The Paul Cain Omnibus (40 page)

And then he saw that Bubu, feigning still to sob, had crawled behind the villainous youth and now was winking up at his master invitingly. All he need do is push—and push he did; Vincent, taken entirely unawares, stumbled back with one of the unintelligible oaths favored by knaves and varlets, turned a highly unlikely double somersault, and smacked his skull smartly against the newel post.

“Quickly,” bellowed Etienne, “into the freezer with him!” And moving with well-nigh incredible speed, he snatched up the youth’s limp upper body, Bubu grabbed his feet, and they clattered down the stairs.

Gertrude slowly raised one pink and wrinkled talon to scratch her ear. “Glory be to God,” she muttered. She sat thinking for a time in silence, jumped when she heard the door of the freezer slam two floors below. Then, conscious of something moving in the room, she turned, looked down; the Tasting Machine, by some means of locomotion known only to God and its inventor, had crept across to just beneath her perch, its fork was poised, whish-t-t through the air at the exact moment Gertrude took wing, snipped out one of her tail feathers.

She alighted on the topmost branch of the rubber plant and, breathing heavily, watched it in frightened fascination.

“Glory be to God,” she muttered. “Glory be to God… .”

In Etienne’s kitchen and pantries adjacent thereto, there were seven refrigerators. There was one, to begin little, with a capacity of a shade under one hundred and two cubic inches, limited to caviar and the eleven, perfect daisies which he affected as a centerpiece at his rare dinners. There was one for ices, sherbets, mousses, and star sapphires (he had a theory that sapphires are at their best at 16.6 degrees Centigrade and always kept his at that temperature), one for certain cheeses, one for fish, one for fruit, and one for miscellaneous. And there was the Crucifreeze… .

This formidable compartment, the largest and coldest of the lot, was the masterpiece of L. Shiver & Sons. Hung there in rigid, frost-glazed putrefaction a brace of woodcock that Etienne himself had shot in the late summer of 1924. Hung there a collection of meat and game to slaver the mouths of the gods: goose and grouse, bear and bull, moose and manatee, teal and terrapin. Hung there, now, between a haunch of venison and a neatly halved wild boar: Vincent.

The temperature in the Crucifreeze averaged thirty-two degrees
below
zero, and even in the moment they were within, hanging Vincent up by his heels, Etienne’s nakedness turned a pale and rather interesting azure. They hurried out, and he closed and doublelocked the door. Bubu scurried around in small, tight circles in sheer excitement, and Etienne, sitting himself down tailor fashion on the meat block, fell to examining the objects that had fallen from Vincent’s pockets when they turned him upside down.

There was a business card:

vincent vincent inc.

“You name it—We invent it.”

Purple Building

808 Lexington Avenue RH 4-6509

There were four sonnets “To Mercedes,” a package of Home Run cigarettes, a nickel, three dimes, and an Egyptian penny. There were two keys tied together with sulphur-yellow ribbon: one was to Etienne’s back door, the other was to Mercedes’ apartment, which comprised the second floor of the house.

Etienne goggled down at these in agape amazement. It must be understood that no man but Etienne and Bubu (who didn’t count, because he was a eunuch) had looked upon Mercedes’ beauty—and lived—since he had abducted her, at the tender age of three, from the seraglio of Yussuf Ben in Khur. True, he allowed her to fly her kite from the roof in pleasant weather, but she was always heavily veiled and …

The kite! He leaped from the meat block and dashed up the back stairs, snatched up a vast towel in passing, wrapped it around his middle, and emerged on the roof. There it was, two hundred yards or so to the north, northeast—the Purple Building! What simpler than for Mercedes to choose a day when the wind was right to communicate, kitewise, with Vincent Vincent, if she so chose? He staggered back and would have fallen if Bubu, who had followed close behind, had not supported him, and for the third time that evening Etienne paled.

“Perfidy,” he piteously wailed, “thy name is woman!” Leaning on Bubu’s shoulder, he reeled back down the stair.

It must here be made of record, somewhat painful record, that Etienne, king among chefs, was a veritable emperor among lovers. The words he whispered into Mercedes’ shell like ears were pure poetry; each morning, noon, and night his impassioned wooing discovered some new expression to delight her heart, bauble to adorn her white perfection, outré and exquisite confection to tempt her tongue. Except, and now we come to the painful part, except for one little thing.

When, in the carefree years of his extreme youth’s extremity, Etienne had by dint of Gargantuan eating and drinking bouts destroyed his digestion, he had also, in spectacular excesses of amorous dalliance, played frightful havoc with his glandular organization. And so, perforce—it must be faced—his well-nigh perfect lovemaking was only well-nigh perfect.

At Mercedes’ door he dismissed Bubu with a heartrending smile, unlocked the door with Vincent’s key, and crossed the tiny cuneus foyer to the bedchamber. Mercedes was still in her bath. He stood a moment listening to her laughter, listening to her sweet voice lifted in a childish song, then crossed to the eastern window. It commanded a perfect view of the Purple Building. In the bottom drawer of a commode he found a
Bluejacket’s Manual of Semaphore Signaling
, a pair of binoculars, tracing paper that bore the outline of two keys. The evidence was complete and irrefutable. But one thing more he must discover—had the keys been used?

He sat down on a vermilion taffeta tuffet and considered ways and means of Mercedes’ execution. Shooting, stabbing, blunt instruments were emphatically out of the question. To mar the wondrously wrought ivory of that beloved body! Etienne shuddered, gulped in pain. Poison, perhaps, something swift and pleasant to the taste. And then she came into the doorway, fresh from her bath, still with the tinkling song upon her lips, and he looked upon her beauty and knew that he could never murder her.

“Darling,” she said, and her voice was a golden bell, “I am of delight to see you.” She crossed to him and stooped and kissed his forehead. Her mouth was like warm silk.

“Have I been good to you?” he asked, a little tremulously.

“You have been to me an angel,” she said simply. “You are the kindest and best man in all the world, and with all my heart I love you.”

“Have I ever denied you anything?” The Braque still life beneath his left nipple quivered slightly. “Had you not but to wish for Richebourg ‘04, or spun-glass slippers, or”—he bobbed his head at her bed in the opposite corner—“a platinum-mounted trundle bed?”

“You have denied me nothing. You are my bounteous and most munificent lord and master.” Her eyes had fallen on the damning evidence which he had spread out on the tuffet. “And now, because of mistaken jealousy, I am about to die.”

“Mistaken!” It was a broken cry from a breaking heart. “Mistaken?”

She sat down beside him, tenderly fondled his toes. “Mistaken, my love. It all began so innocently, Etienne, almost in jest, this gentle nightmare.”

“Jest!”

She nodded. Her enormous eyes flooded with tears for a moment. She dried them with a tiny kerchief, snuffled delicately, went on:

“One day, less than a month agone, my kite, caught in a capricious down draft, disappeared into an open window of the building there, and when I drew it down, someone had written upon it; these were the words: ‘Veiled enchantress of the roof, I am a poor inventor dry of inspiration and close to perishing. Let me look but once upon your face before I go. I ask no more!’

“What harm, thought I,” she continued, “what harm in granting this poor devil his dying wish, and so, only for an instant, mind you, I lowered my veil. That, I thought, was an end of it.”

“What harm,” Etienne echoed hollowly. “What harm!”

“But no.” Mercedes rose, paced to the door and back in obvious agitation. Dear Allah, thought Etienne, what loveliness. “No,” she said, sinking down beside him, “a few days later my kite once more—what Fates and Furies direct these things?—swooped to that window, and this time he wrote, ‘A plot’s afoot against your master, Etienne de Rocoque, and we must join in a counterplot to foil it!’”

“A plot!” Etienne half rose, sank back.

“Aye. And dangling from my kite were these.” She indicated the binoculars, manual, tracing paper. “Through infinite trial and error, I learned to communicate with him by semaphore from the window there. He swore that if I breathed a word to you about this dark conspiracy against you, all was lost. He told me his name, learned mine.”

“The plot then, what of that?” Etienne cried. “Who was involved?”

Mercedes shook her head. “I begin now to believe that it was only a figment, a tissue of lies,” she said. “Because,” she lowered her eyes, and her whole delightful body flushed a fragile pink, “a week ago he sent me a sonnet.”

“By wigwag?”

She nodded.

“The keys, then,” he demanded gently, “what of the keys?”

“That was before,” she murmured. “He said that he must have some means of gaining entrance to the house, to—these were his words—‘Nip the fiendish designs upon de Rocoque in the bud, just as they are about to flower.’”

Etienne sighed. “My child, my sumptuous child,” he patted her hand, “you have been taken in.”

“I know it now!” She leaped to her feet and danced a little dance. “I know it now, my own true love, my king, my benefactor. But I did it all for you! Can you forgive?”

“The keys,” Etienne’s voice was barely audible, “he never used the keys?”

“Never.” Her innocence was a sword, a shield, a banner. “Never!”

Etienne was smiling, went on in a shaky whisper: “And the Tasting Machine. What of that?”

She stopped in mid-pirouette and gazed at him in puzzlement. “The what?”

“This varlet Vincent followed me home a little while ago. He had a machine that he said he had invented especially for me, and when I asked its price, he said—Etienne’s voice broke a touch—“its price was you.”

Her petaled face darkened; a half hue with anger, curved to a kind of agony. She caught her breath. “The knave,” she muttered in a small spasm of loathing. “The unspeakable blackguard! What have you done with him?”

Etienne rose. “I have put him away,” he said, “in a place where he may dwell for a little while upon the bitter lees of vanity and youthful presumption. For only a little while, my sweet. Then I shall burden him with gold and jewels and send him on his way.”

“And the Machine?”

“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.”