Death on the Installment Plan (64 page)

That didn’t do my work for me … Sometimes she’d hang around chewing the fat for hours … When I wanted to get rid of her, there was only one way.

“Let’s go in,” I’d say. “Come on, kid. You can help me tie up some bundles.”

“Let me suck just one more … Wait for me, little chickadee! … I got to finish my night’s- work …”

I could never count on her … Right away she’d look for the back door … She’d chicken out … Except for sewing on buttons, which was her weakness, I never got any real work out of her … She faded the minute I brought it up … It was surefire.

Hardly a week later the plans and solutions began to pour in at a terrific rate … about a hundred a day. Our rules had specified
ad libitum
… They hadn’t let hard reality faze them! … They’d given their fancy free rein … All in all, at first glance, their expositions and plans were as dopey as they come … Our geniuses had really knocked themselves out! …

On the balistic side their ideas were wild … but some of the detail was good … We’d get something out of it … Generally speaking, when they used small sheets of paper, the size of the writing paper they give you in cafés, it was almost always to advertise some colossal device, a bell bigger than the Opéra … and when the plans were enormous, sprawled over eighteen octavo pages, you could bet they were selling some little sounding device about five inches long.

In that hobby parade there was everything you could ask for … every imaginable system, invention, and subterfuge for treasure hunting … Some of the caissons suggested were shaped like an elephant … Others were more like a hippopotamus … The majority, as we might have expected, looked like fishes … Some had a human aspect … regular people with faces … One, the inventor told us, was actually his landlady, a very faithful likeness, with eyes that would shine when they got down below two thousand feet … revolving in concentric circles … to attract all the fauna of the deep seas …

In every mail a fresh load of brilliant solutions turned up … they were somersaulting all over his desk … All we had to do now was wait for our sky pilot. He’d promised to be back the last Thurday of the month … It was all arranged and settled … We were right there at our posts … He was supposed to bring us ten thousand francs … an advance on our share … That would give us a chance to pay our most urgent debts in the neighborhood, to get the telephone turned on, and to run some beautiful pictures in an “extra-special number” devoted entirely to the diving bell … Already the big dailies were talking about us in connection with salvaging submarines, not just recovering the fabulous treasures of the deep … It was the year after the
Farfadet
disaster … The excitement hadn’t died down … We had a sure chance of winning the gratitude of the nation …

But all those prospects didn’t turn the old cutie’s head … In fact she was looking pretty glum. She wanted to see that priest again before taking another step … Sometimes she’d ask me a dozen times an hour if I didn’t see him coming … at the far end of the Galerie … And what about the boss? Where could he be keeping himself again? Painting the town? … Wasn’t he down in the cellar? … No? … He’d been out since morning … All sorts of people were asking for him … It was getting worrisome … “Wait a minute,” I tell the old lady. “I’ll look in at the Insurrection …” I’d hardly stepped out when I see his nibs taking it easy, strolling through the gardens … making eyes at the nursemaids … without a care in the world … He’s whistling, the stinker! He’s got his arms full of bottles … I hightail it over to him …

“Well, well, Ferdinand! You look mighty anxious … Is the house on fire? … Is something wrong? … Has he turned up?”

“No,” I say, “he’s not there …”

“He won’t be long,” he says calmly … “Anyway, here’s some Banyuls … and a bottle of Amer Picon … some anisette … and cookies … How do I know what the priest likes? … What do priests drink anyway? … Everything, I hope …” He wanted to celebrate the success of our venture. “I sincerely believe, Ferdinand, that we’ve hit the royal road … Ah yes! Things are shaping up … I was looking at the plans this morning … my oh my, what a shipment again! A torrent of ideas, my boy … Once the avalanche has subsided … I’m going to do some big-time sorting … On one side everything that looks promising … and on the other, the stuff we’d better forget … He wouldn’t be able to do that … I expect him to give me carte blanche. No hit-or-miss methods! … It takes knowledge! We’ll talk it over this afternoon … And that’s not all, you know … There’s the question of surety … I can’t go into this thing with my eyes closed … Oh no! That would be too easy! Not at my age! Certainly not! … First of all a bank account … That’s the main thing! And two hundred thousand on the line! And joint signatures … him and me! I send for the builders … we place the order … Then we can talk … We’ll know where we’re at … After all we’re not babes in the woods!” Still, a shadow of doubt grazed his mind …

“You think he’ll be pleased with all this?”

“Ah,” I say, “I’m positive.” I hadn’t the slightest doubt.

And so, chatting away, we get back to the office … We wait another little while … Still no priest in sight. It was getting kind of sticky … Madame des Pereires was all wrought up, she was trying to make a little order … so the place wouldn’t look too much like a barn … It was a terrible shambles even in normal times, and now with this rush there wasn’t an inch of space anywhere! … An enormous dungheap! A sow wouldn’t find her kittens … Garbage in full eruption … absolutely sickening … from floor to roof … torn papers, disemboweled books, putrid manuals, manuscripts, memoranda, all reduced to streamers … clouds of flying confetti … The bindings all ripped, thrown in all directions … Those hoodlums had even made off with our beautiful statues … They’d decapitated Flammarion! They’d stuck blotting paper on Hippocrates, lovely violet moustaches … After an inconceivable lot of trouble we managed to extricate three chairs, the table, and the big armchair from the mess. We threw out the customers … We cleared a space to receive the holy man in.

On the stroke of half past five, only half an hour late … there he comes … I spy him coming down the Galerie d’Orléans … He was carrying a black briefcase, stuffed to the gills … He comes in … We greet him. He puts his load down on the table … Everything’s OK. He mops his brow … he must have been walking fast … He catches his breath … The conversation starts up … Courtial takes over … The old lady goes up to the Alcazar … she comes back with a few folders, the most remarkable … quite a neat little assortment … She puts them down beside his briefcase … He seems satisfied … He leafs vaguely through them … picks out one or two at random … He doesn’t seem terribly interested … We wait … we’re afraid to stir a muscle … for him to say something … We breathe with care … He rummages through a few more pages … Then he screws up his whole face … A nervous tic! … And then another! A hideous grimace! Lord, it’s an attack! A regular convulsion comes over him … He takes the whole load of papers and throws them into the showease … Then he clutches his head … He rubs it with both hands … He kneads it, he mangles it … He pinches himself, he massages his chin … and his fat cheeks, his nose too, and his ears … A satanic convulsion! … He gouges his eyes, he scrapes his scalp … And then all of a sudden he leans over … He bends down and there he is on the floor … Plunging his head into the papers … He sniffs at the piles … He grunts, he puffs and blows … He picks up a whole armful and … whoops! … he tosses them up in the air … He flings them at the ceiling … It all comes raining down … papers, folders, plans, pamphlets … They’re all over … We can’t see each other … Once … twice … and then he does it again! All the time howling with joy … jubilant … He squirms … he digs in again … The people collect outside the door … He turns his briefcase upside down … He takes out more newspapers, a lot of clippings, whole armfuls … He scatters them too … In among them, I see them all right … there’s a lot of bank notes … I see them in with the papers … I see them flying away … I dive to pick them up … I know how it’s done … Just then two plug-uglies come charging up … They bang into the door with their shoulders … They push the crowd aside. They barge in … They jump the padre … They collar him from behind, they rough him up, they knock him over, they pin him to the floor … Ah, the poor bastard’s suffocating … He crawls under the table, groaning … “Police,” they inform us … They pull him out by the dogs … They sit on the poor guy …

“Have you known him long?” they ask us … They’re inspectors … The meanest of the two pulls out his card … We tell them quick that we’ve got nothing to do with it … Absolutely nothing! The sky pilot is still wriggling … still struggling … He manages to get up on his knees … He starts sniveling … “Forgive me! Forgive me!” he begs us … “It was for my poor! My blind! … My poor little deaf-mutes …” All he wants in life is to go on collecting funds …

“Shut up! Who’s asking you! … The dirty bastard’s nuts! … When are you going to stop horsing around?” The one who had shown us his card gives the sky pilot such a clout that he goes “quack” and folds up … He wasn’t talking anymore … They put the handcuffs on him right away … They wait a minute … They catch their breath … They kick him to make him get up. It’s not over yet. Courtial still has to sign a statement and then some other paper on both sides. One of the bulls, the one that’s not so mean as the other one, tells us a little about this screwball … He really was a priest … he was even an honorary canon! … Monsieur le Chanoine Fleury! … That’s what he called himself … This wasn’t his first fling or his first run-in with the law … He’d already taken every member of his family for thousands and thousands of francs … His cousins … his aunts … the Little Sisters of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul … He’d touched everybody … the churchwardens of the diocese … the beadle … and even the chair attendant … He owed her at least two thousand francs! … All for screwy schemes without any rhyme or reason … Lately he’d been burglarizing the sacraments chest … They’d caught him at it twice … with his hand in the chest … They’d found the whole of Joan-of-Arc’s-Pence in his room, broken open with a chisel … He had treasure on the brain … They’d noticed it too late … Now they were going to lock him up … His bishop in Libourne had insisted on having him interned …

There was a crowd under our arcades … They were having a hell of a good time, enjoying the show … There were plenty of comments … A lot of thinking was going on … They saw the lettuce scattered around the place … But I’d seen it too … I’d had presence of mind … I’d already saved four or five bills and a fifty-franc piece … They did a lot of exclaiming …Those lugs outside the window had been watching me … The bulls pushed our priest into the gymnasium … He was still resisting … They had to go around in back to load him into a cab … He held on with all his might … He just didn’t want to go …

“My poor! My poor poor! …” he kept yelling. Finally after a lot of trouble the cab came …

They hauled him in … They had to tie him down, to rope him to the seat … Even so, he didn’t keep still … He threw us kisses … It was shameful the way they tortured him … The cab couldn’t get going, the people were standing in front of the horse … They wanted to look inside … They wanted to have the canon brought out … Finally with the help of some more cops they managed to get the carriage clear … So then the whole crowd of pests stream back in front of the shop … They couldn’t make head nor tail of it! They kept cursing at us …

All those insults got the old cutie’s dander up … She wasn’t going to stand for it another minute … She didn’t think twice … She leapt to the door … She opens it, she goes out, she stands there facing them …

“Well?” she says. “What’s the matter with you? … You lousy suckers! You creeps! You’re a lot of crummy snotnoses! Go chase yourselves! Louts! Hoodlums! What have you got to complain about? … Was that crook a friend of yours?” She had guts all right … But it didn’t work … They cussed her even worse … They bellowed harder than ever. They spat all over our window. They threw gravel … It looked like a massacre coming on … We had to beat it out of there quick … by the back way …

After that Trafalgar we didn’t know what to do … How were we going to quiet those lunatics now? This deep-sea diving-bell contest was getting as wild as our perpetual-motion runaround … The place was humming all day long … Often they’d wake me up in the middle of the night with their screeching … A procession of screwballs with their eyes popping out half a mile, ripping their shirts off outside the door, swollen, bloated with certainties, with implacable solutions … It wasn’t a pleasant sight … More and more of them kept coming …They were blocking the traffic … A sarabande of lunatics! …

There was such a seething mass of them in the shop … tangled up in the chairs, clinging to the junk piles, submerged in the papers … that you couldn’t get in when you needed something … All they wanted was to hang around and argue a little more, to bowl us over with some new and conclusive detail …

If at least we’d owed them something … if they’d all coughed up an advance, a rake-off, or a registration fee, we could have understood maybe what they had to be unhappy about, why they were peevish and disgruntled … But that wasn’t the case … For once in our lives we didn’t owe them a nickel! That was the payoff! Couldn’t they give us credit? … Couldn’t they see we weren’t out for lucre? … that all we cared about was honor and fair play! … that we were quits … But nothing of the kind! … It was exactly the opposite! They were rioting for the hell of it … just to get us down … They were a thousand times angrier … a thousand times crummier, gripier, than on previous occasions when we’d bled them white … They were regular demons … Every single one yelled like at the Stock Exchange in honor of his gadget … And all of them together … The racket was something awful! …