The Drums of Jeopardy/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
THERE are some men who know a little about all things and a great deal about many. Such a man was Cutty. But as he approached the counter behind which stood an expectant clerk he felt for once that he was in a far country. There were fiddles and fiddles, just as there were emeralds and emeralds. Never again would he laugh over the story of the man who thought Botticelli was a manufacturer of spool thread. He attacked the problem, however, like the thoroughbred he was—frankly.
"I want to buy a violin," he began, knowing that in polite musical circles the word fiddle was taboo. "I know absolutely nothing at all about quality or price. Understand, though, while you might be able to fool me, you wouldn't fool the man I'm buying it for. Now what would you suggest?"
The clerk—a salesman familiar with certain urban types, thinly including the Fifth Avenue, which came in for talking-machine records—recognized in this well-dressed, attractive elderly man that which he designated the swell. Hateful word, yes, but having a perfectly legitimate niche, since in the minds of the hoi polloi it nicely describes the differences between the poor gentleman and the gentleman of leisure. To proceed with the digression, to no one is the word more hateful than to the individual to whom it is applied. Cutty would have blushed at the clerk's thought.
"Perhaps I'd better get the proprietor," was the clerk's suggestion.
"Good idea," Cutty agreed. "Take my card along with you." This was a Fifth Avenue shop, and Cutty knew there would be a Who's Who or a Bradstreet somewhere about.
In the interim he inspected the case-lined walls. Trombones. He chuckled. Lucky that Hawksley's talent didn't extend in this direction. True, he himself collected drums, but he did not play them. Something odd about music; human beings had to have it, the very lowest in the scale. A universal magic. He was himself very fond of good music; but these days he fought shy of it; it had the faculty of sweeping him back into the twenties and reincarnating vanished dreams.
After a certain length of time, from the corner of his eye he saw the clerk returning with the proprietor, the latter wearing an amiable smile, which probably connoted a delving into the aforesaid volumes of attainment and worth. Cutty hoped this was so, as it would obviate the necessity of going into details as to who he was and what he had.
"Your name is familiar to me," began the proprietor. "You collect antique drums. My clerk tells me that you wish to purchase a good violin."
"Very good. I have in my apartment rather a distinguished guest who plays the violin for his own amusement. He is ill and cannot select for himself. Now I know a little about music but nothing about violins."
"I suggest that I personally carry half a dozen instruments to your apartment and let your guest try them. How much is he willing to pay?"
"Top price, I should say. Shall I make a deposit?"
"If you don't mind. Merely precautionary. Half a dozen violins will represent quite a sum of money; and taxicabs are unreliable animals. A thousand against accidents. What time shall I call?" The proprietor's curiosity was stirred. Musical celebrities, as he had occasion to know, were always popping up in queer places. Some new star probably, whose violin had been broken and who did not care to appear in public before the hour of his début.
"Three o'clock," said Cutty.
"Very well, sir. I promise to bring the violins myself."
Cutty wrote out his check for a thousand and departed, the chuckle still going on inside of him. Versatile old codger, wasn't he?
Promptly at three the dealer arrived, his arms and his hands gripping violin cases. Cutty hurried to his assistance, accepted a part of the load, and beckoned to the man to follow him. The cases were placed on the floor, and the dealer opened them, putting the rosin on a single bow.
Hawksley, a fresh bandage on his head, his shoulders propped by pillows, eyed the initial manœuvres with frank amusement.
"I say, you know, would you mind tuning them for me? I'm not top hole."
The dealer's eyebrows went up. An Englishman? Bewildered, he bent to the trifling labour of tuning the violins. Hawksley rejected the first two instruments after thrumming the strings with his thumb. He struck up a melody on the third but did not finish it.
"My word! If you have a violin there why not let me have it at once?"
The dealer flushed. "Try this, sir. But I do not promise you that I shall sell it."
"Ah!" Hawksley stretched out his hands to receive the instrument.
Of course Cutty had heard of Amati and Stradivari, master and pupil. He knew that all famous violinists possessed instruments of these schools, and that such violins were practically beyond the reach of many. Only through some great artist's death or misfortune did a fine violin return to the marts. But the rejected fiddles had sounded musically enough for him and looked as if they were well up in the society of select fiddles. The fiddle Hawksley now held in his hands was dull, almost black. The maple neck was worn to a shabby gray and the varnish had been sweated off the chin rest.
Hawksley laid his fingers on the strings and drew the bow with a powerful flourishing sweep. The rich, sonorous tones vibrated after the bow had passed. Then followed the tricks by which an artist seeks to discover flaws or wolf notes. A beatific expression settled upon Hawksley face. He nestled the violin comfortably under his chin and began to play softly. Cutty, the nurse, and the dealer became images.
Minors; a bit of a dance; more minors; nothing really begun, nothing really finished—sketches, with a melancholy note running through them all. While that pouring into his ears enchained his body it stirred recollections in Cutty's mind: The fair at Novgorod; the fiddling mountebanks; Russian.
Perhaps the dealer's astonishment was greatest. An Englishman! Who ever heard of an Englishman playing a violin like that?
"I will buy it," said Hawksley, sinking back.
"Sir," began the dealer, "I am horribly embarrassed. I cannot sell that violin because it isn't mine. It is an Amati worth ten thousand dollars."
"I will give you twelve."
"But, sir"
"Name a price," interrupted Hawksley, rather imperiously. "I want it."
Cutty understood that he was witnessing a flash of the ancient blood. To want anything was to have it.
"I repeat, sir, I cannot sell it. It belongs to a Hungarian who is now in Hungary. I loaned him fifteen hundred and took the Amati as security. Until I learn if he is dead I cannot dispose of the violin. I am sorry. But because you are a real artist, sir, I will loan it to you if you will make a deposit of ten thousand against any possible accident, and that upon demand you will return the instrument to me."
"That's fair enough," interposed Cutty.
"I beg pardon," said Hawksley. "I agree. I want it, but not at the price of any one's dishonesty." He turned his head toward Cutty, "You're a thoroughbred, sir. This will do more to bring me round than all the doctors in the world."
"But what the deuce is the difference?" Cutty demanded with a gesture toward the rejected violins.
The dealer and Hawksley exchanged smiles. Said the latter: "The other violins are pretty wooden boxes with tolerable tunes in their insides. This has a soul." He put the violin against his cheek again.
Massenet's "Elégie," Moszkowski's "Serenata," a transcription, and then the aria from Lucia. Not compositions professional violinists would have selected. Cutty felt his spine grow cold as this aria poured goldenly toward heaven. He understood. Hawksley was telling him that the shade of his glorious mother was in this "room. The boy was right. Some fiddles had souls. An odd depression bore down upon him. Perhaps this surprising music, topping his great emotions of the morning, was a straw too much. There were certain exaltations that could not be sustained.
A whimsical forecast: This chap here, in the dingy parlour of his Montana ranch, playing these indescribable melodies to the stars, his cowmen outside wondering what was the matter with their "inards." Somehow this picture lightened the depression.
"My fingers are stiff," said Hawksley. "My hand is tired. I should like to be alone." He lay back rather inertly.
In the corridor Cutty whispered to the dealer: "What do you think of him?"
"As he says, his touch shows a little stiffness, but the wonderful fire is there. He's an amateur, but a fine one. Practice will bring him to a finish in no time. But I never heard an Englishman play a violin like that before."
"Nor I," Cutty agreed. "When the owner sends for that fiddle let me know. Mr. Hawksley might like to dicker for it. If you know where the owner is you might cable that you have an offer of twelve thousand."
"I'm sorry, but I haven't the least idea where the owner is. However, there is an understanding that if the loan isn't covered in eighteen months the instrument becomes salable for my own protection. There is a year still to run."
Four o'clock found Cutty pacing his study, the room blue with smoke. Of all the queer chaps he had met in his varied career this Two-Hawks topped the lot. The constant internal turmoil that must be going on, the instincts of the blood—artist and autocrat! And in the end, the owner of a cattle ranch, if he had the luck to get there alive! Dizzy old world.
Something else happened at four o'clock. A policeman strolled into Eightieth Street. He was at peace with the world. Spring was in his whistle, in his stride, in the twirl of his baton. Whenever he passed a shop window he made it serve as a mirror. No waistline yet—a comforting thought.
Children swarmed the street and gathered at corners. The older ones played boldly in midstreet, while the toddlers invented games that kept them to the sidewalk and curb. The policeman came stealthily upon one of these latter groups—Italians. At the sight of his brass buttons they fled precipitately. He laughed. Once in a month of moons he was able to get near enough to touch them. Natural. Hadn't he himself hiked in the old days at the sight of a copper? Sure, he had.
A bit of colour on the sidewalk attracted his eye, and he picked up the object. Something those kids had been playing with. A bit of red glass out of a piece of cheap jewellery. Not half bad for a fake. He would put one over on Maggie when he turned in for supper. Certainly this was the age of imitation. You couldn't buy a brass button with any confidence. He put the trinket in his pocket and continued on, soon to forget it.
At six he was off duty. As he was leaving the precinct the desk sergeant called him back.
"Got change for a dollar, an' I'll settle that pinochle debt," offered the sergeant.
"I'll take a look." The policeman emptied his coin pocket.
"What's that yuh got there?"
"Which?"
"The red stone?"
"Oh, that? Picked it up on the sidwalk. Some I-talian kids dropped it as they skedaddled."
"Let's have a look."
"Sure." The policeman passed over the stone.
"Gee! That looks like real money. Say, they can do anything with glass these days."
"They sure can."
A man in civilian clothes—a detective from headquarters went up to the desk. "What you guys got there?"
"A ruby this boob picks up off'n the sidewalk," said the sergeant, winking at the finder, who grinned.
"Let's have a squint at it."
The stone was handed to him. The detective stared at it carefully, holding it on his palm and rocking it gently under the desk light. Crimson darts of flame answered to this treatment. He pushed back his hat.
"Well, you boobs!" he drawled.
"What's the matter?"
"Matter? Why, this is a ruby! A whale of a ruby, an' pigeon blood at that! I didn't work in th' appraiser's office for nothing. But for a broken point—kids probably tried to crack it—it would stack up somewhere between three and four thousand dollars!"
The sergeant and the policemen barked simultaneously: "What?"
"A pigeon blood. Where was it you found it?"
"Holy Moses! On Eightieth."
"Any chance of finding that bunch of kids?"
"Not a chance, not a chance! If I got the hull district here there wouldn't be nothin' doin'. The kids'd be too scared t' remember anything. A pigeon-blood ruby, an' I wasn't gonna pick it up at first!"
"Lock it up, sergeant," ordered the detective. "I'll pass the word to headquarters. Too big for a ring. Probably fallen from a pin. But there'll be a holler in a few hours. Lost or stolen, there'll be some big noise. You two boobs!"
"Well, whadda yuh know about that?" whined the policeman. "An' me thinkin' it was glass!"
But there was no big noise. No one had reported the loss or theft of a pigeon-blood ruby of unusual size and quality.