by O. Henry
An hour later Con strolled down the sidewalk toward Kenealy’s café. Thus faithful employees haunt, during their recreation hours, the vicinity where they labour, drawn by some mysterious attraction.
A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were half carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. The eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and assiduous conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and directed upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious madness.
‘Began fighting each other in the back room,’ explained Kenealy to Con. ‘And singing! That was worse. Smashed everything pretty much up. But they’re good men. They’ll pay for everything. Trying to invent some new kind of cocktail, they was. I’ll see they come out all right in the morning.’
Con sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield. As he went through the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs.
‘Good evening again, Mr Lantry,’ said she. ‘And is there no news from the weather yet?’
‘Still threatens r-rain,’ said Con, slipping past with red in his smooth, pale cheek.
Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle. Broken bottles and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of alcohol fumes; the floor was variegated with spirituous puddles.
On the table stood a thirty-two-ounce glass graduated measure. In the bottom of it were two tablespoonfuls of liquid – a bright golden liquid that seemed to hold the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths.
Con smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it.
As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the stairs.
‘No news yet, Mr Lantry?’ she asked, with her teasing laugh.
Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there.
‘The news is,’ he said, ‘that we’re to be married.’
‘Put me down, sir!’ she cried indignantly, ‘or I will – Oh, Con, where, oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?’
One Thousand Dollars
‘One thousand dollars,’ repeated Lawyer Tolman solemnly and severely, ‘and here is the money.’
Young Gillian gave a decidedly amused laugh as he fingered the thin package of new fifty-dollar notes.
‘It’s such a confoundedly awkward amount,’ he explained, genially, to the lawyer. ‘If it had been ten thousand a fellow might wind up with a lot of fireworks and do himself credit. Even fifty dollars would have been less trouble.’
‘You heard the reading of your uncle’s will,’ continued Lawyer Tolman, professionally dry in his tones. ‘I do not know if you paid much attention to its details. I must remind you of one. You are required to render to us an account of the manner of expenditure of this one thousand dollars as soon as you have disposed of it. The will stipulates that. I trust that you will so far comply with the late Mr Gillian’s wishes.’
‘You may depend upon it,’ said the young man politely, ‘in spite of the extra expense it will entail. I may have to engage a secretary. I was never good at accounts.’
Gillian went to his club. There he hunted out one whom he called Old Bryson.
Old Bryson was calm and forty and sequestered. He was in a corner reading a book, and when he saw Gillian approaching he sighed, laid down his book and took off his glasses.
‘Old Bryson, wake up,’ said Gillian. ‘I’ve a funny story to tell you.’
‘I wish you would tell it to someone in the billiard-room,’ said Old Bryson. ‘You know how I hate your stories.’
‘This is a better one than usual,’ said Gillian, rolling a cigarette, ‘and I’m glad to tell it to you. It’s too sad and funny to go with the rattling of billiard balls. I’ve just come from my late uncle’s firm of legal corsairs. He leaves me an even thousand dollars. Now, what can a man possibly do with a thousand dollars?’
‘I thought,’ said Old Bryson, showing as much interest as a bee shows in a vinegar cruet, ‘that the late Septimus Gillian was worth something like half a million.’
‘He was,’ assented Gillian joyously, ‘and that’s where the joke comes in. He’s left his whole cargo of doubloons to a microbe. That is, part of it goes to the man who invents a new bacillus, and the rest to establish a hospital for doing away with it again. There are one or two trifling bequests on the side. The butler and the housekeeper get a seal ring and ten dollars each. His nephew gets one thousand dollars.’
‘You’ve always had plenty of money to spend,’ observed Old Bryson.
‘Tons,’ said Gillian. ‘Uncle was the fairy godmother as far as an allowance was concerned.’
‘Any other heirs?’ asked Old Bryson.
‘None.’ Gillian frowned at his cigarette and kicked the upholstered leather of a divan uneasily. ‘There is a Miss Hayden, a ward of my uncle who lived in his house. She’s a quiet thing – musical – the daughter of somebody who was unlucky enough to be his friend. I forgot to say that she was in on the seal ring and ten-dollar joke, too. I wish I had been. Then I could have had two bottles of brut, tipped the waiter with the ring, and had the whole business off my hands. Don’t be superior and insulting, Old Bryson – tell me what a fellow can do with a thousand dollars.’
Old Bryson rubbed his glasses and smiled. And when Old Bryson smiled, Gillian knew that he intended to be more offensive than ever.
‘A thousand dollars,’ he said, ‘means much or little. One man may buy a happy home with it and laugh at Rockefeller. Another could send his wife South with it and save her life. A thousand dollars would buy pure milk for one hundred babies during June, July and August, and save fifty of their lives. You could count upon a half-hour’s diversion with it at faro in one of the fortified art galleries. It would furnish an education to an ambitious boy. I am told that a genuine Corot was secured for that amount in an auction room yesterday. You could move to a New Hampshire town and live respectably two years on it. You could rent Madison Square Garden for one evening with it, and lecture your audience, if you should have one, on the precariousness of the profession of heir-presumptive.’
‘People might like you, Old Bryson,’ said Gillian, always unruffled, ‘if you wouldn’t moralise. I asked you to tell me what I could do with a thousand dollars.’
‘You?’ said Bryson, with a gentle laugh. ‘Why, Bobby Gillian, there’s only one logical thing you could do. You can go buy Miss Lotta Lauriere a diamond pendant with the money, and then take yourself off to Idaho and inflict your presence upon a ranch. I advise a sheep ranch, as I have a particular dislike for sheep.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gillian, rising, ‘I thought I could depend upon you, Old Bryson. You’ve hit on the very scheme. I wanted to chuck the money in a lump, for I’ve got to turn in an account for it, and I hate itemising.’
Gillian phoned for a cab and said to the driver: ‘The stage entrance of the Columbine Theatre.’
Miss Lotta Lauriere was assisting Nature with a powder puff, almost ready for her call at a crowded matinee, when her dresser mentioned the name of Mr Gillian.
‘Let it in,’ said Miss Lauriere. ‘Now, what is it, Bobby? I’m going on in two minutes.’
‘Rabbit-foot your right ear a little,’ suggested Gillian critically. ‘That’s better. It won’t take two minutes for me. What do you say to a little thing in the pendant line? I can stand three ciphers with a figure one in front of ’em.’
‘Oh, just as you say,’ carolled Miss Lauriere. ‘My right glove, Adams. Say, Bobby, did you see that necklace Della Stacey had on the other night? Twenty-two hundred dollars it cost at Tiffany’s. But of course – pull my sash a little to the left, Adams.’
‘Miss Lauriere for the opening chorus!’ cried the call-boy without.
Gillian strolled out to where his cab was waiting. ‘What would you do with a thousand dollars if you had it?’ he asked the driver.
‘Open a s’loon,’ said the cabby promptly and huskily. ‘I know a place I could take money in with both hands. It’s a four-story brick
on a corner. I’ve got it figured out. Second story – Chinks and chop suey; third floor – manicures and foreign missions; fourth floor – pool room. If you was thinking of putting up the cap—’
‘Oh, no,’ said Gillian, ‘I merely asked from curiosity. I take you by the hour. Drive till I tell you to stop.’
Eight blocks down Broadway Gillian poked up the trap with his cane and got out. A blind man sat upon a stool on the sidewalk selling pencils. Gillian went out and stood before him.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but would you mind telling me what you would do if you had a thousand dollars?’
‘You got out of that cab that just drove up, didn’t you?’ asked the blind man.
‘I did,’ said Gillian.
‘I guess you are all right,’ said the pencil dealer, ‘to ride in a cab by daylight. Take a look at that, if you like.’
He drew a small book from his coat pocket and held it out. Gillian opened it, and saw that it was a bank deposit book. It showed a balance of $1,785 to the blind man’s credit.
Gillian returned the book and got into the cab.
‘I forgot something,’ he said. ‘You may drive to the law offices of Tolman & Sharp, at — Broadway.’
Lawyer Tolman looked at him hostilely and enquiringly through his gold-rimmed glasses.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Gillian cheerfully, ‘but may I ask you a question? It is not an impertinent one, I hope. Was Miss Hayden left anything by my uncle’s will besides the ring and the ten dollars?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mr Tolman.
‘I thank you very much, sir,’ said Gillian, and out he went to his cab. He gave the driver the address of his late uncle’s home.
Miss Hayden was writing letters in the library. She was small and slender and clothed in black. But you would have noticed her eyes. Gillian drifted in with his air of regarding the world as inconsequent.
‘I’ve just come from old Tolman’s,’ he explained. ‘They’ve been going over the papers down there They found a’ – Gillian searched his memory for a legal term – ‘they found an amendment or a postscript or something to the will. It seemed that the old boy loosened up a little on second thoughts and willed you a thousand dollars. I was driving up this way, and Tolman asked me to bring you the money. Here it is. You’d better count it to see if it’s right.’ Gillian laid the money beside her hand on the desk.
Miss Hayden turned white. ‘Oh!’ she said, and again ‘Oh!’
Gillian half turned and looked out the window.
‘I suppose, of course,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘that you know I love you.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Miss Hayden, taking up her money.
‘There is no use?’ asked Gillian, almost light-heartedly.
‘I am sorry,’ she said again.
‘May I write a note?’ asked Gillian, with a smile. He seated himself at the big library table. She supplied him with paper and pen, and then went back to her secretaire.
Gillian made out his account of his expenditure of the thousand dollars in these words: ‘Paid by the black sheep, Robert Gillian, one thousand dollars on account of the eternal happiness, owed by Heaven to the best and dearest woman on earth.’
Gillian slipped his writing into an envelope, bowed, and went his way.
His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman & Sharp.
‘I have expended the thousand dollars,’ he said, cheerily, to Tolman of the gold glasses, ‘and I have come to render account of it as I agreed. There is quite a feeling of summer in the air – do you not think so, Mr Tolman?’ He tossed a white envelope on the lawyer’s table. ‘You will find there a memorandum, sir, of the modus operandi of the vanishing of the dollars.’
Without touching the envelope, Mr Tolman went to a door and called his partner, Sharp. Together they explored the caverns of an immense safe. Forth they dragged as trophy of their search a big envelope sealed with wax. This they forcibly invaded, and wagged their venerable heads together over its contents. Then Tolman became spokesman.
‘Mr Gillian,’ he said formally, ‘there was a codicil to your uncle’s will. It was entrusted to us privately, with instructions that it be not opened until you had furnished us with a full account of your handling of the thousand-dollar bequest in the will. As you have fulfilled the conditions, my partner and I have read the codicil. I do not wish to encumber your understanding with its legal phraseology, but I will acquaint you with the spirit of its contents.
‘In the event that your disposition of the thousand dollars demonstrates that you possess any of the qualifications that deserve reward, much benefit will accrue to you. Mr Sharp and I are named as the judges, and I assure you that we will do our duty strictly according to justice – with liberality. We are not at all unfavourably disposed toward you, Mr Gillian. But let us return to the letter of the codicil. If your disposal of the money in question has been prudent, wise or unselfish, it is in our power to hand you over bonds to the value of fifty thousand dollars, which have been placed in our hands for that purpose. But if – as our client, the late Mr Gillian, explicitly provides – you have used this money as you have used money in the past – I quote the late Mr Gillian – in reprehensible dissipation among disreputable associates – the fifty thousand dollars is to be paid to Miriam Hayden, ward of the late Mr Gillian, without delay. Now, Mr Gillian, Mr Sharp and I will examine your account in regard to the one thousand. You submit it in writing, I believe. I hope you will repose confidence in our decision.
Mr Tolman reached for the envelope. Gillian was a little the quicker in taking it up. He tore the account and its cover leisurely into strips and dropped them into his pocket.
‘It’s all right,’ he said smilingly. ‘There isn’t a bit of need to bother you with this. I don’t suppose you’d understand these itemised bets, anyway. I lost the thousand dollars on the races. Good day to you, gentlemen.’
Tolman & Sharp shook their heads mournfully at each other when Gillian left, for they heard him whistling gaily in the hallway as he waited for the elevator.
O Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter, born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1862. He held various jobs, including a stint as a teller in an Austin bank, but in 1894 he was charged with embezzlement. O. Henry fled to Honduras, but returned three years later to be with his dying wife at which point he was convicted. He served three years in the Ohio State Penitentiary, where he began to write the stories that made him famous. After his release, Porter moved to New York and remarried, but kept his criminal past secret as his literary career blossomed. He died in 1910, having written over 600 stories.
After his death, the O. Henry Award was established in recognition of his outstanding contribution to short fiction.
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Daunt Books
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This electronic edition published in 2012 by Daunt Books
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