I perceived that Lew Wee the night before had delicately indicated by a
mere initial letter a bad word that could fall trippingly from the lips
of Jimmie.
"Sure!" agreed Buck Devine cordially. "And say, take this here telegram
up to the corner of Broadway and Harlem; and move lively now--don't you
stop to read any of them nickel liberries."
I saw what a gentleman should do. I turned my back on the piteous figure
of Jimmie Time. I moved idly off, as if the spectacle of his ignominy
had never even briefly engaged me.
"Shoot up a good cook, will you?" said the lady grimly. "I'll give you
your needings." She followed me to the house.
On the west porch, when she had exchanged the laced boots, khaki riding
breeches, and army shirt for a most absurdly feminine house gown, we had
tea. Her nose was powdered, and her slippers were bronzed leather and
monstrous small. She mingled Scotch whiskey with the tea and drank her
first cupful from a capacious saucer.
"That fresh bunch of campers!" she began. "What you reckon they did last
night? Cut my wire fence in two places over on the west flat--yes,
sir!--had a pair of wire clippers in the whip socket. What I didn't give
'em! Say, ain't it a downright wonder I still retain my girlish
laughter?"
But then, after she had refused my made cigarette for one of her own
deft handiwork, she spoke as I wished her to:
"Yes; three years ago. Me visiting a week at the home of Mrs. W.B.
Hemingway and her husband, just outside of Yonkers, back in York State.
A very nice swell home, with a nice front yard and everything. And also
Mrs. W.B.'s sister and her little boy, visiting her from Albany, the
sister's name being Mrs. L.H. Cummins, and the boy being nine years old
and named Rupert Cummins, Junior; and very junior he was for his age,
too--I will say that. He was a perfectly handsome little boy; but you
might call him a blubberhead if you wanted to, him always being scared
silly and pestered and rough-housed out of his senses by his little girl
cousin, Margery Hemingway--Mrs. W.B.'s little girl, you understand--and
her only seven, or two years younger than Junior, but leading him round
into all kinds of musses till his own mother was that demoralized after
a couple of days she said if that Margery child was hers she'd have her
put away in some good institution.
"Of course she only told that to me, not to Margery's mother. I don't
know--mebbe she would of put her away, she was that frightened little
Margery would get Junior killed off in some horrible manner, like the
time she got him to see how high he dast jump out of the apple tree
from, or like the time she told him, one ironing day, that if he drank a
whole bowlful of starch it would make him have whiskers like his pa in
fifteen minutes. Things like that--not fatal, mebbe, but wearing.
"Well, this day come a telegram about nine A.M. for Mrs. W.B., that her
aunt, with money, is very sick in New Jersey, which is near Yonkers; so
she and Mrs. L.H. Cummins, her sister, must go to see about this
aunt--and would I stay and look after the two kids and not let them get
poisoned or killed or anything serious? And they might have to stay
overnight, because the aunt was eccentric and often thought she was
sick; but this time she might be right. She was worth all the way from
three to four hundred thousand dollars.
"So I said I'd love to stay and look after the little ones. I wanted to
stay. Shopping in New York City the day before, two bargain sales--one
being hand-embroidered Swiss waists from two-ninety-eight upward--I felt
as if a stampede of longhorns had caught me. Darned near bedfast I was!
Say, talk about the pale, weak, nervous city woman with exhausted
vitality! See 'em in action first, say I. There was a corn-fed hussy in
a plush bonnet with forget-me-nots, two hundred and thirty or forty on
the hoof, that exhausted my vitality all right--no holds barred, an arm
like first-growth hick'ry across my windpipe, and me up against a solid
pillar of structural ironwork! Once I was wrastled by a cinnamon bear
that had lately become a mother; but the poor old thing would have lost
her life with this dame after the hand-embroidereds. Gee! I was lame in
places I'd lived fifty-eight years and never knew I had.
"So off went these ladies, with Mrs. L.H. Cummins giving me special and
private warning to be sure and keep Junior well out of it in case little
mischievous Margery started anything that would be likely to kill her.
And I looked forward to a quiet day on the lounge, where I could ache in
peace and read the 'Famous Crimes of History,' which the W.B.'s had in
twelve volumes--you wouldn't have thought there was that many, would
you? I dressed soft, out of respect to my corpse, and picked out a
corking volume of these here Crimes and lay on the big lounge by an open
window where the breeze could soothe me and where I could keep tabs on
the little ones at their sports; and everything went as right as if I
had been in some A-Number-One hospital where I had ought to of been.
"Lunchtime come before I knew it; and I had mine brought to my bed of
pain by the Swede on a tray, while the kids et theirs in an orderly and
uproarious manner in the dining-room. Rupert, Junior, was dressed like
one of these boy scouts and had his air gun at the table with him, and
little Margery was telling him there was, too, fairy princes all round
in different places; and she bet she could find one any day she wanted
to. They seemed to be all safe enough, so I took up my Crimes again.
Really, ain't history the limit?--the things they done in it and got
away with--never even being arrested or fined or anything!
"Pretty soon I could hear the merry prattle of the little ones again out
in the side yard. Ain't it funny how they get the gambling spirit so
young? I'd hear little Margery say: 'I bet you can't!' And Rupert,
Junior, would say:' I bet I can, too!' And off they'd go ninety miles on
a straight track: 'I bet you'd be afraid to!'--'I bet I wouldn't
be!'--'I bet you'd run as fast!'--'I bet I never would!' Ever see such
natural-born gamblers? And it's all about what Rupert, Junior, would do
if he seen a big tiger in some woods--Rupert betting he'd shoot it dead,
right between the eyes, and Margery taking the other end. She has by far
the best end of it, I think, it being at least a forty-to-one shot that
Rupert, the boy scout, is talking high and wide. And I drop into the
Crimes again at a good, murderous place with stilettos.
"I can't tell even now how it happened. All I know is that it was two
o'clock, and all at once it was five-thirty P.M. by a fussy gold clock
over on the mantel with a gold young lady, wearing a spear, standing on
top of it. I woke up without ever suspicioning that I'd been asleep.
Anyway, I think I'm feeling better, and I stretch, though careful,
account of the dame in the plush bonnet with forget-me-nots; and I lie
there thinking mebbe I'll enter the ring again to-morrow for some other
truck I was needing, and thinking how quiet and peaceful it is--how
awful quiet! I got it then, all right. That quiet! If you'd known little
Margery better you'd know how sick that quiet made me all at once. My
gizzard or something turned clean over.
"I let out a yell for them kids right where I lay. Then I bounded to my
feet and run through the rooms downstairs yelling. No sign of 'em! And
out into the kitchen--and here was Tillie, the maid, and Yetta, the
cook, both saying it's queer, but they ain't heard a sound of 'em
either, for near an hour. So I yelled out back to an old hick of a
gardener that's deef, and he comes running; but he don't know a thing on
earth about the kids or anything else. Then I am sick! I send Tillie one
way along the street and the gardener the other way to find out if any
neighbours had seen 'em. Then in a minute this here Yetta, the cook,
says: 'Why, now, Miss Margery was saying she'd go downtown to buy some
candy,' and Yetta says: 'You know, Miss Margery, your mother never 'ets
you have candy.' And Margery says: 'Well, she might change her mind any
minute--you can't tell; and it's best to have some on hand in case she
does.' And she'd got some poker chips out of the box to buy the candy
with--five blue chips she had, knowing they was nearly money anyway.
"And when Yetta seen it was only poker chips she knew the kid couldn't
buy candy with 'em--not even in Yonkers; so she didn't think any more
about it until it come over her--just like that--how quiet everything
was. Oh, that Yetta would certainly be found bone clear to the centre if
her skull was ever drilled--the same stuff they slaughter the poor
elephants for over in Africa--going so far away, with Yetta right there
to their hands, as you might say. And I'm getting sicker and sicker! I'd
have retained my calm mind, mind you, if they had been my own kids--but
kids of others I'd been sacredly trusted with!
"And then down the back stairs comes this here sandy-complected,
horse-faced plumber that had been frittering away his time all day up in
a bathroom over one little leak, and looking as sad and mournful as if
he hadn't just won eight dollars, or whatever it was. He must have been
born that way--not even being a plumber had cheered him up.
"'Blackhanders!'" he says right off, kind of brightening a little bit.
"I like to fainted for fair! He says they had lured the kids off with
candy and popcorn, and would hold 'em in a tenement house for ten
thousand dollars, to be left on a certain spot at twelve P.M. He seemed
to know a lot about their ways.
"'They got the Honourable Simon T. Griffenbaugh's youngest that way,'
he says, 'only a month ago. Likely the same gang got these two.'
"'How do you know?' I asks him.
"'Well,' he says, 'they's a gang of over two hundred of these I-talian
Blackhanders working right now on a sewer job something about two miles
up the road. That's how I know,' he says. 'That's plain enough, ain't
it? It's as plain as the back of my hand. What chance would them two
defenceless little children have with a gang of two hundred
Blackhanders?'
"But that looked foolish, even to me. 'Shucks!' I says. 'That don't
stand to reason.' But then I got another scare. 'How about water?' I
says. 'Any places round here they could fall into and get drownded?'
"He'd looked glum again when I said two hundred Blackhanders didn't
sound reasonable; but he cheers up at this and says: 'Oh, yes; lots of
places they could drownd--cricks and rivers and lakes and ponds and
tanks--any number of places they could fall into and never come up
again.' Say, he made that whole neighbourhood sound like Venice, Italy.
You wondered how folks ever got round without gondolas or something.
'One of Dr. George F. Maybury's two kids was nearly drownded last
Tuesday--only the older one saved him; a wonder it was they didn't have
to drag the river and find 'em on the bottom locked in each other's
arms! And a boy by the name of Clifford Something, only the other day,
playing down by the railroad tracks--'
"I shut him off, you bet! I told him to get out quick and go to his home
if he had one.
"'I certainly hope I won't have to read anything horrible in to-morrow's
paper!' he says as he goes down the back stoop. 'Only last week they was
a nigger caught--'
"I shut the door on him. Rattled good and plenty I was by then. Back
comes this silly old gardener--he'd gone with his hoe and was still
gripping it. The neighbours down that way hadn't seen the kids. Back
comes Tillie. One neighbour where she'd been had seen 'em climb on to a
street car--only it wasn't going downtown but into the country; and this
neighbour had said to herself that the boy would be likely to let some
one have it in the eye with his gun, the careless way he was lugging it.
"Thank the Lord, that was a trace! I telephoned to the police and told
'em all about it. And I telephoned for a motor car for me and got into
some clothes. Good and scared--yes! I caught sight of my face in the
looking-glass, and, my! but it was pasty--it looked like one of these
cheap apple pies you see in the window of a two-bit lunch place! And
while I'm waiting for this motor car, what should come but a telegram
from Mr. W.B. himself saying that the aunt was worse and he would go to
New Jersey himself for the night! Some said this aunt was worth a good
deal more than she was supposed to be. And I not knowing the name of
this town in Jersey where they would all be!--it was East Something or
West Something, and hard to remember, and I'd forgot it.
"I called the police again and they said descriptions was being sent
out, and that probably I'd better not worry, because they often had
cases like this. And I offered to bet them they hadn't a case since
Yonkers was first thought of that had meant so much spot cash to 'em as
this one would mean the minute I got a good grip on them kids. So this
cop said mebbe they had better worry a little, after all, and they'd
send out two cars of their own and scour the country, and try to find
the conductor of this street car that the neighbour woman had seen the
kids get on to.
"I r'ared round that house till the auto come that I'd ordered. It was
late coming, naturally, and nearly dark when it got there; but we
covered a lot of miles while the daylight lasted, with the man looking
sharp out along the road, too, because he had three kids of his own that
would do any living thing sometimes, though safe at home and asleep at
that minute, thank God!
"It was moisting when we started, and pretty soon it clouded up and the
dark came on, and I felt beat. We got fair locoed. We'd go down one road
and then back the same way. We stopped to ask everybody. Then we found
the two autos sent out by the police. I told the cops again what would
happen to 'em from me the minute the kids was found--the kids or their
bodies. I was so despairing--what with that damned plumber and
everything! I'll bet he's the merry chatterbox in his own home. The
police said cheer up--nothing like that, with the country as safe as a
church. But we went over to this Blackhanders' construction camp, just
the same, to make sure, and none of the men was missing, the boss said,
and no children had been seen; and anyway his men was ordinary decent
wops and not Blackhanders--and blamed if about fifty of 'em didn't turn
out to help look! Yes, sir, there they was--foreigners to the last man
except the boss, who was Irish--and acting just like human beings.
"It was near ten o'clock now; so we went to a country saloon to
telephone police headquarters, and they had found the car conductor, he
remembering because he had threatened to put the boy scout off the car
if he didn't quit pointing his gun straight at an old man with gold
spectacles setting across the aisle. And finally they had got off
themselves about three miles down the road; he'd watched 'em climb over
a stone wall and start up a hill into some woods that was there. And he
was Conductor Number Twenty-seven, if we wanted to know that.
"We beat it to that spot after I'd powdered my nose and we'd had a quick
round of drinks. The policemen knew where it was. It wasn't moisting any
more--it was raining for fair; and we done some ground-and-lofty
skidding before we got there. We found the stone wall all right and the
slope leading up to the woods; but, my Lord, there was a good half mile
of it! We strung out--four cops and my driver and me--hundreds of yards
apart and all yelling, so maybe the poor lost things would hear us.
"We made up to the woods without raising a sign; and, my lands, wasn't
it dark inside the woods! I worked forward, trying to keep straight from
tree to tree; but I stumbled and tore my clothes and sprained my wrist,
and blacked one eye the prettiest you'd want to see--mighty near being a
blubberhead myself, I was--it not being my kids, you understand. Oh, I
kept to it though! I'd have gone straight up the grand old state of New
York into Lake Erie if something hadn't stopped me.
"It was a light off through the pine and oak trees, and down in a kind
of little draw--not a lamplight but a fire blazing up. I yelled to both
sides toward the others. I can yell good when I'm put to it. Then I
started for the light. I could make out figures round the fire. Mebbe
it's a Blackhanders' camp, I think; so I didn't yell any more. I
cat-footed. And in a minute I was up close and seen 'em--there in the
dripping rain.
"Rupert, Junior, was asleep, leaned setting up against a tree, with a
messenger boy's cap on. And Margery was asleep on a pile of leaves, with
her cheek on one hand and something over her. And a fat man was asleep
on his back, with his mouth open, making an awful fuss about it. And the
only one that wasn't asleep was a funny little old man setting against
another tree. He had on the scout's campaign hat and he held the gun
across his chest in the crook of his arm. He hadn't any coat on. Then I
see his coat was what was over Margery; and I looked closer and it was a
messenger boy's coat.
"I was more floored than ever when I took that in. I made a little move,
and this funny old man must have heard me--he looked like one of them
silly little critters that play hob with Rip Van Winkle out on the
mountain before he goes to sleep. And he cocks his ears this way and
that; then he jumped to his feet, and I come forward where he could see
me. And darned if he didn't up with this here air gun of Rupert's, like
a flash, and plunk me with a buckshot it carried--right on my sprained
wrist, too!
"Say, I let out a yell, and I had him by the neck of his shirt in one
grab. I was still shaking him when the others come to. The fat man set
up and rubbed his eyes and blinked. That's all he done. Rupert woke up
the same minute and begun to cry like a baby; and Margery woke up, but
she didn't cry. She took a good look at me and she says: 'You let him
alone! He's my knight--he slays all the dragons. He's a good knight!'
"There I was, still shaking the little old man--I'd forgot all about
him. So I dropped him on the ground and reached for Margery; and I was
so afraid I was going to blubber like Rupert, the scout, that I let out
some words to keep from it. Yes, sir; I admit it.
"'Oh! Oh! Oh! Swearing!' says Rupert. I shall tell mother and Aunt Hilda
just what you said!'
"Mebby you can get Rupert's number from that. I did anyway. I stood up
from Margery and cuffed him. He went on sobbing, but not without reason.
"'Margery Hemingway,' I says, 'how dare you!' And she looks up all cool
and cunning, and says: 'Ho! I bet I know worse words than what you said!
See if I don't.' So then I shut her off mighty quick. But still she
didn't cry. 'I s'pose I must go back home,' she says. 'And perhaps it is
all for the best. I have a very beautiful home. Perhaps I should stay
there oftener.'
"I turned on the Blackhanders.
"'Did these brutes entice you away with candy?' I demanded. 'Was they
holding you here for ransom?'
"'Huh! I should think not!' she says. 'They are a couple of 'fraid-cats.
They were afraid as anything when we all got lost in these woods and
wanted to keep on finding our way out. And I said I bet they were awful
cowards, and the fat one said of course he was; but this old one became
very, very indignant and said he bet he wasn't any more of a coward than
I am, but we simply ought to go where there were more houses. And so I
consented and we got lost worse than ever--about a hundred miles, I
think--in this dense forest and we couldn't return to our beautiful
homes. And this one said he was a trapper, scout, and guide; so he built
this lovely fire and I ate a lot of crullers the silly things had
brought with them. And then this old one flung his robe over me because
I was a princess, and it made me invisible to prowling wolves; and
anyway he sat up to shoot them with his deadly rifle that he took away
from Cousin Rupert. And Cousin Rupert became very tearful indeed; so we
took his hat away, too, because it's a truly scout hat.'
"'And she smoked a cigarette,' says Rupert, still sobbing.
"'He smoked one, too, and I mean to tell his mother,' says Margery.
'It's something I think she ought to know.'
"'It made me sick,' says Rupert. 'It was a poison cigarette; I nearly
died.'
"'Mine never made me sick,' says Margery--'only it was kind of sting-y
to the tongue and I swallowed smoke through my nose repeatedly. And
first, this old one wouldn't give us the cigarettes at all, until I
threatened to cast a spell on him and turn him into a toad forever. I
never did that to any one, but I bet I could. And the fat one cried like
anything and begged me not to turn the old one into a toad, and the old
one said he didn't think I could in a thousand years, but he wouldn't
take any chances in the Far West; so he gave us the cigarettes, and
Rupert only smoked half of his and then he acted in a very common way, I
must say. And this old one said we would have br'iled b'ar steaks for
breakfast. What is a br'iled b'ar steak? I'm hungry.'
"Such was little angel-faced Margery. Does she promise to make life
interesting for those who love her, or does she not?
"Well, that's all. Of course these cops when they come up said the two
men was desperate crooks wanted in every state in the Union; but I swore
I knew them both well and they was harmless; and I made it right with
'em about the reward as soon as I got back to a check book. After that
they'd have believed anything I said. And I sent something over to the
Blackhanders that had turned out to help look, and something to
Conductor Number Twenty-seven. And the next day I squared myself with
Mrs. W.B. Hemingway and her husband, and Mrs. L.H. Cummins, when they
come back, the aunt not having been sick but only eccentric again.
"And them two poor homeless boys--they kind of got me, I admit, after
I'd questioned 'em awhile. So I coaxed 'em out here where they could
lead the wild, free life. Kind of sad and pathetic, almost, they was.
The fat one I found was just a kind of natural-born one--a feeb you
understand--and the old one had a scar that the doctor said explained
him all right--you must have noticed it up over his temple. It's where
his old man laid him out once, when he was a kid, with a stovelifter. It
seemed to stop his works.
"Yes; they're pretty good boys. Boogies was never bad but once, account
of two custard pies off the kitchen window sill. I threatened him with
his stepmother and he hid under the house for twenty-four hours. The
other one is pretty good, too. This is only the second time I had to
punish him for fooling with live ca'tridges. There! It's sundown and
he's got on his Wild Wests again."
Jimmie Time swaggered from the bunk house in his fearsome regalia. Under
the awed observation of Boogles he wheeled, drew, and shot from the hip
one who had cravenly sought to attack him from the rear.
"My, but he's hostile!" murmured my hostess. "Ain't he just the hostile
little wretch?"