STRICTLY BUSINESS
More Stories of the Four Million
by
O. HENRY
CONTENTS
I. STRICTLY BUSINESS
II. THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED
III. BABES IN THE JUNGLE
IV. THE DAY RESURGENT
V. THE FIFTH WHEEL
VI. THE POET AND THE PEASANT
VII. THE ROBE OF PEACE
VIII. THE GIRL AND THE GRAFT
IX. THE CALL OF THE TAME
X. THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY
XI. THE THING'S THE PLAY
XII. A RAMBLE IN APHASIA
XIII. A MUNICIPAL REPORT
XIV. PSYCHE AND THE PSKYSCRAPER
XV. A BIRD OF BAGDAD
XVI. COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON
XVII. A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA
XVIII. THE GIRL AND THE HABIT
XIX. PROOF OF THE PUDDING
XX. PAST ONE AT RODNEY'S
XXI. THE VENTURERS
XXII. THE DUEL
XXIII. "WHAT YOU WANT"
I
STRICTLY BUSINESS
I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people. You've been
touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper criticisms and
the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the chorus girls and the
long-haired tragedians. And I suppose that a condensed list of your
ideas about the mysterious stageland would boil down to something like
this:
Leading ladies have five husbands, paste diamonds, and figures no better
than your own (madam) if they weren't padded. Chorus girls are
inseparable from peroxide, Panhards and Pittsburg. All shows walk back
to New York on tan oxford and railroad ties. Irreproachable actresses
reserve the comic-landlady part for their mothers on Broadway and their
step-aunts on the road. Kyrle Bellew's real name is Boyle O'Kelley. The
ravings of John McCullough in the phonograph were stolen from the first
sale of the Ellen Terry memoirs. Joe Weber is funnier than E. H.
Sothern; but Henry Miller is getting older than he was.
All theatrical people on leaving the theatre at night drink champagne
and eat lobsters until noon the next day. After all, the moving pictures
have got the whole bunch pounded to a pulp.
Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people. If we did, the
profession might be more overcrowded than it is. We look askance at the
players with an eye full of patronizing superiority - and we go home and
practise all sorts of elocution and gestures in front of our looking
glasses.
Latterly there has been much talk of the actor people in a new light. It
seems to have been divulged that instead of being motoring bacchanalians
and diamond-hungry _loreleis_ they are businesslike folk, students and
ascetics with childer and homes and libraries, owning real estate, and
conducting their private affairs in as orderly and unsensational a
manner as any of us good citizens who are bound to the chariot wheels of
the gas, rent, coal, ice, and wardmen.
Whether the old or the new report of the sock-and-buskiners be the true
one is a surmise that has no place here. I offer you merely this little
story of two strollers; and for proof of its truth I can show you only
the dark patch above the cast-iron of the stage-entrance door of
Keetor's old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push of
gloved hands too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch - and where I
last saw Cherry whisking through like a swallow into her nest, on time
to the minute, as usual, to dress for her act.
The vaudeville team of Hart & Cherry was an inspiration. Bob Hart had
been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits for four years
with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning changes
with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a
buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the
bass-viol player in more than one house - than which no performer ever
received more satisfactory evidence of good work.
The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful
performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage. In order to
give himself this pleasure he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway
corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth to attend a matinee
offering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the lifetime of a
minstrel joke one comes to scoff and remains to go through with that
most difficult exercise of Thespian muscles - the audible contact of the
palm of one hand against the palm of the other.
One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known
vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and got
his d. h. coupon for an orchestra seat.
A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announcement spaces and passed
into oblivion, each plunging Mr. Hart deeper into gloom. Others of the
audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled, and applauded; but Bob Hart, "All
the Mustard and a Whole Show in Himself," sat with his face as long and
his hands as far apart as a boy holding a hank of yarn for his
grandmother to wind into a ball.
But when H came on, "The Mustard" suddenly sat up straight. H was the
happy alphabetical prognosticator of Winona Cherry, in Character Songs
and Impersonations. There were scarcely more than two bites to Cherry;
but she delivered the merchandise tied with a pink cord and charged to
the old man's account. She first showed you a deliciously dewy and
ginghamy country girl with a basket of property daisies who informed you
ingenuously that there were other things to be learned at the old log
school-house besides cipherin' and nouns, especially "When the Teach-er
Kept Me in." Vanishing, with a quick flirt of gingham apron-strings,
she reappeared in considerably less than a "trice" as a fluffy
"Parisienne" - so near does Art bring the old red mill to the Moulin
Rouge. And then -
But you know the rest. And so did Bob Hart; but he saw somebody else. He
thought he saw that Cherry was the only professional on the short order
stage that he had seen who seemed exactly to fit the part of "Helen
Grimes" in the sketch he had written and kept tucked away in the tray
of his trunk. Of course Bob Hart, as well as every other normal actor,
grocer, newspaper man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a play
tucked away somewhere. They tuck 'em in trays of trunks, trunks of
trees, desks, haymows, pigeonholes, inside pockets, safe-deposit vaults,
handboxes, and coal cellars, waiting for Mr. Frohman to call. They
belong among the fifty-seven different kinds.
But Bob Hart's sketch was not destined to end in a pickle jar. He called
it "Mice Will Play." He had kept it quiet and hidden away ever since he
wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his conception of "Helen
Grimes." And here was "Helen" herself, with all the innocent abandon,
the youth, the sprightliness, and the flawless stage art that his
critical taste demanded.
After the act was over Hart found the manager in the box office, and got
Cherry's address. At five the next afternoon he called at the musty old
house in the West Forties and sent up his professional card.
By daylight, in a secular shirtwaist and plain _voile_ skirt, with her
hair curbed and her Sister of Charity eyes, Winona Cherry might have
been playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacon's daughter, in the
great (unwritten) New England drama not yet entitled anything.
"I know your act, Mr. Hart," she said after she had looked over his card
carefully. "What did you wish to see me about?"
"I saw you work last night," said Hart. "I've written a sketch that I've
been saving up. It's for two; and I think you can do the other part. I
thought I'd see you about it."
"Come in the parlor," said Miss Cherry. "I've been wishing for something
of the sort. I think I'd like to act instead of doing turns."
Bob Hart drew his cherished "Mice Will Play" from his pocket, and read
it to her.
"Read it again, please," said Miss Cherry.
And then she pointed out to him clearly how it could be improved by
introducing a messenger instead of a telephone call, and cutting the
dialogue just before the climax while they were struggling with the
pistol, and by completely changing the lines and business of Helen
Grimes at the point where her jealousy overcomes her. Hart yielded to
all her strictures without argument. She had at once put her finger on
the sketch's weaker points. That was her woman's intuition that he had
lacked. At the end of their talk Hart was willing to stake the judgment,
experience, and savings of his four years of vaudeville that "Mice Will
Play" would blossom into a perennial flower in the garden of the
circuits. Miss Cherry was slower to decide. After many puckerings of her
smooth young brow and tappings on her small, white teeth with the end of
a lead pencil she gave out her dictum.
"Mr. Hart," said she, "I believe your sketch is going to win out. That
Grimes part fits me like a shrinkable flannel after its first trip to a
handless hand laundry. I can make it stand out like the colonel of the
Forty-fourth Regiment at a Little Mothers' Bazaar. And I've seen you
work. I know what you can do with the other part. But business is
business. How much do you get a week for the stunt you do now?"
"Two hundred," answered Hart.
"I get one hundred for mine," said Cherry. "That's about the natural
discount for a woman. But I live on it and put a few simoleons every
week under the loose brick in the old kitchen hearth. The stage is all
right. I love it; but there's something else I love better - that's a
little country home, some day, with Plymouth Rock chickens and six ducks
wandering around the yard.
"Now, let me tell you, Mr. Hart, I am STRICTLY BUSINESS. If you want me
to play the opposite part in your sketch, I'll do it. And I believe we
can make it go. And there's something else I want to say: There's no
nonsense in my make-up; I'm _on the level_, and I'm on the stage for
what it pays me, just as other girls work in stores and offices. I'm
going to save my money to keep me when I'm past doing my stunts. No Old
Ladies' Home or Retreat for Imprudent Actresses for me.
"If you want to make this a business partnership, Mr. Hart, with all
nonsense cut out of it, I'm in on it. I know something about vaudeville
teams in general; but this would have to be one in particular. I want
you to know that I'm on the stage for what I can cart away from it every
pay-day in a little manila envelope with nicotine stains on it, where
the cashier has licked the flap. It's kind of a hobby of mine to want to
cravenette myself for plenty of rainy days in the future. I want you to
know just how I am. I don't know what an all-night restaurant looks
like; I drink only weak tea; I never spoke to a man at a stage entrance
in my life, and I've got money in five savings banks."
"Miss Cherry," said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, "you're in
on your own terms. I've got 'strictly business' pasted in my hat and
stenciled on my make-up box. When I dream of nights I always see a
five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a Jap cooking
clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the title deeds to
the place in my pongee coat pocket, swinging in a hammock on the side
porch, reading Stanley's 'Explorations into Africa.' And nobody else
around. You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry?"
"Not any," said Cherry. "What I'm going to do with my money is to bank
it. You can get four per cent. on deposits. Even at the salary I've been
earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have an income of about
$50 a month just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest some of
the principal in a little business - say, trimming hats or a beauty
parlor, and make more."
"Well," said Hart, "You've got the proper idea all right, all right,
anyhow. There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at all who
couldn't fix themselves for the wet days to come if they'd save their
money instead of blowing it. I'm glad you've got the correct business
idea of it, Miss Cherry. I think the same way; and I believe this sketch
will more than double what both of us earn now when we get it shaped
up."
The subsequent history of "Mice Will Play" is the history of all
successful writings for the stage. Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it,
remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and
business, changed the lines, restored 'em, added more, cut 'em out,
renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger
for the pistol, restored the pistol - put the sketch through all the
known processes of condensation and improvement.
They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boardinghouse clock in the rarely
used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour would
occur every time exactly half a second before the click of the unloaded
revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the thrilling climax of
the sketch.
Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work. In the act a
real 32-caliber revolver was used loaded with a real cartridge. Helen
Grimes, who is a Western girl of decidedly Buffalo Billish skill and
daring, is tempestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the private
secretary and confidential prospective son-in-law of her father,
"Arapahoe" Grimes, quarter-million-dollar cattle king, owning a ranch
that, judging by the scenery, is in either the Bad Lands or Amagansett,
L. I. Desmond (in private life Mr. Bob Hart) wears puttees and Meadow
Brook Hunt riding trousers, and gives his address as New York, leaving
you to wonder why he comes to the Bad Lands or Amagansett (as the case
may be) and at the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattleman should
want puttees about his ranch with a secretary in 'em.
Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind of
play, whether we admit it or not - something along in between "Bluebeard,
Jr.," and "Cymbeline" played in the Russian.
There were only two parts and a half in "Mice Will Play." Hart and
Cherry were the two, of course; and the half was a minor part always
played by a stage hand, who merely came in once in a Tuxedo coat and a
panic to announce that the house was surrounded by Indians, and to turn
down the gas fire in the grate by the manager's orders.
There was another girl in the sketch - a Fifth Avenue society
swelless - who was visiting the ranch and who had sirened Jack Valentine
when he was a wealthy club-man on lower Third Avenue before he lost
his money. This girl appeared on the stage only in the photographic
state - Jack had her Sarony stuck up on the mantel of the Amagan - of the
Bad Lands droring room. Helen was jealous, of course.
And now for the thriller. Old "Arapahoe" Grimes dies of angina pectoris
one night - so Helen informs us in a stage-ferryboat whisper over the
footlights - while only his secretary was present. And that same day he
was known to have had $647,000 in cash in his (ranch) library just
received for the sale of a drove of beeves in the East (that accounts
for the price we pay for steak!). The cash disappears at the same time.
Jack Valentine was the only person with the ranchman when he made his
(alleged) croak.
"Gawd knows I love him; but if he has done this deed - " you sabe, don't
you? And then there are some mean things said about the Fifth Avenue
Girl - who doesn't come on the stage - and can we blame her, with the
vaudeville trust holding down prices until one actually must be buttoned
in the back by a call boy, maids cost so much?
But, wait. Here's the climax. Helen Grimes, chaparralish as she can be,
is goaded beyond imprudence. She convinces herself that Jack Valentine
is not only a falsetto, but a financier. To lose at one fell swoop
$647,000 and a lover in riding trousers with angles in the sides like
the variations on the chart of a typhoid-fever patient is enough to make
any perfect lady mad. So, then!
They stand in the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted elk
heads (didn't the Elks have a fish fry in Amagensett once?), and the
denouement begins. I know of no more interesting time in the run of a
play unless it be when the prologue ends.
Helen thinks Jack has taken the money. Who else was there to take it?
The box-office manager was at the front on his job; the orchestra hadn't
left their seats; and no man could get past "Old Jimmy," the stage
door-man, unless he could show a Skye terrier or an automobile as a
guarantee of eligibility.
Goaded beyond imprudence (as before said), Helen says to Jack Valentine:
"Robber and thief - and worse yet, stealer of trusting hearts, this
should be your fate!"
With that out she whips, of course, the trusty 32-caliber.
"But I will be merciful," goes on Helen. "You shall live - that will be
your punishment. I will show you how easily I could have sent you to the
death that you deserve. There is _her_ picture on the mantel. I will
send through her more beautiful face the bullet that should have pierced
your craven heart."
And she does it. And there's no fake blank cartridges or assistants
pulling strings. Helen fires. The bullet - the actual bullet - goes
through the face of the photograph - and then strikes the hidden spring
of the sliding panel in the wall - and lo! the panel slides, and there is
the missing $647,000 in convincing stacks of currency and bags of gold.
It's great. You know how it is. Cherry practised for two months at a
target on the roof of her boarding house. It took good shooting. In the
sketch she had to hit a brass disk only three inches in diameter,
covered by wall paper in the panel; and she had to stand in exactly the
same spot every night, and the photo had to be in exactly the same spot,
and she had to shoot steady and true every time.
Of course old "Arapahoe" had tucked the funds away there in the secret
place; and, of course, Jack hadn't taken anything except his salary
(which really might have come under the head of "obtaining money under";
but that is neither here nor there); and, of course, the New York girl
was really engaged to a concrete house contractor in the Bronx; and,
necessarily, Jack and Helen ended in a half-Nelson - and there you are.
After Hart and Cherry had gotten "Mice Will Play" flawless, they had a
try-out at a vaudeville house that accommodates. The sketch was a house
wrecker. It was one of those rare strokes of talent that inundates a
theatre from the roof down. The gallery wept; and the orchestra seats,
being dressed for it, swam in tears.
After the show the booking agents signed blank checks and pressed
fountain pens upon Hart and Cherry. Five hundred dollars a week was what
it panned out.
That night at 11:30 Bob Hart took off his hat and bade Cherry good night
at her boarding-house door.
"Mr. Hart," said she thoughtfully, "come inside just a few minutes.
We've got our chance now to make good and make money. What we want to do
is to cut expenses every cent we can, and save all we can."
"Right," said Bob. "It's business with me. You've got your scheme for
banking yours; and I dream every night of that bungalow with the Jap
cook and nobody around to raise trouble. Anything to enlarge the net
receipts will engage my attention."
"Come inside just a few minutes," repeated Cherry, deeply thoughtful.
"I've got a proposition to make to you that will reduce our expenses a
lot and help you work out your own future and help me work out mine - and
all on business principles."
"Mice Will Play" had a tremendously successful run in New York for ten
weeks - rather neat for a vaudeville sketch - and then it started on the
circuits. Without following it, it may be said that it was a solid
drawing card for two years without a sign of abated popularity.
Sam Packard, manager of one of Keetor's New York houses, said of Hart &
Cherry:
"As square and high-toned a little team as ever came over the circuit.
It's a pleasure to read their names on the booking list. Quiet, hard
workers, no Johnny and Mabel nonsense, on the job to the minute,
straight home after their act, and each of 'em as gentlemanlike as a
lady. I don't expect to handle any attractions that give me less trouble
or more respect for the profession."
And now, after so much cracking of a nutshell, here is the kernel of the
story:
At the end of its second season "Mice Will Play" came back to New York
for another run at the roof gardens and summer theatres. There was never
any trouble in booking it at the top-notch price. Bob Hart had his
bungalow nearly paid for, and Cherry had so many savings-deposit bank
books that she had begun to buy sectional bookcases on the instalment
plan to hold them.
I tell you these things to assure you, even if you can't believe it,
that many, very many of the stage people are workers with abiding
ambitions - just the same as the man who wants to be president, or the
grocery clerk who wants a home in Flatbush, or a lady who is anxious
to flop out of the Count-pan into the Prince-fire. And I hope I may be
allowed to say, without chipping into the contribution basket, that they
often move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform.
But, listen.
At the first performance of "Mice Will Play" in New York at the
Westphalia (no hams alluded to) Theatre, Winona Cherry was nervous. When
she fired at the photograph of the Eastern beauty on the mantel, the
bullet, instead of penetrating the photo and then striking the disk,
went into the lower left side of Bob Hart's neck. Not expecting to get
it there, Hart collapsed neatly, while Cherry fainted in a most artistic
manner.
The audience, surmising that they viewed a comedy instead of a tragedy
in which the principals were married or reconciled, applauded with great
enjoyment. The Cool Head, who always graces such occasions, rang the
curtain down, and two platoons of scene shifters respectively and more
or less respectfully removed Hart & Cherry from the stage. The next turn
went on, and all went as merry as an alimony bell.
The stage hands found a young doctor at the stage entrance who was
waiting for a patient with a decoction of Am. B'ty roses. The doctor
examined Hart carefully and laughed heartily.
"No headlines for you, Old Sport," was his diagnosis. "If it had been
two inches to the left it would have undermined the carotid artery as
far as the Red Front Drug Store in Flatbush and Back Again. As it is,
you just get the property man to bind it up with a flounce torn from any
one of the girls' Valenciennes and go home and get it dressed by the
parlor-floor practitioner on your block, and you'll be all right. Excuse
me; I've got a serious case outside to look after."
After that, Bob Hart looked up and felt better. And then to where he lay
came Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line. Vincente, a solemn
man from Brattleboro, Vt., named Sam Griggs at home, sent toys and maple
sugar home to two small daughters from every town he played. Vincente
had moved on the same circuits with Hart & Cherry, and was their
peripatetic friend.
"Bob," said Vincente in his serious way, "I'm glad it's no worse. The
little lady is wild about you."
"Who?" asked Hart.
"Cherry," said the juggler. "We didn't know how bad you were hurt; and
we kept her away. It's taking the manager and three girls to hold her."
"It was an accident, of course," said Hart. "Cherry's all right. She
wasn't feeling in good trim or she couldn't have done it. There's no
hard feelings. She's strictly business. The doctor says I'll be on the
job again in three days. Don't let her worry."
"Man," said Sam Griggs severely, puckering his old, smooth, lined face,
"are you a chess automaton or a human pincushion? Cherry's crying her
heart out for you - calling 'Bob, Bob,' every second, with them holding
her hands and keeping her from coming to you."
"What's the matter with her?" asked Hart, with wide-open eyes. "The
sketch'll go on again in three days. I'm not hurt bad, the doctor says.
She won't lose out half a week's salary. I know it was an accident.
What's the matter with her?"
"You seem to be blind, or a sort of a fool," said Vincente. "The girl
loves you and is almost mad about your hurt. What's the matter with
_you_? Is she nothing to you? I wish you could hear her call you."
"Loves me?" asked Bob Hart, rising from the stack of scenery on which he
lay. "Cherry loves me? Why, it's impossible."
"I wish you could see her and hear her," said Griggs.
"But, man," said Bob Hart, sitting up, "it's impossible. It's
impossible, I tell you. I never dreamed of such a thing."
"No human being," said the Tramp Juggler, "could mistake it. She's wild
for love of you. How have you been so blind?"
"But, my God," said Bob Hart, rising to his feet, "it's _too late_. It's
too late, I tell you, Sam; _it's too late_. It can't be. You must be
wrong. It's _impossible_. There's some mistake.
"She's crying for you," said the Tramp Juggler. "For love of you she's
fighting three, and calling your name so loud they don't dare to raise
the curtain. Wake up, man."
"For love of me?" said Bob Hart with staring eyes. "Don't I tell you
it's too late? It's too late, man. Why, _Cherry and I have been married
two years!_"
II
THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED
A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores
you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.
Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with it. All is not
gold that glitters, but it is a wise child that keeps the stopper in his
bottle of testing acid.
Where Broadway skirts the corner of the square presided over by George
the Veracious is the Little Rialto. Here stand the actors of that
quarter, and this is their shibboleth: "'Nit,' says I to Frohman, 'you
can't touch me for a kopeck less than two-fifty per,' and out I walks."
Westward and southward from the Thespian glare are one or two streets
where a Spanish-American colony has huddled for a little tropical
warmth in the nipping North. The centre of life in this precinct is "El
Refugio," a cafe and restaurant that caters to the volatile exiles from
the South. Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of
Central America and the ireful islands of the Western Indies flit the
cloaked and sombreroed senores, who are scattered like burning lava by
the political eruptions of their several countries. Hither they come to
lay counterplots, to bide their time, to solicit funds, to enlist
filibusterers, to smuggle out arms and ammunitions, to play the game at
long taw. In El Refugio, they find the atmosphere in which they thrive.
In the restaurant of El Refugio are served compounds delightful to the
palate of the man from Capricorn or Cancer. Altruism must halt the story
thus long. On, diner, weary of the culinary subterfuges of the Gallic
chef, hie thee to El Refugio! There only will you find a fish - bluefish,
shad or pompano from the Gulf - baked after the Spanish method. Tomatoes
give it color, individuality and soul; chili colorado bestows upon
it zest, originality and fervor; unknown herbs furnish piquancy and
mystery, and - but its crowning glory deserves a new sentence. Around
it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity - but never in it - hovers an
ethereal aura, an effluvium so rarefied and delicate that only the
Society for Psychical Research could note its origin. Do not say that
garlic is in the fish at El Refugio. It is not otherwise than as if the
spirit of Garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that lingers in the
parsley-crowned dish as haunting as those kisses in life, "by hopeless
fancy feigned on lips that are for others." And then, when Conchito, the
waiter, brings you a plate of brown frijoles and a carafe of wine that
has never stood still between Oporto and El Refugio - ah, Dios!
One day a Hamburg-American liner deposited upon Pier No. 55 Gen. Perrico
Ximenes Villablanca Falcon, a passenger from Cartagena. The General
was between a claybank and a bay in complexion, had a 42-inch waist
and stood 5 feet 4 with his Du Barry heels. He had the mustache of
a shooting-gallery proprietor, he wore the full dress of a Texas
congressman and had the important aspect of an uninstructed delegate.
Gen. Falcon had enough English under his hat to enable him to inquire
his way to the street in which El Refugio stood. When he reached that
neighborhood he saw a sign before a respectable red-brick house that
read, "Hotel Espanol." In the window was a card in Spanish, "Aqui se
habla Espanol." The General entered, sure of a congenial port.
In the cozy office was Mrs. O'Brien, the proprietress. She had
blond - oh, unimpeachably blond hair. For the rest she was amiability,
and ran largely to inches around. Gen. Falcon brushed the floor with
his broad-brimmed hat, and emitted a quantity of Spanish, the syllables
sounding like firecrackers gently popping their way down the string of
a bunch.
"Spanish or Dago?" asked Mrs. O'Brien, pleasantly.
"I am a Colombian, madam," said the General, proudly. "I speak the
Spanish. The advisement in your window say the Spanish he is spoken
here. How is that?"
"Well, you've been speaking it, ain't you?" said the madam. "I'm sure I
can't."
At the Hotel Espanol General Falcon engaged rooms and established
himself. At dusk he sauntered out upon the streets to view the wonders
of this roaring city of the North. As he walked he thought of the
wonderful golden hair of Mme. O'Brien. "It is here," said the General
to himself, no doubt in his own language, "that one shall find the most
beautiful senoras in the world. I have not in my Colombia viewed among
our beauties one so fair. But no! It is not for the General Falcon to
think of beauty. It is my country that claims my devotion."
At the corner of Broadway and the Little Rialto the General became
involved. The street cars bewildered him, and the fender of one upset
him against a pushcart laden with oranges. A cab driver missed him an
inch with a hub, and poured barbarous execrations upon his head. He
scrambled to the sidewalk and skipped again in terror when the whistle
of a peanut-roaster puffed a hot scream in his ear. "Valgame Dios! What
devil's city is this?"
As the General fluttered out of the streamers of passers like a wounded
snipe he was marked simultaneously as game by two hunters. One was
"Bully" McGuire, whose system of sport required the use of a strong arm
and the misuse of an eight-inch piece of lead pipe. The other Nimrod of
the asphalt was "Spider" Kelley, a sportsman with more refined methods.
In pouncing upon their self-evident prey, Mr. Kelley was a shade the
quicker. His elbow fended accurately the onslaught of Mr. McGuire.
"G'wan!" he commanded harshly. "I saw it first." McGuire slunk away,
awed by superior intelligence.
"Pardon me," said Mr. Kelley, to the General, "but you got balled up in
the shuffle, didn't you? Let me assist you." He picked up the General's
hat and brushed the dust from it.
The ways of Mr. Kelley could not but succeed. The General, bewildered
and dismayed by the resounding streets, welcomed his deliverer as a
caballero with a most disinterested heart.
"I have a desire," said the General, "to return to the hotel of O'Brien,
in which I am stop. Caramba! senor, there is a loudness and rapidness of
going and coming in the city of this Nueva York."
Mr. Kelley's politeness would not suffer the distinguished Colombian to
brave the dangers of the return unaccompanied. At the door of the Hotel
Espanol they paused. A little lower down on the opposite side of the
street shone the modest illuminated sign of El Refugio. Mr. Kelley, to
whom few streets were unfamiliar, knew the place exteriorly as a "Dago
joint." All foreigners Mr. Kelley classed under the two heads of
"Dagoes" and Frenchmen. He proposed to the General that they repair
thither and substantiate their acquaintance with a liquid foundation.
An hour later found General Falcon and Mr. Kelley seated at a table in
the conspirator's corner of El Refugio. Bottles and glasses were between
them. For the tenth time the General confided the secret of his mission
to the Estados Unidos. He was here, he declared, to purchase arms - 2,000
stands of Winchester rifles - for the Colombian revolutionists. He
had drafts in his pocket drawn by the Cartagena Bank on its New York
correspondent for $25,000. At other tables other revolutionists were
shouting their political secrets to their fellow-plotters; but none was
as loud as the General. He pounded the table; he hallooed for some wine;
he roared to his friend that his errand was a secret one, and not to be
hinted at to a living soul. Mr. Kelley himself was stirred to
sympathetic enthusiasm. He grasped the General's hand across the table.
"Monseer," he said, earnestly, "I don't know where this country of yours
is, but I'm for it. I guess it must be a branch of the United States,
though, for the poetry guys and the schoolmarms call us Columbia, too,
sometimes. It's a lucky thing for you that you butted into me to-night.
I'm the only man in New York that can get this gun deal through for you.
The Secretary of War of the United States is me best friend. He's in the
city now, and I'll see him for you to-morrow. In the meantime, monseer,
you keep them drafts tight in your inside pocket. I'll call for you
to-morrow, and take you to see him. Say! that ain't the District of
Columbia you're talking about, is it?" concluded Mr. Kelley, with a
sudden qualm. "You can't capture that with no 2,000 guns - it's been
tried with more."
"No, no, no!" exclaimed the General. "It is the Republic of Colombia - it
is a g-r-reat republic on the top side of America of the South. Yes.
Yes."
"All right," said Mr. Kelley, reassured. "Now suppose we trek along home
and go by-by. I'll write to the Secretary to-night and make a date with
him. It's a ticklish job to get guns out of New York. McClusky himself
can't do it."
They parted at the door of the Hotel Espanol. The General rolled his
eyes at the moon and sighed.
"It is a great country, your Nueva York," he said. "Truly the cars in
the streets devastate one, and the engine that cooks the nuts terribly
makes a squeak in the ear. But, ah, Senor Kelley - the senoras with hair
of much goldness, and admirable fatness - they are magnificas! Muy
magnificas!"
Kelley went to the nearest telephone booth and called up McCrary's cafe,
far up on Broadway. He asked for Jimmy Dunn.
"Is that Jimmy Dunn?" asked Kelley.
"Yes," came the answer.
"You're a liar," sang back Kelley, joyfully. "You're the Secretary of
War. Wait there till I come up. I've got the finest thing down here in
the way of a fish you ever baited for. It's a Colorado-maduro, with a
gold band around it and free coupons enough to buy a red hall lamp and a
statuette of Psyche rubbering in the brook. I'll be up on the next car."
Jimmy Dunn was an A. M. of Crookdom. He was an artist in the confidence
line. He never saw a bludgeon in his life; and he scorned knockout
drops. In fact, he would have set nothing before an intended victim but
the purest of drinks, if it had been possible to procure such a thing in
New York. It was the ambition of "Spider" Kelley to elevate himself into
Jimmy's class.
These two gentlemen held a conference that night at McCrary's. Kelley
explained.
"He's as easy as a gumshoe. He's from the Island of Colombia, where
there's a strike, or a feud, or something going on, and they've sent him
up here to buy 2,000 Winchesters to arbitrate the thing with. He showed
me two drafts for $10,000 each, and one for $5,000 on a bank here. 'S
truth, Jimmy, I felt real mad with him because he didn't have it in
thousand-dollar bills, and hand it to me on a silver waiter. Now, we've
got to wait till he goes to the bank and gets the money for us."
They talked it over for two hours, and then Dunn said; "Bring him to
No. - - Broadway, at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon."
In due time Kelley called at the Hotel Espanol for the General. He found
the wily warrior engaged in delectable conversation with Mrs. O'Brien.
"The Secretary of War is waitin' for us," said Kelley.
The General tore himself away with an effort.
"Ay, senor," he said, with a sigh, "duty makes a call. But, senor, the
senoras of your Estados Unidos - how beauties! For exemplification, take
you la Madame O'Brien - que magnifica! She is one goddess - one Juno - what
you call one ox-eyed Juno."
Now Mr. Kelley was a wit; and better men have been shriveled by the fire
of their own imagination.
"Sure!" he said with a grin; "but you mean a peroxide Juno, don't you?"
Mrs. O'Brien heard, and lifted an auriferous head. Her businesslike eye
rested for an instant upon the disappearing form of Mr. Kelley. Except
in street cars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.
When the gallant Colombian and his escort arrived at the Broadway
address, they were held in an anteroom for half an hour, and then
admitted into a well-equipped office where a distinguished looking man,
with a smooth face, wrote at a desk. General Falcon was presented to the
Secretary of War of the United States, and his mission made known by his
old friend, Mr. Kelley.
"Ah - Colombia!" said the Secretary, significantly, when he was made to
understand; "I'm afraid there will be a little difficulty in that case.
The President and I differ in our sympathies there. He prefers the
established government, while I - " the secretary gave the General a
mysterious but encouraging smile. "You, of course, know, General Falcon,
that since the Tammany war, an act of Congress has been passed requiring
all manufactured arms and ammunition exported from this country to pass
through the War Department. Now, if I can do anything for you I will be
glad to do so to oblige my old friend, Mr. Kelley. But it must be in
absolute secrecy, as the President, as I have said, does not regard
favorably the efforts of your revolutionary party in Colombia. I will
have my orderly bring a list of the available arms now in the
warehouse."
The Secretary struck a bell, and an orderly with the letters A. D. T. on
his cap stepped promptly into the room.
"Bring me Schedule B of the small arms inventory," said the Secretary.
The orderly quickly returned with a printed paper. The Secretary studied
it closely.
"I find," he said, "that in Warehouse 9, of Government stores, there is
shipment of 2,000 stands of Winchester rifles that were ordered by the
Sultan of Morocco, who forgot to send the cash with his order. Our rule
is that legal-tender money must be paid down at the time of purchase.
My dear Kelley, your friend, General Falcon, shall have this lot of
arms, if he desires it, at the manufacturer's price. And you will
forgive me, I am sure, if I curtail our interview. I am expecting the
Japanese Minister and Charles Murphy every moment!"
As one result of this interview, the General was deeply grateful to his
esteemed friend, Mr. Kelley. As another, the nimble Secretary of War was
extremely busy during the next two days buying empty rifle cases and
filling them with bricks, which were then stored in a warehouse rented
for that purpose. As still another, when the General returned to the
Hotel Espanol, Mrs. O'Brien went up to him, plucked a thread from his
lapel, and said:
"Say, senor, I don't want to 'butt in,' but what does that monkey-faced,
cat-eyed, rubber-necked tin horn tough want with you?"
"Sangre de mi vida!" exclaimed the General. "Impossible it is that you
speak of my good friend, Senor Kelley."
"Come into the summer garden," said Mrs. O'Brien. "I want to have a talk
with you."