by Howard Mason
“Oh—yeah? Well, MacKinlock and MacKinlock—who already have acted rather nasty in the brusque way they took over last night, are going to have another think coming! For they haven’t, you see, reckoned on me. Sure! For I’m going to plant those damn-fool beans this afternoon—and on Grandfather’s grave, right in the cemetery. No fooling! And when the caretakers rush down on me and ask me what I’m planting—and I show ’em beans!—and then they ask me what right I have to plant beans in a cemetery—I’ll quote from his will—especially his idea of ‘the proper soil’ to make them all come up!—and point out: what more logical soil could I select than Gran’ther’s own sifted rich covering? And I’ll refer ’em to MacKinlock and MacKinlock—and the cemetery’ll be full of police in a minute—reporters, too!—and still I’ll stand firm on the principles at issue. Wadda story! With pictures of me sowing the beans—the grave—maybe old Josiah, the family servant who didn’t get forgotten—maybe MacKinlock and MacKinlock, too! Anyway, then I’ll have, won’t I, for my hearers—in the year Umpty-Ump to come—the whole story from A to Izzard? And can say to them: ‘Read it and weep’?”
“Oh, Boyce, surely you wouldn’t—”
But Boyce Barkstone, with teeth set, was already meticulously gathering up his beans, and putting them equally meticulously into their bag. In order to plant them, one and all, that afternoon, in Woodlawn Cemetery, exactly as he had just proclaimed he was going to do!
Chapter V
A GIRL WITH AUBURN HAIR
Once downstairs, on Broadway, however, Boyce did not board the subway which would take him directly up to Woodlawn Cemetery. That, he told himself grimly, would be a little affair for this afternoon! Instead, he boarded the Broadway subway there at 47th Street, and settled down glumly for an equally long ride northward. But to Van Cortlandt Park. And a certain place ahead of that! After a while, his train emerged from the tube; rapidly New York continued to shrink vertically as he rode northward; soon he was at 168th Street, where houses and stores were newer and smaller—a region that but a few decades ago had been prairie. He did not, however, ride all the way to the Van Cortlandt Park terminus station at 242nd Street, across from which, housed in its little 1-story orange-brick structure, stood the real-estate office, with its bright new desks and furniture, that had given him employment now for 5 years, and a few blocks from which—in Waldo Avenue—was the lavender-papered cubicle with brass bed where he roomed. Instead, he got off at 231st Street—third station ahead of the terminus—and with face set, made his way over to where Albany Crescent intersected Kingsbridge Terrace—both new neat little curved bungalow-populated streets; and, rounding the first corner, stopped in front of a red brick bungalow which was his destination, but which he was not going to have to enter!
For the precise party he wished to see was out on the lawn, her back, however, to the street, a sunbonnet swinging from one petite arm, so that her beautiful copper-red hair gleamed in the morning sunlight—in the other hand, a shears with which she was trimming the rosebushes that stood by the front porch of the house.
Carmine Jeleffe! Whom, a few days ago, he had intended to marry—and who believed implicitly that they were going to marry. But who now would have to be told—
“Boyce!” she exclaimed, as, turning casually, she caught sight of him. She dropped her shears carefully, point down, in a loop in her sea-green gardening dress, and came over to the tiny low hedge marking the junction of yard and sidewalk. “To find you here, in the morning, of all times, is surprising.”
“Why not?” he said. “I’m not just a veteran without a war—but I’m a man without a job! The Executors, you know, took over the business last night, for auditing and liquidating and all that.”
She looked at him, a bit startled. “We-ell, of course they would have to do that, wouldn’t they? Then won’t you come inside—gentleman of leisure? Mother and Father went over to Brooklyn early today, and from sheer boredom I came out and tried my luck at improving Nature. In these rosebushes.”
“No, darlin’,” he told her solemnly. “Not today. I’ve got a number of errands to complete, and so won’t be coming in today. Though, so far as that goes, I’ll probably never again be coming in on any other day either.”
“Never again be coming in?” Carmine’s deep brown eyes were full of utter bewilderment. “On any other day either?” she repeated. “Why, darlin’, have I offended you in some peculiar way?”
“Heavens no, hon’,” he assured her. “Never that.” His own face grew weary. “Carmine, I’ve just come from Grandfather’s attorney. And I won’t be able to go through with our marriage now.”
“Oh,” she returned, plainly thinking he was joking, “walkin’ out on me—heh?—now that you’ve inherited a hundred thousand dollars?”
“No,” he said unhappily. “Never walking out on you. And besides, I didn’t inherit the hundred thousand. Nor even any thousands. I’m—I’m left out of the will.”
“Well, thank God,” was all the girl said. “Now I can prove to Father what I always told him: that if I ever wanted to marry a poor man, I’d marry him. How soon shall we advance the date, now that you’ve inherited nothing?”
“You’re sweet,” he returned. “The kind of a girl that comes only once in a lifetime. But just the same, our marriage is affected—seriously. So much so, darlin’, that it’s off! And besides, I didn’t inherit ‘nothing’—I inherited something. A handful of beans.”
“Beans?” she echoed, astounded.
“Beans,” he said quietly. And, withdrawing his bag, loosed the string and poured them in his hand for her to see. She stared at them, flabbergasted.
“Was—was your grandfather angry with you?”
“I’ll let you answer that,” he told her, “when you’ve heard the story. Come—I will go into your house—as far as its front steps!”
Manifestly hopelessly puzzled, she accompanied him over to the steps, and dropped down at his knees, on the step below that on which he seated himself. A couple of children running a kiddy car hove into view. “H’lo, Miss Jelly,” said one, as they sailed past.
She waved a hand, and turned attentively to Boyce.
And, pouring back his beans from his clenched fist into their cotton receptacle, and replacing it in his breast pocket, he told her all of what he had told Oliver Tydings.
And finally reached the end, with a curious gesture of his two hands.
“Well, Boyce ol’ boy,” was her relieved comment, “I am sorry for you—really—because I know you did want one fling, anyway, at being wealthy. Now me—I’ve had all that, hon’, down there on Riverside Drive, before Father lost all his money, and I tell you, honestly, it isn’t worth the having. So much so do I know that, that I’m going to start hunting us a walk-up flat downtown this very afterno—”
“But wait!” he said gravely. “I—I can take that not having a hundred thousand simoleons to blow—that isn’t so killin’—but—you see you haven’t heard all yet! We can’t marry for the same reason that—well, that I just won’t be coming inside this house any more after today. Because, in short, I’ll either be a fugitive from justice, or out on bail from a criminal charge, or worse, in jail—if nobody cares to bail me.”
“Boyce!” Her red lips fell open. “Boyce? You—you didn’t steal anything, did you, from the receipts of your grandfather’s business?”
“Gosh no,” he groaned. “As I’ve already assured Tydings. But you haven’t asked—nor did Tydings, and I’m glad he didn’t—what was the cause of Grandfather’s and my little argument, that day I last saw him. Yes, the day we locked up the place, and I came over to the house to see Josiah a minute. Well, it was this. The Donnweils, up above Van Cortlandt Park there, took advantage of the clause in the mortgage that the Balhatchet Barkstone company had on their estate, to prepay it. They came into an inheritance, you see: and they came in that morning and paid it smack off. Wi
th $7000. $2000 in certified checks, and $5000 in cash. Grandfather, as I told you, was in there that morning too, right after they’d left, and he insisted on appropriating the currency. So I asked him for a receipt for it. He got very peeved—asked me since when the owner of a business had to account to himself, like a $10-a-week clerk, every time he went to the—er—washroom.”
“But that wasn’t right,” protested the girl. “For after all, that business was one in which you are the recorded manager and treasurer; and even under bond for all the money you handled. And—and your grandfather’s business will be audited?”
“Is being audited—right this minute,” said Boyce sepulchrally. “And the books and records will show I should have $5000 more assets than I have. Cash assets, at that! I haven’t the ghost of a receipt to show I ever gave that money to Grandfather. The outfit down on Washington Square to whom he’s left his estate will demand it from my bondsmen, and will get it. My bondsmen, in turn, will send me to jail. So there you are. Can you dope out an answer to that one?”
Now the girl’s face was grave. “My God, Boyce, that—that is a terrible contretemps. Didn’t your grandfather ever think of the possibility of his dying suddenly and unexpectedly?”
“Who does?” Boyce asked sagely. “Like everybody else in the world, he evidently figured, at best, that he would die only eventually. And because of that little possibility made a will that cut me off. And the existence of that will oddly is due to the identical incident which I’ll be trying ineffectually to hand to a judge in explanation of how I happen to be short in my accounts—namely, Gran’ther’s grabbing off that five thousand smackers without a receipt. For I came back to the house that morning, as I told you, to give Josiah that wisecrack; Gran’ther heard it; thought I was boiling about the dispute about his own money. And so cut me off.”
The girl drooped visibly.
“And are you still bonded with that Lower New York Bonding Company?”
“Yes. For $25,000.”
“Um—that’s awfully bad, Boyce. The head of that company, as I know from Father having gotten so much business for them—including your original first bonding—is Aaron Smeltz. And he’s—he’s a terror! He sent a young secretary of the Fulton Street Fishmarkets, Inc.—whom his firm had bonded, and who was short but $50—to jail for 2 long years. He’s a terror, Boyce. So much so that Father quit all dealings with him 2 years back.” She put a hand on his arm. “Listen, darling, can’t you destroy the books of the real-estate business?”
He smiled mirthlessly. “Commit a felony? However, books—bank account—undeposited checks—even $5.63 petty cash on hand—were all taken over late yesterday by MacKinlock and MacKinlock, named Executors of Grandfather’s will. The books are probably being audited right now; and, being damned simple—if you don’t mind my frank expression—the excellent way I kept them, MacKinlock Frères will be asking me any minute ‘how’s about it’!”
“MacKinlock and MacKinlock,” she repeated. “Now wait! I know the confoundest tattletale who ever existed in the business world, and she works for them. Maisie de Long. Though ’twon’t be for long, for Maisie tells everything she knows. Listen—I’m going to give her a ring, ask her ‘what’s new in her business’—and if any piece of scandal has broken in that office, she’ll spill it to— Now wait, Boyce.”
She rose, and went into the house.
He waited dejectedly, tapping the porch step with the toe of one foot. The kiddy car with the two children—a girl and a boy—flashed past the house again. He grinned at the two faces that smiled at him as they raced past. He liked kids—girls or boys—boys or girls—he’d always wanted one of one or the other; had expected, thanks to marrying Carm—
He sighed.
And now Carmine was back, her face pained.
“My goodness, hon’, I did get an earful! Maisie says the firm has just discovered a horrible discrepancy in some assets on an estate and is trying to locate the thief to question him. As they doubt that the final inventory, comprising only furniture, will bring that much to light.”
“Inventory?” he repeated. “Oh yes, of course. Inventory. That means they’ll be out to Gran’ther’s house in anything from another hour to a few hours to 24 hours. To inventory every stick of furniture in it! Every objet d’art. Every item. So as to be ready to realize every cent for the estate. For many objects won’t go to Josiah—not being technically ‘furniture.’ Though even if they did, they have to be listed and tied up a year.”
She was looking at him questioningly.
“Tied up for a year?” she was repeating. “By inventory? Then that book I loaned you, Boyce—and which you said, last Friday, was still on Josiah’s bookshelf where you’d left it off—will be inventoried as part of your grandfather’s estate.”
“You mean, of course,” he parried, “that book of Chinese Wisdom?”
He felt shamefaced, but tried to conceal it.
“Of course,” she said. “What other book could I have mean— Boyce, you’re floundering. Does that mean that you haven’t read it yet?”
“I did not, alas,” he said gruffly, “read it. I confess all. That I took it from your pretty hands with much and many promises that I would read it—or read at least as much of it as you had, which was a fraction of it, as I recall it—and put it, wrapped and tied in the original paper you yourself got it in, on Josiah’s shelf when I stopped off there that night, because cleaners and decorators were due next day in my own room on Waldo Avenue—and I never, never took the book down again. Tis still there on Josiah’s shelf as I left it.”
“But, darlin’, we must get it back. For after all, it isn’t even mine. It was only entrusted into my care, as I told you, by Uncle McDolphus of—yes, we must get it back. For after all, Uncle McDolphus warned me, ever so solemnly, when he entrusted it to me—he was moving, you see, and had stopped off at our place after coming from wherever he bought it—well, he warned me that under no conditions was I to let it get away from me. Just why, I haven’t the remotest idea. Unless it’s a work that’s out of print or something like that. But he did warn me, all right, all right, about not even letting it out of my own collection of books.” Now she looked a bit pained. “I, of course, being a woman, unwrapped it and peeked at it, found what it was, and then—then I loaned it to you. And now—well, we must get it back, Boyce. For Uncle McDolphus wouldn’t have—” She said no more.
“Yes, I understand,” he acceded grimly. “For a man named Hutchcock McDolphus certainly must know darned well what he wants, and why he wants it, and would—well, I suppose if he knew right now who had his so valuable book, I’d be the one he’d name, right off the bat, in a game of Who-I’d—assuming a man named Hutchcock McDolphus would ever descend to playing Who-I’d. For—”
“Boyce! What are you talking about? Game of Who-I’d? What—”
“Oh,” he deprecated, “an asinine game sweeping New York just now. It starts out simply enough, with your answering a self-propounded question consisting simply of ‘—who I’d like most in the world to meet personally’—but later—”
“That ought to be easy,” she pronounced calmly. “Everybody in the world has one person they want most to meet.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Just try to think of such in a group, when the next step in the fool game is—but all right—who would you like most in the world to meet personally? Now me, I’d like to meet the woman who loved Hitler.”
“In heaven’s name, why her—assuming she even exists?”
“Just to see what she found in the world’s worst-hated man—to ask her what she thinks of him today, now that he’s merely history, and a plenty bad greasy smudge on it—just to—but all right. I was purposely giving you umpty minutes to think—and now I’ll wager you still can’t say who you’d like most in the world to meet personally. Answer fast!”
“Muriel Ordway, the opera singer,” the gi
rl replied promptly, sighing.
“Muriel Ordway, the opera singer?” he repeated. “Never heard of her, but then op’ry’s not my meat. Well, why Muriel Ordway? When there’s millions of other people in the world? Why—”
“Why?” the girl breathed. “Just a matter of a little-girl dream, that’s all—of a beautiful woman who sang even when I was a child—a woman who looked like a—a combination of an angel and a fairy-queen—whose intelligence came right over the very footlights, and—but my chances of ever, ever, ever meeting her are nix, nil, and nihil—and—well, where do we go from here in the game?”
“We play no games today,” he replied gruffly. “With inventoriers scheduled to descend on Grandfather’s estate. For the only way to get back that book of your uncle’s—without barrels of red tape—and then, maybe never—is to get it back before Grandfather’s estate gets inventoried—before the Executors’ men pounce on it there, and finding the book all wrapped and tied, figure it to be a valuable item and list it as part of Grandfather’s estate. And get it back I shall—if only for the reason that I’ll need it.”
“You’ll need it?” she asked wonderingly.
“Right! Because the name of the book, I think you said, was ‘The Way Out’? And I’m sure as shooting that within 24 hours I’ll be on the inside of six stone walls—rather, 4 stone walls, a cement floor, and a cement ceiling—waiting for somebody to go my bond only so that I can go to trial later for embezzlement. Yes, I’ll need a ‘way out’ all right!—far worse than you need a ‘way in’ to the acquaintanceship with your super-hyper-goddess, Muriel Ordway! I’ll need the way out, in short. So goodbye, darlin’—” He leaned over and kissed her. “I go now to rescue the precious tome. And I’ll see you—in court!”
Chapter VI
VOICES THREE
The pink-shirt-sleeved, sallow-faced, jet-haired man lying on his back on the couch-bed, in his bizarre living quarters in upper New York, a small cold-water compress across his eyes—migraine!—felt like a disembodied spirit in a great black void holding conversation with 3 other disembodied and quite invisible spirits. At least he would have felt thus, if he could have expressed himself in this way. But conversation with the spirits in this case went smoothly enough—invisible though they were to the man on the couch. For the reason that—
