DESPERATE NEWSPAPERMAN
Thorpe Richendollar, seated, in Mexican costume, in front of Multimillionaire Silas Crabtree—“The Man Who Couldn’t be Interviewed”!—hoped devoutly that this desperate ruse he had devised to obtain the impossible would work. For, unless it did, he was “out”—from the New York Blade—after 30 days of tentative trial—as a “special writer”; and a man who is “out” of a job—and out of money too!—cannot buy his only sister, whom he loves, a surgical operation which she badly needs.
Indeed, he was wondering at this very moment just how soon he would be “out”—not from that precarious job—no!—but from this very house!—did he fail to live artistically up to his flamboyant getup consisting of one suit of brown corduroy, with short jacket and with pants flaring wide at the bottoms—one screaming pink silk shirt—and one high cornucopia-shaped black velvet hat, broad of brim, and heavy because studded all about with pseudo-silver dollars!
The hard-faced old man with the sharp face and the beady twinkling eyes, seated in black silk dressing gown, Richendollar’s “affidavits” and “musician’s salary check” on his lap, continued to survey Richendollar—as well as the latter’s jet-black hair, cut low at the temples, and jet-black eyes—questioningly under the generous light which poured down from the antique reading lamp onto the highly polished mahogany library table. Light which, indeed, seemed actually to splash forth onto the letter pad of tooled leather—the row of books, between book ends, further out on the table—to the two of them talking—even to the grandfather’s clock in the corner, whose gilt hands stood at 20 minutes of midnight. Silas Crabtree was speaking.
“And so, my Mexican friend, you feel that you, too, being foreign-born—and having entered the United States within a year—as both these fine affidavits from the highest men in New York City affirm—would like to enter my contest, which closes—” He glanced over his shoulder at the clock—“at 12 tonight?”
“I deed theenk so—yas,” said Thorpe Richendollar, speaking in the dialect of Don Rodriquez de la Cueva, the high-class Spanish planter, who, in the play The Lights o’ London, became involved with a London siren and nearly went to the gallows!—a dialect which Richendollar virtually could speak in his sleep due to his having played Don Rodriquez exactly 51 times when the college junior play had gone on tour of the other colleges. And thankful he was, at this moment, that the multimillionaire in front of him didn’t know that Mexican-Spanish was somewhat different from the broken high-Spanish of the printed play-script of The Lights o’ London!
“Well,” Silas Crabtree was saying, “you have such right—to enter my contest—in view of the fact that I’ve advertised it in the personal columns of a paper which has a mail edition—and therefore I have to live 100 per cent up to the United States postal laws. Yes.”
“An’ might I ask, sair,” said Thorpe Richendollar humbly, “w’y you ’ave con-test-tants com’ onlee be-tween tan o’clock an’ meednight?”
“Why? Why, because, from boyhood on, I’ve found that my senses are most acute in those hours. And now that it’s been discovered that cosmic rays fall heavier in those hours, it’s obvious that the rays affect human intelligence. My theory is borne out by no less than Prof—but skip it—such things as cosmic rays would be over your head.”
“Ah,” breathed Thorpe Richendollar to himself only. “‘Multimillionaire Believes Cosmic Rays Make Man Keenest From 10 to Midnight’!”
The other, however, was handing him back the check—that beautifully synthetic check Richendollar had brought with him.
“Here, take your check, de Montesquez, before I forget and file it with your affidavits and, of course, your contest entry. Too bad your night-club cashier ran out of funds just as he was about to cash it. I might cash it for you—only we keep little or no currency in the mansion here. And so—you’re a musician, eh? Well, what do you think of the tempered scale?”
“Ow!” said Richendollar to himself, “I’m in deep water now!” But he spoke. “I theenk, sair, eet ees wrong to tamper scale.”
“Do you? Well, I think it should be tempered more, by God! I even think it should be reduced to—well, the day will come, mark my words, when the musical scale will be cut down to 6 notes—no more! When mankind finds out that 12 notes make too many wrong emotions. And—but skip it—your business, as a night-club fiddler, is to make emotions.”
“Ah!” said Richendollar to himself, “‘Multimillionaire Believes Mankind Will Simplify its Music’! Boy—oh boy!” And for lack of another lead question—and because the convenient subject of “sound” had been touched upon—he hastily asked: “Wall, spikeeng av mooseec mak’ wan theenk av raddio, an’ w’at you theenk, Meest’ Crabtrec, av leetle-a storee what run tonight een seendy’cated sci’ence-nooz saction av Blade noos’paper, w’at tell ’bout mail-order raddio what foun’ to have got a—a soun’ fucus outside sheez nose—an’ w’en man he talk into eet, raddio she shout back words in wan voice—an’ eef man he talk eento her in another peetch—she geeve deef’rent voice, dam’ eef she don’—axcoos, pliz.”
“All hooey,” retorted the other scornfully, “like all scientific stories—in all newspapers. Absolutely nothing to it.”
“Hm!” mused Richendollar. “Wonder how that line would go: ‘Multimillionaire Declares All Newspaper Science Hooey!’? Not so hot, that one.” But because he had seen that amazingly weird phenomenon demonstrated tonight, in the Blade offices, with a small Montwentry-Gord all-metal radio, by a trio of skeptical editors who had not believed their own scientific item, credited to no less than the famous Science Review—and just receiving its first and prior printing in New York City before being syndicated westward—he could not help but try to dispel that “hooey.” “Bot eez sam’teeng to it, sair,” he expostulated. “For I deed see she damonstrated today, sair, een—een—wall, een w’ere our orchestra for our night club she practice. Wan man—he woz cornatteest—he did stoop down—did talk in theez raddio—and out roar voice like come off raddio broadcast!—yet weeth deef’rent voice each peetch he use. Noozpaper deed say treeck woz evolve’ by New York gambler who use’ to end heez parfor-mance weeth elactric bulb what go ‘bang’ een hees belly.”
“Oh, bah!” grunted the other. “Ventriloquism—both on the part of him—if he ever existed—and on the part of your damned cornet blower. That’s quite all there was to it.”
“Boy oh boy oh boy,” mused Richendollar, “but this baby sure is a die-hard! Disputes the validity of a news-story authentic enough to be syndicated—and then explains away even a demonstration of it. Good—night! If he was a judge, on the Criminal Bench, I’d sure hate to be caught 5 miles away from a murdered pastry-maker—with a half-eaten cream puff in my pocket!” But aloud he said only, “Mebbe woz vantreel’quism—yas. I deed not theenk av that.”
The multimillionaire who, during Richendollar’s expostulatory words, had reached out to the table end, withdrawn a drawer, and placed therein Richendollar’s “affidavits,” taking out therefrom, at the same time, a single sheet of paper and a fountain pen, was now thrusting forward the latter two objects. “Well, here’s one sheet of paper—as per the rules of the contest—and pen; and so—but you know, don’t you, the prize—a tract of land?”
“I don’ know w’at track fram lan’—no, sair—but I know prize eez track fram lan’. But lan’ is bast stoff in world. Man in Mexico mak’ leeving on small piece fram lan’. An’—bot w’at you theenk, sair, av Amer-ee-can Agricult’ Sec’tary—who som’ time back did leemit prodoction on lan’ so man he catch more monee for pro-dooce?”
“I think the theory was nuts—and the present Agricultural Secretary who did it is a damn fool. I’m of his party, God help me, but he’s the scrooey note in the party. And someday, mark my words, he’ll be shown in the American school-books with a dunce-cap on his head, for—but skip it. You’re a limitationist by very virtue of being a Mex—for all Mexicans produce no more on a piece of land than they can eat!”
Quite aside from being insulted, Richendollar almost shouted with glee. And to himself only he said: ‘“Multimillionaire Says Agricultural Secretary Williams is World’s Biggest Fool’! Boy oh boy am I getting it? And getting Erminie that operation as well!”
“All right then,” Crabtree was saying, “spin your chair around there—yes—to that leather desk pad—and write me a poem on—well, your subject will be, as all the others have been, individual for you alone; in fact, since I interviewed you tonight in this library, the subject will be this very room.”
“Aha!” thought Richendollar. “Wise guy! A different room each time—no chance for one contestant to shove on the subject to the next.”
“Theez’ room, sair—yes.”
He moved around so as to get his paper under the rich yellow light from the lamp flooding down on the highly polished table. And sucked the end of his fountain pen very realistically. Having all his life been able to write a poem—of sorts!—on anything from a dead rat to a back-end street—a talent which was worth exactly zero at earning a cent—he knew he could not quite reveal that talent here. The grandfather’s clock struck as he chewed. He counted the strokes—10 of them—though the hour was a quarter of midnight. The old man spoke.
“Yes,” he said dryly, “I know it strikes one and three quarter hours off. In fact, introduce that feature in your entry too, de Montesquez!”
“Ow!” said Richendollar to himself. “Making it tough, eh? But if I can’t beat all the wops and Greeks and whatnot who’ve been in this 50-room house trying—I’m a dog.”
And with a show of laboriousness, he proceeded to write!