Chapter 6
Inside the Automat at Forty-sixth and Broadway, just three blocks from the Algonquin Hotel, Dorothy gazed at the mirrorlike wall before her. The wall was made up of tiny doors, each about the size of a post-card. Within each chrome door was a small window, and behind each window, a plate of food. There were macaroni and cheese, ham-and-cheese sandwiches, creamed spinach, Boston baked beans, stewed tomatoes, slices of blueberry pie.
But she wasn’t looking at the food. She wasn’t even looking at the windows. She looked at the thousand reflections in the glass and chrome. Sure, her reflection was there. Her brimless cloche hat was pulled low, almost covering the dark bangs on her forehead. She wore a deep blue dress that was stylish without calling attention to her shapely petite figure.
But she wasn’t interested in her own reflection. Instead, she watched a thousand Robert Benchleys sitting around a table of friends. She saw a thousand of his smiles, two thousand of his merry eyes. She again felt that familiar precious heartache. All these Benchleys here for her alone, yet she couldn’t keep a single one of them. She heard his mellifluous voice behind her.
“Did I ever happen to tell you about the time Mrs. Parker and I both swore off drinking? We were at Tony Soma’s speakeasy one night, holding up our end of the bar ...”
Benchley was telling a story he’d told them all before, entertaining them in order to cheer them up. He spoke as though nothing horrible had happened, as if he had not seen Mayflower’s corpse less than an hour ago.
“Tony was there, as usual, standing on his head and showing off, singing opera. Well, Mrs. Parker and I were greatly enjoying ourselves, by which I mean we were drinking hand over fist, although that’s a certain way to spill your drink ...”
Benchley had given Dorothy a handful of nickels. She popped one of these in a slot, turned the knob and opened the tiny door. She withdrew a liverwurst sandwich. Then she bought a dish of rice pudding, then a slice of pecan pie. She went over to the enormous silver coffee urn, where the steaming black liquid poured from a brass spout in the shape of a dolphin. Again, she watched the elongated reflection of Benchley in the silver urn.
“Before we knew it,” he continued, “the night had turned into the wee morning hours, and we realized it was time to go before we started seeing pink elephants. It was just a week before Christmas, and a soft, silent snow was falling when we finally went outside. Then suddenly, under the Sixth Avenue Elevated, we saw a line of elephants approaching ...”
She smiled. Benchley was getting to the good part.
In many ways, he was her opposite. Opposites attract, they say. But then again, in other ways she and Benchley were much the same. They perceived things through the same eyes. But they differed in how they reacted. Walking down the street together, they once witnessed a very minor tragedy. A little boy had trotted along, his one hand in the hand of his grandmother, his other hand holding a balloon on a string. A woman, walking in the opposite direction, had removed a cigarette from her mouth and tapped off the ash with a long, careless finger. As she did so, the hot end of the cigarette came in contact with the balloon, which burst with a sharp bang. The woman either did not notice or did not care, because she didn’t stop. The boy was at first shocked, then heartbroken.
Dorothy and Benchley had witnessed the same incident, and both, without saying a word, felt in their hearts the little boy’s utter despair. But their reactions were completely different. She wanted to embrace the crying child and cry with him. Misery loves company, she thought.
But Benchley always handled things in a brighter way. He bent down and said something funny—she couldn’t hear what it was—and for a moment, the child forgot his sadness. Then Benchley performed the old sleight-of-hand trick, pulling a nickel from behind the child’s ear. He handed the coin to the boy and told him about a shop around the corner that sold balloons that were even bigger than the one the boy just had.
Benchley continued his story, “The elephants walked in single file, trunk in tail, padding through the snow, and on the tail of the last elephant hung a red light. I turned to Mrs. Parker and said, ‘That’s it. No more booze. I’m on the wagon.’ ‘Me too,’ she said. And then, to steady our nerves, we turned around, went back inside and ordered two double brandies.”
She set the cup of hot coffee on a saucer, and, carrying this and the three other dishes in her arms, she walked carefully over to the improvised Round Table.
“I asked her, ‘Did you see anything just then? You know, anything out of the ordinary?’ ‘Nope. Did you?’ she said hopefully. And Tony turned to us and asked if we had seen the elephants. ‘Elephants? You mean you’ve seen them, too?’ I said. Well, he explained, the Ringling Brothers Circus was in town and the elephants were marching to the Hippodrome.”
The group burst into laughter, attracting the sidelong glances of other diners.
“And that’s when we decided that never again would we swear off drinking,” Benchley concluded.
Faulkner rose when he saw Dorothy approaching, burdened with dishes.
“Oh, Mrs. Parker,” he muttered in his southern accent. “Why didn’t you call me for assistance? Chivalry is not dead.”
She looked at the other men at the table, none of whom rose to help. “No, chivalry’s just sitting on its fat ass.”
Woollcott harrumphed. “Dottie is right. Couldn’t we at least have lunched at a proper restaurant, with waiters to serve us? Here we are, the literary lights of New York, eating humble pie with the common folk at a Horn and Hardart’s.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “Usually, all I can afford at the Algonquin is a hard-boiled egg. And I can rarely afford that.”
She set the sandwich in front of Faulkner and patted his hand in a motherly way. She took a sip from the cup of hot coffee. When she looked up, she saw a man standing by their table.
“Heavens to Betsy!” said the normally laconic Robert Sherwood. “Bud Battersby, where did you suddenly come from?”
Merton “Bud” Battersby was the editor and publisher of the
Knickerbocker News
. He was middle-aged yet had an eternally boyish face. But his typically apple-cheeked countenance was now drained of color.
“I just came from the Algonquin.” Battersby’s voice was that of a sick cat. “Your waiter, Luigi, told me you’d all be here. He told me about Leland Mayflower, too.”
Sherwood rose out of his chair and laid his long hand on Battersby’s shoulder. “We couldn’t believe it about Mayflower. We’re so sorry, Bud.”
“That’s good of you, considering what Leland wrote about your debut play.”
Sherwood shrugged it off.
Woollcott’s nasal voice squeaked, “Yes, what
was
that nasty line Mayflower wrote in his critique of your play, Robert?”
Neither Sherwood nor Battersby answered, both embarrassed that Woollcott would bring up such a thing at a somber moment.
“I believe,” Woollcott continued, “it was, ‘Even the Savior himself couldn’t breathe life into this deathly boring drama.’”
Marc Connelly, a Broadway playwright riding a recent tide of success, drew in a sharp breath. He sympathized with Sherwood’s first professional attempt at theater. “Oh, Aleck, really!” Connelly snapped. “This is no time for your juvenile jeering.”
“I disagree,” Benchley said jovially, trying to revive the lighthearted mood of just a few moments before. “If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry. Please, Bud, join us.”
“Join the Algonquin Round Table for lunch?” Battersby said, suddenly less stupefied. He quickly dragged over a chair. “How could I refuse?”
“We’re the Automat Round Table today,” Dorothy said. “Come one, come all.”
“Verily, that is true,” said Woollcott, eyeing Faulkner narrowly. “Now, Battersby, what can you tell us about Mayflower’s unexpected demise?”
“What can I tell
you
?” He slumped in his chair. “I can’t tell you a thing. That’s why I’m here. What can you tell me?”
“Very little,” Woollcott said. “They found Mayflower under our Round Table, stabbed in the chest with a fountain pen.”
Battersby leaned forward. “A fountain pen? What kind of fountain pen?”
“What kind?” Woollcott said. “The kind you write with, old boy. What else? Ask Benchley; he was there.”
Battersby turned anxiously to Benchley, whose merry smile faded. “You were there? You saw who did it?”
“Oh, no,” Benchley said. “I went in ... afterward.”
“Well, I never,” Battersby muttered. “Did you see what kind of pen it was?”
“Well, no. Is it important?”
“I don’t think so. Not important, I hope. Just very odd.”
“Very odd, indeed.”
Battersby sat up. “What I mean is, Mayflower was the spokesman for Saber Fountain Pens. They run an ad with his picture in the
Knickerbocker
. The same ad runs in every
Playbill
.”
“Good heavens,” Benchley said. “I think it
was
a Saber pen.”
“The bottom of the pen had that texture—”
“A herringbone kind of texture on the barrel, yes. Helps you to grip it better. What’s that slogan they have in their advertisements?”
“‘If it’s not a Saber, it just won’t cut it,’” Battersby said.
“By using a Saber pen to murder Mayflower, the one he himself endorsed, do you think someone was trying to give Mayflower a message?”
“I’d say he got it,” Dorothy said. “But who? And why?”
All eyes turned to Woollcott.
“Why look at me?” he sneered. “I told you, I’d murder him in print before I’d ever lay a finger on his bony old body.”
“Didn’t you try to get that endorsement contract for Saber pens?” she said. “Didn’t you talk to them about being their spokesman?”
Woollcott’s fat cheeks puffed out. “By Jupiter, I won’t sit here and be accused like that.”
“So go sit somewhere else, and we’ll accuse you anyway,” Frank Adams said, jutting his cigar in his mouth.
Connelly said, “No one’s accusing you of anything, Aleck.”
Battersby intervened, addressing Benchley. “Let me ask you again about the scene of the crime. Was there anyone else in the room? Did the police question anyone? Or did you see anyone strange or sinister in the hotel this morning?”
Benchley shrugged. “There was no one else in the dining room, except for Detective Orangutan and me and, well, Mayflower. The murder had already happened before I got to the hotel. A small crowd had gathered in the lobby, but I didn’t take notice of anyone out of the ordinary.”
“I saw someone,” Faulkner mumbled cautiously.
Everyone turned to look at the young, scruffy southerner.
“You saw someone?” Dorothy said.
Faulkner, glancing at Benchley, tried to hide a gulp. “I saw him in the lobby. Very tough-looking fellow. His eyes were dark and hard, but vacant. I was in the lobby waiting to introduce myself to Mrs. Parker and—”
Battersby interjected. “What did the man look like? Can you describe him? His height, his size, his hair color, that sort of thing?”
“I’m not good at describing physical traits,” Faulkner said. “He had empty black eyes. That’s what I remember most. Like a bear’s eyes—black, hollow, soulless but full of mindless destruction. That, and he had a tooth on the chain of his pocket watch.”
“Horsefeathers!” Woollcott cried. He threw his cloth napkin across the table at Faulkner. It landed in Dorothy’s coffee cup. “There’s a towel for your Dachshund, Dottie. He’s wet behind the ears.”
She plucked the coffee-soaked napkin from her cup. “Dry yourself, Aleck. You’re all wet.” She flung it back at Woollcott.
It landed with a soft splat against the silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. He swatted it away as if it was a tarantula. He stood up, aimed an angry glare at her and stormed off toward the men’s room.
She looked at Faulkner. His face had turned red.
Battersby also looked at Faulkner. Then, after a moment of recovery, Battersby said, “What’s eating Mr. Woollcott?”
Benchley explained to Battersby how Leland Mayflower had planned to meet with Woollcott at the Algonquin. “Now Aleck will never know what Mayflower had up his sleeve. His curiosity is probably killing him.”
Then Benchley described how the body had been found and the subsequent confrontation with the police detective. He said, “Woollcott thinks that whoever murdered Mayflower was really trying to kill one of us, one of the members of the Round Table. Mayflower simply arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time, Woollcott says.”
Battersby nodded slowly, taking this in. He removed a pad and pencil from his jacket pocket and scribbled some notes.
“What are you doing?” Dorothy said.
Battersby continued writing, not looking up from his notepad. “I’ll have to write the story myself for an extra evening edition of the
Knickerbocker
. This is news after all.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Adams, chomping on his cigar. “Nothing stops the news. Mayflower would want it that way. But you’d better hurry. I telephoned in my story a few minutes ago. You wouldn’t want the
World
to scoop you on a story of one of the
Knickerbocker
’s own, would you?”
Battersby looked up at Adams. He spoke plainly, without a trace of guile. “Didn’t you have a grudge against Mayflower? Something about a loan for a poker game?”
Adams groaned. “Oh, let’s not start that again.”
Chapter 7
That evening, Benchley was dressed for the theater in top hat, black tie and tails. He sat down and unfolded the extra afternoon edition of the
Knickerbocker News
.
That afternoon at the Automat, Bud Battersby had asked him to fill in for Mayflower as the
Knickerbocker
’s drama critic. This was the opening night of Ziegfeld’s new musical revue,
Twenty-three Skidoo!
Dorothy took her seat next to Benchley. She wore her best evening clothes—a midnight blue velveteen dress—and her hair up. She often accompanied Benchley to the theater in his professional capacity as a drama critic. And it was fun to play dress up—once in a while.