by Howard Mason
“I never knew an author,” admitted Parradine. “Nor ever exp—but please proceed. You are intriguing me.”
“Yes? Well, as I said, eventually Bogardus Sandsteel was offering $50 the copy for The Way Out. Which you can readily surmise drew copies right out of Public Libraries; for Public Libraries, you see, are always hard up; they can always use $50 to buy many books for their shelves in place of one seldom read, or consulted, like The Way Out. Why, I know of two libraries alone, in this part of the country, that parted with their respective copies immediately on the day the price jumped from $40 to $50. Since—anyway, Mr. Parradine, the price continued climbing. On up to $100, which, as I now happen to know, brought in 11 copies. On up to $150, which I also now happen to know drew 4 copies, out of the hands of collectors of highly specialized informative stuff, such as Chinese wisdom would be. On the price went, to $200, which drew 2 copies out of hiding—the two being none other, Mr. Parradine, than two filched by some clerk from the United States Bureau of Copyrights—yes, the two originally deposited for copyright! And finally the price became, during the last month, $250 the copy. None, as I alone happen to know, came in on that $250 offer. So it’s assumable, I believe, Mr. Parradine, that $250 represents the definite valuation point for all copies existent. Since it is the price—the definitely offered price—where the book became no longer in the market for purchase or sale. Or—”
“Fair reasoning,” granted Parradine amiably. “And I take no issue with it. Go ahead.”
“Well, it was, as you say, roughly 3 weeks ago that Sandsteel died. After his $250 ad had been running for months in the trade publications. And drawing no copies whatsoever.”
“Yes, go on. Proving pretty conclusively, I’d say, that he’d drained ’em all in, bar none. But his death—well, you say he never got to have his great ceremonial book burning, and barbecue feast! Well, how comes it then, that by his death the copies aren’t pouring back into circulation?”
“That’s easily answered,” returned the bookseller, downright lugubriously. “For one of the last things he did, when he sensed he wasn’t going to live—and which he did the night before he died—was to go out and set fire to the particular barn which housed all the painfully acquired copies of The Way Out. Yes, a fact, Mr. Parradine. And the barn and all its contents went up in smoke, leaving not a brick! And so he died happy, I guess, thinking he’d killed off the work complete. Its British publishers being non est., and its American publishers being gone. And its author dead, and all. Only—”
“Only you—you had a copy of the work? How on earth did that come abou—”
“Very easily explained, Mr. Parradine,” said the book-dealer glumly. “You see, the day before Sandsteel’s death, I acquired, by purchase, from the executors of the estate of an old bookseller, by name Eliphalet Skillanville, in White Plains, New York, the latter’s tiny stock. Eliphalet Skillanville was a man who had no relatives whatever, and he had not even operated for a year, you see. For he’d been lying paralyzed in a hospital, and in a coma, from a paralytic stroke. And so had known nothing, you see, about all these matters appertaining to The Way Out. Such as the calls for copies, and all.” The bookdealer sighed audibly over the wire. “Well, amongst the stuff I acquired, sight unseen, was one copy of The Way Out. My Lord! I won’t say I wasn’t elated. For I was. I—I was exultant. In view of that $250 call for copies running in the P.W., the R.B., and all. I called up that Utica number pronto. And when I got in connection with some man who it seems was the only man officially able to discuss the matter with me, I told him that I had a copy of the work, and would like to arrange to exchange it immediately for the $250 offered. Well, I was in conversation with—”
The bookdealer at the other end could be heard, at this juncture, to give vent to a bitter ejaculation of some sort.
“—with,” he continued dourly, “though I knew it not at the moment, this Jeronymo Ashpital we’ve been talking about. For you see he was, in addition to being Sandsteel’s heir, the executor of the latter’s will. Well, he told me, quite dryly, that Sandsteel had died the night before, and that I would read about it in the papers next day. And added that he was executor, and all. And when I then proceeded to ask him if the offer was off, so as to find out whether, as I explained it to him, I could at least offer my copy as a rare and scarce book, he said to me—he—well, do you know what he said to me, Mr. Parradine?”
“We-ell,” Parradine endeavored to sympathize, “I can only surmise that if he lived up to his high-school nickname of ‘stinkaroo’ and his college name of ‘King of the Stinkers,’ he said something to you to the effect that—sa-a-a-y, you don’t mean to tell me he coldbloodedly tricked you, Mr. Jark, into letting go of a now-highly valuable copy of a book?”
“Ex-actly!” said the bookdealer vehemently. “For he said to me—well, these are his exact words: ‘Buy your copy? Why, hell-fire, you musty-brained dope, do you want to buy some of the copies of the book we have here? In quantities of anything from a dozen to 2000? For we had over 4000 here last night. 2000 went back into trade already this morning. An even thousand to the American News Company—’ Here,” explained the bookseller to Parradine, “I’m naming the big jobbers now, of so-called remaindered-edition books— ‘—and a thousand to Baker and Taylor. But we’ve still over 2000 here. So-o-o—if you want ’em at the same rate that A N and B and T got them—39 cents per copy—you can have a thousand. Or, in hundreds, at 50 cents apiece. Or, in dozens, 75 cents apiece.’”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” helplessly commented Parradine, to whom all depths of meanness were unknown and unknowable. “And so you were left believing, because of supposedly ‘authoritative’ information, that you had a copy of virtually no value?”
“Exactly, Mr. Parradine! And so, since I was just about to go on press with my own little monthly leaflet of odd items, I got an entry in it of my copy, at the outrageous price of $3.50, and ran my leaflet off. Mailed it out next day. And shortly orders—a few—commenced to come in for my copy. More than I could supply, indeed, so far as that went. For I sold my copy off, to a party. But having those extra additional orders on hand, that I’d been unable to supply, and being near Utica yesterday because of my mother-in-law’s funeral there, I ran out to the Sandsteel farm to see whether I could pick up a dozen more copies, and incidentally to find out when the sold ones were going to hit the market. And lo—this time I got hold of a decent white man—a former New Yorker, incidentally—a lawyer named Isdale Archdeacon, who—”
“Isdale Archdeacon?” interrupted Parradine, nodding. “No more upright man in the whole legal profession. No, I don’t know him, but know of him as when he practised here in New York; and he was actually called ‘White Man’ Archdeacon. Since—but go ahead.”
“Yes, I will. Well, Archdeacon, it seems, was now helping to execute Sandsteel’s will, instead of this—this King of the Stinkers, Jeronymo Ashpital. Who’d been deposed as executor, for highhandedness. And Archdeacon gave me the facts. The real low-down. Showed me how I had been lied to. By one of the biggest, and meanest, liars in creation. Told me how the barn containing Sandsteel’s copies of The Way Out had been burned down by the old man the night before he died. Even took me out and showed it to me. I even picked up a corner of one book cover! So you see, Mr. Parradine, I had sold a highly rare book worth all of $250 for $3.50. And that’s—that’s the whole story, Mr. Parradine.”
“Well, I’ll be darned!” was all Parradine could say. “Your story, Mr. Jark, gilds an already interesting enough work with even further drama. Mayhap someday some author will write up this work and—but anyway, maybe this is where I come into the picture! With a—a now slightly heightened yen for this book—and with some money—more than $3.50, anyway!—to spend. So-o-o do you mind telling me to whom you sold this precious copy?”
Chapter XI
THE BROWSER
The Lower New York bookdealer proved quite wil
ling to detail exactly where his flown bird had gone! And for the simple reason, as became manifest from his immediate reply, that it appeared to be now quite and completely impossible that the bird in question would, or ever could, return to its Next to the Six Deuces—or 222½ West 22nd Street, as that latter site might less figuratively be described. For in the case of that copy of The Way Out, it now appeared that—
“The copy,” retorted the bookdealer dryly. “Didn’t even get sold through my sheet. It was sold to a man who comes to my shop occasionally to get certain back copies of certain trade journals—he picked it off the shelves while merely browsing, and—”
“Browsing right in your—somebody here in New York, eh? Well then,” Gilbert Parradine added triumphantly, “there’s somebody right here in New York then, that I can maybe do business with. For a little Chinese collection oddity. Providing nobody—ah—tips him off that—”
He stopped, as he heard, over the wire, a rueful chuckle.
“Not this man, Mr. Parradine,” the bookdealer retorted. “Not this man—no! For this man is about the most stubborn, micro-brained human in all—You see, I tried myself today, via phone, to buy that copy back for—oh, anything in reason—and was politely told that it wasn’t for sale at any price, nor—”
“He knew, eh?” nodded Parradine, intrigued, “about its being the only copy of itself in existence?”
“Not in the least, apparently,” said the bookdealer, his own voice now radiating profound mystification. “For when I—but ’twas this way. This man is a dealer in hides—yes, stinking unaesthetic hides—and he has an office down on the East River front—and he doesn’t, I tell you, know the difference between a book and a—a cabbage—a fact! He certainly didn’t want this particular book because of any strange leather binding it had, for the simple reason that it didn’t have a leather binding—it was bound in cloth; nor, evidently, did he even want the book for his own instruction or edification, for he never even looked into it when he bought it—just plucked it down off the shelf, had me wrap it up, and only when he had it in his hand asked what the price was—and paid the price without the shadow of an argument.”
The bookdealer paused but the infinitesimal part of a second; then went right on with his castigation of the East River front hides-dealer.
“Which was an odd thing for him—I mean, that he paid my price without any argument whatsoever—for he’ll argue all day about a mere extra nickel or so cost on a back-number magazine of his particular trade. Oh, in his own business he’s as shrewd as they make ’em, so I understand—can actually make a penny squeal—stubborn as—as 20 mules rolled into one, and— However, Mr. Parradine, to put your mind immediately to rest on buying that copy of The Way Out from him, I called him up today and asked him first, casually, whether he’d enjoyed the book he bought; not altogether to my surprise, he calmly said he hadn’t read it, and almost certainly wouldn’t; so then, when I asked him whether he’d care to sell it back to me for a profit, he snapped: ‘Not for sale, Jark, at any price.’”
“Oh well,” Parradine returned philosophically, “that’s purely a relative thing, you know. Price and prices—”
“Yes? Well, when I said to him, ‘That book, as I now find, is a first edition, and has a single typographical error in it that gives it a value of—well, I’d pay $100’—he snapped—”
“Yes? What?”
“He snapped: ‘Don’t be a damned idiot, man, paying $100 for any book that things ain’t spelled right in—much less this one. Or any of its many dooplycates, when you run on to ’em. Though mine ain’t for sale, as I told you, at any price. Get that now! Not at any price—now—or in the future. Nor—’scuse me, now—a man’s come in here with a carload of hides to sell. Goo’bye.’ And,” finished the bookdealer morosely, “he hung right up on me.”
“I see,” said Parradine helplessly. “We-ell, since he anticipates your running onto duplicates of the work, he obviously doesn’t even remotely dream it’s the only one of its kind—owoo! If he won’t sell it now, I wonder what on earth he’d do if he knew ’twas the only one of its kind in the—well—” He made a gesture of futility at the phone. “It’s obvious now, isn’t it, that no mere ten-spot—or pair of ten-spots, from me—would ever crack his leathery hide—more leathery, probably, than the skins he sells! Nor would it—”
Parradine stopped.
For from the door across the room in back of him came a loud knock, thrice repeated.
“Just hold the wire, will you, Mr. Jark?” he requested quickly. “My electrician here, I think, wants to know someth—now don’t go, will you?”
“It’s you, Mr. Parradine,” said the bookdealer, “who will be paying the extra time charge on this connection—not me.”
“Right! So stick around. For in spite of all you tell me about this hides-dealing pepperpot, I’m wondering, at that, whether maybe I—You see, Mr. Jark, you’ve sort of roused my bump of cupidity by telling me that a—a stodgy, and apparently half-illiterate dealer in beef—and cow-skins possesses something that I can at least appreciate and really would like to own! In short, I want to discuss with you whether you think I might get somewhere with the fellow if, say, I ran down there to his office this afternoon before loping off to Chicago—yes, took a later plane today instead of the one I’m going on—and tried my luck at wangling, hornswoggling, or what-have-you, that book out of him for a modest price. Oh, if I did, I’d naturally pay you a commission for the inside info you’ve given me as to his possessing it; on the other hand, Mr. Jark, it might be possible that if I called him up from Chicago tonight and put on a sort of—of long-distance high-pressure act, that— Anyway, just stick around, will you? And I’ll be right back.”
And Parradine lay the telephone instrument down. Just as, again, a knock was sounding on the door back of him.
“Come in,” he called loudly, and swung around in his swivel chair.
The door now opened, revealing, as it did so, a strange figure—a half-man, no less, seated on a “roller-skate” cart!—framed against the bit of outer hallway. But no ordinary half-man this, for he was a Chinaman; quite legless, indeed, so far as the presence of even upper leg stumps went; but amply provided with locomotion, of the gliding kind, anyway, in the matter of the unusually generous rubber-tired wheels under the platform cart. Suspended from his neck was a tray containing shoestrings, pencils, safety-razor blades, what not. In age he was about 44—the same as Parradine, the years being revealed more by the touch of grey at his ears than by his impassive and somewhat thin, dignified face: his oblique eyes would have been declared, by an expert on Chinese faciology, to have been the obliquest in all New York—and his skin the yellowest of all his race living between the Atlantic and the Pacific! His torso, the only part of him visible, was encased in a black Chinese jacket, heavily embroidered in colored silks with fanciful flowers and birds. Matching, in colorfulness, a small round black hat on his head, sewn with brilliantly hued beads.
“Gleetings, Mistel Palladine,” he called, smiling blandly across the room. “I makee big mis-took las’ ni’te, w’en I sellee you sholt shoestlings, ’stead of long shoestling like you wan’. But I no likee bothel you this molnin’ fo’ to le’ me extsange—you plob’ly lots busy in molnin’s, yes, no?—but allee lite!—comee I now, aftel you’ lunch, to makee extsange.”
Parradine frowned amiably.
“Last night?” he queried puzzledly. “I didn’t purchase any—but come in, John Hoi. And don’t hand me any more of that chop-suey talk and pidgin English! For I know who you are, at last. You’re Jonathan G. Wing, ex-San Francisco attorney—admitted to the bar in California, and still legally able to practise there—specialist on criminal law—graduate, magna cum laude, of San Bernardino University—and now selling shoestrings on the streets of New York. Entrez, John Hoi, and tell me what’s on your mind?”
Chapter XII
JOHN HOI
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br /> A hopelessly helpless look swept across the yellow face of the Chinese half-man framed in the half-opened doorway. He shook his head frustratedly, but spoke.
“Good heavens!” was all he said. “Don’t tell me, Mr. Parradine, that the Truth is out over all New York?”
Parradine shook his own head. “By no means, Hoi. Nor will it be, so far as I’m concerned. But here—come in.”
The Chinaman, seizing from each side of himself, where both had been resting quite unobtrusively on the platform cart, a curious several-inch-deep wooden block provided with a metal handle, now proceeded to propel his strange vehicle inward, by a sort of rowing motion wherein his arms were paddles, and the blocks, pressed in contact with floor, were water-encased paddle-blades! Inward sufficiently, he rotated his platform cart enough to reach up deftly and shut the door, and then, seizing the momentarily relinquished block, rotated the cart back again, and was even now gliding over the carpet on what must, indeed, have been ball-bearing rollers.
And now, down in front of Parradine, his blocks placed carefully back at his sides, he was taking from his tray a package of shoestrings. And with it in hand, looking grotesquely up.
“How on earth, Mr. Parradine,” he asked pointedly, “did you discover that I was Jonathan G. Wing?”
“Very simply,” was Parradine’s honest reply. “A friend of mine happens to have known you from days back before you—ah—lost your—limbs, just however that may have happened, and—in short, Hoi, he went to college with you there in California. He was visiting me yesterday, on his way to England, and recognized you; oh, you could never have recognized him, because he’s been badly burned in a hotel fire in Pasadena, poor dev— However, he told me on the q.t. what he had discovered; and thus I found that the humble Chinese I have allowed to sit downstairs in front of Parradine Block is an educated, trained expert.”
