The Lash Part 4

CHAPTER V

THE IRONWORKERS' BALL--AND MAISIE

"You fool!" remarked former Alderman Goldberg to his man, Mulligan, when he learned a little later that night of the spirited occurrence in his bar room. "You fool! Don't you know no better than to put it onto a newspaper guy? Don't you know he can make all kinds of trouble for us if he wants to? Don't you know nothin'? Just because he did up a pal of yours,--and G.o.d knows he had it comin' to him!--is that any reason you've got to pitch into the bloke and set a lot of bees stingin' us?

You're a bright one, ain't you? You're a rotten stiff!" fulminated Goldberg, while his a.s.sistant scowled and said nothing. "I'll tell you one thing," concluded Goldberg, "if they make any trouble for me out of your fool break, you get the run, see?"

But no trouble ensued and Mulligan remained. Micky, having come out ahead, laughed at his rough treatment as a part of a good joke, being no whiner. There was no disposition at the Courier office to cause Goldberg any more trouble than it was hoped was due him after the next election, along with his mates. All the Courier's hopes were centered on that pleasing goal.

Micky's night off, a little later in the week, fell uneventfully, and it was with distinct boredom that he tried to kill time. He was invariably uneasy at these brief intervals of respite from the grind, and it might be said that he enjoyed himself in discontent. It was with a generally ennuied air that he sauntered at midnight into a night lunch room much frequented by the Courier staff and encountered d.i.c.k there, whom he greeted with enthusiasm. It happened that d.i.c.k was through especially early that evening.

An odd friendship had arisen between these two, so dissimilar and yet so like in the welding quality of good fellowship and thorough bohemianism.

It was this restless spirit, the arch-enemy of commercial routine, that had drawn d.i.c.k into journalism after leaving college. The step was a disappointment to his father, who had hoped that d.i.c.k would elect to enter the parent's office and learn the business from the ground up. He did not oppose d.i.c.k's inclinations, however, thinking that a little experience would weary him of his idea. Thus far, however, there seemed little likelihood that d.i.c.k would leave the fascinating grind for the more substantial though more prosaic office desk. He had taken naturally to journalism, was a ready and pleasing writer, and he liked it.

It was the same restless spirit, too, linked with an inborn, luring love of roving and shift of scene, that fired O'Byrn. A happy vagabond, his eyes were filled ever with the charm of new scenes that all too soon grew old. Always were fair mirages to glow on his horizon, bringing him hurrying on--to find them faded. Dream-houses, built on barren sands, dissolving in mists of tears as the years spell the bitter, brutal thing that we call wisdom! Always for him, strange little Irishman, the luring whisper from afar and the mad dash thither, to find as before only chill mists and brooding shadows; and so on, over the wastes, to silence and the end.

"What have you done with yourself?" inquired d.i.c.k, as the two settled themselves comfortably before their sandwiches and coffee. "Find anything worth while?"

"Oh, early in the evenin' I dropped into Ryan's roof garden," replied Micky. "The first stunt wasn't so bad; then they rang in one of those c.o.c.kney carolers from dear ol' Lunnon. He got off a yowl about--

"'Wipe no more, my lidy, Oh, wipe no more to die--'

and I got out. Suggested a scullery strike and business, and it was my night off.

"Blew along and met a bunch of the boys at the Gold Coin. They had started in early and were left-handed in both feet and hangin' onto the bar like a freighter in a recedin' tide. They tried to annex me, but I faded away. I'm through. The budge-mixer's the natural enemy of the profesh. He gets your money and you get next, but it's never till the next morning. I knew a district attorney once, up north, who had been prosecutin' a gang of cheap thieves from a b.u.m district of the county.

He was gettin' off his final spiel, and it was a beaut'. 'Gentlemen of the jury,' he yells, 'they don't raise anything on the Pine Plains but h.e.l.l and huckleberries!' and it was no lie.

"Now on whisky the product's even more limited. You just raise h.e.l.l. No more for me, I'm stickin' to suds. It's popular, the red-eye, but it doesn't last and then it does. There's nothing in it but a pneumatic head and a nimbus of cracked ice in the mornin'. Your Uncle Mike--Why, h.e.l.lo, Fatty!"

Fatty Stearns had ambled in and stood regarding them with a tender smile. Glenwood pulled him into a chair and invited him to order what he wanted. Stearns was soon busy.

"Just ran out for lunch," came from him in m.u.f.fled tones. "I'm up to my neck in that golf game you didn't have time to do," he told Glenwood with a reproachful glance. "It's got me wingin'."

There were strange gurglings from Micky, grown suddenly wild-eyed.

"Fatty, Fatty!" he moaned. "Did you say 'game?'"

"Sure he did!" answered d.i.c.k truculently. "What's the matter with it, you little ape? I play it."

Micky dissolved in simulated sobs. "He plays it!" he groaned. "Oh, why was he ever born, Eliza? Better never have been born than born a slave!"

"We will listen, Micky," remarked d.i.c.k deliberately, "to any objections you have to the greatest, most healthful--"

"Oh, fudge!" interrupted Micky. "I was there once and it's a wonder I didn't turn out a lush for life. Honest, I'd done everything in my time, but that a.s.signment got me wingin'. I get cross-eyed yet every time I think about it and I talk really maudlin. I can't tell what I say those times but the boys say it's fierce. Say I murmur fool talk about putting it onto the green and bawling on the bunkers. I don't know. I guess I got it all in my head that time, but somehow I never could make it jibe.

"You see it was when I was on the Signal in Gulf City. Old man sent for me one day and says, 'There's a three-day golf meet starts tomorrow morning and it's up to you.'

"Now ordinarily I'm the last to buck at any a.s.signment, but I'd seen a fellow dislocate his jaw once on some of the vocabulary of that game, so I sparred for wind.

"'I don't know anything about it,' says I.

"'Neither does anyone else,' says he.

"'Do the players?' I asks him.

"'Damfino!' he came back at me. 'Ask 'em. That's what you're for.'

"So behold your Uncle Mike, d.i.c.k, about nine the next morning looping the links. I had done a fuss stunt and was got up regardless. Had one of those long cutaways that dallied with my ankles; they hadn't gone out in Gulf City. I saw a bunch of busy boys humped up around a d.i.n.ky flag and started for 'em to ask 'em about it. One of 'em, I judged, was gettin'

ready to whale a toad or somethin' with an umbrella handle. He'd hocked his hat and hadn't kept much more than his shirt on anyway; barrin' a pair of pants that had got elephant-tiss-siss-siss, or whatever you call it, and looked like they came off the pile way back in the happy hitherto. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and his arms were the color of sun-cured tobacco, or the mud pies that sister used to bake. Oh, he was a beam-baked child of nature all right. Well, he sees me comin'

toward him, and straightens up and gives me the cold storage stare.

"'Here, you!' he yells, 'I can't drive over you!'

"'No, you bet you can't!' I yells back. 'Ain't it scandalous you can't?

Why can't you? Did you hock the horse along with the hat? Here, go buy yourself a new one of both!' and I tosses him a dime.

"They didn't say anything but it grew kind o' chilly, so I turns up my coat collar and wanders along and by and by I came to the club house.

"It was gorgeous enough around there, looked like the short end at the surrender of Yorktown. My fuss stunt looked like mourning in that color scheme. I drifted around, feelin' lonesome and like a drab ta.s.sel on a red fringe. It was a new one on me, but by and by I got a look-in on the pools. They had a set of cards tacked on the board.

"There was a big geezer in a sunrise coat goin' by just then. I annexed him. 'What's those?' I asked him, pointin' to the cards.

"'Why, the scores, of course,' says he, tryin' to jerk away.

"'Well, how many times do they score before they start?' I asks, hangin'

on. And honestly, d.i.c.k, I didn't know. I was one up in the air with the parachute busted, and it certainly looked slow to me.

"He broke away, wouldn't answer me at all. It was no way to treat a lonesome ta.s.sel. He deserved to be censured for turning me adrift.

"Well, after awhile I struck a pretty decent guy, if he did wear a horse blanket for a vest. He said he'd help me out, that the scorers were busy. I suppose they were flaggin' the bad actors.

"This accommodatin' chap began to go over the cards with me. I got along all right for a while till I got to an X mark. 'What's this?' I asked him.

"'Oh,' says he, 'that's because he struck his caddy.'

"'For how much?' I asks. 'Besides, I supposed the caddies were the ones to strike. They need the money. What races has this bloke been playin'

lately? Must have bet on some brute that ran like cold mola.s.ses.'

"'You don't understand,' says he. 'He struck his caddy with the ball. It knocks him out.'

"'I should think it would,' says I, running my finger down the list.

'Here's a fellow with two X's. That's two down, ain't it? I should think a ten-strike would make a caddy feel sore for fair.'

"'It makes a player use language when he does that,' says the accommodatin' chap, starin' at the board and lookin' reminiscent.

"'Does the caddy contribute?' I asked him.