The Case of the Murdered Mathematician, page 2
Suddenly an old, old Chinaman, passing him, tapped him faintly on the elbow.
“Hi, Zack—you come oval hele?” He actually drew Quiribus over to the very brick face of the closest building. “Like catchee smokee pipe? Two dollal. I show you whel.”
“Smoke—pipe—two—”
“Sshh!” warned the old Chinaman, looking fearfully around. Now he lowered his voice. Spoke his next few words almost in a whisper. “Hop. You call ’em op’um, see?”
“Oh yes, yes,” Quiribus nodded. “I get it now. Yes, I understand. Well—uh—ah—uh—what can I get out of it?” And Quiribus was really interested in the answer to his own question.
“W’at?” queried the old Chinaman, in apparent surprise. So much so that he no longer bothered to talk in a whisper. “W’y—you catchee dleams—fine dleams!—of big women—” The old Chinaman made wide and sweeping gestures with his thin hands to indicate a great, giant woman of Quiribus’s own size. “Big—like you.”
An effably sad look swept over Quiribus’s face. The look—had he but been able himself to view it at that moment—of a man hopelessly lonely in a great teeming world of people. Lonely for people who felt as he, thought as he—
But he answered the old Chinaman, and wholly without asperity.
“Just dreams, eh, old fellow?” he said, concerning those “big women” who had been promised him through the fumes of opium. “Dreams! Well, that wouldn’t do me much good. But thanks—just the same.” And he was off.
Suddenly he stopped, his nostrils dilating a bit, for his attention was riveted by a man in a shiny worn blue velveteen jacket with huge flaring black Windsor tie, and a very small head, who stood atop a small knock-down platform of iron piping, erected out at the curbing, and with a small blackboard set up on it. A ring of curious onlookers were looking up at him. He was selling, as it turned out, Murgratroyd’s Rapid Self-Calculator, and giving away, as also turned out, with each copy, a so-called Seebackoscope—a small flimsy reflecting gimcrack by which—
But his own words explained it!
“With every copy, folks, of Murgratroyd’s Rapid Self-Calculator, we sell up here, we give away one Seebackoscope, by which, I give you my solemn word, you can look, from the sidewalk, into any bedroom on any third floor and see—well what would you see, boys, about 9 o’clock any night—in a lady’s bedroom?—but here!—we’ll get around to that later—just now, we’re talking about the self-calculator.”
Now he pointed, with a light stick, to two large numbers chalked on his blackboard, one below the other but off slightly to one side of it as though for multiplying, and not being added: the upper was an 8-digited figure: the lower a 4-digited one. Together, they stood
64979588
9999
“Does anybody here,” he shouted defiantly, “know a quick way—a real quick way—to multiply this whollaper of an upper figure by this tough handful of 9’s beneath it—without setting down a whole forest of figures?—and adding all day till the cows come home? If he does, he gets—he gets a free Seebackoscope. Anybody?”
“I,” spoke up Quiribus promptly, as 20 faces turned automatically about and surveyed him, “would do it in one subtraction operation. By just subtracting that upper figure from itself with 4 zeros added.”
“Ah-ha!” said the other. “One of the past purchasers of my book, heh? Well—”
“No, I—I never heard of your book. But you asked a question—so I—I answered it.”
“Smart guy, aren’t you?” said the man who was safely atop the flimsy platform. “You musta done some studying up in those woods of yours while the snow was 20 feet deep! Well, since you know so much about mathematics, Jack, I’ll ask you one. What’s—what’s the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter squared?”
“Geometrically,” said Quiribus calmly, “there can be no ratio—for one is lineal, the other is an area. But if you mean the periphery of that square—instead of the square itself—then, the ratio is always .7854.”
The little-headed windsor-tied man on the platform looked for a second, actually apoplectic. But confronting the giant down below, his surge of colour faded, and he answered, denying nothing, however. “Why the hell don’t you get yourself a chair of mathematics in some University, Big Jack? You’re—you’re wasting your time cutting down those big trees! You’re—all right, folks!—let’s get around to how common people like us—common little people like us”—he was bitingly sarcastic in that word “little,” and Quiribus knew it—“can do our figuring.”
But since the faces were remaining riveted fast on Quiribus, doubtlessly waiting his reply, and not on the demonstrator up above, the giant quickly withdrew. For he knew the man on the platform would have no audience whatsoever if he didn’t. And besides, he was not here to cross swords with trick number jugglers.
And now, a full half minute later, Quiribus stood under a vast outhanging monstrous sign that reached clear to the outer curb, and proclaimed, in electric-bulb studded letters, though the bulbs themselves were not at this early hour of the afternoon lighted:
MUSEUM—5 CENTS ONLY
The foyer, back inside, was studded with great slapdash paintings of 3-armed women—men eating fire—savages with tiny pin heads—freaks of every kind except, perhaps, giants! A hard-faced and highly blondeined girl was to be seen back of a nearby ticket wicket, and a barker stood inside the foyer, dressed in cream-coloured full-dress suit with cream-coloured top hat. He had a short megaphone in one hand, which he was not using, and, curiously, a watch in the other, on which he seemed to keep an eye. His eyes, glancing momentarily up, opened wide at Quiribus. But he spoke quickly.
“Sorry, brother, but we’re handling more platform stuff now than we can pay for on this pitch. Maybe you can get on over at—”
“I’m not looking for an exhibition job,” said Quiribus, who understood well enough what that phrase “platform stuff” meant. “I’m not,” he added, very professionally, “in the profession.”
“Oh—you’re not? Well you cert’n’y ought to be. 7 foot 6—if you’re an inch.” The other surveyed Quiribus troubledly. “Just in from the big woods, eh? Well—want to go in? Only a nickle.”
Quiribus heard no more. In fact he was, thanks to giant-sized steps, a full hundred feet down, now, and passing a store. If that was what it really was! For it was a most gloomy place, to say the least, for its two inward slanting show windows were curtained in the backs with opaque black cloth so that the interior was quite invisible. Though it was not so gloomy so far as free attractions went! For in each of the slanting windows was a life-sized wax figure, finely and interestingly done so far as facial expression went, the one to the right of Quiribus, pausing squarely between them, then turning in, being a square-bearded and black-bearded ecclesiastical looking man with gold glasses, with a gold-lettered black sign at the bottom reading:
ELISHA BUSHMAN
FAMOUS MURDERER
As He Appeared Just Before His Execution in Philadelphia.
while the other figure, in the left-hand window into which Quiribus now gazed, was clad in checkered sporting clothes, with a monocle in its eye, ruddy cheeks, and binoculars in the lifelike hands, and was placarded, at its bottom:
CHAPPY MONGROVE
England’s Greatest Plunger
As He Appeared at Epsom Downs Race Course in 1910
And while Quiribus stared fascinatedly at Chappy Mon-grove, a fatherly looking man with long black frock-coat, wide-brimmed black felt hat, a brown goatee with flecks of grey in it, and flowing handlebar moustaches, and who had been lounging out at the curbing, sidled up to him.
“Hell-lo there, Big Man!” he said expansively. “Like to step into our establishment? Dr. von Blomberg’s Museum of Wax Figures? No charge!”
“No—charge?” queried Quiribus, who had turned about. “But what—do you folks get out of it—if I don’t pay—”
“We get the gr-r-reat privilege,” said the goateed man, “of inducing you to take medical treatment—if, that is, you’re ill. If you’re not, we’re not interested. In fact, I’m Dr. von Blomberg himself. University of Leipzig. And I’d certainly like to look you over, but at no charge. Just to see if—but go on in—my treat!—and see—”
“We-ell, what will I see?”
The other lowered his voice.
“The most com-plete exhibit, in the entire world, of pathological specimens of the human—but go on in—it’s okay.”
“But—but I’m not sick,” expostulated Quiribus, who felt keenly the one-sidedness of this proposition, and the unfairness to the pleasant-speaking proprietor of his entering for nothing.
The other, however, was speaking.
“You’re—not sick? Now how on earth do you know you aren’t—but listen—do you ever get up in the mornings, weak in those long legs of yours? After long exhausting dreams? But oh such trying dreams! For I know exactly what you dream. Do you—”
“Wait—what do I dream?”
“Well,” pronounced Dr. von Blomberg easily, “you have, in actuality, two kinds of dreams. In one,—the pleasanter ones—you dream you are in a world of people of your own size—women, though, predominate in that world—that is, in those dreams I speak of—but they are, those women, women of your size, your height, your bulk—you are so happy in their presence that you cavor—er—dance around and laugh—and they—well, they are all gracious with you—in fact, it’s a very happy world, the world of those dreams I’m speaking of just now—for in it you’re no longer a great, monstrous, oversized behemoth who—hrmph—medical terms, that word behemoth—just skip it!—anyway, that world is quite unlike the depressed world in which you stand right now, on South State Street, Chicago—and in which, like it or not, you have to live—oh yes, my dear fellow, you are depressed—depression being a medical thing, I know it when I see it, and—but here, it’s dreams we’re talking about, isn’t it?—well, amongst these giant women there is always one who reappears frequently—she’s—let’s see?—” He scanned Quiribus’s brown eyes, his shaggy brown brows. “She’s blonde—golden blonde—a mere half-dozen inches or so under your height—and she—but here—am I right on all this—so far?”
“Completely so,” said Quiribus unsmilingly, indeed sadly.
“All right, then,” returned von Blomberg, M.D., triumphantly. “If I’m right to that extent, I may be right when I say your colour slightly suggests that—but go on in—we’ll talk it over inside.”
An advertising radio-sound wagon passing down the street suddenly blared forth the words: “The time is now 2:20 p.m. and—” and was turned off, and over to some blatant music.
Quiribus spoke hastily.
“When I do feel bad, Doctor,” he said, “I promise to come to you—first of all.”
And, as Dr. von Blomberg shrugged his shoulders irri-tatedly, Quiribus went on.
But the attraction he was leaving behind him appeared to be about the last of such on the block. For Flesh Row, at least as a thing of shows and sidewalk solicitors, appeared to have suddenly petered out. Indeed, from here on, the remaining long quarter-block or so, to where even now an elevated train thundered past the street atop its raised steel structure, the street seemed to comprise only taverns and wine rooms, with dingy hotels entrances wedged squarely between each.
And now, as the giant strolled slowly along this new and quieter stretch, and where, moreover, there were far fewer people on the sidewalk, a curious incident happened. For, just as he paused a moment, to tuck into the side pocket of his plaid jacket that garish orange-coloured timetable which flopped ever up and down in his back pocket, the rattle and buzz of the downtown section, just past that elevated road, now definitely in his ears, a girl of about 27, with very red lips, black eyes, and highly painted cheeks, dressed in a checkered suit and wearing a neat little scarlet hat, coming straight towards him, started to sink by his very side—grasped wildly out at his arm—said:
“Oh—please!—excuse—help me—please—”
But he had reached out one strong fist, and practically held her up as though she were a doll. “What’s—what’s the matter, miss?” he asked solicitously. “Can I—”
“Faint!” she half gasped. “Would—could you—take me in there—and procure me—drink of brandy?” She managed to nod weakly at a dark wine-room or tap-room just off where she’d staggered so wildly, and through the gloomy windows of which some soiled white jackets, apparently containing waiters, seemed to waft dolorously around.
“Why—of course, miss,” Quiribus said. “If you’re faint. Of—course!”
A small knot of people had threatened to gather—but Quiribus ended that in a trice by piloting her—practically transporting her!—firmly across the sidewalk and into the place. A dingy, dolorous place it was, too, to say the least with sawdust-covered floor and ceiling-hung oil lamps, though none lighted at this hour of early afternoon; no more than a sparse half-dozen pairs of persons, and these mostly couples, were in it—each pair being completely out of earshot with any other pair!—and all sitting at one or another of the small sticky tables which themselves filled the room, yet stood well off from each other; a gloomy looking and quite stoolless service bar stood far across the room. But it was at least a place, as Quiribus realized, where one could get a restorative, which was all that mattered. And helping—practically depositing the girl quickly into a chair at the nearest table—one off the line of the doorway, and also back of the wall space that lay between door and the first of a line of windows, as well as far removed from the nearest couple in the place, he dropped down himself into an adjoining chair. About to rap loudly for a waiter, when one, grey of brows, thin of hair, and quizzical of looks, perhaps at sight of a woman in tow of a giant—or, perhaps, even a giant in tow of a woman!—hove down upon the table. And Quiribus, remembering suddenly to whip his lumberman’s striped cap off his head, in the presence of womankind, and to his knee, and looming down majestically like Mount Fujiyama itself, on table and girl both, proceeded to quickly order something that would jerk her back to strength.
“Bring this lady,” he demanded, “a glass of your very best imported brandy. And make it quick. She’s ill!”
CHAPTER III
“I Was Born in London”
The waiter, turning his gaze momentarily on Quiribus’s companion, then back to the giant again, had a hopelessly helpless look on his face, but replied to Quiribus:
“Brandy? Imported—brandy? Hell-fire, Big Boy from the Camps, we ain’t had a bottle of brandy—let alone imported—in this joint since Hector was a pup. All we got is gin and whisky. Gin at a nickle a throw—whisky at a dime. Which’ll it be? And yours included? For we ain’t supposed to serve wimmen alone.”
“We-ell—in that case—”
“Oh, a small drink of gin—would do me just fine,” the girl put in hastily.
“Same for me,” said Quiribus. And added: “That is, if it’s good gin?”
“Good—gin?” echoed the waiter, though with something like mock amazement on his face. “Why, Big Boy, our gin here—” But then, catching a strange warning look in Quiribus’s eyes, the waiter was off like a pond-skater bug.
The girl didn’t speak. Though she did essay the ghost of a faint appreciative smile. And Quiribus did not try to make her speak. And the gin came, so quickly that it was evident that the bartender, at that bar across the room, kept his gin bottle and empty glasses ever in immediate readiness, and probably, moreover, caught his orders, before his waiters even arrived at his bar, through signals from their raised fingers.
The gin was a dirty grey, and came on a sticky blue-japanned tray. Unaccompanied by the usual extra glasses of water to wash it down, it seemingly lived up to the waiter’s description of it as being “good gin”! The drinks were generous in size, to say the least—one could well have called them giant-size drinks. Filled almost to the brim neither one was slopped over by so much as a drop: nor did either lose a drop as the waiter swished them dexterously to the table-top.
Quiribus was already sliding over a quarter. “Keep the change,” he said curtly. “For that was real speed you gave me.”
“Thought the lady looked kinda peaked,” said the waiter unsmilingly, “so I put on the steam!” He had picked up the quarter; made it disappear in a change pocket of his soiled white coat. But because, perhaps, his tip had been larger than the order itself, made an offer. “Would either of you—want a chaser?”
The girl raised a slender hand, half shook her head.
“No,” said Quiribus for her.
“See you all later, then.” And the waiter was off.
“Better drink that at once,” Quiribus told the girl. “The alcohol in it will—”
He said no more. For she had raised it—downed it in a single gulp. He had raised his, but took it in 4 giant separate swallows, gasping a bit at each. Not knowing, of course, that it was compounded of alcohol, tap-water, and synthetic juniper berry extract; nor, even, that the alcohol itself had been “cooked” in a basement of the ever-growing Sicilian district lying just west and southwest of this region. And which was precisely why the drink had been so giant-sized for a nickle.
And because it had been giant-sized, and was, moreover, 110-proof, it warmed him up. And almost instantaneously. Warmed him ’way up. From the very tips of his toes, to the top of his head; and which was, to say the least, a very long distance. Made him suddenly feel almost at complete peace with the Universe. A condition which, as a giant, he seldom did feel. And which—
