Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

The waiter passed a folded slip of paper to Bob Rosen when he came with the popskull. “The lady left it,” he said. “What lady?” “The blond lady.” Agent and ad man smiled, made appropriate remarks while Bob scanned the note, recognized it as being in his own handwriting, failed to make it out, crammed it in his pocket.

“Mr. Anhalt,” said Stuart, turning dark, large-pupiled eyes on his client, “is a very important man at Rutherford’s: he has a corner office.” A gentle, somewhat tired smile from Anhalt, who gave the conversation a turn and talked about his home in Darien, and the work he was doing on it, by himself. Thus they got through the round of drinks, then walked a few blocks to the restaurant.

Here Bob was infinitely relieved that Anhalt did not order poached egg on creamed spinach, corned beef hash, or something equally simple, wholesome, and disgusting, and tending to inhibit Bob’s own wide-ranging tastes: Anhalt ordered duckling, Stuart had mutton chops, and Bob chose tripe and onions.

“Joe Tressling tells me that you’re going to write something for the cheese show,” said Anhalt, as they disarranged the pickle plate. Bob half-lifted his eyebrows, smiled. Stuart gazed broodingly into the innards of a sour tomato as if he might be saying to himself, “Ten percent of $17.72, Monegasque rights to a detective story.”

“More cheese is being eaten today in the United States than twenty-five years ago,” Anhalt continued. “Much, much more… Is it the result of advertising? Such as the Aunt Carrie Hour? Has that changed public taste? Or — has public taste changed for, say, other reasons, and are we just riding the wave?”

“The man who could have answered that question,” Bob said, “died the day before yesterday.”

Anhalt let out his breath. “How do you know he could have?”

“He said so.”

Anhalt, who’d had a half-eaten dilled cucumber in his hand, carefully laid it in the ash-tray, and leaned forward. “What else did he say? Old Martens, I mean. You do mean Old Martens, don’t you?”

Bob said that was right, and added, with unintentional untruthfulness, that he’d been offered a thousand dollars for that information, and had turned it down. Before he could correct himself, Anhalt, customary faint pink face gone almost red, and Stuart Emmanuel, eyes glittering hugely, said with one voice, “ Who offered—? ”

“What comes out of a chimney?”

Stuart, recovering first (Anhalt continued to stare, said nothing, while the color receded), said, “Bob, this is not a joke. That is the reason we have this appointment. An awful lot of money is involved — for you, for me, for Phil Anhalt, for, well, for everybody. For just everybody. So—”

It slipped out. “For T. Pettys Shadwell?” Bob asked.

The effect, as they used to say in pre-atomic days, was electrical. Stuart made a noise, between a moan and a hiss, rather like a man who, having trustingly lowered his breeches, sits all unawares upon an icicle. He clutched Bob’s hand. “You didn’t godforbid sign anything?” he wailed. Anhalt, who had gone red before, went white this time around, but still retained diffidence enough to place his hand merely upon Bob’s jacket cuff.

“He’s a cad!” he said, in trembling tones. “A swine, Mr. Rosen!”

“‘The most despicable of living men’,” quoted Mr. Rosen. (“Exactly,” said Anhalt.)

“Bob, you didn’t sign anything, godforbid?”

“No. No. No. But I feel as if I’ve had all the mystery I intend to have. And unless I get Information, why, gents, I shan’t undo one button.” The waiter arrived with the food and, according to the rules and customs of the Waiters’ Union, gave everybody the wrong orders. When this was straightened out, Stuart said, confidently, “Why, of course, Bob: Information: Why, certainly. There is nothing to conceal. Not from you ,” he said, chuckling. “Go ahead, start eating. I’ll eat and talk, you just eat and listen.”

And so, as he tucked away the tripe and onions, Bob heard Stuart recount, through a slight barrier of masticated mutton-chop, a most astonishing tale. In every generation (Stuart said) there were leaders of fashion, arbiters of style. At Nero’s court, Petronius. In Regency England, Beau Brummel. At present and for some time past, everyone knew about the Paris designers and their influence. And in the literary field (“Ahah!” muttered Bob, staring darkly at his forkful of stewed ox-paunch) — in the literary field, said Stuart, swallowing in haste for greater clarity, they all knew what effect a review by any one of A Certain Few Names, on the front page of the Sunday Times book section, could have upon the work of even an absolute unknown.

“It will sky-rocket it to Fame and Fortune with the speed of light,” said Stuart.

“Come to the point.” But Stuart, now grinding away on a chunk of grilled sheep, could only gurgle, wave his fork, and raise his eyebrows. Anhalt stopped his moody task of reducing the duckling to a mass of orange-flavored fibres, and turned to take the words, as it were, from Stuart’s mutton-filled mouth.

“The point, Mr. Rosen, is that poor old Martens went up and down Madison Avenue for years claiming he had found a way of predicting fashions and styles, and nobody believed him. Frankly, I didn’t. But I do now. What caused me to change my mind was this: When I heard, day before yesterday, that he had died so suddenly, I had a feeling that I had something of his, something that he’d left for me to look at once, something I’d taken just to get rid of him. And, oh, perhaps I was feeling a bit guilty, certainly a bit sorry, so I asked my secretary to get it for me. Well, you know, with the J. Oscar Rutherford people, as with Nature, nothing is ever lost—” Phillips Anhalt smiled his rather shy, rather sweet and slightly baffled smile—“so she got it for me and I took a look at it… I was …” he paused, hesitated for mot juste .

Stuart, with a masterful swallow, leaped into the breach, claymore in hand. “He was flabbergasted!”

Astounded, amended Anhalt. He was astounded.

There, in an envelope addressed to Peter Martens, and postmarked November 10, 1945, was a color snapshot of a young man wearing a fancy weskit.

“Now, you know, Mr. Rosen, no one in 1945 was wearing fancy weskits. They didn’t come in till some years later. How did Martens know they were going to come in? And there was another snapshot of a young man in a charcoal suit and a pink shirt. Nobody was wearing that outfit in ’45… I checked the records, you see, and the old gentleman had left the things for me in December of that year. I’m ashamed to say that I had the receptionist put him off when he called again… But just think of it: fancy weskits, charcoal suits, pink shirts, in 1945.” He brooded. Bob asked if there was anything about gray flannel suits in the envelope, and Anhalt smiled a faint and fleeting smile.

“Ah, Bob, now, Bob,” Stuart pursed his mouth in mild (and greasy) reproof. “You still don’t seem to realize that this is S*E*R*I*O*U*S*.”

“Indeed it is,” said P. Anhalt. “As soon as I told Mac about it, do you know what he said, Stu? He said, ‘Phil, don’t spare the horses.’” And they nodded soberly, as those who have received wisdom from on high.

“Who,” Bob asked, “is Mac?”

Shocked looks. Mac, he was told, the older men speaking both tandem and au pair , was Robert R. Mac Ian, head of the happy J. Oscar Rutherford corporate family.

“Of course, Phil,” Stuart observed, picking slyly at his baked potato, “I won’t ask why it took you till this morning to get in touch with me. With some other outfit, I might maybe suspect that they were trying to see what they could locate for themselves without having to cut our boy, here, in for a slice of the pie. He being the old man’s confidante and moral heir, anyway, so to speak.” (Bob stared at this description, said nothing. Let the thing develop as far at it would by itself, he reflected.) “But not the Rutherford outfit. It’s too big, too ethical, for things like that.” Anhalt didn’t answer.