The Other 99 Meals Will Be Served In Augusta, Maine.
“Come on, Ben,” said Dulcet. “No use trying to break through a window.
There's no one there. I wonder what the fare is to Augusta?”
“You rascal!” I cried. “If you suspected this, why the devil did you
encourage me to squander my $10?”
“I simply said it would probably be well spent,” he said, with a
clear blue humorous gaze. “If it helps to cauterize your magnificent
credulity, it will be.”
We sat down on a bench in St. Paul's churchyard to smoke a pipe together
while I performed some mental obsequies over my vanished Federal Reserve
certificate. Dove looked up at the sparkling gilded turret of the
Woolworth.
*****
“I daresay Frank Woolworth would have fallen for it, too,” Dove said.
“The idea of a hundred meals for 10 cents each would have appealed to
him. But you know, old man, there are certain fixed and immutable laws
that the observant city dweller is accustomed to. My motto is, whenever
you find an apparent exception to those laws, look for an enigma in the
woodpile. I suspected something wrong when I saw that sandwich man
on Church Street. A man as fat as that doesn't generally take a job
sandwiching. Also I have doubts about people who insist on calling
Christmas 'Yule'. Moreover, a man doesn't generally take a job
sandwiching until his shirt is so ragged that he is ashamed to exhibit
it in public, when he is glad to cover it up with the boards. Those two
fat sandwicheers were members of the firm, I fear, for their linen was
O. K. And, secondly, what are the first things a man gets if he really
intends to start a restaurant? A cash register and a bunch of ketchup
bottles. There wasn't a cash register nor a ketchup bottle in sight in
the Commutation Chophouse. No, my dear; what you admired as carefully
arranged atmosphere of antiquity, the plain board tables and candles and
so on, was really stark cheapness. They weren't spending any money on
overhead; they said so themselves.
“When you called my attention to the spilled beans, I was sure. For they
were not merely beans: they were baked beans; a far more significant
matter. When I looked out of the window I could see at once that there
was no kitchen attached to the Commutation Chophouse. The food was all
being delivered from that place on Beekman Street, whose name was on
the truck. A few ingenious rogues simply rented that old cellar, cheaply
enough I guess, put in a few tables, arranged to have grub shipped in
from near by, printed their commutation tickets, and sat down to collect
as many dollars as they could lure out of the open-handed Christmas
throng.”
“Well, of all infernal liars,” I cried, “they certainly take the prize.”
“Not so,” said Dulcet as we got up to go. “You should have read the
sandwich boards a little more carefully. Their ingenious author,
whom you chide as the Ann Street Ananias, really told the exact and
circumstantial truth.”
We stood at the gateway of the graveyard, and gazed across the roaring
traffic of Broadway. Dove smiled and said he must be starting on his
Christmas shopping.
“I tried to warn you,” he said, “but you wouldn't listen. As I was about
to say just before we visited the place, it was queer that it should
happen on Ann Street. Don't you remember that a certain famous gentleman
had his museum at the corner of Broadway and Ann? And it was he, I
think, who remarked that there's one born every minute. Well, Merry
Christmas!”