The Depot Master Part 30

"'Who was that murderer?' asks Sim of the clerk. 'And when are they going to hang him?'

"'S-sh-sh!' whispers the clerk, scart. ''Tis the boss. The bloke what runs the hotel. He's a fine man, but he has troubles. He's blue.'

"'So that's the boss, hey?' says I. 'And he's blue. Well, he looks it.

What's troublin' him? Ain't business good?'

"'Never better. It ain't that. He has things on his mind. You see--'

"I cal'late he'd have told us the yarn, only Sim wouldn't wait to hear it. We was goin' sight-seein' and we had 'aquarium' and 'Stock Exchange'

on the list for that afternoon. The hotel clerk had made out a kind of schedule for us of things we'd ought to see while we was in New York, and so fur we'd took in the zoological menagerie and the picture museum, and Central Park and Brooklyn Bridge.

"On the way downtown in the elevated railroad Sim done some preachin'.

His text was took from the Golconda House sign, which had 'T. Dempsey, Proprietor,' painted on it.

"'It's that Dempsey man's conscience that makes him so blue, Hiram,'

says Sim. 'It's the way he makes his money. He sells liquor.'

"'Oh!' says I. 'Is THAT it? I thought maybe he'd been sleepin' on one of his own hotel beds. THEY'RE enough to make any man blue--black and blue.'

"The 'aquarium' wa'n't a success. Phinney was disgusted. He give one look around, grabbed me by the arm, and marched me out of that building same as Deacon t.i.tcomb, of the Holiness Church at Denboro, marched his boy out of the Universalist sociable.

"'It's nothin' but a whole pa.s.sel of fish,' he snorts. 'The idea of sendin' two Cape Codders a couple of miles to look at FISH. I've looked at 'em and fished for 'em, and et 'em all the days of my life,' he says, 'and when I'm on a vacation I want a change. I'd forgot that "aquarium"

meant fish, or you wouldn't have got me within smellin' distance of it. Necessity's one thing and pleasure's another, as the boy said about takin' his ma's spring bitters.'

"So we headed for the Stock Exchange. We got our gallery tickets at the bank where the Golconda folks kept money, and in a little while we was leanin' over a kind of marble bulwarks and starin' down at a gang of men smokin' and foolin' and carryin' on. 'Twas a dull day, so we found out afterward, and I guess likely that was true. Anyway, I never see such grown-up men act so much like children. There was a lot of poles stuck up around with signs on 'em, and around every pole was a circle of bedlamites hollerin' like loons. Hollerin' was the nighest to work of anything I see them fellers do, unless 'twas tearin' up papers and shovin' the pieces down somebody's neck or throwin' 'em in the air like a play-actin' snowstorm.

"'What's the matter with 'em?' says I. 'High finance taken away their brains?'

"But Phinney was awful interested. He dumped some money in a mine once.

The mine caved in on it, I guess, for not a red cent ever come to the top again, but he's been a kind of prophet concernin' finances ever sence.

"'I want to see the big fellers,' says he. 'S'pose that fat one is Morgan?'

"'I don't know,' says I. 'Me and Pierpont ain't met for ever so long.

Don't lean over and point so; you're makin' a hit.'

"He was, too. Some of the younger crew on the floor was lookin' up and grinnin', and more kept stoppin' and joinin' in all the time. I cal'late we looked kind of green and soft, hangin' over that marble rail, like posies on a tombstone; and green is the favorite color to a stockbroker, they tell me. Anyhow, we had a good-sized congregation under us in less than no time. Likewise, they got chatty, and commenced to unload remarks.

"'Land sakes!' says one. 'How's punkins?'

"'How's crops down your way?' says another.

"Now there wa'n't nothin' real bright and funny about these questions--more fresh than new, they struck me--but you'd think they was gems from the comic almanac, jedgin' by the haw-haws. Next minute a little bald-headed smart Alec, with clothes that had a tailor's sign hull down and out of the race, steps to the front and commences to make a speech.

"'Gosh t'mighty, gents,' says he. 'With your kind permission, I'll sing "When Reuben Comes to Town."'

"And he did sing it, too, in a voice that needed cultivatin' worse'n a sandy front yard. And with every verse the congregation whooped and laughed and cheered. When the anthem was concluded, all hands set up a yell and looked at us to see how we took it.

"As for me, I was b'ilin' mad and mortified and redhot all over. But Sim Phinney was as cool as an October evenin'. Once in a while old Sim comes out right down brilliant, and he done it now. He smiled, kind of tolerant and easy, same as you might at the tricks of a hand-organ monkey. Then he claps his hands, applaudin' like, reaches into his pocket, brings up a couple of pennies, and tosses 'em down to little baldhead, who was standin' there blown up with pride.

"For a minute the crowd was still. And THEN such a yell as went up! The whole floor went wild. Next thing I knew the gallery was filled with brokers, grabbin' us by the hands, poundin' us on the back, beggin' us to come have a drink, and generally goin' crazy. We was solid with the 'system' for once in our lives. We could have had that whole buildin', from marble decks to gold maintruck, if we'd said the word. Fifty yellin' lunatics was on hand to give it to us; the other two hundred was joyfully mutilatin' the baldhead.

"Well, I wanted to get away, and so did Sim, I guess; but the crowd wouldn't let us. We'd got to have a drink; hogsheads of drinks. That was the best joke on Eddie Lewisburg that ever was. Come on! We MUST come on! Whee! Wow!

"I don't know how it would have ended if some one hadn't b.u.t.ted head first through the mob and grabbed me by the shoulder. I was ready to fight by this time, and maybe I'd have begun to fight if the chap who grabbed me hadn't been a few inches short of seven foot high. And, besides that, I knew him. 'Twas Sam Holden, a young feller I knew when he boarded here one summer. His wife boarded here, too, only she wa'n't his wife then. Her name was Grace Hargrave and she was a fine girl.

Maybe you remember 'em, Sol?"

The depot master nodded.

"I remember 'em well," he said. "Liked 'em both--everybody did."

"Yes. Well, he knew us and was glad to see us.

"'It IS you!' he sings out. 'By George! I thought it was when I came on the floor just now. My! but I'm glad to see you. And Mr. Phinney, too!

Bully! Clear out and let 'em alone, you Indians.'

"The crowd didn't want to let us alone, but Sam got us clear somehow, and out of the Exchange Buildin' and into the back room of a kind of restaurant. Then he gets chairs for us, orders cigars, and shakes hands once more.

"'To think of seein' you two in New York!' he says, wonderin'. 'What are you doin' here? When did you come? Tell us about it.'

"So we told him about our pleasure cruise, and what had happened to us so fur. It seemed to tickle him 'most to death.

"'Grace and I are keepin' house, in a modest way, uptown,' says Sam, 'and she'll be as glad to see you as I am. You're comin' up to dinner with me to-night, and you're goin' to make us a visit, you know,' he says.

"Well, if we didn't know it then, we learned it right away. Nothin'

that me or Simeon could say would make him change the course a point. So Phinney went up to the Golconda House and got our bags, and at half-past four that afternoon the three of us was in a hired hack bound uptown.

"On the way Sam was full of fun as ever. He laughed and joked, and asked questions about East Harniss till you couldn't rest. All of a sudden he slaps his knee and sings out:

"'There! I knew I'd forgotten somethin'. Our butler left yesterday, and I was to call at the intelligence office on my way home and see if they'd scared up a new one.'

"I looked at Simeon, and he at me.

"'Hum!' says I, thinkin' about that 'modest' housekeepin'. 'Do you keep a butler?'

"'Not long,' says he, dry as a salt codfish. And that's all we could get out of him.

"I s'pose there's different kinds of modesty. We hadn't more'n got inside the gold-plated front door of that house when I decided that the Holden brand of housekeepin' wa'n't bashful enough to blush. If I'D been runnin' that kind of a place, the only time I'd felt shy and retirin'

was when the landlord came for the rent.

"One of the fo'mast hands--hired girls, I mean--went aloft to fetch Mrs.

Holden, and when Grace came down she was just as nice and folksy and glad to see us as a body could be. But she looked sort of troubled, just the same.

"'I'm ever so glad you're here,' says she to me and Simeon. 'But, oh, Sam! it's a shame the way things happen. Cousin Harriet and Archie came this afternoon to stay until to-morrow. They're on their way South.

And I have promised that you and I shall take Harriet to see Marlowe to-night. Of course we won't do it now, under any consideration, but you know what she is.'

"Sam seemed to know. He muttered somethin' that sounded like a Scripture text. Simeon spoke up prompt.