The First Mystery Novel

by Howard Mason

  “And died 3 days later of coronary thrombosis?” mused Boyce Barkstone sadly. “I could scarcely believe it, when that wire finally succeeded in reaching me, night before last, in Frisco, at that second hotel I went to—why, I could hardly believe it yet even when I was aboard the plane fetching me back yesterday just in time for the funeral.” He paused, ruminating. “Hm? And he died but 3 days after his will? It seems almost as if Gran’ther had been prescient of his impending death.”

  “Oh, he could have had some peculiar premonitory heart symptoms, possibly,” assented the lawyer undecidedly, as one who was not familiar with such matters. “Though obviously it was your hot-shot—directed, to be sure—ahem—to Josiah, for—for use against Josiah’s enemy—” There was the slightest hint of dubiety in his tone, which indicated he wasn’t sure yet but that Boyce had contrived an artful explanation of that incident in case Balhatchet Barkstone had recounted it to Alex Plenderleith “—which sent your grandfather down posthaste to make that will. And—but by the way, you say, MacKinlock and MacKinlock took over yesterday as Administrators—I mean, of course, the real-estate business uptown there?”

  “Oh yes—yes. Right after the funeral yesterday. I was just unlocking the door of the office there, thinking to do a little cleanup work, after my 5 days’ absence, when a couple of their representatives, accompanied by a deputy sheriff or something, and some court official, barged down on me. All armed, of course, with a court order. I turned over to them all the books and records—the bank book, showing money on deposit—an undeposited check—everything—offered to carry on free for a while—but they frowned me down—said they would put their own man in. So I took their receipts for every item—account book—journal—ledger—cash book—and was out. But gosh!—I thought I was ‘out’ only because they saw no reason for a hundred-thousand-dollar heir to be holding down a job that some poor man could use better.”

  “Executors have a devil of a lot of power,” was all the lawyer would say. “Which is the reason Alex and I won’t function that way: enmities. But be it so.” He made a helpless gesture with his two hands. “Well, at least, Boyce, you won’t have to be made a fool of through any confounded newspaper stories, for MacKinstry MacKinlock’s brother, you know, is County Clerk—and the will, MacKinlock told me, was filed for probate day before yesterday without a single clerk knowing—nor a newspaper man. Not that MacKinlock and MacKinlock were thinking particularly of you—no!—such a sensational story would reflect unpleasant notoriety on them too, you see. And—anyway, the point is that when you’ve received your bequest—the actual act of which receiving might have made an interesting tabloid newspaper picture—any story that lies in the affair is dead.”

  “My bequest?” echoed Boyce bitterly. “A handful of beans. We-ell, since Grandfather’s will so kindly specifies that my legacy may be handed me by you, or by Mr. Winwell, without the usual probate delay, may I have it, such as ’tis?”

  “Why, of course,” said the attorney. “You’ve officially got it already, as far as we’re concerned. For it’s there in the bag—is the bag, in fact, on the table in front of you. Just sign this receipt—here—” He drew over a typed receipt. “Yes—right on that line. More or less a technicality, but it has to be filed by MacKinlock and MacKinlock, at the end of the year, in Probate Court. Yes—that’s okay—all right—and you have your legacy!”

  “Which,” said Boyce Barkstone ruefully, “I shall now proceed to contemplate. What a pity the newspapers aren’t present, yes, no?”

  Chapter III

  THE RIGHT SOIL!

  Dourly, Boyce Barkstone reached out his hand for the little bag which contained all he was to receive from a man worth, he well knew, practically a hundred thousand dollars. But suddenly nearly there, he reached, instead, for the carbon copy of that 1-page foolscap document which had awarded the bag’s contents to him.

  “I think I’d like first,” he said dryly, “before the great event, to re-read, again, that paragraph which allots me my huge share of the Balhatchet Barkstone Estate. If, that is, you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all,” said the lawyer sadly.

  And so again, frowning because of a sardonic something in his grandfather’s words which he could not yet fathom, Boyce re-read that paragraph. Which ran:

  And to my grandson, Boyce Barkstone, I leave a handful of beans, sealed in a tobacco sack, and left with the attorneys who drew this will, with the proviso that this bequest, having no intrinsic value, shall be given him immediately by my executors or its custodians, without necessity of his waiting the year of probate, and with the idea that perhaps he may find a good spot—the right soil, in short!—to plant all his beans in, where, growing simultaneously, they may grow him a valuable crop!

  Boyce looked up ruefully.

  “That ‘simultaneous’ business is, I’d say, rather laying on the irony,” he commented. “Since how else would beans grow? By a stop-and-go system, with a starter? Or how?”

  “Unfortunately,” replied Tydings, “I did not select your grandfather’s language. Alex said he dictated that paragraph himself.”

  “I doubt it not,” commented Boyce. “It’s got all of gran’ther’s biting irony in it that I’ve seen him exhibit now and again. And it—” He broke off, with a sigh.

  And then, shrugging his shoulders, shoved the paper away, and took up the cotton sack. Gloomily, he ground the wax-sealed neck of the sack against the edge of the glass desk top, and the wax crunched so that the string, twisted around the neck of the bag, became untwistable. In a second he had drawn open the neck of the bag, had frowningly poured forth the beans into his hand, thence rolled them lugubriously forth onto the glass top.

  They were a dozen or so in number—16, in fact, as they came to rest—for they had fallen into little groups: two groups of four—two of three—and one of two. And—at least to Boyce Barkstone—brought out graphically the last shred of irony in his grandfather’s bequeathment of them, as to their being planted in one spot! Or, as his grandfather had elaborated, one soil! For they comprised not only many and various sizes of beans, but many shapes, as well, and embraced various colors, to boot, particularly in the case of one flamboyant huge gnarled specimen which suggested itself to be some sort of tropical rooster.

  “We-ell, he gave me quite a nice assortment,” Boyce said ruefully. “I see at least a half dozen varieties amongst the crowd!”

  The lawyer seemed to be trying to find some comforting answer in this comfortless situation.

  And the best he seemed able to marshal was:

  “Well—er—Boyce, that will at least add to the interest in finding the—er—particular spot that contains the particular soil where all can be planted! And—and grow.”

  “Oh—yeah?” retorted Boyce, a bit savagely. “Well, you’ve heard of the man who leaned over so far backward that he was facing frontward again? By that I mean, Grandfather may have had a hell of a swell orgy of being ironical, but he may have overlooked the fact that in so doing he— Now I’m no bean expert,” Boyce broke off, “but that lima bean there is a Michigan product—if I know my Michigan, since I don’t know beans—while that little round black fellow there, now about to jump—there he goes!—”

  “Yes, jumping bean—it’s the light from the window heating up one side of him.”

  “Is it? Well, I’ve heard it’s due to a larva, deposited in that bean by some Mexican moth in Mexico where it originates.”

  “Yes, I believe I’ve heard that too,” nodded Tydings. “But whatever the explanation, we’ll agree it’s a Mexican bean, not so? Indeed, I see that Mexico is quite well represented! For I see all the ingredients of a bowl of chili—if I mistake not!—but the meat. Those 3 red kidney beans there? So it looks at that, doesn’t it, as if you’ll have to harvest your crop to the Mexican army?”

  “I can take it!” said Boyce dryly. “That well-meaning crack of yours, I m
ean! For I know you’re only trying to cheer me up a bit, the best you can. And why not? What’s done is done. But when you even intimate I might harvest this crop to the Mexican army, I might point out one little beano here who doesn’t know Mexico, I’ll wager, because—” He held up a small round bean. “Do you know what kind of a bean this is?”

  The lawyer shook his head. “No. Though I happen to know what kind of a bean this one is, though.” And he picked up the flamboyantly-hued gnarled one.

  “Well, as I said,” Boyce remarked, “I don’t know beans—but this one in my hand is what’s known as an English dwarf bean—and I know that only because, when I visited England, I lived with a chap who grew them exclusively. But what kind of a bean is that peacock in your hand?”

  “That one,” declared Tydings, “I know, because my sister, who’s been to Australia, has a necklace of ’em. It’s a Tonqua bean—of New Guinea. But of course, Boyce, the name attached to an agricultural product doesn’t mean anything other than where it was first named, and neither of us have disproved my facetious thesis at all. For Cortez may have brought that so-called ‘English dwarf bean’ from Mexico to England. While Captain Cook may have brought that New Guinea bean to New Guinea from Mexico, where it became ‘discovered’ and named long, long after.”

  “Yeah?” retorted Boyce. “But how’s about climates? And how’s about the fact that spring hits at different dates in either hemisphere? Now it strikes me that that ‘simultaneously’ in Grandfather’s will—that ‘a good spot’—singular, instead of plural—that ‘a valuable crop’—gives me a straightaway open-and-shut chance to—but first—first!—before I—I make a fool of m’self—do you know anybody who knows anything about beans? About the growing of ’em, I mean? Their care? Their harvesting? Etc.?”

  “Why—yes,” was Oliver Tydings’ bewildered reply. “Abner Hopfear, supreme head of the Dutchess County Hothouses Association. He’s a practical world-expert who has laid out and conducted hothouses for potentates and millionaires all over the world, from India to Australia. A real dirt-farmer, though. You want to ask him something personally?”

  “Right,” said Boyce Barkstone cryptically. “If you could get him on a wire. Could you?”

  “Why, of course,” responded Tydings.

  He looked into an indexed leather-bound notebook lying atop a desk-speaker at the rear of his desk—a book which evidently constituted a roster of past clients—and then raised his desk telephone, dialing it, as Boyce could see, for “Long Distance,” but reaching forward, as he did so, and switching on the desk-speaker so that Boyce could listen to the conversation—or, perhaps, so that he, Tyding, could later listen to Boyce’s!

  Long Distance’s voice came back in the speaker, clear and decisive.

  “Long Distance operator. What connection do you wish?”

  “Millbrook, Dutchess County, New York. The number is Dutch-4791. Mine is Broadway 4-5391.”

  “Don’t hang up,” the girl told him. “We have direct lines to the Dutchess County Hothouse—er—Dutch-4791. Hold the wire.”

  Then, a second later:

  “Here’s your party.”

  Which party proved to be a young man, judging from the voice.

  “Dutchess County Hothouse and Truck Farms talking,” he said.

  “May I speak with your superintendent, Abner Hopfear?”

  “We-ell, Mr. Hopfear’s pretty busy on the experimental far—but who is calling?”

  “His attorney.”

  “Oh—I see—hold the wire.” A pause, then a clicking, and the voice of a man which had in it the twang of a real dirt farmer came on—a voice whose enunciation almost proclaimed that its owner had straw sticking from his ears.

  “Abnear Hopfear speakin’.”

  “Abner, this is Oliver Tydings—yes—’way down in New York. I’ve a client here, Abner, who wants a little specialized information of some sort on the growing of—well, I fancy it’s on the growing of beans! Though I’ll put him on the wire—if you don’t mind. For I consider you the last word in the entire world on the growing of vegetables—and general vegeculture.”

  “Why, shore I’ll give it to him,” said the man. “If I kin! Though I reckon I hain’t brung up vegytables and hothouse pro-ducts all over the world, fer 40 y’ars, an’ in 40 kentries, ’thout perhaps knowin’ a leetle bit. But put him on, an’ I’ll he’p him out best I kin!”

  The lawyer extended the phone to Boyce. “Just use the transmitter end, as I did,” he said. “The box will respond as a receiver.”

  Boyce took the extended instrument avidly. For a curious idea was bouncing around in his brain. And he wanted to learn if—

  “Mr. Hopfear,” he began, “Barkstone is my name. I’ve—I’ve a handful of assorted beans here—ver-ry assorted, when it comes to that—and I’ve made a bet of—of $500—that I can plant them all in one spot somewhere—in one patch of soil, that is, you understand?—and with perhaps some artificial fertilization, which isn’t—ah—prohibited by the terms of the bet—have them all sprout—grow—come up. And—but can you give me an idea where such a spot on the globe—containing the proper soil, that is—might be? And what sort of artificial fertilizer, if any, I might have to perhaps use, wherever such spot—such soil—might be?”

  The practical farmer laughed. “Wa’ll, yo’ng man—fer I see from yore voice yo’re yo’ng—an’ on’y a yo’ng man’d make sich a ’spensive bet ’thout asking his questions fu’st!—if they’s very many types o’ beans in that thar handful you got, yo’re a mite out o’ luck. Fer—but I—I take it ’at you got, mebbe, a black-eye bean—heh?”

  “Why, yes—one of ’em does have a sort of black spot that, with the white of the bean, makes it look like a little black-eyed eyeball.”

  “And some diff’ent kinds o’ kidney beans, heh?”

  “Different ki—we-ell—come to think of it—the kidney beans in this group are a bit different. One is—”

  “Dark red, mebbe, heh? And one not so dark?”

  “Well, I thought—”

  “Yes, many does. Thinks ’at kidney bean ’s jest kidney beans! Have you got a big kidney bean, mebbe, what hain’t red at all?”

  “Why, yes—I have—but I thought it was an albino.”

  “Wall, that’s what some has called it—th’ Albiny Kidney—on’y ’tain’t a albiny, at all, an’ shouldn’t orter be called that. Fack is, that thar bean has lots o’ names, and plenty more are give it by them what tries, off an’ on, to grow it!”

  “I see,” nodded Boyce, trying to hold back some satisfaction in his voice. “Hard to grow, eh? Well, maybe I’ll be making up a few more names for it myself, when I’m growing it. For—anyway, continuing, I’ve got some English dwarf beans—that much I do know—”

  “English dwarf? Cain’t say as I know o’ that bean.”

  “Never heard of—but you—Mr. Tydings said you were—”

  “Yas—I am—a pract’cal grower o’ all what grows an’ kin’ be et—or used. But I hain’t no college perfessor. Ever’ bean has some ’ficial name—yes—but more times than not th’ ’ficial name hain’t ever used. Describe that ’ticler bean, ef you don’t mind. Fer I b’en to England—laid out a hothouse fer a rich man in Lancashire.”

  Boyce described the bean, which was easy, since he’d lived once with a grower of it, and the bean itself now even lay before him.

  “Oh—that ’un? We called that th’ Windsor bean—while the he’pers roun’ thar called it the Bally Broad Bean. Shore, I know that bean moughty well. As I say, I hain’t no perfessor, an’ I don’t know the Latin names—nor all the fool variants, as they is called—but I know the durned bean itse’f—be shore o’ that. Well, what else you got thar—what you really know?”

  “Well, I’ve got one that’s been identified by Mr. Tydings himself here as a Tonqua bean, if you know what that—”


  “Tonquas? Shore! Down in Australy they’re knowed more as New Guinees. But I b’lieve Tonqua is the ’ficial, legal, ’cepted name fer that ’un. I tried to bring some up fer a millionaire outside Sydney, but they seem to hanker atter that island o’ New Guinea lyin’ thar jest to the no’th.”

  “I see. Well, I’ve got a jumping bean, of Mexico—”

  “Oh, yeah? Wall, ef you was to consult a perfessor on that so-called ‘bean’, as I did once, he’ll tell you as that that famous ‘jumpin’ bean’ hain’t no true bean at all! A fac’. Fer I axed a scientist ’bout that onct atter I’d noted, in a listin’ o’ beans I’d jest glanced over—a listin’ put out by the U. S. Department o’ Agryculture—that there little black jumper wasn’t ’eluded in the listin’!—and found also that ’twa’n’t in no dicti’naries I had around. And I foun’ that th’ jumpin’ bean, though it’s a seed, hain’t a real bean. Though, pshaw, ever’body does seem to call it a bean, don’t they? Like they calls the soy bean a bean—when, in act’yality, th’ ‘soy bean’ is a pea. A fac’! ’Pends, I ’spose, them things, on what in tarnation blazes a ‘bean’ mought be said to be, heh? But now le’s see. You got any limy beans?”

  “Yes—one. The only one I could identify right off the bat.”

  “Yes. Wall, you—you got any Oley Olsons?”

  “Oley Olsons?”

  “Wa-all now,” said the other man troubledly, “I think they is called, in colleges, Swedish beans?”

  “Well, what are—Oley Olsons—Swedish beans—or whatever the name should be—like?”