X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “...opens at Brussels this week. Tonight, in fact. His agent, Alfred Lebidoux, Jr., at Paris, gave me via phone his route from there on—so I can contact him... After all, Jones isn’t to release his story till the 25th of the month...

  “All you require is 24 hours advance on Jones anyway...

  “And so I’m going to Germany!

  “The ideal place for me to use as headquarters, too.

  “Central, for one thing, Berlin is, to all of Europe.

  “And, secondly, I have a couple of friends there. Friends who can help me a bit in minor ways. They’re Adolf and Otto Dufenbuerger. I knew them both in Brooklyn. And renewed the old acquaintance recently while flitting through Germany for Cutterman. Old pals almost, Adolf and Otto. The depression sent ’em both scuttling back to Germany. And now a couple hundred reichshillinger will buy from ’em all the help I might need from either. And so close-mouthed, Gillie, both of the lads, that either one would make a newly-fished-up oyster look like he was yawning. In fact, Adolf... can run over to Brussels for me and ascertain...

  “They both live at Bülowstrasse 10-a, Zehlendorf-W, Berlin. In a grand old rambling down-at-heel mansion they both now own. Thanks to inheriting it. And I’ll kip right there with ’em.

  “Now one more point, Gillie...

  “Now, Gillie, have faith in me. I might have told you a little more—sure!—such as, for instance, that... but I’m kinda funny, about bringing in the bacon. I like to put it across the board all myself...

  “Just have faith. That’s all I ask of you. Have faith... Snide promises to put you on the newsstands with the inside story of the Marceau Murder before the day and hour that Jones has named to present it. I-Snide wants that 2500 bucks...”

  DOCUMENT XCII

  Letter, of date February 11, 1937, bearing Belgian postmark, addressed “Mr. Xenius Jones (Very Personally), care Scotland Yard, London, England,” and forwarded, at London, under amended address reading “Not now with Scotland Yard; forward to 136 Grey’s Inn Road.”

  Dear Sir:

  In great desperation I am writing to you as perhaps the only man in the entire world who can aid me—or tell me what to do in the peculiar crisis which faces me.

  I am about—and very soon, I think—to be arrested for the murder of Andre Marceau!

  And, unfortunately, I am today living and existing as another man; and, should I be arrested, and by the wrong sort of people, I don’t know just what may befall me.

  But I will explain.

  In the first place, let me say that I am a Lilliputian.

  And that I come originally from Australia.

  My profession is that of juggler—and, back in Australia, I have generally played under the billing “King Peewee,” though once, in late 1931, for a period of three weeks, I billed myself as “Little Lucas,” and once, in South Australia—though but for 2 days only!—as “The Juggling Jesus.”

  My correct name is Guy Ezekiah. Guy Lucas Ezekiah in full.

  I am the Ezekiah, in fact, who is supposed to have died, in London, in April of 1935, in a rooming-house fire on Great Ormond Street. Exactly 12 days, to be precise, before the André Marceau murder. The fragments of charred bones which were subsequently identified as mine, were not mine; they were those of a Lilliputian mummy which I had purchased on Mile End Road two days before, for possible use later in a theater foyer exhibit. The proprietor of the shop who sold it to me went down with sleeping sickness the very night of the day of the sale—at least so I ascertained in a subsequent telephone call to his place—and he is, so far as I know today, dead. Or, if he is recovered, he evidently knows nothing of either my supposed death in that fire, nor of the Marceau Case either.

  It is an exceedingly long story, Mr. Jones, and I will not attempt to give you more than the barest essentials of it.

  Suffice to say that the night that Great Ormond Street place burned down—and before the fire began, of course—I went in a taxicab to call on my friend Fritz Schmutterling, a Lilliputian like myself—“Count” Friederich “von” Schmutterling as he expected to be known on the vaudeville stage. And under whose identity—and name, too—I myself am today traveling. Fritz lived at Doll Gardens, at Witting Heights Forest, on the edge of London. If, because of your being from India, you know nothing about this place—and which may not even be in existence today—it was a house built by Gerald Fainwaring, some British millionaire, as a sort of playhouse for his only girl child, Adeline Fainwaring. Built as it was, all in miniature, to the finest detail—except, fortunately, for the high brick wall around and about it; and furnished also in miniature to the finest detail—and Fainwaring and the girl both being dead—the place was just perfect for a Lilliputian to live in.

  And Fritz, striking London just after the Fainwaring estate was broken up, and this odd possession put on the real estate market, rented it. He came there, let me moreover say, from what was formerly German East Africa. Where he had grown up, and where, incidentally, he had learned juggling from native jugglers, at a lonely trading post run by his father, Ernst Schmutterling. His mother had died out there 5 years before—and his father, also, just a year before. And out there he had met Alfred Lebidoux Senior, the great Paris theatrical agent, who had gone to Africa to hunt—had gotten the tropical fever—and had wound up at Fritz’ place—and been nursed faithfully back to health by Fritz and some of Fritz’ native servants. And he’d given Fritz a contract—and a promise to stage him in Europe—so grateful was he for what Fritz had done for him. And now Fritz, expecting to tour Europe as a professional juggler, had come first to England to have a difficult eye-muscle operation which he badly required. Lebidoux, Senior, incidentally, had died, in the meantime, of a paralytic stroke, en route for South Africa, after leaving Fritz’ place recovered; but fortunately for Fritz he had written instructions to his son, Alfred Lebidoux, Jr., who was associated with him in Paris, to discharge in full his obligations to Fritz. And thus Fritz, you see, was sitting pretty.

  And this is how it was, more or less, that Fritz Schmutterling was in the Royal Eye Infirmary, at London, the night Marceau was killed. And I being “dead”—well—we were both quite “out,” so far as being suspects went.

  And, since I am asking advice from you, it is right here, Mr. Jones, that I had better give you the “inside” of something that neither you, nor Scotland Yard either, knows—or can know.

  It is, Mr. Jones, that Gavin Horridge, the mystery man and female impersonator who died in London on May 27, 1935, and Captain Foss Ettenborough, the transatlantic flier who went down off the coast of Labrador in May, 1935, in trying to capture that prize money offered by that Hudson Bay Fur King, are brothers. Or half-brothers anyway.

  And this is how I—and I alone, of all living persons today—know this.

  For Fritz went to dinner one night at Ettenborough’s apartment in Rockingham Street. Ettenborough, you see, had stepped up to Fritz on Piccadilly, one day in mid-April, and after introducing himself had asked Fritz, for some strange reason, to come up there. Which Fritz did, on April 20th. Ettenborough had dismissed his man for the night, but had a very nice repast practically ready for serving—and served it himself. And after Fritz had been there a short while, another chap dropped in. A chap dressed in feminine garb—though plainly stage habiliments. That is, female impersonator obviously, and no invert. He’d just come, it seems, from his act, on the East Side. He was introduced to Fritz as Gavin Horridge, a “friend” of Ettenborough’s. However, they all got pretty well liquored before the evening was spent. And twice each of those two men made a break. Referring in each case—and right in front of Fritz—to “my brother over yonder.” And correcting it at once, clumsily, to “my brother in iniquity.”

  Fritz was foxy enough, however, to seem to be drunker than he was—and to have “muffed” the break. My impression is that Horridge had once been involved somewhere in the world in criminal trouble—that he was a natural born impersonator and mimic—and that when he got back to
London eventually he stumbled into that work somehow, but stuck to female impersonations solely as least likely to reveal his identity in case there should some time be in the audience someone who had crossed his path somewhere once—that Ettenborough knew the nature of Horridge’s trouble—but that they kept pretty well aloof from each other in London, except for now and then a covert meeting like this one, under apparently innocent circumstances. That, however, is all I know, Mr. Jones—and all I can surmise. But I am of the impression that you, or Scotland Yard, might be glad to hear these inside facts.

  And now getting back to myself again, the night I let myself into Doll Gardens with a key Fritz had given me—after, of course, I found a card tacked to the door in the high wall, and lighting a match found that it stated that he had gone to the Royal Eye Infirmary to remain an indefinite period—I went to bed. In his bed. Very tired. And that was the night the Great Ormond Street rooming-house burned to the ground. And next morning I read, in Fritz’ morning newspaper tossed over the high garden wall of Doll Gardens, two interesting items: One that I was dead in that fire. And the other that a taxidriver, named Jered Collinson, had been killed in a crash on the Blackfriar’s Bridge. Well, the driver who drove me to Doll Gardens that night, Mr. Jones, was Jered Collinson. For I had taken special note of the license in his cab. And so the secret of my being alive was completely buried.

  And I decided to remain thus, Mr. Jones. At least for the moment. For my agents, in Melbourne, Australia, Isenkind and Levinthal, who had negotiated for me my first booking in England, though on but a cheap music hall circuit of the larger cities, to begin Sunday evening, June 9th, took me on in 1931 as a juggler—but on a 50 per cent commission. One half of all that I should earn, for 10 long years, was to be theirs. It was cutthroat, that contract—nothing else. The most horrible contract, Mr. Jones, ever perpetrated. Though at the time I signed it there had seemed, truly, nothing else for me logically to do.

  And so I stayed fast and tight within Fritz’ premises from the time of the Great Ormond Street fire till he returned from the hospital. Reading a lot, and sleeping a lot, and practicing at my juggling too, with his equipment of miniature coconuts and other African native paraphernalia. And cooking and eating, also from his well stocked larder. The place was exceedingly secluded, being far out on a by-path that led off of St. Judes’ Road. I doubt whether one person passed it in 24 hours.

  When Fritz finally came back from the hospital—and let himself in with his key—which was on the evening of May 13th—3 days after Marceau was killed—he was dumfounded, of course, to see me there. But I explained the circumstances fully. And he quite understood. For he knew about my cutthroat contract with Isenkind and Levinthal. But he was very discouraged. For the change in his eye-muscle balance, as a result of that operation for cyclophoria, had knocked out his juggling. Absolutely! It might be as much as two years or more, so his surgeon, Dr. Gideon Fenchurch, had told him on his last day in the hospital, as Fenchurch had prepared to leave London for the Himalayas, before Fritz’ eye-muscles would adapt themselves to the new shapes of things—rather, Mr. Jones, let me say, before Fritz’ brain would adjust itself to the new shape of the weaving of the patterns in his juggling, caused by the shift in his eye-muscle balance. And here he was all set to go to Paris and whip up an act—even to open up, in fact, at the Pantheon Variété Theatre in Paris on Sunday night, June 16th—under the auspices of a man who had never yet met him, but was ready to do everything in the world to make him successful and prosperous. And so, exceedingly bitter at his fate, Fritz called up Captain Ettenborough. And assented to the identical proposition on which he had turned Ettenborough down, that night he had been up there to dinner in Rockingham Street, and Gavin Horridge had been present.

  And this was the proposition in short!

  Ettenborough, as Fritz explained to me, had advance information on that London-Hudson Bay prize-money offer. From a Canadian air-mail pilot whom he knew. Ettenborough knew, way back in mid-April, that the prize money was to be $25,000. And that it was to be given for the first flier across after British sunset hour of a certain date. That date being Abe Markowitz’—the Hudson Bay Fur King’s—birthday. And that the announcement of Markowitz’ offer would be officially given forth about 36 hours before. Ettenborough had an exceedingly fine ship—at least so he assured Fritz!—a craft loaned him—practically given him—by a friend then in Tibet—with some newfangled ice-cracking device on the wings. He was certain he could make the hop—but he wanted a mascot. He wanted, in short, Mr. Jones, a Lilliputian to make the hop with him. But secretly, at least so far as the take-off was concerned. His idea was to get his Lilliputian mascot aboard the ship secretly, by carrying him, in a huge portmanteau, which he’d convey himself from his closed car in front of the airfield to his waiting ship—and fly off. Releasing the mascot from the portmanteau the second they were up off ground. And then walk out, at Hudson Bay, with the Lilliputian right on his shoulders—the while a dozen news-reel movie cameras, some even flown up from U.S.A., to flash his arrival, ground out the biggest surprise news-picture of the year.

  And he had offered Fritz $5000 to come along as this mascot.

  And now Fritz, discouraged frightfully at the turn of affairs in his life, accepted.

  And it all went through, Mr. Jones, exactly as I have related—and as the newspapers themselves have related.

  But, as you know, Ettenborough went down off the coast of Labrador. I have, of course, Fritz’ and Ettenborough’s signed contract as to Fritz’ 20 per cent participation in that prize money. And I have Fritz’ own signed statement, left with me, as to his intentions. These will prove that I did not kill Fritz. As may be ultimately claimed. So I am not afraid of that phase of the problem. What I am afraid of is—but I’ll first go on with the facts.

  After the morning newspaper tossed over that Doll Gardens wall told me that poor Fritz was gone—drowned with Ettenborough!—I decided that the hour had struck for me—my chance to escape Isenkind and Levinthal forever—to get a booking infinitely better than they had been able to get for me; in short, I decided to go to Paris, as Fritz, contact Lebidoux. Jr., as Fritz—and get all that Fritz was going to get.

  And now, of necessity, I have to admit, here, and over my own signature, that I am guilty of a certain crime, i.e., of altering a British passport—one that, fortunately for me, had been vised in advance for all the countries of the world—which I did by transferring the photo on my passport to Fritz’, after trimming and revolving it slightly so that the impressed letters from the die matched. Fritz’ description on it was not at all specific—he had been presumed to be so individual, as a Lilliputian, that whoever issued that passport had emphasized more Fritz’ Lilliputianism than anything. And I was every bit as much a Lilliputian as Fritz. My only real problem was getting out of England—and I was aided immeasurably in that by the fact that your night inspector of emigration, at Croydon, Bertram Tilroy, was himself going to Paris the night I went. And Tilroy, whose wife had once given birth to a Lilliputian baby which had died, had called on Fritz at Doll Gardens shortly after Fritz came to London. Only— it was not Fritz he saw! For Fritz was drunk in the cellar. And had begged me, for the sake of the reputation of Lilliputia, to do the honors for him. Which I did. I “pinch hit”—as they say in the States—for him. And as him. And thus, when I went out on the field, my passport ready, to board that waiting plane, Tilroy greeted me as Fritz—knew me as Fritz—rode with me, in fact, to Paris—and introduced me to the Immigration Inspector at Le Bourget. And I was out of England! Thereafter there never was a problem.

  I need not dwell on the fact that Lebidoux, Jr., has made me—that, plus the fact that I am, intrinsically, a better juggler than poor Fritz could ever have hoped to have been. As far East as Singapore has Lebidoux gotten me booked. At fine rates—and no 50 per cent to those greedy vultures back in Australia. And now—

  For now, Mr. Jones, my long masquerade is, I daresay up—and finis!


  For a German, calling himself “Adolf Dufenbuerger,” called on me here today at the Hotel Namur in Brussels, where I am staying during this one week in which I am playing the Theatre Tirlemont here, whilst, of course, the European Association of Vaudeville Theatre Managers is in convention. The nature of a certain inquiry he made of me, on behalf of a principal whose identity he would not divulge, indicates plainly to me that somebody—somebody presumably now in Germany—in Berlin, in fact—has as good as fastened the Marceau crime upon me. And that this party—or he and other persons associated with him—will be waiting to get me—if or when I go into Germany. For, unfortunately, I am booked to open at the Jungfern Theatre, Berlin, on Wednesday night, February 17th. And if I cancel my opening, and do not go—well—this outfit can easily enough get me anyway!

  The specific inquiry, Mr. Jones, that this German made of me was whether “Guy Ezekiah” had ever mentioned to me his having once known a Chinese named Cheung. And that inquiry can mean nothing else than that they have dug up a secret in my life which I believed was buried completely—and beyond the possibility of anyone ever digging out. If they have done so—in fact, they undoubtedly have—they are in a position to “prove” me, Guy Ezekiah, to be definitely alive—and, moreover, as I now very much fear, the murderer of André Marceau. And if I was alive on May 10, 1935—then, not having been burned up on April 28th, I manifestly am alive today—and must be one of the known Lilliputians today—well, I happen to know, Mr. Jones, that it will be a short and easy matter after that to prove that “Count Friederich van Schmutterling” is Guy Ezekiah.

  For this Chinese Cheung, Mr. Jones, was in reality a half-Japanese, half-Chinese, and was one of a troupe of wire-walkers with whom I worked, in the U.S.A.— and in the U.S.A. only, and solely under the name “Kogo Yamakura”—for 9 long seasons. With the Great Southern Circus and Treptow Shows, which each year covered the territory from Memphis to Minneapolis and back. The troupe was known as The Family Yamakura, and—with the exception of myself who was home with my mother in New Zealand at the time—it was wiped out in entirety in the Hachijo Island disaster of March 6, 1931. Earthquake and tidal wave both, if you recall this disaster. This troupe, Mr. Jones, claimed to be descended, all, from the original Chuso Yamakura who founded the calling in Japan—indeed, I believe I can do no better thing at this juncture of my letter than to paste hereto, to the sheet on which I am now inditing these words, one of the official professional writeups of this troupe—and in the most amplified form, in fact, in which the troupe was ever written up, namely the entry which appeared in the famous so-called “Jumbo Number,” published in 1929, of Captain Billy Barclay’s “Who’s Who Under the Big Tops—a guide for Circus Proprietors and Carnival Managers.”