The Complete Simon Iff (32 page)

Again he shot prophetic thunderbolts of tone upon the prisoner.

"I expect a microscope would show blood still - in the cracks anyhow."

Again he towered over Aminadab Spratt.

"The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. Where is thy brother Abel?"

"I put the body in the water-tank on the roof," said the murderer. "The hammer is there too. I meant to have got it away to-night in my Ford. He wouldn't have been missed; he'd been paid off from the ship; old Philipps was to have paid him twenty thousand for the emerald, and he had money saved besides. Oh, don't look at me, don't look at me!" he cried piteously to Iff. "All this time your eyes have tortured me, and your voice saying 'Cain!' and a voice inside me beating, beating, beating with my heart 'Thou God seest me!'"

Simon Iff turned away his eyes. The Chief of Police and the two inspectors led away the murderer to his doom.

Teak saw with wonder that Simple Simon's eyes had shifted from the mood of Sinai to that of Bethlehem.

"Why, man, you're crying!" he said in amazement. "I don't see anything to cry about."

"I know you don't," replied the mystic, "and that is one more reason why I'm crying. You can't see the agony of humanity. We're all monkeys, with fate as the buzz-saw! Oh frail ladder that leads up from the beast to the God, how slippery are thy rungs! That man fell in one moment from a hard-working, worthy life to a most shameful death. Humanity itself might so fall from the summit of civilization to a primeval barbarism. Sometimes I think I see it coming. This Count Zeppelin, you know, and the people who are working on the submarine. Ever think what they may lead to? No, Teake, let us go out under the stars with pure hearts, gazing with agony on him who has gone to his death. I caught him and I killed him, my brother, even as he killed his brother, like a lion springing upon a deer. So, as Charles Baxter or somebody once said, 'There, but for the grace of God, goes Simon Iff.' Come!"

Teake followed in silence, shaken by an awe whose nature he hardly understood.

"Don't forget the emerald!" chirped Simple Simon over his shoulder; "it belongs to the Rajah of Bhopur, a very dear friend of mine, a very dear man. One of the best!"

***

*
And so it is in the original typescripts: "umeyumthly". Most likely this should be "umpteenthly". Note also in the first paragraph the unusual word "Americanice". While this is how it is indeed spelled in the typescripts, almost certainly "Americanese" was intended.

"Ladies and gentlemen! I have a confession to make to you. I am leading a double life! (Laughter) To tell you the truth, I got tired of being as ugly as you see me now. (Laughter) ('Opopo' was a singularly handsome man.) Fortunately one day as I was walking down Broadway, I met a benevolent fairy (Laughter) who offered, as a reward for my well-known nobility of character, to give me a wish. I asked to be allowed to become a beautiful girl for at least part of every day. We fixed it for 10.15: dear me, it's nearly 10.15 now. I thought you would like to see the change - and so you shall. But fairies are very particular about their work; the actual operation must be done in darkness. Very thick darkness, ladies and gentlemen, for such powerful psychic force as this! So permit me to retire to the very complete seclusion of this excellent safe, which I perceive tasks the strength even of these four successors of Hercules." The audience in fact beheld a safe, just large enough to hold a man's body, borne from the wings by the staggering porters.

"Let me now introduce Mr. Nash, of the Manganese Safety Corporation."

Mr. Nash stepped forward with a bow. "Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "I represent the Manganese Safety Corporation. This is one of our latest pattern safes, of the regular type. It is not a trick safe. I have inspected it to-night. It has not in any way been tampered with. I have here a thousand dollar bill." (He waved it.) "Which I shall be pleased to present to any one who can prove the contrary, or to any yeggman in the theatre who without knowing the combination can open it in less than twenty-four hours, by drills, blowpipes, or high explosives." Mr. Nash retired, with another little bow. 'Opopo' continued his address.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is of course quite obvious that any one can get out of a safe, sealed as this will be by a committee from the audience with their own private seals, and covered with a tarpaulin, corded, and seals again placed upon the cords, and disappear by means of a trap-door. To obviate this, a large sheet of tinfoil will be placed beneath the safe. Hey, tinfoil, where are you? You're keeping the stage waiting. You'll hear of this on Friday!"

Two men entered with a square of quivering steel, three yards by three.

"Now, may I request half-a-dozen ladies and gentlemen to come upon the stage? I should like the audience to feel assured that there is no trickery about this plate. No sliding panels, secret doors, springs, hinges, or places of concealment!" After the usual momentary hesitation, the required committee stepped sheepishly upon the stage, and took the chairs provided for them by the 'supers'.

"Welcome!" cried Opopo. "Roam freely where you will. Examine everything you see! Yes, sir," he addressed a man who was looking at the plate with what he possibly supposed to be a knowing air. "Yes, sir, you are right again. That is how the trick is done!"

The men turned the edge of the steel sheet every way to the audience. It was obviously what it appeared to be. It was barely thicker than a sheet of paper.

The men laid it down carefully. Opopo picked up a roll of green baize, brought it with the safe, and tossed it with apparent carelessness on to the plate, which it was large enough to cover completely. "Put the safe on the middle!"

"Excuse me!" said one of the committee. "I should like to examine that cloth!"

'Opopo' protested. "We don't want to draw out this examination; we're tied for time. Miss Frolic was furious last night because we kept her waiting."

"I apologize to the lady," said the committeeman sturdily, feeling like the Elder Cato, "but I must insist."

It was a perfectly ordinary piece of green baize in ever respect, and the committeeman retired, with the Elder Cato feeling gone 'avay in der ewigkeit'. Opopo replaced it. The tarpaulin was next produced and examined. It was shaped to the safe, and could be fastened by a cord running in and out through a series of rings. This cord, tied, and sealed from without, appeared a singularly simple and secure protection. Two men put this loosely about the safe, which they then placed in the centre of the steel plate. Opopo threw back the tarpaulin and opened it.

"You will now please rope and handcuff me as much as you like, and shut me in. I will ask one member of the committee, and one alone, to reset the combination, so that neither I, nor any possible confederate, can open the safe from without until it is done in full view of the audience. You will kindly seal the door with your own private seals. You will then be good enough to fasten the tarpaulin, and seal that. In order to make sure that I do not escape North, East, South, West, or above, as you have already arranged in the matter of the floor, you will please adjust the tent, which as you see is made of ordinary linen sheets supported on a light bamboo framework."

The committee verified this statement. Opopo then removed his evening clothes, appearing in tights, and they affixed ropes and chains to their hearts' content. He then got into the safe. "Good-night, ladies and gentlemen! When you next see me, I shall be a beautiful young girl. You will know when the change has been operated by my beginning to sing in a mezzo soprano which has been highly praised. You will then kindly release me from my imprisonment."

He closed the door. The committee went through the dreary formalities to the foregone conclusion; having removed the tent, and investigated the seals, which were intact, the safe was opened, and a charming young lady stepped out upon the stage. "I am sorry to bid you good-night," she said. "Just one snatch of song while our friends here regain their seats; and then I will be off to dance at Yvette's."

She sang a pretty Italian air, and down came the curtain behind her. As she turned, Opopo advanced from the wings, and took her hand for the final applause. It was a very finished performance; fourteen minutes and seven seconds by Simon Iff's watch.

"Neatly presented," he remarked to Signorina Visconti, "but the method is a little too obvious."

"I don't see how it's done at all. But I rather suspect that steel plate."

"Delightful child! That's true imagination. The trickery is likely to lie in the simplest and surest precaution against it. Like a problem by Sam Loyd. You're probably right."

"Is that it, then? But how?"

"Oh, about a dozen ways of doing it suggest themselves."

"I think it is pure psychism," remarked a very fat lady on the other side of the magician, in a very loud harsh voice, meant to be languishing.

Iff's lips curled rather bitterly. "None of my dozen explanations involve hypnotism, double personality, brain storms, undeveloped thyroid, or the fourth dimension. What a pity! But I really cannot rise to those ethereal heights."

The Visconti appreciated the remark.

"Some people are all soul," she murmured, with an eye on the fat lady's corset, which reminded her of the Last Stand of the Old Guard.

"Yes; we should have insisted on confining him in one of those," laughed Iff gently, in her much-too-highly-convoluted ear.

Miss Frolic was 'chronis'; Iff and his companion wandered out into Broadway, and sought supper.

II

It was a sweltering day in August. The air was utterly stagnant. The thermometer stood at 102°; but 102° in Manhattan can be worse than 120° elsewhere. The moisture was insufferable. The air was heavy with electricity. Those who had enough strength left to pray prayed for a thunderstorm.

Simon Iff was at work on a mathematical-philosophical treatise. He wished to follow in the footsteps of Pythagoras, Raymond Lully, and the founders of Freemasonry; to do for the modern scientific conception of the universe what they had done for their own conceptions, the expression of all known relations synthetically in an arithmetical or geometrical notation. There were not many people at work in New York that day. Men and horses were dying like flies. Enormous crowds lay gasping on the beaches, like fish taken from the water. The Mayor of the city was in the Adirondacks, fishing in the vicinity of cottages 'with a double coach-house' whose owners called him by his Christian name, and would do so as long as he was mayor, and could deliver the goods.

But Simon Iff stayed grimly with his folios. Nor did he spare his servants. He had three cars delivering ice on the East side, careless of their upholstery. Nor did his men complain that he asked them to put in twelve hours of that fearful day; they made it sixteen, of their own accord. They had it all to themselves; no jealous millionaires jostled them in their errand.

It was a Monday, and far away in Chicago the bills of Helmuth's Sublime Vaudville had Opopo for a top-liner.

The newspapers of Tuesday morning had the sensation. The trick had failed; Opopo had been found dead when the safe was finally opened. There were no details; Opopo's wife, who had been present, forbade any of the assistants to say anything that might disclose the secret of the trick, which was her late husband's principal asset, unless and until official enquiry demanded it. The cause of death was beyond question, even before an examination of the body. As the door of the safe was opened the committeeman was sent staggering back, shocked almost out of life, by a gust of prussic acid.

Suicide! His last supreme achievement in advertisement. For to the first impression of the public any alternative appeared physically impossible. But the 'Chicago Pigeon' had telegraphed to New York for Wake Morningside, the famous expert in all manner of conjuring tricks and illusions, and exposer of many a fraudulent medium, to investigate the case. An hour after the despatch of the telegram, Morningside walked into the office of the paper!

"Say, some stunt!" was the editorial greeting. "How 'n 'll you get here? I wired an hour back, and nine hours after the story. Speak, mystic stranger!"

"Oh, I happened to be lecturing in Saint Louis, and I stopped off here to see the show. I was one of the committee."

"Gee, some luck!"

"I made an extremely careful examination of the apparatus. I got the facts exactly as they occurred. I examined the apparatus again after the safe was opened. And I have a story for you, complete from A to Z."

"Gee-whiz, we've got the world beat!"

"I put the whole thing down from my notes; I worked all night on it; finished twenty minutes before your wire came, forwarded on from New York."

III

At the same moment as this interview, Miss Mollie Madison rang with timid desperation at the door of Simon Iff's apartment. She would have braved a Rockefeller in his lair with greater courage, so far as awe went; but she felt, as did every one who knew him, the intensity of the mystic's loving kindness, so that with her shyness went an inexpressible confidence.

"I am unfeignedly glad to see you, my dear," he cried, coming forward with both hands outstretched; "you are an exquisite excuse for me to abandon my work. On a day like this too! It is a favour I shall not readily forget."

"You are the kindest, dearest man!"

"Well, tell me your sad story."

"It's the Safe Mystery, of course."

"What safe?"

"Haven't you seen the newspaper?"

"There isn't a word about it in the Tao Teh Ching."

"Oh, silly! I mean the New York papers."

"Better tell me!"

"Opopo is dead."

"All must die!"

"But not of prussic acid in a safe!"

"True, very true. Now I perceive a less altruistic object in your most timely visit than that of luring me from the blistering crags of transcendental philosophy to those primrose paths that lead to the everlasting bonfire of Titianesque Mollie Madison!" She blushed delightfully.