The Man with the Magic Eardrums

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  He made a helpless gesture with his two pudgy hands.

  “And there’s my story,” he finished. “One success—technical, that is, not financial—and one failure. The success—on a Nixon-Duvall with only 6 pennies in it. The failure—on a Nixon-Duvall that prob’ly had a thousand bucks in it. And about then, as I’m wondering how to go on with this game, I catch that story—a week ago, that was—in the Minny Despatch, about your place—and all you folks—and by sheer good luck it just happens to mention a Nixon-Duvall being in the dump. And it says how you were in a sanitarium—and how your dame always blows the town every year on October 21, 22, and 23, to go in retreat in that nunnery in Milwaukee. Which means the servants are bound to go out kiting. For when the cats are away, you know, the mice will play! And it gives th’ street and number, and the way the place stands on the prairie—ever’ goddamn thing I need. It just looks, in fact, like I’m all set—for one more try. Which I made—or tried to make last night. That is, I lay around out there on th’ prairie half the night—and the place here was lighted up all the time. The servants were right on th’ job. But tonight when I got here, it was dark. And I give it a phone call—and nary an answer. So I’m ready—and it’s ready. And so I fetched a ladder across the prairie from that unfinished house south of here—and—well, here I am!” He made another of those characteristically futile gestures with his hands. And then handed me what was supposed to be, for me, a defy. “And now—in case you are thinking of welching on me—you can tell all that to the coppers—and I’ll tell ’em you’re full of hop—and so will the frat—and so will th’ old lady—for I used cotton gloves on both o’ them jobs and left no fingerprints. And the Nixon-Duvall people, I’m betting you, will give me ten dozen specialists to prove that a story to the effect that a guy can listen his way through one o’ their safes is—is hooey! Am I right—or am I right?”

  CHAPTER V

  A Ring on the Phone

  “Quite naturally,” I admitted, “those people wouldn’t want the world to know that there was a weakness in their product. I don’t know but that they would toss in a few specialists! However, there’s a matter of a jimmied window in that frat house, you know.” The rubicund face of the man across from me fell visibly. “And somebody, too, who’d come forward and admit writing to the American Safe Company for you. Yes. And your fingerprints on that window—back of me! All good—for 5 years.” His face was exceedingly glum now. “Well, let’s not talk of things that don’t need to occur. You’ve an interesting history, man, as a safecracker. Nitroglycerineless—that is! Peterman—isn’t that the word I’ve heard applied to safe openers?—up from the honest ranks of labor. The Man With the Magic Eardrums! So long as I live, I’ll think of you by that name—instead of the name Givney. And what a story this is going to be—at the Nicollet Racing Club! I expect still to be telling it there, when I’m in my dotage.” I paused. “However, let’s bring the story to its proper end. The way I outlined it a while back. As a sporting man, Givney, I made you a proposition. You open my wife’s safe—and you go out free. Fail—and damn’d if you don’t sleep tonight in a cell in the Northwest Minneapolis Police Station!”

  His answer made me say—mentally—but two words: “Shrewd beggar!”

  “Listen,” was his demand. “Are—are you trying to get something on your wife?”

  “Listen yourself,” I retorted sharply. “Would there be anything to be gotten—on a woman who retires once a year—into sack­cloth and ashes—in a cell—in a convent?”

  He scratched his chin.

  “We-ell—no, I don’t think there would be.”

  “All right. Then that’s that. So are you going to take me up—or aren’t you? Say yes—or say no.”

  The silence was suddenly broken by the sharp ringing of the telephone bell belonging to the instrument on the table between us. The instrument was close to his side of the table, thanks to the manner in which I had shoved it well out of my way after satisfying myself that his name was Peter Givney. I ignored the ring, however.

  “Answer!” I demanded, as it rang the second time. And I was still referring to the command I had last put to him.

  He seemed confused, however, by my words—and by the third ring of that telephone bell, because, instead of answering my fiat, he reached undecidedly out and lifted the instrument off its cradle. Even as I waved my arms violently to signify that he should leave it alone! But he had it, transmitting end to his lips already.

  “Yessir—he’s here,” he was saying. “Hold th’ wire.”

  He capped the transmitting end of the instrument with his hand. “A guy wants t’ talk to you.”

  “You damn fool,” I raged. “Why in hell did you lift that instrument up? Didn’t I tell you I was dodging a possible Congressional subpoena?”

  “Yeah—but then—then you said to answer.”

  “Damn it,” I fumed. “I was referring to my question to you. And not the phone. I’m not home to every Tom, Dick and Harry. And I’d have ignored it. And—well, what—what does he want?”

  “We-ell—the guy just says: ‘K’n I speak to Mr. Mortimer King.’”

  “Well, now that you’ve shot your mouth off about my being here, ask him who he is.”

  “Who’s speaking?” he asked in the phone.

  A squeaking followed. He looked up, transmitting end of phone again cupped.

  “He says he can’t give his name—an’ it wouldn’t mean nothing to you anyway—because he and you don’t even know each other.”

  “Hm? That’s funny. Ask him what he wants of me—at this hour.”

  He repeated my query. “He wants to know w’at you want?”

  More squeaking. He looked up. Transmitting end of instrument still cupped.

  “He says he wants to lay five hundred plunks in your lap.”

  “Five hundred pl—what the—hell! Five hundr—and he doesn’t even know me. Is he nuts or—here hand the phone over. And shove that cradle over here too, while you’re about it.”

  He shoved the instrument meekly across the table. And followed it with the cradle-base. And then, duly chastened, sat with hands flat on knees.

  And I answered the man, whoever he might be, who was on the other end.

  CHAPTER VI

  Solomon Steenburg on the Wire

  “Hello?” I began.

  A slightly nasal, but very businesslike voice answered.

  “Pardon me, Mr. King, for calling you at this hour—specially since you don’t know me—nor me you. But—but I’ve got to see you on a vital matter. Sol Steenburg is my name.”

  “I see. Well—just what—did you wish to see me—about?”

  “Mr. King, would you be interested in picking up five hundred dollars—and maybe saving a hundred thousand dollars’ future losses among your different books on the tracks—and maybe averting a gang war in New York City, in the bargain?”

  “What the devil?” I echoed. “Is this a joke? Or a game?”

  “Neither,” he said. “It’s on the level!”

  “Well,” I replied slowly, for there was conviction in the fellow’s voice, “I can’t say that I’d be so particularly hot and bothered about a mere five hundred dollars—but when you talk about saving thousands of dollars losses on the tracks—well—that’s like the famous white filly, Snowbird, who got dyed black, and cleaned up on the tracks as Blackbird! In short—a horse of another color! As to gang wars in New York, I don’t just get it. Well, what’s it all about?”

  “Well—first, Mr. King—you own a certain human skull?”

  “Well,” I said, with a half smile on my face, glancing across the stocky shoulders of the man in front of me to that brick shelf between safe door and closet door, “if what I’ve got isn’t a human skull—then it must be an ape’s skull!”

  “Only it isn’t!” was his quite-confident reply. “Now this skull
came to you, I believe,” he pressed on, “in a somewhat unusual way?”

  “That would depend wholly on how you would look at it,” I told him coolly—and unfriendlily.

  “Sure—sure it would, Mr. King. I’ll say. I guess in your racket so many odd things happen that nothing is very queer. However, Mr. King, to make a long story short—would you be interested in selling that skull—for five hundred dollars?”

  “Not overly so,” I told him. “Not that five century notes,” I added, “aren’t—five century notes. Which, if I saw ’em on a sidewalk, I’d lean down and pick them up.”

  “Right! Myself the same, too. Mr. King, I’ve got to see you tonight.”

  “But I’m afraid, my friend,” I told him curtly, “that you’ll have to make an appointment for some time tomorr—”

  “No—don’t say that, Mr. King. I’m less than two blocks from your house right now. I’m on the edge of that big prairie where you live. That is, I’m in the Twin-City Chain Drugstore on Chando Avenue—north of Weddles Street—if you recall it. You see, Mr. King, I tried tonight a bit earlier to get you—I was even up at your home there—and not a soul—not even a servant—was in. So I just decided to stick on here in the vicinity, and keep ringing your place every half hour—till someone, yourself—or some servant—returned. Fact is, I’ve been here for over an hour and a half, in a soda booth, reading Lulu.”

  Lulu! I believed I could almost picture him from the thing be read. And the nasal twang in his voice—and the businesslike directness of his general approach.

  I thought hard. Here was I—with a captive—one un-armed, to be sure—and just about to give me a unique demonstration—of a rare ability he possessed which I wasn’t altogether sure yet wasn’t all based on a mere accidental fluke of some kind. A fluke in a secondhand safe shop. Though if he did possess the ability he claimed, I certainly intended to have that demonstration—since Fate had brought him along at such a grave and disturbing impasse in my own tangled affairs. Yet here, on the other hand, was Mr. Steenburg—Mr. Sol Steenburg—talking about cutting off losses of a hundred thousand dollars or more at the tracks—and five hundred dollars in cash for that skull over yonder on the shelf. Steenburg was talking about concrete things—in a concrete way! While the little man across from me might, for all I knew, be completely deluded as to his “expertness” with Nixon-Duvall safes. I half shook my head troubledly. Steenburg, and his late telephone call, was just like a short-priced horse suddenly entered the last moment in a sweepstakes, changing all odds chalked up on the entire board.

  The little man in the checked cap was watching me with wide-open eyes. I spoke. Into the transmitter. For after all, there were more than 5 full hours yet before Jemimah would hang!

  “All right, my friend. Track losses are damned important things—while five hundred dollars is small change. But I’ll see what it’s all about. So run over. Ring the front door bell. And I’ll let you in. And—but you say you know how to get here, all right?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I’ll have no trouble—thanks to the sidewalks all being laid out, and there being a few streetlights anyway.”

  “But didn’t I understand you to say you’d been here once before tonight?” I asked him puzzledly.

  “Yes, that’s right, Mr. King. But I came from the south that time—Ludlow Street. And when I couldn’t find anybody at home, I wandered west, on some cross-street there on the prairies, to—well, I think it’s called Northdale Avenue. Then I got balled up, and wandered north on that street, and all about the residential district north of you, and around in some sort of circle till I was near the prairie again, but on another street—Chando Avenue, it’s called—where I found this Twin-City drugstore.”

  “I see. I see. Well, come this way then—but be sure to follow my instructions if you don’t want to get lost again! Don’t come down Chando Avenue to Alberta Street—the lights are all out on the east stretch of sidewalk—as you undoubtedly must have found, since you took it into your head to traipse west before—and you may fall all over hell-and-gone before you get to this street, Yukon, crossing the prairie north and south. Walk west on Weddles Street—on the south side of the street—till you come to a big yellow sign reading ‘Hobury Heights Development.’ A short distance later you’ll see a lamppost with a blue sign on it, reading ‘Yukon Street.’ With just a sidewalk, coming up to it from the south. Turn south on that dark ribbon of cement—and—well—there’s only one house—only one, at least, that’s finished—between that lamppost and Ludlow Street, two full blocks to the south where you first came from. So I guess you shouldn’t miss it.”

  “Yes, Mr. King, I get you perfectly. And—oh say—by the way—could you possibly arrange that we could be—alone?”

  “I don’t need to arrange it. I’m alone here now. Mrs. King is in Milwaukee tonight. It’s true that one of my men who tends one of my handbooks in South Minneapolis answered the phone. But he was just leaving. He—wait just a minute.” Now I was pulling a grand bluff. “Are you gone yet, Cronkhite?” No answer, of course! I turned to the instrument. “He’s left. And I wonder if you’ll do me a favor? If you pass him on your way here—he carries a cane, and wears a derby hat, and has a paper-wrapped package under one arm—will you tell him not to forget to call on George Jannsen at 3 o’clock tomorrow afternoon sharp?” I spelled it forth. “J—A—N—N—S—E—N!”

  “George Jannsen, you say? 3 tomorrow—sharp? Sure yes. I’ll watch for him. And I’ll be there in 7—8—minutes.”

  And we hung up together.

  I sighed. And looked at the little man across from me. “Well, Petie, ol’ boy ol’ boy ol’ boy—you and your little demonstration will have to wait a bit, I guess. I’ve got a caller.”

  “Oke,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll wait. Over there by the wall. Or I’ll step downstairs, if you want me to.”

  I laughed openly. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it? You loping like an elephant over the prairies—once you were out of my sight?” I scratched my chin. The narrow oak closet door built into the brickwork of the wall back of him—some 10 or 12 feet from the imbedded safe—gave me an idea. “No, I’m going to sequester you in that closet. You’ll sit on the floor—your back against the wall. And ruminate over your misdeeds!”

  “O. K.” he said cheerfully. Rising.

  So cheerful about it, in fact he was, that I could read in it only the sheer jubilance of a man figuring he had the best of all chances in front of him now, to get something—to blackmail somebody—on!

  “First,” I ordered him, with a dry smile, “set those little magic eardrums of yours—auricles, to be exact—on the table.”

  His face actually paled. “Jesus, don’t—don’t make me do that, will you? It’s—it’s hell—to be locked—in silence.”

  “Pull ’em out—and put ’em down on that table,” I commanded. “I’m laying out the orders here tonight—and not you. Do you want me to get enough of a rise in blood pressure that I’ll call the police—right off?”

  “All—right. All—right! Don’t get sore. Don’t get sore. I’ll sit in the closet. On’y don’t expect, when your friend is gone, to call me to come out. Or knock for me. You’ll hafta to come—and turn the knob o’ th’ door.”

  “Turn the key, you mean,” I corrected him, “that’s sticking out of the lock over there—all in readiness to bolt you snugly into limbo with!”

  He turned about and assured himself of the sad fact of its existence.

  “Well,” he said grumpily, looking back again, “if I take th’ gadgets out—I got t’ have my tweezers. Can I reach for my watch pocket—’thout catching a slug—in my guts?”

  “Reach away!” I told him, smiling.

  He ferreted out of the tiny pocket over his pudgy paunch a pair of tweezers such as women thin their eyebrows with. Deftly, and obviously from much practice therein—and I remembered now how he had sta
ted he did this operation only at night, when the lights were out, and his head was on his pillow—he reached into his right ear—and a second later the tweezers were withdrawn, holding the curiously shaped flesh-tinted cone-like little trumpet.

  With a dolorous sigh, he laid it on the table. And transferred the tweezers to his other hand. But I now held up mine. As a signal—to hold everything! Like a one-eared setter, he promptly turned the other ear towards me. I’m not sure but that he actually cocked it.

  “Don’t make any noise—in that closet over there—while my caller is here,” I warned him. “For if you do, I’ll have to shoot you right through the door—as a burglar—to prove that I’ve been giving him the right low-down on being entirely alone!”

  “I think you would enjoy potting me—at that,” he said spiritedly. “But don’t worry. I’ll be so goddamn quiet that you and him will think you’re both on the Sarah Desert.”

  “See that you do. And come on with the other gadget now!”

  Another deep sigh, and he reached blindly into his other ear with his tweezers, and removed, with the same deftness, his other mechanical sound-focusser. And now the blank expression characteristic of all deaf people settled hopelessly on his face.