THE LORD OF CENTRAL PARK

“THE LORD OF CENTRAL PARK” was first published in 1970. It is a playful story that shows Davidson’s skill as a prose stylist. In an introduction to an earlier Davidson Collection (The Redward Edward Papers, Doubleday, 1978), author Michael Kurland explained:

“Some of you who read this collection are venturing into the arcane, erudite world of Avram Davidson for the first time. Probability theory insists that, despite the acres of trees cut down to provide the wood pulp, the scores of dragons killed and bled to provide the ink, some of you will not have read any of the earlier published works of Don Avram. For that few I issue the following warning: breathe steadily through the nose, if possible, proceed slowly and examine the foliage. Do not search for meanings, as they are scattered like empty oyster shells around the Walrus. I hope that helps. The prose itself will be purely and indisputably Davidson.

“Avram Davidson is the master of the parenthetical phrase. Many’s the time I’ve seen a parenthetical phrase groveling before Avram’s stern hand, begging for mercy. But he takes them and twists them to his will. In the spirit of the true explorer, Avram is ever pushing and prodding at the bounds of language.”

—GD

 

This all took place a while back.…

It was a crisp evening in middle April.

Cornelius Goodeycoonce, the river pirate, headed his plunder-laden boat straight at an apparently solid wall of pilings, steering with the calm of a ferryboat captain nearing a slip, and cut his motor.

Up in Central Park, where he was kipped out in a secluded cave, Arthur Marmaduke Roderick Lodowicke William Rufus de Powisse-Plunkert, 11th Marquess of Grue and Groole in the Peerage of England, 22nd Baron Bogle in the Peerage of Scotland, 6th Earl of Ballypatcoogen in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Penhokey in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, Laird of Muckle Greet, Master of Snee, and Hereditary Lord High Keeper of the Queen’s Bears, heard a familiar beat of wings in the night and held out a slice of bread just in time to catch a medium-rare charcoal-broiled steak.

Not a mile away the Grand Master of the Mafia, Don Alexander Borjia, admired for the ten-thousandth time the eternally enigmatic smile on the lips of the original Mona Lisa, which hung, as it had for 50 years, on the wall of the Chamber of the order’s Grand Council.

A certain foreign visitor, who called himself Tosci, came down the gangway ladder on the side of the yacht which in daylight flew the flag of the landlocked nation whose citizenship he claimed, and got gingerly into the launch which was to bear him to shore.

Daisy Smith, in her trim and tiny bachelor-girl apartment, prepared herself a tuna-fish sandwich without enthusiasm, and reflected how much more—how very much more—she would rather be preparing, say, roast beef and potatoes for a young man, if only she knew a young man she considered worth preparing roast beef and potatoes for.

And across the North River, on the Jersey shore, a thin line of green still hugged the outline of the cliffs; and over that, a thin line of blue. And then the night rolled all the way down, and the lines of light were lost.…

The momentum of Cornelius’s boat carried it swiftly toward the bulkhead. A crash seemed inevitable. Then Cornelius picked up an oar and prodded one certain timber well below the waterline. Instantly a section of the pilings swung open, just wide enough and just high enough for the boat to pass through; then it swung shut once more.

The boat proceeded onward in gathering darkness as the light from the river dimmed behind it. Gauging the precise instant when the momentum would cease to propel his boat against the mild current of Coenties’ Kill—walled in and walled over these 150 years—the man lowered his oar and began to pole. The eyes of an alligator flashed briefly, then submerged.

Presently a light showed itself some distance off, then vanished, reappeared, vanished once more in the windings of the sluggish creek, and finally revealed itself, hissing whitely, as a Coleman lamp. It sat on the stone lip of what had been a fairly well-frequented landing in the days when De Witt Clinton was Mayor and Jacob Hays was High Constable of the City of New York. Cheap as labor had been in those days—and fill even cheaper—it had been less expensive to vault up rather than bury the Kill when the needs of the growing metropolis demanded the space. Experience had proved that to be the case when other Manhattan “kills” or streams, refusing meekly to submit to burial, had flooded cellars and streets.

The Goodeycoonce-the-river-pirate of that time had noted, marked, mapped, and made the private excavations. They were an old, old family, loath to change what was even then an old family trade.

“Well, now, let’s see—” said the present-day Cornelius. He tied up. He unloaded his cargo onto a pushcart, placed the lamp in a bracket, and slowly trundled the cart over the stone paving of the narrow street, which had echoed to no other traffic since it lost the light of the sun so long ago.

At the head of the incline the path passed under an archway of later construction. The Goodeycoonce-of-that-time, trusting no alien hand, had learned the mason’s trade himself, breaking in onto a lovely, dry, smooth tunnel made and abandoned forever by others—the first, last, and short-lived horse-car subway. The wheels of the push-cart fitted perfectly into the tracks, and the grade was level.

Granny Goodeycoonce was reading her old Dutch family Bible in the snug apartment behind her second-hand store. That is, not exactly reading it; it had been generations since any member of the family could actually read Dutch; she was looking at the pictures. Her attention was diverted from a copperplate engraving of the she-bear devouring the striplings who had so uncouthly mocked the Prophet Elisha with the words, Go up, ballhead (“Serve them right!” she declared. “Bunch of juvenile delinquents!”), by a thumping from below.

She closed the Book and descended to the cellar, where her only grandchild was hauling his plunder up through the trap door.

“Put out that lamp, Neely!” she said sharply. “Gasoline costs money!”

“Yes, Granny,” the river pirate said obediently.

*   *   *

DENNY THE DIP stared in stupefaction at the sudden appearance of a steak sandwich’s most important ingredient. Then he stared at the winged visitor which had appeared a second after the steak. The winged visitor stared back—or, perhaps “glared” would be the mot juste—out of burning yellow eyes. “Cheest!” said Denny the Dip.

There had been a time when, so skillful was the Dip, that he had picked the pocket of a Police Commissioner while the latter was in the very act of greeting a Queen. (He had returned the wallet later, of course, via the mails, out of courtesy, and, of course, minus the money.) But Time with her wingèd Flight, and all that—age and its concomitant infirmities, much aggravated by a devotion to whatever Celtic demigod presides over the demijohn—had long rendered the Dip unfit for such professional gestures.

For some years now he had been the bane of the Mendicant Squad. His method was to approach lone ladies with the pitch that he was a leper, that they were not to come any nearer, but were to drop some money on the sidewalk for him. This, with squeaks of dismay, they usually did. But on one particular evening—this one, in fact—the lone lady he had approached turned out to be a retired medical missionary; she delivered a lecture on the relative merits of chaulmoogra oil and the sulfonamides in the treatment of Hansen’s Disease (“—not contagious in New York, and never was—”), expressed her doubts that the Dip suffered from anything worse than, say, ichthyosis; and the paper she gave him was neither Silver Certificate nor Federal Reserve Note, but the address of a dermatologist.

Her speech had lasted a good quarter of an hour, and was followed by some remarks on Justification Through Faith, the whole experience leaving Denny weak and shaken. He had just managed to totter to one of those benches which a benevolent municipality disposes at intervals along Central Park West, and sink down, when he was espied by the 22nd Baron and 11th Marquess aforesaid, Arthur Marmaduke et cetera, who was walking his dog, Guido.

The dog gave Denny a perfunctory sniff, and growled condescendingly. Denny, semisubliminally, identified it as a whippet, reidentified it as an Italian greyhound, looked up suddenly and whimpered, “Lord Grey and Gore?”

“Grue and Groole,” the dog’s master corrected him. “Who the juice are you?” The dog was small and whipcord-thin and marked with many scars. So was his master. The latter was wearing a threadbare but neat bush-jacket, jodhpurs, veldt-schoen, a monocle, and a quasi-caracul cap of the sort which are sold three-for-two-rupees in the Thieves’ Bazaar at Peshawar. He scowled, peered through his monocled eye, which was keen and narrow, the other being wide and glassy.

“Cor flog the flaming crows!” he exclaimed. “Dennis! Haven’t seen you since I fingered that fat fool for you aboard the Leviathan in ’26. Or was it ’27? Demned parvenu must have had at least a thousand quid in his wallet, which you were supposed to divide with me fifty-fifty, but didn’t; eh?”

“Sixty-forty in my favor was the agreement,” Denny said feebly. “Have you got the price of a meal or a drink on yez, perchance?”

“Never spend money on food or drink,” said the Marquess primly. “Against my principles. Come along, come along,” he said, prodding the Dip with his swagger stick, “and I’ll supply you with scoff and wallop, you miserable swine.”

The Dip, noting the direction they were taking, expressed his doubt that he could make it through the Park.

“I don’t live through the Park, I live in the Park, mind your fat head, you bloody fool!” They had left the path and were proceeding—master and hound as smoothly as snakes, Denny rather less so—behind trees, up rocks, between bushes, under low-hanging boughs. And so came at last to the cave. “Liberty Hall!” said the Marquess. “After you, you miserable bog-oaf.”

A charcoal fire glowed in a tiny stove made from stones, mud, and three automobile license plates. A kettle hummed on it, a teapot sat beside it, in one corner was a bed of evergreen sprigs covered with a rather good Tientsin rug woven in the archaic two blues and a buff, and a Tibetan butter-lamp burned on a ledge. There was something else in the cave, something which lunged at Denny and made fierce noises.

“Cheest!” he cried. “A baby eagle!” And fell back.

“Don’t be a damned fool,” his host exclaimed pettishly. “It’s a fully grown falcon, by name Sauncepeur … There, my precious, there, my lovely. A comfit for you.” And he drew from one of his pockets what was either a large mouse or a small rat and offered it to the falcon. Sauncepeur swallowed it whole. “Just enough to whet your appetite, not enough to spoil the hunt. Come, my dearie. Come up, sweetheart, come up.”

The Marquess had donned a leather gauntlet and unleashed the bird from the perch. Sauncepeur mounted his wrist. Together they withdrew from the cave; the man muttered, the bird muttered back, a wrist was thrown up and out, there was a beating of wings, and the falconer returned alone, stripping off his gauntlet.

“Now for some whiskey.… Hot water? Cold? Pity I’ve no melted yak butter to go with—one grew rather used to it after a bit in Tibet; cow butter is no good—got no body. What, straight? As you please.”

Over the drink the 11th Marquess of Grue and Groole filled in his visitor on his career since ’25—or was it ’26? “Poached rhino in Kenya, but that’s all over now, y’know. What with the Blacks, the Arabs, and the East Injians, white man hasn’t got a prayer in that show—poaching, I mean. Ran the biggest fantan game in Macao for a while, but with the price opium’s got to, hardly worthwhile.

“Signed a contract to go find the Abominable Snowman, demned Sherpas deserted only thirty days out, said the air was too thin for their lungs that high up, if you please, la-de-da—left me short on supplies, so that when I finally found the blasted yeti, I had to eat it. No good without curry, you know, no good a-tall.

“Lost m’right eye about that time, or shortly after. Altercation with a Sikh in Amritsar. Got a glass one. Lid won’t close, muscle wonky, y’know. Natives in Portuguese East used to call me Bwana-Who-Sleeps-With-One-Eye-Waking; wouldn’t come within a hundred yards after I’d kipped down for the night.”

He paused to thrust a Sobranie black-and-gold into a malachite cigarette holder and lit it at the fire. With the dull red glow reflected in his monocle and glass eye, smoke suddenly jutting forth from both nostrils, and the (presumably) monkey skull he held in one hand for an ashtray as he sat cross-legged in the cave, the wicked Marquess looked very devilish indeed to the poor Dip, who shivered a bit, and surreptitiously took another peg of whiskey from the flask.

“No, no,” the Marquess went on, “to anyone used to concealing himself in Mau Mau, Pathan, and EOKA country, avoiding the attention of the police in Central Park is child’s play. Pity about the poor old Fakir of Ipi, but then, his heart always was a bit dicky. Still, they’ve let Jomo out of jail. As for Colonel Dighenes—”

And it was brought to the attention of the bewildered Dip that the Marquess had fought for, and not against, the Mau Maus, Pathans, EOKAs, et cetera. The nearest he came to explaining this was, “Always admired your Simon Girty chap, y’know. Pity people don’t scalp any more—here, give over that flask, you pig, before you drink it all. It’s a point of honor with me never to steal more than one day’s rations at a time.

“Travel light, live off the country. I was one of only two White men in my graduating class at Ah Chu’s College of Thieves in Canton. Took my graduate work at Kaffir Ali’s, Cairo. I suppose you little know, miserable fellow that you are, that I was the last man to be tried by a jury of his peers before the House of Lords! True, I did take the Dowager’s Daimler, and, true, I sold it—lost the money at baccarat—never trust an Azerbaijanian at cards, but—”

He stopped, harkened to some sound in the outer darkness. “I fancy I hear my saucy Sauncepeur returning. ‘What gat ye for supper, Lord Randall, my son?’—eh? Chops, steak, Cornish rock hen, what? Curious custom you Americans have—charcoal grills on your balconies. Though, mind, I’m not complaining. Bread ready? Ahhh, my pretty!”

The steak was just fine, as far as Denny the Dip was concerned, though Lord Grue and Groole complained there was a shade too much garlic. “Mustn’t grumble, however—the taste of the Middle Classes is constantly improving.”

*   *   *

THE MAN WHO called himself Tosci rose to his feet.

“Don Alexander Borgia, I presume?” he inquired.

“No, no, excuse me—Borjia—with a ‘j,’” the Grand Master corrected him. The Grand Master was a tall, dark, handsome man, with a head of silvery-grey hair. “The Grand Council is waiting,” he said, “to hear your proposition. This way.”

“I had no idea,” Tosci murmured, impressed, “that the headquarters of the Mafia were quite so—quite so—” He waved his hand, indicating an inability to find the mot juste to fit the high-toned luxury and exquisite good taste of the surroundings.

“This is merely the Chamber of the Grand Council,” said Don Alexander. “The actual headquarters, which we are required by our charter to maintain, is in back of a candy store on Mulberry Street. The dead weight of tradition, huh? Well, pretty soon that time will come of which the political philosophers have predicted, when the State shall wither away. ‘No more Tradition’s chains will bind us,’ yeah? After you.” Don Alexander took his seat at the head of the table and gestured the visitor to begin.

The latter gazed at the assembled Masters of the Mafia, who gazed back, unwinking, unblinking, but not—he was quite sure—unthinking.

After a moment he began, “Signori—” and paused; then, “Fratelli—”

—and was interrupted by Grand Master Borjia.

“Excuse me, Hare Tosci, or Monsoon Tosci, or however you say in your country, but evidently you have fallen victim to the false delusion that the Mafia is a strictly Eyetalian organization, which I have no hesitation in saying it is an erroneous concept and a misinformation disseminated by the conscript press, see? I would like it clearly understood that you should get it through your head we of the sorely misconstrued and much maligned Mafia do not discriminate in any way, shape, or form, against race, creed, color, national or’gin, or, uh, what the hell is the other thing which we don’t discriminate against in any way, shape, or form, somebody?”

“Previous kahn-dition of soivitood,” said a stocky Grand Councilor, wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, two cauliflower ears, and an eyepatch.

“Yeah. Thanks very much, Don Lefty McGonigle.”

“Nat a-tall,” said Don Lefty, with a slight blush, as he bent his slightly broken nose toward the orchid in his buttonhole—one of three flown up for him daily from Bahía. “‘Rank is but d’guinea stamp, an’ a man’s a man for all dat,’” he added. “A quotation from d’poet Boyns; no offensive ettnic connotations intended.”

“Exactly,” said the Grand Master, a slight scowl vanishing from his distinguished features. “Our Grand Council is a veritable microcosm of American opportunity, as witness, besides myself, Don Lefty McGonigle, Don Shazzam X—formerly Rastus Washington—Don Gesú-María Gomez, Don Leverret Lowell Cabot, Don Swede Swanson, Don Tex Thompson, Don Morris Caplan, and Don Wong Hua-Fu, which he’s the Temporary Member of the Permanent Representation of the Honorable Ten Tongs—in a word, a confraternity of American business and professional men devoted to the study of the Confucian classics, the Buddhist Scriptures, and the art of horticulture as it might be exemplified by the peaceful cultivation of the ah-peen poppy.”

He paused and drew breath. “The Mafia,” he continued, “despite the innumerous slanders and aspersions cast upon it by scoffers, cynics, and the ever-present envious, is no more than a group of humble citizens of the world, determined to provide, besides certain commercial services, a forum wherein or whereby to arbitrate those differences which the lack of communication—alas, all too prevalent in our society—might otherwise terminate untowardly; as to its supposed origins in romantic Sicily, who, indeed, can say? What’s on your mind, Tosci?” he concluded abruptly.

Mr. (or Herr, or Monsieur, or whatever way they say in his country) Tosci blinked. Then he smiled a small noncommittal smile, appropriate to the citizen of a neutral nation.

“As you are aware, my country is landlocked,” he began. “Despite, or perhaps because of this situation, the question of providing a merchant marine of our own arises from time to time. It has arisen lately. My company, the Societé Anonyme de la Banque de la Commerce et de l’Industrie et pour les Droites des Oeuvriers et des Paysans, known popularly and for convenience as Paybanque, is currently interested in the possibilities of such a project.

“It is those ‘certain commercial services’ of the Mafia, of which you spoke, that we propose to engage. Our merchant marine headquarters in the New World would naturally be located in the New York City port area. Although at the present time the North River, or such New Jersey areas as Hoboken or Bayonne are most heavily favored by shipping, it was not always so. It is our opinion that excellent possibilities exist along the East River side of Manhattan, particularly the lower East River.

“It is our desire therefore that you provide us with a land, sea, and air survey, largely but not exclusively photographic in nature, engaging for the duration of the survey more or less centrally located quarters on the waterfront area in this locale. Something in the neighborhood of the Williamsburg Bridge would be ideal. Our representatives would participate with you, though the home office, so to speak, would remain aboard my yacht.

“This portfolio,” he went on, placing it on the table and opening it, “contains a more detailed description of our proposal, as well as the eleven million dollars in United States Treasury Notes which your Northern European contact informed us would be your fee for considering the proposal. If you are agreeable to undertake the work, we can discuss further terms.”

He ceased to speak. After a moment the Grand Master said, “Okay. We will leave you know.” After Tosci had departed, Don Alexander asked, “Well, what do you think?”

“An Albanian Trotskyite posing as a Swiss Stalinist. If you ask me, I think he wants to blow up the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” Don Morris Caplan said.

“Of course he wants to blow up the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” Borjia snapped. “That was obvious right from the beginning—I can spot them Albanian deviationists a mile away. Now the point is: Do we want the Brooklyn Navy Yard blown up? It is to this question, my esteemed fellow colleagues, which we must now divert our attention.”

*   *   *

EVENTS WENT THEIR traditional way in the Goodeycoonce household. Granny had dressed herself up as though for a masquerade, the principal articles of costume consisting of a tasseled cap, a linen blouse with wide sleeves, a pair of even wider breeches, and wooden shoes; all these articles were very, very old. She next picked up a pipe of equally antique design, with a long cherrywood stem and a hand-painted porcelain bowl, and this she proceeded to charge with genuine Indian Leaf tobacco which she had shredded herself in her chopping bowl. The tobacco was purchased at regular intervals from the last of the Manahatta Indians—that is, he was one-eighth Last-of-the-Manahatta-Indians, on his mother’s side—who operated the New Orleans Candle and Incense Shop on Lexington Avenue. (“I don’t know what them crazy White folks want with that stuff,” he often said; “they could buy grass for the same price.”) Granny struck a kitchen match, held it flat across the top of the pipe bowl, and began to puff.

Neely seated himself and took up a spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen. A scowl, or rather a pout, settled on his usually good-natured countenance.

First Granny coughed. Then she gagged. Then she inhaled with a harsh, gasping breath. Then she turned white, then green, then a bright red which might have startled and even alarmed Neely, had he not seen it all happen so often before. Presently she removed the pipe. Her face had taken on an almost masculine appearance. She rolled up one hand into a somewhat loose fist, then the other, then she placed one in alignment with the other and lifted them to her eye and peered through her simulated telescope.

Neely, in a tone of voice obviously intended as mockery, or at least mimicry, said, “‘To arms, to arms! Blow der drums and beat der trumpet! De dumdam Engels ships ben gesailing up de River!’”

The eye which was not looking through the “telescope” now looked at him, and there was something cold and cruel in it. Neely’s own eyes fell. After a moment he mumbled, “Sorry, Oude Piet. I mean Oom Piet. I mean, darn it, Heer—um—Governor—ah—Your Highness.”

The eye glared at him, then the “telescope” shifted. After a while a heavily accented and guttural voice, quite unlike his grandmother’s usual tones, came from her throat and announced, in a businesslike drone, “Shloop by der vharf in Communipaw. Beaver pelts—”

Neely clicked his tongue in annoyance. “You’re in the wrong century, darn it, now!” he cried. Again, the cold old eye glared at him. But he stood his ground. “Come on, now,” he said. “A promise is a promise. What would the Company say?”

The “telescope” shifted again. The drone recommenced. “Pier Dvendy-Zeven—Durkish Zigarettes—Zipahi brand—vhatchman gedding dronk—”

Neely’s ballpoint scribbled rapidly. “That’s the ticket!” he declared.

*   *   *

DAISY SMITH FINISHED the tuna-fish sandwich (no mayonnaise—a girl has to watch those calories every single minute) and washed the dish. For dessert she had half a pear. Then the question could no longer be postponed—what was she going to do that evening? It had all seemed so simple, back in Piney Woods, New Jersey: she would take her own savings, all $80, plus the $500 or so, most of it in old-fashioned long bills, but including the $100 Liberty Bond, which had been found in the much-mended worsted stocking under Uncle Dynus’s mattress after his funeral (the note found with it—thise is four Dasi—seemed to make traffic with the Surrogate’s Court unnecessary), and come to New York. There she would find, in the order named, an apartment, a job, and Someone-To-Go-Out-With.

She had found the first two without much trouble, but the third, which she had thought would proceed from the second, did not materialize. Her employer, Mr. Katachatourian, was the nicest old man in the world, but, though a widower, he was old; somehow the importing of St. John’s bread—his business—didn’t seem to attract young men. And if, from time to time, with trepidation, he took a flyer on a consignment of sesame seeds, or pistachio nuts, it helped Daisy’s prospects not at all. The jobbing of sesame seeds, or pistachio nuts, attracted exactly the same sort of gentlemen as did the jobbing of St. John’s bread—either middle-aged and married, or elderly.

Once, to be sure, and once only, Daisy had made a social contact from her job. Mr. Imamoglu, one of the largest exporters of St. John’s bread on the eastern Aegean littoral, had come to New York on business, had dropped in to see his good customer, The Katachatourian Trading Company, and had immediately fallen in love with Daisy. With true Oriental opulence he took her out every night for a week. He took her to the opera, to the St. Regis, to the Horse Show at Madison Square Garden, to Jack Dempsey’s restaurant, to a Near Eastern night club on Ninth Avenue, to Hamburger Heaven, to a performance of Phèdre in the original French, to the Bowery Follies, and to a triple-feature movie house on 42nd Street which specialized in technicolor Westerns, of which Mr. Imamoglu was inordinately fond.

Then he proposed marriage.

Well, the prospect of living in a strawberry-ice-cream-pink-villa in the fashionable suburb of Karşiyaka across the picturesque Bay from the romantic port of Izmir, where she would be waited on, hand and foot, by multitudes of servants, did appeal to Daisy. But although Mr. Imamoglu assured her that both polygamy and the harem were things of the past in Turkey, that, in fact, neither veil nor yashmak could be procured for love or money in all his country, still, you know, after all. And furthermore, Mr. Imamoglu was somewhat on in years; he must have been in his thirties.

And besides, she didn’t love him.

So Daisy said No.

The departure of the semidisconsolate exporter left Daisy’s evenings emptier than before. Go to church? Why, bless you, of course she went to church, every single Sunday, sometimes twice, and met a number of young men who played the organ or were in the choir or conducted a Sunday-school class. Most of them lived in the YMCA and were careful to explain to Daisy that it would be many, many years before they could even begin to think of marriage; and their ideas of a social evening were quite different from Mr. Imamoglu’s; they would arrange to meet her somewhere after supper and then go to a free illustrated lecture on the Greenland missions; followed by a cup of coffee or a Coke, followed by a chaste farewell at the subway kiosk.

Sometimes a girl thought she might just as well be back in Piney Woods, New Jersey.

What, then, to do tonight? Wash her hair? Watch TV? Catch up on her letters? Mending? Solo visit to a movie? She decided to take a walk.

A few blocks from her apartment she saw a familiar trio leaning in familiar stances against a wall. They nudged one another as they saw Daisy coming, as they had the first time and as they did every time. By now she knew there would be no wolf whistles, no rude proposals.

“Good evening, miss.”

“G’evening, miss.”

“Evening, miss.”

“Good evening,” Daisy said, pausing. “Oh, look at your new hats!” she exclaimed. “White fedoras. My goodness. Aren’t they nice!”

The three men beamed and smirked, and readjusted their brims. “All the big fellows wear white fedoras,” said the leader of the trio, whose name was Forrance.

“The big fellows?”

“Sure. Like on that, now, TV show, The Unthinkables. Al—Lucky—Baby Face—you know.”

As Forrance mentioned these people his two associates pursed lips and nodded soberly. One was quite small and suffered from nosebleeds. (“Must be a low pressure rarea comin’ down from Canada,” he would mumble; “I c’n alwees tell: Omma reggella human brommeter.”) He was known, quite simply, as Blood.

His companion, as if in compensation, was obese in the extreme. (“A glanjalla condition,” was his explanation; he indignantly denied gluttony. Taxed with overeating, he pleaded a tapeworm. “It’s not f’ me,” was his indignant cry, over a third helping of breaded pork chops and French fries; “it’s f’ the woim!”) Not unexpectedly he was called Guts. Now and then he pretended that it was an acknowledgement of personal courage.

“Al?” Daisy repeated. “Lucky? Baby Face? White fedoras? The Unthinkables? But you’re not gangsters?” she burst out. “Are you?” For, as often as she had seen them, she had never thought to ask their trade.

Forrance drew himself up. Blood slouched. Guts loomed. A look of pleased importance underlay the grim look they assumed at the question. “Listen,” Forrance began, out of the side of his mouth, an effect instantly spoiled by his adding, “miss.”

“Listen, miss, you ever hear of—” he paused, glanced around, drew nearer—“the Nafia?” He thrust his right hand into his coat pocket. So did his two lieutenants. Daisy said, No, she never did; and at once the three were cast down. Was it, she asked helpfully, anything like the Mafia? Forrance brightened, Blood brightened, Guts brightened.

“Sumpthing like the Mafia,” said Forrance. “Om really very surprised you never—but you’re from outatown, aintcha?”

“But what do you do?” Daisy demanded, mildly thrilled, but somehow not in the least frightened.

“We control,” said Forrance impressively, “all the gumball and Indian nut machines south of Vesey Street!”

“My goodness,” said Daisy. “Uh—are there many?”

“We are now awaiting delivery of the first of our new fleet of trucks,” said Forrance formally.

“Well,” said Daisy, “lots of luck. I’ve got to go now. Good night.”

“Good night, miss.”

“G’night, miss.”

“Night, miss.”

The crisp air was so stimulating that Daisy walked a considerable distance past her usual turning-around point, and then decided to come home by a different route, window-shopping on the way. And in one window she noted many good buys in linoleum and tarpaulins, ships’ chandlery, bar-and-grill supplies, and various other commodities; but somehow nothing she really needed just at the moment.

Then the flowered organdy caught her eye, but the bolt of blue rayon next to it was just as adorable. She looked up at the sign. THE ALMOST ANYTHING SECOND-HAND GOODS AND OUTLET STORE, it said. Wondering slightly, Daisy opened the door and went in. A bell tinkled. After a moment another door opened and a tall vigorous-looking woman, whose brown hair was turning grey, came in from the back. She smiled politely on seeing Daisy.

“I thought I might get some of that organdy in the window, the one with the flowers, enough for a dress.”

“Yes, isn’t it lovely? I’ll get it for you right away. Was there anything else in the window you liked, while I’m there? Leather goods, outboard motors, canned crab-meat?”

“No, just—”

“Seasoned Honduras mahogany, yerba maté, Manila hemp? Turkish cigarettes—Sipahi brand?”

“No, just the organdy, and, oh, maybe that blue rayon?”

“That’s lovely, too. You have very good taste.”

While the lady was reaching into the window, the door at the back opened again and a voice said, “Granny,” and then stopped. Daisy turned around. She saw a well-made young man with a healthy open countenance and light brown hair which needed combing. He wore a peacoat, corduroy trousers, and a woolen cap. He stared at Daisy. Then he smiled. Then he blushed. Then he took off his cap.

Daisy instantly decided to buy, not just enough material for a dress, but both entire bolts, plus so large an amount of leather goods, outboard motors, canned crab-meat, seasoned Honduras mahogany, yerba maté, Manila hemp, and Turkish Sipahi cigarettes as would leave the proprietor no choice but to say, “Well, you can never carry all that by yourself; my grandson will help you take it home,”—or words to that effect.

What actually happened was quite different. The lady emerged from the window with the bolts of cloth and said, “I really don’t know which is the lovelier,” then noticed the young man and said, “Yes, Neely?”

“I finished the, uh, you-know,” said the young man. He continued smiling at Daisy, who was now smiling back.

“Then start stacking the Polish hams,” his grandmother directed crisply. “Smash up all those old crates, pile the raw rubber up against the north wall, but not too near the Turkish cigarettes because of the smell. Go on, now.”

“Uh—” said Neely, still looking at the new young customer.

“And when you’re finished with that,” his grandmother said, “I want all the cork fenders cleaned, and the copper cable unwound from the big reel onto the little ones.”

“Uh—”

“Now, never mind, Uh—you go and do as I say, or we’ll be up all night.… Neely!”

For a moment the young man hesitated. Then his eyes left Daisy and caught his grandmother’s glance. He looked down, swallowed, scraped his boots. “Well?” Neely threw Daisy a single quick glance of helplessness, wistfulness, and embarrassment. He said, “Yes, Granny,” turned and went out the door.

Daisy, her purchase under her arm, walked home full of indignation. “There are no young men any more!” she told herself vexedly. “If they’re men, they’re not young, and if they’re young, they’re just not men. ‘Yes, Granny!’ How do you like that? Oh, I’d ‘Yes, Granny’ him!” she declared. “I’d show him who was boss!” she thought, somewhat inconsistently.

“Milksop!” she concluded. She was surprised to realize that, in her annoyance, she had bought only the flowered organdy. There was really no help for it; much as she despised the grandmother and grandson, if she wanted that blue rayon she would have to revisit THE ALMOST ANYTHING SECOND-HAND GOODS AND OUTLET STORE a second time. Too bad, but it wasn’t really her fault, was it?

*   *   *

THE MAN CALLED Tosci stepped from the yacht’s launch onto the gangway ladder and was steadied by a stubble-faced man in dungarees. “Thank you, boatswain,” he said.

“Did you enjoy your visit ashore, M. Tosci?” the bosun asked.

“Ah, New York is such a stimulating city,” said Tosci, going up the ladder. “One simply cannot absorb it on a single visit.”

He handed his hat to the man, who followed him to his cabin, where he tossed the hat aside, and turned on a device which not only blanked out the sound of their actual conversation against any electronic eavesdropping, but supplied a taped innocuous conversation to be picked up by such devices instead.

“Well?” the “boatswain” demanded.

Tosci shrugged. “Well, Comrade Project Supervisor,” he said, “they took the Treasury Notes and said they would let us know. One really could not expect more at the moment.”

“I suppose not,” the Project Supervisor said gloomily. “Do you think they will ‘take the contract,’ as I believe the phrase goes?”

“Why should they not, Comrade Project Supervisor? How could they resist the temptation? We are, after all, prepared to go as high as a hundred and eleven million dollars. It would take them a long time to collect a hundred and eleven million dollars from their, how do they call it, ‘numbers racket.’”

“About a week and a half; not more. Well, well, we shall see. Meanwhile, I am hungry. You took your time coming back.”

“I am sorry, Comrade Project Supervisor, but—”

“No excuses. Bring me my supper now. And see that the cabbage in the borscht is not soggy as it was last night, and that there are no flies in the yogurt. Do you hear?”

“Yes, Comrade Project Supervisor,” said Tosci.

*   *   *

DON SYLVESTER FITZPATRICK, Second Vice-President of the Mafia (Lower Manhattan Branch) and son-in-law of Don Lefty McGonigle, sat brooding in his tiny office in the wholesale foodstuffs district. Despite his title he was a mere petty don in the hierarchy; well did he know that it was rumored he owed even this to nepotism, and these circumstances rankled (as he put it) in his bosom. “A man of my attainments, which they should put him in the front ranks of enterprise,” he muttered, “and what am I doing? I’m in charge of the artichoke rake-off at the Washington Market!” Don Sylvester laughed bitterly; Don Sylvester sulked.

Meanwhile, in the Grand Chamber Council, discussion among the senior dons went on apace.

“Blowing up the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” said Don Tex Thompson reflectively, “might be just the thing the national economy is in need of. Unemployment among skilled laborers went up seven point-oh-nine percent in the last fortnightly period, and among unskilled laborers the figure scores an even higher percentile. The Mafia,” he said, “cannot remain indifferent to the plight of the workingman.”

“Not if it is to retain that position of esteem and preeminence to which it is rightly entitled,” said Don Morris Caplan.

“To say nothing of the excellent effect upon our National Defenses of clearing out all that obsolete equipment and replacing it with the newest devices obtainable through modern science,” Don Shazzam X (formerly Rastus Washington) declared. “The Congress could scarcely refuse appropriations in such circumstances.”

Don Wong Hua-Fu pursed his thin lips and put the tips of his six-inch fingernails together in church-steeple fashion. “The Honorable Ten Tongs do include sound common stocks in the various heavy-metals industries in their portfolio. Still,” he said, “we must consider the great burdens already borne by the widows and orphans who constitute the majority of American taxpayers.”

And Don Leverret Lowell Cabot pointed out another possible objection. “We cannot neglect our own heavy commitments in the Brooklyn Navy Yard area,” he said. “As part of our responsibility to the men who man our country’s ships we have, need I remind the Grand Council, leading interests in the bars, restaurants, night clubs, strip-joints, clip-joints, and gambling hells of the area—to say nothing of the hotels used for both permanent and temporary residence by the many charming ladies who lighten the burdens of the sea-weary sailors.”

“It’s a problem, believe me,” sighed Don Gesú-María Gomez. “Little does the public know of our problems.”

“Decisions, decisions, decisions!” Don Swede Swanson echoed the sigh.

“Gen-tle-men, gen-tle-men,” said Don Lefty McGonigle, a note of mild protest in his hoarse voice. “Aren’t we being a littul pre-ma-chua? We are not being asked to blow up duh Brooklyn Navy Yahd dis minute. We are not even being asked to decide if fit should be blown up dis minute. All we are being asked to do, gen-tle-men, is to decide if we are going to make a soyvey of de lowa East Trivva estuary from d’ point of view of its ameni-ties as a pos-si-ble headquarters faw moychant marine offices. I yap-peal to you, Grand Master, am I creckt?”

Don Alexander Borjia tore his eyes away from the Mona Lisa on the wall. The lineaments of La Gioconda never ceased to entrance him, and there was the added fillip to his pleasure that the rest of the world naïvely thought the original still hung in the Louvre, little realizing that this last was a mere copy, painted, true, by Leonardo, but by Leonardo in his ancient age. The switcheroo had been arranged by Don Alexander’s father, the late Grand Master Don Cesár Borjia, before the First World War. Copies of masterworks of art, stolen at various times from museums and private collectors around the world, adorned the other walls. But Don Alexander Borjia’s favorite remained the Mona Lisa.

“Don Lefty McGonigle is correct,” he said. “Take the contract for the survey, charge them eighty-seven million dollars for it, and when it comes time for a decision on the big question, so we’ll leave them know further. All in favor say Aye. Opposed, Nay. The Ayes got it.”

There was a silence.

“A foyda question,” said Don Lefty finally. He fingered the cabochon emerald which nestled in his watered-silk four-in-hand, and fiddled with his eyepatch.

“Speak.”

“Whom is to be ap-poin-ted to take over d’ soyvey?”

“Whom did you have in mind?”

“A young man which he oughta be given more responsibility than he’s being given, to wit, my son-in-law, the Second Vice-President of the Mafia, Lower Manhattan Branch. Woddaya say, gen-tle-men?”

The pause which followed this suggestion seemed faintly embarrassed. Then Don Swede Swanson was heard to express the opinion that Don Sylvester FitzPatrick couldn’t find the seat of his pants in the dark with both hands.

Don Lefty turned to him and pressed both his hands to his chest. “You wound me!” he exclaimed, his voice deep with suppressed emotion. “Night afta night I come home an’ my liddle Philomena is eating huh haht out. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ she asks, weeping, ‘what has everybody got against poor Sylvester? Didn’t he soyve his apprenticeship the same as everybody else? Is-int he loyal? Trustwoythy? Coyteous? Kind? So why, afta twelve years, is he still only in chahge of ahtichokes at Wahshington Mahket?’

“An’ ya know what? I don’t know what ta say ta huh! If fit was a matta of money, so I’d buy him a sand-and-gravel company, or a broory. But it’s a matta of tra-di-tion, gen-tle-men! All of youse got sons. I ain’t got no son! All I got is my liddle Philomena. A bee-uty in thuh Hollywood sense a thuh woid she may not be, but she yiz the yimage of huh sainted mother, rest her soul, an’ huh husband is like a son ta me, so when ya spit on him, gen-tle-men, it’s like ya spitting on me!”

Throats were cleared, eyes wiped, noses blown. Don Alexander essayed to speak, but was prevented by emotion. At last the silence was broken by Don Swede Swanson. “So let be Sylvester,” he said huskily. There was a chorus of nods.

*   *   *

“OF COURSE, THERE is one hazard of the chase involved in my sweet Sauncepeur’s snaffling hot broils off these outdoor grills,” Lord Grue and Groole observed. “It—shall I sweeten the air in here a bit? I’ve a packet of frankincense that my friend, Osman Ali the Somali, sent me not long ago; I wouldn’t buy incense, of course,” he said, sprinkling the pale yellow grains on the glowing embers. A pungent odor filled the cave.

Denny the Dip coughed. The Marquess donned his gauntlet and examined the falcon’s talons, particularly about the pads. “It makes the poor creature’s petti-toes sore. I’ve experimented with various nostra and it’s my considered opinion that Pinaud’s Moustache Wax is above all things the best. Is there anything more left in the flask? Shall we kill it, as you say over here? Ah, good show.”

With a gesture he motioned to Denny to take the bed; he himself reclined on a tiger skin which was stored during the day in a dry niche. Thus settled, he grew expansive. “Ah, it’s not what I’ve been accustomed to, me that used to have my own shooting lodge in the grouse season, waited on, hand and foot, by a dozen Baloochi servants; well, and now here I am, like a bloody eremite, living on me wits and the $5.60 I get from home each week.”

Denny lifted his head. “You’re a remittance man?” he inquired.

“Sort of remittance man, you might say, yes. Me nevew, Piers Plunkert, pays me two quid a week, not so much to stay away as to stay alive. ‘Avoid alcohol, Uncle,’ he writes, ‘and mind you wear your wooly muffler when the north wind blows.’ It’s not filial piety, mind, or avuncular piety, or anything like it. You see, if I pop off, he becomes the twelfth Marquess of Grue and Groole, and all the rest of that clobber—the mere thought of it makes his blood run cold. No, he’s not a Labour M.P.; his fix is worse than that. He’s one of the Angry Young Men!

“Struth! Lives in a filthy little room in South Stepney, and composes very bad, very blank verse damning The Establishment, under the pseudonym of ‘Alf Huggins.’ Well, now, I ask you—would you pay any attention to an Angry Young Man named Lord Grue and Groole? No, of course you wouldn’t. And neither would anyone else.

“Once a year I threaten suicide. ‘It doesn’t matter about me, my boy,’ I write. ‘You will carry on the name and title.’ My word, what a flap that puts him in! Always good for ten quid pronto via cablegram.”

A sound, so dim and distant that it failed to reach the ear of Denny the Dip, caused the peerless peer to break off discourse and raise his head. “Bogey,” he announced. “Policeman, to you. Weighs about a hundred and sixty and has trouble with his left arch. Neglects his tum, too—hear it rumble!”

Denny strained, could hear nothing but the traffic passing through the park, its sound rising and falling with the wind, like surf. He murmured, “What a talent you got, Grooley! What a team we’d make!”

“A team we certainly will not make!” the peer snorted. “But, as to your playing squire to my knight, hmm, well, we’ll consider it. I plan to take a brisk walk in the morning, down to the Battery and vicinage. We’ll see if you can stand the pace—no sinecure being gunbearer, as it were, to the man who out-walked The Man-Eater of Mysore. And another thing—” He thwacked the Dip across the feet with his swagger stick. “No more of this ‘Grooley’! Call me Sahib, Bwana, Kyrios, or M’lord.”

*   *   *

“HMM,” MURMURED LORD Grue and Groole, pausing and looking in the shop window. “I find that curious. Don’t you find that curious, Denny?”

Denny, panting and aching from the long trek down from Central Park, was finding nothing curious but his inability to break away and sink to rest. “Wuzzat, Gr—I mean Bwana?” he moaned. He was bearing, in lieu of gun, the Marquess’s swagger stick.

“Use your eyes, man! There, in the window. What do you see?”

The Dip wiped the sweat out of his eyes. “Leather goods?” he inquired. “Outboard motors? Canned crab-meat?” The Marquess clicked his tongue, and swore rapidly in Swahili (Up-Country dialect). “Seasoned Honduras mahogany?” the Dip continued hastily. “Flowered organdy? Blue rayon? Manila hemp?”

“Ahah! Just so, a great lovely coil of Manila hempen rope. Notice anything odd about it? No? You were pulling the wrong mendicant dodge, you should’ve used a tin cup. You really don’t see that scarlet thread running through it, so cleverly and closely intertwined that it cannot be picked out without spoiling the rope? You do see it; good. No use to ask if you know what it means; you don’t, so I’ll tell you. It means that rope was made by and for the Royal Navy. It is never sold, so it must have been stolen. No one would dare fence it in Blighty, so they’ve shipped it over here. Clever, I call that. Must look into this.”

He entered the shop, followed by Denny, who sank at once into a chair. The dog Guido, looking as cool and fresh as his master, stood motionless. Mrs. Goodeycoonce emerged from the back.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” said Lord Grue and Groole, touching the brim of his quasi-caracul cap, and giving her no chance to speak. “My name is Arthur Powisse, of the Powisse Exterminating Company. Allow me to offer you my card—dear me, I seem to have given the last one away; ah, well, it doesn’t signify. This is my chief assistant, Mr. Dennis, and the animal is one of our pack of trained Tyrolean Rat Hounds. We have just finished a rush job at one of the neighborhood warehouses, and, happening to pass by and being entranced by your very attractive window display, thought we would drop in and offer you an estimate on de-ratting your premises.”

Mrs. Goodeycoonce opened her mouth, but the Marquess swept on. “I anticipate your next comment, ma’am. You are about to say, ‘But I keep a clean house’—and so you do, so you obviously do. But do your neighbors? Aye, there’s the rub; they don’t, alas. Around the corner is an establishment of the type known as, if you will pardon the expression, a common flophouse—the sort of place where they throw fishbones in the corner and never sweep up. Three doors down is the manufactory of Gorman’s Glossy Glue Cakes, a purely animal product, on which Ratus ratus thrives, ma’am, simply thrives!”

Something flickered in Granny Goodeycoonce’s eyes which seemed to indicate she had long been aware of the proximity of Gorman’s Glossy Glue Cakes, particularly on very warm days, and found in it no refreshment of soul whatsoever.

“How often at night,” Lord Grue and Groole waxed almost lyrical, “when all should be quiet, must you not have heard Noises, eh?—and attributed them to the settling of the timbers, the expansion and contraction of the joists and beams. Not a bit of it! Rats!” His voice sank to a whisper. “Oh, the horror of it! First one grey shadow, then another—”

He took a step forward, she took one backward, he advanced, she retreated. “Then great grisly waves of them, first in the foundations, then in the cellar, then—does this door lead to the cellar? I had better examine it.”

*   *   *

LATER THAT EVENING found the Marquess and his bearer deep in the shadowy doorway of an empty warehouse. “It was the advent of that offensively wholesome-looking young chap, her grandson, that broke the spell,” the Marquess mused. “Said she’d consider it. No matter. I saw the cellar. Those crates and crates of Polish hams! Those bales of raw rubber! Turkish Sipahi cigarettes! That infinite variety of portable, seaborne merchandise!

“It can only mean one thing: the people are pukka river pirates. I know the signs—seen them on the Thames, the Nile, Hoogli, Brahmapootra, Whampoa, Pei-Ho—eheu fugaces. Nice set-up she’s got there—snug shop, tidy house, fine figger, and a widow woman, I’m sure—no sign of a husband and anyone can see she’s not the divorcing type. Hmm, well, question is: How does the lad get the stuff there? How do river pirates usually get the stuff there? Just so.”

And they had walked along the waterfront, the Marquess examining the water as intently as one of the inhabitants of the Sunda Straits peering for bêche-de-mer, the Dip plodding along to the rear of Guido, as sunken beneath the weight of the swagger stick as if it had been an elephant gun. He reflected on the day he might have spent, conning old ladies out of coins, and on a certain bat-cave he knew of, where an ounce and a quarter of Old Cordwainer retailed for the ridiculous sum of 31 cents. But there was that about the Marquess which said Hither to me, caitiff, and therein fail not, at your peril; therefore Denny plodded meekly.

“Ho,” said His Lordship, stopping, and pointing at the filthy waters of the East River, which, in a happier time, lined with forests and grassy meads, were thick with salmon, shad, cod, alewives, herring, sturgeon, and all fruits of the sea; now the waters were merely thick. “Observe,” said His Lordship. “You see how—there—the oil slick, orange peel, bad bananas, and other rubbish floats down with the tide. Whereas the flotsam rides more or less straight out from under us and joins the current at a right angle. The main current, that is. Let’s have a dekko,” he declared, and shinnied down the side of the wharf timbers almost to the water’s edge.

His enthusiasm, as he clambered up, almost communicated itself to the Dip. “Whuddaya see, Sahib?” he asked, craning.

“Enough. Tonight, when the eyes of the Blessed Houris in Paradise, yclept ‘stars’ in our rude Saxon Tongue, shine as clearly as this filthy air will allow them to, we shall follow young Mr. Goodeycoonce. Here are rupees, or whatever the juice they call them—‘quarters’? Just so. Go thou and eat, and return within the hour. As for me, a strip of biltong will do, and fortunately I took care to refill the flask. They make good whiskey in Belfast, I must say, cursed Orangemen though they be.” He raised his drink and waved it across a trickle in the gutter. “To the King over the water”—and drank. His glass eye glittered defiance to all the House of Hanover.

*   *   *

ALL WAS QUIET in the kitchen behind THE ALMOST ANYTHING SECOND-HAND GOODS AND OUTLET STORE. Granny Goodeycoonce was pasting in her scrapbook the latest letter she had received in reply to a message of congratulations sent on the birthday of one of the Princesses of the Netherlands. It read, as did all the others in the scrapbook: The Queen has read your letter with interest and directs me to thank you for your good wishes. And it was signed, as nearly as could be made out, Squiggle Van Squiggle, Secretary.

“Gee,” said Neely, looking up from a trade journal he was reading, “here’s a bait business for sale on Long Island, on the North Shore.” There was no answer. He tried again. “And a boat basin in Connecticut. ‘Must be sold at once,’ the ad says, ‘to settle estate.’ Gee.”

His grandmother capped the tube of library paste. “I suppose Princess Beatrix will be getting engaged pretty soon,” she observed. “I wonder who to. How old is the Crown Prince of Greece? No, that wouldn’t do, I suppose; he’ll be King of Greece some day, and she’ll be Queen of Holland. Hmm.” She knit her brows, deep in the problems of dynasty.

“They could be combined,” Neely suggested.

Granny Goodeycoonce looked up, amazed. “What, Greece and Holland?”

“No, I mean a bait business and a boatyard. People,” he explained enthusiastically, “would buy bait to fish with from their boats. And—”

She clicked her tongue. “The idea! A Goodeycoonce becoming a fishmonger!”

“Better than being a river pirate,” he mumbled.

“Never let me hear you use that word again!” she snapped. “The very idea! Have you no respect for the traditions of the family? Why, it makes my blood boil! And don’t you forget for one minute, young man, that I am a Goodeycoonce by descent as well as by marriage; don’t you forget that!”

“Fat chance,” Neely muttered.

His grandmother opened her mouth to release a thunderbolt, but at that moment there came a thud from the cellar, followed by a clatter.

“Oh, my land,” Granny whispered, a hand at her throat. “Rats! I should’ve listened to that Limey. Is the door to the cellar locked?”

Answer was superfluous, for at that moment the door swung open and in stepped the Limey himself, more properly described as Arthur Marmaduke Roderick Lodowicke William Rufus de Powisse-Plunkert, Baron Bogle, Earl of Ballypatcoogan, Viscount Penhokey, Laird of Muckle Greet, Master of Snee, 11th Marquess of Grue and Groole in the Peerage of England, and Hereditary Lord High Keeper of the Queen’s Bears. “Good evening, all,” he said.

Neely went pale. “I knew it!” he cried. “I knew we couldn’t go on getting away with it forever, not after almost three hundred years! That exterminator story was just a dodge—he must be from the Harbor Patrol, or the Coast Guard!”

The Marquess took his swagger stick from the quivering Denny (who had made the underground voyage with his head under his coat, for fear of bats), and smacked it gently into the palm of his hand. “You know, I resent that very much,” he said, a touch of petulance in his voice. “I will have you know that I am no copper’s nark, common informer, or fink. I—”

“You get out of my house,” said Granny Goodeycoonce, “or I’ll—”

“Call the police? Oh, I doubt that, my good woman; I doubt that entirely. How would you explain all those cork fenders in the cellar? The copper cable, raw rubber, Turkish Sipahi cigarettes, Polish hams? To say nothing of enough sailcloth to supply a regatta, a ton of tinned caviar, five hundred oka of Syrian arrack, twenty canisters of ambergris, several score pods of prime Nepauli musk, and, oh, simply ever so many more goodies—all of which, I have no hesitation in declaring, are the fruits of, I say not ‘theft,’ but of, shall I say, impermissive acquisition. Eh?”

Granny Goodeycoonce, during the partial inventory, had recovered her aplomb. “Well, you simply couldn’t be more wrong,” she said, a smile of haughty amusement on her lips. “‘Impermissive’? Poo. We have the best permission anyone could ever want. Neely, show this foreign person our permission.”

Still pale, and muttering phrases like I’ll be an old man when I get out, Neely unlocked an antique cabinet in one corner of the room and removed a flat steel case, which he handed to his grandmother. She opened it with a key of her own, and reverently extracted a parchment document festooned with seals, which she displayed to the Marquess with the words: “Look, but don’t touch.”

He fixed his monocle firmly in his good eye and bent over. After a while he straightened up. “Mph. Well, I must confess that my knowledge of Seventeenth Century Dutch orthography is rather limited. But I can make out the name of Van Goedikoentse, as well as that of Petrus Stuyvesant. Perhaps you would be good enough to explain?”

Nothing could have pleased Granny more. “This,” she said in tones both hushed and haughty, “is a Patent from the Dutch West India Company, granting to my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Nicolaes Jacobus Van Goedikoentse, and ‘to his heirs forever,’ the right of collecting customs in the harbor port of Nieuw Amsterdam. It was granted in return for Myn Heer Van Goedikoentse’s valiant help in resisting the insolent British demand for surrender in 1662. Governor Stuyvesant promised he would never forget.”

For a moment no word broke the reverent silence. Then, slowly, Lord Grue and Groole removed his cap. “And naturally,” he said, “your family has never recognized that surrender. Madam, as an unreconstructed Jacobite, I honor them for it, in your person.” He gravely bowed. Equally gravely, Mrs. Goodeycoonce made a slight curtsy. “Under no circumstances,” he went on, “would I dream of betraying your confidence. As a small effort to amend for the sins of my country’s past I offer you my collaboration—my very, very experienced collaboration, if I do say so.”

Three hundred years (almost) of going it alone struggled in Mrs. Goodeycoonce’s bosom to say No. At the same time she was plainly impressed with Lord Grue and Groole’s offer—to say nothing of his manner. It took her a while to reply. “Well,” she said finally, “we’ll see.”

*   *   *

DON SYLVESTER FITZPATRICK, Second Vice-President of the Mafia (Lower Manhattan Branch), was nervous. The survey was almost finished, and the Grand Council still hadn’t made up its mind about blowing up the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In fact, it was even now debating the project in their Chamber, at the window of the anteroom to which Don Sylvester now sat. Elation at being at long last removed from the artichoke detail had gradually given way to uneasiness. Suppose they did decide to blow it up? Would the United States Government take the same broad view of this as the Dons did? Visions of being hanged from the yardarm of, say, the USS Missouri, danced like sugar plums in Sylvester’s head.

A flutter from the crates at his foot distracted his attention. In one was a black pigeon, in one was a white. Very soon the mysterious Mr. Tosci would appear with $87,000,000 in plain, sealed wrappers, and be told the Grand Council’s decision. Even now the Mafiosi bomb squads were standing by at the ready in Brooklyn. Informed only that morning that police had put the traditional, semiannual wire tap on the Mafiosi phones, the Mafiosi had brought out the traditional, semiannual pigeon post.

“Now, remember,” Don Lefty McGonigle had instructed his son-in-law, “d’ black boid has d’ message Bombs Away awready in d’ cap-sool fastened to its foot. And d’ white boid’s got d’ message Everyt’ing Off inscribed on d’ paper in d’ cap-sool on its foot. Ya got dat?”

“Yeah, Papa,” said Don Sylvester, wiping his face.

“So when ya get d’ woid, Yes, ya leddout d’ black pigeon. But if ya get d’ woid, No, den ya leddout d’ white pigeon. An’ nats all dere’s to it. Okay?”

“Okay, Papa.”

“Om depending on you. Philomena is depending on you. So don’t chew be noivous.”

“No, Papa,” said Don Sylvester.

*   *   *

WHEN FORRANCE TOLD Daisy that the “Nafia” was awaiting delivery of the first of its new fleet of trucks he was speaking optimistically. The new truck was “new” only in the sense that it was newer than the one it replaced, a 1924 Star, which had to be thawed out with boiling water in cold weather and cranked by hand before it would start, in all weather. The Nafia treasury had suffered a terrible blow when the Cherry Street Mob, in the mid-fifties, took over the distribution of birch beer south of Vesey Street—during the course of which epic struggle Guts had his ears boxed and Blood suffered a sympathetic nasal hemorrhage; as a result, the treasury could only afford to have the single word NAFIA painted on the side panels. Still it was something.

“Rides like a dream, don’t it,” Forrance said, as they headed along South Street one bright afternoon.

“No, it don’t,” said Blood. “It liss.”

“Whaddaya mean, ‘it liss’?”

“I mean, like it liss ta one side. Look—”

Guts said, “He’s right, boss. It does liss. Them new gumball machines ain’t equally distributed. They all slide to one side.”

Forrance halted the truck with a grinding of gears. “All right,” he said resignedly; “then let’s take’m all out and put’m back in again, but evenly this time.”

So the smallest criminal organization in New York got out of its fleet of trucks to unload and reload its gumball machines.

*   *   *

TOSCI PAUSED ON the deck of the yacht to receive his superior’s final instructions. “I have counted the money,” he said. “Eighty-six million in negotiable bearer bonds, and one million in cash.”

“Very well. Perhaps they will have time to spend it all before we Take Over; perhaps not. I have instructed the Chief Engineer to test the engines in order that we can leave as soon as the decision is made. They say the bombs are set for four hours, but who knows if we can believe them?”

As if to confirm his fears, the Chief Engineer at this moment rushed on deck, grease and dismay, in equal parts, showing on his face.

“The engines won’t start!” he cried.

“They must start!” snapped the Project Supervisor. “Go below and see to it!” The Chief, with a shrug, obeyed. The Project Supervisor scowled. “An odd coincidence—if it is a coincidence,” he said. “Personally, I have never trusted sailors since the Kronstadt Mutiny.” To conceal his nervousness he lifted his binoculars to his eyes, ordering Tosci not to leave the ship for the time being. Scarcely had he looked through the glasses when an exclamation broke through his clenched lips.

“There is a truck on the waterfront,” he cried, “with the Mafia’s name on it! And three men are lifting something from it. Here—” he thrust the glasses at Tosci—“see what you can make of it.”

Tosci gazed in bewilderment. “Those machines,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like them. I don’t understand—why should the Mafia be unloading such strange devices so near our ship?”

Suspicion, never far below the surface of the Project Supervisor’s mind, and usually right on top of it, burst into flames. “They must be electronic devices to keep our engines from functioning!” he cried. “They think to leave us stuck here in the direct path of the explosions, thus destroying alien witnesses! Clever, even admirable—but we cannot allow it. Come—” he seized Tosci by the arm holding the portfolio in which the bonds and money were—“to the launch! We must see about this!” Together they rushed down the gangway ladder into the boat.

*   *   *

“WHITE PIGEON IF it’s No,” Don Sylvester mumbled. “Black pigeon if it’s Yes. White, No. Black, Yes. I got it.” But he was still nervous. Suppose he fumbled his responsibilities at the crucial moment—suppose he bungled the job? For the hundredth time his fingers examined the catches on the cage, lifted one up a fraction of an inch, closed it, then lifted the other—and there was a sudden sound from the cage.

Don Sylvester’s startled fingers flew to his mouth. The catch snapped up. The black pigeon hopped out, fluttered to the window sill, cooed again, and—as Sylvester made a frantic lunge for it—spread its wings and flew out. It soared up, up, up, circled once, circled twice, then flew off toward Brooklyn.

Sylvester stared at the air in wordless horror. Then he stared at the door of the Grand Council Chamber. Any moment now, it might open. He tiptoed over and listened.

“I say no!” a voice declared.

“And I say yes!” declared a second voice.

Helplessly, his eyes roamed the anteroom, fell at length on the telephone. Regardless of possible wiretaps, he quickly and fearfully dialed a number. “Hello?” he whispered hoarsely. “Hello, Philomena? Listen, Philomena—”

*   *   *

THE BLACK PIGEON flapped its way toward Brooklyn with leisurely strokes, thinking deep pigeonic thoughts. Now and then it caught an updraft and coasted effortlessly. It was in no hurry. But, of course, it really was not very far to Brooklyn, as a pigeon flies.…

*   *   *

“EASY DOES IT—watch my toes, ya dope—down, down.”

“Good afternoon, boys,” said Daisy. “I just came out to mail a letter to Turkey. Did you know that airmail is ten cents cheaper to the west bank of the Hellespont, because it’s in Europe? Oooh—gumballs! Let me see if I have a penny—”

“No, let me see if I got one, Miss—”

“No, lemme see, Forry—”

“Aa, c’mon, I gotta have one—”

While the three Nafiosi were plunging in their pockets, the yacht’s launch drew up to the pier. Out of it came Tosci, the Project Supervisor, and three crewmen. “What are you up to?” Tosci shouted.

“What’s it to you?” Forrance countered.

“I order you to remove those machines from this area at once!”

Instantly truculent, Forrance thrust out his jaw. “Nobody orders the Nafia what to do with its machines,” he said. “Anyways, not south of Vesey Street,” he amended.

“Put them on the truck and see that they are driven away,” Tosci instructed a crewman, who began to obey, but was prevented by Blood. The crewman swung, Blood’s nose, ever sensitive, began to bleed, and Daisy, aroused, cried, “You let him alone!” and wielded her pocketbook with a will. The crewman staggered. Guts, gauging his distance to a nicety, swung his ponderous belly around and knocked him down.

“Take the girl,” shouted the Project Supervisor, in his own language. “She is undoubtedly their ‘moll.’ We will keep her aboard as a hostage.” And while he, Tosci, and one of their men engaged the tiny syndicate in combat, the other two sailors hustled Daisy into the launch, muffling her cries for help.

*   *   *

MRS. GOODEYCOONCE, NEELY, Denny, Guido, and Lord Grue and Groole were out for a walk. No decision had yet been made on the noble lord’s proposal, but nevertheless everyone seemed to be growing somewhat closer. The Marquess was telling about the time that he rescued the Dowager Begum of Oont from the horrid captivity in which she had been placed by her dissolute nephew, the Oonti Ghook. All listened in fascination, except the dog Guido, who had heard the story before.

So taken up in his account was the Marquess that he absentmindedly abstracted from his pocket a particularly foul pipe (which respect for the lady had normally prevented his smoking in her presence), and proceeded to charge it with the notoriously rank tobacco swept up for sale to the inhabitants of the lower-income quarters of Quetta; and struck a match to it. At the first unconsidered whiff Mrs. Goodeycoonce coughed. Then she gagged, then she inhaled with a harsh, gasping breath. And next she turned white, green, and bright red.

Neely was the first to notice. “Granny!” he said. “Granny?” Then, “It must be your pipe—”

The Marquess was overcome with confusion and remorse. “Terribly sorry,” he declared. “I’d knock the dottle out, except that’s all it is, you know—dottle, I mean. I say, Mrs. Goodeycoonce—oh, I say.”

But Mrs. Goodeycoonce’s face had taken on an almost masculine appearance. She rolled up first one fist, loosely, and then the other, placed them in alignment, lifted them to her eyes, and peered out upon the River. And in a gutturally accented and heavy voice quite unlike her usual tones she declared, “Zound der alarm! Beat to qvarters! Zo, zo, wat den duyvel!”

The Marquess’s eagle-keen eyes followed her glance and immediately observed something very much amiss upon the waters.

“Stap my vitals, if I don’t believe a gel is being forced aboard that vessel over there,” he said. “Bad show, that. What?”

Instantly the possessing spirit of Peter Stuyvesant vanished and was replaced by that of Mrs. Goodeycoonce. She uttered a cry. “White slavery, that’s what it must be! And in broad daylight, too. Oh, the brazen things! What should we do?”

Neely hauled an old-fashioned but quite authentic and brass-bound telescope from his pocket and swung it around. As he focused in and recognized Daisy, struggling desperately while being taken up the gangway, he uttered a hoarse shout of rage.

“‘Do’?” he yelled. “We’ve got to save her! Come on! My boat! Let’s go!”

*   *   *

THE BLACK PIGEON passed over City Hall, dallied for a few moments in the currents around the Woolworth Building, and then pressed on in the general direction of Sand Street.…

*   *   *

AS NEELY’S BOAT zoomed under the bow of the yacht, the Marquess kicked off his shoes, seized the anchor chain, and swarmed up like a monkey. Neely and Denny were met at the foot of the gangway ladder by two crewmen, who shouted, gesticulated, and menaced them with boathooks. But in a moment the boatmen’s attention was diverted by a tumult from above. Part of this was caused by Lord Grue and Groole who, darting from one place of concealment to another, called out (in different voices) battle cries in Pathan, Kikuyu, and Demotic Greek; and part of it was caused by the alarm of the crew at being boarded—so they thought—by a host of foes.

While their opponents’ attention was thus distracted, Denny and Neely gained the deck where Neely at once knocked down the first sailor he saw. Denny’s contribution was more circumspect. Noting an oily rag in a corner he took out a match. In a moment clouds of black smoke arose.

“Fire!” cried the Dip. “Fire! Fire!”

Part of the crew promptly swarmed down the ladder into Neely’s boat and cast off. The rest jumped over the side and commenced swimming briskly toward the nearer shore.

“Hello!” Neely shouted, stumbling along the passageways, opening doors. “Hello, hello! Where are you?”

A muffled voice called, he burst in, and there was Daisy, gagged and bound, struggling in a chair. Neely cut her loose, removed the gag, and—after only a very slight hesitation, perhaps natural in a shy young man of good family—kissed her repeatedly.

“Well,” said Daisy tremulously, as he paused for breath, and then to herself, “I guess he’s not such a milksop after all.”

On deck Denny the Dip and the Marquess stomped out the smoldering rag, though not, however, in time to avoid having attracted two police boats, a Coast Guard cutter, the Governor’s Island ferry, a Hudson River Dayliner, and the New York City Fireboat, Zophar Mills, all of which converged on the yacht.

“Thank you, thank you,” called out the Marquess, between cupped hands. “We don’t require any assistance, the fire is out. You will observe, however, that officers and crew have abandoned the ship, which means that she is now, under maritime law, by right of salvage, the property of myself and my associates, both in personam and in rem.”

The failure of the engines to start, it was ascertained after a careful scrutiny, was owing to the intrusion of a large waterbug into one of the oil lines; this was soon set right. An attempt of a floating delegate of the Masters, Mates, and Pilots Union to question the Marquess’s right to take the helm of the salvaged vessel was quickly terminated by the revelation that he possessed a first-class navigation certificate in the Siamese Merchant Marine. The delegate addressed him henceforth as “Captain,” and, on departing, offered him the use of all the amenities of the Union Hall.

It was while seeing this personage off that Lord Grue and Groole observed a familiar shadow on the deck of the yacht, and, taking off his quasi-caracul and waving it, lured Sauncepeur down from what the poet Pope once so prettily described as “the azure Realms of Air.”

“She has clutched a quarry,” he observed. “Well-footed, my pretty, well-trussed. Let me have pelt, dearie—nay, don’t mantle it—there. Good. You shall have new bewits, with bells, and silver varvels to your jesses, with my crest upon them. Hel-lo, hel-lo, what have you done, you demned vulture? You’ve taken a carrier pigeon!” He opened the message capsule. “Bombs Away,” he read. “Rum, very rum. Doubtless the name of a horse, and some poor booby of a bookmaker has taken this means of evading the puritanical Yankee laws dealing with the dissemination of racing intelligence. Hmm, well, not my pidjin. Haw, haw!” he chuckled at the pun. “Denny!” he called.

“Yes, M’Lord?”

The Marquess tossed him the bird. “A pigeon for the pot. See that Sauncepeur gets the head and the humbles; afterwards she’s to have a nice little piece of beefsteak, and a bone to break.”

*   *   *

THAT, IN A way, concludes the story. The epilogue is brief. Don Lefty McGonigle, though heartbroken at the abrupt and (to him mysterious) disappearance of his son-in-law and daughter, takes some comfort in the frequent picture postcards that Philomena sends him from such places as Tahiti, Puntas Arenas, Bulawayo, and other locales where the Mafia’s writ (fearsomely hard on deserters) runneth not. The Nafia (originally organized in 1880 under the full name of the National Federation of Independent Artisans, a “Wide Awake” or Chowder and Marching Society, as part of the presidential campaign of General Winfield Scott Hancock, whose famous declaration that “the tariff is a local issue” insured his defeat by General J. Abram Garfield)—the Nafia still controls all the gumball and Indian nut machines south of Vesey Street; and revels in the publicity resultant from its members’ brief incarceration, along with Tosci, the Project Supervisor, and the three crewmen. The Cherry Street Mob would now not dream of muscling in on a syndicate whose pictures were in all the papers in connection with a portfolio containing $87,000,000; it is the Mob’s belief that the fight was caused by the Nafia’s attempting to hijack this sum.

Cornelius (“Neely”) and Daisy Goodeycoonce have purchased, out of their share of the salvage money, one of the most up-and-coming bait-and-boatyard businesses on Long Island Sound. Granny Goodeycoonce at first was reluctant, but on learning that Daisy’s mother was a Van Dyne, of the (originally) Bergen-op-Zoom, Holland, Van Dynes, she extended her blessings. It remains her view, however, that the family profession of nocturnal customs collecting is merely in abeyance, and will be kept in trust, as it were, for the children.

Granny is, in fact, for the first time in her life, no longer a Goodeycoonce, but Mistress of Snee, Lady of Muckle Greet, Baroness Bogle, Countess Ballypatcoogen, Viscountess Penhokey, Marchioness of Grue and Groole—and, presumably, Lord High Keeperess of the Queen’s Bears—although on this last point Debrett’s is inclined to be dubious. The fact that the older couple has chosen to go on a prolonged honeymoon with their yacht to the general vicinage of the Sulu Sea where, those in the know report, the opportunities for untaxed commerce (coarsely called “smuggling” by some) between the Philippines, Indonesia, and British North Borneo are simply splendid, is doubtless purely coincidental.

One thread (or at most two) in the gorgeous tapestry we have woven for the instruction of our readers remains as yet untied. This is the question of what happened to Tosci and his Project Supervisor after their release from brief confinement on unpressed charges of assault.

It is unquestionably true that their pictures were in all the papers. It is equally true, and equally unquestionable, that the Mafia frowns on publicity for those connected with its far-flung operations. Rumors that the two men were fitted for concrete spaceshoes and subsequently invited to participate in skindiving operations south of Ambrose Light, no matter how persistent, cannot be confirmed.

A Mr. Alexander Borjia, businessman and art connoisseur, questioned by a Congressional investigating committee, said (or at any rate, read from a prepared statement): “My only information about the so-called Mafia comes from having heard that it is sometimes mentioned in the Sunday supplements of sensation-seeking newspapers. I do not read these myself, being unable to approve of the desecration of the Lord’s Day which their publication and distribution necessarily involve. Nor can I subscribe to the emphasis such journals place upon crime and similar sordid subjects, which cannot but have an unfortunate effect upon our basically clean-living American youth.”

It was at or about this point that Senator S. Robert E. Lee (“Sourbelly Sam”) Sorby (D., Old Catawba) chose to light up his famous double-bowl corncob pipe, of which it has been said that the voters of his native state sent him to Washington because they could not stand the smell of it at home. Mr. Borjia (evidently as unimpressed as the Old Catawba voters by Senator Sorby’s statement that the mixture was made according to a formula invented by the Indians after whom the State was named)—Mr. Borjia coughed, gagged, gasped, turned white, green, red; and after leveling an imaginary telescope consisting of his own loosely rolled fists, proceeded (in a strange, guttural, and heavily accented voice quite unlike his own) to describe what was even then going on in the secret chambers of the Mafia in such wealth of detail as to make it abundantly clear to the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative branches of the Government (as well as to himself, when with bulging eyes he subsequently read the transcripts of his own “confession”) that he must never be allowed outside any of the several Federal caravanserais in which he has subsequently and successively been entertained.

And there let us leave him.

AFTERWORD FOR THE LORD OF CENTRAL PARK

I HAVE BEEN told (by whom?—who knows by whom?—you think I have time to ask the ID of every nut who comes down the pike?) (ans.: No.)—I have been told that Plato, somewhere, says in effect that when a carpenter makes a table he is merely copying, in wood, a table (a prototable?) which already exists in his mind. Which already exists in his mind as a sort of mental reflection of a sort of celestial table. As it were. If Plato did not call this latter an archetype of a table, it was because Plato had not read Jung. Although of course, if Plato did call it an archetype, does this mean that Plato had read Jung? If history is, as some Greek philosophers said it is, cyclical, perhaps Plato had indeed read Jung. (This, by the way is called “metaphysics.” If you had a brother, would he love noodles?) What is all this leading up to? Why are you so suspicious? The archetype or it may be the prototype of this story is a book by Robert Nathan. Chap who had lost his home during the Depression, and all his goods save for a four-poster bed, had moved the bed to a cave in Central Park. What’s the matter? Shakespeare didn’t steal from Holinshed? I wrote this story a long time ago, and on reading the as-yet-untitled ms., Lorna Moore, then wife to Ward Moore, said, “I know just the title for it: The Lord of Central Park.” And I thought she was right. And I still think so. But somewhere along the line came an editor who thought he had a better one. And so it goes. (It does go so.)

Now. Was there an actual prototype for the Lord of Central Park himself? Well … In a way it is a composite; of all the magnificent loonies which used to flourish in the days of the Ever-victorious British Raj. And in a way it is based slightly upon an actual (nonroyal) duke who was actually the last man to be tried by the House of Lords as “a jury of his peers.” The House of Lords has relinquished this right. And is Britain visibly better off? However. Not my pidgin. The duke is dead now. So never mind which one. Fe dux does not, after all, imply the duke was gay.

And as for the Manhattan exemplified in this tale of things odd and curious, there are those who say that it is not the real Manhattan. To which I say, It is a real Manhattan: I have walked its streets. And if much has been destroyed in the Manhattan of others, none of it has been destroyed in the Manhattan of my mind. The archetype remains, for archetypes do not suffer themselves to be destroyed.

(Note: Augustus Van Horne Stuyvesant has died, at a great age, after this story was written. He was the last living male descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, last Dutch Governor of New York, then New Amsterdam, New Netherlands.)