The Collection (141 page)

“Listen, Cadwallader,” I began.

“Cadwallader?” he pops back. “That isn't my name.” It caught
me off guard. “Huh?” says I. “You're Cadwallader Van Aylslea!”

“Who's he? I fear there is a mistake of identity.”

He was sitting up straight, looking very intently at me, and
his right hand had slid between the third and fourth buttons of his shirt. I
should have guessed, of course, but I didn't.

But I decided to humor him. “Who are you, then?”

A shrewd look came into his eyes as he swept back from his
forehead a lock of hair that wasn't there. “It escapes me for the moment,” he
temporized. “But no, I shall not lie to you, my friend. I remember, of course,
but it is best that I remain incognito.”

I began to wonder if I'd bit off more than I could handle.

I wondered if he had these spells often, and if so, how I
should handle him.

“For all of me,” I said a bit disgustedly, “you can remain
anything you want. I'm going out for a paper.”

It was time for the morning papers to be out, eleven-thirty,
and I wanted to see if any mention was made of a search for a missing nut from
the Van Aylslea tree. There wasn't.

I hate to tell you about the next morning, Mr. Gupstein.

When I woke up, there was Cadwallader standing in his
undershirt looking out of the window. His right hand was thrust inside his
undershirt and he had a carefully coiled spitcurl on his forehead. When he
heard me sit up in bed, he turned majestically.

“My good friend,” he said, “I have thought it over and I've
decided that I may cast aside anonymity and reveal to you in confidence my true
identity.”

Yeah, Mr. Gupstein, you guessed it. Why do so many nuts
think they are Napoleon? Why don't some of them pick on Eddie Cantor or
Mussolini?

I didn't know, and of course it would have been useless to
ask him, whether this delusion was something temporary that he'd been through
before, or whether it was here to stay.

I got dressed quick and after breakfast I locked him in to
keep him safe from English spies, and I went out and sat in the park to think.

I could, of course, take him out and lose him somewhere and
wash my hands of the matter. The cops would pick him up and he'd tell them he'd
been staying with the Rajah of Rangoon, if he told them anything even that
lucid. Stuff like that goes over big at headquarters.

But I didn't want to do that, Mr. Gupstein. Funny as it
sounds, I liked the guy, and I had a hunch that if he had right treatment he'd
get over this stage and go back to good old kleptomania. And he belonged there,
Mr. Gupstein. It would be a shame for technique like his to go to waste.

And I remembered, too, that if I could get him back to
normal, such as normal was, I could clean up enough in a week or two to retire.
As it was, I was out a couple of hundred bucks of my own dough.

Then I had my big idea. You can't argue with a nut. Or maybe
you
can, Mr. Gupstein, because you're a lawyer, but I couldn't. But my
idea was this: How could two guys both be Napoleon? If you put two Napoleons in
the same cell, wouldn't one of them outtalk the other? And wouldn't the guy who
had the delusion longest be the best talker?

I went around to the bank and drew some dough and then I
hunted up a private sanitarium and a bit of fast talking got me an audience in
private with the head cheese.

“Have you got any Napoleons here?” I asked him.

“Three of them,” he admitted, looking me over like he was
wondering if I'd dispute their claims to that identity.

“Why?”

I leaned forward confidentially. “I have a very dear friend
who has the same delusion. I think if he were shut up with another guy who has
prior claim on the same idea, he might be talked out of it. They can't both be
Napoleon, you know.”

“Such a procedure,” he said, “would be against medical
ethics. We couldn't possibly—”

I took a roll of bills from my pocket and held them under
his nose. “A hundred dollars,” I suggested, “for a three-day trial; win, lose,
or draw.”

He looked offended. He opened his mouth to turn me down, but
I could see his eyes on the frogskins.

“Plus, of course,” I added, “the regular sanitarium fees for
the three days. The hundred dollars as an honorarium to you personally for
taking an interest in the experiment.”

“It couldn't possibly—” he began, and looked at me
expectantly to see if I was going to cut in and raise the ante. I stood pat;
that was all I wanted to invest. There was silence while I kept holding the
bills out toward him.

“—do any harm,” he concluded, taking the money. “Can you
bring your friend today?”

Cadwallader was under the bed when I got home. He said the
spies had been closing in on the apartment. It took a lot of fast talking to
get him out. I had to go and buy him a false mustache and colored glasses for a
disguise. And I pulled the shades down in the taxi that took us to the
sanitarium.

It took all my curiosity-tortured will power, Mr.

Gupstein, to wait the full three days, but I did it.

When I was shown into his office, the doctor looked up
sadly.

“I fear the experiment was a dismal failure,” he admitted.

“I warned you. The patient still has paranoia.”

“I don't give three shrieks in Hollywood if he still has
pyorrhea,” I came back. “Does he or does he not still think he's Napoleon?”

“No,” he said. “He doesn't. Come on, I'll let you see for
yourself.”

We went upstairs and the doc waited outside while I went
into the room to talk to Cadwallader.

The other Napoleon had already been moved on.

My blue-eyed wonder was lying on a bed with his head in his
mitts, but he sprang up with delight when he saw me.

“Rajah, old pal,” he asked eagerly. “Have you a saucer?”

“A saucer?” I looked at him in bewilderment.

“A saucer.”

“What do you want with a saucer?”

The beginning wasn't promising, but I plowed on. There was
one thing interested me most.

“Are you Napoleon Bonaparte?” I asked him.

He looked surprised.
“Me?”

I was getting fed up. “Yes, you,” I told him.

He didn't answer, and I could see that his mind, what there
was of it, wasn't on the conversation. His eyes were roving around the room.

“What are you looking for?” I demanded.

“A saucer.”

“A
saucer?”

“Sure. A saucer.”

The conversation was getting out of hand. “What on earth do
you want with a saucer?”

So I can sit down, of course.”

“Huh?” I asked, startled.

“Naturally,” he replied. “Can't you see that I'm a teacup?”

I gulped, and turned sadly to the door. Then for a moment he
seemed to gather shreds of his sanity together. “I say, Rajah,” he piped up. I
turned.

“If I don't see you again, Rajah, I want you to have
something to remember me by.” He reached for his tie and pulled out the
stickpin with the rock the size of a postage stamp. I'd forgotten about it, no
kidding. He handed it to me, and I thanked him. And I meant it.

“You'll come again, though?” he asked wistfully.

“Sure I will, Cadwallader.” I turned to the door again.

Darned if I didn't want to bawl, Mr. Gupstein.

I told the doctor he'd be sent for, and got out of the
sanitarium safely. Then I looked the sparkler over carefully again, and I
decided it's worth at least five G's. So I'll come out ahead on the deal as
soon as I cash in on it.

First, I was going to appraise the stone, so I trotted into
one of the ritziest shops in town. I knew I'd have to pick an expensive joint
to flash a rock that size without arousing too much suspicion.

There was only one clerk behind the counter and another
customer was ahead of me. I began to look around, but when I caught part of the
conversation, I froze.

“... and since then,” the clerk was saying, “you haven't
heard a word from or about your brother, Mr. Van Aylslea?”

The customer shook his head. “Not a word. We're keeping it
from the press, of course.”

I took a close look. The bloke was older and not so heavy,
but I could see he resembled my kleptomaniac teacup.

So as quietly as though I was walking on eggs, I eased out
of the shop. But I waited outside. I figured I might do Cadwallader a final
favor. When Van Aylslea came out, I buttonholed him.

“Mr. Van Aylslea,” I whispered. “I'm Operative Fifty-three.
Your brother is at Bide-a-Wee Sanitarium.”

His face lighted up, and he shook my hand and patted my
shoulder like a long-lost brother. “I'll get him right away,” he said.

“Better stop for a saucer,” I called after him as his car
started, but I guess he didn't hear me.

I drifted on. If that stone had belonged to the Van Aylsleas
and if they traded at that particular shop, they might recognize it, so I
figured I'd had a narrow squeak.

It occurred to me that it had been in my tie when I talked
to Cadwallader's brother, which had been a foolish chance to take, but I guess
he didn't notice it. He was too excited.

Well, that takes me up to a few minutes ago, Mr. Gupstein. I
decided to skip the appraisal and come right to you for advice.

Are you willing to approach the Van Aylsleas for me and find
out if they want to offer a reward for the rock? I understand, Mr. Gupstein,
that you
have
handled deals like that very successfully, and I'd rather
not risk trying to peddle it if they offer a good reward.

And the Van Aylslea guy I just left looked like a reasonable
guy who—

Huh? You say you know the family and that the brother is
almost as batty as Cadwallader, and that he's a klepto too, at times?

Nix, Mr. Gupstein, you can't make me believe that he's
slicker than his brother with the finger-work. That's impossible. Mr. Gupstein.
Nobody could be smoother than—

Oh, well, let's not worry about that. The point is, are you
willing to handle the deal for me?

The stickpin? Why, it's right here in my tie, of course,
where it's been ever since . . .

Huh?

. . . Well, Mr. Gupstein, I'm sorry I took up your time.

But this decides me, Mr. Gupstein. When
two
amateur
dips give me a cleaning the same week, I'm through.

I've got a brother-in-law who's a bookie and wants to give
me a good, honest job. And I'm taking it. I've lifted my last leather.

You're darned right I mean it, Mr. Gupstein. And to prove
it, here's
your
billfold back. So long, Mr. Gupstein.

The bar in front of him was wet and sloppy; Sir Charles
Hanover Gresham carefully rested his forearms on the raised dry rim of it and
held the folded copy of
Stagecraft
that he was reading up out of the
puddles. His forearms, not his elbows; when you have but one suit and it is
getting threadbare you remember not to rest your elbows on a bar or a table.
Just as, when you sit, you always pull up the trouser legs an inch or two to
keep the knees from becoming baggy.

When you are an actor you remember those things. Even if
you're a has-been who never really was and who certainly never will be, living
— barely — off blackmail, drinking beer in a Bowery bar, hung over and
miserable, at two o'clock on a cool fall afternoon, you remember.

But you always read
Stagecraft.

He was reading it now. “Gambler Angels Meller,” a one-column
headline told him; he read even that, casually. Then he came to a name in the
second paragraph, the name of the playwright. One of his eyebrows rose a full
millimeter at that name. Wayne Campbell, his
patron,
 had written
another play.

The first in three full years. Not that that mattered to
Wayne, for his last play and his second last had both sold to Hollywood for
very substantial sums. New plays or no, Wayne Campbell would keep on eating
caviar and drinking champagne. And new plays or no, he, Sir Charles Hanover
Gresham, would keep on eating hamburger sandwiches and drinking beer. It was
the only thing he was ashamed of — not the hamburgers and the beer, but the
means by which he was forced to obtain them. Blackmail is a nasty word; he
hated it.

But now, possibly, just possibly-Even that chance was worth
celebrating. He looked at the bar in front of him; fifteen cents lay there. He
took his last dollar bill from his pocket and put it down on the one dry spot
on the bar.

“Mac!” he said. Mac, the bartender, who had been gazing into
space through the wall, came over. He asked,

“The same, Charlie?”

“Not the same, Mac. This time the amber fluid.”

“You mean whiskey?”

“I do indeed. One for you and one for me.
Ah, with the
Grape my jading life provide...”

Mac poured two shots and refilled Sir Charles's beer glass.
“Chaser's on me.” He rang up fifty cents.

Sir Charles raised his shot glass and looked past it, not at
Mac the bartender but at his own reflection in the smeary back-bar mirror. A
quite distinguished-looking gentleman stared back at him. They smiled at one
another; then they both looked at Mac, one of them from the front, the other
from the back.

“To your excellent health, Mac,” they said — Sir Charles
aloud and his reflection silently. The raw, cheap whiskey burned a warm and
grateful path.

Mac looked over and said, “You're a screwy guy, Charlie, but
I like you. Sometimes I think you really
are
a knight. I dunno.”

“A Hair perhaps divides the False and True”
 said Sir
Charles. “Do you by any chance know Omar, Mac?”

“Omar who?”

“The tentmaker. A great old boy, Mac; he's got me down to a
T. Listen to this:

After a momentary silence
spake

Some Vessel of a more
ungainly Make: