The Collection (135 page)

“Yes. One was a pudgy-looking little man. Wouldn't leave his
name.”

“And the other?” asked Peter.

“A big shaggy dog,” said the blonde. “I got
his
name,
though. It's Rover. The man called him that. He tried to kiss me.”

“Eh?” said Peter Kidd.

“The dog, not the man. The man said 'Down, Rover,' so that's
how I know his name. The dog's, not the man's.”

Peter looked at her reprovingly. He said, “I'll be back in
five minutes,” and went down the stairs to the floor below.

The door of the Henderson Printery was open, and he walked
in and stopped in surprise just inside the doorway. The pudgy man and the
shaggy dog were standing at the counter. The man was talking to Mr. Henderson,
the proprietor.

“—will be all right,” he was saying. “I'll pick them up
Wednesday afternoon, then. And the price is two-fifty?” He took a wallet from
his pocket and opened it. There seemed to be about a dozen bills in it. He put
one on the counter. “Afraid I have nothing smaller than a ten.”

“Quite all right, Mr. Asbury,” said Henderson, taking change
from the register. “Your cards will be ready for you.”

Meanwhile, Peter walked to the counter also, a safe distance
from the shaggy dog. From the opposite side of the barrier Peter was approached
by a female employee of Mr.

Henderson. She smiled at him and said, “Your order is ready.

I'll get it for you.”

She went to the back room and Peter edged along the counter,
read, upside down, the name and address written on the order blank lying there:
Robert Asbury, 633 Kenmore Street. The telephone number was BEacon 3-3434. The
man and the dog, without noticing Peter Kidd this time, went on their way out
of the door.

Henderson said, “Hullo, Mr. Kidd. The girl taking care of
you?”

Peter nodded, and the girl came from the back room with his
package. A sample letterhead was pasted on the outside.

He looked at it and said, “Nice work. Thanks.”

Back upstairs, Peter found the pudgy man sitting in the
waiting room, still holding the shaggy dog's leash.

The blonde said, “Mr. Kidd, this is Mr. Smith, the gentleman
who wishes to see you. And Rover.”

The shaggy dog ran to the end of the leash, and Peter Kidd
patted its head and allowed it to lick his hand. He said,

“Glad to know you, Mr. — ah — Smith?”

“Aloysius Smith,” said the little man. “I have a case I'd
like you to handle for me.”

“Come into my private office, then, please, Mr. Smith.

Ah — you don t mind if my secretary takes notes of our
conversation?”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Smith, trolling along at the end of
the leash after the dog, which was following Peter Kidd into the inner office.
Everyone but the shaggy dog took chairs.

The shaggy dog tried to climb up onto the desk, but was
dissuaded.

“I understand,” said Mr. Smith, “that private detectives
always ask a retainer. I—” He took the wallet from his pocket and began to take
ten-dollar bills out of it. He took out ten of them and put them on the desk.
“I — I hope a hundred dollars will be sufficient.”

“Ample,” said Peter Kidd. “What is it you wish me to do?”

The little man smiled deprecatingly. He said, “I'm not
exactly sure. But I'm scared. Somebody has tried to kill me —twice. I want you
to find the owner of this dog. I can't just let it go, because it follows me
now. I suppose I could — ah —take it to the pound or something, but maybe these
people would keep on trying to kill me. And anyway, I'm curious.”

Peter Kidd took a deep breath. He said, “So am I. Can you
put it a bit more succinctly?”

“Huh?”

“Succinctly,” said Peter Kidd patiently, “comes from the
Latin word,
succinctus,
 which is the past participle of
succingere,
 the
literal meaning of which is
to gird
up — but in this sense, it—”

“I knew I'd seen you before,” said the pudgy man.

“You're the circumabulate guy. I didn't get a good look at
you then, but—”

“Circumambulate,” corrected Peter Kidd.

The blonde quit drawing pothooks and looked from one to
another of them. “What was that word?” she asked.

Peter Kidd grinned. “Never mind, Miss Latham. I'll explain
later. Ah — Mr. Smith, I take it you are referring to the dog which is now with
you. When and where did you acquire it — and how?”

“Yesterday, early afternoon. I found it on Vine Street near
Eighth. It looked and acted lost and hungry. I took it home with me. Or rather,
it followed me home once I'd spoken to it. It wasn't until I'd fed it at home
that I found the note tied to its collar.”

“You have that note with you?”

Mr. Smith grimaced. “Unfortunately, I threw it into the
stove. It sounded so utterly silly, but I was afraid my wife would find it and
get some ridiculous notion. You know how women are. It was just a little poem,
and I remember every word of it. It was — uh — kind of silly, but—”

“What was it?”

The pudgy man cleared his throat. “It went like this:
I
am the dog

 
 Of a murdered man.

 
Escape his fate, Sir,

 
 If you can.”

“Alexander Pope,” said Peter Kidd.

“Eh? Oh, you mean Pope, the poet. You mean that's something
of his?”

“A parody on a bit of doggerel Alexander Pope wrote about
two hundred years ago, to be engraved on the collar of the King's favorite dog.
Ah — if I recall rightly, it was:

I am the dog

Of the King at Kew.

Pray tell me, Sir,

Whose dog are you?”

The little man nodded. “I'd never heard it, but— Yes, it
would be a parody all right. The original's clever.
'Whose dog
are
you?'
” He chuckled, then sobered abruptly. “I thought my verse was funny,
too, but last night—”

“Yes?”

“Somebody tried to kill me, twice. At least, I think so. I
took a walk downtown, leaving the dog home, incidentally, and when I was
crossing the street only a few blocks from home, an auto
tried
to hit
me.”

“Sure it wasn't accidental?”

“Well, the car actually swerved out of its way to get me,
when I was only a step off the curb. I was able to jump back, by a split second
and the car's tires actually scraped the curb where I'd been standing. There
was no other traffic, no reason for the car to swerve, except—”

“Could you identify the car? Did you get the number?”

“I was too startled. It was going too fast. By the time I
got a look at it, it was almost a block away. All I know is that it was a
sedan, dark blue or black. I don't even know how many people were in it, if
there was more than one. Of course, it
might
have been just a drunken
driver. I thought so until, on my way home, somebody took a shot at me.

“I was walking past the mouth of a dark alley. I heard a
noise and turned just in time to see the flash of the gun, about twenty or
thirty yards down the alley. I don't know by how much the bullet missed me —
but it did. I ran the rest of the way home.”

“Couldn't have been a backfire?”

“Absolutely not. The flash was at shoulder level above the
ground, for one thing. Besides— No, I'm sure it was a shot.”

“There have never been any other attempts on your life,
before this? You have no enemies?”

“No, to both questions, Mr. Kidd.”

Peter Kidd interlocked his long fingers and looked at him.
“And just what do you want me to do?”

“Find out where the dog came from and take him back there.
To — uh — take the dog off my hands meanwhile. To find what it's all about.”

Peter Kidd nodded. “Very well, Mr. Smith. You gave my
secretary your address and phone number?”

“My address, yes. But please don't call me or write me. I
don't want my wife to know anything about this. She is very nervous, you know.
I'd rather drop in after a few days to see you for a report. If you find it
impossible to keep the dog, you can board it with a veterinary for some length
of time.”

When the pudgy man had left, the blonde asked, “Shall I
transcribe these notes I took, right away?”

Peter Kidd snapped his fingers at the shaggy dog. He said,
“Never mind, Miss Latham. Won't need them.”

“Aren't you going to work on the case?”

“I
have
worked on the case,” said Peter. “It's
finished.”

The blonde's eyes were big as saucers. “You mean—”

“Exactly.” said Peter Kidd. He rubbed the backs of the shaggy
dog's ears and the dog seemed to love it. “Our client's right name is Robert
Asbury, of six-thirty-three Kenmore Street, telephone Beacon three,
three-four-three-four. He's an actor by profession, and out of work. He did not
find the dog, for the dog was given to him by one Sidney Wheeler who purchased
the dog for that very purpose undoubtedly — who also provided the
hundred-dollar fee. There's no question of murder.”

Peter Kidd tried to look modest, but succeeded only in
looking smug. After all, he'd solved his first case — such as it was — without
leaving his office.

He was dead right, too, on all counts except one:

The shaggy dog murders had hardly started.              

• • •

The little man with the bulbous nose went home — not to the
address he had given Peter Kidd, but to the one he had given the printer to put
on the cards he'd had engraved.          His name, of course,
was
Robert
Asbury and not Aloysius Smith. For all practical purposes, that is, his name
was Robert Asbury. He had been born under the name of Herman Gilg. But a long
time ago he'd changed it in the interests of euphony the first time he had
trodden the boards; 633 Kenmore Street was a theatrical boardinghouse.

Robert Asbury entered, whistling. A little pile of mail on
the hall table yielded two bills and a theatrical trade paper for him. He
pocketed the bills unopened and was looking at the want ads in the trade paper
when the door at the back of the hall opened.

Mr. Asbury closed the magazine hastily, smiled his most
winning smile. He said, “Ah, Mrs. Drake.”

It was Hatchet-face herself, but she wasn't frowning.

Must be in a good mood. Swell! The five-dollar bill he could
give her on account would really tide him over. He took it from his wallet with
a flourish.

“Permit me,” he said, “to make a slight payment on last
week's room and board, Mrs. Drake. Within a few days I shall—”

“
Yes, yes,” she interrupted. “Same old story, Mr.

Asbury, but maybe this time it's true even if you don't know
it yet. Gentleman here to see you, and says it's about a role.”

“Here? You mean he's waiting in the—?”

“No, I had the parlor all tore up, cleaning. I told him he
could wait in your room.”

He bowed. “Thank you, Mrs. Drake.” He managed to walk, not
run, to the stairway, and start the ascent with dignity. But who the devil
would call to see him about a role?

There were dozens of producers any one of whom might phone
him, but it couldn't be a producer calling in person.

More likely some friend telling him where there was a spot
he could try out for.

Even that would be a break. He'd felt it in his bones that
having all that money in his wallet this morning had meant luck. A hundred and
ten dollars! True, only ten of it was his own, and Lord, how it had hurt to
hand out that hundred! But the ten meant five for his landlady and two and a
half for the cards he absolutely
had
to have — you can't send in your
card to producers and agents unless you have cards to send in —and cigarette
money for the balance. Funny job that was. The length some people will go to
play a practical joke. But it was just a joke and nothing crooked, because this
Sidney Wheeler was supposed to be a right guy, and after all, he owned that
office building and a couple of others; probably a hundred bucks was like a
dime to him. Maybe he'd want a follow-up on the hoax, another call at this
Kidd's office. That would be another easy ten bucks.

Funny guy, that Peter Kidd. Sure didn't look like a
detective; looked more like a college professor. But a good detective
ought
to be part actor and not look like a shamus.

This Kidd sure talked the part, too. Circum — am
—Circumambulate, and — uh — succinctly. “Perhaps you had better circumambulate
me succinctly.” Goofy! And that “from the Latin” stuff!

The door of his room was an inch ajar, and Mr. Asbury pushed
it open, started through the doorway. Then he tried to stop and back out again.

There was a man sitting in the chair facing the doorway and
only a few feet from it — the opening door had just cleared the man's knees.
Mr. Asbury didn't know the man, didn't
want
to know him. He disliked the
man's face at sight and disliked still more the fact that the man held a pistol
with a long silencer on the barrel. The muzzle was aimed toward Mr. Asbury's
third vest button.

Mr. Asbury tried to stop too fast. He stumbled, which, under
the circumstances, was particularly unfortunate. He threw out his hands to save
himself. It must have looked to the man in the chair as though Mr. Asbury was
attacking him, making a diving grab for the gun.

The man pulled the trigger.

• • •

 “ 'I am the dog of a murdered man,' ” said the blonde. “
'Escape his fate, Sir, if you can.' ” She looked up from her shorthand
notebook. “I don't get it.”

Peter Kidd smiled and looked at the shaggy dog, which had
gone to sleep in the comfortable warmth of a patch of sunlight under the
window.

“Purely a hoax,” said Peter Kidd. “I had a hunch Sid Wheeler
would try to pull something of the sort. The hundred dollars is what makes me
certain. That's the amount Sid thinks he owes me.”