The Man Who Would Be Prophet

by Edwin Balmer

FOOL all, part the time; part, all the time; but not all, all the time."

Then he cusses them and calls them beasts and swine

The Man Who would be Prophet—See page 726

 

 

THE MAN WHO WOULD
BE PROPHET

BY EDWIN BALMER

Author of "By Wireless" etc.

DRAWING BY C. H. DROGKAMP (SEE FRONTISPIECE)

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct for life and saves many from working for a living.

The beginning of everything was upon the road which runs near the Bridewell. There had been a difficulty with the expense account which necessitated travelling, not in cab which is only half as dear as automobile, but in cable-car which is awful indeed. A break-down in cable-car is quite as routine as in automobile but can never be fashionable; moreover the population misses by a shade or two the nicety of really refined gasoline.

My particular cable-car, however, was so comparatively deserted that I had quite one strap to myself till a huge gentlemen clamped hands and feet over mine and—following the custom in Chicago cable-cars—passed a word for Municipal Ownership. He called himself a Journalist like myself only careless to the point of criminal liability in using the advertising rather than the news columns for his Representations. He talked of South American plantations, flesh-reducers and mail-order diagnosis enthusiastically; of difficulties with the Board of Health and exclusion from the mails, darkly.

"If men like me had the run of things, it isn't the Fourth but the First Estate we'd make it," he volunteered. And as I fastened my watch to both key chains, I was inclined to agree with him.

"Did you say you were getting back down-town soon?" he asked.

"As soon as I can get a car," I replied.

"Do you think you can make it by night?" he said. "I must get word to him then. Mine is urgent business. It's this way. I didn't expect him till the twenty-ninth, but this time he got ten days off for good conduct. That means he'll be at the Magnolius Hotel to-night."

"The name?" said I.

"How should I know? But he can't get an alias for his figure. He ain't more than five feet six and stout. He'll have heavy black hair but it won't have time to grow out much. But you'll know him. Just go up and say 'He's gone south for thirty days' and he'll tumble."

"But you?" I said.

"Oh I sold the Post Office Building to a man from down the state and like a d—d fool sold it to him again next time he came up. Could just as easy have sold him option on the auditorium or Masonic Temple or—or Lincoln Park; but got careless. Well; this is what comes of trying to turn over money too many times in the same place. But you'll give him my message?"

The Officer on the platform put a hand on his shoulder and I reflected. It promised "space." Space, in Chicago newspapers is five and six dollars a column only but I was riding in cable.

I had little difficulty in finding the room at the Magnolius that night.

"I'm from him," I announced through the cautious crack of the door. "I'm to tell you he had to go South for thirty days."

The door bounced angrily open now and I could see he was very rotund and his hair was thick though not yet grown out much.

"Gone South for thirty days?" he repeated. "Like him; just when I was getting ready to pull teeth by mail-order too. Did he say I was to bail him out? Cause I won't."

"He didn't," I said and dropped away.

Then I became respectable and paid at the Pressed Club, not my dues—for I was not a new member—nor even all the rest I owed, but still enough to rehabilitate my credit and my name once more appeared at the bottom of the slips. When a man has money, the only account he can't afford to pay is that of the Club; but when he hasn't it, the Pressed Club demands are the only ones he can afford to settle. It gives him a ready refuge where the talk is never sordid and even if he finds it advisable to bring thither creditors, met on the way, converse there is on too lofty a plane to ever become embarrassing. Moreover, if the creditor is too reminiscent, the Club furnishes excellent facilities for pleasantly and cheaply liquidating Liabilities.

This night two of these Liabilities had been with me but by ten o'clock I had them entirely liquidated and they had vanished. Two men in crash stood over me. The first said, "It's him;" the second, "So it is," I said; "It's not," with customary caution, but they smiled and mopped their foreheads. "We need a drink," said the taller of the two. He was the man I had met on the cable-car; there was no mistaking the clamp of his hand or the rotundity of the other, though now his hair had grown out amazingly all over. I was not pleased. Rehabilitation aforesaid was beginning to get shabby.

"Why?" I asked.

"You'll be interested," the tall one assured. "First let me introduce you proper to Brother Dan Dravie, that's him; and Poachey Cardigan, that's me. The less said about our profession the better for we've done everything in our time—and done time too, often enough. We've sold both sides of State Street from Van Buren to the river, the Post Office and City Hall and most of the public grounds—sold it all on easy payments to down state men and a few from Iowa; and we never even asked for the second installment. We've located gold mines and love, restored hair, affections and full figures all by mail order. We've done a lot more than the statute of limitations will make mentionable some day; but it's all played out. Therefore we're going to be prophets, Dan and I; we're going to be millionaire prophets."

"Prophets we'll be," confirmed Dravie.

"I understand perfectly," I said. "You shouldn't drink so many patent medicines. You must be more careful."

"Neither drunk nor careless," denied Dravie. "Prophets we'll be—what else is there for us. We've never been in any one place except jail long enough to get anything out of politics—though jail ain't a real handicap in Chicago, We haven't any capital; we haven't a cent—haven't even a bank reference. We've played out every mere worldly graft. We can't work and we can't work anything that isn't liable to be investigated these days. So there's nothing else open but the Heavenly graft. We're going to be prophets—the only question is which?"

"Which prophet?" I asked as I succumbed and signed the ticket.

"I mean what name," Cardigan explained. "We've got all the specifications."

With subdued pride he handed me a paper on which was written informally:

"Contract—between me and you and you and me.

"One. That me and you do this together—to be prophets and make 'em big.

"Two. That me and you be prophets together, or me with you or you with me. helping or any other way as pays best; and that me and you will do anything, even up to doing as we should, to do this.

"Three. That me nor you shall not be prophet unto himself for more than fifty per cent—whoever's prophet, me and you always getting half.

(Signed) Poachey Cardigan.

Dan Dravie. "

"Now," said Cardigan, "the only question is who we want? A good man's half the prophet. And it has to be jointed—you can't have a mere single name in prophecy any more than you can in the English aristocracy."

"Don't you want to be original?" said I.

"Original?" put in Cardigan scornfully. "Did you ever see anybody original pay? The original prophets were dandies, weren't they? Never cleared a thing that I heard of. But when they come back! No sir! Original prophecy may have been all right in its time—but me for the modern prophet!"

"Most of the good names have been used—even for the second time," lamented Dravie. "Elisha and all the rest with the good pious sigh at the end."

"Why don't you be Manasha?" I suggested.

"Manasha—sounds good," reflected Dravie slowly, "but Manasha the what? You've got to be the Reviver, the Restorer, the Recoverer, the Repairer or the Re-something to divert the invalid coin from Hot Springs!

"How 'll the Resusticator do?" I asked. "That's never been used, I believe."

"Fine," enthused Cardigan. "Manasha the Resusticator and Dan's hair ought to go together. If he's any kind of a Resusticator he'll come in mighty handy to himself to bring 'em through after he's done 'em."

"The Resusticator part's all right," agreed Dravie. "But where did you get Manasha?" suspiciously.

"Manasha's all right," I assured. "Got him from the encyclopedia. Look at those books over there Ma—Nasha. Great name, eh?"

"From the outside of the Encyclopedia?" said Cardigan slowly. "But that's the way they name those crazy burlesque troops and fake cures."

"Well?" said I; and there was an appreciative pause.

"Then I've never been here before," objected Dravie after a moment. "I told you I didn't want to be original—with never a private car or Florida house to my back. I want to have been here before."

"Tell 'em you were then," said Cardigan contemptuously. "What have you got all that hair for if you can't carry off a little thing like that? Besides you won't have to waste any time now reading up to see what you were when you were here before. Great! You'll be the only prophet returned to earth never having been here before and all you do—"

"Who's going to be Manasha?" demanded Dravie, and Cardigan subsided.

"We needn't keep you up," Dravie said politely turning to me after a moment. "We want to look up a few things in these books here. So just sign another buffet slip, will you? No; don't bother to fill in the top—and we'll put back all the books we don't need." And I left them pouring over the books.

In a newspaper office events obliterate each other. A great person could not be found or could not be lost or developed, some other incapacity which demanded some thousands of ems per day. It was only at the end of the month when I wondered who had written in six Martinis and Manhattans over my signature, that I recalled my indiscretion at the Club.

I turned then to the profitable avocation of city newspaper men. As everyone knows, country newspapers pay illy for space but pictures require much space and little exertion. So, after buying the old sample stocks of small photographers, we supply the rural press with scores of likenesses (seldom two alike) whenever anything happens to celebrities—and sometimes when we merely say something happens. The demand is heavy, but if celebrities refuse to warn us it is not our fault that a President's daughter or a Senator's wife appears blonde in Dakota, brunette in Iowa and red-headed in parts of Kansas. Then a not entirely insignificant war springing up between the Russians and the Japanese, my attention was again distracted.

For some weeks I was unimpeded by fact or information and war extras flourished. Then an inconsiderate Associated Press correspondent, sending words at a couple of dollars apiece, began moving those fleets and armies whose annihilation had thrice brought out circulation well over the quarter million. I was regulated to the mechanical confirming of his despatches from Chefoo and adding the details.

It was a hot eventful night. I had myself to blame for most of the events. Before nine-thirty I had raised Port Arthur and sunk the entire Russian fleet. Of course I had done this before in the routine way. But this time I had confirmed the raising of the fort and the depression of the fleet from Pekin, Shanghai, Teinsin and from four other places I found on the map and to be absolutely sure of beating our rivals had heard heavy firing from two places besides not given on any atlas. Then I had denied it unofficially and officially from St. Petersburg and semi-officially also, quoting the semi-official Novoe Vremya which attributed the disasters of the entire war to the English and American Press. Tokyo had wired me its regular ominous but monotonous silence. The German Kaiser and five of his ministers—whose names I chose carefully from the Milwaukee directory—had cabled the paper that they would still persevere from interfering. Paris sent invigorated confidence that Rothschild's would still take Russian bonds. London now claimed the maritime preponderance in more aggravated form; Washington sent me the standing pledge more erect than ever—of its total abstinence from foreign trouble. Even from Boston I had not forgotten to elicit a loud call to the Hague. Repeated practice had made perfect at last; every detail which we did not have to save for a later extra, was there. Like sponge cake, after the kitchen door had been slammed, the world quivered and sank a little; then adjusted itself soggily to the shock and all was well—unless that careless correspondent in the East insisted again upon manæuvering with that fleet so recently abased.

To be on the safe side I left.

"Due to the well-known unreliability of information from Chinese sources (I knew; for had not my full dress shirt, promised for Friday, remained in the celestial tub till Saturday?) the dispatches printed in our regular edition, while there is every presumption that they are still correct, await further confirmation." And finally for any contingency overlooked, I left three distinct sets of Chefoo details which had not yet been used west of Pittsburg.

I sought the club as I had the night the year before. I could see little change—it is not a place where you see much lying around. A different third of the membership was supporting the other two. In the billiard room, white's string was short five buttons instead of three; and after passing thirty-five, black could, with caution, now steal two points instead of one—that was all.

Into the chair beside mine and before the stand where my gin ricky cooled, there crawled a strange semblance of a man. In different places from his hair and clothing a gummy black substance formed a bas-relief and adhered to everything it touched. I had seen such a sight once before when a man had fallen down upon Jackson Boulevard while they were paving it; for everyone knows that Jackson Boulevard is asphalt; and asphalt is a diachylon pavement and most adhesive to fall into before it has cooled. But this man wore the paving alone; unmistakable signs of gravel were upon him—and Jackson Boulevard does not rmi along the lake shore.

"Can't you give me another drink?" he whispered as he put down my gin ricky. "For the sake of the prophet give me another drink."

"For the sake of the prophet?" I said. "What prophet?"

"Don't you know me?" he gasped.

"Not while you're wearing that Venezuela mixture," I said.

His hands felt instinctively for my watch; and as instinctively I snapped it to my key chains. I tried to remember where I had picked up that instinct, but for a moment I could not.

"I've come back," he repeated. "And we was prophets—prophets and made 'em big." He seemed to be quoting. "Me and Dravie, what was Manasha the Resusticator; up-to-date millionaire prophets we was. Right here we settled it, you setting there and giving us drinks. I'm Poachey Cardigan and you—Oh Lordy, you've been lying around here ever since!"

"In reality only," I warned. "Constructively I've been lying in Seoul, Chemulpo, Vladivostok, Chefoo and a lot of other places. But never mind that. Where have you been?"

"It's true," said Cardigan with a dry suggestive gulp as he broke the straws "Prophets we was and made 'em big. He divided fair and equal—or he was going to—50% and 50%, for he played me square. And then he went and lost it all. O poor, poor Dan that never would take my advice though I begged him."

"Take the cocktail," I said with polite anachronism. "Tell me everything from beginning to end. You started out as Manasha the Resusticator; do you remember that?"

"I ain't drunk yet. Of course I remember. We started out early the next morning, we did; and Dravie was the Resusticator—he had the hair; and I was the clinic."

"The clinic?" I asked.

"Sure; but don't interrupt me. He had the build—short and fat and honest looking. Even his face looked honest for you couldn't see it for the hair and somehow hair—even if it's false hair looks honest."

"He shaved just the top of his head; and combed the rest down so it met his beard and covered him up. Then he put on black robes and rolled me in the street and put sticking plaster all over me, though nothing's the matter and gives me a crutch, telling me to stay back and wait for the signal.

"Down by the court house are about a thousand people getting personal injury damages from the city and street cars. He goes into the street and hollers but they think he's advertising a dental parlor and no one stops. He hollers louder and waves his arms, and some thinks he's advertising a new Garden and some Germans stop. Then he cusses them and calls them beasts and swine so that at last everybody knows he's a modern prophet and that's the modern introduction to salvation and they all stops. Then he tells them how he is Manasha the Resusticator, returned but arriving for the first time to resusticate the living yet dead and dead where life was and a lot more so that no one can understand it and they all take it in.

"Then he calls for them suffering from loathsome diseases because all disease is loathsome being of the spirit not the body—the county hospital to the contrary notwithstanding—and therefore to be cured by a good talker. I comes up then and seeing me he calls out that I'm forgiven by Manasha and he tears off the plaster—which hurt like the D..l let me tell you—and rips off the sling and waves my crutch over his head.

"Just then as he calls for more, some come out of the court house. They didn't dare throw off their splints and crutches yet, so Dravie rushes up to them, which have been paid their damages, and makes passes over them with his hands. He tells 'em he's forgiven them and they're well. Part of them, being sore tired of their bandages, tears them off; and he tears them off the rest; and they all cries out he's a great prophet—and he is, for they give him part of their damages to make sure he won't tell. Them that haven't got their damages yet, he pulls out of their chairs and cures them; and they have to say he's a great prophet too, though they don't want to.

"But a man with really something the matter comes along; and Dravie, seeing him first, cries out that he feels a poor, diseased sinful brother is drawing nigh who can't be healed as he lacks faith; and he's right, he can't be healed. So Manasha makes good there too. And then he begins talking about a town.

"I never heard of such a town—and I've read the booklets for the New Jersey resorts too. He built that town up like a railroad writer about a block-signal and a siding—and Dravie didn't even have the semaphore to go on. I couldn't see his lay till he began selling lots in that town; and then I knows he wasn't crazy.

"What did I do? I said, "Dan you old fool, you got a thousand dollars and half is mine by contract. Go and get decent drunk." But he wouldn't as he shouldn't but should later on as you'll see. Then "Where're you going, Dan?" says I.

"To the town," he says. "Our town."

"Come out of it," says I. "You put it pretty strong, but you didn't believe it yourself, Dan?"

"We caught 'em on the rise," he says talking like a broker and paying no attention to me. "But if we had a town—an exchange where we could margin this salvation business too, we could sell 'em short and catch 'em coming and going. We must have a town."

"But you promised 'em that, Dan," says I. "That's what you took their money for—and are you going to give it to 'em?"

"I got to," he says but I could see it hurt him. " Didn't we used to leave the pea under the shell the first times before we got anything big, Poachey?" he says. And then I see he is all right but has bigger schemes than I know and follow on.

"We come to a little place in the country where a lot of crazy people were trying to get together on one religion. No two of them were alike except they were all dissatisfied and they're fighting but, when we finds them at the one meeting house trying to see who'd run it. And Dravie sees the reason they all disagree is that nobody's afraid of anybody else and they can all understand what each other say so they have the nerve to say it's not so. Then Dan puts on his robes and stalks in, not speaking to anybody when they speak to him but knocking over them in his way. Then he cusses them all around and gets 'em scared and talks for an hour and a half on things which they never heard of before and he didn't either and in words they don't understand and neither does he. Then all of a sudden he stops and leans over and says that maybe, if they give all to the service of the prophet—which is him—he'll do what he can to save them. And they're so anxious to show they understand something he's said at last that they do it. But when the first man offered all he has, Dravie says "No;" and that takes 'em all back; and when the next man offered all he has, Dravie says "No;" and that gets them all worked up so that the leader offers him all they all have and finally they get Dravie to say "Yes," but reluctantly. And that was how we got our town where I was recorder of the Host and Prayer-master General; and a good graft it was with no one to look into the scandals of the department."

"Take another drink if you can and go on," I said. "How did you make it a good graft with those people?"

"It wasn't just them few," Cardigan said. "Dravie sent for them he sold the lots to, following his fool innovation of giving them what he sold; they all come and brought a pile more. He sold them lots and then he sold them all some more lots till we sold some twice over and some we didn't have like in the good old days. Poachy Cardigan—him that was Inspector of Righteousness—he couldn't see what more could be gotten; but he didn't have the modern prophetic vision. So Dravie wouldn't go and get drunk then, as he shouldn't, but should later on as he knows now.

"Ten per cent. of what they have, Dravie makes them give him clear; and the other ninety—how did we get that? It's shameful what they spend in tobacco, so he forbids it to 'em and they give the prophet the cost. What they spend on liquor is disgraceful, so they have to stop that and give him the price. And that was better than selling them the liquor in monopoly as he thought first of doing because now we make one hundred instead of only ninety-five per cent, on the traffic. He discourages kissing and engagement rings—having no jewelry store—but advises adding the price of the diamond to the fee. When they build their houses, Dravie blesses them all on a sliding scale; but that don't pay anything like the profit on the material he sells them. And if we didn't get forty per cent, there, he credited me with more than my share which wasn't like him.

"Another forty we get after telling them the dignity of work and work for the love of working—which they pretty nearly did. And is there ten per cent. missed? We must have got that for we owned the stores and sold 'em everything. And Poachey Cardigan, he can't see what else we can get after getting one hundred per cent.; but he ain't the prophet. He says, "Now Dan, will you get out? If we get any more, it'll be tainted." But still he wouldn't as he should later on—but did not.

"Poachey Cardigan, he didn't have a prophetic insight; for after he thought he had everything, having only one hundred per cent., Dravie got 'em to give back everything—all the land he sold them and the houses they built on it. Even the Equitable never worked anything like that. So when I see them all paying rent—and shameful high rent it was—for their own houses, I was for leaving. As far as I saw, the people didn't have anything but prayings left. But Dravie remembered the old Pan-healer we used to run; so he has a lot of cure letters run off. They were prayer cure letters now but made up the old way—a lot printed off with the place for the name and disease left blank. Whenever anyone sends in a petition for a cure and ten dollars—you understand this was for the trade we couldn't reach personally so they had the ten—we filled in the names at the top and sent it back, which was better than the old days when we had to fill a bottle up with colored water and send that too.

"Then Poachey, he says, "Dan; ain't this the limit. Dan," I says, is there anything else?" And Dan says, "I've done 'em pretty thoroughly, haven't I?" I says, "Dan I mean it. With a wig and a Sunday School class to hide the baldness, you'd shame our Prominent Citizen. I don't see how Miss Tarbell overlooked you. Will you stop now?" But he only hesitated.

"Poachey," he says. "I got nothing against you. Don't misunderstand me. I never see anyone better than you to get the goods when the graft is started. No, Poachey, in some way you do them better than me; but in other ways you can't help me the way I need. You don't originate half the new business you ought; you haven't the instinct. I have it pretty strong myself and it seems to me I've worked everything—yes, I've done about everything, I think, but operate for appendicitis. But you don't know how I feel fearing I may have missed something; and you can't help me. Poachey, I've got to have someone born and trained to it. I've got to have a politician."

"A politician?" says I. "What for?"

"An alderman, if I can get one," says Dan, "from Tammany Hall of the Philadelphia ring. I can't depend on you, Poachey. You haven't the instinct. But if one of them says there's nothing left to be worked"—

"But I stops him. "Dan," I says cautiously, fearing I don't know what, "Don't. There may be honor even between one of them and us; but don't! How are you going to get anybody to come anyway?" I says. "We haven't any street railways wanting franchises or a gas works wanting a charter; there's no water-works big enough to make it worth his while and we ain't going to put in a subway or drainage system. What'll he find in it?" I says again. "He won't come."

"I'll start him on a guarantee and then put him on a percentage basis," says Dan; and in spite of all I says, he sent for the politician. Poor, poor Dan."

The lips wavered; but as I signed another slip and the steward hurried off suggestively, Cardigan went on.

"There was two of us—Dravie, what was prophet and Cardigan, that's me. But old Dan, though he was prophet comes running down the street.

"For Gord's sake, Dan," says I. "What's—"

"The Politician," he yells, "The politician, Poachey. Oh Poachey, Poachey; it's all my fault," he jerks out as he ran. "I wouldn't have sent for him as you asked but,—"

"But what, Dan?" says I.

"But I thought coming straight from New York or Philadelphia or New Jersey, his instinct couldn't fail to set him doing the people in any spot we overlooked. But Poachey—he's a reformer—a reformer."

"You mean, Dan," I yells, "You mean...?"

"I do, Poachey," says Dan. "He turned us out and broke us up. He's taken everything away from us and turned the people against us. But—but there's one comfort, Poachey," he says.

"What's that?" I says.

"We hadn't overlooked anything, Poachey. We must have gathered everything in that was at all loose and a good deal that was nailed down; for he couldn't see anything left for him to get except from us and so," says Dan, "he's getting it."

"You should have thought of that Dan," says I.

"How did I know he was a reformer?" says Dan and I couldn't say any more.

"The people were coming on close behind and we could hear them. "Listen," says Dan. "He's gone and destroyed the confidence of the people in me too. They used to think I was infallible and now—"

"Neither old prophet or new," they all yells. "If he's old style, he'd never have taken a cent; if new, he'd never have a cent taken from him. And they caught old Dan by the barber shop and shaved him. Pretty soon they begin to see who he was; and—you remember those statutes of Limitations I was telling about? Well; they hadn't run out; poor, poor Dan. If he only got drunk any one of the times I told him to—they was often enough!"

He hiccoughed pitifully but I held the glass away. "And you—you? I said.

"There was a party along called Poachey Cardigan, wasn't there? They caught old Poachey up where they were putting gravel on a roof. They didn't have any feathers; so they put the regular roofing on him, with stone to cover the tar—and turned him out. Said he was a better prophet than Dravie because he did it without the hair. Say; have you ever walked a hundred miles with a shoe full of stones? Old Poachey, he was one big shoe full of stones all over. He walked and walked and all along the road Dan Dravie said "Don't get drunk yet, Poachey; it's big; it's big." And though he was tired, though he was powerful tired, never, never did Poachey put down the prophet. You knew Manasha the Prophet, didn't you, Sir? Look at him now."

He fumbled in a bag he carried and brought forth what looked like dirty excelsior; but as he straighened it out and it took form, I could see indeed the hair and beard of the prophet, shorn from him like a heavy fleece which holds the shape of the sheep. I shuddered; for lacking an eye or two which occasionally showed through, I recognized the companion of the man beside me.

"Yes," said the warden at Bridewell, "he was brought here; but I sent him up to the infirmary. Is it true that he was without a drink for two hours this morning?"

"Unless somebody else paid for it," I said. "By any chance did he have anything about him?"

"Only a big lot of hair; he wouldn't give it up. Said there was a big profit in that kind of hair; a millionaire or a million profit, I think he said. I wonder what he meant."