Part 6

Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then, spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: “If Slimmy was here, he'd see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a yegg oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!”

It was only a week or two after he left the Basher that Looney's faith in Slim's star was tested again. Half a dozen of the brotherhood were gathered about a fire in a gravel pit in northern Illinois, swapping yarns and experiences and making merry. It was a tremendous fire, and lighted up the hollow as if it were the entrance to Gehenna, flinging the grotesque shadows of the men against the overhanging embankments, and causing the inhabitants of a village a mile or so away to wonder what farmer's haystack was aflame. The tramps were wasting five times the wood they needed, after their fashion. They had eaten to repletion, and they were wasting the left-over food from their evening gorge; they had booze; they were smoking; they felt, for the hour, at peace with the world.

“Wot ever _did_ become of dat Slim?” asked the Burlington Crip, who happened to be of the party, looking speculatively at Looney. Even the sinister Crip, for the nonce, was not toting with him his usual mordant grouch.

Looney was tending the fire, while he listened to tales of the spacious days of the great Johnny Yegg himself, and other Titans of the road who have now assumed the state of legendary heroes; and he was, as usual, saying nothing.

“Slim? Slimmy t' Match wot Looney here's been tailin' after fer so long?” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was bumped off in Paterson t'ree or four years ago.”

“He wasn't neither,” spoke up Looney. “Tex, here, seen him in Chi last mont'.”

And, indeed, Tex had told Looney so. But now, thus directly appealed to, Tex answered nothing. And for the first time Looney began to get the vague suspicion that these, his friends, might have trifled with him before. Certainly they were serious now. He looked around the sprawled circle and sensed that their manner was somehow different from the attitude with which they had usually discussed his quest for Slim.

“Bumped off?” said Tex. “How?”

“A wobbly done it,” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was scabbin'. Strike-breakin'. And they was some wobblies there helpin' on the strike. See? An' this wobbly bumps Slim off.”

“He didn't neither,” said Looney again.

“T' hell he didn't? He said he did,” said the San Diego Kid pacifically. “Is a guy gonna say he's bumped off a guy unless he's bumped him off?”

Looney, somewhat shaken, withdrew from the group to seek comfort from the constellations; and particularly from that big, red star, the apparent king of stars, which he had come to think of as Slim's star, and vaguely, as Slim's mascot. It was brighter and redder than ever that night, Looney thought, and sitting on a discarded railroad tie and staring at the planet, Looney gradually recovered his faith.

“He ain't neither been bumped off, Slim ain't,” he muttered, “an' I'm gonna find him yet.”

And Slim had not been bumped off, however sincere the San Diego Kid may have been in his belief.

It was some months later that Looney did find him in a little city in Pennsylvania--or found some one that looked like him.

Looney had dropped from a freight train early in the morning, had rustled himself some grub, had eaten two good meals and had part of a day's sleep, and now, just as dark was coming on, and the street lamps were being lighted, was loafing aimlessly on the platform of the railway depot. He purposed to take a train south that night, when it became so dark that he could crawl into an empty in the yards without too much danger of being seen and he was merely putting in the time until full night came on.

While he was standing idly so, an automobile drew up beside the station platform and an elegantly dressed and slender man of about thirty got out. He assisted from the car a woman and a small child, and they made toward the door of the waiting room.

“Slim!” cried Looney, rushing forward.

For this was Slim--it must be Slim--it was Slimmy the Match in every feature--and yet, the car!--the clothes--the woman--the baby--the prosperity----- _Was_ it Slim?

“Slim!” cried Looney again, his heart leaping in his meager body. “It's me, Slim! It's Looney! I've got youse again, Slim! Gawd! I've found yuh!”

The woman hastily snatched the child up into her arms, with a suppressed scream, and recoiled.

The man made no sound, but he, too, drew back a step, not seeming to see Looney's outstretched hand.

But he did see it--he saw more than that. He saw, as if they were flashed before him at lightning speed upon a cinema screen, a dozen scenes of a wild and reckless and indigent youth that he had thought was dead forever; he saw these roughneck years suddenly leap alive and stalk toward him again, toward him and his; he saw his later years of industry, his hard-won success, his position so strenuously battled for, his respectability that was become so dear to him, all his house of life so laboriously builded, crumbling before the touch of this torn and grotesque outcast that confronted and claimed him, this wavering, dusty lunatic whom he dimly remembered. If his wife knew--if her people knew--if the business men of this town were to know----

He shuddered and turned sick, and then with a sudden recovery he took his child from its mother and guided her before him into the waiting room.

Looney watched them enter, in silence. He stood dazed for a moment, and then he slowly turned and walked down the railroad track beyond the limits of the town. There, upon a spot of turf beside the right of way, he threw himself upon his face and sobbed and moaned, as a broken-hearted child sobs, as a dog moans upon its master's grave.

But after a while he looked up. Slim's star was looking down at him, red and confident and heartening as ever. He gazed at it a long time, and then an idea took form in his ruined brain and he said aloud:

“Now, dat wasn't _really_ Slim! I been lookin' fer Slim so long I t'ink I see Slim where he ain't! Dat was jus' some guy wot looks like Slimmy. Slimmy, he wouldn't never of gone back on an old pal like dat!”

The rumble of an approaching train caught his ears. He got to his feet and prepared to board it.

“Slim, he's waitin' fer me somewheres,” he told the star. “I may be kinda looney about some t'ings, but I knows Slim, an' dey ain't no yellow streak nowheres in Slim!”

And with unshaken loyalty Looney the Mutt boarded the train and set off upon his endless quest anew.

VI--Kale

|See that old fellow there?” asked Ed the waiter. “Well, his fad is money.”

The old fellow indicated--he must have been nearly eighty--sat eating corned beef and cabbage in a little booth in a certain delightful, greasy old chophouse in downtown New York. It was nearly time to close the chophouse for that day for it was almost eleven o'clock at night; it was nearly time to close the chophouse forever, for it was the middle of June, 1919. In a couple of weeks the wartime prohibition act would be in force, and Ed and I had been discussing what effect it would have upon our respective lives.

There was no one else in the place at the time except the cashier and the old man whose fad was money, and so Ed had condescended toward me, as a faithful customer, and was sitting down to have a drink with me.

“His fad is money?” I questioned, glancing at the old gentleman, who seemed to be nothing extraordinary as regards face or manner or attire. He had a long, bony New Englandish head and a short, white, well-trimmed beard; he was finishing his nowise delicate food with gusto. “I should say,” I added, “that his fad was corned beef and cabbage.”

“That's one of his fads,” admitted Ed the waiter, “and I don't know but that it's as strong in him as his money fad. At any rate, I've never seen him without one or the other was near him, and both in large quantities.”

We had been conversing in a mumble, so that our voices should not carry to the old gentleman. And now Ed dropped his voice still lower and whispered:

“That's Old Man Singleton.”

I looked at him with a renewed interest. Every one knew who Old Man Singleton was, and many persons liked to guess how much he was worth. Ostensibly he had retired, leaving to his two sons the management of the Singleton banking business, with its many ramifications; but actually he kept his interest in the concern and was reputed to be coaching his grandsons in the ways of the world, and especially that part of the world known as “The Street.”

Starting out as a New England villager who hated poverty because his family had always known it, he had come to New York as a lad of twenty, with red knitted mittens on his osseous hands, and he had at once removed the mittens and put the hands to work gathering money; it was rumored that the hands had never turned loose any of the garnered coin; it was even said by some persons that he still had the same pair of mittens.

The details of his rise I cannot give; he had achieved his ambition to be one of the very rich men of America because the ambition was so strong within him.

“Of course his fad is money,” I muttered to Ed the waiter. “Everybody knows that Old Man Singleton's fad is money.”

Ed was about to reply, when Mr. Singleton looked up and motioned for his check. Ed brought it, and gave the old gentleman his hat and his stick and his change.

“I hope everything was all right,” Mr. Singleton said Ed, palpably bidding for recognition and a tip.

“Eh? said Singleton, looking blankly at Ed You know me, hey? I don't recall you. Yes, everything was all right, thank you.” He gave the waiter a dime and passed out, after another blank, fumbling look at Ed, and a shake of his head. There was something feeble and wandering in the old fellow's manner; his memory was going; it was obvious that before long the rest of him would follow his memory. He shouldn't be allowed to go around this way alone at night,” murmured Ed, watching the door through which he had made his exit. “But I suppose he's as bull-headed as ever about doing what he pleases, even if his legs are shaky.”

“He didn't know you,” I hinted, for I wished to learn all that Ed knew about Old Man Singleton.

Ed is a person who has been in the world nearly fifty years; he has had some very unusual acquaintances and experiences. It is never safe to predict just what Ed will know and what he will not know. One afternoon, after I had known Ed for about a year, I was attempting to argue some scientific point with a friend who was lunching with me, and Ed, who was waiting on us and listening, remarked: “I beg your pardon, sir, but it wasn't in _The Descent of Man_ that Darwin said that; it was in _The Origin of Species_.”

And yet, if you deduce from that remark that Ed knows a great deal about modern science, you will be mistaken; as likely as not he could quote pages of Marcus Aurelius to you, and at the same time he might pronounce “Euripides” as if the last two syllables were one, riming with “hides”; his reading, like his life, has been elective.

“He doesn't recall you,” I repeated.

“And that's ingratitude,” said Ed, “if he only knew it. I saved the old man's life once.”

And Ed limped over to the table and resumed his seat opposite me. He has a bullet under one kneecap, and at times it makes him very lame. He would never tell me how it came there; to this day I do not know.

“From what did you save his life?” I asked. “From a man,” said Ed moodily. “From a man who had a notion to bean him one night. And to this day I ask myself: 'Did I do right, or did I do wrong?'”

“Tell me about it,” I insisted,

“Drink up,” said Ed, manipulating the Scotch bottle and the siphon of seltzer. “This is one of the last highballs you'll ever have, unless you sneak around and take it on the sly. I don't know that I should have another one myself; it settles in this damned knee of mine if I get a little too much.”

“Tell me when, where and how you knew Old Man Singleton,” I demanded again.

“This knee of mine,” went on Ed, disregarding me, “is a hell of a handicap. We were talking about prohibition--what's prohibition going to do to me? Hey? It puts me out of a job in a barroom like this the first thing. And what else can I do? With this game leg, you can see me going on the stage as a Russian dancer, can't you? Or digging trenches to lay gas pipes in, or carrying a Hod? Huh? And I can't even get a job in a swell restaurant uptown; they don't want any gamelegged waiters sticking around, falling over the chairs. This was about the only kind of a joint and the only kind of a job I was fit for, this chop-house thing down here, and it's going to close in two weeks. What then? Be somebody's housemaid? I can't see it. I don't wish anybody any bad luck, but I hope the guy that put over this prohibition thing gets stiff in all his joints and lives forever.”

I sympathized and waited, and finally he began. “Old Man Singleton's fad,” said Ed, “as I re marked before, is money. And as you remarked, another of his fads is corned beef and cabbage--especially cabbage. He will eat corned beef with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat pork with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat cabbage without either; it is the cabbage he likes--or kale. In fact, you could reduce his two fads to one, and say what he likes is kale--kale in the slang sense of money, and kale that is cabbage. And all his life he has been stuffing himself with kale.

“His fad is kale that he can see and feel and handle and show and carry about with him. Not merely money in the bank and stocks and bonds and property and real estate, but actual cash. He likes to carry it with him, and he does carry it with him. I guess he likes the feel of it in his billfolder, and the thought that he has got it on him--on him, the poor boy that came out of New England with the red knitted mittens on that everybody has heard so much about. I can understand the way he feels about it; with a folder full of thousand-dollar and ten-thousand-dollar bills he feels safe, somehow; feels like he'll never have to go back to that little New England town and saw cordwood and shovel snow again.

“He's got it on him now, that folder, and I'll bet you on it. That's what I meant when I said it wasn't safe for him to be trotting about this way after night. For if I know it, it stands to reason others know it, too.

“What you want to know is, how I know it. Well, I was not always what I am now. Once I was quite a bird and wore dress suits and went to the Metropolitan Opera and listened to Caruso as he jumped his voice from peak to peak. Yes, sir, I know every darned acoustic in that place! They weren't my dress suits that I wore, but they fit me. Once I moved in the circles of the idle rich, though they didn't know it, and helped 'em spend the unearned increment they wrung from the toil of the downtrodden laboring man.

“Once, to come down to brass tacks, I was a butler's companion. It is an office you won't find listed in the social directory, but it existed, for me at least. The butler in the case was a good friend of mine by the name of Larry Hodgkins, and being part Irish, he was an ideal English butler. Larry and his mother were in the employ of the Hergsheimers, a wealthy Jewish family--you know who they are if you read the financial pages or the Sunday supplements. Mrs. Hodgkins was the housekeeper and Larry was the butler, and when the Hergsheimers were traveling Larry and his mother stayed in the New York house as caretakers and kept things shipshape. And let me give you a tip, by the way: if you ever take a notion to quit the writing game and go into domestic service, plant yourself with a rich Hebrew family. They want things done right, but they are the most liberal people on earth, especially to Gentile servants.

“This Hergsheimer was Jacob Hergsheimer, and he was in right socially in New York, as well as financially; he had put himself across into the big time socially because, if you ask me, he belonged there; all the Hergsheimers didn't get across, but this one did. His New York house is uptown, between the sixties and the eighties, east of the Park, and he wants it kept so he can drop into it with his family and a flock of servants at any hour of the day or night, from any part of the earth, without a minute's notice, and give a dinner party at once, if he feels like it, and he frequently feels like it.

“It was Mrs. Hodgkins's and Larry's job to keep the fire from going out in the boilers, so to speak, and a head of steam on, so that the domestic ship could sail in any direction on receipt of orders by wire, wireless or telephone. They were permanent there, but Jake Hergsheimer and his family, as far as I could make out, never got more than an average of about three months' use a year out of that mansion.

“This time I am speaking of was nearly ten years ago. I was a waiter in an uptown restaurant, and both my legs were good then; Larry and I were old pals. The Jake Hergsheimers were sailing around the world in a yacht, and would be at it for about a year, as far as Larry knew, and he asked me up to live with him. I accepted; and believe me, the eight months I put in as Jake Hergsheimer's guest were _some_ eight months. Not that Jake knew about it; but if he had known it, he wouldn't have cared. This Jake was a real human being.

“And his clothes fit me; just as if I had been measured for them. He had what you might call an automatic tailor, Jake did. Every six weeks, rain or shine, that tailor delivered a new suit of clothes to the Hergsheimer house, and he sent in his bill once a year, so Larry the butler told me. Some people go away and forget to stop the milk; and when Jake sailed for the other side of the world he forgot to tell anybody to stop the tailor. Larry didn't feel as if it were any part of his duty to stop him; for Larry liked that tailor. He made Larry's clothes, too.

“And I didn't see where it was up to me to protest. As I said, Jake's garments might have been made for me. In fact, a great many of them _were_ made for me. There were at least fifteen suits of clothes that had never been worn in that house, made to my measure and Jake's, when I became butler's companion in the establishment, and they kept right on coming. Also, there was a standing order for orchestra seats at the Metropolitan. Jake had a box every second Thursday, or something like that, but when he really wanted to hear the music and see the show he usually sat in the orchestra. Not only did his business suits fit me, but his dress clothes fit me, too.

“I used to go often, with a lady's maid that had the same access to clothing as I did. She was part of a caretaking staff also. Being a writing person, you have, of course, only viewed New York's society and near-society from the outside, and no doubt you have been intimidated by the haughty manners of the servants. Well, when you get close to swells and really know them personally, you will find they are human, too.

“A butler on duty is a swelled-up proposition, because he has to be that way. But take him as you find him among his peers, and he quits acting like the Duke of Westminster Abbey, and is real sociable. This Larry person, for instance, could distend himself like a poisoned pup and make a timid millionaire feel like the sleeves of his undershirt must be showing below his cuffs; but in our little select circle Larry was the life of the party.

“Being, as I said before, an outsider, you likely don't realize how many of those big swell millionaires' cribs uptown are in the hands of caretakers like Larry and his mother and me the best part of the year. Well, they are; and there's a social life goes on in them that don't ever get into the papers. The parties we had that year in Jake's house would have done Jake himself good, if Jake could have got an invitation to them. But Jake was absent, though his cellar and his grocers were at our service; and he never questioned a bill, Larry said. There were twelve or fifteen hand-picked servants in our little social circle that year, and before I left there I could begin to understand how these débutantes feel at the end of the season--sort of tired and bored and willing to relax and go in for work and rest and athletics for a change.

“I had only been butler's companion for a few weeks when Old Man Singleton dropped in one evening--yes, sir, Old Lemuel Singleton himself. He came to see the butler's mother, Mrs. Hodgkins. He had known her a good many years before, when he was wearing those red mittens and sawing wood up in that New England town and she was somebody's Irish cook. And he had run across her again, after he became a millionaire, down here in New York City. He was tickled to see her, and he didn't care a darn if she was Jake Hergsheimer's housekeeper. She could cook cabbage and kale better than any one else in the world, and he used to come and sit with her, and talk about that little old town up there, and indulge in his favorite dissipation.

“Old Man Singleton has had what you call the social entrée in New York for a good many years; for so long that some of his children, and all his grandchildren, were born with it. But he never took it very seriously himself. He has been an in-and-outer, you might say. If he saw Mrs. Hodgkins around Jake's house, he would call her Mary and ask her how folks were up home in front of Jake and his wife and a whole bunch of guests, just as soon as not.

“And his sons and his daughters and his grandchildren never could get him out of those ways; he always was bull-headed about doing what he pleased, so Mrs. Hodgkins told me, and he always will be. And the old lady liked to see him and chin with him and cook for him; and believe me, she was some cook when she set herself to it. Not merely kale, but everything. She didn't cook for the Hergsheimers--they had a chef for that--but they missed it by not having her. Victuals was old Mary's middle name, and she could rustle up some of the best grub you ever threw your lip over.

“At first, Old Man Singleton and Mrs. Hodgkins didn't mix much with us younger folks when we pulled a party. It wasn't that we were too aristocratic for them, for off duty, as I said before, butlers and other swells can be as easy and jolly as common people. But they seemed too antiquated, if you get me; they were living too much in the past.

“And then, one night, I discovered what Old Man Singleton's fad was--kale. Money. Big money. Big money on his person. It was this way: Larry and I wanted to go downtown and have a little fun, but neither of us had any cash in hand. Larry had a check for one hundred and fifty dollars which Jake Hergsheimer had sent him, but all the tradesmen we knew were closed at that hour, and there wasn't any way to cash it, unless Old Man Singleton could.

“'Mr. Singleton,' says Larry to the old man, who was sitting down to a mess of pork and kale with Mrs. Hodgkins, 'maybe you can cash this for me.' And he handed him the check.

“The old man stopped eating and put his glasses on and pulled a billfolder out of his pocket, with a kind of pleased smile on his face.

“'Let me see,' he says, taking out the bills, and running them over with his fingers; 'let me see.'

“I nearly dropped dead. There wasn't a bill in there of lower denomination than one thousand dollars; and most of them were ten-thousand-dol-lar bills.

“'No, Larry,' says the old man, 'I'm afraid I can't, afraid I can't--haven't got the change.'

“And while we stood there and looked, he smoothed and patted those bills, and folded and refolded them, and then put them back into his pocket, and patted the pocket.