I swept the two little flesh-colored devices into the front of the library table drawer, already lying an inch or so open, thanks either to Otto’s carelessness—or else Rozalda’s.
With which I stepped around the table and over to the closet door. And threw it open. The silken dresses hanging on hangers at the side of the closet—and the few books and racing records on the shelves—would have to be his sole companions for a few minutes. I motioned to him. He seemed used to sign language.
He came across the intervening space, draggingly, rebelliously, sullenly. And not with the least fraction of the celerity with which he had clambered over that windowsill a short while before. He went dispiritedly into the closet, the while I stood well off, my hand on the gun in my right-hand pocket. He turned, and stood waiting.
I motioned him down.
He settled, first squattingly, and then relaxingly, onto the floor. Put his back against the rear wall of the closet. Drew up his knees, linked his hands together about them by aid of his pudgy fingers. The hopeless dull expression now written large on his face was one of complete resignation.
I stepped to the door, and nodded, trying at least to convey the words: “See you later.” And closing the door on him, I turned the key in the lock within it, and put it in my pocket.
With which I stepped over a few feet to the right and gazed speculatively up at the skull. And which, in turn, gazed superciliously out—and over me—suggesting exactly what it had when I had originally viewed it for the first time: a London bobby—because of the strip of white adhesive tape holding the lower jaw firmly to the sconce, passing under the jaw and ending on each of the flat bony cheek-planes of the latter.
Strange, I mused, staring at it, that fellow Steenburg’s words! No skull in the world was worth five hundred dollars. That is, intrinsically. Extrinsically—well that was another thing entirely. So, of causes—facts—indeed, the history of that sconce—just what did this Steenburg know? Therein lay the answer to the riddle of his generous offer! But at this point a curious thought struck me. Rather, a sequence of thoughts, one growing directly out of the other! This very fellow I now had locked in the closet might have been after that skull—and all his story about Nixon-Duvall safes might have been a lot of hooey. Particularly in view of the fact that he had left himself an “out”—with respect to being 100 per cent able to open a Nixon-Duvall safe! And Mr. “Sol Steenburg,” in turn, might be another nightbird—playing independently—at some kind of a game. He might even have a gun on him a yard long. And seeing that skull in full view—might pull his gun on me pronto. Still more—he might even be a confederate of the fellow I had locked in the closet—and the two of them—if ever they got together!—might succeed in tieing me up tighter than a kite—and maybe plant a bullet between my ribs, in addition, to prevent my identifying them.
But—if the skull weren’t here in sight—and I had some sort of plausible story about where it really was—and had, safely locked up, the one man who could testify it was in the house—Mr. “Steenburg,” if he was not all he seemed to be, would have to use guile—not force.
So I hurriedly lifted down Mr. Skull—and he really looked, as I did so, as though he suspected what I was going to do with him, and wanted to rattle forth an objection, except that, of course, so snugly were his lower teeth bound to his dome by that tape that, even had he been a living head, he would have had, perforce, to remain mute!—anyway, I lifted him down, and put him in the partly filled wastebasket at the side of the table, clear on the bottom, and covered him well over—and around—with waste paper. And sat down back again in the swivel chair.
Come on, Mr. “Steenburg!”
CHAPTER VII
Mr. Steenburg Introduces Himself!
Mr. Sol Steenburg—for so he really did prove subsequently to be—lost no time in getting over. As it afterward developed, he had positively to take the 1 a.m. plane out of Minneapolis that very night—which accounted for part of his speed. That, plus the fact that he was, after all, but one and three-quarters blocks away. For hardly had the onyx clock which looked down on me from the brickwork mantel ticked away a further half-minute, then a long, vigorous ring at the front door bell took place.
I rose, and drawing aside the drapes on each side of the arched door so that the bright light from the room would illuminate well the single broad flight of stairs to the front door, went down, and opened it.
A man dressed in a dapper suit of some sort of striped material, and wearing as well a rakish grey fedora hat, stood there. He was about 32 years of age, as nearly as I could then judge, and his face carried a thin and gracefully curving mustache such as, 7 or 8 years ago, or thereabouts, was affected by more than one screen idol. At least, those were the points that impressed themselves immediately on me, thanks to the light coming down from the open archway above us.
“Mr. Steenburg?” I queried.
“Yes, yes. And this is Mr. King?”
“Yes, Mr. Steenburg.” I closed the door as he came in. “Just go right up those stairs there—to my library.”
He preceded me up them, and stood aside, hat in hand, as I went in.
“Put your hat here on the rack, Mr. Steenburg,” I invited him. “And take that gilt-legged Louis chair over ponder,” I added. “And I’ll sit in my old workhorse of a chair across from you.”
He hung his rakish grey hat next my own, and, crossing the room briskly, sat down in the Louis Quatorze chair. Taking a lone cigarette from some upper vest pocket, and fumbling in his right-hand coat pocket for a match or a lighter. At the moment his nickel-plated lighter flashed forth I was certain it was a silver-plated gun like the one in my coat pocket—and my hand tightened on my own. But it was only a lighter, after all! He ignited his cigarette, puffed on it, and gazed in frank curiosity about the room.
The while I took up the swivel chair, rescuing an ash tray from the table drawer for his ashes, watching him inquiringly, surveying him more painstakingly, and wondering what on earth his visit was about.
Well dressed, Sol Steenburg. At least that striped suit was of fine material, and well tailored. Perhaps 40 years old—and not the 32 I had first hypothesized down at the front door—thanks to the brighter light bringing out a faint crepe-like texture to the skin directly under his eyes. His nose was quite aquiline—at least it possessed, in lieu of the hump that should presumably have been there to suggest his race, and to conform with his name, but the slightest convexity at its bridge. Though his eyes were: brown, sometimes almost loquacious themselves when he talked, at other times becoming the coldest, most business-like brown I have ever seen. His tie carried a small diamond, and matched a silk handkerchief that peeped with carefully adjusted carelessness from the upper handkerchief pocket of his coat. A tiny violet studded the buttonhole of his lapel. Plainly, Sol was a man who liked women—and whom, doubtlessly, women of some sorts would like in return.
Now we were waiting, one for the other.
“Well, Mr. Steenburg,” I said, “one of my weaknesses is possession of a hopeless bump of curiosity! For which reason I allowed you to come over here tonight—instead of tomorrow.”
“And thanks a lot for that, anyway, Mr. King,” he said. “For I’ve got to be in court at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow—at Buffalo.”
“In court?” I queried, raising my eyebrows.
“I guess you don’t know yet who I am, do you?” he said quizzically.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” I replied.
“Well, I’m the son of—but, by the way, Mr. King, are we alone now?”
I scratched my chin. Those businesslike brown eyes were fixed upon my face like gimlets that bored into my very thoughts. But remembering that, after all, the incumbent of the closet was, for the present, stone deaf—and had had due warning to stay put and keep quiet—I lied quite brazenly.
“We’re completely alone. The man who answered the phone when you called has long
since left.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I passed him. There on Weddles Street. Just before I reached the signboard. Limping along with his cane. In fact, he had two packages. I gave him your message. And he stared after me like he thought I was bewitched.”
I could hardly keep from grinning. For whoever he had passed had doubtlessly been walking east on Weddles Street from Northdale Avenue—to get to Chando Avenue—and had never turned out, at all, of the Hobury Heights prairies where Yukon Street—or Yukon Street someday to be!—in the form of a single lonely sidewalk, intersected Weddles Street. But my suppressed grin was not so much at the sheer “happenstance” that should have made this fellow pass a man tallying so nearly with my faked description, but at my picturization of the thoughts that must have gone through that individual at receiving such a cryptic message out of the night! I kept a straight face, however, as I replied.
“Well, naturally—he wondered how in hell a mere stranger passing him on the street had that confidential dope about—well—Jannsen. For just as he went out, you see, I told him it was St. Cloud, Minnesota, calling.”
“Oh yes—sure—I see. I see. Well, now—neither of your two servants are downstairs? The big German—or Rozalda?”
I gazed at him in surprise. How in the devil did he know about Otto and Rozalda? At least, Rozalda’s name? But I decided to let that clear itself up, automatically whenever he got to his errand.
“No,” I told him. And added darkly: “And the big German—as you call him—Otto’s his name—is going to catch Billy-Hell tomorrow. For leaving this house alone.”
“Violating orders?” he queried.
“Very much,” I nodded. And added explanatorily: “He has a mistress—a German girl—married—in Stillwater, Minnesota.”
“Oh-oh!” he commented. “And when the cats are away, the mice—well maybe,” he broke off, “you’ll be surprised to know that your Rozalda has a number of boy friends too?”
“Not at all,” I told him. And had good reason for my answer. “But I am surprised at your knowing so much about Otto—and Rozalda.” I paused. “So let’s get to the subject. We’re all alone.”
He was manifestly satisfied that I spoke the truth.
“Well, Mr. King,” he began, “as I told you on the phone, my name is Sol Steenburg. I’m a former criminal attorney. Of Buffalo, New York. Where I practice law at present. Only, I don’t practice criminal law any more. Real estate law—exclusively. I live at 289lvin Parkway, Buffalo. And my offices are in the Brisbane Building. See—just putting all my cards on the table?”
I nodded, more puzzled than ever. Though, in his having been a criminal attorney once, lay some slight possible clue as to his interest in that skull. If, that is, he were a one-time criminal attorney—and not an imposter. And I decided, then and there, to test him out, and, at the same time—if he were all he claimed to be—get an authoritative answer to something that was harassing me tonight to the bottommost depths of my being.
CHAPTER VIII
The Mulkovitch Riddle
“So you were at one time a criminal attorney, eh, Mr. Steenburg?” I replied. “Then you’d know a good deal about the laws of bigamy. Now I’ve been interested—merely academically, of course—in the case of this—this Negress, due to hang over there in London in five hours or so. And—”
“I too!” put in Steenburg vehemently. “For the filthy slut, now about to die, has given the Home Secretary, for his memoirs, the solution of the Mulkovitch Riddle. Which—as a one-time criminal attorney—I’ve racked my brains plenty on, over the past five years. And will continue to rack, no doubt, till the Home Secretary himself dies—and his memoirs are published!”
“But it’s just a case, as I understand it,” I returned, “of a man disappearing inside of a dive.”
“Just?” he echoed. “Just—is good! It—but where were you, Mr. King, 5 years—no—5 years and 3 months ago?”
I had to ponder a minute myself on that question. And then I recalled how on exactly that date I would have been about exactly halfway between America and Rio de Janeiro. And on the high seas to boot. “I was aboard a ship with Mrs. King,” I told Steenburg briefly. “Going to Rio. A small ship—without even radio news.”
“Which would account then,” he returned, “for your not knowing much about that British riddle. And in the matter of my own knowing considerable about it, I happen to have a little book—rather booklet—published at a shilling in England—one of a series of true cases—this one called ‘The Mulkovitch Riddle’—which gives the thing in greater detail than was ever available over here in the cursory newspaper mentions of it. And—” He cleared his throat. “Well it seems, Mr. King, that this heavily bearded and mustached Russian—Nikolai Mulkovitch—a man of about 40, more or less—appeared in London roughly five years ago, and was seen here—there—and about, in various cafes in Soho and so forth, talking communism. In broken Russianesque English. He had entered England on a valid passport, though it was subsequently found—when it was investigated—to have been issued on the basis of ‘verbal interrogation’ only, and by some emigration commissar named Bluvitsky, who died a few days after Mulkovitch left Russia. So there never was any data available about who Mulkovitch really was!
“Be that as it may,” Steenburg continued, “Mulkovitch fell under suspicion in London as being an anarchist. And murderer to boot! Not by the British police, however, but by an astute American secret service chief there who found that Mulkovitch’s advent in London was just one week before the American Embassy was dynamited—and an under-clerk killed—in the apparent effort to destroy certain treaties just drawn up between England and America. And so he suspected Mulkovitch as having perhaps been the dynamiter. And put two of his men—both Americans residing in London—to trailing Mulkovitch so as to try to get a line on the Russian—two men so that, if one lost the trail, the other one would still have it.
“And the very first day Mulkovitch was under surveillance,” Steenburg went on, “he repaired to—well, to give the complete details, he was first followed, around 10 o’clock or so in the morning, to a West End barber shop, where, as though in preparation for some important call, he had his voluminous beard and mustache neatly trimmed, and his shoes shined; thence emerging, he repaired—it was now around noontime, more or less—to a lonely house standing out in the center of some small prairie on the outskirts of London—a set-up very much like you have here, Mr. King—only Exham Heath that particular ‘prairie’ was called!—and was seen to ring, and to be admitted by a black woman.
“And before the ring was even answered, one of the two agents was circling about the side of the prairie to get on the rear edge of this heath—to watch the rear door of the house—in case Mulkovitch was giving a ‘slip.’”
Steenburg paused reflectively, then continued:
“The bearded Mulkovitch didn’t, however, come out.
“And hour after hour continued to go by.
“It was a nippy cold day—comfortable smoke coming from the chimney of the house, yes, but nippy outside—but the agents held their ground.
“And the chief agent, situated somewhere in the front, noted woman after woman coming to the place—several altogether—each carrying a bag or a satchel—some ringing the bell and being admitted by the black woman—a couple even using keys—but none coming out again. And so this agent, seeing that the place was some strange kind of an underworld joint, called a passing milkwagon driver and asked him to send the first bobby he saw down there.
“Well, the bobby came,” Steenburg went on, “and the agent told him briefly what had occurred—that a man under grave suspicion of being a bomber and murderer by the local London American secret service chief was inside—and asked the bobby to request his—the bobby’s—superiors to have the place ‘pulled’—and to be extremely careful not to let this Russian man get away.
“And
within 15 minutes,” Steenburg continued, “a detail of London police arrived. And surrounded the place like nobody’s business.
“Upon which the American agents immediately withdrew, as to have remained would, it seems, have been a sort of—of covert insult to the efficiency of the British police.
“But the police,” Steenburg went on, “getting admission—well—they found that the place was Jemimah Cobb’s latest dive—last known, about 2 months back, to have been down near the West India docks. And now evidently taking a fly at business on the outskirts of the city. ‘Clients’ being notified, I suppose, by telephone!” Steenburg laughed. But his laugh faded into profound puzzlement. “And all they found inside was the notorious Jemimah Cobb herself and her 5 girls, the latter all dressed in flamboyant silks and so forth—and all ready for the ‘trade.’ All, as it happened, were known personally to one of the raiding party—Inspector Allison—who in plain clothes had visited the West India docks joint a number of times in the building up of evidence for a watertight case. And to give you an idea, Mr. King, of the sort of thing this Cobb creature purveyed, there was Gertrude with the cross-eyes; Minnie the hunchback—”
“Oh-oh!” I said. “Jemimah Cobb had profited, it seems, from having been shot—for not having one such?”
“So it seems, yes,” agreed Steenburg. “And then there was the French woman who talked practically no English—now what was her name?—oh yes, Theodora—”
“Theodora!” I stiffened in my chair with surprise. For even I remembered Theodora, in that Quarter Moon Road joint. In that noxious lost chapter of my life. Theodora of the long golden hair—undoubtedly bleached! I’d even learned a few words of French from her. And had heard too, from her own lips, how her dream was to get back to her native France. And so poor Theodora—still a girl when I had been in that place—now Steenburg spoke of her as ‘the French woman’—poor Theodora had gone on and on and on with Jemimah. And down and down and down at the same time. And had become, as she went “on”—and “down”—older too—alas for her!
The Man with the Magic Eardrums Page 6
