LARGELY FORGOTTEN TODAY, Everett Rhodes Castle (1894–1968) was a hugely popular short story writer for decades, appearing with regularity in the pages of the best-paying magazines in America, including Redbook, Collier’s, and The Saturday Evening Post, to which he sold his first story in 1917.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, his goal had been to be a cartoonist, but he instead became a journalist before becoming an advertising copywriter while creating gently humorous stories that mostly featured business, romance, and crime on the side.
Castle is best known for his long series about Colonel Humphrey Flack, a con man who swindles other swindlers with the aid of his partner, Uthas P. (“Patsy”) Garvey. They serve a role akin to Robin Hood figures, turning over their ill-gotten gains to the deserving while retaining a percentage “for expenses.” The magazine stories inspired a humorous, family-oriented television series for the Dumont network titled Colonel Humphrey Flack that ran from October 7, 1953, to July 2, 1954; it was revived for a thirty-nine-episode syndicated series that aired from October 5, 1958, to July 5, 1959, with the title Colonel Flack.
“The Colonel Gives a Party” was first published in the May 8, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
THE OLD GENTLEMAN with the crimson face and sweeping white mustaches picked up the telephone and asked, in an amiable bass, for the cashier. His watery blue eyes, pendent in bulging brassières of flesh, twinkled good-naturedly. His free hand, a massive paw speckled with brown spots, fondled a brandy and soda. A vintage cigar, also speckled with brown spots, rode jauntily above his huge, glistening, winged collar.
“This is Colonel Humphrey Flack in Suite Nine-o-two,” he said, after a moment. “Mr. Garvey and I are checking out in the morning. Ha….Exactly….Eh?…No, no. Everything has been eminently satisfactory. Quite. I—we are merely going South. To my place in Palm Beach. Will you see that my chit is ready immediately after breakfast? Ha….Good. Very good. Incidentally, there will be a few—hum—additions to the account this evening. I—ha—am giving a little farewell party.”
The younger man with his hands thrust deep into the trouser pockets of his blue flannel suit turned away from the window. His dark eyes smoldered with resentment.
“It ought to be a pleasure to hear you speak the truth for once,” he fumed. “But it isn’t! The Colonel gives the party! What else have you been doing twice a week for the past weeks? Poker, he calls it! Ever thought of what that gang of high-binders you’ve been having in here probably call it?” His thin, bitter laugh curdled the twilight.
The old gentleman by the telephone gestured meekly with his sweating glass. “But it’s been fun,” he protested mildly. “And at seventy-one a man must seize the few—hum—pleasures which come his way.”
Mr. Uthas Garvey’s nervous fingers flecked the ash from his cigarette. “That’s your trouble,” he snapped. “You’re living in the past. You’re a hangover from the good old days when suckers bought the Brooklyn Bridge, gold bricks, went for the wire racket, the tear-up, and all the other bewhiskered gyps of the Gay Nineties.”
The Colonel dipped his aristocratic puce beak into his glass, came up smiling. “I live by my wits,” he admitted benignly. “Ha. I admit it, frankly. But so do you, my dear chap. The pot libels the kettle, eh?”
“I’m fed up with wits!” Mr. Garvey assured him sourly. “What’s it got me in the two years we’ve been playing around together? Right now I’ve got three dollars and ten cents in cash and a case of stomach ulcers. And what have you laid by, fine-feathered friend? Two bucks and a bad case of dementia grandeur. Some balance sheet, eh?”
“It could be worse, my dear boy.”
“How?” Mr. Garvey dropped his voice to a mocking imitation of his associate’s rumble. “Get my bill ready, my good man! I’m leaving for the South, my good man.” His voice edged up. “Where does the lettuce come from to pay the bill? The railroad tickets? Where will you get the dough you’ll lose tonight trying to make a four-card flush stand up against three mop squeezers?”
“Maybe I’ll hold the three queens tonight, my dear chap. Ha. Exactly.”
“Against Billings?” Mr. Garvey’s laughter was abrupt, derisive. “That goon used to be a dealer in Moxey Manning’s gambling joint in Denver. Purdy? He just beat a rap for selling fake cemetery lots to the widow-and-orphan trade by an eyelash. And Spertz! A crooked stock rigger under indictment right now. And Dolan! A bottom-of-the-deck artist. A fine gang of playmates.”
“Don’t forget Captain Ferdinand Smythe-Calder,” the Colonel implored him meekly. “Of course, he isn’t a captain and Calder isn’t his real name. But he has a very quick brain. Ha. Indubitably.”
“As opposed to senile decay!” Mr. Garvey muttered wrathfully.
The Colonel rubbed his lower lip tenderly. “It’s heartening, the interest people take in the aged and mentally infirm,” he observed placidly. “At my last little poker party, Eddie, the bell captain, delivered some cigars. Yesterday he took the time and—hum—trouble to hint that my guests—particularly the Captain—were residents of Queer Street, as the English say. Ha. Exactly. I gathered the Captain had done the dirty, as they say, to some friend of the lad’s. A nice boy. Ha. Eddie, I mean. Did you know this was his last day at the hotel? He’s leaving in the morning. The Marines, I believe. A noble service. I must not forget to leave him a substantial remembrance.”
“And they lock up poor jerks who only imagine that they’re Nero or Napoleon or Lincoln,” Mr. Garvey mourned.
The Colonel was humming one of his favorite tunes now. A little number entitled A Violet Plucked from Mother’s Grave. It was more than flesh could take.
“For God’s sake, quit that dirge!” Mr. Garvey screamed.
“Dirge?” The watery orbs were mildly reproving. “Hardly, my dear fellow. A most interesting little lyric. By a chap named J. P. Skelly. He was known as the Bible House Plumber in his day. He wrote over four hundred songs. All on brown wrapping paper. Ha. Exactly. Most interesting, eh?”
“I’m enthralled,” Mr. Garvey snarled. “You’ve opened up an entirely new world to me.” He dropped down abruptly on a putty-colored settee that cornered the far side of the parlor. “My ulcers!” he moaned.
With quick solicitude the Colonel dug up the telephone and called for room service. He ordered bicarbonate, and then, almost as a casual afterthought, added two quarts of Scotch, a bottle of brandy, one of bourbon, charged water, ginger ale, cigarettes, and a box of cigars.
“And—hah—a large platter of turkey, ham and cheese sandwiches later, eh? About ten-thirty.”
Mr. Garvey’s stomach writhed in agony, but his mind was busy with a bitter sum in mental arithmetic. “How typical of our partnership,” he observed brightly. “Everything fifty-fifty! A dose of baking soda for Garvey and forty dollars’ worth of high living for Colonel Humphrey.”
The old gentleman ignored the crack. He gulped his drink and reached again for the telephone. “The desk,” he commanded.
When the connection was made, he requested the immediate installation of a radio. He hung up with a flourish.
“Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” Mr. Garvey quoted petulantly. Then his mind backtracked to the flourish. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Or could I be wrong?”
“About a hangover from the old days when suckers went for the wire racket and all the other bewhiskered gyps of the Gay Nineties? My dear boy!”
“Spare me those trained dewlaps quivering with reproach.” The younger man stood up and started for the array of glasses and bottles on the side table near the older man. Then he sighed and twisted away. “You don’t like radio,” he pointed out accusingly over his shoulder. “You’ve said so a hundred times. The blatting—”
“But I do like the—hah—manly art of self-defense, my dear lad,” the Colonel pointed out glibly. “And so do my guests.” The massive gold chain attached to his stomach watch twitched with logic—or something. “Young Cooney is battling Stanley Peyskisk for the light-heavyweight championship tonight. Ha. Exactly. I—I was reading about it over luncheon today. Hum. On the sports page. Then I happened to notice that the bout would also be on a local station at eleven o’clock. What a marvelous age we are living in, my dear boy! It—it makes one think, doesn’t it?”
“Cooney will cut him to pieces,” Mr. Garvey predicted. “And don’t tell me all the wise money is going on the Polack. I know it is. But wise dough has been wrong before.”
The Colonel was making himself another drink. He held glass and bottle high, squinting tenderly at the golden liquid threading into the glass. “I wasn’t thinking of the two contestants,” he chirruped blithely. “My—my mind was traveling back. Years ago we had to—hum—depend on the telegraph for sporting results—”
“I’m not interested.”
But the old goat was off, teetering on his toes, one hand tugging reminiscently at his port mustache.
Mr. Garvey sighed, shrugged his shoulders wearily, and wished the bicarbonate would arrive.
“I was thinking of the old wire racket you mentioned,” the Colonel pattered on. “Remember how it worked? Contact was made with a—hum—gullible and—and avaricious gentleman with money. It was explained to this easy mark that the contactor was a close friend or relative of a telegraph operator. This operator had agreed to hold up the news of certain race results. Ha. Exactly. At the same time he would pass along the names of the winning horses to his friend. The friend would thus be able to place a bet on the winning horse with some bookie joint—hah—after the race was won. It—it was absolutely sure. The contactor explained that he was without the necessary funds to make a big killing, quick. Hence the opportunity for the easy mark. Of course, the whole thing was a plant. After letting the mark win a few small bets, they took him in—hah—a big way and—hum—fled.”
Mr. Garvey draped his feet over the end of the settee and lit a cigarette. The tableau was one of complete disinterest.
“I was just thinking—” the Colonel went on with a sly, ruminative grin, as his younger partner sent smoke rings twisting toward the ceiling—“ha—how the magic of modern science and invention has made such small stratagems—hum—quite obsolete. You agree?”
Mr. Garvey yawned, loudly and ostentatiously.
A waiter arrived, pushing a white-clothed cart covered with bottles before him. Mr. Garvey sat up with a quick sigh of relief. The Colonel signed the check with the dash and confidence of the Federal Reserve System. He added a tip to the bottom of the card. The smile on the waiter’s face made Mr. Garvey wince as he stirred his bicarbonate.
Then the old boar was at the telephone again. This time he wanted the bell captain. “Eddie? Ha….Oh, I see. This is Colonel Flack. Will you tell him I’d like to see him for a minute as soon as he returns? Tell him it is—hah—very important.”
Garvey eyed him thoughtfully over the cloudy glass. The Colonel grinned.
Something—either the bicarbonate or the grin—made the younger man feel better. “So I was wrong, eh?”
“What time have you, my dear fellow?”
Garvey stared at his wrist. “Five to eight.”
“Your watch is three minutes slow. I checked with the telephone company just before you returned from dinner. Please set it.”
“What difference does three minutes make when—”
The Colonel returned his huge gold hunter to his white linen vest. “Timing is one of the most important things in life, my dear Garvey. In business. In—hah—the drama. Even in paying one’s hotel bill. Ha. Exactly. Quite.”
Mr. Uthas P. Garvey dragged his coat sleeve away from his wrist for the fifth time in twenty minutes. It was exactly five minutes after ten. Nearly an hour to go! Mr. Garvey lit another cigarette and sat back to brood. Why couldn’t the old goat come right out and say what the angle was? He had insisted that the younger man could carry out his part of the deal more naturally, and, consequently, with a better chance for success, if he did not know what was going on. But that was always his line.
Mr. Garvey inhaled savagely. At three minutes after eleven o’clock—not one moment sooner—he was to turn on the radio.
After pretending to fiddle with the tuning controls, he was to bring in the local station carrying the fight. What did that make him? A stooge for a cheap hotel radio, Mr. Garvey thought bitterly. The smoke from his cigarette was flat and unstimulating in his lungs. Nothing added up. The old crocodile had intimated, with one of his sly cat-and-canary smiles, that the Garvey bewilderment augured well for the success of his scheme. It proved, he said, the psychological soundness of the basic thought.
So what? So where? So how? Mr. Garvey ground out his cigarette with savage thoroughness. The old ram had intimated that his ulcers were nothing but attacks of nervous indigestion. Well, for once, Mr. Garvey hoped the old bull was right. Ulcers or no ulcers, he had to have a drink! A big drink! The six men around the green-covered table in the middle of the room paid no attention to him as he crossed to the bottle-littered table by the door.
“All pink,” a flat voice announced as he reached for rye. “Sorry, Colonel. They don’t seem to be running, do they?”
Mr. Garvey recognized the voice. He wondered if Dolan had dealt his flush from the bottom of the pack.
But apparently the Colonel entertained no such suspicion. He took a hearty pull from the glass beside him.
“That’s the third time I’ve had three of a kind topped,” he announced, with a chuckle. “Perhaps I’m allergic to the—hah—digit, eh? Ha. Quite. Well, we shall see….Your deal, Billings.”
The news caused Mr. Garvey to add still another jigger of liquor to his drink. He gulped thirstily and then sauntered over to stand behind the Colonel. His dark eyes took a swift inventory of the chips. He gulped again. They were playing five-card stud, five-dollar limit. As Mr. Garvey stood there, a little man in his shirt sleeves across the table bet a red chip on an exposed ace. He had eyebrows like Harpo Marx and a mouth like a barracuda. A tall man next to him saw the red chip with long, delicate-looking fingers and added a yellow one. His exposed card was a knave of diamonds. And Captain Ferdinand Smythe-Calder looked like a knave, Mr. Garvey thought. A very elegant knave.
A beefy man whose baldness and horn-rimmed glasses made him look like a gremlin’s wicked uncle grunted and turned down his hand. The next man did the same with a shrug and a thin smile.
The Colonel hiccuped gently. His shirt sleeves ballooned out of his bulging vest. His white mustaches seemed to reach out and clutch at the drifting smoke which brooded over the table. His eyes seemed to be at full tide.
“Purdy,” he said to the gremlin’s wicked uncle, “you ought to have more faith in the—hah—future. Ha. Exactly….Spertz, did I see you turn down a nine? Observe my little trey of hearts, gentlemen. Now take heed of my confidence in a beneficent providence.” He hiccuped again and the ashes from his cigar cascaded gently down the front of his vest. “Here is Billings’s original bet. Here is Calder’s raise. Ha. And here is my answer to them both.” He pushed another yellow chip forward.
Billings saw the raise and added a yellow chip on his own account. His eyebrows twitched greedily. Calder, the tall man with the long white fingers, lit a fresh cigarette and raised them both. The Colonel beamed delightedly.
Tight-lipped, Mr. Garvey watched the hand through. Eyebrows won it with aces back-to-back. His hairy arms, bare to the elbow, went out to garner the harvest. Mr. Garvey turned away from the slaughter with a groan he found difficult to stifle. The old mark was getting tighter by the minute.
His journey back to the grateful dimness of the putty-colored settee in the corner was broken by the shrill summons of the telephone. Mr. Garvey crossed to the instrument. A male voice asked for Colonel Flack.
“For you,” Mr. Garvey said, gesturing with the receiver.
The Colonel levered himself upward with difficulty.
“Flack here….Eh? What?…Oh, Parker! No, I haven’t given the matter any—hah—further consideration. I—I’m leaving for the South in the morning….Eh?…Yes, I know. But consider the low coupon rate, my dear man. Suppose I bought ten thousand dollars’ worth?…I know they’re high-grade bonds. Ha. Without question. But at one hundred and seven, the yield is less than three per cent….Eh?…So am I. Some later offering, perhaps.”
He pattered back to the table in the center of the room. The old chump’s guests were impatiently awaiting his return. Jackals awaiting their prey, Mr. Garvey thought. He plucked nervously at his wrist. Nearly a half hour to go.
“Broker chap,” the Colonel explained to the table. “Well, well. Perhaps the fellow changed my luck. Ha. Eh?…Another stack of chips, my dear Calder.”
This washes me up, Mr. Garvey assured himself fervidly. When I get out of this jam I’m traveling on my own.
His ulcers began to yell. A waiter brought two great platters of sandwiches. Mr. Garvey closed his eyes. The next time he looked at his watch, it was one minute after eleven.
He arose and stretched with elaborate carelessness. The Colonel, busily engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to draw to an inside straight, seemed to miss the movement completely. Mr. Garvey moved aimlessly in the direction of the radio.
“Now they’re out in the middle of the ring, ladies and gentlemen. One minute and fifteen seconds of this fifteen-round bout for the light-heavyweight championship is over. And the boys—”
The Colonel bounded out of his chair. “Bless my soul!” he sputtered. “The Cooney-Peyskisk go! I—I had forgotten all about it….Leave it on, my dear Garvey! Leave it on!”
“Cooney will cut that guy to pieces,” Mr. Garvey predicted for the second time that night.
The Colonel’s eyes popped with interest. “You think so, my dear boy? Really? Of—of course, I don’t know much about boxing myself. Next to—hah—nothing. But Eddie, the bell captain here, was talking about it to me this morning. He seems to think it will be all Peyskisk. Ha. Without a doubt. Apparently, he had made quite a substantial wager on the chap. Betting with the wise money was the way—hum—he put it.”
Mr. Garvey stared at the mountain of chips before Billings, swiveled his eyes to the Captain’s pile and went on to take in the substantial assets of the remaining guests.
“I’m afraid the poor chump doesn’t know any more about wise money than you do, Colonel,” he sneered.
Billings spoke around his cigar, “Meaning what, Claude High-pocket?”
Mr. Garvey felt the color flood his face at this insulting reference to his financial conservatism. But the Colonel halted the angry retort which rose to his younger associate’s tightly pressed lips.
“Now, now, gentlemen!” he pleaded hastily. “No personalities, eh? A—a friendly little gathering. My—my young friend here is not well. He—hum—suffers from ulcers….I—I’m sorry if his dislike for cards seemed to reflect on your—er-r—luck, Billings. Ha….I’m sure nothing of the kind was intended, eh, my dear boy?”
Mr. Garvey eyed him stonily, obstinately.
“How about a little bet on the outcome of the event?” the Colonel proposed, obviously covering the awkward situation as best he could. “Garvey, here, likes Cooney. But he’s not a—hah—betting man. The wise money seems to prefer Peyskisk. Ha. Exactly. Whom do you gentlemen prefer? Billings? Purdy?”
The radio bellowed: “Cooney lands two light rights to the face. Another right and a left. The Polished Pole took the last two going away. Now both men are back in the middle of the ring. Now it’s Peyskisk who’s handing it out. A looping right which caught Cooney on the side of the face, and then two hard lefts to the champion’s midriff and one in the face. They go into a clinch. Peyskisk—And there’s the bell, for Round One, ladies and gentlemen. Now George Maxwell for Bellows Shaving Lotion. Come in, George.”
“Sounds like an even match.” The drawling observation came from the elegant Captain lounging in the doorway leading into the bedroom. The bathroom lay beyond the bedroom. The self-styled military man had carelessly sauntered out of the parlor just as the Colonel’s challenge had been pinched off by the increased volume of the radio.
The Colonel turned, pivoting on another hiccup. “How about you, Calder?”
The Captain lit a languid cigarette. “I always trail along with the wise money your friend Mr. Garvey seems to dislike,” he said, with a smile which bared even white teeth beneath a small elegant mustache. “I like Peyskisk. Would you like a hundred or two on Cooney, just to put a little extracurricular interest into the broadcast?”
“I’ll take five hundred!”
“You’re a—a—Don’t be a fool!” Mr. Garvey snarled. “The odds are seven to five on Peyskisk. I—I was only giving you my personal opinion.”
“I have great confidence in your—hah—fistic judgment, my dear boy,” the Colonel chided him with unheeding cheerfulness. “Ha. Hic! Indeed.” His watery eyes swiveled challengingly around the room. “Any other supporters of—hah—the Pole?”
“I’ll take a couple of hundred,” the gremlin’s uncle said eagerly. He spoke after one quick look at the Captain.
“A hundred,” Dolan, the alleged bottom-of-the-deck artist, said quickly. He licked his gray lips.
“Calder usually knows what he’s doing,” Spertz said over a poised siphon. He made the observation sound like a question. “A hundred for me,” he said suddenly.
Garvey heard them through an agony of apprehension. He faced the teetering old fool savagely.
“Don’t be a patsy!” he cried with passionate earnestness. “You—you’re tight as a fiddler’s toupee! I—I only said I thought Cooney—”
“You mustn’t—hah—deprecate your—er-r—talents, my dear Garvey,” the old monkey reproved him. He tugged gently at his port mustache. “No. No. Besides, I have a hunch that Cooney may change my—hum—recent bad luck.”
“…The referee is now between the two men,” the staccato voice of the announcer rattled on as the Colonel paused to lift his glass. “Cooney’s right eye apparently was slightly hurt by Peyskisk in that volley during the closing seconds of the first round. He keeps brushing it with his right. Now the contender tries two lefts to the chin and another looping right to the head. Now they’re trading rights and lefts to the body. The Pole tries a left hook and the men go into a clinch as the bell rings….Now back to George Maxwell and a message from the makers of the shaving lotion with a lift.”
Mr. Garvey suddenly resolved never to use a bottle of the stuff as long as he lived. Words foamed up to his lips and were smothered in helpless rage. While the rest of the party munched sandwiches and lapped up liquor, the announcer spattered the room with four more rounds of give and take. Too much take on the part of Cooney to keep the fever from glistening in Garvey’s eyes.
“Telephone down for another spot of soda, my dear chap,” the Colonel begged him after the fifth round. In this round Cooney’s right optic was realistically described by the announcer as bearing a startling resemblance to an oyster with high blood pressure.
“I’m having a double rye,” Mr. Garvey informed him thickly. He started recklessly for the array of bottles and glasses. He was busy pouring when the seventh round began. In the middle of the operation he replaced both the bottle and the glass on the table and started unsteadily for the bedroom. Cooney was down. He was up at the count of five, however, but Mr. Garvey did not stop. He went through the darkened room and snapped on the lights in the bathroom. For several minutes he ran cold water on his wrists. Then he sprinkled some of the Colonel’s imported toilet water on his forehead and eyelids.
Back in the bedroom he sat down on the edge of the far bed and lit a cigarette. He wondered how many years a first offender got under the Defrauding-an-Innkeeper Act.
Time has a hackneyed habit of standing still in moments of great mental stress. Mr. Garvey had no idea how long he sat there on the bed, before the door leading into the parlor was suddenly flung open to flood his harassed, weary eyes with a blaze of golden radiance.
“Garvey! My dear boy! Where are you? Ha. Come out! Come out immediately! Your judgment has been vindicated! Ha. Completely! Cooney retains his title!”
Garvey made him out finally. The Colonel stood on the threshold. The light from behind caught the triumphant ends of his mustaches and danced gleefully on his huge bald pate.
“What—” he managed to say before the Colonel was off again.
“In the eleventh round, my dear boy. Ha. A miracle! Exactly. Without a doubt. The—the Pole had battered him to a—hum—pulp. Ha. Quite. But our boy did not give up. No! No! The—the typical American spirit. He kept boring in. And then a lucky punch! A—a truly lethal affair. Come out, my dear fellow. Our—our guests wish to congratulate you on your—hum—acumen.”
The world rolled gently off Mr. Garvey’s chest. He stood up. He tugged his red-and-green foulard out from under his ear, whither it had slipped during his stay in the bathroom.
“I told you Cooney would cut him to pieces,” he said for the third time since dinner.
But he still was not done with the observation. Two hours later, when the parlor of Suite 902 was a quiet shambles of empty bottles, sandwich fragments, ashes, and scattered poker chips, he perched himself on the arm of one of the room’s easy chairs and repeated it again.
The Colonel was seated at the big table in the center of the room, busy with pencil and paper as he hummed another of his favorite tunes. It was The Letter Edged in Black.
For a moment Mr. Garvey digressed. “How much?” he inquired eagerly.
The Colonel sat back in his chair and removed the heavy horn-rimmed reading glasses which he had adjusted at the start of his book-keeping.
“After—hah—adequate allowance for my poker losses of recent weeks and setting aside all moneys due and owing our hostel,” he reported with a broad smile, “I find that we are in the black to the extent of three hundred and fifteen dollars and—hum—sixty-five cents. Ha. Three hundred and fifteen dollars. Not bad, eh? By the way, did you notice how the other guests seemed to—hah—regard the gallant Captain with marked disfavor after the fight?”
Mr. Garvey’s nod started out to be gay enough, but before it could flower fully it became slightly frostbitten.
“Suppose Cooney had lost?” he inquired with a shiver.
The Colonel had risen from his bookkeeping labors to mix himself a nightcap. His huge head twisted benignly at the question.
“Eh? Then I wouldn’t have bet on him, my dear boy. I would have maneuvered the situation so that my money would have been on Peyskisk. Ha. Exactly. Perhaps by offering odds which would have appealed to my—hum—sporting guests. Or, if that failed, I had in mind suggesting that each of us put one hundred dollars into a pool. The money to go to the man picking the winning round. Or then I might have recouped our battered fortunes by betting them I could name the round in which the fight would end. Ha. I fancy this would have got me some—hum—juicy odds.”
Mr. Garvey slid down into the easy chair.
“Am I gazing at a seventh son of a seventh son?” he demanded incredulously. “Am I looking at Swami Flack in the flesh? Were those hiccups of yours really phonies? Are you standing there telling me in all sobriety that you knew Cooney was going to win that fight in the eleventh round by a lucky punch?”
The old gentleman stirred his drink thoughtfully. He looked like a sporting peer after a hard day at Ascot. “Put it this way, my dear boy,” he said blandly: “I did not know Cooney was going to win the fight—in advance. Ha. No. No. But I did know that he had won the fight in the eleventh round—before I made any wagers.”
Mr. Garvey thought of something. “That telephone call! Parker!”
The Colonel took a long, appreciative pull at his nightcap.
“Eddie, the bell captain,” he corrected the younger man softly. “He told me it was Cooney.”
“But that couldn’t be,” said Mr. Garvey. “The—the fight didn’t go on until eleven o’clock.”
The Colonel brushed the golden drops from his mustaches. His watery eyes twinkled merrily. “Earlier in the evening,” he rumbled benignly, “you called me a confidence man. Ha. Eh? Exactly. I—I protested that I lived by my wits. The two aren’t necessarily synonymous. This evening—my little party—is a case in point. I arranged it after I noticed by the paper that this fight was being carried by the local radio station, starting at eleven o’clock. Ha. Exactly. It struck me that this was rather a late hour for a—hum—bout of this importance.”
“A difference of time could account for that,” Mr. Garvey pointed out.
“It could, but it didn’t. I took the trouble to call up the radio station and inquire. I was informed that because of prior commercial commitments the station could not carry the fight at ten o’clock—when it actually occurred. So they were carrying an electrical transcription of the entire affair, exactly as it occurred, at eleven o’clock. Ha. Exactly. A rebroadcast.”
A quick grin broke like a breaker over Mr. Garvey’s tanned face. “That was why you were so particular about the time I turned the radio on. If we had caught the first minutes of the broadcast, we—your guests would have realized that it was a transcription and—and—” He paused. “I suppose you cut off the closing announcement too?”
“Exactly.”
Mr. Garvey stood up. His ulcers had disappeared.
“Clever!” he said admiringly. “And—and my natural anxiety made it look like the McCoy, didn’t it?” he added with thoughtful modesty.
“A great job, my dear boy,” the Colonel agreed, and Mr. Garvey’s suddenly suspicious eyes found only guileless enthusiasm in the crimson face behind the words. “Splendid. Ha. Quite. But perhaps it didn’t work quite the way I’ve just described it at all.”
The younger man sat down suddenly. “I—I don’t get you.”
“Ask yourself these two questions,” the old gentleman suggested solicitously: “Wouldn’t it have been rather—hum—dangerous for me to assume that a group of gamblers—to—hah—name them gently—would not know the exact time of a big-time bout?”
“Lots of people don’t stop to think about things they read in the paper,” Mr. Garvey pointed out. “I didn’t.” Then he added hastily, “What’s the second question?”
“Didn’t it strike you that the boys were a bit—hah—avid to get their money down on Peyskisk?”
“That was Calder. He’s a smart cooky. You said so yourself. They followed his lead.”
“Exactly.”
Mr. Garvey lit a cigarette. He blew smoke at his partner. “So what?”
The Colonel beamed over his fondly clasped nightcap. Then he sat down and crossed his plump knees tenderly. “Eh? Oh. So I took out some insurance, my dear boy. Ha. Just in case. Or I protected my exposed flank, as they say in—hah—military circles.”
“I get my military news over the radio,” Mr. Garvey pointed out sourly.
Colonel Humphrey Flack ignored both the acid and the observation. “Put yourself in the wily, quick-thinking Captain’s shoes,” he urged gently. “A slightly—hah—inebriated, innocent old gentleman of means with whom he has been playing cards—at a profit—is leaving town. At a farewell party given by this old gentleman a radio happens to be turned on about eleven o’clock, just in time to catch the opening minutes of the first round of a prize fight. The wily Captain, being a follower of such things, knows the fight really started at ten o’clock, hence this must be a rebroadcast. Luckily, this fact is not apparent, because the radio was not tuned in when the opening announcement was made. Ha. Quite. Now! Even as the wily Captain is figuring on how to turn this situation to his financial—hum—advantage, the old gentleman hands him the idea on a platter—with a convincing hiccup.”
“The bet?”
“Right. So what happens? The Captain saunters unobtrusively in the direction of the bathroom. But his real destination is the telephone in the bedroom. The radio will cover his—er-r—quick, guarded inquiry. A moment later he emerges. He offers to bet on the man whom he has just been told has won the fight. Exactly. Peyskisk! He is betting on a sure thing. He can’t lose. The fight is over. Ha. Hum. A wink is as good as a word to his friends. Ha. Indubitably. They hasten to—hah—get in their wagers.”
“The guy he telephoned gave him the wrong boy.” Mr. Garvey’s dark head nodded understandingly. Then he frowned. “But it still doesn’t add up,” he protested plaintively. “How could you be sure Calder would get the wrong boy? How could you control his call? He might have called some pal or a newspaper office or a dozen different gambling joints?”
The Colonel finished his nightcap and arose. He pulled out his stomach watch and stared at it.
“Nearly two o’clock, my dear chap. And we must be up and away to the sun-drenched Southland in the morning….Eh? Oh, the telephone call, of course. It was very simple. Elementary. I had stressed the fact that Eddie, the bell captain, had a substantial wager on the fight, that he was a rabid boxing enthusiast. Remember? To be sure. Calder had no time to waste. The sucker might cool off while he was waiting around for a number. Ha. Then there was always the danger that if he did too much talking he might be overheard. Against all this was the simple, quick, and direct path! Pick up the telephone. Ask for the bell captain. Inquire about the fight. A few seconds and the whole thing was over. It was just the bait for a wily captain.”
The Colonel lowered his eyes modestly.
“And of course with Eddie having it in for the guy anyway and leaving to join the Marines in the morning—”
Mr. Garvey grinned. Then he thought of something else. “What gave you the idea, in the first place?”
The Colonel looked longingly at the bottle-covered table, sighed and turned resolutely toward the bedroom. “I—I was living in the past, my dear boy,” he chuckled from the threshold. “Ha. Just so. Remember our talking about the old wire racket earlier in the evening? How the—er-r—confidence man ensnared his victim by pretending to get advance notice of racing results. Ha. I see you do. Well, I just got to wondering how one of the wonders of—hum—modern science—like radio, for instance—might be adapted to this be-whiskered gyp of the Gay Nineties—in reverse, so to speak.”