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Mason Compton, president and general manager, sat in his private office in the works of the International Machine Company, chewing upon an unlighted cigar and occasionally running his fingers through his iron-gray hair as he compared and recompared two statements which lay upon the desk before him.
“Damn strange,” he muttered as he touched a button beneath the edge of his desk. A boy entered the room. “Ask Mr. Bince if he will be good enough to step in here a moment, please,” said Compton; and a moment later, when Harold Bince entered, the older man leaned back in his chair and motioned the other to be seated.
“I can’t understand these statements, Harold,” said Compton. “Here is one for August of last year and this is this August’s statement of costs. We never had a better month in the history of this organization than last month, and yet our profits are not commensurate with the volume of business that we did. That’s the reason I sent for these cost statements and have compared them, and I find that our costs have increased out of all proportions to what is warranted. How do you account for it?”
“Principally the increased cost of labor,” replied Bince. “The same holds true of everybody else. Every manufacturer in the country is in the same plight we are.”
“I know,” agreed Compton, “that that is true to some measure. Both labor and raw materials have advanced, but we have advanced our prices correspondingly. In some instances it seems to me that our advance in prices, particularly on our specialties, should have given us even a handsomer profit over the increased cost of production than we formerly received.
“In the last six months since I appointed you assistant manager I am afraid that I have sort of let things get out of my grasp. I have a lot of confidence in you, Harold, and now that you and Elizabeth are engaged I feel even more inclined to let you shoulder the responsibilities that I have carried alone from the inception of this organization. But I’ve got to be mighty sure that you are going to do at least as well as I did. You have shown a great deal of ability, but you are young and haven’t had the advantage of the years of experience that made it possible for me to finally develop a business second to none in this line in the West.
“I never had a son, and after Elizabeth’s mother died I have lived in the hope somehow that she would marry the sort of chap who would really take the place of such a son as every man dreams of—some one who will take his place and carry on his work when he is ready to lay aside his tools. I liked your father, Harold. He was one of the best friends that I ever had, and I can tell you now what I couldn’t have you a month ago: that when I employed you and put you in this position it was with the hope that eventually you would fill the place in my business and in my home of the son I never had.”
“Do you think Elizabeth guessed what was in your mind?” asked Bince.
“I don’t know,” replied the older man. “I have tried never to say anything to influence her. Years ago when she was younger we used to talk about it half jokingly and shortly after you told me of your engagement she remarked to me one day that she was happy, for she knew you were going to be the sort of son I had wanted.
“I haven’t anybody on earth but her, Harold, and when I die she gets the business. I have arranged it in my will so you two will share and share alike in profits after I go, but that will be some time. I am far from being an old man, and I am a mighty healthy one. However, I should like to be relieved of the active management. There are a lot of things that I have always wanted to do that I couldn’t do because I couldn’t spare the time from my business.
“And so I want you to get thoroughly into the harness as soon as possible, that I may turn over the entire management to you. But I can’t do it, Harold, while the profits are diminishing.”
As the older man’s gaze fell again to statements before him the eyes of the younger man narrowed just a trifle as they rested upon Mason Compton, and then as the older man looked up Bince’s expression changed.
“I’ll do my best, sir,” he said, smiling. “Of course I realize, as you must, that I have tried to learn a great deal in a short time. I think I have reached a point now where I pretty thoroughly grasp the possibilities and requirements of my work, and I am sure that from now on you will note a decided change for the better on the right side of the ledger.”
“I am sure of it, my boy,” said Compton heartily. “Don’t think that I have been finding fault with anything you have done. I just wanted to call your attention to these figures. They mean something, and it’s up to you to find out just what they do mean.”
And then there came a light tap on the door, which opened immediately before any summons to enter had been given, and Elizabeth Compton entered, followed by another young woman.
“Hello, there!” exclaimed Compton. “What gets us out so early? And Harriet too! There is only one thing that would bring you girls in here so early.”
“And what’s that?” asked Elizabeth.
“You are going shopping, and Elizabeth wants some money.”
They all laughed. “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes!” exclaimed Harriet Holden.
“How much?” asked Compton of his daughter, still smiling.
“How much have you?” asked Elizabeth. “I am utterly broke.”
Compton turned to Bince. “Get her what she needs, Harold,” he said.
The young man started to the door.
“Come with me, Elizabeth,” he said; “we will go out to the cashier’s cage and get you fixed up.”
They entered Bince’s office, which adjoined Compton’s.
“Wait here a minute, Elizabeth,” said Bince. “How much do you want? I’ll get it for you and bring it back. I want to see you a moment alone before you go.”
She told him how much she wanted, and he was back shortly with the currency.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “I don’t know whether you have noticed it or not, because your father isn’t a man to carry his troubles home, but I believe that he is failing rapidly, largely from overwork. He worries about conditions here which really do not exist. I have been trying to take the load off his shoulders so that he could ease up a bit, but he has got into a rut from which he cannot be guided.
“He will simply have to be lifted completely out of it, or he will stay here and die in the harness. Everything is running splendidly, and now that I have a good grasp of the business I can handle it. Don’t you suppose you could persuade him to take a trip? I know that he wants to travel. He has told me so several times, and if he could get away from here this fall and stay away for a year, if possible, it would make a new man of him. I am really very much worried about him, and while I hate to worry you I feel that you are the only person who can influence him and that something ought to be done and done at once.”
“Why, Harold,” exclaimed the girl, “there is nothing the matter with father! He was never better in his life nor more cheerful.”
“That’s the side of him that he lets you see,” replied the man. “His gaiety is all forced. If you could see him after you leave you would realize that he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Your father is not an old man in years, but he has placed a constant surtax on his nervous system for the last twenty-five years without a let-up, and it doesn’t make any difference how good a machine may be it is going to wear out some day, and the better the machine the more complete will be the wreck when the final break occurs.”
As he spoke he watched the girl’s face, the changing expression of it, which marked her growing mental perturbation.
“You really believe it is as bad as that, Harold?” she asked.
“It may be worse than I think,” he said. “It is surely fully as bad.”
The girl rose slowly from the chair. “I will try and persuade him to see Dr. Earle.”
The man took a step toward her. “I don’t believe a doctor is what he needs,” he said quickly. “His condition is one that even a nerve specialist might not diagnose correctly. It is only some one in a position like mine, who has an opportunity to observe him almost hourly, day by day, who would realize his condition. I doubt if he has any organic trouble whatever. What he needs is a long rest, entirely free from any thought whatever of business. At least, Elizabeth, it will do him no harm, and it may prolong his life for years. I wouldn’t go messing around with any of these medical chaps.”
“Well,” she said at last, with a sigh, “I will talk to him and see if I can’t persuade him to take a trip. He has always wanted to visit Japan and China.”
“Just the thing!” exclaimed Bince; “just the thing for him. The long sea voyage will do him a world of good. And now,” he said, stepping to her side and putting an arm around her.
She pushed him gently away.
“No,” she said; “I do not feel like kissing now,” and turning she entered her father’s office, followed by Bince.
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From her father’s works Elizabeth and Harriet drove to the shopping district, where they strolled through a couple of shops and then stopped at one of the larger stores.
Jimmy Torrance was arranging his stock, fully nine-tenths of which he could have sworn he had just shown an elderly spinster who had taken at least half an hour of his time and then left without making a purchase. His back was toward his counter when his attention was attracted by a feminine voice asking if he was busy. As he turned about he recognized her instantly—the girl for whom he had changed a wheel a month before and who unconsciously had infused new ambition into his blood and saved him, temporarily at least, from becoming a quitter.
He noticed as he waited on her that she seemed to be appraising him very carefully, and at times there was a slightly puzzled expression on her face, but evidently she did not recognize him, and finally when she had concluded her purchases he was disappointed that she paid for them in cash. He had rather hoped that she would have them charged and sent, that he might learn her name and address. And then she left, with Jimmy none the wiser concerning her other than that her first name was Elizabeth and that she was even better-looking than he recalled her to have been.
“And the girl with her!” exclaimed Jimmy mentally. “She was no slouch either. They are the two best-looking girls I have seen in this town, notwithstanding the fact that whether one likes Chicago or not he’s got to admit that there are more pretty girls here than in any other city in the country.
“I’m glad she didn’t recognize me. Of course, I don’t know her, and the chances are that I never shall, but I should hate to have any one recognize me here, or hereafter, as that young man at the stocking counter. Gad! but it’s beastly that a regular life-sized man should be selling stockings to women for a living, or rather for a fraction of a living.”
While Jimmy had always been hugely disgusted with his position, the sight of the girl seemed to have suddenly crystallized all those weeks of self-contempt into a sudden almost mad desire to escape what he considered his degrading and effeminating surroundings. One must bear with Jimmy and judge him leniently, for after all, notwithstanding his college diploma and physique, he was still but a boy and so while it is difficult for a mature and sober judgment to countenance his next step, if one can look back a few years to his own youth he can at least find extenuating circumstances surrounding Jimmy’s seeming foolishness.
For with a bang that caused startled clerks in all directions to look up from their work he shattered the decorous monotone of the great store by slamming his sales book viciously upon the counter, and without a word of explanation to his fellow clerks marched out of the section toward the buyer’s desk.
“Well, Mr. Torrance,” asked that gentleman, “what can I do for you?”
“I am going to quit,” announced Jimmy.
“Quit!”’ exclaimed the buyer. “Why, what’s wrong? Isn’t everything perfectly satisfactory? You have never complained to me.”
“I can’t explain,” replied Jimmy. “I am going to quit. I am not satisfied. I am going to er—ah—accept another position.”
The buyer raised his eyebrows. “Ah!” he said. “With—” and he named their closest competitor.
“No,” said Jimmy. “I am going to get a regular he-job.”
The other smiled. “If an increase in salary,” he suggested, “would influence you, I had intended to tell you that I would take care of you beginning next week. I thought of making it fifteen dollars,” and with that unanswerable argument for Jimmy’s continued service the buyer sat back and folded his hands.
“Nothing stirring,” said Jimmy. “I wouldn’t sell another sock if you paid me ten thousand dollars a year. I am through.”
“Oh, very well,” said the buyer aggrievedly, “but if you leave me this way you will be unable to refer to the house.”
But nothing, not even a team of oxen, could have held Jimmy in that section another minute, and so he got his pay and left with nothing more in view than a slow death by starvation.
“There,” exclaimed Elizabeth Compton, as she sank back on the cushions of her car.
“There what?” asked Harriet.
“I have placed him.”
“Whom?”
“That nice-looking young person who waited on us in the hosiery section.”
“Oh!” said Harriet. “He was nice-looking, wasn’t he? But he looked out of place there, and I think he felt out of place. Did you notice how he flushed when he asked you what size?” and the girls laughed heartily at the recollection. “But where have you ever met him before?” Harriet asked.
“I have never met him,” corrected Elizabeth, accenting the “met.” “He changed a wheel on the roadster several weeks ago one evening after I had taken Harold down to the club. And he was very nice about it. I should say that he is a gentleman, although his clothes were pretty badly worn.”
“Yes,” said Harriet, “his suit was shabby, but his linen was clean and his coat well brushed.”
“My!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “He must have made an impression on some one.”
“Well,” said Harriet, “it isn’t often you see such a nice-looking chap in the hosiery section.”
“No,” said Elizabeth, “and probably if he were as nice as he looks he wouldn’t be there.”
Whereupon the subject was changed, and she promptly forgot Mr. Jimmy Torrance. But Jimmy was not destined soon to forget her, for as the jobless days passed and he realized more and more what an ass he had made of himself, and why, he had occasion to think about her a great deal, although never in any sense reproaching her. He realized that the fault was his own and that he had done a foolish thing in giving up his position because of a girl he did not know and probably never would.
There came a Saturday when Jimmy, jobless and fundless, dreaded his return to the Indiana Avenue rooming-house, where he knew the landlady would be eagerly awaiting him, for he was a week in arrears in his room rent already, and had been warned he could expect no further credit.
“There is a nice young man wanting your room,” the landlady had told him, “and I shall have to be having it Saturday night unless you can pay up.”
Jimmy stood on the corner of Clark and Van Buren looking at his watch. “I hate to do it,” he thought, “but the Lizard said he could get twenty for it, and twenty would give me another two weeks.” And so his watch went, and two weeks later his cigarette-case and ring followed. Jimmy had never gone in much for jewelry—a fact which he now greatly lamented.
Some of the clothes he still had were good, though badly in want of pressing, and when, after still further days of fruitless searching for work the proceeds from the articles he had pawned were exhausted, it occurred to him he might raise something on all but what he actually needed to cover his nakedness.
In his search for work he was still wearing his best-looking suit; the others he would dispose of; and with this plan in his mind on his return to his room that night he went to the tiny closet to make a bundle of the things which he would dispose of on the morrow, only to discover that in his absence some one had been there before him, and that there was nothing left for him to sell.
It would be two days before his room rent was again due, but in the mean time Jimmy had no money wherewith to feed the inner man. It was an almost utterly discouraged Jimmy who crawled into his bed to spend a sleepless night of worry and vain regret, the principal object of his regret being that he was not the son of a blacksmith who had taught him how to shoe horses and who at the same time had been too poor to send him to college.
Long since there had been driven into his mind the conviction that for any practical purpose in life a higher education was as useless as the proverbial fifth wheel to the coach.
“And even,” mused Jimmy, “if I had graduated at the head of my class, I would be no better off than I am now.”
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The next day, worn out from loss of sleep, the young man started out upon a last frenzied search for employment. He had no money for breakfast, and so he went breakfastless, and as he had no carfare it was necessary for him to walk the seemingly interminable miles from one prospective job to another. By the middle of the afternoon Jimmy was hungrier than he had ever been before in his life. He was so hungry that it actually hurt, and he was weak from physical fatigue and from disappointment and worry.
“I’ve got to eat,” he soliloquized fiercely, “if I have to go out to-night and pound somebody on the head to get the price, and I’m going to do it,” he concluded as the odors of cooking food came to him from a cheap restaurant which he was passing. He stopped a moment and looked into the window at the catsup bottles and sad-looking pies which the proprietor apparently seemed to think formed an artistic and attractive window display.
“If I had a brick,” thought Jimmy, “I would have one of those pies, even if I went to the jug for it,” but his hunger had not made him as desperate as he thought he was, and so he passed slowly on, and, glancing into the windows of the store next door, saw a display of second-hand clothes and the sign “Clothes Bought and Sold.”
Jimmy looked at those in the window and then down at his own, which, though wrinkled, were infinitely better than anything on display.
“I wonder,” he mused, “if I couldn’t put something over in the way of high finance here,” and, acting upon the inspiration, he entered the dingy little shop. When he emerged twenty minutes later he wore a shabby and rather disreputable suit of hand-me-downs, but he had two silver dollars in his pocket.
When Jimmy returned to his room that night it was with a full stomach, but with the knowledge that he had practically reached the end of his rope. He had been unable to bring himself to the point of writing his father an admission of his failure, and in fact he had gone so far, and in his estimation had sunk so low, that he had definitely determined he would rather starve to death now than admit his utter inefficiency to those whose respect he most valued.
As he climbed the stairway to his room he heard some one descending from above, and as they passed beneath the dim light of a flickering gas-jet he realized that the other stopped suddenly and turned back to look after him as Jimmy continued his ascent of the stairs; and then a low voice inquired:
“Say, bo, what you doin’ here?”
Jimmy turned toward the questioner.
“Oh!” he exclaimed as recognition of the other dawned slowly upon him. “It’s you, is it? My old and esteemed friend, the Lizard.”
“Sure, it’s me,” replied the Lizard. “But what you doin’ here? Looking for an assistant general manager?”
Jimmy grinned.
“Don’t rub it in,” he said, still smiling.
The other ascended toward him, his keen eyes appraising him from head to foot.
“You live here?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Jimmy; “do you?”
“Sure, I been livin’ here for the last six months.”
“That’s funny,” said Jimmy; “I have been here about two months myself.”
“What’s the matter with you?” asked the Lizard. “Didn’t you like the job as general manager?”
Jimmy flushed.
“Forget it,” he admonished.
“Where’s your room?” asked the Lizard.
“Up another flight,” said Jimmy. “Won’t you come up?”
“Sure,” said the Lizard, and together the two ascended the stairs and entered Jimmy’s room. Under the brighter light there the Lizard scrutinized his host.
“You been against it, bo, haven’t you?” he asked.
“I sure have,” said Jimmy.
“Gee,” said the other, “what a difference clothes make! You look like a regular bum.”
“Thanks,” said Jimmy.
“What you doin’?” asked the Lizard.
“Nothing.”
“Lose your job?”
“I quit it,” said Jimmy. “I’ve only worked a month since I’ve been here, and that for the munificent salary of ten dollars a week.”
“Do you want to make some coin?” asked the Lizard.
“I sure do,” said Jimmy. “I don’t know of anything I would rather have.”
“I’m pullin’ off something to-morrow night. I can use you,” and he eyed Jimmy shrewdly as he spoke.
“Cracking a box?” asked Jimmy, grinning.
“It might be something like that,” replied the Lizard; “but you won’t have nothin’ to do but stand where I put you and make a noise like a cat if you see anybody coming. It ought to be something good. I been working on it for three months. We’ll split something like fifty thousand thirty-seventy.”
“Is that the usual percentage?” asked Jimmy.
“It’s what I’m offerin’ you,” replied the lizard.
Thirty per cent of fifty thousand dollars! Jimmy jingled the few pieces of silver remaining in his pocket. Fifteen thousand dollars! And here he had been walking his legs off and starving in a vain attempt to earn a few paltry dollars honestly.
“There’s something wrong somewhere,” muttered Jimmy to himself.
“I’m taking it from an old crab who has more than he can use, and all of it he got by robbing people that didn’t have any to spare. He’s a big guy here. When anything big is doing the newspaper guys interview him and his name is in all the lists of subscriptions to charity—when they’re going to be published in the papers. I’ll bet he takes nine-tenths of his kale from women and children, and he’s an honored citizen. I ain’t no angel, but whatever I’ve taken didn’t cause nobody any sufferin’—I’m a thief, bo, and I’m mighty proud of it when I think of what this other guy is.”
Thirty per cent of fifty thousand dollars! Jimmy was sitting with his legs crossed. He looked down at his ill-fitting, shabby trousers, and then turned up the sole of one shoe which was worn through almost to his sock. The Lizard watched him as a cat watches a mouse. He knew that the other was thinking hard, and that presently he would reach a decision, and through Jimmy’s mind marched a sordid and hateful procession of recent events—humiliation, rebuff, shame, poverty, hunger, and in the background the face of his father and the face of a girl whose name, even, he did not know.
Presently he looked up at the Lizard.
“Nothing doing, old top,” he said. “But don’t mistake the motives which prompt me to refuse your glittering offer. I am moved by no moral scruples, however humiliating such a confession should be. The way I feel now I would almost as lief go out and rob widows and orphans myself, but each of us, some time in our life, has to consider some one who would probably rather see us dead than disgraced. I don’t know whether you get me or not.”
“I get you,” replied the Lizard, “and while you may never wear diamonds, you’ll get more pleasure out of life than I ever will, provided you don’t starve to death too soon. You know, I had a hunch you would turn me down, and I’m glad you did. If you were going crooked some time I thought I’d like to have you with me. When it comes to men, I’m a pretty good picker. That’s the reason I have kept out of jail so long. I either pick a square one or I work alone.”
“Thanks,” said Jimmy, “but how do you know that after you pull this job I won’t tip off the police and claim the reward.”
The Lizard grinned his lip grin.
“There ain’t one chance in a million,” he said. “You’d starve to death before you’d do it. And now, what you want is a job. I can probably get you one if you ain’t too particular.”
“I’d do anything,” said Jimmy, “that I could do and still look a policeman in the face.”
“All right,” said the Lizard. “When I come back I’ll bring you a job of some sort. I may be back to-night, and I may not be back again for a month, and in the mean time you got to live.”
He drew a roll of bills from his pocket and commenced to count out several.
“Hold on!” cried Jimmy. “Once again, nothing doing.”
“Forget it,” admonished the Lizard. “I’m just payin’ back the twenty you loaned me.”
“But I didn’t loan it to you,” said Jimmy; “I gave it to you as a reward for finding my watch.”
The Lizard laughed and shoved the money across the table.
“Take it,” he said; “don’t be a damn fool. And now so-long! I may bring you home a job to-night, but if I don’t you’ve got enough to live on for a couple of weeks.”
After the Lizard had gone Jimmy sat looking at the twenty dollars for a long time.
“That fellow may be a thief,” he soliloquized, “but whatever he is he’s white. Just imagine, the only friend I’ve got in Chicago is a safe-blower.”
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When Elizabeth Compton broached to her father the subject of a much-needed rest and a trip to the Orient, he laughed at her. “Why, girl,” he cried, “I was never better in my life! Where in the world did you get this silly idea?”
“Harold noticed it first,” she replied, “and called my attention to it; and now I can see that you really have been failing.”
“Failing!” ejaculated Compton, with a scoff. “Failing nothing! You’re a pair of young idiots. I’m good for twenty years more of hard work, but, as I told Harold, I would like to quit and travel, and I shall do so just as soon as I am convinced that he can take my place.”
“Couldn’t he do it now?” asked the girl.
“No, I am afraid not,” replied Compton. “It is too much to expect of him, but I believe that in another year he will be able to.”
And so Compton put an end to the suggestion that he travel for his health, and that night when Bince called she told him that she had been unable to persuade her father that he needed a rest.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that you don’t take it seriously enough yourself, and that you failed to impress upon him the real gravity of his condition. It is really necessary that he go—he must go.”
The girl looked up quickly at the speaker, whose tones seemed unnecessarily vehement.
“I don’t quite understand,” she said, “why you should take the matter so to heart. Father is the best judge of his own condition, and, while he may need a rest, I cannot see that he is in any immediate danger.”
“Oh, well,” replied Bince irritably, “I just wanted him to get away for his own sake. Of course, it don’t mean anything to me.”
“What’s the matter with you tonight, anyway, Harold?” she asked a half an hour later. “You’re as cross and disagreeable as you can be.”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “There is nothing the matter with me at all.”
But his denial failed to convince her, and as, unusually early, a few minutes later he left, she realized that she had spent a most unpleasant evening.
Bince went directly to his club, where he found four other men who were evidently awaiting him.
“Want to sit in a little game to-night, Harold?” asked one of them.
“Oh, hell,” replied Bince, “you fellows have been sitting here all evening waiting for me. You know I want to. My luck’s got to change some time.”
“Sure thing it has,” agreed another of the men. “You certainly have been playing in rotten luck, but when it does change—oh, baby!”
As the five men entered one of the cardrooms several of the inevitable spectators drew away from the other games and approached their table, for it was a matter of club gossip that these five played for the largest stakes of any coterie among the habitues of the card-room.
It was two o’clock in the morning before Bince disgustedly threw his cards upon the table and rose. There was a nasty expression on his face and in his mind a thing which he did not dare voice—the final crystallization of a suspicion that he had long harbored, that his companions had been for months deliberately fleecing him. Tonight he had lost five thousand dollars, nor was there a man at the table who did not hold his I. O. U’s. for similar amounts.
“I’m through, absolutely through,” he said. “I’ll be damned if I ever touch another card.”
His companions only smiled wearily, for they knew that to-morrow night he would be back at the table.
“How much of old man Compton’s money did you get tonight?” asked one of the four after Bince had left the room.
“About two thousand dollars,” was the reply, “which added to what I already hold, puts Mr. Compton in my debt some seven or eight thousand dollars.”
Whereupon they all laughed.
“I suppose,” remarked anther, “that it’s a damn shame, but if we don’t get it some one else will.”
“Is he paying anything at all?” asked another.
“Oh, yes; he comes across with something now and then, but we’ll probably have to carry the bulk of it until after the wedding.”
“Well, I can’t carry it forever,” said the first speaker. “I’m not playing here for my health,” and, rising, he too left the room. Going directly to the buffet, he found Bince, as he was quite sure that he would.
“Look here, old man,” he said, “I hate to seem insistent, but, on the level, I’ve got to have some money.”
“I’ve told you two or three times,”’ replied Bince, “that I’d let you have it as soon as I could get it. I can’t get you any now.”
“If you haven’t got it, Mason Compton has,” retorted the creditor, “and if you don’t come across I’ll go to him and get it.”
Bince paled.
“You wouldn’t do that, Harry?” he almost whimpered. “For God’s sake, don’t do that, and I’ll try and see what I can do for you.”
“Well,” replied the other, “I don’t want to be nasty, but I need some money badly.”
“Give me a little longer,” begged Bince, “and I’ll see what I can do.”
Jimmy Torrance sat a long time in thought after the Lizard left. “God!” he muttered. “I wonder what dad would say if he knew that I had come to a point where I had even momentarily considered going into partnership with a safe-blower, and that for the next two weeks I shall be compelled to subsist upon the charity of a criminal?
“I’m sure glad that I have a college education. It has helped me materially to win to my present exalted standing in society. Oh, well I might be worse off, I suppose. At least I don’t have to worry about the income tax.
“It is now October, and since the first of the year I have earned forty dollars exactly. I have also received a bequest of twenty dollars, which of course is exempt. I venture to say that there is not another able-bodied adult male in the United States the making of whose income-tax schedule would be simpler than mine.”
With which philosophic trend of thought, and the knowledge that he could eat for at least two weeks longer, the erstwhile star amateur first baseman sought the doubtful comfort of his narrow, lumpy bed.
It was in the neighborhood of two o’clock the next morning that he was awakened by a gentle tapping upon the panels of his door.
“Who is it?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“It’s me bo,” came the whispered reply in the unmistakable tones of the Lizard.
Jimmy arose, lighted the gas, and opened the door.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered.
“Are the police on your trail?”
“No,” replied the Lizard, grinning. “I just dropped in to tell you that I grabbed a job for you.”
“Fine!” exclaimed Jimmy. “You’re a regular fellow all right.”
“But you might not like the job,” suggested the Lizard.
“As long as I can earn an honest dollar,” cried Jimmy, striking a dramatic pose, “I care not what it may be.”
The Lizard’s grin broadened.
“I ain’t so sure about that,” he said. “I know your kind. You’re a regular gent. There is some honest jobs that you would just as soon have as the smallpox, and maybe this is one of them.”
“What is it?” asked Jimmy. “Don’t keep me guessing any longer.”
“You know Feinheimer’s Cabaret.”
“The basement joint on Wells Street?” asked Jimmy. “Sure I know it.”
“Well, that’s where I got you a job,” said the Lizard.
“What doing?” asked Jimmy.
“Waiter,” was the reply.
“It isn’t any worse than standing behind a counter, selling stockings to women,” said Jimmy.
“It ain’t such a bad job,” admitted the Lizard, “if a guy ain’t too swelled up. Some of ‘em make a pretty good thing out of it, what with their tips and short changing—Oh, there are lots of little ways to get yours at Feinheimer’s.”
“I see,” said Jimmy; “but don’t he pay any wages?”
“Oh, sure,” replied the Lizard; “you get the union scale.”
“When do I go to work?”
“Go around and see him to-morrow morning. He will put you right to work.”
And so the following evening the patrons of Feinheimer’s Cabaret saw a new face among the untidy servitors of the establishment—a new face and a new figure, both of which looked out of place in the atmosphere of the basement resort.
Feinheimer’s Cabaret held a unique place among the restaurants of the city. Its patrons were from all classes of society. At noon its many tables were largely filled by staid and respectable business men, but at night a certain element of the underworld claimed it as their own, and there was always a sprinkling of people of the stage, artists, literary men and politicians. It was, as a certain wit described it, a social goulash, for in addition to its regular habitues there were those few who came occasionally from the upper stratum of society in the belief that they were doing something devilish. As a matter of fact, slumming parties which began and ended at Feinheimer’s were of no uncommon occurrence, and as the place was more than usually orderly it was with the greatest safety that society made excursions into the underworld of crime and vice through its medium.
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Feinheimer liked Jimmy’s appearance. He was big and strong, and the fact that Feinheimer always retained one or two powerful men upon his payroll accounted in a large measure for the orderliness of his place. Occasionally one might start something at Feinheimer’s, but no one was ever known to finish what he started.
And so Jimmy found himself waiting upon table at a place that was both reputable and disreputable, serving business men at noon and criminals and the women of the underworld at night. In the weeks that he was there he came to know many of the local celebrities in various walks of life, to know them at least by name. There was Steve Murray, the labor leader, whom rumor said was one of Feinheimer’s financial backers—a large man with a loud voice and the table manners of a Duroc-Jersey. Jimmy took an instinctive dislike to the man the first time that he saw him.
And then there was Little Eva, whose real name was Edith. She was a demure looking little girl, who came in every afternoon at four o’clock for her breakfast. She usually came to Jimmy’s table when it was vacant, and at four o’clock she always ate alone. Later in the evening she would come in again with a male escort, who was never twice the same.
“I wonder what’s the matter with me?” she said to Jimmy one day as he was serving her breakfast. “I’m getting awfully nervous.”
“That’s quite remarkable,” said Jimmy. “I should think any one who smoked as many cigarettes and drank as much whisky as you would have perfect nerves.”
The girl laughed, a rather soft and mellow laugh. “I suppose I do hit it up a little strong,” she said.
“Strong?” exclaimed Jimmy. “Why, if I drank half what you do I’d be in the Washingtonian Home in a week.”
She looked at him quizzically for a moment, as she had looked at him often since he had gone to work for Feinheimer.
“You’re a funny guy,” she said. “I can’t quite figure you out. What are you doing here anyway?”
“I never claimed to be much of a waiter,” said Jimmy, “but I didn’t know I was so rotten that a regular customer of the place couldn’t tell what I was trying to do.”
“Oh, go on,” she cried; “I don’t mean that. These other hash-slingers around here look the part. Aside from that, about the only thing they know how to do is roll a souse; but you’re different.”
“Yes,” said Jimmy, “I am different. My abilities are limited. All I can do is wait on table, while they have two accomplishments.”
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me,” said the girl. “I wasn’t rubbering. I was just sort of interested in you.”
“Thanks,” said Jimmy.
She went on with her breakfast while Jimmy set up an adjoining table. Presently when he came to fill her water-glass she looked up at him again.
“I like you, kid,” she said. “You’re not fresh. You know what I am as well as the rest of them, but you wait on me just the same as you would on”—she hesitated and there was a little catch in her voice as she finished her sentence—“just the same as you would on a decent girl.”
Jimmy looked at her in surprise. It was the first indication that he had ever had from an habitue of Feinheimer’s that there might lurk within their breasts any of the finer characteristics whose outward indices are pride and shame. He was momentarily at a loss as to what to say, and as he hesitated the girl’s gaze went past him and she exclaimed:
“Look who’s here!”
Jimmy turned to look at the newcomer, and saw the Lizard directly behind him.
“Howdy, bo,” said his benefactor. “I thought I’d come in and give you the once-over. And here’s Little Eva with a plate of ham and at four o’clock in the afternoon.”
The Lizard dropped into a chair at the table with the girl, and after Jimmy had taken his order and departed for the kitchen Little Eva jerked her thumb toward his retreating figure.
“Friend of yours?” she asked.
“He might have a worse friend,” replied the Lizard non-committally.
“What’s his graft?” asked the girl.
“He ain’t got none except being on the square. It’s funny,” the Lizard philosophized, “but here’s me with a bank roll that would choke a horse, and you probably with a stocking full of dough, and I’ll bet all the money I ever had or ever expect to have if one of us could change places with that poor simp we’d do it.”
“He is a square guy, isn’t he?” said the girl. “You can almost tell it by looking at him. How did you come to know him?”
“Oh, that’s a long story,” said the Lizard. “We room at the same place, but I knew him before that.”
“On Indiana near Eighteenth?” asked the girl.
“How the hell did you know?” he queried.
“I know a lot of things I ain’t supposed to know,” replied she.
“You’re a wise guy, all right, Eva, and one thing I like about you is that you don’t let anything you know hurt you.”
And then, after a pause: “I like him,” she said. “What’s his name?”
The Lizard eyed her for a moment.
“Don’t you get to liking him too much,” he said. “That bird’s the class. He ain’t for any little—”
“Cut it!” exclaimed the girl. “I’m as good as you are and a damn straighter. What I get I earn, and I don’t steal it.”
The Lizard grinned. “I guess you’re right at that; but don’t try to pull him down any lower than he is. He is coming up again some day to where he belongs.”
“I ain’t going to try to pull him down,” said the girl. “And anyhow, when were you made his godfather?”
Jimmy saw Eva almost daily for many weeks. He saw her at her post-meridian breakfast—sober and subdued; he saw her later in the evening, in various stages of exhilaration, but at those times she did not come to his table and seldom if ever did he catch her eye.
They talked a great deal while she breakfasted, and he learned to like the girl and to realize that she possessed two personalities. The one which he liked dominated her at breakfast; the other which he loathed guided her actions later in the evening. Neither of them ever referred to those hours of her life, and as the days passed Jimmy found himself looking forward to the hour when Little Eva would come to Feinheimer’s for her breakfast.
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It was Christmas Eve. Elizabeth Compton and Harriet Holden were completing the rounds of their friends’ homes with Christmas remembrances—a custom that they had continued since childhood. The last parcel had been delivered upon the South Side, and they were now being driven north on Michigan Boulevard toward home. Elizabeth directed the chauffeur to turn over Van Buren to State, which at this season of the year was almost alive with belated Christmas shoppers and those other thousands who always seize upon the slightest pretext for a celebration.
It was a noisy, joyous crowd whose spirit, harmonizing with the bright lights and the gay shop windows, infected all who came within its influence. As the car moved slowly northward along the world’s greatest retail street the girls leaned forward to watch the passing throng through the windows.
“Isn’t it wonderful,” exclaimed Harriet, “what a transformation a few lights make? Who would ever think of State Street as a fairy-land? And yet, if you half close your eyes the hallucination is complete. Even the people who by daylight are shoddy and care-worn take on an appearance of romance and gaiety, and the tawdry colored lights are the scintillant gems of the garden of a fairy prince.”
“Don’t!” Elizabeth pleaded. “The city night always affects me. It makes me want to do something adventurous, and on Christmas Eve it is even worse. If you keep on like that I shall soon be telling David to drive us up and down State Street all night.”
“I wish we didn’t have to go home right away,” said Harriet. “I feel like doing something devilish.”
“Well, let’s!” exclaimed Elizabeth.
“Do something devilish?” inquired Harriet. “What, for instance?”
“Oh, ‘most anything that we shouldn’t do,” replied Elizabeth, “and there isn’t anything that we could do down here alone that we should do.”
They both laughed. “I have it!” exclaimed Elizabeth suddenly. “We’ll be utterly abandoned—we’ll have supper at Feinheimer’s without an escort.”
Harriet cast a horrified glance at her companion. “Why, Elizabeth Compton,” she cried, “you wouldn’t dare. You know you wouldn’t dare!”
“Do you dare me?” asked the other.
“But suppose some one should see us?” argued Harriet. “Your father would never forgive us.”
“If we see any one in Feinheimer’s who knows us,” argued Elizabeth shrewdly, “they will be just as glad to forget it as we. And anyway it will do it no harm. I shall have David stay right outside the door so that if I call him he can come. I don’t know what I would do without David. He is a sort of Rock of Ages and Gibraltar all in one.”
Through the speaking-tube Elizabeth directed David to drive to Feinheimer’s, and, whatever David may have thought of the order, he gave no outward indication of it.
Christmas Eve at Feinheimer’s is, or was, a riot of unconfined hilarity, although the code of ethics of the place was on a higher plane than that which governed the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve patrons of so-called respectable restaurants, where a woman is not safe from insult even though she be properly escorted, while in Feinheimer’s a woman with an escort was studiously avoided by the other celebrators unless she chose to join with them. As there was only one class of women who came to Feinheimer’s at night without escort, the male habitues had no difficulty in determining who they might approach and who they might not.
Jimmy Torrance was as busy as a cranberry merchant. He had four tables to attend to, and while the amount of food he served grew more and more negligible as the evening progressed, his trips to the bar were exceedingly frequent. One of his tables had been vacated for a few minutes when, upon his return from the bar with a round of drinks for Steve Murray and his party he saw that two women had entered and were occupying his fourth table. Their backs were toward him, and he gave them but little attention other than to note that they were unescorted and to immediately catalogue them accordingly. Having distributed Steve Murray’s order, Jimmy turned toward his new patrons, and, laying a menu card before each, he stood between them waiting for their order.
“What shall we take?” asked Elizabeth of Harriet. Then: “What have you that’s good?” and she looked up at the waiter.
Jimmy prided himself upon self-control, and his serving at Feinheimer’s had still further schooled him in the repression of any outward indication of his emotions. For, as most men of his class, he had a well-defined conception of what constituted a perfect waiter, one of the requisites being utter indifference to any of the affairs of his patrons outside of those things which actually pertained to his duties as a servitor; but in this instance Jimmy realized that he had come very close to revealing the astonishment which he felt on seeing this girl in Feinheimer’s and unescorted.
If Jimmy was schooled in self-control, Elizabeth Compton was equally so. She recognized the waiter immediately, but not even by a movement of an eyelid did she betray the fact; which may possibly be accounted for by the fact that it meant little more to her than as though she had chanced to see the same street-sweeper several times in succession, although after he had left with their order she asked Harriet if she, too, had recognized him.
“Immediately,” replied her friend. “It doesn’t seem possible that such a good-looking chap should be occupying such a menial position.”
“There must be something wrong with him,” rejoined Elizabeth; “probably utterly inefficient.”
“Or he may have some vice,” suggested Harriet.
“He doesn’t look it,” said Elizabeth. “He looks too utterly healthy for that. We’ve seen some of these drug addicts in our own set, as you may readily recall. No, I shouldn’t say that he was that.”
“I suppose the poor fellow has never had an opportunity,” said Harriet. “He has a good face, his eyes and forehead indicate intelligence, and his jaw is strong and aggressive. Probably, though, he was raised in poverty and knows nothing better than what he is doing now. It is too bad that some of these poor creatures couldn’t have the advantages of higher education.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “it is too bad. Take a man like that; with a college education he could attain almost any decree of success he chose.”
“He certainly could,” agreed Harriet; and then suddenly: “Why, what’s the matter, Elizabeth? Your face is perfectly scarlet.”
The other girl tapped the floor with the toe of one boot impatiently.
“That horrid creature at the next table just winked at me,” she said disgustedly.
Harriet looked about in the direction her companion had indicated, to see a large, overdressed man staring at them. There was a smirk on his face, and as Harriet caught his eye she saw him rise and, to her horror, realized that he was advancing toward their table.
He stopped in front of them with his huge hands resting on the edge of their table and looked down at Elizabeth.
“Hello, kiddo!” he said. “What are you going to drink?”
Elizabeth gave the man one look such as would utterly have frozen a male from her own stratum of society, but it had as little effect upon Steve Murray’s self-assurance as the cork from a popgun would have on the armored sides of a rhinoceros.
“All right,” said the man, “what’s the use of asking? There’s only one thing when Steve Murray buys. Here, waiter,” he yelled, pounding on the table. The nearest waiter, who chanced not to be Jimmy, who was then in the kitchen, came hurriedly forward. “Open up some wine,” commanded Murray. “Come on, boys! Bring your chairs over here,” he continued, addressing his companions; “let’s have a little party.”
Elizabeth Compton rose.
“You will oblige me,” she said, “by leaving our table.”
Steve Murray laughed uproariously. He had dropped into a chair next to hers.
“That’s great!” he cried. “I guess you don’t know who I am, kiddo. You won’t cop off anything better in this joint than Steve Murray. Come on—let’s be friends. That’s a good girl,” and before Elizabeth realized the man’s intentions he had seized her wrist and pulled her down into his lap.
It was this scene that broke upon Jimmy’s view as he emerged from the kitchen with a laden tray. He saw Steve Murray seize the girl, and he saw her struggling to free herself, and then there was a mighty crash as Jimmy dropped the tray of steaming food upon the floor and ran quickly forward.
Murray was endeavoring to draw the girl’s lips to his as Jimmy’s hand shot between their faces and pushed that of the man away. With his free arm he encircled the girl’s body and attempted to draw her from her assailant.
“Cut it, Murray!” he commanded in a low tone of voice. “She isn’t your sort.”
“Who the hell are you?” cried the labor leader, releasing the girl and rising to his feet. “Get the hell out of here, you dirty hash-slinger! Any girl in this place belongs to me if I want her. There don’t only one kind come in here without an escort, or with one, either, for that matter. You get back on your job, where you belong,” and the man pressed forward trying to push Jimmy aside and lay hands on Elizabeth again.
Jimmy did not strike him then. He merely placed the palm of one hand against the man’s breast and pushed him backward, but with such force that, striking a chair, Steve Murray fell backward and sprawled upon the floor. Scrambling to his feet, he rushed Jimmy like a mad bull.
In his younger days Murray had been a boiler-maker, and he still retained most of his great strength. He was a veritable mountain of a man, and now in the throes of a berserker rage he was a formidable opponent. His face was white and his lips were drawn back tightly, exposing his teeth in a bestial snarl as he charged at Jimmy. His great arms and huge hands beat to the right and left like enormous flails, one blow from which might seemingly have felled an ox.
Torrance had stood for a moment with an arm still around the girl; but as Murray rose to his feet he pushed her gently behind him, and then as the man was upon him Jimmy ducked easily under the other’s clumsy left and swung a heavy right hook to his jaw. As Murray staggered to the impact of the blow Jimmy reached him again quickly and easily with a left to the nose, from which a crimson burst spattered over the waiter and his victim. Murray went backward and would have fallen but for the fact he came in contact with one of his friends, and then he was at Jimmy again.
By this time waiters and patrons were crowding forward from all parts of the room, and Feinheimer, shrieking at the top of his voice, was endeavoring to worm his fat, toadlike body through the cordon of excited spectators. The proprietor reached the scene of carnage just in time to see Jimmy plant a lovely left on the point of Murray’s jaw.
The big man tottered drunkenly for an instant, his knees sagged, and, as Jimmy stood in readiness for any eventuality, the other crashed heavily to the floor.
Towering above the others in the room suddenly came a big young fellow shouldering his way through the crowd, a young man in the uniform of a chauffeur. Elizabeth saw him before he discovered her.
“Oh David!” she cried. “Quick! Quick! Take us out of here!”
As the chauffeur reached her side and took in the scene he jerked his head toward Jimmy. “Did any one hurt you miss?”
“No, no!” she cried. “This man was very kind. Just get us out of here, David, as quickly as you can.” And, turning to Jimmy: “How can I ever repay you? If it hadn’t been for you—oh, I hate to think what would have happened. Come out to the car and give David your name and address, and I will send you something tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Jimmy. “You just get out of here as quick as you can. If the police happened to look in now you might be held as a witness.”
“How utterly horrible!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “Come, David! Come, Harriet!” David making a way for her, she started for the door.
Harriet paused long enough to extend her hand to Jimmy. “It was wonderfully brave of you,” she said. “We could never do enough to repay you. My name is Harriet Holden,” and she gave him an address on Lake Shore Drive. “If you will come Monday morning about ten o’clock,” she said, “I am sure that there is something we can do for you. If you want a better position,” she half suggested, “I know my father could help, although he must never know about this to-night.”
“Thanks,” said Jimmy, smiling. “It’s awfully good of you, but you must hurry now. There goes your friend.”
Feinheimer stood as one dazed, looking down at the bulk of his friend and associate.
“Mein Gott!” he cried. “What kind of a place you think I run, young man?” He turned angrily on Jimmy. “What you think I hire you for? To beat up my best customer?”
“He got what was coming to him,” said a soft feminine voice at Jimmy’s elbow. The man looked to see Little Eva standing at his side. “I didn’t think anybody could do that to Murray,” she continued. “Lord, but it was pretty. He’s had it coming to him ever since I’ve known him, but the big stiff had everybody around this joint buffaloed. He got away with anything he started.”
Feinheimer looked at Little Eva disgustedly.
“He’s my best customer,” he cried, “and a bum waiter comes along and beats him up just when he is trying to have a little innocent sport on Christmas Eve. You take off your apron, young man, and get your time. I won’t have no rough stuff in Feinheimer’s.”
Jimmy shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
“Shouldn’t I wait to see if I can’t do something more for Mr. Murray?” he suggested.
“You get out of here!” cried Feinheimer, “Get out of here or I’ll call the police.”
Jimmy laughed and took off his apron as he walked back to the servants’ coat-room. As he emerged again and crossed through the dining-room he saw that Murray had regained consciousness and was sitting at a table wiping the blood from his face with a wet napkin. As Murray’s eyes fell upon his late antagonist he half rose from his chair and shook his fist at Jimmy.
“I’ll get you for this, young feller!” he yelled. “I’ll get you yet, and don’t you forget it.”
“You just had me,” Jimmy called back; “but it didn’t seem to make you very happy.”
He could still hear Murray fuming and cursing as he passed out into the barroom, at the front of which was Feinheimer’s office.