by Otto Penzler
“If you are discontented with your bargain you can communicate with my solicitors,” said Fidelity with dignity. She gave him a little bow and cast down her eyes modestly.
“Cut your loss,” muttered Garstein to Sir Rufus.
“That is very good advice, Mr. Garstein,” said Fidelity without looking up. “Sir Rufus, in your hour of tribulation I perceive that you have a good friend to advise you. Would you like to cut your loss, Sir Rufus?”
“Are you offering me a compromise?” demanded Sir Rufus.
“Certainly,” said Fidelity. “I feel that you are more sinned against than sinning, Sir Rufus. Your heart was poisoned and your head confused. I will be generous.”
“Generous?” clamoured Sir Rufus. “Generous?”
“And my generosity,” went on Fidelity, “shall be rewarded by the contemplation of yours. The other day you showed me your pocket cheque-book. If you have it on you, as I am sure you have, I suggest that you write a cheque for a thousand pounds to the Police Orphanage. If you will do that, I will telephone my solicitors to stop the action against you for malicious arrest and imprisonment. The cheque should be handed to Detective-Inspector Rason.”
Rason made a violent movement, which he as violently checked. Garstein looked affronted. Sir Rufus waved his arm foolishly.
The sergeant was seized with a coughing fit. Like every true policeman, he was more than ready to do his bit for the Orphanage.
“Miss Dove has been in touch with her solicitors, I can vouch for that, sir,” he put in to aid Sir Rufus in forming a decision.
“You would have the barefathed impudenth—” began Garstein.
“Sir Rufus has digged a pit for me and fallen into it himself,” said Fidelity, and her voice was exquisitely sad. “He must clamber out of it as best he can. To redeem my good name I would gladly endure the full glare of publicity upon every detail of the affair.”
Sir Rufus leant heavily against the sergeant’s desk. His hand went to his breast-pocket and then he dashed it away again.
“The police often risk their lives in the discharge of their duty,” said Fidelity almost with reverence. “Mr. Rason will tell you that he was once in grave peril from a giant crane. For myself, I would gladly forego my rights if the Orphanage were to benefit. Charity, Sir Rufus, covers a multitude of sins.”
Sir Rufus snatched the sergeant’s pen. Rason, white with fury, accepted the cheque.
Fidelity after ’phoning her solicitors, breathed a benediction upon her foes and went forgivingly away.
Rogue: Colonel Humphrey Flack
The Colonel Gives a Party
EVERETT RHODES CASTLE
LARGELY FORGOTTEN TODAY, Everett Rhodes Castle (1894–1968) was a hugely popular short story writer for decades, appearing with regularity in the pages of the best-paying magazines in America, including Redbook, Collier’s, and The Saturday Evening Post, to which he sold his first story in 1917.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, his goal had been to be a cartoonist, but he instead became a journalist before becoming an advertising copywriter while creating gently humorous stories that mostly featured business, romance, and crime on the side.
Castle is best known for his long series about Colonel Humphrey Flack, a con man who swindles other swindlers with the aid of his partner, Uthas P. (“Patsy”) Garvey. They serve a role akin to Robin Hood figures, turning over their ill-gotten gains to the deserving while retaining a percentage “for expenses.” The magazine stories inspired a humorous, family-oriented television series for the Dumont network titled Colonel Humphrey Flack that ran from October 7, 1953, to July 2, 1954; it was revived for a thirty-nine-episode syndicated series that aired from October 5, 1958, to July 5, 1959, with the title Colonel Flack.
“The Colonel Gives a Party” was first published in the May 8, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
THE COLONEL GIVES A PARTY
Everett Rhodes Castle
THE OLD GENTLEMAN with the crimson face and sweeping white mustaches picked up the telephone and asked, in an amiable bass, for the cashier. His watery blue eyes, pendent in bulging brassières of flesh, twinkled good-naturedly. His free hand, a massive paw speckled with brown spots, fondled a brandy and soda. A vintage cigar, also speckled with brown spots, rode jauntily above his huge, glistening, winged collar.
“This is Colonel Humphrey Flack in Suite Nine-o-two,” he said, after a moment. “Mr. Garvey and I are checking out in the morning. Ha….Exactly….Eh?…No, no. Everything has been eminently satisfactory. Quite. I—we are merely going South. To my place in Palm Beach. Will you see that my chit is ready immediately after breakfast? Ha….Good. Very good. Incidentally, there will be a few—hum—additions to the account this evening. I—ha—am giving a little farewell party.”
The younger man with his hands thrust deep into the trouser pockets of his blue flannel suit turned away from the window. His dark eyes smoldered with resentment.
“It ought to be a pleasure to hear you speak the truth for once,” he fumed. “But it isn’t! The Colonel gives the party! What else have you been doing twice a week for the past weeks? Poker, he calls it! Ever thought of what that gang of high-binders you’ve been having in here probably call it?” His thin, bitter laugh curdled the twilight.
The old gentleman by the telephone gestured meekly with his sweating glass. “But it’s been fun,” he protested mildly. “And at seventy-one a man must seize the few—hum—pleasures which come his way.”
Mr. Uthas Garvey’s nervous fingers flecked the ash from his cigarette. “That’s your trouble,” he snapped. “You’re living in the past. You’re a hangover from the good old days when suckers bought the Brooklyn Bridge, gold bricks, went for the wire racket, the tear-up, and all the other bewhiskered gyps of the Gay Nineties.”
The Colonel dipped his aristocratic puce beak into his glass, came up smiling. “I live by my wits,” he admitted benignly. “Ha. I admit it, frankly. But so do you, my dear chap. The pot libels the kettle, eh?”
“I’m fed up with wits!” Mr. Garvey assured him sourly. “What’s it got me in the two years we’ve been playing around together? Right now I’ve got three dollars and ten cents in cash and a case of stomach ulcers. And what have you laid by, fine-feathered friend? Two bucks and a bad case of dementia grandeur. Some balance sheet, eh?”
“It could be worse, my dear boy.”
“How?” Mr. Garvey dropped his voice to a mocking imitation of his associate’s rumble. “Get my bill ready, my good man! I’m leaving for the South, my good man.” His voice edged up. “Where does the lettuce come from to pay the bill? The railroad tickets? Where will you get the dough you’ll lose tonight trying to make a four-card flush stand up against three mop squeezers?”
“Maybe I’ll hold the three queens tonight, my dear chap. Ha. Exactly.”
“Against Billings?” Mr. Garvey’s laughter was abrupt, derisive. “That goon used to be a dealer in Moxey Manning’s gambling joint in Denver. Purdy? He just beat a rap for selling fake cemetery lots to the widow-and-orphan trade by an eyelash. And Spertz! A crooked stock rigger under indictment right now. And Dolan! A bottom-of-the-deck artist. A fine gang of playmates.”
“Don’t forget Captain Ferdinand Smythe-Calder,” the Colonel implored him meekly. “Of course, he isn’t a captain and Calder isn’t his real name. But he has a very quick brain. Ha. Indubitably.”
“As opposed to senile decay!” Mr. Garvey muttered wrathfully.
The Colonel rubbed his lower lip tenderly. “It’s heartening, the interest people take in the aged and mentally infirm,” he observed placidly. “At my last little poker party, Eddie, the bell captain, delivered some cigars. Yesterday he took the time and—hum—trouble to hint that my guests—particularly the Captain—were residents of Queer Street, as the English say. Ha. Exactly. I gathered the Captain had done the dirty, as they say, to some friend of the lad’s. A nice boy. Ha. Eddie, I mean. Did you know this was his last day at the hotel? He’s leaving
in the morning. The Marines, I believe. A noble service. I must not forget to leave him a substantial remembrance.”
“And they lock up poor jerks who only imagine that they’re Nero or Napoleon or Lincoln,” Mr. Garvey mourned.
The Colonel was humming one of his favorite tunes now. A little number entitled A Violet Plucked from Mother’s Grave. It was more than flesh could take.
“For God’s sake, quit that dirge!” Mr. Garvey screamed.
“Dirge?” The watery orbs were mildly reproving. “Hardly, my dear fellow. A most interesting little lyric. By a chap named J. P. Skelly. He was known as the Bible House Plumber in his day. He wrote over four hundred songs. All on brown wrapping paper. Ha. Exactly. Most interesting, eh?”
“I’m enthralled,” Mr. Garvey snarled. “You’ve opened up an entirely new world to me.” He dropped down abruptly on a putty-colored settee that cornered the far side of the parlor. “My ulcers!” he moaned.
With quick solicitude the Colonel dug up the telephone and called for room service. He ordered bicarbonate, and then, almost as a casual afterthought, added two quarts of Scotch, a bottle of brandy, one of bourbon, charged water, ginger ale, cigarettes, and a box of cigars.
“And—hah—a large platter of turkey, ham and cheese sandwiches later, eh? About ten-thirty.”
Mr. Garvey’s stomach writhed in agony, but his mind was busy with a bitter sum in mental arithmetic. “How typical of our partnership,” he observed brightly. “Everything fifty-fifty! A dose of baking soda for Garvey and forty dollars’ worth of high living for Colonel Humphrey.”
The old gentleman ignored the crack. He gulped his drink and reached again for the telephone. “The desk,” he commanded.
When the connection was made, he requested the immediate installation of a radio. He hung up with a flourish.
“Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” Mr. Garvey quoted petulantly. Then his mind backtracked to the flourish. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Or could I be wrong?”
“About a hangover from the old days when suckers went for the wire racket and all the other bewhiskered gyps of the Gay Nineties? My dear boy!”
“Spare me those trained dewlaps quivering with reproach.” The younger man stood up and started for the array of glasses and bottles on the side table near the older man. Then he sighed and twisted away. “You don’t like radio,” he pointed out accusingly over his shoulder. “You’ve said so a hundred times. The blatting—”
“But I do like the—hah—manly art of self-defense, my dear lad,” the Colonel pointed out glibly. “And so do my guests.” The massive gold chain attached to his stomach watch twitched with logic—or something. “Young Cooney is battling Stanley Peyskisk for the light-heavyweight championship tonight. Ha. Exactly. I—I was reading about it over luncheon today. Hum. On the sports page. Then I happened to notice that the bout would also be on a local station at eleven o’clock. What a marvelous age we are living in, my dear boy! It—it makes one think, doesn’t it?”
“Cooney will cut him to pieces,” Mr. Garvey predicted. “And don’t tell me all the wise money is going on the Polack. I know it is. But wise dough has been wrong before.”
The Colonel was making himself another drink. He held glass and bottle high, squinting tenderly at the golden liquid threading into the glass. “I wasn’t thinking of the two contestants,” he chirruped blithely. “My—my mind was traveling back. Years ago we had to—hum—depend on the telegraph for sporting results—”
“I’m not interested.”
But the old goat was off, teetering on his toes, one hand tugging reminiscently at his port mustache.
Mr. Garvey sighed, shrugged his shoulders wearily, and wished the bicarbonate would arrive.
“I was thinking of the old wire racket you mentioned,” the Colonel pattered on. “Remember how it worked? Contact was made with a—hum—gullible and—and avaricious gentleman with money. It was explained to this easy mark that the contactor was a close friend or relative of a telegraph operator. This operator had agreed to hold up the news of certain race results. Ha. Exactly. At the same time he would pass along the names of the winning horses to his friend. The friend would thus be able to place a bet on the winning horse with some bookie joint—hah—after the race was won. It—it was absolutely sure. The contactor explained that he was without the necessary funds to make a big killing, quick. Hence the opportunity for the easy mark. Of course, the whole thing was a plant. After letting the mark win a few small bets, they took him in—hah—a big way and—hum—fled.”
Mr. Garvey draped his feet over the end of the settee and lit a cigarette. The tableau was one of complete disinterest.
“I was just thinking—” the Colonel went on with a sly, ruminative grin, as his younger partner sent smoke rings twisting toward the ceiling—“ha—how the magic of modern science and invention has made such small stratagems—hum—quite obsolete. You agree?”
Mr. Garvey yawned, loudly and ostentatiously.
A waiter arrived, pushing a white-clothed cart covered with bottles before him. Mr. Garvey sat up with a quick sigh of relief. The Colonel signed the check with the dash and confidence of the Federal Reserve System. He added a tip to the bottom of the card. The smile on the waiter’s face made Mr. Garvey wince as he stirred his bicarbonate.
Then the old boar was at the telephone again. This time he wanted the bell captain. “Eddie? Ha….Oh, I see. This is Colonel Flack. Will you tell him I’d like to see him for a minute as soon as he returns? Tell him it is—hah—very important.”
Garvey eyed him thoughtfully over the cloudy glass. The Colonel grinned.
Something—either the bicarbonate or the grin—made the younger man feel better. “So I was wrong, eh?”
“What time have you, my dear fellow?”
Garvey stared at his wrist. “Five to eight.”
“Your watch is three minutes slow. I checked with the telephone company just before you returned from dinner. Please set it.”
“What difference does three minutes make when—”
The Colonel returned his huge gold hunter to his white linen vest. “Timing is one of the most important things in life, my dear Garvey. In business. In—hah—the drama. Even in paying one’s hotel bill. Ha. Exactly. Quite.”
—
Mr. Uthas P. Garvey dragged his coat sleeve away from his wrist for the fifth time in twenty minutes. It was exactly five minutes after ten. Nearly an hour to go! Mr. Garvey lit another cigarette and sat back to brood. Why couldn’t the old goat come right out and say what the angle was? He had insisted that the younger man could carry out his part of the deal more naturally, and, consequently, with a better chance for success, if he did not know what was going on. But that was always his line.
Mr. Garvey inhaled savagely. At three minutes after eleven o’clock—not one moment sooner—he was to turn on the radio.
After pretending to fiddle with the tuning controls, he was to bring in the local station carrying the fight. What did that make him? A stooge for a cheap hotel radio, Mr. Garvey thought bitterly. The smoke from his cigarette was flat and unstimulating in his lungs. Nothing added up. The old crocodile had intimated, with one of his sly cat-and-canary smiles, that the Garvey bewilderment augured well for the success of his scheme. It proved, he said, the psychological soundness of the basic thought.
So what? So where? So how? Mr. Garvey ground out his cigarette with savage thoroughness. The old ram had intimated that his ulcers were nothing but attacks of nervous indigestion. Well, for once, Mr. Garvey hoped the old bull was right. Ulcers or no ulcers, he had to have a drink! A big drink! The six men around the green-covered table in the middle of the room paid no attention to him as he crossed to the bottle-littered table by the door.
“All pink,” a flat voice announced as he reached for rye. “Sorry, Colonel. They don’t seem to be running, do they?”
Mr. Garvey recognized the voice. He wondered if Dolan had dealt his flush from the
bottom of the pack.
But apparently the Colonel entertained no such suspicion. He took a hearty pull from the glass beside him.
“That’s the third time I’ve had three of a kind topped,” he announced, with a chuckle. “Perhaps I’m allergic to the—hah—digit, eh? Ha. Quite. Well, we shall see….Your deal, Billings.”
The news caused Mr. Garvey to add still another jigger of liquor to his drink. He gulped thirstily and then sauntered over to stand behind the Colonel. His dark eyes took a swift inventory of the chips. He gulped again. They were playing five-card stud, five-dollar limit. As Mr. Garvey stood there, a little man in his shirt sleeves across the table bet a red chip on an exposed ace. He had eyebrows like Harpo Marx and a mouth like a barracuda. A tall man next to him saw the red chip with long, delicate-looking fingers and added a yellow one. His exposed card was a knave of diamonds. And Captain Ferdinand Smythe-Calder looked like a knave, Mr. Garvey thought. A very elegant knave.
A beefy man whose baldness and horn-rimmed glasses made him look like a gremlin’s wicked uncle grunted and turned down his hand. The next man did the same with a shrug and a thin smile.
The Colonel hiccuped gently. His shirt sleeves ballooned out of his bulging vest. His white mustaches seemed to reach out and clutch at the drifting smoke which brooded over the table. His eyes seemed to be at full tide.
“Purdy,” he said to the gremlin’s wicked uncle, “you ought to have more faith in the—hah—future. Ha. Exactly….Spertz, did I see you turn down a nine? Observe my little trey of hearts, gentlemen. Now take heed of my confidence in a beneficent providence.” He hiccuped again and the ashes from his cigar cascaded gently down the front of his vest. “Here is Billings’s original bet. Here is Calder’s raise. Ha. And here is my answer to them both.” He pushed another yellow chip forward.
Billings saw the raise and added a yellow chip on his own account. His eyebrows twitched greedily. Calder, the tall man with the long white fingers, lit a fresh cigarette and raised them both. The Colonel beamed delightedly.