Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

Gerald Kersh The Persian Bedspread

© Copyright, 1963, by Gerald Kersh

As odd a tale as you’ve ever read — about the smoothest, slickest rug and tapestry dealer you’ve ever met in print — a story with a curiously haunting quality...

In the trade, some sinister similes were applied to Mr. Hadad — he evoked images of danger. “A coiled spring wrapped in fat, such as the Eskimos use for catching bears,” said one. Another said, “Dealing with Hadad is like feeling for a double-edged razor blade on a slippery floor in the dark.”

But in the discreet light of his shop, which was the shyest of all those shops off Fifth Avenue where sensitive tradesmen seem to hide for fear of customers, Mrs. Gourock saw only a plump, creamy-skinned, spaniel-eyed little man, forlorn in posture, smiling wistfully. Mrs. Gourock was a woman who knew what she wanted, and had the wherewithal to buy it.

“I want a rug for my husband’s study,” she said. “How much is the thing in the window?”

The jeweler in that street exhibited one pearl, the milliner one hat, and Hadad one rug.

“Oh, that?” said Hadad, thinking that some women’s egos need inflating, others invite a pinprick. “The silk Bijar? Oh, say twelve thousand dollars.”

Taken aback, she said, “It’s for my husband’s study. Twelve thousand dollars!”

“Ah,” said Hadad, “for your husband’s study. You have in mind something less costly. First, pray be seated, and let me offer you a cup of coffee. — Oh, Dikran, coffee, please.”

And he said to himself: If a woman like this one buys her husband gifts, she is up to some hanky-panky. She is a payer of payments, not a giver of gifts.

“Perhaps a Bijar is too blazing a blue for the seclusion of a study; it is hard to read on a Bijar,” he told her. “On the other hand, there is something gently hypnotic about a Sarafan. I love a Sarafan. But such as I have here would perhaps cost more than you would be prepared to spend, just for a study.”

“What’s that one up there?” she asked, pointing to the wall behind Hadad. “Is it a rug? Or a tapestry? And why is it framed?”

“So many questions all in one breath!” said Hadad, laughing. “It is framed, dear lady, because I had it framed. And its history is not for ladies to hear—”

“Do you take me for a child?”

Hadad shook his head, and surmised: about thirty-nine years and six months old, you — without counting your teeth.

“In any case, it is a sort of curiosity, ma’am, which you wouldn’t care to buy even if it were for sale,” he said.

“Why? How d’you know?”

“Ah, coffee,” said Hadad. His assistant drew up a low table and set down a tray.

“I can’t eat that Turkish delight,” said Mrs. Gourock.

Hadad said, “Other rahat lakoum you cannot eat. This you will eat. Now let me think what would be nice for your husband’s study. He is a quiet, reserved man, I think?”

“How d’you know?”

Because, Hadad decided, wordlessly, it is generally the gentle ones that get grabbed in marriage by great brassy women like you, who would have your cake and eat it too. Also, I think he has a controlled devil of a temper, and the money is all his — or why should you be all of a sudden so considerate of him in his study?

Meanwhile, he murmured, “I have Mosul, Kir Shehr, and sumptuous Teherans. I have Kirman, Shiraz, and silken Tabriz. I have Bergama, Fereghan, Khorosan—”

“I want you to tell me what that is in the frame.”

“Well,” said Hadad, smiling, “it is not something you can get at Mejjid’s Auction Rooms in Atlantic City, where — unless my memory deceives me, which it never does — you bought for $300 a pair of Chinese vases worth, alas, about $40.” He added, “June 29th, 1950.”

Then his voice faded, his lips parted, his eyelids drooped, and Mrs. Gourock was reminded of Peter Lorre in a murder movie: Hadad had just that lost, sick, hopeless look.

He forestalled her inevitable “How d’you know?” by saying, “It happens that I was there at the time, and I never forget a face. You were bidding against an old lady in an immense straw hat. Her name was Kitty. She was a shill.”

“I like auctions,” said Mrs. Gourock. “I didn’t want the vases. I’ve paid more — oh, so much more — than $300 for two hours’ entertainment...” She was surprised to catch herself making excuses. “What’s a shill?”

“You know,” said Hadad, “that if anyone is running a so-called game of chance at a fair, somebody must appear to win pour encourager les autres. Thus, at a pea-and-thimble game, a seemingly silly farmer will win $100 while the audience is gathering. He is a shill, employed by the thimble-rigger, and he is not paid in real money.

“Conversely, at a certain type of auction sale, somebody must get an obvious bargain to excite the on-lookers.

“Thus, the attics and thrift shops of the nation are full of Mejjid’s stuff, all bought by people who cannot for the life of them say just what made them blurt out that last silly bid before the auctioneer cried ‘Gone!’ It’s no disgrace to you; it is like feeding a slot machine with silver dollars, but warmer, less impersonal — only, once in ten thousand tries, a slot machine will disgorge a jackpot, and Mejjid will never disgorge anything.”

Dogged as a spoiled child, Mrs. Gourock persisted. “I want you to tell me about that thing in the frame.”

Hadad seemed not to have heard her; he went right on.

“You know how it is, dear lady. You look in — only for fun, mind. No harm in that, eh? The auctioneer is about to give away a cut-glass lemonade set, free of charge. He doesn’t want to — personally, he’d cherish such a lemonade set, make an heirloom of it. But he’s paid (sigh) to give things away. However, first things first; and here’s a Moorish coffee table. Everybody nudges everybody else as the auction room fills up; everybody is there to kill time. Nobody’s going to buy anything at all. The joke’s on Mejjid, eh? Poor old Mejjid!

“And so some joker bids fifty cents for the coffee table, and there is a titter when a grim old lady in inappropriate shorts calls out seventy-five. Then it’s a dollar. ‘—And four bits,’ says a fat man with a cigar. ‘—And a quarter,’ you say, just to keep the ball rolling. It really is fun, no? All you have to do is keep saying ‘—And a quarter,’ and sit back and watch your neighbors making fools of themselves. The bidding is up to $13, let us say. ‘—And a quarter.’ you call, waiting for the inevitable. It doesn’t happen.

“All of a sudden you are the loneliest person in the world, for it is, ‘Gone to the lady for $13.25!’ ”

Mrs. Gourock said, “About that hanging, or whatever it is, in the frame...”

“Yes, yes,” said Hadad, offering her a cigarette. “Now once upon a time — no, never mind... A rug for a study, eh?”

“Once upon a time what?”

With a helpless gesture Hadad said, “You are a very dangerous lady. You must know everything. Once upon a time, driven by necessity, I worked as a shill for Mejjid.”

“Yes, but what about that?” She pointed to the framed tapestry.

“Madam, are you determined to drive me frantic?” cried Hadad, clutching his head. “I will tell you about it, since you are so insistent. Did you ever hear of the Mighty Mektoub? No, I think not. But you have heard of Casanova? Of Don Juan? Naturally, everybody has. Well, Mektoub was the Syrian Casanova; only Casanova was a mere sower of wild oats, and Don Juan nothing but a juvenile delinquent, compared with Mektoub. His exploits were put into verse by one Shams-ud-Din, in the seventeenth century, but it would take an epic poet like Firdausi, or Homer, to do justice to him as a fighter, a hunter, and, above all, as a lover.”

She was all excitement. “I’d like to read it. Where can I get a copy?”

“Dear lady, you cannot — the only known copy of that poem is in the possession of King Farouk. The tapestry you see was Mektoub’s bedspread, and it is supposed to convey to its owner some of Mektoub’s remarkable powers—”

“And does it? It doesn’t!” said Mrs. Gourock. “Does it?”

“Let me proceed,” said Hadad. “I say. I was one of Mejjid’s shills — to my eternal shame and sorrow — for I spoke little English at that time, and had an aged father to support. And I hated Mejjid, with reason. With excellent reason, but that is private and, in a way, sacred.”

“Why?”

“It was not,” said Hadad, looking reproachfully at her, “it was not that he underpaid me; that was nothing. It was not that — falsely calling himself Mejjid Effendi, a title to which he had no more right than a pig has to the name of Lion — he publicly humiliated me. For I am descended from the Kings of Edom, madam, and cannot be insulted by an inferior. A Hadad would not own a dog with the pedigree of a Mejjid.”

“What was it then?”

Hadad sighed. “I do not know why I tell you this,” he murmured. “Simply, by bringing the force of his money to bear upon her father, he married my fiancée, a girl of sixteen.”

“How old was Mejjid?”

“Sixty-eight. He had outlived four wives,” said Hadad.

“Pretty hard on the poor girl,” said Mrs. Gourock.

“It would be cruelty to animals to marry a hyena to the likes of Mejjid. Still, she bore him three daughters, old as he was. Let us not talk of her any more, if you please. I say, I was Mejjid’s shill, and his most trusted one, because he knew that as a gentleman I would die sooner than cheat him. These people make capital out of honor,” said Hadad. “So it was my business to ‘buy in’ the Mektoub bedspread.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Gourock. “But if Mejjid prized it so highly, why didn’t he keep it at home?”

“He took it home with him every evening, after I had brought it back — but it is in the nature of a certain type to derive a thrill from imperiling what they value most. So, with me to trust, Mejjid could enjoy every day the sensation of the reckless gambler whose fortune trembles on the turn of a card, and his overwhelming joy when he is dealt another ace to his pair of aces; although, with me to trust, he could be sure that he risked nothing. I hope I make myself clear?”

“Yes. So I suppose you had a copy made, and—”

“No, dear lady!” said Hadad sharply — while the commentator in his head said: That is just the sort of thing you would have done, you exceedingly horrible woman! “I said ‘My honor was involved.’ Even if it had not been, Mejjid would not have been fooled by a substitute.”

“I’d just have walked off with it instead of giving it back,” said Mrs. Gourock.

Hadad was shocked. “That, sweet lady, is not Hadad’s way. I will tell you what I did. Every day or so, you see, I bought the bedspread at Mejjid’s auction. I was one of those shills that get the unmistakable bargains, you understand. Mejjid had provided me with a checkbook of the Jersey Provincial bank. The check I signed was, of course, worthless — I signed myself M. Mehrabi, sometimes, or T. F. Hafiz, or Aram Aramian — any name but mine.

“So came the fatal afternoon when I bid for the Mektoub bedspread for the last time. The auctioneer introduced it as a ‘rare piece of Persian tapestry, in perfect condition, dating back to the year 1580 A.D.’

“The auctioneer flogged that crowd and yipped at them like a cowboy rounding up cattle. ‘Twenty-five, twenty-five, who’ll say forty? — Thirty, thirty-five, forty! — Forty, forty, do I hear fifty? — Fifty-five, fifty-five, sixty! — Seventy, seventy, who said eighty? — Eighty, ninety, ninety, and five, ninety-five, one hundred, one hundred’ — ‘Two hundred,’ I said, and someone cried ‘—and fifty!’ Two hundred and fifty,’ cried the auctioneer, ‘who says two seventy-five? — Three, I hear three, three, three! — And twenty-five, three twenty-five, three twenty-five, three fifty!’

“He became very brisk then, talked very fast, Three fifty, three fifty — going, going — gone to the gentleman over there for three hundred and fifty dollars! — and if you can find a tapestry to equal that on Fifth Avenue for $3,000 I’ll eat my hat!... Right now let’s see that pair of antique brass candle-sticks...’

“I took the tapestry with trembling hands, for if the bidding, by some chance, had gone $50 higher, my plan would have come to nothing — although the virtue of this same plan was that it could wait another day, or week, or month, if need be. I wrote my check on the Jersey Provincial bank, but this time I signed it with my own name — Mansur Hadad. Then I carried the tapestry away, while the crowd gave its slightly stimulated interest to the next lot.

“I went to my room, and waited. As I expected, Mejjid rang me somewhat later, and shouted, ‘Why weren’t you here at six?’ I replied, ‘Because I preferred not to be there at six.’ ‘I’m coming over,’ he said. So he did. He asked for his Mektoub bedspread. I told him, ‘It’s mine.’ Something in my manner must have alarmed him, for he became sweet as honey. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I understand — you’re playing a little joke on poor old Mejjid. You want a raise, and this is your funny little way of asking for it. He-he-he! Eh?’

“I said to him, ‘Mejjid, you son of a dog, you brother of seventeen vile sisters — I cannot properly tell you what I called him, and in any case it loses in the translation — you have seen the last of the Mektoub. Go away, before I beat you about the head with a stick. The transaction is complete. The Mektoub bedspread is mine.’

“He said, ‘I don’t think you understand American law, little fellow. You have stolen my property and swindled me, and I can send you to prison for a number of years.’

“Feigning innocence, I said, ‘The other checks were not good, because I signed them with false names. But this one is good, because I signed it with my own.’

“ ‘Give me the Mektoub, and well forget this folly,’ he said. ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse. You have broken the law, but I will forgive you.’

“ ‘The only law I have broken,’ I said, ‘is the law that prohibits the keeping of pigs in houses. Go!’

“He said, ‘I suppose, in your ignorance, you imagine that I fear a scandal. Ha! I have connections, you little crook, connections — I am wired in, if you understand the phrase.’

“ ‘I do not,’ I said. ‘Unless you refer to the fencing farmers use in America to restrain beasts.’

“ ‘I’ll have you in jail tonight,’ he shouted, and ran out. Sure enough, in a very short time he returned with a policeman in uniform and another in plainclothes, and had me arrested on a charge of swindling him by passing a worthless check.

“He begged to the last for the Mektoub bedspread. ‘Give it to me, and all’s forgotten and forgiven,’ he cried piteously, until the detective whispered something about compounding a felony.

“I said, ‘It is where you’ll never find it.’ As a matter of fact, Mejjid was standing on it, for I had laid it under the cheap hooked rug that was on the floor of my little room. So I went to jail—”

Mrs. Gourock cried, “No! For how long?”

Hadad replied, “For exactly sixteen hours. Mejjid, you see, was so perfectly certain that this last check, like all the others, was so much stage money, he acted impulsively.

“He did not know that I had opened an account in my right name at the Jersey Provincial bank and, by starving myself and living like a worm, had saved $380. That check was good. I had legitimately bought the Mektoub bedspread. It was mine! At all events, it was not Mejjid’s. Then I sued him for false arrest.

“He settled out of court for $10,000. Tour account is paid, O perverter of innocence,’ I told him. And with this money, I went into business on my own, dealing in nothing but goods of the most superlative and unquestionable quality and value, adhering always to the honest truth thereafter, so that my brief career as accomplice to Mejjid is behind me — finished — a dream. Mejjid himself, though apparently hale and hearty, suddenly became decrepit, a vegetable, and I married his widow. Now I have told you everything.”

“Tell me,” said Mrs. Gourock, “is there really any truth in that Mektoub bedspread story? I mean, about making its owner like...?”

Hadad shrugged. “That is not for me to say.”

“Why not? It’s yours, isn’t it? And why do you keep it in a frame?”

“Dear lady,” said Hadad, “youth needs no enchantments — youth is its own magic. I have had my moments. Now I keep the Mektoub bedspread in a glazed frame, because it might be more than my life is worth to take it out.”

“Why?”

“Madam, I am afraid of it — I have a weak heart. Now, concerning this rug for your husband’s study...”

“Eh? Oh, that. You choose one,” said Mrs. Gourock.

“I have a very rich old Bokhara — the perfect thing for leather-bound books, lamplight, and contemplation — that I can let you have for $3,500.”

“Yes, I suppose so. All right, I’ll have that. Wrap it up,” said Mrs. Gourock, “but do you know, I’m interested in curios. Antiques with a history. You know?”

“Alas, I deal only in carpets and tapestries,” said Hadad.

“How much would you want for that Mektoub bedspread?”

“What? I beg your pardon! Its intrinsic value — about $15,000 — aside, it has other significances, my good lady,” said Hadad, with something like indignation, his hands on his heart.

“Now look—” said Mrs. Gourock, moving. “Listen—” An hour later, gasping painfully, Hadad swallowed a pill.

“Pray talk no more, ma’am, I have no more strength to argue,” he said. “For heaven’s sake, take the accursed Mektoub! Give me $20,000 and take it away!”

Mrs. Gourock took out her checkbook.

“After all, perhaps I am getting a little too tired for even such memories as the Mektoub invokes,” said Hadad. “With the Bokhara, it will be $23,500. Do you want the frame, madam?”

“I think so. No, I do not want the frame.”

“Dikran, take the Mektoub out of the frame. Now, where shall I send these, good lady?”

“Here’s my address,” she said, writing on a pad. “Send” — she paused — “wait a moment. Let’s get this straight: send the Bokhara rug to Mr. Ingram Gourock, at that address — and put the Mektoub in my car, I’ll take it with me.”

“If you are not going directly home, sweet lady, it can be delivered before you arrive—”

“It doesn’t concern you where I... Just put it in my car,” said Mrs. Gourock, in some confusion.

When she was gone, Dikran asked, “What shall I put in the frame this time, Mr. Hadad?”

“I will think of something appropriate to its size. First, take this check to the bank at once. And Dikran!”

“Sir?”

“Wipe that silly grin off your face.”

“Yes, Mr. Hadad,” said Dikran.