Aubrey Determines to give Service that's Different
Seldom has a young man spent a more desolate afternoon than Aubrey on
that Sunday. His only consolation was that twenty minutes after he had
left the bookshop he saw a taxi drive up (he was then sitting gloomily
at his bedroom window) and Titania enter it and drive away. He
supposed that she had gone to join the party in Larchmont, and was glad
to know that she was out of what he now called the war zone. For the
first time on record, O. Henry failed to solace him. His pipe tasted
bitter and brackish. He was eager to know what Weintraub was doing,
but did not dare make any investigations in broad daylight. His idea
was to wait until dark. Observing the Sabbath calm of the streets, and
the pageant of baby carriages wheeling toward Thackeray Boulevard, he
wondered again whether he had thrown away this girl's friendship for a
merely imaginary suspicion.
At last he could endure his cramped bedroom no longer. Downstairs
someone was dolefully playing a flute, most horrible of all tortures to
tightened nerves. While her lodgers were at church the tireless Mrs.
Schiller was doing a little housecleaning: he could hear the monotonous
rasp of a carpet-sweeper passing back and forth in an adjoining room.
He creaked irritably downstairs, and heard the usual splashing behind
the bathroom door. In the frame of the hall mirror he saw a pencilled
note: Will Mrs. Smith please call Tarkington 1565, it said.
Unreasonably annoyed, he tore a piece of paper out of his notebook and
wrote on it Will Mrs. Smith please call Bath 4200. Mounting to the
second floor he tapped on the bathroom door. "Don't come in!" cried an
agitated female voice. He thrust the memorandum under the door, and
left the house.
Walking the windy paths of Prospect Park he condemned himself to
relentless self-scrutiny. "I've damned myself forever with her," he
groaned, "unless I can prove something." The vision of Titania's face
silhouetted against the shelves of books came maddeningly to his mind.
"I was going to have such a good time, and you've spoilt it all!" With
what angry conviction she had said: "I never saw a man like you
before--and I've seen a good many!"
Even in his disturbance of soul the familiar jargon of his profession
came naturally to utterance. "At least she admits I'm DIFFERENT," he
said dolefully. He remembered the first item in the Grey-Matter Code,
a neat little booklet issued by his employers for the information of
their representatives:
Business is built upon CONFIDENCE. Before you can sell Grey-Matter
Service to a Client, you must sell YOURSELF.
"How am I going to sell myself to her?" he wondered. "I've simply got
to deliver, that's all. I've got to give her service that's DIFFERENT.
If I fall down on this, she'll never speak to me again. Not only that,
the firm will lose the old man's account. It's simply unthinkable."
Nevertheless, he thought about it a good deal, stimulated from time to
time as in the course of his walk (which led him out toward the
faubourgs of Flatbush) he passed long vistas of signboards, which he
imagined placarded with vivid lithographs in behalf of the Chapman
prunes. "Adam and Eve Ate Prunes On Their Honeymoon" was a slogan that
flashed into his head, and he imagined a magnificent painting
illustrating this text. Thus, in hours of stress, do all men turn for
comfort to their chosen art. The poet, battered by fate, heals himself
in the niceties of rhyme. The prohibitionist can weather the blackest
melancholia by meditating the contortions of other people's abstinence.
The most embittered citizen of Detroit will never perish by his own
hand while he has an automobile to tinker.
Aubrey walked many miles, gradually throwing his despair to the winds.
The bright spirits of Orison Swett Marden and Ralph Waldo Trine,
Dioscuri of Good Cheer, seemed to be with him reminding him that
nothing is impossible. In a small restaurant he found sausages,
griddle cakes and syrup. When he got back to Gissing Street it was
dark, and he girded his soul for further endeavour.
About nine o'clock he walked up the alley. He had left his overcoat in
his room at Mrs. Schiller's and also the Cromwell bookcover--having
taken the precaution, however, to copy the inscriptions into his pocket
memorandum-book. He noticed lights in the rear of the bookshop, and
concluded that the Mifflins and their employee had got home safely.
Arrived at the back of Weintraub's pharmacy, he studied the contours of
the building carefully.
The drug store lay, as we have explained before, at the corner of
Gissing Street and Wordsworth Avenue, just where the Elevated railway
swings in a long curve. The course of this curve brought the
scaffolding of the viaduct out over the back roof of the building, and
this fact had impressed itself on Aubrey's observant eye the day
before. The front of the drug store stood three storeys, but in the
rear it dropped to two, with a flat roof over the hinder portion. Two
windows looked out upon this roof. Weintraub's back yard opened onto
the alley, but the gate, he found, was locked. The fence would not be
hard to scale, but he hesitated to make so direct an approach.
He ascended the stairs of the "L" station, on the near side, and paying
a nickel passed through a turnstile onto the platform. Waiting until
just after a train had left, and the long, windy sweep of planking was
solitary, he dropped onto the narrow footway that runs beside the
track. This required watchful walking, for the charged third rail was
very near, but hugging the outer side of the path he proceeded without
trouble. Every fifteen feet or so a girder ran sideways from the
track, resting upon an upright from the street below. The fourth of
these overhung the back corner of Weintraub's house, and he crawled
cautiously along it. People were passing on the pavement underneath,
and he greatly feared being discovered. But he reached the end of the
beam without mishap. From here a drop of about twelve feet would bring
him onto Weintraub's back roof. For a moment he reflected that, once
down there, it would be impossible to return the same way. However, he
decided to risk it. Where he was, with his legs swinging astride the
girder, he was in serious danger of attracting attention.
He would have given a great deal, just then, to have his overcoat with
him, for by lowering it first he could have jumped onto it and muffled
the noise of his fall. He took off his coat and carefully dropped it
on the corner of the roof. Then cannily waiting until a train passed
overhead, drowning all other sounds with its roar, he lowered himself
as far as he could hang by his hands, and let go.
For some minutes he lay prone on the tin roof, and during that time a
number of distressing ideas occurred to him. If he really expected to
get into Weintraub's house, why had he not laid his plans more
carefully? Why (for instance) had he not made some attempt to find out
how many there were in the household? Why had he not arranged with one
of his friends to call Weintraub to the telephone at a given moment, so
that he could be more sure of making an entry unnoticed? And what did
he expect to see or do if he got inside the house? He found no answer
to any of these questions.
It was unpleasantly cold, and he was glad to slip his coat on again.
The small revolver was still in his hip pocket. Another thought
occurred to him--that he should have provided himself with tennis
shoes. However, it was some comfort to know that rubber heels of a
nationally advertised brand were under him. He crawled quietly up to
the sill of one of the windows. It was closed, and the room inside was
dark. A blind was pulled most of the way down, leaving a gap of about
four inches. Peeping cautiously over the sill, he could see farther
inside the house a brightly lit door and a passageway.
"One thing I've got to look out for," he thought, "is children. There
are bound to be some--who ever heard of a German without offspring? If
I wake them, they'll bawl. This room is very likely a nursery, as it's
on the southeastern side. Also, the window is shut tight, which is
probably the German idea of bedroom ventilation."
His guess may not have been a bad one, for after his eyes became
accustomed to the dimness of the room he thought he could perceive two
cot beds. He then crawled over to the other window. Here the blind
was pulled down flush with the bottom of the sash. Trying the window
very cautiously, he found it locked. Not knowing just what to do, he
returned to the first window, and lay there peering in. The sill was
just high enough above the roof level to make it necessary to raise
himself a little on his hands to see inside, and the position was very
trying. Moreover, the tin roof had a tendency to crumple noisily when
he moved. He lay for some time, shivering in the chill, and wondering
whether it would be safe to light a pipe.
"There's another thing I'd better look out for," he thought, "and
that's a dog. Who ever heard of a German without a dachshund?"
He had watched the lighted doorway for a long while without seeing
anything, and was beginning to think he was losing time to no profit
when a stout and not ill-natured looking woman appeared in the hallway.
She came into the room he was studying, and closed the door. She
switched on the light, and to his horror began to disrobe. This was
not what he had counted on at all, and he retreated rapidly. It was
plain that nothing was to be gained where he was. He sat timidly at
one edge of the roof and wondered what to do next.
As he sat there, the back door opened almost directly below him, and he
heard the clang of a garbage can set out by the stoop. The door stood
open for perhaps half a minute, and he heard a male voice--Weintraub's,
he thought--speaking in German. For the first time in his life he
yearned for the society of his German instructor at college, and also
wondered--in the rapid irrelevance of thought--what that worthy man was
now doing to earn a living. In a rather long and poorly lubricated
sentence, heavily verbed at the end, he distinguished one phrase that
seemed important. "Nach Philadelphia gehen"--"Go to Philadelphia."
Did that refer to Mifflin? he wondered.
The door closed again. Leaning over the rain-gutter, he saw the light
go out in the kitchen. He tried to look through the upper portion of
the window just below him, but leaning out too far, the tin spout gave
beneath his hands. Without knowing just how he did it, he slithered
down the side of the wall, and found his feet on a window-sill. His
hands still clung to the tin gutter above. He made haste to climb down
from his position, and found himself outside the back door. He had
managed the descent rather more quietly than if it had been carefully
planned. But he was badly startled, and retreated to the bottom of the
yard to see if he had aroused notice.
A wait of several minutes brought no alarm, and he plucked up courage.
On the inner side of the house--away from Wordsworth Avenue--a narrow
paved passage led to an outside cellar-way with old-fashioned slanting
doors. He reconnoitred this warily. A bright light was shining from a
window in this alley. He crept below it on hands and knees fearing to
look in until he had investigated a little. He found that one flap of
the cellar door was open, and poked his nose into the aperture. All
was dark below, but a strong, damp stench of paints and chemicals
arose. He sniffed gingerly. "I suppose he stores drugs down there,"
he thought.
Very carefully he crawled back, on hands and knees, toward the lighted
window. Lifting his head a few inches at a time, finally he got his
eyes above the level of the sill. To his disappointment he found the
lower half of the window frosted. As he knelt there, a pipe set in the
wall suddenly vomited liquid which gushed out upon his knees. He
sniffed it, and again smelled a strong aroma of acids. With great
care, leaning against the brick wall of the house, he rose to his feet
and peeped through the upper half of the pane.
It seemed to be the room where prescriptions were compounded. As it
was empty, he allowed himself a hasty survey. All manner of bottles
were ranged along the walls; there was a high counter with scales, a
desk, and a sink. At the back he could see the bamboo curtain which he
remembered having noticed from the shop. The whole place was in the
utmost disorder: mortars, glass beakers, a typewriter, cabinets of
labels, dusty piles of old prescriptions strung on filing hooks, papers
of pills and capsules, all strewn in an indescribable litter. Some
infusion was heating in a glass bowl propped on a tripod over a blue
gas flame. Aubrey noticed particularly a heap of old books several
feet high piled carelessly at one end of the counter.
Looking more carefully, he saw that what he had taken for a mirror over
the prescription counter was an aperture looking into the shop.
Through this he could see Weintraub, behind the cigar case, waiting
upon some belated customer with his shop-worn air of affability. The
visitor departed, and Weintraub locked the door after him and pulled
down the blinds. Then he returned toward the prescription room, and
Aubrey ducked out of view.
Presently he risked looking again, and was just in time to see a
curious sight. The druggist was bending over the counter, pouring some
liquid into a glass vessel. His face was directly under a hanging
bulb, and Aubrey was amazed at the transformation. The apparently
genial apothecary of cigar stand and soda fountain was gone. He saw
instead a heavy, cruel, jowlish face, with eyelids hooded down over the
eyes, and a square thrusting chin buttressed on a mass of jaw and
suetty cheek that glistened with an oily shimmer. The jaw quivered a
little as though with some intense suppressed emotion. The man was
completely absorbed in his task. The thick lower lip lapped upward
over the mouth. On the cheekbone was a deep red scar. Aubrey felt a
pang of fascinated amazement at the gross energy and power of that
abominable relentless mask.
"So this is the harmless old thing!" he thought.
Just then the bamboo curtain parted, and the woman whom he had seen
upstairs appeared. Forgetting his own situation, Aubrey still stared.
She wore a faded dressing gown and her hair was braided as though for
the night. She looked frightened, and must have spoken, for Aubrey saw
her lips move. The man remained bent over his counter until the last
drops of liquid had run out. His jaw tightened, he straightened
suddenly and took one step toward her, with outstretched hand
imperiously pointed. Aubrey could see his face plainly: it had a
savagery more than bestial. The woman's face, which had borne a timid,
pleading expression, appealed in vain against that fierce gesture. She
turned and vanished. Aubrey saw the druggist's pointing finger
tremble. Again he ducked out of sight. "That man's face would be
lonely in a crowd," he said to himself. "And I used to think the
movies exaggerated things. Say, he ought to play opposite Theda Bara."
He lay at full length in the paved alley and thought that a little
acquaintance with Weintraub would go a long way. Then the light in the
window above him went out, and he gathered himself together for quick
motion if necessary. Perhaps the man would come out to close the
cellar door----
The thought was in his mind when a light flashed on farther down the
passage, between him and the kitchen. It came from a small barred
window on the ground level. Evidently the druggist had gone down into
the cellar. Aubrey crawled silently along toward the yard. Reaching
the lit pane he lay against the wall and looked in.
The window was too grimed for him to see clearly, but what he could
make out had the appearance of a chemical laboratory and machine shop
combined. A long work bench was lit by several electrics. On it he
saw glass vials of odd shapes, and a medley of tools. Sheets of tin,
lengths of lead pipe, gas burners, a vise, boilers and cylinders, tall
jars of coloured fluids. He could hear a dull humming sound, which he
surmised came from some sort of revolving tool which he could see was
run by a belt from a motor. On trying to spy more clearly he found
that what he had taken for dirt was a coat of whitewash which had been
applied to the window on the inside, but the coating had worn away in
one spot which gave him a loophole. What surprised him most was to spy
the covers of a number of books strewn about the work table. One, he
was ready to swear, was the Cromwell. He knew that bright blue cloth
by this time.
For the second time that evening Aubrey wished for the presence of one
of his former instructors. "I wish I had my old chemistry professor
here," he thought. "I'd like to know what this bird is up to. I'd
hate to swallow one of his prescriptions."
His teeth were chattering after the long exposure and he was wet
through from lying in the little gutter that apparently drained off
from the sink in Weintraub's prescription laboratory. He could not see
what the druggist was doing in the cellar, for the man's broad back was
turned toward him. He felt as though he had had quite enough thrills
for one evening. Creeping along he found his way back to the yard, and
stepped cautiously among the empty boxes with which it was strewn. An
elevated train rumbled overhead, and he watched the brightly lighted
cars swing by. While the train roared above him, he scrambled up the
fence and dropped down into the alley.
"Well," he thought, "I'd give full-page space, preferred position, in
the magazine Ben Franklin founded to the guy that'd tell me what's
going on at this grand bolshevik headquarters. It looks to me as
though they're getting ready to blow the Octagon Hotel off the map."
He found a little confectionery shop on Wordsworth Avenue that was
still open, and went in for a cup of hot chocolate to warm himself.
"The expense account on this business is going to be rather heavy," he
said to himself. "I think I'll have to charge it up to the Daintybits
account. Say, old Grey Matter gives service that's DIFFERENT, don't
she! We not only keep Chapman's goods in the public eye, but we face
all the horrors of Brooklyn to preserve his family from unlawful
occasions. No, I don't like the company that bookseller runs with. If
'nach Philadelphia' is the word, I think I'll tag along. I guess it's
off for Philadelphia in the morning!"