The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Story That I Like Best, by Ray Long

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Title: My Story That I Like Best

Authors: Edna Ferber
         Irvin S. Cobb
         Peter B. Kyne
         James Oliver Curwood

Editor: Ray Long

Release Date: July 23, 2021 [eBook #65906]

Language: English

Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images generously
             made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY STORY THAT I LIKE
BEST ***


MY STORY THAT
I LIKE BEST



_By_

EDNA FERBER

IRVIN S. COBB

PETER B. KYNE

JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

MEREDITH NICHOLSON

H. C. WITWER



_With an Introduction_

_by_

RAY LONG

_Editor of Cosmopolitan_

1925

NEW YORK




Copyright 1925, by
International Magazine Company
New York

FIFTH EDITION
Printed November, 1925




_THIS BOOK IS
DEDICATED
TO
THAT GREAT NUMBER OF
INTELLIGENT
AMERICANS
WHO ARE
CONSTANT READERS
OF
COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE
IT IS SENT TO YOU
WITH THE
CORDIAL GOOD WISHES
OF THE WRITERS
AND
THE EDITOR_




CONTENTS

Introduction By Ray Long
The Gay Old Dog By Edna Ferber
The Escape Of Mr. Trimm By Irvin S. Cobb
Point By Peter B. Kyne
Kazan By James Oliver Curwood
The Third Man By Meredith Nicholson
Money To Burns By H. C. Witwer


[Illustration: RAY LONG]




_INTRODUCTION by RAY LONG_


In presenting this volume to you I am imagining that I am host for an
evening. I have invited six of the distinguished writers of our time and
asked them to relax over their coffee and in a mood of friendliness to
discuss their own work. They have permitted me to have you sit with me
and listen.

An interesting group, surely. Miss Ferber, black-haired, dark-eyed,
vivid, animation itself; Irvin Cobb, tall, heavy-set, with, as his
daughter says, two chins in front and a spare in the rear; Peter B.
Kyne, about five foot six, with the face and figure of a well-fed
priest; Jim Curwood, tall, wiry, outdoorsy in every line and movement;
Nicholson, my idea of an ambassador to the Court of St. James; Harry
Witwer, with the poise and quickness that one learns in the ring. (He
did fight as a youngster; that's why he can make you see a prize ring
when he describes it.)

Yes, an interesting group. Just as interesting to me today, after years
of friendship, as to you, who may meet them for the first time. The sort
of folks that wear well. The sort that haven't been spoiled by success.
For each of them realizes the simplicity of the recipe that won his
success. It can be told in few words: _Think better and work harder than
your competitor._

If you get to know these authors well, you will see that is all there
has been to it: they have thought better and worked harder than the
other fellow. And they are still doing it--thinking better and working
harder: that's why their success endures. That's why their names are
trade-marks for interesting, satisfying reading matter. As the
manufacturer who establishes a trade-mark must not let his product
deteriorate, lest he lose his customers, just so the successful writer
must keep his product to high standard lest he lose his readers.

I have asked each of the six to tell you which of all the stories he has
written he likes best, but before they begin let me tell you what
inspired my request.

I grow irritated every now and then when some self-appointed critic
arises to say that he has selected the best short stories for the year.
What he means, of course, is that he has selected the stories which _in
his opinion_ are best. More often than not, his opinion is worthless; it
may even be harmful. For if those studying for a career in writing
accept his views, they may be misled in what really constitutes the
story of distinction.

In this discussion there will be no effort to say that these stories
excel in any year. What they represent is the selection by each of six
authors of his own story which he likes best of all he has written. And
inasmuch as each of these writers has been years at his trade, this
forms a collection not only interesting to you and myself, but
informative and valuable to the student of writing.

Distinction in writing is determined by one test: endurance in public
favor. Not the favor of any one or two persons, but of the great mass of
readers.

A critic here and there may--and often does--select some writer of
freakish material and call him a genius, but that sort of genius is
short-lived.

Freakish writing never lasts. Individual manner of telling a story,
yes--that is essential to distinction. But individuality that endures
results from personality that pleases.

No matter how much it may interest you to see a freak in a side-show,
you would not want one as a lifelong friend. No matter how much it may
interest you to see a piece of freakish writing, you would not keep it
handy on your library shelves or table. As a curiosity, possibly; as a
companion, never.

You will want lifelong friendship with the stories of the six writers
here. They are real writing by real writers. And I am proud of the
privilege of introducing you thus informally to these six writers, just
as I am proud of the fact that they are such vital factors in the
success of Cosmopolitan Magazine under my editorship. I think I may
boast that no editor ever brought together a more distinguished group.
But enough of myself and my views. Let's listen to my guests.




[Illustration]

[Illustration: EDNA FERBER]




_FOREWORD_


_Most writers lie about the way in which they came to write this or that
story. I know I do. Perhaps, though, this act can't quite be classified
as lying. It is not deliberate falsifying. Usually we roll a
retrospective eye while weaving a fantastic confession that we actually
believe to be true. It is much as when a girl says to her sweetheart,
"When did you begin to love me?" and he replies, "Oh, it was the very
first time I saw you, when----" etc. Which probably isn't true at all.
But he thinks it is, and she wants to think it is. And that makes it
almost true._

_It is almost impossible to tell just how a story was born. The process
is such an intricate, painful, and complicated one. Often the idea that
makes up a story is only a nucleus. The finished story may represent an
accumulation of years. It was so in the case of the short story entitled
"The Gay Old Dog."_

_I like "The Gay Old Dog" better than any other short story I've written
(though I've a weakness for "Old Man Minick") because it is a human
story without being a sentimental one; because it presents a picture of
everyday American family life; because its characters are of the type
known as commonplace, and I find the commonplace infinitely more
romantic and fascinating than the bizarre, the spectacular, the rich, or
the poor; it is a story about a man's life, and I like to write about
men; because it is a steadily progressive thing; because its ending is
inevitable._

_It seems to me that I first thought of this character as short-story
material (and my short stories are almost invariably founded on
character, rather than on plot or situation) when I read in a Chicago
newspaper that the old Windsor Hotel, a landmark, was to be torn down.
The newspaper carried what is known as a feature story about this. The
article told of a rather sporty old Chicago bachelor who had lived at
this hotel for years. Its red plush interior represented home for him.
Now he was to be turned out of his hotel refuge. The papers called him
The Waif of the Loop. That part of Chicago's downtown which is encircled
by the elevated tracks is known as the Loop. I thought, idly, that here
was short-story material; the story of this middle-aged, well-to-do
rounder whose only home was a hotel. Why had he lived there all these
years? Was he happy? Why hadn't he married? I put it down in my
note-book (yes, we have them)--The Waif of the Loop. Later I discarded
that title as being too cumbersome and too difficult to grasp.
Non-Chicagoans wouldn't know what the Loop meant._

_So there it was in my note-book. A year or two went by. In all I think
that story must have lain in my mind for five years before I actually
wrote it. That usually is the way with a short story that is rich, deep,
and true. The maturing process is slow. It ripens in the mind. In such
cases the actual mechanical matter of writing is a brief business. It
plumps into the hand like a juicy peach that has hung, all golden and
luscious, on the tree in the sun._

_From time to time I found myself setting down odd fragments related
vaguely to this character. I noticed these overfed, gay-dog men of
middle age whom one sees in restaurants, at the theater, accompanied,
usually, by a woman younger than they--a hard, artificial expensively
gowned woman who wears a diamond bracelet so glittering that you
scarcely notice the absence of ornament on the third finger of the left
hand. Bits of characterization went into the note-book . . . "The kind
of man who knows head waiters by name . . . the kind of man who insists
on mixing his own salad dressing . . . he was always present on first
nights, third row, aisle, right." I watched them. They were lonely,
ponderous, pathetic, generous, wistful, drifting._

_Why hadn't he married? Why hadn't he married? It's always interesting
to know why people have missed such an almost universal experience as
marriage. Well, he had had duties, responsibilities. Um-m-m--a mother,
perhaps, and sisters. Unmarried sisters to support. The thing to do then
was to ferret out some business that began to decline in about 1896 and
that kept going steadily downhill. A business of the sort to pinch Jo's
household and make the upkeep of two families impossible for him. It
must, too, be a business that would boom suddenly, because of the War,
when Jo was a middle-aged man. I heard of a man made suddenly rich in
1914 when there came a world-wide demand for leather--leather for
harnesses, straps, men's wrist watches. Slowly, bit by bit, the story
began to set--to solidify--to take shape._

_Finally, that happened which always reassures me and makes me happy and
confident. The last paragraph of the story came to me, complete. I set
down that last paragraph, in lead pencil, before the first line of the
story was written. That ending literally wrote itself. I had no power
over it. People have said to me: "Why didn't you make Emily a widow when
they met after years of separation? Then they could have married."_

_The thing simply hadn't written itself that way. It was unchangeable.
The end of the story and the beginning both were by now inevitable. I
knew then that no matter what happened in the middle, that story would
be--perhaps not a pleasant story, nor a happy one, though it might
contain humor--but a story honest, truthful, courageous and human._


[Illustration]


_The_ GAY OLD DOG[1]

By Edna Ferber


Those of you who have dwelt--or even lingered--in Chicago, Illinois
(this is not a humorous story), are familiar with the region known as
the Loop. For those others of you to whom Chicago is a transfer point
between New York and San Francisco there is presented this brief
explanation:

The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district embraced by the iron
arms of the elevated tracks. In a city boasting fewer millions, it would
be known familiarly as downtown. From Congress to Lake Street, from
Wabash almost to the river, those thunderous tracks make a complete
circle, or loop. Within it lie the retail shops, the commercial hotels,
the theaters, the restaurants. It is the Fifth Avenue (diluted) and the
Broadway (deleted) of Chicago. And he who frequents it by night in
search of amusement and cheer is known, vulgarly, as a Loop-hound.

Jo Hertz was a Loop-hound. On the occasion of those sparse first nights
granted the metropolis of the Middle West he was always present, third
row, aisle, left. When a new Loop café was opened Jo's table always
commanded an unobstructed view of anything worth viewing. On entering he
was wont to say, "Hello, Gus," with careless cordiality to the head
waiter, the while his eye roved expertly from table to table as he
removed his gloves. He ordered things under glass, so that his table, at
midnight or thereabouts, resembled a hotbed that favors the bell system.
The waiters fought for him. He was the kind of man who mixes his own
salad dressing. He liked to call for a bowl, some cracked ice, lemon,
garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil and make a rite of it.
People at near-by tables would lay down their knives and forks to watch,
fascinated. The secret of it seemed to lie in using all the oil in sight
and calling for more.

That was Jo--a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric,
roving-eyed and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth
that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of those pinch-waist
belted suits and a trench coat and a little green hat, walking up
Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying to take the curb
with a jaunty youthfulness against which every one of his fat-incased
muscles rebelled, was a sight for mirth or pity, depending on one's
vision.

The gay-dog business was a late phase in the life of Jo Hertz. He had
been a quite different sort of canine. The staid and harassed brother of
three unwed and selfish sisters is an under dog. The tale of how Jo
Hertz came to be a Loop-hound should not be compressed within the limits
of a short story. It should be told as are the photoplays, with frequent
throwbacks and many cut-ins. To condense twenty-three years of a man's
life into some five or six thousand words requires a verbal economy
amounting to parsimony.

At twenty-seven Jo had been the dutiful, hard-working son (in the
wholesale harness business) of a widowed and gummidging mother, who
called him Joey. If you had looked close you would have seen that now
and then a double wrinkle would appear between Jo's eyes--a wrinkle that
had no business there at twenty-seven. Then Jo's mother died, leaving
him handicapped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a
three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle became a
fixture.

Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously
made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the
living.

"Joey," she had said, in her high, thin voice, "take care of the girls."

"I will, Ma," Jo had choked.

"Joey," and the voice was weaker, "promise me you won't marry till the
girls are all provided for." Then as Joe had hesitated, appalled: "Joey,
it's my dying wish. Promise!" "I promise, Ma," he had said.

Whereupon his mother had died, comfortably, leaving him with a
completely ruined life.

They were not bad-looking girls, and they had a certain style, too. That
is, Stell and Eva had. Carrie, the middle one, taught school over on the
West Side. In those days it took her almost two hours each way. She said
the kind of costume she required should have been corrugated steel. But
all three knew what was being worn, and they wore it--or fairly faithful
copies of it. Eva, the housekeeping sister, had a needle knack. She
could skim the State Street windows and come away with a mental
photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads of
departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went
home and reproduced them with the aid of a two-dollar-a-day seamstress.
Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe. She wasn't
really a beauty, but someone had once told her that she looked like
Janice Meredith (it was when that work of fiction was at the height of
its popularity). For years afterward, whenever she went to parties, she
affected a single, fat curl over her right shoulder, with a rose stuck
through it.

Twenty-three years ago one's sisters did not strain at the household
leash, nor crave a career. Carrie taught school, and hated it. Eva kept
house expertly and complainingly. Babe's profession was being the family
beauty, and it took all her spare time. Eva always let her sleep until
ten.

This was Jo's household, and he was the nominal head of it. But it was
an empty title. The three women dominated his life. They weren't
consciously selfish. If you had called them cruel they would have put
you down as mad. When you are the lone brother of three sisters, it
means that you must constantly be calling for, escorting, or dropping
one of them somewhere. Most men of Jo's age were standing before their
mirror of a Saturday night, whistling blithely and abstractedly while
they discarded a blue polka-dot for a maroon tie, whipped off the maroon
for a shot-silk, and at the last moment decided against a shot-silk, in
favor of a plain black-and-white, because she had once said she
preferred quiet ties. Jo, when he should have been preening his feathers
for conquest, was saying:

"Well, my God, I _am_ hurrying! Give a man time, can't you? I just got
home. You girls have been laying around the house all day. No wonder
you're ready."

He took a certain pride in seeing his sisters well dressed, at a time
when he should have been reveling in fancy waistcoats and brilliant-hued
socks, according to the style of that day, and the inalienable right of
any unwed male under thirty, in any day. On those rare occasions when
his business necessitated an out-of-town trip, he would spend half a day
floundering about the shops selecting handkerchiefs, or stockings, or
feathers, or fans, or gloves for the girls. They always turned out to be
the wrong kind, judging by their reception.

From Carrie, "What in the world do I want of a fan!"

"I thought you didn't have one," Jo would say.

"I haven't. I never go to dances."

Jo would pass a futile hand over the top of his head, as was his way
when disturbed. "I just thought you'd like one. I thought every girl
liked a fan. Just," feebly, "just to--to have."

"Oh, for pity's sake!"

And from Eva or Babe, "I've _got_ silk stockings, Jo." Or, "You brought
me handkerchiefs the last time."

There was something selfish in his giving, as there always is in any
gift freely and joyfully made. They never suspected the exquisite
pleasure it gave him to select these things; these fine, soft, silken
things. There were many things about this slow-going, amiable brother of
theirs that they never suspected. If you had told them he was a dreamer
of dreams, for example, they would have been amused. Sometimes,
dead-tired by nine o'clock, after a hard day downtown, he would doze
over the evening paper. At intervals he would wake, red-eyed, to a
snatch of conversation such as, "Yes, but if you get a blue you can wear
it anywhere. It's dressy, and at the same time it's quiet, too." Eva,
the expert, wrestling with Carrie over the problem of the new spring
dress. They never guessed that the commonplace man in the frayed old
smoking-jacket had banished them all from the room long ago; had
banished himself, for that matter. In his place was a tall, debonair,
and rather dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening
clothes. The kind of man who can lean up against a mantel, or propose a
toast, or give an order to a man-servant, or whisper a gallant speech in
a lady's ear with equal ease. The shabby old house on Calumet Avenue was
transformed into a brocaded and chandeliered rendezvous for the
brilliance of the city. Beauty was here, and wit. But none so beautiful
and witty as She. Mrs.--er--Jo Hertz. There was wine, of course; but no
vulgar display. There was music; the soft sheen of satin; laughter. And
he the gracious, tactful host, king of his own domain----

"Jo, for heaven's sake, if you're going to snore, go to bed!"

"Why--did I fall asleep?"

"You haven't been doing anything else all evening. A person would think
you were fifty instead of thirty."

And Jo Hertz was again just the dull, gray, commonplace brother of three
well-meaning sisters.

Babe used to say petulantly: "Jo, why don't you ever bring home any of
your men friends? A girl might as well not have any brother, all the
good you do."

Jo, conscience-stricken, did his best to make amends. But a man who has
been petticoat-ridden for years loses the knack, somehow, of comradeship
with men. He acquires, too, a knowledge of women, and a distaste for
them, equaled only, perhaps, by that of an elevator-starter in a
department store.

Which brings us to one Sunday in May. Jo came home from a late Sunday
afternoon walk to find company for supper. Carrie often had in one of
her school-teacher friends, or Babe one of her frivolous intimates, or
even Eva a staid guest of the old-girl type. There was always a Sunday
night supper of potato salad, and cold meat, and coffee, and perhaps a
fresh cake. Jo rather enjoyed it, being a hospitable soul. But he
regarded the guests with the undazzled eyes of a man to whom they were
just so many petticoats, timid of the night streets and requiring escort
home. If you had suggested to him that some of his sisters' popularity
was due to his own presence, or if you had hinted that the more
kittenish of these visitors were probably making eyes at him, he would
have stared in amazement and unbelief.

This Sunday night it turned out to be one of Carrie's friends.

"Emily," said Carrie, "this is my brother, Jo."

Jo had learned what to expect in Carrie's friends. Drab-looking women in
the late thirties, whose facial lines all slanted downward.

"Happy to meet you," said Jo, and looked down at a different sort
altogether. A most surprisingly different sort, for one of Carrie's
friends. This Emily person was very small, and fluffy, and blue-eyed,
and sort of--well, crinkly-looking. You know. The corners of her mouth
when she smiled, and her eyes when she looked up at you, and her hair,
which was brown, but had the miraculous effect, somehow, of being
golden.

Jo shook hands with her. Her hand was incredibly small, and soft, so
that you were afraid of crushing it, until you discovered she had a firm
little grip all her own. It surprised and amused you, that grip, as does
a baby's unexpected clutch on your patronizing forefinger. As Jo felt it
in his own big clasp, the strangest thing happened to him. Something
inside Jo Hertz stopped working for a moment, then lurched sickeningly,
then thumped like mad. It was his heart. He stood staring down at her,
and she up at him, until the others laughed. Then their hands fell
apart, lingeringly.

"Are you a school-teacher, Emily?" he said.

"Kindergarten. It's my first year. And don't call me Emily, please."

"Why not? It's your name. I think it's the prettiest name in the world."
Which he hadn't meant to say at all. In fact, he was perfectly aghast to
find himself saying it. But he meant it.

At supper he passed her things, and stared, until everybody laughed
again, and Eva said acidly, "Why don't you feed her?"

It wasn't that Emily had an air of helplessness. She just made you feel
you wanted her to be helpless, so that you could help her.

Jo took her home, and from that Sunday night he began to strain at the
leash. He took his sisters out, dutifully, but he would suggest, with a
carelessness that deceived no one, "Don't you want one of your girl
friends to come along? That little What's-her-name--Emily, or something.
So long's I've got three of you, I might as well have a full squad."

For a long time he didn't know what was the matter with him. He only
knew he was miserable, and yet happy. Sometimes his heart seemed to ache
with an actual physical ache. He realized that he wanted to do things
for Emily. He wanted to buy things for Emily--useless, pretty, expensive
things that he couldn't afford. He wanted to buy everything that Emily
needed, and everything that Emily desired. He wanted to marry Emily.
That was it. He discovered that one day, with a shock, in the midst of a
transaction in the harness business. He stared at the man with whom he
was dealing until that startled person grew uncomfortable.

"What's the matter, Hertz?"

"Matter?"

"You look as if you'd seen a ghost or found a gold mine. I don't know
which."

"Gold mine," said Jo. And then, "No. Ghost."

For he remembered that high, thin voice, and his promise. And the
harness business was slithering downhill with dreadful rapidity, as the
automobile business began its amazing climb. Jo tried to stop it. But he
was not that kind of business man. It never occurred to him to jump out
of the down-going vehicle and catch the up-going one. He stayed on,
vainly applying brakes that refused to work.

"You know, Emily, I couldn't support two households now. Not the way
things are. But if you'll wait. If you'll only wait. The girls
might--that is, Babe and Carrie----"

She was a sensible little thing, Emily. "Of course I'll wait. But we
mustn't just sit back and let the years go by. We've got to help."

She went about it as if she were already a little match-making matron.
She corralled all the men she had ever known and introduced them to
Babe, Carrie, and Eva separately, in pairs, and _en masse._ She arranged
parties at which Babe could display the curl. She got up picnics. She
stayed home while Jo took the three about. When she was present she
tried to look as plain and obscure as possible, so that the sisters
should show up to advantage. She schemed, and planned, and contrived,
and hoped; and smiled into Jo's despairing eyes.

And three years went by. Three precious years. Carrie still taught
school, and hated it. Eva kept house, more and more complainingly as
prices advanced and allowance retreated. Stell was still Babe, the
family beauty; but even she knew that the time was past for curls.
Emily's hair, somehow, lost its glint and began to look just plain
brown. Her crinkliness began to iron out.

"Now, look here!" Jo argued, desperately, one flight. "We could be
happy, anyway. There's plenty of room at the house. Lots of people begin
that way. Of course, I couldn't give you all I'd like to, at first. But
maybe, after a while----"

No dreams of salons, and brocade, and velvet-footed servitors, and satin
damask now. Just two rooms, all their own, all alone, and Emily to work
for. That was his dream. But it seemed less possible than that other
absurd one had been.

You know that Emily was as practical a little thing as she looked
fluffy. She knew women. Especially did she know Eva, and Carrie, and
Babe. She tried to imagine herself taking the household affairs and the
housekeeping pocket-book out of Eva's expert hands. Eva had once
displayed to her a sheaf of aigrettes she had bought with what she saved
out of the housekeeping money. So then she tried to picture herself
allowing the reins of Jo's house to remain in Eva's hands. And
everything feminine and normal in her rebelled. Emily knew she'd want to
put away her own freshly laundered linen, and smooth it, and pat it. She
was that kind of woman. She knew she'd want to do her own delightful
haggling with butcher and vegetable peddler. She knew she'd want to muss
Jo's hair, and sit on his knee, and even quarrel with him, if necessary,
without the awareness of three ever-present pairs of maiden eyes and
ears.

"No! No! We'd only be miserable. I know. Even if they didn't object. And
they would, Jo. Wouldn't they?"

His silence was miserable assent. Then, "But you do love me, don't you,
Emily?"

"I do, Jo. I love you--and love you--and love you. But, Jo, I--can't."

"I know it, dear. I knew it all the time, really. I just thought, maybe,
somehow----"

The two sat staring for a moment into space, their hands clasped. Then
they both shut their eyes, with a little shudder, as though what they
saw was terrible to look upon. Emily's hand, the tiny hand that was so
unexpectedly firm, tightened its hold on his, and his crushed the absurd
fingers until she winced with pain.

That was the beginning of the end, and they knew it.

Emily wasn't the kind of girl who would be left to pine. There are too
many Jo's in the world whose hearts are prone to lurch and then thump at
the feel of a soft, fluttering, incredibly small hand in their grip. One
year later Emily was married to a young man whose father owned a large,
pie-shaped slice of the prosperous state of Michigan.

That being safely accomplished, there was something grimly humorous in
the trend taken by affairs in the old house on Calumet. For Eva married.
Of all people, Eva! Married well, too, though he was a great deal older
than she. She went off in a hat she had copied from a French model at
Field's, and a suit she had contrived with a home dressmaker, aided by
pressing on the part of the little tailor in the basement over on
Thirty-first Street. It was the last of that, though. The next time they
saw her, she had on a hat that even she would have despaired of copying,
and a suit that sort of melted into your gaze. She moved to the North
Side (trust Eva for that), and Babe assumed the management of the
household on Calumet Avenue. It was rather a pinched little household
now, for the harness business shrank and shrank.

"I don't see how you can expect me to keep house decently on this!" Babe
would say contemptuously. Babe's nose, always a little inclined to
sharpness, had whittled down to a point of late. "If you knew what Ben
gives Eva."

"It's the best I can do, Sis. Business is something rotten."

"Ben says if you had the least bit of----" Ben was Eva's husband, and
quotable, as are all successful men.

"I don't care what Ben says," shouted Jo, goaded into rage. "I'm sick of
your everlasting Ben. Go and get a Ben of your own, why don't you, if
you're so stuck on the way he does things."

And Babe did. She made a last desperate drive, aided by Eva, and she
captured a rather surprised young man in the brokerage way, who had made
up his mind not to marry for years and years. Eva wanted to give her
wedding things, but at that Jo broke into sudden rebellion.

"No, sir! No Ben is going to buy my sister's wedding clothes,
understand? I guess I'm not broke--yet. I'll furnish the money for her
things, and there'll be enough of them, too."

Babe had as useless a trousseau, and as filled with extravagant
pink-and-blue and lacy and frilly things as any daughter of doting
parents. Jo seemed to find a grim pleasure in providing them. But it
left him pretty well pinched. After Babe's marriage (she insisted that
they call her Estelle now) Jo sold the house on Calumet. He and Carrie
took one of those little flats that were springing up, seemingly
overnight, all through Chicago's South Side.

There was nothing domestic about Carrie. She had given up teaching two
years before, and had gone into Social Service work on the West Side.
She had what is known as a legal mind--hard, clear, orderly--and she
made a great success of it. Her dream was to live at the Settlement
House and give all her time to the work. Upon the little household she
bestowed a certain amount of grim, capable attention. It was the same
kind of attention she would have given a piece of machinery whose oiling
and running had been entrusted to her care. She hated it, and didn't
hesitate to say so.

Jo took to prowling about department store basements, and household
goods sections. He was always sending home a bargain in a ham, or a sack
of potatoes, or fifty pounds of sugar, or a window clamp, or a new kind
of paring knife. He was forever doing odd little jobs that the janitor
should have done. It was the domestic in him claiming its own.

Then, one night, Carrie came home with a dull glow in her leathery
cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what she called a
plain talk.

"Listen, Jo. They've offered me the job of first assistant resident
worker. And I'm going to take it. Take it! I know fifty other girls
who'd give their ears for it. I go in next month."

They were at dinner. Jo looked up from his plate, dully. Then he glanced
around the little dining-room, with its ugly tan walls and its heavy,
dark furniture (the Calumet Avenue pieces fitted cumbersomely into the
five-room flat).

"Away? Away from here, you mean--to live?"

Carrie laid down her fork. "Well, really, Jo! After all that
explanation."

"But to go over there to live! Why, that neighborhood's full of dirt,
and disease, and crime, and the Lord knows what all. I can't let you do
that, Carrie."

Carrie's chin came up. She laughed a short little laugh. "Let me! That's
eighteenth-century talk, Jo. My life's my own to live. I'm going."

And she went.

Jo stayed on in the apartment until the lease was up. Then he sold what
furniture he could, stored or gave away the rest, and took a room on
Michigan Avenue in one of the old stone mansions whose decayed splendor
was being put to such purpose.

Jo Hertz was his own master. Free to marry. Free to come and go. And he
found he didn't even think of marrying. He didn't even want to come or
go, particularly. A rather frumpy old bachelor, with thinning hair and a
thickening neck. Much has been written about the unwed, middle-aged
woman; her fussiness, her primness, her angularity of mind and body. In
the male that same fussiness develops, and a certain primness, too. But
he grows flabby where she grows lean.

Every Thursday evening he took dinner at Eva's, and on Sunday noon at
Stell's. He tucked his napkin under his chin and openly enjoyed the
home-made soup and the well-cooked meats. After dinner he tried to talk
business with Eva's husband, or Stell's. His business talks were the
old-fashioned kind, beginning:

"Well, now, looka here. Take, f'rinstance your rawhides and leathers."

But Ben and George didn't want to "take, f'rinstance, your rawhides and
leathers." They wanted, when they took anything at all, to take golf or
politics or stocks. They were the modern type of business man who
prefers to leave his work out of his play. Business, with them, was a
profession--a finely graded and balanced thing, differing from Jo's
clumsy, downhill style as completely as does the method of a great
criminal detective differ from that of a village constable. They would
listen, restively, and say, "Uh-uh," at intervals, and at the first
chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning glance at
their wives. Eva had two children now. Girls. They treated Uncle Jo with
good-natured tolerance. Stell had no children. Uncle Jo degenerated, by
almost imperceptible degrees, from the position of honored guest, who is
served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and one
of those obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a
bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave one baffled and
unsatisfied.

Eva and Stell got together and decided that Jo ought to marry.

"It isn't natural," Eva told him. "I never saw a man who took so little
interest in women."

"Me!" protested Jo, almost shyly. "Women."

"Yes. Of course. You act like a frightened schoolboy."

So they had in for dinner certain friends and acquaintances of fitting
age. They spoke of them as "splendid girls." Between thirty-six and
forty. They talked awfully well, in a firm, clear way, about civics, and
classes, and politics, and economics, and boards. They rather terrified
Jo. He didn't understand much that they talked about, and he felt humbly
inferior, and yet a little resentful, as if something had passed him by.
He escorted them home, dutifully, though they told him not to bother,
and they evidently meant it. They seemed capable, not only of going home
quite unattended, but of delivering a pointed lecture to any highwayman
or brawler who might molest them.

The following Thursday Eva would say, "How did you like her, Jo?"

"Like who?" Jo would spar feebly.

"Miss Matthews."

"Who's she?"

"Now, don't be funny, Jo. You know very well I mean the girl who was
here for dinner. The one who talked so well on the immigration
question."

"Oh, her! Why, I liked her all right. Seems to be a smart woman."

"Smart! She's a perfectly splendid girl."

"Sure," Jo would agree cheerfully.

"But didn't you like her?"

"I can't say I did, Eve. And I can't say I didn't. She made me think a
lot of a teacher I had in the fifth reader. Name of Himes. As I recall
her, she must have been a fine woman. But I never thought of her as a
woman at all. She was just Teacher."

"You make me tired," snapped Eva impatiently. "A man of your age. You
don't expect to marry a girl, do you? A child!"

"I don't expect to marry anybody," Jo had answered.

And that was the truth, lonely though he often was.

The following spring Eva moved to Winnetka. Anyone who got the meaning
of the Loop knows the significance of a move to a North Shore suburb,
and a house. Eva's daughter, Ethel, was growing up, and her mother had
an eye on society.

That did away with Jo's Thursday dinner. Then Stell's husband bought a
car. They went out into the country every Sunday. Stell said it was
getting so that maids objected to Sunday dinners, anyway. Besides, they
were unhealthy, old-fashioned things. They always meant to ask Jo to
come along, but by the time their friends were placed, and the lunch,
and the boxes, and sweaters, and George's camera, and everything, there
seemed to be no room for a man of Jo's bulk. So that eliminated the
Sunday dinners.

"Just drop in any time during the week," Stell said, "for dinner. Except
Wednesday--that's our bridge night--and Saturday. And, of course,
Thursday. Cook is out that night. Don't wait for me to phone."

And so Jo drifted into that sad-eyed, dyspeptic family made up of those
you see dining in second-rate restaurants, their paper propped up
against the bowl of oyster crackers, munching solemnly and with
indifference to the stare of the passer-by surveying them through the
brazen plate-glass window.

And then came the War. The war that spelled death and destruction to
millions. The war that brought a fortune to Jo Hertz, and transformed
him, overnight, from a baggy-kneed old bachelor, whose business was a
failure, to a prosperous manufacturer whose only trouble was the
shortage in hides for the making of his product--leather! The armies of
Europe called for it. Harnesses! More harnesses! Straps! Millions of
straps. More! More!

The musty old harness business over on Lake Street was magically changed
from a dust-covered, dead-alive concern to an orderly hive that hummed
and glittered with success. Orders poured in. Jo Hertz had inside
information on the War. He knew about troops and horses. He talked with
French and English and Italian buyers--noblemen, many of
them--commissioned by their countries to get American-made supplies. And
now, when he said to Ben and George "Take f'rinstance your rawhides and
leathers," they listened with respectful attention.

And then began the gay-dog business in the life of Jo Hertz. He
developed into a Loop-hound, ever keen on the scent of fresh pleasure.
That side of Jo Hertz which had been repressed and crushed and ignored
began to bloom, unhealthily. At first he spent money on his rather
contemptuous nieces. He sent them gorgeous fans, and watch bracelets,
and velvet bags. He took two expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and
there was something more tear-compelling than grotesque about the way he
gloated over the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in the bathroom. He
explained it.

"Just turn it on. Ice-water! Any hour of the day or night."

He bought a car. Naturally. A glittering affair; in color a bright blue,
with pale blue leather straps and a great deal of gold fittings, and
wire wheels. Eva said it was the kind of thing a soubrette would use,
rather than an elderly business man. You saw him driving about in it,
red-faced and rather awkward at the wheel. You saw him, too, in the
Pompeian room at the Congress Hotel of a Saturday afternoon when
doubtful and roving-eyed matrons in kolinsky capes are wont to
congregate to sip pale amber drinks. Actors grew to recognize the
semi-bald head and the shining, round, good-natured face looming out at
them from the dim well of the parquet, and sometimes, in a musical show,
they directed a quip at him, and he liked it. He could pick out the
critics as they came down the aisle, and even had a nodding acquaintance
with two of them.

"Kelly, of the _Herald_," he would say carelessly. "Bean, of the _Trib._
They're all afraid of him."

So he frolicked, ponderously. In New York he might have been called a
Man About Town.

And he was lonesome. He was very lonesome. So he searched about in his
mind and brought from the dim past the memory of the luxuriously
furnished establishment of which he used to dream in the evenings when
he dozed over his paper in the old house on Calumet. So he rented an
apartment, many-roomed and expensive, with a man-servant in charge, and
furnished it in styles and periods ranging through all the Louis's. The
living-room was mostly rose-color. It was like an unhealthy and bloated
boudoir. And yet there was nothing sybaritic or uncleanly in the sight
of this paunchy, middle-aged man sinking into the rosy-cushioned luxury
of his ridiculous home. It was a frank and naïve indulgence of
long-starved senses, and there was in it a great resemblance to the
rolling-eyed ecstasy of a schoolboy smacking his lips over an all day
sucker.

The War went on, and on, and on. And the money continued to roll in--a
flood of it. Then, one afternoon, Eva, in town on shopping bent, entered
a small, exclusive, and expensive shop on Michigan Avenue. Exclusive,
that is, in price. Eva's weakness, you may remember, was hats. She was
seeking a hat now. She described what she sought with a languid
conciseness, and stood looking about her after the saleswoman had
vanished in quest of it. The room was becomingly rose-illumined and
somewhat dim, so that some minutes had passed before she realized that a
man seated on a raspberry brocade settee not five feet away--a man with
a walking stick, and yellow gloves, and tan spats, and a check suit--was
her brother Jo. From him Eva's wild-eyed glance leaped to the woman who
was trying on hats before one of the many long mirrors. She was seated,
and a saleswoman was exclaiming discreetly at her elbow.

Eva turned sharply and encountered her own saleswoman returning,
hat-laden. "Not today," she gasped. "I'm feeling ill. Suddenly." And
almost ran from the room.

That evening she told Stell, relating her news in that telephone
pidgin-English devised by every family of married sisters as protection
against the neighbors and Central. Translated, it ran thus:

"He looked straight at me. My dear, I thought I'd die! But at least he
had sense enough not to speak. She was one of those limp, willowy
creatures with the greediest eyes that she tried to keep softened to a
baby stare, and couldn't, she was so crazy to get her hands on those
hats. I saw it all in, one awful minute. You know the way I do. I
suppose some people would call her pretty. I don't. And her color! Well!
And the most expensive-looking hats. Aigrettes, and paradise, and
feathers. Not one of them under seventy-five. Isn't it disgusting! At
his age! Suppose Ethel had been with me!"

The next time it was Stell who saw them. In a restaurant. She said it
spoiled her evening. And the third time it was Ethel. She was one of the
guests at a theater party given by Nicky Overton II. You know. The North
Shore Overtons. Lake Forest. They came in late, and occupied the entire
third row at the opening performance of "Believe Me!" And Ethel was
Nicky's partner. She was growing like a rose. When the lights went up
after the first act Ethel saw that her uncle Jo was seated just ahead of
her with what she afterward described as a blonde. Then her uncle had
turned around, and seeing her, had been surprised into a smile that
spread genially all over his plump and rubicund face. Then he had turned
to face forward again, quickly.

"Who's the old bird?" Nicky had asked. Ethel had pretended not to hear,
so he had asked again.

"My uncle," Ethel answered, and flushed all over her delicate face, and
down to her throat. Nicky had looked at the blonde, and his eyebrows had
gone up ever so slightly.

It spoiled Ethel's evening. More than that, as she told her mother of it
later, weeping, she declared it had spoiled her life.

Eva talked it over with her husband in that intimate, kimonoed hour that
precedes bedtime. She gesticulated heatedly with her hair brush.

"It's disgusting, that's what it is. Perfectly disgusting. There's no
fool like an old fool. Imagine! A creature like that. At his time of
life."

There exists a strange and loyal kinship among men. "Well, I don't
know," Ben said now, and even grinned a little. "I suppose a boy's got
to sow his wild oats sometime."

"Don't be any more vulgar than you can help," Eva retorted. "And I think
you know, as well as I, what it means to have that Overton boy
interested in Ethel."

"If he's interested in her," Ben blundered, "I guess the fact that
Ethel's uncle went to the theater with someone who wasn't Ethel's aunt
won't cause a shudder to run up and down his frail young frame, will
it?"

"All right," Eva had retorted. "If you're not man enough to stop it,
I'll have to, that's all. I'm going up there with Stell this week."

They did not notify Jo of their coming. Eva telephoned his apartment
when she knew he would be out, and asked his man if he expected his
master home to dinner that evening. The man had said yes. Eva arranged
to meet Stell in town. They would drive to Jo's apartment together, and
wait for him there.

When she reached the city Eva found turmoil there. The first of the
American troops to be sent to France were leaving. Michigan Boulevard
was a billowing, surging mass: Flags, pennants, banners, crowds. All the
elements that make for demonstration. And over the whole--quiet. No
holiday crowd, this. A solid, determined mass of people waiting patient
hours to see the khaki-clads go by. Three years of indefatigable reading
had brought them to a clear knowledge of what these boys were going to.

"Isn't it dreadful!" Stell gasped.

"Nicky Overton's only nineteen, thank goodness." Their car was caught in
the jam. When they moved at all it was by inches. When at last they
reached Jo's apartment they were flushed, nervous, apprehensive. But he
had not yet come in. So they waited.

No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told the
relieved houseman.

Jo's home has already been described to you. Stell and Eva, sunk in
rose-colored cushions, viewed it with disgust, and some mirth. They
rather avoided each other's eyes.

"Carrie ought to be here," Eva said. They both smiled at the thought of
the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy cushions, and hangings,
and lamps. Stell rose and began to walk about, restlessly. She picked up
a vase and laid it down; straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and
wandered into the hall. She stood there a moment, listening. Then she
turned and passed into Jo's bedroom. And there you knew Jo for what he
was.

This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. It was Jo, the
clean-minded and simple-hearted, in revolt against the cloying luxury
with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all rooms in any
house, reflects the personality of its occupant. True, the actual
furniture was paneled, cupid-surmounted, and ridiculous. It had been the
fruit of Jo's first orgy of the senses. But now it stood out in that
stark little room with an air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a
pink tarleton _danseuse_ who finds herself in a monk's cell. None of
those wall-pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be hung.
No satin slippers. No scented notes. Two plain-backed military brushes
on the chiffonier (and he so nearly hairless!). A little orderly stack
of books on the table near the bed. Eva fingered their titles and gave a
little gasp. One of them was on gardening.

"Well, of all things!" exclaimed Stell. A book on the War, by an
Englishman. A detective story of the lurid type that lulls us to sleep.
His shoes ranged in a careful row in the closet, with a shoe-tree in
every one of them. There was something speaking about them. They looked
so human. Eva shut the door on them, quickly. Some bottles on the
dresser. A jar of pomade. An ointment such as a man uses who is growing
bald and is panic-stricken too late. An insurance calendar on the wall.
Some rhubarb-and-soda mixture on the shelf in the bathroom, and a little
box of pepsin tablets.

"Eats all kinds of things at all hours of the night," Eva said, and
wandered out into the rose-colored front room again with the air of one
who is chagrined at her failure to find what she has sought. Stell
followed her furtively.

"Where do you suppose he can be?" she demanded. "It's"--she glanced at
her wrist--"why, it's after six!"

And then there was a little dick. The two women sat up, tense. The door
opened. Jo came in. He blinked a little. The two women in the rosy room
stood up.

"Why--Eve! Why, Babe! Well! Why didn't you let me know?"

"We were just about to leave. We thought you weren't coming home."

Jo came in, slowly.

"I was in the jam on Michigan, watching the boys go by." He sat down,
heavily. The light from the window fell on him. And you saw that his
eyes were red.

And you'll have to learn why. He had found himself one of the thousands
in the jam on Michigan Avenue, as he said. He had a place near the curb,
where his big frame shut off the view of the unfortunates behind him. He
waited with the placid interest of one who has subscribed to all the
funds and societies to which a prosperous, middle-aged business man is
called upon to subscribe in war time. Then, just as he was about to
leave, impatient at the delay, the crowd had cried, with a queer
dramatic, exultant note in its voice, "Here they come! Here come the
boys!"

Just at that moment two little, futile, frenzied fists began to beat a
mad tattoo on Jo Hertz's broad back. Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all
indignant resentment. "Say, look here!"

The little fists kept up their frantic beating and pushing. And a
voice--a choked, high little voice--cried: "Let me by! I can't see! You
man, you! You big fat man! My boy's going by--to war--and I can't see!
Let me by!"

Jo scrooged around, still keeping his place. He looked down. And
upturned to him in agonized appeal was the face of little Emily. They
stared at each other for what seemed a long, long time. It was really
only the fraction of a second. Then Jo put one great arm firmly around
Emily's waist and swung her around in front of him. His great bulk
protected her. Emily was clinging to his hand. She was breathing
rapidly, as if she had been running. Her eyes were straining up the
street.

"Why, Emily, how in the world----"

"I ran away. Fred didn't want me to come. He said it would excite me too
much."

"Fred?"

"My husband. He made me promise to say good-by to Jo at home."

"Jo?"

"Jo's my boy. And he's going to war. So I ran away. I had to see him. I
had to see him go."

She was dry-eyed. Her gaze was straining up the street.

"Why, sure," said Jo. "Of course you want to see him." And then the
crowd gave a great roar. There came over Jo a feeling of weakness. He
was trembling. The boys went marching by.

"There he is," Emily shrilled, above the din. "There he is! There he is!
There he----" And waved a futile little hand. It wasn't so much a wave
as a clutching. A clutching after something beyond her reach.

"Which one? Which one, Emily?"

"The handsome one. The handsome one. There!" Her voice quavered and
died.

Jo put a steady hand on her shoulder. "Point him out," he commanded.
"Show me." And the next instant: "Never mind. I see him."

Somehow, miraculously, he had picked him from among the hundreds. Had
picked him as surely as his own father might have. It was Emily's boy.
He was marching by, rather stiffly. He was nineteen, and fun-loving, and
he had a girl, and he didn't particularly want to go to France and--to
go to France. But more than he had hated going, he had hated not to go.
So he marched by, looking straight ahead, his jaw set so that his chin
stuck out just a little. Emily's boy.

Jo looked at him, and his face flushed purple. His eyes, the hard-boiled
eyes of a Loop-hound, took on the look of a sad old man. And suddenly he
was no longer Jo, the sport; old J. Hertz, the gay-dog. He was Jo Hertz,
thirty, in love with life, in love with Emily, and with the stinging
blood of young manhood coursing through his veins.

Another minute and the boy had passed on up the broad street--the fine,
flag-bedecked street--just one of a hundred service-hats bobbing in
rhythmic motion like sandy waves lapping a shore and flowing on.

Then he disappeared altogether.

Emily was clinging to Jo. She was mumbling something, over and over. "I
can't. I can't. Don't ask me to. I can't let him go. Like that. I
can't."

Jo said a queer thing.

"Why, Emily! We wouldn't have him stay home, would we? We wouldn't want
him to do anything different, would we? Not our boy. I'm glad he
enlisted. I'm proud of him. So are you glad."

Little by little he quieted her. He took her to the car that was
waiting, a worried chauffeur in charge. They said good-by, awkwardly.
Emily's face was a red, swollen mass.

So it was that when Jo entered his own hallway half an hour later he
blinked, dazedly, and when the light from the window fell on him you saw
that his eyes were red.

Eva was not one to beat about the bush. She sat forward in her chair,
clutching her bag rather nervously.

"Now, look here, Jo. Stell and I are here for a reason. We're here to
tell you that this thing's got to stop."

"Thing? Stop?"

"You know very well what I mean. You saw me at the milliner's that day.
And night before last, Ethel. We're all disgusted. If you must go about
with people like that, please have some sense of decency."

Something gathering in Jo's face should have warned her. But he was
slumped down in his chair in such a huddle, and he looked so old and fat
that she did not heed it. She went on. "You've got us to consider. Your
sisters. And your nieces. Not to speak of your own----"

But he got to his feet then, shaking, and at what she saw in his face
even Eva faltered and stopped. It wasn't at all the face of a fat,
middle-aged sport. It was a face Jovian, terrible.

"You!" he began, low-voiced, ominous. "You!" He raised a great fist
high. "You two murderers! You didn't consider me, twenty years ago. You
come to me with talk like that. Where's my boy! You killed him, you two,
twenty years ago. And now he belongs to somebody else. Where's my son
that should have gone marching by today?" He flung his arms out in a
great gesture of longing. The red veins stood out on his forehead.
"Where's my son! Answer me that, you two selfish, miserable women.
Where's my son!" Then, as they huddled together, frightened, wild-eyed:
"Out of my house! Out of my house! Before I hurt you!"

They fled, terrified. The door banged behind them.

Jo stood, shaking, in the center of the room. Then he reached for a
chair, gropingly, and sat down. He passed one moist, flabby hand over
his forehead and it came away wet. The telephone rang. He sat still. It
sounded far away and unimportant, like something forgotten. I think he
did not even hear it with his conscious ear. But it rang and rang
insistently. Jo liked to answer his telephone, when at home.

"Hello!" He knew instantly the voice at the other end.

"That you, Jo?" it said.

"Yes."

"How's my boy?"

"I'm--all right."

"Listen, Jo. The crowd's coming over tonight. I've fixed up a little
poker game for you. Just eight of us."

"I can't come tonight, Gert."

"Can't! Why not?"

"I'm not feeling so good."

"You just said you were all right."

"I am all right. Just kind of tired."

The voice took on a cooing note. "Is my Joey tired? Then he shall be all
comfy on the sofa, and he doesn't need to play if he don't want to. No,
sir."

Jo stood staring at the black mouthpiece of the telephone. He was seeing
a procession go marching by. Boys, hundreds of boys, in khaki.

"Hello! Hello!" The voice took on an anxious note. "Are you there?"

"Yes," wearily.

"Jo, there's something the matter. You're sick. I'm coming right over."

"No!"

"Why not? You sound as if you'd been sleeping. Look here----"

"Leave me alone!" cried Jo, suddenly, and the receiver clacked onto the
hook. "Leave me alone. Leave me alone." Long after the connection had
been broken.

He stood staring at the instrument with unseeing eyes. Then he turned
and walked into the front room. All the light had gone out of it. Dusk
had come on. All the light had gone out of everything. The zest had gone
out of life. The game was over--the game he had been playing against
loneliness and disappointment. And he was just a tired old man. A
lonely, tired old man in a ridiculous, rose-colored room that had grown,
all of a sudden, drab.


[Footnote 1: _From Edna Ferber's Cheerful by Request. Copyright, 1918,
1922, by Doubleday, Page & Co. By permission of the publishers._]


[Illustration: IRVIN S. COBB]




_FOREWORD_


_My favorite short story of all the short stories I have written is "The
Escape of Mr. Trimm." It was the first piece of avowed fiction I wrote.
It was written more than twelve years ago._

_At the time, I was on the city staff of the New York Evening World. I
was a reasonably busy person in those days. I did assignments, both
special and ordinary; I handled my share of the "re-write"--that is, the
building, inside the office, of news-stories based on details telephoned
in by "leg men" or outside workers; I covered most of the big criminal
trials that coincidentally took place; I wrote a page of alleged humor
for the color section of the Sunday World and for the McClure syndicate;
and every week I turned out a given number of shorter and also
supposedly humorous articles for the magazine page of the Evening
World._

_In the run of my contemporaneous duties I was detailed to report the
trial, in Federal Court, of a famous financier. This trial lasted
several weeks. What most deeply impressed me was the bearing of the
accused man. Although he had distinguished counsel, he practically
conducted his own defense. When the jurors came in with a verdict of
guilty and the judge sentenced him to a long term of imprisonment at
hard labor, he kept his nerve and his wits. I said to myself that this
man would never serve out his sentence; he was too smart for that; he
would find a way to beat the law, even though his appeals were denied.
And he did._

_On the concluding day of the trial I fell to wondering just what
possibly could defeat the will of such a man as this man was. At once a
notion jumped into my head and, then and there, sitting at the
reporters' table, I decided to write a story focusing about this central
idea._

_I had written fiction before--every reporter has--fiction masquerading
as the lighter side of the news. But I said to myself that this story
should be out-and-out fiction. Such small reputation as I had as a
special writer largely was founded on my efforts at humor. But I made up
my mind that this story should contain no humor at all._

_Not until six months had passed did I get my chance. In the following
summer I went on my annual vacation of two weeks. In the concluding two
days of that vacation I wrote the first draft of the yarn, and, back at
the shop, in odd moments, I wrote it over again, making, though, only a
few changes in the original text, and none at all in the sequence of
imaginary events._

_I sent the manuscript to Mr. George Horace Lorimer, Editor of the
Saturday Evening Post. He accepted it and invited me to submit other
manuscripts to him. But I had to wait another full year--until vacation
time came again--before there was opportunity for any more short-story
writing. Then I did two more stories. Mr. Lorimer bought them both, and
thereby I was encouraged to give up my newspaper job, with its guarantee
of a pay envelope every Saturday, for the less certain but highly
alluring rôle of a free-lance contributor to weekly and monthly
periodicals._

_Maybe I like "The Escape of Mr. Trimm" best of all my stories because
it was this story which opened the door for me into magazine work. A
writer's estimate of his own output rarely agrees with the judgment of
his friends. But, after a period of consideration, after weighing this
against that, after trying to forget what some of the professional
reviewers have had to say about certain of my efforts, and striving
instead to remember only what more gentle critics, out of the goodness
of the heart, sometimes have told me, I still find myself committed to
the belief that the story which appears in this volume is--so far as my
prejudiced opinion goes--the best story I have ever written._


[Illustration]




_The_ ESCAPE _of_ MR. TRIMM[2]

By IRVIN S. COBB


Mr. Trimm, recently president of the late Thirteenth National Bank, was
taking a trip which was different in a number of ways from any he had
ever taken. To begin with, he was used to parlor cars and Pullmans and
even luxurious private cars when he went anywhere; whereas now he rode
with a most mixed company in a dusty, smelly day coach. In the second
place, his traveling companion was not such a one as Mr. Trimm would
have chosen had the choice been left to him, being a stupid-looking
German-American with a drooping, yellow mustache. And in the third
place, Mr. Trimm's plump white hands were folded in his lap, held in a
close and enforced companionship by a new and shiny pair of Bean's
Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs. Mr. Trimm was on his way to the
Federal penitentiary to serve twelve years at hard labor for breaking,
one way or another, about all the laws that are presumed to govern
national banks.

       *       *       *       *       *

All the time Mr. Trimm was in the Tombs, fighting for a new trial, a
certain question had lain in his mind unasked and unanswered. Through
the seven months of his stay in the jail that question had been always
at the back part of his head, ticking away there like a little watch
that never needed winding. A dozen times a day it would pop into his
thoughts and then go away, only to come back again.

When Copley was taken to the penitentiary--Copley being the cashier who
got off with a lighter sentence because the judge and jury held him to
be no more than a blind accomplice in the wrecking of the Thirteenth
National--Mr. Trimm read closely every line that the papers carried
about Copley's departure. But none of them had seen fit to give the
young cashier more than a short and colorless paragraph. For Copley was
only a small figure in the big intrigue that had startled the country;
Copley didn't have the money to hire big lawyers to carry his appeal to
the higher courts for him; Copley's wife was keeping boarders; and as
for Copley himself, he had been wearing stripes several months now.

With Mr. Trimm it had been vastly different. From the very beginning he
had held the public eye. His bearing in court when the jury came in with
their judgment; his cold defiance when the judge, in pronouncing
sentence, mercilessly arraigned him and the system of finance for which
he stood; the manner of his life in the Tombs; his spectacular fight to
beat the verdict, had all been worth columns of newspaper space. If Mr.
Trimm had been a popular poisoner, or a society woman named as
corespondent in a sensational divorce suit, the papers could not have
been more generous in their space allotments. And Mr. Trimm in his cell
had read all of it with smiling contempt, even to the semi-hysterical
outpourings of the lady special writers who called him The Iron Man of
Wall Street and undertook to analyze his emotions--and missed the mark
by a thousand miles or two.

Things had been smoothed as much as possible for him in the Tombs, for
money and the power of it will go far toward ironing out even the
corrugated routine of that big jail. He had a large cell to himself in
the airiest, brightest corridor. His meals were served by a caterer from
outside. Although he ate them without knife or fork, he soon learned
that a spoon and the fingers can accomplish a good deal when backed by a
good appetite, and Mr. Trimm's appetite was uniformly good. The warden
and his underlings had been models of official kindliness; the
newspapers had sent their brightest young men to interview him whenever
he felt like talking, which wasn't often; and surely his lawyers had
done all in his behalf that money--a great deal of money--could do.
Perhaps it was because of these things that Mr. Trimm had never been
able to bring himself to realize that he was the Hobart W. Trimm who had
been sentenced to the Federal prison; it seemed to him, somehow, that
he, personally, was merely a spectator standing at one side watching the
fight of another man to dodge the penitentiary.

However, he didn't fail to give the other man the advantage of every
chance that money would buy. This sense of aloofness to the whole thing
had persisted even when his personal lawyer came to him one night in the
early fall and told him that the court of last possible resort had
denied the last possible motion. Mr. Trimm cut the lawyer short with a
shake of his head as the other began saying something about the chances
of a pardon from the President. Mr. Trimm wasn't in the habit of letting
men deceive him with idle words. No President would pardon him, and he
knew it.

"Never mind that, Walling," he said steadily, when the lawyer offered to
come to see him again before he started for prison the next day. "If
you'll see that a drawing-room on the train is reserved for me--for us,
I mean--and all that sort of thing, I'll not detain you any further. I
have a good many things to do tonight. Good night."

"Such a man, such a man," said Walling to himself as he climbed into his
car; "all chilled steel and brains. And they are going to lock that
brain up for twelve years. It's a crime," said Walling, and shook his
head. Walling always said it was a crime when they sent a client of his
to prison. To his credit be it said, though, they sent very few of them
there. Walling made as high as eighty thousand a year at criminal law.
Some of it was very criminal law indeed. His specialty was picking holes
in the statutes faster than the legislature could make them and provide
them and putty them up with amendments. This was the first case he had
lost in a good long time.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Jerry, the turnkey, came for him in the morning Mr. Trimm had made
as careful a toilet as the limited means at his command permitted, and
he had eaten a hearty breakfast and was ready to go, all but putting on
his hat. Looking the picture of well-groomed, close-buttoned, iron-gray
middle age, Mr. Trimm followed the turnkey through the long corridor and
down the winding iron stairs to the warden's office. He gave no heed to
the curious eyes that followed him through the barred doors of many
cells; his feet rang briskly on the flags.

The warden, Hallam, was there in the private office with another man, a
tall, raw-boned man with a drooping, straw-colored mustache and the
unmistakable look about him of the police officer. Mr. Trimm knew
without being told that this was the man who would take him to prison.
The stranger was standing at a desk, signing some papers.

"Sit down, please, Mr. Trimm," said the warden with a nervous
cordiality. "Be through here in just one minute. This is Deputy Marshal
Meyers," he added.

Mr. Trimm started to tell this Mr. Meyers he was glad to meet him, but
caught himself and merely nodded. The man stared at him with neither
interest nor curiosity in his dull blue eyes. The warden moved over
toward the door.

"Mr. Trimm," he said, clearing his throat, "I took the liberty of
calling a cab to take you gents up to the Grand Central. It's out front
now. But there's a big crowd of reporters and photographers and a lot of
other people waiting, and if I was you I'd slip out the back way--one of
my men will open the yard gate for you--and jump aboard the subway down
at Worth Street. Then you'll miss those fellows."

"Thank you, Warden--very kind of you," said Mr. Trimm in that crisp,
businesslike way of his. He had been crisp and businesslike all his
life. He heard a door opening softly be hind him, and when he turned to
look he saw the warden slipping out, furtively, in almost an embarrassed
fashion.

"Well," said Meyers, "all ready?"

"Yes," said Mr. Trimm, and he made as if to rise.

"Wait one minute," said Meyers.

He half turned his back on Mr. Trimm and fumbled at the side pocket of
his ill-hanging coat. Something inside of Mr. Trimm gave the least
little jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all those
months began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchief
the man was getting out. Doubtless he was going to mop his face.

He didn't mop his face, though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, as
if it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then,
thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying in
his hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had little
notches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that had
ticked in Mr. Trimm's head was answered at last--in the sight of these
steel things with their notched jaws.

Mr. Trimm stood up and, with a movement as near to hesitation as he had
ever been guilty of in his life, held out his hands, backs upward.

"I guess you're new at this kind of thing," said Meyers, grinning. "This
here way--one at a time."

He took hold of Mr. Trimm's right hand, turned it sideways and settled
one of the steel cuffs over the top of the wrist, flipping the notched
jaw up from beneath and pressing it in so that it locked automatically
with a brisk little click. Slipping the locked cuff back and forth on
Mr. Trimm's lower arm like a man adjusting a part of machinery, and then
bringing the left hand up to meet the right, he treated it the same way.
Then he stepped back.

Mr. Trimm hadn't meant to protest. The word came unbidden.

"This--this isn't necessary, is it?" he asked in a voice that was husky
and didn't seem to belong to him.

"Yep," said Meyers, "Standin' orders is play no favorites and take no
chances. But you won't find them things uncomfortable. Lightest pair
there was in the office, and I fixed 'em plenty loose."

For half a minute Mr. Trimm stood like a rooster hypnotized by a
chalkmark, his arms extended, his eyes set on his bonds. His hands had
fallen perhaps four inches apart, and in the space between his wrists a
little chain was stretched taut. In the mounting tumult that filled his
brain there sprang before Mr. Trimm's consciousness a phrase he had
heard or read somewhere, the title of a story or, perhaps, it was a
headline--The Grips of the Law. The Grips of the Law were upon Mr.
Trimm--he felt them now for the first time in these shiny wristlets and
this bit of chain that bound his wrists and filled his whole body with a
strange, sinking feeling that made him physically sick. A sudden sweat
beaded out on Mr. Trimm's face, turning it slick and wet.

He had a handkerchief, a fine linen handkerchief with a hemstitched
border and a monogram on it, in the upper breast pocket of his buttoned
coat. He tried to reach it. His hands went up, twisting awkwardly like
crab claws. The fingers of both plucked out the handkerchief. Holding it
so, Mr. Trimm mopped the sweat away. The links of the handcuffs fell in
upon one another and lengthened out again at each movement, filling the
room with a smart little sound.

He got the handkerchief stowed away with the same clumsiness. He raised
the manacled hands to his hat brim, gave it a downward pull that brought
it over his face and then, letting his short arms slide down upon his
plump stomach, he faced the man who had put the fetters upon him,
squaring his shoulders back. But it was hard, somehow, for him to square
his shoulders--perhaps because of his hands being drawn so closely
together. And his eyes would waver and fall upon his wrists. Mr. Trimm
had a feeling that the skin must be stretched very tight on his jawbones
and his forehead.

"Isn't there some way to hide these--these things?"

He began by blurting and ended by faltering it. His hands shuffled
together, one over, then under the other.

"Here's a way," said Meyers. "This'll help."

He bestirred himself, folding one of the chained hands upon the other,
tugging at the white linen cuffs and drawing the coat sleeves of his
prisoner down over the bonds as far as the chain would let them come.

"There's the notion," he said. "Just do that-a-way and them bracelets
won't hardly show a-tall. Ready? Let's be movin', then."

But handcuffs were never meant to be hidden. Merely a pair of steel
rings clamped to one's wrists and coupled together with a scrap of
chain, but they'll twist your arms and hamper the movements of your body
in a way constantly to catch the eye of the passer-by. When a man is
coming toward you, you can tell that he is handcuffed before you see the
cuffs.

Mr. Trimm was never able to recall afterward exactly how he got out of
the Tombs. He had a confused memory of a gate that was swung open by
someone whom Mr. Trimm saw only from the feet to the waist; then he and
his companion were out on Lafayette Street speeding south toward the
subway entrance at Worth Street, two blocks below, with the marshal's
hand cupped under Mr. Trimm's right elbow and Mr. Trimm's plump legs
almost trotting in their haste. For a moment it looked as if the
warden's well-meant artifice would serve.

But New York reporters are up to the tricks of people who want to evade
them. At the sight of them a sentry reporter on the corner shouted a
warning which was instantly caught up and passed on by another picket
stationed half-way down the block; and around the wall of the Tombs came
pelting a flying mob of newspaper photographers and reporters, with a
choice rabble behind them. Foot passengers took up the chase, not
knowing what it was about, but sensing a free show. Truckmen halted
their teams, jumped down from their wagon seats and joined in. A
man-chase is one of the pleasantest outdoor sports that a big city like
New York can offer its people.

Fairly running now, the manacled banker and the deputy marshal shot down
the winding steps into the subway a good ten yards ahead of the foremost
pursuers. But there was one delay, while Meyers skirmished with his free
hand in his trousers pocket for a dime for the tickets, and another
before a northbound local rolled into the station. Shouted at, jeered
at, shoved this way and that, panting in gulping breaths, for he was
stout by nature and staled by lack of exercise, Mr. Trimm, with Meyers
clutching him by the arm, was fairly shot aboard one of the cars, at the
apex of a human wedge. The astonished guard sensed the situation as the
scrooging, shoving, noisy wave rolled across the platform toward the
doors which he had opened and, thrusting the officer and his prisoner
into the narrow platform space behind him, he tried to form with his
body a barrier against those who came jamming in.

It, didn't do any good. He was brushed away, protesting and blustering.
The excitement spread through the train, and men, and even women, left
their seats, overflowing the aisles.

There is no cruder thing than a city crowd, all eyes and morbid
curiosity. But Mr. Trimm didn't see the staring eyes on that ride to the
Grand Central. What he saw was many shifting feet and a hedge of legs
shutting him in closely--those and the things on his wrists. What the
eyes of the crowd saw was a small, stout man who, for all his bulk,
seemed to have dried up inside his clothes so that they bagged on him
some places and bulged others, with his head tucked on his chest, his
hat over his face and his fingers straining to hold his coat sleeves
down over a pair of steel bracelets.

Mr. Trimm gave mental thanks to a Deity whose existence he thought he
had forgotten when the gate of the train-shed clanged behind him,
shutting out the mob that had come with them all the way. Cameras had
been shoved in his face like gun muzzles, reporters had scuttled
alongside him, dodging under Meyers' fending arm to shout questions in
his ears. He had neither spoken nor looked at them. The sweat still ran
down his face, so that when finally he raised his head in the
comparative quiet of the train-shed his skin was a curious gray under
the jail paleness like the color of wet wood ashes.

"My lawyer promised to arrange for a compartment--for some private place
on the train," he said to Meyers. "The conductor ought to know."

They were the first words he had uttered since he left the Tombs. Meyers
spoke to a jaunty Pullman conductor who stood alongside the car where
they had halted.

"No such reservation," said the conductor, running through his sheaf of
slips, with his eyes shifting from Mr. Trimm's face to Mr. Trimm's hands
and back again, as though he couldn't decide which was the more
interesting part of him; "must be some mistake. Or else it was for some
other train. Too late to change now--we pull out in three minutes."

"I reckon we better git on the smoker," said Meyers, "if there's room
there."

Mr. Trimm was steered back again the length of the train through a
double row of pop-eyed porters and staring trainmen. At the steps where
they stopped the instinct to stretch out one hand and swing himself up
by the rail operated automatically and his wrists got a nasty twist.
Meyers and a brakeman practically lifted him up the steps and Meyers
headed him into a car that was hazy with blue tobacco smoke. He was
confused in his gait, almost as if his lower limbs had been fettered,
too.

The car was full of shirt-sleeved men who stood up, craning their necks
and stumbling over each other in their desire to see him. These men came
out into the aisle, so that Meyers had to shove through them.

"This here'll do as well as any, I guess," said Meyers. He drew Mr.
Trimm past him into the seat nearer the window and sat down alongside
him on the side next the aisle, settling himself on the stuffy plush
seat and breathing deeply, like a man who had got through the hardest
part of a not easy job.

"Smoke?" he asked.

Mr. Trimm shook his head without raising it.

"Them cuffs feel plenty easy?" was the deputy's next question. He lifted
Mr. Trimm's hands as casually as if they had been his hands and not Mr.
Trimm's, and looked at them.

"Seem to be all right," he said as he let them fall back. "Don't pinch
none, I reckon?" There was no answer.

The deputy tugged a minute at his mustache, searching his arid mind. An
idea came to him. He drew a newspaper from his pocket, opened it out
flat and spread it over Mr. Trimm's lap so that it covered the chained
wrists. Almost instantly the train was in motion, moving through the
yards.

"Be there in two hours more," volunteered Meyers. It was late afternoon.
They were sliding through woodlands with occasional openings which
showed meadows melting into wide, flat lands.

"Want a drink?" said the deputy, next. "No? Well, I guess I'll have a
drop myself. Travelin' fills a feller's throat full of dust." He got up,
lurching to the motion of the flying train, and started forward to the
water cooler behind the car door. He had gone perhaps two-thirds of the
way when Mr. Trimm felt a queer, grinding sensation beneath his feet; it
was exactly as though the train were trying to go forward and back at
the same time. Almost slowly, it seemed to him, the forward end of the
car slued out of its straight course, at the same time tilting up. There
was a grinding, roaring, grating sound, and before Mr. Trimm's eyes
Meyers vanished, tumbling forward out of sight as the car floor buckled
under his feet. Then, as everything--the train, the earth, the sky--all
fused together in a great spatter of white and black, Mr. Trimm was
plucked from his seat as though a giant hand had him by the collar and
shot forward through the air over the seat-backs, his chained hands
aloft, clutching wildly. He rolled out of a ragged opening where the
smoker had broken in two, flopped gently on the sloping side of the
right-of-way and slid easily to the bottom, where he lay quiet and still
on his back in a bed of weeds and wild grass, staring straight up.

How many minutes he lay there Mr. Trimm didn't know. It may have been
the shrieks of the victims or the glare from the fire that brought him
out of the daze. He wriggled his body to a sitting posture, got on his
feet, holding his head between his coupled hands, and gazed full-face
into the crowning railroad horror of the year.

There were numbers of the passengers who had escaped serious hurt, but
for the most part these persons seemed to have gone daft from terror and
shock. Some were running aimlessly up and down and some, a few, were
pecking feebly with improvised tools at the wreck, an indescribable
jumble of ruin, from which there issued cries of mortal agony, and from
which, at a point where two locomotives were lying on their sides,
jammed together like fighting bucks that had died with locked horns, a
tall flame already rippled and spread, sending up a pillar of black
smoke that rose straight, poisoning the clear blue of the sky. Nobody
paid any attention to Mr. Trimm as he stood swaying upon his feet. There
wasn't a scratch on him. His clothes were hardly rumpled, his hat was
still on his head. He stood a minute and then, moved by a sudden
impulse, he turned round and went running straight away from the
railroad at the best speed his pudgy legs could accomplish, with his
arms pumping up and down in front of him and his fingers interlaced. It
was a grotesque gait, rather like a rabbit hopping on its hindlegs.

Instantly, almost, the friendly woods growing down to the edge of the
fill swallowed him up. He dodged and doubled back and forth among the
tree trunks, his small, patent-leathered feet skipping nimbly over the
irregular turf, until he stopped for lack of wind in his lungs to carry
him another rod. When he had got his breath back Mr. Trimm leaned
against a tree and bent his head this way and that, listening. No sound
came to his ears except the sleepy calls of birds. As well as Mr. Trimm
might judge he had come far into the depths of a considerable woodland.
Already the shadows under the low limbs were growing thick and confused
as the hurried twilight of early September came on.

Mr. Trimm sat down on a natural cushion of thick green moss between two
roots of an oak. The place was clean and soft and sweet-scented. For
some little time he sat there motionless, in a sort of mental haze. Then
his round body slowly slid down fiat upon the moss, his head lolled to
one side and, the reaction having come, Mr. Trimm's limbs all relaxed
and he went to sleep straightway.

After a while, when the woods were blade and still, the half-grown moon
came up and, sifting through a chink in the canopy of leaves above,
shone down full on Mr. Trimm as he lay snoring gently with his mouth
open and his hands rising and falling on his breast. The moonlight
struck upon the Little Giant handcuffs, making them look like
quicksilver.

Toward daylight it turned off sharp and cool. The dogwoods which had
been a solid color at nightfall now showed pink in one light and green
in another, like changeable silk, as the first level rays of the sun
came up over the rim of the earth and made long, golden lanes between
the tree trunks. Mr. Trimm opened his eyes slowly, hardly sensing for
the first moment or two how he came to be lying under a canopy of
leaves, and gaped, seeking to stretch his arms. At that he remembered
everything; he hunched his shoulders against the tree roots and wriggled
himself up to a sitting position where he stayed for a while, letting
his mind run over the sequence of events that had brought him where he
was and taking inventory of the situation.

Of escape he had no thought. The hue and cry must be out for him before
now; doubtless men were already searching for him. It would be better
for him to walk in and surrender than to be taken in the woods like some
animal escaped from a traveling menagerie. But the mere thought of
enduring again what he had already gone through--the thought of being
tagged by crowds and stared at, with his fetters on--filled him with a
nausea. Nothing that the Federal penitentiary might hold in store for
him could equal the black, blind shamefulness of yesterday; he knew
that. The thought of the new ignominy that faced him made Mr. Trimm
desperate. He had a desire to burrow into the thicket yonder and hide
his face and his chained hands.

But perhaps he could get the handcuffs off and so go to meet his captors
in some manner of dignity. Strange that the idea hadn't occurred to him
before! It seemed to Mr. Trimm that he desired to get his two hands
apart more than he had ever desired anything in his whole life before.

The hands had begun naturally to adjust themselves to their enforced
companionship, and it wasn't such a very hard matter, though it cost him
some painful wrenches and much twisting of the fingers, for Mr. Trimm to
get his coat unbuttoned and his eyeglasses in their small leather case
out of his upper waistcoat pocket. With the glasses on his nose he
subjected his bonds to a critical examination. Each rounded steel band
ran unbroken except for the smooth, almost jointless hinge and the small
lock which sat perched on the back of the wrist in a little rounded
excrescence like a steel wart. In the flat center of each lock was a
small keyhole and alongside of it a notched nub, the nub being sunk in a
minute depression. On the inner side, underneath, the cuffs slid into
themselves--two notches on each showing where the jaws might be
tightened to fit a smaller hand than his--and right over the large blue
veins in the middle of the wrists were swivel links, shackle-bolted to
the cuffs and connected by a flat, slightly larger middle link, giving
the hands a palm-to-palm play of not more than four or five inches. The
cuffs did not hurt--even after so many hours there was no actual
discomfort from them and the flesh beneath them was hardly reddened.

But it didn't take Mr. Trimm long to find out that they were not to be
got off. He tugged and pulled, trying with his fingers for a purchase.
All he did was to chafe his skin and make his wrists throb with pain.
The cuffs would go forward just so far, then the little humps of bone
above the hands would catch and hold them.

Mr. Trimm was not a man to waste time in the pursuit of the obviously
hopeless. Presently he stood up, shook himself and started off at a fair
gait through the woods. The sun was up now and the turf was all dappled
with lights and shadows, and about him much small, furtive wild life was
stirring. He stepped along briskly, a strange figure for that green
solitude, with his correct city garb and the glint of the steel at his
sleeve ends.

Presently he heard the long-drawn, quavering, banshee wail of a
locomotive. The sound came from almost behind him, in an opposite
direction from where he supposed the track to be. So he turned around
and went back the other way. He crossed a half-dried-up runlet and
climbed a small hill, neither of which he remembered having met in his
flight from the wreck, and in a little while he came out upon the
railroad. To the north a little distance the rails bent round a curve.
To the south, where the diminishing rails running through the unbroken
woodland met in a long, shiny V, he could see a big smoke smudge against
the horizon. This smoke Mr. Trimm knew must come from the wreck--which
was still burning, evidently. As nearly as he could judge he had come
out of cover at least two miles above it. After a moment's consideration
he decided to go south toward the wreck. Soon he could distinguish small
dots like ants moving in and out about the black spot, and he knew these
dots must be men.

A whining, whirring sound came along the rails to him from behind. He
faced about just as a handcar shot out around the curve from the north,
moving with amazing rapidity under the strokes of four men at the pumps.
Other men, laborers to judge by their blue overalls, were sitting on the
edges of the car with their feet dangling. For the second time within
twelve hours impulse ruled Mr. Trimm, who wasn't given to impulses
normally. He made a jump off the right-of-way, and as the handcar
flashed by he watched its flight from the covert of a weed tangle.

But even as the handcar was passing him Mr. Trimm regretted his
hastiness. He must surrender himself sooner or later; why not to these
overalled laborers, since it was a thing that had to be done? He slid
out of hiding and came trotting back to the tracks. Already the handcar
was a hundred yards away, flitting into distance like some big,
wonderfully fast bug, the figures of the men at the pumps rising and
falling with a walking-beam regularity. As he stood watching them fade
away and minded to try hailing them, yet still hesitating against his
judgment, Mr. Trimm saw something white drop from the hands of one of
the blue-clad figures on the handcar, unfold into a newspaper and come
fluttering back along the tracks toward him. Just as he, starting
doggedly ahead, met it, the little ground breeze that had carried it
along died out and the paper dropped and flattened right in front of
him. The front page was uppermost and he knew it must be of that
morning's issue, for across the column tops ran the flaring headline:
"Twenty Dead in Frightful Collision."

Squatting on the cindered track, Mr. Trimm patted the crumpled sheet
flat with his hands. His eyes dropped from the first of the glaring
captions to the second, to the next--and then his heart gave a great
bound inside of him and, clutching up the newspaper to his breast he
bounded off the tracks back into another thicket and huddled there with
the paper spread on the earth in front of him, reading by gulps while
the chain, that linked wrist to wrist tinkled to the tremors running
through him. What he had seen first, in staring black-face type, was his
own name leading the list of known dead, and what he saw now, broken up
into choppy paragraphs and done in the nervous English of a trained
reporter throwing a great news story together to catch an edition, but
telling a clear enough story nevertheless, was a narrative in which his
name recurred again and again. The body of the United States deputy
marshal, Meyers, frightfully crushed, had been taken from the wreckage
of the smoker--so the double-leaded story ran--and near to Meyers
another body, with features burned beyond recognition, yet still
retaining certain distinguishing marks of measurement and contour, had
been found and identified as that of Hobart W. Trimm, the convicted
banker. The bodies of these two, with eighteen other mangled dead, had
been removed to a town called Westfield, from which town of Westfield
the account of the disaster had been telegraphed to the New York paper.
In another column farther along was more about Banker Trimm; facts about
his soiled, selfish, greedy, successful life, his great fortune, his
trial, and a statement that, in the absence of any close kin to claim
his body, his lawyers had been notified.

Mr. Trimm read the account through to the end, and as he read the sense
of dominant, masterful self-control came back to him in waves. He got
up, taking the paper with him, and went back into the deeper woods,
moving warily and watchfully. As he went his mind, trained to take hold
of problems and wring the essence out of them, was busy. Of the charred,
grisly thing in the improvised morgue at Westfield, wherever that might
be, Mr. Trimm took no heed nor wasted any pity. All his life he had used
live men to work his will, with no thought of what might come to them
afterward. The living had served him, why not the dead?

He had other things to think of than this dead proxy of his. He was as
good as free! There would be no hunt for him now; no alarm out, no
posses combing every scrap of cover for a famous criminal turned
fugitive. He had only to lie quiet a few days, somewhere, then get in
secret touch with Walling. Walling would do anything for money. And he
had the money--four millions and more, cannily saved from the crash that
had ruined so many others.

He would alter his personal appearance, change his name--he thought of
Duvall, which was his mother's name--and with Walling's aid he would get
out of the country and into some other country where a man might live
like a prince on four millions or the fractional part of it. He thought
of South America, of South Africa, of a private yacht swinging through
the little frequented islands of the South Seas. All that the law had
tried to take from him would be given back. Walling would work out the
details of the escape--and make it safe and sure--trust Walling for
those things. On one side was the prison, with its promise of twelve
grinding years sliced out of the very heart of his life; on the other,
freedom, ease, security, even power. Through Mr. Trimm's mind tumbled
thoughts of concessions, enterprises, privileges--the back corners of
the globe were full of possibilities for the right man. And between this
prospect and Mr. Trimm there stood nothing in the way, nothing but----

Mr. Trimm's eyes fell upon his bound hands. Snug-fitting, shiny steel
bands irked his wrists. The Grips of the Law were still upon him.

But only in a way of speaking. It was preposterous, unbelievable,
altogether out of the question that a man with four millions salted down
and stored away, a man who all his life had been used to grappling with
the big things and wrestling them down into submission, a man whose luck
had come to be a byword--and had not it held good even in this last
emergency?--would be balked by puny scraps of forged steel and a
trumpery lock or two. Why, these cuffs were no thicker than the gold
bands that Mr. Trimm had seen on the arms of overdressed women at the
opera. The chain that joined them was no larger and, probably, no
stronger than the chains which Mr. Trimm's chauffeur wrapped around the
tires of the touring-car in winter to keep the wheels from skidding on
the slush. There would be a way, surely, for Mr. Trimm to free himself
from these things. There must be--that was all there was to it.

Mr. Trimm looked himself over. His clothes were not badly rumpled; his
patent-leather boots were scarcely scratched. Without the handcuffs he
could pass unnoticed anywhere. By night then he must be free of them and
on his way to some small inland city, to stay quiet there until the
guarded telegram that he would send in cipher had reached Walling. There
in the woods by himself Mr. Trimm no longer felt the ignominy of his
bonds; he felt only the temporary embarrassment of them and the need of
added precaution until he should have mastered them.

He was once more the unemotional man of affairs who had stood Wall
Street on its esteemed head and caught the golden streams that trickled
from its pockets. First making sure that he was in a well-screened
covert of the woods he set about exploring all his pockets. The coat
pockets were comparatively easy, now that he had got used to using two
hands where one had always served, but it cost him a lot of twisting of
his body and some pain to his mistreated wrist bones to bring forth the
contents of his trousers pockets. The chain kinked time and again as he
groped with the undermost hand for the openings; his dumpy, pudgy form
writhed grotesquely. But finally he finished. The search produced four
cigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, a
silver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chicken
feed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple of quill toothpicks,
a gold watch with a dangling fob, a note-book and some papers. Mr. Trimm
ranged these things in a neat row upon a log, like a watchmaker putting
out his kit, and took swift inventory of them. Some he eliminated from
his design, stowing them back in the pockets easiest to reach. He kept
for present employment the match safe, the cigar cutter and the watch.

This place where he had halted would suit his present purpose well, he
decided. It was where an uprooted tree, fallen across an incurving bank,
made a snug little recess that was closed in on three sides. Spreading
the newspaper on the turf to save his knees from soiling, he knelt and
set to his task. For the time he felt neither hunger nor thirst. He had
found out during his earlier experiments that the nails of his little
fingers, which were trimmed to a point, could invade the keyholes in the
little steel warts on the backs of his wrists and touch the locks. The
mechanism had even twitched a little bit under the tickle of the nail
ends. So, having already smashed the gun-metal match safe under his
heel, Mr. Trimm selected a slender-pointed bit from among its fragments
and got to work, the left hand drawn up under the right, the fingers of
the right busy with the lock of the left, the chain tightening and
slackening with subdued clinking sounds at each movement.

Mr. Trimm didn't know much about picking a lock. He had got his money by
a higher form of burglary that did not require a knowledge of
lock-picking. Nor as a boy had he been one to play at mechanics. He had
let other boys make the toy fluttermills and the wooden traps and the
like, and then he had traded for them. He was sorry now that he hadn't
given more heed to the mechanical side of things when he was growing up.

He worked with a deliberate slowness, steadily. Nevertheless, it was hot
work. The sun rose over the bank and shone on him through the limbs of
the uprooted tree. His hat was on the ground alongside of him. The sweat
ran down his face, streaking it and wilting his collar flat. The scrap
of gun metal kept slipping out of his wet fingers. Down would go the
chained hands to scrabble in the grass for it, and then the picking
would go on again. This happened a good many times. Birds, nervous with
the spirit that presages the fall migration, flew back and forth along
the creek, almost grazing Mr. Trimm sometimes. A rain crow wove a brown
thread in the green warp of the bushes above his head. A chattering red
squirrel sat up on a tree limb to scold him. At intervals, distantly,
came the cough of laboring trains, showing that the track must have been
cleared. There were times when Mr. Trimm thought he felt the lock
giving. These times he would work harder.

       *       *       *       *       *

Late in the afternoon Mr. Trimm lay back against the bank, panting. His
face was splotched with red, and the little hollows at the sides of his
forehead pulsed rapidly up and down like the bellies of scared tree
frogs. The bent outer case of the watch littered a bare patch on the
log; its mainspring had gone the way of the fragments of the gun-metal
match safe which were lying all about, each a worn-down, twisted wisp of
metal. The spring of the eyeglasses had been confiscated long ago and
the broken crystals powdered the earth where Mr. Trimm's toes had
scraped a smooth patch. The nails of the two little fingers were worn to
the quick and splintered down into the raw flesh. There were countless
tiny scratches and mars on the locks of the handcuffs, and the steel
wristbands were dulled with blood smears and pale-red tarnishes of new
rust; but otherwise they were as stanch and strong a pair of Bean's
Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs as you'd find in any hardware store
anywhere.

The devilish, stupid malignity of the damned things! With an acid oath
Mr. Trimm raised his hands and brought them down on the log violently.
There was a double click and the bonds tightened painfully, pressing the
chafed red skin white. Mr. Trimm snatched up his hands close to his
near-sighted eyes and looked. One of the little notches on the under
side of each cuff had disappeared. It was as if they were living things
that had turned and bitten him for the blow he gave them.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the time the sun went down there was a tingle of frost in the air.
Mr. Trimm didn't sleep much. Under the squeeze of the tightened fetters
his wrists throbbed steadily and racking cramps ran through his arms.
His stomach felt as though it were tied into knots. The water that he
drank from the branch only made his hunger sickness worse. His
undergarments, that had been wet with perspiration, clung to him
clammily. His middle-aged, tenderly cared-for body called through every
pore for clean linen and soap and water and rest, as his empty insides
called for food.

After a while he became so chilled that the demand for warmth conquered
his instinct for caution. He felt about him in the darkness gathering
scraps of dead wood, and, after breaking several of the matches that had
been in the gun-metal match safe, he managed to strike one and with its
tiny flame started a fire. He huddled almost over the fire, coughing
when the smoke blew into his face and twisting and pulling at his arms
in an effort to get relief from the everlasting cramps. It seemed to him
that if he could only get an inch or two more of play for his hands he
would be ever so much more comfortable. But he couldn't, of course.

He dozed, finally, sitting crosslegged with his head sunk between his
hunched shoulders. A pain in a new place woke him. The fire had burned
almost through the thin sole of his right shoe, and as he scrambled to
his feet and stamped, the clap of the hot leather flat against his
blistered foot almost made him cry out.

       *       *       *       *       *

Soon after sunrise a boy came riding a horse down a faintly traced
footpath along the creek, driving a cow with a bell on her neck ahead of
him. Mr. Trimm's ears caught the sound of the clanking bell before
either the cow or her herder was in sight, and he limped away, running,
skulking through the thick cover. A pendent loop of a wild grapevine,
swinging low, caught his hat and flipped it off his head; but Mr. Trimm,
imagining pursuit, did not stop to pick it up and went on bareheaded
until he had to stop from exhaustion. He saw some dark-red berries on a
shrub upon which he had trod, and, stooping, he plucked some of them
with his two hands and put three or four in his mouth experimentally.
Warned instantly by the harsh, burning taste, he spat the crushed
berries out and went on doggedly, following, according to his best
judgment, a course parallel to the railroad. It was characteristic of
him, a city-raised man, that he took no heed of distances nor of the
distinguishing marks of the timber.

Behind a log at the edge of a small clearing in the woods he halted some
little time, watching and listening. The clearing had grown up in sumacs
and weeds and small saplings and it seemed deserted; certainly it was
still. Near the center of it rose the sagging roof of what had been a
shack or a shed of some sort. Stooping cautiously, to keep his bare head
below the tops of the sumacs, Mr. Trimm made for the ruined shanty and
gained it safely. In the midst of the rotted, punky logs that had once
formed the walls he began scraping with his feet. Presently he uncovered
something. It was a broken-off harrow tooth, scaled like a long, red
fish with the crusted rust of years.

Mr. Trimm rested the lower rims of his handcuffs on the edge of an old,
broken watering trough, worked the pointed end of the rust-crusted
harrow tooth into the flat middle link of the chain as far as it would
go, and then with one hand on top of the other he pressed downward with
all his might. The pain in his wrists made him stop this at once. The
link had not sprung or given in the least, but the twisting pressure had
almost broken his wrist bones. He let the harrow tooth fall, knowing
that it would never serve as a lever to free him--which, indeed, he had
known all along--and sat on the side of the trough, rubbing his wrists
and thinking.

He had another idea. It came into his mind as a vague suggestion that
fire had certain effects upon certain metals. He kindled a fire of bits
of the rotted wood, and when the flames ran together and rose slender
and straight in a single red thread he thrust the chain into it, holding
his hands as far apart as possible in the attitude of a player about to
catch a bounced ball. But immediately the pain of that grew unendurable
too, and he leaped back, jerking his hands away. He had succeeded only
in blackening the steel and putting a big water blister on one of his
wrists right where the shackle bolt would press upon it.

Where he huddled down in the shelter of one of the fallen walls he
noticed, presently, a strand of rusted fence wire still held to
half-tottering posts by a pair of blackened staples; it was part of a
pen that had been used once for chickens or swine. Mr. Trimm tried the
wire with his fingers. It was firm and springy. Rocking and groaning
with the pain of it, he nevertheless began sliding the chain back and
forth along the strand of wire.

Eventually, the wire, weakened by age, snapped in two. A tiny shined
spot, hardly deep enough to be called a nick, in its tarnished, smudged
surface was all the mark that the chain showed.

Staggering a little and putting his feet down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm left
the clearing, heading as well as he could tell eastward, away from the
railroad. After a mile or two he came toil dusty wood road winding
downhill.

To the north of the clearing where Mr. Trimm had halted were a farm and
a group of farm buildings. To the southward a mile or so was a cluster
of dwellings set in the midst of more farm lands, with a shop or two and
a small white church with a green spire in the center. Along a road that
ran northward from the hamlet to the solitary farm a ten-year-old boy
came, carrying a covered tin pail. A young gray squirrel flirted across
the wagon ruts ahead of him and darted up a chestnut sapling. The boy
put the pail down at the side of the road and began looking for a stone
to throw at the squirrel.

Mr. Trimm slid out from behind a tree. A hemstitched handkerchief,
grimed and stained, was loosely twisted around his wrists, partly hiding
the handcuffs. He moved along with a queer, sidling gait, keeping as
much of his body as he could turned from the youngster. The ears of the
little chap caught the faint scuffle of feet and he spun around on his
bare heel.

"My boy, would you----" Mr. Trimm began.

The boy's round eyes widened at the apparition that was sidling toward
him in so strange a fashion, and then, taking fright, he dodged past Mr.
Trimm and ran back the way he had come, as fast as his slim brown legs
could take him. In half a minute he was out of sight round a bend.

Had the boy looked back he would have seen a still more curious
spectacle than the one that had frightened him. He would have seen a man
worth four million dollars down on his knees in the yellow dust, pawing
with chained hands at the tight-fitting lid of the tin pail, and then,
when he had got the lid off, drinking the fresh, warm milk which the
pail held with great, choking gulps, uttering little mewing, animal
sounds as he drank, while the white, creamy milk ran over his chin and
splashed down his breast in little, spurting streams.

But the boy didn't look back. He ran all the way home and told his
mother he had seen a wild man on the road to the village; and later,
when his father came in from the fields, he was soundly thrashed for
letting the sight of a tramp make him lose a good tin bucket and half a
gallon of milk worth nine cents a quart.

       *       *       *       *       *

The rich, fresh milk put life into Mr. Trimm. He rested the better for
it during the early part of that night in a haw thicket. Only the sharp,
darting pains in his wrists kept rousing him to temporary wakefulness.
In one of those intervals of waking the plan that had been sketchily
forming in his mind from the time he had quit the clearing in the woods
took on a definite, fixed shape. But how was he with safety to get the
sort of aid he needed, and where?

Canvassing tentative plans in his head, he dozed off again.

       *       *       *       *       *

On a smooth patch of turf behind the blacksmith shop three yokels were
languidly pitching horseshoes--"quaits," they called them--at a stake
driven in the earth. Just beyond, the woods shredded out into a long,
yellow and green peninsula which stretched up almost to the back door of
the smithy, so that late of afternoons the slanting shadows of the
nearmost trees fell on its roof of warped shingles. At the extreme end
of this point of woods Mr. Trimm was squatted behind a big boulder,
squinting warily through a thick-fringed curtain of ripened goldenrod
tops and sumacs, heavy-headed with their dark-red tapers. He had been
there more than an hour, cautiously waiting his chance to hail the
blacksmith, whose figure he could make out in the smoky interior of his
shop, passing back and forth in front of a smudgy forge fire and
rattling metal against metal in intermittent fits of professional
activity.

From where Mr. Trimm watched to where the horseshoe-pitching game went
on was not more than sixty feet. He could hear what the players said and
even see the little puffs of dust rise when one of them clapped his
hands together after a pitch. He judged by the signs of slackening
interest that they would be stopping soon and, he hoped, going clear
away.

But the smith loafed out of his shop and, after an exchange of bucolic
banter with the three of them, he took a hand in their game himself. He
wore no coat or waistcoat and, as he poised a horseshoe for his first
cast at the stake, Mr. Trimm saw, pinned flat against the broad strap of
his suspenders, a shiny, silvery-looking disc. Having pitched the shoe,
the smith moved over into the shade, so that he almost touched the clump
of undergrowth that half buried Mr. Trimm's protecting boulder. The
near-sighted eyes of the fugitive banker could make out then what the
flat, silvery disc was, and Mr. Trimm cowered low in his covert behind
the rock, holding his hands down between his knees, fearful that a gleam
from his burnished wristlets might strike through the screen of weed
growth and catch the inquiring eye of the smith. So he stayed, not
daring to move, until a dinner horn sounded somewhere in the cluster of
cottages beyond, and the smith, closing the doors of his shop, went away
with the three yokels.

Then Mr. Trimm, stooping low, stole back into the deep woods again. In
his extremity he was ready to risk making a bid for the hire of a
blacksmith's aid to rid himself of his bonds, but not a blacksmith who
wore a deputy sheriff's badge pinned to his suspenders.

       *       *       *       *       *

He caught himself scraping his wrists up and down again against the
rough, scrofulous trunk of a shellbark hickory. The irritation was
comforting to the swollen skin. The cuffs, which kept catching on the
bark and snagging small fragments of it loose, seemed to Mr. Trimm to
have been a part and parcel of him for a long time--almost as long a
time as he could remember. But the hands which they clasped so close
seemed like the hands of somebody else. There was a numbness about them
that made them feel as though they were a stranger's hands which never
had belonged to him. As he looked at them with a sort of vague curiosity
they seemed to swell and grow, these two strange hands, while the
fetters measured yards across, while the steel bands shrunk to the
thinness of piano wire, cutting deeper and deeper into the flesh. Then
the hands in turn began to shrink down and the cuffs to grow up into
great, thick things as cumbersome as the couplings of a freight car. A
voice that Mr. Trimm dimly recognized as his own was saying something
about four million dollars over and over again.

Mr. Trimm roused up and shook his head angrily to clear it. He rubbed
his eyes free of the clouding delusion. It wouldn't do for him to be
getting light-headed.

       *       *       *       *       *

On a flat, shelving bluff, forty feet above a cut through which the
railroad ran at a point about five miles north of where the collision
had occurred, a tramp was busy, just before sundown, cooking something
in an old washboiler that perched precariously on a fire of wood coals.
This tramp was tall and spindle-legged, with reddish hair and a pale,
beardless, freckled face with no chin to it and not much forehead, so
that it ran out to a peak like the profile of some featherless,
unpleasant sort of fowl. The skirts of an old, ragged overcoat dangled
grotesquely about his spare shanks.

Desperate as his plight had become, Mr. Trimm felt the old sick shame at
the prospect of exposing himself to this knavish-looking vagabond whose
help he meant to buy with a bribe. It was the sight of a dainty wisp of
smoke from the wood fire curling upward through the cloudy, damp air
that had brought him limping cautiously across the right-of-way, to
climb the rocky shelf along the cut; but now he hesitated, shielded in
the shadows twenty yards away. It was a whiff of something savory in the
washboiler, borne to him on the still air and almost making him cry out
with eagerness, that drew him forth finally. At the sound of the halting
footsteps the tramp stopped stirring the mess in the washboiler and
glanced up apprehensively. As he took in the figure of the newcomer his
eyes narrowed and his pasty, nasty face spread in a grin of
comprehension.

"Well, well, well," he said, leering offensively, "welcome to our city,
little stranger."

Mr. Trimm came nearer, dragging his feet, for they were almost out of
the wrecks of his patent-leather shoes. His gaze shifted from the
tramp's face to the stuff on the fire, his nostrils wrinkling. Then
slowly, "I'm in trouble," he said, and held out his hands.

"Wot I'd call a mild way o' puttin' it," said the tramp coolly. "That
purticular kind o' joolry ain't gen'lly wore for pleasure."

His eyes took on a nervous squint and roved past Mr. Trimm's stooped
figure down the slope of the hillock.

"Say, pal, how fur ahead are you of yore keeper?" he demanded, his
manner changing.

"There is no one after me--no one that I know of," explained Mr. Trimm.
"I am quite alone--I am certain of it."

"Sure there ain't nobody lookin' fur you?" the other persisted
suspiciously.

"I tell you I am all alone," protested Mr. Trimm. "I want your help in
getting these--these things off and sending a message to a friend.
You'll be well paid, very well paid. I can pay you more money than you
ever had in your life, probably, for your help. I can promise-----"

He broke off, for the tramp, as if reassured by his words, had stooped
again to his cooking and was stirring the bubbling contents of the
washboiler with a peeled stick. The smell of the stew, rising strongly,
filled Mr. Trimm with such a sharp and an aching hunger that he could
not speak for a moment. He mastered himself, but the effort left him
shaking and gulping.

"Go on, then, an' tell us somethin' about yourself," said the freckled
man. "Wot brings you roamin' round this here railroad cut with them
bracelets on?"

"I was in the wreck," obeyed Mr. Trimm. "The man with me--the
officer--was killed. I wasn't hurt and I got away into these woods. But
they think I'm dead too--my name was among the list of dead."

The other's peaky face lengthened in astonishment.

"Why, say!" he began. "I read all about that there wreck--seen the list
myself--say, you can't be Trimm, the New York banker? Yes, you are! Wot
a streak of luck! Lemme look at you! Trimm, the swell financier,
sportin' 'round with the darbies on him all nice an' snug an' reg'lar!
Mister Trimm--well, if this ain't rich!"

"My name is Trimm," said the starving banker miserably. "I've been
wandering about here a great many hours--several days, I think it must
be--and I need rest and food very much indeed. I don't--don't feel very
well," he added, his voice trailing off.

At this his self-control gave way again and he began to quake violently
as if with an ague. The smell of the cooking overcame him.

"You don't look so well an' that's a fact, Trimm," sneered the tramp,
resuming his malicious, mocking air. "But set down an' make yourself at
home, an' after a while, when this is done, we'll have a bite
together--you an' me. It'll be a reg'lar tea party fur jest us two."

He broke off to chuckle. His mirth made him appear even more repulsive
than before.

"But looky here, you wuz sayin' somethin' about money," he said
suddenly. "Le's take a look at all this here money."

He came over to him and went through Mr. Trimm's pockets. Mr. Trimm said
nothing and stood quietly, making no resistance. The tramp finished a
workmanlike search of the banker's pockets. He looked at the result as
it lay in his grimy palm--a moist little wad of bills and some
chicken-feed change--and spat disgustedly with a nasty oath.

"Well, Trimm," he said, "fur a Wall Street guy seems to me you travel
purty light. About how much did you think you'd get done fur all this
pile of wealth?"

"You will be well paid," said Mr. Trimm, arguing hard; "my friend will
see to that. What I want you to do is to take the money you have there
in your hand and buy a cold chisel or a file--any tools that will cut
these things off me. And then you will send a telegram to a certain
gentleman in New York. And let me stay with you until we get an
answer--until he comes here. He will pay you well; I promise it."

He halted, his eyes and his mind again on the bubbling stuff in the
rusted washboiler. The freckled vagrant studied him through his
red-lidded eyes, kicking some loose embers back into the fire with his
toe.

"I've heard a lot about you one way an' another, Trimm," he said.
"'Tain't as if you wuz some pore down-an'-out devil tryin' to beat the
cops out of doin' his bit in stir. You're the way-up, high-an'-mighty
kind of crook. An' from wot I've read an' heard about you, you never
toted fair with nobody yet. There wuz that young feller, wot's his
name?--the cashier--him that wuz tried with you. He went along with you
in yore games an' done yore work fur you an' you let him go over the
road to the same place you're tryin' to dodge now. Besides," he added
cunningly, "you come here talkin' mighty big about money, yet I notice
you ain't carryin' much of it in yore clothes. All I've had to go by is
yore word. An' yore word ain't worth much, by all accounts."

"I tell you, man, that you'll profit richly," burst out Mr. Trimm, the
words falling over each other in his new panic. "You must help me; I've
endured too much--I've gone through too much to give up now." He pleaded
fast, his hands shaking in a quiver of fear and eagerness as he
stretched them out in entreaty and his linked chain shaking with them.
Promises, pledges, commands, orders, arguments poured from him. His
tormentor checked him with a gesture.

"You're wot I'd call a bird in the hand," he chuckled, hugging his slack
frame, "an' it ain't fur you to be givin' orders--it's fur me. An',
anyway, I guess we ain't a-goin' to be able to make a trade--leastwise
not on yore terms. But we'll do business all right, all right--anyhow,
I will."

"What do you mean?" panted Mr. Trimm, full of terror. "You'll help me?"

"I mean this," said the tramp slowly. He put his hands under his
loose-hanging overcoat and began to fumble at a leather strap about his
waist. "If I turn you over to the Government I know wot you'll be worth,
purty near, by guessin' at the reward; an' besides, it'll maybe help to
square me up fur one or two little matters. If I turn you loose I ain't
got nothin' only your word--an' I've got an idea how much faith I kin
put in that."

Mr. Trimm glanced about him wildly. There was no escape. He was fast in
a trap which he himself had sprung. The thought of being led to jail,
all foul of body and fettered as he was, by this filthy, smirking wretch
made him crazy. He stumbled backward with some insane idea of running
away.

"No hurry, no hurry a-tall," gloated the tramp, enjoying the torture of
this helpless captive who had walked into his hands. "I ain't goin' to
hurt you none--only make sure that you don't wander off an' hurt
yourself while I'm gone. Won't do to let you be damagin' yoreself;
you're valuable property. Trimm, now, I'll tell you wot we'll do! We'll
just back you up agin one of these trees an' then we'll jest slip this
here belt through yore elbows an' buckle it around behind at the back;
an' I kinder guess you'll stay right there till I go down yonder to that
town that I passed comin' up here an' see wot kind of a bargain I kin
strike up with the marshal. Come on, now," he threatened with a show of
bluster, reading the resolution that was mounting in Mr. Trimm's face.
"Come on peaceable, if you don't want to git hurt."

Of a sudden Mr. Trimm became the primitive man. He was filled with those
elemental emotions that make a man see in spatters of crimson. Gathering
strength from passion out of an exhausted frame, he sprang forward at
the tramp. He struck at him with his head, his shoulders, his knees, his
manacled wrists, all at once. Not really hurt by the puny assault, but
caught by surprise, the freckled man staggered bade, clawing at the air,
tripped on the washboiler in the fire, and with a yell vanished below
the smooth edge of the cut.

Mr. Trimm stole forward and looked over the bluff. Half-way down the
cliff on an outcropping shelf of rock the man lay, face downward,
motionless. He seemed to have grown smaller and to have shrunk into his
clothes. One long, thin leg was bent up under the skirts of the overcoat
in a queer, twisted way, and the cloth of the trouser leg looked
flattened and empty. As Mr. Trimm peered down at him he saw a red stain
spreading on the rock under the still, silent figure's head.

Mr. Trimm turned to the washboiler. It lay on its side, empty, the last
of its recent contents sputtering out into the half-drowned fire. He
stared at this ruin a minute. Then without another look over the cliff
edge he stumbled slowly down the hill, muttering to himself as he went.
Just as he struck the level it began to rain, gently at first, then
hard, and despite the shelter of the full-leaved forest trees, he was
soon wet through to his skin and dripped water as he lurched along
without sense of direction and, indeed, without any active realization
of what he was doing.

       *       *       *       *       *

Late that night it was still raining--a cold, steady, autumnal downpour.
A huddled figure slowly climbed upon a low fence running about the
house-yard of the little farm where the boy lived who got thrashed for
losing a milk-pail. On the wet top rail, precariously perching, the
figure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up,
painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. He
moved slowly toward the house, tottering from weakness and because of
the slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way and that
through the murk; starting at every sound and stopping often to listen.

The outlines of the lean-to kitchen at the back of the house were
looming dead ahead of him when from the corner of the cottage sprang a
small terrier. It made for Mr. Trimm, barking shrilly. He retreated
backward, kicking at the little dog and, to hold his balance, striking
out with short, dabby jerks of his fettered hands--they were such
motions as the terrier itself might make trying to walk on its hindlegs.
Still backing away, expecting every instant to feel the terrier's teeth
in his flesh, Mr. Trimm put one foot into a hotbed with a great clatter
of the breaking glass. He felt the sharp ends of shattered glass tearing
and cutting his shin as he jerked free. Recovering himself, he dealt the
terrier a lucky kick under the throat that sent it back, yowling, to
where it had come from, and then, as a door jerked open and a
half-dressed man jumped out into the darkness, Mr. Trimm half hobbled,
half fell out of sight behind the woodpile.

Back and forth along the lower edge of his yard the farmer hunted, with
the whimpering, cowed terrier to guide him, poking in dark corners with
the muzzle of his shotgun for the unseen intruder whose coming had
aroused the household. In a brushpile just over the fence to the east
Mr. Trimm lay on his face upon the wet earth, with the rain beating down
on him, sobbing with choking gulps that wrenched him cruelly, biting at
the bonds on his wrists until the sound of breaking teeth gritted in the
air. Finally, in the hopeless, helpless frenzy of his agony he beat his
arms up and down until the bracelets struck squarely on a flat stone and
the force of the blow sent the cuffs home to the last notch so that they
pressed harder and faster than ever upon the tortured wrist bones.

When he had wasted ten or fifteen minutes in a vain search the farmer
went shivering back indoors to dry put his wet shirt. But the groveling
figure in the brushpile lay for a long time where it was, only stirring
a little while the rain dripped steadily down on everything.

       *       *       *       *       *

The wreck was on a Tuesday evening. Early on the Saturday morning
following, the chief of police, who was likewise the whole of the day
police force in the town of Westfield, nine miles from the place where
the collision occurred, heard a peculiar, strangely weak knocking at the
front door of his cottage, where he also had his office. The door was a
Dutch door, sawed through the middle, so that the top half might be
opened independently, leaving the lower panel fast. He swung this top
half bade.

A face was framed in the opening--an indescribably dirty, unutterably
weary face, with matted white hair and a rime of whitish beard stubble
on the jaws. It was fallen in and sunken and it drooped on the chest of
its owner. The mouth, swollen and pulpy, as if from repeated hard blows,
hung agape, and between the purplish parted lips showed the stumps of
broken teeth. The eyes blinked weakly at the chief from under lids as
colorless as the eyelids of a corpse. The bare white head was filthy
with plastered mud and twigs, and dripping wet.

"Hello, there!" said the chief, startled at this apparition. "What do
you want?"

With a movement that told of straining effort the lolled head came up
off the chest. The thin, corded neck stiffened back, rising from a
dirty, collarless neckband. The Adam's apple bulged out prominently, as
big as a pigeon's egg.

"I have come," said the specter in a wheezing rasp of a voice which the
chief could hardly hear, "I have come to surrender myself. I am Hobart
W. Trimm."

"I guess you got another think comin'," said the chief, who was by the
way of being a neighborhood wag. "When last seen Hobart W. Trimm was
only fifty-two years old. Besides which, he's dead and buried. I guess
maybe you'd better think ag'in, grandpap, and see if you ain't
Methus'lah or the Wanderin' Jew."

"I am Hobart W. Trimm, the banker," whispered the stranger with a sort
of wan stubbornness.

"Go on and prove it," suggested the chief, more than willing to prolong
the enjoyment of the sensation. It wasn't often in Westfield that
wandering lunatics came a-calling.

"Got any way to prove it?" he repeated as the visitor stared at him.

"Yes," came the creaking, rusted hinge of a voice, "I have."

Slowly, with struggling attempts, he raised his hands into the chief's
sight. They were horribly swollen hands, red with the dried blood where
they were not black with the dried dirt; the fingers puffed up out of
shape; the nails broken; they were like the skinned paws of a bear. And
at the wrists, almost buried in the bloated folds of flesh, blackened,
rusted, battered, yet still strong and whole, was a tightly locked pair
of Bean's Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs.

"Great God!" cried the chief, transfixed at the sight. He drew the bolt
and jerked open the lower half of the door.

"Come in," he said, "and lemme get them irons off of you--they must hurt
something terrible." "They can wait," said Mr. Trimm very humbly. "I
have worn them a long, long while, I think--I am used to them. Wouldn't
you please get me some food first?"


[Footnote 2: _From Irvin Cobb's The Escape of Mr. Trimm, His Plight and
Other Plights, Copyright, 1913, by George H. Doran Company. By
permission of the publishers._]


[Illustration]


[Illustration: PETER B. KYNE]




_FOREWORD_


_In the days of my youth I was happy. I had no money, hence no
responsibilities. All I had was a job with wages that never developed
into a position with salary. However, out of my stipend I managed to buy
a good shotgun and, each fall thereafter, a case of shells with my own
special load for quail--one ounce of No. 9 chilled shot with twenty-four
grains of Laflin & Rand powder. In "those old days of the lost sunshine"
I possessed also two additional treasures--the most wonderful and
lovable shooting crony a man ever had and the finest little English
setter any man ever killed a quail over. My pal presented me with this
dog because he loved me; moreover, he had a weakness for pointers and
owned a bitch named Lou._

_Lee Clark and his good dog Lou! What memories they evoke! As I write
the years fall away and Lee and Lou and Dick and I are quail-hunting in
the hills of California. I see a little swale covered with stunted sage,
blackberry bushes and dried nettles, and the dogs are questing through
it. Lee Clark is on one side of this swale and I am on the other, and
for a moment the dogs are invisible to me. Then, borne to me on the
crisp October air, comes Lee's voice_:

"_Point!_"

_I move fifteen or twenty feet. I am in no hurry, for I know those dogs.
It is a matter of personal honor with them not to break point. Presently
I see them. Little lemon-and-white Lou has found the bird, and Dicky
thorough little gentleman that he was, is honoring her point! Lee walks
down to his dog; the quail lies close. "Good old Lou," Lee says, and
stoops to give her the caress she craves. Then he kicks out the
bird--for me! (Lee was like that. He would never kill a bird over his
own dog's point while his field companion stood by, nor could any
protest move him from this exhibition of his inherent graciousness and
courtesy.) So I fire--and miss--and then at forty yards Lee gets the
bird, and Lou trots sedately down and picks the little feathered martyr
up very gently, scarcely disturbing a feather, and carries the trophy
uphill to Lee. As I write, with twenty years behind me, I tan see her
yet, her tail and rear end swishing pridefully and her beautiful eyes
abeam with love; she is even trying to smile with the bird in her
mouth!_

_Lee takes the bird from her and tucks it in his hunting-coat pocket.
Then he strokes Lou's head and says: "Good girl," and Lou licks his hand
and scurries away to find another bird. And this time she points so
close to me that Lee calls cheerily to me to kick the bird out and kill
it. I do--and again Lou retrieves the bird. But she does not bring it to
her master this time. Ah, no! Lou is wiser than that. She brings it to
me, for she knows it is my bird!_

_Meanwhile Dick is frozen on another bird! And so it goes. At noon we
rest under an oak beside a creek, and over a barbecued steak and a
bottle of good wine, discuss the morning shoot and the prospects of as
good shooting in the afternoon. And late that night we drive home in the
moonlight in an old side-bar buggy, with Dick curled up in back and Lou
in her master's lap, with her muzzle in his hand . . ._

_Well, there will never be another Dick or another Lou or another
gallant, kindly, unselfish, understanding friend and shooting crony like
Lee Clark. A fiend stole Dick from me and Lou died in puppy-birth; when
Lee told me about it he wept, and I honored him for his tears. And then
the pressure of life commenced to be felt. After twelve years of Lou,
Lee Clark could not accustom himself to other dogs--and the hopelessness
of finding another Lou was quite apparent, for Lou had been one of those
rare dogs that do not require training! And I could never find another
Dicky and had no place to keep him if I had. I became an author and
married, and a multitude of interests claimed us, and we gave up
quail-shooting, although every few years we meet and talk bravely about
the necessity for renewing our youth afield._

_A man who has trained field dogs for me has much of Lee Clark in him,
and that man's wife is a rare good sport. One day I went to his kennels,
and he showed me a five-year-old setter that had been the unbeautiful
runt of his litter. He called this dog Jeff, and Jeff was a failure. His
litter mates had made field trial history but Jeff was so little and
homely, nobody had ever wanted him, and he had never been trained. He
was a stud dog._

_He was the reincarnation of my lost Dick! I bought him for a hundred
and twenty-five dollars, and ignoring the theory that you cannot teach
an old dog new tricks, I had Jeff trained. He was such a bright,
cunning, fast little old man of a dog that the trainer, who names my
dogs after the heroes and heroines of my stories, renamed him Cappy
Ricks and registered him by that name. Cappy Ricks did not win in the
field trials that year, but he lost on a hair-line decision and after an
exhibition of bird work that made him great, even in defeat, and brought
me offers of far more than I had spent on him from men who knew a real
dog when they saw one. Well, I have bought many dogs, but I have never
sold one, and I never shall . . . too much like selling old Uncle Tom
down the river! So Cappy is rounding out his years questing through the
alfalfa field at my ranch for quail that aren't there. However, I gave
him his chance, for dead Dick's sake, and he made good, and I hope he
enjoyed it._

_So I wrote a story about Cappy and a fictitious trainer and his wife,
because field dog trainers and the field dog "fancy" are different from
all other sportsmen. And when my little story had been written and my
editor, Ray Long, asked me what I was going to call it, I had a swift
and poignant vision of a lovely October morning in the hills of
California. There was a little swale grown over with stunted sage,
blackberry vines and dried nettles, and in the cover Lou was standing at
point, with Dick honoring her; from across the swale I heard again the
voice of the best friend and the best field companion any man ever had.
And he was calling warningly_:

"_Point!_"

_Yes, this story is dedicated to Lee Clark and his good dog, Lou!_




POINT[3]

BY PETER B. KYNE


Little Old Dan Pelly occupied a position in life analogous to that of a
tragedian who aspires to play comedy rôles. By reason of early
environment, natural inclination and years of practice, he was a dog
trainer; now, in the sunset of his rather futile life, he was a cross
between a chicken raiser, farmer and dreamer of old dreams that had to
do mostly with dogs and good quail cover. In a word, old Dan was not
happy, and this morning as he sat on a fallen scrub oak tree on the
highest point on his alleged ranch and gazed off into Little Antelope
Valley, he almost wished that a merciful Providence would waft him out
of this cold world.

"The Indians had the right idea of a hereafter," mused Dan Pelly. "To
them the next world was a happy hunting ground. This world is no longer
fit for a white man to live in. It's getting too civilized. Travel as
far as you will for good trout-fishing and upland hunting and you'll
find some scrub there ahead of you in a flivver. Get out on your own
ground at dawn on the day the shooting season opens--and you'll find
empty shotgun shells a week old. Tim, old pal, the more I see of some
men the more I love you."

Tim--or, to accord him his registered name. Tiny Tim--ran his cool
muzzle into Dan Pelly's horny palm and rested it there. Just rested it
and spoke never a word, for Tiny Tim was one of those rare dogs who know
when their masters are troubled of soul and forbear to weary their loved
ones with unnecessary outbursts of affection or sympathy. He leaned his
shoulder against Dan's knee and rested his muzzle in Dan's hand as who
should say: "Well, man alone is vile. Here I am and I'll stick, depend
upon it."

Tiny Tim was an English setter and the last surviving son of Keepsake,
the greatest bitch Dan Pelly had ever seen or owned. Dan had wept when
an envious scoundrel had poisoned her the night before a field trial up
Bakersfield way. All of her puppies out of Kenwood Boy had survived, and
all had made history in dogdom. Three of them had been placed--one, two,
three--in the Derby. The other two had been the runners-up, and the
least promising of these runners-up had been Tiny Tim.

Tim had been the runt of the litter and as if his physical deficiency
had not been sufficient handicap, he had grown into a singularly
unbeautiful dog. He had a butterfly nose, one black ear, a solid white
coat with the exception of a black spot as big as a man's hand just over
the root of his tail; and his tail was his crowning misfortune. Dog
fanciers like a setter with a merry tail, but Tiny Tim carried his very
low when he ran that Derby, and he had never carried it very high since.
As if to offset the tragedy of his tail, however, Tiny Tim ran with a
high head, for he had, tucked away in that butterfly nose, a pair of
olfactory nerves that carried him unerringly to birdy ground. He could
always manage to locate a bird lying close in cover that had been
thoroughly prospected by other dogs.

Dan Pelly had sold Tiny Tim's litter mates at a fancy figure after that
memorable Derby, but for homely Tiny Tim there were no bidders; so Dan
Pelly expressed him back to the kennels. He was homely and lacked style
and dash in his bird work; he appeared a bit nervous and uncertain and
inclined to limit his range, and it seemed to Dan that as a field trial
prospect he was so much inferior to other dogs that it was scarcely
worth while spending any time or money on his education. However, he did
have a grand nose; when he grew older Dan hoped he might outgrow his
nervousness and be steadier to shot and wing; in view of his undoubted
instinct for birds, it seemed the part of wisdom to make a "plug"
shooting dog of him. Every dog trainer keeps such an animal, if not for
his own use then for the use of stout old bank presidents and of retired
brewers whose idea of the sport of hunting is to come home with "the
limit." A grand hunting dog means little in the lives of such
"sportsmen"; they want a dog that will work close to the gun, thus
enabling them to proceed leisurely, as becomes a fat man. It is no
pleasure to them to be forced to walk down a steep hill, clamber across
a deep gully and climb the opposite hill to kill a bird their dog has
been pointing for fifteen or twenty minutes. It is reserved for
idealists like old Dan Pelly to thrill to the work of a dog like that.
The dead bird is a secondary consideration.

So Tiny Tim had been sent back to the kennel, and now, in his fifth
year, he was still on Dan Pelly's hands. But that was no fault of Tiny
Tim's. And he had never again been entered in a field trial. That was no
fault of his, either. Dan Pelly had merely gone out of the dog business,
and Tiny Tim, his last dog and best beloved, was neither a field trial
dog nor yet a potterer for fat bankers and retired brewers who came down
to Dan Pelly's place for a week-end shoot in the season. No, Tiny Tim
had never achieved that disgrace. Dan Pelly had given up dog training
and dog boarding and dog raising and dog trading after his return from
that field trial where old Keepsake's litter had brought him more money
than he had ever seen at any one time before. Consequently, Tiny Tim was
Dan's own shooting dog and Dan had trained him not for filthy lucre but
for that love and companionship for a good dog which idealists of the
Dan Pelly type can never repress.

Tiny Tim had known but one master, and but one code of sportsmanship; he
responded to but one set of signals; he had never been curbed in his
range or speed; he had never been scolded or shouted at or beaten, but
he had received much of love and caressing and praise. He had been fed
properly, housed properly, wormed regularly every three months, bathed
every Saturday afternoon and brushed and combed almost every day, and as
a result he was an extremely healthy dog, albeit a small dog, even among
small, field type English setters. Dan Pelly loved him just a little bit
more because he was a runt and because, though royally bred, his bearing
was a bit ignoble.

"I'll have none of your bench type setters," Dan was wont to remark when
speaking of setters. "I could weep from just lookin' at them--the poor
boobs, with their domed foreheads and their sad, bloodshot eyes and
dribbling chops. Too heavy and slow for anybody but a fat man. An hour's
hard going of a warm day and they're done. I'll have a light, neat
little setter for a long, hard, drivin' day of it."

Dan Pelly's choice of dog was an index to his character. He, too, was a
light, compact little man, with something of a lost dog's wistfulness
about him. Dan didn't like pointers. They were too aggressive, too
headstrong, too noisy for him. The sight of a bulldog or a bull terrier
or an Airedale made him angry, for such dogs could always be depended
upon to pounce upon a shooting dog and worry him. Toy dogs depressed
him. They seemed so unworthy of human attention and moreover they had no
brains.

This morning Dan Pelly was more than ordinarily unhappy. He needed five
hundred dollars worse than he needed salvation . . .

And only the day before while he and Tim had been working a patch of low
cover just off the county road, a man in a very expensive automobile
driven by a liveried chauffeur had paused in the road to watch them.
Presently Tim had made one of those spectacular points which always give
a real dog lover a thrill. In mid-air, while leaping over a small bush,
he had caught the scent of a quail crouching close under that bush. He
had landed with his body half turned toward the bush, his head had swung
around and there he had stood, "frozen." Dan had walked up, kicked the
bird out, waited until the quail was forty yards away and fired.
Meanwhile Tim had broken point and, head up, was following the flushed
bird with anxious eyes.

As the gun barked the bird flinched slightly but did not reduce its
speed. Wings spread stiffly, it sailed away out of sight and Dan Pelly,
seeing himself watched by the man in the motor car, grinned
deprecatingly.

"Missed him a mile," he called.

"You let him get too far away before you fired," the stranger replied
with that hearty camaraderie which always obtains between lovers of
upland shooting.

"My gun is a full choke; I can kill nicely with it at fifty yards, but I
like to give the birds a chance for their white alley so I never shoot
under forty yards."

"Grand point your little setter made then. Steady to flush and shot,
too. Homely little rascal, but man, he's a dog! I must have a look at
him, if you don't mind, my friend." And he got out of the car.

"Certainly, sir. Come, Timmy, lad. Shake hands with the gentleman."

But Tiny Tim had other and more important matters to attend to. He was
racing at full speed after that departing bird. Dan whistled him to
halt, but Tim paid no attention. He crossed a gentle rise of ground and
disappeared on the other side. He was out of sight for about five
minutes; then he appeared again on the crest and came jogging sedately
back to Dan Pelly. In his mouth he held tenderly a wounded quail.
Straight to Dan Pelly he came, and as he advanced he twisted his little
body sinuously and arched and lowered his shoulders and flipped his tail
from side to side and smiled with his eyes. In effect he said: "Dan, you
didn't think you hit that bird, but I saw him flinch ever so little.
I've had a lot of experience in such matters and experience has taught
me that a bird hit like that will fly a couple of hundred yards and then
drop. So I kept my eye on this one and sure enough just as he reached
the top of that little rise I saw him settle rather abruptly. So I went
over and nosed around and picked up his trail. He had an injured
wing--numbed, probably--and he was down and running to beat the band.
It's sporty to chase a runner, because if we don't get him, Dan, a
weasel will."

The stranger looked at the bird in Tim's mouth and then he looked at Dan
Pelly. "Well, I'll be swindled!" he declared. "If I live to be a million
years old I'll never see a prettier piece of bird work than that. The
dog's human."

"Yes, he's a right nice little feller," Dan declared pridefully. "Timmy,
boy, take the bird to the gentleman and then shake hands with him."

Timmy looked at the stranger, who smiled at him, so he walked sedately
to the latter and gently dropped the frightened bird into his hand. Not
a feather had been disturbed; not a tooth had marred the tender flesh.

The stranger reached down and twigged Tiny Tim's nose; then he tugged
his ear a little, said "Good dog" and stroked Tim's head. Tim extended a
paw to be shaken. They were friends.

"Want to sell this dog, my friend?" the newcomer demanded.

"Oh, no! Timmy's the only dog I have left. He's just my little shooting
dog and I'm right fond of him. He has a disposition that sweet, sir,
you've never seen the beat of it. If I sold Timmy I'd never dare come
home. My wife would take the rolling pin to me."

"I'll give you two hundred and fifty dollars for him."

"Timmy isn't for sale, sir."

"Not enough money, eh? Well, I don't blame you. If Timmy was my dog five
thousand dollars wouldn't touch him. It was worth that to me to see him
perform. Let me see him work this cover, if you please." To Tiny Tim:
"All right, boy. Root 'em out. Lots of birds in here yet."

The dog was off like a streak. Suddenly he paused, sniffing up-wind,
swung slowly left and slowly right, trotted forward a few paces and
halted, head up, tail swinging excitedly, every muscle aquiver.

"It's dry as tinder and the birds don't lay close. He's on to some
running birds now, sir. Watch him road 'em to heavier cover and then
point."

Instead, they flushed. Tim watched them interestedly, marked where they
had settled, moved gingerly forward--and froze on a single that had
failed to flush. Dan Pelly handed the stranger his gun. "Perhaps, sir,"
he said with his wistful smile, "you might enjoy killing a bird over
Timmy's point."

This was the apotheosis of field courtesy. The stranger took the gun,
smiling his thanks, walked over to Tiny Tim, kicked out the bird and
missed him. Tim glanced once at the bird and promptly dismissed him from
consideration. He made a wide cast to come up on the spot where he had
seen the flushed covey settle.

"Point!" called Dan Pelly. This time the stranger killed his bird, which
Tim retrieved in handsome style.

"He brought the dead bird to me!" the stranger shouted. "Did you notice
that? He brought it to me!"

"Of course. It's your bird. You killed it. Timmy knows that. It wouldn't
be mannerly of him to bring it to me. I see you appreciate a good
shooting dog, sir. I suppose, living in the city and a busy man, you
don't get much afield. There's a lot of birds scattered in this cover.
Have a little shoot over Timmy. I have four birds and that's enough for
our supper. I'll sit down under this oak tree and have a smoke."

"That's devilish sporting of you, my friend. Thank you very much." And
the stranger hurried away after Tiny Tim. He was an incongruous figure
in that patch of cover, what with his derby hat and overcoat, and he
seemed to realize this, for he shed both, stuffed a dozen cartridges
into his pockets--he was far too big a man to wear Dan Pelly's
disreputable old hunting jacket--and hurried away after Tiny Tim. From
the far corner of the field Dan presently heard a merry fusillade, and
in about fifteen minutes his guest returned with half a dozen quail and
Tiny Tim trotting at his heels.

"I'll give you a thousand dollars for Timmy, my friend," was his first
announcement. "Why, he works for me as if I were his master."

"You're the first man except his master who has ever shot over him,"
Pelly replied proudly. "Sorry, but Timmy is not for sale."

"I'll bet nobody has ever offered you a thousand dollars for him. Here's
my card, Mr.-- er--er----"

"Dan Pelly's my name, sir."

"Mr. Pelly, and if you change your mind, wire me collect and I'll send a
man down with the cash and you can send the dog back by him."

Dan took the card. The stranger thanked him and departed with his quail
in his expensive car.

And this morning Dan Pelly sat at the highest point on his so-called
ranch and looked down into Little Antelope Valley and was unhappy. He
needed five hundred dollars to meet a mortgage; he could get a thousand
dollars within twenty-four hours by sending a telegram collect to the
man who had admired Tiny Tim--and he didn't have the courage to send the
telegram. In fact, he hadn't had sufficient courage to tell Martha, his
wife, of the stranger's offer. Martha was made of sterner stuff than her
husband and a terrible panic of fear had seized Dan at the mere thought
of telling her. What if she should accept the thousand dollars?

Dan loaded his pipe and smoked ruminatively. He thought of his wasted
and futile life. Twenty-five years wasted as a professional dog trainer.
Faugh! And all he had to show for it was a host of memories, sweet and
bitter; sweet as he remembered the dear days afield with good dogs and
good fellows, the thrill of many a hard-fought field trial; bitter as he
thought of dogs he had loved and which had been sold or poisoned or died
of old age or disease; bitterer still as he reflected that he and Martha
had come to a childless old age with naught between them and the county
poor farm save a thousand acres of rough sage-covered land which, with
the exception of about twenty-five acres of rich, sub-irrigated bottom
land, was worthless save as a training ground for dogs. It had numerous
springs on it, good cover and just enough scrub oaks to form safe
roosting places for quail. It was a rather decent little game preserve
and occasionally Dan made a few dollars by granting old customers the
privilege of a shoot on it. He ran about a hundred head of goats on it,
while in the bottom land he and Martha eked out a precarious existence
with a few chickens and turkeys, a few hogs, a few stands of bees, three
cows, a couple of horses and Tiny Tim. For Tim was known to a few dog
fanciers as the last of the old Keepsake-Kenwood Boy strain in the state
and not infrequently they sent their bitches to Tiny Tim's court.

Poor Martha! Hers had not been a very happy life with Dan Pelly. A dog
trainer is--a dog trainer. He can't very well be anything else because
God has made him so. And in his heart of hearts he doesn't want to be.
He trains dogs ostensibly for money but in reality because he loves them
and the job affords him a legitimate excuse to be afield with them, to
enjoy their society and that of the jovial devotees of upland
game-shooting. Dan Pelly wasn't an ambitious man. He had no desire to
dip coupons or wear fine raiment; his taste in automobiles went no
further than an old ruin he had picked up for two hundred dollars for
the purpose of carting his dogs around in the days before Martha took
over the handling of the Pelly fortunes, when Dan had had dogs to cart
around.

The crux of the situation was this. Dog trainers are so busy with their
dogs that they neglect to send out bills for board and training, and the
men who can afford to buy expensive dogs and have them boarded and
trained seldom think of their dogs until fall. Then they pay the bill
and sometimes wonder why it is so large. In a word, the income of a dog
trainer is never what one might term staggering, and it is more or less
uncertain.

Martha had grown weary of this uncertainty and when distemper for the
second time had cleaned out Dan Pelly's kennels, taking all of his own
dogs with the exception of Tiny Tim and either killing or ruining the
dogs of his customers, Mrs. Pelly felt that it was time to act. She knew
it would be years before Dan's old customers would send dogs to him
again. Friendship and a reputation as a great trainer are undoubtedly
first aids to a dog trainer's success, but men who love their dogs
hesitate to send them to a kennel where the germs of virulent distemper
are known to exist. It was up to Dan Pelly to burn his old kennels and
build new ones far removed from the location of the old. He could not
afford to do this and since Martha was desirous of seeing him engage in
something more constructive, Dan Pelly had gone out of business and
become a farmer in the trifling manner heretofore described.

Martha told him she was weary of dogs. She had shed too many tears over
dead favorites; she had assisted at too many operations for the cure of
canker of the ear, fistula, tumor and cancer, broken legs, smashed toes
and cuts from barbed wire. She was already too learned in the gentle art
of healing mange and exorcising tapeworms. She loved dogs, but to have
thirty pointers and setters set up a furious barking whenever a stranger
appeared at the Pelly farm had finally "gotten on her nerves." She
understood Dan better than he understood himself and she knew how bitter
was the sacrifice she demanded; yet she realized that she must be firm
and lead Daniel in the way he must go, else would they come to want and
misery in a day when Dan would be too old to tramp over hill and dale
training dogs. Dan had readily consented to her direction--particularly
after she had wept a little. Poor Martha!

From where he sat Dan Pelly could this morning see great activity on the
floor of Little Antelope Valley, just below him. Half a dozen men on
horseback were riding backward and forward and at least a dozen white
specks that Dan Pelly knew for hunting dogs were ranging here and there
among the low sage cover.

"The first arrivals for the Pacific Coast Field Trials, and they're out
on the grounds, looking them over and seeing how their dogs behave.
Three days from now they'll be running the Derby, and after that the All
Age Stake. Ah, Timmy lad, if we two could only go to a field trial
again! How like old times it would be, Timmy! We'd be down at the
station to greet all the gentlemen coming in for the trials, and then
we'd be crowding around the baggage car watching the dogs in their
crates bein' lifted out. And we'd be peekin' through the air-holes in
the crates to see whether they'd be setters or pointers, and if setters,
whether they'd be English or Irish. And then the banquet up at the hotel
the night before the Derby and the toastmaster rappin' for order and
sayin': 'Gentlemen, we have with us tonight one of the Old Guard, Dan
Pelly. Dan is going to tell us something about the field trials of other
days--other days and other dogs. Gentlemen--old Dan Pelly.'

"Ah, Tim my lad, we're out of it. Think, Timmy, if we two were driving
out to Antelope Valley in the morning, with you in my lap, and the
entrance fee up and me wild with excitement, if you were paired say with
a dog like Manitoba Rap or Fischel's Frank or Mary Montrose or Ringing
Bells or Robert the Devil--any one of the big ones, eh, Timmy? No,
Timmy, I wouldn't be excited. They're all great dogs. Didn't Mary
Montrose win the All America three times--the only dog in the world that
ever proved her championship caliber three times?

"But Timmy lad, you'd run circles around her. You might run with a low
head and a dead tail--though your head is high and your tail is none so
low as it was in the Derby, when you were a wee puppy and nervous and
frightened--but you'd make the judges notice you, Timmy. You'd show them
dash and range and speed and style and brains; steady to flush, steady
to shot, steady to command, no false pointing, no roading birds to a
flush if you could help it, picking up singles on ground the other dog
thought he had covered, marking where the flushed coveys settle and
picking them up again. Ah, Timmy dog, it's breaking my heart to hide
your light under a bushel basket. I owe it to you to let men that know
and can appreciate a good dog see you work. Of the hundreds of dogs I've
owned, of the thousand I've trained since boyhood, you are the king of
them all. God help me, Timmy, I gave Martha my word I'd never attend
another field trial or handle another dog in one, either for myself or
another. We're whipped, Timmy. Whipped to a frazzle."

Tiny Tim leaned a little closer and licked the palm of Dan's hand. He
was an understanding little dog. Even when Dan finally heaved slowly to
his feet and started down the hillside toward home, Tiny Tim followed at
his heels, forbearing to follow his natural instinct, which was to frisk
ahead of Dan far and wide and attend to the business for which he really
had been created.

Arrived at the house Dan encountered with a sheepish glance the
searching one of his wife.

"Where have you been, Dan?" she queried.

"Oh, takin' a little walk," he replied.

She sat down beside him on the porch and put her arm around his neck.
"Hard to be out of it, isn't it, dear?"

"It's hard to think that a dog like Timmy shouldn't have his chance,
Martha. Why not make an exception to our agreement in this one case? I'm
sure I could win the All Age Stake with him. The entrance fee is
twenty-five dollars and there'll be upwards of forty dogs entered.
That'll be a thousand-dollar purse, divided five hundred, three-fifty
and a hundred and fifty. Might win first prize and be able to pay the
mortgage. Somehow I got a notion the bank won't renew the loan."

Martha's eyes were as wistful as her husband's but hers was a far more
resolute nature. She kept her bargains and expected others to keep
theirs; she knew the weakness of Dan Pelly. If he should go down to the
field trials and enter Tiny Tim, he would meet old friends and old
customers. It was four years since he had quit the game--long enough for
men to forget those distemper germs and take another chance on Dan, for
Dan's fame as a trainer was almost national. Somebody would be certain
to ask him to train a Derby or Futurity prospect for next fall, or to
handle a string of dogs in the Manitoba chicken trials.

And Dan was weak. He was one of those men who could never quite say no
as if he meant it. Let him go down to dogdom and he would be back in the
game again as deep as ever within a year. Decidedly (thought Martha)
they couldn't afford to go over that ground again.

"Yes," Dan sighed, "it's a pity Timmy can't have his chance. He never
was a kennel-raised dog. He's been allowed to rove and roam and he's
hunted so much on his own I don't really understand why he hasn't been
spoiled. But the exercise and experience he's had in one year exceed
that of most dogs in a lifetime. He's little, but he's well muscled and
tough and can hold his speed long after other dogs have slowed up. I
wish he could have his chance, Martha."

Martha felt herself slipping, so, to avoid that catastrophe, she left
Dan and entered the house.

All day long Dan sat on the porch, glooming and grieving. Having the
field trials held practically at his own door was a sore temptation. Dan
dwelt in Gethsemane. All day he suffered until finally, being human, he
was tempted beyond his strength and fell. About four o'clock, while
Martha was busy feeding the chickens, locking them up and gathering
eggs, Dan Pelly sneaked into the house, donned his Sunday suit,
abstracted the sum of fifty dollars from Martha's cache in the tomato
can back of the jars of preserves on the back porch, cranked his
prehistoric automobile and with Tiny Tim on the seat behind him fled to
the fleshpots. He left a note on the dining-room table for Martha.


Dear Martha:

Can't stand it any longer. Timmy _must_ have his chance. It's for his
sake, dear. I've robbed you of your egg money, but I _know_ you'll have it
back tomorrow.


Your loving

DAN.


Dan Pelly felt like a criminal as he rattled down the dusty country
lane. But if he could only have seen Martha's face as she read his note!
She laughed at first and then her eyes grew moist. "Poor old Dan!" she
murmured to the cat. "I'm so glad he defied me. It proves he's a human
being. I'm so grateful to him for his weakness. He didn't force me to a
decision."

Arrived in town Dan Pelly parked his car at the village square, went to
the local hotel and engaged a room. He registered, "Dan Pelly and his
dog, Tiny Tim." Before he could go up to the room he was seen and
recognized by the secretary of the field trial club, Major Christensen.

"Hello, Dan, you old fossil. When did they dig you up?" the Major
saluted him affably. "Back in the game again?"

"Oh, no," Dan replied. "Just blew in to look 'em over. Got a son of old
Keepsake and Kenwood Boy here. Thought I'd start him in fast company and
see if he has any class. He's just a plug shooting dog."

"Well," the Major answered, looking Tim over with a critical and
disapproving glance, "it'll cost you twenty-five dollars to glean that
information, Dan." He took out an entry blank; Dan filled it out and
returned it together with the entrance fee. Next he visited the hotel
kitchen, where he did business with the chef and procured for Tiny Tim a
hearty ration of lamb, stew with vegetables, after which he took the
little dog up to his room. Tim sprang into bed immediately, curled up
and went to sleep.

That night Dan attended the banquet. Old friends were there, fellow
trainers, trainers he had never met before, with dogs from Canada to the
Gulf, from Maine to California. It was an exceedingly doggy party and
poor old starved Dan reveled in it. He was living again, and under the
stimulus of the unusual excitement and a couple of nips of contraband
Scotch whisky he made the speech of his career, ripped the Fish and Game
Commission up the back and ended by going upstairs and bringing Tiny Tim
down in his arms to exhibit him to those around the festal board as the
only real dog he had ever owned.

"He'll win every heat in which he's entered," Dan bragged, "and he'll
win in the finals. He looks like a mutt, but oh, boy, watch his smoke!"

When the drawing for the next day's events took place, Dan discovered
that Tiny Tim had been paired with a famous old pointer from Nevada,
known as Colonel Dorsey. Dan knew there were better dogs than Colonel
Dorsey, but they weren't very plentiful, and under the able handling of
a veteran trainer, Alf Wilkes, Dan knew Tiny Tim would have to extend
himself to center the attention of the judges on his performance. To
have Tim paired with Colonel Dorsey pleased Dan greatly, however, for if
Tim merely succeeded in running a dead heat with the Colonel, that meant
that Tim and the Colonel would fight it out together in the finals; for
Colonel Dorsey was, in the opinion of all present, the class of the
entries; he was in excellent form and condition and as full of ginger
and go as a runaway horse.

A gentleman who had arrived too late for the banquet came shouldering
his way through the crowd in the hotel lobby just after the drawing. Dan
recognized in him the gentleman who had offered him a thousand dollars
for Tiny Tim that day in the patch of cover by the side of the road. He
came smiling up to Dan Pelly and shook his hand heartily.

"I'm the owner of Colonel Dorsey," he announced. "It'll be a barrel of
fun to run my dog against Tiny Tim. A sporting dog owned and handled by
a sportsman. Mr. Pelly, we're going to have a race."

"I hope so, sir," said Dan simply. "I want Timmy to have a foeman worthy
of his steel, as the feller says."

"He will," the other promised.

He did. They were put down in a wide flat with a little watercourse
running through the center of it. The cover was low, stunted sage,
affording excellent cover for the birds and opportunities for them to
sneak away from a dog without being seen, for there was not much open
space between the sage bushes. They were away together, headed for the
watercourse, Colonel Dorsey in the lead.

Suddenly Tiny Tim stopped dead and commenced to road at right angles,
coming up into the wind. The Colonel pressed eagerly on and flushed, but
was steady to flush. So was Tiny Tim. A moment later the Colonel pointed
and Tiny Tim, standing in the open, honored the Colonel's point
beautifully, but broke point after a minute of waiting and scouted off
on a wide cast. The Colonel held his point and his handler, coming up,
attempted to flush. The point was barren. Undoubtedly the bird had been
there but had run out.

The Colonel's owner, who had been following the judges in a buckboard
with Dan Pelly in the seat beside him, looked at his guest. "I own a
colonel, but you own a general, Mr. Pelly. Your dog is handling his
birds better than mine."

"Point!" came a hoarse shout from the direction in which Tim had gone.
He had come back on his cast and was down in the watercourse on point.
Dan Pelly got out of the buckboard and flushed a double, at the same
time firing over the birds. Tim was absolutely stanch to shot and flush.
He looked disappointed because no dead bird rewarded his efforts, but
immediately pressed on up the gully. Dan Pelly thrilled. He knew the
birds would lie close in this cover and that Tim would run up a heavy
score. He did. Point after point he scored and always a single was
flushed. When he had made nineteen points on single birds the whistle
blew and the dogs were taken up.

Colonel Dorsey, ranging wide, had shown speed, style and dash but had
found no birds. Tim had made but one cast but it was sufficient to show
that he, too, had speed and range, albeit his style was nothing to brag
about. But he had performed the function for which bird dogs are bred.
He had found game and handled it in a masterly manner. The dogs were
down forty minutes and both were fresh when taken up. The judges awarded
the heat to Tiny Tim.

Colonel Dorsey's owner slapped old Dan Pelly on the back. "I came a long
way for a splendid thrashing," he admitted gallantly. "However, the
Colonel was out of luck. He got off into barren territory and rather
wasted his time. We'll meet again in the finals."

And it was even so. Three days later Tiny Tim again faced the Colonel,
who in the succeeding heats had given marvelous performances and
disposed of his antagonists in a most decisive manner. But likewise so
had Tiny Tim.

It was a battle from start to finish. Both dogs got on birdy ground at
once and worked it thoroughly, and at the finish there was little to
choose between them. Tim had two more points to his credit and no
flushes; the Colonel had one flush, due to eagerness at the start, and
he had failed to honor one of Tim's points. These errors appeared to
offset Tim's lack of style, but the latter's marvelous bird work could
not be gainsaid; and remembering the decisive manner in which the little
setter had disposed of the Colonel in the initial heat, the judges
awarded the All Age Stake, which carried with it the Pacific Coast
championship, to Tiny Tim and Dan Pelly retired to the hotel richer by
five hundred dollars and a silver loving cup. That afternoon he paid two
hundred and fifty dollars on the mortgage and had it renewed for another
year. Then he wrote a letter to Martha, bought a neat crate for Tiny Tim
and--started down the field trial circuit.

In some ways--notably dog ways--Dan Pelly was a weak vessel. He lacked
the moral courage to come home and be good forever after. Timmy was so
much better in big company than he had anticipated that should it mean
death to both of them, Dan Pelly simply had to try him out in Oregon on
pheasant. Poor Timmy had never seen a pheasant, and it was such a shame
to deny him this great adventure.

So the next Martha heard of Dan was a wire to the effect that Timmy had
taken second place in the trials on pheasant at Lebanon, Oregon. A week
later came another telegram, informing her that Timmy had taken first
money in the Washington field trials, handling Hungarian partridge for
the first time. A letter followed and Martha read:


Dear Wife:

I don't suppose you will ever believe me again now that I have broke my
word to you and run away. I don't seem to be able to help myself. Timmy
is wonderful. I've got to go on to try him on chicken in Manitoba and
then the International and the All America. I enclose $500.

With love from Timmy and

Your devoted husband,

DAN PELLY.


Timmy was third on prairie chicken. Everybody said his performance was
marvelous in view of his total ignorance of this splendid game, so Dan
Pelly did not think it worth while to advertise the fact that he had
introduced Timmy to two crippled chickens the day before in order that
he might know their scent when he ran on to it. The International in
Montana was won by Timmy, and Dan's cup of happiness overflowed when the
judges handed him his trophies and a check for a thousand dollars.
Colonel Dorsey gave him a stiff run but the best the Colonel could do
was second place.

And then came the never to be forgotten day down in Kentucky when Timmy
went in on bobwhite quail for the All America, the field trial classic
of the Western Hemisphere. Timmy was at home again on quail. He had some
bad luck before he learned about bobwhite's peculiarities, but he had
enough wins to put him in the finals, and at the finish he was cast off
with a little Llewellyn bitch whose performance made Dan Pelly's heart
skip a beat or two. Nothing except Timmy's age and years of experience
enabled him to win over her; up to the last moments of the race
predictions were freely made that it would be a dead heat.

But just before the whistle blew, Timmy roaded a small cover to a stanch
point--the sole find made during the heat--and Dan Pelly went home with
Timmy and more money than he had ever seen before in his life except in
a bank; although better to wistful little Dan was the knowledge that he
had bred, raised, trained and handled the most consistent winner and the
most spectacularly outstanding bird dog champion in North America. Old
Keepsake and her wonderful consort, Kenwood Boy, had transmitted their
great qualities to their son, and Dan knew, in view of Tiny Tim's great
record over the field trial circuit, how much in demand would be the
puppies from that strain. Please God, Timmy might live long enough to
perpetuate his great qualities in his offspring.

Dan's return was not a triumphal one. He felt like anything except a
conquering hero. Indeed, he felt mean and low and untrustworthy; he had
to call on a reserve store of courage in order to face Martha and
explain his dastardly conduct in appropriating her fifty dollars,
breaking his promise and running away with Timmy.

Martha was sitting on the porch in her rocking-chair as Dan and his dog
came up the lane. Tiny Tim romped ahead and sprang up in Martha's lap
and kissed her and whimpered his joy at the homecoming--so Martha had
ample opportunity to brace herself to meet the culprit.

"Hello, Martha, old girl," Dan cried with a cheerfulness he was far from
feeling. "Timmy and I are home again. Are you going to forgive me,
Martha?"

Martha looked so glum and serious that Dan's heart sank.

"Oh, Martha!" he quavered and came slowly up the steps and tossed into
her lap a huge roll of banknotes. "I know I done wrong, Martha," he
declaimed. "I've been gamblin' on the side--you know, honey--side bets
on Timmy. I'm afraid we're never going to be real poor again. We've got
the mortgage paid off and three thousand in reserve, and I'm going to
sell Timmy for seven thousand five hundred dollars, with a half interest
in his sire fees for three years----"

Martha stood up, her eyes ablaze with scorn and anger.

"Dan Pelly," she flared at him, "how dare you?"

Dan hung his head.

"Oh, Martha," he pleaded, "can't you realize how terrible it is to keep
a good dog down?"

"Who offered to buy Timmy?"

"Mr. Fletcher, the owner of Colonel Dorsey."

"Tell him to go chase himself," Martha suggested slangily. "If you
expect to make your peace with me, Dan Pelly, you'll give up all idea of
selling Timmy."

"But Martha--seven thousand five hundred dollars! Think what it means to
you. No more worry about our old age, everything settled fine and dandy
at last after twenty-five years of hard luck."

"Do you really want to sell Timmy, Dan?"

"No, Martha, I don't. It'd break my heart. Bu-bu-but--I'll do it for
your sake."

"Dan, come here."

Dan came and flopped awkwardly on his old knees while Martha's arms went
around him.

"Sweet old Dan," she whispered. "What a glorious holiday you two have
had! I've been so happy just realizing how happy you have been. Dan!"

"Yes, Martha."

"Perhaps we can get back into the dog business again. Don't you think
you'd like to buy about half a dozen really fine brood bitches? Timmy's
puppies would be spoken for before they were born. The least we could
get would be a hundred dollars each for them." She stroked his old head.
"I'm afraid, Dan, it's too late to reform you. Once a dog man, always a
dog man----"

What else she intended to say remained forever unsaid, for little, weak,
foolish, sentimental old Dan commenced to sniffle, as he had the night
old Keepsake was poisoned. He wasn't a worldly man or a very ambitious
man; he craved but little here below, but one of the things he craved
was clean sportsmanship and love and understanding and a small, neat,
field type English setter that would be just a little bit better than
the other fellow's. And tonight he was so filled with happiness he just
naturally overflowed. Tiny Tim, observing that something was wrong, came
and leaned his shoulder against Martha's knee and laid his muzzle in her
hand and rested it there. It was a big moment!


[Footnote 3: _Copyright, 1922, by International Magazine Co.
(Cosmopolitan Magazine)_]


[Illustration: JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD]




_FOREWORD_


_There must be some sentiment attached to an author's choice of what he
considers his "best story" if he can reach any such decision at all.
Frankly, I cannot, and so I have chosen the story which has always lived
closest to my heart. It is really not a short story complete in itself
but is one of ten stories, or instalments, which make up my novel
"Kazan._"

_This individual story I like best because in it I bid good-by to Kazan
and Gray Wolf, two dogs whose memories will live with me long after the
memories of many of my two-legged friends have faded away. Kazan died up
near Fort MacPherson, a little this side of the Arctic Circle; Gray Wolf
near Norway House. Gray Wolf was a dog with an undoubted strain of wolf
in her, and was blinded when very young. She did not belong to me, but
was owned by a man who claimed to be a relative of the Bishop of the
Yukon. Kazan was mine. He was a one-man dog. It was his friendship for
blind Gray Wolf, when we were on one of our adventures near Norway
House, that led to the writing of my novel "Kazan._"


[Illustration]




KAZAN[4]

BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD


Kazan, the quarter-strain wolf-dog, lay at the end of a fine steel
chain, watching little Professor McGill mixing a pail of tallow and
bran. A dozen yards from him lay a big Dane, his huge jaws drooling in
anticipation of the unusual feast which McGill was preparing. The Dane
showed signs of pleasure when McGill approached him with a quart of the
mixture, and as he gulped it down the little man with the cold blue eyes
and the gray-blond hair stroked his back without fear. But his attitude
was different when he turned to Kazan. His movements were filled with
caution, and yet his eyes and his lips were smiling, and he gave the
wolf-dog no evidence of his fear, if it could be called fear.

The little professor was up in the north country for the Smithsonian
Institution and had spent a third of his life among dogs. He loved them,
and understood them. He had written a number of magazine articles on dog
intellect which had attracted wide attention among naturalists. It was
largely because he loved dogs, and understood them more than most men,
that he had bought Kazan and the big Dane on a night when Sandy
McTrigger and his partner had tried to get them to fight to the death in
a Red Gold City saloon. The refusal of the two splendid beasts to kill
each other for the pleasure of the three hundred men who had assembled
to witness the fight delighted the professor. He had already planned a
paper on the incident.

Sandy had told McGill the story of Kazan's capture, and of his wild
mate, Gray Wolf, and the professor had asked him a thousand questions.
But each day Kazan puzzled him more. No amount of kindness on his part
could bring a responsive gleam in Kazan's eyes. Not once did Kazan
signify a willingness to become friends. And yet he did not snarl at
McGill, or snap at his hands when they came within reach. Quite
frequently Sandy McTrigger came over to the little cabin where McGill
was staying, and three times Kazan leaped at the end of his chain to get
at him, and the wolf-dog's white fangs gleamed as long as Sandy was in
sight. Alone with McGill he became quiet.

Something told Kazan that McGill had come as a friend that night when he
and the big Dane stood shoulder to shoulder in the cage that had been
built for a slaughter pen. Away down in his brute heart he held McGill
apart from other men. He had no desire to harm him. He tolerated him,
but showed none of the growing affection of the huge Dane. It was this
fact that puzzled McGill. He had never before known a dog that he could
not make love him.

Today he placed the tallow and bran before Kazan, and the smile in his
face gave way to a look of perplexity. Kazan's lips had drawn suddenly
back. A fierce snarl rolled deep in his throat. The hair along his spine
stood up. His muscles twitched. Instinctively the professor turned.
Sandy McTrigger had come up quietly behind him. His brutal face wore a
grin as he looked at Kazan.

"It's a fool job--tryin' to make friends with him," he said. Then he
added, with a sudden interested gleam in his eyes, "When you startin'?"

"With the first frost," replied McGill. "It ought to come soon. I'm
going to join Sergeant Conroy and his party at Fond du Lac by the first
of October."

"And you're going up to Fond du Lac--alone?" queried Sandy. "Why don't
you take a man?"

The little professor laughed softly.

"Why?" he asked. "I've been through the Athabasca waterways a dozen
times, and know the trail as well as I know Broadway. Besides, I like to
be alone. And the work isn't too hard, with the currents all flowing to
the north and east."

Sandy was looking at the Dane, with his back to McGill. An exultant
gleam shot for an instant into his eyes.

"You're taking the dogs?"

"Yes."

Sandy lighted his pipe, and spoke like one strangely curious.

"Must cost a heap to take these trips o' yourn, don't it?"

"My last cost about seven thousand dollars. This will cost five," said
McGill.

"Gawd!" breathed Sandy. "An' you carry all that along with you! Ain't
you afraid--something might happen----"

The little professor was looking the other way now. The carelessness in
his face and manner changed. His blue eyes grew a shade darker. A hard
smile which Sandy did not see hovered about his lips for an instant.
Then he turned, laughing.

"I'm a very light sleeper," he said. "A footstep at night rouses me.
Even a man's breathing awakens me, when I make up my mind that I must be
on guard. And, besides,"--he drew from his pocket a blue-steel automatic
pistol,--"I know how to use _this._" He pointed to a knot in the wall of
the cabin. "Observe," he said. Five times he fired, at twenty paces, and
when Sandy went up to look at the knot he gave a gasp. There was one
jagged hole where the knot had been.

"Pretty good," he grinned; "most men couldn't do better'n that with a
rifle."

When Sandy left, McGill followed him with a suspicious gleam in his
eyes, and a curious smile on his lips. Then he turned to Kazan.

"Guess you've got him figgered out about right, old man," he laughed
softly. "I don't blame you very much for wanting to get him by the
throat. Perhaps----"

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, and went into the cabin. Kazan
dropped his head between his paws, and lay still, with wide-open eyes.
It was early in September, and each night brought now the first chill
breaths of autumn. Kazan watched the last glow of the sun as it faded
out of the southern skies. Darkness always followed swiftly after that,
and with darkness came more fiercely his wild longing for freedom. For
Kazan was remembering.

Ever since that terrible day when the brute prospector, Sandy McTrigger,
had first beaten him sick and then chained him in the wake of his canoe
till every splendid muscle in his bruised body seemed bursting with pain
and he was choked with water, Kazan had never for one minute ceased to
remember and hate and mourn. He hated Sandy McTrigger with all the
hatred of a dog and a wolf, and he mourned for his blind mate, Gray
Wolf, with as much intensity as he hated. But with all the longing and
sorrow in him he could not know how much more awful their separation was
for his faithful mate.

Never had the terror and loneliness of blindness fallen upon Gray Wolf
as in the days that followed Kazan's capture. For hours after the shot,
she had crouched in the bush back from the river, waiting for him to
come to her. She had faith that he would come, as he had come a thousand
times before, and she lay close on her belly, sniffing the air, and
whining when it brought no scent of her mate. Day and night were alike
an endless chaos of darkness to her now, but she knew when the sun went
down. She sensed the first deepening shadows of evening, and she knew
that the stars were out, and that the river lay in moonlight. It was a
night to roam, and after a time she had moved restlessly about in a
small circle on the plain, and sent out her first inquiring call for
Kazan.

Up from the river came the pungent odor of smoke, and instinctively she
knew that it was this smoke, and the nearness of men, that was keeping
Kazan from her. But she went no nearer than that, first circle made by
her padded feet. Blindness had taught her to wait. Since the day of the
battle on the Sun Rock, when the lynx had destroyed her eyes, Kazan had
never failed her. Three times she called for him in the early night.
Then she made herself a nest under a Banksian shrub, and waited until
dawn.

Just as she knew when night blotted out the last glow of the sun, so
without seeing she knew when day came. Not until she felt the warmth of
the sun on her back did her anxiety overcome her caution. Slowly she
moved toward the river, sniffing the air, and whining. There was no
longer the smell of smoke in the air, and she could not catch the scent
of man. She followed her own trail back to the sand bar, and in the
fringe of thick bush overhanging the white shore of the stream she
stopped and listened.

After a little she scrambled down and went straight to the spot where
she and Kazan were drinking when Sandy's shot came. And there her nose
struck the sand still wet and thick with Kazan's blood. She sniffed the
trail of his body to the edge of the stream, where Sandy had dragged him
to the canoe. And then she came upon one of the two clubs that Sandy had
used to beat wounded Kazan into submission. It was covered with blood
and hair, and all at once Gray Wolf lay back on her haunches and turned
her blind face to the sky, and there rose from her throat a cry for
Kazan that drifted for miles on the wings of the south wind. Never had
Gray Wolf given quite that cry before. It was not the "call" that comes
with moonlit nights, and neither was it the hunt cry, nor the she-wolf's
yearning for matehood. It carried with it the lament of death. And after
that one cry Gray Wolf slunk back to the fringe of bush over the river,
and lay with her face turned to the stream.

A strange terror fell upon her. She had grown accustomed to darkness,
but never before had she been _alone_ in that darkness. Always there had
been the guardianship of Kazan's presence. She heard the clucking sound
of a spruce hen in the bush a few yards away, and now that sound came to
her as if from out of another world. A ground-mouse rustled through the
grass close to her forepaws, and she snapped at it--and closed her teeth
on a rock. The muscles of her shoulders twitched tremulously, and she
shivered as if stricken by intense cold. She was terrified by the
darkness that shut out the world from her, and she pawed at her closed
eyes, as if she might open them to light.

Early in the afternoon, she wandered back on the plain. It was
different. It frightened her, and soon she returned to the beach, and
snuggled down under the tree where Kazan had lain. She was not so
frightened here. The smell of Kazan was strong about her. For an hour
she lay motionless, with her head resting on the club clotted with his
hair and blood. Night found her still there. And when the moon and stars
came out she crawled back into the pit in the white sand that Kazan's
body had made under the tree.

With dawn she went down to the edge of the stream to drink. She could
not see that the day was almost as dark as night, and that the
gray-black sky was a chaos of slumbering storm. But she could smell the
presence of it in the thick air, and could _feel_ the forked flashes of
lightning that rolled up with the dense pall from the south and west.
The distant rumbling of thunder grew louder, and she huddled herself
again under the tree. For hours the storm crashed over her, and the rain
fell in a deluge. When it had finished, she slunk out from her shelter,
like a thing beaten. Vainly she sought for one last scent of Kazan. The
club was washed clean. Again the sand was white where Kazan's blood had
reddened it. Even under the tree there was no sign of him left.

Until now only the terror of being alone in the pit of darkness that
enveloped her had oppressed Gray Wolf. With afternoon came hunger. It
was this hunger that drew her from the sandbar, and she wandered back
into the plain. A dozen times she scented game, and each time it evaded
her. Even a ground-mouse that she cornered under a root escaped her
fangs.

That night she slept again where Kazan had lain, and three times she
called for him without answer. But still through the day that followed,
and the day that followed that, blind Gray Wolf clung to the narrow rim
of white sand. On the fourth day her hunger reached a point where she
gnawed the bark from willow bushes. It was on this day that she made a
discovery. She was drinking, when her sensitive nose touched something
in the water's edge that was smooth, and bore a faint fleshy odor. It
was one of the big northern river clams. She pawed it ashore, sniffing
at the hard shell. Then she crunched it between her teeth. She had never
tasted sweeter meat than that which she found inside, and she began
hunting for other clams. She found many of them, and ate until she was
no longer hungry.

For three days more Gray Wolf remained on the bar. And then, one night
the Call came to her. It set her quivering with a strange, new
excitement--something that may have been a new hope--and in the
moonlight she trotted nervously up and down the shining strip of sand,
facing now the north, and now the south, and then the east and the
west--her head flung up, listening, as if in the soft wind of the night
she was trying to locate the whispering lure of a wonderful voice. And
whatever it was that came to her, came from out of the south and east.
Off there--across the barren, far beyond the outer edge of the northern
timber line--was home. And off there, in her brute way, she reasoned
that she must find Kazan.

The Call did not come from their old windfall home in the swamp. It came
from beyond that, and in a flashing vision there rose through her
blindness a picture of the towering Sun Rock, of the winding trail that
led to it, and the cabin on the plain where the man and the woman and
the baby lived. It was there that blindness had come to her. It was
there that day had ended, and eternal night had begun. And it was there
that she had given birth to her first-born. Nature had registered these
things so that they could never be wiped out of her memory.

And to that Call she responded, leaving the river and its food behind
her--straight out into the face of darkness and starvation, no longer
fearing death or the emptiness of the world she could not see; for ahead
of her, two hundred miles away, she could see the Sun Rock, the winding
trail, the nest of her first-born between the two big rocks--_and
Kazan!_

And sixty miles farther north Kazan, night after night, gnawed at his
steel chain. Night after night he had watched the stars, and the moon,
and had listened for Gray Wolf's call, while the big Dane lay sleeping.
Tonight it was colder than usual, and the keen tang of the wind that
came fresh from the west stirred him strangely. It set his blood afire
with what the Indians call the Frost Hunger. Lethargic summer was gone
and the sharp-winded days and nights of hunting were at hand. He wanted
to leap out into freedom and run until he was exhausted, with Gray Wolf
at his side. He knew that Gray Wolf was off there--where the stars hung
low in the clear sky--and that she was waiting.

All that night he was restless--more restless than he had been at any
time before. Once, in the far distance, he heard a cry that he thought
was the cry of Gray Wolf, and his answer roused McGill from deep sleep.
It was dawn, and the little professor dressed himself and came out of
the cabin. With satisfaction he noted the exhilarating snap in the air.
He wet his fingers and held them above his head, chuckling when he found
the wind had swung into the north. He went to Kazan, and talked to him.
Among other things he said: "This'll put the black flies to sleep,
Kazan. A day or two more of it and we'll start."

Five days later McGill led first the Dane, and then Kazan, to a packed
canoe. Sandy McTrigger saw them off, and Kazan watched for a chance to
leap at him. Sandy kept his distance, and McGill watched the two with a
thought that set the blood running swiftly behind the mask of his
careless smile. They had slipped a mile downstream when he leaned over
and laid a fearless hand on Kazan's head. Something in the touch of that
hand, and in the professor's voice, kept Kazan from a desire to snap at
him. He tolerated the friendship with expressionless eyes and a
motionless body.

"I was beginning to fear I wouldn't have much sleep, old boy," chuckled
McGill ambiguously, "but I guess I can take a nap now and then with you
along!"

For three days the journey continued without mishap along the shore of
Lake Athabasca. On the fourth night McGill pitched his tent in a clump
of Banksian pine a hundred yards back from the water. All that day the
wind had come steadily from behind them, and for at least a half of the
day the professor had been watching Kazan closely. From the west there
had now and then come a scent that stirred Kazan uneasily. Since noon he
had sniffed that wind. Twice McGill had heard him growling deep in his
throat, and once, when the scent had come stronger than usual, he had
bared his fangs, and the bristles stood up along his spine.

For an hour after striking camp the professor did not build a lire, but
sat looking up the shore of the lake through his hunting glass. It was
dusk when he returned to where he had put up his tent and chained the
dogs. For a few moments he stood unobserved, looking at the wolf-dog.
Kazan was still uneasy. He lay _facing_ the west. McGill made note of
this, for the big Dane lay behind Kazan--to the east.

Behind a rock McGill built a very small fire, and prepared supper. After
this he went into the tent, and when he came out he carried a blanket
under his arm. He chuckled as he stood for a moment over Kazan.

"We're not going to sleep in there tonight, old boy," he said. "I don't
like what you've found in the west wind." He laughed and buried himself
in a clump of stunted Banksians thirty paces from the tent. Here he
rolled himself in his blanket, and went to sleep.

It was a quiet, starlit night, and hours afterward Kazan dropped his
nose between his forepaws and drowsed. It was the snap of a twig that
roused him. The sound did not awaken the sluggish Dane, but instantly
Kazan's head was alert, his keen nostrils sniffing the air. What he had
smelled all day was heavy about him now.

Slowly, from out of the Banksians behind the tent, there came a figure.
It was not that of the professor. It approached cautiously, with lowered
head and hunched shoulders, and the starlight revealed the murderous
face of Sandy McTrigger. Kazan crouched low. He laid his head flat
between his forepaws. His long fangs gleamed. But he made no sound that
betrayed his concealment under a thick Banksian shrub. Step by step
Sandy approached, and at last he reached the flap of the tent. He did
not carry a club or a whip in his hand now. In the place of either of
those was the glitter of steel. At the door to the tent he paused, and
peered in, his back to Kazan.

Silently, swiftly--the wolf now, in every movement--Kazan came to his
feet. He forgot the chain that held him. Ten feet away stood the enemy
he hated above all others he had ever known. Every ounce of strength in
his splendid body gathered itself for the spring. And then he leaped.
This time the chain did not pull him back, almost neck-broken. Age and
the elements had weakened the leather collar he had worn since the days
of his slavery in the traces, and it gave way with a snap. Sandy turned,
and in a second leap Kazan's fangs sank into the flesh of his arm. With
a startled cry the man fell, and as they rolled over on the ground the
big Dane's deep voice rolled out in thunderous alarm.

In the fall Kazan's hold was broken. In an instant he was on his feet,
ready for another attack. And then the change came. He was _free._ The
collar was gone from his neck. The forest, the stars, the whispering
wind were all about him. _Here_ were men, and off there was--Gray Wolf!
His ears dropped, and he turned swiftly, and slipped like a shadow back
into the glorious freedom of his world.

A hundred yards away something stopped him for an instant. It was not
the big Dane's voice, but the sharp _crack--crack--crack_ of the little
professor's automatic. And above that sound there rose the voice of
Sandy McTrigger in a weird and terrible cry.




II


Mile after mile Kazan went on. For a time he was oppressed by the
shivering note of death that had come to him in Sandy McTrigger's cry,
and he slipped through the Banksians like a shadow, his ears flattened,
his tail trailing, his hind quarters betraying that curious slinking
quality of the wolf and dog stealing away from danger. Then he came out
upon a plain, and the stillness, the billion stars in the clear vault of
the sky, and the keen air that carried with it a breath of the Arctic
barrens brought him alert and questing. He faced in the direction of the
wind. Somewhere off there, far to the south and west, was Gray Wolf. For
the first time in many weeks he sat back on his haunches and gave the
deep and vibrant call that echoed weirdly for miles about him. Back in
the Banksians the big Dane heard it, and whined. From over the still
body of Sandy McTrigger the little professor looked up with a white,
tense face, and listened for a second cry.

But to that first call instinct told Kazan that there would be no
answer, and now he struck out swiftly, galloping mile after mile, as a
dog follows the trail of its master home. He did not turn back to the
lake, nor was his direction toward Red Gold City. As straight as he
might have followed a road blazed by the hand of man, he cut across the
forty miles of plain and swamp and forest and rocky ridge that lay
between him and the McFarlane. All that night he did not call again for
Gray Wolf. With him, reasoning was a process brought about by habit--by
precedent, and as Gray Wolf had waited for him many times before, he
believed that she would be waiting for him now somewhere near the
sandbar.

By dawn he had reached the river, within three miles of the sandbar.
Scarcely was the sun up when he stood on the white strip of sand where
he and Gray Wolf had come down to drink. Expectantly and confidently he
looked about him for Gray Wolf, whining softly and wagging his tail. He
began to search for her scent, but rains had washed even her footprints
from the clean sand. All that day he searched for her along the river
and out on the plain. Again and again he sat back on his haunches and
sent out his mating cry to her.

And slowly, as he did these things, nature was working in him that
miracle of the wild which the Crees have named the "spirit call." As it
had worked in Gray Wolf, so now it stirred the blood of Kazan. With the
going of the sun, and the sweeping about him of shadowy night, he turned
more and more to the south and east. His whole world was made up of the
trails over which he had hunted. That world, in his comprehension of it,
ran from the McFarlane in a narrow trail through the forest and over the
plains to the little valley from which the beavers had driven them. If
Gray Wolf was not here--she was there, and tirelessly he resumed his
quest of her.

Not until the stars were fading out of the sky again, and gray day was
giving place to night, did exhaustion and hunger stop him. He killed a
rabbit, and for hours after he had feasted, he lay dose to his kill, and
slept. Then he went on.

The fourth night he came to the little valley between the two ridges,
and under the stars, more brilliant now in the chill clearness of the
early autumn nights, he followed the creek down into their old swamp
home. It was broad day when he reached the edge of the great beaver pond
that now completely surrounded the windfall under which Gray Wolf's
second-born had come into the world. Broken Tooth and the other beavers
had wrought a big change in what had once been his home and Gray Wolf's,
and for many minutes Kazan stood silent and motionless at the edge of
the pond, sniffing the air heavy with the unpleasant odor of the
usurpers.

Until now his spirit had remained unbroken. Footsore, with thinned sides
and gaunt head, he circled slowly through the swamp. All that day he
searched. And his crest lay flat now, and there was a hunted look in the
droop of his shoulders and in the shifting look in his eyes. Gray Wolf
was gone. Slowly nature was impinging that fact upon him. She had passed
out of his world and out of his life, and he was filled with a
loneliness and a grief so great that the forest seemed strange, and the
stillness of the wild a thing that now oppressed and frightened him.

Once more the dog in him was mastering the wolf. With Gray Wolf he had
possessed the world of freedom. Without her, that world was so big and
strange and empty that it appalled him.

That night he slunk under a log. Deep in the night he grieved in his
slumber, like a child. And day after day, and night after night, Kazan
remained a slinking creature of the big swamp, mourning for the one
creature that had brought him out of chaos into light, who had filled
his world for him, and who, in going from him, had taken from this world
even the things that Gray Wolf had lost in her blindness.




III


In the golden glow of the autumn sun there one day came up the stream
overlooked by the Sun Rock a man, a woman, and a child. Almost two years
had passed since Joan, the girl-wife, had left these regions with her
trapper husband for a taste of that distant world which is known as
Civilization. All her life, except the years she had passed at a Mission
school over at Fort Churchill, she had lived in the forests--a wild
flower of nature as truly as the velvety _bakneesh_ flowers among the
rocks. And civilization had done for her what it had done for many
another wild flower transplanted from the depths of the wilderness. She
did not look as she did in the days when she was Kazan's mistress, and
when the wolf-dog's loyalty was divided between Gray Wolf, on the Sun
Rock, and Joan, in the cabin half a mile away. Her cheeks were thin. Her
blue eyes had lost their luster. She coughed, and when she coughed the
man looked at her with love and fear in his eyes.

But now, slowly, the man had begun to see the transformation, and on the
day their canoe pointed up the stream and into the wonderful valley that
had been their home before the call of the distant city came to them, he
noted the flush gathering once more in her cheeks, the fuller redness of
her lips, and the gathering glow of happiness and content in her eyes.
He laughed softly as he saw these things, and he blessed the forests.

"You are happy again, Joan," he said joyously. "The doctors were right.
You are a part of the forests."

"Yes, I am happy," she whispered, and suddenly there came a little
thrill into her voice, and she pointed to a white finger of sand running
out into the stream. "Do you remember--years and years ago, it
seems--that Kazan left us here? She was on the sand over there, calling
to him. Do you remember?" There came a little tremble to her mouth. "I
wonder--where they--have gone."

The cabin was as they had left it. Only the crimson _bakneesh_ had grown
up about it, and shrubs and tall grass had sprung up near its walls.
Once more it took on life, and day by day the color came deeper into
Joan's cheeks, and her voice was filled with its old wild sweetness of
song. Joan's husband cleared the trails over his old trap-lines, and
Joan and the little Joan, who romped and talked now, transformed the
cabin into _home._ One night the man returned to the cabin late, and
when he came in there was a glow of excitement in Joan's blue eyes.

"Did you hear it?" she asked. "Did you hear--_the call?_"

He nodded, stroking her soft hair.

"I was a mile back in the creek swamp," he said. "I heard it!"

Joan's hands clutched his arms.

"It wasn't Kazan," she said. "I would recognize his voice. But it seemed
to me it was like the other--the call that came that morning from the
sandbar, his mate's."

The man was thinking. Joan's fingers tightened. She was breathing a
little quickly.

"Will you promise me this?" she asked. "Will you promise me that you
will never hunt or trap for wolves?"

"I had thought of that," he replied. "I thought of it--after I heard the
call. Yes, I will promise."

Joan's arms stole up about his neck.

"We loved Kazan," she whispered. "And you might kill him--or her."

Suddenly she stopped. Both listened. The door was a little ajar, and to
them there came again the wailing mate-call of the wolf. Joan ran to the
door. Her husband followed. Together they stood silent, and with tense
breath Joan pointed over the starlit plain.

"Listen! Listen!" she commanded. "It's her cry, _and it came from the
Sun Rock!_"

She ran out into the night, forgetting that the man was close behind her
now, forgetting that little Joan was alone in her bed. And to them, from
miles and miles across the plain, there came a wailing cry in answer--a
cry that seemed a part of the wind, and that thrilled Joan until her
breath broke in a strange sob.

Farther out on the plain she went, and then stopped, with the golden
glow of the autumn moon and the stars shimmering in her hair and eyes.
It was many minutes before the cry came again, and then it was so near
that Joan put her hands to her mouth, and her cry rang out over the
plain as of old:

"_Kazan! Kazan! Kazan!_"

At the top of the Sun Rock, Gray Wolf--gaunt and thinned by
starvation--heard the woman's cry, and the call that was in her throat
died away in a whine. And to the north a swiftly moving shadow stopped
for a moment, and stood like a thing of rock under the starlight. It was
Kazan. A strange fire leaped through his body. Every fiber of his brute
understanding was afire with the knowledge that here was home. It was
here, long ago, that he had lived, and loved, and fought--and all at
once the dreams that had grown faded and indistinct in his memory came
back to him as real, living things. For, coming to him faintly over the
plain, _he heard Joan's voice!_

In the starlight Joan stood, tense and white, when from out of the pale
mists of the moon-glow he came to her, cringing on his belly, panting
and wind-run, and with a strange whining note in his throat. To Joan,
Kazan was more than mere dog. Next to her husband and baby she loved
him. There passed through her mind a day when he had saved her and the
baby from the wolves--and again the scene of that other day when he had
leaped upon the giant husky that was at the throat of little Joan. . . .
As her arms hugged Kazan's great shaggy head up to her, the man heard
the whining, gasping joy of the beast.

And then there came once more across the plain Gray Wolf's mate-seeking
cry of grief and of loneliness. Swiftly, as though struck by a lash,
Kazan was on his feet. In another instant he was gone.

"_Now_ do you believe?" cried Joan pantingly. "_Now_ do you believe
in the God of my world--the God I have lived with, the God that
gives souls to the wild things, the God that--that has brought--us
all--together--once more--_home!_"

His arms closed gently about her.

"I believe, my Joan," he whispered. Afterward they sat in the starlight
in front of the cabin. But they did not hear again that lonely cry from
the Sun Rock. Joan and her husband understood. "He'll visit us again
tomorrow," the man said at last. "Come, Joan, let us go to bed."
Together they entered the cabin. And that night, side by side, Kazan and
Gray Wolf hunted again on the moonlit plain.


[Footnote 4: _From James Other Curwood's Kazan. Copyright 1914, by
Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. By permission of the publishers._]


[Illustration: MEREDITH NICHOLSON]




_FOREWORD_


_I ALWAYS find myself uncomfortable in the company of those who delight
in literary shop-talk. Nothing I have ever heard or read on the subject
of writing has seemed to me of any value to a practitioner of the art in
so far as methods, hours of work and such matters are concerned. One
writes or one doesn't, and that seems to me the end on't. In the domain
of style there is, of course, a valuable and fascinating literature, but
the ability to write English prose of beauty and power pertains to the
higher branches of the craft._

_The choice and use of a subject is a thing apart. Here we enter a
no-man's land "where all is possible and all unknown." Pretending to no
special knowledge of this matter, I will, however, acknowledge myself a
firm believer in the operation of subconscious processes that assist in
the development of ideas. Once an idea takes root in the mind and has a
fertile germ in it, it immediately begins to grow. And as the plant
matures it thrusts its way through the crust teasingly from time to
time, until finally it stands up in full bloom in the conscious mind. It
is obviously difficult for anyone engaged in the creative arts to take
himself as a subject for psychological analysis. For the mind's
operation is a mystery. The origin of ideas belongs in the realm of the
unfathomable. If it were not for arousing the ire of trained
psychologists, there are a good many things that I could suggest from my
own experience that hint of forces at work in all of us that lure us to
a twilight borderland beyond which nothing is quite real but all is
touched with mystery._

_Nothing is more interesting than the manner in which the inevitable
form in which a thing should be written is instantly evident when the
idea itself--the device--becomes clear and definite. When I was a
newspaper reporter and had got my facts on some assignment, I found
myself visualizing the story as it would appear in print, even to the
first sentence and the arrangement of paragraphs, on my way back to the
office. There is, beyond question, a journalistic sense that enables one
instantaneously to appraise material and determine its treatment. I have
written almost everything from five-line news items, newspaper
editorial, verse, history, essays and short stories to novels of various
kinds, and I have always found that first instinctive sense of value and
form a pretty safe guide._

_When a short-story idea strikes me I draw a line like the flight of a
rocket across a piece of paper and write across it a few words
indicating the chief incidents of the story. The back of an envelope
suffices for this; I never make elaborate notes even for a novel,
trusting to the merry little imps in the subconscious cellar to keep me
supplied with material. And they are wilful little devils, who are
likely to go on a strike at times; but as nothing can be done to
stimulate their efforts, it's the wiser plan to try to forget what it is
you want to fashion and mold until, some day when you are watching a
ball game or hearing a symphony or doing something else utterly
unrelated to the particular idea that has tormented you, the whole thing
stands there before your eyes quite as unexpectedly as though a magician
had waved his wand and wrought a miracle you can't explain--and need
not._

_"The Third Man" struck me one day in a hotel room where, beside the
telephone, was a tablet on which some scribbling of the last guest
remained--a curious geometric cal figure roughly outlined all over the
sheet. I had often noticed the habit men have--women seem less addicted
to it--of marking with a pencil while the mind is engaged with something
wholly alien. As I reflected upon this I found not only that I myself
drew symbols or scrawled words when preoccupied, but that I constantly
repeated the same signs and words. It occurred to me that a man might
leave incriminating testimony by such idle pencilings. The idea having
interested me for an hour, I forgot all about it until one day the whole
story of "The Third Man" rose out of the subcellar and demanded to be
written._

_I employed in this story a character I have used frequently in short
stories--a banker with an adventurous, quixotic strain and a sincere
interest in helping the underdog. The idea of giving a dinner and
placing at every plate a tablet and pencil and (no one being in the
secret) waiting to see whether a certain man, never suspected of a
murder, would not from habit draw a certain figure which the host had
found on a scrap of paper at the scene of the crime, gives an
opportunity for that suspensive interest which is essential to a mystery
tale._

_I may add that I never have found a device for a story, long or short,
when I was consciously seeking it. Others no doubt have a very different
experience, and they are luckier than those of us who are obliged to
wait for the subconscious imps to throw up the trapdoor and disclose
something. There are well-known instances of writers dreaming a plot,
but only once have I been so favored. The thing looked quite splendid
while I slept, but it dissolved so quickly at the moment of waking that
I was unable to piece it together._

_It may be of interest to the student of such matters that practically
every idea that I have ever developed came to me at some place which I
always identify with it. And further, when this has happened on the
street or in some room of a house, I never revisit the place without an
odd feeling--a curious, disturbing uneasiness. There is a street corner
in my home town that I avoid, for there, I remember distinctly, the
device for a story occurred to me. The story was, I may say, one of the
most successful I ever wrote, and yet by some freakish and inexplicable
association of ideas I don't like to pass that corner! I should add that
neither the corner nor anything pertaining to it figured in the story or
was in any way related to it._

_So it will readily be seen that I am unlikely to be of service to
students or beginners, for in very plain terms I must admit that I do
not know how I do things. It is because the whole business is so
enveloped in mystery that I enjoy writing and try to keep myself in a
receptive state for those happy surprises, without which I should
quickly find myself without material and seeking other occupation._


[Illustration]




_The_ THIRD MAN[5]

BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON


When Webster G. Burgess asked ten of his cronies to dine with him at the
University Club on a night in January they assumed that the president of
the White River National had been indulging in another adventure which
he wished to tell them about.

In spite of their constant predictions that if he didn't stop hiding
crooks in his house and playing tricks on the Police Department he would
ultimately find himself in jail, Mr. Burgess continued to find amusement
in frequent dallyings with gentlemen of the underworld. In a town of
approximately three hundred thousand people a banker is expected to go
to church on Sundays and otherwise conduct himself as a decent, orderly,
and law-abiding citizen, but the president of the White River National
did not see things in that light. As a member of the Board of Directors
of the Released Prisoners' Aid Society he was always ready with the
excuse that his heart was deeply moved by the misfortunes of those who
keep to the dark side of the street, and that sincere philanthropy
covered all his sins in their behalf.

When his friends met at the club and found Governor Eastman one of the
dinner party, they resented the presence of that dignitary as likely to
impose restraints upon Burgess, who, for all his jauntiness, was not
wholly without discretion. But the governor was a good fellow, as they
all knew, and a story-teller of wide reputation. Moreover, he was taking
his job seriously, and, being practical men, they liked this about him.
It was said that no governor since Civil War times had spent so many
hours at his desk or had shown the same zeal and capacity for gathering
information at first hand touching all departments of the State
government. Eastman, as the country knows, is an independent character,
and it was this quality, which he had shown first as a prosecuting
attorney, that had attracted attention and landed him in the seat of the
Hoosier governors.

"I suppose," remarked Kemp as they sat down, "that these tablets are
scattered around the table so we can make notes of the clever things
that will be said here tonight. It's a good idea and gives me a chance
to steal some of your stories, governor."

A scratch pad with pencil attached had been placed at each plate, and
the diners spent several minutes in chaffing Burgess as to the purpose
of this unusual table decoration.

"I guess," said Goring, "that Web is going to ask us to write limericks
for a prize and that the governor is here to judge the contest. Indoor
winter sports don't appeal to me; I pass."

"I'm going to write notes to the House Committee on mine," said Fanning;
"the food in this club is not what it used to be, and it's about time
somebody kicked."

"As I've frequently told you," remarked Burgess, smiling upon them from
the head of the table, "you fellows have no imagination. You'd never
guess what those tablets are for, and maybe I'll never tell you."

"Nothing is so innocent as a piece of white paper," said the governor,
eyeing his tablet. "We'd better be careful not to jot down anything that
might fly up and hit us afterward. For all we know, it may be a scheme
to get our signatures for Burgess to stick on notes without relief from
valuation or appraisement laws. It's about time for another Bohemian
oats swindle, and our friend Burgess may expect to work us for the price
of the dinner."

"Web's bound to go to jail some day," remarked Ramsay, the surgeon, "and
he'd better do it while you're in office, governor. You may not know
that he's hand in glove with all the criminals in the country: he quit
poker so he could give all his time to playing with crooks."

"The warden of the penitentiary has warned me against him," replied the
governor easily. "Burgess has a man at the gate to meet convicts as they
emerge, and all the really bad ones are sent down here for Burgess to
put up at this club."

"I never did that but once," Burgess protested, "and that was only
because my mother-in-law was visiting me and I was afraid she wouldn't
stand for a burglar as a fellow guest. My wife's got used to 'em. But
the joke of putting that chap up here at the club isn't on me, but on
Ramsay and Colton. They had luncheon with him one day and thanked me
afterward for introducing them to so interesting a man. I told them he
was a manufacturer from St. Louis, and they swallowed it whole. Pettit
was the name, but he has string of aliases as long as this table, and
there's not a rogues' gallery in the country where he isn't indexed. You
remember, Colton, he talked a good deal of his travels, and he could do
so honestly, as he'd cracked safes all the way from Boston to Seattle."

Ramsay and Colton protested that this could not be so; that the man they
had luncheon with was a shoe manufacturer and had talked of his business
as only an expert could.

The governor and Burgess exchanged glances, and both laughed.

"He knew the shoe business all right enough," said Burgess, "for he
learned it in the penitentiary and proved so efficient that they made
him foreman of the shop!"

"I suppose," said Kemp, "that you've got another crook coming to take
that vacant chair. You'd better tell us about him so we won't commit any
social errors."

At the governor's right there was an empty place, and Burgess remarked
carelessly that they were shy a man, but that he would turn up later.

"I've asked Tate, a banker at Lorinsburg, to join us and he'll be along
after a while. Any of you know Tate? One of our scouts recently
persuaded him to transfer his account to us, and as this is the first
time he's been in town since the change I thought it only decent to show
him some attention. We're both directors in a company that's trying to
develop a tile factory in his town, so you needn't be afraid I'm going
to put anything over on you. Tate's attending a meeting tonight from
which I am regrettably absent! He promised to be here before we got down
to the coffee."

As the dinner progressed the governor was encouraged to tell stories,
and acceded good-naturedly by recounting some amusing things that had
happened in the course of his official duties.

"But it isn't all so funny," he said gravely after keeping them in a
roar for half an hour. "In a State as big as this a good many
disagreeable things happen, and people come to me every day with
heartbreaking stories. There's nothing that causes me more anxiety than
the appeals for pardon; if the pardoning power were taken away from me,
I'd be a much happier man. The Board of Pardons winnows out the cases,
but even at that there's enough to keep me uncomfortable. It isn't the
pleasantest feeling in the world that as you go to bed at night somebody
may be suffering punishment unjustly, and that it's up to you to find it
out. When a woman comes in backed by a child or two and cries all over
your office about her husband who's doing time and tells you he wasn't
guilty, it doesn't cheer you much; not by a jugful! Wives, mothers, and
sisters: the wives shed more tears, the sisters put up the best
argument, but the mothers give you more sleepless nights."

"If it were up to me," commented Burgess, "I'm afraid I'd turn 'em all
out!"

"You would," chorused the table derisively, "and when you'd emptied the
penitentiaries you'd burn 'em down!"

"Of course there's bound to be cases of flagrant injustice," suggested
Kemp. "And the feelings of a man who is locked up for a crime he never
committed must be horrible. We hear now and then of such cases and it
always shakes my faith in the law."

"The law does the best it can," replied the governor a little
defensively, "but, as you say, mistakes do occur. The old saying that
murder will out is no good; we can all remember cases where the truth
was never known. Mistakes occur constantly, and it's the fear of not
rectifying them that's making a nervous wreck of me. I have in my pocket
now a blank pardon that I meant to sign before I left my office, but I
couldn't quite bring myself to the point. The Pardon Board has made the
recommendation, not on the grounds of injustice--more, I'm afraid, out
of sympathy than anything else--and we have to be careful of our
sympathies in these matters. And here again there's a wife to reckon
with. She's been at my office nearly every day for a year, and she's
gone to my wife repeatedly to enlist her support. And it's largely
through Mrs. Eastman's insistence that I've spent many weeks studying
the case. It's a murder: what appeared to be a heartless, cold-blooded
assassination. And some of you may recall it--the Avery case, seven
years ago, in Salem County."

Half the men had never heard of it and the others recalled it only
vaguely.

"It was an interesting case," Burgess remarked, wishing to draw the
governor out. "George Avery was a man of some importance down there and
stood high in the community. He owned a quarry almost eleven miles from
Torrenceville and maintained a bungalow on the quarry land where he used
to entertain his friends with quail-hunting and perhaps now and then
with a poker party. He killed a man named Reynolds who was his guest. As
I remember, there seemed to be no great mystery about it, and Avery's
defense was a mere disavowal and a brilliant flourish of character
witnesses."

"For all anybody ever knew, it was a plain case, as Burgess says," the
governor began. "Avery and Reynolds were business acquaintances and
Avery had invited Reynolds down there to discuss the merging of their
quarry interests. Reynolds was found dead a little way from the bungalow
by some of the quarry laborers. He had been beaten on the head with a
club in the most barbarous fashion. Reynolds's overcoat was torn off and
the buttons ripped from his waistcoat, pointing to a fierce struggle
before his assailant got him down and pounded the life out of him. The
purpose was clearly not robbery, as Reynolds had a considerable sum of
money on his person that was left untouched. When the men who found the
body went to rouse Avery he collapsed when told that Reynolds was dead.
In fact, he lay in a stupor for a week, and they could get nothing out
of him. Tracks? No; it was a cold December night and the ground was
frozen.

"Reynolds had meant to take a midnight train for Chicago, and Avery had
wired for special orders to stop at the quarry station, to save Reynolds
the trouble of driving into Torrenceville. One might have supposed that
Avery would accompany his visitor to the station, particularly as it was
not a regular stop for night trains and the way across the fields was a
little rough. I've personally been over all the ground. There are many
difficult and inexplicable things about the case, the absence of motive
being one of them. The State asserted business jealousy and
substantiated it to a certain extent, and the fact that Avery had taken
the initiative in the matter of combining their quarry interests and
might have used undue pressure on Reynolds to force him to the deal to
be considered."

The governor lapsed into silence, seemingly lost in reverie. With his
right hand he was scribbling idly on the tablet that lay by his plate.
The others, having settled themselves comfortably in their chairs,
hoping to hear more of the murder, were disappointed when he ceased
speaking. Burgess's usual calm, assured air deserted him. He seemed
unwontedly restless, and they saw him glance furtively at his watch.

"Please, governor, won't you go on with the story?" pleaded Colton. "You
know that nothing that's said at one of Web's parties ever goes out of
the room."

"That," laughed the governor, "is probably unfortunate, as most of his
stories ought to go to the grand jury. But if I may talk here into the
private ear of you gentlemen I will go on a little further. I've got to
make up my mind, in the next hour or two about this case, and it may
help me to reach a conclusion to think aloud about it."

"You needn't be afraid of us," said Burgess encouragingly. "We've been
meeting here--about the same crowd--once a month for five years, and
nobody has ever blabbed anything."

"All right; we'll go a bit further. Avery's stubborn silence was a
contributing factor in his prompt conviction. A college graduate, a
high-strung, nervous man, hard-working and tremendously ambitious;
successful, reasonably prosperous, happy in his marriage, and with every
reason for living straight: there you have George Avery as I make him
out to have been when this calamity befell him. There was just one
lapse, one error, in his life, but that didn't figure in the case, and I
won't speak of it now. His conduct from the moment of his arrest, a week
following the murder, and only after every other possible clue had been
exhausted by the local authorities, was that of a man mutely resigned to
his fate. I find from the records that he remained at the bungalow in
care of a physician, utterly dazed, it seemed, by the thing he had done,
until a warrant was issued and he was put in jail. He's been a prisoner
ever since, and his silence has been unbroken to this day. His wife
assures me that he never, not even to her, said one word about the case
more than to declare his innocence. I've seen him at the penitentiary on
two occasions, but could get nothing out of him. In fact, I exhausted
any ingenuity I may have in attempting to surprise him into some
admission that would give me ground for pardoning him, but without
learning anything that was not in the State's case. They're using him as
a bookkeeper, and he's made a fine record: a model convict. The long
confinement has told seriously on his health, which is the burden of his
wife's plea for his release, but he wouldn't even discuss that.

"There was no one else at the bungalow on the night of the murder," the
governor continued. "It was Avery's habit to get his meals at the house
of the quarry superintendent, about five hundred yards away, and the
superintendent's wife cared for the bungalow, but the men I've had at
work couldn't find anything in that to hang a clue on. You see,
gentlemen, after seven years it's not easy to work up a case, but two
expert detectives that I employed privately to make some investigations
along lines I suggested have been of great assistance. Failing to catch
the scent where the trail started, I set them to work backward from a
point utterly remote from the scene. It was a guess, and ordinarily it
would have failed, but in this case it has brought results that are all
but convincing."

The tablets and pencils that had been distributed along the table had
not been neglected. The guests, without exception, had been drawing or
scribbling; Colton had amused himself by sketching the governor's
profile. Burgess seemed not to be giving his undivided attention to the
governor's review of the case. He continued to fidget, and his eyes
swept the table with veiled amusement. Then he tapped a bell and a
waiter appeared.

"Pardon me a moment, governor, till the cigars are passed again."

In his round with the cigar tray the Jap, evidently by prearrangement,
collected the tablets and laid them in front of Burgess.

"Changed your mind about the limerick contest, Web?" asked someone.

"Not at all," said Burgess carelessly; "the tablets have fulfilled their
purpose. It was only a silly idea of mine anyhow." They noticed,
however, that a tablet was left at the still vacant place that awaited
the belated guest, and they wondered at this, surmising that Burgess had
planned the dinner carefully and that the governor's discussion of the
Avery case was by connivance with their host. With a quickening of
interest they drew their chairs closer to the table.

"The prosecuting attorney who represented the State in the trial is now
a judge of the Circuit Court," the governor resumed when the door closed
upon the waiter. "I have had many talks with him about this case. He
confesses that there are things about it that still puzzle him. The
evidence was purely circumstantial, as I have already indicated; but
circumstantial evidence, as Thoreau once remarked, may be very
convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk! But when two men have
spent a day together in the house of one of them, and the other is found
dead in a lonely place not far away, and suspicion attaches to no one
but the survivor--not even the tramp who usually figures in such
speculations--a jury of twelve farmers may be pardoned for taking the
State's view of the matter."

"The motive you spoke of, business jealousy, doesn't seem quite adequate
unless it could be established that they had quarreled and that there
was a clear showing of enmity," suggested Fullerton, the lawyer.

"You are quite right, and the man who prosecuted Avery admits it," the
governor answered.

"There may have been a third man in the affair," suggested Ramsay, "and
I suppose the cynical must have suggested the usual woman in the case."

"I dare say those possibilities were thrashed out at the time," the
governor replied; "but the only woman in this case is Avery's wife, and
she and Reynolds had never met. I have found nothing to sustain any
suspicion that there was a woman in the case. Avery's ostensible purpose
in asking Reynolds to visit him at that out-of-the-way place was merely
that they could discuss the combination of their quarry interests
privately, and close to Avery's plant. It seems that Avery had
undertaken the organization of a big company to take over a number of
quarries whose product was similar, and that he wished to confer
secretly with Reynolds to secure his sanction to a selling agreement
before the others he wanted to get into the combination heard of it.
That, of course, is perfectly plausible; I could make a good argument
justifying that. Reynolds, like many small capitalists in country towns,
had a number of irons in the fire and had done some promoting on his own
hook. All the financial genius and all the financial crookedness aren't
confined to Wall Street, though I forget that sometimes when I'm on the
stump! I'm disposed to think from what I've learned of both of them that
Avery wasn't likely to put anything over on Reynolds, who was no child
in business matters. And there was nothing to show that Avery had got
him down there for any other purpose than to effect a merger of quarry
interests for their mutual benefit."

"There probably were papers to substantiate that," suggested Fullerton;
"correspondence and that sort of thing."

"Certainly; I have gone into that," the governor replied. "All the
papers remain in the office of the prosecuting attorney, and I have
examined them carefully. Now, if Avery had been able to throw suspicion
on some one else you'd think he'd have done so. And if there had been a
third person at the bungalow that night you'd imagine that Avery would
have said so; it's not in human nature for one man to take the blame for
another's crime, and yet we do hear of such things, and I have read
novels and seen plays built upon that idea. But here is Avery with
fifteen years more to serve, and, if he's been bearing the burden and
suffering the penalty of another's, sin, I must say that he's taking it
all in an amazing spirit of self-sacrifice."

"Of course," said Fullerton, "Reynolds may have had an enemy who
followed him there and lay in wait for him. Or Avery may have connived
at the crime without being really the assailant. That is conceivable."

"We'll change the subject for a moment," said the governor, "and return
to our muttons later."

He spoke in a low tone to Burgess, who looked at his watch and answered
audibly:

"We have half an hour more."

The governor nodded and, with a whimsical smile, began turning over the
tablets.

"These pads were placed before you for a purpose which I will now
explain. I apologize, for taking advantage of you, but you will pardon
me, I'm sure, when I tell you my reason. I've dipped into psychology
lately with a view to learning something of the mind's eccentricities.
We all do things constantly without conscious effort, as you know; we
perform acts automatically without the slightest idea that we are doing
them. At meetings of our State boards I've noticed that nobody ever uses
the pads that are always provided except to scribble on. Many people
have that habit of scribbling on anything that's handy. Hotel keepers,
knowing this, provide pads of paper ostensibly for memoranda that guests
may want to make while at the telephone, but really to keep them from
defacing the wall. Left alone with pencil and paper, most of us will
scribble something or draw meaningless figures.

"Sometimes it's indicative of a deliberate turn of mind; again it's
sheer nervousness. After I had discussed this with a well-known
psychologist I began watching myself and found that I made a succession
of figure eights looped together in a certain way--I've been doing it
here!

"And now," he went on with a chuckle, "you gentlemen have been indulging
this same propensity as you listened to me. I find on one pad the word
Napoleon written twenty times with a lot of flourishes; another has
traced a dozen profiles of a man with a bulbous nose: it is the same
gentleman, I find, who honored me by drawing me with a triple chin--for
which I thank him. And here's what looks like a dog kennel repeated down
the sheet. Still another has sketched the American flag all over the
page. If the patriotic gentleman who drew the flag will make himself
known, I should like to ask him whether he's conscious of having done
that before?"

"I'm guilty, governor," Fullerton responded. "I believe it is a habit of
mine. I've caught myself doing it scores of times."

"I'm responsible for the man with the fat nose," confessed Colton; "I've
been drawing him for years without ever improving my draftsmanship."

"That will do," said the governor, glancing at the door. "We won't take
time to speak of the others, though you may be relieved to know that I
haven't got any evidence against you. Burgess, please get these works of
art out of the room. We'll go back to the Avery case. In going over the
papers I found that the prosecuting attorney in his search of the
bungalow the morning after the murder found a number of pieces of paper
that bore an odd, irregular sort of sketch. I'm going to pass one of
them round, but please send it back to me immediately."

He produced a sheet of letter paper that bore traces of hasty crumpling
but had been smoothed out again, and held it up. It bore the
lithographed name of the Avery Quarry Company. On it was drawn this
device:


[Illustration]


"Please note," said the governor as the paper passed from hand to hand,
"that same device is traced there five times, sometimes more irregularly
than others, but the general form is the same. Now, in the fireplace of
the bungalow living-room they found this and three other sheets of the
same stationery that bore this same figure. It seems a fair assumption
that someone sitting at a table had amused himself by sketching these
outlines and then, when he had filled the sheet, tore it off and threw
it into the fireplace, wholly unconscious of what he was doing. The
prosecutor attached no importance to these sheets, and it was only by
chance that they were stuck away in the file box with the other
documents in the case."

"Then you suspect that there was a third man in the bungalow that
night?" Ramsay asked.

The governor nodded gravely.

"Yes; I have some little proof of it, quite a bit of proof, in fact. I
have even had the wastebasket of the suspect examined for a considerable
period. Knowing Burgess's interest in such matters, I have been using
him to get me certain information I very much wanted. And our friend is
a very successful person! I wanted to see the man I have in mind and
study him a little when he was off-guard, and Burgess has arranged that
for me, though he had to go into the tile business to do it! As you can
readily see, I could hardly drag him to my office, so this little party
was gotten up to give me a chance to look him over at leisure."

"Tate!" exclaimed several of the men.

"You can see that this is a very delicate matter," said the governor
slowly. "Burgess thought it better not to have a smaller party, as Tate,
whom I never saw, might think it a frame-up. So you see we are using you
as stool-pigeons, so to speak. Burgess vouches for you as men of
discretion and tact; and it will be your business to keep Tate amused
and his attention away from me while I observe him a little."

"And when I give the signal you're to go into the library and look at
picture books," Burgess added.

"That's not fair!" said Fullerton. "We want to see the end of it!"

"I'm so nervous," said Colton, "I'm likely to scream at any minute!"

"Don't do it!" Burgess admonished. "The new House Committee is very
touchy about noise in the private dining-rooms, and besides I've got a
lot of scenery set for the rest of the evening, and I don't want you
fellows to spoil it."

"It begins to look," remarked the governor, glancing at his watch, "as
though some of our scenery might have got lost."

"He'd hardly bolt," Burgess replied; "he knows of no reason why he
should! I told the doorman to send him right up. When he comes there
will be no more references to the Avery case: you all understand?"

They murmured their acquiescence, and a solemn hush fell upon them as
they turned involuntarily toward the vacant chair.

"This will never do!" exclaimed the governor, who seemed to be the one
tranquil person in the room. "We must be telling stories and giving an
imitation of weary business men having a jolly time. But I'm tired of
talking; some of the good story-tellers ought to be stirred up."

With a little prodding Fullerton took the lead, but was able to win only
grudging laughter. Colton was trying his hand at diverting them when
they were startled by a knock. Burgess was at the door instantly and
flung it open.




II


"Ah, Tate! Come right in; the party hasn't started yet!"

The newcomer was a short, thick-set man, clean-shaven, with coarse dark
hair streaked with gray. The hand he gave the men in succession as they
gathered about him for Burgess's introduction was broad and heavy. He
offered it limply, with an air of embarrassment.

"Governor Eastman, Mr. Tate; that's your seat by the governor, Tate,"
said Burgess. "We were just listening to some old stories from some of
these fellows, so you haven't missed anything. I hope they didn't need
me at that tile meeting; I never attend night meetings: they spoil my
sleep, which my doctor says I've got to have."

"Night meetings," said the Governor, "always give me a grouch the next
morning. A party like this doesn't, of course!"

"Up in the country where I live we still stick to lodge meeting as an
excuse when we want a night off," Tate remarked.

They laughed more loudly than was necessary to put him at ease. He
refused Burgess's offer of food and drink and when someone started a
political discussion they conspired to draw him into it. He was County
Chairman of the party not then in power and complained good-naturedly to
the governor of the big plurality Eastman had rolled up in the last
election. He talked slowly, with a kind of dogged emphasis, and it was
evident that politics was a subject to his taste. His brown eyes, they
were noting, were curiously large and full, with a bilious tinge in the
white. He met a glance steadily, with, indeed, an almost disconcerting
directness.

Where the governor sat became, by imperceptible degrees, the head of the
table as he began seriously and frankly discussing the points of
difference between the existing parties, accompanied by clean-cut
characterizations of the great leaders.

There was nothing to indicate that anything lay behind his talk; to all
appearances his auditors were absorbed in what he was saying. Tate had
accepted a cigar, which he did not light but kept twisting slowly in his
thick fingers.

"We Democrats have had to change our minds about a good many things,"
the governor was saying. "Of course we're not going back to Jefferson"
(he smiled broadly and waited for them to praise his magnanimity in
approaching so near to an impious admission), "but the world has spun
around a good many times since Jefferson's day. What I think we
Democrats do and do splendidly is to keep dose to the changing current
of public opinion; sometimes it seems likely to wash us down, as in the
free-silver days; but we give, probably without always realizing it, a
chance for the people to express themselves on new questions, and if
we've stood for some foolish policies at times the country's the better
for having passed on them. These great contests dear the air like a
storm, and we all go peacefully about our business afterward."

As he continued they were all covertly watching Tate, who dropped his
cigar and began playing with the pencil before him, absently winding and
unwinding it upon the string that held it to the tablet. They were
feigning an absorption in the governor's recital which their quick,
nervous glances at Tate's hand belied. Burgess had pushed back his chair
to face the governor more comfortably and was tying knots in his napkin.

Now and then Tate nodded solemnly in affirmation of something the
governor said, but without lifting his eyes from the pencil. His broad
shoulders were bent over the table, and the men about him were
reflecting that this was probably an attitude into which his heavy body
often relaxed when he was pondering deeply.

Wearying of the pencil--a trifle of the dance-card variety--he dropped
it and drew his own from his waistcoat pocket. Then, after looking up to
join in a laugh at some indictment of Republicanism expressed in droll
terms by the governor, he drew the tablet closer and, turning his head
slightly to one side, drew a straight line. Burgess frowned as several
men changed position the better to watch him. The silence deepened, and
the governor's voice rose with a slight oratorical ring. Through a
half-open window floated the click of billiard balls in the room below.
The governor having come down to the Wilson Administration, went back to
Cleveland, whom he praised as a great leader and a great president. In
normal circumstances there would have been interruptions and questions
and an occasional gibe; and ordinarily the governor, who was not noted
for loquacity, would not have talked twenty minutes at a stretch without
giving an opportunity to his companions to break in upon him. He was
talking, as they all knew, to give Tate time to draw the odd device
which it was his habit to sketch when deeply engrossed.

The pencil continued to move over the paper; and from time to time Tate
turned the pad and scrutinized his work critically. The men immediately
about him watched his hand, wide-eyed, fascinated. There was something
uncanny and unreal in the situation: it was like watching a wild animal
approaching a trap and wholly unmindful of its danger. The square box
which formed the base of the device was traced clearly; the arcs which
were its familiar embellishment were carefully added. The governor,
having exhausted Cleveland, went back to Jackson, and Tate finished a
second drawing, absorbed in his work and rarely lifting his eyes.

Seeing that Tate had tired of this pastime, the governor brought his
lecture to an end, exclaiming:

"Great Scott, Burgess! Why haven't you stopped me! I've said enough here
to ruin me with my party, and you hadn't the grace to shut me off."

"I'm glad for one," said Tate, pushing back the pad, "that I got in time
to hear you; I've never known before that any Democrat could be so
broad-minded!"

"The governor loosens up a good deal between campaigns," said Burgess,
rising. "And now, let's go into the library where the chairs are
easier."

The governor rose with the others, but remained by his chair, talking to
Tate, until the room cleared, and then resumed his seat.

"This is perfectly comfortable; let's stay here, Mr. Tate. Burgess,
close the door, will you."

Tate, hesitated, looked at his watch, and glanced at Burgess, who sat
down as though wishing to humor the governor, and lighted a cigar.

"Mr. Tate," said the governor unhurriedly, "if I'm not mistaken, you are
George Avery's brother-in-law."

Tate turned quickly, and his eyes widened in surprise.

"Yes," he answered in slow, even tones; "Avery married my sister."

"Mr. Tate, I have in my pocket a pardon all ready to sign, giving Avery
his liberty. His case has troubled me a good deal; I don't want to sign
this pardon unless I'm reasonably sure of Avery's innocence. If you were
in my place, Mr. Tate, would you sign it?"

The color went out of the man's face and his jaw fell; but he recovered
himself quickly.

"Of course, governor, it would be a relief to me, to my sister, all of
us, if you could see your way to pardoning George. As you know, I've
been doing what I could to bring pressure to bear on the Board of
Pardons: everything that seemed proper. Of course," he went on
ingratiatingly, "we've all felt the disgrace of the thing."

"Mr. Tate," the governor interrupted, "I have reason to believe that
there was a third man at Avery's bungalow the night Reynolds was killed.
I've been at some pains to satisfy myself of that. Did that ever occur
to you as a possibility?"

"I suspected that all along," Tate answered, drawing his handkerchief
slowly across his face. "I never could believe George Avery guilty; he
wasn't that kind of man!"

"I don't think he was myself," the governor replied. "Now, Mr. Tate, on
the night of the murder you were not at home, nor on the next day when
your sister called you on the long-distance telephone. You were in
Louisville, were you not?"

"Yes, certainly; I was in Louisville."

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Tate, you were not in Louisville! You were at
Avery's bungalow that night, and you left the quarry station on a
freight train that was sidetracked on the quarry switch to allow the
Chicago train to pass. You rode to Davos, which you reached at two
o'clock in the morning. There you registered under a false name at the
Gerber House, and went home the next evening pretending to have been at
Louisville. You are a bachelor, and live in rooms over your bank, and
there was no one to keep tab on your absences but your clerks, who
naturally thought nothing of your going to Louisville, where business
often takes you. You were there two days ago, I believe. But that has
nothing to do with this matter. When you heard that Reynolds was dead
and Avery under suspicion you answered your sister's summons and hurried
to Torrenceville."

"I was in Louisville; I was in Louisville, I tell you!" Tate uttered the
words in convulsive gasps. He brushed the perspiration from his forehead
impatiently and half rose.

"Please sit down, Mr. Tate. You had had trouble a little while before
that with Reynolds about some stock in a creamery concern in your county
that he promoted. You thought he had tricked you, and very possibly he
had. The creamery business had resulted in a bitter hostility between
you: it had gone to such an extent that he had refused to see you again
to discuss the matter. You brooded over that until you were not quite
sane where Reynolds was concerned: I'll give you the benefit of that.
You asked your brother-in-law to tell you when Reynolds was going to see
him, and he obligingly consented. We will assume that Avery, a good
fellow and anxious to aid you, made a meeting possible. Reynolds wasn't
to know that you were to be at the bungalow--he wouldn't have gone if he
had known it--and Avery risked the success of his own negotiations by
introducing you into his house, out of sheer good will and friendship.
You sat at a table in the bungalow living-room and discussed the matter.
Some of these things only I have guessed at; the rest of it----"

"It's a lie; it's all a damned lie! This was a scheme to get me here:
you and Burgess have set this up on me! I tell you I wasn't at the
quarry; I never saw Reynolds there that night or any other time. My God,
if I had been there,--if Avery could have put it on me, would he be
doing time for it?"

"Not necessarily, Mr. Tate. Let us go back a little. It had been in your
power once to do Avery a great favor, a very great favor. That's true,
isn't it?"

Tate stared, clearly surprised, but his quivering lips framed no answer.

"You had known him from boyhood, and shortly after his marriage to your
sister it had been in your power to do him a great favor; you had helped
him out of a hole and saved the quarry for him. It cost me considerable
money to find that out, Mr. Tate, and not a word of help have I had from
Avery: be sure of that! He had been guilty of something just a little
irregular--in fact, the forging of your name to a note--and you had
dealt generously with him, out of your old-time friendship, we will say,
or to spare your sister humiliation."

"George was in a corner," said Tate weakly but with manifest relief at
the turn of the talk. "He squared it all long ago."

"It's natural, in fact, instinctive, for a man to protect himself, to
exhaust all the possibilities of defense when the law lays its hand upon
him. Avery did not do so, and his meek submission counted heavily
against him. But let us consider that a little. You and Reynolds left
the bungalow together, probably after the interview had added to your
wrath against him, but you wished to renew the talk out of Avery's
hearing and volunteered to guide Reynolds to the station where the
Chicago train was to stop for him. You didn't go back, Mr. Tate----"

"Good God, I tell you I wasn't there! I can prove that I was in
Louisville; I tell you----"

"We're coming bade to your alibi in a moment," said the governor
patiently. "We will assume--merely assume for the moment--that you said
you would take the train with Reynolds and ride as far as Ashton, where
the Midland crosses and you would get an early morning train home. Avery
went to sleep at the bungalow wholly ignorant of what had happened; he
was awakened in the morning with news that Reynolds had been killed by
blows on the head inflicted near the big derrick where you and
Reynolds--I am assuming again--had stopped to argue your grievances.
Avery--shocked, dazed, not comprehending his danger and lying there in
the bungalow prostrated and half-crazed by the horror of the
thing--waited: waited for the prompt help he expected from the only
living person who knew that he had not left the bungalow. He knew you
only as a kind, helpful friend, and I dare say at first he never
suspected you! It was the last thing in the world he would have
attributed to you, and the possibility of it was slow to enter his
anxious, perturbed mind. He had every reason for sitting tight in those
first hideous hours, confident that the third man at that bungalow
gathering would come forward and establish his innocence with a word. As
is the way in such cases, efforts were made to fix guilt upon others;
but Avery, your friend, the man you had saved once, in a fine spirit of
magnanimity, waited for you to say the word that would dear him. But you
never said that word, Mr. Tate. You took advantage of his silence; a
silence due, we will say, to shock and horror at the catastrophe and to
his reluctance to believe you guilty of so monstrous a crime or capable
of allowing him, an innocent man, to suffer the penalty for it."

Tate's big eyes were bent dully upon the governor. He averted his gaze
slowly and reached for a glass of water, but his hand shook so that he
could not lift it, and he glared at it as though it were a hateful
thing.

"I wasn't there! Why----" he began with an effort at bravado; but the
words choked him and he sat swinging his head from side to side and
breathing heavily.

The governor went on in the same low, even tone he had used from the
beginning:

"When Avery came to himself and you still were silent, he doubtless
saw that, having arranged for you to meet Reynolds at the
bungalow--Reynolds, who had been avoiding you--he had put himself in the
position of an accessory before the fact and that even if he told the
truth about your being there he would only be drawing you into the net
without wholly freeing himself. At best it was an ugly business, and
being an intelligent man he knew it. I gather that you are a secretive
man by nature; the people who know you well in your own town say that of
you. No one knew that you had gone there and the burden of the whole
thing was upon Avery. And your tracks were so completely hidden: you had
been at such pains to sneak down there to take advantage of the chance
Avery made for you to see Reynolds and have it out with him about the
creamery business, that suspicion never attached to you. You knew Avery
as a good fellow, a little weak, perhaps, as you learned from that
forgery of your name ten years earlier; and it would have been his word
against yours. I'll say to you, Mr. Tate, that I've lain awake nights
thinking about this case, and I know of nothing more pitiful, my
imagination can conjure nothing more horrible, than the silent suffering
of George Avery as he waited for you to go to his rescue, knowing that
you alone could save him."

"I didn't do it, I didn't do it!" Tate reiterated in a hoarse whisper
that died away with a queer guttural sound in his throat.

"And now about your alibi, Mr. Tate: the alibi that you were never even
called on to establish." The governor reached for the tablet and held it
before the man's eyes, which focused upon it slowly, uncomprehendingly.
"Now," said the governor, "you can hardly deny that you drew that
sketch, for I saw you do it with my own eyes. I'm going to ask you, Mr.
Tate, whether this drawing isn't also your work?"

He drew out the sheet of paper he had shown the others earlier in the
evening and placed it beside the tablet. Tate jumped to his feet,
staring wild-eyed, and a groan escaped him. The governor caught his arm
and pushed him bade into his chair.

"You will see that is Avery's letterhead that was used in the quarry
office. As you talked there with Reynolds that night you played with a
pencil as you did here a little while ago and without realizing it you
were creating evidence against yourself that was all I needed to
convince me absolutely of your guilt. I have three other sheets of
Avery's paper bearing the same figure that you drew that night at the
quarry office; and I have others collected in your own office within a
week! As you may be aware, the power of habit is very strong. For years,
no doubt, your subconsciousness has carried that device, and in moments
of deep abstraction with wholly unrelated things your hand has traced
it. Even the irregularities in the outline are identical, and the size
and shading are precisely the same. I ask you again, Mr. Tate, shall I
sign the pardon I brought here in my pocket and free George Avery?"

The sweat dripped from Tate's forehead and trickled down his cheeks in
little streams that shone in the light. His collar had wilted at the
fold, and he ran his finger round his neck to loosen it. Once, twice, he
lifted his head defiantly, but, meeting the governor's eyes fixed upon
him relentlessly, his gaze wavered. He thrust his hand under his coat
and drew out his pencil and then, finding it in his fingers, flung it
away, and his shoulders drooped lower.




III


Burgess stood by the window with his back to them. The governor spoke to
him, and he nodded and left the room. In a moment he returned with two
men and dosed the door quickly.

"Hello, warden; sit down a moment, will you?"

The governor turned to a tall, slender man whose intense pallor was
heightened by the brightness of his oddly staring blue eyes. He advanced
slowly. His manner was that of a blind man moving cautiously in an
unfamiliar room. The governor smiled reassuringly into his white,
impassive face.

"I'm very glad to see you, Mr. Avery," he said. He rose and took Avery
by the hand.

At the name Tate's head went up with a jerk. His chair creaked
discordantly as he turned, looked up into the masklike face behind him,
and then the breath went out of him with a sharp, whistling sound as
when a man dies, and he lunged forward with his arms flung out upon the
table.

The governor's grip tightened upon Avery's hand; there was something of
awe in his tone when he spoke.

"You needn't be afraid, Avery," he said. "My way of doing this is a
little hard, I know, but it seemed the only way. I want you to tell me,"
he went on slowly, "whether Tate was at the bungalow the night Reynolds
was killed. He _was_ there, wasn't he?"

Avery wavered, steadied himself with an effort, and slowly shook his
head. The governor repeated his question in a tone so low that Burgess
and the warden, waiting at the window, barely heard. A third time he
asked the question. Avery's mouth opened, but he only wet his lips with
a quick, nervous movement of the tongue, and his eyes met the governor's
unseeingly.

The governor turned from him slowly, and his left hand fell upon Tate's
shoulder.

"If you are not guilty, Tate, now is the time for you to speak. I want
you to say so before Avery; that's what I've brought him here for. I
don't want to make a mistake. If you say you believe Avery to be guilty,
I will not sign his pardon."

He waited, watching Tate's hands as they opened and shut weakly; they
seemed, as they lay inert upon the table, to be utterly dissociated from
him, the hands of an automaton whose mechanism worked imperfectly. A
sob, deep, hoarse, pitiful, shook his burly form.

The governor sat down, took a bundle of papers from his pocket, slipped
one from under the rubber band which snapped back sharply into place. He
drew out a pen, tested the point carefully, then, steadying it with his
left hand, wrote his name.

"Warden," he said, waving the paper to dry the ink, "thank you for your
trouble. You will have to go home alone. Avery is free."




IV


When Burgess appeared at the bank at ten o'clock the next morning he
found his friends of the night before established in the directors' room
waiting for him. They greeted him without their usual chaff, and he
merely nodded to all comprehendingly and seated himself on the table.

"We don't want to bother you, Web," said Colton, "but I guess we'd all
feel better if we knew what happened after we left you last night. I
hope you don't mind."

Burgess frowned and shook his head.

"You ought to thank God you didn't have to see the rest of it! I've got
a reservation on the Limited tonight: going down to the big city in the
hope of getting it out of my mind."

"Well, we know only what the papers printed this morning," said Ramsay;
"a very brief paragraph saying that Avery had been pardoned. The papers
don't tell the story of his crime as they usually do, and we noticed
that they refrained from saying that the pardon was signed at one of
your dinner parties."

"I fixed the newspapers at the governor's request. He didn't want any
row made about it, and neither did I, for that matter. Avery is at my
house. His wife was there waiting for him when I took him home."

"We rather expected that," said Colton, "as we were planted at the
library windows when you left the club. But about the other man: that's
what's troubling us."

"Um," said Burgess, crossing his legs and clasping his knees. "_That_
was the particular hell of it."

"Tate was guilty; we assume that of course," suggested Fullerton. "We
all saw him signing his death warrant right there at the table."

"Yes," Burgess replied gravely, "and he virtually admitted it; but if
God lets me live I hope never to see anything like that again!"

He jumped down and took a turn across the room.

"And now---- After that, Web?"

"Well, it won't take long to tell it. After the governor signed the
pardon I told the warden to take Avery downstairs and get him a drink:
the poor devil was all in. And then Tate came to, blubbering like the
vile coward he is, and began pleading for mercy: on his knees, mind you;
on his _knees!_ God! It was horrible--horrible beyond anything I ever
dreamed of--to see him groveling there. I supposed, of course, the
governor would turn him over to the police. I was all primed for that,
and Tate expected it and bawled like a sick calf. But what he said
was--what the governor said was, and he said it the way they say 'dust
to dust' over a grave--'You poor fool, for such beasts as you the
commonwealth has no punishment that wouldn't lighten the load you've got
to carry around with you till you die!' That's all there was of it!
That's exactly what he said, and can you beat it? I got a room for Tate
at the club, and told one of the Japs to put him to bed." "But the
governor had no right," began Ramsay eagerly; "he had no _right_----"
"The king can do no wrong! And, if you fellows don't mind, the incident
is dosed, and we'll never speak of it again."


[Footnote 5: _From Best Laid Schemes, Copyright, 1919, 1922, by
Charles Scribner's Sons. By permission of the publisher._]


[Illustration: H. C. WITWER]




_FOREWORD_


_I have selected "Money to Burns" as my best effort because the
situations and characters in that story appealed to me more than any
others I've created in some three hundred odd yarns. The "gold-digging"
young lady of the chorus, the super-sophisticated bellboy with his
hard-boiled philosophy, and the beautiful, cynical Goddess of the
Switchboard, are all familiars of mine. Intimate with their habits,
characteristics, mannerisms and vocabulary, I had only to create a
central plot and push them bodily into it. After that, writing the story
was merely a case of conscientious reporting--it almost wrote itself!_

_The genesis of "Money to Burns" was some envious remarks of a bellboy
in discussing the sensational escapades of a certain young millionaire.
The boy, bringing ice water to my room in a hotel, pointed to the
glaring headlines in a newspaper that told of the gilded youth's latest
adventure, and bitterly bemoaned the fate that made him a bellboy and
the other a millionaire. He discoursed on what he would do were he the
possessor of wealth, etc. I encouraged his conversation, with a story
forming itself before my eyes. When he left the room I put his
counterpart on paper, gave him wealth, added the other characters and
necessary embellishments, carved out the title which I hoped would
attract the reader's interest and--there you are!_

_As to how I work--one word pretty well covers that question. The word
is "HARD!" I try to get interesting characters and titles first of all;
after that, plots. The characters are always people I know well. The
plots may come from any source--things that have happened to me, a
chance remark of some individual, a newspaper headline, an adventure I
would relish having myself, etc._

_To a beginner I would advise a thorough reading of the popular
magazines, a shot at the newspaper game if possible, plenty of clean
white paper and a resolution to take lots of punishment. Thais all I
would presume to advise--and I may have given an overdose already!_


[Illustration]




MONEY TO BURNS[6]

By H. C. WITWER


"_When fortune favors a man too much, she makes him a fool!_"

Neither Napoleon, Nero, Alexander, Jack Johnson, Mark Antony nor Bill
Hohenzollern was the composer of that remark, though, honest, I bet they
all _thought_ it about the time the world was giving them the air.
However, the boy who originally pulled the above wise crack was Mr.
Publius Syrus, a master mind current in dear old Syria during the fiscal
year of 77 B.C. Two thousand annums after Publius gave up the struggle,
Jimmy Burns, a professional bellhop--age, twenty; color, white;
nationality, Broadway-American--decided to find out for himself whether
or not Pubby's statement was true. It is! Loll back in the old easy
chair for about approximately a half-hour and I'll do my stuff. Perhaps
you don't know me, as Eve coyly remarked to Adam, so taking advantage of
your good nature I'll introduce myself. I'm Gladys Murgatroyd, a
switchboard operator at the Hotel St. Moe. I was slipped into the cradle
under the name of Mary Ellen Johnson, but as that smacks more of the
kitchen than the drawing-room, I changed that label some time ago to the
Gladys Murgatroyd thing, which I admit sounds phony--still, I'm a phone
girl, so what could be sweeter?

However, one morning during a slight lull in the daily hostilities
between me and the number-seeking guests, I am reading my favorite
book--the _Morning Squawk_, the newspaper that made the expression "It
is alleged" famous, or maybe it was the other way around. Spattered all
over the front page is a highly sensational account of the latest
adventures of one of these modern prodigal sons--in round numbers,
Carlton Van Ryker, whose father celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday by
entering a tomb in a horizontal position and leaving his only progeny
two paltry $500,000 bank notes. The young millionaire with the name like
a Pullman car and a soft collar had been stepping high, wide and fast
with his pennies and at the time of going to press was the plot of an
"alienation of my wife's affections" suit, a badly mismanaged shooting
affair, and various other things that would keep his mind off the
weather for quite a spell. While I'm drinking all this in with my
lustrous orbs, along comes Mons. James Joseph Aloysius Burns, who was
either the hero of this episode in my exciting career, or else he
wasn't.

Although I've known Jimmy Burns for the worst part of two years, we're
still good friends, both of us being refugees from the land of Utah. My
home town was the metropolis of Bountiful, where I once won a beauty
contest single-handed, and James fled from Salt Lake City, where smoking
cigarettes is the same as throwing rocks at the President, in the eyes
of the genial authorities.

But to get to the business of the meeting--Jimmy sported a sarcastical
sneer as he approached my switchboard on this particular morning.

"Kin you feature a cuckoo like this dizzy Van Ryker havin' all that
sugar," he snorts, nodding angrily at the newspaper, "whilst us regular
white folks is got to slave like Uncle Tom or we don't eat? Is that
fair?"

"Cheer up, Jimmy," I says with a smile. "We don't get much money, that's
a fact, but then we can laugh out loud. That's more than Van Ryker can
do! Look at the pushing around he's getting because he hauled oil and
inherited a million, poor fellow; he----"

"That mug was ru'ned by too much jack!" butts in Jimmy. "He's what you
call a weak sister. He wasn't _built_ to handle important money--you got
to be _born_ that way! Knowin' how to spend money is a gift. _I_ got the
gift, but I ain't got the money!"

"And you never _will_ have the money, frittering away your life hopping
bells in a hotel, Jamesy--not to give you a short answer," I says. "When
they assembled you they left out the motor--_ambition!_"

"Blah!" says Jimmy courteously. "That's what _you_ think. I got plenty
ambition. My ambition is to wake up every morning for the rest of my
life with a twenty-dollar bill in my kick! Believe me, Cutey, I often
wish I was a Wall Street bond messenger, a bootlegger or even a
professional reformer--but I ain't never had a shot at no _big_ dough
like that. Why, if it was rainin' tomato bouillon, I'd be there with a
knife instead of a spoon!"

"As if _that_ would stop you!" I remark sweetly. I once saw James eat.
"It seems to me you're always craving excitement," I went on, dealing
out some wrong numbers. "Only last week you told me you had a massage."

"Go ahead and kid me," says Jimmy. "_You_ should bite your nails--you're
a woman, a good looker with more curves than a scenic railway, and they
ain't no way _you_ kin lose! But it's different _here._ It seems to me I
beep workin' for a livin' since the doc says 'It's a boy!' and the
chances is I'll be workin' for a livin' till the doc says 'Get the
embalmer'!"

Don't you love that?

"Why don't you check out of the bell-hopping game and try your luck at
something with a future in it?" I ask him, though, really, I'm about as
interested in Jimmy's biography as I am in the election returns at
Tokyo. "If _I_ was a man, this town wouldn't have _me_ licked!"

"Apple sauce!" sneers Jimmy politely. "A guy without money has got the
same chance in New York as a ferryboat salesman would have on the Sara
Desert. It takes jack to make jack. With a bank roll I could make _my_
name as well known as Jonah's, and I'd spot him his whale!"

"What do you _do_ with your nickels?" I ask him. "I don't doubt that
Chaplin and Fairbanks get more _wages_ than you bellboys, but I thought
your _tips_ ran into better figures than they have in the Follies."

"Say, cutey, be yourself!" says James scornfully. "Most of the eggs in
this trap is as tight as the skin on a grape--they wouldn't give a thin
dime to see Tut-ankh-Amen walk up Fifth Avenoo on his hands! I could be
railroaded to Sing Sing for what I think of _them_ babies. Why should
_I_ have to carry suitcases and hustle ice water for a lot of monkeys
like that?"

"Don't put on dog, Jimmy," I smile. "The guests of the St. Moe are every
bit as good as you are, even if you _are_ a haughty bellhop and they are
lowly millionaires. Suppose _you_ had a million, what would you do with
it?"

"Well," says Jimmy thoughtfully, "the first thing I'd do wouldst be to
get me a education--not that I'm no dumb Isaac by no means, but they's a
few lessons like algeometry, matriculation, mock geography and the like
which I could use. _I_ wouldn't get all tangled up with no wild women or
pull none of the raw stuff which this Van Ryker jobbie done, that's a
cinch! They'd be no horseplay what the so ever, as far as _I_ was
concerned. What _I'd_ do wouldst be to crash into some business, make my
pile and my name and not do no playin' around till I was about fifty and
independent for life. Ain't it a crime when I got them kind of
intentions to make good and no nonsense about it, that somebody don't
slip me a million?"

"It's an outrage, Jimmy," I agree, allowing a giggle to break jail.
"Still, all men are born equal and if it's actually possible that you
_haven't_ got a million, why, you must have thrown your chances away.
When Eddie Windsor was your age, for instance, he had made himself
Prince of Wales!"

"Me and him begin life in a different type of cradle!" says Jimmy. "And
that stuff about everybody bein' equal when they're born is the oyster's
ice skates. The only way me and them wealthy millionaires was even at
birth is that we was all babies!"

This debate between me and Jimmy was about like Adam and a monkey
arguing over which of 'em was our first ancestor--we could have found
plenty of people to side with both of us. Then again, the customers was
beginning to snap into it for the day and craved the voice with the
smile. I got as busy at the switchboard as a custard pie salesman on a
movie comedy lot, so I gave the money-mad James the air for the time
being.

A couple of weeks later, or maybe it was a jolly old fortnight, Hon. Guy
Austin Tower returns from a voyage to Europe, and then the fun began!
Maybe you all haven't had the unusual pleasure of meeting my boy friend,
so with your kind permission I'll introduce him.

This handsome young metropolitan sheik is a millionaire of the first
water, a full-blooded playwright, one of my wildest admirers, and a
guest at the Hotel St. Moe. Guy would be a face card in any deck--he's a
real fellow, no fooling. Even the parboiled Jimmy Burns, who thinks
everybody guilty till proved innocent, is one of Guy's fans. Guy just
sprays Jimmy and the rest of the hired help with princely tips and
doesn't dime them to death, as most of the other inmates do.

Like Carlton Van Ryker, Guy was left about everything but Lake Michigan
when his male parent entered the obituary column, but _unlike_ Van
Ryker, Guy didn't let his millions make him a clown. He wanted to carve
his own way on our popular planet, so he simply forgot about his
warehouse full of doubloons and took up the trade of writing plays. As
he's got two frolics running on Broadway now, you could hardly call him
a bust.

Well, when Guy came back from overseas he got a welcome from the St. Moe
staff that would have tickled a political boss. Honestly, he brought
something back for everybody! What he brought back for me was some
perfectly gorgeous Venetian lace and his sixty-fifth request that I
renounce the frivolous pleasures of the telephone switchboard and enter
matrimony.

I accepted the lace, which drove my girl friend, Hazel Killian, wild
with envy, but on the wedding bells I claimed exemption. I like Guy, but
I'm by no means in love with him--or with anyone else! From what I've
been able to observe on my perch at the St. Moe switchboard, there's a
bit too much "moan" in matrimony, and, really, I get no more thrill out
of contemplating marriage than Noah would get out of contemplating
Niagara Falls. I've seen too much of it! I do get a kick, though, out of
my daily struggle to remain a campfire girl and still keep from dying of
too little fun. The swarming lobby of any costly Gotham hotel is the
favorite hunting grounds of snips that pass in the night, always looking
for the best of it--lounge lizards, synthetic sheiks of all ages and
others too humorous to mention. Any young, well dressed member of my
much advertised sex who doesn't resemble a gorilla is their legitimate
prey, and trying to discourage 'em is like trying to discourage the
anti-drys. But I got their number--being a phone girl, that's my job,
isn't it? I meet five hundred representatives of the sillier sex every
day, and it's a hobby of mine to treat 'em all with equal chilly
politeness till they get out of line. Then I turn off the politeness,
just giving 'em the chill, and honest, when I want to be cold--which is
generally--I'd turn a four-alarm fire into an iceberg with a glance!

However, there are a lot of yawns connected with plugging a telephone
switchboard day by day in every way, and now and then a male will come
along sufficiently interesting for little Gladys to accept temporarily
as an accomplice in the assassination of time.

Dinners, dances, theaters, this and that--nothing my mother and I
couldn't laugh over, so don't curl your lip!

Well, Guy Tower hadn't been back in the St. Moe a week when he began
showering attentions on me from the point where he left off before he
sailed away. Honestly, he dinnered and theatered me silly! Hazel Killian
watched me carelessly toy with this good-looking young gold mine with
unconcealed feelings of covetousness. She simply couldn't understand why
I didn't grab this boon from Heaven and marry him while he was stupefied
with my charms. Hazel, who is an artists' model and no eyesore herself,
is suffering from a lifelong ambition to become a bird in a gilded cage.
She craves a millionaire, and in desperation she offered to match coins
with me for Guy, but I indignantly refused. I _know_ Hazel--she's a
dear, but she'd have Rockefeller penniless in a month and every shop on
Fifth Avenue sporting a "Closed to Restock" sign. She's just a pretty
baby who loves to go buy and she makes 'em give till it hurts, don't
think she doesn't!

Another person who got upset over Guy's inability to keep away from me
was Jerry Murphy, house sleuth at the St. Moe. Jerry's so big that if he
had numbers on him he'd look like a box car, and he's just another male
I can get all dizzied up with a properly manipulated eye and smile.
Really, he's not a bad fellow, but as a detective he's a blank
cartridge. He couldn't catch pneumonia if it was against the law not to
have it. Jerry don't know what it's all about and never will, because
he's too thick between the ears to ask and nobody will tell him. He
hangs around my switchboard like a hungry collie around a kitchen and
he's just as eager; but I'm not collecting losers, so Jerry's
meaningless to _me._ My bounding around with Guy fills Jerry with pain
and alarm and he keeps me supplied with laughs by constantly warning me
of the pitfalls and temptations that surround a little telephone girl
who steps out with a millionaire. "If 'at big mock orange makes one
out-of-the-way crack to you, cutey, just tip me off and I'll _ruin_
him!" says Jerry with a menacing growl. "I can't cuddle up to the idea
of you goin' out with him all the time. Don't let him go to work and
lure you somewheres away from easy callin' distance of help!"

"Cut yourself a piece of cake!" I says. "Mister Tower is a perfect
gentleman, Jerry, and it would be impossible for him to act like
anything else if he and I were alone on an island in the middle of the
Pacific."

"Say, listen, cutey,'" says Jerry, wincing, "don't mention 'at
alone-on-a-island stuff in my presence! 'At's what I been dreamin' about
me and you for a year. If we ever get on a ship together, I'll wreck it
as sure as you're born!"

Now, isn't he a scream?

Well, at one of our dinner dates about a month after his return, Guy
shows up haggard and wan and apparently all in. Generally a fellow who
couldn't do enough for his stomach, he ordered this night with the
enthusiasm of a steak fiend week-ending at a vegetarian friend's. When
the nourishment arrived, Guy just dallied and toyed with it. Afterwards
we favored the dance floor with a visit, and instead of tripping his
usual wicked ballroom he acted like he had an anvil in each of his
pumps. A dozen times during the evening he had to tap back a yawn, and
really I began to get steamed up. I'm not used to seeing my boy friends
pass out on me!

"I hope I'm not keeping you awake, Mr. Tower," I remarked frigidly as we
returned to our table and the nineteenth yawn slipped right through his
fingers, in spite of his well meant attempt to push it back.

"Forgive me!" says Guy quickly, and a flush brings some color to his
face for the first time that night. "I--the fact is, Gladys, I don't
believe I've had a dozen hours' sleep in the past week!"

"Then you've been cheating," I smile, "for you've always left me around
midnight. Is she a blonde or a brunette, or have you noticed?"

Guy laughs and, leaning over, pats my hand.

"As if I would ever notice _any_ girl but you!" he says, getting
daringly original. "Oh, it isn't a girl, Gladys--though there _is_ a
woman at the bottom of the thing, at that. I'll explain that paradoxical
statement. Rosenblum wants my next play to open his new Thalia Theater,
which will be completed within two months--and I haven't the ghost of an
idea, not the semblance of a plot! I've paced the floor like a caged
animal, smoking countless cigarettes and drinking oceans of black
coffee. I've written steadily for hours at a stretch and then torn the
whole business up in disgust. That's what's kept me awake at night--that
and my daily battles with this infernal Rosenblum!"

"How come?" I ask him in surprise. "I don't see the percentage in
battling with the man who puts your plays on Broadway, Guy."

"He wants me to write a risqué farce, one of those
loathsome--er--pardon me--bedroom things for Yvette D'Lys," says Guy
angrily, "and I ab-so-lute-ly will not do it! I refuse to prostitute my
art for the sordid box office! I----"

"Hold everything!" I butt in. "Shakespeare wasn't below writing bedroom
farces, and I think even _you'll_ admit that he got some favorable
mention as a playwright."

"Shakespeare write a bedroom farce!" gasps Guy. "Why, my dear girl,
you--which of his marvelous plays could you _possibly_ twist into that?"

"Othello," I says promptly. "In act five they clown all over the
boudoir! You should go to the theater oftener."

For a second Guy looks puzzled, then he grins and the lines around his
navy-blue eyes relax.

"You are delightful," he says. "If I cannot get mental stimulus from
_you_, then I am indeed uninspired! Nevertheless, I am not going to do
as Rosenblum requests. I have never written anything salacious or even
suggestive, and I never will! Furthermore, I don't believe Miss D'Lys or
_any_ actress likes to play that kind of a part. It is managers of the
Rosenblum type that force those rôles on them--callous,
dollar-grabbing, cynical pessimists, who take it for granted that all
women are bad!"

"Any man who takes it for granted that all women are bad is no
pessimist, Guy," I says thoughtfully. "He's an optimist!"

"Great!" says Guy, slapping the table with his hand. "May I use that
epigram in my play?"

"I'll loan it to you," I tell him. "If I break out with the writing rash
myself some day, I'll want it back. And now let me hear some of the
ideas you tore up in disgust--maybe one of them is the real McCoy. Trot
'em out and I'll give you my honest opinion."

Well, he did and I did. Guy rattled off a half-dozen plots, which failed
to thicken and merely sickened. Honestly, they had everything in 'em but
the Battle of Gettysburg, and really they were fearful--about as new and
exciting as a beef stew, which is just what I told him, being a truthful
girl.

Guy sighs and looks desperate.

"Gladys," he says, "I simply _must_ have a play ready to open the Thalia
in less than eight weeks! You know that my interest in playwriting is
anything but mercenary--good heavens, I have more money than I know what
to do with. What I want is to see my name on another Broadway success,
and I'm absolutely barren of ideas! I've simply struck a dry spell, such
as all writers do, occasionally. At this moment I'd give twenty-five
thousand dollars for an original plot!"

I drew a deep breath and stared at him.

"Don't kid about that kind of money, Guy," I says solemnly. "And--don't
tempt me!"

"I never was more serious in my life!" he quickly assures me. "Why, have
_you_ an idea? By Jove, Gladys, if you if _have_--you are the goddess
from the machine----"

"Be of good cheer," I interrupt. "I'll go home and sleep over matters,
which is what you better do, too--you look like you fell out of a well
or something, really! I'll see you tomorrow. I don't think I'll have a
plot for you by then, but----"

"Naturally--still, if you even have a suggestion that I might use," says
Guy eagerly, "I----"

"I say I don't _think_ I'll have a plot by then, I know I'll have one!"
I finish.

And I did, really!

When I got home that night I went right to bed, but somehow Mr. Slumber
and me couldn't seem to come to terms. My brain just refused to call it
a union day but kept mulling over Guy and his magnanimous offer of
twenty-five thousand lire for a plot. Good heavens, he could buy a plot
with a house and barn on it for that! Then my half-sleepy mind turns to
Jimmy Burns, the gloomy bellhop, whose deathless ambition is to corral a
fortune and dumfound Europe with his progress from then on! Suddenly
these two trains of thought collide with a crash and out of the wreck
comes an idea that I think will make Jimmy Burns famous and give Guy
Tower his play! That trifling matter being all settled, I turned over
and slept the sleep of the just.

The very next evening I propositioned Guy, who listened with flattering
attention. After telling him I had his play all set, I furnished him
with a short but interesting description of the life, habits and desires
of James Joseph Aloysius Burns. I then proposed that Guy place his
twenty-five thousand to the bellboy's credit for one month, James to be
allowed free rein with the jack. If Burns has increased the amount at
the end of thirty days, he is to return the original twenty-five
thousand to Guy. If not, he must give back whatever amount he has left.
All the principals are to be sworn to secrecy and that's all there is to
my scheme--it's as simple as the recipe for hot chocolate!

"If Jimmy Burns is really miscast in life and has a brain and business
ability far above hopping bells," I explain, "why, the use of
twenty-five thousand for thirty days might make him one of the world's
most famous men! It's a sporting chance, Guy--will you gamble?"

Guy looks somewhat perplexed. He stares into my excited face and clears
his throat nervously.

"Well--I--of course, I am interested in _anything_ you suggest, Gladys,"
he says. "I--eh--suppose I am unusually stupid this evening, but I
cannot see how my dowering this bellboy will assist me in writing my
play."

"Listen," I says. "You claimed you'd put out twenty-five thousand for a
plot, didn't you? Well, believe me, the movements of Jimmy Burns with
twenty-five thousand dollars to do what he wants with will supply all
the ideas you can handle--if you don't think so, you're crazy!"

"But----" begins Guy.

"Don't butt!" I cut him off, impatiently. "You're not the goat yet and
you won't be if you listen to teacher. All you have to do is give Jimmy
the sugar, watch his stuff for the next thirty days, and you'll get a
true-to-life masterpiece for your drama--probably a play that will show
the making of a financial, scientific or artistic Napoleon! If you can't
get a play out of the effect of sudden wealth on a lowly bellhop, then
you got no business In the same room with a typewriter!"

Guy rubs his chin, smooths back his wavy hair and gazes out of the
window at New York City.

"By Jove!" he busts out suddenly, slapping his hands together. "The
thing is fantastic--grotesque--but I'll do it!"

So it came to pass that the next day Guy, Jimmy Burns, and myself met by
appointment in the cashier's office of the Plumbers & Physicians
National Bank. As I was on my lunch hour and minutes were at a premium,
there was little time squandered on preliminaries, Guy making his
proposition to the thunderstruck James in simple words of one syllable.
At first M. Burns refused to believe he wasn't being kidded, then he got
hysterical with delight. When the startled cashier solemnly asked for
his signature and handed him a bank book showing there was $25,000 to
his credit in the vaults, Jimmy broke down and cried like a baby!

"Now listen to me, young man," I tell the panting Burns when he has hid
the bank book in his shoe to the open amusement of Guy and the wondering
cashier. "You want to get an immediate rush of brains to the head and
make that twenty-five thousand _mean_ something, because that's the last
you get if you cry your eyes out! That's all there is, there isn't any
more, get me? You been going around squawking about what a world-beater
you'd be if you had money. Well, now you got plenty of it and we look
for big things from you. No clowning, remember, you _must_ make good! Is
all that clear?"

Still in a happy trance, Jimmy Burns removes his cap with a start.

"Ye-ye-yes, ma'am!" he gulps, the first time he was ever polite to
anyone, before or since.

Well, really, the effect of that $25,000 suddenly showered on Jamesy was
every bit as startling as I expected--only in a slightly different way
than I fondly hoped! Those pennies went right to his shapely head, and
instead of stimulating his brain, why, they just _removed_ it
altogether. First of all, Jimmy got a wild and uncontrollable desire to
leave the art of bell-hopping flat on its back. Not satisfied to resign
his portfolio in a dignified way, he kidded the guests, insulted the
manager, rode Jerry Murphy till Jerry wanted his heart, and wound up by
punching Pete Kift, the bell captain, right on the nose. By an odd
coincidence, these untoward actions got Jimmy the gate.

The plutocrat bellhop's next imitation was to apply for the most
expensive suite in the hotel. They just laughed Hon. Burns off, telling
him there was nothing but standing room left in the inn and try to get
_that!_ But Guy Tower came to the rescue and got Jimmy the suite, as Guy
wanted to keep his experiment under as close observation as possible
while making notes for his play. Once settled in his gorgeous apartment,
Jimmy swelled up like a mump and run his former colleagues ragged
getting him ice water, stationery, telegram blanks and drug-store gin.
He staggered around in the most fashionable lobby in New York making
cracks like "Hey, d'ye think Prohibition will ever come back?" to
astounded millionaires and their ladies. Honestly, he was a wow I When
one of the fellows he used to work with called him "Jimmy," the nee
bellboy angrily insists that the manager fire him for undue familiarity,
remarking, "A guy has got to keep them servants in their proper places!"

He sent a wire to the Standard Oil Company asking if they couldn't use a
younger man in Rockefeller's place, paid the dinge elevator pilots a
dollar twenty times a day to stop the car and tie his shoe laces,
panicked the highest priced tailor in Manhattan by ordering seven suits
of "mufti," having read that the King of England occasionally dresses in
that, and generally misplayed his hand till everybody was squawking and
in no time at all Jimmy Burns was about as popular as a mad deg in the
St. Moe hotel. He failed to go through college like he promised he
would, but he certainly went through everything else, and only for Guy,
Jimmy would have been streeted fifty times a day!

The next desire that attacks James is the ambition to see his name in
the newspapers, so he advertises for a press agent. The first publicity
purveyor who showed up made James think he was good by using nothing but
adjectives in his conversation and asking for a honorarium of $250 the
week. Mr. Burns thought the salary was more than reasonable, but as he's
the type that would ask President Coolidge for a reference, he demanded
one from the candidate for the job. "You have asked the man who owns
one--just a minute!" says the press agent cheerily, and not at all
abashed he dashes out of the room. I heard all this when he stopped at
my switchboard with Jimmy and asked me where the writing room was. In
five minutes he's back, waving a paper in Jimmy's face. "Look _that_
over!" he says.

James read it out loud for my entertainment. According to this
testimonial, the bearer had did about everything in the publicity line
but act as press representative for a school where middle-aged eagles
are taught how to fly. James seems to get quite a kick out of it.

"I think I'll take this guy," he remarks, as he looks up from the
reference.

"Fine!" says the delighted applicant. "That's a good thought. I'll snap
right into it and----"

"Tomato sauce!" butts in James sneeringly. "I don't wish no part of
_you_, the baby _I_ want to hire is the bozo which wrote this
recommendation of you. He's good, what I mean, a letter-writin' idiot!"

"A bit odd that we should both be thinking the same thing," says Mr.
Press Agent coolly. "As a matter of fact, I wrote that recommendation
myself. So now that I'm engaged as your publicity expert, let me have a
few of your photos and----"

The following morning nearly every front page in town displayed a
picture of James Burns and this glaring headline:

BELL BOY LEFT MILLION BY GUEST
HE ONCE LOANED DIME!

That was the press agent's first effort and, as far as I was ever able
to see, his last. But it got ample results, as with your permission I'll
be glad to show you.

Within a week, Jimmy Burns had discovered what millions have discovered
before _his_ little day--that the mere possession of lucre does not mean
happiness, and for some it means positive misery! Not only did James
become the prey of the charity solicitors, confidence workers, stock
swindlers, "yes men," phony promoters and other parasites that infest
the hotel, but he was constantly in boiling water through his cuckoo
escapades growing out of sudden wealth that sent his brains on location.
After purchasing a diamond as big as Boston, only brighter, he bought
the highest priced horseless carriage he could find in the market and
the same identical day it slipped out of his hands and tried to climb
the steps of the Fifth Avenue library. The gendarmes pinched him for
reckless driving, though Jimmy protested that it wasn't really
"wreckless" as he had plenty wreck, and his worship tossed the trembling
James into the hoosegow for three days, remarking, "I'll teach you rich
men a lesson!" Then the income-tax beagles read that newspaper headline
and came down on Burns like a cracked ceiling. So all in all, Jimmy was
finding few chuckles connected with his pieces of eight.

When the rich but unhappy James got out of the Bastille, he decided to
throw a party in his costly suite at the St. Moe for his former
associates of the bellhops' bench. As Jimmy confided to me, apparently
his only friend, he felt the immediate need of mixing with people who
spoke his language. He wanted to forget his troubles and get back on a
friendly footing with the boys, who had severed diplomatic relations
with him on account of his acting like he was Sultan of Goitre or
something when he became a thousandaire overnight. Jimmy felt that a
first-class soiree would do the trick.

The party came off as advertised, but all it meant to the poor little
rich man was more grief! It was really a respectable enough affair, no
hats being broken or that sort of thing, and a pleasant time was had by
all with the slight exception of the charming host. Our hero made two
fatal mistakes. The first was not inviting Jerry Murphy and the second
was laying in a stock of canny Scotch for medicinal purposes, in case
any of his guests should get stricken with the dread disease of thirst.
The result was that an epidemic of parched throats broke out early in
the evening and pretty soon the other habitues of the St. Moe began
complaining bitterly about the unusually boisterous race riot that was
being staged with a top-heavy cast on the sixth floor. Mr. Williams, the
manager, who liked Jimmy Burns and arsenic the same way, called upon
Jerry Murphy to quell the disturbance and Jerry licked his lips with
delight. The man-mountain house detective run all the way upstairs,
figuring the elevators too slow to whisk him to a job as tasty to him as
cream is to puss. Jerry pounded on the door of Jimmy's salon and
demanded admittance. Recognizing his voice, James climbed unsteadily on
a chair, opened the transom and peered with a rolling eye at Jerry.

"Go roll yer hoop--hic--you big shtiff, thish is
gen'lemen's--hic--gen'lemen's blowout!" says Jimmy, carelessly pouring a
pitcher of water, cracked ice and all, on Jerry's noble head. "Hic--shee
kin you _laugh off!_"

Foaming at the mouth and uttering strange cries, the infuriated Jerry
broke through the door and the panic was on! The beauty and chivalry
present fled before the charging sleuth like they'd flee before a
charging hippo, but the unfortunate Jimmy got left at the post. After
cuffing him around the room till the sport palled on him, Jerry dragged
James off to durance vile and once again Jamesy is put under glass, this
time credited with illegally possessing spirits frumenti. They held him
under lock and key all night and it took all of Guy Tower's influence
and quite a few of his quarters to get Jerry to withdraw the charge and
free Jimmy the next morning.

Well, honestly, I felt sorry for Jimmy Burns, who was certainly taking
cruel and unusual punishment and being made to like it. I thought
perhaps if I injected a lady into the situation it might make things a
bit more pleasant for him, so I introduced Hazel Killian to the
"millionaire bellboy," as the newspapers were still calling James. _O
sole mia!_ as they say in Iowa, what an off day my brain was having when
it cooked up _that_ idea! With visions clouding her usually painstaking
taste, of the Riviera, Paris, Monte Carlo, gems, yachts, Boles-Joyce
limousines or what have you, Hazel took to Jimmy like a goldfish takes
to a bowl and our evening expeditions now consisted of your
correspondent and Guy, assisted by Hazel and Jimmy. We went everywhere
together, with James insisting upon paying most of the bills. But while
Jimmy was civil enough to the easy-to-look-at Hazel, he simply showered
his attentions on your little friend Gladys, grabbing every chance to
make the most violent love to me. This greatly annoyed Guy and Hazel and
equally greatly amused _me_--Jimmy was just a giggle to me, not a gasp!

In the meanwhile, Mr. Williams and Jerry Murphy had banded together to
make James sick and tired of living in the Hotel St. Moe. He seldom
found his room made up, there was always something wrong with the
lights, the water and the steam, none of the help would answer his
bells, and when he hollered for service he was told he would find it in
the dictionary under S. But Pete Kift pulled the worst trick of all on
him. With the radiant Hazel on his arm and Guy keeping military distance
behind, Jimmy was proudly strutting through the lobby one fine evening.
All were resplendent in evening clothes, and to show you I'm not catty
I'll say that Hazel in an evening gown would attract attention away from
the Yosemite. As the party neared the desk, Pete Kift suddenly looks at
Jimmy and bawls "_Front!_" at the top of his bull elephant's voice, and
mechanically responding to the habit of a lifetime, poor Jimmy Burns
grabs an amazed guest's suitcase and hastily starts for the elevator!
The witnesses just screamed when they grasped the situation and
recognized James as the ex-bellhop. Even Guy smiled, but it was
different with Hazel, who could have shot down Mr. Burns on the spot in
cold blood. As for Jimmy, well, honestly, he would have welcomed the
bullet!

Nevertheless, in spite of this fox pass Hazel believed Jimmy had
actually inherited an even million, and evidently James had not gone out
of his way to make her think different. So one day Hazel tells me she's
all through posing for artists and is determined to make Jimmy her very
own. When she adds that he has sworn to star her in a musical comedy or
back her in a movie production, I nearly passed out! Can you imagine
Jimmy, with only a few thousand left, making any such maniacal promises
as that to a girl with a memory like Hazel's? _Oo la la_, what a fine
disturbance James was readying himself for!

As I had vowed to say nothing about how Jimmy got his bankroll, I
couldn't very well give the ambitious Hazel the lowdown on matters, but
I _did_ try most earnestly to lay her off him. I got nowhere! Refusing
to be warned, Hazel point-blankly accused me of having a yen for Jimmy
myself, and then she set sail for this gilded youth in dead earnest.

Well, knowing nothing of Hazel's plans with regard to himself, the
doomed Jimmy kept on entertaining like his first name was Astor, his
middle name Vanderbilt and his last name Morgan. He took me, Hazel and
Guy to the races at Belmont Park and stabled us all in a box. As James
had loudly declared that he knew more about horses than Vincent Ibanez,
we all played his-feed-box tips for five races and we learned about
losers from him. When the sixth and last scramble arrived, Guy had
donated $1,500, I had sent in $50, and Hazel had parted with $80 to the
oral books and was fit to be tied I What Jimmy lost, nobody knows.
Anyhow, he gazed over the program for the sixth race, a mile handicap,
and suddenly let out a yell.

"Hot dog!" he says, much excited. "Here's where we all get independent
for life. They's a beagle in this dash by the name of Bellhop and if
that ain't a hunch then Pike's Peak's a pimple. Get down on this baby
with the family jools and walk outa here rancid with money!"

We split a contemptuous grin between us and presented it to Jimmy before
getting down on the favorite in a last attempt to break even on the day.
Jimmy milled his way back to our box, flushed and panting, and gayly
announced that he had shot the works on Bellhop's nose. He said we were
all paranoiacs for not doing the same. Well, it was all over in a
twinkling! The favorite found the handicap of our bets a bit too much
and finished an even last. Bellhop tripped the mile in something like
0.96 and won from here to the Ruhr, clicking off $15,000 for Mr. James
Joseph Aloysius Burns. James then announced his intention of buying the
horse and presenting it to Hazel for Arbor Day, and it was only with the
greatest of difficulty that me and Guy talked him out of it. Hazel gave
us a murderous glare and for the rest of the day you couldn't have got a
nail file between her and Jimmy, honestly!

Whirling back to New York in Jimmy's car, now steered by a uniformed
chauffeur, I began to reprove James for this gambling and stepping out
when he should be using his money and time to secure his future. What
about all his promises to me? How about all the big things he was going
to do? When was he going to enter business, or whatever he thought he
could do best?

"Don't make me laugh!" says Jimmy, tapping an imported cigarette on a
solid gold case. "I'm sittin' pretty. What a sucker _I'd_ be to pester
myself about work when I got all this sugar!"

"Of course," says Hazel, nestling closer to him. "Imagine a millionaire
_working!_"

And the only thing that really burned me up was Jimmy's grin at Guy and
the sly dig in the ribs he gave me, the little imp!

Well, from then on Jimmy had lots of luck and all of it bad. The fellow
who invented money was a clever young man, but he really should have
stayed around the laboratory for another couple of hours and invented an
antidote for the trouble it brings. The well-to-do ex-bellhop used his
jack as a wedge to get into one jam after another, till finally came the
worst blow of all, and Miss Hazel Killian delivered it.

It seems that Hazel got fatigued waiting for Jimmy to unbelt the roll
and star her in a musical comedy or a super-production, so she requested
a showdown. Jimmy checked up and discovered he had blown all but about
five thousand of his ill-gotten gains, and as trustworthy reports had
reached him that it would take about ten times that much to group a show
around the beauteous Hazel, he calmly told her all bets were off. Hazel
promptly fainted, but Jimmy's idea of first aid being an alarmed glance
and a dash for the door, she quickly snapped out of it and demanded ten
thousand dollars for the time she put in entertaining him.

"Aha--a gold digger, hey?" says Jimmy indignantly. "So you wish ten
grand for entertainin' me? Where d'ye get that stuff? They ain't no ten
thousand dollars' worth of laughs in you for _me_, I'll tell the world!
Take the air!"

Infuriated beyond speech, Hazel brought suit for $100,000 against James
the following day, charging that promising young man had promised to wed
her. Further, deponent sayeth not!

That was the end of the high life for Jimmy Burns. Honestly, he was
scared stiff and he got little comfort from _me_, for I was absolutely
disgusted with the way he had carried on from the time Guy gave him that
money. Opportunity had knocked on this little fool's door and he had
pretended he wasn't at home. Not only that, but I felt he had got me in
wrong with Guy Tower, whose $25,000 investment for a plot now seemed a
total loss. I told Guy tearfully how sorry I was that my scheme had
failed to pan out, but he cut me off in the middle of my plea for
forgiveness, his face a mass of smiles.

"My dear girl, you owe me no apology," says Guy, patting my shoulder.
"It is I who owe you a debt of gratitude. I've written a farce-comedy
around Jimmy's adventures with the twenty-five thousand, and Rosenblum
predicts it will be the hit of the season! I've never seen him so
enthusiastic. Your idea was more than successful, and Jimmy is welcome
to whatever he has left of the money when the time limit expires!"

Wasn't that lovely?

In the meantime, the miserable Jimmy had tried to forget his worries
again by mixing with his former fellow workmen about the hotel. Jerry
Murphy and Pete Kift wouldn't give him a tumble, so he sat on the
bellhops' bench all night, trying to square things with his
ex-playmates. But now that he was a "millionaire" they put on the ice
and treated him like a maltese would be treated at a mouse's reception.
A great longing comes over Jimmy to be a care-free bellboy again,
without the burden of wealth. He felt the irresistible call of the ice
water, the stationery and the tip! So, unable to lick the temptation, he
sneaked the baggage of a few guests upstairs and was promptly run out of
the hotel by the other boys for poaching on their preserves. To make
things perfect, a couple of days later he was served with the papers in
Hazel's suit.

Unable to cope with the situation and hysterical with fear, Jimmy rushed
to the switchboard and made an appeal to me that would have melted a
Chinese executioner. He placed the blame for the trouble he was in on my
georgetted shoulders--manlike--and insisted that I had to get him out of
the mess. The legal documents Hazel had him tagged with smacked to the
terrified Jimmy of pitiless judges, stern juries, jail--perhaps even the
gallows! Honestly, James was in fearful shape, no fooling. I shut off
his moans finally, and told him to get rid of whatever money he had left
and I would take on myself the horrible job of explaining everything to
Hazel. With a wild whinny, Jimmy dashed out of the hotel without even
thanking me, gambled his remaining ducats in one wild stock-market
plunge--and two days later the ticker informed him that he was worth
$25,000 again!

But money was now smallpox to Jimmy Burns. It was just three weeks and
four days since Guy Tower gave him the original $25,000, and under the
agreement Jimmy still had three days left to splurge. Nothing stirring!
What he wanted to do now was to get rid of his wealth, as I had told him
Hazel's barristers would never let her sue him should they find out the
defendant had no more nickels. Jimmy wanted to go to law with Hazel the
same way he wanted to part with his ears, so he busts in on Guy and
tells him to take back his gold because he don't wish any part of it.
Before the astonished Guy can open his mouth, Jimmy hurls twenty-five
one-thousand-dollar bills on the table and flees the room!

Well, being an important customer of the St. Moe, Guy got Jimmy back his
old job hopping bells, broke, but happy for the first time in a month.
Then Guy insisted on me accepting a small royalty from his play for
producing Jimmy Burns as the plot. That left everybody taken care of but
the raging Hazel, who declared herself off me for life and was packed
and ready to leave me alone in New York. Guy solved that problem and
made Hazel crazily happy by engaging her to play _herself_ in his
comedy, "Money to Burns." Merry Flag Day!


[Illustration]


[Footnote 6: _Copyright, 1923, International Magazine Company
(Cosmopolitan Magazine)_]

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