Local Color Part 33

"See you later, Colonel," he called across the intervening s.p.a.ce. "You said you'd be there when we open up, you know."

"I'll be there, Swifty, on a front seat!" pledged Mr. Birdseye happily.

The overloaded elevator strained and started and vanished upward, vocal to the last. In the comparative calm which ensued Mr. Birdseye, head well up, chest well out, and thumbs in the arm openings of a distended waistcoat, lounged easily but with the obvious air of a conqueror back toward the desk and Mr. Ollie Bates.

"Some noisy bunch!" said Mr. Bates admiringly. "Say, J. Henry, where did they pick you up?"

"They didn't pick me up, I picked them up--met 'em over at Barstow and rode in with 'em."

"Seems like it didn't take you long to make friends with 'em," commented Mr. Bates.

"It didn't take me half a minute. Easiest bunch to get acquainted with you ever saw in your life, Ollie. And kidders? Well, they wrote kidding--that's all--words and music. I wish you could a-seen them stringing old man 'Lonzo Nutt down the street! I like to died!" He unbent a trifle; after all, Mr. Bates was an old friend. "Say, Ollie, that gang won't do a thing to our little old scrub team this afternoon, with Long Leaf Pinderson pitching. I saw him in action--with oranges.

He----"

"Say, listen, J. Henry," broke in Mr. Bates. "Who in thunder do you think that gang is you've been a.s.sociating with?"

"Think it is? Who would it be but the Moguls?"

"Moguls?"

A convulsion seized and overcame Mr. Bates. He bent double, his distorted face in his hands, his shoulders heaving, weird sounds issuing from his throat. Then lifting his head, he opened that big mouth of his, afflicting the adjacent air with raucous and discordant laughter.

"Moguls! Moguls! Say, you need to have your head looked into. Why, J.

Henry, the Moguls came in on the twelve-forty-five and Nick Cornwall and the crowd met 'em and they're down to the Hotel Esplanade right this minute, I reckon. We tried to land 'em for the Balboa, but it seemed like they wanted a quiet hotel. Well, they'll have their wish at the Esplanade!"

"Then who--then who are these?"

It was the broken, faltering accent of Mr. Birdseye, sounded wanly and as from a long way off.

"These? Why, it's the College Glee Club from Chickasaw Tech., down in Alabama, that's going to give a concert at the opera house to-night. And you thought all the time you were with the Moguls? Well, you poor simp!"

In addition to simp Mr. Bates also used the words b.o.o.b, sucker, chunk of Camembert and dub in this connection. But it is doubtful if Mr. Birdseye heard him now. A great roaring, as of dashing cataracts and swirling rapids, filled his ears as he fled away, blindly seeking some sanctuary wherein to hide himself from the gaze of mortal man.

Remaining to be told is but little; but that little looms important as tending to prove that truth sometimes is stranger than fiction. With Swifty Megrue coaching, with Magnus, the Big Chief, backstopping, with Pinderson, master of the spitball, in the box twirling, nevertheless and to the contrary notwithstanding, the Anneburg team that day mopped up, the score standing:

R H E Anneburg 6 9 1 Moguls 4 7 2

CHAPTER X

SMOOTH CROSSING

On this voyage the _Mesopotamia_ was to sail at midnight. It was now, to be precise about it, eleven forty-five P. M. and some odd seconds; and they were wrestling the last of the heavy luggage aboard. The Babel-babble that distinguishes a big liner's departure was approaching its climax of acute hysteria, when two well-dressed, youngish men joined the wormlike column of eleventh-hour pa.s.sengers mounting a portable bridge labelled First Cabin which hyphenated the strip of dark water between ship and sh.o.r.e. They were almost the last persons to join the line, coming in such haste along the dock that the dock captain on duty at the foot of the canvas-sided gangway let them pa.s.s without question.

Except that these two men were much of a size and at a first glance rather alike in general aspect; and except that one of them, the rearmost, bore two bulging handbags while the other kept his hands m.u.f.fled in a grey tweed ulster that lay across his arms, there was nothing about them or either of them to distinguish them from any other belated pair of men in that jostling procession of the flurried and the hurried. Oh, yes, one of them had a moustache and the other had none.

Indian file they went up the gangway and past the second officer, who stood at the head of it; and still tandem they pushed and were pushed along through the jam upon the deck. The second man, the one who bore the handbags, gave them over to a steward who had jumped forward when he saw them coming. He hesitated then, looking about him.

"Come on, it's all right," said the first man.

"How about the tickets? Don't we have to show them first?" inquired the other.

"No, not now," said his companion. "We can go direct to our stateroom."

The same speaker addressed the steward:

"D-forty," he said briskly.

"Quite right, sir," said the steward. "D-forty. Right this way, sir; if you please, sir."

With the dexterity born of long practice the steward, burdened though he was, bored a path for himself and them through the crowd. He led them from the deck, across a corner of a big cabin that was like a hotel lobby, and down flights of broad stairs from B-deck to C and from C-deck to D, and thence aft along a narrow companionway until he came to a cross hall where another steward stood.

"Two gentlemen for D-forty," said their guide. Surrendering the handbags to this other functionary, he touched his cap and vanished into thin air, magically, after the custom of ancient Arabian genii and modern British steamship servants.

"'Ere you are, sirs," said the second steward. He opened the door of a stateroom and stood aside to let them in. Following in behind them he deposited the handbags in mathematical alignment upon the floor and spoke a warning: "We'll be leavin' in a minute or two now, but it's just as well, sir, to keep your stateroom door locked until we're off--thieves are about sometimes in port, you know, sir. Was there anything else, sir?" He addressed them in the singular, but considered them, so to speak, in the plural. "I'm the bedroom steward, sir," he added in final explanation.

The pa.s.senger who had asked concerning the tickets looked about him curiously, as though the interior arrangement of a steamship stateroom was to him strange.

"So you're the bedroom steward," he said. "What's your name?"

"Lawrence, sir."

"Lawrence what?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?" said the steward, looking puzzled.

"He wants to know your first name," explained the other prospective occupant of D-forty. This man had sat himself down upon the edge of the bed, still with his grey ulster folded forward across his arms as though the pockets held something valuable and must be kept in a certain position, just so, to prevent the contents spilling out.

"'Erbert Lawrence, sir, thank you, sir," said the steward, his face clearing, "I'll be 'andy if you ring, sir." He backed out. "Nothing else, sir? I'll see to your 'eavy luggage in the mornin'. Will there be any trunks for the stateroom?"

"No trunks," said the man on the bed. "Just some suitcases. They came aboard just ahead of us, I think."

"Right, sir," said the accommodating Lawrence. "I'll get your tickets in the morning and take them to the purser, if you don't mind. Thank you, sir." And with that he bowed himself out and was gone.

As the door closed behind this thoughtful and accommodating servitor the fellow travellers looked at each other for a moment steadily, much as though they might be sharers of a common secret that neither cared to mention even between themselves. The one who stood spoke first:

"I guess I'll go up and see her pull out," he said. "I've never seen a ship pull out; it's a new thing to me. Want to go?"

The man nursing the ulster shook his head.

"All right, then," said the first. He pitched his own topcoat, which he had been carrying under his arm, upon the lone chair. "I'll be back pretty soon." He glanced keenly at the one small porthole, looked about the stateroom once more, then stepped across the threshold and closed the door. The lock clicked.

Left alone, the other man sat for a half minute or so as he was, with his head tilted forward in an att.i.tude of listening. Then he stood up and with a series of shrugging, lifting motions, jerked the ulster forward so that it slipped through the loop of his arms upon the floor.

Had the efficient Lawrence returned at that moment it is safe to say he would have sustained a profound shock, although it is equally safe to say he would have made desperate efforts to avoid showing his emotions.

The man was manacled. Below his white shirt-cuffs his wrists were encircled by snug-fitting, shiny bracelets of steel united by a steel chain of four short links. That explained his rather peculiar way of carrying his ulster and his decidedly awkward way of ridding himself of it.

He stepped across the room and with his coupled hands tried the k.n.o.b of the door. The k.n.o.b turned, but the bolt had been set from the outside.