"Funny as a flat tire. Get going, goldbrick."
_9._ Another firetruck rolled up and there was much kidding back and forth between the two crews. This was clearly no situation in which lives or property were at stake; it was rather in line with a.s.sisting distraught cats down from tops of telephonepoles or persuading selfimmolated children to unlock the bathroom door and let mommy in; an amusing interval in a tense day. Perhaps those manning the second truck were more naturally ingenious, possibly the original workers sought more diverting labor; at any rate the futile chopping was abandoned. Instead, several long ladders were hooked together and the synthesis lowered from the curb to the edge of d.i.n.kman"s roof. It seemed remarkably fragile, but it reached and the watchers murmured approval.
No longer beset by novelty, the men took easily to the swaying, sagging bridge. They pa.s.sed over the baffled gra.s.s, the leader carrying another short ladder which he hung from the roof, stabbing its lower rungs down into the matted verdure below. The crossing was made with such insouciance the wonder was they hadnt done it at first, instead of wasting time on other expedients.
The firemen went down the vertical ladder and forced an entrance into the choked windows. Mrs d.i.n.kman came out first, helped by two of them.
She kept pinching her gla.s.ses into place with one hand and pulling her skirt modestly close with the other, activities leaving her very little to grasp the ladder with. The firemen seemed quite accustomed to this sort of irrationality, and paying no heed to the rush of words--inaudible to us on the street--bursting from her, they coaxed her expertly up onto the roof. Here she stood, statuesquely outlined against the bright sky, berating her succorers, until Mr d.i.n.kman, rounded, bald, and calm, joined her.
At first Mrs d.i.n.kman refused to try the bridge to the street, but after some urging which was conveyed to us by the gestures of the firemen, she ventured gingerly on the trembling ladders only to draw back quickly.
One of the firemen demonstrated the ease and simplicity of the journey, but it was vain; Mrs d.i.n.kman was carried across gallantly in traditional movie style, with Mr d.i.n.kman and the crew following sedately behind.
"A crime," Mrs d.i.n.kman was saying when she came within earshot. "A crime. Malicious mischief. Ought to be locked up for life."
"Don"t upset yourself, my dear," urged Mr d.i.n.kman. "It"s very distressing, but afterall it might be worse."
""Worse"! Adam d.i.n.kman, has misfortune completely unhinged your mind?
Money thrown in the gutter--imposed on by oily rascals--our house swallowed up by this ... this unnatural stuff--and the final humiliation of being pulled out of our own home in front of a gawking crowd." She turned around and shouted, "Shoo, shoo--why don"t you go home?" And then to Mr d.i.n.kman again, ""Worse" indeed! I"d like to know what could be worse?"
"Well now--" began Mr d.i.n.kman; but I didnt hear the rest, for I was afraid by "rascals" Mrs d.i.n.kman referred, quite unjustly, to me and I thought the time opportune to remind Gootes he hadnt yet completed his a.s.signment.
"Right," he agreed, suddenly a.s.suming the abrupt accents of an improbable Englishman, "oh very right, old chap. Let"s toddle along and see what Fu Manchu has to say for himself. First off though I shall have to phone in to Fleet Street--I mean to W R."
"Fine. You can ask him at the same time to authorize you to give me the other thirty."
Gootes lost his British speech instantly. "What other thirty, b.u.m?"
"Why, the balance of the fifty. For an introduction to Mi--to the maker of the Metamorphizer. To compensate me, you know, for my loss of revenue."
"Weener, you have all the earmarks of a castiron moocher. Let me tell you, suh--such methods are unbecoming. They suggest damyankee push and blackmail. Remember Reconstruction and White Supremacy, suh."
If I were hypersensitive to the silly things people say, I should have given up selling long before. I pretended not to hear him. We walked into a drugstore and he dropped a nickel into a payphone, hunching the receiver between ear and shoulder. "Fifty your last word?" he asked out of the corner of his mouth.
I nodded.
"h.e.l.lo? _"Gencer?_ Gootes. Hya, beautiful? Syphilis all cleared up? Now ... now, baby ... well, if youre going to be formal--gimme W R." He turned to me and leered while he waited.
"... Chief? Gootes. Got the d.i.n.kman story. You know--Freak Growth Swallows Hollywood Mansion. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But, Chief--this was what I wanted you for--on the followup; I have the fellow who put the stuff on the gra.s.s. Yeah. Sure I did. Yeah. And the sonofab.i.t.c.h wants to hold us up for another thirty. Or else he won"t sing. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But I can"t, Chief. I havent got a lead. I don"t know, Chief, not much of a one, I guess. Wait a minute."
He turned to me. "Listen, little man: Mr Le ffacase"--he p.r.o.nounced it l"fa.s.sa.s.sy and he p.r.o.nounced it with awe. I too was properly solemn, for I hadnt realized before to whom he referred when he talked so lightly of "W R." I knew--as what newspaper reader didnt--of William Rufus Le ffacase, "The Last of the Great Editors," but I hadnt connected him with the _Daily Intelligencer_-- "--Mr Le ffacase will shoot you another sawbuck and no more. What"s the deal?"
Now, the famous editor"s reputation was such that you didnt tell him to go to the devil, even through the medium of an agent; it would have been like writing your name on the Lincoln Memorial. It was reluctantly therefore that I shook my head. "I"m sorry, Mr Gootes," I apologized, "I"d certainly like to oblige--"
He cut me off with a waving hand and turned cheerfully back to the telephone. "No soap, Chief. O K. O K. All right--put the rewrite man on." And for the next ten minutes he went over the events at the d.i.n.kmans", carefully spelling out all names including the napoleonic firechief"s. I began to suspect Gootes wasnt so inefficient a reporter as he appeared.
The story given in, he hung up and turned to me. "Well, so long, little man--been nice knowing you."
"But--what about meeting the discoverer of the Metamorphizer?"
"Oh, that. Well, W R thinks we don"t need him anymore. Not enough in that angle."
I suspected he was bluffing; still it was possible he wasnt. In such a delicate situation there was nothing I could do but bluff in turn. If you are a good salesman, I always say, you must have psychology at your fingertips. "Very well, Mr Gootes; perhaps I shall see you again sometime."
I was immediately confronted by a Frenchman, affable, volatile, affectionate. "Ah cher ami, do not leave me with the abruptness. You desolate mon coeur. Alors--return to me the twenty dollars."
"But, Mr Gootes--"
"None of it, bud." He whisked the cards out and showed them to me, the ace of spades ghoulishly visible, its ominousness tempered only by the word "Bicycle" printed across it. "Don"t hold out on your Uncle Jacson or I might have the boys take you for a little trip. A block of concrete tastefully inscribed "A Weener" ought to make an amusing base for a birdbath, say."
"Listen, Gootes." I was firm. "I"m reasonably certain youve been authorized to advance me the other thirty, but I hope we"re both sensible people and I"ll be glad to sign a receipt for the full amount if youll let me have twentyfive."
"Albert, youre a fine fellow--a prince." On a page from his notebook he wrote, _Of Jacson Gootes, $50 U.S._ and I signed it. He handed me another twentydollarbill and put his wallet away. "Charge the other five to agent"s fees," he suggested. "Lead us to your Steinmetz."
You just can"t expect everyone to have the same standards of probity, so philosophically I pocketed my loss and gains together. Life is full of ups and downs and take the bad with the good. Gootes was in high spirits after his piece of chicanery and as we went down the street he practiced, quite unsuccessfully, a series of ventriloquial exercises.
_10._ The appearance of the apartmenthouse drew the comment from him that it was a good thing for their collective bloodpressures the Chamber of Commerce and the All Year Club didnt know such things existed in the heart of Hollywood. "It"s no better than I live in myself," he added.
He whistled at the dismal livingroom and raised his eyebrows at the kitchen. Before I could mutter an introduction, Miss Francis growled without turning around, "If youve come about the icebox--"
"Zounds!" exclaimed Gootes. "A female Linnaeus. Shades of Dorothy Dix!"
"I don"t know who you are, young man, but youre extremely impudent to come tramping into my kitchen, adding nothing to the sum of knowledge but a confirmation of my s.e.x which would be plain to any mammal. If youve--"
"Nein, Fraulein Doktor," said Gootes hastily, "about z" kelvinators I know nossing. I represent, Fraulein Doktor, z" _Daily Intelligencer_ zeitung--"
Miss Francis pierced his turgid explanation with a sharp spate of words in what I took to be German. Gootes answered with difficult slowness, but he fumbled and halted before long and abandoning the Central European, became again the Southern Gentleman. "I quite understand, mam, how any delicately reared gentlewoman would resent having her privacy intruded upon by rude agents of the yellow press. But consider, mam: we live in a progressive age and having made a great contribution to Science you can hardly escape the fame rightfully yours. You are a public figure now and must stand in the light. Would it not be preferable, mam, to talk as lady to gentleman (I am related to the Taliaferros of Ruffin County on the distaff side) than to be badgered by some hack journalist?"
Miss Francis squatted ungracefully on her heels and looked up from the flowerpot she had been engaged with. "I havent any objection to publicity, hack or otherwise," she said mildly. "I am merely impressed again by the invulnerability of newspapers to thousands of important discoveries and inventions, newsworthy "contributions to Science" as you call them in your bland ignorance of semantics, in contrast to their acute, almost painful sensitivity to any mischance."
Gootes, unjointing disproportioned length carelessly against the sink to the peril of several jars of specimens, didnt reply. Instead he fluttered his arms and produced a halfdollar, apparently from Miss Francis" hair, which after exhibiting he prudently pocketed.
"Tell me, Dr Francis--"
"Miss. Show me how you did that trick."
"In a minute, Miss Francis. It"s a honey, isnt it? Paid fourbits to a funhouse in Utica, New York, for it. Tell me, how did you come to make your great discovery?"
"I was born. I went to school. I read books. I reached maturity. I looked through a microscope."
"Yes?" prodded Gootes.
"That"s all."
"La.s.sie," urged Gootes, underlining the honey of his voice with a tantalizing glimpse of a rapidfire s.n.a.t.c.hing of three colored handkerchiefs out of the air, "tis no sensible course ye follow. Think, gurrl, what the press can do to a recalcitrant la.s.s like yoursel. Ye wouldna like it if tomorrow"s paper branded you--and I quote--"an uns.e.xed harpy, a traitor to mankind, a heartless, soulless--""
"Oh, shut up. What do you want to know?"
"First," said Gootes briskly, "what is this stuff?"