About time, p.12
About Time, page 12
But every night the lights are on, the wonderfully warm yellow-orange gas lights, and all last winter they used the fireplaces. This summer people have had glimpses of them. They’ve been seen playing croquet on the lawn, Ellie in a long white dress. And just this week twin hammocks, the kind with long fringe at the sides, appeared on the shaded veranda. And the two of them lie there reading the lazy afternoons away. I know what they read. The books they’d bought had arrived when I last visited the Cluetts, and along with other fine leather-bound old volumes there were the complete works of Dickens and Sir Walter Scott, just the thing for long summer afternoons far back in the past.
For that’s where the Cluetts are, of course. I don’t quite believe stories I’ve heard—that one night last winter it snowed on their property and nowhere else; and that occasionally sun has shone or rain has fallen on their roof but not on the rest of the town, as though the house existed in some other year. Just the same, Ellie and Sam are living far back in the past; that’s where they are. For their new house is haunted by its old self. And its ghost has captured the Cluetts—rather easily; I think they were glad to surrender.
The Face in the Photo
* * *
On one of the upper floors of the new Hall of Justice I found the room number I was looking for, and opened the door. A nice-looking girl inside glanced up from her typewriter, switched on a smile, and said, “Professor Weygand?” It was a question in form only—one glance at me, and she knew—and I smiled and nodded, wishing I’d worn my have-fun-in-San-Francisco clothes instead of my professor’s outfit. She said, “Inspector Ihren’s on the phone; would you wait, please?” and I nodded and sat down, smiling benignly the way a professor should.
My trouble is that, although I have the thin, intent, professorial face, I’m a little young for my job, which is assistant professor of physics at a large university. Fortunately I’ve had some premature gray in my hair ever since I was nineteen, and on campus I generally wear those miserable permanently baggy tweeds that professors are supposed to wear, though a lot of them cheat and don’t. These suits, together with round, metal-rimmed, professor-style glasses which I don’t really need, and a careful selection of burlap neckties in diseased plaids of bright orange, baboon blue, and gang green (de rigueur for gap-pocketed professor suits) complete the image. That’s a highly popular word meaning that if you ever want to become a full professor you’ve got to quit looking like an undergraduate.
I glanced around the little anteroom: yellow plaster walls; a big calendar; filing cabinets; a desk, typewriter, and girl. I watched her the way I inspect some of my more advanced girl students—from under the brows and with a fatherly smile in case she looked up and caught me. What I really wanted to do, though, was pull out Inspector Ihren’s letter and read it again for any clue I might have missed about why he wanted to see me. But I’m a little afraid of the police—I get a feeling of guilt just asking a cop a street direction—and I thought rereading the letter just now would betray my nervousness to Miss Candyhips here who would somehow secretly signal the inspector. I knew exactly what it said, anyway. It was a formally polite three-line request, addressed to my office on the campus, to come here and see Inspector Martin O. Ihren, if I would, at my convenience, if I didn’t mind, please, sir. I sat wondering what he’d have done if, equally politely, I’d refused, when a buzzer buzzed, the smile turned on again, and the girl said, “Go right in, Professor.” I got up, swallowing nervously, opened the door beside me, and walked into the Inspector’s office.
Behind his desk he stood up slowly and reluctantly as though he weren’t at all sure but what he’d be throwing me into a cell soon. He put out a hand suspiciously and without a smile saying, “Nice of you to come.” I answered, sat down before his desk, and I thought I knew what would have happened if I’d refused this man’s invitation. He’d simply have arrived in my classroom, clapped on the handcuffs, and dragged me here. I don’t mean that his face was forbidding or in any way remarkable; it looked ordinary enough. So did his brown hair and so did his plain gray suit. He was a young-middle-aged man somewhat taller and heavier than I was, and his eyes looked absolutely uninterested in anything in the universe but his work. I had the certain conviction that, except for crime news, he read nothing, not even newspaper headlines; that he was intelligent, shrewd, perceptive, and humorless; and that he probably knew no one but other policemen and didn’t think much of most of them. He was an undistinguished formidable man, and I knew my smile looked nervous.
He got right to the point; he was more used to arresting people than dealing with them socially. He said, “There’s some people we can’t find, and I thought maybe you could help us.” I looked politely puzzled but he ignored it. “One of them worked in Haring’s Restaurant; you know the place; been there for years. He was a waiter and he disappeared at the end of a three-day weekend with their entire receipts—nearly five thousand bucks. Left a note saying he liked Haring’s and enjoyed working there but they’d been underpaying him for ten years and now he figured they were even. Guy with an oddball sense of humor, they tell me.” Ihren leaned back in his swivel chair, and frowned at me. “We can’t find that man. He’s been gone over a year now, and not a trace of him.”
I thought he expected me to say something, and did my best. “Maybe he moved to some other city, and changed his name.”
Ihren looked startled, as though I’d said something even more stupid than he expected. “That wouldn’t help!” he said irritatedly.
I was tired of feeling intimidated. Bravely I said, “Why not?”
“People don’t steal in order to hole up forever; they steal money to spend it. His money’s gone now, he feels forgotten, and he’s got a job again somewhere—as a waiter.” I looked skeptical, I suppose, because Ihren said, “Certainly as a waiter; he won’t change jobs. That’s all he knows, all he can do. Remember John Carradine, the movie actor? Used to see him a lot. Had a face a foot long, all chin and long jaw; very distinctive.” I nodded, and Ihren turned in his swivel chair to a filing cabinet. He opened a folder, brought out a glossy sheet of paper, and handed it to me. It was a police WANTED poster, and while the photograph on it did not really resemble the movie actor it had the same remarkable long-jawed memorability. Ihren said, “He could move and he could change his name, but he could never change that face. Wherever he is he should have been found months ago; that poster went everywhere.”
I shrugged, and Ihren swung to the file again. He brought out, and handed me, a large old-fashioned sepia photograph mounted on heavy gray cardboard. It was a group photo of a kind you seldom see any more—all the employees of a small business lined up on the sidewalk before it. There were a dozen mustached men in this and a woman in a long dress smiling and squinting in the sun as they stood before a small building which I recognized. It was Haring’s Restaurant looking not too different than it does now. Ihren said, “I spotted this on the wall of the restaurant office; I don’t suppose anyone has really looked at it in years. The big guy in the middle is the original owner who started the restaurant in 1885 when this was taken; no one knows who anyone else in the picture was but take a good look at the other faces.”
I did, and saw what he meant; a face in the old picture almost identical with the one in the WANTED poster. It had the same astonishing length, the broad chin seeming nearly as wide as the cheekbones, and I looked up at Ihren. “Who is it? His father? His grandfather?”
Almost reluctantly he said, “Maybe. It could be, of course. But he sure looks like the guy we’re hunting for, doesn’t he? And look how he’s grinning! Almost as though he’d deliberately gotten a job in Haring’s Restaurant again, and were back in 1885 laughing at me!”
I said, “Inspector, you’re being extremely interesting, not to say downright entertaining. You’ve got my full attention, believe me, and I am in no hurry to go anywhere else. But I don’t quite see . . . ”
“Well, you’re a professor, aren’t you? And professors are smart, aren’t they? I’m looking for help anywhere I can get it. We’ve got half a dozen unsolved cases like that—people that absolutely should have been found, and found easy! William Spangler Greeson is another one; you ever heard of him?”
“Sure. Who hasn’t in San Francisco?”
“That’s right, big society name. But did you know he didn’t have a dime of his own?”
I shrugged. “How should I know? I’d have assumed he was rich.”
“His wife is; I suppose that’s why he married her, though they tell me she chased him. She’s older than he is, quite a lot. Disagreeable woman; I’ve talked to her. He’s a young, handsome, likable guy, they say, but lazy; so he married her.”
“I’ve seen him mentioned in Herb Caen’s column. Had something to do with the theater, didn’t he?”
“Stage-struck all his life; tried to be an actor and couldn’t make it. When they got married she gave him the money to back a play in New York, which kept him happy for a while; used to fly East a lot for rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts. Then he started getting friendly with some of the younger stage people, the good-looking female ones. His wife punished him like a kid. Hustled him back here, and not a dime for the theater from then on. Money for anything else but he couldn’t even buy a ticket to a play any more; he’d been a bad boy. So he disappeared with a hundred and seventy thousand bucks of hers, and not a sign of him since, which just isn’t natural. Because he can’t—you understand, he can’t—keep away from the theater. He should have shown up in New York long since—with a fake name, dyed hair, a mustache, some such nonsense. We should have had him months ago but we haven’t; he’s gone, too.” Ihren stood up. “I hope you meant it when you said you weren’t in a hurry, because . . . ”
“Well, as a matter of fact . . . ”
“. . . because I made an appointment for both of us. On Powell Street near the Embarcadero. Come on.” He walked out from behind his desk, picking up a large Manila envelope lying on one corner of it. There was a New York Police Department return address on the envelope, I saw, and it was addressed to him. He walked to the door without looking back as though he knew I’d follow. Down in front of the building he said, “We can take a cab; with you along I can turn in a chit for it. When I went by myself I rode the cable car.”
“On a day like this anyone who takes a cab when he can ride the cable car is crazy enough to join the police force.”
Ihren said, “Okay, tourist,” and we walked all the way up to Market and Powell in silence. A cable car had just been swung around on its turntable, and we got an outside seat, no one near us; presently the car began crawling and clanging leisurely up Powell. You can sit outdoors on the cable cars, you know, and it was nice out, plenty of sun and blue sky, a typical late summer San Francisco day. But Ihren might as well have been on the New York subway. “So where is William Spangler Greeson?” he said as soon as he’d paid our fares. “Well, on a hunch I wrote the New York police, and they had a man put in a few hours for me at the city historical museum.” Ihren opened his Manila envelope, pulled out several folded sheets of grayish paper, and handed the top one to me. I opened it; it was a photostatic copy of an old-style playbill, narrow and long. “Ever hear of that play?” Ihren said, reading over my shoulder. The sheet was headed: TONIGHT & ALL WEEK! SEVEN GALA NIGHTS! Below that, in big type: MABLE’S GREENHORN UNCLE!
“Sure, who hasn’t?” I said. “Shakespeare, isn’t it?” We were passing Union Square and the St. Francis Hotel.
“Save the jokes for your students, and read the cast of characters.”
I read it, a long list of names; there were nearly as many people in old-time plays as in the audiences. At the bottom of the list it said Members of the Street Crowd, followed by a dozen or more names in the middle of which appeared William Spangler Greeson.
Ihren said, “That play was given in 1906. Here’s another from the winter of 1901.” He handed me a second photostat, pointing to another listing at the bottom of the cast. Onlookers at the Big Race, this one said, and it was followed by a half-inch of names in small type, the third of which was William Spangler Greeson. “I’ve got copies of two more playbills,” Ihren said, “one from 1902, the other from 1904, each with his name in the cast.”
The car swung off Powell, and we hopped off, and continued walking north on Powell. Handing back the photostat, I said, “It’s his grandfather. Probably Greeson inherited his interest in the stage from him.”
“You’re finding a lot of grandfathers today, aren’t you, Professor?” Ihren was replacing the stats in their envelopes.
“And what are you finding, Inspector?”
“I’ll show you in a minute,” he said, and we walked on in silence. We could see the Bay up ahead now, beyond the end of Powell Street, and it looked beautiful in the sun, but Inspector Ihren didn’t look at it. We were beside a low concrete building, and he gestured at it with his chin; a sign beside the door read, STUDIO SIXTEEN: COMMERCIAL TV. We walked in, passed through a small office in which no one was present and into an enormous concrete-floored room in which a carpenter was building a set—the front wall of a little cottage. On through that room—the Inspector had obviously been here before—then he pulled open a pair of double doors, and we walked into a tiny movie theater. There was a blank screen up front, a dozen seats, and a projection booth. From the booth a man’s voice called, “Inspector?”
“Yeah. You ready?”
“Soon as I thread up.”
“Okay.” Ihren motioned me to a seat, and sat down beside me. Conversationally he said, “There used to be a minor character around town name of Tom Veeley, a sports fan, a nut. Went to every fight, every Giant and Forty-Niners game, every auto race, roller derby, and jai-alai exhibition that came to town—and complained about them all. We knew him because every once in a while he’d leave his wife. She hated sports, she’d nag him, he’d leave, and we’d have to pick him up on her complaint for desertion and nonsupport; he never got far away. Even when we’d nab him all he’d talk about was how sports were dead, the public didn’t care any more and neither did the players, and he wished he’d been around in the really great days of sports. Know what I mean?”
I nodded, the tiny theater went dark, and a beam of sharp white light flashed out over our heads. Then a movie appeared on the screen before us. It was black and white, square in shape, the motion somewhat more rapid and jerky than we’re used to, and it was silent. There wasn’t even any music, and it was eerie to watch the movement hearing no sound but the whir of the projector. The picture was a view of Yankee Stadium taken from far back of third base showing the stands, a man at bat, the pitcher winding up. Then it switched to a closeup—Babe Ruth at the plate, bat on shoulder, wire backstop in the background, fans behind it. He swung hard, hit the ball, and—chin rising as he followed its flight—he trotted forward. Grinning, his fists pumping rhythmically, he jogged around the bases. Type matter flashed onto the screen: The Babe does it again! it began, and went on to say that this was his fifty-first home run of the 1927 season, and that it looked as though Ruth would set a new record.
The screen went blank except for some meaningless scribbled numbers and perforations flying past, and Ihren said, “A Hollywood picture studio arranged this for me, no charge. Sometimes they film cops-and-crooks television up here, so they like to cooperate with us.”
Jack Dempsey suddenly appeared on the screen, sitting on a stool in a ring corner, men working over him. It was a poor picture; the ring was outdoors and there was too much sun. But it was Dempsey, all right, maybe twenty-four years old, unshaven and scowling. Around the edge of the ring, the camera panning over them now between rounds, sat men in flat-topped straw hats and stiff collars; some had handkerchiefs tucked into their collars and others were mopping their faces. Then, in the strange silence, Dempsey sprang up and moved out into the ring, crouching very low, and began sparring with an enormous slow-moving opponent; Jess Willard, I imagined. Abruptly the picture ended, the screen illuminated with only a flickering white light. Ihren said, “I looked through nearly six hours of stuff like this; everything from Red Grange to Gertrude Ederle. I pulled out three shots; here’s the last one.”
On the screen the scratched flickering film showed a golfer sighting for a putt; spectators stood three and four deep around the edge of the green. The golfer smiled engagingly and began waggling his putter; he wore knickers well down below his knees and his hair was parted in the middle and combed straight back. It was Bobby Jones, one of the world’s great golfers, at the height of his career back in the 1920s. He tapped the ball, it rolled, dropped into the cup, and Jones hurried after it as the crowd broke onto the green to follow him—all except one man. Grinning, one man walked straight toward the camera, then stopped, doffed his cloth cap in a kind of salute, and bowed from the waist. The camera swung past him to follow Jones who was stooping to retrieve his ball. Then Jones moved on, the man who had bowed to us hurrying after him with the crowd, across the screen and out of sight forever. Abruptly the picture ended, and the ceiling lights came on.
Ihren turned to face me. “That was Veeley,” he said, “and it’s no use trying to convince me it was his grandfather, so don’t try. He wasn’t even born when Bobby Jones was winning golf championships, but just the same that was absolutely and indisputably Tom Veeley, the sports fan who’s been missing from San Francisco for six months now.” He sat waiting, but I didn’t reply; what could I say to that? Ihren went on, “He’s also sitting just back of home plate behind the screen when Ruth hit the home run, though his face is in shadow. And I think he’s one of the men mopping his face at ringside during the Dempsey fight, though I’m not absolutely certain.”
