Bunker Bean Part 40

"We've done it," rejoiced the flapper. "Serve the perfectly old taggers good and plenty right!"

Bean lifted a final gaze to the laurel-crowned Believer. He knew that Believer's secret now.

"What a stunning tie," exclaimed the flapper. "It just perfectly does something to you."

"'S little old last year's tie," said her husband carelessly.

At six-thirty that evening they were resting on a balcony overlooking the garden of a hotel at Versailles. Back of them in the little parlour a waiter was setting a most companionable small table for two. Such little sounds as he made were thrilling. They liked the hotel much. Its management seemed to have been expecting them ever since the building's erection, and to have reserved precisely that nest for them.

They had been "doing" the palace. A little self-conscious, in their first free solitude, they had agreed that the palace would be instructive. Through interminable galleries they had gone, inspecting portraits of the dead who had made and marred French history ... led on by a guide whose amiable delusion it was that he spoke English. The flapper had been chiefly exercised in comparing the palace, to its disadvantage, with a certain house to be surrounded on all sides by scenery and embellished with perfectly patent laundry tubs.

The flapper sighed in contentment, now.

"We needn't ever do it again," she said. "How they ever made it in that old barn--"

Bean had occupied himself in thinking it was funny about kings. To have been born a king meant not so much after all. He still dwelt upon it as they sat looking down into the shadowed garden.

"There was that last one," he said musingly. "Born as much a king as any ... and look what they did to him. Better man than the other two before him ... they had 'habits' enough, and he was decent. But he couldn't make them believe in him. He couldn't have believed in himself very hard. His picture looks like a man I know in New York named Ca.s.sidy .. always puttering around, dead serious about something that doesn't matter at all. You got to bluff people, and this poor old dub didn't know how ... so they clipped his head off for it. Two or three times a good bluff would have saved him."

"No bath, no furnace," murmured the flapper. "That perfectly reminds me, soon as we get back--"

"Then," pursued Bean, "along comes Mr. little old George W. Napoleon Bluff and makes them eat out of his hand in about five minutes. Didn't he walk over them, though? And they haven't quit thanking him for it yet. Saw a lot of 'em snivelling over him at that tomb this morning.

Think he'd died only yesterday. You know, I don't blame him so much for a lot of things he did--fighting and women and all that. He knew what they'd do to him if he ever for one minute quit bluffing. You know, he was what I call an upstart."

The flapper stole a hand into his and sighed contentedly.

"You've perfectly worked it all out, haven't you?" she said.

"--and if you come right down to it, I'm nothing but 'n upstart myself."

"Oh, splash!" said the flapper, in loving refutation.

"'S all," he persisted; "just 'n upstart. Of course I don't have to be one with you. I wouldn't be afraid to tell you anything in the world; but those others, now; every one else in the world except you; I'll show 'em who's little old George W. Upstart--old man Upstart himself, that's what!"

"You're a king," declared the flapper in a burst of frankness.

"Eh?" said Bean, a little startled.

"Just a perfectly little old king," persisted the flapper with dreamy cert.i.tude. "Never fooled little George W. Me. Knew it the very first second. Went over me just like _that_."

"Oh, I'm no king; never was a king; rabbit, I guess. Little old perfectly upstart rabbit, that's what!"

"What am I?" asked the flapper pointedly.

"Little old flippant flapper, that's what! But you're my Chubbins just the same; my Chubbins!" and he very softly put his hand to her cheek.

"_Monsieur et Madame sont servi_," said the waiter. He was in the doorway but discreetly surveyed the evening sky through an already polished wine-gla.s.s held well aloft.

The three perfectly taggers meeting their just due, consulted miserably as they gathered about a telephone in Paris the following morning. The Demon had answered the call.

"Says she has it all reasoned out," announced the Demon.

"'S what she said before," grunted Breede. "Tha's nothing new."

"And she says we're snoop-cats and we might as well go back home--now,"

continued the Demon. "Says she's got the--u-u-m-mm!--says to perfectly quit tagging."

"Nothing can matter now," said the bereaved mother.

"He's talking himself," said the Demon. "Mercy he's got a new voice ... sounds like another man. He says if we don't beat it out of here by the next boat--he can imagine nothing of less--something or other I can't hear--"

"--consequence," snapped Breede.

"Yes, that's it; and now he's laughing and telling her she's a perfectly flapper."

"Oh, my poor child," murmured the mother.

"Puzzle t' me," said Breede. "I swear I can't make out just how many kinds of a--"

"James!" said his wife sternly, and indicated the presence of several interested foreigners.