XI
The day began with placid routine. Breede did his accustomed two-hours' monologue. And no one molested Bean. No one appeared to know that he was other than he seemed, and that big things were going forward. Tully ignored him. Markham, who had the day before called him "Old man!" whistled obliviously as they brushed past each other in the hall. No directors called him in to tell him that would never do with them.
He was grateful for the lull. He couldn't be "stirred up" that way every day. And he needed to gather strength against Breede when Breede should discover that exquisite joke of the flapper's. He suspected that the flapper wouldn't find it funny to keep the thing from poor old Pops more than a few days longer.
"I'll be drawing my last pay next Saturday," he told himself.
"Telephone for Boston Baked," called the office-boy wit, late in the afternoon.
Bulger looked sympathetic.
"Same trouble I have," he confided as Bean passed him. "Take 'em on once and they bother the life out of you."
"You'd never believe," came the voice of the flapper. "I found the darlingest old sideboard with claw-feet yesterday over on Fourth Avenue. He wants two hundred and eighty, but they're all robbers, and I just perfectly mean to make him come down five or ten dollars. Every little counts. You leave it to me."
"Sure! You fix it all up!"
"And maybe we won't want fumed oak in the dining—room maybe a rich mahogany stain. Would that suit? I'm only thinking of you."
"I'll leave all that to you; you'll perfectly well manage."
"I just perfectly darling well knew you'd say that; and I'm sending you down a car"
"A what? Car?" This was even more alarming than the darling old sideboard.
"Just a little old last year's car. Poor old Pops would give it to me now if I asked him—but it's just as well to have it away in case Moms could ever make him change his mind, only of course she perfectly well can't do anything of the sort. But anyway I'm sending it to that shop around the corner in the street below you, and they'll hold it there to your order. You never can tell; we might need it suddenly some time, and anyway you ought to have it, don't you see, because I'm just perfectly giving it to you this minute, and you can run about in it with that dearest dog, and it's the very first thing I ever gave you, isn't it? I'll always remember it just for that. It will do us all right for a few weeks, until we can look around. And there never was any one before, was there? You just needn't answer; you'd have to say 'No,' and anyway Granny says a young—you know what—should never ask silly questions about what happened before she met him, because it perfectly well makes rows, and I know she's right, but there never was, was there, and no matter anyway, because it's settled forever now, and we do, don't we? My! but I'm excited. Don't forget what I said about the brass andirons and the curtains for your den. Goo'-bye."
"Huh! yes, of course not!" said Bean, but the flapper had gone.
Back at the typewriter he tried to collect his memories of her message: sideboard with darling feet of some kind, no fumed oak, perhaps—brass andirons, curtains for his den. He couldn't recall what she had said about those. Maybe it would come to him. He wished he had told her that he already had a few good etchings. And the car! That was plain in his mind little old last year's thing—at that shop around the corner. Did one say "garrash" or garrige?" He heard both.
Anyway, he owned a motor car; you couldn't get around that. Maybe Bulger wouldn't open his eyes if he knew it. Bulger was an authority on cars, and spoke in detail of their strange insides with the aplomb of a man who has dissected them for years. He had violent disputes with the second bookkeeper about which was the best car for the money. The bookkeeper actually owned a motorcycle, or would, after he had paid five dollars a month a few more times, but Bulger would never allow this minor contrivance to be brought into their discussions. Bulger was intolerant of anything costing under five thou'—eat you up with repairs.
Bean longed to approach Bulger and say:
"Some dame, that! Just sent me a little old last year's car."
But he knew this would never do. Bulger would not only tell him why the car was of an inferior make, but he would want to borrow it to take a certain party, or maybe the gang, out for a spin, and get everybody killed or arrested or something. Bulger dressed fearlessly; no one with eyes could deny that; but he was tactless. Better keep that car under cover.
At seven-thirty that evening, with Nap on a leash, he strolled into the garage. He carried the yellow stick and the gloves, and he was prepared to make all sorts of a nasty row if they tried to tell him the car wasn't there, or so much as hinted that he might not be the right party. He knew how to deal with those automobile sharks.
"I believe you have a car here for me—Mr. Bean," he said briskly. It was the first time in all his life that he had spoken of himself as "Mr. Bean!" He threw his shoulders back even farther when he had achieved it.
The soiled person whom he addressed merely called to another soiled person who, near at hand, seemed to be beating an unruly car into subjection. The second person merely ducked his head backward and over his right shoulder.
"All right, all right!" said the first person, and then to Bean, "All right, all right!"
The car was before him, a large, an alarming car—and red! It was as red as the unworn cravat. Good thing it was getting dark. He wouldn't like to go out in the daytime in one as red as that, not at first.
He ran his eyes critically over it, trying to look disappointed.
"Good shape?" he demanded.
"How about it, Joe? She all right?"
Joe perceptibly stopped hammering.
"Garrumph-rumph!" he seemed to say.
"Well?" said the first person, eying Bean as if this explained everything.
"Take a little spin," said Bean.
"Paul!"
Paul issued from the office, a shock-headed, slouching youth in extreme negligée, a half-burned cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He yawned without dislodging the cigarette.
"Gentleman wants to g'wout." Paul vanished.
Nap had already leaped to a seat in the red car. He had learned what those things were for.
Paul reappeared, trim in leathern cap, well-fitting Norfolk jacket and shining puttees.
"Never know he only had on an undershirt," thought Bean, struck by this swiftly devised effect of correct dressing. He sat in the roomy rear seat beside Nap, leaning an elbow negligently on the arm-rest. He watched Paul shrewdly in certain mysterious preparations for starting the car. An observer would have said that one false move on Paul's part would have been enough.
The car rolled out and turned into the wide avenue half a block away.
"Where to, Boss?" asked Paul.
"Just around," said Bean. "Tea and things!"
They glided swiftly on.
"Oh, just a little old last year's car!" said Bean, frowning royally at a couple of mere foot people who turned to stare.
What would that flapper do next?
He surrendered to the movement. Drunkenly he mused upon a wild inspiration to bring Ram-tah out and give him a ride in this big red car. It appealed to him much. Ram-tah would almost open his eyes at the novelty of that progress. But he felt that this was no safe thing to do. He would be arrested. The whole secret might come out.
He had retained no sense of direction, but he was presently conscious of the river close at his side, and then the car, with warning blasts, curved up to a much lighted building and halted. A large man in uniform came solicitously to help him descend and gave him a fragment of cardboard which he knew would redeem his motor.
He was seated at a table looking down upon the shining river.
"Tea and things," he said to the waiter.
"Yes, sir; black or green, sir?"
"Bottle ginger ale!" How did he know whether he wanted black or green tea. No time to be fussy.
He began a lordly survey of the people at neighbouring tables—people who had doubtless walked there, or come in hired cabs, at the best. Hired cabs had yesterday seemed impressive to him; now they were rather vulgar. Of course, there might be circumstances
He froze like a pointing dog. At a table not twenty feet distant, actually in the flesh, sat the Greatest Pitcher the World Has Ever Known. For a moment he could only stare fixedly. The man was simply there! He was talking volubly to two other men, and he was also eating a mere raspberry ice!
It showed how things "worked around," once you got started. Hadn't his whole life been a proof of this? How many times had he wished he might happen upon that Pitcher just as he was now, in street clothes—to look at him, study him! He wished he had ordered raspberry ice instead of ginger ale, which he didn't like. He would order one anyway.
It was all Ram-tah. If you knew you were a king, you needn't ever worry again. You sat still and let things come to you. After all, a king was greater than a pitcher, if you came down to it—in some ways, certainly.
He stared until the group left the table. He could actually have touched the Pitcher as he passed. Would wonders never cease?
Two men in uniform helped him into the big red car again, tenderly, as if he were fragile. He had meant to return to the garage, but now he saw the more dignified way was to stop at his own house. Further, Paul should take him to the office in the morning and call for him at four-thirty again. He wouldn't be afraid to ride in the red car even in daylight now. Sitting there not twenty feet from that Pitcher!
"Eight o'clock in the morning," he said curtly to Paul as he descended. And Paul touched his leather cap respectfully as the car moved off.
Cassidy lounged near in shirt sleeves.
"I see three was kilt-up in wan yistaday in th' Bur-ronx," said Cassidy interestedly.
"Good thing for the tired business man, though," said Bean, yawning in a bored way. "And that fellow of mine is careful."
Then his seeming boredom vanished.
"Say, you can't guess who I saw just now. Close to him as I am to you this minute"
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
Solitary in the big red car, descending the crowded lanes of the city the next morning, Bean's sensations were conceivably those that had been Ram-tah's at the zenith of his power. There was the fragrant and cherished memory of the Greatest Pitcher, and a car to ride solitary in that simply blared the common herd from before it. People in street-cars looked enviously out at him. He lolled urbanely, with a large public manner. When you were a king you behaved like one, and the world knelt to you. Great pitchers sitting under the same roof with you; red motor-cars; fumed oak dining-rooms; flappers; brokers; shares. He wished he had thought to chew an unlighted cigar in this resplendent chariot. There seemed to be almost a public demand for it. Certain things were expected of a man!
"Be here at four-thirty," he directed.
And Paul, his fellow, glancing up along the twenty-two stories of the office building, was impressed. He considered it probable that the bored young man owned this building. "The guys that have gits!" thought Paul.
Bean was preposterously working once more, playing the part of a cog on the wheel. Another day, it seemed, of that grotesque nonsense, even after the world's Greatest Pitcher had sat not twenty feet from him the night before, eating raspberry ice. But events could not long endure that strain. Before the day was over Breede would undoubtedly "fire" him, with two or three badly chosen words; actually go through the form of discharging a man who had once ruled all Egypt with a kindly but an iron hand!
Of course, the fellow was unconscious of this, as he still must be of the rare joke the flapper was exquisitely holding over his head. His demeanour toward Bean betrayed no recognition of shares or pitchers or big red cars, nor of the ever-impending change in their relationship. He dictated fragments of English words, and Bean reconstructed them with the cunning of a Cuvier. He felt astute, robust, and disrespectful. Just one wrong word from Breede and all would be over between them. The poor old wreck didn't dream that he had nursed a flapper in his bosom, a flapper that would just perfectly have what she wanted—and no good fussing.
In the outer office, however, he was aware that his expansion was subtly making itself felt. Bulger had insensibly altered and was treating him after the manner of a fellow club man. Old Metzeger said "Good morning!" to him affectionately—for Metzeger—and once he detected Tully staring at him through the enlarging glasses as if in an effort to read his very soul. But he knew his soul was not to be read by such as Tully. Tully, back there on the Nile, would have been a dancer—at the most, a fancy skater—if, indeed, he had risen to the human order, and were not still a slinking gazelle. Good name that, for Tully. He would remember it—gazelle!
At three o'clock he glanced aside from his typewriter to see a director enter Breede's room. He did not lift his look above the hem of the man's coat, but he knew him for the quiet one. And yet, when the door closed upon him, he seemed to become as noisy as any of them. Bean heard his voice rising.
Another director came, the big one who gripped a cigarette with an obviously cigar mouth. Once behind the shut door he seemed to approve of the noise and to be swelling its volume.
Three other directors hurried in, the elderly advanced dresser in the lead. He, of course, was always indignant, but now the other two were manifesting choler equal to his own. They puffed and glowered and, when the door had closed, they seemed to help skilfully with the uproar. It was a mob scene.
Bean was reminded of a newspaper line he had once or twice encountered: "The scene was one of indescribable confusion. Pandemonium reigned!" Pandemonium indubitably seemed to reign over those directors. He wondered. He wondered uncomfortably.
"Buzz-z-z-z! Buzz-z-z-z-z! Buzz-z-z-z-z-z!"
He quit wondering. He knew.
Yet for a moment after he stood in their presence they seemed to take no note of him. They were not sitting decorously in chairs as he conceived that directors should. The big one with the cigarette sat on the table, ponderously balanced with a fat knee between fat red hands. Another stood with one foot on a chair. Only the quiet one was properly sitting down. The elderly advanced dresser was not even stationary. With the faultless coat thrown back by pocketed hands, revealing a waist line greater than it should have been, he strutted and stamped. He seemed to be trying to step holes into the rug, and to be exploding intimately to himself.
"Plain enough," said the man who had been studying his foot on the chair. "Some one pulled the plug."
"And away she goes—shoosh!" said the big man dramatically.
"Kennedy & Balch buying right and left. Open at a hundred and twenty-five to-morrow, sure!" said the quiet one quietly.
"Placed an order yesterday for four hundred shares and got 'em," said another, not so quietly. "And to-day they're bidding Federal Express up to the ceiling."
"Plug pulled!"
The advanced-dressing director strutted to the fore with a visibly purpling face.
"Plug pulled? Want t' know where it was pulled? Right in this office. Want to know who pulled it? That!" He pointed unmistakably to the child among them taking notes. At another time Bean might have quailed, at least momentarily; but he had now discovered that the advanced-dressing old gentleman used scent on his clothes. He was afraid of no man who could do that in the public nostrils. He surveyed the old gentleman with frank hostility, noting with approval, however, the dignified yet different pattern of his waistcoat. But he knew the other directors were looking hard at him.
"Shrimp! snake!" added the old gentleman, like a shocked naturalist encountering a loathsome hybrid.
"Been plowing with our heifer?" asked Breede incisively.
Bean was familiar with that homely metaphor. He felt easier.
"Your heifer!" He would have liked to snort as the old gentleman did, but refrained from an unpractised effort! "Your heifer? No; I bought a good fat yoke of steers to do my plowing. Took his money to buy one of 'em with!" He waved a careless arm at the smouldering vessel across the table. They were all gasping, in horror, in disgust. He was a little embarrassed. He sought to smooth the thing over a bit with his next words.
"Eagle shot down with its own feather," he said, hazily recalling something that had seemed very poetic when he read it.
"Wha'd I tell you? Wha'd I tell you!" shouted the oldest director, doing an intricate dance step.
"Hold 'ny Federal?" asked Breede.
"A block or two; several margins of it," said Bean.
"How many shares?"
"Have to ask Kennedy & Balch; they're my brokers. I guess about some seven or eight hundred shares."
"Wha'd I tell you? Wha'd I tell you?" again shouted the oldest director, and, as if despairing of an answer, he swore surprisingly for one of his refined garniture and aroma.
"Find out something in this office?" asked Breede, evenly.
"Why wouldn't I? I found out something the minute you sent people to me with that 'By the way—' stuff. I knew it as quick as you had them breaking their ankles trying to get my fifty shares. Knew it the very minute you sent that—that slinking gazelle to me." He pointed at Tully.
He had not meant to call Tully that. It 
rushed out. Tully wriggled uneasily in his chair at the desk, blushed well into his yellow beard, then drew out a kerchief of purest white silk and began nervously to polish his glasses.
"Hoo-shaw-Ha-ha-Hooshway!"
It was Breede, with, for the moment, a second purple face on the Board of Directors. Neither Bean nor Tully ever knew whether he had suppressed a laugh or a sneeze.
"Come, come, come!" broke in the oldest, sweeping the largest director aside with one finger as he pulled a chair to the table.
"This 'll never do with us, you know! How much, how much, how much?"
He again poised the chastely wrought fountain pen of gold above the dainty check-book in Morocco leather.
"Have to give 'em up you know; can't allow that sort of underhand work; where'd the world be, where'd it be, where'd it be? Sign an order; tell me what you paid. Take your word for it!"
He was feeling for Bean the contempt which a really distinguished safe-blower is said to feel for the cheap thief who purloins bottles of milk from basement doorways in the gray of dawn.
"Now, now, now, boy!" The pen was still poised.
"Oh, put up your trinkets," said Bean with a fine affectation of weariness.
The old gentleman sat back and exhaled a scented but vicious breath. There was silence. It seemed to have become evident that the unprincipled young scoundrel must be taken seriously.
Then spoke the largest director, removing from his lips a cigarette which his own bulk seemed to reduce to something for a microscope only. He had been silent up to this moment, and his words now caused Bean the first discomfort he had felt.
"You will come here to-morrow morning," he began, slanting his entire facial area toward Bean, "and you will make restitution for this betrayal of trust. I think I speak for these gentlemen here, when I say we will do nothing with you to-night. Of course, if we chose—but no; you are a free man until to-morrow morning. After that all will depend on you. You are still young; I shall be sorry if we are forced to adopt extreme measures. I believe we shall all be sorry. But I am sure a night of sober reflection will bring you to your senses. You will come here to-morrow morning. You may go."
The slow, cool words had told. He tried to preserve his confident front, as he turned to the door. He would have left his banner on the field but for the oldest director, who had too long been silent.
"Snake in the grass!" hissed the oldest director, and instantly the colours waved again from Bean's lifted standard. He did not like the oldest director and he soared into the pure ether of verbal felicity, forgetful of all threats.
He stared pityingly at the speaker a moment, then cruelly said:
"You know they quit putting perfumery on their clothes right after the Chicago fire."
He left the room with faultless dignity.
"Impertinent young whelp!" spluttered the oldest director; but his first fellow-director who dared to look at him saw that he was gazing pensively from the high window, his back to the group.
"No good," said the quiet director to the largest. "A little man's always the hardest to bluff. Bet I could bluff you quicker than you could bluff him!"
"Well, I didn't know what else," answered the largest director, who was already feeling bluffed.
"Why didn't J. B. here assert himself then?"
"’Fraid he'd get mad 's 'ell an' quit me," said Breede. "Only st'nogfer ever found gimme minute's peace. Dunno why—talk aw ri'. He un'stan's me; res' drive me sane."
"Plug's pulled, anyway," commented the quiet director. "Only thing to do is haul in what we can on a rising market. God knows where she'll stop."
"Pound her down," said the largest director sagely.
"Any pounding now will pound her up."
"Hold off and let it die down."
"Only make it worse. No use; we ve got to cut that money up."
"Seven hundred shares, did he say?" asked the large director. "Very pretty indeed! J. B., I'll only give you one guess whether he quits his job or not."
"Thasso!" admitted Breede dejectedly.
"He'll show up all right in the morning, mark me," said the largest director, regaining confidence.
"Sneaking snake in the grass," muttered the oldest director, yet without his wonted vim.
"I'll telephone to McCurdy, right in the next block here," continued the largest director. "Might as well have this chap watched to-night and keep tight to him to-morrow until he shows up. We may find somebody's behind him."
"'S my idea," said Breede, "some one b'ind him."
"Grinning little ape!" remarked the oldest director bitterly.
To Bean in the outer office came the facetious boy.
"Telephone for Perfesser Bunker Hill Monument," he said, but spoiled it by laughing himself. It was extempore and had caught him unawares. The harried Bean fled to the telephone booth.
"I wanted to tell you," began the flapper, "not to eat anything out of cans unless I just perfectly have it on my pure-food list. They poison people, but the dearest grocer gave me a list of all the safe things, made up by a regular committee that tells how much poison each thing has in it, so you can know right off, or alcohol either. Now, remember! Oh, yes, what was I going to say? Granny says the first glamour soon fades, but after that you just perfectly settle down to solid companionship. And oh, yes, I want you to let me just perfectly have my own way about those hangings for the drawing-room, because you see I know, and, oh, I had some thing else. No matter. Won't I be glad when the deal is adjusted in the interests of all concerned, as poor old Pops says. Why don't you tell me something? I'm just perfectly waiting to hear."
"Uh, of course, of course; you're just perfectly a slinking gazelle. Ha, ha, ha!" answered Bean, laughing at his own jest after the manner of the office-boy.
He was back making a feeble effort to finish the last of Breede's letters. He glanced mechanically at his notes. Above that routine work he had so many things to think about. He'd fixed Tully for good. Tully wouldn't try that "by the way" and "not impossible" stuff with him any more. And that little old man—perfumery not used since the Chicago fire, or had he said the Mexican War? No matter. And talked to Breede about heifers. But there was the big-faced brute, speaking pretty seriously. Let him go free to-night! State's prison offence, maybe! Might be in jail this time to-morrow. Would the flapper telephone to him there? Send him unpoisoned canned food? Would he be disgraced? Breede—directors—glamour wearing off—slinking gazelles with yellow whiskers—rotten perfumery. So rushed the turbulent flood of his mind. But the letter was finished at last.
Two days later a certain traffic manager of lines west of Chicago read a paragraph in this letter many times:
"The cramped conditions of this terminal have been of course appreciably relieved by the completion of the west-side cut-off. Nevertheless our traffic has not yet attained its maximum, and new problems of congestion will arise next year. I am engaged to that perfectly flapper daughter of yours, and we are going to marry each other when she gets perfectly good and ready. Better not fuss any. Let Julia do the fussing. To meet this emergency I dare say it will come to four-tracking the old main line over the entire division. It will cost high, but we must have a first-class freight-carrier if we are to get the business."
The traffic manager at first reached instinctively for his telegraphic cipher code. But he reflected that this was not code-phrasing. He read the paragraph again and was obliged to remind himself that his only daughter was already the wife of a man he knew to be in excellent health. Also he was acquainted with no one named Julia.
He copied from the letter that portion of it which seemed relevant, and destroyed the original. He had never heard it said of Breede; but he knew there are times when, under continued mental strain, the most abstemious of men will relax.