Chapter 4

TORCHY BUGS THE SYSTEM

Guess I ain't mentioned Mortimer before. Didn't seem hardly worth while. You know--there are parties like that, too triflin' to do any beefin' about. But, honest, for awhile there first off this young shrimp that was just makin' his debut as one of Miller's subslaves in the bondroom did get on my nerves more or less. He's a slim, fine-haired, fair-lookin' young gent, with quick, nervous ways and a habit of holdin' his chin well up. No boob, you understand. He was a live one, all right.

And it wa'n't his havin' his monogram embroidered on his shirt sleeves or his wearin' a walkin' stick down to work that got me sore. But you don't look for the raw rebuff from one of these twelve-dollar file jugglers. That's what he slips me, though, and me only tryin' to put across the cheery greetin'!

"Well, Percy," says I, seein' him wanderin' around lonesome durin' lunch hour, "is it you for the Folies today, or are you takin' a chance on one of them new automatic grub factories with me?"

"Beg pardon?" says he, givin' me that frigid, distant look.

"Ah, can the hauteur!" says I. "We're on the same payroll. Maybe you didn't notice me before, though. Well, I'm the guardian of the gate, and I'm offerin' to tow you to a new sandwich works that's quite popular with the staff."

"Thanks," says he. "I am lunching at my club." And with that he does a careless heel-spin, leavin' me stunned and gawpin'.

"Slap!" thinks I. "You will go doin' the little ray of sunshine act, will you? Lunchin' at his club! Now there's a classy comeback for you! Guess I'll spring that myself sometime. Score up for Percy!"

But I wa'n't closin' the incident at that, and, while in my position it wouldn't have been hardly the thing for me to get out the war club and camp on his trail,--him only a four-flushin' bond clerk,--I was holdin' myself ready for the next openin'. It comes only a few mornin's later when he strolls in casual about nine-thirty and starts to pike by into the cloakroom. But I had my toe against the brass gate.

"What name?" says I.

"Why," says he, flushin' up, "I--er--I work here."

"Excuse," says I, drawin' back the foot. "Mistook you for Alfy Vanderbilt come to buy us out."

"Puppy!" says he explosive through his front teeth.

"Meanin' me?" says I. "Why, Algernon! How rough of you!"

He just glares hack over his shoulder and passes on for his session with Miller. I'll bet he got it too; for here in the Corrugated we don't stand for any of that nine-thirty dope except from Mr. Robert.

It's only the next week, though, that Mortimer pulls a couple more delayed entrances in succession, and I sure was lookin' to see him come out with a fresh-air pass in his hand. But it didn't happen. Instead, as I'm in Old Hickory's office a few days later, allowin' him to give me a few fool directions about an errand, in breaks Miller all glowin' under the collar.

"Mr. Ellins," says he, "I can't stand that young Upton. He's got to go!"

"That's too bad," says Old Hickory, shiftin' his cigar to port. "I'd promised his father to give the boy a three months' trial at least. One of our big stockholders, Colonel Upton is, you know. But if you say you can't----"

"Oh, I suppose I can, Sir, in that case," says Miller; "but he's worse than useless in the department, and if there's no way of getting him to observe office hours it's going to be bad for discipline."

"Try docking him, Miller," suggests Mr. Ellins. "Dock him heavy. And pile on the work. Keep him on the jump."

"Yes, Sir," says Miller, grinnin' at me' as he goes out.

And of course this throws a brighter light on Mortimer's case,--pampered son takin' his first whirl at honest toil, and all that. Then later in the day I gets a little private illumination. Mother arrives. Rather a gushy, talky party she is, with big, snappy eyes like Mortimer's, and the same haughty airs. Just now, though, she's a little puffy from excitement and deep emotion.

Seems Mother and Sister Janice are on their way to the steamer, billed to spend the winter abroad. Also it develops that stern Father, standin' grim and bored in the background, has ruled that Son mustn't quit business for any farewell lallygaggin' at the pier. Hence the fam'ly call. As the touchin' scene all takes place in the reception room, just across the brass rail from my desk, I'm almost one of the party.

"Oh, my darling boy!" wails Ma, pushin' back her veils and wrappin' him in the fond clinch.

"Aw, Mother!" protests Mortimer.

"But we are to be so far apart," she goes on, "and with your father in California you are to be all alone! And I just know you'll be forlorn and lonesome in that dreadful boarding house! Oh, it is perfectly awful!"

"Oh, quit it, Mother. I'll be all right," says Mortimer.

"But the work here," comes back Mother. "Does it come so hard? How are you to stand it? Oh, if you had only kept on at college, then all this wouldn't have been necessary."

"Well, I didn't, that's all," says Mortimer; "so what's the use?"

"I shall worry about you all the time," insists Mother. "And you are so careless about writing! How am I to know that you are not ill, or in trouble? Now promise me, if you should break down under the strain, that you will cable me at once."

"Oh, sure!" says Mortimer. "But time's up, Mother. I must be getting back. Good-by."

I had to turn my shoulder on the final break-away, and I thought the whole push had cleared out, when I hears a rustle at the gate, and here's Mother once more, with her eyes fixed investigatin' on me.

"Boy," says she, "are you employed here regularly?"

"I'm one of the fixtures, Ma'am," says I.

"Very well," says she. "I am glad to hear it. And you have rather an intelligent appearance."

"Mostly bluff, though," says I. "You mustn't bank too much on looks."

"Ah, but I can tell!" says she, noddin' her head and squintin' shrewd. "You have a kind face too."

"Ye-e-es?" says I. "But what's this cue for?"

"I will tell you, Boy," says she, comin' up confidential. "You see, I must trust someone in this matter. And you will be right here, where you can see him every day, won't you--my son Mortimer, I mean?"

"I expect I'll have to," says I, "if he sticks."

"Then you must do this for me," she goes on. "Keep close to him. Make yourself his friend."

"Me?" says I. "Well, there might be some trouble about that."

"I understand," says she. "It will be difficult, under the circumstances. And Mortimer has such a proud, reserved nature! He has always been that way. But now that he is thrown upon his own resources, and if you could once gain his confidence, he might allow you to--well, you'll try, won't you? And then I shall depend upon you to send word to me once every week as to how he looks, if he seems happy, how he is getting on in business, and so on. Come, do you promise?"

"Is this a case of philanthropy, or what?" says I.

"Oh, I shall see that you are well repaid," says she.

"That listens well," says I; "but it's kind of vague. Any figures, now?"

"Why--er--yes," says she, hesitatin'. "Suppose I should send you, say, five dollars for every satisfactory report?"

"Then I'm on the job," says I.

And in two minutes more she's left me the address of her London bankers, patted me condescendin' on the shoulder, and has flitted. So here I am with a brand new side line,--an assignment to be friendly at so much per. Can you beat that?

It wa'n't until afterwards, either, when I'm busy throwin' on the screen pictures of how that extra five'll fat up the Saturday pay envelope, that I remembers the exact wordin' of the contract. Five for every satisfactory report. Gee! that's different! Then here's where I got to see that Mortimer behaves, or else I lose out. And I don't waste any time plannin' the campaign. I tackles him as he strolls out thirty seconds ahead of the twelve o'clock whistle.

"After another one of them clubby lunches?" says I.

"What's that to you?" he growls.

"I'm interested, that's all," says I.

"Oh, no, you're not," says he; "you're just fresh."

"Ah, come now, Morty," says I. "This ain't no reg'lar feud we're indulgin' in, you know. Ditch the rude retort and lemme tow you to a joint where for----"

"Thanks," says Mortimer. "I prefer my own company."

"Gee! what poor taste!" says I.

And it looked like I'd gone and bugged any five-spot prospects with my first try.

So I lets Mortimer simmer for a few days, not makin' any more cracks, friendly or otherwise. I was about to hand in a blank report too, when one noon he sort of hesitates as he passes the desk, and then stops.

"I say," he begins, "show me that cheap luncheon place you spoke of, will you?"

It's more of an order than anything else; but that only makes this sudden shift of his more amusin'. "Why, sure," says I. "Soured on the club, have you?"

"Not exactly," says he; "but--well, the fact is, Father must have forgotten to send a check for last month's bill, and I'm on the board--posted, you know."

"Then that wa'n't any funny dream of yours, eh," says I, "this club business? Which is it, Lotos or the Union League?"

"It's my frat club, of course," says Mortimer. "And I don't mind saying that it's a deucedly expensive place for me to go, even when I can sign checks for my meals. I'm always being dragged into billiards, dollar a corner, and that sort of thing. It counts up, and I--I'm running rather close to the wind just now."

"What! And you gettin' twelve?" says I. "Why, say, some supports fam'lies on that. Takes managin', though. But I'll steer you round to Max's, where for a quarter you can----"

"A quarter!" breaks in Mortimer. "But--but that's more than I have left."

"And this only Wednesday!" says I. "Gee! but you have been goin' the pace, ain't you? What is the sum total of the reserve, anyway?"

Mortimer scoops into his trousers pockets, fishin' up a silver knife, a gold cigar clipper, and seventeen cents cash.

"Well, well!" says I. "That is gettin' down to hardpan! It's breakin' one of my business rules, but I see where I underwrite your lunch ticket for the next few days."

"You mean you're going to stake me?" says he. "But why?"

"Well, it ain't on account of your winnin' ways," says I.

"Humph!" says he. "Here! You may have this stickpin as security."

"Gwan!" says I. "I ain't no loan shark. Maybe I'm just makin' an investment in you. Come on to Max's."

I could see Mortimer's nose begin to turn up as we crowds in at a table where a couple of packers from the china store next door was doin' the sword swallowin' act. "What a noisy, messy place!" says he.

"The service ain't quite up to Louis Martin's, that's a fact," says I; "but then, there's no extra charge for the butter and toothpicks."

We tried the dairy lunch next time; but he don't like that much better. Pushin' up to the coffee urn with the mob, and havin' a tongue sandwich slammed down in front of him by a grub hustler that hadn't been to a manicure lately was only a couple of the details Mortimer shies at.

"Ah, you'll soon get to overlook little things like that," says I.

Mortimer shakes his head positive. "It's the disgusting crowd one has to mingle with," says he. "Such a cheap lot of--of roughnecks!"

"Huh!" says I. "Lots of 'em are pullin' down more'n you or me. Some of 'em are almost human too."

"I don't care," says he. "I dislike to mix with them. It's bad enough at the boarding house."

"None of the aristocracy there, either?" says I.

"They're freaks, all of them," says he. "What do you think--one fellow wears an outing shirt in to dinner! Then there's an old person with gray whiskers who--well, I can't bear to watch him. The others are almost as bad."

"When you get to know the bunch you won't mind," says I.

"But I don't care to know them," says Mortimer. "I haven't spoken to a soul, and don't intend to. They're not my kind, you see."

"Are you boastin', or complainin'?" says I. "Anyway, you're in for a lonesome time. What do you do evenin's?"

"Walk around until I'm tired, that's all," says he.

"That's excitin'--I don't think," says I.

Next he branches off on Miller, and starts tellin' me what a deep and lastin' grouch he'd accumulated against his boss. But I ain't encouragin' any hammer play of that kind.

"Stow it, Morty," says I. "I'm wise to all that. Besides, you ought to know you can't hold a job and come floatin' in at any old hour. No wonder you got in Dutch with him! Say, is this your first stab at real work?"

He admits that it is, and when I gets him to describe how he's been killin' time when he wa'n't in college it develops that one of his principal playthings has been a six-cylinder roadster,--mile-a-minute brand, mostly engine and gastank, with just space enough left for the driver to snuggle in among the levers on the small of his back.

"I've had her up to sixty-five an hour on some of those Rhode Island oiled stretches," says Mortimer.

"I expect," says I. "And what was it you hit last?"

"Eh?" says he. "Oh, I see! A milk wagon. Rather stiff damages they got out of us, with the hospital and doctor's bills and all that. But it was more the way I was roasted by the blamed newspapers that made Father so sore. Then my being canned from college soon after--well, that finished it. So he sends Mother and Sis off to Europe, goes on a business trip to California himself, closes the house, and chucks me into this job."

"Kind of poor trainin' for it, I'll admit," says I. "But buck up, Morty; we'll do our best."

"We?" says he, liftin' his eyebrows.

"Uh-huh," says I. "Me and you."

"What's it got to do with you? I'd like to know!" he demands.

"I've been retained," says I. "Never you mind how, but I'm here to pass out the friendly shove, coach you along, see that you make good."

"Well, I like your nerve!" says he, stoppin' short as we're crossin' Broadway. "A young mucker like you help me make good! Say, that's rich, that is! Huh! But why don't you? Come ahead with it, now, if you're such an expert!"

It was a dare, all right. And for a minute there we looked each other over scornful, until I decides that I'll carry on the friend act if I have to risk gettin' my head punched.

"First off, Mortimer," says I, "forgettin' what a great man you are so long as Father's payin' the bills, let's figure on just what your standin' is now. You're a bum bond clerk, on the ragged edge of bein' fired, ain't you?"

He winces some at that; but he still has a comeback. "If it wasn't for that bonehead Miller, I'd get on," he growls.

"Bah!" says I. "He's only layin' down the rules of the game; so it's up to you to follow 'em."

"But he's unreasonable," whines Mortimer. "He snoops around after me, finds fault with everything I do, and fines me for being a little late mornings."

I takes a long breath and swallows hard. Next I tries to strike the saintly pose, and then I unreels the copybook dope just like I believed it myself.

"He does, eh?" says I. "Then beat him to it. Don't be late. Show up at eight-thirty instead of nine. That extra half-hour ain't goin' to kill you. Be the last to quit too. Play up to Miller. Do things the way he wants 'em done, even if you have to do 'em over a dozen times. And use your bean."

"But it's petty, insignificant work," says Mortimer.

"All the worse for you if you can't swing it," says I. "See here, now--how are you goin' to feel afterwards if you've always got to look back on the fact that you begun by fallin' down on a twelve-dollar job?"

Must have got Mortimer in the short ribs, that last shot; for he walks all the rest of the way back to the Corrugated without sayin' a word. Then, just as we gets into the elevator, he unloosens.

"I don't believe it will do any good to try," says he; "but I've a mind to give it a whirl."

I didn't say so, but that was the first thing we'd agreed on that day. So that night I has to send off a report which reads like this:

Mortimer's health O. K.; disposition ragged; business prospects punk.

Hoping you are the same,

TORCHY.

It's a wonder Mortimer didn't have mental indigestion, with all that load of gilt-edged advice on his mind, and I wa'n't lookin' for him to lug it much further'n the door; but, if you'll believe me, he seems to take it serious. Every mornin' after that I finds his hat on the hook when I come in, and whenever I gets a glimpse of him durin' the day he has his coat off and is makin' a noise like the busy bee. At this it takes some time before he makes an impression on Miller; but fin'lly Morty comes out to me with a bulletin that seems to tickle him all over.

"What do you know?" says he. "When Miller was looking over some of my work to-day he breaks out with, 'Very good, Upton. Keep it up.'"

"Well, I expect you told him to chase himself, eh?" says I.

"No," says Mortimer. "I sprung that new scheme of mine for filing the back records, and perhaps he's going to adopt it."

"Think of that!" says I. "Say, you keep on, and you'll be presented with that job for life. But, honest, you don't find Miller such a fish, do you?"

"Oh, I guess he's all right in his way," says Mortimer.

"Then brace yourself, Morty," says I, "while I slip you some more golden words. Tackle that boardin' house bunch of yours. Ah, hold your breath while you're doin' it, if you want to, and spray yourself afterwards with disinfectant, but see if you can't learn to mix in."

"But why?" says he. "I can't see the use."

"Say, for the love of Pete," says I, "ain't it hard enough for me to press out all this wise dope without drawin' diagrams? I don't know why, only you should. Go on now, take it from me."

Maybe it was followin' my hunch, or maybe there wa'n't anything else for him to do, but blamed if this didn't work too. Inside of two weeks he gives me the whole tale, one day as we're sittin' in the armchairs at the dairy lunch.

"Remember my telling you about the fellow who wore the outing shirt?" says he. "Well, say, he's quite a chap, you know. He's from some little town out in Wyoming, and he's on here trying to be a cartoonist--runs a hoisting engine day times and goes to an art school evenings. How's that, eh?"

"Sounds batty," says I. "There's most as many would-be cartoonists as there are nutty ones tryin' to write plays for Belasco."

"But this Blake's going to get there," says Mortimer. "I was up in his room Sunday, and he showed me some of his work. Clever stuff, a lot of it. He's landed a couple of things already. Then there's old man McQuade, the one with the whiskers. Say, he's been all over the world,--Siberia, Africa, Japan, South America. Used to be selling agent for a mill supply firm. He has all his savings invested in an Egyptian cotton plantation that hasn't begun to pay yet, but he thinks it will soon. You ought to hear the yarns he can spin, though!"

"So-o-o?" says I.

"But Aronwitz is the fellow I'm traveling' around with most just now," goes on Mortimer enthusiastic. "Say, he's a wonder! Been over here from Hungary only six years, worked his way through Columbia, copping an A. M. and an A. B., and sending back money to his old mother right along. He's a Socialist, or something, and writes for one of those East Side papers. Then evenings he teaches manual training in a slum settlement house. He took me over with him the other night and got me to help him with his boys. My, but they're a bright lot of youngsters--right off the street too! I've promised to take a class myself."

"In what," says I, "table etiquette?"

"I'm going to start by explaining to them how a gasolene engine works," says Mortimer. "They're crazy to learn anything like that. It will be great sport."

"Mortimer," says I, "a little more of that, and I'll believe you're the guy that put the seed in succeed. Anyone wouldn't guess you was doin' penance."

"I feel that I'm really living at last," says he in earnest.

So in that next report to Mother, after I'd thanked her for the last check and filled in the usual health chart and so on, I proceeds to throw in a few extras about how Son was makin' the great discovery that most folks was more or less human, after all. Oh, I spread myself on that part of it, givin' full details!

"And if that don't charm an extra five out of the old girl," thinks I, "I miss my guess."

Does it? Well, say, that happy thought stays with me for about ten days. At times I figured the bonus might be as high as a fifty. And then one mornin' here comes a ruddy-faced old party that I spots as Colonel Upton. He calls for Mortimer, and the two of 'em has a ten-minute chat in the corridor. Afterwards Morty interviews Miller, and when he comes out next he has his hat and overcoat with him.

"So long, Torchy," says he. "I'm leaving."

"Not for good!" says I. "What's wrong?"

"Mother," says he. "In some way she's found out about the sort of people I've been going around with, and she's kicked up a great row, got Father on the cable, and--well, it's all off. I'm to travel abroad for a year or so to get it out of my system."

"Gee!" says I as he goes out to join the Colonel. "Talk about boobing a swell proposition! But that was too good to last, anyway. And, believe me, if I'm ever asked again to be friendly on a salary, I bet I don't overdo the thing."