The Case of the Murdered Mathematician, page 23
“His publishers,” said Clarvoe hurriedly, “don’t want his new work revealed yet. It’s going to knock the spots out of all conceived ideas of math’matics.”
“Ah, you don’t say? That’s fine.” Sam Press made some notes. “What college are you graduated from, Mr. Brown?”
Clarvoe masterfully took hold.
“Brown University,” he said hastily. “Of River’s Fork, Indiana. Founded by his father. Endowed by his father. A very odd college. Took only spec’lized students. Students already so talented that they could learn little or nothing in the ordin’ry ever’day run-o’-the-mill coll—in fact they taught only—you tell him, Brown?”
“Well—ah—uh,” said Quiribus, realizing that, after all, a school is any place where knowledge is transmitted, “it’s about—as Mr. Clarvoe says. My father, Xanrof Brown, founded the institution. Some of its famous pupils—but you’d want only the founder, I guess. You can find him in Who’s Who in America.”
“Good! The founder, yes, and the one eminent student now figuring in this case.” Press made some more notes.
Clarvoe had turned apologetically to the little linen-dustered man. “Judge,” he said, “I couldn’t find a gavel to save my soul—on such short notice. I—I had to get a carpenter’s mallet. And—and—and that soap-box yonder—well Judge, anything bigger than that, with handles and all, would have shoved that table ’way out into the room, and so—”
“Good ’nough,” said the judge tolerantly. “An’thing what fits the hooman behind is a chair. And as fer the mallet—but sence yon pieces indicated that’s m’ bench, I’ll git myself out’n the way o’ things hyar. Okay.”
He strode over to where the boarding-houselike stand stood. Wiggled in behind it. Put his umbrella atop it. Stripped off his linen duster. Dropped it to the floor, his linen hat atop it, and put the umbrella then atop that. Sat down majestically on the soap-box. Cleared his throat. Gave explanation of his geographical position.
“Friends and folks,” he said, “’count of a most ur—gent matter app’taining to a will—and conditions thareof and thareto, which expire at 4 ’clock today—the County an’ Probate Co’te of River’s Fo’k, Indyana, is now got to go into session—ah—special session—yes, kin do same onder U.S. Soopreme Co’te stat—tute 899,123—in Chi—I’ll be m’ own court clark, but Mr. Sam’el Press, I ’p’int you, onder my right as p’esidin’ officer, special co’te stenographer. That is. Mis—ter Press. I del’gate you to fu’nish a special transcript needed by this here co’te an’ a suttin pleader tharein, Mr. Q. Brown, as ’fficial ev’dence o’ so’thin. In sho’t, Mr. Press, of yo’ll furnish this co’te from out’n all them copies o’ what yo’re aimin’ to hand out to papers and skinydcates o’ what goes on hyer, one copy—plus one set o’ phot’graphs you may take of an’thing and ever’thing—yo’re dis—charged as to yore duties hyar. Onder-stand?”
“Right, Ju—Your Honour,” said Sam Press, entering fully into the legalistic spirit of things. And catching, as anyone could see, a brand new angle to this story, whatever it was to be. “Carbon Copy Number 8, from my electric-operated mill, will be a-a-all yours!”
The judge raised the carpenter’s mallet. Came down with it firmly.
“Hear ye—hear ye!” he intoned without the ghost of a smile. “The Caounty an’ Probate Co’te of River’s Fo’k, Indiana, is now in session. In special session, in and at the City of Chi—cago, the Caounty of Cook. For the pu’-pose of hearin’ the plea of one Q. Brown, heir of an’ to Xanrof Brown, rec’nt’y deceased, as to wharein an’ how an’ in what manner and matter said heir may’ve complied—or—or tried to comply—with the last-made will of said Xanrof Brown rec’nt’y filed at this co’te. An’ we’ll now hyar f’m whoever wants to git things started.” The Judge sat back, alpaca clad arms folded, square-framed silver spectacles far down on judicial nose, as Samuel Press made some delighted pot-hooks in his book.
And George Clarvoe, who obviously was the only person in the room to “get things started” rose uneasily. And gave his opening address!
“Mayor Shull, Chief Gilkeson, Honourable Court, Members of the Press in the person of Sam Press, gentlemen and lunkheads, the latter two being two gents present named O’Cardigan and Keith who consider themselves mathematicians par excellence, I’ve called you all here today for the reason that certain charges get contin’lly made against P’lice Departments, the world over, that they won’t call in specialists. Yeah, experts. In murder and crime cases. But want to hog a-a-all the glory their—themselves. Well, that’s true—too true—of all departments in the world—but Chicago. Here, we’re actuated by—by eth’cal and pract’cal considerations and nothing else. For the minute we have a case that isn’t up our—our—our intell’ct’al alley, we immediately, after determining just what alley is involved, go down that alley and get hold of—uh—ah—we get in an expert, that is, in the line o’ thought involved. Now in this Munstergale Case, after some—ah—careful and painstaking anal’sis as to the ex-act catygory of—of knowledge it involves—we called in Mr. Quiribus Brown, em’nent mathematician. And who was even kind enough since he could use his work on the case in some purely private probate matter of his own, to waive his otherwise large fee. That’s the way we do ’round here. Get the best there is, and wiggle out of—ah—uh—drive a shrewd deal on the matter of fees and expen—ah—I mean, we save the taxpayers’ money. And—and—and since my words are being recorded here, I want to say one thing—to Crime. Yes, you, Crime! Keep—out—of—Chicago! We’ll get you via science—spec’lized knowledge—if you don’t. I—I thank you. Go ahead, Perfessor Brown.”
And now the while Quiribus, who had been delegated to play the part of “eminent expert,” gave a faint shadow of a bow, thinking it might be called for at this point, and the Court sat grimly waiting, and the highly mixed audience, or committee, whatever it might be, sat likewise expectantly, a deep silence fell in the room. A silence in which Mayor Shull chewed savagely on his unlighted black cigar. It was a silence, indeed, that one could cut with a lawn-mower blade as the blade is on the day of October 1st. And so Quiribus, expert, proceeded—to “do his stuff!”
With his back now against the great wall-sized blackboard, his grey hat shoved, by his feet, under the taborette in front of him and slightly to his right, his own brown eyes troubledly confronting those 7 pairs of eyes silently facing him from directly across the room, Quiribus was acutely conscious that those eyes were by no means all friendly. O’Cardigan’s were frankly combative, belligerent, while Mayor Shull’s were downright contemptuous. While, in turn, Clarvoe’s at the other end, were frankly pleading. Even, it seemed, almost panic-stricken now.
Quiribus spoke. Schoolmaster-like. Probably this was to be the only “class in mathematics” he was ever to conduct. Perhaps—
“I don’t know,” he began slowly, “whether Mr. Clarvoe here, while I was on the way over here, gave you all a brief res—res—resumé of the—the unrevealed features in this case, i.e. what was obtained from Professor Munstergale just before he died. And how—oh, he did?” For he’d seen Captain Spelvin flash him a slight nod, as though to save himself energy. “Good! That saves a heap of words from me. Well then, you all know, of course, that when Professor Munstergale, unable because of the wound in his head—the—the damage in his brain—to combine letters and digits—weak as all get-out to boot, when it came to even setting anything down—operating only, according to a neurologist Mr. Clarvoe says he consulted, on—on auditory associations, and so forth—that when Professor Munstergale was asked by Mr. Clarvoe to set down something that—and I quote—‘will give us the name of the man who shot you—something known to you, maybe—but not to us’—he depicted, pretty surely and firmly too, what’s on this small board behind me.”
And with a wave of his giant hand he motioned to the small portable blackboard, back of his right shoulder against the wallboard. Bearing the firmly delineated
“Now,” drove on Quiribus, as 7 pairs of eyes facing him refused to have anything more to do with a board they had evidently viewed too much already, “when Mr. Clarvoe here first talked to me about bringing to play my tal—ah—services in this case, with a brief statement of what was at hand, I am frank to say that I knew, immediately—then and there, yes—right on the spot!—the name of the man who killed Professor Munstergale. A fact! Yes, the name conveyed by Professor Munstergale by the specific thing he outlined. And—”
“And w’ich,” put in O’Cardigan belligerently, “is got to be, ain’t it, somethin’ sounding like Curve, Spiral, or Unwind? For that there dia—”
“Well, Mr. O’Cardigan,” conceded Quiribus pleasantly, “that thing is a curve all right, and it’s an unwind-type of spiral, too, if that’s of interest to you! Technically, an involute: the involute of a circle. Which gives us still a new possible name, doesn’t it? ‘Lieutenant Invo’—yes Invo, Lieut!” He grinned a giant grin, to show he was being 100 per cent facetious, but only deep unsmiling silence from his audience rewarded him. “Only, my good friend,” he went on to O’Cardigan, “mathematicians are not cheap rebus-makers—they talk to other mathematicians in terms that—besides,” he broke off plaintively, now talking to all of his little audience, “the professor was up against a real job here in name-conveyance—a tough one, if you ask me, and—but as I started to say back there, I knew, immediately I had the facts, and saw the diagram, at—at the time Mr. Clarvoe negotiated for my services in his case, I knew the name of the person who killed Professor Munstergale. The last name, that is, you understand,” Quiribus explicated, looking from left to right and back again. “It would be a little too much to expect any mathematical symbol to give a whole and entire name. Since—but anyway, I knew then and there, the last name of Professor Munstergale’s killer. And—”
“Then,” put in O’Cardigan, even more belligerently than before, “why’n’t we look it up, here and now, in that there card-file the Prof had, that lists hunderds an’ hunderds of people he’d had dealings with, and get out o’ all this platform spiel?”
“That’s a good question too, Mr. O’Cardigan,” Quiribus again conceded, and as pleasantly as before. “But easily answered. If the Professor had had sufficient important dealings with this person to have had a card on him, he’d have waved his hand backwards toward the cabinet when Mr. Clarvoe asked him where he’d originally met his assailant. However, just to settle things that it’s not quite that easy—I’ll look it up now. For I asked Mr. Clarvoe today to fetch along the single drawer that—ah—the drawer labelled Sm-Ur.”
And under a battery of eyes whose total expression seemed to be one of stern reproval because this short-cut hadn’t been taken long before, Quiribus took up from the taborette the card-file box Clarvoe had provided. Turned part way into it. Went over a single group of cards, one by one. Finally shook his head. Looked up. “Not here” he said. “As you’ll find for yourself when I give you the name. Rather, show you how I reach the name.”
He had replaced the box. And now unbent his long frame to verticality again.
“Yes,” he said, but to his whole audience, “that would have made things ver-ee simple! For the reason that there just happens to be 49 of this particular name in the Chicago Telephone Directory! Yes, my friends, 49! Oh sure, I took a casual look-see in the directory after talking to Mr. Clarvoe some ti—about my coming into his case, yes—took a casual look-see just to find out how much—how much ‘filtration’ might be required at that. Yes, to pick one murderer—out of 49 people bearing his name!”
He paused, as 7 pairs of eyes confronting him now carried 7 palpably different emotions.
“However,” he endeavoured to dispel the different emotions in those 7 pairs of eyes, “just as any two intersecting lines, each of which, you know, is composed of ‘points,’ intersect at but one, and one common point, so also would a certain two ‘lines’ here do the same. Yes, the line of—of nomenclatural identity—I worked that beautiful phrase out just before I came over here!—yes, the line of nomenclatural identity, consisting of not less than 49 points!—and a line representing the probable, and possible, people at the place where Professor Munstergale originally met the person, as conveyed by him to Mr. Clarvoe when Mr. Clarvoe asked him to set down ‘where he’d met his assailant.’ Yes, ‘where?’”
And turning, Quiribus drew out from the wallboard the small portable blackboard, turned it about, and lent it gently back to the wall, revealing now uppermost on it the diagram with which Munstergale had answered the question “where?”
“Well,” Quiribus now facing his audience again, observed, “to obtain the general locus of that second line—though I wonder do you all know just what I mean?—by the word locus?—well anyway, to obtain the general locus is where I’ll now need—or rather will use—the diary Professor Munstergale kept. And which—”
“But Brown,” put in the red-haired intelligent-looking Keith, “that diary he left doesn’t mention anybody. It’s all I, I, I—‘I cut my chin’—‘I rescued a cat’—‘I—’”
“Oh sure, maybe so—in fact, yes,” agreed Quiribus. “For I glanced at it myself. Curiosity, you know. But that doesn’t matter. Just so long as, from it, we may get the general loc—here, let me put that locus stuff more simple. Get the—the slant of a certain line—its angle—extent—you know?—that’s enough. So-o—is it all right, Mr. Clarvoe, if I read aloud something from Professor Munstergale’s diary?”
“It’s all your show, my hearty—ah—Mr. Expert,” said Clarvoe. Though his voice said plainly: “Damn you, Big Boy, if you don’t deliver—”
Quiribus, trying to suppress the faint smile that had come to his own lips at Clarvoe’s plainly implied words, reached over and picked up the blue-bound book that Clarvoe, by his own request, had brought today. And which was indeed Volume 7 of the 10-volume diary kept for years by Munstergale. He turned its leaves reverently. For to him, a mathematician, even the belly-aches of a mathematician were holy. And he came to rest finally on one handwritten entry which once had given him, when he first scanned it, great pain. And did so even today, considering the fact that never in his own life could he function in similar affair either as instructor or as matriculator. Considering that he had no diplomas, and never would have. Regretfully he read it aloud:
Registration Day today at the U, for the Academy only. (Tomorrow being, of course, Registration Day for the U itself.) Three of us handled the lesser rush satisfactorily, which took all of 4 hours. Registration was held this year in the Aquarium of all places. Good heavens—Registration Day in an Aquarium!—with fish swimming about in tanks along the walls, and seeming to deprecate all intellectual advancement with their very disapprobative cold fish eyes—registration in an aquarium, for a course that, for these particular registrants—or at least so all naïvely appear to believe—means 8 years of close association with the U. How little suited most of the registrants are for the particular course they think they are embarking on. A thing I can asseverate with safety, at least with respect to some certain courses, which involve my mathematics. Such as engineering. Statistical work. Accountancy. And so forth. And into which type courses I was able to urge some who were on the doubtful side—and to dissuade others who were hell-bent for heaven to embark on same! By explaining to them the historical significance of this day, and watching their eyes. To those whose eyes showed a gleam of comprehension—or better, appreciation!—I could safely say, “Go ahead—with your proposed engineering, or what.” While to those whose eyes remained dead, uncomprehending, like the fish-eyes about us, I could safely say, “Forget that kind of course.” But generally speaking, they plunge forth as angels fear to tread. One bespectacled chap hankered to be an astronomer. But he’ll make it, I’m certain, for he pointed out, even to me, that this historical date will not be with us again for 89 years.
Though the registrations were not many this year—only about 75, divided between the three of us—they were particularly tiring and time-consuming, as usual. But, as usual, not because of the students themselves. Who bring faith, naïveté, and consummate optimism with them. But because of the relatives who come with them. Generally one with each, like a—a protective asteroid circling about a planet—or a planet around a sun.
Generally a doting father, sometimes an idolizing mother, sometimes an uncle—in one case, a grandfather on two crutches who chewed tobacco and swore huge oaths—many of them illiterate, some erudite—but all of whom, no matter what the relationship, really consume the registrar’s time and energy by telling him all about themselves—their educational past!—their life history!—and wanting to know all sorts of asinine things. Such as, for instance, whether it wouldn’t be better for sonny boy to go to work now, and, by the expiration of the 8 years he would spend in Academy and U, have a huge sum set by that would more than compensate for the earning-differential over the ensuing years. (A beautiful fallacy there, of course!) Or wanting to know, in some cases, after learning I was a mathematician, what on earth you can use mathematics for in life. Good Heavens! What good are mathematics—in life! Almost a shame to desecrate such a historical day as this, in trying to explain what good mathematics are—to doubting, dubious, and in many cases completely uncomprehending relatives!
Quiribus, coming to the end of the diary entry, looked about him. “Any questions—anybody?”
Though no doubt questions galore were possible, there were quite none, for the simple reason, no doubt, that nobody knew where Quiribus was aiming, let alone going, or trying to go! There was but a challenging silence that seemed to say, “There’ll be questions all right, Mr. Expert, in due course—if all isn’t made clear around here.”
“Very well,” he said. And stooping, set the book back against the wall.
