engaged in the pastime of casting silver money from his pockets in the
middle of the street. With each motion of the generous one's hand the
crowd huddled upon the falling largesse with yells of joy. Traffic was
suspended. A policeman in the centre of the mob stooped often to the
ground as he urged the blockaders to move on.
The Margrave saw at a glance that here was food for his hunger after
knowledge concerning abnormal working of the human heart. He made his
way swiftly to the young man's side and took his arm. "Come with me at
once," he said, in the low but commanding voice that his waiters had
learned to fear.
"Pinched," remarked the young man, looking up at him with expressionless
eyes. "Pinched by a painless dentist. Take me away, flatty, and give me
gas. Some lay eggs and some lay none. When is a hen?"
Still deeply seized by some inward grief, but tractable, he allowed
Quigg to lead him away and down the street to a little park.
There, seated on a bench, he upon whom a corner of the great Caliph's
mantle has descended, spake with kindness and discretion, seeking to
know what evil had come upon the other, disturbing his soul and driving
him to such ill-considered and ruinous waste of his substance and
stores.
"I was doing the Monte Cristo act as adapted by Pompton, N. J., wasn't
I?" asked the young man.
"You were throwing small coins into the street for the people to
scramble after," said the Margrave.
"That's it. You buy all the beer you can hold, and then you throw
chicken feed to - Oh, curse that word chicken, and hens, feathers,
roosters, eggs, and everything connected with it!"
"Young sir," said the Margrave kindly, but with dignity, "though I do
not ask your confidence, I invite it. I know the world and I know
humanity. Man is my study, though I do not eye him as the scientist
eyes a beetle or as the philanthropist gazes at the objects of his
bounty - through a veil of theory and ignorance. It is my pleasure
and distraction to interest myself in the peculiar and complicated
misfortunes that life in a great city visits upon my fellow-men. You may
be familiar with the history of that glorious and immortal ruler, the
Caliph Harun Al Rashid, whose wise and beneficent excursions among his
people in the city of Bagdad secured him the privilege of relieving so
much of their distress. In my humble way I walk in his footsteps. I seek
for romance and adventure in city streets - not in ruined castles or in
crumbling palaces. To me the greatest marvels of magic are those that
take place in men's hearts when acted upon by the furious and diverse
forces of a crowded population. In your strange behavior this evening
I fancy a story lurks. I read in your act something deeper than the
wanton wastefulness of a spendthrift. I observe in your countenance the
certain traces of consuming grief or despair. I repeat - I invite your
confidence. I am not without some power to alleviate and advise. Will
you not trust me?"
"Gee, how you talk!" exclaimed the young man, a gleam of admiration
supplanting for a moment the dull sadness of his eyes. "You've got the
Astor Library skinned to a synopsis of preceding chapters. I mind that
old Turk you speak of. I read 'The Arabian Nights' when I was a kid. He
was a kind of Bill Devery and Charlie Schwab rolled into one. But, say,
you might wave enchanted dishrags and make copper bottles smoke up coon
giants all night without ever touching me. My case won't yield to that
kind of treatment."
"If I could hear your story," said the Margrave, with his lofty, serious
smile.
"I'll spiel it in about nine words," said the young man, with a deep
sigh, "but I don't think you can help me any. Unless you're a peach at
guessing it's back to the Bosphorus for you on your magic linoleum."
THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN AND THE HARNESS MAKER'S RIDDLE
"I work in Hildebrant's saddle and harness shop down in Grant Street.
I've worked there five years. I get $18 a week. That's enough to marry
on, ain't it? Well, I'm not going to get married. Old Hildebrant is
one of these funny Dutchmen - you know the kind - always getting off bum
jokes. He's got about a million riddles and things that he faked from
Rogers Brothers' great-grandfather. Bill Watson works there, too. Me and
Bill have to stand for them chestnuts day after day. Why do we do it?
Well, jobs ain't to be picked off every Anheuser bush - And then there's
Laura.
"What? The old man's daughter. Comes in the shop every day. About
nineteen, and the picture of the blonde that sits on the palisades of
the Rhine and charms the clam-diggers into the surf. Hair the color of
straw matting, and eyes as black and shiny as the best harness
blacking - think of that!
"Me? well, it's either me or Bill Watson. She treats us both equal. Bill
is all to the psychopathic about her; and me? - well, you saw me plating
the roadbed of the Great Maroon Way with silver to-night. That was on
account of Laura. I was spiflicated, Your Highness, and I wot not of
what I wouldst.
"How? Why, old Hildebrandt says to me and Bill this afternoon: 'Boys,
one riddle have I for you gehabt haben. A young man who cannot riddles
antworten, he is not so good by business for ein family to provide - is
not that - hein?' And he hands us a riddle - a conundrum, some calls
it - and he chuckles interiorly and gives both of us till to-morrow
morning to work out the answer to it. And he says whichever of us
guesses the repartee end of it goes to his house o' Wednesday night to
his daughter's birthday party. And it means Laura for whichever of us
goes, for she's naturally aching for a husband, and it's either me or
Bill Watson, for old Hildebrant likes us both, and wants her to marry
somebody that'll carry on the business after he's stitched his last pair
of traces.
"The riddle? Why, it was this: 'What kind of a hen lays the longest?
Think of that! What kind of a hen lays the longest? Ain't it like a
Dutchman to risk a man's happiness on a fool proposition like that?
Now, what's the use? What I don't know about hens would fill several
incubators. You say you're giving imitations of the old Arab guy that
gave away - libraries in Bagdad. Well, now, can you whistle up a fairy
that'll solve this hen query, or not?"
When the young man ceased the Margrave arose and paced to and fro by the
park bench for several minutes. Finally he sat again, and said, in grave
and impressive tones:
"I must confess, sir, that during the eight years that I have spent in
search of adventure and in relieving distress I have never encountered
a more interesting or a more perplexing case. I fear that I have
overlooked hens in my researches and observations. As to their
habits, their times and manner of laying, their many varieties and
cross-breedings, their span of life, their - "
"Oh, don't make an Ibsen drama of it!" interrupted the young man,
flippantly. "Riddles - especially old Hildebrant's riddles - don't have
to be worked out seriously. They are light themes such as Sim Ford and
Harry Thurston Peck like to handle. But, somehow, I can't strike just
the answer. Bill Watson may, and he may not. To-morrow will tell. Well,
Your Majesty, I'm glad anyhow that you butted in and whiled the time
away. I guess Mr. Al Rashid himself would have bounced back if one of
his constituents had conducted him up against this riddle. I'll say good
night. Peace fo' yours, and what-you-may-call-its of Allah."
The Margrave, still with a gloomy air, held out his hand.
"I cannot express my regret," he said, sadly. "Never before have I
found myself unable to assist in some way. 'What kind of a hen lays the
longest? It is a baffling problem. There is a hen, I believe, called
the Plymouth Rock that - "
"Cut it out," said the young man. "The Caliph trade is a mighty serious
one. I don't suppose you'd even see anything funny in a preacher's
defense of John D. Rockefeller. Well, good night, Your Nibs."
From habit the Margrave began to fumble in his pockets. He drew forth
a card and handed it to the young man.
"Do me the favor to accept this, anyhow," he said. "The time may come
when it might be of use to you."
"Thanks!" said the young man, pocketing it carelessly. "My name is
Simmons."
* * * * * *
Shame to him who would hint that the reader's interest shall altogether
pursue the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. I am indeed astray
if my hand fail in keeping the way where my peruser's heart would
follow. Then let us, on the morrow, peep quickly in at the door of
Hildebrant, harness maker.
Hildebrant's 200 pounds reposed on a bench, silver-buckling a raw
leather martingale.
Bill Watson came in first.
"Vell," said Hildebrant, shaking all over with the vile conceit of the
joke-maker, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays der longest?'"
"Er - why, I think so," said Bill, rubbing a servile chin. "I think so,
Mr. Hildebrant - the one that lives the longest - Is that right?"
"Nein!" said Hildebrant, shaking his head violently. "You haf not
guessed der answer."
Bill passed on and donned a bed-tick apron and bachelorhood.
In came the young man of the Arabian Night's fiasco - pale, melancholy,
hopeless.
"Vell," said Hildebrant, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays
der longest?'"
Simmons regarded him with dull savagery in his eye. Should he curse this
mountain of pernicious humor - curse him and die? Why should - But there
was Laura.
Dogged, speechless, he thrust his hands into his coat pockets and stood.
His hand encountered the strange touch of the Margrave's card. He drew
it out and looked at it, as men about to be hanged look at a crawling
fly. There was written on it in Quigg's bold, round hand: "Good for one
roast chicken to bearer."
Simmons looked up with a flashing eye.
"A dead one!" said he.
"Goot!" roared Hildebrant, rocking the table with giant glee. "Dot is
right! You gome at mine house at 8 o'clock to der party."
XVI
COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON
There are no more Christmas stories to write. Fiction is exhausted;
and newspaper items, the next best, are manufactured by clever young
journalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessimistic
view of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are reduced
to very questionable sources - facts and philosophy. We will begin
with - whichever you choose to call it.
Children are pestilential little animals with which we have to cope
under a bewildering variety of conditions. Especially when childish
sorrows overwhelm them are we put to our wits' end. We exhaust our
paltry store of consolation; and then beat them, sobbing, to sleep. Then
we grovel in the dust of a million years, and ask God why. Thus we call
out of the rat-trap. As for the children, no one understands them except
old maids, hunchbacks, and shepherd dogs.
Now comes the facts in the case of the Rag-Doll, the Tatterdemalion,
and the Twenty-fifth of December.
On the tenth of that month the Child of the Millionaire lost her
rag-doll. There were many servants in the Millionaire's palace on the
Hudson, and these ransacked the house and grounds, but without finding
the lost treasure. The child was a girl of five, and one of those
perverse little beasts that often wound the sensibilities of wealthy
parents by fixing their affections upon some vulgar, inexpensive toy
instead of upon diamond-studded automobiles and pony phaetons.
The Child grieved sorely and truly, a thing inexplicable to the
Millionaire, to whom the rag-doll market was about as interesting as Bay
State Gas; and to the Lady, the Child's mother, who was all form - that
is, nearly all, as you shall see.
The Child cried inconsolably, and grew hollow-eyed, knock-kneed,
spindling, and corykilverty in many other respects. The Millionaire
smiled and tapped his coffers confidently. The pick of the output of
the French and German toymakers was rushed by special delivery to the
mansion; but Rachel refused to be comforted. She was weeping for her
rag child, and was for a high protective tariff against all foreign
foolishness. Then doctors with the finest bedside manners and
stop-watches were called in. One by one they chattered futilely about
peptomanganate of iron and sea voyages and hypophosphites until their
stop-watches showed that Bill Rendered was under the wire for show or
place. Then, as men, they advised that the rag-doll be found as soon
as possible and restored to its mourning parent. The Child sniffed at
therapeutics, chewed a thumb, and wailed for her Betsy. And all this
time cablegrams were coming from Santa Claus saying that he would soon
be here and enjoining us to show a true Christian spirit and let up on
the pool-rooms and tontine policies and platoon systems long enough to
give him a welcome. Everywhere the spirit of Christmas was diffusing
itself. The banks were refusing loans, the pawn-brokers had doubled
their gang of helpers, people bumped your shins on the streets with red
sleds, Thomas and Jeremiah bubbled before you on the bars while you
waited on one foot, holly-wreaths of hospitality were hung in windows of
the stores, they who had 'em were getting their furs. You hardly knew
which was the best bet in balls - three, high, moth, or snow. It was no
time at which to lose the rag-doll or your heart.
If Doctor Watson's investigating friend had been called in to solve this
mysterious disappearance he might have observed on the Millionaire's
wall a copy of "The Vampire." That would have quickly suggested, by
induction, "A rag and a bone and a hank of hair." "Flip," a Scotch
terrier, next to the rag-doll in the Child's heart, frisked through the
halls. The hank of hair! Aha! X, the unfound quantity, represented the
rag-doll. But, the bone? Well, when dogs find bones they - Done! It were
an easy and a fruitful task to examine Flip's forefeet. Look, Watson!
Earth - dried earth between the toes. Of course, the dog - but Sherlock
was not there. Therefore it devolves. But topography and architecture
must intervene.
The Millionaire's palace occupied a lordly space. In front of it was a
lawn close-mowed as a South Ireland man's face two days after a shave.
At one side of it, and fronting on another street was a pleasaunce
trimmed to a leaf, and the garage and stables. The Scotch pup had
ravished the rag-doll from the nursery, dragged it to a corner of
the lawn, dug a hole, and buried it after the manner of careless
undertakers. There you have the mystery solved, and no checks to write
for the hypodermical wizard or fi'-pun notes to toss to the sergeant.
Then let's get down to the heart of the thing, tiresome readers - the
Christmas heart of the thing.
Fuzzy was drunk - not riotously or helplessly or loquaciously, as you or
I might get, but decently, appropriately, and inoffensively, as becomes
a gentleman down on his luck.
Fuzzy was a soldier of misfortune. The road, the haystack, the
park bench, the kitchen door, the bitter round of eleemosynary
beds-with-shower-bath-attachment, the petty pickings and ignobly
garnered largesse of great cities - these formed the chapters of his
history.
Fuzzy walked toward the river, down the street that bounded one side of
the Millionaire's house and grounds. He saw a leg of Betsy, the lost
rag-doll, protruding, like the clue to a Lilliputian murder mystery,
from its untimely grave in a corner of the fence. He dragged forth the
maltreated infant, tucked it under his arm, and went on his way crooning
a road song of his brethren that no doll that has been brought up to the
sheltered life should hear. Well for Betsy that she had no ears. And
well that she had no eyes save unseeing circles of black; for the faces
of Fuzzy and the Scotch terrier were those of brothers, and the heart of
no rag-doll could withstand twice to become the prey of such fearsome
monsters.
Though you may not know it, Grogan's saloon stands near the river and
near the foot of the street down which Fuzzy traveled. In Grogan's,
Christmas cheer was already rampant.
Fuzzy entered with his doll. He fancied that as a mummer at the feast of
Saturn he might earn a few drops from the wassail cup.
He set Betsy on the bar and addressed her loudly and humorously,
seasoning his speech with exaggerated compliments and endearments, as
one entertaining his lady friend. The loafers and bibbers around caught
the farce of it, and roared. The bartender gave Fuzzy a drink. Oh, many
of us carry rag-dolls.
"One for the lady?" suggested Fuzzy impudently, and tucked another
contribution to Art beneath his waistcoat.
He began to see possibilities in Betsy. His first-night had been a
success. Visions of a vaudeville circuit about town dawned upon him.
In a group near the stove sat "Pigeon" McCarthy, Black Riley, and
"One-ear" Mike, well and unfavorably known in the tough shoestring
district that blackened the left bank of the river. They passed a
newspaper back and forth among themselves. The item that each solid and
blunt forefinger pointed out was an advertisement headed "One Hundred
Dollars Reward." To earn it one must return the rag-doll lost, strayed,
or stolen from the Millionaire's mansion. It seemed that grief still
ravaged, unchecked, in the bosom of the too faithful Child. Flip, the
terrier, capered and shook his absurd whisker before her, powerless to
distract. She wailed for her Betsy in the faces of walking, talking,
mama-ing, and eye-closing French Mabelles and Violettes. The
advertisement was a last resort.
Black Riley came from behind the stove and approached Fuzzy in his
one-sided parabolic way.
The Christmas mummer, flushed with success, had tucked Betsy under his
arm, and was about to depart to the filling of impromptu dates
elsewhere.
"Say, 'Bo," said Black Riley to him, "where did you cop out dat doll?"
"This doll?" asked Fuzzy, touching Betsy with his forefinger to be sure
that she was the one referred to. Why, this doll was presented to me by
the Emperor of Beloochistan. I have seven hundred others in my country
home in Newport. This doll - "
"Cheese the funny business," said Riley. "You swiped it or picked it up
at de house on de hill where - but never mind dat. You want to take fifty
cents for de rags, and take it quick. Me brother's kid at home might be
wantin' to play wid it. Hey - what?"
He produced the coin.
Fuzzy laughed a gurgling, insolent, alcoholic laugh in his face. Go to
the office of Sarah Bernhardt's manager and propose to him that she be
released from a night's performance to entertain the Tackytown Lyceum
and Literary Coterie. You will hear the duplicate of Fuzzy's laugh.
Black Riley gauged Fuzzy quickly with his blueberry eye as a wrestler
does. His hand was itching to play the Roman and wrest the rag Sabine
from the extemporaneous merry-andrew who was entertaining an angel
unaware. But he refrained. Fuzzy was fat and solid and big. Three inches
of well-nourished corporeity, defended from the winter winds by dingy
linen, intervened between his vest and trousers. Countless small,
circular wrinkles running around his coat-sleeves and knees guaranteed
the quality of his bone and muscle. His small, blue eyes, bathed in the
moisture of altruism and wooziness, looked upon you kindly, yet without
abashment. He was whiskerly, whiskyly, fleshily formidable. So, Black
Riley temporized.
"Wot'll you take for it, den?" he asked.
"Money," said Fuzzy, with husky firmness, "cannot buy her."
He was intoxicated with the artist's first sweet cup of attainment.
To set a faded-blue, earth-stained rag-doll on a bar, to hold mimic
converse with it, and to find his heart leaping with the sense of
plaudits earned and his throat scorching with free libations poured in
his honor - could base coin buy him from such achievements? You will
perceive that Fuzzy had the temperament.
Fuzzy walked out with the gait of a trained sea-lion in search of other
cafes to conquer.
Though the dusk of twilight was hardly yet apparent, lights were
beginning to spangle the city like pop-corn bursting in a deep skillet.
Christmas Eve, impatiently expected, was peeping over the brink of the
hour. Millions had prepared for its celebration. Towns would be painted
red. You, yourself, have heard the horns and dodged the capers of the
Saturnalians.
"Pigeon" McCarthy, Black Riley, and "One-ear" Mike held a hasty converse
outside Grogan's. They were narrow-chested, pallid striplings, not
fighters in the open, but more dangerous in their ways of warfare than
the most terrible of Turks. Fuzzy, in a pitched battle, could have eaten
the three of them. In a go-as-you-please encounter he was already
doomed.
They overtook him just as he and Betsy were entering Costigan's Casino.
They deflected him, and shoved the newspaper under his nose. Fuzzy could
read - and more.
"Boys," said he, "you are certainly damn true friends. Give me a week to
think it over."
The soul of a real artist is quenched with difficulty.
The boys carefully pointed out to him that advertisements were soulless,
and that the deficiencies of the day might not be supplied by the
morrow.
"A cool hundred," said Fuzzy thoughtfully and mushily.
"Boys," said he, "you are true friends. I'll go up and claim the reward.
The show business is not what it used to be."
Night was falling more surely. The three tagged at his sides to the foot
of the rise on which stood the Millionaire's house. There Fuzzy turned
upon them acrimoniously.
"You are a pack of putty-faced beagle-hounds," he roared. "Go away."
They went away - a little way.
In "Pigeon" McCarthy's pocket was a section of one-inch gas-pipe eight
inches long. In one end of it and in the middle of it was a lead plug.
One-half of it was packed tight with solder. Black Riley carried a
slung-shot, being a conventional thug. "One-ear" Mike relied upon a
pair of brass knucks - an heirloom in the family.
"Why fetch and carry," said Black Riley, "when some one will do it for
ye? Let him bring it out to us. Hey - what?"
"We can chuck him in the river," said "Pigeon" McCarthy, "with a stone
tied to his feet."
"Youse guys make me tired," said "One-ear" Mike sadly. "Ain't progress
ever appealed to none of yez? Sprinkle a little gasoline on 'im, and
drop 'im on the Drive - well?"
Fuzzy entered the Millionaire's gate and zigzagged toward the softly
glowing entrance of the mansion. The three goblins came up to the gate
and lingered - one on each side of it, one beyond the roadway. They
fingered their cold metal and leather, confident.
Fuzzy rang the door-bell, smiling foolishly and dreamily. An atavistic
instinct prompted him to reach for the button of his right glove. But he
wore no gloves; so his left hand dropped, embarrassed.
The particular menial whose duty it was to open doors to silks and laces
shied at first sight of Fuzzy. But a second glance took in his passport,
his card of admission, his surety of welcome - the lost rag-doll of the
daughter of the house dangling under his arm.
Fuzzy was admitted into a great hall, dim with the glow from unseen
lights. The hireling went away and returned with a maid and the Child.
The doll was restored to the mourning one. She clasped her lost darling
to her breast; and then, with the inordinate selfishness and candor of
childhood, stamped her foot and whined hatred and fear of the odious
being who had rescued her from the depths of sorrow and despair. Fuzzy
wriggled himself into an ingratiatory attitude and essayed the idiotic
smile and blattering small talk that is supposed to charm the budding
intellect of the young. The Child bawled, and was dragged away, hugging
her Betsy close.
There came the Secretary, pale, poised, polished, gliding in pumps, and
worshipping pomp and ceremony. He counted out into Fuzzy's hand ten
ten-dollar bills; then dropped his eye upon the door, transferred it to
James, its custodian, indicated the obnoxious earner of the reward with
the other, and allowed his pumps to waft him away to secretarial
regions.
James gathered Fuzzy with his own commanding optic and swept him as far
as the front door.
When the money touched fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take
to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder
of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It - and, oh, what an
elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the
foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold,
drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey
that he craved. The fairy doll had waved a wand with her rag-stuffed
hand; and now wherever he might go the enchanted palaces with shining
foot-rests and magic red fluids in gleaming glassware would be open to
him.
He followed James to the door.
He paused there as the flunky drew open the great mahogany portal for
him to pass into the vestibule.
Beyond the wrought-iron gates in the dark highway Black Riley and his
two pals casually strolled, fingering under their coats the inevitably
fatal weapons that were to make the reward of the rag-doll theirs.
Fuzzy stopped at the Millionaire's door and bethought himself. Like
little sprigs of mistletoe on a dead tree, certain living green thoughts
and memories began to decorate his confused mind. He was quite drunk,
mind you, and the present was beginning to fade. Those wreaths and
festoons of holly with their scarlet berries making the great hall
gay - where had he seen such things before? Somewhere he had known
polished floors and odors of fresh flowers in winter, and - and some one
was singing a song in the house that he thought he had heard before.
Some one singing and playing a harp. Of course, it was Christmas - Fuzzy
though he must have been pretty drunk to have overlooked that.
And then he went out of the present, and there came back to him out of
some impossible, vanished, and irrevocable past a little, pure-white,
transient, forgotten ghost - the spirit of _noblesse oblige_. Upon a
gentleman certain things devolve.
James opened the outer door. A stream of light went down the graveled
walk to the iron gate. Black Riley, McCarthy, and "One-ear" Mike saw,
and carelessly drew their sinister cordon closer about the gate.
With a more imperious gesture than James's master had ever used or could
ever use, Fuzzy compelled the menial to close the door. Upon a gentleman
certain things devolve. Especially at the Christmas season.
"It is cust - customary," he said to James, the flustered, "when a
gentleman calls on Christmas Eve to pass the compliments of the season
with the lady of the house. You und'stand? I shall not move shtep till
I pass compl'ments season with lady the house. Und'stand?"
There was an argument. James lost. Fuzzy raised his voice and sent it
through the house unpleasantly. I did not say he was a gentleman. He was
simply a tramp being visited by a ghost.
A sterling silver bell rang. James went back to answer it, leaving Fuzzy
in the hall. James explained somewhere to some one.
Then he came and conducted Fuzzy into the library.
The lady entered a moment later. She was more beautiful and holy than
any picture that Fuzzy had seen. She smiled, and said something about a
doll. Fuzzy didn't understand that; he remembered nothing about a doll.
A footman brought in two small glasses of sparkling wine on a stamped
sterling-silver waiter. The Lady took one. The other was handed to
Fuzzy.
As his fingers closed on the slender glass stem his disabilities dropped
from him for one brief moment. He straightened himself; and Time, so
disobliging to most of us, turned backward to accommodate Fuzzy.
Forgotten Christmas ghosts whiter than the false beards of the most
opulent Kris Kringle were rising in the fumes of Grogan's whisky. What
had the Millionaire's mansion to do with a long, wainscoted Virginia
hall, where the riders were grouped around a silver punch-bowl, drinking
the ancient toast of the House? And why should the patter of the cab
horses' hoofs on the frozen street be in any wise related to the sound
of the saddled hunters stamping under the shelter of the west veranda?
And what had Fuzzy to do with any of it?
The Lady, looking at him over her glass, let her condescending smile
fade away like a false dawn. Her eyes turned serious. She saw something
beneath the rags and Scotch terrier whiskers that she did not
understand. But it did not matter.
Fuzzy lifted his glass and smiled vacantly.
"P-pardon, lady," he said, "but couldn't leave without exchangin'
comp'ments sheason with lady th' house. 'Gainst princ'ples gen'leman do
sho."
And then he began the ancient salutation that was a tradition in the
House when men wore lace ruffles and powder.
"The blessings of another year - "
Fuzzy's memory failed him. The Lady prompted:
" - Be upon this hearth."
" - The guest - " stammered Fuzzy.
" - And upon her who - " continued the Lady, with a leading smile.
"Oh, cut it out," said Fuzzy, ill-manneredly. "I can't remember. Drink
hearty."
Fuzzy had shot his arrow. They drank. The Lady smiled again the smile of
her caste. James enveloped and re-conducted him toward the front door.
The harp music still softly drifted through the house.
Outside, Black Riley breathed on his cold hands and hugged the gate.
"I wonder," said the Lady to herself, musing, "who - but there were so
many who came. I wonder whether memory is a curse or a blessing to them
after they have fallen so low."
Fuzzy and his escort were nearly at the door. The Lady called: "James!"
James stalked back obsequiously, leaving Fuzzy waiting unsteadily, with
his brief spark of the divine fire gone.
Outside, Black Riley stamped his cold feet and got a firmer grip on his
section of gas-pipe.
"You will conduct this gentleman," said the lady, "Downstairs. Then tell
Louis to get out the Mercedes and take him to whatever place he wishes
to go."
XVII
A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA
The great city of Bagdad-on-the-Subway is caliph-ridden. Its palaces,
bazaars, khans, and byways are thronged with Al Rashids in divers
disguises, seeking diversion and victims for their unbridled generosity.
You can scarcely find a poor beggar whom they are willing to let enjoy
his spoils unsuccored, nor a wrecked unfortunate upon whom they will not
reshower the means of fresh misfortune. You will hardly find anywhere a
hungry one who has not had the opportunity to tighten his belt in gift
libraries, nor a poor pundit who has not blushed at the holiday basket
of celery-crowned turkey forced resoundingly through his door by the
eleemosynary press.
So then, fearfully through the Harun-haunted streets creep the one-eyed
calenders, the Little Hunchback and the Barber's Sixth Brother, hoping
to escape the ministrations of the roving horde of caliphoid sultans.
Entertainment for many Arabian nights might be had from the histories
of those who have escaped the largesse of the army of Commanders of the
Faithful. Until dawn you might sit on the enchanted rug and listen to
such stories as are told of the powerful genie Roc-Ef-El-Er who sent the
Forty Thieves to soak up the oil plant of Ali Baba; of the good Caliph
Kar-Neg-Ghe, who gave away palaces; of the Seven Voyages of Sailbad, the
Sinner, who frequented wooden excursion steamers among the islands; of
the Fisherman and the Bottle; of the Barmecides' Boarding house; of
Aladdin's rise to wealth by means of his Wonderful Gas-meter.
But now, there being ten sultans to one Sheherazade, she is held too
valuable to be in fear of the bowstring. In consequence the art of
narrative languishes. And, as the lesser caliphs are hunting the happy
poor and the resigned unfortunate from cover to cover in order to heap
upon them strange mercies and mysterious benefits, too often comes the
report from Arabian headquarters that the captive refused "to talk."
This reticence, then, in the actors who perform the sad comedies of
their philanthropy-scourged world, must, in a degree, account for the
shortcomings of this painfully gleaned tale, which shall be called
THE STORY OF THE CALIPH WHO ALLEVIATED HIS CONSCIENCE
Old Jacob Spraggins mixed for himself some Scotch and lithia water
at his $1,200 oak sideboard. Inspiration must have resulted from its
imbibition, for immediately afterward he struck the quartered oak
soundly with his fist and shouted to the empty dining room:
"By the coke ovens of hell, it must be that ten thousand dollars! If
I can get that squared, it'll do the trick."
Thus, by the commonest artifice of the trade, having gained your
interest, the action of the story will now be suspended, leaving you
grumpily to consider a sort of dull biography beginning fifteen years
before.
When old Jacob was young Jacob he was a breaker boy in a Pennsylvania
coal mine. I don't know what a breaker boy is; but his occupation seems
to be standing by a coal dump with a wan look and a dinner-pail to have
his picture taken for magazine articles. Anyhow, Jacob was one. But,
instead of dying of overwork at nine, and leaving his helpless parents
and brothers at the mercy of the union strikers' reserve fund, he
hitched up his galluses, put a dollar or two in a side proposition now
and then, and at forty-five was worth $20,000,000.
There now! it's over. Hardly had time to yawn, did you? I've seen
biographies that - but let us dissemble.
I want you to consider Jacob Spraggins, Esq., after he had arrived at
the seventh stage of his career. The stages meant are, first, humble
origin; second, deserved promotion; third, stockholder; fourth,
capitalist; fifth, trust magnate; sixth, rich malefactor; seventh,
caliph; eighth, _x_. The eighth stage shall be left to the higher
mathematics.
At fifty-five Jacob retired from active business. The income of a
czar was still rolling in on him from coal, iron, real estate, oil,
railroads, manufactories, and corporations, but none of it touched
Jacob's hands in a raw state. It was a sterilized increment, carefully
cleaned and dusted and fumigated until it arrived at its ultimate stage
of untainted, spotless checks in the white fingers of his private
secretary. Jacob built a three-million-dollar palace on a corner lot
fronting on Nabob Avenue, city of New Bagdad, and began to feel the
mantle of the late H. A. Rashid descending upon him. Eventually Jacob
slipped the mantle under his collar, tied it in a neat four-in-hand, and
became a licensed harrier of our Mesopotamian proletariat.
When a man's income becomes so large that the butcher actually sends
him the kind of steak he orders, he begins to think about his soul's
salvation. Now, the various stages or classes of rich men must not be
forgotten. The capitalist can tell you to a dollar the amount of his
wealth. The trust magnate "estimates" it. The rich malefactor hands you
a cigar and denies that he has bought the P. D. & Q. The caliph merely
smiles and talks about Hammerstein and the musical lasses. There is a
record of tremendous altercation at breakfast in a "Where-to-Dine-Well"
tavern between a magnate and his wife, the rift within the loot being
that the wife calculated their fortune at a figure $3,000,000 higher
than did her future _divorce_. Oh, well, I, myself, heard a similar
quarrel between a man and his wife because he found fifty cents less in
his pockets than he thought he had. After all, we are all human - Count
Tolstoi, R. Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us.
Don't lose heart because the story seems to be degenerating into a sort
of moral essay for intellectual readers.
There will be dialogue and stage business pretty soon.
When Jacob first began to compare the eyes of needles with the camels
in the Zoo he decided upon organized charity. He had his secretary send
a check for one million to the Universal Benevolent Association of the
Globe. You may have looked down through a grating in front of a decayed
warehouse for a nickel that you had dropped through. But that is neither
here nor there. The Association acknowledged receipt of his favor of
the 24th ult. with enclosure as stated. Separated by a double line, but
still mighty close to the matter under the caption of "Oddities of the
Day's News" in an evening paper, Jacob Spraggins read that one "Jasper
Spargyous" had "donated $100,000 to the U. B. A. of G." A camel may have
a stomach for each day in the week; but I dare not venture to accord him
whiskers, for fear of the Great Displeasure at Washington; but if he
have whiskers, surely not one of them will seem to have been inserted in
the eye of a needle by that effort of that rich man to enter the K. of
H. The right is reserved to reject any and all bids; signed, S. Peter,
secretary and gatekeeper.
Next, Jacob selected the best endowed college he could scare up and
presented it with a $200,000 laboratory. The college did not maintain
a scientific course, but it accepted the money and built an elaborate
lavatory instead, which was no diversion of funds so far as Jacob ever
discovered.
The faculty met and invited Jacob to come over and take his A B C
degree. Before sending the invitation they smiled, cut out the C, added
the proper punctuation marks, and all was well.
While walking on the campus before being capped and gowned, Jacob saw
two professors strolling nearby. Their voices, long adapted to indoor
acoustics, undesignedly reached his ear.
"There goes the latest _chevalier d'industrie_," said one of them, "to
buy a sleeping powder from us. He gets his degree to-morrow."
"_In foro conscientiae_," said the other. "Let's 'eave 'arf a brick at
'im."
Jacob ignored the Latin, but the brick pleasantry was not too hard for
him. There was no mandragora in the honorary draught of learning that he
had bought. That was before the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act.
Jacob wearied of philanthropy on a large scale.
"If I could see folks made happier," he said to himself - "If I could see
'em myself and hear 'em express their gratitude for what I done for 'em
it would make me feel better. This donatin' funds to institutions and
societies is about as satisfactory as dropping money into a broken slot
machine."
So Jacob followed his nose, which led him through unswept streets to the
homes of the poorest.
"The very thing!" said Jacob. "I will charter two river steamboats, pack
them full of these unfortunate children and - say ten thousand dolls and
drums and a thousand freezers of ice cream, and give them a delightful
outing up the Sound. The sea breezes on that trip ought to blow the
taint off some of this money that keeps coming in faster than I can work
it off my mind."
Jacob must have leaked some of his benevolent intentions, for an immense
person with a bald face and a mouth that looked as if it ought to have a
"Drop Letters Here" sign over it hooked a finger around him and set him
in a space between a barber's pole and a stack of ash cans. Words came
out of the post-office slit - smooth, husky words with gloves on 'em, but
sounding as if they might turn to bare knuckles any moment.
"Say, Sport, do you know where you are at? Well, dis is Mike O'Grady's
district you're buttin' into - see? Mike's got de stomach-ache privilege
for every kid in dis neighborhood - see? And if dere's any picnics or red
balloons to be dealt out here, Mike's money pays for 'em - see? Don't