Читать книгу While Rome Burns - Alexander Woollcott - Страница 18
ОглавлениеTHE teasing mystery of an anon-
ymous benefaction and how it
was solved at last.
THE EDITOR’S EASY CHAIR
The question as to who killed the late Arnold Rothstein remains as yet unanswered, and there seems no present likelihood of the world ever knowing just what became of that most vanishing lady of them all—Miss Dorothy Arnold. But now one mystery that for many weeks had plagued and vexed your frantic correspondent has at last been solved. The events leading up to the tragedy could be recounted in a brochure entitled The Mystery of the Easy Chair.
It was on a tranquil, lulling day last May that the chair arrived at Wits’ End. As though it were yesterday, I remember my first glimpse of its noble profile, when I came in and found it glistening amid the shabbier furnishings. I had been up the street on some errand or other—had probably trudged off, let us say, to take an ailing neighbor a glass of guava jelly nesting in a basket under a snowy napkin. At all events, the chair arrived during my absence. That notorious dawdler, my man Saturday, explained that two melodramatic delivery-men had borne it triumphantly into the living room, cut the strings, whipped off and taken away the encasing paper, and gone their way, saying no words as to whence it had come, and leaving not a tittle of evidence behind to help me guess. It was a new chair, copied, I suspect, from some classic model of an ampler age, and built to sustain without misgivings a person of considerable bulk—should any such chance to pay me a visit.
Being a burnt child, my first suspicion led me to telephone one of those harpies called interior decorators. I know their tricks and their manners, and I just wanted to warn this one that I would not have my flat fixed by duress, that if she thought to tempt me with the sight of this masterpiece on the premises, and thereafter mail me a staggering bill for it, she might better send a dray around for it at once. The harpy in question repelled this “horrid implication” with some little asperity.
I was then driven, blushing, to the conclusion that the chair was a gift from some unknown admirer. But from whom? Of course in the days when I was a dramatic critic I was showered with presents. Anyway, at Christmastime there would always be a few tasty bottles of this or that from Jones & Green; a box from Dixie Hines containing three pencils with my name lettered in gold on each, and almost correctly spelled, too; and several cartons of Camels from old Santa Lee Shubert. But, with my retirement from the turmoil of journalism, the neighborly affection of these gentlemen withered as if from some sudden frost. An unsuspected gift, therefore, had become a rarity. I could not begin to guess who had sent the chair.
The chair, though superb in architecture, was upholstered in one of those flagrant chintzes, designed, apparently, by the art editor of a seed catalogue. I itched to have it reupholstered in some stout denim, but dared not thus affront the veiled unknown. Therefore I decided, like Bunker Bean, to play the waiting game, keeping up the while an artfully careless watch on every visitor for some telltale gesture—perhaps a blush of pride at the reminder of so costly a gift, perhaps an irrepressible spasm of regret at having parted with it. Inevitably, several wags, hearing of my researches, wrote me, handsomely confessing that in a moment of impulse they had ordered the chair sent to me. But these shy admissions lacked the ring of authenticity. Finally I came to the conclusion that the giver must be one of two persons, and I set myself to the task of discovering which.
To be safe, I showered each of the suspects with orchids, bonbons, and theater tickets, in the manner of a nineteenth-century gallant, writing them little notes which besought them to drop in to tea and sit in a great, new wonderful chair which I had acquired for their comfort. As each sank into its beckoning depths, I watched for some blush of complicity, but came at last to the conclusion that I was on the wrong scent. After a pointblank question, indeed, each suspect disavowed all previous knowledge of the chair, but not before I had spent enough on their entertainment—orchids, bonbons, theater tickets, orange pekoe, crumpets, and the like—to have paid for the chair, and a couple of ottomans thrown in.
Then, the other day, just as the mystery was receding into a pigeonhole alongside the Charlie Ross dossier, a quite hysterical furniture dealer broke through the cordon of sentries while I was nibbling my breakfast rusk. He rushed at me in saucer-eyed excitement, holding out a dingy business card and muttering, “A terrible predicament, yo, a terrible predicament.” He was in the middle of a stuttering explanation that a chair had been ordered by an apparently fussy family named Talcott—he had got that far in the story of his terrible predicament when he spied his lost chair, as good as new, save for a few nicks in the woodwork and a few caviar-stains and splotches of fountain-pen ink, barely perceptible in the rank flora of the upholstery. With a loud, glad cry he signaled his henchmen, who were, I discovered, even then crouched in the hallway.
The last thing I saw of the mystery it was on its way down the freight elevator. The Editor’s Easy Chair, forsooth! Too easy, it seems. Altogether too easy.
