Читать книгу Where Your Treasure Is - Holman Day - Страница 13

Table of Contents

THAT doorway was solidly banked with banners frescoed in gaudy colors and roughly painted; they advertised a show within. A few glances I had time to give while I walked toward the man who had hailed me, revealed that there were on tap such features as “Petrified Mormon Giant,” “Siamese Susie,” “Mammoth Peruvian Cockatoo,” and others. Over the door was heralded in big letters: “Dawlin’s Mammoth Wonder Show.”

I guessed that the man in the doorway might be Dawlin. He wore a corduroy suit, with gaiters, and a broad-brimmed cowboy hat was canted on one side of his head. By the way in which he was looking me over I could see that I was suiting him.

“Hitched up with a show?” he asked.

I told him that I was not, and I said it with considerable curtness. To be sure, the personality and garb of Showman Shrady had formed my early ideal, and I ought to have felt gratified, I suppose, when this man took me for a showman. But I was pricked a little by the thought that my appearance seemed to grade me on that plane. “Want to hitch on?”

“What makes you think I’m in the show business?”

“I had you sized that way on account of the scenery.” I gathered that he meant my clothes.

“I don’t see any circus signs on this suit of mine,” I told him.

“Oh, say, I didn’t mean to offend—but it’s usually only sports and professionals who tog that way down in this part of the town. If you’re a gent you seem to be off your beat.”

There was nothing offensive about the man—he seemed a good-humored chap who was a little cheeky.

“Well, what if I had been a showman—what about it?”

“I was going to offer you a lay—here at the door.”

“Selling tickets?”

“Good gad, no, man! I want you for the spiel—for the oratory—tongue-work—hooking the hicks! You’re rigged out just right. You must know that the better the front we put on at the door, the better the business inside! But excuse me if I got the tags shifted!”

I swung my cane with one hand and with the other hand in my pocket sifted coins through my fingers. There were not many coins. I needed more in a hurry. It had been impressed on me that in spite of all my pride in my attire I did not look like a “gent”; it was certain that I did not feel like one. Disappointment was curdling pride in me; my clothes had gone back on me. I entertained a sort of a grudge against them. All of a sudden I made up my mind to get back at those garments which had cost me so much money and now repaid me in contentment so niggardly.

“It would be all new business for me. Can I do it, do you suppose?” I asked the man.

“Looks are half the battle. You’ve got capital in your clothes to start with. You don’t look like a souse! The last two I have had on the door pawned their rigs for rum. I’ve got the patter stuff all written out. All you’ve got to do is study it and reel it off like you used to recite pieces in school.”

“What’s the pay?”

Seeing surrender in my face, he winked and crooked his finger in invitation to me to follow him inside. He led me into a narrow little office. He offered a drink and a cigar, and I refused both.

“Gee! Some principles, hey? Now, if you’re a church member I reckon you won’t stand for the lay!”

“I’m devilish far from being a church member,” I told him.

“I don’t like to open up too much till I know a little something about you. Can you tell me?”

I told him enough to make him pretty much at ease.

“Do you know any of the right kind in this locality—the sporting bunch?”

I gave a roster of acquaintances that made his eyes glisten.

“Oh, then, you’re all right!” he cried, slapping my knee. “In my business a fellow has to try the ice before he slides out too far. I’m coming right across to you.” He waved his hand to indicate his establishment. “This show is only a hinkumginny, you know!”

“I thought so,” I said, calmly. I hadn’t the least idea what he meant, but I knew that one needed to act wise with wise gentlemen.

“We run the gazara game and phrenology.”

I nodded and winked an eye as if I had been quite sure of that fact right along.

He scratched a few figures on a wisp of paper and pushed it to me across the desk-slide on which he had set out the whisky-glasses.

“That’s the split,” he said, grinning. Still it was all Greek to me.

“I know places doing half our business and paying twice as much—and every once in a while having to settle a squeal, at that! But I’ve got a cousin at headquarters—see? Nothing to it! Now you can understand what a sweet little pudding you’re pulling alongside of.”

I was wishing I could understand better, though I was developing a dim notion that he was talking about money paid for protection from the law. He pulled back the paper and tore it up.

“Only fifty a week,” he said; “it’s nothing. I’m thinking of throwing in another twenty-five without their asking. It beats laying up treasures in heaven!”

I agreed.

“Now as to a lay for you! Of course, first of all, I have to grab off my fifty of the net—it’s my show and my pull! Then there’s the ‘Prof’—Professor Jewelle. He has his twenty-five per cent. I’ll tell you straight, now, I have been getting by with those dickerdoodles I’ve had out on the stand for fifteen per cent., and ‘prof’ and I have divided the other ten. But they were crumby! Their suits were wrinkled worse than an elephant’s dewlap, and the nap of their plug-hats was fruzzled up like the fur in the mane of the Australian witherlick. No pull to that class! The jaspers jogged right past without being a mite impressed. If you grab in with us your looks and your style make you worth a lay of twenty-five per cent. Now what say?”

“I’ll grab,” I told him, and never did a man hire with less idea of just what kind of a business he was entering or what pay he was going to get for his labor.

“You say your name is Ross Sidney,” said the boss, remembering what I had told him. “Mine is Jeff Dawlin, Ross, and there’s no mistering among partners.” He gave me a few dirty sheets of paper. “There’s your spiel all written out. You can add your own talk as you work into the spirit of the thing. The idea is get them to stop, look, listen—and then coax till they come in. If they come out squealing, you go on and bawl them—bawl them down! There’s some good work to be done in that line—and you’re husky and can scare ’em, providing Big Mike hasn’t already scared ’em enough. There isn’t a thing in the show but what’s a fake—of course you understand that. Most of ’em are too ashamed to squeal.”

He was leading me into the inner mysteries of the place while he talked. He made no reference to the objects which were ranged around the sides of the big room, plainly despising them as curiosities which could not possibly interest anybody. But they interested me mightily and I lagged behind to give each one a glance in passing.

“Siamese Susie” was made up of a couple of big wax dolls confined in a single dress. “The Peruvian Cockatoo” manifestly had been, when he was alive, the humble master of some up-country barn-yard; now he was tricked out with all sorts of dyed false feathers, including an enormous topknot. The “Mormon Giant” was a papier-mâché figure, and there was a hideous thing labeled “Mermaid” constructed of the same material as the giant. There were a few other nondescript exhibits in dingy glass cases or mounted on stands draped in dirty hangings. I had never seen a collection of more shameless frauds. I began to understand that I had not been let in on the main proposition for money-making.

On one side of the room there were curtains lettered: “Professor Jewelle, the World’s Greatest Seer.” The professor came out when Dawlin called for him. He wore a wig and false white whiskers, and had watery eyes, and a breath like a whiff from a distillery chimney. A big brute of a man was loafing in one corner of the room, and I reckoned that this person must be Big Mike; I had seen many such of the bouncer sort when I had made my rounds, hunting for experiences.

Mr. Dawlin introduced me, and I seemed to make a good impression.

When he slyly slid out the information that I, too, had been having troubles which had kept me under cover for some weeks, I noted that I stood even higher in their estimation.

As we talked on I began to feel a bit ambitious. I thought I might be able to improve business.

“Look here,” I suggested, “why not put a tank in here and let me do some of my diving stunts? It would be a novelty—there really doesn’t seem to be much to the show as it stands.”

“Say, I haven’t pulled a greenhorn into camp, have I?” inquired Mr. Dawlin with a good deal of tartness. “Show? Good gad! who ever said we wanted a show?”

I did not know what to say to that and so I did not answer.

“What do you think I would be doing, or the ‘prof’ would be doing, while the jethros were crowded around you? We wouldn’t be doing a thing in the line of the regular graft. The main idea of this concern is to get ’em in here where there’s nothing to take up their minds after they’ve had one look around the place. Then they begin to feel that they want to get something for their money. So the ‘prof’ hands ’em the dome dope—feels their bumps—and I feed ’em the gazara stuff. How many times have I got to tell you what this place is?”

“Oh, I’m wise,” I said, trying hard to look that way. “But of course I’m anxious to do all I can to help.”

“The zeal of youth! The zeal of youth!” prattled the professor. He seemed to me to be pretty much of an old fool. He had that smug, cooing way with him—all put on like the airs of a country undertaker. He came across to me before I could understand what he was about and stuck his thumb onto a spot on the top of my head and pressed with his forefinger a little lower down. “Yes, approbativeness well developed and conscientiousness—this where my finger—”

“Oh, shut up!” snorted Mr. Dawlin. “Don’t cry to put that stuff over among friends.”

“However,” the professor went on, continuing to fondle my head, “the development of the brain upward, forward, and backward, from the medulla—”

“Save it for the cud-wallopers, I tell you!”

“If this young man is going to have his say about me in front, I want him to know that the science of phrenology has a good exponent here,” said the professor.

I reckon he had seen me looking him over without a great amount of liking and was anxious to put on a bit of a front.

“He’ll say that you’ll read all heads free of charge, and that’s all he’ll say,” stated Mr. Dawlin. “It isn’t necessary for him to know the difference between a medulla and a free-lunch pickle—and I don’t believe you know, yourself. Ross, we want to open the doors again to-morrow. Do you think you can get the gist of that patter into your head overnight?”

I thumbed the dirty sheets and said I’d do my best. Therefore, I went to my room and applied myself. There was a lot of extravagant guff about the curiosities, flowery flapdoodle of the usual barker sort.

The next morning I was able to make some sort of a try at it from the stand, for I have said before that I always was more or less cheeky. A sort of a fluffy-ruffle damsel with bleached hair was in the ticket-office and there never was a young fellow yet who did not try on a little extra swagger when a girl was hard by. She smiled at me encouragingly when I had arrested the attention of a few passers, some of whom bought tickets and went in. I guess I must have smiled back, for Dawlin, who was standing in the doorway, appraising my first efforts, came and climbed up beside me and growled in my ear.

“You’re breaking in fine. Only put a little more punch and sing-song into it! And, by the way, the dame who is shuffling the pasteboards—she’s private goods—mine!”

“I don’t want her,” I said, with considerable heat.

“I don’t say you do—but a lot of trouble has sometimes been made in partnerships by women. So that’s why I have flipped the buried card at the start-off. Now tune up and let it went! If your voice gets husky I’ll send out a handful of bird-seed and a hunk of cuttlefish.” I reckoned he was trying his cheap humor on me to smooth the insult about the girl. It seemed to me like an insult, and he understood pretty well how I felt.

So I went to my job and minded my own business most exclusively.

Day after day, for several weeks, I stood up on my rostrum and cajoled folks into that joint, and I say frankly and honestly that for a long time I did not have full understanding of just what went on inside. Possibly that statement makes me out a mighty stupid chap.

But I was ashamed to ask any more questions after what Dawlin had yapped out about his suspicions that I was a greenhorn.

I did not have any special conversation with him, anyway. I was still ugly when I thought upon his warning about that painted girl—as if I wanted her! And I was careful that she should have no word to carry to him about me; I never looked in her direction.

Furthermore, I did not want to know very much about what they were up to inside. I was ashamed of my job. It struck me that if I came to know all the fraud of the thing I’d jack the proposition. An ostrich sort of attitude, to be sure, a foolish evasion, but that’s just how it was, like other things which came up in my life, things not lending themselves readily to explanation as I look back on them now.

I saw patrons come out, some angry and with red faces, some ashamed, some laughing—but only a few of the last, and they were plainly chaps who took it as a joke when anybody could put something across in their case.

Man after man came out with a broad piece of paper in his hand, crumpled it up, swore, and dashed it down on the sidewalk.

It was a chart purporting to be a reading of bumps, as Professor Jewelle sized up the patron’s cranium. Nobody seemed to be very well pleased. A lot of them pitched into me and said that I had promised that the reading was free.

Well, the reading was free.

But once the victim had ventured inside the curtains and after the free reading, the professor handed over the chart and demanded three dollars for it.

Disputes ended promptly, for Big Mike was always present. The vocabulary of that bellowing bull was limited to two words in those séances—“Three dollars!”

Of course I had to find this out before long or stand convicted in these records as liar and half-wit combined.

I also found out about the gazara game, Mr. Dawlin’s special project.

There was an oblong box in which were stacked leather envelopes, each envelope bearing a numbered card.

Mr. Dawlin seemed to be a very generous individual; he would allow patrons to win considerable money by picking prize envelopes into which he had slipped crisp bills; he also seemed to be a careless operator. For instance, he would quite openly put a twenty or a fifty dollar bill into the envelope holding the card numbered 0. Then he would shuffle the envelopes and with carelessness utterly blind would leave the corner of that card sticking up a bit, revealing the upper part of the numeral. Feverishly excited patrons would bid high for the privilege of drawing first—sometimes almost as high as the prize itself, for Mr. Dawlin had plainly left a good thing exposed. But, strangely enough, what had seemed like the figure 0 was revealed in the drawing as the figure 9 with an exaggerated upper loop. If the patron made moan and let out the secret of his grief, Mr. Dawlin reproached him for trying to take advantage of an oversight in an honest game. Such was the activity known as “gazara” in our establishment! I don’t know who gave the game that designation. I believe that in Maccabees a town of that name is spoken of—and being in Apocrypha seems well placed. It may be that the game started there—at the same time the gold-brick game was hatched in Gomorrah. Both schemes must be very ancient—for they are true, tried, and certain.

Mr. Dawlin had much information to give me regarding games in general. He told me about his brother Ike, a proficient gold-brick artist. He said that if I cared to go into that line he would put me next to his brother. Mr. Dawlin, as had the others of his fraternity, complimented me on my honest looks. When I dared to suggest that the gold-brick scheme must be known to everybody, and all played out, he laughed at my ignorance. He said that getting a whole lot for a little always had been a bait for human greed and always would be; as to getting at the yaps in these days, it was only a matter of fresh style of approach and men like his brother were thinking up new methods of approach all the time.

Men who needed money in a hurry to make up a balance were almost always ready to gamble heavily and desperately.

He said his brother had a deal on at that very time, but that it was too late for me to get in on that, for the thing was all set and pretty near ready to be pulled off. It was an up-country case, of course.

“Plant by ‘Peacock’ Pratt,” said Davdin. That was a new name for my roster of rascality, and I stuck it into a mental pigeonhole. “Pratt is a white-vest operator. Paunch scenery!” He saw that I wasn’t catching him very well and explained that Pratt affected the manner of a prosperous Westerner who regularly stoned neighbors’ chickens out of his garden with gold nuggets.

Speaking of gold, I was not specially dissatisfied with the rake-off I was getting from these precious rascals, though, of course, it was small as compared with my diver’s wages. But standing in the sunshine under a plug-hat with nothing to do but gabble nonsense was a softer snap than grubbing under muddy water with a diver’s helmet stuck over my head. I was truly in a way to succumb to the blandishments of my cheap screak and settle down into the practice of roguery.

But I had some sense of shame left in me. I kept on that disguising mustache when I was before the public. It was not much of a mask, to be sure, but it comforted me a bit to know that it made me look unlike myself.

And that’s why the Sortwell boys from Levant did not recognize me when they halted on the sidewalk one day and listened to my barking.

There they were, the two of them, grown up to manhood; but they were mighty green specimens. They were looking at the banners rather than at me. I wagered with myself that it was the first time they had ever been in the big city; even one trip would have rounded off some of the rough comers they were showing. For instance, they surely would have had experience with such a peep-show as we were running and would not have been tempted.

They walked over to the painted maiden and asked her if she could recommend the show; they grinned and gaped at her amorously. She fawned on them and they bought tickets and went in. I wasn’t a bit sorry, nor did I try to stop them. My last expenence with the gang in Levant had not implanted in me any hankering to hug and kiss the Sortwell boys.

I watched for them to come out, for I felt pretty sure that they would be properly trimmed and I anticipated secret relish in looking on their faces. I told myself I didn’t care. If a good jolt should be handed to them it would help in satisfying my grudge against the town which had sent me flying. Bitterness was in me at that moment. I was glad I was out of the jay place. If I had stayed there I would be looking just like those simpering rubes who had gone in like lambs to be sheared. I’d never want to go back to that town, I decided all over again.

When they came out each one carried one of Professor Jewelle’s charts, and they were crying like great calves—actually guffling slobbering sobs. They went away a little distance and stood on the sidewalk, looking at each other and scruffing tears from their eyes with the palms of their hands. Awhile back if somebody had told me I would see a couple of big, larruping chaps from Levant doing that on the street in broad daylight, I’d have predicted a good laugh for myself.

Well, there was nothing like that in my case!

A lump swelled in my throat. I don’t know what it was—whether ’twas homesickness, longing for my own people of my own kind, spectacle of boys who had gone barefoot with me, sight of their sorrow, mindfulness of what the cruel city had done to me, reflection that I had helped in a measure to get them into their scrape—I say I don’t know just what it was. But my throat gripped and tears flowed up into my eyes. Those poor devils, who were children in spite of their size, were helplessly adrift—I could see that. Something special must have happened to them.

I seem to be stopping to analyze my emotions. At the time I was doing nothing of the sort. I felt a comforting sense that I was not a rascal down in my heart, in spite of what I had done and of the job I was holding down.

I left my rostrum, ran into the little office, and tipped Dawlin’s bottle of whisky against my upper lip; the alcohol dissolved the gum and I ripped off the mustache. Then I chased along after the Sortwell boys. They were far up the street, plugging slowly with bowed shoulders.

When I came close upon them I took my time to get my breath and control my emotions. Then I called to them, and they turned around and stared at me with eyes which expressed all the range of feelings between interrogation and stupefaction.

“Well, haven’t you anything to say to an old friend?” I asked.

“It ain’t you,” faltered the older. “It may look like you, but it ain’t.”

“There ain’t anything in this place that’s looking like it really is,” whimpered the younger. “There was a card with a zero on it and it wasn’t a zero—it was a nine—and he took our money.”

“Have you lost your money, boys?”

“All of it—every scrimptom of it,” bawled the older. “We ’ain’t got anything to get home with. We saved up to come down and see the city for a couple of days—and now it’s all gone.”

“We worked all winter logging—sweating and freezing in Cale Warson’s swamp—to earn that money, and that hell-hound down there took it and jammed it into his pants pocket. And how’ll we get home?”

Oh, I knew what logging in a swamp was! I knew what sort of wages were paid and how hard it is to save! That one sentence fairly lanced my conscience. “He jammed it into his pocket!” To Jeff Dawlin, who reached out and took in his money so easily, those bills were hardly more than so much paper, as he handled them.

But he had not been a boy in a country town where money is not come at so easily, where the little hoards grow so slowly, where there are so many dreams about the big world up in the attics under the patched coverlids—dreams which the little savings may bring to realization!

These were boys from my home town. Thank God, a lot of the cheap in me, the soul-dirt I had rubbed off in my associations, the cynical notions about right and wrong, the inclinations of a swaggering sport—yes, a whole lot of that slime was washed out of me right there and then by my new emotions. I don’t say I was made anyways clean—not all of it went. I have done many things since then to be ashamed of. But I was a blamed sight more of a man when I went up and patted those poor boys on their backs, standing between them.

“Don’t take on about it any more, fellows,” I said. “I guess I’ll be able to do something for you.” My tone was pretty important and they began to look me over; they had been so fussed up that they had not taken full stock of me till then.

“Golly! You’re rich, ain’t you?” gasped the older.

“Now about losing this money—where did you lose it?” I asked, swelling a little more because I knew I was in the way to make a big impression.

“Down the street there—where those fraud duflickers are all billed out! It looked like a zero—”

“And they charged three dollars apiece for feeling of our heads!” put in the younger. “There was a big man who cracked his fists—”

“Never mind! I know all about all such places, boys. I won’t allow any such things to be put across in this city on any friends of mine!”

I was talking as if I owned the town. They goggled at me as if they believed that I did own it. When I started back toward Dawlin’s joint they followed me like hounds at heel.

I flipped a lordly gesture at the girl in the ticket-office and walked in without paying—herding my clients ahead of me. That was visible evidence of my mysterious importance, and they looked up at me as if they were ready to fall down and offer worship. For in America any man who can walk past ticket-sellers and pay by a flip of the hand, displays a power which autocrats may envy.

“You are sure this is the place?” I asked the Sortwell boys.

They breathlessly assured me that it was.

“And there’s the man who made us pay him six dollars,” declared the older.

Professor Jewelle had stepped out through the slit in his curtains. I walked up to him.

“Did you charge these gentlemen six dollars—take the money from them?” I asked, sternly.