Paul Cain - The Paul Cain Omnibus

“It is an interesting novelty. At some time after nine I am expecting guests, the first in several months. It may amuse them.” He crossed to the door.

“I want to see it!” She ran to him, clapping her hands in childish joy. “I must see it!”

“Later,” he said, and he stooped to kiss her nose. “Later, my one...”

Then he went out through the tiny foyer, closed and locked the door.

When Etienne came to the front room of his own apartment on the third floor, the day was duskening, there was the small drum of distant thunder. He turned on the lights, and saw, to his startled amazement, that Gertrude had fainted, was hanging upside down from a branch of the rubber plant. Swiftly and gently he disengaged her clenched talons and, hurrying into the bathroom, waved a phial of smelling salts beneath her beak. After a time she opened one eye.

“What is it, my saffron beauty?” he purred solicitously.

She opened her other eye and regarded him dully, expressionlessly. She said no word. He released her and she fluttered out, through the corridor and down the back stairs. Etienne frowned, shrugged, fell to dressing. As was his wont when expecting guests, he wore a belted smock, pantaloons of stiffly starched white duck, a tall and extravagantly flared chef’s cap. His chest glittered with jeweled medals — only a small part of his collection, but enough to cover an area of one square cubit.

After a last more or less resigned glance at his reflection in the mirror, he went back to the front room and, picking up the entirely quiescent Tasting Machine, carried it down to the Salle à Manger, placed it on one end of the table, and went on to the kitchen. Bubu was peeling a mangosteen; Gertrude was nowhere to be seen. Etienne peeked into an oven, uncovered a steaming pot and sniffed, gave its contents a reflective stir.

“Where is that absurd bird?” he finally demanded. Bubu turned a fast back somersault, gestured towards the garden.

“She swooned,” Etienne continued, “swooned dead away. It’s probably the heat.”

He went then to the big slate upon which, only as a reminder, he sometimes chalked his menus, scrawled:

Anguilles au Gris, Vert, et Rouge

Anchois Robespierre

Oeufs de Rocs en Gelée

Veloute d‘Eperlans Central Park

Agulhacreola au Sauce Nacre

Sylphides à la Crème de Lion Mann

Endive Belge au Goo

Grives, Becfigues, et Béguinettes

et Merles de Corse Bubu

Bubu, avidly watching, swelled with pride. Etienne must indeed be in a magnificent mood thus to honor him in naming a brand new dish. Etienne cocked his head and grinned at Bubu’s glee, scrawled on:

Hamburger 61st Street

Coots avec Leeks Navets Farcis Bleu

Ballotines de Oison Mercedes

He stopped and was thoughtful, went to an open window that gave upon the garden. The sky was writhing with thunder clouds and, by an abrupt flash of lightning, he saw Gertrude in the magnolia tree abstractedly tearing a large white blossom into bits. He whistled, but she only glanced fleetingly, fleetingly, in his direction, then lifted her head and bayed mournfully at the darkling, tumultuous sky. It was an eerie sound.

“Bright-feathered imbecile,” he muttered tenderly. “She’ll get soaking wet in another minute.”

A few drops of rain pattered on the sill. He whistled once more, crossed back to the slate, and added:

Salade de Concombres, Ambergris

et Choux Jaune

Jambon à la Prague

Sous la Cendre Teak

Fraises Réve de Bébé Blaque

Péche Attila

Bavaroise Gertrude

He was thoughtful again, crossed to the smallest of the refrigerators, and gently removed the eleven perfect daisies which would serve as an epergne. Opening the refrigerator, he thought of Vincent. It would not do to leave that brash youth too long in the Crucifreeze. Perhaps another half hour of chilled meditation upon his sins would suffice, then Etienne would free him, pay him handsomely for the Tasting Machine, and send him packing. It was well for Vincent — he smiled wryly — that he was not a vindictive man.

There was a bowl of caviar in the small refrigerator, the luminous, absinthe-greenish kind. It had been flown from Baku the previous day. It occurred to Etienne that it might be as well to test the Machine once more before his guests arrived. He took the bowl into the dining room and placed it on the table; almost immediately the Machine began to hum, whirr softly, ever so softly. The spoon arm slowly unfolded, reached out and — snup! — engulfed a great mouthful, snatched it to the aperture, popped it in. The filament began to glow, and then, sibilantly, sensually, unmistakably, the Machine chortled with pleasure.

Etienne heaved a great and beatific snortle. It worked, and perfectly. He carried the bowl back into the kitchen and put it in the small refrigerator. The Machine’s voice followed him for a moment with thin whines of anguish. That was as well, he decided. Let it be ravenous for the feast to come.

He listened then. He could hear Bubu in the cellar — clink and stumble, rumble, plink — as he chose wines to accompany dinner; he could hear the rain outside, a tenuous shuffle of thunder, Gertrude wetly baying at the sky; he could hear the distant surf of tires on Park Avenue.

And then he heard another sound — a slam, a click, a closed door. He wondered for a little while where it came from, then abruptly dropped his spoon and closed a pot, hurried to the Salle. The door was closed, locked.

He pounded on it lightly, then more heavily, then hard. A horrid sweat grew suddenly upon his flesh.

“Mercedes!” he shouted. “Are you there?”

There was no answer and no sound. He smiled a pea-green smile and tried to pull himself together. His nerves... Obviously an errant breeze had sprung. He need simply find the key... and...

The key, the only key, was inside, and this was a heavy, practically impregnable door. Ah, well, a locksmith...

“Bubu,” he called, but Bubu was in the cellar, and thunder quenched his voice. Thinking of keys, how could he have thought that Mercedes could be here? He himself had locked her door.

But wait! If she had traced the keys, and Vincent had made duplicates, then she, too, might...

From beyond the door there came — or did he only imagine it? — a faint, far hum, a tremulous, low-pitched moan of — what was it like, anticipation?

Etienne whirled, rushed up the stairs. Mercedes’ door was open. He shouted for her, shrieked her name. A crash of thunder worried away to silence. Dashing back down the stairs he fell, described a spinning parabola, and landed on his head. There was darkness...

He must have been unconscious for a full minute, perhaps more. When he sat up and ruefully rubbed his skull, it seemed that it was spring. Birds were singing, and a gentle fountain somewhere gently played. Then he knew it was the rain, a roaring cloudburst. And over it there was a great, expanding sigh of ecstasy that shook the house.

Etienne remembered then, and clawed his way along the corridor, weakly beat upon the door, and sobbed, “Mercedes!” And she answered him.

“Etienne!” she cried, and her sweet, tinkling voice was strained and harsh, like coarse silk tearing. “Etienne — I lied! I—”

And then her words were drowned in such a cataclysmic rhapsody of rapturous squeals and groans and slobbering slurr-ups of delight as to stun the ear and stop the heart. “Vincent!” she screamed at last, above this storm of gustatory joy, “Vincent, my love!”

And then her voice was stilled.