The Man with the Wooden Spectacles. Harry Stephen Keeler

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СКАЧАТЬ on the blink—you see what a psychotherapeutist can do.”

      Mr. Wainright, now passing a nickel over the wicket, smiled faintly at those words. Considering who and what he was about to call up!

      “One of those ducks,” grunted Mayor Sweeney, “who talk pain away?—but from nuts only? Hell, Vado, he couldn’t talk this headache of mine away—if for no other reason than that I’m sane—not just 100 per cent sane, Vado, but 101.333 per cent!” Mr. Wainwright, now obtaining his slug, could not but help note the drugstore proprietor frowning puzzledly as one who knew—exactly as did Mr. Wainwright himself!—that he who is too downright convinced of his own sanity is, almost always, in danger. “I’ll stick to your Vado’s Knockit,” the Mayor was continuing, pocketing the bottle. “Or Bromo Seltzer. All right, Vado. Thanks for the bottle—and I’ll send you over a pair of tickets tomorrow for the Policeman’s Benefit.” And Chicago’s “top man” was going out the door, on his way home to treat his headache with Vado’s Knockit, and, perhaps, to brag to his own wife that he was 101.333 per cent sane. Though at this juncture of matters Mr. Wainwright, actually grinning at the paradoxical concept of a man being more sane than sane!—101.333 per cent so!—had secured a slug, and was now entering a telephone booth. Where, looking up a number, he dialed it.

      A girl’s voice answered.

      “I want,” he said, “to speak to Dr. Gregor Miranovski, the hypnoti—that is, hypnotic therapeutist—on a very very serious matt—”

      “Dr. Miranovski,” said a girl’s voice, “is out of town.”

      “Thank—you!” He hung up. “Well, he’s out, all right.

      So I may be able to use him. If I can pull an imitation of him—on the phone.”

      Now, outside on the sidewalk again, a cab drew up in response to his signal.

      “The River,” he told the driver simply.

      The driver looked astounded. As he had a right to be, at anybody desiring to ride such a short distance. But philo­sophical where strange fares were involved, he jerked his meter, and with a lurch that flattened his fare against the cushions, sped riverward.

      At the Clark Street bridge, Mr. Wainwright climbed blithely out, paying off the taximeter “pull” of 25 cents with a silver half-dollar from which he waved back the change.

      Down the stone stairs of Wacker Drive Mr. Wainwright hastily made his way, to, in fact, the concrete embankment along the river. A diver was working midway of the block between Clark Street and Dearborn Street, the cranks of his air machine being turned by two laborers.

      A small group of loungers were looking on from the actual embankment—and a larger group from the Upper Drive level.

      The young man frowned.

      This large and generous audience was going to complicate exceedingly what he now must do—and do quickly.

      Slowly he walked to where the diver was submerged.

      But past and on. And he was just about halfway between the diver’s position and Dearborn Street—at Piling 47, to be exact, in view of the black numbers stencilled on it—when the lucky break of breaks came.

      Lucky, that is, for this particular young man.

      For a great, clumsy helicopter was bearing clutteringly down on the region, from the southeast, its double horizontal wings making a terrific roar. It was only a few hundred feet above river and street. The bridges, at both ends of this block, became suddenly thick with people—arrested, in motion. Streetcars stopped. And automobiles also on the drive above. Everybody in the entire vicinity—except one—raised his chin and faced the sky.

      That one exception was the diver, working far down the water’s surface.

      And perhaps even he too looked upward. Who knows? At which, Mr. Wainwright, with a chuckle, just tore off the end of his paper wrapping—tilted his package—and the sledge within slid forth into the silent water with a slight splash—and was gone instantly. The while the helicopter let out a great final roar of its blades which brought all chins a millimeter higher.

      And before it was drifting away to the west—and traffic was miraculously resumed again—Mr. Wainwright was again climbing into a cab on the Upper Drive level at Dearborn Street.

      “Clark and Washington Streets,” he said, naming the very point where, but a fraction of an hour before, he had read that story detailing the catastrophic fall of one J. D., safe burglar, and had, himself, evolved a great radical idea in connection therewith!

      His face was a bit thoughtful now, as he walked rapidly back toward the Klondike Building.

      He stopped, however, at the little watch-repair shop where he had ordered the watch engraved.

      And it was ready! Had been ready no doubt for 5 minutes.

      The “I. V.” had been neatly converted into a “P. W.”—and the fresh cuts had been darkened with some acid.

      “Oke,” Mr. Wainwright said briefly, and laid down 2 dollars.

      And departed.

      Again entering the Klondike Building.

      And again taking the stairs.

      And again striking Floor 8 in one minute.

      Where again he repaired to the door of 806.

      Nobody was in the hall. With quite supreme confidence, he slipped the master key he had purchased into the Police Padlock. It opened easily—exactly as he had known it would! He slipped it off and into his side coat pocket. And shoving the door slightly inward, and half turning, he slipped back­ward into the room—thus assuring himself that nobody in the hall was seeing this maneuver.

      But as he turned about, after quietly shoving the door to, he gave a start.

      Not, however, because anyone was in the room, coolly surveying his entrance—nor even looking in from the one window, since that latter contingency was one quite impos­sible, the window fronting only on a blank, ugly windowless wall, less than five feet from it. Neither, moreover, did he give a start because of the old safe across the room, with its door swung wide open—and several bits of gleaming dial on the floor. Nor at the old clock, awry on the wall. Nor at the old desk. Nor at the old leather couch—or rather, should it per­haps be said, the several feet thereof which struck emptily out from a black burlap-covered folding screen.

      But because, on the floor, lay a dead man! A dead man, in the striped overalls and jumper of a janitor and night watch­man. And his face was covered with a blue bandanna handkerchief that presumably had been his own.

      “Good—grief!” said Mr. Wainwright, to whom a mere corpse was nothing at all. For many were the corpses—women, of course—that he had prettied up with rouge and lipstick for his good friend, Gideon Arkwright, the North Avenue undertaker. “I certainly inferred,” he commented, to himself, scratching his chin, “that the body had been removed elsewhere. For—now what the devil did that story say on that? Oh yes!—that the body had been ‘left all morning exactly where ’twas found.’ ‘All morning’ is right!—plus a piece of ‘afternoon’ thrown in! He nodded sagely. “One shrewd piece of language, that ‘all morning’—and СКАЧАТЬ