The Man with the Magic Eardrums

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  Steenburg was looking at me oddly.

  “The name reminded me,” I said embarrassedly, “that I’m to call up a party of that name tonight. But—but go on.”

  He hesitated a minute. Then continued: “And there was Katie, the German girl, who had seven fingers on each hand—ugh—” Steenburg shivered visibly. “She—she must have suggested an—an octopus; and there was Koko, some strange dark-skinned multi-breed from Singapore with apparently all the races of the entire world in her.

  “And so,” Steenburg went on, “Jemimah and the 5 girls were whisked off to the police station—and the place searched from top to bottom by the raiding police. But no Mulkovitch! They looked under beds—in closets—tapped walls—

  “And still no Mulkovitch!

  “They pulled the fire out of the boiler—the old place had central heating—and raked the ashes. Not even a button or a belt-buckle!

  “Well, the girls,” Steenburg continued, “in separate cells in jail, each and individually declared that no Mulkovitch was in that house so far as they personally knew; and Jemimah Cobb further swore that no such man had entered her place—and that anybody claiming so was a ‘bloody liar’ and ‘coverin’ up his own stinkin’ incomp’tence.’ The girls were searched and examined, by the jail matrons, to their very skins to see if any were concealing some incriminating clue. Nothing was found to indicate other than that they at least thought they spoke the truth. So all were arraigned that night in police court on some British charge like our disorderly conduct—with leave, however, for the crown to institute murder charges if Mulkovitch’s body were found—and were sent—on six month sentences each—to—well, Koko, the multi-breed, was sent to the Women’s Department of the North London Jail for Psychopaths; Theodora went to the Women’s Reformatory on Lower Thames—”

  Poor Theodora! But I kept my face impassive.

  “—where at the end of her six months’ sentence,” continued Steenburg, “—for no Mulkovitch was ever found—she was deported back to France.”

  France! So Theodora had gotten home after all!

  “Katie, of the 7 fingers on each hand, and Minnie the hunchback, were sent to the Bermondsey Women’s Jail—from which Katie, at the end of her sentence, was shipped back to Germany. And Gertrude, of the cross-eyes, went to the women felons’ division of Pentonville Prison where Jemimah Cobb is today.”

  “And what—did Jemimah Cobb—get out of it?”

  Grimly, as I put that question, I wondered what on earth Steenburg would have thought had I put it correctly: “What did my legal and lawful wife get out of it?”

  “Oh,” he said, “she appealed her sentence—and a judge, in the next higher court, merely fined her. A paltry 50 pounds. There was some sort of scandal that she had something on him. That he was one of her—clients. At any rate, she slithered out of it—to run more dives. And ultimately, as now, to reach the end of her rope. And what I have related,” Steenburg finished, “is the Mulkovitch Riddle.”

  “Well, there’s nothing to it at all,” I said, a little deflatedly, “so far I can see. It’s plain that during the excitement of the raid Mulkovitch slipped out.”

  “No,” Steenburg said. “The police came down well prepared for a raid and for an important capture. And the agents never relinquished their positions till the police had completely taken over.”

  “Then,” I said, “he must have been hidden in the walls, and, several days later, after the thing died down—he just walked out.”

  “Yes? Well, next day, while the police still had the place under complete guard, the owner—a very religious man—decided to do something immediately that he had long intended to do. Namely, demolish the old house and put up a double bungalow. So he called in a huge corps of men and tore down the house. In front of the police. There were no secret panels or walls. The men dug up the foundation for the new place. No grave! No body. No Mul­kovitch. And to boil a long story short, Mr. King, he was never again seen by human eye.”

  Steenburg gave a gesture of finality with his hands.

  “Well,” I ventured, “it would seem then that the two agents who saw Mulkovitch enter the place just failed to see him emerge.”

  “In broad daylight?” Steenburg returned. “From a house out on a lonely heath?” He shook his head. “And if that’s all there was to it, Mr. King, why has Jemimah Cobb used the solution to try and bargain her way out of the noose? And why has the Home Secretary, in turn, called it an ‘amazing solution’?”

  I could not reply to that one. For it successfully diverted a hundred possible contraventions.

  “Well,” I said helplessly, “there—there isn’t any answer then—if, that is, the premises of the enigma are precisely as you have set forth.”

  “They are,” he pronounced firmly. “I sent my booklet to a friend in London, who is now a police inspector there. And asked him if all the premises were there—and if all were correct. He sent it back, with a letter that the booklet contained all there was on the case—and that what there was there was all correct.”

  A deep silence fell on us both. And I was the first to break in.

  “Well, all this thing began,” I said, “when I started to ask you, back there, a—a purely academic question. Yes—on hearing that you were an ex-criminal lawyer. And this is it: What is the status of the white wife of the white American whom Jemimah Cobb is going to name—assuming, of course, that that American has taken a wife, and without the formality of a divorce, for I understand that—that Jemimah Cobb’s death was reported once in the American papers?”

  “Yes. Well, that wife is loser in all directions.”

  “In all directions? Just what do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean, Mr. King, that even if Jemimah Cobb didn’t hang tonight—though of course she will, for her last possible appeal has failed—oh, those English are tough, when it comes to criminals, and no maybe!—but even if, as a mere argumentative hypothesis, she didn’t hang—as, for instance, if she went to the penitentiary for life, or—or even to the lunatic asylum—well, the white wife in question is no wife. And, conversely, if Jemimah Cobb is hanged, the white wife’s bigamous marriage becomes okay and legal, and stands—only—her heart gets broken.”

  “Broken?” I echoed.

  “Good God, Mr. King,” he came back, “what decent white woman’s wouldn’t be? To learn that her husband—had married a degenerate Negress before her? Why no story on God’s green earth, Mr. King, could ever explain that away. The man in the case plainly was some kind of a degenerate himself—perhaps partially reformed today. But reverting again to such white wife as he may have—well, if by any chance she has any Southern blood in her, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her take poison—or something.”

  I was silent. He had put things mighty pointedly. One hundred per cent loser, one person—whether all the horses came under the tape noses together—or all failed to start! One hundred per cent loser—whether Jemimah Cobb hung or didn’t hang. And hung Jemimah Cobb assuredly was scheduled to be. Unless—

  “But you were about to tell me, Mr. Steenburg,” I put in suddenly, “exactly why you came here tonight.” I glanced at the clock. “So—will you please continue?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I will. And will make it brief!”

  CHAPTER IX

  Mr. Steenburg Discusses His Odd Errand

  “I have told you who I am,” Steenburg resumed, “but not who I am the son of. I am the son—the only son—of Rabbi David Steenburg, conceded to be the best informed man in the entire world on race-track gambling—the evils of it, that is! But of course, your being in a sanitarium the last couple of months or so, Mr. King, catching a pick-up on your nerves from the flu, you probably—like all patients—haven’t been allowed to read newspapers. Probably that place in Virginia where you were just didn’t allow newspapers ever to come into it—so there wouldn’t be any argument
s with the patients. You see, I was in one myself once, long ago, when I had a bit of a nervous breakdown. And we weren’t permitted newspapers. So, because of all this, it’s quite possible that you wouldn’t know—”

  “Just a minute,” I broke in. “You learned of my resting up in that sanitarium—from the Minneapolis Despatch?”

  “I both learned of it, I don’t mind telling you, directly from your Polish girl servant Rozalda—but I read it, too, in that story about some nitroglyc—well—but you’ve seen the story by now, of course. So—”

  “No,” I told him. “I did not read it. And I have not yet seen it. I happen to know about the story now, yes, from—from a chap I met downtown tonight—for but a minute or two—and from what I can gather it seems that there was far more King Family History in it than nitro-glycerine!”

  “Yes,” Steenburg admitted. And fumbled in his pockets. “I’ve the story here, in fact—for I had reasons to get a copy of it, Mr. King—and if you’d like to have it, you—”

  I shook my head.

  “No. Laurel will undoubtedly have a copy. She—but Laurel, I ought to explain, is Mrs. King.” I stroked my chin, frowning. “I wonder just why—why she never sent me that story? Yes.”

  “I can answer that, Mr. King.”

  “You can?” I said in surprise. “Well go ahead—but also tell me how on earth the newspapers made such a complete tie-up to our family here, of the mere fact that some cracksman, at some time past moreover, hid a little nitroglycerine out on this big expanse of prairie surrounding this house?”

  “Well,” Steenburg declared, withdrawing a long folded clipping, “as to the latter question, Mr. King, some police inspec­tor who investigated the matter opined that maybe burglars stashed the stuff out here, figuring to be ready some night to blow your safe. But that, going up into some single unfinished house out there with binoculars, had been able to see—right in this very room here—that you had a safe of a type that was unblowable. In fact, this inspector showed how every detail of this room could have been caught in binoculars. And again—” He was unfolding the clipping as he talked, and it revealed itself to be composed of a long one and a very short one. “—the police wanted very much to question some gardener your wife had employed for about 3 weeks in your absence—from, in fact, I see it says, September 20th to October 8th—a bearded and mustached chap, with lobeless ears, named—let’s see—yes—Alonzo Hetchel—but who had left here more or less abruptly and without notice, and whose whereabouts were unknown. They had a theory that he might have been the inside man for some gang.”

  “They—would!” I laughed ironically. “The Honorable Mr. Hetchel, having been bearded and all that—and having lobeless ears to boot—becomes, for the police, the usual mystery man in the case. How, oh how, did it ever happen, I wonder, that the police didn’t suggest that he might even have been the famous Nikolai Mulkovitch—who vanished like a rabbit inside a conjuror’s silk hat?”

  “If any of them have thought about that famous case over the years as I have,” said Steenburg troubledly, “I daresay one of them has. For about 2 seconds, that is! But unfortunately for such beautiful hypothesis,” he went on, taking my words seriously, “which hypothesis couldn’t explain that Mulkovitch Riddle anyway!—your mystery gardener, according to the paper, talked English as only a native-born American—a Vermonter, your wife thought—talks it—and Mulkovitch, as I think I said, talked only broken Russianesque English; your gardener was, the paper said, around 55—while Mulkovitch would even today have been only about 45; and, last but not least, your gardener had lobeless ears—and Mulkovitch, according to the trained agents who trailed him—as I happen to know from my booklet on the case—possessed ears replete to the so-called helix, tragus, anti-tragus, lobule, anti-helix and concha!”

  I smiled. And replied to him.

  “You take me too seriously, I’m afraid—and I gather you know the subject of criminal identification. I have no idea whatsoever that I—or Mrs. King—have been harboring the world’s famous jack rabbit. Who leaps into a hat—and dissolves! But as for Hetchel, Esquire, since he’s been a gardener solely during my absence, I can’t vouch for him except to say that if, according to the Minneapolis police theory, he had been an inside man for a gang, he would have informed said gang as to the utter uselessness of even bringing their nitroglycerine around.” I shook my head, in wonderment at the police. “But you were going to tell me your explanation of why on earth Laurel did not send me this story?”

  “You—you won’t think me presumptuous,” Steenburg said, looking up, “if I read the tail end of the story? The part, in fact, which continued over on to another page? For that jumped tail-end—well—that holds the explanation.”

  “Heavens no, man,” I assured him. “A quarter million people have already read the whole yarn. So one more reading won’t hurt!”

  “No, that’s true.” And somewhat hesitantly, Steenburg read off aloud the smaller of the two clippings he held in his hand.

  Mrs. King will best be remembered as the former Laurel van Utley, of Minneapolis society, the only daughter—as was stated very briefly above—of Ignatius van Utley, the Catholic prayer-book publisher who left his entire fortune to found the order and convent of the Ethelredan Sisters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her mother was Alabama Leeds—one of the two daughters of the famous General “Dixie” Leeds of the Confederate Army. Mrs. King is also cousin to one of Minneapolis’ most unique characters—”Long John” van Critchford, the famous 7-foot-high traffic officer, ex-polo player, graduate of Harvard, and holder of a Ph.D. degree, who today, because of the loss of his own family’s fortunes, handles the traffic in front of Donaldson’s Glass House where it pours together from Nicollet and Hennepin Avenues. Mrs. King received nothing in her father’s will, and an attempt on the part of her cousin, “Long John,” to break the will, was a failure. It was shortly after the death of Ignatius van Utley that the then Laurel van Utley married King—Mortimer Quintus King as he appears on the Minneapolis polls records!—who at that time was best known as “Lucky King,” due to his rapid rise from having started as a bookmaker, with a single $100, taking “out-track” bets, to where he was conducting a dozen books as well as controlling a score of handbooks in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

  Some two years ago Mrs. King—after, it is said, long and deep reflection; and urged on, it is also stated, by certain distant relatives—sued King for legal separation, alleging that he had failed to live up to a pre-marital and implied agreement, namely to quit bookmaking; and alleging like­wise that the frequent distasteful notoriety arising out of his profession had gradually and increasingly hurt her sensi­bilities to the extent that she had come to feel it was a mistake for them to continue on together. The suit was ultimately withdrawn—after, so it is said, rather arduous arguments put to her by King, as well as certain threats voiced by him in the direction of certain relatives of his wife’s—but it is known that in the bill of stipulations, made out of court for its withdrawal, King agreed never to allow his name again to appear in the newspapers—at least through any voluntary act of his own, or any interviews whatsoever with himself; and he agreed that if he did, he forfeited all rights to contest any and all further actions against him by Mrs. King for divorce or separation.

  Steenburg looked up, quite embarrassed.

  And I had to laugh his embarrassment off for him. “I quite understand now,” I assured him. “There appears to be as much stuff in that story to embarrass Mrs. King and myself—as there is legitimate news. Indeed, there is a story that I never shall have a copy of—unless I go down to the Despatch office secretly, and buy a back number. October 15th—you say is its date?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “But you can have this one, Mr. King.”

  “No,” was my rejoinder. “If you went to the trouble of digging up a copy—you must want all the facts concerning this family pretty badly! So keep—all the published
facts you’ve now got.” But, to myself I reflected that despite that story with its undeniable array of facts—and despite Steenburg’s association with all the Ottos—or all the Rozaldas—in the world, there was one thing he could not know: that when that story was published here in Minneapolis I was on the West Coast—living under a pseudonym—and not in any sanitarium at all. So I changed the subject. “But you were saying, before we got off onto my family, that you’re the son of Mr.—that is, Rabbi—David Steenburg. So—what?”

  “Yes.” He was friendly, in spite of the brusqueness of my last two words. “And since you’ve been cut off in that sanitarium from stories about yourself—for, as I said, I was in a sanitarium once, and know all the damfool folderol of sanitarium life and rules—well, since you’ve been cut off from stories about yourself, by their regulations plus a little discreet—ahem!—epistolary editing on the part of Mrs. King, then you naturally haven’t seen any stories about Sol Steenburg either! Or the Steenburg family. One particular story about which would have been enough, I fancy, to have increased your nervous breakdown a little bit. Yes. And the contents of which story I’m about to tell you now. Namely, Mr. King, that my father is to appear—or, shall I put it, was to appear!—voluntarily—and as the star witness—before the forthcoming Senatorial Investigation sched­uled for November 10th. The one called, as you undoubtedly know, ‘An Investigation Toward Abolishment by Federal Statute of All Race-Track Booking in America, by Machine, Oral and All Other Recording Devices or Systems.’”

  “Oh-oh!” I said. “The man who’s going to help take my livelihood away?” I paused. “I suppose, then, if your father is a voluntary witness, he’s a friend of Secora—that little animated prosecuting red-pepper pot?”

  “No, Father’s a friend of Senator Copebrooke, who inaugurated the investigation—a lifelong friend,” Sol Steenburg returned.