Shorty McCabe on the Job Part 13

"Nowhere," says Millie. "We're tryin' to break in."

"Oh!" says I. "Candidates for amateur night?"

"Not much!" says Millie. "We're as good as any. Maurice ain't got a thing on us, honest; nor that Ripple combination, either. Why, we got steps of our own that the rest haven't thought of!"

"Ye-e-es?" says I.

"Oh, I know," says she, shruggin' her shoulders. "Maybe we don't look it; but, say, we've got the goods."

"Case of undiscovered genius, eh?" says I.

Millie flushes a little at that; but bites her lips to keep back the hot retort. Bright lookin' girl, Millie; and if she hadn't been costumed so vivid she wouldn't have been such a bad looker. But in that tight, striped dress with the slashed skirt, and that foolish lid with the two skimpy pink feathers curlin' over the back--well, believe me, she was some zippy!

"Say, lemme tell you how it happened, won't you?" says she.

"If it ain't too long," says I.

"I'll make it sketchy," says she. "In the first place, when I landed here in New York about a year and a half ago, I'd made up my mind to connect with big money. I didn't know exactly how; the stage, maybe.

Anyway, I knew the coin was here, and that it wasn't in Saskatoon."

"Sa.s.s--which?" says I.

"Saskatoon," says she. "It's on the map, up in Saskatchewan, you know.

No, I wasn't born there. Hardly anybody was. It's too new. I went there with Mother and Brother Phil when the Northwest boom first started. It was all right for Philip. He could do surveying, and then he got to dipping into real estate. But there was no chance for me; so I started for the white lights. While I was looking around here I took on anything that would furnish a meal ticket. Oh, you can't starve Millie! I did fancy ironin' in a hand laundry, was window demonstrator for an electric vibrator concern, did a turn as a dress model, and sold soda checks in a drugstore. They don't load you down on payday in any of them places; but that didn't worry me. I was sizing up the good things, and I'd about decided on the front row of a musical comedy for mine, when what did I have to go and do but get soft on Tim here!"

Tim blushes embarra.s.sed and sc.r.a.pes his hoof.

"Enough to wreck most any career, wasn't it?" goes on Millie. "Think of it! Me, who'd come down to New York with my head so full of ambitions there wasn't any room to catch cold, and then in a little over a year to go and marry the first good-natured Irishman that asked me! You see, I'm only half Irish myself,--Mother was Argentine Spanish,--which makes me so different from Tim. Look at him! Would you dream he had a bit of sense? But he's--oh, he's Tim, that's all. And not many of 'em come better. Driving a motor truck, he was, and satisfied at that. It was up at a Terrace Garden dance we got acquainted. No music at all in his head; but in his feet--say, he just naturally has to let his toes follow the tune, and if ragtime hadn't been invented he'd have walked slow all his life. And me? Well, I ought to dance, with Father a born fiddler, and Mother brought up with castanets in her hands. We danced twelve of the fourteen numbers together that night, and I never even noticed he had red hair. I'd been dying to dance for months. Some partner, Tim was too. That began it. We joined a cla.s.s and started learning the new steps. And almost before I knew it I was Mrs. Moran. We'd been married nearly a month before I woke up to what a fool thing I'd done. There I was, tryin' to feed and clothe two people, besides payin' the rent and furniture installments, all on sixteen per. I got a job as cashier in a quick lunch place next day. Tim didn't like it a bit; did you, Tim?"

Mr. Moran grins good-natured.

"That's the way he stormed around at home," says Millie. "But I had a scheme. We'd seen some of this dancing done on the stage, not much better than we could do ourselves. 'Tim dear,' says I, 'we've been dancing for the fun of it. It's the best thing you do. Now let's make it pay.' He thought I was crazy. I believe he had an idea he was born to drive a gasoline truck, and that it would be wicked to try anything else. But I do the heavy thinking for the Moran family. I nearly starved him until I'd saved out a tenspot. Then I went to the best tango professor I could find and took an hour lesson. Next I taught Tim. We cleared out our little dining room and had our meals off the gas range.

My next splurge was a music machine and some dance records. One Sat.u.r.day Tim brought home two dollars for overtime, and that night we watched Maurice from the second balcony. Then we really began practicing. Why, some nights I kept him at it for four hours on a stretch. He weighed one hundred and eighty at the start; but now he's down to one hundred and forty-three. But it's been good for him. And trying to keep all those new variations in his head--why, he's almost learned to think!

Say, you know you can get almost anything by keeping at it. And Tim and I have learned rag dancing, all there is to it, besides some I've made up. All we need now is a chance, and it's such sc.u.m as old Bloom that keeps us out. Do you blame me for landing on his hat?"

"Not me," says I. "And I hope you break in sometime or other."

"It's got to be now," says Millie. "I've made Tim quit the truck, and we're down to our last dollar. Think of that! Just when I can see daylight ahead too! Why, if I knew where I could get hold of two hundred----"

She pauses and gazes around sort of desperate, until she and Elisha P.

Bayne are starin' at each other.

I couldn't resist the temptation, either. "There you are," says I. "Mr.

Bayne runs a bank. Lendin' money's his business."

"Really, McCabe!" says Bayne indignant.

But Millie ain't lettin' any hints get by. "Why wouldn't someone lend me that much?" says she, gazin' earnest at me once more. "Just two hundred!

I could pay it back in less than six months. Oh, I'm sure I could! Mr.

McCabe, wouldn't you?"

Almost took my breath away, the quick way she turned my josh back on me.

"Why," says I, "I--I might--on security."

"Security?" says she, kind of vague. Then all of a sudden she brightens up. "Why, yes; of course you'd want security. I'd put up Tim."

"Eh?" says I, and something of the kind comes from Timothy too.

"He can always earn from twelve to fifteen a week," says Millie, eager.

"You could have ten of it for twenty weeks. We could live in one room, and I would keep things running. Honest, if we don't make a go of it we'll come back and pay up."

"But what's the scheme?" says I. "Going off somewhere, are you?"

"That's what I want the money for, to take us there," says she. "I--I don't want to tell the rest. I haven't even told Tim. But we can win out. I'm sure we can if you'll stake us. Won't you, please, Professor MCCabe?"

And I expect it was all due to that sneer of Elisha P. Bayne's. For while this was about as batty a business proposition as I ever had put up to me, this scheme of Millie's for hockin' her hubby, I'd got more or less int'rested in her yarn. And it struck me that a girl who'd done what she had wa'n't any quitter. Elisha puts on such a hard, cold sneer too; and comin' from this wise, foxy old near-plute who'd been playin'

lead pipe cinches all his life, I expect, and never lettin' go of a nickel until he had a dime's worth of goods in his fist--well, it got to me, all right.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Say, I'm a bear for Paris."]

"You win," says I, flashin' my roll and startin' to count off the twenties.

"But, McCabe!" gasps Elisha P. "Surely you're not going to lend two hundred dollars to--to such a person as this?"

"Yep," says I. "This is my foolish day. And I'm goin' to write you a check for two hundred more for a six months' option on that Sucker Brook tract. Here you are, Mrs. Moran. Never mind the ticket for Tim. I'm takin' your word."

"Talk about miracles!" says Millie, countin' the money dazed.

"Bless you, Sorr!" says Tim husky as I shows 'em out.

And I finds Elisha P. sittin' there rubbin' his hands expectant. He must have suspicioned I was easy all the while, or he wouldn't have hung on so; but after this exhibition I expect he felt it was only a matter of makin' a few pa.s.ses and then walkin' off with everything but my shirt.

Fact is, though, I'd had some new dope on this property, and while it looked like a thirty-to-one shot I thought I'd take a chance. Course, he tries to close the deal outright; but the option is as far as I'll go.

For weeks after that, though, I carried four hundred on the books with a minus sign in front. Then I crossed it off altogether. Not a word from the Morans. Nothing doing in the way of buying booms around Sucker Brook. But you got to stand some losses now and then if you're goin' to keep in line for an occasional big cleanup. And, anyway, it was worth while to head Elisha P. Bayne's b.o.o.b list. You ought to see the sarcastic smiles he used to shoot over when we'd meet and he'd ask if I'd heard from, my dancing friends yet. Say, I expect I furnished the one joke of his life.

I did bank on gettin' back something from Millie, though, if only a money order for ten on account. But all through June and July, clear into August, not a whisper. Whatever her scheme had been, it must have gone wrong.

And then here one mornin' last week as I'm gazin' idle out the front window onto 42d-st., up rolls a taxi, and out climbs a couple that you might have said had been shot over by aeroplane from the Rue de Rivoli.

Couldn't tell that so much from her getup as from the Frenchy hat and boulevard whiskers he's sportin'. First brick red imperial I ever remember seein' too. It ain't until they've climbed the stairs and walked in the studio door, though, that I even had a glimmer as to who they was. But one glance at them black eyes of the lady's was enough.

"Well, I'll be singed!" says I. "The Morans!"

"Of London and Paris," adds Millie.

"Gwan!" says I.

"Show him, Tim," says she. At which Timothy extracts from the inside of his silk tile a billboard poster announcing the comin', for a limited engagement only, of those European tango wizards, Mons. and Mlle. Moran.

"I cabled our agents we wouldn't sail until we'd seen a sample of the paper," says Millie.