VII
At one o’clock on the morning of Thanksgiving Day, young Merrick solved the riddle to which he had devoted much of his spare time for nearly two months.
After only a week’s sporadic work on it, he had written to Nancy Ashford:
“When the light breaks on this it will not come like a valley dawn. The book is going to be pitch dark up to a certain moment, and after that it will be clear and bright as a June morning. There’s no halfway business about a job like this. Either you can read it all, with ease and understanding; or you can’t read a syllable!”
The Thanksgiving recess having begun at noon on Wednesday, Bobby determined to spend the brief vacation on the cryptic journal. It would be a good time. Distractions and interruptions would be reduced to a minimum, for no sooner had the noon whistles blown than the student quarter was as deserted as if warned of an impending epidemic of the Black Plague. He had made a tentative promise to have evening dinner on Thanksgiving Day with old Nicholas “provided I finish a problem it is important to complete at once.”
All Wednesday afternoon, he turned from one futile experiment to another, most of them being variants of schemes already tried. It annoyed him that he seemed unable to bring his attention to a sharp focus. Now he would sit at his desk for an hour, sharpening pencils and gazing glassily at the mocking script. Now he would fling himself across his bed and, supporting himself on an aching elbow, set down columns of letters in every manner of eccentric sequence. Oblivious of the passing time, his own discomfort, his need of exercise, he continued to lay out diagrams and tear up paper. Night came down and he turned on the lights. Midnight found him very weary, his brain operating mechanically, sluggishly. He tapped his teeth with his pencil, and went woolgathering in spite of himself. He even made a brief mental excursion on foot along the highway to the north of Windymere and assisted a motorist in distress. Recovering himself, impatiently, he pursued his endless diagrams.
Then a fresh idea occurred to him. Here was something he had not yet tried. He wrote the first few words of the unintelligible script in a running line, utterly disregarding the spaces between them. (It had long been his practice to reproduce the letters in capitals, thinking this might help to simplify the words.)
Now he broke in two what was obviously the first sentence, at the point where the Greek letter “μ” indicated a half-stop, and set down the remainder of that obvious division immediately below it:
R
A
E
I
O
S
D
R
O
M
F
I
N
E
D
R
C
N
I
E
Y
U
Y
R
E
D
Moved by sheer caprice, he wrote the lines again, the second division lacking one space of meeting the left margin:
R
A
E
I
O
S
D
R
O
M
F
I
N
E
D
R
C
N
I
E
Y
U
Y
R
E
D
For full five minutes he stared at this combination until the lines blurred and blended. Of a sudden, his heart speeded up. His pencil shook as he rapidly rewrote the letters, mortising the lines:
readericonsideryoumyfriend
“I have it!”
He shouted, aloud; laughed, ecstatically, half hysterically. How ridiculously simple it was—now that he had cracked it open. Within five minutes of feverish copying and mortising, he had decoded the brief message of the first page:
Reader I consider you my friend and commend your perseverance having achieved the ability to read this book you have also the right to possess it my reasons for doing this in cipher will be made plain as you proceed
With the long strain relaxed, Bobby awoke to the fact that he was wolfishly hungry. He dressed for the street, a broad grin of self-satisfaction on his face. It was good to have conquered something! As he stood before the glass, knotting his scarf, he glanced at the little black book on the table as a gladiator might have regarded a recumbent antagonist.
Stepping out into a stinging sleet-storm, invigorated by its tonic thrust, he squared his shoulders, lengthened his stride, took deep inhalations, laughed joyously, sang the Marseillaise, and marched to it, swinging his long arms with a triumphant swagger.
There was a little chophouse only a block south of the Michigan Central station where one Tony held forth all night. Tony was typical of the occasional small shopkeeper, erudite barber, philosophical cobbler, or picturesque restaurateur to be found in every college town, by whose eccentricities, combined with a sincere interest in varsity athletics and the institution at large, they contrive to achieve local fame.
Many a full professor at the State University would have been happy and lucky had he been able to call as many undergraduates by their names as Tony. The turnover in population in a college town being bewilderingly rapid, Tony’s eleven years’ residence in Ann Arbor had made him a fixture, an institution. It was as if he had been there since the sixth day of creation.
He was reputed to be quite well to do, in spite of the fact that he extended credit and made unsecured loans to students with a naive faith that would have closed a bank in forty-eight hours.
On the cigar-case lay open a cheap daybook. Attached to it, by a cotton string, was a pencil. If a student came into Tony’s place without funds, he ordered what he liked and upon leaving wrote his name and the amount of his indebtedness in the book. It was not necessary to establish one’s credit. One wrote in the book. When one got around to it, one paid off the score, leafed back through the book, located and personally deleted the item. Tony unemotionally accepted the payment. His failure to smile his thanks over the liquidation of the debt was in itself a pretty compliment. Having known it would be paid, there was no occasion for breaking out into rapture.
Tony himself came on duty at six in the evening and stayed the night. Nobody ever saw him at his place of business in the daytime, capable assistants being in charge through the breakfast and luncheon hours.
“Tony, how come you work only at night?” he was frequently asked by his clients, as he plunked platters of ham and eggs on a bare wooden table.
“You rather I not be here at night—eh?” Tony would inquire, grinning, quite aware that in the noisy protest which this rejoinder would evoke, their original inquiry would be forgotten.
Periodically young reporters on The Michigan Daily, hopeful of developing what they suspected was an unusual flair for feature writing, would engage Tony in conversation about his business; how much did he lose annually through bad loans and loose credit; why did he work only at night when business was unimportant; and sundry queries phrased in the best conventional manner of journalistic impertinence. But no story had ever appeared on this subject, Tony invariably taking refuge, when hard pressed, behind his inadequate knowledge of English.
“I couldn’t get anything out of him. He’s too damned dumb.”
“Yeah?” the sophisticated Sunday editor would reply. “My boy, you have made the customary blunder of mistaking Tony’s depth for thickness!”
Bobby Merrick knew from experience that Tony would be on hand tonight, to attend to his pressing wants. He would be served with amazing rapidity a steak well able to hold its own alongside many a more snobbish cut of select beef with a Parisian name, all buttoned up the back with mushrooms and presented with stiff salaams on a silver-mounted plank at a cost ten times the tariff Tony levied. There would be freshly-made coffee and a salad worthy of an exacting palate.
Tony knew exactly when to stop rubbing the bowl with garlic.
Bursting into the little café, Bobby found himself the sole patron. Tony, drowsy but amiable, made haste to draw out a chair for him. With the grace of a courtier, he took his guest’s heavy fur coat and deftly shook the snow from its shoulders.
His client enumerated his desires with the eloquent conviction of one who knows exactly what he wants, and Tony made off with his instructions.
“Needn’t bother about the potatoes, Tony,” called Bobby, as his host began to rattle his pans.
“Out dam’ late, doc!” shouted Tony, above the hiss of the hot grill. He had an unerring instinct for identifying medics; probably because they were older than the rah-rahs, and had a pungent smell. Medics were always highly aromatic of their future trade.
“Baby case, mebbe?”
He liked to make the young medics think they looked old and wise enough to be interns, at least, or out on call, understrapping for their snug-in-bed betters. Eventually the more industrious and persistent would be “doctored” officially, some fine June morning at Hill Auditorium, in the sonorous tones of the President; but every one of them had long since received his degree from Tony. They chaffed one another about it; but never chided him, or suggested that he discontinue the practice.
“No, Tony,” drawled Bobby, “nothing like that. Not for a long time yet. And no babies—ever!”
Tony plopped the thick stone dishes down with a comforting clatter on the bare table, adorned only by deep-carved initials—some of them to be pointed to with pride; many of them reminiscent of excellent stories without which the university traditions would have been seriously impoverished.
The steak was a masterpiece. The potatoes had arrived, magnanimously unmindful of the guest’s feeling of indifference toward them. There was a head of chilled lettuce, half the size of a small cabbage, dripping with a creamy Roquefort dressing not to be had in that exact degree of all-rightness in more than six other places in the North Temperate zone.
“Coffee, doc?”
“You bet, Tony! Strong as brandy and hot as hell! I’m in great need of nourishment!”
Tony put down the steaming mug, thrust his big thumbs under his apron-string, in the vicinity of his waistcoat pockets, and considered his voracious customer with deep satisfaction. The next best thing to broiling a choice steak was watching a healthy client making proper use of it.
“No babies—eh?”
Bobby shrugged a shoulder and shook his head.
“Eye-ear-nose—mebbe? Lots of dem fellers.”
“Heads!” declared Bobby, stoutly abjuring ophthalmology, otology, and all their works.
“Ah—so?” Tony grew excited. “I show you a head! You like for to see heads? Look, doc!” He bent down and offered for minute inspection a four-inch strip of bare white scalp. Straightening, he lightly tapped the scar and nodded several times very solemnly, “I dam’ near die … Very bad!”
“Accident?” inquired Bobby.
“Railroad!”
“Wreck, maybe?”
Tony chuckled.
“Nah! Work on da railroad. Jus’—what you, call—wop! Not ride.”
“So after you were hurt, you thought you had enough of working on the railroad, eh?”
“I’ll say da world!” concurred Tony, whose amazing use of the prevailing slang was by no means the least of his conversational charms. “Doc Hudson—he set me up here.”
“You don’t tell me!” Bobby put down his fork and gave attention.
Tony nodded vigorously.
“Doc Hudson—Detroit—he fix me. Patch da head. Put me in da business. Great feller! Too bad he die!”
When it was evident that his patron wanted to know all about it, Tony was eager to furnish information. The sanguinary account of his accident was recited dramatically with much stress upon the grisly details, not omitting a quite voluminous report of the minor incidents leading up to the event, many of which were less essential to the pathology of the case than to the histrionic technique of the narrator.
All but dead, he had been; yes. The company surgeon had called in Doctor Hudson. Hudson had done “da eempossible!” But never again must Tony be working under the hot sun—never!
“ ‘But what I do?’ I cry. ‘I starve; mebbe?’ … ‘Can you cook, Tony?’ he say.”
It developed into a long story. Doctor Hudson had spent a whole day helping Tony locate a suitable place for his little restaurant; had guaranteed the rent of the building; had been present at the purchase of the range; had deposited to Tony’s account in the leading bank a sum sufficient to carry him until his income was assured.
“I never heard about this before, Tony,” said Bobby.
“No! Nobody know! Doc say, ‘Tony! Tell nobody. Not while I leeve.’ He dead now. I can tell!”
Bobby’s glassy look of abstraction was mistaken for waning interest in the story, and Tony had no wish to bore his guest. He would return to the medic’s pet interest. It was reasonably sure he would be attentive to an inquiry about his own aspirations.
“So!—You do heads, too, mebbe—like Doc Hudson?”
“I hope to, Tony. Some day,” said Bobby, rising.
“Great feller—Doc Hudson! … Nobody know!”
Young Merrick paid his bill, donned his coat, said good night, lingered with his hand on the latch. Tony had begun clearing the table.
“I say—Tony!”
Tony put down a double handful of dishes.
“Did Doctor Hudson ever tell you why he wanted you to keep it a secret about his setting you up here?”
Tony inserted his thumbs under his apron-string and strolled forward, meditatively shaking his head.
“Dam’ funny feller! He say, jus’ like I tell you, ‘Tony, I fix you so you no more work in da hot sun. While I leeve, you tell nobody.’ I say, ‘Doc, you one dam’ fine feller. I pay you back some day.’ He say, ‘Nah—but, Tony,’ he say, ‘some dam’ cold night, eef a feller come een, hongry and broke—’ ”
“Yeah?” prodded Bobby; for Tony had apparently changed his mind about the advisability of this confidence and had dismissed the rest of the sentence with a gesture. His red face crinkled with perplexity, and he rubbed the side of his bulbous nose with a corner of his apron. Nodding, jerkily, after the manner of an old man, he turned away, and was resuming his interest in the dishes.
“What then?” pursued Bobby—at his elbow.
“Doc say never tell nobody while I leeve.”
“You mean—you never tell about these fellows who come in here hungry and broke? … Listen! I’ll bet you a new fur-lined overcoat against a package of fags that that little account book, over there, on the case—and all these fellows who come in here hungry and broke—”
Tony interrupted. His face was very serious. He picked up his tray, and, as he straightened dignifiedly, he replied, in a thickening dialect significant that he was about to submerge and become incommunicable, “Ees eet dat you would make old Tony onhappy? Da leetle book! Eet ees for me to know! Doc Hudson—he say, ‘Tony—you tell nobody!’ For why he say that, I do not know; but—I tell nobody!”
“I’m sorry, Tony!” said Bobby contritely. “I had no right to intrude in your personal affairs. I beg your pardon.”
Tony smiled absently.
“Oh—eet ees all right,” he said reassuringly. “Gooda night, doc. Come again!”