The First Mystery Novel

by Howard Mason

  The other man gave a description, unusually detailed, unusually minute. And Boyce nodded as he gazed at those in front of him and saw two of such.

  “Haow many kin’s o’ beans you got thar, alt’gether, youngster?”

  “Well—now that you’ve pointed out that all kidney beans aren’t just kidney beans, I’ve—well—I’ve got—let’s see?—oh—about 10 or 11 kinds altogether, more or less.”

  The other chuckled.

  “Wall, Mr. Bettin’ Man, I’m sorry to say as that yo’ve lost yore bet han’s down. ’Tain’t jest, yo’ngster, the simple matter of a mere spot to sow ’em in—a mere patch o’ soil, as you’ve put it—an’ as mebbe yo’re bet has put it—an’ th’ makin’ o’ that patch o’ soil art’ficially fertile to accom’date th’ hull bunch—it’s a matter o’ climates—an’ soils ’ith diff’ent textures an’—an’ diffent ’mount o’ moisture—an’ ith di’ent av’ege temp’tures—an’ all that. Why, you got beans thar what’s abs’lootely anti-thety-cal to each other in th’ conditions under which they kin be planted—an’ grow. Now them thar Windsor beans you say you got, they won’t grow no-how ’cept in a foggy coldish sort o’ land. An’ how many places like that, ’sides England, air there? Oh—a few—yes. Now them Oley Olsons, they has to be growed in a no’then kentry like Sweden. Whar the days is sho’t. Don’t ask why! Fer I dunno. Fer the limy, Mich’gan’s the best, though they kin be growed all the way down to the Mason and Dixon line. Even fu’ther—though not in Mexico, y’ understand—no! That Tonqua has to be growed in New Guinee—’r in places whar the climate is hot like ’tis thar. Meanin’ hot whar they’s mountings nearby to stir the air over ’em. And that kidney bean what hain’t got no color, that bean—which hain’t no albiny, but is a white kidney bean what’s knowed by lots o’ names—anyway, that bean is a problem in itse’f in growin’. Fer it—you see, yo’ng man, beans is the tarnationest critters they is in the hull world. They has to have a whole range o’ climates alone fer ’em even to come up. Some won’t show th’ noses o’ their derned pods ’cept’n it’s hot, dry an’ dusty; fer others, it has to be cold an’ dry; fer others, it’s got to be hot an’ moist; and fer others, cold an’ moist. Beans! Why, yo’ngster, they hain’t even no single hothouse, nowhar in th’ world, whar you could grow, under the same roof, no dozen specymens o’ beans as asso’ted as them what you got thar. They is one kentry on the globe—yes—whar you could grow ’em all. But no one spot o’ soil whar—”

  “One country? One country—did you say?”

  “One kentry, I said! But no single spot—no single patch o’ soil—nossir. That kentry, yo’ngster, is Chiny—whar ev’vy kin’ o’ soil an’ climate knowed kin be found, sence Chiny’s so big an’ extends so fur south and no’th—with some of it in mountings, some in swamp, an’ some near the sea. They ain’t no single spot—no bit o’ soil—in Chiny, whar all them beans—an’ all other beans they is in th’ world—could grow. But they is that kentry, ef’n you kin git a few co’spondents, or local consuls, to sow them beans fer you, each in its own ’tic’ler ’propriate soil.” Mr. Abner Hopfear paused. “An’thing else I kin tell you?”

  “That’s a-a-all I want to know,” said Boyce energetically. “Thank you, Mr. Hopfear. That’s a-a-all I want to know! Good—bye.” And he hung up. And turned to the lawyer triumphantly.

  “Well—you heard? My grandfather has given me a scientifically impossible task! He gives me the problem of sowing those beans in a soil—in a ‘spot,’ he even particularizes it—which permit them to grow and thrive simultaneously. His own word, too, that ‘simultaneously.’ All of which—as you heard—is absolutely impossible of accomplishment. Outside of sowing ’em all over China. But China—hell fire!—China isn’t a spot. China’s half the world! And parts of China are months removed from each other in seasons alone. A bean that would have to be sowed in the south of China would almost be getting harvested before—before one that had to be sowed in the north was out of the ground. Now, by gosh, you must admit I’ve found a way to qualify under that will. By breaking it! And inheriting, as I think I have a moral right to do, as Grandfather’s legal heir. What—what about it?”

  And, exultantly, he waited Tydings’ answer.

  Chapter IV

  AN ALIENIST SPEAKS

  The lawyer regarded Boyce with a half-amused, half-pained expression on his face. Then, taking off his round tortoise-shell eyeglasses, and fastening them on his thumb, he half shook his head.

  “My poor boy,” he said, “you’ve become so swept away by what looks to you like a brilliant legal idea that you can’t see that—well, you’re like a man who can’t see the beach because of the sea.” He was regretfully silent a moment. “Boyce, I would gladly ‘bust’ that will sky-high for you, if that were possible, for that bunch of crackpots down there in Washington Square shouldn’t have jot nor tittle of that hard-earned money. But—” He made a helpless gesture with his glasses-pinched finger. “Nothing in your grandfather’s will, confound it, is contingent on your planting those beans. No further legacy—or phase of inheriting—or anything else—depends on your even sowing a single bean—or pair of such—much less successfully bringing one or two or more up. My partner Alex is one of the best drawer-ups of wills in all America—and Alex wouldn’t, in the first place, be guilty of even drawing up a will that held a loophole by which it might later be broken. And this will of your grandfather’s is a perfect example of Alex’s best! You can’t possibly break it, Boyce, on the basis you outline simply because nothing is made contingent on your use of the bequest in question. Your grandfather has but ‘suggested’—and ironically, of course—that such-and-so might be a procedure to follow. He has left you those beans—yes—but only with the ‘idea’ of thus-and-so—but hasn’t made it imperative that you do anything with them but toss them into Long Island sound if you so wish. No, Boyce”—and unhappily he put his glasses back on the end of his nose—“I’m sorry to say—and I say it as one who would be glad to divert this money from those crackpots who think they prove social theories, but prove nothing—I’d be glad to abort it—if it could be. Don’t you think I studied all that out before you came down here this morning to hear an advance reading of it? There is—” He took off his glasses again. “—There is, Boyce, quite nothing whatsoever in this entire document by which you could break it other than, of course, the old, old ‘standby’—” he paused regretfully, as a man who hated even to mention the suggestion—“other than—insanity,” he finished, with tight lips.

  Boyce Barkstone scratched his chin. “But damn—I wouldn’t bring an insanity charge against a sane man for—for ten times a hundred thousand dollars. I accept your dictum about the—the hopelessness of my fool idea of trying to break Grand’ther’s will on the impossibility of his bean-sowing suggestion. I—I was too carried away to see what you’ve correctly pointed out. But about—about calling him screwy—hell fire!—of course, after all, I’m no alienist, you know—there might, after all, have been some screw loose in poor Grandfather—I saw only one side of him. Which—damn it—seemed a hundred-percent sane. But—but if there was a screw loose—then—then, damn it, I think I’ve more right to his money than that fool Academy for the Proving-up of Social Theories, I take it?”

  “Yes, they’re the screwiest outfit in New York,” said the lawyer tight-lippedly. He was studiedly silent. “Well,” he mused aloud, “there’s a quick way to find out—what you suggest, I mean. About your grandfather’s mental status. Even more, about what the nature of the expert testimony would be—if your grandfather’s mentality were attacked. I can—will, in fact—call up Dr. Lanway Aveyard, the psychiatrist—the best in the United States!—who knew your grandfather well. For they were members of the same club, you know. The Philosophers’ Club, on 39th Street. Not that everybody in it is a philosopher—God, no!—I know one reformed bootlegger is in it, though he has a yen for philosophy! And everybody likes hi—anyw
ay, be assured that I am a really neutrally-minded individual in this matter, Boyce, because there’s nothing in my pocket whether you got Balhatchet’s money—or old Josiah—or the Academy for the Poof-Whoof-Whoof—or the Society for Examination of Dog Skulls, which society, believe it or not, actually exists in New York. Aveyard may know something that he keeps to himself, inasmuch as he’s never been consulted by your grandfather. And if it were detrimental to your grandfather’s mental status, he may drop a hint—could be safely subpoenaed then as a wit—however—here goes!—we’ll see. I know him fairly well. We’ll find out!”

  Again he raised the telephone that was connected to the now turned-on desk speaker.

  And dialed it, though without looking, this time, either in his private indexed address book, or even the telephone directory, for any number. A girl’s voice—presumably a reception-room girl—answered. The lawyer spoke. “This is Attorney Oliver Tydings—and do you think you could put me onto Dr. Aveyard at once, or—or am I in consultation hours?”

  “Oh my, no,” the girl replied. “That is, I mean that consultation hours won’t begin till this afternoon. Indeed, Dr. Aveyard hasn’t even started out yet for his morning’s work at the sanitarium. He’s going over some case histories of patien— Now I’m new here, so I— Mr. Tydings, you say the name is?— I think that will be all right, but will you just hold the wire, please?”

  A few seconds elapsed; then a calm, judicial voice came on the wire. Rather, out of the desk-speaker. It was a voice that suggested the deepest and soundest judgment on the part of its owner. “Dr. Aveyard speaking,” it said. “Did I get it right—that this is Oliver Tydings?”

  “Yes, Dr. Aveyard—Oliver Tydings. Say, Doctor, a matter has come up that—well, I’m not going to speak categorically now—but quite frankly—open-and-shut. Doctor, you knew Balhatchet Barkstone very well, that I know, and so might I ask—or—or mightn’t I!—whether there was anything, in your estimation, wrong with him? Mentally, of course, I mean.”

  “Oh-oh!” half-laughed the medical man. “Have you a will that you want broken?”

  “Well, not I particularly. I’m just inquiring on behalf of a client.”

  “Well, it’s a will, of course. Who wrote the will, if I might ask?”

  “Alex Winwell, my partner.”

  The other laughed. “You don’t think a mere alienist could break one of Alex Winwell’s wills, do you?” But the voice grew serious. “Well, Oliver, I don’t know what it’s all about, but if you really want an answer, all I can say is that Balhatchet Barkstone was about the sanest man I ever knew. He had a sense of humor—dry humor—damned dry—yes—but with it a sense of extreme justice. I believe that if a man ever did him a wrong—or gave him an insult—he’d repay him in like measure to the finest degree; that is, if he owed a man a farthing but no more—he’d either find some way to split an American penny and pay him—or else he’d send to England to some numismatist and get the exact coin with which to pay off. And so, when it comes to the matter of his mental condition, Balhatchet Barkstone had nothing whatsoever wrong with his mind. He wasn’t even eccentric, as we alienists regard that much-abused word. The only thing that might set him off from other men might be the originality of his thought. I considered—so did Doctors Hanse and Lewell, both psychiatrists like myself—that the lecture Balhatchet Barkstone gave at the Philosophers’ Club, a month or so back, embodied the most amazingly unique concept ever arrived at.”

  “What—what was the lecture?” asked Oliver Tydings, with what seemed, at least, to be a note of desperate legalistic optimism.

  “Why, the subject of it was—” And the medical man called off slowly: “‘Continuation of Proclivities and Talent the Only True Basis for Calculating Legal Family Descendancy.’ Its thesis was, of course, that when family proclivities—and talents—die, or become so diluted that they no longer are recognizable—or expressed—that an outsider who possesses qualities, or proclivities, or like talents, is in actuality a closer heir than the one who is an heir-at-law or a so-called ‘blood descendant.’” The alienist paused. “He specifically objectified his main thesis by pointing out certain great fortunes that have been made here in America alone by certain inventors of new food products—new games—even, in one case, a fortune-telling device—even, of all things, a certain device of wheels and discs which, it is said, helps authors to construct plots—it was a phase of our industrialism in which he appeared particularly interested—yes, that fortunes are garnered from such simple ideas—anyway, he showed concrete example after concrete example of how certain inheritors of A-I brains of that type have failed utterly to improve the family-invented product, be it a food, or be it a game, or be it what it may be, while mere office boys and porters in the same businesses had improved the products vastly, and even added better ones. And, he asked point-blankedly, who, from the point of view of such benefits as accrue to those who consume such products, were the real and logical heirs of a business of that type?” The alienist paused again. “Of course, his general thesis would be mighty difficult to put into practical application and execution—certainly, when you get away from such concrete fields as foods, games, and so forth—though the practical application of his thesis is not entirely impossible, eventually perhaps, in a few hundred years, when, say, specific talents can be actually measured by machines, as even Balhatchet suggested roughly. His lecture was, of course, in the main, but an advocacy of the thesis embodied—and frankly indicated that perhaps only in a hundred years, at best, might the psychological machinery for setting it into practical application be set up.”

  “And you say, Doctor, that two other alienists heard that lecture?”

  “Yes, myself—a member of the Philosophers’ Club—and my two guests. And a Matteawan State Hospital cub, named Doctor Peedard, who was a guest of one of my guests. Later, we all had a session over some Scotch and soda. And our unanimous dictum was that only the sanest man in America could have given that lecture and remained—in our opinions!—sane, as did Balhatchet Barkstone. That is to say, we all agreed he was the most logical reasoner, the clearest thinker, we had ever heard.”

  “We-ell—thanks, Dr. Aveyard. I—I presume that in a court contest, you—and these two physicians—and the—the insane asylum cub—would all testify that way?”

  “How else could we?” queried Aveyard. “Believing as we do. And how else would we, having all put ourselves of mutual record, as it were, over our Scotches and soda?”

  “Hrmph—yes—perhaps.” The lawyer seemed to be casting about. Then came a sudden shrewd question, as Boyce Barkstone, listening attentively, realized. “Have you ever, Doctor, examined Balhatchet Barkstone neurologically in your office? I mean for—”

  “I get it!” laughed the other. “Yes, I have. And not long ago. He had a touch of neuritis. I went all over him, including the usual psychiatrical tests which might bring out whether it might have been a psycho-neurosis. He was also a hundred-percent normal in that office examination, and eventually we found that the neuritis rose from an abscessed tooth.”

  “Yes,” grunted Tydings. “Well, one last question, Doctor, and I’ll let you go. Has anybody rung you, and asked you where you stood on Mr. Barkstone, since Mr. Barkstone’s death—or since his burial—anybody, that is, connected with—ahem—the Academy for the Proving of Soc—”

  “Yes, there has. Tutwilliger Maynard, of our Philosophers’ Club, did. He is a member of that crowd down there. And he indicated that he’d learned, from some firm of professional executors, that there was a little bequest left them.”

  “Little bequest is right!” grunted Tydings. “We-ell, thanks, Doctor, for your time, and now I’ll say goodnight—”

  “And goodnight to you, Oliver—even though ’tisn’t even near noon yet,” the alienist laughed.

  Oliver Tydings hung up disgruntledly, and revolving partway about again in his swivel chair, gave a peculiar gesture
with his hands.

  “Well, Boyce, that’s that! You heard everything. If Lanyway Aveyard says your grandfather was sane, then your grandfather is—or was—saner than either of us two put together! For Aveyard’s known as The Man Who Can’t Be Bought!—simply because he’s known as a man who never takes a fee for testifying in court cases. Juries believe him implicitly because of that fact. I would say, therefore, what I already suspected: that you can’t break Balhatchet Barkstone’s will on the score of mental weakness. And as for the mere eccentricity apparently involved—in the absence, I mean, of his motive in leaving you those beans, known only to you and to me!—well, eccentricity itself appears to be no stigma, at least here in America, denoting mental weakness or incompetency. And even worse, as you heard from Aveyard’s own statement, those crackpots down in Greenwich Village have learned already that he’s ready to testify in a direction that will uphold their inheritance of your grandfather’s estate completely.”

  Boyce said nothing. For there was nothing to be said. And a long silence fell between the two men.

  It was broken, at length, by Oliver Tydings.

  “Well, do you want your beans, or shall we toss ’em into the cuspidor?”

  “Heck—no!” retorted the younger man savagely. “I’d keep ’em—if for nothing else than to lay out in front of listeners when I’m an old man, and say: ‘These, gentlemen, are what I received from my grandfather in the long, long ago; me—his legal heir—his only blood relative—back in 19-umpty-um—and then I’ll relate the sad tale.”

  “Which,” pointed out the lawyer sagely, “they won’t believe. So what?”

  “Well,” laughed Boyce, but quite mirthlessly, “if you really think that—and that gives me a real idea!—I’ll just have ’em read the story for themselves—by asking them to read the clipping.”

  “Story? There isn’t going to be any story, as I told you,” the lawyer pointed out. “MacKinlock and MacKinlock have provided there be none here, through their brother being Probate Court Clerk.”