Chapter 2

Many other interruptions retarded his progress. He had not gone far before he was invited into a game of ball, and this, of course, could not be neglected. The game ending in a general conflict of the players, caused by Bootsey's falling on top of another boy, whom he utterly refused to let up unless it should be admitted that the flattened unfortunate was "out," he issued from the turmoil in time to join in an attack upon a peanut roaster and to avail himself largely of the spoils. Enriched with peanuts, he had got as far as the City Hall Park when a drunken man attracted his attention, and he assisted actively in an effort to convince the drunken man that the Mayor's office was the ferry to Weehawken. It was while engaged in giving these disinterested assurances that he felt himself lifted off his feet by a steady pull at his ears, and looking up he beheld Mr. Jayres.

"You unmitigated little rascal!" cried Mr. Jayres, "where've you been?"

"Nowhere," said Bootsey, in an injured tone.

"Didn't I tell you to get back promptly?"

"Aint I a-getting' back?"

"Aint you a-get--whew!" roared Mr. Jayres, with the utmost exasperation, "how I'd like to tan your plaguey little carcass till it was black and blue! Come on, now," and Mr. Jayres strode angrily ahead.

Bootsey followed. He offered no reply to this savage expression, but from his safe position in the rear he grinned amiably.

Mr. Jayres was large and dark and dirty. His big fat face, shaped like a dumpling, wore a hard and ugly expression. Small black eyes sat under his low, expansive forehead. His cheeks and chin were supposed to be shaven, and perhaps that experience may occasionally have befallen them. His costume was antique. Around his thick neck he wore a soiled choker. His waistcoat was low, and from it protruded the front of a fluted shirt. A dark-blue swallow-tail coat with big buttons and a high collar wrapped his huge body, and over his shoulders hung a heavy mass of black hair, upon which his advanced age had made but a slight impression.

His office was upon the top floor of a building in Murray Street. It was a long, low room. Upon its door was fastened a battered tin sign showing the words: "Absalom Jayres, Counsellor." The walls and ceiling were covered with dusty cobwebs. In one end of the room stood an old wood stove, and near it was a pile of hickory sticks. A set of shelves occupied a large portion of the wall, bearing many volumes, worn, dusty, and eaten with age.

Among them were books of the English peerage, records of titled families, reports of the Court of Chancery in hundreds of testamentary cases, scrap-books full of newspaper clippings concerning American claimants to British fortunes, lists of family estates in Great Britain and Ireland, and many other works bearing upon heraldry, the laws of inheritance, and similar subjects.

Upon the walls hung charts showing the genealogical trees of illustrious families, tracing the descent of Washington, of Queen Victoria, and of other important personages. There was no covering on the floor except that which had accumulated by reason of the absence of broom and mop. A couple of tables, a few dilapidated chairs, a pitcher and a basin, were about all the furniture that the room contained.

Being elderly and huge, it required far more time for Mr. Jayres to make the ascent to his office than for Bootsey. Having this fact in mind, Bootsey sat down upon the first step of the first flight, intending to wait until Mr. Jayres had at least reached the final flight before he started up at all. He failed to communicate his resolution, however, and when Mr. Jayres turned about upon the third floor, hearing no footsteps behind him, he stopped. He frowned. He clinched his fist and swore.

"There'll be murder on me," he said, "I know there will, if that Boy don't do better! Now, where the pestering dickens can he be?"

Mr. Jayres leaned over the bannister and started to call. "Boo--" he roared, and then checked himself. "Drat such a name as that," he said. "Who ever heard of a civilized Boy being called Bootsey? What'll people think to see a man of my age hanging over a bannister yelling 'Bootsey'! No, I must go down and hunt him up. I wonder why I keep that Boy? I wonder why I do it?"

Mr. Jayres turned, and with a heavy sigh he began to descend to the street. On the second landing he met Bootsey smoking a cigarette and whistling. Mr. Jayres did not fly into a passion. He did not grow red and frantic. He just took Bootsey by the hand and led him, step by step, up the rest of the way to the office. He drew him inside, shut the door, and led him over to his own table. Then he sat down, still holding Bootsey's hand, and waited until he had caught his breath.

"Now, then," he said, at last.

"Yez'r," said Bootsey.

"You're a miserable little rogue!" said Mr. Jayres.

Bootsey held his peace.

"I've stood your deviltries till I've got no patience left, and now I'm going to discharge you!"

"Aw, don't," said Bootsey.

"Yes," said Mr. Jayres, "I will; if I don't, the end of it all will be murder. Some time or other I'll be seized of a passion, and there's no telling what'll happen. There's your two dollars to the end of the week--now, go!"

"Aw, now," said Bootsey, "wot's de use? I aint done nawfin'. 'Fi gets bounced mom'll drub me awful! You said you wanted me to take a letter up to Harlem dis afternoon."

"Yes, you scamp! And here's the afternoon half gone."

"O'll have it dere in less 'n no time," pleaded Bootsey.

Mr. Jayres scowled hard at Bootsey and hesitated. But finally he drew the letter from the drawer of his table and handed it over, saying as he did so, "If you aint back here by 5 o'clock, I'll break every bone in your body!"

Bootsey left the office with great precipitation, and as he closed the door behind him, Mr. Jayres glared morosely at a knot-hole in the floor. "Funny about that boy!" he said reflectively. "I don't know as I ever gave in to any living human being before that Boy came along in all my life."

Mr. Jayres turned to his table and began to write, but was almost immediately interrupted by a knock upon the door. He called out a summons to enter, and two people, a man and a woman, came in. The man was large, stolid, and rather vacant in his expression. The woman was small and quick and sharp.

"Well, sir," said Mr. Jayres.

The woman poked the man and told him to speak.

"We've called--" said the man slowly.

"About your advertisement in the paper," added the woman quickly.

"Which paper?" asked Mr Jayres.

"Where's the paper?" asked the man, turning to the woman.

"Here," she replied, producing it.

"Oh, yes, I see," said Mr. Jayres, "it's about the Bugwug estate. What is your name, sir?"

"His name is Tobey, and I'm Mrs. Tobey, and we keeps the Gallinipper Laundry, sir, which is in Washington Place, being a very respectable neighborhood, though the prices is low owing to competition of a party across the street."

"Now, Maggie," said the man, "let me talk."

"Who's hindering you from talking, Tobey? I'm not, and that's certain. The gentleman wanted to know who we were, and I've told him. He'd been a week finding out from you."

"Come, come," said Mr. Jayres sharply, "let's get to business."

"That's what I said," replied Mrs. Tobey, "while I was putting on my things to come down town. 'Tobey,' says I, 'get right to business. Don't be wasting the gentleman's time,' which he always does, sir, halting and hesitating and not knowing what to say, nor ever coming to the point. 'It's bad manners,' says I, 'and what's more, these lawyers,' says I, 'which is very sharp folks, wont stand it,' says I. But I don't suppose I done him much good, for he's always been that way, sir, though I'm sure I've worked my best to spur him up. But a poor, weak woman can't do everything, though you'd think he thought so, if--"

"Oh, now stop, stop, stop!" cried Mr. Jayres, "you mustn't run on so. Your name is Tobey and you have called about the Bugwug property. Well, now, what of it?"

"I want to know is there any money in it," answered Mr. Tobey.

"Now, if you please, sir, just listen to that," cried Mrs. Tobey pityingly. "He wants to know is there money in it! Why, of course, there's money in it, Tobey. You're a dreadful trial to me, Tobey. Didn't the gentleman's advertisement say there was 500,000 pounds in it? Aint that enough? Couldn't you and me get along on 500,000 pounds, or even less, on a pinch?"

"But the question is," said Mr. Jayres, "what claim you have on the Bugwug property. Are you descended from Timothy Bugwug, and if so, how directly and in what remove?"

"That's what we wants you to tell us, sir," replied Mr. Tobey.

"Why, we supposed you'd have it all settled," added his wife. "Aint you a lawyer?"

"Oh, yes, I'm a lawyer," Mr. Jayres suavely replied, "and I can tell you what your claim is if I know your relationship to Timothy Bugwug. He died in 1672, leaving four children, Obediah, Martin, Ezekiel, and Sarah. Obediah died without issue. Martin and Sarah came to America, and Ezekiel was lost at sea before he had married. Now then, where do you come in?"

"My mother--" said Mr. Tobey.

"Was a Bugwug," said Mrs. Tobey. "There's no doubt at all but what all that money belongs to us, and if you've got it you must pay it right away to us, for plenty of use we have for it with six young children a-growing up and prospects of another come April, which as regards me is terrible to think of, though, I suppose, I shouldn't repine, seeing that it's the Lord's will that woman should suffer, which, I must say, it seems to me that they have more than their fair share. However, I don't blame Tobey, for he's a fine man, and a hard-working one, if he hasn't got the gift of speech and is never able to come to the point, though that's not for the lack of having it dinged into his ears, for if I says it once I says it fifty times a day, 'Tobey, will you come to the point?'"

Mr. Jayres took up his pen. "Well, let's see," he said. "What is your full name, Mr. Tobey?"

"William Tobey, sir. I am the son of--"

"Jonathan Tobey and Henrietta Bugwug," continued the lady, "it being so stated in the marriage license which the minister said was for my protection, and bears the likeness of Tobey on one side and mine on the other and clasped hands in the center signifying union, and is now in the left-hand corner of the sixth shelf from the bottom in the china closet and can be produced at any time if it's needful. I've kept it very careful."

"Whose daughter was Henrietta Bugwug?" asked Mr. Jayres.

"Tobey's grandfather's, sir, a very odd old gentleman, though blind, which he got from setting off fireworks on a Fourth of July, and nearly burned the foot off the blue twin, called blue from the color of his eyes, the other being dark-blue, which is the only way we have of telling 'em apart, except that one likes cod liver oil and the other don't, and several times when the blue twin's been sick the dark-blue twin has got all the medicine by squinting up his eyes so as I couldn't make him out and pretending it was him that had the colic, and Mr. Bugwug, that's Tobey's grandfather, lives in Harlem all by himself, because he says there's too much noise and talking in our flat, and I dare say there is, though I don't notice it."

"In Harlem, eh? When did you first hear that you had an interest in the Bugwug estates?"

"Oh, ever so long, and we'd have had the money long ago if it hadn't been that a church burned down a long time ago somewhere in Virginia where one of the Bugwugs married somebody and all the records were lost, though I don't see what that had to do with it, because Tobey's here all ready to take the property, and it stands to reason that he wouldn't have been here unless that wedding had 'a' happened without they mean to insult us, which they'd better not, and wont, if they know when they are well off," and at the very thought of such a thing Mrs. Tobey tossed her head angrily.

"I see," said Mr. Jayres, "I see. And you want me to take the matter in hand, I suppose, and see if I can recover the money, eh?"

"Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Tobey, in a disappointed tone, "I thought from the piece in the paper that the money was all ready for us."

"You mustn't be so impatient," soothingly responded Mr. Jayres, laying his fat finger on his fat cheek and smiling softly. "All in good time. All in good time. The money's where it's safe. You only need to establish your right to it. We must fetch a suit in the Court of Chancery, and that I'll do at once upon looking up the facts. Of course--er--there'll be a little fee."

"A little what?" said Mr. Tobey.

"A little which?" said Mrs. Tobey.

"A little fee," said Mr. Jayres, smiling sweetly. "A mere trifle, I assure you; just enough to defray expenses--say--er--a hundred dollars."

"Oh, dear me!" cried Mrs. Tobey. "This is vexing. To think of coming down town, Tobey, dear, with the expectations of going back rich, and then going back a hundred dollars poorer than we were. I really don't think we'd better do it, Tobey?"

"Ah," said Mr. Jayres, "but think also of the fortune. Two millions and a half! Isn't that worth spending a few hundred dollars for? Just put your mind on it, ma'am."

"I've had my mind on it ever since I seen your piece in the paper," replied Mrs. Tobey, "and a hundred dollars does seem, as you say, little enough to pay for two millions and a half, which would be all I'd ask or wish for, and would put us where we belong, Tobey, which is not in the laundry line competing with an unscrupulous party across the street, though I don't mention names, which perhaps I ought, for the public ought to be warned. It's a party that hasn't any honor at all--"

"I'm sure not," said Mr. Jayres sympathetically. "He is, without doubt, a dirty dog."

"Oh, it isn't a he," Mrs. Tobey replied, "the party is a her."

"Of course, of course," said Mr. Jayres. "And to think that you have to put up with the tricks of a female party directly across the street. Why, it's shameful, ma'am! But if you had that two millions, as you just observed, all that would be over."

"Two million and a half I thought you said it was," said Mrs. Tobey rather sharply.

"Oh, yes, and a half--and a half," the lawyer admitted in a tone of indifference, as much as to say that there should be no haggling about the odd $500,000. "What a pretty pile it is, Mrs. Tobey?"

"I don't know, Tobey, but what we'd better do it," Mrs. Tobey said after a pause. "It aint so very much when you think of what we're to get for it."

"That's the right way to look at it, ma'am. I'll just draw up the receipt, and to-morrow I'll call at the Gallinipper Laundry to get some further particulars necessary to help me make out the papers."

Mr. Tobey seemed to be somewhat at a loss to know precisely what was the net result of the proceedings in which he had thus far taken so small a part, but upon being directed by Mrs. Tobey to produce the hundred dollars, he ventured a feeble remonstrance. This was immediately checked by Mrs. Tobey, who assured him that he knew nothing whatever about such matters and never could come to the point, which he ought to be able to do by this time, for nobody could say but that she had done her part. At last two fifty-dollar bills were deposited in Mr. Jayres's soft palm and a bit of writing was handed over to Mrs. Tobey in exchange for them; and followed by Mr. Jayres's warm insistence that they had never done a better thing in their lives, the Tobeys withdrew.

It was nearly six o'clock when the door of Mr. Jayres's office opened again and the shocky head of Bootsey appeared. Mr. Jayres was waiting for him.

"Here you are at last, you wretched little scamp!" he cried. "Didn't I tell you I'd whale you if you weren't back by five o'clock?"

"I come jest as soon 's I could," said Bootsey. "He was a werry fly ole gen'l'man."

"What did he say?"

"He said he didn't hev no doubts but wot you was a reg'lar villyum an' swin'ler, an' cheat an' blackmailer, an' ef he had de user his eyes an' legs he'd come down yere an' han' you over ter de coppers; dat you aint smart enuff ter get no money outer him, fer he's bin bled by sich coveys like you all he's a-going ter bleed, an' dat he don't b'lieve dere is any sech ting as de Bugwug estate nohow, an' ef yer wants ter keep outen jail yer'd better let him an' his folks alone."

Mr. Jayres scowled until it seemed as if his black eyebrows would meet his bristly upper lip, and then he said: "Bootsey, before you come to the office to-morrow morning you'd better go to the Gallinipper Laundry in Washington Place, and tell a man named Tobey who keeps it, that--er--that I've gone out of town for a few days, Bootsey, on a pressing matter of business."

III.

BLUDOFFSKI.

The friends of Mr. Richard O'Royster always maintained that he was the best of good fellows. Many, indeed, went so far as to say he had no faults whatever; and while such an encomium seems, on the face of it, to be extravagant, its probability is much strengthened by the fact that whatever he had they always came into the possession of sooner or later. If he had any faults, therefore, they must have known it. They would never have allowed anything so valuable as a fault to escape them.

Mr. O'Royster was sitting, one afternoon, in the private office of his bankers, Coldpin & Breaker. Mr. Coldpin sat with him, discussing the advisability of his investing $250,000 in the bonds of the East and West Telegraph Company. It was a safe investment, in Mr. Coldpin's judgment, and Mr. O'Royster was about to order the transaction carried out, when the office door was thrust open and a long, black-bearded, wiry-haired, savage-looking man walked in.

His head was an irregular hump set fixedly on his shoulders so that one almost expected to hear it creak when he moved it. His eyes were little, and curiously stuck on either side of his thick, stumpy nose, as if it were only by the merest accident that they hadn't taken a position back of his ears or up in his forehead or down in his hollow cheeks. His entrance put a sudden and disagreeable stop to the conversation. Mr. O'Royster adjusted his eyeglass and looked with a sort of serene curiosity at the man. Mr. Coldpin moved nervously in his chair.

"Vell," the fellow said, after a pause, "I haf come to sbeak mit you."

"You come very often," replied Mr. Coldpin in a mildly remonstrative tone.

No answer was returned to this suggestion. The intruder simply settled himself on his feet in an obstinate sort of way.

Mr. Coldpin produced a dollar-bill and handed it over, remarking testily, "There, now, I'm very busy!"

"Nein, nein!" said the man. "It vas not enough!"

"Not enough?"

"I vants dwenty tollar."

"Oh, come now; this wont do at all. You mustn't bother me so. I can't be--"

The man did something with his mouth. Possibly he smiled. Possibly he was malevolently disposed. At all events, whatever his motive or his humor, he did something with his mouth, and straightway his two rows of teeth gleamed forth, his eyes changed their position and also their hue, and the hollows in his cheeks became caverns.

"Great Caesar!" cried Mr. O'Royster. "Look here, my good fellow, now don't! If you must have the money, we'll try to raise it. Don't do that. Take in your teeth, my man, take 'em in right away, and we'll see what we can do about the twenty."

He composed his mouth, reducing it to its normal dimensions and arranging it in its normal shape, whereupon Mr. O'Royster, drawing a roll of bills from his pocket, counted out twenty dollars.

Mr. Coldpin interposed. "You may naturally think, O'Royster," he observed quietly, "that this man has some hold upon me by which he is in a position to extort money. There is no such phase to this remarkable case. I owe him nothing. He is simply in the habit of coming here and demanding money, which I have let him have from time to time in small sums to--well, get rid of him. I think, though, that it's time to stop. You must not give him that $20. I won't permit it. Put it back in--"

The man did something else in a facial way just as defiant of analysis as his previous contortion and equally effective on Mr. O'Royster's nerves. He moved toward Mr. O'Royster and held up his hand for the money. It was slowly yielded up, and without so much as an acknowledgment, the man thrust it into his pocket and stalked out.

Mr. O'Royster watched his misshapen body as it disappeared through the entry. Then he gazed at the banker and finally remarked: "Can't say that your friend pleases me, Coldpin."

"To tell the truth, O'Royster, I live in mortal terror of that creature. He followed me into this room from the street one day and demanded, rather than begged, some money. I scarcely noticed him, telling him I had nothing, when he did something that attracted my attention, and the next minute my flesh began to creep, my backbone began to shake, and I thought I should have spasms. I gave him a handful of change and off he went. Since then, as I told you, he has been coming here every month or so. I'm going to move next May into a building where I can have a more guarded office."

"Odd tale!" said Mr. O'Royster, "deuced odd. Why don't you get a pistol?"

"Well, I have a sort of feeling that it wouldn't hurt him to shoot him. Of course it would, you know, but still--"

"Yes, I know what you mean. He certainly does look as if a pistol would be no adequate defense against him. What you want is a nice, self-cocking, automatic thunderbolt."

They changed the subject, returning to their interrupted business, and having concluded that they talked on until it had grown quite late.

"By Jove!" cried Mr. O'Royster, glancing at his watch, "it's half-past six, and I've a dinner engagement at the club at seven. I must be off. Ring for a cab, wont you?"

The cab arrived in a few moments and Mr. O'Royster hurried out. "Drive me to the Union Club," he said, "and whip up lively."

He sprang in, the cab started off with a whirl, and he turned in his seat to let down the window. A startled look came into his face.

"It's too dark to see well," he said to himself, "and this thing bounces like a tugboat in a gale, but if that ourang-outang wasn't standing under that gaslight yonder, I'll be hanged!"

Mr. O'Royster's was the sort of mind that dwelt lightly and briefly on subjects affecting it disagreeably, and long before he reached the club it had left the ourang-outang far in the distance. In the presence of a jolly company, red-headed duck, burgundy and champagne, it had room for nothing but wit and frolic, to which its inclinations always strongly tended.

The night had far advanced when Mr. O'Royster left the club. He turned into Fifth Avenue, journeying toward Twenty-third Street, and had walked about half the distance when he felt a touch upon his arm. Mr. O'Royster was in that condition when his mental senses acted more quickly than his physical senses. Bringing his eyes to bear upon the spot where he felt the touch, he made out the shape of a big, dirty hand, and following it and the arm above it, he presently ascertained that a man was close at his elbow. He spent several minutes scrutinizing the man's face, and finally he said:

"Ah, I shee. Beg pawdon, dear boy, f'not 'bsherving you b'fore. Mos' happy to renew zhe 'quaintance so auspishously begun 'saffer-noon. H--hic!--'ope you're feeling well. By zhe way, ol' f'llaw, wha' zhure name?"

"Bludoffski."