The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery

by Viola Brothers Shore

  O TEMPORA! O MAWRUSS!

  “God,” observed Neil Wolfe to his friend, Irving Apfel, in whose office they were seated, “loves the British, but he certainly gives the Jews the luck.”

  Irving selected one of two cigars his friend proffered him and tilted back his chair so that his six feet of broad-shouldered manhood made a perilous triangle with his desk and the floor. His square chin showed a late afternoon shadowing of blue, and his shiny black hair, wetly plastered back in wide, sleek ridges from his square forehead, suggested recent thought waves in the direction of home. But it was only five-forty-five, and an unwritten law among men forbade their leaving the office for another fifteen minutes.

  Neil Wolfe was half a foot shorter than his friend—blond, dynamic, forceful, with a magnificent bass voice and a sense of humor. He teased Irving as unmercifully as he bullied him, but Irving adored him.

  “I don’t know,” Irving replied. “I think it’s more smartness than luck.”

  “Don’t tell me, you big lucky stiff! My Uncle Abraham is smarter than any Jew I ever met—even you. But he just hasn’t got your luck.”

  “Luck? Luck? I don’t believe in it! Your Uncle Abraham is a risches ponem and that’s why things don’t go right with him.”

  “I don’t know what a risches ponem is, but it sounds bad, so I guess Uncle is it.”

  He was. If Abraham Wolfe could have taken this sorry scheme entire and molded it closer to the heart’s desire, there would have been in the recasting no Jewish charitable institutions. For one thing there would have been no one to support them. For another, there would have been no one to need them. No, Mr. Wolfe could never quite understand why the good Lord, having created the Church of England, had not called it a day and quit then and there.

  And the worst of it is, if you happen to be born a Wolfe, though you spell it with never so many silent e’s, and if in addition to Wolfe your parents have had the rummy notion to christen you Abraham, not all the baptismal water in England will wash away the suspicion that you are a true descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, don’t you know. Especially if God has seen fit to grace your countenance with a goodly allowance of British nose. And if the more you resent it the more the thing seems to stick to you, you get rather fed up on it after a while, what?

  Abraham Wolfe and his brother Charles had for many years owned homes in King’s Highway, a section of Brooklyn which had suddenly become so infested with kosher delicatessen stores that all the God-fearing Christians had to sell their homes—at a profit—and move elsewhere. But not Abraham Wolfe. He had a gymnasium rigged up in his attic. He had a vegetable garden at the back of his house, and to the left a concrete pathway led to the garage which his brother Charles had erected on their joint properties. His wife had a complete electric equipment, which Mr. Wolfe had solicitously installed for her at the expense of sundry manufacturers eager to have him recommend their wares. He would not consider moving away. He remained. So did a slight tendency toward acidity, which his doctor had hoped to cure only through the absence of all nervous excitement and annoyance.

  About three months after the death of Charles, Mr. Wolfe’s nephew Neil wrote to him—at his mountain hotel—that he had an offer for Charles’ house from his best friend. However, as he had promised to give his Uncle Abraham first say, did his uncle wish to purchase the house for nine thousand dollars? No, his uncle jolly well did not. Nine thousand dollars was too dashed much money. Besides, if the people were friends of Neil, don’t you see—why, there was no blooming sense in his buying it at all, what?

  Mr. Wolfe returned to find Irving Apfel et al installed next door. His acidity fairly waxed fat, figuratively speaking, on his mental anguish. And when almost immediately thereafter prices began to boom in King’s Highway, so that the house became worth double what Mr. Apfel had paid for it—and if Mr. Wolfe had bought it his bank balance would have been burdened with about nine thousand unearned dollars—he simply could not keep his mind from dwelling on his misfortunes, and he became so impregnated with acid that he had to drink his milk through a straw to keep it from curdling—really!

  Irving had fitted up half the garage, which they shared jointly, as a playhouse for little Ruthie, aged six. Mr. Wolfe had no use for his half. You see, he was Ruthless. Such was the pervasiveness of his acidity that an idea up in his brain began to ferment. In the end he bought a second-hand car. Irving was stunned by the news.

  “What do you mean—a regular automobile? That piker? How do you know?” he demanded of his wife.

  Bessie, a small armful of slim womanhood in a bungalow apron which entirely covered her dark blue dress, had seen him drive it into the garage. Her hair fluffed softly round her flushed little face, and in her eyes was a helpless sort of light, as though salad dressing were her soul’s despair. As a matter of fact, at making salad dressing, as at everything else her capable little hands undertook, she was invariably successful. Her expression—wistful, appealing, almost despairing—had nothing to do with the matter in hand, but was altogether a racial characteristic. You may have noticed it. It is very seductive and very misleading.

  “He needs a car,” commented her husband, “like I need a hole in the back of my head to let out the steam. For what does he need a car?”

  “For enjoyment probably,” suggested Bessie, puckering up her little mouth wryly at the taste of the salad dressing.

  “Enjoyment! Him? He don’t enjoy nothing only to see somebody fall down on a banana peel and break their necks. It’s dangerous to leave him walk round the streets—the kind of enjoyment he’s looking for! I don’t wish him no hard luck, only I hope he runs into a telegraph pole the first day. What kind of a car has he got?”

  “I didn’t notice. But you can run out and look while I—”

  “Yo! He should live so long! What do I care about cars anyway? I rather hire a taxi when I need it. Let somebody else get the headaches. I should go look what kind of a car he’s got! Yo!”

  However, a few minutes later, just when he happened to be examining the paint on the side of his house, Mr. Wolfe, with an air of casualness which ill concealed his low-minded exultation, came rolling out of the garage and drove away.

  “I should walk,” muttered Irving, heading for his back door and forgetting all about the paint, “while such a nothing rides round in a Fearless. D’y’ever see?”

  To Bessie he announced inspiredly out of a silence which had enveloped him throughout almost the whole of dinner: “I know why he done it!” He nodded his head knowingly. “He thinks we wouldn’t leave Ruthie play in the garadge no more! That’s why he got it! I knew it wasn’t only for pleasure. How I hate such a spite face! All he thinks about is spite—spite! But wait! I’ll show him!”

  Bessie raised questioning eyebrows from the complicated problem of disposing of a chicken wing with equal regard for good breeding and efficiency.

  “I got a good mind to buy one twice as big—he should plotz with aggravation!”

  Bessie betrayed a certain amount of interest. “You mean you’re thinking of buying a—”

  Irving interrupted her hastily:

  “Sure! Right away I’ll run out and buy a car! I was only thinking, if I’ll buy a car, so I’ll buy one it’ll take up twice the room in the garadge—he should bust his gall. Only I ain’t thinking about it yet.”

  And neither was he—consciously. But you know how it is, once the deadly germ has gained admission to your subconscious storeroom. How futile the antitoxins of prudence, caution, economy! How vain the preventive of previous good resolutions! You and I know that the best thing to do, once you have been bitten, is to go out and sign an application blank, thereby saving wear and tear on the gears and brakes of your willing centers. But Irving did not know.

  He fell asleep that night as easily as if there did not exist such a thing as autosuggestion. Poor Irving—already as firmly hooked as though he had pai
d his deposit and the check had gone through and he couldn’t even stop payment on it any more.

  And in this untroubled slumber he dreamed that he came riding home in a big, new, magnificent automobile—so big, so new, and withal so magnificent that beside it the car of Mr. Wolfe suggested something the ash man was carrying away the week after Christmas. And Mr. Wolfe, beholding it, became green with rage and began to sneeze and cough and sputter.

  Irving woke, thereby dissipating the dream. Not so the sneezing, coughing and sputtering. They belonged, it developed, to Mr. Wolfe’s car, which he, with noisy disregard for the slumbers of Mr. Apfel, was coaxing into the garage. It was eleven-thirty.

  Irving’s next dream was also of the car, only now it was late at night, and Mr. Wolfe, who had returned some time before, making a noise like goodness knows what, could be presumed to have entered his first delicious slumber. And now the car in which Irving rode was not only twice as big and three times as grand as Mr. Wolfe’s, but it was at least ten times as noisy. This dream was even more soul satisfying than the first, probably because it took place within the full consciousness of the dreamer.

  Well, as I said before, once you start thinking about automobiles, comes a day when such a feller nilly gives you a divorce from your heels, only instead of hurrying on like always, a-scared of your life, you stand still and even give him a shake with your fist, and “wait, you son of a gun!” or words to that effect, you mutter.

  Comes another day when you’re hanging on a strap making up your mind which you hate worse, post-mortem garlic or long since departed tobacco, and even the subway has to come up for air, and you can see such a bunch of nothings riding across the bridge in automobiles as if it was coming to them. And you shut your mouth tight, forgetting that you opened it on purpose you shouldn’t have to breathe through your nose, and something—something happens in your insides!

  And then—well, you know how it is yourself when you come home early from the office and your wife is giving a hand in the kitchen and you got nothing to do only sit on the porch and read the evening papers which you already found out got nothing in; and there on the lawn next door is a feller taking apart his car from head to tail light, and—well—not that you change your opinions of course, only—

  And one fine day you find that fellers with automobiles ain’t really such a terrible bore like you used to think. Really, to hear them talk don’t give you such a pain at all. Even, you ask them a few questions yourself. Asking don’t cost nothing. You even get to figuring, if you ever did get a car—you know, if you ever got to the point where you had to have it for your business, what kind would you get? And though you know positively that you ain’t in the least interested in buying a car, still you open a magazine at the back instead of the front—just for the reading. They really make them ads more interesting often than the stories nowadays. Honest!

  And whereas before you never took any notice of a car unless it picked on you first, now you begin to read the names on the wheels of all the automobiles you pass parked along the curb. And you try to make out the name plates on those that are coming toward you without malicious intent. It got to be a sort of game with Irving to see how far away he could spot the makes he knew. Many a time he crossed a street to verify a casual guess. Soon he began to be proud of the scope of his knowledge. It was this pride which—

  Far be it from me to indulge in any bromidiocies in regard to pride. Only, one Sunday morning as Irving and Bessie were walking down to her mother’s for dinner he began naming the cars as they passed. Of some he wasn’t exactly so sure, y’understand, but Bessie wouldn’t know the difference anyway. She didn’t. But she wasn’t altogether stupid. She regarded her husband with a little narrowing of the lids over her misleadingly helpless brown eyes. And when, upon arrival at her mother’s house, Irving made himself comfortable with the automobile section of the paper the look in her eyes deepened, and she remarked something to her cousin, Arthur Jacobi, the lawyer—a tall, wavy-haired, handsome youth, the pride of the family.

  “Why don’t you buy a car, Irving?” asked Arthur at dinner. “A rich man like you—”

  Irving started, his face dully red.

  “A car? What do I need with a car?”

  “You could come round Sundays and take Aunt Essie out for a ride.”

  “Yo!” Irving grunted. “If I made my money easy like you, maybe. But I ain’t a lawyer. I got to work for my living.”

  “We don’t want a car,” supplemented Bessie, “until we can really afford one. I don’t want to feel every time we puncture a tire—‘there goes my winter suit!’”

  “To hear you talk,” put in Irving, “you would think I’d deduct it from your allowance if a tire busted. And anyway if you get good tires they’re guaranteed eight or ten thousand miles.”

  “Sure! I’m surprised at you, Bessie! Here’s your husband dying to buy a car, and—”

  “Who? Me?” Irving’s indignation was enough to convict him. “I never even thought of such a thing!”

  Isn’t it a shame the way that automobile bug can make a liar out of an honest man? Why, just two nights before, watching Mr. Wolfe and his shadowy wife emerge half frozen from their open Fearless, Irving had lost himself with significant ease along a well-worn avenue of thought ending in a series of comparisons between the merits of open cars—even the most magnificent—and closed, even the more humble, which were all in favor of the latter. True, a sedan, for instance, wouldn’t take up so much room in the garage as the car which had heretofore occupied that place in Irving’s mental wanderings. But on the other hand, to see him come home nice and warm on such a night while Mr. Wolfe was perishing with the cold would be krenk enough for that gentleman. A big car was not such a bargain either, y’understand.

  “First place,” pondered Irving, “you got too much room in it. Your friends are all the time expecting you to take them along, and especial your wife’s family. Not that you wouldn’t take them along once in a while for a ride, but—you know how it is with people you take out in your car—they always got their pockets sewed up. And especially the women should ever think of shelling out a dollar, God forbid! Your wife’s mother, for instance. Not that she ain’t a grand woman. But you don’t need to see her every day for your happiness. Between you and I, for your happiness you wouldn’t need to see her at all. Even, a cup-pay might be better than a sedan. If people weren’t grad so comf’table they wouldn’t come along all the time. And if Ruthie had to sit on the little seat every time Bessie wouldn’t be so quick to invite along every Tom, Dick and Julius.”

  Yes, a coupé was the thing. Not that he was thinking about buying a car of course!

  One day he noticed a shiny new padlock on the door of the garage.

  “What’s th’ idea?” he demanded, bearding old man Wolfe on his back porch. “Trying to lock me outa the garadge? I own half that garadge!”

  “I say don’t get so dashed excited! I’ve got to protect my blooming property, what?”

  “I don’t know nothing about your blooming property. I only know you got no right absolootly to keep me outa my garadge.”

  “I say, don’t be a bally ass! I’ll let you in any time you like, you know. But my blasted insurance—”

  “What I got to do with your blasted insurance? All I know is, you got no right positively to put a padlock on my property. Every time I want to go in my own garadge I should ask yet your permission? You should live so long!”

  “I don’t see what you’re going to do about it—really.”

  He found out the following Sunday night, as with a creaking of gears, a honking of horn and a screeching of brakes he arrived at his garage, and stepping out of his car began fumbling in his pocket for his keys. Suddenly his eye was caught by something on the door, and inspection having verified his worst suspicions, language began to issue from his lips, which, though perfectly good English, was by the sa
me token decidedly more English than good.

  As he reached the Apfel porch the door was opened noiselessly and the friendly voice of his neighbor assailed him:

  “Did you want to get in the garadge, Mr. Wolfe?”

  With biting sarcasm Mr. Wolfe responded: “You don’t suppose I jolly well want to leave my blooming car in the street, what?”

  “No,” replied Mr. Apfel seriously. “I stayed up on purpose to leave you in, because I know what a inconvenience it is to be locked outa your own garadge.”

  “I say, look here now,” began Mr. Wolfe, who had found that even the most biting sarcasm wasn’t a dashed bit of good with the blooming rabble, “what’s the dashed idea of having two blooming locks on the door?”

  “To protect my property.”

  “Property! Why, dash it, you haven’t any bally property!”

  “I beg your pardon”—Mr. Apfel’s manner was one of wounded dignity—“I got a belly stepladder and two belly cans of paint. And you know how expensive paint is nowadays!”

  “But, dash it all, one lock is enough!” spluttered Mr. Wolfe.

  Irving shook his head sadly.

  “You might forget to lock it some time, and my insurance—”

  Mr. Wolfe made a noise in his throat.

  “See here, you know, that’s all bally rot! How am I going to get in my blooming garage?”

  “I’ll leave you in any time you want—in our blooming garadge.”

  “But—but—but how am I going to get my blooming car if you’re out?”

  “The same way I’ll get my blooming stepladder if you’re out.”

  Too bad Mr. Wolfe could not at that moment have been put to the acid test. He would have sailed through on high.

  “I say,” he shouted furiously to his retreating neighbor, “that’s all bally rot! I won’t stand for it, dod rot it!”

  “I don’t see,” replied Irving, “what you’re going to do about it—dod rot it!” he flung over his shoulder as an afterthought.