Somewhere in Red Gap Part 18

It was delicate work, let me tell you, turning down folks that wanted to sing patriotic songs or recite war poetry that would be sure to start something, with Professor Gluckstein wishing to get up and tell how the cowardly British had left the crew of a German submarine to perish after shooting it up when it was only trying to sink their cruiser by fair and lawful methods; and Henry Lehman wanting to read a piece from a German newspaper about how the United States was a nation of vile money-grubbers that would sell ammunition to the enemy just because they had the ships to take it away, and wouldn't sell a dollar's worth to the Fatherland, showing we had been bought up by British gold--and so on.

But I kept neutral. I even turned down an Englishman named Ruggles, that keeps the U.S. Grill and is well thought of, though he swore that all he would do was to get off a few comical riddles, and such. He'd just got a new one that goes: "Why is an elephant like a corkscrew? Because there's a 'b' in both." I didn't see it at first, till he explained with hearty laughter--because there's a "b" in both--the word "both." See? Of course there's no sense to it. He admitted there wasn't, but said it was a jolly wheeze just the same. I might have took a chance with him, but he went on to say that he'd sent this wheeze to the brave lads in the trenches, along with a lot of cigars and tobacco, and had got about fifty postcards from 'em saying it was the funniest thing they'd heard since the war begun. And in a minute more he was explaining, with much feeling, just what low-down nation it was that started the war--it not being England, by any means--and I saw he wasn't to be trusted on his feet.

So I smoothed him down till he promised to donate all the lemonade for Aggie Tuttle, who was to be Rebekkah at the Well; and I smoothed Henry Lehman till he said he'd let his folks come and buy chances on things, even if the country was getting overrun by foreigners, with an Italian barber shop just opened in the same block with his sanitary shaving parlour; though--thank goodness--the Italian hadn't had much to do yet but play on a mandolin. And I smoothed Professor Gluckstein down till he agreed to furnish the music for us and let the war take care of itself.

The Prof's a good old scout when he ain't got his war bonnet on. He was darned near crying into his meerschaum pipe with a carved fat lady on it when I got through telling him about the poor soldiers in the wet and cold without a thing to smoke. He says: "You're right, madam; with Jake Frost in the trenches and no tobacco, all men should be brothers under their hides." And I got that printed in the _Recorder_ for a slogan, and other foreigners come into line; and things looked pretty good.

Also, I got Doc Sulloway, who happened to be in town, to promise he'd come and tell some funny anecdotes. He ain't a regular doctor--he just took it up; a guy with long black curls and a big moustache and a big hat and diamond pin, that goes round selling Indian Snake Oil off a wagon. Doc said he'd have his musician, Ed Bemis, come, too. He said Ed was known far and wide as the world's challenge cornetist. I says all right, if he'll play something neutral; and Doc says he'll play "Listen to the Mocking Bird," with variations, and play it so swell you'll think you're perched right up in the treetops listening to Nature's own feathered songsters.

That about made up my show, including, of course, the Spanish dance by Beryl Mae Macomber. Red Gap always expects that and Beryl Mae never disappoints 'em--makes no difference what the occasion is. Mebbe it's an Evening with Shakespeare, or the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, or that Oratorio by Elijah somebody, but Beryl Mae is right there with her girlish young beauty and her tambourine. You see, I didn't want it a long show--just enough to make the two-bits admission seem a little short of robbery. Our real graft, of course, was to be where the young society debutantes and heiresses in charge of the booths would wheedle money out of the dazed throng for chances on the junk that would be donated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ALL SUNNED UP LIKE A MAN THAT KNOWS THE WORLD IS HIS OYSTER AND EVERY MONTH'S GOT AN 'R' IN IT"]

Well, about three days before the show I went up to Masonic Hall to see about the stage decorations, and I was waiting while some one went down to the Turf Exchange to get the key off Tim Mahoney, the janitor--Tim had lately had to do janitor work for a B'nai B'rith lodge that was holding meetings there, and it had made him gloomy and dissolute--and, while I was waiting, who should come tripping along but Egbert Floud, all sunned up like a man that knows the world is his oyster and every month's got an "r" in it. Usually he's a kind of sad, meek coot, looking neglected and put upon; but now he was actually giggling to himself as he come up the stairs two at a time.

"Well, Old-Timer, what has took the droop out of your face?" I ask him.

"Why," he says, twinkling all over the place, "I'm aiming to keep it a secret, but I don't mind hinting to an old friend that my part of the evening's entertainment is going to be so good it'll make the whole show top-heavy. Them ladies said they'd rely on me to think up something novel, and I said I would if I could, and I did--that's all. I'd seen enough of these shows where you ladies pike along with pincushions and fancy lemonade and infants' wear--and mebbe a red plush chair, with gold legs, that plays 'Alice, Where Art Thou?' when a person sets down on it--with little girls speaking a few pieces about the flowers and lambs, and so on, and cleaning up about eleven-twenty-nine on the evening's revel--or it would be that, only you find you forgot to pay the Golden Rule Cash Store for the red-and-blue bunting, and they're howling for their money like a wild-cat. Yes, sir; that's been the way of it with woman at the helium. I wouldn't wish to be a Belgian at all under present circ.u.mstances; but if I did have to be one I'd hate to think my regular meals was depending on any crooked work you ladies has done up to date."

"You'd cheer me strangely," I says, "only I been a diligent reader of history, and somehow I can't just recall your name being connected up with any cataclysms of finance. I don't remember you ever starting one of these here panics--or stopping one, for that matter. I did hear that you'd had your pocket picked down to the San Francisco Fair."

I was prodding him along, understand, so he'd flare up and tell me what his secret enterprise was that would make women's operations look silly and feminine. I seen his eyes kind of glisten when I said this about him being touched.

"That's right," he says. "Some lad nicked me for my roll and my return ticket, and my gold watch and chain, and my horseshoe scarfpin with the diamonds in it."

"You stood a lot of pawing over," I says, "for a man that's the keen financial genius you tell about being. This lad must of been a new hand at it. Likely he'd took lessons from a correspondence school. At least, with you standing tied and blinded that way, a good professional one would have tried for your gold tooth--or, anyway, your collar b.u.t.ton. I see your secret though," I go on as sarcastically as possible: "You got the lad's address and you're going to have him here Sat.u.r.day night to glide among the throng and ply his evil trade. Am I right or wrong?"

"You are not," he says. "I never thought of that. But I won't say you ain't warm in your guess. Yes, you certainly are warm, because what I'm going to do is just as dastardly, without being so darned illegal, except to an extent."

Well, it was very exasperating, but that was all I could get out of him. When I ask for details he just clams up.

"But, mark my words," says the old smarty, "I'll show you it takes brains in addition to woman's wiles and artwork to make a decent clean-up in this little one-cylinder town."

"If you just had a little more self-confidence," I says, "you might of gone to the top; lack of faith in yourself is all that's kept you back.

Too bad!"

"All right for you to kid me," he says; "but I'd be almost willing to give you two dollars for every dollar that goes out of this hall Sat.u.r.day night."

Well, it was kind of pathetic and disgusting the way this poor old dub was leaning on his certainty; so I let him alone and went on about my work, thinking mebbe he really had framed up something crooked that would bring at least a few dollars to the cause.

Every time I met him for the next three days after that he'd be so puffed up, like a toad, with importance and low remarks about woman that, at last, I just ignored him, pretending I hadn't the least curiosity about his evil secret. It hurt his feelings when I quit pestering him about it, but he'd been outraging mine right along; so we split even.

He'd had a good-sized room just down the hall turned over to him, and a lot of stuff of some kind carried in there in the night, and men working, with the door locked all the time; so I and the other ladies went calmly on about our own business, decorating the main hall with the flags of all nations, fixing up the platform and the booths very pretty, and giving Mr. Smarty Egbert Floud nothing but haughty glances about his hidden novelty. Even when his men was hammering away in there at their work he'd have something hung over the keyhole--as insulting to us as only a man can be.

Sat.u.r.day night come and we had a good crowd. Cousin Egbert was after me the minute I got my things off to come and see his dastardly secret; but I had my revenge. I told him I had no curiosity about it and was going to be awful busy with my show, but I'd try as a personal favour to give him a look over before I went home. Yes, sir; I just turned him down with one superior look, and got my curtains slid back on Mrs. Leonard Wales, dressed up like a superdreadnought in a naval parade and surrounded by every little girl in town that had a white dress. They wasn't states this time, but Columbia's Choicest Heritage, with a second line on the program saying, "Future Buds and Debutantes From Society's Home Galleries." It was a line we found under some babies' photos on the society page of a great newspaper printed in New York City. Professor Gluckstein and his son Rudolph played the "Star-Spangled Banner" on the piano and fiddle during this feature.

Then little Magnesia Waterman, dressed to represent the Queen of Sheba, come forward and sung the song we'd picked out for her, with the people joining in the chorus:

We're for you, Woodrow Wilson, One Hundred Million Strong!

We put you in the White House And we know you can't do wrong.

It was very successful, barring hisses from all the Germans and English present; but they was soon hushed up. Then Doc Sulloway come out and told some funny anecdotes about two Irishmen named Pat and Mike, lately landed in this country and looking for work, and imitated two cats in a backyard, and drawing a gla.s.s of soda water, and sawing a plank in two; and winding up with the announcement that he had donated a dozen bottles of the great Indian Snake Oil Remedy for man and beast that had been imparted to him in secret by old Rumpatunk, the celebrated medicine man, who is supposed to have had it from the Great Spirit; and Ed Bemis, the World's Challenge Cornetist, entertained one and all; and Beryl Mae done her Spanish dance that I'd last seen her give at the Queen Esther Cantata in the M.E. Church. And that was the end of the show; just enough to start 'em buying things at the booths.

At least, we thought it would be. But what does a lot of the crowd do, after looking round a little, but drift out into the hall and down to this room where Cousin Egbert had his foul enterprise, whatever it was.

I didn't know yet, having held aloof, as you might say, owing to the old hound's offensive manner. But I had heard three or four parties kind of gasping to each other, had they seen what that Egbert Floud was doing in the other room?--with looks of horror and delight on their faces. That made me feel more superior than ever to the old smarty; so I didn't go near the place yet, but herded people back to the raffles wherever I could.

The first thing was Lon Price's corner lot, for which a hundred chances had been sold. Lon had a blueprint showing the very lot; also a picture of a choice dwelling or bungalow, like the one he has painted on the drop curtain of Knapp's Opera House, under the line, "Price's Addition to Red Gap; Big Lots, Little Payments." It's a very fancy house with porches and bay windows and towers and front steps, and everything, painted blue and green and yellow; and a blond lady in a purple gown, with two golden-haired tots at her side, is waving good-bye to a tall, handsome man with brown whiskers as he hurries out to the waiting street car--though the car line ain't built out there yet by any means.

However, Lon got up and said it was a Paradise on earth, a Heaven of Homes; that in future he would sell lots there to any native Belgian at a 20 per cent. discount; and he hoped the lucky winner of this lot would at once erect a handsome and commodious mansion on it, such as the artist had here depicted; and it would be only nine blocks from the swell little Carnegie Library when that, also, had been built, the plans for it now being in his office safe.

Quite a few of the crowd had stayed for this, and they cheered Lon and voted that little Magnesia Waterman was honest enough to draw the numbers out of a hat. They was then drawn and read by Lon in an exciting silence--except for Mrs. Leonard Wales, who was breathing heavily and talking to herself after each number. She and Leonard had took a chance for a dollar and everybody there knew it by now. She was dead sure they would get the lot. She kept telling people so, right and left. She said they was bound to get it if the drawing was honest. As near as I could make out, she'd been taking a course of lessons from a professor in Chicago about how to control your destiny by the psychic force that dwells within you. It seems all you got to do is to will things to come your way and they have to come. No way out of it. You step on this here psychic gas and get what you ask for.

"I already see our little home," says Mrs. Wales in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "I see it objectively. It is mine. I claim it out of the boundless all-good. I have put myself in the correct mental att.i.tude of reception; I am holding to the perfect All. My own will come to me."

And so on, till parties round her begun to get nervous. Yes, sir; she kept this stuff going in low, tense tones till she had every one in hearing buffaloed; they was ready to give her the lot right there and tear up their own tickets. She was like a c.r.a.pshooter when he keeps calling to the dice: "Come, seven--come on, come on!" All right for the psychics, but that's what she reminded me of.

And in just another minute everybody there thought she'd cheated by taking these here lessons that she got from Chicago for twelve dollars; for you can believe it or not but her number won the lot. Yes, sir; thirty-three took the deed and Lon filled in her name on it right there.

Many a cold look was shot at her as she rushed over to embrace her husband, a big lump of a man that's all right as far up as his Adam's apple, and has been clerking in the Owl Cigar Store ever since he can remember. He tells her she is certainly a wonder and she calls him a silly boy; says it's just a power she has developed through concentration, and now she must claim from the all-good a dear little home of seven rooms and bath, to be built on this lot; and she knows it will come if she goes into the silence and demands it. Say! People with any valuables on 'em begun to edge off, not knowing just how this strange power of hers might work.

Then I look round and see the other booths ain't creating near the excitement they had ought to be, only a few here and there taking two-bit chances on things if Mrs. Wales ain't going in on 'em, too; several of the most attractive booths was plumb deserted, with the girls in charge looking mad or chagrined, as you might say. So I remember this hidden evil of Egbert Floud's and that the crowd has gone there; and while I'm deciding to give in and gratify my morbid curiosity, here comes Cousin Egbert himself, romping along in his dinner-jacket suit and tan shoes, like a wild mustang.

"What was I telling you?" he demands. "Didn't I tell you the rest of this show was going to die standing up? Yes, sir; she's going to pa.s.s out on her feet." And he waved a sneering arm round at the deserted booths. "What does parties want of this truck when they can come down to my joint and get real entertainment for their money? Why, they're breaking their ankles now to get in there!"

It sure looked like he was right for once in his life; so I says:

"What is it you've done?"

"Simple enough," says he, "to a thinking man. It comes to me like a flash or inspiration, or something, from being down to that fair in San Francisco, California. Yes, sir; they had a deadfall there, with every kind of vice rampant that has ever been legalized any place, and several kinds that ain't ever been; they done everything, from strong-arm work to short changing, and they was getting by with it by reason of calling it Ye Olde Tyme Mining Camp of '49, or something poetical like that.

That was where I got nicked for my roll, in addition to about fifty I lost at a crooked wheel. I think the workers was mostly ex-convicts, and not so darned ex- at that. Anyway, their stuff got too raw even for the managers of an exposition, so they had to close down in spite of their name. That's where I get my idee when these ladies said think up something novel and pleasing. Just come and see how I'm taking it off of 'em." And, with that, he grabs me by the arm and rushes me down to this joint of his.

At the side of the doorway he had two signs stuck up. One says, Ye Olde Tyme Saloone; and the other says, Ye Olde Tyme Gambling Denne. You could of pushed me over with one finger when I looked in. He'd drew the crowd, all right. I knew then that Aggie Tuttle might just as well close down her Rebekkah-at-the-Well dive, and that no one was going to take any more chances on pincushions and tidies and knitted bed slippers.

About a third of the crowd was edged up to the bar and keeping Louis Meyer and his father busy with drink orders, and the other two-thirds was huddled round a roulette layout across the room. They was wedged in so tight I couldn't see the table, but I could hear the little ball click when it slowed up, and the rattle of chips, and squeals from them that won, and hoa.r.s.e mutters from the losers.

Cousin Egbert rubbed his hands and giggled, waiting for me to bedeck him with floral tributes.

"I suppose you got a crooked wheel," I says.

"Shucks, no!" says he. "I did think of it, but I'd of had to send out of town for one and they're a lot of trouble to put in, what with the electric wiring and all; and besides, the straightest roulette wheel ever made is crooked enough for any man of decent instincts. I don't begrudge 'em a little excitement for their money. I got these old bar fixings out of the Spilmer place that was being tore down, and we're charging two bits a drink for whatever, and that'll be a help; and it looks to me like you ladies would of thought you needed a man's brain in these shows long before this. Come on in and have a shot. I'll buy."

So we squeezed in and had one. It was an old-time saloon, all right--that is, fairly old; about 1889, with a bra.s.s foot rail, and back of the bar a stuffed eagle and a cash register. A gang of ladies was taking claret lemonades and saying how delightfully Bohemian it all was; and Miss Metta Bigler, that gives lessons in oil painting and burnt wood, said it brought back very forcibly to her the Latin Quarter of Chicago, where she finished her art course. Henrietta Templeton Price, with one foot on the railing, was shaking dice with three other prominent society matrons for the next round, and saying she had always been a Bohemian at heart, only you couldn't go very far in a small town like this without causing unfavourable comment among a certain element.

It was a merry scene, with the cash register playing like the Swiss Family Bellringers. Even the new Episcopalian minister come along, with old Proctor Knapp, and read the signs and said they was undeniably quaint, and took a slug of rye and said it was undeniably delightful; though old Proctor roared like a maddened bull when he found what the price was. I guess you can be an Episcopalian one without its interfering much with man's natural habits and innocent recreations.

Then he went over and lost a two-bit piece on the double-o, and laughed heartily over the occurrence, saying it was undeniably piquant with old Proctor plunging ten cents on the red and losing it quick, and saying a fool and his money was soon parted--yes, and I wish I had as much money as that old crook ain't foolish; but no matter.

Beryl Mae Macomber was aiding the Belgians by running out in the big room to drum up the stragglers. She was now being Little Nugget, the Miners' Pet; and when she wasn't chasing in easy money she'd loll at one end of the bar with a leer on her flowerlike features to entice honest workingmen in to lose their all at the gaming tables. There was chuck-a-luck and a c.r.a.p game going, and going every minute, too, with Cousin Egbert trying to start three-card monte at another table--only they all seemed wise to that. Even the little innocent children give him the laugh.

I went over to the roulette table and lost a few dollars, not being able to stick long, because other women would keep goring me with their elbows. Yes, sir; that layout was ringed with women four deep. All that the men could do was stand on the outside and pa.s.s over their loose silver to the fair ones. Sure! Women are the only real natural-born gamblers in the world. Take a man that seems to be one and it's only because he's got a big streak of woman in him, even if it don't show any other way. Men, of course, will gamble for the fun of it; but it ain't ever funny to a woman, not even when she wins. It brings out the natural wolf in her like nothing else does. It was being proved this night all you'd want to see anything proved. If the men got near enough and won a bet they'd think it was a good joke and stick round till they lost it.

Not so my own s.e.x. Every last one of 'em saw herself growing rich on Cousin Egbert's money--and let the Belgians look out for themselves.