Odd Numbers

“Well, well!” says I. “Bagpipes!”

“Bagpipes be blowed!” says Chunk. “That’s an accordion he’s playing. Listen!”

Say, I was listenin’, and with both ears. Also other folks was beginnin’ to do the same. Inside of five minutes, too, all the chatter has died down, and as I glanced around at the tables I could see that whole crowd of fancy dressed folks noddin’ and beatin’ time with their fans and cigars and fizz glasses. Even the waiters was standin’ still, or tiptoin’ so’s to take it in.

Ever hear one of them out-of-date music bellows handled by a natural born artist? Say, I’ve always been partial to accordions myself, though I never had the courage to own up to it in public; but this was the first time I’d ever heard one pumped in that classy fashion.

Music! Why, as he switches off onto “The Old Folks at Home,” you’d thought there was a church organ and a full orchestra out there! Maybe comin’ across the water had something to do with it; but hanged if it wa’n’t great! And of all the fine old tunes he gave us – “Nellie Gray,” “Comin’ Through the Rye,” “Annie Laurie,” and half a dozen more.

“Chunk,” says I, as the concert ends and the folks begin to applaud, “there’s only one thing to be done in a case like this. Lemme take that lid of yours.”

“Certainly,” says he, and drops a fiver into it before he passes it over. That wa’n’t the only green money I collects, either, and by the time I’ve made the entire round I must have gathered up more’n a quart of spendin’ currency.

“Hold on there, Shorty,” says Chunk, as I starts out to deliver the collection. “I’d like to go with you.”

“Come along, then,” says I. “I guess some of these sailormen will row us out.”

What we had framed up was one of these husky, rugged, old hearts of oak, who would choke up some on receivin’ the tribute and give us his blessin’ in a sort of “Shore Acres” curtain speech. Part of that description he lives up to. He’s some old, all right; but he ain’t handsome or rugged. He’s a lean, dyspeptic lookin’ old party, with a wrinkled face colored up like a pair of yellow shoes at the end of a hard season. His hair is long and matted, and he ain’t overly clean in any detail. He don’t receive us real hearty, either.

“Hey, keep your hands off that rail!” he sings out, reachin’ for a boathook as we come alongside.

“It’s all right, Cap,” says I. “We’re friends.”

“Git out!” says he. “I ain’t got any friends.”

“Sure you have, old scout,” says I. “Anyway, there’s a lot of people ashore that was mighty pleased with the way you tickled that accordion. Here’s proof of it too,” and I holds up the hat.

“Huh!” says he, gettin’ his eye on the contents. “Come aboard, then. Here, I guess you can stow that stuff in there,” and blamed if he don’t shove out an empty lard pail for me to dump the money in. That’s as excited as he gets about it too.

Say, I’d have indulged in about two more minutes of dialogue with that ugly faced old pirate, and then I’d beat it for shore good and disgusted, if it hadn’t been for Chunk Tracey. But he jumps in, as enthusiastic as if he was interviewin’ some foreign Prince, presses a twenty-five-cent perfecto on the Cap’n, and begins pumpin’ out of him the story of his life.

And when Chunk really enthuses it’s got to be a mighty cold proposition that don’t thaw some. Ten to one, too, if this had been a nice, easy talkin’, gentle old party, willin’ to tell all he knew in the first five minutes, Chunk wouldn’t have bothered with him; but, because he don’t show any gratitude, mushy or otherwise, and acts like he had a permanent, ingrowin’ grouch, Chunk is right there with the persistence. He drags out of him that he’s Cap’n Todd Spiller, hailin’ originally from Castine, Maine, and that the name of his old tub is the Queen of the Seas. He says his chief business is clammin’; but he does a little fishin’ and freightin’ on the side. He don’t work much, though, because it don’t take a lot to keep him.

“But you have a wife somewhere ashore, I suppose,” suggests Chunk, “a dear old soul who waits anxiously for you to come back?”

“Bah!” grunts Cap’n Spiller, knockin’ the heel out of his corncob vicious. “I ain’t got any use for women.”

“I see,” says Chunk, gazin’ up sentimental at the moon. “A blighted romance of youth; some fair, fickle maid who fled with another and left you alone?”

“No such luck,” says Spiller. “My trouble was havin’ too many to once. Drat ’em!”

And you’d most thought Chunk would have let it go at that; but not him! He only tackles Spiller along another line. “What I want to know, Captain,” says he, “is where you learned to play the accordion so well.”

“Never learned ’tall,” growls Spiller. “Just picked it up from a Portugee that tried to knife me afterwards.”

“You don’t say!” says Chunk. “But there’s the musician’s soul in you. You love it, don’t you? You use it to express your deep, unsatisfied longings?”

“Guess so,” says the Captain. “I allus plays most when my dyspepshy is worst. It’s kind of a relief.”

“Um-m-m – ah!” says Chunk. “Many geniuses are that way. You must come into town, though, and let me take you to hear some real, bang up, classical music.”

“Not me!” grunts Spiller. “I can make all the music I want myself.”

“How about plays, then?” says Chunk. “Now, wouldn’t you like to see the best show on Broadway?”

“No, sir,” says he, prompt and vigorous. “I ain’t never seen any shows, and don’t want to seen one, either.”

And, say, along about that time, what with the stale cookin’ and bilge water scents that was comin’ from the stuffy cabin, and this charmin’ mood that old Spiller was in, I was gettin’ restless. “Say, Chunk,” I breaks in, “you may be enjoyin’ this, all right; but I’ve got enough. It’s me for shore! Goin’ along?”

“Not yet,” says he. “Have the boat come back for me in about an hour.”

It was nearer two, though, before he shows up again, and his face is fairly beamin’.

“Well,” says I, “did you adopt the old pirate, or did he adopt you?”

“Wait and see,” says he, noddin’ his head cocky. “Anyway, he’s promised to show up at my office to-morrow afternoon.”

“You must be stuck on entertaining a grouchy old lemon like that,” says I.

“But he’s a genius,” says Chunk. “Just what I’ve been looking for as a head liner in a new vaudeville house I’m opening next month.”

“What!” says I. “You ain’t thinkin’ of puttin’ that old sour face on the stage, are you? Say, you’re batty!”

“Batty, am I?” says Chunk, kind of swellin’ up. “All right, I’ll show you. I’ve made half a million, my boy, by just such batty moves as that. It’s because I know people, know ’em through and through, from what they’ll pay to hear, to the ones who can give ’em what they want. I’m a discoverer of talent, Shorty. Where do I get my stars from? Pick ’em up anywhere. I don’t go to London and Paris and pay fancy salaries. I find my attractions first hand, sign’ em up on long contracts, and take the velvet that comes in myself. That’s my way, and I guess I’ve made good.”

“Maybe you have,” says I; “but I’m guessin’ this is where you stub your toe. Hot line that’ll be for the head of a bill, won’t it – an accordion player? Think you can get that across?”

“Think!” says Chunk, gettin’ indignant as usual, because someone suggests he can fall down on anything. “Why, I’m going to put that over twice a day, to twelve hundred-dollar houses! No, I don’t think; I know!”

And just for that it wouldn’t have taken much urgin’ for me to have put up a few yellow ones that he was makin’ a wrong forecast.

But, say, you didn’t happen to be up to the openin’ of Peter K.’s new Alcazar the other night, did you? Well, Sadie and I was, on account of being included in one of Chunk’s complimentary box parties. And, honest, when they sprung that clouded moonlight water view, with the Long Island lights in the distance, and the Sound steamers passin’ back and forth at the back, and the rocks in front, hanged if I didn’t feel like I was on the veranda of our yacht club, watchin’ it all over again, the same as it was that night!

Then in from one side comes this boat; no ordinary property piece faked up from something in stock; but a life sized model that’s a dead ringer for the old Queen of the Seas, even to the stovepipe and the shirts hung from the forestay. It comes floatin’ in lazy and natural, and when Cap Spiller goes forward to heave over the anchor he drops it with a splash into real water. He’s wearin’ the same old costume, – shirt sleeves, cob pipe, and all, – and when he begins to putter around in the cabin, blamed if you couldn’t smell the onions fryin’ and the coffee boilin’. Yes, sir, Chunk had put it all on!

Did the act get ’em interested? Say, there was fifteen straight minutes of this scenic business, with not a word said; but the house was so still I could hear my watch tickin’. But when he drags out that old accordion, plants himself on the cabin roof with one leg swingin’ careless over the side, and opens up with them old tunes of his – well, he had ’em all with him, from the messenger boys in the twenty-five-cent gallery to the brokers in the fifteen-dollar boxes. He takes five curtain calls, and the orchestra circle was still demandin’ more when they rung down the front drop.

“Chunk,” says I, as he shows up at our box, “I take it back. You sure have picked another winner.”

“Looks like it, don’t it?” says he. “And whisper! A fifty-minute act for a hundred a week! That’s the best of it. Up at the Columbus their top liner is costing them a thousand a day.”

“It’s a cinch if you can hold onto him, eh?” says I.

“Oh, I can hold him all right,” says Chunk, waggin’ his head confident. “I know enough about human nature to be sure of that. Of course, he’s an odd freak; but this sort of thing will grow on him. The oftener he gets a hand like that, the more he’ll want it, and inside of a fortnight that’ll be what he lives for. Oh, I know people, from the ground up, inside and outside!”

Well, I was beginnin’ to think he did. And, havin’ been on the inside of his deal, I got to takin’ a sort of pride in this hit, almost as much as if I’d discovered the Captain myself. I used to go up about every afternoon to see old Spiller do his stunt and get ’em goin’. Gen’rally I’d lug along two or three friends, so I could tell ’em how it happened.

Last Friday I was a little late for the act, and was just rushin’ by the boxoffice, when I hears language floatin’ out that I recognizes as a brand that only Chunk Tracey could deliver when he was good and warm under the collar. Peekin’ in through the window, I sees him standin’ there, fairly tearin’ his hair.

“What’s up, Chunk?” says I. “You seem peeved.”

“Peeved!” he yells. “Why, blankety blank the scousy universe, I’m stark, raving mad! What do you think? Spiller has quit!”

“Somebody overbid that hundred a week?” says I.

“I wish they had; then I could get out an injunction and hold him on his contract,” says Peter K. “But he’s skipped, skipped for good. Read that.”

It’s only a scrawly note he’d left pinned up in his dressin’ room, and, while it ain’t much as a specimen of flowery writin’, it states his case more or less clear. Here’s what it said:

Mister P. K. Tracey;

Sir: – I’m through being a fool actor. The money’s all right if I needed it, which I doant, but I doant like makin’ a fool of myself twict a day to please a lot of citty foalks I doant give a dam about annie way, I doant like livin’ in a blamed hotel either, for there aint annie wheres to set and smoak and see the sun come up. I’d ruther be on my old bote, and that’s whare I’m goin’. You needn’t try to find me and git me to come back for I wont. You couldn’t git me to act on that staige agin, ever. It’s foolish.

Yours, Todd Spiller.

“Now what in the name of all that’s woolly,” says Chunk, “would you say to a thing like that?”

“Me?” says I. “I don’t know. Maybe I’d start in by admittin’ that to card index the minds of the whole human race was a good deal of a job for one party to tackle, even with a mighty intellect like yours. Also, if it was put up to me flat, I might agree with Spiller.”

CHAPTER IX

HANDING BOBBY A BLANK

Say, what do you make out of this plute huntin’ business, anyway? Has the big money bunch got us down on the mat with our wind shut off and our pockets inside out; or is it just campaign piffle? Are we ghost dancin’, or waltz dreamin’, or what? It sure has me twisted up for fair, and I don’t know whether I stand with the criminal rich or the predatory poor.

That’s all on account of a little mix-up I was rung into at the hotel Perzazzer the other day. No, we ain’t livin’ there reg’lar again. This was just a little fall vacation we was takin’ in town, so Sadie can catch up with her shoppin’, and of course the Perzazzer seems more or less like home to us.

But it ain’t often I’ve ever run against anything like this there. I’ve been thinkin’ it over since, and it’s left me with my feet in the air. No, you didn’t read anything about it in the papers. But say, there’s more goes on in one of them big joints every week than would fill a whole issue.

Look at the population the Perzazzer’s got, – over two thousand, countin’ the help! Why, drop us down somewhere out in Iowa, and spread us around in separate houses, and there’d be enough to call for a third-class postmaster, a police force, and a board of trade. Bunched the way we are, all up and down seventeen stories, with every cubic foot accounted for, we don’t cut much of a figure except on the checkbooks. You hear about the Perzazzer only when some swell gives a fancy blow-out, or a guest gets frisky in the public dining room.

And anything in the shape of noise soon has the muffler put on it. We’ve got a whole squad of husky, two-handed, soft spoken gents who don’t have anything else to do, and our champeen ruction extinguisher is Danny Reardon. To see him strollin’ through the café, you might think he was a corporation lawyer studyin’ how to spend his next fee; but let some ambitious wine opener put on the loud pedal, or have Danny get his eye on some Bridgeport dressmaker drawin’ designs of the latest Paris fashions in the tea room, and you’ll see him wake up. Nothing seems to get by him.

So I was some surprised to find him havin’ an argument with a couple of parties away up on our floor. Anyone could see with one eye that they was a pair of butt-ins. The tall, smooth faced gent in the black frock coat and the white tie had sky pilot wrote all over him; and the Perzazzer ain’t just the place an out of town minister would pick out to stop at, unless he wanted to blow a year’s salary into a week’s board.

Anyway, his runnin’ mate was a dead give away. He looked like he might have just left a bench in the Oriental lodgin’ house down at Chatham Square. He’s a thin, gawky, pale haired youth, with tired eyes and a limp lower jaw that leaves his mouth half open all the time; and his costume looks like it had been made up from back door contributions, – a faded coat three sizes too small, a forty fat vest, and a pair of shiny black whipcord pants that someone had been married in about twenty years back.

What gets me is why such a specimen should be trailin’ around with a clean, decent lookin’ chap like this minister. Maybe that’s why I come to take any notice of their little debate. There’s some men, though, that you always give a second look at, and this minister gent was one of that kind. It wa’n’t until I see how he tops Danny by a head that I notices how well built he is; and I figures that if he was only in condition, and knew how to handle himself, he could put up a good lively scrap. Something about his jaw hints that to me; but of course, him bein’ a Bible pounder, I don’t expect anything of the kind.

“Yes, I understand all that,” Danny was tellin’ him; “but you’d better come down to the office, just the same.”

“My dear man,” says the minister, “I have been to the office, as I told you before, and I could get no satisfaction there. The person I wish to see is on the ninth floor. They say he is out. I doubt it, and, as I have come six hundred miles just to have a word with him, I insist on a chance to – ”

“Sure!” says Danny. “You’ll get your chance, only it’s against the rules to allow strangers above the ground floor. Now, you come along with me and you’ll be all right.” With that Danny gets a grip on the gent’s arm and starts to walk him to the elevator. But he don’t go far. The next thing Danny knows he’s been sent spinnin’ against the other wall. Course, he wa’n’t lookin’ for any such move; but it was done slick and prompt.

“Sorry,” says the minister, shovin’ his cuffs back in place; “but I must ask you to keep your hands off.”

I see what Danny was up to then. He looks as cool as a soda fountain; but he’s red behind his ears, and he’s fishin’ the chain nippers out of his side pocket. I knows that in about a minute the gent in the frock coat will have both hands out of business. Even at that, it looks like an even bet, with somebody gettin’ hurt more or less. And blamed if I didn’t hate to see that spunky minister get mussed up, just for objectin’ to takin’ the quiet run out. So I pushes to the front.

“Well, well!” says I, shovin’ out a hand to the parson, as though he was someone I’d been lookin’ for. “So you showed up, eh?”

“Why,” says he, – “why – er – ”

“Yes, I know,” says I, headin’ him off. “You can tell me about that later. Bring your friend right in; this is my door. It’s all right, Danny; mistakes will happen.”

And before any of ’em knows what’s up, Danny is left outside with his mouth open, while I’ve towed the pair of strays into our sittin’ room, and shooed Sadie out of the way. The minister looks kind of dazed; but he keeps his head well.

“Really,” says he, gazin’ around, “I am sure there must be some misunderstanding.”

“You bet,” says I, “and it was gettin’ worse every minute. About two shakes more, and you’d been the center of a local disturbance that would have landed you before the police sergeant.”

“Do you mean,” says he, “that I cannot communicate with a guest in this hotel without being liable to arrest?”

“That’s the size of it,” says I. “Danny had the bracelets all out. The conundrum is, though, Why I should do the goat act, instead of lettin’ you two mix it up? But that’s what happened, and now I guess it’s up to you to give an account.”

“H’m!” says he. “It isn’t quite clear; but I infer that you have, in a way, made yourself responsible for me. May I ask whom I have to thank for – ”

“I’m Shorty McCabe,” says I.

“Oh!” says he. “It seems to me I’ve heard – ”

“Nothing like bein’ well advertised,” says I. “Now, how about you – and this?” With that I points to the specimen in the cast offs, that was givin’ an imitation of a flytrap. It was a little crisp, I admit; but I’m gettin’ anxious to know where I stand.

The minister lifts his eyebrows some, but proceeds to hand out the information. “My name is Hooker,” says he, – “Samuel Hooker.”

“Preacher?” says I.

“Ye-es, a poor one,” says he. “Where? Well, in the neighborhood of Mossy Dell, Pennsylvania.”

“Out in the celluloid collar belt, eh?” says I. “This ain’t a deacon, is it?” and I jerks my thumb at the fish eyed one.

“This unfortunate fellow,” says he, droppin’ a hand on the object’s shoulder, “is one of our industrial products. His name is Kronacher, commonly called Dummy.”

“I can guess why,” says I. “But now let’s get down to how you two happen to be loose on the seventh floor of the Perzazzer and so far from Mossy Dell.”

The Reverend Sam says there ain’t any great mystery about that. He come on here special to have a talk with a party by the name of Rankin, that he understood was stoppin’ here.

“You don’t mean Bobby Brut, do you?” says I.

“Robert K. Rankin is the young man’s name, I believe,” says he, – “son of the late Loring Rankin, president of the Consolidated – ”

“That’s Bobby Brut,” says I. “Don’t catch onto the Brut, eh? You would if you read the champagne labels. Friend of yours, is he?”

But right there the Rev. Mr. Hooker turns balky. He hints that his business with Bobby is private and personal, and he ain’t anxious to lay it before a third party. He’d told ’em the same at the desk, when someone from Bobbie’s rooms had ’phoned for details about the card, and then he’d got the turn down. But he wa’n’t the kind that stayed down. He’s goin’ to see Mr. Rankin or bu’st. Not wantin’ to ask for the elevator, he blazes ahead up the stairs; and Danny, it seems, hadn’t got on his track until he was well started.

“All I ask,” says he, “is five minutes of Mr. Rankin’s time. That is not an unreasonable request, I hope?”

“Excuse me,” says I; “but you’re missin’ the point by a mile. It ain’t how long you want to stay, but what you’re here for. You got to remember that things is run different on Fifth-ave. from what they are on Penrose-st., Mossy Dell. You might be a book agent, or a bomb thrower, for all the folks at the desk know. So the only way to get next to anyone here is to show your hand and take the decision. Now if you want to try runnin’ the outside guard again, I’ll call Danny back. But you’ll make a mess of it.”

He thinks that over for a minute, lookin’ me square in the eye all the time, and all of a sudden he puts out his hand. “You’re right,” says he. “I was hot headed, and let my zeal get the better of my commonsense. Thank you, Mr. McCabe.”

“That’s all right,” says I. “You go down to the office and put your case to ’em straight.”

“No,” says he, shruggin’ his shoulders, “that wouldn’t do at all. I suppose I’ve come on a fool’s errand. Kronacher, we’ll go back.”

“That’s too bad,” says I, “if you had business with Bobby that was on the level.”

“Since you’ve been so kind,” says he, “perhaps you would give me your opinion – if I am not detaining you?”

“Spiel away!” says I. “I’ll own up you’ve got me some interested.”

Well, say, when he’d described his visit as a dippy excursion, he wa’n’t far off. Seems that this Rev. Sam Hooker ain’t a reg’lar preacher, with a stained glass window church, a steam heated parsonage, and a settled job. He’s sort of a Gospel promoter, that goes around plantin’ churches here and there, – home missionary, he calls it, though I always thought a home missionary was one that was home from China on a half-pay visit.

Mainly he says he drifts around through the coke oven and glass works district, where all the Polackers and other dagoes work. He don’t let it go with preachin’ to ’em, though. He pokes around among their shacks, seein’ how they live, sendin’ doctors for sick babies, givin’ the women folks hints on the use of fresh air and hard soap, an’ advisin’ ’em to keep their kids in school. He’s one of them strenuous chaps, too, that believes in stirrin’ up a fuss whenever he runs across anything he thinks is wrong. One of the fights he’s been making is something about the boys in the glass works.

“Perhaps you have heard of our efforts to have a child labor bill passed in our State?” says he.

“No,” says I; “but I’m against it. There’s enough kids has to answer the mill whistle, without passin’ laws to make ’em.”

Then he explains how the bill is to keep ’em from goin’ at it too young, or workin’ too many hours on a stretch. Course, I’m with him on that, and says so.

“Ah!” says he. “Then you may be interested to learn that young Mr. Rankin is the most extensive employer of child labor in our State. That is what I want to talk to him about.”

“Ever see Bobby?” says I.

He says he hasn’t.

“Know anything of his habits, and so on?” I asks.

“Not a thing,” says the Rev. Sam.

“Then you take it from me,” says I, “that you ain’t missed much.”

See? I couldn’t go all over that record of Bobby Brut’s, specially to a preacher. Not that Bobby was the worst that ever cruised around the Milky Way in a sea goin’ cab with his feet over the dasher; but he was something of a torrid proposition while he lasted. You remember some of his stunts, maybe? I hadn’t kept strict tabs on him; but I’d heard that after they chucked him out of the sanatorium his mother planted him here, with a man nurse and a private doctor, and slid off to Europe to stay with her son-in-law Count until folks forgot about Bobby.

And this was the youth the Rev. Mr. Hooker had come to have a heart to heart talk with!

“Ain’t you takin’ a lot of trouble, just for a few Polackers?” says I.