THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK
The almost-married couple sat long in mutual terror and a common
paralysis of ingenuity. Marjorie, for lack of anything better to do,
was absent-mindedly twisting Snoozleums's ears, while he, that pocket
abridgment of a dog, in a well meaning effort to divert her from her
evident grief, made a great pretence of ferocity, growling and
threatening to bite her fingers off. The new ring attracted his
special jealousy. He was growing discouraged at the ill-success of his
impersonation of a wolf, and dejected at being so crassly ignored,
when he suddenly became, in his turn, a center of interest.
Marjorie was awakened from her trance of inanition by the porter's
voice. His plantation voice was ordinarily as thick and sweet as his
own New Orleans sorghum, but now it had a bitterness that curdled the
blood:
"'Scuse me, but how did you-all git that theah dog in this heah cah?"
"Snoozleums is always with me," said Marjorie briskly, as if that
settled it, and turned for confirmation to the dog himself, "aren't
you, Snoozleums?"
"Well," the porter drawled, trying to be gracious with his great
power, "the rules don't 'low no live stock in the sleepin' cars,
'ceptin' humans."
Marjorie rewarded his condescension with a blunt: "Snoozleums is more
human than you are."
"I p'sume he is," the porter admitted, "but he can't make up berths.
Anyway, the rules says dogs goes with the baggage."
Marjorie swept rules aside with a defiant: "I don't care. I won't be
separated from my Snoozleums."
She looked to Mallory for support, but he was too sorely troubled with
greater anxieties to be capable of any action.
The porter tried persuasion: "You betta lemme take him, the conducta
is wuss'n what I am. He th'owed a couple of dogs out the window trip
befo' last."
"The brute!"
"Oh, yassum, he is a regulah brute. He just loves to hear 'm splosh
when they light."
Noting the shiver that shook the girl, the porter offered a bit of
consolation:
"Better lemme have the pore little thing up in the baggage cah. He'll
be in charge of a lovely baggage-smasher."
"Are you sure he's a nice man?"
"Oh, yassum, he's death on trunks, but he's a natural born angel to
dogs."
"Well, if I must, I must," she sobbed. "Poor little Snoozleums! Can he
come back and see me to-morrow?" Marjorie's tears were splashing on
the puzzled dog, who nestled close, with a foreboding of disaster.
"I reckon p'haps you'd better visit him."
"Poor dear little Snoozleums--good night, my little darling. Poor
little child--it's the first night he's slept all by his 'ittle
lonesome, and----"
The porter was growing desperate. He clapped his hands together
impatiently and urged: "I think I hear that conducta comin'."
The ruse succeeded. Marjorie fairly forced the dog on him.
"Quick--hide him--hurry!" she gasped, and sank on the seat completely
crushed. "I'll be so lonesome without Snoozleums."
Mallory felt called upon to remind her of his presence. "I--I'm here,
Marjorie." She looked at him just once--at him, the source of all her
troubles--buried her head in her arms, and resumed her grief. Mallory
stared at her helplessly, then rose and bent over to whisper:
"I'm going to look through the train."
"Oh, don't leave me," she pleaded, clinging to him with a dependence
that restored his respect.
"I must find a clergyman," he whispered. "I'll be back the minute I
find one, and I'll bring him with me."
[Illustration: MARJORIE FAIRLY FORCED THE DOG ON HIM....]
The porter thought he wanted the dog back, and quickened his pace
till he reached the corridor, where Mallory overtook him and asked, in
an effort at casual indifference, if he had seen anything of a
clergyman on board.
"Ain't seen nothin' that even looks like one," said the porter. Then
he hastened ahead to the baggage car with the squirming Snoozleums,
while Mallory followed slowly, going from seat to seat and car to car,
subjecting all the males to an inspection that rendered some of them
indignant, others of them uneasy.
If dear old Doctor Temple could only have known what Mallory was
hunting, he would have snatched off the mask, and thrown aside the
secular scarlet tie at all costs. But poor Mallory, unable to
recognize a clergyman so dyed-in-the-wool as Doctor Temple, sitting in
the very next seat--how could he be expected to pick out another in
the long and crowded train?
All clergymen look alike when they are in convention assembled, but
sprinkled through a crowd they are not so easily distinguished.
In the sleeping car bound for Portland, Mallory picked one man as a
clergyman. He had a lean, ascetic face, solemn eyes, and he was
talking to his seat-mate in an oratorical manner. Mallory bent down
and tapped the man's shoulder.
The effect was surprising. The man jumped as if he were stabbed, and
turned a pale, frightened face on Mallory, who murmured:
"Excuse me, do you happen to be a clergyman?"
A look of relief stole over the man's features, followed closely by a
scowl of wounded vanity:
"No, damn you, I don't happen to be a parson. I have chosen to
be--well, if you had watched the billboards in Chicago during our run,
you would not need to ask who I am!"
Mallory mumbled an apology and hurried on, just overhearing his
victim's sigh:
"Such is fame!"
He saw two or three other clerical persons in that car, but feared to
touch their shoulders. One man in the last seat held him specially,
and he hid in the turn of the corridor, in the hope of eavesdropping
some clue. This man was bent and scholastic of appearance, and wore
heavy spectacles and a heavy beard, which Mallory took for a guaranty
that he was not another actor. And he was reading what appeared to be
printer's proofs. Mallory felt certain that they were a volume of
sermons. He lingered timorously in the environs for some time before
the man spoke at all to the dreary-looking woman at his side. Then the
stranger spoke. And this is what he said and read:
"I fancy this will make the bigots sit up and take notice, mother: 'If
there ever was a person named Moses, it is certain, from the writings
ascribed to him, that he disbelieved the Egyptian theory of a life
after death, and combated it as a heathenish superstition. The Judaic
idea of a future existence was undoubtedly acquired from the
Assyrians, during the captivity.'"
He doubtless read much more, but Mallory fled to the next car. There
he found a man in a frock coat talking solemnly to another of equal
solemnity. The seat next them was unoccupied, and Mallory dropped into
it, perking his ears backward for news.
"Was you ever in Moline?" one voice asked.
"Was I?" the other muttered. "Wasn't I run out of there by one of my
audiences. I was givin' hypnotic demonstrations, and I had a run-in
with one of my 'horses,' and he done me dirt. Right in the midst of
one of his cataleptic trances, he got down from the chairs where I had
stretched him out and hollered: 'He's a bum faker, gents, and owes me
two weeks' pay.' Thank Gawd, there was a back door openin' on a dark
alley leadin' to the switch yard. I caught a caboose just as a freight
train was pullin' out."
Mallory could hardly get strength to rise and continue his search. On
his way forward he met the conductor, crossing a vestibule between
cars. A happy thought occurred to Mallory. He said:
"Excuse me, but have you any preachers on board?"
"None so far."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"How can you tell?"
"Well, if a grown man offers me a half-fare ticket, I guess that's a
pretty good sign, ain't it?"
Mallory guessed that it was, and turned back, hopeless and helpless.