The House of Torchy Part 35

"At last!" says Forsythe, strikin' a pose. "My virtues are about to be discovered. I shall be delighted to a.s.sist you, Miss Gorman, in any way."

"Tut, tut, Forsythe!" says Mr. Robert. "Don't be too reckless. Miss Jane might take you at your word."

"Go on. Slander me," says Forsythe. "Say that, when enlisted in a n.o.ble cause, I am a miserable shirker."

"Indeed, I shouldn't believe a word of it, even if I had time to listen to him," declares Miss Jane. "And I must be at the camp within an hour.

I shall need one of you young men now. Let me see. Suppose I take this one--Torchy, isn't it? Get your coat. I'll not promise to have you back for dinner, but I'll try. Thank you so much, Robert."

And then it was a case of goin' on from there. Whew! I've sort of had the notion now and then, when I've been operatin' with Old Hickory Ellins at the Corrugated Trust on busy days, that I was some rapid private sec. But say, havin' followed Miss Jane Gorman through them dinner preliminaries, I know better.

While that French chauffeur of hers is rollin' us down Long Island at from forty to fifty miles per hour, she has her note-book out and is pumpin' me full of things I'm expected to remember--what train the chef's gang is comin' on, how the supplies are to be carted over, who to see about knockin' up a stage for the cabaret talent, and where the buntin' has been ordered. I borrows a pad and pencil, and wishes I knew shorthand.

By the time we lands at the camp, though, I have a fair idea of the job she's tackled; and while she's havin' an interview with the C. O. I starts explorin' the scene of the banquet. First off I finds that the mess-hall seats less than five hundred, the way they got the tables fixed; that there's no room for a stage without breakin' through one end and tackin' it on; and that the camp cooks will have the range ovens full of bread and the tops covered with oatmeal in double boilers as usual. Outside of that and a few other things, the arrangements was lovely.

Miss Jane ain't a bit disturbed when I makes my report.

"There!" says she. "Didn't I say you were just the a.s.sistant I needed?

Now, please tell all those things to the Brigadier. He will know exactly what to do. Then you'd best be out here early Monday morning to see that they're done properly. And I think, Torchy, I shall make you my general manager for this occasion. Yes, I'll do it. Everyone will report first to you, and you will tell them exactly where to go and what to do."

"You--you mean," says I, gaspin' a bit, "all the hired help?"

"And the volunteers too," says Miss Jane. "Everyone."

Maybe I grinned. I didn't know just how it was goin' to work out, but I could feel something comin'. Forsythe was goin' to get his. He stood to get it good, too. Not all on account of what I owed Mr. Robert for the friendly turns he'd done me. Some of it would be on my own hook, to pay up for the yawny half hours I'd had to sit through listenin' while Forsythe discoursed about himself. You should have seen the satisfied look on Mr. Robert's face when I hinted how Forsythe might be in line for new sensations.

"If I could only be there to watch!" says he. "You must tell me all about it afterwards. They'll enjoy hearing of it at the club."

But, at that, Forsythe wasn't the one to walk right into trouble. He's a shifty party, and he ain't been duckin' work all these years without gettin' expert at it. Accordin' to schedule he was to show up at the camp about nine-thirty Monday morning; but it's nearer noon when he rolls up in his car. And I don't hesitate a bit about givin' him the call.

"You know it's this week, not next," says I, "that this dinner is comin'

off. And there's four bolts of buntin' waitin' to be hung up."

"Quite so," says Forsythe. "We must get to work right away."

I had to chase down to the station again then, to see that the chef's outfit was bein' loaded on the trucks; but I was cheered up by the thought of Forsythe balanced on top of a tall step-ladder with his mouth full of tacks and his collar gettin' wilty.

It's near an hour before I gets back, though. Do I find Forsythe in his shirt-sleeves climbin' around on the rafters? I do not. He's sittin'

comfortable in a camp-chair on a fur motor robe, smokin' a cigarette calm, and surrounded by half a dozen cla.s.sy young ladies that he's rounded up by 'phone from the nearest country club. The girls and three or four chauffeurs are doin' the work, while Forsythe is doin' the heavy directin'.

He'd sketched out his decoratin' scheme on the back of an envelop, and now he was tellin' 'em how to carry it out. The worst of it is, too, that he's gettin' some stunnin' effects and is bein' congratulated enthusiastic by the girls.

It's the same way with fixin' up the tables with ferns and flowers.

Forsythe plans it out with a pencil, and his crew do the hustlin'

around.

Course, I had to let it ride. Besides, there was a dozen other things for me to look after. But I'm good at a waitin' game. I kept my eye on Forsythe, to see that he didn't slip away. He was still there at two-thirty, havin' organized a picnic luncheon with the young ladies, when Miss Jane blew in. And blamed if she don't fall for Forsythe's stuff, too.

"Why, you've done wonders, Mr. Hurd," says she. "What a versatile genius you are?"

"Oh, that!" says he, wavin' a sandwich careless. "But it's an inspiration to be doing anything at all for you, Miss Gorman."

And here he hasn't so much as shed his overcoat.

It must have been half an hour later when Sig. Zaretti, the head chef, comes huntin' me out with a desperate look in his eyes. I was consultin'

Miss Jane about borrowin' a piano from the Y. M. C. A. tent, but he kicks right in.

"Ah, I am distract," says he, puffin' out his cheeks. "Eet--eet ees too mooch!"

"Go on," says I. "Shoot the tragedy. What's too much?"

"That Pedro and that Salvatore," says he. "They have become lost, the worthless ones. They disappear on me. And in three hours I am to serve, in this crude place, a dinner of six courses to seven hundred men. They abandon me at such a time, with so much to be done."

"Well, that's up to you," says I. "Can't some of your crowd double in bra.s.s? What about workin' in some of your waiters?"

"But they are all employed," says Zaretti. "Besides, the union does not permit. If you could a.s.sist me with two men, even one. I implore."

"There ain't a cook in sight," says I. "Sorry, but----"

"Eet ees not for cook," he protests. "No; only to help make the peel from those so many potatoes. One who could make the peel. Please!"

"Oh!" says I. "Peelin' potatoes! Why, 'most anybody could help out at that, I guess. I would myself if----"

"No," breaks in Miss Jane. "You cannot be spared. And I'm sure I don't know who could."

"Unless," I puts in, "Mr. Hurd is all through with his decoratin'."

"Why, to be sure," says she. "Just tell him, will you?"

"Suppose I send him over to you, Miss Gorman," says I, "while I hustle along that piano?"

She nods, and I lose no time trailin' down Forsythe.

"Emergency call for you from Miss Jane," says I, edgin' in among his admirers and tappin' him on the shoulder. "She's waitin' over by headquarters."

"Oh, certainly," says Forsythe, startin' off brisk.

"And say," I calls after him, "I hope it won't be anything that'll make you faint."

"Please don't worry about me," says he.

Well, I tried not to. In fact, I tried so hard that some folks might have thought I'd heard good news from home. But I'd had a peek or two into the camp kitchen since Zaretti's food construction squad had moved in, and, believe me, it was no place for an artistic temperament, subject to creeps up the back. There was about a ton of cold-storage turkeys bein' unpacked, bushels of onions goin' through the shuckin'

process, buckets of soup stock standin' around, and half a dozen murderous-lookin' a.s.sistant chefs was sharpenin' long knives and jabberin' excited in four languages.

Oh, yes; Forsythe was goin' to need all the inspiration he'd collected, if he lasted through.

I kind of wanted to stick around and cheer him up with friendly words while he was fishin' potatoes out of the cold water and learnin' to use a peelin'-knife, but my job wouldn't let me. After I'd seen the piano landed on the new stage, there were chairs to be placed for the orchestra, and then other things. So it was some little time before I got around to the kitchen wing again, pretendin' to be lookin' for Zaretti. But nowhere in that steamin', hustlin', garlic-smellin' bunch could I see Forsythe.

"Hey, chef!" I sings out. "Where's that expert potato-peeler I sent you?"