Encounters Read online

“How do you plan to get word to all the sinners?” he asked.

  “I met a batch of ’em tonight,” I said. “I'll just go on back to the same place tomorrow and announce that we're open for preaching, salvation, and craps.”

  “We'll need some craps tables and a roulette wheel,” noted Quesadilla.

  “Well, I figure if I'm supplying the sinners, the very least the landlord can do is supply the equipment.”

  He mulled on it for a minute or two and then agreed.

  We shook hands, and I left him playing on the pipe organ. Then I hunted up a nearby hotel, which had seen better days and probably better centuries. I figured I was moving up to more elegant quarters the next night, but I didn't see no need to insult the management, so I registered for a week and the next morning I tiptoed out while the desk clerk was otherwise occupied.

  There wasn't much for me to do until after dinnertime, so I decided to mosey on over to the Louvre and soak up a little culture. I saw everyone clustered around this one painting, and I figured it must be something pretty special, so I stood in line until I could get a good close look at it, but it turned out to be a picture of this kind of plain woman who couldn't quite make up her mind whether to smile at the painter or not, and in truth it didn't hold a candle to the picture of Nellie Willoughby in the alltogether that they had hanging over the Long Bar of the New Stanley Hotel back in Nairobi.

  I wandered around a bit more, and then I came to this statue of a lady who wasn't wearing an awful lot more that the ladies I'd seen the previous night, and it set my good artistic blood to boiling, because someone had busted off the arms out of sheer malicious mischief, and since it hadn't been covered up or repaired or nothing I figured the guards didn't know about it yet, so I hunted up a gendarme and grabbed him by the arm and led him over to the statue and pointed out what had happened and told him he'd better report it to his superior and maybe double their security until the culprit was caught. He just looked at me like I posed a serious danger, and right on the instant I realized that it was an inside job, and he didn't want to let his superiors know that he'd had any part of it, so I apologized for taking his time, and made a mental note to come back on his day off, and lay out the whole plot to whoever was in charge of the place after first finding out if there was a reward for exposing the culprits.

  After I left the Louvre, I found I still had some time on my hands, so I wandered over to the Arc de Triomphe, which I'd always thought was horse race but turned out to be a kind of big stone arch as well, though for the life of me I couldn't see how you could bet on it. I saw a bunch of Frenchmen standing around not doing much of anything, so I walked over and told ’em that they looked like a sporting lot, and that they could now do their sinning and their repenting all in the same spot if they'd come to Notre Dame a bit after midnight. Most of ’em thought I was kidding, but three or four guys writ down the information, and I told ’em to make sure they passed the word to all their friends and relations.

  I stopped at a sidewalk cafe for dinner, and got a little live entertainment with my meal when a couple of bearded Americans wearing turtlenecks and berets got into a knock-down drag-out over which of ’em looked more like Hemingway. In point of fact, the only Hemingway I knew was bald and eighty and ran a hardware store back in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, but I didn't see no sense hurting their feelings by enlightening ’em, and before long the gendarmes came along and dragged ’em both off to the hoosegow just as I was finishing my dessert.

  By then it was time to go back to the Follies Bergere. I figured I'd just hunt up M. Bergere and ask him to make the announcement for me, but nobody'd in the whole place had seen hide nor hair of him, so I waited until the place filled up and then hopped onto the stage. Evidently I interrupted the very same blonde lady I had interrupted the night before, because she bellowed "You again!" and took off a shoe and started hammering me with it.

  The audience thought it was all part of the show, and I recognized some of the same faces from the last time, so after I calmed the young lady down I told ’em a couple of more stories, including the one about the airplane pilot and the Tasmanian belly dancer, and then, when they'd all stopped laughing, I explained to them that Notre Dame had a new policy of one-stop sinning and salvation, and even though most of ’em laughed at first I kept explaining it over and over until everybody got right serious and the stage manager kept making a gesture with his hand across his throat, which I figured meant he was choking on a peach pit or something, and finally I thanked ’em for their time and hospitality and promised to greet any and all of ’em that came to Notre Dame later in the evening, and before I left the building I'd hired half a dozen refined young naked ladies to provide a little entertainment for our parishioners between midnight and sunrise.

  I was thinking of stopping by the Lido and the Moulin Rouge and making the same announcement, but I noticed it was getting on toward ten o'clock and I decided I'd better get back to Notre Dame and see how Quesadilla was coming along with his part of the bargain.

  Well, somehow or other, he'd managed to find a couple of roulette tables and three craps tables, and had even hunted up some poker and baccarat tables as well. I asked him if he knew anyone in the beer and wine business, so we could get a little liquid refreshment into them sinners what was running low on energy, and he said that he'd already thought of that, and couldn't see no reason to pay a middleman to set up a bar when we could do it ourselves, and just as he was explaining it to me in came a couple of deliverymen with our supplies.

  We broke out a bottle of our best drinking stuff to celebrate our little enterprise, and then we settled back to wait for the sinners to start gathering, and sure enough, just after midnight, in they came, and by three in the morning we must have had a good four hundred evil men and painted women gambling their money away. Then at five o'clock we closed all the tables, and I stood up on a chair and forgave ’em in the name of my merciful and compassionate Silent Partner, and then they all went home, and me and Quesadilla paid off the young ladies and moved all the tables and supplies into a storeroom and counted up our take.

  “Sixteen thousand francs!” he said excitedly.

  “There's a lot to be said for working on the side of the Lord,” I agreed.

  “I never realized how well salvation could pay,” he said.

  “Well, it's all a matter of getting the right class of people in your congregation,” I said. “Them what's beyond redemption usually ain't got all that much pocket money, and them what's totally without sin are probably more likely to throw the first stone than place the first bet.”

  Well, I found to my surprise that he liked talking religion as much as I did, so we kept it up til after sunrise, and then a batch of priests showed up and Quesadilla decided to head off to bed, and I watched the poorbox for a while and decided that the priests were missing a bet and that maybe once I got to know ’em better I'd explain to ’em how to run their church more like a business, but for the time being I decided they probably didn't want no outsiders interfering with the way they practiced their trade, so I headed toward the exit, and just as I did I bumped into a big roly-poly guy in priest's robes.

  “Excuse me, Brother,” I said. “I hope I didn't do you no lasting harm.”

  “I'm fine, my son,” he replied. “Didn't I see you here very early yesterday morning as well?”

  “It's a possibility,” I said. “I hang around churches a lot, me being a man of the cloth and all.”

  “Episcopalian?” he asked.

  “That's right generous of you,” I answered, “but it's a little early in the day for me.”

  He just stared at me for a minute. “Well, if you should ever need help, I'm Father Gaston.”

  “I'll keep it in mind,” I promised him. “And if you ever feel the need of spiritual uplifting, I'm the Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones.”

  Well, he kept on staring at me for so long that I figured he was a little bit near-sighted and had maybe forgot his glas
ses, so finally I just smiled at him and continued on out the door, after which I decided that I needed someplace a little more upscale to hang my hat, so I hopped a taxicab and pulled up at the Ritz a few minutes later. I found out at the desk that they didn't give no discounts to clergymen, but I figured that as long as I was already there I might as well rent myself a room, and I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon doing a little serious sleeping.

  Business was booming that night, as word of our little enterprise seemed to have spread far and wide, and it kept getting better all through the week. Every morning I would leave just after sunrise, and bump into Father Gaston, and exchange a few pleasantries with him, and every evening I would round up the ladies from the Follies Bergere and cart ’em over to Notre Dame and make sure that Quesadilla didn't invite none of ’em up to the belltower for a little hanky-panky, and I was just about sure I'd finally found my calling, and was even thinking about scaring up some other churches and maybe franchising the salvation business, when one night, just when the young ladies were doing their artistic interpretation of an Indian love dance to Quesadilla's accompaniment on the pipe organ, and the mayor himself had two thousand francs riding on the next roll of the dice, Father Gaston burst into the church.

  “What is going on here?” he demanded, and suddenly all our parishioners dropped what they were doing and high-tailed it for the exits, except for the young ladies, who weren't exactly dressed for going outside in the cool evening breeze.

  “Well, howdy, Father Gaston,” I said. “What brings you here at this ungodly hour?”

  “Ungodly is the word for it!” he bellowed. “I had a feeling all week that something strange was going on here. What are you doing in my church?”

  “Acquiring a first-rate congregation of sinful men and loose women,” I explained. “After all, if they didn't have nothing to confess, you wouldn't need them little booths, would you?”

  “This is outrageous!” he said. “Look at those women!”

  “I can hardly take my eyes off ’em,” I agreed admiringly. “Especially the third from the left.”

  “They're all naked!”

  “Not much gets past your watchful eye, does it?” I said, figuring a little compliment, one clergyman to another, might help to calm him down.

  “Why are they here?”

  “Where else are a passel of naked ladies gonna go to find forgiveness?” I said. “I'd say Notre Dame has outdone itself tonight.”

  “And what were all those other people doing here?” he continued.

  “Getting all the sin and corruption out of their systems so they'd be fit for saving,” I said.

  He stared at the tables. “Do you mean to tell me there's been gambling going on here?”

  “No, I sure didn't mean to tell you that,” I answered.

  “I didn't mean to tell him anything,” he said unhappily.

  “I'm calling the gendarmes this instant!” said Father Gaston.

  “It won't do no good,” I pointed out. “All our dealers and croupiers are gone. Tell ’em to come by tomorrow about midnight, and to bring plenty of money with ’em.”

  “You are impossible!” he shouted at me, and then turned to Quesadilla. “I hold you responsible for this, you ugly little clubfoot!”

  “I don't care,” said Quesadilla. “Reverend Jones is my friend. In fact, he's my only friend, and I won't let you do anything bad to him.”

  “He's a criminal and a fraud!” growled Father Gaston.

  “Why don't you come up to the belltower with me and we'll discuss it?” suggested Quesadilla with a funny kind of smile on his face.

  “We have nothing to discuss,” said Father Gaston. “I'm having you both arrested.”

  “I don't think that would be a very good idea,” said Quesadilla.

  “Nobody asked you your opinion,” said Father Gaston.

  “If I go to court, they might ask me more than my opinion,” said Quesadilla. “They might even ask me what I saw you doing with Madame Duchard.”

  “That was seventeen years ago!” said Father Gaston uneasily.

  “Oh, I'll just tell them what I saw,” said Quesadilla. “You can fill in the dates and other particulars.”

  “All right,” said Father Gaston with a defeated sigh. “No gendarmes. Just get out of here and don't come back.”

  “That suits me fine,” said Quesadilla. “Thirty years of this place is enough for me.”

  “Hah!” said Father Gaston. “Where is an ugly little clubfoot like you going to find work? You'll starve within a month.”

  “Father Gaston,” I said, “as one man of the cloth to another, I'm ashamed to hear you carrying on like this to a decent Christian like Quesadilla who never meant no one any harm, and we ain't going to listen to no more of it.”

  I took Quesadilla by the arm and led him out the door, while Father Gaston just stood and glared at us.

  “He's right, you know,” said Quesadilla, as we walked down the empty Paris streets. “I've been cooped up there for thirty years. How am I ever going to make a living? I don't have any job skills.”

  “Sure you do,” I said. “And with a little help from me, you ain't gonna have no trouble at all.”

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked curiously.

  “Did you ever hear the one about the bullfighter and the fan dancer?” I asked.

  “No, but—”

  “Then shut up and listen.”

  Well, I told it to him, and as depressed as he was, he practically fell down laughing, so I told him to get himself a pen and paper, and once he did I sat down and told him the one about the poet and the feather merchant's twin daughters, and then the one about the Sumo wrestler and the circus thin lady, and the one about the six-fingered gangster and the one-eyed manicurist, and by the time the sun had come up I've guv him about a hundred such knee-slappers.

  Then, after we had breakfast, I took him over to the Follies Bergere and introduced him to the stage manager, and after he told a couple of jokes they hit it right off, and the last I saw of the Clubfoot of Notre Dame, he was providing the musical accompaniment for the dancing girls at the organ and telling the audience droll stories between acts.

  As for me, I took my half of the money and headed off to London, where I hoped to find a church that was more attuned to my particular brand of salvation.

  8. The Crown Jewels

  The very first thing you notice about London is that is ain't exactly warm. The second thing is that it ain't exactly cold. The third is that it ain't exactly dry. The fourth is that it ain't exactly sunny. The fifth is that it ain't exactly cheap.

  Still, London's got a lot of things going for it. For one thing, most of the folks speak a kind of American, which was a pleasant change from Paris, where they don't speak no known language at all. For another, everyone kept saying that it was a pretty class-ridden town, so I figured if I could just find out where the sinful classes hung out I'd know right where to establish my tabernacle.

  I took a room at an old, run-down hotel on Basil Street, then went out looking for a sinner or two of the female persuasion, just to test the waters, so to speak. I'd got maybe three blocks away from the hotel when I came across a large crowd lined up to get into some theater, and they seemed so eager and excited that I decided I might as well join ’em and see what all the fuss was about, since in my broad experience on four continents very few entertainments draw that kind of enthusiasm unless they feature a few fallen women in serious need of both clothing and redemption.

  Well, we all filed in and sat down, and while I was looking for painted women, of which there was nary a sign, an announcer came out on the bare stage and said, “Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen. Our speaker tonight needs no introduction. He has consented to give one of his rare public lectures, and so may I present, without any further adieu, the greatest consulting detective in the world, London's own Sherringford House.”

  Everybody stood up and started clapping, and then
this skinny guy, dressed in tweeds and smoking a pipe, came out onto the stage.

  “Mr. House,” said the announcer, “before you begin, can we impose upon you to display your remarkable powers of deduction for the audience?”

  “Certainly,” said Sherringford House. “May I have a volunteer, please?”

  Well, I could see right off that there weren't going to be no sinners on display, so I got up to leave.

  “Thank you, sir,” said House, and suddenly everyone started staring at me.

  “You talking to me?” I said.

  “You have recently been in Paris, I perceive,” he said, “and I believe it is not incorrect to state that you toil in the service of your Lord.”

  “Now how on earth did you know that?” I asked.

  He merely smiled, and suddenly everyone started applauding.

  “The science of deduction,” he said after they'd all calmed down, “can be divided into three separate parts: observation, analysis, and conclusion. Anyone who has been properly trained can do what I just did. You ask how I have solved one hundred and three cases without a failure, and I say to you that had the police learned those three basic principles—observation, analysis, and conclusion—they would not have needed my services in any of them.”

  “Rubbish!” said a voice from the audience.

  “I beg your pardon?” said House.

  “I say that's balderdash, and that you're a fake,” said the voice, which was suddenly sounding pretty familiar. “What's more, I'm willing to bet five thousand pounds that I can prove it.”

  “Please stand up, sir, so that I may see you,” said House.

  The man stood up, and now that I could get a good look at him, I realized that it was Erich Von Horst.

  “I will put a challenge to you, Mr. House,” said Von Horst. “In three nights’ time, I will steal the Crown Jewels, and I'll wager five thousand pounds that you and the entire London Metropolitan Police Force cannot prevent me from so doing.”

  “Arrest that criminal!” shouted a woman.

  “No!” said House sharply. “This man has challenged my integrity. Were I to back down, I would be less than British, which is unthinkable.” He turned back to Von Horst. “Sir,” he said, “have you any conditions attached to your challenge?”