He flipped a palm back and forth.
'So-so,' he said.
'Bastard,' she said.
I walked home slowly, ashamed. I was embarrassed at confessing how I saw myself as a member of the persecuted minority of the short.
Still, it was true. You may believe I was obsessed by my size. Let me tell how I felt. I have already commented on the rewards society offers to men of physical stature. The tall are treated with respect; the short earn contempt or amusement. This is true only of men. 'Five-foot-two, eyes of blue' is still an encomium for a female. Our language reflects this prejudice. A worthy person is said to be 'A man you can look up to.' An impecunious man is suffering from 'the shorts.' To be short-tempered is reprehensible.
To short-circuit is to frustrate or impede. A shortfall is a deficiency.
Thus does our language reflect our prejudice. And the philosophy that I had in a moment of weakness divulged to Belle and Perce reflected my deepest feelings about being a midget. From my size, or lack of it, came my beliefs, dreams, ideas, emotions, fantasies, reactions. All of which would be put to the test whether I liked it or not, in the rocky week ahead.
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2
I arrived at TORT the next morning before 9.00 a.m. My IN basket was piled high with requests for investigations and research, but after shuffling through them, I decided that most could be handled by Mrs Kletz and the rest could wait.
Shortly before ten, I phoned Gardner & Weiss, who did all the job printing for Tabatchnick, Orsini, Reilly, and Teitelbaum. I spoke directly to Mr Weiss and explained what I wanted on the Stonehouse reward posters.
'No problem,' he said. 'I'll send a messenger for the photograph and copy. How many do you want?'
I had no idea. 'A hundred,' I said.
'Wednesday,' he said.
'This afternoon,' I said.
'Oh,' he said sadly. 'Oh, oh, oh.'
'It's a rush job. We'll pay.'
'Without saying,' he told me. 'You want to see a proof first?'
'No. I trust you.'
'You do?' he said.
'By one o'clock this afternoon?'
'I'll try. Only because you said you trust me. The messenger's on his way.'
I dug out the photograph of Professor Stonehouse and typed the copy for the poster: REWARD! A generous cash award will be paid to any cabdriver who can prove he picked up this man in the vicinity of Central Park West and 70th Street on the night of January 10th, this year. Then I added the TORT telephone number and my extension.
As usual, Thelma Potts was seated primly outside the 287
office of Mr Leopold Tabatchnick.
'Miss Potts!' I cried. 'You're looking uncommonly lovely this morning.'
'Oh-oh,' she said. 'You want something.'
'Well, yes. I have a friend who needs legal advice. I wondered if I could have one of Mr Tabatchnick's cards to give him.'
'Liar,' she said. 'You want to pretend you're Mr Tabatchnick.'
I was astonished. 'How did you know?' I asked her.
'How many do you need?' she asked, ignoring my question.
As I was leaving she dunned me for a dollar for the sick kit. I handed it over.
'Still betting on Hamish Hooter?' I asked her.
'I only bet on sure things,' she said loftily.
When Gertrude Kletz came in I called her into my office and showed her the photograph of Professor Stonehouse and the reward copy. I explained that she should expect the posters to be delivered by Gardner & Weiss in the early afternoon. Meanwhile, she could begin compiling a list of taxi garages, which she could get from the Yellow Pages.
'Or from the Hack Bureau,' she said.
I looked at her with admiration.
'Right,' I said. I told her the posters would have to be hand-carried to the garages and, with the permission of the manager, displayed on walls or bulletin boards.
'I'll need sticky tape and thumbtacks,' she said cheerfully. The Kipper file had hooked her; now the Stonehouse case had done the same. I could see it in her bright eyes. Her face was burning with eagerness.
I told her I was off to the lab to check into Stonehouse's tests, and that by the time I got back, she'd probably be out distributing the posters. I put on hat and coat, grabbed up my briefcase, and rushed out, waving at Yetta as I sailed past.
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She was wearing the green sweater I had given her, but curiously this failed to stir me.
The chemical laboratory was on Eleventh Avenue near 55th Street. I took a cab over. Bommer & Son, Inc., was on the fourth floor of an unpretentious building set between a sailors' bar (BIG BOY DRINKS 75 CENTS DURING
HAPPY HOUR, 9 TO 2 A.M.) and a gypsy fortune teller (READINGS. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. SICKNESS). The elevator was labelled FREIGHT ONLY, so I climbed worn stairs to the fourth floor, the nose-crimping smell of chemicals becoming more intense as I ascended.
The receptionist in the outer office was typing away at Underwood's first model. She stopped.
'I'd like to speak to Mr Bommer, please.'
In a few moments a stoutish man wearing a stained white laboratory coat flung himself into the office.
'Yes?' he demanded in a reedy voice.
The receptionist pointed me out. He came close to me, peering suspiciously at my face. I thought him to be in the sixties — possibly the 1860s.
'Yes?'
'Mr Waldo Bommer?'
'Yes.'
I proffered Mr Tabatchnick's card. He held it a few inches from his eyes and read it aloud: 'Leopold H.
Tabatchnick. Attorney-at-Law.' He lowered the card.
'Who's suing?' he asked me.
'No one,' I said. 'I just want a moment of your time. I represent the estate of Professor Yale Stonehouse. Among his papers is a cancelled cheque made out to Bommer & Son, with no accompanying voucher. The government is running a tax audit on the estate, and it would help if you could provide copies of the bill.'
'Come with me,' he said abruptly.
I followed him through a rear door into an enormous loft laboratory where five people, three men, two women, 289
all elderly and all wearing stained laboratory coats, were seated on high stools before stone-topped workbenches.
They seemed intent on what they were doing; none looked up as we passed through.
Mr Waldo Bommer led the way to a private office tucked into one corner. He closed the door behind us.
'How do you stand it?' I asked him.
'Stand what?'
'The smell.'
'What smell?' he said. He took a deep breath through his nostrils. 'Hydrogen sulphide, hypochlorous acid, sulphur dioxide, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. A smell? I love it. Smells are my bread and butter, mister.
How do you think I do a chemical analysis? First, I smell.
You see before you an educated nose.'
He tapped the bridge of his nose. A small pug nose with trumpeting nostrils.
'An educated nose,' he repeated proudly. 'First, I smell.
Sometimes that tells me all I have to know.'
Suddenly he grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me close. I thought he meant to kiss me. But he merely sniffed at my mouth and cheeks.
'You don't smoke,' he said. 'Right?'
'Right,' I said, pulling back from his grasp.
'And this morning, for breakfast, you had coffee and a pastry. Something with fruit in it. Figs maybe.'
'Prune Danish,' I said.
'You see!' he said. 'An educated nose. My father had the best nose in the business. He could tell you when you had changed your socks. Sit down.'
Waldo Bommer shuffled through a drawer in a battered oak file.
'Stacy, Stone, Stonehouse,' he intoned. 'Here it is.
Professor Yale Stonehouse. Two chemical analyses of unknown liquids. 14 December of last year.'
'May I take a look?' I asked.
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'Why not?'
I scanned the two carbon-copy reports. There were a
lot of chemical terms; one of them included arsenic trioxide.
'Could you tell me what these liquids were, please?'
He snatched the papers from my hands and scanned them. 'Simple. This one, plain cocoa. This one was brandy.'
'The brandy has the arsenic trioxide in it?'
'Yes.'
'Didn't you think that unusual?'
He shrugged.
'Mister, I just do the analysis. What's in it is none of my business. A week ago a woman brought in a tube of toothpaste loaded with strychnine.'
'Toothpaste?' I cried. 'How did they get it in?'
Again he shrugged. 'Who knows? A hypo through the opening maybe. I couldn't care less. I just do the analysis.'
'Could I get copies of these reports, Mr Bommer? For the government. The tax thing . . . '
He thought a moment.
'I don't see why not,' he said finally. 'You say this Professor Stonehouse is dead?'
'Yes, sir. Deceased early this year.'
'Then he can't sue me for giving out copies of his property.'
Ten minutes later I was bouncing down the splintering stairs with photocopies in my briefcase. I had offered to pay for the copies, and Bommer had taken me up on it. I inhaled several deep breaths of fresh air, then went flying up Eleventh Avenue. There is no feeling on earth to match a hunch proved correct. I decided to press my luck. I stopped at the first unvandalized phone booth I came to.
'Yah?' Olga Eklund answered.
'Olga, this is Joshua Bigg.'
'Yah?'
'Is Miss Glynis in?'
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'No. She's at her clinic.'
That was what I hoped to hear.
'But Mrs Stonehouse is at home?'
'Yah.'
'Well, maybe I'll drop by for a few moments. She's recovered from her, uh, indisposition?'
'Yah.'
'Able to receive visitors?'
'Yah.'
'I'll come right over. You might mention to her that I'll be stopping by for a minute or two.'
I waited for her 'Yah,' but there was no answer; she had hung up. Shortly afterwards Olga in the flesh was taking my coat in the Stonehouse hallway.
'I'm sorry Miss Glynis isn't at home,' I said to Olga.
'You think I might be able to call her at the clinic?'
'Oh yah,' she said. 'It's the Children's Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Clinic. It's downtown, on the East Side.'
'Thank you,' I said gratefully. 'I'll call her there.'
Ula Stonehouse was half-reclining on the crushed velvet
couch. She was beaming, holding a hand out to me. As usual, there was a wineglass and a bottle of sherry on the glass-topped table.
'How nice!' she warbled. 'I was hoping for company and here you are!'
'Here I am, indeed, ma'am,' I said, taking her limp hand. 'I was sorry to hear you have been indisposed, but you look marvellously well now.'
'Oh, I feel so good,' she said, patting the couch next to her. I sat down obediently. 'My signs changed and now I feel like a new woman.'
'I'm delighted to hear it.'
I watched her reach forward to fill her glass with a tremulous hand. She straightened back slowly, took a sip, looking at me over the rim with those milk-glass eyes flickering. The mop of blonde curls seemed frizzier than 292
ever. She touched the tip of her nose as one might gently explore a bruise.
'Would you care for anything, Mr Bigger?' she asked.
'A drink? Coffee? Whatever?'
'Bigg, ma'am,' I said. 'Joshua Bigg. No, thank you.
Nothing for me. Just a few minutes of your time if you're not busy.'
'All the time in the world,' she said, laughing gaily.
She was wearing a brightly printed shirtwaist dress with a wide, ribbon belt. The gown, the pumps, the makeup, the costume jewellery: all too young for her. And the flickering eyes, warbling voice, fluttery gestures gave a feverish impression: a woman under stress. I felt sure she was aware of what was going on.
'Mrs Stonehouse,' I said, 'I wish I had good news to report about your husband, but I'm afraid I do not.'
'Oh, let's not talk about that,' she said. 'What's done is done. Now tell me all about yourself.'
She looked at me brightly, eyes widened. If she wasn't going to talk about her vanished husband, I was stymied.
Still, for the moment, it seemed best to play along.
'What would you like to know about me, ma'am?'
'You're a Virgo, aren't you?'
'Pisces,' I told her.
'Of course,' she said, as if confirming her guess. 'Are you married?'
'No, Mrs Stonehouse, I am not.'
'Oh, you must be,' she said earnestly. 'You must listen to me. And you must because I have been so happy in my own marriage, you see. A family is a little world. I have my husband and my son and my daughter. We are a very close, loving family, as you know.'
I looked at her helplessly. She had deteriorated since I first met her; now she was almost totally out of it. I thought desperately how I might use her present mood to get what I wanted. 'I'm an orphan, Mrs Stonehouse,' I 293
said humbly. 'My parents were killed in an accident when I was an infant.'
Surprisingly, shockingly, tears welled up in those milky eyes. She stifled a sob, reached to grip my forearm. Her clutch was frantic.
'Poor tyke,' she groaned, then lunged for her glass of sherry.
'I was raised by relatives,' I went on. 'Good people, I wasn't mistreated. But still . . . So when you speak of a close, loving family, a little world — I know nothing of all that. The memories.'
'The memories,' she said, nodding like a broken doll.
'Oh yes, the m e m o r i e s . . . '
'Do you have a family album, Mrs Stonehouse?' I asked softly, and, to my surprise, she responded by producing the album with unexpected rapidity.
What followed was a truly awful hour. We pored over those old photographs one by one while Ula Stonehouse provided running commentary, rife with pointless anecdotes. I murmured constant appreciation and made frequent noises of wonder and enjoyment.
Wedding Pictures: the tail, gaunt groom towering over the frilly doll-bride. An old home in Boston. Glynis, just born, naked on a bearskin rug. Childhood snapshots.
Powell Stonehouse at ten, frowning seriously at the camera. Picnics. Outings. Friends. Then, gradually, the family groups, friends, picnics, outings — all disappearing.
Formal photographs. Single portraits, Yale, Ula, Glynis, Powell. Lifeless eyes. A family moving towards dissolution.
When Mrs Stonehouse leaned forward to refill her glass, I rapidly removed a recent snapshot of Glynis from the album and slipped it into my briefcase before she sat back again. 'Remarkable,' I said, as if I were riveted to the book. 'Really remarkable. Happy times.'
She looked at me, not seeing me.
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'Oh yes,' she said. 'Happy times. Such good babies.
Glynis never cried. Never. Powell did, but not Glynis. It's over.'
I didn't dare ask what she meant by that.
'Emanations,' she went on. 'And visits beyond. I know it's over.'
'Mrs Stonehouse,' I asked anxiously, 'are you feeling well?'
'What? she said. 'Well,' she said, passing a faltering hand across her brow, 'perhaps I should lie down for a few moments. So many memories.'
'Of course,' I said, rising. 'I'll call Olga.'
I found her seated at the long dining room table, leafing through Popular Mechanics.
'Olga,' I said, 'I think Mrs Stonehouse needs you. I think she'd like to rest for a while.'
'Yah?' she said. She rose, yawned, and stretched. 'I go.'
In the kitchen Effie was at the enormous stove, stirring something with a long wooden spoon. Her porky face creased into a grin.
'Mr Bigg!' she said. 'How nice!'
She put the spoon aside, clapped a lid on the pot, and wiped her hands on her apron. She gestured towards the white enamel
led table and we both drew up chairs.
'Effie,' I said, 'how are you? It's good to see you again.'
That was true, and it was a comfort to be honest again.
She was such a jolly tub of a woman.
'Getting along,' she said. 'You look a little puffy around the gills. Not sick, are you?'
'No,' I said, 'I'm okay. But I've been talking to Mrs Stonehouse. I'm a little shook.'
'Yes,' she said, wagging her head dolefully. 'I know what you mean. Worse every day.'
'Why?' I asked. 'What's happening to her?'
She frowned. 'I don't rightly know. Her husband disappearing, I guess. Powell moving out. And the way 295
Glynis has been acting. I suppose it's just too much for her.'
'How has Glynis been acting?'
'Strange,' Effie said. 'Snappish. Cold. Goes to her room and stays there. Never a smile.'
'Is this recent?' I asked.
'Oh yes. Just since your last visit.'
She looked at me shrewdly. I decided to plunge ahead. If she repeated what I was saying to Glynis, so much the better. So I told Effie what I knew about the arsenic. She listened closely, then nodded when I had finished.
'Are you a detective?' she asked.
'Sort of,' I said. 'Chief Investigator for the legal firm representing Professor Stonehouse.'
'You don't suspect me of poisoning him, do you?'
'Never,' I lied. 'Not for a minute.'
'Glynis?'
We stared at each other. I wondered if her silence was meant to imply consent, and decided to act as if it did.
'I must establish that Glynis had the means,' I said.
'You just can't go out and buy arsenic at Rexall's. And to do that, I need the name of the medical laboratory where she worked as a secretary.'
'I'd rather not,' she said quickly.
'I was going to ask Mrs Stonehouse, but she's in no condition to answer questions. Effie, I need the name.'
Once again we stared at each other.
'It's got to be done,' I said.
'Yes,' she agreed sadly.
After a while she got up and lumbered from the kitchen.
She came back in a few minutes with a slip of paper. I glanced at it briefly. Atlantic Medical Research, with the address and phone number.
'I had it in my book,' Effie explained, 'in case we had to reach her at work.'
'When did she stop working there?'
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She thought a moment.
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