MARTIN CALLS QUITS
From his own table, by craning his neck, Willard could see Martin’s,
and it was apparent that the latter was not making much of a meal. Bob,
who sat at his left, was plainly sympathetic and solicitous: Willard
could see Bob passing the spinach and urging his neighbor to eat,
and could see Martin’s dismal refusal. Perhaps it was because Martin
partook only of a little soup and a dish of rice pudding that the
malady returned to him less severely after the noon meal. Willard kept
his promise and procured a small bottle of soda-mint tablets, and all
the rest of the day Martin’s expression was one of supreme disgust as
he continuously dissolved the tablets in his mouth. The remedy at least
allowed him to take an active part in practice, which was fortunate
since he was given a try-out at left tackle. He was a bit slow at
first, but, with Mr. Cade constantly urging, he showed quite a lot of
speed toward the end of the practice. He confessed to Willard later
that he might have done better if the onion smell hadn’t bothered him.
“It came on in the locker room,” he said. “I didn’t notice it until I
was changing. Then I got it strong and it stayed with me all the time.
I--I get it yet, but it’s not so bad.”
“It must be your imagination,” said Willard. “Ever troubled like this
before? I say, Mart, there isn’t--isn’t any--”
“Any what?”
“Well, any--er--insanity in your family, is there?”
“Don’t be a silly fool!” begged Martin.
“I just thought that maybe--”
“Listen here, Brand! There’s no imagination about it. I’ve been
poisoned.”
“Poisoned!” gasped Willard. Martin nodded gravely.
“Yes, I’ve got it all doped out. I’ve been onion poisoned.”
“But onions aren’t--aren’t poisonous,” expostulated Willard.
“Maybe not to some folks, but they are to me,” Martin spoke with
conviction. “What happened is just this. That night we went to the
lunch-cart the place was full of onion odor. Remember? Well, I breathed
a lot of it into my system and it poisoned me. It’s in my blood
probably. If I’m not all right tomorrow I’m going to see a doctor.”
Willard considered the theory for a moment and then gravely acknowledged
that there might be something in it.
“You bet there is,” Martin assured him. “Why, it stands to reason.
Look what chloroform does. It gets into your blood when you inhale it,
doesn’t it? Well, it’s the same way with onions. Some folks aren’t
affected by it, but I’m different. I guess a doctor would be mighty
interested in my case.” Martin paused to consider the idea and then
went on proudly. “Yes, sir, I’ll bet he would! I’ll bet he’d write
about me to the--the medical association!”
“I dare say,” assented Willard. “Maybe it would get in the New York
papers, too. ‘Poisoned by Onions! Strange Case of Young Preparatory
School Student Puzzles the Medical Fraternity!’ Maybe they’d print your
picture, Mart.”
“You can make a silly joke of it if you like,” said Martin, “but I’ll
bet I’m right!”
Joe and Bob came up to the room that night and Martin explained his
theory again for their benefit. He was undergoing another visitation
of the onion malady, but interest in his case and in his solution of
it gave him strength to bear up better than usual. Joe and Bob--Bob
especially--were tremendously impressed with the theory and Bob
recalled having read of a similar case. “Only,” he said, “in that case
the man had been poisoned by eating watercress.”
“Eating what?” asked Martin incredulously.
“Watercress,” repeated Bob. “It doesn’t affect most people, but some
fellows can’t eat it at all. You’ve heard that, haven’t you, Joe?”
“Yes,” Joe assented soberly. “I had a cousin like that. Watercress and
strawberries were like poison to him.”
Martin looked from Joe to Bob suspiciously, but they were so evidently
in earnest that he asked: “What happened to this fellow?”
“Why, he ate watercress and was poisoned. It got into his blood, you
know, and the only way they could save his life was by transfusion.”
“What’s that? You mean pumping someone else’s blood into him?”
“Sure! That’s the only thing possible in extreme cases.”
Martin hurriedly produced his bottle and popped a soda-mint into his
mouth. “Well, I guess onions wouldn’t do that to a fellow,” he said
with a confidence that didn’t quite ring true. “Would you think so,
Joe?”
“Search me,” replied Joe comfortingly. “I never heard of onion
poisoning before.”
“Nor I,” said Bob troubledly. “I guess it’s a pretty rare disease, and
maybe the doctors don’t understand it yet. Guess it’s sort of like
sleeping sickness,” he added blandly.
Martin shot a hostile and wary look at him, but Bob only smiled
sympathetically and reached out his hand. “Let’s see one of those
tablets, Mart,” he requested. “I’ve got a sort of a heavy feeling
myself tonight.”
“You don’t notice the taste of onions, do you?” asked Martin hopefully
as he tossed the bottle across the table.
“N--no, not exactly. More a sort of gone sensation. I guess it was the
baked potato I ate.” He took some time to get a tablet out, under cover
of the table; so long that Martin said impatiently: “Shake the bottle.
They’re probably stuck.”
“I’ve got it, thanks.” Bob popped a tablet into his mouth, made a wry
face, screwed the cover on the bottle again and tossed it back. “Nasty
tasting things, aren’t they?” he asked.
“You get used to them after awhile,” replied Martin consolingly.
“I guess I’ve eaten twenty of them today. When you have blood
trans--whatever it is, Bob, how do you do it? I mean, where do you get
the blood?”
“Advertise, I think. It isn’t easy, of course, because the other
fellow, the one who gives the new blood, has to be pretty healthy. Lots
of times you can’t find anyone and it’s no use.”
“What happens then?” inquired Martin uneasily.
Bob shrugged. “The patient dies, of course. You hear of it very often.”
Martin gulped and almost swallowed his tablet. “Gee! I guess I’d find
someone if I had to,” he said. “Maybe, though, it’s more imagination
than anything with me. You know you can imagine all sorts of things,
and I guess onions wouldn’t be very hard, eh?”
“N--no,” said Joe, “but I have a hunch that your theory is about right,
Mart. It certainly sounds mighty reasonable to me.”
“I don’t see how you make that out,” replied Martin shortly. “If it was
really a case of--of being poisoned I guess I’d be a lot worse now than
I am. It’s been going on two days, and anyone knows that poison acts
pretty quick.”
“Some poisons,” answered Bob significantly. “But there are others that
act--er--very slowly. There’s hemp, for instance.”
“That’s a rope,” said Martin derisively.
“It’s a very deadly poison,” said Bob sternly, “and it’s
very--very--what’s the word, Joe?”
“Lingering?” asked Joe.
“Insidious,” suggested Willard.
“Insidious, that’s it! Sometimes the patient suffers for weeks.”
“Well, I haven’t eaten any hemp,” said Martin crossly. “I haven’t eaten
anything, confound it! I’m mighty near starved! Maybe that’s what the
trouble is. If it wasn’t so late I’d go out and get a sandwich or a
piece of pie or something.”
“What you need is hearty food,” said Bob. “A nice steak and onions, for
instance.”
“Shut up! I hope you choke!” Martin fairly gibbered. “I wish you
had it! I wish you all had it, you gang of grinning apes! You make
me sick!” In proof of the latter assertion he shuddered violently,
hurriedly produced his bottle of soda-mint tablets and, keeping his
lips very tightly closed, agitatedly unscrewed the top. The others
watched with almost painful intensity. Martin inverted the bottle,
seized a tablet and popped it into his mouth. Instantly a strange,
haunted look came over his face. He swallowed once, his eyes round and
alarmed, and then the tablet came out of his mouth even quicker than it
had gone in and he laid hands on his stomach and closed his eyes.
“What is it?” asked Bob anxiously. “Feeling sick, Mart?”
“Sick! I--I’m dying! They--they’re full of it!”
“What are? Full of what?” asked Joe.
“The tablets.” Martin opened his eyes slowly, and gazed in horror at
the questioner. “They’re full of--of onion! Oh, gee!”
“Nonsense,” said Bob cheerfully. “How could they be? Let’s see them.”
Martin weakly brought them forth from his pocket and held them out with
averted head. Bob removed the lid and held the bottle to his nose. “I
don’t smell anything,” he said. “Do you, Brand?”
“Not a thing,” replied Willard gravely. “You try, Joe.”
“Well, there’s a faint--ah--medicinal odor apparent,” said Joe
judicially, “but as for onions--”
“Let me smell,” demanded Martin. He took the bottle and put it to his
nostrils. Then it went flying across the room and its contents rolled
merrily about the floor. “It is!” he yelled. “They are! Can’t you
fellows smell it?”
“Look here, Martin,” responded Joe sternly. “You’d better pull yourself
together, old man. It won’t do to let this--this hallucination go too
far. Better get into bed and try to forget about onions. Maybe a good
night’s rest is what you need. In the morning I’d have a talk with the
doctor. Of course your trouble may not be serious, Mart. I dare say if
you take it in time you can be cured. But I’d feel a whole lot easier
if you saw a doctor, old man.”
Martin’s expression of glowering distaste changed slightly. He stared
in growing fascination at Bob.
“It might be,” continued the latter kindly, “that you’ve been bitten by
the Diptera onionensis, otherwise known as the onion-fly. Of course, it
isn’t probable, but you never can tell, Mart. There’s the tse-tse fly,
now. You wouldn’t expect to find that around here, but I’ve been told
that it is quite common. Then why not the onion-fly?”
Martin’s gaze was fixed on Bob and Martin’s mouth was slowly dropping
open. He was like one who is seeing a Great Light and who is still too
dazed by its refulgence for speech. Bob smiled gently and continued,
keeping, however, perhaps unintentionally, the table between him and
Martin.
“You’ve been so awfully sympathetic about my sleeping sickness,
Mart, that I just can’t bear to see you troubled like this. It would
certainly be a load off my mind if you’d just talk things over with the
doctor--”
“You did it!” hissed Martin. “You--you played a trick on me!”
“Why, Mart,” protested Bob in hurt tones. “How can you sit there and
say them cruel words?”
Martin glared wildly about him. Joe was so entirely overcome by some
emotion that he had his head in his hands and Willard was gasping,
perhaps with pain, his countenance hidden behind a propped-up book.
Martin swallowed hard once, drew his feet beneath him and then was out
of his chair with a roar.
“I’ll onion you!” he shouted. “I’ll--I’ll--”
Around the table they plunged, hurdling Joe’s legs, since that youth
was too helpless to draw them back, twirling Willard around in his
chair like a chip in a maelstrom as they passed, Bob a half circuit to
the good at the end of each lap. Noise and confusion reigned supreme,
but through it came Bob’s voice, made faint by laughter:
“For the love of Mike, Mart, use discretion!”
Martin’s invariable reply was a savage howl of wrath.
On the tenth circuit--or perhaps it was the eleventh!--disaster
overtook the pursued. Bob slipped coming into the backstretch and
went down, and Martin hurled himself on him. Over and over they went,
grunting, gasping, gurgling. Willard rescued the lamp just before the
table went over on top of the battlers, showering them with books and
papers. Had Bob been in his best form that contest would have been
brief, for he was bigger and stronger than his antagonist, but laughter
drugged him and before he could cry for mercy Martin had thumped his
head many times on the rug and jounced merrily up and down on his ribs.
When, at last, Martin drew off and Bob climbed weakly to his feet the
room was a wreck and over the scene hung, like a horrible miasma, the
sickening concentrated odor of onions!
Martin sniffed and would have flung himself on Bob again if the latter
had not pointed beseechingly to the floor. Martin looked and picked up
the stoppered remains of a broken bottle. To it clung a paper label.
“Onion Extract,” he read.
When peace, if not complete order, had been restored Bob confessed.
“I gave you fair warning, Mart,” he said. “I told you I’d get even.
Trouble with you is you think you invented joking and that no one else
can get away with it. I got the idea that night when you turned up
your nose at the onions in the lunch-cart. I paid the cook a quarter
for that bottle of onion extract and the rest was easy. All I had to
do was get to table long enough ahead of you to drop a little of the
stuff around: on your napkin, in your porridge, in your salt-cellar and
so on. I was clever enough not to be too generous with it, you know.
Once, when you were looking the other way, I got some on your meat, and
another time in your coffee. Yesterday I sprinkled a good big lot on
your football togs. Maybe you noticed it?”
Martin said: “Hm!” grimly.
“I tried to get Brand to put some on your toothbrush and your pillow,
but he was too tender-hearted,” added Bob. Martin turned a sorrowfully
accusing look on Willard. “And that’s that,” Bob ended, smilingly.
“Huh,” said Martin this time, scornfully. “I knew all along it was just
some silly joke!”
“Oh, no, you didn’t, pettie! Anyhow, we’ll call it quits now if you
like. I’m satisfied if you are. Only, Mart, no more ‘tse-tse flies’ and
‘sleeping sickness’ stuff. My health is very good, thank you, and if
you want a place on the team, son, you get out and earn it!”
“Oh, that’s all right, Bob,” answered Martin, grinning. “Johnny told
me today I was to play left tackle after this. So I don’t care whether
you have sleeping sickness or not!” Then, after a perceptible pause, he
added: “Much!”