Chapter VII
Aubrey Takes Lodgings
I am sensible that Mr. Aubrey Gilbert is by no means ideal as theleading juvenile of our piece. The time still demands some explanationwhy the leading juvenile wears no gold chevrons on his left sleeve. Asa matter of fact, our young servant of the Grey-Matter Agency had beendeclined by a recruiting station and a draft board on account of flatfeet; although I must protest that their flatness detracts not at allfrom his outward bearing nor from his physical capacity in the ordinaryconcerns of amiable youth. When the army "turned him down flat," as heput it, he had entered the service of the Committee on PublicInformation, and had carried on mysterious activities in their behalffor over a year, up to the time when the armistice was signed by theUnited Press. Owing to a small error of judgment on his part, nowcompletely forgotten, but due to the regrettable delay of the Germanenvoys to synchronize with over-exuberant press correspondents, thelast three days of the war had been carried on without his activeassistance. After the natural recuperation necessary on the 12th ofNovember, he had been re-absorbed by the Grey-Matter AdvertisingAgency, with whom he had been connected for several years, and wherehis sound and vivacious qualities were highly esteemed. It was in thecourse of drumming up post-war business that he had swung so far out ofhis ordinary orbit as to call on Roger Mifflin. Perhaps theseexplanations should have been made earlier.
At any rate, Aubrey woke that Saturday morning, about the time Titaniabegan to dust the pavement-boxes, in no very world-conquering humour.As it was a half-holiday, he felt no compunction in staying away fromthe office. The landlady, a motherly soul, sent him up some coffee andscrambled eggs, and insisted on having a doctor in to look at hisdamage. Several stitches were taken, after which he had a nap. Hewoke up at noon, feeling better, though his head still achedabominably. Putting on a dressing gown, he sat down in his modestchamber, which was furnished chiefly with a pipe-rack, ash trays, and aset of O. Henry, and picked up one of his favourite volumes for a bitof solace. We have hinted that Mr. Gilbert was not what is called"literary." His reading was mostly of the newsstand sort, and Printer'sInk, that naive journal of the publicity professions. His favouritediversion was luncheon at the Advertising Club where he would pore,fascinated, over displays of advertising booklets, posters, andpamphlets with such titles as Tell Your Story in Bold-Face. He wasaccustomed to remark that "the fellow who writes the Packard ads hasRalph Waldo Emerson skinned three ways from the Jack." Yet much must beforgiven this young man for his love of O. Henry. He knew, what manyother happy souls have found, that O. Henry is one of those rare andgifted tellers of tales who can be read at all times. No matter howweary, how depressed, how shaken in morale, one can always findenjoyment in that master romancer of the Cabarabian Nights. "Don'ttalk to me of Dickens' Christmas Stories," Aubrey said to himself,recalling his adventure in Brooklyn. "I'll bet O. Henry's Gift of theMagi beats anything Dick ever laid pen to. What a shame he diedwithout finishing that Christmas story in Rolling Stones! I wish someboss writer like Irvin Cobb or Edna Ferber would take a hand atfinishing it. If I were an editor I'd hire someone to wind up thatyarn. It's a crime to have a good story like that lying around halfwritten."
He was sitting in a soft wreath of cigarette smoke when his landladycame in with the morning paper.
"Thought you might like to see the Times, Mr. Gilbert," she said. "Iknew you'd been too sick to go out and buy one. I see the President'sgoing to sail on Wednesday."
Aubrey threaded his way through the news with the practiced eye of onewho knows what interests him. Then, by force of habit, he carefullyscanned the advertising pages. A notice in the HELP WANTED columnsleaped out at him.
WANTED--For temporary employment at Hotel Octagon, 3 chefs, 5experienced cooks, 20 waiters. Apply chef's office, 11 P.M. Tuesday.
"Hum," he thought. "I suppose, to take the place of those fellows whoare going to sail on the George Washington to cook for Mr. Wilson.That's a grand ad for the Octagon, having their kitchen staff chosenfor the President's trip. Gee, I wonder why they don't play that up insome 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 wherehe had thrown his overcoat the night before. From the pocket he tookout 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 queerthing the way that fellow trailed me last night--then my finding thisin the drug store, and getting that crack on the bean. I wonder ifthat 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 onmy own. I'd have a wonderful stand-in with old man Chapman if I savedthat girl from anything. . . . I've heard of gangs of kidnappers. . . .No, I don't like the looks of things a little bit. I think thatbookseller 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 andromantic than an advertising account was irresistible. "I'll slip overto 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 Ican watch that bookshop without being seen, and find out what'shaunting it. I've got that old .22 popgun of mine that I used to useup at camp. I'll take it along. I'd like to know more aboutWeintraub'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 getmixed 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 theChinese Paste people," he thought, "if they knew I was taking a tube oftheir stuff on this adventure!")--his .22 revolver, a small green boxof cartridges of the size commonly used for squirrel-shooting, a volumeof 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 downstairsfor lunch. After lunch he lay down for a rest, as his head was stillvery painful. But he was not able to sleep. The thought of TitaniaChapman's blue eyes and gallant little figure came between him andslumber. He could not shake off the conviction that some peril washanging over her. Again and again he looked at his watch, rebuking thelagging dusk. At half-past four he set off for the subway. Half-waydown Thirty-third Street a thought struck him. He returned to hisroom, got out a pair of opera glasses from his trunk, and put them inhis bag.
It was blue twilight when he reached Gissing Street. The block betweenWordsworth Avenue and Hazlitt Street is peculiar in that on oneside--the side where the Haunted Bookshop stands--the old brownstonedwellings have mostly been replaced by small shops of a bright, livelycharacter. At the Wordsworth Avenue corner, where the L swings roundin a lofty roaring curve, stands Weintraub's drug store; below it, onthe western side, a succession of shining windows beacon through theevening. Delicatessen shops with their appetizing medley of cooked andpickled meats, dried fruits, cheeses, and bright coloured jars ofpreserves; small modistes with generously contoured wax busts ofcoiffured ladies; lunch rooms with the day's menu typed and pasted onthe outer pane; a French rotisserie where chickens turn hissing on thespits before a tall oven of rosy coals; florists, tobacconists,fruit-dealers, and a Greek candy-shop with a long soda fountain shiningwith onyx marble and coloured glass lamps and nickel tanks of hotchocolate; a stationery shop, now stuffed for the holiday trade withChristmas cards, toys, calendars, and those queer little suede-boundvolumes of Kipling, Service, Oscar Wilde, and Omar Khayyam that appearevery year toward Christmas time--such modest and cheerfulmerchandising makes the western pavement of Gissing Street a jollyplace when the lights are lit. All the shops were decorated for theC
hristmas trade; the Christmas issues of the magazines were just outand brightened the newsstands with their glowing covers. This sectionof Brooklyn has a tone and atmosphere peculiarly French in some parts:one can quite imagine oneself in some smaller Parisian boulevardfrequented by the petit bourgeois. Midway in this engaging andanimated block stands the Haunted Bookshop. Aubrey could see itswindows lit, and the shelved masses of books within. He felt a severetemptation to enter, but a certain bashfulness added itself to hisdesire to act in secret. There was a privy exhilaration in his plan ofputting the bookshop under an unsuspected surveillance, and he had theemotion of one walking on the frontiers of adventure.
So he kept on the opposite side of the street, which still maintains anunbroken row of quiet brown fronts, save for the movie theatre at theupper corner, opposite Weintraub's. Some of the basements on this sideare occupied now by small tailors, laundries, and lace-curtain cleaners(lace curtains are still a fetish in Brooklyn), but most of the housesare still merely dwellings. Carrying his bag, Aubrey passed the brighthalo of the movie theatre. Posters announcing THE RETURN OF TARZANshowed a kind of third chapter of Genesis scene with an Eve in a sportssuit. ADDED ATTRACTION, Mr. AND Mrs. SIDNEY DREW, he read.
A little way down the block he saw a sign VACANCIES in a parlourwindow. The house was nearly opposite the bookshop, and he at oncemounted 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 rancour. Adoptingthe customary compromise of untrained domestics, she did not invite himinside, but departed, leaving the door open to show that there was noill will.
Aubrey stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. In animmense mirror the pale cheese-coloured flutter of a gas jet wasremotely reflected. He noticed the Landseer engraving hung againstwallpaper designed in facsimile of large rectangles of gray stone, andthe usual telephone memorandum for the usual Mrs. J. F. Smith (whoabides in all lodging houses) tucked into the frame of the mirror.Will Mrs. Smith please call Stockton 6771, it said. A carpeted stairwith a fine old mahogany balustrade rose into the dimness. Aubrey, whowas thoroughly familiar with lodgings, knew instinctively that thefourth, ninth, tenth, and fourteenth steps would be creakers. A softmusk sweetened the warm, torpid air: he divined that someone wastoasting marshmallows over a gas jet. He knew perfectly well thatsomewhere in the house would be a placard over a bathtub with thelegend: Please leave this tub as you would wish to find it. RogerMifflin would have said, after studying the hall, that someone in thehouse was sure to be reading the poems of Rabbi Tagore; but Aubrey wasnot 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 thearmpits. 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'tsmoke in bed, do you? The last young man I had burned holes in threeof 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. Treasureskipped up the treads beside her. The sight of the six feet ascendingtogether amused Aubrey. The fourth, ninth, tenth, and fourteenth stepscreaked, as he had guessed they would. On the landing of the secondstorey a transom gushed orange light. Mrs. Schiller was secretlypleased at not having to augment the gas on that landing. Under thetransom and behind a door Aubrey could hear someone having a bath, witha great sloshing of water. He wondered irreverently whether it wasMrs. J. F. Smith. At any rate (he felt sure), it was some experiencedhabitue of lodgings, who knew that about five-thirty in the afternoonis the best time for a bath--before cooking supper and the homecomingablutions of other tenants have exhausted the hot water boiler.
They climbed one more flight. The room was small, occupying half thethird-floor frontage. A large window opened onto the street, giving aplain view of the bookshop and the other houses across the way. Awash-stand stood modestly inside a large cupboard. Over the mantel wasthe familiar picture--usually, however, reserved for the fourth floorback--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 inadvance."
Mrs. Schiller was almost disconcerted by the rapidity of thetransaction. She preferred to solemnize the reception of a new lodgerby a little more talk--remarks about the weather, the difficulty ofgetting "help," the young women guests who empty tea-leaves downwash-basin pipes, and so on. All this sort of gossip, apparentlyaimless, has a very real purpose: it enables the defenceless landladyto size up the stranger who comes to prey upon her. She had hardly hada good look at this gentleman, nor even knew his name, and here he hadpaid a week's rent and was already installed.
Aubrey divined the cause of her hesitation, and gave her his businesscard.
"All right, Mr. Gilbert," she said. "I'll send up the girl with someclean towels and a latchkey."
Aubrey sat down in a rocking chair by the window, tucked the muslincurtain to one side, and looked out upon the bright channel of GissingStreet. He was full of the exhilaration that springs from any changeof abode, but his romantic satisfaction in being so close to theadorable Titania was somewhat marred by a sense of absurdity, which isfeared by young men more than wounds and death. He could see thelighted windows of the Haunted Bookshop quite plainly, but he could notthink of any adequate excuse for going over there. And already herealized that to be near Miss Chapman was not at all the consolation hehad expected it would be. He had a powerful desire to see her. Heturned off the gas, lit his pipe, opened the window, and focussed theopera glasses on the door of the bookshop. It brought the placetantalizingly near. He could see the table at the front of the shop,Roger's bulletin board under the electric light, and one or twonondescript customers gleaning along the shelves. Then somethingbounded violently under the third button of his shirt. There she was!In the bright, prismatic little circle of the lenses he could seeTitania. Heavenly creature, in her white V-necked blouse and brownskirt, there she was looking at a book. He saw her put out one arm andcaught the twinkle of her wrist-watch. In the startling familiarity ofthe magnifying glass he could see her bright, unconscious face, themerry profile of her cheek and chin. . . . "The idea of that girlworking in a second-hand bookstore!" he exclaimed. "It's positivesacrilege! Old man Chapman must be crazy."
He took out his pyjamas and threw them on the bed; put his toothbrushand razor on the wash-basin, laid hairbrushes and O. Henry on thebureau. Feeling rather serio-comic he loaded his small revolver andhipped it. It was six o'clock, and he wound his watch. He was alittle uncertain what to do: whether to keep a vigil at the windowwith the opera glasses, or go down in the street where he could watchthe bookshop more nearly. In the excitement of the adventure he hadforgotten all about the cut on his scalp, and felt quite chipper. Inleaving Madison Avenue he had attempted to excuse the preposterousnessof his excursion by thinking that a quiet week-end in Brooklyn wouldgive him an opportunity to jot down some tentative ideas for Daintybitsadvertising copy which he planned to submit to his chief on Monday.But now that he was here he felt the impossibility of attacking anysuch humdrum task. How could he sit down in cold blood to devise any"attention-compelling" lay-outs for Daintybits Tapioca and Chapman'sCherished Saratoga Chips, when the daintiest bit of all was only a fewyards away? For the first time was made plain to him the amazing powerof 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 CHIP
S
These delicate wafers, crisped by a secret process, cherish in theirunique tang and flavour all the life-giving nutriment that has made thepotato 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 herselfshould come to any harm? "Was this the face that launched a thousandchips?" he murmured, and for an instant wished he had brought TheOxford Book of English Verse instead of O. Henry.
A tap sounded at his door, and Mrs. Schiller appeared. "Telephone foryou, Mr. Gilbert," she said.
"For ME?" said Aubrey in amazement. How could it be for him, hethought, for no one knew he was there.
"The party on the wire asked to speak to the gentleman who arrivedabout 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 itoccurred to him that this would arouse Mrs. Schiller's suspicions. Heran down to the telephone, which stood under the stairs in the fronthall.
"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 well-wisher," 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 inthe voice that made the diaphragm at Aubrey's ear vibrate tinnily.Aubrey grew angry.
"Well, Herr Freund," he said, "if you're the well-wisher I met on theBridge last night, watch your step. I've got your number."
There was a pause. Then the other repeated, ponderously, "I am afriend. 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 inthe dark by the window, smoking a pipe and thinking, with his eyes onthe bookshop.
There was no longer any doubt in his mind that something sinister wasafoot. He reviewed in memory the events of the past few days.
It was on Monday that a bookloving friend had first told him of theexistence of the shop on Gissing Street. On Tuesday evening he hadgone round to visit the place, and had stayed to supper with Mr.Mifflin. On Wednesday and Thursday he had been busy at the office, andthe idea of an intensive Daintybit campaign in Brooklyn had occurred tohim. On Friday he had dined with Mr. Chapman, and had run into acurious 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 belost--he being the same man Aubrey had seen in the bookshop on Tuesdayevening.
(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 whyshould 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 obviouslyTeutonic voice.
He remembered the face of anger and fear displayed by the Octagon chefwhen he had spoken to him in the elevator. Until this oddly menacingtelephone message, he could have explained the attack on the Bridge asmerely a haphazard foot-pad enterprise; but now he was forced toconclude that it was in some way connected with his visits to thebookshop. He felt, too, that in some unknown way Weintraub's drugstore had something to do with it. Would he have been attacked if hehad not taken the book cover from the drug store? He got the cover outof his bag and looked at it again. It was of plain blue cloth, withthe title stamped in gold on the back, and at the bottom the letteringLondon: Chapman and Hall. From the width of the backstrap it wasevident that the book had been a fat one. Inside the front cover thefigure 60 was written in red pencil--this he took to be Roger Mifflin'sprice 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, waswritten
153 (3) 1, 2
"I suppose these are page numbers," Aubrey thought. "I think I'dbetter 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 thecrepitant stairs, "The Bookshop, the Octagon, and Weintraub's; but thatbook seems to be the clue to the whole business."
The Haunted Bookshop Page 8