Joe was late getting there because you can’t drop a body like a shoe. The business downtown had taken time, and when he reached the church’s vestibule, they were carrying Kennedy out. The widow walked with her oldest boy. Even the professional morticians wore a veil of pallid gloom. Mary came next, alone, her eyes meeting his and asking him, “Why couldn’t you have been here?” Joe chewed his lip. She didn’t know where he had been. He moved closer to Lew Farber, who was standing to one side. The money, flat and tidy and concealed within his coat, felt bulky as a phone book when he breathed.
“We got the word from down below,” Lew said. “Needham says you’re a Kennedy kind of a cop. You were right, huh? It was Solly all along?”
“Call it a hunch, Lew. Call it anything. He admitted it before he went for the gun.”
“What could have been between them?” Farber said.
Joe answered slowly. “I don’t pretend to know.” The big church emptied fast. Out in the bright street where the cops stood grandly at attention, the rented limousines pulled slowly from the curb. “Well, it’s done,” Joe said, then looked at his friend. “Ever occur to you, Lew, that maybe Kennedy was on Solly’s payroll?”
“If I didn’t know you were kiddin’,” Lew said, “I would punch you in the mouth.”
Joe walked alone in the vast and quiet church. Far ahead, on the high front altar, the sexton was killing the candlelight. The bright flames just surrendered and went out, like murdered memories. It will be safe now, Joe thought carefully; I think the story will hold.
He paused at one side of the darkened church and he had the money in his hand. The mouth of the poor box was capacious as the inside of a hat. The money fell and thudded mildly against the quarters, the nickels, the dimes. God make it right, Joe prayed, then quickly walked away. Outside the last of Kennedy’s cortege had passed from view, and the cops, in exquisite order, marched away.
The Mystery of Keesh
by Jack London
More about Jack London — from Irving Stone’s excellent biography, SAILOR ON HORSEBACK (Houghton Mifflin, 1938): “He was afraid of nothing; the greater the risk, the greater the fun. Was he not a Vising who had crossed San Francisco Bay in an open skiff in a howling southwester?... He was endowed with the characteristics that go to make up the genius of the Irish: compassion for the sufferings of others; liberality with their own possessions; the love of a fight... and the courage to plow in with both fists flying.”
Is it any wonder that Jack London was so preoccupied with the superman theme? He was close to a superman himself... And now we bring you the seventh in our series of detective, crime, and mystery stories by Jack London. This too might be called the tale of a superman — a primitive superman who lived long ago “on the rim of the polar sea.” It is also the tale of headcraft, as distinguished from witchcraft — a puzzle story in the great tradition and one of Jack London’s most ingenious mysteries.
Keesh lived long ago on the rim of the polar sea, was headman of his village through many and prosperous years, and died full of honors with his name on the lips of men. So long ago did he live that only the old men remember his name, his name and the tale, which they got from the old men before them, and which the old men to come will tell to their children and their children’s children down to the end of time. And the winter darkness, when the north gales make their long sweep across the ice-pack and the air is filled with flying white and no man may venture forth, is the chosen time for the telling of how Keesh, from the poorest igloo in the village, rose to power and place over them all.
He was a bright boy, so the tale runs, healthy and strong, and he had seen thirteen suns, in their way of reckoning time. For each winter the sun leaves the land in darkness, and the next year a new sun returns so that they may be warm again and look upon one another’s faces. The father of Keesh had been a very brave man, but he had met his death in a time of famine, when he sought to save the lives of his people by taking the life of a great polar bear. In his eagerness he came to close grapples with the bear, and his bones were crushed; but the bear had much meat on him and the people were saved. Keesh was his only son, and after that Keesh lived alone with his mother. But the people are prone to forget, and they forgot the deed of his father; and he being but a boy and his mother only a woman, they too were swiftly forgotten, and before long came to live in the meanest of all the igloos.
It was at a council one night in the big igloo of Klosh-Kwan, the chief, that Keesh showed the blood that ran in his veins and the manhood that stiffened his back. With the dignity of an elder, he rose to his feet, and waited for silence amid the babble of voices.
“It is true that meat be apportioned me and mine,” he said. “But it is oft-times old and tough, this meat, and moreover it has an unusual quantity of bones.”
The hunters, grizzled and gray, and lusty and young, were aghast. The like had never been known before. A child, that talked like a grown man and said harsh things to their very faces!
But steadily and with seriousness, Keesh went on. “For that I know my father, Bok, was a great hunter, I speak these words. It is said that Bok brought home more meat than any of the two best hunters, that with his own hands he attended to the division of it, that with his own eyes he saw to it that the least old woman and the last old man received fair share.”
“Na! Na!” the men cried. “Put the child out!” “Send him off to bed!” “He is no man that he should talk to men and graybeards!”
He waited calmly till the uproar died down.
“Thou hast a wife, Ugh-Gluk,” he said, “and for her dost thou speak. And thou, too, Massuk, a mother also, and for them dost thou speak. My mother has no one, save me; wherefore I speak. As I say, though Bok be dead because he hunted over-keenly, it is just that I, who am his son, and that Ikeega, who is my mother and was his wife, should have meat in plenty so long as there be meat in plenty in the tribe. I, Keesh, the son of Bok, have spoken.”
He sat down, his ears keenly alert to the flood of protest and indignation his words had created.
“That a boy should speak in council!” old Ugh-Gluk was mumbling.
“Shall the babes in arms tell us men the things we shall do?” Massuk demanded in a loud voice. “Am I a man that I should be made a mock by every child that cries for meat?”
The anger boiled a white heat. They ordered him to bed, threatened that he should have no meat at all, and promised him sore beatings for his presumption. Keesh’s eyes began to flash, and the blood to pound darkly under his skin. In the midst of the abuse he sprang to his feet.
“Hear me, ye men!” he cried. “Never shall I speak in the council again, never again till the men come to me and say, ‘It is well, Keesh, that thou shouldst speak, it is well and it is our wish.’ Take this now, ye men, for my last word. Bok, my father, was a great hunter. I, too, his son, shall go and hunt the meat that I eat. And be it known, now, that the division of that which I kill shall be fair. And no widow nor weak one shall cry in the night because there is no meat, when the strong men are groaning in great pain for that they have eaten overmuch. And in the days to come there shall be shame upon the strong men who have eaten overmuch. I, Keesh, have said it!”
Jeers and scornful laughter followed him out of the igloo, but his jaw was set and he went his way, looking neither to right nor left.
The next day he went forth along the shoreline where the ice and the land met together. Those who saw him go noted that he carried his bow, with a goodly supply of bone-barbed arrows, and that across his shoulder was his father’s big hunting spear. And there was laughter, and much talk, at the event. It was an unprecedented occurrence. Never did boys of his tender age go forth to hunt, much less to hunt alone. Also were there shaking of heads and prophetic mutterings, and the women looked pityingly at Ikeega, and her face was grave and sad.