Laughing Gas (13 page)

'For goodness gracious sake!
Are you really dumb, or are you just trying to be aggravating? Haven't I told you a hundred times? Not "pretty" - "pitty". Not "flowers" -"f'owers". Not "you" - " 'oo". And not "Mr Brinkmeyer" - "Mithter B'inkmeyer". Will you please get the line right 1 We've had conference after conference
...
all the highest-paid authors in the organization working on the thing
...
and you go and mess it up. You say "Pitty f'owers for 'oo, Mithter B'inkmeyer". And, remember, not a syllable more. No wisecracks.'

'Right ho.'

'About my spats, for instance,' said Mr Brinkmeyer. 'Right ho.'

'And don't giggle. Smile, but not giggle.'

'Right ho.'

'And then hold it.'

'The nosegay?'

'The picture.'

This puzzled me.

'What picture? You didn't mention any picture.' She wandered off on to a side-issue. 'Do you want a good box on the ear?' 'No.'

'Then don't try to be funny. After business with nosegay, speak the line and hold the picture.' 'She means "Don't cut",' explained Mr Brinkmeyer. 'Exactly. Hold it. Wait for the kiss.' I shook from ringlets to toenails. 'Kiss?'

'That's where I kiss you,' said Mr Brinkmeyer, in an odd, strangled voice, like one speaking from the tomb. Behind their glasses his eyes looked hunted and haggard.

I was still quivering.

'You kiss me?'

'Of course he kisses you. Haven't you been told that over and over and over? Can't you understand plain English? He - kisses - you. It will make a very pretty and appealing picture.'

I was just seeking for words in which to make plain how little it appealed to me, when the footman who had brought me my supper on the previous evening appeared.

'Excuse yes possibly,' he said.

'Well, what is it?'

'Chap at door,' said the footman, becoming clearer. Miss Brinkmeyer nodded.

'It must be your new elocution teacher,' she said, starting to move towards the exit. 'I think you and the child had better have a run through, Theodore. He's such a lunkhead that he probably hasn't got it even now. You can use the coffee-pot as a nosegay.'

'No need to do the kiss?' said Mr Brinkmeyer, rather pleadingly. 'Just walk the kiss, eh?'

'Certainly. I don't suppose you want to kiss the little insect more than is absolutely necessary,' said Miss Brinkmeyer, and with these offensive words took her departure. I waited till she had disappeared, then fixed Mr Brinkmeyer with a steely eye.

'Brinkmeyer,' I said, in a low, hard voice, 'was this your idea?*

He disclaimed the charge vehemently. 'Sweet suffering soup-spoons, no
I
Given a free hand, I wouldn't touch you with a pair of tongs.' It was exactly how I felt.

'Same here,' I said. 'I wouldn't touch
you
with a pair of tongs.'

We gazed at each other with something like affection. Twin souls.

'How would it be if we just shook hands?' I suggested. 'Or you could pat me on the back.'

'No. I've got to kiss you. She says I must. Well, it'll all be over this time to-morrow. There's that. But I wish I'd stuck to the cloak and suit business.'

I was still much moved. I felt that the responsibility should be fixed.

'If it wasn't your idea, whose was it?'

He scowled.

'It was that press agent guy of yours - that Booch - who thought it up. He said it would mean publicity of the right sort, darn him. And Beulah said it was a great notion. Gee! I'm glad that fellow got poked in the snoot. A mystery, they call it. The mystery to me is why nobody ever thought of doing it before.'

I started. The words had touched a cord in my mind.

'Poked in the snoot? Did somebody do that to him?'

'Did they
I
Haven't you read the paper?'

'Not that bit.'

'Lookut!' said Mr Brinkmeyer, diving for the periodical and opening it at the middle page. His face had lost its drawn look. He had become virtually gay and practically bobbish.

I took the paper, and headlines met my eye. As follows:

STRANGE OCCURRENCE AT MALIBU

MYSTERY FIEND SMITES TWO

POKED US IN SNOOT,' SAY VICTIMS

The report beneath these headlines ran thus:

It will be no use Love sending a gift of roses to Cosmo Booch, noted press agent, or Dikran Marsupial, ace director, for some little time to come, because they won't be able to smell 'em. Both are home at this writing with swollen noses, the result of an encounter with what appears to have been a first-class fiend.

As Faust once remarked, there are moments when a fellow needs a fiend, but neither Cosmo Booch, ace press agent, nor Dikran Marsupial, noted director, needed this one when he descended on the former's cosy little cottage beside the sad sea waves of Malibu. They were playing checkers and did not require a third.

an eye-witness

As to what it was all about, your correspondent has to confess himself a trifle fogged. Cosmo, questioned over the telephone at a late hour last night, was incoherent. So was Dikran. Each made odd spluttering noises, but contributed little or nothing to ye corn's enlightenment. Fortunately, there turns out to have been an eye-witness in the shape - if you can call it a shape - he would do well to knock off starchy foods
- of George G. Frampton, well-k
nown and popular member of the Hollywood Writers' Club.

fiend gives george elbow

George G. Frampton, as all the world knows, is attached to the commercial side of the
Screen Beautiful
(ace motion-picture magazine), and it was in the course of one of his whirlwind drives for subscriptions, advertisements, or what have you that he found himself at Malibu. He was, indeed, on the point of calling upon Mr Booch to take up the matter of a half-page in the Special Number, when he was interested to find himself thrust to one side by a fiend.

leaped fence

George knows very few fiends, and this one, he says, was a complete stranger to him. He describes him as of powerful physique, and go
rilla
esque features, and states that he was dressed in a quiet grey suit with suede shoes, as worn by the better class of fiend. He leaped the low fence which separates the Booch domain from the waterfront and proceeded to the porch.

in a flash

It all happened, says George, who can turn a phrase as well as the next man, in a flash. The fiend leaped on to the porch and immediately dispelled any notion that might have been lurking in the minds of the checker players that here was a mere kibitzer who had come to breathe down the backs of their necks and offer advice, by pasting Cosmo Booch squarely on the schnozzle. And while Cosmo was calling on the Supreme Court to have this declared unconstitutional, he did precisely the same to Mr Marsupial. He then left by the front or carriage entrance.

mentally unbalanced?

The whole affair is wrapped in mystery. All your correspondent could get from the two victims was the statement: 'He poked us in the snoot.' They were unable to offer any explanation. They had never seen their assailant before, nor - this is our guess - do they want to see him again. All they want is something to reduce the swelling. Another facet of the mystery is - Why, if he was going to punch anybody, did not the fiend punch George G. Frampton? The fact that, being in a position to poke George in the snoot, he did not do so opens up a disquieting line of thought. Is the locality haunted by a mentally unbalanced fiend?

We are watching developments closely

.

Mr Brinkmeyer, who had been reading over my shoulder, seemed a bit querulous.

'I can't see what they want to call him a fiend for,' he said. 'Why fiend? Sounds kind of a good scout to me.

Stepped right up and let him have it. I'd like to meet that fellow.'

'So would I’
I said, and I meant it. I wished to get in touch with little Joey Cooley without delay, and reason with him.

For I had read this excerpt, as you may suppose, with mixed feelings. While the broad, basic fact that the man responsible for me getting kissed by the President of the Brinkmeyer-Magnifico Motion Picture Corporation had got it on the nose was far from displeasing, I could not disguise it from myself that the thing cut both ways.

However much your soul may have gone into someone else's body, you see, you can't help feeling a sort of responsibility for the body that used to be yours before someone else's soul went into it. You don't want the new tenant damaging its prestige and lowering it socially.

If this sort of thing was to continue, it seemed to me a mere question of time before the escutcheon of the Haver-shots would be blotted by the circumstance of the head of the family getting bunged into a dungeon cell for thirty days without the option.

I felt very strongly that this child Cooley must be talked to like a father. Some older and wiser head must buttonhole him and counsel prudence and restraint.

As I reached this conclusion, the footman entered.

'Telephone perhaps possibly,' he said.

'For me?' said Mr Brinkmeyer.

'No, thank you, please. For the young juvenile.'

'That's right,' I said. 'I was expecting a call. Lead me to the instrument.'

Chapter
13

The
telephone was in a sort of booth place along the hall. I closed the door carefully to ensure privacy, and flung myself on it, making eager hunting noises. 'Hullo,' I said. 'Hullo. Hullo.'

It was plain the moment he gave tongue that the child was in the pink. There was a merry ring in hi
s voice. 'Hello? Is that you?'

'Yes.'

'This is the hundred and fiftieth Duke of Havershot'

'Not Duke. Earl. And third, you ass.'

'Well, how's everything? Have you had breakfast?'

'Yes.'

'How were
the prunes?' 'Damn the prunes!
' He chuckled fruitily.

'You'll have to learn to love them, buddy. Guess what I had for breakfast?'

'I decline to guess what you had for breakfast.'

'Well, believe me, it was good. Say, listen, have you seen the paper?'

'Yes.'

'Read about the Malibu Horror?' 'Yes.'

'Rather a good notice, I thought. Say, listen, did you ever do any boxing?' 'Yes.'

'I thought you must have. My timing was nice.' 'It was, was it?'

'Yessir. I seemed to be getting a lot of steam behind the punch. Well, I'm much obliged. I got those two bozoes a couple of beauts! You'd ought to have seen it. Bam.
...
Wham!
...
and down they went. I near died laughing.'

It seemed to me that it wa
s time to squelch this kid. Too
bally exuberant altogether. He appeared to be under the impression that this was the maddest, merriest day of all the glad new year - a view in which he was vastly mistaken.

I spoke with considerable acerbity. 'Well, you've gone and landed yourself in a nice posish. A dashed nice posish, I don't think.' 'Says which?'

'What the hell do you mean, says which?' 'I mean, why?'

'Do you realize diat you are a fugitive from justice?' 'What of it?'

'You won't be so dashed airy when the hands of the gendarmes fall upon your shoulder and they shove you in chokey for assault on the person.'

He laughed jovially. Getting more exuberant all the time.

'Oh, that's all right.’
'You think so, do you?'

'Sure. Those two ginks had never seen me before. You never met them, did you?' 'No.'

'Well, then.'

'But suppose you run into them again.' 'They won't recognize me.' 'Of course they will.'

'No, they won't. Not after I've shaved off this moustache.

I uttered a quavering cry.

'You aren't going to shave off my moustache?'

I spoke with feeling, for I loved the little thing. It had been my constant companion for years. I had tended it in sickness and in health, raising it with unremitting care from a sort of half-baked or Hitler smudge to its present robust and dapper condition. More like a son than a moustache it had always been to me.

He appeared to be no
t without decent instincts, for
there was a marked touch of remorse in his voice as he replied.

'Got to,' he said regretfully. 'It's going to make all the difference.'

'It took me years to grow it.'

'I know, I know. It's a shame. Say, listen, I'll tell you what I'll do to meet you. You can cut off my curls.' 'Oh, right ho. Thanks.' 'Don't mention it.'

This gentleman's agreement concluded, he dismissed the subject and turned to one which he evidently considered of greater import.

'Well, that's that. Now I want to talk about this statue thing.'