Part 11

He took a sheet of paper and wrote the answer. It contained but one line, but it told a whole chapter. In due course of time it was delivered to her. She opened the envelope and read the enclosure. What she said was unfit for publication, for what she saw was only two words and they were:

“Forget it.”

TOLD BY THE MANICURE GIRL

“How long have you been here?” asked the man with the black mustache; “I never noticed you before.”

“Just a week to-day,” said the manicure, as she soused one of his fat, pudgy paws in the scented water. She didn’t even take the trouble to look up at him as she talked, but applied herself at once to the almost impossible task of making his nails even presentable. It’s a hard job, you know, trying to improve on one of nature’s bum pieces of work.

The man leaned back in his chair contentedly, and with that air of assurance which money begets, and he looked her over as he would have looked over a new style of shirt in a haberdasher’s window. He noted that her hair was dark chestnut in color and luxuriant, also that it was undoubtedly all her own. The contour of her face was such as would have attracted any man with red blood in his veins and a heart to pump it. She had, besides, nice hands that were well kept, and a dainty manner that was rather charming.

“Don’t you ever get tired of doing this kind of work?” he asked, when he had finished his inspection and had sized her up to his apparent satisfaction.

“I am always tired of it,” she answered, briefly.

“How would you like to travel?” was his next question.

Then she paused a moment and glanced up. She was smiling, and the two dimples that came in her cheeks rather enhanced her beauty.

Then he saw that she also had teeth that were white and regular, that her lips were red and her eyelashes long.

You know a bargaining man takes in all these things, just the same as a buyer of beef on the hoof feels and prods the cattle in the search for blemishes.

“There is nothing in the world I would like better than to travel.”

She looked him squarely in the eyes, and her smile was accentuated. Then she resumed her work. As for him he leaned still farther back in the comfortable chair and sucked complacently on his big Havana.

“I knew you was a nice little girl as soon as I saw you.”

“Did you?”

The rapid, supple fingers never paused for a moment in their work, and were trimming, rubbing and polishing those awful nails into some kind of decent shape. The thick, heavy, hairy hand, with its spatulate extremities, showed physical strength and nothing else. It was made for work, and it had worked, too, in its day. It had been used to the most ordinary and menial kind of labor, as the hands of its ancestors had. It had lifted beams and handled picks and shovels. It had pulled at ropes and tugged at heavy burdens. It had had little to do with the gentler side of life, and even the big diamond ring on the fourth finger could not hide its early career.

But an accident happened--a money-making accident which some might call opportunity--and the hands had been withdrawn from their labors, and the callous spots had a chance to disappear--gradually, but none the less surely. The movement of the slim white fingers caused him to look down, and he was conscious of the fact that his heart was beating a bit faster than usual. The blue smoke from his cigar curled up through his mustache, it crept into his eyes and made them sting. Through the haze he noticed that the girl had a bow of black ribbon fastened to her hair.

“I’ll bet you’d be a good sport if you had the chance.”

“That depends upon what you mean by the chance,” she said.

He couldn’t quite analyze that, and so he blurted out:

“Go down the line with me and I’ll show you.”

She paid no attention to that.

“How about it?” he persisted.

“How about what?”

“I’d just like to take you out to a little lunch for two. What time do you break away from here? What time do you knock off?”

“To-night, do you mean?”

“Sure, yes, to-night.”

“Just time enough to go home, and I never go out at night.”

“Tush, tush, now. Be a good fellow, and if I like you I’ll take you on a long trip. You know you said you liked to travel, didn’t you? Well, I’m going to give you a chance, if you behave yourself and stick to me. I’ve been looking for a girl like you for a long while, and you just hit me right, so you’re on the job. I can make good, all right, you needn’t be afraid of that, for I’ve got all kinds of money, and when I meet anybody I like I spend it like a drunken sailor, see?”

“Yes, I see; I knew you had money all the time.”

“You did, did you; well, how?”

“Because it is only men with plenty of money who would talk to a girl the way you have been talking to me. It is only the men with money who think they can buy everything in sight, especially if that which they think they fancy happens to be the wearer of a skirt, and it’s the men with money who think their money is better than anybody else’s money, and their dollars are of more value than the dollars owned or controlled by some one who has less than they have. Are you married?”

“No,” he answered. He would have said more if he had known what to say.

“Then why don’t you go and pick out some woman whom you like and who likes you, and marry her and have it over with. Your time for being a gay sport has passed; leave that to the young fellows.”

Daintily she reddened his nails with rouge, doing them as carefully as if they were works of art, and tapping each one gently in order to get just the right amount of color.

“I don’t think,” she went on, “that you quite know what you’ve been up against. You may have heard the old saying, ‘a burnt child dreads the fire;’ well, I’m the child in this case, although I’m no child in years. As I told you before, I’ve been here a week, and it’s a great relief to me to be working, for I’ve been on one of those little trips you were just talking about, and there is nothing to it. You see,” then she glanced up quickly, “perhaps you don’t want to hear this.”

“That’s all right; go ahead, you can’t hurt my feelings.”

“I was told that I was a good fellow and a nice girl, and I was led to believe that I could have anything in the world that I wanted, and I want to tell you right here that it is a beautiful thing to believe and have faith in anyone. Some of the stories that men tell to women would make great reading if it was only written right, but they would be all fiction, because I don’t believe a man ever told a woman the truth in his life. I’m talking from personal experience, of course. This one man, who was really old enough to be my father, talked to me about my future, and said, among other things, he would always look after me, and I was serious enough about it to believe that he would, too. Then one day he asked me if I wanted to take a little trip, and his words were so much like yours when you spoke that you startled me. Isn’t it strange that the nails of your left hand take on so much higher polish than those of the right hand? I wonder why it is? There, _I’m_ through now. Fifty cents, please.”

“But how about the finish of that story? Did you take the trip?”

“Of course I took it.”

“Make the job a dollar and tell me the rest.”

“I never would have believed that I would be sitting here telling that story to a man whom I had only met once. You’re not offended at the way I criticised you, are you?”

“Not at all,” he answered, “go ahead and criticise me all you like. I rather like it, it’s so seldom that I am criticised.”

“You mean nowadays?” she asked, noting his hands.

“Yes, since I got money. Go on with the story.”

“The trip was to be to Europe--first London, then Paris, and after that Berlin. He was a banker and so prominent that you would know his name at once if I were to mention it, but there is where I draw the line. I’ll save him that much, anyhow. When we left he had a large bag in which he seemed to take an especial interest, for he would allow no one to touch it but himself, and it wasn’t until we were half way across that I found out that it was all full of money.”

“Money?” queried the man with the black mustache, sitting bolt upright in his chair.

“Yes, money. That’s what I said, wasn’t it?” she asked, petulantly. “Brand new greenbacks, pound notes, hundred and thousand-franc notes. Oh, they were beautiful to look at, and I counted over the packages because they were so pretty. You see, he said he was going over to put through a big banking deal, and he cautioned me to say nothing about all the money he had with him, for fear he would be robbed. When we arrived in London we went direct to the Cecil, where he registered under an assumed name, but I was down on the book as his wife, just the same, and he told me to go out and get some clothes and anything I wanted. He said he wanted to have some of the big bills changed and that was the easiest way in the world to have it done, but he asked me to bring all the change to him, and to pay for every separate article with one of the new bills. I thought it was rather queer at the time, but I did as he told me and I never in my life had such a good time buying things. I brought back to the hotel a dreadful amount of change, so much that it was a nuisance.

“Every day it was the same thing over again until I honestly grew tired of spending money. Think of that--tired spending. Before we left for Paris he put over $15,000 of the change in a safe deposit vault that only he and I knew about, because something had happened and he had to get to Paris quickly. When we got there we went to the Grand Hotel, where he registered under still another name. Again I went shopping, and the only hard part of it was that I had a new bill to change every time I bought anything, think of that, even if it was a little lunch in a cafe, and many a time I have had to wait while they sent out for the change of a thousand-franc note. We were there just four days when one afternoon two men came to our rooms with the proprietor or manager of the hotel, and the first thing I knew he was arrested on the charge of making or having counterfeit money or something like that. Before they got him out of the room he whispered to me that he had put $15,000 more in a safe deposit vault in Paris, and he told me the name of the place. He said it was in my name, too.

“I wasn’t arrested, but I was put out of the hotel as if I had been a swindler. I had enough money to get home, and so I came. I don’t want any more excitement in mine, and I’m content to get along the best way I can, without any fireworks or trips of any kind, unless, of course, _I’m_ sure that everything is absolutely correct and all right. Suppose I had been broke, what would I have done alone in Paris?”

“What happened to the man?” he asked, ignoring her question.

“He was tried and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment, and if he had only married me, and I had my marriage certificate, I could go over there and get $30,000 as easy as nothing. I don’t care so very much for it, but still it would come in very handy and I wouldn’t mind dividing it up with anyone who could help me out.”

The man fidgeted in his chair, glanced out of the window, and then took a long pull at his cigar.

“Bored you, didn’t it?” asked the girl. “I knew it would, but you insisted on my telling it, and you’re the only one that knows it. I’m really getting garrulous.”

“Do you think $5,000 would be enough to get the papers fixed up?”

“Oh, yes, that would be quite enough, for I inquired about it. It would take me there and back again and pay all expenses.”

“And you’d give me half?”

“Why, of course I would. Who wouldn’t?”

You know the old saying about a sucker being born every minute. I could go on and make the usual hot finish to this story, but what’s the use when two lines will suffice. She got the money, of course, and he got what is known in the language of The Line as the lemon. Very sour it was for this hard, wise fellow, and they say that now every time he passes a manicure parlor he turns his head the other way and says things which wouldn’t look well in print.

INVESTING IN A HUSBAND

Money makes the mare go.

Sure.

That is, sometimes, if it’s the right kind of a mare and there is enough money.

Take out all the “ifs” and “buts” and it will be all right.

The world began with a man, Adam, and the woman came later, but the finish will be different, for there will be a woman in the last ditch giving or ready to give the avenging angel the stiffest kind of an argument.

This story differs from the Creation in that it begins with a woman, as all stories of to-day should. And why not? for take the lady out of the case and there’s no story and never will be. The slim finger of a woman, you know, is in every pie. Sometimes it improves the flavor and sometimes it spoils it--that’s a matter of luck--and there are men who have tried pies or many fingers, whichever simile you prefer, and the result in their cases is always the same.

The girl in this story had birth, and blood, and breeding behind her. She also had good looks and a little money, and that is about all that anyone wants. Add to that a fairly nice disposition and you have reached the limit.

Of course, she wasn’t perfect by any means. She was a bit whimsical and peculiar, and her moods were as apparent as the moving pictures thrown on a sheet in the theatre. She was unusual in that her moods were reflected in her face with all the truthfulness of a mirror. That was the reason that some said she was good-looking, while others contended that she was most ordinary. Take her as I’ve often seen her, when she was cheerful and happy-go-lucky, and while there was nothing about her features that was regular she was attractive enough for anyone, and she could make a good many young fellows turn their heads to look after her as she passed down the street.

Then again something would happen, and she would seem to age ten years in as many hours, and a crop of deep lines and wrinkles would spring out like magic. But she had magnetism, and she was forever standing at the fork of two roads, one of which led to good and the other to bad. To her it was the toss of a coin which one she would take.

It was while she was in a thoughtful mood, debating with herself, that the man came along. There’s an apology goes with that, for he hadn’t a vote yet, and he was very youthful in his ways and of that age where a youngster is apt to tell more than is good for him, and to stray from the field of fact. Of course, it’s not a crime--it’s only a period. With his red cheeks and baby complexion he looked like a cross between a stick of peppermint candy and one of Raphael’s cherubs. He was as pretty a piece of embroidery as ever asked his mother for spending money, and when the girl saw him she immediately threw out a line and took him in tow. Inside of twenty-four hours she had her monogram indelibly stamped on him, and he was hers. Hand in hand they went out to see the world and become real sports, and it wasn’t long before wine was the limit and it wasn’t half good enough at that. They left a lurid streak up and down the line, but it soon faded out, for they weren’t financially strong enough to make a splash that would attract any more attention than a pair of tiny gold fish in a two-dollar aquarium.

After all, it amounts to nothing more or less than a question of capacity--stomach as well as purse, and it is rarely that the two harmonize. The man with the yard-wide thirst is often handicapped by a purse with complete or partial paralysis.

And then these two fell in with other company in the shape of a man and woman whose nuptials had been attended by incidents of a more or less exciting character, the star part of which was an elopement which savored more of desire than genius in its arrangements. They had succeeded so well in their new venture that they owned the entire contents of a flat across the river in Jersey, and being still in the throes of love themselves--or thinking they were--they were headquarters for everything that seemed like an affair of the heart. Some who were not their friends were unkind enough to say that it was nothing more nor less than a case of misery loving company, and that being on the coals themselves this couple enjoyed leading others to the broiler. But that’s unkind and really ought not to be believed.

However, many a racket came off in the flat, and they all went as hot a pace as wind and weather permitted, until even a rank outsider would have said it was time for a minister to get on the job and do what he could to make things legal.

The cork popped from a bottle of wine and the juice of the grape sizzled out.

“What do you say, Kid, let’s get married?”

“All right, I’m game if you are; you can’t phaze me,” she said.

“Well, how about to-night?”

“The sooner the better.”

Talk about quick action, it was here with a vengeance.

Four people on a ferryboat, then an elevated railroad and the ringing of a minister’s door bell.

It’s all very simple.

The dinner afterward in a cafe, very informal, you know, to harmonize with the ceremony, with a couple of quarts for luck sandwiched in by cocktails and highballs; then a few brief telegrams:

“Married to-night; wish us luck;” you know the rest.

It was all right, after all, apparently, and everybody did wish them luck, even if there were a few bad spots in the job. But, you see, they suited themselves and there was no one else to be taken into consideration, not even the relatives. This going around and holding consultations in advance is no good, and people who are in love or who think they are in love don’t want advice of any kind, except the kind that rings the door bell of a minister’s hut or buys a wedding ring and sends it with the words:

“Get busy before it is too late.”

I’m no critic, and I don’t pretend to criticise here. I’m simply telling a story which may or may not be true, but I’m not going to be responsible for it any more than the man who rents a place and plants flowers in the garden is responsible for the architecture of the house on the premises.

It is said that the bride in this case was kind enough to supply the funds for the honeymoon, while the nice boy supplied the beauty and called it even. In the eyes of the lady it seems a fair enough proposition, but harsh things are liable to be said of such a combination, even though it is no one’s business.

When they returned from the fields of fruits and flowers the boy had made up his mind, like the Count Boni de Castellane, that being a husband was much better than holding down a job in an office, and so they settled in New York like a pair of pigeons after a long flight. He had no more idea of the responsibilities of married life than a six-months’-old infant has of playing the races. With a place to sleep and a feed bag always ready for his face he was satisfied, but that was because of his youth. You see, marrying from the cradle has both its advantages and its drawbacks, according to the way you look at it.

For him every morning was Christmas, and the tree was always fixed up with something nice with his name on it. Do you blame him for looking pleasant? Press the button for a dollar, press it twice and you get five. Just as easy as drawing money out of the bank when you have a check book.

But with all going out and nothing coming in it doesn’t last long, and when he had swept up all the spare change in sight he began to cast his covetous eye upon the big bundle that was tied up with a woolen string.

He knew something about the racing game--just enough to get stung when the time came--and he knew a man who was good enough to offer him a half interest in a racing mare that had been kept under cover for a year or so, but who could, if she was let out, beat anything that ever wore pigskin. To that infantile mind of his this was the one great chance of a lifetime and the thousand-dollar bill was the key which would unlock the door to wealth.

Money without working for it.

Why it was a pipe. Besides, it made a beautiful and alluring tale for the bride, who had reached that stage where she didn’t want her boy away from her, not even for a minute. With the thousand he would make the initial investment, and with the rest of the bank roll he would bet. With paper and pencils they sat at the table one night and rolled up two thousand to the fortune of a Rockefeller.

How easy it is to make money that way. All you have to do is to begin with any amount, even a penny, and if your pencil holds out you’ll have a million in less than no time, but you can’t buy anything with it--there’s the trouble. The man in the insane asylum who imagined that every stone in the construction of the building was of pure gold and that it belonged to him was just as rich in his own mind as the wealthiest human being in the world--and happier, too, I’ll bet you.

They planned it all out, even to the trip to Europe on the winnings of the first big race, for she would carry odds of not less than 20 to 1, because she was unknown.

A little trip down to the bank and out came the money in brand new bills that were very good to look at.

So the first step was taken, and the boy made up his mind that he had turned his back forever upon such things as ten-dollar-a-week jobs.

It doesn’t require any ingenuity or brains for a man to separate himself from such things as thousand-dollar bills--in fact it’s quite easy. Consequently it didn’t require any brain work on the part of the boy to deplete the account by just that amount within a very short time. For his new bill he received in return a slip of paper which stated that he was the half owner of the racing mare known as Blue Monday, and that in consideration of his paying one-half of the training expenses of the said mare he was to be entitled to one-half of the winnings, less jockey fees and other incidentals.

To him it sounded beautiful and it took not less than one quart to celebrate this new business venture--paid for by the lady, of course, but still, in view of the fact that they were one, it was all right.

Then there began to come to him via the U. S. Mail, certain sundry statements concerning the expenses of putting this fine bit of horse flesh into the proper condition to bring home the money, and the request for immediate remittance. There was variety enough about these statements, too, to satisfy the most fastidious, and the amounts ranged all the way from six dollars and fifty cents to an even hundred. The clever mind of the bride took in the situation at a glance, but the faith of the optimistic kid held as fast as a ship’s anchor to a rock ledge, and he could see nothing but success in the near future.

You know there is never a day so far away that it doesn’t come at last. So it was that the day of the long expected race arrived and down deep in the trousers pockets of the Pink Cheeked One was $150, the last shot in the locker.

“It’s all right, Kid,” he said to her. “It’s just as I thought, she’s a twenty-five to one shot, and I’m going to plank every cent down. At those odds we’ll take home with us $3,750, and I guess that’ll hold us for awhile. How about it?”

“But suppose she doesn’t win?”

“Doesn’t win? What’s the matter with you--are you getting cold feet? How can she lose? Didn’t we clock her this morning on the try-out and didn’t she beat the track time? Wait till you know more about this game and you’ll see where _I’m_ right.”