The Man with the Wooden Spectacles. Harry Stephen Keeler

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      “A little—familiar’ Did you ever hear of Pepperduff Wainwright?”

      “Pepperdu—Why Lord, yes! He was the greatest expert on padlocks and padlock mechanism in—in the world. And invented many. In fact, come to think of it—he—he invented this Copely lock. And—yes, by George, he evolved the Paddington lock too, if I’m not mistaken. For they’re both in the same category. And—but did you know him?”

      “He was my grandfather,” said the young man simply. “And virtually brought me up, I lived padlocks day and night—had ’em at every meal!—had to undergo catechization on ’em every night before I could even go to bed. And I—but here, you can throw this in the junk box.”

      “In—in the junk box? But here, sir, isn’t—”

      The young man raised a hand patiently.

      “The key of it is all I want,” he said. And because, evidently, of the extreme mystification on the clerk’s face, he added, “You see I’ve a trunk at home that I bought at auction—and it’s padlocked with an old Paddington police lock of—of certain type and number—anyway, this key, I happen to know, will open it.”

      “Sa-ay—it’s a handy thing at times to know locks, isn’t it? I—”

      “Do you wait on that counter yonder where those sledges stand?”

      “I can—yes.” And the clerk started around the end of the counter and was almost immediately back of another counter across the narrow store space, the young man following. “But I don’t quite understand,” the clerk was saying. “A sledge, now?—well, why would you want to smash the lock if—”

      “The trunk happens to have two padlocks on it,” said the young man wearily. “One, as I say, positively can be unlocked with this key. The other is a—a Zylline lock—unpickable and unremovable. I’ll take that short sledge over yonder. How much is it?”

      “That one? It’s $4.50.”

      “Wrap it, please, if you will.”

      It was wrapped, right there at the counter. And the young man was outside within 9 minutes after he had entered, so swift had been the two transactions.

      He hurried on toward Clark Street, passing the Klondike Building without even a sidewise glance. His eyes were fixed ahead of him in intent thought.

      But no further from the Klondike Building in that direction than was the Hardware Store from it in the other, was a tiny watch-repair shop, no more than about 7 feet wide. It carried prominently in its narrow window a sign reading, “Second-hand and Uncalled-for Watches Cheap.” And so many of which did it apparently have that they filled the whole upper part of the window.

      The young man stopped short.

      Swiftly he cast his eyes over the battery of watches which hung, many of them, backs outward. Then he went in. The proprietor, an old man with a white head and an engraving tool in his hand, turned to the tiny wooden rail cutting off his work bench.

      “How much,” said the young man, gazing troubledly at a big telechron clock at the end of the silver-like store, “is that old silver watch there, with ‘I. V.’ engraved on it?”

      “We-ell—now in a manner of speaking—”

      “Quick!” said the young man. “Name your lowest price, or else!”

      “We-ell—well, it’s $4. And it keeps—”

      “Can you, in the next few minutes, while I’m on an errand, engrave a half-circle loop on that ‘I,’ changing it into a ‘P’—and an additional angle on the ‘V,’ making it a ‘W’?”

      “Why, yes—sure. It might look a little—”

      “Do it, please,” said the young man. “The ‘I’ into a ‘P’—and the ‘V’ into a ‘W.’ And here’s $2 on account. And if it isn’t done in 15 minutes when I come back, I’ll have to pass it—”

      “It’ll be done!” said the old man. “And—and I’ll rub acid across the fresh cuts to make the engraving look uniform.”

      And almost before Mr. Piffington Wainwright, the owner of the initials in question, was out of the door, the old man was locking the watch in a felt-lined vise; was, in fact, before Mr. Wainwright was ten feet distant, cutting, with sure hand, a neat curling sliver of silver from the watch case.

      At the corner, Mr. Wainwright waited for a taxicab to come along. Reflecting deeply, as he waited, on the newsstory he had read.

      “Wild defense, all right—J. D.’s claiming amnesia! And ‘hypnotic amnesia’—of all things! Just a stall, of course, for time; for with that defense he hasn’t a cha—hm?—say, I might be able to sew my own entrance into this affair up a bit tighter if Dr. Mironovski really is out of town. But—”

      But standing not on suppositions, he stepped into a drugstore in back of him, the name of which—as shown on a huge sign over its door—was VADO’S. And inserted himself immediately into a line of 3 persons in front of a cashier’s booth which, from the placard above the wicket, sold telephone slugs. With the result that he met for the very first time in his young life—met, that is, in a sense—one of Chicago’s famous figures; no less, in fact, than—

      For a man in a pharmacist’s tan coat, back of a counter just to one side of the line, was speaking to a customer who, himself, leaned, in profile, on the counter, chin in hand and—the pharmacist, that is—was saying:

      “Yes, Mayor Sweeney, this particular remedy of mine will knock out any headache that ever existed. Except, of course—ahem—”

      Mr. Wainright, being always glad to meet the famous, turned slightly in line to survey his Mayor.

      Mayor Gardiner Sweeney, now turning about in his hand a small demoniacal-looking green-glass bottle, was a man of about 50, with rather small greenish-blue eyes, and curly hair peeping out from under a black derby hat.

      His tweed clothes were rich, and a gold encased elk’s tooth, with huge diamond in the tip of the tooth, swung from a massive chain on his vest, His face was pale with the paleness of one who smoked far too many cigars; it was lined, too, with the lines of one who had sat in too many troublesome late-houred political meetings.

      “I’ll take it, Vado,” he was grunting. “But don’t bother to wrap it up. For I’m hopping in my car outside—and going home for the day.”

      “Okay, Mayor—and no charge!—it’s on the house—but—just a minute, Mayor. Been having these—er—headaches long?”

      “Some time. Though this one, plainly, is from a Welsh rarebit I ate day before yesterday. And—but why do you ask?” The mayor’s voice was grumpy, as one whose intimate physiology had been pried into!

      “We-ell—I think I would have my headaches looked into by a doctor, for headaches, Mayor, are symptomatic of so many things. A fact! And if your doctor says there’s no organic trouble at the base of them —well— now I know you’ll laugh—”

      “I won’t laugh. What in hell is there in Life to laugh at, anyway? What is СКАЧАТЬ