# What a Young Man Should Know

Youth receives an amusing lesson in the school of experience
What A Young Man Should Know
By T. S. Stribling
This is Mr. Stribling's second appearance in Everybody's—each time in a story marked by a delightfully novel type of humor. Mr. Stribling is one of the very few people who can write understandingly about young folks in the terrifically serious years just before twenty, and this romance of Sim Toyne, aged seventeen, is as real as your own youth.
SUCCESSFULLY to live down his seventeenth year, a boy should be equipped with a mother, a sister, a shotgun, a husky man friend, a wise altruistic girl friend and a watchful police.
At seventeen a boy's career teeters between the White House at Washington and a gray, rather somber house at Leavenworth. A push, a mere nudge at the right moment in the selected direction, is decisive.
Sim Toyne owned the dog and gun. He received his pro rata of police surveillance. Doll Breen was husky enough. Mrs. Breen, if not his real mother, had corrected the misdeal by long devotion. But the when it came to a wise altruistic girl-friend, Sim Toyne rocked along in the same boat with the other fifty-odd million American males.
Technically Mrs. Irene Petway was no longer a girl. Her title precluded that. Besides at twenty-four a woman is as set in life's mold as a man at thirty-six. However, if not a kitten, Mrs. Irene was kittenish. She practised her little pink claws on any available bit of masculine floss. During her work as dental assistant, every move she made for a man patient she freighted with a delicate personal significance.
Sim Toyne had first met her amid the antiseptic surroundings of a dental chair. She had been a cooling fragrance amid carbolic smells and roaring right-angled burrs. As Sim had writhed to escape the surgeon's misguided sense of humor (the fellow wore a certain fixed smile while he worked), his real fear had been not that the machine-shop in his mouth would result in a casualty, but that Mrs. Petway would cease holding a corner of the rubber dam and would retire into the inner office from which the humorist had called her.
But that was a long time ago—three weeks. Yet to-day, as the two strolled down Leadville's main street after office hours, Sim was still apprehensive lest she vanish. Very often when they walked like this she would disappear into some dry-goods store on an errand too delicate for masculine observation and he would have to wait outside; or she would fall in with some girl friend and they would talk to his utter neglect.
So to make the most of his fleeting opportunity, he reiterated earnestly:
“But Mizziz Petway, seventeen ain't a bit too young. In fact, Mizziz Petway, seventeen is the normal age to marry. I read it in a book. The book said the happiest marriages was contracted early——”
“And cured early?”
“Well—you want or marriage to be happy, don't you, Mrs. Petway?”
“I don't know.” Mrs. Petway smoothed the gray suède on her little finger and glanced up at him. “I shouldn't care for a strange or fantastic married life, Mr. Toyne.”
THE hobbledehoy stared down at her blankly. “Why, Mizziz Petway—don't you want to be hap— Oh! Do ye mean they ain't no happy mar— Mizziz Petway, what do you mean?”
Mrs. Irene looked up at his flushed face and shining eyes— “Oh, nothing! It was a joke.”
“That's a mighty solemn thing to joke about, Mizziz Petway—you—you are not cynical, are you, Mizziz Petway?”
“No. I'm divorced now.”
Sim spent a moment on this, but decided that it meant nothing, mere girlish chatter, disconnected. So he proceeded to strike deep intellectual chords:
“Well, I'm glad you ain't cynical, Mizziz Petway. Won't do for a woman to be cynical—especially before marriage,” He looked down at her. “But you've been married! That don't seem reasonable to me that you've been married. Seems like I must of dreamt it and it ain't so.”
“It seems a bad dream to me, too, Sim,” she answered soberly enough.
“Does it? Didn't he treat you nice, Mizziz Petway?”
Mrs. Irene slowly shook her glossy high-piled hair.
“Didn't he love you?”
“Not—just me—he—it seemed to me that he—.” A certain tang entered the woman's soft voice. “Well, he knew so many women. He couldn't let a pretty girl pass without just staring at her. He——
“If he hadn't of loved pretty girls, Miziz Petway, he never would of married you.”
Mrs. Irene turned and looked up at Sim with wide brown eyes. “Why, that's what he said.”
Sim drew a little breath of pleasure. He felt set up for having duplicated the absent Mr. Petway's mental processes.
And for some reason Mrs. Irene seemed to have yielded to a softer mood. She stared down Santa Cruz Street at nothing, Then she made up her mind, straighten her shoulders and laid a small finger on her companion's arm. “Sometimes I've thought, Sim, that the book you were telling me about is right. That it's really best to marry young—especially men should marry young, Sim—fellows like before—well, before they know such an awful lot about women—” she broke off and looked up at the boy earnestly, appraisingly.
A queer warm sensation swept over Sim. He felt himself admitted to an intimacy, a nearness, he had never known before. Then under her scrutiny, there crept into him an unhappy sense of deceit. His face reddened.
“But—uh—Mizziz Petway!” he blurted with the confessional instinct of lovers, “I—I think I ought to tell you something—you—you a-feeling that way—I—” He paused, staring at her with a hot face.
The woman looked back with widening eyes, as if an old enemy she had long suspected suddenly had confronted her. “Oh, Sim!” It was a gasp.
The hobbledehoy stammered on relentlessly: “I—I've read a good deal—I'm a “great {nowrap|reader——”}}
“Well-uh?” A blank interrogation.
“Well, you know, I— I've been reading a book—a book about what every young fellow ought to know wh-when h-he—when he gets married.” Sim swallowed.
Mrs. Irene nodded, miles at sea.
“And—and there's a good deal about w-women in that—” Sim ended breathless and brick red.
For two full seconds the quick-witted Mrs. Petway continued her uncomprehending stare. She saw he was through. Then, gradually, it began to dawn on her. Her lips twitched. She bit them. Suddenly she looked down Santa Cruz and pointed out a gang of urchins standing before a window. One very small boy was elevated to a larger lad's back for a better view of something inside. At that moment he tumbled off.
Mrs. Irene burst out laughing. “What funny boys!” she cried. “Let's go down there!” She took Sim's arm and started, rippling into paroxysms of laughter. “Look at him kick the big boy! L-Look!” she gasped between attacks. “How d-droll! What a comedy!” She fished a bit of lace from her bag and wiped her eyes. “Ex-excuse me, Mr.—Mr. T-Toyne, but I'm so amused at th-th-th' boys.” She went off again.
Sim stared at the comedians around the window. Certainly seeing a small boy tumble off a large boy and kick at the large boy's legs in revenge was nothing new to him. But he didn't want to appear blasé—as he was—not at just this critical juncture. So he joined Mrs. Irene's infectious laugh—at the boys. And they walked up to the show-window having the best time possible.
THE attraction in the window of Goodloe's jewelry store was a large ruby set on blue velvet. Two brass shells, an English and an American flag were spaced so they led the eye to the jewel. In the corner of the window was an art card bearing this legend:
The gem on exhibition, known as the Rajah's Ruby, was mined in Ceylon for Bandomoy, the Rajah of Bhawalpur. It was purchased by the Sultan of Turkey for one of his favorites. Looted from the royal harem by the Young Turks, it was captured at the fall of Damascus by an English major under General Allenby.
Its value, like all the major gems, is undetermined and speculative. Experts estimate it from one and a half to three million dollars. At the present depreciation of money, these figures are perhaps too low.
Not for sale.
For a moment Sim Toyne stopped breathing to gaze at this vast fortune focused into a little crimson flare which he could conceal in his palm. It was amazing. But the next moment found him skeptical. No doubt it was glass. Yet even if it was glass its glow held him. He felt an impulse to go hang his chin over the bottom molding of the window with the rest of the boys and stare into its red heart; but the dignity of his position restrained him.
The boys were younger than Sim, ranging from nine to fourteen. As a kind of cocktail to the feast of the jewel, they stuck their tongues against the glass and peered through at a peculiar beef-steaky effect this produced in an interior mirror. Then they wiped everything clean with their coat sleeves and started anew. Sim was not too old to realize they were having a splendid time.
Mrs. Petway also was moved by the stone. “Isn't it a beauty!" Her accent was full of desire.
Sim turned to look at her. “Why, I guess it's glass.”
Mrs. Irene confronted him. “No it isn't—it's paste.”
“Isn't paste glass?”
THE urchins turned around and began a defensive chorus: “Naw, lady, that's reel! Look whut it's wuth, mom!” suggested a little negro, pointing at the placard with white eyes. “It's a ruby and b'longs to the Rager of Bawlly-pore!” shrilled a youngster in a soda cap. “Look at the sign! Look! There it is in the corner. You c'n read it yuhse'f!”
But Mrs. Irene considered the marvel from a broader outlook on life. “It's a replica,” she explained, and at the tone of her voice all the tinier boys in the gang came closer with covert intentions of holding her fingers or skirt. “Rich folks keep their own gems in storage vaults and wear replicas just like that. It keeps their real jewels safe.”
This was great news. The youngsters stared up at her. The little negro had possessed himself of one of her suède fingers and stood smelling her scented bag with undisguised satisfaction. The white boys took a more intellectual view of the phenomenon. “But look here,” they shrilled, “ain't that wearing phony stuff? Do they fool anybody?”
Sim didn't exactly like to be mobbed out of his girl. “Anyway, it's cheap stuff in the window,” he put in.
“Cheap stuff!” Apparently Mrs. Irene was more incensed than the boys. “I wish you'd try buying one little string of brilliants! Cheap stuff! Cheap! You'd see. Wish to goodness I had that one! I could just wa-a-arm in it! If I could only wear it!” She pressed her fingers against her breast where she would set the gem. “Isn't it a love!”
Sim was surprized at gesture and words.
“Do you really want it that bad?”
Mrs. Irene gave a brief laugh, caught Sim's arm and started up the street. "Oh, yes I'm crazy about brilliants—especially rubies—they look so-o-o—Oh, come ahead!”
“I didn't know you really cared for a thing in the world,” said Sim blankly.
“Well, I do,” she assured him.
“Wonder what it 'ud cost?” inquired Sim speculatively.
“Why it isn't for sale.” Mrs. Irene's tone was almost tart with desire. “That shows it's the very finest class stuff, and it's a replica, that's what gets me—a replica. Somewhere, Sim, a great big ruby, exactly like that one, is lying in some queen's or princess's jewel-box——”
“But what's it worth!” pressed Sim, mentally running over his resources.
“It's not for sale— Oh, five thousand!”
Sim's sudden hopes of a great financial sacrifice melted. It left his pulse whispering in his ear, “I wish I could get it for you,” he said humbly.
“Oh boy!” Mrs. Petway began to laugh to make up for her curtness.
“I bet you'd marry me quick enough then.”
“Kid, I'd marry the original Mr. Petway over again if he showed up with a dream like that in his mit—much less you,” she tacked on thoughtfully.
“Why, Mizziz Petway!” cried the moralist, shocked again, “you wouldn't sell yourself to a man you didn't love for a ruby, would you?”
“I'd love him.”
“O-oh!” Sim drew a breath, somewhat relieved, somewhat jealous. “I was afraid you was about to get cynical again. You know I can't stand a cynical woman, Mizziz Petway. It's all right for us men, being cynical is. We got to go up against the cold, hard world, Mizziz Petway, but a woman—uh—uh something wrong—I read that in that book.”
“That must be a good book,” said the woman rather sharply, “an informing book. If you could just find some plan outlined in that book how to get that ruby, you would also find out how to get a wife, and surely that's something every young man should know.”
“Look here, Mzziz Petway!” blurted the youth, “is that straight goods?”
“As straight as I ever put out.”
Sim accepted the reply at its face value. “And you'll marry me if I get it?”
“I most certainly will, Mr. Toyne,” she asseverated, looking curiously at the youngster. “Mr. Toyne, I will marry, marry, marry you—I will certainly marry you, if you get that stone.”
“Then we're engaged!” cried Sim tremulously. “Will you—uh—shake hands on it?”
Mrs. Petway's gravity was barely controlled as she put her little gloved hand into Sim's palm. The ardor of his grip hurt her knuckles. An impulse to give him a kiss crossed her mind, but she suppressed it.
“And it don't make any difference how I get it?” he beamed down on her.
By this time they had reached forty-two Guadelupe Prospect, a street of melancholy third-rate boarding-houses. They paused.
“MR. TOYNE, it isn't my idea of a wife's duty to inquire into the business affairs of her husband. He gets the money, she never knows how; she spends it, he never knows how. And now,” she pressed his fingers warmly, “good-by, and take care of yourself, because, remember, I have an interest in you now, Sim.” She shook her finger at him and walked up the stoop, looking back at him. She applied her pass-key and opened the door, still looking at the boy with smiling lips and speculative eyes. Then she blew him a kiss—the kiss—from her glove, called, “See you to-morrow,” and the door closed.
Sim stared at the blistered shutter with a strong pulse throbbing in his temple. He was trembling violently. He was engaged. He looked up and down Guadalupe Prospect. A dying tree or two struggled for life in the little square brick compounds along the thoroughfare.
Its drabness looked like a burst of sunlit wood to Sim. He felt an impulse to go whooping down the street, but only jumped off the stoop and started walking rapidly. His bliss was almost in his arms. All he lacked was a five-thousand-dollar imitation ruby. The pulse in his temple became violent.
As he passed a corner grocery that purveyed to the neighborhood, a sudden plan popped into his head. He dashed inside and asked the use of the phone.
The grocer, a little bald-headed man counting eggs, nodded toward the instrument. Sim rushed over, called a number, rang two more unnecessary rings, snapped central, before a woman's voice spoke in his ear.
“This is Sim Toyne, Mizziz McGillicuddy. I want Lengthy—I mean Peter—Peter McGillicuddy. Oh, yes, I'm in a rush. Please let him finish later—yes.”
A pause ensued; rapidly grew unbearable. Sim scratched his shin with the inner edge of his shoesole. He was about to ring again to see if he still had connection when Peter's wobbly bass opened on his ear.
“This is Sim, Peter—Sim—Sim Toyne! Say, Central, kain't you give a feller good connection so he won't have to bawl? Say, Peter—graveyard——”
Came a blank purring over the wire, then Peter's voice, metallic, deep, far-away, but still registering its blankness: “What did you say?”
“GEEMENY Crimeny, Peter, what you got stuffed in yore years? Graveyard—graveyard!” He was shouting it.
“Ooh, graveyard!”
“Godfrey's Cordial, yes, GRAVEYARD!”
The little bald-headed grocer's eyes popped at such an extraordinary conversation.
Be it known that this conversation was not so entirely without cogency as it sounded. The word “graveyard” was a password between the two boys denoting a call for help in the direst extremity. They had sworn with the terrificest oaths never to fail, never to never to delay when summoned by this enigmatic vocable.
They had had chosen it because it could be worked into ordinary conversation without exciting undue attention; yet at the same time it was sufficiently striking to grasp the ears of initiates.
"Where'll I meet you?” gasped the far-away voice.
At Doll Breen's—bring a brickbat!”
“Godfrey's Cor—” A click in the receiver told Sim that his comrade had hung up and was speeding toward the rendezvous.
The grocer, who was vaguely affronted that a boy should come in and howl “graveyard” over his wire, lost count of his eggs completely as Sim shot out the door.
The human embryo, it is said, reproduces every physical form assumed by its forebears from protozoa to primate; children, likewise, skim through a synopsis of the mental and moral development of mankind from pithecanthropus to profiteers.
A quaint and a curious thing is humanity's moral development. Taken by and large, the basis of all ethics, in every age, rests upon one question: In what mode is it best to steal in order that the strongest survive?
The answers have changed with the epochs. Wife-stealing gave way to alienation of affections; the tomahawk falls before the coal strike; slave raiding succumbs to monopoly of production.
Our jails and penitentiaries are nothing more than selective groupings of men whose answer to this perennial query was out of date—it isn't done that way now; our palaces and mansions are selective groupings of other men who did not misplace the tense of their intents—more like this.
Adolescent seventeen is somewhere in the robber-knight period of civilization. The reason why boys of this age are not hanged is because ninety-nine per cent. of the robberies, murders, arsons and piracies they commit are mental. Seventeen is too brief to crowd into action such a plethora of violence.
It seems hardly worth while to suggest that these acts, done or undone, are not crimes at all, but responses to the highest moral impulses at that given stage. If any skeptic doubt that the boys who raid his watermelon-patch and break out his window-lights are not all heroes, let him catch one and by threat, bribe or torture try to make him tell who his pals were.
At four o'clock that afternoon, Mr. Sim Toyne sat in his attic bedroom, at a square table, making an India-ink drawing. His crow-quill was rusty and made a thin whisper at each stroke. Peter McGillicuddy stood watching Sim with his head and shoulders bent to conform to the slope of the attic roof.
Shoved into corners and crevices, and filling the embrasure of the little dormer window that gave Sim light for his draftsmanship, were tennis-rackets, bats, hockey sticks, a shotgun, and a revolver, rusted stiff.
The air was stuffy with the smell of bird-skins which Sim had tried to mount, of photographic chemicals, of the neglected beginnings of a butterfly collection that moldered in one corner in a small dry-goods box topped with a window-pane.
These signs of restless boyish activity, groping out into every available channel in an endeavor to acquaint itself with this bewilderment called Life, held a kind of mute appeal for sympathy.
Sim did his work on some yellowed drafting paper which he had bought during a spasm of civil engineering. Now he handled the India ink not altogether unskilfully.
“See this 'X,' Lengthy?” Sim made one. “There's where we meet at midnight.”
McGillicuddy nodded solemnly.
Sim handed the plat to his satellite, “We meet right at this 'X' when the fire-station clock points twelve. Did you ever read 'The Blood of a Corsican?'”
“No, have you got it?” asked Peter eagerly.
“NO, THE boys wore it out reading it. What I wanted to tell you was, you must get there eggsactly at twelve; not before, not after. In 'The Blood of a Corsican,' Orsino, that's the feller who really done the murders, and believe me, Lengthy, he was a noble character, Orsino says: 'You are just as unpunctual to get to a place five minutes ahead of time as five minutes behind time; neither one is on time.'”
“Gee—I never thought of that before.”
“Well, you must think of it. In our profession, Lengthy, a fellow mustn't loiter around waiting for nobody. It would draw suspicion on both of 'em.”
The tall boy became silent again and stationary, with shoulder and head tilted parallel to the rafter.
The plat Peter received was merely a rough sketch of Leadville showing the location of Goodloe's jewelry store. It was territory which had been strange and uncharted to Peter only once in his life, when at the age of four he ran away from his mother.
“And Lengthy, if anything happens to you—if you get caught or anything—you want to remember this map, and eat it.”
“Eat it!”
“Sure you eat it! That destroys it completely, doesn't it? With the detectives right on you—you eat 'em.”
“Looks like they'd print 'em on crackers, or something——”
“Aw Geemeny Christmas!” Sim rose in brisk disgust. “Well, the next point is to wrap up that brick to smash the window.”
“Look here, Shorty,” said Peter, coming to life, “I've been thinking about smashing that window—that's giving old man Goodloe a pretty rotten deal, Shorty—bustin' out his big plate-glass window. Old man Goodloe's been pretty decent to us, Shorty, the time our baseball busted out one of his little windows—when we were kids.”
Sim scratched his head. “I'd thought of that, too.” The burglar stared unseeingly at three cocoons which had lain on his window-shelf ever since the foregoing summer in the fading hope that they would turn into butterflies. “Tell you what I b'lieve I'll do, Lengthy. When—er—me and her are a good safe way down in Mexico, I think I'll send old man Goodloe a check, in disguised handwriting, to pay for his window—I don't want old man Goodloe to lose nothing on this deal.”
“Sure not.”
“If that was his ruby, you know, Lengthy, I'd rather lose her than touch it, but when it's a mere traveling exhibition of Fine Arts or something——
"Sure, sure,” nodded Peter, understanding perfectly. Some moral scruple of the big fellow seemed relieved. He moved out into the center of the room where the roof permitted him to stand almost erect.
“And say, Lengthy,” went on Sim, also brightened by this straightening of a matter of conscience, “you're in half on this.”
Peter stared. “Half—what you mean?”
“Why I mean half that ruby's yours.”
The huge boy appeared shocked. “Half of five thousand dollars!”
“I bet it's nearer ten thousand!” declared Sim optimistically.
Both sums were so huge that they appeared practically the same viewed from the chronic penury of boyhood, One-half of infinity equals infinity.
THEN McGillicuddy's own spirit of self-sacrifice leaped up.
“Why, naw! Geemenettie naw! I wouldn't think of it. I ain't about to get married. I'm just helping you as a friend!”
Sim got up. “Now look here, Lengthy, half of that ruby's yours! No back talk. What kind of a fellow do you think I am, eh, Lengthy—what kind of a chap d'you take me for?”
Peter moistened his lips. Both boys were quivering at this emotional crescendo.
“But, Sim,” objected the tall boy with a sudden inspiration toward martyrdom, “that kain't be. Your girl gets it. We can't divide it.”
Sim's face changed. “Sure—sure. Irene gets it.” He kept forgetting Irene at intervals. “Well, now look here, Lengthy, if ever I can do anything for you, s'long as I'm above ground. Lengthy, call on me—for anything. I'm yours till Niagara Falls—”
“Oh it's nothing—nothing—” brushed aside Peter gruffly, very uncomfortable under such stress—— “nothing a tall. Now lemme see. We want some padding to go around this brick——”
“Sure!” Sim moved to the door, also glad of the relief. He opened it and called lustily down-stairs: “Mrs. Breen! Oh Mrs. Breen!”
When a woman's voice sang up from below, he continued:
“Send me a tow sack, up by Adele, please, Mrs. Breen!”
Instantly a shrill, angry, child's voice protested from somewhere that she was reading and could not be disturbed.
“Come along, Adele, be polite,” admonished the woman's voice.
“Aw, you don't have to be polite at home!” exploded the child shrilly.
“Adele, dear, how often have I explained to you——?”
“Politeness happens too often at home!” shrieked Adele, “and Sim Toyne—” a pause, then a directing of Adele's voice atticward. “What are you going to do with that tow sack, Sim Toyne?”
“Don't worry, Adele,” called down Sim hastily, then lifting his vocal pitch. “I'll come down and get it myself, Mrs. Breen!”
“No, I'll go!” A sudden clattering below told him that Adele was already sprinting kitchenward.
This shift disturbed Sim. He stepped back into his attic. “I wish I hadn't called that brat,” he said to Peter, as he hastily replaced some half-dozen things on the table to restore its ordinary appearance.
Almost in no time Adele came flying up the stairs with the sack in one hand and the book she had been reading held in the other, with a small forefinger marking her place. She kicked the door open and danced in like a dash of sunlight.
“Why, hello, Peter—I didn't know you were here.”
“Hello, Adele!”
“What do you want with the sack, Sim?” She tossed it down and blew some flakes of bran from her fingers.
“Oh—an experiment.”
“What sort of an experiment?”
Sim's attic was stuffed with relics of experiments, but to save his secret he could think of no possible experiment calling for a tow sack.
“Oh, I don't know, Adele, till I try it."
It was Sim's misfortune continually to underestimate Adele's mental resources.
“Wha-a-at! Don't know what you're going to do with it—how did you know you wanted a tow sack?”
An anecdote Sim had once heard gave him a loophole.
“Why, didn't you ever hear of Thomas A. Edison, Adele?” he asked brightly. “Edison never started experimenting until he had ever'thing, simply ever'thing. He would give fifty dollars to anybody who could just mention anything he didn't have. And a girl—about your size—won his fifty. Guess what she mentioned?”
“Don't know—what's that brick for?”
Sim's Edison effort had exhausted him. The best he could do was to spar for time by looking in the wrong direction and saying. “What brick?”
“Why that one on the table.” She pointed very definitely.
“Oh—that brick. Lengthy brought it up here.”
“What for?”
“Geemeny Crimeny, Adele, there the gentleman stands, you can ask him for yourself.” A gentle perspiration broke out on Sim's forehead.
"DIDN'T he bring it up to you?”
“It's a sample brick,” put in Peter's bass.
“Sample of what?”
“Oh Godfrey's Cordial, Adele, it's sample of some more bricks that's just like that brick!”
“What book you reading, Adele?” interposed Peter paternally.
“Slest, scobblers daughter-r starvinfluv. Who's going to buy bricks, Peter?”
“What did you say the name of the book was?” demanded Sim irritably.
“Celestee—the—Cobbler's—Daughter—or—Starving—for—Love!” She spaced it wrathfully. “What's the matter with your ears, Sim Toyne—full of wax?”
Sim straightened. He had a stranglehold. “Adele Breen, I'm going to tell your mother what you said.”
Adele switched uncomfortably. “Huh, I don't care; and I'll tell her you are going to do something with a brick and a sack you don't want her to know, too—that's what I'll do, Mister Sim Toyne!” She bent forward and waggled a pink finger at his face.
“Huh,” Sim shrugged without conviction, “we don't care.”
Adele opened her blue eyes wide. “Oh, you're both in it! Oh, you're both in it! Oh! Oh! Oh! I knew it was something bad! Oh!”
She danced up and down, clapping hands, with triumph and curiosity horror queerly mixed in her face and tones.
Sim clutched after a non-existent nonchalance. “Ho, listen at that kid—because we've got a brick and a sack— Ho, listen to her!”
“I'll find out from mama what you can with a brick and a sack!” cried Adele. “I'll ask daddy! I'll ask the garbage man! I'll find out! I'll find out! I'll find out!”
She danced about the attic as if possessed by forty little devils of betrayal, then danced out the door, bounced down the steps, still chanting, “I'll find out! I'll find out!”
The two boys stared at each other. Then by common impulse rushed to the common landing and craned over.
“Adele! Adele! Come back up here!”
Adele came flying back, her little forefinger still marking her place in the amorous exigencies of “Celeste, the Cobbler's Daughter.” As she came running up the steps, she looked continually into their faces, giving them no time at all for a conference.
SIM plunged, “Adele—you mustn't tell this!”
“Oh, no!” she removed her right forefinger from Celeste, substituted her left and with her right crossed her flat little chest.
“Well—we—we're going to kill some puppies and—throw 'em away—in this sack.”
“Who-weeeee! Sim Toyne, you're not going to do any such terrible thing!”
“Yes, we are!” asseverated Sim, not knowing whether this shriek implied distrust of truthfulness or moral condemnation.
“Whose little puppies? Oh, the poor little things—whose?”
Sim groped in his head for a name. There are some thirty thousand population in Leadville, with most of whom Sim was acquainted, but to save his soul, the only name he could think of was Mr. Goodloe's. He gave it.
“What has Mr. Goodloe done to you?”
“Nothing to me—to a friend.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“Me-e-e!”
“Yes, you!”
“What?”
Sim cleared his throat. “I was in there one day—just me and him—we were in there together—in his store, I mean, and—er—Mr. Goodloe said—he said— “What little yellow-headed pop-eyed brat is that anyway?”
“Uh-bout ME!” screamed Adele.
“He sure said it,” nodded Sim firmly. “He said you were meddlesome, and that you asked a thousand questions. Right then I thought, 'Old Goodloe, I'll git even with you for talking about the purtiest, sweetest little girl in Leadville in any such way—I'll kill your little old mean pups!' And I'm going to!”
Adele's eyes were brilliant at the affront. At that moment, Mr. Goodloe, the jeweler lost a friend, whom he was destined never to regain. A distaste for the kindly old man would linger in the heart of the grown-up Miss Breen long after she had forgot how it came to be planted there.
“Don't let a policeman catch you, Sim.”
“We won't—don't you tell.”
“I won't—do you need any more sacks?”
“No, this'll do—remember, not a word.”
“Oh, I won't.”
She turned and started down-stairs. “How many are there?”
“Six.”
“I wish there was a dozen!”
Sim and Peter turned back into the attic with long breaths of relief. Quite accidentally, Sim had stumbled upon a very helpful bit of information about women; one that every young man should know.
When Peter McGillicuddy went home, Sim Toyne spent the remainder of the afternoon making ready to leave the attic where he had lived and wondered since he was twelve years old. As he went about, the stuffy little room stood out with a new dearness as if he had never seen it before. And there was Doll, Mrs. Breen, and Adele. He could hardly imagine his life going on without those three. But he was giving them all up for a ruby and a woman.
Thought of the woman picked Sim's spirits up. The remainder of his life would be an endless basking in Mrs. Petway's smiles. However, his joy would be bitten by the secret of how he obtained the ruby.
Instantly he fancied himself a sort of Byronesque hero, leading a proud but remorseful life in some Mexican castle, rich, envied, but feared. Through it all, he would keep a gloomy watch over the sunny innocence of Mrs. Petway.
He could see her tripping to him through the castle halls with a nosegay; and after a little attempt to please him, she would sigh and say,
“Mr. Toyne—why is it that you never smile?”
And he would kiss her tenderly on the hair and say, “Leave me now, little one, I have other things to think of.”
The prospect of such hopeless remorse filled Sim with a shivering ecstasy. He would be a marked man. …
There must be hundreds of poets in our state penitentiaries.
Down-stairs a clock began to strike six, but was drowned in a chorus of hoarse whistles from furnaces, smelters and reduction plants. Through his dormer window, Sim saw Mount Massive turn russet against a green sky of infinite depth. The air grew cold by swift gradations. Between the bats of Sim's eyes, the street lights winked into brilliance and formally ended the day.
At half-past six, Adele came to the attic door and told Sim supper was ready. She delivered her message in a frightened voice, quite unlike the usual possessive Adele.
Sim said he was not hungry.
Adele stood in the doorway a moment, her hair a blur of gold in the shadows. She breathed in long audible sighs. Presently, in a good imitation of her mother's accents, she cadenced, “Oh, dear me, what is this world coming to?” and took her troubled little self down-stairs again.
Sim got briskly into action. He switched on his study light, picked up his padded brick and crammed it into a pocket. He studied the effect in a dusty mirror, drew it out and put it under his coat. He moved his body this way and that scrutinizing the result. It left him unsatisfied. He drew it out and wrapped it in a newspaper. The parcel looked suspiciously like a brick wrapped in a newspaper. So he added an outer roll of drawing-paper and converted it into a big bundle of engineer's plans, Any one now would certainly mistake him for an architect going down-town for night work.
HE tucked the bundle under his arm, took a last look about his attic, at his butterflies, a rough star-map, an embryonic wireless outfit, a boy-made easel for amateur oil painting. Sim drew a melancholy breath, much as Adele had done, blinked out his light and tiptoed down-stairs.
A few minutes later, Sim moved down Bonanza street with his cap over his eyes and his brick under his arm.
He walked nervously. The monotony of design gave him the impression that he was skirting a line of hostile forts.
The shouts of a group of children bursting out of one house and scooting across the lawn to another startled Sim like the sortie of an enemy. Down one yard came a dog under full lung power. It lined up alongside Sim just inside the fence, raving, offering to chew the boy to bits if he would only step inside.
Ordinarily, Sim would have stopped and by whistles and cooing, and by tentative offers of his hand, he would have reminded the brute that, a long time ago, an epoch or two, say in the Devonian age, the dog's forebears and Sim's forebears made a firm alliance against all the other animals of the globe, and from that good day, dog and man have been comrades and lovers. But to-night Sim quickened his pace and was glad when an ornamental cross-fence cut off this condemnation.
A whisper out of the shadows of some elms gave the fugitive another turn until he recognized the voice of Peter McGillicuddy. Peter was saying,
“Ain't the dogs bad to-night, Sim?”
A moment later Peter's big form materialized out of the darkness. The presence of his comrade reassured Sim. He did not chide the big fellow for unpunctual earliness, although it was condemned by Orsino, that philosopher ennobled by many murders.
“Sure are.”
“Wonder what's got into 'em?”
“Instinct. A dog can tell a bad man, Lengthy, every pop—dogs and babies.”
“Pshaw, how can they tell it?”
“By telegraphy.”
“Telegraphy?”
“Sure. Telegraphy is to be very sensitive and to get in report with somebody. Then every thing they think is telegraphed right into your brain.”
“Geewhillikins—that 'ud be grand in poker!”
“It wouldn't work in poker. Your heart's got to be pure, and you got to breathe through your backbone.”
“Backbone—say, you're kiddin'.”
“No. I got a book about it at home—Rager Yoger. If I hadn't decided to go into this robber business, I was thinking of taking it up. You keep your heart spotless and free from desire, and you get to be a divine healer—” and Sim could see himself moving about in long travel-stained robes, extending a hand, curing the ills of the world, impassible to all wrath or envy or greed or lust—a marked man. A shiver of desire for this sort of life trickled through him.
PETER stared down at him, “Breathing through your backbone—” suddenly he broke into an immense roaring laugh that rocked the street, “Well, I be jimswizzled, Shorty—breathing through your backbone!” he roared again.
Peter's mirth offend Sim deeply, and somehow, in the darkness, the tall boy sensed it at once, without a word said or a movement made. So he left off laughing at telepathy as abruptly as he began and walked along in discomfort. Presently in a different tone, he asked the hour. Sim drew a big nickel watch, maneuvered it into a beam from the street lamp, “Quarter till nine.”
Both slowed down a trifle in order not to arrive too early at the scene of the robbery. The two meandered on for a distance with a painful sense of separation. Peter wanted to apologize for his laughter, and after a while Sim felt this fact and the sense of tension slowly eased in their hearts. It made them meltingly confidential.
Sim said, “Lengthy, I ain't got a friend in the world I can trust now but you—I want you to promise me just one thing.”
“Sure, sure,” the tall boy was affected.
“If anything happens, Lengthy—if anything should happen——”
“Yes——”
“I want to be buried with my revolver in my right hand, layin' across my chest, Lengthy——”
“Godfrey's Cordial!” Intense admiration. Sim was now getting back to where Peter's admiration functioned.
SHIVERS of an artist's creative impulse moved Sim to further post mortem details.
“And, Lengthy, I don't want my hair brushed at all, just run your fingers through it, and buy me a red cravat, and have my pistol laying kinder slanting up across my chest.”
Tears of a profound and melancholy enjoyment blurred the stars for Sim. After all, his chosen profession promised rewards as exquisite as divine healing.
“If they get me you fix me that way, too,” said Peter.
“All right,” murmured Sim remotely.
A pattering of footsteps behind them startled the robbers into sudden flight. As they legged it along the elm-darkened sidewalk, a sharp voice on the verge of tears shrilled out:
“Now, you wait for me, Sim Toyne! I'm scared! You wait!”
Sim's diaphragm gave a spasm. He would much have preferred detectives. He slackened his gait.
“Gee-e-rusalum—Adele's follered us!”
“What!” Peter was as deeply shocked.
“That's her!”
“Le's run off'n leave her!”
“N-no—we kain't. She'd foller and foller and git lost.”
“Well, don't this beat hallelujah!”
Both boys stopped, staring back up the pavement in dismay. They could see Adele's small pursuing figure darting through splotches of light, a mere flutter of skirts and a glint of hair.
“I s-swan!” groaned Peter as he watched her coming.
But Sim girded on his moral arms to repel boarders. As Adele flitted up, breathless, he said solemnly, “Adele, you'll haff to go back.”
The child came to a dead stop, amazed at this reception.
“Why, Sim?”
“You kain't go with us, that's all.”
“Kain't I see the little dogs killed?” she quavered.
“No—little girls mustn't see little dogs killed.”
Adele stood her ground, staring up at Sim through the gloom, “You aren't my mother, Sim Toyne.”
“Whether I'm your mother or not, you're not going——”
“Sim—pullease——”
The boy remained cold and unresponsive.
When Adele saw that begging was not going to work, she snapped into a sudden temper.
“Can if I will and will if I want to!”
“Adele Breen, you are not going to follow us to-night!”
The pronunciation of her full name, the cold correctness of Sim's grammar, daunted the little girl.
“Si-Sim, I couldn't go to s-sleep in my bed, S-Sim. And it scares me to lie awake, S-Sim,” pleaded Adele tearfully. “Slim, pullease let me go with you so I won't be scared, Sim, pullease, Sim——”
Sim was thawing, melting, abominably. His arms ached to grab up the little girl, to kiss her fright away and let her go, but he couldn't. He had to hold his front lines. “No, if you're afraid to lie awake in your bed, you can walk around town till you get sleepy—but you kain't foller us!”
With this helpful advice, Sim turned stiffly and moved off down the street.
Instantly there was uproar behind him. Adele screamed, flung out her arms like a football tackle and rushed full tilt, head on, into the ornamental iron fence. The bump rattled the railings and genuine pain colored Adele's shrieks.
Sim whirled. Adele was butting her golden head against the railings. Sim ran back. “Quit it!” he yelled. “Stop it, you little ignoramus!” He caught her hands and jerked her away from her self-torture, “Shut up! You can go!”
He stood with her, completely nonplussed what to do next.
“Oh, Adele,” he groaned, “what makes you such a bad little girl?”
“God,” sniffed Adele, on the authority of the Sunday-school. She rubbed her head with one hand and possessed herself of Sim's fingers with the other.
Sim let her have them. Through that human impulse to keep on trying to do a task when all hope is lost, the trio continued down the street toward the scene of the robbery.
THE police of Leadville, and of all other cities in general, have a reputation for sleeping on their beats, for loafing in all-night groceries, and for dependable absenteeism when lawlessness is afoot. These ideas are fostered by the movies, vaudeville sketches and Sherlock Holmes tales. The reason why the police are kept very much in the background of such works is because the inopportune appearance of a cop in the front pages of our picaresque novels would have ruined many a fine romance.
Sim Toyne subscribed to these articles of faith. Therefore when the hobbledehoy peered around Wilson's grocery at the junction of Bonanza and Santa Cruz he was amazed to see Mike Callahan, whom he knew very well, patrolling back and forth in front of Goodloe's jewelry-store. The three crept into the concealing shadow of some banana cases and squatted, looking at Mike.
Mike walked back and forth at a leisurely pace. At the end of his beat he gave his night-stick a kind of flirt that sent it spinning to the end of its thong, then a jerk, which continued the spin, but restored it to his hand. Sim determined some day to borrow Mike's stick and try it.
Adele did not have to stoop much. She leaned against Sim and yawned luxuriously. She was the only one at ease and comfortable.
“Getting sleepy, Adele?” asked Sim, hopefully.
“No-o-o,” Adele yawned again, stretching up her arms, pulled gently at Sim's hair and ears, and relapsed into her glassy-eyed watching of Mike.
The policeman came and went and dangled his club with automaton-like regularity. His footsteps approached out of darkness; then he appeared, came quite close to their corner, twirled his club, turned, and melted softly into the gloom again. When Mike was at the farther end of his beat, they could not hear him. Then Santa Cruz street lay before them in silence splotched with street lights. It seemed waiting—ready to leap at something. If everything had begun to rumble and move about, it would not have surprised the adolescents. Perhaps their brains still held residual impressions of the earth when it was young and plastic, as they were now; when earthquakes and cataclysms crouched behind every transient immobility.
A belated pedestrian came hurrying by. The sound of his footsteps carried a long way through the night. Somewhere a cock began crowing. It stirred up others. There were cocks everywhere. They crowed in a score of different keys, with strange individual inflections.
“Gee!” groaned Peter, shifting his cramped position with pain, “how do other fellows get in to—er—kill little dogs?”
Adele was leaning hard on Sim. Her head pushed in between the boy's shoulder and chin. She had thrust an arm over the top button of Sim's coat, and now much of her weight hung on the button from her armpit. Something like a hook in Adele's hip cut into Sim's thigh and slowly produced numbness. Hanging like this the little girl enjoyed a dewy slumber.
“She's asleep,” said Sim. “Talk anyway you want to.”
“How do other fellows rob jewelry-stores, if a cop prances up and down all night long?” Peter seemed aggrieved.
SIM suppressed a yawn. “O-oh, they cut tunnels—or wait for a stroke of luck, like we're doing.”
Peter eased an aching leg. “I say, Shorty—you're fonder of married life than I'd be.”
That recalled to Sim why he had come. He immediately roused and grew dithyrambic. “Lengthy, it's love—you don't know what love is, Lengthy. Just for a smile from her, Lengthy, I'd wade into fire, drink boiling lead—God knows I wish her house would get on fire so I could run in and— Geeminy!”
For at that moment Adele's hooks gave way and she plumped down on the ground. She started a sleepy crying, but Sim leaned over, picked her up, petted her, told her not to cry, and asked if she didn't want to go home.
Adele became sufficiently awake to admit she preferred home.
Sim stood her off at arms' length as she rubbed her eyes. “Well—can you find your way back home?”
Adele blinked about without a notion of where she was. At that moment she saw Mike Callahan appearing out of the shadows. She wriggled out of Sim's hands. “I'll make Mr. Callahan carry me home,” she yawned, “then you can go on and kill the puppies.” She yawned again. “Leave one,” she directed, through some freak of generosity; then before Sim could collect his wits, or move to stop her at all, she started trotting after the policeman, calling: “Mr. Callahan! Oh, Mr. Callahan, wait for me—I'm scared——”
The amateur burglars held their breaths. Patrolman Callahan stared in the blankest astonishment at this fluffy little creature who had dropped out of nowhere onto his beat.
“Little gir-rl, and where did ye come fr-rom?”
Adele held up sleepy arms toward him. “I was stayin' all night wiv a little girl friend, Mister Callahan,” she yawned and used the most babyish accent,
“Yis, darlin', and where was that?”
“I don't know, Mr. Callahan. I—I waked up, and I was so scared. But mama told me not to cry. And I didn't. But I wanted to go home. So I slipped out, but I didn't cry. Then a great big dog he barked at me. It was such a great big dog, Mr. Callahan——”
“Yis, darlin'——”
“And I run and run and run and run—and then I saw you——”
The blue Samson squatted on the balls of his feet to receive the Delilah in his arms. “Ye poor-r, br-rave little darlin',” he crooned, as Adele adapted herself to the contour of his stomach, chest and shoulder, “and can ye raymimber ye're number and strate?”
“Five-two-six Bonanza,” yawned Adele, turning in as obviously as if she had taken a berth on a Pullman.
And the Pullman moved off.
The two boys stared after the officer's broad back.
“Can you beat it?” gasped Peter.
“Lengthy,” philosophized Sim gloomily, “they come into this world able to put it across——”
The burglars arose slowly from their cramped position and hobbled around to the front of Goodloe's jewelry-store.
Goodloe's show-window was a big plate-glass front, flanked by a tall narrow-glass side; and this side formed part of the alcove of the doorway.
The boys walked quickly down the pavement and stepped into the alcove where they were concealed from the sweep of the street. The arc light on the corner played over their retreat with a hard purplish glare and blanched everything in the show-window, ruby and all.
The moment Sim actually was on the scene of the robbery, nervousness seized him. The dreamy glory of the affair was nailed hard and fast to this harshly lighted doorway. A sense of wrong-doing seized him—the first that had crowed his mind. His hand shook so he could hardly remove the papers from the brick.
Finally he got them off and looked around. “See anybody, Lengthy?” he whispered out of a dry mouth.
Peter stuck his head out of the alcove and peered up and down. “Nobody at all,” he whispered.
Sim was queerly disappointed. His heart sank. He wanted to quit his job—if Peter had not been there. “Say, Peter,” he whispered suddenly, “we can't do this unless we paste strips of paper over the glass——”
“SURE we can,” returned McGillicuddy phlegmatically. “You're thinking about pasting strips of paper over the windows in Paris so the shock from the German shells wouldn't break 'em.”
“Yeh—that's a fact,” admitted Sim desperately.
“Hit it!” said Peter.
Sim had to now. If he stopped now, Peter would never look up to him again.
“Hit it!”
Sim was shuddering as if with an ague. He swung his brick against the heavy glass. It drummed, rebounded, and left the pane intact.
“Hit it! Smash it hard!” rushed Peter, suddenly catching the excitement. “That cop'll be back in a minute!”
Sim drew back for a desperate swing. At that moment the door flew open and a smallish man shot out onto the burglars. One of his fists caught Sim in the ear. A mighty gong roared through the boy's head. He slumped against the side of the alcove. Peter McGillicuddy turned and dived at their assailant. It was too high a tackle. Both drove through the doorway and smashed down on the floor inside. With a shock, Sim saw his big friend had been twisted underneath during the fall, and the smash had been Peter's head against the flooring. Sim saw a blur of swinging arms and flying fists in the hard light. He heaved up from the wall and lunged into the mêlée.
As he dived, a foot smashed Sim on the chest and stopped his breathing. But the boy flung his arms around it, froze to it. The foot shook Sim back and forth, so the youngster's head snapped to and fro, and the jewelry-store seemed to jiggle in every direction. With a gasp and a wrench, Sim twisted his body to one side of that terrible foot and flung himself into the little man's crotch. He wriggled within range of the head and began a furious bastinado with clenched fists. At every lick the head bobbed down.
“Leggo Lengthy! Turn Lengthy loose!” he shrieked at the owner of the head. “Leggo Lengthy—” for Lengthy was making queer stertorous noises. “Leggo—O-o-oh-eee!”
Sim's voice shot up in a scream of pain from a sudden crushing of his stomach. In the midst of his hammering the little iron man had locked his feet behind Sim, straightened his legs and was now squeezing the life out of the boy with a crotch hold. Sim felt as if hot packing were being forced into his chest. The hard purplish light twinkled red. The boy writhed upward, screaming. He pushed desperately at the small of the man's back, screaming, trying to lift his body from this hot, tearing constriction.
His breath was going. “Stop! Stop!” he croaked from the top of his lungs, “O-oh—God—Stop!” He flapped down prone on the terrible little man's back, and patted his shoulder—that ancient signal of defeat in the wrestling ring.
Perhaps the defender of Goodloe's store had once been a wrestler. At any rate the pressure relaxed somewhat on Sim's tortured bowels.
“Got enough?” asked a voice not even out of breath.
“U-ugh—more'n enough——”
“You young devils!”
The three lay motionless on the floor. Peter's breathing also sounded a little easier. However, the boys knew that the python into whose coils they had fallen was ready to resume pressure at an instant's notice. Then the eternal admiration of boy for man bubbled up in Sim:
“Gee, mister—what a crotch holt you got!”
Their captor made no reply to this, but suddenly released both boys and got to his feet before they could stir from the floor.
“Stay where you are,” he directed.
They stayed, but Peter gargled as if from a very sore throat, “Gan we sed ub?”
“Set up!”
They did and looked at the fellow. Sim could but reflect in amazement that he was certainly a little man to overcome two such huskies as they.
THE protector of Goodloe's jewelry-store seemed to be lost in meditation. Finally he snapped: “What's behind this—a gang of kid sneak-thieves?”
Sim straightened where he sat. “No!” indignantly, “we're not—not by a hell of a lot! I—I was doing this for a—a—a—friend——”
“Warm friendship!”
“It's a—a—lady friend,” blurted out Sim, growing a darker hue in the purplish light.
“O-o-oh——”
Something in the little man's long-drawn “Oh!” made Sim very uncomfortable.
“Do you realize I could send you both to the pen for this?”
“We wasn't doing nothing but standing in the alcove,” grumbled Peter, “and you jumped out and beat us up.”
“You brought that brick along, I suppose, to drum tunes on windows—and sing, perhaps?”
“I won't tell you no lie,” said Sim. “We were going to break in.”
“You astonish me.”
“Well—we was.”
“What did your lady friend want,” pursued the questioner curiously, “that she should send you on such a dubious errand?”
“Why, Godfrey's Cordial, man!” cried Sim greatly surprised. “She wanted the replicker, of course!”
The man was surprised in his turn. “Replica—of what?”
“The ruby—the Rajah's ruby!”
THE little fellow backed to the counter, pulled himself up backward into a sitting posture and broke into an amazed laugh. “So that's what you thought—replica of a jewel—they think more damn things! That was one hell of a stroke you were about to pull—steal a replica—” Here he went into full mirth. “Well, I be damn!”
“What's the matter with swiping a replica for a lady just about crazy about it?” demanded Sim, vaguely affronted.
“Why, I'll give it to you, if it's for a skirt!” cried the little man in a kind of indignation and disgust. “Lord! I know how the woman hunch feels—if you'd come to me in the first place—” he jumped off the counter and started forward to the window.
“Give me the replica?” gasped Sim, springing up and following, “a twelve-thousand-dollar replica——”
“Replica, hell—I got a half-bushel of 'em. Bought 'em at auction in Frisco—off that old tower of jewels they tore down.” He glanced around at them. “Say, don't you fellows mention that till I get out of town. Folks thinks different things about my rubies, but none of 'em don't think nothing as cheap as it is.”
The boys gasped a chorus, “No, no!” “Geemenettie, no!” “Say, Shorty, this makes it easy sailin' for you, don't it!” “Well, if I'd only of known——”
Sim was utterly confounded at the outcome. It was his first revelation of the fundamental brummagem of life—imitations of replicas. Then the idealist in him weighed this left-over from the old Frisco Exhibition.
“Say—look here, Lengthy—I can't do that!”
“Kain't do what?”
“Give her that.”
“Why-y-y!”
“That book of mine says a man kain't have a happy married life based on deception. You kain't expect me to offer Mrs. Petway a phony imitation and try to pretend like it's a real imitation. You can't have no hap——”
The little man, who was leaning to get it, whirled so suddenly it stopped Sim in mid-sentence. “Mrs. Petway?”
“Yeh, Mrs. Irene Petway—she and me are going to marry——”
“Where she live?”
“Forty-two Guadelupe.”
“Know the way?”
Peter began laughing. “Gee, he ought to—goes there every day.”
“Then, come on, le's go!” The little man was already running to the back end of the jewelry-store. He reappeared a moment later, shaking himself into his overcoat.
Something about the small athlete, a kind of inward boiling, reduced the boys to a complete and an apprehensive silence. They followed him out into the street. He slammed the door and locked it.
“Which way?”
They pointed simultaneously. He started off swiftly and the two trailed along at his heels. His overcoat snapped behind him and the boys sometimes had to trot to keep up. As he raced along he boiled out fragmentary sentences, mostly profanity.
“Damn fool—jealous as hell—knew she was somewhere in this damn town——”
He seemed so angry, so wrought upon; his voice shook so that neither of the hobbledehoys ventured any questions or observations other than to indicate the correct street turnings.
When Peter pointed out forty-two Guadelupe, the little man told them briefly that he could manage the rest of the way by himself. He left them at the corner, in front of the grocery-store as if they had been hitched.
BOTH boys strained their eyes after him as he grew indistinct in the shadows. They heard him clanging at the door-bell as if forty-two were on fire. Came a long wait.
During the interim Sim was afraid he would not be able to hear anything further for the drumming of the blood in his ears.
Then a woman's voice screamed, “Mr. Petway! Husband!” It was Irene's. It held the overtones of a swift and blinding joy. Two figures on the stoop melted into one. Sim stood peering into the gloom, his mouth open and dry. He could hear the woman sobbing and the man's voice trembling. “And for God's sake, Irene, no more jealousy … you running off … it … it's hell.” The two vanished from the stoop. The door closed.
Sim stood shivering and staring up melancholy Guadelupe Prospect until Peter touched his arm.
“It's getting toward morning. Shorty—we'd better sneak home and slip in before anybody gits awake.”
Sim turned and fell in with his friend's step. After a block or two, he moistened his lips and was able to speak.
“Lengthy,” he said, “I've got a book at home, and it says, Lengthy, i-it says, if you l-l-love a woman like you ort, Lengthy y-you'll be gug-glad to give her up, sh-sh-she'll be huh-happier that way——”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1965, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 59 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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