Finger finger, p.17
Finger, Finger!, page 17
But he was speaking. To me.
“I’m—hrmph!—going. So take this chair, young man. You’ll doubtless be wanting to report on the trip Mr. Kenwood tells me you just made for him.”
But—leave it to Kenwood! Badly as he wanted to know the outcome of my trip, he still preferred to devil me by holding Zing there. Psychologist that he was, he knew I was impatient to speak. Either triumphantly. Or to get my failure off my chest. And he took supreme delight in making it impossible.
“Well, David,” he said, “I see you’re back. And you’re just in time, in fact, to pass on the idea of my having my name changed!”
Name changed! Hippolytus Zing’s blitherings. And me—literally seething to pass on the news.
“Name—changed!” I said. I looked at Zing. And refused to sit down.
“I have just been suggesting,” he said mildly, pulling at one of his jowls, “to Mr. Kenwood here that though his name complies beautifully with those fool—hrmph!—theories of eupho-harmonics which his magazine sets forth at one point, it is all wrong numerologically—and should be changed.”
“Why?” I asked Zing abruptly.
“Because then the disharmony in his psyche would pass—and his business would prosper greatly.”
“Why not,” I said, wishing this old bore would go, “change the name of this business instead? In short—the name of Ultrapolitan Magazine?”
“Because that would not help Mr. Kenwood,” pronounced Hippolytus Zing gravely. “The Ultrapolitan has no psyche. He has!”
“Well what would it cost him,” I asked sarcastically, “to have his name changed? According to the best numerological principles?”
“Now—now David,” chided Jack Kenwood, rejoicing at my grumpiness.
“It would cost him nothing,” said Hippolytus Zing. “A neighbor—across the hall from me? Impossible!”
“What name would you suggest?” I asked, realizing I was prolonging the conversation.
“Oh,” said Zing, “I would have to work that out with charts. It would take 24 hours or more.” He turned to Kenwood. “But you haven’t given me your reactions yet, Mr. Kenwood?”
Kenwood laughed. I could see now that he had had enough—and was ready to dismiss Zing.
“Honestly, Dr. Zing—nothing on earth would induce me to change ye olde patronymic. Jack Kenwood it will have to stay—and the old psyche will have to remain, just like an old suit of b.v.d.’s.”
Hippolytus Zing gave a stiff bow. “Quite so, then. If a man is satisfied with his psyche, nothing can be done. One must absolutely want to change one’s psyche—and hence one’s destiny—otherwise neither can be changed.” He turned to me. “And you, young man, what might your full name be!”
The old codger! He knew as well as anything that it was David Rand—and nothing more. For he had asked me that question twice before. But he wanted to put me in my place.
“My full—and real—name, Dr. Zing, is Jonathan Smith-Jones,” I said, without cracking a smile. “I only use David Rand in business.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Hm? Smith-Jones?” He was dead game, knowing I was deviling him now. “Well I’ll figure that out tomorrow or next day, young man. It may be that I can compute a way for you to better yourself.”
“Here—here, Doc,” said Kenwood. “Rand—that is, Smith-Jones here—is one of my most valued employes. I hope you don’t put bad ideas into his head.”
“Not at all—if you don’t want me to,” Zing replied. And turned toward the door as one who had exhausted the sales possibilities for the day. He did gaze ruminatively toward Aline as though he thought of suggesting her changing her name—to which change I was amenable providing it was “Rand”—but sighed instead.
And I asked a question that long had bothered me. And ran the risk of getting a whole lecture.
“Doctor Zing—is Zing—Hippolytus Zing—your real name—or is it a numerological name?”
“It is, my dear young infant,” he said, with a note of pride, “my genuine, christened name—and, moreover, the name that exactly fits my psyche. A case which happens only once in a thousand times. No, I have not had to change my name. I have a brother Sebastien Zing who is quite successful. Moreover, in case you feel doubts, I am a Doctor—a Doctor of Philosophy, that is, you understand—of Poggtown College, Iowa—1908. Well—” He fumbled for his watch, and as he drew the old silver turnip out I saw that it held but one hand. “—I must be going.”
And he shambled off—to his dark court office across the way.
And now that we were alone again—we three in Number 1122—I dropped down into the just-vacated visitor’s chair facing Kenwood’s desk, and with my back somewhat uncivilly, to be sure, toward Winsome One working silently away, told Kenwood Drinkwater Dorr’s answer, and tossed Drinkwater’s signed agreement across the desk to him. He looked it over greedily. But he was plainly in the most genial of moods this afternoon. So genial that he didn’t even ask for his precious set of curves back. Nor did I bring that up! At length he leaned back.
“Good work, David,” he said. He called across the room in back of me. “Well, Winsome, David here has brought home the bacon!” I looked back at her, and she flashed me a smile. Kenwood directed his attention solely to me again. “Well, David, so long as Drinkwater has fixed it all okay, I’ll start for New York Monday. Yes, Monday. I want to rent an office—a suite, this time—get printing quotations there, and arrange to have that bunch of cuts—you know—for my new idea—Artisto Magazine—delivered. They’re in storage in New York—not here. The reason for my getting printer’s quotations is because I may get electros from our Ultrapolitan plates here, and print in both cities. Yes, we’re going to expand now, and no foolin’. Also, I may put in some time hunting over New York for another old crooked back like Sol, whose whole family can do the mussy mailing work. I’m hopping fast, David, now that capital’s assured. And Monday, David, your salary begins at $75 the week. I promised it, you know—and here ’tis.” He raised a deprecate hand as I started to issue my thanks. “No expressions of gratitude, David. You’ve toiled early and late around here, for a paltry hundred bucks, and it’s about time you get your cut out of Ultrapolitan.” And as though to change an embarrassing subject, he asked hastily: “What’s the talk on Broadway about the Republicans’ fixing upon Senator Capman to lick the Democrats two years hence?”
I told him what I’d heard in the hotel lobbies. And got his comment—tinged as it was by the fact that he was a 101-percent Republican—and the Democrats were in!
“They’re a bit puzzled, it seems,” I put in, “as to Capman’s uttered statement to the effect that our currency may rightfully and morally be inflated.”
“Oh the devil!” he said, keeping his expletives down, I knew, because of Winsome One being in the room. “It isn’t in Capman’s hands—nor anybody else’s hands—the inflation of our currency. Currency, David, is something that will ever automatically inflate—but never deflate. No! I hate to think what the dollar will be worth five years from today. Half its value, perhaps. In fact, I caught a sucker today, David, just because of my knowledge of that simple fact.”
“A sucker?” I commented. “Wha—”
“Doolittle, the building manager,” he explained. “When he made a crack up here yesterday about how nice it would be for me if I had a ten years’ lease on this room—and to my amazement I pried out of him that I could get said 10 years’ lease for the identical rent we’re paying now—well—I grabbed it!” He opened the top side drawer of his desk and withdrew a stiff folded paper which I could see at least said, in bold letters, LEASE. “Yes, I grabbed it, David,” he went on. “The damn fool! I knew we’d always have to have a Chicago office, no matter how you came out in N. Y. And since he was sucker enough to give me one for ten long years—for what we’re paying today in 1938—well, believe you me, I grabbed it. He—rather the trustees of this building—will be looking exceedingly sick in five years when they realize that we’re squatting here on a gross under-rent. When ten years come, they’ll hand us our hats in a hurry.”
He laid the lease triumphantly under the single glass paperweight lying on his desk.
I couldn’t say, however, that I agreed with him at all. For my own views were that currency was stable at last—and to remain so for many years. And 10 years was, I thought, a long time to tie up to any building even though it was mighty well kept up, as was the Interstate Life.
But it was his business, not mine.
He was speaking.
“Well, any questions about the business—General Manager?”
That sounded not so bad! And I asked one.
“How’d you come out at Topeka, Kansas?”
“Not quite so good as I expected—but not so bad either,” Kenwood said. “They preferred to try 25,000 copies at the larger rate—rather than sign on the dotted line for the 100,000 at the cut rate.” And he added, a bit ruefully: “I did think I could knock the deal across for one hundred thou, considering the downright ease with which young Veldon talked ’em half the distance into considering 10 thou at top rates. Maybe I’m losing my magic touch, David.”
“Not you, Jack,” I said, shaking my head. “Young Veldon was losing ’em altogether, if you ask me. That’s the way I sized it up when I left here. You’re just 25,000 copies to the good, that’s all. And a plump order too, when you consider it alongside some of those 100-copy orders that Lyendrerth always sent in from that territory.” I paused. “Anything else happened while I was gone?”
Kenwood laughed grimly “The new G.M. wants to know all, eh? Okay. It’s office-hunger—but speaks well for you, David.”
And I listened intently for the next 15 minutes while he answered my request. Giving him further details about my trip that for the moment had been aborted in the press of other things. And watching him also, at one point, add to a sheaf of bills in his inside vest pocket, a further sheaf of $1500 which Winsome One had gotten for him, obviously, from the bank, Lucky Kenwood!
And it was he who terminated the interview.
“Well,” he said, “you’d better beat it, Traveller. Go on home and wash up and rest. Travelling’s tiresome work. We’ve lasted the biggest part of a week now without you, and can go another day.” He rose from his desk. “Expect you down tomorrow as usual, David. To sort over various stray ends of the business before I go East early next week. But if you’re tired, sleep late. No more time clock for you. You’re virtually general manager around here right now, you know.”
With which, and a critical look at some inkspots on his well-manicured hands, he gave me a curt nod, and rounding the right side of his obliquely placed desk, left the room, and the sound of his footsteps going up the hall outside were audible. I rose from the visitor’s chair, took up my pig-skin bag, but strolled over to Winsome One’s desk. She looked curiously up at me, and smiled. I asked but one question.
“How about taking a walk tonight, Winsome—around 8 or 8:30? Or have you a Hallowe’en party on—somewhere?”
“No, I’ve no party on,” she said. “And I’d like to take a walk. I do want to hear all about New York. And about Mr. Kenwood’s curious cousin. He’s told me about him.”
“Drinkwater’s a good scout,” I told her. “But he doesn’t make the error of thinking that I’m the mainspring here! He’s coming in—but solely on the basis that Jack Kenwood remains in—and with us!” With which I turned away, but paused long enough to add: “All right then, Winsome. I’ll be at your place at 8 sharp.”
I treated myself downstairs to a cab in order to get to my own roominghouse. Not much of a place, that roominghouse, though. An old dilapidated 3-story red brick house, standing in a row of such, with tall crumbling white stone steps, and windows with rounded tops. Windows which did not even have the grace to face other habitations, since, across the street, for the entire half-deserted block, merely the lugubrious walls and tall chimneys of the Newberry Library power plant, and the deserted grounds waiting for a library expansion due to arrive in 1950 or 2000 A.D. perhaps, stared back. Once in my room—a large rear chamber on the second floor—with its flowered wallpaper and ancient furniture, I set my bag to one side and flung the raincoat across the bed. That is, only for a second. The sight of it made me think once more of Jack Kenwood’s precious sales curves, and that in turn made me realize that his good mood of this afternoon might easily be an acerbic mood by tonight or tomorrow. So I decided to try once more to find shred or fragment of paper that might possibly be a clue to the identity of my friend across the aisle. That is, I groped again in the capacious outer pockets of the garment, and this time tried not only the change compartment built within the right-hand one, but tried also a certain almost indistinguishable hip-pocket, the like of which I had discovered in my own garment, whose location was betrayed by nothing more than a broad thin horizontal slit, and whose depths were manifestly intended for either gun—or whiskey-flask—Lord knows which. But no scrap or fragment of paper was there in either pockettette or scabbard! Flinging the coat open, and exposing the broad inner hem where the goods had been turned in a full 6 inches to provide, no doubt, a substantial backing for a string of buttonholes, I caught sight thereon of the tight diagonal slit, locked snugly itself with its own firm button, which marked the special currency pocket built in the garment about waist high. That is, I presume it must have been a currency pocket—a place to carry paper money in, in a rainstorm! For one exactly like it had been in my own raincoat. Lord knows just what it was put in there for. I’ve often wished since, that I had listened to the clothing store salesman’s entire recitation in New York, instead of stopping him midway in his speech, and asking him ironically if he always tried to sell a customer who was already sold when he entered the door—and who had been sold not only by a screaming sign out in front—but by a rainstorm to boot! But regardless of all that, one thing is certain: the man who designed those coats certainly should have been psycho-analyzed by Freud. There seemed literally no telling where or when one was going to find an orifice.
And that’s how I happened to thrust my fingers more or less hopelessly in that hitherto unexplored pocket—that is, after I had barked my fingertips unlocking its tight recalcitrant button—and came upon the purse.
Which is what it proved to me, when I worked it forth. A quite long, narrow purse, not slim by any means, nor plump to bursting, either. Just midway between the two states! A purse perhaps 4 inches in length, and less than 2 inches high, of worn, brown, skimpy leather, with a cheap brass clasp locking together its two compartments. Its make, Woolworth. Or Kresge. Nevertheless, the idea did instantly pop into my mind that it might perhaps contain as much as a couple of dollars, and that that sum ought to make it worth my bearded friend’s while to ride out to the address jotted on the back of that sales curve, inquire for anybody having just come from New York, and exchange raincoats.
So I hopefully clicked open the closest of the two compartments and peered within. No money was there, but the yellow glint of metal caught my eye. Quickly I drew out the single article which shone thus in the afternoon sunlight, and found that my fingers were holding a most quaint finger ring, to say the least.
For it consisted of but a plain wide band of gold, at least three-eighths of an inch broad, and carrying atop itself a most simple and cheap ornament, or setting, if it should be termed that. The ornament was but a shiny miniature silver horseshoe, not quite as large as a dime, but faithfully reproduced even to the tiny nail holes. It had been merely brazed, or welded, to the gold band. But, as though to give to the baser metal some sort of value that might be in keeping with the gold on which it sat, a cheap but small diamond had been set in the crest of the horseshoe, where it curved around in both directions. I have long watched diamonds in jewelers’ windows, and studied their prices, and I could see with half an eye that this was not only a small stone, but a poor one; it had a decided tint of yellow, and I could plainly make out the flick of a prominent carbon point within it. It was worth, at most, $15. Not a cent more. I could not help at that moment but feel that the silver horseshoe was intended to bring luck—but that the diamond had been placed in it so that the entire ring wouldn’t be carelessly lost, much less tossed away in a rage in case the wrong kind of luck came. In due time I was to learn that the diamond had, indeed, been incorporated for nearly the first purpose—to imbue the article with sufficient value that care would always be taken with it. But now that’s getting pretty well ahead of my story.
As I held up the ring, turning the cheap diamond this way and that in the late afternoon sunlight to catch the sickly tint from its facets, almost devoid of any scintillations whatever, I caught sight in the same sunlight of an inscription, cut within the broad gold band itself, and apparently entirely around the inner surface. It didn’t look, in the light where I held it, like script nor English letters. Nor, in fact letters, for as I screwed up my eyes to focus them forcibly, I discerned what looked like a crudely etched bird flapping its short wings, and next it a taller bird with long wings.
Hieroglyphics!
