“Do you think—Is there any chance on earth that she might know me?”
Dr. Withers shook his head.
“If I ever know …” Rufus Bottomley muttered. “If I ever learn who …” His teeth were tight set under the flowing mustache. His hand clenched, and the black cigar within it slowly crumbled.
IV
METROPOLIS PICTURES
June 26, 1939
Professor Drew Furness
Department of English
University of California at Los Angeles
Los Angeles, Cal.
Dear Professor Furness:
Miss O’Breen informs me that she has acquainted you with our plans for inviting the Baker Street Irregulars to act as unofficial advisors in the making of The Speckled Band, and that you, as a member of the Irregulars, are pleased with the idea.
However, let me take this opportunity of extending my own personal invitation to you to be my guest for this period.
I hope that in this way Metropolis Pictures may, to some small extent, make up to you for the inconvenience and humiliation which you suffered in my office the other day. I repeat the assurances, which Miss O’Breen has already given you, that I had no part in that shameful occurrence, and that I would gladly take punitive measures for what has transpired if only it was possible for me to do so. Our legal department, however, assures me that it is not. I hope and trust that you will accept, through me, the most sincere apologies of Metropolis Pictures.
Sincerely yours,
F. X. Weinberg
FXW/RS
11473 Shenandoah Road
West Los Angeles
June 27, 1939
Mr. F. X. Weinberg
Metropolis Pictures
Los Angeles, Cal.
Dear Mr. Weinberg:
Your plans, as Miss O’Breen outlined them to me, are indeed pleasing. I beg you to rely on my heartiest cooperation in your venture.
Your apologies, though gratefully accepted, are hardly necessary. I realized, of course, that the sole responsibility was that of Stephen Worth. Let us consider that the episode never took place.
Sincerely yours,
Drew Furness
The note finished, Drew Furness left the desk, settled his long frame in the Morris chair, and took up the latest copy of the Journal of English and Germanic Philology.
The little old lady on the sofa looked up from her crocheting. “Who were you writing to, Drew?”
“Whom, Aunt Belle,” he said automatically.
“I don’t know why you expect me to talk that way just because you’re an English teacher. I know your grandfather wouldn’t have stood for such highfalutin talk for a minute. Why, I remember …”
Drew Furness read calmly on until the familiar anecdote was ended and his aunt repeated her question. “Who’s the letter to?”
“F. X. Weinberg. You remember, Aunt Belle—the cinema producer who’s making The Speckled Band.”
“Oh.” A crafty look came over Aunt Belle’s round little face. “Tell me, Drew—is he one of them?”
“How should I know, Aunt Belle? He’s Jewish, I think, if that’s what you mean.”
“You know very well that’s not what I mean. I mean,” she explained, “is he one of Them?”
“Now, Aunt Belle, let’s not start that again.”
“He beat you up, didn’t he? You came home all black and blue after you went to see him. You can’t fool me. What did he try to make you tell him, Drew?”
“Please. There’s an interesting thing of Bretheridge’s in here about the authorship of Lust’s Dominion. He seems to upset quite a few of one’s preconceived notions.”
That seemed to hold Aunt Belle. She was silent. But Drew Furness did not return to the JEGPh. Instead he thought of that day in the studio and the absurdly humiliating scene in the commissary where that delightful Miss O’Breen had taken him for refreshment. He must, he feared, have cut a very sorry figure in that young lady’s eyes—a figure hardly worthy of one of the foremost authorities on the problem of William Ireland and the sources of his forged plays. He wondered—
“Drew …”
“Please, Aunt Belle. Do let me alone. I have to study.”
“Study indeed! A body’d think you were still a schoolboy instead of a professor. But you can’t put me off like that. Drew, I saw a man in the street today.”
“That’s hardly surprising, is it?”
“He was lurking, Drew. Lurking right in front of this house. You can’t tell me that doesn’t mean anything. They’re everywhere, They are. A person isn’t safe in her own house any more, but They come spying around.”
“Please. You go back to your knitting and let me read.”
“That’s just like a man,” she sniffed. “Can’t tell knitting from crocheting. And you’re just as blind about what goes on all around you. But you’ll find out someday. When They come into power, then you’ll understand. Then you’ll know what your poor old auntie used to try to tell you when you wouldn’t even—”
“Hang it all, Aunt Belle!” Drew Furness cried in exasperation.
A resigned frown spread across the old face. “That’s right. I knew it would come to this someday. Go on. Swear at me. Use your foul language—and you an English teacher. Someday you’ll be sorry. Go right ahead—don’t mind what I say. But you’ll be sorry yet, Drew Furness, when They come …”
The dumpy little Cassandra gathered up her crocheting and majestically left the room, trailing doom behind her. Drew Furness sat still for a moment, trying faithfully to follow Bretheridge’s intricate tables of run-on lines, but finally tossed the periodical from him.
These scenes brought on by Aunt Belle’s unspecified phobia were frequent enough; but he could not get used to them. Quarreling, no matter how innocently, with an old woman always upset him. Besides, she had seemed worse of late. He began almost to wonder if there might be anything seriously wrong.
On an impulse he picked up the phone book and opened it to the O’s. He ran his finger down the page: O’Boyle, Obradovich, O’Brand, Obrasky—O’Breen. And on Berendo Street—the address to which he had driven her home on that fantastic day.
He lifted the phone from its cradle, then slowly let it fall back again. Really that was a very foolish idea. What could Miss O’Breen and he have to talk about?
He went back to Lust’s Dominion.
V
METROPOLIS PICTURES
July 3, 1939
Mr. Otto Federhut
c/o The Association for the Placement
of Refugees in the Professions
New York, N. Y.
Dear Mr. Federhut:
You have no doubt heard from your new colleagues in the Baker Street Irregulars of my plans to invite the society to Hollywood to supervise the making of The Speckled Band.
If you are still unsettled in this country, I urge you to accept this invitation as applying especially to yourself. It is even possible that I can arrange some contacts for you here in Hollywood which will solve your problems for a time at least.
The motion picture, as the youngest and most progressive of the major art forms, owes it to society to do what it can in the defense of democracy; and I, as a representative of the industry, stand always ready to offer my aid to those who are victims of foreign tyranny.
I deeply hope that we can add your name to our roster of guests.
Sincerely yours,
F. X. Weinberg
FXW/RS
New York
7 July, 1939
F. X. Weinberg, Esq.
Metropolis Pictures
Los Angeles, California
My dear Sir:
This invitation that you offer to me is, I feel, a great honor, and I accept it with eagerness. Long have I admired the makers of American films—yes, and envied them when I have seen the propagandistic Mischmasch which our once great UFA has been forced to turn out. It will be a pleasant sight to behold an industry which is not dominated by Emil Jannings in an u
nending row of historical variations complete with costumes upon the role of Hermann Goring.
I hear—for in this land, thanks be to God, we may speak freely—that among the German colony in Hollywood the anti-Nazi movement is growing daily in strength and vigor. May it be that you could put me in touch with the leaders of such a movement that I may add my forces to theirs in our great work?
Believe me, even aside from these political considerations, I shall be more than happy to consider your invitation. In this world of strife and terror, it is happy to think again that free men may have sufficient cultural leisure that to them the treatment of Sherlock Holmes may seem a matter of weight and import. I shall enjoy joining in the sport.
Respectfully yours,
Otto Federhut
Otto Federhut wrote this note at a table in the Prater—a little restaurant founded by an Austrian émigré for his compatriots and fortunately still undiscovered by color-seeking New Yorkers. Herr Doktor Federhut reread the note, passed it over to his companion, and sipped his coffee blissfully. It was highly sweetened coffee with a great island of whipped cream floating on it—the first such cup he had found in this benighted land.
His companion—a tall, heavy-set man with thick eyebrows and a striking saber cut across his left cheek—read the missive carefully and handed it back. “It is hard to adjust oneself,” he said in German, “to the fact that in this land one may write what one pleases in a letter and have no fears as to who may read it.”
Federhut nodded, with a shaggy toss of his leonine white hair. “It is a strange thing, this democracy. Sometimes it seems to me almost like a householder who says, ‘No, I shall never lock my front door. That would infringe upon the rights of entry of my fellow man.’”
The heavy man smiled his agreement. “And now it is as though two of his fellow men should enter the house to find a safe dueling ground—two brothers who cannot fight their battle at home.”
“Brothers!” Otto Federhut snorted.
“We are all Germans. That is not easy to forget.”
“Does a German drink coffee and whipped cream?” the Austrian asked sardonically.
“Does an Austrian remain unmoved by Goethe, by Beethoven, by Wagner?”
“By Wagner, my friend, all too often. And if you have Beethoven, so do we have Mozart. But I will admit the brotherhood. More binds us now than a matter of names and nations. He has made us one in more ways than the world understands.”
“Do you think that you will meet those of whom you have written there?”
Federhut laughed. “Do you think all the world a spy still, here in this free country? You recall the story of the three friends who met in a Berlin café”
“No.”
“The first friend sat down in silence. The second friend sat down and sighed. The third friend sat down and groaned. Then the waiter came over and said, ‘Gentlemen, I must ask you to refrain from this political discussion.’”
The thin edge of a smile met the saber cut. “Good,” the man nodded.
“Good,” Federhut agreed, “and true. But here we may speak out. So say it then—do I hope to meet in Hollywood these leaders of the refugee anti-Nazi movement?”
“Very well, I say it then. But do you?”
“Naturally. I hope to make contacts there invaluable to our cause. This F. X. Weinberg can hardly know with what eargerness I accept his invitation. It is sad,” he went on hesitantly, “that brothers must suffer; but we have been patient long enough. Schiller was wrong in his Ode to Joy. Millions cannot be patient forever for the better world—not even courageously patient. We must act.”
“We must act,” his companion repeated.
Chapter 3
TIME: Monday, July 17, 1939
PLACE: 221B Romualdo Drive
Romualdo Drive is one of those curvaceous little streets that intertwine like a cluster of angleworms on the hill southeast of the Hollywood Bowl. F. X. Weinberg had pulled every conceivable wire with the City Planning Commission to have Romualdo Drive rechristened Baker Street, but the Commission had remained adamant. Romualdo was a fine old Spanish name of noble memory (a statement not likely to be disputed by the long-dead Indians who had suffered under the lash of Don Diego Arturo Romualdo y Vegas), and we Angelenos must preserve our traditions. Street numerals, however, can hardly be considered objects of traditional veneration; and 221B was allowed to stand in the middle of the 2700 block, to the rejoicing of all Baker Street devotees and the intense confusion of the mailman.
Thus the Baker Street Irregulars (such of them, that is, as had been able to accept Mr. Weinberg’s invitation) were to be established in Hollywood proper, some ten minutes’ drive from the Metropolis studios. Just what claim to existence Hollywood, as an entity, may have is a matter for argument. As part of the city of Los Angeles, it has no separate political being. The United States Post Office knows nothing of such a city. Most of the major studios have long since moved off to sprawl more contentedly in the open spaces. Actors and directors live where there is room for swimming pools and a chance of becoming an honorary mayor. The tourist hunting stars at play is advised to seek them in Beverly Hills or in the strip of resorts located along Sunset Boulevard in the county of Los Angeles.
All that Hollywood has left to distinguish it from any other comfortably bourgeois community within a city are the footprints in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese, the corner of Hollywood and Vine, Morton Thompson, and the Brown Derby, where people lunch incessantly, hoping to be taken for actors by the others who are hoping to be taken for producers.
But Metropolis Pictures still remains in Hollywood, a desolate Casabianca. And in Hollywood, at 221B Romualdo Drive, Maureen was busy readying the household of the Baker Street Irregulars.
“This is your own bright idea, Maureen,” Mr. Weinberg had told her. “So Feinstein can take over the office today. You run this.”
And now it was four o’clock in the afternoon—a wonderful bright afternoon when you should be lying on the beach somewhere in the sun, or maybe better yet sitting under an umbrella beside a fountain of beer—and the press reception was at seven and nothing was ready. The house was of two stories—two big roomy stories—but at the moment it seemed to Maureen more like Groucho Marx’s stateroom. There were the men from the caterers, the staff of servants for the reception, the decorator’s men who had just remembered a few touches left unfinished, the cameramen from Maureen’s department planning suitable angles, and enough unidentified extras to cast a de Mille production. But there was no Mrs. Hudson.
That had been Mr. Weinberg’s own idea, after he had spent a hasty evening reading the Holmes works which he had purchased as story properties long ago. “At 221B Baker Street,” he said, “they had a landlady named Mrs. Hudson. So all right—we won’t give them a Japanese houseboy or a French valet. No—we’ll give them a housekeeper named Mrs. Hudson. And you, Maureen, will make a release on that.”
She had sent word to an employment agency: Wanted: One housekeeper, must be named Mrs. Hudson, to report at 221B Romualdo Drive at twelve noon, July 17. That morning the agency had phoned her. They had finally located a housekeeping Mrs. Hudson through their branch office in San Francisco. Should they have her fly down? They should, Maureen told them, and wondered at herself for taking such an utterly screwy commission in so calm a manner. She remembered when she had her first office job with the Atlas Paper Towel Supply Company and thought Mr. Murdock was eccentric because he smoked tiny cigars the size of cigarettes. Now an employer who smoked a hookah wouldn’t suprise her, even if he sat on a specially constructed mushroom to do so.
The doorbell rang. Maureen, explaining to the caterer that he had sadly underestimated the liquor supply—this was a press reception—broke off and hurried to the door. Maybe this was Mrs. Hudson. She could turn over the household to this nice motherly soul and get back to finishing those damned releases to be handed out at seven.
But it was a messenger boy.
“For
Stephen Worth,” he said. “Sign here.”
“Mr. Worth isn’t here.”
“O.K. Hold it for him.”
“I don’t know—”
“He’ll be here, won’t he?”
“I can’t say. I—”
The phone rang.
“Listen, lady,” the boy expostulated. “The guy that gave me this said this Stephen Worth was going to be here and I should leave this for him. Now will you sign for it”—the phone kept on ringing—“and let me get on with my job?”
“Oh—all right.” Maureen scribbled her initials, snatched the plain white envelope, and hurried to the phone.
“Ha-lo,” said a deep, vaguely foreign voice. “Two-two-one-B Bakair Street?”
“The City Planning Commission maintains it’s still Romualdo Drive.”
“Ah so? You are Miss O’Breen?”
“Yes”—impatiently.
“You will please to kindly inform Mr. Worth that I called and that I may see him later?”
“And what is your name?”
“Ah, that.” The voice laughed—a hearty gurgle that seemed to Maureen, in her state of tension, almost ominous. “You are efficient, Miss O’Breen. You must know everything, no? Even if it is not good to know.”
The doorbell rang.
“But how can I tell him you called if—”
“True. The admirable American logic. Na! You may tell him that I am concerned with Miss Gray, with Miss Amy Gray. Shall I spell it?”
“Amy Gray? All right. But if you would—”
“I hear that your doorbell rings. Goodby.”
A click sounded in Maureen’s ear. She made a hasty note on the back of the white envelope—that way Worth would be sure to get it, if indeed he came, which God forbid—and hurried to the door. Maybe this would be Mrs. Hudson.
It was a man who looked, oddly enough, as peculiar, with the same suggestions of the foreign and the sinister, as the voice on the phone had sounded. He was tall and bearded, with a felt hat pulled well over his face and, of all costumes on such a day, a heavy astrakhan-trimmed topcoat.
In silence he extended his card. Maureen looked up puzzled. “Whom did you want to see?” she asked, feeling as foolishly affected as she always did when trapped into a whom clause.
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars Page 4
