Odd Numbers
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“Well, well!” says Pinckney. “Regularly employed here, are you, Spotty?”
“Me? Nah!” says Spotty, lookin’ disgusted at the thought. “I’m only stayin’ around.”
“Ain’t you afraid the sun will fade them curly locks of yours?” says I.
“Ah, quit your kiddin’!” says Spotty, startin’ to roll a fresh cigarette.
“Don’t mind Shorty,” says Pinckney. “I have some good news for you.”
That don’t excite Spotty a bit. “Not another job!” he groans.
“No, no,” says Pinckney, and then he explains about finding Uncle Aloysius, windin’ up by askin’ Spotty how he’d like to go up there and live.
“I don’t know,” says Spotty. “Good ways off, ain’t it!”
“It is, rather,” admits Pinckney; “but that need not trouble you. What do you think I am going to do for you, Spotty?”
“Give it up,” says he, calmly lightin’ a match and proceedin’ with the smoke.
“Well,” says Pinckney, “because of the long and faithful service of your father, and the many little personal attentions he paid me, I am going to give you – Wait! Here it is now,” and hanged if Pinckney don’t fork over ten new twenty-dollar bills. “There!” says he. “That ought to be enough to fit you out well and take you there in good shape. Here’s the address too.”
Does Spotty jump up and crack his heels together and sputter out how thankful he is? Nothin’ so strenuous. He fumbles the bills over curious for a minute, then wads ’em up and jams ’em into his pocket. “Much obliged,” says he.
“Come around to Shorty’s with your new clothes on to-morrow afternoon about four o’clock,” says Pinckney, “and let us see how you look. And – er – by the way, Spotty, is that a friend of yours?”
I’d been noticin’ her too, standin’ just inside the doorway pipin’ us off. She’s a slim, big-eyed, black-haired young woman, dressed in the height of Grand-st. fashion, and wearin’ a lot of odd, cheap lookin’ jewelry. If it hadn’t been for the straight nose and the thin lips you might have guessed that her first name was Rebecca.
“Oh, her?” says Spotty, turnin’ languid to see who he meant. “That’s Mareena. Her father runs the shop.”
“Armenian?” says I.
“No, Syrian,” says he.
“Quite some of a looker, eh?” says I, tryin’ to sound him.
“Not so bad,” says Spotty, hunchin’ his shoulders.
“But – er – do I understand,” says Pinckney, “that there is – ah – some attachment between you and – er – the young lady?”
“Blamed if I know,” says Spotty. “Better ask her.”
Course, we couldn’t very well do that, and as Spotty don’t seem bubblin’ over with information he has to chop it off there. Pinckney, though, is more or less int’rested in the situation. He wonders if he’s done just right, handin’ over all that money to Spotty in a place like that.
“It wa’n’t what you’d call a shrewd move,” says I. “Seems to me I’d bought his ticket, anyway.”
“Yes; but I wanted to get it off my mind, you know,” says he. “Odd, though, his being there. I wonder what sort of persons those Syrians are!”
“You never can tell,” says I.
The more Pinckney thinks of it, the more uneasy he gets, and when four o’clock comes next day, with no Spotty showin’ up, he begins to have furrows in his brow. “If he’s been done away with, it’s my fault,” says Pinckney.
“Ah, don’t start worryin’ yet,” says I. “Give him time.”
By five o’clock, though, Pinckney has imagined all sorts of things, – Spotty bein’ found carved up and sewed in a sack, and him called into court to testify as to where he saw him last. “And all because I gave him that money!” he groans.
“Say, can it!” says I. “Them sensation pictures of yours are makin’ me nervous. Here, I’ll go down and see if they’ve finished wipin’ off the daggers, while you send Swifty out after something soothin’.”
With that off I hikes as a rescue expedition. I finds the red flag still out, the sample rug still in place; but there’s no Spotty in evidence. Neither is there any sign of the girl. So I walks into the store, gazin’ around sharp for any stains on the floor.
Out from behind a curtain at the far end of the shop comes a fat, wicked lookin’ old pirate, with a dark greasy face and shiny little eyes like a pair of needles. He’s wearin’ a dinky gold-braided cap, baggy trousers, and he carries a long pipe in one hand. If he didn’t look like he’d do extemporaneous surgery for the sake of a dollar bill, then I’m no judge. I’ve got in too far to look up a cop, so I takes a chance on a strong bluff.
“Say, you!” I sings out. “What’s happened to Spotty?”
“Spot-tee?” says he. “Spot-tee?” He shrugs his shoulders and pretends to look dazed.
“Yes, Spotty,” says I, “red-headed, freckle-faced young gent. You know him.”
“Ah!” says he, tappin’ his head. “The golden crowned! El Sareef Ka-heel?”
“That’s the name, Cahill,” says I. “He’s a friend of a friend of mine, and you might as well get it through your nut right now that if anything’s happened to him – ”
“You are a friend of Sareef Ka-heel?” he breaks in, eyin’ me suspicious.
“Once removed,” says I; “but it amounts to the same thing. Now where is he?”
“For a friend – well, I know not,” says the old boy, kind of hesitatin’. Then, with another shrug, he makes up his mind. “So it shall be. Come. You shall see the Sareef.”
At that he beckons me to follow and starts towards the back. I went through one dark room, expectin’ to feel a knife in my ribs every minute, and then we goes through another. Next thing I knew we’re out in a little back yard, half full of empty cases and crates. In the middle of a clear space is a big brown tent, with the flap pinned back.
“Here,” says the old gent, “your friend, the Sareef Ka-heel!”
Say, for a minute I thought it was a trap he’s springin’ on me; but after I’d looked long enough I see who he’s pointin’ at. The party inside is squattin’ cross-legged on a rug, holdin’ the business end of one of these water bottle pipes in his mouth. He’s wearin’ some kind of a long bath robe, and most of his red hair is concealed by yards of white cloth twisted round his head; but it’s Spotty all right, alive, uncarved, and lookin’ happy and contented.
“Well, for the love of soup!” says I. “What is it, a masquerade?”
“That you, McCabe?” says he. “Come in and – and sit on the floor.”
“Say,” says I, steppin’ inside, “this ain’t the costume you’re going to start for Canada in, is it?”
“Ah, forget Canada!” says he. “I’ve got that proposition beat a mile. Hey, Hazzam,” and he calls to the old pirate outside, “tell Mrs. Cahill to come down and be introduced!”
“What’s that?” says I. “You – you ain’t been gettin’ married, have you?”
“Yep,” says Spotty, grinnin’ foolish. “Nine o’clock last night. We’re goin’ to start on our weddin’ trip Tuesday, me and Mareena.”
“Mareena!” I gasps. “Not the – the one we saw out front? Where you going, Niagara?”
“Nah! Syria, wherever that is,” says he. “Mareena knows. We’re goin’ to live over there and buy rugs. That two hundred was just what we needed to set us up in business.”
“Think you’ll like it?” says I.
“Sure!” says he. “She says it’s fine. There’s deserts over there, and you travel for days and days, ridin’ on bloomin’ camels. Here’s the tent we’re goin’ to live in. I’m practisin’ up. Gee! but this pipe is somethin’ fierce, though! Oh, here she is! Say, Mareena, this is Mr. McCabe, that I was tellin’ you about.”
Well, honest, I wouldn’t have known her for the same girl. She’s changed that Grand-st. uniform for a native outfit, and while it’s a little gaudy in color, hanged if it ain’t becomin’! For a desert bride I should say she had some class.
“Well,” says I, “so you and Spotty are goin’ to leave us, eh?”
“Ah, yes!” says she, them big black eyes of hers lightin’ up. “We go where the sky is high and blue and the sun is big and hot. We go back to the wide white desert where I was born. All day we shall ride toward the purple hills, and sleep at night under the still stars. He knows. I have told him.”
“That’s right,” says Spotty. “It’ll be all to the good, that. Mareena can cook too.”
To prove it, she makes coffee and hands it around in little brass cups. Also there’s cakes, and the old man comes in, smilin’ and rubbin’ his hands, and we has a real sociable time.
And these was the folks I’d suspected of wantin’ to carve up Spotty! Why, by the looks I saw thrown at him by them two, I knew they thought him the finest thing that ever happened. Just by the way Mareena reached out sly to pat his hair when she passed, you could see how it was.
So I wished ’em luck and hurried back to report before Pinckney sent a squad of reserves after me.
“Well!” says he, the minute I gets in. “Let me know the worst at once.”
“I will,” says I. “He’s married.” It was all I could do, too, to make him believe the yarn.
“By Jove!” says he. “Think of a chap like Spotty Cahill tumbling into a romance like that! And on Fourth-ave!”
“It ain’t so well advertised as some other lanes in this town,” says I; “but it’s a great street. Say, what puzzled me most about the whole business, though, was the new name they had for Spotty. Sareef! What in blazes does that mean?”
“Probably a title of some sort,” says Pinckney. “Like sheik, I suppose.”
“But what does a Sareef have to do?” says I.
“Do!” says Pinckney. “Why, he’s boss of the caravan. He – he sits around in the sun and looks picturesque.”
“Then that settles it,” says I. “Spotty’s qualified. I never thought there was any place where he’d fit in; but, if your description’s correct, he’s found the job he was born for.”
CHAPTER IV
A GRANDMOTHER WHO GOT GOING
Ever go on a grandmother hunt through the Red Ink District? Well, it ain’t a reg’lar amusement of mine, but it has its good points. Maybe I wouldn’t have tackled it at all if I hadn’t begun by lettin’ myself get int’rested in Vincent’s domestic affairs.
Now what I knew about this Vincent chap before we starts out on the grandmother trail wouldn’t take long to tell. He wa’n’t any special friend of mine. For one thing, he wears his hair cut plush. Course, it’s his hair, and if he wants to train it to stand up on top like a clothes brush or a blacking dauber, who am I that should curl the lip of scorn?
Just the same, I never could feel real chummy towards anyone that sported one of them self raisin’ crests. Vincent wa’n’t one of the chummy kind, though. He’s one of these stiff backed, black haired, brown eyed, quick motioned, sharp spoken ducks, that wants what he wants when he wants it. You know. He comes to the studio reg’lar, does his forty-five minutes’ work, and gets out without swappin’ any more conversation than is strictly necessary.
All the information I had picked up about him was that he hailed from up the State somewhere, and that soon after he struck New York he married one of the Chetwood girls. And that takes more or less capital to start with. Guess Vincent had it; for I hear his old man left him quite a wad and that now he’s the main guy of a threshin’ machine trust, or something like that. Anyway, Vincent belongs in the four-cylinder plute class, and he’s beginnin’ to be heard of among the alimony aristocracy.
But this ain’t got anything to do with the way he happened to get confidential all so sudden. He’d been havin’ a kid pillow mix-up with Swifty Joe, just as lively as if the thermometer was down to thirty instead of up to ninety, and he’s just had his rub down and got into his featherweight serge, when in drifts this Rodney Kipp that’s figurin’ so strong on the defense side of them pipe line cases.
“Ah, Vincent!” says he.
“Hello, Rodney!” says Vincent as they passes each other in the front office, one goin’ out and the other comin’ in.
I’d never happened to see ’em meet before, and I’m some surprised that they’re so well acquainted. Don’t know why, either, unless it is that they’re so different. Rodney, you know, is one of these light complected heavyweights, and a swell because he was born so. I was wonderin’ if Rodney was one of Vincent’s lawyers, or if they just belonged to the same clubs; when Mr. Kipp swings on his heel and says:
“Oh, by the way, Vincent, how is grammy?”
“Why!” says Vincent, “isn’t she out with you and Nellie?”
“No,” says Rodney, “she stayed with us only for a couple of days. Nellie said she hadn’t heard from her for nearly two months, and told me to ask you about her. So long. I’m due for some medicine ball work,” and with that he drifts into the gym. and shuts the door.
Vincent, he stands lookin’ after him with a kind of worried look on his face that was comical to see on such a cocksure chap as him.
“Lost somebody, have you?” says I.
“Why – er – I don’t know,” says Vincent, runnin’ his fingers through the bristles that waves above his noble brow. “It’s grandmother. I can’t imagine where she can be.”
“You must have grandmothers to burn,” says I, “if they’re so plenty with you that you can mislay one now and then without missin’ her.”
“Eh?” says he. “No, no! She is really my mother, you know. I’ve got into the way of calling her grammy only during the last three or four years.”
“Oh, I see!” says I. “The grandmother habit is something she’s contracted comparative recent, eh? Ain’t gone to her head, has it?”
Vincent couldn’t say; but by the time he’s quit tryin’ to explain what has happened I’ve got the whole story. First off he points out that Rodney Kipp, havin’ married his sister Nellie, is his brother-in-law, and, as they both have a couple of youngsters, it makes Vincent’s mother a grammy in both families.
“Sure,” says I. “I know how that works out. She stays part of the time with you, and makes herself mighty popular with your kids; then she takes her trunk over to Rodney’s and goes through the same performance there. And when she goes visitin’ other places there’s a great howl all round. That’s it, ain’t it?”
It wa’n’t, not within a mile, and I’d showed up my low, common breedin’ by suggesting such a thing. As gently as he could without hurtin’ my feelin’s too much, Vincent explains that while my programme might be strictly camel’s foot for ordinary people, the domestic arrangements of the upper classes was run on different lines. For instance, his little Algernon Chetwood could speak nothing but French, that bein’ the brand of governess he’d always had, and so he naturally couldn’t be very thick with a grandmother that didn’t understand a word of his lingo.
“Besides,” says Vincent, “mother and my wife, I regret to say, have never found each other very congenial.”
I might have guessed it if I’d stopped to think of how an old lady from the country would hitch with one of them high flyin’ Chetwood girls.
“Then she hangs out with your sister, eh, and does her grandmother act there?” says I.
“Well, hardly,” says Vincent, colorin’ up a little. “You see, Rodney has never been very intimate with the rest of our family. He’s a Kipp, and – Well, you can’t blame him; for mother is rather old-fashioned. Of course, she’s good and kind-hearted and all that; but – but there isn’t much style about her.”
“Still sticks to the polonaise of ’81, and wears a straw lid she bought durin’ the Centennial, eh?” says I.
Vincent says that about tells the story.
“And where is it she’s been livin’ all this time that you’ve been gettin’ on so well in New York?” says I.
“In our old home, Tonawanda,” says he, shudderin’ some as he lets go of the name. “It’s where she should have stayed, too!”
“So-o-o-o?” says I. I’d been listenin’ just out of politeness up to that point; but from then on I got int’rested, and I don’t let up until I’ve pumped out of him all the details about just how much of a nuisance an old, back number mother could be to a couple of ambitious young folks that had grown up and married into the swell mob.
It was a case that ought to be held up as a warnin’ to lots of superfluous old mothers that ain’t got any better taste than to keep on livin’ long after there’s any use for ’em. Mother Vincent hadn’t made much trouble at first, for she’d had an old maid sister to take care of; but when a bad case of the grip got Aunt Sophrony durin’ the previous winter, mother was left sort of floatin’ around.
She tried visitin’ back and forth between Vincent and Nellie just one consecutive trip, and the experiment was such a frost that it caused ructions in both families. In her Tonawanda regalia mother wa’n’t an exhibit that any English butler could be expected to pass the soup to and still keep a straight face.
So Vincent thinks it’s time to anchor her permanent somewhere. Accordin’ to his notion, he did the handsome thing too. He buys her a nice little farm about a mile outside of Tonawanda, a place with a fine view of the railroad tracks on the west and a row of brick yards to the east, and he lands mother there with a toothless old German housekeeper for company. He tells her he’s settled a good comfortable income on her for life, and leaves her to enjoy herself.
But look at the ingratitude a parent can work up! She ain’t been there more’n a couple of months before she begins complainin’ about bein’ lonesome. She don’t see much of the Tonawanda folks now, the housekeeper ain’t very sociable, the smoke from the brick yards yellows her Monday wash, and the people she sees goin’ by in the cars is all strangers. Couldn’t Vincent swap the farm for one near New York? She liked the looks of the place when she was there, and wouldn’t mind being closer.
“Of course,” says he, “that was out of the question!”
“Oh, sure!” says I. “How absurd! But what’s the contents of this late bulletin about her being a stray?”
It was nothing more or less than that the old girl had sold up the farm a couple of months back, fired the housekeeper, and quietly skipped for New York. Vincent had looked for her to show up at his house, and when she didn’t he figured she must have gone to Nellie’s. It was only when Rodney Kipp fires the grammy question at him that he sees he’s made a wrong calculation and begins havin’ cold feet.
“If she’s here, alone in New York, there’s no knowing what may be happening to her,” says he. “Why, she knows nothing about the city, nothing at all! She might get run over, or fall in with disreputable people, or – ” The other pictures was so horrible he passes ’em up.
“Mothers must be a great care,” says I. “I ain’t had one for so long I can’t say on my own hook; but I judge that you and sister has had a hard time of it with yours. Excuse me, though, if I don’t shed any tears of sympathy, Vincent.”
He looks at me kind of sharp at that; but he’s too busy with disturbin’ thoughts to ask what I mean. Maybe he’d found out if he had. It’s just as well he didn’t; for I was some curious to see what would be his next move. From his talk it’s plain Vincent is most worried about the chances of the old lady’s doin’ something that would get her name into the papers, and he says right off that he won’t rest easy until he’s found her and shooed her back to the fields.
“But where am I to look first?” says he. “How am I to begin?”
“It’s a big town to haul a dragnet through, that’s a fact,” says I. “Why don’t you call in Brother-in-Law Rodney, for a starter?”
“No, no,” says Vincent, glancin’ uneasy at the gym. door. “I don’t care to have him know anything about it.”
“Maybe sister might have some information,” says I. “There’s the ’phone.”
“Thanks,” says he. “If you don’t mind, I will call her up at the Kipp country place.”
He does; but Nellie ain’t heard a word from mother; thought she must be with Vincent all this time; and has been too busy givin’ house parties to find out.
“Have her cross examine the maids,” says I. “The old lady may have left some orders about forwardin’ her mail.”
That was the clew. Inside of ten minutes Nellie ’phones back and gives a number on West 21st-st.
“Gee!” says I. “A hamfatters’ boardin’-house, I’ll bet a bag of beans! Grandmother has sure picked out a lively lodgin’-place.”
“Horrible!” says Vincent. “I must get her away from there at once. But I wish there was someone who – Shorty, could I get you to go along with me and – ”
“Rescuin’ grandmothers ain’t my long suit,” says I; “but I’ll admit I’m some int’rested in this case. Come on.”
By the time our clockwork cab fetches up in front of the prunery it’s after six o’clock. There’s no mistakin’ the sort of histrionic asylum it was, either. A hungry lookin’ bunch of actorets was lined up on the front steps, everyone of ’em with an ear stretched out for the dinner bell. In the window of the first floor front was a beauty doctor’s sign, a bull fiddle-artist was sawin’ out his soul distress in the hall bedroom above, and up under the cornice the Chicini sisters was leanin’ on the ledge and wishin’ the folks back in Saginaw would send on that grubstake letter before the landlady got any worse. But maybe you’ve seen samples of real dogday tragedy among the profesh, when the summer snaps have busted and the fall rehearsals have just begun. What, Mabel?
“It’s a sure enough double-in-brass roost,” says I. “Don’t say anything that sounds like contract, or you’ll be mobbed.”
But they sizes Vincent up for a real estate broker, and gives him the chilly stare, until he mentions the old lady’s name. Then they thaws out sudden.
“Oh, the Duchess!” squeals a couple in chorus. “Why, she always dines out, you know. You’ll find her around at Doughretti’s, on 27th-st.”
“Duchess!” says Vincent. “I – I’m afraid there’s some mistake.”
“Not at all,” says one of the crowd. “We all call her that. She’s got Little Spring Water with her to-night. Doughretti’s, just in from the avenue, is the place.”
And Vincent is the worst puzzled gent you ever saw as he climbs back into the cab.
“It can’t be mother they mean,” says he. “No one would ever think of calling her Duchess.”
“There’s no accountin’ for what them actorines would do,” says I. “Anyway, all you got to do is take a peek at the party, and if it’s a wrong steer we can go back and take a fresh start.”
You know Doughretti’s, if you don’t you know a dozen just like it. It’s one of these sixty-cent table dotty joints, with an electric name sign, a striped stoop awnin’, and a seven-course menu manifolded in pale purple ink. You begin the agony with an imitation soup that looks like Rockaway beach water when the tide’s comin’ in, and you end with a choice of petrified cheese rinds that might pass for souvenirs from the Palisades.
If you don’t want to taste what you eat, you let ’em hand you a free bottle of pure California claret, vatted on East Houston-st. It’s a mixture of filtered Croton, extra quality aniline dyes, and two kinds of wood alcohol, and after you’ve had a pint of it you don’t care whether the milk fed Philadelphia chicken was put in cold storage last winter, or back in the year of the big wind.
Madam Doughretti had just fed the Punk Lady waltz into the pianola for the fourth time as we pulls up at the curb.
“It’s no use,” says Vincent. “She wouldn’t be here. I will wait, though, while you take a look around; if you will, Shorty.”
On the way over he’s given me a description of his missin’ parent; so I pikes up the steps, pushes past the garlic smells, and proceeds to inspect the groups around the little tables. What I’m lookin’ for is a squatty old party with gray hair pasted down over her ears, and a waist like a bag of hay tied in the middle. She’s supposed to be wearin’ a string bonnet about the size of a saucer, with a bunch of faded velvet violets on top, a coral brooch at her neck, and either a black alpaca or a lavender sprigged grenadine. Most likely, too, she’ll be doin’ the shovel act with her knife.
Well, there was a good many kinds of females scattered around the coffee stained tablecloths, but none that answers to these specifications. I was just gettin’ ready to call off the search, when I gets my eye on a couple over in one corner. The gent was one of these studio Indians, with his hair tucked inside his collar.
The old girl facin’ him didn’t have any Tonawanda look about her, though. She was what you might call a frosted pippin, a reg’lar dowager dazzler, like the pictures you see on fans. Her gray hair has been spliced out with store puffs until it looks like a weddin’ cake; her hat is one of the new wash basin models, covered with pink roses that just matches the color of her cheeks; and her peek-a-poo lace dress fits her like it had been put onto her with a shoe horn.