 Story 1 of Strictly Business. More Stories of the Four Million. Strictly Business. More Stories of the Four Million. By O. Henry. Story 1. Strictly Business. I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people. You've been touched with and by actors. And you read the newspaper criticisms and the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the Chorus Girls and the long-haired Tragedians. And I suppose that a condensed list of your ideas about the mysterious stage land would boil down to something like this. Leading ladies have five husbands, paced diamonds, and figures no better than your own, madam, if they weren't padded. Chorus Girls are inseparable from peroxide, panhards, and Pittsburgh. All shows walk back to New York on tan Oxford and railroad ties. Irreproachable actresses reserve the comic landlady part for their mothers on Broadway and their step aunts on the road. Carly Bellews' real name is Boyle O'Kelly. The ravings of John McCulloch in the phonograph were stolen from the first sale of the Ellen Terry memoirs. Joe Weber is funnier than E. H. Southern, but Henry Miller is getting older than he was. All theatrical people, on leaving the theater at night, drink champagne, and eat lobsters until noon the next day. After all, the moving pictures have got the whole bunch pounded to a pulp. Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people. If we did, the profession might be more overcrowded than it is. We look a scans at the players with an eye full of patronizing superiority, and we go home and practice all sorts of elocution and gestures in front of our looking glasses. Laterally, there has been much talk of the actor people in a new light. It seems to have been divulged that, instead of being motoring bacchanalians and diamond-hungry loralize, they are business-like folk, students and aesthetics with children in homes and libraries, owning real estate, and conducting their private affairs in as orderly and unsensational a manner as any of us good citizens who are bound to the chariot wheels of the gas, rent, coal, ice, and ward men. Whether the old or the new report of the sock and buskinners, be the true one, is a surmise that has no place here. I offer you merely this little story of two strollers, and for proof of its truth I can show you only the dark patch above the cast iron of the stage entrance store of Keter's old vaudeville theatre, made there by the petulant push of gloved hands, too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb latch, and, where I last saw cherry, whisking through like a swallow into her nest, on time to the minute, as usual, to dress for her act. The vaudeville team of Hart and Cherry was an inspiration. Bob Hart had been roaming through the eastern and western circuits for four years, with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning changes with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a buck and wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the base vile player in more than one house, than which no performer ever received more satisfactory evidence of good work. The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage. In order to give himself this pleasure, he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway corner between 34th and 44th to attend a matinee offering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the lifetime of a minstrel joke, one comes to scoff and remains to go through with that most difficult exercise of thespian muscles, the audible contact of the palm of one hand against the palm of the other. One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known vaudevillian face at the box office window of a rival attraction and got his DH coupon for an orchestra seat. A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announcement spaces and passed into oblivion, each plunging Mr. Hart deeper into gloom. Others of the audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled, and applauded. But Bob Hart, quote, all the mustard and a whole show in himself, unquote, sat with his face as long and his hands as far apart as a boy holding a hank of yarn for his grandmother to wind into a ball. But when H came on, the mustard suddenly sat up straight. H was the happy alphabetical prognosticator of Winona Cherry in character songs and impersonations. There were scarcely more than two bites to Cherry, but she delivered the merchandise tied with a pink cord and charged to the old man's account. She first showed you a deliciously dewy and gingamy country girl with a basket of property daisies who informed you ingenuously that there were other things to be learned at the old log school house besides cipher and nouns, especially when the teacher kept me in. Vanishing with a quick flirt of gingham apron strings, she reappeared in a considerably less than a trice as a fluffy Parisienne. So near does Art bring the old red mill to the moulin rouge. And then. But you know the rest, and so did Bob Hart. But he saw somebody else. He thought he saw that Cherry was the only professional on the short order stage that he had seen who seemed exactly to fit the part of Helen Grimes in the sketch he had written and kept tucked away in the tray of his trunk. Of course, Bob Hart, as well as every other normal actor, grocer, newspaper man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a play tucked away somewhere. They tuck him in trays of trunks, trunks of trees, desks, hay mows, pigeon holes, inside pockets, safe deposit vaults, handboxes, and coal sellers, waiting for Mr. Froman to call. They belong among the fifty-seven different kinds. But Bob Hart's sketch was not destined to end in a pickle jar. He called it Mice Will Play. He had kept it quiet and hidden away ever since he wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his conceptions of Helen Grimes. And here was Helen herself, with all the innocent abandon, the youth, the sprightliness, and the flawless stage art that his critical taste demanded. After the act was over, Hart found the manager in the box office, and got Cherry's address. At five the next afternoon, he called at the musty old house in the West Forties, and sent up his professional card. By daylight, in a secular shirt-waste and plain volet skirt, with her hair curbed and her sister-of-charity eyes, Winona Cherry might have been playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacons' daughter, in the great, unwritten, new England drama, not yet entitled anything. I know your act, Mr. Hart, she said after she looked over his card carefully. What did you wish to see me about? I saw you work last night, said Hart. I've written a sketch that I've been saving up. It's for two, and I think you can do the other part. I thought I'd see you about it. Come in the parlor, said Miss Cherry. I've been wishing for something of the sort. I think I'd like to act instead of doing turns. Bob Hart drew his cherished, mice will play from his pocket, and read it to her. Read it again, please, said Miss Cherry. And then she pointed out to him clearly how it could be improved by introducing a messenger instead of a telephone call, and cutting the dialogue just before the climax while they were struggling with the pistol, and by completely changing the lines and business of Helen Grimes at the point where her jealousy overcomes her. Hart yielded to all her strictures without argument. She had at once put her finger on the sketch's weaker points. That was her woman's intuition that he had lacked. At the end of their talk, Hart was willing to stake the judgment, experience, and savings of his four years of vaudeville that, mice will play, would blossom into a perennial flower in the garden of the circuits. Miss Cherry was slower to decide. After many puckering of her smooth, young brow, and tapping on her small, white teeth, with the end of a lead pencil, she gave out her dictum. Mr. Hart, she said, I believe your sketch is going to win out. That Grimes part fits me like a shrinkable flannel after its first trip to a handless hand laundry. I can make it stand out like the colonel of the forty-fourth regiment at a little mother's bizarre. And I've seen you work. I know what you can do with the other part. But business is business. How much do you get a week for the stunt you do now? Two hundred, answered Hart. I get one hundred for mine, said Cherry. That's about the natural discount for a woman. But I live on it, and put a few simoleons every week under the loose brick in the old kitchen hearth. The stage is all right, I love it, but there's something else I love better. That's a little country home some day, with Plymouth rock chickens and six ducks wandering around the yard. Now, let me tell you, Mr. Hart, I am strictly business. If you want me to play the opposite part in your sketch, I'll do it, and I believe we can make it go. And there's something else I want to say. There's no nonsense in my makeup. I'm on the level, and I'm on the stage for what it pays me, just as other girls work in stores and offices. I'm going to save my money, to keep me when I'm past doing my stunts. No old ladies' home or retreat for impudent actresses for me. If you want to make this a business partnership, Mr. Hart, with all nonsense cut out of it, I'm in on it. I know something about vaudeville teams in general, but this would have to be one in particular. I want you to know that I'm on the stage for what I can cart away from it, every payday in a little manila envelope with nicotine stains on it, where the cashier has licked the flap. It's kind of a hobby of mine to want to cravenet myself for plenty of rainy days in the future. I want you to know just how I am. I don't know what an all-night restaurant looks like. I drink only weak tea. I've never spoke to a man at a stage entrance in my life, and I've got money in five savings-banks. Miss Cherry, said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, you're in on your own terms. I've got strictly business pasted in my hat and stenciled on my make-up box. When I dream of nights I always see a five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a jab cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the tidal deeds to the place in my pongy coat-pocket, swinging in a hammock on the side porch, reading Stanley's explorations into Africa, and nobody else around. You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry? Not any, said Cherry. What I'm going to do with my money is to bank it. You can get four percent on deposits. Even at the salary I've been earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have an income of about fifty dollars a month, just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest some of the principal and the little business, say, trimming hats or a beauty parlor, and make more. Well, said Hart, you've got the proper idea, all right, all right, anyhow. There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at all who couldn't fix themselves for the wet days to come, if they'd save their money instead of blowing it. I'm glad you've got the correct business idea of it, Miss Cherry. I think the same way, and I believe this sketch will more than double what both of us earn now when we get it shaped up. The subsequent history of mice will play is the history of all successful writings for the stage. Hart and Cherry cut it, pieced it, remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and business, changed the lines, restored them, added more, cut them out, renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger for the pistol, restored the pistol, put the sketch through all the known processes of condensation and improvement. They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boarding-house clock in the rarely used parlor until its warning click, at five minutes to the hour, would occur every time, exactly half a second before the click of the unloaded revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the thrilling climax of the sketch. Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work. In the act, a real thirty two-caliber revolver was used, loaded with a real cartridge. Helen Grimes, who is a western girl of decidedly buffalo-billish skill and daring, is tempestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the private secretary and confidential prospective son-in-law of her father, Arapaho Grimes, quarter-million-dollar cattle-king, owning a ranch that, judging by the scenery, is in either the Badlands or Amagansat Long Island. Desmond, in private life, Mr. Bob Hart, wears putties and Meadowbrook hunt-riding trousers and gives his address as New York, leaving you to wonder why he comes to the Badlands or Amagansat, as the case may be, and at the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattle-man should want putties about his ranch with the secretary in him. Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind of play, whether we admit it or not, something along in between Bluebeard Jr. and Symboline, played in the Russian. There were only two parts and a half in Mice Will Play. Hart and Cherry were the two, of course, and the half was a minor part always played by a stagehand, who merely came in once in a tuxedo coat and a panic to announce that the house was surrounded by Indians, and to turn down the gas-fire in the grate by the manager's orders. There was another girl in the sketch, a Fifth Avenue Society swelless, who was visiting the ranch and who had sireened Jack Valentine when he was a wealthy clubman on Lower Third Avenue before he lost his money. The girl appeared on the stage only in the photographic state. Jack had her serenity stuck up on the mantle of the Amagan, of the Badlands' drawing-room. Helen was jealous, of course. And now for the thriller. Old Arapaho Grimes dies of angina pectoris one night, so Helen informs us in a stage-fairy boat whisper over the footlights, while only his secretary was present. And that same day he was known to have had six hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars in cash in his ranch library just received for the sale of a drove of bees in the east. That accounts for the price we pay for steak. The cash disappears at the same time. Jack Valentine was the only person with the ranch man when he made his alleged croak. God knows I'd love him, but if he has done this, steed. You saw me, don't you? And then there are some mean things said about the Fifth Avenue girl, who doesn't come on the stage. And can we blame her, with the vaudeville trust holding down prices until one actually must be buttoned in the back by a call-boy? Made's cost so much? But wait, here's the climax. Helen Grimes, chaperral-ish as she can be, is goaded beyond imprudence. She convinces herself that Jack Valentine is not only a falsetto, but a financier. To lose that one fell swoop, six hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars, and a lover in riding trousers, with angles in the sides, like the variations on the chart of a typhoid fever patient, is enough to make any perfect lady mad. So then, they stand in the ranch library, which is furnished with mounted elk heads. Didn't the elks have a fish fry and amaganset once? And the denoyment begins. I know of no more interesting time in the run of a play, unless it be when the prologue ends. Helen thinks Jack has taken the money. Who else was there to take it? The box-office manager was at the front on his job. The orchestra hadn't left their seats, and no one could get past old Jimmy, the stage-door man, unless he could show a sky terrier or an automobile as a guarantee of eligibility. Goaded beyond imprudence, as before said, Helen says to Jack Valentine, robber and thief, and worse yet, stealer of trusting hearts, this should be your fate. With that out, she whips, of course, the trusty 32 caliber. But I will be merciful, goes on Helen. You shall live. That will be your punishment. I will show you how easily I could have sent you to the death that you deserve. There is her picture on the mantle. I will send through her more beautiful face the bullet that should have pierced your craven heart. And she does it. And there's no fake blank cartridges or assistance pulling strings. Helen fires. The bullet, the actual bullet, goes through the face of the photograph, and then strikes the hidden spring of the sliding panel in the wall, and lo, the panel slides, and there is the missing six hundred and forty seven thousand dollars in convincing stacks of currency and bags of gold. It's great. You know how it is. Jerry practiced for two months at a target on the roof of her boarding house. It took good shooting. In the sketch she had to hit a brass disc only three inches in diameter, covered by wallpaper in the panel. And she had to stand in exactly the same spot every night. And the photo had to be in exactly the same spot. And she had to shoot steady and true every time. Of course, Old Arapaho had tucked the funds away there in the secret place. And of course, Jack hadn't taken anything except his salary, which really might have come under the head of obtaining money under. But that is neither here nor there. And of course, the New York girl was really engaged to a concrete house contractor in the Bronx. And necessarily, Jack and Helen ended in a half-nelson. And there you are. After Hart and Cherry had gotten mice will play flawless, they had a tryout at a vaudeville house that accommodates. The sketch was a house wrecker. It was one of those rare strokes of talent that inundates a theater from the roof down. The gallery wept and the orchestra seats being dressed for it swam in tears. After the show, the booking agents signed blank checks and pressed fountain pens upon Hart and Cherry. Five hundred dollars a week was what had panned out. That night, at eleven thirty, Bob Hart took off his hat and bade Cherry good night at her boarding-house door. Mr. Hart, she said thoughtfully, come inside just a few minutes. We've got our chance now to make good and make money. What we want to do is to cut expenses every cent we can and save all we can. Right, said Bob. It's business with me. You've got your scheme for banking yours, and I dream every night of that bungalow with a Jap cook and nobody around to raise trouble. Anything to enlarge the net receipts will engage my attention. Come inside just a few minutes, repeated Cherry, deeply thoughtful. I've got a proposition to make to you that will reduce our expenses a lot and help you work out your own feature and help me work out mine and all on business principles. Mice Will Play had a tremendously successful run in New York for ten weeks, rather neat for a vaudeville sketch, and then it started on the circuits. Without following it, it may be said that it was a solid drawing card for two years, without a sign of abated popularity. Sam Packard, manager of one of Keter's New York houses, said of Hart and Cherry, as square and high-toned a little team as ever came over the circuit. It's a pleasure to read their names on the booking list. Quiet, hard workers, no Johnny and Mabel nonsense, on the job to the minute, straight home after their act, and each of them as gentlemen-like as a lady. I don't expect to handle any attractions that give me less trouble or more respect for the profession. And now, after so much cracking of a nutshell, here is the kernel of the story. At the end of its second season, Mice Will Play came back to New York for another run at the roof gardens and summer theaters. There was never any trouble in booking it at the top-notch price. Bob Hart had his bungalow nearly paid for, and Cherry had so many savings-deposit bankbooks that she had begun to buy sectional bookcases on the installment plan to hold them. I tell you these things to assure you, even if you can't believe it, that many, very many, of the stage-people are workers with abiding ambitions. Just the same as the man who wants to be president, or the grocery clerk who wants a home in Flatbush, or a lady who is anxious to flop out of the count-pan into the Prince Fire. And I hope, I may be allowed to say, without chipping into the contribution basket, that they often move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform. But listen. At the first performance of Mice Will Play in New York at the Westphalia, no hams alluded to, theater, Winona Cherry was nervous. When she fired at the photograph of the Eastern beauty on the mantle, the bullet, instead of penetrating the photo and then striking the disc, went into the lower left side of Bob Hart's neck. Not expecting to get it there, Hart collapsed neatly, while Cherry fainted in a most artistic manner. The audience, surmising that they viewed a comedy instead of a tragedy in which the principals were married or reconciled, applauded with great enjoyment. The cool head, who always graces such occasions, rang the curtain down, and two platoons of scene-shifters respectively, and more or less respectfully, removed Hart and Cherry from the stage. The next turn went on, and all went as merry as an alimony bill. The stage-hands found a young doctor at the stage entrance, who was waiting for a patient with a decoction of American beauty roses. The doctor examined Hart carefully and laughed heartily. No headlines for you, old sport, was his diagnosis. If it had been two inches to the left, it would have undermined the carotid artery as far as the red front drug store in Flatbush and back again. As it is, you just get the property man to bind it up with a flounce torn from any one of the girl's Valencians, and go home and get it dressed by the parlor floor practitioner on your block, and you'll be all right. Excuse me, I've got a serious case outside to look after. After that, Bob Hart looked up and felt better. And then, to where he lay came Vincente, the tramp juggler, great in his line. Vincente, a solemn man from Brattleboro, Vermont, named Sam Griggs at home, sent toys and maple sugar home to two small daughters from every town he played. Vincente had moved on the same circuits with Hart and Cherry, and was their parapetetic friend. Bob, said Vincente in a serious way, I'm glad it's no worse. The little lady is wild about you. Who? asked Hart. Cherry, said the juggler. We didn't know how bad you were hurt, and we kept her away. It's taking the manager and three girls to hold her. It was an accident, of course, said Hart. Cherry's all right. She wasn't feeling in good trim, or she couldn't have done it. There's no hard feelings. She's strictly business. The doctor says I'll be on the job again in three days. Don't let her worry. Man, said Sam Griggs severely, puckering his old smooth, lined face. Are you a chess automaton or a human pin cushion? Cherry's crying her heart out for you, calling Bob, Bob, every second, with them holding her hands and keeping her from coming to you. What's the matter with her? asked Hart, with wide open eyes. The sketch'll go on again in three days. I'm not hurt bad, the doctor says. She won't lose out half a week's salary. I know it was an accident. What's the matter with her? You seem to be blind, or a sort of a fool, said Vincente. The girl loves you and is almost mad about your hurt. What's the matter with you? Is she nothing to you? I wish you could hear her call you. Loves me? asked Bob Hart, rising from the stack of scenery on which he lay. Cherry loves me? Why, it's impossible. I wish you could see her and hear her, said Griggs. But, man, said Bob Hart, sitting up. It's impossible. It's impossible, I tell you. I never dreamed of such a thing. No human being, said the tramp juggler, could mistake it. She's wild for love of you. How have you been so blind? But, my God, said Bob Hart, rising to his feet. It's too late. It's too late, I tell you, Sam. It's too late. It can't be. You must be wrong. It's impossible. There's some mistake. She's crying for you, said the tramp juggler. For love of you, she's fighting three and calling your name so loud they don't dare to raise the curtain. Wake up, man. For love of me, said Bob Hart, with staring eyes. Don't I tell you it's too late? It's too late, man. Why, Cherry and I have been married two years. End of Story One Strictly Business Story Two of Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million, by O. Henry This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Coddy, Gurney, Illinois Story Two The Gold That Glittered A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience. Therefore, let us have the moral first and be done with it. All is not gold that glitters, but it is a wise child that keeps the stopper in his bottle of testing acid. Where Broadway skirts the corner of the square presided over by George the Veracious is the Little Rialto. Here stand the actors of that quarter, and this is their chivaleth. Nits, as I, too, froman, you can't touch me for a copic less than two fifty per, and out I walks. Westward and southward from the Thespian Glare are one or two streets where a Spanish-American colony has huddled for a little tropical warmth in the nipping north. The center of life in this precinct is El Refugio, a cafe and restaurant that caters to the volatile exiles from the south. Up from Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of Central America, and the iraful islands of the Western Indies, flit the cloaked in sombrero de señores, who are scattered like burning lava by the political eruptions of their several countries. Hither they come to lay counter-plots, to bide their time, to solicit funds, to enlist filibusterers, to smuggle out arms and ammunitions, to play the game at long-taw. In El Refugio they find the atmosphere in which they thrive. In the restaurant of El Refugio are served compounds delightful to the palate of the man from Capricorn or Cancer. Altruism must halt the story thus long. On diner, weary of the culinary subterfuges of the Gallic chef, hide thee to El Refugio. There only will you find a fish, bluefish, shad, or pampano from the Gulf, baked after the Spanish method. Tomatoes give it color, individuality, and soul. Chili colorado bestows upon its zest, originality, and fervor. Unknown herbs furnish pickwency and mystery. And but its crowning glory deserves a new sentence. Around it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity, but never in it, hovers anetherial aura, antifluvium so rarefied and delicate, that only the Society for Psychical Research could note its origin. Do not say that garlic is in the fish at El Refugio. It is not otherwise than as if the spirit of garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that lingers in the parsley crown dish, as haunting as those kisses in life, by hopeless fancy feigned on lips that are for others. And then, when Concito, the waiter, brings you a plate of brown fajoles in a carafe of wine that has never stood still between Arporto and El Refugio, adios. One day a Hamburg American liner deposited upon Pier Number 55, General Perico Jimenez Velablanka Falcone, a passenger from Cartagena. The general was between a clay bank and a bay in complexion, had a 42-inch waist, and stood five feet four with his du Berry heels. He had the mustache of a shooting gallery proprietor. He wore the full dress of a Texas congressman, and had the important aspect of an uninstructed delegate. General Falcone had enough English under his hat to enable him to inquire his way to the street in which El Refugio stood. When he reached that neighborhood, he saw a sign before a respectable red brick house that read, Hotel Español. And the window was a card in Spanish. A que se habla Español. The general entered, sure of a congenial port. In the cozy office was Mrs. O'Brien, the proprietress. She had blonde, oh, unimpeachably blonde hair. For the rest, she was amiability, and ran largely two inches around. General Falcone brushed the floor with his broad-brimmed hat and emitted a quantity of Spanish, the syllable sounding like firecrackers gently popping their way down the string of a bunch. Spanish Ordego asked Mrs. O'Brien pleasantly. I am a Colombian, madam, said the general proudly. I speak the Spanish. The advertisements in your window say the Spanish. He has spoken here. How is that? Well, you've been speaking it, ain't you? said the madam. I'm sure I can't. At the Hotel Español, General Falcone engaged rooms and established himself. At dusk, he sauntered out upon the streets to view the wonders of this roaring city of the north. As he walked, he thought of the wonderful golden hair of Madam O'Brien. It is here, said the general to himself, no doubt in his own language, that one shall find the most beautiful signoras in the world. I have not in my Colombia viewed among our beauties one so fair. But no, it is not for the general Falcone to think of beauty. It is my country that claims my devotion. At the corner of Broadway and the Little Rialto, the general became involved. The street cars bewildered him, and the fender of one upset him against a push cart laden with oranges. A cab driver missed him an inch with a hub, and poured barbarous execrations upon his head. He scrambled to the sidewalk, and skipped again in terror when the whistle of a peanut roaster puffed a hot scream in his ear. Falcone deals, what devil's city is this? As the general fluttered out of the streamers of passers, like a wounded snipe, he was marked simultaneously as game by two hunters. One was Bully Maguire, whose system of sport required the use of a strong arm and the misuse of an eight-inch piece of lead pipe. The other nimrod of the asphalt was Spider Kelly, a sportsman with more refined methods. In pouncing upon their self-evident prey, Mr. Kelly was ashamed the quicker. His elbow fended accurately the onslaught of Mr. Maguire. Go on, he commanded harshly. I saw it first. Maguire slunk away, awed by superior intelligence. Pardon me, said Mr. Kelly to the general, but you got balled up in the shuffle, didn't you? Let me assist you. He picked up the general's hat and brushed the dust from it. The ways of Mr. Kelly could not but succeed. The general, bewildered and dismayed by the resounding streets, welcomed his deliverer as a caballero with a most disinterested heart. I have a desire, said the general, to return to the Hotel of O'Brien, in which I am stopped. Caramba, señor, there is a loudness and rapidness of going and coming in the city of this Nueva York. Mr. Kelly's politeness would not suffer the distinguished Columbian to brave the dangers of the return unaccompanied. At the door of the Hotel Espanol they paused. A little lower down on the opposite side of the street, shown the modest illuminated sign of El Refugio, Mr. Kelly, to whom few streets were unfamiliar, knew the place exteriorly as a dago joint. All foreigners, Mr. Kelly clasped under the two heads of dagos and Frenchmen. He proposed to the general that they repair, thither and substantiate their acquaintance with a liquid foundation. An hour later found General Falcone and Mr. Kelly seated at a table in the conspirators' corner of El Refugio. Bottles and glasses were between them. For the tenth time the general confided the secret of his mission to the Estados Unidos. He was here, he declared, to purchase arms, two thousand stands of Winchester rifles, for the Columbian revolutionists. He had drafts in his pocket, drawn by the Cartagena Bank on its New York correspondent, for twenty-five thousand dollars. At other tables other revolutionists were shouting their political secrets to their fellow plotters, but none was as loud as the general. He pounded the table, he hallowed for some wine, he roared to his friend that his errand was a secret one, and not to be hinted at to a living soul. Mr. Kelly himself was stirred to sympathetic enthusiasm. He grasped the general's hand across the table. Moncier, he said earnestly. I don't know where this country of yours is, but I'm for it. I guess it must be a branch of the United States, though, for the poetry guys and the schoolmarms call us Columbia too sometimes. It's a lucky thing for you that you butted into me tonight. I'm the only man in New York that can get this gun deal through for you. The Secretary of War of the United States is my best friend. He's in the city now, and I'll see him for you tomorrow. In the meantime, Moncier, you keep them drafts tight in your inside pocket. I'll call you to-morrow and take you to see him. Say, that ain't the District of Columbia you're talking about, is it?" concluded Mr. Kelly with a sudden qualm. You can't capture that with no two-thousand guns. It's been tried with more. No, no, no, exclaimed the general. It is the Republic of Columbia. It is a great republic on the top side of America, the South, yes, yes. All right, said Mr. Kelly, reassured. Now, suppose we trek along home and go bye-bye. I'll write to the Secretary tonight and make a date with him. It's a ticklish job to get guns out of New York. McCluskey himself can't do it. They parted at the door of the Hotel Espanol. The general rolled his eyes at the moon inside. It is a great country your new wave of York, he said. Truly, the cars in the streets devastate one, and the engine that cooks the nuts terribly, makes a squeak in the ear. But us, Mr. Kelly, these senoras with hair of much goldness, and admirable fatness, they are magnificous, more magnificous. Yes. Kelly went to the nearest telephone booth and called up McCrary's Cafe, far up on Broadway. He asked for Jimmy Dunn. Is that Jimmy Dunn? asked Kelly. Yes, came the answer. You're a liar, sang back Kelly joyfully. You're the Secretary of War. Wait there till I come up. I've got the finest thing down here in the wave of fish you've ever baited for. It's a Colorado Maduro with a gold band around it, and free coupons enough to buy a red haul lamp and a statuette of psyche rubbering in the brook. I'll be up on the next car. Jimmy Dunn was an AM of Crookdom. He was an artist in the Confidence Line. He never saw a bludgeon in his life, and he scorned knockout drops. In fact, he would have set nothing before an intended victim, but the purest of drinks, if it had been possible to procure such a thing in New York. It was the ambition of Spider Kelly to elevate himself into Jimmy's class. These two gentlemen held a conference that night at McCrary's. Kelly explained. He's as easy as a gumshoe. He's from the island of Columbia, where there's a strike or a feud or something going on, and they've sent him up here to buy two thousand Winchester's to arbitrate the thing with. He showed me two drafts for ten thousand each, and one for five thousand dollars on a bank here. It's truth, Jimmy. I felt real mad with him because he didn't have it in thousand dollar bills and handed to me on a silver waiter. Now we've got to wait till he goes to the bank and gets the money for us. They talked it over for two hours, and then Dunn said, bring him to number Broadway at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. In due time Kelly called at the Hotel Espanol for the general. He found the Wiley Warrior engaged in delectable conversation with Mrs. O'Brien. The secretary of war is waiting for us, said Kelly. The general tore himself away with an effort. Ha, senor! he said with a sigh. Duty makes a call. But, senor, the senoras of your estados unidos, how beauties, for exemplification, take you la madame O'Brien. Que magnífica, she is one goddess, one Juno, what you call one oxide Juno. Now Mr. Kelly was a wit, and better men have been shriveled by the fire of their own imagination. Sure, he said with a grin, but you mean a peroxide Juno, don't you? Mrs. O'Brien heard, and lifted an oriferous head. Her business-like eye rested for an instant upon the disappearing form of Mr. Kelly. Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady. When the gallant Colombian and his escort arrived at the Broadway address, they were held in an anti-room for half an hour, and then admitted into a well-equipped office, where a distinguished looking man with a smooth face wrote at a desk. General Falcone was presented to the Secretary of War of the United States, and his mission made known by his old friend Mr. Kelly. Ah, Columbia, said the Secretary, significantly, when he was made to understand. I'm afraid there will be a little difficulty in that case. The President and I differ in our sympathies there. He prefers the established government, while I, the Secretary, gave the General a mysterious but encouraging smile. You, of course, know, General Falcone, that since the Tammany War, an act of Congress has been passed, requiring all manufactured arms and ammunition exported from this country to pass through the War Department. Now, if I can do anything for you, I will be glad to do so to oblige my old friend, Mr. Kelly. But it must be in absolute secrecy, as the President, as I have said, does not regard favorably the efforts of your revolutionary party in Columbia. I will have my orderly bring a list of the available arms now in the warehouse. The Secretary struck a bell, and an orderly with the letters ADT on his cap, stepped promptly into the room. Bring me Schedule B of the Small Arms Inventory, said the Secretary. The orderly quickly returned with a printed paper. The Secretary studied it closely. I find, he said, that in warehouse nine of Government's stores there is a shipment of two thousand stands of Winchester rifles that were ordered by the Sultan of Morocco, who forgot to send the cash with his order. Our rule is that legal tender money must be paid down at the time of purchase. My dear Kelly, your friend, General Falcone, shall have this lot of arms, if he desires it, at the manufacturer's price. And you will forgive me, I am sure, if I curtail our interview, I am expecting the Japanese minister and Charles Murphy every moment. As one result of this interview, the General was deeply grateful to his esteemed friend, Mr. Kelly. As another, the nimble Secretary of War was extremely busy during the next two days, buying empty rifle cases and filling them with bricks, which were then stored in a warehouse rented for that purpose. As still another, when the General returned to the hotel Espignol, Mrs. O'Brien went up to him, plucked a thread from his lapel, and said, Say, Senor, I don't want to butt in, but what does that monkey-faced, cat-eyed, rubber-necked, tin-horned tough want with you? Zangre de Mavida, exclaimed the General. Impossible it is that you speak of my good friend, Senor Kelly. Come into the summer garden, said Mrs. O'Brien. I want to have a talk with you. Let us suppose that an hour has elapsed. And you say, said the General, that for the sum of eighteen thousand dollars can be purchased the furnishment of the house and the lease of one year with this garden so lovely, so resembling unto the patios of Maikara, Colombia. And dirt cheap at that, sighed the lady. Adios, breathed General Falcone. What to me is war and politics. This spot is one of paradise. My country, it have other brave heroes to continue the fighting. What to me should be glory in the shooting of Mons? Ah, no, it is here I have found one angel. Let us buy the hotel espagnol, and you shall be mine, and the money shall not be waste on guns. Mrs. O'Brien rested her blonde pompadour against the shoulder of the Colombian Patriot. Oh, Senor, she sighed happily. Ain't you terrible? Two days later was the time appointed for the delivery of the arms to the General. The boxes of supposed rifles were stacked in the rented warehouse, and the Secretary of War sat upon them waiting for his friend Kelly to fetch the victim. Mr. Kelly hurried, at the hour, to the hotel espagnol. He found the General behind the desk, adding up accounts. I have decide, said the General, to buy not guns. I have today buy the insides of this hotel, and there shall be marrying of the General Pericle Jimenez-Vilavonka Falcone with la Madame O'Brien. Mr. Kelly almost strangled. Say, you old bald-headed bottle of shoe polish, he sputtered. You're a swindler, that's what you are. You've bought a boarding-house with money belonging to your infernal country, wherever it is. Ah, said the General, footing up a column. That is what you call politics. War and revolution, they are not nice. Yes, it is not best that one shall always follow Minerva. No, it is of quite desirable to keep hotels and be with that Juno. That Oxide Juno, ah, what hair of the gold it is that she have. Mr. Kelly choked again. Ah, Senor Kelly, said the General, feelingly and finally. Is it that you have never eaten of the corn-beef hash that Madame O'Brien she make? End of story two. The gold that glittered. Story three of strictly business. More stories of the four million, by O'Henry. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Coddy, Derny Illinois. Story three, babes in the jungle. Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says to me once in Little Rock. If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get too old to do on a swindling among grown men, go to New York. In the West a sucker is born every minute, but in New York they appear in chunks of row. You can't count them. Two years afterward I found that I couldn't remember the names of the Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left ear. So I knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver's advice. I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up Broadway. And I run against Silver himself, all encompassed up in a spacious kind of haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and rubbing the half-moons on his nails with a silk handkerchief. Parises or superannuated, I ask him. Hello, Billy, says Silver. I'm glad to see you. Yes, it seemed to me that the West was accumulating a little too much wiseness. I have been saving New York for dessert. I know it's a low-down trick to take things from these people. They only know this and that and pass to and fro and think ever and anon. I'd hate for my mother to know I was skinning these weak-minded ones. She raised me better. Is there a crush already in the waiting rooms of the old doctor that does skin-grafting? I ask. Well, no, says Silver. You needn't back epidermis to win today. I've only been here a month, but I'm ready to begin. And the members of Willie Manhattan's Sunday School class, each of whom has volunteered to contribute a portion of cuticle towards this rehabilitation, may as well send their photos to the evening daily. I've been studying the town, says Silver, and reading the papers every day, and I know it as well as the cat in the city hall knows Ann O'Sullivan. People here lie down on the floor and scream and kick when you are the least bit slow about taking money from them. Come up in my room and I'll tell you. We'll work the town together, Billy, for the sake of old times. Silver takes me up in a hotel. He has a quantity of irrelevant objects lying about. There's more ways of getting money from these metropolitan hayseeds, says Silver. Then there is of cooking rice in Charleston, South Carolina. They'll bite at anything. The brains of most of them commute. The wiser they are in intelligence, the less perception of cognizance they have. Why, didn't a man the other day sell J.P. Morgan an oil portrait of Rockefeller Jr. for Andrea del Sarto's celebrated painting of the young St. John? You see that bundle of printed stuff in the corner, Billy? That's gold mining stock. I started out one day to sell that, but I quit it in two hours. Why? Got arrested for blocking the street. People fought to buy it. I sold the policeman a block of it on the way to the station house. And then I took it off the market. I don't want people to give me their money. I want some little consideration connected with the transaction to keep my pride from being hurt. I want them to guess the missing letter in Shikko, or draw to a pair of nines before they pay me a cent of money. Now there's another little scheme that worked so easy I had to quit it. You see that bottle of blue ink on the table? I tattooed an anchor on the back of my hand and went to a bank and told him I was Admiral Dewey's nephew. They offered to cash my draft on him for a thousand, but I didn't know my uncle's first name. It shows, though, what an easy town it is. As for burglars, they won't go in a house now unless there's a hot supper ready and a few college students to wait on him. They're slugging citizens all over the upper part of the city, and I guess, taking the town from end to end, it's a plain case of assault and battery. Monty, says I, when Silver had slacked up. You may have Manhattan correctly discriminated in your prorative, but I doubt it. I've only been in town two hours, but it don't dawn upon me that it's ours with a cherry in it. There ain't enough Russ and Urbe about it to suit me. I'd be a good deal much better satisfied if the citizens had a straw or more in their hair and run more to velveteen vests and buckeye watch charms. They don't look easy to me. You've got it, Billy, says Silver. All immigrants have it. New York's bigger than Little Rock or Europe, and it frightens a foreigner. You'll be all right. I tell you I feel like slapping the people here because they don't send me all their money in laundry baskets, with germicides sprinkled over it. I hate to go down on the street to get it. Who wears the diamonds in this town? Why, Winnie, the wiretapper's wife, and Bella, the bunco-steer's bride. New Yorkers can be worked easier than a blue rose on a tidy. The only thing that bothers me is, I know I'll break the cigars in my vest pocket when I get my clothes all full of twenties. I hope you are right, Monty, says I, but I wish all the same I had been satisfied with a small business in Little Rock. The crop of farmers is never so short out there, but what you can get a few of them to sign a petition for a new post office that you can discount for $200 at the county bank. The people here appear to possess instincts of self-preservation and ill-liberality. I fear me that we are not cultured enough to tackle this game. Don't worry, says Silver. I've got this J-ville near Turritown correctly estimated, as sure as North River is the Hudson, and East River ain't the River. Why, there are people living in four blocks of Broadway who never saw any kind of a building except a skyscraper in their lives. A good, live, hustling Western man ought to get conspicuous enough here inside of three months to incur either Jerome's clemency or Lawson's displeasure. I perbly aside, says I. Do you know of any immediate system of buncoing the community out of a dollar or two except by applying to the Salvation Army or having a fit on Ms. Helen Gold's doorsteps? Dozens of them, says Silver. How much capital have you got, Billy? A thousand, I told him. I've got $1,200. Says he. We'll pull and do a big piece of business. There's so many ways we can make a million that I don't know how to begin. The next morning Silver meets me at the hotel, and he is all sonorous and stirred with a kind of silent joy. Where to meet J.P. Morgan this afternoon, says he. A man I know in the hotel wants to introduce us. He's a friend of his. He says he likes to meet people from the West. That sounds nice and plausible, says I. I'd like to know, Mr. Morgan. It won't hurt us a bit, says Silver. To get acquainted with a few finance kings, I kind of like the social way New York has with strangers. The man Silver knew was named Klein. At three o'clock Klein brought his Wall Street friend to see us in Silver's room. Mr. Morgan looked some like his pictures, and he had a Turkish towel wrapped around his left foot, and he walked with a cane. Mr. Silver and Mr. Purskid, says Klein. It sounds superfluous, says he, to mention the name of the greatest financial— Cut it out, Klein, says Mr. Morgan. I'm glad to know you, gents. I take great interest in the West. Klein tells me you're from Little Rock. I think I've a real order, too, out there somewhere. If either of you guys would like to deal a hand or two of stud poker, I— Now, Pierpont cuts in Klein. You forget. Excuse me, gents, says Morgan. Since I've had the gout so bad, I sometimes play a social game of cards at my house. Neither of you never knew one-eyed Peters, did you, while you was around Little Rock? He lived in Seattle, New Mexico. Before we could answer, Mr. Morgan hammers on the floor with his cane and begins to walk up and down, swearing in a loud tone of voice. They have been pounding your stocks today on the street, Pierpont? asks Klein, smiling. Stocks? No, roars Mr. Morgan. It's that picture I sent an agent to Europe to buy. I just thought about it. He cabled me today that it ain't to be found in all Italy. I'd pay fifty thousand dollars tomorrow for that picture. Yes, seventy-five thousand dollars. I give the agent a la carte in purchasing it. I cannot understand why the art galleries will allow a Da Vinci. Why, Mr. Morgan, says Klein, I thought you owned all the Da Vinci paintings. What is the picture like, Mr. Morgan? asks Silver. It must be as big as the side of the Flatiron building. I'm afraid your art education is on the bum, Mr. Silver, says Morgan. The picture is twenty-seven inches by forty-two, and it is called Love's Idol Hour. It represents a number of cloak models doing the two-step on the bank of a purple river. The Cablegram said it might have been brought to this country. My collection will never be complete without that picture. Well, so long, gents. Us financiers must keep early hours. Mr. Morgan and Klein went away together in a cab. Me and Silver talked about how simple and unsuspecting great people was, and Silver said what a shame it would be to try to rob a man like Mr. Morgan. And I said I thought it would be rather impudent, myself. Klein proposes a stroll after dinner, and me and him and Silver walks down toward Seventh Avenue to see the sights. Klein sees a pair of cufflinks that instigate his admiration in a pawn-shop window, and we all go in while he buys them. After we got back to the hotel, and Klein had gone, Silver jumps at me and waves his hands. Did you see it? says he. Did you see it, Billy? What? I asks. Why, that picture Morgan wants. It's hanging in that pawn-shop behind the desk. I didn't say anything because Klein was there. It's the article sure as you live. The girls are as natural as paint can make them, all measuring thirty-six and twenty-five and forty-two skirts, if they had any skirts, and they're doing a buck and wing on the bank of a river with the blues. What did Mr. Morgan say he'd give for it? Oh, don't make me tell you. They can't know what it is in that pawn-shop. When the pawn-shop opens the next morning, me and Silver was standing there as anxious as if we wanted to soak our Sunday suit to buy a drink. We sauntered inside and began to look at watch chains. That's a violent specimen of a promo you've got up there. Remark Silver, casual to the pawnbroker. But I kind of enthused over the girl with the shoulder blades and red bunting. Would an offer of two dollars and twenty-five cents for it cause you to knock over any fragile articles of your stock in hurrying it off the nail? The pawnbroker smiles and goes on showing us plate watch chains. That picture, says he, was pledged a year ago by an Italian gentleman. I loaned him five hundred dollars on it. It is called Love's Idol Hour, and it is by Leonardo Da Vinci. Two days ago the legal time expired, and it became an unredeemed pledge. Here's a style of chain that has worn a great deal now. At the end of half an hour me and Silver paid the pawnbroker two thousand dollars and walked out with the picture. Silver got into a cab with it and started for Morgan's office. I goes to the hotel and waits for him. In two hours Silver comes back. Did you see Mr. Morgan, I ask. How much did he pay you for it? Silver sits down and fools with a tassel on the table cover. I never exactly saw Mr. Morgan, he says. Because Mr. Morgan's been in Europe for a month. But what's worrying me, Billy, is this. The department stores have all got that same picture on sale, framed, for three dollars and forty-eight cents. And they charge three dollars and fifty cents for the frame alone. That's what I can't understand. End of Story 3. Babes in the Jungle. Story 4 of Strictly Business. More stories of the four million by O. Henry. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Coddy Gurney Illinois. Story 4. The Day Resurgent. I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comes to drawing his Easter picture. For his legitimate pictorial conceptions of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in number. First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may have free play. A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the proper number of toes will fill the bill. Ms. Clarice St. Bavisore, the well-known model, will pose for it in the Leather Go Gallagher, or whatever it was that Trollby called it. Second, the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework of lilies. This is magazine covering, but reliable. Third, Ms. Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday Parade. Fourth, Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw hat, happy and self-conscious in the Grand Street turnout. Of course the rabbits do not count, nor the Easter eggs, since the higher criticism has hard-boiled them. The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that Easter, of all our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our conception. It belongs to all religions, although the pagans invented it. Going back still further to the first spring, we can see Eve choosing with pride a new green leaf from the tree Ficus Carica. Now the object of this critical and learned preamble is to set forth the theorem that Easter is neither a date, a season, a festival, a holiday, nor an occasion. What it is, you shall find out if you follow in the footsteps of Danny McCree. Easter Sunday dawned, as it should, bright and early, in its place on the calendar between Saturday and Monday. At 5.24 the sun rose, and at 10.30 Danny followed its example. He went into the kitchen and washed his face at the sink. His mother was frying bacon. She looked at his hard, smooth, knowing countenance as he juggled with the round cake of soap, and thought of his father when she first saw him stopping a hot grounder between second and third twenty-two years before on a vacant lot in Harlem, where the La Paloma apartment house now stands. In the front room of the flat Danny's father sat by an open window, smoking his pipe, with his disheveled gray hair tossed about by the breeze. He still clung to his pipe, although his sight had been taken from him two years before by a precocious blast of giant powder that went off without permission. Very few blind men care for smoking, for the reason that they cannot see the smoke. Now, could you enjoy having the news read to you from an evening newspaper, unless you could see the colors of the headlines? "'Tis Easter Day,' said Mrs. McCree. Scramblemine,' said Danny. After breakfast he dressed himself in the Sabbath morning costume of the Canal Street importing-house stray chauffeur, frock coat, striped trousers, patterned leathers, gilded trace chain across front of vest, and wing collar, rolled brim derby and butterfly bow from Schaunsteins, between 14th Street and Tony's fruit stand, Saturday night sale. "'You'll be going out this day, of course, Danny,' said old man McCree, a little wistfully. "'Tis a kind of holiday,' they say. "'Well, it's fine spring weather. I can feel it in the air.' "'Why, should I not be going out?' demanded Danny in his grumpious chest tones. "'Should I stay in? Am I as good as a horse? One day of rest, my team has a week. Who earns the money for the rent and the breakfast you've just eaten? I'd like to know. Answer me that.' "'All right, lad,' said the old man. "'I'm not complaining. While me two eyes was good, there was nothing better to my mind than a Sunday out. There's a smell of turf and burn and brush coming in the windy. I have me tobacco. A good fine day and rest to you, lad. Times I wish your mother had learned to read, so I might hear the rest about the hippopotamus. But let that be.' "'Now what is this foolishness he talks of hippopotamuses?' asked Danny of his mother, as he passed through the kitchen. "'Have you been taking him to the zoo? And for what?' "'I have not,' said Mrs. McCree. He sets by the windy all day. To his little recreation of blind man among the poor gets it all. I'm thinking they wander in their minds at times. One day he talks of Greece without stopping for most of an hour. I'd looks to see if there's Lord Vernon in the frying-pan. There is not. He says I do not understand.' "'To his weary days, Sundays, and holidays and all, for a blind man, Danny. There was no better nor stronger than him when he had his two eyes. Does a fine day, son? Enjoy yourself against the morning. There will be a cold supper at six.' "'Have you heard of any talk of a hippopotamus?' asked Danny of Mike, the janitor, as he went out the door downstairs. "'I have not,' said Mike, pulling his shirt sleeves higher. "'But to his the only subject in the animal, natural and illegal list of outrages I've not been complained to about these two days. See the landlord. Or else move out if you like. Have you hippopotamuses in the lease? No, then?' "'It was the old man who spoke of it,' said Danny, likely there's nothing in it.' Danny walked up the street to the avenue, and then struck northward into the heart of the district, where Easter, modern Easter, in new bright raiment, leads the Paschal March. Out of towering brown churches came the blithe music of anthems from the choirs. The broad sidewalks were moving parters of living flowers. So it seemed when your eye looked upon the Easter girl. Gentlemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardenia'd, sustained the background of the tradition. Children carried lilies in their hands. The windows of the brownstone mansions were packed, with the most opulent creations of flora, the sister of the lady of the lilies. Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled, and tightly buttoned, walked Corrigan, the cop, shield to the curb. Danny knew him. Why, Corrigan, he asked, is Easter? I know it comes the first time you're full after the moon rises on the 17th of March, but why? Is it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor appoint it out of politics? "'Tis an annual celebration,' said Corrigan, with the judicial error of the Third Deputy Police Commissioner. Peculiar to New York, it extends up to Harlem. Sometimes they has the reserves out at 125th Street. In my opinion it's not political.' "'Thanks,' said Danny, and say, did you ever hear a man complain of hippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I mean.' "'Nothin' larger than sea turtles,' said Corrigan, reflecting, and there was wood alcohol in that.' Danny wandered. The double heavy incumbency of enjoying simultaneously a Sunday and a festival day was his. The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-made garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the Philistine would desport himself, the grimness of Melpomani herself attends upon his capers. Therefore Danny set his jaw hard at Easter, and took his pleasure sadly. The family entrance of Dugan's café was feasible, so Danny yielded to the vernal season as far as a glass of Bach. Seated in a dark, linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after the mysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee. "'Say, Tim,' he said to the waiter, "'why do they have Easter?' "'Skidoo!' said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye. "'Is that a new one? All right. Tony Pastors for you last night, I guess. I give it up. What's the answer? Two apples or a yard and a half?' From Dugan's, Danny turned back eastward. The April sun seemed to stir in him a vague feeling that he could not construe. He made a wrong diagnosis, and decided that it was Katie Conlon. A block from her house on Avenue A, he met her going to church. They pumped hands on the corner. "'Gee, but you look dumpish and dressed up,' said Katie. "'What's wrong? Come away with me to church and be cheerful.' "'What's doing at church?' asked Danny. "'Why, it's Easter Sunday, silly. I waited till after eleven, expecting you might come around to go.' "'What does Easter stand for, Katie?' asked Danny gloomily. Nobody seems to know.' "'Nobody as blind as you,' said Katie with spirit. "'You haven't even looked at my new hat, and skirt. Why, it's when all the girls put on new-spring clothes, silly. Are you coming to church with me?' "'I will,' said Danny. "'If this Easter is pulled off there, they ought to be able to give some excuse for it. Not that the hat ain't a beauty. The green roses are great.' At church the preacher did some expounding with no pounding. He spoke rapidly, for he was in a hurry to get home to his early Sabbath dinner, but he knew his business. There was one word that controlled his theme, resurrection. Not a new creation, but a new life arising out of the old. The congregation had heard it often before, but there was a wonderful hat, a combination of sweet peas and lavender, in the sixth pew from the pulpit. It attracted much attention. After church Danny lingered on a corner, while Katie waited, with piquet in her sky-blue eyes. "'Are you coming along to the house?' she asked. "'But don't mind me. I'll get there all right. You seem to be studying a lot about something. All right. Will I see you any time specially, Mr. McCree?' "'I'll be around Wednesday night, as usual,' said Danny, turning and crossing the street. Katie walked away, with the green roses dangling indignantly. Danny stopped two blocks away. He stood still with his hands in his pockets. At the curb on the corner. His face was that of a graven image. Deep in his soul something stirred so small, so fine, so keen and leavening, that his hard fibers did not recognize it. It was something more tender than the April day, more subtle than the call of the senses. Pure and deeper rooted than the love of a woman. For had he not turned away from green roses and eyes that had kept him chained for a year? And Danny did not know what it was. The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to his dinner, had told him. But Danny had had no libretto with which to follow the drowsy intonation. But the preacher spoke the truth. Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a horsey yell of delight. Hipopotamus! he shouted to an elevated road-pillar. Well, how is that for a bum-guess? Why, blast my skylights, I know what he was driving at now. Hipopotamus! wouldn't that send you to the Bronx? It's been a year since he heard it, and he didn't miss it so very far. We quit at 469 B.C., and this comes next. Well, a wooden man wouldn't have guessed what he was trying to get out of him. Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his labor supported. Old man McCree was still sitting by the window. His extinct pipe lay on the sill. Well, that be you, lad, he asked. Danny flared into the rage of a strong man, who was surprised at the outset of committing a good deed. Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house? he snapped viciously. Have I no right to come in? Here a faithful lad, said old man McCree, with a sigh. Is it evening yet? Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled in guilt letters. The History of Greece. Dust was on it half an inch thick. He laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a strip of paper. Then he gave a short roar at the top of his voice and said, Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then? Did I hear you open the book? said old man McCree. Many and weary be the months since my lad has read it to me. I don't know, but I took a great likings to them Greeks. You left off at a place. It is a fine day outside, lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have gotten used to me chair by the windy and me pipe. Pellopinesis was the place where we left off, and not hippopotamus, said Danny. The war began there. It kept something doing for thirty years. The headline says that a guy named Philip of Macedon, in 338 B.C., got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the battle of Cheronea. I'll read it. With his hand to his ear, wrapped in the Pellopinesian war, old man McCree sat for an hour, listening. Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. Mrs. McCree was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old man McCree's eyes. Do you hear our lad reading to me? he said. There is none finer in the land. My two eyes have come back to me again. After supper, he said to Danny. Tis a happy day this Easter, and now you will be off to see Katie in the evening. Well enough. Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house? said Danny, angrily. Have I no right to stay in it? After supper there is yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 B.C., when the kingdom, as they say, became an integral portion of the Roman Empire. Am I nothing in this house? End of Story 4 The Day Resurgent Story 5 of Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million by O. Henry This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Cotty, Gurney, Illinois. Story 5 The Fifth Wheel The ranks of the bedline moved closer together, for it was cold. They were alluvial deposits of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The bedliners stamped their freezing feet, looked at the empty benches in Madison Square, whence Jack Frost had evicted them, and muttered to one another in a confusion of tongues. The flat iron building, with its impious cloud-piercing architecture, looming mistily above them on the opposite delta, might well have stood for the Tower of Babel, whence these polyglot idlers had been called by the winged walking delegate of the Lord. Standing on a pine box, a head higher than his flock of goats, the preacher exhorted whatever transient and shifting audience the North wind doled out to him. It was a slave market. Fifteen cents bought you a man. You deeded him to Morpheus, and the recording angel gave you credit. The preacher was incredibly earnest and unwirried. He had looked over the list of things one may do for one's fellow man, and had assumed for himself the task of putting to bed all who might apply at his soapbox on the nights of Wednesday and Sunday. That left but five nights for other philanthropists to handle, and had they done their part as well, this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory, where all might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem-plays in the rent-man and business go to the deuce. The hour of eight was but a little while past. Sightseers in a small dark mass of pay-or were gathered in the shadow of General Wurst's monument. Now and then, shyly, ostentatiously, carelessly, or with conscientious exactness, one would step forward and bestow upon the preacher small bills or silver. Then a lieutenant of Scandinavian coloring and enthusiasm would march away to a lodging-house with a squad of the redeemed. All the while the preacher exhorted the crowd in terms beautifully devoid of eloquence, splendid with the deadly, accusative monotony of truth. Before the picture of the bed-liners fades, he must hear one phrase of the preachers, the one that formed his theme that night. It is worthy of being stenciled on all the white ribbons in the world. Quote, no man ever learned to be a drunkard on five-cent whiskey. Unquote. Think of it, Tipler. It covers the ground from the sprouting ride to the potter's field. A clean profile direct young man in the rear of the bed-less emulated the terrapin, drawing his head far down into the shell of his coat-caller. It was a well-cut tweed coat, and the trousers still showed signs of having flattened themselves beneath the compelling goose. But conscientiously I must warn the milliner's apprentice who reads this, expecting a Reginald Montressor in Straits, to peruse no further. The young man was no other than Thomas McQuade, ex-coachman, discharged for drunkenness one month before, and now reduced to the grimy ranks of the one-night bed-seekers. If you live in smaller New York, you must know the Van Smythe family carriage, drawn by the two 1,500-pound, 101-shot bays. The carriage is shaped like a bathtub. In each end of it reclines an old lady Van Smythe holding a black sunshade the size of a New Year's Eve feather-tickler. Before his downfall, Thomas McQuade drove the Van Smythe bays and was himself driven by Annie, the Van Smythe ladies made. But it is one of the saddest things about romance that a tight shoe or an empty commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic of any cupid worshipper, and Thomas's physical troubles were not few. Therefore his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost ladies made than it was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dancing, crawling, and wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal campus of the Bedline army. Nearly four weeks of straight whiskey and a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and intercourse. The Bedliner standing at his right was a young man of about his own age, Shabby but neat. What's the diagnosis of your case, Freddy? asked Thomas, with the free masonic familiarity of the damned. Booze? That's mine. You don't look like a panhandler. Neither am I. A month ago I was pushing the lines over the backs of the finest team of percher and buffaloes that ever made their mile down Fifth Avenue in 2.85. And look at me now. Say, how do you come to be at this bed, bargain counter, rummage sale? The other young man seemed to welcome the advances of the airy ex-coachman. No, said he. Mine isn't exactly a case of drink. Unless we allow that cupid as a bartender, I'm married unwisely, according to the opinion of my unforgiving relatives. I've been out of work for a year because I don't know how to work, and I've been sick in Bellevue and other hospitals for months. My wife and kid had to go back to her mother. I was turned out of the hospital yesterday, and I haven't a cent. That's my tale of woe. Tough luck, said Thomas. A man alone can pull through all right, but I hate to see the women and kids get the worst of it. Just then, there homed up Fifth Avenue, a motor-car so splendid, so red, so smoothly running, so craftily demolishing the speed regulations, that it drew the attention of even the listless bedliners. Suspended and pinioned on its left side was an extra tire. When opposite the unfortunate company, the fastenings of this tire became loosed. It fell to the asphalt, bounded and rolled rapidly in the wake of the flying car. Thomas McQuade, senting an opportunity, darted from his place among the preacher's goats. In thirty seconds he had caught the rolling tire, swung it over his shoulder, and was trotting smartly after the car. On both sides of the avenue, people were shouting, whistling, and waving canes at the red car, pointing to the enterprising Thomas, coming up with the lost tire. One dollar, Thomas had estimated, was the smallest curtain that so grand an automobile list could offer for the service he had rendered, and save his pride. Two blocks away the car had stopped. There was a little brown muffled chauffeur driving, and an imposing gentleman wearing a magnificent seal skin coat and silk hat on a rear seat. Thomas proffered the captured tire with his best ex-coachman manner, and a look in the brighter of his reddened eyes, that was meant to be suggestive to the extent of a silver coin, or two, and receptive up to higher denominations. But the look was not so construed. The seal skin gentleman received the tire, placed it inside the car, gazed intensely at the ex-coachman, and muttered to himself inscrutable words. Strange, strange, said he. Once or twice even I, myself, have fancied that the Chaldean caroscope has availed. Could it be possible? Then he addressed less mysterious words to the waiting and hopeful Thomas. Sir, I thank you for your kind rescue of my tire, and I would ask you, if I may, a question. Do you know the family of Van Smeis, living in Washington Square North? Aten I too, replied Thomas. I lived there. Wish I did yet. The seal skin gentleman opened a door of the car. Step in, please, he said. You have been expected. Thomas McQuaid obeyed with surprise but without hesitation. A seat in a motor-car seems better than standing-room in the bed-line. But after the lap-robe had been talked about him and the auto had sped on its course, the peculiarity of the invitation lingered in his mind. Maybe the guy hasn't got any change, was his diagnosis. Lots of these swell-rounders don't lug about any ready money. Guess he'll dump me out when he gets to some joint where he can get cash on his mug. Anyhow, it's a cinch that I've got that open-air bed convention beat to a finish. Submerged in his greatcoat, the mysterious automobile-ist seemed, himself, to marvel at the surprises of life. Wonderful, amazing, strange! he repeated to himself constantly. When the car had well entered the Crosstown Seventies, it swung eastward a half-block and stopped before a row of high-stooped, round-stone front houses. Be kind enough to enter my house with me, said the seal skin gentleman when they had alighted. He's going to dig up shore, reflected Thomas, following him inside. There was a dim light in the hall. His host conducted him through a door to the left, closing it after him and leaving them in absolute darkness. Suddenly a luminous globe, strangely decorated, shone faintly in the center of an immense room that seemed to Thomas more splendidly appointed than any he had ever seen on the stage or read of in fairy tales. The walls were hidden by gorgeous red hangings, embroidered with fantastic gold figures. At the rear end of the room were draped porters of dull gold, spangled with silver crescents and stars. The furniture was of the costliest and rarest styles. The ex-coachman's feet sank into rugs as fleecy and deep as snowdrifts. There were three or four oddly shaped stands or tables covered with black velvet drapery. Thomas McQuade took in the splendors of this palatial apartment with one eye, with the other he looked for his imposing conductor to find that he had disappeared. But gee, muttered Thomas, this listens like a spook-shop. Shouldn't wonder if it ain't one of these Moravian knights' adventures that you read about. Wonder what became of the furry guy. Suddenly a stuffed owl that stood on an ebony perch near the illuminated globe slowly raised his wings and emitted from his eyes a brilliant electric glow. With a fright-borne implication, Thomas seized a bronze statuette of hebe from a cabinet nearby and hurled it with all his might at the terrifying and impossible fowl. The owl and his perch went over with a crash. With the sound there was a click and the room was flooded with light from a dozen frosted globes along the walls and ceiling. The gold portiers parted and closed and the mysterious automobilist entered the room. He was tall and wore evening dress of perfect cut and accurate taste. A van dyke beard of glossy golden brown, rather long and wavy hair, smoothly parted, and large magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave him a most impressive and striking appearance. If you can conceive a Russian Grand Duke in a Rajah's throne room advancing to greet a visiting emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his manner. But Thomas McQuade was too near his DTs to be mindful of his peas and queues. When he viewed this silken, polished, and somewhat terrifying host, he thought vaguely of dentists. Say, Doc, he said resentfully, that's a hot bird you keep on tap. I hope I didn't break anything. But I've nearly got the Willy Wallos, and when he threw them thirty-two candle-power lamps of his on me, I took a snapshot at him with that little brass flat-iron girl that stood on the sideboard. That is merely a mechanical toy, said the gentleman with the wave of his hand. May I ask you to be seated while I explain why I brought you to my house? Perhaps you would not understand nor be in sympathy with the psychological prompting that caused me to do so. So I will come to the point at once by venturing to refer to your admission that you know the Vance Smythe family of Washington Square North. Any silver missing? asked Thomas Hartley. Any jewelry displaced? Of course I know them. Any of the old lady's sun shades disappeared? Well, I know them, and then what? The Grand Duke rubbed his white hands together softly. Wonderful, he murmured. Wonderful! Shall I come to believe in the Chaldean horoscope myself? Let me assure you, he continued, that there is nothing for you to fear. Instead, I think I can promise you that very good fortune awaits you. We will see. Do they want me back? asked Thomas, with something of his old professional pride in his voice. I'll promise to cut out the booze and do the right thing if they'll try me again. But how did you get wise, Doc? But gee, it's the swellest employment agency I was ever in, with its flashlight owls and so forth. With an indulgent smile, the gracious host begged to be excused for two minutes. He went out to the sidewalk and gave an order to the chauffeur who still waited in the car. Returning to the mysterious apartment, he sat by his guest and began to entertain him so well by his witty and genial converse that the poor bedliner almost forgot the cold streets from which he had been so recently and so singularly rescued. A servant brought some tender cold fowl and tea biscuits and a glass of miraculous wine, and Thomas felt the glamour of Arabia envelop him. Thus half an hour sped quickly, and then the honk of the returned motor-car at the door suddenly drew the grand duke to his feet with another soft petition for a brief absence. Two women, well muffled against the cold, were admitted at the front door and suavely conducted by the master of the house down the hall through another door to the left and into a smaller room, which was screened and segregated from the larger front room by heavy double-porters. Here the furnishings were even more elegant and exquisitely tasteful than in the other. On a gold inlaid rosewood table were scattered sheets of white paper and a queer triangular instrument or toy, apparently of gold, standing on little wheels. The taller woman threw back her black veil and loosened her cloak. She was fifty, with a wrinkled and sad face. The other, young and plump, took a chair a little distance away and to the rear as a servant or an attendant might have done. You sent for me, Professor Cherubusko, said the older woman, whirly. I hope you have something more definite than usual to say. I have about lost the little faith I had in your art. I would not have responded to your call this evening if my sister had not insisted upon it. Madam, said the professor, with his princeliest smile, The true art cannot fail. To find the true psychic and potential branch sometimes requires time. We have not succeeded, I admit, with the cards, the crystal, the stars, the magic formula of Sarazan, or the Oracle of Poe. But we have, at last, discovered the true psychic root. The Chaldean chyroscope has been successful in our search. The professor's voice had a ring that seemed to proclaim his belief in his own words. The elderly lady looked at him with a little more interest. Why, there was no sense in those words that it wrote with my hands on it. She said, What do you mean? The words were these, said Professor Cherubusko, rising to his full magnificent height. By the fifth wheel of the chariot he shall come. I haven't seen many chariots, said the lady, but I never saw one with five wheels. Progress, said the professor. Progress in science and mechanics has accomplished it, though, to be exact, we may speak of it only as an extra tire. Progress in occult art has advanced in proportion. Madam, I repeat, that the Chaldean chyroscope has succeeded. I can not only answer the question that you have propounded, but I can produce, before your eyes, the proof thereof. And now the lady was disturbed, both in her disbelief and in her poise. Oh, Professor! she cried anxiously. When, where, has he been found? Do not keep me in suspense. I beg you will excuse me for a very few minutes, said Professor Cherubusko, and I think I can demonstrate to you the efficacy of the true art. Thomas was contentedly munching the last crumbs of the bread in foul, when the enchanter appeared suddenly at his side. Are you willing to return to your old home, if you are assured of a welcome and restoration to favor? he asked, with his courteous royal smile. Do I look bug-house? answered Thomas. Enough of the foot-back life for me. But will they have me again? The old lady is as fixed in her ways as a nut on a new axle. My dear young man, said the other, she has been searching for you everywhere. Great, said Thomas, I'm on the job. That team of drop-sicle dromedaries they call horses is a handicap for a first-class coachman like me. But I'll take the job back. Sure, Doc, they're good people to be with. And now a change came over the suave countenance of the Caliph of Baghdad. He looked keenly and suspiciously at the ex-coachman. May I ask what your name is? he said shortly. You've been looking for me, said Thomas, and don't know my name? You're a funny kind of sleuth. You must be one of the central office gumshoers. I'm Thomas McQuaid, of course, and I've been chauffeur of the Van Smythe Elephant team for a year. They fired me a month ago for, well, Doc, you saw what I did to your old owl. I went broke on booze. And when I saw the tire drop off your whiz wagon, I was standing in that squad of hobos at the Worth Monument, waiting for a free bed. Now, what's the prize for the best answer to all this? To his intense surprise, Thomas felt himself lifted by the collar and dragged, without a word of explanation, to the front door. This was opened, and he was kicked forcibly down the steps with one heavy, disillusionizing, humiliating impact of the stupendous Arabian shoe. As soon as the ex-coachman had recovered his feet and his wits, he hastened as fast as he could eastward toward Broadway. Crazy guy was his estimate of the mysterious automobile-ist. Just wanted to have some fun, kiddin', I guess. He might have dug up a dollar anyhow. No, I've got to hurry up and get back to that gang of bumbed hunters before they all get preached to sleep. When Thomas reached the end of his two-mile walk, he found the ranks of the homeless reduced to a squad of perhaps eight or ten. He took the proper place of a newcomer at the left end of the rear rank. In a file in front of him was the young man who had spoken to him of hospitals and something of a wife and child. Sorry to see you back again, said the young man, turning to speak to him. I hoped you had struck something better than this. Me, said Thomas, oh, I just took a run around the block to keep warm. I see the public ain't lending to the Lord very fast tonight. In this kind of weather, said the young man, charity avails itself of the proverb and both begins and ends at home. And the preacher and his vehement lieutenant struck up a last hymn of petition to providence and man, those of the bedliners whose windpipes still registered above 32 degrees, hopelessly and tunelessly joined in. In the middle of the second verse Thomas saw a sturdy girl with wind-tossed drapery battling against the breeze and coming straight toward him from the opposite sidewalk. Annie, he yelled, and ran toward her. You fool, you fool! she cried, weeping and laughing and hanging upon his neck. Why did you do it? The stuff, explained Thomas briefly, you know, was subsequently knit, not a drop, he lettered to the curb. How did you happen to see me? I came to find you, said Annie, holding tight to his sleeve. Oh, you big fool, Professor Cherubusko told us we might find you here. Professor shh, don't know the guy. What saloon does he work in? He's a clairvoyant, Thomas, the greatest in the world. He found you with the Chaldean telescope, he said. He's a liar, said Thomas. I never had it. He never saw me have anybody's telescope. And he said you came in a chariot with five wheels or something. Annie, said Thomas solicitously. You're giving me the wheels now. If I had a chariot, I'd have gone to bed in it long ago, and without any singing and preaching for a nightcap either. Listen, you big fool, the missus says she'll take you back. I begged her to, but you must behave. And you can go up to the house tonight, and your old room over the stable is ready. Great, said Thomas, earnestly. You are it, Annie, but when did these stunts happen? Tonight, at Professor Cherubusko's. He sent his automobile for the missus, and she took me along. I've been there with her before. What's the professor's line? He's a clairvoyant and a witch. The missus consults him. He knows everything, but he hasn't done the missus any good yet, though she's paid him hundreds of dollars. But he told us that the stars told him we could find you here. What's the old lady want this cherry-buster to do? That's a family secret, said Annie. And now you've asked enough questions. Come on home, you big fool. They had moved but a little way up the street when Thomas stopped. Got any dough with you, Annie, he asked. Annie looked at him sharply. Oh, I know what that look means, said Thomas. You're wrong, not another drop. But there's a guy that was standing next to me in the bed line over there. That's in bad shape. He's the right kind, and he's got wives or kids or something, and he's on the sick list. No booze. If you could dig up half a dollar for him, so he could get a decent bed, I'd like it. Annie's fingers began to wiggle in her purse. Sure, I've got money, she said. Lots of it. Twelve dollars. And then she added, with women's ineradicable suspicion of vicarious benevolence, bring him here and let me see him first. Thomas went on his mission. The one bedliner came readily enough. As the two drew near, Annie looked up from her purse and screamed, Mr. Walter, oh, Mr. Walter! Is that you, Annie? said the young man meekly. Oh, Mr. Walter, and the missus hunting high and low for you! Does Mother want to see me? he asked, with a flush coming out on his pale cheek. She's been hunting for you high and low. Sure, she wants to see you. She wants you to come home. She's tried police and morgues and lawyers, and advertising and detectives, and rewards, and everything. And then she took up clairvoyance. You'll go right home, won't you, Mr. Walter? Gladly, if she wants me, said the young man. Three years is a long time. I suppose I'll have to walk up, though, unless the streetcars are giving free rides. I used to walk and beat that old plug-team of bays we used to drive to the carriage. Have they got them yet? They have, said Thomas, feelingly, and they'll have them ten years from now. The life of the royal, elephanty bus, truck-horsey bus is one hundred and forty-nine years. I'm the coachman. Just got my reappointment five minutes ago. Let's all ride up in a surface car, that is, or if Annie will pay the fares. On the Broadway car, Annie handed each one of the protocols a nickel to pay the conductor. Seems to me you are mighty reckless the way you throw large sums of money around, said Thomas sarcastically. In that purse, said Annie decidedly, is exactly eleven dollars and eighty-five cents. I shall take every cent of it to-morrow and give it to Professor Cherubusko, the greatest man in the world. Well, said Thomas, I guess he must be a pretty fly-guy to pipe off things the way he does. I'm glad his spooks told him where you could find me. If you'll give me his address, someday I'll go up there myself and shake his hand. Presently, Thomas moved tentatively in his seat, and thoughtfully felt an abrasion or two on his knees and elbows. Say, Annie, said he, confidentially. Maybe it's one of the last dreams of booze. But I have a kind of recollection of riding in an automobile with a swell guy that took me to a house full of eagles and arc lights. He fed me on biscuits and hot air, and then kicked me down the front steps. If it was the DTs, why am I so sore? Shut up, you fool, said Annie. If I could find that funny guy's house, said Thomas, in conclusion, I'd go up there someday and punch his nose for him. End of Story Five, The Fifth Wheel