“If you hear any noises later on,” I said, “ignore them. If there is any damage, it will be paid for generously.”
He nodded and I went into the room. He locked the door behind me and his steps receded. There was silence.
The room was small, mean and tawdry. It contained a brown chest of drawers with a small mirror hanging over it, a straight wooden chair, a wooden rocking chair, a single bed of chipped enamel, with a much mended cottoncounterpane. The curtains at the single window had fly marks on them and the green shade was without a slat at the bottom. There was a wash bowl in the corner with two paper-thin towels hanging beside it. There was, of course, no bathroom, and there was no closet. A piece of dark figured material hanging from a shelf made a substitute for the latter. Behind this I found a gray business suit of the largest size made, which would be my size, if I wore ready-made clothes, which I do not. There was a pair of black brogues on the floor, size number twelve at least. There was also a cheap fiber suitcase, which of course I searched, as it was not locked.
I also searched the bureau and was surprised to find that everything in it was neat and clean and decent. But there was not much in it. Particularly there were no pearls in it. I searched in all other likely and unlikely places in the room but I found nothing of interest.
I sat on the side of the bed and lit a cigarette and waited. It was now apparent to me that Henry Eichelberger was either a very great fool or entirely innocent. The room and the open trail he had left behind him did not suggest a man dealing in operations like stealing pearl necklaces.
I had smoked four cigarettes, more than I usually smoke in an entire day, when approaching steps sounded. They were light quick steps but not at all clandestine. A key was thrust into the door and turned and the door swung carelessly open. A man stepped through it and looked at me.
I am six feet three inches in height and weigh over two hundred pounds. This man was tall, but he seemed lighter. He wore a blue serge suit of the kind which is called neat for lack of anything better to say about it. He had thick wiry blond hair, a neck like a Prussian corporal in a cartoon, very wide shoulders and large hard hands, and he had a face that had taken much battering in its time. His small greenish eyes glinted at me with what I then took to be evil humor. I saw at once that he was not a man to trifle with, but I was not afraid of him. I was his equal in size and strength, and, I had small doubt, his superior in intelligence.
I stood up off the bed calmly and said: “I am looking for one Eichelberger.”
“How you get in here, bud?” It was a cheerful voice, rather heavy, but not unpleasant to the ear.
“The explanation of that can wait,” I said stiffly. “I am looking for one Eichelberger. Are you he?”
“Haw,” the man said. “A gut-buster. A comedian. Wait’ll I loosen my belt.” He took a couple of steps farther into the room and I took the same number towards him.
“My name is Walter Gage,” I said. “Are you Eichelberger?”
“Gimme a nickel,” he said, “and I’ll tell you.”
I ignored that. “I am the fianc� of Miss Ellen Macintosh,” I told him coldly. “I am informed that you tried to kiss her.”
He took another step towards me and I another towards him. “Whaddaya mean—tried?” he sneered.
I led sharply with my right and it landed flush on his chin. It seemed to me a good solid punch, but it scarcely moved him. I then put two hard left jabs into his neck and landed a second hard right at the side of his rather wide nose. He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus.
I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor. This made me lose my balance temporarily and while I was thinking about how to regain it a wet towel began to slap at my face and I opened my eyes. The face of Henry Eichelberger was close to mine and bore a certain appearance of solicitude.
“Bud,” his voice said, “your stomach is as weak as a Chinaman’s tea.”
“Brandy!” I croaked. “What happened?”
“You tripped on a little tear in the carpet, bud. You really got to have liquor?”
“Brandy,” I croaked again, and closed my eyes.
“I hope it don’t get me started,” his voice said.
A door opened and closed. I lay motionless and tried to avoid being sick at my stomach. The time passed slowly, in a long gray veil. Then the door of the room opened and closed once more and a moment later something hard was being pressed against my lips. I opened my mouth and liquor poured down my throat. I coughed, but the fiery liquid coursed through my veins and strengthened me at once. I sat up.
“Thank you, Henry,” I said. “May I call you Henry?”
“No tax on it, bud.”
I got to my feet and stood before him. He stared at me curiously. “You look O.K.,” he said. “Why’n’t you told me you was sick?”
“Damn you, Eichelberger!” I said and hit with all my strength on the side of his jaw. He shook his head and his eyes seemed annoyed. I delivered three more punches to his face and jaw while he was still shaking his head.
“So you wanta play for keeps!” he yelled and took hold of the bed and threw it at me.
I dodged the corner of the bed, but in doing so I moved a little too quickly and lost my balance and pushed my head about four inches into the baseboard under the window.
A wet towel began to slap at my face. I opened my eyes.
“Listen, kid. You got two strikes and no balls on you. Maybe you oughta try a lighter bat.”
“Brandy,” I croaked.
“You’ll take rye.” He pressed a glass against my lips and I drank thirstily. Then I climbed to my feet again.
The bed, to my astonishment, had not moved. I sat down on it and Henry Eichelberger sat down beside me and patted my shoulder.
“You and me could get along,” he said. “I never kissed your girl, although I ain’t saying I wouldn’t like to. Is that all is worrying at you?”
He poured himself half a waterglassful of the whiskey out of the pint bottle which he had gone out to buy. He swallowed the liquor thoughtfully.
“No, there is another matter,” I said.
“Shoot. But no more haymakers. Promise?”
I promised him rather reluctantly. “Why did you leave the employ of Mrs. Penruddock?” I asked him.
He looked at me from under his shaggy blond eyebrows. Then he looked at the bottle he was holding in his hand. “Would you call me a looker?” he asked.
“Well, Henry—”
“Don’t pansy up on me,” he snarled.
“No, Henry, I should not call you very handsome. But unquestionably you are virile.”
He poured another half-waterglassful of whiskey and handed it to me. “Your turn,” he said. I drank it down without fully realizing what I was doing. When I had stopped coughing Henry took the glass out of my hand and refilled it. He took his own drink moodily. The bottle was now nearly empty.
“Suppose you fell for a dame with all the looks this side of heaven. With a map like mine. A guy like me, a guy from the stockyards that played himself a lot of very tough left end at a cow college and left his looks and education on the scoreboard. A guy that has fought everything but whales and freight hogs—engines to you—and licked ‘em all, but naturally had to take a sock now and then. Then I get a job where I see this lovely all the time and every day and know it’s no dice. What would you do, pal? Me, I just quit the job.”
“Henry, I’d like to shake your hand,” I said.
He shook hands with me listlessly. “So I ask for my time,” he said. “What else would I do?” He held the bottle up and looked at it against the light. “Bo, you made an error when you had me get this. When I start drinking it’s a world cruise. You got plenty dough?”
“Certainly,” I said. “If whiskey is what you want, Henry, whiskey is what you shall have. I have a very nice apartment on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood and while I cast no aspersions on your own humble and of course quite temporary abode, I now suggest we repair to my apartment, which is a good deal larger and gives one more room to extend one’s elbow.” I waved my hand airily.
“Say, you’re drunk,” Henry said, with admiration in his small green eyes.
“I am not yet drunk, Henry, although I do in fact feel the effect of that whiskey and very pleasantly. You must not mind my way of talking which is a personal matter, like your own clipped and concise method of speech. But before we depart there is one other rather insignificant detail I wish to discuss with you. I am empowered to arrange for the return of Mrs. Penruddock’s pearls. I understand there is some possibility that you may have stolen them.”
“Son, you take some awful chances,” Henry said softly.
“This is a business matter, Henry, and plain talk is the best way to settle it. The pearls are only false pearls, so we should very easily be able to come to an agreement. I mean you no ill will, Henry, and I am obliged to you for procuring the whiskey, but business is business. Will you take fifty dollars and return the pearls and no questions asked?”
Henry laughed shortly and mirthlessly, but he seemed to have no animosity in his voice when he said: “So you think I stole some marbles and am sitting around here waiting for a flock of dicks to swarm me?”
“No police have been told, Henry, and you may not have known the pearls were false. Pass the liquor, Henry.”
He poured me most of what was left in the bottle, and I drank it down with the greatest good humor. I threw the glass at the mirror, but unfortunately missed. The glass, which was of heavy and cheap construction, fell on the floor and did not break. Henry Eichelberger laughed heartily.
“What are you laughing at, Henry?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I was just thinking what a sucker some guy is finding out he is—about them marbles.”
“You mean you did not steal the pearls, Henry?”
He laughed again, a little gloomily. “Yeah,” he said, “meaning no. I oughta sock you, but what the hell? Any guy can get a bum idea. No, I didn’t steal no pearls, bud. If they was ringers, I wouldn’t be bothered, and if they was what they looked like the one time I saw them on the old lady’s neck, I wouldn’t decidedly be holed up in no cheap flot in L.A. waiting for a couple carloads of johns to put the sneeze on me.”
I reached for his hand again and shook it.
“That is all I required to know,” I said happily. “Now I am at peace. We shall now go to my apartment and consider ways and means to recover these pearls. You and I together should make a team that can conquer any opposition, Henry.”
“You ain’t kidding me, huh?”
I stood up and put my hat on—upside down. “No, Henry. I am making you an offer of employment which I understand you need, and all the whiskey you can drink. Let us go. Can you drive a car in your condition?”
“Hell, I ain’t drunk,” Henry said, looking surprised.
We left the room and walked down the dark hallway. The fat manager very suddenly appeared from some nebulous shade and stood in front of us rubbing his stomach and looking at me with small greedy expectant eyes. “Everything okey?” he inquired, chewing on a time-darkened toothpick.
“Give him a buck,” Henry said.
“What for, Henry?”
“Oh, I dunno. Just give him a buck.”
I withdrew a dollar bill from my pocket and gave it to the fat man.
“Thanks, pal,” Henry said. He chucked the fat man under the Adam’s apple, and removed the dollar bill deftly from between his fingers. “That pays for the hooch,” he added. “I hate to have to bum dough.”
We went down the stairs arm in arm, leaving the manager trying to cough the toothpick up from his esophagus.
THREE
At five o’clock that afternoon I awoke from slumber and found that I was lying on my bed in my apartment in the Chateau Moraine, on Franklin Avenue near Ivar Street, in Hollywood. I turned my head, which ached, and saw that Henry Eichelberger was lying beside me in his undershirt and trousers. I then perceived that I also was as lightly attired. On the table near by there stood an almost full bottle of Old Pantation rye whiskey, the full quart size, and on the floor lay an entirely empty bottle of the same excellent brand. There were garments lying here and there on the floor, and a cigarette had burned a hole in the brocaded arm of one of my easy chairs.
I felt myself over carefully. My stomach was stiff and sore and my jaw seemed a little swollen on one side. Otherwise I was none the worse for wear. A sharp pain darted through my temples as I stood up off the bed, but I ignored it and walked steadily to the bottle on the table and raised it to my lips. After a steady draught of the fiery liquid I suddenly felt much better. A hearty and cheerful mood came over me and I was ready for any adventure. I went back to the bed and shook Henry firmly by the shoulder.
“Wake up, Henry,” I said. “The sunset hour is nigh. The robins are calling and the squirrels are scolding and the morning glories furl themselves in sleep.”
Like all men of action Henry Eichelberger came awake with his fist doubled. “What was that crack?” he snarled. “Oh, yeah. Hi, Walter. How you feel?”
“I feel splendid. Are you rested?”
“Sure.” He swung his shoeless feet to the floor and rumpled his thick blond hair with his fingers. “We was going swell until you passed out,” he said. “So I had me a nap. I never drink solo. You O.K.?”
“Yes, Henry, I feel very well indeed. And we have work to do.”
“Swell.” He went to the whiskey bottle and quaffed from it freely. He rubbed his stomach with the flat of his hand. His green eyes shone peacefully. “I’m a sick man,” he said, “and I got to take my medicine.” He put the bottle down on the table and surveyed the apartment. “Geez,” he said, “we thrown it into us so fast I ain’t hardly looked at the dump. You got a nice little place here, Walter. Geez, a white typewriter and a white telephone. What’s the matter, kid—you just been confirmed?”
“Just a foolish fancy, Henry,” I said, waving an airy hand. Henry went over and looked at the typewriter and the telephone side by side on my writing desk, and the silver-mounted desk set, each piece chased with my initials.
“Well fixed, huh?” Henry said, turning his green gaze on me.
“Tolerably so, Henry,” I said modestly;
“Well, what next pal? You got any ideas or do we just drink some?”
“Yes, Henry, I do have an idea. With a man like you to help me I think it can be put into practice. I feel that we must, as they say, tap the grapevine. When a string of pearls is stolen, all the underworld knows it at once. Pearls are hard to sell, Henry, inasmuch as they cannot be cut and can be identified by experts, I have read. The underworld will be seething with activity. It should not be too difficult for us to find someone who would send a message to the proper quarter that we are willing to pay a reasonable sum for their return.”
“You talk nice—for a drunk guy,” Henry said, reaching for the bottle. “But ain’t you forgot these marbles are phonies?”
“For sentimental reasons I am quite willing to pay for their return, just the same.”
Henry drank some whiskey, appeared to enjoy the flavor of it and drank some more. He waved the bottle at me politely.
“That’s O.K—as far as it goes,” he said. “But this underworld that’s doing all this here seething you spoke of ain’t going to seethe a hell of a lot over a string of glass beads. Or am I screwy?”
“I was thinking, Henry, that the underworld probably has a sense of humor and the laugh that would go around would be quite emphatic.’
“There’s an idea in that,” Henry said. “Here’s some mug finds out lady Penruddock has a string of oyster fruit worth oodles of kale, and he does hisseif a neat little box job and trots down to the fence. And the fence gives him the belly laugh. I would say something like that could get around the poolrooms and start a little idle chatter. So far, so nutty. But this box man is going to dump them beads in a hurry, because he has a three-to-ten on him even if they are only worth a nickel plus sales tax. Breaking and entering is the rap, Walter.”