Читать книгу Average Jones - Samuel Hopkins Adams - Страница 4

“They used to show that experiment in the laboratory,” said Bertram.

“You must have had just the accurate amount of liquid in the glass,

Average. Move back, you lunatic, it's dripping all over you.”

But Average Jones sat unheeding. The liquor dribbled down into his

lap. He kept his fascinated gaze fixed on the shattered glass. Bertram

dabbed him with a napkin.

“Tha—a—anks, Bertram,” drawled the beneficiary of this attention. “Doesn't matter. Excuse me. Good night.”

Leaving his surprised companions, he took hat and cane and caught a Third Avenue car. By the time he had reached Brooklyn Bridge he had his campaign mapped out. It all depended upon the opening question. Average Jones decided to hit out and hit quick.

At the house near the Navy Yard he learned that his man was out. So he sat upon the front steps while one of the highest-priced wines in New York dried into his knees. Shortly before eleven a shuffling figure paused at the steps, feeling for a key.

“Mr. Arbuthnot, otherwise Ransom?” said Average Jones blandly.

The man's chin jerked back. His jaw dropped.

“Would you like to hire another B-flat trombonist?” pursued the young man.

“Who are you?” gasped the other. “What do you want?”

“I want to know,” drawled Average Jones, “how—er-you planted the glass bulb—er—the sulphuric acid bulb, you know—in the chair that you sent—er—to the Honorable William Linder, so that—er—it wouldn't be shattered by anything but the middle C note of a B-flat trombone?”

The man sat down weakly and bowed his face in his hands. Presently he looked up.

“I don't care,” he said. “Come inside.”

At the end of an hour's talk Arbuthnot, alias Ransom, agreed to everything that Average Jones proposed.

“Mind you,” he said, “I don't promise I won't kill him later. But meantime it'll be some satisfaction to put him down and out politically. You can find me here any time you want me. You say you'll see Linder to-morrow?”

“To-morrow,” said Average Jones. “'Look in the next day's papers for the result.”

Setting his telephone receiver down the Honorable William Linder lost himself in conjecture. He had just given an appointment to his tried and true, but quite impersonal enemy, Mr. Horace Waldemar.

“What can Waldemar want of me?” ran his thoughts. “And who is this friend, Jones, that he's bringing? Jones? Jones! Jones?!” He tried it in three different accents, without extracting any particular meaning therefrom. “Nothing much in the political game,” he decided.

It was with a mingling of gruffness and dignity that he greeted Mr. Waldemar an hour later. The introduction to Average Jones he acknowledged with a curt nod.

“Want a job for this young man, Waldemar?” he grunted.

“Not at present, thank you,” returned the newspaper owner. “Mr. Jones has a few arguments to present to you.”

“Arguments,” repeated the Honorable William Lender contemptuously. “What kind of arguments?”

“Political arguments. Mayoralty, to be specific. To be more specific still, arguments showing why you should drop out of the race.”

“A pin-feather reformer, eh?”

The politician turned to meet Average Jones' steady gaze and mildly inquiring smile.

“Do you—er—know anything of submarine mines, Mr. Linder?” drawled the visitor.

“Huh?” returned the Honorable William Linder, startled.

“Submarine mines,” explained the other., “Mines in the sea, if you wish words of one syllable.”

The lids of the Honorable Linder contracted.

“You're in the wrong joint,” he said, “this ain't the Naval College.”

“Thank you. A submarine mine is a very ingenious affair. I've recently been reading somewhat extensively on the subject. The main charge is some high explosive, usually of the dynamite type. Above it is a small jar of sulphuric acid. Teeth, working on levers, surround this jar. The levers project outside the mine. When a ship strikes the mine, one or more of the levers are pressed in. The teeth crush the jar. The sulphuric acid drops upon the main charge and explodes it. Do you follow me.”

“I'll follow you as far as the front door,” said the politician balefully. He rose.

“If the charge were in a chair, in the cushion of an easy chair, we'll say, on the third floor of a house in Brooklyn—”

The Honorable William Linder sat down again. He sat heavily.

“—the problem would be somewhat different. Of course, it would be easy to arrange that the first person to sit down in the chair would, by his own weight, blow himself up. But the first person might not be the right person, you know. Do you still follow me?”

The Honorable William Linder made a remark like a fish.

“Now, we have, if you will forgive my professorial method,” continued Average Jones, “a chair sent to a gentleman of prominence from an anonymous source. In this chair is a charge of high explosive and above it a glass bulb containing sulphuric acid. The bulb, we will assume, is so safe-guarded as to resist any ordinary shock of moving. But when this gentleman, sitting at ease in his chair, is noticed by a trombonist, placed for that purpose In the street, below—”

“The Dutch horn-player!” cried the politician. “Then it was him; and I'll—”

“Only an innocent tool,” interrupted Average Jones, in his turn. “He had no comprehension of what he was doing. He didn't understand that the vibration from his trombone on one particular note by the slide up the scale—as in the chorus of Egypt—would shiver that glass and set off the charge. All that he knew was to play the B-flat trombone and take his pay.”

“His pay?” The question leaped to the politician's lips. “Who paid him?”

“A man—named—er—Arbuthnot,” drawled Average Jones.

Linder's eyes did not drop, but a film seemed to be drawn over them.

“You once knew—er—a Mrs. Arbuthnot?”

The thick shoulders quivered a little.

“Her husband—her widower—is in Brooklyn. Shall I push the argument any further to convince you that you'd better drop out of the mayoralty race?”

Linder recovered himself a little. “What kind of a game are you ringing in on me?” he demanded.

“Don't you think,” suggested Average Jones sweetly, “that considered as news, this—”

Linder caught the word out of his mouth. “News!” he roared. “A fake story ten years old, news? That ain't news! It's spite work. Even your dirty paper, Waldemar, wouldn't rake that kind of muck up after ten years. It'd be a boomerang. You'll have to put up a stronger line of blackmail and bluff than that.”

“Blackmail is perhaps the correct word technically,” admitted the newspaper owner, “but bluff—there you go wrong. You've forgotten one thing; that Arbuthnot's arrest and confession would make the whole story news. We stand ready to arrest Arbuthnot, and he stands ready to confess.”

There was a long, tense minute of silence. Then—

“What do you want?” The straight-to-the-point question was an admission of defeat.

“Your announcement of withdrawal. I'd rather print that than the Arbuthnot story.”

There was a long silence. Finally the Honorable Linder dropped his hand on the table. “You win,” he declared curtly. “But you'll give me the benefit, in the announcement, of bad health caused by the shock of the explosion, to explain my quitting, Waldemar?”

“It will certainly make it more plausible,” assented the newspaper owner with a smile.

Linder turned on Average Jones.

“Did you dope this out, young fellow?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“Well, you've put me in the Down-and-Out-Club, all right. And I'm just curious enough to want to know how you did it.”

“By abstaining,” returned Average Jones cryptically, “from the best wine that ever came out of the Cosmic Club cellar.”