Kitabı oku: «Those Times and These», sayfa 10

He came back, having delivered the goods to the satisfaction of his employers, to find himself promoted to a general supervision of the editorial direction of the papers in his syndicate, with a thumping good salary and a roving commission. He willed it that the first week of his incumbency in his new duties should carry him to Schuylerville. In his old office, which looked much the same as it had looked when he occupied it, he found young Morgan, his former assistant, also looking much the same, barring that now Morgan was in full charge and giving orders instead of taking them. Authority nearly always works a change in a man; it had in this case.

“Say, Olcott,” said Morgan after the talk between them had ebbed and flowed along a little while, “you remember that old geezer, Van Nicht, don’t you? You know, the old boy who wrote the long piece about his family, and you ran it?”

“Certainly I do,” said Olcott. “Why – what of him?”

Instead of answering him directly, Morgan put another question:

“And of course you remember the old Van Nicht house, under that big, whopping elm tree, out at the end of Putnam Street, where he used to live with those two freakish sisters of his?”

“Where he used to live? Doesn’t he – don’t they – live there now?”

“Nope – tree’s gone and so is the house.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Gone out of existence – vamoosed. Here’s what happened, and it’s a peach of a tale too: One night about six months ago there came up a hard thunderstorm – lots of lightning and gobs of thunder, not to mention rain and wind a plenty. In the midst of it a bolt hit the Van Nicht elm – ker-flewie – and just naturally tore it into flinders. When I saw it myself the next day it was converted from a landmark into the biggest whisk broom in the world. The neighbours were saying that it rained splinters round there for ten minutes after the bolt struck. I guess they didn’t exaggerate much at that, because – ”

“Was the house struck too? Was anybody hurt?” Olcott cut in on him.

“No, the house escaped somehow – had a few shingles ripped off the roof, and some of its windows smashed in by flying scraps; that was all. And nobody about the place suffered anything worse than a stunning. But the fright killed the older sister – Miss Rachael. Anyhow, that’s what the doctors think. She didn’t have a mark on her, but she died in about an hour, without ever speaking. I guess it was just as well, too, that she did. If she had survived the first shock I judge the second one would just about have finished her.”

“The second shock? You don’t mean the lightning?”

“No, no!” Morgan hastened to explain.

“Lightning never plays a return date – never has need to, I take it. I mean the shock of what happened after daylight next morning.

“That was the queerest part of the whole thing – that was what made a really big story out of it. We ran two columns about it ourselves, and the A. P. carried it for more than a column.

“After the storm had died down and it got light enough to see, some of the neighbours were prowling round the place sizing up the damage. Right in the heart of the stump of the elm, which was split wide open – the stump, I mean – they found a funny-looking old copper box buried in what must have been a rot-ted-out place at one time, maybe ninety or a hundred years ago. But the hollow had grown up, and nobody ever had suspected that the tree wasn’t solid as iron all the way through, until the lightning came along and just naturally reached a fiery finger down through all that hardwood and probed the old box out of its cache and, without so much as melting a hinge on it, heaved it up into sight, where the first fellow that happened along afterward would be sure to see it. Well, right off they thought of buried treasure, but being honest they called old Van Nicht out of the house, and in his presence they opened her up – the box I mean – and then, lo and behold, they found out that all these years this town had been worshipping a false god!

“Yes, sir, the great and only original Cecilius Jacob Van Nicht was a rank fake. He was as bogus as a lead nickel. There were papers in the box to prove what nobody, and least of all his own flesh and blood, ever suspected before. He wasn’t a hero of the Revolution. He wasn’t a colonel under George Washington. He wasn’t of Holland-Dutch stock. His name wasn’t even Van Nicht. His real name was Jake Nix – that’s what it was, Nix – and he was just a plain, everyday Hessian soldier – a mercenary bought up, along with the other Hessians, and sent over here by King George to fight against the cause of liberty, instead of for it.

“As near as we can figure it out, he changed his name after the war ended, before he moved here to live, and then after he died – or anyhow when he was an old man – his son, the second Cecilius Jacob, concocted the fairy tale about his father’s distinguished services and all the rest of it. The son was the one, it seems, who capitalised the false reputation of the old man. He lived on it, and all the Van Nichts who came after him lived on it too – only they were innocent of practising any deception on the community at large, and the second Van Nicht wasn’t. It certainly put the laugh on this town, not to mention the local aristocracy, and the D. A. R.‘s and the Colonial Dames and the rest of the blue bloods generally, when the news spread that morning.

“Oh, there couldn’t be any doubt about it! The proofs were all right there and dozens of reliable witnesses saw them – letters and papers and the record of old Nix’s services in the British army. In fact there was only one phase of the affair that has remained unexplained and a mystery. I mean the presence of the papers in the tree. Nobody can figure out why the son didn’t destroy them, when he was creating such a swell fiction character out of his revered parent. One theory is that he didn’t know of their existence at all – that the old man, for reasons best known to himself, hid them there in that copper box and that then the tree healed up over the hole and sealed the box in, with nobody but him any the wiser, and nobody ever suspecting anything out of the way, but just taking everything for granted. Why, it was exactly as if the old Nix had come out of the grave after lying there for a century or more, to produce the truth and shame his own offspring, and incidentally scare one of his descendants plumb to death.”

“What a tragedy!” said Olcott. But his main thought when he said it was not for the dead sister but for the living.

“You said it,” affirmed Morgan. “That’s exactly what it was – a tragedy, with a good deal of serio-comedy relief to it. Only there wasn’t anything very comical about the figure the old man Van Nicht cut when he came walking into this office here about half past ten o’clock that day, with a ragged piece of crêpe tied round his old high hat. Olcott, you never in your life saw a man as badly broken up as he was. All his vanity, all his bumptiousness was gone – he was just a poor, old, shabby, broken-spirited man. I’d already gotten a tip on the story and I’d sent one of my boys out to find him and get his tale, but it seemed he’d told the reporter he preferred to make a personal statement for publication. And so here he was with his statement all carefully written out and he asked me to print it, insisting that it ought to be given as wide circulation as possible. I’ll dig it up for you out of the files in a minute and let you see it.

“Yes, sir, he’d sat down alongside his sister’s dead body and written it. He called it A Confession and an Apology, and I ran it that way, just as he’d written it. It wasn’t very long, but it was mighty pitiful, when you took everything into consideration. He begged the pardon of the public for unwittingly practicing a deceit upon it all through his life – for living a lie, was the way he phrased it – and he signed it ‘Jacob Nix, heretofore erroneously known as Cecilius Jacob Van Nicht, 4th.’ That signature was what especially got me when I read it – it made me feel that the old boy was literally stripping his soul naked before the ridicule of this town and the ridicule of the whole country. A pretty manly, straightforward thing, I called it, and I liked him better for having done it than I ever had liked him before.

“Well, I told him I would run the card for him and I did run it, and likewise I toned down the story we carried about the exposure too. I’m fairly well calloused, I guess, but I didn’t want to bruise the old man and his sister any more than I could help doing. But, of course, I didn’t speak to him about that part of it. I did try, in a clumsy sort of way, to express my sympathy for him. I guess I made a fairly sad hash of it, though. There didn’t seem to be any words to fit the situation. Or, if there were, I couldn’t think of them for the moment. I remember I mumbled something about letting bygones be bygones and not taking it too much to heart and all that sort of thing.

“He thanked me, and then, as he started to go, he stopped and asked me whether by any chance I knew of any opening – any possible job for a person of his age and limitations. I remember his words: ‘It is high time that I was casting about to find honourable employment, no matter how humble. I have been trading with a spurious currency for too long. I have spent my life in the imposition of a monumental deceit upon this long-suffering community. I intend now, sir, to go to work to earn a living with my own hands and upon my own merits. I wish to atone for the rôle I have played.’

“It may have been imagination, but I thought there was a kind of faint hopeful gleam in his eye as he looked at me and said this; and he seemed to flinch a little bit when I broke the news to him that we didn’t have any vacancies on the staff at present. I sort of gathered that he rather fancied he had literary gifts. Literary gifts? Can’t you just see that poor, forlorn old scout piking round soliciting want ads at twenty cents a line or trying to cover petty assignments on the news end? I told him, though, I’d be on the lookout for something for him, and he thanked me mighty ceremoniously and limped out, leaving me all choked up. Two days later, after the funeral, he telephoned in to ask me not to trouble myself on his account, because he had already established a connection with another concern which he hoped would turn out to be mutually advantageous and personally lucrative; or words to that effect.

“So I did a little private investigating that evening and I found out where the old chap had connected. You see I was interested. A live wire named Garrison, who owned the state rights for selling the World’s Great Classics of Prose and Poetry on subscriptions, had landed here about a week before. You know the kind of truck this fellow Garrison was peddling? Forty large, hard, heavy volumes, five dollars down and a dollar a month as long as you live; no blacksmith’s fireside complete without the full set; should be in every library; so much for the full calf bindings; so much for the half leather; give your little ones a chance to acquire an education at a trifling cost; come early and avoid the rush of those seeking to take advantage of this unparalleled opportunity; price positively due to advance at the end of a limited period; see also our great clubbing offer in conjunction with Bunkem’s Illustrated Magazine – all that sort of guff.

“Well, Garrison had opened up headquarters here. He’d brought some of his agents with him – experts at conning the simple peasantry and the sturdy yeomanry into signing on the dotted line A and paying down the first installment as a binder; but he needed some home talent to fill out his crew, and he advertised with us for volunteers. Old Van Nicht – Nix, I mean – had heard about it, and he had applied for a job as canvasser, and Garrison had taken him on, not on salary, of course, but agreeing to pay him a commission on all his sales. That was what I found out that night.”

Before Olcott’s eyes rose a vision of a dried-up, bleak-eyed old man limping from doorstep to doorstep, enduring the rebuffs of fretful housewives and the insolence of annoyed householders – a failure, and a hopeless, predestined failure at that.

“Too bad, wasn’t it?” he said.

“What’s too bad?” asked Morgan.

“About that poor old man turning book agent at his age, with his lack of experience with the ways of the world.”

“Save your pity for somebody that needs it,” said Morgan, grinning. “That old boy doesn’t. Why, Olcott, he was a hit from the first minute. This fellow Garrison was telling me about him only last week. All that stately dignity, all that Sir Walter Raleigh courtesy stuff, all that faculty for using the biggest possible words in stock, was worth money to the old chap when he put it to use. It impressed the simple-minded rustic and the merry villager. It got him a hearing where one of these gabby young canvassers with a striped vest and a line of patter memorised out of a book would be apt to fail. Why, he’s the sensation of the book-agent game in these parts. They sick him on to all the difficult prospects out in the country, and he makes good nine times out of ten. He’s got four counties in his territory, with all expenses paid, and last month his commissions – so Garrison told me – amounted to a hundred and forty dollars, and this month he’s liable to do even better. What’s more, according to Garrison, the old scout likes the work and isn’t ashamed of it. So what do you know about that?”

As Morgan paused, Olcott asked the question which from the first of this recital had been shaping itself in the back part of his head: “The other sister – what became of her?” He tried to put a casual tone into his inquiry.

“You mean Miss Harriet? Well, say, in her case the transformation was almost as great as it was in her brother’s. She came right out of her shell, too – in fact, she seemed downright glad of a chance to come out of it and quit being a recluse. She let it be noised about that she was in the market for any work that she could do, and a lot of people who felt sorry for her, including Mayor McGlynn, who’s a pretty good chap, interested themselves in her behalf. Right off, the school board appointed her a substitute teacher in one of the lower grammar grades at the Hawthorne School, out here on West Frobisher Street. She didn’t lose any time in delivering the goods either. Say, there must have been mighty good blood in that family, once it got a real chance to circulate. The kiddies in her classes all liked her from the start, and the other teachers and the principal liked her, too, and when the fall term begins in October she goes on as a regular.

“On top of that, when she’d got a little colour in her cheeks and had frizzed her hair out round her face, and when she’d used up her first month’s pay in buying herself some good black clothes, it dawned on the town all of a sudden that she was a mighty good-looking, bright, sweet little woman instead of a dowdy, sour old maid. They say she never had a sweetheart before in her life – that no man ever had looked at her the second time; at least that’s the current gossip. Be that as it may, she can’t complain on that score any more, even if she is still in mourning for her sister.”

“How do you know all this?” demanded Olcott suspiciously. “Are you paying her attentions yourself?”

“Who, me? Lord, man, no! I’m merely an innocent bystander. You see, we live at the same boarding house, take our meals at the same table in fact, and I get a chance to see what’s going on. She came there to board – it’s Mrs. Gale’s house – as soon as she moved out of the historic but mildewed homestead, which was about a month after the night of the storm. The New Diamond Auto Company – that’s a concern formed since you left – bought the property and tore down the old house, after blasting the stump of the family tree out of the ground with giant powder; they’re putting up their assembling plant on the site. After the mortgage was satisfied and the back taxes had been paid up, there was mighty little left for the two heirs; but about that time Miss Harriet got her job of teaching and she came to Mrs. Gale’s to live, and that’s where I first met her. Two or three spry young fellows round town are calling on her in the evenings – nearly every night there’s some fellow in the parlour, all spruced up and highly perfumed, waiting to see her – not to mention one or two of the unmarried men boarders.”

“Morgan,” said Olcott briskly, “do me a favour! Take me along with you to dinner tonight at your boarding place, will you?”

“Tired of hotels, eh?” asked Morgan. “Well, Mrs. Gale has good home cooking and I’d be glad to have you come.”

“That’s it,” said Olcott; “I’m tired of hotel life.”

“You’re on,” said Morgan.

“Yes,” said Olcott, “I am – but you’re not on – at least not yet.” But Morgan didn’t hear that, because Olcott said it to himself.

CHAPTER VII. HARK! FROM THE TOMBS

FROM all the windows of Coloured Odd Fellows’ Hall, on the upper floor of the two-story building at the corner of Oak and Tennessee Streets, streamed Jacob’s ladders of radiance, which slanted outward and downward into the wet night. Along with these crossbarred shafts of lights, sounds as of singing and jubilation percolated through the blurry panes. It was not yet eleven o’clock, the date being December thirty-first; but the New Year’s watch service, held under the auspices of Castle Camp, Number 1008, Afro-American Order of Supreme Kings of the Universe, had been going on quite some time and was going stronger every minute.

Odd Fellows’ Hall had been especially engaged and partially decorated for this occasion. Already it was nearly filled; but between now and midnight it would be fuller, and at a still later time would doubtlessly attain the superlatively impossible by being fuller than fullest.

From all directions, out of the darkness, came belated members of the officiating fraternity, protecting their regalias under umbrellas, and accompanied by wives and families if married, or by lady and other friends if otherwise. With his sword clanking impressively at his flank and his beplumed helmet nodding grandly as he walked, each Supreme King of the Universe bore himself with an austere and solemn mien, as befitting the rôle he played – of host to the multitude – and the uniform that adorned his form.

Later, after the young year had appropriately been ushered in, when the refreshments were being served, he might unbend somewhat. But not now. Now every Supreme King was what he was, wearing his dignity as a becoming and suitable garment. This attitude of the affiliated brethren affected by contagion those who came with them as their guests. There was a stateliness and a formality in the greetings which passed between this one and that one as the groups converged into the doorway, set in the middle front of the building, and by pairs and by squads ascended the stairs.

“Good evenin’, Sist’ Fontleroy. I trusts things is goin’ toler’ble well wid you, ma’am?”

“Satisfactory, Br’er Grider – thank de good Lawd! How’s all at yore own place of residence?”

“Git th’ough de C’ris’mus all right, Mizz Hillman?”

“Yas, suh; ‘bout de same ez whut I always does, Mist’ Duiguid.”

“Well, ole yeah’s purty nigh gone frum us, Elder; ain’t it de truth?”

“Most doubtless is. An’ now yere come ‘nother! We don’t git no younger, sister, does we?”

“Dat we don’t, sholy!”

The ceremonial reserve of the moment would make the jollifying all the sweeter after the clocks struck and the whistles began to blow.

There was one late arrival, though, who came along alone, wearing a downcast countenance and an air of abstraction, and speaking to none who encountered him on the way or at the portal. This one was Jeff Poindexter; but a vastly different Jeff from the customary Jeff. Usually he moved with a jaunty gait, his elbows out and his head canted back; and on the slightest provocation his feet cut scallops and double-shuffles and pigeonwings against the earth. Now his heels scraped and his toes dragged; and the gladsome raiment that covered his person gave him no joy, but only an added sense of resentment against the prevalent scheme of mundane existence.

An unseen weight bowed his shoulders down, and beneath the wide lapels of an almost white waistcoat his heart was like unto a chunk of tombstone in his bosom. For the current light of his eyes, Miss Ophelia Stubblefield, had accepted the company of a new and most formidable rival for this festive occasion. Wherefore an embodiment of sorrow walked hand in hand with Jeff.

After this blow descended all the taste of delectable anticipation in his mouth had turned to gall and to wormwood. Of what use now the costume he had been at such pains to accumulate from kindly white gentlemen, for whom Jeff in spare moments did odd jobs of valeting – the long, shiny frock coat here; the only slightly spotted grey-blue trousers there; the almost clean brown derby hat in another quarter; the winged collar and the puff necktie in yet a fourth? Of what value to him would be the looks of envy and admiration sure to be bestowed upon the pair of new, shiny and excessively painful patent-leather shoes, specially acquired and specially treasured for this event?

He had bought those shoes, with an utter disregard for expense, before he dreamed that another would bring Ophelia to the watch party. With her at his side, his soul would have risen exultant and triumphant above the discomfort of cramped-up toes and pinched-in heels. Now, at each dragging step, he was aware that his feet hurt him. Indeed, for Jeff there was at that moment no balm to be found throughout all Gilead, and in his ointment dead flies abounded thickly.

It added to his unhappiness that the lady might and doubtlessly would rest under a misapprehension regarding his failure to invite her to share with him the pleasures of the night. He had not asked her to be his company; had not even broached the subject to her. For this seeming neglect there had been a good and sufficient reason – one hundred and ninety pounds of a chocolate-coloured reason. Seven days before, on Christmas Eve, Jeff had been currying Mittie May, the white mare of Judge Priest, in the stable back of the Priest place, when he heard somebody whistle in the alley behind the stable and then heard his name called. He had stepped outside to find one Smooth Crumbaugh leaning upon the alley gate.

“Hello, Smoothy!” Jeff had hailed with a smart and prompt cordiality.

It was not that he felt any deep warmth of feeling for Smooth, but that it was prudent to counterfeit the same. All in Smooth’s circle deported themselves toward Smooth with a profound regard and, if Smooth seemed out of sorts, displayed almost an affection for him, whether they felt it or not. ‘Twere safer thus.

With characteristic brusqueness, Smooth entirely disregarded the greeting.

“Come yere to me, little nigger!” he said out of one corner of his lips, at the same time fixing a lowering stare upon Jeff. Then, as Jeff still stood, filled with sudden misgivings: “Come yere quick w’en I speaks! Want me to come on in dat yard after you?”

Jeff was conscious of no act of wrongdoing toward Smooth Crumbaugh. With Jeff, discretion was not only the greater part of fighting valour but practically was all of it. Nevertheless, he was glad, as he obeyed the summons and, with a placating smile fixed upon his face, drew nearer the paling, that he stood on the sanctuary ground of a circuit judge’s premises, and that a fence intervened between him and his truculent caller.

“Comm’ right along,” he said with an affected gaiety.

Just the same, he didn’t go quite up to the gate. He made his stand three or four feet inside of it, ready to jump backward or sidewise should the necessity arise.

“I’se feared I didn’t heah you call de fus time,” stated Jeff ingratiatingly. “I wuzn’t studyin’ about nobody wantin’ me – been wipin’ off our ole mare. ‘Sides, I thought you wuz down in Alabam’, workin’ on de ole P. and A. Road.”

“Num’mine dat!” said Smooth. “Jes’ lis’en to whut I got to say.”

The hostile glare of his eye bored straight into Jeff, making him chilly in his most important organs. Smooth was part basilisk, but mainly hyena, with a touch of the man-eating tiger in his composition. “Little nigger,” he continued grimly, “I come th’ough dis lane on puppus’ to tell you somethin’ fur de good of yore health.”

“I’s lis’enin’,” said Jeff, most politely.

“Heed me clost,” bade Smooth; “heed me dost, an’ mebbe you mout live longer. Who wuz you at de Fust Ward Cullid Baptis’ Church wid last Sunday night? Dat’s de fust question.”

“Who – me?”

“Yas; you!”

“Why, lemme see, now,” said Jeff, dissembling. “Seem lak, ez well ez I reckerleck, I set in de same pew wid quite a number of folkses durin’ de service.”

“I ain’t axin’ you who you set wid. I’s axin’ you who you went wid?”

“Oh!” said Jeff, as though enlightened as to the real object of the inquiry, and still sparring for time. “You means who did I go dere wid, Smoothy? Well – ”

“Wuz it dat Stubblefield gal, or wuzn’t it? Answer me, yas or no!”

The tone of the questioner became more ominous, more threatening, with each passing moment.

“Yas – yas, Smoothy.” He giggled uneasily. “Uh-huh! Dat’s who ‘twuz.”

“Well, see dat it don’t happen ag’in.”

“Huh?”

“You heared whut I said!”

“But I – But she – ”

“See dat it don’t happen nary time ag’in.”

“But – but – ”

“Say, whut you mean, interrup’in’ me whilst I’s speakin’ wid you fur yore own good? Shut up dat trap-face of your’n an’ lis’en to me, whut I’m say in’: Frum dis hour on, you stay plum’ away frum dat gal. Understan’?”

“Honest, Smoothy, I didn’t know you wuz cravin’ to be prankin’ round wid Ophelia!”

Jeff spoke with sincerity, from the heart out. In truth, he hadn’t known, else his sleep of nights might have been less sound.

“Dat bein’ de case, you better keep yore yeahs open to heah de news, else you won’t have no yeahs. Git me mad an’ I’s liable to snatch ‘em right offen de sides of your haid an’ feed ‘em to you. I’s tuck a lay-off fur de C’ris’mus. An’ endurin’ de week I spects to spend de mos’ part of my time enjoyin’ dat gal’s society. I aims to be wid her to-night an’ to-morrow night an’ de nex’ night, an’ ever’ other night twell I goes back down de road. I aims to tek her to de C’ris’mus tree doin’s at de church on Friday night, an’ to de festibul at de church on Sad’day night, an’ to de watch party up at de Odd Fellers’ Hall on New Yeah’s Eve. Is dat clear to you?”

“Suttinly is, seein’ ez it’s you,” assented Jeff, trying to hide his disappointment under a smile. “Course, Smoothy, ef you craves a young lady’s company fur a week or so, I don’t know nobody dat’s mo’ entitled to it’n whut you is. Jes’ a word frum you is plenty fur me. You done told me how you feels; dat’s ample.”

“No, ‘tain’t!” growled Smooth. “I got somethin’ mo’ to tell you. Frum now on, all de time I’s in dis town I don’t want to heah of you speakin’ wid dat gal, or telephonin’ to her, or writin’ her ary note, or sendin’ ary message to her house. Ef you do I’s gwine find out ‘bout it; an’ den I’s gwine lay fur you an’ strip a whole lot of dark meat offen you wid a razor or somethin’. I won’t leave nothin’ of you but jes’ a framework. Now den, it’s up to you! Does you want to go round fur de rest of yore days lookin’ lak a scaffoldin’, or doesn’t you?”

“Smoothy,” protested Jeff, “I ain’t got no quarrel wid you. I ain’t aimin’ to git in no rookus wid nobody a-tall – let alone ‘tis you. But s’posen’” – he added this desperately – “s’posen’ now I should happen to meet up wid her on de street. Fur politeness’ sake I’s natchelly ‘bleeged to speak wid her, ain’t I – even ef ‘tain’t nothin’ more’n jes’ passin’ de time of day?”

“Is dat so?” said Smooth in mock surprise. “Well, suit yo’se’f; suit yo’se’f. Only, de words you speaks wid her better be yore farewell message to de world. Ef anythin’ happen to you now, sech ez a fun’el, hit’s yore own fault – you done had yore warnin’ frum headquarters. I ain’t got no mo’ time to be wastin’ on a puny little scrap of nigger sech ez you is. I’s on my way now. But jes’ remember whut I been tellin’ you an’ govern yo’se’f ‘cordin’ly.” And with that the bully turned away, leaving poor Jeff to most discomforting reflections amid the ruins of his suddenly blasted romance.

The full scope of his rival’s design stood so clearly revealed that it left to its victim no loophole of escape whatsoever. Not only was he to be debarred, by the instinct of self-preservation, from seeking the presence of Ophelia during the most joyous and the most socially crowded week of the entire year; not only were all his pleasant dreams dashed and smashed, but, furthermore, he might not even make excuses to her for what would appear in her eyes as an abrupt and unreasonable cessation of sentimental interest on his part, save and except it be done at dire peril to his corporeal well-being and his physical intactness.

Above all things, Jeff Poindexter coveted to stay in one piece. And Smooth Crumbaugh was one who nearly always kept his word – especially when that word involved threats against any who stood between him and his personal ambitions.

Jeff, watching the broad retreating back of Smooth, as Smooth swaggered out of the alley, fetched little moans of acute despair. To him remained but one poor morsel of consolation – no outsider had been a witness to his interview with the bad man. Unless the bad man bragged round, none need know how abject had been Jeff’s capitulation.

Solitary, melancholy, a prey to conflicting emotions, Jeff Poindexter climbed the stairs leading up to Odd Fellows’ Hall, at the heels of a family group of celebrants. Until the last minute he hadn’t meant to come; but something drew him hither, even as the moth to the flame is drawn. He paid his fifty cents to the Most High Grand Outer Guardian, who was stationed at the door in the capacity of ticket taker and cash collector, and entered in, to find sitting-down space pretty much all occupied and standing room rapidly being preempted – especially round the walls and at the back of the long assembly room.