"_When fortune favors a man too much, she makes him a fool!_"
Neither Napoleon, Nero, Alexander, Jack Johnson, Mark Antony nor Bill
Hohenzollern was the composer of that remark, though, honest, I bet they
all _thought_ it about the time the world was giving them the air.
However, the boy who originally pulled the above wise crack was Mr.
Publius Syrus, a master mind current in dear old Syria during the fiscal
year of 77 B.C. Two thousand annums after Publius gave up the struggle,
Jimmy Burns, a professional bellhop--age, twenty; color, white;
nationality, Broadway-American--decided to find out for himself whether
or not Pubby's statement was true. It is! Loll back in the old easy
chair for about approximately a half-hour and I'll do my stuff. Perhaps
you don't know me, as Eve coyly remarked to Adam, so taking advantage of
your good nature I'll introduce myself. I'm Gladys Murgatroyd, a
switchboard operator at the Hotel St. Moe. I was slipped into the cradle
under the name of Mary Ellen Johnson, but as that smacks more of the
kitchen than the drawing-room, I changed that label some time ago to the
Gladys Murgatroyd thing, which I admit sounds phony--still, I'm a phone
girl, so what could be sweeter?
However, one morning during a slight lull in the daily hostilities
between me and the number-seeking guests, I am reading my favorite
book--the _Morning Squawk_, the newspaper that made the expression "It
is alleged" famous, or maybe it was the other way around. Spattered all
over the front page is a highly sensational account of the latest
adventures of one of these modern prodigal sons--in round numbers,
Carlton Van Ryker, whose father celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday by
entering a tomb in a horizontal position and leaving his only progeny
two paltry $500,000 bank notes. The young millionaire with the name like
a Pullman car and a soft collar had been stepping high, wide and fast
with his pennies and at the time of going to press was the plot of an
"alienation of my wife's affections" suit, a badly mismanaged shooting
affair, and various other things that would keep his mind off the
weather for quite a spell. While I'm drinking all this in with my
lustrous orbs, along comes Mons. James Joseph Aloysius Burns, who was
either the hero of this episode in my exciting career, or else he
wasn't.
Although I've known Jimmy Burns for the worst part of two years, we're
still good friends, both of us being refugees from the land of Utah. My
home town was the metropolis of Bountiful, where I once won a beauty
contest single-handed, and James fled from Salt Lake City, where smoking
cigarettes is the same as throwing rocks at the President, in the eyes
of the genial authorities.
But to get to the business of the meeting--Jimmy sported a sarcastical
sneer as he approached my switchboard on this particular morning.
"Kin you feature a cuckoo like this dizzy Van Ryker havin' all that
sugar," he snorts, nodding angrily at the newspaper, "whilst us regular
white folks is got to slave like Uncle Tom or we don't eat? Is that
fair?"
"Cheer up, Jimmy," I says with a smile. "We don't get much money, that's
a fact, but then we can laugh out loud. That's more than Van Ryker can
do! Look at the pushing around he's getting because he hauled oil and
inherited a million, poor fellow; he----"
"That mug was ru'ned by too much jack!" butts in Jimmy. "He's what you
call a weak sister. He wasn't _built_ to handle important money--you got
to be _born_ that way! Knowin' how to spend money is a gift. _I_ got the
gift, but I ain't got the money!"
"And you never _will_ have the money, frittering away your life hopping
bells in a hotel, Jamesy--not to give you a short answer," I says. "When
they assembled you they left out the motor--_ambition!_"
"Blah!" says Jimmy courteously. "That's what _you_ think. I got plenty
ambition. My ambition is to wake up every morning for the rest of my
life with a twenty-dollar bill in my kick! Believe me, Cutey, I often
wish I was a Wall Street bond messenger, a bootlegger or even a
professional reformer--but I ain't never had a shot at no _big_ dough
like that. Why, if it was rainin' tomato bouillon, I'd be there with a
knife instead of a spoon!"
"As if _that_ would stop you!" I remark sweetly. I once saw James eat.
"It seems to me you're always craving excitement," I went on, dealing
out some wrong numbers. "Only last week you told me you had a massage."
"Go ahead and kid me," says Jimmy. "_You_ should bite your nails--you're
a woman, a good looker with more curves than a scenic railway, and they
ain't no way _you_ kin lose! But it's different _here._ It seems to me I
beep workin' for a livin' since the doc says 'It's a boy!' and the
chances is I'll be workin' for a livin' till the doc says 'Get the
embalmer'!"
Don't you love that?
"Why don't you check out of the bell-hopping game and try your luck at
something with a future in it?" I ask him, though, really, I'm about as
interested in Jimmy's biography as I am in the election returns at
Tokyo. "If _I_ was a man, this town wouldn't have _me_ licked!"
"Apple sauce!" sneers Jimmy politely. "A guy without money has got the
same chance in New York as a ferryboat salesman would have on the Sara
Desert. It takes jack to make jack. With a bank roll I could make _my_
name as well known as Jonah's, and I'd spot him his whale!"
"What do you _do_ with your nickels?" I ask him. "I don't doubt that
Chaplin and Fairbanks get more _wages_ than you bellboys, but I thought
your _tips_ ran into better figures than they have in the Follies."
"Say, cutey, be yourself!" says James scornfully. "Most of the eggs in
this trap is as tight as the skin on a grape--they wouldn't give a thin
dime to see Tut-ankh-Amen walk up Fifth Avenoo on his hands! I could be
railroaded to Sing Sing for what I think of _them_ babies. Why should
_I_ have to carry suitcases and hustle ice water for a lot of monkeys
like that?"
"Don't put on dog, Jimmy," I smile. "The guests of the St. Moe are every
bit as good as you are, even if you _are_ a haughty bellhop and they are
lowly millionaires. Suppose _you_ had a million, what would you do with
it?"
"Well," says Jimmy thoughtfully, "the first thing I'd do wouldst be to
get me a education--not that I'm no dumb Isaac by no means, but they's a
few lessons like algeometry, matriculation, mock geography and the like
which I could use. _I_ wouldn't get all tangled up with no wild women or
pull none of the raw stuff which this Van Ryker jobbie done, that's a
cinch! They'd be no horseplay what the so ever, as far as _I_ was
concerned. What _I'd_ do wouldst be to crash into some business, make my
pile and my name and not do no playin' around till I was about fifty and
independent for life. Ain't it a crime when I got them kind of
intentions to make good and no nonsense about it, that somebody don't
slip me a million?"
"It's an outrage, Jimmy," I agree, allowing a giggle to break jail.
"Still, all men are born equal and if it's actually possible that you
_haven't_ got a million, why, you must have thrown your chances away.
When Eddie Windsor was your age, for instance, he had made himself
Prince of Wales!"
"Me and him begin life in a different type of cradle!" says Jimmy. "And
that stuff about everybody bein' equal when they're born is the oyster's
ice skates. The only way me and them wealthy millionaires was even at
birth is that we was all babies!"
This debate between me and Jimmy was about like Adam and a monkey
arguing over which of 'em was our first ancestor--we could have found
plenty of people to side with both of us. Then again, the customers was
beginning to snap into it for the day and craved the voice with the
smile. I got as busy at the switchboard as a custard pie salesman on a
movie comedy lot, so I gave the money-mad James the air for the time
being.
A couple of weeks later, or maybe it was a jolly old fortnight, Hon. Guy
Austin Tower returns from a voyage to Europe, and then the fun began!
Maybe you all haven't had the unusual pleasure of meeting my boy friend,
so with your kind permission I'll introduce him.
This handsome young metropolitan sheik is a millionaire of the first
water, a full-blooded playwright, one of my wildest admirers, and a
guest at the Hotel St. Moe. Guy would be a face card in any deck--he's a
real fellow, no fooling. Even the parboiled Jimmy Burns, who thinks
everybody guilty till proved innocent, is one of Guy's fans. Guy just
sprays Jimmy and the rest of the hired help with princely tips and
doesn't dime them to death, as most of the other inmates do.
Like Carlton Van Ryker, Guy was left about everything but Lake Michigan
when his male parent entered the obituary column, but _unlike_ Van
Ryker, Guy didn't let his millions make him a clown. He wanted to carve
his own way on our popular planet, so he simply forgot about his
warehouse full of doubloons and took up the trade of writing plays. As
he's got two frolics running on Broadway now, you could hardly call him
a bust.
Well, when Guy came back from overseas he got a welcome from the St. Moe
staff that would have tickled a political boss. Honestly, he brought
something back for everybody! What he brought back for me was some
perfectly gorgeous Venetian lace and his sixty-fifth request that I
renounce the frivolous pleasures of the telephone switchboard and enter
matrimony.
I accepted the lace, which drove my girl friend, Hazel Killian, wild
with envy, but on the wedding bells I claimed exemption. I like Guy, but
I'm by no means in love with him--or with anyone else! From what I've
been able to observe on my perch at the St. Moe switchboard, there's a
bit too much "moan" in matrimony, and, really, I get no more thrill out
of contemplating marriage than Noah would get out of contemplating
Niagara Falls. I've seen too much of it! I do get a kick, though, out of
my daily struggle to remain a campfire girl and still keep from dying of
too little fun. The swarming lobby of any costly Gotham hotel is the
favorite hunting grounds of snips that pass in the night, always looking
for the best of it--lounge lizards, synthetic sheiks of all ages and
others too humorous to mention. Any young, well dressed member of my
much advertised sex who doesn't resemble a gorilla is their legitimate
prey, and trying to discourage 'em is like trying to discourage the
anti-drys. But I got their number--being a phone girl, that's my job,
isn't it? I meet five hundred representatives of the sillier sex every
day, and it's a hobby of mine to treat 'em all with equal chilly
politeness till they get out of line. Then I turn off the politeness,
just giving 'em the chill, and honest, when I want to be cold--which is
generally--I'd turn a four-alarm fire into an iceberg with a glance!
However, there are a lot of yawns connected with plugging a telephone
switchboard day by day in every way, and now and then a male will come
along sufficiently interesting for little Gladys to accept temporarily
as an accomplice in the assassination of time.
Dinners, dances, theaters, this and that--nothing my mother and I
couldn't laugh over, so don't curl your lip!
Well, Guy Tower hadn't been back in the St. Moe a week when he began
showering attentions on me from the point where he left off before he
sailed away. Honestly, he dinnered and theatered me silly! Hazel Killian
watched me carelessly toy with this good-looking young gold mine with
unconcealed feelings of covetousness. She simply couldn't understand why
I didn't grab this boon from Heaven and marry him while he was stupefied
with my charms. Hazel, who is an artists' model and no eyesore herself,
is suffering from a lifelong ambition to become a bird in a gilded cage.
She craves a millionaire, and in desperation she offered to match coins
with me for Guy, but I indignantly refused. I _know_ Hazel--she's a
dear, but she'd have Rockefeller penniless in a month and every shop on
Fifth Avenue sporting a "Closed to Restock" sign. She's just a pretty
baby who loves to go buy and she makes 'em give till it hurts, don't
think she doesn't!
Another person who got upset over Guy's inability to keep away from me
was Jerry Murphy, house sleuth at the St. Moe. Jerry's so big that if he
had numbers on him he'd look like a box car, and he's just another male
I can get all dizzied up with a properly manipulated eye and smile.
Really, he's not a bad fellow, but as a detective he's a blank
cartridge. He couldn't catch pneumonia if it was against the law not to
have it. Jerry don't know what it's all about and never will, because
he's too thick between the ears to ask and nobody will tell him. He
hangs around my switchboard like a hungry collie around a kitchen and
he's just as eager; but I'm not collecting losers, so Jerry's
meaningless to _me._ My bounding around with Guy fills Jerry with pain
and alarm and he keeps me supplied with laughs by constantly warning me
of the pitfalls and temptations that surround a little telephone girl
who steps out with a millionaire. "If 'at big mock orange makes one
out-of-the-way crack to you, cutey, just tip me off and I'll _ruin_
him!" says Jerry with a menacing growl. "I can't cuddle up to the idea
of you goin' out with him all the time. Don't let him go to work and
lure you somewheres away from easy callin' distance of help!"
"Cut yourself a piece of cake!" I says. "Mister Tower is a perfect
gentleman, Jerry, and it would be impossible for him to act like
anything else if he and I were alone on an island in the middle of the
Pacific."
"Say, listen, cutey,'" says Jerry, wincing, "don't mention 'at
alone-on-a-island stuff in my presence! 'At's what I been dreamin' about
me and you for a year. If we ever get on a ship together, I'll wreck it
as sure as you're born!"
Now, isn't he a scream?
Well, at one of our dinner dates about a month after his return, Guy
shows up haggard and wan and apparently all in. Generally a fellow who
couldn't do enough for his stomach, he ordered this night with the
enthusiasm of a steak fiend week-ending at a vegetarian friend's. When
the nourishment arrived, Guy just dallied and toyed with it. Afterwards
we favored the dance floor with a visit, and instead of tripping his
usual wicked ballroom he acted like he had an anvil in each of his
pumps. A dozen times during the evening he had to tap back a yawn, and
really I began to get steamed up. I'm not used to seeing my boy friends
pass out on me!
"I hope I'm not keeping you awake, Mr. Tower," I remarked frigidly as we
returned to our table and the nineteenth yawn slipped right through his
fingers, in spite of his well meant attempt to push it back.
"Forgive me!" says Guy quickly, and a flush brings some color to his
face for the first time that night. "I--the fact is, Gladys, I don't
believe I've had a dozen hours' sleep in the past week!"
"Then you've been cheating," I smile, "for you've always left me around
midnight. Is she a blonde or a brunette, or have you noticed?"
Guy laughs and, leaning over, pats my hand.
"As if I would ever notice _any_ girl but you!" he says, getting
daringly original. "Oh, it isn't a girl, Gladys--though there _is_ a
woman at the bottom of the thing, at that. I'll explain that paradoxical
statement. Rosenblum wants my next play to open his new Thalia Theater,
which will be completed within two months--and I haven't the ghost of an
idea, not the semblance of a plot! I've paced the floor like a caged
animal, smoking countless cigarettes and drinking oceans of black
coffee. I've written steadily for hours at a stretch and then torn the
whole business up in disgust. That's what's kept me awake at night--that
and my daily battles with this infernal Rosenblum!"
"How come?" I ask him in surprise. "I don't see the percentage in
battling with the man who puts your plays on Broadway, Guy."
"He wants me to write a risqué farce, one of those
loathsome--er--pardon me--bedroom things for Yvette D'Lys," says Guy
angrily, "and I ab-so-lute-ly will not do it! I refuse to prostitute my
art for the sordid box office! I----"
"Hold everything!" I butt in. "Shakespeare wasn't below writing bedroom
farces, and I think even _you'll_ admit that he got some favorable
mention as a playwright."
"Shakespeare write a bedroom farce!" gasps Guy. "Why, my dear girl,
you--which of his marvelous plays could you _possibly_ twist into that?"
"Othello," I says promptly. "In act five they clown all over the
boudoir! You should go to the theater oftener."
For a second Guy looks puzzled, then he grins and the lines around his
navy-blue eyes relax.
"You are delightful," he says. "If I cannot get mental stimulus from
_you_, then I am indeed uninspired! Nevertheless, I am not going to do
as Rosenblum requests. I have never written anything salacious or even
suggestive, and I never will! Furthermore, I don't believe Miss D'Lys or
_any_ actress likes to play that kind of a part. It is managers of the
Rosenblum type that force those rôles on them--callous,
dollar-grabbing, cynical pessimists, who take it for granted that all
women are bad!"
"Any man who takes it for granted that all women are bad is no
pessimist, Guy," I says thoughtfully. "He's an optimist!"
"Great!" says Guy, slapping the table with his hand. "May I use that
epigram in my play?"
"I'll loan it to you," I tell him. "If I break out with the writing rash
myself some day, I'll want it back. And now let me hear some of the
ideas you tore up in disgust--maybe one of them is the real McCoy. Trot
'em out and I'll give you my honest opinion."
Well, he did and I did. Guy rattled off a half-dozen plots, which failed
to thicken and merely sickened. Honestly, they had everything in 'em but
the Battle of Gettysburg, and really they were fearful--about as new and
exciting as a beef stew, which is just what I told him, being a truthful
girl.
Guy sighs and looks desperate.
"Gladys," he says, "I simply _must_ have a play ready to open the Thalia
in less than eight weeks! You know that my interest in playwriting is
anything but mercenary--good heavens, I have more money than I know what
to do with. What I want is to see my name on another Broadway success,
and I'm absolutely barren of ideas! I've simply struck a dry spell, such
as all writers do, occasionally. At this moment I'd give twenty-five
thousand dollars for an original plot!"