Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

by Gruber, Frank

  Herbert Mills groaned.

  “Nice going, Captain,” Quade complimented. “Perhaps I can fit in the missing pieces. Mills had a customer for a Jesse James letter, but didn’t have the letter, because there was only one such letter in existence and Mr. George Grimshaw owned it. Mr. Grimshaw was willing to sell the letter, but, oddly, wanted money for it—which was something Mr. Mills didn’t have, in large enough quantities. He stalled around with Mr. Paley, the customer, gave him a glimpse of a forged letter maybe. He didn’t dare really sell the forgery though, because Mr. Paley, while he might only make a casual examination of a letter, would give it a real good going over before he laid out big money.”

  He paused and looked at Herbert Mills. The fat man’s stricken face told him that he was on the right track. He went on:

  “In the meantime, Mr. Paley went in to see Martin Lund, a dealer in autographs. Mr. Lund promptly told him that there was only one letter in existence and George Grimshaw owned that. Paley told him to make a dicker with Grimshaw for it.

  “About that time I came into the picture. Grimshaw brought the letter to town this morning to take to Lund, but discovered suddenly that a couple of thugs were following him. He guessed the reason, and hired Charlie Boston and myself to make the delivery of the letter.

  “We got by the pugs all right—and then discovered that Martin Lund had been murdered. I went out to the track because there was a note with the letter informing Lund of Grimshaw’s whereabouts.

  “Mills was ahead of us at the track. He knew where the original was because his monkeys had reported to him. He’d killed Lund because Lund knew too much about him—though he got to Lund too late. Lund had already reported Mills’ forgeries to the police, but Mills didn’t know that.”

  “That’s right,” the captain said. Quade went on:

  “Mills needed the money the James letter would bring. He not only had to get his hands on it, but he had to get Grimshaw out of the way. If he sold it with Grimshaw alive, Grimshaw would be on his neck for stealing it.

  “So Mills killed him and stuffed the phoney receipt in Grimshaw’s pocket. That was to throw Grimshaw’s heir, his daughter, off the track. That disposed of Lund and Grimshaw and left Mills free to resume his original negotiations with the customer, Paley. Except for one small thing—obtaining the original Jesse James letter. He’s been working very hard to get that. Haven’t you, Herbie?”

  Herbert Mills scowled.

  Meyer, the hotel manager, cut in: “It’s six o’clock, Mr. Quade. If you haven’t got that money, you’ll have to go—”

  “O.K.,” Quade sighed, “We’ll go.”

  “Uh-uh,” Charlie Boston exclaimed. “Here’s the dough!” He took a huge roll of bills from his pocket.

  Mills cried out. “That’s mine! He stole it from me.”

  “You’re crazy!” exclaimed Boston. “Me and Ollie won this at the races. We had a hundred-dollar show ticket on Rameses. Didn’t we, Ollie?”

  Quade looked at Mills, then at the adamant face of the hotel manager. “That’s right, Charlie. We certainly did have a ticket on that horse.”

  Captain Roletti coughed, then winked at Quade. “You’re right. I heard you did.” He passed Quade and said out of the side of his mouth, “Where he’s goin’ he won’t need it, anyway.”

  Words and Music

  Oliver Quade was in the dough. His hotel bill was paid, he had fifty-three dollars in his pocket, and Charlie Boston, his friend and assistant, had a ticket on the Irish Sweepstakes.

  It was something to celebrate and they were doing it in the bar and cocktail lounge of the Midtown Hotel. They’d had two beers apiece and were at that expansive stage where they were willing to listen to the beef of the little fellow who’d had a good many more than two beers.

  “I’m a song writer,” the little fellow insisted drunkenly. “I can prove it.”

  “That’s fine,” said Oliver Quade. “I knew a song writer once who ate crackers in bed. Too bad, he was a nice guy.”

  The song writer swiveled about and leered at the pasty-faced professor who was banging away at the dwarf piano at the other side of the room.

  “Bah,” he said, “listen to that bilge. They call that music! I wrote the best little damn song that’s been written in this damn town in the las’ five years. Y’wanna hear it?”

  “No,” said Charlie Boston.

  “Tha’s fine,” said the little man. “I’m glad to oblige, and when you hear it, remember the name’s Billy Bond. ‘Words and Music’ by Billy Bond. Tha’s me, Billy Bond.”

  He whipped a folded sheet of song manuscript from his inside breast pocket and, holding his glass of beer in his other hand, began to navigate the perilous sea between the bar and the piano.

  Oliver Quade winked at Charlie Boston. “This may be good.” He followed Billy Bond.

  The little song writer waved his sheet of music in the piano player’s face. “Here, chum! Play this. It’s good. I wrote it myself.”

  “Well, well,” said the piano pounder, “a member of the perfession. Shake!”

  Billy Bond ignored the outstretched hand. “Play it in slow tempo. With feeling. It’s a sad song, see. About a cottage by the shore, a summer day, a soft wind …”

  The man at the piano hummed a few notes. “I gotcha, pal. I gotcha. Yeah, sure …”

  “I’ll sing it,” said Billy Bond. “You play.”

  He cleared his throat noisily and sang:

  “Say, dear, you’ll come with me to the shore …

  We’ll leave our little cottage … never more …”

  Billy Bond banged his fist on the top of the piano. “Slower!” he yelled at the piano player. “I told you slow tempo. Try it again!”

  Oliver Quade saw the glint in the piano player’s eyes and laid a hand on Billy Bond’s arm. “Maybe this isn’t just the place for your kind of song, Billy boy. But it’s a swell number!”

  “Sure, it’s swell!” snapped Billy Bond. “That’s why I want you to hear it. I want everybody to hear it.”

  He picked up his beer glass from the top of the piano where he had set it. “I’ll sing it,” he said. He gulped a mouthful of beer and started to set the glass back on top of the piano.

  Quade, looking at Billy Bond, saw the horror that swept across his face.

  “Gawd!” said Billy Bond. His mouth fell open and the glass of beer fell to the floor. Billy Bond clawed at his throat—and fell forward, into Oliver Quade’s arms.

  Quade let him gently to the floor. A film of perspiration suddenly formed on his forehead as he looked into the song writer’s glazing eyes.

  “He’s passed out!” said the man at the piano.

  “No,” Quade replied. “He’s … dead!”

  The piano player snorted. “Naw!” he pushed back from the piano and came around it. He prodded Billy Bond with his toe. “Hey, souse! It’s time to go home.”

  A two-hundred-pound waiter came forward. “Shame on your pal, mister,” he chided Quade. “One beer and he passes out!”

  Quade said tightly, “You oaf, he’s dead!”

  “Dead drunk,” cracked the piano player.

  “If you don’t want to be bothered with him,” said the waiter-bouncer, “just slip me his address and I’ll pour him into a taxi. No extra charge.”

  He stooped and turned Billy Bond over. With his face almost in Bond’s, he stiffened. “Jeez!” he cried. “He is dead!”

  The piano player reeled back. His pasty face turned the color of sour dough.

  And then pandemonium reigned in the cocktail lounge. After pandemonium, came the police. Several of them. Also several men from the medical examiners’ office. Photographers and reporters.

  The pride of the force, Detective Sergeant Vickers, was in charge of the police detail. He looked almost too young to be a detective sergeant. He was
tall and slender, wore a tailor-made London drape suit, a green snap-brim Alpine hat and French-toed tan shoes.

  He was brusque and thorough. “He had a glass of beer,” he said to Oliver Quade. “He took a drink of it and keeled over—dead. Why?”

  “You’re the detective,” Quade retorted.

  The sergeant’s eyes roamed over Quade and finally came to rest on Quade’s middle vest button.

  He said, “What’s your name? And occupation?”

  “The name is Oliver Quade. I’m a human encyclopedia.”

  Sergeant Vickers’ eyes came up to Quade’s necktie. “What was that last?”

  “I said I was a human encyclopedia. Is there any law against that?”

  The sergeant’s lips puckered. “No,” he said, “there’s no law against it. And none that says you have to talk. Only … I can take you down to Headquarters where we have a little room with a big light in it and some very hard-boiled cops who sometimes disobey police regulations. So let’s try again; what’s your occupation?”

  “I’m a human encyclopedia. I make my living telling people the answers to questions. I sell books of knowledge. And I know what’s in them. Take The Compendium of Human Knowledge. Twelve hundred pages of information, condensed, classified—everything the human race has ever learned since the beginning of time. And only $2.95—”

  “Hey! You trying to sell me a book?”

  “Well, I’m really on a vacation, but I’ve got some books in my room upstairs. If you’d like to give me an order—”

  Sergeant Vickers snarled, “Cut it!”

  “For example,” said Quade, “do you know our American woods are full of a plant with narcotic qualities and no one does anything about it?”

  “Sure, that’s easy,” said Vickers, answering in spite of himself. “Marijuana.”

  “And you call yourself a detective!” Quade said pityingly. “Don’t you know something is done about the marijuana weed? It’s the mandrake, or may-apple, famed in fable, and said to groan when uprooted. It has a grotesque shape, formed almost like a man, and the ancients considered it a cure for barrenness.” Quade took a deep breath and started in again. “Do you know—”

  “Shut up!” cried Vickers. He shifted to Charlie Boston and glowered at him. “What’s your name?”

  “Charles Boston. I’m an assistant human encyclopedia.”

  Sergeant Vickers chopped the air with his fist. “The dead fellow, what’s his name?”

  Quade answered that. “He said it was Billy Bond. He was a song writer.”

  “Billy Bond, a song writer? I never heard of him.”

  “Do you know all the song writers in New York?” Quade asked.

  Vickers loosened a bit. “I cover the Broadway beat. I know just about all the hoofers, the bookmakers, song writers and all the other riff—ah, Broadway regulars.”

  “And you never heard of Billy Bond? Well, maybe he was just breaking in. I never heard of him myself until he introduced himself here at the bar, less than five minutes before he died.”

  “You mean you didn’t come here with him?”

  “Hell, no.”

  A white-coated intern came over and whispered into Sergeant Vickers’ ear. Quade saw the sergeant’s eyes widen.

  He looked at Quade through smoldering eyes. “So you were just a bar-pickup acquaintance of Bond’s, huh? Would you be surprised to know then that Bond died of poison? Hydrocyanic acid. It was dumped in his beer!”

  Quade moistened his lips with his tongue. His nostrils flared slightly, but otherwise he showed no emotion.

  Sergeant Vickers said softly, “You don’t seem very surprised?”

  “I knew he was dead,” Quade replied evenly. “He fell against me and I got a whiff of the hydrocyanic acid.”

  Vickers pounced on that. “How do you know it was hydrocyanic acid?”

  “Because I’m a human encyclopedia. I know everything. Hydrocyanic has an odor very similar to bitter almonds. It is made by adding sodium gradually to sulphuric acid.”

  Vickers’ lips parted slightly. “What the—You know a lot about poisons? You must have had a damn good reason—”

  “Sure. I’ve got good reasons for knowing a lot of things. For example, that a proteus is a blind, water-breathing, tailed amphibian, inhabiting the limestone caves to the east of the Adriatic. You still refuse to believe that I’m what I told you, a human encyclopedia? Now, look, you’re sniffing around the wrong telephone pole. And while you’re at it, the real culprit has beat it. The one you want is the chap who changed the beer glasses.”

  “Whoa! What’re you getting at?”

  “Someone changed glasses with Billy Bond. I wasn’t paying too much attention to it at the time, because Bond was getting into an argument with the piano player and, anyway, I wasn’t attaching any significance to a little thing like that—then. After Bond was dead, the fellow was gone.”

  “Yes?” said Sergeant Vickers, through bared teeth. “And just what did this beer-swapping gent look like?”

  “He had a scar on his chin.”

  “A scar, eh? Go on.” There was a jeering note in the sergeant’s voice.

  “The scar was about the size of a dime. Rather odd design. It looked almost like a figure nine. That is the top part of it was almost a circle. And the circle had a tail—”

  “Soup Spooner!” exclaimed Vickers.

  “Eh?”

  “Fella I know has a scar something like that. Was this fella tall or short?”

  “About five feet, thin and he weighed around one sixty. There was something else that was peculiar about him. His eyes were kind of—vacant.”

  Sergeant Vickers inhaled softly. “He looked a little goofy? That’s Soup Spooner. Hold it a minute.” He stepped briskly to the bar and crooked his finger at the bartender. “Paddy, was Soup Spooner in here?”

  Paddy’s forehead washboarded. “Soup Spooner? Why, I don’t think….”

  “Cut that,” Sergeant Vickers snarled. “You haven’t had this dump all these years without knowing Soup. The description he,” jabbing a finger at Quade, “gave, fits Soup. Now, was he here?”

  Paddy still looked worried. “Well, Sergeant, as you can see, there were quite a few people here and I was pretty busy and—”

  Sergeant Vickers cut him off, savagely. “Was Soup anywhere near this Bond fellow at the bar?”

  The bartender shook his head. “To tell you the truth, Sergeant, I hardly ever look at the faces of customers.”

  Vickers swore and turned back to Quade. “All right, it was Soup Spooner. It fits in with the rest of it. Soup knows about poisons and things.”

  “He mixes a neat Mickey Finn?”

  Vickers grunted. “He’s a chemist who went bad. He got his name from making soup for petermen. That’s how he got goofy, too. A batch of nitroglycerine exploded on him. Too bad. The guy was a genius with chemicals. If he’d gone straight you’d be reading about him in those encyclopedias of yours.”

  “Well,” said Quade, “if you know him, I imagine you’ll have no trouble picking him up?”

  “Naw. We’ve got his record down at Headquarters. We can round him up inside of two hours. Not that it’ll do us any good. Soup knows people. Lawyers and politicians. We can put him on the scene—and it doesn’t mean a thing.” He laughed shortly. “For that matter, we’ll have a helluva time proving murder anyway. This song writer might have got tired of it all, you know. Only I don’t think so. Not if there was poison in his beer and Soup was in the same building. But try and convince a jury of that.”

  “Tough,” Quade sympathized. “O.K., then, if my pal and me scram?”

  Vickers whipped out a notebook. “Where do you live?”

  “Right here, at the Midtown. Room 707. One week’s rent paid in advance.”

  “Well, stick around. You’ll be wan
ted for the inquest in a couple of days. I’ll let you know.”

  Oliver Quade, followed by Charlie Boston, walked smartly out of the cocktail lounge. There was a worried look on Charlie’s face, but he said nothing until they had closed the door of their room. Then he exploded.

  “Dammit, Ollie! Can’t we go anywhere without getting mixed up in trouble?”

  “No trouble, Charlie. A little misunderstanding, that’s all.”

  “All, hell!” Charlie said bitterly. “You think I didn’t see the look in your eyes? You’re going to play cop again and I’m going to get slapped around and we’re both going to wind up on the sidewalk, without our luggage and not a dime in our pockets. Just when we’re ahead of the game, for the first time in months!”

  “Hush, Charlie!” Quade chided. “None of that’s going to happen. Not any more. I’m through with it. Billy Bond was a perfect stranger to me. I’m not interested. Only a little curious.”

  Charlie Boston groaned. “Curious! Here we go again!”

  Quade grinned crookedly. “What was he so sore about? You’d think if he’d just had a song published, he’d be happy about it. And poison in beer. Wow! That’s a new one. Ummm …”

  He stepped between the twin beds and scooped up the telephone. “Give me Mr. Billy Bond’s room, please. Eight twelve, isn’t it?”

  “No, nine one four. I’ll ring him.” She did. There was no response, of course. Quade said then: “Never mind. But look, would you have a bellboy bring me up a copy of The Showman, from the newsstand downstairs?”

  As he hung up the receiver, Charlie Boston flung himself down on a bed and sulked. Quade chuckled. “What’s good in the fourth at Rockingham, tomorrow?”

  Charlie Boston’s head jerked up. “The fourth. Daisy Q … Aw, hell!” He let his head fall back to the pillow.

  “So I have to give up what little fun I get out of life to play stooge to your pet crime waves!”