Late the next night there was a violent peal at the Apfel bell. At least it would have been a violent peal had not Irving thoughtfully disconnected the bell wires. The speech Mr. Wolfe had prepared died on his lips. While he was readjusting his mental processes a window opened overhead.
“Anything I could do for you, Mr. Wolfe?”
“Yes. I suppose you wouldn’t mind letting me into my garage, what?”
“—Th—th—” Mr. Apfel’s manner registered deep concern. “Too bad you went to the trouble to come away over here. I left our blooming garadge unlocked especial to save you th’ inconvenience—”
People without humor or imagination are usually at a disadvantage in affairs of this kind. Mr. Wolfe had rather a bad spell that night.
The following night it was quite cold and Mr. Wolfe retired early. Pressure brought to bear upon his front doorbell tore him from that sleep which comes to good and evil, history and literature to the contrary notwithstanding, and he was at the window nursing a stubbed toe before he even realized that he was awake. Borne on an icy blast, through the open window drifted the pleasant voice of Mr. Apfel:
“Sorry to disturb you so late, but would you mind opening for me the door to our blooming garadge? I need my blooming stepladder.”
Though Mr. Wolfe failed to honor this perfectly reasonable request, and even slammed down the window rudely, Irving whistled himself home. Life has compensations even for a man who has to do without his blooming stepladder all night.
The next time Mr. Wolfe found the garage tightly locked a light snow was falling. Mr. Wolfe let himself softly into his house. He fumed a little until Central took his number. Then he relaxed. He could hear the ringing in the next house. In his mind he had composed a little speech for the ears of Mr. Apfel—well, not exactly composed—adapted. It had been composed a few nights before by Mr. Apfel, who, desiring a can of paint at midnight and finding the Wolfe doorbell muffled, had had recourse to the telephone. And Mr. Wolfe, though he suspected blooming well who it might be, had nevertheless answered, because there always was the chance that it might blooming well not be. And besides when the dashed telephone is at your bedside it takes dashed strong nerves to withstand its appeal, what?
Lacking imagination, the very words his neighbor had used on that irritating occasion rolled sweetly in Mr. Wolfe’s mind. Only, when prolonged ringing failed to elicit any response, they began to lose flavor, and impatience seized him.
At last the casual voice of Central advised him that they didn’t answer, which, dash it all, was perfectly obvious, what? He bade her jolly well keep on ringing. Meanwhile the snow had covered his car with “ermine too dear for an earl.” Mr. Wolfe was not familiar with the American poets, and it is doubtful whether he would have recalled Lowell just at that moment anyway.
After the languorous voice of Central had assured him for the fourth time that they did not answer, Mr. Wolfe stepped out into the night and tried the Apfel back doorbell. It too had been bereft of all power for good or evil. Whereupon a great rage possessed Mr. Wolfe and he shook both the front and the back doors—not at the same time, however—and banged with his fists and pounded with a shovel, until a voice down the street bade him desist. Well, it amounted to that anyway. Though most of the words were in a blasted foreign idiom and sounded more like a man gargling a bad throat than any blooming language, Mr. Wolfe had no difficulty in gathering that it jolly well amounted to that. So Mr. Wolfe, having removed some of the ermine from his car, covered it over with his wife’s best couch cover and returned to the phone. Though he realized that he could not make them answer, still he had no intention of letting them sleep in peace. As Mr. Wolfe recalled, it is dashed difficult to sleep through a telephone barrage, what?
In the early morning Mr. Wolfe descended to see whether the blasted engine had frozen. It had. So had his wife’s best couch cover, which he justly suspected she would nag him into replacing. He was in a bad humor, and what made it even worse was the fact that the garage key had laid in an envelope right outside his front door all night, only he had not discovered it until daybreak. And when he learned later that the Apfels had been absent all night visiting relatives in Staten Island it was not an absence which made the heart grow fonder.
Neil, trying to adjust matters, arranged a meeting. But he could bring the discussion no further than the point where Mr. Wolfe was willing that Mr. Apfel should buy himself a key to fit his, Mr. Wolfe’s, lock. And Mr. Apfel was willing that Mr. Wolfe should buy himself a key for his, Mr. Apfel’s lock. But neither had any suggestions as to where the money was to come from to pay for the extra key to either lock, since it was entirely a matter of principle with both of them not to stand for the extortion of one solitary cent.
At last Mr. Wolfe was driven to exclaim: “It’s just his blasted spite, dash it! I’m getting a bit fed up on it. If he had a car in the garage, now, I’d have a key made for him. If he had even the faintest intention of ever putting a car in the blooming garage, I’d—”
“How do you know,” inquired Irving. “Who gave you a guarantee I ain’t?”
Mr. Wolfe did something with his upper lip which made Mr. Apfel continue hotly: “What would you say if I told you I got one picked out already—a new one too? No second-handed junks—”
“There now, uncle,” interposed Neil, who was having the time of his life, “you said if Irving were thinking of getting a car—well now, you hear, Irving says—”
Irving had a feeling he had gone too far. He rose with dignity.
“To show you which one is the spiteful one, Mr. Wolfe, here is a key,” depositing one on the table. “Your lock you could sell for junk. That’s all it’s good for. Some day you’ll learn, Mr. Wolfe, it don’t pay to be a piker. When I buy a lock I always buy myself two keys. I couldn’t stand to have nothing slipped over on me, Mr. Wolfe. But I ain’t the kind of a man that makes himself small for a quarter, which is more than some people could say, not mentioning no names.”
Some visiting friends left their car before Irving’s door. It was of prehistoric vintage. He was examining it with interest when Mr. Wolfe called out to him: “I say now, is that your new car?”
Irving, with a nervous glance in the direction of his own home, sought to discourage the conversation by not replying.
“I understood you to say,” continued Mr. Wolfe, “it was to be a new car, what?”
Irving retreated toward the house.
“This ain’t it,” he vouchsafed surlily.
“Oh, indeed!” Mr. Wolfe was plainly skeptical. “When do you expect yours, now?”
“I’ll send you a postal,” replied Irving, almost bumping into Bessie in the hall. But if she had overheard she gave no sign.
Only the next evening, returning from the office, he heard her voice at the telephone:
“It’s going to be a surprise for me, I’m sure. I told Arthur that day he was at your house for dinner—something made me feel it—and more and more lately I’ve thought he had it in his mind. Yes, I distinctly heard him say”—and when he entered the dining room her entire manner changed, and she continued innocently—“glove counter. I’ll be there. Goodbye.” Not three days later he ran into that grafter Saul Hermann on the L.
“Here’s that dollar I owe you,” said Hermann.
Irving nearly fainted, but he pocketed the dollar first. “I hear you’re getting a new car?”
Irving paled.
“What?”
“Ye-eh. Your mother-in-law told my wife. We’ll be round some night for a ride. News travels quick, don’t it?”
“I’ll say so!” admitted Irving.
He stopped off at the B & L Delicatessen—so called because the proprietors were named Sokol and Amstein.
“Call it a quarter of a pound,” said Sokol, and Irving’s conscience did not urge him to call attention to the fact that the scales registered a goo
d three-eighths. Believe me, lots of times when the store was so crowded you couldn’t get near the scales Sokol made enough mistakes the other way! “By the way, what kind of a car is it you got?”
Irving felt himself growing red.
“I got no car.”
“But you’re getting one, ain’t it?” inquired Sokol with such a thoughtful look in the direction of the scales that Irving hastened to answer, “Well, getting ain’t got.”
Sokol wrapped the cheese.
“With people like you, Mr. Apfel, it is. Everybody round here knows already about it. Your wife’s mother was in our other store and she told my partner. Like my partner says to her, ‘A man like Mr. Apfel—’” But what his partner had said about a man like Mr. Apfel the subject of the eulogy did not linger to hear. He was busy with thoughts of his own. All evening he was busy with them. Long after Bessie had gone to bed he sat there with pencil and paper, still busy. At last he put down the pencil.
“I won’t do nothing in a hurry,” he told himself, putting out the dining-room light. “I don’t want to do nothing rash. I’ll sleep on it and see how I feel in the morning.”
Well, in the morning he felt practically the same way, only worse. Breakfast held no interest for him, and though he propped the newspaper against the fruit bowl as usual, it was obvious that it failed to hold his attention.
Somewhere in the back of his brain Irving carried an Impression, gleaned no doubt from a perusal of the joke papers and shared by the small minority who have not tried to buy a car recently, that buying a car was a mere matter of letting it be known that you wanted one and then dodging those agents whose cars did not happen to appeal to your fancy. He even thought that the days of a prospective automobile purchaser were entirely made up of riding round in different makes of cars with salesmen eager to cut one another’s throats for his valued order. They say it used to be like that in the good old days. But, as they say in the third year at C. C. N. Y., O Tempora! O Mawruss!
Irving had many things to learn. The first was that the last thing that troubles the mind of an automobile salesman is your valued order. The next was that if you live in Brooklyn you must buy through a Brooklyn agency, and the third was that the last place on earth to look for an automobile is a Brooklyn agency. Six months they offered him—four months. One place promised that if anybody countermanded his order he might be fifteenth on the list to get the car. Three months he was offered, as if that ought to make him the King of Jerusalem! Three months! What couldn’t happen in three months? He might be dead! Or worse yet, Wolfe might be dead! Three months! Yo!
A secondhand car he might have had. But how did he know what kind of dreck they could hand him? And besides, what a satisfaction for Wolfe! An open car he might have had too. Just a coupé had to be grad so hard to get!
Certain it is no salesmen came to take him out for rides. In fact no salesmen came near him at all. Not even a cigar did he get. There he stood ready to shell out good cash, and nobody even wanted it. A live salesman could have sold him, eppes, a ten-thousand-dollar car. But a live salesman is even harder to find in these times than a ten-thousand-dollar car!
Determined to try every agency in town Irving came finally in the offices of the Birchland Company upon a friendly voice—the kind of voice that didn’t make you feel you had your nerve to call up about a nothing like a order for a automobile. This voice actually took his name and number and promised to call him back—did call him back, and told him he could have a coupé in six weeks!
Irving stopped off at the Brooklyn agency of the Birchland on his way home. Mr. Ring was an affable man. He actually seemed pleased at the prospect of getting Mr. Apfel’s order. He got it. The Birchland ain’t exactly the dearest car on the market, y’understand, but if you stand a Birchland coupé next to any other coupé, who knows the difference? And it don’t cost such a fortune to run neither. For the first car, who wants such a expensive elephant? After you learn to run it is plenty time for such expensive cars. And only six weeks to wait! Tra-la-la! For days Irving floated in a glamorous sort of haze, until in Opper’s Restaurant he ran into Julius Mayer, of the Jayem Company, Used Cars.
“Julius,” Irving could not resist asking, “what do you think about the Birchland?”
“I don’t have to think. I know.” Something about his voice gave Irving a sinking sensation—his gesture rudely dissipated the glamorous gaze. “You ain’t thinking of buying one, I hope?”
Irving denied it with perfect honesty. At that moment he was only thinking of how to get out of buying one.
“It’s a bunch of junk. There’s only one medium-priced car on the market. That’s a Huck.”
Irving crossed to the telephone booth. He could not get in because there was a man in there yelling his head off.
“Serves you right,” he was screaming. “A Huck? Who buys a Huck only a greenhorn? Didn’t I told you before you done it—‘Get a Hodge!” Max Baumann hailed Irving in passing.
“Know anybody wants to buy a car cheap?”
“No,” replied Irving gloomily; “what kind?”
“A Hodge. I want to sell it and get another Birchland like I had. Four years I had mine. Never no trouble—nothing. Were you trying to telephone?”
“No,” responded Irving, “I changed my mind. What was that you were saying about your Birchland?”
The beginning of February Irving took his first lesson. In two weeks the car would be there, and he meant to know how to run it. They sent to instruct him a little snip with a cigarette dangling from his pale lips and a superior way of talking about cylinders, exhausts, gears, and what not that gave Irving a pain. And though, under his guidance, Irving succeeded in getting the car to go, keep on going and stop most of the times he listed—and some of the times he didn’t list—still at the end of the lesson he felt discouraged. The cigarettel was such a feller, y’understand, he don’t know how to explain something so you could understand it. All he knows is how to make you feel like a fool if you don’t understand it.
“Throw out your clutch!” is all he knows to holler, when you don’t know what your clutch is, let alone where you should throw it! Such a feller only makes you nervous.
The second lesson Irving was ready for him. Pencil and paper he had with him.
“Now,” he demanded, “tell me what I do—but slow.”
The cigarettel sighed wearily.
“Connect your ignition.”
“You mean push round this button, ain’t it?” and Irving wrote, “Push round left-hand button.”
“Then?”
“Advance the spark—give her gas—”
The cigarettel demonstrated, his hands busy with the wheel.
Wrote Irving: “Push hands till it’s like a quarter past four,” and continued:
“Put foot on starting button. If it don’t, pull out choker—try again.
“See long stick is loose to jiggle round Neutral.
“See the break is off.
“Push hands till it’s like five after five.
“Push stick left and back—this is first.
“Put right foot on axellerator.
“Push out the left foot—push in the right.”
Nu? Ain’t that easier than all that guessing work? He makes such a paper for going into high, for stopping, backing up, everything. Then he learns them by heart, and if he forgets something, all he’s got to do is look up the paper. Ain’t that a cinch?
Sure! Only crossing Flatbush Avenue once he failed to perceive until too late that trolley cars were coming simultaneously from both directions. Whereupon half of him decided to hurry ahead, and the other half of him, quite independently, decided to back up. As a result of which the whole of him did something that was not written down on any of the papers, I guess, because the Birch came to a wholly non-strategic stop square across the car tracks. Irving forgot everything.
He even forgot where he put the papers. His memory was entirely engrossed with all the details of all the automobile accidents he had ever read of or heard of or witnessed. He even recalled how Mr. Wolfe on his first day out, in trying to pass round a truck, had grown rattled and run over a woman, who was suing for heavy damages. It even occurred to him that Mr. Wolfe should worry—he had insurance. But—he, Irving, had no insurance!
Meanwhile a chauffeur in back of him had described a breath-destroying arc, which he could witness out of the corner of his eye while making footless attempts—with both feet—to budge his car. And the two motormen, who had halted just when Irving was convinced that even if he escaped death he would never be the same, did not by their choice of language make it any easier for him to concentrate on the subject in hand. Nor did the interested attention of the bystanders, nor the instructions which the cigarettel was barking at him, move either him or the Birchland to any spectacular feats of locomotion. To Irving at that moment life was just one damn stall after another. Finally, when for a bent nickel you could have bought Irving’s entire stock in himself, the cigarettel gave a grab and a jab, and the Birchland continued serenely on its way.
And after a while Irving got the hang of the thing, and six weeks to the day after he had given his valued order he called Mr. Ring on the telephone. He really expected to hear that his car was there! Instead Mr. Ring explained affably that because of the cold no freight had been moved.
“Don’t you expect cold weather in winter? What’s th’ idea, promising to deliver a car in February if in cold weather you can’t deliver no cars? Did you think maybe this year we would have summer in February?”
“If,” suggested Mr. Ring coldly, “you feel like getting out of your contract, Mr. Apfel—”
Mr. Apfel did not. By no means.
“I was only going to say,” he concluded pleasantly, “when do you think my car will be here, if you don’t mind?”
The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery Page 31
