The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  I looked at him for a long minute before I opened up.

  “Listen, Cadwallader,” I told him, “I'll let you stay here on a few terms. One is that you never go out unless we go together. If you happen to pinch anything, I'll take care of it and see that it goes back where it belongs. I'm a whiz at telling where things like that belong, Cadwallader.”

  “Gee, that's swell of you. I—”

  “And another thing,” I went on. “If and when you're found by your folks, you'll never mention me. You'll tell them you don't remember where you've been. Same goes; for cops.

  Okay?”

  He wrung my hand so hard I thought I'd lose a finger.

  I took all the stuff from the table, except what he said was his, out to the kitchen. I put all the currency in my own billfold, and put the empties and the junk in the incinerator. I put the jewelry where I usually keep stuff like that.

  All in all, it was still nearly a thousand bucks. And he'd collected it in a couple of hours or so, I figured. I began to add figures and count unhatched chickens until I got dizzy.

  “Cadwallader,” I said, when I came back to the living room. “I've got an errand downtown. Want to come with me?”

  He did. Until almost dark I led him through crowded stores and gave him every chance; to acquit himself nobly.

  And I kept him clear of counters where he might fill valuable space in his pockets with cheap junk.

  It was something of a shock when I got in the taxi to take him back home with me, to discover my wallet was gone again. So were my cigarettes, but I had enough change loose in a trouser pocket to pay the cab.

  I grinned to myself, Mr. Gupstein, but it was a grin of chagrin. Twice in one day I'd been robbed and hadn't known it.

  “Now, Cadwallader, my boy,” I said when we were safely in my apartment, “I'll trouble you for my leather back, and if by any chance you collared anything else, give it to me and I'll see that it is all returned where it belongs.”

  He began to feel in his pockets and an embarrassed look spread over his face. He smiled but it was a sickly-looking smile.

  “I'm afraid I haven't got your wallet, Rajah,” he said after he'd felt all around. “If you say it's gone, I must have taken it on the way downtown, but I haven't it now.”

  I remembered all the sugar in that billfold, and, Mr.

  Gupstein, I must have let out a howl that could have been heard on Staten Island if it had been a clear night. I forgot he was more than twice my size, and I stepped right up and frisked him and I didn't miss a bet.

  Then I did it again. Every pocket was as empty as an alderman's cigar box the day after election. I didn't believe it, but there it was.

  I pushed him back into a chair. I thought of getting my roscoe but I didn't think I'd need it. I felt mad enough to peel the hide off a tiger bare-handed.

  “What's the gag?” I demanded. “Talk fast.”

  He looked like a four-year-old caught with a jam pot.

  “Sometimes, Rajah, but not often, my kleptomania works sort of backward. I put things from my own pockets in other people's. It's something I've done only a few times, but this must have been one of them. I'm awfully sorry.”

  I sighed and sat down. I looked at him, and I guess I wasn't mad any longer. It wasn't his fault. He was telling the truth; I could see that with half an eye. And I could see, too, that he was just about three times as far off his rocker as I'd given him credit for.

  Still and all, Mr. Gupstein, I still liked the guy. I began to wonder if I was getting mushy above the eyebrows myself.

  Oh well, I thought, I can get the dough back by taking him out a few more times. He'd said his kleptomania didn't go into reverse often. And if I'd start out broke each time, it couldn't do any harm.

  So that was that, but after I'd counted all those chickens it was a discouraging evening. You can see that, Mr. Gupstein. I got out a deck of cards and taught him how to play cribbage and he beat me every game until I began to get bored. I decided to pump him a bit.

  “Listen, Cadwallader,” I began.

  “Cadwallader?” he pops back. “That isn't my name.” It caught me off guard. “Huh?” says I. “You're Cadwallader Van Aylslea!”

  “Who's he? I fear there is a mistake of identity.”

  He was sitting up straight, looking very intently at me, and his right hand had slid between the third and fourth buttons of his shirt. I should have guessed, of course, but I didn't.

  But I decided to humor him. “Who are you, then?”

  A shrewd look came into his eyes as he swept back from his forehead a lock of hair that wasn't there. “It escapes me for the moment,” he temporized. “But no, I shall not lie to you, my friend. I remember, of course, but it is best that I remain incognito.”

  I began to wonder if I'd bit off more than I could handle.

  I wondered if he had these spells often, and if so, how I should handle him.

  “For all of me,” I said a bit disgustedly, “you can remain anything you want. I'm going out for a paper.”

  It was time for the morning papers to be out, eleven-thirty, and I wanted to see if any mention was made of a search for a missing nut from the Van Aylslea tree. There wasn't.

  I hate to tell you about the next morning, Mr. Gupstein.

  When I woke up, there was Cadwallader standing in his undershirt looking out of the window. His right hand was thrust inside his undershirt and he had a carefully coiled spitcurl on his forehead. When he heard me sit up in bed, he turned majestically.

  “My good friend,” he said, “I have thought it over and I've decided that I may cast aside anonymity and reveal to you in confidence my true identity.”

  Yeah, Mr. Gupstein, you guessed it. Why do so many nuts think they are Napoleon? Why don't some of them pick on Eddie Cantor or Mussolini?

  I didn't know, and of course it would have been useless to ask him, whether this delusion was something temporary that he'd been through before, or whether it was here to stay.

  I got dressed quick and after breakfast I locked him in to keep him safe from English spies, and I went out and sat in the park to think.

  I could, of course, take him out and lose him somewhere and wash my hands of the matter. The cops would pick him up and he'd tell them he'd been staying with the Rajah of Rangoon, if he told them anything even that lucid. Stuff like that goes over big at headquarters.

  But I didn't want to do that, Mr. Gupstein. Funny as it sounds, I liked the guy, and I had a hunch that if he had right treatment he'd get over this stage and go back to good old kleptomania. And he belonged there, Mr. Gupstein. It would be a shame for technique like his to go to waste.

  And I remembered, too, that if I could get him back to normal, such as normal was, I could clean up enough in a week or two to retire. As it was, I was out a couple of hundred bucks of my own dough.

  Then I had my big idea. You can't argue with a nut. Or maybe you can, Mr. Gupstein, because you're a lawyer, but I couldn't. But my idea was this: How could two guys both be Napoleon? If you put two Napoleons in the same cell, wouldn't one of them outtalk the other? And wouldn't the guy who had the delusion longest be the best talker?

  I went around to the bank and drew some dough and then I hunted up a private sanitarium and a bit of fast talking got me an audience in private with the head cheese.

  “Have you got any Napoleons here?” I asked him.

  “Three of them,” he admitted, looking me over like he was wondering if I'd dispute their claims to that identity.

  “Why?”

  I leaned forward confidentially. “I have a very dear friend who has the same delusion. I think if he were shut up with another guy who has prior claim on the same idea, he might be talked out of it. They can't both be Napoleon, you know.”

  “Such a procedure,” he said, “would be against medical ethics. We couldn't possibly—”

  I took a roll of bills from my pocket and held them under his nose. “A hundred dollars,” I suggested, “
for a three-day trial; win, lose, or draw.”

  He looked offended. He opened his mouth to turn me down, but I could see his eyes on the frogskins.

  “Plus, of course,” I added, “the regular sanitarium fees for the three days. The hundred dollars as an honorarium to you personally for taking an interest in the experiment.”

  “It couldn't possibly—” he began, and looked at me expectantly to see if I was going to cut in and raise the ante. I stood pat; that was all I wanted to invest. There was silence while I kept holding the bills out toward him.

  “—do any harm,” he concluded, taking the money. “Can you bring your friend today?”

  Cadwallader was under the bed when I got home. He said the spies had been closing in on the apartment. It took a lot of fast talking to get him out. I had to go and buy him a false mustache and colored glasses for a disguise. And I pulled the shades down in the taxi that took us to the sanitarium.

  It took all my curiosity-tortured will power, Mr.

  Gupstein, to wait the full three days, but I did it.

  When I was shown into his office, the doctor looked up sadly.

  “I fear the experiment was a dismal failure,” he admitted.

  “I warned you. The patient still has paranoia.”

  “I don't give three shrieks in Hollywood if he still has pyorrhea,” I came back. “Does he or does he not still think he's Napoleon?”

  “No,” he said. “He doesn't. Come on, I'll let you see for yourself.”

  We went upstairs and the doc waited outside while I went into the room to talk to Cadwallader.

  The other Napoleon had already been moved on.

  My blue-eyed wonder was lying on a bed with his head in his mitts, but he sprang up with delight when he saw me.

  “Rajah, old pal,” he asked eagerly. “Have you a saucer?”

  “A saucer?” I looked at him in bewilderment.

  “A saucer.”

  “What do you want with a saucer?”

  The beginning wasn't promising, but I plowed on. There was one thing interested me most.

  “Are you Napoleon Bonaparte?” I asked him.

  He looked surprised. “Me?”

  I was getting fed up. “Yes, you,” I told him.

  He didn't answer, and I could see that his mind, what there was of it, wasn't on the conversation. His eyes were roving around the room.

  “What are you looking for?” I demanded.

  “A saucer.”

  “A saucer?”

  “Sure. A saucer.”

  The conversation was getting out of hand. “What on earth do you want with a saucer?”

  So I can sit down, of course.”

  “Huh?” I asked, startled.

  “Naturally,” he replied. “Can't you see that I'm a teacup?”

  I gulped, and turned sadly to the door. Then for a moment he seemed to gather shreds of his sanity together. “I say, Rajah,” he piped up. I turned.

  “If I don't see you again, Rajah, I want you to have something to remember me by.” He reached for his tie and pulled out the stickpin with the rock the size of a postage stamp. I'd forgotten about it, no kidding. He handed it to me, and I thanked him. And I meant it.

  “You'll come again, though?” he asked wistfully.

  “Sure I will, Cadwallader.” I turned to the door again.

  Darned if I didn't want to bawl, Mr. Gupstein.

  I told the doctor he'd be sent for, and got out of the sanitarium safely. Then I looked the sparkler over carefully again, and I decided it's worth at least five G's. So I'll come out ahead on the deal as soon as I cash in on it.

  First, I was going to appraise the stone, so I trotted into one of the ritziest shops in town. I knew I'd have to pick an expensive joint to flash a rock that size without arousing too much suspicion.

  There was only one clerk behind the counter and another customer was ahead of me. I began to look around, but when I caught part of the conversation, I froze.

  “... and since then,” the clerk was saying, “you haven't heard a word from or about your brother, Mr. Van Aylslea?”

  The customer shook his head. “Not a word. We're keeping it from the press, of course.”

  I took a close look. The bloke was older and not so heavy, but I could see he resembled my kleptomaniac teacup.

  So as quietly as though I was walking on eggs, I eased out of the shop. But I waited outside. I figured I might do Cadwallader a final favor. When Van Aylslea came out, I buttonholed him.

  “Mr. Van Aylslea,” I whispered. “I'm Operative Fifty-three. Your brother is at Bide-a-Wee Sanitarium.”

  His face lighted up, and he shook my hand and patted my shoulder like a long-lost brother. “I'll get him right away,” he said.

  “Better stop for a saucer,” I called after him as his car started, but I guess he didn't hear me.

  I drifted on. If that stone had belonged to the Van Aylsleas and if they traded at that particular shop, they might recognize it, so I figured I'd had a narrow squeak.

  It occurred to me that it had been in my tie when I talked to Cadwallader's brother, which had been a foolish chance to take, but I guess he didn't notice it. He was too excited.

  Well, that takes me up to a few minutes ago, Mr. Gupstein. I decided to skip the appraisal and come right to you for advice.

  Are you willing to approach the Van Aylsleas for me and find out if they want to offer a reward for the rock? I understand, Mr. Gupstein, that you have handled deals like that very successfully, and I'd rather not risk trying to peddle it if they offer a good reward.

  And the Van Aylslea guy I just left looked like a reasonable guy who—

  Huh? You say you know the family and that the brother is almost as batty as Cadwallader, and that he's a klepto too, at times?

  Nix, Mr. Gupstein, you can't make me believe that he's slicker than his brother with the finger-work. That's impossible. Mr. Gupstein. Nobody could be smoother than—

  Oh, well, let's not worry about that. The point is, are you willing to handle the deal for me?

  The stickpin? Why, it's right here in my tie, of course, where it's been ever since . . .

  Huh?

  . . . Well, Mr. Gupstein, I'm sorry I took up your time.

  But this decides me, Mr. Gupstein. When two amateur dips give me a cleaning the same week, I'm through.

  I've got a brother-in-law who's a bookie and wants to give me a good, honest job. And I'm taking it. I've lifted my last leather.

  You're darned right I mean it, Mr. Gupstein. And to prove it, here's your billfold back. So long, Mr. Gupstein.

  The bar in front of him was wet and sloppy; Sir Charles Hanover Gresham carefully rested his forearms on the raised dry rim of it and held the folded copy of Stagecraft that he was reading up out of the puddles. His forearms, not his elbows; when you have but one suit and it is getting threadbare you remember not to rest your elbows on a bar or a table. Just as, when you sit, you always pull up the trouser legs an inch or two to keep the knees from becoming baggy.

  When you are an actor you remember those things. Even if you're a has-been who never really was and who certainly never will be, living — barely — off blackmail, drinking beer in a Bowery bar, hung over and miserable, at two o'clock on a cool fall afternoon, you remember.

  But you always read Stagecraft.

  He was reading it now. “Gambler Angels Meller,” a one-column headline told him; he read even that, casually. Then he came to a name in the second paragraph, the name of the playwright. One of his eyebrows rose a full millimeter at that name. Wayne Campbell, his patron, had written another play.

  The first in three full years. Not that that mattered to Wayne, for his last play and his second last had both sold to Hollywood for very substantial sums. New plays or no, Wayne Campbell would keep on eating caviar and drinking champagne. And new plays or no, he, Sir Charles Hanover Gresham, would keep on eating hamburger sandwiches and drinking beer. It was the only thing he was ashame
d of — not the hamburgers and the beer, but the means by which he was forced to obtain them. Blackmail is a nasty word; he hated it.

  But now, possibly, just possibly-Even that chance was worth celebrating. He looked at the bar in front of him; fifteen cents lay there. He took his last dollar bill from his pocket and put it down on the one dry spot on the bar.

  “Mac!” he said. Mac, the bartender, who had been gazing into space through the wall, came over. He asked,

  “The same, Charlie?”

  “Not the same, Mac. This time the amber fluid.”

  “You mean whiskey?”

  “I do indeed. One for you and one for me. Ah, with the Grape my jading life provide...”

  Mac poured two shots and refilled Sir Charles's beer glass. “Chaser's on me.” He rang up fifty cents.

  Sir Charles raised his shot glass and looked past it, not at Mac the bartender but at his own reflection in the smeary back-bar mirror. A quite distinguished-looking gentleman stared back at him. They smiled at one another; then they both looked at Mac, one of them from the front, the other from the back.

  “To your excellent health, Mac,” they said — Sir Charles aloud and his reflection silently. The raw, cheap whiskey burned a warm and grateful path.

  Mac looked over and said, “You're a screwy guy, Charlie, but I like you. Sometimes I think you really are a knight. I dunno.”

  “A Hair perhaps divides the False and True” said Sir Charles. “Do you by any chance know Omar, Mac?”

  “Omar who?”

  “The tentmaker. A great old boy, Mac; he's got me down to a T. Listen to this:

  After a momentary silence spake

  Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make:

  'They sneer at me from leaning all awry:

  What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?' ”

  Mac said, “I don't get it.”

  Sir Charles sighed. “Am I all awry, Mac? Seriously, I'm going to phone and make an important appointment, maybe.

  Do I look all right or am I leaning all awry? Oh, Lord, Mac, I just thought what that would make me. Hamawry.”

  “You look all right, Charlie.”