The Case of the Murdered Mathematician, page 1
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
DEDICATION
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1947 by Harry Stephen Keeler.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com
DEDICATION
To Joe Paskiewicz or “Paskie,” my warmest memory out of Armour Tech!
H. S. K.
CHAPTER I
A Strange and Curious Quest
Quiribus Brown, his 7½ feet of giantism causing him to tower high above all the pygmy-like humans about him, his vivid plaid lumberjack’s short jacket and blue-and-orange-striped tightly-fitted knitted cap turning him into a literal blaze of colour for the inhabitants of such a drab city as Chicago, paused uncertainly at the unsavoury down-at-heel corner of Harrison and State Streets.
The fact that the whole region hereabouts smacked of pickpockets and strong-arm men—plus the fact that the sum of $1,171 was on Quiribus’s person—his life savings, no less!—worried the giant not in the least. For not only could he, did he so wish, with his 360 pounds of weight and his 3-foot-long arms, toss any two of the people around him a dozen feet, but that $1,171 was buttoned tightly in the capacious pocket of the grey flannel shirt he wore, and buttoned over it, in turn, was the plaid lumberman’s jacket. And so, if that bright yellow time-table, flopping openly from his hip pocket, branded him, this summer-like late October day, at a quarter of 2 in the afternoon, as a huge and gargantuan 27-or-so-year-old infant from the North Woods, possessed of kindly, trusty brown eyes and genial, easy-going long face, Quiribus did not in the least care.
Indeed, all he was worried about, just at this moment, was which way he should now go. To attain a certain curious objective. Curious, at least, for a giant! For, having gained the point where he was by a somewhat deviously wandering path from the Michigan Central Railway Depot, somewhere to the south and also to the east, he was just a bit in the dark as to his next direction.
For in front of him, as he stood uncertainly, lay a busy though narrow cobblestoned street of clattering trucks and drab ramshackle one-story shops; while, to his right, along a wider but paved street of more clattering trucks and streetcars, came sounds of life, of music, of—
And riveted thus, as it were, the cynosure of dozens of eyes turning back and gaping curiously, some even grinningly, at him, Quiribus could not see the bright, black, hard eyes of a girl of about 27, with almost too highly carmined lips, and dressed in a checkered suit and neat little scarlet hat, across from him on the diagonally opposite corner, grow harder yet at sight of him and his undeniable lumberjack’s accoutrements, nor did he hear her say to herself: “Lumberjack—and the biggest I ever saw in my life!—his whole summer’s wages inside his filthy shirt, and him and it ready for the taking. A plain pushover, no less—if I follow my usual line—from A to Izzy. For a guy with an outsized carcass like that pos-i-lutely couldn’t have any more than—than minus-zero in wits! A pushover. Except—for the big question! Is he going to go straight down Harrison Street—or is he going down State?”
Much less, of course, could Quiribus—even had he been looking straight towards this particular hard-eyed girl at this very second, and which he wasn’t—have seen her feel quickly within a secret pocket of her checkered skirt to see if a certain fragile phial of powerful knockout drops that should be there, was there—and find that it was. Nor could Quiribus, considering that his back was squarely to the curbstone intersection, even see the girl pause uncertainly; and then, betting on her woman’s hunch that if the more lively of the two streets confronting him did not immediately capture his footsteps, he would nevertheless be practically certain to turn back to it, and on to it, after traversing a couple score feet of that duller cobblestoned one, speed down the wider block of clanging streetcars in order to cross over that block, at its further end, and meet him a quarter way or so up it. For the full carrying out of that peculiar procedure which she had described, at least to herself, as “my usual line—from A to Izzy.”
For it was right at this juncture, as Quiribus stood still uncertainly at the intersection, that a wizened, grizzled old fellow, with a wide-brimmed flopping grey felt hat, and black shirt minus tie—a man with, however, a kind but weatherbeaten face—detached himself from a bit of wall where he was loafing in the early afternoon sunshine, and, moreover, smoking a corncob pipe, and came over to Quiribus Brown.
“Howdy, Great Big Stranger f’m the Big Timbers,” he greeted, friendly, pipe now in gnarled fingers. “Kin I he’p yo’ out any? Yo’ look kinda puhplexed like.”
Quiribus looked the other over troubledly.
“Maybe you can,” he assented. “You—you live in this town?
“Hell no, stranger! I hain’t no Chycagyan ’tall—ef’n that’s whut you mean; nor am I f’m them big woods, nuther, whar you hangs out—me, I’m f’m Big River—down ’round Memphis, but I be’n hyar a few weeks, hangin’ ’round tryin’ t’ git myse’f a job some’eres firin’ a b’iler or so’thin, an’ so mebbe I kin steer you a’right. So whar, mebbe, yo’ aimin’ to go, heh?”
“We-e-ell,” said Quiribus undecidedly, “I was just wondering how to get to the—the downtown district.”
“Downtown deestrick, heh? Wa-all, jest go long this street yo’re on—no, not this narrer cobblestoned ’un facin’ ye, but th’ paved ’un to yo’re right—an’ yo’ll—shoo!” This to a couple of stragglers-by who had stopped, a few feet off from the colloquy, were gawking back—threatening to start a crowd, or at least a ring about the two men. “Git goin’, you two,” threatened the old man fiercely. “Cain’t a man talk to a friend in this town ’thout a crowd gatherin’? Shoo!
“Yowsah, Big Man, t’ git t’ th’ downtown deestrick, yo’ go ’long this paved street, to yo’re right, an’ yo’ll hit the elyvated road atter a long, long block whut’s fully long’s two blocks. Which elyvated road ’gins the busyiness section. But yo’ jest watch yo’re step, Big Man f’m th’ Woods, on this block atween hyer an’ thar—fer that block’s called Flesh Row, Big Boy, an’—”
“Flesh Row?” Quiribus’s shaggy black-brown eyebrows raised.
“Yowsah, Big Boy. Flesh Row! Used once’t, they say, t’ be called Honky Tonk Row, an’ then, still later, Gypper’s Block, but hit’s got a new and better name now. In proper line ’ith this—this Sodom of Amerricy whut Chycago is, so he’p me. They’ll play ag’in you, Big Boy, f’m hyar on—shoo!”—this to another momentarily spellbound passerby, who seemed threatening to become part of the meeting except that, as Quiribus amicably tossed out a stock frown to add to the old man’s “shoo,” the new arrestee scurried off like a frightened bug—“they’ll play ag’in you, Big Boy,” the old man resumed, “f’m hyar on, ’ith marked kyards—an’ll keep a-tryin’, too. Fur they adage ’long hyar is ‘Th’ bigger they comes, th’ harder they falls!’ An’ ef’n that’s true, yo’ll shore hatter watch yo’re steps! When’d you git in town?”
“About—twenty minutes ago,” said Quiribus, rendering, at least, the time he’d left that depot.
“Evah b’en hyar befo’?”
“Never.”
“Well yo’ jest watch yo’re step, Big Boy. On Flesh Row! Fur hit’s got ab’s’lutely evah game evah i’vented—bar none!—fer to ’ppeal to a man’s baser an’—an’ lower—an’—an’ carnal se’f—th’ Ol’ Mist’ Devil in him, yowsah!—but tries hard’s it kin t’ never d’liver—an’, when it does d’liver, hit’s on’y fer to take yo’ fer so’thin’ bigger—fer all yo’ got. So watch yo’re step. An’ good luck.”
“Thank you, my friend—and I’ll do all you suggest.”
And down Chicago’s famous Flesh Row, Quiribus turned.
CHAPTER II
On Flesh Row
From the corner, where the giant had paused so uncertainly, the street on which he was now embarked had seemed one that was alive with activity on one side only—for, on the other, across the way, was just a row of low dull-looking radio-parts shops, and a great block-long 6-story building constituting, had Quiribus but known it, Sears Roebuck and Company’s store—a firm from which, often and again, he’d ordered by mail. But that one side on which he was—and which appeared to be the indisputably live side of that stretch of street—seemed a maze of overhanging signs, amidst which were gilt pawnshop balls, cheap theatre marquees, enormous cloth-painted wiener-wursts—indeed, the human eye simply could not separate them. They hung, these countless signs, by equally countless chains and supports and brackets, cut from what was a solid phalanx of dull brick 3-story buildings, not unlike those to be seen along the waterfront of any Mississippi River city; for the windows all carried ancient rounded tops, with clumsy gingerbreadlike eaves thereto, and many of the crumbling stone sills carried tin cans with growing things in them, betokening Italian occupancy upstairs.
While all along the broad sidewalk below—sometimes in doorways—sometimes loafing under overhanging signs—sometimes standing out on the curb and looking inward—and always, therefore, in sharp contrast with the crowd ever threading, ever pushing interminably in both directions, were to be seen furtive looking men—watching the crowds—sizing the people up—figuring out each passer-by—sometimes even accosting—
Indeed, no sooner had Quiribus left the corner 20 feet behind him, keeping close in to the buildings, and therefore free of the necessity of ever trying to thread through and between these pygmies, than a pockmarked man, in a dingy black sweater jacket, standing idly in a dark green painted doorway, reached out and gingerly touched the giant’s arm.
“Hi there, Great Big Man from the Woods?—like to spin th’ little ivory ball? Upstairs—and you can lay as little as two bits.”
Quiribus, having been touched on the arm, was polite enough to pause.
“I suppose, mister,” he said, friendlily, “that you’re speaking—of some kind of game of chance? But you see—the only game I know happens to be Casino! So—”
“Oh,” hurriedly deprecated the other, “there’s ab’slutely nothin’ to this game, Big Boy. It’s just a wheel—with numbers on it—and colours—and a little white ball—”
“Numbers? Colours?” Quiribus was instantly interested. Though for reasons best known to himself, and because intimately connected with his strange giant’s life history. “Well that sounds sort of—tell you what, mister—I’ll probably be back later on.”
“Okay, Big Fellow,” said the puller-in, who evidently realized the advantage of never using too much suasion on interested customers. “Tall men are lucky. So you’d just about bust our bank. But don’t forget the place, willya?”
“I sure won’t.” Quiribus looked up at it, the better to note it. And then with a friendly nod, went on. In another 30 feet or so, a cheap motion-picture foyer presented itself. The man out in front, with soiled checkered suit and cane studded with rhinestones, shouted, at sight of Quiribus:
“Hi-oh, Big Man from the Woods—hi! Take a look! Take–”
Quiribus, turned about, had stopped—was looking. For a great 6-foot-long poster on one side of a tobacco-juice stained foyer, consisting of a violently hand-coloured many-many-times-enlarged enlargement of an actual photograph, showed a sparsely-clad girl lying back on a couch, Smoke trailing from her fingers; and across the entire bottom quarter of it was lettered, in screaming black-outlined scarlet letters:
MARIJUANA—WEED OF LUST
while, set symmetrically on the other side of the foyer, was a similarly hand-coloured and many-many-times-enlarged photograph, showing several women in dishabille lying about on beds kicking their heels, and with, lettered in scarlet letters across its bottom quarter, the legend
THE HOUSE OF SHAME
“Banned, Big Man!” the barker was now shouting triumphantly, waving his rhinestone-studded cane in the air. “Banned—by ever’ censor board in Amer’ca—but slipped into Chy here—and now showing f’r th’ first time. Two fillums—’at should cost a buck apiece—for the price of one—and that price only ten—”
“Tomorrow,” said Quiribus sadly, turning off. “If they’re still showing.” And now he was to find evidence of flesh on Flesh Row. More, that is, than in mere film form!
Suddenly, in a black-curtain-draped opening in a calci-mined wallboard-created structure cutting off what might have been a whole pair of narrow store fronts and the most of the mutual space between, a man started beating a raucous gong and shouting, between beats:
“She’s here, folks!—she’s here!—as naked as the day she was born!—and alive!—so alive, she moves a hand or arm if you call to her—she smiles at you!—yet hasn’t a stitch on her—all of her’s shown—all of her!—you can look all day, if you want to—the price to see her is two bits—only two bits!—and you couldn’t buy the sight for a dollar anywhere el—”
He stopped dead, as Quiribus loomed up in front of him. Proved, in fact, to be a little man, no more than 5 feet high—a veritable “shorty”—with a close-cropped bullet-shaped head and blue eyes. He was operating a gong at the side of a narrow ticket-seller’s booth in which sat a sour-looking man wearing an indisputable toupee, and over which booth was a single long sign, in gleaming white letters on black, reading:
THE NAKED WOMAN WHO LIVES
IN THE RAINDROP!
“You—you really mean,” Quiribus queried, to the man with the gong, and with downright puzzled honesty, “that you’ve—you’ve got a live naked woman in there—to be seen for—for twenty-five cents only?”
The little man with the gong sized Quiribus up troubledly. Very much so! Then decided, evidently, to be 100 per cent truthful with a potential customer of this size!
“Now—now listen here, Big Boy from the Woods—how in hell d’ya s’pose we could show a naked dame, in th’ regular way—without gettin’ pinched? But sure we got what we say—a naked dame—but reduced—sure!—reduced by lenses to a tin—er—small size—an’ reflected into a glass globe—now wait!—this is what it is, and it’s on the level.” He tucked his gong under his arm, and held his hands out about a foot and a half apart. “She appears layin’ in a glass ball ’bout this size—see?—representin’ an enlarged raindrop—see?—and she’s inside it there, a livin’, breathin’, movin’ little figger full 4 inches long—and she is naked—as naked as the day she was born—but hell, you can screw your glims up a bit, can’t you?—now listen, if it ain’t all jest as I’ve described, I’ll give you your money back and a buck besides, as you come out. Go on in, Big Boy! Go on! It—”
“I’ll be back later,” said Quiribus good-naturedly, “when I’ve picked me up—a darned good strong pair of specs.” And on he went.
“And I know you’ll be back,” said the little man confidently. “Because giants, they—”
He said no more. For Quiribus threw a warning look back at him.
Quiribus went on. Some 40 feet or so onward, in front of a vacant store, Quiribus paused a moment, to stare fascinatedly, in spite of himself, at something dancing—or at least being made to dance—on the sidewalk there, by a hardfaced man who stood off some feet with hands carelessly in pockets and apparently operating the thing by invisible black threads emanating, perhaps, from but one pocket only. It was a little figure, about a foot and a quarter high, no more, made by blowing up a human-shaped balloon of thin flesh-coloured rubber, and having painted on the part representing the face a Cupid’s bow mouth, a nose, and a pair of languishing eyes; above the eyes were glued false and toothbrushlike eyelashes, and atop the head was a thatch of yellow fibre representing blondeined hair; this was all the little flesh-coloured figure did have, so that it resembled something grotesquely naked—something whose sex, moreover, was never a thing to be in doubt. It represented evidently a so-called “belly dance,” but made, as it danced, the most obscene gestures Quiribus had ever seen in his life. He knew that the dance was created by one black thread, the gestures by still another, with both threads no doubt tied to brass rings slipped over fingers of one of the hands thrust so carelessly in the pockets of the hard-faced man nearby. And as a deep purple crimson flush poured over the giant’s great face, the other spoke cozeningly:
“Pretty cute, eh, Big Fellow? Take one back to the woods with you. Two bits, only! It’ll make them lonely tree-choppin’ buddies of yours squirm all over the landscape!”
“Thanks for your suggestion,” said Quiribus, as the little figure now fell flat on its own back but brazenly continued its lewd motions, “but unfortunately I wouldn’t do that—to my pals.” And on he went.
Now a succulent smell of garlicky hot-dogs filtered out into the air. A huge Greek, with long moustaches, and an enormously oversized white cook’s hat atop his greasy head, was frying them lustily on a hot plate in a glassless open store front. They were full 12 inches long, each one, and were advertised, in screaming black-outlined orange letters painted across the top of the window, as “Giant Dogs 17—cents.” Quiribus, approaching the open space where the dogs sizzled, found himself wondering curiously exactly how big a crowd would gather—and even, no doubt, buy giant dogs!—at sight of a real and actual giant, like himself—publicly eating a giant dog. Wondered even—and equally curiously—if he were to agree to eat giant dogs out here on this sidewalk, for as long as they were handed him free, exactly how many that particular hardlooking Greek would hand out—free! But without trying to find the answers to either of these purely theoretical questions, Quiribus went stolidly on, passed the place, continuing to ignore the faces that turned ever back to him, off and on.
