This time he didn’t shake his head. He folded the dirty square of paper, stowed it away carefully in some hole in the lining of his miserable jacket, and strode—yes, strode!—away, nodding and grinning smugly.
Kaplan turned and looked unhappily at Molly. Luckily she was biting off a thread and had not noticed. If she hadn’t been there, he knew he would have been useless. Now he had to put on a show of unconcern.
But his hands shook so violently that he banged down the iron almost hard enough to smash the machine, shot a vicious jet of steam through the suit, and the vacuum pedal, which dried the buck and garment, bent under the jab of his unsteady foot. He raised the iron and blindly walloped a crease in the pants.
Half an hour later, when Molly was arranging the garments for delivery, she let out a shriek:
“Ira! What are you doing—trying to ruin us by botch jobs?”
Kaplan groaned. He had started, properly enough, at the pleat near the waist; but a neat spiral crease ended at the side seam. If Molly had not caught the error, Mr. McElvoy, Cedarmere’s dapper high-school principal, would have come raging into the store next day, wearing a pair of corkscrew pants.
“From morning to night,” Kaplan moaned, “nothing but trouble! You and your foolishness—why can’t I be rich and send you to Florida?”
“Oh, you want to get rid of me?” she shrilled. “Like a dog I work so we can save money, but you ain’t satisfied! What more do you want—I should drive the truck?”
“It ain’t a bad idea,” he said wistfully. “How I hate to drive—”
He was almost quick enough to dodge the hanger. It was the first time he had ever regretted the imposing height of his bald, domelike head.
Bleary-eyed, Kaplan drove up to the store twenty-five minutes early. Sometime, late at night, Molly had fallen into an exhausted sleep. But his weary ear and intense worry had kept him awake until dawn. Then he got out of bed and dazedly made breakfast.
He remembered the last thing she had shrieked at him:
“Five bankruptcies we’ve had, and not a penny we made on any of them! So once in your life you get an idea, we should borrow money and buy a bandbox, we should move to a little town where there ain’t competition. So what do you do? Bums you practically give your business to!”
There wasn’t much literal truth in her accusation, yet Kaplan recognized its hyperbolic justice. By accepting the tramp as a tramp, merely because he wore dirty rags, Kaplan was encouraging some mysterious, unscrupulous conniving. just what it might be, he couldn’t guess. But what if the tramp actually had money and was copying the bandbox machine so he could find out where to buy one—
“A fat lot people care, good work, bad work, as long as it’s cheap,” Kaplan mumbled unhappily. “Don’t Mr. Goodwin, the cheap piker, ride fifteen miles to that faker, Aaron Gottlieb, because it’s a quarter cheaper?”
Kaplan opened the door of the Ford delivery truck and stepped out. “The loafer,” he mumbled, “he could buy a bandbox, open a store, and drive me right out of business. Family he ain’t got, a nice house be don’t need—he could clean and press for next to—”
Kaplan had been fishing in his pocket for the key. When he looked up, his muttering rose to a high wail of fright.
“You! What do you want here?”
Early as it was, the tramp squatted cross-legged on the chill sidewalk as if he had been waiting patiently for hours. Now he raised himself to his feet and bowed his head with flattering respect.
“The magnificence of the sun shines full upon you,” he intoned in a deep, solemn voice. “I accept that as an omen of good fortune.”
Kaplan fumbled with the lock, trying to keep his bulk between the store and the tramp. How he could keep out his unwelcome guest who seemed intent on entering, he had no idea. The tramp, however, folded his arms in dignity and waited without speaking further.
Unable to fumble convincingly any longer, Kaplan opened the door. It violated his entire conditioning, but he tried to close it on the tramp. Extremely agile, his visitor slipped through the narrow opening and stood quietly inside the store.
“All right, so you’re in!” Kaplan cried in a shrill voice. “So now what?”
The unattractively fringed mouth opened. “I acknowledge your superior science,” a low rumble stated.
“Hah?” was all Kaplan could extract from his flat vocal cords.
The tramp gazed longingly at the bandbox machine before he turned, slowly and enviously, to Kaplan.
“I have solved the mystery of the automobile, the train, the ship— yea, even the airplane. These do not befuddle me. They operate because of their imprisoned atoms, those infinitely small entities whom man has contrived to enslave. That one day they will revolt, I shall not argue.”
Kaplan searched, but he could find no answer. How could he? The tramp spoke English of a sort. Individually most of the words made sense; together, they defied interpretation.
“Electric lights,” the tramp went on, “are obviously dismembered parts of astral sheaths, which men torment in some manner to force them to assume an even more brilliant glow. This sacrilegious use of the holy aura I shall not denounce now. It is with your remarkably specialized bit of science that I am concerned.”
“For science, it don’t pay so good,” Kaplan replied with a nervous attempt at humor.
“Your science is the most baffling, least useful in this accursed materialistic world. What is the point of deliberately cleansing one’s outer garments while leaving one’s soul clad in filth?”
To Kaplan, that gave away the game. Before that, the tramp had been mouthing gibberish. This was something Kaplan could understand.
“You wouldn’t like to clean garments for people, I suppose?” he taunted slyly.
Evidently the tramp didn’t hear Kaplan. He kept his eyes fixed on the bandbox and began walking toward it in a dazed way. Kaplan couldn’t drive him away; despite his thinness, the tramp looked strong. Besides, he was within his legal rights.
“I have constructed many such devices in the year since I returned to the depraved land of my birth. In Tibet, the holy land of wisdom, I was known to men as Salindrinath, an earnest student. My American name I have forgotten.”
“What are you getting at?” Kaplan demanded.
Salindrinath spoke almost to himself: “Within the maws of these machines, I placed such rags as I possess. I besought the atoms to cleanse for me as they cleanse for you. Lo! My rags came to me with dirt intact, and a bit of machinery grime to boot.”
He wheeled on Kaplan.
“And why should they not?” he roared savagely. “What man does not know that atoms have powerful arms, but not fingers with which to pluck dirt from garments?”
As one actor judging the skill of another, Kaplan had to admit the tramp’s superiority. How a man could so effectively hide the simple urge to make a profit, Kaplan envied without understanding. The tramp wore a look of incredibly painful yearning.
“Pity me! Long ago should I have gone to my next manifestation. I have accomplished all possible in this miserable skin; another life will bestow Nirvana upon me. Alone of all the occult, this senseless wizardry torments me. Give me your secret—”
Kaplan recoiled before the fury of the plea. But he was able to conceal his confusion by pretending to walk backward politely to the workshop.
“Give it to you? I got to make a living, too.”
Beneath his outwardly cool exterior, Kaplan was desperately scared. What sort of strategy was this? When one man wants to buy out another, or drive him to the wall, he beats around the bush, of course. But he is also careful to drop hints and polite threats. This kind of idiocy, though! It didn’t make sense. And that worried Kaplan more than if it had, for he knew the tramp was far from insane.
“Do you aspire to learn of me? Eagerly shall I teach you in return for your bit of useless knowledge! What say you?”
“Nuts,” Kaplan informed him.
Salindrinath pondered thi
s reply. “Then let my scientific training prove itself. Since you seem unwilling to explain—”
“Unwilling! Hah, if you only knew!”
“Mayhap you will consent to cleanse my sacred garments in my presence. Then shall I observe, without explanation. With a modicum of introspection, I can discover its principle. Yes?”
Kaplan picked up the heavy flat bat with which he banged creases into clothing. Its weight and utilitarian shape tempted him; the lawlessness of the crime appalled his kindly soul.
“What you got in mind?”
“Why, simply this—let me watch your machine cleanse my vestments.”
Regretfully Kaplan put down his weapon. His soft red lips, he felt sure, were a thin white line of controlled rage.
“Ain’t it enough you want to put me out of business? Must I give you a free dry cleaning too? Cleaning fluid costs money. If I cleaned your clothes, I couldn’t clean a pair of overalls with it. Maybe you want me to speak plainer?”
“It was but a simple request.”
“Some simple request! Listen to him— Even for ten dollars, I wouldn’t put your rags in my bandbox!”
“What, pray, is your objection?” Salindrinath asked humbly.
“You can ask? Such filth I have never seen. Shame on you!”
Salindrinath gazed down at his tatters. “Filth? Nay, it is but honest earth. What holy man fears the embrace of sacred atoms?”
“Listen to him,” Kaplan cried. “Jokes! You got atoms on you, you shameless slob, the same kind like on a pig—”
Now the ragged one recoiled. This he did with one grimy hand clutching at his heart.
“You dare!” he howled. “You compare my indifference to mere external cleanliness with SWINE? Oh, profaner of all things sacred, dabbler in satanic arts—” He strangled into silence and goggled fiercely at Kaplan, who shrank back. “You think perhaps I am unclean?”
“Well, you ain’t exactly spotless,” Kaplan jabbered in fright.
“But that you should compare me with the swine, the gross materialist of the mire!” Salindrinath stood trembling. “If you believe my vestments to be unclean, wait, bedraggler of my dignity. Wait! You shall discover the vestments of your cleanly, externally white and shining trade to be loathsome—loathsome and vile beyond words!”
“Some ain’t so clean,” Kaplan granted diplomatically.
The shabby one turned on his run-down heel and strode to the door.
“The garments of your respected customers will show you the real meaning of filth. And I shall return soon, when you are duly humbled!”
Kaplan shrugged at the furiously slammed door.
“A nut,” he told himself reassuringly. “A regular lunatic.”
But even that judicious pronouncement did not comfort him. He was too skilled in bargaining not to recognize the gambits that Salindrinath had shrewdly used—disparagement of the business, the attempt to wheedle information, the final threat. All were unusually cock-eyed, and thus a bit difficult for the amateur to discern, but Kaplan was not fooled so easily.
He sorted his work on the long receiving table. While waiting for the pressing machine to heat up, he began brushing trouser cuffs and sewing on loose or missing buttons.
Luckily Kaplan steamed out Mrs. Jackson’s fall outfit first. That delayed the shock only a few moments, but later he was to look back on those free minutes with cosmic longing.
He came to Mr. McElvoy’s daily suit. Nobody could accuse the neat principal of anything but the most finicking immaculacy. Yet when Kaplan got through stitching up a cuff and put his hand in a pocket to brush out the usual fluff—
“Yeow!” he yelled, snatching out his hand.
For a long while Kaplan stood shuddering, his fingers cold with revulsion. Then, cautiously, he ran his hand over the outside of the pocket. He felt only the flat shape of the lining.
“Am I maybe going out of my mind?” he muttered. “Believe me, with everything on my shoulders, and that nut besides, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Slowly he inserted the tips of his fingers into the pocket. Almost instantly something globular and clammily smooth crept into the palm of his furtively exploring hand.
Kaplan shouted in disgust, but he wouldn’t let go. Clutching the monstrosity was like holding a round, affectionate oyster that kept trying to snuggle deeper into his palm. Kaplan wouldn’t free it, though. Grimly he yanked his hand out.
Somehow it must have sensed his purpose. Before he could snatch it out of its refuge, the cold, clammy thing squeezed between his fingers with a repulsively fierce effort—
Kaplan determinedly kept fumbling around after it, until his mind began working again. He hadn’t felt any head on it, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t have teeth somewhere in its apparently featureless body. How could it eat without a mouth? So the little tailor stopped daring the disgusting beast to bite him.
He stood still for a moment, gaping down at his hand. Though it was empty, he still felt a sensation of damp coldness. From his hand he stared back to Mr. McElvoy’s suit. The pockets were perfectly flat. He couldn’t detect a single bulge.
The idea nauseated him, but he forced himself to explore all the pockets.
“Somebody,” he whispered savagely when he finished, “is all of a sudden a wise guy—only he ain’t so funny.”
He stalked, rather waddlingly, to the telephone, ripped the receiver off the hook, barked a number at the operator. Above the burr of the bell at the other end he could hear the gulp of his own angry swallowing.
“Hello,” a husky feminine voice replied. “Is that you, darling?”
“Mrs. McElvoy?” he rasped, much too loudly.
The feminine voice changed, grew defensive. “Well?”
“This is Kaplan the tailor. Mrs. McElvoy”—his rasp swelled to a violent shout—“such a rotten joke I have never seen in eighteen years I been in this business. What am I—a dope your husband should try funny stuff on?” The words began running together. “Listen, maybe I ain’t classy like you, but I got pride also. So what if I work for a living? Ain’t I—”
“Whatever are you talking about?” Mrs. McElvoy asked puzzledly.
“Your husband’s pants, that’s what! Such things he’s got in his pockets, I wouldn’t be seen dead with them!”
“Mr. McElvoy has his suits cleaned after wearing them only once,” she retorted frigidly.
“So, does that mean he can’t keep dirty things in his pockets?”
“I’m sorry you don’t care to have our trade,” Mrs. McElvoy said, obviously trying to control her anger. “Mr. Gottlieb has offered to call for them every morning. He’s also twenty-five cents cheaper. Good day!”
In reply to the bang that hurt his ear, Kaplan slammed down the receiver. The moment he turned to march off, the bell jangled. Viciously he grabbed up the receiver.
“Hello … darling?” a deep feminine voice asked.
“Mrs. McElvoy?” he roared.
For several seconds he listened to a strained, bitter silence. Then:
“IRA!” his wife shrilled in outrage.
He hung up hastily and, trembling, he went back to his pressing machine.
“Will I get it now,” he moaned. “Everything happens to me. If I don’t starve for once, so all kinds of trouble flops in my lap. First I lose my best customer—I should only have a thousand like him, I’d be on easy street—and then I make a little mistake. But go try to tell Molly I made a mistake. Married twenty years, and she acts like I was a regular lady-killer—”
Kaplan’s pressing production rose abruptly from four suits an hour to nine. But that was because no cuffs were brushed, no pockets turned inside out, no buttons stitched or replaced. He banged down the iron, slashed the suits with steam, vacuumed them hastily, batted the creases, which had to be straight the first time or not at all. He knew there would be kicks all that week, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
The door opened. Kaplan raised a white face. It wasn’t his
wife, though. Fraulein, Mrs. Sampter’s refugee maid, clumped over to him and shoved a pair of pants in his hands.
“Goot morgen,” she said pleasantly. “Herr Sompter he vants zhe pockets new. You make soon, no?”
Kaplan nodded dumbly. Without thinking of the consequences, he stuffed his hand in the pocket to note the extent of the damage.
“Eee—YOW!” he howled. “What kind of customers have I got all of a sudden? Take it away, Fraulein! With crazy people I don’t want to deal!”
Fraulein’s broad face wrinkled bewilderedly. She took back the pants and ran her hands through the pockets.
“Crazy people—us? Maybe you haf got zhe temperature?”
“Such things in pockets! Phooey on practical jokers! Go away—”
“You just vait till Mrs. Sompter about this hears.” And stuffing the pants under her arm, Fraulein marched out angrily.
Despite his revulsion, it took Kaplan only a few moments to grow suspicious. One previously dignified customer might suddenly have become a practical joker, but not two. Something scared him even more than that. Fraulein had put her hands in the pockets! Apparently she had not felt anything at all.
“Who’s crazy?” Kaplan whispered frightenedly. “Me or them?”
Warily he approached the worktable. Mr. McElvoy was neat, but Mr. Rich was such a bug on cleanliness that even his dirty suits were immaculate, and his pockets never contained lint. That was the suit Kaplan edged up to.
The instant Molly opened the door she began shrieking.
“You loafer! You no-good masher! I call up to tell you I don’t feel good, so maybe I won’t have to work today. ‘Hello, darling,’ I say, so who else could it be but your own wife? No—it’s Mrs. McElvoy!”
Despite her red-eyed glare, she seemed to recognize a subtle change in him. His plump face was grave and withdrawn, hardened in the fire of spiritual conflict. Instead of claiming it was a mistake, which she had been expecting and would have pounced on, he merely turned back to his pressing machine.
She got panicky. “Ira! Ain’t you going to even say you weren’t thinking? Don’t tell me you … you love Mrs. McElvoy—”
More Wandering Stars Page 6
