“So what? So I talk to Mr. Colby and he mentions that Mr. Arnold has a fifty-thousand-dollar corporation policy. It don’t do Colby any good, though. If Arnold dies, the money goes to the company. Arnold’s girl owns seventy per cent of the stock. She can liquidate the business—in which case Colby gets three-four thousand as his share.
“Or she can run the business indefinitely. In which case Colby gets nothing…. But suppose Arnold Publishing Company owes their printer forty thousand and Arnold dies? What happens then? The insurance is paid to the company and the company pays its creditors.”
Wexler chuckled. “And I am the chief creditor. I get the money and split with Colby—on account of I wouldn’t be such a big creditor if Mr. Colby don’t doctor up the company’s books.”
“A very nice scheme,” said Quade. “But what about the insurance company—weren’t you afraid of them?”
“Naw. What can they suspect? That Mr. Colby killed Mr. Arnold? No, because he owns only thirty per cent of the stock. Arnold’s daughter inherits sixty and already owns ten. She’s the likely suspect, but the insurance company wouldn’t dare say a nice girl would kill her father. Me, why would I kill Arnold? The insurance company don’t even know I exist.”
“But you’re the chief creditor of the firm. Most of the money the insurance company pays the Arnold Publishing Company goes to you.”
“Ah, that’s the sharp point. The insurance company don’t know I am a creditor. Naw, they don’t know that, because Mr. Colby, he don’t say nothing. Not right away. Later on—well, Mr. Wexler liked Mr. Arnold so much he didn’t want to press for payment of his bill right away. So in two-three months, when the cops and the insurance company have forgotten all about things, Arnold Publishing pays its bills…. It’s really all very simple. I’m sure there won’t be another human encyclopedia up in this neck of the woods, then, to figure out this and that.”
“No,” said Quade, “but it so happens I have three friends outside. They’re up the street waiting for me.”
A startled look leaped into Colby’s eyes. “You’re lying!” he said, but there was uncertainty in his tone.
“Am I?” smiled Quade. “You forget I was at The Poplars with a group.”
“To hell with that,” Wexler said.
“You can’t kill him, Wexler!” exclaimed Colby. “Not here. I—”
Wexler looked coldly at Colby. “Ah, you’re afraid of that, Colby. Afraid when there’s the least little chance of getting your toes in it. All right, go outside and see if those friends of his are waiting.”
“They’re in the restaurant across from the hotel,” said Quade.
Colby ran out of the proofroom. Quade heard the door outside slam. He thought Wexler might be scared enough to let him have it now.
“While we’re waiting, Quade,” said Wexler, “I could be more relaxed if you’d raise your hands.”
Quade brought his hands up to shoulder level. Then he sniffed and reached carefully for the white handkerchief in his breast pocket.
“Careful!” cautioned Wexler.
“Yeah, sure!” Quade drew out the handkerchief and showed Wexler the dart inside.
“Remember this?” he asked. “You threw it at the girl in the lunch counter.”
“Drop it!” cried Wexler. “Drop it, or I’ll plug you!”
“You can shoot,” said Quade, “and there’s a possibility the wound won’t be fatal, but a scratch of this, Wexler—well, you put the poison on it yourself. And I can surely hit you with it.”
He gripped the poison dart between thumb and forefinger. A quick flip and it would zip at Wexler. The distance was too short to miss.
Perspiration broke out on Wexler’s forehead. “Drop it, Quade!” he cried hoarsely.
He knew his own poison, but he knew that he had everything to lose and nothing to gain—except a few more months of life. Was it enough?
Surrender meant but a stay of death.
Quade was still casual outwardly, but inwardly he was like a coiled spring. He had to read Wexler’s intentions from his face, and act a fraction of a second before the killer.
“All right,” said Wexler, “you win.”
He lied. He was lowering his gun, but Quade saw it in his eyes. He was going to shoot. He was going to gamble on getting in the surprise, vital shot.
“Fine,” said Quade. He took a step back, smiled—and dropping his hand to the proofreader’s desk, lifted it up and shoved it at Wexler in a tremendous heave. At the same instant, he threw himself frantically sidewards and forward.
Thunder rocked the little room. The bullet from the automatic missed Quade’s face by less than one-sixteenth of an inch. He felt the wind as it zipped past him.
Then Wexler was down under the desk and Quade was swarming over it, slamming at the printer with his fist that was not encumbered by the dart. He put everything he had into the blow and it connected solidly with Wexler’s jaw.
Wexler collapsed.
When he recovered a few seconds later, Quade had the automatic. There were tears in Wexler’s eyes as he looked up at Quade. “The dart …” he muttered. It was sticking in his throat.
“Oh, that,” said Quade. He grinned crookedly and gave it a flip. It stuck in the overturned desk. “Why, you see, Wexler, I didn’t want to carry a thing around in my pocket with poison on it, for fear I might accidentally stick myself with it—so I carefully wiped the poison from it.”
Louis Wexler screamed incoherently.
The outside door slammed open, feet pounded through the office. Quade whirled, the automatic gripped in his fist. But it wasn’t Colby; it was Charlie Boston.
“Ollie!” Boston cried. “I heard a shot and I knew you had something to do with it.”
“I did,” said Quade. “But did you see a man running outside?”
“Yeah. He bumped into me and got tough. The squirt! I knocked him cold with one punch!”
“Good, Charlie! Now go out and collar him before he comes around. The local law ought to come around any minute.”
He came, a burly policeman with a huge revolver. With him came Linda Starr and Mildred Rogers.
Quade waved at the girls. “Be through here in a few minutes.”
“No more history, Mr. Quade?” asked Linda.
“No more history. The lesson’s finished for today.”
Funny Man
Charlie Boston grabbed Oliver Quade’s arm. “Look,” he said, “a movie studio!”
Quade twisted the wheel to the right, stepped on the brakes. The motor of the dilapidated jalopy expired with a wheezing sigh.
Quade looked across the street. “All right, it’s a studio,” he said. “They do have studios in Hollywood, you know.”
“The sign by the gate says Slocum Studios,” Charlie Boston’s voice was eager. “Do you suppose this is the place where Hedy Lamarr works?”
“And if it is, would she want to see you? Come on, we’ve got things to do. We’ve got to get located. After all, we were lucky to make it from San Bernardino on three gallons of gas.” He looked hopefully at Charlie Boston. “I don’t suppose, Charlie, you’ve got a stray quarter—or even a dime, somewhere about you?”
“You know damn well I haven’t. You got my last cent in Arizona.”
“In that case, I guess I’ve got to go to work. Before I’m even a half-hour in Hollywood!”
“Where can you work around here?”
“Right there,” said Quade. “Where all those people are hanging around the studio gate. If I work fast I won’t need a peddler’s license.”
He opened the door of the flivver beside him and it came away in his hand. “If we ever get any money, Charlie, we’ll buy a new car and send this one to China.”
He walked across the street toward the studio gate. Before he quite reached it he turned to the right and stopped w
ith his back against the stucco wall.
He raised his hands dramatically and began talking in a voice that rolled out over Wilshire Boulevard and drowned out the noise of the traffic.
“I’m Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia!” he boomed. “I know the answer to all questions. I know the distance to the moon and the sun. I can name all the presidents and vice presidents. I can recite the batting averages of every major league baseball player. I am the Human Encyclopedia, the walking compendium of human knowledge.”
There were twenty or thirty people already hanging around the gates when Quade began talking. Inside of thirty seconds the number had doubled. A crowd draws a larger crowd. This is true, anywhere. In Hollywood it is doubly so. Hollywood has more freaks than any other city in the country; and they always have time to listen to another freak.
Quade thundered on: “I know the answers to all questions. I bar no holds. I’ll answer any question on history, science, mathematics, business or sports. Try me out, someone. Make me prove what I say. Ask me a question!”
“Is it going to rain today?”
“It hasn’t rained here in 224 days,” Quade retorted. “So the chances are it won’t rain today. But that’s not a fair question. The answer doesn’t require any encyclopedic knowledge. I’m not a fortune teller and can’t make guesses. I’m an exponent of learning. Any question anyone can ask me—”
“I’ve got a question!” someone yelled. “Referring to a number of animals, would you say, a herd of lions, a flock—or what?”
Quade’s eyes brightened. “Now, that’s the type of question I like. It would stump practically anyone in this audience. But, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t phase me. The answer is—a pride of lions. And just for fun, I’ll give you extra measure. In referring to geese you would say a gaggle of geese; pheasants, a nide of pheasants. Try those on your friends, sometime … All right, someone else ask me another question, any subject at all.”
It came instantly. “What are felt hats made of?”
“Rabbit fur,” Quade shot back. “The fur is sheared from the pelt, put through certain processes and emerges as ‘felt.’ … Next!”
A youth snapped: “A man boiling a kettle of water on top of Mt. Everest stuck his bare arm into the boiling water and wasn’t scalded. Why not?”
Quade cried, “You’re getting tricky now. The answer to that question is because of the low boiling point of the water at that altitude. The boiling point of water at sea level is 212 degrees, but it drops one degree for every five hundred feet of altitude. Therefore, the boiling point of water at the top of Mt. Everest, which is 21,000 feet, would be only 172 degrees—not enough to scald a person.”
They came fast and furious after that.
“Who was Machiavelli?”
“How far is it from the earth to the moon?”
“Who won the heavyweight championship from Tommy Burns?”
Quade tossed back the answers swiftly and accurately. The game continued for ten minutes, then Quade called a sudden halt.
“That’s all, folks. Now, I’m going to tell you how you, each and everyone of you, can learn the answers to every question that was asked here today—and ten thousand others. Any question anyone can ask you at any time. They’re all here!” He holds out his hand and Charlie Boston, who had lugged a valise from the car across the street, tossed him a book.
Quade ruffled its pages. “Here it is, The Compendium of Human Knowledge. The knowledge of the ages, condensed, classified, abbreviated, all in one volume. A complete high school education, available to every man, woman and child in this audience.
“Yes, I’m selling this amazing book, the compendium of all knowledge acquired by man since the beginning of time. But what am I asking for this college education in one book … $25.00? Cheap at the price! But no! Not even $5.00, but a mere, paltry, insignificant $2.95!”
Charlie Boston stepped up beside Oliver Quade and hissed: “Scram, Ollie! A cop!”
A man in a blue uniform pushed through the crowd. “Hey, you!” he said. “Mr. Slocum wants to talk to you about that voice of your’n.”
Oliver Quade drew himself up to his lean frame and fixed the policeman with an icy stare. “Since when is a citizen of this glorious country denied the right of free speech? Are you not a servant of the people? So by what right do you dare order one of your employers not to speak!”
The cop grinned sickishly. “I’m not complaining about your talk. It’s Mr. Slocum. He wants to see you in his office, right away.”
Quade waved his hands to the audience. “You see, ladies and gentlemen, that’s what happens to a humble citizen when one of our millionaire movie moguls turns his thumb down. My voice raised in honest speech, in a humble endeavor to earn a livelihood, annoys Mr. Slocum, yonder in his plush-lined office and so I am arrested.”
“Who said anythin’ about arresting anyone?” the policeman demanded. “I only said Mr. Slocum wants to talk to you. He heard your voice and sent me out to bring you in. Hey, you didn’t think I was a regular cop, did you?”
Quade brightened. “Of course not, my good man! I see it all now. Mr. Slocum is a motion picture producer; he heard my resonant voice and—yes, of course. He wishes to talk contract with me. Lead on, officer! I’ll talk to your Mr. Slocum.”
The crowd was already dispersing. The policeman pushed his way through and Quade followed. Behind him came Charlie Boston, still protesting at walking into a lion’s den.
The main studio building was a maze of corridors and private offices. The uniformed man led Quade and Boston down the row of offices and finally opened the door of an office that only a Hollywood mogul or a blue-sky promoter could afford.
There were two or three girls in the office and a couple of sleek-haired young men.
“Miss Hendricks will announce you to Mr. Slocum,” said the policeman to Quade. “Miss Hendricks, this is the man from outside, the man whose voice Mr. Slocum heard.”
A woman who looked like a middle-aged schoolteacher said, “Mr. Slocum will see you.”
“Wait here, Charles,” Quade said, and passed through the portals of Mr. Tommy Slocum’s inner sanctum.
He went into a room that looked like a newspaper morgue. A short, slight young man, who wore baggy trousers and a soiled shirt, got up from behind a littered desk and snapped at Quade:
“Can you bark?”
Quade had seen and heard many things in his life. He was almost never surprised. But his mouth fell open now.
“Can I bark?” he repeated inanely.
“Yeah, sure. Like a dog. Let’s hear you.”
Quade’s eyes hardened. “You mean like this?” He barked. “Arf! Arf!”
Tommy Slocum sawed the air impatiently. “No, no, no! Bark like the biggest, maddest dog you ever heard in your life. Put feeling into it!”
Quade fixed the little man with a deadly stare, took a deep breath … and barked. He barked like a St. Bernard dog whose tail had been stepped on by a fat man.
Tommy Slocum cried. “Splendid! I thought you had the stuff when I heard you bellowing out there on the street. You’ll do, fella, you’ll do!”
Deliberately Quade looked about the room. “Where’s the keeper?” he asked. “This is the crazy house, isn’t it?”
Tommy Slocum guffawed. “Don’t you know? This is the Slocum Studios. We make the Desmond Dogg animated cartoons.”
Quade looked sick. “Desmond Dogg! And I—I barked like Desmond Dogg?”
“Sure, that’s why I wanted you. Pete Rice, who usually dubs in the voice for Desmond, has laryngitis and won’t be able to bark for three-four days. We need the voice tomorrow. Come in here at nine o’clock. It’ll only be a couple of hours’ work and you’ll get fifty dollars. Oke?”
“Mr. Slocum,” said Quade. “You sent a policeman outside to drag me in. You interfered with my legitimate
business. Your cop scared away my customers. I didn’t complain. I came in here because I thought a motion picture producer had recognized my talents. And what do you do? You insult—”
“All right, what the hell’s money?” snapped Slocum. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”
Quade’s mouth twisted suddenly. “I’ll be here at nine in the morning.”
He turned abruptly and rushed out of Slocum’s private office. He burst out of the room and almost knocked the wind out of one of the tallest men that ever walked a street. He was as thin as he was tall.
“What the hell!” the man gasped. “Look where you’re going!” Then his eyes popped. “Oliver Quade!”
“Christopher Buck!” Quade exclaimed. “The world’s greatest detective!”
The long, lean man winced and darted a look around him. “Nix!”
Quade looked innocently around the office. “Are you in disguise? Shadowing someone?”
“Still the clowner!” Christopher Buck spat venomously.
Quade chuckled. “What’re you doing here in movieland, Buck? Didn’t think you’d ever get across the plains.”
“I came in an airplane,” said Buck coldly. “How did you come—riding the rods?”
“Ha-ha,” Quade laughed mirthlessly. “We do have great times together, don’t we? Say, Charlie, remember this beanpole? Our old friend, Christopher Buck.”
“I saw him when he came in,” Charlie Boston retorted. “I was hoping he wouldn’t recognize me.”
Christopher Buck reddened. Then his eyes suddenly narrowed. “What’re you fellows doing here?”
Quade shrugged. “Well, you know how it is, Buck, old boy. When Hollywood calls … I just signed a long-term picture contract.”
Buck looked suspiciously at Quade. “Quit clowning, Quade. You just came out of Tommy Slocum’s office. So he did hire you?”
Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia Page 28
