Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

“What’s that one up there?” she asked, pointing to the wall behind Hadad. “Is it a rug? Or a tapestry? And why is it framed?”

“So many questions all in one breath!” said Hadad, laughing. “It is framed, dear lady, because I had it framed. And its history is not for ladies to hear—”

“Do you take me for a child?”

Hadad shook his head, and surmised: about thirty-nine years and six months old, you — without counting your teeth.

“In any case, it is a sort of curiosity, ma’am, which you wouldn’t care to buy even if it were for sale,” he said.

“Why? How d’you know?”

“Ah, coffee,” said Hadad. His assistant drew up a low table and set down a tray.

“I can’t eat that Turkish delight,” said Mrs. Gourock.

Hadad said, “Other rahat lakoum you cannot eat. This you will eat. Now let me think what would be nice for your husband’s study. He is a quiet, reserved man, I think?”

“How d’you know?”

Because, Hadad decided, wordlessly, it is generally the gentle ones that get grabbed in marriage by great brassy women like you, who would have your cake and eat it too. Also, I think he has a controlled devil of a temper, and the money is all his — or why should you be all of a sudden so considerate of him in his study?

Meanwhile, he murmured, “I have Mosul, Kir Shehr, and sumptuous Teherans. I have Kirman, Shiraz, and silken Tabriz. I have Bergama, Fereghan, Khorosan—”

“I want you to tell me what that is in the frame.”

“Well,” said Hadad, smiling, “it is not something you can get at Mejjid’s Auction Rooms in Atlantic City, where — unless my memory deceives me, which it never does — you bought for $300 a pair of Chinese vases worth, alas, about $40.” He added, “June 29th, 1950.”

Then his voice faded, his lips parted, his eyelids drooped, and Mrs. Gourock was reminded of Peter Lorre in a murder movie: Hadad had just that lost, sick, hopeless look.

He forestalled her inevitable “How d’you know?” by saying, “It happens that I was there at the time, and I never forget a face. You were bidding against an old lady in an immense straw hat. Her name was Kitty. She was a shill.”

“I like auctions,” said Mrs. Gourock. “I didn’t want the vases. I’ve paid more — oh, so much more — than $300 for two hours’ entertainment...” She was surprised to catch herself making excuses. “What’s a shill?”

“You know,” said Hadad, “that if anyone is running a so-called game of chance at a fair, somebody must appear to win pour encourager les autres. Thus, at a pea-and-thimble game, a seemingly silly farmer will win $100 while the audience is gathering. He is a shill, employed by the thimble-rigger, and he is not paid in real money.

“Conversely, at a certain type of auction sale, somebody must get an obvious bargain to excite the on-lookers.

“Thus, the attics and thrift shops of the nation are full of Mejjid’s stuff, all bought by people who cannot for the life of them say just what made them blurt out that last silly bid before the auctioneer cried ‘Gone!’ It’s no disgrace to you; it is like feeding a slot machine with silver dollars, but warmer, less impersonal — only, once in ten thousand tries, a slot machine will disgorge a jackpot, and Mejjid will never disgorge anything.”

Dogged as a spoiled child, Mrs. Gourock persisted. “I want you to tell me about that thing in the frame.”

Hadad seemed not to have heard her; he went right on.

“You know how it is, dear lady. You look in — only for fun, mind. No harm in that, eh? The auctioneer is about to give away a cut-glass lemonade set, free of charge. He doesn’t want to — personally, he’d cherish such a lemonade set, make an heirloom of it. But he’s paid (sigh) to give things away. However, first things first; and here’s a Moorish coffee table. Everybody nudges everybody else as the auction room fills up; everybody is there to kill time. Nobody’s going to buy anything at all. The joke’s on Mejjid, eh? Poor old Mejjid!

“And so some joker bids fifty cents for the coffee table, and there is a titter when a grim old lady in inappropriate shorts calls out seventy-five. Then it’s a dollar. ‘—And four bits,’ says a fat man with a cigar. ‘—And a quarter,’ you say, just to keep the ball rolling. It really is fun, no? All you have to do is keep saying ‘—And a quarter,’ and sit back and watch your neighbors making fools of themselves. The bidding is up to $13, let us say. ‘—And a quarter.’ you call, waiting for the inevitable. It doesn’t happen.

“All of a sudden you are the loneliest person in the world, for it is, ‘Gone to the lady for $13.25!’ ”

Mrs. Gourock said, “About that hanging, or whatever it is, in the frame...”

“Yes, yes,” said Hadad, offering her a cigarette. “Now once upon a time — no, never mind... A rug for a study, eh?”

“Once upon a time what?”

With a helpless gesture Hadad said, “You are a very dangerous lady. You must know everything. Once upon a time, driven by necessity, I worked as a shill for Mejjid.”

“Yes, but what about that?” She pointed to the framed tapestry.

“Madam, are you determined to drive me frantic?” cried Hadad, clutching his head. “I will tell you about it, since you are so insistent. Did you ever hear of the Mighty Mektoub? No, I think not. But you have heard of Casanova? Of Don Juan? Naturally, everybody has. Well, Mektoub was the Syrian Casanova; only Casanova was a mere sower of wild oats, and Don Juan nothing but a juvenile delinquent, compared with Mektoub. His exploits were put into verse by one Shams-ud-Din, in the seventeenth century, but it would take an epic poet like Firdausi, or Homer, to do justice to him as a fighter, a hunter, and, above all, as a lover.”

She was all excitement. “I’d like to read it. Where can I get a copy?”

“Dear lady, you cannot — the only known copy of that poem is in the possession of King Farouk. The tapestry you see was Mektoub’s bedspread, and it is supposed to convey to its owner some of Mektoub’s remarkable powers—”

“And does it? It doesn’t!” said Mrs. Gourock. “Does it?”

“Let me proceed,” said Hadad. “I say. I was one of Mejjid’s shills — to my eternal shame and sorrow — for I spoke little English at that time, and had an aged father to support. And I hated Mejjid, with reason. With excellent reason, but that is private and, in a way, sacred.”

“Why?”

“It was not,” said Hadad, looking reproachfully at her, “it was not that he underpaid me; that was nothing. It was not that — falsely calling himself Mejjid Effendi, a title to which he had no more right than a pig has to the name of Lion — he publicly humiliated me. For I am descended from the Kings of Edom, madam, and cannot be insulted by an inferior. A Hadad would not own a dog with the pedigree of a Mejjid.”

“What was it then?”

Hadad sighed. “I do not know why I tell you this,” he murmured. “Simply, by bringing the force of his money to bear upon her father, he married my fiancée, a girl of sixteen.”

“How old was Mejjid?”

“Sixty-eight. He had outlived four wives,” said Hadad.

“Pretty hard on the poor girl,” said Mrs. Gourock.

“It would be cruelty to animals to marry a hyena to the likes of Mejjid. Still, she bore him three daughters, old as he was. Let us not talk of her any more, if you please. I say, I was Mejjid’s shill, and his most trusted one, because he knew that as a gentleman I would die sooner than cheat him. These people make capital out of honor,” said Hadad. “So it was my business to ‘buy in’ the Mektoub bedspread.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Gourock. “But if Mejjid prized it so highly, why didn’t he keep it at home?”