4. A word put by Shakespeare in its singular and plural forms into the mouth of Mrs. Quickly, (Merry Wives) which commentators differ in explaining. It is probably a blunder for quandary.
ca-na-ry, v.i. To dance, to frolic; to perform the old dance called a canary. (Obs.)
ca-na-ry-bird, n. An insessorial singing bird, a kind of finch, from the Canary Islands, the Carduelis canaria or Fringilla canaria of the finch family, much esteemed as a household pet, being one of the most common cage birds.
“Not much help I’m afraid!” Hutchins looked up with a smile. “A dog? An island? A wine? A dance? You have a wide choice. And here are a lot of derived words—canary-bird flower, canary-vine, canary-moss, canary-stone, canary-wood.”
“That’s enough!” cried Basil. “You’re making it too complicated!”
Hutchins laughed and shut the book with a loud clap. Basil rose and picked up his hat. Lights in the windows of various buildings were beginning to glow through the early dusk. Suddenly he saw letters of fire:
“Yes.” Hutchins’ gaze followed Basil’s. “Amazing how a little shift in the angle of vision can change the look of everything, isn’t it? This hotel faces on 45th Street, but as my window is in the back it overlooks 44th. New York is full of these surprises. When you enter a building you can never tell from the front door view what unexpected sights you may see from a back, top-floor window. Over there is a physical culture school that has classes on the roof all during the day though nobody in the street knows anything about it.”
“I should think that Tilbury neon sign would get on your nerves.”
“One gets used to things, and I won’t have to put up with it much longer. I understand Broadway is to be dimmed out in a few days, and before the war is over it’ll probably be blacked out.”
As Basil started for the door, Hutchins called after him. “One moment.” Hutchins laid aside the book and came over to the door. His eyes were fixed on Basil’s earnestly. “You know you said something important a moment ago.”
“What?”
“You said I was making the canary business too complicated. Has it occurred to you that you are making it too complicated yourself?”
Basil smiled. “Maybe you have something there! It’s one of my worst failings—to elaborate an idea with so many fine shadings of implication and potential meaning that I lose sight of the essential thing. The murderer’s motive for releasing the canary is probably something extremely simple and obvious, and that’s why I’ve missed it. I’ve been looking for something subtle and complex. I needed what I got from your window—a little shift in the angle of vision!”
As Basil went down in the elevator he made an effort to dismiss all the complexities and think of the simplest, most obvious significance implied in the act of releasing a canary from its cage. For a moment an idea seemed to flicker on the periphery of consciousness. But strain his attention as he would its color and shape still eluded him.
IN THE EARLY MORNING the theatrical district looks as tawdry and disheveled as a woman caught by the dawn still wearing evening dress and make up blended for artificial light. This morning a sun glare as ruthlessly intolerant as youth itself searched out everything that was mean and ugly and false in the neighborhood of Broadway and West 44th: sidewalks littered with paper and cigarette butts; garbage cans in the alley at the rear of the cocktail bar; showy façades of varnish, glass, and metal camouflaging buildings of drab brick or dingy stone; and eddies of dust everywhere, the thick, black, powdery dust at the heart of the city. It was not pretty. It was the dance hall and gambling saloon section of a frontier town raised to the nth degree.
Yet Basil looked at the scene with a certain affection this morning, for it had suddenly become ephemeral—part of a world that might be destined to change beyond recognition. He no longer asked himself if the buildings were handsome or hideous, sanitary or insanitary, but if they were bombproof or non-bombproof. The Tilbury building towered against the cold blue sky with the arrogance of a structure confident in the strength of its steel frame and cinder-concrete roof and floor arches. The shabby walls of the theater looked defenseless and insubstantial as paper—brick walls without a steel frame that would crumble at the first blast.
A timid voice cut across these sentimental reflections. “Excuse me, but can you tell me the way to Mr. Milhau’s office?”
