Part 12

_FOREWORD_

_I have selected "Money to Burns" as my best effort because the situations and characters in that story appealed to me more than any others I've created in some three hundred odd yarns. The "gold-digging" young lady of the chorus, the super-sophisticated bellboy with his hard-boiled philosophy, and the beautiful, cynical Goddess of the Switchboard, are all familiars of mine. Intimate with their habits, characteristics, mannerisms and vocabulary, I had only to create a central plot and push them bodily into it. After that, writing the story was merely a case of conscientious reporting--it almost wrote itself!_

_The genesis of "Money to Burns" was some envious remarks of a bellboy in discussing the sensational escapades of a certain young millionaire. The boy, bringing ice water to my room in a hotel, pointed to the glaring headlines in a newspaper that told of the gilded youth's latest adventure, and bitterly bemoaned the fate that made him a bellboy and the other a millionaire. He discoursed on what he would do were he the possessor of wealth, etc. I encouraged his conversation, with a story forming itself before my eyes. When he left the room I put his counterpart on paper, gave him wealth, added the other characters and necessary embellishments, carved out the title which I hoped would attract the reader's interest and--there you are!_

_As to how I work--one word pretty well covers that question. The word is "HARD!" I try to get interesting characters and titles first of all; after that, plots. The characters are always people I know well. The plots may come from any source--things that have happened to me, a chance remark of some individual, a newspaper headline, an adventure I would relish having myself, etc._

_To a beginner I would advise a thorough reading of the popular magazines, a shot at the newspaper game if possible, plenty of clean white paper and a resolution to take lots of punishment. Thais all I would presume to advise--and I may have given an overdose already!_

MONEY TO BURNS[6]

By H. C. WITWER

"_When fortune favors a man too much, she makes him a fool!_"

Neither Napoleon, Nero, Alexander, Jack Johnson, Mark Antony nor Bill Hohenzollern was the composer of that remark, though, honest, I bet they all _thought_ it about the time the world was giving them the air. However, the boy who originally pulled the above wise crack was Mr. Publius Syrus, a master mind current in dear old Syria during the fiscal year of 77 B.C. Two thousand annums after Publius gave up the struggle, Jimmy Burns, a professional bellhop--age, twenty; color, white; nationality, Broadway-American--decided to find out for himself whether or not Pubby's statement was true. It is! Loll back in the old easy chair for about approximately a half-hour and I'll do my stuff. Perhaps you don't know me, as Eve coyly remarked to Adam, so taking advantage of your good nature I'll introduce myself. I'm Gladys Murgatroyd, a switchboard operator at the Hotel St. Moe. I was slipped into the cradle under the name of Mary Ellen Johnson, but as that smacks more of the kitchen than the drawing-room, I changed that label some time ago to the Gladys Murgatroyd thing, which I admit sounds phony--still, I'm a phone girl, so what could be sweeter?

However, one morning during a slight lull in the daily hostilities between me and the number-seeking guests, I am reading my favorite book--the _Morning Squawk_, the newspaper that made the expression "It is alleged" famous, or maybe it was the other way around. Spattered all over the front page is a highly sensational account of the latest adventures of one of these modern prodigal sons--in round numbers, Carlton Van Ryker, whose father celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday by entering a tomb in a horizontal position and leaving his only progeny two paltry $500,000 bank notes. The young millionaire with the name like a Pullman car and a soft collar had been stepping high, wide and fast with his pennies and at the time of going to press was the plot of an "alienation of my wife's affections" suit, a badly mismanaged shooting affair, and various other things that would keep his mind off the weather for quite a spell. While I'm drinking all this in with my lustrous orbs, along comes Mons. James Joseph Aloysius Burns, who was either the hero of this episode in my exciting career, or else he wasn't.

Although I've known Jimmy Burns for the worst part of two years, we're still good friends, both of us being refugees from the land of Utah. My home town was the metropolis of Bountiful, where I once won a beauty contest single-handed, and James fled from Salt Lake City, where smoking cigarettes is the same as throwing rocks at the President, in the eyes of the genial authorities.

But to get to the business of the meeting--Jimmy sported a sarcastical sneer as he approached my switchboard on this particular morning.

"Kin you feature a cuckoo like this dizzy Van Ryker havin' all that sugar," he snorts, nodding angrily at the newspaper, "whilst us regular white folks is got to slave like Uncle Tom or we don't eat? Is that fair?"

"Cheer up, Jimmy," I says with a smile. "We don't get much money, that's a fact, but then we can laugh out loud. That's more than Van Ryker can do! Look at the pushing around he's getting because he hauled oil and inherited a million, poor fellow; he----"

"That mug was ru'ned by too much jack!" butts in Jimmy. "He's what you call a weak sister. He wasn't _built_ to handle important money--you got to be _born_ that way! Knowin' how to spend money is a gift. _I_ got the gift, but I ain't got the money!"

"And you never _will_ have the money, frittering away your life hopping bells in a hotel, Jamesy--not to give you a short answer," I says. "When they assembled you they left out the motor--_ambition!_"

"Blah!" says Jimmy courteously. "That's what _you_ think. I got plenty ambition. My ambition is to wake up every morning for the rest of my life with a twenty-dollar bill in my kick! Believe me, Cutey, I often wish I was a Wall Street bond messenger, a bootlegger or even a professional reformer--but I ain't never had a shot at no _big_ dough like that. Why, if it was rainin' tomato bouillon, I'd be there with a knife instead of a spoon!"

"As if _that_ would stop you!" I remark sweetly. I once saw James eat. "It seems to me you're always craving excitement," I went on, dealing out some wrong numbers. "Only last week you told me you had a massage."

"Go ahead and kid me," says Jimmy. "_You_ should bite your nails--you're a woman, a good looker with more curves than a scenic railway, and they ain't no way _you_ kin lose! But it's different _here._ It seems to me I beep workin' for a livin' since the doc says 'It's a boy!' and the chances is I'll be workin' for a livin' till the doc says 'Get the embalmer'!"

Don't you love that?

"Why don't you check out of the bell-hopping game and try your luck at something with a future in it?" I ask him, though, really, I'm about as interested in Jimmy's biography as I am in the election returns at Tokyo. "If _I_ was a man, this town wouldn't have _me_ licked!"

"Apple sauce!" sneers Jimmy politely. "A guy without money has got the same chance in New York as a ferryboat salesman would have on the Sara Desert. It takes jack to make jack. With a bank roll I could make _my_ name as well known as Jonah's, and I'd spot him his whale!"

"What do you _do_ with your nickels?" I ask him. "I don't doubt that Chaplin and Fairbanks get more _wages_ than you bellboys, but I thought your _tips_ ran into better figures than they have in the Follies."

"Say, cutey, be yourself!" says James scornfully. "Most of the eggs in this trap is as tight as the skin on a grape--they wouldn't give a thin dime to see Tut-ankh-Amen walk up Fifth Avenoo on his hands! I could be railroaded to Sing Sing for what I think of _them_ babies. Why should _I_ have to carry suitcases and hustle ice water for a lot of monkeys like that?"

"Don't put on dog, Jimmy," I smile. "The guests of the St. Moe are every bit as good as you are, even if you _are_ a haughty bellhop and they are lowly millionaires. Suppose _you_ had a million, what would you do with it?"

"Well," says Jimmy thoughtfully, "the first thing I'd do wouldst be to get me a education--not that I'm no dumb Isaac by no means, but they's a few lessons like algeometry, matriculation, mock geography and the like which I could use. _I_ wouldn't get all tangled up with no wild women or pull none of the raw stuff which this Van Ryker jobbie done, that's a cinch! They'd be no horseplay what the so ever, as far as _I_ was concerned. What _I'd_ do wouldst be to crash into some business, make my pile and my name and not do no playin' around till I was about fifty and independent for life. Ain't it a crime when I got them kind of intentions to make good and no nonsense about it, that somebody don't slip me a million?"

"It's an outrage, Jimmy," I agree, allowing a giggle to break jail. "Still, all men are born equal and if it's actually possible that you _haven't_ got a million, why, you must have thrown your chances away. When Eddie Windsor was your age, for instance, he had made himself Prince of Wales!"

"Me and him begin life in a different type of cradle!" says Jimmy. "And that stuff about everybody bein' equal when they're born is the oyster's ice skates. The only way me and them wealthy millionaires was even at birth is that we was all babies!"

This debate between me and Jimmy was about like Adam and a monkey arguing over which of 'em was our first ancestor--we could have found plenty of people to side with both of us. Then again, the customers was beginning to snap into it for the day and craved the voice with the smile. I got as busy at the switchboard as a custard pie salesman on a movie comedy lot, so I gave the money-mad James the air for the time being.

A couple of weeks later, or maybe it was a jolly old fortnight, Hon. Guy Austin Tower returns from a voyage to Europe, and then the fun began! Maybe you all haven't had the unusual pleasure of meeting my boy friend, so with your kind permission I'll introduce him.

This handsome young metropolitan sheik is a millionaire of the first water, a full-blooded playwright, one of my wildest admirers, and a guest at the Hotel St. Moe. Guy would be a face card in any deck--he's a real fellow, no fooling. Even the parboiled Jimmy Burns, who thinks everybody guilty till proved innocent, is one of Guy's fans. Guy just sprays Jimmy and the rest of the hired help with princely tips and doesn't dime them to death, as most of the other inmates do.

Like Carlton Van Ryker, Guy was left about everything but Lake Michigan when his male parent entered the obituary column, but _unlike_ Van Ryker, Guy didn't let his millions make him a clown. He wanted to carve his own way on our popular planet, so he simply forgot about his warehouse full of doubloons and took up the trade of writing plays. As he's got two frolics running on Broadway now, you could hardly call him a bust.

Well, when Guy came back from overseas he got a welcome from the St. Moe staff that would have tickled a political boss. Honestly, he brought something back for everybody! What he brought back for me was some perfectly gorgeous Venetian lace and his sixty-fifth request that I renounce the frivolous pleasures of the telephone switchboard and enter matrimony.

I accepted the lace, which drove my girl friend, Hazel Killian, wild with envy, but on the wedding bells I claimed exemption. I like Guy, but I'm by no means in love with him--or with anyone else! From what I've been able to observe on my perch at the St. Moe switchboard, there's a bit too much "moan" in matrimony, and, really, I get no more thrill out of contemplating marriage than Noah would get out of contemplating Niagara Falls. I've seen too much of it! I do get a kick, though, out of my daily struggle to remain a campfire girl and still keep from dying of too little fun. The swarming lobby of any costly Gotham hotel is the favorite hunting grounds of snips that pass in the night, always looking for the best of it--lounge lizards, synthetic sheiks of all ages and others too humorous to mention. Any young, well dressed member of my much advertised sex who doesn't resemble a gorilla is their legitimate prey, and trying to discourage 'em is like trying to discourage the anti-drys. But I got their number--being a phone girl, that's my job, isn't it? I meet five hundred representatives of the sillier sex every day, and it's a hobby of mine to treat 'em all with equal chilly politeness till they get out of line. Then I turn off the politeness, just giving 'em the chill, and honest, when I want to be cold--which is generally--I'd turn a four-alarm fire into an iceberg with a glance!

However, there are a lot of yawns connected with plugging a telephone switchboard day by day in every way, and now and then a male will come along sufficiently interesting for little Gladys to accept temporarily as an accomplice in the assassination of time.

Dinners, dances, theaters, this and that--nothing my mother and I couldn't laugh over, so don't curl your lip!

Well, Guy Tower hadn't been back in the St. Moe a week when he began showering attentions on me from the point where he left off before he sailed away. Honestly, he dinnered and theatered me silly! Hazel Killian watched me carelessly toy with this good-looking young gold mine with unconcealed feelings of covetousness. She simply couldn't understand why I didn't grab this boon from Heaven and marry him while he was stupefied with my charms. Hazel, who is an artists' model and no eyesore herself, is suffering from a lifelong ambition to become a bird in a gilded cage. She craves a millionaire, and in desperation she offered to match coins with me for Guy, but I indignantly refused. I _know_ Hazel--she's a dear, but she'd have Rockefeller penniless in a month and every shop on Fifth Avenue sporting a "Closed to Restock" sign. She's just a pretty baby who loves to go buy and she makes 'em give till it hurts, don't think she doesn't!

Another person who got upset over Guy's inability to keep away from me was Jerry Murphy, house sleuth at the St. Moe. Jerry's so big that if he had numbers on him he'd look like a box car, and he's just another male I can get all dizzied up with a properly manipulated eye and smile. Really, he's not a bad fellow, but as a detective he's a blank cartridge. He couldn't catch pneumonia if it was against the law not to have it. Jerry don't know what it's all about and never will, because he's too thick between the ears to ask and nobody will tell him. He hangs around my switchboard like a hungry collie around a kitchen and he's just as eager; but I'm not collecting losers, so Jerry's meaningless to _me._ My bounding around with Guy fills Jerry with pain and alarm and he keeps me supplied with laughs by constantly warning me of the pitfalls and temptations that surround a little telephone girl who steps out with a millionaire. "If 'at big mock orange makes one out-of-the-way crack to you, cutey, just tip me off and I'll _ruin_ him!" says Jerry with a menacing growl. "I can't cuddle up to the idea of you goin' out with him all the time. Don't let him go to work and lure you somewheres away from easy callin' distance of help!"

"Cut yourself a piece of cake!" I says. "Mister Tower is a perfect gentleman, Jerry, and it would be impossible for him to act like anything else if he and I were alone on an island in the middle of the Pacific."

"Say, listen, cutey,'" says Jerry, wincing, "don't mention 'at alone-on-a-island stuff in my presence! 'At's what I been dreamin' about me and you for a year. If we ever get on a ship together, I'll wreck it as sure as you're born!"

Now, isn't he a scream?

Well, at one of our dinner dates about a month after his return, Guy shows up haggard and wan and apparently all in. Generally a fellow who couldn't do enough for his stomach, he ordered this night with the enthusiasm of a steak fiend week-ending at a vegetarian friend's. When the nourishment arrived, Guy just dallied and toyed with it. Afterwards we favored the dance floor with a visit, and instead of tripping his usual wicked ballroom he acted like he had an anvil in each of his pumps. A dozen times during the evening he had to tap back a yawn, and really I began to get steamed up. I'm not used to seeing my boy friends pass out on me!

"I hope I'm not keeping you awake, Mr. Tower," I remarked frigidly as we returned to our table and the nineteenth yawn slipped right through his fingers, in spite of his well meant attempt to push it back.

"Forgive me!" says Guy quickly, and a flush brings some color to his face for the first time that night. "I--the fact is, Gladys, I don't believe I've had a dozen hours' sleep in the past week!"

"Then you've been cheating," I smile, "for you've always left me around midnight. Is she a blonde or a brunette, or have you noticed?"

Guy laughs and, leaning over, pats my hand.

"As if I would ever notice _any_ girl but you!" he says, getting daringly original. "Oh, it isn't a girl, Gladys--though there _is_ a woman at the bottom of the thing, at that. I'll explain that paradoxical statement. Rosenblum wants my next play to open his new Thalia Theater, which will be completed within two months--and I haven't the ghost of an idea, not the semblance of a plot! I've paced the floor like a caged animal, smoking countless cigarettes and drinking oceans of black coffee. I've written steadily for hours at a stretch and then torn the whole business up in disgust. That's what's kept me awake at night--that and my daily battles with this infernal Rosenblum!"

"How come?" I ask him in surprise. "I don't see the percentage in battling with the man who puts your plays on Broadway, Guy."

"He wants me to write a risqué farce, one of those loathsome--er--pardon me--bedroom things for Yvette D'Lys," says Guy angrily, "and I ab-so-lute-ly will not do it! I refuse to prostitute my art for the sordid box office! I----"

"Hold everything!" I butt in. "Shakespeare wasn't below writing bedroom farces, and I think even _you'll_ admit that he got some favorable mention as a playwright."

"Shakespeare write a bedroom farce!" gasps Guy. "Why, my dear girl, you--which of his marvelous plays could you _possibly_ twist into that?"

"Othello," I says promptly. "In act five they clown all over the boudoir! You should go to the theater oftener."

For a second Guy looks puzzled, then he grins and the lines around his navy-blue eyes relax.

"You are delightful," he says. "If I cannot get mental stimulus from _you_, then I am indeed uninspired! Nevertheless, I am not going to do as Rosenblum requests. I have never written anything salacious or even suggestive, and I never will! Furthermore, I don't believe Miss D'Lys or _any_ actress likes to play that kind of a part. It is managers of the Rosenblum type that force those rôles on them--callous, dollar-grabbing, cynical pessimists, who take it for granted that all women are bad!"

"Any man who takes it for granted that all women are bad is no pessimist, Guy," I says thoughtfully. "He's an optimist!"

"Great!" says Guy, slapping the table with his hand. "May I use that epigram in my play?"

"I'll loan it to you," I tell him. "If I break out with the writing rash myself some day, I'll want it back. And now let me hear some of the ideas you tore up in disgust--maybe one of them is the real McCoy. Trot 'em out and I'll give you my honest opinion."

Well, he did and I did. Guy rattled off a half-dozen plots, which failed to thicken and merely sickened. Honestly, they had everything in 'em but the Battle of Gettysburg, and really they were fearful--about as new and exciting as a beef stew, which is just what I told him, being a truthful girl.

Guy sighs and looks desperate.

"Gladys," he says, "I simply _must_ have a play ready to open the Thalia in less than eight weeks! You know that my interest in playwriting is anything but mercenary--good heavens, I have more money than I know what to do with. What I want is to see my name on another Broadway success, and I'm absolutely barren of ideas! I've simply struck a dry spell, such as all writers do, occasionally. At this moment I'd give twenty-five thousand dollars for an original plot!"

I drew a deep breath and stared at him.

"Don't kid about that kind of money, Guy," I says solemnly. "And--don't tempt me!"

"I never was more serious in my life!" he quickly assures me. "Why, have _you_ an idea? By Jove, Gladys, if you if _have_--you are the goddess from the machine----"

"Be of good cheer," I interrupt. "I'll go home and sleep over matters, which is what you better do, too--you look like you fell out of a well or something, really! I'll see you tomorrow. I don't think I'll have a plot for you by then, but----"

"Naturally--still, if you even have a suggestion that I might use," says Guy eagerly, "I----"

"I say I don't _think_ I'll have a plot by then, I know I'll have one!" I finish.

And I did, really!

When I got home that night I went right to bed, but somehow Mr. Slumber and me couldn't seem to come to terms. My brain just refused to call it a union day but kept mulling over Guy and his magnanimous offer of twenty-five thousand lire for a plot. Good heavens, he could buy a plot with a house and barn on it for that! Then my half-sleepy mind turns to Jimmy Burns, the gloomy bellhop, whose deathless ambition is to corral a fortune and dumfound Europe with his progress from then on! Suddenly these two trains of thought collide with a crash and out of the wreck comes an idea that I think will make Jimmy Burns famous and give Guy Tower his play! That trifling matter being all settled, I turned over and slept the sleep of the just.

The very next evening I propositioned Guy, who listened with flattering attention. After telling him I had his play all set, I furnished him with a short but interesting description of the life, habits and desires of James Joseph Aloysius Burns. I then proposed that Guy place his twenty-five thousand to the bellboy's credit for one month, James to be allowed free rein with the jack. If Burns has increased the amount at the end of thirty days, he is to return the original twenty-five thousand to Guy. If not, he must give back whatever amount he has left. All the principals are to be sworn to secrecy and that's all there is to my scheme--it's as simple as the recipe for hot chocolate!

"If Jimmy Burns is really miscast in life and has a brain and business ability far above hopping bells," I explain, "why, the use of twenty-five thousand for thirty days might make him one of the world's most famous men! It's a sporting chance, Guy--will you gamble?"

Guy looks somewhat perplexed. He stares into my excited face and clears his throat nervously.

"Well--I--of course, I am interested in _anything_ you suggest, Gladys," he says. "I--eh--suppose I am unusually stupid this evening, but I cannot see how my dowering this bellboy will assist me in writing my play."

"Listen," I says. "You claimed you'd put out twenty-five thousand for a plot, didn't you? Well, believe me, the movements of Jimmy Burns with twenty-five thousand dollars to do what he wants with will supply all the ideas you can handle--if you don't think so, you're crazy!"

"But----" begins Guy.