Shorty McCabe Part 35

Oh, yes, he had one. It was a little shaky, but, barrin' that, it was as smooth as mayonnaise. And language! Why, just tellin' me how much obliged he was, he near stood the dictionary on its head. There wa'n't no doubt of his warm feelin' for me by the time he was through. It was almost like bein' adopted by a rich uncle.

"Oh, that's all right," says I. "You can use that couch any time the disappearin' fit comes on. She was hot on the trail; eh, Monty?"

"It was all a painful, absurd error," says he, "a mistaken ident.i.ty, I presume. Permit me to make myself known to you," and he shoves out his card.

Rasmulli Pinphoodle, J. R. D.--that was the way it read.

"Long ways from Smith, ain't it?" says I. "The first of it sounds like a Persian rug."

"My Hindu birth name," says he.

"I'd have bet you wa'n't a domestic filler," says I. "The Pinphoodle is English, ain't it?"

He smiles like I'd asked him to split a pint with me, and says that it was.

"But the tag on the end--J. R. D.--I pa.s.ses up," says I. "Don't stand for Judge of Rent Dodgers, does it?"

"Those letters," says he, makin' another merry face, "represent the symbols of my Vedic progression."

"If I'd stopped to think once more, I'd fetched that," says I.

It was a jolly. I've never had the Vedic progression--anyways, not had enough to know it at the time--but I wasn't goin' to let him stun me that way.

Later on I got next to the fact that he was some kind of a healer, and that the proper thing to do was to call him Doc. Seems he had a four-by-nine office on the top floor back, over the Studio, and that he was just startin' to introduce the Vedic stunt to New York. Mostly he worked the mailorder racket. He showed me his ad in the Sunday personal column, and it was all to the velvet. Accordin' to his own specifications he was a head-liner in the East Indian philosophy business, whatever that was. He'd just torn himself away from the crowned heads of Europe for an American tour, and he stood ready to ladle out advice to statesmen, tinker up broken hearts, forecast the future, and map out the road to Wellville for millionaires who'd gone off their feed.

He sure had a full bag of tricks to draw from; but I've noticed that the more gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s you try to keep in the air at once, the surer you are to queer the act. And Pinphoodle didn't look like a gent that kept the receivin' teller workin' overtime.

There was something about him, though, that was kind of dignified. He was the style of chap that would blow his last dime on havin' his collar 'n' cuffs polished, and would go without eatin' rather than frisk the free lunch at a beer joint. He was willin' to talk about anything but the female with the gimlet eyes and the keen-cutter tongue.

"She is a mistaken, misguided person," says he. "And by the way, Professor McCabe, there is a fire-escape, I believe, which leads from my office down to your back windows. Would it be presuming too much if I should ask you to admit me there occasionally, in the event of my being--er--pursued again?"

"It ain't a board bill, is it, Doc?" says I.

"Nothing of the kind, I a.s.sure you," says he.

"Glad to hear it," says I. "As a rule, I don't run no rock-of-ages refuge, but I likes to be neighborly, so help yourself."

We fixed it up that way, and about every so often I'd see Doc Pinphoodle slidin' in the back window, with a worried look on his face, and iron rust on his trousers. He was a quiet neighbor, though--didn't torture the cornet, or deal in voice culture, or get me to cash checks that came back with remarks in red ink written on 'em.

I was wonderin' how the Vedic stunt was catchin' on, when all of a sudden he buds out in an eight-dollar hat, this year's model, and begins to lug around an iv'ry-handled cane.

"I'm glad they're comin' your way, Doc," says I.

"Thanks," says he. "If I can in any measure repay some of the many kindnesses which you have--"

"Sponge it off," says I. "Maybe I'll want to throw a lady off the scent myself, some day."

A week or so later I misses him altogether, and the janitor tells me he's paid up and moved. Well, they come and go like that, so it don't do to feel lonesome; but I had the floor swept under the couch reg'lar, on a chance that he might show up again.

It was along about then that I hears about the bull pup. I'd been wantin' to have one out to Primrose Park--where I goes to prop up the weekend, you know. Pinckney was tellin' me of a friend of his that owns a likely-lookin' litter about two months old, so one Sat.u.r.day afternoon I starts to hoof it over and size 'em up.

Now that was reg'lar, wa'n't it? You wouldn't think a two-eyed man like me could go astray just tryin' to pick out a bull pup, would you? But look what I runs into! I'd gone about four miles from home, and was. .h.i.ttin' up a Daddy Weston clip on the side path, when I sees one of them big bay-windowed bubbles slidin' past like a train of cars. There was a girl on the back seat that looks kind of natural. She sees me, too, shouts to Francois to put on the emergency brake, and begins wavin' her parasol at me to hurry on. It was Sadie Sullivan.

"Hurry up, Shorty! Run!" she yells. "There isn't a minute to lose."

I gets up on my toes at that, and I hadn't no more'n climbed aboard before the machine was tearin' up the macadam again.

"Anybody dyin'," says I, "or does the bargain counter close at five o'clock?"

"Aunt Tillie's eloping," says she, "and if we don't head her off she'll marry an old villain who ought to be in jail."

"Not Mr. Pinckney's Aunt Tillie, the old girl that owns the big place up near Blenmont?" says I.

"That's the one," says Sadie.

"Why she's qualified for an old ladies' home," says I. "You don't mean to say she's got kittenish at her age."

"There's no age limit to that kind of foolishness," says Sadie, "and this looks like a serious attack. We've got to stop it, though, for I promised Pinckney I'd stand guard until he came back from Newport."

I hadn't seen the old girl myself, but I knew her record, and now I got it revised to date. She'd hooked two husbands in her time, but neither of 'em had lasted long. Then she gave it up for a spell and it wa'n't until she was sixty-five that she begins to wear rainbow clothes again, and caper around like one of the squab octet. Lately she'd begun to show signs of wantin' to sit in a shady corner with a man.

Pinckney had discouraged a bald-headed minister, warned off an old bachelor, and dropped strong hints to a couple of widowers that took to callin' frequent for afternoon tea. Then a new one had showed up.

"He's a sticker, too," says Sadie. "I don't know where Aunt Tillie found him, but Pinckney says he's been coming out from the city every other day for a couple of weeks. She's been meeting him at the station and taking him for drives. She says he's some sort of an East Indian priest, and that he's giving her lessons in a new faith cure that she's taking up. To-day, though, after she'd gone off, the housekeeper found that her trunk had been smuggled to the station. Then a note was picked up in her room. It said something about meeting her at the church of St.

Paul's-in-the-Wood, at four-thirty, and was signed, 'Your darling Mulli.' Oh, dear, it's almost half-past now! Can't you go any faster, Francois?"

I thought he couldn't, but he did. He jammed the speed lever up another notch, and in a minute more we were hittin' only the high places. We caromed against them red-leather cus.h.i.+ons like a couple of pebbles in a bottle, and it was a case of holdin' on and hoping the thing would stay right side up. I hadn't worked up much enthusiasm about gettin' to St.

Paul's-in-the-Wood before, but I did then, all right. Never was so glad to see a church loom up as I was that one.

"That's her carriage at the chapel door," says Sadie. "Shorty, we must stop this thing."

"It's out of my line," says I, "but I'll help all I can."

We made a break for the front door and b.u.t.ted right in, just as though they'd sent us cards. It wasn't very light inside, but down at the far end we could see a little bunch of folks standin' around as if they was waitin' for somethin' to happen.

Sadie didn't make any false motions. She sailed down the center aisle and took Aunt Tillie by the arm. She was a dumpy, pie-faced old girl, with plenty of ballast to keep her shoes down, and a lot of genuine store hair that was puffed and waved like the specimens you see in the Sixth-ave. show cases. She was actin' kind of nervous, and grinnin' a silly kind of grin, but when she spots Sadie she quit that and puts on a look like the hired girl wears when she's been caught bein' kissed by the grocery boy.

"You haven't done it, have you?" says Sadie.

"No," says Aunt Tillie; "but it's going to be done just as soon as the rector gets on his other coat."

"Now please don't, Mrs. Winfield," says Sadie, gettin' a waist grip on the old girl, and rubbin' her cheek up against her shoulder in that purry, coaxin' way she has. "You know how badly we should all feel if it didn't turn out well, and Pinckney--"

"He's a meddlesome, impertinent young scamp!" says Aunt Tillie, growin'

red under the layers of rice powder. "Haven't I a right to marry without consulting him, I'd like to know?"

"Oh, yes, of course," says Sadie, soothing her down, "but Pinckney says--"

"Don't tell me anything that he says, not a word!" she shouts. "I won't listen to it. He had the impudence to suggest that my dear Mulli was a--a corn doctor, or something like that."