Greener Than You Think Part 13

Technocrats demanded the government be immediately turned over to a committee of engineers and competent agronomists who would deal with the situation as it deserved after harnessing the wasted energy of the populace. Nationalists hinted darkly that the whole thing was the result of a plot by the Elders of Zion and that Kaplan's Delicatessen--in conspiracy with A Cohen, Notions--was at the bottom of the gra.s.s.

Brother Paul wrote--and his letter was printed, for he now advertised his radioprograms in the columns of the _Intelligencer_--that Caesar--presumably the state of California--had been chastened for arrogating to itself things not to be rendered unto Caesar and the tankmen had deservedly perished for their sacrilege. The letter aroused fury--the followers of Brother Paul either didnt read the _Intelligencer_ or were satisfied their leader needed no championing, if they did--and other letters poured in calling for various expressions of popular disapproval, from simple boycott up through tarring and feathering to plain and elaborated--with gasoline and castration--lynching. The gra.s.s was a hot topic.

With its acute perception of the popular taste Le ffacase's paper printed not only most of the communications--the unprintable ones were circulated among the staff till they wore out or disappeared mysteriously in the Gents Room--but maps showing the daily progress of the weed, guesses as to the duration of the plague by local prophets, learned articles by scientists, opinions of statesmen, views of prominent entertainers, in fact anything having any remote connection with the topic of the day. The paper even went further and offered a reward of ten thousand dollars to anyone advancing a suggestion leading to the destruction of the intruder. Its circulation jumped at the expense of less perspicacious rivals and the incoming mail, already many times normal, swelled to staggering proportions.

The contest was taken with deadly seriousness, for the livelihood of many of the paper's readers was suddenly threatened by its subject and from a new quarter. In the same issue as the offered reward there appeared an interview with the accredited head of the organized motionpicture producers. This retiring gentleman was rumored to be completely illiterate, an unquestionable slander, for he had written checks to support every cause dedicated to keeping wages where they belonged and seeing the wage earners didnt waste the money so benevolently supplied by their employers.

I got the details of the interview from the interviewer himself. The magnate--he had no objection to the description--had been irritable and minced no words. The gra.s.s was bad alike for production and boxoffice, taking everyone's mind off the prime business of making and viewing motionpictures. It was injuring The Industry and he couldnt conceal the fact that The Industry, speaking through his mouth and with his vocabulary, was annoyed.

"Unless this disgraceful episode ends within ten days," he had said sternly, "the Motion Picture Industry will move to Florida."

It was an ultimatum; Southern Californians heard and trembled. The last time this dread interdiction had been invoked--in the midst of a bitter election fight--it had sent them scurrying to the polls to do their benefactor's bidding. Now indeed the gra.s.s menace would be taken seriously.

The next day's paper had news of more immediate concern to me. The governor had appointed a special committee to investigate the situation and the first two witnesses to be called were Josephine Spencer Francis and Albert Weener.

_20._ William Rufus Le ffacase was as enthusiastic as his phlegmatic nature permitted. He called me into his office and half raised the snuffbox off the desk as though to offer me an unwelcome pinch. "Youre a made man now, Weener," he said, thinking better of his generosity and putting the snuffbox back. "Your name will be in headlines from Alabama to Alberta--and all due to the _Intelligencer_."

I would have resented this as a gross misappropriation of credit--for surely all obligation was on the other side--had I not been deeply disturbed by the prospect of being haled before this committee like a criminal before the bar of justice.

"I'd much rather avoid this unpleasant notoriety, Mr. Le ffacase," I protested. "Since the _Intelligencer_, for reasons best known to itself, chooses not to avail itself of my contributions, but prints my name over words I have not written, there could be no possible objection to my slipping away to Nevada until this investigation ends."

His face became a pretty shade of plum. "Weener, youre a thief, a petty, cadging, sly, larcenous, pilfering, b.l.o.o.d.y thief. You take the _Daily Intelligencer_'s honest dollars without a qualm, aye, with a smirk on your imbecile face, proposing with the cool impudence of the born embezzler to return no value for them. Weener, you forget yourself. The _Intelligencer_ picked you out of a gutter, a nauseous, dungspattered and thoroughly fitting gutter, and pays you well, mark that, you feebleminded counterfeit of a confidenceman, pays you well, not for your futile, lecherous pawings at the chast.i.ty of the English language, but out of the boundless generosity which only a newspaper with a great soul can have. And what do you propose to do in grat.i.tude? To run, to flee, to hide from the expression of authority, to bring disgrace upon the very newspaper whose munificence pumps life into your boneless, soulless, gutless carca.s.s. Not another word, not a sound, not a ghoulish syllable from your ineffective vocabulary. Out of my presence before I lose my temper. Get down to whatever smokefilled and tastelessly decorated room that committee is meeting in and do not leave while it is in session, neither to eat, sleep, nor move those bowels whose possession I gravely doubt. You hear me, Weener?"

For some reason the committee was not attempting to get the story of the gra.s.s in chronological order. When I arrived, the six distinguished gentlemen were trying to find out all about the crudeoil poured, apparently without effect, in what now seemed so long ago, but which actually had been less than two weeks before.

Flanked on either side by his colleagues, the little black plug of his hearingaid sticking out like a misplaced unicorn's horn, was the chairman, Senator Jones, his looseskinned old fingers resting lightly on the bright table, the nails square and ridged, the flesh brownspotted.

He adjusted a pair of goldrimmed spectacles, quickly found the improvement in his vision unpleasant, and rumbled, "What did it cost the taxpayers?"

On the stand, the chief of police was settled in great discomfort, so far forward on the rounded edge of his chair that his balance was a source of fascinated speculation to the gallery. He squirmed a perilous half inch forward, but before he had time to reply, old Judge Robinson of the State Supreme Court, who scorned any palliation of his deafness such as Senator Jones condescended to, cupped his left ear with his hand and shrieked, "Ay? Ay? What's that? Speak up, can't you? Don't sit there mumbling."

a.s.semblyman Brown, head of the legislature's antiracketeering committee, intense concentration expressed in the forward push of his vigorous shoulders and the creased lines on his youthful forehead, asked if it were not true that the oil had been held up by a union jurisdictional dispute? There was a spattering of applause from the listeners at this adroit question and one man in the back of the room cried "Sha--" and then sat down quickly.

Attorney General Smith wanted to know just who had ordered the oil in the first place and whether the propertyowners had given their consent to its application. The attorney general's square face, softened and rounded by fat, shone on the wriggling chief like a klieglight; his lips, irresistibly suggesting twin slices of underdone steak, parting into a pleasant smile when his question had concluded. The other two members of the committee seemed about to inquire further when the chief managed to stammer, he was awfully sorry, gentlemen, but he had been out of town and hadnt even heard of the oil till this moment.

He was instantly dismissed from the stand and a new witness, from the mayor's office, was called, with no happier results. He, too, was about to be excused when Dr Johnson, who represented Science on the committee, descended from Himalayan abstraction to demand what effect the oil had had on the gra.s.s.

There were excited whisperings and craning of feminine heads as Dr Johnson propounded his question. The interest he excited was, however, largely vicarious. For he was famous, not so much in his own right, as in being the husband of the _Intelligencer_'s widely read society columnist whose malapropisms caused more wry enjoyment and fearsome antic.i.p.ation than an elopement to Nevada.

"And what effect did the oil have on the gra.s.s?" he repeated.

The query caused confusion, for it seemed the committee could not proceed until this fact had been ascertained. Various technicians were sent for, and the doctor, tall, solemn and benign, looked over his stiff, turned-down collar and the black string tie drooping around it, as though searching for some profound truth which would be readily apparent to him alone.

The experts discoursed at some length in esoteric terms--one even bringing a portable blackboard on which he demonstrated, with diagrams, the chemical, geologic and mathematical aspects of the problem--but no pertinent information was forthcoming till some minor clerk in the Department of Water and Power, who had only got to the stand through a confusion of names, said boldly, "No effect whatever."

"Why not?" asked Judge Robinson. "Was the oil adulterated? Speak up, speak up; don't mumble."

Henry Miller, the Southland's bestknown realtor ("Los Angeles First in Population by Nineteen Ninety Nine"), who had connections in the oil industry, as well as in citrus and walnut packing, frowned disapprovingly. The clerk said he didnt know, but he might venture a guess--

Senator Jones informed him majestically that the committee was concerned with facts, not speculations. This created an impa.s.se until Attorney General Smith tactfully suggested the clerk might be permitted to guess, entirely off the record. After the official stenographer had been commanded sternly not to take down a single word of conjecture, the witness was allowed to advance the opinion that the oil hadnt killed the plant because it had never reached the roots.

"Ay?" questioned the learned judge, looking as though neither his lunch nor breakfast nor, for that matter, any nourishment absorbed since the Taft administration, had agreed with him.

"I'm a bit of a gardener myself, gentlemen," the witness a.s.sured them confidentially, settling back comfortably. "I putter around my own place Sat.u.r.days and Sundays and I know what devilgra.s.s is like. I can well imagine a bunch of it twenty or twentyfive feet high could be coated with many, many gallons of oil without a drop seeping down into the ground."

Mr Miller said magisterially, "Not really good American oil," but no one paid attention, knowing that he was commenting, not as a member of the committee, but in his other capacity as the head of an organization to promote Brotherhood and Democracy by deporting all foreignborn and the descendants of foreignborn to their original countries. Everyone was only too happy to have the oil matter concluded at any cost; and after the stenographer was ordered to resume his labors, the next witness was called.

"Albert Weener!"

I hope I may never again have to submit to the scrutiny of twelve such merciless eyes. I cast my own down at the brown linoleum until every stain and inkspot was impressed ineradicably on my mind. Senator Jones finally broke the tension by asking, "What is your name?"

Judge Robinson enjoined, "Speak up, speak up. Don't mumble."

"Albert Weener," I replied.

There was a faint sigh through the room. Everyone who read the _Daily Intelligencer_ had heard of me.

"And what is your occupation, Mr Weener?" asked Henry Miller.

"Salesman, sir," I answered automatically, forgetting my present connection with the newspaper, and he smiled at me sympathetically.

"You belong to a socalled tradesunion?" inquired a.s.semblyman Brown.

"I will ask the honorable Mr Brown to modify his question by having the word 'socalled' struck from it."

"I will inform the honorable attorney general that my question stands exactly as I phrased it," rejoined a.s.semblyman Brown sharply. "I'll remind the attorney general I myself am a member in good standing of a legitimate union, namely the International Brotherhood of Embalmers, Morticians, Gravediggers and Helpers, and when I asked the witness if he belonged to a socalled tradesunion I was referring to any one of those groups of Red conspirators who attempt to strangle the economic body by interfering with the normal course of business and mulcting honest citizens of tributary dues before they can pursue their livelihoods."

Judge Robinson cupped his ear again and glared at me. "Speak up man; stop mumbling."

"I don't belong to any union," I answered as soon as there was a chance for my words to be heard. Senator Jones took a notebook from his pocket, consulted it, put it back, scribbled something on the pad in front of him, tore it up, looked at his notebook again and asked, "What is your connection with this ... um ... gra.s.s?"

"I applied Miss Francis' Metamorphizer to it, sir," I answered.

"Nonsense," said Judge Robinson sharply.

"Explain yourself," demanded Attorney General Smith.

"Tell us just what this stuff is and how you applied it," suggested Henry Miller.

"Don't mumble," ordered Judge Robinson.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen, I don't know exactly what it is. Youll have to ask Miss Francis that. But--"

Senator Jones interrupted me. "You mean to say you applied a chemical to someone's lawn, a piece of valuable property, without knowing its contents?" he asked sternly.

"Well, Senator----" I began.

"Do you habitually act in this irresponsible manner?"

"Senator, I----"