It was something to celebrate and they were doing it in the bar and cocktail lounge of the Midtown Hotel. They’d had two beers apiece and were at that expansive stage where they were willing to listen to the beef of the little fellow who’d had a good many more than two beers.
“I’m a song writer,” the little fellow insisted drunkenly. “I can prove it.”
“That’s fine,” said Oliver Quade. “I knew a song writer once who ate crackers in bed. Too bad, he was a nice guy.”
The song writer swiveled about and leered at the pasty-faced professor who was banging away at the dwarf piano at the other side of the room.
“Bah,” he said, “listen to that bilge. They call that music! I wrote the best little damn song that’s been written in this damn town in the las’ five years. Y’wanna hear it?”
“No,” said Charlie Boston.
“Tha’s fine,” said the little man. “I’m glad to oblige, and when you hear it, remember the name’s Billy Bond. ‘Words and Music’ by Billy Bond. Tha’s me, Billy Bond.”
He whipped a folded sheet of song manuscript from his inside breast pocket and, holding his glass of beer in his other hand, began to navigate the perilous sea between the bar and the piano.
Oliver Quade winked at Charlie Boston. “This may be good.” He followed Billy Bond.
The little song writer waved his sheet of music in the piano player’s face. “Here, chum! Play this. It’s good. I wrote it myself.”
“Well, well,” said the piano pounder, “a member of the perfession. Shake!”
Billy Bond ignored the outstretched hand. “Play it in slow tempo. With feeling. It’s a sad song, see. About a cottage by the shore, a summer day, a soft wind…”
The man at the piano hummed a few notes. “I gotcha, pal. I gotcha. Yeah, sure…”
“I’ll sing it,” said Billy Bond. “You play.”
He cleared his throat noisily and sang:
“Say, dear, you’ll come with me to the shore…
We’ll leave our little cottage… never more…”
Billy Bond banged his fist on the top of the piano. “Slower!” he yelled at the piano player. “I told you slow tempo. Try it again!”
Oliver Quade saw the glint in the piano player’s eyes and laid a hand on Billy Bond’s arm. “Maybe this isn’t just the place for your kind of song, Billy boy. But it’s a swell number!”
“Sure, it’s swell!” snapped Billy Bond. “That’s why I want you to hear it. I want everybody to hear it.”
He picked up his beer glass from the top of the piano where he had set it. “I’ll sing it,” he said. He gulped a mouthful of beer and started to set the glass back on top of the piano.
Quade, looking at Billy Bond, saw the horror that swept across his face.
“Gawd!” said Billy Bond. His mouth fell open and the glass of beer fell to the floor. Billy Bond clawed at his throat — and fell forward, into Oliver Quade’s arms.
Quade let him gently to the floor. A film of perspiration suddenly formed on his forehead as he looked into the song writer’s glazing eyes.
“He’s passed out!” said the man at the piano.
“No,” Quade replied. “He’s… dead!”
The piano player snorted. “Naw!” he pushed back from the piano and came around it. He prodded Billy Bond with his toe. “Hey, souse! It’s time to go home.”
A two-hundred-pound waiter came forward. “Shame on your pal, mister,” he chided Quade. “One beer and he passes out!”
Quade said tightly, “You oaf, he’s dead!”
“Dead drunk,” cracked the piano player.
“If you don’t want to be bothered with him,” said the waiter-bouncer, “just slip me his address and I’ll pour him into a taxi. No extra charge.”
He stooped and turned Billy Bond over. With his face almost in Bond’s, he stiffened. “Jeez!” he cried. “He is dead!”
The piano player reeled back. His pasty face turned the color of sour dough.
And then pandemonium reigned in the cocktail lounge. After pandemonium, came the police. Several of them. Also several men from the medical examiners’ office. Photographers and reporters.
The pride of the force, Detective Sergeant Vickers, was in charge of the police detail. He looked almost too young to be a detective sergeant. He was tall and slender, wore a tailor-made London drape suit, a green snap-brim Alpine hat and French-toed tan shoes.
He was brusque and thorough. “He had a glass of beer,” he said to Oliver Quade. “He took a drink of it and keeled over — dead. Why?”
“You’re the detective,” Quade retorted.
The sergeant’s eyes roamed over Quade and finally came to rest on Quade’s middle vest button.
He said, “What’s your name? And occupation?”
“The name is Oliver Quade. I’m a human encyclopedia.”
Sergeant Vickers’ eyes came up to Quade’s necktie. “What was that last?”
“I said I was a human encyclopedia. Is there any law against that?”
The sergeant’s lips puckered. “No,” he said, “there’s no law against it. And none that says you have to talk. Only… I can take you down to Headquarters where we have a little room with a big light in it and some very hard-boiled cops who sometimes disobey police regulations. So let’s try again; what’s your occupation?”
“I’m a human encyclopedia. I make my living telling people the answers to questions. I sell books of knowledge. And I know what’s in them. Take The Compendium of Human Knowledge. Twelve hundred pages of information, condensed, classified — everything the human race has ever learned since the beginning of time. And only $2.95—”
“Hey! You trying to sell me a book?”
“Well, I’m really on a vacation, but I’ve got some books in my room upstairs. If you’d like to give me an order—”
Sergeant Vickers snarled, “Cut it!”
“For example,” said Quade, “do you know our American woods are full of a plant with narcotic qualities and no one does anything about it?”
“Sure, that’s easy,” said Vickers, answering in spite of himself. “Marijuana.”
“And you call yourself a detective!” Quade said pityingly. “Don’t you know something is done about the marijuana weed? It’s the mandrake, or may-apple, famed in fable, and said to groan when uprooted. It has a grotesque shape, formed almost like a man, and the ancients considered it a cure for barrenness.” Quade took a deep breath and started in again. “Do you know—”
“Shut up!” cried Vickers. He shifted to Charlie Boston and glowered at him. “What’s your name?”
“Charles Boston. I’m an assistant human encyclopedia.”
Sergeant Vickers chopped the air with his fist. “The dead fellow, what’s his name?”
Quade answered that. “He said it was Billy Bond. He was a song writer.”
“Billy Bond, a song writer? I never heard of him.”
“Do you know all the song writers in New York?” Quade asked.
Vickers loosened a bit. “I cover the Broadway beat. I know just about all the hoofers, the bookmakers, song writers and all the other riff — ah, Broadway regulars.”
“And you never heard of Billy Bond? Well, maybe he was just breaking in. I never heard of him myself until he introduced himself here at the bar, less than five minutes before he died.”
“You mean you didn’t come here with him?”
“Hell, no.”
A white-coated intern came over and whispered into Sergeant Vickers’ ear. Quade saw the sergeant’s eyes widen.
He looked at Quade through smoldering eyes. “So you were just a bar-pickup acquaintance of Bond’s, huh? Would you be surprised to know then that Bond died of poison? Hydrocyanic acid. It was dumped in his beer!”
Quade moistened his lips with his tongue. His nostrils flared slightly, but otherwise he showed no emotion.