Cheerful-By Request Part 43

"Thought you was in 'Frisco."

"Well, I ain't."

Moran s.h.i.+fted his attention from the girl to Tyler. "Friend o' yours?"

Before Tyler could open his lips to answer the girl put in, "Sure he is.

Sure I am. We been around together all afternoon."

Tyler jerked. "Why, ma'am, I guess you've made a mistake. I never saw you before in my life. I kind of thought when you up and spoke to me you must be taking me for somebody else. Well, now, isn't that funny--"

The smile faded from the girl's face, and it became twisted with fury.

She glared at Moran, her lips drawn back in a snarl. "Who're you to go b.u.t.tin' into my business! This guy's a friend of mine, I tell yuh!"

"Yeh? Well, he's a friend of mine, too. Me an' him had a date to meet here right now and we're goin' over to a swell little dance on Michigan Avenoo. So it's you who's b.u.t.tin' in, Blanche, me girl."

The girl stood twisting her handkerchief savagely. She was panting a little. "I'll get you for this."

"Beat it!" said Moran. He tucked his arm through Tyler's, with a little impelling movement, and Tyler found himself walking up the street at a smart gait, leaving the girl staring after them.

Tyler Kamps was an innocent, but he was not a fool. At what he had vaguely guessed a moment before, he now knew. They walked along in silence, the most ill-sorted pair that you might hope to find in all that higgledy-piggledy city. And yet with a new, strong bond between them. It was more than fraternal. It had something of the character of the feeling that exists between a father and son who understand each other.

Man-like, they did not talk of that which they were thinking.

Tyler broke the silence.

"Do you dance?"

"Me! Dance! Well, I've mixed with everything from hula dancers to geisha girls, not forgettin' the Barbary Coast in the old days, but--well, I ain't what you'd rightly call a dancer. Why you askin'?"

"Because I can't dance, either. But we'll just go up and see what it's like, anyway."

"See wot wot's like?"

Tyler took out his card again, patiently. "This dance we're going to."

They had reached the Michigan Avenue address given on the card, and Tyler stopped to look up at the great, brightly lighted building. Moran stopped too, but for a different reason. He was staring, open-mouthed, at Tyler Kamps.

"You mean t' say you thought I was goin'--"

He choked. "Oh, my Gawd!"

Tyler smiled at him, sweetly. "I'm kind of scared, too. But Monicker goes to these dances and he says they're right nice. And lots of--of pretty girls. Nice girls. I wouldn't go alone. But you--you're used to dancing, and parties and--girls."

He linked his arm through the other man's. Moran allowed himself to be propelled along, dazedly. Still protesting, he found himself in the elevator with a dozen red-cheeked, scrubbed-looking jackies. At which point Moran, game in the face of horror, accepted the inevitable. He gave a characteristic jerk from the belt.

"Me, I'll try anything oncet. Lead me to it."

The elevator stopped at the ninth floor. "Out here for the jackies'

dance," said the elevator boy.

The two stepped out with the others. Stepped out gingerly, caps in hand.

A corridor full of women. A corridor a-flutter with girls. Talk.

Laughter. Animation. In another moment the two would have turned and fled, terrified. But in that half-moment of hesitation and bewilderment they were lost.

A woman approached them hand outstretched. A tall, slim, friendly looking woman, low-voiced, silk-gowned, inquiring.

"Good-evening!" she said, as if she had been haunting the halls in the hope of their coming. "I'm glad to see you. You can check your caps right there. Do you dance?"

Two scarlet faces. Four great hands twisting at white caps in an agony of embarra.s.sment. "Why, no ma'am."

"That's fine. We'll teach you. Then you'll go into the ball room and have a wonderful time."

"But--" in choked accents from Moran.

"Just a minute. Miss Hall!" She beckoned a diminutive blonde in blue.

"Miss Hall, this is Mr.--ah--Mr. Moran. Thanks. And Mr.?--yes--Mr.

Kamps. Tyler Kamps. They want to learn to dance. I'll turn them right over to you. When does your cla.s.s begin?"

Miss Hall glanced at a toy watch on the tiny wrist. Instinctively and helplessly Moran and Tyler focused their gaze on the dials that bound their red wrists. "Starting right now," said Miss Hall, crisply. She eyed the two men with calm appraising gaze. "I'm sure you'll both make wonderful dancers. Follow me."

She turned. There was something confident, dauntless, irresistible about the straight little back. The two men stared at it. Then at each other.

Panic was writ large on the face of each. Panic, and mutiny. Flight was in the mind of both. Miss Hall turned, smiled, held out a small white hand. "Come on," she said. "Follow me."

And the two, as though hypnotised, followed.

A fair-sized room, with a piano in one corner and groups of fidgeting jackies in every other corner. Moran and Tyler sighed with relief at sight of them. At least they were not to be alone in their agony.

Miss Hall wasted no time. Slim ankles close together, head held high, she stood in the centre of the room. "Now then, form a circle please!"

Twenty six-foot, well-built specimens of manhood suddenly became shambling hulks. They clumped forward, breathing hard, and smiling mirthlessly, with an a.s.sumption of ease that deceived no one, least of all, themselves. "A little lively, please. Don't look so scared. I'm not a bit vicious. Now then, Miss Weeks! A fox trot."

Miss Weeks, at the piano, broke into spirited strains. The first faltering steps in the social career of Gunner Moran and Tyler Kamps had begun.

To an onlooker, it might have been mirth-provoking if it hadn't been, somehow, tear-compelling. The thing that little Miss Hall was doing might have seemed trivial to one who did not know that it was magnificent. It wasn't dancing merely that she was teaching these awkward, serious, frightened boys. She was handing them a key that would unlock the social graces. She was presenting them with a magic something that would later act as an open sesame to a hundred legitimate delights.

She was strictly business, was Miss Hall. No nonsense about her.

"One-two-three-four! And a _one_-two _three_-four. One-two-three-four!

And a _turn_-two, _turn_-four. Now then, all together. Just four straight steps as if you were walking down the street. That's it!

One-two-three-four! Don't look at me. Look at my feet. And a _one_-two _three_-four."

Red-faced, they were. Very earnest. Pathetically eager and docile. Weeks of drilling had taught them to obey commands. To them the little dancing teacher whose white spats twinkled so expertly in the tangle of their own clumsy clumping boots was more than a pretty girl. She was knowledge. She was power. She was the commanding officer. And like children they obeyed.

Moran's Barbary Coast experience stood him in good stead now, though the stern and watchful Miss Hall put a quick stop to a certain tendency toward shoulder work. Tyler possessed what is known as a rhythm sense.

An expert whistler is generally a natural dancer. Stella Kamps had always waited for the sound of his cheerful whistle as he turned the corner of Vernon Street. High, clear, sweet, true, he would approach his top note like a Tettrazini until, just when you thought he could not possibly reach that dizzy eminence he did reach it, and held it, and trilled it, bird-like, in defiance of the laws of vocal equilibrium.

His dancing was much like that. Never a half-beat behind the indefatigable Miss Weeks. It was a bit laboured, at first, but it was true. Little Miss Hall, with the skilled eye of the specialist, picked him at a glance.

"You've danced before?"