And yet, despite his success in almost all phases of writing, there has been one that, in his own opinion, has baffled him. He never seemed to be able to conquer the short story — at least, he never wrote one that satisfied him. So what did Mr. Myers do? Let it beat him? No, indeed. He joined a class in short-story writing at New York University, and at one of the sessions, Mr. Hollis Alpert, the teacher, read W. Somerset Maugham’s “Mr. Know-All ” which deals, you will remember, with the appraisal of a string of pearls. This reading led to a class assignment in which the students had to write a short story about a precious stone. “Nothing So Hard As a Diamond” is Henry Myers’s homework and it won a Third Prize in EQMM’s Eighth Annual Contest.
Whether or not I ought to notify the police, there are three reasons why I am not going to: (1) They may not have authority to prevent a crime, which I am not even sure is going to be committed; (2) If I am wrong, I will fed like a fool; and (3) If I am right, it was I who put the prospective criminal up to it.
But I can’t just let it happen. I’m supposed to have ethics. I’m a doctor.
Exactly a month ago I finished my internship, took an office of my own on upper West End Avenue, and set up as a fully equipped M.D.; fully equipped, that is, with everything but patients. To supply this lack, I spent a little money on engraved announcements, and mailed them everywhere I thought they might do some good.
The only answer I received, and the last I expected, was from the president of the third largest bank in the city. I had found his name, George Brinsley Belmore, in the printed list of my father’s classmates, the year they were graduated from Yale, and sent him an announcement with the others, adding a handwritten notation that I was my father’s son. Mr. Belmore was not even a forlorn hope; he was just one more unturned stone, so why not? He might — not too unlikely — have the traditional sentimentality of an alumnus.
He did, and it was peculiarly unpleasant. He was too cordial. He didn’t just write; he telephoned. Not via his secretary; in person. Not from his office; from his home. Not for business; for dinner. And not some time; right away.
Some people tell me I’m young and impressionable, and practically pat my head. I don’t know. How young is 25? By my reckoning, it’s a quarter of a century. However that may be, I didn’t like his voice. It was the very voice, as I had always imagined it, of every Babbitt, slapper-on-the-back, hee-hawing, heartiness-purveying, smug, happy-days-are-here-again jackass in the world. I was prepared to lick my share of boots in order to get along, but these particular boots were oversized and stepped too heavily on my sensibilities.
“Drop everything and come on!” he brayed into the telephone. “Your patients will live till you get back. Tell your patients — to have patience! Ha ha ha ha ha! Nobody here but just the wife and me. I’ve got to see old Mickey the Mule’s boy. We called him that ’cause he never kicked about anything. Sarcasm, you know. Ha ha ha. Any time will do. Say ten minutes from now!” With another yell of mirth at his own wit, he hung up.
I visualized him down as an extremely fat man, inclined to apoplexy, and mentally catalogued him as a good prospect. That voice of his, high in pitch, reminded me of a dramatic tenor I had heard sing Siegfried at the Metropolitan. A lot of beef supports those resonant head-tones.
And perhaps because he overdid his warmth, I had the impression that he was really cold, unfeeling, even cruel. Some psychologist — Jung, I think — said that sentimentality is merely brutality disguised. The connection was suggested. I remember, by an ancient Assyrian frieze, showing a priest of Baal sacrificing a bullock on an altar. The expression on the stone face, perceived and perpetuated by the sculptor, was one of extreme sentimentality, and was oddly appropriate to its owner’s action of cutting the bullocks throat.
Business being business, however, I dismissed my telephonic hunches as unscientific. My own throat was in no danger, whereas my host’s might be — of laryngitis, at least — if he kept up that kind of vocal production. While I shaved, I felt I might even like him. When I brushed my newest suit, I was sure of it. His heartiness began to seem sincere. He was a Yale man. New Haven. New England. Traditions of hospitality. That kind of rationalizing comes easily, when you’re trying to build up a clientele.
I took a taxi, just in case they should be watching from a window, though why a bank president or his wife should be that eager or that easily impressed, I don’t know. But it was well for my own assurance that I did, for they lived in a genuine, honest-to-God, marble mansion, one of those remaining from the days when a million dollars was a lot of money, and whoever had it wanted you to know it.
The inside was a perfect match for the outside. There were Rembrandts and Persian rugs, neither of which I could suppose otherwise than genuine, a butler who undoubtedly was genuine, and a marble staircase, which seemed less intended for getting down from the floor above, than to permit a regal descent into an assemblage. I admit I am not a competent judge of how wealth ought to look, not having acquired any. I may even be envious. But to me it seemed ostentatious.
Down the marble staircase came my host, royally, because the staircase would have it so, although his intention was to be affable. His appearance startled me, not because he differed from what I had expected, but because he didn’t. He was fat, he might well be apoplectic, what with a puffy vein standing out from one of his temples and little, mean eyes in the middle of a moon face. I felt as if I had already dreamed him. He was, it is true, a little shorter than I had anticipated, but that somehow made him worse. Anything would have made him worse; nothing could have helped. The only thing even remotely in his favor was the fascination that a huge fortune carries about with it, and my own vague hope that I might get a little of it.
The machine-gun insistence with which he had assaulted me over the phone was absent now. Having got me there, it was presumably not needed, and had been turned off. Instead, he beamed, like a ray of light shining through a glass of jelly. He came toward me, smiled, spoke my first name, which is the same as my father’s, and held out his shapeless hand. I smiled, and shook it.
He maintained his grasp for a moment, looked through me at my father, saw the resemblance, and was satisfied.
“Mrs. Belmore will be down soon,” he said. “Come into the library; I want to tell you something before she joins us.” He piloted me, with his arm possessively about my shoulders, assuring me on the way that it was like being with old Mickey the Mule again. There’s a great kick in it, ha ha ha.
The library was of course magnificent, with chairs and lamps so arranged for comfort and lighting as to make one really want to read, and rows of books exquisitely bound. They were all classics or semi-classics, or at least books which at one time or another had been considered important. He saw me looking at the titles — I’m curious about what people read — and said: “I’ve been doing some first-edition collecting. Show them to you, if you like, after dinner.” I replied that I would enjoy that; but my eye was on a couple of shelves of reading matter that seemed not in keeping with the rest. Detective stories — dozens of them, all in inexpensive paper editions, but, unlike the others, all undeniably fingered and read. I thought I had him: this was what he really liked.
“No,” he said, answering my silent question, “Mrs. Belmore reads those. I wish she would take an interest in something good.” (The snob!) He motioned me to a chair. We sat. “Here’s what I want you to do.”
So. He wanted me to do something. I thought there was a catch, back of all that cordiality.