Lonesome Town Part 2

A moment before a problem had darkened his brow. Now the darkness was displaced by light. Over the suggested answer to the unanswerable he exulted. What was difficulty of any sort except illusion? His Fatness the Quail-that is to say, the park sparrow cop-to-day had accused him of believing too devoutly in signs. Yet _what_ were signs for if not to point the way?

His chuckles evoked the curiosity of Polkadot. Back toward him waggled one white-tipped, enquiring ear. Willingly, as at all such requests of his quadruped pal, he leaned to oblige.

"Why not?" He laughed aloud. "I ask you that, old hoss-_why not_?"

CHAPTER III-THE SKY SIGN

Peter Pape sighed a chestful of relief. They pulled on like ordinary pants. But of course that was what they were expected to do. Weren't they direct from the work room of the most expensive tailor he could locate in Gotham? Even so, he had inserted his silk-socked toes into their twin tunnels with some foreboding. They were different, these long, straight leg-sheaths of his first full-dress suit.

There. The secret is out. Our East-exiled Westerner had followed advice.

Praying that news of his lapse never would wing back to h.e.l.lroaring, he had submitted himself to measurements for a claw-hammer, known chiefly by rumor on the range as a "swallow-tail." The result had been delivered late that afternoon, one week since the signs of Broadway had directed him aright. The suit had seemed in full possession of the dressing room of his hotel suite when he had returned from his usual park-path sprint on Polkadot, an event to-day distinguished by the whipcord riding breeches of approved balloon cut which had displaced his goat-skin chaps. Somehow it helped to fill an apartment which hitherto had felt rather empty; with its air of sophistication suggested the next move in the role for which it was the costume _de luxe_.

The trousers conquered in combat, Pape essayed to don the stiff-bosomed s.h.i.+rt which, according to the diagram pinned on the wall picturing a conventional gentleman ready for an evening out, must encase his chest.

His chief conclusion, after several preparatory moments, was that the hiring of a valet was not adequate cause for a lynching with the first handy rope. No. There were arguments pro valet which should stay the hand of any one who ever had essayed to enter the costume _de luxe_ of said conventional gentleman. What those patent plungers of his real pearl studs couldn't and didn't do! With the contrariness of as many mavericks, they preferred to puncture new holes in the immaculate linen, rather than enter the eyelets of the s.h.i.+rt-maker's provision.

But we won't go into the matter. Other writers have done it so often and so soulfully. The one best thing that may be remarked about such trials of the spirit is that they have an end as well as a beginning. At last and without totally wrecking the work of the launderer, Why-Not Pape's famed will to win won. The s.h.i.+rt was harnessed; hooked-up; coupled.

Now came the test of tests for his patience and persistence-for his tongue and other such equipment of the genus human for the exercise of self-control. This was not trial by fire, although the flames of suppression singed him, but by choking. Again he thought tolerantly of valets; might have asked even the loan of m'lady's maid had he been acquainted personally with any of his fair neighbors.

"They'd ought to sell block and tackle with every box of 'em," he a.s.sured the ripe-tomato-colored cartoon of himself published in the dresser mirror.

Smoothing out certain of his facial distortions, lest they become muscularly rooted, to the ruin of his none too comely visage, he retrieved a wandering son-of-a-b.u.t.ton from beneath the radiator and returned to the fray with a fresh strip of four-ply. When thrice he had threatened out loud to tie on a bandanna and let it go at that, by some slip or trick of his fingers he accomplished the impossible. His neck protruded proudly from his first stiff collar since the Sunday dress-ups of Lord Fauntleroy days-before the mother and father of faint but fond memory had gone, literally and figuratively "West," leaving their orphan to work the world "on his own."

Around the collar the chart ent.i.tled, "Proper Dress for Gents at All Hours," dictated that he tie a narrow, white silk tie. Antic.i.p.ating difficulties here, he had ordered a dozen. And he needed most of them; tried out one knot after another of his extensive repertoire; at last, by throwing a modified diamond hitch, accomplished an effect which gratified him, although probably no dress-tie had been treated quite that way before.

His chortle of relief that he was at ordeal's end proved to be premature. Peering coldly and pointedly at him from across the room, their twin rows of pop-eyes perpendicularly placed, stood his patent leathers. Clear through his arches he already had felt their maliciousness and, as the worst of his trials, had left them to the last. All too late he recalled the fact that brand new b.u.t.toned shoes only meet across insteps and ankles by suasion of a hook, even as range boots yield most readily to jacks. Prolific as had been the growth of his toilet articles since a week ago, that small instrument of torture was not yet a fruit thereof. Further delay ensued before response to the order which he telephoned the desk for "one shoe-hooker-quick."

Peter Stansbury Pape had emerged from the West of his upgrowing and self-making with two projects in view-one grave, one much less so. The grave, when its time came, would involve a set-to in the street called Wall with a certain earnest little group of shearers who, seeming to take him for a woolly lamb, _almost_ had lifted his fleece. Animated by a habit of keeping his accounts in life square, steady in his stand as the mountain peaks that surrounded his home ranch, his courage fortified against fear because he recognized it at first sight and refused to yield to it, he was biding the right time to betake himself "down-town"

for the round-up reckoning. But of all that, more anon.

His "less so" was to learn life as it is lived along Gay Way, although he had made no promise to himself to become a part thereof. A sincere wish to explore the greatest Main Street on any map, whose denizens so far had shown themselves elusive as outlaw broncs to a set-down puncher, had moved him to acceptance of the suggestion of 'Donis Moore.

While awaiting the pleasure-or the pain-of the shoe-hook, he considered the indifference of his reception at the Astor, a hotel selected for its location "in the heart of things." In the heart of things-in the thick of the fight-in the teeth of the wind-right there was where Pape liked best to be. But the room-clerk had seemed unimpressed by his demand for the most luxurious one-man apartment on their floor plan. The cas.h.i.+er had eyed coldly the "herd" of New York drafts which he had offered for "corralling" in the treasury of the house. Clerks, elevator boys, even the dry-bar tenders had parried his questions and comments with that indifferent civility which had made this world, said to be the Real, seem false as compared with his hale and hearty Out-West.

The reply to his first inquiry, anent hotel stable accommodations for the intimate equine friend who, as a matter of course, had accompanied him on an American Express Company ticket, had been more of a shock to him than the height of Mt. Woolworth, first seen while ferrying the Hudson. Mr. Astor's palace, he was told, had a garage of one-hundred-car capacity, but no stable at all, not even stall s.p.a.ce for one painted pony. There were more rooms in the "one-man" suite than he knew how to utilize in his rather deficient home life, but the idea of attempting to smuggle Polkadot to the seventh landing, as suggested by the boast of a more modern hostelry that it elevated automobiles to any floor, was abandoned as likely to get them both put out. He had tramped many side-street trails before he had found, near the river, the stable of a contractor who still favored horses. Only this day had he learned of a riding academy near the southern fringe of Central Park where the beast might be boarded in style better suited to his importance in one estimation at least.

It is a pleasure to state that money really didn't matter with Pape; in any calculable probability, never would. That const.i.tutional demand of his-why not, why not?-had drilled into certain subterranean lakes beneath the range on which his unsuspecting cattle had grazed for years; had drilled until fonts of oleose gold had up-flowed. For months past his oil royalties literally had swamped the county-seat bank. He had been forced to divert the tide to Chicago and retain an attorney to figure his income tax. Upon him-in the _now_, instead of the hazy, hoped-for future-was the vacation time toward which he had toiled physically through the days of the past and through the nights had self-trained his mind with equal vigor.

The time had come. But the place-well, so far, America's Bagdad had offered nothing approaching his expectations. Perhaps the fault had been in his surface unfitness for the censorious gaze of the Bagdadians.

Perhaps clothes had unmade his outer man to folks too hurried to learn his inner. However, thanks to the official Sage of Traffic Squad "B," he now had remedied superficial defects.

In truth, any one fairly disposed who saw his descent of the Astor's front steps, would have conceded that. Despite the vicissitudes of preparation, the result was good. A tall, strong-built, free-swinging young man came to a halt at curb's edge, a young man immaculately arrayed, from silky top of hat to tips of glistening boots. His attention, however, was not upon the impression which he might or might not be making. Having done his best by himself, he was not interested in casual applause. There was a strained eagerness in his eyes as, leaning outward, he peered up The Way.

The night was cloudy, so that the overhead darkness of eight-thirty was not discounted by any far-off moon or wan-winking stars. The sky looked like a black velvet counter for the display of man-made jewelry-Edison diamonds in vast array-those great, vulgar "cl.u.s.ter pieces" of Stage Street.

And high above all others-largest, most brilliant, most vulgar, perhaps-was a trinket transformed from some few bubbles of oil, the latest acquisition of one Westerner.

There it was-_there it was_! Pape chortled aloud from the thrill of first sight of it. Cryptic and steady it blazed, overtopping a quick-change series of electric messages regarding the merits of divers brands of underwear, chewing gum, pneumatic tires, corsets, automobiles, hosiery, movies and such. His heart swelled from pride, his pulse quickened and his mind lit as he viewed it. The while, his lips moved to the words emblazoned within its frame of lurid, vari-colored roses.

WELCOME TO OUR CITY WHY-NOT PAPE

While yet he stood at the curb a limousine, doubtless theater-bound, was halted in the traffic crush before him. He saw a bobbed, dark head, bound by a pearl filet with an emerald drop, protrude; saw a pointing, bejeweled finger; heard clearly the drawled comment:

"More likely, some new food for the fat, dar-rling. Remind me to tell mother. She gained whole ounces on that last chaff she choked down. The poor dear is losing her pep-starving worse than any Chinese baby that ever--"

The heavy car was crawling on toward its next stop. But Pape was spared any regrets in nearer diversion as he drifted along with the tide of pavement pa.s.sers. In slowing to keep off the heels of a couple ahead, he eaves-dropped a woman's demand of her escort:

"Now what, do you imagine, _is_ Why-Not Pape? I do detest mysteries, although I suppose they're the only way to get the public nowadays.

Personally, I haven't any use for women that won't tell their ages, have you? I never read serial stories and simply can't stand those suppressed men that some girls rave about. The reason you make a hit with me, Jimmie, is because you're so frank, so natural, so sort of puppy-like.

Oh, don't bother getting sore! You know by this time that I--"

_What_ was Why-Not Pape, indeed? Soon as the a.n.a.lytical lady strayed from the vital subject to that of her ingenuous companion, the author of the latest Broadway riddle pa.s.sed on, a breaker on the edge of the down-sweeping tide of theater-goers, actor folk out of work and inevitable window shoppers. Of the several he overheard querying the new sign, none guessed-as none do in most real-life mysteries-that they were jostling elbows with the quite palpable solution. His upward stare attracted a direct remark from a pavement companion.

"You'll read the answer in the newspapers soon. n.o.body nor nothing is going to burn real money for long in that make-you-guess display."

Pape was startled. Would the press take him up-possibly in time pique the public interest to such extent that he might need to blaze forth, within his rose-border, answers to the questions he had raised? If so, the coveted recognition might be considered won.

But he did not need to tell New York what or who he was, to congratulate himself. None would have excuse hereafter to regard lightly an introduction to Why-Not Pape. Even though inadvertently, already the city was welcoming him.

His one regret anent the bought-and-paid-for greeting was that it did not include the worthy Polkadot. He had considered a design of a light-p.r.i.c.ked figure of himself mounted, the horse done in natural colors, only abandoning it when informed that black was not effective in Edison bulbs. At that, the bronc s.h.i.+ed at a glare and down in his horse heart would not have liked such presentment had he seen and understood.

And the simpler conceit seemed to be attracting a sufficiency of attention. As well it might-well it might! So Peter Pape a.s.sured himself, beaming back and up at it. The Mayor's Committee for the Entertainment of Distinguished Strangers couldn't have done better by him. And any prima donna must have been pleased with that floral frame.

CHAPTER IV-DOUBLE FOCUS

A man of action does not loiter all evening returning his own howdy-doo to himself-not in his first evening outfit. At Forty-second Street Pape cast a last look at the sign in which he felt by now devout belief, doubtless one of the most costly and colorful ever flaunted before New York. Certainly it was self-advertis.e.m.e.nt raised to the _N_th power and worthy any one's consideration. Yet the obligation to escort his new suit somewhere was on him.

Where? To one of the cinematograph houses inviting from every compa.s.s point? Unthinkable. To the dance hall up the street, decorated in artificial cherry blossoms, where partners to suit the individual taste might be rented by the hour? Not in these clothes of cla.s.s. To one of the "girl" shows? He had seen sufficient of them to realize more interest in sisters in the prevailing demi-habille of the street. To some romantic play? The heroes of such, sure to be admirable in looks and conduct, always got him in a discouraged state of mind about himself.

In his quandary Pape had approached a dignified, sizable building of yellow brick and now stopped before a plain-framed poster which named the pile as the Metropolitan Opera House, within which Geraldine Farrar was singing _Zaza_ that night-that moment probably. Grand opera! He was impressed by the conviction that he and his new suit had been led blindly by Fate, who never before in his experience had shown more horse, or common, sense.

He made for the box office. The hour was late, or so he was informed by the man at the window. The curtains had been drawn aside many minutes before; were about to close again. The fas.h.i.+onable subscribers were seated. Wasn't he able to see that even the S. R. O. sign was up outside?

Standing room was not what Pape wanted-not with those patent pincers on his feet. Matter of fact, he wouldn't have considered a stand-up view of anything. Before paying for the best orchestra seat they had-didn't matter about the price-he'd like to know who was Zaza, just as folks outside were asking what was Why-Not.

The look of the man at the window accused him of being mildly insane.

"_Zaza's Zaza_" he observed, as he turned to his accounts.