Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures Part 16

I might have known better. I was within perhaps ten feet of the Gasowas.h.i.+ne when another door, this time a smaller one toward the front, squeaked for a moment and then flew open. Simultaneously a bolt of something white shot forth and made for my head.

Regardless of appearances, I dropped flat to the floor and wriggled out of the danger zone.

When I arose, I realized what new disaster had taken place. It was the sixty yards of dish-towel this time!

Presumably, a roller had smashed and released the thing; at any rate, there it was, yard after yard of it, trailing after the Gasowas.h.i.+ne as it thumped energetically toward the street door.

And that was not the worst. The end of the toweling entwined itself about one of the dining-tables and held there. The table went over, collided with the next and emptied that, too.

Then the next followed and the next, each new crash echoed by the frightened squeals of the guests, now lined up against the opposite walls.

The tenth table, with its load of crockery and gla.s.sware, had been sent to destruction before Macdougal, the manager, finally gained the dining-room. Tears rose to his eyes as he made a rapid survey of the havoc, but he kept his wits and shouted:

"Knock it over! Somebody knock it over!" A big military-looking man in evening clothes sprang forward. I offered a prayer for him and held my breath. He rushed to the Gasowas.h.i.+ne, seized it with his mighty arms, and gave a shove.

"M-m-m-mister," quavered Hawkins, wriggling from under one of the tables, "don't do that! The g-g-g-gasolene tank!"

But it was done. With a dull crash, the only perfect machine for was.h.i.+ng and drying dishes fell to its side. The big man smiled at it.

And then--well, then a sheet of flame seemed to envelope the unfortunate. A heavy boom shook the apartment, the big gla.s.s door splintered musically and fell inward, the lights in that end of the room were extinguished.

Then followed the screams of the terrified guests, the patter of numberless fragments of crockery and countless drops of filthy dishwater as they reached the floor. And then the big man picked himself up some twenty feet from the spot where he had dared the wrath of the Gasowas.h.i.+ne.

And Hawkins standing majestically in the wreck of a table, with one foot in a salad bowl and the other oozing nesselrode pudding, while an unbroken stream of mayonnaise dressing meandered down the back of his coat--Hawkins, standing thus, shook his fist at the big man and, above the turmoil, shouted at him:

"I told you so!"

Such was the fate of the first, last, and only Gasowas.h.i.+ne.

Bellboys, clerks, and waiters pelted with hand grenades its smoldering remains and squirted chemical fire-extinguishers upon it; but the Gasowas.h.i.+ne's day was done. Its turbulent spirit had pa.s.sed to another sphere.

Later, when some measure of order had been restored to the dining-room, when the door had been boarded up and the inquisitive police satisfied and the street crowd dispersed; when a sympathetic waiter had partially cleansed Hawkins, and that gentleman had suggested that we might as well depart, he received a peremptory invitation to call upon the proprietor in his private office.

The proprietor was a calm, cold man. He viewed Hawkins with an inscrutable stare for some time before he spoke.

"I hardly know, Mr. Hawkins," he said at last, "whom to blame for this."

"Well, I know! That hulking lummox who knocked over my----"

"At any rate, the machine was yours, I fear you will have to pay for the damage."

"I will, eh?" bl.u.s.tered Hawkins. "Well, I told your man Macdougal that if one dish was broken I'd pay for it. Here's the dollar for the dis.h.!.+

Come, Griggs."

"Um-um. So you refuse to settle?" smiled the proprietor.

"Absolutely and positively!" declared Hawkins.

"Well, I think that, pending a suit for damages, I can have you held on a charge of disorderly conduct," mused the calm man. "Mr. Macdougal, will you kindly call an officer?"

Hawkins wilted at that. His checkbook came forth, and the string of figures he was compelled to write made my heart bleed.

When he had exchanged the slip for a receipt, Hawkins and I made for the side door and slunk out into the night.

The Gasowas.h.i.+ne, I presume, or such combustible fragments as remained, found an inglorious grave next day in the ranges of the same kitchen which had witnessed the start of its short little life.

CHAPTER VII.

Perhaps some of the blame should rest upon the barbaric habit of having Sunday dinner in the middle of the afternoon.

Had it been evening when Hawkins and his better half sat down to dinner with us, it would not, naturally, have been daylight; and much unpleasantness might have been avoided, for the gas had not yet been turned on in the modeled Hawkins residence, and an inspection would have been impossible.

Again, I may have started the trouble myself by bringing up the subject of the renovations.

"Yes, the work's all done," said Hawkins, with a more genial air than he usually exhibited when that topic was touched. "I tell you, it's a model home now."

"Particularly in containing no new inventions by its owner," added Mrs.

Hawkins.

"Oh, those may come later," said the gifted inventor, casting a complacent wink in my direction.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," replied the lady rather tartly. "We escaped with our lives when the house was wrecked, but next time----"

"Madam," flared Hawkins, "if you knew what that house----"

Just here my wife broke in with a spasmodic remark anent the doings of the Russians in Manchuria, and a discussion of the merits of Hawkins'

inventions was happily averted.

But the s.p.u.n.ky light didn't die out of Hawkins' eye. He appeared to be nursing something beside wrath, and when we arose from the table he remarked shortly:

"Come up to the house, Griggs, and smoke a cigar while we look it over."

"And note the charm of the inventionless home," supplemented his wife.

"Inventionless fiddlestick!" snapped Hawkins as he slammed the door behind us. "It's a wonder to me that women weren't created either with sense or without tongues."

I made no comment and we walked in silence to the Hawkins house.

It had been done over in a style which must have made Hawkins' bank account look like an Arabian grain field after a particularly bad locust year; but beyond noting the general beauty of the decorations, I found nothing remarkable until we reached the second floor.

There, as we gazed from the back windows, it struck me that something familiar had departed, and I asked:

"What's become of the fire-escape?"