Let us suppose that an hour has elapsed.
"And you say," said the General, "that for the sum of $18,000 can be
purchased the furnishment of the house and the lease of one year with
this garden so lovely - so resembling unto the patios of my cara
Colombia?"
"And dirt cheap at that," sighed the lady.
"Ah, Dios!" breathed General Falcon. "What to me is war and politics?
This spot is one paradise. My country it have other brave heroes to
continue the fighting. What to me should be glory and the shooting of
mans? Ah! no. It is here I have found one angel. Let us buy the Hotel
Espanol and you shall be mine, and the money shall not be waste on
guns."
Mrs. O'Brien rested her blond pompadour against the shoulder of the
Colombian patriot.
"Oh, senor," she sighed, happily, "ain't you terrible!"
Two days later was the time appointed for the delivery of the arms to
the General. The boxes of supposed rifles were stacked in the rented
warehouse, and the Secretary of War sat upon them, waiting for his
friend Kelley to fetch the victim.
Mr. Kelley hurried, at the hour, to the Hotel Espanol. He found the
General behind the desk adding up accounts.
"I have decide," said the General, "to buy not guns. I have to-day buy
the insides of this hotel, and there shall be marrying of the General
Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon with la Madame O'Brien."
Mr. Kelley almost strangled.
"Say, you old bald-headed bottle of shoe polish," he spluttered, "you're
a swindler - that's what you are! You've bought a boarding house with
money belonging to your infernal country, wherever it is."
"Ah," said the General, footing up a column, "that is what you call
politics. War and revolution they are not nice. Yes. It is not best that
one shall always follow Minerva. No. It is of quite desirable to keep
hotels and be with that Juno - that ox-eyed Juno. Ah! what hair of the
gold it is that she have!"
Mr. Kelley choked again.
"Ah, Senor Kelley!" said the General, feelingly and finally, "is it that
you have never eaten of the corned beef hash that Madame O'Brien she
make?"
III
BABES IN THE JUNGLE
Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says
to me once in Little Rock: "If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get
too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to New York. In the
West a sucker is born every minute; but in New York they appear in
chunks of roe - you can't count 'em!"
Two years afterward I found that I couldn't remember the names of the
Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left ear; so I
knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver's advice.
I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up Broadway. And
I run against Silver himself, all encompassed up in a spacious kind of
haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and rubbing the half-moons on his
nails with a silk handkerchief.
"Paresis or superannuated?" I asks him.
"Hello, Billy," says Silver; "I'm glad to see you. Yes, it seemed to me
that the West was accumulating a little too much wiseness. I've been
saving New York for dessert. I know it's a low-down trick to take things
from these people. They only know this and that and pass to and fro and
think ever and anon. I'd hate for my mother to know I was skinning these
weak-minded ones. She raised me better."
"Is there a crush already in the waiting rooms of the old doctor that
does skin grafting?" I asks.
"Well, no," says Silver; "you needn't back Epidermis to win to-day.
I've only been here a month. But I'm ready to begin; and the members of
Willie Manhattan's Sunday School class, each of whom has volunteered to
contribute a portion of cuticle toward this rehabilitation, may as well
send their photos to the _Evening Daily_.
"I've been studying the town," says Silver, "and reading the papers
every day, and I know it as well as the cat in the City Hall knows an
O'Sullivan. People here lie down on the floor and scream and kick when
you are the least bit slow about taking money from them. Come up in my
room and I'll tell you. We'll work the town together, Billy, for the
sake of old times."
Silver takes me up in a hotel. He has a quantity of irrelevant objects
lying about.
"There's more ways of getting money from these metropolitan hayseeds,"
says Silver, "than there is of cooking rice in Charleston, S. C. They'll
bite at anything. The brains of most of 'em commute. The wiser they are
in intelligence the less perception of cognizance they have. Why, didn't
a man the other day sell J. P. Morgan an oil portrait of Rockefeller,
Jr., for Andrea del Sarto's celebrated painting of the young Saint John!
"You see that bundle of printed stuff in the corner, Billy? That's gold
mining stock. I started out one day to sell that, but I quit it in two
hours. Why? Got arrested for blocking the street. People fought to buy
it. I sold the policeman a block of it on the way to the station-house,
and then I took it off the market. I don't want people to give me their
money. I want some little consideration connected with the transaction
to keep my pride from being hurt. I want 'em to guess the missing letter
in Chic - go, or draw to a pair of nines before they pay me a cent of
money.
"Now there's another little scheme that worked so easy I had to quit
it. You see that bottle of blue ink on the table? I tattooed an anchor
on the back of my hand and went to a bank and told 'em I was Admiral
Dewey's nephew. They offered to cash my draft on him for a thousand, but
I didn't know my uncle's first name. It shows, though, what an easy town
it is. As for burglars, they won't go in a house now unless there's a
hot supper ready and a few college students to wait on 'em. They're
slugging citizens all over the upper part of the city and I guess,
taking the town from end to end, it's a plain case of assault and
Battery."
"Monty," says I, when Silver had slacked, up, "you may have Manhattan
correctly discriminated in your perorative, but I doubt it. I've only
been in town two hours, but it don't dawn upon me that it's ours with a
cherry in it. There ain't enough rus in urbe about it to suit me. I'd be
a good deal much better satisfied if the citizens had a straw or more in
their hair, and run more to velveteen vests and buckeye watch charms.
They don't look easy to me."
"You've got it, Billy," says Silver. "All emigrants have it. New York's
bigger than Little Rock or Europe, and it frightens a foreigner. You'll
be all right. I tell you I feel like slapping the people here because
they don't send me all their money in laundry baskets, with germicide
sprinkled over it. I hate to go down on the street to get it. Who wears
the diamonds in this town? Why, Winnie, the Wiretapper's wife, and
Bella, the Buncosteerer's bride. New Yorkers can be worked easier than a
blue rose on a tidy. The only thing that bothers me is I know I'll break
the cigars in my vest pocket when I get my clothes all full of
twenties."
"I hope you are right, Monty," says I; "but I wish all the same I had
been satisfied with a small business in Little Rock. The crop of farmers
is never so short out there but what you can get a few of 'em to sign
a petition for a new post office that you can discount for $200 at
the county bank. The people here appear to possess instincts of
self-preservation and illiberality. I fear me that we are not cultured
enough to tackle this game."
"Don't worry," says Silver. "I've got this Jayville-near-Tarrytown
correctly estimated as sure as North River is the Hudson and East River
ain't a river. Why, there are people living in four blocks of Broadway
who never saw any kind of a building except a skyscraper in their lives!
A good, live hustling Western man ought to get conspicuous enough here
inside of three months to incur either Jerome's clemency or Lawson's
displeasure."
"Hyperbole aside," says I, "do you know of any immediate system of
buncoing the community out of a dollar or two except by applying to the
Salvation Army or having a fit on Miss Helen Gould's doorsteps?"
"Dozens of 'em," says Silver. "How much capital have you got, Billy?"
"A thousand," I told him.
"I've got $1,200," says he. "We'll pool and do a big piece of business.
There's so many ways we can make a million that I don't know how to
begin."
The next morning Silver meets me at the hotel and he is all sonorous and
stirred with a kind of silent joy.
"We're to meet J. P. Morgan this afternoon," says he. "A man I know in
the hotel wants to introduce us. He's a friend of his. He says he likes
to meet people from the West."
"That sounds nice and plausible," says I. "I'd like to know Mr. Morgan."
"It won't hurt us a bit," says Silver, "to get acquainted with a few
finance kings. I kind of like the social way New York has with
strangers."
The man Silver knew was named Klein. At three o'clock Klein brought his
Wall Street friend to see us in Silver's room. "Mr. Morgan" looked some
like his pictures, and he had a Turkish towel wrapped around his left
foot, and he walked with a cane.
"Mr. Silver and Mr. Pescud," says Klein. "It sounds superfluous," says
he, "to mention the name of the greatest financial - "
"Cut it out, Klein," says Mr. Morgan. "I'm glad to know you gents; I
take great interest in the West. Klein tells me you're from Little Rock.
I think I've a railroad or two out there somewhere. If either of you
guys would like to deal a hand or two of stud poker I - "
"Now, Pierpont," cuts in Klein, "you forget!"
"Excuse me, gents!" says Morgan; "since I've had the gout so bad I
sometimes play a social game of cards at my house. Neither of you never
knew One-eyed Peters, did you, while you was around Little Rock? He
lived in Seattle, New Mexico."
Before we could answer, Mr. Morgan hammers on the floor with his cane
and begins to walk up and down, swearing in a loud tone of voice.
"They have been pounding your stocks to-day on the Street, Pierpont?"
asks Klein, smiling.
"Stocks! No!" roars Mr. Morgan. "It's that picture I sent an agent to
Europe to buy. I just thought about it. He cabled me to-day that it
ain't to be found in all Italy. I'd pay $50,000 to-morrow for that
picture - yes, $75,000. I give the agent a la carte in purchasing it. I
cannot understand why the art galleries will allow a De Vinchy to - "
"Why, Mr. Morgan," says klein; "I thought you owned all of the De Vinchy
paintings."
"What is the picture like, Mr. Morgan?" asks Silver. "It must be as big
as the side of the Flatiron Building."
"I'm afraid your art education is on the bum, Mr. Silver," says Morgan.
"The picture is 27 inches by 42; and it is called 'Love's Idle Hour.' It
represents a number of cloak models doing the two-step on the bank of a
purple river. The cablegram said it might have been brought to this
country. My collection will never be complete without that picture.
Well, so long, gents; us financiers must keep early hours."
Mr. Morgan and Klein went away together in a cab. Me and Silver talked
about how simple and unsuspecting great people was; and Silver said what
a shame it would be to try to rob a man like Mr. Morgan; and I said I
thought it would be rather imprudent, myself. Klein proposes a stroll
after dinner; and me and him and Silver walks down toward Seventh Avenue
to see the sights. Klein sees a pair of cuff links that instigate his
admiration in a pawnshop window, and we all go in while he buys 'em.
After we got back to the hotel and Klein had gone, Silver jumps at me
and waves his hands.
"Did you see it?" says he. "Did you see it, Billy?"
"What?" I asks.
"Why, that picture that Morgan wants. It's hanging in that pawnshop,
behind the desk. I didn't say anything because Klein was there. It's the
article sure as you live. The girls are as natural as paint can make
them, all measuring 36 and 25 and 42 skirts, if they had any skirts, and
they're doing a buck-and-wing on the bank of a river with the blues.
What did Mr. Morgan say he'd give for it? Oh, don't make me tell you.
They can't know what it is in that pawnshop."
When the pawnshop opened the next morning me and Silver was standing
there as anxious as if we wanted to soak our Sunday suit to buy a drink.
We sauntered inside, and began to look at watch-chains.
"That's a violent specimen of a chromo you've got up there," remarked
Silver, casual, to the pawnbroker. "But I kind of enthuse over the girl
with the shoulder-blades and red bunting. Would an offer of $2.25 for it
cause you to knock over any fragile articles of your stock in hurrying
it off the nail?"
The pawnbroker smiles and goes on showing us plate watch-chains.
"That picture," says he, "was pledged a year ago by an Italian
gentleman. I loaned him $500 on it. It is called 'Love's Idle Hour,' and
it is by Leonardo de Vinchy. Two days ago the legal time expired, and it
became an unredeemed pledge. Here is a style of chain that is worn a
great deal now."
At the end of half an hour me and Silver paid the pawnbroker $2,000 and
walked out with the picture. Silver got into a cab with it and started
for Morgan's office. I goes to the hotel and waits for him. In two hours
Silver comes back.
"Did you see Mr. Morgan?" I asks. "How much did he pay you for it?"
Silver sits down and fools with a tassel on the table cover.
"I never exactly saw Mr. Morgan," he says, "because Mr. Morgan's been
in Europe for a month. But what's worrying me, Billy, is this: The
department stores have all got that same picture on sale, framed, for
$3.48. And they charge $3.50 for the frame alone - that's what I can't
understand."
IV
THE DAY RESURGENT
I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comes
to drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial conceptions
of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in number.
First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may have
free play. A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the proper number
of toes will fill the bill. Miss Clarice St. Vavasour, the well-known
model, will pose for it in the "Lethergogallagher," or whatever it was
that Trilby called it.
Second - the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework of lilies.
This is magazine-covery, but reliable.
Third - Miss Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade.
Fourth - Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw hat, happy
and self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout.
Of course, the rabbits do not count. Nor the Easter eggs, since the
higher criticism has hard-boiled them.
The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that Easter, of
all our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our conception.
It belongs to all religions, although the pagans invented it. Going back
still further to the first spring, we can see Eve choosing with pride a
new green leaf from the tree _ficus carica_.
Now, the object of this critical and learned preamble is to set forth
the theorem that Easter is neither a date, a season, a festival, a
holiday nor an occasion. What it is you shall find out if you follow in
the footsteps of Danny McCree.
Easter Sunday dawned as it should, bright and early, in its place on the
calendar between Saturday and Monday. At 5.24 the sun rose, and at 10.30
Danny followed its example. He went into the kitchen and washed his
face at the sink. His mother was frying bacon. She looked at his hard,
smooth, knowing countenance as he juggled with the round cake of soap,
and thought of his father when she first saw him stopping a hot grounder
between second and third twenty-two years before on a vacant lot in
Harlem, where the La Paloma apartment house now stands. In the front
room of the flat Danny's father sat by an open window smoking his pipe,
with his dishevelled gray hair tossed about by the breeze. He still
clung to his pipe, although his sight had been taken from him two years
before by a precocious blast of giant powder that went off without
permission. Very few blind men care for smoking, for the reason that
they cannot see the smoke. Now, could you enjoy having the news read to
you from an evening newspaper unless you could see the colors of the
headlines?
"'Tis Easter Day," said Mrs. McCree.
"Scramble mine," said Danny.
After breakfast he dressed himself in the Sabbath morning costume of
the Canal Street importing house dray chauffeur - frock coat, striped
trousers, patent leathers, gilded trace chain across front of vest,
and wing collar, rolled-brim derby and butterfly bow from Schonstein's
(between Fourteenth Street and Tony's fruit stand) Saturday night sale.
"You'll be goin' out this day, of course, Danny," said old man McCree,
a little wistfully. "'Tis a kind of holiday, they say. Well, it's fine
spring weather. I can feel it in the air."
"Why should I not be going out?" demanded Danny in his grumpiest chest
tones. "Should I stay in? Am I as good as a horse? One day of rest my
team has a week. Who earns the money for the rent and the breakfast
you've just eat, I'd like to know? Answer me that!"
"All right, lad," said the old man. "I'm not complainin'. While me two
eyes was good there was nothin' better to my mind than a Sunday out.
There's a smell of turf and burnin' brush comin' in the windy. I have me
tobaccy. A good fine day and rist to ye, lad. Times I wish your mother
had larned to read, so I might hear the rest about the hippopotamus - but
let that be."
"Now, what is this foolishness he talks of hippopotamuses?" asked Danny
of his mother, as he passed through the kitchen. "Have you been taking
him to the Zoo? And for what?"
"I have not," said Mrs. McCree. "He sets by the windy all day. 'Tis
little recreation a blind man among the poor gets at all. I'm thinkin'
they wander in their minds at times. One day he talks of grease without
stoppin' for the most of an hour. I looks to see if there's lard burnin'
in the fryin' pan. There is not. He says I do not understand. 'Tis weary
days, Sundays, and holidays and all, for a blind man, Danny. There was
no better nor stronger than him when he had his two eyes. 'Tis a fine
day, son. Injoy yeself ag'inst the morning. There will be cold supper at
six."
"Have you heard any talk of a hippopotamus?" asked Danny of Mike, the
janitor, as he went out the door downstairs.
"I have not," said Mike, pulling his shirtsleeves higher. "But 'tis the
only subject in the animal, natural and illegal lists of outrages that
I've not been complained to about these two days. See the landlord. Or
else move out if ye like. Have ye hippopotamuses in the lease? No,
then?"
"It was the old man who spoke of it," said Danny. "Likely there's
nothing in it."
Danny walked up the street to the Avenue and then struck northward into
the heart of the district where Easter - modern Easter, in new, bright
raiment - leads the pascal march. Out of towering brown churches came the
blithe music of anthems from the choirs. The broad sidewalks were moving
parterres of living flowers - so it seemed when your eye looked upon the
Easter girl.
Gentlemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardeniaed, sustained the
background of the tradition. Children carried lilies in their hands. The
windows of the brownstone mansions were packed with the most opulent
creations of Flora, the sister of the Lady of the Lilies.
Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled and tightly buttoned, walked
Corrigan, the cop, shield to the curb. Danny knew him.
"Why, Corrigan," he asked, "is Easter? I know it comes the first time
you're full after the moon rises on the seventeenth of March - but why?
Is it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor appoint it
out of politics?"
"'Tis an annual celebration," said Corrigan, with the judicial air of
the Third Deputy Police Commissioner, "peculiar to New York. It extends
up to Harlem. Sometimes they has the reserves out at One Hundred and
Twenty-fifth Street. In my opinion 'tis not political."
"Thanks," said Danny. "And say - did you ever hear a man complain of
hippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I mean."
"Nothing larger than sea turtles," said Corrigan, reflecting, "and there
was wood alcohol in that."
Danny wandered. The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying simultaneously
a Sunday and a festival day was his.
The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so often
that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-made
garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the
griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the
Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself,
attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter,
and took his pleasure sadly.
The family entrance of Dugan's cafe was feasible; so Danny yielded to
the vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark,
linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after the
mysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee.
"Say, Tim," he said to the waiter, "why do they have Easter?"
"Skiddoo!" said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye. "Is that a new one?
All right. Tony Pastor's for you last night, I guess. I give it up.
What's the answer - two apples or a yard and a half?"
From Dugan's Danny turned back eastward. The April sun seemed to stir in
him a vague feeling that he could not construe. He made a wrong
diagnosis and decided that it was Katy Conlon.
A block from her house on Avenue A he met her going to church. They
pumped hands on the corner.
"Gee! but you look dumpish and dressed up," said Katy. "What's wrong?
Come away with me to church and be cheerful."
"What's doing at church?" asked Danny.
"Why, it's Easter Sunday. Silly! I waited till after eleven expectin'
you might come around to go."
"What does this Easter stand for, Katy," asked Danny gloomily. "Nobody
seems to know."
"Nobody as blind as you," said Katy with spirit. "You haven't even
looked at my new hat. And skirt. Why, it's when all the girls put on new
spring clothes. Silly! Are you coming to church with me?"
"I will," said Danny. "If this Easter is pulled off there, they ought to
be able to give some excuse for it. Not that the hat ain't a beauty. The
green roses are great."
At church the preacher did some expounding with no pounding. He spoke
rapidly, for he was in a hurry to get home to his early Sabbath dinner;
but he knew his business. There was one word that controlled his
theme - resurrection. Not a new creation; but a new life arising out of
the old. The congregation had heard it often before. But there was a
wonderful hat, a combination of sweet peas and lavender, in the sixth
pew from the pulpit. It attracted much attention.
After church Danny lingered on a corner while Katy waited, with pique in
her sky-blue eyes.
"Are you coming along to the house?" she asked. "But don't mind me. I'll
get there all right. You seem to be studyin' a lot about something. All
right. Will I see you at any time specially, Mr. McCree?"
"I'll be around Wednesday night as usual," said Danny, turning and
crossing the street.
Katy walked away with the green roses dangling indignantly. Danny
stopped two blocks away. He stood still with his hands in his pockets,
at the curb on the corner. His face was that of a graven image. Deep
in his soul something stirred so small, so fine, so keen and leavening
that his hard fibres did not recognize it. It was something more tender
than the April day, more subtle than the call of the senses, purer and
deeper-rooted than the love of woman - for had he not turned away from
green roses and eyes that had kept him chained for a year? And Danny
did not know what it was. The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to his
dinner, had told him, but Danny had had no libretto with which to follow
the drowsy intonation. But the preacher spoke the truth.
Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a hoarse yell of delight.
"Hippopotamus!" he shouted to an elevated road pillar. "Well, how is
that for a bum guess? Why, blast my skylights! I know what he was
driving at now.
"Hippopotamus! Wouldn't that send you to the Bronx! It's been a year
since he heard it; and he didn't miss it so very far. We quit at 469
B. C., and this comes next. Well, a wooden man wouldn't have guessed
what he was trying to get out of him."
Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his labor
supported.
Old man McCree was still sitting by the window. His extinct pipe lay on
the sill.
"Will that be you, lad?" he asked.
Danny flared into the rage of a strong man who is surprised at the
outset of committing a good deed.
"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" he
snapped, viciously. "Have I no right to come in?"
"Ye're a faithful lad," said old man McCree, with a sigh. "Is it evening
yet?"
Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled in gilt
letters, "The History of Greece." Dust was on it half an inch thick. He
laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a strip of paper.
And then he gave a short roar at the top of his voice, and said:
"Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?"
"Did I hear ye open the book?" said old man McCree. "Many and weary be
the months since my lad has read it to me. I dinno; but I took a great
likings to them Greeks. Ye left off at a place. 'Tis a fine day outside,
lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have gotten used to me chair
by the windy and me pipe."
"Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not
hippopotamus," said Danny. "The war began there. It kept something doing
for thirty years. The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon,
in 338 B. C., got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the
battle of Cher-Cheronoea. I'll read it."
With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man McCree
sat for an hour, listening.
Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. Mrs. McCree
was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old man
McCree's eyes.
"Do you hear our lad readin' to me?" he said. "There is none finer in
the land. My two eyes have come back to me again."
After supper he said to Danny: "'Tis a happy day, this Easter. And now
ye will be off to see Katy in the evening. Well enough."
"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" said
Danny, angrily. "Have I no right to stay in it? After supper there is
yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 B. C., when the
kingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of the Roman Empire.
Am I nothing in this house?"
V
THE FIFTH WHEEL
The ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold. They
were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth
Avenue and Broadway. The Bed Liners stamped their freezing feet, looked
at the empty benches in Madison Square whence Jack Frost had evicted
them, and muttered to one another in a confusion of tongues. The
Flatiron Building, with its impious, cloud-piercing architecture looming
mistily above them on the opposite delta, might well have stood for the
tower of Babel, whence these polyglot idlers had been called by the
winged walking delegate of the Lord.
Standing on a pine box a head higher than his flock of goats, the
Preacher exhorted whatever transient and shifting audience the north
wind doled out to him. It was a slave market. Fifteen cents bought you a
man. You deeded him to Morpheus; and the recording angel gave you
credit.
The preacher was incredibly earnest and unwearied. He had looked over
the list of things one may do for one's fellow man, and had assumed for
himself the task of putting to bed all who might apply at his soap box
on the nights of Wednesday and Sunday. That left but five nights for
other philanthropists to handle; and had they done their part as well,
this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all
might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and
the rent man and business go to the deuce.
The hour of eight was but a little while past; sightseers in a small,
dark mass of pay ore were gathered in the shadow of General Worth's
monument. Now and then, shyly, ostentatiously, carelessly, or with
conscientious exactness one would step forward and bestow upon the
Preacher small bills or silver. Then a lieutenant of Scandinavian
coloring and enthusiasm would march away to a lodging house with a squad
of the redeemed. All the while the Preacher exhorted the crowd in terms
beautifully devoid of eloquence - splendid with the deadly, accusative
monotony of truth. Before the picture of the Bed Liners fades you must
hear one phrase of the Preacher's - the one that formed his theme that
night. It is worthy of being stenciled on all the white ribbons in the
world.
_"No man ever learned to be a drunkard on five-cent whisky."_
Think of it, tippler. It covers the ground from the sprouting rye to the
Potter's Field.
A clean-profiled, erect young man in the rear rank of the bedless
emulated the terrapin, drawing his head far down into the shell of his
coat collar. It was a well-cut tweed coat; and the trousers still showed
signs of having flattened themselves beneath the compelling goose. But,
conscientiously, I must warn the milliner's apprentice who reads this,
expecting a Reginald Montressor in straits, to peruse no further. The
young man was no other than Thomas McQuade, ex-coachman, discharged for
drunkenness one month before, and now reduced to the grimy ranks of the
one-night bed seekers.
If you live in smaller New York you must know the Van Smuythe family
carriage, drawn by the two 1,500-pound, 100 to 1-shot bays. The carriage
is shaped like a bath-tub. In each end of it reclines an old lady Van
Smuythe holding a black sunshade the size of a New Year's Eve feather
tickler. Before his downfall Thomas McQuade drove the Van Smuythe bays
and was himself driven by Annie, the Van Smuythe lady's maid. But it is
one of the saddest things about romance that a tight shoe or an empty
commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic of any
Cupid-worshiper. And Thomas's physical troubles were not few. Therefore,
his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost lady's maid than it
was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his
racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dancing, crawling, and
wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal
campus of the Bed Line army. Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and
a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a
psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by
phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and intercourse.
The Bed Liner standing at his right was a young man of about his own
age, shabby but neat.
"What's the diagnosis of your case, Freddy?" asked Thomas, with the
freemasonic familiarity of the damned - "Booze? That's mine. You don't
look like a panhandler. Neither am I. A month ago I was pushing the
lines over the backs of the finest team of Percheron buffaloes that ever
made their mile down Fifth Avenue in 2.85. And look at me now! Say; how
do you come to be at this bed bargain-counter rummage sale."
The other young man seemed to welcome the advances of the airy
ex-coachman.
"No," said he, "mine isn't exactly a case of drink. Unless we allow that
Cupid is a bartender. I married unwisely, according to the opinion of my
unforgiving relatives. I've been out of work for a year because I don't
know how to work; and I've been sick in Bellevue and other hospitals for
months. My wife and kid had to go back to her mother. I was turned out
of the hospital yesterday. And I haven't a cent. That's my tale of woe."
"Tough luck," said Thomas. "A man alone can pull through all right. But
I hate to see the women and kids get the worst of it."
Just then there hummed up Fifth Avenue a motor car so splendid, so red,
so smoothly running, so craftily demolishing the speed regulations that
it drew the attention even of the listless Bed Liners. Suspended and
pinioned on its left side was an extra tire.
When opposite the unfortunate company the fastenings of this tire became
loosed. It fell to the asphalt, bounded and rolled rapidly in the wake
of the flying car.
Thomas McQuade, scenting an opportunity, darted from his place among the
Preacher's goats. In thirty seconds he had caught the rolling tire,
swung it over his shoulder, and was trotting smartly after the car. On
both sides of the avenue people were shouting, whistling, and waving
canes at the red car, pointing to the enterprising Thomas coming up with
the lost tire.
One dollar, Thomas had estimated, was the smallest guerdon that so grand
an automobilist could offer for the service he had rendered, and save
his pride.
Two blocks away the car had stopped. There was a little, brown, muffled
chauffeur driving, and an imposing gentleman wearing a magnificent
sealskin coat and a silk hat on a rear seat.
Thomas proffered the captured tire with his best ex-coachman manner
and a look in the brighter of his reddened eyes that was meant to be
suggestive to the extent of a silver coin or two and receptive up to
higher denominations.
But the look was not so construed. The sealskinned gentleman received
the tire, placed it inside the car, gazed intently at the ex-coachman,
and muttered to himself inscrutable words.
"Strange - strange!" said he. "Once or twice even I, myself, have fancied
that the Chaldean Chiroscope has availed. Could it be possible?"
Then he addressed less mysterious words to the waiting and hopeful
Thomas.
"Sir, I thank you for your kind rescue of my tire. And I would ask you,
if I may, a question. Do you know the family of Van Smuythes living in
Washington Square North?"
"Oughtn't I to?" replied Thomas. "I lived there. Wish I did yet."
The sealskinned gentleman opened a door of the car.
"Step in please," he said. "You have been expected."
Thomas McQuade obeyed with surprise but without hesitation. A seat in a
motor car seemed better than standing room in the Bed Line. But after
the lap-robe had been tucked about him and the auto had sped on its
course, the peculiarity of the invitation lingered in his mind.
"Maybe the guy hasn't got any change," was his diagnosis. "Lots of these
swell rounders don't lug about any ready money. Guess he'll dump me out
when he gets to some joint where he can get cash on his mug. Anyhow,
it's a cinch that I've got that open-air bed convention beat to a
finish."
Submerged in his greatcoat, the mysterious automobilist seemed, himself,
to marvel at the surprises of life. "Wonderful! amazing! strange!" he
repeated to himself constantly.
When the car had well entered the crosstown Seventies it swung eastward
a half block and stopped before a row of high-stooped, brownstone-front
houses.
"Be kind enough to enter my house with me," said the sealskinned
gentleman when they had alighted. "He's going to dig up, sure,"
reflected Thomas, following him inside.
There was a dim light in the hall. His host conducted him through a door
to the left, closing it after him and leaving them in absolute darkness.
Suddenly a luminous globe, strangely decorated, shone faintly in
the centre of an immense room that seemed to Thomas more splendidly
appointed than any he had ever seen on the stage or read of in fairy
tales.
The walls were hidden by gorgeous red hangings embroidered with
fantastic gold figures. At the rear end of the room were draped
portieres of dull gold spangled with silver crescents and stars. The
furniture was of the costliest and rarest styles. The ex-coachman's feet
sank into rugs as fleecy and deep as snowdrifts. There were three or
four oddly shaped stands or tables covered with black velvet drapery.
Thomas McQuade took in the splendors of this palatial apartment with one
eye. With the other he looked for his imposing conductor - to find that
he had disappeared.
"B'gee!" muttered Thomas, "this listens like a spook shop. Shouldn't
wonder if it ain't one of these Moravian Nights' adventures that you
read about. Wonder what became of the furry guy."
Suddenly a stuffed owl that stood on an ebony perch near the illuminated
globe slowly raised his wings and emitted from his eyes a brilliant
electric glow.
With a fright-born imprecation, Thomas seized a bronze statuette of
Hebe from a cabinet near by and hurled it with all his might at the
terrifying and impossible fowl. The owl and his perch went over with a
crash. With the sound there was a click, and the room was flooded with
light from a dozen frosted globes along the walls and ceiling. The gold
portieres parted and closed, and the mysterious automobilist entered the
room. He was tall and wore evening dress of perfect cut and accurate
taste. A Vandyke beard of glossy, golden brown, rather long and wavy
hair, smoothly parted, and large, magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave
him a most impressive and striking appearance. If you can conceive
a Russian Grand Duke in a Rajah's throne-room advancing to greet a
visiting Emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his
manner. But Thomas McQuade was too near his _d t's_ to be mindful of his
_p's_ and _q's_. When he viewed this silken, polished, and somewhat
terrifying host he thought vaguely of dentists.
"Say, doc," said he resentfully, "that's a hot bird you keep on tap.
I hope I didn't break anything. But I've nearly got the williwalloos,
and when he threw them 32-candle-power lamps of his on me, I took a
snap-shot at him with that little brass Flatiron Girl that stood on the
sideboard."
"That is merely a mechanical toy," said the gentleman with a wave of his
hand. "May I ask you to be seated while I explain why I brought you to
my house. Perhaps you would not understand nor be in sympathy with the
psychological prompting that caused me to do so. So I will come to the
point at once by venturing to refer to your admission that you know the
Van Smuythe family, of Washington Square North."
"Any silver missing?" asked Thomas tartly. "Any joolry displaced? Of
course I know 'em. Any of the old ladies' sunshades disappeared? Well,
I know 'em. And then what?"
The Grand Duke rubbed his white hands together softly.
"Wonderful!" he murmured. "Wonderful! Shall I come to believe in the
Chaldean Chiroscope myself? Let me assure you," he continued, "that
there is nothing for you to fear. Instead, I think I can promise you
that very good fortune awaits you. We will see."
"Do they want me back?" asked Thomas, with something of his old
professional pride in his voice. "I'll promise to cut out the booze and
do the right thing if they'll try me again. But how did you get wise,
doc? B'gee, it's the swellest employment agency I was ever in, with its
flashlight owls and so forth."
With an indulgent smile the gracious host begged to be excused for two
minutes. He went out to the sidewalk and gave an order to the chauffeur,
who still waited with the car. Returning to the mysterious apartment,
he sat by his guest and began to entertain him so well by his witty and