He waved a hand. “Do you know anything about music?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t put it in musical terms. Your idea of busting in with the fantasy of one of them sequestering a bale of kale intended for Lewent is sublimely cuckoo.”
“That’s a pity. I offered it as a substitute for Lewent’s fantasy of one of them poisoning your aunt.”
He threw his head back and haw-hawed. He was chock full of gusto. When he could speak he said, “Not my aunt really — yes, I suppose she was, since my Uncle Theodore married her. She died in great pain, and I was strongly affected by it. I couldn’t eat properly for weeks. But the idea of one of those gals giving her poison — absolutely, you know, Herman the Midget is an imp of prodigious fancy! Dear God, such witless malice! Nevertheless, I am his staunch ally. He and I are one. Would you like to know how ardently I covet a few of the Lewent millions, now in the grasp of my Uncle Theodore?”
I told him I would love to, but he didn’t hear me. He bounced to his feet, strode to the piano bench and sat, held his hands poised above the keyboard with the fingers spread, and tilted his head back with his eyes closed. Suddenly down his hands went, both to his left, and the air was split with a clap of thunder. Other claps and rumblings followed; then his hands started working their way to the right, and there was screeching and squealing. Abruptly it stopped, and he whirled to face me.
“That’s how I covet that money. That’s how I feel.”
“Bad,” I said emphatically.
“Don’t I know it. Say I had five million. With the income from it I could put a thirty-piece orchestra on the air an hour a week in a dozen key cities, playing the music of the future. I have some of it already written. If you think I’m touched, you’re damn right I’m touched! So were Beethoven and Bizet touched, in their day. And the recordings. Dear God, the recordings I’ll make! I mean I would make. Instead of reveling in that paradise, here I am. I spoke of millions. Would you like to hear the actual facts of my personal financial status?”
He turned and bent his head over the keyboard, and started two fingers of his right hand dancing over the black keys. He kept in one octave and touched so delicately that with my head cocked I could barely hear the faint discordant jangle. It set my teeth on edge, and I raised my voice. “I could lend you a buck.”