The Complete Simon Iff (34 page)

"So much for Mr. Morningside and his conjugation with may, might, could, should and would. Now for the unspeakable Gale!

"'She was of poor parents' - pah! poor! how disgusting! 'of doubtful character' - of course, no money. 'dead or disappeared' - disgraceful of them! Then comes a fact, a fact in her favour. She gained a scholarship. That fact can be tested. 'She was expelled for an escapade'. Was she judged fairly by those arbitrary dons? A poor girl, with no pull? And what's an 'escapade'? An innocent freak, or an assassination? Mr. Gale doesn't trouble to find out.

"She then walks the streets - 'it seems'. Where else would anybody walk?

"She 'narrowly escapes conviction as a thief'. In English, she was acquitted. Pretty good for a poor girl, I think.

"'She then fascinated a photographer' - English, she got a job.

"'In the studio potassium cyanide abounds' - there's no English, thank God, for this filthy type of innuendo.

"He died 'under suspicious circumstances'. Who suspected what?

"She is 'heard of in connexion with a gang of coiners'. What's the connexion? 'The police could get no evidence against her!' Those miserable police - we reporters could teach them something! Then she dances in a cabaret - dreadful. Then she goes into vaudeville - more dreadful still.

"'She set her cap at him, but in vain.' Who says so? The jealous wife, again? 'Somebody throws vitriol - and misses. Who was it? Miss Max, of course, a girl who has been in a Japanese Juggling Act. Yet she misses two people completely, not with a rifle at a thousand yards, but with vitriol!

"'She was suspected,' and her alibi is so good that it must be false. The three men 'probably all of them under her spell' - when the theory is that she is crazily in love with Opopo, and would have to explain the object of the alibi to the false witnesses. 'Wealthy men' have to be under all kinds of a spell to take a long chance of prison for the sake of a girl in love with another man!

"Then she 'renews her advances' to Opopo after his marriage. The wife again? And then he engages another girl, 'it is said'? Green room gossip.

"And it all ends up 'it is natural to suppose.' I suppose it is natural to suppose, to some people! The long and the short of it is that this whole article is a most damnable tissue of malicious lying and guessing. There's not one single proved fact to her discredit. And is it 'natural to suppose' that this debauched harlot keeps herself clean and keen, every muscle taut, every nerve alert, as she must do to go through that act? I saw her. She's as swift and slender as Artemis, her eyes aglitter, her lips firm, not an ounce of waste flesh; as you would perhaps say in an outburst of frankness, 'Gee, what a peach!' I may be an old dotard, but I thought her a perfect type of woman. She may be 'immoral' in your vile Puritanical sense; but she's mistress of herself, if I ever saw one. Why, it's Love that gives strength and courage and vitality to those that serve Him wisely and gaily and with passion!"

"I'm feeling ever so much better, Mr. Iff!"

"If you're through breakfast, suppose we go and hunt up some real evidence!"

Simple Simon had bethought him to ask Teake to telephone the Chicago Police to help him, and the Commissioner had gladly complied. In fact, he was cursing fate that his duties would not let him leave New York. He would have dearly loved to hunt with Simon Iff.

He found Rogers, the 'Whip of Chicago' as they called him, in consultation with the District Attorney. They greeted him warmly, but were not particularly pleased when he announced his belief in the innocence of Miss Max.

"You're butting into an impossibility", said Rogers. The truth was that both men were extremely sore over a wrongful arrest, which had let the city in for heavy damages, and a fiasco in the matter of a raid, which had made the administration ridiculous. Their political existence was at stake; they could afford no more blunders.

Iff, with matchless tact - the wrong way round - tackled them directly. "Go slow!" he said, "the longest way round is sometimes the shortest way home, and kind hearts are more than coronets, and all that. Give that poor girl every courtesy and comfort that you can; with a little luck, I'll have the right man for you in four-and-twenty hours, and you'll be glad you did it."

"That's a bet," said Rogers, heartily, clasping Iff by the hand; "she shall have champaign and caviar till to-morrow morning."

"Done!" cried Iff, "and now may I have an hour with the exhibits?"

Rogers conducted Iff to a vast room where the apparatus was stored. It had been set up in position; the corpse of Opopo was replaced by a wax model, the cords and handcuffs replaced exactly as they were when he was found.

"Beautiful!" cried Simon, "you really merit your success. This is true imagination. Beautiful, beautiful!"

Rogers was much gratified.

"But where," asked the mystic, "is the phial containing the poison?"

"She destroyed it, obviously."

"You looked for it?"

"Everywhere."

"Beneath the stage?"

"Especially there."

"Good."

"She wasn't arrested till yesterday; she had plenty of opportunity to get rid of it."

"But she didn't know that; she might have been arrested at once - with Mrs. Opopo in the house. She would have got rid of it before giving the alarm."

"An accomplice under the stage?"

"Possibly, possibly. But do you mind if I look for myself?"

"Sure. But where?"

"Here - and now."

Simple Simon inspected the inside of the safe with extreme care. He had the model removed, and renewed his effort. His delicate fingers seemed to caress the steel. Presently he withdrew, and began to examine the bonds that held the model. He seemed less interested than before; he was languid and distracted. "What's the use," he said slowly after a few minutes, "when one knows?"

Rogers was not at all impressed.

"Let's get down to business," suddenly snapped Simon, an entirely different person, "I want to see that committee. I may get some sense out of them."

"Wake Morningside's here now, as it happens; he wants leave to go on to New York."

"Lucky; let's see him! Here, for choice!"

"I'll send for him."

Morningside arrived in a few moments. After the usual phrases of commonplace, Simon Iff began his attack.

"Forgive the impertinence of an old man to a young one, won't you? But you should always stick to the indicative mood. The subjunctive's poison to you. I think I may say that I've never known you wrong in a fact, or right in a theory. You've got observation skinned to a whisper (isn't it?) but your imagination is absolutely on the blink." He looked mildly to Rogers for encouragement in his efforts to talk the vernacular, but that deity was wholly occupied in chewing a cigar. Simon Iff thought of the priests of Baal, and wondered if he would do any good by crying and cutting himself with stones. Morningside was making his defence, and it would have been impolite to interrupt. Consequently, his mind was absolutely free to roam.

The moment Morningside concluded, he began, "This, Morningside, is why I rely absolutely upon your memory to solve this mystery. Which of the numerous fools on the committee brought those hard cords to tie a man up with?"

"They came from the theatre. Opopo provided them himself. Most people don't know how easy it is to slip the knot up with such stuff as that."

"I thought so. You, of course, are the wily old bird who supplied that soft cotton cord, and tied it properly?"

Morningside, pleased, nodded assent.

"There's one cord, thicker than yours and nearly as soft, with a curious knot behind the man's back that has pulled very tight."

"Yes." Morningside began to take interest. Rogers chewed his cigar like a cow with its cud.

"A cord which is neither quite right, nor quite wrong, for its purpose. A knot which implies considerable knowledge of knots, and quite wrong for its purpose."

"Now you mention it, that's so."

"Remember who brought that cord?"

"Yes, a tall thin man of about thirty."

"Because, when we pull that knot open in court, at the critical moment, we shall find a film of paraffin wax, or some very similar substance."

Rogers chewed his cigar with unabated determination; he spoke through his teeth.

"Very pretty work, Mr. Iff. I'll go get Professor William Henry Stubbs, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, May twenty-nine, eighteen hundred and eighty-two, educated at public schools and at the University of Cornell, travelled in Europe from June nineteen hundred and one to October nineteen hundred and five, took degree of doctor of science at Heidelberg nineteen hundred and five, inherited four thousand three hundred and sixty dollars in August nineteen hundred and six through the death of his mother, his father having died in infancy; lectured in Middle West and around the Coast during nineteen hundred and seven and nineteen hundred and eight; November of that year met Emma Susan Cooper, aged thirty-one and married her - January third, nineteen hundred and nine; obtained post of Professor of Physics in the Hazelrigg Simons University, Botts, Colorado, in March of the same year; separated from his wife May nineteen hundred and ten, she visited the east under the name of Miss Madeline Adams, and exchanging constantly letters of affection with him; met her in Denver, Colorado, and spent a week with her at Christmas of that year; ceased to correspond with her in February of this year, but left Botts, Colorado, for this city, on Tuesday of last week on receipt of an unsigned telegram, giving the Dyer's Convention as an excuse for his absence, which convention he has punctually attended; was present at Helmuth's Sublime Vaudeville on Monday night of this week, and joined the committee on the stage at the presentation of the act of the late Opopo, alias John Drew Westcott, which was the true name of that performer."

He recommenced a more active mastication of his cigar. During his whole speech he had never faltered, or changed his tone or his expression.

"Beautiful, beautiful!" cried Simon, as delighted as he had been with the reconstruction of the stage scene. "And I take it that you will also get Emma Susan Cooper, or Stubbs, alias Madeline Adams, or Westcott."

"I shall," said the Sphinx, stolidly. "She put him up to it. Plenty of property, all settled on her; and twelve thousand plunks from the insurance people."

"Why didn't you act?" put in Morningside.

"Couldn't see the possibility, same as you couldn't," retorted Rogers, rather cruelly. "Simple, ain't it, when you get on to it? Paraffin capsul in a knot. His first jerk for freedom, and the knot pulls tight, and the capsul crushes, and it's up the golden stairs singing Glory Hallelujeh! Say, Mr. Iff, that was bully work, though, when you didn't know. Gee! I was sore on you this morning; thought you'd stall me off by proving that girl didn't do it, and scare the game!"

"We've both gone wrong," murmured Iff, "through taking each other for quite unpardonable fools!"

"How'd you get wise?"

"Easy," said Simple Simon. "Miss Max couldn't have done it. The man was dead before she reached the stage. Then somebody else did it. One of the committee, for certain. Morningside had examined everything, and found no prussic acid. I just ran over the walls of the safe, on the chance of some attachment there which he might have overlooked. Nothing. Then who could have introduced what into that safe? Only a committeeman; only a cord. it was then merely a question of which cord. One couldn't easily fix a delicate capsul - a mere film of wax, in order to escape detection - in a hard cord, or a thin one. I knew the kind of cord Morningside would bring, and it wasn't he that did it. He hasn't got the imagination. Only one cord remains. Morningside's admirable faculties at once enabled us to discover who brought it. And then you opened with all that heavy artillery. Great work!"

"It's rather shocking," said Morningside, "Mrs. Westcott, or rather Stubbs, being enceinte.

"Now, they all try that. Ovariotomy, following disease, in September, nineteen hundred and nine."

"And it's been a terrible experience for Miss Max," was Morningside's final broadside.

"Wish I had a cent for every dollar she gets out of the 'Pigeon'. Gee, but she'll pluck that bird! Guess I'll fix Old Man Stubbs and Missis Emma Susan now. You can hike right on down East, Mr. Morningside. We'll want you for the trial; you'll get a wire, all right! Might I have the pleasure of your company at dinner, Mr. Iff; I'd like you to meet my wife. She keeps my records."

"Thanks, I'd like to. And may I bring Miss Mollie Madison? She keeps mine."

***

*
French: gale - [gal] nf itch, scabies, mange, scab. - G.M.Kelly

"Evidence of Identity", by Dolores Cass, was the Book of the season. It was as dry as a treatise on trigonometry, but people read it and discussed it as if it were a novel. The Washington Square group all tried to look like each other so as to deceive the very elect, and succeeded perfectly, as there was not one with an ounce of individuality in the whole gang.

But what annoyed everybody was that the mystery was nowhere disclosed. How Dolores had managed the affair was still perfectly obscure... if she had managed it. All that she revealed was that a Second Girl existed. Simon Iff had contributed a powerful preface, in which he explained nothing at all but his theories on love. "Amor omnia vincit", he concluded furiously, "Love is 'inimicus humani generis'... the enemy of the human race."

For before Miss Mollie Madison had reached her office after her interview with him, Simon had been rung up from Boston. It was Dolores, and she begged him, in the interests of science, to suppress the story. There was nothing for him to do but to follow the beacon of Miss Mollie Madison's little red head, and put an extinguisher upon it.

They compensated her by making her chief bridesmaid at the wedding of Dolores to Geoffrey Travis, which was the most fashionable affair that even Boston had known in a long while.

The presents were wonderful. Simon Iff had given the bridegroom an alabaster image of Ganesha, very glorious with gold and vermilion; but he had apologized to Dolores with empty hands, saying that he hadn't been able to think of anything suitable so far; he hoped to repair the omission a little later.