Bagombo Snuff Box (5 page)

As their numbers decreased, he began to slow their exits in
order to savor them. Now Ann Sheridan, the next-to-the-last in line, astride a
western pony, tapped him on the forehead with a lightbulb to remind him of the
name of an important contact at General Electric—Mr. Bronk. She blushed under
his gaze, dismounted, and dissolved.

The last stood before him, clutching a sheaf of papers.
Alfred was stumped. The papers seemed to be the only clue, and they recalled
nothing. He reached out and clasped her to him. “Now, baby,” he murmured, “what’s
on your mind?”

“Oh, Mr. Moorhead,” sighed Ellen.

“Oh, gosh!” said Alfred, freeing her. “Ellen—I’m sorry, I forgot
myself.”

“Well, praise be, you finally remembered me.”

A few days ago, just before I came up here to Newport on a
vacation, in spite of being broke, it occurred to me there isn’t any profession—or
racket, or whatever—that takes more of a beating from its clients than real
estate. If you stand still, they club you. If you run, they shoot.

Maybe dentists have rougher client relationships, but I
doubt it. Give a man a choice between having his teeth or a real estate salesman’s
commission extracted, and he’ll choose the pliers and novocaine every time.

Consider Delahanty. Two weeks ago, Dennis Delahanty asked me
to sell his house for him, said he wanted twenty thousand for it.

That afternoon I took a prospect out to see the house. The
prospect walked through it once, said that he liked it and he’d take it. That
evening he closed the deal. With Delahanty. Behind my back.

Then I sent Delahanty a bill for my commission—five percent
of the sale price, one thousand dollars.

“What the hell are you?” he wanted to know. “A busy movie
star?”

“You knew what my commission was going to be.”

“Sure, I knew. But you only worked an hour. A thousand bucks
an hour! Forty thousand a week, two million a year! I just figured it out.”

“Some years I make ten million,” I said.

“I work six days a week, fifty weeks a year, and then turn
around and pay some young squirt like you a thousand for one hour of smiles and
small talk and a pint of gas. I’m going to write my congressman. If it’s legal,
it sure as hell shouldn’t be.”

“He’s my congressman, too, and you signed a contract. You
read it, didn’t you?”

He hung up on me. He still hasn’t paid me.

Old Mrs. Hellbrunner called right after Delahanty. Her house
has been on the market for three years, and it represents about all that’s left
of the Hellbrunner family’s fortune. Twenty-seven rooms, nine baths, ballroom,
den, study, music room, solarium, turrets with slits for crossbowmen, simulated
drawbridge and portcullis, and a dry moat. Somewhere in the basement, I
suppose, are racks and gibbets for insubordinate domestics.

“Something is very wrong,” said Mrs. Hellbrunner. “Mr. Delahanty
sold that awful little cracker-box of his in one day, and for four thousand
more than he paid for it. Good heavens, I’m asking only a quarter of the
replacement price for my house.”

“Well—it’s a very special sort of person who would want your
place, Mrs. Hellbrunner,” I said, thinking of an escaped maniac. “But someday
he’ll come along. They say there’s a house for every person, and a person for
every house. It isn’t every day I get someone in here who’s looking for
something in the hundred-thousand-dollar range. But sooner or later—”

“When you accepted Mr. Delahanty as a client, you went right
to work and earned your commission,” she said. “Why can’t you do the same for
me?”

“We’ll just have to be patient. It’s—”

She, too, hung up, and then I saw the tall, gray-haired
gentleman standing in the office doorway. Something about him—or maybe about me—made
me want to jump to attention and suck in my sagging gut.

“Yessir!” I said.

“Is this yours?” he said, handing me an ad clipped from the
morning paper. He held it as though he were returning a soiled handkerchief
that had fallen from my pocket.

“Yessir—the Hurty place. That’s mine, all right.”

“This is the place, Pam,” he said, and a tall, somberly
dressed woman joined him. She didn’t look directly at me, but at an imaginary
horizon over my left shoulder, as though I were a headwaiter or some other
minor functionary.

“Perhaps you’d like to know what they’re asking for the
place before we go out there,” I said.

“The swimming pool is in order?” said the woman.

“Yes, ma’am. Just two years old.”

‘And the stables are usable?” said the man.

“Yessir. Mr. Hurty has his horses in them now. They’re all
newly whitewashed, fireproof, everything. He’s asking eighty-five thousand for
the place, and it’s a firm price. Is that within your price range, sir?”

He curled his lip.

“I said that about price range, because some people—”

“Do we look like any of them?” said the woman.

“No, you certainly don’t.” And they didn’t, either, and
every second they were looking more like a
four-thousand-two-hundred-fifty-dollar commission. “I’ll call Mr. Hurty right
away.”

“Tell him that Colonel and Mrs. Bradley Peckham are interested
in his property.”

The Peckhams had come by cab, so I drove them to the Hurty
estate in my old two-door sedan, for which I apologized, and, to judge from
their expression, rightly so.

Their town car, they related, had developed an infuriating
little squeak, and was in the hands of a local dealer, who had staked his
reputation on getting the squeak out.

“What is it you do, Colonel?” I asked, making small talk.

His eyebrows went up. “Do? Why, whatever amuses me. Or in
time of crisis, whatever my country needs most.”

“Right now he’s straightening things out at National Steel
Foundry,” said Mrs. Peckham.

“Rum show, that,” said the Colonel, “but coming along, coming
along.”

At the Hurty threshold, Mr. Hurty himself came to the door,
tweedy, booted, and spurred. His family was in Europe. The Colonel and his
wife, once I had made the formal introductions, ignored me. The Peckhams had
some distance to go, however, before offending four thousand dollars’ worth of
my pride.

I sat quietly, like a Seeing Eye dog or overnight bag, and
listened to the banter of those who bought and sold eighty-five-thousand-dollar
estates with urbane negligence.

There were none of your shabby questions about how much the
place cost to heat or keep up, or what the taxes were, or whether the cellar
was dry. Not on your life.

“I’m so glad there’s a greenhouse,” said Mrs. Peckham. “I
had such high hopes for the place, but the ad didn’t mention a greenhouse, and
I just prayed there was one.”

“Never underestimate the power of prayer,” I said to myself.

“Yes, I think you’ve done well with it,” the Colonel said to
Hurty. “I’m glad to see you’ve got an honest-to-God swimming pool, and not one
of these cement-lined puddles.”

“One thing you may be interested in,” said Hurty, “is that
the water isn’t chlorinated. It’s passed under ultraviolet light.”

“I should hope so,” said the Colonel.

“Um,” said Hurty.

“Have you a labyrinth?” said Mrs. Peckham.

“How’s that?” said Hurty.

“A labyrinth made of box hedge. They’re awfully picturesque.”

“No, sorry,” said Hurty, pulling on his mustache.

“Well, no matter,” said the Colonel, making the best of it. “We
can put one in.”

“Yes,” said his wife. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, and placed
her hand over her heart. Her eyes rolled, and she started to sink to the floor.

“Darling!” The Colonel caught her about the waist.

“Please—” she gasped.

“A stimulant!” commanded the Colonel. “Brandy! Anything!”

Hurty, unnerved, fetched a decanter and poured a shot.

The Colonel’s wife forced some between her lips, and the
roses returned to her cheeks.

“More, darling?” the Colonel asked.

“A sip,” she whispered.

When she’d finished it off, the Colonel sniffed the glass. “By
George, but that’s got a lovely bouquet!” He held out the glass to Hurty, and
Hurty filled it.

“Jove!” said the Colonel, savoring, sniffing. “First-rate.
Mmm. You know, it’s a vanishing race that has the patience really to know the
exquisite things in life. With most, it’s gulp, gulp, and they’re off on some
mad chase again.”

“Sure,” said Hurty.

“Better, dear?” the Colonel asked his wife.

“Much. You know how it is. It comes and goes.”

I watched the Colonel take a book from the shelves. He
looked in the front, possibly to make sure it was a first edition. “Well, Mr.
Hurty,” he said, “I think it must show in our eyes how much we like the place.
There are some things we’d change, of course, but by and large—”

Hurty looked to me.

I cleared my throat. “Well,” I lied, “there are a number of
people very interested in this property, as you might expect. I think you’d
better make your offer official as soon as possible, if it’s really to your
liking.”

“You aren’t going to sell it to just anybody, are you?” said
the Colonel.

“Certainly not!” lied Hurty, trying to recapture some of the
élan he had lost during the labyrinth and brandy episodes.

“Well,” said the Colonel, “the legal end can be handled
quickly enough when the time comes. But first, if you don’t mind, we’d like to
get the feel of the place—get the newness out of it.”

“Yes, of course, certainly,” said Hurty, slightly puzzled. “Then
you don’t mind if we sort of wander about a bit, as though it were already
ours?”

“No, I guess not. I mean, certainly not. Go right ahead.”

And the Peckhams did, while I waited, fidgeting in the
living room, and Hurty locked himself in his study. They made themselves at
home all afternoon, feeding the horses carrots, loosening the earth about the
roots of plants in the greenhouse, drowsing in the sun by the swimming pool.

Once or twice I tried to join them, to point out this feature
or that, but they received me as though I were an impertinent butler, so I gave
it up.

At four, they asked a maid for tea, and got it—with little
cakes. At five, Hurty came out of his study, found them still there, covered
his surprise admirably, and mixed us all cocktails.

The Colonel said he always had his man rub the inside of martini
glasses with garlic. He asked if there was a level spot for polo.

Mrs. Peckham discussed the parking problems of large
parties, and asked if there was anything in the local air that was damaging to
oil paintings.

At seven, Hurty, fighting yawns, excused himself, and
telling the Peck-hams to go on making themselves at home, he went to his
supper. At eight, the Peckhams, having eddied about Hurty and his meal on their
way to one place or another, announced that they were leaving.

They asked me to drop them off at the town’s best
restaurant.

“I take it you’re interested?” I said.

“We’ll want to talk a little,” said the Colonel. “The price
is certainly no obstacle. We’ll let you know.”

“How can I reach you, Colonel, sir?”

“I’m here for a rest. I prefer not to have anyone know my
whereabouts, if you don’t mind. I’ll call you.”

“Fine.”

“Tell me,” said Mrs. Peckham. “How did Mr. Hurty make his
money?”

“He’s the biggest used-car salesman in this part of the
state.”

“Aha!” said the Colonel. “I knew it! The whole place had the
air of new money about it.”

Any Reasonable Offer

“Does that mean you don’t want it after all?” I asked.

“No, not exactly. We’ll simply have to live with it a little
while to see what can be done about it, if anything.”

“Could you tell me specifically what it was you didn’t like?”
I asked.

“If you can’t see it,” said Mrs. Peckham, “no one could possibly
point it out to you.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll let you know,” said the Colonel.

Three days passed, with their normal complement of calls
from Dela-hanty and Mrs. Hellbrunner, but without a sign from Colonel Peckham
and his lady.

As I was closing my office on the afternoon of the fourth
day, Hurty called me.

“When the hell,” he said, “are those Peckham people going to
come to a boil?”

“Lord knows,” I said. “There’s no way I can get in touch
with them. He said he’d call me.”

“You can get in touch with them anytime of night or day.”

“How?”

“Just call my place. They’ve been out here for the past
three days, taking the newness out of it. They’ve damn well taken something
out of me, too. Do the liquor and cigars and food come out of your commission?”

“If there is a commission.”

“You mean there’s some question about it? He goes around here
as though he has the money in his pocket and is just waiting for the right time
to give it to me.”

“Well, since he won’t talk with me, you might as well do the
pressuring. Tell him I’ve just told you a retired brewer from Toledo has
offered seventy-five thousand. That ought to get action.”

‘All right. I’ll have to wait until they come in from
swimming, for cocktails.”

“Call me back when you’ve got a reaction, and I’ll toot out
with an offer form all ready to go.”

Ten minutes later he did. “Guess what, brain-box?”

“He bit?”

“I’m getting a brand-new real estate agent.”

“Oh?”

“Yes indeedy. I took the advice of the last one I had, and a
red-hot prospect and his wife walked out with their noses in the air.”

“No! Why?”

“Colonel and Mrs. Peckham wish you to know that they couldn’t
possibly be interested in anything that would appeal to a retired brewer from
Toledo.”

It was a lousy estate anyhow, so I gaily laughed and gave my
attention to more substantial matters, such as the Hellbrunner mansion. I ran a
boldface advertisement describing the joys of life in a fortified castle.