Ten minutes later they compromised on twenty dollars. Quade paid the money and stowed away his receipt. Then he said to a burly man who had stood by patiently during the dickering, “All right, Charlie, prepare the exhibit.”
Charlie Boston picked up a heavy suitcase and started for the main part of the building. Quade followed along.
“Ollie,” said Boston. “You know I’m not terribly happy. I never am around dogs. I can’t for the life of me figure out why you want to work this dog show. Last week you wouldn’t work the Elks’ Convention in Buffalo. And now,” he shuddered, “look at that whole row of English bulldogs. Gosh, if they should get loose—”
“Nothing to it. The only way to handle a dog is to let him know you’re not afraid of him.”
“I tried that once. That was the time I lost the seat of my pants.”
The dog exhibit building had a small arena, containing about two hundred seats, built around a tanbark pit, where the dogs were put through their paces. The rest of the building was crowded with rows of stalls, separated by wooden partitions. Each stall contained a pedigreed dog. Around the outer edge of the room were commercial exhibits, dog remedies, foods, supplies, equipment.
Oliver Quade’s booth was wedged in between one displaying dog biscuits and another featuring a line of disinfectants and remedies.
Boston set the suitcase on the floor outside the booth. Oliver Quade stepped on it to the counter. Then he began talking.
“I am Oliver Quade,” he boomed in a stentorian voice that rolled out across the auditorium and bounded back from the far walls, “Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia. I have the greatest brain in the world. I know everything. I know the answers to all questions: What came first, the hen or the egg; the age of Ann; the batting and fielding average of every big and minor league baseball player; every date in history. Everything under the sun.”
A group of youths had stopped in the aisle before Quade the moment he had started to talk.
“Oh, yeah?” one of them said.
“Oh, yeah?” Quade retorted. “I can answer any question you can ask me. On any subject — history, science, mathematics, sports, anthropology. Go ahead, ask me a question and see.”
The wise-cracking boy looked puzzled. His pals urged him on. “Go ahead. You started it.”
“All right,” grinned the boy. “Here’s one. How does a fox rid itself of fleas?”
The other boys began tittering, but Quade threw up his hands. “That was supposed to be a brain teaser. But I can answer it correctly. Br’er Fox’s reputation for cleverness is justly earned. When he’s bothered with fleas he takes a piece of wool or wood into his mouth and lets himself into a pool of water, tail first. The fleas don’t like to be drowned so they scramble further up on his body. Pretty soon only the fox’s nose and mouth are above the water and the fleas get into the wood or wool he’s got in his mouth. Then the fox drops the thing into the water and removes himself promptly from the vicinity.”
A roar of laughter swept the crowd that had now gathered on the aisle. Quade’s eyes gleamed and he went on: “Try me on something else. Anything, anyone!”
“What kind of dogs are these?” The interrogator was a young woman and she had them on leash; two huge animals, only a little smaller than St. Bernard dogs, and infinitely ludicrous. Long, woolly hair covered their faces, their entire bodies. They looked more like sheep than sheep themselves.
Quade chuckled as he replied, “Those, Madam, are Old English sheep dogs. Once when I was lost in a wild section of England, near the Scottish border, I killed one of those dogs, thinking it a sheep. It was not until later that I learned of my mistake and I haven’t been able to eat mutton since.”
Again the crowd roared. The questions came fast and furious after that. Everyone seemed to want to play the new game.
“How far is it to the moon?”
“What is the population of Talladega, Alabama?”
“When was the Battle of Austerlitz?”
“What is ontology?”
Quade answered all the questions, promptly and accurately. The audience applauded each time he gave a prompt answer. Then, after ten minutes, Quade called a dramatic halt.
“Now,” he bellowed, “I want to tell you how you can learn the answers to all the questions you’ve asked me. All those and ten thousand more. I’m going to give every one of you the opportunity to do what I did — have at your fingertips the answer to every single question anyone can ask you. Every one of you can be a Human Encyclopedia…”
Charlie Boston opened the suitcase at Quade’s feet. He brought out a thick volume and handed it to Quade.
“Here it is, folks,” Quade said. “The compendium of human knowledge of the ages. The answers to all questions. A complete college education crammed into one volume. Listen.” Quade leaned forward and lowered his voice to a confidential bellow.
“I’m not asking twenty-five dollars for this marvelous twelve-hundred-page book. I’m not even asking fifteen dollars, ten or five. Just a mere, paltry, insignificant two dollars and ninety-five cents. Think of it, folks, the knowledge of the ages for a mere pittance…. And here I come!”
He leaped down the from the counter and grabbed an armful of books. Then he attacked the crowd, talking as he went through. He sold the books, twenty-two of them. Then, when the remnants of the crowd still lingered to hear more entertainment, Quade blithely walked off. There was no use wasting time on dead-heads. In a little while there’d be a new crowd and Quade would attack them. But now, he had a half-hour intermission.
He was walking through a dog aisle when a biting voice said to one side of him: “Sheep!”
It was the girl who had asked Quade to identify the sheep dogs. He grinned. She was very easy on the eyes, blonde, and with the finest chiseled features Quade had ever seen on a girl, a complexion of milk and honey and eyes that danced with blue mischief. She was not more than twenty-one or two.
“Sorry I had to embarrass you,” Quade apologized. “But I ask you in all fairness, do those creatures look like dogs?”
He pointed at the one in the stall. The girl surveyed the dog critically. “Well,” she conceded, “the man I got them from told me they were dogs. Sometimes I’m inclined to disbelieve him. But say, what’s the trick about that question and answer stuff you pulled back there?”
“No trick at all, it’s on the level.”
“Oh, come now, you don’t really know everything.”
“But I do. I have a smattering of every subject under the sun.”
“I don’t understand. No one person could know everything.”
“You heard my pitch. I sell small encyclopedias. They’re pretty good, worth the money. But I didn’t get my knowledge from them. I got it from a twenty-four volume set. I’ve read it from cover to cover, not once, but four times.”
She looked at him in awe. “How long—”
“Fifteen years. And I remember everything I read. For example, in the premium list of the Westfield Kennel Show I remember the name of Lois Lanyard as the exhibitor of a pair of Old English Sheepdogs…”
“And you’re Oliver Quade. And now we’re introduced.”
Quade’s eyes sparkled. The friendliness of the girl delighted him. He talked for a moment more with her, then a sleek-haired young man in white flannels came up.
“Freddie,” said Lois Lanyard, “this is Mr. Quade, the Human Encyclopedia. Mr. Quade, my fiancé, Mr. Bartlett.”
Quade started to put out his hand but Bartlett nodded shortly and turned to Lois. “The judge is going to place the awards on the pointers in a few minutes,” he said. “Shall we watch?”