A. Fair - Gold Comes in Bricks

There were quick steps in the corridor. Henry Ashbury came striding in through the open door, and stared at the party over the tops of his glasses.

Mrs. Ashbury looked at me, then at Bob, then at her husband. “Oh, Henreeeeee! Where have you been? Poor Bernard’s spent the whole night looking for you. Henry, this is the most awful thing — the most hideous thing! Henry, dear, I’m going to faint.”

She closed her eyes and swayed around on her feet. The nurse and the doctor closed in. The doctor muttered soothingly, “Now, Mrs. Ashbury, you simply can’t excite yourself.”

“If you’ll just go to bed quietly,” the nurse said.

Mrs. Ashbury let her eyelids flutter down until the eyes were almost closed. She gurgled in her throat, and tilted her head back so she could watch what was going on through the slits at the bottoms of her eyelids.

“Henry, darling.”

Ashbury didn’t pay any attention to her. He looked at me.

I said, “I’m just pinning something on Bob. I think he’s responsible for the thing you wanted investigated.”

Bob said, “I’m not. I swear you’ve got me wrong. I—”

“Stole some of Alta’s letters,” I finished.

He was up on his feet. “You look here, Lam. I don’t care if you can lick Joe Louis with one hand tied behind you. You’re not going to—”

Mrs. Ashbury saw that her husband had swivelled his eyes around to glare at Bob. His face had colored and set in hard lines. She decided fainting wasn’t going to do any good. She planted her feet on the floor, swept the doctor and the nurse to one side, and said, “So that’s it. You’ve been hiring a detective to come in here and frame horrible crimes on my son. I want you people to be witnesses to the things that have been said in this room. Henry, you’re going to pay for this, and pay dearly. Robert, darling, you come with Mother. We won’t waste time talking to these people. I’ll see my lawyer in the morning. Things which I hadn’t understood before are perfectly plain to me now. Henry’s trying to frame something on you so as to make me leave him.”

Bob moved to his mother’s side. She put an arm around his shoulder, and sighed.

Bertha Cool got up, slowly and majestically. Her manner was that of a master workman getting ready to tackle a difficult job in a businesslike manner.

Henry Ashbury raised his eyebrows, looked over the tops of his glasses at Bertha Cool, held up his hand, and said, “Don’t.”

There was a second or two of silence. Bertha Cool looked to me for instructions.

Ashbury shook his head at me. “Let it go, Lam,” he said. “I think I’m getting somewhere.”

“You just think you’re getting somewhere. If you were, I’d let you go, but the cards are stacked against you.”

Mrs. Ashbury said, “The doctor will testify that I’m in no condition to answer questions.”

“I most certainly will,” Dr. Parkerdale said. “This whole procedure is outrageous.”

Bob was glad of the opportunity to get out. “Come, Mother, I’ll get you back to bed.”

“Yes,” she said, in a voice that was a little above a whisper. “Things are going around and around.”

Bertha Cool pushed a chair to one side, strode over to the door, and kicked it shut.

Ashbury looked at her and said, “No.”

Bertha heaved a sigh. She was itching to pitch in and handle the situation, but a hundred dollars a day was a hundred dollars a day and instructions were instructions.

The nurse came toward the door. Bertha moved to one side. The nurse opened the door, and the doctor and Bob led Mrs. Ashbury down the corridor and into her bedroom. The door slammed. I heard the turn of a key in the lock.

Bertha Cool said, “Nuts.”

Ashbury said, “We can’t risk it, Donald. It’s all right if we stood a chance, but that doctor knows which side of the bread has the butter. This will look like hell in a divorce court.”

“You’re the boss,” I said. “Personally, I think you’ve scrambled the eggs.”

A door down the corridor was opened, slammed, then locked. Dr. Parkerdale came striding indignantly into the room. “You have all but killed her,” he said.

“No one invited her to this party,” I said. “Send Bob back here. We want to question him.”

“He can’t leave his mother’s bedside. I won’t be responsible for consequences if—”

“No one wants you to be responsible for anything,” Bertha Cool said. “You couldn’t kill that woman with a sledge hammer, and you know it. She’s putting on an act.”

Dr. Parkerdale said, “Madam, like all laymen, you’re prone to judge from external appearances. I’m telling you, her blood pressure has reached a dangerous point.”

“Let it come to a boil,” Bertha said. “It’ll do her good.”

Ashbury said to the doctor, “You think she’s in a dangerous physical condition?”

“Very critical,” the doctor said.

“Yes,” Bertha Cool snorted. “So critical that he leaves his patient to strut down the hall and try to make evidence for a divorce court.”

The significance of that remark soaked into Dr. Parkerdale’s mind. He turned wordlessly and walked back down the corridor to Mrs. Ashbury’s room. He knocked. The door was unlocked, opened, and locked again.

Bertha Cool kicked my door closed.

Ashbury said, “I’m sorry, Donald, but they’ve ganged up on us. The nurse won’t contradict the doctor.”

I reached for my hat. “It’s your funeral,” I said. “I had a winning hand until you trumped my ace.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be. If you want to do a good day’s job, start getting worried about your wife.”

“That would be playing right into their hands.”

“So worried,” I went on, “that you insist on a consultation. Get a doctor of some real standing in the profession, get him out here right away, and take her blood pressure. ”

He looked at me for a minute, then his eyes softened into a twinkle. He started for the telephone.

I said, “Come on, Bertha.”

Tokamura Hashita sat on the edge of the bed, blinked his eyes against the light, and listened to my proposition. I said, “These experts say the stuff’s no good, Hashita. They claim it only works with rubber knives and unloaded guns. They claim they’ll put on a test and tie you in a bow-knot like a shoelace. They offer to bet fifty bucks. I tried to show them what you’d taught me, and they jammed me into a garbage can and told me they could do the same with you.”

His eyes reflected back the lights as though they’d been burnished with black lacquer. “Excuse please,” he said. “Plant acorn. After a while is very big oak tree, but cannot make lumber from green sapling. Must allow time for growth.”

I said, “Well, if you think it’ll work, I’m willing to be shown, but the way things stand right now, I think it’s just a stunt. I’ve got fifty bucks to cover their bets.”

He got up and pushed his feet into straw sandals, slippety-slopped across to a closet, opened a door, peeled off his pajamas, and pulled on clothes. When he turned to me, there were reddish lights in his eyes. He didn’t say a word.

I led the way out of the door. He put on a coat and hat, and went down to where the taxicab was waiting at the curb, the meter clicking merrily away. He didn’t say a word as we got in, and he didn’t say a word all the way to the gambling club.

When he was dressed up, he wasn’t a bad-looking chap, a bit heavy in the waist. But it was just thick body muscles, not fat, that gave him that chunky appearance.

I walked over to the roulette table and started gambling. He stood a couple of paces behind me, looking at me scornfully.