The Four Million
whether to draw steel or borrow a match.
The bride leaned forward low. She and the girl spoke rapidly together,
their tongues moving quickly like those of two serpents—a comparison
that is not meant to go further. Two smiles and a dozen nods closed the
conference.
And now in the broad, quiet avenue in front of the Rubberneck car a man
in dark clothes stood with uplifted hand. From the sidewalk another
hurried to join him.
The girl in the fruitful hat quickly seized her companion by the arm
and whispered in his ear. That young man exhibited proof of ability to
act promptly. Crouching low, he slid over the edge of the car, hung
lightly for an instant, and then disappeared. Half a dozen of the
top-riders observed his feat, wonderingly, but made no comment, deeming
it prudent not to express surprise at what might be the conventional
manner of alighting in this bewildering city. The truant passenger
dodged a hansom and then floated past, like a leaf on a stream between
a furniture van and a florist’s delivery wagon.
The girl in the tan jacket turned again, and looked in the eyes of Mrs.
James Williams. Then she faced about and sat still while the Rubberneck
auto stopped at the flash of the badge under the coat of the
plainclothes man.
“What’s eatin’ you?” demanded the megaphonist, abandoning his
professional discourse for pure English.
“Keep her at anchor for a minute,” ordered the officer. “There’s a man
on board we want—a Philadelphia burglar called ‘Pinky’ McGuire. There
he is on the back seat. Look out for the side, Donovan.”
Donovan went to the hind wheel and looked up at James Williams.
“Come down, old sport,” he said, pleasantly. “We’ve got you. Back to
Sleepytown for yours. It ain’t a bad idea, hidin’ on a Rubberneck,
though. I’ll remember that.”
Softly through the megaphone came the advice of the conductor:
“Better step off, sir, and explain. The car must proceed on its tour.”
James Williams belonged among the level heads. With necessary slowness
he picked his way through the passengers down to the steps at the front
of the car. His wife followed, but she first turned her eyes and saw
the escaped tourist glide from behind the furniture van and slip behind
a tree on the edge of the little park, not fifty feet away.
Descended to the ground, James Williams faced his captors with a smile.
He was thinking what a good story he would have to tell in Cloverdale
about having been mistaken for a burglar. The Rubberneck coach
lingered, out of respect for its patrons. What could be a more
interesting sight than this?
“My name is James Williams, of Cloverdale, Missouri,” he said kindly,
so that they would not be too greatly mortified. “I have letters here
that will show—”
“You’ll come with us, please,” announced the plainclothes man. “‘Pinky’
McGuire’s description fits you like flannel washed in hot suds. A
detective saw you on the Rubberneck up at Central Park and ’phoned down
to take you in. Do your explaining at the station-house.”
James Williams’s wife—his bride of two weeks—looked him in the face
with a strange, soft radiance in her eyes and a flush on her cheeks,
looked him in the face and said:
“Go with ’em quietly, ‘Pinky,’ and maybe it’ll be in your favour.”
And then as the Glaring-at-Gotham car rolled away she turned and threw
a kiss—his wife threw a kiss—at some one high up on the seats of the
Rubberneck.
“Your girl gives you good advice, McGuire,” said Donovan. “Come on,
now.”
And then madness descended upon and occupied James Williams. He pushed
his hat far upon the back of his head.
“My wife seems to think I am a burglar,” he said, recklessly. “I never
heard of her being crazy; therefore I must be. And if I’m crazy, they
can’t do anything to me for killing you two fools in my madness.”
Whereupon he resisted arrest so cheerfully and industriously that cops
had to be whistled for, and afterwards the reserves, to disperse a few
thousand delighted spectators.
At the station-house the desk sergeant asked for his name.
“McDoodle, the Pink, or Pinky the Brute, I forget which,” was James
Williams’s answer. “But you can bet I’m a burglar; don’t leave that
out. And you might add that it took five of ’em to pluck the Pink. I’d
especially like to have that in the records.”
In an hour came Mrs. James Williams, with Uncle Thomas, of Madison
Avenue, in a respect-compelling motor car and proofs of the hero’s
innocence—for all the world like the third act of a drama backed by an
automobile mfg. co.
After the police had sternly reprimanded James Williams for imitating a
copyrighted burglar and given him as honourable a discharge as the
department was capable of, Mrs. Williams rearrested him and swept him
into an angle of the station-house. James Williams regarded her with
one eye. He always said that Donovan closed the other while somebody
was holding his good right hand. Never before had he given her a word
of reproach or of reproof.
“If you can explain,” he began rather stiffly, “why you—”
“Dear,” she interrupted, “listen. It was an hour’s pain and trial to
you. I did it for her—I mean the girl who spoke to me on the coach. I
was so happy, Jim—so happy with you that I didn’t dare to refuse that
happiness to another. Jim, they were married only this morning—those
two; and I wanted him to get away. While they were struggling with you
I saw him slip from behind his tree and hurry across the park. That’s
all of it, dear—I had to do it.”
Thus does one sister of the plain gold band know another who stands in
the enchanted light that shines but once and briefly for each one. By
rice and satin bows does mere man become aware of weddings. But bride
knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes
comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of.
THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER
Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker,
allowed a look of mild interest and surprise to visit his usually
expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at half
past nine in company with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy
“Good-morning, Pitcher,” Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were
intending to leap over it, and then plunged into the great heap of
letters and telegrams waiting there for him.
The young lady had been Maxwell’s stenographer for a year. She was
beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. She forewent the
pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets or
lockets. She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to
luncheon. Her dress was grey and plain, but it fitted her figure with
fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the
gold-green wing of a macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly
radiant. Her eyes were dreamily bright, her cheeks genuine peachblow,
her expression a happy one, tinged with reminiscence.
Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this
morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room, where her
desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. Once
she moved over by Maxwell’s desk, near enough for him to be aware of
her presence.
The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy New
York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs.
“Well—what is it? Anything?” asked Maxwell sharply. His opened mail lay
like a bank of stage snow on his crowded desk. His keen grey eye,
impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half impatiently.
“Nothing,” answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile.
“Mr. Pitcher,” she said to the confidential clerk, “did Mr. Maxwell say
anything yesterday about engaging another stenographer?”
“He did,” answered Pitcher. “He told me to get another one. I notified
the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples this morning.
It’s 9.45 o’clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple
chewing gum has showed up yet.”
“I will do the work as usual, then,” said the young lady, “until some
one comes to fill the place.” And she went to her desk at once and hung
the black turban hat with the gold-green macaw wing in its accustomed
place.
He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker during
a rush of business is handicapped for the profession of anthropology.
The poet sings of the “crowded hour of glorious life.” The broker’s
hour is not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are hanging to
all the straps and packing both front and rear platforms.
And this day was Harvey Maxwell’s busy day. The ticker began to reel
out jerkily its fitful coils of tape, the desk telephone had a chronic
attack of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and call at him
over the railing, jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. Messenger
boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams. The clerks in the
office jumped about like sailors during a storm. Even Pitcher’s face
relaxed into something resembling animation.
On the Exchange there were hurricanes and landslides and snowstorms and
glaciers and volcanoes, and those elemental disturbances were
reproduced in miniature in the broker’s offices. Maxwell shoved his
chair against the wall and transacted business after the manner of a
toe dancer. He jumped from ticker to ’phone, from desk to door with the
trained agility of a harlequin.
In the midst of this growing and important stress the broker became
suddenly aware of a high-rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding
canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a
string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a
silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with
these accessories; and Pitcher was there to construe her.
“Lady from the Stenographer’s Agency to see about the position,” said
Pitcher.
Maxwell turned half around, with his hands full of papers and ticker
tape.
“What position?” he asked, with a frown.
“Position of stenographer,” said Pitcher. “You told me yesterday to
call them up and have one sent over this morning.”
“You are losing your mind, Pitcher,” said Maxwell. “Why should I have
given you any such instructions? Miss Leslie has given perfect
satisfaction during the year she has been here. The place is hers as
long as she chooses to retain it. There’s no place open here, madam.
Countermand that order with the agency, Pitcher, and don’t bring any
more of ’em in here.”
The silver heart left the office, swinging and banging itself
independently against the office furniture as it indignantly departed.
Pitcher seized a moment to remark to the bookkeeper that the “old man”
seemed to get more absent-minded and forgetful every day of the world.
The rush and pace of business grew fiercer and faster. On the floor
they were pounding half a dozen stocks in which Maxwell’s customers
were heavy investors. Orders to buy and sell were coming and going as
swift as the flight of swallows. Some of his own holdings were
imperilled, and the man was working like some high-geared, delicate,
strong machine—strung to full tension, going at full speed, accurate,
never hesitating, with the proper word and decision and act ready and
prompt as clockwork. Stocks and bonds, loans and mortgages, margins and
securities—here was a world of finance, and there was no room in it for
the human world or the world of nature.
When the luncheon hour drew near there came a slight lull in the
uproar.
Maxwell stood by his desk with his hands full of telegrams and
memoranda, with a fountain pen over his right ear and his hair hanging
in disorderly strings over his forehead. His window was open, for the
beloved janitress Spring had turned on a little warmth through the