THE UNHAPPY MEDIUM
They may be such a thing as a ghost, but I don't believe it! At the
same time, I'm willin' to admit that my feelin's in the matter ain't
gonna prove the ruin of the haunted house promoters. They's a whole
lot of things which I look on as plain and simple bunk, that the
average guy studies at college. But the reason I say they _may_ be, is
because when me and Kid Scanlan come back East this year we stopped off
somewheres in the hurrah for prohibition part of the country and was
showed over what the advertisin' matter admitted to be the greatest
bakery in the world.
I think them ad writers was modest fellers. That joint was not only
the world's greatest bakery, it was the world's greatest _anything_!
I never really knowed a thing about bread, except that you put butter
on it, until I give that place the up and down.
What I don't know about the staff of life now would never get you
through Yale. I might go farther than that and come right out with the
fact that I have become a abandoned bread fiend and got to have it or I
foam at the mouth, since I seen how it was made at this dough foundry.
A accommodatin' little guy took hold of me and the Kid and showed us
all over the different machine shops where this here bread was mixed,
baked and what-notted for the trade. Our charmin' guide must have come
from a family of auctioneers and circus barkers and he never heard of
no sums under ten or eleven thousand in his life. He knowed more about
figures than Joe Grady, who once filled in a summer with a Russian
ballet, and he had been wound up and set to deliver chatter at the rate
of three words a second, provided the track was fast and he got off in
front. He talked with his whole body, waggin' his head, movin' his
arms and shufflin' his feet. When he got warmed up and goin' good, he
pushed forward at you with his hands like he was tryin' to insert his
chatter right into you.
He leads us to a spot about half a mile from where we come in, holds up
his hands to Heaven, coughs, blows his nose and gives a little shiver.
"Over there!" he bellers, without no warnin'. "Over there is our
marvelous, mastadon, mixin' shop. We use 284,651 pounds of
scrupulously sifted and freshly flavored flour, one million cakes of
elegant yeast and 156,390 pounds of bakin' powder each and every year!
We employ 865 magnificent men there and they get munificent money. We
don't permit the use of drugs, alcoholics, tobacco or unions! The men
works eight easy hours a delightful day, six days a week and they are
happy, hardy and healthy! Promotion is regular, rapid and regardless!
Our employees is all loyal, likable and Lithuanians! They own their
own cottages, clothes and chickens, bein' thrifty, temperate and--"
"Tasty!" I yells. I couldn't, keep it in no longer!
"What?" snaps the little guy, kinda sore.
"Lay off, Stupid!" says the Kid to me, with a openly admirin' glance at
the runt. "Go on with your story," he nods to him. "Never mind
Senseless, here, I'm gettin' every word of it!"
The little hick glares at me and points to a shack on the left.
"Over there," he pipes. "Over there is our shippin' plant where the
freshly finished and amazingly appetizin' loaves are carefully counted
and accurately assembled! For this painstakin' performance we employ
523 more men. None but the skilled, superior
and--and--eh--Scandinavian are allowed in that diligent department, and
each and every day a grand, glorious total of ten thousand lovely
loaves is let loose with nothin' missin' but the consumer's contented
cackle as he eagerly eats! We even garnish each loaf with a generous
gob of Gazoopis--our own ingenuous invention--before they finally
flitter forth! Would you like to see the shop?"
"I certainly wish _I_ could sling chatter like that!" answers the Kid
with a sigh. "But I guess it's all in the way a guy was brung up.
Gobs of generous Gazoopis!" he mutters, turnin' the words over in his
mouth like they was sweet morsels. "Gobs of generous Gazoopis! Oh,
boy!"
The little guy throws out his chest and bows with a "I-thank-you" look
all over his face. He got me sore just watchin' him. Y'know that runt
hated himself!
"Say!" I says to him. "If all that stuff you claim for this roll
foundry is on the level, it must take a lot of dough to run it, eh?"
"Are you tryin' to kid me?" he sneers.
"No!" I comes back. "But speakin' of bakeries, I'd sacrifice my sacred
silk socks for a flash at them skilled Scandinavians assemblin' that
bread, before I move on to nasty New York!"
The Kid slaps me on the back and grins.
"Go on, Foolish!" he says. "You got this bird on the ropes!" He turns
to the runt. "All I want," he goes on, "is one peep at them likable
Lithuanians--can I git that?"
"You guys is as funny as pneumonia to me!" snorts the little guy,
gettin' red in the face. "That stuff may pass for comedy in Yonkers or
wherever you hicks blowed in from, but it don't git no laugh outa me!
D'ye wanna see this shop or don't you--yes or no?"
"Let's go!" I tells him. "You got me all worked up about it!"
"Same here!" says the Kid. "I only wish I could talk like you can, but
I guess it's a gift, ain't it?"
The little guy grunts somethin' and nods for us to fall in behind him,
and we lock step along till we come to another joint from which was
issuin' what I'll lay eight to five was all the noise in the world.
How they ever gathered it up and got it in the buildin' I don't know,
but I do know it was there! If you'd take a bowlin' alley on
Turnverein night, a boiler factory workin' on a rush order and the
battle of Gettysburg, wind 'em up and set 'em all off at once, you
might get a faint idea of how the inmates of that buildin' was ruinin'
the peace and quiet of the surroundin' country. A dynamite explosion
in the next block would have attracted as much attention as a whisper
in a steamfittin' shop.
"I thought the war was all over!" hollers the Kid, holdin' his ears.
"Has the police been tipped off about this?"
"What d'ye mean the police?" screams back the runt. "That there is the
mixin' and bakin' shop."
"Yeh?" I cuts in. "Well, I don't know what them skilled Scandinavians
of yours is at, but, believe me, they're _tryin'_ all right!"
The runt sneers at us.
"You must be a fine pair of hicks!" he says. "D'ye mean to say you
never heard of the Eureka Mixin' and Bakin' machine?"
"I can hear it now, all right!" I tells him, noddin' to the buildin'
where the boilermakers was havin' a field day, "but--"
"Sufferin' salmon, what boobs!" he interrupts me. Then he gives us
both the once over and starts his sneerer workin' again. "Say!" he
asks me. "Who d'ye like to win the battle of Santiago and d'ye think
Lincoln will git elected again?"
"I don't know," I comes back. "I'm gonna vote for Jefferson myself!"
I looks him right in the eye. "I think Washington is a sucker to hang
around Valley Forge all winter, don't you?" I asks him.
"Couple of small time cut-ups, eh?" he says, shakin' his head. "Where
d'ye come from?"
"New York," the Kid tells him, "and listen--will you do me a favor and
let's hear some more about them likable Lithuanians and gobs of
generous Gazoopis?"
"I figured you come from some hick burg like New York," says the runt,
ignorin' the Kid's request. "I can spot a guy from New York ten miles
away! He knocks Brooklyn, thinks walkin' up Broadway is seein' life,
was born in Memphis and is the only thing that keeps the mail order
houses in Oshkosh from goin' to the wall! New Yorkers, eh?" he winds
up with another insultin' sneer. "I got you!"
"Gobs of generous Gazoopis!" mutters the Kid like he's in a trance.
"Sweet Papa!"
The runt looks at him.
"How does _that_ bird fool the almshouse?" he asks me.
I bent down so's I could whisper in the side of his little dome. Them
skilled Scandinavians in the buildin' had gone crazy or else some of
the night shift had come in with more boilers and things to hit 'em
with.
"That's Kid Scanlan, welterweight champion of the world!" I hisses in
his ear.
"Ha, ha!" laughs the runt. "That's who he'd _like_ to be, you mean!"
"Our employees is all hale, hearty and hilarious!" grins the Kid at
him. "We pay 'em off in money, music and mush! Wow!"
"If that big stiff is tryin' to kid me," begins the runt, gettin' red
again, "he--"
"All right, all right!" I butts in quickly. "Don't let's have no
violence. Show us what makes that shop go, and we'll grab the next
rattler for New York. Y'know the Kid fights Battlin' Edwards on the
twenty-first and--"
"Are you on the _level_ with that stuff?" interrupts the runt, still
lookin' at the Kid. "Is that really Kid Scanlan?"
I calls the Kid over.
"Kid," I says, "meet Mister--er--"
"Sapp," says the runt. "Joe Sapp!" He sticks out his hand. "I
remember you now," he tells the Kid. "I seen you fight some tramp in
Fort Wayne last year. I think you hit this guy with everything but the
referee and that's why I like your work. When _I_ send in three bucks
for a place to sit down at a box fight, I expect to see assault and
batter and not the Virginia Reel! Why--"
"Not to give you a short answer," I butts in, "but how about the insane
asylum over there?" I points to the buildin'. "Do we see that or
don't we?"
Right away he straightens up and sticks his finger at it.
"It takes exactly twelve, temptin' minutes to completely compose and
accurately assemble a loaf!" he shouts. "We never heard of waste, and
efficiency was born in this factory. The only thing that loafs here is
the bread! Each eager employee has his own particular part to perform
and that accounts for the amazin' and awesome accuracy with which we
bake the beautiful bread. Step this way!"
"Believe me!" says the Kid, "I wish I had a line of patter like that!
'Amazin' and awesome accuracy'!" he repeats. "Do you get that?"
Right then about a dozen dames and their consorts come breezin' in the
main entrance. Offhand, they look like the hicks that gives the
"Seein' New York" busses a play, and when the runt spots them he ducks
and grabs my arm.
"C'mon!" he says. "Shake it up! If them boobs see me, I'll have to
show 'em all over the plant! That's a gang of them Snooks' Tourists,
seein' the world for fourteen eighty-five a-piece, breakfast at hotel
on third mornin' out and bus from train included! Most of them is
wisenheimers from Succotash Crossin', Mo.; and they're out to see that
they don't get cheated. They're gonna see everything like it says on
the ticket, and some of 'em is ready to sue Snooks because they got
somethin' in their eye from lookin' out the train window and missed
eight telegraph poles and a water tank on account of it. The rest of
them sits around knockin' everything on general principles and claimin'
the thing is a fake. Then there'll be one old guy in the party with a
trick horn he holds to his ear, and, when I get all through tellin' 'em
about the mixin' shop, the deef guy will say, 'Hey? What was that
about the airship again?' There will also be three veteran
school-teachers which will want samples of the bread and hide out a
couple of rolls on the side. And then one young married couple which
started sayin' 'Wonderful!' when the train pulled out of the old home
town and which has said nothin' else but that since! No, sir! I'm off
them tourists--c'mon, sneak around here!"
He boldly walks into the buildin' where all the noise is comin' from,
and not wantin' to act yellah before strangers we followed him in.
They was a lot of things in there and if you ever make the town, Joe
Sapp will show 'em to you. He has to, in order to eat. But the only
thing I remember was the way them lovely, luxurious loaves was
artistically assembled, and I'll remember that little item till the
insurance company pays off!
They was a great, big machine in the middle of the floor and that was
the thing that was makin' the bread and noise. A half dozen of them
skilled Scandinavians stood away up on a gallery at one end and their
job was of a pourin' nature. They was all dressed in white and wore
little trick hats on which it said this, "No Human Hands Touch It." I
didn't know whether it meant the skilled Scandinavians or the beautiful
bread.
"The most marvelous, magnificent, mammoth invention of the age!" bawls
the runt so's we could hear him over the noise. "Here is where the
beautiful bread is blissfully baked by the wonderful workmen! This
machine cost the sensational sum of half a million dollars, and its
capacity is a trifle over five hundred finely finished luscious loaves
each and every--"
That's all I heard because I went in a trance from watchin' the thing.
I never seen nothin' like it before and I know darn well I never will
again. Listen! Them skilled Scandinavians poured in raw wheat at one
end of this here machine, and it come out the other end, steamin' hot
bread! Some machine, eh? Not only that, but when it come out, it was
baked, labelled, wrapped in oil paper and smellin' most heavenly from
that generous gob of Gazoopis, as the runt said.
I dragged the Kid outside and we started for the railroad station
without comment. As we passed out the door, we heard the runt
screamin', probably thinkin' we was still there.
"One section reduces the wheat to flour, another mixes the dough, it
passes on to the steam ovens and then what happens? _Bread_! Over
here--"
The Kid stops all of a sudden, takes a hitch in his belt and looks back
at the shop.
"Hell!" he says. "They _can't_ make no bread like that!"
"You seen 'em do it, didn't you?" I asks him, although I was thinkin'
the same thing myself.
"Even at that," he comes back, "I don't believe it!"
We walks on a little ways, and the Kid stops again.
"I certainly wish I could talk like that little runt!" he shoots out.
"Take it from me, that bird is there forty ways. He's got Webster
lookin' like a dummy!"
He keeps on mutterin' to himself as we breeze up to the station, and,
when I lean over to get an earful I hear him sayin', "They're all
simple, sassy and suckers! We feed 'em oranges, oatmeal and olives!"
So, as I said before, they _may_ be such a thing as ghosts. After
watchin' that bread bakin' machine at play I'll go further than that.
There may be _anything_!
One day at the trainin' camp, a couple of weeks after we hit New York,
a handler comes to me and says they's two guys outside that wants to
see the Kid. I hopped out to take a flash at 'em, but the Kid has been
reached, and when I come on the scene he's shakin' hands with 'em. One
of these guys was dressed the way the public thinks bookmakers and con
men doll up and he wore one of them sweet, trustin' innocent faces like
you see on the villain in a dime novel. He looked to me like he'd
steal a sunflower seed from a blind parrot.
But it was the other guy that was the riot to me.
He was tall and lanky, dressed all in black like the pallbearer the
undertaker furnishes, and the saddest-lookin' boob I ever seen in my
life! If he wasn't the original old Kid Kill-Joy, he was the bird that
rehearsed him, believe me! Y'know just from lookin' at this guy, a man
would get to thinkin' about his past life, the time he throwed the baby
down the well when but a playful child, how old his parents was gettin'
and the time Shorty Ellison run off with the red-headed dame that lived
over the butcher's. You wished you had saved your money or somebody
else's, suddenly findin' out that it was a tough world where a poor man
didn't have a Chinaman's chance, and you wondered if death by drownin'
was painful or not.
That's the way it made you feel when you just looked at this guy. Ever
see one of 'em?
He had a trick of sighin'. Not just ordinary heaves, but deep, dark
and gloomy sighs that took all the life out of whoever he sighed at.
If they had that bird over in Europe, they never would have been no
war, because when he started sighin', nobody would have had enough
ambition left to fight. Every time he opened his mouth I thought he
was gonna say, "Merciful Heaven help us all!" or somethin' like that.
But he didn't. He just sighed.
The Kid tells me the riot of color was Honest Dan Leduc, and that he
was the best behaved guy that ever spent a week end in Sing Sing, where
he had gone every now and then to study jail conditions at the request
of thirteen men, the same bein' a judge and a jury. The sad-lookin'
boob was Professor Pietro Parducci, the well known medium.
"Medium what?" I says, when the Kid pulls that one.
The Kid frowns at me and turns to his new found friends.
"Don't mind Foolish here," he tells 'em, "he's got the idea that
everything is crooked. He thinks the war was a frame-up for the
movies, and the Kaiser got double-crossed, but he ain't a bad guy at
that. He knows more about makin' money than a lathe hand at the mint."
He jerks his thumb at Honest Dan and swings around on me. "This guy
and me was brung up together," he explains, "and before I went into the
fight game we was as close as ninety-nine and a hundred. He's been all
over the world since then, he says so himself, but just now he's up
against it. It seems he was runnin' a pool room on Twenty-Eighth
Street and he give the wrong winner of the Kentucky Derby to the
precinct captain. The next mornin' the captain give every cop in the
station house a axe and Dan's address. His friend here is a now,
whosthis and--"
Honest Dan pulls what I bet he thought was a pleasant smile. It
reminded me more of a laughin' hyena.
"One minute!" he butts in. "My friend, the world-renowed Professor
Parducci, is a medium, a mystic and a swami. He's the seventh son of a
seventh son, born with a veil and spent two years in Indiana with the
yogi. He can peer into the future or gaze back at the past. He is in
direct communication with the spirits of the dear departed and as a
crystal gazer and palmist he stands alone!"
"That's a great line of patter, Dan," says the Kid, "but we met a guy
on the trip back that had the English language layin' down and rollin'
over when he snapped his fingers. Generous gobs of Gazoopis and
likable, loyal Lithuanians! Can you tie that?"
I was still lookin' over the gloomy guy with the name that sounded like
a brand of olive oil, and I decided he was the bunk. I asked him could
he tell my fortune, and he draws himself up and claims he's not in
harmony just now. That was the tip-off to me, and I figures he has
come out to take the Kid for his bankroll. I knowed he couldn't tell
no fortunes the minute I seen him. He didn't look to me as if he could
tell his own name, and I bet all the spirits he ever communicated with
was called private stock. The end of his nose was as red as a four
alarm fire and the back of his collar was all wore off from where he
had kept throwin' back his head so's the saloon keepers could meet
expenses. Honest Dan said he couldn't speak much English, so I guess
he had stopped at "I'll have the same" and "Here's a go!"
Well, I had the right dope, because the next week the Kid goes down to
the bank and draws out five thousand bucks to set Honest Dan and the
professor up in business with. They was gonna open a swell
fortune-tellin' joint on Fifth Avenue. I said the thing sounded
crooked to me, and the Kid got sore and told me Honest Dan couldn't do
nothin' like that, it wasn't in him. He showed me where Dan had always
got time off for good conduct, no matter what jail he was in.
The professor brightens up for a minute when the Kid hands over the
roll, but after that he went right back into the gloom again.
Honest Dan gives the Kid a receipt for the sucker money and him and his
trick medium goes on their way. After a while, I forgot about 'em.
The Kid fights Edwards and a couple of more tramps and knocks 'em all
kickin' and we're just gonna grab one of them "See America Firsts" for
the coast when some club promoter goes crazy and offers us ten thousand
iron men to fight Joe Ryan. The Kid would have fought the Marines for
half of that, so we run all the way to the club and signed articles
whiles the guy that hung up the purse was still wishin' he had stayed
on the wagon.
The Kid had got Professor Parducci to fix him up with a few love charms
and owls' ears by which he was gonna make himself solid with Miss
Vincent. In fact Scanlan fell so hard for the medium stuff that when
the professor told him to get at all cost a lock of Miss Vincent's hair
clipped at eighteen minutes after eleven on a rainy Sunday night, he
writes out to her and asks her to send him a lock cut just that way!
When he wasn't pesterin' the professor on how to win the movie queen,
he was goin' around mutterin', "Loyal, likeable Lithuanians and
generous gobs of Gazoopis!" until the newspaper guys wrote that Kid
Scanlan would be a mark for the first good boy he fought, because like
everybody else that was a sudden success, he had took to usin'
stimulants which is only sold on a doctor's prescription. On the
level, he'd git a wad of paper and sit around all night with a
dictionary, writin' down all the words that begin with the same letter
and then he'd git up and repeat that stuff for a hour.
One afternoon we went downtown to look over this joint run by Honest
Dan and the professor. It was in one of them studio buildings on Fifth
Avenue near Twenty-Eighth Street, and the rent they was payin' for it
would have kept the army in rubber heels for six years. They's a long
line of autos outside and the inmates was streamin' in and out of the
place like a crowd goin' to see the beloved rector laid out. Some of
the dames would be familiar to you, if you've been readin' the box
scores in the latest divorce melees, or the lineup of the committee for
the aid of the Esquimaux victims of the war.
We get in a elevator, and, floatin' up to the roof, walk down what
would have been a fire trap on the East Side, and here we are at
Professor Parducci's Temple of the Inner Star. A couple of West Indian
hall boys, who's gag line was "Say-hib," lets us in. They was dressed
in sheets and had towels twisted around their heads and smelled
strongly of gin. Pretty soon Honest Dan comes out and shakes hands all
around. Except for his face, you'd never know it was the same guy.
His hair is brushed all the way back like the guys that poses for the
underwear ads and he's dressed in a black suit that fit him better than
most of his skin. In his shirt front they's a diamond that looked like
a young arc light, and he had enough gems on his hands to make J. P.
Morgan gnash his teeth.
He told me that him and the professor wasn't doin' no more business
than a guy would do in Hades with the ice water concession, and that
Barnum was wrong when he said they was a sucker born every minute.
Honest Dan said _his_ figures showed there was about two born every
_second_.
He leads us into a great big hall that was filled with statues,
pictures, rugs, sofas, women and fatheads. The furnishings of this
joint would make Buckingham Palace look like a stable. It must have
ruined the Kid's five thousand just to lay in scenery for that one room
alone. The statues and pictures was nearly all devoted to one subject,
and that was why should people wear clothes--especially women? The
victims is all lollin' around on them plush sofas, drinkin' tea and
lookin' like a ten-year-old kid at church or a guy waitin' in the
doctor's office to find out if he's got consumption or chilblains. It
was as quiet as a Sunday in Philadelphia and they was also a very
strong smell of burnin' glue, which Honest Dan said was sacred incense
that always had to be used by the professor before he could work.
Among the decorations was a very large dame sittin' over in a corner
dressed within a inch of her life. I suppose she had ears, a neck and
hands, but you couldn't tell right away whether she had or not, because
them parts of her anatomy, as the feller says, was buried under a
carload of diamonds. You could see by her face that at one time she
had probably been a swell-lookin' dame, but them days was all over.
Still, she was makin' a game try at comin' back, and from her
complexion she must have been kept busy day and night openin' bottles
and cans signed on the outside by Lillian Russell and etc.
This dame was havin' the best time of anybody in the joint. She was
sittin' up very straight and solemn with both chins restin' in her
glitterin' hands and from the look in her eyes some Sunday paper had
just claimed she was the best lookin' woman in America and the like.
A guy wouldn't have to be no Sherlock Holmes to see that this was the
bird that was bein' readied for the big killin' by Honest Dan and his
trick professor. The rest of them was just what you might call the
chorus.
Sittin' right beside the stout party was a kid that had just dropped in
from the cover of a magazine. She was the kind of female that could
come down to breakfast with the mumps and her hair in curl papers, fry
the egg on the wrong side and yet make the lucky guy across the table
go out whistlin' and pityin' his unwed friends. You know how them
dames look when they have give some time to _dollin' up_, don't you?
Well, this one had everything; take it from me, she was a knockout!
She's tappin' the floor with a classy little foot and tryin' to see can
she pull a silk handkerchief apart with her bare hands, the while
registerin' this,
"This-medium-thing-is-the-bunk-and-I-wish-I-was-out-of-here!"
I doped her as the stout dame's daughter, hittin' .1000 on the guess as
I found out later.
"Well," whispers Honest Dan to the Kid, "what d'ye think of the place?"
"Some joint!" says the Kid. "Listen--I got a new one. The most
magnificently, male mauler on earth! How's that--poor, eh?"
"What does it mean?" asks Honest Dan.
"It means _me_, Stupid!" pipes the Kid. "I'm havin' some cards made up
with that on it. The sagacious, sanguine and scandalous Scanlan,
welterweight walloper of the world! Where's the professor?"
"Sssh!" whispers Honest Dan. "Lay off that _professor_ gag here.
That's small town stuff--he's a mahatma now! He's in one of his
silences, but if you keep quiet I'll take you around and show you how
he works."
He takes us through a little door that leads into a dark room which was
a steal on the old chamber of horrors at the Eden Musee. It was full
of ghost pictures drawed by artists who had no use for prohibition, and
they was plenty of skulls and stuff like that layin' around where they
would do the most good. At the far end is a small wire gratin' with a
Morris chair on the other side of it. Honest Dan explains that that's
where the come-ons sit while the professor massages their soul. They
never see him, Dan figurin' in that way it would be harder to pick the
professor out at police headquarters when the district attorney got
around to him. We hadn't been there a minute, when the curtain at the
other end of the room opens and in blows the stout dame, floppin' down
in the chair with a sigh as the professor pulls open the grate to feed
her the oil. Dan pulls us back in the dark, and I notice she was so
excited that she shook all over like a ten cent portion of cornstarch
or Instant Desserto and her breath was comin' in short little gasps.
Honest Dan is takin' a inventory of the couple of quarts of diamonds
she wore and figurin' the list price on his shirt cuffs. When he got
through, he dug me in the ribs and says it looks like a big winter.
The professor starts to talk with a strong Ellis Island dialect,
tellin' the dame that he's just been in a trance, give the sacred
crystal the once over and took up her case with a few odd ghosts. The
result was that a spirit which was in the know had just give him a tip
that she was no less than the tenth regular reincarnation of Cleopatra,
who did a big time act in one with a guy called Marc Anthony which was
now doin' a single or had jumped to the movies or somethin' like that.
The stout dame gets up off the chair and waves her handkerchief.
"Merciful Heavens!" she remarks loudly. "I knew it!"
Then she pulls a funny fall and faints!
The professor hisses at Dan to get him a cigarette, and the West Indian
hall boys drag the stout dame into the chair from which she had slipped
followin' the professor's sure-fire stuff about Cleopatra. He snatches
a few drags out of the cigarette before the dame comes to and when she
does, he goes on and says yes she is Cleopatra, they ain't no doubt
about that part of it and she must have noticed the strange power she
had over men all her life, hadn't she? The stout dame sighs and nods
her head. The professor then tells her that she has been in wrong and
unhappy all her life, because she had never met her mate. The same
bein' a big, husky, red-blooded cave man which would club her senseless
and carry her off to his lair. Had she ever met anybody like that?
The stout dame says not lately, but when poor Henry and her had first
got wed he was a Saturday night ale-hound and once or twice he had--but
never mind, she won't speak ill of the dead. The professor says he can
see that nobody of the real big-league calibre has crossed her path as
yet and that her husband's spirit had told him in confidence only the
other day that one night he got to thinkin' what a poor worm he was to
be married to Cleopatra, and it had been too much for his humble soul
which bust.
The dame nods and starts to weep.
"Poor Hennerey!" she says. "He ain't stopped lyin' yet. I should
never have wed him, but how did I know that my fatal beauty would prove
his undoing?"
"Ain't that rich?" pipes Honest Dan in my ear.
The professor has a coughin' spell, and when he calmed himself, he says
he has just got in touch with Marc Anthony and he's pullin' the wires
to have him come back to earth so's their souls can be welded together
again and if she will come back in a week, he'll be able to tell her
some big news. He said it was bein' whispered around among the spirits
that Marc Anthony was on earth now, eatin' his noble heart out because
he couldn't find her.
Then he suddenly shuts the gate, and the dame staggers out, overcome
with joy and the smell of that incense which would have made a glue
factory quit. Honest Dan beats it around and opens the door for her.
They wouldn't take a nickel off her then, because they was savin' her
for the big play.
About a week after our visit to the Temple of the Inner Star, the Kid
comes runnin' up to my room at the hotel one mornin' and busts in the
door. He's got a newspaper in his hand and he slams it down on the bed
and kicks a innocent chair over on its side.
"I hope they give him eighty years!" he hollers.
"Who's your friend?" I asks him.
"Friend!" he screams. "Why, the big psalm-singin' stiff, I'll murder
him!"
"They's just one thing I'd like to know, Kid," I says. "Who?"
"That cheap, pan-handlin' crook that Dan Leduc wished on me!" he yells.
"That rotten snake I kept from dyin' in the gutter, that baby-stealin'
rat which claims he's a medium! Professor Bunko--that's who!"
I grabbed up the paper and all over the front page is a picture of Miss
Vincent. Underneath it says this,
"Famous Film Star Rumored Engaged to Millionaire."
"Well," I says, "what has this here social note got to do with the
Professor?"
"What has a jockey got to do with horse-racin'?" bellers the Kid. "Why
the big hick, I'll go down there and strangle him right out loud before
them high-brow simps of his! I'll have him pinched and I hope he gets
life! I'll--"
He went on like that for half an hour, and when he finally cools off he
explains that the professor had guaranteed to dust off his charmers and
charm Miss Vincent so hard that she wouldn't even give a pleasant smile
to nobody but the Kid. All Scanlan had to do was follow the
professor's dope and they'd be nothin' to it but slippin' the minister
and payin' the railroad people for the honeymoon. The Kid had gone
ahead and done like the professor said, startin' off with the letter
requestin' a lock of her hair clipped at eleven eighteen on a rainy
Sunday night. Then he telegraphed her to bathe her thumbs in hot
oolong tea every Friday at noon and send him the leaves in a red
envelope. He followed that up with a note demandin' a ring that she
had first dipped in the juice of a stewed poppy, and then held in back
of her while she said, "Alagazza, gazzopi, gazzami" thirteen times.
I guess the professor overplayed the thing a bit, because the only
action the Kid got was a short note from Miss Vincent in which she said
that as long as he had started right in to drink the minute he hit New
York, their friendship was all over. The next thing was that notice in
the paper.
The Kid's idea was to go right down and wreck the Temple of the Inner
Star, windin' up by havin' Honest Dan and his bunk medium pinched. I
showed him where it would do no good, because he had set 'em up in
business and if they was crooked the jury would figure that and put the
Kid's name on one of them indictments. He calmed off finally and said
he'd be satisfied to let it go at half killin' 'em both and makin' a
bum out of the Temple of the Inner Star.
We got down there in a few minutes, and Honest Dan meets us at the
door. He's all excited and says the time has come for the big hog
killin', after which they're gonna blow New York, because they been
tipped off that the new police commissioner is about to startle the
natives with a raid. The Kid starts to bawl him out, when the big
stout dame is ushered into the room and Dan hustles us into the
professor's shrine in the rear.
As soon as she gets inside, the professor tells her to prepare for a
shock. She shivers all over, grabbin' the side of the chair and takin'
a long whiff out of a little green bottle. Then she says she'll try
and be brave, and to let her have the works. The professor says he has
finally dug up Marc Anthony, and all the spirits is in there tryin' for
them, so's they can be brought together. He told her to go right back
to her rooms at the Fitz-Charlton and he would send out the old thought
waves for Marc. Just when he'd get him, he didn't know--it might be a
day, a week or a month, but she was to sit there all dolled up to
receive him and wait. He said she would know Marc, because he would
have a snake tattooed on the third finger of his right hand in memory
of the way Cleopatra kissed off. That's all he was allowed to give out
just now, he winds up.
Well, the stout dame thanks him about six hundred times and waddles out
darn near hysterical. She grabs hold of her daughter and hisses in her
ear,
"Oh, Gladys, they've found him! My beloved Marc Anthony is coming to
claim me for his own. Then we will return to Egypt, and, sitting upon
a golden throne--"
Friend daughter pulls a weary smile and leads Cleopatra to the door.
"Oh, don't, mother!" she says. "Don't! If you only knew how all this
sickens me! This man has hypnotized you! Why don't you listen to me
and take that trip to California where--"
"What!" squeals the stout dame. "What? Be away when my Marc comes?
How dare you think of such a thing! I did that once and if you have
read your ancient history, you must remember the terrible result!"
Daughter sighs, shakes her head and they go out.
Now the Kid has been takin' all this stuff in without lettin' a peep
out of him and when the stout dame has left, I figured he'd tear right
in to the plotters, so I got ready to hold up my end and reached for a
chair. But what d'ye think the Kid did? He falls down on a sofa and
starts to laugh! On the level, I bet he snickered out loud for a good
fifteen minutes and then he gets up and walks to the door without
sayin' a single word to either Dan or the professor, after all that
stuff he pulled on me at the hotel!
While we're goin' down in the elevator, Honest Dan tells us that they
got a handsome actor who just now is playin' in a show called "Standin'
on the Corners, Waitin' for a Job," and they're gonna have him get a
snake painted on the third finger of his right hand and shoo him up to
the stout dame the next day. After he has been welcome homed, Marc
Anthony is gonna say that he's makin' out a check for the professor
which throwed them together, and don't she think she ought to send in
somethin' also? When she asks what he thinks would be about right,
Marc Anthony is gonna say that he guesses she ought to keep the pen she
wrote the check with as a souvenir, but that everything else she had,
includin' anything a pawnbroker would give a ticket on, would do!
I didn't say nothin' to that, but I was doin' a piece of thinkin' and
as soon as we got our feet on Fifth Avenue again, I let go. I told the
Kid what I thought of his friend Honest Dan in language that Billy
Sunday could have been proud of. When I got through with Dan, I took
up the professor and give him a play. I said it was my belief that a
couple of safety-first crooks, who would deliberate trim a simple old
stout dame out of her dough in that coarse manner, should be taken up
to the Metropolitan tower and eased off.
The Kid just grins and starts hummin' under his breath.
By this time I had worked myself up to such a pitch that my goat was
chasin' madly about the streets, and to have the Kid act that way was
about all I needed. I carefully explained to him just how many kinds
of a big, yellah tramp he was, to let the professor crab him with Miss
Vincent and get away with it clean. I showed him where he should have
at least bent a chair over that guy's head, if he was a real gentleman
whose honor had been trifled with and not a four flushin' false alarm.
"Gobs of generous Gazoopis!" he snickers at me when I get through.
"Our employees is all new, noisy and Norwegians!"
They was a queer look in his eye, and I figured he must have slipped
out in the mornin' at that and dug up a place where prohibition hadn't
carried. I stopped right in the middle of the traffic and told him I
was goin' up to the Fritz-Charlton the next mornin' and tip the stout
dame off, if it was the last thing I did.
He just grins!
The next mornin' I beat it up to Cleopatra's hotel, and, after I have
waited an hour, she sends a maid down to see me. The maid tells me to
spread my hands out flat on a little table that's standin' there and
she examines every finger like a sure enough mechanic looks over a
second-hand automobile he's gonna buy to hack with. Finally, she
throws my hands down with a disappointed look and her shoulders begins
one of them hula dances.
"_Viola_!" she remarks. "That leetle snake, he is not there! Madame
she is not at home--away wit' you!"
Well, I figures I did what _I_ could, so I breezed out and left
Cleopatra flat.
Failin' to locate the Kid anywheres, I went on down to the studio and
walk right in on the professor and Honest Dan givin' Marc Anthony a
dress rehearsal. He was a handsome guy, all right, sickenin'ly so,
with one of them soft, mushy faces and wavin' blonde hair. He's had
the snake tattooed on his finger, like the part called for, and the way
he carries on about how he's gonna give the stout dame the work makes
me foam at the mouth. My once favorably known left had all it could do
to keep from bouncin' off his chin! Finally, they start him away and
Honest Dan tells me how they got it framed up for him to meet
Cleopatra. He was to go to the Fritz-Charlton and send up a card that
claimed he was the editor of "Society Seethings," and when she comes
down to see him, he was to ask her what was her plans for the winter
season and a lot of bunk like that. In no way was he to make a crack
about bein' Marc Anthony--that would be too raw, but as he was leavin'
he was to carelessly let her see that snake on his finger. That was
all!
They knowed Cleopatra would do the rest.
I couldn't stand no more, so I hustled back to our hotel, and the
minute I get in, the clerk tells me the Kid has been chasin' around
lookin' for me all morning so I beat it right up to our suite. The Kid
is doin' his road work by canterin' around the room when I come in, and
he rushes over and grabs me by the arm.
"When are them yeggmen gonna send Marc Anthony up to Cleopatra?" he
demands, all excited.
"He just left a few minutes ago!" I tells him. "Why?"
The Kid gives a yell and jumps over to the door leadin' to our
sittin'-room, yankin' it open with one jerk. I thought I'd pass away
when I got a flash at what was inside. They was about twenty of the
roughest lookin' guys I ever seen in my life, all dolled up in new
suits, shoes and hats. Some of them I recognized as ex-heavy-weights,
they was a few strikin' longshoremen, a fair sprinklin' of East Side
gunmen and here and there what had passed for a actor in the tanks.
"Some layout, eh?" pipes the Kid, rubbin' his hands together. "It took
me all mornin' and nearly three hundred bucks to rib them guys up, but
they're all desperate, darin' and dolled up!"
"What the--what's the big idea?" I gasps.
"Hold up your hands!" roars the Kid at his rough and readys.
They did--and I got it!
Each and every one of them guys had a snake tattooed on the third
finger of his right hand!
The Kid had probably put in the mornin' rehearsin' 'em, because all he
had to say now was, "Go to it!" and they beat it. He told me they was
all goin' up to the Fritz-Charlton and ask for the stout dame at three
minute intervals, show their right hand and claim they was Marc Anthony!
"If that don't show the stout dame that the professor is the bunk and
if she don't let out a moan that'll be plainly heard at police
headquarters, I'll make Dan a present of the five thousand he took me
for!" says the Kid.
In about a hour the telephone begins to ring and I answers it. When
the ravin' maniac on the other end of the wire got to where he could
control the English language, I found out it was no less than Honest
Dan. The main thing he said was for us to come down to the Temple of
the Inner Star right away, because him and the professor has got in a
terrible jam. We hopped in a taxi and did like he said. Honest Dan is
waitin' in the elevator for us, and he looked like the loser in a
battle royal. He says the stout dame has just left, and she's in a
terrible state. I could believe that easy, because they is nothin'
more vicious in the land of the free than a enraged come-on. I'd
rather face a nervous wildcat than face a angry boob!
"Somebody put the bee on us!" howls Honest Dan, wringin' his hands.
"And a truckload of guys went up to the hotel claimin' they was Marc
Anthony in voices that disturbed people in China. They throwed the
real Marc out on his lily white ear, and seven of 'em got pinched for
disorderly conduct. I understand they was a melee up there that would
make a football game look like chess and the papers is havin' a field
day with the thing! We got to grab Cleopatra's gems and go away from
here before the whole plant is uncovered."
"Why," I says, "how are you gonna take the stout dame now? She knows
it's a fake, don't she?"
"Fake, hell!" hollers Dan. "_She thinks it's on the level_! The only
thing that bothers her is which one is the _right_ Marc Anthony. She
says two of them had such patrician faces that she thinks some of the
Caesars has got mixed up with the lot. She's gonna put it up to her
late husband, and she's comin' back here any minute to talk with his
spirit!" He begins walkin' the floor. "I never seen no dame like
that!" he busts out. "She _wants_ to be trimmed! The only thing she
seemed to be sore about was the fact that she couldn't pick out the
right Marc Anthony. Now we git the chance of a lifetime to grab a roll
when she comes back and we ain't got no ghost! If I could only get the
guy that sent all them Marc Anthonys up there," he winds up with a
yell, "I'd make a ghost out of him!"
He never seemed to think the Kid might have done it, because the Kid
was the boy that had set him and the professor up in business and why
should he crab his own play?
A little electric buzzer makes good while Honest Dan is ravin' away,
and Dan, gettin' white, grabs the Kid by the arm and begs him to come
to the rescue.
"Jump in that cabinet there!" he whispers to him. "And when this dame
asks if you're Henry, say yes, and tell her the real Marc Anthony is
the guy with the blonde hair, and he's now at the City Hospital.
That's all you got to say and--"
He shoves the Kid back of the cabinet and me back of a curtain just as
Cleopatra blows in with her daughter. Honest Dan tells them to be
seated quick, because the professor has just got the spirit of her
husband where he's ready to talk to the reporters. The West Indian
hall boys sneak around in the back, rattlin' chains and bangin' on
pans. Then Dan reaches back and opens the mechanical bellows, and a
blast of cold air comes into the room while a white light flashes over
the cabinet.
"Now!" whispers Dan to the stout dame, "speak quick!"
At that minute, Dan looked like a guy with a ticket on a hundred to one
shot, watchin' it breeze into the stretch leadin' by by a city block.
"Is--is that you Henery?" squeaks Cleopatra in a tremblin' voice.
They's a rustle in the cabinet and then _this_ comes out over the top.
"Generous gobs of Gazoopis! Our employees is ready, reckless and
Russian. This guy is crooked, crazy and careless. He will take you
for your beautiful, bulgin' bankroll and--"
"Why, Henery!" squawks the dame, jumpin' up off the chair.
I heard the well known dull thud on the other side of the cabinet, and
I guess it was Professor Parducci fallin' senseless on the floor. I
thought Honest Dan had dropped dead from the way he was hung over a
sofa.
"Each and every day," goes on the voice in the cabinet, "each and every
day we ship a million lovely loaves--"
"Merciful Heavens!" yells the dame. "A sign! Henery, shall I go back?"
"Back is right!" says the voice. "These guys is cheap crooks and they
ain't no Marc Anthony!"
The lights go out and Honest Dan comes to, rushin' over to the stout
dame with a million alibis tryin' to be first out of his mouth. I beat
it around to the back, but the professor has gone somewheres else while
the goin' was fair to medium.
"You have deceived me, you wretch!" screams the stout dame. "You
have--"
That's as far as she got, because right in the middle of it she pulls a
faint, and daughter eases her to the floor. The Kid hops out of the
cabinet and grabs Honest Dan.
"Beat it, you rat," bawls Scanlan, "before I commit mayhem!"
From the way Honest Dan went out of that room, he must have passed
Samoa, the first hour!
Daughter reaches up and grabs the Kid's hand.
"I--I--want to thank you," she says, "for saving my mother. I--I don't
know what might have happened, if you hadn't been here!"
"That's all right!" pipes the Kid. "D'ye want us to do anything else?"
"Yes," she says. "Will you tell me where you heard that--that
description of the--the million lovely loaves?"
"Sure," answers the Kid. "When we was comin' East, we stopped off at a
hick burg somewheres and a guy took us over a bakery--"
Daughter claps her hands and laughs.
"Poetic justice!" she says. "That explains everything. My poor, dear
father founded that bakery, and those were the last advertisements for
it he wrote!"