The Complete Simon Iff (42 page)

Dr. Buzzard shook his head, and began to speak.

"Don't spoil my scenario! The scene changes. Could you not read the plain story of the footprints? I do not know why Harper came so stealthily to the house; but he was evidently crazy about Birdie Thorpe. He reaches the knoll. He sees her - the desirable woman of six or seven years before - become the ghastly crone you saw two days ago. Not yet thirty-five!

"And what is she doing? She does not see him at all, for she is standing by a pool in the swamp, throwing her little child to the alligators!"

"Good God!" cried Buzzard, leaping from his chair. "Who told you so?"

"She said so in my presence. She did not want her to grow up like Selma to disgrace her!"

"Good God! Good God!"

"I am sometimes tempted to doubt it," remarked Simon Iff with acidity.

"I suppose that's right," said Buzzard, chewing the cud of his memory of the trail. "She could have taken the child, walking, to the jungle, and led it in, leaving that torn rag. Then she could have picked her up, and gone to the swamp. She had a good story to cover her tracks over there. Probably Harper saw just the end of it, the brute's snout snapping at the screaming baby, and the mother crying out to Jesus Christ!

"They do that in India too, don't they, by the way?"

"No," snapped Simon. "Only another missionary lie."

"Well, no wonder Harper went clean crazy and ran from the accursed house until his brain burst!"

"That's how I read it."

"Say, but I've got to put Higgs wise to this." He got up to telephone.

"Oh, I wouldn't," said Simon, very wearily. "If you're peeved with her, why not just leave her in Florida?"

"I guess hell is too good for her."

"No fear o'that. She had the only right kind of baptism."

Mrs. Mills swept into the room, radiant, with Agnes in tow.

"Oh, my dear Mr. Iff, I'm so glad to see you back. I hope you have had a perfectly lovely time. There's more work for you, haven't you heard? Mysterious disappearance of a girl named Alma Something. I suppose it's only the White Slave Traffic, but probably you'd like to detect it, wouldn't you? It must be deliciously exciting."

"I am afraid I must really go back to my meditation. But I'll tell you what, if you're fond of your joke, why not wire Dolores Travis - the famous Cass girl, you know? - to come and spend a week or so with you. Just indicate the facts of the mystery, and say I'm here, but too busy to take the case."

Mrs. Mills bustled out to send a telegram, while Simple Simon lay back in his chair chuckling.

"A little touched, too, for all his cleverness, just a little touched!" murmured Buzzard under his breath.

'The plans of mice and men gang aft agley;' and so, now and then, do those of Mrs. Mills.

Dinner brought her a telegram. Dolores Travis regretted that social engagements in Boston prevented her, etc.

The 'Travis' and the 'social engagements' were two good hard slaps for Simon Iff.

He opened his own telegram with apprehension. It read. "Once bit, twice shy. Dolores Cass."

Two more!

Simon Iff was considered a crank by many people; they based their opinion on those of his acts which were in reality severely rational.

But he had a little Temperament of his own, for all that; and it showed itself from time to time in sudden and acute attacks of discontentment with his environment. For instance, he would come in one evening and sit down to work, only to find himself conscious of a staleness in his surroundings. He would perhaps try to fight it off, discover that it was too strong for him, and put in an hour dragging the furniture all over the room into new positions.

At other times his routine of diet would become suddenly oppressive; on such occasions it was his practice to go out alone and find a restaurant where he had never eaten before. There he would search the bill of fare for some new kind of food, the wine list for some unfamiliar tipple. Disappointed, as a rule, in the quest, for the tendency to standarisation is an eternal menace to evolution, he would invent a meal for himself.

About a week after his return from Florida this mood took him. He went out on foot, and plunged into the tense and vital centres of crude life which makes Seventh and Eighth Avenues between Twenty-Third and Forty-Second Streets one of the most interesting districts in New York. It is, however, not a peculiarly happy hunting-ground for the disgruntled gourmet. But Simon, walking fast through the icy air, began to get an honest appetite; and he might have fallen into very bad hands had not his Fortune steered him to a fantastic inn called The Bas Bastion. Something in the manner of the exterior attracted him, and he entered to find a vast low-roofed room, where the tables were shut off from each other by wooden fences. The tables were innocent of napery, but each one was adorned with a dish of potato salad, which Simon, with true instinct, divined to be the supreme achievement of man's genius in that particular direction.

He sat down, and a waiter approached him. Alas! nothing on the bill of fare appealed to his mood. The Bas Bastion has the best steaks in New York, grilled over fires of hickory; but he cared not for steak.

The potato salad, however, entered by his nostrils with olfactory gust into every gate and alley of his body, thence flooded the brain with etherealized blood to such good purpose that he ordered slices of chicken, beef, ham, lobster and liver sausage to be tightly rolled in thin cylinders of dough, and baked. For drink, he concluded, let there be a great stein of that old musty ale laced with a wine-glassful of gin and another of rum; flavour the mixture with a tablespoonful of Crême de Noyau.

The magician secured the execution of this remarkable order by slipping a ten-dollar bill into the waiter's hand. It convinced the man that his weird guest was sane, instead of, as had been properer, confirming him in the impression that "the guy's bughouse."

So absorbed was the mystic in the sublunary sustenance of his novel banquet that it was only when he began to fill an old black meerschaum pipe of the 'Boer' pattern, modelled on a giant scale with heavy amber mouth-piece, that he perceived that one of the party of four at the next table was an acquaintence, one John Caudle, a very famous lawyer.

His genial nod was intercepted by the waiter, who informed Iff, trembling, that pipes were not allowed.

Simple Simon knocked out the tobacco, and rolled it in a piece of cigarette-paper before replacing it in his pipe.

"This, my friend, is a cigarette-holder. Decision of the Supreme Court of New York, January 30, 1910. Cyril Grey versus the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel."*

The waiter immediately visualized himself and his proprietor as mulcted of half-a-million dollars apiece, and went off to inform the boss that Iff was a 'fly cop'.

The boss rang up the leading politicians in his district, appealing for protection, as he had voted the straight Republican ticket (both early and often) ever since 1886.

Simon completed his nod with added geniality. Caudle's gesture invited him over; as he lifted his third stein of 'Simon Pure', the name under which he had decided to market his new drink, and took the chair provided for him.

"Meet Mr. Gatt, Mr. Iff," said the lawyer. "Mr. Robinson, Mr. Carver." The two latter individuals were lawyers of great eminence, though not equal (in the House of Local Fame) to Caudle; Gatt was President of the Obelisk Publishing Company, which owned a number of rather vulgar magazines, such as "Thin Ice", "The Knuckle", "The Freudian", "Camembert", and "Smutty Stories".

"We were in the midst of a rather interesting discussion," said Caudle; "it might amuse you to hear it, though it is a purely legal problem."

"I should like very much to hear it," said Iff. "And may I order a round of drinks? I to pay if I fail to solve the problem."

"It's a bet," said Caudle heartily. "Go to it, Bob!"

Mr. Robinson cleared his throat. "My client, Mr. Iff, is a Mrs. Owen, a charming lady of Scandinavian blood. Her husband met her six years ago in Charleston, South Carolina, and married her in that city. I may tell you that South Carolina does not recognize the legality of divorce."

"My client," said Carver, after blowing his nose very vigorously, "is a Mrs. Owen, a charming lady of the purest African descent. Mr. Owen, having obtained a divorce from our friend Robinson's client in Reno, Nevada, came to New York City and married my client."

Caudle, sipping his claret, took up the tale. "My client," he echoed, "is a Mrs. Owen, a charming lady of French extraction. Mr. Owen, having occasion to travel to Atlanta, Georgia, found that his New York marriage was not recognized in that state. He has an almost equal horror of immorality and of the bachelor's estate, so he took the only possible course, and married my client."

"You must understand, Mr. Iff," put in Gatt, "these three women are all unquestionably Owen's legal wives."

"That is so," admitted Caudle. "But to continue. Business called Owen to Europe last year. For some reason unexplained - it does not concern us - he converted the whole of his holdings into cash, and bought diamonds with it - to the value of some six and a half million dollars. The ship on which he was returning to America was rammed and sunk in a fog about fifty miles off Nantucket. Owen, who had the diamonds in a belt, escaped in one of the boats, which was almost immediately picked up by the 'Maxuma', one of our latest battle-cruisers. Owen died an hour later from shock and exposure.

"He was intestate. I beg of you to note that his property is in Federal hands, and the problem is one concerning the conflicting claims of his three wives. South Carolina recognizes only No. 1, New York only No. 2, Georgia only No. 3. Who, in a word, gets the Diamonds?" He concluded with an air of mild pride in the complexities of his profession.

Iff scribbled two words on a slip of paper, and handed it to him. Caudle, after one glance, put it away immediately in his waistcoat pocket. "Gentlemen", he said somewhat hastily, "the drinks are on me. In fact, I will buy the next round also." And he called the waiter.

Robinson and Carver were mightily intrigued by this performance. They divined that the decision was against Caudle, and had rather frightened him. But which of them was the victor? They began to renew their arguments, when Gatt, scenting danger of a quarrel, broke in.

"Mr. Iff's perspicacity seems so eminently convincing to Caudle that I should like to consult him about a very mysterious robbery which has just taken place in my office."

"Do", said Simon. "I shall be delighted."

"My firm occupies the whole of the eighth floor of the Isadora Duncan Building. There are on one side the private offices of the principals, on the other a single very large room occupied by the staff of stenographers, bookkeepers, etc. The idea of the big room is to have them all superintended by a single overseer; it makes for efficiency.

"We close at five o'clock, but often have to keep some of the staff overtime. This however was not the case yesterday; by ten minutes past five every one had left.

"The offices are not locked; as soon as the staff vanish, the cleaners appear. The building officials and detectives make themselves responsible for the safety of property. There is in any case nothing much worth stealing; the cash is banked daily before closing hours.

"Well, sir, one of the girl stenographers, a Miss Vickers, came to me this morning in singular distress. One of the cashiers, leaving early, had given her a box of cigarettes to hand to one of our travelling men, who was expected to call. He did not do so, and she locked up the box in the drawer of her desk. This morning the drummer was on hand at 9 o'clock sharp, and she called him over to deliver her package. The drawer was still locked. But the cigarettes were gone.

"I came over to inspect the desk. Other girls, hearing the news, crowded round; several told similar tales of petty pilfering.

"There was nothing much in this. Any one of the cleaning staff - or some dishonest official of the building, for the matter of that - could easily work the trick with a set of skeleton keys. But here's the queer thing - a trifle, Mr. Iff, but devilish annoying, because it's such a stupid mystification! - Miss Vickers, while I stood talking, took the cover off her typewriter. Immediately she exclaimed. The machine had been smashed. It was a new model Wemyss, a machine constructed for hard wear and perfect work. It is consequently built of unusual strength, the cast steel frame being much more solid than is usual.

"This frame had been hammered with great violence - there were a dozen marks on it - and at last it had been smashed clean across. There is no sense in the business at all; it is the act of a madman."

"But when was it done? Such operations are noisy."

"That's what beats us. There was somebody on the floor the whole time. A sly thief might have come in and out at almost any time, even manipulating locks without attracting attention; but this blacksmith business! It's unthinkable."

"Very curious indeed," said Simon Iff without enthusiasm. "I should like to look into it."

"Of course we shall afford you every facility."

"Thanks," replied the magician with a queer little grin, "but I don't believe I shall have to trouble you at all. A couple of telephone messages and a morning call ought to do it; suppose you lunch with me and hear the story."

"That beats cock-fighting! But the lunch is on me if you make good on that. By Jiminy; say, may I bring along the editor of 'Jags'? He'll simply eat it up."

"I hope so, indeed," said Simon earnestly. "An editor with a poor appetite or a deranged liver is a public menace."

II

The party broke up soon after, and Simon Iff walked home to bed. His eccentric evening had been a great success. In the morning he woke deliciously normal, and after breakfast made the two telephone calls he had promised, and proceeded in his car to the Isadora Duncan Building. But he did not go to the eighth floor; he went to the ninth, and entered the tiny office of Hodge, Peet and Co., publishers of Indianapolis; New York Office, Mr. Greil.