“Oh, well, it’s only for a week. We can stand it for that long. They’re
very civil to us.”
“But they’re watchin’ of us already like so many cats.”
“Oh no, they’re not. They’re only kind.”
“I don’t want none o’ that sort of kindness. What do ye think that
two-foot-four of a Daisy says to me when ’e offered me the loan of ’is
razor? ‘Lovey,’ says ’e, ‘I’m goin’ to ’elp ye to knock off the booze.
It’ll be terr’ble hard work for an old man like you.’ ‘To ’ell with you!’
says I. ‘Ye ain’t goin’ to ’elp me to do no such thing, because knock it
off is somethink I don’t mean.’ ‘Well, what did you come in ’ere for?’
says ’e. ‘I come in ’ere,’ I says to ’im, ‘because my buddy come in ’ere;
and wherever ’e goes I’ll foller ’im.’”
“Then that’s understood, Lovey,” I said, cheerfully. “If I go at the end
of the week, you go; and if I stay, you stay. We’ll be fellas together.”
He shook his head mournfully.
“If you go at the end of the week, sonny, I go, too; but if you
stay—well, I don’t know. I’ve been in jails, but I ’ain’t never been
in no such place as this—nobody with no spunk. Look at ’em in there
now—nothink but a bunch of simps.”
“You won’t leave me, Lovey?”
The extinct-blue eyes were raised to mine.
“No, sonny; I won’t leave ye—not for ’ardly nothink.”
_CHAPTER IV_
I don’t know how we got the idea that before we went any farther we
should be interviewed by Andy Christian, but I suppose somebody must
have told us. We had heard of him, of course. He was, in fact, the
master wizard whose incantations were wrecking our institutions. It was
a surprise to us, therefore, to see, about nine o’clock, a brisk little
elderly man blow in and blow past us—the metaphor is the most expressive
I can use—with hardly more recognition than a nod.
“Hello, fellows!” he called out, as he passed through the hall and
glanced in at Lovey and me in the sitting-room. “Hello, boys!” he said,
casually, through the second door, to the other group, after which he
went on his way to talk domestic matters with Mouse in the kitchen.
He seemed a mild-mannered man to have done all the diabolical work we
had laid at his door. Neatly dressed in a summery black-and-white check,
with a panama hat, he was like any other of the million business men who
were on their way to New York offices that morning. It was only when he
came back from the kitchen and was in conference with some of the men in
the back parlor that I caught in him that look of dead and buried tragedy
with which I was to grow so familiar in other members of the club.
Superficially he was clean-shaven, round-featured, rubicund, and kindly,
with a quirk about the lips and a smile in his twinkling gray eyes that
seemed always about to tell you the newest joke. His manner toward Lovey
and me, when he came into the front sitting-room, was that of having
known us all our lives and of resuming a conversation that only a few
minutes before had been broken off.
“Let me see! Your name is—?”
He looked at Lovey as though he knew his name perfectly well, only that
for the second it had slipped his memory.
Lovey went forward to the roll-top desk at which Mr. Christian had seated
himself, and whispered, confidentially, “My name is Lovey, Your Honor.”
The quirk about the lips seemed to execute a little caper.
“Is that your first name or your second?”
“It’s my only name.”
“You mean that you have another name, but you don’t want to tell it?”
“I mean that if I ’ave another name it ain’t nobody’s business but mine.”
The head of the club was now writing in a ledger, his eye following the
movement of his pen.
“I see that you’re a man of decided opinions.”
“I am—begging Your Honor’s parding,” Lovey declared, with dignity.
“That’ll help you in the fight you’re going to put up.” Before Lovey
could protest that he wasn’t going to put up no fight the gentle voice
went on, “And you seem like a respectable man, too.”
“I’m as respectable as anybody else—at ’eart. I don’t use bad langwidge,
nor keep bad company, nor chew, nor spit tobacco juice over nothink, and
I keeps myself to myself.”
“All that’ll be a great help to you. What’s been your occupation?”
“’atter.”
As our host was less used to the silent “h” than I, it became necessary
for me to say, “Hatter, sir.”
I suppose it was my voice. Christian looked up quickly, studying me with
a long, kind, deep regard. Had I been walking two thousand years ago on
the hills of Palestine and met Some One on the road, he might have looked
at me like that.
The glance fell. Lovey’s interrogation continued.
“And would you like that kind of job again—if we could get it for
you—ultimately?”
“I don’t want no job, Your Honor. I can look after myself. I didn’t come
in ’ere of my own free will—nor to pass the buck—nor nothink.”
There was an inflection of surprise, perhaps of disapproval in the tone.
“You didn’t come in here of your own free will? I think it’s the first
time that’s been said in the history of the club. May I ask how it
happened?”