Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

by Gruber, Frank

  “It was smart figuring on Demmy’s part. By knocking off her husband Jessie could come into a half million or so. Then Lois happened to see Jessie with Demetros and questioned her. That made Lois next on her list. I didn’t know the reason when I went after Lois and Jessie today, but I knew Jessie was desperate and I wasn’t taking chances on Lois being the next victim.”

  “That all sounds pretty straight,” said Boston. “But where’d this guy Renfrew fit into the picture?”

  “Renfrew finally figured out Wes Peters’ soft thing, or maybe he didn’t see it until after we told him about it. Anyway, he suddenly got the bright idea of taking up where Wes left off, not knowing that Demetros had shuffled a new deal. Renfrew phoned Jessie to put the squeeze on her. Which signed his death warrant. Demetros got to him and told him a few things and then Renfrew got panicky and wanted to come to me, to blow up the thing and save his life. So Demmy killed him.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Boston. “What about Lois’ romance you busted up?”

  Quade’s ears turned red. “Why, she gave me an invitation to come out some time—What the hell you grinning about, you big ape?”

  “Nothing,” said Boston, his face as sober as a Kansas prohibitionist’s.

  Death Sits Down

  It was dark in the stock room. The murderer pulled on a string that dangled before him and a bulb overhead bathed him with yellow, malignant light. The murderer wanted his victim to see his face before he struck.

  The murderer said, “Do you know who I am, John Hocker?”

  John Hocker lifted his scared face from the rifle that was pressing into his stomach and looked into the face of the murderer. He gasped. “You! How did you get here?”

  “That’s too long a story to tell,” replied the murderer. “In about ten minutes things are going to happen in the plant of the Bartlett Cash Register Company and my presence will be required to play an active part in those things. I thought, though, that I’d kill you first.”

  John Hocker trembled even more than he had when the murderer had stepped out of the deeper gloom of an aisle a moment ago and thrust the gun into his middle. “You can’t kill me!” he cried, hysterically. “I’ve never done anything to you. There’s no reason—”

  “There are half a million reasons,” said the murderer. “All of them dollars.”

  Then he pulled the trigger and the steel-jacketed slug tore into John Hocker’s entrails, smashed his spine and thudded into a packing case behind, where it hit a cash register and made a metallic “ting.”

  Hocker was dead before his body thudded to the concrete floor. But, just to make sure, the murderer put the rifle to the dead man’s head and pulled the trigger a second time.

  Then he walked coolly to another aisle. He lifted a board from a packing case and stuck the rifle into the box. He then peeled off a cheap pair of canvas gloves and tossed them in on top of the rifle. After that he replaced the board on the case.

  He moved unhurriedly. The two rifle shots had made plenty of noise but the doors of the stock room were thick. And the murderer knew that no one should be in adjoining rooms. Everyone in the great plant of the Bartlett Cash Register Company should be elsewhere at this moment. For the reason the murderer had hinted to John Hocker before he had blasted him into eternity.

  The joke was really on Oliver Quade. Only he didn’t know it. He thought it was on the employees of the Bartlett Cash Register Company. A couple of hundred of them were gathered in the big plant recreation room.

  Quade chuckled as he climbed up on a bench and looked out over a sea of faces. They thought he was going to entertain them. Well, he was, but they were going to pay for it. He didn’t know what these two hundred men knew.

  He began talking in his normal speaking voice. It was like the roar of an angry surf.

  “I’m Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia,” Quade boomed. “I have the greatest brain in the country. I know the answers to all questions. I know physics as well as Einstein, I know history better than Ridpath and I know more about economics than Professor Lemo.

  “What? You don’t believe it? Try me out. Ask me a question, someone. On any subject. History, science, mathematics, sports … You!” He stabbed a forefinger at an open-mouthed worker. “Ask me any question, sir—about the cash register business, if you like.”

  The man flushed at being singled out of the crowd, but he attempted a swagger. “Uh, all right, who invented the cash register?”

  “James Ritty, of Ohio,” Quade shot back. “He received a patent for it in 1879. Someone else now, ask me any question.”

  “Who was Robert Raikes?” someone yelled.

  Quade grinned. “The father of the Sunday School. He started the first one in Gloucester, England, in 1780 … Next!”

  “What is aphasia?” someone asked.

  “Speechlessness.”

  Then came a good one. “What is althing?”

  Quade threw up his hands. “I defy anyone but the asker to answer that one. Is althing something to eat, wear, ride, or is it a city, river or mountain?”

  Three or four persons made guesses but Quade shook his head each time.

  “Althing is the name for the parliament of the Kingdom of Iceland. It was formed in the year 930 and has been in existence ever since except for a short period from 1798 to 1874.”

  The questions came fast and furious after that. And Quade shot back the answers. The working men asked the distance to the sun and moon, the batting averages of different baseball players; historical dates and scientific questions. Quade answered them all. Then suddenly he called a dramatic halt.

  “That’ll be all the questions for the moment. Now, I’ll show you how you can all learn for yourselves the answers to questions anyone can put to you.” He stopped and opened a valise. He brought out a thick volume and waved it aloft. “It’s all here, the knowledge of the ages, condensed, classi­fied. The Compendium of Human Knowledge, the greatest, most authoritative—”

  Then a bell drowned out Oliver Quade’s voice. It roared its stentorian metallic clangor in the recreation room and in every room and building of the huge Bartlett Cash Register Company plant.

  Quade scowled and waited for the noise to subside. It didn’t for a full thirty seconds. By then Quade had lost his audience. The two-hundred-odd men in the room had gathered into clumps and when the bell stopped they all seemed to be talking at once, loudly.

  Quade caught two words. He leaped down and caught a man’s arm. “What do you mean—‘sit down’?”

  “That bell,” the man replied. “We been waitin’ for it. It’s the signal for our strike. We’re sitting down now—until we win!”

  Quade gasped. “Sit-down strike! You mean everyone here’s going to sit down?”

  “You bet; three hundred of us. And a thousand outside, to make sure no damn strike breakers get in here.”

  “Excuse me,” said Quade. “I just remembered I’ve got to see a dog about a man.” He tossed the book into his valise, caught it up and left the building hurriedly.

  Then he saw the reason for the throngs that had been on the street outside, a half hour ago, when he’d entered the plant of the Bartlett Cash Register Company. They were strikers. They carried placards now, all reading:

  BARTLETT CASH REGISTER COMPANY

  ON STRIKE

  There were plenty of men inside the grounds. None molested Quade. Not until he got near the front gate. He found it closed, locked with a padlock. “Hey,” he said to a man standing nearby. “I’ve got to get outside.”

  “A quitter, huh!”

  “I’m not an employee!” howled Quade. “I’m a salesman who happened to be on the grounds. I want to get out of here.”

  “You mean you’re a company spy. You want to make a report to the bosses. Well, you’re just out of luck. We’ve chased the bosses out of the grounds. There ain’t n
o one comin’ in or goin’ out. Not until the strike’s settled. See those boys outside? They’re to keep quitters inside as well as strike breakers out. Some of ’em’d be downright mad at anyone who tried to leave these grounds. You figure you’d like to go argue with them?”

  Quade saw the belligerent faces of several strikers. He shook his head. “I guess not,” he said. “But look, who’s running things in here? I’d like to talk to him.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ who is and who ain’t, but maybe Steve Murphy could tell you who’s running things.”

  Quade sized up the layout. The plant of the Bartlett Cash Register Company occupied perhaps five acres. The building was set back from the street a considerable distance and there was more than a hundred feet of open ground all around. A high, barbed-wire-topped steel fence ran completely around the grounds. And it was entirely surrounded by pickets.

  He went back to the recreation room. “Who’s Steve Murphy?” he asked a sit-down striker.

  The man looked around the room. “That’s him over there, the fat guy with the red hair.”

  Steve Murphy was a former prize fighter who had gone to fat. He stood five feet six and weighed over 200 pounds.

  “What do you want?” he barked.

  “I’m Oliver Quade. You heard me a little while ago, making that spiel. I don’t work here. I just happened to be here when the strike was called. Naturally I want to get out of here.”

  “So do we; we’re losing money every minute we strike. Maybe we’ll lose the strike and our jobs. But that ain’t gonna stop us. We’re going to stick it out. We knew this strike was being pulled and we got food here for a month if necessary. Those two cars that were backed in on the siding this morning, they’re full of supplies. So, buddy, you just sit tight with us. Ain’t no one comin’ in and no one goin’ out. That’s the rules.”

  “Who makes the rules for you?”

  “Union headquarters.”

  “And who’s the head of your union? I want to see him.”

  “That’s Gaylord. But you can’t see him. He’s on the outside, doing the negotiating with the bosses. He’s smart, Gaylord is.”

  “But there must be someone in charge of the five hundred men in here.”

  “There is. We figured this thing out beforehand and we organized the men into companies of 75 each. I’m a company commander.”

  “And who’s the general?”

  “Olinger. Bob Olinger. He’s the big boss on the inside. He tells us captains what to do.”

  “Then Olinger is the man I want to see. Where’ll I find him?”

  “In the office.”

  The Chief of the sit-down strikers was about thirty-one. He ran a lathe in the machine shop, but if you met him outside the plant you’d probably have guessed him to be a lawyer. He was lean almost to the point of emaciation. He wore glasses, had an unruly mop of hair and a prominent nose.

  “Your face is unfamiliar,” he said to Oliver Quade. “How do you happen to be inside this plant?”

  “Ah,” said Quade, “that’s the crux of the whole situation. I’m not a Bartlett employee and I don’t want to be in this plant. I want out—in the worst way.”

  “The worst way would be on a stretcher. You probably mean the best way.” He smiled at his own wit.

  “You bandy words,” retorted Quade. “You shouldn’t do that with me. I’m the Human Encyclopedia.”

  “And what is a human encyclopedia?”

  “Me. I know the answers to all questions. I’ve read the encyclopedia, twenty-four volumes of them, from cover to cover, four times.”

  “How interesting. I knew a man who read Gone With The Wind standing up.”

  “He doesn’t belong in my club. Now how about it—do I get a safe conduct pass through the lines?”

  “No. This strike is the culmination of weeks of planning. Every man here signed up for the duration of the siege. We made an agreement among us; not a man leaves and none comes in. No matter who.”

  “But you can tell your men I’m not one of you. That I’m an innocent bystander.”

  “About the innocent part I can’t be sure. You’re a glib sort, Quade. You might be one of those human encyclopedias. Again, you might be a company spy. I couldn’t take the chance. Stick around.”

  Quade groaned. “How long is the strike apt to last?”

  Olinger shrugged. “Who knows? Old Bartlett and his directors are a mighty stubborn lot. We wouldn’t be on strike if they weren’t. It’s all up to them. Bartlett’s got spies all through the plant. And now, if you’ll excuse me …”

  Quade turned to leave the office. Halfway to the door he stopped. “Perhaps,” he said, “the strike won’t be so bad.”

  The inspiration for the comment was a girl. She stood in the open doorway, looking questioningly at Quade. He grinned. She was a darned pretty girl. Take away that denim work apron and turn a few beauticians loose on her for an hour and she’d be ready for a picture that would make a society editor really mean it when he wrote: “Beautiful deb.”

  “Ruth,” Olinger said, “I thought you were going to leave the plant?”

  “You thought wrong, Bob,” said the girl. “Every girl in my department stuck, so I stuck with them!”

  Olinger sighed. “All right, but please remember the rules. The women are to remain on the second floor. We don’t want any spies to tell stories about immoralities and orgies and such. It would hurt our cause … Uh, this is Mr. Quade. Miss Ruth Larson.”

  “You’re the spellbinder who was giving the men in the recreation room cat fits a while ago,” said Ruth Larson. “The word got up to us. When you get a few minutes come upstairs and amuse the female sitter-downers.”

  “Is there any money among them? I seldom talk without a monetary audience.”

  The office door slammed open and another girl burst in. She was as frightened as Quade ever hoped to see anyone. “Bob!” she cried. “There’s a dead man in the stock room! He’s been shot!”

  “Shot?” cried Bob Olinger, aghast. “What do you mean, Martha?”

  “I almost stepped on him!” the girl babbled. “It was horrible!”

  She swayed and Quade leaped to her side. He caught her and helped her to a swivel chair. Bob Olinger and Ruth Larson gathered around.

  “I went into the stock room and there he was lying—in that pool of blood!”

  “Don’t talk about it now,” said Olinger. “I’ll go see what’s what. Ruth, stay here with Martha.”

  Olinger did not go directly to the stock room. He went out into the plant first and gathered together four men, his strike captains.

  The dead man in the stock room lay between two rows of crates containing cash registers, ready for shipment. The body lay face downward.

  Olinger, his lips a straight line, turned the body over with his foot. Then he recoiled.

  “It’s Mr. Hocker!”

  “Hocker?” cried the ex-prizefighter, Murphy. “You mean Hocker, one of the bosses?” He sounded very awed.

  “Yes. The vice-president.”

  Pete Walsh, one of the strike captains, grunted. “Something screwy about this. Bob, I thought you herded out all the office gang.”

  “I did, but naturally, we didn’t count each one. Hocker must have been out in the plant at the time.”

  “Which was unfortunate for him,” said Oliver Quade. “And for you, too.”

  Olinger looked dully at Quade for a moment, then suddenly he gasped.

  “We’ll be blamed! They’ll say one of us murdered him. It’ll lick us!”

  “What do you mean, lick us?” snarled Ford Smith, an unshaven wild-eyed man of about thirty. “You hardly ever see a big strike without someone getting hurt.” At the moment Ford Smith looked very much like a soapbox orator inciting a crowd.

  Olinger’s eyes glinted. “Cut out th
at kind of talk! If the men hear you they’ll do things. Every man in this plant was picked for the sit-down part of it because he agreed to play a passive part. I’ll stand for no rioting, no sabotage. Get that, all of you!” He glared around the circle composed of Steve Murphy, Pete Walsh, Ford Smith and Henry Jackson—his four strike captains.

  “Don’t look at me!” growled Pete Walsh. “I didn’t kill this bozo.” Walsh was young, too, about thirty-five. Quade, sizing him up, guessed that he could make things very interesting for Murphy, the ex-prizefighter.

  Henry Jackson, the last member of the group, was of a different mold. He was a dour-looking man, his tight-lipped mouth grimly set. Quade sympathized with the strike leader, Olinger. The workers had elected him leader, probably because he had a reputation for integrity and intelligence. But they had played him a scurvy trick in the selection of his four captains.

  Quade said, “You’ve still got a corpse. What’re you going to do about it?”

  Olinger clenched his fists. “We’ve got to notify the police and they’ll come here in swarms. The newspaper publicity resulting from it’ll ruin us.”

  “If we lose now,” said Jackson, “we’re licked for good. We’ll never get the set-up we had this time.”

  “The blood hasn’t congealed yet,” said Quade. “That means he was killed during the past half-hour—since the sit-down.”

  “You would make it worse,” groaned Olinger. “Well, we’ve got to decide what to do.”

  “If you find the murderer—” Quade began, but Ford Smith snarled at him:

  “You keep your trap shut. You’ve got no business here in the first place. And anyway, I’ve got my suspicions about you.”

  “And I’ve got mine about you!” snapped Quade.

  Olinger said, “I don’t want news of this to get out. Quade, you’re in this, so stick around. Jackson, what do you think we’d better do?”