Читать книгу The Affair of the Bottled Deuce - Harry Stephen Keeler - Страница 8

CHAPTER VI

Discovery Strange, Discovery Odd!

Butterball made a curtsey. To show complete modesty on the part of a Chicago Avenue police station detective possessing far too large a stomach. He did it well. He should, Lou reflected, have been doing it in the Follies.

Butterball threw a question now toward Marchesi.

“Did this well-heeled well-garnished plutocrat here have any visitors, to any extent?”

“I never saw one in my life,” declared Marchesi. “I am up—I am down—many times a day. I never saw any of such.”

“Yet he’s been here a long time?”

“Since early last fall, yes.”

“Has he relatives here in Chi? Maybe some multimillionaire uncle who gives him chewing gum money—to put under mattresses?”

“He said, when he came here, sir, he had no relatives.”

“Lone wolf, eh? Well, I might as well go back in to his bedroom, and examine the tags on his clothing. See how much he paid for same. Sometimes you can find out more about a man from his cloth—”

He said no more. But turned and went back into the bedroom.

Lou, therefore, strode down the room toward the kitchen. Strode through the doorway containing apparently a sliding door. Found, as he got into the kitchen proper, that the sliding door slid back only on rails, above and below, that lay in the kitchen itself—that it wasn’t even an honest God-fearing sliding door—was an 1890 phony imitation of one.

The kitchen bore a softwood floor as did the other room, and had an old zinc-lined sink on its left wall. From the wall above it protruded a single faucet. At the window side of the sink was a cast iron handpump that had been necessary to get the water to the 4th floor back in the ’90’s when everybody below was washing his neck at the same hour. With today’s pressures, the giving ’way of a single Fuller ball would have ejected a stream of water from the one faucet of the sink big enough for a fire hose.

Off from the sink pump was—ahem!—a toilet seat affixed hydrostatically to the same vertical drain pipe that took care of the sink, and placed here obviously in the long ago for purposes of plumbing economy. One drain pipe—for one flat. It seemed, from marks in the floor, that once, in the long ago, the toilet seat had been modestly encased in a matchboard cubicle. Which presumably had been torn away during the years, by some former tenant, during some cold period when coal was scarce in this flat, and burned in a coal-burning stove. Here now today, in this room, a man could cook or reign—reign or cook. Lou wrinkled his nose. Swung his gaze on beyond it. Saw the other bathroom facilities which this particular flat afforded. A round zinc wash tub, standing off the wall, that could be filled partly under the cold-water faucet, and put on the stove and warmed; in it was a long backscrubbing brush, a colored bottle of bubblebath powder, and a pink washrag. Fit for Cleopatra herself. Maybe!

Practically in the entrance of the kitchen yet, Lou swung his gaze rightward to see, of course, the other door of the flat that led out into the hallway, and which did, indeed, carry on its inside a powerful hand-bolt, completely shot, and a complicated Yale lock fixture. The door apparently never used—that is, had not been used during the tenure of occupancy of this now-dead tenant, for up against it was shoved an upended soap box, its open side in front so that one’s knees could be shoved into it, from a small up-ended wooden box such as carries proprietary remedies, standing just off it as a seat. A paper napkin atop the taller box made it a dining table of sorts, and a plate, a knife and fork laid out, proclaimed that dinner tonight was to have been for one!

Off from the blocked door and improvised dining table ensemble, was a 4-hole gas stove with, above it, a long shelf carrying a congeries of breakfast food packages and cans, including corn beef hash and lobster, with, below same, a few pots and pans on nails, plus a frying pan, and plus a wire rack containing a few pieces of silverware, a few more pieces of chinaware. Off from the stove, further windowward, stood a zinc scrub pail with a mop in it, and which explained fully why the floors in this place were as unusually clean as they were.

Lou strode forth, over to the rear window. It was open an inch, to create a draft from front of the flat to rear. But its grating was locked tight, like all the others, with the Yale padlock. Gazing out, all he could see was the blank windowless side of the cold storage warehouse off from it, to the extent of about 10 feet or so. Gazing sidewise, he could see that the latter bellied out, rearwardly, of its own front, in his direction. Even the buildings around here were just like the flats!—mortised together—in jig-saw puzzle-like segments! He sensed the bottom of the fire-escape on the outside of the windows along here must, indeed, fall into some sort of a nearly closed courtyard, even as Marchesi had earlier suggested by just a few words. Was, indeed, subsequently to find even more that this was so.

He turned from his position of no vantage, and went back into the main room.

Butterball was back. Shaking his head.

“Suits, about $40 each—made of stuff that never needs any pressing—shirts, $2.25 each—ties, 75 cents. Not rich. Not poor. Reg’lar middle-class.”

They stood now. Each in his own thoughts. Lou spoke.

“Butterball, do you know someth—”

“If I did I—”

“Yeah, we both know the regulation answer. But Butterball, that hanging hand of yon clean, naïve young middle-class man yonder—the one holding the black gunmetal gun, yes—and which hand actually sticks to gun because of index finger curled inside the trigger guard!—that hand doesn’t hang heavy enough. I’ve seen too many dead gun-holding hands in my day. The slightest weight on a dying hand and arm causes it to—”

“I think it’s all imaginary on your part, Lousy. It looks to me just like it should—”

“No, it isn’t imaginary.”

“I think it is.”

“I think it isn’t. Oh, I know, Butterball, you’re the famous 1-second observer—and that you’ve been in here all this time and haven’t made such observation as I, and—”

“Listen, Lousy,” said Butterball, with some acerbity, “if that hand is hanging any lighter than it should hang—listen, what the hell do you mean, anyway?—why should it hang down for any reason other than that’s what it’s supposed to? Its weight? A—”

“Plus the gun!”

“Plus the gun, yeah. Well, if it isn’t hanging as heavy as it could—might hang, I—I give you this case—I mean, I appoint you as source of observation around here, and—”

“Will you add superintendent of operations, too?”

“Hell, yes! I have reason in that respect for wishing you were. Because—well, because the less I have to do in this case from now, or a few hours from now, the more—”

“All right, Butterball. I’ll check. By lifting the arm a tiny bit—”

“Don’t tell me,” grimaced Butterball, “you can tell how much a dead arm—should weigh?”

“I can’t tell you what I can tell you. I don’t even exactly know myself. I—”

Lou strode forward. Lifted the pendant arm lightly, so as not to dislodge the gun in its hand. But shook his head as he did. For though reasonably heavy, the crook in the elbow wasn’t as straight as it seemingly should have been.

Now he let the arm down, and lifted just the hand itself. Perhaps an eighth of an inch or so, no more. Again shook his head. Now he reached about in his back pocket. Withdrew his white silk handkerchief. Shook it open. And with it detached the gun gently from the hanging hand. Opening his eyes wide as he did so, so light, so amazingly weightless was that gun.

He stood erect with it. Using the handkerchief to keep his fingerprints off it, he pressed its two ends in such a way as to put stress across its middle. The “gun” broke squarely, easily, into two halves, Revealing it wasn’t metal, wasn’t wood. Wasn’t anything—but black wax!

“See what I mean, Butterball?” he said quietly. “Black wax!”

Butterball could only stare with open eyes and open mouth.

“Ever heard, Butterball,” said Lou kindly, “of a man killing himself with a wax gun? Butterball, this is a staged ‘suicide’—not a genuine one. It’s staged. For what reason, I can’t remotely guess. But it’s staged. It’s—”

“Meaning—meaning,” said Butterball, “that it’s—”

“Meaning,” pointed out Lou calmly, “that you will now have to go out—or downstairs to Mr. Marchesi’s—and call the particular squad from the Detective Bureau that covers the specific thing this is. And which is Homicide, Butterball. Yeah, Homicide, commencing with H as in—in Hah-Hah!”