just as if she'd caught _me_ in a lie. But I let it pass and
apologized, I was so glad to find she was a fake. And Ma promised to
leave them low circus people alone for a spell and come back to the
White Kittens again. I then announced I was going out and fire Anna. At
that a look of terror came over Ma's face, and she restrained me by the
sleeve.
"Be careful how you go near that kitchen!" she says warningly.
"For heaven's sakes, Ma!" I says. "What's wronger than usual out there?"
"I dunno, but I think something is!" she says. "I believe it's a bomb!"
"A bomb!" I says. "Whatter you mean?"
"Anna is out to market," says Ma, "and the one with the black beard like
poor Kiskoff's brought it. 'For Anna,' says he, and shoved it at me, and
snook off down the stairs like a murderer."
"Brought _what?"_ I says.
"The bomb, of course!" says Ma, impatient herself.
"How do you know it's one?" I says, a little uneasy and wishing I had
fired Anna before she got this swell chance of firing us.
"Well, it looks just like the one in the picture where them three
Germans blew theirselves up in the newspaper!" says she. "And it ticks."
"My Gawd!" I says. "Where is the thing?"
"On the kitchen-table," says Ma.
"Well," I says, bravely. "I think I aught to take a look at it anyways."
"I wished you wouldn't," says she. But she came down the hall after me
like the loyal mother she is, and the two of us stopped at the
threshhold as the poet says.
And there, sure enough, in the middle of the spotless oilcloth on the
kitchen table lay a mighty funny looking package, about the size of a
dish-pan and done up in that black oil-cloth them foreigners seem so
fond of. And between yells from that radical parrot, who commenced his
"I love Anarchy!" the moment he set eyes on us, we could hear that
evil-looking package tick as plain as day.
Well, what with a mother and a father both practically born on the
centre trapese and used myself to taking chances since early childhood,
I don't believe I'm more of a coward than most. But I will admit my
heart commenced going too quick at that sight and the radical bird was
as usual loose in the place, and didn't make my nerves any easier. But
a stitch in time often saves a whole pair of silk ones, and remembering
this, I took some quick action. I turned up my georgette crepe sleeves,
and the front of my skirt so's not to splash it, and made straight for
the sink, keeping my eye on the centre-table all the while.
"Look out!" screams Ma. "What are you going to do?"
"Throw cold water on it!" I says. And filling the dish-pan I took a long
sling with it, and pretty near drowned the kitchen table, to say nothing
of the scare I threw into Frits. As soon as he quit, we listened again,
but my efforts had been in vain, for the thing was still ticking--slow,
loud ticks, and very alarming.
"No good!" I says, sadly. "We'll have to take severer measures!"
"Well, what'll they be?" says Ma.
"There's a plain-clothes cop outside looking for trouble," says I
grimly, "and here is where I hand him a little," says I.
And then, without waiting even to roll down the georgettes, I hurried to
the window and looked out. Like most cops, he couldn't be seen at first
when wanted, but finally he came into view and I tried to catch his
attention, but was unable to at first. But finally he heard me and
looked up, and I beckoned.
"Bomb!" I says. "Hurry up!"
And did he hurry? He did! I would not of believed a man his size could
do it, but he must of beat the elevator, for it never brought me up that
fast. When I let him in, his lack of surprise was the most alarming
thing which had yet been pulled. He evidently _expected_ a bomb to be
here.
"By golly, we'll get them now!" he says triumphantly. "We been watching
this place for two months on account of having it straight that there is
a bunch of Bolshevist bomb makers in this building or the next one, and
this is the first time anything has stirred! Where is your bomb? Lead me
to it!"
IV
WELL, I didn't lead him exactly. Since he was so set up about it, I let
him go ahead, but Ma and me followed close behind and told him the way
and everything. When he came to the kitchen door Frits let out a yell
"Anarchy! I love Anarchy!" and you aught to of seen the cop stagger in
his tracks for a minute. But he came to immediate, and we all stood at
attention while he give that bundle the once-over. It was ticking away
as strong as ever.
"Hey! get me a pail of water, quick!" says the cop. I did it, and then,
I will certainly give him credit for it, he grabbed up the bundle and
plunged it in with both hands just as Anna come in at the door.
Believe you me, I never saw anything so funny as what happened then. The
cop took his hands out the water and stood there dripping and staring at
her.
"Hello, Anna!" he says. "What you doing here?"
"Ay bane working!" says Anna. "How you bane, Mike?"
"Pretty good!" he says. "But kind of busy with a bomb we got here. Stand
off while I take a look. It has quit ticking and I guess it's drownded!"
He lifted the wet bundle out, and the minute Anna sees it she set up a
yell as good as one of her pet parrot's.
"That bane mine!" she says, making a grab for it. But Mike held her
off.
"Yours, eh?" he says, severely. _"Yours!_ Well, we'll just have a look
at it, my girl!"
With which he undid the string, unfolded the oilcloth, and there was a
big new alarm-clock with the price still on it--2 beans--and a round,
heavy cheese!
"Bane youst a present from may feller!" says Anna coyly.
Well, did we feel cheap? We did. And in addition to that Mike, the smart
and brave young cop, was disappointed something terrible.
"Who is this Anna?" I asked him soon's I got my breath.
"Oh, a Swede girl--I know her a long time," he says foolishly. "Used to
entertain me in the basement when I was on the regular force. She's
_some_ cook! You're lucky to have her."
And just then this ex-pro-German Bolshevist cook we was so lucky to have
starts to yell again!
"Frits! Oy! Frits!" she says. "He bane gone! Make un yoump back!"
And sure enough, there was Frits on the fire-escape of the flat next to
us. He had give one hop and a flutter and got across, where he sat,
silent for once in his life and giving us the evil-eye.
"Yoump back," says the cook in passionate entriety. "Yoump back to your
Aniky that you love! All day you yell you love may an' now you leave
may!"
And as she said them words still another weight was lifted from my
shoulders, although not from hers, for instead of jumping back, that
radical bird which it seemed was not a radical after all and acting like
the most conventional parrot in the world, commenced to climb up the
fire-escape of the other apartment house, like he was leaving us
forever.
"Yoump!" implored Anna, but he just climbed, instead.
"Here, wait, and I'll get him!" says Mike. "Glad to do it, Anna. I can
step across easy enough!"
Anna held his coat, and he swung hisself over to the other side almost
as neat as a picture-actor, and commenced following that mean-hearted
bird up and up, story after story, until that animal led him in at a
open window about three flats above. We waited in silence and, believe
you me, I had about commenced to believe that bird and he was never
coming out again, when down comes Mike, the bird tucked into his vest,
his face simply purple with excitement. I never seen any acrobat work
swifter or quieter than he did. He landed on the kitchen floor and
closed the window behind him before he even give Anna her bird.
"The telephone!--quick! The telephone--headquarters at once--I've got
that guy this time at last! And to think that a damn bird had to find
him for me!"
And it was the truth. Frits, far from being an alien, was a good little
American parrot and had actually led the cop to the very place he had
been looking for all that while, and they arrested two guys and
everything!
And after they got through the phone rang and there was Goldringer's
voice.
"The aeroplane has come, Miss La Tour," he says. "When will you be
over?"
"First thing in the morning!" I says, relieved to think of a quiet day
ahead. Ain't it grand to have work you love to do? It's so restful!
VI
THE GLAD HAND
I
I SEE a piece in the paper where that ex-leading headliner of the old
German Big-Time Circuit, William Hohenzollern, him that used to appear
in the spiritualistic act known as "Me and God," claims he had no hand
in starting those fireworks in Europe which has recently ended in a
Fourth of July celebration. And although myself a good American and
looking with doubt upon any statement known to be German, I am sort of
inclined to believe him. At any rate, to believe that he was not the
whole cheese in the matter, but only a sort of limp limberger, or swiss,
and full of holes. Because it's my experience personally myself, that a
strong personality with a clean-cut idea can usually get a thing done if
they elect theirself boss and stick on the job until it is finished, but
if they call a committee meeting and discuss the action before them,
the whole idea is likely to get stalled. Why, look at Congress! Not that
I, being a mere lady of the female sect, know why or how they get
stalled, or on just what. But it's a cinch they do and are, and you can
prove it by any editorial page in the country. And it seems that Billy
the Bone-head, confessed to the reporter, which managed to get this
Sunday story printed, that a committee meeting of Yonkers or something
was called about the war, he, Bill the Badman, not having the bean to go
to it alone, and it was them ruined the war, or so he says. Which goes
to show that not alone in the theatrical and moving-picture worlds do
the heads of departments alibi their flivvers, but also in the
King-business, and it's a habit which may even yet ruin the former, as
it pretty near has the latter, unless they quit shirking and deliver
better goods. Because if the Head Has-Been had had any real thinker and
had thought up the war all by his little self and forced it on his
book-keeper, cashier and so forth, he might of got away with it like
Napoleon and Rockefeller and Eva Tanguay and a lot of them which has
thrust riches and success upon theirselves.
But no committee can ever do that sort of thing. It takes a
single-handed personality, and I guess mabe the biggest bluff Germany
has had to confess to is her ex-leader. He seems the A-1 example of how
true it is that well-known tailors' ad, "Clothes make the man." Also it
inspires me to invent a quotation to hang beside the famous one of
Shakespeare's, I think it is "Do it now!" which you see so often, mine
being "Do it yourself!" Well, you will if you are the able one on a
committee. Everybody which has served on one knows that every committee
is composed of the one which does all the work and three to six others
which uses most of their vitality and imagination in thinking up excuses
and offering them.
Well, anyways, the foregoing is why I simply eliminated the other
members of my Theatrical Ladies' Committee of Welcome to Our Returning
Heroes. And eliminating them was so simple, too. I just didn't call any
committee. And why would I, what with the knowledge I had gained through
former experiences? Believe you me, a lady which learns by experience
is a great little time-saver, although admittedly rare, but in my line
you don't fall out of a air-plane more than once, and any successful
picture actress and dancer like myself will tell you the same. So as to
committees, none for me, thanks just the same, as the man said to the
soda clerk the morning of July first, 1919 A. D., which is Latin for
Anti-Drinking. Not that I will ever again try to get into the
strong-character class with the aforementioned celebrities, for a
reputation for doing anything well is as good as a signed contract to do
it. And my advice to young girls is, don't let it be known you can do
anything well or you'll have to deliver constantly. Look as ignorant as
possible whenever anything is suggested except the thing you are burning
to get after, or your time will be taken up with a lot of useless
side-lines that get you nowheres. There is a person for every job if you
just let the job alone until the right person finds it. Did you ever
notice the way simps which can't do a thing always get it done for them?
You have! Well--from this on, here's where I look like a poor fish
whenever anybody outside of a motion-picture magnate or a theatrical
manager makes a noise like work to be done.
All the amateur stuff can be taken care of by the sweet womanly women
who ain't got anybody to support except their dressmakers, and not by a
mere professional earning near a hundred thousand a year like I. My
final lesson on working with volunteer boards and committees is a
un-wept memory, and believe you me, that Chateau Terry battle had
nothing on some of the War Relief Committee board rooms I seen in
executive session and keep the home fires burning is right, we done it,
especially the White Kittens Belgian Relief, which it's a fact we nearly
split over whether we'd print our postcard appeals on pink or yellow
cards!
Well, anyways, I suppose these relief committees was a big help to them
that was on them if not to any one else, and after all a lot of money
somehow got left to do good with after expenses was paid. But the
biggest relief I know of come from relieving ourselfs of them relief
committees, and the last of all was the Welcome Home one.
I wouldn't of gone on it in the first place only I was so low in my
mind. And who wouldn't be a little low even with my cheery disposition
after such a morning as I went through, first commencing with the loss
of Maude.
Not that I had ever liked her nor 'Frisco, her husband, either, but
losing her was worse than living with her any day, and when Ma come in
and broke the news I wasn't in any mood for it, struggling as I was over
the joint contract which Goldringer had just sent on from Los Angeles as
a nice surprise and welcome for Jim which we were expecting to hear he
would be leaving France any day now. It called for seventy-five thousand
per each of us for six joint pictures, our expenses to the coast, and I
was holding out for a car while there and a special publicity man of our
own to be paid by them, but chosen by us, meaning Rosco, which has so
faithfully let the public know every time I sneezed these last five
years and has a way of disguising a two column ad so's the editor thinks
it's a news item.
Well, anyways, I was reading through all that foreign language portion
of this contract and had waded past about a page of "to wit, viz.: party
of the first part" stuff, which sounds like it didn't mean anything,
but is where they sometimes slip one over on you, when in come Ma with a
big home-made cruller partly in her hand and partly in her face. She was
dreadfull agitated but had to get rid of the first part of the second
party before she could speak, and I put in a few seconds of watchful
waiting, wondering how could she do it, for Ma had put on at least
thirty lbs. the last few months and believe you me, she was no slif
before then, weighing some amount she would never tell just what and
anybody knows what that means with a woman. But up to just recent she
had gone through spells where she was making at least the faint motions
of dieting, or when not that, sighing and saying she hadn't really ought
to over every second helping but taking it. Do you get me? You do!
Since she had heard Jim was coming back, however, she had taken to
eating everything in sight regardless. It give me real pleasure to think
of any mother-in-law feeling that way about her daughter's husband and
dancing partner coming back, for with many mothers it is nothing of the
kind. So I made no remarks upon the cruller, and finally Ma give a gulp
and gasped out the bad news.
"Maude is gone!" she says.
"Gone?" says I. "Whatter you mean, gone?"
"I can't find her no place!" says Ma. "And I looked everywheres!"
This give me a most unpleasant feeling down my back, and I got to my
feet in a hurry.
"Are you sure she ain't hid?" I says, "like the last time," I says.
"Come and see for yourself!" says Ma, and I went, you can bet on that!
And sure enough, she wasn't in the box. Ma lifted the wire off the top
and lifted out the two old sofa cushions we had put in for comfort and
only Maude's husband, 'Frisco, was there. He was as usual lying in about
five coils like a boiler-heater, with his wicked-looking flat head on
the top, and he stuck out his oyster fork of a tongue, and give us a
little hiss, much as to say, why was we always disturbing him. But no
Maude.
"Ma!" I began, catching a guilty look on her face. "Ma Gilligan, you
left that snake out again! After all the times I ast you not to!"
"Well, it was just for a minute!" she says. "I was playing with her, and
then I thought maybe the crullers I had made was cool by then and I went
and got a few and when I come back she was gone!"
"Well, she's got to be found, that's all!" I snapped. "All this comes
from you insisting on keeping in with them low circus people and
boarding their acts for them!"
"But Madame Estelle had to stay with her husband when he fell offen the
trapeze and they so devoted!" says Ma. "And I didn't take the big
snakes--the substitute is using them--but only her own dear pets which
the landlady wouldn't leave her have in her room."
"And now one of them is loose in _my_ room!" I says, "which is the
general result of charity which, as the poet says, had ought to begin at
home," I says. "And you know, Ma, how I feel about snakes. There's
nobody in the psycopathic ward got anything on me. If only they had even
a few feet instead of so many yards, I wouldn't mind them so much."
"Well, now Mary, I'm real sorry," says Ma. "But not half so sorry as
Madame Estelle will be if anything happens to Maude! I'm real fond of
the little beauty myself, and if you had been with a circus all the
years I was, you would understand her better!"
Well, believe you me, it wasn't a lack of understanding with me, it was
a religious conviction, and why not, for hadn't them beasts made trouble
beginning with the original eviction of undesirable tenants, and was I
to think it likely that our own janitor would be any more lenient if
Maude was to get, say, as far as the elevator? Keeping snakes never got
a tenant in right yet and loose ones might set the first of May forward
as many months as was necessary. Not to mention my own personal feelings
in the matter, which it's a fact I once broke a contract on the
Small-Time years ago because a snake-charmer come off just as I was
going on and I used to meet her and them in the wings every time.
Well, anyways, I will say it for Ma, she certainly turned in and helped
me make a thorough search for Maude, which was going some for a lady of
her figure. Looking for a vanished snake in a apartment means
considerable gymnastics, because nothing can be overlooked with safety,
and I didn't want that parlor-eel slipping anything over on
me--especially her cold stomach in the middle of the night across my
face, for instance.
So I and Ma looked under all the furniture and in the pedalcase of the
pianola and in the vases and behind the steam radiators, back of the big
gold clock, inside the victrola, under the rugs, back of the pictures on
the wall and every place:--but no Maude. Finally we even took a look out
in the hall, although we knew nobody had opened the front door, and
after that we opened the wall safe where we keep our diamonds in a
stocking, this being a compromise between Ma's habits and my
common-sense. And then we had a peep into the ice-box where Ma found a
saucer of pudding which she had someways overlooked at supper but no
snake.
And after we had felt under the bath-tub with my best lavender umbrella
which what with the limousine it was the first use I ever had for it,
and then taken a forlorn hope into the soiled-clothes hamper, we give it
up, and sat down with ruined georgette blouses and perfectly wild
looking hair and all heated up like a couple of wrestlers. Any one
coming in then would of thought we had been indulging in a family
discussion of some kind, and for a matter of that it's the truth. I said
a few raw remarks about the kind of a home she run for me and I working
as hard as cider to keep it and now she left snakes around, Gawd knows
where, and how would a artist like myself get the rest to do justice to
my work on the bomb-explosion scene in the last reel of "Bosh or
Bolshevik?" which I was going to be shot in only the next day, and if
she had to support me instead of I her, she would have a right to leave
any animals or minerals around she chose, but this was my flat and
although Gawd knew she was welcome, pretty soon we would have none if I
was to be made a nervous wreck out of instead of the biggest nerve in
pictures. Yes, I said that and a lot more pretty mean stuff as only a
daughter can--for even with my refinement I am but a mere human after
all, and under the glittering success of my career is several common
human failings and at times I act no different from any less well-known
female in the bosom of my family.
So I had the last word and Ma was in wrong and went to get lunch without
a come-back out of her. Alas! Had I but canned that foolish chatter of
mine! But how could I know she was going to act like she done later
because of it? You can't remember forwards and if a person could, it's
ten to one they'd quit before they was off the bottle and go back to
Heaven whence they come, life being so full of mistakes you could of
avoided if only you had done something different from what you did!
II
Well, anyways, Ma went back to the kitchen to fix up a little snack of
waffles and honey and poached eggs on hash and cream-cake and
strawberries with a cup of cocoa and whipped cream for a light lunch,
her lunches being light about the way a "light" motor truck is, and I
went back to my joint contract and was so mad I concluded to write into
it not alone expenses and Rosco but a cottage or bungaloo, as it is
called in Los Angeles, while out there. With which I wrote a refined but
firm letter to Goldringer, saying this was my final word on the matter
and spoke also for Jim. Then I enclosed the contract and Ma called out
the cocoa was getting cold and so I stamped and put it in the hall-slot
which I never have a feeling any letter going down it is headed for
anybody except maybe the devil, and not even him unless it don't get
stuck on the way. And then I ate, though not with much appetite, what
with expecting any moment to see Maude crawl out from some place, and Ma
being quiet to a extent not to be fully accounted for by three plates of
waffles. It wasn't natural in her, that quiet, but I remembered the
doughnuts and laid it to the sequence. Still I tried to get her to talk,
as talking, if about herself, generally cheers her quite a lot.
"Anything ail you, Ma?" I says.
"Nothing much," says Ma, lighting into the cream-cake. "Nothing to speak
of."
"Tell me about it then!" I says. But Ma wouldn't. She heaved a big sigh
and handed me a substitute for what was really on her mind. It was
something just as good, I credit her for that.
"You know the stuff you ordered from Schultz?" she says.
"You mean the wet goods I ordered to keep Jim from parching to death
this summer?" I says, because although Jim is far from a real drinking
man, he having his profession of dancing always in mind even after
eleven P. M. and Gawd knows never fails to realize that sound
acrobatics is the basis of all good dancing which a drunkard never yet
was, or at least not for over two seasons; still, in spite of all this,
Jim is a mere male and a drink or two, especially if difficult to get,
is not by any means objectionable to him. And beside he had been two
years in France and I didn't want him to feel it had anything on America
when he come home, even if I had to go so far as to myself personally
replace what Congress had taken away. Do you get me? You do! And I had
done it as far as my bank account, cellarette and the liquor-dealer
permitted. Which looked like it was going to postpone the drought quite
sometime for us. And while here and there stuff like champagne and
brandy and vermouth had to be bought, like remnants on a bargain
counter--just kind of odds and ends of each--I had one satisfaction out
of the buy, and that was getting a case of Old Home Rye--absolutely the
last case in the city--probably the last in the whole entire U. S. A.,
and it was Jim's one best bet. A high-ball of this--just one--with his
dinner was about his exact idea of drinking, and I had calculated that
the three gallons, taking it at his rate would last him pretty near a
year, and by that time some new vice would surely of been invented to
take its place.
Well, anyways, I had ordered it and paid for it, and there wasn't any
more of it anywheres, and it and the contract with Goldringer was two of
the best surprises I had for Jim.