Say, you can't always tell, can you? Here a couple of weeks back I
thought I'd wiped It'ly off the map. We'd settled down in this little
old burg, me and the Boss and Mister 'Ankins, nice and comfortable, and
not too far from Broadway. And we was havin' our four o'clock teas with
the mitts, as reg'lar as if there was money comin' to us for each round,
when this here Sherlock proposition turns up.
Mister 'Ankins, he was the first to spot it, and he comes trottin' in
where we was prancin' around the mat, his jaw loose, and his eyebrows
propped up like Eddie Foy's when he wears his salary face.
"Hit's most hunnacountable, sir," says he.
"Time out!" says I, blockin' the Boss's pet upper cut. "Mister 'Ankins
seems to have something on the place where his mind ought to be."
"Hankins," says the Boss, putting down his guard reluctant, "haven't I
told you never to----"
"Yes, sir; yes, sir," says Mister 'Ankins, "but there's that houtrageous
thing fawst to the door and, Lor' 'elp me, sir, Hi cawnt pull it hoff."
The Boss he looks at me, and I looks at the Boss, and then we both looks
at Mister 'Ankins. Seein' as how he couldn't reveal much with that
cheese pie face of his, we goes and takes a look at the door. It was
the outside one, just as you gets off the elevator.
And there _was_ something there, too; the dizziest kind of a visitin'
card that was ever handed out, I suspicion, in those particular swell
chambers for single gents. It was a cuff, just a plain, every day wrist
chafer, pinned up with the wickedest little blood letter that ever came
off the knife rack. Half an inch of the blade stuck through the panel,
so the one who put it there must have meant that it shouldn't blow away.
The Boss jerks it loose, sizes it up a minute, and says:
"Stiletto, eh? Made in Firenze--that's Florence. Shorty, have you any
friends from abroad that are in the habit of leaving their cutlery
around promiscuous?"
"I know folks as far west as Hoboken, if that's what you mean," says I,
"but there ain't none of them in the meat business."
Well, we takes the thing inside under the bunch light and has another
squint.
"Here's writin' in red ink," says I, and holds up the cuff.
"Read it," says the Boss.
"I could play it better on a flute," says I. "You try."
We didn't have to try hard. The minute he skinned his eye over that his
jaw goes loose like he'd stopped a body wallop with his short ribs.
"It's Tuscan," says he, "and it means that someone's in trouble and
wants help."
"Do they take this for police headquarters, or a Charity Organization?"
says I. "Looks to me like a new kind of wireless from the wash lady. Why
don't you pay her?"
"That's one of my cuffs," says the Boss.
"It's too well ventilated to get into the bag again," says I.
"Shorty," says he, lettin' my Joe-Weber go over his shoulder, "do you
know where I saw that cuff last? It was in North Italy!"
Then he figured out by the queer laundry marks just where he'd shed this
identical piece of his trousseau. We'd left it, with a few momentoes
just as valuable, when we made that quick move away from that punky old
palace after our little monkey shine with the brigands.
"You don't mean--?" says I. But there wa'n't no use wasting breath on
that question. He was blushin'. We fiddled some on its having come from
old Vincenzo, or maybe from Blue Beak, the Count that rented us the
place; but the minute we tied that cuff up with the castle we knew that
the one who sent it meant to ring up a hurry call on us for help, and
that it wasn't anybody but the Lady Brigandess herself, the one that
put us next and kept the Boss from being sewed up in a blanket.
"That's a Hey Rube for me," says I. "How about-cher?"
But the Boss was kicking off his gym. shoes and divin' through his
shirt. In five minutes by the watch we were dressed for slootin'.
"I know a Dago roundsman--" says I.
"No police in this," says the Boss.
"Guess you're right," says I. "Too much lime-light and too little
headwork. We'll cut the cops out. Where to first?"
"I'm going to call on the Italian consul," says the Boss. "He's a friend
of mine."
So we opened the sloot business with a ride in one of those heavy weight
'lectric hansoms, telling the throttle pusher to shove her wide open.
Maybe we broke the speed ord'nance some, but we caught Mr. Consul on the
fly, just as he was punchin' the time card. He wore a rich set of Peter
Cooper whiskers, but barring them he was a well finished old gent, with
a bow that was an address of welcome all by itself. The way that he
shoved out leather chairs you'd thought he was makin' a present of 'em
to us.
But the Boss hadn't any time to waste on flourishes. We got right down
to cases. He wanted to know about where the Tuscans usually headed for
when they left Ellis Island, what sort of gangs they had in New York and
what kind of Black Hand deviltry they were most given to. He asked a
hundred questions and never answered one. Then he shook hands with Mr.
Consul and we chased out.
"It looks like the Malabistos," says the Boss. "They have a kind of
headquarters over a basement restaurant. Perhaps they've shut her up
there. We'll take a look at the place anyway."
A lot of good it did us, too. The spaghetti works was in full blast,
with a lot of husky lowbrows goin' in and out, smokin' cheroots half as
long as your arm, and acting as if the referee had just declared a draw.
The opening for a couple of bare fisted investigators wasn't what you
might call promisin'. Not having their grips and passwords, we didn't
feel as though we could make good in their lodge.
"I could round up a gang and then we could rush 'em," says I.
"That wouldn't do," says the Boss. "Strategy is what we need here."
"I'm just out of that," says I.
"Perhaps there's a back door," says the Boss.
So we moseys around the block, huntin' for a family entrance. But that
ain't the way they build down in Mulberry Bend. They chucks their old
rookeries slam up against one another, to keep 'em from fallin' over, I
guess. Generally though, there's some sort of garlic flue through the
middle of the block, but you need a balloon to find it.
"Hist!" says I. "Hold me head while I thinks a thunk. Didn't I come down
here once to watch a try-out? Sure! And it was pulled off in the
palatial parlors of Appetite Joe Cardenzo's Chowder Association, the
same being a back room two flights up. Now if we could dig up Appetite
Joe--"
We did. He was around the corner playing 'scope for brandied plums, but
he let go the cards long enough to listen to my fairy tale about wantin'
a joint where I could give my friend a private lesson.
"Sure!" said Joe, passing out the key, "but you breaka da chair I charga
feefty cent."
There were two back windows and the view wasn't one you'd want to put in
a frame. Down below was a court filled with coal boxes and old barrels,
and perfumed like the lee side of Barren Island. But catty-corners
across was the back of that spaghetti mill. We could tell it by the
two-decker bill board on the roof. In the upper windows we could see
Dago women and kids, but the windows on the second floor were black.
"Iron shutters," says the Boss. "And that's where she is if anywhere."
"Got a scalin' ladder and a jimmy in your pocket?" says I. "Then I'll
have to run around to a three ball exchange and see if I can't dig up an
outfit."
A patent fire escape and a short handled pick-axe was the best I could
do. We made the board jumper fast inside and down I went. Then there was
acrobatics; swingin' across to that three inch window ledge, balancin'
with one foot on nothing, and single hand work with the pick-axe. Lucky
that shutter-bar was half rusted away. She came open with a bang when
she did come, and it near sent me down into the barrels. Me eyelashes
held though, and there I was, up against a window.
"See anything?" says the Boss.
"Room to rent," says I, for it looked like we'd pried open a vacant
flat.
Just then the sash goes up and something shiny glitters in the dark. I
was just lettin' go with one hand to swing for a head when someone lets
loose a Dago remark that was mighty business like and more or less
familiar.
"Is it you?" says I. "If you're the Lady Brigandess own up sudden."
"Ah-h-h!" says she, thankful like, as if she'd seen her horse win by a
nose. Then she puts up the rib tickler and grabs me by the wrist.
"Guess your lady friend's here," I sings out to the Boss.
"Have you got her?" says he.
"No," says I; "she's got me."
But no sooner does she hear him than she lets go of me, shoves her head
out of the window and calls up to him. The Boss says something back and
for the next two minutes they swaps Dago talk to beat the cars.
"How shall I pass her up?" says I.
Just then she made a spring for that rope ladder of ours and overhands
up like a trapeze star. An' me thinkin' we'd need a derrick or a
bo's'n's chair!
It wa'n't no time for reunions at that stage of the game, nor for hard
luck stories, either. None of us was pining to hold any sociables with
the Malabistos. We quit the chowder club on the jump, streaked up the
hill into Mott street, and piled into one of those fuzzy two horse
chariots that they keep hooked up for weddin's and funerals.
"Where to?" says the bone thumper.
"Head her for Buffalo and let loose to beat the Empire State express,"
says I, "but hunt for asphalt."
That fetched us up Second Avenue, but there wasn't any conversin' done
until we'd put fifty blocks behind us. Then I reckon the Boss asked the
Lady Brigandess if she'd missed any meals lately. From the way he gave
orders to steer for a food refinery she must have allowed that she had.
Not having time to be particular, we hit a goulash emporium where they
spell the meat card mostly with cz's. But they gave us a private room
upstairs, which was what we wanted. And it wasn't until we got inside
that we had a full length view of her. Say, I was glad we'd landed so
far east of Broadway. Post me for a welcher if she wasn't rigged out in
the same kind of a chorus costume that she wore when we saw her last,
over there in It'ly! Only it was more so. It was the kind of costume
that'd been all right on a cigarette card, or outside a Luna Park joint,
and it would have let her into the Arion ball without a ticket; but it
wasn't built for circulatin' 'round New York in.
"Piffle! Piffle!" says I to the Boss. "They'll think we've pinched her
out of a Kiralfy ballet. Hadn't we better send for yer lady-fren's
trunk?"
The Boss grinned, but he looked her over as satisfied as if she'd been
dressed accordin' to his own water color sketches. She was something of
a star, yes, yes! If you were lookin' for figure and condition, she had
'em. And when it came to the color scheme--well, no grease paint
manipulator ever mixed caffy-o-lay and raspb'ry pink the way it grew on
her. For a made-in-It'ly girl she was the real meringue.
"We'll see about clothes later," says the Boss, and ordered up seventeen
kinds of sckeezedsky, to be served in relays.
She brought her appetite with her, all right, even if she had mislaid
her suit case. And, while she was pitchin' into what passes for grub on
Second Avenue, she told the Boss the story of her life. Leastways,
that's what it sounded like to me.
The way I gets it from the Boss was like this: Her father, the old
brigand pantanta, couldn't get over the way we'd bansheed his bunch of
third rate kidnappers with our tin armor play. He accumulated a sort of
ingrowin' grouch and soured on the whole push because they wouldn't turn
state's evidence as to who had given us the dope to do 'em.
The Lady Brigandess she had stood that for a while, until one day she
gets her Irish up, tells the old man how she tipped us off herself, and
then makes tracks out of the country. One way and another she'd heard a
lot about America. So she takes out yellow tickets on a few spare
sparks and buys a steerage berth for New York.
Well, she hadn't more'n got past Sandy Hook before a Malabisto runner
spotted her. So did the advance man of another gang. They sized up the
gold hoops in her ears, her real money necklace and some of the other
furniture she sported, and they invited her home to tea. Just how the
scrap began or what it was all about she didn't know, so the story by
rounds hasn't been told. The next thing she knew though, they'd hustled
her into the Bend and bottled her up in that back room, but not before
she'd done a little extemporaneous carvin' on her own account. I
gathered that three or four of the Malabistos needed some plain sewin'
done on 'em after the bell rang, and that the rest wasn't so anxious for
her society as at first. She'd been cooped up for two days when she
managed to get hold of a Dago woman who promised to carry that cuff to
the place where old Vincenzo had told her we hung out in New York.
"So far it's as good as playin' leading heavy in 'The Shadows of a Great
City,'" says I, "but what's down for the next act? Where does she want
to go now?"
Say, you'd thought the Boss had been nipped with the goods on. He goes
strawb'ry color back to his ears. Next he takes a look across the table
at her where she sits, quiet and easy, and as much to home as Lady
Graftwad on the back seat of the tonneau. She was takin' notice of him,
too, kind of runnin' over his points like he was something rich she'd
won at a raffle and was glad to get. But the Boss he braced up and
looked me straight in the eye.
"Shorty," says he, "I want to call your attention to the fact that this
young lady is something like three thousand miles from home, that we're
the only two human beings on this side of the ocean she knows by sight,
and that once she risked a good deal to do us a service."
"I'll put my name to all that," says I, "but what does it lead up to;
where do we exit?"
"That," says the Boss, "is a conundrum."
"Ain't she got any programme?" says I.
"She--er--that is," says the Boss, trying to duck, "she says she wants
to go with us."
"Whe-e-e-ew!" says I, through my front teeth. "This is _so_ sudden. Just
tell the lady, will you, that I've resigned."
"No you don't, Shorty," says the Boss. "You'll see this thing through."
"But look at them circus clothes," says I. "I've got no aunts or
grandmothers, or second cousins that I could unload a Lady Brigandess
on."
"Nor I," says the Boss.
But he didn't look half so worried as he might. Say, when I came to
figure out what we were up against, I could feel little cold storage
whiffs on my shoulder blades. Suppose someone should meet you in the
middle of Herald Square, hand you a ring-tailed tiger, and then skiddoo.
What? That would be an easy one compared to our proposition. It wasn't a
square deal to shake her, and she'd made up her mind not to stay put
anywhere again.
"Wait here until I telephone someone," says the Boss.
"De-lighted!" says I. "Better ring up the Gerry Society, too, while
you're about it. They might help us out."
The Lady Brigandess and I didn't have a real sociable time while the
Boss was gone. I could see she was watchin' every move I made, as much
as to say, "You can't lose me, Charlie." It was just as cheery as
waitin' in the Sergeant's room for bail.
When the Boss does show up he wears a regular breakfast food smile that
made me leary, for when he looks tickled it don't signify that things
are coming his way. Generally it only means that he's goin' to break out
in a new spot.
"It just occurred to me," says he, "that I had accepted an invitation
from the Van Urbans for the opera."
"What kind of a bluff did you throw?" says I.
"None at all, Shorty," says he. "I just asked if they would have room
for three, and they said they would."
Say, the Boss don't need no nerve tonic, does he? You know about the Van
Urbans, don't you? They weigh in at something like forty millions and
are a good fifth on Mrs. Astor's list.
"Straight goods, now," says I, "you don't reckon to spring this
aggregation on the diamond horse-shoe, do you?"
"We must put in the time somehow," says he.
I thought it might be all a grand josh, until I'd watched some of his
moves. First we drives over to Fift' avenue and stops at one of those
places where it says "Robes" on a brass plate outside. The Boss stays in
there four minutes and comes out with a piece of dry goods that they
must have stood him up a hundred for--kind of an opera cloak, ulster
length, all rustly black silk outside and white inside. The Lady
Brigandess she puts it on with no more fuss than as if she'd been
brought up on such things and had ordered this one a month ahead.
Next we heads for our own quarters, having shifted our Mott street
chariot for the real article, with rubber tires and silver plated
lamps. About that time I got wise to the fact that the Boss and her
Ladyship were ringin' me into their talk, and I was gettin' curious. I
see the Boss shaking his head like he was tryin' to prove an alibi, and
every once in a while pointin' to me. First thing I knows she'd quit his
side of the carriage and was snugglin' up alongside of me, and cooin'
away in some outlandish kind of baby talk that I was glad I didn't
savvy. I made no kick though, until she begins to pat me on the head.
"Call her off, will you?" says I. "I'm no lost kid."
"The young lady is just expressing her thanks," says the Boss, "to the
gallant young hero who so nobly rescued her from the Malabistos. Don't
shy, Shorty; she says that anyone so brave as you are needn't worry
about not being handsome."
He was kiddin' me, see? I knew he'd given her some fairy tale or other,
but I didn't have any come back that she could understand. I felt like a
monkey though, having my hair mussed and thinkin' maybe next minute
she'd give me the knife. And the Boss he sat there grinnin' like a Jack
lantern.
I didn't get a chance to break away until we got to our own ranch. Then
we left her sitting in the buggy while we went up to make a lightnin'
change. Sure, I've got a head waiter's rig; bought it the time I had to
lead off the grand march at the Tim Grogan Association's tenth annual
ball, but I never looked to wear it out attendin' grand opera.
"I hope the Van Urbans will appreciate that I'm givin' 'em a treat,"
says I.
"They'll be blind if they don't," says the Boss. "Is it your collar that
hurts?"
"No, it's the shoes," says I, "but the pain'll numb down by the time we
get there."
We made our grand entry about the end of the second spasm. The Van
Urbans had taken their corners. There was Papa Van Urban, lookin' like
ready money; and Mamma Van Urban, made up regardless; and Sis Van Urban,
one of those tall Gainsborough girls that any piker could pick for a
winner on form and past performance.
Say, it took all the front I had in stock just to tag along as an also
ran, but when I thought of the Boss, headin' the procession, I was dead
sorry for him. And what kind of a game do you think he hands out?
Straight talk, nothin' but! Course he didn't make no family hist'ry out
of tellin' who his lady-fren' was, but as far as he went it tallied with
the card, even to lettin' on that she was a Lady Brigandess.
"Out we go now," says I to myself, and looks to see Mamma Van Urban
throw a cat fit. But she didn't. She just squealed a little, same's if
someone had tickled her behind the ear, and then she began slingin' that
gurgly-gurgly Newport talk that the Sixt' avenue sales ladies use. Sis
Van Urban caught the same cue, and to hear 'em you'd thought the Boss
had done something real cute. They gave the Lady Brigandess the High
Bridge wig-wag and shooed her into a stage corner chair.
She never made a kick at anything until they tried to take away her
cloak. Not much! She was just beginnin' to be stuck on that. She kept it
wrapped around her like she knew the proprietor wa'n't responsible for
overcoats. The Boss tried to tell her how there wa'n't any grand larceny
intended, but it was no go. She had her suspicions of the crowd, so they
just had to let her sit there draped in black. And at that she wa'n't
any misfit.
Now I'd been inside the Metropolitan once or twice before, havin' blown
myself to a standee just for the sake of lookin' at the real things with
their war paint on, but I wasn't feelin' any more to home in the back of
that box than I would in the pilot house of an air ship.
But the Lady Brigandess didn't show no more stage fright than an
auctioneer. She just holds her chin up and looks out at all that display
of openwork dressmaking and cut glass exhibit without so much as battin'
an eyelash. She was takin' it all in, too, from the bargain hats in the
fam'ly circle, to the diamond tummy warmers in the parterre, but you'd
never guessed that she'd just escaped from a Dago back district where
they have one mail a week. If I hadn't seen her chumming with a hold-up
gang that couldn't have bought fifteen cent lodgings on the Bowery, I'd
bet the limit that she was a thoroughbred in disguise.
There was some rubberin' at her, of course, and I expect we had the
safety vault crowd guessin' as to what kind of a prize the Van Urbans
had won, but it didn't feaze her a bit. She just gave 'em the Horse Show
stare, as cool as a mint frappe. The ringin' up of the curtain didn't
disturb her any, either. When a chesty baritone sauntered down toward
the footlights and began callin' the chorus names she glanced over her
shoulder, casual like, just to see what the row was all about, and then
went on sizin' up the folks in the boxes. She couldn't have done it
better if she'd taken lessons by mail.
"If she would only talk!" gurgles Mrs. Van Urban. "Doesn't she speak
anything but Italian?"
"Pure Tuscan is all she knows," says the Boss, "and the way she talks it
is better than any music you'll hear to-night. Wait until she has
satisfied her eyes."
Pretty soon the baritone quits jawin' the chorus and a prima donna in
spangled clothes comes to the front. Maybe it was Melba, or Nordica.
Anyway, she was an A-1 warbler. She hadn't let go of more'n a dozen
notes before the Lady Brigandess begins to sit up and take notice. First
she has a kind of surprised look, as if a ringer had been sprung on her;
and then, as the high C artist begins to let herself go, she swings
around and listens with both ears. The music didn't seem to go in one
side and out the other. It stuck somewhere between, and swayed and
lifted her like a breeze in a posy bush. I could hear her toe tappin'
out the tune and see her head keep time to it. Why, if I could get my
money's worth out of music like that I'd buy a season ticket.
When the prima donna had cut it off, with her voice way up in the flies
somewhere, and the house had rose to her, as the bleachers do when one
of the Giants knocks a three bagger, the Lady Brigandess was still
sittin' there, waitin' for more.
Her trance didn't last long, though. She just cast one eye around the
boxes, where the folks were splittin' gloves and wavin' fans and
yellin' "Bravo! Bravo!" so that you'd 'a-thought somebody'd carried Ohio
by a big majority, and then she takes a notion to get into the game
herself.
Shuckin' that high priced opera cloak she jumps up, drops one hand on
her hip, holds the other up to her lips and peels off a kind of
whoop-e-e-e yodel that shakes the skylight. Talk about your cornet bugle
calls! That little ventriloquist pass of hers had 'em stung to a
whisper. It cut through all that patter and screech like a siren whistle
splittin' a fish horn serenade, and it was as clear as the ring of
silver sleigh bells on a frosty night.
After that it was all up to her. The other folks quit and turned to see
who had done it. Two or three thousand pairs of double barrelled opera
glasses were pointed our way. The folks behind 'em found something worth
lookin' at, too. Our Brigandess wasn't in disguise any more. She stood
up there at the box rail, straight as a Gibson girl, her black hair
hangin' in two thick braids below her waist, the gold hoops in her ears
all ajiggle, her little fringed jacket risin' and fallin', and her black
eyes snappin' like a pair of burning trolley fuses. Well, say, if she
wa'n't a pastelle I never saw one! I guess the star singer thought so,
too. She'd just smiled and nodded at the others, but she blew a kiss up
to our lady before she left.
I don't know just what would have happened next if someone hadn't shown
up at the back of the box and asked for the Boss. It was the Italian
consul that we'd been to see earlier in the day.
"Where'd you find her?" says he.
"Meanin' who?" says the Boss.
"Why, her highness the Princess Padova."
"Beg pardon," says the Boss, "but if you mean the young lady there,
you're wrong. She's the daughter of a poor but honest brigand chief, and
she's just come from Tuscany to discover New York."
"She's the Princess Padova or I'm a Turk," says the Consul. "Ask her to
step back here a moment."
It sounded like a pipe dream, all right. Who ever saw a princess rigged
out for the tambourine act and mixin' with a lot of chestnut roasters?
But old whiskers had the evidence down pat, though. As he told it, she
was a sure enough princess, so far as the tag went, only the family had
been in the nobility business so long that the pedigree had lasted out
the plunks.
It seemed that away back, before the Chicago fire or the Sayers-Heenan
go, her great-grandpop had princed it in regulation shape. Then there'd
come a grand mix-up, a war or something, and a lot of princes had either
lost their jobs or got on the blacklist. Her great-grandpop had been one
of the kind that didn't know when he was licked. They euchred him out
of his castle and building lots, but he gathered up what was left of his
gang and slid for the tall timber, where he went on princing the best he
knew how. As he couldn't disgrace himself by workin', and hadn't lost
the hankerin' for reg'lar meals, he got into the habit of taking up
contributions from whoever came along, calling it a road tax. And that's
how the Padova family fell into playing the hold-up game.
But the old man Padova, the Princess' father, never forgot that if he'd
had his rights he would have been boss of his ward, and he always acted
accordin'. So when he picked the Consul up on the road one night with a
broken leg he gave him the best in the house, patched him up like an
ambulance surgeon, and kept him board free until he could walk back to
town. And so, when Miss Padova takes it into her head to elope to
America with a tin trunk, Papa Padova hikes himself down to the nearest
telegraph office and cables over a general alarm to his old friend,
who's been made consul.
"I've been having Mulberry Bend raked with a fine toothed comb," says
he, "but when I saw her highness stand up here in the box I knew her at
a glance, although it's been ten years since I saw her last."
Then he asked her if he hadn't called the trick, and she said he had.
"Now," says he, "perhaps you'll tell us why you came to America?"
"Sure," says she, or something that meant the same, "I've come over
after me best feller. I've made up my mind that I'll marry him," and she
slips an arm around the Boss's neck just as cool as though they'd been
on a moonlight excursion.
Mr. Consul's face gets as red as a fireman's shirt, the Van Urbans catch
their breath with both fists, and I begins to see what a lovely mess I'd
been helping the Boss to get himself into. He never turned a hair
though.
"The honor is all mine," says he, just as if he meant every word of it.
"Ahem!" says the Consul, kind of steadying himself against the curtains.
"Perhaps it would be best, before anything more is said on this subject,
for the Princess to have a talk with my wife. We'll take her home."
Well, they settled it that way and I was mighty glad to get her off our
hands so easy.
Next afternoon the Consul shows up at our ranch as gay as an up-state
deacon who's seeing the town incog.
"Sir," says he to the Boss, givin' him the right hand of fellowship,
"you're a real gent. After what you did last night I'm proud to know
you; and I'm happy to state that it's all off with the Princess."
Then he went on to tell how Miss Padova, being out of her latitude,
hadn't got her book straight. She'd carried away the notion that when a
Princess went out of her class she had a right to sign on any chap that
she liked the looks of, without waitin' for him to make the first move.
They did it that way at home. But when the Consul's wife had explained
the United States way, and how the Boss was a good deal of a rooster
himself, with real money enough to buy up a whole rink full of Dago
princes, why Miss Padova feels like a plush Christmas box at a January
sale. She turns on the sprinkler, wants to know what they suppose the
Boss thinks of her, and says she wants to go back to It'ly by the next
trolley.
"But she'll get over feeling bad," says the Consul. "We'll ship her back
next Friday, and you can take it from me that the incident is closed."
I was lookin' for the Boss to open a bottle or two on that. But he
didn't. For a pleased man he held in well.
"Poor little girl!" says he, looking absent minded towards the Bronx.
Then he cheers up a minute. "I say, do you mind if I run up and see her
once before she sails?"
"You may for all of me," says the Consul, "but if you'll listen to my
advice you won't go."
He did though, and lugged me along for a chaperone, which is some out of
my line.
"I'm afraid they've rather overdone the explaining business," says he on
the way up; and while I had my own idea as to that, I had sense enough,
for once, not to butt in.
That was an ice house call, all right. They left us on the mat while our
cards went up, and after a while the hired girl comes down to give us
the book-agent glare.
"Th' Missus," says she, "says as how the young lady begs to be 'xcused."
"Does the young lady know we're here?" says the Boss.
"She does," says the girl, and shuts the door.
"Gee!" says I, "that's below the belt."
The Boss hadn't a word left in him, but I wouldn't have met him in the
ring about then for anything less'n a bookie's bundle.
Just as we hit the sidewalk we hears a front window go up, and down
comes a red rose plunk in front of us.
"Many happy returns of the day," says I, handing it to the Boss.
"I suppose you're right," says he. "It's the only way to look at it, I
expect; and yet--oh, hang it all, Shorty, what's the use?"
"Ahr-r, say!" says I. "Switch off! It's all over, and you've side
stepped takin' the count."