Theophilus North (6 page)

It was during this closing hour that Henry presented me to Mrs. Cranston. “Mrs. Cranston, I should like you to make the acquaintance of my friend Teddie North. He works at the Casino and has some jobs reading aloud to some ladies and gentlemen whose eyesight is not what it used to be.”

“I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. North.”

“Thank you, ma'am, I feel privileged.”

“Teddie has only one fault, ma'am, as far as I know, he minds his own business.”

“That recommends him to me, Mr. Simmons.”

“Henry does me too much credit, Mrs. Cranston. That has been my aim, but even in the short time I've been in Newport I've discovered how difficult it is not to get involved in situations beyond one's control.”

“Like a certain elopement recently, perhaps.”

I was thunderstruck. How could word of that brief adventure have leaked out? This was my first warning of how difficult it was to keep a secret in Newport, things that could easily escape notice in a big city. (After all servants are praised for “foreseeing every wish” of their employers; that requires close and constant attention. Aquidneck is not a large island, and the heart of its Sixth City is not of wide extent. )

“Ma'am, I can be forgiven for trying to be of assistance to my friend and employer at the Casino.”

She lowered her head with a slight but benevolent smile. “Mr. Simmons, you'll excuse me if I ask you to go into the bar for two minutes while I tell Mr. North something he should know.”

“Yes, indeed, gracious lady,” said Henry, very pleased, and left the room.

“Mr. North, this town has an excellent police force and a very intelligent Chief of Police. It needs them not only to protect the valuables of some of the citizens but to protect some of the citizens from themselves; and to protect them from undesirable publicity. Whatever it was that you were called upon to do two and a half weeks ago, you did it very well. But you know yourself that it might have ended in disaster. If some such complication should present itself to you again, I hope you will get in touch with me. I have done some helpful things for the Chief of Police and he has been kind and helpful to me and to some of the guests in my house.” She put her hand briefly on mine and added, “Will you remember that?”

“Yes, indeed, Mrs. Cranston. I thank you for letting me know that I can trouble you, if the occasion arises.”

“Mr. Simmons! Mr. Simmons!”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Please rejoin us and let us break the law a little bit.” She tapped a handbell and gave a coded order to the bar boy. As a sign of good fellowship we were served what I remember as gin-fizzes. “Mr. Simmons tells me that you have some ideas of your own about the trees of Newport and about the various parts of the town. I would like to hear them in your own words.”

I did so—Schliemann and Troy and all. My partition of Newport was, of course, still incomplete.

“Well! Well! Thank you. How Edweena will enjoy hearing that. Mr. North, I spent twenty years in the Bellevue Avenue City, as most of my guests upstairs have; but now I am a boarding-house keeper in the last of your cities and proud of it. . . . Henry Simmons tells me that the gentlemen in Herman's Billiard Parlor thought that you might be some kind of detective.”

“Yes, ma'am, and some other undesirable types that he was not ready to tell me.”

“Ma'am, I didn't want to put too heavy a burden on the chap in his first weeks. Do you think he's strong enough now to be told that he was suspected of being a
jiggala
, maybe, or a
smearer?
”

“Oh, Henry Simmons, you have your own language! The word is
‘gigolo.'
Yes, I think he should be told everything. It may help him in the long run.”

“A
smearer
, Teddie, is a newspaperman after dirt—a scandal hound. During the season they're thick as flies. They try to bribe the servants to tell what's going on. If they can't find any muck they invent some. It's the same in England—millions and millions read about the wicked rich and love it. ‘Duke's daughter found in Opium Den—Read all about it!' And now it's Hollywood and the fillum stars. Most of the smearers are women, but there's plenty of men, too. We won't have anything to do with them, will we, Mrs. Cranston?”

She sighed. “They aren't entirely to blame.”

“Now that Teddie's wheeling up and down the Avenue he'll begin to get feelers. Have you been approached yet, old man?”

“No,” I said sincerely. A minute later, I caught my breath; I had indeed been “approached” without realizing what lay behind it. Flora Deland! I shall give an account of that later. It occurred to me that I should keep my Journal locked up—it already contained material not elsewhere obtainable.

“And the
gigolo
, Mr. Simmons?”

“Just as you wish, ma'am. I know you'll forgive me if I call our young friend by one nickname or another. It's a way I've got.”

“And what are you going to call Mr. North now?”

“It's those teeth, ma'am. They blind me. Every now and then I've got to call him ‘Choppers.' ”

There was nothing remarkable about my teeth. I explained that I had spent my first nine years in Wisconsin, a great dairy state, and that one of its gifts to its children was excellent teeth. Henry had good reason to envy them. Children reared in the center of London often missed this advantage; his caused him constant pain.

“Choppers, old fellow, the men at Herman's thought for a while that you might be one of these—?”

“Gigolos.”

“Thank you, ma'am. That's French for dancing partners with ambitions. Next month they'll be here like a plague of grasshoppers—fortune-hunters. You see, there are dozens of heiresses here with no young men of their own class. These days the young men from the big houses go off to Labrador with Dr. Grenfell to carry condensed milk to the Eskimos; or they go off, like my master, to photograph birds at the South Pole; or they go to ranches in Wyoming to break their legs. Some go off to Long Island where they hear there's lots of fun to be had. No young man wants to enjoy himself under the eyes of his parents and his relatives. Except during Yacht Race Week and the Tennis Tournament no man under thirty would be seen here.”

“No single man under forty, Henry.”

“Thank you, ma'am. So when the hostesses want to give a dance for their beautiful daughters they call up their dear friend the Admiral at the Naval Station and ask him to send over forty young men that can waltz and one-step without stumbling. They've learned from experience, the old ladies, to put a lot of pure spring water in the punch. Another thing they do is to invite house-guests for a month at a time from the embassies in Washington—young counts and marquesses and barons that are climbing up the first steps in the diplomatic career. That's the stuff! I came over to this country of yours, Choppers, as a ‘gentleman' to an Honourable six removes from an earldom. He got engaged to a daughter of Dr. Bosworth at ‘Nine Gables'—nicest fellow you could hope to meet but he couldn't get up before noon. Fell asleep at dinner parties; loved the meal but couldn't stand the waits between courses. Even with my tactful persuasion he was an hour late for every appointment. His wife, who was as energetic as a beehive, divorced him with a cool million—that's what they say. . . . All that an ambitious young man's got to have is a pleasant way of talking, a pair of dancing pumps, and
one
little respectable letter of introduction and all the doors are open to him, including a card to the Casino. So at first we thought you were one of them.”

“Thank you, Henry.”

“Nevertheless, Mrs. Cranston, we wouldn't think the worse of Mr. North here, if he found a sweet little thing in copper mines or railroads, would we?”

“I advise against it, Mr. North.”

“I have no intention of doing so, Mrs. Cranston, but may I ask your reasons against it?”

“The partner who owns the money owns the whip and a girl brought up to great wealth thinks she has great brains too. I'll say no more. By the end of the summer you will have made your own observations.”

I greatly enjoyed these pre-midnight conversations. If at times I thought of myself as Captain Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked on the island of Aquidneck and preparing to study the customs and manners there I could scarcely have fallen on better luck. Telescopes are generally mounted on tripods. One leg of mine was grounded on my daily visits on the Avenue; another rested on the experience and wisdom available to me at Mrs. Cranston's; a third was still to seek.

I was not sincere in promising Mrs. Cranston to call on her aid whenever a complicated and even dangerous situation arose. By nature I like to tend to my own business, to keep my mouth shut, and to scramble out of my own mistakes. Probably Mrs. Cranston soon knew that I was engaged eight or nine hours a week at “Nine Gables”—a “cottage” where something peculiar was certainly going on; she may have suspected that I was getting involved beyond my depths at the George F. Granberrys' in a situation that might at any moment burst into a lurid conflagration of “yellow journalism.”

In the matter that turned on my reading at “Wyckoff House” I did call on her for help and got it handsomely.

Diana Bell

So there I was, bicycling my way up and down the Avenue and not only earning my living but saving money toward renting a small apartment. One morning in the middle of my third week, having come to the end of my children's class at the Casino and preparing to take a shower and change my clothes before entering on my day's academic program, I was stopped by Bill Went-worth. “Mr. North, can I see you here some time at the end of the day?”

“Yes, of course, Bill. Will six-fifteen be all right for you?”

I had come to know Bill well and with increasing admiration. He had invited me to Sunday dinner in his home with his wife and with a married daughter and her husband—sound Rhode Islanders, every one of them. I was aware that something was worrying him. He looked at me narrowly and said, “When you were at my house you told us of some adventures you'd had. Would you like to try a little expedition that's not in the regular run of things? You can turn it down flat, if you don't like the sound of it, and it won't change things between you and me. It'll call for some sharp wits, but it'll be well paid.”

“Yes, I would, especially if it would be of any service to you, Bill. Send me to the North Pole.”

“That might attract attention, likely. This is what they call a ‘confidential mission.' ”

“Just what I like.”

At six-fifteen I entered his office of cups and trophies. Bill sat at his desk, passing his hand despondently over his close-cropped gray hair. He came at once to the point. “A problem has been dropped on my lap. The chairman of our Board of Governors here has been for some time a Mr. Augustus Bell. He's a New York businessman, but his wife and daughters live here a large part of the year. They go to New York for a few months in the winter. His older daughter Diana is about twenty-six; that's old for a girl in her set. They have a saying here: ‘She's worn out a lot of dancing shoes.' She's high-spirited and restless. Everybody knows that in New York she started going around with some undesirable company. She got written up in the papers—and you know the kind of papers I mean. Then something worse happened. About two and a half years ago one of those undesirable characters followed her up here. Her family wouldn't receive him. So they eloped. She was brought back before she got very far—police, private detectives, and all that. The newspapers went wild. . . . The trouble is that Newport's no longer a summer resort for young men of her own class. Newport's for the middle-aged and upward.” Bill struggled with himself a moment. “Now it's happening again. Her mother found in her room a letter from a man making arrangements to go off with her day-after-tomorrow night. Going to Maryland to get married. Now, Mr. North, it's very difficult to deal with the rich. Mr. Bell thinks it's my obvious duty to drop everything and pursue two adults and somehow
block
them. He doesn't want anything more to do with the police and with private detectives. I will not do it and probably my job is at stake.”

“Of course, I'll do it, Bill. I'll try my best.” Bill sat silent, mastering his emotion. “Who's the man?”

“Mr. Hilary Jones, head of the athletic staffs in the school system here. He's about thirty-two, he's been divorced and has a daughter. He's well thought of by everybody, including his former wife.” He picked up a large envelope. “Here are some newspaper photographs of Miss Bell and Mr. Jones and some clippings about them. Do you drive?”

“Yes, for four summers at the camp in New Hampshire I've driven every kind of car. Here's my driver's license; it has three weeks to go.”

“Mr. North, I took a great liberty for which I hope you will forgive me. I told Mr. Bell I knew someone who was young, who got on well with everybody, and who I thought was level-headed and resourceful. I didn't tell him your name, but I said you were a Yale man. Mr. Bell's a Yale man, too. But I don't want you to do this for me. You're free to tell me it's a nauseating underhand business and that you'll have nothing to do with it.”