“An' phwat did this Dinnis do thin?” asked McDermott.
“He attimpted to assault the person that kissed him,” said O'Toole. “Maybe 'twas the King av Italy. 'Twas in all the papers at th' time. Some wan told me ye were in France y'rsilf, Paddy.”
“I was that,” said McDermott. “I wint wid mules.”
“Did ye see annything av the war?”
“I did not,” said McDermott. “Divil a bit of ut, barrin' a lot o' racket an' a big roarin' divil av a stame-boiler thing that come bustin' through th' air an' took away the mules that was me passport. But I come near seein' some av ut, wan time.”
“An' how was it that ye come near it, an' missed it?” inquired Tim.
“I wint to slape,” said McDermott. “The war was slapin', an' I laid m'silf down b' the side av ut an' took a nap, too. Later, I woke up in the hospital, some wan havin' stipped on me whilst I was slapin', or somethin'. They was afther keep-in' me in th' hospital indefinite, an' I slipped away wan mornin', dodgin' the orderlies an' nurses, or I might have been there yet eatin' jelly an' gettin' me face washed f'r me. An' afther I got back here I thried to jine that war, but th' Amurrican Army w'u'd not have me.”
“And phwy not?”
“Because av me fut.”
“And how did ye hurt y'r fut?”
“Divil a bit do I know how,” said McDermott. “I'm tellin' ye 'twas done whilst I was aslape. I remimber gettin' soused in wan av thim Frinch barrooms, an' I w'u'd think it was a mule stipped on me fut whin I was slapin' off me souse, excipt that thim mules was gone before I got me souse.”
“An' ye saw naught av the war?” Tim was distinctly disappointed.
“But little of ut, but little of ut,” said McDermott. “But, Timmy,—wan thing I did whilst I was in France.”
“An' phwat was that?”
“I avened up an ould grudge,” said McDermott. He put away a second drink, rolling it over his tongue with satisfaction. “Do ye mind that Goostave Schmidt that used to kape bar acrost the strate? Ye do! Do ye mind th' time he hit me wid th' bung starter? Ye do!”
“Phwat thin?”
“Well, thin,” said McDermott, “I met up wid him ag'in in wan av thim Frinch barrooms. I do not remimber phwat he said to me nor phwat I said to him, for I was soused, Timmy. But wan word led to another, an' I give him as good as he sint, an' 'twas wid a bung starter, too. I brung it back wid me as a sooveneer av me travels in France.”
And, undoing his brown paper bundle, McDermott fished forth from among his change of socks and shirts and underwear the bung starter of the Hôtel Fauçon and laid it upon the bar for his friend's inspection. Something else in the bundle caught O'Toole's eye.
“An' phwat is that thing ye have there?” asked Tim.
“Divil a bit do I know phwat,” said McDermott, picking the article up and tossing it carelessly upon the bar. “'Twas layin' by me cot in the hospital, along wid m' bung starter an' me clothes whin I come to m'silf, an' whin I made me sneak from that place I brung it along.”
It was theCroix de Guerre.
Looney had but one object in life, one thought, one conscious motive of existence—to find Slim again. After he found Slim, things would be different, things would be better, somehow. Just how, Looney did not know.
Looney did not know much, anyhow. Likely he would never have known much, in the most favorable circumstances. And the circumstances under which he had passed his life were scarcely conducive to mental growth. He could remember, vaguely, that he had not always been called Looney Hogan. There had been a time when he was called Kid Hogan. Something had happened inside his head one day, and then there had come a period of which he remembered nothing at all; after that, when he could remember again, he was not Kid any more, but Looney. Perhaps some one had hit him on the head. People were always hitting him, before he knew Slim. And now that Slim was gone, people were always hitting him again. When he was with Slim, Slim had not let people hit him—often. So he must find Slim again; Slim, who was the only God he had ever known.
In the course of time he became known, in his own queer world, from Baltimore to Seattle, from Los Angeles to Boston, as Slim's Lost Mutt, or as Looney the Mutt. Looney did not resent being called a dog, particularly, but he never called himself “The Mutt”; he stuck to “Looney”; Slim had called him Looney, and Looney must, therefore, be right.
The humors of Looney's world are not, uniformly, kindly humors. Giving Looney the Mutt a “bum steer” as to Slim's whereabouts was considered a legitimate jest.
“Youse ain't seen Slim Matchett anywheres?” he would ask of hobo or wobbly, working stiff or yeggman, his faded pale-blue eyes peering from his weather-worn face with the same anxious intensity, the same eager hope, as if he had not asked the question ten thousand times before.
And the other wanderer, if he were one that knew of Looney the Mutt and Looney's quest would answer, like as not:
“Slimmy de Match? Uh-huh! I seen Slim last mont' in Chi. He's lookin' fer youse, Looney.” One day the Burlington Crip, who lacked a hand, and who looked so mean that it was of common report that he had got sore at himself and bitten it off, varied the reply a bit by saying:
“I seen Slim las' week, an' he says: 'Where t' hell's dat kid o' mine? Youse ain't seen nuttin' o' dat kid o' mine, has you, Crip? Dat kid o' mine give me de slip, Crip. He lammistered, and I ain't seen him since. If youse gets yer lamps on dat kid o' mine, Crip, give him a wallop on his mush fer me, an' tell him to come an' find me an' I'm gonna give him another one.'”
Looney stared and wondered and grieved. It hurt him especially that Slim should think that he, Looney, had run away from Slim; he agonized anew that he could not tell Slim at once that such was not the truth. And he wondered and grieved at the change that must have taken place in Slim, who now promised him “a wallop on the mush.” For Slim had never struck him. It was Slim who had always kept other people from striking him. It was Slim who had, upon occasion, struck other people to protect him—once, in a hangout among the lakeside sand dunes south of Chicago, Slim had knifed a man who had, by way of jovial byplay to enliven a dull afternoon, flung Looney into the fire.
It never occurred to Looney to doubt, entirely, these bearers of misinformation. He was hunting Slim, and of course, he thought, Slim was hunting Looney. His nature was all credulity. Such mind as the boy possessed—he was somewhere in his twenties, but had the physique of a boy—was saturated with belief in Slim, with faith in Slim, and he thought that all the world must admire Slim. He did not see why any one should tell lies that might increase Slim's difficulties, or his own.
There was a big red star he used to look at nights, when he slept in the open, and because it seemed to him bigger and better and more splendid than any of the other stars he took to calling it Slim's star. It was a cocky, confident-looking star; it looked as if it would know how to take care of itself, and Slim had been like that. It looked good-natured, too, and Slim had been that way. When Looney had rustled the scoffin's for Slim, Slim had always let him have some of the best chow—or almost always. And he used to talk to that star about Slim when he was alone. It seemed sympathetic. And although he believed the hoboes were telling him the truth when they said that they had seen Slim, it was apparent even to his intelligence that they had no real sympathy with his quest.
Once he did find a certain sympathy, if no great understanding. He worked a week, one Spring, for a farmer in Indiana. The farmer wished to keep him, for that Summer at least, for Looney was docile, willing enough, and had a natural, unconscious tact with the work-horses. Looney was never afraid of animals, and they were never afraid of him. Dogs took to him, and the instant liking of dogs had often stood him in good stead in his profession.
“Why won't you stay?” asked the farmer.
“Slim's lookin' fer me, somewheres,” said Looney. And he told the farmer about Slim. The farmer, having perceived Looney's mental twilight, and feeling kindly toward the creature, advanced an argument that he thought might hold him.
“Slim is just as likely to find you if you stay in one place, as if you go travelin' all over the country,” he said.
“Huh-uh,” said Looney. “He ain't, Mister. It's this way, Mister: every time I stop long any-, wheres, Slim, he passes me by.”
And then he continued, after a pause: “Slim, he was always good to me, Mister. I kinda want to be the one that finds Slim, instead of just stayin' still an' waitin' to be found.”
They were standing in the dusk by the barn, and the early stars were out. Looney told him about Slim's star.
“I want to be the guy that does the findin',” went on Looney presently, “because I was the guy that done the losin'. One night they was five or six of us layin' under a lot of railroad ties we had propped up against a fence to keep the weather off, an' we figgered on hoppin' a train fer Chi that night. Well, the train comes along, but I'm asleep. See? The rest of t' gang gits into an empty in de dark, an' I don't wake up. I s'pose Slim he t'inks I'm wit' t' gang, but I don't wake up under them ties till mornin'. I went to Chi soon's I could, but I ain't never glommed him since, Mister. I didn't find him dere. An' dat's t' way I lost Slim, Mister.”
“Maybe,” suggested the farmer, “he is dead.”
“Nit,” said Looney. “He ain't dead. If Slim was croaked or anything, I'd be wised up to it. Look at that there star. Dat is Slim's star, like I told youse. If Slim had been bumped off, or anything, Mister, that star wouldn't be shinin' that way, Mister.”
And he went back to his own world—his world—which was a succession of freight and cattle cars, ruinous sheds and shelters in dubious suburbs near to railroad sidings, police stations, workhouses, jails, city missions, transient hangouts in bedraggled clumps of wood, improvised shacks, shared with others of his kind in vacant lots in sooty industrial towns, chance bivouacs amidst lumber piles and under dripping water tanks, lucky infrequent lodgings in slum hotels that used to charge fifteen cents for a bed and now charge a quarter, golden moments in vile barrooms and blind tigers, occasional orgies in quarries or gravel pits or abandoned tin-roofed tool houses, uneasy, loiterings and interrupted slumbers in urban parks and the squares or outskirts of villages. Sometimes he worked, as he had with the Indiana farmer, with the wheat harvesters of the Northwest, or the snow shovelers of the metropoli, or the fruit gatherers of California; but more often he loafed, and rustled grub and small coin from the charitably disposed.
It all seemed the natural way of life to Looney. He could not remember anything else. He viewed the people of the world who did not live so, and whom he saw to be the majority, as strange, unaccountable beings whom he could never hope to understand; he vaguely perceived that they were stronger than he and his ever-hiking clan, and he knew that they might do unpleasant things to him with their laws and their courts and their strength, but he bore them no rancor, unlike many of his associates.
He had no theories about work or idleness; he accepted either as it came; he had little conscious thought about anything, except finding Slim again. And one thing worried him: Slim, who was supposed to be looking for Looney, even as Looney was looking for Slim, left no mark. He was forever looking for it, searching for the traces of Slim's knife—a name, a date, a destination, a message bidding Looney to follow or to wait—on freight sheds and water tanks, and known and charted telegraph poles and the tool houses of construction gangs. But Slim, always just ahead of him, as he thought, continually returning and passing him, ever receding in the distance, left no mark, no wanderer's pateran, behind. Looney left his own marks everywhere, but, strangely enough, it seemed that Slim never saw them. Looney remembered that one time when he and Slim were together Slim had wished to meet and confer with the Burlington Crip, and had left word to that effect, penciled and carved and sown by the speech of the mouth, from the Barbary Coast to the Erie Basin. And the Burlington Crip, with his snaggle teeth and his stump where a hand had been, had joined them on the Brooklyn waterfront within two months. It had been simple, and Looney wondered why Slim omitted this easy method of communication. Perhaps Slim was using it and Looney was not finding the marks. He knew himself for stupid, and set his failure down to that, never to neglect on Slim's part. For Slim was Slim, and Slim could do no wrong.
His habit of searching for some scratched or written word of Slim's became known to his whole section of the underworld, and furnished material for an elaboration of the standing jest at his expense. When ennui descended upon some chance gathering in one of the transient hangouts—caravanserai as familiar to the loose-foot, casual guests, from coast to coast, as was ever the Blackstone in Chicago or the Biltmore in New York to those who read this simple history—it was customary for some wag to say:
“Looney, I seen a mark that looked like Slim's mark on a shed down in Alexandria, Virginny, right by where the Long Bridge starts over to Washington.”
And it might be that Looney would start at once, without a word, for Alexandria. Therein lay the cream of this subtle witticism, for its perpetrators—in Looney's swift departures.
Or it might be that Looney would sit and ponder, his washed-out eyes interrogating the speaker in a puzzled fashion, but never doubting. And then the jester would say, perhaps: “Why don't you get a move onto you, Looney? You're gonna miss Slim again.”
And Looney would answer, perchance: “Slim, he ain't there now. The' was one of them wobblies' bump-off men sayin' he seen Slim in Tacoma two weeks ago, an' Slim was headin' this way. I'm gonna wait fer him a while longer.”
But he never waited long. He could never make himself. As he had told the Indiana farmer, he was afraid to wait long. It was the Burlington Crip who had made him afraid to do that. The Crip had told him one time: “Looney, Slim went through here last night, while youse was asleep over on that lumber pile. I forgets youse is lookin' fer him or I'd a tipped him off youse was here.”
Slim had been within a hundred yards of him, and he had been asleep and had never known! What would Slim think, if he knew that? So thereafter he was continually tortured by the fancy that Slim might be passing him in the night; or that Slim, while he himself was riding the rods underneath a railway car, might be on the blind baggage of that very train, and would hop off first and be missed again. From day to day he became more muddled and perplexed trying to decide whether it would be better to choose this route or that, whether it would be better to stop here a week, or go yonder with all possible speed. And from month to month he developed more and more the questing, peering, wavering manner of the lost dog that seeks its master.
Looney was always welcome In the hang-outs of the wandering underworld. Not only was he a source of diversion, a convenient butt, but few could rustle grub so successfully. His meager frame and his wistfulness, his evident feebleness of intellect, drew alms from the solvent population, and Looney faithfully brought his takings to the hangouts and was dispatched again for more. Servant and butt he was to such lords as the Burlington Crip and the English Basher. But he did not mind so long as he was not physically maltreated—as he often was. The occasional crimes of his associates, the occasional connection of some of them with industrial warfare here and there, Looney sometimes participated in; but he never understood. If he were told to do so and so, for the most part he did it. If he were asked to do too much, or was beaten up for his stupidity, and he was always stupid, he quietly slunk away at his first opportunity.
The English Basher was a red-faced savage with fists as hard and rough as tarred rope; and he conceived the idea that Looney should be his kid, and wait upon him, even as he had been Slim's kid. Looney, afraid of the man, for a time seemed to acquiesce. But the Basher had reckoned without Looney's faculty for blundering.
He dispatched Looney one day, ostensibly to bum a handout, but in reality to get the lay of a certain house in a suburb near Cincinnati, which the Basher meditated cracking the next convenient night. Looney returned with the food but without the information. He had been willing enough, for he admired yeggmen and all their ways and works, and was withheld by no moral considerations from anything he was asked to do; but he had bungled. He had been in the kitchen, he had eaten his own scoffin's there, he had talked with the cook for twenty minutes, he had even brought up from the cellar a scuttle of coal for the kitchen range to save the cook's back, but he actually knew less about that house, its plan, its fastenings, its doors and basement windows than the Basher had been able to gather with a single stroke of the eye as he loitered down the street.
“Cripes! Whadje chin about with the kitchen mechanic all dat time, you?” demanded the Basher.
“She was stringin' me along,” said Looney humbly, “an' I spilled to her about me an' Slim.”
“Slim! ——— ———— yer, I've a mind t' croak yer!” cried the Basher.
And he nearly did it, knocking the boy down repeatedly, till finally Looney lay still upon the ground.
“'S'elp me,” said the Basher, “I've a mind to give yer m' boots! You get up an' beat it! An' if I ever gets my lamps onto you again Iwillcroak you, by Gawd, an' no mistake!”
Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then, spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: “If Slimmy was here, he'd see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a yegg oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!”
It was only a week or two after he left the Basher that Looney's faith in Slim's star was tested again. Half a dozen of the brotherhood were gathered about a fire in a gravel pit in northern Illinois, swapping yarns and experiences and making merry. It was a tremendous fire, and lighted up the hollow as if it were the entrance to Gehenna, flinging the grotesque shadows of the men against the overhanging embankments, and causing the inhabitants of a village a mile or so away to wonder what farmer's haystack was aflame. The tramps were wasting five times the wood they needed, after their fashion. They had eaten to repletion, and they were wasting the left-over food from their evening gorge; they had booze; they were smoking; they felt, for the hour, at peace with the world.
“Wot everdidbecome of dat Slim?” asked the Burlington Crip, who happened to be of the party, looking speculatively at Looney. Even the sinister Crip, for the nonce, was not toting with him his usual mordant grouch.
Looney was tending the fire, while he listened to tales of the spacious days of the great Johnny Yegg himself, and other Titans of the road who have now assumed the state of legendary heroes; and he was, as usual, saying nothing.
“Slim? Slimmy t' Match wot Looney here's been tailin' after fer so long?” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was bumped off in Paterson t'ree or four years ago.”
“He wasn't neither,” spoke up Looney. “Tex, here, seen him in Chi last mont'.”
And, indeed, Tex had told Looney so. But now, thus directly appealed to, Tex answered nothing. And for the first time Looney began to get the vague suspicion that these, his friends, might have trifled with him before. Certainly they were serious now. He looked around the sprawled circle and sensed that their manner was somehow different from the attitude with which they had usually discussed his quest for Slim.
“Bumped off?” said Tex. “How?”
“A wobbly done it,” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was scabbin'. Strike-breakin'. And they was some wobblies there helpin' on the strike. See? An' this wobbly bumps Slim off.”
“He didn't neither,” said Looney again.
“T' hell he didn't? He said he did,” said the San Diego Kid pacifically. “Is a guy gonna say he's bumped off a guy unless he's bumped him off?”
Looney, somewhat shaken, withdrew from the group to seek comfort from the constellations; and particularly from that big, red star, the apparent king of stars, which he had come to think of as Slim's star, and vaguely, as Slim's mascot. It was brighter and redder than ever that night, Looney thought, and sitting on a discarded railroad tie and staring at the planet, Looney gradually recovered his faith.
“He ain't neither been bumped off, Slim ain't,” he muttered, “an' I'm gonna find him yet.”
And Slim had not been bumped off, however sincere the San Diego Kid may have been in his belief.
It was some months later that Looney did find him in a little city in Pennsylvania—or found some one that looked like him.
Looney had dropped from a freight train early in the morning, had rustled himself some grub, had eaten two good meals and had part of a day's sleep, and now, just as dark was coming on, and the street lamps were being lighted, was loafing aimlessly on the platform of the railway depot. He purposed to take a train south that night, when it became so dark that he could crawl into an empty in the yards without too much danger of being seen and he was merely putting in the time until full night came on.
While he was standing idly so, an automobile drew up beside the station platform and an elegantly dressed and slender man of about thirty got out. He assisted from the car a woman and a small child, and they made toward the door of the waiting room.
“Slim!” cried Looney, rushing forward.
For this was Slim—it must be Slim—it was Slimmy the Match in every feature—and yet, the car!—the clothes—the woman—the baby—the prosperity——-Wasit Slim?
“Slim!” cried Looney again, his heart leaping in his meager body. “It's me, Slim! It's Looney! I've got youse again, Slim! Gawd! I've found yuh!”
The woman hastily snatched the child up into her arms, with a suppressed scream, and recoiled.
The man made no sound, but he, too, drew back a step, not seeming to see Looney's outstretched hand.
But he did see it—he saw more than that. He saw, as if they were flashed before him at lightning speed upon a cinema screen, a dozen scenes of a wild and reckless and indigent youth that he had thought was dead forever; he saw these roughneck years suddenly leap alive and stalk toward him again, toward him and his; he saw his later years of industry, his hard-won success, his position so strenuously battled for, his respectability that was become so dear to him, all his house of life so laboriously builded, crumbling before the touch of this torn and grotesque outcast that confronted and claimed him, this wavering, dusty lunatic whom he dimly remembered. If his wife knew—if her people knew—if the business men of this town were to know——
He shuddered and turned sick, and then with a sudden recovery he took his child from its mother and guided her before him into the waiting room.
Looney watched them enter, in silence. He stood dazed for a moment, and then he slowly turned and walked down the railroad track beyond the limits of the town. There, upon a spot of turf beside the right of way, he threw himself upon his face and sobbed and moaned, as a broken-hearted child sobs, as a dog moans upon its master's grave.
But after a while he looked up. Slim's star was looking down at him, red and confident and heartening as ever. He gazed at it a long time, and then an idea took form in his ruined brain and he said aloud:
“Now, dat wasn'treallySlim! I been lookin' fer Slim so long I t'ink I see Slim where he ain't! Dat was jus' some guy wot looks like Slimmy. Slimmy, he wouldn't never of gone back on an old pal like dat!”
The rumble of an approaching train caught his ears. He got to his feet and prepared to board it.
“Slim, he's waitin' fer me somewheres,” he told the star. “I may be kinda looney about some t'ings, but I knows Slim, an' dey ain't no yellow streak nowheres in Slim!”
And with unshaken loyalty Looney the Mutt boarded the train and set off upon his endless quest anew.
See that old fellow there?” asked Ed the waiter. “Well, his fad is money.”
The old fellow indicated—he must have been nearly eighty—sat eating corned beef and cabbage in a little booth in a certain delightful, greasy old chophouse in downtown New York. It was nearly time to close the chophouse for that day for it was almost eleven o'clock at night; it was nearly time to close the chophouse forever, for it was the middle of June, 1919. In a couple of weeks the wartime prohibition act would be in force, and Ed and I had been discussing what effect it would have upon our respective lives.
There was no one else in the place at the time except the cashier and the old man whose fad was money, and so Ed had condescended toward me, as a faithful customer, and was sitting down to have a drink with me.
“His fad is money?” I questioned, glancing at the old gentleman, who seemed to be nothing extraordinary as regards face or manner or attire. He had a long, bony New Englandish head and a short, white, well-trimmed beard; he was finishing his nowise delicate food with gusto. “I should say,” I added, “that his fad was corned beef and cabbage.”
“That's one of his fads,” admitted Ed the waiter, “and I don't know but that it's as strong in him as his money fad. At any rate, I've never seen him without one or the other was near him, and both in large quantities.”
We had been conversing in a mumble, so that our voices should not carry to the old gentleman. And now Ed dropped his voice still lower and whispered:
“That's Old Man Singleton.”
I looked at him with a renewed interest. Every one knew who Old Man Singleton was, and many persons liked to guess how much he was worth. Ostensibly he had retired, leaving to his two sons the management of the Singleton banking business, with its many ramifications; but actually he kept his interest in the concern and was reputed to be coaching his grandsons in the ways of the world, and especially that part of the world known as “The Street.”
Starting out as a New England villager who hated poverty because his family had always known it, he had come to New York as a lad of twenty, with red knitted mittens on his osseous hands, and he had at once removed the mittens and put the hands to work gathering money; it was rumored that the hands had never turned loose any of the garnered coin; it was even said by some persons that he still had the same pair of mittens.
The details of his rise I cannot give; he had achieved his ambition to be one of the very rich men of America because the ambition was so strong within him.
“Of course his fad is money,” I muttered to Ed the waiter. “Everybody knows that Old Man Singleton's fad is money.”
Ed was about to reply, when Mr. Singleton looked up and motioned for his check. Ed brought it, and gave the old gentleman his hat and his stick and his change.
“I hope everything was all right,” Mr. Singleton said Ed, palpably bidding for recognition and a tip.
“Eh? said Singleton, looking blankly at Ed You know me, hey? I don't recall you. Yes, everything was all right, thank you.” He gave the waiter a dime and passed out, after another blank, fumbling look at Ed, and a shake of his head. There was something feeble and wandering in the old fellow's manner; his memory was going; it was obvious that before long the rest of him would follow his memory. He shouldn't be allowed to go around this way alone at night,” murmured Ed, watching the door through which he had made his exit. “But I suppose he's as bull-headed as ever about doing what he pleases, even if his legs are shaky.”
“He didn't know you,” I hinted, for I wished to learn all that Ed knew about Old Man Singleton.
Ed is a person who has been in the world nearly fifty years; he has had some very unusual acquaintances and experiences. It is never safe to predict just what Ed will know and what he will not know. One afternoon, after I had known Ed for about a year, I was attempting to argue some scientific point with a friend who was lunching with me, and Ed, who was waiting on us and listening, remarked: “I beg your pardon, sir, but it wasn't inThe Descent of Manthat Darwin said that; it was inThe Origin of Species.”
And yet, if you deduce from that remark that Ed knows a great deal about modern science, you will be mistaken; as likely as not he could quote pages of Marcus Aurelius to you, and at the same time he might pronounce “Euripides” as if the last two syllables were one, riming with “hides”; his reading, like his life, has been elective.
“He doesn't recall you,” I repeated.
“And that's ingratitude,” said Ed, “if he only knew it. I saved the old man's life once.”
And Ed limped over to the table and resumed his seat opposite me. He has a bullet under one kneecap, and at times it makes him very lame. He would never tell me how it came there; to this day I do not know.
“From what did you save his life?” I asked. “From a man,” said Ed moodily. “From a man who had a notion to bean him one night. And to this day I ask myself: 'Did I do right, or did I do wrong?'”
“Tell me about it,” I insisted,
“Drink up,” said Ed, manipulating the Scotch bottle and the siphon of seltzer. “This is one of the last highballs you'll ever have, unless you sneak around and take it on the sly. I don't know that I should have another one myself; it settles in this damned knee of mine if I get a little too much.”
“Tell me when, where and how you knew Old Man Singleton,” I demanded again.
“This knee of mine,” went on Ed, disregarding me, “is a hell of a handicap. We were talking about prohibition—what's prohibition going to do to me? Hey? It puts me out of a job in a barroom like this the first thing. And what else can I do? With this game leg, you can see me going on the stage as a Russian dancer, can't you? Or digging trenches to lay gas pipes in, or carrying a Hod? Huh? And I can't even get a job in a swell restaurant uptown; they don't want any gamelegged waiters sticking around, falling over the chairs. This was about the only kind of a joint and the only kind of a job I was fit for, this chop-house thing down here, and it's going to close in two weeks. What then? Be somebody's housemaid? I can't see it. I don't wish anybody any bad luck, but I hope the guy that put over this prohibition thing gets stiff in all his joints and lives forever.”
I sympathized and waited, and finally he began. “Old Man Singleton's fad,” said Ed, “as I re marked before, is money. And as you remarked, another of his fads is corned beef and cabbage—especially cabbage. He will eat corned beef with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat pork with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat cabbage without either; it is the cabbage he likes—or kale. In fact, you could reduce his two fads to one, and say what he likes is kale—kale in the slang sense of money, and kale that is cabbage. And all his life he has been stuffing himself with kale.
“His fad is kale that he can see and feel and handle and show and carry about with him. Not merely money in the bank and stocks and bonds and property and real estate, but actual cash. He likes to carry it with him, and he does carry it with him. I guess he likes the feel of it in his billfolder, and the thought that he has got it on him—on him, the poor boy that came out of New England with the red knitted mittens on that everybody has heard so much about. I can understand the way he feels about it; with a folder full of thousand-dollar and ten-thousand-dollar bills he feels safe, somehow; feels like he'll never have to go back to that little New England town and saw cordwood and shovel snow again.
“He's got it on him now, that folder, and I'll bet you on it. That's what I meant when I said it wasn't safe for him to be trotting about this way after night. For if I know it, it stands to reason others know it, too.
“What you want to know is, how I know it. Well, I was not always what I am now. Once I was quite a bird and wore dress suits and went to the Metropolitan Opera and listened to Caruso as he jumped his voice from peak to peak. Yes, sir, I know every darned acoustic in that place! They weren't my dress suits that I wore, but they fit me. Once I moved in the circles of the idle rich, though they didn't know it, and helped 'em spend the unearned increment they wrung from the toil of the downtrodden laboring man.
“Once, to come down to brass tacks, I was a butler's companion. It is an office you won't find listed in the social directory, but it existed, for me at least. The butler in the case was a good friend of mine by the name of Larry Hodgkins, and being part Irish, he was an ideal English butler. Larry and his mother were in the employ of the Hergsheimers, a wealthy Jewish family—you know who they are if you read the financial pages or the Sunday supplements. Mrs. Hodgkins was the housekeeper and Larry was the butler, and when the Hergsheimers were traveling Larry and his mother stayed in the New York house as caretakers and kept things shipshape. And let me give you a tip, by the way: if you ever take a notion to quit the writing game and go into domestic service, plant yourself with a rich Hebrew family. They want things done right, but they are the most liberal people on earth, especially to Gentile servants.
“This Hergsheimer was Jacob Hergsheimer, and he was in right socially in New York, as well as financially; he had put himself across into the big time socially because, if you ask me, he belonged there; all the Hergsheimers didn't get across, but this one did. His New York house is uptown, between the sixties and the eighties, east of the Park, and he wants it kept so he can drop into it with his family and a flock of servants at any hour of the day or night, from any part of the earth, without a minute's notice, and give a dinner party at once, if he feels like it, and he frequently feels like it.
“It was Mrs. Hodgkins's and Larry's job to keep the fire from going out in the boilers, so to speak, and a head of steam on, so that the domestic ship could sail in any direction on receipt of orders by wire, wireless or telephone. They were permanent there, but Jake Hergsheimer and his family, as far as I could make out, never got more than an average of about three months' use a year out of that mansion.
“This time I am speaking of was nearly ten years ago. I was a waiter in an uptown restaurant, and both my legs were good then; Larry and I were old pals. The Jake Hergsheimers were sailing around the world in a yacht, and would be at it for about a year, as far as Larry knew, and he asked me up to live with him. I accepted; and believe me, the eight months I put in as Jake Hergsheimer's guest weresomeeight months. Not that Jake knew about it; but if he had known it, he wouldn't have cared. This Jake was a real human being.
“And his clothes fit me; just as if I had been measured for them. He had what you might call an automatic tailor, Jake did. Every six weeks, rain or shine, that tailor delivered a new suit of clothes to the Hergsheimer house, and he sent in his bill once a year, so Larry the butler told me. Some people go away and forget to stop the milk; and when Jake sailed for the other side of the world he forgot to tell anybody to stop the tailor. Larry didn't feel as if it were any part of his duty to stop him; for Larry liked that tailor. He made Larry's clothes, too.
“And I didn't see where it was up to me to protest. As I said, Jake's garments might have been made for me. In fact, a great many of themweremade for me. There were at least fifteen suits of clothes that had never been worn in that house, made to my measure and Jake's, when I became butler's companion in the establishment, and they kept right on coming. Also, there was a standing order for orchestra seats at the Metropolitan. Jake had a box every second Thursday, or something like that, but when he really wanted to hear the music and see the show he usually sat in the orchestra. Not only did his business suits fit me, but his dress clothes fit me, too.
“I used to go often, with a lady's maid that had the same access to clothing as I did. She was part of a caretaking staff also. Being a writing person, you have, of course, only viewed New York's society and near-society from the outside, and no doubt you have been intimidated by the haughty manners of the servants. Well, when you get close to swells and really know them personally, you will find they are human, too.
“A butler on duty is a swelled-up proposition, because he has to be that way. But take him as you find him among his peers, and he quits acting like the Duke of Westminster Abbey, and is real sociable. This Larry person, for instance, could distend himself like a poisoned pup and make a timid millionaire feel like the sleeves of his undershirt must be showing below his cuffs; but in our little select circle Larry was the life of the party.
“Being, as I said before, an outsider, you likely don't realize how many of those big swell millionaires' cribs uptown are in the hands of caretakers like Larry and his mother and me the best part of the year. Well, they are; and there's a social life goes on in them that don't ever get into the papers. The parties we had that year in Jake's house would have done Jake himself good, if Jake could have got an invitation to them. But Jake was absent, though his cellar and his grocers were at our service; and he never questioned a bill, Larry said. There were twelve or fifteen hand-picked servants in our little social circle that year, and before I left there I could begin to understand how these débutantes feel at the end of the season—sort of tired and bored and willing to relax and go in for work and rest and athletics for a change.
“I had only been butler's companion for a few weeks when Old Man Singleton dropped in one evening—yes, sir, Old Lemuel Singleton himself. He came to see the butler's mother, Mrs. Hodgkins. He had known her a good many years before, when he was wearing those red mittens and sawing wood up in that New England town and she was somebody's Irish cook. And he had run across her again, after he became a millionaire, down here in New York City. He was tickled to see her, and he didn't care a darn if she was Jake Hergsheimer's housekeeper. She could cook cabbage and kale better than any one else in the world, and he used to come and sit with her, and talk about that little old town up there, and indulge in his favorite dissipation.
“Old Man Singleton has had what you call the social entrée in New York for a good many years; for so long that some of his children, and all his grandchildren, were born with it. But he never took it very seriously himself. He has been an in-and-outer, you might say. If he saw Mrs. Hodgkins around Jake's house, he would call her Mary and ask her how folks were up home in front of Jake and his wife and a whole bunch of guests, just as soon as not.
“And his sons and his daughters and his grandchildren never could get him out of those ways; he always was bull-headed about doing what he pleased, so Mrs. Hodgkins told me, and he always will be. And the old lady liked to see him and chin with him and cook for him; and believe me, she was some cook when she set herself to it. Not merely kale, but everything. She didn't cook for the Hergsheimers—they had a chef for that—but they missed it by not having her. Victuals was old Mary's middle name, and she could rustle up some of the best grub you ever threw your lip over.
“At first, Old Man Singleton and Mrs. Hodgkins didn't mix much with us younger folks when we pulled a party. It wasn't that we were too aristocratic for them, for off duty, as I said before, butlers and other swells can be as easy and jolly as common people. But they seemed too antiquated, if you get me; they were living too much in the past.
“And then, one night, I discovered what Old Man Singleton's fad was—kale. Money. Big money. Big money on his person. It was this way: Larry and I wanted to go downtown and have a little fun, but neither of us had any cash in hand. Larry had a check for one hundred and fifty dollars which Jake Hergsheimer had sent him, but all the tradesmen we knew were closed at that hour, and there wasn't any way to cash it, unless Old Man Singleton could.
“'Mr. Singleton,' says Larry to the old man, who was sitting down to a mess of pork and kale with Mrs. Hodgkins, 'maybe you can cash this for me.' And he handed him the check.
“The old man stopped eating and put his glasses on and pulled a billfolder out of his pocket, with a kind of pleased smile on his face.
“'Let me see,' he says, taking out the bills, and running them over with his fingers; 'let me see.'
“I nearly dropped dead. There wasn't a bill in there of lower denomination than one thousand dollars; and most of them were ten-thousand-dol-lar bills.
“'No, Larry,' says the old man, 'I'm afraid I can't, afraid I can't—haven't got the change.'
“And while we stood there and looked, he smoothed and patted those bills, and folded and refolded them, and then put them back into his pocket, and patted the pocket.
“'Mary,' he says to the old woman with a grin, 'that's quite a lot of money for little Lem Singleton to be carrying around in his pocket, isn't it?' “'It is that, Lemuel,' said the old lady, 'and I should think you'd be afraid of leaving it out of the bank.'
“'Well, Mary,' says the old man, 'I kind o' like to have it around me all the time—uh—huh! a little bit where I can put my hands on it, all the time. I used to carry gold; but I gave that up; it's too heavy, for what it's worth. But I like it, Mary; I used to look at that gold and say to myself, “Well, there's one thing you got, Lem Singleton, they never thought you'd get when you left home! And they aren't going to take it away from you, either!” It was a long time before I could make paper seem as real to me as gold. But it does now.'
“And what does the old bird do but take it out of his pocket again and crinkle it through his fingers and smooth it out again and pet it and do everything but kiss it. Larry and I stood looking at him with our eyes sticking out, and he looked at us and laughed. It came to me all of a sudden that he liked to come where we servants were because he could pull that kind of thing in front of us, but that he was sort of lost among the swell-society bunch because he didn't dare pull it there and didn't feel so rich among them.
“'My God, Larry,' I said, when we were outside the house, 'did you notice how much kale the old man had there?'
“'Uh-huh,' said Larry. 'Mother always cooks a lot for him.'
“'Wake up, Stupid,' I said. 'I don't mean cabbage. I mean money. There must have been nearly two hundred thousand dollars in that roll!'
“'He always has around one hundred thousand dollars on him, at least,' says Larry. 'And I've seen him flash as high as a quarter of a million.'
“'Well,' I says, 'something ought to be done about it.'
“'What do you mean, Ed?' says he.
“'Oh, nothing,' I said.
“We walked over to get the L train downtown, saying nothing, and then finally Larry remarked: “'Electricity is a great thing, Ed.'
“'I never said it wasn't,' says I.
“'It's a great thing,' says Larry, 'but when you sit on it, sit on it right. For instance, I'd a darned sight rather sit in one of these electric trains than in that electric chair up at Sing Sing.'
“'Who said anything about an electric chair?' I asked him.
“'Nobody said anything,' says Larry, 'but you're thinking so darned loud I can get you.'
“'Piffle, peanuts and petrification,' I said. 'Take care of your own thoughts, and I'll skim the fat off of mine myself.'
“Well, as I said, after that we got better acquainted, the old man and I. I paid more attention to him. He interested me more. I've always been interested in science of all kinds, and the year I spent in Jake Hergsheimer's house I cut the leaves of a lot of books in his library and gave them the once over. I was always interested in psychology, even before the word got to be a headliner in the Sunday supplements, and I took a good deal of pleasure that winter trying to get inside of Old Man Singleton's mind. I must say, I never got very far in, at that. My general conclusion at the end is what it was at the beginning—his fad is kale.
“And he loved to show it, you could see that. Not that he pulled it every time he happened to be at one of our parties. Often he would drop in that winter from some swell social event at one of the big houses uptown, where he had been a guest, and eat some of old Mary's chow, and never intimate by word or look that he had all that kale on him. And then again he'd come among us, diked out in the soup and fish, and flash the roll, for no other reason that I know except he enjoyed seeing us get the blind staggers, which we always did. And then he'd fuss with it and pet it and go into a dream over it, and wake up again and grin and talk about life with old Mary. And they agreed about life; you never heard two more moral persons exchange views. It was sometimes as good as a Sunday-school to listen to them for half an hour.
“One night, when they had been gassing for a while, they sort of got my goat, and I said to him:
“'Mr. Singleton, does it ever strike you as a little peculiar that you should have so much money and so many other people, such as myself, none at all?'
“'No, Ed,' he says. 'No, it doesn't. That's the Lord's way, Ed! Money is given as a sacred trust by the Lord to them that are best fitted to have and to hold.'
“'Meaning,' I asked him, 'that if you were ever to let loose of any of it, it might work harm in the world?'
“He chewed over that for quite a while, as if he saw something personal in it, and he gave me a ten-dollar bill for a Christmas present. He isn't as stingy as some people say he is; he just looks so stingy that if he was the most liberal man on earth he would get the reputation of being stingy.
“The lady's maid that I used to go to the opera with quit me a little while after Christmas. She and I were walking around the promenade between the acts one night at the Metropolitan and Larry was with us, when a fellow stopped Larry and spoke to him. I could see the guy looking at the girl and me as he and Larry talked. Later, Larry told me that it was one of Jake Hergsheimer's friends, and he had been a little bit surprised to see Larry at the opera all diked out, and he had wanted to know who the girl was.
“Well, anyhow, she never went to the opera with me after that; but a few weeks later I saw her at a cabaret with Jake's friend. It was a grief to me; but I got into some real trouble, or let it get into me, about the same time, and that helped take the sting off. I had once been married—but there's no use going into all that. Anyhow, when the marriage kind o' wore off, my own folks took my wife's side of the case and she went to live with them. My old dad was sick, and they needed money, and my wife wrote to me that she was willing to let bygones be bygones and accept some money from me, and that my parents felt the same way, and there was a kid, too, that my folks were bringing up.
“Well, I was desperate for some way to get hold of some cash and send to them. In the end, I took one of Jake Hergsheimer's silver vases and hocked it and sent the money, and got it out of hock two or three months later; but in the meantime there was a spell when I was so hard pressed it looked to me like I would actually have to do something dishonest to get that money.
“One night, before Jake Hergsheimer came to my rescue and lent me that silver vase, if you want to call it that, I was sitting alone in the house thinking what a failure in life I was, and how rotten it was to have a wife and kid and parents all set against me, and drinking some of Jake's good booze, and getting more and more low in my mind, when there came a ring at the front doorbell. The butler was out, and old Mary was asleep way up in the top of the house, at the back, and wouldn't hear.
“'I'll bet,' I said to myself, 'that's Old Man Singleton nosing around for his cabbage.' And I made up my mind I wouldn't let him in—he could ring till he froze to death on the front steps, and I wouldn't. It was a blustery, snowy January night, with new snow over the old ice underneath, and I says to myself, 'It's a wonder the old coot don't slip down and bust some of those big New England bones of his. And I wouldn't care much if he did.'
“But he kept on ringing, and finally I thought I'd better go and let him in. I didn't have any ulterior notions when I went up the stairs from the servants' dining room and made for the front door. But the minute I clapped eyes on him I thought of all that kale in his pocket.
“I opened the front door, but outside of that was an iron grille. It had a number of fastenings, but the final one was a short, heavy iron bar that lay in two sockets, one on each side of the opening.
“I lifted the bar and swung the grille open.
“'Ha! Hum!' said he, and sneezed. 'It's you, Ed, is it?'
“And, snuffing and sneezing, he passed in front of me.
“And as he passed by me that bar said something to my hand. And the hand raised up. It wasn't any of my doings, it was all the hand and the bar. It raised up, that bar did, right behind the old man's head. He stopped just outside the front door and flapped his big bony feet on a rug that was there, to get the snow off his shoes, and while he flapped and sneezed that bar was right over the old man's brain-box.
“'Well,' I said to myself, 'here is your chance to be an honest man and a prosperous man, reunited with your wife and your kid and your folks at home, and not have to borrow anything from Jake Hergsheimer's collection—just one little tap on the old man's head, and down he goes, and he's got anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in his clothes.'
“'Yes,' said myself to me, 'one little tap, and maybe you kill him. What then? The electric chair, huh?'
“'Hell!' I said to myself. 'Take a chance! The old man has so much money that what he has in his pocket means nothing to him one way or another. Larry's gone till morning, and the old woman won't wake for a long time. It means a little bit of a headache for Old Lemuel here, and it means your chance to lead an honest life hereafter and be a useful citizen and take care of those you have been neglecting.'
“'Yes,' said myself to me, 'it's more moral to do it, and make your life over, but you never have been one for morality in the past. Besides, you'd kill him.'
“And I might have killed him, boss. I wasn't sure of it then, but I've been sure of it since then. I was that strung up that I would have hit too hard.
“And yet, I mightnothave done so! I might have hit him just enough to put him out and make my get-away, and I might have led an honest life since then.
“But at the moment I couldn't do it. I saw, all of a sudden, something funny. I saw the old man stamping his feet and getting the snow off, and I thought of him as a dead man, and I says to myself: 'How damned funny for a dead man to stamp the snow off his feet!' And I laughed.
“'Heh? Heh? What did you say, Ed?' says the old man, and turns around.
“I dropped the iron bar to my side, and that dead man came up out of the grave.
“'Nothing, Mr. Singleton,' I said. 'I was just going to say, go on in, and I'll get a brush and clean the snow off of you.'
“I said I saved his life from a man one time. Well, I was the man I saved his life from.
“He went on in, and I barred the grille and locked the door, and we went on down to the dining room. I was shaking, and still I wasn't easy in my mind. I told him there wasn't anybody home but me, and he said he'd take a drop of Jake's brandy. And while I was opening a bottle of it for him, what does he do but pull out that billfolder.
“'For God's sake, Mr. Singleton,' I said, turning weak and sitting down in a chair all of a sudden, 'put that money up.'
“He sat there and sipped his brandy and talked, but I didn't hear what he was saying. I just looked at him, and kept saying to myself, should I have done it? Or should I have let him go by?
“Boss, that was nearly ten years ago, and I've been asking myself that question from time to time ever since. Should I have done it? Was it moral to refuse that chance to make my life over again? You know me, kid. You know some of me, at least. You know I don't hold much by morals. If I was to tell you how I got that bullet under my kneecap, you'd know me better thanyoudo. If I had hit him just right and made my get-away, I would have led a different life.
“And I wouldn't now be 'waiting for my death sentence. For that's practically what this prohibition thing means to me. I can't work at anything but this. And this is through with. And I'm through with. I'm a bum from now on. There's no use kidding myself; I'm a bum.
“And yet, often, I'm glad I didn't do it.”
Ed brooded in silence for a while.
And then I said, “It's strange he didn't know you.”
“It's been ten years,” said Ed, “and you saw that the old man's got to the doddering stage. He likely wouldn't know his own children if he didn't see them every day or two.”
“I suppose,” I said, “that the old man feels he is ending his days in a very satisfactory manner—the national prohibition thing triumphant, and all that.”
“How do you mean?” asked Ed.
“Don't you know?” I said. “Why, Old Man Singleton, it is said, helped to finance the fight, and used his money and his influence on other big money all over the country in getting next to doubtful politicians and putting the thing through the state legislatures. I don't mean there was anything crooked about it anywhere, but he was one of the bunch that represented organized power, and put the stunt across while the liquor interests were still saying national prohibition could never come.”
“The hell he did!” said Ed. “I didn't know he was mixed up with it. I never saw him take a drink, now that I remember, except the brandy on the night I saved his life.”
“Old Man Singleton,” I said, “is credited with having had more to do with it than any other one person, by those who are on the inside.”
“The old coot!” said Ed. And then added wryly: “I hope he gets as stiff in his knee joint as I am and lives forever! He's made a bum of me!”
It was three or four weeks after my talk with Ed that I read in the papers of a peculiar accident of which Old Man Singleton had been the victim. A head of cabbage, he said, had fallen out of a tree and hit him on his own head one evening as he was walking alone in Central Park. He had been dazed by the blow for a moment; and when he regained his feet a considerable sum of money which he had been carrying was gone. He was sure that he had been struck by a head of cabbage, for a head of cabbage lay on the pathway near him when he was helped to his feet. He did not pretend to be able to say how a head of cabbage could have gotten into one of the park trees.
The police discredited his story, pointing out that likely the old man, who was near-sighted, had blundered against a tree in the dusk and struck his head. The head of cabbage, they told the reporters, could have had nothing to do with it; it could not have come into contact with his head at all, unless, indeed, some one had put it into a sack and swung it on him like a bludgeon; and this, the police said, was too absurd to be considered. For why should a crook use a head of cabbage, when the same results might have been attained with the more usual blackjack, stick or fist?
Old Man Singleton was not badly hurt; and as regarded the loss of the money, he never said, nor did his family ever say, just how large the sum was. Mr. Singleton had the vague impression that after the cabbage fell out of the tree and hit him he had been helped to his feet by a man who limped and who said to him: “Kale is given to them that can best use it, to have and to hold.”
He did not accuse this person, who disappeared before he was thoroughly himself again, of having found the money which had evidently dropped from his pocket when the cabbage fell from the tree and hit him, but he was suspicious, and he thought the police were taking the matter too lightly; he criticized the police in an interview given to the papers. The police pointed out the irrelevance of the alleged words of the alleged person who limped, and intimated that Mr. Singleton was irrational and should be kept at home evenings; as far as they were concerned, the incident was closed.
But I got another slant at it, as Ed might have said. Last winter I was talking at my club with a friend just back from Cuba, where the rum is red and joy is unconfined.
“I met a friend of yours,” he said, “by the name of Ed down there, who is running a barroom and seems to be quite a sport in his way. Sent his regards to you. Must have made it pay—seems to have all kinds of money. Named his barroom 'The Second Thought.' Asked him why. He said nobody knew but himself, and he was keeping it a secret—though you might guess. Wants you to come down. Sent you a message. Let's see: what was it? Oh, yes! Cryptic! Very cryptic! Wrote it down—here it is: 'Kale! Kale! The gang's all here.' Make anything out of it? I can't.”
I could, though I didn't tell him what. But I shall not visit Ed in Cuba; I consider him an immoral person.