Of All Things Part 10

This gave us both amus.e.m.e.nt for a little while, but your combinations are limited in a thing like that, and by the time the grill was reached he was saying the names correctly and with a little more a.s.surance.

It was in the grill that the happy event took place. Mr. Shriner, the one of whom we expected least, suddenly turned up at a table alone. He was a quiet man and not at all worked up over his unexpected honor. He signaled the boy with one hand and went on taking soup with the other, and learned, without emotion, that he was wanted on the telephone. He even made no move to leave his meal to answer the call, and when last seen he was adding pepper with one hand and taking soup with the other. I suspect that he was a "plant," or a plain-clothes house detective, placed there on purpose to deceive me.

We had been to every nook of the hotel by this time, except the writing-room, and, of course, no one would ever look there for patrons of the hotel. Seeing that the boy was about to totter, I went up and spoke to him. He continued to totter, thinking, perhaps, that I was Mr. Kenworthy, his long-lost beau-ideal. But I spoke kindly to him and offered him a piece of chocolate almond-bar, and soon, in true reporter fas.h.i.+on, had wormed his secret from him before he knew what I was really after.

The thing I wanted to find out was, of course, just what the average is of replies to one paging trip. So I got around it in this manner: offering him another piece of chocolate almond-bar, I said, slyly: "Just what is the average number of replies to one paging trip?"

I think that he had suspected something at first, but this question completely disarmed him, and, leaning against an elderly lady patron, he told me everything.

"Well," he said, "it's this way: sometimes I find a man, and sometimes I can go the rounds without a bite. To-night, for instance, here I've got four names and one came across. That's about the average--perhaps one in six."

I asked him why he had given Mr. Kenworthy such a handicap at the start.

A faint smile flickered across his face and then flickered back again.

"I call the names I think will be apt to hang round in the part of the hotel I'm in. Mr. Kenworthy would have to be in the dressy dining-room or in the lobby where they wait for ladies. You'd never find him in the bar or the Turkish baths. On the other hand, you'll never find a man by the name of Blevitch anywhere except in the bar. Of course, I take a chance and call every name once in so often, no matter where I am, but, on the whole, I uses my own discretion."

I gave him another piece of chocolate and the address of a good bootmaker and left him. What I had heard had sobered me, and the lights and music suddenly seemed garish. It is no weak emotion to feel that you have been face to face with a mere boy whose chances of success in his work are one to six.

And I found that he had not painted the lily in too glowing terms. I followed other pages that night--some calling for "Mr. Strudel," some for "Mr. Carmickle," and one was broad-minded enough to page a "Mrs.

Bemis." But they all came back with that wan look in their eyes and a break in their voices.

And each one of them was stopped by the man in the business suit in the downstairs dining-room and each time he considered it a personal affront that there wasn't a call for "Studz."

Some time I'm going to have him paged, and when he comes out I shall untie his necktie for him.

XIV

FOOTBALL; COURTESY OF MR. MORSE

Sunday morning these fine fall days are taken up with reading about the "40,000 football enthusiasts" or the "gaily-bedecked crowd of 60,000 that watched the game on Sat.u.r.day." And so they probably did, unless there were enough men in big fur coats who jumped up at every play and yelled "Now we're off!" thus obstructing the view of an appreciable percentage.

But why stop at the mention of the paltry 50,000 who sat in the Bowl or the Stadium? Why forget the twice 50,000 all over the country, in Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, Atlanta, who watched the same game over the ticker, or sat in a smoke-fogged room listening to telegraphic announcements, play by play, or who even stood on the curbing in front of a newspaper office and watched an impartial employee shove a little yellow ball along a black-board, usually indicating the direction in which the real football was _not_ going.

Since it is so important to give the exact number of people who saw the game, why not do the thing up right and say: "Returns which are now coming in from the Middle West, with some of the rural districts still to be heard from, indicate that at least 145,566 people watched the Yale-Princeton football game yesterday. Secretary Dinwoodie of the San Francisco Yale Club telegraphed late last night that the final count in that city would probably swell the total to a round 150,395.

This is, or will be, the largest crowd that ever a.s.sembled in one country to watch a football game."

And watching the game in this vicarious manner isn't so bad as the fellow who has got tickets and carfare to the real game would like to have it. You are in a warm room, where you can stretch your legs and regulate your remarks to the intensity of your emotions rather than to the s.e.x of your neighbors. And as for thrills! "Dramatic suspense" was probably first used as a term in connection with this indoor sport.

The scene is usually some college club in the city--a big room full of smoke and graduates. At one end is a scoreboard and miniature gridiron, along which a colored counter is moved as the telegraph behind the board clicks off the plays hot from the real gridiron.

There is also an announcer, who, by way of clarifying the message depicted on the board, reads the wrong telegram in a loud, clear tone.

Just as the crowd in the football arena are crouching down in their fur coats the better to avoid watching the home team fumble the kick-off, the crowds two and ten hundred miles away are settling back in their chairs and lighting up the old pipes, while the German-silver-tongued announcer steps to the front of the platform and delivers the following:

"Yale won the toss and chose to defend the south goal, Princeton taking the west."

This mistake elicits much laughter, and a witty graduate who has just had lunch wants to know, as one man to the rest of the house, if it is puss-in-the-corner that is being played.

The instrument behind the board goes "Tick-ity-tick-tick-tickity."

There is a hush, broken only by the witty graduate, who, encouraged by his first success, wants to know again if it is puss-in-the-corner that is being played. This fails to gain.

"Gilblick catches the kick-off and runs the ball back to his own 3-yard line, where he is downed in his tracks," comes the announcement.

There is a murmur of incredulity at this. The little ball on the board shoots to the middle of the field.

"Hey, how about that?" shout several precincts.

The announcer steps forward again.

"That was the wrong announcement," he admits. "Tweedy caught the kick-off and ran the ball back twenty-five yards to midfield, where he is thrown for a loss. On the next play there was a forward pa.s.s, Klung to Breakwater, which--"

Here the message stops. Intense excitement.

"Tickity-tickity-tick-tickity."

The man who has $5 on the game shuts his eyes and says to his neighbor: "I'll bet it was intercepted."

A wait of two triple-s.p.a.ce minutes while the announcer winds his watch. Then he steps forward. There is a noisy hush.

"It is estimated that 50,000 people filed into the Palmer Stadium to-day to watch Yale and Princeton in their annual gridiron contest,"

he reads. "Yale took the field at five minutes of 2, and was greeted by salvos and applause and cheering from the Yale section. A minute later the Princeton team appeared, and this was a signal for the Princeton cohorts to rise as one man and give vent to their famous 'Undertaker's Song.'"

"How about that forward pa.s.s?" This, as one man, from the audience.

The ball quivers and starts to go down the field. A mighty shout goes up. Then something happens, and the ball stops, looks, listens and turns in the other direction. Loud groans. A wooden slide in the mechanism of the scoreboard rattles into place, upside down. Agile spectators figure out that it says "Pa.s.s failed."

Every one then sinks back and says, "They ought not to have tried that." If the quarterback could hear the graduates' do-or-die backing of their team at this juncture he would trot into the locker building then and there.

Again the clear voice from the platform:

"Tweedy punts--" (noisy bond-salesman in back of room stands up on a chair and yells "Yea!" and is told to "Shut up" by three or four dozen neighbors) "to Gumble on his 15-yard line. Gumble fumbles."

The noisy bond-salesman tries to lead a cheer but is prevented.

Frightful tension follows. Who recovered? Whose ball is it? On what line? Wet palms are pressed against trouser legs. How about it?

"Tick-tickity-tick-tickity-tickity-tickity."

You can hear the announcer's boots squeak as he steps forward.

"Mr. A.T. Blevitch is wanted on the telephone," he enunciates.

Mr. A.T. Blevitch becomes the most unpopular man in that section of the country. Every one turns to see what a man of his stamp can look like. He is so embarra.s.sed that he slinks down in his seat and refuses to answer the call.