Читать книгу The Man with the Wooden Spectacles - Harry Stephen Keeler - Страница 8

CHAPTER V

The Busy Young Man

He was a most odd-looking young man, the young man who stood on the corner of Washington and Clark Streets, reading the sensational murder story that had just been dropped on all the Loop newsstands by the Despatch, in its first issue out for the day. For his cheeks were rouged, and his eyes surveyed the print through dainty rimless eyeglasses held to his vest by a broad, black ribbon; as black, indeed, as was the very lit’ry tie he wore—which was a black Windsor! About 25 years in age, no more, he was small in stature, and slender, and immaculately dressed, the finishing touch to his garb being a tiny yellow flower—carefully selected, obvious­ly, for its pure perfection of petal—in his buttonhole, and the bare corner of a lavender silk handkerchief just peeping from his handkerchief pocket.

Yet, try as one might, one would still not be able to conclusively place this particular young man in the category of those male individuals who use rouge, for about him were various contradictory suggestions of amazing heterogeneity. One—apparent to perhaps anyone—being that the young man was some peculiar combination of individualist and aesthete—one who, in short, would ruddle his otherwise too-white skin if he so wished and so desired, and those who didn’t like it could take a sweet jump into the lake—and “to hell with ’em” to boot! While the other suggestions which literally radiated from him, as do heat waves from a red-hot stove, would have depended more or less upon the calling of the observer himself. As for instance, the comment of G. Fontenoy Burgette, an accomplished actor—Shakespearean and otherwise—now out of work, and passing the very corner, which comment ran: “A synthetically assembled histrionic front, that whole get-up!—and I’ve a notion to copy it, end write me up a 10-minute vaudeville skit about it.” While Arthur K. Hambury, seasoned managing editor of 4 fiction magazines published in Printingtown, and also passing the corner, was at the same time remarking:

“That fellow has not one, but several varieties of creative genius within him!”

Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the comment of a most seasoned observer of men and things, one “Cylinder” Mc­Greavy, hold-up man and burglar, also passing the corner, who actually said: “In the racket, that bird—either coke-peddler, or box-hunter for a gopher-mob!—but wit’ a goddam’ good gang in back of ’im!”

But be the artificial-looking, and also contradictory-looking young man what he be, the story he was reading was a finely written story, and, from its text and headlines, it was plain that it was a scoop; from its by-line, in fact it was evident that its writer was brother of one person actively named in the story, namely, the State’s Attorney; and it was furthermore obvious that the journals in question had had ample time to write the story, since the murder, taking place during the night —but not discovered until morning, and then only by the State’s Attorney himself!—had not been officially revealed to the police.

And it was also plain that, after having been completely written, a whole new chapter had been added to the story by virtue of information telephoned in, or hastily written up—for a several-hundred word forestory, in boldface type, describing how the murderer and burglar, self-admitted by certain words he had inadvertently and through error uttered to a harmless pedestrian, had been arrested with presumably the stolen goods on his person—and was now being held incommuni­cado somewhere—presumably in some special lock-up controlled by the State’s Attorney. Where he was wildly and ridiculously claiming—at least to the correspondent who had written the story—‘hypno-mesmeric amnesia’ over his whole stay in Chicago. Which, he averred, had been the last three days.

A number of photographs embellished and illuminated the story: The State’s Attorney—who, so it seemed, with the State itself, was the despoiled party!—gazed forth so debonairly that it was plain it was a reproduction of a campaign poster; pictures of the inside of the really quaint office where the robbery had taken place were also reproduced, though it was evident, by the very undisturbed condition of the old iron safe in one, that they were photographs taken before the crime in question—indeed, as stated at one point in the story, they had in actuality been taken some time before the case, for a feature article to detail how Chicago’s State’s Attorney had always retained this quaint room—memento of his struggling days—out of sentiment, and which photographs were now being used fortuitously for this bigger and more important tale.

Such fine photography did the prints embody, that even some of the larger words on a diploma, hanging on one wall in one particular view, were legible. Absent only, in fact, from the photographic layout, was the picture of the captured murderer and burglar. No doubt by express intention of the State’s Attorney himself, who thus would abort completely a possible repetition of that contretemps which had befallen the State’s Attorney in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, three months ago, wherein one of the latter’s catches had been habeased out of jail under designation on the habeas corpus warrant not of the latter’s name—which was unknown even to his attorney—but by use of the suspect’s picture—reproduced in the Pittsburgh Gazette!

It was, however, the murderer’s fantastic alibi in this Chicago criminal affair, more than anything else, which made the eyes of the odd-looking young man, reading the story, widen. Till he came to the end of the story.

At which, looking off into space for a few seconds, he exclaimed:

“By the gods—this is the chance! With him standing mute—for this amnesia tale of his is just something to temporarily block his being questioned—this is where I come in!” He half shook his head, a bit dubiously. “Too bad I was with the gang all night—I might just as well have been with J. D., knocking in that box!—for I couldn’t need sleep more than I do! But no help for that now. For this is the chance, all right. But good only till—”

He gazed at a clock hanging out over the corner. “Boy!—I’ll have to work fast—mighty fast! For the State’s Attorney’s boys’ll take just about 12 hours of this amnesia hooey from J. D.—and no more!—and then he’ll catch all they’ve got—from fists to rubber hoses!—and will crack and when he does—my play will be up the creek. So now the question is: is that office with the kicked-in box open for business, and running?—and can I get in?”

He took a last hasty survey of the paper; then tossed it away. And, confirming by the street sign that he was already at Washington Street, he dove across the traffic and hurried a half-block westward. Where he turned into an ancient office building whose entrance was marks by an outmoded soapstone arch on which was chiseled “The Klondike Building,” and inside of whose woodfloored foyer was just a single ancient elevator shaft with iron webbing, the elevator being just now somewhere upstairs.

He did not ring for the elevator—but took the stair.

And within exactly 1 minute—a tribute to good wind and heart—was at the 8th landing, and making his way down a dark wood-floored hall and around a bend, happily, from that elevator shaft. And shortly he stood before a door, whose ground-glass panel carried only the digit “806,” and just the words

LOUIS J. VANN

Attorney

This, as had been set forth in the story he had just read, was the old office of the present State’s Attorney, now housed, of course, in the big City and County Building across the street, and an office still being held today for purely sentimental reasons. The office, moreover, described in the story as having been the scene last night of murder and robbery. All was quiet as a grave; no shadows were there on that ground-glass panel to reveal any worker therein. But the young man did not enter, if for no other reason than that the door was held firmly, rigidly, closed by a massive and extremely high-grade padlock which tautly linked together an old ring-bolt that was in the door, and one that was in the jamb—both ring bolts having doubtlessly been installed at some long bygone time when the original occupant of the room had gone on a long vacation—and so neatly did the eye of one bolt lie exact­ly above that of the other—and so snugly did the padlock shaft fill them both—that a fly could not have woven his way inside that office.

This was the door whose lock—in that story—had been said to have been jimmied. And the marks of that jimmy, moreover, were visible near where the lock was—if one looked hard enough.

But daunted the young man was, in no wise, by the powerful padlock. Indeed, at the very sight of it, his eyes lighted up with a strange triumphant light to be seen only in the eyes of fanatics, collectors, and speed maniacs. And he proceeded to give it particular attention—especially such words and numbers as would be found etched upon it.

For, stamped on a generous blank area on the face of the padlock was visible the inscription:

Official Police Department

Padlock—Code LBJ

This appeared of no interest to the young man with the roughed cheeks, for with a decided air of familiarity with such things as padlocks, he tilted up the padlock so that a smaller blank area on its end would be visible to him.

And there, in extremely fine letters, but letters which were quite readable to him through his pince-nez, were the words

Waddington Lock, Type C-4

“And that,” he said, half smiling, “is all I want to know!”

With which he turned and left the door, and within a few seconds was again taking the stairs to the main floor.

Once there—and outside, in fact—he proceeded a couple of numbers further westward, where a great sign hung over the sidewalk reading:

CHICAGO LOCK AND HARDWARE COMPANY

Every Kind of Lock and Key in the World

Hardware, Too!

And into this place he hurried.

It was an exceedingly capacious store, having an elbow-shaped extension in the rear where a couple of adjoining stores did not require their full depth. And it was—though the young man did not know it—the foremost emporium for locks and keys in the entire Middle West.

Approaching a blond-moustached salesman at a counter which appeared to be devoted to locks only, he spoke, half inquiringly, and half dogmatically.

“The Waddington lock is, of course, an individual lock, supplied with one key only—”

“Oh yes,” the salesman replied, taking the tone of the words as a query instead of a statement—which very shortly it was to prove to be. “They are used for official police purposes because they positively cannot be picked, and are individual. But one key with each lock, and each lock sealed.”

A faint smile swept over the young man’s rouged face at the statement he had just heard.

“No doubt,” he said, suddenly, “you carry Copely padlocks?”

“Indeed we do!” the clerk affirmed. “The Copely line is—”

“I would like,” the young man interrupted, “a Copely Master Padlock—yes, the kind which can be opened by four different keys. Though I want a Type B padlock.”

“Right, sir.” And the clerk ran up a ladder, where he looked into a drawer. “I don’t suppose you would mind, would you,” he called down, “if it were a Type A—so long as it’s a Copely Master pa—”

“Must be Type B,” said the young man, frowning for the first time. “So, if you haven’t—”

“Wait!” The clerk went nimbly up another step. And took down an open hardware drawer from that level.

Which he brought all the way down. And from it, surveying it stintingly first, brought out a paper-sealed padlock. On which was printed, “Copely Master—Type B.”

The young man tore off the paper and inspected, quite critically, the lock inside, and its single key, as one who knows that goods within wrappers often belie the words printed thereon.

“I rather take it,” said the clerk, puzzledly, “that you are a little familiar with padlocks?”

The young man looked up. There was an amused light in his eye.

“A little—familiar’ Did you ever hear of Pepperduff Wainwright?”

“Pepperdu—Why Lord, yes! He was the greatest expert on padlocks and padlock mechanism in—in the world. And invented many. In fact, come to think of it—he—he invented this Copely lock. And—yes, by George, he evolved the Paddington lock too, if I’m not mistaken. For they’re both in the same category. And—but did you know him?”

“He was my grandfather,” said the young man simply. “And virtually brought me up, I lived padlocks day and night—had ’em at every meal!—had to undergo catechization on ’em every night before I could even go to bed. And I—but here, you can throw this in the junk box.”

“In—in the junk box? But here, sir, isn’t—”

The young man raised a hand patiently.

“The key of it is all I want,” he said. And because, evidently, of the extreme mystification on the clerk’s face, he added, “You see I’ve a trunk at home that I bought at auction—and it’s padlocked with an old Paddington police lock of—of certain type and number—anyway, this key, I happen to know, will open it.”

“Sa-ay—it’s a handy thing at times to know locks, isn’t it? I—”

“Do you wait on that counter yonder where those sledges stand?”

“I can—yes.” And the clerk started around the end of the counter and was almost immediately back of another counter across the narrow store space, the young man following. “But I don’t quite understand,” the clerk was saying. “A sledge, now?—well, why would you want to smash the lock if—”

“The trunk happens to have two padlocks on it,” said the young man wearily. “One, as I say, positively can be unlocked with this key. The other is a—a Zylline lock—unpickable and unremovable. I’ll take that short sledge over yonder. How much is it?”

“That one? It’s $4.50.”

“Wrap it, please, if you will.”

It was wrapped, right there at the counter. And the young man was outside within 9 minutes after he had entered, so swift had been the two transactions.

He hurried on toward Clark Street, passing the Klondike Building without even a sidewise glance. His eyes were fixed ahead of him in intent thought.

But no further from the Klondike Building in that direction than was the Hardware Store from it in the other, was a tiny watch-repair shop, no more than about 7 feet wide. It carried prominently in its narrow window a sign reading, “Second-hand and Uncalled-for Watches Cheap.” And so many of which did it apparently have that they filled the whole upper part of the window.

The young man stopped short.

Swiftly he cast his eyes over the battery of watches which hung, many of them, backs outward. Then he went in. The proprietor, an old man with a white head and an engraving tool in his hand, turned to the tiny wooden rail cutting off his work bench.

“How much,” said the young man, gazing troubledly at a big telechron clock at the end of the silver-like store, “is that old silver watch there, with ‘I. V.’ engraved on it?”

“We-ell—now in a manner of speaking—”

“Quick!” said the young man. “Name your lowest price, or else!”

“We-ell—well, it’s $4. And it keeps—”

“Can you, in the next few minutes, while I’m on an errand, engrave a half-circle loop on that ‘I,’ changing it into a ‘P’—and an additional angle on the ‘V,’ making it a ‘W’?”

“Why, yes—sure. It might look a little—”

“Do it, please,” said the young man. “The ‘I’ into a ‘P’—and the ‘V’ into a ‘W.’ And here’s $2 on account. And if it isn’t done in 15 minutes when I come back, I’ll have to pass it—”

“It’ll be done!” said the old man. “And—and I’ll rub acid across the fresh cuts to make the engraving look uniform.”

And almost before Mr. Piffington Wainwright, the owner of the initials in question, was out of the door, the old man was locking the watch in a felt-lined vise; was, in fact, before Mr. Wainwright was ten feet distant, cutting, with sure hand, a neat curling sliver of silver from the watch case.

At the corner, Mr. Wainwright waited for a taxicab to come along. Reflecting deeply, as he waited, on the newsstory he had read.

“Wild defense, all right—J. D.’s claiming amnesia! And ‘hypnotic amnesia’—of all things! Just a stall, of course, for time; for with that defense he hasn’t a cha—hm?—say, I might be able to sew my own entrance into this affair up a bit tighter if Dr. Mironovski really is out of town. But—”

But standing not on suppositions, he stepped into a drugstore in back of him, the name of which—as shown on a huge sign over its door—was VADO’S. And inserted himself immediately into a line of 3 persons in front of a cashier’s booth which, from the placard above the wicket, sold telephone slugs. With the result that he met for the very first time in his young life—met, that is, in a sense—one of Chicago’s famous figures; no less, in fact, than—

For a man in a pharmacist’s tan coat, back of a counter just to one side of the line, was speaking to a customer who, himself, leaned, in profile, on the counter, chin in hand and—the pharmacist, that is—was saying:

“Yes, Mayor Sweeney, this particular remedy of mine will knock out any headache that ever existed. Except, of course—ahem—”

Mr. Wainright, being always glad to meet the famous, turned slightly in line to survey his Mayor.

Mayor Gardiner Sweeney, now turning about in his hand a small demoniacal-looking green-glass bottle, was a man of about 50, with rather small greenish-blue eyes, and curly hair peeping out from under a black derby hat.

His tweed clothes were rich, and a gold encased elk’s tooth, with huge diamond in the tip of the tooth, swung from a massive chain on his vest, His face was pale with the paleness of one who smoked far too many cigars; it was lined, too, with the lines of one who had sat in too many troublesome late-houred political meetings.

“I’ll take it, Vado,” he was grunting. “But don’t bother to wrap it up. For I’m hopping in my car outside—and going home for the day.”

“Okay, Mayor—and no charge!—it’s on the house—but—just a minute, Mayor. Been having these—er—headaches long?”

“Some time. Though this one, plainly, is from a Welsh rarebit I ate day before yesterday. And—but why do you ask?” The mayor’s voice was grumpy, as one whose intimate physiology had been pried into!

“We-ell—I think I would have my headaches looked into by a doctor, for headaches, Mayor, are symptomatic of so many things. A fact! And if your doctor says there’s no organic trouble at the base of them —well— now I know you’ll laugh—”

“I won’t laugh. What in hell is there in Life to laugh at, anyway? What is it you suggest?”

“Well—that before drenching your system with acetanilid—which is in all headache remedies—and maybe putting your heart permanently on the blink—you see what a psychotherapeutist can do.”

Mr. Wainright, now passing a nickel over the wicket, smiled faintly at those words. Considering who and what he was about to call up!

“One of those ducks,” grunted Mayor Sweeney, “who talk pain away?—but from nuts only? Hell, Vado, he couldn’t talk this headache of mine away—if for no other reason than that I’m sane—not just 100 per cent sane, Vado, but 101.333 per cent!” Mr. Wainwright, now obtaining his slug, could not but help note the drugstore proprietor frowning puzzledly as one who knew—exactly as did Mr. Wainwright himself!—that he who is too downright convinced of his own sanity is, almost always, in danger. “I’ll stick to your Vado’s Knockit,” the Mayor was continuing, pocketing the bottle. “Or Bromo Seltzer. All right, Vado. Thanks for the bottle—and I’ll send you over a pair of tickets tomorrow for the Policeman’s Benefit.” And Chicago’s “top man” was going out the door, on his way home to treat his headache with Vado’s Knockit, and, perhaps, to brag to his own wife that he was 101.333 per cent sane. Though at this juncture of matters Mr. Wainwright, actually grinning at the paradoxical concept of a man being more sane than sane!—101.333 per cent so!—had secured a slug, and was now entering a telephone booth. Where, looking up a number, he dialed it.

A girl’s voice answered.

“I want,” he said, “to speak to Dr. Gregor Miranovski, the hypnoti—that is, hypnotic therapeutist—on a very very serious matt—”

“Dr. Miranovski,” said a girl’s voice, “is out of town.”

“Thank—you!” He hung up. “Well, he’s out, all right.

So I may be able to use him. If I can pull an imitation of him—on the phone.”

Now, outside on the sidewalk again, a cab drew up in response to his signal.

“The River,” he told the driver simply.

The driver looked astounded. As he had a right to be, at anybody desiring to ride such a short distance. But philo­sophical where strange fares were involved, he jerked his meter, and with a lurch that flattened his fare against the cushions, sped riverward.

At the Clark Street bridge, Mr. Wainwright climbed blithely out, paying off the taximeter “pull” of 25 cents with a silver half-dollar from which he waved back the change.

Down the stone stairs of Wacker Drive Mr. Wainwright hastily made his way, to, in fact, the concrete embankment along the river. A diver was working midway of the block between Clark Street and Dearborn Street, the cranks of his air machine being turned by two laborers.

A small group of loungers were looking on from the actual embankment—and a larger group from the Upper Drive level.

The young man frowned.

This large and generous audience was going to complicate exceedingly what he now must do—and do quickly.

Slowly he walked to where the diver was submerged.

But past and on. And he was just about halfway between the diver’s position and Dearborn Street—at Piling 47, to be exact, in view of the black numbers stencilled on it—when the lucky break of breaks came.

Lucky, that is, for this particular young man.

For a great, clumsy helicopter was bearing clutteringly down on the region, from the southeast, its double horizontal wings making a terrific roar. It was only a few hundred feet above river and street. The bridges, at both ends of this block, became suddenly thick with people—arrested, in motion. Streetcars stopped. And automobiles also on the drive above. Everybody in the entire vicinity—except one—raised his chin and faced the sky.

That one exception was the diver, working far down the water’s surface.

And perhaps even he too looked upward. Who knows? At which, Mr. Wainwright, with a chuckle, just tore off the end of his paper wrapping—tilted his package—and the sledge within slid forth into the silent water with a slight splash—and was gone instantly. The while the helicopter let out a great final roar of its blades which brought all chins a millimeter higher.

And before it was drifting away to the west—and traffic was miraculously resumed again—Mr. Wainwright was again climbing into a cab on the Upper Drive level at Dearborn Street.

“Clark and Washington Streets,” he said, naming the very point where, but a fraction of an hour before, he had read that story detailing the catastrophic fall of one J. D., safe burglar, and had, himself, evolved a great radical idea in connection therewith!

His face was a bit thoughtful now, as he walked rapidly back toward the Klondike Building.

He stopped, however, at the little watch-repair shop where he had ordered the watch engraved.

And it was ready! Had been ready no doubt for 5 minutes.

The “I. V.” had been neatly converted into a “P. W.”—and the fresh cuts had been darkened with some acid.

“Oke,” Mr. Wainwright said briefly, and laid down 2 dollars.

And departed.

Again entering the Klondike Building.

And again taking the stairs.

And again striking Floor 8 in one minute.

Where again he repaired to the door of 806.

Nobody was in the hall. With quite supreme confidence, he slipped the master key he had purchased into the Police Padlock. It opened easily—exactly as he had known it would! He slipped it off and into his side coat pocket. And shoving the door slightly inward, and half turning, he slipped back­ward into the room—thus assuring himself that nobody in the hall was seeing this maneuver.

But as he turned about, after quietly shoving the door to, he gave a start.

Not, however, because anyone was in the room, coolly surveying his entrance—nor even looking in from the one window, since that latter contingency was one quite impos­sible, the window fronting only on a blank, ugly windowless wall, less than five feet from it. Neither, moreover, did he give a start because of the old safe across the room, with its door swung wide open—and several bits of gleaming dial on the floor. Nor at the old clock, awry on the wall. Nor at the old desk. Nor at the old leather couch—or rather, should it per­haps be said, the several feet thereof which struck emptily out from a black burlap-covered folding screen.

But because, on the floor, lay a dead man! A dead man, in the striped overalls and jumper of a janitor and night watch­man. And his face was covered with a blue bandanna handkerchief that presumably had been his own.

“Good—grief!” said Mr. Wainwright, to whom a mere corpse was nothing at all. For many were the corpses—women, of course—that he had prettied up with rouge and lipstick for his good friend, Gideon Arkwright, the North Avenue undertaker. “I certainly inferred,” he commented, to himself, scratching his chin, “that the body had been removed elsewhere. For—now what the devil did that story say on that? Oh yes!—that the body had been ‘left all morning exactly where ’twas found.’ ‘All morning’ is right!—plus a piece of ‘afternoon’ thrown in! He nodded sagely. “One shrewd piece of language, that ‘all morning’—and struck in there like a plum to make others think as P. Wainwright, Esquire—and keep curiosity seekers away. Well, my profit, that’s all.”

And he gave a philosophical shrug of his shoulders.

And proceeded to business.

Though not without first reading a white card that had been placed on the inside of the door he had just closed, with 4 thumbtacks. It bore, on its top, the engraved words:

CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT

and underneath it, in handwriting, and signed, was the notice:

This room completely inspected by me at 8:30 a.m. October 23 by special request of State’s Attorney Louis J. Vann, and notes and camera shots made of all vital and essential criminological residua.

Rufus Scott,

Inspector, Burglary Division,

Chicago Detective Bureau.

Mr. Wainwright smiled dolefully. “Then a few ‘post-crime’ ‘traces’ oughtn’t to hurt matters in the least!”

And apparently acting on which, he crossed the room quickly to that open safe. Where he drew from his pocket the watch he had just procured. Setting its hands to the hour of 10:43—which it seems the able inspector Scott had, accord­ing to the newsstory, been able to determine as conclusively and absolutely the hour of the crime and the murder—Mr. Wainwright twisted the winder till something in the watch snapped.

After which, squatting down, he sent the watch sliding—with a slight shuffling noise—back under the safe, the under bottom of which cubicle cleared the floor very narrowly, thanks to the odd manner in which the makers—or perhaps some later secondhand dealers—had appended the wheels, the axles of the latter protruding at points considerably up the sides of the iron box. Mr. Wainwright did not, however, attempt to follow the progress of the watch with his eye, if for no other reason than because of the darkness beneath the safe, but, judging from the smart rap that sounded forth, the watch just hit the wall board and came to a stop.

Mr. Wainwright now went straight to where an old diploma hung on one wall, a bit higher than an eye could conveniently reach. And here, again, he indulged in a double procedure. The first part of which consisted of rubbing his ten fingertips vigorously in his hair. Which done, he planted them—the whole 10—fingers slightly outstretched—against the painted wall under that diploma.

And now he stood not further on the order of his going!

For stepping adroitly over the thing on the floor, he was again at the door through which but three-quarters of a minute before he had entered. And opening which, a few inches, he gave a cautious peep into the hall. In both directions.

But the hall was clear.

It was the work of a split second for him to emerge and to slip, back into the eyelets of the bolt, the curved shaft of the open padlock which had been reposing in his side coat pocket. Click! And the padlock was locked.

Again he took the stairs to the street. Tossing the master padlock key back of a radiator between floors 5 and 4.

The elevator was not in sight as he came down the last flight, and into the wood-moored foyer.

And within a minute of having left that 8th floor, he was out again on the sidewalk. And a full 40 feet away, in a westerly direction, though gazing studiedly back of himself. With the result that he could see a yellow taxicab draw up sharply in front of the Klondike Building, and a well-built man in a tweed suit, carrying a leather portfolio, climb out and pay off the driver with some kind of very official-looking tickets. After which, striding forward to the door, the tweed-suited man took up a position at the side of the Klondike Building entrance.

To some persons, he would have been—in the light of his portfolio!—nothing other than a salesman, waiting some client or customer scheduled to enter, or to leave, the Klondike Building. Not so was he, apparently, to Mr. Wainwright. Who, now standing on the curb, was nodding his head.

“Soles an inch thick,” the latter was commenting. “And looking as innocent as a cat who’s just swallowed the family parrot. A detective, of course. Put there by the State’s Attorney.” And he gave a tiny chuckle. “Yet why not? Doesn’t the criminal always return to the scene of his crime?” He gave a half-nod. “There’s the spot for my arrest, all right—and the man to make it! And then—then to confess to the murder of Rudol—no, Adolph Reibach! And the theft of that skull. So here goes! And I do hope, by Gracious, I do—that I haven’t slipped up anywhere. Heavens!—to have all this trouble—for nothing!”

And resolutely he walked toward the Klondike Building, and that innocent-appearing man with the portfolio!