by Howard Mason
“That’s right,” returned the bookdealer promptly. “His name is McDolphus—Hutchcock McDolphus.”
“Hutchcock McDolphus?” echoed Parradine, a broad grin suffusing his features. “Does he look like his name?”
The bookdealer at the other end of the wire actually smiled audibly. “He does! Quite. Depending, that is, on how you objectify names.”
“I see,” laughed Parradine. His laugh faded. “Hutchcock McDolphus, eh? Well if there’s anything in a name, all heaven or hell, I’d say, couldn’t budge him if he took a stand on anything. Nor—however, any leads into his better—his more esthetic—his more human and sympathetic self?”
“None that I know of. He did ask in my shop one day where my phone was, so that he could call up his niece. And then dialed some number. And asked for ‘Carmine.’ Though she wasn’t there.”
“Carmine, eh? Carmine!” Parradine shook his head approvingly. “There, by George, is one beautiful name.” He added sagely: “Somebody in his tribe evidently has a flair for pure poetry!” He was momentarily silent. Then added, a bit sardonically: “However, so far as either one of us, say, reaching him through and via Miss Carmine—there are only about 6,000,000 people in New York, aren’t there?”
“Quite right, Mr. Parradine. Even though there be only one Carmine.”
Parradine was thoughtful. Then spoke. “Well, since this fellow’s name is McDolphus, I would only waste my time in calling him up and trying to wangle that book out of him for a price. For any price. For a man named McDolphus wouldn’t sell a 5-cent item for a million dollars, if somebody was bent on paying him the million. And a man who deals in hides would be shrewd enough to know that anybody trying to get a valueless book from him was trying to get something worth a million dollars. Not so? But now you, Mr. Jark—you’re a bookseller—somebody a hides-dealer named McDolphus would never understand—a man who might part with a valueless tome one day, and then develop an inordinate desire to possess it again the next, so-o-o—I’ve a proposition to make to you. A sporting proposition. A proposition not particularly based at all on my interest in possessing an item that’s the only one of its kind, nor even to add to my collection of things Chinese, but because a man of the Chinese race has just sold me on the efficacy of this—this passport to success and solution of all problems. But would you care to listen to an odd and possibly lucrative proposition, concerning that book?”
The bookdealer was quick to answer.
“If there’s the slightest chance,” he replied, “for me to make a little—by all means,” he broke off. “For I—but go ahead, Mr. Parradine. What is your proposition?”
CHAPTER XVI
AGAIN—THREE VOICES!
Louis Rocco, once more lying on his back on his couch-bed, in his bizarre and flamboyant living quarters in Parradine Tower, a folded handkerchief only now across his eyes—for his migraine was rapidly fading!—took up conversation with the 3 disembodied spirits about him—at least as they felt to him with his vision cut thus completely off.
Smoothing the folded handkerchief tighter down over his eyes, he spoke in a low voice.
“So his line still gives out the busy signal, eh? Well, that’s all the more reason than before ’at we should go on keeping silent in here, for the longer he chews the rag, the more cert he’s nearly and about ready to hang up. And before we re’lize it, we’ll hear him comin’ through that stairway door outside. And—however, since you lugs have been havin’ to keep your traps shut all day—or the most of it—’count of the contin’al danger of him gumshoeing up here and tapping on the door, and me not figuring till 5 minutes ago how to fix that stairway door outside so she gives that warning rattle—well then, your tongues are all hanging out, no doubt, to ask some final questions. Okay! Ask ’em, then—one question each—and one only—and in a low voice—because any minute now he’ll be up on this level. And I don’t want nobody’s bazooing to drown out his approach. For I want him safe in here—beyond all three doors and beyond yonder bolt—so’s I can be putting that rod on his spine and letting him know it’s a snatch.”
“After which,” Rocco went on, businesslike, with scarcely a pause, “we gotta work fast. Get that now, each of you. Fast! To get the John Hancock on the card—to get the—”
And now, out of the black void caused by the tight compress on Rocco’s eyes, came a voice from one of the disembodied spirits!
“Bod afder dot, Roggo, vy nod we boomp him off ride avay? Unt schnake his potty oud-d-d-d tonide bevore—”
“Why, you Heine fool,” snapped Rocco, toward the thick voice, “because we gotta be able to have proof—clear up to the minute o’ the ransom payment—that he’s alive—something like his sig across the top of some current newspaper—or what. That’s why we gotta hold him fast and tight in that perfec’ hideout we got—give him reading matter what he wants—or at least such as don’t give him no naughty ideas or nothing—keep him cheerful and calmlike like he’s going to be freed when the ransom is paid, and—”
Now a new voice broke in—that voice which was in so many ways an educated and finished voice—and completely minus any trace of any kind of an accent.
“Pardon me, Mr. Rocco, for interpolating a comment—but just how, may I ask, could any reading matter—ah—give Parradine ‘naughty ideas’?”
“Oh keerist!” bit out Rocco irritably. “Skip it. A guy’s every word around here is weighed like it was gold. Pertend, P’fessor—pertend I never said it. See? Pertend I said nothing but that we’d give the son-of-a-bitch reading matter what he wants. Got it? Okay then. So we hold him in that hideout, healthy and happy, till the mazuma is paid.”
Now came the third voice. Plaintively, and with some apprehension in it.
“Bot wance we catch thoz’ ransome monee, Loo—ee—you no mebbe gonna try order us for to mak’ beeg scatter—weeth heem knowin’ ’oo—”
Rocco, horizontal though he was, raised both hands in a mock helpless gesture, and directed scornful words in the direction of that third voice.
“Why, you dago halfwit!—d’ya think I’m nuts? With him then able to de-scribe at least 4 of us? And the F.B.I. able easy to locate 4 lugs marked like us—an’where in the U.S.A.—if we take it on the lam? And the Rock—out there in Alcytraz Bay off San Fran—yawning for us? Keerist no—on any scatter! For once the ransom dough is passed—once, that is, ’at we get the highball from Silk and Chopper that it is passed—Parr’dine’s a dead cuckoo. A cuckoo who’ll never ident’fy nobody. Even if, by Christ, he ever gets ident’fied himself! After what we’ll do to his dead puss and his fingerti—no, I’ll do the bump-off myself, when the time comes—and inside the hideout where a 2-foot cannon-cracker couldn’t be heard, let alone his yell when he sees curts coming—and where his chances of dodgin’ the slugg’ll be e-zackly zero, because there won’t be nothing for him to hide behind!—and for grabbin’ the gat’ll be less’n minuz zero, for th’ sweet reason ’at he won’t even be able to get at it or at yours trul— But all right now—chop the gab—all o’ you—in fact, get into your positions. For he’ll be swingin’ through that outer door any minute. And I want it quiet around here—quiet as the grave—when he does. Sat’sfied now, Blinky? If so—”
“Su’ I sat’sfied, Loo—ee,” came the last speaking voice, its possessor now much reassured, obviously, about the absence of any necessity for mad flight across the country after this “job” was successfully over! “So I ask joos’ wan mo’ question—seence no soun’ of door outside, yet—an’ then I queet. W’at—w’at you theenk, Loo—ee, Par’dine he say w’en he learn he eez snatch’—an—that snatch sheez wan-honder’-p’cent p’lice proof? W’at you theenk he say, heh?”
“Well, stick around, Blinky,” retorted Rocco derisively, “and we’ll all find out. For whatever ’tis—it oughta be.”
CHAPTER XV
CONSPIRACY AGAINST A HIDES-DEALER!
&n
bsp; Gilbert Parradine, seated at his desk, his telephone instrument to his lips, tapped thoughtfully on that desk as the Lower New York City bookdealer asked the single significant question: “What is your proposition?”
And now Parradine answered.
“Well, the proposition, Mr. Jark,” he said slowly, “is this: Suppose I mail you today a check—or Parradine Properties pay-order, as you’d prefer—for $250—”
“I beg your pardon,” was Mr. Ochiltree Jark’s frankly puzzled reply. “Before you go ahead—Parradine Properties pay order? I don’t just—”
“Oh,” apologized Parradine, “I should have explained that. My properties—estate—call it what you want—are fixed in such a way that their many affairs go on whether I am alive or dead—non est or—or est! And I can pay out money—raise money on all or part—anything—if and when I so please, by giving certain named trustees a signed order to do so or thus. You wouldn’t have known about that, so forgive my referring to it, please. I have a few pennies in bank, so in your case it can be a check. And will be. So here’s the exact proposition: Suppose I send you a check today, by mail, for $250!—the exact putative top value of that The Way Out book. Which top price probably couldn’t be obtained in the market for some time yet. At least until somebody wants it—and badly. And as for the book’s valuation right now, to a certain Mr. Hutchcock McDolphus, it must be intrinsically worth no less than $3.50—what he paid for it—and no more than the ‘beyond-all-price’ figure for which he apparently holds it. Strange? So awfully strange! I can’t understand it—except on the hypothesis that, like myself, he’s all hipped up on the validity of the ancient Chinese wisdom of oxcart days! And that—
“But,” broke off Parradine, “to the proposition. Which is that I send you this check I speak of—I trust you entirely, you see, as one business man to another—I’ve always been safe in such things—and that you, bolstered by the fact of a cash customer—a cash-in-advance customer, so to speak—see this Hutchcock McDolphus in person and try your expert book-buyer’s hand in acquiring that book back from him. For he probably hasn’t an iota of appreciation of rare volumes. Even though he may, right now, be all enthused about the worth of Chinese wisdom in the—the hides business—or something! Oh, he may prove stubborn—sure—and what not else. But you’re probably something of a negotiator yourself, I take it, when it comes to— Anyway, you play to get your property back—for it is, in a certain sense, your property, Mr. Jark, since you sold it under false apprehensions—to get it back on any pretext, via any stunt, scheme, or what-have-you. With the understanding that when you have done so, the book, in view of my advance payment on it, is mine. But that whatever is the difference between the cost of your acquisition of it—and my check—is all yours?”
“Even up to,” asked the dealer almost amusedly, “$246.50?”
“Yes,” nodded Parradine. “Even though you get it back for the original cost.”
The other man, however, could be actually heard shaking his head. “That would be quite ‘out,’ I’d say. Since on the phone McDolphus wouldn’t even discuss selling it back to me at any price. Nor—however—hm?” Ochiltree Jark was silent. Then spoke. “Well, that sure is a proposition, Mr. Parradine. Cash on the nail in advance and all. And I to catch the difference, if I can persuade him—”
“Yes, or—or hornswoggle him, or browbeat him—yes.”
“No chance for that,” was the bookdealer’s frank rejoinder. “For it would have to be a hornswoggling proposition such as never took place on land nor sea—a matching of wits between a musty stick-in-the-mud bookdealer, and a—a—a—but yes, I’ll play ball with you, Mr. Parradine. For I need money. So it’s a deal. Expect nothing, however. For this McDolphus, I tell you, is so stubborn he’d refuse to sign his own pardon if he were being executed. A fact I and he—but I have some angles though. Yes, some angles.” Ochiltree Jark chuckled a bit. “I only regret, though—” and he chuckled even more, “that you can’t sit in on this piece of—of bibliographic hijacking. For this—this ought to be good! The Irresistible Force against the Immovable—”
“—McDolphus!” nodded Parradine. “Well, I’d like to sit in. As—well—your bookshop assistant or something. Only I go to Chicago in about an hour and a half, to be absent some days, and—”
“Chicago? Well then, if by some miracle I acquire that book from Hutchcock McDolphus—by hook, crook, hornswoggle or—or hijack!—where in Chicago would I express it to you?”
“Oh,” said Parradine, “deliver it right here in New York. Either by express, insured, or in person, to—well—my fiancée—Muriel Ordway, at the Renoir-Carlton. I’ll call her up about its possible arrival.”
The bookdealer could be heard putting this information down. For he was repeating it slowly. “Muriel? Ordway? Renoir-Carlton Hotel? Yes. Now that wouldn’t be,” he asked, half quizzically, “Miss Ordway, the European opera singer?”
“Why not?” queried Parradine. Then realized his answer was somewhat senseless, and changed it. “Yes, ’tis. Why?”
“Why, I heard her, in Boston, about a year ago. I think she is the most remarkable singer I ever—well, she has a voice of—of cool, molten gold.”
“Cool molt—thank you. I will convey that specific metaphor to her. She will be pleased.”
There was momentary silence. The bookman broke it.
“Very well then, Mr. Parradine. I have everything clear in my mind. I’ll do my best to hornswoggle or otherwise—and I do have some angles of my own—that book back from Hutchcock McDolphus. But I suggest that you expect nothing—except perhaps the return of your check. Expect nothing!”
“Which,” pointed out Parradine, “is often one way to be pleasurably surprised. Anyway, I’ll hope you get the book.”
“I’ll try,” said the other, with a sudden fierce burst of determination in his voice.
“Good. Then I’ll say goodbye, Mr. Jark.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Parradine.”
And the two men hung up practically together. And Parradine, casting his eyes sidewise to the rack that held his hat, and then floorward to where his alligator bag stood packed for his going, prepared to go upstairs and see the lighting exhibit that Rocco even now must have ready and waiting.
Chapter XVI
“MADAME ORDWAY!”
But, about to rise from his chair, Gilbert Parradine settled quickly down into it again. Drew out the top drawer of his desk, and from a stack of government-stamped envelopes, extracted one. Upon which, after shoving the drawer back in, and taking from a gold-cornered cubical black onyx fountain pen holder the gold-banded onyx fountain pen it contained, he wrote, in a flowing hand, the address of the bookdealer with whom he had just talked. And then, as the address dried, and pen still in hand, he wrote out, on the topmost salmon-colored leaf of a tiny gold-cover-encased checkbook lying close at hand, a check for $250, payable to the man whose name was now on the envelope. Which check, after he had blotted it carefully with a tiny blotter lying in the book, he inserted in the envelope without any additional writing whatsoever, and sealed the latter.
And now rising, he crossed the carpeted room, went out into the tiny hallway permitted by the slender tower, and in the mail slot at the side of the one and single shaft allowing a single elevator to ascend to this height of the tower, he dropped his envelope.
Then went back into his office, quickly closing the door after himself.
But now, back at his desk, he did not seat himself in his swivel chair again; instead, he took up the phone and, standing, prepared to make a telephone call.
Which he did by first dialing the instrument carefully for Manhattan 1-0001.
A girl responded, so mechanically that she seemed like a phonograph.
“Renoir-Carlton Hotel.”
“Miss Muriel Ordway, please,” he asked. “Suite 952.”
No longer, however, was there a p
honograph on the end of the wire. There was, instead, a telephone operator who loved music, and who insisted on a great artiste having her due.
“Madame Ordway—do you wish?” were the chiding words. To which he smiled.
“Madame Ordway—yes,” was all he said.
And now, standing waiting, he was, thanks to his altered position with respect to that gargantuan silver-framed and glassed photograph on his desk, looking down at none other than the party he was calling. A most beautiful woman, to say the least, about 35 years of age, dark of hair and equally dark, though luminously so, of eye. A woman manifestly of perfect poise, yet one of tenderness and understanding; a woman of undoubted high intelligence, yet one of the world of footlights and song. From her dainty ears hung great silver eardrops, and on her head was a chic but distinctive Russian hat. Her lips were parted in a kindly, tolerant smile—the smile of a woman who had been everywhere, and tasted all honors. And found them to be not so all-important in the scheme of things, after all. A woman who—
But now the very subject of the photograph was herself on the wire. As evidenced by the rich voice that answered—the voice of a trained and professional singer.
“Hello?”
“Muriel,” Parradine said instantly, “this is Gilbert.”
“Why—hello, Gilbert? Hello?”
“I won’t talk but a minute now, darling. In view of the fact that you’ll probably be seeing me off. Yes, I leave same hour as originally scheduled—same plane—same airfield. But important things get left so unsaid during these see-offs, that I thought I’d better get this, that I’m trying to say now, cleared off.”
