Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

by Gruber, Frank

  “Oh, yeah?” one of them said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Quade retorted. “I can answer any question you can ask me. On any subject—history, science, mathematics, sports, anthropology. Go ahead, ask me a question and see.”

  The wise-cracking boy looked puzzled. His pals urged him on. “Go ahead. You started it.”

  “All right,” grinned the boy. “Here’s one. How does a fox rid itself of fleas?”

  The other boys began tittering, but Quade threw up his hands. “That was supposed to be a brain teaser. But I can answer it correctly. Br’er Fox’s reputation for cleverness is justly earned. When he’s bothered with fleas he takes a piece of wool or wood into his mouth and lets himself into a pool of water, tail first. The fleas don’t like to be drowned so they scramble further up on his body. Pretty soon only the fox’s nose and mouth are above the water and the fleas get into the wood or wool he’s got in his mouth. Then the fox drops the thing into the water and removes himself promptly from the vicinity.”

  A roar of laughter swept the crowd that had now gathered on the aisle. Quade’s eyes gleamed and he went on: “Try me on something else. Anything, anyone!”

  “What kind of dogs are these?” The interrogator was a young woman and she had them on leash; two huge animals, only a little smaller than St. Bernard dogs, and infinitely ludicrous. Long, woolly hair covered their faces, their entire bodies. They looked more like sheep than sheep themselves.

  Quade chuckled as he replied, “Those, Madam, are Old English sheep dogs. Once when I was lost in a wild section of England, near the Scottish border, I killed one of those dogs, thinking it a sheep. It was not until later that I learned of my mistake and I haven’t been able to eat mutton since.”

  Again the crowd roared. The questions came fast and furious after that. Everyone seemed to want to play the new game.

  “How far is it to the moon?”

  “What is the population of Talladega, Alabama?”

  “When was the Battle of Austerlitz?”

  “What is ontology?”

  Quade answered all the questions, promptly and accurately. The audience applauded each time he gave a prompt answer. Then, after ten minutes, Quade called a dramatic halt.

  “Now,” he bellowed, “I want to tell you how you can learn the answers to all the questions you’ve asked me. All those and ten thousand more. I’m going to give every one of you the opportunity to do what I did—have at your fingertips the answer to every single question anyone can ask you. Every one of you can be a Human Encyclopedia …”

  Charlie Boston opened the suitcase at Quade’s feet. He brought out a thick volume and handed it to Quade.

  “Here it is, folks,” Quade said. “The compendium of human knowledge of the ages. The answers to all questions. A complete college education crammed into one volume. Listen.” Quade leaned forward and lowered his voice to a confidential bellow.

  “I’m not asking twenty-five dollars for this marvelous twelve-hundred-page book. I’m not even asking fifteen dollars, ten or five. Just a mere, paltry, insignificant two dollars and ninety-five cents. Think of it, folks, the knowledge of the ages for a mere pittance…. And here I come!”

  He leaped down the from the counter and grabbed an armful of books. Then he attacked the crowd, talking as he went through. He sold the books, twenty-two of them. Then, when the remnants of the crowd still lingered to hear more entertainment, Quade blithely walked off. There was no use wasting time on dead-heads. In a little while there’d be a new crowd and Quade would attack them. But now, he had a half-hour intermission.

  He was walking through a dog aisle when a biting voice said to one side of him: “Sheep!”

  It was the girl who had asked Quade to identify the sheep dogs. He grinned. She was very easy on the eyes, blonde, and with the finest chiseled features Quade had ever seen on a girl, a complexion of milk and honey and eyes that danced with blue mischief. She was not more than twenty-one or two.

  “Sorry I had to embarrass you,” Quade apologized. “But I ask you in all fairness, do those creatures look like dogs?”

  He pointed at the one in the stall. The girl surveyed the dog critically. “Well,” she conceded, “the man I got them from told me they were dogs. Sometimes I’m inclined to disbelieve him. But say, what’s the trick about that question and answer stuff you pulled back there?”

  “No trick at all, it’s on the level.”

  “Oh, come now, you don’t really know everything.”

  “But I do. I have a smattering of every subject under the sun.”

  “I don’t understand. No one person could know everything.”

  “You heard my pitch. I sell small encyclopedias. They’re pretty good, worth the money. But I didn’t get my knowledge from them. I got it from a twenty-four volume set. I’ve read it from cover to cover, not once, but four times.”

  She looked at him in awe. “How long—”

  “Fifteen years. And I remember everything I read. For example, in the premium list of the Westfield Kennel Show I remember the name of Lois Lanyard as the exhibitor of a pair of Old English Sheepdogs …”

  “And you’re Oliver Quade. And now we’re introduced.”

  Quade’s eyes sparkled. The friendliness of the girl delighted him. He talked for a moment more with her, then a sleek-haired young man in white flannels came up.

  “Freddie,” said Lois Lanyard, “this is Mr. Quade, the Human Encyclopedia. Mr. Quade, my fiancé, Mr. Bartlett.”

  Quade started to put out his hand but Bartlett nodded shortly and turned to Lois. “The judge is going to place the awards on the pointers in a few minutes,” he said. “Shall we watch?”

  Lois flashed an angry look at her fiancé but Bartlett bluntly took her arm and walked off with her. Quade shrugged and walked down the aisle containing the English bulldogs. He made friends with a couple of the dogs, although he had some uneasy moments while doing so.

  “Maybe,” Quade said to himself, “they’ll judge the pointers today. Then again maybe they won’t!”

  When he walked away, the snap fastening the biggest bulldog to the wall was loose. The dog, however, didn’t know it yet. Later, instinct and nature would take its course.

  Quade went quickly back to his booth, climbed up on his stand and began his pitch. And if he had talked loud before he shook the rafters now. The noise was too much for the dogs and they set up a terrific racket. Inside of thirty seconds bedlam reigned in the building. Men and women began rushing about. That excited the dogs even more. And then, Quade, on his perch, saw a big bulldog leap out of his stall. He went no further than the neighboring one, which contained a bulldog almost as big as himself. Also a male.

  The fight created a riot in the building. A hundred people clamored, screamed and yelled. A half dozen dog handlers had to use water and burning newspaper to get the dogs apart.

  Quade watched the fight, but Charlie Boston was conspicuous by his absence. He had taken flight outside the building the moment he’d heard one of the bulldogs was loose.

  When the dogs were back in their stalls and the crowd began dispersing, Quade strolled into the pointer aisle. “Going to judge the pointers today?” he asked Freddie Bartlett.

  Bartlett glared at him, “No, some damn fool let one of the bulls loose and it’ll take two hours for the dogs to quiet down.”

  “Next time,” Quade said to himself, “maybe Freddie will be more particular who he snubs.”

  Charlie Boston dashed up, wild-eyed. “Oliver,” he croaked. “Come over here a minute. I gotta tell you …”

  Quade followed Boston to one side. “In your booth,” gasped Boston. “Gawd, a dead man!”

  “Hell, I just left that booth five minutes ago.”

  “Maybe so, but there’s a stiff there now.”

  Quade’s lips tightened. He distanced his partner, reaching the s
mall booth a dozen steps ahead of him. He leaned over the four-foot counter, looked down into the small space behind—and caught his breath.

  A man wearing white flannels, white doeskin shoes and a black and white striped sweater was lying there in the tanbark. And a dark brown liquid had trickled from a spot over his left eye down over the bridge of his nose.

  Quade turned. “Call the show secretary and the police.”

  “But he’s in our booth.”

  “Call the cops,” Quade repeated sharply.

  Charlie Boston had a policeman at his side and, in their wake, coat-tails flapping, the dog show secretary.

  “Murder!” bleated the secretary. “Murder, here! Oh, my God!”

  The dogs started barking again and Quade slumped in disgust. The fool secretary was starting another riot. It lasted for a full ten minutes, then a dozen Westfield police arrived and herded everyone in the building into the aisle before Quade’s booth.

  Chief Costello of the Westfield Police Department was in command. “This is your booth, I understand,” he began on Quade.

  “Yes, it’s my booth and you want to know what I know. The answer is, nothing. There was a dog fight and I joined the crowd to watch it. My assistant here, Charlie Boston, found the body and told me about it. That’s all I know.”

  “Zat so?” The chief turned on Boston and put him through a bad few minutes. But Boston defended himself ably. He had left the building when the dog fight started because he didn’t like dog fights. When the dogs had quieted he’d returned and found the body here in the booth. He’d gone to tell Quade immediately. He stuck stoutly to that story.

  The coroner come and examined the body inside the booth. He came out in a few minutes. “Shot with a .32 caliber bullet, I’d say.”

  “And no one heard the shot?” the chief said sarcastically. “A hundred people in here, too.”

  “And five hundred dogs,” added Quade. “All of them barking. You couldn’t have heard a machine gun.”

  The chief glared at him. “I’ll talk to you some more.” He turned to the coroner. “S’pose you’d better take him to town. We’ll give the notice to the papers and someone may come down and identify him.”

  “That’s not necessary,” said the coroner. “I know him. His name is Wesley Peters.”

  “Wesley! My God!”

  The scream came from a gorgeously blonde young woman in the front of the crowd. Quade stepped quickly toward her, but couldn’t quite catch her as she sank to the tanbark. He dropped to his knees and bumped into a slender, dark-haired chap who was also stooping to pick her up.

  “I beg your pardon!” the man exclaimed. “It’s my wife.”

  Quade pushed a path through the crowd to a booth with a long table in it. The young fellow brought his wife behind Quade, deposited her gently on the table. The coroner came through but the woman had already revived and was struggling to sit up. She moaned. “Wesley! He’s dead … dead!”

  Lois Lanyard came up, put her arm around the girl and spoke soothingly.

  “I’ll take her home,” said the young husband.

  “Hmm. Guess it’s all right,” grunted the chief of police. “I know both of you.”

  But the woman who had fainted protested at being taken home and after a moment insisted she was quite recovered.

  “Thanks for trying to help,” the young fellow told Quade.

  “Quite all right.”

  “My brother, Bob,” Lois Lanyard said. “And his wife, Jessie.”

  Quade had already guessed the relationship. The family resemblance between Bob and Lois Lanyard was striking, but whereas Lois was wholesome and vital, her brother seemed to be the ascetic, brooding type. His wife was dressed expensively, her hair was burnished gold and her coiffure marvelous. Lois’ clothes had probably cost as much as Jessie Lanyard’s but didn’t look it. Which was the difference between them. Lois was born to money, Jessie had married it.

  The chief of police became brusque. “All right, we know who he is. Now let’s see if we can’t find out who killed him. You,” pointing at Quade, “you say this is your booth. I don’t see nothin’ in it.”

  “I do not display samples.”

  “Naw? What’s your racket?”

  The show secretary stretched up on his toes and whispered to the chief. There was a light in the chief’s eyes when he tackled Quade again. “A book agent, huh!” he snapped in glee. “So you’re the bloke who’s been making all the racket around here today. Come on now, talk and talk fast.”

  “Why would I want to kill this man? I never saw him before in my life.”

  “So what? Does every robber and thug have to be introduced first to the people he robs?”

  “Has he been robbed?”

  A startled look came into the chief’s eyes. He turned away hurriedly and pulled the coroner into the booth. He emerged a moment later, crestfallen.

  “He wasn’t robbed.”

  “Ah, his money is still on him, eh? How much?”

  “Over a thousand dollars,” admitted the chief. “And there’s a watch and stickpin. But—maybe you didn’t have time.”

  “No? You forget that I was the one who sent for the police?”

  The chief swore roundly. “Say, who’s the policeman here? You or me?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Why you—!” The chief started to swing a punch at Quade, but caught himself with an effort. “Enough of that stuff now. We’ve got to find the gun.”

  He signaled to a couple of policemen and barked orders at them. They scattered through the neighboring booths. And inside of two minutes one of them yelled in discovery. He came back carrying a nickel-plated .32 caliber revolver in a handkerchief. The chief’s eyes gleamed.

  He sent policemen scurrying about getting the name of everyone present. Then he allowed everyone to depart. He dispersed the exhibitors too and posted policemen at each door.

  “No one’ll be allowed in here until we’ve had time to go over the building,” he announced. “Three o’clock in the afternoon anyway.”

  Oliver Quade and Charlie Boston strolled toward a restaurant a short distance from the dog building. “Don’t look now,” said Boston as they entered. “But there’s a flatfoot shadowing us.”

  “Naturally. The chief hasn’t forgotten that it’s my booth.”

  Lois Lanyard, her brother and his wife and Freddie Bartlett were in the restaurant, seated at a large table. The only vacant spot was at a small table next to theirs. Quade and Boston sat down at it.

  Lois introduced them all around.

  A waitress came to take their order, then Quade leaned back in his chair and studied the group at the next table. Lois was chattering gaily with Freddie, but every now and then she cast a sharp glance at her brother who was biting his lips and staring moodily at the tablecloth. Jessie Lanyard was trying to make conversation with her husband, but wasn’t having much success. She seemed to have recovered entirely from her faint, but her conversation, it seemed to Quade, was high pitched and forced.

  Quade sat up. “Look, folks,” he said, “I seem to be Murder Suspect Number I and the chief of police is going to ask me some mighty embarrassing questions this afternoon. Mind if I talk about it?”

  Lois made warning signals with her eyes and Freddie drew himself up stiffly, but Lois’ brother came out of his lethargy. “Yes, let’s talk about it. We’re all thinking about it anyway. Why did my wife faint when the coroner said it was Wesley Peters? Is that what you want to know?”

  “No. I want to know why Mrs. Lanyard pretended to faint?”

  All four of the people at the adjoining table gasped. Jessie’s face went white, then red. “What do you mean by that?” she snapped.

  “I mean that you were no more faint than I,” Quade replied. “I saw your eyes. And your muscles were tensed, not relaxed, w
hen your husband picked you up.”

  “Mr. Quade,” said Freddie Bartlett. “I don’t think this is a matter that concerns you.”

  “But it does,” cried Lois’ brother. “Jessie put on a scene over there and I want to know the meaning of it. Jessie, why did you faint? Or pretend to faint?”

  Jessie’s eyes flashed sparks. “Very well, if you must have a public scene, I’ll tell you. You know very well that I knew Wes before I married you. Naturally it was a shock to learn that he was murdered—under such peculiar circumstances.”

  “Why peculiar?” snapped Bob Lanyard. “The dog show was as good a place as any for him to die. He was a—a dog, you know.”

  “Bob!” Jessie cried indignantly.

  “Why did you have to start this?” exclaimed Lois, looking at Quade.

  “Because I wanted to make you all mad,” retorted Quade. “When people are mad they tell things, and I think there are some things to be told. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Lanyard?”

  Jessie Lanyard’s eyes slitted, “All right, Wesley was in love with me once. And I almost accepted him before I married you, Bob. I didn’t want to tell you that, but you insisted on having it. So take it.”

  Charlie tugged at Quade’s sleeve. Quade turned and saw Chief Costello bearing down on the group.

  “Hello, folks,” said the chief. “Thought I’d find you here.”

  “You mean your shadow told you we came here,” Quade retorted.

  “Still at it, young fella, huh? Well, I got some news for you. I found out who owned the gun that Wesley was killed with.”

  Jessie Lanyard rose so suddenly that she bumped the table and knocked over a water glass. Quade saw panic in her eyes.

  “It was his own gun,” continued the chief. “He bought it a year ago, got a license to carry it.”

  The panic remained in Jessie’s eyes. Quade hesitated, then suddenly pointed a lean forefinger at her. “But didn’t he give you that gun, Mrs. Lanyard?” he asked softly.

  Jessie screamed suddenly. She pushed back her chair and it crashed to the floor. Her face was suddenly twisted into a weird gargoyle. “Yes, he gave it to me. Yes, and I killed him. I killed him with his own gun! I’d do it again because I hated him!”