Shorty McCabe Read online

  CHAPTER II

  What did we do with Homer, eh? Ah, forget it! Say, soon's he got back totown and found he could navigate 'round by himself, he begins to countup expenses. Then he asks us to put in a bill.

  "Bill!" says I. "What for? I'm no hired man. I've been doin' this forfun." Leonidas says the same.

  But Homer wouldn't have it that way. He says we've done him a lot ofgood, and lost our valuable time, and he'll feel hurt if we don't lethim make us a little present. With that he pries open a fat leathergreen goods case, paws over a layer of yellow backs two or three inchesthick--and fishes out a couple of ten spots.

  "Stung!" says Leonidas, under his breath.

  "Homer," says I, shovin' 'em back at him, "if you're as grateful as allthat, I'll tell you what you'd better do--keep these, and found a Homefor Incurable Tight-wads."

  Then we loses him in the crowd, and each of us strikes out for himself.Blessed if I know where Leonidas strayed to, but I'm dead sure of theplace I fetched up at. It was It'ly, North It'ly. Ever been there? Well,don't. Nothin' but dagoes and garlic and roads that run up hill. Say,some day when my roll needs the anti-fat treatment, I'm goin' to sendover there and have 'em put a monument that'll read: "Here's whereShorty McCabe was buried alive for five weeks."

  Doing? Wasn't a blamed thing doing there. We were just assassinatin'time, that's all. But the Boss thought he liked it, for a while, so Ihad to hang on. The Boss? Oh, he's just the Boss. Guess you wouldn'tknow him--he hasn't been cured by three bottles of anything, and isn'tmuch for buyin' billboard space. But he's a star all right. He's got amint somewhere, a little private mint of his own, that runs days andnights and overtime. Scotty mine? No, better'n that--defunctgrandmothers and such. It's been comin' his way ever since he was bigenough to clip a coupon. Don't believe he knows how much he _has_ got,but that don't worry him. He don't even try to spend the gate receipts;just uses what he wants and lets the rest pyramid.

  Course, he's out of my class in a way; but then again, he ain't. The waywe come to hook up was like this: You see, when I quits Homer, I takesthe first thing that comes along, which happens to be the Jericho Lamb.He wants me to train him for his go with Grasshopper Jake, and I did.

  Well, we pulls it off in Denver. The Lamb he bores in like a stonecrusher for five rounds. Then he stops a cross hook with his jaw and isjarred some. That brings out the yellow. Spite of all I could say, hestops rushin' and plays for wind and safety. Think of that, with theGrasshopper as groggy as a five days old calf! Well, I saw what wascoming to _him_, right there. When the bell rings I chucks my towel to arubber and quits. I hadn't hired out for no wet nurse, and I told thecrowd so.

  Just as I was makin' my sneak this quiet-speakin' chap falls inalongside and begins to talk to me. First off I sized him up for one ofthem English Johnnies that had lost his eyeglass. But that's where I wasdead wrong. He wasn't no Johnnie, and he wasn't no tinhorn sport. But hewas a new one on me. They don't grow many like him, I guess, so nowonder I didn't get wise right away.

  "Think the Lamb's all in?" says he.

  "All in!" says I. "He never had anything to put in. He was licked beforethe bell tapped. And me trainin' him for five weeks! I'm goin' to kickmyself all the way back to New York."

  "I'll help you," says he. "I backed that Lamb of yours to win."

  "How much?" says I.

  "Oh, only a few hundred."

  "But you ain't seen him licked yet," says I.

  "I'll take your word for it," says he.

  Say, that was no tinhorn play, was it? He goes off and leaves his goodmoney up, just on a flier like that.

  "You're the real goods," says I.

  "I can return the sentiment," says he.

  So we took the midnight East. When we got the morning papers at Omaha wesaw that the Lamb only lasted half-way through the seventh, and'possumed the count at that. Well, we got some acquainted before we hitChicago, and by the time we'd landed in Jersey City I'd signed articleswith him for a year. He calls it secretary, but I holds out for sparrin'partner.

  Oh, he can handle the mitts some, all right; none of your parlorY. M. C. A. business, either, but give and take. He strips at one hundredand forty and can stand punishment like a stevedore. But, of course,there's no chance of ever gettin' him on the platform. He likes to go hisfour rounds before dinner, just to take the drab coloring off the world ingeneral. That's the way he puts it.

  Take him all around, he's a thoroughbred. I know that much, but afterthat I don't follow him. I used to wonder sometimes. Give most Johnnieshis pile and turn 'em loose, and what would they do? They'd wear out theclub window-sills, and take in pink teas, and do the society turn. Butnot for him. He's a mixer, the Boss is. He wants to see things, allkinds.

  Sometimes he lugs me along and sometimes he don't. It all depends onwhether I'd fit in. When he heads for Fifth Avenue I know I'm let out.But when he gets into a sack coat and derby hat I'm bettin' that maybewe'll fetch up somewheres on the East Side. Perhaps it'll be the grandannual ball of the Truck Drivers' Association, or just one of themAnarchist talkfests in the back room of some beer parlor. There's notelling. We may drink muddy coffee out of dinky brass cups with a lot ofSyrian rug sellers down on Washington Street, or drop into the middle ofa gang of sailors down on Front Street.

  And I'm no bodyguard, mind. The Boss ain't in much need of that. But helikes to have some one to talk to, and I guess most of his friends don'tgo in for such promiscuous visitin' lists as he does. I like it wellenough, but where _he_ gets any fun out of it I can't see. I put it upto him once, and what do you suppose he says? Asks me if I ever heard ofa duck by the name of Panzy de Lean.

  "Sounds kind of familiar," says I. "Don't he run a hotel or somethingdown to Palm Beach?"

  "You're warm," says the Boss, "but you've mixed your dates. Old Panzystruck the east coast about four hundred years before our friend Flaglerannexed it. And he wasn't in the hotel business. Exploring was his line.He was looking for a new kind of mineral water that he was going to callthe Elixir of Life. Well, in some ways Panzy and I are alike."

  It was a josh, all right, that he was handin' out, but he meantsomethin' by it, for the Boss ain't the kind to talk just for the sakeof making a noise. I never let on but what I was next. Later in theseason I had a chance to come back at him with it, for along in Februarywe got under way for Palm Beach ourselves.

  "Goin' to take a hack at the 'lixir business?" I says.

  "No, Shorty," says he. "Just going to dodge a few blizzards and watchthe mob."

  But he didn't like it much, being in that push, so we took a jump overto Bermuda, where everything's so white it makes your eyes ache. Thatdidn't suit him, either.

  "Shorty," says he one day, "you didn't sign for any outside tour, butI've got the go fever bad. Can you stand it for awhile in foreignparts?"

  "I'm game," says I, not knowing what I was to be up against.

  So we hiked back to New York and Mister 'Ankins--he's the lady-like gentthat stays home an' keeps our trousers creased, an' juggles the laundrybag and so forth, when we're there--Mr. 'Ankins he packs a couple ofsteamer trunks and off we starts.

  Well, we hit a lot of outlandish places, like Paris and Berlin; andfinally, when things began to warm up some, and I knew by the calendarthat the hokey-pokey men had come out on the Bowery, we lands in MonteCarlo. Say, I'd heard a lot about Monte Carlo on and off--there was asong about it once, you know--but if that's the best imitation of PhilDaly's they can put up over there, they'd better go out of business. Notthat the scenery isn't bang-up and the police protection O. K., but thegame--well, I've seen more excitement over a ten-cent ante.

  The Boss didn't care much for that sort of thing anyway. He touched 'emup for a stack or two, but almost went to sleep over it. It wasn't untilOld Blue Beak butted in that our visit began to look interestin'. He wasa count, or a duke, or something, with a name full of i's and l's, but Icalled him Blue Beak for short. The Boss said for a miniature wordpainting that couldn't be bettered.
Never saw a finer specimen ofhand-decorated frontispiece in my life. It wasn't just red, nor purple.It was as near blue as a nose can get. Other ways, he was a tall, skinnyold freak, with a dyed mustache and little black eyes as shifty as a foxterrier's. He was as polite, though, as a book agent, and as smooth asthe business side of a banana skin.

  "What's his game," says I to the Boss, after Blue Beak and him hadswapped French conversation for an hour. "Is it gold bricks or greengoods?"

  "My friend, the count," says the Boss, "wants to rent us a castle, allfurnished and found; a genuine antique, with a pedigree that runs backto Marc Antony."

  "A castle!" says I. "What's that the cue to? And how did he guess youwere a come-on?"

  "Every American is a come-on, Shorty," says the Boss. "But this is a newproposition to me. However, I mean to find out. I've told him to comeback after dinner."

  And old Blue Beak had his memory with him, all right. He came back. Heand the Boss had a long session of it. In the morning the Boss says tome:

  "Shorty, throw out your chest; you're going to live in a castle for awhile."

  Then he told me how it happened. Blue Beak wasn't any con. man at all,just one of those hard-up gents whose names look well in a list ofguests, but don't carry weight with the paying teller. He was in such arush to get the ranch off his hands, though, that price didn't seem tofigure much. That's what made the Boss sit up and take notice. He was agreat one for wanting to know why.

  "We'll start to-day," says he.

  So off we goes, moseyin' down into It'ly on a bum railroad, staying atbummer hotels, and switching off to a rickety old chaise behind a pairof animated frames that showed the S. P. C. A. hadn't got as far asIt'ly yet. Think of riding from the Battery to White Plains in a FifthAvenue stage! That would be a chariot race to what we took before wehove in sight of that punky castle. After that it was like climbingthree sets of Palisades, one top of the other, on a road that did thecorkscrew all the way.

  "That's your castle, is it?" says I, rubberin' up at it. "Looks like astorage warehouse stranded on Pike's Peak. Gee, but I wouldn't like tofall out of one of those bedroom windows! You'd never hit anything foran hour. Handy place to have company, though; wouldn't have to put onthe potatoes until you saw 'em coming. So that's a castle, is it? Idon't wonder old Blue Beak had a lot of conversation to unload. If Ilive up there all summer I shall accumulate enough talk to last me therest of my life."

  "Oh, I don't imagine we'll be lonesome," puts in the Boss. "I fancy Icaught sight of one or two of our neighbors on the way."

  "You did?" says I. "Where?"

  "Behind the rocks," says he, kind of snickering.

  But I never savvied. I'd had my eyes glued to that dago Waldorf-Astoriabalanced up there on that toothpick of a mountain. I had a batty ideathat the next whiff of breeze would jar it loose. But when they'd openedup a gate like the double doors of an armory, and let us in, I forgotall that. Say, that castle was the solidest thing I ever run across. Thewalls were so thick that the windows looked like they were set at theend of tunnels. In the middle was a big court, such as they have inthese swell new apartment houses, and a lot of doors and windows openedon that.

  "Much as 'leven rooms and bath, eh?" says I.

  "The Count assures me that there are two hundred and odd rooms, notreckoning the dungeons," said the Boss. "I hope we'll find one or two ofthem fit to live in."

  We did, just about that. A white-headed old villain, who looked as ifhe'd just escaped from a "Pirates of Penzance" chorus--Vincenzo, hecalled himself--took our credentials and then showed us around the shop.There was a dining-room about the size of the Grand Central train shed.Say, a Harlem man would have wept for joy at sight of it. And there wasa picture gallery that had Steve Brodie's collection beat a mile. As forbedrooms, there was enough to accommodate a State convention. The onlyrunning water in sight, though, was in the fountain out in the court,and the place looked as though when the gas man made his last call he'dtaken the fixtures along with the meter.

  Yet the Boss seemed to be tickled to death with the whole shootingmatch. At dinner that night he made me sit at one end of the dining-roomtable while he sat at the other, and we were so far apart we had toshout at each other when we talked. The backs of some of thosedining-room chairs were more than eight feet tall. It was like leaningup against a billboard. The waiters looked like stage villains out of ajob, and whenever they passed the potatoes I peeled my eye for a knifeplay. It didn't come though. Nothing did.

  We put in nearly a week rummaging through that moldy old barracks. Itwas three days before I could come down to breakfast without gettinglost. The Boss found a lot to look at and paw over; old books andpictures, rusty tin armor and such truck. He even poked around in thecoal cellars that they called dungeons.

  I liked being up in the towers best. I'd go up there and look about duewest, where New York was the last time I saw it. I never wanted wingsquite so bad as I did then. And, say, I'd given up a month's salary fora sporting extra some nights. Dull? Why, there are crossroads up inSullivan County that would seem like the Tenderloin alongside of thatplace.

  Funny thing, though, was that the Boss was so stuck on it. He'd gasabout the lakes, and the mountains, and the sky, and all that, pointing'em out to me as if they were worth seeing, when I'd seen better'n thatmany a time, painted on back drops--and could get away from 'em when Iwanted. But here it was a case of nowhere to stay but in. You couldn'tgo pikin' around the landscape without falling off the edge.

  Guess I'd have gone clean nutty if it hadn't been for the little gloveplay we did every afternoon. We had some of the chorus hands fix up anice lot of straw in a corner of the courtyard, so's to sort ofupholster the paving stones, and after we got used to the new foot-workit was almost as good as a rubber mat.

  We'd been having a gingery little go one day, with the whole crew of thecastle, from head purser down to the second assistant pan wrastler,holding their breath in the background, and I was playing shower bathfor the Boss with a leather bucket, dipping out of the fountain pool andsousing it over him, when I spots a deadhead in the audience.

  She'd been playin' peek-a-boo behind one of them big stone pillars, butI guess she had got so interested that she forgot and stepped out intothe open. She was a native, all right; but say, she wasn't any back-rowdago girl. She was in the prima donna class, she was. Ever see Melbamade up for the "Carmen" act? Well, this one was about half Melba'ssize, but for shape and color she had her stung to a whisper; and as forwardrobe, she had it all on. Gold hoops in her ears, tinkly things onher jacket, and a rainbow dress with the reds and greens leading thefield. Eyes were her strong point, though--regular forty candle powers.She had the current all switched on, too, and a plumb centre range onthe Boss.

  Now he wasn't exactly in reception costume, the Boss wasn't. When he'dknocked off his runnin' shoes it left him in a pair of salmon trunksthat cleared the knees considerable. He'd made a fine ad. for a physicalculture school, just as he stood; for he's well muscled, and hisunderpinning mates up, and he don't interfere when he walks. The coldwater had brought out the baby pink all over him, and he looked like oneof these circus riders does on the four sheet posters. He had thelime-light, too, for a streak of sun comin' down between the towers justhit him. I see the girl wasn't missin' any of these points. It wasn'tany snap-shot she was takin', it was a time exposure.

  "Who's your lady friend in the wings?" says I to the Boss.

  "Where?" says he.

  I jerks my thumb at her. For a minute there wasn't a word said. The Bosswasn't able, I guess, and the girl never moved an eyelash. Then he yellsfor the bath towel and makes a break inside, me after him. When we'drubbed down and got into our Broadway togs, we chases back and organizesourselves into a board of inquiry. Who was she--regular boarder, or justtransient? Where did she come from? And why? Likewise how, trolley,subway, or balloon?

  But I'm blessed if that whole gang didn't go as mum as a lot of railroadhands after a smash-up. Why, they hadn
't seen no such lady, cross theirhearts they hadn't. Maybe it was old Rosa, yes? And Rosa a sylph thatwould fit tight in a pork barrel! A goat, then?

  "Let's give 'em the third degree," says I.

  So we done it, locked 'em all in a room and put 'em on the carpet one byone. They was scared stiff, too stiff to talk. All but old Vincenzo, thewhite-haired old pirate the count had left in charge. He was a lovelypeagreen under the gills, but he made a stagger at putting up a game oftalk. No, he hadn't seen no one. He had been watching their excellenciesin their little affair of honor. Still, he couldn't swear that _we_hadn't seen some one. Folks did see things at the castle; he had seensights himself, though generally after dark. He remembered a song abouta beautiful young lady who, back in the seventeen hundred and something,had--

  But I shut him off there. This fairy might have seen seventeen summers,or maybe eighteen, but she was no antique. I could kiss the Book onthat. She was a regular Casino broiler. I made a point of this. Itdidn't feaze the old sinner, though. He went on perjuring himself ascheerful as a paid witness, and he'd have broken the Ananias record ifhe'd had time.

  "That will do for now," says the Boss, in a kind of"step-up-front-there" tone. "If you don't know who she was just now,we'll let it go at that. But by to-morrow you'll know the whole story.It'll be healthier for all hands if you do."

  Vincenzo, though, didn't have a proper notion of what he was up against.Next day he knew less than the day before. He was ready to swear thewhole outfit, by all the saints in the chapel, that there hadn't been agirl on the premises.

  "Bring him along, Shorty," says the Boss, starting downstairs. "There'sa hole in the sub-cellar that I want this old pirate to look through."

  If that hole had been cut for an ash chute it was a dandy, for themuzzle of it was a mile more or less from anything solider'n air. Weskewered Vincenzo's arms to the small of his back and let him down bythe heels until he had a bird's-eye view of three counties. Then wepulled him up and tested his memory.

  It worked all right. That upside-down movement had shook up his thoughtworks. He was as anxious to testify as the front benchers at a Bowerymission on soup day. We loosened the cords a bit, set him where he couldsee the chute plain, and told him to blaze away.

  Lucky the Boss knows Eye-talyun, for old Vincenzo couldn't separatehimself from English fast enough. But they had me guessing what it wasall about. I couldn't make out why the old chap had to use up all thedago words in the box just to tell who was the lady that had the privateview. Once in a while the Boss would jab in a question, and then oldVincenzo would work his jaw all the faster. When it was all over theBoss looks at me as pleased as though he'd got money from home, andsays:

  "Shorty, how's your nerve?"

  "Not much below par," says I. "Why?"

  "Because," says he, "they're after us--brigands."

  "Brigands!" says I. "Tut, tut! Don't tell me that this dead and alivecountry can show up anything like that."

  "It can," says he. "The woods are full of 'em."

  Then he gives me the framework of what old Vincenzo had been tellinghim. The prima donna girl, it seems, was a lady brigandess, daughter ofthe heavy villain that led the bunch. She'd come in to size us up andmake an estimate as to what we'd fetch on a forced sale. They hadspotted us from the time we registered and had been hangin' aroundoutside laying for us to separate. Their game was to pinch one of us anddo business with the other on a cash basis--wanted some one left whocould go away and cash a check, you see. When we didn't show nodisposition to take after dinner promenades or before breakfast ramblesthey ups and tell Vincenzo that they wants the run of the castle andpromises to toast his toes if they don't get it.

  They don't have to promise but once, for Vincenzo has been through themill. It was this kind of work that had queered the count. According toVincenzo, old Blue Beak had been Pat-Crowed regular every season forfive summers, and the thing had got on his nerves.

  Well, Vincenzo lets three or four of 'em in one day just as the Boss andme were swappin' uppercuts and body punches in the courtyard. Maybe theydidn't like the looks of things. Anyway, they hauled off and sent forthe main guy, who was busy down the line a-ways. He comes up with thereserves, and his first move is to send the girl in to get a line on us.And that was the way things stood up to date.

  "Who'd a thought it?" says I. "The way she looked at you I suspicionedshe'd marked you out as something good to eat."

  That turned the Boss red behind the ears. "I'm afraid we'll have to askfor her visiting card the next time she calls," says he. "Come,Vincenzo, I want you to show me about locking up."

  After that no one came or went without showing a pass, and I luggedabout four pounds of brass keys around, for we didn't want to be stoodup by a gang of moth-eaten brigands loaded with old hardware. Theycovered close by day, but at night we could see 'em sneakin' around thewalls, like a bunch of second-story men new to their job. Neither theBoss nor I had a gun, never having had a call for such a thing, but wefound a couple of old blunderbusses hung up in the hall, reg'larjunkshop relics, and we unlimbered them, loading with nails, scrap iron,and broken glass. 'Course, we couldn't hit anything special, but itbroke the monotony for both sides. Once in a while they'd shoot back,just out of politeness, but I don't believe any of 'em ever took anymedal at a schuetzenfest.

  This lasted for two or three nights. It wasn't such bad fun, either, forus. The party of the second part, though, wasn't off on a vacation, likewe were. They were out rustling for money to pay the landlord and thebutcher, and they were losing time. Hard working lot of brigands theywere, too. I wouldn't have monkeyed around after dark on thatperpendicular landscape for twice the money, and I don't believe any of'em drew more than union rates. Fact is, I was getting to feel almostsorry for 'em, when one night something happened to give me the marbleheart.

  I'd been making my rounds with the brass foundry, seeing that all thetramp chains were on, putting out the cat, and coming the "Shore Acres"act, when I sees something dark skiddoo across the court to where theBoss stood smoking in the moonshine by the fountain. I does a sprint,too, and was just about to practise a little Eleventh Avenue jiu-jitsuon whoever it was--when flip goes a piece of black lace, and there wasthe lady brigandess, some out of breath, but still in the game.

  She opens up on the Boss in a stage whisper that whirls him around as ifhe'd been on a string. Not wantin' to butt in ahead of my number, I sortof loafed around just outside the ropes, but near enough to block afoul. Now, I don't know just all they said, nor how they said it, butfrom what the Boss told me afterward they must have had a nice littleconfab there that would be the real thing for grand opera if some onewould only set it to music.

  Seems that she'd found out, the lady brigandess had, that the old man'sgang had run across a bricked-up passageway down in one corner of thebasement, a kind of All-Goods-Must-Be-Delivered-Here gate that had beenthrown into the discards. Of course, they'd gone to work to open it up,and they'd got as far as some iron bars that called for a hack-saw.They'd sent off for their breaking and entering kit, meaning to finishthe job next day. The following night they'd planned to drop inunexpected, sew the Boss up in his blanket before he could make a move,and cart him off until I could bail him out with a peck or so of realmoney.

  The rest of the scene the Boss never would fill in just as it came offthe bat, but I managed to piece out that the brigandess, sizing us upfor a couple of pikers, reckoned that we wouldn't pan out much cash, andthat the Boss might be used some rough by the gang. That prospect notsetting well on her mind, she rolls out the back door of their camp,makes a swift trip around to our new private entrance, squeezes throughthe bars, and comes up to put us wise.

  Must have been just as she'd got to them lines that the Boss begantaking a good look at her. I saw him gazin' into her eyes like he'dtaken out a search warrant. Don't know as I could blame him much,either. She was a top liner. Wasn't anything coy or kittenish about her.She stood up and gave him as good as he sent. Next I see him
make theonly fool play but one that I ever knew the Boss to make--reg'lar kidtrick.

  "Here," says he, pulling off the big carbuncle ring he always wears,"that's to remember me by."

  She didn't even look at it. No joolry for hers. Instead, she sayssomething kind of low and sassy, pokes her face up, and begins topucker.

  The Boss he sort of side steps and squints over his shoulder at me. Now,I'm not sayin' what I'd do if a girl like that gave me the Cissy Loftuseye. It ain't up to me. But I know what I'd want the crowd to do--and Idid it.

  When I turned around again they was just at the breakaway, so it musthave been one of the by-by forever kind, such as you see at the dock onsailing day. Then she took us down to show us how she came in, andsqueezed herself through the bars. They shook hands just once, and thatwas all.

  That night there was a grand howl from the brigands. They had put inhours of real work, the kind they'd figured on cutting out after theygot into the brigand business, only to run into a burglar-proof shutterwhich we had put up. They pranced around to the front gate and shooktheir fists at us, and called us American pigs, and invited us to comeout and have our ears trimmed, and a lot of nonsense like that. I wantedto turn loose the blunderbusses, but the Boss said: "No, let 'em enjoythemselves."

  "How long do you suppose they'll keep that sort of thing up?" says I.

  "Vincenzo says some of them will stay around all summer unless we buythem off," says he.

  "That's lovely," says I, "for anyone that's dead gone on the life here."

  "I'm not," says he. "I can't get out of here too quick, now."

  "Oh, ho!" says I, meaning not much of anything.

  Being kept awake some by their racket that night, I got to thinking howwe could give that gang of grafters the double cross. There wasn't anyuse making a back-alley dash for it, as we didn't know the lay of theland and they were between us and New York. But most of the fancythinking I've ever done has been along that line--how to get back toBroadway. Along toward morning I throws five aces at a flip--turns up anidee that had been at the bottom of the deck. "It's a winner!" says I,and goes to sleep happy.

  After breakfast I digs through my steamer trunk and hauls out afour-ounce can of aluminum paint that the intelligent Mr. 'Ankins hadmistook for shavin' soap and put in before we left home. Then I picksout a couple of suits of that tin armor in the hall, a medium-sized one,and a short-legged, forty-fat outfit, and I gets busy with my brush.

  "What's up?" says the Boss, seeing me slinging on the aluminum paint.

  "Been readin' a piece on 'How to Beautify the House' in the 'Ladies'Home Companion,'" says I. "Got any burnt-orange ribbon about you?"

  It was a three-hour job, but when I was through I'd renovated up thatcast-off toggery so that it looked as good as if it had been just pickedfrom the bargain counter. Then I waited for things to turn up. Thebrigands opened the ball as soon as it was dark. They'd rigged up abattering-ram and allowed they meant to smash in our front door. TheBoss laughed.

  "That gate looks as if it had stood a lot of that kind of boy's play,and I guess it's good for a lot more," says he. "Now, if they were nothopelessly medieval they would try a stick of dynamite."

  We could have poured hot water down on them, or dropped a few bricks,but we didn't. We just let them skin their knuckles and strain theirbacks on the battering-ram. About moonrise I sprung my scheme.

  "What do you say to throwing a scare into that bunch of back numbers?"says I.

  "How?" says the Boss.

  I led him down to the court, where I'd laid out the plated tinware todry.

  "Think you can fit yourself into some of that boiler plate?" says I.

  That hit the Boss in the short ribs. We tackled the job off-hand, mestrappin' a section on him, and he clampin' another on me. It was likedressing for a masquerade in the dark, neither of us ever having wornsteel boots or Harveyized vests before. Some of the joints didn't seemto fit any too close, and a lot of it I suppose we got on hindside frontand upside down, but in the course of half an hour we were harnessed forfair, including a conning tower apiece on our heads. Then we did themarch past just to see how we looked.

  "With a little white muslin you'd do to go on as the ghost in 'Hamlet,'"says the Boss, through his front bars.

  "You sound like a junk wagon comin' down the street," says I, "andyou're a fair imitation of a tinshop on parade. Shall we go for amidnight stroll?"

  "I'm ready," says the Boss.

  Grabbing up a couple of two-handed skull splitters that I'd laid out tofinish our costumes, we swung open the gate and sasshayed out, calm anddignified, into the middle of that bunch of brigands.

  It wasn't hardly a square deal, of course, they being brought up on asteady diet of ghost stories; and I reckon there was a spooky look aboutus that sent a frappe wireless up and down those dago spines. But, afterall, it was the banana oil the aluminum paint was mixed with that turnedthe trick. Smelled it, haven't you? If there's any perfume fitter for alost soul than attar of banana oil, it hasn't been discovered. Firstthey went bug-eyed. Next they sniffed. At the second sniff one bigduffer, with rings in his ears and a fine assortment of second-handpepper-boxes in his sash, digs up a scared yell that would have donecredit to one of these Wuxtre-e-e! Wuxtre-e-e! boys, and then heskiddoos into the rocks like some one had tied a can to him. That set'em all off, same's when you light the green cracker at the end of thebunch. Some yelled, some groaned, and some made no remarks. But theyfaded. Inside of two minutes by the clock we had the front yard toourselves.

  "Curtain!" says I to the Boss. "This is where we do a littledisappearing ourselves, before they get curious and come back."

  We hustled into the castle, pried ourselves out of our tin roofing,chucked our dunnage into old Blue Beak's best carryall, hitched acouple of auction-house steppers, and lit out on the town trail withoutso much as stopping to shake a da-da to old Vincenzo.

  I didn't breathe real deep, though, until we'd fetched sight of a littleplace where the mountain left off and the dago police were supposed tobegin. Just before we got to the first house we sees something up on arock at one side of the road. Day was comin', red and sudden, and we sawwho it was on the rock--the lady brigandess. Sure thing!

  Now don't tax me with how she got there. I'd quit trying to keep caseson her. But there she was waiting for us. As we got in line she gluedher eyes on the Boss and tossed him a lip-thriller with a realJuliet-Roxane movement. And the Boss blew one back. Well, that suitedme, all right, so far as it went. But as we made for a turn in the roadthe Boss reached out for the lines and pulled in our pair of skates.Then he turns and looks back. So did I. She was still there, for a fact,and it kind of looked as if she was holding her arms out toward him.

  "By God, Shorty," says the Boss, breathing quick and talking through histeeth, "I'm going back."

  "Sure," says I, "to New York," and I had a half-Nelson on him before heknew it was coming. We went four miles that way, too, the horsesfinding the road, before I dared let him up. I looked for trouble then.But it had been all over in a breath, just an open-and-shut piece ofbattiness, same as fellers have when they jump a bridge. He was meekenough the rest of the way, but sore. I couldn't pry a word out of himanyway. Not until we got settled down in the smoking-room of aMediterranean steamer headed for Sandy Hook did he shake his trance.

  "Shorty," says he, givin' me the friendly palm, "I owe you a lot morethan apologies."

  "Well, I ain't no collection agency," says I. "Sponge it off."

  "I was looking for the Elixir," says he, "and--and I found it."

  "I can get all the 'Lixir I want," says I, "between the East River andthe North, and I don't need no cork-puller, either."

  That's me. I've been back a week now, and even the screech of the Ltrains sounds good. Everything looks good, and smells good, and feelsgood. You don't have to pinch yourself to find out whether or not you'realive. You know all the time that you're in New York, where there'ssomethin' doin' twenty hours in the day.

/>   It'ly! Oh, yes, I want to go there again--when I get to be a mummy.