“Lo, Sam!” said Maurice cautiously. “What you doin'?”
Penrod at that instant had a singular experience--an intellectual shock
like a flash of fire in the brain. Sitting in darkness, a great light
flooded him with wild brilliance. He gasped!
“What you doin'?” repeated Mr. Levy.
Penrod sprang to his feet, seized the licorice bottle, shook it with
stoppering thumb, and took a long drink with histrionic unction.
“What you doin'?” asked Maurice for the third time, Sam Williams not
having decided upon a reply.
It was Penrod who answered.
“Drinkin' lickrish water,” he said simply, and wiped his mouth with such
delicious enjoyment that Sam's jaded thirst was instantly stimulated. He
took the bottle eagerly from Penrod.
“A-a-h!” exclaimed Penrod, smacking his lips. “That was a good un!”
The eyes above the fence glistened.
“Ask him if he don't want some,” Penrod whispered urgently. “Quit
drinkin' it! It's no good any more. Ask him!”
“What for?” demanded the practical Sam.
“Go on and ask him!” whispered Penrod fiercely.
“Say, M'rice!” Sam called, waving the bottle. “Want some?”
“Bring it here!” Mr. Levy requested.
“Come on over and get some,” returned Sam, being prompted.
“I can't. Penrod Schofield's after me.”
“No, I'm not,” said Penrod reassuringly. “I won't touch you, M'rice.
I made up with you yesterday afternoon--don't you remember? You're all
right with me, M'rice.”
Maurice looked undecided. But Penrod had the delectable bottle again,
and tilting it above his lips, affected to let the cool liquid purl
enrichingly into him, while with his right hand he stroked his middle
facade ineffably. Maurice's mouth watered.
“Here!” cried Sam, stirred again by the superb manifestations of his
friend. “Gimme that!”
Penrod brought the bottle down, surprisingly full after so much gusto,
but withheld it from Sam; and the two scuffled for its possession.
Nothing in the world could have so worked upon the desire of the
yearning observer beyond the fence.
“Honest, Penrod--you ain't goin' to touch me if I come in your yard?” he
called. “Honest?”
“Cross my heart!” answered Penrod, holding the bottle away from Sam.
“And we'll let you drink all you want.”
Maurice hastily climbed the fence, and while he was thus occupied Mr.
Samuel Williams received a great enlightenment. With startling rapidity
Penrod, standing just outside the storeroom door, extended his arm
within the room, deposited the licorice water upon the counter of the
drug store, seized in its stead the bottle of smallpox medicine, and
extended it cordially toward the advancing Maurice.
Genius is like that--great, simple, broad strokes!
Dazzled, Mr. Samuel Williams leaned against the wall. He had
the sensations of one who comes suddenly into the presence of a
chef-d'oeuvre. Perhaps his first coherent thought was that almost
universal one on such huge occasions: “Why couldn't _I_ have done that!”
Sam might have been even more dazzled had he guessed that he figured not
altogether as a spectator in the sweeping and magnificent conception of
the new Talleyrand. Sam had no partner for the cotillon. If Maurice
was to be absent from that festivity--as it began to seem he might
be--Penrod needed a male friend to take care of Miss Rennsdale and he
believed he saw his way to compel Mr. Williams to be that male friend.
For this he relied largely upon the prospective conduct of Miss
Rennsdale when he should get the matter before her--he was inclined to
believe she would favour the exchange. As for Talleyrand Penrod himself,
he was going to dance that cotillon with Marjorie Jones!
“You can have all you can drink at one pull, M'rice,” said Penrod
kindly.
“You said I could have all I want!” protested Maurice, reaching for the
bottle.
“No, I didn't,” returned Penrod quickly, holding it away from the eager
hand.
“He did, too! Didn't he, Sam?”
Sam could not reply; his eyes, fixed upon the bottle, protruded
strangely.
“You heard him--didn't you, Sam?”
“Well, if I did say it I didn't mean it!” said Penrod hastily, quoting
from one of the authorities. “Looky here, M'rice,” he continued,
assuming a more placative and reasoning tone, “that wouldn't be fair to
us. I guess we want some of our own lickrish water, don't we? The bottle
ain't much over two-thirds full anyway. What I meant was, you can have
all you can drink at one pull.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, this way: you can gulp all you want, so long as you keep
swallering; but you can't take the bottle out of your mouth and commence
again. Soon's you quit swallering it's Sam's turn.”
“No; you can have next, Penrod,” said Sam.
“Well, anyway, I mean M'rice has to give the bottle up the minute he
stops swallering.”
Craft appeared upon the face of Maurice, like a poster pasted on a wall.
“I can drink so long I don't stop swallering?”
“Yes; that's it.”
“All right!” he cried. “Gimme the bottle!”
And Penrod placed it in his hand.
“You promise to let me drink until I quit swallering?” Maurice insisted.
“Yes!” said both boys together.
With that, Maurice placed the bottle to his lips and began to drink.
Penrod and Sam leaned forward in breathless excitement. They had feared
Maurice might smell the contents of the bottle; but that danger was
past--this was the crucial moment. Their fondest hope was that he would
make his first swallow a voracious one--it was impossible to imagine a
second. They expected one big, gulping swallow and then an explosion,
with fountain effects.
Little they knew the mettle of their man! Maurice swallowed once; he
swallowed twice--and thrice--and he continued to swallow! No Adam's
apple was sculptured on that juvenile throat, but the internal progress
of the liquid was not a whit the less visible. His eyes gleamed with
cunning and malicious triumph, sidewise, at the stunned conspirators;
he was fulfilling the conditions of the draught, not once breaking the
thread of that marvelous swallering.
His audience stood petrified. Already Maurice had swallowed more than
they had given Duke and still the liquor receded in the uplifted bottle!
And now the clear glass gleamed above the dark contents full half the
vessel's length--and Maurice went on drinking! Slowly the clear glass
increased in its dimensions--slowly the dark diminished.
Sam Williams made a horrified movement to check him--but Maurice
protested passionately with his disengaged arm, and made vehement vocal
noises remindful of the contract; whereupon Sam desisted and watched the
continuing performance in a state of grisly fascination.
Maurice drank it all! He drained the last drop and threw the bottle in
the air, uttering loud ejaculations of triumph and satisfaction.
“Hah!” he cried, blowing out his cheeks, inflating his chest, squaring
his shoulders, patting his stomach, and wiping his mouth contentedly.
“Hah! Aha! Waha! Wafwah! But that was good!”
The two boys stood looking at him in stupor.
“Well, I gotta say this,” said Maurice graciously: “You stuck to your
bargain all right and treated me fair.”
Stricken with a sudden horrible suspicion, Penrod entered the storeroom
in one stride and lifted the bottle of licorice water to his nose--then
to his lips. It was weak, but good; he had made no mistake. And Maurice
had really drained--to the dregs--the bottle of old hair tonics, dead
catsups, syrups of undesirable preserves, condemned extracts of
vanilla and lemon, decayed chocolate, ex-essence of beef, mixed dental
preparations, aromatic spirits of ammonia, spirits of nitre, alcohol,
arnica, quinine, ipecac, sal volatile, nux vomica and licorice water--
with traces of arsenic, belladonna and strychnine.
Penrod put the licorice water out of sight and turned to face the
others. Maurice was seating himself on a box just outside the door and
had taken a package of cigarettes from his pocket.
“Nobody can see me from here, can they?” he said, striking a match. “You
fellers smoke?”
“No,” said Sam, staring at him haggardly.
“No,” said Penrod in a whisper.
Maurice lit his cigarette and puffed showily.
“Well, sir,” he remarked, “you fellers are certainly square--I gotta
say that much. Honest, Penrod, I thought you was after me! I did
think so,” he added sunnily; “but now I guess you like me, or else
you wouldn't of stuck to it about lettin' me drink it all if I kept on
swallering.”
He chatted on with complete geniality, smoking his cigarette in content.
And as he ran from one topic to another his hearers stared at him in a
kind of torpor. Never once did they exchange a glance with each other;
their eyes were frozen to Maurice. The cheerful conversationalist made
it evident that he was not without gratitude.
“Well,” he said as he finished his cigarette and rose to go, “you
fellers have treated me nice and some day you come over to my yard; I'd
like to run with you fellers. You're the kind of fellers I like.”
Penrod's jaw fell; Sam's mouth had been open all the time. Neither
spoke.
“I gotta go,” observed Maurice, consulting a handsome watch. “Gotta get
dressed for the cotillon right after lunch. Come on, Sam. Don't you have
to go, too?”
Sam nodded dazedly.
“Well, good-bye, Penrod,” said Maurice cordially. “I'm glad you like me
all right. Come on, Sam.”
Penrod leaned against the doorpost and with fixed and glazing eyes
watched the departure of his two visitors. Maurice was talking volubly,
with much gesticulation, as they went; but Sam walked mechanically
and in silence, staring at his brisk companion and keeping at a little
distance from him.
They passed from sight, Maurice still conversing gayly--and Penrod
slowly betook himself into the house, his head bowed upon his chest.
Some three hours later, Mr. Samuel Williams, waxen clean and in sweet
raiment, made his reappearance in Penrod's yard, yodelling a code-signal
to summon forth his friend. He yodelled loud, long, and frequently,
finally securing a faint response from the upper air.
“Where are you?” shouted Mr. Williams, his roving glance searching
ambient heights. Another low-spirited yodel reaching his ear, he
perceived the head and shoulders of his friend projecting above the
roofridge of the stable. The rest of Penrod's body was concealed from
view, reposing upon the opposite slant of the gable and precariously
secured by the crooking of his elbows over the ridge.
“Yay! What you doin' up there?”
“Nothin'.”
“You better be careful!” Sam called. “You'll slide off and fall down in
the alley if you don't look out. I come pert' near it last time we was
up there. Come on down! Ain't you goin' to the cotillon?”
Penrod made no reply. Sam came nearer.
“Say,” he called up in a guarded voice, “I went to our telephone a while
ago and ast him how he was feelin', and he said he felt fine!”
“So did I,” said Penrod. “He told me he felt bully!”
Sam thrust his hands in his pockets and brooded. The opening of the
kitchen door caused a diversion. It was Della.
“Mister Penrod,” she bellowed forthwith, “come ahn down fr'm up there!
Y'r mamma's at the dancin' class waitin' fer ye, an' she's telephoned
me they're goin' to begin--an' what's the matter with ye? Come ahn down
fr'm up there!”
“Come on!” urged Sam. “We'll be late. There go Maurice and Marjorie
now.”
A glittering car spun by, disclosing briefly a genre picture of Marjorie
Jones in pink, supporting a monstrous sheaf of American Beauty roses.
Maurice, sitting shining and joyous beside her, saw both boys and waved
them a hearty greeting as the car turned the corner.
Penrod uttered some muffled words and then waved both arms--either in
response or as an expression of his condition of mind; it may have
been a gesture of despair. How much intention there was in this
act--obviously so rash, considering the position he occupied--it
is impossible to say. Undeniably there must remain a suspicion of
deliberate purpose.
Della screamed and Sam shouted. Penrod had disappeared from view.
The delayed dance was about to begin a most uneven cotillon when Samuel
Williams arrived.
Mrs. Schofield hurriedly left the ballroom; while Miss Rennsdale,
flushing with sudden happiness, curtsied profoundly to Professor Bartet
and obtained his attention.
“I have telled you fifty times,” he informed her passionately ere she
spoke, “I cannot make no such changes. If your partner comes you have to
dance with him. You are going to drive me crazy, sure! What is it? What
now? What you want?”
The damsel curtsied again and handed him the following communication,
addressed to herself:
“Dear madam Please excuse me from dancing the cotilon with you
this afternoon as I have fell off the barn
“Sincerly yours
“PENROD SCHOFIELD.”