Bagombo Snuff Box (6 page)

The next morning, I looked up from my work to see the ad,
torn from the paper, in the long, clean fingers of Colonel Peckham.

“Is this yours?”

“Good morning, Colonel. Yessir, it is.”

“It sounds like our kind of place,” said the voice of Mrs.
Peckham.

We crossed the simulated drawbridge and passed under the
rusty portcullis of their kind of place.

Mrs. Hellbrunner liked the Peckhams immediately. For one
thing, they were, I’m pretty sure, the first people in several generations to
admire the place. More to the point, they gave every indication of being about
to buy it.

“It would cost about a half-million to replace,” said Mrs.
Hellbrunner.

“Yes,” said the Colonel. “They don’t build houses like this
anymore.”

“Oh!” gasped Mrs. Peckham, and the Colonel caught her as she
headed for the floor.

“Quick! Brandy! Anything!” cried Colonel Peckham.

When I drove the Peckhams back to the center of town, they
were in splendid spirits.

“Why on earth didn’t you show us this place first?” said the
Colonel.

“Just came on the market yesterday,” I said, “and priced the
way it is, I don’t expect it’ll be on the market very long.”

The Colonel squeezed his wife’s hand. “I don’t expect so, do
you, dear?”

Mrs. Hellbrunner still called me every day, but now her tone
was cheery and flattering. She reported that the Peckhams arrived shortly after
noon each day, and that they seemed more in love with the house on each visit.

“I’m treating them just like Hellbrunners,” she said
craftily.

“That’s the ticket.”

“I even got cigars for him.”

“Pour it on. It’s all tax-deductible,” I cheered.

Four nights later, she called me again to say that the
Peckhams were coming to dinner. “Why don’t you sort of casually drop in
afterward, and just happen to have an offer form with you?”

“Have they mentioned any figures?”

“Only that it’s perfectly astonishing what you can get for a
hundred thousand.”

I set my briefcase down in the Hellbrunner music room after
dinner that evening. I said, “Greetings.”

The Colonel, on the piano bench, rattled the ice in his
drink.

“And how are you, Mrs. Hellbrunner?” I said. One glance told
me she had never in all her life been worse.

“I’m fine,” she said hoarsely. “The Colonel has just been
speaking very interestingly. The State Department wants him to do some
troubleshooting in Bangkok.”

The Colonel shrugged sadly. “Once more to the colors, as a civilian
this time.”

“We leave tomorrow,” said Mrs. Peckham, “to close our place
in Philadelphia—”

‘And finish up at National Steel Foundry,” said the Colonel.

“Then off to Bangkok they go,” quavered Mrs. Hellbrunner.

“Men must work, and women must weep,” said Mrs. Peckham.

“Yup,” I said.

The next morning, the telephone was ringing when I unlocked
my office door.

It was Mrs. Hellbrunner. Shrill. Not like old family at all.
“I don’t believe he’s going to Bangkok,” she raged. “It was the price. He was
too polite to bargain.”

“You’ll take less?” Up to now, she’d been very firm about
the hundred-thousand figure.

“Less?” Her voice became prayerful. “Lord—I’d take fifty to
get rid of the monster!” She was silent for a moment. “Forty. Thirty. Sell it!”

So I sent a telegram to the Colonel, care of National Steel
Foundry, Philadelphia.

There was no reply, and then I tried the telephone.

“National Steel Foundry,” said a woman in Philadelphia.

“Colonel Peckham, please.”

“Who?”

“Peckham. Colonel Bradley Peckham. The Peckham.”

“We have a Peckham, B. C., in Drafting.”

“Is he an executive?”

“I don’t know, sir. You can ask him.”

There was a click in my ear as she switched my call to Drafting.

“Drafting,” said a woman.

The first operator broke in: “This gentleman wishes to speak
to Mr. Peckham.”

“Colonel Peckham,” I specified.

“Mr. Melrose,” called the second woman, “is Peckham back
yet?”

“Peckham!” Mr. Melrose shouted. “Shag your tail. Telephone!”

Above the sound of room noises, I heard someone ask, “Have a
good time?”

“So-so,” said a vaguely familiar, faraway voice. “Think we’ll
try Newport next time. Looked pretty good from the bus.”

“How the hell do you manage tony places like that on your salary?”

“Takes a bit of doing.” And then the voice became loud, and
terribly familiar. “Peckham speaking. Drafting.”

I let the receiver fall into its cradle.

I was awfully tired. I realized that I hadn’t had a vacation
since the end of the war. I hai to get away from it all for a little while, or
I would go mad. But Delahanty hadn’t come through yet, so I was stone broke.

And then I thought about what Colonel Bradley Peckham had
said about Newport. There were a lot of nice houses there—all beautifully
staffed, furnished, stocked, overlooking the sea, and for sale.

For instance, take this place—the Van Tuyl estate. It has almost
everything: private beach and swimming pool, polo field, two grass tennis courts,
nine-hole golf course, stables, paddocks, French chef, at least three
exceptionally attractive Irish parlor maids, English butler, cellar full of vintage
stuff—

The labyrinth is an interesting feature, too. I get lost in
it almost every day. Then the real estate agent comes looking for me, and he
gets lost just as I find my way out. Believe me, the property is worth every
penny of the asking price. I’m not going to haggle about it, not for a minute.
When the time comes, I’ll either take it or leave it.

But I’ve got to live with the place a little longer—to get
the newness out—before I tell the agent what I’m going to do. Meanwhile, I’m
having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.

What do you know about that?” said Earl Fenton. He unslung his
stereoscopic camera, took off his coat, and laid the coat and the camera on top
of the television-radio-phonograph console. “Here we go on a trip clean around
the world, Maude, and two minutes after we come back to our new house, the
telephone rings. That’s civilization.”

“For you, Mr. Fenton,” said the maid.

“Earl Fenton speaking . . . Who?. . . You got the right
Fenton? There’s a Brudd Fenton on San Bonito Boulevard. . . . Yes, that’s
right, I did. Class of 1910 . . . Wait! No! Sure I do! Listen, you tell the
hotel to go to hell, Charley, you’re my guest. . . . Have we got room?”

Earl covered the mouthpiece and grinned at his wife. “He
wants to know if we’ve got room!” He spoke into the telephone again. “Listen, Charley,
we’ve got rooms I’ve never been in. No kidding. We just moved in today—five
minutes ago. . . . No, it’s all fixed up. Decorator furnished the place nice as
you please weeks ago, and the servants got everything going like a dollar
watch, so we’re ready. Catch you a cab, you hear?. . .

“No, I sold the plant last year. Kids are grown up and on
their own and all—young Earl’s a doctor now, got a big house in Santa Monica,
and Ted’s just passed his bar exams and gone in with his Uncle George— Yeah,
and Maude and I, we’ve just decided to sit back and take a well-earned— But the
hell with talking on the phone. You come right on out. Boy! Have we got a lot
of catching up to do!” Earl hung up and made clucking sounds with his tongue.

Maude was examining a switch panel in the hallway. “I don’t
know if this thingamajig works the air-conditioning or the garage doors or the
windows or what,” she said.

“We’ll get Lou Converse out here to show us how everything
works,” said Earl. Converse was the contractor who had put up the rambling,
many-leveled “machine for living” during their trip abroad.

Earl’s expression became thoughtful as he gazed through a picture
window at the flagstone terrace and grill, flooded with California sunshine,
and at the cartwheel gate that opened onto the macadam driveway, and at the
garage, with its martin house, weathercock, and two Cadillacs. “By golly,
Maude,” he said, “I just finished talking to a ghost.”

“Um?” said Maude. “Aha! See, the picture window goes up, and
down comes the screen. Ghost? Who on earth?”

“Freeman, Charley Freeman. A name from the past, Maude. I
couldn’t believe it at first. Charley was a fraternity brother and just about
the biggest man in the whole class of 1910. Track star, president of the fraternity,
editor of the paper, Phi Beta Kappa.”

“Goodness! What’s he doing coming here to see poor little
us?” said Maude.

Earl was witnessing a troubling tableau that had been in the
back of his mind for years: Charley Freeman, urbane, tastefully clothed, was
having a plate set before him by Earl, who wore a waiter’s jacket. When he’d
invited Charley to come on out, Earl’s enthusiasm had been automatic, the
reflex of a man who prided himself on being a plain, ordinary, friendly fellow,
for all of his success. Now, remembering their college relationship, Earl found
that the prospect of Charley’s arrival was making him uncomfortable. “He was a
rich kid,” Earl said. “One of those guys”—and his voice was tinged with
bitterness—“who had everything. You know?”

“Well, hon,” said Maude, “you weren’t exactly behind the
door when they passed out the looks and brains.”

“No—but when they passed out the money, they handed me a
waiter’s jacket and a mop.” She looked at him sympathetically, and he was
encouraged to pour out his heart on the subject. “By golly, Maude, it does
something to a man to go around having to wait on guys his same age, cleaning
up after ‘em, and seeing them with nice clothes and all the money in the world,
going off to some resort in the summer when I had to go to work to pay next
year’s tuition.” Earl was surprised at the emotion in his voice. “And all the
time they’re looking down on you, like there was something wrong with people
who weren’t handed their money on a silver platter.”

“Well, that makes me good and mad!” Maude said, squaring her
shoulders indignantly, as though to protect Earl from those who’d humiliated
him in college. “If this great Charley Freeman snooted you in the old days, I
don’t see why we should have him in the house now.”

“Oh, heck—forgive and forget,” Earl said gloomily. “Doesn’t throw
me anymore. He seemed to want to come out, and I try to be a good fellow, no
matter what.”

“So what’s the high-and-mighty Freeman doing now?”

“Don’t know. Something big, I guess. He went to med school,
and I came back here, and we kind of lost touch.” Experimentally, Earl pressed
a button on the wall. From the basement came muffled whirs and clicks, as
machines took control of the temperature and humidity and purity of the
atmosphere about him. “But I don’t expect Charley’s doing a bit better than this.”

“What were some of the things he did to you?” Maude pursued,
still indignant.

Earl waved the subject away with his hand. There weren’t any
specific incidents that he could tell Maude about. People like Charley Freeman
hadn’t come right out and said anything to humiliate Earl when he’d waited on
them. But just the same, Earl was sure that he’d been looked down on, and he
was willing to bet that when he’d been out of earshot, they’d talked about him,
and . . .

He shook his head in an effort to get rid of his dour mood,
and he smiled. “Well, Mama, what say we have a little drinkie, and then take a
tour of the place? If I’m going to show it to Charley, I’d better find out how
a few of these gimcracks work, or he’ll think old Earl is about as at home in a
setup like this as a retired janitor or waiter or something. By golly, there
goes the phone again! That’s civilization for you.”

“Mr. Fenton,” the maid said, “it’s Mr. Converse.”

“Hello, Lou, you old horse thief. Just looking over your
handiwork. Maude and I are going to have to go back to college for a course in
electrical engineering, ha ha. . . . Eh? Who?. . . No kidding. They really
want to?. . . Well, I guess that’s the kind of thing you have to expect to go
through. If they’ve got their heart set on it, okay. Maude and I go clean
around the world, and two minutes after we’re home, it’s like the middle of
Grand Central Station.”

Earl hung up and scratched his head in mock wonderment and
weariness. In reality, he was pleased with the activity, with the bell-ringing
proof that his life, unlike his ownership of the plant and the raising of his
kids and the world cruise, was barely begun.

“What now?” said Maude.

“Aw, Converse says some fool home magazine wants to do a
story on the place, and they want to get the pictures this afternoon.”

“What fun!”

“Yeah—I guess. I dunno. I don’t want to be standing around
in all the pictures like some stuffed shirt.” To show how little he cared, he
interested himself in another matter. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t, considering
what we paid her, but that decorator really thought of everything, you know?”
He’d opened a closet next to the terrace doors and found an apron, a chef’s
hat, and asbestos gloves inside. “By golly, you know, that’s pretty rich. See
what it says on the apron, Maude?”

“Cute,” said Maude, and she read the legend aloud: ‘“Don’t
shoot the cook, he’s doing the best he can.’ Why, you look like a regular Oscar
of the Waldorf, Earl. Now let me see you in the hat.”

He grinned bashfully and fussed with the hat. “Don’t know exactly
how one of the fool things is supposed to go. Feel kind of like a man from
Mars.”

“Well, you look wonderful to me, and I wouldn’t trade you
for a hundred stuck-up Charley Freemans.”

They wandered arm in arm over the flagstone terrace to the
grill, a stone edifice that might have been mistaken from a distance for a
branch post office. They kissed, as they had kissed beside the Great Pyramid,
the Colosseum, and the Taj Mahal.