Lingar does his work well. Passing by the pool hall that night, I hear his slow drawl, and look inside. A group of men are listening, spellbound.
“Well, gentlemen, this here spy was usin’ invisible ink. You had to put a hot iron on it to make the writin’ visible. When this Government man came into his room in the hotel, he carelessly slid a cigarette case over the letter. But he hadn’t figured on our desert summers. When he put that cigarette case over it, it was just like puttin’ on a hot iron. The Government man picked it up; there underneath was plans for the whole gol-derned bombin’ sight.”
Pete and Bernice are working against time back in Los Angeles. I keep in touch with them by telephone. On Thursday, Pete says they’ll be ready to shoot on Saturday, but I hear Grandis and Scarborough are signing up on Friday night at the poolroom. So it has to be Friday or never. Pete says he’ll make it somehow, and to get as big a crowd as possible hanging around the poolroom.
I don’t need to get the crowd. Lingar’s good for that.
Grandis has been keeping pretty well out of sight. Now he comes over to me in front of the whole crowd. Words slip from his mouth like wet watermelon seeds being pushed out one at a time. “Just because we’re competitors, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be friends.” He sticks out his right hand.
I get my fingers wrapped around it. “No hard feelings at all,” I say, grinning and squeezing. “Everything’s fair in war and business, eh?”
He retrieves what’s left of his hand and stands looking down at it. “Eh?” he says. “Yes. Oh, yes.” He’s not going to be signing anything with that hand — not for a few minutes at least.
Scarborough comes bustling in, carrying a brief case. Every neck cranes as he walks over to a table. He’s the town’s big shot.
“All ready, Grandis?” he asks.
And just then I hear the rumble of a truck coming up the street. Someone yells, “Here’s a house on a truck!”
Everyone piles out of the poolroom.
Pete’s up on the seat with the driver, looking as though Lady Luck was sitting at his side, giving him her best smile. If you’re in on the secret, you can see that originally the house had been a condemned refrigerated fruit car. But they’ve put in a door, windows, cute little striped awnings, a peaked, shingled roof, and given it a coat of bright green paint. Even I have to look twice and then rub my eyes.
Scarborough stands for a minute, fascinated, then pushes his way through the gawking bystanders. “What have you here?” he asks Pete.
It’s Bernice Johnson who answers the question. She opens the door and stands on the threshold in a neat house dress and white apron, sheer silk stockings peeping beneath the swing skirt.
She says, “We have here the first unit of the Quint-Felton-Johnson Desert House, equipped with insulated walls, packed with four inches of ground cork, soundproof, windproof, weatherproof, bugproof. My father still has six hundred acres of level land. We’re going to put these houses on it. Every unit is equipped with Puckley air conditioners. No matter how hot it gets outside, the inside’s cool and comfortable. A workman coming home in the evening finds an appetizing meal served by a wife whose nerves aren’t frayed by heat, finds a place to stretch out. Wouldn’t you boys like to come in?”
Would they! There’s a rush that makes the truck sway on its springs. Men crowd around the door, peer in the windows, set foot on the threshold — and stop.
Bernice has done it. The idea was ours, but it took a woman to put it into execution. And it’s that feminine touch that makes the thing go across.
There’s an electric refrigerator, a gas range, a table all set with tablecloth, napkins and silverware. There are bright-colored linoleum rugs in the kitchen, and a thick Axminster rug in the living room. There are reading lights, pictures on the walls, neat wallpaper, drapes on the windows, and the crowning touch of all, what Pete says afterward is the best job of silent salesmanship that was ever pulled, a big easy chair with a radio beside it, a footstool, a pair of slippers on the floor, and a newspaper open at the sporting section. On the little smoking stand is a humidor, a brier pipe stained a rich brown, and a basket filled with matches.
The interior is filled with a restful coolness which comes as a relief after the glare of a blazing desert sun. Scarborough moves forward, and we all draw back from the door so he can go in. Pete follows him.
“What are you going to do with this?” Scarborough asks.
Pete says in a loud voice, “Sell two hundred of them to you. This is the first unit of a mass-production desert palace. The houses in this town are wooden shacks with tin roofs. In summer they’re regular ovens. Workingmen can’t live in such conditions. You’re going to work three shifts. Think of a man on the night shift coming home in the morning to one of those iron-roofed, bake-oven shacks, fighting off flies and—”
“How much,” Scarborough interrupts, “and how soon?”
Pete says, “Believe it or not, we get these cars cheap. Originally, they cost plenty. The insulation has packed just enough so they can’t be used any longer for shipping fruit. But it hasn’t hurt them a bit for insulated houses. They’re cool in summer, warm in winter. They’re so weatherproof you can air-condition them for a few cents a day. You can start your factory and your experiments, and we’ll deliver these at the rate of twenty a week, every one air-conditioned with a Puckley.”
Pete opens a drawer in the table and pulls out a contract.
“Just a minute!” Grandis yells, pushing forward.
He’s a little guy, and I’m blocking the doorway. “Okay, boys,” I say. “Let’s get out and let ’em talk.” I put my heel down hard on Grandis’ instep. A moment later I hear the door slam behind me.
The bunch climbs down off the truck. Pete has it all fixed with the driver. The gears mesh, and the truck, with Bernice, Scarborough and Pete in the house, starts moving away fast.
“Hey, wait!” Grandis yells, and runs limping after the truck, choking on the dust, losing ground at every jump, the men jeering at him.
Ole Johnson is standing near me. “Looks like the dame is smiling on us,” I tell him.
“Vot you mean, ay dame? My Bernice she ain’t bane no dame. She—”
“Lady Luck,” I tell him. “She’s the dame who’s smiling. Your daughter has a third interest in this. She’ll net ten thousand bucks. Grandis is stuck with his old shacks.”
Behind me I hear a slow, drawling voice say, “Reminds me of the time up in the Geronimo Mountains when I saw an old she-grizzly chase a prospector. He got jammed between two saplings. Well, gentlemen, that bear flung her paws around the saplings and the man all together and started to squeeze. There was enough spring in the saplings so she couldn’t crush the man, and she couldn’t break the saplings. She’d squeeze for a while and then let go to get another grip. Then she’d squeeze again, and she kept it up until she got plumb tuckered out. But she wouldn’t give up. She just kept on squeezin’ until she fell over dead.”
The old liar hitched up his one gallus and looks at me with an expression that says he ain’t charging for that one. He’s just throwing it in with the pride of performance of an artist putting on a final touch.
“That’s the way with Grandis,” he says. “He’s plumb squeezed himself to death!”