The First Mystery Novel

by Howard Mason

  “Ah do t’ink dis is awful, dough, Mist’ Boyce. Oh, not de fi’ thousum dollah what you cain’t he’p, but de mattah whut yo’ grandfaddah could he’p. Ah mean dat he leab you plumb out ob in de col’, an’ all fo’ some ob dem lun’tics what libs down in de Village, same whut you speak ’bout. Ah don’—Ah don’ unnahstan’ it. Hab you got any idea whut he wuz mad at?”

  “Have I? I’ll say I have! It was because,” Boyce explained patiently, “he was in the back parlor, instead of you, that day you had just asked me what to say to that smart-alecky old Senegambian Don Juan, next time the old devil made a crack at you, and I called out, loud as hell, ‘Nuts to you, you old fool!’ And blew. But when I got upstreet a ways and looked back, I saw that it was Gran’ther who was in the back-parlor. And so, Josiah, just because of that ‘Nuts to you, you old fool!’ Grandfather considered himself mortally insulted, and cut me off with—”

  “But, Mist’ Boyce,” Josiah interrupted, “he—he didn’ t’ink dat. He did t’ink at fus’ you mebbe was drunk o’ somep’n. Fac’ is, he axed me, raght aftah you’d b’en in an’ went again, ef’n you wuz drunk o’ somep’n w’en Ah’d seed you las’. An’ Ah said dat I had b’en raght up close to you an’ hadn’t smelled nary a drap o’ nothin’. An’ Ah axed him w’y he axed dat. An’ he sez, ‘Well, den Boyce mus’ sho’ hate de Fathah ob his kentry, ’kaze I des cotched him, by de reflection in de back-parlor do’ an’ suhtain t’ings Ah heahed, stickin’ he haid in de pahlo’ an’ shoutin’, at Gawge Wash’ton’s pikter dah above de fiahplace: ‘Nuts to you, you ol’ fool!’ So den I ups and tell yo’ grandfaddah whut happened, Mist’ Boyce. How I had axed you whut Ah should say to dat old negro w’enebber he pull a fas’ one, an’ how you wuz des ’bout to tell me whut to say but went to de phone instid, sayin’ you’d be back in a minut an’ gib it to me—an’ how den he, yo’ grandfaddah, heave in by de back way whilst you ’uz talkin’ and sen’ me out to de back yahd to do somep’n—an’ how, da’fo, dat message wuz fo’ me. An’ we bof laff, ’cep’n he say, kinda hurt: ‘W’y de debbil, Josiah, don’ you come to a expuht, ’stid ob a kid lak Boyce, w’en you wan’s sassy ans’aws? Now mah ans’aw fo’ all dat old negro’s cracks’d be: “Go button yo’ lips, befo’ some brains dribbles into yo’ haid.”’”

  Boyce Barkstone was listening to all this with jaw falling ever and ever more open.

  “Josiah, do you really mean to tell me that Gran’ther knew positively that I was just passing a hot-shot into the parlor for your use on that old—er—Senegambian?”

  “Co’se he did, Mist’ Boyce! Aftah all, he knowed dat yo’ couldn’ know dat he had come in de house de back way, meanw’ile. He des t’ought, as Ah’ve tol’ you, dat you ’uz poppin’ off ’g’inst Gawje Wash’nton. Till, dat is, Ah ’splained ebert’ing puffectly, as Ah’ve tried to ’splain to yo’. Fac’ is—so fah as dem ’splanations ob mine wen’—Ah wuz eben able to show him dat ol’ negro, whut yo’ dign’fies by callin’ a Senygamblin’-Man ’cep’n he nothin’ but a damned ol’ negro—an’way, Ah shows yo’ gran’faddah de ol’—ol’—ol’ bastahd, comin’ down de st’eet. W’ich make yo’ gran’faddah say, ‘A-a-all raght! We’ll see w’ich ob dem two fancy wisecracks—mine, o’ Boyce’s—makes dat ol’ smaht-aleck slink off wid he tail ’tween he laigs. You han’ him fus’ Boyce’s, an’ den you han’ him mine. And we see!

  “So,” continued Josiah, “Ah ups wid de winder—yo’ grandfaddah stan’s behin’ me to watch de show!—an’ den long comes de ol’—ol’—ol’—Ah swah, Mist’ Boyce, Ah gits so hot w’en Ah t’inks ’bout dat man Ah—Ah cain’t t’ink. Ah—an’way, he looks in at me, and he says: ‘Ah dere, an’ how is de noble knight whut defen’in’ de vihtue ob all de yaller gals in dis block?’ To w’ich Ah says, ‘Nuts to yo’, yo’ ol’ fool!’ But Ah’m sorry to say, Mist’ Boyce, it nebbah faze him. Fo’ he come back at me so fas’ it make mah haid swim. An’ he say: ‘So yo’s runnin’ ober ag’in, is yo’, lak a pitcher o’ beer whut’s all frof?’ Den yo’ gran’faddah he nudge me hahd, and whispah, ‘Try mine’—an’ so Ah ups and says to dis ol’—ol’ ol’ son-ob-a-bitch out dah, Ah sez: ‘Go button yo’ lips befo’ some brains dribbles into yo’ haid.’ An’, Mist’ Boyce, it—it knocks him fo’ a row. A fack! He scratch his haid, and muttahs, ‘Button mah—button mah lip befo’ some brains dribbles in—into—dribbles in?’ Den he say ‘Bah,’ and beat it down st’eet mumblin’ lak a whupped dawg. An’ yo’ gran’faddah he laff like de debbil an’ he say to me, ‘Well, dah you is, Josiah, see? Nex’ time yo’ wan’s wisecracks, don’ you go to a babe-in-ahms lak Boyce—yo’ come to a expuht lak me—a ol’ man whut know all de answahs.’ And so you see, Mist’ Boyce,” Josiah finished, “you hain’t ’sulted him at all, an’ he knowed all ’bout whut dem wuhds ‘Nuts to yo’, yo’ old fool!’ was ’sposed to be fo’.”

  Boyce Barkstone sat, utterly flabbergasted.

  “But—but he must have been mad at me,” he expostulated. “For otherwise he wouldn’t have—”

  “But Ah clah, Mist’ Boyce, he wuzn’ mad at yo’ dat mawnin’—an’ sence he nebbah seed you ’g’in, how could he git mad atterwahd? On’y t’ing he say whut could eben be construe’ dat he wuz mad—on’y he wuzn’ mad—wuz dat him an’ you had a little argyment in de office a w’ile befo’ whut proved, he said, dat you ’uz gittin’ to be a bettah bus’ness man all de time bekaze, he said, somep’n lak de same situmation, w’en it comed up a few yahs back, wuz create’ by yo’ yo’se’f. Dis time, he say, yo’ had sense ’nough to at leas’ kick ’g’inst it. Nex’ time, he say, yo’d prob’ly hab sense ’nough to plant yo’ foot down hahd an’ keep it dah.”

  Boyce bit his lips. Suddenly a peculiar idea struck him.

  “But see here, Josiah,” he said hurriedly, “I came back that morning immediately I saw I’d pulled a boner, to explain it away. I rang the bell again and again, and Grandfather not only wouldn’t open up for me, but I saw him back of the heavy lace curtains watching me. So he was mad, you see; and that proves—”

  “But, Mist’ Boyce, he tol’ me ’bout dat secon’ comin’ back ob you. He ’uz goin’, don’t fergit, by de same clock whut misleaded yo’. An’ he knowed dat ef he let you in, you’d—well, he said to me: ‘Ef’n Ah’d let Boyce in, he’d a frittahed ’way some mo’ time doin’ whut he ’purrently a’ready has, an’ woulda missed dat train suah as shootin’, so Ah des let him ring an’ pertended nobody wan’t heah.’”

  “You’re—you’re not lying to me, Josiah, just to make me feel better?”

  “No, Mist’ Boyce, Ah ain’ lyin’ to you—not one bit. Eber’t’ing Ah tells today is de truf. An’ it prob’le, Ah t’ink, dat yo’ gran’faddah wuzn’ mad at you nohow, an’ wuzn’ ’sulted ’bout nothin’, nor eben—eben puzzle’.”

  Boyce Barkstone passed a hand helplessly over his forehead.

  “Well, good God, Josiah, it all means then that—that he didn’t cut me off with a handful of beans out of revenge. For—for hurt feelings, that is. That he—oh, he cut me off, all right, with a handful of beans, but not—not out of anger or miff. But why in heaven’s earth did he do it? For outside of the incidents of that morning, which you’ve illuminated plentifully, everything else was tranquil between us; was—”

  Boyce’s eyes, riveted unseeingly on that flamboyant Negro-like quilt covering the fourposter bed in front of him, were riveted also, at that moment—and equally as unseeingly!—upon the bright red book that he had deposited there a brief while before. But because it was bright red, that book—and the quilt was everything but—he had, perforce, to see the book, whether or no. “The Way Out”! Book of Chinese wisdom. Chinese! His eyes moved to the very slight protuberance in his vest pocket, made by that tiny bag of beans. Beans!

  His eyes moved back to that book. All the wisdom of all China out of all time! And China—only country where any and all beans could be successfully planted! Why, the Chinese mus
t know their beans; if so, they might even conceivab—

  He shook his head dazedly, like a water spaniel ridding itself of water. The water being, in this case, strange hopeful ideas that surged about in his brain but which, after all, were quite hopeless. For how could—

  But suddenly he spoke.

  “Josiah! Have you a phone directory in here, with your extension phone? I want to call Uptown University.”

  “Uptown Un’vers’ty? Dat big flock ob buildin’s all kivvred wid ivory, ’bout twenn’y min’s walk f’um here?”

  “Yes, yes—but I don’t want to walk there; I only want to talk there. Where’s the directory?”

  “In de drawah, sah, in de kitchen table, dah.”

  Boyce was back in the stiff chair again. Riffling over the huge Manhattan directory which had just about fitted that drawer. And found his number, Uptown A-59087.

  He was ringing it a second later. And getting an answer in a woman’s voice:

  “Uptown University—Registrar’s Office speaking.”

  “Is there anybody there,” Boyce poured forth impulsively, “Who knows beans?”

  “Sir! This is no phone connection on which to be facetious. I very much regret it, but I shall have to hang up on—”

  “No, wait! I wasn’t being facetious. I meant: is there anybody amongst your faculty who is up on beans?”

  “Oh? Versed in legumes, you mean?”

  “We-ell, yes—that is no—that is, I don’t know what kind of a specialist I want to get in touch with: but it’s one who knows beans—you know?—Lima beans—kidney beans—”

  “Yes,” she hastened to interrupt his beans enumeration. “Well, our Professor Zack—Professor Sealwell Zack—is, I think I can quite well say, the biggest authority in the entire world on legumes. Which comprise beans and peas. You would like to speak to him?”

  “I’ll say. And thanks!”

  Now he heard her voice saying: “Put this party onto Professor Zack’s quarters in Faculty Building—no, Professor Zack is recorded here as having no classes today. Yes, he’s checking yesterday’s examination papers—yes, that’s right.”

  And now an exceedingly scholarly voice came on the wire. One could almost see a pair of round hornshell eyeglasses, affixed to a black ribbon, resting on its owner’s doubtlessly bearded face! At least, that was the way Boyce visualized the face from the kindly and scholarly tones of the voice.

  “Professor Zack speaking,” it said.

  “Professor, this is a young man who is up against a—well, my name, sir, is Barkstone—Boyce Barkstone—not that it matters—but I’m up against a problem in—well—uh—well—uh—psychology. But wait, Professor—psychology relating, I can’t help but estimate, to—to beans. That is to say—well, y’ know I can’t say further, simply because I’m only floundering about myself. But all I really want to know—need to know, indeed—is whether the Chinese know anything about beans? And I’m not—not joking, really!”

  “No, I can tell from your voice that you are not. Well the bean, Mr.—Barkstone I think you said the name was?—well, the bean, Mr. Barkstone, is an old, old item of diet in China. Indeed, a Chinese, Sun Soo, long ahead of Gregor Mendel, experimented with certain varieties of Chinese beans and arrived at Mendel’s very Laws of Heredity. That’s not generally known, of course. But as to your specific question, I would say that the Chinese probably know more about beans—their growing, that is, and their cooking, and their mythology, and so forth—than any race on earth. I should hardly say, however, that the Chinese are conversant with the science of beans. Which science deals with such problems as whether a thing is a bean or not; and whether one species of beans is but a variant on another; and many other problems. Of course there are beans that have probably never seen China—” Boyce’s face fell “—though that is not to say they could not be made to grow somewhere in that vast country. As the majority of known beans indubitably have. And—well, I feel I’ve answered your question. Anything else?”

  “No, Professor, I guess not. At least just now. Maybe again today I might want to ask something concerning beans; if I do, would I have the permission—to ring you?”

  “My dear Mr. Barkstone! If Universities are not at the command of the rank and file of the people, they have lost their function. You may call at any time; on the wire, or in person.”

  “Thanks a million, Professor!”

  And Boyce Barkstone hung up.

  Abstractedly he returned to the spring chair he had vacated, and sank heavily, abstractedly, into it. Thoughtfully, from his breast pocket, he withdrew the tiny bag of beans that had represented his heritage, and regarded it helplessly. Then, frowning, he fixed his gaze on that bright red book lying practically within his reach on Josiah’s quilt. All the wisdom of all the Chinese of all times—embodied in the pages of that book. And somewhere, perhaps, in those many pages, filled with type, there might shine some tiny ray of light about beans—about beans, that is, left, in the 20th century, to a young New Yorker named—

  “It’s all clear to me now,” he was now saying aloud, not particularly to Josiah, though Josiah was an amazed listener. “Grandfather, not having been insulted, left me these beans to plant in the only spot in the world where these many diverse beans could be planted: which, Josiah, was my own mind. My own mind, Josiah! That’s right! ‘Planting those beans in the right soil’ was taking ’em into the thinking apparatus of one Boyce Barkstone, and deriving, from the use of that thinking apparatus—deriving what? Nothing! For, Josiah, the soil apparently isn’t worth a damn. For I have planted those beans in it, so to speak, and nothing—nothing, Josiah, has come out. Nor ever will, because the soil’s no good! But, Josiah, if the Chinese know their beans—or such dozen or so or more beans as they may have over there—and I, in turn, can get hep to every jot and tittle of their Wisdom, past and present if not future, then, Josiah, I have administered some fertilizer—Chinese fertilizer, alas!—to that bum soil in my mind; and maybe then I can grow—Josiah, are you still willing that a proved $5000 embezzler use your room while you’re gone, not to hide from the police now—but to read—ponder—read some more—ponder some more—”

  “Yo’ sho’ kin!” said Josiah, who had suddenly arisen, eyes popping out of head as they directed themselves to that tinny alarm clock. “Des as Ah said. Fo’ Ah’s goin’ to Baltimo’, des as Ah said—an’ belieb me-e-e, Mist’ Boyce, Ah’s goin’ raght now!”

  Chapter IX

  90 MINUTES TO GO!

  Gilbert Parradine, owner of Parradine Block, New York City, filling one entire square of uptown Broadway, and including the Parradine Apartments, the Parradine Moderne Motion Picture Theatre, and Parradine Tower, did not dream, as he picked up the telephone in his office this sunny afternoon, that within less than 90 minutes from then he would be held for one hundred thousand dollars ransom, under one of the most diabolical and police-proof kidnap plots ever invented by gangsters!

  And so, shoving slightly out of the way of his feet the packed green alligator bag which stood on the carpeted floor at the base of his swivel chair, which bag he was about to take with him to Chicago on the 4 P.M. plane, he proceeded once more to dial the instrument in front of him for the operator.

  And receiving her response, in a voice now familiar to him, asked her immediately:

  “Try again, will you please, to get me that party in Lower New York—222½ West 22nd Street was the address. Strange that the automatic ringing system is out of kilter on that particular exchange, when I— Yes, this is Mr. Parradine speaking—and it’s Ochiltree Jark, of course, same as before, whom I want— Yes, I’ve got to leave for Chicago shortly. And I’d like to complete my call down-city there before I— Yes, I’ll wait.”

  He hung up, and leaned back in his swivel chair, gazing absently at himself in the reflecting glass surface of a gargantuan silver-framed photograph which stood on the huge hand-carv
ed mahogany desk, prominent even amidst the gold-plated desk paraphernalia. A photograph whose glass, covering a dark background, and reflecting perfectly by the bright light pouring into the room from the high tower windows—at least in the direction where Parradine’s head now stood—showed a dignified, almost aristocratic-looking man of 44 or so, with kindly brown eyes and a touch of grey around the ears, and with a richly tailored brownish-plaid vest, carrying a heavy gold watch chain, peeping from between purplish, Bond-Street-made coat lapels.

  But here an interruption took place.

  A diffident—almost timorous—knock on the single door of his office. Which lay completely across the room from, and in back of where Parradine sat. And to which he called, loudly: “Come in!” and revolved briskly clear about, causing the richly plum-carpeted room, with mahogany hand-carved furnishings, and rich leather couch, to swing dizzily past his gaze.

  The man who came in, revealing as he did so a passing glimpse of an outside marble-tessellated hallway, and the corner of an elevator shaft, was about 35, and exceedingly dark of skin, though by no manner of means a Negro; indeed, his blue-black hair was as straight as hair could be; his jet eyes were a cold black, and there was a scar on one cheek. Dressed in green-striped trousers of almost dandified cut, he was in his shirtsleeves, which, patterned with pink stripes and interlocked green flowers, were the final touch that proclaimed plainly his Sicilian blood. He held in his free hand a wire-cutters and what appeared to be a green insulated coil out of some piece of automatic electrical machinery; and reason enough!—since he was head electrician for Parradine Tower and Parradine Moderne Motion Picture Theatre down the block.

  He spoke. Very deferentially, blinking at the light from the windows as though it were causing him extreme pain.

  “Mr. Parradine,” he said—and there was, in the outwardly Sicilian speaker’s words so slight an accent, if any, that it was plain he was one born in New York of Sicilian parents only, and never in Sicily itself, “I hope you ain’t going to overlook running upstairs before you pull out? For I’ve set up the min’ture model of that new lighting system I’ve devised for Parradine Block. All ready to be hooked in and all. And I—”