The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag And Other Stories Read online

  He did not come up and speak to her, therefore she took position on him again. Hoag she could not see anywhere; had she missed him herself, or what?

  Randall walked down to the corner, glanced speculatively at a stand of taxis, then swung aboard a bus which had just drawn up to its stop. She followed him, allowing several others to mount it before her. The bus pulled away. Hoag had certainly not gotten aboard; she concluded that it was safe to break the routine.

  He looked up as she sat down beside him. "Cyn! I thought we had lost you."

  "You darn near did," she admitted. "Tell me—what’s cookin’?"

  "Wait till we get to the office."

  She did not wish to wait, but she subsided. The bus they had entered took them directly to their office, a mere half-dozen blocks away. When they were there he unlocked the door of the tiny suite and went at once to the telephone. Their listed office phone was connected through the PBX of a secretarial service.

  "Any calls?" he asked, then listened for a moment. "O.K. Send up the slips. No hurry."

  He put the phone down and turned to his wife. "Well, babe, that’s just about the easiest five hundred we ever promoted."

  "You found out what he does with himself?"

  "Of course."

  "What does he do?"

  "Guess."

  She eyed him. "How would you like a paste in the snoot?"

  "Keep your pants on. You wouldn’t guess it, though it’s simple enough. He works for a commercial jeweler—polishes gems. You know that stuff he found under his fingernails, that got him so upset?"

  "Yes?"

  "Nothing to it. Jeweler’s rouge. With the aid of a diseased imagination he jumps to the conclusion it’s dried blood. So we make half a grand."

  "Mm-m-m. And that seems to be that. This place he works is somewhere in the Acme Building, I suppose."

  "Room 1310. Or rather Suite 1310. Why didn’t you tag along?"

  She hesitated a little in replying. She did not want to admit how clumsy she had been, but the habit of complete honesty with each other was strong upon her. "I let myself get misled when Hoag spoke to you outside the Acme Building. I missed you at the elevator."

  "I see. Well, I— Say! What did you say? Did you say Hoag spoke to me?"

  "Yes, certainly."

  "But he didn’t speak to me. He never laid eyes on me. What are you talking about?"

  "What am I talking about? What are you talking about! Just before the two of you went into the Acme Building, Hoag stopped, turned around and spoke to you. The two of you stood there chinning, which threw me off stride. Then you went into the lobby together, practically arm in arm.

  He sat there, saying nothing, looking at her for a long moment. At last she said, "Don’t sit there staring like a goon! That’s what happened."

  He said, "Cyn, listen to my story. I got off the bus after he did and followed him into the lobby. I used the old heel-and-toe getting into the elevator and swung behind him when he faced the front of the car. When he got out, I hung back, then fiddled around, half in and half out, asking the operator simpleton questions, and giving him long enough to get clear. When I turned the corner he was just disappearing into 1310. He never spoke to me. He never saw my face. I’m sure of that."

  She was looking white, but all she said was, "Go on."

  "When you go in this place there is a long glass partition on your right, with benches built up against it. You can look through the glass and see the jewelers, or jewelsmiths, or whatever you call ‘em at work. Clever—good salesmanship. Hoag ducked right on in and by the time I passed down the aisle he was already on the other side, his coat off and a smock on, and one of those magnifying dinguses screwed into his eye. I went on past him to the desk—he never looked up— and asked for the manager. Presently a little birdlike guy shows up and I ask him if they have a man named Jonathan Hoag in their employ. He says yes and asks if I want to speak to him. I told him no, that I was an investigator for an insurance company. He wants to know if there is anything wrong and I told him that it was simply a routine investigation of what he had said on his application for a life policy, and how long had he worked there? Five years, he told me. He said that Hoag was one of the most reliable and skillful employees. I said fine, and asked if he thought Mr. Hoag could afford to carry as much as ten thousand. He says certainly and that they were always glad to see their employees invest in life insurance. Which was what I figured when I gave him the stall.

  "As I went out I stopped in front of Hoag’s bench and looked at him through the glass. Presently he looked up and stared at me, then looked down again. I’m sure I would have spotted it if he had recognized me. A case of complete skeezo, sheezo ... how do you pronounce it?"

  "Schizophrenia. Completely split personalities. But look, Teddy—"

  "Yeah?"

  "You did talk with him. I saw you."

  "Now slow down, puss. You may think you did, but you must have been looking at two other guys. How far away were you?"

  "Not that far. I was standing in front of Beecham’s Bootery. Then comes Chez Louis, and then the entrance to the Acme Building. You had your back to the newspaper stand at the curb and were practically facing me. Hoag had his back to me, but I couldn’t have been mistaken, as I had him in full profile when the two of you turned and went into the building together."

  Randall looked exasperated. "I didn’t speak with him. And I didn’t go in with him; I followed him in."

  "Edward Randall, don’t give me that! I admit I lost the two of you, but that’s no reason to rub it in by trying to make a fool of me."

  Randall had been married too long and too comfortably not to respect danger signals. He got up, went to her, and put an arm around her. "Look, kid," he said, seriously and gently, "I’m not pulling your leg. We’ve got our wires crossed somehow, but I’m giving it to you just as straight as I can, the way I remember it."

  She searched his eyes, then kissed him suddenly, and pulled away. "All right. We’re both right and it’s impossible. Come on."

  " ‘Come on’ where?"

  "To the scene of the crime. If I don’t get this straightened out I’ll never sleep again."

  The Acme Building was just where they had left it. The Bootery was where it belonged, likewise Chez Louis, and the newsstand. He stood where she had stood and agreed that she could not have been mistaken in her identification unless blind drunk. But he was equally positive as to what he had done.

  "You didn’t pick up a snifter or two on the way, did you?" he suggested hopefully.

  "Certainly not."

  "What do we do now?"

  "I don’t know. Yes, I do, too! We’re finished with Hoag, aren’t we? You’ve traced him down and that’s that."

  "Yes ... why?"

  "Take me up to where he works. I want to ask his daytime personality whether or not he spoke to you getting off the bus."

  He shrugged. "O.K., kid. It’s your party."

  They went inside and entered the first free elevator. The starter clicked his castanets, the operator slammed his doors and said, "Floors, please."

  Six, three, and nine. Randall waited until all those had been served before announcing, "Thirteen."

  The operator looked around. "I can give you twelve and fourteen, buddy, and you can split ‘em."

  "Huh?"

  "There ain’t no thirteenth floor. If there was, nobody would rent on it."

  "You must be mistaken. I was on it this morning."

  The operator gave him a look of marked restraint. "See for yourself." He shot the car upward and halted it. "Twelve." He raised the car slowly, the figure 12 slid out of sight and was quickly replaced by another. "Fourteen. Which way will you have it?"

  "I’m sorry," Randall admitted. "I’ve made a silly mistake. I really was in here this morning and I thought I had noted the floor."

  "Might ha’ been eighteen," suggested the operator. "Sometimes an eight will look like a three. Who you lookin’ for?"

&n
bsp; "Detheridge & Co. They’re manufacturing jewelers."

  The operator shook his head. "Not in this building. No jewelers, and no Detheridge."

  "You’re sure?"

  Instead of answering, the operator dropped his car back to the tenth floor. "Try 1001. It’s the office of the building."

  No, they had no Detheridge. No, no jewelers, manufacturing or otherwise. Could it be the Apex Building the gentleman wanted, rather than the Acme? Randall thanked them and left, considerably shaken.

  Cynthia had maintained complete silence during the proceedings. Now she said, "Darling—"

  "Yeah. What is it?"

  "We could go up to the top floor, and work down."

  "Why bother? If they were here, the building office would know about it."

  "So they would, but they might not be telling. There is something fishy about this whole business. Come to think about it, you could hide a whole floor of an office building by making its door look like a blank wall."

  "No, that’s silly. I’m just losing my mind, that’s all. You better take me to a doctor."

  "It’s not silly and you’re not losing your grip. How do you count height in an elevator? By floors. If you didn’t see a floor, you would never realize an extra one was tucked in. We may be on the trail of something big." She did not really believe her own arguments, but she knew that he needed something to do.

  He started to agree, then checked himself. "How about the stairways? You’re bound to notice a floor from a staircase."

  "Maybe there is some hanky-panky with the staircases, too. If so, we’ll be looking for it. Come on."

  But there was not. There were exactly the same number of steps—eighteen—between floors twelve and fourteen as there were between any other pair of adjacent floors. They worked, down from the top floor and examined the lettering on each frosted-glass door. This took them rather long, as Cynthia would not listen to Randall’s suggestion that they split up and take half a floor apiece. She wanted him in her sight.

  No thirteenth floor and nowhere a door which announced the tenancy of a firm of manufacturing jewelers, neither Detheridge & Co. nor any other name. There was no time to do more than read the firm names on the doors; to have entered each office, on one pretext or another, would have taken much more than a day.

  Randall stared thoughtfully at a door labeled: "Pride, Greenway, Hamilton, Steinbolt, Carter & Greenway, Attorneys at Law." "By this time," he mused, "they could have changed the lettering on the door."

  "Not on that one," she pointed out. "Anyhow, if it was a set-up, they could have cleaned out the whole joint, too. Changed it so you wouldn’t recognize it." Nevertheless she stared at the innocent- seeming letters thoughtfully. An office building was a terribly remote and secret place. Soundproof walls, Venetian blinds—and a meaningless firm name. Anything could go in such a place—anything. Nobody would know. Nobody would care. No one would ever notice. No policeman on his beat, neighbors as remote as the moon, not even scrub service if the tenant did not wish it. As long as the rent was paid on time, the management would leave a tenant alone. Any crime you fancied and park he bodies in the closet.

  She shivered. "Come on, Teddy. Let’s hurry."

  They covered the remaining floors as quickly as possible and came out at last in the lobby. Cynthia felt warmed by the sight of faces and sunlight, even though they had not found the missing firm. Randall stopped on the steps and looked around. "Do you suppose we could have been in a different building?" he said doubtfully.

  "Not a chance. See that cigar stand? I practically lived there. I know every flyspeck on the counter."

  "Then what’s the answer?"

  "Lunch is the answer. Come on."

  "O.K. But I’m going to drink mine." She managed to persuade him to encompass a plate of corned-beef hash after the third whiskey sour. That and two cups of coffee left him entirely sober, but unhappy. "Cyn—"

  "Yes, Teddy."

  "What happened to me?"

  She answered slowly. "I think you were made the victim of an amazing piece of hypnosis."

  "So do I—now. Either that, or I’ve finally cracked up. So call it hypnosis. I want to know why."

  She made doodles with her fork. "I’m not sure that I want to know. You know what I would like to do, Teddy?"

  "What?"

  "I would like to send Mr. Hoag’s five hundred dollars back to him with a message that we can’t help him, so we are returning his money."

  He stared at her. "Send the money back? Good heavens!"

  Her face looked as if she had been caught making an indecent suggestion, but she went on stubbornly. "I know. Just the same, that’s what I would like to do. We can make enough on divorce cases and skip-tracing to eat on. We don’t have to monkey with a thing like this."

  "You talk like five hundred was something you’d use to tip a waiter."

  "No, I don’t. I just don’t think it’s enough to risk your neck—or your sanity—for. Look, Teddy, somebody is trying to get us in the nine hole; before we go any further, I want to know why."

  "And I want to know why, too. Which is why I’m not willing to drop the matter. Damn it, I don’t like having shenanigans put over on me."

  "What are you going to tell Mr. Hoag?"

  He ran a hand through his hair, which did not matter as it was already mussed. "I don’t know. Suppose you talk to him. Give him a stall."

  "That’s a fine idea. That’s a swell idea. I’ll tell him you’ve broken your leg but you’ll be all right

  tomorrow." "Don’t be like that, Cyn. You know you can handle him." "All right. But you’ve got to promise me this, Teddy." "Promise what?" "As long as we’re on this case we do everything together." "Don’t we always?" "I mean really together. I don’t want you out of my sight any of the time." "But see here, Cyn, that may not be practical." "Promise." "O.K., O.K. I promise." "That’s better." She relaxed and looked almost happy. "Hadn’t we better get back to the ffice?"

  "The hell with it. Let’s go out and take in a triple feature."

  "O.K., Brain." She gathered up her gloves and purse.

  The movies failed to amuse him, although they had selected an all-Western bill, a fare of which he was inordinately fond. But the hero seemed as villainous as the foreman, and the mysterious masked riders, for once, appeared really sinister. And he kept seeing the thirteenth floor of the Acme Building, the long glass partition behind which the craftsmen labored, and the little dried-up manager of Detheridge & Co. Damn it—could a man be hypnotized into believing that he had seen anything as detailed as that?

  Cynthia hardly noticed the pictures. She was preoccupied with the people around them. She found herself studying their faces guardedly whenever the lights went up. If they looked like this when they were amusing themselves, what were they like when they were unhappy? With rare exceptions the faces looked, at the best, stolidly uncomplaining. Discontent, the grim marks of physical pain, lonely unhappiness, frustration, and stupid meanness, she found in numbers, but rarely a merry face. Even Teddy, whose habitual debonair gaiety was one of his chief virtues, was looking dour—with reason, she conceded. She wondered what were the reasons for those other unhappy masks.

  She recalled having seen a painting entitled "Subway." It showed a crowd pouring out the door of an underground train while another crowd attempted to force its way in. Getting on or getting off, they were plainly in a hurry, yet it seemed to give them no pleasure. The picture had no beauty in itself; it was plain that the artist’s single purpose had been to make a bitter criticism of a way of living.

  She was glad when the show was over and they could escape to the comparative freedom of the street. Randall flagged a taxi and they started home.

  "Teddy—"

  "Uh?"

  "Did you notice the faces of the people in the theater?"

  "No, not especially. Why?"

  "Not a one of them looked as if they got any fun out of life."

  "Maybe they don’t."

/>   "But why don’t they? Look—we have fun, don’t we?"

  "You bet."

  "We always have fun. Even when we were broke and trying to get the business started we had fun. We went to bed smiling and got up happy. We still do. What’s the answer?"

  He smiled for the first time since the search for the thirteenth floor and pinched her. "It’s fun living with you, kid."

  "Thanks. And right back at you. You know, when I was a little girl, I had a funny idea."

  "Spill it."

  "I was happy myself, but as I grew up I could see that my mother wasn’t. And my father wasn’t. My teachers weren’t—most of the adults around me weren’t happy. I got an idea in my head that when you grew up you found out something that kept you from ever being happy again. You know how a kid is treated: ‘You’re not old enough to understand, dear,’ and ‘Wait till you grow up, darling, and then you’ll understand.’ I used to wonder what the secret was they were keeping from me and I’d listen behind doors to try and see if I couldn’t find out."

  "Born to be a detective!"

  "Shush. But I could see that, whatever it was, it didn’t make the grown-ups happy; it made ‘em sad. Then I used to pray never to find out." She gave a little shrug. "I guess I never did."

  He chuckled. "Me neither. A professional Peter Pan, that’s me. Just as happy as if I had good ense."

  She placed a small gloved hand on his arm. "Don’t laugh, Teddy. That’s what scares me about this Hoag case. I’m afraid that if we go ahead with it we really will find out what it is the grown-ups know. And then we’ll never laugh again."

  He started to laugh, then looked at her hard. "Why, you’re really serious, aren’t you?" He chucked her under the chin. "Be your age, kid. What you need is dinner—and a drink." V

  After dinner, Cynthia was just composing in her mind what she would say to Mr. Hoag on telephoning him when the house buzzer rang. She went to the entrance of their apartment and took up the house phone. "Yes?"

  Almost immediately she turned to her husband and voicelessly shaped the words, "It’s Mr. Hoag." He raised his brows, put a cautioning finger to his lips, and with an exaggerated tiptoe started for the bedroom. She nodded.