“Oh—I see,” she nodded. “So you’ll be beaming on me from the front row, eh?”
“I shall be regarding you paternally—yes,” he said. “And I—but, Elsa, I am keeping you, I know, from framing up the brilliant defense which I am sure you will offer—and of getting together your corps of valuable witnesses, and all that, and—and so I’ll be vamoosing.” He rose. “Too bad—” he chuckled with his tongue. “Too bad, really, that this defendant called for a trial so quickly—as tonight—for it doesn’t give you, Elsa, a chance to frame the really brilliant defense which I’m sure ordinarily you would offer.”
She too rose, businesslike.
“Yes, isn’t it too bad? For it does prevent me from making a proper defense. However, it may interest you to know that I don’t really need any defense! For no less an expert than Aunt Li—and oh yes, that in turn reminds me at least to thank you for the hope that the match I touch to your valuable real-estate document will be nice and hot!—it really may interest you, Uncle, to know that my actual calling on Mumbo Jumbo tonight, coupled with the wish that I get hold of that paper, will insure that I get hold of it all right!—anyway, as I started out originally to say, I’ll need no defense, tonight, because—but haven’t you,” broke off, “forgotten your fides Achates?”
“My—fydies—H-80’s?” he repeated uncomprehendingly. “And what the devil is—” But he looked all over himself, and even passed a hand lightly over his head to assure himself that his hat was thereon. “What the devil, Elsa,” he inquired peevishily, “do you mean by fydies—”
“Oh, your bumbershoot, of course,” she said exasperatedly.
“Good God, of course!” he ejaculated. And pirouetting about, reached over to where he had stood it against the wall. “My third occasion today of leaving that behind. But what did you mean by fydies H-80’s?”
“Oh, that means,” Elsa explained wearily, “ ‘faithful friend.’ I forgot that you didn’t study either Latin or Greek at Hog Hollow Coll—I mean Davetown U. ‘Faithful friend,’ ” she went on hurriedly, “it means. Or—or loving dog that trots ever behind one, tongue hanging out, eyes beaming love—though your ‘dorg,’ you say, stays behind—now and then?”
“By God, Elsa,” he said admiringly, “but that’s aptly put!” He was most amiable now. And, oddly enough, not miffed at all because of her nearly calling his alma mater “Hog Hollow College!” “My umbrella is exactly like a dog! But one of those confounded dogs, don’t you know, who—when you’re about to leave a place—is maliciously withdrawn under the table—or—or back of the door—or God knows where—and so off you go without him.” He held the umbrella up. “Dog—that’s exactly what you are!”
He faced Elsa again. “By Godfrey, Elsa, when you were a little girl you used to have some profound philosophical ideas—your father’s mouth used to fall wide open at some of the things you pulled—and you’ve certainly propounded one today. Such as—”
“—why is an umbrella like a dog,” Elsa said flippantly—and also sarcastically—now completely distrusting any of her uncle’s compliments. “But speaking of umbrellas,” she persisted, for to her the psychology of the whole Moffit tribe had always been a fascinating labyrinth to be explored, “speaking,” she repeated, “of umbrellas—well, since I’m 99.999 per cent convinced, Uncle, that you intend to slap a transfer of that property on record when—er, that is, if—I lose that case tonight—and I’m a thousand per cent convinced that when you do, I’ll never talk to you again, so help. me God!—well, do you mind at least satisfying my curiosity before you and I go into the great silence—you never would thus far, you know—do you mind satisfying my curiosity as to why you’ve carried that fool thing that’s now in your hands—for years—day and night—rain or shine—stars or clouds—heat wave or cold wave—”
“I haven’t carried this ‘fool thing’—as you term it,” he replied, now patently miffed, “ ‘for years.’ Since I only bought it this morning—at a second-hand umbrella stand near the Boston Store. To take the place of my other one which, like the dog you spoke of just now—”
“Just stayed behind somewhere?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, why,” asked Elsa, still sarcastic, “didn’t you go back—and whistle—and call ‘Here dorg’?”
He surveyed her pityingly. “I am beginning to doubt now that you have the philosophical mind with which I just credited you. Else you wouldn’t be so flip—listen—did you never carry an object—or a garment—with you everywhere you went—but I see no—well, if you had, you would have found that not only would you be inclined to leave that kind of an object behind, everywhere you stopped—”
“If,” Elsa qualified coolly, “I were a ‘haid-fog—’—I mean, if I had the Mind Moffitian, yes—but go ahead?”
“If you had just a pinch of the Moffit mind in your Colby cerebellum,” he retorted, acrimoniously, “you might be able to figure out a way to clear that 100 per cent guilty crook client of yours tonight! And—but let it pass. As I was attempting to say, before I was brutally and discourteously interrupted, if you were wont to habitually carry a particular object with you everywhere you went, you would find that you’d be inclined to leave it, willy-nilly, here, there, and everywhere—and, on top of that—and to boot!—when you ultimately did find you had done just this, you wouldn’t be able to remember at all just where you’d left it, so that—”
“If,” she came back tauntingly, “I had a mind like that of a Moffit: Sylvester—Silas and Saul! But go ahead. And do you buy another umbrella, Uncle, every time you leave yours somewhere? I’m not ribbing you, really. I’m interested.”
He surveyed her suspiciously.
“If you are ribbing me,” he said gelidly, “enjoy yourself!” And added, warningly: “While—you can! And if you’re not,” he added, “I will show you that one member of our family at least can display courtesy to others in it.”
He stood a moment, his chin held inordinately high, obviously reveling in the superiority attained by being both confidential and hypercourteous in this verbal set-to.
“No,” he said, arrogantly, “I naturally don’t buy another umbrella without first trying to figure where on earth I left the one I had—no! And which does involve, often—thanks perhaps to a—er—slight idiosyncrasy in the otherwise very fine Moffitian mind!—everything from near brain fever to the use of calculus, logarithms, logic and God knows what else. No, I don’t buy another without retracing all my steps—over all the places I’ve been in the few hours before I discover it’s gone—and either catching up with it, in case rain hasn’t started, or—”
“Oh, yes. I get it! If rain starts in before you recover it—the jig is up.”
“Practically, yes,” he said, with supreme dignity. “People being of the dishonest nature that they are. But now that you have the facts of my little idiosyncrasy, I presume you will find it quite impossible to believe that a person could leave behind him such an essential part of his being as his umbrella, and—on top of that, forget so utterly exactly where he had left it that—”
“Not at all! The blood Moffit—Sylvester—Silas and Saul. Or, putting it scientifically, when the conscious mind tries to follow the vagaries of the subconscious—it’s like a rheumatic elephant trying to catch a fox.”
“An apt simile,” he said, without the vestige of a smile, “if only you’ll leave out the unnecessary cracks against the Moffits. And now again I’ll be going. And holding tightly, this time, to my umbrella so as not to clutter up—the while you’re preparing an important case!—your very efficient premises with it as I did a certain cigar store—’way back on October the 22nd, this year a.d.!—with my lucky umbrella. Yes—”
“Wait! Lucky umbrella? And October 22nd? Why, that was only yesterday.” And poor Elsa, confronted with her first case in court—and that case as good as lost—swung suddenly backward in time, as though she were h
anging onto a long cosmic rope, across 10,000 years: from the age of philosophical concept to the era of sheer rank superstition. “What—what cigar store,” she asked cunningly, “didja leave it in? Or—or maybe your equations are just wrong—maybe you left it on a streetcar—or on a train—or in an elevator—or at someplace you stopped off ahead of the store—or—or someplace you stopped off after leaving it—you know, Uncle, with nearly every cigar store in the city carrying that giant Jumbo cigar above the counter, your subconscious mind may see yourself leaving that in the rear—and thinking it was your umbrell—but what cigar store didja leave it in?” Her face was the picture of innocence.
“The store,” he said contemptuously, “if it will make you any happier to know, is known as The Whistling Jim.
And in case,” he added scornfully, “you’ve any idea of sneaking over there and recovering my lucky umbrella for yourself—just forget it! For the lying dog of a proprietor, who was on duty himself when I went in there, naturally maintains it wasn’t left there; and now that he’s committed himself, he’ll stand on that till hell freezes over.”
“And chances are,” Elsa spiritedly defended the owner, Mr. Whistling Jim, “that he may be telling God’s own truth. For after all, if you’d distinctly remembered having left it there, you’d have gone immediately back after it. And so—”
“That’ll do,” he said, still with extreme contemptuousness. “Our budding barrister forgets there is something in the world that sometimes supplements definite knowledge. Something known as logic.”
“Oh yeah? Logic, heh? Seems to me I took a whole course in that—in college. But let’s hear your 24-karat logic?”
“Quite! Well, my dear budding barrister, it is true that I have no recollection whatsoever of either carrying forth my umbrella—or of not doing so—but I do know that I passed an umbrella seller, squatting on the sidewalk up the street, and he held out an umbrella to me and said: ‘Umbrella, sir? Rain’s but 5 minutes off.’ And umbrella sellers don’t try to sell people who already have one. Q. E. D.”
“Okay! And now I’ll hand you a piece of logic. When I first came into this building, there was a blind man in this block who sold chocolate bars on sunny days, and umbrellas on gray days—and who could just sense whether a person was obscuring his light—crossing his vision, in other words. And he could smell rain like nobody’s business. And he’s been gone for ages. Now if by any chance that gink who offered you an umbrella is this gink—or was blind anyway—well, where’s the old logic now? Q. E. D.!”
He surveyed her contemptuously.
“Your whole example,” he said coldly, “is made up out of whole cloth. For this fellow—hm!—” he broke off, “by Godfrey, Elsa, you might have something at that—in that, I mean, I might have left my lucky umbrella somewhere ahead of the cigar store—and fastened on the big Jumbo cigar as a false recollection that I left it there.” He passed a hand over his forehead. “By Godfrey, maybe it is an utter delusion altogether—my thinking I left it in that Whistling Ji—come to think of it now, when I entered that pipe store, which was before that, to glance at their stock and see if by any chance they had a giant teakwood pipe like old Sam Hollery’s, I was without—by God!—now I do remember—it was before I even went into the pipe store—it was when I stepped into that new sausage emporium to see if they had any Czechoslovakian metwursts—I leaned the umbrella against the counter—and walked off withou—but no, when I was asking the newsboy outside for a Weekly Real Estate News, a quarter minute later, thinking yesterday’s date was today’s, I leaned on the umbrell—no, by God, I leaned on the trolley post—good Christ, Elsa, why didn’t you leave me be? Here I was at least absolutely certain ’twas the cigar store—even though the lying bastard of a Whistling Jim himself does say no—and now you’ve started me—at any rate,” he broke off, with a note of finality, “it would have had to be the Whistling Jim, or the pipe store, or the sausage store, because that umbrella seller outside the Whistling Jim tried to sell me one—and by God he wasn’t blind—although, of course, he may have learned to cover it up by looking straight at a prospect—well now, that makes it possible that I left it on the streetcar that I took after I left the Whistling—”
“It’s a gift!” Elsa said fervently. “And only squirrels and Moffits have it! Oh yes, Uncle. And you can just chop off that red-hot retort that’s trying to escape you. Only squirrels and Moffits have it, I say! For in identically the same way has Saul lost—and irrecoverably—no less than four—” She was going, of course, to say, “pairs of historical spectacles,” but realized, both from her experience of the last few minutes and the thundercloud on her uncle’s face, that if she did, the whole conversation was due to fly pyrotechnically off again like a comet into interstellar space.
“It’s a gift,” she repeated reverently. “And for the sake of the limited time we both have, let’s drop the subject. Instead, tell me how I can get an umbrella blessed—quickly tonight—so that it will be lucky?”
He grinned malevolently at her. “You can’t! You can’t just make an umbrella lucky, my girl. It has to have been accomplished through—now damn it, I remember I was sizing up the handle of it as I went out of the pipe store, and figuring what an odd pipe could be made out of it; so that not only cuts out the pipe store and the sausage store entirely, but confirms the absolute mental picture I have of its being tucked under my arm when I went into that Whistling Jim cigar sto—unless, by God, I leaned it momentarily against that drugstore wall while I was searching for my keys, and walked off withou—or, again, laid it on the seat of that streetcar, and got up in a hurry when I reached my stree—but no, that umbrella seller smiled when he looked my way, so he couldn’t have been blind; which decrees that ’twas the Whistling Jim that got it this time, so—but where on earth was I?—oh yes—well, my lucky umbrella happens to have been bought at the very moment when all the stars governing my life were—”
“Wait, Uncle—wait!” And Elsa, who at his very mention of “lucky stars,” had immediately commenced to swing back across the 10,000 years again, proceeded to return malevolency with pure malignancy! “Since we’re going into things mystical,” she said, felinely, “let’s be ultra-correct in our terminology—what say?” And down, midway of her return swing, she dipped her hands—and brought them up brimming with the odd concept that Silas Moffit’s own son had broached that afternoon. “All the stars governing your life in this particular cycle of your existence!—or maybe I’m over your head now, what?” she taunted him.
But he looked at her so pityingly that she actually shrunk.
“When you get over my head on philosophy and mysticism and the Hidden Laws of Existence, astronomers will be finding maggots on the moon with 10-cent-store spyglasses! And, as I was saying—at the moment you thought to teach a mathematician how to multiply 2 by 2—my lucky umbrella happened to have been bought at the very moment when all the stars governing my life were in fortunate conjunction, both with the date of the month, and the numerology of the word ‘umbrella.’ Which fact was so clearly and conclusively demonstrated to me by a famous astrologist and numerologist, that—”
“—that immediately an old piece of cotton and wire became lucky,” said Elsa, who by now had swung completely back across the 10,000 years again! “But damn it, you haven’t yet answered my question. Why you always carry—”
“Yes, I know. And I’ll answer it. So that you’ll have an object lesson for all time to come in courtesy and good breeding. Well, I’ll answer it only providing you drop all your antagonistic parries at me. Now will you—or won’t you? If you won’t—”
“Okay. I will. Since you’re leaving—”
“All right. You asked why I always carry an umbrella—lucky if it happens to be—but anyway if it isn’t! Well, my dear budding lawyer with a presumably analytical brain, an umbrella is a portfolio. And the most easily carried and convenient portfolio in the world. Now take my busine
ss, of loaning money to the bar and judiciary—”
“And that’s another question I’m going to ask. Since I’m paying through the nose for all this info by holding back all ‘antagonistic parries’—otherwise known as dirty cracks. For some reason I don’t know myself, I’ve never asked that question before. But do now. That’s a darned queer specialty, isn’t it, Uncle? As queer, in its way, sez I, as Saul’s collecting spec—all right, calm down! A queer specialty though, isn’t it, loaning only to the judiciary—and to members of the bar? I’ve heard that no financial man in any city of the whole U. S. A. confines his business to that particular cross-section of humanity. So why—”
“Easily answered,” he said complacently. “And pleasurably also—since it will dispel your apparent illusion that the Moffit Mind works without motivations.” He paused. “I have a son-in-law who is a lawyer. And was—long before you cut your legal teeth. And Manny can get the inside dope on every lawyer and judge in Chicago. What I mean is, whether the prospect has his fingers in any graft, or game, or whatnot. What his whole real financial picture is. Besides which Manny has an uncanny ability to tell when their re-election is in the bag. Or if their own party is going to sandbag ’em. And thus, my dear prober into human psychology, I can tell whether a prospect is going to be able eventually to pay off—or fail to pay off. Now is or isn’t that better than loaning money blindly—on false financial pictures? Manny even knows which judges have their fingers in rich pies. And incidentally, Elsa, that judge you’re going before tonight is—Manny says—200 per cent honest. Now you know all. And to dispel your last illusion that we Moffits are daft or—or something, I’ll show you exactly how an umbrella is a portfol—”
“Stop!”
Elsa had swung back across the years! Opening an umbrella—inside of a room! It—it was flaunting Fate itself! It was unthink—But Silas Moffit had slipped open the binding tape at the top of his cotton-covered habiliment and had already opened it halfway, its ribs projecting outward and upward.
The Man with the Wooden Spectacles Page 25
