The Affair of the Bottled Deuce. Harry Stephen Keeler

off it as a seat. A paper napkin atop the taller box made it a dining table of sorts, and a plate, a knife and fork laid out, proclaimed that dinner tonight was to have been for one!

      Off from the blocked door and improvised dining table ensemble, was a 4-hole gas stove with, above it, a long shelf carrying a congeries of breakfast food packages and cans, including corn beef hash and lobster, with, below same, a few pots and pans on nails, plus a frying pan, and plus a wire rack containing a few pieces of silverware, a few more pieces of chinaware. Off from the stove, further windowward, stood a zinc scrub pail with a mop in it, and which explained fully why the floors in this place were as unusually clean as they were.

      Lou strode forth, over to the rear window. It was open an inch, to create a draft from front of the flat to rear. But its grating was locked tight, like all the others, with the Yale padlock. Gazing out, all he could see was the blank windowless side of the cold storage warehouse off from it, to the extent of about 10 feet or so. Gazing sidewise, he could see that the latter bellied out, rearwardly, of its own front, in his direction. Even the buildings around here were just like the flats!—mortised together—in jig-saw puzzle-like segments! He sensed the bottom of the fire-escape on the outside of the windows along here must, indeed, fall into some sort of a nearly closed courtyard, even as Marchesi had earlier suggested by just a few words. Was, indeed, subsequently to find even more that this was so.

      He turned from his position of no vantage, and went back into the main room.

      Butterball was back. Shaking his head.

      “Suits, about $40 each—made of stuff that never needs any pressing—shirts, $2.25 each—ties, 75 cents. Not rich. Not poor. Reg’lar middle-class.”

      They stood now. Each in his own thoughts. Lou spoke.

      “Butterball, do you know someth—”

      “If I did I—”

      “Yeah, we both know the regulation answer. But Butterball, that hanging hand of yon clean, naïve young middle-class man yonder—the one holding the black gunmetal gun, yes—and which hand actually sticks to gun because of index finger curled inside the trigger guard!—that hand doesn’t hang heavy enough. I’ve seen too many dead gun-holding hands in my day. The slightest weight on a dying hand and arm causes it to—”

      “I think it’s all imaginary on your part, Lousy. It looks to me just like it should—”

      “No, it isn’t imaginary.”

      “I think it is.”

      “I think it isn’t. Oh, I know, Butterball, you’re the famous 1-second observer—and that you’ve been in here all this time and haven’t made such observation as I, and—”

      “Listen, Lousy,” said Butterball, with some acerbity, “if that hand is hanging any lighter than it should hang—listen, what the hell do you mean, anyway?—why should it hang down for any reason other than that’s what it’s supposed to? Its weight? A—”

      “Plus the gun!”

      “Plus the gun, yeah. Well, if it isn’t hanging as heavy as it could—might hang, I—I give you this case—I mean, I appoint you as source of observation around here, and—”

      “Will you add superintendent of operations, too?”

      “Hell, yes! I have reason in that respect for wishing you were. Because—well, because the less I have to do in this case from now, or a few hours from now, the more—”

      “All right, Butterball. I’ll check. By lifting the arm a tiny bit—”

      “Don’t tell me,” grimaced Butterball, “you can tell how much a dead arm—should weigh?”

      “I can’t tell you what I can tell you. I don’t even exactly know myself. I—”

      Lou strode forward. Lifted the pendant arm lightly, so as not to dislodge the gun in its hand. But shook his head as he did. For though reasonably heavy, the crook in the elbow wasn’t as straight as it seemingly should have been.

      Now he let the arm down, and lifted just the hand itself. Perhaps an eighth of an inch or so, no more. Again shook his head. Now he reached about in his back pocket. Withdrew his white silk handkerchief. Shook it open. And with it detached the gun gently from the hanging hand. Opening his eyes wide as he did so, so light, so amazingly weightless was that gun.

      He stood erect with it. Using the handkerchief to keep his fingerprints off it, he pressed its two ends in such a way as to put stress across its middle. The “gun” broke squarely, easily, into two halves, Revealing it wasn’t metal, wasn’t wood. Wasn’t anything—but black wax!

      “See what I mean, Butterball?” he said quietly. “Black wax!”

      Butterball could only stare with open eyes and open mouth.

      “Ever heard, Butterball,” said Lou kindly, “of a man killing himself with a wax gun? Butterball, this is a staged ‘suicide’—not a genuine one. It’s staged. For what reason, I can’t remotely guess. But it’s staged. It’s—”

      “Meaning—meaning,” said Butterball, “that it’s—”

      “Meaning,” pointed out Lou calmly, “that you will now have to go out—or downstairs to Mr. Marchesi’s—and call the particular squad from the Detective Bureau that covers the specific thing this is. And which is Homicide, Butterball. Yeah, Homicide, commencing with H as in—in Hah-Hah!”