Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

by Gruber, Frank

  “Right!” said Quade.

  A few moments later there was a knock at the door and Oliver Quade let in a bellboy. He took the copy of The Showman and exhibited a quarter and a five dollar bill.

  The bellboy, who was thirty-five and partially bald, riveted his eyes on the bill.

  Quade said, “What would you do for this?”

  “No,” said the bellboy. “I wouldn’t kill anyone.”

  “Very well. Bring me the key to Room 914 and the bill’s yours.”

  “It’s a lie!” the bellboy cried. “I didn’t rob that room last week. You can’t pin it on me!”

  Quade chuckled. “You dope, I’m not a cop. I’m a book salesman. I want to take a look into Room 914. I’m not going to take anything out of it, and I’m not trying to frame you for the robbery you didn’t commit last week. You can stand outside the door while I’m inside.”

  “Gimme the fin,” said the bellboy. “If somebody walks by your room in a couple of minutes and accidentally drops a key, it wasn’t me, because I’m down in the basement chinning with the engineer.”

  The bellboy departed with the bill and Quade shook his head in admiration. A couple of minutes later, he opened the door of his room and sure enough, there lay a key, with a tag on it which was the number 914.

  “Coming along, Charlie?” Quade asked.

  Charlie Boston got up from the bed. “If you’re set on going to jail, I might as well go along, so I can say, ‘I told you so.’”

  They climbed the stairs to the ninth floor, and a moment later slipped into Room 914. It was a mere cubbyhole of a room, one of the nine-dollar-a-week affairs.

  Quade went straight to the cheap chest of drawers. Scattered among two or three shirts and some underwear were several letters, addressed to William Bond, Midtown Hotel, New York City.

  Quade looked at the postmarks and found one dated only a few days previous. He slipped out the contents, a single sheet of notepaper, at the top of which was printed, apparently with a rubber stamp.

  Bond’s Meat Market

  Quality Meats and Sausages

  Waverly, Iowa

  The letter was in a scrawling hand and written in pencil. It read:

  Dear Son:

  Your year is up. Since your heart is so set on becoming a song writer, your mother wants I should let you stay another six months, but I do not see how I can afford it. Business is not very good in the shop and since I’ve had to hire a boy to take your place, in addition to sending you the $15.00 every week, we have been pinched ourselves.

  If you insist on staying in New York I cannot continue to send you the money. You will have to support yourself. I am sorry. I think it would be better if you came home and went to work in the meat market and forgot all about that song writing.

  Your father,

  Joseph Bond.

  Quade refolded the pathetic little note and put it back in the envelope. “Poor guy,” he said soberly.

  “What’s wrong with the meat business?” demanded Charlie Boston, remembering meals he had missed.

  “I didn’t say anything about the butcher shop. I said it was tough about Billy. He finally clicked, just when his time was up and—bingo!”

  “Bingo to you,” said a calm voice at the door.

  Quade whirled. He had not heard the door open. Nor did he hear it close, now, as the man who had come into the room pushed it softly shut.

  He was a rather slender man, slightly above medium height, and had a scar on his chin that looked very much like a figure 9. His eyes were slightly bulging—and vacant.

  A draft of wind seemed to fan Quade’s spine. He said, “Hello, Soup.”

  The intruder’s dull eyes fixed themselves on Quade’s face. “How d’you know my name?”

  “Somebody mentioned it in the cocktail lounge downstairs, a while ago.”

  Soup Spooner’s thin lips curled. “Maybe you’re the guy who mentioned it … Hold it, lug!”

  The last was an admonition to Charlie Boston who had started to edge forward. Soup’s right hand came carelessly out of his coat pocket and there was a .32 caliber automatic in it.

  “What the hell you snoopin’ in here for?” he demanded.

  “Why, I was just—uh, trying to get this fellow’s home address. Notify his folks, you know?”

  “Hand them over—the letters. Maybe I’ll notify the family myself. How about your families?”

  “Hey!” exclaimed Charlie Boston, in alarm.

  “Ha-ha,” Quade laughed mirthlessly. “I guess we better be going—minding our own business.”

  He took a tentative step forward. Soup Spooner made no objections and Quade tried another step.

  Then the door was flung violently open and Sergeant Vickers of the Homicide Squad stepped into the room. “What the hell?” he cried. “Soup, drop that rod!”

  Soup reversed his automatic and held it by the muzzle. “I got a permit, Vickers.”

  “Whoever gave you a permit?” Vickers demanded.

  Soup shrugged. “Man I used to work for arranged it. The Swede.”

  “The Swede, huh? Well, he’s pushing up daisies these days. And I’m going to see that your little permit is revoked, Soup. What’re you doing in here?” Vickers scowled at Quade. “And you, mister?”

  “Believe it or not,” said Quade, “I was waiting for a stagecoach.”

  “I was lookin’ for a pal,” Soup offered, “and I saw these guys friskin’ this room. That’s why I pulled the rod on them.”

  “Yeah? Well, who’s this friend of yours?”

  “Fella named Smith. Tom Smith.”

  “What’s his room number?”

  “Nine two seven.”

  Vickers turned and stabbed a thumb at a detective standing by the door. “Step over and ask the party in room 927 if his name is Smith.”

  Quade said, “This is the man who was in the cocktail lounge. I saw him coming up on the elevator and recognizing him, followed. Isn’t that so, Charlie?”

  “Yeah, sure,” agreed Charlie Boston. “He’s the bird who’s doing the lying.”

  “And what,” Vickers asked, pointedly, “are you doing with those letters?”

  Quade said quickly, “They were lying on the bed here. I just picked them up.”

  “You lie like hell!” said Soup Spooner.

  The detective who had gone to Room 927 returned. “It’s a woman. Her name is Hoffnagel.”

  Vickers bared his teeth. “Come again, Spooner.”

  Soup blinked. “I musta made a mistake. This is the Keenan Hotel, isn’t it?”

  “You know damn well it’s the Midwest!”

  Soup passed a hand before his eyes, and when he removed it, his expression was more vacant than ever. “I—I get mixed up sometimes. Maybe it was Bill Jones I was going to see. Or Joe Coffee.”

  “Or Captain Hitchcock at the station,” Vickers snapped. “Come along, Soup.”

  He relieved Soup of the automatic and shoved him toward the door. Then he turned to Quade and Boston. “And you birds, I’m putting a watch on this room. Scram!”

  Quade and Boston scrammed. Back to their own room where Quade attacked the copy of The Showman the bellboy had bought for him. After a few minutes intensive search, he exclaimed: “Here it is, Charlie. Listen: ‘Billy Bond’s song, Cottage by the Shore, has been accepted for publication, by the Murdock Publishing Company.’”

  “So?” Charlie Boston asked. “We knew he had a song accepted. He was hollering it loud enough downstairs.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Quade. “But didn’t you notice something funny about his room?”

  “There wasn’t anything wrong about it.”

  Quade said wearily, “He was a song writer. He’s been trying to sell songs for a whole year. His father’s letter said so. But did you see one sing
le song sheet around his room.”

  Boston screwed up his face. “Maybe he’d just cleaned out his room.”

  “Ah, hell! No song writer would ever chuck away his rejected songs. Not all of them. I knew a song writer in Dayton, Ohio, once whose whole house was full of manuscripts. They had them on the piano and in the kitchen. Even in the bathroom.”

  “What’re you trying to make out, Ollie?”

  “That someone had beat us to this Billy’s room. And cleaned it out.”

  “They didn’t clean out his personal letters. You’d think—”

  “No, I wouldn’t. There wasn’t any sense in trying to conceal his identity, because the hotel people would know him, anyway. But the songs….”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” He scooped up the telephone directory and, finding a number, asked the operator to get it for him. A moment later he had the offices of The Showman.

  “Say,” he said, “in this week’s department, ‘Words and Music’, you got a piece about Billy Bond getting a song accepted by the Murdock Publishing Company.”

  A man’s voice said, wearily, “Who’s this, Murdock again?”

  “No. I—uh, I’m speaking for Oliver Quade’s Band. The boss thought he might—well, plug the song and I’m just calling—”

  “No soap,” said the representative of The Showman. “The item was in error. The Murdock Company denies it.”

  “Yeah? Well, where’d you get the dope?”

  “From Billy Bond himself. We were victimized. It happens every week. Somebody wants some free advertising and sends us some baloney. We can’t check on everything that comes in.”

  “No? Well, you ought to!” Quade banged the receiver on the hook.

  “That’s screwy,” he said, to Charlie Boston. “They say Billy Bond sent that item in himself and it isn’t true. Why would he do a thing like that?”

  “Maybe he had a dicker with another outfit and wanted to play the Murdock Company against them. They’re a well-known outfit.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “Why, I’ve seen their ads. They’re all over.”

  “All over where?”

  Charlie Boston picked up a true confession magazine from the dresser. He ruffled the pages in back. “I’ve seen it in here. Lots of times. Here it is!”

  Quade ripped the magazine from his hands. He scanned a column of small ads, then began reading:

  Song poems Wanted. Fame and Fortune May be Yours. You Write the Words. We furnish the Music. Big Royalties! Murdock & Co. Monadnock Block, New York City.

  “Do you smell anything, Charlie?” Quade asked.

  “You mean that ad? They’re phonies?”

  “Maybe. Some of these outfits are. I guess there must be a million people in this country trying to write songs. Most of them can’t write music, but anyone can write the words of a song. Joe Doak sees this ad and sends in his lyric. So what? So he gets a letter saying the lyrics are swell.”

  “Form letter number 83, huh?”

  “Yeah. Joe Doak falls for it. Murdock & Co. has ‘discovered’ other song hits—lyrics that came in the mail just like Joe Doak’s. Maybe Doak’s tripe will be a hit. His lyrics are swell. All he needs is a good tune for them. And guess what? Murdock and Company has a couple of the best tunesmiths in the business, right on their staff. One of them read Joe Doak’s lyrics and raved about them so much that the company’s willing to let said tunesmith arrange the music for practically nothing—just a mere fifty or sixty bucks.”

  “Hell,” said Charlie Boston, “even I wouldn’t fall for that.”

  “You would if you lived in the sticks and worked in a meat market. You wouldn’t let fame and fortune slip through your fingers for a measly little fifty smackers, would you?”

  “Maybe not. So I send the dough to Murdock, huh? What then?”

  “Then you’ve got lyrics and music. What good are they, if you can’t get the song published? Maybe your old man has a meat market and he kicks in with $200 to $250. Murdock publishes your songs. Prints five hundred, a thousand, maybe two thousand copies. All you got to do now is sell them.”

  “Me? How would I know how to sell song sheets?”

  Quade shrugged. “That’s no worry of the Murdock Company. They’ve lived up to their part of the bargain. It’s in the contract.”

  “Not my contract. I holler police. I squawk to Jim Farley.”

  “It won’t do you any good. These companies operate within the laws. They live up to their agreement.”

  Quade picked up his hat. “Hold down the fort, Charlie. I’m going over and have a little chitchat with Mr. Murdock.”

  “You might need me, Ollie!”

  “Uh-uh, not in a music publisher’s office. I’d like you to stick around here. I’ve a hunch Sergeant Vickers will be popping in again. I’m curious as to what he’ll say.”

  The Monadnock Block was on Madison. It had seen better days. Quade consulted the building directory and rode in the elevator to the sixth floor. The layout of the Murdock Company consisted of an anteroom and two private offices. A tall woman, wearing glasses, sat behind a desk in the anteroom.

  “Mr. Quade calling on Mr. Murdock,” Quade said smoothly.

  “You have an appointment?”

  “No, but I want to see him just the same.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to tell me your business first.”

  “It’s personal.”

  The woman—she was in her early thirties—wore no makeup whatever. She sniffed at Quade. “I’m Mr. Murdock’s confidential secretary. You can tell me what it’s about.”

  “You’re Miss Smith?” Quade asked.

  “The name is Henderson,” the woman said primly. “Now, if you’ll state—”

  Quade slowly closed one eye in a wink. “Tell him it’s about Ethel. He’ll know.”

  Miss Henderson looked steadily at Quade. Then she rose and went into one of the private offices. She was inside for a long moment. When she came out, she nodded to Quade.

  Murdock was about forty. A bluff, hearty type with not too much hair. “What’s this about Ethel?” he boomed. “I don’t know any woman with that name.”

  “I didn’t say Ethel was a woman,” Quade said. “Ethel’s the name of a song. I wrote it myself.”

  Murdock’s eyes glittered. “You’ve got the manuscript with you?”

  “No, you see, I saw your ad in a magazine. It says you write the music for lyrics. That’s what I’ve got. A lyric.”

  “Send it in. We’ll advise you if it shows merit.”

  “Oh, it’s got merit all right,” Quade said. “You don’t have to be afraid of that. All my friends who’ve seen it said it was swell. It ought to be a hit.”

  “No doubt, no doubt. But I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything about it until I see it.”

  “Well, I wanted to get your terms before I sent it in. How much royalty will I get?”

  “That depends. Al Donnelley made twenty thousand dollars on his last song.”

  “Al Donnelley? Say, he’s good.”

  Mr. Murdock coughed. “Al sometimes does a little arranging for me. Just as a favor, you know. It’s quite possible, er, if your lyrics are good that I can persuade Al to write the music for you.”

  “You could? That’d be great. We’d go fifty-fifty on the profits, huh?”

  “Why … I don’t think Al would want to do that. He’d be satisfied just to know that he helped a new song writer make the grade. He’s a great guy, Al. Of course, I’d give him a little present or something. Maybe fifty-sixty dollars. You wouldn’t mind that, would you?”

  “Me? I’ve got to shell out fifty dollars? Sure. I wouldn’t mind. I’d give it to him out of the first royalties.”

  Mr. Murdock shook his head. “That’d make it—too comm
ercial. Al wouldn’t like that. Give me the money when you bring in the lyrics and I’ll slip it to Al.”

  “But I haven’t got fifty dollars. Not now.”

  “How much have you got?”

  “Well, that’s the trouble. I haven’t got any money. In fact, I had to borrow carfare to get—”

  Mr. Murdock kicked back his chair. “Good afternoon, I’m very busy.”

  Quade went to the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned. “You want me to send Ethel to you? The song, I mean.”

  “If you send fifty dollars with it—yes!” Murdock said grimly.

  Quade went out the door. He stopped at Martha Henderson’s desk. “He threw me out,” he complained. “For a lousy fifty bucks. I’ll show him. I’ll get my song published somewhere else.”

  “You do that,” Martha Henderson said coolly. “I’ll listen to it on the radio. Goodbye.”

  “What’re you doing tonight, sister?” Quade asked bluntly.

  “I have a date with a girl friend,” Martha Henderson retorted. “Her name is Ethel.”

  Quade winced and ducked out of the office …

  Back at the hotel he bumped into Detective Sergeant Vickers stepping into the elevator. “I was just going up to see you, Quade,” the detective said.

  “Did he confess?”

  “Confess?” Vickers snarled. “Nick Darcy was in the station waiting for us. You know who Nick Darcy is? Just about the toughest criminal lawyer in this town, that’s all.”

  They stepped out on Quade’s floor and walked to his room. Charlie Boston snorted. “You bring cops home with you?”

  Vickers snapped. “What I want to know is how the hell Nick Darcy knew I’d be bringing Soup in? Did you tip him off?”

  “I never even heard of Darcy,” Quade retorted. “I don’t keep up with criminal news.”

  “The hell you don’t. I was checking up on you at Headquarters. Lieutenant Todd knows all about you. Gave you a big build-up. Says you go around the country pretending to sell books and somehow you always get mixed up in some murder case.”

  “Is that all the lieutenant said about me?” Quade smiled. “I’m disappointed.”

  “No, he said the helluvit was, you usually solved them and made monkeys of the cops. So that encyclopedia stuff isn’t a gag, eh?”