With pulses hammering excitedly, Oscar followed her eagerly. It was his first experience at amateur sleuthing, and to his surprise he found himself enjoying it.
CHAPTER IV
In Durance Vile
LESTER MERCER was pacing the floor of his sumptuously appointed office when they entered. Celeste opened the door, but before she closed it Oscar had slipped in as unheralded as a well-behaved ghost.
“What is it you want?” Mercer burst out. “You took a chance on spoiling the whole game by coming here.”
“First of all,” Celeste said coolly, “did you get the bond?”
Oscar started violently as the import of these words crashed into his brain. His suspicions had been correct! Mercer was the culprit!
“Quiet, you little fool!” Mercer hissed at Celeste. “Suppose someone overheard you. Certainly I have it. But I wasn’t able to slip out and give it to you as we planned. We had a little slip-up here.”
“Slip-up?” There was an anxious edge to Celeste’s voice.
“Yes. The little dope we pinned this job on managed to escape. I still don’t know how he did it. Anyway, it created a lot of excitement and if I had left then, it would have looked rather suspicious.”
“Well, give it to me now,” Celeste told him. “I can slip out of here without being searched.”
Mercer stuck a hand into his inside coat pocket.
“All right,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll give it to you; and then for Pete’s sake, clear out of here.”
Oscar trembled with excitement as Mercer’s hand emerged from his pocket holding an oblong piece of crisp, gilt-edged paper. The missing bond! Oscar wavered indecisively. Should he make a desperate lunge for the bond, the evidence that would clear him of any possible guilt? He knew that if Celeste got her hands on that gilt-edged certificate, left the bank with it, his last chance would go glimmering. He tensed himself, determined to risk everything on one frantic gamble.
Mercer was extending the bond, Celeste’s slim hand was reaching greedily for it . . .
Oscar crouched, gathering his muscles—and then the door banged open and the hearty voice of Phineas Q. Botts boomed through the room.
“Been looking for you, Mercer. Thought I might find you here.”
Mercer wheeled toward the door, stuffing the incriminating paper into his trouser pocket as he faced his employer.
Oscar’s shoulders sagged dispiritedly. His moment for vindication was gone. Anything could happen now.
Botts looked from Mercer to Celeste. “Not interrupting anything, I hope?” he rumbled jovially.
“Not at all,” Mercer said hastily. “As a matter of fact, Miss—er—Miss Summers was just going.”
“That’s right,” Celeste smiled coyly. “I simply have to dash off.” She turned slightly to look straight at Mercer. “It’s a pity you didn’t have that snapshot with you,” she murmured. “Perhaps I can arrange to see you tonight and pick it up. I’m so anxious to have it!”
“Excellent idea,” Mercer agreed quickly. “The bank employees are holding their dance tonight at the Grande Arms Hotel. If you could arrange to meet me in the lobby I’ll have it for you then.”
“You can expect me,” murmured Celeste, “at nine. There’s a sentimental value to that particular snapshot—and I wouldn’t like anything to happen to it.”
SHE turned, her bright smile turned incandescently on the portly personage of Mr. Botts, and swished enticingly from the room.
“Lovely creature,” Botts breathed gustily. “Charming! Reminds me of a girl I knew once in France. I was younger then, but—”
Botts broke off suddenly, coughing in embarrassment.
“As I was saying,” he rumbled on, “we can’t find hide nor hair of this fellow Doolittle. He’s not in the building; there’s not a trace of him anywhere.”
Oscar felt a comfortable glow warming him. He was safe, secure at last! Why, he could walk right out of the bank this minute and nobody would be the wiser. Along with this feeling of security came a sudden rush of confidence. He wouldn’t run like a scared chicken. No, sir, he’d stick.
Mercer had the bond. He’d follow Mercer until an opportunity presented itself to grab the precious paper. With this evidence he could clear himself. For the first time that day, Oscar’s course of action seemed simple and uncomplicated—
And then suddenly the smug, complacent smile that adorned his invisible features was wiped away by a horrible noise—the strange buzzing noise that accompanied his miraculous transformations.
In a few seconds he would be visible again. Goodness, this was terrible!
In fact, it was positively catastrophic. Because Phineas Q. Botts and Lester Mercer showed no signs of leaving the room. Mercer was trying to get on the good side of his boss, always a splendid idea if it isn’t done too obviously.
“Ahem!” Mercer coughed. “I didn’t recall that you had been in France, sir.” He winked slyly. The two policemen, sensing the drift of things, stood around grinning.
Botts’ pink-jowled face colored pinker, but he took the innuendo in good stride.
“Ah yes, Mercer. Lovely country, France, lovely country! Before the Nazis got hold of it, of course. Why, I was only a young man when my father sent me to Paris before the World War to—er—paint. Ah yes, great artists, those Parisians, great artists! Good red wine, attractive—harrumph!—young ladies—” Botts fairly glowed at the reminiscence.
“I trust, sir, that you did considerable painting,” Mercer said with a Grandpa-you’re-an-old-devil grin.
“Paris has never been the same since,” Botts breathed in a gust of frankness. Then he remembered what he had said, and blushed furiously.
Meanwhile, Oscar’s bovine eyes were flying frantically around the room, searching desperately for a place of concealment. They lighted on the huge desk that stood in the center of the room. He moved quickly—but even as he took the first steps, he knew he was too late.
For it had happened again. Oscar was suddenly as plain as a light snapped on in a dark room. Every inch of his unprepossessing body became as glaringly obvious as the Lindbergh Beacon.
Phineas Q. Botts spotted him first.
“There he is!” he shouted. “Grab him!”
Botts obeyed his own command by lunging across the room, crashing into Oscar’s slight form. His fat arms wrapped around the wasp-like waist and his booming voice roared into Oscar’s ears.
OSCAR felt a pair of strong hands on his arms. A bulky uniformed figure loomed before him. There was a metallic click as handcuffs were snapped around his thin wrists. Through the cloudy fog of hysteria that blanketed his brain, he could hear his own voice, shrill and incoherent, pleading his innocence.
“How did he get in here?” Mercer said wonderingly. “It’s incredible, amazing!”
“Nonsense!” bleated Botts triumphantly. “I saw him as he slipped in the door. They have to get up mighty early in the morning to steal a march on Phineas Botts!”
“You’ve got to listen!” Oscar began to plead hysterically. “I’ve been framed! I’m innocent! But I know who the real thief is. You’ve got to believe me!”
“What’s that?” Botts said instantly. “You know who the thief is? Well, speak up, man! Who is he?”
“I’ll tell you!” Oscar panted.
He shook himself free from the clutch of the policeman and advanced belligerently toward Lester Mercer.
“There’s the real thief!” he shouted, pointing both manacled fists at the efficiency expert. “He’s got the bond on him right now! Search him,” Oscar concluded triumphantly, “and see whether or not I’m telling the truth!” Mercer licked his lips as all eyes in the room focused on him. He looked nervously about, clenching and unclenching his hands.
“That’s absurd!” he protested weakly. “The man’s insane. Take him away before he goes berserk and hurts somebody.”
“Now just a moment, Lester,” Botts interposed. “Seems to me we ought to give Oscar every chance to
clear himself. If you have nothing to fear, you shouldn’t object to being searched.”
“I don’t,” Mercer gasped nervously. “It’s only that . . .”
“He’s stalling,” Oscar cut in. “He’s got the bond on him. He knows he’s guilty!” he added confidently.
Oscar folded his arms nonchalantly as the policemen, at a nod from Botts, started toward Mercer. It was just then, as he was tasting the premature delights of vindication and vengeance, that the buzzing noise started again in his ears.
A look of horror soared over his features.
“No!” Oscar prayed desperately. “Not now, not now!”
But despite his pleas, the buzzing sound grew in volume and Oscar knew that in another instant, the inexorable transformation would occur. He gazed wildly about him and his eyes lighted on the desk. With a speed born of desperation, he lunged across the office to the haven it presented.
“After him!” shouted Mercer, taking immediate advantage of Oscar’s break. “He’s trying to escape! There’s your guilty man!”
Mercer, Botts and the policemen wheeled with these words and raced to the desk under which Oscar had disappeared.
“I’ll get him!” Mercer cried. He dropped to his knees and peered under the desk. The triumphant shout died on his lips and an incredulous, baffled look passed over his face. When he straightened up and climbed groggily to his feet, his face was pale.
“He’s not there!” he gasped. “He’s gone. He got away.”
These words fell on Oscar’s despairing soul like rain on parched ground. There was still hope for him! If he could remain invisible long enough to escape, there was still a chance to prove his innocence. He crouched under the desk, hardly daring to breathe, listening to Botts’ angry voice.
“Are you going crazy?” Botts was shouting. “I saw him dart under this desk myself, and there’s no human way that he could get out. Are you trying to tell me my eyes are lying?”
IT was at that crucial moment that a stray particle of dust drifted upward into Oscar’s nose. It selected a soft spot on the tender membrane and proceeded to raise hell. Oscar’s eyes began to water. Frenziedly, he clapped both hands over his mouth and nose. But it was no use, for nature suddenly ejected the offending bit of dust—with a loud, snorting sneeze.
“Hear that?” stormed Botts excitedly. “He’s under there, all right. I’ll drag him out myself!”
The sneeze had done more than merely betray Oscar’s position to the enemy. It had also heralded the sound of a slow, horrifying buzzing in Oscar’s ears. Gripped by terror and impending doom, Oscar shuddered as his body suddenly became visible again—at the precise second that Phineas Q. Botts’ moonlike face stared in at him.
Botts’ full-throated bellow sounded like the baying of a bloodhound. “Hah,” he bayed, “hah!”
Despite Oscar’s desperate struggles Botts managed to secure a grip on one of his thrashing ankles. Then, puffing and blowing triumphantly, he dragged him forth into the circle of grim, unfriendly faces.
“Please,” Oscar moaned piteously from his humiliating position, “I can explain everything. You’ve got to listen!”
“That’s what he said before,” Mercer sneered. “It’s just another trick to try an escape.”
“He won’t get another chance,” Botts puffed. “Grab him,” he barked at the hovering policemen, “and see that he doesn’t get away this time.”
Bewildered and gasping, Oscar was jerked to his beanstalk feet and dragged to the door by the two burly cops. With a supreme effort, he twisted to face Mercer.
“There’s the real thief!” Oscar shrieked. “I’ve got proof . . .”
The sentence was cut short as he was jerked through the doorway by the impatient policemen.
CHAPTER V
Oscar’s Fatal Plunge
SEVERAL hours later, Oscar stared moodily through the barred windows of his cell, his mind a hopeless cesspool of despair. It was eight o’clock. In another hour Mercer would slip the bond to Celeste and she would vanish forever. With her would go Oscar’s last and lone chance of ever clearing himself.
With a shuddery sigh he collapsed on the narrow cot and buried his head in his hands. He remained in this position for several minutes and then he raised his head, listening.
An unmistakably familiar sound was buzzing in his ears. Oscar was not surprised. That elusive quality in his soul that provided surprise for him had taken too much of a beating in the last twelve hours.
With a moody, jaundiced eye he watched his body disappear for the third time that day.
“So what?” he muttered bitterly.
He sat there on the edge of the bunk, frowning at the floor. Unconsciously his hand found a tin water cup that was lying on the cold stones. Absent-mindedly he began to tap the cup gently against the iron frame of the cot, keeping a doleful accompaniment to his gloomy thoughts. As he thought of Mercer holding Ann Meade in his arms, swaying to smooth music, Oscar’s tempo and temper increased until he was pounding out a miniature facsimile of the “Anvil Chorus.”
“Cut that racket in there!” a heavy voice shouted. “What do you think this is, a steel foundry?”
Oscar stopped guiltily as other voices joined the protest. He heard the footsteps of the guard pounding in his direction.
“It’s Doolittle,” he heard the jailer say. “I’ll fix that little twerp so he don’t feel so gay.”
Oscar paled. He thought of crawling under the bed but he knew it would do no good. He was in for it, all right. He stared helplessly about—and then he smiled. A malicious, cunning smile spread across his face as he looked down at his still invisible body and recalled that to all intents and purposes, he had vanished.
“I’ve been pushed around all day,” he muttered. “It’s about my turn now.”
The guard, a large, glowering young man, appeared suddenly before Oscar’s cell.
“Cut that rumpus,” he growled. “Or I’ll—”
He broke off, the words fading on his lips as he peered incredulously into the empty cell. He shook the door, tried the lock, his face a ludicrous mask of painful amazement. And then, as if realizing for the first time what had happened, he sprang into action.
“Escape!” he bawled. “The guy from the bank broke loose! Send out the alarm!”
Oscar had a slight pang of remorse as he heard this. His nervousness increased as he caught shouted questions, footsteps pounding along the old stone floors. He hadn’t planned to escape. Nothing that daring had occurred to him. Still—why not?
The guard stuck a key in the lock, swung the door open and stepped into the cell. Oscar cringed away from him and then, his heart threatening to pop from his mouth, he edged past the man’s burly form and crept into the corridor.
His lips twisted in a peculiar smile as he looked back at the guard standing perplexedly in the middle of the cell, his back to the door. Very gently Oscar swung the cell door shut. Stifling the laughter that bubbled up in his throat, he turned the key in the lock and then tossed the ring of keys into the middle of the corridor.
THEY fell with a metallic jangle. The guard wheeled about, his face mirroring rage, amazement and a half dozen other emotions too difficult to classify. He lunged at the door, gripping the bars in ham-like fists.
“Help!” he bellowed. “Lemme out o’here! I been tricked! They jumped me from behind.”
He lapsed off at that point into a stream of highly imaginative and picturesque profanity that surpassed anything Oscar had heard since he eavesdropped on a faculty meeting in high school.
He listened with wistful admiration until he heard footsteps pounding in his direction. Looking up, he saw a half-dozen guards racing toward the cell that housed the bellowing jailer. Retreat, Oscar decided, was the strategic move. Turning, he scurried away in the opposite direction, his invisible features set in a grim, determined mask.
He had no clear idea of what he was going to do, but he knew that he must recover the bond before Mercer passed i
t on to his slinky accomplice, Celeste.
If he failed he would be branded forever as a thief and a criminal. With this thought bolstering his courage, Oscar crept down the corridor toward the door, beyond which lay freedom. His destination—the bank employee’s dance at the Grande Arms Hotel.
OSCAR hesitated in the lobby of the Grande Arms Hotel, his determination wavering in the face of its imposing splendor and dignity. Throngs of formally attired couples surged past him, their faces mirroring the anticipated delights of the gala evening. From the ballroom adjoining the lobby, the strains of smooth, sophisticated music could be heard, inviting the revelers to romance and gaiety.
Everyone but the nervous, invisible figure crouched forlornly in the middle of the lobby was unhappy.
Oscar recognized with envy his fellow employees sauntering through the lobby, their dates clinging to their arms, drinking in the pearls of wisdom that dropped glibly from masculine lips. Oscar even had a glimpse of Phineas Botts, resplendent in white tie and topper, striding through the lobby, waving genially to his employees.
Botts’ wife, a sharp-looking, middle-aged woman, who somehow gave the impression of being freshly lacquered, marched beside him, obviously proud of her position.
“There goes Mrs. Astor’s horse,” Oscar heard an underpaid clerk snicker.
“Looks to me like she’s been having too many oats,” his girl friend agreed in a stage whisper.
Oscar was mildly horrified at such impertinence, but there was nothing he could say about it at the moment. His invisibility was the important thing now. Besides, Mrs. Botts did look somewhat overstuffed. Oscar wondered vaguely if she wouldn’t be useful at a picnic where there weren’t any benches around to sit on . . .
He saw something then that made him forget his thoughts, jerked him to attention.
Through the arched doorway that led to the ballroom, Oscar saw Lester Mercer whispering to Celeste, saw him hand her something quickly, surreptitiously.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 6