“Houghton seems quite innocent,” she said, beside me on a small sofa. Madame DePage and Dr. Houghton had departed to prepare for the first evening dinner sitting.
I frowned. “But they hadn’t met prior to this trip. . he sought her out, she said. . ”
“Yes-they’d corresponded, however, and were in that sense old acquaintances. They spoke in detail about the hospital in La Panne. . went on and on about a nurse named Cavell, in Brussels, from whom madame hoped Dr. Houghton could arrange a pass through German lines.”
“That seems unlikely.”
Miss Vance shrugged. “So Dr. Houghton told her-but madame naively clung to her belief that doctors and nurses ‘transcend the national and the politic of war.’ ”
“Good luck to her with that view.”
With a lifted eyebrow, Miss Vance said, “There well may be, as you suspect, a shipboard romance between them. . madame is a passionate woman, in every respect. . but if Houghton is not the genuine article, he’s a masterful impostor.”
“Still, you will check on him, with your New York office, I trust.”
“Oh yes. And by Tuesday we should have preliminary reports on those crew members, Williams and Leach, as well. . And what did you gather from your conversation with the Champagne King?”
I sighed, leaned back on the comfortable sofa. “Well, he’s a loudmouth who likes to impress others by throwing his money around.”
“Nothing more?”
“Nothing more than the two million dollars in stocks and bonds in that bag of his.”
Miss Vance’s eyes showed white all round. “Do tell! Well, his technique is working-I am impressed.”
I gave her the details, such as they were.
She shook her head. “What a foolish ass. .”
“Nonetheless, the purpose of those names in the stowaway’s shoe becomes clear-it seems unlikely it’s potential assassination targets. Rather, robbery victims.”
Nodding, she said, “That would seem the common denominator-Madame DePage has her war relief funds, Frohman his money to buy new properties in London, and this oaf Kessler has his stocks and bonds in hand-to keep them ‘safe.’ ”
I chuckled. “As if all this food weren’t enough, the Lucy is a virtual brigands’ buffet! Courtesy of a bunch of first-class idiots with their first-class purses full.”
“And what of the Sage of East Aurora?”
She was nodding toward Elbert Hubbard, who sat at a handsome writing table complete with built-in mercury gilt lamp, near another such desk, at which his wife, Alice, perched. Both were intently applying ink to paper, bathed in afternoon sunlight filtering down through the leaded-glass dome almost directly above them.
“Well, it’s time for our appointment,” I said. “Shall we find out?”
Within minutes, introductions had been made, and we repaired to a pair of adjacent couches, Miss Vance next to me, with Hubbard at my left, his wife seated next to him. Plain but not unattractive people, the pair’s shared shoulder-length hairstyle created a peculiar visual bond. Alice Hubbard wore a simple, unpretentious afternoon dress of blue serge. Hubbard wore a loose-fitting blue jacket that had certainly once been new, though perhaps not in this century; underneath was a white shirt and an oversize, floppy darker blue velvet tie, and on the floor next to him was a battered briefcase. .
Another briefcase! Was there a million dollars in it, I wondered, or perhaps several bags of diamonds? That would have fitted the trend, all right-although in this case, the “treasure” in that battered bag was more likely page after scribbled page of words of wisdom from the aphorism-spouting “homely philosopher.”
I knew quite a bit about Hubbard already, having written several humorously critical articles about him (in one of which I’d termed him “the P.T. Barnum of the arts”). His career as an author-he was sort of a Mark Twain without the wit or storytelling ability-had not begun until his mid-thirties. A poor boy who’d quit high school to work as a travelling salesman, he had sold soap door-to-door, educating himself by devouring books in the dim light of dingy hotel rooms.
No one could deny that Hubbard had a gift for sales-had he not been so sincere about his beliefs, he would have made a wonderful confidence man. He had risen to a partnership in that soap company, which his admittedly clever merchandising ideas had turned into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. At the height of this success he walked out to enroll in college!
He chose Harvard, no less, where his writing teachers looked at his prose and advised a return to the soap business. Indignant, Hubbard left the campus, returned to his farm home in small East Aurora, New York, and began submitting his work to Manhattan publishers, who also knew soap when they smelled it.
Finally, finding no takers for his brilliance in prose, Hubbard began to self-publish his magazine, The Philistine, a periodical whose homely little anecdotes and ham-on-wry quips attracted a following. His antiwar article “A Message to Garcia” caught fire and sold forty million copies, making him famous. . and rich.
He had built an empire of sorts there in East Aurora, becoming a kind of benign cult leader to a group called the Roycrofters, who lived in a village he ruled. He invited people to come to learn to work with their hands, while, in their spare time, learning to use their minds. At the end of the work day, the Roycrofters would listen to music and read books. It was capitalism dressed up like communism.
The Roycrofters’ chief source of income was printing and binding expensive editions of the classics as well as Hubbard’s own writings (Alice’s, too). In addition they wove rag rugs and baskets, and manufactured hand-modelled leather goods, brassware, pottery, and Mission-style furniture.
“I’m pleased to talk to you, Mr. Van Dine,” he said. He had an undeniable warmth, and possessed a presence as compelling as his wife-who disappeared into the sofa-did not. “After all, one of my tiny claims to fame is pioneering the on-the-spot profile.”
“Your ‘Little Journeys,’ ” I said, with a forced smile and a nod, referring to booklets he’d published over the years in which he’d written articles based on visits with famous people. John D. Rockerfeller, Luther Burbank, Thomas Edison-one celebrity a month for fourteen years. . all of the articles hero-worshipping tripe.
Though his face was almost childishly placid, his brown eyes had fire. “I presume you wish to speak to me about my article. . Did you get a copy?”
“No, I did not, sir.”
“How about you, young lady?”
“No, Mr. Hubbard,” Miss Vance said.
He beamed and reached down and unlatched the bulging briefcase, withdrawing two copies of a digest-sized magazine with a rather plain cover. He handed a copy to me, and another to Miss Vance, with obvious pride.
The magazine’s title-The Philistine-was in a sort of Gothic script, vaguely religious in aspect. It was subheaded: “A Periodical of Protest,” and bore no cover illustration, just an aphorism between red bars: “NEUTRALITY: The attempt of a prejudiced mind to convince itself that it is not prejudiced.”
A small design included the volume and issue number, and in a justified-margin square of type it said: “Printed Every Little While for the Society of the Philistines and Published by Them Monthly. Subscription, One Dollar Yearly. Single Copies, Ten Cents. October 1914.”
“I’m anxious to read your article,” I said, meaning it. “But I’ve already read many excerpts in the press.”
“ ‘Who Lifted the Lid Off Hell?’ has attracted more attention than anything I’ve written since ‘Garcia.’ ” He was grinning like a monkey, and his wife was looking at him sideways, with her own smile, less the simian variety and more the madonna.
Miss Vance said, “I understand it’s quite critical of Kaiser Bill.”
“I like to call him Bill Kaiser,” Hubbard said, and winked at her, as if this were an incredible display of wit.
“You called him a number of other things, too,” I said. I had the magazine open, and quickly scanned the article that was considered the most scathing condemnation of the Kaiser to appear in any American publication to date, looking for examples. “Here you say he’s ‘a mastoid degenerate’. . and here, a ‘megalomaniac.’ ”