Daniel Stashower - The Dime Museum Murders

"This should do it," he said, pushing the flexible steel through the bars and guiding it toward the lock. "By straightening out this spring, I can use it as a reaching rod. You see? It seems to be working."

Mr. Graff and I watched as Harry eased the end of the heavy lock-pick toward the lock. For a few moments it bobbed up and down like a fishing pole as the metal spring strained beneath the weight. "I must get a feel for the balance," he said. "There was no way of practicing this beforehand."

Gradually, I could see that Harry was getting control of the reaching rod. Cautiously, he began guiding the pick toward the keyhole but it repeatedly bounced off the lock plate. "I'm getting closer each time," he said. "Now, if I can just-if I can just-"

I don't know how long my brother stood there flailing about in the dim light with that strange piece of metal. Occasionally I heard a dull scratch of metal as the pick bounced off the lock. Sometimes there would be a faint flash as light from the overhead bulbs glinted off the metal spring.

Perhaps an hour passed in this fashion. I was sitting on the floor with my back against the door, and had nearly fallen asleep when a cry from my brother brought me to my senses. "Dash!" Harry cried exuberantly. "At last! The pick is in the lock! Now it should be child's play to-"

And that's when the spring broke. Harry watched in mute horror as his lock-pick clattered to the floor.

"Bad luck," said Mr. Graff.

"My dear sirs," said our drunken friend in the opposite cell, "once again I feel compelled to-"

"Silence!" Harry snapped.

Mr. Graff and I looked at one another. Not another sound was heard for a good ten minutes or so.

"Well, Harry," I said at fast. "It's getting quite late. Shall I call for Sergeant O'Donnell?"

"Indeed not," my brother said. "If you would be so good as to hand me the lock-pick, I shall begin again."

Harry made three more attempts to escape from the lockup that night, and failed each time. He kept his arms folded and his mouth shut when Sergeant O'Donnell finally came to release us, and would not even return my "good night" when I dropped him at home. I hoped a night's sleep would restore him to his usual bull-headed arrogance.

In those days, Harry and Bess were living in my mother's flat on East Sixty-ninth Street, an arrangement that appealed to him for two reasons-it was cheap and it kept him close to Mama. There would have been room for me, too, but I fancied myself as a bit of a man about town, and imagined living at home might cramp my style. I kept a room in Mrs. Arthur's boarding house, only seven blocks away, where I very occasionally enjoyed an evening of whist and cigars with my fellow lodgers. Apart from this, I might just as well have been living in a monastery.

Harry and Bess were seated at the breakfast table when I arrived, while Mother busied herself at the stove. Harry still looked a bit crestfallen.

"My darling Theo!" Mother called as I came through the kitchen door. "Sit down! I will bring you a little something!"

"No, thank you, Mama," I said, removing my trilby. "I have already breakfasted with Mrs. Arthur. Good morning, Bess."

"Hello, Dash," my sister-in-law said. "You boys were out a bit late last night, weren't you?"

"Speak to your husband about that," I answered. "I would rather have been home sleeping."

"You say you've had breakfast?" Mother asked. "It cannot have been enough. You look thin! Sit!"

"I'm fine, Mother. I'll take a cup of tea, if there is any left."

I sat down at the breakfast table while she began clattering around in the cupboards. I couldn't tell you how many days began that way in those years, with Harry and Bess sitting at their places and my mother darting from table to stove. I once had occasion to visit Professor Einstein at his laboratory in Princeton, and I must report that it seemed quite a modest affair compared with my mother's kitchen. She never used one pot where three would do; she never finished serving one meal before starting preparations on the next. One navigated the room as though crossing a busy thoroughfare, bobbing and weaving amongst the simmering goulashes, cooling breads, whistling kettles, and clattering cake pans. Many times I would call at the house on a summer afternoon to take my mother for a drive, only to find that she could not leave her stewpot and basting spoon. "You go along, Theo," she would invariably say. "The pot needs minding."

As for my brother, he was never happier than when our mother was clucking over him. He sighed with sat-

isfaction whenever she placed a dish of his beloved Hungarian pepper roast in front of him. His face glowed as she poured out his tea, giving him a peck on the forehead as she did so. From my vantage across the table, however, I would often see a flicker of despair pass over my sister-in-law's face whenever Mama tucked Harry's napkin under his chin, or cut up his kippered herring into bite-sized pieces. I resolved that it would be different for me, if I were ever fortunate enough to marry.

I had arrived just as Harry was buttering his first slice of brown toast, an operation of enormous delicacy. Harry required three coatings of paper-thin butter slices to achieve the required perfection, and each of these had to be spread to the very edge of the bread-but not beyond-in precise, surgical strokes. "Have you seen The Herald?" Harry asked, pausing in his exertions long enough to pass the newspaper to me. He had folded the front page to an item in the third column.

MAGNATE FOUND DEAD

Millionaire Wintour Poisoned

at Fifth Avenue Home

"Horrible! Horrible!" cries Distraught Wife

Wealthy manufacturer Branford Howard Wintour, the reclusive patron of the arts, was found dead at his home late yesterday, the apparent victim of a bizarre poisoning. Police would not confirm whether a strange mischance or a sinister murder plot had claimed the lif e of the famed businessman.

Mr. Wintour, a collector of rare toys, evidently succumbed to the deadly toxin while examining a recent acquisition. As of last night, the nature and source of the poison were unknown. Although police would not confirm foul play in the matter, a suspect has been taken into custody.

The item continued for several paragraphs, detailing the dead man's long record of philanthropy and public service, but adding little to what Harry and I had learned the previous evening.

"It is an obscenity, is it not?" Harry declared as I lowered the newspaper.

"Tragic, certainly," I answered.

"It is an offense against decency." He took an angry bite of his now-perfected toast.

Ah, I said to myself, Harry's not referring to Win-tour's death. He's referring to the fact that the newspaper failed to mention his name.

"Strange mischance," I said, quoting from the account. "They seem to be allowing for the possibility that Wintour's death was accidental."

"Ridiculous! The police merely wish to give themselves an excuse if they fail to unmask the murderer."

"I don't know about that," I said. "If Le Fant ф me had actually killed Mr. Wintour, I suppose it's possible that his death might have been an accident."

"The device might accidentally have fired a poison dart?"

"Suppose some earlier owner had altered the mechanism to shoot a dart instead of a red blotch. Maybe this person wanted it to be a different sort of trick. Instead of marking a card, maybe he wanted to have it puncture a balloon. And maybe the dart wasn't poisoned at all- or not intentionally, anyway. Maybe it was simply coated with some resin or adhesive that happened to be poisonous. It could have happened that way, couldn't it?"