Rope Part 6

He side-stepped with great agility. "How would any man of my calibre vote?"

"True, true." She was becoming animated.

"But we've tremendous problems yet to solve.... Do you believe in enforcing the laws, Mr. Mix? The Sunday laws especially?"

Mr. Mix picked up his cue, and gave thanks for the diversion. "Dear lady, I am a citizen. As a citizen, I help to _make_ the laws; they're made by all of us for our own good. Show me a man who _doesn't_ believe in enforcing the laws, and I won't argue with him--I couldn't count on his sincerity."

"It's a pleasure to talk to a man like you," she said. "I wonder if you agree with our other ideals. Er--what do you think about dancing?"

He had a good phrase which he had been saving up for six weeks.

"Dancing," he said, "is popular because it's so conspicuously innocent, and so warmly satisfactory to the guilty."

"Good! _Good!_ How about tobacco?"

This, too, he side-stepped. "It's a poison, so the doctors say. Who am I to put any opinion against theirs?"

She was regarding him earnestly, and a little perplexedly.

"How is it, when in spirit you're one of us, you've never joined the League?"

"I-I've never been invited," said Mr. Mix, somewhat taken aback.

"Then _I_ invite you," she said, promptly. "And I know you'll accept.

It's men like you we need--men with some backbone; prominent, useful citizens. You sit right there. I've got an application blank in my desk. Read it over when you get home, and sign it and mail it to me."

"I appreciate the distinction of your asking me," said Mr. Mix, with supreme deference. "And if you have time, I wish you'd tell me what your aims are. I am very deeply interested."

He stayed another half hour, and the conversation never swerved from the entertaining subject of reform. Mr. Mix was insufferably bored, and c.u.mulatively restless, but he was convinced that he was making headway, so that he kept his mind relentlessly on the topic, and dispensed honey by the shovelful. When he prepared to leave, he tested out his conviction, and reminded her gently: "Now, in regard to that note--"

Mirabelle was blinded by her own visionings, and deafened by her own eloquence. "Well, we'll have to take that up again--But you come to the meeting Tuesday, anyhow. And here's one of our pamphlets for you to look at in the meantime."

As he went down the steps, she was watching him, from the ambush of lace window-curtains, and she was saying to herself: "Such a nice man--so influential, too.... Now if I could get _him_ persuaded over--"

Mr. Mix, strolling nonchalantly downtown, was also talking to himself, and his conclusions would have astonished her. "What I've got to do,"

said Mr. Mix, thoughtfully, "is to string the old dame along until I can raise five thousand bucks. But where's it coming from?"

Then, squarely in front of the Orpheum Theatre, he met Henry Devereux.

"Good-morning, Henry," said Mr. Mix, soberly. "First time I've had a chance to speak to you since...." He coughed discreetly. "I don't believe I need to say that if there's anything I can do for you at any time, all you've got to do is to say so."

Privately, Henry had always considered Mr. Mix as a genial poseur, but he knew that Mr. Mix belonged to the Citizens Club, which was the local standard, and that for thirty years he had been on rather intimate business relations with Mr. Starkweather. This was sufficient recommendation for Henry, in the swirl of his agitation, to loose his tongue.

"All right," he said. "Tell me how soon I can sell this overgrown magic-lantern outfit--and what I can get for it--and where I can put the money to bring in the biggest income--and where I can get a good job."

Now all this was intended to be purely in the nature of a rhetorical question: for naturally, if Henry decided to sell, he would want Bob Standish to handle the transaction for him, and to get the commission: and also, if Henry had to find employment, he would go to his friend, and be sure of a cordial reception. But Mr. Mix took it literally.

Mr. Mix started, and his memory began to unfold. It was on the tip of his tongue to blurt out: "And lose your shot at the estate?" but he restrained himself. He wasn't supposed to know the circ.u.mstances, and as a matter of fact, as he realized with a thrill of relish, he was probably the only outsider who _did_ know the circ.u.mstances. "Why,"

said Mr. Mix. "Do you own the Orpheum? Well, I should say offhand it's worth a good deal. Twenty thousand. The land, you know: the building's no good."

Henry nodded impatiently. "Yes, but who'd buy it?"

"Well, now, about _that_--of course, I'm not a real estate man--but you could certainly _trade_ it."

"What for?"

Mr. Mix caught the note of sincerity in Henry's voice, and Mr. Mix thought rapidly. He appeared to deliberate, to waver, to burn his bridges. "Well--say for a third interest in Theodore Mix and Company."

Henry stared. "Are you serious?"

Mr. Mix almost fell over backwards. "Why, yes. It's sudden, but ...

why, yes. I could use more capital, and I want a crack salesman. I'll trade--if you're quick on the trigger. I've got two or three people interested so far, but when it's _you_--"

Henry took him by the arm. "Come on over to the Citizens Club, then, and we'll talk about it."

CHAPTER V

When Henry went home to his wife and his father-in-law, he was confident that he had a very fine bargain; when he told them what he had heard from his aunt and Mr. Archer, what he had seen with his own eyes, and what he had done with Mr. Mix, he expected first, sympathy, and afterwards, unqualified approval. Within the next five minutes, however, Henry was sitting limp and baffled; and wishing that he had Bob Standish to support him. Bob, at least, would understand.

"Holy Smoke!" he said, weakly. "_I_ didn't suppose you'd take it like that! Why, I--I feel as if I'd been run over by a steam-roller with Taft at the wheel!"

Judge Barklay had long since forgiven his daughter, but he hadn't quite forgiven Henry. "Do you want my honest opinion? I should say you're suffering from two extreme causes--exaggerated ego and cold feet."

Henry flushed. He had the most profound respect for Judge Barklay--a man who had preferred to be a city magistrate, and to be known throughout the whole state for his wisdom and humanity, instead of keeping up his law practice, at five times the income--and Henry, like every one else, valued the Judge's opinions. "You don't mean you think I'd _run_ the miserable little peanut-stand, do you? And keep books on it as if it had been the Federal Reserve Bank?"

"It strikes me," said the Judge, "that both of us would rather have you run a peanut-stand than--I'm using your own a.n.a.logy--than spend your whole life eating peanuts. Why, Henry, your uncle _wanted_ you to be shocked--wanted you to be mad enough to stand up on your hind legs and fight."

Henry looked at his wife. "What are _you_ going to suggest? Hire a snake-charmer and a wild-man-from-Borneo and an infant pachyderm and a royal ring-tailed gyasticutus, and pull off a side-show after the main tent's closed?"

"Oh, _Henry_! Can't you _see_ what a lark it would be?"

"Lark?" he repeated, hazily. "Lark? You've got the wrong bird. It's crow."

"No, but Henry dear, you aren't going to be a quitter, are you?"

"Wife of my bosom, do you realize what you're talking about? It would cost a thousand dollars just to make the place _clean_. It'll cost three or four more to make it attractive enough to get anybody inside of it. And I haven't got the price."

"What's the matter with a mortgage?" demanded the Judge. "And you've got a car, haven't you? You've got a saddle-horse. You've got all kinds of junk you can turn into money."

"On a wild gamble? Why, Anna, we couldn't stay on here with the Judge--that would be getting help I'm not allowed to have--we'd have to go live in some cheap apartment; we couldn't even have a maid for awhile; we couldn't entertain anybody; we couldn't have any outside pleasures; I'd have to work like a dog; you _know_ what the crowd on the hill would say--and then I'm beaten before I start anyway.

Quitter! You wouldn't call a man a quitter if he stayed out of a hurdle race because he'd broken a leg, would you?"

"Well," said Anna, "I'm willing to live in such a cheap apartment that the landlord calls it a _flat_. And you can't get any servants these days; there _aren't_ any. And who cares about entertaining? And for outside pleasures, why couldn't we go to the Orpheum?" They all laughed, but Anna was the first to stop. "I'll work just as hard as you will, Henry. I'll peel potatoes and wash the sink--" She glanced, ruefully, at her hands--"and if it'll help you, I--I'd sell tickets or be an usher or play the piano. Why, Henry, it would be a _circus_--and we wouldn't need any snake-charmers, either."