HE CRUSHES AND HUMILIATES A RIVAL
Sid, with new skates glistening at his side, was bound for the park
lagoon when John ran across the street and stopped him.
"Come along?" asked Sid amicably. John shook his head.
"I want to talk to you," said he. "Bill says you're trying to cut me out
with Louise. It's got to stop."
"What's he know about it?" asked the culprit defiantly.
"And Louise told me you'd taken her up to the drug store."
Sid shrugged his shoulders. "Guess I've a right to. What have you got to
say about it?"
"Well," said John slowly, "She's my girl--"
Sid sneered.
"And we're going to get married on the money from the paper route when I
grow up and--"
"Pooh!" Sid laughed unpleasantly. "Go ahead and save your money. I don't
care. I'm spending mine--on her--and you can't stop me either."
Money, money, money! All he was hearing these days was about spending,
not saving it, and Sid's words, as had his lady's, riled him not a
little.
"I'm going to take her out, too," he shot back. "Won't be a cheap thing
like sodas, either. We're going to the theater, we are, and then she'll
promise not to speak to you any more. If she won't, I'll punch your face
in, first time I catch you."
"Theater!" said Sid, so impressed that the concluding threat passed
unheeded.
"Going to buy the tickets, this afternoon," John boasted. "Main floor
seats at the 'Home'--_seventy-five cents each!_ Don't you wish you were
going?"
Sid's skates slipped from his shoulder into the snow. He picked them up
and looked at John uncertainly.
"That'll cost a lot of money, won't it?" he asked.
"Most two dollars," magnificently.
"Let's take her together, then. I'll pay half the carfare and the
seats."
John thought a moment. The plan possessed certain advantages. He would
be able to observe how Louise acted with Sid, for one; and if he didn't
consent, that persistent rival would take her later, anyway, which would
be a thousand times worse. Besides, the prospect of two hard-earned
dollars being frittered away for an evening's entertainment had been far
from pleasing.
"The tickets are for a week from Saturday," he said slowly. "Want me to
get you one?"
Sid nodded and dug into his pocket for a handful of Christmas change. He
passed over a dollar and twelve cents to John, and left for the lagoon.
Half a dozen times as the street car bounced westward over the uneven
track, John decided to tell Sid that, after all, the entertainment was
for but two. He would probably spoil all the fun, anyway, and then the
evening would be a total failure. He was still undecided when he stepped
up to the tawdry box office with its photographs of local theatrical
stars.
"How many?" asked the man at the little window.
John drew out a coin from his pocket. Heads, Sid joined them; tails, he
should be Louise's sole escort. Heads it was. The fates had willed it;
let the outcome be for good or ill.
When he told of the arrangement at the family supper table, that
evening, his parents choked.
"I suppose," said Mr. Fletcher, his voice still shaking with laughter,
"that you'll sit, one on each side of the lady, and glare because she
took the last piece of candy from the other fellow's box."
Candy? Why, of course. The heroine of each of the novels he had read,
was always receiving toothsome dainties and showers of roses from her
many admirers. But he couldn't afford both methods of expressing his
devotion, and candy alone would have to do. This taking your best girl
to a show promised to be far more expensive than he had thought.
Need it be said that his shoes were veritable ebony mirrors, that
eventful evening? Or that his ears were clean, even to the very recesses
under the lobes? And when such a thing occurs, you may be sure that
Solomon in all his glory was arrayed no more immaculately than that
small boy.
He presented himself promptly at the door of the Martin flat at
half-past seven. Louise was in her room while Mrs. Martin added the
finishing touches to the party dress which she was wearing in honor of
the occasion, so he shoved the two-pound box of dipped caramels, ordered
in spite of paternal objections, into his overcoat pocket and sat down
in the big parlor rocker to wait.
Shortly thereafter, Sid appeared with a tissue-wrapped bouquet of roses
in his hand. "For Louise," he told Mrs. Martin.
John glared at him stolidly, and regretted his choice of candy. It would
have taken a little of that confident smile away, if his rival had found
himself antedated by a gift of a similar nature.
A quarter of an hour later found them bouncing along over the same car
line which John had used on the ticket quest. The conveyance was poorly
heated, but the children were too excited to notice the cold. Louise was
wearing two of the roses on her frock, and Sid was in high spirits
accordingly.
"Ever been out West, Louise?" he asked with a side glance at John. The
lady shook her head.
"I was, all last vacation--real ranch, real cowboys. Used to take pony
rides every day."
John sketched a caricature on the frosty window pane and sulked in
silence. Why didn't his folks make enough money to take him on such
summer jaunts? Then he wouldn't have to sit like a dummy and listen to
his rival out-talk him with the one girl he cared anything about.
"And walk?" continued Sid, secure in his romancing, now that he knew
that neither of his auditors had been beyond the Mississippi. "Why, the
air's so fine that you can walk ever so far without feeling tired.
Breakfast at the ranch was at seven, and once, I walked twenty miles
just to get up an appetite for it."
"That's nothing," John snapped moodily. "I walked thirty miles before
breakfast, once, too. It was right here in the city."
"What?" gasped Sid, scarcely believing his ears.
"Yes," assented John cheerfully. "It was in the afternoon before, but
that didn't make any difference. It was before breakfast, wastn't it?"
Louise giggled. Sid kicked against the wicker seat cushion in front of
him and was silent. John rubbed a clear spot on the frost-etched car
window and peered into the outer darkness.
"Next block's ours," he grinned, still elated at the success of his
thrust. "Come on, Louise."
They scrambled wildly for the door. Sid was the first in the street and
helped the lady down from the high car-step, while John drew the tickets
from his coat pocket and led the way to the brilliantly lighted theater
lobby. Louise's eyes glistened with excitement as the trio stopped to
look at the posters beside the doorway.
"Martha, the Milliner's Girl," Sid read slowly from the huge letters at
the top of the bulletin board.
"Peach of a show," John commented, as they walked past the line of
people waiting their turn at the box office. "Six folks killed, and
shooting and everything. I asked the man when I bought the seats."
A uniformed usher led them impressively to their places and presented
them with programs. John stooped over his fiancée and helped her off
with her coat as he leered at Sid. That gentleman leaned easily back in
the upholstered theater chair.
"Nice seats," he remarked with a touch of condescension. "A little near
the stage [the words had been Mrs. DuPree's, once upon a time], but
they'll do."
"I like 'em," John snapped angrily. Louise acquiesced. Sid scowled and
fell back upon the wild and woolly West as a means of maintaining the
conversational upper hand.
"Once I went hunting, last summer"--he began. John glanced at his watch.
Ten minutes before the performance would begin; ten long, dragging
minutes of Sid's talk about a place of which he knew nothing. Why had he
brought his voluble rival along?--"hunting for bear," continued the
narrator. "Lots of fun, Louise. One of the cowboys took me with him 'way
up a mountain. We went into a big, dark forest with palms--"
"Palms don't grow out West," John interrupted savagely.
"Yes, they do."
"Geogerfy says they don't."
"This was a part the geogerfies don't know anything about," serenely.
"Ever been out there?"
"No," reluctantly.
"Then keep quiet. _I have._ Well, there were the palms and--"
Was there to be no respite from the steady flow? John suddenly
remembered the candy, and reached for his overcoat.
"Oh," exclaimed Louise, as the white, pink-stringed box was brought
forth. Sid stopped, obviously disconcerted. John unwrapped the dainties
and threw the paper on the floor.
"Have some?" he asked as he lifted the cover.
The lady's lips closed over a chocolate-covered caramel. Sid's did
likewise. John helped himself to a third and leaned back happily. At
last a way of silencing his adversary had been found.
[Illustration: _Silencing his adversary._]
Conversation was temporarily impossible, so the trio gazed eagerly
around them. Just ahead, sat a shop girl in a shabby best dress, with a
head of blonde, mismatched hair, and beside her, her escort, an Irish
mechanic, who shifted his head from time to time as the unaccustomed
collar scraped his neck. Across the aisle was a family of towheaded
Swedes, the father self-conscious in his carefully pressed black suit;
the mother, watchful of her two mischievous, blue-eyed urchins. Young
gallants of the neighborhood filled the boxes at either side of the
auditorium, taking this, the most expensive, means of proving their
devotion to their lady loves. In the rear of the theater were the first
and second balconies, occupied by voluble men and women of all ages and
nationalities. Ahead, hung the stage curtain, decorated with staring
advertisements, "Lamson, the neighborhood undertaker," "Trade at the
corner grocery. Vegetables always at the lowest market prices,"
"Snider's drug store, prescriptions, choice candies, and camera
supplies," and the like. From somewhere in the heights came a sharp
"rap-rap-rap," which echoed even to the more forward rows on the main
floor.
"Gallery," explained John. "Fellow knocks on the back of one of the
benches to make the boys behave." His jaws resumed the burden of
reducing that persistent caramel to a swallowable state.
The orchestra of five filed solemnly in through the little door beneath
the stage and took their accustomed places. A dart, propelled by an
urchin of the upper regions who evidently had no fear of the monitor's
stick, sailed serenely downward and found a resting place in a blonde
lock of the salesgirl's hair. The footlights flashed on, and the
musicians struck up a lilting, popular air, as Sid cleared his throat.
"Then the cowboy--" he began.
"Have another?" interrupted John, extending the box of tenacious
goodies.
"Sh-h," whispered Louise. "There goes the curtain."
Why Martha had selected the hapless vocation of milliner's apprentice,
John could not understand. For it was in Madame's little millinery shop
in New York that Mordaunt Merrilac, gentleman by appearance, and leader
of a desperate band of counterfeiters, met and became infatuated with
the heroine. This he revealed in a soliloquy punctuated by frequent
tugging at his black mustache, and strode majestically to the rear of
the long, gloomy basement in which the first act was laid. There he
joined three overalled mechanics in shirtsleeves, who puttered gingerly
about a table on which were mysterious vats and a brightly glowing
electric crucible.
"Is all in readiness?" growled Mordaunt.
"Aye, master."
"Into the acid vat with the plate, then." He drew out a jewelled watch
and studied the dial with knitted brows. "Ten long minutes before we
know of our success."
A muffled scream, long-drawn and filled with terror, broke in upon the
silence which followed. Louise, Sid, and John leaned anxiously forward
on the very edges of their seats.
"What's that?" gasped the tallest of the workmen.
"'Tis nothing," sneered the villain. "Come, Ralph, draw out the die."
The group gathered anxiously around the bit of metal. Mordaunt
scrutinized it carefully, and strode swiftly over to an opposite corner
of the stage where an ancient letterpress stood. Running an inked roller
over the surface of the etching, he placed it on the bed of the press,
revolved the wheel rapidly in one direction, reversed, and drew forth a
slip of white paper.
"The face of a twenty-dollar bill to perfection," he exclaimed as he
examined the dark oblong at one end. "Men, you may go."
Thus was the intricate process of counterfeiting depicted, and the
audience, as audiences did in Shakespeare's time when a sign represented
a forest or a tree or a mountain, allowed its imagination to make the
thing seem plausible.
Mordaunt raised his voice. "Dolores!" he called, once, twice, thrice.
A tall, lithe creature in dark, clinging robes, with the black hair of
all villains and villainesses, responded.
"Yes, brother?" she whined from the head of the basement stairway.
"Bring me Martha."
The ogre had commanded, therefore the maiden was flung down the steps
before him--slight, dainty, with a wealth of blonde hair, and a pitiful
sob in her voice which drew a lump into John's throat, willy-nilly.
"Let me go, oh, please let me go!" she wailed. Louise's lower lip
trembled sympathetically. Such a tender slip of a heroine to be at the
mercy of such an unscrupulous monster!
"Still stubborn, Martha?" Mordaunt snarled.
The girl drew herself up proudly. Only her heaving bosom told of the
physical struggle which had forced her into the basement den. John could
not help marvelling at her recuperative powers.
"Still," she murmured with flashing eye.
"Think it over well," the black mustachioed one persisted. "Am I so
odious? Marriage with me means riches, girl, riches. And I would be kind
to you."
She shook her head vehemently. "Never, never, never would I marry a man
who lives as you. Though you beat me, though you torture me [Louise's
eyes welled in spite of herself], never can you force me into such
wedlock."
Hasty footsteps sounded at the head of the stairway. Ralph, the etcher,
dashed down into the room.
"The police!" he shrieked. "They are about to raid us!"
Merrilac muttered a curse. "Take her away," he growled to his sister of
the clinging robes. "Take her to your home by the secret passage." He
pressed a button and a panel in the wall swung back. "Ralph and I must
remain to destroy the die! Quick, on your life, be quick!"
Would the police come in time? Nay, John and Sid and Louise, not yet.
That would have ended the play in the first act. Dolores dragged the
heroine away with her. Mordaunt swung the panel back into place and ran
over to the table where the counterfeiting apparatus lay.
"Look you to your automatics!" he shouted. "And up with the trapdoor,
Ralph. The acid vats must be hidden."
But the police were upon them as he spoke. Revolvers cracked. Jack
Harkness, blonde, curly haired, and of magnificent physique, let his
firearm drop as he clapped his hand to a suddenly nerveless right arm.
"I'm wounded," he bellowed, "but after them! Let not that arch villain
escape!"
A bluecoat sprang forward, halted, and fell flat on his face. Ralph, a
heroic sacrifice in spite of his guilt, intercepted a bullet meant for
Mordaunt. Then the master counterfeiter, realizing that his cause was
hopeless, raised a hand as a token of surrender, and advanced slowly to
receive the waiting handcuffs. As the policeman raised his hands to slip
them on, he dashed suddenly past to the stairway, and slammed the door
behind him. A key squeaked in its little-used lock, and the
representatives of the law stared at each other for one dazed, dragging
moment.
Suddenly Harkness flung his muscular form against the door again and
again until it broke from its hinges. As his subordinates dashed up the
stairway in futile pursuit, he dallied in the bullet-marked room that he
might walk to the center of the stage and wave his unwounded arm
melodramatically.
"I will rescue her," he vowed solemnly. "I will rescue my little Martha
though the chase leads to the burning, sand-strewn deserts of Africa!"
There was tumultuous applause and the curtain. Louise leaned back in her
seat with shining eyes. John drew a deep breath.
"Isn't it just peachy?"
Sid DuPree nodded. "Makes me think of the way the cowboys used to shoot
off their revolvers on the ranch."
"Have another candy," suggested John promptly. Again was the flow of
reminiscences successfully checked.
But the author of "Martha, the Milliner's Girl," was too considerate of
the welfare of his hero to lead him on an expensive trip to Africa; for
that worthy, as are all such stage beings, was poor and otherwise
honest. So the second act revealed a richly furnished room in Dolores'
apartment, not many miles away from the scene of act one. Martha threw
herself on the luxuriously upholstered lounge in a paroxysm of sobs.
Dolores entered, still clothed in dark, clinging robes. Entered also
Mordaunt Merrilac, as beetling of brow as ever. Perfervid conversation
ensued between the trio in which little Martha tearfully ordered the
villain to release her.
"My detention here will avail you naught, Mordaunt Merrilac," she
quavered. "In spite of all you can do, some day, my hero, Jack Harkness,
will find this den and rescue me!" Prolonged handclapping came from the
more genteel portion of the audience, mingled with cheers and cat-calls
from the gallery.
The villain laughed sardonically. "Still you hope for rescue by him?"
"I do."
"Then wait." He pressed a convenient button. Through the heavily
curtained doorway, closely guarded by the two remaining members of the
gang, walked Jack Harkness.
"Gee!" gasped John, consternation-struck by this new development. It was
evident that the same stupidity which had allowed Merrilac to make his
escape in the first act, had led this singularly wooden-headed hero into
that villain's trap.
"So, my proud beauty," hissed Mordaunt, "you expect this man to save
you? 'Tis futile. At twelve, tonight, we shall plunge him into the
Hudson River, and you, Martha, shall see him die!"
Whereupon Martha gave a piercing shriek, swooned, and the curtain fell.
"Crickets!" sighed John, as a prodigious bumping behind the lowered
curtain told of scenery that was being shifted, "I wish they'd hurry
up." Louise nodded silently, while the box of carmels lay neglected on
her lap; and for once during the evening, Sid could find no parallel for
such thrilling events in the scenes of his last vacation trip.
Almost before they realized it, the curtain rose again and revealed the
hut on the Hudson. In one corner of the dismal interior stood Jack
Harkness, bound, but appropriately defiant. In the other, on the floor
lay the weak, sobbing little heap that was Martha. In the center stalked
a triumphant Mordaunt with his two confederates.
"Jack Harkness," he hissed, "your time has come. Men, throw back the
trapdoor." Ah, those ever-present trapdoors!
He walked over to the opening. "The Hudson runs muddy tonight," he
murmured, as a shudder ran through the audience, "and very cold. 'Tis
well. Drag forth the prisoner and loose his bonds."
He stooped to jerk Martha to her feet. The rude door at the rear sprang
open, and the police burst in upon the scene. The two counterfeiters
sought for an escape, and Jack, sudden strength returning to his
immobile limbs, sprang upon the startled Mordaunt. A terrific struggle
ensued, and a tender scene between the two lovers as the police dragged
their three captives from the stage.
"At last, little Martha," Harkness murmured as he looked down at her.
"At last," she murmured, gazing shyly into his face. Then came a long,
passionate kiss--and the curtain.
Sid sprang to his feet and helped Louise on with her coat, but John,
stumbling after them up the aisle and out on the crowded street, neither
noticed nor cared. The play triangle of two men and a maid seemed
strangely analogous to his own love affairs. Sid was Mordaunt Merrilac,
Louise was little Martha, and he was the heroic Jack Harkness. Neither
counterfeiters nor police would participate, but that did not diminish
the tenseness of the situation, nevertheless. He was roused from his
revery by Sid's voice as they came to the street car corner.
"Here's a drug store, Louise. Let's go in and have a soda."
Dreaming again, and Sid had stolen another march on him! He trailed
sulkily in and the trio sat down in the little wire-backed chairs before
a round, shiny table. The drug clerk came forward ceremoniously and
stood beside them.
"My treat," said Sid grandly. "What'll you have, Louise?"
She wasn't certain. A feeling of dull resentment took possession of
John. If Sid was going to act this way, he'd make it as costly an affair
as possible.
"Chop-suey sundae," he announced, after a hasty glance at the printed
menu.
"What?" stammered Sid. Such a delicacy cost a whole quarter, the most
expensive treat that the soda fountain purveyed.
"Yes," said John calmly. "Better take one, too, Louise," he added
maliciously. "They taste just peachy."
She accepted his suggestion gratefully.
"Give me a glass of water," ordered Sid weakly. It is an awful thing to
possess soda liabilities of fifty cents when you have but three dimes
and two nickels in your pocket.
John sensed his rival's predicament and smiled. Slowly, with manifest
enjoyment in every mouthful, he devoured the tempting, frozen treat.
Then he leaned back in his chair contentedly and waited for Louise to
finish. The white-coated soda clerk approached the table for payment,
and the terror which crept into Sid's face was strangely like that on
Mordaunt's when the police had broken into the river hut. He drew out
his inadequate supply of small change and looked at it blankly.
"Come, boys," prompted the man of syrups and sodawater, "I can't wait
all day."
"I haven't enough money," whispered Sid at last.
John turned, a hint of the stage hero's mannerisms in his dramatic
gesture. "What? Invite us for a treat and then can't pay for it? You're
a fine one, Sid." He drew a half-dollar from his own pocket and flung it
down on the table. "Never mind him," he turned to Louise. "I'll pay your
car fare home!"
And with the crushed and humiliated Sid following them miserably, he led
the way from the drug store to the waiting car.