Twenty-Three and a Half Hours' Leave/Chapter 4
IV
AT that exact moment the elevator man, having a moment's leisure after the lunch rush, made his way back along the corridor where he had left a wild-eyed refugee. All was quiet. In the office of the National Asphalt Company the clicking of typewriters showed that no fleeing soldier, seeking sanctuary and a pair of trousers, had upset the day's pavements. Dolls and Wigs was calm. Coat Fronts remained inadequate and still.
He wandered back, his face twisted in a dry grin. Then suddenly from Booth, Photographer, he heard a wild yell. This was followed by the crash of a heavy body, a number of smothered oaths and a steady softish thud that sounded extremely like the impact of fists on flesh.
The elevator man opened the door of Booth, Photographer's, anteroom and stuck his head in. The studio beyond showed something on the floor that stirred in the wrapping of an Indian blanket, while stepping across it and on it a mad thing in undergarments and a service hat was delivering blows at something unseen.
The elevator man carefully reached a hand inside the door and took out the key. Then as stealthily he closed the door, locked it from the outside, and moved back swiftly to his cage, where the buzzer showed that the carpet cleaning company which occupied the fourth floor was in a hurry and didn't care who knew it.
At the end of twenty minutes two roundsmen went up in the cage. Going up they learned of the preliminaries.
“Crazy, I guess,” finished the elevator man. “He looked crazy, now I think about it. Probably killed the lot by this time. Where do you fellows hide, anyhow?”
Back in Booth, Photographer, there was a complete and awful silence. Revolvers ready, the door was opened and the roundsmen sprang in. It looked like the worst. The Indian blanket nor moved nor quivered. A chair, overturned, lay on top of it, and against that there leaned tipsily a photographer's screen, on which was painted, in grays and whites, an Italian garden.
“I'm glad to see you,” called a cheery voice. “I'm glad to see you!”
Standing in the doorway of the dressing room was a tall young man. He held a brush in his hand and was still slicking down his hair.
“How are you, anyhow?” demanded the tall young man, and proceeded to shake down the leg of a pair of black trousers. “A trifle short, aren't they?” he observed. “But they're a darn sight better than nothing!”
“Get him, Joe,” said one of the officers casually, and walked toward the inner room.
“Oh, I'll go along all right,” said Sergeant Gray blithely. “It's worth the price. I'm only sorry you didn't see it. I”
“Joe! called the other officer from the inner room. “Come here, will you?”
“Mind if I go along?” asked Sergeant Gray. “I'd like to look at 'em again. I want to remember how they look all the rest of my life.”
Joe nodded, and Sergeant Gray led the way to the studio. In a corner, roped tightly to a chair, sat Booth, Photographer. He was bleeding profusely from a cut on the lip and another over the eye, his head was bobbing weakly on his shoulders, and he wore, to be exact, one union suit minus two buttons on the chest and held together by a safety pin.
Joe stumbling over the Indian blanket heard it groan beneath him, and uncovered a stout gentleman in a cutaway coat and with his collar torn off.
“Pretty good, eh?” demanded Sergeant Gray. “Sorry about the collar, though. Booth's is too small for me.”
“Want an ambulance?” inquired the elevator man with unholy joy in his eyes.
“Yes. Better have one.” And to the wreckage: “You gentlemen will be all right,” said Joe. “How'd this happen, anyhow?'
“I'll tell you,” volunteered the sergeant. “They're spies, that's what they are. German spies. D'you get it? And I”
“Aw, shut up!” said the first roundsman, wearily. “Take him along, Joe. Now, how d'you feel, Mr. Booth?”
“But I tell you”
“You don't tell me anything. You go. That's all.”
“Oh, very well,” said Sergeant Gray cheerfully. “You'll be sorry. That's all. Come on, Joe.” He raised his voice in song.
“Where do we go from here, Joe, where do we go from here?” he sang in a very deep bass.
At the centre table he stopped, however, with Joe's revolver very close to him, and consulted Mr. Booth's watch which, with all of his money but car fare back to camp, lay in a heap there.
“You might hurry a bit, Joe,” he suggested. “I've only got twenty-three and a half hours' leave, and time's flying. You'll observe,” he added, “that old Booth's money and watch are here.” He glanced significantly toward the elevator man. “Eight dollars and ninety cents, Joe,” he said. “The old boy'll need it for a doctor.”
The general breakfasted rather late the next morning—at seven o'clock. His ordinary hour was six-thirty. He had eaten three fried eggs, some fried potatoes, a bran muffin, drunk a cup of coffee, and was trying to remember if he had made any indiscreet remarks at a dinner party the night before about Pershing or the General Staff, when an aide came in with a report. The general read it slowly, then looked up.
“You mean to say,” he inquired, “that those fellows haven't had any clothes since yesterday morning?”
“No uniforms, sir.”
“The entire troop?”
“All except those who were on duty here yesterday, sir. I believe”—the aide hesitated—“I believe some of them went to town anyhow, sir.”
“The devil you say!” roared the general.
“I rather fancy that the men we saw in slickers, sir”
Suddenly the general laughed. The aide laughed also. Aides always laugh when the general does. It is etiquette. When the general had stopped laughing he became very military again, and swore.
“We'll look into it, Tommy,” he said. “It's a damned shame. Somebody's going to pay for it through the nose.”
This is a little-used phrase, but the general had read it somewhere and adopted it. It means copiously.
He was not aware, naturally, that Sergeant Gray was already paying for it, copiously.
It was at that precise moment that a little car drew up outside his quarters. The general smiled and rolled himself a cigarette.
“Bring me another cup of coffee,” he ordered, “and get another chair, Tommy.”
The girl came in. She kissed the general on his right cheek, and then on his chin, and then stood back and looked at him.
“I'm in trouble, Uncle Jimmy,” she said. “If a man from the Headquarters Troop overstays his leave what happens to him?”
“Court-martialed; maybe shot,” replied the general with a glance at Tommy, who did not see it as he was looking at the girl.
“But if it is my fault”
“Then you'll be shot,” said the general cheerily. “Now see here, Peggy, if you don't let my young men alone What's that you're carrying?”
“It's a slicker!” said Peggy.
The general looked at Tommy, and Tommy looked back.
Peggy told her story, and showed, toward the end, an alarming disposition to cry.
“He knew something,” she said. “That—that man Booth was a spy, Uncle Jimmy. I could hear him asking all sorts of questions, and when the sergeant came out his face was”
“Sergeant, eh?' interrupted Uncle Jimmy. “Any sergeants from the Headquarters Troop on leave, Tommy?”
“I'll find out, sir.”
Tommy went away.
“I had got into the car, and he was coming, when three or four other soldiers came along. They all went back into the building, and I—I thought they were going to get Mr. Booth. But pretty soon they came out without him, and one of them gave me this slicker; and—and they all went away.”
“Good Lord!” said the general suddenly. “The young devils! The—the young scamps! So that was it. Now look here, Peggy,” he said, bending forward with a twinkle. “I—well, I understand, I can't explain, but it was just mischief. Your young man's all right, though where he's hiding”
He broke off and chuckled.
“He is not at all the hiding sort.”
“Under certain circumstances, Peggy,“ observed the general, “any man will hide—and should.”
Some time later, at approximately the hour when Sergeant Gray's twenty-three and a half hours' leave was up, the little car started for the city. It contained one anxious young lady, one general who rolled constant cigarettes and chuckled, and one aide on the folding seat in the back, rather resentful because there was no adequate place for his legs.
“I'm going along, Tommy,” the general had said. “It promises to be rather good, and I need cheering. Besides, under the circumstances, a member of Miss Peggy's family”
At the building on Twenty-second Street the general got out, leaving Peggy discreetly in the car. He was a large and very military figure, and he summoned the elevator man with a single commanding gesture.
“I want to know,” said the general fixing him with a cold eye, “whether you happened, yesterday afternoon, to have seen about here an enlisted man without a uniform?”
“I did,” said the elevator man unctuously.
“You did—what?”
“I did see him.”
“Say, 'sir',” prompted the aide.
“I did—sir.” It plainly hurt to say it.
“When and where did you see him last?”
“At one-thirty, getting into a police wagon—sir.”
“Exactly,” said the general. “You of course provided him with clothing before the—er—arrest.”
“I did not,” said the elevator man, who had by now decided that no man could bully him, even if he did wear two stars. “He stole a suit. And before he did that he like to killed two men. Mr. Booth, he's in the hospital now; and as for the other gentleman, he was took away in a taxi last night. If he was one of your men, all I got to say is”
“Of no importance whatever,” finished the general coldly. “Find out where he was taken,” he added to Tommy, and stalked out. The elevator man followed him with resentful eyes.
“You tell Pershing, or the Secretary of War, or whatever that is,” he said venomously, “that his pet wild cat is in the central police station. I expect he's in a padded cell. Good-by.”
An hour later the little car stopped in front of the best restaurant in town and the general assisted his niece to get out. From the folding seat behind, two pairs of long legs, one in khaki and one in black rather too short, disentangied themselves and followed. The best restaurants in town in the morning present a dishabille appearance of sweepers, waiters without coats and general dreariness; but the general took the place by storm.
“Table for four,” he said. Now that he was doing the thing he was minded to do it magnificently. “Sit down, sergeant. Tommy, run and telephone, as I told you, to the Department of Justice. Got to nail those fellows quick.”
As one newly awakened from sleep Sergeant sat down beside Peggy. He presented, up to the neck, the appearance of a Mr. Booth suddenly elongated as to legs and arms. From the neck up he was a young man who had found one hundred and seventy-five dollars and the only girl in the world.
The general ordered breakfast for four. Then he glanced up from the menu.
“Suit you all right, Gray?”
“Splendidly, sir—unless” He hesitated.
“Go ahead,” said the general. “You've earned the right to choose what you like.”
“I was going to suggest, sir, that I ordinarily have a bran muffin”
The general put down the menu and stared at him. Then he chuckled.
“Might have known it would be you!” he observed. “But c'est la guerre, Gray. C'est la guerre! We'll have them.”