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<p>One December in the Frio country there was a ratama tree in full bloom, for the winter had been as warm as springtime. That way rode the Frio Kid and his satellite and co-murderer, Mexican Frank. The kid reined in his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful and grim, with dangerously narrowing eyes. The rich, sweet scent touched him somewhere beneath his ice and iron.</p>
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<p>“I don’t know what I’ve been thinking about, Mex,” he remarked in his usual mild drawl, “to have forgot all about a Christmas present I got to give. I’m going to ride over tomorrow night and shoot Madison Lane in his own house. He got my girl—Rosita would have had me if he hadn’t cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it up to now?”</p>
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<p>“Ah, shucks, Kid,” said Mexican, “don’t talk foolishness. You know you can’t get within a mile of Mad Lane’s house tomorrow night. I see old man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don’t you suppose Mad Lane’ll kind of keep his eye open for a certain <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks.”</p>
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<p>“I’m going,” repeated the Frio Kid, without heat, “to go to Madison Lane’s Christmas doings, and kill him. I ought to have done it a long time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and—oh! h––––l, Mex, he got her; and I’ll get him—yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then’s when I’ll get him.”</p>
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<p>“I’m going,” repeated the Frio Kid, without heat, “to go to Madison Lane’s Christmas doings, and kill him. I ought to have done it a long time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and—oh! h⸺l, Mex, he got her; and I’ll get him—yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then’s when I’ll get him.”</p>
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<p>“There’s other ways of committing suicide,” advised Mexican. “Why don’t you go and surrender to the sheriff?”</p>
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<p>“I’ll get him,” said the Kid.</p>
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<p>Christmas Eve fell as balmy as April. Perhaps there was a hint of faraway frostiness in the air, but it tingles like seltzer, perfumed faintly with late prairie blossoms and the mesquite grass.</p>
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@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-fatal-error" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Fatal Error</h2>
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<p>What are you looking so glum about?” asked a Houston man as he dropped into a friend’s office on Christmas Day.</p>
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<p>“What are you looking so glum about?” asked a Houston man as he dropped into a friend’s office on Christmas Day.</p>
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<p>“Same old fool break of putting a letter in the wrong envelope, and I’m afraid to go home. My wife sent me down a note by the hired man an hour ago, telling me to send her ten dollars, and asking me to meet her here at the office at three o’clock and go shopping with her. At the same time I got a bill for ten dollars from a merchant I owe, asking me to remit. I scribbled off a note to the merchant saying: ‘Can’t possibly do it. I’ve got to meet another little thing today that won’t be put off.’ I made the usual mistake and sent the merchant the ten dollars and my wife the note.”</p>
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<p>“Can’t you go home and explain the mistake to your wife?”</p>
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<p>“You don’t know her. I’ve done all I can. I’ve taken out an accident policy for $10,000 good for two hours, and I expect her here in fifteen minutes. Tell all the boys goodbye for me, and if you meet a lady on the stairs as you go down keep close to the wall.”</p>
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@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
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<p>“Sorry we couldn’t make it sooner, Jimmy, me boy,” said Mike. “But we had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the governor nearly balked. Feeling all right?”</p>
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<p>“Fine,” said Jimmy. “Got my key?”</p>
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<p>He got his key and went upstairs, unlocking the door of a room at the rear. Everything was just as he had left it. There on the floor was still Ben Price’s collar-button that had been torn from that eminent detective’s shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy to arrest him.</p>
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<p>Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suitcase. He opened this and gazed fondly at the finest set of burglar’s tools in the East. It was a complete set, made of specially tempered steel, the latest designs in drills, punches, braces and bits, jimmies, clamps, and augers, with two or three novelties, invented by Jimmy himself, in which he took pride. Over nine hundred dollars they had cost him to have made at––––, a place where they make such things for the profession.</p>
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<p>Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suitcase. He opened this and gazed fondly at the finest set of burglar’s tools in the East. It was a complete set, made of specially tempered steel, the latest designs in drills, punches, braces and bits, jimmies, clamps, and augers, with two or three novelties, invented by Jimmy himself, in which he took pride. Over nine hundred dollars they had cost him to have made at ⸻, a place where they make such things for the profession.</p>
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<p>In half an hour Jimmy went down stairs and through the café. He was now dressed in tasteful and well-fitting clothes, and carried his dusted and cleaned suitcase in his hand.</p>
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<p>“Got anything on?” asked Mike Dolan, genially.</p>
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<p>“Me?” said Jimmy, in a puzzled tone. “I don’t understand. I’m representing the New York Amalgamated Short Snap Biscuit Cracker and Frazzled Wheat Company.”</p>
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@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
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<p>He smelled of gin and his whiskers resembled the cylinder of a Swiss music box. He walked into a toy shop on Main Street yesterday and leaned sorrowfully against the counter.</p>
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<p>“Anything today?” asked the proprietor coldly.</p>
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<p>He wiped an eye with a dingy red handkerchief and said:</p>
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<p>“Nothing at all, thank you. I just came inside to shed a tear. I do not like to obtrude my grief upon the passersby. I have a little daughter, sir; five years of age, with curly golden hair. Her name is Lilian. She says to me this morning: ‘Papa, will Santa Claus bring me a red wagon for Christmas? It completely unmanned me, sir, as, alas, I am out of work and penniless. Just think, one little red wagon would bring her happiness, and there are children who have hundreds of red wagons.”</p>
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<p>“Nothing at all, thank you. I just came inside to shed a tear. I do not like to obtrude my grief upon the passersby. I have a little daughter, sir; five years of age, with curly golden hair. Her name is Lilian. She says to me this morning: ‘Papa, will Santa Claus bring me a red wagon for Christmas?’ It completely unmanned me, sir, as, alas, I am out of work and penniless. Just think, one little red wagon would bring her happiness, and there are children who have hundreds of red wagons.”</p>
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<p>“Before you go out,” said the proprietor, “which you are going to do in about fifteen seconds, I am willing to inform you that I have a branch store on Trains Street, and was around there yesterday. You came in and made the same talk about your little girl, whom you called Daisy, and I gave you a wagon. It seems you don’t remember your little girl’s name very well.”</p>
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<p>The man drew himself up with dignity, and started for the door. When nearly there, he turned and said:</p>
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<p>“Her name is Lilian Daisy, sir, and the wagon you gave me had a rickety wheel and some of the paint was scratched off the handle. I have a friend who tends bar on Willow Street, who is keeping it for me till Christmas, but I will feel a flush of shame on your behalf, sir, when Lilian Daisy sees that old, slab-sided, squeaking, secondhand, leftover-from-last-year’s-stock wagon. But, sir, when Lilian Daisy kneels at her little bed at night I shall get her to pray for you, and ask Heaven to have mercy on you. Have you one of your business cards handy, so Lilian Daisy can get your name right in her petitions?”</p>
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@ -29,7 +29,6 @@
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<span>When the stars are lit like tapers</span>
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<br/>
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<span class="i1">Then the night winds chilly blow.</span>
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<br/>
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</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>“Take that stuff up to the editorial department,” said the business manager shortly.</p>
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@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="aristocracy-versus-hash" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">Aristocracy Versus Hash</h2>
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<p>The snake reporter of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">The Rolling Stone</i> was wandering up the avenue last night on his way home from the Y.M.C.A. rooms when he was approached by a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled hair. He accosted the reporter in a hollow, weak voice.</p>
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<p>The snake reporter of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">The Rolling Stone</i> was wandering up the avenue last night on his way home from the <abbr="initialism">YMCA</abbr> rooms when he was approached by a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled hair. He accosted the reporter in a hollow, weak voice.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Can you tell me, Sir, where I can find in this town a family of scrubs?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I don’t understand exactly.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Let me tell you how it is,’ said the stranger, inserting his forefinger in the reporter’s buttonhole and badly damaging his chrysanthemum. ‘I am a representative from Soapstone County, and I and my family are houseless, homeless, and shelterless. We have not tasted food for over a week. I brought my family with me, as I have indigestion and could not get around much with the boys. Some days ago I started out to find a boarding house, as I cannot afford to put up at a hotel. I found a nice aristocratic-looking place, that suited me, and went in and asked for the proprietress. A very stately lady with a Roman nose came in the room. She had one hand laid across her stom—across her waist, and the other held a lace handkerchief. I told her I wanted board for myself and family, and she condescended to take us. I asked for her terms, and she said $300 per week.</p>
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<p>“ ‘I found nine widows of Supreme Judges, twelve relicts of Governors and Generals, and twenty-two ruins left by various happy Colonels, Professors, and Majors, who valued their aristocratic worth from $90 to $900 per week, with weak-kneed hash and dried apples on the side. I admire people of fine descent, but my stomach yearns for pork and beans instead of culture. Am I not right?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Your words,’ said the reporter, ‘convince me that you have uttered what you have said.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Thanks. You see how it is. I am not wealthy; I have only my per diem and my perquisites, and I cannot afford to pay for high lineage and moldy ancestors. A little corned beef goes further with me than a coronet, and when I am cold a coat of arms does not warm me.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I greatly fear, ‘said the reporter, with a playful hiccough, ‘that you have run against a high-toned town. Most all the first-class boarding houses here are run by ladies of the old Southern families, the very first in the land.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I greatly fear,’ said the reporter, with a playful hiccough, ‘that you have run against a high-toned town. Most all the first-class boarding houses here are run by ladies of the old Southern families, the very first in the land.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I am now desperate,’ said the Representative, as he chewed a tack awhile, thinking it was a clove. ‘I want to find a boarding house where the proprietress was an orphan found in a livery stable, whose father was a dago from East Austin, and whose grandfather was never placed on the map. I want a scrubby, ornery, low-down, snuff-dipping, back-woodsy, piebald gang, who never heard of finger bowls or Ward McAllister, but who can get up a mess of hot cornbread and Irish stew at regular market quotations.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Is there such a place in Austin?’</p>
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<p>“The snake reporter sadly shook his head. ‘I do not know,’ he said, ‘but I will shake you for the beer.’</p>
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<p>This is a large room, built as a vault, fireproof, and entered by but a single door.</p>
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<p>There is “No Admission” on the portal; and the precious files are handed out by a clerk in charge only on presentation of an order signed by the Commissioner or chief clerk.</p>
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<p>In years past too much laxity prevailed in its management, and the files were handled by all comers, simply on their request, and returned at their will, or not at all.</p>
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<p>In these days most of the mischief was done. In the file room, there are about–––– files, each in a paper wrapper, and comprising the title papers of a particular tract of land.</p>
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<p>In these days most of the mischief was done. In the file room, there are about ⸻ files, each in a paper wrapper, and comprising the title papers of a particular tract of land.</p>
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<p>You ask the clerk in charge for the papers relating to any survey in Texas. They are arranged simply in districts and numbers.</p>
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<p>He disappears from the door, you hear the sliding of a tin box, the lid snaps, and the file is in your hand.</p>
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<p>Go up there some day and call for Bexar Scrip <abbr>No.</abbr> 2692.</p>
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<p>The law was on his side.</p>
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<p>Every sentiment of justice, of right, and humanity was against him.</p>
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<p>The certificate by virtue of which the original survey had been made was missing.</p>
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<p>It was not be found in the file, and no memorandum or date on the wrapper to show that it had ever been filed.</p>
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<p>It was not to be found in the file, and no memorandum or date on the wrapper to show that it had ever been filed.</p>
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<p>Under the law the land was vacant, unappropriated public domain, and open to location.</p>
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<p>The land was occupied by a widow and her only son, and she supposed her title good.</p>
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<p>The railroad had surveyed a new line through the property, and it had doubled in value.</p>
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<p>The boy came up and leaned on the desk beside him.</p>
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<p>“A right interesting office, sir!” he said. “I have never been in here before. All those papers, now, they are about lands, are they not? The titles and deeds, and such things?”</p>
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<p>“Yes,” said Sharp. “They are supposed to contain all the title papers.”</p>
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<p>“This one, now,” said the boy, taking up Bexar Scrip <abbr>No.</abbr> 2692, “what land does this represent the title of? Ah, I see ‘Six hundred and forty acres in B–––– country? Absalom Harris, original grantee.’ Please tell me, I am so ignorant of these things, how can you tell a good survey from a bad one. I am told that there are a great many illegal and fraudulent surveys in this office. I suppose this one is all right?”</p>
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<p>“This one, now,” said the boy, taking up Bexar Scrip <abbr>No.</abbr> 2692, “what land does this represent the title of? Ah, I see ‘Six hundred and forty acres in B⸺ country? Absalom Harris, original grantee.’ Please tell me, I am so ignorant of these things, how can you tell a good survey from a bad one. I am told that there are a great many illegal and fraudulent surveys in this office. I suppose this one is all right?”</p>
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<p>“No,” said Sharp. “The certificate is missing. It is invalid.”</p>
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<p>“That paper I just saw you place in that file, I suppose is something else—field notes, or a transfer probably?”</p>
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<p>“Yes,” said Sharp, hurriedly, “corrected field notes. Excuse me, I am a little pressed for time.”</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Boyd read it twice.</p>
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<p>“It’s either a cipher or a sunstroke,” said he.</p>
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<p>“Ever hear of anything like a code in the office—a secret code?” asked the m. e., who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors come and go.</p>
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<p>“Ever hear of anything like a code in the office—a secret code?” asked the <abbr>m. e.</abbr>, who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors come and go.</p>
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<p>“None except the vernacular that the lady specials write in,” said Boyd. “Couldn’t be an acrostic, could it?”</p>
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<p>“I thought of that,” said the m. e., “but the beginning letters contain only four vowels. It must be a code of some sort.”</p>
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<p>“I thought of that,” said the <abbr>m. e.</abbr>, “but the beginning letters contain only four vowels. It must be a code of some sort.”</p>
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<p>“Try em in groups,” suggested Boyd. “Let’s see—‘Rash witching goes’—not with me it doesn’t. ‘Muffled rumour mine’—must have an underground wire. ‘Dark silent unfortunate richmond’—no reason why he should knock that town so hard. ‘Existing great hotly’—no it doesn’t pan out. I’ll call Scott.”</p>
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<p>The city editor came in a hurry, and tried his luck. A city editor must know something about everything; so Scott knew a little about cipher-writing.</p>
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<p>“It may be what is called an inverted alphabet cipher,” said he. “I’ll try that. ‘R’ seems to be the oftenest used initial letter, with the exception of ‘m.’ Assuming ‘r’ to mean ‘e’, the most frequently used vowel, we transpose the letters—so.”</p>
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<p>“Great!” cried Boyd. “It’s a charade. My first is a Russian general. Go on, Scott.”</p>
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<p>“No, that won’t work,” said the city editor. “It’s undoubtedly a code. It’s impossible to read it without the key. Has the office ever used a cipher code?”</p>
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<p>“Just what I was asking,” said the m.e. “Hustle everybody up that ought to know. We must get at it some way. Calloway has evidently got hold of something big, and the censor has put the screws on, or he wouldn’t have cabled in a lot of chop suey like this.”</p>
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<p>Throughout the office of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> a dragnet was sent, hauling in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length of servitude. They got together in a group in the city room, with the m. e. in the centre. No one had heard of a code. All began to explain to the head investigator that newspapers never use a code, anyhow—that is, a cipher code. Of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort of code—an abbreviation, rather—but—</p>
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<p>The m. e. knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long he had worked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> envelope for longer than six years. Calloway had been on the paper twelve years.</p>
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<p>“Try old Heffelbauer,” said the m. e. “He was here when Park Row was a potato patch.”</p>
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<p>Throughout the office of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> a dragnet was sent, hauling in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length of servitude. They got together in a group in the city room, with the <abbr>m. e.</abbr> in the centre. No one had heard of a code. All began to explain to the head investigator that newspapers never use a code, anyhow—that is, a cipher code. Of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort of code—an abbreviation, rather—but—</p>
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<p>The <abbr>m. e.</abbr> knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long he had worked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> envelope for longer than six years. Calloway had been on the paper twelve years.</p>
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<p>“Try old Heffelbauer,” said the <abbr>m. e.</abbr> “He was here when Park Row was a potato patch.”</p>
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<p>Heffelbauer was an institution. He was half janitor, half handyman about the office, and half watchman—thus becoming the peer of thirteen and one-half tailors. Sent for, he came, radiating his nationality.</p>
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<p>“Heffelbauer,” said the m. e., “did you ever hear of a code belonging to the office a long time ago—a private code? You know what a code is, don’t you?”</p>
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<p>“Heffelbauer,” said the <abbr>m. e.</abbr>, “did you ever hear of a code belonging to the office a long time ago—a private code? You know what a code is, don’t you?”</p>
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<p>“Yah,” said Heffelbauer. “Sure I know vat a code is. Yah, apout dwelf or fifteen year ago der office had a code. Der reborters in der city-room haf it here.”</p>
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<p>“Ah!” said the m. e. “We’re getting on the trail now. Where was it kept, Heffelbauer? What do you know about it?”</p>
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<p>“Ah!” said the <abbr>m. e.</abbr> “We’re getting on the trail now. Where was it kept, Heffelbauer? What do you know about it?”</p>
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<p>“Somedimes,” said the retainer, “dey keep it in der little room behind der library room.”</p>
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<p>“Can you find it?” asked the m. e. eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”</p>
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<p>“Can you find it?” asked the <abbr>m. e.</abbr> eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”</p>
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<p>“Mein Gott!” said Heffelbauer. “How long you dink a code live? Der reborters call him a maskeet. But von day he butt mit his head der editor, und—”</p>
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<p>“Oh, he’s talking about a goat,” said Boyd. “Get out, Heffelbauer.”</p>
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<p>Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resource of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> huddled around Calloway’s puzzle, considering its mysterious words in vain.</p>
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<p>Then Vesey came in.</p>
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<p>Vesey was the youngest reporter. He had a thirty-two-inch chest and wore a number fourteen collar; but his bright Scotch plaid suit gave him presence and conferred no obscurity upon his whereabouts. He wore his hat in such a position that people followed him about to see him take it off, convinced that it must be hung upon a peg driven into the back of his head. He was never without an immense, knotted, hardwood cane with a German-silver tip on its crooked handle. Vesey was the best photograph hustler in the office. Scott said it was because no living human being could resist the personal triumph it was to hand his picture over to Vesey. Vesey always wrote his own news stories, except the big ones, which were sent to the rewrite men. Add to this fact that among all the inhabitants, temples, and groves of the earth nothing existed that could abash Vesey, and his dim sketch is concluded.</p>
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<p>Vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffelbauer’s “code” would have done, and asked what was up. Someone explained, with the touch of half-familiar condescension that they always used toward him. Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the m. e.’s hand. Under the protection of some special Providence, he was always doing appalling things like that, and coming, off unscathed.</p>
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<p>Vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffelbauer’s “code” would have done, and asked what was up. Someone explained, with the touch of half-familiar condescension that they always used toward him. Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the <abbr>m. e.</abbr>’s hand. Under the protection of some special Providence, he was always doing appalling things like that, and coming, off unscathed.</p>
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<p>“It’s a code,” said Vesey. “Anybody got the key?”</p>
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<p>“The office has no code,” said Boyd, reaching for the message. Vesey held to it.</p>
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<p>“Then old Calloway expects us to read it, anyhow,” said he. “He’s up a tree, or something, and he’s made this up so as to get it by the censor. It’s up to us. Gee! I wish they had sent me, too. Say—we can’t afford to fall down on our end of it. ‘Foregone, preconcerted rash, witching’—h’m.”</p>
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<p>Vesey sat down on a table corner and began to whistle softly, frowning at the cablegram.</p>
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<p>“Let’s have it, please,” said the m. e. “We’ve got to get to work on it.”</p>
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<p>“Let’s have it, please,” said the <abbr>m. e.</abbr> “We’ve got to get to work on it.”</p>
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<p>“I believe I’ve got a line on it,” said Vesey. “Give me ten minutes.”</p>
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<p>He walked to his desk, threw his hat into a wastebasket, spread out flat on his chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going. The wit and wisdom of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> remained in a loose group, and smiled at one another, nodding their heads toward Vesey. Then they began to exchange their theories about the cipher.</p>
|
||||
<p>It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the m. e. a pad with the code-key written on it.</p>
|
||||
<p>It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the <abbr>m. e.</abbr> a pad with the code-key written on it.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I felt the swing of it as soon as I saw it,” said Vesey. “Hurrah for old Calloway! He’s done the Japs and every paper in town that prints literature instead of news. Take a look at that.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Thus had Vesey set forth the reading of the code:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
@ -118,7 +118,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Concluded arrangement to act at hour of midnight without saying. Report hath it that a large body of cavalry and an overwhelming force of infantry will be thrown into the field. Conditions white. Way contested by only a small force. Question the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Times</i> description. Its correspondent is unaware of the facts.</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>“Great stuff!” cried Boyd excitedly. “Kuroki crosses the Yalu tonight and attacks. Oh, we won’t do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison’s essays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vesey,” said the m. e., with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favour manner, “you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest ‘beat’ of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vesey,” said the <abbr>m. e.</abbr>, with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favour manner, “you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest ‘beat’ of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ames was the kingpin, the snowy-petalled Marguerite, the star-bright looloo of the rewrite men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-apple colic, cyclones in the summer zephyr, lost children in every top-spinning urchin, an uprising of the downtrodden masses in every hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile. When not rewriting, Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-year-old son.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ames and the “war editor” shut themselves in a room. There was a map in there stuck full of little pins that represented armies and divisions. Their fingers had been itching for days to move those pins along the crooked line of the Yalu. They did so now; and in words of fire Ames translated Calloway’s brief message into a front page masterpiece that set the world talking. He told of the secret councils of the Japanese officers; gave Kuroki’s flaming speeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry to a man and a horse; described the quick and silent building, of the bridge at Suikauchen, across which the Mikado’s legions were hurled upon the surprised Zassulitch, whose troops were widely scattered along the river. And the battle!—well, you know what Ames can do with a battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in the same story, with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for the false and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese First Army printed in its issue of <em>the same date</em>.</p>
|
||||
<p>Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator at Wi-ju. Calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word “great” in his code should have been “gage,” and its complemental words “of battle.” But it went to Ames “conditions white,” and of course he took that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army struggling through the snowstorm, blinded by the whirling flakes, was thrillingly vivid. The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first day of May, “conditions white” excited some amusement. But it in made no difference to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i>, anyway.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -86,7 +86,7 @@
|
||||
<p>They will tell you in Coralio, as they delight in telling the stranger, of the conclusion of that tragic flight. They will tell you how the upholders of the law came apace when the alarm was sounded—the <i xml:lang="es">Comandante</i> in red slippers and a jacket like a head waiter’s and girded sword, the soldiers with their interminable guns, followed by outnumbering officers struggling into their gold lace and epaulettes; the barefooted policemen (the only capables in the lot), and ruffled citizens of every hue and description.</p>
|
||||
<p>They say that the countenance of the dead man was marred sadly by the effects of the shot; but he was identified as the fallen president by both Goodwin and the barber Estebán. On the next morning messages began to come over the mended telegraph wire; and the story of the flight from the capital was given out to the public. In San Mateo the revolutionary party had seized the sceptre of government, without opposition, and the <i xml:lang="es">vivas</i> of the mercurial populace quickly effaced the interest belonging to the unfortunate Miraflores.</p>
|
||||
<p>They will relate to you how the new government sifted the towns and raked the roads to find the valise containing Anchuria’s surplus capital, which the president was known to have carried with him, but all in vain. In Coralio Señor Goodwin himself led the searching party which combed that town as carefully as a woman combs her hair; but the money was not found.</p>
|
||||
<p>So they buried the dead man, without honours, back of the town near the little bridge that spans the mangrove swamp; and for a <em>real</em> a boy will show you his grave. They say that the old woman in whose hut the barber shaved the president placed the wooden slab at his head, and burned the inscription upon it with a hot iron.</p>
|
||||
<p>So they buried the dead man, without honours, back of the town near the little bridge that spans the mangrove swamp; and for a <i xml:lang="es">real</i> a boy will show you his grave. They say that the old woman in whose hut the barber shaved the president placed the wooden slab at his head, and burned the inscription upon it with a hot iron.</p>
|
||||
<p>You will hear also that Señor Goodwin, like a tower of strength, shielded Doña Isabel Guilbert through those subsequent distressful days; and that his scruples as to her past career (if he had any) vanished; and her adventuresome waywardness (if she had any) left her, and they were wedded and were happy.</p>
|
||||
<p>The American built a home on a little foothill near the town. It is a conglomerate structure of native woods that, exported, would be worth a fortune, and of brick, palm, glass, bamboo and adobe. There is a paradise of nature about it; and something of the same sort within. The natives speak of its interior with hands uplifted in admiration. There are floors polished like mirrors and covered with handwoven Indian rugs of silk fibre, tall ornaments and pictures, musical instruments and papered walls—“figure-it-to-yourself!” they exclaim.</p>
|
||||
<p>But they cannot tell you in Coralio (as you shall learn) what became of the money that Frank Goodwin dropped into the orange-tree. But that shall come later; for the palms are fluttering in the breeze, bidding us to sport and gaiety.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -12,18 +12,21 @@
|
||||
<img alt="The Standard Ebooks logo" src="../images/logo.svg" epub:type="z3998:publisher-logo"/>
|
||||
</header>
|
||||
<p><i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Short Fiction</i><br/>
|
||||
was published in YEAR by<br/>
|
||||
was compiled from short stories written between 1883 and 1910 by<br/>
|
||||
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry">O. Henry</a>.</p>
|
||||
<p>This ebook was produced for the<br/>
|
||||
<a href="https://standardebooks.org">Standard Ebooks project</a><br/>
|
||||
by<br/>
|
||||
<a href="PRODUCER_URL">PRODUCER</a>,<br/>
|
||||
and is based on a transcription produced in PG_YEAR by<br/>
|
||||
<b class="name">TRANSCRIBER_1</b>, <b class="name">TRANSCRIBER_2</b>, and <a href="https://www.pgdp.net">The Online Distributed Proofreading Team</a><br/>
|
||||
<a href="https://www.brokenandsaved.com">Vince Rice</a>,<br/>
|
||||
and is based on transcriptions produced by<br/>
|
||||
<b class="name">Joseph E. Lowenstein</b>, <b class="name">Charles Franks</b>, <b class="name">Greg Weeks</b><br/>
|
||||
<b class="name">John Bickers</b>, <b class="name">Dagny</b>, <b class="name">Earl C. Beach</b><br/>
|
||||
<b class="name">Glynn Burleson</b>, <b class="name">Jim Tinsley</b>, <b class="name">Tim O’Connell</b><br/>
|
||||
and <a href="https://www.pgdp.net">The Online Distributed Proofreading Team</a><br/>
|
||||
for<br/>
|
||||
<a href="PG_URL">Project Gutenberg</a><br/>
|
||||
<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2777">Project Gutenberg</a><br/>
|
||||
and on digital scans available at the<br/>
|
||||
<a href="IA_URL">Internet Archive</a>.</p>
|
||||
<a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924022067254">Internet Archive</a>.</p>
|
||||
<p>The cover page is adapted from<br/>
|
||||
<i epub:type="se:name.visual-art.painting">PAINTING</i>,<br/>
|
||||
a painting completed in YEAR by<br/>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
|
||||
<p>It appears that ladies who are past thirty-five years of age are peculiarly sensitive to the effect of a bright light striking upon their heads from above. The skull of a woman is quite different from that of a man, especially on the top, and at the age of thirty-five, the texture of the skull at this place becomes very light. Rays of light—especially electric light—have a peculiarly penetrating and disturbing effect upon the cerebral nerves.</p>
|
||||
<p>Strange to say, this infirmity is never felt by a young woman, but as soon as she passes the heyday of youth, it is at once perceptible. The fact is generally known to women, and discussed among themselves, but they have jealously guarded the secret, even from their nearest male relatives and friends. The lady physician who recently exposed the matter in a scientific journal is the first of her sex to make it known to the public.</p>
|
||||
<p>If anyone will take the trouble to make a test of the statement, its truth will be unquestionably proven. Engage a woman of middle age in conversation beneath a well-lighted chandelier, and in a few moments she will grow uneasy, and very soon the pain inflicted by the light will cause her to move away from under its source. On young and healthy girls the rays of light have no perceptible effect. So, when we see a lady at a theater wearing a tall and cumbersome hat, we should reflect that she is more than thirty-five years old, and is simply protecting herself from an affliction that advancing years have brought upon her. Whenever we observe one wearing small and unobtrusive headgear we know that she is still young and charming, and can yet sit beneath the rays of penetrating light without inconvenience.</p>
|
||||
<p>No man who has had occasion to rail against woman s supposed indifference to the public comfort in this respect, will hesitate to express sincere regret that he has so misunderstood them. It is characteristic of Americans to respect the infirmities of age, especially among the fair sex, and when the facts here narrated have been generally known, pity and toleration will take the place of censure. Henceforth a tall hat, with nodding feathers and clustering flowers and trimming, will not be regarded with aversion when we see it between us and the stage, but with respect, since we are assured that its wearer is no longer young, but is already on the down hill of life, and is forced to take the precaution that advancing years render necessary to infirm women.</p>
|
||||
<p>No man who has had occasion to rail against woman’s supposed indifference to the public comfort in this respect, will hesitate to express sincere regret that he has so misunderstood them. It is characteristic of Americans to respect the infirmities of age, especially among the fair sex, and when the facts here narrated have been generally known, pity and toleration will take the place of censure. Henceforth a tall hat, with nodding feathers and clustering flowers and trimming, will not be regarded with aversion when we see it between us and the stage, but with respect, since we are assured that its wearer is no longer young, but is already on the down hill of life, and is forced to take the precaution that advancing years render necessary to infirm women.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -49,7 +49,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Pasa looked at him as a mother looks at a beloved but capricious babe.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Think better of it,” she said, in a low voice; “since for the next meal there will be nothing. The last centavo is spent.” She pressed closer against the grating.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sell the goods in the shop—take anything for them.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Have I not tried? Did I not offer them for one-tenth their cost? Not even one peso would anyone give. There is not one <em>real</em> in this town to assist Dickee Malonee.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Have I not tried? Did I not offer them for one-tenth their cost? Not even one peso would anyone give. There is not one <i xml:lang="es">real</i> in this town to assist Dickee Malonee.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Dick clenched his teeth grimly. “That’s the comandante,” he growled. “He’s responsible for that sentiment. Wait, oh, wait till the cards are all out.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Pasa lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “And, listen, heart of my heart,” she said, “I have endeavoured to be brave, but I cannot live without thee. Three days now—”</p>
|
||||
<p>Dicky caught a faint gleam of steel from the folds of her mantilla. For once she looked in his face and saw it without a smile, stern, menacing and purposeful. Then he suddenly raised his hand and his smile came back like a gleam of sunshine. The hoarse signal of an incoming steamer’s siren sounded in the harbour. Dicky called to the sentry who was pacing before the door: “What steamer comes?”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -14,13 +14,9 @@
|
||||
<p>“Bank doesn’t open ‘til nine,” he remarked curtly, but without feeling. He had had to make that statement so often to early birds since San Rosario adopted city banking hours.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am well aware of that,” said the other man, in cool, brittle tones. “Will you kindly receive my card?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The cashier drew the small, spotless parallelogram inside the bars of his wicket, and read:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<b>J. F. C. Nettlewick</b>
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<b>National Bank Examiner</b>
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<blockquote class="card">
|
||||
<p><abbr class="name">J. F. C.</abbr> Nettlewick</p>
|
||||
<p>National Bank Examiner</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>“Oh—er—will you walk around inside, <abbr>Mr.</abbr>—er—Nettlewick. Your first visit—didn’t know your business, of course. Walk right around, please.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The examiner was quickly inside the sacred precincts of the bank, where he was ponderously introduced to each employee in turn by <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Edlinger, the cashier—a middle-aged gentleman of deliberation, discretion, and method.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -10,7 +10,8 @@
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Getting Acquainted</h2>
|
||||
<p>His coat was rusty and his hat out of style, but his nose glasses, secured by a black cord, lent him a distinguished air, and his manner was jaunty and assured. He stepped into a new Houston grocery yesterday, and greeted the proprietor cordially.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll have to introduce myself,” he said. “My name is ⸻, and I live next door to the house you have just moved in. Saw you at church Sunday. Our minister also observed you, and after church he says, ‘Brother ⸻, you must really find out who that intelligent-looking stranger is who listened so attentively today.’ How did you like the sermon?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Very well,” said the grocer as he picked some funny-looking currants with wings out of a jar. “Yes, he is a very eloquent and pious man. You have not been in business long in Houston, have you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Very well,” said the grocer as he picked some funny-looking currants with wings out of a jar.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes, he is a very eloquent and pious man. You have not been in business long in Houston, have you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Three weeks,” said the grocer, as he removed the cheese knife from the box to the shelf behind him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Our people,” said the rusty-looking man, “are whole-souled and hospitable. There is no welcome too warm for them to extend to a newcomer, and the members of our church in particular are especially friendly toward anyone who drops in to worship with us. You have a nice stock of goods.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“So, so,” said the grocer, turning his back and gazing up at a supply of canned California fruits.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -54,9 +54,7 @@
|
||||
<p>The young lady seated herself and the night editor knitted his brows and read over the poem two or three times to get the main points. He then wrote a few lines upon a sheet of paper and said:</p>
|
||||
<p>Now, miss, here is the form in which your item will appear when we print it:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<b>Fatal Accident</b>
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<header>Fatal Accident</header>
|
||||
<p>Last evening <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Alter Ego of this city was killed by the explosion of a kerosene lamp while at work in his room.</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>“Now, you see, miss, the item includes the main facts in the case, and—”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
|
||||
<cite>—Mulvaney.</cite>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<section id="helping-the-other-fellow-1" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<p>This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Andador</i> which was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leaving the Land of Always Afternoon. William was remaining, and he favored me with a condensed oral autobiography as we sat on the sands in the shade cast by the Bodega Nacional.</p>
|
||||
<p>This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Andador</i> which was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leaving the Land of Always Afternoon. William was remaining, and he favored me with a condensed oral autobiography as we sat on the sands in the shade cast by the Bodega Nacional.</p>
|
||||
<p>As usual, I became aware that the Man from Bombay had already written the story; but as he had compressed it to an eight-word sentence, I have become an expansionist, and have quoted his phrase above, with apologies to him and best regards to <em>Terence</em>.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="helping-the-other-fellow-2" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
@ -79,7 +79,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“I think she went back with her mother,” said Trotter, “to the village in the mountains that they come from. Tell me, what would this job you speak of pay?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why,” said I, hesitating over commerce, “I should say fifty or a hundred dollars a month—maybe two hundred.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ain’t it funny,” said Trotter, digging his toes in the sand, “what a chump a man is when it comes to paddling his own canoe? I don’t know. Of course, I’m not making a living here. I’m on the bum. But—well, I wish you could have seen that Timotea. Every man has his own weak spot.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The gig from the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Andador</i> was coming ashore to take out the captain, purser, and myself, the lone passenger.</p>
|
||||
<p>The gig from the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Andador</i> was coming ashore to take out the captain, purser, and myself, the lone passenger.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll guarantee,” said I confidently, “that my brother will pay you seventy-five dollars a month.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right, then,” said William Trotter. “I’ll—”</p>
|
||||
<p>But a soft voice called across the blazing sands. A girl, faintly lemon-tinted, stood in the Calle Real and called. She was bare-armed—but what of that?</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Her Mysterious Charm</h2>
|
||||
<p>In the conservatory of a palatial Houston home Roland Pendergast stood with folded arms and an inscrutable smile upon his face, gazing down upon the upturned features of Gabrielle Smithers.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why is it,” he said, “that I am attracted by you? You are not beautiful, you lack aplomb, grace, and savoir faire. You are cold, unsympathetic and bowlegged.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I have striven to analyze the power you have over me, but in vain. Some esoteric chain of mental telepathy binds us two together, but what is its nature? I dislike being in love with one who has neither chic,naivete nor front teeth, but fate has willed it so. You personally repel me, but I can not tear you from my heart. You are in my thoughts by day and nightmares by night.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I have striven to analyze the power you have over me, but in vain. Some esoteric chain of mental telepathy binds us two together, but what is its nature? I dislike being in love with one who has neither chic, naivete nor front teeth, but fate has willed it so. You personally repel me, but I can not tear you from my heart. You are in my thoughts by day and nightmares by night.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Your form reminds me of a hatrack, but when I press you to my heart I feel strange thrills of joy. I can no more tell you why I love you than I can tell why a barber can rub a man’s head fifteen minutes without touching the spot that itches. Speak, Gabrielle, and tell me what is this spell you have woven around me!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I will tell you,” said Gabrielle with a soft smile. “I have fascinated many men in the same way. When I help you on with your overcoat I never reach under and try to pull your other coat down from the top of your collar.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -13,7 +13,8 @@
|
||||
<p>“Plenty of it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Any of this real black shiny dye that looks blue in the sunshine?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right then, now I’ll proceed. Do you know anything about this here Monroe docterin’ ?” “Well, yes, something.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right then, now I’ll proceed. Do you know anything about this here Monroe docterin’?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, yes, something.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“And widders; do you feel able to prognosticate a few lines about widders?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I can’t tell what you are driving at,” said the clerk. “What is it you want to know?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m gettin’ to the pint. Now there’s hair dye, Monroe docterin’, and widders. Got them all down in your mind?”</p>
|
||||
@ -22,7 +23,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Well,” said the clerk, “our hair dye is—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wait a minute, young feller. Now on the other hand I hears rumors of wars this mornin’, and I hears alarmin’ talk about this here Monroe docterin’. Ef I uses hair dye and trains down to thirty-eight or forty years of age, I ketches the widder, but I turns into a peart and chipper youth what is liable to be made to fight in this here great war. Ef I gives up the hair dye, the recrutin’ sargent salutes these white hairs and passes by, but I am takin’ big chances on the widder. She has been to meetin’ twicet with a man what has been divorced, and ties his own cree-vat, and this here Monroe docterin’ is all what keeps me from pulling out seventy-five cents and makin’ a strong play with said dye. What would you do, ef you was me, young feller?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t think there will be any war soon,” said the clerk.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Jerusalem; I’m glad to hear it! Gimme the biggest bottle of blue-black hair dye fur seventyfive cents that you got. I’m goin’ to purpose to that widder before it gets dry, and risk the chances of Monroe takin’ water again on this war business.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Jerusalem; I’m glad to hear it! Gimme the biggest bottle of blue-black hair dye fur seventy-five cents that you got. I’m goin’ to purpose to that widder before it gets dry, and risk the chances of Monroe takin’ water again on this war business.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -17,7 +17,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up a train would be a hard job. Well, it isn’t; it’s easy. I have contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of express companies, and the most trouble I ever had about a holdup was in being swindled by unscrupulous people while spending the money I got. The danger wasn’t anything to speak of, and we didn’t mind the trouble.</p>
|
||||
<p>One man has come pretty near robbing a train by himself; two have succeeded a few times; three can do it if they are hustlers, but five is about the right number. The time to do it and the place depend upon several things.</p>
|
||||
<p>The first “stickup” I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way I got into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business. Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone wrong. The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man and plays some low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name. Wire fences and “nesters” made five of them; a bad heart made the sixth.</p>
|
||||
<p>Jim S–––– and I were working on the 101 Ranch in Colorado. The nesters had the cowman on the go. They had taken up the land and elected officers who were hard to get along with. Jim and I rode into La Junta one day, going south from a roundup. We were having a little fun without malice toward anybody when a farmer administration cut in and tried to harvest us. Jim shot a deputy marshal, and I kind of corroborated his side of the argument. We skirmished up and down the main street, the boomers having bad luck all the time. After a while we leaned forward and shoved for the ranch down on the Ceriso. We were riding a couple of horses that couldn’t fly, but they could catch birds.</p>
|
||||
<p>Jim S⸺ and I were working on the 101 Ranch in Colorado. The nesters had the cowman on the go. They had taken up the land and elected officers who were hard to get along with. Jim and I rode into La Junta one day, going south from a roundup. We were having a little fun without malice toward anybody when a farmer administration cut in and tried to harvest us. Jim shot a deputy marshal, and I kind of corroborated his side of the argument. We skirmished up and down the main street, the boomers having bad luck all the time. After a while we leaned forward and shoved for the ranch down on the Ceriso. We were riding a couple of horses that couldn’t fly, but they could catch birds.</p>
|
||||
<p>A few days after that, a gang of the La Junta boomers came to the ranch and wanted us to go back with them. Naturally, we declined. We had the house on them, and before we were done refusing, that old ‘dobe was plumb full of lead. When dark came we fagged ’em a batch of bullets and shoved out the back door for the rocks. They sure smoked us as we went. We had to drift, which we did, and rounded up down in Oklahoma.</p>
|
||||
<p>Well, there wasn’t anything we could get there, and, being mighty hard up, we decided to transact a little business with the railroads. Jim and I joined forces with Tom and Ike Moore—two brothers who had plenty of sand they were willing to convert into dust. I can call their names, for both of them are dead. Tom was shot while robbing a bank in Arkansas; Ike was killed during the more dangerous pastime of attending a dance in the Creek Nation.</p>
|
||||
<p>We selected a place on the Santa Fé where there was a bridge across a deep creek surrounded by heavy timber. All passenger trains took water at the tank close to one end of the bridge. It was a quiet place, the nearest house being five miles away. The day before it happened, we rested our horses and “made medicine” as to how we should get about it. Our plans were not at all elaborate, as none of us had ever engaged in a holdup before.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
|
||||
<img alt="The Standard Ebooks logo" src="../images/logo.svg" epub:type="z3998:publisher-logo"/>
|
||||
</header>
|
||||
<p>This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for <a href="https://standardebooks.org">Standard Ebooks</a>, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.</p>
|
||||
<p>This particular ebook is based on a transcription produced for <a href="PG_URL">Project Gutenberg</a> and on digital scans available at the <a href="IA_URL">Internet Archive</a>.</p>
|
||||
<p>This particular ebook is based on a transcription produced for <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2777">Project Gutenberg</a> and on digital scans available at the <a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924022067254">Internet Archive</a>.</p>
|
||||
<p>The writing and artwork within are believed to be in the <abbr>U.S.</abbr> public domain, and Standard Ebooks releases this ebook edition under the terms in the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication</a>. For full license information, see the <a href="uncopyright.xhtml">Uncopyright</a> at the end of this ebook.</p>
|
||||
<p>Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at <a href="https://standardebooks.org">standardebooks.org</a>.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="journalistically-impossible" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Journalistically Impossible</h2>
|
||||
<p>Did you report that suicide as I told you to do last night?” asked the editor of the new reporter, a graduate of a school of journalism.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Did you report that suicide as I told you to do last night?” asked the editor of the new reporter, a graduate of a school of journalism.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I saw the corpse, sir, but found it impossible to write a description of the affair.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“How in the world was I to state that the man’s throat was cut from ear to ear when he had only one ear?”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -50,7 +50,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“What you need,” he decided, “is sea air and companionship.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Would a mermaid—” I began; but he slipped on his professional manner.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I myself,” he said, “will take you to the Hotel Bonair off the coast of Long Island and see that you get in good shape. It is a quiet, comfortable resort where you will soon recuperate.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Hotel Bonair proved to be a nine-hundred-room fashionable hostelry on an island off the main shore. Everybody who did not dress for dinner was shoved into a side dining-room and given only a terrapin and champagne table d’hôte. The bay was a great stamping ground for wealthy yachtsmen. The <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Corsair</i> anchored there the day we arrived. I saw <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Morgan standing on deck eating a cheese sandwich and gazing longingly at the hotel. Still, it was a very inexpensive place. Nobody could afford to pay their prices. When you went away you simply left your baggage, stole a skiff, and beat it for the mainland in the night.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Hotel Bonair proved to be a nine-hundred-room fashionable hostelry on an island off the main shore. Everybody who did not dress for dinner was shoved into a side dining-room and given only a terrapin and champagne table d’hôte. The bay was a great stamping ground for wealthy yachtsmen. The <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Corsair</i> anchored there the day we arrived. I saw <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Morgan standing on deck eating a cheese sandwich and gazing longingly at the hotel. Still, it was a very inexpensive place. Nobody could afford to pay their prices. When you went away you simply left your baggage, stole a skiff, and beat it for the mainland in the night.</p>
|
||||
<p>When I had been there one day I got a pad of monogrammed telegraph blanks at the clerk’s desk and began to wire to all my friends for getaway money. My doctor and I played one game of croquet on the golf links and went to sleep on the lawn.</p>
|
||||
<p>When we got back to town a thought seemed to occur to him suddenly. “By the way,” he asked, “how do you feel?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Relieved of very much,” I replied.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“For one thing,” answered Richard, rankling a little, “it won’t buy one into the exclusive circles of society.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oho! won’t it?” thundered the champion of the root of evil. “You tell me where your exclusive circles would be if the first Astor hadn’t had the money to pay for his steerage passage over?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Richard sighed.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And that’s what I was coming to,” said the old man, less boisterously. “That’s why I asked you to come in. There’s something going wrong with you, boy. I’ve been noticing it for two weeks. Out with it. I guess I could lay my hands on eleven millions within twenty-four hours, besides the real estate. If it’s your liver, there’s the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Rambler</i> down in the bay, coaled, and ready to steam down to the Bahamas in two days.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“And that’s what I was coming to,” said the old man, less boisterously. “That’s why I asked you to come in. There’s something going wrong with you, boy. I’ve been noticing it for two weeks. Out with it. I guess I could lay my hands on eleven millions within twenty-four hours, besides the real estate. If it’s your liver, there’s the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Rambler</i> down in the bay, coaled, and ready to steam down to the Bahamas in two days.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not a bad guess, dad; you haven’t missed it far.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah,” said Anthony, keenly; “what’s her name?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Richard began to walk up and down the library floor. There was enough comradeship and sympathy in this crude old father of his to draw his confidence.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -17,8 +17,8 @@
|
||||
<p>Far up the lake—eighteen miles above the town—the eye of this cheerful camp-follower of booms had spied out a graft. He purchased there a precipitous tract of five hundred acres at forty-five cents per acre; and this he laid out and subdivided as the city of Skyland—the Queen City of the Switzerland of the South. Streets and avenues were surveyed; parks designed; corners of central squares reserved for the “proposed” opera house, board of trade, lyceum, market, public schools, and “Exposition Hall.” The price of lots ranged from five to five hundred dollars. Positively, no lot would be priced higher than five hundred dollars.</p>
|
||||
<p>While the boom was growing in Okochee, J. Pinkney’s circulars, maps, and prospectuses were flying through the mails to every part of the country. Investors sent in their money by post, and the Skyland Real Estate Company (J. Pinkney Bloom) returned to each a deed, duly placed on record, to the best lot, at the price, on hand that day. All this time the catamount screeched upon the reserved lot of the Skyland Board of Trade, the opossum swung by his tail over the site of the exposition hall, and the owl hooted a melancholy recitative to his audience of young squirrels in opera house square. Later, when the money was coming in fast, J. Pinkney caused to be erected in the coming city half a dozen cheap box houses, and persuaded a contingent of indigent natives to occupy them, thereby assuming the role of “population” in subsequent prospectuses, which became, accordingly, more seductive and remunerative.</p>
|
||||
<p>So, when the dream faded and Okochee dropped back to digging bait and nursing its two and a half percent tax, J. Pinkney Bloom (unloving of checks and drafts and the cold interrogatories of bankers) strapped about his fifty-two-inch waist a soft leather belt containing eight thousand dollars in big bills, and said that all was very good.</p>
|
||||
<p>One last trip he was making to Skyland before departing to other salad fields. Skyland was a regular post-office, and the steamboat, <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i>, under contract, delivered the mail bag (generally empty) twice a week. There was a little business there to be settled—the postmaster was to be paid off for his light but lonely services, and the “inhabitants” had to be furnished with another month’s homely rations, as per agreement. And then Skyland would know J. Pinkney Bloom no more. The owners of these precipitous, barren, useless lots might come and view the scene of their invested credulity, or they might leave them to their fit tenants, the wild hog and the browsing deer. The work of the Skyland Real Estate Company was finished.</p>
|
||||
<p>The little steamboat <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i> was about to shove off on her regular up-the-lake trip, when a rickety hired carriage rattled up to the pier, and a tall, elderly gentleman, in black, stepped out, signaling courteously but vivaciously for the boat to wait. Time was of the least importance in the schedule of the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i>; Captain MacFarland gave the order, and the boat received its ultimate two passengers. For, upon the arm of the tall, elderly gentleman, as he crossed the gangway, was a little elderly lady, with a gray curl depending quaintly forward of her left ear.</p>
|
||||
<p>One last trip he was making to Skyland before departing to other salad fields. Skyland was a regular post-office, and the steamboat, <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i>, under contract, delivered the mail bag (generally empty) twice a week. There was a little business there to be settled—the postmaster was to be paid off for his light but lonely services, and the “inhabitants” had to be furnished with another month’s homely rations, as per agreement. And then Skyland would know J. Pinkney Bloom no more. The owners of these precipitous, barren, useless lots might come and view the scene of their invested credulity, or they might leave them to their fit tenants, the wild hog and the browsing deer. The work of the Skyland Real Estate Company was finished.</p>
|
||||
<p>The little steamboat <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i> was about to shove off on her regular up-the-lake trip, when a rickety hired carriage rattled up to the pier, and a tall, elderly gentleman, in black, stepped out, signaling courteously but vivaciously for the boat to wait. Time was of the least importance in the schedule of the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i>; Captain MacFarland gave the order, and the boat received its ultimate two passengers. For, upon the arm of the tall, elderly gentleman, as he crossed the gangway, was a little elderly lady, with a gray curl depending quaintly forward of her left ear.</p>
|
||||
<p>Captain MacFarland was at the wheel; therefore it seemed to J. Pinkney Bloom, who was the only other passenger, that it should be his to play the part of host to the boat’s new guests, who were, doubtless, on a scenery-viewing expedition. He stepped forward, with that translucent, child-candid smile upon his fresh, pink countenance, with that air of unaffected sincerity that was redeemed from bluffness only by its exquisite calculation, with that promptitude and masterly decision of manner that so well suited his calling—with all his stock in trade well to the front; he stepped forward to receive Colonel and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Peyton Blaylock. With the grace of a grand marshal or a wedding usher, he escorted the two passengers to a side of the upper deck, from which the scenery was supposed to present itself to the observer in increased quantity and quality. There, in comfortable steamer chairs, they sat and began to piece together the random lines that were to form an intelligent paragraph in the big history of little events.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Our home, sir,” said Colonel Blaylock, removing his wide-brimmed, rather shapeless black felt hat, “is in Holly Springs—Holly Springs, Georgia. I am very proud to make your acquaintance, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bloom. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Blaylock and myself have just arrived in Okochee this morning, sir, on business—business of importance in connection with the recent rapid march of progress in this section of our state.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Colonel smoothed back, with a sweeping gesture, his long, smooth, locks. His dark eyes, still fiery under the heavy black brows, seemed inappropriate to the face of a business man. He looked rather to be an old courtier handed down from the reign of Charles, and re-attired in a modern suit of fine, but raveling and seam-worn, broadcloth.</p>
|
||||
@ -49,7 +49,6 @@
|
||||
<span>My spirit drifts, in longing sweet,</span>
|
||||
<br/>
|
||||
<span class="i1">Back to the Georgia hills.</span>
|
||||
<br/>
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<span>“And through the close-drawn, curtained night</span>
|
||||
@ -139,11 +138,11 @@
|
||||
<p>And now, upon the left bank, they caught a glimpse of a white village, high up on the hills, smothered among green trees. That was Cold Branch—no boom town, but the slow growth of many years. Cold Branch lay on the edge of the grape and corn lands. The big country road ran just back of the heights. Cold Branch had nothing in common with the frisky ambition of Okochee with its impertinent lake.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Mac,” said J. Pinkney suddenly, “I want you to stop at Cold Branch. There’s a landing there that they made to use sometimes when the river was up.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Can’t,” said the captain, grinning more broadly. “I’ve got the United States mails on board. Right today this boat’s in the government service. Do you want to have the poor old captain keelhauled by Uncle Sam? And the great city of Skyland, all disconsolate, waiting for its mail? I’m ashamed of your extravagance, J. P.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Mac,” almost whispered J. Pinkney, in his danger-line voice, “I looked into the engine room of the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i> a while ago. Don’t you know of somebody that needs a new boiler? Cement and black Japan can’t hide flaws from me. And then, those shares of building and loan that you traded for repairs—they were all yours, of course. I hate to mention these things, but—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Mac,” almost whispered J. Pinkney, in his danger-line voice, “I looked into the engine room of the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i> a while ago. Don’t you know of somebody that needs a new boiler? Cement and black Japan can’t hide flaws from me. And then, those shares of building and loan that you traded for repairs—they were all yours, of course. I hate to mention these things, but—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, come now, J. P.,” said the captain. “You know I was just fooling. I’ll put you off at Cold Branch, if you say so.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The other passengers get off there, too,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bloom.</p>
|
||||
<p>Further conversation was held, and in ten minutes the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i> turned her nose toward a little, cranky wooden pier on the left bank, and the captain, relinquishing the wheel to a roustabout, came to the passenger deck and made the remarkable announcement: “All out for Skyland.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Blaylocks and J. Pinkney Bloom disembarked, and the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i> proceeded on her way up the lake. Guided by the indefatigable promoter, they slowly climbed the steep hillside, pausing often to rest and admire the view. Finally they entered the village of Cold Branch. Warmly both the Colonel and his wife praised it for its homelike and peaceful beauty. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bloom conducted them to a two-story building on a shady street that bore the legend, “Pine-top Inn.” Here he took his leave, receiving the cordial thanks of the two for his attentions, the Colonel remarking that he thought they would spend the remainder of the day in rest, and take a look at his purchase on the morrow.</p>
|
||||
<p>Further conversation was held, and in ten minutes the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i> turned her nose toward a little, cranky wooden pier on the left bank, and the captain, relinquishing the wheel to a roustabout, came to the passenger deck and made the remarkable announcement: “All out for Skyland.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Blaylocks and J. Pinkney Bloom disembarked, and the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i> proceeded on her way up the lake. Guided by the indefatigable promoter, they slowly climbed the steep hillside, pausing often to rest and admire the view. Finally they entered the village of Cold Branch. Warmly both the Colonel and his wife praised it for its homelike and peaceful beauty. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bloom conducted them to a two-story building on a shady street that bore the legend, “Pine-top Inn.” Here he took his leave, receiving the cordial thanks of the two for his attentions, the Colonel remarking that he thought they would spend the remainder of the day in rest, and take a look at his purchase on the morrow.</p>
|
||||
<p>J. Pinkney Bloom walked down Cold Branch’s main street. He did not know this town, but he knew towns, and his feet did not falter. Presently he saw a sign over a door: “Frank E. Cooly, Attorney-at-Law and Notary Public.” A young man was <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cooly, and awaiting business.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Get your hat, son,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bloom, in his breezy way, “and a blank deed, and come along. It’s a job for you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now,” he continued, when <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cooly had responded with alacrity, “is there a bookstore in town?”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -14,9 +14,9 @@
|
||||
<p>Overstrained etiquette at last gave way. It is not known who first overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus’s simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy, had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the electrics, leaving the combat to be waged by the light of gunfire alone. Dutch Mike crawled from his haven and ran into the street crying for the watch instead of for a Shakespeare to immortalize the Cimmerian shindy.</p>
|
||||
<p>The cop came, and found a prostrate, bleeding Montagu supported by three distrait and reticent followers of the House. Faithful to the ethics of the gangs, no one knew whence the hurt came. There was no Capulet to be seen.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Raus mit der interrogatories,” said Buck Malone to the officer. “Sure I know who done it. I always manages to get a bird’s eye view of any guy that comes up an’ makes a show case for a hardware store out of me. No. I’m not telling you his name. I’ll settle with um meself. Wow—ouch! Easy, boys! Yes, I’ll attend to his case meself. I’m not making any complaint.”</p>
|
||||
<p>At midnight McManus strolled around a pile of lumber near an East Side dock, and lingered in the vicinity of a certain water plug. Brick Cleary drifted casually to the trysting place ten minutes later. “He’ll maybe not croak,” said Brick; “and he won’t tell, of course. But Dutch Mike did. He told the police he was tired of having his place shot up. It’s unhandy just now, because Tim Corrigan’s in Europe for a week’s end with Kings. He’ll be back on the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Kaiser Williams</i> next Friday. You’ll have to duck out of sight till then. Tim’ll fix it up all right for us when he comes back.”</p>
|
||||
<p>At midnight McManus strolled around a pile of lumber near an East Side dock, and lingered in the vicinity of a certain water plug. Brick Cleary drifted casually to the trysting place ten minutes later. “He’ll maybe not croak,” said Brick; “and he won’t tell, of course. But Dutch Mike did. He told the police he was tired of having his place shot up. It’s unhandy just now, because Tim Corrigan’s in Europe for a week’s end with Kings. He’ll be back on the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Kaiser Williams</i> next Friday. You’ll have to duck out of sight till then. Tim’ll fix it up all right for us when he comes back.”</p>
|
||||
<p>This goes to explain why Cork McManus went into Rooney’s one night and there looked upon the bright, stranger face of Romance for the first time in his precarious career.</p>
|
||||
<p>Until Tim Corrigan should return from his jaunt among Kings and Princes and hold up his big white finger in private offices, it was unsafe for Cork in any of the old haunts of his gang. So he lay, perdu, in the high rear room of a Capulet, reading pink sporting sheets and cursing the slow paddle wheels of the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Kaiser Wilhelm</i>.</p>
|
||||
<p>Until Tim Corrigan should return from his jaunt among Kings and Princes and hold up his big white finger in private offices, it was unsafe for Cork in any of the old haunts of his gang. So he lay, perdu, in the high rear room of a Capulet, reading pink sporting sheets and cursing the slow paddle wheels of the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Kaiser Wilhelm</i>.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was on Thursday evening that Cork’s seclusion became intolerable to him. Never a hart panted for water fountain as he did for the cool touch of a drifting stein, for the firm security of a foot-rail in the hollow of his shoe and the quiet, hearty challenges of friendship and repartee along and across the shining bars. But he must avoid the district where he was known. The cops were looking for him everywhere, for news was scarce, and the newspapers were harping again on the failure of the police to suppress the gangs. If they got him before Corrigan came back, the big white finger could not be uplifted; it would be too late then. But Corrigan would be home the next day, so he felt sure there would be small danger in a little excursion that night among the crass pleasures that represented life to him.</p>
|
||||
<p>At half-past twelve McManus stood in a darkish crosstown street looking up at the name “Rooney’s,” picked out by incandescent lights against a signboard over a second-story window. He had heard of the place as a tough “hangout”; with its frequenters and its locality he was unfamiliar. Guided by certain unerring indications common to all such resorts, he ascended the stairs and entered the large room over the café.</p>
|
||||
<p>Here were some twenty or thirty tables, at this time about half-filled with Rooney’s guests. Waiters served drinks. At one end a human pianola with drugged eyes hammered the keys with automatic and furious unprecision. At merciful intervals a waiter would roar or squeak a song—songs full of “<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Johnsons” and “babes” and “coons”—historical word guaranties of the genuineness of African melodies composed by red waistcoated young gentlemen, natives of the cotton fields and rice swamps of West Twenty-eighth Street.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -15,114 +15,111 @@
|
||||
<p>Scene—Her boudoir.</p>
|
||||
<table>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>And now, Viola, since we understand each other, let us never fall out again. Let us forget the bitter words that we have spoken one to another, and resolve to dwell always in love and affection. <i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Places his arm around her waist.</i></td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>Oh, Charles, you don’t know how happy you make me! Of course we will never quarrel again. Life is too short to waste in petty bickerings and strife. Let us keep in the primrose path of love, and never stray from it any more. Oh, what bliss to think you love me and nothing can ever come between us! Just like the old days when we used to meet by the lilac hedge, isn’t it? <i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Lays her head on his shoulder.</i></td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>Yes, and when I used to pull blossoms and twine them in your hair and call you Queen Titania.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>Oh, that was nice. I remember. Queen Titania? Oh, yes, she was one of Shakespeare’s characters, who fell in love with a man with a donkey’s head.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>H’m!</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>Now don’t. I didn’t mean you. Oh, Charles, listen to the Christmas chimes! What a merry day it will be for us. Are you sure you love me as well as you used to?</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>More. <i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Smack.</i></td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>Does ’em fink me sweet?</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td><i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Smack. Smack!</i></td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>Wuz ’em’s toodleums?</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>Awful heap. Who do you wuv?</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>My ownest own old boy.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">Both</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">Both</td>
|
||||
<td><i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Smack!</i></td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>Listen, the bells are chiming again. We should be doubly happy, love, for we have passed through stormy seas of doubt and anger. But now, a light is breaking, and the rosy dawn of love has returned.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>And should abide with us forever. Oh, Charles, let us never again by word or look cause pain to each other.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>Never again. And you will not scold any more?</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>No, dearest. You know I never have unless you gave me cause.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>Sometimes you have become angry and said hard things without any reason.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>Maybe you think so, but I don’t. <i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Lifts her head from his shoulder.</i></td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>I know what I’m talking about. <i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Takes his arm from her waist.</i></td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>You come home cross because you haven’t got sense enough to conduct your business properly, and take your spite out on me.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>You make me tired. You get on your ear because you are naturally one of the cain-raising, blab-mouthed kind and can’t help it.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td>You old crosspatch of a liar from Liarsville, don’t you talk to me that way or I’ll scratch your eyes out.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td>You blamed wildcat. I wish I had been struck by lightning before I ever met you.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td><i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Seizing the broom. Biff! biff! biff.</i></td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">She</td>
|
||||
<td><i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Seizing the broom.<i> Biff! biff! biff.</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">He</td>
|
||||
<td><i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">After reaching the sidewalk</i> I wonder if Colonel Ingersoll is right when he says suicide is no sin!</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td/>
|
||||
<td><i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Curtain</i></td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
</table>
|
||||
<p><i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Curtain</i></p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -34,7 +34,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Except the roisterers in the tavern, the village folk were abed. David crept softly into his room in the shed of his father’s cottage and made a bundle of his small store of clothing. With this upon a staff, he set his face outward upon the road that ran from Vernoy.</p>
|
||||
<p>He passed his father’s herd of sheep, huddled in their nightly pen—the sheep he herded daily, leaving them to scatter while he wrote verses on scraps of paper. He saw a light yet shining in Yvonne’s window, and a weakness shook his purpose of a sudden. Perhaps that light meant that she rued, sleepless, her anger, and that morning might—But, no! His decision was made. Vernoy was no place for him. Not one soul there could share his thoughts. Out along that road lay his fate and his future.</p>
|
||||
<p>Three leagues across the dim, moonlit champaign ran the road, straight as a ploughman’s furrow. It was believed in the village that the road ran to Paris, at least; and this name the poet whispered often to himself as he walked. Never so far from Vernoy had David travelled before.</p>
|
||||
<section id="roads-of-destiny-1" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<section id="roads-of-destiny-1" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title">The Left Branch</h3>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
@ -106,7 +106,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Come,” boomed the great voice of the marquis, “out with you to the carriage! Daybreak shall not find you on my hands. Wed you shall be again, and to a living husband, this night. The next we come upon, my lady, highwayman or peasant. If the road yields no other, then the churl that opens my gates. Out with you into the carriage!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The marquis, implacable and huge, the lady wrapped again in the mystery of her cloak, the postilion bearing the weapons—all moved out to the waiting carriage. The sound of its ponderous wheels rolling away echoed through the slumbering village. In the hall of the Silver Flagon the distracted landlord wrung his hands above the slain poet’s body, while the flames of the four and twenty candles danced and flickered on the table.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="roads-of-destiny-2" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<section id="roads-of-destiny-2" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3>The Right Branch</h3>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
@ -223,7 +223,7 @@
|
||||
<p>But it seemed that, for some reason, the plotters had slightly altered their plans. When the royal carriage had reached the Rue Christopher, one square nearer than the Rue Esplanade, forth from it burst Captain Desrolles, with his band of would-be regicides, and assailed the equipage. The guards upon the carriage, though surprised at the premature attack, descended and fought valiantly. The noise of conflict attracted the force of Captain Tetreau, and they came pelting down the street to the rescue. But, in the meantime, the desperate Desrolles had torn open the door of the king’s carriage, thrust his weapon against the body of the dark figure inside, and fired.</p>
|
||||
<p>Now, with loyal reinforcements at hand, the street rang with cries and the rasp of steel, but the frightened horses had dashed away. Upon the cushions lay the dead body of the poor mock king and poet, slain by a ball from the pistol of Monseigneur, the Marquis de Beaupertuys.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="roads-of-destiny-3" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<section id="roads-of-destiny-3" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3>The Main Road</h3>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Rouge Et Noir</h2>
|
||||
<p>It has been indicated that disaffection followed the elevation of Losada to the presidency. This feeling continued to grow. Throughout the entire republic there seemed to be a spirit of silent, sullen discontent. Even the old Liberal party to which Goodwin, Zavalla and other patriots had lent their aid was disappointed. Losada had failed to become a popular idol. Fresh taxes, fresh import duties and, more than all, his tolerance of the outrageous oppression of citizens by the military had rendered him the most obnoxious president since the despicable Alforan. The majority of his own cabinet were out of sympathy with him. The army, which he had courted by giving it license to tyrannize, had been his main, and thus far adequate support.</p>
|
||||
<p>But the most impolitic of the administration’s moves had been when it antagonized the Vesuvius Fruit Company, an organization plying twelve steamers and with a cash capital somewhat larger than Anchuria’s surplus and debt combined.</p>
|
||||
<p>Reasonably an established concern like the Vesuvius would become irritated at having a small, retail republic with no rating at all attempt to squeeze it. So when the government proxies applied for a subsidy they encountered a polite refusal. The president at once retaliated by clapping an export duty of one real per bunch on bananas—a thing unprecedented in fruit-growing countries. The Vesuvius Company had invested large sums in wharves and plantations along the Anchurian coast, their agents had erected fine homes in the towns where they had their headquarters, and heretofore had worked with the republic in goodwill and with advantage to both. It would lose an immense sum if compelled to move out. The selling price of bananas from Vera Cruz to Trinidad was three reals per bunch. This new duty of one real would have ruined the fruit growers in Anchuria and have seriously discommoded the Vesuvius Company had it declined to pay it. But for some reason, the Vesuvius continued to buy Anchurian fruit, paying four reals for it; and not suffering the growers to bear the loss.</p>
|
||||
<p>Reasonably an established concern like the Vesuvius would become irritated at having a small, retail republic with no rating at all attempt to squeeze it. So when the government proxies applied for a subsidy they encountered a polite refusal. The president at once retaliated by clapping an export duty of one <i xml:lang="es">real</i> per bunch on bananas—a thing unprecedented in fruit-growing countries. The Vesuvius Company had invested large sums in wharves and plantations along the Anchurian coast, their agents had erected fine homes in the towns where they had their headquarters, and heretofore had worked with the republic in goodwill and with advantage to both. It would lose an immense sum if compelled to move out. The selling price of bananas from Vera Cruz to Trinidad was three reals per bunch. This new duty of one <i xml:lang="es">real</i> would have ruined the fruit growers in Anchuria and have seriously discommoded the Vesuvius Company had it declined to pay it. But for some reason, the Vesuvius continued to buy Anchurian fruit, paying four reals for it; and not suffering the growers to bear the loss.</p>
|
||||
<p>This apparent victory deceived His Excellency; and he began to hunger for more of it. He sent an emissary to request a conference with a representative of the fruit company. The Vesuvius sent <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Franzoni, a little, stout, cheerful man, always cool, and whistling airs from Verdi’s operas. Señor Espirition, of the office of the Minister of Finance, attempted the sandbagging in behalf of Anchuria. The meeting took place in the cabin of the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Salvador</i>, of the Vesuvius line.</p>
|
||||
<p>Señor Espirition opened negotiations by announcing that the government contemplated the building of a railroad to skirt the alluvial coast lands. After touching upon the benefits such a road would confer upon the interests of the Vesuvius, he reached the definite suggestion that a contribution to the road’s expenses of, say, fifty thousand pesos would not be more than an equivalent to benefits received.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Franzoni denied that his company would receive any benefits from a contemplated road. As its representative he must decline to contribute fifty thousand pesos. But he would assume the responsibility of offering twenty-five.</p>
|
||||
@ -63,7 +63,7 @@
|
||||
<p>And while the cheering was breaking out afresh everywhere, Captain Cronin and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vincenti turned and walked back toward the shore where the gig was waiting for them.</p>
|
||||
<p>“There’ll be another ‘<i xml:lang="es">presidente proclamada</i>‘ in the morning,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vincenti, musingly. “As a rule they are not as reliable as the elected ones, but this youngster seems to have some good stuff in him. He planned and maneuvered the entire campaign. Olivarra’s widow, you know, was wealthy. After her husband was assassinated she went to the States, and educated her son at Yale. The Vesuvius Company hunted him up, and backed him in the little game.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s a glorious thing,” said Cronin, half jestingly, “to be able to discharge a government, and insert one of your own choosing, in these days.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, it is only a matter of business,” said Vincenti, stopping and offering the stump of his cigar to a monkey that swung down from a lime tree; “and that is what moves the world of today. That extra real on the price of bananas had to go. We took the shortest way of removing it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, it is only a matter of business,” said Vincenti, stopping and offering the stump of his cigar to a monkey that swung down from a lime tree; “and that is what moves the world of today. That extra <i xml:lang="es">real</i> on the price of bananas had to go. We took the shortest way of removing it.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -31,9 +31,9 @@
|
||||
<p>There was a knock on his door. A telegram had come for him. It came from the West, and these were its words:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<b>“Come back and the answer will be yes.</b>
|
||||
<b>Come back and the answer will be yes.</b>
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p class="signature">“Dolly.”</p>
|
||||
<p class="signature">Dolly.</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>He kept the boy waiting ten minutes, and then wrote the reply: “Impossible to leave here at present.” Then he sat at the window again and let the city put its cup of mandragora to his lips again.</p>
|
||||
<p>After all it isn’t a story; but I wanted to know which one of the heroes won the battle against the city. So I went to a very learned friend and laid the case before him. What he said was: “Please don’t bother me; I have Christmas presents to buy.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Monsieur Tictocq, I believe,” said the gentleman.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You will see on the register that I sign my name Q. <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>. Jones,” said Tictocq, “and gentlemen would understand that I wish to be known as such. If you do not like being referred to as no gentleman, I will give you satisfaction any time after July 1st, and fight Steve O’Donnell, John McDonald, and Ignatius Donnelly in the meantime if you desire.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I do not mind it in the least,” said the gentleman. “In fact, I am accustomed to it. I am Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, Platform <abbr>No.</abbr> 2, and I have a friend in trouble. I knew you were Tictocq from your resemblance to yourself.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Entrez vous,” said the detective.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="fr">Entrez vous</i>,” said the detective.</p>
|
||||
<p>The gentleman entered and was handed a chair.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am a man of few words,” said Tictoq. “I will help your friend if possible. Our countries are great friends. We have given you Lafayette and French fried potatoes. You have given us California champagne and—taken back Ward McAllister. State your case.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I will be very brief,” said the visitor. “In room <abbr>No.</abbr> 76 in this hotel is stopping a prominent Populist Candidate. He is alone. Last night someone stole his socks. They cannot be found. If they are not recovered, his party will attribute their loss to the Democracy. They will make great capital of the burglary, although I am sure it was not a political move at all. The socks must be recovered. You are the only man that can do it.”</p>
|
||||
@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“The proprietor has already been spoken to. Everything and everybody is at your service.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Tictocq consulted his watch.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Come to this room tomorrow afternoon at 6 o’clock with the landlord, the Populist Candidate, and any other witnesses elected from both parties, and I will return the socks.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bien, Monsieur; schlafen sie wohl.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bien, Monsieur; <i xml:lang="de">schlafen sie wohl</i>.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Au revoir.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, Platform No.2, bowed courteously and withdrew.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Hush,” says Tictocq: “Make no noise at all. You have already made enough.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Footsteps are heard outside.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Be quick,” says Tictocq: “give me those socks. There is not a moment to spare.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Vas sagst du?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="de">Vas sagst du?</i>”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah, he confesses,” says Tictocq. “No socks will do but those you carried off from the Populist Candidate’s room.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The company is returning, no longer hearing the music.</p>
|
||||
<p>Tictooq hesitates not. He seizes the professor, throws him upon the floor, tears off his shoes and socks, and escapes with the latter through the open window into the garden.</p>
|
||||
@ -86,9 +86,9 @@
|
||||
<p>Tictocq’s room in the Avenue Hotel.</p>
|
||||
<p>A knock is heard at the door.</p>
|
||||
<p>Tictocq opens it and looks at his watch.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah,” he says, “it is just six. Entrez, Messieurs.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The messieurs entrez. There are seven of them; the Populist Candidate who is there by invitation, not knowing for what purpose; the chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, platform <abbr>No.</abbr> 2, the hotel proprietor, and three or four Democrats and Populists, as near as could be found out.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t know,” begins the Populist Candidate, “what in the h––––”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah,” he says, “it is just six. <i xml:lang="fr">Entrez</i>, Messieurs.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The messieurs <i xml:lang="fr">entrez</i>. There are seven of them; the Populist Candidate who is there by invitation, not knowing for what purpose; the chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, platform <abbr>No.</abbr> 2, the hotel proprietor, and three or four Democrats and Populists, as near as could be found out.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t know,” begins the Populist Candidate, “what in the h⸺”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Excuse me,” says Tictocq, firmly. “You will oblige me by keeping silent until I make my report. I have been employed in this case, and I have unravelled it. For the honor of France I request that I be heard with attention.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Certainly,” says the chairman; “we will be pleased to listen.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Tictocq stands in the centre of the room. The electric light burns brightly above him. He seems the incarnation of alertness, vigor, cleverness, and cunning.</p>
|
||||
@ -96,23 +96,23 @@
|
||||
<p>“When informed of the robbery,” begins Tictocq, “I first questioned the bell boy. He knew nothing. I went to the police headquarters. They knew nothing. I invited one of them to the bar to drink. He said there used to be a little colored boy in the Tenth Ward who stole things and kept them for recovery by the police, but failed to be at the place agreed upon for arrest one time, and had been sent to jail.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I then began to think. I reasoned. No man, said I, would carry a Populist’s socks in his pocket without wrapping them up. He would not want to do so in the hotel. He would want a paper. Where would he get one? At the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Statesman</i> office, of course. I went there. A young man with his hair combed down on his forehead sat behind the desk. I knew he was writing society items, for a young lady’s slipper, a piece of cake, a fan, a half emptied bottle of cocktail, a bunch of roses, and a police whistle lay on the desk before him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Can you tell me if a man purchased a paper here in the last three months?’ I said.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘we sold one last night.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘we sold one last night.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Can you describe the man?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Accurately. He had blue whiskers, a wart between his shoulder blades, a touch of colic, and an occupation tax on his breath.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Which way did he go?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Out.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I then went—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wait a minute,” said the Populist Candidate, rising; “I don’t see why in the h––––”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wait a minute,” said the Populist Candidate, rising; “I don’t see why in the h⸺”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Once more I must beg that you will be silent,” said Tictocq, rather sharply. “You should not interrupt me in the midst of my report.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I made one false arrest,” continued Tictocq. “I was passing two finely dressed gentlemen on the street, when one of them remarked that he had ‘stole his socks.’ I handcuffed him and dragged him to a lighted store, when his companion explained to me that he was somewhat intoxicated and his tongue was not entirely manageable. He had been speaking of some business transaction, and what he intended to say was that he had ‘sold his stocks.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I then released him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“An hour afterward I passed a saloon, and saw this Professor von Bum drinking beer at a table. I knew him in Paris. I said ‘here is my man.’ He worshipped Wagner, lived on limburger cheese, beer, and credit, and would have stolen anybody’s socks. I shadowed him to the reception at Colonel <abbr>St.</abbr> Vitus’s, and in an opportune moment I seized him and tore the socks from his feet. There they are.”</p>
|
||||
<p>With a dramatic gesture, Tictocq threw a pair of dingy socks upon the table, folded his arms, and threw back his head.</p>
|
||||
<p>With a loud cry of rage, the Populist Candidate sprang once more to his feet.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gol darn it! I WILL say what I want to. I—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gol darn it! I <em>will</em> say what I want to. I—”</p>
|
||||
<p>The two other Populists in the room gazed at him coldly and sternly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Is this tale true?” they demanded of the Candidate.</p>
|
||||
<p>“No, by gosh, it ain’t!” he replied, pointing a trembling finger at the Democratic Chairman. “There stands the man who has concocted the whole scheme. It is an infernal, unfair political trick to lose votes for our party. How far has thing gone?” he added, turning savagely to the detective.</p>
|
||||
<p>“No, by gosh, it ain’t!” he replied, pointing a trembling finger at the Democratic Chairman. “There stands the man who has concocted the whole scheme. It is an infernal, unfair political trick to lose votes for our party. How far has this thing gone?” he added, turning savagely to the detective.</p>
|
||||
<p>“All the newspapers have my written report on the matter, and the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Statesman</i> will have it in plate matter next week,” said Tictocq, complacently.</p>
|
||||
<p>“All is lost!” said the Populists, turning toward the door.</p>
|
||||
<p>“For God’s sake, my friends,” pleaded the Candidate, following them; “listen to me; I swear before high heaven that I never wore a pair of socks in my life. It is all a devilish campaign lie.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -25,7 +25,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“I know you didn’t,” remarked the visitor, coolly; “And you won’t just yet. Light up?” He threw a leg over an arm of his chair, and tossed a handful of rich-hued cigars upon the table. Lawyer Gooch knew the brand. He thawed just enough to accept the invitation to smoke.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You are a divorce lawyer,” said the cardless visitor. This time there was no interrogation in his voice. Nor did his words constitute a simple assertion. They formed a charge—a denunciation—as one would say to a dog: “You are a dog.” Lawyer Gooch was silent under the imputation.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You handle,” continued the visitor, “all the various ramifications of busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might saw, who extracts Cupid’s darts when he shoots ’em into the wrong parties. You furnish patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch of Hymen has burned so low you can’t light a cigar at it. Am I right, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gooch?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I have undertaken cases,” said the lawyer, guardedly, “in the line to which your figurative speech seems to refer. Do you wish to consult me professionally, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ––––” The lawyer paused, with significance.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I have undertaken cases,” said the lawyer, guardedly, “in the line to which your figurative speech seems to refer. Do you wish to consult me professionally, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ⸻” The lawyer paused, with significance.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not yet,” said the other, with an arch wave of his cigar, “not just yet. Let us approach the subject with the caution that should have been used in the original act that makes this powwow necessary. There exists a matrimonial jumble to be straightened out. But before I give you names I want your honest—well, anyhow, your professional opinion on the merits of the mix-up. I want you to size up the catastrophe—abstractly—you understand? I’m <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Nobody; and I’ve got a story to tell you. Then you say what’s what. Do you get my wireless?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You want to state a hypothetical case?” suggested Lawyer Gooch.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s the word I was after. ‘Apothecary’ was the best shot I could make at it in my mind. The hypothetical goes. I’ll state the case. Suppose there’s a woman—a deuced fine-looking woman—who has run away from her husband and home? She’s badly mashed on another man who went to her town to work up some real estate business. Now, we may as well call this woman’s husband Thomas R. Billings, for that’s his name. I’m giving you straight tips on the cognomens. The Lothario chap is Henry K. Jessup. The Billingses lived in a little town called Susanville—a good many miles from here. Now, Jessup leaves Susanville two weeks ago. The next day <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings follows him. She’s dead gone on this man Jessup; you can bet your law library on that.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -70,7 +70,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“I got between him and the door.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Married man,’ says I, ‘I know you was christened a fool the minute the preacher tangled you up, but don’t you never sometimes think one little think on a human basis? There’s ten of that gang in there, and they’re pizen with whisky and desire for murder. They’ll drink you up like a bottle of booze before you get halfway to the door. Be intelligent, now, and use at least wild-hog sense. Sit down and wait till we have some chance to get out without being carried in baskets.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I got to be home by seven, Buck,’ repeats this henpecked thing of little wisdom, like an unthinking poll parrot. ‘Mariana,’ says he, ‘will be out looking for me.’ And he reaches down and pulls a leg out of the checker table. ‘I’ll go through this Trimble outfit,’ says he, ‘like a cottontail through a brush corral. I’m not pestered any more with a desire to engage in rucuses, but I got to be home by seven. You lock the door after me, Buck. And don’t you forget—I won three out of them five games. I’d play longer, but Mariana—’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Hush up, you old locoed road runner,’ I interrupts. ‘Did you ever notice your Uncle Buck locking doors against trouble? I’m not married,’ says I, ‘but I’m as big a d––––n fool as any Mormon. One from four leaves three,’ says I, and I gathers out another leg of the table. ‘We’ll get home by seven,’ says I, ‘whether it’s the heavenly one or the other. May I see you home?’ says I, ‘you sarsaparilla-drinking, checker-playing glutton for death and destruction.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Hush up, you old locoed road runner,’ I interrupts. ‘Did you ever notice your Uncle Buck locking doors against trouble? I’m not married,’ says I, ‘but I’m as big a d⸺n fool as any Mormon. One from four leaves three,’ says I, and I gathers out another leg of the table. ‘We’ll get home by seven,’ says I, ‘whether it’s the heavenly one or the other. May I see you home?’ says I, ‘you sarsaparilla-drinking, checker-playing glutton for death and destruction.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“We opened the door easy, and then stampeded for the front. Part of the gang was lined up at the bar; part of ’em was passing over the drinks, and two or three was peeping out the door and window and taking shots at the marshal’s crowd. The room was so full of smoke we got halfway to the front door before they noticed us. Then I heard Berry Trimble’s voice somewhere yell out:</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘How’d that Buck Caperton get in here?’ and he skinned the side of my neck with a bullet. I reckon he felt bad over that miss, for Berry’s the best shot south of the Southern Pacific Railroad. But the smoke in the saloon was some too thick for good shooting.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Me and Perry smashed over two of the gang with our table legs, which didn’t miss like the guns did, and as we run out the door I grabbed a Winchester from a fellow who was watching the outside, and I turned and regulated the account of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Berry.</p>
|
||||
@ -82,7 +82,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Perry introduces me to Mariana, and they ask me to come in. No, sir-ee. I’d had enough truck with married folks for that day. I says I’ll be going along, and that I’ve spent a very pleasant afternoon with my old partner—‘especially,’ says I, just to jostle Perry, ‘during that game when the table legs came all loose.’ But I’d promised him not to let her know anything.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ve been worrying over that business ever since it happened,” continued Buck. “There’s one thing about it that’s got me all twisted up, and I can’t figure it out.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“What was that?” I asked, as I rolled and handed Buck the last cigarette.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why, I’ll tell you: When I saw the look that little woman gave Perry when she turned round and saw him coming back to the ranch safe—why was it I got the idea all in a minute that that look of hers was worth more than the whole caboodle of us—sarsaparilla, checkers, and all, and that the d––––n fool in the game wasn’t named Perry Rountree at all?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why, I’ll tell you: When I saw the look that little woman gave Perry when she turned round and saw him coming back to the ranch safe—why was it I got the idea all in a minute that that look of hers was worth more than the whole caboodle of us—sarsaparilla, checkers, and all, and that the d⸺n fool in the game wasn’t named Perry Rountree at all?”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -13,8 +13,7 @@
|
||||
<p>He picked up a book and pretended to be interested, while he watched her glance over the paper. When she struck the place where the piece had been cut, she frowned and seemed to be thinking very seriously.</p>
|
||||
<p>However, she did not say anything about it and the man was in doubt as to whether her curiosity had been aroused or not.</p>
|
||||
<p>The next day when he came home to dinner she met him at the door with flashing eyes and an ominous look about her jaw.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You miserable, deceitful wretch!” she cried. “After living all these years with you to find</p>
|
||||
<p>that you have been basely deceiving me and leading a double life, and bringing shame and sorrow upon your innocent family! I always thought you were a villain and a reprobate, and now I have positive proof of the fact.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You miserable, deceitful wretch!” she cried. “After living all these years with you to find that you have been basely deceiving me and leading a double life, and bringing shame and sorrow upon your innocent family! I always thought you were a villain and a reprobate, and now I have positive proof of the fact.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wh—wha—what do you mean, Maria?” he gasped. “I haven’t been doing anything.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Of course you are ready to add lying to your catalogue of vices. Since you pretend not to understand me—look at this.”</p>
|
||||
<p>She held up to his gaze a complete paper of the issue of the day before.</p>
|
||||
@ -22,8 +21,10 @@
|
||||
<p>“Why that was just a little joke, Maria. I didn’t think you would take it seriously. I—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Do you call that a joke, you shameless wretch?” she cried, spreading the paper before him.</p>
|
||||
<p>The man looked and read in dismay. In cutting out the catarrh advertisement he had never thought to see what was on the other side of it, and this was the item that appeared, to one reading the other side of the page, to have been clipped:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>A gentleman about town, who stands well in business circles, had a high old time last night in a certain restaurant where he entertained at supper a couple of chorus ladies belonging to the comic opera company now in the city. Loud talking and breaking of dishes attracted some attention, but the matter was smoothed over, owing to the prominence of the gentleman referred to.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You call that a joke, do you, you old reptile,” shrieked the excited lady. ‘Tm going home to mamma this evening and I’m going to stay there. Thought you’d fool me by cutting it out, did you? You sneaking, dissipated old snake you! I’ve got my trunk nicely packed and I’m going straight home—don’t you come near me!”</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>“You call that a joke, do you, you old reptile,” shrieked the excited lady. “I’m going home to mamma this evening and I’m going to stay there. Thought you’d fool me by cutting it out, did you? You sneaking, dissipated old snake you! I’ve got my trunk nicely packed and I’m going straight home—don’t you come near me!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Maria,” gasped the bewildered man. “I swear I—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Don’t add perjury to your crimes, sir!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The man tried unsuccessfully to speak three or four times, and then grabbed his hat and ran down town. Fifteen minutes later he came back bringing two new silk dress patterns, four pounds of caramels, and his bookkeeper and three clerks to prove that he was hard at work in the store on the night in question.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -35,8 +35,8 @@
|
||||
<p>“Of course; you said it was Alex Sweet, the ‘Texas Siftings’ man.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“So I understood,” said the fat man. “The hotel clerk said it was Alex Sweet.”</p>
|
||||
<p>He handed them the card and skipped out the side door. The card read:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p><b><abbr class="name">L. X.</abbr> Wheat</b></p>
|
||||
<blockquote class="card">
|
||||
<p><abbr class="name">L. X.</abbr> Wheat</p>
|
||||
<p>Representing Kansas City</p>
|
||||
<p>Smith and Jones Mo.</p>
|
||||
<p>Wholesale Undertakers’ Supplies</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="the-rake-off" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Rake-Off</h2>
|
||||
<p>Who bids?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Who bids?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The auctioneer held up a child’s rocking-horse, battered and stained. It had belonged to some little member of the man’s family whose household property was being sold under the hammer.</p>
|
||||
<p>He was utterly ruined. He had given up everything in the world to his creditors—house, furniture, horses, stock of goods and lands. He stood among the crowd watching the sale that was scattering his household goods and his heirlooms among a hundred strange hands.</p>
|
||||
<p>On his arm leaned a woman heavily veiled. “Who bids?”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Blythe shook out his wry clothing, and moved slowly up the Calle Grande through the hot sand. He moved without a destination in his mind. The little town was languidly stirring to its daily life. Golden-skinned babies tumbled over one another in the grass. The sea breeze brought him appetite, but nothing to satisfy it. Throughout Coralio were its morning odors—those from the heavily fragrant tropical flowers and from the bread baking in the outdoor ovens of clay and the pervading smoke of their fires. Where the smoke cleared, the crystal air, with some of the efficacy of faith, seemed to remove the mountains almost to the sea, bringing them so near that one might count the scarred glades on their wooded sides. The light-footed Caribs were swiftly gliding to their tasks at the waterside. Already along the bosky trails from the banana groves files of horses were slowly moving, concealed, except for their nodding heads and plodding legs, by the bunches of green-golden fruit heaped upon their backs. On doorsills sat women combing their long, black hair and calling, one to another, across the narrow thoroughfares. Peace reigned in Coralio—arid and bald peace; but still peace.</p>
|
||||
<p>On that bright morning when Nature seemed to be offering the lotus on the Dawn’s golden platter “Beelzebub” Blythe had reached rock bottom. Further descent seemed impossible. That last night’s slumber in a public place had done for him. As long as he had had a roof to cover him there had remained, unbridged, the space that separates a gentleman from the beasts of the jungle and the fowls of the air. But now he was little more than a whimpering oyster led to be devoured on the sands of a Southern sea by the artful walrus, Circumstance, and the implacable carpenter, Fate.</p>
|
||||
<p>To Blythe money was now but a memory. He had drained his friends of all that their good-fellowship had to offer; then he had squeezed them to the last drop of their generosity; and at the last, Aaron-like, he had smitten the rock of their hardening bosoms for the scattering, ignoble drops of Charity itself.</p>
|
||||
<p>He had exhausted his credit to the last <em>real</em>. With the minute keenness of the shameless sponger he was aware of every source in Coralio from which a glass of rum, a meal or a piece of silver could be wheedled. Marshalling each such source in his mind, he considered it with all the thoroughness and penetration that hunger and thirst lent him for the task. All his optimism failed to thresh a grain of hope from the chaff of his postulations. He had played out the game. That one night in the open had shaken his nerves. Until then there had been left to him at least a few grounds upon which he could base his unblushing demands upon his neighbours’ stores. Now he must beg instead of borrowing. The most brazen sophistry could not dignify by the name of “loan” the coin contemptuously flung to a beachcomber who slept on the bare boards of the public market.</p>
|
||||
<p>He had exhausted his credit to the last <i xml:lang="es">real</i>. With the minute keenness of the shameless sponger he was aware of every source in Coralio from which a glass of rum, a meal or a piece of silver could be wheedled. Marshalling each such source in his mind, he considered it with all the thoroughness and penetration that hunger and thirst lent him for the task. All his optimism failed to thresh a grain of hope from the chaff of his postulations. He had played out the game. That one night in the open had shaken his nerves. Until then there had been left to him at least a few grounds upon which he could base his unblushing demands upon his neighbours’ stores. Now he must beg instead of borrowing. The most brazen sophistry could not dignify by the name of “loan” the coin contemptuously flung to a beachcomber who slept on the bare boards of the public market.</p>
|
||||
<p>But on this morning no beggar would have more thankfully received a charitable coin, for the demon thirst had him by the throat—the drunkard’s matutinal thirst that requires to be slaked at each morning station on the road to Tophet.</p>
|
||||
<p>Blythe walked slowly up the street, keeping a watchful eye for any miracle that might drop manna upon him in his wilderness. As he passed the popular eating house of Madama Vasquez, Madama’s boarders were just sitting down to freshly-baked bread, <i xml:lang="es">aguacates</i>, pines and delicious coffee that sent forth odorous guarantee of its quality upon the breeze. Madama was serving; she turned her shy, stolid, melancholy gaze for a moment out the window; she saw Blythe, and her expression turned more shy and embarrassed. “Beelzebub” owed her twenty pesos. He bowed as he had once bowed to less embarrassed dames to whom he owed nothing, and passed on.</p>
|
||||
<p>Merchants and their clerks were throwing open the solid wooden doors of their shops. Polite but cool were the glances they cast upon Blythe as he lounged tentatively by with the remains of his old jaunty air; for they were his creditors almost without exception.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -41,9 +41,9 @@
|
||||
<p>After distributing a liberal largesse among the faithful, Grandemont rode back to town well pleased. There were many other smaller details to think of and provide for, but eventually the scheme was complete, and now there remained only the issuance of the invitations to his guests.</p>
|
||||
<p>Along the river within the scope of a score of miles dwelt some half-dozen families with whose princely hospitality that of the Charleses had been contemporaneous. They were the proudest and most august of the old regime. Their small circle had been a brilliant one; their social relations close and warm; their houses full of rare welcome and discriminating bounty. Those friends, said Grandemont, should once more, if never again, sit at Charleroi on a nineteenth of January to celebrate the festal day of his house.</p>
|
||||
<p>Grandemont had his cards of invitation engraved. They were expensive, but beautiful. In one particular their good taste might have been disputed; but the Creole allowed himself that one feather in the cap of his fugacious splendour. Might he not be allowed, for the one day of the renaissance, to be “Grandemont du Puy Charles, of Charleroi”? He sent the invitations out early in January so that the guests might not fail to receive due notice.</p>
|
||||
<p>At eight o’clock in the morning of the nineteenth, the lower coast steamboat <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">River Belle</i> gingerly approached the long unused landing at Charleroi. The bridge was lowered, and a swarm of the plantation hands streamed along the rotting pier, bearing ashore a strange assortment of freight. Great shapeless bundles and bales and packets swathed in cloth and bound with ropes; tubs and urns of palms, evergreens, and tropical flowers; tables, mirrors, chairs, couches, carpets, and pictures—all carefully bound and padded against the dangers of transit.</p>
|
||||
<p>At eight o’clock in the morning of the nineteenth, the lower coast steamboat <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">River Belle</i> gingerly approached the long unused landing at Charleroi. The bridge was lowered, and a swarm of the plantation hands streamed along the rotting pier, bearing ashore a strange assortment of freight. Great shapeless bundles and bales and packets swathed in cloth and bound with ropes; tubs and urns of palms, evergreens, and tropical flowers; tables, mirrors, chairs, couches, carpets, and pictures—all carefully bound and padded against the dangers of transit.</p>
|
||||
<p>Grandemont was among them, the busiest there. To the safe conveyance of certain large hampers eloquent with printed cautions to delicate handling he gave his superintendence, for they contained the fragile china and glassware. The dropping of one of those hampers would have cost him more than he could have saved in a year.</p>
|
||||
<p>The last article unloaded, the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">River Belle</i> backed off and continued her course down stream. In less than an hour everything had been conveyed to the house. And came then Absalom’s task, directing the placing of the furniture and wares. There was plenty of help, for that day was always a holiday at Charleroi, and the Negroes did not suffer the old traditions to lapse. Almost the entire population of the quarters volunteered their aid. A score of piccaninnies were sweeping at the leaves in the yard. In the big kitchen at the rear André was lording it with his old-time magnificence over his numerous sub-cooks and scullions. Shutters were flung wide; dust spun in clouds; the house echoed to voices and the tread of busy feet. The prince had come again, and Charleroi woke from its long sleep.</p>
|
||||
<p>The last article unloaded, the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">River Belle</i> backed off and continued her course down stream. In less than an hour everything had been conveyed to the house. And came then Absalom’s task, directing the placing of the furniture and wares. There was plenty of help, for that day was always a holiday at Charleroi, and the Negroes did not suffer the old traditions to lapse. Almost the entire population of the quarters volunteered their aid. A score of piccaninnies were sweeping at the leaves in the yard. In the big kitchen at the rear André was lording it with his old-time magnificence over his numerous sub-cooks and scullions. Shutters were flung wide; dust spun in clouds; the house echoed to voices and the tread of busy feet. The prince had come again, and Charleroi woke from its long sleep.</p>
|
||||
<p>The full moon, as she rose across the river that night and peeped above the levee saw a sight that had long been missing from her orbit. The old plantation house shed a soft and alluring radiance from every window. Of its two-score rooms only four had been refurnished—the larger reception chamber, the dining hall, and two smaller rooms for the convenience of the expected guests. But lighted wax candles were set in the windows of every room.</p>
|
||||
<p>The dining-hall was the chef d’aevre. The long table, set with twenty-five covers, sparkled like a winter landscape with its snowy napery and china and the icy gleam of crystal. The chaste beauty of the room had required small adornment. The polished floor burned to a glowing ruby with the reflection of candle light. The rich wainscoting reached half way to the ceiling. Along and above this had been set the relieving lightness of a few watercolour sketches of fruit and flower.</p>
|
||||
<p>The reception chamber was fitted in a simple but elegant style. Its arrangement suggested nothing of the fact that on the morrow the room would again be cleared and abandoned to the dust and the spider. The entrance hall was imposing with palms and ferns and the light of an immense candelabrum.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -134,11 +134,11 @@
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p><b>Second Message to Congress</b></p>
|
||||
<p>Written for</p>
|
||||
<p>THE ROSE OF DIXIE</p>
|
||||
<p><b>BY</b></p>
|
||||
<p><b>The Rose of Dixie</b></p>
|
||||
<p><b>by</b></p>
|
||||
<p>A Member of the Well-known</p>
|
||||
<p>BULLOCH FAMILY, OF GEORGIA</p>
|
||||
<p>T. Roosevelt</p>
|
||||
<p><b>Bulloch Family, of Georgia</b></p>
|
||||
<p><b>T. Roosevelt</b></p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Now,” said Mullins, “New York is a big city, but we’ve got the detective business systematized. There are two ways we can go about finding your sister. We will try one of ’em first. You say she’s fifty-two?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“A little past,” said Meeks.</p>
|
||||
<p>The detective conducted the Westerner to a branch advertising office of one of the largest dailies. There he wrote the following “ad” and submitted it to Meeks:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wanted, at once—one hundred attractive chorus girls for a new musical comedy. Apply all day at No. ––––Broadway.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wanted, at once—one hundred attractive chorus girls for a new musical comedy. Apply all day at No. ⸻ Broadway.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Meeks was indignant.</p>
|
||||
<p>“My sister,” said he, “is a poor, hardworking, elderly woman. I do not see what aid an advertisement of this kind would be toward finding her.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right,” said the detective. “I guess you don’t know New York. But if you’ve got a grouch against this scheme we’ll try the other one. It’s a sure thing. But it’ll cost you more.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -42,7 +42,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Van Duyckink’s rather sombre eyes lighted up. He rose to his lank height and grasped Billy McMahan’s hand.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thank you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> McMahan,” he said, in his deep, serious tones. “I have been thinking of doing some work of that sort. I shall be glad of your assistance. It pleases me to have become acquainted with you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Billy walked back to his seat. His shoulder was tingling from the accolade bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon him in envy and new admiration. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> William Darragh McMahan trembled with ecstasy, so that her diamonds smote the eye almost with pain. And now it was apparent that at many tables there were those who suddenly remembered that they enjoyed <abbr>Mr.</abbr> McMahan’s acquaintance. He saw smiles and bows about him. He became enveloped in the aura of dizzy greatness. His campaign coolness deserted him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wine for that gang!” he commanded the waiter, pointing with his finger. “Wine over there. Wine to those three gents by that green bush. Tell ’em it’s on me. D––––n it! Wine for everybody!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wine for that gang!” he commanded the waiter, pointing with his finger. “Wine over there. Wine to those three gents by that green bush. Tell ’em it’s on me. D⸺n it! Wine for everybody!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The waiter ventured to whisper that it was perhaps inexpedient to carry out the order, in consideration of the dignity of the house and its custom.</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right,” said Billy, “if it’s against the rules. I wonder if ’twould do to send my friend Van Duyckink a bottle? No? Well, it’ll flow all right at the caffy tonight, just the same. It’ll be rubber boots for anybody who comes in there any time up to 2 A. M.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Billy McMahan was happy.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">Young lady</td>
|
||||
<td>Oh, I want to send a telegram at once, if you please. Give me about six blanks, please. <i epub:type="stage-direction">Writes about ten minutes.</i> How much will this amount to, please?</td>
|
||||
<td>Oh, I want to send a telegram at once, if you please. Give me about six blanks, please. <i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Writes about ten minutes.</i> How much will this amount to, please?</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">Clerk</td>
|
||||
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">Young lady</td>
|
||||
<td>Goodness gracious! I’ve only thirty cents with me. <i epub:type="stage-direction">Suspiciously.</i> How is it you charge so much, when the post-office only requires two cents?</td>
|
||||
<td>Goodness gracious! I’ve only thirty cents with me. <i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">Suspiciously.</i> How is it you charge so much, when the post-office only requires two cents?</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">Clerk</td>
|
||||
@ -34,7 +34,7 @@
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">Young lady</td>
|
||||
<td>Give me another blank, please: I guess that will be enough. <i epub:type="stage-direction">After five minutes’ hard work she produces the following: “Ring was awfully lovely. Come down as soon as you can. Mamie.”</i></td>
|
||||
<td>Give me another blank, please: I guess that will be enough. <i epub:type="z3998:stage-direction">After five minutes’ hard work she produces the following: “Ring was awfully lovely. Come down as soon as you can. Mamie.”</i></td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td epub:type="z3998:persona">Clerk</td>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -14,15 +14,15 @@
|
||||
<p>Bridger smiled again—strictly to himself—and this time he took out a little memorandum book and made a note of it. This he had no right to do without due explanation, and I said so.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s a new theory,” said Bridger, “that I picked up down in Ratona. I’ve been gathering support for it as I knock about. The world isn’t ripe for it yet, but—well I’ll tell you; and then you run your mind back along the people you’ve known and see what you make of it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>And so I cornered Bridger in a place where they have artificial palms and wine; and he told me the story which is here in my words and on his responsibility.</p>
|
||||
<p>One afternoon at three o’clock, on the island of Ratona, a boy raced along the beach screaming, “<i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, ahoy!”</p>
|
||||
<p>One afternoon at three o’clock, on the island of Ratona, a boy raced along the beach screaming, “<i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, ahoy!”</p>
|
||||
<p>Thus he made known the keenness of his hearing and the justice of his discrimination in pitch.</p>
|
||||
<p>He who first heard and made oral proclamation concerning the toot of an approaching steamer’s whistle, and correctly named the steamer, was a small hero in Ratona—until the next steamer came. Wherefore, there was rivalry among the barefoot youth of Ratona, and many fell victims to the softly blown conch shells of sloops which, as they enter harbour, sound surprisingly like a distant steamer’s signal. And some could name you the vessel when its call, in your duller ears, sounded no louder than the sigh of the wind through the branches of the coconut palms.</p>
|
||||
<p>But today he who proclaimed the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> gained his honours. Ratona bent its ear to listen; and soon the deep-tongued blast grew louder and nearer, and at length Ratona saw above the line of palms on the low “point” the two black funnels of the fruiter slowly creeping toward the mouth of the harbour.</p>
|
||||
<p>But today he who proclaimed the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> gained his honours. Ratona bent its ear to listen; and soon the deep-tongued blast grew louder and nearer, and at length Ratona saw above the line of palms on the low “point” the two black funnels of the fruiter slowly creeping toward the mouth of the harbour.</p>
|
||||
<p>You must know that Ratona is an island twenty miles off the south of a South American republic. It is a port of that republic; and it sleeps sweetly in a smiling sea, toiling not nor spinning; fed by the abundant tropics where all things “ripen, cease and fall toward the grave.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Eight hundred people dream life away in a green-embowered village that follows the horseshoe curve of its bijou harbour. They are mostly Spanish and Indian mestizos, with a shading of San Domingo Negroes, a lightening of pure-blood Spanish officials and a slight leavening of the froth of three or four pioneering white races. No steamers touch at Ratona save the fruit steamers which take on their banana inspectors there on their way to the coast. They leave Sunday newspapers, ice, quinine, bacon, watermelons and vaccine matter at the island and that is about all the touch Ratona gets with the world.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> paused at the mouth of the harbour, rolling heavily in the swell that sent the whitecaps racing beyond the smooth water inside. Already two dories from the village—one conveying fruit inspectors, the other going for what it could get—were halfway out to the steamer.</p>
|
||||
<p>The inspectors’ dory was taken on board with them, and the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> steamed away for the mainland for its load of fruit.</p>
|
||||
<p>The other boat returned to Ratona bearing a contribution from the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro’s</i> store of ice, the usual roll of newspapers and one passenger—Taylor Plunkett, sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> paused at the mouth of the harbour, rolling heavily in the swell that sent the whitecaps racing beyond the smooth water inside. Already two dories from the village—one conveying fruit inspectors, the other going for what it could get—were halfway out to the steamer.</p>
|
||||
<p>The inspectors’ dory was taken on board with them, and the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> steamed away for the mainland for its load of fruit.</p>
|
||||
<p>The other boat returned to Ratona bearing a contribution from the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro’s</i> store of ice, the usual roll of newspapers and one passenger—Taylor Plunkett, sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bridger, the United States consul at Ratona, was cleaning his rifle in the official shanty under a breadfruit tree twenty yards from the water of the harbour. The consul occupied a place somewhat near the tail of his political party’s procession. The music of the band wagon sounded very faintly to him in the distance. The plums of office went to others. Bridger’s share of the spoils—the consulship at Ratona—was little more than a prune—a dried prune from the boardinghouse department of the public crib. But $900 yearly was opulence in Ratona. Besides, Bridger had contracted a passion for shooting alligators in the lagoons near his consulate, and was not unhappy.</p>
|
||||
<p>He looked up from a careful inspection of his rifle lock and saw a broad man filling his doorway. A broad, noiseless, slow-moving man, sunburned almost to the brown of Vandyke. A man of forty-five, neatly clothed in homespun, with scanty light hair, a close-clipped brown-and-gray beard and pale-blue eyes expressing mildness and simplicity.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You are <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bridger, the consul,” said the broad man. “They directed me here. Can you tell me what those big bunches of things like gourds are in those trees that look like feather dusters along the edge of the water?”</p>
|
||||
@ -90,7 +90,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Did he get the right man?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“He did,” said the Consul.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And how did he know?” I inquired, being in a kind of bewilderment.</p>
|
||||
<p>“When he put Morgan in the dory,” answered Bridger, “the next day to take him aboard the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, this man Plunkett stopped to shake hands with me and I asked him the same question.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“When he put Morgan in the dory,” answered Bridger, “the next day to take him aboard the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, this man Plunkett stopped to shake hands with me and I asked him the same question.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bridger,’ said he, ‘I’m a Kentuckian, and I’ve seen a great deal of both men and animals. And I never yet saw a man that was overfond of horses and dogs but what was cruel to women.’ ”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="the-world-and-the-door" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The World and the Door</h2>
|
||||
<p>A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but the Spanish purser of the fruit steamer <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">El Carrero</i> swore to me by the shrine of Santa Guadalupe that he had the facts from the U. S. vice-consul at La Paz—a person who could not possibly have been cognizant of half of them.</p>
|
||||
<p>A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but the Spanish purser of the fruit steamer <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">El Carrero</i> swore to me by the shrine of Santa Guadalupe that he had the facts from the U. S. vice-consul at La Paz—a person who could not possibly have been cognizant of half of them.</p>
|
||||
<p>As for the adage quoted above, I take pleasure in puncturing it by affirming that I read in a purely fictional story the other day the line: “ ‘Be it so,’ said the policeman.” Nothing so strange has yet cropped out in Truth.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>When H. Ferguson Hedges, millionaire promoter, investor and man-about- New-York, turned his thoughts upon matters convivial, and word of it went “down the line,” bouncers took a precautionary turn at the Indian clubs, waiters put ironstone china on his favourite tables, cab drivers crowded close to the curbstone in front of all-night cafés, and careful cashiers in his regular haunts charged up a few bottles to his account by way of preface and introduction.</p>
|
||||
@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
|
||||
<p>From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and sloop to Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a tramp bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the discursive skipper from his course.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land—La Paz the Beautiful, a little harbourless town smothered in a living green ribbon that banded the foot of a cloud-piercing mountain. Here the little steamer stopped to tread water while the captain’s dory took him ashore that he might feel the pulse of the coconut market. Merriam went too, with his suit case, and remained.</p>
|
||||
<p>Kalb, the vice-consul, a Græco-Armenian citizen of the United States, born in Hessen-Darmstadt, and educated in Cincinnati ward primaries, considered all Americans his brothers and bankers. He attached himself to Merriam’s elbow, introduced him to everyone in La Paz who wore shoes, borrowed ten dollars and went back to his hammock.</p>
|
||||
<p>There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had dropped out of the world into the triste Peruvian town. At Kalb’s introductory: “Shake hands with––––,” he had obediently exchanged manual salutations with a German doctor, one French and two Italian merchants, and three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men, rubber men, mahogany men—anything but men of living tissue.</p>
|
||||
<p>There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had dropped out of the world into the triste Peruvian town. At Kalb’s introductory: “Shake hands with ⸻,” he had obediently exchanged manual salutations with a German doctor, one French and two Italian merchants, and three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men, rubber men, mahogany men—anything but men of living tissue.</p>
|
||||
<p>After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front <i xml:lang="es">galeria</i> with Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank Scotch “smoke.” The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the floodgates of a stream of long-dammed discourse, overjoyed to have captured an audience that had not suffered under a hundred repetitions of his views and theories.</p>
|
||||
<p>“One year more,” said Bibb, “and I’ll go back to God’s country. Oh, I know it’s pretty here, and you get dolce far niente handed to you in chunks, but this country wasn’t made for a white man to live in. You’ve got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you. Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant is here. When any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to her house and propose. It’s nicer to be rejected by <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant than it is to be drowned. And they say drowning is a delightful sensation.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Many like her here?” asked Merriam.</p>
|
||||
@ -52,8 +52,8 @@
|
||||
<p>Merriam and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant were very happy. He announced their engagement at the Hotel Orilla del <abbr>Mar.</abbr> Eight foreigners and four native Astors pounded his back and shouted insincere congratulations at him. Pedrito, the Castilian-mannered barkeep, was goaded to extra duty until his agility would have turned a Boston cherry-phosphate clerk a pale lilac with envy.</p>
|
||||
<p>They were both very happy. According to the strange mathematics of the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when united became only half as dense instead of darker. They shut the world out and bolted the doors. Each was the other’s world. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant lived again. The remembering look left her eyes. Merriam was with her every moment that was possible. On a little plateau under a grove of palms and calabash trees they were going to build a fairy bungalow. They were to be married in two months. Many hours of the day they had their heads together over the house plans. Their joint capital would set up a business in fruit or woods that would yield a comfortable support. “Good night, my world,” would say <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant every evening when Merriam left her for his hotel. They were very happy. Their love had, circumstantially, that element of melancholy in it that it seems to require to attain its supremest elevation. And it seemed that their mutual great misfortune or sin was a bond that nothing could sever.</p>
|
||||
<p>One day a steamer hove in the offing. Barelegged and bare-shouldered La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day and four-o’clock tea.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she was the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the shallow water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain and two passengers, ploughing their way through the deep sand toward the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of the passengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to strawberry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever, H. Ferguson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten feet away.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she was the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the shallow water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain and two passengers, ploughing their way through the deep sand toward the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of the passengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to strawberry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever, H. Ferguson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten feet away.</p>
|
||||
<p>When Hedges saw Merriam his face flushed a dark red. Then he shouted in his old, bluff way: “Hello, Merriam. Glad to see you. Didn’t expect to find you out here. Quinby, this is my old friend Merriam, of New York—Merriam, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Quinby.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Merriam gave Hedges and then Quinby an ice-cold hand. “Br-r-r-r!” said Hedges. “But you’ve got a frappéd flipper! Man, you’re not well. You’re as yellow as a Chinaman. Malarial here? Steer us to a bar if there is such a thing, and let’s take a prophylactic.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Merriam, still half comatose, led them toward the Hotel Orilla del <abbr class="eoc">Mar.</abbr></p>
|
||||
@ -67,9 +67,9 @@
|
||||
<p>Bibb was sitting on the shady side of the gallery waiting for the eleven-o’clock breakfast. Presently Merriam came out and joined him. His eye was strangely bright.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bibb, my boy,” said he, slowly waving his hand, “do you see those mountains and that sea and sky and sunshine?—they’re mine, Bibbsy—all mine.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You go in,” said Bibb, “and take eight grains of quinine, right away. It won’t do in this climate for a man to get to thinking he’s Rockefeller, or James O’Neill either.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Inside, the purser was untying a great roll of newspapers, many of them weeks old, gathered in the lower ports by the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> to be distributed at casual stopping-places. Thus do the beneficent voyagers scatter news and entertainment among the prisoners of sea and mountains.</p>
|
||||
<p>Inside, the purser was untying a great roll of newspapers, many of them weeks old, gathered in the lower ports by the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> to be distributed at casual stopping-places. Thus do the beneficent voyagers scatter news and entertainment among the prisoners of sea and mountains.</p>
|
||||
<p>Tio Pancho, the hotel proprietor, set his great silver-rimmed <i xml:lang="es">anteojos</i> upon his nose and divided the papers into a number of smaller rolls. A barefooted muchacho dashed in, desiring the post of messenger.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="es">Bien venido</i>,” said Tio Pancho. “This to Señora Conant; that to el Doctor S-S-Schlegel—<i xml:lang="es">Dios</i>! what a name to say!—that to Señor Davis—one for Don Alberto. These two for the <i xml:lang="es">Casa de Huespedes</i>, <i xml:lang="es">Numero 6</i>, <i xml:lang="es">en la calle de las Buenas Gracias</i>. And say to them all, muchacho, that the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> sails for Panama at three this afternoon. If any have letters to send by the post, let them come quickly, that they may first pass through the <i xml:lang="es">correo</i>.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="es">Bien venido</i>,” said Tio Pancho. “This to Señora Conant; that to el Doctor S-S-Schlegel—<i xml:lang="es">Dios</i>! what a name to say!—that to Señor Davis—one for Don Alberto. These two for the <i xml:lang="es">Casa de Huespedes</i>, <i xml:lang="es">Numero 6</i>, <i xml:lang="es">en la calle de las Buenas Gracias</i>. And say to them all, muchacho, that the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> sails for Panama at three this afternoon. If any have letters to send by the post, let them come quickly, that they may first pass through the <i xml:lang="es">correo</i>.”</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant received her roll of newspapers at four o’clock. The boy was late in delivering them, because he had been deflected from his duty by an iguana that crossed his path and to which he immediately gave chase. But it made no hardship, for she had no letters to send.</p>
|
||||
<p>She was idling in a hammock in the patio of the house that she occupied, half awake, half happily dreaming of the paradise that she and Merriam had created out of the wrecks of their pasts. She was content now for the horizon of that shimmering sea to be the horizon of her life. They had shut out the world and closed the door.</p>
|
||||
<p>Merriam was coming to her house at seven, after his dinner at the hotel. She would put on a white dress and an apricot-coloured lace mantilla, and they would walk an hour under the coconut palms by the lagoon. She smiled contentedly, and chose a paper at random from the roll the boy had brought.</p>
|
||||
@ -100,8 +100,8 @@
|
||||
<p>She was glad to see the bulky, white-clad figure of Tio Pancho standing alone on the gallery.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tio Pancho,” she said, with a charming smile, “may I trouble you to ask <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Merriam to come out for just a few moments that I may speak with him?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Tio Pancho bowed as an elephant bows.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Buenas tardes, Señora Conant,” he said, as a cavalier talks. And then he went on, less at his ease:</p>
|
||||
<p>“But does not the señora know that Señor Merriam sailed on the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> for Panama at three o’clock of this afternoon?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="es">Buenas tardes</i>, Señora Conant,” he said, as a cavalier talks. And then he went on, less at his ease:</p>
|
||||
<p>“But does not the señora know that Señor Merriam sailed on the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> for Panama at three o’clock of this afternoon?”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Voilà, Gray Wolf,” cries Couteau, the bartender. “How many victims today? There is no blood upon your hands. Has the Gray Wolf forgotten how to bite?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sacrè Bleu, Mille Tonnerre, by George,” hisses the Gray Wolf. “Monsieur Couteau, you are bold indeed to speak to me thus.</p>
|
||||
<p>“By Ventre <abbr>St.</abbr> Gris! I have not even dined today. Spoils indeed. There is no living in Paris now. But one rich American have I garroted in a fortnight.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bah! those Democrats. They have ruined the country. With their income tax and their free trade, they have destroyed the millionaire business. Carrambo! Diable! D–n it!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bah! those Democrats. They have ruined the country. With their income tax and their free trade, they have destroyed the millionaire business. <i xml:lang="es">Carrambo!</i> <i xml:lang="fr">Diable!</i> D⸺n it!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Hist!” suddenly says Chamounix the ragpicker, who is worth 20,000,000 francs, “someone comes!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The cellar door opened and a man crept softly down the rickety steps. The crowd watches him with silent awe.</p>
|
||||
<p>He went to the bar, laid his card on the counter, bought a drink of absinthe, and then drawing from his pocket a little mirror, set it up on the counter and proceeded to don a false beard and hair and paint his face into wrinkles, until he closely resembled an old man seventy-one years of age.</p>
|
||||
@ -36,9 +36,9 @@
|
||||
<p>Gray Wolf slipped cautiously to the bar and examined the card left by the newcomer.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Holy Saint Bridget!” he exclaims. “It is Tictocq, the detective.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ten minutes later a beautiful woman enters the cellar. Tenderly nurtured, and accustomed to every luxury that money could procure, she had, when a young vivandière at the Convent of Saint Susan de la Montarde, run away with the Gray Wolf, fascinated by his many crimes and the knowledge that his business never allowed him to scrape his feet in the hall or snore.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Parbleu, Marie,” snarls the Gray Wolf. “Que voulez vous? Avez-vous le beau cheval de mon frère, oule joli chien de votre père?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“No, no, Gray Wolf,” shouts the motley group of assassins, rogues and pickpockets, even their hardened hearts appalled at his fearful words. “Mon Dieu! You cannot be so cruel!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tiens!” shouts the Gray Wolf, now maddened to desperation, and drawing his gleaming knife. “Voilà! Canaille! Tout le monde, carte blanche enbonpoint sauve que peut entre nous revenez nous a nous moutons!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="fr">Parbleu</i>, Marie,” snarls the Gray Wolf. “<i xml:lang="fr">Que voulez vous? Avez-vous le beau cheval de mon frère, oule joli chien de votre père?</i>”</p>
|
||||
<p>“No, no, Gray Wolf,” shouts the motley group of assassins, rogues and pickpockets, even their hardened hearts appalled at his fearful words. “<i xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu!</i> You cannot be so cruel!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="fr">Tiens!</i>” shouts the Gray Wolf, now maddened to desperation, and drawing his gleaming knife. “<i xml:lang="fr">Voilà! Canaille! Tout le monde, carte blanche enbonpoint sauve que peut entre nous revenez nous a nous moutons!</i>”</p>
|
||||
<p>The horrified sans-culottes shrink back in terror as the Gray Wolf seizes Maria by the hair and cuts her into twenty-nine pieces, each exactly the same size.</p>
|
||||
<p>As he stands with reeking hands above the corpse, amid a deep silence, the old, gray-bearded man who has been watching the scene springs forward, tears off his false beard and locks, and Tictocq, the famous French detective, stands before them.</p>
|
||||
<p>Spellbound and immovable, the denizens of the cellar gaze at the greatest modern detective as he goes about the customary duties of his office.</p>
|
||||
@ -46,14 +46,14 @@
|
||||
<p>“Mon Dieu!” he mutters, “it is as I feared—human blood.”</p>
|
||||
<p>He then enters rapidly in a memorandum book the result of his investigations, and leaves the cellar.</p>
|
||||
<p>Tictocq bends his rapid steps in the direction of the headquarters of the Paris gendarmerie, but suddenly pausing, he strikes his hand upon his brow with a gesture of impatience.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Mille tonnerre,” he mutters. “I should have asked the name of that man with the knife in his hand.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="fr">Mille tonnerre</i>,” he mutters. “I should have asked the name of that man with the knife in his hand.”</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>It is reception night at the palace of the Duchess Valerie du Bellairs.</p>
|
||||
<p>The apartments are flooded with a mellow light from paraffine candles in solid silver candelabra.</p>
|
||||
<p>The company is the most aristocratic and wealthy in Paris.</p>
|
||||
<p>Three or four brass bands are playing behind a portière between the coal shed, and also behind time. Footmen in gay-laced livery bring in beer noiselessly and carry out apple-peelings dropped by the guests.</p>
|
||||
<p>Valerie, seventh Duchess du Bellairs, leans back on a solid gold ottoman on eiderdown cushions, surrounded by the wittiest, the bravest, and the handsomest courtiers in the capital.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah, madame,” said the Prince Champvilliers, of Palais Royale, corner of Seventy-third Street, “as Montesquiaux says, ‘Rien de plus bon tutti frutti’—Youth seems your inheritance. You are tonight the most beautiful, the wittiest in your own salon. I can scarce believe my own senses, when I remember that thirty-one years ago you—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah, madame,” said the Prince Champvilliers, of Palais Royale, corner of Seventy-third Street, “as Montesquiaux says, ‘<i xml:lang="fr">Rien de plus bon tutti frutti</i>’—Youth seems your inheritance. You are tonight the most beautiful, the wittiest in your own salon. I can scarce believe my own senses, when I remember that thirty-one years ago you—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Saw it off!” says the Duchess peremptorily.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Prince bows low, and drawing a jewelled dagger, stabs himself to the heart.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The displeasure of your grace is worse than death,” he says, as he takes his overcoat and hat from a corner of the mantelpiece and leaves the room.</p>
|
||||
@ -81,14 +81,14 @@
|
||||
<p>Old François Beongfallong, the great astronomer, who is studying the sidereal spheres from his attic window in the Rue de Bologny, shudders as he turns his telescope upon the solitary figure upon the spire.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sacrè Bleu!” he hisses between his new celluloid teeth. “It is Tictocq, the detective. I wonder whom he is following now?”</p>
|
||||
<p>While Tictocq is watching with lynx-like eyes the hill of Montmartre, he suddenly hears a heavy breathing beside him, and turning, gazes into the ferocious eyes of the Gray Wolf.</p>
|
||||
<p>Carnaignole Cusheau had put on his W. U. Tel. <abbr>Co.</abbr> climbers and climbed the steeple.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Parbleu, monsieur,” says Tictocq. “To whom am I indebted for the honor of this visit?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Carnaignole Cusheau had put on his <abbr>W. U.</abbr> <abbr>Tel.</abbr> <abbr>Co.</abbr> climbers and climbed the steeple.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="fr">Parbleu</i>, monsieur,” says Tictocq. “To whom am I indebted for the honor of this visit?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Gray Wolf smiled softly and depreciatingly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You are Tictocq, the detective?” he said.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then listen. I am the murderer of Marie Cusheau. She was my wife and she had cold feet and ate onions. What was I to do? Yet life is sweet to me. I do not wish to be guillotined. I have heard that you are on my track. Is it true that the case is in your hands?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It is.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thank le bon Dieu, then, I am saved.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thank <i xml:lang="fr">le bon Dieu</i>, then, I am saved.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Gray Wolf carefully adjusts the climbers on his feet and descends the spire.</p>
|
||||
<p>Tictocq takes out his notebook and writes in it.</p>
|
||||
<p>“At last,” he says, “I have a clue.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -51,11 +51,11 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Let be,’ says I. ‘Let’s have a stationary verdict. If I keep on appealing this way they’ll have me shot about ten days before I was captured. No, I haven’t got any fine-cut.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“They sends me over to the calaboza with a detachment of coloured postal-telegraph boys carrying Enfield rifles, and I am locked up in a kind of brick bakery. The temperature in there was just about the kind mentioned in the cooking recipes that call for a quick oven.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then I gives a silver dollar to one of the guards to send for the United States consul. He comes around in pajamas, with a pair of glasses on his nose and a dozen or two inside of him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I’m to be shot in two weeks,’ says I. ‘And although I’ve made a memorandum of it, I don’t seem to get it off my mind. You want to call up Uncle Sam on the cable as quick as you can and get him all worked up about it. Have ’em send the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Kentucky</i> and the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Kearsarge</i> and the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Oregon</i> down right away. That’ll be about enough battleships; but it wouldn’t hurt to have a couple of cruisers and a torpedo-boat destroyer, too. And—say, if Dewey isn’t busy, better have him come along on the fastest one of the fleet.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I’m to be shot in two weeks,’ says I. ‘And although I’ve made a memorandum of it, I don’t seem to get it off my mind. You want to call up Uncle Sam on the cable as quick as you can and get him all worked up about it. Have ’em send the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Kentucky</i> and the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Kearsarge</i> and the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Oregon</i> down right away. That’ll be about enough battleships; but it wouldn’t hurt to have a couple of cruisers and a torpedo-boat destroyer, too. And—say, if Dewey isn’t busy, better have him come along on the fastest one of the fleet.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Now, see here, O’Keefe,’ says the consul, getting the best of a hiccup, ‘what do you want to bother the State Department about this matter for?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ says I; ‘I’m to be shot in two weeks. Did you think I said I was going to a lawn-party? And it wouldn’t hurt of Roosevelt could get the Japs to send down the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Yellowyamtiskookum</i> or the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Ogotosingsing</i> or some other first-class cruisers to help. It would make me feel safer.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Now, what you want,’ says the consul, ‘is not to get excited. I’ll send you over some chewing tobacco and some banana fritters when I go back. The United States can’t interfere in this. You know you were caught insurging against the government, and you’re subject to the laws of this country. To tell the truth, I’ve had an intimation from the State Department—unofficially, of course—that whenever a soldier of fortune demands a fleet of gunboats in a case of revolutionary <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">katzenjammer</i>, I should cut the cable, give him all the tobacco he wants, and after he’s shot take his clothes, if they fit me, for part payment of my salary.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Consul,’ says I to him, ‘this is a serious question. You are representing Uncle Sam. This ain’t any little international tomfoolery, like a universal peace congress or the christening of the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Shamrock <span epub:type="z3998:roman">IV</span></i>. I’m an American citizen and I demand protection. I demand the Mosquito fleet, and Schley, and the Atlantic squadron, and Bob Evans, and General E. Byrd Grubb, and two or three protocols. What are you going to do about it?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ says I; ‘I’m to be shot in two weeks. Did you think I said I was going to a lawn-party? And it wouldn’t hurt of Roosevelt could get the Japs to send down the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Yellowyamtiskookum</i> or the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Ogotosingsing</i> or some other first-class cruisers to help. It would make me feel safer.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Now, what you want,’ says the consul, ‘is not to get excited. I’ll send you over some chewing tobacco and some banana fritters when I go back. The United States can’t interfere in this. You know you were caught insurging against the government, and you’re subject to the laws of this country. To tell the truth, I’ve had an intimation from the State Department—unofficially, of course—that whenever a soldier of fortune demands a fleet of gunboats in a case of revolutionary <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">katzenjammer</i>, I should cut the cable, give him all the tobacco he wants, and after he’s shot take his clothes, if they fit me, for part payment of my salary.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Consul,’ says I to him, ‘this is a serious question. You are representing Uncle Sam. This ain’t any little international tomfoolery, like a universal peace congress or the christening of the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Shamrock <span epub:type="z3998:roman">IV</span></i>. I’m an American citizen and I demand protection. I demand the Mosquito fleet, and Schley, and the Atlantic squadron, and Bob Evans, and General E. Byrd Grubb, and two or three protocols. What are you going to do about it?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Nothing doing,’ says the consul.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Be off with you, then,’ says I, out of patience with him, ‘and send me Doc Millikin. Ask Doc to come and see me.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Doc comes and looks through the bars at me, surrounded by dirty soldiers, with even my shoes and canteen confiscated, and he looks mightily pleased.</p>
|
||||
@ -66,7 +66,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘For a Yank,’ says Doc, putting on his specs and talking more mild, ‘you ain’t so bad. If you had come from below the line I reckon I would have liked you right smart. Now since your country has gone back on you, you have to come to the old doctor whose cotton you burned and whose mules who stole and whose niggers you freed to help you. Ain’t that so, Yank?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘It is,’ says I heartily, ‘and let’s have a diagnosis of the case right away, for in two weeks’ time all you can do is to hold an autopsy and I don’t want to be amputated if I can help it.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Now,’ says Doc, businesslike, ‘it’s easy enough for you to get out of this scrape. Money’ll do it. You’ve got to pay a long string of ’em from General Pomposo down to this anthropoid ape guarding your door. About $10,000 will do the trick. Have you got the money?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Me?’ says I. ‘I’ve got one Chili dollar, two real pieces, and a medio.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Me?’ says I. ‘I’ve got one Chili dollar, two <i xml:lang="es">real</i> pieces, and a medio.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Then if you’ve any last words, utter ’em,’ says that old reb. ‘The roster of your financial budget sounds quite much to me like the noise of a requiem.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Change the treatment,’ says I. ‘I admit that I’m short. Call a consultation or use radium or smuggle me in some saws or something.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Yank,’ says Doc Millikin, ‘I’ve a good notion to help you. There’s only one government in the world that can get you out of this difficulty; and that’s the Confederate States of America, the grandest nation that ever existed.’</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -57,7 +57,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“No use,” he said, grimly. “They’re the Hethcote sables, all right. You’ll have to turn ’em over, Moll, but they ain’t too good for you if they cost a million.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Molly, with anguish in her face, hung upon the Kid’s arm.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, Kiddy, you’ve broke my heart,” she said. “I was so proud of you—and now they’ll do you—and where’s our happiness gone?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Go home,” said the Kid, wildly. “Come on, Ransom—take the furs. Let’s get away from here. Wait a minute—I’ve a good mind to—no, I’ll be d–––– if I can do it—run along, Moll—I’m ready, Ransom.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Go home,” said the Kid, wildly. “Come on, Ransom—take the furs. Let’s get away from here. Wait a minute—I’ve a good mind to—no, I’ll be d⸺ if I can do it—run along, Moll—I’m ready, Ransom.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Around the corner of a lumberyard came Policeman Kohen on his way to his beat along the river. The detective signed to him for assistance. Kohen joined the group. Ransom explained.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sure,” said Kohen. “I hear about those saples dat vas stole. You say you have dem here?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Policeman Kohen took the end of Molly’s late scarf in his hands and looked at it closely.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
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