Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 172
Topper, having exhausted the resources of the tree, had little choice. He was forced to arrest himself. There was no place left to go. Descend, however, he refused to do. He doubted if he could descend even had he so desired. He would probably have to live in that tree all the days of his life. He remembered that Scollops had once got herself into a similar situation, and everyone had had an uncomfortable time of it, but none quite so uncomfortable as Scollops. He could readily understand that. The services of the Fire Company had been required to extricate the cat. Would he, too, be carried down ingloriously on the shoulder of a perfect stranger, some fire-fighting Frenchman, while the inevitable French mob ironically cheered and offered humiliating scraps of advice? How the hell had this all come about, anyway? The Colonel and Marion and Mrs. Hart, they were responsible for this seemingly endless series of contretemps — this uninterrupted rushing about. High aloft in his tree Topper decided that a man could pay too dear a price for the friendship of such persons. He felt more convinced of this than ever when the gendarme next addressed him.
“If you do not descend all at once,” called the man, “it is that I will fire.”
Even from his great height Topper decided that the revolver in the gendarme’s hand looked vulgarly large and ostentatious.
“But, m’sieu, I cannot descend,” Mr. Topper replied in a firm but reasonable voice.
The gendarme shrugged his shoulders with magnificent indifference.
“Perhaps, m’sieu, this will be of help,” he answered.
A bullet ripped and snorted through the branches of the pine. To Mr. Topper it sounded like the scream of a wild stallion.
“Monsieur le gendarme,” he sang out promptly, “I descend with a speed never before attempted.”
“Don’t you do it,” warned a voice in his ear. “Are you ready, ladies? Then pull.”
Topper, feeling strangely like a tattered rag doll, was snatched unceremoniously from his insecure perch, whisked through space, and deposited in another tree.
“God, Colonel,” he protested, “give me a moment’s warning the next time you do that. What do you think I am, a sort of flying squirrel? I feel so damn helpless I could gnash this tree to splinters. This is worse than dashing from pillar to post.”
“We’re saving your life for future taking,” said Marion, invisible on a neighboring limb; then, cupping her lips in her hand, she shouted, “Hey, you little dressed up runt! I’ll come down there and tweak your prying nose.”
“M’sieu,” called the gendarme, and even his distance from the treed Mr. Topper could not blunt the strained incredulity of his voice, “how did you achieve that impossible?”
“None of your business,” shouted Marion Kerby. “Your mother was the keeper of a house of ill fame, and that other little pig’s was an inmate. Shrug that off, you frog.”
Assured that they were not only being mocked by the effeminate voice of the man in the tree, but also grossly insulted, both gendarmes now discharged their revolvers in his direction. Topper was promptly and breathlessly transferred to another tree. Like a huge, overstuffed bat, the man floated helplessly through the forest.
“Listen,” gasped Mr. Topper, clinging desperately to a swaying limb, “you all toss me about from tree to tree altogether too carelessly. You seem to forget that I weigh in the neighborhood of one hundred and seventy-five pounds — that is, I did before I climbed up that damned pine. Since I’ve taken up tree-jumping I’ve lost considerable weight.”
“Nonsense,” replied Marion. “It’s good for you. Best thing in the world.”
“But not for my nerves,” retorted Topper. “If you’ll only put me down on solid earth I’ll take a chance with those two gendarmes.”
“Let’s all go down and beat them up,” suggested Marion. “I’m getting sick of them and their damn guns.”
“I’m terribly tired of it all myself,” said Topper, with marked sincerity. “I don’t like all this monkey business. If anyone had told me this morning that before night I was going to be flying madly from tree to tree, I’d have laughed scoffingly in his face.”
The implacable gendarmes had now taken up their stand beneath Topper’s third tree.
“M’sieu,” began the spokesman, “it is not seemly for a man to conduct himself in public as you are now doing.”
“Well, if you’d only go away,” called Topper, “I could continue to jump about these trees all by myself. Is there a law against tree-jumping in France?”
The gendarmes discussed this question for several minutes between themselves.
“M’sieu,” said one of them at last, “is it that you would be willing to descend and allow us to examine your person?”
“For what?” asked the startled Topper.
“For wings, perhaps,” suggested Marion.
“We wish only to observe you, m’sieu,” said the second gendarme. “One is of a desire to see how you do it.”
“In the customary manner,” shouted Marion.
“What do you think?” asked Mr. Topper of his unseen friends. “Should I trust those damn godarmes?”
“We’ll take you down,” replied the Colonel, “then stand by for trouble.”
Accordingly, Mr. Topper was taken down. That is, he was taken part of the way down. About fifteen feet from the ground the others seemed either to lose interest in what they were doing or to forget all about Mr. Topper — whatever it was, the results came to the same thing. Topper felt himself suddenly released. With a wild cry he descended heavily upon the upturned faces of the two gendarmes. When the three of them arose from the pine needles, Mr. Topper’s arms were firmly held by each of the officers he had unwittingly assaulted.
“Monsieur,” announced one gendarme, “it is that we must escort you to Monsieur le commissaire.”
“But no,” wheezed the half-stunned Topper. “It is that you will play no such dirty trick on me. The words of your mouth herself were that it was you who would effect the inspection.”
“That same thing has been effected,” replied the gendarme, “and we believe you to be mad without hope.”
“On what do you base such an opinion ridiculous?” asked Topper. “I’m without hope, I admit, but I’m not mad — not yet.”
“No man, m’sieu, in his sanity complete would flit from tree to tree only to hurl himself through space regardless of the consequences either to himself or to the gendarmerie of France. M’sieu, if you are not mad, you are possessed of a thousand devils.”
As the gendarme delivered himself of this belief the voice of an infuriated dog made itself heard in the forest. Topper took heart.
“Here comes one of those devils now,” he said, as the foaming head of Oscar burst through the undergrowth and flung itself into action. Positions were speedily reversed. From the tree Mr. Topper had so recently quitted, the two gendarmes looked down moodily on an animal that could be none other than the most pervertedly conceived of all the demons in hell.
“To the car!” commanded the Colonel in his best parade-ground voice. “Those birds will remember their guns in a moment and start in plugging at Topper.”
“Easy on that name, Colonel,” cried Topper as he dashed through the woods in the direction of the car.
Bullets followed his retreat, but they had been fired without much hope. The gendarmes were disconcerted because Topper had escaped like an ordinary human being instead of flapping batlike through the trees. The name had been, Toppaire. They would remember.
When the active little party was once more under way Mr. Topper asked a question.
“Are things,” he asked, “to be like this forever? What I mean is, are our nights to be devoted to orgies and our days given over to flight?”
“Give me my nightly orgy,” said Marion Kerby calmly, “and you can do what you want with your days.”
“I’d like to know how you spent your time when you were on a higher plane,” remarked Mr. Topper.
“Oh, I just went about trying to drum up sex among a lot of people who didn’t even know the meaning of the word,” Marion replied.
“Any luck?” asked Mrs. Hart.
“Not a chance,” said Marion. “I met one old duck who seemed to have some ideas. ‘Sex,’ he mused with a puzzled expression when I took up the matter with him. ‘Now, I wonder what’s familiar about that word.’ He paused for a moment, then broke into horrid, derisive laughter. ‘Oh, yes,’ he chuckled, ‘I remember now. Weren’t we the silliest things? Tell me, does that puerile practice still maintain?’ Well, you know, I felt quite silly myself for a while, then I got peeved. I told him that sex was making rapid progress, that it was even being glorified, and that without it there would be hardly any books and no moving pictures. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice,’ said he quite happily, the old dog. ‘Well,’ said I, just to show my independence, ‘a few chunks of sex round here would wake things up a bit. I’m going back where it comes from.’ The old guy was quite disturbed. ‘Don’t try to go bootlegging any of it on this plane,’ he said, ‘because you won’t find any customers unless you catch them when they first arrive. Don’t know how you ever came up in the first place. You’re a spiritual moron.’ ”
“Disgusting old thing,” said Clara Hart sympathetically. “In life, I’ll bet, he was a nasty man.”
“Hell,” remarked the Colonel. “Without sex there wouldn’t be any planes at all.”
“And I would be just as well pleased,” commented Topper. “If I’m ever arrested now I’ll spend the rest of my life in a dungeon.”
“We’ll come and visit you,” said Marion.
“If you want that drink,” he told her, “you’d better pull yourself and your friends together. I’m going to stop at the next place we come to, and I don’t care a damn if I am arrested. There won’t be any trees in jail.”
When Topper drove up before a roadside café his friends, stimulated by the prospect of a drink, had made decided improvements in their appearances. Here, restfully on a broad, pleasant veranda perilously poised above a chasm of rocks against which the waves tore themselves to tatters, they sat and sipped champagne, then settled down to drink in earnest. Gradually the nervous tension slipped from Mr. Topper. He felt at peace with the world. Why not? He had everything he wanted — Marion, the Mediterranean, lots of champagne, and no Mrs. Topper.
“Drink up,” urged the Colonel expansively. “This wine is on me.”
“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Hart tossed in, as women will inevitably at the wrong time. “The wine is on the three of us. Mr. Topper is our guest, of course, but the Colonel, there, he’ll take it out of our winnings. He’s the original pro-rater — the guy who invented that discouraging custom known as Dutch treating.”
Once more the Colonel attempted to look grieved, which was almost impossible for him in the presence of champagne.
“Would you ladies like a salad?” Mr. Topper inquired. “I don’t feel quite natural unless I’m paying for a little something.”
“I could nibble a bush of romaine,” replied Marion.
“Prefer that to endive?” he asked, thoughtfully studying the card.
“Too strong for me,” said Mrs. Hart. “I never could bear ducks’ eggs.”
“Who asked you to bear ducks’ eggs?” demanded the Colonel. “Leave that to the ducks. It’s their business.”
“How did we get on the subject of eggs and ducks?” asked Mr. Topper, a trifle confused. “Why not stick to salad? I wasn’t inviting you all to breakfast or dinner, although I’m perfectly willing. I’ll invite you to both if you feel like it.”
“I merely brought up ducks in connection with romaine salad,” Mrs. Hart explained.
“Romaine salad to a duck’s egg is like a red flag to a bull,” observed the Colonel profoundly.
“Bulls?” asked Mr. Topper. “Now, how on earth did bulls creep in?”
“Bulls don’t creep in,” said Marion. “Bulls bash in. Didn’t you ever hear of the well known bulls of Bashan?”
“I’ve heard a little about those bulls,” replied Mr. Topper, “but not much. Did they happen to like salad? Because if they didn’t I see no reason to take them up either.”
“Oh, hell,” said Mrs. Hart. “Let’s order ices. That will solve the whole problem. Things are getting too involved.”
“All right,” agreed the Colonel affably. “We’ll make it champagne.”
“Just the same,” pursued Topper, “I’d like to know more about those bulls of Bashan. Who did they ever pinch?”
“They didn’t,” replied Marion. “They just horned in.”
“That’s different,” said Mr. Topper in a pleased voice. “It makes everything even farther from satisfactory.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Disappearing Suicide
WHEN MR. TOPPER awoke the next morning he found himself in bed with a headless woman. Feeling already as if death would be a welcome release, the sight of his decapitated companion made him feel even worse. The fact that there was a definite declivity in the center of the neighboring pillow served only to heighten a situation that was already sufficiently unpleasant. Regular breathing and an occasional low moan issuing from the rim of this declivity added mental to the physical anguish the miserable man was already experiencing. Even the bare arms and shoulders so close to him lost something of their fascination as he reached out and roughly shook the unfinished body.
“Marion!” he said. “Wake up! And please do something about your head. Either add it to your body or add your body to it. My stomach is all upset.”
“I’ll claw your stomach to ribbons if you don’t quit that shaking,” were Marion’s waking words.
“Wish you would,” muttered Topper. “I could do without a lot of my stomach this morning. Don’t know where we are or how we got here. Last thing I remember was sitting on the veranda of some damn café discussing ducks and bulls.”
“You were very dull about those bulls,” remarked the pillow. “Guess you don’t even know where Bashan is.”
“Don’t even know where we are, I tell you,” said Mr. Topper irritably, “let alone where those bulls came from. Must be some queer place in New York like Goshen.”
“Both Bashan and Goshen are in Palestine,” Marion told him, “and that’s where the bulls came from.”
“Which, Bashan or Goshen?” asked Topper.
“Bashan,” replied Marion. “The bulls came from Bashan, but it’s quite possible that some of them settled in Goshen. They were wild, you know, those bulls that came from Bashan.”
“All bulls are wild to me,” said Mr. Topper. “Why did they ever come from Bashan in the first place? Didn’t they make out well there?”
“No mention is made of cows,” observed Marion.
“But where there’s a lot of bulls there should be a little cows,” concluded Topper.
“Perhaps that’s what made ’em wild,” observed Marion.
“What?” inquired Topper.
“No cows,” replied Marion.
“Then there must have been some cows, or at least a cow, in Goshen if — —”
“Will you shut up?” Marion interrupted. “You’re as drunk as a lord right now, or else you wouldn’t be giving one damn whether there were bulls in Bashan and cows in Goshen or whether the twain shall meet. Let’s go back to sleep.”
“Will you make a head, then?” asked Topper.
“No, I won’t,” snapped Marion. “I’ve got one hell of a headache from all that champagne.”
“Is that what you do when you have a hangover?” Topper inquired enviously.
“Yes,” answered Marion. “I get rid of my head and that leaves the ache high and dry.”
“You mean there’s nothing there to ache in?” asked Topper.
“God, how dull you are this morning! If you ask me another question I’ll do something desperate.”
“It’s desperate enough as it is, lying here looking at you,” replied Topper moodily.
“I’ve got everything else but a head,” retorted Marion with growing irritation. “Look at some other part.”
“That’s all right,” complained Topper, “but how would you like to have me lying here without any head?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” she answered. “Do you imagine I’m deriving any pleasure in looking into that besotted face of yours? If your fortune had depended on that mask you’d have been a little match girl years ago.”
“So you won’t make a head?” persisted Topper.
“No, I won’t make a head, you nincompoop.”
“Then will you pull the covers up over that pillow, and I’ll try to pretend it’s there?”
“That settles it!” exclaimed Marion furiously. “I told you to leave me alone. Now you’ll wish you had.”
Springing from the bed, she materialized her head, and clad as she was in a towering rage, she rushed to a French window through which, to Topper’s horror, she hurled herself, loudly shouting his name. Instead of hearing the thud of a falling body the man in bed heard the crash of an overturned chair just outside the window.
“Holy mackerel,” came the voice of Marion Kerby. “We’re on the ground floor.”
“Madam, you’re on my chest,” a gentleman replied indignantly. “I’m on the ground floor, or, rather, veranda.”
“A meticulous devil,” Mr. Topper observed to himself, in spite of his consternation.
“Sorry, mister,” he heard Marion saying. “Thought I was higher up. Wanted to commit suicide. My mistake.”
“Hope you succeed next time,” gasped the man.
Topper sneaked to the window and applied one timid eye to a slit in the curtain. What he saw was not reassuring. To all intents and purposes an overlarge, middle-aged gentleman was attacking an underclad, small young lady. It could have been the other way round, but the man in such affairs usually gets the blame. Numerous guests of the hotel were watching developments in an interested semicircle. Hotel factotums and officials were protesting in voluble French. Newcomers were arriving from all directions.
“Leave that brazen creature alone this instant!” cried a stout lady bursting through the crowd. “So this is why you were so anxious to come to France, is it? You’ll pay dear for your folly, believe me.”
