“My hair is just about to tumble entirely down,” she said pleasantly to her partner; “would you mind if I go and fix it?”
“Not at all.”
“You’re a peach.”
A few minutes later, wrapped in her crimson opera cloak, she flitted down a side-stairs, her cheeks glowing with excitement at her little adventure. She ran by a couple who stood at the door—a weak-chinned waiter and an over-rouged young lady, in hot dispute—and opening the outer door stepped into the warm May night.
The over-rouged young lady followed her with a brief, bitter glance—then turned again to the weak-chinned waiter and took up her argument.
“You better go up and tell him I’m here,” she said defiantly, “or I’ll go up myself.”
“No, you don’t!” said George sternly.
The girl smiled sardonically.
“Oh, I don’t, don’t I? Well, let me tell you I know more college fellas and more of ’em know me, and are glad to take me out on a party, than you ever saw in your whole life.”
“Maybe so—”
“Maybe so,” she interrupted. “Oh, it’s all right for any of ’em like that one that just ran out—God knows whereshewent—it’s all right for them that are asked here to come or go as they like—but when I want to see a friend they have some cheap, ham-slinging, bring-me-a-doughnut waiter to stand here and keep me out.”
“See here,” said the elder Key indignantly, “I can’t lose my job. Maybe this fella you’re talkin’ about doesn’t want to see you.”
“Oh, he wants to see me all right.”
“Anyways, how could I find him in all that crowd?”
“Oh, he’ll be there,” she asserted confidently. “You just ask anybody for Gordon Sterrett and they’ll point him out to you. They all know each other, those fellas.”
She produced a mesh bag, and taking out a dollar bill handed it to George.
“Here,” she said, “here’s a bribe. You find him and give him my message. You tell him if he isn’t here in five minutes I’m coming up.”
George shook his head pessimistically, considered the question for a moment, wavered violently, and then withdrew.
In less than the allotted time Gordon came down-stairs. He was drunker than he had been earlier in the evening and in a different way. The liquor seemed to have hardened on him like a crust. He was heavy and lurching—almost incoherent when he talked.
“’Lo, Jewel,” he said thickly. “Came right away, Jewel, I couldn’t get that money. Tried my best.”
“Money nothing!” she snapped. “You haven’t been near me for ten days. What’s the matter?”
He shook his head slowly.
“Been very low, Jewel. Been sick.”
“Why didn’t you tell me if you were sick. I don’t care about the money that bad. I didn’t start bothering you about it at all until you began neglecting me.”
Again he shook his head.
“Haven’t been neglecting you. Not at all.”
“Haven’t! You haven’t been near me for three weeks, unless you been so drunk you didn’t know what you were doing.”
“Been sick, Jewel,” he repeated, turning his eyes upon her wearily.
“You’re well enough to come and play with your society friends here all right. You told me you’d meet me for dinner, and you said you’d have some money for me. You didn’t even bother to ring me up.”
“I couldn’t get any money.”
“Haven’t I just been saying that doesn’t matter? I wanted to seeyou, Gordon, but you seem to prefer your somebody else.”
He denied this bitterly.
“Then get your hat and come along,” she suggested. Gordon hesitated—and she came suddenly close to him and slipped her arms around his neck.
“Come on with me, Gordon,” she said in a half whisper. “We’ll go over to Devineries’ and have a drink, and then we can go up to my apartment.”
“I can’t, Jewel,——”
“You can,” she said intensely.
“I’m sick as a dog!”
“Well, then, you oughtn’t to stay here and dance.”
With a glance around him in which relief and despair were mingled, Gordon hesitated; then she suddenly pulled him to her and kissed him with soft, pulpy lips.
“All right,” he said heavily. “I’ll get my hat.”
When Edith came out into the clear blue of the May night she found the Avenue deserted. The windows of the big shops were dark; over their doors were drawn great iron masks until they were only shadowy tombs of the late day’s splendor. Glancing down toward Forty-second Street she saw a commingled blur of lights from the all-night restaurants. Over on Sixth Avenue the elevated, a flare of fire, roared across the street between the glimmering parallels of light at the station and streaked along into the crisp dark. But at Forty-fourth Street it was very quiet.
Pulling her cloak close about her Edith darted across the Avenue. She started nervously as a solitary man passed her and said in a hoarse whisper—“Where bound, kiddo?” She was reminded of a night in her childhood when she had walked around the block in her pajamas and a dog had howled at her from a mystery-big back yard.
In a minute she had reached her destination, a two-story, comparatively old building on Forty-fourth, in the upper window of which she thankfully detected a wisp of light. It was bright enough outside for her to make out the sign beside the window—theNew York Trumpet. She stepped inside a dark hall and after a second saw the stairs in the corner.
Then she was in a long, low room furnished with many desks and hung on all sides with file copies of newspapers. There were only two occupants. They were sitting at different ends of the room, each wearing a green eye-shade and writing by a solitary desk light.
For a moment she stood uncertainly in the doorway, and then both men turned around simultaneously and she recognized her brother.
“Why, Edith!” He rose quickly and approached her in surprise, removing his eye-shade. He was tall, lean, and dark, with black, piercing eyes under very thick glasses. They were far-away eyes that seemed always fixed just over the head of the person to whom he was talking.
He put his hands on her arms and kissed her cheek.
“What is it?” he repeated in some alarm.
“I was at a dance across at Delmonico’s, Henry,” she said excitedly, “and I couldn’t resist tearing over to see you.”
“I’m glad you did.” His alertness gave way quickly to a habitual vagueness. “You oughtn’t to be out alone at night though, ought you?”
The man at the other end of the room had been looking at them curiously, but at Henry’s beckoning gesture he approached. He was loosely fat with little twinkling eyes, and, having removed his collar and tie, he gave the impression of a Middle-Western farmer on a Sunday afternoon.
“This is my sister,” said Henry. “She dropped in to see me.”
“How do you do?” said the fat man, smiling. “My name’s Bartholomew, Miss Bradin. I know your brother has forgotten it long ago.”
Edith laughed politely.
“Well,” he continued, “not exactly gorgeous quarters we have here, are they?”
Edith looked around the room.
“They seem very nice,” she replied. “Where do you keep the bombs?”
“The bombs?” repeated Bartholomew, laughing. “That’s pretty good—the bombs. Did you hear her, Henry? She wants to know where we keep the bombs. Say, that’s pretty good.”
Edith swung herself onto a vacant desk and sat dangling her feet over the edge. Her brother took a seat beside her.
“Well,” he asked, absent-mindedly, “how do you like New York this trip?”
“Not bad. I’ll be over at the Biltmore with the Hoyts until Sunday. Can’t you come to luncheon to-morrow?”
He thought a moment.
“I’m especially busy,” he objected, “and I hate women in groups.”
“All right,” she agreed, unruffled. “Let’s you and me have luncheon together.”
“Very well.”
“I’ll call for you at twelve.”
Bartholomew was obviously anxious to return to his desk, but apparently considered that it would be rude to leave without some parting pleasantry.
“Well”—he began awkwardly.
They both turned to him.
“Well, we—we had an exciting time earlier in the evening.”
The two men exchanged glances.
“You should have come earlier,” continued Bartholomew, somewhat encouraged. “We had a regular vaudeville.”
“Did you really?”
“A serenade,” said Henry. “A lot of soldiers gathered down there in the street and began to yell at the sign.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“Just a crowd,” said Henry, abstractedly. “All crowds have to howl. They didn’t have anybody with much initiative in the lead, or they’d probably have forced their way in here and smashed things up.”
“Yes,” said Bartholomew, turning again to Edith, “you should have been here.”
He seemed to consider this a sufficient cue for withdrawal, for he turned abruptly and went back to his desk.
“Are the soldiers all set against the Socialists?” demanded Edith of her brother. “I mean do they attack you violently and all that?”
Henry replaced his eye-shade and yawned.
“The human race has come a long way,” he said casually, “but most of us are throw-backs; the soldiers don’t know what they want, or what they hate, or what they like. They’re used to acting in large bodies, and they seem to have to make demonstrations. So it happens to be against us. There’ve been riots all over the city to-night. It’s May Day, you see.”
“Was the disturbance here pretty serious?”
“Not a bit,” he said scornfully. “About twenty-five of them stopped in the street about nine o’clock, and began to bellow at the moon.”
“Oh”— She changed the subject. “You’re glad to see me, Henry?”
“Why, sure.”
“You don’t seem to be.”
“I am.”
“I suppose you think I’m a—a waster. Sort of the World’s Worst Butterfly.”
Henry laughed.
“Not at all. Have a good time while you’re young. Why? Do I seem like the priggish and earnest youth?”
“No—” she paused,“—but somehow I began thinking how absolutely different the party I’m on is from—from all your purposes. It seems sort of—of incongruous, doesn’t it?—me being at a party like that, and you over here working for a thing that’ll make that sort of party impossible ever any more, if your ideas work.”
“I don’t think of it that way. You’re young, and you’re acting just as you were brought up to act. Go ahead—have a good time?”
Her feet, which had been idly swinging, stopped and her voice dropped a note.
“I wish you’d—you’d come back to Harrisburg and have a good time. Do you feel sure that you’re on the right track——”
“You’re wearing beautiful stockings,” he interrupted. “What on earth are they?”
“They’re embroidered,” she replied, glancing down; “Aren’t they cunning?” She raised her skirts and uncovered slim, silk-sheathed calves. “Or do you disapprove of silk stockings?”
He seemed slightly exasperated, bent his dark eyes on her piercingly.
“Are you trying to make me out as criticizing you in any way, Edith?”
“Not at all——”
She paused. Bartholomew had uttered a grunt. She turned and saw that he had left his desk and was standing at the window.
“What is it?” demanded Henry.
“People,” said Bartholomew, and then after an instant: “Whole jam of them. They’re coming from Sixth Avenue.”
“People?”
The fat man pressed his nose to the pane.
“Soldiers, by God!” he said emphatically. “I had an idea they’d come back.”
Edith jumped to her feet, and running over joined Bartholomew at the window.
“There’s a lot of them!” she cried excitedly. “Come here, Henry!”
Henry readjusted his shade, but kept his seat.
“Hadn’t we better turn out the lights?” suggested Bartholomew.
“No. They’ll go away in a minute.”
“They’re not,” said Edith, peering from the window. “They’re not even thinking of going away. There’s more of them coming. Look—there’s a whole crowd turning the corner of Sixth Avenue.”
By the yellow glow and blue shadows of the street lamp she could see that the sidewalk was crowded with men. They were mostly in uniform, some sober, some enthusiastically drunk, and over the whole swept an incoherent clamor and shouting.
Henry rose, and going to the window exposed himself as a long silhouette against the office lights. Immediately the shouting became a steady yell, and a rattling fusillade of small missiles, corners of tobacco plugs, cigarette-boxes, and even pennies beat against the window. The sounds of the racket now began floating up the stairs as the folding doors revolved.
“They’re coming up!” cried Bartholomew.
Edith turned anxiously to Henry.
“They’re coming up, Henry.”
From down-stairs in the lower hall their cries were now quite audible.
“—God damn Socialists!”
“Pro-Germans! Boche-lovers!”
“Second floor, front! Come on!”
“We’ll get the sons—”
The next five minutes passed in a dream. Edith was conscious that the clamor burst suddenly upon the three of them like a cloud of rain, that there was a thunder of many feet on the stairs, that Henry had seized her arm and drawn her back toward the rear of the office. Then the door opened and an overflow of men were forced into the room—not the leaders, but simply those who happened to be in front.
“Hello, Bo!”
“Up late, ain’t you!”
“You an’ your girl. Damnyou!”
She noticed that two very drunken soldiers had been forced to the front, where they wobbled fatuously—one of them was short and dark, the other was tall and weak of chin.
Henry stepped forward and raised his hand.
“Friends!” he said.
The clamor faded into a momentary stillness, punctuated with mutterings.
“Friends!” he repeated, his far-away eyes fixed over the heads of the crowd, “you’re injuring no one but yourselves by breaking in here to-night. Do we look like rich men? Do we look like Germans? I ask you in all fairness—”
“Pipe down!”
“I’ll say you do!”
“Say, who’s your lady friend, buddy?”
A man in civilian clothes, who had been pawing over a table, suddenly held up a newspaper.
“Here it is!” he shouted, “They wanted the Germans to win the war!”
A new overflow from the stairs was shouldered in and of a sudden the room was full of men all closing around the pale little group at the back. Edith saw that the tall soldier with the weak chin was still in front. The short dark one had disappeared.
She edged slightly backward, stood close to the open window, through which came a clear breath of cool night air.
Then the room was a riot. She realized that the soldiers were surging forward, glimpsed the fat man swinging a chair over his head—instantly the lights went out and she felt the push of warm bodies under rough cloth, and her ears were full of shouting and trampling and hard breathing.
A figure flashed by her out of nowhere, tottered, was edged sideways, and of a sudden disappeared helplessly out through the open window with a frightened, fragmentary cry that died staccato on the bosom of the clamor. By the faint light streaming from the building backing on the area Edith had a quick impression that it had been the tall soldier with the weak chin.
Anger rose astonishingly in her. She swung her arms wildly, edged blindly toward the thickest of the scuffling. She heard grunts, curses, the muffled impact of fists.
“Henry!” she called frantically, “Henry!”
Then, it was minutes later, she felt suddenly that there were other figures in the room. She heard a voice, deep, bullying, authoritative; she saw yellow rays of light sweeping here and there in the fracas. The cries became more scattered. The scuffling increased and then stopped.
Suddenly the lights were on and the room was full of policemen, clubbing left and right. The deep voice boomed out:
“Here now! Here now! Here now!”
And then:
“Quiet down and get out! Here now!”
The room seemed to empty like a wash-bowl. A policeman fast-grappled in the corner released his hold on his soldier antagonist and started him with a shove toward the door. The deep voice continued. Edith perceived now that it came from a bull-necked police captain standing near the door.
“Here now! This is no way! One of your own sojers got shoved out of the back window an’ killed hisself!”
“Henry!” called Edith, “Henry!”
She beat wildly with her fists on the back of the man in front of her; she brushed between two others; fought, shrieked, and beat her way to a very pale figure sitting on the floor close to a desk.
“Henry,” she cried passionately, “what’s the matter? What’s the matter? Did they hurt you?”
His eyes were shut. He groaned and then looking up said disgustedly—
“They broke my leg. My God, the fools!”
“Here now!” called the police captain. “Here now! Here now!”
“Childs’, Fifty-ninth Street,” at eight o’clock of any morning differs from its sisters by less than the width of their marble tables or the degree of polish on the frying-pans. You will see there a crowd of poor people with sleep in the corners of their eyes, trying to look straight before them at their food so as not to see the other poor people. But Childs’, Fifty-ninth, four hours earlier is quite unlike any Childs’ restaurant from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine. Within its pale but sanitary walls one finds a noisy medley of chorus girls, college boys, débutantes, rakes,filles de joie—a not unrepresentative mixture of the gayest of Broadway, and even of Fifth Avenue.
In the early morning of May the second it was unusually full. Over the marble-topped tables were bent the excited faces of flappers whose fathers owned individual villages. They were eating buckwheat cakes and scrambled eggs with relish and gusto, an accomplishment that it would have been utterly impossible for them to repeat in the same place four hours later.
Almost the entire crowd were from the Gamma Psi dance at Delmonico’s except for several chorus girls from a midnight revue who sat at a side table and wished they’d taken off a little more make-up after the show. Here and there a drab, mouse-like figure, desperately out of place, watched the butterflies with a weary, puzzled curiosity. But the drab figure was the exception. This was the morning after May Day, and celebration was still in the air.
Gus Rose, sober but a little dazed, must be classed as one of the drab figures. How he had got himself from Forty-fourth Street to Fifty-ninth Street after the riot was only a hazy half-memory. He had seen the body of Carrol Key put in an ambulance and driven off, and then he had started up town with two or three soldiers. Somewhere between Forty-fourth Street and Fifty-ninth Street the other soldiers had met some women and disappeared. Rose had wandered to Columbus Circle and chosen the gleaming lights of Childs’ to minister to his craving for coffee and doughnuts. He walked in and sat down.
All around him floated airy, inconsequential chatter and high-pitched laughter. At first he failed to understand, but after a puzzled five minutes he realized that this was the aftermath of some gay party. Here and there a restless, hilarious young man wandered fraternally and familiarly between the tables, shaking hands indiscriminately and pausing occasionally for a facetious chat, while excited waiters, bearing cakes and eggs aloft, swore at him silently, and bumped him out of the way. To Rose, seated at the most inconspicuous and least crowded table, the whole scene was a colorful circus of beauty and riotous pleasure.
He became gradually aware, after a few moments, that the couple seated diagonally across from him with their backs to the crowd, were not the least interesting pair in the room. The man was drunk. He wore a dinner coat with a dishevelled tie and shirt swollen by spillings of water and wine. His eyes, dim and blood-shot, roved unnaturally from side to side. His breath came short between his lips.
“He’s been on a spree!” thought Rose.
The woman was almost if not quite sober. She was pretty, with dark eyes and feverish high color, and she kept her active eyes fixed on her companion with the alertness of a hawk. From time to time she would lean and whisper intently to him, and he would answer by inclining his head heavily or by a particularly ghoulish and repellent wink.
Rose scrutinized them dumbly for some minutes until the woman gave him a quick, resentful look; then he shifted his gaze to two of the most conspicuously hilarious of the promenaders who were on a protracted circuit of the tables. To his surprise he recognized in one of them the young man by whom he had been so ludicrously entertained at Delmonico’s. This started him thinking of Key with a vague sentimentality, not unmixed with awe. Key was dead. He had fallen thirty-five feet and split his skull like a cracked cocoa-nut.
“He was a darn good guy,” thought Rose mournfully. “He was a darn good guy, o’right. That was awful hard luck about him.”
The two promenaders approached and started down between Rose’s table and the next, addressing friends and strangers alike with jovial familiarity. Suddenly Rose saw the fair-haired one with the prominent teeth stop, look unsteadily at the man and girl opposite, and then begin to move his head disapprovingly from side to side.
The man with the blood-shot eyes looked up.
“Gordy,” said the promenader with the prominent teeth, “Gordy.”
“Hello,” said the man with the stained shirt thickly.
Prominent teeth shook his finger pessimistically at the pair, giving the woman a glance of aloof condemnation.
“What’d I tell you Gordy?”
Gordon stirred in his seat.
“Go to hell!” he said.
Dean continued to stand there shaking his finger. The woman began to get angry.
“You go way!” she cried fiercely. “You’re drunk, that’s what you are!”
“So’s he,” suggested Dean, staying the motion of his finger and pointing it at Gordon.
Peter Himmel ambled up, owlish now and oratorically inclined.
“Here now,” he began as if called upon to deal with some petty dispute between children. “Wha’s all trouble?”
“You take your friend away,” said Jewel tartly. “He’s bothering us.”
“What’s at?”
“You heard me!” she said shrilly. “I said to take your drunken friend away.”
Her rising voice rang out above the clatter of the restaurant and a waiter came hurrying up.
“You gotta be more quiet!”
“That fella’s drunk,” she cried. “He’s insulting us.”
“Ah-ha, Gordy,” persisted the accused. “What’d I tell you.” He turned to the waiter. “Gordy an’ I friends. Been tryin’ help him, haven’t I, Gordy?”
Gordy looked up.
“Help me? Hell, no!”
Jewel rose suddenly, and seizing Gordon’s arm assisted him to his feet.
“Come on, Gordy!” she said, leaning toward him and speaking in a half whisper. “Let’s us get out of here. This fella’s got a mean drunk on.”
Gordon allowed himself to be urged to his feet and started toward the door. Jewel turned for a second and addressed the provoker of their flight.
“I know all aboutyou!” she said fiercely. “Nice friend, you are, I’ll say. He told me about you.”
Then she seized Gordon’s arm, and together they made their way through the curious crowd, paid their check, and went out.
“You’ll have to sit down,” said the waiter to Peter after they had gone.
“What’s ’at? Sit down?”
“Yes—or get out.”
Peter turned to Dean.
“Come on,” he suggested. “Let’s beat up this waiter.”
“All right.”
They advanced toward him, their faces grown stern. The waiter retreated.
Peter suddenly reached over to a plate on the table beside him and picking up a handful of hash tossed it into the air. It descended as a languid parabola in snowflake effect on the heads of those near by.
“Hey! Ease up!”
“Put him out!”
“Sit down, Peter!”
“Cut out that stuff!”
Peter laughed and bowed.
“Thank you for your kind applause, ladies and gents. If some one will lend me some more hash and a tall hat we will go on with the act.”
The bouncer bustled up.
“You’ve gotta get out!” he said to Peter.
“Hell, no!”
“He’s my friend!” put in Dean indignantly.
A crowd of waiters were gathering. “Put him out!”
“Better go, Peter.”
There was a short struggle and the two were edged and pushed toward the door.
“I got a hat and a coat here!” cried Peter.
“Well, go get ’em and be spry about it!”
The bouncer released his hold on Peter, who, adopting a ludicrous air of extreme cunning, rushed immediately around to the other table, where he burst into derisive laughter and thumbed his nose at the exasperated waiters.
“Think I just better wait a l’il longer,” he announced.
The chase began. Four waiters were sent around one way and four another. Dean caught hold of two of them by the coat, and another struggle took place before the pursuit of Peter could be resumed; he was finally pinioned after overturning a sugar-bowl and several cups of coffee. A fresh argument ensued at the cashier’s desk, where Peter attempted to buy another dish of hash to take with him and throw at policemen.
But the commotion upon his exit proper was dwarfed by another phenomenon which drew admiring glances and a prolonged involuntary “Oh-h-h!” from every person in the restaurant.
The great plate-glass front had turned to a deep blue, the color of a Maxfield Parrish moonlight—a blue that seemed to press close upon the pane as if to crowd its way into the restaurant. Dawn had come up in Columbus Circle, magical, breathless dawn, silhouetting the great statue of the immortal Christopher, and mingling in a curious and uncanny manner with the fading yellow electric light inside.
Mr. In and Mr. Out are not listed by the census-taker. You will search for them in vain through the social register or the births, marriages, and deaths, or the grocer’s credit list. Oblivion has swallowed them and the testimony that they ever existed at all is vague and shadowy, and inadmissible in a court of law. Yet I have it upon the best authority that for a brief space Mr. In and Mr. Out lived, breathed, answered to their names and radiated vivid personalities of their own.
During the brief span of their lives they walked in their native garments down the great highway of a great nation; were laughed at, sworn at, chased, and fled from. Then they passed and were heard of no more.
They were already taking form dimly, when a taxi cab with the top open breezed down Broadway in the faintest glimmer of May dawn. In this car sat the souls of Mr. In and Mr. Out discussing with amazement the blue light that had so precipitately colored the sky behind the statue of Christopher Columbus, discussing with bewilderment the old, gray faces of the early risers which skimmed palely along the street like blown bits of paper on a gray lake. They were agreed on all things, from the absurdity of the bouncer in Childs’ to the absurdity of the business of life. They were dizzy with the extreme maudlin happiness that the morning had awakened in their glowing souls. Indeed, so fresh and vigorous was their pleasure in living that they felt it should be expressed by loud cries.
“Ye-ow-ow!” hooted Peter, making a megaphone with his hands—and Dean joined in with a call that, though equally significant and symbolic, derived its resonance from its very inarticulateness.
“Yo-ho! Yea! Yoho! Yo-buba!”
Fifty-third Street was a bus with a dark, bobbed-hair beauty atop; Fifty-second was a street cleaner who dodged, escaped, and sent up a yell of, “Look where you’re aimin’!” in a pained and grieved voice. At Fiftieth Street a group of men on a very white sidewalk in front of a very white building turned to stare after them, and shouted:
“Some party, boys!”
At Forty-ninth Street Peter turned to Dean. “Beautiful morning,” he said gravely, squinting up his owlish eyes.
“Probably is.”
“Go get some breakfast, hey?”
Dean agreed—with additions.
“Breakfast and liquor.”
“Breakfast and liquor,” repeated Peter, and they looked at each other, nodding. “That’s logical.”
Then they both burst into loud laughter.
“Breakfast and liquor! Oh, gosh!”
“No such thing,” announced Peter.
“Don’t serve it? Ne’mind. We force ’em serve it. Bring pressure bear.”
“Bring logic bear.”
The taxi cut suddenly off Broadway, sailed along a cross street, and stopped in front of a heavy tomb-like building in Fifth Avenue.
“What’s idea?”
The taxi-driver informed them that this was Delmonico’s.
This was somewhat puzzling. They were forced to devote several minutes to intense concentration, for if such an order had been given there must have been a reason for it.
“Somep’m ’bouta coat,” suggested the taxi-man.
That was it. Peter’s overcoat and hat. He had left them at Delmonico’s. Having decided this, they disembarked from the taxi and strolled toward the entrance arm in arm.
“Hey!” said the taxi-driver.
“Huh?”
“You better pay me.”
They shook their heads in shocked negation.
“Later, not now—we give orders, you wait.”
The taxi-driver objected; he wanted his money now. With the scornful condescension of men exercising tremendous self-control they paid him.
Inside Peter groped in vain through a dim, deserted check-room in search of his coat and derby.
“Gone, I guess. Somebody stole it.”
“Some Sheff student.”
“All probability.”
“Never mind,” said Dean, nobly. “I’ll leave mine here too—then we’ll both be dressed the same.”
He removed his overcoat and hat and was hanging them up when his roving glance was caught and held magnetically by two large squares of cardboard tacked to the two coat-room doors. The one on the left-hand door bore the word “In” in big black letters, and the one on the right-hand door flaunted the equally emphatic word “Out.”
“Look!” he exclaimed happily—
Peter’s eyes followed his pointing finger.
“What?”
“Look at the signs. Let’s take ’em.”
“Good idea.”
“Probably pair very rare an’ valuable signs. Probably come in handy.”
Peter removed the left-hand sign from the door and endeavored to conceal it about his person. The sign being of considerable proportions, this was a matter of some difficulty. An idea flung itself at him, and with an air of dignified mystery he turned his back. After an instant he wheeled dramatically around, and stretching out his arms displayed himself to the admiring Dean. He had inserted the sign in his vest, completely covering his shirt front. In effect, the word “In” had been painted upon his shirt in large black letters.
“Yoho!” cheered Dean. “Mister In.”
He inserted his own sign in like manner.
“Mister Out!” he announced triumphantly. “Mr. In meet Mr. Out.”
They advanced and shook hands. Again laughter overcame them and they rocked in a shaken spasm of mirth.
“Yoho!”
“We probably get a flock of breakfast.”
“We’ll go—go to the Commodore.”
Arm in arm they sallied out the door, and turning east in Forty-fourth Street set out for the Commodore.
As they came out a short dark soldier, very pale and tired, who had been wandering listlessly along the sidewalk, turned to look at them.
He started over as though to address them, but as they immediately bent on him glances of withering unrecognition, he waited until they had started unsteadily down the street, and then followed at about forty paces, chuckling to himself and saying, “Oh, boy!” over and over under his breath, in delighted, anticipatory tones.
Mr. In and Mr. Out were meanwhile exchanging pleasantries concerning their future plans.
“We want liquor; we want breakfast. Neither without the other. One and indivisible.”
“We want both ’em!”
“Both ’em!”
It was quite light now, and passers-by began to bend curious eyes on the pair. Obviously they were engaged in a discussion, which afforded each of them intense amusement, for occasionally a fit of laughter would seize upon them so violently that, still with their arms interlocked, they would bend nearly double.
Reaching the Commodore, they exchanged a few spicy epigrams with the sleepy-eyed doorman, navigated the revolving door with some difficulty, and then made their way through a thinly populated but startled lobby to the dining-room, where a puzzled waiter showed them an obscure table in a corner. They studied the bill of fare helplessly, telling over the items to each other in puzzled mumbles.
“Don’t see any liquor here,” said Peter reproachfully.
The waiter became audible but unintelligible.
“Repeat,” continued Peter, with patient tolerance, “that there seems to be unexplained and quite distasteful lack of liquor upon bill of fare.”
“Here!” said Dean confidently, “let me handle him.” He turned to the waiter—“Bring us—bring us—” he scanned the bill of fare anxiously. “Bring us a quart of champagne and a—a—probably ham sandwich.”
The waiter looked doubtful.
“Bring it!” roared Mr. In and Mr. Out in chorus.
The waiter coughed and disappeared. There was a short wait during which they were subjected without their knowledge to a careful scrutiny by the head-waiter. Then the champagne arrived, and at the sight of it Mr. In and Mr. Out became jubilant.
“Imagine their objecting to us having, champagne for breakfast—jus’ imagine.”
They both concentrated upon the vision of such an awesome possibility, but the feat was too much for them. It was impossible for their joint imaginations to conjure up a world where any one might object to any one else having champagne for breakfast. The waiter drew the cork with an enormouspopand their glasses immediately foamed with pale yellow froth.
“Here’s health, Mr. In.”
“Here’s same to you, Mr. Out.”
The waiter withdrew; the minutes passed; the champagne became low in the bottle.
“It’s—it’s mortifying,” said Dean suddenly.
“Wha’s mortifying?”
“The idea their objecting us having champagne breakfast.”
“Mortifying?” Peter considered. “Yes, tha’s word—mortifying.”
Again they collapsed into laughter, howled, swayed, rocked back and forth in their chairs, repeating the word “mortifying” over and over to each other—each repetition seeming to make it only more brilliantly absurd.
After a few more gorgeous minutes they decided on another quart. Their anxious waiter consulted his immediate superior, and this discreet person gave implicit instructions that no more champagne should be served. Their check was brought.
Five minutes later, arm in arm, they left the Commodore and made their way through a curious, staring crowd along Forty-second Street, and up Vanderbilt Avenue to the Biltmore. There, with sudden cunning, they rose to the occasion and traversed the lobby, walking fast and standing unnaturally erect.
Once in the dining-room they repeated their performance. They were torn between intermittent convulsive laughter and sudden spasmodic discussions of politics, college, and the sunny state of their dispositions. Their watches told them that it was now nine o’clock, and a dim idea was born in them that they were on a memorable party, something that they would remember always. They lingered over the second bottle. Either of them had only to mention the word “mortifying” to send them both into riotous gasps. The dining-room was whirring and shifting now; a curious lightness permeated and rarefied the heavy air.
They paid their check and walked out into the lobby.
It was at this moment that the exterior doors revolved for the thousandth time that morning, and admitted into the lobby a very pale young beauty with dark circles under her eyes, attired in a much-rumpled evening dress. She was accompanied by a plain stout man, obviously not an appropriate escort.
At the top of the stairs this couple encountered Mr. In and Mr. Out.
“Edith,” began Mr. In, stepping toward her hilariously and making a sweeping bow, “darling, good morning.”
The stout man glanced questioningly at Edith, as if merely asking her permission to throw this man summarily out of the way.
“’Scuse familiarity,” added Peter, as an afterthought. “Edith, good-morning.”
He seized Dean’s elbow and impelled him into the foreground.
“Meet Mr. In, Edith, my bes’ frien’. Inseparable. Mr. In and Mr. Out.”
Mr. Out advanced and bowed; in fact, he advanced so far and bowed so low that he tipped slightly forward and only kept his balance by placing a hand lightly on Edith’s shoulder.
“I’m Mr. Out, Edith,” he mumbled pleasantly. “S’misterin Misterout.”
“’Smisterinanout,” said Peter proudly.
But Edith stared straight by them, her eyes fixed on some infinite speck in the gallery above her. She nodded slightly to the stout man, who advanced bull-like and with a sturdy brisk gesture pushed Mr. In and Mr. Out to either side. Through this alley he and Edith walked.
But ten paces farther on Edith stopped again—stopped and pointed to a short, dark soldier who was eying the crowd in general, and the tableau of Mr. In and Mr. Out in particular, with a sort of puzzled, spell-bound awe.
“There,” cried Edith. “See there!”
Her voice rose, became somewhat shrill. Her pointing finger shook slightly.
“There’s the soldier who broke my brother’s leg.”
There were a dozen exclamations; a man in a cutaway coat left his place near the desk and advanced alertly; the stout person made a sort of lightning-like spring toward the short, dark soldier, and then the lobby closed around the little group and blotted them from the sight of Mr. In and Mr. Out.
But to Mr. In and Mr. Out this event was merely a particolored iridescent segment of a whirring, spinning world.
They heard loud voices; they saw the stout man spring; the picture suddenly blurred.
Then they were in an elevator bound skyward.
“What floor, please?” said the elevator man.
“Any floor,” said Mr. In.
“Top floor,” said Mr. Out.
“This is the top floor,” said the elevator man.
“Have another floor put on,” said Mr. Out.
“Higher,” said Mr. In.
“Heaven,” said Mr. Out.
In a bedroom of a small hotel just off Sixth Avenue Gordon Sterrett awoke with a pain in the back of his head and a sick throbbing in all his veins. He looked at the dusky gray shadows in the corners of the room and at a raw place on a large leather chair in the corner where it had long been in use. He saw clothes, dishevelled, rumpled clothes on the floor and he smelt stale cigarette smoke and stale liquor. The windows were tight shut. Outside the bright sunlight had thrown a dust-filled beam across the sill—a beam broken by the head of the wide wooden bed in which he had slept. He lay very quiet—comatose, drugged, his eyes wide, his mind clicking wildly like an unoiled machine.
It must have been thirty seconds after he perceived the sunbeam with the dust on it and the rip on the large leather chair that he had the sense of life close beside him, and it was another thirty seconds after that before that he realized that he was irrevocably married to Jewel Hudson.
He went out half an hour later and bought a revolver at a sporting goods store. Then he took a taxi to the room where he had been living on East Twenty-seventh Street, and, leaning across the table that held his drawing materials, fired a cartridge into his head just behind the temple.