Tales from Two Pockets

by Capek, Karel; Comrada, Norma

• ISBN13: 9780945774259
• ISBN10: 0945774257
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-06-01
• Publisher: Catbird Press

Summary

Capek wrote 48 stories that deconstruct the mystery story by breaking one rule here, three rules there, and yet also make for wonderful reading. His unique approaches to the mysteries of justice and truth are full of the ordinary and the extraordinary, humor and humanism.

Author Biography

Karel Capek (1890–1938) is generally considered the greatest Czech author of the first half of this century. He was Czechoslovakia's leading novelist, playwright, story writer, and columnist, and the spirit of its short-lived democracy. His plays appeared on Broadway soon after their debut in Prague, and his books were translated into many languages. Capek expressed himself in the form of accessible and highly enjoyable writing.

Table of Contents

Introduction	7	(15)
Tales from One Pocket
Dr. Mejzlik's Case	15	(5)
The Blue Chrysanthemum	20	(7)
The Fortuneteller	27	(6)
The Clairvoyant	33	(7)
The Mystery of Handwriting	40	(8)
Proof Positive	48	(6)
The Experiment of Professor Rouss	54	(8)
The Missing Letter	62	(8)
Stolen Document 139/VII Sect. C	70	(9)
The Man Who Looked Just a Bit Suspicious	79	(6)
The Poet	85	(7)
Mr. Janik's Cases	92	(10)
The Fall of the House of Voticky	102	(10)
The Record	112	(8)
The Selvin Case	120	(8)
Footprints	128	(9)
The Receipt	137	(9)
Oplatka's End	146	(9)
The Last Judgment	155	(6)
The Crime on the Farm	161	(6)
The Disappearance of an Actor	167	(13)
An Attempt at Murder	180	(6)
Released on Parole	186	(6)
The Crime at the Post Office	192

Excerpts

Dr. Mejzlik's Case

"Listen, Mr. Dastych," Detective Captain Mejzlik said pensively to the police department's shrewd old pro, "the truth of the matter is that I've come to you for advice. I have a certain case I don't know what on earth to do about."

"Out with it then," said Mr. Dastych. "Whom does the case concern?"

"Me," sighed Dr. Mejzlik. "The more I think about it, the less I understand it. You know, a person could go crazy just thinking about it."

"So who did what to you?" Mr. Dastych asked in a soothing voice.

"Nobody," Dr. Mejzlik burst out. "That's the worst part of it. I myself did something that I don't understand."

"Perhaps it's not all that bad," old Dastych consoled him. "Just what did you do, young man?"

"I caught a safecracker," Dr. Mejzlik answered gloomily.

"And that's all?"

"That's all."

"And perhaps he wasn't the right safecracker," Mr. Dastych said helpfully.

"But he was; in fact he's already confessed. He broke into the safe at the Jewish Benevolent Association; did you hear about it? His name was Rozanowski or Rosenbaum or something, from Lvov," grumbled Dr. Mejzlik. "They found the safecracking tools on him and everything."

"Well then, what would you like to know?" old Dastych encouraged him.

"I would like to know," the police captain began thoughtfully, "how it was I caught him. Wait, I'll tell you just what happened. A month ago, it was March third, I was on duty till midnight. I don't know if you remember, but it had been raining for three days straight. So I stopped in at a coffee shop for a moment, and after that I meant to go right home, to Vinohrady. But instead of that I headed in the opposite direction, toward Dlazdena Street. Tell me, please, do you have any idea why I went straight to that part of town?"

"Perhaps it was merely by chance," Mr. Dastych ventured.

"Listen, in that kind of weather a person doesn't drag his feet through the streets merely by chance. I'd like to know what, by all that's holy, I was doing there. What do you think, could it have been some kind of premonition? You know, something like telepathy?"

"Aha," said Mr. Dastych. "It's entirely possible."

"So you see," Dr. Mejzlik said worriedly. "There we have it. But it could also have been some kind of subconscious notion that made me drop by to see what was happening at The Three Maidens."

"That's that cheap dive on Dlazdena Street," Mr. Dastych recalled.

"Precisely. All the safecrackers and pickpockets from Pest and Halic bed down there when they come to Prague on business. We keep an eye on that place. What do you think, couldn't it have simply been ordinary police routine for me to go there and take a look around?"

"It could," declared Mr. Dastych. "Sometimes people do things like that quite automatically, especially when they feel a sense of obligation, you might say. There isn't anything strange about that."

"So I go to Dlazdena Street," Dr. Mejzlik continued, "and while I'm in the neighborhood I check the room register at The Three Maidens, and then I go on down the street. At the end of Dlazdena Street I come to a stop and I turn back again; kindly tell me, why would I have turned back again?"

"Habit," offered Mr. Dastych. "The routine habit of a patrol officer."

"Might be," the police captain agreed. "But I wasn't on duty and I wanted to go home. Maybe it was a hunch."

"There've been such cases," Mr. Dastych acknowledged. "But there's nothing mysterious about a hunch like that. After all, it's well known that people have higher powers of one kind or another ..."

"My God," bellowed Dr. Mejzlik, "was it routine habit then, or some kind of higher power? That's what I'd like to know! - But wait: While I'm trudging along, there's some man coming toward me from the opposite direction. You'll say, why on earth shouldn't somebody be walking along Dlazdena Street at one o'clock at night, in whatever direction? There's nothing suspicious about that. I myself didn't think anything of it; but I stopped directly under the streetlight and lit a cigarette. That's what we do, you know, when we want to check out somebody at night. What do you think: was it chance, or habit, or ... or some sort of subconscious warning?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Dastych.

"I don't either," Dr. Mejzlik shouted angrily. "Damn it all! So I'm lighting a cigarette under the streetlight and this man is coming along towards me. I wasn't even checking him out, just standing there staring at the ground. But as this fellow passed by, something started bothering me. Damn, I said to myself, there's something wrong here - but what exactly? I mean, I hadn't paid any real attention to his lordship at all. So I'm standing in the rain under the streetlight and thinking things over; and all at once it hit me: his shoes! That man had something odd on his shoes. And I'll tell you right now what it was: powder."

"What kind of powder?" asked Mr. Dastych.

"Well, powder . In that instant I remembered that the man had some dusty powder between the soles and the uppers of his shoes."

"And why wouldn't he have dusty powder on his shoes?" Mr. Dastych wanted to know.

"It's obvious," Dr. Mejzlik cried out. "I'm telling you, sir, in that split second I saw , yes, saw the insulating material they use in safes that gets scattered all over the floor. You know, the powder between the steel plates. And I saw those shoes tramping through that powder."

"That was intuition," Mr. Dastych decided. "Ingenious, but pure intuition."

"Baloney," said Dr. Mejzlik. "Man, if it hadn't been raining I wouldn't even have noticed the powder. But when it's raining, people don't usually have powder on their shoes, understand?"

"That was empirical deduction," Mr. Dastych said with certainty. "It was a brilliant inference based on experience. So what happened next?"

"Well, naturally I followed the man; he went into The Three Maidens, of course. And I telephoned for two plain-clothesmen and we raided the place; we found Mr. Rosenbaum there along with his powder and his safecracking tools and twenty thousand from the Jewish Benevolent Association's safe. The rest of it doesn't matter. But you know, the newspapers said that this time our police demonstrated considerable preparedness - what a lot of baloney! Believe me, if I hadn't by chance gone to Dlazdena Street and by chance noticed the shoes on that crook ... What I mean is," Dr. Mejzlik said dispiritedly, "if it really was only by chance. That's the problem."

"It makes no difference whatsoever," stated Mr. Dastych. "Young man, it was an achievement for which you should be congratulated."

"Congratulated!" Dr. Mejzlik exploded. "Why should I be congratulated when I don't know what for? For my incredible shrewdness as a detective? For automatic, routine police work? For pure luck? For some sort of intuition or telepathy? Look, this was my first big case; a person has to have something to build on, right? Say that tomorrow they assign me some sort of murder; Mr. Dastych, what will I do? Am I supposed to run around the streets peering shrewdly at people's shoes? Or just go about my business and wait for some hunch or inner voice to lead me straight to the murderer? That's it, you see, that's my situation. Now the whole police force is saying: that Mejzlik, he's got a real flair; that young fellow with the glasses is going to go places with his talents as a detective. It's an awful situation, no doubt about it," Dr. Mejzlik muttered. "A person's got to have some kind of method. Until I had my first case, I believed in all manner of exact methods; you know, like careful observation, expertise, systematic investigation, and similar nonsense. But after dealing with this case, I see that - Listen," he blurted out with relief, "I think it was nothing but chance."

"It looks that way," said Mr. Dastych prudently. "But there was also a bit of solid observation involved and a certain amount of logic."

"And mechanical routine," the young policeman added despondently.

"And intuition. And also something of a talent for hunches. And instinct."

"Jesus Christ," moaned Dr. Mejzlik. "See what I mean? So what am I supposed to do now, Mr. Dastych?"

"- Dr. Mejzlik, you're wanted on the telephone," the waiter announced. "Police headquarters."

"Here we go," Dr. Mejzlik murmured in alarm; and when he returned to the table, he looked pale and tense. "Check, please," he called out irritably. "It's already started. They found some foreigner murdered in a hotel. Damn , if only -" and he left. It seemed that the resolute young man had a bad case of butterflies.

The Blue Chrysanthemum

"Well, I'll tell you," said old Fulinus, "how Klara comes into this story. I was in charge of the gardens on Prince Lichtenberg's estate in Lubenic in those days - that old prince, mister, he was a real connoisseur; he had Veitsche send whole trees from England, and he brought in seventeen thousand bulbs specially from Holland - but that's beside the point. One Sunday, then, I'm going down the street in Lubenic and I meet up with Klara; that was the village idiot, you know, deaf and dumb, a crazy, simple-minded fool of a gift who wandered all over, braying as cheerful as can be - can you tell me, mister, why these idiots are so blessed cheerful? Anyway, I was trying to dodge her, so she wouldn't slobber me with a kiss, when all of a sudden I caught sight of a bunch of flowers in her paws. She had some dillweed and other such stuff from the fields, but in amongst them, mister - I've seen a lot of things, but this one really bowled me over. I tell you, that crazy girl had one pompon chrysanthemum in her nosegay that was blue ! Blue, sir! It was just as blue as Phlox laphami; a little slate tinge to it, with satiny, rosy edges and a center like Campanula turbinata , beautifully full, but all that's the least of it: mister, that blue color was then and is still to this very day absolutely unknown in chrysanthemums! Two years ago I was with old Veitsche, you know, and Sir James was bragging to me about how, the year before, one of their chrysanthemums, this import straight from China, had bloomed a speck lilac in color, but unfortunately it died on them over the winter. And here in the claws of that cackling rattlebrain was a chrysanthemum as blue as you could ever hope to see. Right.

"So here was this Klara, mooing cheerfully and shoving her bunch of flowers at me. I gave her a little coin from my change, pointed to the chrysanthemum, and said, `Klara, where'd you get this?' Klara cackled and snorted, just as pleased as could be, but I didn't get anything more out of her. I hollered at her, pointed with my hands, but it was no use; no matter what, she was going to throw her arms around me. I took that blue chrysanthemum and went straight to the old prince: `Your Highness, here's what's growing somewhere nearby; let's go find it.' The old prince immediately ordered a coach so we could take Klara with us. But in the meantime Klara had gone off somewhere and couldn't be found. We stood there by the rig, swearing for a good hour - His Highness used to be with the dragoons. We were still at it when Klara dashed up with her tongue lolling out and jammed a whole bunch of fresh blue chrysanthemums at me, torn right off the bush. The prince whipped out a bill for her then and there, but Klara started boohooing with disappointment; poor thing, she didn't know about paper money. I had to give her a coin to quiet her down. Then she started dancing around and shrieking, but we set her up on the driver's box, pointed to the blue chrysanthemums, and said, `Klara, take us there!'

"Klara whooped with glee up there on the box; you can't imagine how his High and Mightiness the coachman was horrified at having to sit next to her. Besides which, the horses would skitter every time she squealed and cock-a-doodled, oh, I'll tell you, it was the devil's own ride. After we'd been going for an hour and a half I said, `Your Highness, we've already covered at least eight miles.'

"`No matter,' muttered the prince, `a hundred miles if need be.'

"`All right,' I said, `I'm all for it, but Klara brought back that second bouquet inside of an hour. That place can't be more than two miles from Lubenic.'

"`Klara,' cries the prince, pointing to the blue chrysanthemums, `where do these grow? Where did you find them?'

"Klara croaked and gurgled and pointed still further ahead; probably she liked riding up there on the coach. You know, I thought the prince was going to kill her; dear Jesus, that man could carry on! Lather was dripping off the horses, Klara was cackling, the prince was cursing, the driver only by some miracle kept from sobbing in shame, and I was working out a strategy for tracking down that blue chrysanthemum. `Your Highness,' says I, `this isn't going to work. We'll have to look without Klara. We've got to mark out a two-mile area on the map, divide it up into sections, and have a house-to-house search.'

"`My God,' says the prince, `there isn't a single park within two miles of Lubenic!'

"`That's all right,' says I. `The devil of a lot you'll find in a park, unless you're looking for ageratum or canna. Look, down here on the stalk is a bit of soil; that's not humus, it's a greasy, yellowish clay, most likely fertilized by human whatchamacallit. We've got to look for a place where there's plenty of pigeons; there's lots of pigeon droppings on these leaves. And most likely this grows by a fence made from peeled stakes, because here at tee leafstalk is a chip of fir bark. That's our clue, right there.'

"`What do you mean?' says the prince.

"`What I mean,' says I, `is that we have to look around every shed and shanty within an area of two miles. We'll break up into four search parties: you, me, your gardener, and my helper, Vencl, and that's that.'

"Well then, next morning the first thing that happened was that Klara brought me another bouquet of blue chrysanthemums. I searched all over my section after that: I drank warm beer at every local pub, ate homemade cheeses, and asked people about blue chrysanthemums. Mister, don't ask me what kind of diarrhea I got from those cheeses; it was hot, the way it sometimes gets at the end of September, and I made it into every little farmhouse and had to put up with every kind of rudeness, because people thought that I was either crazy, or a salesman, or somebody from the government. But one thing was clear by nighttime: there was no blue chrysanthemum growing in my section. There wasn't any in the other three, either. Yet Klara brought me one more broken-off branch of blue chrysanthemums.

Continue...

Excerpted from TALES FROM TWO POCKETS by Karel Capek Copyright © 1994 by Norma Comrada
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.