I am sensible that Mr. Aubrey Gilbert is by no means
ideal as the leading
juvenile of our piece. The time still demands some explanation
why
the leading juvenile wears no gold chevrons on his left
sleeve.
As a matter of fact, our young servant of the Grey-Matter
Agency
had been declined by a recruiting station and a draft
board
on account of flat feet; although I must protest that
their
flatness detracts not at all from his outward bearing
nor from
his physical capacity in the ordinary concerns of amiable
youth.
When the army "turned him down flat," as he put it, he
had entered
the service of the Committee on Public Information, and
had
carried on mysterious activities in their behalf for
over a year,
up to the time when the armistice was signed by the United
Press.
Owing to a small error of judgment on his part, now completely
forgotten,
but due to the regrettable delay of the German envoys
to synchronize
with overexuberant press correspondents, the last three
days
of the war had been carried on without his active assistance.
After the natural recuperation necessary on the 12th of
November,
he had been reabsorbed by the Grey-Matter Advertising
Agency,
with whom he had been connected for several years, and
where his sound
and vivacious qualities were highly esteemed. It was
in the course
of drumming up post-war business that he had swung so
far out of his
ordinary orbit as to call on Roger Mifflin. Perhaps these
explanations
should have been made earlier.
At any rate, Aubrey woke that Saturday morning, about
the time Titania
began to dust the pavement-boxes, in no very world-conquering
humour.
As it was a half-holiday, he felt no compunction in staying
away from
the office. The landlady, a motherly soul, sent him up
some coffee and
scrambled eggs, and insisted on having a doctor in to
look at his damage.
Several stitches were taken, after which he had a nap.
He woke up at noon, feeling better, though his head still
ached abominably. Putting on a dressing gown, he sat down in his modest
chamber, which was furnished chiefly with a pipe-rack, ash trays, and a
set of O. Henry, and picked up one of his favourite volumes for a bit of
solace.
We have hinted that Mr. Gilbert was not what is called
"literary."
His reading was mostly of the newsstand sort, and Printer's
Ink,
that naive journal of the publicity professions. His
favourite
diversion was luncheon at the Advertising Club where
he would pore,
fascinated, over displays of advertising booklets, posters,
and pamphlets with such titles as Tell Your Story in
Bold-Face. He
was accustomed to remark that "the fellow who writes
the Packard
ads has Ralph Waldo Emerson skinned three ways from the
Jack."
Yet much must be forgiven this young man for his love
of O. Henry.
He knew, what many other happy souls have found, that
O. Henry
is one of those rare and gifted tellers of tales who
can be read at all times. No matter how weary, how depressed, how shaken
in morale, one can always find enjoyment in that master romancer of the
Cabarabian Nights. "Don't talk to me of Dickens' Christmas Stories," Aubrey
said to himself, recalling his adventure in Brooklyn. "I'll bet O. Henry's
Gift of the Magi beats anything Dick ever laid pen to. What a shame he
died without finishing that Christmas story in Rolling Stones! I wish some
boss writer
like Irvin Cobb or Edna Ferber would take a hand at finishing
it.
If I were an editor I'd hire someone to wind up that
yarn. It's a crime to have a good story like that lying around half written."
He was sitting in a soft wreath of cigarette smoke when
his landlady
came in with the morning paper.
"Thought you might like to see the Times, Mr. Gilbert,"
she said.
"I knew you'd been too sick to go out and buy one. I
see the President's
going to sail on Wednesday."
Aubrey threaded his way through the news with the practiced
eye
of one who knows what interests him. Then, by force of
habit,
he carefully scanned the advertising pages. A notice
in the HELP
WANTED columns leaped out at him.
WANTED--For temporary employment at Hotel Octagon, 3 chefs,
3 experienced cooks, 20 waiters. Apply chef's office,
11 P.M. Tuesday.
"Hum," he thought. "I suppose, to take the place of those
fellows
who are going to sail on the George Washington to cook
for Mr. Wilson.
That's a grand ad for the Octagon, having their kitchen
staff chosen
for the President's trip. Gee, I wonder why they don't
play that up
in some real space? Maybe I can place some copy for them
along
that line."
An idea suddenly occurred to him, and he went over to
the chair
where he had thrown his overcoat the night before. From
the pocket
he took out the cover of Carlyle's Cromwell, and looked
at it carefully.
"I wonder what the jinx is on this book?" he thought.
"It's a queer
thing the way that fellow trailed me last night--then
my finding
this in the drug store, and getting that crack on the
bean.
I wonder if that neighbourhood is a safe place for a
girl to work in?"
He paced up and down the room, forgetting the pain in
his head.
"Maybe I ought to tip the police off about this business,"
he thought.
"It looks wrong to me. But I have a hankering to work
the thing out on
my own. I'd have a wonderful stand-in with old man Chapman
if I saved
that girl from anything. . . . I've heard of gangs of
kidnappers.
. . . No, I don't like the looks of things a little bit.
I think that bookseller is half cracked, anyway. He doesn't
believe
in advertising! The idea of Chapman trusting his daughter
in a place
like that----"
The thought of playing knight errant to something more
personal
and romantic than an advertising account was irresistible.
"I'll slip over to Brooklyn as soon as it gets dark this
evening,"
he said to himself. "I ought to be able to get a room
somewhere along
that street, where I can watch that bookshop without
being seen,
and find out what's haunting it. I've got that old .22
popgun
of mine that I used to use up at camp. I'll take it along.
I'd like to know more about Weintraub's drug store, too.
I didn't
fancy the map of Herr Weintraub, not at all. To tell
the truth, I had
no idea old man Carlyle would get mixed up in anything
as interesting
as this."
He found a romantic exhilaration in packing a handbag.
Pyjamas, hairbrushes, toothbrush, toothpaste--("What
an ad it
would be for the Chinese Paste people," he thought, "if
they
knew I was taking a tube of their stuff on this adventure!")
his .22 revolver, a small green box of cartridges of
the size commonly
used for squirrel-shooting, a volume of O. Henry, a safety
razor
and adjuncts, a pad of writing paper. . . . At least
six nationally
advertised articles, he said to himself, enumerating
his kit.
He locked his bag, dressed, and went downstairs for lunch.
After lunch he lay down for a rest, as his head was still
very painful.
But he was not able to sleep. The thought of Titania
Chapman's blue
eyes and gallant little figure came between him and slumber.
He could
not shake off the conviction that some peril was hanging
over her.
Again and again he looked at his watch, rebuking the
lagging dusk.
At half-past four he set off for the subway. Half-way
down
Thirty-third Street a thought struck him. He returned
to his room,
got out a pair of opera glasses from his trunk, and put
them in
his bag.
It was blue twilight when he reached Gissing Street.
The block between Wordsworth Avenue and Hazlitt Street
is peculiar
in that on one side--the side where the Haunted Bookshop
stands--
the old brownstone dwellings have mostly been replaced
by small
shops of a bright, lively character.
At the Wordsworth Avenue corner, where the L swings round
in a lofty roaring curve, stands Weintraub's drug store; below it, on the
western side, a succession of shining windows beacon through the evening.
Delicatessen shops with their appetizing medley of cooked
and pickled
meats, dried fruits, cheeses, and bright coloured jars
of preserves;
small modistes with generously contoured wax busts of
coiffured ladies;
lunch rooms with the day's menu typed and pasted on the
outer pane;
a French rotisserie where chickens turn hissing on the
spits before
a tall oven of rosy coals; florists, tobacconists, fruit-dealers,
and
a Greek candy-shop with a long soda fountain shining
with onyx
marble and coloured glass lamps and nickel tanks of hot
chocolate;
a stationery shop, now stuffed for the holiday trade
with
Christmas cards, toys, calendars, and those queer little
suede-bound
volumes of Kipling, Service, Oscar Wilde, and Omar Khayyam
that
appear every year toward Christmas time--such modest
and cheerful
merchandising makes the western pavement of Gissing Street
a jolly
place when the lights are lit.
All the shops were decorated for the Christmas trade;
the Christmas issues of the magazines were just out and brightened the
newsstands with their glowing covers.
This section of Brooklyn has a tone and atmosphere peculiarly
French in some parts: one can quite imagine oneself in
some
smaller Parisian boulevard frequented by the petit bourgeois.
Midway in this engaging and animated block stands the
Haunted Bookshop.
Aubrey could see its windows lit, and the shelved masses
of books within.
He felt a severe temptation to enter, but a certain bashfulness
added
itself to his desire to act in secret. There was a privy
exhilaration
in his plan of putting the bookshop under an unsuspected
surveillance,
and he had the emotion of one walking on the frontiers
of adventure.
So he kept on the opposite side of the street, which
still maintains
an unbroken row of quiet brown fronts, save for the movie
theatre
at the upper corner, opposite Weintraub's. Some of the
basements
on this side are occupied now by small tailors, laundries,
and lace-curtain cleaners (lace curtains are still a
fetish
in Brooklyn), but most of the houses are still merely
dwellings.
Carrying his bag, Aubrey passed the bright halo of the
movie theatre.
Posters announcing THE RETURN OF TARZAN showed a kind
of third chapter of Genesis scene with an Eve in a sports suit. ADDED ATTRACTION,
Mr. AND Mrs. SIDNEY DREW, he read.
A little way down the block he saw a sign VACANCIES in
a parlour window. The house was nearly opposite the bookshop, and he at
once mounted the tall steps to the front door and rang.
A fawn-tinted coloured girl, of the kind generally called
"Addie,"
arrived presently. "Can I get a room here?" he asked.
"I don't know,
you'd better see Miz' Schiller," she said, without rancor.
Adopting the customary compromise of untrained domestics,
she did
not invite him inside, but departed, leaving the door
open to show
that there was no ill will.
Aubrey stepped into the hall and closed the door behind
him.
In an immense mirror the pale cheese-coloured flutter
of a gas jet
was remotely reflected. He noticed the Landseer engraving
hung against
wallpaper designed in facsimile of large rectangles of
gray stone,
and the usual telephone memorandum for the usual Mrs.
J. F. Smith
(who abides in all lodging houses) tucked into the frame
of
the mirror. Will Mrs. Smith please call Stockton 6771,
it said.
A carpeted stair with a fine old mahogany balustrade
rose into
the dimness. Aubrey, who was thoroughly familiar with
lodgings,
knew instinctively that the fourth, ninth, tenth, and
fourteenth steps
would be creakers. A soft musk sweetened the warm, torpid
air:
he divined that someone was toasting marshmallows over
a gas jet.
He knew perfectly well that somewhere in the house would
be
a placard over a bathtub with the legend: Please leave
this tub
as you would wish to find it. Roger Mifflin would have
said,
after studying the hall, that someone in the house was
sure
to be reading the poems of Rabbi Tagore; but Aubrey was
not
so caustic.
Mrs. Schiller came up the basement stairs, followed by
a small pug dog.
She was warm and stout, with a tendency to burst just
under the armpits.
She was friendly. The pug made merry over Aubrey's ankles.
"Stop it, Treasure!" said Mrs. Schiller.
"Can I get a room here?" asked Aubrey, with great politeness.
"Third floor front's the only thing I've got," she said.
"You don't smoke in bed, do you? The last young man I
had burned
holes in three of my sheets----"
Aubrey reassured her.
"I don't give meals."
"That's all right," said Aubrey. "Suits me."
"Five dollars a week," she said.
"May I see it?"
Mrs. Schiller brightened the gas and led the way upstairs.
Treasure skipped up the treads beside her. The sight
of the six
feet ascending together amused Aubrey. The fourth, ninth,
tenth,
and fourteenth steps creaked, as he had guessed they
would.
On the landing of the second storey a transom gushed
orange light.
Mrs. Schiller was secretly pleased at not having to augment
the gas
on that landing. Under the transom and behind a door
Aubrey could
hear someone having a bath, with a great sloshing of
water.
He wondered irreverently whether it was Mrs. J. F. Smith.
At any rate
(he felt sure), it was some experienced habitue of lodgings,
who knew
that about five thirty in the afternoon is the best time
for a bath--
before cooking supper and the homecoming ablutions of
other tenants have exhausted the hot water boiler.
They climbed one more flight. The room was small, occupying
half
the third-floor frontage. A large window opened onto
the street,
giving a plain view of the bookshop and the other houses
across the way.
A wash-stand stood modestly inside a large cupboard.
Over the mantel
was the familiar picture--usually, however, reserved
for the fourth
floor back--of a young lady having her shoes shined by
a ribald
small boy.
Aubrey was delighted. "This is fine," he said. "Here's
a week
in advance."
Mrs. Schiller was almost disconcerted by the rapidity
of the transaction.
She preferred to solemnize the reception of a new lodger
by a little
more talk--remarks about the weather, the difficulty
of getting "help,"
the young women guests who empty tea-leaves down wash-basin
pipes,
and so on. All this sort of gossip, apparently aimless,
has a very real purpose: it enables the defenceless landlady
to size up the stranger who comes to prey upon her. She
had
hardly had a good look at this gentleman, nor even knew
his name,
and here he had paid a week's rent and was already installed.
Aubrey divined the cause of her hesitation, and gave her
his
business card.
"All right, Mr. Gilbert," she said. "I'll send up the
girl
with some clean towels and a latchkey."
Aubrey sat down in a rocking chair by the window, tucked
the muslin
curtain to one side, and looked out upon the bright channel
of Gissing Street. He was full of the exhilaration that
springs
from any change of abode, but his romantic satisfaction
in being
so close to the adorable Titania was somewhat marred
by a sense
of absurdity, which is feared by young men more than
wounds and death.
He could see the lighted windows of the Haunted Bookshop
quite plainly,
but he could not think of any adequate excuse for going
over there.
And already he realized that to be near Miss Chapman
was not at all
the consolation he had expected it would be. He had a
powerful desire
to see her.
He turned off the gas, lit his pipe, opened the window,
and focussed the opera glasses on the door of the bookshop.
It brought the place tantalizingly near. He could see
the table at
the front of the shop, Roger's bulletin board under the
electric light,
and one or two nondescript customers gleaning along the
shelves.
Then something bounded violently under the third button
of his shirt.
There she was! In the bright, prismatic little circle
of the lenses
he could see Titania. Heavenly creature, in her white
V-necked
blouse and brown skirt, there she was looking at a book.
He saw her put out one arm and caught the twinkle of
her wrist-watch.
In the startling familiarity of the magnifying glass
he could see
her bright, unconscious face, the merry profile of her
cheek and chin.
. . . "The idea of that girl working in a second-hand
bookstore!"
he exclaimed. "It's positive sacrilege! Old man Chapman
must be
crazy."
He took out his pyjamas and threw them on the bed; put
his toothbrush
and razor on the wash-basin, laid hairbrushes and O.
Henry on
the bureau. Feeling rather serio-comic he loaded his
small revolver
and hipped it. It was six o'clock, and he wound his watch.
He was a little uncertain what to do: whether to keep
a vigil
at the window with the opera glasses, or go down in the
street
where he could watch the bookshop more nearly. In the
excitement
of the adventure he had forgotten all about the cut on
his scalp,
and felt quite chipper.
In leaving Madison Avenue he had attempted
to excuse the preposterousness of his excursion by thinking
that
a quiet week-end in Brooklyn would give him an opportunity
to jot
down some tentative ideas for Daintybits advertising
copy which
he planned to submit to his chief on Monday. But now
that he was
here he felt the impossibility of attacking any such
humdrum task.
How could he sit down in cold blood to devise any "attention-compelling"
lay-outs for Daintybits Tapioca and Chapman's Cherished
Saratoga Chips,
when the daintiest bit of all was only a few yards away?
For the first time was made plain to him the amazing
power of young
women to interfere with the legitimate commerce of the
world.
He did get so far as to take out his pad of writing paper
and jot
down
CHAPMAN'S CHERISHED CHIPS
These delicate wafers, crisped by a secret process, cherish
in their
unique tang and flavour all the life-giving nutriment
that has made
the potato the King of Vegetables----But the face of
Miss Titania kept
coming between his hand and brain. Of what avail to flood
the world
with Chapman Chips if the girl herself should come to
any harm?
"Was this the face that launched a thousand chips?" he
murmured,
and for an instant wished he had brought The Oxford Book
of English
Verse instead of O. Henry.
A tap sounded at his door, and Mrs. Schiller appeared.
"Telephone for you, Mr. Gilbert," she said.
"For ME?" said Aubrey in amazement. How could it be for
him,
he thought, for no one knew he was there.
"The party on the wire asked to speak to the gentleman
who arrived
about half an hour ago, and I guess you must be the one
he means."
"Did he say who he is?" asked Aubrey.
"No, sir."
For a moment Aubrey thought of refusing to answer the
call. Then it
occurred to him that this would arouse Mrs. Schiller's
suspicions.
He ran down to the telephone, which stood under the stairs
in the
front hall.
"Hello," he said.
"Is this the new guest?" said a voice--a deep, gargling
kind of voice.
"Yes," said Aubrey.
"Is this the gentleman that arrived half an hour ago with
a handbag?"
"Yes; who are you?"
"I'm a friend," said the voice; "I wish you well."
"How do you do, friend and wellwisher," said Aubrey genially.
"I schust want to warn you that Gissing Street is not
healthy for you,"
said the voice.
"Is that so?" said Aubrey sharply. "Who are you?"
"I am a friend," buzzed the receiver. There was a harsh,
bass note
in the voice that made the diaphragm at Aubrey's ear
vibrate tinnily.
Aubrey grew angry.
"Well, Herr Freund," he said, "if you're the wellwisher
I met
on the Bridge last night, watch your step. I've got your
number."
There was a pause. Then the other repeated, ponderously,
"I am a friend.
Gissing Street is not healthy for you." There was a click,
and he had rung off.
Aubrey was a good deal perplexed. He returned to his room,
and sat in the dark by the window, smoking a pipe and
thinking,
with his eyes on the bookshop.
There was no longer any doubt in his mind that something
sinister
was afoot. He reviewed in memory the events of the past
few days.
It was on Monday that a bookloving friend had first told
him of the
existence of the shop on Gissing Street. On Tuesday evening
he had gone
round to visit the place, and had stayed to supper with
Mr. Mifflin.
On Wednesday and Thursday he had been busy at the office,
and the idea
of an intensive Daintybit campaign in Brooklyn had occurred
to him.
On Friday he had dined with Mr. Chapman, and had run
into a curious
string of coincidences. He tabulated them:--
(1) The Lost ad in the Times on Friday morning.
(2) The chef in the elevator carrying the book that was
supposed
to be lost--he being the same man Aubrey had seen in
the bookshop
on Tuesday evening.
(3) Seeing the chef again on Gissing Street.
(4) The return of the book to the bookshop.
(5) Mifflin had said that the book had been stolen from
him.
Then why should it be either advertised or returned?
(6) The rebinding of the book.
(7) Finding the original cover of the book in Weintraub's
drug store.
(8) The affair on the Bridge.
(9) The telephone message from "a friend"--a friend with
an obviously
Teutonic voice.
He remembered the face of anger and fear displayed by
the Octagon
chef when he had spoken to him in the elevator. Until
this oddly
menacing telephone message, he could have explained the
attack
on the Bridge as merely a haphazard foot-pad enterprise;
but now he was forced to conclude that it was in some
way connected
with his visits to the bookshop. He felt, too, that in
some
unknown way Weintraub's drug store had something to do
with it.
Would he have been attacked if he had not taken the book
cover from
the drug store?
He got the cover out of his bag and looked at it again.
It was of plain blue cloth, with the title stamped in gold on the back,
and at the bottom the lettering London: Chapman and Hall. From the width
of the backstrap it was evident that the book had been a fat one.
Inside the front cover the figure 60 was written in red
pencil--
this he took to be Roger Mifflin's price mark. Inside
the back cover
he found the following notations--
vol. 3--166, 174, 210, 329, 349 329 ff. cf. W. W.
These references were written in black ink, in a small,
neat hand.
Below them, in quite a different script and in pale violet
ink,
was written
153 (3) 1, 2
"I suppose these are page numbers," Aubrey thought. "I
think I'd
better have a look at that book."
He put the cover in his pocket and went out for a bite
of supper.
"It's a puzzle with three sides to it," he thought, as
he descended
the crepitant stairs, "The Bookshop, the Octagon, and
Weintraub's;
but that book seems to be the clue to the whole business." |
