Odd Numbers

“Do we look it?” says Maizie. “No! First cousins on the whiskered side. Ever hear that name Blickens before?”

“Why – er – why – ” says I, scratchin’ my head.

“Don’t dig too deep,” says Maizie. “How about Blickens’ skating rink in Kansas City?”

“Oh!” says I. “Was it run by a gent they called Sport Blickens?”

“It was,” says she.

“Why, sure,” I goes on. “And the night I had my match there with the Pedlar, when I’d spent my last bean on a month’s trainin’ expenses, and the Pedlar’s backer was wavin’ a thousand-dollar side bet under my nose, this Mr. Blickens chucked me his roll and told me to call the bluff.”

“Yes, that was dad, all right,” says Maizie.

“It was?” says I. “Well, well! Now if there’s anything I can do for – ”

“Whoa up!” says Maizie. “This is no grubstake touch. Let’s get that off our minds first, though I’m just as much obliged. It’s come out as dad said. Says he, ‘If you’re ever up against it, and can locate Shorty McCabe, you go to him and say who you are.’ But this isn’t exactly that kind of a case. Phemey and I may look a bit rocky and – Say, how do we look, anyway? Have you got such a thing as a – ”

“Tidson,” says Sadie, breakin’ in, “you may roll in the pier glass for the young lady.” Course, that reminds me I ain’t done the honors.

“Excuse me,” says I. “Miss Blickens, this is Mrs. McCabe.”

“Howdy,” says Maizie. “I was wondering if it wasn’t about due. Goshety gosh! but you’re all to the peaches, eh? And me – ”

Here she turns and takes a full length view of herself. “Suffering scarecrows! Say, why didn’t you put up the bars on us? Don’t you look, Phemey; you’d swallow your gum!”

But Euphemia ain’t got any idea of turnin’ her head. She has them peaceful eyes of hers glued to Sadie’s copper hair, and she’s contented to yank away at her cud. For a consistent and perseverin’ masticator, she has our friend Fletcher chewed to a standstill. Maizie is soon satisfied with her survey.

“That’ll do, take it away,” says she. “If I ever get real stuck on myself, I’ll have something to remember. But, as I was sayin’, this is no case of an escape from the poor farm. We wore these Hetty Green togs when we left Dobie.”

“Dobie?” says I.

“Go on, laugh!” says Maizie. “Dobie’s the biggest joke and the slowest four corners in the State of Minnesota, and that’s putting it strong. Look at Phemey; she’s a native.”

Well, we looked at Phemey. Couldn’t help it. Euphemia don’t seem to mind. She don’t even grin; but just goes on workin’ her jaws and lookin’ placid.

“Out in Dobie that would pass for hysterics,” says Maizie. “The only way they could account for me was by saying that I was born crazy in another State. I’ve had a good many kinds of hard luck; but being born in Dobie wasn’t one of the varieties. Now can you stand the story of my life?”

“Miss Blickens,” says I, “I’m willin’ to pay you by the hour.”

“It isn’t so bad as all that,” says she, “because precious little has ever happened to me. It’s what’s going to happen that I’m living for. But, to take a fair start, we’ll begin with dad. When they called him Sport Blickens, they didn’t stretch their imaginations. He was all that – and not much else. All I know about maw is that she was one of three, and that I was born in the back room of a Denver dance hall. I’ve got a picture of her, wearing tights and a tin helmet, and dad says she was a hummer. He ought to know; he was a pretty good judge.

“As I wasn’t much over two days old when they had the funeral, I can’t add anything more about maw. And the history I could write of dad would make a mighty slim book. Running roller skating rinks was the most genteel business he ever got into, I guess. His regular profession was faro. It’s an unhealthy game, especially in those gold camps where they shoot so impetuous. He got over the effects of two .38’s dealt him by a halfbreed Sioux; but when a real bad man from Taunton, Massachusetts, opened up on him across the table with a .45, he just naturally got discouraged. Good old dad! He meant well when he left me in Dobie and had me adopted by Uncle Hen. Phemey, you needn’t listen to this next chapter.”

Euphemia, she misses two jaw strokes in succession, rolls her eyes at Maizie May for a second, and then strikes her reg’lar gait again.

“Excuse her getting excited like that,” says Maizie; “but Uncle Hen – that was her old man, of course – hasn’t been planted long. He lasted until three weeks ago. He was an awful good man, Uncle Hen was – to himself. He had the worst case of ingrowing religion you ever saw. Why, he had a thumb felon once, and when the doctor came to lance it Uncle Hen made him wait until he could call in the minister, so it could be opened with prayer.

“Sundays he made us go to church twice, and the rest of the day he talked to us about our souls. Between times he ran the Palace Emporium; that is, he and I and a half baked Swede by the name of Jens Torkil did. To look at Jens you wouldn’t have thought he could have been taught the difference between a can of salmon and a patent corn planter; but say, Uncle Hen had him trained to make short change and weigh his hand with every piece of salt pork, almost as slick as he could do it himself.

“All I had to do was to tend the drygoods, candy, and drug counters, look after the post-office window, keep the books, and manage the telephone exchange. Euphemia had the softest snap, though. She did the housework, planted the garden, raised chickens, fed the hogs, and scrubbed the floors. Have I got the catalogue right, Phemey?”

Euphemia blinks twice, kind of reminiscent; but nothin’ in the shape of words gets through the gum.

“She has such an emotional nature!” says Maizie. “Uncle Hen was like that too. But let’s not linger over him. He’s gone. The last thing he did was to let go of a dollar fifty in cash that I held him up for so Phemey and I could go into Duluth and see a show. The end came early next day, and whether it was from shock or enlargement of the heart, no one will ever know.

“It was an awful blow to us all. We went around in a daze for nearly a week, hardly daring to believe that it could be so. Jens broke the spell for us. One morning I caught him helping himself to a cigar out of the two-fer box. ‘Why not?’ says he. Next Phemey walks in, swipes a package of wintergreen gum, and feeds it all in at once. She says, ‘Why not?’ too. Then I woke up. ‘You’re right,’ says I. ‘Enjoy yourself. It’s time.’ Next I hints to her that there are bigger and brighter spots on this earth than Dobie, and asks her what she says to selling the Emporium and hunting them up. ‘I don’t care,’ says she, and that was a good deal of a speech for her to make. ‘Do you leave it to me?’ says I. ‘Uh-huh,’ says she. ‘We-e-e-ough!’ says I,” and with that Maizie lets out one of them backwoods college cries that brings Tidson up on his toes.

“I take it,” says I, “that you did.”

“Did I?” says she. “Inside of three days I’d hustled up four different parties that wanted to invest in a going concern, and before the week was over I’d buncoed one of ’em out of nine thousand in cash. Most of it’s in a certified check, sewed inside of Phemey, and that’s why we walked all the way up here in the rain. Do you suppose you could take me to some bank to-morrow where I could leave that and get a handful of green bills on account? Is that asking too much?”

“Considering the way you’ve brushed up my memory of Sport Blickens,” says I, “it’s real modest. Couldn’t you think of something else?”

“If that had come from Mrs. McCabe,” says she, eyin’ Sadie kind of longin’, “I reckon I could.”

“Why,” says Sadie, “I should be delighted.”

“You wouldn’t go so far as to lead two such freaks as us around to the stores and help us pick out some New York clothes, would you?” says she.

“My dear girl!” says Sadie, grabbin’ both her hands. “We’ll do it to-morrow.”

“Honest?” says Maizie, beamin’ on her. “Well, that’s what I call right down decent. Phemey, do you hear that? Oh, swallow it, Phemey, swallow it! This is where we bloom out!”

And say, you should have heard them talkin’ over the kind of trousseaus that would best help a girl to forget she ever came from Dobie.

“You will need a neat cloth street dress, for afternoons,” says Sadie.

“Not for me!” says Maizie. “That’ll do all right for Phemey; but when it comes to me, I’ll take something that rustles. I’ve worn back number cast-offs for twenty-two years; now I’m ready for the other kind. I’ve been traveling so far behind the procession I couldn’t tell which way it was going. Now I’m going to give the drum major a view of my back hair. The sort of costumes I want are the kind that are designed this afternoon for day after to-morrow. If it’s checks, I’ll take two to the piece; if it’s stripes, I want to make a circus zebra look like a clipped mule. And I want a change for every day in the week.”

“But, my dear girl,” says Sadie, “can you afford to – ”

“You bet I can!” says Maizie. “My share of Uncle Hen’s pile is forty-five hundred dollars, and while it lasts I’m going to have the lilies of the field looking like the flowers you see on attic wall paper. I don’t care what I have to eat, or where I stay; but when it comes to clothes, show me the limit! But say, I guess it’s time we were getting back to our boarding-house. Wake up, Phemey!”

Well, I pilots ’em out to Fifth-ave., stows ’em into a motor stage, and heads ’em down town.

“Whew!” says Sadie, when I gets back. “I suppose that is a sample of Western breeziness.”

“It’s more’n a sample,” says I. “But I can see her finish, though. Inside of three months all she’ll have left to show for her wad will be a trunk full of fancy regalia and a board bill. Then it will be Maizie hunting a job in some beanery.”

“Oh, I shall talk her out of that nonsense,” says Sadie. “What she ought to do is to take a course in stenography and shorthand.”

Yes, we laid out a full programme for Maizie, and had her earnin’ her little twenty a week, with Phemey keepin’ house for both of ’em in a nice little four-room flat. And in the mornin’ I helps her deposit the certified check, and then turns the pair over to Sadie for an assault on the department stores, with a call at a business college as a finish for the day, as we’d planned.

When I gets home that night I finds Sadie all fagged out and drinkin’ bromo seltzer for a headache.

“What’s wrong?” says I.

“Nothing,” says Sadie; “only I’ve been having the time of my life.”

“Buying tailor made uniforms for the Misses Blickens?” says I.

“Tailor made nothing!” says Sadie. “It was no use, Shorty, I had to give in. Maizie wanted the other things so badly. And then Euphemia declared she must have the same kind. So I spent the whole day fitting them out.”

“Got ’em something sudden and noisy, eh?” says I.

“Just wait until you see them,” says Sadie.

“But what’s the idea?” says I. “How long do they think they can keep up that pace? And when they’ve blown themselves short of breath, what then?”

“Heaven knows!” says Sadie. “But Maizie has plans of her own. When I mentioned the business college, she just laughed, and said if she couldn’t do something better than pound a typewriter, she’d go back to Dobie.”

“Huh!” says I. “Sentiments like that has got lots of folks into trouble.”

“And yet,” says Sadie, “Maizie’s a nice girl in her way. We’ll see how she comes out.”

We did, too. It was a couple of weeks before we heard a word from either of ’em, and then the other day Sadie gets a call over the ’phone from a perfect stranger. She says she’s a Mrs. Herman Zorn, of West End-ave., and that she’s givin’ a little roof garden theater party that evenin’, in honor of Miss Maizie Blickens, an old friend of hers that she used to know when she lived in St. Paul and spent her summers near Dobie. Also she understood we were friends of Miss Blickens too, and she’d be pleased to have us join.

“West End-ave.!” says I. “Gee! but it looks like Maizie had been able to butt in. Do we go, Sadie?”

“I said we’d be charmed,” says she. “I’m dying to see how Maizie will look.”

I didn’t admit it, but I was some curious that way myself; so about eight-fifteen we shows up at the roof garden and has an usher lead us to the bunch. There’s half a dozen of ’em on hand; but the only thing worth lookin’ at was Maizie May.

And say, I thought I could make a guess as to somewhere near how she would frame up. The picture I had in mind was a sort of cross between a Grand-st. Rebecca and an Eighth-ave. Lizzie Maud, – you know, one of the near style girls, that’s got on all the novelties from ten bargain counters. But, gee! The view I gets has me gaspin’. Maizie wa’n’t near; she was two jumps ahead. And it wa’n’t any Grand-st. fashion plate that she was a livin’ model of. It was Fifth-ave. and upper Broadway. Talk about your down-to-the-minute costumes! Say, maybe they’ll be wearin’ dresses like that a year from now. And that hat! It wa’n’t a dream; it was a forecast.

“We saw it unpacked from the Paris case,” whispers Sadie.

All I know about it is that it was the widest, featheriest lid I ever saw in captivity, and it’s balanced on more hair puffs than you could put in a barrel. But what added the swell, artistic touch was the collar. It’s a chin supporter and ear embracer. I thought I’d seen high ones, but this twelve-inch picket fence around Maizie’s neck was the loftiest choker I ever saw anyone survive. To watch her wear it gave you the same sensations as bein’ a witness at a hanging. How she could do it and keep on breathin’, I couldn’t make out; but it don’t seem to interfere with her talkin’.

Sittin’ close up beside her, and listenin’ with both ears stretched and his mouth open, was a blond young gent with a bristly Bat Nelson pompadour. He’s rigged out in a silk faced tuxedo, a smoke colored, open face vest, and he has a big yellow orchid in his buttonhole. By the way he’s gazin’ at Maizie, you could tell he approved of her from the ground up. She don’t hesitate any on droppin’ him, though, when we arrives.

“Hello!” says she. “Ripping good of you to come. Well, what do you think? I’ve got some of ’em on, you see. What’s the effect?”

“Stunning!” says Sadie.

“Thanks,” says Maizie. “I laid out to get somewhere near that. And, gosh! but it feels good! These are the kind of togs I was born to wear. Phemey? Oh, she’s laid up with arnica bandages around her throat. I told her she mustn’t try to chew gum with one of these collars on.”

“Say, Maizie,” says I, “who’s the Sir Lionel Budweiser, and where did you pick him up?”

“Oh, Oscar!” says she. “Why, he found me. He’s from St. Paul, nephew of Mrs. Zorn, who’s visiting her. Brewer’s son, you know. Money? They’ve got bales of it. Hey, Oscar!” says she, snappin’ her finger. “Come over here and show yourself!”

And say, he was trained, all right. He trots right over.

“Would you take him, if you was me?” says Maizie, turnin’ him round for us to make an inspection. “I told him I wouldn’t say positive until I had shown him to you, Mrs. McCabe. He’s a little under height, and I don’t like the way his hair grows; but his habits are good, and his allowance is thirty thousand a year. How about him? Will he do?”

“Why – why – ” says Sadie, and it’s one of the few times I ever saw her rattled.

“Just flash that ring again, Oscar,” says Maizie.

“O-o-oh!” says Sadie, when Oscar has pulled out the white satin box and snapped back the cover. “What a beauty! Yes, Maizie, I should say that, if you like Oscar, he would do nicely.”

“That goes!” says Maizie. “Here, Occie dear, slide it on. But remember: Phemey has got to live with us until I can pick out some victim of nervous prostration that needs a wife like her. And for goodness’ sake, Occie, give that waiter an order for something wet!”

“Well!” says Sadie afterwards, lettin’ out a long breath. “To think that we ever worried about her!”

“She’s a little bit of all right, eh?” says I. “But say, I’m glad I ain’t Occie, the heir to the brewery. I wouldn’t know whether I was engaged to Maizie, or caught in a belt.”

CHAPTER III

WHERE SPOTTY FITTED IN

Also we have a few home-grown varieties that ain’t listed frequent. And the pavement products are apt to have most as queer kinks to ’em as those from the plowed fields. Now take Spotty.

“Gee! what a merry look!” says I to Pinckney as he floats into the studio here the other day. He’s holdin’ his chin high, and he’s got his stick tucked up under his arm, and them black eyes of his is just sparklin’. “What’s it all about?” I goes on. “Is it a good one you’ve just remembered, or has something humorous happened to one of your best friends?”

“I have a new idea,” says he, “that’s all.”

“All!” says I. “Why, that’s excuse enough for declarin’ a gen’ral holiday. Did you go after it, or was it delivered by mistake? Can’t you give us a scenario of it?”

“Why, I’ve thought of something new for Spotty Cahill,” says he, beamin’.

“G’wan!” says I. “I might have known it was a false alarm. Spotty Cahill! Say, do you want to know what I’d advise you to do for Spotty next?”

No, Pinckney don’t want my views on the subject. It’s a topic we’ve threshed out between us before; also it’s one of the few dozen that we could debate from now until there’s skatin’ on the Panama Canal, without gettin’ anywhere. I’ve always held that Spotty Cahill was about the most useless and undeservin’ human being that ever managed to exist without work; but to hear Pinckney talk you’d think that long-legged, carroty-haired young loafer was the original party that philanthropy was invented for.

Now, doing things for other folks ain’t one of Pinckney’s strong points, as a rule. Not that he wouldn’t if he thought of it and could find the time; but gen’rally he has too many other things on his schedule to indulge much in the little deeds of kindness game. When he does start out to do good, though, he makes a job of it. But look who he picks out!

Course, I knew why. He’s explained all that to me more’n once. Seems there was an old waiter at the club, a quiet, soft-spoken, bald-headed relic, who had served him with more lobster Newburg than you could load on a scow, and enough highballs to float the Mauretania in. In fact, he’d been waitin’ there as long as Pinckney had been a member. They’d been kind of chummy, in a way, too. It had always been “Good morning, Peter,” and “Hope I see you well, sir,” between them, and Pinckney never had to bother about whether he liked a dash of bitters in this, or if that ought to be served frappe or plain. Peter knew, and Peter never forgot.

Then one day when Pinckney’s just squarin’ off to his lunch he notices that he’s been given plain, ordinary salt butter instead of the sweet kind he always has; so he puts up a finger to call Peter over and have a swap made. When he glances up, though, he finds Peter ain’t there at all.

“Oh, I say,” says he, “but where is Peter?”

“Peter, sir?” says the new man. “Very sorry, sir, but Peter’s dead.”

“Dead!” says Pinckney. “Why – why – how long has that been?”

“Over a month, sir,” says he. “Anything wrong, sir?”

To be sure, Pinckney hadn’t been there reg’lar; but he’d been in off and on, and when he comes to think how this old chap, that knew all his whims, and kept track of ’em so faithful, had dropped out without his ever having heard a word about it – why, he felt kind of broke up. You see, he’d always meant to do something nice for old Peter; but he’d never got round to it, and here the first thing he knows Peter’s been under the sod for more’n a month.

That’s what set Pinckney to inquirin’ if Peter hadn’t left a fam’ly or anything, which results in his diggin’ up this Spotty youth. I forgot just what his first name was, it being something outlandish that don’t go with Cahill at all; but it seems he was born over in India, where old Peter was soldierin’ at the time, and they’d picked up one of the native names. Maybe that’s what ailed the boy from the start.

Anyway, Peter had come back from there a widower, drifted to New York with the youngster, and got into the waiter business. Meantime the boy grows up in East Side boardin’-houses, without much lookin’ after, and when Pinckney finds him he’s an int’restin’ product. He’s twenty-odd, about five feet eleven high, weighs under one hundred and thirty, has a shock of wavy, brick-red hair that almost hides his ears, and his chief accomplishments are playin’ Kelly pool and consumin’ cigarettes. By way of ornament he has the most complete collection of freckles I ever see on a human face, or else it was they stood out more prominent because the skin was so white between the splotches. We didn’t invent the name Spotty for him. He’d already been tagged that.

Well, Pinckney discovers that Spotty has been livin’ on the few dollars that was left after payin’ old Peter’s plantin’ expenses; that he didn’t know what he was goin’ to do after that was gone, and didn’t seem to care. So Pinckney jumps in, works his pull with the steward, and has Spotty put on reg’lar in the club billiard room as an attendant. All he has to do is help with the cleanin’, keep the tables brushed, and set up the balls when there are games goin’ on. He gets his meals free, and six dollars a week.

Now that should have been a soft enough snap for anybody, even the born tired kind. There wa’n’t work enough in it to raise a palm callous on a baby. But Spotty, he improves on that. His idea of earnin’ wages is to curl up in a sunny windowseat and commune with his soul. Wherever you found the sun streamin’ in, there was a good place to look for Spotty. He just seemed to soak it up, like a blotter does ink, and it didn’t disturb him any who was doin’ his work.

Durin’ the first six months Spotty was fired eight times, only to have Pinckney get him reinstated, and it wa’n’t until the steward went to the board of governors with the row that Mr. Cahill was given his permanent release. You might think Pinckney would have called it quits then; but not him! He’d started out to godfather Spotty, and he stays right with the game. Everybody he knew was invited to help along the good work of givin’ Spotty a lift. He got him into brokers’ offices, tried him out as bellhop in four diff’rent hotels, and even jammed him by main strength into a bank; but Spotty’s sun absorbin’ habits couldn’t seem to be made useful anywhere.

For one while he got chummy with Swifty Joe and took to sunnin’ himself in the studio front windows, until I had to veto that.

“I don’t mind your friends droppin’ in now and then, Swifty,” says I; “but there ain’t any room here for statuary. I don’t care how gentle you break it to him, only run him out.”

So that’s why I don’t enthuse much when Pinckney says he’s thought up some new scheme for Spotty. “Goin’ to have him probed for hookworms?” says I.

No, that ain’t it. Pinckney, he’s had a talk with Spotty and discovered that old Peter had a brother Aloysius, who’s settled somewhere up in Canada and is superintendent of a big wheat farm. Pinckney’s had his lawyers trace out this Uncle Aloysius, and then he’s written him all about Spotty, suggestin’ that he send for him by return mail.

“Fine!” says I. “He’d be a lot of use on a wheat farm. What does Aloysius have to say to the proposition?”

“Well, the fact is,” says Pinckney, “he doesn’t appear at all enthusiastic. He writes that if the boy is anything like Peter when he knew him he’s not anxious to see him. However, he says that if Spotty comes on he will do what he can for him.”

“It’ll be a long walk,” says I.

“There’s where my idea comes in,” says Pinckney. “I am going to finance the trip.”

“If it don’t cost too much,” says I, “it’ll be a good investment.”

Pinckney wants to do the thing right away, too. First off, though, he has to locate Spotty. The youth has been at large for a week or more now, since he was last handed the fresh air, and Pinckney ain’t heard a word from him.

“Maybe Swifty knows where he roosts,” says I.

It was a good guess. Swifty gives us a number on Fourth-ave. where he’d seen Spotty hangin’ around lately, and he thinks likely he’s there yet.

So me and Pinckney starts out on the trail. It leads us to one of them Turkish auction joints where they sell genuine silk oriental prayer rugs, made in Paterson, N. J., with hammered brass bowls and antique guns as a side line. And, sure enough, camped down in front on a sample rug, with his hat off and the sun full on him, is our friend Spotty.