Pendragon had taken up a huge, jewel-encrusted dagger from the chest, as the woman, semiconscious, was placed before the altar. When the woman began to writhe in awakening, her face turned toward the crowd, I grabbed Mr. Benchley and said, “We’ve got to stop this! They’re going to kill Dvoyra!”
“From the size of this crowd, and those two huge women guarding her—by God, Chico was right, they’re as big as Sumo wrestlers!—with all these people, I think we have little chance to stop them.”
“We have to try somehow!”
“Perhaps a diversion,” suggested Lord Wildly.
“Look, Pendragon’s handing Groucho the dagger!”
Lord Wildly said, “Why that takes the biscuit! All right, soldiers, keep your peckers up while I’m off to ring up the police.”
“Whatever you do, don’t say anyone’s life is at stake; say there’s an orgy in progress—they’ll get here more quickly.”
“Right-o! I’ll go like the clappers!”
We watched in wary astonishment, as Groucho accepted the dagger and shouted nonsensical blather at Pendragon. Then he walked around to where Dvoyra lay, awake now and screaming, and began an incantation over her. Groucho rocked back and forth over her body, davening like a pilgrim at the Wailing Wall, muttering incoherently. Ending the incantation, he leaned deeply over the woman and drew his cape over her head as he did so. Words were exchanged and when Groucho emerged, her screaming had stopped, although the look of terror remained.
Chico and Harpo rushed up to stand beside Groucho, and when Pendragon objected, Zeppo told him that these were the Grand Master’s “Interlocutors,” whatever that meant outside of a minstrel show. I was to find out.
The Brothers were trying to buy time, I could see that. Zeppo announced that the Interlocutors would interrogate the virgin to be certain she was the appropriate sacrifice to the Lord of Darkness. Pendragon began to object, but a Germanic-spouting Groucho pointed to a chair and ordered him to “szitzen ze down!”
Chico asked Dvoyra, “What’s new?” And when she didn’t respond he announced to Groucho, “She’s not a virgin!”
“Haden zi pecker!”
“Ya!”
“What is he talking about?” demanded Pendragon, growing more suspicious by the moment.
“She’s not a virgin,” said Zeppo.
Chico explained, “There was this boy she knew in seventh grade, you see—”
“Something’s not right here,” hissed Pendragon. “What’s going on?” he thundered. “Who are you people?”
Groucho spat out fake German.
“He’s not speaking German.”
“He is,” said Zeppo. “He’s got a speech impediment is all. You’ll hurt P.P.’s feelings if you make fun of him. Even his countrymen can’t understand what he’s talking about half the time, that’s why he takes me along everywhere. ”
Again Groucho shouted indistinguishable blabber.
“What did he say?” asked the leery Pendragon, rocking back and forth from heel to toe and poised to strike.
“I said,” shouted Groucho in native Manhattan inflection, “don’t forget who’s holding the damn dagger!” Mr. Benchley and I pulled off our hoods.
Three things happened simultaneously: The salon was stormed by a regiment of New York City police officers entering on the blast of police whistles to throw the entire room into wild confusion. As people tried to escape to other regions of the apartment, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo wrestled the two Amazon women to the floor. As all hell broke loose, Mr. Benchley ran to Dvoyra Katzenelenbogen’s rescue, lifting the drugged and dazed woman off the altar and placing her down in a safe corner for me to minister to while he returned to help a very cornered Groucho Marx.
“I wouldn’t step any closer,” Groucho warned Pendragon. “There’s a man behind you with a stick, and if you try to lunge at me, he’s going to lay that bat on your head!”
Mr. Benchley tapped Pendragon on the shoulder, and when he turned around swinging, Mr. Benchley ducked in time to avoid the blow. But a little fast footwork by my friend—a leg kicked out at just the right moment—sent Pendragon down on his face.
This did not stop the warlock for very long. He rose to his feet and turned slowly toward Mr. Benchley, and like a bull rushing a matador, drove himself head-first into the midsection of my friend, which sent Mr. Benchley violently to the floor. As the monster stood brazenly over his victim, ready to pounce with the full force of his massive weight on top of Mr. Benchley’s chest, I screamed. Pendragon’s sidekick, Ralph the Ravisher, moved in to assist his master in a brutal pummeling. I turned to look at Dvoyra, the poor haggard-looking thing, and I figured she’d be safe enough without me for a few moments while I went to help my friend. As Pendragon was about to stomp, Mr. Benchley rolled away in time to avoid the deadly impact.
As I crossed the dozen steps to my friend, not knowing how I might be effective, I was pushed aside by Aleck, who seemed to come from out of nowhere. With unusually brisk dexterity for a man of such weight, he made for the fight, his knob-headed ivory walking stick striking the crown of Ralph the Ravisher with all the aplomb of Astaire and the power of Ruth.
Pendragon’s big mitts were encircling Aleck’s thick neck in a stranglehold when Lord Wildly arrived, and with several well-placed blows Tristan put the monster out of commission. Down to the ground slumped the warlock, now rendered harmless. All of us looked at Lord Wildly for what seemed a long, disbelieving moment. He answered our unspoken query: “Jiu Jitsu.”
By this time, Zeppo had joined Mr. Benchley and Groucho on the stage, and the three of them sat down on the backs of the fallen Pendragon and his sidekick, Ralph, while Aleck summoned policemen forward to handcuff the brutes.
As for Harpo and Chico, things were not so easy: The men were small, the women strong. But they clung onto the women’s backs like rodeo bronco-riders, and it was only when a fist-fight broke out a few feet away between the acolytes and police officers that a rogue fist slammed into one of the matrons, sending her back down to the floor, thereby freeing Chico to kick the piano-legged shins of Harpo’s ornery critter, until she, too, took a right to the jaw.
A second battery of policemen charged into the room, which was filled with people running around in confusion. The acolytes had covered themselves again, their hoods pulled down over their heads to protect their identities, but the policemen, intent on identifying the participants of the orgy, were pulling off the hoods. I recognized a famous restaurateur, a Wall Street wizard, and a society matron I’d met at a Swopes weekender on Long Island last summer.
I wrapped a shivering and disoriented Dvoyra in the black robe I had been wearing. Although she was a bit woozy from having been drugged, she managed to get to her feet. I searched for Lord Wildly through the chaos of black-hooded-and-robed people being herded by the police, but then turned my attention to finding an officer to help me with Dvoyra. After I briefed him on the circumstances of her condition and assured the girl herself that she was in safe hands until I might rejoin her, the officer carried her from the room.
In a few minutes, things started to settle down so that I was able to spot Lord Wildly being roughly manhandled by a cop near the entrance to the reception room. I pushed through the crowd, strangely ignored by the police roundup, and when I arrived at his side I saw that Detective Morgan was about to place a very belligerent Wildly in cuffs.
“Lord Wildly did make the call to the police,” I insisted. “The brute being led out over there is Luther Pendragon, and he and his company of misfits were about to sacrifice the life of Miss Katzenelenbogen to their lord, Satan. So you can just let Lord Wildly go. He’s with me and my friends over there, come to rescue the woman.”
“I should arrest you and your friends for butting into my investigation. I don’t know how this Pendragon character fits into the murders, but if you’re telling me he and his friends here were going to kill that girl, that’s something we’ll look into.”
“I’ll swear
an oath to the fact he had murder in mind,” announced Mr. Benchley, a humdinger of a welt rising on his cheekbone.
“Me, too,” agreed Groucho, as my team straggled over.
“I join in, too, in whatever they tell you,” said Chico.
Zeppo said, “Add me to that list.”
Harpo just whistled and nodded and drew his index finger across his neck.
“So, you’re saying Pendragon murdered the spiritualists?”
“Sure looks like it.”
“Could be he killed Miss Ada, but Madame Olenska? With Benny Booth’s gun?”
We all looked at each other for an answer, some reasoning that might make sense that Pendragon had obtained the weapon from Benny’s suite at the Waldorf.
“The young Booth is not a killer,” said Aleck.
“Look here, Woollcott, keep your opinions to things you know about.”
“Oh, Detective, I know about you, all right, and I’d love to give you my opinion on that matter, but we’ll just let you blunder through, blunder
through . . . .”
My friends—all except Aleck—were bedraggled from the melée: evening suit jackets and ties askew, stud buttons popped, and all of them smelling of sweat and the smoke of burning cannabis. With Aleck’s last word, we all took our cue to ignore the detective, and he didn’t stop us as we moved through to the reception room.
“That was exhilarating,” said a pompous Aleck, twirling his stick like a majorette. “I saved your life, you realize that, don’t you, Bob? That man was about—”
“Yes, yes, thanks much, Aleck, old sport,” replied Mr. Benchley, trying to reposition a popped-out and bent shirtfront.
“You now owe me.”
“On the contrary! In Chinese culture, the person who saves one’s life is bound for life to serve the person he saved.”
‘Well, I’m not of the yellow race. You are obligated.”
“All right, then, in some cultures, what you just said amounts to a marriage proposal. Gertrude wouldn’t like it.”
“Oh, Bob!” said Aleck, changing the subject. “I almost forgot to tell you. While you were off on this escapade, I called Joe to alert the troops that you’d not returned by one o’clock, like you asked me to do. He told me to tell you and Dottie that the attorney handling Madame’s estate got back to town late this evening and returned Morgan’s telephone call.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. Let’s get out of this hell hole and I’ll tell you all about it in the cab.”
“I’m fit for the knackers’ yard,” droned a rather ragged and rumpled Lord Wildly, as we went to fetch Dvoyra, who was settled on the sofa, a police officer standing guard. Lord Wildly took her hand, patted it, and said, “Chin up, old girl, it’s been a poxy time, but you’re off Queer Street, now, what?” Then, eyes landing on Groucho, a vision of dishevelment, his false beard and brows askew, globs of spirit gum hanging oddly from his face as he led his brothers to meet us: “Crickey! You’re all over the shop!”
“All over the shop, on the wrong page, and fit to be tied!” Groucho replied.
Detective Morgan wanted to take Dvoyra downtown to the station. But after only a few questions, and trying without much success to convince the terrified woman to press charges against Luther Pendragon and his cronies (she was out of her mind with fear of retaliation), he said I could take her back to my hotel, on condition that later in the morning, after a few hours’ sleep, she would come down to the station to make a statement. Without further threats, other than a feeble sneer, he left us.
From out of nowhere the thought hit me: “The chest, the book, the key, and the dagger!”
“And while you’re at it, the bell, the book, and the candle!” said Groucho. “Don’t bother to go looking for them. They’re all gone.”
“But who—”
“A person dressed in a black robe and hood. I’ll know him when I see him.”
“That’s just dandy!” I said. And then: “Of course, Caroline Mead!”
The maid answered the bell . . .
Percival Peckinpah—
Friends call him P.P., loves Coney Island hot dogs.
Young Luther Pendragon
Pendragon today
Detail of monsters on the Dakota
Satanic ritual— Macabre parlor game
Chapter Twelve
After a tearful reunion with Dvoyra and Chaim at the hotel, Lord Wildly joined the Brothers at a speakeasy that never closes, Aleck returned to his apartment for a good night’s sleep, and Mr. Benchley and I returned to my rooms for a nightcap to help us wind down after our rather wild evening. I filled an ice bag for Mr. Benchley’s face.
“Does it matter that Caroline took the things?” asked Mr. Benchley, referring to the chest, book, key, and dagger.
“I suppose not. They belonged to Madame O, all except the key.”
On the cab ride home, Aleck had given us the few details Joe had told him about Madame’s will. According to attorney Moore, who had returned to town this very evening, the bulk of Madame’s estate went to Caroline, which included her share of the house on Washington Square. There were small bequests to several other people.
But while attorney Moore was out of town, Madame Olenska insisted on making changes to the document with the elder Mr. Billings of the firm, Billings, Billings and Moore, who then sailed for a grand tour of Europe with his grandson on the evening of the day Madame signed the new document. Detective Morgan expected to hear from Mr. Moore as soon as the latter retrieved the document on his return to the office in the morning.
“Perhaps the chest does belong, now, to Caroline,
but the key belonged to Ada. Do you think
Caroline was in cahoots with Pendragon all along?”
“That’s possible. It’s almost as if the sisters were sharing the responsibility for safeguarding the items. They must have believed they held some supernatural power.”
“But, were these objects things one would murder for?”
“Murder? Why, my dear Mrs. Parker, Pendragon was ready to kill Dvoyra in sacrifice to Satan. Why wouldn’t he kill?”
“I can’t believe Caroline would have anything to do with the murders. After all, she lived with Madame for quite some time, and she could have removed the chest at any time—made it appear it had been stolen. Why murder?”
“You know, Mrs. Parker, from all we’ve gathered about Madame Olenska, from Lord Wildly, the Katzenelenbogens, Rabindranath, and the Brents, even the disagreeable Caroline Mead—well, they’ve all painted a very attractive picture of the spiritualist: a woman of compassion and generosity. Could she have been a cunning blackmailer and Satanist in disguise?”
“Madame appeared to be well set. Why blackmail somebody for the paltry sum of ten thousand dollars? Benny’s a rich man—why not ask for more? Could we be wrong? Is Benny lying about the blackmail?”
“You think there was some other reason he went to the house after the séance?” asked Mr. Benchley.
“We were dead wrong about the Katzenelenbogens.”
“Benny Booth appears an all-right sort of guy, if plagued with too much money and an easy mark for the card sharps,” said Mr. Benchley. “What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Benny has too much money, you said.”
“Yes, well, you did know he’s a Booth?”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” I laughed—as if family wealth and position ever mattered to me. A high standing on the Family Register was a negative factor where I was concerned. I’d been married to a Connecticut Parker, and although I loved Eddie, I found his family loathsome: looking down their noses at this little Jewish girl, and anyone else who aspired to arts and letters. Their philosophy is: It doesn’t matter what you do with your life, as long as your pedigree has been established. Shit, even thoroughbred horses have got to perform well at the track to steer clear of the glue factory! As Mr. Benchley has been quoted, “It doesn’t matter what you do so much
as that you do it in evening clothes.” I suppose you might say my experience has left me suspicious of “people of quality.”
“Sorry, my dear, thought it common knowledge. He’s a Boston Booth.”
“Whoopee!” I replied, the word dripping sarcasm. “So he’s not from the Booth lineage of theatricals. Didn’t one of them shoot Lincoln?”
“Be a good girl, now. He likes to gamble—badly, from what we’ve heard.”
“He’s an easy mark.”
“Oh, I don’t know if he is or not. He just loses more than he wins.”
“He’s vulnerable—rich, but still vulnerable. Lost a wife, an infant son, his best friend . . . then he married Bette. Now he’s a fugitive. I can’t think about this any more. Fill my glass—be a dear,” I said, heading for the bathroom.
I scrubbed the night’s grime from my face and splashed cold water on my eyes. After stepping out of my dress, I searched for my dressing gown, and remembered that I’d sent it down to the laundry. I fetched an old, slightly worn silk wrapper from my bathroom closet. It was there—on top of a heap of clothing fallen to the floor where I had nestled earlier that evening during the cocktail party—the yearbook I’d taken from Caroline Mead’s room. I threw on the robe and carried the yearbook into the living room, setting it down on the coffee table. Mr. Benchley handed me a drink and was about to settle in the easy chair when the telephone rang. “Be a dear and get that for me, Fred.”
“‘Be a dear’; I’m only a dear when you want me to do your bidding.”
“That’s a dear, do my bidding, please, Fred.”
“Oh, all right, since you put it that way,” he said with a sigh, as he reached for the phone and then handed me the receiver.
It was Heywood informing us that after a joy-ride through Brooklyn—with a stop at Coney Island for hotdogs, popcorn, and a romantic gambol through the Tunnel of Love—he, Ross, and FPA had brought the real Percival Peckinpah to the police station and handed him over to Detective Morgan. While there, they learned some grim news.
[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong Page 24
