He stopped, as the other shook his head sadly. “Quiribus, as I tried to tell you when you came on this job, there just isn’t a chance for such kind of puzzles to break—to arise—in our work here. Not once in a decade. For we do only commercial work, Quiribus. Nothing even remotely criminological. Even this job was very unusual—dramatic, I mean—pseudo-criminological—for us ever to have gotten hold of. Rather, to have consented to try to handle. Your chance—if any—to catch such assignment as you speak of by the tail, would be in the Chicago Police Department—where every hour things break—but even then, in view of the unusual kind of case you require—to solve your unhappy problem—you’d have to be in such department for months—maybe years—before there’d be the precise one by which you—but good heavens Quiribus, civil service rules are civil service rules!—and a man of your size—even a whole foot less than you in height—would be automatically ruled out absolutely by 101 per cent! You couldn’t even take the examination, when you weren’t even able to pass the physical requirements. And even if you weren’t rulable out on that basis alone, there would still be no chance what­soever for you, practically a youth out of a country town in Indiana, to get aboard, in a strange city, as a criminological investigator. Either with the official department, or with a private criminal investigation agency. Why—take Chicago alone—where you’re now busting your very sconce against this situation. To be able to do criminological work in a city like this, Quiribus, you’d have to have lived here, and gone about here, for more than a year, at the very least; for this London of the West is too vast, too huge, for a man to operate in it efficiently without knowing it literally from A to Izzard. Your lack of knowledge of Chicago alone would be a knock­out blow—towards your being hired in the particular line you have in mind.” Captain Spelvin shook his head, truly unhappily. “No, I don’t see any solution whatsoever of the particular problem that confronts you other than–” He stopped as Quiribus’s face grew set. And Spelvin, with a half laugh and an uneasy shake of his own head, changed entirely—and quickly!—the angle of his words. “We-ell, aside from all that, then, what are you going to do now—or at least eventually—with your life—now that she’s gone? With a head packed as yours is—with all the mathematical knowledge there is in the Universe!—I suppose you’ll event­ually—ah—teach—in a University?”

  “No,” said Quiribus briefly. “Because I’m ineligible. Don’t forget—I got not one iota of my mathematics out of a school or a college. No, I wouldn’t be eligible to any college in the country. No, I love Nature—and I hate, more than a man like you, Captain, can ever dream, to be gawked at, the way I am in big places—and so—so I’d like to win out on this rotten problem of mine—and then go back and take over that fine farm I’ve told you about, and act­ually work it myself. But of course, to do that—” His words trailed off gloomily.

  So thick, indeed, was the gloom and silence in the room that Captain Spelvin, as was evident, decided to dispel it all, at least for the moment, by some kind of action.

  “We-ell,” he said, with enforced joviality, and with a peculiar clap of his hands as though to blow away a miasma, “I think I’d better just check on how our valuable acquisition of a while back is making out! So that—”

  And he reached forth in the general direction of his three telephones. But paused, undecidedly, hand in mid-air.

  “Let’s see now?” he ruminated aloud. “I guess I’ll use this private and out-connected phone of mine, so that—”

  He drew over to him the instrument he’d evidently selected. But looked up at Quiribus. The receiver of this private outside phone of mine happens,” he explained, “to be com­pletely on the blink; so I’m having to receive on it today, on the loud desk-speaker there. And which, my dear fellow, will give you the opportunity to listen, with your own ears, as to how the fair lady whom you helped to retrieve for—”

  But here, one of the Captain’s other phones rang, and, by one of those curious chances of Life, as was to shortly prove to be the case, was to herald a call from none other than the very man the Captain himself had been about to call. Except that, the call coming not on the instrument whose receiver was hooked to the desk-speaker, Quiribus was not destined to hear the brief conversation except such of it as was spoken at his end.

  Spelvin, leaning sideways, had already raised that partic­ular instrument.

  “Captain Spelvin,” he said hurriedly. A pause. Then: “Oh yes, Napet. Yes. I was just about to call you. Well how does she like occupying a small but regal suite at the Palmer House for a change—instead of—well—you know?”

  Another brief pause, in which only a low squeaking sound, at most, was audible from the instrument.

  “Yes, I suppose,” was the Captain’s comment to some­thing.

  Another pause.

  “Yes, I’ll be over there in a while, to talk things over with her more fully—particularly about transportation and so forth.”

  The briefest of pauses this time.

  “No, hardly, I’d say. With a million dollars in the picture, there’s no more chance of her running away than there is of—but stick around—yes.” Another pause. “Yes—good-bye.” And Captain Spelvin hung up.

  “Well, your ex-lady friend, of a little while ago, is trying very hard to digest the stupendous new fact that’s ricochetted right into her life. She—”

  Again a telephone bell rang, its peculiar resonances mark­ing it, however, as a different instrument from the one just laid down.

  Spelvin made a philosophic gesture with his two hands. “Now that’s the phone I was just going to use—and didn’t! Which likely means that somebody craves mighty private conversa—well, Quiribus,” he smiled, “I guess I’ll have to let you kind of lend deaf ears this time—since it won’t be your case that may get discuss—no, no, don’t go!” This, as Quiribus rose undecidedly, then sat down again. Spelvin raised the instrument again he had originally been about to use.

  “Hello?” he said guardedly.

  “Is this you, Frank?” promptly came, from the desk-speaker, a man’s voice, but a very brusque, business-like, practical, even hard voice: the voice of a man who dealt, in his work, with prosaic, matter-of-fact things. “Yes. But who’s speaking?”

  “Well, Frank, this happens to be your honourable cousin, one George Clarvoe, Chief of the Homicide Division of the Chicago Detective Bureau. Now is that the correct and proper form of identification with you, for—”

  But already Captain Spelvin was replying. “Why hello there, George! How’s the old King of Tightmouths—no, the Emperor himself of Tightmouths? What’s on your mind?”

  “Puh—lenty, Frank!”

  “Why—anything up?”

  “Anything—up? Would I be ringing you, Frank, at this hour of your day—and on that private phone of yours—if there wasn’t? I—say listen, Frank—have you—by any remote chance at all, amongst all those high-class operatives who do your particular stuff over there, anybody who knows anything about mathematics? The whole science inclusive, of mathematics, I mean?”

  “For the love of—say, listen!—amongst all those so-called ‘high-class operatives’ I have, I have none who knows mathematics—no!—but I have got one man who was, up to about 10 minutes ago, a purely tentative operative in this outfit—who does know positively everything there is to be known about mathematics—but who’s done his special job around here—received his $10 day’s fee, and is just taking his depart—”

  “Well, wait—hold him!—that is—maybe. I don’t know yet. For I may possibly want you to hire him again—on my own personal behalf, that is—for another 10 bucks—for the rest of this day—but all depending, however, on a couple of things: first: who in hell is he, Frank?—for unless I know all about him, I can’t play ball with him on this matter; and second, that anything he might contribute to this little—ah—enigma here—where I am right now—will be the sole and exclusive property and accomplishment of George Clarvoe of the Chicago Detective Bureau.”

  “This—little enigma? We-ell—what is the—little enigma, George?”

  “Murder, of course, Frank. But a murder—involving mathematics!”

  CHAPTER V

  Expert Opinion Wanted!

  There was a momentary but profound silence, the while Quiribus, his nostrils suddenly distending, leaned forward—far forward—in his seat.

  “Murder?” repeated Spelvin.” Murder—involving math—”

  “Yes, Frank, but that’s not the point. At least not right now. The point just now is—who is this bird—who seems to work almost by the day? Not, by any remote chance, an ex-professor of mathematics—I hope?”

  “Of course not, George. But why—do you care? If you’ve a problem in the field of mathe—”

  “Why? Because though I might need a mathematical prof right now—and maybe not, for all I know!—I’m shying completely off, as I don’t mind telling you, from calling in one, for the simple reason, Frank, that the last two profs I called in—in other murder cases—though in quite other fields of professorology than mathematics!—were so damned impractical that neither one could combine his own science with a simple problem in criminology; on top of which, Frank, they both gabbed like old women, once they got away from the scene of the crime, and knocked both cases into a cocked hat. Why—I was even told subsequently that that was the chief characteristic of all prof—”

  “Well this chap isn’t,” put in Spelvin reassuringly.

  “Okay, then. But who and what, then, is he? For I rang you in the first place, Frank, simply because your men have been trained by you plenty swellelegantly to keep their mouths shut completely as to what they’ve done for whom. And I know that with your orders to do the same in this case, they’d lean over backward to—but you say this fellow you’re referring to is just ringing out? After only being in with you—for a day? But knows mathematics? So-o—who is he? I ask—simply because if he’s a guy who’d have to insinuate himself into the picture here—either via the Press, or any other way—my using him is O—U—T, out!—and I’ll just try to stumble on ahead on my own poor theories here, based on our own crude arithmetic.”

  There was another silence while Captain Spelvin’s brow creased thoughtfully.

  Then he spoke.

  “Well, George, here is the set-up—regarding him—in a nutshell. Frank, we’ve recovered that lost heiress whom I told you about confidentially, and–”

  “Oh, that Isabelle—”

  “Right! But just don’t fill out the name any. Because the whole peculiar affair has been handled so as to avoid all publicity—and any semblance of any news stories anywhere. And—”

  “Keep cool, old Frank! I happen to be on a private wire right now—just as you are. On top of which, where I’m talking from, at this moment, might just as well be the North Pole—so far as any overhearers go. Well, well—so you landed her?”

  “Yes—and how!”

  “Quite a case,” was George Clarvoe’s reply though adding dryly, “for an old prosaic firm like yours to handle, Frank. But what do you think will be the final outcome—of the dame?”

  “Well,” was Spelvin’s thoughtful reply, “I think that what she’s lived through will all be, eventually, a bad night­mare for her. I can even conceive of her winding up event­ually, in a small town, the most respected lady in that town—though what I really think most likely is that with her huge fortune, with which to swing a little influence in Hollywood, and certain acting talents she undoubtedly has, she’ll find a legitimate outlet for her—her psyche on the screen—perhaps play these very roles she lived in real life so realistically that she may some day become another screen celebrity. That, at least, is my guess.”

  “But your operative got himself nicely paid off before he even put in a full day’s time, eh? Well he was honest, Frank! For most, like him, would have wangled out of the dame where they could meet again—where she hung out, and so forth. And, getting it, would have played you for days and days at ten per. So he kind of passes one test, anyway! So what is this now—about his knowing mathematics?”

  “I can give you that in a nutshell, George. And will. He’s the son—the only offspring, in fact—of a once well-known mathematical professor, Professor Xanrof Brown. Who, because of invalidism—and the loss of his wife, Wyllabelle—when the boy was young, retired to a farm down in Indiana. Or to a small town in Indiana, depending, really, on how you look at it. For the farmhouse of their particular farm thrusts itself right into the outskirts of the town itself, while the farm fringes the rear edge of the town. And—but continuing on with Professor Xanrof Brown, George, he officially named the boy Quiribus—via legal christening, and all that—when the boy was 6, and then going by the purely temporary handle of ‘Big Boy ’—for the reason, the old man said, that an abnormal individual in life is out of harmony with Life with anything but a frankly bizarre name. But whether or no, George, the boy has spent virtually his entire life taking care of the old man, nursing him, and running the farm chiefly by the help of hired labour. His full time, you see, has been taken up with the old man. The latter taught him, personally, every brand of mathe­matics—clear to the very highest ones—every angle of mathematics—but neglected quite, so I gather, to instruct him in anything else. For whatever else Quiribus knows appears to be a sort of hodge-podge, picked up solely by reading from the fairly generous library that was in the farm­house home there. For he practically never went to any thing but a few grades in country school, and quite because the other children regarded him as, he says, a strange creature. In fact, his life has been, he says, George, a struggle against his fate—of Giantism. Which even, as you can surmise, gave him a 4-F classification in the Big Struggle of a few years back. Therein adding plentifully to the chap’s bitterness. In fact—”

  “Hey, Frank—what is this, anyway? A sob-story—about a giant? If it is, I can’t get very hot and bothered, much less bust out into a flood of boo-hoos, about a fool giant’s troubles. Nor—but of course this particular ‘fool giant’ appears to have something I might use and—go ahead, then? I’m a patient and eager listener. So what in hell is he doing wandering around in Chicago—trying to get a job as investigator of crime or what-have-you?”

  “I’m even ready to tell you that, George. Since you appear to have all day—to listen! All right. Well, his father, let me state here, died a week ago. But the circum­stances preceding that are—are why he’s here today—seek­ing what he is. For—well his father, he says, has been virtually insane for over a year. Due, Quiribus says, not to true mental disability, but to purely physical causes—speci­fically, hardening of the brain arteries. Quiribus even had a couple of alienists down there—rather, one up from Louis­ville—and one up from Cincinnati—who both declared to him privately that the old man was insane, technically, and legally, and whatnot. But of course Quiribus didn’t do any­thing about it. It all being in line with the old man’s physical dissolution. But something complicative came up—in line with the condition. For the old man asked him one day, in some completely lucid moment, what he—Quiri­bus—was going to do with his life after he—yes, the old man—was gone; and Quiribus up and told him—rather foolishly, perhaps, but nevertheless—

  “You see,” Spelvin endeavoured to explain, “the big fellow has an idea that many cases, involving criminal acts and matters, as well as property rights and whatnot, break all the time, but possess mathematical ‘aspects’—at least, George, aspects such as only a trained mathematician can properly—even ever, Quiribus believes—solve. Of course I’ve told him that he’d have to live to be as old as Methusalah for even a half-dozen such to break, in both the criminological and legalistic fields; and—”

  “Yeah? Well one’s broken right here—at least in the criminological field—where I am now. And—how! And if this baby has anything on the ball—I mean, if he’s got a flair for analysing mathematics and crime combined—how­ever, that doesn’t matter. A simple level-headed guy who knows his mathematics is what I need just now—but one who, if I spring the set-up to him, will keep his trap shut. And where oh where oh where will I ever get—but go ahead?”

  “I am. Because this fellow, George, happens to possess some strange sensibilities—characteristics it seems, of giants only—to the extent that if he had agreed, under some ridiculous agreement of honour, not to reveal to the world for 10 years or so that he possessed a right hand, would bind his right arm inside his clothes—and keep it there—for 10 years. And—how do I know all this? Now don’t be sarcastic, George; it was always you, you know, who said I was the best reader of character in all America. Though I happen to know all this I’ve just set forth about Brown because I’ve talked with him at extra length before taking him on: and, if that’s not enough for you, then let me say I saw letters from even his own pastor expostulating about his ‘too fool sense of honour’ as one not being compatible with practical Christianity ‘as practised today.’ So top that—if you can! And if you’re looking for that kind of honour, George—yes, the kind of honour that means its possessor will never reveal some angle, aspect, side, or slant of a matter that he promises and agrees not to reveal—we-ell, you’ve found it. But at the same time, I warn you, you’ll be finding extreme sensi­tivity. For giants, Quiribus tells me, are the most sensitive people on earth; if anybody even remotely suggests that they take themselves out of a picture because they’re no longer wanted in it, their hats are on their heads before you can say Jack Robinson—Jack Woodford—or Jack Spratt—and they’re off! And regardless too, from all I gather, of whether they may have been about to cash in on something. So that’s the particular mathematician I offers you today. Whatcha got, man?”

  “You sure are a super-salesman on this guy, Frank. Is he incorporated? I ask, because you must have a 51 per cent share in him! But leaving all joking aside, he may be the guy I’ll want to—but wait. If he’s a damned fool, as you started to imply, I don’t thi—but what was this foolish come­back he gave to his old man? And which seems to have something to do with his wandering around here in Chi looking for—well, being with you? I—I don’t get it all. What was—”

 

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