Title: The Life of the Party
Author: Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury), 1876-1944
Language: English
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_The Life of the Party_

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BY IRVIN S. COBB

FICTION

THE LIFE OF THE PARTY
THOSE TIMES AND THESE
LOCAL COLOR
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
FIBBLE, D. D.
BACK HOME
THE THUNDERS OF SILENCE
THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM

WIT AND HUMOR

EATING IN TWO OR THREE LANGUAGES
"SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS----"
EUROPE REVISED
ROUGHING IT DE LUXE
COBB'S BILL OF FARE
COBB'S ANATOMY

MISCELLANY

THE GLORY OF THE COMING
PATHS OF GLORY
"SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS----"

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
NEW YORK

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[Illustration: "ARE YOU PAYIN' AN ELECTION BET THREE WEEKS AFTER THE
ELECTION'S OVER? OR IS IT THAT YOU'RE JEST A PLAIN BEDADDLED IJIET?"]

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_The Life of the Party

By

Irvin S. Cobb

Author of "Back Home," "Old Judge Priest," etc., etc.

Illustrated By James M. Preston_

[Illustration: Publisher's logo]

_New York George H. Doran Company_


_Copyright, 1919,
By George H. Doran Company

Copyright, 1919, by the Curtis Publishing Company
Printed in the United States of America_

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TO

MISTRESS MAY WILSON PRESTON

A LADY OF GREAT DRAWING QUALITIES

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_ILLUSTRATIONS_


"Are you payin' an election bet three weeks after the
  election's over? Or is it that you're jest a plain
  bedaddled ijiet?"                          _Frontispiece_

                                                       PAGE
"That's nice," spake the fearsome stranger. "Now
  stay jest the way you are and don't make no
  peep or I'll have to plug you wit' this here gat"      24

Mr. Leary's gait became a desperate gallop, and as
  he galloped he shouted: "Wait, please, here I
  am.--Here's your passenger"                            32

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_The Life of the Party_


I

It had been a successful party, most successful. Mrs. Carroway's parties
always were successes, but this one nearing its conclusion stood out
notably from a long and unbroken Carrowayian record. It had been a
children's party; that is to say, everybody came in costume with intent
to represent children of any age between one year and a dozen years. But
twelve years was the limit; positively nobody, either in dress or
deportment, could be more than twelve years old. Mrs. Carroway had made
this point explicit in sending out the invitations, and so it had been,
down to the last hair ribbon and the last shoe buckle. And between
dances they had played at the games of childhood, such as drop the
handkerchief, and King William was King James' son and prisoner's base
and the rest of them.

The novelty of the notion had been a main contributory factor to its
success; that, plus the fact that nine healthy adults out of ten dearly
love to put on freakish garbings and go somewhere. To be exactly
truthful, the basic idea itself could hardly be called new, since long
before some gifted mind thought out the scheme of giving children's
parties for grown-ups, but with her customary brilliancy Mrs. Carroway
had seized upon the issues of the day to serve her social purposes,
weaving timeliness and patriotism into the fabric of her plan by making
it a war party as well. Each individual attending was under pledge to
keep a full and accurate tally of the moneys expended upon his or her
costume and upon arrival at the place of festivities to deposit a like
amount in a repository put in a conspicuous spot to receive these
contributions, the entire sum to be handed over later to the guardians
of a military charity in which Mrs. Carroway was active.

It was somehow felt that this fostered a worthy spirit of wartime
economy, since the donation of a person who wore an expensive costume
would be relatively so much larger than the donation of one who went in
for the simpler things. Moreover, books of thrift stamps were attached
to the favours, the same being children's toys of guaranteed American
manufacture.

In the matter of refreshments Mrs. Carroway had been at pains to comply
most scrupulously with the existing rationing regulations. As the
hostess herself said more than once as she moved to and fro in a
flounced white frock having the exaggeratedly low waistline of the sort
of frock which frequently is worn by a tot of tender age, with a wide
blue sash draped about her almost down at her knees, and with fluffy
skirts quite up to her knees, with her hair caught up in a coquettish
blue bow on the side of her head and a diminutive fan tied fast to one
of her wrists with a blue ribbon--so many of the ladies who had attained
to Mrs. Carroway's fairly well-ripened years did go in for these
extremely girlishly little-girly effects--as the hostess thus attired
and moving hither and yon remark, "If Mr. Herbert Hoover himself were
here as one of my guests to-night I am just too perfectly sure he could
find absolutely nothing whatsoever to object to!"

It would have required much stretching of that elastic property, the
human imagination, to conceive of Mr. Herbert Hoover being there,
whether in costume or otherwise, but that was what Mrs. Carroway said
and repeated. Always those to whom she spoke came right out and agreed
with her.

Now it was getting along toward three-thirty o'clock of the morning
after, and the party was breaking up. Indeed for half an hour past, this
person or that had been saying it was time, really, to be thinking about
going--thus voicing a conviction that had formed at a much earlier hour
in the minds of the tenants of the floor below Mrs. Carroway's studio
apartment, which like all properly devised studio apartments was at the
top of the building.

It was all very well to be a true Bohemian, ready to give and take, and
if one lived down round Washington Square one naturally made allowances
for one's neighbours and all that, but half past three o'clock in the
morning was half past three o'clock in the morning, and there was no
getting round that, say what you would. And besides there were some
people who needed a little sleep once in a while even if there were some
other people who seemed to be able to go without any sleep; and finally,
though patience was a virtue, enough of a good thing was enough and too
much was surplusage. Such was the opinion of the tenants one flight
down.

So the party was practically over. Mr. Algernon Leary, of the firm of
Leary & Slack, counsellors and attorneys at law, with offices at Number
Thirty-two Broad Street, was among the very last to depart. Never had
Mr. Leary spent a more pleasant evening. He had been in rare form, a
variety of causes contributing to this happy state. To begin with, he
had danced nearly every dance with the lovely Miss Milly Hollister, for
whom he entertained the feelings which a gentleman of ripened judgment,
and one who was rising rapidly in his profession, might properly
entertain for an entirely charming young woman of reputed means and
undoubted social position.

A preposterous ass named Perkins--at least, Mr. Leary mentally indexed
Perkins as a preposterous ass--had brought Miss Hollister to the party,
but thereafter in the scheme of things Perkins did not count. He was a
cipher. You could back him up against a wall and take a rubber-tipped
pencil and rub him right out, as it were; and with regards to Miss
Hollister that, figuratively, was what Mr. Leary had done to Mr.
Perkins. Now on the other hand Voris might have amounted to something as
a potential rival, but Voris being newly appointed as a police
magistrate was prevented by press of official duties from coming to the
party; so Mr. Leary had had a clear field, as the saying goes, and had
made the most of it, as the other saying goes.

Moreover, Mr. Leary had been the recipient of unlimited praise upon the
ingenuity and the uniqueness expressed in his costume. He had not
represented a Little Lord Fauntleroy or a Buster Brown or a Boy Scout or
a Juvenile Cadet or a Midshipmite or an Oliver Twist. There had been
three Boy Scouts present and four Buster Browns and of sailor-suited
persons there had been no end, really. But Mr. Leary had chosen to
appear as Himself at the Age of Three; and, as the complimentary comment
proved, his get-up had reflected credit not alone upon its wearer but
upon its designer, Miss Rowena Skiff, who drew fashion pictures for one
of the women's magazines. Out of the goodness of her heart and the
depths of her professional knowledge Miss Skiff had gone to Mr. Leary's
aid, supervising the preparation of his wardrobe at a theatrical
costumer's shop up-town and, on the evening before, coming to his
bachelor apartments, accompanied by her mother, personally to add those
small special refinements which meant so much, as he now realised, in
attaining the desired result.

"Oh, Mr. Leary, I must tell you again how very fetching you do look!
Your costume is adorable, really it is; so--so cute and everything. And
I don't know what I should have done without you to help in the games
and everything. There's no use denying it, Mr. Leary--you were the life
of the party, absolutely!"

At least twice during the night Mrs. Carroway had told Mr. Leary this,
and now as he bade her farewell she was saying it once more in
practically the same words, when Mrs. Carroway's coloured maid, Blanche,
touched him on the arm.

"'Scuse me, suh," apologised Blanche, "but the hall man downstairs he
send up word jes' now by the elevator man 'at you'd best be comin' right
on down now, suh, effen you expects to git a taxicab. He say to tell you
they ain't but one taxicab left an' the driver of 'at one's been
waitin' fur hours an' he act like he might go way any minute now. 'At's
whut the hall man send word, suh."

Blanche had brought his overcoat along and held it up for him, imparting
to the service that small suggestion of a ceremonial rite which the
members of her race invariably do display when handling a garment of
richness of texture and indubitable cost. Mr. Leary let her help him
into the coat and slipped largess into her hand, and as he stepped
aboard the waiting elevator for the downward flight Mrs. Carroway's
voice came fluting to him, once again repeating the flattering phrase:
"You surely were the life of the party!"


II

It was fine to have been the life of the party. It was not quite so fine
to discover that the taxicab to which he must entrust himself for the
long ride up to West Eighty-fifth Street was a most shabby-appearing
vehicle, the driver of which, moreover, as Mr. Leary could divine even
as he crossed the sidewalk, had wiled away the tedium of waiting by
indulgence in draughts of something more potent than the chill air of
latish November. Mr. Leary peered doubtfully into the illuminated
countenance but dulled eyes of the driver and caught a whiff of a breath
alcoholically fragrant, and he understood that the warning relayed to
him by Blanche had carried a subtle double meaning. Still, there was no
other taxicab to be had. The street might have been a byway in old
Pompeii for all the life that moved within it. Washington Square, facing
him, was as empty as a graveyard generally is at this hour, and the
semblance of a conventional graveyard in wintertime was helped out by a
light snow--the first of the season--sifting down in large damp flakes.

Twice and thrice he repeated the address, speaking each time sharply and
distinctly, before the meaning seemed to filter into the befogged
intellect of the inebriate. On the third rendition the latter roused
from where he was slumped down.

"I garcia, Steve," he said thickly. "I garcia firs' time only y'
hollowed s'loud I couldn und'stancher."

So saying he lurched into a semiupright posture and fumbled for the
wheel. Silently condemning the curse of intemperance among the working
classes of a great city Mr. Leary boarded the cab and drew the skirts of
his overcoat down in an effort to cover his knees. With a harsh grating
of clutches and an abrupt jerk the taxi started north.

Wobbling though he was upon his perch the driver mechanically steered a
reasonably straight course. The passenger leaning back in the depths of
the cab confessed to himself he was a trifle weary and more than a
trifle sleepy. At thirty-seven one does not dance and play children's
games alternately for six hours on a stretch without paying for the
exertion in a sensation of let-downness. His head slipped forward on his
chest.


III

With a drowsy uncertainty as to whether he had been dozing for hours or
only for a very few minutes Mr. Leary opened his eyes and sat up. The
car was halted slantwise against a curbing; the chauffeur was jammed
down again into a heap. Mr. Leary stepped nimbly forth upon the
pavement, feeling in his overcoat pocket for the fare; and then he
realised he was not in West Eighty-fifth Street at all; he was not in
any street that he remembered ever having seen before in the course of
his life. Offhand, though, he guessed he was somewhere in that mystic
maze of brick and mortar known as Old Greenwich Village; and, for a
further guess, in that particular part of it where business during these
last few years had been steadily encroaching upon the ancient residences
of long departed Knickerbocker families.

The street in which he stood, for a wonder in this part of town, ran a
fairly straight course. At its western foot he could make out through
the drifting flakes where a squat structure suggestive of a North River
freight dock interrupted the sky line. In his immediate vicinity the
street was lined with tall bleak fronts of jobbing houses, all dark and
all shuttered. Looking the other way, which would be eastward, he could
make out where these wholesale establishments tailed off, to be
succeeded by the lower shapes of venerable dwellings adorned with the
dormered windows and the hip roofs which distinguished a bygone
architectural period. Some distance off in this latter direction the
vista between the buildings was cut across by the straddle-bug structure
of one of the Elevated roads. All this Mr. Leary comprehended in a quick
glance about him, and then he turned on the culprit cabman with rage in
his heart.

"See here, you!" he snapped crossly, jerking the other by the shoulder.
"What do you mean by bringing me away off here! This isn't where I
wanted to go. Oh, wake up, you!"

Under his vigorous shaking the driver slid over sideways until he
threatened to decant himself out upon Mr. Leary. His cap falling off
exposed the blank face of one who for the time being has gone dead to
the world and to all its carking cares, and the only response he offered
for his mishandling was a deep and sincere snore. The man was hopelessly
intoxicated; there was no question about it. More to relieve his own
deep chagrin than for any logical reason Mr. Leary shook him again; the
net results were a protesting semiconscious gargle and a further
careening slant of the sleeper's form.

Well, there was nothing else to do but walk. He must make his way afoot
until he came to Sixth Avenue or on to Fifth, upon the chance of finding
in one of these two thoroughfares a ranging nighthawk cab. As a last
resort he could take the Subway or the L north. This contingency,
though, Mr. Leary considered with feelings akin to actual repugnance. He
dreaded the prospect of ribald and derisive comments from chance fellow
travellers upon a public transportation line. For you should know that
though Mr. Leary's outer garbing was in the main conventional there were
strikingly incongruous features of it too.

From his neck to his knees he correctly presented the aspect of a
gentleman returning late from social diversions, caparisoned in a
handsome fur-faced, fur-lined top coat. But his knees were entirely
bare; so, too, were his legs down to about midway of the calves, where
there ensued, as it were, a pair of white silk socks, encircled by pink
garters with large and ornate pink ribbon bows upon them. His feet were
bestowed in low slippers with narrow buttoned straps crossing the
insteps. It was Miss Skiff, with her instinct for the verities, who had
insisted upon bows for the garters and straps for the slippers, these
being what she had called finishing touches. Likewise it was due to that
young lady's painstaking desire for appropriateness and completeness of
detail that Mr. Leary at this moment wore upon his head a very
wide-brimmed, very floppy straw hat with two quaint pink-ribbon
streamers floating jauntily down between his shoulders at the back.

For reasons which in view of this sartorial description should be
obvious, Mr. Leary hugged closely up to the abutting house fronts when
he left behind him the marooned taxi with its comatose driver asleep
upon it, like one lone castaway upon a small island in a sea of
emptiness, and set his face eastward. Such was the warmth of his
annoyance he barely felt the chill striking upon his exposed nether
limbs or took note of the big snowflakes melting damply upon his thinly
protected ankles. Then, too, almost immediately something befell which
upset him still more.

He came to where a wooden marquee, projecting over the entrance to a
shipping room, made a black strip along the feebly lighted pavement. As
he entered the patch of darkness the shape of a man materialised out of
the void and barred his way, and in that same fraction of a second
something shiny and hard was thrust against Mr. Leary's daunted bosom,
and in a low forceful rumble a voice commanded him as follows: "Put up
your mitts--and keep 'em up!"

Matching the action of his hands everything in Mr. Leary seemed to
start skyward simultaneously. His hair on his scalp straightened, his
breath came up from his lungs in a gasp, his heart lodged in his throat,
and his blood quit his feet, leaving them practically devoid of
circulation and ascended and drummed in his temples. He had a horrid,
emptied feeling in his diaphragm, too, as though the organs customarily
resident there had caught the contagion of the example and gone north.

"That's nice," spake the fearsome stranger. "Now stay jest the way you
are and don't make no peep or I'll have to plug you wit' this here gat."

[Illustration: "THAT'S NICE," SPAKE THE FEARSOME STRANGER. "NOW STAY
JEST THE WAY YOU ARE AND DON'T MAKE NO PEEP OR I'LL HAVE TO PLUG YOU
WIT' THIS HERE GAT"]

His right hand maintained the sinister pressure of the weapon against
the victim's deflated chest, while his left dexterously explored the
side pockets of Mr. Leary's overcoat. Then the same left hand jerked the
frogged fastenings of the garment asunder and went pawing swiftly over
Mr. Leary's quivering person, seeking the pockets which would have been
there had Mr. Leary been wearing garments bearing the regulation and
ordained number of pockets. But the exploring fingers merely slid along
a smooth and unbroken frontal surface.

"Wot t'ell? Wot t'ell?" muttered the footpad in bewilderment. "Say,
where're you got yore leather and yore kittle hid? Speak up quick!"

"I'm--I'm--not carrying a watch or a purse to-night," quavered Mr.
Leary. "These--these clothes I happen to be wearing are not made with
places in them for a watch or anything. And you've already taken what
money I had--it was all in my overcoat pocket."

"Yep; a pinch of chicken feed and wot felt like about four one-bone
bills." The highwayman's accent was both ominous and contemptuous. "Say,
wotcher mean drillin' round dis town in some kinder funny riggin'
wit'out no plunder on you? I gotta right to belt you one acrost the
bean."

"I'd rather you didn't do that," protested Mr. Leary in all seriousness.
"If--if you'd only give me your address I could send you some money in
the morning to pay you for your trouble----"

"Cut out de kiddin'," broke in the disgusted marauder. His tone changed
slightly for the better. "Say, near as I kin tell by feelin' it, dat
ain't such a bum benny you're sportin'. I'll jest take dat along wit'
me. Letcher arms down easy and hold 'em straight out from yore sides
while I gits it offen you. And no funny business!"

"Oh, please, please, don't take my overcoat," implored Mr. Leary,
plunged by these words into a deeper panic. "Anything but that!
I--you--you really mustn't leave me without my overcoat."

"Wot else is dere to take?"

Even as he uttered the scornful question the thief had wrested the
garment from Mr. Leary's helpless form and was backing away into the
darkness.

Out of impenetrable gloom came his farewell warning: "Stay right where
you are for fi' minutes wit'out movin' or makin' a yelp. If you wiggle
before de time is up I gotta pal right yere watchin' you, and he'll sure
plug you. He ain't no easy-goin' guy like wot I am. You're gittin' off
lucky it's me stuck you up, stidder him."

With these words he was gone--gone with Mr. Leary's overcoat, with Mr.
Leary's last cent, with his latchkey, with his cardcase, with all by
which Mr. Leary might hope to identify himself before a wary and
incredulous world for what he was. He was gone, leaving there in the
protecting ledge of shadow the straw-hatted, socked-and-slippered,
leg-gartered figure of a plump being, clad otherwise in a single
vestment which began at the line of a becomingly low neckband and
terminated in blousy outbulging bifurcations just above the naked knees.
Light stealing into this obscured and sheltered spot would have revealed
that this garment was, as to texture, a heavy, silklike, sheeny,
material; and as to colour a vivid and compelling pink--the exact colour
of a slice of well-ripened watermelon; also that its sleeves ended
elbow-high in an effect of broad turned-back cuffs; finally, that adown
its owner's back it was snugly and adequately secured by means of a
close-set succession of very large, very shiny white pearl buttons; the
whole constituting an enlarged but exceedingly accurate copy of what,
descriptively, is known to the manufactured-garment trade as a one-piece
suit of child's rompers, self-trimmed, fastening behind; suitable for
nursery, playground and seashore, especially recommended as summer wear
for the little ones; to be had in all sizes; prices such-and-such.

Within a space of some six or seven minutes this precisely was what the
nearest street lamp did reveal unto itself as its downward-slanting
beams fell upon a furtive, fugitive shape, suggestive in that deficient
subradiance of a vastly overgrown forked parsnip, miraculously endowed
with powers of locomotion and bound for somewhere in a hurry; excepting
of course no forked parsnip, however remarkable in other respects, would
be wearing a floppy straw hat in a snowstorm; nor is it likely it would
be adorned lengthwise in its rear with a highly decorative design of
broad, smooth, polished disks which, even in that poor illumination,
gleamed and twinkled and wiggled snakily in and out of alignment, in
accord with the movements of their wearer's spinal column.

But the reader and I, better informed than any lamp post could be as to
the prior sequence of events, would know at a glance it was no parsnip
we beheld, but Mr. Algernon Leary, now suddenly enveloped, through no
fault of his own, in one of the most overpowering predicaments
conceivable to involve a rising lawyer and a member of at least two good
clubs; and had we but been there to watch him, knowing, as we would
know, the developments leading up to this present situation, we might
have guessed what was the truth: That Mr. Leary was hot bent upon
retreating to the only imaginable refuge left to him at this
juncture--to wit, the interior of the stranded taxicab which he had
abandoned but a short time previously.


IV

Nearly all of us at some time or other in our lives have dreamed awful
dreams of being discovered in a public place with nothing at all upon
our bodies, and have awakened, burning hot with the shame of an enormous
and terrific embarrassment. Being no student of the psychic phenomena of
human slumber I do not know whether this is a subconscious
harking-back to the days of our infancy or whether it is merely a
manifestation to prove the inadvisability of partaking of Welsh rabbits
and lobster salads immediately before retiring. More than once Mr. Leary
had bedreamed thus, but at this moment he realised how much more dread
and distressing may be a dire actuality than a vision conjured up out of
the mysteries of sleep.

One surprised by strangers in a nude or partially nude state may have
any one of a dozen acceptable excuses for being so circumstanced. An
earthquake may have caught one unawares, say; or inopportunely a
bathroom door may have blown open. Once the first shock occasioned by
the untoward appearance of the victim has passed away he is sure of
sympathy. For him pity is promptly engendered and volunteer aid is
enlisted.

But Mr. Leary had a profound conviction that, revealed in this ghastly
plight before the eyes of his fellows, his case would be regarded
differently; that instead of commiseration there would be for him only
the derision which is so humiliating to a sensitive nature. He felt so
undignified, so glaringly conspicuous, so--well, so scandalously
immature. If only it had been an orthodox costume party which Mrs.
Carroway had given, why, then he might have gone as a Roman senator or
as a private chief or an Indian brave or a cavalier. In doublet or jack
boots or war bonnet, in a toga, even, he might have mastered the dilemma
and carried off a dubious situation. But to be adrift in an alien
quarter of a great and heartless city round four o'clock in the morning,
so picturesquely and so unseasonably garbed, and in imminent peril of
detection, was a prospect calculated to fill one with the frenzied
delirium of a nightmare made real. Put yourself in his place, I ask you.

His slippered feet spurned the thin snow as he moved rapidly back toward
the west. Ahead of him he could detect the clumped outlines of the
taxicab, and at the sight of it he quickened to a trot. Once safely
within it he could take stock of things; could map out a campaign of
future action; could think up ways and means of extricating himself from
his present lamentable case with the least possible risk of undesirable
publicity. At any rate he would be shielded for the moment from the life
which might at any moment awaken in the still sleeping and apparently
vacant neighbourhood. Finally, of course, there was the hope that the
drunken cabman might be roused, and once roused might be capable, under
promise of rich financial reward, of conveying Mr. Leary to his bachelor
apartments in West Eighty-fifth Street before dawn came, with its
early-bird milkmen and its before-day newspaper distributors and its
others too numerous to mention.

Without warning of any sort the cab started off, seemingly of its own
volition. Mr. Leary's gait became a desperate gallop, and as he galloped
he gave voice in entreaty.

[Illustration: MR. LEARY'S GAIT BECAME A DESPERATE GALLOP, AND AS HE
GALLOPED HE SHOUTED: "WAIT, PLEASE. HERE I AM--HERE'S YOUR PASSENGER!"]

"Hey there!" he shouted. "Wait, please. Here I am--here's your
passenger!"

His straw hat blew off, but this was no time to stop for a straw hat.
For a few rods he gained upon the vehicle, then as its motion increased
he lost ground and ran a losing race. Its actions disclosed that a
conscious if an uncertain hand guided its destinies. Wabbling this way
and that it wheeled skiddingly round a corner. When Mr. Leary, rowelled
on to yet greater speed by the spurs of a mounting misery, likewise
turned the corner it was irrevocably remote, beyond all prospect of
being overtaken by anything human pursuing it afoot. The swaying black
bulk of it diminished and was swallowed up in the snow shower and the
darkness. The rattle of mishandled gears died to a thin metallic
clanking, then to a purring whisper, and then the whisper expired, dead
silence ensuing.


V

In the void of this silence stood Mr. Leary, shivering now in the
reaction that had succeeded the nerve jar of being robbed at a pistol's
point, and lacking the fervour of the chase to sustain him. For him the
inconceivable disaster was complete and utter; upon him despair
descended as a patent swatter upon a lone housefly. Miles away from
home, penniless and friendless--the two terms being practically
synonymous in New York--what asylum was there for him now? Suppose
daylight found him abroad thus? Suppose he succumbed to exposure and was
discovered stiffly frozen in a doorway? Death by processes of
congealment must carry an added sting if one had to die in a suit of
pink rompers buttoning down the back. As though the thought of freezing
had been a cue to Nature he noted a tickling in his nose and a chokiness
in his throat, and somewhere in his system, a long way off, so to speak,
he felt a sneeze forming and approaching the surface.

To add to his state of misery, if anything could add to its distressing
total, he was taking cold. When Mr. Leary took cold he took it
thoroughly and throughout his system. Very soon, as he knew by past
experience, his voice would be hoarse and wheezy and his nose and his
eyes would run. But the sneeze was delayed in transit, and Mr. Leary
took advantage of the respite to cast a glance about him. Perhaps--the
expedient had surged suddenly into his brain--perhaps there might be a
hotel or a lodging house of sorts hereabouts? If so, such an
establishment would have a night clerk on duty, and despite the
baggageless and cashless state of the suppliant it was possible the
night clerk might be won, by compassion or by argument or by both, to
furnish Mr. Leary shelter until after breakfast time, when over the
telephone he could reach friends and from these friends procure an
outfit of funds and suitable clothing.

In sight, though, there was no structure which by its outward appearance
disclosed itself as a place of entertainment for the casual wayfarer.
Howsomever, lights were shining through the frosted panes of a row of
windows stretching across the top floor of a building immediately at
hand, and even as he made this discovery Mr. Leary was aware of the
dimmed sounds of revelry and of orchestral music up there, and also of
an illuminated canvas triangle stuck above the hallway entrance of the
particular building in question, this device bearing a lettered
inscription upon it to advertise that here the members of the Lawrence
P. McGillicuddy Literary Association and Pleasure Club were holding
their Grand Annual Civic Ball; admission One Dollar, including Hat
Check; Ladies Free when accompanied by Gents. Evidently the Lawrence P.
McGillicuddys kept even later hours at their roisterings than the
Bohemian sets in Washington Square kept.

Observing these evidences of adjacent life and merry-makings Mr. Leary
cogitated. Did he dare intrude upon the festivities aloft there? And if
he did so dare would he enter cavortingly, trippingly, with intent to
deceive the assembled company into the assumption that he had come to
their gathering in costume; or would he throw himself upon their charity
and making open confession of his predicament seek to enlist the
friendly offices of some kindly soul in extricating him from it?

While he canvassed the two propositions tentatively he heard the thud of
footsteps descending the stairs from the dance hall, and governed by an
uncontrollable impulse he leaped for concealment behind a pile of
building material that was stacked handily upon the sidewalk almost at
his elbow. He might possibly have driven himself to face a multitude
indoors, but somehow could not, just naturally could not, in his present
apparel, face one stranger outdoors--or at least not until he had
opportunity to appraise the stranger.

It was a man who emerged from the hallway entrance; a stockily built man
wearing his hat well over one ear and with his ulster opened and flung
back exposing a broad chest to the wintry air. He was whistling a
sprightly air.

Just as this individual came opposite the lumber pile the first
dedicatory sneeze of a whole subsequent series of sneezes which had been
burgeoning somewhere in the top of Mr. Leary's head, and which that
unhappy gentleman had been mechanically endeavouring to suppress, burst
from captivity with a vast moist report. At the explosion the passer-by
spun about and his whistle expired in a snort of angered surprise as the
bared head of Mr. Leary appeared above the topmost board of the pile,
and Mr. Leary's abashed face looked into his.

"Say," he demanded, "wotcher meanin', hidin' there and snortin' in a
guy's ear?"

His manner was truculent; indeed, verged almost upon the menacing.
Evidently the shock had adversely affected his temper, to the point
where he might make personal issues out of unavoidable trifles.
Instinctively Mr. Leary felt that the situation which had arisen called
for diplomacy of the very highest order. He cleared his throat before
replying.

"Good evening," he began, in what he vainly undertook to make a casual
tone of voice. "I beg your pardon--the sneeze--ahem--occurred when I
wasn't expecting it. Ahem--I wonder if you would do me a favour?"

"I would not! Come snortin' in a guy's ear that-a-way and then askin'
him would he do you a favour: You got a crust for fair!" Here, though, a
natural curiosity triumphed over the rising tides of indignation. "Wot
favour do you want, anyway?" he inquired shortly.

"Would you--would you--I wonder if you would be willing to sell me that
overcoat you're wearing?"

"I would not!"

"You see, the fact of the matter is I happened to be needing an overcoat
very badly at the moment," pressed Mr. Leary. "I was hoping that you
might be induced to name a price for yours."

"I would not! M. J. Cassidy wears M. J. Cassidy's clothes, and nobody
else wears 'em, believe me! Wot's happened to your own coat?"

"I lost it--I mean it was stolen."

"Stole?"

"Yes, a robber with a revolver held me up a few minutes ago just over
here in the next cross street and he took my coat away."

"Huh! Well, did you lose your hat the same way?"

"Yes--that is to say, no. I lost my hat running."

"Oh, you run, hey? Well, you look to me like a guy wot would run. Well,
did he take your clothes, too? Is that why you're squattin' behind them
timbers?" The inquisitive one took a step nearer.

"No--oh, no! I'm still wearing my--my--the costume I was wearing,"
answered Mr. Leary, apprehensively wedging his way still farther back
between the stack of boards and the wall behind. "But you see----"

"Well then, barrin' the fact that you ain't got no hat, ain't you jest
as well off without no overcoat now as I'd be if I fell for any
hard-luck spiel from you and let you have mine?"

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that exactly," tendered Mr. Leary
ingratiatingly. "I'm afraid my clothing isn't as suitable for outdoor
wear as yours is. You see, I'd been to a sort of social function and on
my way home it--it happened."

"Oh, it did, did it? Well, anyway, I should worry about you and your
clothes," stated the other. He took a step onward, then halted; and now
the gleam of speculative gain was in his eye. "Say, if I was willin' to
sell--not sayin' I would be, but if I was--wot would you be willin' to
give for an overcoat like this here one?"

"Any price within reason--any price you felt like asking," said Mr.
Leary, his hopes of deliverance rekindling.

"Well, maybe I'd take twenty-five dollars for it just as it stands and
no questions ast. How'd that strike you?"

"I'll take it. That seems a most reasonable figure."

"Well, fork over the twenty-five then, and the deal's closed."

"I'd have to send you the money to-morrow--I mean to-day. You see, the
thief took all my cash when he took my overcoat."

"Did, huh?"

"Yes, that's the present condition of things. Very annoying, isn't it?
But I'll take your address. I'm a lawyer in business in Broad Street,
and as soon as I reach my office I'll send the amount by messenger."

"Aw, to hell with you and your troubles! I might a-knowed you was some
new kind of a panhandler when you come a-snortin' in my ear that-a-way.
Better beat it while the goin's good. You're in the wrong neighbourhood
to be springin' such a gag as this one you just now sprang on me.
Anyhow, I've wasted enough time on the likes of you."

He was ten feet away when Mr. Leary, his wits sharpened by his
extremity, clutched at the last straw.

"One moment," he nervously begged. "Did I understand you to say your
name was Cassidy?"

"You did. Wot of it?"

"Well, curious coincidence and all that--but my name happens to be
Leary. And I thought that because of that you might----"

The stranger broke in on him. "Your name happens to be Leary, does it?
Wot's your other name then?"

"Algernon."

Stepping lightly on the balls of his feet Mr. Cassidy turned back, and
his mien for some reason was potentially that of a belligerent.

"Say," he declared threateningly, "you know wot I think about you? Well,
I think you're a liar. No regular guy with the name of Leary would let a
cheap stiff of a stick-up rob him out of the coat offen his back without
puttin' up a battle. No regular guy named Leary would be named Algernon.
Say, I think you're a Far Downer. I wouldn't be surprised but wot you
was an A. P. A. on the top of that. And wot's all this here talk about
goin' to a sociable functure and comin' away not suitably dressed? Come
on out of that now and let's have a look at you."

"Really, I'd much rather not--if you don't mind," protested the
miserable Mr. Leary. "I--I have reasons."

"The same here. Will you come out from behind there peaceable or will I
fetch you out?"

So Mr. Leary came, endeavouring while coming to wear a manner combining
an atmosphere of dignified aloofness and a sentiment of frank
indifference to the opinion of this loutish busybody, with just a touch,
a mere trace, as it were, of nonchalance thrown in. In short, coming out
he sought to deport himself as though it were the properest thing in
the world for a man of years and discretion to be wearing a bright pink
one-piece article of apparel on a public highway at four A. M. or
thereabouts. Undoubtedly, considering everything, it was the hardest
individual task essayed in New York during the first year of the war.
Need I add that it was a failure--a total failure? As he stood forth
fully and comprehensively revealed by the light of the adjacent
transparency, Mr. Cassidy's squint of suspicion widened into a pop-eyed
stare of temporary stupefaction.

"Well, for the love of---- In the name of---- Did anywan ever see the
likes of----!"

He murmured the broken sentences as he circled about the form of the
martyr. Completing the circuit, laughter of a particularly boisterous
and concussive variety interrupted his fragmentary speech.

"Ha ha, ha ha," echoed Mr. Leary in a palpably forced and hollow effort,
to show that he, too, could enter into the spirit of the occasion with
heartiness. "Does strike one as rather unusual at first sight--doesn't
it?"

"Why, you big hooman radish! Why, you strollin' sunset!" thus Mr.
Cassidy responded. "Are you payin' an election bet three weeks after the
election's over? Or is it that you're just a plain bedaddled ijiet? Or
wot is it, I wonder?"

"I explained to you that I went to a party. It was a fancy-dress party,"
stated Mr. Leary.

Sharp on the words Mr. Cassidy's manner changed. Here plainly was a
person of moods, changeable and tempersome.

"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, and you a large, grown man, to be
skihootin' round with them kind of foolish duds on, and your own country
at war this minute for decency and democracy?" From this it also was
evident that Mr. Cassidy read the editorials in the papers. "You should
take shame to yourself that you ain't in uniform instid of baby
clothes."

It was the part of discretion, so Mr. Leary inwardly decided, to ignore
the fact that the interrogator himself appeared to be well within the
military age.

"I'm a bit old to enlist," he stated, "and I'm past the draft age."

"Then you're too old to be wearin' such a riggin'. But, by cripes, I'll
say this for you--you make a picture that'd make a horse laugh."

Laughing like a horse, or as a horse would laugh if a horse ever
laughed, he rocked to and fro on his heels.

"Sh-sh; not so loud, please," importuned Mr. Leary, casting an uneasy
glance toward the lighted windows above. "Somebody might hear you!"

"I hope somebody does hear me," gurgled the temperamental Mr. Cassidy,
now once more thoroughly beset by his mirth. "I need somebody to help me
laugh. By cripes, I need a whole crowd to help me; and I know a way to
get them!"

He twisted his head round so his voice would ascend the hallway. "Hey,
fellers and skoirts," he called; "you that's fixin' to leave! Hurry on
down here quick and see Algy, the livin' peppermint lossenger, before he
melts away with his own sweetness."

Obeying the summons with promptness a flight of the Lawrence P.
McGillicuddy's, accompanied for the most part by lady friends, cascaded
down the stairs and erupted forth upon the sidewalk.

"Here y'are--right here!" clarioned Mr. Cassidy as the first skylarkish
pair showed in the doorway. His manner was drolly that of a showman
exhibiting a rare freak, newly captured. "Come a-runnin'!"

They came a-running and there were a dozen of them or possibly fifteen;
blithesome spirits, all, and they fenced in the shrinking shape of Mr.
Leary with a close and curious ring of themselves, and the combined
volume of their glad, amazed outbursts might be heard for a distance of
furlongs. On prankish impulse then they locked hands and with skippings
and prancings and impromptu jig steps they circled about him; and he,
had he sought to speak, could not well have been heard; and, anyway, he
was for the moment past speech, because of being entirely engaged in
giving vent to one vehement sneeze after another. And next, above the
chorus of joyous whooping might be heard individual comments, each
shrieked out shrilly and each punctuated by a sneeze from Mr. Leary's
convulsed frame; or lacking that by a simulated sneeze from one of the
revellers--one with a fine humorous flare for mimicry. And these
comments were, for example, such as:

"Git onto the socks!"

"Ker-chew!"

"And the slippers!"

"Ker-chew!"

"And them lovely pink garters!"

"Ker-chew!"

"Oh, you cutey! Oh, you cut-up!"

"Ker-chew!"

"Oh, you candy kid!"

"And say, git onto the cunnin' elbow sleeves our little playmate's
sportin'."

"Yes, but goils, just pipe the poilies--ain't they the greatest ever?"

"They sure are. Say, kiddo, gimme one of 'em to remember you by, won't
you? You'll never miss it--you got a-plenty more."

"Wot d'ye call wot he's got on 'um, anyway?" The speaker was a male,
naturally.

"W'y, you big stoopid, can't you see he's wearin' rompers?" The answer
came in a giggle, from a gay youthful creature of the opposite sex as
she kicked out roguishly.

"Well, then be chee, w'y don't he romp a little?"

"Give 'um time, cancher? Don't you see he's blowin' out his flues? He's
busy now. He'll romp in a minute."

"Sure he will! We'll romp with 'um."

A waggish young person in white beaded slippers and a green sport skirt
broke free from the cavorting ring, and behind Mr. Leary's back the
nimble fingers of the madcap tapped his spinal ornamentations as an
instrumentalist taps the stops of an organ; and she chanted a familiar
counting game of childhood:

"Rich man--poor man--beggar man--thief--doctor--loiryer----"

"Sure, he said he was a loiryer." It was Mr. Cassidy breaking in. "And
he said his name was Algernon. Well, I believe the Algernon part--the
big A. P. A."

"Oh, you Algy!"

"Algernon, does your mother know you're out?"

"T'ree cheers for Algy, the walkin' comic valentine!"

"Algy, Algy--Oh, you cutey Algy!" These jolly Greenwich Villagers were
going to make a song of his name. They did make a song of it, and it was
a frolicsome song and pitched to a rollicksome key. Congenial newcomers
arrived, pelting down from upstairs whence they had been drawn by the
happy rocketing clamour; and they caught spirit and step and tune with
the rest and helped manfully to sing it. As one poet hath said, "And now
reigned high carnival." And as another has so aptly phrased it, "There
was sound of revelry by night." And, as the second poet once put it, or
might have put it so if so be he didn't, "And all went merry as a
marriage bell." But when we, adapting the line to our own descriptive
usages, now say all went merry we should save out one exception--one
whose form alternately was racked by hot flushes of a terrific
self-consciousness and by humid gusts of an equally terrific sneezing
fit.


VI

"Here, here, here! Cut out the yellin'! D'you want the whole block up
out of their beds?" The voice of the personified law, gruff and
authoritative, broke in upon the clamour, and the majesty of the law,
typified in bulk, with galoshes, ear muffs and woollen gloves on, not to
mention the customary uniform of blue and brass, ploughed a path toward
the centre of the group.

"'S all right, Switzer," gaily replied a hoydenish lassie; she, the
same who had begged Mr. Leary for a sea-pearl souvenir. "But just see
wot Morrie Cassidy went and found here on the street!"

Patrolman Switzer looked then where she pointed, and could scarce
believe his eyes. In his case gleefulness took on a rumbling thunderous
form, which shook his being as with an ague and made him to beat himself
violently upon his ribs.

"D'ye blame us for carryin' on, Switzer, when we seen it ourselves?"

"I don't--and that's a fact," Switzer confessed between gurgles. "I
wouldn't a blamed you much if you'd fell down and had a fit." And then
he rocked on his heels, filled with joviality clear down to his rubber
soles. Anon, though, he remembered the responsibilities of his position.
"Still, at that, and even so," said he, sobering himself, "enough of a
good thing's enough." He glared accusingly, yea, condemningly, at the
unwitting cause of the quelled commotion.

"Say, what's the idea, you carousin' round Noo York City this hour of
the night diked up like a Coney Island Maudie Graw? And what's the idea,
you causin' a boisterous and disorderly crowd to collect? And what's the
idea, you makin' a disturbance in a vicinity full of decent hard-workin'
people that's tryin' to get a little rest? What's the general idea,
anyhow?"

At this moment Mr. Leary having sneezed an uncountable number of times,
regained the powers of coherent utterance.

"It is not my fault," he said. "I assure you of that, officer. I am
being misjudged; I am the victim of circumstances over which I have no
control. You see, officer, I went last evening to a fancy-dress party
and----"

"Well, then, why didn't you go on home afterwards and behave yourself?"

"I did--I started, in a taxicab. But the taxicab driver was drunk and he
went to sleep on the way and the taxicab stopped and I got out of it and
started to walk across town looking for another taxicab and----"

"Started walkin', dressed like that?"

"Certainly not. I had an overcoat on, of course. But a highwayman held
me up at the point of a revolver, and he took my overcoat and what money
I had and my card case and----"

"Where did all this here happen--this here alleged robbery?"

"Not two blocks away from here, right over in the next street to this
one."

"I don't believe nothin' of the kind!"

Patrolman Switzer spoke with enhanced severity; his professional honour
had been touched in a delicate place. The bare suggestion that a footpad
might dare operate in a district under his immediate personal
supervision would have been to him deeply repugnant, and here was this
weirdly attired wanderer making the charge direct.

"But, officer, I insist--I protest that----"

"Young feller, I think you've been drinkin', that's what I think about
you. Your voice sounds to me like you've been drinkin' about a gallon of
mixed ale. I think you dreamed all this here pipe about a robber and a
pistol and an overcoat and a taxicab and all. Now you take a friendly
tip from me and you run along home as fast as ever you can, and you get
them delirious clothes off of you and then you get in bed and take a
good night's sleep and you'll feel better. Because if you don't it's
goin' to be necessary for me to run you in for a public nuisance. I
ain't askin' you--I'm tellin' you, now. If you don't want to be locked
up, start movin'--that's my last word to you."

The recent merrymakers, who had fallen silent the better to hear the
dialogue, grouped themselves expectantly, hoping and waiting for a yet
more exciting and humorous sequel to what had gone before--if such a
miracle might be possible. Nor were they to be disappointed. The
dénouement came quickly upon the heels of the admonition.

For into Mr. Leary's reeling and distracted mind the warning had sent a
clarifying idea darting. Why hadn't he thought of a police station
before now? Perforce the person in charge at any police station would be
under requirement to shelter him. What even if he were locked up
temporarily? In a cell he would be safe from the slings and arrows of
outrageous ridicule; and surely among the functionaries in any station
house would be one who would know a gentleman in distress, however
startlingly the gentleman might be garbed. Surely, too, somebody--once
that somebody's amazement had abated--would he willing to do some
telephoning for him. Perhaps, even, a policeman off duty might be
induced to take his word for it that he was what he really was, and not
what he seemed to be, and loan him a change of clothing.

Hot upon the inspiration Mr. Leary decided on his course of action. He
would get himself safely and expeditiously removed from the hateful
company and the ribald comments of the Lawrence P. McGillicuddys and
their friends. He would get himself locked up--that was it. He would now
take the first steps in that direction.

"Are you goin' to start on home purty soon like I've just been tellin'
you; or are you ain't?" snapped Patrolman Switzer, who, it would appear,
was by no means a patient person.

"I am not!" The crafty Mr. Leary put volumes of husky defiance into his
answer. "I'm not going home--and you can't make me go home, either." He
rejoiced inwardly to see how the portly shape of Switzer stiffened and
swelled at the taunt. "I'm a citizen and I have a right to go where I
please, dressed as I please, and you don't dare to stop me. I defy you
to arrest me!" Suddenly he put both his hands in Patrolman Switzer's
fleshy midriff and gave him a violent shove. An outraged grunt went up
from Switzer, a delighted whoop from the audience. Swept off his balance
by the prospect of fruition for his design the plotter had technically
been guilty before witnesses of a violent assault upon the person of an
officer in the sworn discharge of his duty.

He felt himself slung violently about. One mitted hand fixed itself in
Mr. Leary's collar yoke at the rear; the other closed upon a handful of
slack material in the lower breadth of Mr. Leary's principal habiliment
just below where his buttons left off.

"So you won't come, won't you? Well then I'll show you--you pink
strawberry drop!"

Enraged at having been flaunted before a jeering audience the patrolman
pushed his prisoner ten feet along the sidewalk, imparting to the
offender's movements an involuntary gliding gait, with backward jerks
between forward shoves; this method of propulsion being known in the
vernacular of the force as "givin' a skate the bum's rush."

"Hey, Switzer, lend me your key and I'll ring for the wagon for you,"
volunteered Mr. Cassidy. His care-free companions, some of them, cheered
the suggestion, seeing in it prospect of a prolonging of this delectable
sport which providence without charge had so graciously deigned to
provide.

"Never mind about the wagon. Us two'll walk, me and him," announced the
patrolman. "'Taint so far where we're goin', and the walk'll do this
fresh guy a little good--maybe'll sober him up. And never mind about any
of the rest of you taggin' along behind us neither. This is a pinch--not
a free street parade. Go on home now, the lot of youse, before you wake
up the whole Lower West Side."

Loath to be cheated out of the last act of a comedy so unique and so
rich the whimsical McGillicuddys and their chosen mates fell reluctantly
away, with yells and gibes and quips and farewell bursts of laughter.


VII

Closely hyphenated together the deep blue figure and the bright pink one
rounded the corner and were alone. It was time to open the overtures
which would establish Patrolman Switzer upon the basis of a better
understanding of things. Mr. Leary, craning his neck in order to look
rearward into the face of his custodian, spoke in a key very different
from the one he had last employed.

"I really didn't intend, you know, to resist you, officer. I had a
private purpose in what I did. And you were quite within your rights.
And I'm very grateful to you--really I am--for driving those people
away."

"Is that so?" The inflection was grimly and heavily sarcastic.

"Yes. I am a lawyer by profession, and generally speaking I know what
your duties are. I merely made a show--a pretence, as it were--of
resisting you, in order to get away from that mob. It was--ahem--it was
a device on my part--in short, a trick."

"Is that so? Fixin' to try to beg off now, huh? Well, nothin' doin'!
Nothin' doin'! I don't know whether you're a fancy nut or a plain souse
or what-all, but whatever you are you're under arrest and you're goin'
with me."

"That's exactly what I desire to do," resumed the schemer. "I desire
most earnestly to go with you."

"You're havin' your wish, ain't you? Well, then, the both of us should
oughter be satisfied."

"I feel sure," continued the wheedling and designing Mr. Leary, "that as
soon as we reach the station house I can make satisfactory atonement to
you for my behaviour just now and can explain everything to your
superiors in charge there, and then----"

"Station house!" snorted Patrolman Switzer. "Why, say, you ain't headin'
for no station house. The crowd that's over there where you're headin'
for should be grateful to me for bringin' you in. You'll be a treat to
them, and it's few enough pleasures some of them gets----"

A new, a horrid doubt assailed Mr. Leary's sorely taxed being. He began
to have a dread premonition that all was not going well and his brain
whirled anew.

"But I prefer to be taken to the station house," he began.

"And who are you to be preferrin' anything at all?" countered Switzer.
"I'll phone back to the station where I am and what I've done; though
that part of it's no business of yours. I'll be doin' that after I've
arrainged you over to Jefferson Market."

"Jeff--Jefferson Market!"

"Sure, 'tis to Jefferson Market night court you're headin' this minute.
Where else? They're settin' late over there to-night; the magistrate is
expectin' some raids somewheres about daylight, I dope it. Anyhow,
they're open yet; I know that. So it'll be me and you for Jefferson
Market inside of five minutes; and I'm thinkin' you'll get quite a
reception."

Jefferson Market! Mr. Leary could picture the rows upon rows of gloating
eyes. He heard the incredulous shout that would mark his entrance, the
swell of unholy glee from the benches that would interrupt the
proceedings. He saw stretched upon the front pages of the early editions
of the afternoon yellows the glaring black-faced headlines:


                          WELL-KNOWN LAWYER
                          CLAD IN PINK ROMPERS
                          HALED TO NIGHT COURT


He saw--but Switzer's next remark sent a fresh shudder of apprehension
through him, caught all again, as he was, in the coils of accursed
circumstance.

"Magistrate Voris will be gettin' sleepy what with waitin' for them
raids to be pulled off, and I make no doubt the sight of you will put
him in a good humour."

And Magistrate Voris was his rival for the favours of Miss Milly
Hollister! And Magistrate Voris was a person with a deformed sense of
humour! And Magistrate Voris was sitting in judgment this moment at
Jefferson Market night court. And now desperation, thrice compounded,
rent the soul of the trapped victim of his own misaimed subterfuge.

"I won't be taken to any night court!" he shouted, wresting himself
toward the edge of the sidewalk and dragging his companion along with
him. "I won't go there! I demand to be taken to a station house. I'm a
sick man and I require the services of a doctor."

"Startin' to be rough-house all over again, huh?" grunted Switzer
vindictively. "Well, we'll see about that part of it, too--right now!"

Surrendering his lowermost clutch, the one in the silken seat of the
suit of his writhing prisoner, he fumbled beneath the tails of his
overcoat for the disciplinary nippers that were in his righthand rear
trousers pocket.

With a convulsive twist of his body Mr. Leary jerked himself free of the
mittened grip upon his neckband, and as, released, he gave a deerlike
lunge forward for liberty he caromed against a burdened ash can upon the
curbstone and sent it spinning backward; then recovering sprang onward
and outward across the gutter in flight. In the same instant he heard
behind him a crash of metal and a solid thud, heard a sound as of a
scrambling solid body cast abruptly prone, heard the name of Deity
profaned, and divined without looking back that the ash can,
conveniently rolling between the plump legs of the personified Arm of
the Law, had been Officer Switzer's undoing, and might be his salvation.


VIII

With never a backward glance he ran on, not doubting as a hare before
the beagle, but following a straight course, like unto a hunted roebuck.
He did not know he could run so fast, and he could not have run so fast
any other time than this. Beyond was a crossing. It was blind instinct
that made him double round the turn. And it was instinct, quickened and
guided by desperation, that made him dart like a rose-tinted flash up
the steps to the stoop of an old-fashioned residence standing just
beyond the corner, spring inside the storm doors, draw them to behind
him, and crouch there, hidden, as pursuit went lumbering by.

Through a chink between the door halves he watched breathlessly while
Switzer, who moved with a pronounced limp and rubbed his knees as he
limped, hobbled halfway up the block, slowed down, halted, glared about
him for sight or sign of the vanished fugitive, and then misled by a
false trail departed, padding heavily with a galoshed tread, round the
next turn.

With his body still drawn well back within the shadow line of the
overhanging cornice Mr. Leary, coyly protruded his head and took visual
inventory of the neighbourhood. So far as any plan whatsoever had
formed in the mind of our diffident adventurer he meant to bide where he
was for the moment. Here, where he had shelter of a sort, he would
recapture his breath and reassemble his wits. Even so, the respite from
those elements which Mr. Leary dreaded most of all--publicity,
observation, cruel jibes, the harsh raucous laughter of the
populace--could be at best but a woefully transient one. He was not
resigned--by no means was he resigned--to his fate; but he was helpless.
For what ailed him there was no conceivable remedy.

Anon jocund day would stand tiptoe on something or other; Greenwich
Village would awaken and bestir itself. Discovery would come, and forth
he would be drawn like a shy, unwilling periwinkle from its shell, once
more to play his abased and bashful role of free entertainer to
guffawing mixed audiences. For all others in the great city there were
havens and homes. But for a poor, lorn, unguided vagrant, enmeshed in
the burlesque garnitures of a three-year-old male child, what haven was
there? By night the part had been hard enough--as the unresponsive
heavens above might have testified. By the stark unmerciful sunlight; by
the rude, revealing glow of the impending day how much more scandalous
would it be!

His haggard gaze swept this way and that, seeking possible succour where
reason told him there could be no succour; and then as his vision pieced
together this outjutting architectural feature and that into a coherent
picture of his immediate surroundings he knew where he was. The one bit
of chancy luck in a sequence of direful catastrophes had brought him
here to this very spot. Why, this must be West Ninth Street; it had to
be, it was--oh joy, it was! And Bob Slack, his partner, lived in this
identical block on this same side of the street.

With his throat throbbing to the impulse of new-born hope he emerged
completely from behind the refuge of the storm doors, backed himself out
and down upon the top step, and by means of a dubious illumination
percolating through the fanlight above the inner door he made out the
figures upon the lintel. This was such and such a number; therefore Bob
Slack's number must be the second number to the eastward, at the next
door but one.


IX

Five seconds later a fleet apparition of a prevalent pinkish tone gave a
ranging house cat the fright of its life as former darted past latter to
vault nimbly up the stone steps of a certain weatherbeaten
four-story-and-basement domicile. Set in the door jamb here was a
vertical row of mail-slots, and likewise a vertical row of electric push
buttons; these objects attesting to the fact that this house, once upon
a time the home of a single family, had eventually undergone the
transformation which in lower New York befalls so many of its kind, and
had become a layer-like succession of light-housekeeping apartments, one
apartment to a floor, and the caretaker in the basement.

Since Bob Slack's bachelor quarters were on the topmost floor Bob
Slack's push button would be the next to the lowermost of the battery of
buttons. A chilled tremulous finger found that particular button and
pressed it long and hard, released it, pressed it again and yet again.
And in the interval following each period of pressing the finger's owner
hearkened, all ears, for the answering click-click that would tell him
the sleeper having been roused by the ringing had risen and pressed the
master button that released the mechanism of the street door's lock.

But no welcome clicking rewarded the expectant ringer. Assuredly Bob
Slack must be the soundest sleeper in the known world. He who waited
rang and rang and rerang. There was no response.

Eventually conviction was forced upon Mr. Leary that he must awaken the
caretaker--who, he seemed dimly to recall as a remembrance of past
visits to Bob Slack, was a woman; and this done he must induce the
caretaker to admit him to the inside of the house. Once within the
building the refugee promised himself he would bring the slumberous
Slack to consciousness if he had to beat down that individual's door
doing it. He centred his attack upon the bottom push button of all.
Directly, from almost beneath his feet, came the sound of an areaway
window being unlatched, and a drowsy female somewhat crossly inquired to
know who might be there and what might be wanted.

"It's a gentleman calling on Mr. Slack," wheezed Mr. Leary with his head
over the balusters. He was getting so very, very hoarse. "I've been
ringing his bell, but I can't seem to get any answer."

"A gentleman at this time o' night!" The tone was purely incredulous.

"Yes; a close friend of Mr. Slack's," assured Mr. Leary, striving to put
stress of urgency into his accents, and only succeeding in imparting an
added hoarseness to his fast-failing vocal cords. "I'm his law partner,
in fact. I must see him at once, please--it's very important, very
pressing indeed."

"Well, you can't be seein' him."

"C-can't see him? What do you mean?"

"I mean he ain't here, that's what. He's out. He's went out for the
night. He's ginerally always out on Friday nights--playin' cards at his
club, I think. And sometimes he don't come in till it's near breakfast
time. If you're a friend of his I sh'd think it'd be likely you'd know
that same."

"Oh, I do--I do," assented Mr. Leary earnestly; "only I had forgotten
it. I've had so many other things on my mind. But surely he'll be coming
in quite soon now--it's pretty late, you know."

"Don't I know that for myself without bein' told?"

"Yes, quite so, of course; naturally so." Mr. Leary was growing more and
more nervous, and more and more chilled, too. "But if you'll only be so
very kind as to let me in I'll wait for him in his apartment."

"Let you in without seein' you or knowin' what your business is? I
should guess not! Besides, you couldn't be gettin' inside his flat
anyways. He's locked it, unless he's forgot to, which ain't likely, him
bein' a careful man, and he must a-took the key with him. I know I ain't
got it."

"But if you'll just let me inside the building that will be sufficient.
I would much rather wait inside if only in the hall, than out here on
the stoop in the cold."

"No doubt, no doubt you would all of that." The tone of the unseen
female was drily suspicious. "But is it likely I'd be lettin' a stranger
into the place, that I never seen before, and ain't seen yet for that
matter, just on the strength of his own word? And him comin'
unbeknownst, at this hour of the mornin'? A fat chancet!"

"But surely, though, you must recall me--Mr. Leary, his partner. I've
been here before. I've spoken to you."

"That voice don't sound to me like no voice I ever heard."

"I've taken cold--that's why it's altered."

"So? Then why don't you come down here where I can have a look at you
and make sure?" inquired this careful chatelaine.

"I'm leaning with my head over the rail of the steps right above you,"
said Mr. Leary. "Can't you poke your head out and see my face? I'm quite
sure you would recall me then."

"With this here iron gratin' acrost me window how could I poke me head
out? Besides, it's dark. Say, mister, if you're on the level what's the
matter with you comin' down here and not be standin' there palaverin'
all the night?"

"I--I--well, you see, I'd rather not come for just a minute--until I've
explained to you that--that my appearance may strike you as being a
trifle unusual, in fact, I might say, queer," pleaded Mr. Leary, seeking
by subtle methods of indirection to prepare her for what must surely
follow.

"Never mind explainin'--gimme a look!" The suspicious tenseness in her
voice increased. "I tell you this--ayther you come down here right this
secont or I shut the window and you can be off or you can go to the
divil or go anywheres you please for all of me, because I'm an
overworked woman and I need my rest and I've no more time to waste on
you."

"Wait, please; I'm coming immediately," called out Mr. Leary.

He forced his legs to carry him down the steps and reluctantly, yet
briskly, he propelled his pink-hued person toward the ray of light that
streamed out through the grated window-opening and fell across the
areaway.

"You mustn't judge by first appearances," he was explaining with a false
and transparent attempt at matter-of-factness as he came into the zone
of illumination. "I'm not what I seem, exactly. You see, I----"

"Mushiful Evans!" The exclamation was half shrieked, half gasped out;
and on the words the window was slammed to, the light within flipped
out, and through the glass from within came a vehement warning.

"Get away, you--you lunatic! Get away from here now or I'll have the
cops on you."

"But please, please listen," he entreated, with his face close against
the bars. "I assure you, madam, that I can explain everything if you
will only listen."

There was no mercy, no suggestion of relenting in the threatening
message that came back to him.

"If you ain't gone from here in ten seconts I'll ring for the night
watchman on the block, and I'll blow a whistle for the police. I've got
me hand on the alarm hook right now. Will you go or will I rouse the
whole block?"

"Pray be calm, madam, I'll go. In fact, I'm going now."

He fell back out of the areaway. Fresh uproar at this critical juncture
would be doubly direful. It would almost certainly bring the vengeful
Switzer, with his bruised shanks. It would inevitably bring some one.


X

Mr. Leary retreated to the sidewalk, figuratively casting from him the
shards and potsherds of his reawakened anticipations, now all so rudely
shattered again. He was doomed. It would inevitably be his fate to cower
in these cold and drafty purlieus until----

No, it wouldn't either!

Like a golden rift in a sable sky a brand-new ray of cheer opened before
him. Who were those married friends of Slack's, who lived on the third
floor--friends with whom once upon a time he and Slack had shared a
chafing-dish supper? What was the name? Brady? No, Braydon. That was
it--Mr. and Mrs. Edward Braydon. He would slip back again, on noiseless
feet, to the doorway where the bells were. He would bide there until the
startled caretaker had gone back to her sleep, or at least to her bed.
Then he would play a solo on the Braydons' bell until he roused them.
They would let him in, and beyond the peradventure of a doubt, they
would understand what seemed to be beyond the ken of flighty and
excitable underlings. He would make them understand, once he was in and
once the first shock of beholding him had abated within them. They were
a kindly, hospitable couple, the Braydons were. They would be only too
glad to give him shelter from the elements until Bob Slack returned
from his session at bridge. He was saved!

Within the coping of the stoop he crouched and waited--waited for five
long palpitating minutes which seemed to him as hours. Then he applied
an eager and quivering finger to the Braydons' button. Sweet boon of
vouchsafed mercy! Almost instantly the latch clicked. And now in another
instant Mr. Leary was within solid walls, with the world and the weather
shut out behind him.

He stood a moment, palpitant with mute thanksgiving, in the hallway,
which was made obscure rather than bright by a tiny pinprick of
gaslight; and as thus he stood, fortifying himself with resolution for
the embarrassing necessity of presenting himself, in all his show of
quaint frivolity, before these comparative strangers, there came
floating down the stair well to him in a sharp half-whisper a woman's
voice.

"Is that you?" it asked.

"Yes," answered Mr. Leary, truthfully. It was indeed he, Algernon Leary,
even though someone else seemingly was expected. But the explanation
could wait until he was safely upstairs. Indeed, it must wait. Attempted
at a distance it would take on rather a complicated aspect; besides, the
caretaker just below might overhear, and by untoward interruptions
complicate a position already sufficiently delicate and difficult.

Down from above came the response, "All right then. I've been worried,
you were so late coming in, Edward. Please slip in quietly and take the
front room. I'm going on back to bed."

"All right!" grunted Mr. Leary.

But already his plan had changed; the second speech down the stair well
had caused him to change it. Safety first would be his motto from now
on. Seeing that Mr. Edward Braydon apparently was likewise out late it
would be wiser and infinitely more discreet on his part did he avoid
further disturbing Mrs. Braydon, who presumably was alone and who might
be easily frightened. So he would just slip on past the Braydon
apartment, and in the hallway on the fourth floor he would cannily bide,
awaiting the truant Slack's arrival.

On tiptoe then, flight by flight, he ascended toward the top of the
house. He was noiselessly progressing along the hallway of the third
floor; he was about midway of it when under his tread a loose plank gave
off an agonized squeak, and, as involuntarily he crouched, right at his
side a door was flung open.

What the discomfited refugee saw, at a distance from him to be measured
by inches rather than by feet, was the face of a woman; and not the face
of young Mrs. Edward Braydon, either, but the face of a middle-aged lady
with startled eyes widely staring, with a mouth just dropping ajar as
sudden horror relaxed her jaw muscles, and with a head of grey hair
haloed about by a sort of nimbus effect of curl papers. What the strange
lady saw--well, what the strange lady saw may best perhaps be gauged by
what she did, and that was instantly to slam and bolt the door and then
to utter a succession of calliopelike shrieks, which echoed through the
house and which immediately were answered back by a somewhat similar
series of outcries from the direction of the basement.


XI

Up the one remaining flight of stairs darted the intruder. He flung
himself with all his weight and all his force against Bob Slack's door.
It wheezed from the impact, but its stout oaken panels held fast. Who
says the impossible is really impossible? The accumulated testimony of
the ages shows that given the emergency a man can do anything he just
naturally has to do. Neither by training nor by habit of life nor yet by
figure was Mr. Leary athletically inclined, but a trained gymnast might
well have envied the magnificent agility with which he put a foot upon
the doorknob and sprang upward, poising himself there upon a slippered
toe, with one set of fingers clutching fast to the minute projections of
the door frame while with his free hand he thrust recklessly against the
transom.

The transom gave under the strain, moving upward and inward upon its
hinges, disclosing an oblong gap above the jamb. With a splendid wriggle
the fugitive vaulted up, thrusting his person into the clear space thus
provided. Balanced across the opening upon his stomach, half in and half
out, for one moment he remained there, his legs kicking wildly as though
for a purchase against something more solid than air. Then convulsive
desperation triumphed over physical limitations. There was a rending,
tearing sound as of some silken fabric being parted biaswise of its
fibres, and Mr. Leary's droll after sections vanished inside; and
practically coincidentally therewith, Mr. Leary descended upon the
rugged floor with a thump which any other time would have stunned him
into temporary helplessness, but which now had the effect merely of
stimulating him onward to fresh exertion.

In a fever of activity he sprang up. Pawing a path through the
encompassing darkness, stumbling into and over various sharp-cornered
objects, barking his limbs with contusions and knowing it not, he found
the door of the inner room--Bob Slack's bedroom--and once within that
sanctuary he, feeling along the walls, discovered a push bulb and
switched on the electric lights.

What matter though the whole house grew clamorous now with a mounting
and increasing tumult? What mattered it though he could hear more and
more startled voices commingled with the shattering shrieks emanating
from the Braydon apartment beneath his feet? He, the hard-pressed and
sore-beset and the long-suffering, was at last beyond the sight of
mortal eyes. He was locked in, with two rooms and a bath to himself, and
he meant to maintain his present refuge, meant to hold this fort against
all comers, until Bob Slack came home. He would barricade himself in if
need be. He would pile furniture against the doors. If they took him at
all it would be by direct assault and overpowering numbers.

And while he withstood siege and awaited attack he would rid himself of
these unlucky caparisons that had been his mortification and his
undoing. When they broke in on him--if they did break in on him--he
would be found wearing some of Bob Slack's clothes. Better far to be
mistaken for a burglar than to be dragged forth lamentably yet
fancifully attired as Himself at the Age of Three. The one thing might
be explained--and in time would be; but the other? He felt that he was
near the breaking point; that he could no more endure.


XII

He stopped where he was, in the middle of the room, with his eyes and
his hands seeking for the seams of the closing of his main garment. Then
he remembered what in his stress he had forgotten--the opening or
perhaps one should say the closing was at the back. He twisted his arms
rearward, his fingers groping along his spine.

Now any normal woman has the abnormal ability to do and then to undo a
garment hitching behind. Nature, which so fashioned her elbows that she
cannot throw a stone at a hen in the way in which a stone properly
should be thrown at a hen, made suitable atonement for this articular
oversight by endowing her joints with the facile knack of turning on
exactly the right angle, with never danger of sprain or dislocation, for
the subjugation of a back-latching frock. Moreover, years of practice
have given her adeptness in accomplishing this achievement, so that to
her it has become an everyday feat. But man has neither the experience
to qualify him nor yet the bodily adaptability.

By reaching awkwardly up and over his shoulder Mr. Leary managed to tug
the topmost button of his array of buttons out of its attendant
buttonholes, but below and beyond that point he could not progress. He
twisted and contorted his body; he stretched his arms in their sockets
until twin pangs of agony met and crossed between his shoulder blades,
and with his two exploring hands he pulled and fumbled and pawed and
wrenched and wrested, to make further headway at his task. But the
sewing-on had been done with stout thread; the buttonholes were taut and
snug and well made. Those slippery flat surfaces amply resisted him.
They eluded him; defied him; outmastered him. Thanks be to, or curses be
upon, the passionate zeal of Miss Rowena Skiff for exactitudes, he,
lacking the offices of an assistant undresser, was now as definitely and
finally inclosed in this distressful pink garment as though it had been
his own skin. Speedily he recognised this fact in all its bitter and
abominable truth, but mechanically, he continued to wrestle with the
obdurate fastenings.

While he thus vainly contended, events in which he directly was
concerned were occurring beneath that roof. From within his refuge he
heard the sounds of slamming doors, of hurrying footsteps, of excited
voices merging into a distracted chorus; but above all else, and from
the rest, two of these voices stood out by reason of their augmented
shrillness, and Mr. Leary marked them both, for since he had just heard
them he therefore might identify their respective unseen owners.

"There's something--there's somebody in the house!" At the top of its
register one voice was repeating the warning over and over again, and
judging by direction this alarmist was shrieking her words through a
keyhole on the floor below him. "I saw it--him--whatever it was. I
opened my door to look out in the hall and it--he--was right there. Oh,
I could have touched him! And then it ran and I didn't see him any more
and I slammed the door and began screaming."

"You seen what?"

The strident question seemed to come from far below, down in the depths
of the house, where the caretaker abided.

"Whatever it was. I opened the door and he was right in the hall there
glaring at me. I could have touched it. And then he ran and I----"

"What was he like? I ast what was he like--it's that I'm astin' you!"
The janitress was the one who pressed for an answer.

For the moment the question, pointed though it was, went unanswered. The
main speaker--shrieker, rather--was plainly a person with a mania for
details, and even in this emergency she intended, as now developed, to
present all the principal facts in the case, and likewise all the
incidental facts so far as these fell within her scope of knowledge.

"I was awake," she clarioned through the keyhole, speaking much faster
than any one following this narrative can possibly hope to read the
words. "I couldn't sleep. I never do sleep well when I'm in a strange
house. And anyhow, I was all alone. My nephew by marriage--Mr. Edward
Braydon, you know--had gone out with the gentleman who lives on the
floor above to play cards, and he said he was going to be gone nearly
all night, and my niece--I'm Mrs. Braydon's unmarried aunt from
Poughkeepsie and I'm down here visiting them--my niece was called to
Long Island yesterday by illness--it's her sister who's ill with
something like the bronchitis. And he was gone and so she was gone, and
so here I was all alone and he told me not to stay up for him, but I
couldn't sleep well--I never can sleep in a strange house--and just a
few minutes ago I heard the bell ring and I supposed he had forgotten
to take his latchkey with him, and so I got up to let him in. And I
called down the stairs and asked him if it was him and he answered back.
But it didn't sound like his voice. But I didn't think anything of that.
But, of course, it was out of the ordinary for him to have a voice like
that. But all the same I went back to bed. But he didn't come in and I
was just getting up again to see what detained him--his voice really
sounded so strange I thought then he might have been taken sick or
something. But just as I got to the door a plank creaked and I opened
the door and there it was right where I could have touched him. And then
it ran--and oh, what if----"

"I'm astin' you once more what it was like?"

"How should I know except that----"

"Was it a big, fat, wild, bare-headed, scary, awful-lookin' scoundrel
dressed in some kind of funny pink clothes?"

"Yes, that's it! That's him--he was all sort of pink. Oh, did you see
him too? Oh, is it a burglar?"

"Burglar nothin'! It's a ravin', rampagin' lunatic--that's what it is!"

"Oh, my heavens, a lunatic!"

"Sure it is. He tried to git me to let him in and----"

"Oh, whatever shall we do!"


XIII

"Hey, what's all the excitement about?"

A new and deeper voice here broke into the babel, and Mr. Leary
recognising it at a distance, where he stood listening--but not failing,
even while he listened, to strive unavailingly with his problem of
buttons--knew he was saved. Knowing this he nevertheless retreated still
deeper into the inner room. The thought of spectators in numbers
remained very abhorrent to him. So he did not hear all that happened
next, except in broken snatches.

He gathered though, from what he did hear, that Bob Slack and Mr. Edward
Braydon were coming up the stairs, and that a third male whom they
called Officer was coming with them, and that the janitress was coming
likewise, and that divers lower-floor tenants were joining in the march,
and that as they came the janitress was explaining to all and sundry how
the weird miscreant had sought to inveigle her into admitting him to Mr.
Slack's rooms, and how she had refused, and how with maniacal craft--or
words to that effect--he had, nevertheless, managed to secure admittance
to the house, and how he must still be in the house. And through all her
discourse there were questions from this one or that, crossing its flow
but in no-wise interrupting it; and through it all percolated hootingly
the terrorised outcries of Mr. Braydon's maiden aunt-in-law, issuing
through the keyhole of the door behind which she cowered. Only now she
was interjecting a new harassment into the already complicated mystery
by pleading that someone repair straightway to her and render
assistance, as she felt herself to be on the verge of fainting dead
away.

With searches into closets and close scrutiny of all dark corners passed
en route, the procession advanced to the top floor, mainly guided in its
oncoming by the clew deduced from the circumstances of the mad intruder
having betrayed a desire to secure access to Mr. Slack's apartment,
with the intention, as the caretaker more than once suggested on her way
up, of murdering Mr. Slack in his bed. Before the ascent had been
completed she was quite certain this was the correct deduction, and so
continued to state with all the emphasis of which she was capable.

"He couldn't possibly have got downstairs again," somebody hazarded; "so
he must be upstairs here still--must be right round here somewhere."

"Didn't I tell you he was lookin' for Mr. Slack to lay in wait for him
and destroy the poor man in his bed?" shrilled the caretaker.

"Watch carefully now, everybody. He might rush out of some corner at
us."

"Say, my transom's halfway open!" Mr. Bob Slack exclaimed. "And, by
Jove, there's a light shining through it yonder from the bedroom. He's
inside--we've got him cornered, whoever he is."

Boldly Mr. Slack stepped forward and rapped hard on the door.

"Better step on out peaceably," he called, "because there's an officer
here with us and we've got you trapped."

"It's me, Bob, it's me," came in a wheezy, plaintive wail from somewhere
well back in the apartment.

"Who's me?" demanded Mr. Slack, likewise forgetting his grammar in the
thrill of this culminating moment.

"Algy--Algernon Leary."

"Not with that voice, it isn't. But I'll know in a minute who it is!"
Mr. Slack reached pocketward for his keys.

"Better be careful. He might have a gun or something on him."

"Nonsense!" retorted Mr. Slack, feeling very valiant. "I'm not afraid of
any gun. But you ladies might stand aside if you're frightened. All
ready, officer? Now then!"

"Please come in by yourself, Bob. Don't--don't let anybody else come
with you!"


XIV

If he heard the faint and agonised appeal from within Mr. Slack chose
not to heed it. He found the right key on his key ring, applied it to
the lock, turned the bolt and shoved the door wide open, giving back
then in case of an attack. The front room was empty. Mr. Slack crossed
cautiously to the inner room and peered across the threshold into it,
Mr. Braydon and a grey-coated private watchman and a procession of
half-clad figures following along after him.

Where was the mysterious intruder? Ah, there he was, huddled up in a far
corner alongside the bed as though he sought to hide himself away from
their glaring eyes. And at the sight of what he beheld Mr. Bob Slack
gave one great shocked snort of surprise, and then one of recognition.

For all that the cowering wretch wore a quaint garment of a bright and
watermelonish hue, except where it was streaked with transom dust and
marked with ash-can grit; for all that his head was bare, and his knees,
and a considerable section of his legs as well; for all that he had
white socks and low slippers, now soaking wet, upon his feet; for all
his elbow sleeves and his pink garters and his low neck; and finally for
all that his face was now beginning, as they stared upon it, to wear
the blank wan look of one who is about to succumb to a swoon of
exhaustion induced by intense physical exertion or by acutely prolonged
mental strain or by both together--Mr. Bob Slack detected in this
fabulous oddity a resemblance to his associate in the practice of law at
Number Thirty-two Broad Street.

"In the name of heaven, Leary----" he began.

But a human being can stand just so many shocks in a given number of
minutes--just so many and no more. Gently, slowly, the gartered legs
gave way, bending outward, and as their owner collapsed down upon his
side with the light of consciousness flickering in his eyes, his figure
was half-turned to them, and they saw how that he was ornamentally but
securely buttoned down the back with many large buttons and how that
with a last futile fluttering effort of his relaxing hands he fumbled
first at one and then at another of these buttons.

"Leary, what in thunder have you been doing? And where on earth have you
been?" Mr. Slack shot the questions forth as he sprang to his partner's
side and knelt alongside the slumped pink shape.

Languidly Mr. Leary opened one comatose eye. Then he closed it again and
the wraith of a smile formed about his lips, and just as he went sound
asleep upon the floor Mr. Slack caught from Mr. Leary the softly
whispered words, "I've been the life of the party!"





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