The She Boss Part 6

They had been slowly walking down the street. Tweet stopped short and looked at him.

"That means what? That you don't care to consider it further?"

It had meant just that when Hiram said it. There was now in Tweet's question a tone of finality. Hiram felt that his reply would end the matter. Swiftly his mind grasped for a judicious rejoinder and settled on "No." He could not bring himself to part with this semblance of friendship just yet.

"All right, then," Tweet returned. "You're just not through considerin', eh? Well, I'll tell you: We'll break away and give you a chance to think. There's a man down California Street I wanta see before I leave and I'll stroll down that way. You think it over, and meet me at eleven-thirty up in that disfiguration old Squinty calls a loungin' room. So long."

He turned abruptly and strode away.

Hiram watched his erect figure and firm step till the crowd hid him, then followed more slowly in the same direction. His feet were carrying him toward the restaurant, and he was guiltily permitting them. He saw a shining drab automobile drawn up at the curb before the restaurant door. He walked slower and slower as he neared the door, paused, and looked within.

Lucy was leaning on the counter negligently collecting scattered toothpicks, and conversing laughingly with a carefully dressed middle-aged man with a handsome face and curly brown hair. His hair and Lucy's fluffy topknot were almost touching. Hiram saw him grasp playfully at Lucy's hand, saw her jerk it away with a flirtatious laugh.

Then Hiram bolted, half blind with pain.

CHAPTER VI

THE FIRE

Hiram did not take note of much till he was three blocks from the restaurant. There was a dull pain somewhere within him, but when his thinking apparatus began shaking off its stunned condition he found it difficult to a.n.a.lyze this pain.

The girl had done practically nothing. In fact, but for her laughter, her att.i.tude toward the well-dressed man would have showed righteous displeasure. The thought that this might be a common occurrence did not enter his head. He was distressed now; he found, only with a keen feeling of utter alienation, he was one lone backwoodsman against San Francisco, scorning him, ready to trample him under foot.

A sign over the window of a store cleared this mystery. Hiram stopped and stared up at it. In a flash he knew what was the matter with him, and that he hated the stranger for his clothes--that he hated everybody because this man wore good clothes. He squeezed his pocketbook and read and reread the painted words in their painted circles:

"O'coat, $40, no more; Coat, $20, no more; Pants, $5, no more; Hat, $3, no more."

His mind was adding twenty, five, and three. The total was twenty-eight. He could get along without an overcoat, though in San Francisco, even in summer, an overcoat is comfortable at night. Should he or should he not? His rusty old clothes were torturing him.

Twenty-eight dollars! And perhaps only four or five more for extras--a tie, collars, suspenders, and--oh, yes! shoes. He had forgotten the shoes. His were brogans. He must have shoes, too. Perhaps five for shoes. He had barely sixty-seven dollars. Should he? Was it foolish, or----

Reflected in the show window he saw a drab automobile flash behind him.

At the wheel he saw, erect, forceful, jaunty, and well-dressed, with a black cigar gripped in his teeth, the man who had s.n.a.t.c.hed at Lucy's hand. Clinching his pocketbook, Hiram entered the store.

A half hour later he came out, poorer by some thirty-eight dollars, but rich in the self-esteem which the bright, stiff garments gave him.

He left his bundle in his stall at the lodging house, criticized himself before the cracked mirror in the hall, and went down on the street. He bought three five-cent cigars and lighted one. He gripped it in his teeth and let it protrude from the left-hand corner of his mouth. Then he started for the restaurant.

Long before he reached it panic was upon him. He had absolutely no pretext on which to enter. It was then only ten-thirty, and he had breakfasted at nine. To enter boldly and begin a conversation with Lucy--which he had all along boastfully promised himself he would do--he now knew to be the last thing on earth he would dare.

Besides, though the garments he wore were new and bright and stiff, those two brief glimpses of his rival's clothes now tardily showed him that there was a difference. His coat, for instance, seemed a bit angular--there seemed to be corners he had not noticed in the store.

It did not snuggle down to his neck and shoulders just right. Hiram thought that perhaps the linen collar was a trifle too large.

Thus criticizing, and walking slower and slower, he neared the restaurant. Now it was impossible to take another step without coming abreast of it. He stopped and looked in a jeweler's window next door.

He stood there fifteen minutes. Time and again he nerved himself up to entering the restaurant, only to feel cold sweat break out on his forehead as he lifted his foot. He would return to the lodging house, change his clothes, and see her when he ate at noon. He would never let her see him in those now hated new clothes. He had squandered thirty-eight dollars for her, and he had only twenty-nine left.

Down the street from the heart of the city came a sudden clangor.

Vehicles were rushed close to the curbs. Up a side street a new jangle of bells broke out. Never had Hiram seen a city fire, but at once he knew that such was happening.

A hook-and-ladder company rattled past with clamor and gongs and clatter of hoofbeats. People poured from the doors of buildings to watch. Men rushed to the curb and looked after the firemen; the women stood near the buildings, under the awnings, shading their eyes and standing on tiptoes. Quickly the sidewalk filled. A chemical engine pa.s.sed, clouds of black smoke rolling in its wake. Across the street a pillar of black smoke burst from a third-story window.

"It's across the street! Across the street!" shouted the crowd.

A hose cart rumbled up. The men on the curb grew frantic, yelling and pointing to the smoke. The hose cart was stopped.

A little later the chief's automobile came. Then the apparatus that had pa.s.sed down the street came back. Flames and smoke were bursting from three windows now. The street and the sidewalk were filled with the crowd.

Hiram had not moved a muscle. People elbowed him on both sides, but he paid no attention. The rapid operations of the fire fighters held him spell-bound.

"Oo-oo-oo! Look there!" suddenly came a shrill familiar voice at his side.

A sputter of sparks had shot from the roof of the building, and a man had emerged from a trap-door, it seemed, and darted from sight. But the fire and every new phase of it had lost all holding power over Hiram Hooker. Pressed to his elbow, wedged in by the crowd, stood Lucy.

"Oh, I love a fire!" she was ecstatically informing some one on her other side--a waitress.

Hiram stood there sick with her proximity. She had not recognized him--she was engrossed with the clouds of black smoke, the intermittent red gleam of blaze, and the crackling streams of water. Her tongue was wagging rapidly, and she seemed not to care to whom she spoke or whether that fortunate person were listening.

Suddenly, through the scurrying firemen in the street, a big red automobile came slowly. It was filled with men and women. Its horn was honking perpetually. Besides the fire apparatus, no other vehicles were allowed in the street, yet no one seemed to interfere with this machine.

"Oh, it's the Samax Company!" exclaimed Lucy, dancing up and down.

"They're going to take a fire picture. Look, Minnie! There's Mr.

Kenoke--the director! I never thought of it--right here at my very door, too! If I only could see him, Minnie. What a chance for the fire scene in 'The Crowning Defeat!' Oh, why didn't I think of it, Minnie? Mr. Kenoke! Mr. Kenoke! Oh, dear, he wouldn't hear me in a thousand years!"

She was waving over the heads of the crowd at some one in the red automobile, it seemed. There seemed even less likelihood now of her taking note of Hiram. He watched her furtively and wondered.

"Oh, I must see him!" she went on excitedly. "Say, mister"--she suddenly turned a flushed face to Hiram--"won't you---- Why, h.e.l.lo!"

she broke off. "I didn't know it was you. Oh, you will, I know!

You're big--you can do it! Won't you try to get to that heavy-set man in the machine for me? Please--won't you?"

She was looking eagerly up at him. Hiram rose to the situation like a man. For her he felt he would have cheerfully entered a beehive should she command him. Was not this the adventure girl of whom he had dreamed?

"What'll I do?"

"Oh, will you? Good! Listen: Tell him to have Mr. Blair carry Miss Worthington out the door. And listen: Miss Worthington has fainted--see? Mr. Blair faints then, and staggers and falls down with her. Then Mr. Speed rushes up and takes a letter from Mr. Blair's pocket and runs out of the picture. And listen: Mr. Blair and Miss Worthington still lie there. Tell him there's no makeup. And tell him Miss Lucy Dalles wants him to do that, and that he won't regret it.

Tell him I said it was a peach--see? But listen: Don't say anything about me being in a restaurant, though. Oh, can you? Will you?"

Hiram was stunned. Had the girl gone crazy?

"Go on, please, before the fire's out! I can't explain now--wait.

I'll tell you later. He'll know, though. Go on, now--try!"

Without the faintest notion of what it was all about--with only the thrilling thought that he was serving her--Hiram's big figure began pushing through the crowd, dazedly repeating her queer message and the names.

He was tall, strong, and angular. Shoving this way and that, he fought his way to the curb. Here he encountered a rope stretched lengthwise of the street. The crowd was now confined to the sidewalk. Hiram crawled under the rope. A policeman shouted at him and started toward him. Hiram ran, tripped over a slippery hose, caught himself, and plunged on through the knots of struggling, dripping firemen.

The automobile had stopped. The occupants were clambering to the wet pavement. One man was hurriedly setting up a peculiar-shaped camera directly opposite the entrance of the burning building. Another, a heavy-set man, was bobbing about, shouting orders to men and women, who listened, then ran toward the door.