Jack and the Check Book

V

THE INVISIBLE CLOAK

I am very sorry, sorr," said the janitor as he turned off the heat and disconnected the electric lights. "'Tain't me as is doin' ut – ut's the owner of the buildin'. He says the rint ain't been paid for six mont's, and while he ain't hard-hearted enough to turn nobody out on the sthreet such weather as this, he don't see no use in dandlin' tinants what don't pay in no lap o' luxury."

Jack looked at the man in silence, completely stunned by this new development in a situation already sufficiently distressing.

"'Let him enjye all the pleasures of the roof, Mike,' says he," continued the janitor, "'but no wooin' of his beauty sleep to the soft music of the steam-radiator, nor 'lectric lights to cheer the dark places of his sperrit whin twilight comes. Ut's the land of the Midnight Sun for his till I see th' color of his bank account.'"

"But I shall freeze if you turn off the heat," protested Jack.

"That's the answer, I guess," returned the janitor. "Ut's a pretty cold snap we do be havin'."

Jack buried his face in his hands and groaned. Things had gone ill for the unhappy lad for a long time now, and the sudden precipitation of winter weather found him practically penniless. For one reason or another no one seemed to care for his poetry, and his last story, from the proceeds of which he had expected to make enough to tide him over for a little while at least, had been returned by every editor in town.

"Ut's mighty sorry for you, I am," said the kindly janitor, his heart stirred by the pitiable picture of suffering before him. "I'd be afther leavin' t'ings as they are if I dared, but the old man's orders – "

"I know, I know," said Jack, wearily, "but it's awfully tough just the same. I can get along without food, but without light and heat I don't see how I can do my work."

"I'll lend yez a candle, sorr," said the janitor. "That'll help some. Ye can warm your hands over the flame of ut while you're doin' your t'inkin', and ut'll give ye light enough to put down what ye t'ink in between times."

"Good old Mike!" said Jack, wringing the other by the hand warmly. "When my ship comes in you shall have a good slice of the cargo for that."

"Sure an' she ain't la'nched yet, is she?" asked the janitor, with a grin, and then, as Jack seemed to have sunk into a dejected reverie, he gathered up his tools and left the room.

An hour passed before the miserable lad even so much as raised his head.

"Jove! it's cold!" He shivered, as he gazed around him, the room bathed in the gathering shadows of twilight. "And to think that it was only last summer that I was complaining because this place was so infernally hot!"

His teeth chattered as he spoke, and he suddenly bethought himself of his fur-lined overcoat hanging in the closet, his very last possession, and one he had worn persistently of late, not so much because the temperature of the town required it as to maintain publicly an appearance of prosperity.

"I'll take one last wear out of you," he said, as he put it on, "and to-morrow I'll put you in cold storage at the house of mine Uncle. He already has my watch, my scarf-pin, and everything else that I have that is negotiable – he might as well top his collection off with you."

The thought that the useful old garment was still good enough to act as a satisfactory bit of security for a temporary accommodation at the neighboring pawnshop cheered him up somewhat, and he went out, seeking a comfortable spot where with his last half-dollar he could assuage the growing pangs of hunger. As he left the house he noticed that the snow was beginning to fall, so he decided not to go very far afield for his meal. A cheap restaurant half-way down the block, on the avenue, attracted his eye, and he went in and ordered his dinner – twenty-five cents' worth of roast beef and a cup of coffee for himself, and the balance to tip the waiter. He ate slowly, though this was not his habit, merely because the place was warm and bright, and as he lingered over his coffee he wrote a sonnet on life on the back of the bill of fare. Then, his account paid, he started back to his apartment. As he left the café the wheezing notes of a minute hand-organ playing "The Good Old Summer-time" fell upon his ear. It sounded very much like a talking-machine in the last stages of bronchitis, and then, suddenly, in the midst of a "B-flat" that sounded more like a sneeze than a note, a heartrending picture of misery and desolation smote upon his vision. On the corner, exposed to all the icy winds that blew up the avenue, and over the cross-streets from the river, huddled up into a seeming mass of rags, over which the falling snow was drifting, was the form of an aged woman, turning the crank of a battered and broken organ with fitful twists of her poor blue hands.

"Holy smoke!" cried Jack, as his eye fell upon the old woman's bent figure. "And I have been sympathizing with myself for the last four hours!"

In an instant he had whipped off his overcoat – the fur-lined coat that had been his only hope for immediate financial relief – and had thrown it across the poor old shoulders.

"Excuse me, madam," he said, as the old woman stopped grinding the organ to look gratefully up into his face. "If I had any money I'd give it to you, but I'm dead broke myself, and I can't help you that way. But, by thunder! I can't stand seeing you freeze!"

"Oh, I cannot take your coat, sir," the old woman began.

"Yes, you can," said Jack. "If you don't want it as an act of charity, let me have a quarter to buy my breakfast to-morrow morning, and you can have the coat for the time being. I'll rent it to you over-night for a quarter. You can return it in the morning. I live right across the street at the Redmere."

The old woman muttered a scarcely audible word of thanks.

"Heaven will reward you for this," she began.

"That's all right," said Jack, cheerfully. "I'm not looking for dividends of that particular kind. I'll consider it a good bargain if you'll just rent this old horse-blanket for the night for twenty-five cents. Then nobody will be under obligation to anybody else."

The old woman smiled even as she shivered, and diving down into the mysterious depths of her ragged garments produced a handful of pennies which she handed to the unexpected philanthropist.

"I will return the coat in the morning," she said. "Good-night!"

And again the withered hand began to turn the crank, and the suffering organ, as Jack sped across the way to the Redmere again, began to wheeze as before, taking a turn this time at that popular melody, "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night."

"Poor old hag!" muttered Jack as, without removing his clothes, he climbed into bed and covered himself in addition with the bath-rug. "I may be ninety-seven different kinds of an ass, but here's to the Heart of Folly! I couldn't let that old creature freeze to death under my very window."

And warmed by the thought of a kindly deed done he turned over and went to sleep.

So weary was the poor lad after the troublesome experiences of a day so full of worry that he slept heavily and far into the next morning. Indeed, it required all the elbow power of Mike, the janitor, hammering with his great fist upon the door, to awaken him.

"Hello, there! What the dickens do you want?" cried Jack, sleepily, aroused at last from his slumbers by a thunderous kick upon the door from the janitorial foot.

"Ut's me, sorr," replied Mike.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" said Jack, opening the door. "What's the trouble now? Orders from the landlord to stop my sleeping?"

"No, sorr," replied the janitor. "Sure an' I'm just afther bringin' yez a package lift at the door."

"Confound you, Mike!" growled Jack, with a glance at the clock. "Nobody can economize with a noise trust like you around. If you had only let me sleep an hour longer I could have saved the price of a breakfast!"

"Well, the lady that lift this bundle tould me to give ut yez without anny delay," returned Mike. "And whin annybody gives me a dollar to get a move on I get ut."

"A lady gave you a dollar to hand this bundle to me?" demanded Jack, incredulously.

"She did that," said Mike. "She come drivin' up in her limybean motor-car, and give me the package, and tould me not to let anny weeds grow under me slippers."

Jack rubbed his eyes in astonishment, and gazed wonderingly at the brown-paper package. What could it be? Certainly not his fur coat. A limousine car and the lady of the wheezy hand-organ did not seem to go together. In an instant, consumed with curiosity, he tore off the brown-paper covering, and found within a white pasteboard box, oblong in shape, and tied up with blue ribbon. Attached to the middle was a note, which, on being opened, revealed the following message to Jack's staring eyes:

The United States Fairy Company

8976 Wall Street

New York, December 12, 1910.

Dear Jack, – I return your cloak herewith with many thanks for your kindness to

"Well, I'll be blowed!" ejaculated the lad as he read. "The old lady a fairy? I don't know about this – it has a phony look to me!"

As he spoke he cut the blue ribbon with his penknife and opened the box. The mystery, instead of being solved, now became all the deeper, for as far as Jack's eye was able to see the box was empty.

The janitor grinned unsympathetically.

"Quare toime for an April-fool joke!" he said, as he left the room.

For a few moments Jack was as silent as the Sphinx, and then, with a sudden surge of wrath that any one should play such a trick upon him, he gave the box a kick that sent it flying across the room. It landed on a chair, the cover fell off, and then, mystery of mysteries, three-quarters of the chair disappeared wholly from sight. Again Jack rubbed his eyes in amazement, and slowly, like a trapper passing along a forest trail, he crept over to where the chair stood and put out his hand to feel for its missing parts. In a moment he was reassured as to their existence, for he could feel the outlines of the missing sections, but something apparently lay across them. It was a soft, silky material, tangible enough, but absolutely invisible. It felt like a cloak, and as Jack passed his hands along its folds he found that it had sleeves, buttons, buttonholes, and a hood at the back of its collar, not to mention several capacious pockets within.

"Huh!" he ejaculated. "It feels like an invisible ulster. I wonder – "

An idea flashed across his mind, acting upon which he seized the cloak, and rushed into his bedroom, where, standing before the mirror on his bureau, he put it on, buttoning it all the way up to his neck. This done, he glanced at himself in the glass.

Only his head, which had remained uncovered, was reflected there!

"Well of all – " he began, astounded at the vision before him, or rather the lack of it. Hastily he pulled the hood over his head, and immediately, as far as the eye could see, he completely vanished.

And then Jack knew what had happened.

The fairy godmother had given him one of the choicest possessions of her kingdom – the famous invisible cloak!

Ten minutes later Jack found himself passing through the Subway gate at Forty-second Street, entirely unobserved by anybody, and therefore relieved of the necessity of paying his fare. The invisible cloak was doing its duty nobly, but a moment later the lad had an example of its dangers as well as of its virtues, for as he sat quietly by the door of the car trying to collect his flustered thoughts, a very stout German gentleman got aboard the train and sat down heavily upon him. He did not stay, however, but on the contrary, with a startled cry of alarm, rose up as quickly as he had sat down.

"Dere iss somedings in dot seadt, alretty yet!" he cried to the guard, excitedly.

Jack slipped noiselessly out of the seat, and the guard, after feeling around in it for a second or two, turned with scorn upon the astonished Teuton, and in language of a slightly unparliamentary cast advised him to change his diet.

"You'll be seein' t'ings next!" he said.

Jack shook with internal laughter as the amazed son of the Rhine sat cautiously down again, his face showing a deal of relief to find that his first spooky impression was not correct, all of which for the remainder of the trip down-town he openly expressed with considerable volubility. Finally he was interrupted by the raucous voice of the guard crying:

"Wall Street!"

Now Jack had not consciously started out to go to Wall Street, but the announcement of the train's arrival there gave him a thrill.

"Wall Street, eh?" he muttered. "Ha! Hum! Methinks the financial stringency is over if this little old coat holds out! I seem to detect the odor of money."

He mounted the steps to the street, and wandered aimlessly down the great financial highway until he found himself standing before the gorgeous façade of the famous Urban National Bank. Here he paused a moment, and curiosity as much as anything else led him to enter its portals, and there within lay spread before his famished financial eyes, separated from his hands only by a slight bit of steel grillwork, countless packages, huge of bulk, of bank-notes, in all denominations, any one of which, once in his possession, would serve to put him at ease for the remainder of the year. Monte Cristo himself had no such stores of wealth within his reach in the treasure-caves of his wondrous island. The teller behind the grill was counting the contents of his safe, and as he bent over to foot up a column of figures Jack stopped in front of the little window and said:

"Good-morning!"

He did this not so much for the fun of it as for a precautionary test of his invisibility, for a great scheme had entered his mind. The teller looked up, craned his neck in every direction, and peered around to see who had addressed him.

"There must be something the matter with my nerves this morning," he said, scratching his head in bewilderment. "I was sure somebody spoke to me."

Jack had all he could do to keep from laughing outright, but safety bade him restrain the impulse, and in a moment he had climbed over the steel grillwork and entered the sacred precincts of Ready Money. Once within the teller's cage his heart began to thump so violently that it seemed impossible for him to escape detection, but so busy were all the bank people with the duties of the day that no one seemed to hear. And then our hero began. Within five minutes he had stowed away within the capacious pockets of his invisible cloak as many of the packages of bills, green-backed and yellow, as he could possibly carry there, and then, slipping out through the little door at the rear of the cage, he walked calmly out of the bank with them. Arrived on Broadway, he removed his coat and, hanging it over his arm, took a taxicab back to the Redmere.

He could hardly wait until he reached his apartment to count up the results of his morning's work, but his caution stood by him, and it was not until he had locked his door and barricaded it with the bureau rolled in front of it that he opened the various packages. There were ten of them altogether, and Jack's eyes nearly popped out of his head with wonder as he saw so much real money spread out before him. Three of the packages held one thousand dollars each in twenty-dollar bills, four of them held five hundred dollars each in five-dollar bills, and the other three totalled fifteen hundred dollars in ones and twos – sixty-five hundred dollars altogether.

"Mike!" he cried, going to the dumbwaiter shaft, and calling down, vociferously, "turn on the heat, and tell the boss to send a truck around here for his rent."

Hiding the money under the mattress of his bed, Jack removed the invisible cloak and hung it in the closet, taking care to lock the door thereof, and then he started to shave. His hand trembled too much for this, however, and after he had snipped off two or three pieces of his cheek he abandoned the effort, but his brief trial before the glass had a distinct moral influence upon him, for as his eye caught its own reflection in the mirror, and Jack came to look himself squarely in the face for the first time since his removal of the money from the bank, he found that he could not do it. His eye faltered and fell, and the question flashed across his mind as to the honesty of his morning's work.

"Hum!" he muttered, sitting down suddenly on his bed and staring at a hole in the carpet, "I hadn't thought of that before! What would my poor but honest parents think about this?"

He scratched the end of his nose thoughtfully.

"It isn't any too straight, even in these days of frenzied finance," he went on; "that is, it isn't unless I regard this thing as a loan! Of course if it's a loan – yes, it must be. Otherwise I'm no better than any other – "

His brow cleared as the idea entered his mind.

"I'll make it O. K. in a jiffy," he said.

He went to his writing-desk, and wrote to the cashier of the Urban National Bank as follows:

New York, December 12, 1910.

Cashier, the Urban National Bank,

New York City:

Dear Sir, – I think it only proper to inform you that, unknown to yourself or any other person in your bank, I have this morning negotiated a loan with your institution for six thousand five hundred dollars. I have a temporary need for this accommodation, and in order that the transaction may appear a trifle less informal, I beg to hand you herewith my six-months note for the amount borrowed, together with one hundred and ninety-five dollars in cash to cover discount charges, reckoned on a six-per-cent. basis. Please acknowledge receipt of the same in the Personal Column of the New York Morning Gazoo.

The charming ease and promptness with which this transaction was put through have given me a more than friendly feeling for your bank, and now that I have used one package of your money I take pleasure in saying that I shall not only recommend it to my friends, but shall hereafter use no other.

This written, Jack purchased a blank promissory note at a stationery store on the corner and filled it in.

$6,500. New York, December 12, 1910.

Six months after date I promise to pay to the order of the Urban National Bank Six thousand five hundred dollars at the Urban National Bank, New York City. Value received.

Both these interesting documents he now inclosed in an envelope, with one hundred and ninety-five dollars in bills, sending the whole by special-delivery mail to the cashier of the bank.

"There!" said Jack, when he had completed this righteous act. "I can now look myself in the eye again."

From this time on Jack wore his invisible cloak nearly all the time. He found it very convenient, especially when he wished to go to the theatre, or to ride on any of our vehicles of public transportation. Once he seriously contemplated a trip to Europe in it, but this was postponed by a sudden important development which called for his attention nearer home. While seated in the back of Colonel Midas's box at the Metropolitan Opera House one night, listening to the dreamy numbers of "La Bohème," utterly unobserved, of course, by any of the other occupants of the box, thanks to his magic cloak, Jack overheard Colonel Midas engaged in a strenuous conversation with one of his male relatives, who had asked the eminent financier for some kind of a tip that would make a rich man of him.