Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

Sloan finished his drink. “Just how many club members are still alive?”

“Ninety-five.”

Sloan stared at him for a few moments. “You mean to tell me that only three of you people have died since 1898?”

Weatherlee nodded. “There was Meyer. He died in a train accident back in 1909. Or was it 1910? And McMurty. He stayed in the Guard and worked himself up to full colonel before he was killed in the Argonne in 1918. And Iverson. He died of acute appendicitis in 1921.”

Sloan considered his empty glass and then sighed. “Care for a drink?”

Weatherlee smiled affably. “I guess one more won’t hurt. I’ll take whatever you’re having.”

Sloan caught the bartender’s eye and held up two fingers.

Weatherlee leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Actually this isn’t the original champagne bottle. I broke that in 1924.”

Sloan studied it again.

“It happened at our convention that year,” Weatherlee said. “I was riding the elevator at the time. In those days they didn’t operate as smoothly as they do now. There was this sudden jerk as the operator stopped at my floor. The suitcase I was carrying sprang open and the bottle dropped to the floor. Couldn’t have fallen more than a foot, but there it lay, shattered on the floor.”

Weatherlee shook his head at the memory. “I was absolutely panic-stricken. I mean here I was the custodian of the club’s bottle — a great responsibility — and there it lay, shattered on the elevator floor. Luckily I was the only passenger on the elevator at the time. No one but the operator knew what had happened.”

“So you went out and bought another bottle?”

“No. I didn’t see how I could duplicate it anywhere. The bottle was quite distinctive. Purchased in Tampa, twenty-six years before.”

Sloan indicated the bottle. “Then what is that?”

“It was the elevator operator who saved me,” Weatherlee said. “He went out and got an exact duplicate.”

“How did he manage to do that?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. He seemed a little evasive, now that I remember, but I was too overjoyed to press him. He was really most apologetic about the accident. Most solicitous. Took care of the mess in the elevator and brought the new bottle to my room fifteen minutes later. Wouldn’t even let me pay for it. Claimed that the entire incident was really his doing and wouldn’t accept a cent.”

Sloan took his eyes from the magnum. “You said something about Captain O’Reilly trying to break the bottle?”

“Yes. Last year at our meeting. I still don’t know exactly why he tried it. But I do remember that he kept staring at the bottle all evening. That year I was the Treasurer and I’d just finished reading my report. We had $4,990 in the treasury. Our dues are actually almost nominal, but still after all those years and compounded interest, it reached that sum.”

The bartender brought the drinks. Sloan paid him and took a swallow of his whiskey and soda. “So what about O’Reilly?”

Weatherlee watched the bartender leave. “Oh, yes. Well, just as I finished, he rose suddenly to his feet and began slashing at the bottle with his cane and shouting, ‘That damn bottle! That damn bottle!’ And then it seemed as though nearly everyone else went mad, too. They shouted and cursed and smashed at the bottle, some even with chairs. I really don’t know how it would all have ended if the waiters hadn’t rushed in and restrained them.”

“But they didn’t break the bottle?”

“No. It was most remarkable. The blows were really resounding, and yet it didn’t break. I thought about that all year. All this long year.”

Weatherlee took a deep breath. “I arrived here early this morning. I am not a drinking man, but on impulse I bought a pint of whiskey and took it up to my room. I just sat there drinking and staring at the bottle. I even forgot all about the bus tour. And then I don’t know what came over me, but I picked up an ashtray — one of those heavy glass things that are practically indestructible — and struck the bottle. Again and again, until finally the ashtray broke.”

Weatherlee took the handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket. “I was in a perfect frenzy. I rushed out of my room with the bottle, and down the hallway I found one of those maintenance closets with its door open. There was a hammer on one of the shelves. I put the magnum of champagne into the stationary tub in the cubicle and struck it again and again with the hammer.”

“But the bottle still didn’t break?”

Weatherlee dabbed lightly at his forehead with the handkerchief. “But what was most ghastly of all was that all the time I was trying to smash that bottle, I had the feeling that someone, somewhere, was laughing at me.”

He glared at the magnum. “And then suddenly, the conviction, the certainty, came to me that neither I, nor anybody in the club could destroy that bottle. If it were done, it had to be done by someone on the outside.”

Sloan frowned at his drink. “Just why do you want to destroy that bottle in the first place?”

Weatherlee sighed. “I don’t know. I just know that I do. ”

They were both silent for almost a minute and then Sloan said, “This elevator operator. What did he look like?”

“The elevator operator? Rather a distinguished sort of person. I remember thinking at the time that he wasn’t at all what one would expect of an elevator operator. Rather tall. Dark hair, dark eyes.”

One of the doors of the dining room across the lobby opened and a waiter stepped out. He came into the bar. “Mr. Weatherlee, we’re serving now.”

Weatherlee nodded. “Yes. I’ll be there in a moment.”

Sloan waited until the waiter was out of hearing. “When did you say you broke the original bottle?”

“In 1924.”

“And nobody’s died since then?”

“Nobody’s died since 1921. That was when Iverson got his acute appendicitis.”

Sloan stared at the bottle again. “I’d like to join your club.”

Weatherlee blinked. “But that’s impossible.”

“Why is it impossible?”

“Well... for one thing, you didn’t belong to our National Guard company.”

“Do your by-laws say anything about members having to belong to that particular company? Or any company at all?”

“Well, no. But it was assumed... ”

“And you did say that you never did fill your membership quota? Only ninety-eight people signed up? That leaves a vacancy of two, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but you are so much younger than any of the rest of us. It would be unfair for us to have to compete with you for the bottle.”

“Look,” Sloan said. “I’m not a rich man, but I’ll match what’s in the treasury, dollar for dollar.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Weatherlee said a bit stiffly, “but if you should outlive all of us, and that seems likely, you’d get it all back anyhow.”

Sloan smiled patiently. “I’ll sign an affidavit renouncing all claim to what’s in the treasury.”

Weatherlee rubbed his neck. “I don’t know. I’m not the final authority on anything like this. I’m not even an officer this year, unless you want to count being Custodian of the Bottle. I really don’t know what the procedure would be in a case like this. I suppose we’ll all have to take a vote or something.”

He rose and put the magnum under his arm. “I suppose there’s no harm in asking, but frankly I think they’ll turn you down.”

Sloan put his hand on the hammer. “Better leave this here with me.”

Sloan came to Weatherlee’s room at nine-thirty the next morning.

He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Weatherlee.