by Max Shulman
She made an entry in the notebook. “Do you have sex fantasies in which your partner is a woman of superior economic means?”
“I’m having one now,” I admitted with a blush.
She nodded and made another note. “How old were you when you began using narcotics?”
“Eighteen months,” I said, remembering that paregoric is an opium derivative.
“Splendid!” she cried, her pencil flying. “You’d be a classic case if you only had pellagra.”
“I’m sorry about the pellagra, Miss Geddes. If I had known, be assured that I would have contracted a case somewhere.”
“You’re sweet,” she said and patted my hand.
“It would be difficult to be otherwise to you, dear lady,” I replied with lowered eyelids.
“You know, Mr. Riddle, you seem to have more of the social graces than the other churls in your class.”
“It is you who brings me out of myself.”
“It might be amusing,” she said speculatively, “to exhibit you to some of my friends.”
“I’m a million laughs,” I assured her.
“Maybe it’s not such a good idea,” she said, stroking her chin thoughtfully. “The last time I brought home a derelict to entertain my guests, he stole my brother.”
“You may depend on me to behave in an exemplary manner,” I said quietly.
She thought for a moment. “All right, I’ll do it. Can you make it Saturday night?”
“It would be better sooner,” I said. “By Saturday, Judge Schram will probably have me in jail for contempt.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll have my father get the charges dismissed.”
“Well, if it isn’t too much trouble—”
“Not at all. Daddy loves to bribe judges. Saturday night, then, Mr. Riddle.”
“It will be my pleasure.”
“Now I must go home,” said Miss Geddes. “Can I drop you somewhere?”
“If it’s not out of your way, I’m going home too.”
“Come along,” she said. We each laid down a nickel for the coffee and went outside to her cream-colored phaeton. I could not help but admire the authority with which she drove; we did not stop for a single traffic light all the way to my house, although they were all red.
“Don’t stop,” I said as we approached my house, “or the children will steal your tires. Just slow down to thirty or so and I’ll hop out.”
“Righto,” she said. “See you Saturday. Be sure to wear those funny clothes you’ve got on.”
She diminished her speed and I leaped from the car. Laughing lightly at the resultant fractures, I went into the house with singing heart.
CHAPTER 4
Mother was reading in the living room when I came into the house. “Mother! Halloa! I have news!” I cried.
Mother looked up from the Racing Form. “Yeah?” she said.
“I’m in love,” I declared.
“With a girl?”
I nodded.
“Thank God,” said Mother.
CHAPTER 5
Several years ago in my town there lived a boy named Arthur Scott. His family was very poor, and young Scott was forced to go to work at an early age. Dressed in rags, he sold rag-paper editions of the evening papers on a street corner downtown. Each night, after he had sold all his papers, Scott would go home cold and hungry and turn over his meager earnings to his mother—except, of course, in summer, when he went home hot and hungry.
On his way home every night Scott passed one of the town’s finest bakeries. The bakery window was filled with all manner of goodies, and the poor urchin would always stop and press his nose against the glass, salivating wildly at the sight of the cakes, pies, and petit fours. One night, filled with unusually acute longing, Scott pressed his nose too hard against the window. The window broke, and Scott’s nose was severely gashed. An ambulance was summoned and Scott was rushed to Mercy Hospital.
Although Mercy Hospital was a charitable institution, run by the city to provide free medical care to the indigent, some of the best doctors in the city practiced there—successful physicians who took time off from their lucrative private practices to devote as much as two or three hours a month to needy patients. Among these unselfish healers was the eminent plastic surgeon, Dr. Nelson Estabrook.
Dr. Estabrook was a man of wide interests. In addition to being a plastic surgeon, he was also a stock-market plunger. Daily he won or lost great sums of money on the stock exchange. He was in almost constant communication with his brokers. Even while he was operating, he kept a telephone beside him so that he could be instantly informed of any fluctuations in the market.
Dr. Estabrook happened to be on duty when young Scott was brought into the hospital to have his nose mended. Scott was immediately prepared for surgery and wheeled into the operating room where Dr. Estabrook stood in readiness. After a brief examination, Dr. Estabrook went swiftly to work.
“Scalpel,” he said, and the nurse handed him a scalpel.
“Trephine,” he said, and the nurse handed him a trephine.
“Clamp,” he said, and the nurse handed him a clamp.
“Telephone,” he said, and the nurse handed him a telephone.
He dialed a number. “Hello,” he said. “Let me talk to Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, or Beane.… Hello, Fenner. What’s happening to North American Locomotive?… Still going down?… You need another half million?… But I’ve already given you two million today.… All right. Sell my house, car, yacht, and racing stables.… Let me know as soon as anything happens. Good-by.”
Dr. Estabrook returned to the operation with a heavy heart. North American Locomotive had fallen two hundred points that day. An unscrupulous competitor had started a rumor that a drop-forge operator at the North American Locomotive Works had leprosy, and railroads all over the country were canceling orders. Dr. Estabrook had his entire fortune invested in North American Locomotive; a further drop in the stock would wipe him out.
Preoccupied with locomotives, Dr. Estabrook scarcely noticed what he was doing with young Scott’s nose. Absently he dismantled the nose and proceeded to reassemble it. The nurse watched him silently for a while, but finally curiosity forced her to speak. “Doctor,” she said, “how come you made his nose look like a cowcatcher?”
“Oh, pshaw,” said the doctor, irritated at himself. “Now I’ve got to do it all over. Scalpel.”
But before the nurse could hand him the scalpel, the phone rang. Dr. Estabrook seized it eagerly. “Yes?” he cried.
“North American just dropped ten more points,” he was told.
The doctor blanched, teetered for a moment, and then dropped dead.
“Oh, pshaw,” said the nurse. “Now we will have to leave this boy’s nose looking like a cowcatcher, for the late Dr. Estabrook was the only plastic surgeon we had.”
Two weeks later young Scott was discharged from the hospital, in perfect health but sullen. The giggles he had provoked from the nurses at the hospital were nothing compared to the reception he got at home. He was greeted with guffaws and thigh-slapping from his family and friends. “Hey, lookit old Cowcatcher Nose,” they cried and rolled over and over with laughter.
All this derision was psychologically devastating to Cowcatcher Nose, as young Scott was now called. His former sweet nature curdled. He became surly and abrupt. Where he had previously been gregarious, he now avoided people. His industry was replaced by sloth. His mouth, in the past much given to smiling, now curved unpleasantly downward under his cowcatcher nose.
One desire obsessed him: to repair his nose. But that took money. Since the death of Dr. Estabrook no plastic surgeon practiced at Mercy Hospital. The only solution was to go to a plastic surgeon in private practice, but that was far beyond Cowcatcher Nose’s means.
Inevitably it occurred to him to steal the money. One night he tied a handkerchief over his face and went out and held up a gas station. Unfortunately it was a windy night. A gust of wind blew t
he handkerchief off his face as he was fleeing the station. This enabled the gas station attendant to supply a most graphic description to the police when they arrived a few moments later. Cowcatcher Nose was quickly apprehended, convicted, and sent to prison.
During his journey to prison, he thought things over. He realized that he had been mistaken in turning to crime. He made up his mind that after he had paid his debt to society he would thenceforth live a normal, useful life in spite of his disfigurement. Perhaps he could learn a trade in prison, find a good job after his release, save his money, and maybe someday be able to afford a new nose. Cowcatcher Nose was actually feeling good as he entered the prison gates.
As was the custom at this prison, he was taken to the office of the warden immediately after his admittance. The warden, who was curiously enough also named Scott, gave Cowcatcher Nose his usual lecture to incoming convicts. In this case he delivered his speech more rapidly than usual, for, being a highborn, fastidious man, the sight of Cowcatcher Nose’s nose was disturbing to him and he wished to get him out of the office as soon as possible.
“Are there any questions?” asked the warden when he had finished his orientation.
“As a matter of fact, there are,” replied Cowcatcher Nose. “I notice that your name is Scott too. I wonder if we could be related.”
“Certainly not,” replied the warden with a shudder.
“I don’t know,” persisted Cowcatcher Nose. “You look a lot like a great-uncle of mine.”
“Guard,” called the warden. “Throw this man in solitary.”
Cowcatcher Nose was forthwith placed in an oubliette where he remained for six weeks. After this period he was transferred to a cell and allowed to participate in the normal activities of the prison. This meant that he could write one letter a month. His first letter was to his parents, asking many questions of a genealogical nature. For during his solitary confinement Cowcatcher Nose had become convinced that he and the warden were indeed related.
A reply came from his parents a week later, detailing his antecedents and corollary branches of the family for several generations back. Sure enough, Cowcatcher Nose discovered that Warden Scott was a cross-cousin of a nephew of his great-aunt.
Cowcatcher Nose acquainted the warden with this intelligence one afternoon when the warden was inspecting the jute mill. “Ridiculous,” snapped the warden, reddening. “I’ll have you know that I’m a direct descendant of Sir Walter Scott.”
“Come on up to my cell and I’ll show you the letter,” said Cowcatcher Nose.
The warden declined the invitation and instead had Cowcatcher Nose returned to solitary for another six weeks. But Cowcatcher Nose clung to his idea, and as soon as he was able to write letters again, he inquired of his parents whether Sir Walter Scott was among their progenitors.
He received an affirmative reply. Moreover, said his mother and father, they—and Cowcatcher Nose too—were members of the Kenilworth Society, an organization composed exclusively of descendants of Sir Walter Scott. Each year the Kenilworth Society held an outing on the banks of Loch Ness, and each year Cowcatcher Nose’s parents received an invitation to come over for a day of jousting and alfresco supper. Because of the expense involved in such a trip, they naturally had to decline. They explained that they had never mentioned these invitations to Cowcatcher Nose before because they had not wanted him to be disappointed at not being able to attend.
Cowcatcher Nose could hardly wait until he saw the warden again. His first opportunity was at a softball game between the Arsonists and the Breakers-and-Enterers. During the seventh-inning stretch, Cowcatcher Nose raced to the warden’s side and told him all about his membership in the Kenilworth Society. Again the warden grew angry and ordered Cowcatcher Nose committed to solitary.
“All right!” shouted Cowcatcher Nose as the guards dragged him away. “Just you wait and see. As soon as I get out of this prison, I’m going to go over to Scotland and go to one of those outings. And you can’t stop me, either!”
Cowcatcher Nose had occasion later to regret this defiant statement. As it happened, the warden was in the habit of attending the annual Kenilworth Society outings at Loch Ness. He was, in fact, the only American to attend. At these outings, the warden knew, one found the very cream of British and Scottish society, many of them titled, all of them keen scholars of heraldry. The warden himself, wellborn though he was, had been regarded as a parvenu for a long time. Only after many years did the other members become satisfied that he was a gentleman and accept him wholeheartedly.
The warden was appalled at the thought of Cowcatcher Nose attending a Kenilworth Society outing. How would they feel when they saw this great boor with his unthinkable nose? After their initial horror they would certainly vote to disaffiliate the American branch of the Kenilworth Society. The warden gnashed his teeth. He had come to look forward with great zest to these annual outings.
He must, he decided, prevent Cowcatcher Nose from attending. But how? Obviously he had a right to attend. Well, thought the warden grimly, if he could not prevent Cowcatcher Nose’s attendance, he could at least delay it; he could see to it that no parole shortened Cowcatcher Nose’s ten-year sentence.
So when after five years Cowcatcher Nose became eligible for parole, the warden sent his application to the parole board with a negative endorsement. And he did the same with all subsequent applications.
The warden’s spitefulness only served to strengthen Cowcatcher Nose’s determination. He was going to go to the Kenilworth Society outing and nothing could stop him. Through ten long years he thought of nothing else. He performed his prison tasks automatically, he eschewed conversation with his fellow inmates, he ate his meals without tasting. During his rare leisure periods he went to the prison library and read the few volumes of Sir Walter Scott’s novels which were there, read them and reread them until he had them committed to memory.
When at last his time was up, Cowcatcher Nose was called into the warden’s office to receive his discharge. “Listen,” said the warden with a nervous smile, “you’re not really going to the Kenilworth Society outing, are you?”
“Yes,” said Cowcatcher Nose quietly. “Yes, I am, Cousin.”
At this the warden flew into a towering rage and toppled over, dead of apoplexy.
When he got back to the city, Cowcatcher Nose went to a secondhand bookstore and bought the complete works of Sir Walter Scott. Then he found a shack on the edge of town and sat down and read all the books three times. After that he began to make his plans.
Forgotten now was his ten-year-old resolution to go straight. He needed a lot of money in a hurry, and only crime would provide it. “I might as well,” he told himself, “steal enough to get my nose fixed too, so I will look nice at the outing.”
This, then, could be no petty robbery. It had to be big. A bank would do, but one needed an organization for this type work. For safecracking one needed equipment. It had to be something that a lone man could do with his bare hands. In a little while the answer came to him: kidnaping.
He scouted the town for several weeks, looking for a likely kidnaping prospect. Finally he settled on the family of Daniel Mainwaring. Mr. Mainwaring was the town’s leading real-estate dealer. He had a fortune of several million dollars, and boy and girl twins, aged nine. Cowcatcher Nose decided to kidnap just one of the twins instead of both. “Mr. Mainwaring will pay just as much for one as for both,” he thought. “He won’t want to break up a set.”
So one moonless night Cowcatcher Nose slipped through the window of the Mainwaring nursery, threw a blanket over the boy, and carried him off to his shack. In the boy’s bed he left a note demanding $100,000 in ransom.
The boy, whose name was Marvin, slept all through his abduction. When he woke in Cowcatcher Nose’s shack, he made no outcry. In fact, he seemed rather pleased to be there. The truth was that Marvin was delighted to get away from his twin sister Esther because she pinched him all the time.
Esther had go
od reason for pinching Marvin, or at least she thought she did. Esther’s hair was straight and stringy; Marvin’s was thick, soft, and curly. People always used to say, “It’s too bad that he wasn’t the girl and she wasn’t the boy.” These comments caused Esther to hate her twin brother, and that is why she pinched him.
On the morning after Marvin’s kidnaping Esther woke early and went over to pinch her brother. She saw the ransom note lying in his bed. She read the note and broke into a huge grin. “If I tear up the note,” she thought exultantly, “they won’t know where he is and I will be rid of him.” She destroyed the note instanter. Later, when her parents asked her where Marvin was, she shook her head innocently and replied, “Damn if I know.”
Meanwhile, in Cowcatcher Nose’s shack, Marvin was enjoying himself thoroughly. Cowcatcher Nose had opened a can of beans for breakfast and now he was reading aloud from Quentin Durward. Marvin listened with shining eyes, delighted at not being pinched and loving Sir Walter Scott’s romantic tale. At noon they had another can of beans, and then Cowcatcher Nose read until evening. At nightfall Cowcatcher Nose went out to inspect the hollow tree where he had instructed Mr. Mainwaring to leave the ransom money. There was nothing there. He returned to the shack, opened another can of beans, and then read until bedtime.
The next day he read Ivanhoe. There was nothing in the hollow tree that night. The day after that he read Rob Roy. Again there was nothing in the tree. That night, as he tucked Marvin in, he said, “I think I better send another letter. Maybe they didn’t find the first one.”
“Aw, gee, Cowcatcher Nose, do you have to?” asked Marvin. “I don’t want to go home. It’s such fun being here with you and listening to all those wonderful stories.”
“They are fine stories, aren’t they?” said Cowcatcher Nose with a smile.
“They sure are,” agreed Marvin.
“You know, I’m a descendant of Sir Walter Scott.”
“Gee,” said Marvin.
“Well, all right,” said Cowcatcher Nose. “I’ll wait till tomorrow. But if I don’t get an answer by then, I’m going to write another letter.”
