“Best in the world!” says Parsons. “And a strong baseball fan.”
“Fine!” says Uncle Billy and he snapped his fingers at a waiter. “Pencil and paper and messenger boy—quick! Now then, Peachy, write this lady a note and say that we will be highly honoured if she will join us here after the show to discuss a matter of grave importance to the Old Guard. Say that you will call in a taxi to get her.”
When the note had gone Uncle Billy lighted a fresh cigar and chuckled to himself.
“If she’ll go through with it,” says he, “I’ll guarantee to knock all the funny business out of Tom O’Connor for the rest of his natural life.”
Miss Harrington turned up about eleven-thirty, even prettier off the stage than on it, which is going some. She said that she had side-stepped a date with a Pittsburgh millionaire because we were real people. That was a promising start. She ordered a light supper of creamed lobster and champagne and then Uncle Billy began to talk.
He told her that as a manager he was in a bad fix. He said he had a new man on the payroll who was promoting civil war. He explained that unless he was able to tame this fellow the team would be crippled. Miss Harrington said that would be a pity, for she had bet on us to win the pennant. She wanted to know what was the matter. Uncle Billy told her all about Tom O’Connor and his practical jokes. Miss Harrington said it would be a good thing to give him a dose of his own medicine. It was like Uncle Billy to let her think that the idea belonged to her.
“Suppose,” says Uncle Billy, “you should get a note from him, asking you to meet him at the stage door some night next week. For the sake of the ball club, would you say ‘Yes’?”
“But—what would happen after that?” asked Miss Harrington. “I don’t know the man at all and—”
Uncle Billy told her what would happen after that, and as it dawned on the rest of us we nearly rolled out of our chairs. Miss Harrington laughed too.
“It would be terribly funny,” said she, “and I suppose it would serve him right; but it might get into the papers and—”
Uncle Billy shook his head.
“My dear young lady,” says he, “the only publicity that you get in this town is the publicity that you go after. I am well and favourably known to the police. A lot of ’em get annual passes from me. Captain Murray at the Montmorency Street Station is my pal. He can see a joke without plans and specifications. I promise you that the whole thing will go off like clockwork. We’ll suppose that you have attracted the young man’s attention during the performance. You would attract any man’s attention, my dear.”
“I would stand up and bow for that compliment,” said Miss Harrington, “but the waiter is looking. Go on.”
“We will suppose that you have received a note from him,” said Uncle Billy. “He is to meet you at the stage door. . . . One tiny little scream—just one. . . . Would you do that—for the sake of the ball club?”
Miss Harrington giggled.
“If you’re sure that you can keep me out of it,” said she, “I’ll do it for the sake of the joke!”
Uncle Billy was a busy man for a few days, but he found time to state that he didn’t believe that Tom O’Connor had anything to do with the Algonquin Club thing. He said it was so clever that Tom couldn’t have thought of it, and he said it in the dressing room so loud that everybody heard him. Maybe that was the reason why Tom didn’t suspect anything when he was asked to fill out a box party.
Pat Dunphy, Peachy Parsons and some of the rest of us were in on the box party, playing thinking parts mostly. Uncle Billy and Tom O’Connor had the front seats right up against the stage.
Miss Harrington was immense. If she’d had forty rehearsals she couldn’t have done it any better. Before she’d been on the stage three minutes Tom was fumbling round for his programme trying to find her name. Pretty soon he began to squirm in his chair.
“By golly, that girl is looking at me all the time!” says he.
“Don’t kid yourself!” said Uncle Billy.
“But I tell you she is! There—did you see that?”
“Maybe she wants to meet you,” says Uncle Billy. I’ve seen her at the ball park a lot of times.”
“You think she knows who I am?” asks Tom.
“Shouldn’t wonder. You’re right, Tom. She’s after you, that’s a fact.”
“Oh, rats!” says O’Connor. “Maybe I just think so. No, there it is again! Do you suppose, if I sent my card back—”
“I’m a married man,” says Uncle Billy. “I don’t suppose anything. But if a girl as pretty as that—”
Tom went out at the end of the first act. I saw him write something on a card and slip it to an usher along with a dollar bill.
When the second act opened Tom was so nervous he couldn’t sit still. It was easy to see that he hadn’t received any answer to his note and was worrying about it. Pretty soon Miss Harrington came on to sing her song about the moon—they’ve always got to have a moon song in musical comedy or it doesn’t go—and just as the lights went down she looked over toward our box and smiled, the least little bit of a smile, and then she nodded her head. The breath went out of Tom O’Connor in a long sigh.
“Somebody lend me twenty dollars,” says he.
“I’m going to meet her at the stage door after the show,” says Tom, “and she won’t think I’m a sport unless I open wine.”
Well, he met her all right enough. The whole bunch of us can swear to that because we were across the street, hiding in a doorway. When she came out Tom stepped up, chipper as a canary bird, with his hat in his hand. We couldn’t hear what he said, but there was no trouble in hearing Miss Harrington.
“How dare you, sir!” she screams. “Help! Police! Help!”
Two men, who had been loafing round on the edge of the sidewalk, jumped over and grabbed Tom by the arms. He started in to explain matters to ’em, but the men dragged him away down the street and Miss Harrington went in the other direction.
“So far, so good,” says Uncle Billy. “Gentlemen, the rest of the comedy will be played out at the Montmorency Street Police Station. Reserved seats are waiting for us. Follow me.”
You can say anything you like, but it’s a pretty fine thing to be in right with the police. You never know when you may need ’em, and Uncle Billy certainly was an ace at the Montmorency Street Station. We went in by the side door and were shown into a little narrow room with a lot of chairs in it, just like a moving-picture theatre, except that instead of a curtain at the far end there was a tall Japanese screen. What was more, most of the chairs were occupied. Every member of the Old Guard ball club was there, and so was Al Jorgenson and Lije, the rubber.
“Boys,” says Uncle Billy, “we are about to have the last act of the thrilling drama entitled The Kidder Kidded, or The Old Guard’s Revenge. The first and second acts went off fine. Be as quiet as you can and don’t laugh until the blow-off. Not a whisper—not a sound—s-s-sh! They’re bringing him in now!”
There was a scuffling of feet and a scraping of chair-legs on the other side of the screen. We couldn’t see O’Connor and he couldn’t see us, but we could hear every word he said. He was still trying to explain matters.
“But I tell you,” says Tom, “I had a date with her.”
“Yeh,” says a gruff voice, “she acted like it! Don’t tell us your troubles. Tell ’em to Captain Murray. Here he comes now.”
A door opened and closed and another voice cut in:
“Well, boys, what luck?”
“We got one, cap,” says the gruff party. “Caught him with the goods on—”
“It’s all a mistake, sir—captain!” Tom breaks in. “I give you my word of honour as a gentleman—”
“Shut up!” says Captain Murray. “Your word of honour as a gentleman! That’s rich, that is! You keep your trap closed for the present—understand? Now,
boys, where did you get him?”
“At the stage door of the Royal Theatre,” says the plain-clothes man, who did the talking for the two who made the pinch. “Duffy and me, we saw this bird kind of slinking round, and we remembered that order about bringing in all mashers, so we watched him. A girl came out of the stage door and he braced her. She hollered for help and we grabbed him. Oh, there ain’t any question about it, cap; we’ve got him dead to rights. We don’t even need the woman’s testimony.”
“Good work, boys!” says the captain. “We’ll make an example of this guy!”
“Captain,” says Tom, “listen to reason! I tell you this girl was flirting with me all through the show—”
“That’s what they all say! If she was flirting with you, why did she make a holler when you braced her?”
“I—I don’t know,” says Tom. “Maybe she didn’t recognise me.”
“No, I’ll bet she didn’t!”
“But, captain, I sent her my card and she sent back word—”
“Oh, shut up! What’s your name?” Murray shot that one at him quick and Tom took a good long time to answer it.
“Smith,” says he at last. “John Smith.” That raised a laugh on the other side of the screen.
“Well,” says the captain, “unless we can get him identified he can do his bit on the rock pile under the name of Smith as well as any other, eh, boys?”
“Sure thing!” said the plain-clothes men.
“The rock pile!” says Toms.
“That’s what I said—rock pile! Kind of scares you, don’t it. There won’t be any bail for you to jump or any fine for you to pay. We’ve had a lot of complaints about mashers lately and some squeals in the newspapers. You’ll be made an example of. Chickens are protected by the game laws of this state, and it’s time some of the lady-killers found it out.”
Tom began to plead, but he might just as well have kept quiet. They whirled in and gave him the third degree—asked him what he had been pinched for the last time and a whole lot of stuff. We expected he’d tell his name and send for Uncle Billy to get him out, but for some reason or other he fought shy of that. We couldn’t understand his play at first, but we knew why soon enough. The door back of the screen opened again.
“Cap’n,” says a strange voice, “there’s some newspaper men here.”
Well, that was all a stall, of course. We didn’t let the newspaper men in on it because we wanted them for a whip to hold over Tom’s head in the future.
“What do they want?” asks Murray.
“They’re after this masher story,” says the stranger. “I don’t know who tipped it off to ’em, but they’ve seen the woman and got a statement from her. She says she thinks this fellow is a baseball player.”
“I wouldn’t care if he was the president of the League!” says the captain. “You know the orders we got to break up mashing and bring ’em in, no matter who they are. Here we’ve got one of ’em dead to rights; and it’s the rock pile for him, you can bet your life on it!”
“And serve him right,” says the stranger. “But, cap’n, wouldn’t it be a good thing to identify him? These newspapermen say they know all the ballplayers. Shall we have ’em in to give him the once-over?”
“I’ll send for ’em in a minute,” says Murray.
That was the shot that brought Tom off his perch with a yell.
“Captain,” he begs, “anything but that! I’d rather you sent me up for six months—yes, or shot me! If this gets into the papers it’ll——! Oh, say, if you have any heart at all—please—please——Oh, you don’t understand!”
We didn’t understand either, but Tom made it plain. I’m not going to write all he said; it made my face burn to sit there and listen to it. It took all the fun out of the joke for me. It seems that this rough kidder—this practical joker who never cared a rap how much he hurt anybody else’s feelings—had some pretty tender feelings of his own. He opened up his heart and told that police captain something that he never had told us—told him about the little girl back in the home town who was waiting for him, and how she wouldn’t ever be able to hold up her head again if the story got into the papers and he was disgraced.
“It ain’t for me, captain,” he begs; “it’s for her. You wouldn’t want her shamed just because I’ve acted like a fool, would you? Think what it means to the girl, captain! Oh, if there’s anything you can do——”
Uncle Billy beat me to it. I was already on my feet when he took two jumps and knocked the screen flat on the floor.
“That’s enough!” says Uncle Billy. We had planned to give Tom the horse-laugh when the screen came down, but somehow none of us could laugh just then. If I live to be as old as Hans Wagner I’ll never forget the expression on Tom O’Connor’s face as he blinked across the room and saw us all sitting there, like an audience in a theatre.
“Tom,” says Uncle Bill, “I’m sorry, but this is what always happens with a practical joke. It starts out to be funny, but it gets away from you and then the first thing you know somebody is hurt. You’ve had a lot of fun with this ball club, my boy, and some of it was pretty rough fun, but—I guess we’ll all agree to call it square.”
Tom got on his feet, shaking a little and white to the lips. He couldn’t seem to find his voice for a minute and he ran his fingers across his mouth before he spoke.
“Is—is this a joke?” says he.
“It started out to be,” says Uncle Billy. “I’m sorry.”
Tom didn’t say another word and he didn’t look at any of us. He went out of the room alone and left us there. I wanted to go after him and tell him not to take it so hard; but I thought of the way he had shamed Al Jorgenson, I thought of the girl who wouldn’t even speak to Holliday again, I thought of the four kids who went home broken-hearted, all on Tom’s account—and I changed my mind. It was a bitter dose, but I decided not to sweeten it any for him.
Tom O’Connor isn’t funny any more, and I think he is slowly making up his mind that we’re not such a bad outfit after all. To this day the mention of the name of Smith makes him blush, so I guess that in spite of the fact that he’s never opened his mouth about it since, he hasn’t forgotten what his own stuff feels like.
The Pitcher and the Plutocrat
P.G. Wodehouse
The main difficulty in writing a story is to convey to the reader clearly yet tersely the natures and dispositions of one’s leading characters. Brevity, brevity—that is the cry. Perhaps, after all, the playbill style is the best. In this drama of love, baseball, frenzied finance, and tainted millions, then, the principals are as follows, in their order of entry:
Isabel Rackstraw (a peach)
Clarence Van Puyster (a Greek god)
Old Man Van Puyster (a proud old aristocrat)
Old Man Rackstraw (a tainted millionaire)
More about Clarence later. For the moment let him go as a Greek god. There were other sides, too, to Old Man Rackstraw’s character; but for the moment let him go as a Tainted Millionaire. Not that it is satisfactory. It is too mild. He was the Tainted Millionaire. The Tainted Millions of other Tainted Millionaires were as attar of roses compared with the Tainted Millions of Tainted Millionaire Rackstraw. He preferred his millions tainted. His attitude toward an untainted million was that of the sportsman toward the sitting bird. These things are purely a matter of taste. Some people like Limburger cheese.
It was at a charity bazaar that Isabel and Clarence first met. Isabel was presiding over the Billiken, Teddy Bear, and Fancy Goods stall. There she stood, that slim, radiant girl, buncoing the Younger Set out of its father’s hard-earned with a smile that alone was nearly worth the money, when she observed, approaching, the handsomest man she had ever seen. It was—this is not one of those mystery stories—it was Clarence Van Puyster. Over the heads of the bevy of gilded youths who clustered round the stall their e
yes met. A thrill ran through Isabel. She dropped her eyes. The next moment Clarence had bucked center; the Younger Set had shredded away like a mist; and he was leaning toward her, opening negotiations for the purchase of a yellow Teddy Bear at sixteen times its face value.
He returned at intervals during the afternoon. Over the second Teddy Bear they became friendly; over the third, intimate. He proposed as she was wrapping up the fourth Golliwog, and she gave him her heart and the parcel simultaneously. At six o’clock, carrying four Teddy Bears, seven photograph frames, five Golliwogs, and a Billiken, Clarence went home to tell the news to his father.
Clarence, when not at college, lived with his only surviving parent in an old red-brick house at the north end of Washington Square. The original Van Puyster had come over in Governor Stuyvesant’s time in one of the then fashionable ninety-four-day boats. Those were the stirring days when they were giving away chunks of Manhattan Island in exchange for trading-stamps; for the bright brain which conceived the idea that the city might possibly at some remote date extend above Liberty Street had not come into existence. The original Van Puyster had acquired a square mile or so in the heart of things for ten dollars cash and a quarter interest in a pedler’s outfit. “The Columbus Echo and Vespucci Intelligencer” gave him a column and a half under the heading: “Reckless Speculator. Prominent Citizen’s Gamble in Land.” On the proceeds of that deal his descendants had led quiet, peaceful lives ever since. If any of them ever did a day’s work, the family records are silent on the point. Blood was their long suit, not Energy. They were plain, homely folk, with a refined distaste for wealth and vulgar hustle. They lived simply, without envy of their richer fellow citizens, on their three hundred thousand dollars a year. They asked no more. It enabled them to entertain on a modest scale; the boys could go to college, the girls buy an occasional new frock. They were satisfied.
Having dressed for dinner, Clarence proceeded to the library, where he found his father slowly pacing the room. Silver-haired old Vansuyther Van Puyster seemed wrapped in thought. And this was unusual, for he was not given to thinking. To be absolutely frank, the old man had just about enough brain to make a jay-bird fly crooked, and no more.
At the Old Ballgame Page 17
