Mrs. Nolak was short and ineffectual looking, and on the cessation of
the world war had belonged for a while to one of the new
nationalities. Owing to unsettled European conditions she had never
since been quite sure what she was. The shop in which she and her
husband performed their daily stint was dim and ghostly, and peopled
with suits of armor and Chinese mandarins, and enormous papier-mâché
birds suspended from the ceiling. In a vague background many rows of
masks glared eyelessly at the visitor, and there were glass cases full
of crowns and scepters, and jewels and enormous stomachers, and
paints, and crape hair, and wigs of all colors.
When Perry ambled into the shop Mrs. Nolak was folding up the last
troubles of a strenuous day, so she thought, in a drawer full of pink
silk stockings.
“Something for you?” she queried pessimistically.
“Want costume of Julius Hur, the charioteer.”
Mrs. Nolak was sorry, but every stitch of charioteer had been rented
long ago. Was it for the Townsends’ circus ball?
It was.
“Sorry,” she said, “but I don’t think there’s anything left that’s
really circus.”
This was an obstacle.
“Hm,” said Perry. An idea struck him suddenly. “If you’ve got a piece
of canvas I could go’s a tent.”
“Sorry, but we haven’t anything like that. A hardware store is where
you’d have to go to. We have some very nice Confederate soldiers.”
“No. No soldiers.”
“And I have a very handsome king.”
He shook his head.
“Several of the gentlemen,” she continued hopefully, “are wearing
stovepipe hats and swallow-tail coats and going as ringmasters--but
we’re all out of tall hats. I can let you have some crape hair for a
mustache.”
“Want somep’n ’stinctive.”
“Something--let’s see. Well, we have a lion’s head, and a goose, and a
camel--”
“Camel?” The idea seized Perry’s imagination, gripped it fiercely.
“Yes, but it needs two people.”
“Camel. That’s the idea. Lemme see it.”
The camel was produced from his resting place on a top shelf. At first
glance he appeared to consist entirely of a very gaunt, cadaverous
head and a sizable hump, but on being spread out he was found to
possess a dark brown, unwholesome-looking body made of thick, cottony
cloth.
“You see it takes two people,” explained Mrs. Nolak, holding the camel
in frank admiration. “If you have a friend he could be part of it. You
see there’s sorta pants for two people. One pair is for the fella in
front, and the other pair for the fella in back. The fella in front
does the lookin’ out through these here eyes, an’ the fella in back
he’s just gotta stoop over an’ folla the front fella round.”
“Put it on,” commanded Perry.
Obediently Mrs. Nolak put her tabby-cat face inside the camel’s head
and turned it from side to side ferociously.
Perry was fascinated.
“What noise does a camel make?”
“What?” asked Mrs. Nolak as her face emerged, somewhat smudgy. “Oh,
what noise? Why, he sorta brays.”
“Lemme see it in a mirror.”
Before a wide mirror Perry tried on the head and turned from side to
side appraisingly. In the dim light the effect was distinctly
pleasing. The camel’s face was a study in pessimism, decorated with
numerous abrasions, and it must be admitted that his coat was in that
state of general negligence peculiar to camels--in fact, he needed to
be cleaned and pressed--but distinctive he certainly was. He was
majestic. He would have attracted attention in any gathering, if only
by his melancholy cast of feature and the look of hunger lurking round
his shadowy eyes.
“You see you have to have two people,” said Mrs. Nolak again.
Perry tentatively gathered up the body and legs and wrapped them about
him, tying the hind legs as a girdle round his waist. The effect on
the whole was bad. It was even irreverent--like one of those mediaeval
pictures of a monk changed into a beast by the ministrations of Satan.
At the very best the ensemble resembled a humpbacked cow sitting on
her haunches among blankets.
“Don’t look like anything at all,” objected Perry gloomily.
“No,” said Mrs. Nolak; “you see you got to have two people.”
A solution flashed upon Perry.
“You got a date to-night?”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly----”
“Oh, come on,” said Perry encouragingly. “Sure you can! Here! Be good
sport, and climb into these hind legs.”
With difficulty he located them, and extended their yawning depths
ingratiatingly. But Mrs. Nolak seemed loath. She backed perversely
away.
“Oh, no----”
“C’m on! You can be the front if you want to. Or we’ll flip a coin.”
“Oh, no----”
“Make it worth your while.”
Mrs. Nolak set her lips firmly together.
“Now you just stop!” she said with no coyness implied. “None of the
gentlemen ever acted up this way before. My husband----”
“You got a husband?” demanded Perry. “Where is he?”
“He’s home.”
“Wha’s telephone number?”
After considerable parley he obtained the telephone number pertaining
to the Nolak penates and got into communication with that small, weary
voice he had heard once before that day. But Mr. Nolak, though taken
off his guard and somewhat confused by Perry’s brilliant flow of
logic, stuck staunchly to his point. He refused firmly, but with
dignity, to help out Mr. Parkhurst in the capacity of back part of a
camel.
Having rung off, or rather having been rung off on, Perry sat down on
a three-legged stool to think it over. He named over to himself those
friends on whom he might call, and then his mind paused as Betty
Medill’s name hazily and sorrowfully occurred to him. He had a
sentimental thought. He would ask her. Their love affair was over, but
she could not refuse this last request. Surely it was not much to
ask--to help him keep up his end of social obligation for one short
night. And if she insisted, she could be the front part of the camel
and he would go as the back. His magnanimity pleased him. His mind
even turned to rosy-colored dreams of a tender reconciliation inside
the camel--there hidden away from all the world....
“Now you’d better decide right off.”
The bourgeois voice of Mrs. Nolak broke in upon his mellow fancies and
roused him to action. He went to the phone and called up the Medill
house. Miss Betty was out; had gone out to dinner.
Then, when all seemed lost, the camel’s back wandered curiously into
the store. He was a dilapidated individual with a cold in his head and
a general trend about him of downwardness. His cap was pulled down low
on his head, and his chin was pulled down low on his chest, his coat
hung down to his shoes, he looked run-down, down at the heels,
and--Salvation Army to the contrary--down and out. He said that he was
the taxicab-driver that the gentleman had hired at the Clarendon
Hotel. He had been instructed to wait outside, but he had waited some
time, and a suspicion had grown upon him that the gentleman had gone
out the back way with purpose to defraud him--gentlemen sometimes
did--so he had come in. He sank down onto the three-legged stool.
“Wanta go to a party?” demanded Perry sternly.
“I gotta work,” answered the taxi-driver lugubriously. “I gotta keep
my job.”
“It’s a very good party.”
“’S a very good job.”
“Come on!” urged Perry. “Be a good fella. See--it’s pretty!” He held
the camel up and the taxi-driver looked at it cynically.
“Huh!”
Perry searched feverishly among the folds of the cloth.
“See!” he cried enthusiastically, holding up a selection of folds.
“This is your part. You don’t even have to talk. All you have to do is
to walk--and sit down occasionally. You do all the sitting down. Think
of it. I’m on my feet all the time and _you_ can sit down some of
the time. The only time _I_ can sit down is when we’re lying
down, and you can sit down when--oh, any time. See?”
“What’s ’at thing?” demanded the individual dubiously. “A shroud?”
“Not at all,” said Perry indignantly. “It’s a camel.”
“Huh?”
Then Perry mentioned a sum of money, and the conversation left the
land of grunts and assumed a practical tinge. Perry and the
taxi-driver tried on the camel in front of the mirror.
“You can’t see it,” explained Perry, peering anxiously out through the
eyeholes, “but honestly, ole man, you look sim’ly great! Honestly!”
A grunt from the hump acknowledged this somewhat dubious compliment.
“Honestly, you look great!” repeated Perry enthusiastically. “Move
round a little.”
The hind legs moved forward, giving the effect of a huge cat-camel
hunching his back preparatory to a spring.
“No; move sideways.”
The camel’s hips went neatly out of joint; a hula dancer would have
writhed in envy.
“Good, isn’t it?” demanded Perry, turning to Mrs. Nolak for approval.
“It looks lovely,” agreed Mrs. Nolak.
“We’ll take it,” said Perry.
The bundle was stowed under Perry’s arm and they left the shop.
“Go to the party!” he commanded as he took his seat in the back.
“What party?”
“Fanzy-dress party.”
“Where’bouts is it?”
This presented a new problem. Perry tried to remember, but the names
of all those who had given parties during the holidays danced
confusedly before his eyes. He could ask Mrs. Nolak, but on looking
out the window he saw that the shop was dark. Mrs. Nolak had already
faded out, a little black smudge far down the snowy street.
“Drive uptown,” directed Perry with fine confidence. “If you see a
party, stop. Otherwise I’ll tell you when we get there.”
He fell into a hazy daydream and his thoughts wandered again to
Betty--he imagined vaguely that they had had a disagreement because
she refused to go to the party as the back part of the camel. He was
just slipping off into a chilly doze when he was wakened by the
taxi-driver opening the door and shaking him by the arm.
“Here we are, maybe.”
Perry looked out sleepily. A striped awning led from the curb up to a
spreading gray stone house, from which issued the low drummy whine of
expensive jazz. He recognized the Howard Tate house.
“Sure,” he said emphatically; “’at’s it! Tate’s party to-night. Sure,
everybody’s goin’.”
“Say,” said the individual anxiously after another look at the awning,
“you sure these people ain’t gonna romp on me for comin’ here?”
Perry drew himself up with dignity.
“’F anybody says anything to you, just tell ’em you’re part of my
costume.”
The visualization of himself as a thing rather than a person seemed to
reassure the individual.
“All right,” he said reluctantly.
Perry stepped out under the shelter of the awning and began unrolling
the camel.
“Let’s go,” he commanded.
Several minutes later a melancholy, hungry-looking camel, emitting
clouds of smoke from his mouth and from the tip of his noble hump,
might have been seen crossing the threshold of the Howard Tate
residence, passing a startled footman without so much as a snort, and
heading directly for the main stairs that led up to the ballroom. The
beast walked with a peculiar gait which varied between an uncertain
lockstep and a stampede--but can best be described by the word
“halting.” The camel had a halting gait--and as he walked he
alternately elongated and contracted like a gigantic concertina.