Bob tried to visualize T. Pettys Shadwell as a boy, failed, drank soup. “Good soup” he said. “Thanks. Very kind of you.”
Shadwell urged him strongly not to mention it. He chuckled. “Old Pete used to lug around some of the darndest stuff in that portfolio of his,” he said. “In fact, some of it referred to a scheme we were once trying to work out together. Nothing came of it, however, and the old fellow was inclined to be a bit testy about that, still—I believe you’d find it interesting. May I show you?”
Bob still felt rotten, but the death wish had departed. “Sure,” he said. Shadwell looked around the room, then at Bob, expectantly. After a minute he said, “Where is it?” “Where is what?” “The portfolio. Old Martens’.”
They stared at each other. The phone rang. With a wince and a groan, Bob answered. It was Noreen, a girl with pretensions to stagecraft and literature, with whom he had been furtively lecherous on an off-and-on basis, the off periods’ commencements being signaled by the presence in Noreen’s apartment of Noreen’s mother, (knitting, middleclass morality and all) when Bob came, intent on venery.
“I’ve got a terrible hangover,” he said, answering her first (guarded and conventional) question; “and the place is a mess.”
“See what happens if I turn my back on you for a minute?” Noreen clucked, happily. “Luckily, I have neither work nor social obligations planned for the day, so I’ll be right over.”
Bob said, “Crazy!”, hung up, and turned to face Shadwell, who had been nibbling the tips of his prehensile fingers. “Thanks for the soup,” he said, in tones of some finality.
“But the portfolio?” “I haven’t got it.” “It was leaning against the old man’s chair when I saw the two of you in the bar.” “Then maybe it’s still in the bar. Or in the hospital. Or maybe the cops have it. But—” “It isn’t. They don’t.” “But I haven’t got it. Honest, Mr. Shadwell, I appreciate the soup, but I don’t know where the Hell—”
Shadwell rubbed his tiny, sharp mustache, like a Δ-mark pointing to his tiny, sharp nose. He rose. “This is really too bad. Those papers referring to the business old Peter and I had been mutually engaged in—really, I have as much right to them as… But look here. Perhaps he may have spoken to you about it. He always did when he’d been drinking and usually did even when he wasn’t. What he liked to refer to as, ‘The sources of the Nile’? Hmm?” The phrase climbed the belfry and rang bells audible, or at least apparent, to Shadwell. He seemed to leap forward, long fingers resting on Bob’s shoulders.
“You do know what I mean. Look. You: Are a writer. The old man’s ideas aren’t in your line. I: Am an advertising man. They are in my line. For the contents of his portfolio—as I’ve explained, they are rightfully mine—I will give: One thousand: Dollars. In fact: For the opportunity of merely looking through it: I will give: One hundred. Dollars.”
As Bob reflected that his last check had been for $17.72 (Monegasque rights to a detective story), and as he heard these vasty sums bandied about, his eyes grew large, and he strove hard to recall what the Hell had happened to the portfolio—but in vain.
Shadwell’s dry, whispery voice took on a pleading note. “I’m even willing to pay you for the privilege of discussing your conversation with the old f—the old gentleman. Here—” And he reached into his pocket. Bob wavered. Then he recalled that Noreen was even now on her way uptown and crosstown, doubtless bearing with her, as usual, in addition to her own taut charms, various tokens of exotic victualry to which she—turning her back on the veal chops and green peas of childhood and suburbia—was given: such as Shashlik makings, lokoumi, wines of the warm south, baklava, provalone, and other living witnesses to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.
Various hungers, thus stimulated, began to rise and clamor, and he steeled himself against Shadwell’s possibly unethical and certainly inconveniently timed offers.
“Not now,” he said. Then, throwing delicacy to the winds, “I’m expecting a girl friend. Beat it. Another time.”
Annoyance and chagrin on Shadwell’s small face, succeeded by an exceedingly disgusting leer. “Why, of course,” he said. “Another time? Certainly. My card—” He hauled out the perforated pack. “I already got one,” Bob said. “Goodbye.”
He made haste to throw off the noisome clothes in which he had been first hot, then drunk, then comatose; to take a shower, comb his mouse-colored hair, shave the pink bristles whose odious tint alone prevented him from growing a beard, to spray and anoint himself with various nostra which T. Pettys Shadwell’s more successful colleagues in advertising had convinced him (by a thousand ways, both blunt and subtle) were essential to his acceptance by good society; then to dress and await with unconcealed anticipation the advent of the unchaste Noreen.
She came, she kissed him, she prepared food for him: ancient duties of women, any neglect of which is a sure and certain sign of cultural decadence and retrogression. Then she read everything he had written since their last juncture, and here she had some fault to find.
“You waste too much time at the beginning, in description,” she said, with the certainty possible to those who have never sold a single manuscript. “You’ve got to make your characters come alive—in the very first sentence.”
“‘Marley was dead, to begin with,’” muttered Bob.
“What?” murmured Noreen, vaguely, feigning not to hear. Her eye, avoiding lover boy, lit on something else. “What’s this?” she asked. “You have so much money you just leave it lying around? I thought you said you were broke.” And Bob followed her pointing and encarnadined fingertip to where lay two crisp twenty-dollar bills, folded lengthwise, on the table next the door.
“Shadwell!” he said, instantly. And, in response to her arched brows (which would have looked much better unplucked, but who can what will away?), he said, “A real rat of a guy—a louse, a boor—who had some crumby proposal.”
“And who also has,” said Noreen, going straight to the heart of the matter, “money.” Bob resolved never to introduce the two of them, if he could help it. “Anyway,” she continued, laying aside Bob’s manuscript, “now you can take me out somewhere.” Feebly he argued the food then cooking; she turned off the gas and thrust the pots incontinently into the ice-box, rose, and indicated she was now ready to leave. He had other objections to leaving just then, which it would have been impolitic to mention, for in Noreen’s scheme of morality each episode of passion was a sealed incident once it was over, and constituted no promise of any other yet to come.
With resignation tempered by the reflection that Shadwell’s four sawbucks couldn’t last forever, and that there was never so long-drawn-out an evening but would wind up eventually back in his apartment, Bob accompanied her out the door.
And so it was. The next day, following Noreen’s departure in mid-morning, found Bob in excellent spirits but flat-broke. He was reviewing the possibilities of getting an advance from his agent, Stuart Emmanuel, a tiny, dapper man whose eyes behind double lenses were like great black shoebuttons, when the phone rang. ESP or no ESP, it was Stuart himself, with an invitation to lunch.
“I’m glad some of your clients are making money,” said Bob, most ungraciously.
“Oh, it’s not my money,” said Stuart. “It’s J. Oscar Rutherford’s. One of his top men—no, it’s not Joe Tressling, I know you saw him the day before yesterday, yes, I know nothing came of it, this is a different fellow altogether. Phillips Anhalt. I want you to come.”
So Bob left yesterday’s half-cooked chow in the ice-box and, very little loath, set out to meet Stuart and Phillips Anhalt, of whom he had never heard before. The first rendezvous was for a drink at a bar whose name also meant nothing to him, though as soon as he walked in he recognized it as the one where he had been the day before yesterday, and this made him uneasy—doubly so, for he had callously almost forgotten what had had happened there. The bartender, it was at once evident, had not. His wary glance at the three of them m
ust have convinced him that they were reasonably good insurance risks, however, for he made no comment.
Anhalt was a middle-sized man with a rather sweet and slightly baffled face and iron-gray haircut en brosse. “I enjoyed your story very much,” he told Bob—thus breaking in at once upon the shallow slumber of the little scold who boarded in Bob’s Writer’s Consciousness. Of course (it shrilled) I know exactly the one you mean, after all, I’ve written only one story in my entire life so “your story” is the only identification it needs. I liked your novel, Mr. Hemingway. I enjoyed your play, Mr. Kaufman.
Stuart Emmanuel, who knew the labyrinthine ways of writers’ mind as he knew the figures in his bank statement, said smoothly, “I expect Mr. Anhalt refers to Unvexed to the Sea.”
With firm politeness Mr. Anhalt disappointed this expectation. “I know that’s the prize-winner,” he said, “and I mean to read it, but the one I referred to was The Green Wall.” Now, as it happened this very short little story had been bounced thirteen times before its purchase for a negligible sum by a low-grade salvage market of a magazine; but it was one of Bob’s favorites. He smiled at Phillips Anhalt, Anhalt smiled at him, Stuart beamed and ordered drinks.
The waiter passed a folded slip of paper to Bob Rosen when he came with the popskull. “The lady left it,” he said. “What lady?” “The blond lady.” Agent and ad man smiled, made appropriate remarks while Bob scanned the note, recognized it as being in his own handwriting, failed to make it out, crammed it in his pocket.
“Mr. Anhalt,” said Stuart, turning dark, large-pupiled eyes on his client, “is a very important man at Rutherford’s: he has a corner office.” A gentle, somewhat tired smile from Anhalt, who gave the conversation a turn and talked about his home in Darien, and the work he was doing on it, by himself. Thus they got through the round of drinks, then walked a few blocks to the restaurant.
Here Bob was infinitely relieved that Anhalt did not order poached egg on creamed spinach, corned beef hash, or something equally simple, wholesome, and disgusting, and tending to inhibit Bob’s own wide-ranging tastes: Anhalt ordered duckling, Stuart had mutton chops, and Bob chose tripe and onions.
“Joe Tressling tells me that you’re going to write something for the cheese show,” said Anhalt, as they disarranged the pickle plate. Bob half-lifted his eyebrows, smiled. Stuart gazed broodingly into the innards of a sour tomato as if he might be saying to himself, “Ten percent of $17.72, Monegasque rights to a detective story.”
“More cheese is being eaten today in the United States than twenty-five years ago,” Anhalt continued. “Much, much more… Is it the result of advertising? Such as the Aunt Carrie Hour? Has that changed public taste? Or—has public taste changed for, say, other reasons, and are we just riding the wave?”
“The man who could have answered that question,” Bob said, “died the day before yesterday.”
Anhalt let out his breath. “How do you know he could have?”
“He said so.”
Anhalt, who’d had a half-eaten dilled cucumber in his hand, carefully laid it in the ash-tray, and leaned forward. “What else did he say? Old Martens, I mean. You do mean Old Martens, don’t you?”
Bob said that was right, and added, with unintentional untruthfulness, that he’d been offered a thousand dollars for that information, and had turned it down. Before he could correct himself, Anhalt, customary faint pink face gone almost red, and Stuart Emmanuel, eyes glittering hugely, said with one voice, “Who offered—?”
“What comes out of a chimney?”
Stuart, recovering first (Anhalt continued to stare, said nothing, while the color receded), said, “Bob, this is not a joke. That is the reason we have this appointment. An awful lot of money is involved—for you, for me, for Phil Anhalt, for, well, for everybody. For just everybody. So—”
It slipped out. “For T. Pettys Shadwell?” Bob asked.
The effect, as they used to say in pre-atomic days, was electrical. Stuart made a noise, between a moan and a hiss, rather like a man who, having trustingly lowered his breeches, sits all unawares upon an icicle. He clutched Bob’s hand. “You didn’t godforbid sign anything?” he wailed. Anhalt, who had gone red before, went white this time around, but still retained diffidence enough to place his hand merely upon Bob’s jacket cuff.
“He’s a cad!” he said, in trembling tones. “A swine, Mr. Rosen!”
“‘The most despicable of living men’,” quoted Mr. Rosen. (“Exactly,” said Anhalt.)
“Bob, you didn’t sign anything, godforbid?”
“No. No. No. But I feel as if I’ve had all the mystery I intend to have. And unless I get Information, why, gents, I shan’t undo one button.” The waiter arrived with the food and, according to the rules and customs of the Waiters’ Union, gave everybody the wrong orders. When this was straightened out, Stuart said, confidently, “Why, of course, Bob: Information: Why, certainly. There is nothing to conceal. Not from you,” he said, chuckling. “Go ahead, start eating. I’ll eat and talk, you just eat and listen.”
And so, as he tucked away the tripe and onions, Bob heard Stuart recount, through a slight barrier of masticated mutton-chop, a most astonishing tale. In every generation (Stuart said) there were leaders of fashion, arbiters of style. At Nero’s court, Petronius. In Regency England, Beau Brummel. At present and for some time past, everyone knew about the Paris designers and their influence. And in the literary field (“Ahah!” muttered Bob, staring darkly at his forkful of stewed ox-paunch)—in the literary field, said Stuart, swallowing in haste for greater clarity, they all knew what effect a review by any one of A Certain Few Names, on the front page of the Sunday Times book section, could have upon the work of even an absolute unknown.
“It will sky-rocket it to Fame and Fortune with the speed of light,” said Stuart.
“Come to the point.” But Stuart, now grinding away on a chunk of grilled sheep, could only gurgle, wave his fork, and raise his eyebrows. Anhalt stopped his moody task of reducing the duckling to a mass of orange-flavored fibres, and turned to take the words, as it were, from Stuart’s mutton-filled mouth.
“The point, Mr. Rosen, is that poor old Martens went up and down Madison Avenue for years claiming he had found a way of predicting fashions and styles, and nobody believed him. Frankly, I didn’t. But I do now. What caused me to change my mind was this: When I heard, day before yesterday, that he had died so suddenly, I had a feeling that I had something of his, something that he’d left for me to look at once, something I’d taken just to get rid of him. And, oh, perhaps I was feeling a bit guilty, certainly a bit sorry, so I asked my secretary to get it for me. Well, you know, with the J. Oscar Rutherford people, as with Nature, nothing is ever lost—” Phillips Anhalt smiled his rather shy, rather sweet and slightly baffled smile—“so she got it for me and I took a look at it… I was …” he paused, hesitated for mot juste.
Stuart, with a masterful swallow, leaped into the breach, claymore in hand. “He was flabbergasted!”
Astounded, amended Anhalt. He was astounded.
There, in an envelope addressed to Peter Martens, and postmarked November 10, 1945, was a color snapshot of a young man wearing a fancy weskit.
“Now, you know, Mr. Rosen, no one in 1945 was wearing fancy weskits. They didn’t come in till some years later. How did Martens know they were going to come in? And there was another snapshot of a young man in a charcoal suit and a pink shirt. Nobody was wearing that outfit in ’45… I checked the records, you see, and the old gentleman had left the things for me in December of that year. I’m ashamed to say that I had the receptionist put him off when he called again… But just think of it: fancy weskits, charcoal suits, pink shirts, in 1945.” He brooded. Bob asked if there was anything about gray flannel suits in the envelope, and Anhalt smiled a faint and fleeting smile.
“Ah, Bob, now, Bob,” Stuart pursed his mouth in mild (and greasy) reproof. “You still don’t seem to realize that this is S*E*R*I*O*U*S*.”
/> “Indeed it is,” said P. Anhalt. “As soon as I told Mac about it, do you know what he said, Stu? He said, ‘Phil, don’t spare the horses.’” And they nodded soberly, as those who have received wisdom from on high.
“Who,” Bob asked, “is Mac?”
Shocked looks. Mac, he was told, the older men speaking both tandem and au pair, was Robert R. Mac Ian, head of the happy J. Oscar Rutherford corporate family.
“Of course, Phil,” Stuart observed, picking slyly at his baked potato, “I won’t ask why it took you till this morning to get in touch with me. With some other outfit, I might maybe suspect that they were trying to see what they could locate for themselves without having to cut our boy, here, in for a slice of the pie. He being the old man’s confidante and moral heir, anyway, so to speak.” (Bob stared at this description, said nothing. Let the thing develop as far at it would by itself, he reflected.) “But not the Rutherford outfit. It’s too big, too ethical, for things like that.” Anhalt didn’t answer.
After a second, Stuart went on, “Yes, Bob, this is really something big. If the late old Mr. Martens’ ideas can be successfully developed—and I’m sure Phil, here will not expect you to divulge until we are ready to talk Terms—they will be really invaluable to people like manufacturers, fashion editors, designers, merchants, and, last but not least—advertising men. Fortunes can literally be made, and saved. No wonder that a dirty dog like this guy Shadwell is trying to horn in on it. Why, listen—but I’m afraid we’ll have to terminate this enchanting conversation. Bob has to go home and get the material in order—” (What material? Bob wondered. Oh, well, so far: $40 from Shadwell and a free lunch from Anhalt.)—“and you and I, Phil, will discuss those horses Mac said not to spare.”
Anhalt nodded. It seemed obvious to Rosen that the ad man was unhappy, unhappy about having given Peter Martens the brush-off while he was alive, unhappy about being numbered among the vultures now that he was dead. And, so thinking, Bob realized with more than a touch of shame, that he himself was now numbered among the vultures; and he asked about funeral arrangements. But it seemed that the Masonic order was taking care of that: the late Peter Martens was already on his way back to his native town of Marietta, Ohio, where his lodge brothers would give him a formal farewell: aprons, sprigs of acacia, and all the ritual appurtenances. And Bob thought, why not? And was feeling somehow, very much relieved.
The Avram Davidson Treasury Page 22
