Chapter 6

It was like talkin' into a 'phone when the line's out of business. Rinkey goes on sendin' Morse wireless with his teeth, and never unloosens a word.

"Look here, Br'er Singh," says I, "you ain't gettin' any third degree--yet! Cut out the ague act and give Mr. Pinckney the straight talk. He's got a date here and wants to know why the gate is up."

More silence from Rinkey.

"Oh, well," says I, "I expect it ain't etiquette to jump the outside guard; but if we're goin' to get next to Sir Hunter, it looks like we had to announce ourselves. Here goes!"

I starts for the inside door; but I hadn't got my knuckles on the panel before Rinkey was givin' me the knee tackle and splutterin' all kinds of language.

"Hey!" says I. "Got the cork out, have you?"

With that Rinkey gets up and beckons us over into the far corner.

"The lord sahib," says he, rollin' his eyes at the bed room door--"the lord sahib desire that none should come near. He is in great anger."

"What's he grouchy about?" says I.

"The lord sahib," says he, "will destroy to death poor Ringhi Singh if he reveals."

"Destroy to death is good," says I; "but it don't sound convincin'. I think we're bein' strung."

Pinckney has the same idea, so I gets a good grip on Rinkey's neck.

"Come off!" says I. "As a liar you're too ambitious. You tell us what's the matter with your boss, or I'll do things to you that'll make bein' destroyed to death seem like fallin' on a feather bed!"

And it come, quick. "Yes, sahib," says he. "It is that there has been lost beyond finding the lord sahib's glorious eye."

"Sizzlin' sisters! Another pane gone!" says I. "This must be my eye retrievin' day, for sure."

But Pinckney takes it mighty serious. He says that the dinner at the club don't count for so much, but that the other affair can't be sidetracked so easy. It seems that the girl has lived through one throw down, when the feller skipped off to Europe just as the tie-up was to be posted, and it wouldn't do to give her a second scare of the same kind.

Rinkey was mighty reluctant about goin' into details, but we gets it out of him by degrees that the lord sahib has a habit, when he's locked up alone, of unscrewin' the fake lamp and puttin' it away in a box full of cotton battin'.

"Always in great secret," says Rinkey; "for the lord sahib would not disclose. But I have seen, which was an evil thing--oh, very evil! To-night it was done as before; but when it was time for the return, alas! the box was down side up on the floor and the glorious eye was not anywhere. Search! We look into everything, under all things. Then comes a great rage on the lord sahib, and I be sore from it in many places."

"That accounts for your restin' on your face, eh?" says I. "Well, Pinckney, what now?"

"Why," says he, "we've simply got to get a substitute eye. I'll wait here while you go out and buy another."

"Say, Pinckney," I says, "if you was goin' down Broadway at eight-thirty P. M., shoppin' for glass eyes, where'd you hit first? Would you try a china store, Or a gent's furnishin's place?"

"Don't they have them at drug stores?" says Pinckney.

"I never seen any glass eye counters in the ones I go to," says I. And then, right in the midst of our battin' our heads, I comes to.

"Oh, splash!" says I. "Pinckney, if anyone asks you, don't let on what a hickory head I am. Why, I've got a glass eye that Sir Hunter can have the loan of over night, just as well as not."'

"You!" says Pinckney, lookin' wild.

"Sure thing," says I. "It's a beaut, too. Can't a feller own a glass eye without wearin' it?"

"But where is it?" says Pinckney.

"It's with Snick Butters," says I. "He's usin' it, I expect. Fact is, it was built for Snick, but I hold a gilt edged first mortgage, and all I need to do to foreclose is say the word. Come on. Just as soon as we find Snick you can run back and fix up Sir Hunter as good as new."

"Do you think you can find him?" says Pinckney.

"We've got to find him," says I. "I'm gettin' interested in this game."

Snick was holdin' down a chair in the smokin' room at the Gilsey. He grins when he sees me, but when I puts it up to him about callin' in the loose lens for over night his jaw drops.

"Just my luck," says he. "Here I've got bill board seats for the Casino and was goin' to take the newsstand girl to the show as soon as she can get off."

"Sorry, Snick," says I, "but this is a desperate case. Won't she stand for the green curtain?"

"S-s-sh!" says he. "She don't know a thing about that. I'll have to call it off. Give me two minutes, will you?"

That was Snick, all over--losin' out just as easy as some folks wins. When he comes back, though, and I tells him what's doin', he says he'd like to know just where the lamp was goin', so he could be around after it in the mornin'.

"Sure," says I. "Bring it along up with you, then, there won't be any chance of our losin' it."

So all three of us goes back to the hotel. Pinckney wa'n't sayin' a word, actin' like he was kind of dazed, but watchin' Snick all the time. As we gets into the elevator, he pulls me by the sleeve and whispers:

"I say, Shorty, which one is it?"

"The south one," says I.

It wasn't till we got clear into Sir Hunter's reception room, under the light, that Pinckney heaves up something else.

"Oh, I say!" says he, starin' at Snick. "Beg pardon for mentioning it, but yours is a--er--you have blue eyes, haven't you, Mr. Butters?"

"That's right," says Snick.

"And Sir Hunter's are brown. It will never do," says he.

"Ah, what's the odds at night?" says I. "Maybe the girl's colour blind, anyway."

"No," says Pinckney, "Sir Hunter would never do it. Now, if you only knew of some one with a----"

"I don't," says I. "Snick's the only glass eyed friend I got on my repertoire. It's either his or none. You send Rinkey in to ask Twiggle if a blue one won't do on a pinch."

Mr. Rinkey didn't like the sound of that program a bit, and he goes to clawin' around my knees, beggin' me not to send him in to the lord sahib.

"G'wan!" says I, pushin' him off. "You make me feel as if I was bein' measured for a pair of leggin's. Skiddo!"

As I gives him a shove my finger catches in the white stuff he has around his head, and it begins to unwind. I'd peeled off about a yard, when out rolls somethin' shiny that Snick spots and made a grab for.

"Hello!" says he. "What's this?"

It was the stray brown, all right. That Kipling coon has had it stowed away all the time. Well say, there was lively doin's in that room for the next few minutes; me tryin' to get a strangle hold on Rinkey, and him doin' his best to jump through a window, chairs bein' knocked over, Snick hoppin' around tryin' to help, and Pinckney explainin' to Sir Hunter through the keyhole what it was all about.

When it was through we held a court of inquiry. And what do you guess? That smoked Chinaman had swiped it on purpose, thinkin' if he wore it on the back of his head he could see behind him. Wouldn't that grind you?

But it all comes out happy. Sir Hunter was a little late for dinner, but he shows up two eyed before the girl, makes a hit with her folks, and has engaged Snick to give him private lessons on how to make a fake optic behave like the real goods.

VIII

PINCKNEY AND THE TWINS

Say, when it comes to gettin' himself tangled up in ways that nobody ever thought of before, you can play Pinckney clear across the board. But I never knew him to send out such a hard breathin' hurry call as the one I got the other day. It come first thing in the mornin' too, just about the time Pinckney used to be tearin' off the second coupon from the slumber card. I hadn't more'n got inside the Studio door before Swifty Joe says:

"Pinckney's been tryin' to get you on the wire."

"Gee!" says I, "he's stayin' up late last night! Did he leave the number?"

He had, and it was a sixty-cent long distance call; so the first play I makes when I rings up is to reverse the charge.

"That you, Shorty?" says he. "Then for goodness' sake come up here on the next train! Will you?"

"House afire, bone in your throat, or what?" says I.

"It's those twins," says he.

"Bad as that?" says I. "Then I'll come."

Wa'n't I tellin' you about the pair of mated orphans that was shipped over to him unexpected; and how Miss Gertie, the Western blush rose that was on the steamer with 'em, helps him out? Well, the last I hears, Pinckney is gone on Miss Gertie and gettin' farther from sight every minute. He's planned it out to have the knot tied right away, hire a furnished cottage for the summer, and put in the honeymoon gettin' acquainted with the ready made family that they starts in with. Great scheme! Suits Pinckney right down to the ground, because it's different. He begins by accumulatin' a pair of twins, next he finds a girl and then he thinks about gettin' married. By the way he talked, I thought it was all settled; but hearin' this whoop for help I suspicioned there must be some hitch.

There wa'n't any carnation in his buttonhole when he meets me at the station; he hasn't shaved since the day before; and there's trouble tracks on his brow.

"Can't you stand married life better'n this?" says I.

"Married!" says he. "No such luck. I never expect to be married, Shorty; I'm not fit."

"Is this a decision that was handed you, or was it somethin' you found out for yourself?" says I.

"It's my own discovery," says he.

"Then there's hope," says I. "So the twins have been gettin' you worried, eh? Where's Miss Gertie?"

That gives Pinckney the hard luck cue, and while we jogs along towards his new place in the tub cart he tells me all about what's been happenin'. First off he owns up that he's queered his good start with Miss Gertie by bein' in such a rush to flash the solitaire spark on her. She ain't used to Pinckney's jumpy ways. They hadn't been acquainted much more'n a week, and he hadn't gone through any of the prelim's, when he ups and asks her what day it will be and whether she chooses church or parsonage. Course she shies at that, and the next thing Pinckney knows she's taken a train West, leavin' him with the twins on his hands, and a nice little note sayin' that while she appreciates the honour she's afraid he won't do.

"And you're left at the post?" says I.

"Yes," says he. "I couldn't take the twins and follow her, but I could telegraph. My first message read like this, 'What's the matter with me?' Here is her answer to that," and he digs up a yellow envelope from his inside pocket.

"Not domestic enough. G." It was short and crisp.

He couldn't give me his come back to that, for he said it covered three blanks; but it was meant to be an ironclad affidavit that he could be just as domestic as the next man, if he only had a chance.

"And then?" says I.

"Read it," says he, handin' over Exhibit Two.

"You have the chance now," it says. "Manage the twins for a month, and I will believe you."

And that was as far as he could get. Now, first and last, I guess there's been dozens of girls, not countin' all kinds of widows, that's had their lassoes out for Pinckney. He's been more or less interested in some; but when he really runs across one that's worth taggin' she does the sudden duck and runs him up against a game like this.

"And you're tryin' to make good, eh?" says I. "What's your program?"

For Pinckney, he hadn't done so worse. First he hunts up the only aunt he's got on his list. She's a wide, heavy weight old girl, that's lost or mislaid a couple of husbands, but hasn't ever had any kids of her own, and puts in her time goin' to Europe and comin' back. She was just havin' the trunks checked for Switzerland when Pinckney locates her and tells how glad he is to see her again. Didn't she want to change her plans and stay a month or so with him and the twins at some nice place up in Westchester? One glimpse of Jack and Jill with their comp'ny manners on wins her. Sure, she will!

So it's tip to Pinckney to hire a happy home for the summer, all found. Got any idea of how he tackles a job like that? Most folks would take a week off and do a lot of travelling sizin' up different joints. They'd want to know how many bath rooms, if there was malaria, and all about the plumbin', and what the neighbours was like. But livin' at the club don't put you wise to them tricks. Pinckney, he just rings up a real estate agent, gets him to read off a list, says, "I'll take No. 3," and it's all over. Next day they move out.

Was he stung? Well, not so bad as you'd think. Course, he's stuck about two prices for rent, and he signs a lease without readin' farther than the "Whereas"; but, barrin' a few things like haircloth furniture and rooms that have been shut up so long they smell like the subcellars in a brewery, he says the ranch wa'n't so bad. The outdoors was good, anyway. There was lots of it, acres and acres, with trees, and flower gardens, and walks, and fish ponds, and everything you could want for a pair of youngsters that needed room. I could see that myself.

"Say, Pinckney," says I, as we drives in through the grounds, "if you can't get along with Jack and Jill in a place of this kind you'd better give up. Why, all you got to do is to turn 'em loose."

"Wait!" says he. "You haven't heard it all."

"Let it come, then," says I.

"We will look at the house first," says he.

The kids wa'n't anywhere in sight; so we starts right in on the tour of inspection. It was a big, old, slate roofed baracks, with jigsaw work on the eaves, and a lot of dinky towers frescoed with lightnin' rods. There was furniture to match, mostly the marble topped, black walnut kind, that was real stylish back in the '70's.

In the hall we runs across Snivens. He was the butler; but you wouldn't guess it unless you was told. Kind of a cross between a horse doctor and a missionary, I should call him--one of these short legged, barrel podded gents, with a pair of white wind harps framin' up a putty coloured face that was ornamented with a set of the solemnest lookin' lamps you ever saw off a stuffed owl.

"Gee, Pinckney!" says I, "who unloaded that on you!"

"Snivens came with the place," says he.

"He looks it," says I. "I should think that face would sour milk. Don't he scare the twins?"

"Frighten Jack and Jill?" says Pinckney. "Not if he had horns and a tail! They seem to take him as a joke. But he does make all the rest of us feel creepy."

"Why don't you write him his release?" says I.

"Can't," says Pinckney. "He is one of the conditions in the contract--he and the urns."

"The urns?" says I.

"Yes," says Pinckney, sighin' deep. "We are coming to them now. There they are."

With that we steps into one of the front rooms, and he lines me up before a white marble mantel that is just as cheerful and tasty as some of them pieces in Greenwood Cemetery. On either end was what looks to be a bronze flower pot.

"To your right," says Pinckney, "is Grandfather; to your left, Aunt Sabina."

"What's the josh?" says I.

"Shorty," says he, heavin' up another sigh, "you are now in the presence of sacred dust. These urns contain the sad fragments of two great Van Rusters."

"Fragments is good," says I. "Couldn't find many to keep, could they? Did they go up with a powder mill, or fall into a stone crusher?"

"Cremated," says Pinckney.

Then I gets the whole story of the two old maids that Pinckney rented the place from. They were the last of the clan. In their day the Van Rusters had headed the Westchester battin' list, ownin' about half the county and gettin' their names in the paper reg'lar. But they'd been peterin' out for the last hundred years or so, and when it got down to the Misses Van Rusters, a pair of thin edged, old battle axes that had never wore anything but crape and jet bonnets, there wa'n't much left of the estate except the mortgages and the urns.

Rentin' the place furnished was the last card in the box, and Pinckney turns up as the willin' victim. When he comes to size up what he's drawn, and has read over the lease, he finds he's put his name to a lot he didn't dream about. Keepin' Snivens on the pay roll, promisin' not to disturb the urns, usin' the furniture careful, and havin' the grass cut in the private buryin' lot was only a few that he could think of off hand.

"You ain't a tenant, Pinckney," says I; "you're a philanthropist."

"I feel that way," says he. "At first, I didn't know which was worse, Snivens or the urns. But I know now--it is the urns. They are driving me to distraction."

"Ah, do a lap!" says I. "Course, I give in that there might be better parlour ornaments than potted ancestors, specially when they belong to someone else; but they don't come extra, do they? I thought it was the twins that was worryin' you?"

"That is where the urns come in," says he. "Here the youngsters are now. Step back in here and watch."

He pulls me into the next room, where we could see through the draperies. There's a whoop and a hurrah outside, the door bangs, and in tumbles the kids, with a nurse taggin' on behind. The youngsters makes a bee line for the mantelpiece and sings out:

"Hello, Grandfather! Hello, Aunt Sabina! Look what we brought this time!"

"Stop it! Stop it!" says the nurse, her eyes buggin' out.

"Boo! Fraid cat!" yells the twins, and nursy skips. Then they begins to unload the stuff they've lugged in, pilin' it up alongside the urns, singin' out like auctioneers, "There's some daisies for Aunt Sabina! And wild strawberries for Grandfather! And a mud turtle for aunty! And a bird's nest for Grandfather!" windin' up the performance by joinin' hands and goin' through a reg'lar war dance.

Pinckney explains how this was only a sample of what had been goin' on ever since they heard Snivens tellin' what was in the urns. They'd stood by, listenin' with their mouths and ears wide open, and then they'd asked questions until everyone was wore out tryin' to answer 'em. But the real woe came when the yarn got around among the servants and they begun leavin' faster'n Pinckney's Aunt Mary could send out new ones from town.

"Maybe the kids'll get tired of it in a few days," says I.

"Exactly what I thought," says Pinckney; "but they don't. It's the best game they can think of, and if I allow them they will stay in here by the hour, cutting up for the benefit of Grandfather and Aunt Sabina. It's morbid. It gets on one's nerves. My aunt says she can't stand it much longer, and if she goes I shall have to break up. If you're a friend of mine, Shorty, you'll think of some way to get those youngsters interested in something else."

"Why don't you buy 'em a pony cart?" says I.

"I've bought two," says he; "and games and candy, and parrots and mechanical toys enough to stock a store. Still they keep this thing up."

"And if you quit the domestic game, the kids have to go to some home, and you go back to the club?" says I.

"That's it," says he.

"And when Miss Gertie comes on, and finds you've renigged, it's all up between you and her, eh?" says I.

Pinckney groans.

"G'wan!" says I. "Go take a sleep."

With that I steps in and shows myself to the kids. They yells and makes a dash for me. Inside of two minutes I've been introduced to Grandfather and Aunt Sabina, made to do a duck before both jars, and am planted on the haircloth sofa with a kid holdin' either arm, while they puts me through the third degree. They want information.

"Did you ever see folks burned and put in jars?" says Jack.

"No," says I; "but I've seen pickled ones jugged. I hear you've got some ponies."

"Two," says Jill; "spotted ones. Would you want to be burned after you was a deader?"

"Better after than before," says I. "Where's the ponies now?"

"What do the ashes look like?" says Jack.

"Are there any clinkers?" says Jill.

Say, I was down and out in the first round. For every word I could get in about ponies they got in ten about them bloomin' jars, and when I leaves 'em they was organisin' a circus, with Grandfather and Aunt Sabina supposed to be occupyin' the reserved seats. Honest, it was enough to chill the spine of a morgue keeper. By good luck I runs across Snivens snoopin' through the hall.

"See here, you!" says I. "I want to talk to you."

"Beg pardon, sir," says he, backin' off, real stiff and dignified; "but----"

"Ah, chuck it!" says I, reachin' out and gettin' hold of his collar, playful like. "You've been listenin' at the door. Now what do you think of the way them kids is carryin' on in there?"

"It's outrageous, sir!" says he, puffin' up his cheeks, "It's scandalous! They're young imps, so they are, sir."

"Want to stop all that nonsense?" says I.

He says he does.

"Then," says I, "you take them jars down cellar and hide 'em in the coal bin."

He holds up both hands at that. "It can't be done, sir," says he. "They've been right there for twenty years without bein' so much as moved. They were very superior folks, sir, very superior."

"Couldn't you put 'em in the attic, then?" says I.

He couldn't. He says it's in the lease that the jars wa'n't to be touched.

"Snivens," says I, shovin' a twenty at him, "forget the lease."

Say, he looks at that yellowback as longin' as an East Side kid sizin' up a fruit cart. Then he gives a shiver and shakes his head. "Not for a thousand, sir," says he. "I wouldn't dare."

"You're an old billygoat, Snivens," says I.

And that's all the good I did with my little whirl at the game; but I tries to cheer Pinckney up by tellin' him the kids wa'n't doin' any harm.

"But they are," says Pinckney. "They're raising the very mischief with my plans. The maids are scared to death. They say the house is haunted. Four of them gave notice to-day. Aunt Mary is packing her trunks, and that means that I might as well give up. I'll inquire about a home to send them to this afternoon."

I guess it was about four o'clock, and I was tryin' to take a snooze in a hammock on the front porch, when I hears the twins makin' life miserable for the gard'ner that was fixin' the rose bushes.

"Lemme dig, Pat," says Jill.

"G'wan, ye young tarrier!" says Pat

"Can't I help some?" says Jack.

"Yes, if ye'll go off about a mile," says Pat.

"Why don't the roses grow any more?" asks Jill.

"It's needin' ashes on 'em they are," says Pat.

"Ashes!" says Jack.

"Ashes!" says Jill.

Then together, "Oh, we know where there's ashes--lots!"

"We'll fetch 'em!" says Jill, and with that I hears a scamperin' up the steps.

I was just gettin' up to chase after 'em, when I has another thought. "What's the use, anyway?" thinks I. "It's their last stunt." So I turns over and pretends to snooze.

When Pinckney shows up about six the twins has the pony carts out and is doin' a chariot race around the drive, as happy and innocent as a couple of pink angels. Then they eats their supper and goes to bed, with nary a mention of sayin' good-night to the jars, like they'd been in the habit of doin'. Next mornin' they gets up as frisky as colts and goes out to play wild Indians in the bushes. They was at it all the forenoon, and never a word about Grandfather and Aunt Sabina. Pinckney notices it, but he don't dare speak of it for fear he'll break the spell. About two he comes in with a telegram.

"Miss Gertie's coming on the four o'clock train," says he, lookin' wild.

"You don't act like you was much tickled," says I.

"She's sure to find out what a muss I've made of things," says he. "The moment she gets here I expect the twins will start up that confounded rigmarole about Grandfather and Aunt Sabina again. Oh, I can hear them doing it!"