by Howard Mason
“Of course, Rocco!” Parradine assured him pleasantly. “Of course. And by no means have I forgotten. Just as I told you, I am to run up before pulling out for the airfield.”
“What airfield will you be leaving from, Mr. Parradine?”
“The new uptown one—Arrow Airfield—6 blocks from here. Just a 2-minute hop for me in a taxi. My passage is on the 4 o’clock Chicago Rocket. So I can dally a whole hour with you—and on you—if needs be.”
“Good. For I’ve lots of details to show you that won’t be ev’dent at first glance in the model. Nor—but how long will you be gone, do you estimate, Mr. Parradine?”
“Why, a week at outermost, Rocco. Why? For by dint of stepping on things while I’m there, I ought to be able to catch all 20 of those nightclub acts that I’m figuring to put on at the theatre. When, that is, they come east here. Probably they’ll all be good, as guaranteed by the ratings I have on them. Still, I want to be sure.”
“Yeah, that’s the way to be, Mr. Parradine. The way I always am—sure. We-ell, I guess that’s all, then; so I’ll be— But wait!—and in case I forget to ask you later—now, if anything comes up while you are gone, where in Chicago will I be able to get in touch with—”
“Now, Rocco! Are you trying to kid me? You know—or at least you ought to know, since you’ve been with me for all of three years—that I’ve stopped for years at the Palmer House there, and would stop nowhere else. Why, they all know me there—from elevator men to desk clerks.”
“Well,” laughed the Sicilian, uneasily, “I thought you might have hankered for a change.”
“By no means. No. I’ve reserved accommodations there by phone this morning. Suite 1100-B, however—if you do want to make mental note of it—all in case some new kind of Cosmic Rays bring New York’s electrical service to an end, and you have to wire me, while you install a coon-shouter atop our theatre marquee to shout our histrionic wares!”
Rocco laughed at the quaint conception. “That’d be an idea at that, Mr. Parradine, for a theatre. A low-brow theatre, like a burleycue. A whole row of coon-shouters along the marquee. All yelling about—except,” he broke off, more seriously, “cosmic rays don’t interfere with elec— However,” he broke off again, “your suite won’t be hard to remember, if something does go wrong. 1100-B.”
“1100-B is right,” confirmed Parradine. “Unless, of course, after I’ve registered in tonight, they have to shift me because of somebody now in 1100-B not vacating. However, the Suite number’s of no importance, anyway. Palmer House is all you need to keep on mental file.”
Rosso tucked his wire-cutters in a hip pocket, but appeared reluctant to go.
“Is it true,” he inquired almost plaintively, “that they have the barroom of that Palmer House paved with silver dollars?”
“Good heavens, no,” laughed Parradine. “That was a feature of one of the old Palmer Houses, before even my time. You see, there’ve been about a half dozen or so Palmer Houses, on the same site. The one you spoke of was the one built after the Chicago Fire.”
“I see. Well, I’ll be dam—uh—that’s the first I knew of that. You see, I’ve never been to Chi myself. Nor—but I’ll run on then, Mr. Parradine. And will have everything ready to show you—at least ready to light up.”
“Good! That’s the way I want to clap eyes on it first. I’ll be up, bag and all, as soon as I get a down-city phone connection I’m trying to complete, and ask a—a—a $64 question of the man I’m trying hard to get in connection with.”
“Okay, Mr. Parradine.” And Rocco, with a subservient nod of his head, withdrew.
And now Parradine was alone again, waiting his connection with one Ochiltree Jark. With whom he, Parradine, had not the slightest acquaintance in the world. Ochiltree Jark who, if certain facts were correct—
Gilbert Parradine rose, and strolled over to the nearest window. And, hands clasped behind himself, gazed contentedly from his perfect 12th floor tower-room vantage point, down upon and over his great uptown real-estate holding. Comprising the entire square called Parradine Block, bounded by four streets on three of which, neatly landscaped at the expense of Parradine Block’s own builder, were the many entrances to the trim, 3-story, ornately-corniced and red-tile-roofed building constituting the Parradine Apartments, and on the fourth of which—famous Broadway itself!—back of an enormously broad sidewalk created by donating valuable frontage to the city, lay the fronts of countless stores and neat shops; this real estate holding so vast as to include, as its upper Broadway end, no less than a 7-story office building, bearing atop its own outer corner the slender many-storied tower in which the owner of it all now stood, and containing, at its lower Broadway end, that great deluxe first-run motion-picture theatre whose giant marquee, at this distance, seemed like but an arm completely overhanging a gleaming ribbon of pavement, and where the people, threading in even now for the matinee, seemed to be but fleas. A holding so vast that—
But here the phone on the desk behind Gilbert Parradine rang. He turned instantly and swept across the room. Dropped into his swivel chair. And put the instrument to his ear.
It proved to be, as he had just about expected, the telephone operator he had been talking with less than 5 minutes before.
“I have that down-city connection, Mr. Parradine,” she announced pleasantly. “And your very party. Mr.—ah—Ochiltree Jark.” The faintest ripple, a mere tinkle, no more, of a laugh escaped the girl. She was plainly highly amused by this quaint name, but immediately became all business again. “Now are you ready to come on?”
“Quite,” Parradine told her, a bit amused himself at her amusement.
“Very well, sir. I’ll throw you in, now.”
There was a clicking. Then a man’s voice came on the circuit. It was an agreeable voice, but a fogyish one—indeed, almost a fusty one—the voice of a man who lived in some strange little peculiar world of his own.
“Ochiltree Jark speaking,” he said with dignity.
Chapter X
CONCERNING ONE “STINKAROO, THE KING OF THE STINKERS!”
“Oh yes, Mr. Jark,” Parradine replied pleasantly. “So glad I got hold of you okay. I—but my name is Parradine—Gilbert Parradine—and of New York, of course.”
“Parra—not, by any chance, the owner of the Parradine Moderne Motion Picture Theatre ’way uptown?”
“That’s right,” nodded Parradine. “Don’t tell me that you folks ’way down around—ah—22nd Street—ever come ’way up to my showplace?”
“Well, probably most don’t, no, Mr. Parradine. But you see I managed, just night before last, to catch, at your theatre uptown there, the first run of a picture I very much wanted to see. And to study some of your next billings, which all appear to be first runs. Why—the one I saw hadn’t even come yet to the downtown showplaces.”
“Well,” laughed Parradine, “I feel that the uptowners here have some priority rights of their own, on entertainment and film fare. Indeed, we’ll be the first screen theatre in New York City—if not perhaps all America!—to show this new English comic, Broom Sherwood, who they say actually put the cameramen and soundmen in stitches during the filming of this, his first film; and if that fight in Brooklyn between Casey O’Kelly and that fellow Napoleoni, or whatever he now calls himself, comes off on schedule—we’ll be having the first films on it. Same time, in fact, as the Sherwood film. And—but here!—I seem to be trying to sell something. And I’m—”
“That’s quite all right,” said the man on the other end of the wire. “In fact, I noted the forecast and dating of that identical hook-up of first runs in your lobby when I was up there.”
Now a silence fell, a polite silence. And then Ochiltree Jark added courteously:
“What—what can I do for you, Mr. Parradine?”
“We-ell,” responded the latter, “I’ll make it very brief. I’m a collector, Mr. Jark�
��though in a small and modest way—of Chinese objects. Everything from jade seals to—well, anything. Oh, no sinologist, me—heavens no! I pluck what appeals to me. And hardly know the meaning or history of most of the things I have. Nor—but anyway, a friend of mine, by the name of Vanzwell Cooperider, who sort of keeps his eye open for my—ah—weakness, called me up around noontime today, and told me that in a little catalogue or leaflet put out by you there on 22nd Street, you—but you’re in the book business, are you not?”
“That’s right, Mr. Parradine. I do a sort of specialized shop trade in second-hand books, specially bound stuff and—and sets, you know; and a catalogue trade with respect to odd and somewhat rare items.”
“Well, it’s about one of those rarer items,” Gilbert Parradine said, “one of those catalogue items, that I’m calling up now. My friend says you have, listed in your latest catalogue, a book called The Way Out. Allegedly containing all the wisdom of old China, collated and all, and—”
“That’s right, Mr. Parradine. And I even recognize your friend’s name. For I have a mailing list, you see, of only a couple hundred copies. Vanzwell Cooperider, yes, of Long Island. Interested, if I’m not mistaken, in old Shakespearean items. However, your friend apparently did not notice the code-letter extension ‘o-o’ on that entry. Which means—or at least signified—that I had listed, for sale, one copy only of that work The Way Out.”
“Oh yes—1 copy only, eh? Well, I have sort of taken a notion that a good thorough compilation of the Chinese people’s wisdom might well go with my weird assemblage of objects. And so-o-o if you’ve a copy, I suppose I’d have no trouble in getting hold of it? So how much is it?”
There was a long pause. It seemed to radiate regret, apology, even self-recrimination. “I hardly know what to say, Mr. Parradine,” the odd-books dealer replied. “At the realization, I mean, that that entry has put you to the trouble of calling up and all, when you’re probably a busy man, with your theatre and all. But you see, this catalogue which your friend has seen is not newly mailed out—it’s been out—oh, all of a little more than 3 weeks—and the copy The Way Out which I had, is sold. And I only wish to heaven I had it back! For it possesses now a real value. Instead of—of the paltry $3.50 I sold it for. Yes, sir! A real value!”
“Real value? What—what do you mean, Mr. Jark?”
“I mean simply, sir, that it is almost certainly the only copy existent of the particular literary work which it represents.”
“The only copy? We-e-ell—if it is—or at least assuming it is—and you had it—what would you be charging for it?”
“Well, under the odd and curious circumstances in which its valuation, as being the probably sole existent copy, has been beautifully worked out, the price would necessarily and—ah—automatically be $250. Only $250, yes, since it’s not a specimen of incunabula. It’s a quite modern book, yes, but quite irreplaceable, both now and forever in the future, via either publisher or author. Yes, $250 would be its market value.”
“Two hundred fifty, eh? Um? Two hundred—and fifty? Well, that wouldn’t be overpriced, I’d say, for a book so rare. ’Specially one with such an angle as to fit a collection of Chinese obj— But here!—I’m introducing myself in the picture, am I not? And regardless of me, the situation is as is. But do you mind telling me, Mr. Jark, how on earth it comes that there is only one copy of this work? And that you, a bookman, let yours go for a song? If, that is, you don’t mind?”
“Not at all, Mr. Parradine—not at all—so long as you don’t object to giving your own time on the phone. We in bookstores, you know, have more time than we have—” The bookseller broke off. Paused the barest moment. Went on. “Well, the work in question was created by a chap named Gordon Highsmith. Brought up in China. And was published in both England and America, though by two different sets of publishers, quite naturally. The British edition, however, is as non est as is the American. Yes, the great blitz in the British publishing district, during the late war. Only two copies of that edition are known—so-called author check-copies—printed, as such are, on green paper—and both today in the hands of known collectors. As for the American edition, of which we’re now speaking, the work was issued by a firm in Philadelphia known as the Vinnedge Brothers. The Vinnedge Brothers are out of the publishing business, and, so far as anybody seems to know, dead. Which may be just as well, since one of the brothers had a weird flair for—but—er—I won’t go into that! The author of the work, however—yes, Highsmith—has not been heard of for some years; he is presumed to have died in the North African Tunisian campaign, from a bursting German shell. So-o-o the book, you’ll understand, can’t be reproduced—at least certainly not in American edition, anyway—since the author, missing, owns the copyright, and the Vinnedge Brothers firm, dissolved and all, owned the American publication rights. And—but is this clear?”
“So clear,” nodded Parradine, “that I’ll call it double-check—on reproduction! Go ahead, Mr. Jark.”
“Yes, I will. Well, there was, here in America—at least, up to some time back—an erratic multi-millionaire who seems to have had an idea that he was sent here to Earth by Heaven itself to do certain things with his money—certain things, that is, calculated to correct certain evils in the world. In fact, it’s acknowledged today that the man was not erratic, but was insane. Anyway, his name was Bogardus Sandsteel. Of—”
“Oh? Bogardus Sandsteel of Utica? Who died—about 3 weeks ago? On his farm outside of that city? He—now let me see?—yes, he had an anti-Chinese complex, didn’t he?—spent thousands of dollars buying up property in big cities where Chinese had chop-suey restaurants, and then cancelling the poor devils’ leases. Thinking, I suppose, they would go off and blow their brains out, or something. The—the idiot! For, dispossessed, they only opened up elsewhere; and— But Bogardus Sandsteel then, is connected in some way with this book, The Way Out? Or—the copy thereof?”
“Right, Mr. Parradine.”
“I see. That is—I don’t see at all! For not much about the man really ever reached the papers. Even his death, I recall, was some days getting out. And very little beyond. Indeed, all I recall, outside of the matter of who his heir was, and his anti-Chinese complex, and his war of extermination on Chinese restaurants, was that the day after he died, his servants loosed a couple of bulls onto the reporters from Utica, trying to get the full story on the old man.”
“That’s him,” replied the bookdealer vehemently. “A stinker in death as well as in life. So much so that he even left his fortune to a—a bigger stinker. A nephew named Jeronymo Ashpital. A—a—a man—” the bookdealer was actually sputtering now over the wire—“so low that—”
“Yes, I know,” said Parradine soothingly. “I mean that a friend of mine—no, not Vanzwell Cooperider—another friend—went through both high school and college with this Jeronymo Ashpital. And told me, when the matter of Sandsteel’s death came up in our conversation, that Ashpital was known as ‘Stinkaroo’ in high-school, and in college as ‘King of the Stinkers!’”
“That’s him!” cried the bookdealer fiercely. “He’s the cause of my losing—but I’ll go on.” He seemed to collect himself. “Well,” he continued, more calmly, “it appears, Mr. Parradine, that about a year ago, Bogardus Sandsteel came upon a copy of this The Way Out which, claiming—nay, practically proving—that the wisdom of the Chinese people encompasses all the wisdom of all races, times, ages and what not, virtually apotheosizes the Chinese race; and so he at once conceived the idea of—”
“Oh-oh! I get it. He’s been buying up the work, I take it, to get it out of circulation?”
“Exactly that, Mr. Parradine. With a view—as I now happen to know—to some day, when he had gotten ’em all in—except that he never lived to see this particular colorful high spot in his career—burn ’em all, publicly, with great ceremonies, with a band, and a barbecue feast, and all. Oh, I fancy that did a man ever stan
d trial for his sanity, under such a charge, he’d be almost certainly certified to an asylum.” The bookdealer could here be heard to sigh helplessly. “But people like Bogardus Sandsteel, possessed of 25,000,000 dollars, never stand trial for their—but I’ll hurry on with the facts. Which are merely that for practically a year he’s had a standing ad in The Publishers’ Weekly ‘Books-wanted Department,’ the Retail Bookseller, the sheet known as The Booksearcher, and the weekly leaflet called The Library Hunter. The ad, in addition to making offer for copies of The Way Out, carried a blind address, for communication, and a Utica phone number. I myself never learned who the advertiser was till the day after his death. And I doubt whether anybody else ever did! Since—but anyway, the price first offered was 39 cents a copy—the standard retail ‘remainder price,’ you see—to draw out standing wholesale stocks. Then it went up. Shortly it was $3.50, the net retail. As time went on, the price offer went up, up, up. Eventually he was offering $50 the copy. Which—”
“Pardon me,” queried Parradine puzzledly, “but what on earth reason did the ad give for paying such fancy prices?”
“Oh, the reason given, after the price got pretty well upped, was one at least never heard of before in the book trade; perhaps that’s why it ‘sat’ so perfectly! For the story in the ad was that the advertiser was agent for the author, who desired to delete some of the items in his book, as errors, and to add some new material, but could not republish the book because of legal restrictions. Was, therefore, going to collate the copies of the whole edition, strip the bindings, alter, and re-bind. The trade knows that authors are frightfully sensitive about the authenticity of their works, and since nobody knew whether this Highsmith was poor, rich, or what—well, the explanation ‘sat,’ since, indeed, in the case of authors, Mr. Parradine, we expect anything, you know! And—”
