Shorty McCabe Part 23

"He just said 'Bah!' and jumped into a cab," says Pinckney.

"He didn't hurt you, did he?" says Sadie.

"What, him?" says I. "Not that I know about. But I've got this to tell you, Mrs. Dipworthy: if you put any high value on your new steady, you'd better chase him off this reservation."

"Why, Shorty McCabe!" says she, takin' me by the shoulders and turnin'

them blue eyes of hers straight at me. "My new steady? That--that woolly-haired freak?"

Say, you could have slipped me into the penny slot of a gum machine. Oh, fudge! Piffle! Splash! It's a wonder when I walk I don't make a noise like a sponge--I take some things in so easy. Is it curious my head never aches?

Pinckney sees how bad I was feelin', and he cuts in to tell me how things had worked out. And say, do you know what that Patchouli had done?

After I left him he goes back tickled to death, and waits for an openin'. Then, one night when they was havin' a big hunt ball, or some kind of swell jinks, he tolls Sadie into the palm-room, drops to the mat on his knees, and fires off that twin-star-luff speech, beggin' her to fly with him and be his'n. As a capper he digs up that envelop, to show her there needn't be any hitch in the program.

"What's this?" says Sadie, making a sudden grab and gettin' the goods.

With that she lets go a string of giggles and streaks it out into the ball-room.

"It is the doc.u.ment of our marriage," says the Baron, makin' a bold bluff.

"Oh, is it?" says she, openin' the thing up, and reading it off. "Why, Baron, this doesn't give you leave to marry anyone," says Sadie; "this is a peddler's license, and here's the badge, too. If you wear this you can stand on the corner and sell shoe-laces and collar-b.u.t.tons. I'd advise you to go do it."

It was while the crowd was howlin' and pinnin' the fakir's tag on him that he began to froth at the mouth and tell how he was comin' down to make mincemeat of me.

"That's why we followed him," says Pinckney--"to avert bloodshed."

"If he had so much as touched you, Shorty," says Sadie, "I would have spent my pile to have had him sent up for life."

"Oh, it wouldn't have cost that much," says I. "With me thinkin' the way I did then, maybe there wouldn't have been a whole lot left to send."

Ah, look away! I ain't tellin' what Sadie did next. But say, she's a hummin'-bird, Sadie is.

CHAPTER IX

How about him, eh?--the two-spot of clubs in billiard cloth and b.u.t.tons at the door. There's no tellin' what the Studio'll have next--maybe a sidewalk canopy and a carriage caller. Swifty Joe's gettin' ambitious.

Me gettin' mixed up with that Newport push has gone to Swifty's head like a four-line notice does to the pompadour of a second row chorus girl. First off he says it's a shame I don't have a valet.

"Say," says I, "don't it keep me busy enough remindin' you that I'm still able to wear my own clothes, without puttin' on an extra hand?"

But after this last stunt he broke out again; so we compromised on Congo. I thought Swifty'd had him made to order, uniform and all; but he says he found him, just as he stands, doin' the stray act over on Sixth-ave. He'd come up from New Orleans with a fortune-tellin' gent that had got himself pinched for doing a little voudoo turn on the side, and as Congo didn't have much left but his appet.i.te, I put him on the pay-roll at two per and found. And say, I'm stung, at that. To look at him you'd think a ham sandwich would run him over; but he's got a capacity like a shop-lifter's pocket. For three days I tried to feed him up on the retail plan, and then I let out the contract to a free-lunch supply concern.

Sure, it gives the joint kind of a swell look, havin' him on the door, and if it didn't act the same on Swifty's head I wouldn't kick.

On the dead now, I don't care so much about loomin' up in the picture.

There's them that it suits down to the ground, and that shows up well in front; and then again, there's a lot of people gets the spot light on 'em continual who'd be better off in the shade. I'm a top-gallery boy, by rights, and that's where you'll find me most of the time; but now and then I get dragged down into the wings with a note. Yes, yes, I'm just back after one of them excursions.

You see, after we'd shunted Sadie's Baron back on to the goulash circuit, where he belonged, and Sadie and Pinckney had got over their merry fit and skipped off to wake up another crowd of time a.s.sa.s.sinators, at Rockywold, or some such place as that, I says to myself, "Shorty," says I, "you stick to the physical-culture game and whittle out the by-plays."

That's just what I was doin', too, when an A. D. T. shows up with a prepaid josh from Pinckney, givin' me a special invite to run out and help 'em celebrate.

"Any come-back?" says the boy.

"No, sonny," says I; "you can cut the wire."

Say, Pinckney means all right, and he's done me some good turns; but that don't put me in his cla.s.s, does it? Nay, nay, says I. Here's one dinner party that I ducks. And with that I gets busy on one of my reg'lars who's bein' trained to go against two months of foreign cookin'. I hadn't more'n finished with him, though, when there comes another yellow envelop. This one was from Sadie, and it was a hurry call. She didn't say much; but I could see heel-prints of trouble all over it.

"Me for Rockywold," says I, chuckin' a collar in a suit-case and grabbin' a time-table off the rack.

Yes, that was different. Maybe I'm a jay to cast myself for any such part; but since Sadie an' me had that little reunion, I've kind of felt that sooner or later she might be let in for a mix-up where I'd come in handy, and when it was pulled off I wanted to be within hail.

Course, I wasn't layin' out no hero act; like showin' up with a can of gasolene just as the tank ran dry, or battin' the block off'm a villyun in a dress suit. I was just willin' to hang around on the edges and make myself useful generally. Not that I'm followin' the she-male protectin'

business regular. But with Sadie it's another thing. We used to play in the same alley, you know; and she don't forget it, even if she has come into a bunch of green money as big as a haystack.

She was on hand when I dropped off the smoker, sittin' in the Rockywold station rig and lookin' for me with both eyes. And say, what a difference it makes to clothes who wears 'em!

"It's bully of you to come, Shorty," says she.

"Oh, I don't know," says I. "I guess good judges wouldn't call it a medal play. What's loose?"

"Buddy," says she.

For a minute I was lost, until she asks if I don't remember the youngster. "Oh, sure!" says I. "That kid brother of yours, with the eighteen-karat ringlets and a girly kind of face? The Sisters used to dress him up in a Fauntleroy suit for the parochial school fair, and make him look like a picture on an Easter card. Nice, cute little chap, eh?"

"He was cute once--ten or twelve years ago," says Sadie. "He isn't as cute as he was. He doesn't wear ringlets now--he likes rings better. And that's why I had to send for you, Shorty. I couldn't tell anyone else.

Oh, the little wretch! If it wasn't for mother I'd cure him of a lot of things."

Well, we had some family history on the way out, beginnin' with the way Buddy'd been spoiled at home, takin' in a few of the sc.r.a.pes Sadie had helped him out of, and endin' with his blowin' in at Rockywold without waitin' for a bid from anyone. Seems he'd separated himself from the last stake Sadie had handed out--nothin' new, same old fool games--and now he wanted a refill, just as a loan, until he could play a tip he'd got from a gent he'd met in a beanery.

"And I just wouldn't stand for that," says Sadie. "Those bookmakers are nothing but swindlers, anyway. I know, because I bet ten dollars on a race once, and didn't win."

Say, I had a lithograph of Buddy and his beanery tip goin' up against an argument like that. Of course it wa'n't more'n two minutes before Sadie'd got her Sullivan up. She offered Buddy his choice between a railroad ticket home to mother, or nothing at all. Buddy wouldn't arbitrate on those lines. He said he was a desperate man, and that she'd be sorry before night. Sadie'd heard that before; so she just laughed and said the steam-car ticket offer would be held open until night.

She didn't see anything more of Buddy for a couple of hours, and then she caught him as he came up from the billiard-room. Bein' an expert on such symptoms, she knew why he talked like his mouth was full of cotton, but she couldn't account for the wad of bills he shook at her.

Buddy could. He'd run across a young Englishman down there who thought he could handle a cue. Buddy had bet hot air against real money, and trimmed his man.

"That wasn't the worst of it, though," said Sadie. "After I had got him up to my rooms he pulled out the money again, to count it over, and out came a three-inch marquise ring--an opal set with diamonds--that I knew the minute I put my eyes on it. There were her initials on the inside, too. Oh, no one but Mrs. Purdy Pell."

"Tut, tut!" says I. "You can easy square it with her."

"But that's just what I can't do," says Sadie. "She loves me about as much as a tramp likes work. She tells folks that I make fools of her boys. Her boys, mind you! She claims every stray man under twenty-five, and when I came here she had three of them on the string. Goodness knows, I didn't want them! They're only imitation men, anyway. And it was her ring that Buddy had in his pocket."

"Maybe he hadn't lifted it," says I.

Sadie swallowed a bit hard at that; but she raps out the straight goods.

"Yes, he did," says she. "He must have sneaked it out of her room as he went down stairs. Think of it! Stealing! He's done a lot of foolish things before; but I didn't think he would turn out a crook. The Lord knows where he gets that kind of blood from--not from the Sullivans, or the Scannells, either. But I can't have him put away. There's mother.

And he won't mind a thing I say. Now what shall I do, Shorty?"