Middleton threw up his hands hopelessly. “That settles it, then. I spend the night in this place. All right. Lead on, Macduff.”
“Me name is Kelly,” said the giant, “as I told ye wanst, an’ not Macduff. ‘Tis Irish I am — not Scotch. All right.” He stepped out into the open room. “Stines, come here, Stines.”
The fellow in the tattered and torn shirt with the sharp pasty face sitting at the end of the bench leaped to attention and came over to the door of the small office.
“Stines, this here man be named Jonathan Doe. Show him to a bed, and get him an extra blanket from the cupboard.”
“Come this way, ‘bo,” said Stines, surveying Middleton a bit superciliously, from the crown of the latter’s head to the tips of his shoes.
And Middleton found himself following the man Stines. The other led the way to a wide corridor that ran into the room from one side.
To the left of the corridor, as to the right and to the end, was a further doorway, and into this the man Stines led the way. Here, in a large room utterly devoid of chairs, benches, tables, or rugs, was a row of about twenty beds, each very tiny, each painted white, some of which showed, however, scratches where the white paint had fallen away, exposing the iron underneath, and each made up with a very thin mattress and a very thin ‘grey blanket.
“See that bed over there?” said the man Stines. His lips twitched badly as he spoke. “That one near the end? Well, that’s your bed. You don’t have to go to bed though, bo, if you don’t want to. Suit yourself. You’re free as the wind in this here place.” And he cackled a mirthless laugh.
Middleton looked curiously at him. He realised suddenly that the man was a drug fiend who had been sent to this place by relatives or friends.
“Who brung ye in here, ‘bo?”
“Bo?” mused Middleton. “Well,” he replied slowly, “it was the police who brought me here. But I shan’t be here long. I’ll be out of here to-morrow morning, thank heavens.”
Stines cackled again. “I’ve heard that story twenty times this week. Always to-morrow — always to-morrow — friends are goin’ to come and take ‘em out. But they never comes, I notices.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Have — have — have you got any snow with you, pard?”
“Snow? Snow?” Middleton shook his head slowly. “My friend, you speak a new language so far as I am concerned. But I can guess without much trouble that it’s drugs you want. I’m sorry, though, but I haven’t the least suggestion of a drug about me. I couldn’t help you out even if I wanted to.”
Stines looked him over with a shrewd look. He peered into the other’s eyes, and then looked down at his feet. “Le’ — le’ me see your arm, partner. Le’ me see your arm.”
Middleton silently bared his right arm up to the elbow. Then he did the same with the other. The face of the man Stines fell. “I — I been waitin’ for a snowbird like meself to be shoved in that door. I thought sure when I seen you that you was one — but I guess you’re not. Well — maybe yet to-night. They bring people in at all hours. Fellow got in last night. I got ten grains offen him. In fac’, that ten grains is what I’m livin’ on now. I’m feelin’ pretty good — but, oh, say — I’ll have the willies by to-morrow if I don’t connect. It’ll sure be hell.” He sighed. “Well, go on to bed, partner. There ain’t no chairs in this here dump for to put your clothes on. And you ain’t allowed to go to bed in ‘em, neither. You’ll find a clean cotton nightshirt in your bed, an’ ye hang y’r togs over th’ foot of it.”
Sleep was the farthest thing from Middleton’s mind. He followed Stines back to the dismal, furnitureless room which he had so guilelessly entered that night. The figures were still clustered along the bench. With the exception of some muttering which came from one man, extreme silence prevailed. Stines was speaking as they made their way along. “Ye come in on a lucky day, partner. They tries all th’ bugs here on Monday mornin and ships ‘em all out Monday afternoon, to make room f’r th’ new bugs that’s comin’ in here all the time. Ye won’t have to stay no more’n four days at the most. Tain’t a happy joint, this dump. An’ th’ scoff — ” he made a wry face. “Java an’ bread, mebbe cherries — that’s beans — f’r supper. County institootion, this, you know. But the bughouses is better. They’re State institootions.”
“What are the bughouses?” asked Middleton curiously.
“The insane asylums, you nut,” said Stines, yet withal in friendly mien. “The State insane asylums.”
“Oh — the insane asylums,” repeated Middleton. “Well, thank heavens, I don’t travel that far. Once I’ve had a talk with the doctor here, I’ll be winging my way back to the big outside.” He looked curiously at Stines. “Have you been in the insane asylum?”
“Have I been in the insane asylum?” asked Stines. “Have I been in the insane asylum?” He laughed loud and long. “Say — I’ve been in the bughouse exactly nine different times. I’m one o’ the few lucky nuts that gets out to tell the tale. In fac’, I ain’t no nut, you see. I’m a dope-head, and it’s the snow with me.”
“Then why don’t you stop it?” asked Middleton.
“Say — ask somebody who takes coke and morph,” retorted Stines belligerently, “an’ then you’ll know. It won’t be till the damned heathen Chinks quit growin’ poppies that such as me will live safe on the outside o’ the bughouse walls.” He pointed down the line of abject figures to where a Chinaman, who looked neither to the right nor left of him, except occasionally to turn and say something in guttural Chinese to some imaginary being over his left shoulder, sat. “ ‘Tis them heathens such as him that makes such as me. I give him hot water out o’ th’ faucet this mornin’ instead o’ coffee, an’ took half of his bread. He couldn’t talk no English, so he couldn’t make Little Kelly wise to what had been put over on him. Say — as long as that yellow-skinned Chink is here, I expect to eat anyway. Now these other guys, nuts as they are, can soon tell Little Kelly if they ain’t gettin’ served their full supply o’ scoff.”
And for the first time in his life it was given to Middleton to realise clearly the moral turpitude to which drugs reduced their victims. Then his gaze travelled on to a red-haired man with freckled face, who by now had risen from the bench and was pacing up and down the floor hurling a literal stream of language at nothing, and invariably making a most exact detour round Stines and Middleton as he passed them. “Now that guy was in once before with me,” stated Stines. “He’s an alcoholic. He’ll get over what he’s got. Them kind recovers quickest of all. Why, say, nutty as he is to-night, you wouldn’t know that guy after two months.”
Middleton gazed about him at the desolate big hall-like chamber that comprised the sole sitting-room in this, Chicago’s Psycopathic Detention Station, and then once more at the figures who sat slumped along the one bench, all uninterested in bed and in life itself. Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned to Stines. “Well, considering that I need my sleep just the same as if I were out of here, I may as well turn in.”
To-morrow, he told himself, would see the last of this place.
CHAPTER X
“MY BOY ANGELO”
JERRY MIDDLETON awoke in the morning with a profound belief that he was back in Fortescue’s fishing shack, only to open his eyes and find that he was in the same little dormitory, with now practically half the beds occupied by figures lying in various postures, some undressed, some partly so, some still in their clothing; the most silent, a few mumbling to themselves. It was hardly light outside — the grey hue of the sky showed that it could scarcely be five o’clock in the morning yet. Stines was shaking each of the patients roughly by the shoulder.
“Time to get up,” he was saying. “Time to get up. Big Kelly’s orders. “God,” he said, coming over to Middleton’s bed, “it’s goin’ to be hell f’r me to-day, Doe. God — I hope that somebody with just a little sniff comes in that door. They got to, that’s all. They got to.”
Middleton slowly dresse
d in his unprepossessing ragged suit, and once more drew on the worn gaping shoes which he laced with their strings of dirty cord. Now as he splashed refreshing water into his bewhiskered face from a single dirty washbowl in one corner of the room, he told himself angrily that this ridiculous mistake would never have occured as a termination to last night’s well-paid-for prank had not Fate given a climax to her own blunders by sending the police into a room that was a twin to that which he had described to them — a twin room from whose window only a bare brick wall was visible.
At this juncture two attendants — they were exceedingly husky in build, and wore white coats and keys jangled at their belts — passed the open door of the dormitory, the one in front bearing a great steaming coffee-pot, and the one at back a tray on which was stacked many enormous slices of bread which gave forth a buttery oleaginous smell even as it passed on its way to the dining-room.
Ten minutes later — the light outside was just approaching daylight now — a violent rapping on a dishpan in the direction of the dining-room galvanised into sudden action the eight men who were prisoners here and who, all dressed now, were silently waiting in various postures on their beds. The suddenness of their mutual spring to their feet showed that man loses the desire for satisfying his bodily hungers only long after he may lose his mental faculties.
The man who now stood in charge, his narrow set eyes glinting down on the scene, must have been Little Kelly, for he was as similar to the other Kelly of the night just passed as one brother can be to another. He approached Middleton at once. “You Jonathan Doe?” he asked. His voice was hard and showed a man that brooked absolutely no breach of discipline.
“That’s the name I’m falsely entered under here,” said Middleton quietly, meeting his gaze. “Middleton is my name.”
Kelly surveyed him a moment, and then turned toward the dining-room. “Go in and eat,” he commanded. “Take the seat next to the Chinaman.”
Middleton went in, and took the seat assigned, but appetite he had none. Never had he seen men so like beasts as at that early morning breakfast. Everywhere there were snarls and rumbling growls, and once the powerfully built McCarthy, who Stines had said had once run amuck, rose squarely up in his seat and fastened his big hands about the neck of the red-haired man, who forthwith swung off with a stiff right to McCarthy’s chin, and only the brief intervention of Little Kelly, who was on the spot in an instant separating the two with powerful arms that literally dragged them from each other’s throats, saved the place from becoming a shambles of bread and coffee.
“Another move like that, McCarthy,” he warned, “and the jacket for you. Know what that means, my boy? Haven’t forgotten, have you?”
With a savage grunt McCarthy settled back in his position on the long bench and fell to munching hungrily his own bread again. Stines, apparently delegated to this task by Little Kelly, was busying himself up and down the long table, straightening out overturned tin cups, separating patients from their mixups with respect to their neighbour’s property and all the time quite oblivious to the Chinaman at Middleton’s elbow who gave forth sharp guttural cries, holding aloft his coffee cup and trying to explain both to Little Kelly, the assemblage, and to some invisible person behind him that something was wrong. Middleton knew only too well. Stines, official pourer of the coffee, had again substituted hot water for most of the Chinaman’s beverage and the poor Asiatic was trying to make the fact clear. As for himself, he could not eat; the buttery smell of the unsavoury morning meal, the coffee lying in pools and dripping in rivulets off the edge of the table, were too much for him. He shoved his bread and his coffee silently over to the Chinaman, who, staring blankly at him, suddenly comprehended, grasped the donation in his two hands, and broke forth into a new stream of gutturals, turning over his shoulder and pointing out Middleton to some invisible being.
With the completion of the non-delectable meal, the assemblage rose for the simple reason that everybody seemed to finish just at the same time everybody else did, and as there was nothing left to eat, all motive for remaining was removed. They clambered forth from between bench and table, and made, each by himself, for the big main room again, the red-haired man once more recommencing his pacing up and down and talking into space, the rest dropping back listlessly on the bench and sitting for the most part with chins in hands.
It was but five minutes afterwards, while Stines was washing the tin cups and mopping off the big table, that Little Kelly answered a ring at the telephone in the office, and a moment later, jingling his keys, came forth from his sanctum and opened the door that connected with the world outside. A stranger, hat in hand, entered, and Little Kelly locked the door behind him. The hair on his head was sleek in its blackness, and he had the snapping jet eyes of a Sicilian. Little Kelly was speaking to him, and rather deferentially too. “Just step up, Mr. Giani, and pick him out. They rang me from the office and told me what you’d be wanting.”
The man, hat in hand, advanced gingerly up to the bench and stopped in front of Middleton. He paused a bare moment, and then spoke. “Ah, Angelo, you know me, eh? You know you’ oncle, eh?”
Middleton glanced up at Little Kelly. “Is this man wrong here” — he tapped his head significantly — ” like the rest of these people? I’m Middleton — Middleton’s my name. He wants probably that boy over there.”
But the visitor was speaking in earnest to Little Kelly. “He eez my nephew, all right. Angelo — I know him well. He work in my comiss’ business — four — fi’ year back. Much good a American boy — heeza mama American, heeza not full Italian like his uncle Gregorio. No gotta black eyes of heeza papa an’ oncle. Ah, too bad he gone craze’ in de head — not know nobody. You let me talk to Angelo alone. I bet I make him come back — I make him sane man again — -juz’ like you an’ me.”
Kelly pursed up his lips. “You’ll have to go some, my friend, to cure any of these birds when the doctors themselves can’t.” He sighed resignedly. Taking out his bunch of keys he unlocked an inconspicuous door in one wall, revealing a tiny room fitted up with a settee, a comfortable armchair, and a soft rug on the floor. He turned his gaze on Middleton. “Go in that room with this man. Talk to him. Listen to him. He wants to help you. Don’t you want to get out of this place?”
“But I tell you I never saw him in my life,” protested Middleton. “I — ” And then suddenly he stopped, for a broad wink coming to him from the Sicilian at the back of Little Kelly’s shoulder apprised him of the fact that there was something underneath this little drama which he had not perceived. He arose with alacrity and preceded the Sicilian into the little private room, where the latter quietly closed the door. “Angelo, my boy,” he kept saying loudly, “my boy Angelo. Try an’ theenk hard. Theenk hard, Angelo. Say you know you’ oncle.” And all the time he was repeating this gibberish, he was extracting from his breast pocket a letter with which he came closer to the astonished Middleton, and lowering his voice said hurriedly: “Theez eez from a frien’. Read it fas’. Read all of it. Then geev’ em you’ answer by mouth. In meantime I keep talk loud to you. Pay no attention.”
Dumbfounded, Middleton ripped open the flap of the envelope, and drew forth the communication, which proved to be typewritten, while in the meantime the Sicilian kept talking to him in what was manifestly the Italian tongue. Disregarding the flow of alien words in his ear, he glanced hastily at the signature, and found there no other than the single word “Fortescue” in the latter’s own handwriting. Whereupon he proceeded to read the communication from beginning to end. And it was a surprising one, to say the least. For its contents ran:
“DEAR JERRY,
“I’m afraid that little stunt which you so effectually pulled off last night has got you into something of an unforeseen mess with the police, and that this finds you in a place not altogether to your liking. And, still worse, I feel that I am to blame for your predicament. But we will pluck you out of there, Jerry, old boy, and on the basis that all’s well that ends
well you will have no complaint when you are back on Astor Street once more.
“Now, Jerry, an unhappy piece of news about myself.
“I had a terrible experience last night, old man, and, try as I may, I can see nothing other than that you and you only can extricate me from the results of it. What happened can be stated in a few words: Just a short while prior to 9 o’clock last night — while you were waiting in St. Andrew’s Church to do your act — I was calling upon a young musical comedy actress whom I have known for some time, and to whose apartment I have been on more than one occasion. I regret to be egotistic; but this girl has been enamoured of me for some six months past. It culminated last night in a long argument in which I told her that nothing in the way of marriage could ever be between us. And what did she do, Jerry, but seize a revolver — a tiny pearl-handled one — and shot herself squarely in the head. She fell where she stood and I was terrified, for I thought certain she was dead. When I thought of the disgrace the whole thing would bring down, and the useless explanations I would have to give to the police, I got into a panic and fled out of the place. As bad luck would have it I was glimpsed by a janitor who had seen me come to that place more than once, and who knew my name; and I realised on the spot that the police would be wanting to question me before many more quarter-hours.
“The very first thing I did was to arrange for an alibi. Because of the fact that old Uncle Jed and Christina, the two servants in your house, have quit in the past week to take positions elsewhere at higher wages, and that I had in the meantime hired a new man for you, I hurried over to Astor Street in a taxicab, and bribed this man — actually crossed his palm with hard money — it was the only thing I could do — to say, if the police called up your residence, that you and I had been playing pinochle until just a few minutes before, and had just left the house. And with that I hurried back to my own apartment.
The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro Page 10
