Spell It!
Jennings was the last to arrive and as he sat down, stretched his legs out in comfort and accepted his usual dry martini (with a pearl onion), he said, "There are eight million stories in the naked city."
"Hey," said Baranov, "what an idea for a TV series!"
"The only trouble is that we miss them all. I probably missed one on the way to the Union Club. I always walk here on nice days. Good constitutional, helps keep me fit. Not like you, tubby," he said, addressing me.
I was irritated. "You keep fit by aerating the brain into a neat specimen of vacuum. You don't even make sense when you talk."
From his high-winged armchair, Griswold stirred, and the soft burr of his snoring was interrupted by a soft murmur. I don't know what he said; something about a pot, I think, and possibly a kettle.
I said, "What did you miss, Jennings? Usually, you're observant enough to step in every pothole you encounter."
Jennings pretended to ignore me. "I passed a young couple arguing. The girl, not more than seventeen, I should judge, said in a whisper that I just caught, 'You shouldn't have let him see the shadow.' The boy, not more than twenty, said, 'It would have been dangerous, otherwise.'"
"So?" said Baranov.
"That's all I heard because I walked on. But then I got to thinking. What shadow? Why should he have seen it, whoever he was, and why would it have been dangerous, if he didn't see it? What was it all about?" "Who cares?" I said.
"I do," said Jennings. "There was something unusual there; some story of the naked city; and I'll never know what it was."
"Ask Griswold," I said. "He will reason it out and from those two short sentences build a tale of intrigue and derring-do. Go ahead. Ask him."
Jennings tried to look contemptuous at that, but I could see he was tempted. Griswold's odd capacity to see beneath the surface—
Jennings looked at the grizzled old sleeper and, as usual, when his name was mentioned, it turned out that, somehow, he wasn't sleeping deeply enough to miss it.
His scotch and soda moved to his lips. His eyes opened, he brushed at his luxuriant white mustache with the back of his left hand and he said, "I haven't the vaguest notion what all that talk about shadows was. Of course, I have in my time encountered odd little events that I could see deeply into—something where no crime of any sort seemed involved; only something odd."
"Like what?" I said, deliberately baiting him.
I have always seemed to attract confidences [said Griswold]. I suppose it is partly the dignity of my presence that allows people to feel an infinite trust in me, and partly the luminous intelligence that shines in my eyes and leads people to assume they can find wisdom on which they can confidently lean.
Whatever the case, people turn to me in trouble.
I know a man, for instance, who is a writer. If I were to mention his name, you would know him at once. Any literate American and, for that matter, any literate European, would recognize his name. That name is of the essence to the story and since it was told to me in confidence, I cannot possibly give it to you, even in the unlikely case that I thought I could rely on your secrecy. I will, therefore, call him Reuben Kelinsky, making certain that even the initials are not accurate.
Kelinsky is ordinarily a carefree individual. He has few of the stigmata of the writer. He is not harried by deadlines, nor soured by reviews, nor embittered by rejections, nor depressed by shrunken royalties, nor enraged by editorial obtuseness—to say nothing of the villainy of publishers, agents, copy editors and printers. He wrote in a facile manner, sold everything, made a good living and was a happy man.
Consider my astonishment, then, when once, while we were having lunch, he seemed distinctly distrait. He bit his lower lip, clenched his fist now and then, and kept muttering under his breath.
"What is it, my boy?" I asked in sympathy. "You seem upset."
"Upset?" he said. "I am enraged. I have been trying for three weeks to cool down and I can't seem to. It's gotten so bad, I'm taking cold showers in the morning, and it's no use. I'm so hot and bothered that I steam the cold water in no time at all."
"Tell me what happened."
"May I?" he said with a hopeful look in his eyes. "Maybe you can help me make sense out of it."
"Say on," I said.
He said, "I had obtained a very good set of Durant's Story of Civilization for a mere pittance and I was delighted. I had read each volume from the library as it came out, and I had always wanted a complete set. The only catch was that Volume 2, The Life of Greece, was missing.
"Well, you know how it is. I had lived without any of the volumes for decades, but now that I had ten of them, I simply couldn't live without the eleventh. What's more, I intended to read the entire set right through in order. I did not want to have to skip a volume and return to it, and it wouldn't take me too long to get through Volume 1, so I needed Volume 2 in a matter of a week or so. It graveled me, you know.
"I should have waited till I was back in New York where I have many bookstores that I deal with, each one of which would have been glad to help me out, but I was stuck in Washington for a few days and I just hated to have to wait. When I came across a large bookstore on my way to a luncheon appointment, I walked in on impulse. "I was in a hurry. I had the luncheon appointment and I was used to being in 'Kelinsky country,' so to speak, when I was in a bookstore, so I walked up to a desk and said to the woman behind it, rater brusquely, 'Where do you keep your sets of Will Durant's history series?' She gestured vaguely up a circular stairway. I ran up it and found myself drowning in Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
"I called down, 'Hey, I don't see Durant.'
"She gestured again, and I moved in the direction she indicated and came across shelves and shelves of him. There was Caesar and Christ and Our Oriental Heritage and The Age of Reason Begins and, in fact, about a dozen copies of every single volume in the set except Volume 2. I wasted considerable time looking, because I couldn't believe there wouldn't be even one The Life of Greece.
"I ran down the circular staircase in utter frustration. I was already late for my appointment, but I was determined to get that volume. I went back to the desk and said, 'Where do I order a book?' She gestured again— she never once said anything to me, that miserable woman—and I dashed over to still another desk.
"'I want to order a book,' I said, gasping. All that frustrated running around wasn't doing me any good.
"The guy behind the desk looked at me stonily and didn't say a word. I repeated impatiently, 'I want to order a book. I want Durant's The Life of Greece.'
"He made no move to get an order blank. In fact, he made no move at all. After a longish wait, he said, 'What's your name?'
"I said very distinctly, feeling that would get a little action out of him, you know, 'Reuben Kelinsky.'
"And he said, 'Spell it!'
"That did it. I felt I was in some sort of nightmare. I don't say that everyone in the world has heard of me. I don't say that I expect as many as one person out of ten, or out of a hundred, to be able to spell my name on hearing it, but I think I do have a right to expect someone in a bookstore to be able to spell my name. There were probably at least a dozen of my books in that bookstore at that very moment.
"There was a copy of Books in Print on his desk, the 'Authors' volume, 'A' through 'K.' I opened it to the end—I know exactly where my name is—and said 'There's how to spell it.'
"And he said, 'I'm not here to be abused. I won't take your order.'
"What could I do but leave? I was fifteen minutes late to my luncheon. I was so enraged, I could scarcely eat and what I did eat gave me indigestion. And I did not have my book, either actually or on order. Of course, once I got back to New York, I obtained a copy of the book at once and I have a complete set now, but my rage has never stopped. I sent an angry letter to the store, but just got back a reply to the effect that I had been unruly and abusive, and I was to take my business elsewhere. And there's nothing I can do. I just can't understand it."
He sat there and brooded about it, then he said, "You know, this is the first time I've told the whole story, and now that I've told it, I feel much better. It's like lancing a boil."
"Absolutely. In fact, you might as well forget about it. If that's the worst thing that ever happens to you in your lifetime, you are the most fortunate man in the world."
"I know. But why on earth did he ask me to spell my name?"
I said, gently, "Well, Reuben, I only hear your side of the tale. Were you by any chance unruly and abusive?"
"No, I swear to you. I've told you exactly what happened, word for word, step by step. I didn't scream. I didn't yell names. I felt like it, but I didn't. I was in a hurry and I may have looked annoyed and impatient, but not one impolite word escaped me."
"Don't get angry," I said, "but I'm pursuing all possibilities. You pronounced your name correctly, I suppose?"
He did get angry. "Come, Griswold, are you entering into the conspiracy, too? Don't I know how to pronounce my own name? Of course, I pronounced it correctly. I went to great pains to do so, because I wanted him to know who I was and to get on the ball and get the book for me. But I was stupid. I should have waited till I was back in New York."
"In that case," I said, "I think we are possibly on the track of a criminal conspiracy and I will ask you to come with me and tell your story to a friend of mine in the government." But I suppose you three see what I'm driving at.
"No, we don't," I said stolidly.
"What? Not one of you?" said Griswold.
"Not one," I said, and neither of the other two denied it.
"In that case, you'll never get any of the tales of the naked city," said Griswold with contempt. "Look, why should the man behind the counter ask Kelinsky to spell a name he obviously knew how to spell?
"One possibility, and it had to be investigated, was that it was a password of some kind. People who don't know each other, but must trust each other in matters involving great risk, must have a system of recognizing each other in a foolproof manner. And the passwords used must not be so out of the ordinary as to alert anyone overhearing the exchange.
"If the bookstore was being used for some criminal operation and you, for instance, want to make sure you don't pass information to the wrong person and don't like to ask right out who the right person is, here is the tactic you might use. You ask for a particular book, and when the clerk asks your name, you announce it to be that of a well-known writer: Mark Twain, Saul Bellow, Herman Melville, or, if you wish, Reuben Kelinsky.
"If the clerk is legitimate, he knows how to spell the name and takes your order; or, if it is a living author, he asks you for your autograph and then takes your order; or he may express doubt and say you're kidding. If the clerk is engaged in criminal activities, he says, 'Spell it,' a totally ridiculous request.
"And he knows that you're a fellow criminal, if you don't act surprised at his not knowing how to spell a name he obviously should know how to spell. If you calmly spell the name, then both of you can do business. But when you grabbed 'Authors in Print,' he knew that he had the real author and in a panic, he accused you of abusive behavior and got rid of you."
Griswold spread his arms and said, "See!"
Jennings said, with something like awe, "And I suppose you did investigate the place and uncovered some kind of racket."
"Well," said Griswold, "there was a drug-smuggling operation being tracked down in Washington at the time, and I thought that this might be it, but it wasn't. The truth was that the clerk in the bookstore was no admirer of Kelinsky, and had recognized him, and had decided to have a little harmless fun at his expense, and he had succeeded.—But Kelinsky is happy now, because naturally our investigation was no fun for the clerk, even though we did clear him in the end. He'll be careful with his practical jokes next time.
"And see here, I've never claimed to be right every single time."