Behind the Beyond and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge Part 10

"Yes," said my friend, "sure--Billy is ranching out in Montana. I saw him in Chicago last spring,--weighed about two hundred pounds,--you wouldn't know him."

"No, I certainly wouldn't," I murmured to myself.

"And where's Pete?" I said. This was safe ground. There is always a Pete.

"You mean Billy's brother," he said.

"Yes, yes, Billy's brother Pete. I often think of him."

"Oh," answered the unknown man, "old Pete's quite changed,--settled down altogether." Here he began to chuckle, "Why, Pete's married!"

I started to laugh, too. Under these circ.u.mstances it is always supposed to be very funny if a man has got married. The notion of old Peter (whoever he is) being married is presumed to be simply killing. I kept on chuckling away quietly at the mere idea of it. I was hoping that I might manage to keep on laughing till the train stopped. I had only fifty miles more to go. It's not hard to laugh for fifty miles if you know how.

But my friend wouldn't be content with it.

"I often meant to write to you," he said, his voice falling to a confidential tone, "especially when I heard of your loss."

I remained quiet. What had I lost? Was it money? And if so, how much?

And why had I lost it? I wondered if it had ruined me or only partly ruined me.

"One can never get over a loss like that," he continued solemnly.

Evidently I was plumb ruined. But I said nothing and remained under cover, waiting to draw his fire.

"Yes," the man went on, "death is always sad."

Death! Oh, that was it, was it? I almost hiccoughed with joy. That was easy. Handling a case of death in these conversations is simplicity itself. One has only to sit quiet and wait to find out who is dead.

"Yes," I murmured, "very sad. But it has its other side, too."

"Very true, especially, of course, at that age."

"As you say at that age, and after such a life."

"Strong and bright to the last I suppose," he continued, very sympathetically.

"Yes," I said, falling on sure ground, "able to sit up in bed and smoke within a few days of the end."

"What," he said, perplexed, "did your grandmother----"

My grandmother! That was it, was it?

"Pardon _me_," I said provoked at my own stupidity; "when I say _smoked_, I mean able to sit up and be smoked to, a habit she had,--being read to, and being smoked to,--only thing that seemed to compose her----"

As I said this I could hear the rattle and clatter of the train running past the semaph.o.r.es and switch points and slacking to a stop.

My friend looked quickly out of the window.

His face was agitated.

"Great heavens!" he said, "that's the junction. I've missed my stop. I should have got out at the last station. Say, porter," he called out into the alleyway, "how long do we stop here?"

"Just two minutes, sah," called a voice back. "She's late now, she's makin' up tahm!"

My friend had hopped up now and had pulled out a bunch of keys and was fumbling at the lock of the suit case.

"I'll have to wire back or something," he gasped. "Confound this lock--my money's in the suit case."

My one fear now was that he would fail to get off.

"Here," I said, pulling some money out of my pocket, "don't bother with the lock. Here's money."

"Thanks," he said grabbing the roll of money out of my hand,--in his excitement he took all that I had.--"I'll just have time."

He sprang from the train. I saw him through the window, moving toward the waiting-room. He didn't seem going very fast.

I waited.

The porters were calling, "All abawd! All abawd." There was the clang of a bell, a hiss of steam, and in a second the train was off.

"Idiot," I thought, "he's missed it;" and there was his fifty-dollar suit case lying on the seat.

I waited, looking out of the window and wondering who the man was, anyway.

Then presently I heard the porter's voice again. He evidently was guiding someone through the car.

"Ah looked all through the kyar for it, sah," he was saying.

"I left it in the seat in the car there behind my wife," said the angry voice of a stranger, a well-dressed man who put his head into the door of the compartment.

Then his face, too, beamed all at once with recognition. But it was not for me. It was for the fifty-dollar valise.

"Ah, there it is," he cried, seizing it and carrying it off.

I sank back in dismay. The "old gang!" Pete's marriage! My grandmother's death! Great heavens! And my money! I saw it all; the other man was "making talk," too, and making it with a purpose.

Stung!

And next time that I fall into talk with a casual stranger in a car, I shall not try to be quite so extraordinarily clever.

_V.--Under the Barber's Knife_

"WAS you to the Arena the other night?" said the barber, leaning over me and speaking in his confidential whisper.