Mervyn revealed himself like Trampas in The Virginian. Boce drew his shoulders up quickly. Then he sang out, “Ah, there, Mervyn! Fellow here’s interested in your car. I’ve been giving him the poop.”
“Just what is your price?” inquired the serious young man gaily.
“Three hundred,” Mervyn answered.
The young man departed.
“You weren’t very persuasive, John,” Mervyn said in a mild voice.
Boce lowered his shoulders cautiously. “Give me something to work with.”
“What’s your final offer on the car? This time I mean it. Well?”
“Oh... one sixty-five. If you throw in a new set of seat covers. And balance the wheels.”
Mervyn had an inspiration. “Make me a memorandum of that offer, John. Here, on the back of this envelope. Print. I can’t read your writing.”
Boce seemed startled. But then he shrugged and complied. “I call your attention to the fact that I wrote, ‘Tentative and conditional, not a firm offer.’”
“Why did you do that?” Mervyn muttered, studying the thing.
“Just sound business practice. The law of contracts is pretty tricky stuff.”
“Well, I’ll give you a tentative and conditional ‘no.’ But I’ll keep the memorandum in case I suddenly blow my tubes and start giving away my possessions.”
“I’ll be there when you do,” said Boce playfully.
“Incidentally, where were you last Friday night?”
“My God, Mervyn, are you still chewing that old bone? What difference does it make?”
“What difference does it make to you what difference it makes?”
“For the life of me I can’t see—”
“All right. My car disappeared along about then.”
Boce rolled his eyes, imploring the heavens. “So now I’m a thief as well as a liar.”
“Not necessarily. I think this John character went south in my car. I’d like to know his last name.”
“It’s not Boce, old man, believe me.”
“I believe you. But man does not live by faith alone.”
“I wouldn’t drive that rattletrap ten blocks,” Boce assured him. “Unless my life depended on it, of course.”
“Or you couldn’t borrow my Volkswagen. Come on, John, give. Where were you Friday night?”
“Damn it all, Mervyn, if it’s any of your business, I had a date! You satisfied?”
“No. Who was she?”
“Never mind! Let’s just say one of the local fertility goddesses. We danced the Highland fling. Every time I tried to waltz out the door she dragged me back in for one more go-around.”
Beyond that, John Boce would not testify. In disgust Mervyn returned to Apartment 3, where he contemplated Boce’s memorandum.
Suddenly he had an idea.
At the university library he gained access to the big workroom near John Thompson’s office on the pretext of delivering a message to Harriet, who of course was not on duty. On his way out he paused by the bulletin board, which was thickly hung with notices of all kinds. One was a directive regarding summer schedules, signed “J. Thompson.” But it was typed.
Twenty minutes later, at the apartment house where Thompson maintained his residence, Mervyn had better luck. In the slot beside the call buttons was a neatly handprinted JOHN THOMPSON. Mervyn eased the card from the slot and fled.
His next stop was John Viviano’s studio. The photographer was not in, but his brother Frank was, and to Mervyn’s surprise he immediately nodded at Mervyn’s request and rummaged through a file-cabinet drawer. He brought out a drawing done with much swash and verve, of a model in a black cape. Notes detailing the materials to be used were hand-printed along the side.
“My compliments,” said Frank Viviano. “I don’t know why you want it, but I hope you can use it to hang John. I’m looking forward to kicking away the chair.”
Mervyn thanked him feebly, and left with the drawing.
Now how to get hold of a specimen of John Pilgrim’s hand-printing? The project furrowed Mervyn’s brow. An outright request would yield, he was sure, either a sneer or a burst of bad poetry. Or, worse, both. He could always break into the brute’s cottage, of course... Finally, Mervyn decided upon indirection.
He stopped into a stationery store and bought a copy of the current Saturday Review. There was a demonstration typewriter on display, and on the pretext of trying it out he typed a card with the message:
Complimentary Copy! Now is the time to get a FREE 3-month subscription. All you have to do is suggest four persons (name and address) who might be interested in taking the Saturday Review. (Your name will not be used.)
Please print.
Our representative will call shortly to collect your card. Just fill it out, and your FREE 3-month subscription will start coming to you in (approximately) one month.
He parked down and across the street from Pilgrim’s cottage. The Lambretta was gone, so the poet was not at home. Mervyn sneaked up the concrete walk to Pilgrim’s porch, left the magazine, with the card clipped to it, propped against the front door, sneaked back and composed himself in his car to wait.
An hour went by before he heard the Lambretta’s roar. Mervyn watched Pilgrim steer the machine bouncefully over the curb and up along the walk like a rocket. By some miracle it did not crash against the porch. The engine coughed and died, Pilgrim leaped off and to his door — and Mervyn saw him stoop and pick up the magazine and kick his door open and go into the cottage reading the card.
Mervyn waited, scanning Milton Street. About twenty minutes later a neatly dressed boy of about fourteen came along the sidewalk. Mervyn called him over and began to talk earnestly. The boy nodded without expression. Finally Mervyn pointed out Pilgrim’s garden cottage; the boy nodded again, went up the walk and disappeared.
Five minutes later he returned bearing the card. Mervyn gave him a fifty-cent piece and sent him on his expressionless way.
By God, chortled Mervyn, I’ve outwitted that unwashed cat!
He eagerly scanned the face of the card, where he had typed the spurious message. His face fell; there was nothing on it but what he had typed. When he turned the card over, however, he immediately brightened. Pilgrim had fallen for it!
I spit on your lousy magazine. I hate the stupid egghead rag. Don’t pull this on me again. Next time I’ll grab your “representative” and I’ll cockalize him.
He had hand-printed his churlish message.
It was dusk by the time Mervyn got back to the Yerba Buena Garden Apartments. Not a bad day’s work, he thought in the gloaming. For once, he had outfoxed his adversaries (as he had begun to think of the four Johns, even though three of them must be innocent).
As he passed John Boce’s apartment, Mervyn heard Harriet Brill’s laugh. It recalled to him the party of two nights before when Boce had “borrowed” his fifth of bourbon without permission. That was one bottle of bourbon, Mervyn decided, he would have to write off.
But to his astonishment, there outside his door in a paper sack stood a fifth of bourbon, practically full. Was the leopard changing his spots?
The incident, following as it did the success of his quest for hand-printing specimens, put Mervyn into a pleasant euphoria. In his apartment he locked the door, turned on the lights, pulled the drapes, took out the various hand-printing samples he had collected, laid them on the table beside the two anonymous letters, mixed himself a highball, and sat down humming.
Now let’s see, Mervyn thought, rubbing his hands. He took his time, sipping his highball, enjoying far more the taste of superior intelligence and victory over the infidel.