“You—you could kiss me,” he commented, obviously a bit aghast. “W’y?”
“Because,” I told him, “Long John happens to be my wife’s cousin. A fact! And if you had read the tail end of that story the front 9/10ths of which you’ve got in your hip pocket—the part, that is, that spilled over onto an inside page—you’d have known that fact. Long John—”
“Just—a—minute,” he said, passing a hand over his brow. “First you said you hadn’t never seen the story—and now you say you’ve read its tail end. So what the hell! If—”
“Since the time of my last statement,” I explained, “I talked to a man who had read the story—the whole of it. Yes, while you were having a—well—siesta in yon closet.” And I went on. “And so as I just started to tell you, Long John happens to be my wife’s cousin. The most damned insufferable snob who ever lived. For I’ve met him—through her—more than once. He looks straight through me—thanks to that Ph.D. degree he’s got—as though I were the dirt on the tracks where I make my living.” I shook my head admiringly. “No, Petie ol’ boy ol’ boy, you ought to have a prize for that Ziegfeldian stunt.” I looked down at his clipping again. “But what did his friend—the friend with the fists like hams—and the 240 pounds of weight—at the Workers’ Rest—do to you? I don’t see any black eyes.”
“I’ll say you don’t!” he bit out. “Nor—won’t! For—listen, you don’t think, do you, that Petie Givney, Esquire, after getting his write-off from th’ court clerk, and then hearing from them reporter guys what Long John had to say, would go back to that dump on South Humboldt—at least for a few days—till all this cools down? Hell—no! Not while he can get a clean bed, on the River Front, at 20 cents a night—till this thing sort of all blows over, like.”
“I see,” I laughed. Then added: “You’d better relinquish your one collar, and your comb and brush, for good—and get a new room right off. For my sweet cousin-in-law, I don’t mind telling you, will never rest till he pays you back for making an ass out of him on the street, and then again in court. Not that, I’ll admit, he isn’t an ass and a damned ass.” I put the tiny clipping in the desk drawer. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I keep your clipping, yes?”
“Why should you have—my clipping?” he asked belligerently.
“Why?” I said, in mock amazement. “Why—for two good reasons. One, you can easily get another downtown after you leave here tonight—which I won’t be doing. And two, I want it to show to my wife when she returns—for she’s ‘real people’ herself, Givney, and thinks the same concerning that insufferable snob as even I do!—and I’d like her, too, to get a good laugh out of how the college-educated ass was made a monkey of—in court—by the talented actor, P. Givney.”
Again he gave that helpless gesture with his hands—the gesture of a bug on a collector’s pin.
“Take it,” was all he said.
A brief glowering silence followed. Glowering, at least from his end of things.
“And now,” I said, to get back to our subject, “you were just about to state back about the time a visitor barged in on me—that you were feeling an urge to make a try—at my safe. In exchange for a walkout. All right. Everything stands as agreed. So let’s see how good you are.”
He rose from his chair. But at that moment the stillness of the room was shattered by the ring of the telephone bell. Undoubtedly the very call Steenburg had predicted.
I ignored it.
The while it rang a second time.
The little man returned to the table, from which he had partly turned away, just before the first ring, and stood waiting, with his hands in his pockets. “Shall I wait—till you answer?” he inquired blandly.
“No,” I told him, equally blandly. “We’ll just let it ring.”
He watched me closely, his eyes narrowed, and then his face broke slowly into a grin.
“The missus—eh?—checking up from Milwaukee, to see if you’re out with any floosies. Better rest ’er mind.”
“It is she,” I affirmed. “But she can ring again later.”
He looked at me bewilderedly.
“We-e-ell—long-distance calls cost dough—though, come to think of it at that, them that ain’t answered ain’t either charged nor recorded. Still—this is the first goddamned time in my life I ever heard of a hubby that wasn’t willin’ to prove to wiffie he was home in his carpet slippers—so long’s he was. Jesus, man, this is a break for you. Save you plenty suspicions ag’in you someday—when you are phylandering. Go ahead an’ answer. I’ll wait.
But he was to find that his arguments were falling on ears as deaf as his own—when his eardrums were out. Particularly when the phone rang for the third time. And I still made no move to answer it.
Now his face was malignantly triumphant. He leveled his forefinger directly at me and launched forth into a scathing speech.
“Sa-ay, King,” he bit out impudently, “I’m—I’m on to you now. That is—part way. I don’t catch it all. No. But you’re—you’re afraid to answer that there phone. You don’t want your dame to know you’re home in the house alone tonight—while she’s in that there convent prayin’. You raised hell tonight w’en I answered it a while back—by mistake. An’ you wouldn’t even talk till you learned it was some nertzy guy passin’ through Minny—instead of she. A-all right—baby! It’s my innin’s now—to ask questions. Just why are you home in the house t’night—while Mrs. King’s hawgtied in Milwaukee—and you’re supposed to be in Virginny? In short—what’s comin’ off here tonight? What’s—what’s your game, King?” At which point, being a slight bit asthmatic, he ran out of either breath or denunciatory ideas.
The cursed phone then rang for the fourth time. I was not only quite flustered now—but angry as well. Angry at him—at myself—at Fate—that, at this moment of all moments, Laurel should have taken it into her head to ring here. For, of course, it must be she. And—“That’s—that’s enough from you,” I growled. “Get busy!”
“Oh—yeah?” His accusing forefinger was again pointed at me as the phone bell gave one last curtailed querying ring—the last of its series of such. He must have taken a lot of delight in making me squirm, for he started off again.
“You got somethin’ shady scheduled here for t’night, Brother King. Wimmen—I’ll bet. And you don’t dare answer that phone. A-all—right! When you get ready t’ let me into your little game, King, then maybe I’ll try my hand at your dirty work. But not until. Nossir—not until.” And he sank down into the chair he had just been occupying, and stared at the window in back of me.
Immediately I glanced apprehensively back of me, so vacuous and straight-eyed was his stare. But there was no confederate seated on the windowsill—with a gun pointed at my back. Window was down. Shade was down. All was quiet—on the Potomac! We were all alone. And I had the only available gun. For about a quarter of a minute I thought on the matter. This fellow had arrived at a crucial moment in my life for me. A hyper-crucial moment, no less, considering that not only were my financial affairs involved, but that—And I glanced at that clock troubledly—that execution, in London, and Jemimah Cobb’s revelation, now lay but 3 1/2 hours distant. And, I reasoned, if I had an ounce of sense, I should placate this fellow, and get the benefit of his talent—or rather knowledge—if he really had such, especially in view of the fact that that telephone had complicated matters as it had. And, when I thought of the way Steenburg had talked quite plainly with me, knowing that no witnesses existed to corroborate that conversation, I saw that I too was in a position to do exactly the same with this fellow. So I leaned back in my chair, and began the recital, to my stubborn customer, of certain salient facts which had transpired back there in San Francisco.
CHAPTER XXI
What Happened Back in Frisco
“Givney,” I said, “I’m broke!”
He stared at me. Unbelief was depicted
on his round face.
“Broke?” he returned. “You—broke? You, runnin’ a half dozen books at every track—under half a dozen sep’rate names? Don’t bull me, King.”
“I’m not bulling you—as you put it. The cycle of my financial life has joined its ends, Givney—and I’m right back to where I started as Lucky King—with a hundred dollars. And no more.”
“You—down to a C-note?” was his only comment. “The hell you are!”
“Yes,” I told him quietly and truthfully, “I am. And outside of that C-note, as you call it, Givney, I’m as broke—as you.”
“As me? Jesus! Then, outside of the said C-note—you must be broke then. Still, what is this? A play on words?”
“No,” I said. “It’s no play on words. I’m broke. A five-letter word meaning ‘busted.’ Though,” I added, “at the same time—I’m worth a hundred thousand dollars!”
“Ah!” he bit out. “I—I thought there was a catch in it. Well—that’s different. A hundred grand!”
“Wait!” I said. “I told you I was broke. And I am. I’m worth a hundred thousand—yes—only it’s not in my own possession.”
He stared at me helplessly.
“I’m going to be absolutely frank with you now, Givney. I’m going to give you the whole low-down. And you’ve got to play with me—or go to jail. And if it’s jail—and you even try to spout a word of what I’m telling you—they’ll tell you you’re crazy. In fact, I’ll tip them off that you threatened to blackmail me—and not a reporter would dare print a word of this story.”
“It must be interesting,” he commented. “Well, go ahead. Seems like I got something you need. Maybe we can get together.”
“We can,” I told him firmly. “And, at the same time, you can maybe earn a sweet commission. On top of which, you and I can be friends—for the rest of our days. Think, Givney, you could learn to run about a track grandstand—and take bet money—and make out tickets?”
“Hell yes, I could.”
“All right. Play with me—and you’ve a life job. Maybe I’ll even put you in as a blackboard odds writer. Your days, Givney, as second-story man—are over.”
I paused.
“Givney, the world doesn’t know what the tracks did to me the past spring and summer—because of the half a dozen books I’ve run under the names of other fellows—tight-mouthed, confidential chaps, all. No, the world doesn’t know, Givney, what the tracks really did to me. Tapped wires. Bad calculations. Dark horses. I even learned just tonight, Givney, that one of my good luck fetishes has been tampered with in a certain way—and turned into a hoodoo—a jonah! So take your choice of what really sent me to the cleaners. In short, I was cleaned at the end of the last Misaugee Lake meet.”
“And was that why you had to go to a sanitar’um for your nerves?”
“Hell no,” I said. “I didn’t go to a sanitarium at all. That was just a story very covertly given out by my wife—by arrangement between us—to hoodwink the process servers. On a certain matter where it’s up to me, broke or not broke, at least to play to protect the rest of the boys as much as I can. No, I went as far as I could get from Minneapolis. To Frisco. And took up residence there under another name. But I see you’re puzzled about this matter involving process servers. Well, I had it from good sources, Givney, that I was certain to be subpoenaed in the forthcoming Senatorial Investigation of track booking and horse racing—because of my being President of the American Bookies’ Association. So I burned all the records I had. And went to Frisco.”
“But you was broke, you say?” he queried, almost querulously. “Your wife, then, she financed—”
“No,” I said, bitterness in my voice. And as I thought back of my lonely days in Frisco, there was bitterness in my heart as well as my voice. “No, she didn’t finance my hegira. Exodus. Or what-have-you. For the fact of my being broke, Givney, is one of the last things I’d ever tell Laurel. Laurel being Mrs. King. For my wife, Givney, is all heart and soul in that Convent at Milwaukee that her father founded. A compulsion, no less, and—” I broke off. I realized that I was a rat for discussing, with the man across from me, an utter stranger, her whom I was discussing. But realized also that I must deal with facts tonight, whether the doing so caused me recriminations or whether it did not. “A compulsion, a psychologist—bug expert to you, Givney—would call what Laurel has. A compulsion based on grief for a parent whom she admired tremendously. She has no use for my profession. She’s always said: ‘Mortimer—if you ever drop your pile—it’s God’s own warning that he wants you to become as a beggar—without a place to put your head. And I shan’t work against God’s will—by taking care of you. If God sends that sign—then, Mortimer, I’m going to get a legal separation from you—and enter that Convent—as Mother Superior.’”
“Do you love her?” he asked, with startling directness.
“Why, of course,” I said, surprised. “Just because she can’t see my profession—or because I can’t see the sense or wisdom of an annual ordeal for the Old Man, now completely evaporated into dust and nothingness!—doesn’t prevent me from loving her. Probably from loving her all the more.”
He nodded sagely, as one quite understanding that bit of human psychology.
“I can see through and back of various little things,” I added gruffly, “that she does subconsciously, and which enables me to look far beyond her apparent willingness to leave me.”
“Whaddye mean—sub—sub—sub-conshully?”
“My God, Givney,” I said appalled, “have you never in your life read anything more than a newspaper?” I paused. “Subconscious? Well by that word I mean—but here’s an example of what I mean: Whenever in my whole life I’ve talked on the telephone to my wife, I’ve always—unknown to myself—and bar no time, either!—put three of my fingers in the gap between two of my adjoining shirt buttons. Showing exactly my subconscious evaluation of our relationship.”
“Three fingers—in your shirt gap?” he said helplessly. And then laughed scornfully. “What the hell would that—have to do with anything?”
“Simply,” I said, pityingly, “that it screams aloud that I feel humbly inferior to her—consider her far finer and better than myself—in short, in comparison with her I feel ‘little,’ and—”
“Yeah?” he almost yelled, what intellectual curiosity he had, completely frustrated, “but what the hell has the three fingers in the shirt gap got to do with that!”
“Simply,” I explained, and still pityingly, “that, feeling ‘little’—and being on the phone where I’m not observed—the old subconscious knows that, you know!—and trying desperately to raise my ‘littleness,’ I take the attitude of Napoleon—you know?—hand in coat?” He nodded, showing he evidently had seen plenty of Napoleon’s pictures. “And who,” I continued, “though little in stature, became a world figure.”
“Hrmph. So that’s what you always do when you talk to your wife? And that, what you just spieled, is what it means? Well now I’ll tell you one! Why is it that whenever I used to talk to my brother on the phone—my brother what’s dead now—I used to make little hats on paper? Over and over. Hats and hats. What does that mean?”
“Easy,” I said. “Your brother was older than you, wasn’t he? By several years?”
“W’y—w’y, yes. But how—”
“And when you were kids, you never had a hat—that is, a new hat, did you?”
“No!” he retorted, bitterly. “Every goddamned lid I got, I inher’ted from my older brother. And—”
“—and all were, by that time, worn—had grease-stained bands—and were too big for your head anyway. And there you are,” I finished. “Your first lesson, Givney, in the mysteries of subconscious actions. For when talking to that particular brother, you ‘manufactured’ ‘new hat’ after ‘new hat’—sure, the pencil-drawn hats!—desperately—to avoid, during your t
emporary relationship with him on the phone, ‘inheriting’ those cast-off ones which gave you such shame.”
“I guess,” he admitted grumblingly, “there’s somethin’ to this sub-conshus stuff after all, all right. Too bad horses don’t have subconshusses! Then a bookie like you could tell which ones wasn’t going to let theirselves out—in a race!” He paused. “Well then now, getting back to the case of you and your wife, and what you ‘were’ telling me a few minutes back, just how—how, now—can she just become—a Mother Super—”
“Money, Givney,” I told him. “Which can do anything—as in a second or two I may explain. But here are the salient facts. As concern me—and now, in a slight sense, concern you.” I paused. “When times were at their best in my game, Givney, I salted lots of money away in diamonds. All gamblers do, I guess. I had already given Laurel this house—which, by the way, is wholly in her name, even my dower rights to it waived at her request—a gift to her on the 5th anniversary of our marriage. When it was put up, Givney—all this neighborhood was just country—outskirts of Minneapolis—the region here not even yet scheduled to be Hobury Heights. Today the house and grounds are worth twice what we paid for them—when we built the place. But that’s neither here nor there—except to let you know that I don’t even own a slice of the room we’re sitting in. And so as I started to say, when times were good in my game I salted plenty more money in diamonds. But I made the fatal mistake of giving them, as I had the house here, to my wife. I never, never, never thought, Givney, that she’d become imbued with this convent idea—she didn’t seem to have those sorts of ideas in her head at all. At least then. And I gave the diamonds to her by legal deed, too—so that no disputes could ever come up afterward, with disgruntled losers on my handbooks, that the stones had been put up as bets, wagers, or gambling payoffs.”
He was paying interested attention to my words; so I continued.
The Man with the Magic Eardrums Page 19
