“Hold it!” said the other man coldly. “For this one doesn’t! Nor won’t. Except that I see no reason why to cut my own throat with the wrong susp—well you see, my fine Bucko, there just happens to be one other suspect. No other than—but the card, please! Yes, yes, the card.”

  Quiribus extended it back. The Homicide Head did not replace it in the protruding drawer, however; instead, as though motivated by the sad fact that an outsider to the police now knew the name across its top—and the facts written on it—he creased it down its longitudinal middle and placed it—in his breast pocket! Now, in line with his last statement, he turned wearily again to the cabinet, still at his right shoulder. And bent over no less than the very drawer which had been left sticking forth. And riffling far over the cards in it, stopped where there were apparently two, tightly clipped together at their tops by a paper clip. And moving slightly to one side, nodded Quiribus to crane his own neck over. Which the giant eagerly did. Finding, again, a card bearing single-spaced wide lines, and upside down as before!—but with, hand-lettered across its top, with again the current year-date following, the name

  UNWYNDE, J. Haverstoke

  And now Quiribus was scratching his head. “Darn—but that name—when I look at it visibly that way—yes, visibly!—is sort of—of familiar. Yet by godfrey, I don’t know it from–”

  “You don’t pe—ruse our Chy—cago papers down in the Injiany sticks, do you?” said the other man, almost acerbically. “Well, J. Haverstoke Unwynde, my dear outsized Hoosier, is none other than the man who won the recent mayoralty contest on the independent ticket—all because the old-line parties fell out—and who takes office in 5 days from now. A man of about 50—British extraction, does one go by his name, his blond hair and blue eyes, though—but anyway—”

  And only now was it dawning on Quiribus, a child in politics, the implication of what he was being told.

  “Oh-oh!” was his comment. “And the Mayor—the Mayor appoints the Chief of Police—doesn’t he?”

  “He does!” retorted the other glumly. “And the Chief appoints the Detective Bureau heads. Including such as the Homici—but here!”—he had withdrawn the clipped-together cards—was thrusting them, bottoms at the top now, at Quiribus—“read and weep—for George T. Clarvoe! Standing this day between Scurilla and Charybibydis.”

  Quiribus took the offered cards eagerly, and bent his attention to the topmost one. Not remotely dreaming yet that the facts set forth on the 2 cards—or at least the alleged and hypothetical “facts”!—were such as would have rocked all Chicago, if ever officially released! Nor were they facts that even Quiribus himself would have, or could have, known were true—or false. Since—

  And with jaw falling open slightly as he read even the topmost line, he proceeded to peruse the card which indi­cated that this cabinet could well indeed some day have been the source for a biographical treatise to be called “Threads Crossed by a Mathematician.” For that top­most card ran:

  October 2. “J. Haverstoke Unwynde,” Chicago’s mayoralty-candidate, and none other than Rudolph Pfankuch, Hitler’s personal representative to me in Berlin on the Revised Nazi-Mathematical Text book matter. Almost unbelievable—but true. J. Haverstoke Unwynde, spurious Anglo-Ameri­can, an ex-Nazi and one more rabid, when he functioned, than Hitler himself; more violent exponent of ruthless Jewish and Polish extermination than Streicher; more—and now!—candidate for Mayor of a city not only teeming with Jewish people, but said to be the greatest Polish city outside Warsaw! Oh, there’s no doubt about it. For he spoke perfect English there in Berlin that day, a year before the war, when he argued so long, and so futilely, with me to write for Hitler a mathematical textbook that should contain cunning hidden Nazi principles; yes, perfect English with even a decided British accent gained, as he then told me frankly, from having been a waiter for years, near King’s Cross, London; and with his blue Teutonic eyes, and blond—

  The typewriting reaching the bottom of the card here, the giant lost no time in withdrawing from it the clip holding the two, turning it over—going right on with its amazing story—

  —hair, he can pass easily as an Englishman—does!—except perhaps to a few raciological experts who really know skull formations—but will attribute his somewhat anomalous skull to some single Danish—and therefore Teutonic—progenitor. Oh he’s had a touch of reconstruction on his nose, all right—his brows, too, I’d say!—but his voice—good heavens!—it’s unmis­takable to me, so sensitized as I am on voices. And which is precisely and exactly why, after merely glimpsing him yesterday while I was collecting my bond-coupon interest—but glimpsing him, alas, only in person, and not hearing him speak!—I went to the political rally tonight. For even glimpsing him only, I could not divest myself of the belief I had seen him before. But the rally tonight at Lincoln-Belmont Turner Hall has clinched it. For Lord knows I got the chance there to hear both his platform voice, and his low-pitched conversational voice, since he didn’t know me from Adam when I came up after this last political speech before election—didn’t know me for the simple reason that when in Berlin there I was bearded and moustached, and wearing heavy tortoiseshell Oxford eyeglasses, with a ribbon. But oh—it was Pfankuch all right! And for him to have picked up the Unwynde identity so quickly after the German debacle, means—

  And now the typewriting on the reverse side of the card had reached its end, too—for lack of further card surface to cover, but Quiribus lost no time in transferring his attention to the frontmost surface of the second card-numbered at its top with the single number “3” to show the sequence of card-surfaces—and went on with the amazing story there set down. And which contained:

  —that he had already established the Unwynde identity here in America—probably between the time he worked as waiter in London, and before going back to Germany to aid the King of Beasts. The only real mystery is where has he gotten the money which makes it possible for him to live today like a rich man—to be able to enter politics? That, plus a purely minor mystery: does his new wife, Celestyne, his wife of no more than a year, and whose name is seen in so many contributions to charities, religious festivals, whatnot, know his identity? I doubt it. Doubt it completely. But that’s of no importance. The real mystery is where did he get all the money he has today? I think I can safely venture that it’s been screwed out of rich Americans, through some local Nazi agent here who did the negotiating—and the banking of the money!—for getting those rich Americans’ relatives out of German concentration camps—for Pfankuch, alias it appears Unwynde, did certainly tell me, there in Berlin, that it would cost me ab-so-lute-ly nothing—if I co-operated with him and Hitler—to free some friend or relative, in case I had any in camps. So-o-o, if it were to “cost me nothing”—then obviously it must have “cost” others plenty! However—

  For the third time this voluminous inside story of an American politician—if true and correct inside story it really were!—came to a momentary break-off for lack of further typewriting area; and so, flipping this card over, and finding that the story indeed did come to an apparent end near its bottom, Quiribus silently drove on—on to whatever the story’s strange end must be. The fourth side ran:

  —I am a mathematician—and he is—at least now—an American politician and candidate for mayor of a city where his former Nazi but still Teutonic efficiency can make it a very good mayor—at least as good as many of the out-and-out Germans who have ruled here in the past.

  He will, however, be crestfallen, all right, all right!—when he receives the letter I have written to him—receives it, that is, the morning after the election—and providing only that he wins in the election!—my letter assuring him that none but myself in the entire world know his secret, and that it will be forever guarded, and telling him at the same time that I am so happy to hear of his forthcoming endowment of $50,000 to the Mathe­matics Department of Mid-West University, to be spent for a giant 15-foot-diameter terrestrial and navigational globe, a set of all the known 49 hypothetical curves done in intersecting string areas, the Lardsvin Probability Demonstrator, the Clens-bury mathematics library of 2,015 volumes, and—25 scholarships for worthy students. I can even visualize J. Haverstoke Unwynde né Pfankuch, sitting, in but a few days from now, after my letter arrives, chewing on those German lips, and trying to figure whether my suggestion is merely a friendly suggestion—or—blackmail! I have to chuckle!

  Quiribus, coming at last to the bottom of this 4th install­ment of what undoubtedly constituted—at least if true!—the biggest political scandal ever known in a Jewish and Polish-American city, turned to the other man, one card clutched helplessly now in each huge hand.

  “Whew!” was all the giant could say. “I—I don’t know much about big city politics, Mr. Clarvoe—and haven’t read everything that’s ever happened—but I’d—I’d say this would be about the darndest accusation ever, wouldn’t it, to be brought—against an American office holder?”

  “I’ll say!” nodded the other gloomily. “Except that—it hasn’t been brought. And never can be now—by the one man who”—and he bobbed his head, almost angrily, toward the greyed head of the dead man not far away—“who could have brought it!” He laughed uneasily. “For it’s quite attributable, don’t forget, Big Boy, to the mental vapourings of a cracked—perhaps—coocoo—maybe just senile—professor of a fool science that—anyway, it’s an entry which nobody, in almost certain probability, even knew existed.”

  “Including particularly,” said Quiribus troubledly, “Mr.—ah—Unwynde. Supposedly named—” He glanced down at the cards in his hands. Vaguely sensing even further implications of political nature, in view of the fact that—“And all in typewriting too, which doesn’t, I take it, constitute legal evidence?”

  “Right again, Astuty Observer from Injiany,” was Clarvoe’s mirthless and grim reply. “Especially in view of the fact that the very ice-wagon it was typed on is upstairs in his bedroom and living-room—yeah, right in the house here!—and that damned puh-lenty hours have elapsed here before even Big Boy himself was—ah—drug in hyer—as o—ficy—all witness to the entry!” He laughed mirthlessly, “Yeah, I wonder just how many of the Unwynde gang would merely claim this old boy was just senile—and how many would claim that three little coppers, friendly to the defeated party, and hearing they were going to be ousted—sure, sure, a pre-dated ouster order!—how soon those little cops called up some louse of a politician and got him over here—or even did it themselves—yeah—planted this all-out bombshell against the other party’s winning candidate? Oh, I mean,” Clarvoe added disgustedly, wearily, “how many’d claim that—and successfully—now that the one guy in the world who could demolish that canaryard—is deado there? Yeah, how long before they’d start unleashing their guns?” And he lapsed plainly into melancholy—but a melancholy however marked by a most grim set of his chin.

  Quiribus, astounded at all these sinister suggestions, only turned toward the dead man, the back of whose grey head, visible against the rounded chair back, made it seem as though he was listening to this whole conversation. And then the giant, finally comprehending the full odour of this first sniff of Chicago politics, shook his own head, turned back to the cabinet, and prepared to hastily replace the cards before even his own lone fingers should somehow get singed by them. Except that—the other man’s silently and primly outstretched hand indicated that these, like the previous card, were not to be replaced there—were not, to be available and on tap should certain 7½ foot people later go around town burbling fantastic tales of cards bearing—charges against—

  And now, as Clarvoe put the 2 cards together, bent them double down their longer middle and put them meaning­ fully in his breast pocket, the giant spoke. Spoke of what the significance of all this—in relation to that blackboard there—at least part of that blackboard!—the part that Munstergale had drawn last—might hold.

  “We-ell,” was all he could say, “whether Unwynd’s this man’s real name or just the name he’s going by, he certainly has got the name of an acknowledged mathematical curve all right—and Lord knows there is a motive spilled out on those 4 sides of those two cards there—but!—but,” he emphasized, “you don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Clarvoe,” he said almost unbelievingly, “to tell me that he—Unwynde—lives on Three Squares Place too? Why that would be—”

  “Not at all,” said the other man curtly, bringing to a complete stop any and all ratiocination, prospective or otherwise, of the giant in front of him. “Not at all,” he repeated. “But—” He lapsed momentarily into gloomy reflection. Came suddenly back to himself.

  “Brown—” Now he was downright human, in his mode of address—and it was plain he was up against a real mathematical poser. “Brown, years ago in Chicago—around 1900 or so—three men who came here, from various places, founded a brokerage and banking business. One was Charles P. Wrangles; one, Mohammed Kuad, was a Turk who handled their foreign business; and one, Simon Threak, put in most of the cash. They eventually erected a then-quite modern office building on West Madison Street, across from the North-eastern Railroad Depot, and gave it their own name—or rather names. Which name the build­ing has even today. Though Charles Wrangles, Mohammed Kuad, and Simon Threak themselves are long since dead. And—”

  “You’re—you’re trying, I reckon,” put in Quiribus, frowningly, “to tell me the name—of the building? Other wise—”

  “I am—yes. Well, it’s called the Threak-Kuad-Wrangles Building. And—”

  “The—the Threak-Kuad-Wrangles Building?” echoed the giant, downright unbelievingly. “Why—why—Threak-Kuad—why!—Threak-Kuad-Wrangles is phonetically nothing less than—than Three Quadrangles; and—”

  Quiribus had automatically turned his gaze full on the up­ standing panel blackboard, on the back of which he had seen, not so many minutes ago, three of the most well-depicted squares—or quadrangles!—he had ever viewed. Turned his gaze back. “Threak—Three—but you—you don’t mean to say that Unwynde lives—that is—”

  The other man raised a hand wearily. Took down the phone directory again. Flipped it open to a point, other than the first one, where he had turned down the corner of another page. And again revolving the book around, shoved it almost roughly into Quiribus’s hands; and who, now holding it clumsily, found his gaze falling automatically on a single checked entry. Which read:

  Unwynde, J. Haverstoke, Broker. Room 601, Threak-Kuad-Wrangles Building, 555 West Madison Street. 3 Telephones: HAY-market 9988 Res. 610 Flower Terrace. BIT-ter-sweet 0212

  “And there,” declared the police head, crossing his arms, “is why you’re here! For each one of these men tallies with what’s depicted on that board, both sides. So far, I mean, as I can tell, from the damned unreliable and probably half-baked mathematical testimony of these two lunkheads, Keith and O’Cardigan!—who can’t both be right. Each of those high-up birds—Speirrl and Unwynde—has a damned perfect motive, if this baby knows anything, to bump this old bird off; each must have been first visited, or talked to, or viewed, by the Prof at respectively Three Squares Place, Speirrl’s residence; or, as you yourself read, at the Threak-Kuad-Wrangles Building, in the case of Un­wynde—if the Prof was in process of collecting some bond-interest when he first saw Unwynde in the flesh, and was doing same, as is quite probable, in the small bank on the first floor of that building known as the Stocks and Bond Coupon Bank of West Madison Street: and each of these men, moreover, as our good fran’, the Chief of the Unione Siciliano has elicited for us, via the wife of one and the servant of the other, no longer has a gun he once had—but has ‘disposed’ of same. And—

  “No, no, no,” Clarvoe broke off, as the giant opened his mouth, but opened it only, “let me finish this indictment of 2 men—not one—such as ’tis. For both of these babies—Speirrl and Unwynde, I mean—can’t be guilty of this murder. Only one came here last night, was let in by the Professor, talked with him, or argued with him, and then killed him. Only one! And so it depends now, Big Fellow, on what you name that curve to be—as to which one I’d dare call in and put into the old sizzle-seat—what we call ‘under the green lights!’ Demanding to know where he was last night before, at, and after 10:47—insisting on taking his thumbprint, which he’ll most assuredly refuse to give, simply because the lawyer he’ll bring with him will fight it tooth and nail on the score of general constitutional­ity of rights—oh, so much so,” Clarvoe finished wryly, “that it’ll all end up by our having to hold the damned mouth­piece, and take the f.p. by force—I know how these things go when high-ups get under the green light. And that’s not all the iniquity I’ll have to pour on the dome of the guy I pull in. For I’ll have to hold him incommunicado, while I check his alibi twenty ways across the board—quite regardless of his maybe coming clear on the matter of the thumbprint, since thumbprints can get into cases before or after a killing—oh yes!—I’ll have to hold him like a common crook, while I check his—well, if I have the right man—it doesn’t matter; for he’s a goner—so far as wielding any power against the copper who had the perspicuity and guts to bring him to justice; but—if I’ve the wrong man—well, how long, Big Boy, do you think I’ll last—if I do all this—to the wrong man?”

  The giant grinned broadly. “About an hour, I’d reckon—after you’d had to turn him loose!”

  “Even an hour is pretty generous,” retorted George Clarvoe grimly.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26