Yes, empty-handed, Tom Dorgan. And I can't honestly say I didn't have
the chance, but--if my hands are empty my head is full.
Listen.
There's a girl I know with short brown hair, a turned-up nose and gray
eyes, rather far apart. You know her, too? Well, she can't help that.
But this girl--oh, she makes such a pretty boy! And the ladies at the
hotel over in Brooklyn, they just dote on her when she's not only a boy
but a bell-boy. Her name may be Nancy when she's in petticoats, but in
trousers she's Nathaniel--in short, Nat.
Now, Nat, in blue and buttons, with his nails kept better than most
boys', with his curly hair parted in the middle, and with a gentle tang
to his voice that makes him almost girlish--who would suspect Nat of
having a stolen pass-key in his pocket and a pretty fair knowledge of
the contents of almost every top bureau-drawer in the hotel?
Not Mrs. Sarah Kingdon, a widow just arrived from Philadelphia, and
desperately gone on young Mr. George Moriway, also fresh from
Philadelphia, and desperately gone on Mrs. Kingdon's money.
The tips that lady gave the bad boy Nat! I knew I couldn't make you
believe it any other way; that's why I passed 'em on to you, Tommy-boy.
The hotel woman, you know, girls, is a hotel woman because she isn't
fit to be anything else. She's lazy and selfish and little, and she's
shifted all her legitimate cares on to the proprietor's shoulders. She
actually--you can understand and share my indignation, can't you, Tom,
as you've shared other things?--she even gives over her black tin box
full of valuables to the hotel clerk to put in the safe; the coward!
But her vanity--ah, there's where we get her, such speculators as you
and myself. She's got to outshine the woman who sits at the next
table, and so she borrows her diamonds from the clerk, wears 'em like
the peacock she is, and trembles till they're back in the safe again.
In the meantime she locks them up in the tin box which she puts in her
top bureau-drawer, hides the key, forgets where she hid it, and--O
Tom! after searching for it for hours and making herself sick with
anxiety, she ties up her head in a wet handkerchief with vinegar on it
and--rings the bell for the bell-boy!
He comes.
As I said, he's a prompt, gentle little bell-boy, slight, looks rather
young for his job, but that very youth and innocence of his make him
such a fellow to trust!
"Nat," says Mrs. Kingdon, tearfully pressing half a dollar into the
nice lad's hand, "I--I've lost something and I want you to--to help me
find it."
"Yes'm," says Nat. He's the soul of politeness.
"It must be here--it must be in this room," says the lady, getting wild
with the terror of losing. "I'm sure--positive--that I went straight
to the shoe-bag and slipped it in there. And now I can't find it, and
I must have it before I go out this afternoon for--for a very special
reason. My daughter Evelyn will be home to-morrow and--why don't you
look for it?"
"What is it, ma'am?"
"I told you once. My key--a little flat key that locks--a box I've
got," she finishes distrustfully.
"Have you looked in the shoe-bag, ma'am?"
"Why, of course I have, you little stupid. I want you to hunt other
places where I can't easily get. There are other places I might have
put it, but I'm positive it was in the shoe-bag."
Well, I looked for that key. Where? Where not? I looked under the
rubbish in the waste-paper basket; Mrs. Kingdon often fooled thieves by
dropping it there. I pulled up the corner of the carpet and looked
there--it was loose; it had often been used for a hiding-place. I
looked in Miss Evelyn's boot and in her ribbon box. I emptied Mrs.
Kingdon's full powder box. I climbed ladders and felt along cornices.
I looked through the pockets of Mrs. Kingdon's gowns--a clever bell-boy
it takes to find a woman's pocket, but even the real masculine ones
among 'em are half feminine; they've had so much to do with women.
I rummaged through her writing-desk, and, in searching a gold-cornered
pad, found a note from Moriway hidden under the corner. I hid it again
carefully--in my coat pocket. A love-letter from Moriway, to a woman
twenty years older than himself--'tain't a bad lay, Tom Dorgan, but you
needn't try it.
At first she watched every move I made, but later, as her headache grew
worse, she got desperate. So then I put my hand down into the shoe-bag
and found the key, where it had slipped under a fold of cloth.
Do you suppose that woman was grateful? She snatched it from me.
"I knew it was there. I told you it was there. If you'd had any sense
you'd have looked there first. The boys in this hotel are so stupid."
"That's all, ma'am?"
She nodded. She was fitting the key into the black box she'd taken
from the top drawer. Nat had got to the outside door when he heard her
come shrieking after him.
"Nat--Nat--come back! My diamonds--they're not here. I know I put
them back last night--I'm positive. I could swear to it. I can see
myself putting them in the chamois bag, and--O my God, where can they
be! This time they're gone!"
Nat could have told her--but what's the use? He felt she'd only lose
'em again if she had 'em. So he let them lie snug in his trousers
pocket--where he had put the chamois bag, when his eyes lit on it,
under the corner of the carpet. He might have passed it over to her
then, but you see, Tom, she hadn't told him to look for a bag; it was a
key she wanted. Bell-boys are so stupid.
This time she followed his every step. He could not put his hand on
the smallest thing without rousing her suspicion. If he hesitated, she
scolded. If he hurried, she fumed. Most unjust, I call it, because he
had no thought of stealing--just then.
"Come," she said at last, "we'll go down and report it at the desk."
"Hadn't I better wait here, ma'am, and look again?"
She looked sharply at him.
"No; you'd better do just as I tell you."
So down we went. And we met Mr. Moriway there. She'd telephoned him.
The chambermaid was called, the housekeeper, the electrical engineer
who'd been fixing bells that morning, and, as I said, a bell-boy named
Nat, who told how he'd just come on duty when Mrs. Kingdon's bell rang,
found her key and returned it to her, and was out of the room when she
unlocked the box. That was all he knew.
"Is he telling the truth?" Moriway asked Mrs Kingdon.
"Ye--es, I guess he is; but where are the diamonds? We must have
them--you know--to-day, George," she whispered. And then she turned
and went upstairs, leaving Moriway to do the rest.
"There's only one thing to do, Major," he said to the proprietor.
"Search 'em all and then--"
"Search me? It's an outrage!" cried the housekeeper.
"Search me if ye loike," growled McCarthy, resentfully. "Oi wasn't
there but a minute; the lady herself can tell ye that."
Katie, the chambermaid, flushed painfully, and there were indignant
tears in her eyes, which, I'll tell you in confidence, made a girl
named Nancy uncomfortable.
But the boy Nat; knowing that bell-boys have no rights, said nothing.
But he thought. He thought, Tom Dorgan, a lot of things and a long way
ahead.
The peppery old Major marched us all off to his private office.
Not much, girls, it hadn't come. For suddenly the annunciator rang out.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nat looked at the bell-boy's bench. It
was empty. There was to be a ball that night, and the bells were going
it over all the place.
"Number Twenty-one!" shouted the clerk at the desk.
But Number Twenty-one didn't budge. His heart was beating like a
hammer, and the ting--ng--ng of that bell calling him rang in his head
like a song.
"Number Twenty-one!" yelled the clerk.
Oh, he's got a devil of a temper, has that clerk. Some day, Tom, when
you love me very much, go up to the hotel and break his face for me.
"You.--boy--confound you, can't you hear?" he shouted.
That time he caught the Major's ear--the one that wasn't deaf. He
looked from Powers' black face to the bench and then to me. And all
the time the bell kept ringing like mad.
"Git!" he said to the boy. "And come back in a hurry."
Number Twenty-one got--but leisurely. It wouldn't do for a bell-boy to
hurry, particularly when he had such good cause.
Oh, girls, those stone stairs, the servants' stairs at the St. James!
They're fierce. I tell you, Mag, scrubbing the floors at the Cruelty
ain't so bad. But this time I was jolly glad bell-boys weren't allowed
in the elevator. For there were those diamonds in my pants pocket, and
I must get rid of 'em before I got down to the office again. So I
climbed those stairs, and every step I took my eye was searching for a
hiding-place. I could have pitched the little bag out of a window, but
Nancy Olden wasn't throwing diamonds to the birds, any more than Mag
here is likely to cut off the braids of red hair we used to play horse
with when we drove her about the Cruelty yard.
One flight.
No chance.
Another.
Everything bare as stone and soap could keep it.
The third flight--my knees began to tremble, and not with climbing.
The call came from this floor. But I ran up a fourth just on the
chance, and there in a corner was a fire hatchet strapped to the wall.
Behind that hatchet Mrs. Kingdon's diamonds might lie snug till
evening. I put the ends of my fingers first in the little crack to
make sure the little bag wouldn't drop to the floor, and then dived
into my pocket and--
And there behind me, stealthily coming up the last turn of the stairs
was Mr. George Moriway!
Don't you hate a soft-walking man, Mag? That cute fellow was cuter
than the old Major himself, and had followed me every inch of the way.
"There's something loose with this hatchet, sir," I said, innocently
looking down at him.
"Oh, there is? What an observing little fellow you are! Never mind
the hatchet; just tell me what number you were sent to answer."
"Number?" I repeated, as though I couldn't see why he wanted to know.
"Why--431."
"Not much, my boy--331."
"'Scuse me, sir, ain't you mistaken?"
He looked at me for full a minute. I stared him straight in the eye.
A nasty eye he's got--black and bloodshot and cold and full of
suspicion. But it wavered a bit at the end.
"I may be," he said slowly, "but not about the number. Just you turn
around and get down to 331."
"All right, sir. Thank you very much. It might have got me in
trouble. The ladies are so particular about having the bells answered
quick--"
"I guess you'll get in trouble all right," he said and stood
watching--from where he stood he could watch me every inch of the
way--till I got to 331, at the end of the hall, Mrs. Kingdon's door.
And the goods still on me, Tom, mind that.
My, but Mrs. Kingdon was wrathy when she saw me!
"Why did they send you?" she cried. "Why did you keep me waiting so
long? I want a chambermaid. I've rung a dozen times. The whole place
is crazy about that old ball to-night, and no one can get decent
attention."
"Can't I do what you want, ma'am?" I just yearned to get inside that
door.
"No," she snapped. "I don't want a boy to fasten my dress in the
back--"
"We often do, ma'am," I said softly.
"You do? Well--"
"Yes'm." I breathed again.
"Well--it's indecent. Go down and send me a maid."
She was just closing the door in my face--and Moriway waiting for me to
watch me down again.
"Mrs. Kingdon--"
"Well, what do you want?"
"I want to tell you that when I get down to the office they'll search
me."
She looked at me amazed.
"And--and there's something in my pocket I--you wouldn't like them to
find."
"What in the world--my diamonds! You did take them, you little wretch?"
She caught hold of my coat. But Lordy! I didn't want to get away a
little bit. I let her pull me in, and then I backed up against the
door and shut it.
"Diamonds! Oh, no, ma'am. I hope I'm not a thief. But--but it was
something you dropped--this."