Torchy and Vee
Course, it's a little odd to see a young gent in torn cutaway coat and
tousled hair scramblin' around under taxi-cabs and dodgin' cars to pick
up cigar-butts and chewin' gum papers. So quite a crowd collects. Some
of 'em cheers and some haw-haws. But the overseas vets. don't allow
Hartley to let up for a second.
"Hey! Don't miss that cigarette stub!" one would call out to him. And as
soon as he'd retrieved that another would point out a piece of banana
peelin' out in the middle of the avenue. He got cussed enthusiastic by
some of the taxi drivers who just grazed him, and the traffic cop
threatened to run him in until he saw the bunch of soldiers bossin' the
job and then he grins and turns the other way.
I expect I should have been more or less wrathy at seein' a brother
officer get it as raw as that, but I'm afraid I did more or less
grinnin' at some of Hartley's antics. It struck me, though, that he
might be kind of embarrassed if I stayed around until they turned him
loose. So before he finished I edged out of the crowd and drifted off.
I couldn't help puttin' one thing up to Brother Beans though. "Excuse me
for gettin' curious," says I, "but when I asks Hartley what G. O. G.
stands for he made kind of a punk guess. If it ain't any deep
secret----"
"It is," says Brother Beans, "but I think I'll let you in on it. The
name of our noble organization is 'Grue's Overseas Grouches,' and our
humble object is to rebuke the only taint of Prussianism which we have
personally encountered in an otherwise perfectly good man's army. When
we've done that we intend to disband."
"Huh!" says I, glancin' over to where Hartley is springin' sort of a
sheepish smile at a buck private who's pattin' him on the back, "I think
you can most call it a job now."
CHAPTER X
THE CASE OF OLD JONESEY
And then again, you can't always tell. I forget whether it was Bill
Shakespeare first sprung that line, or Willie Collier; but whoever it
was he said a whole bookful at once. Wise stuff. That's it. And simple,
too. Yet it's one of the first things we forget.
But to get the point over I expect I'll have to begin with this
bond-room bunch of ours at the Corrugated. They're the kind of young
sports who always think they can tell. More'n that they always will,
providin' they can get anybody to listen. About any subject you can
name, from whether the government should own the railroads to describin'
the correct hold in dancin' the shimmy.
This particular day though it happens to be babidolls. Maybe it wasn't
just accident, either. I expect the sudden arrival of spring had
something to do with the choice of topic. For out in Madison Square park
the robins were hoppin' busy around in the flower beds, couples were
twosing confidential on the benches, lady typists were lunchin' off ice
cream cones, and the Greek tray peddlers were sellin' May flowers.
Anyway, it seemed like this was a day when romance was in the air, if
you get me. I think Izzy Grunkheimer must have started it with that
thrillin' tale of his about how he got rung in on a midnight studio
supper down in Greenwich Village and the little movie star who mistook
him for Charley Zukor. Izzy would spin that if he got half an openin'.
It was his big night. I believe he claims he got hugged or something.
And he always ends up by rollin' his eyes, suckin' in his breath and
declarin' passionate: "Some queen, yes-s-s!"
But the one who had the floor when I strolls into the bond room just
before the end of the noon hour is Skip Martin, who helped win the war
by servin' the last two months checkin' supplies for the front at St.
Nazaire. He was relatin' an A. W. O. L. adventure in which a little
French girl by the name of Mimi figured prominent, when Budge Haley, who
was a corporal in the Twenty-seventh and got all the way to Coblenz,
crashed in heartless.
"Cheap stuff, them base port fluffs," says Budge. "Always beggin' you
for chocolate or nickin' you for francs some way. And as for looks, I
couldn't see it. But say, you should have seen what I tumbled into one
night up in Belgium. We'd plugged twenty-six kilometers through the mud
and rain that day and was billeted swell in the town hall. The mess
call had just sounded and I was gettin' in line when the Loot yanks me
out to tote his bag off to some lodgin's he'd been assigned five or six
blocks away.
"Maybe I wasn't good and sore, too, with everything gettin' cold and me
as a refugee. I must have got mixed up in my directions, for I couldn't
find any house with a green iron balcony over the front door noway.
Finally I takes a chance on workin' some of my French and knocks at a
blue door. Took me some time to raise anybody, and when a girl does
answer all I gets out of her is a squeal and the door is slammed shut
again. I was backin' off disgusted when here comes this dame with the
big eyes and the grand duchess airs.
"'Ah le bon Dieu!' says she gaspy. 'Le soldat d'Amerique! Entrez,
m'sieur.' And say, even if I couldn't have savvied a word, that smile
would have been enough. Did I get the glad hand? Listen; she hadn't seen
anything but Huns for nearly four years. Most of that time she'd spent
hidin' in the cellar or somewhere, and for her I was the dove of peace.
She tried to tell me all about it, and I expect she did, only I couldn't
comprenez more'n a quarter of her rapid fire French. But the idea seemed
to be that I was a he-angel of the first class who deserved the best
there was in the house. Maybe I didn't get it, too. The Huns hadn't
been gone but a few hours and the peace dinner she'd planned was only a
sketchy affair, as she wasn't dead sure they wouldn't come back. When
she sees me though, she puts a stop order on all that third-rate stuff
and tells the cook to go the limit. And say, they must have dug up food
reserves from the sub-cellar, for when me and the Countess finally sits
down----"
"Ah, don't pull that on us!" protests Skip Martin. "We admit the vintage
champagne, and the pate de foie gras, but that Countess stuff has been
overdone."
"Oh, has it?" says Budge. "You mean you didn't see any hangin' 'round
the freight sheds. But this is in Bastogne, old son, and there was her
Countess mark plastered all over everything, from the napkins to the
mantelpiece. Maybe I don't know one when I get a close-up, same as I did
then. Huh! I'm telling you she was the real thing. Why, I'll bet she
could sail into Tiffany's tomorrow and open an account just on the way
she carries her chin."
"Course she was a Countess," says Izzy. "I'll bet it was some dinner,
too. And what then?"
"It didn't happen until just as I was leavin'," says Budge. "'Sis,' says
I, 'vous etes un-un peach. Merci very much.' And I was holdin' out my
hand for a getaway shake when she closes in with a clinch that makes
this Romeo and Juliet balcony scene look like an old maid's farewell.
M-m-m-m. Honest, I didn't wash it off for two days. And, countess or
not, she was some grand little lady. I'll tell the world that."
"Look!" says one of our noble exempts. "You've even got old Jonesey
smackin' his lips."
That gets a big laugh from the bunch. It always does, for he's one of
our permanent jokes, old Jones. And as he happens to be sittin' humped
over here in the corner brushin' traces of an egg sandwich from his
mouth corners, the josh comes in kind of pat.
"Must have been some lady killer in his time, eh?" suggests Skip Martin.
That gets across as a good line too, and Skip follows it up with
another. "Let's ask him, fellers."
And the next thing old Jones knows he's surrounded by this grinnin'
circle of young hicks while Budge Haley is demandin': "Is it so,
Jonesey, that you used to be a reg'lar chicken hound?"
I expect it's the funny way he's gone bald, with only a fringe of
grayish hair left, and the watery blue eyes behind the dark glasses,
that got us callin' him Old Jones. Maybe the bent shoulders and his
being deaf in one ear helps. But as a matter of fact, I don't think he's
quite sixty. To judge by the fringe, he once had a crop of sandy hair
that was more or less curly. Some of the color still holds in the
bristly mustache and the ear tufts. A short, chunky party with a stubby
nose and sort of a solid-lookin' chin, he is.
But there never is much satisfaction kiddin' Jonesey. You can't get his
goat. He just holds his hand up to his ear and asks kind of bored: "Eh,
what's that?"
"How about them swell dames that used to go wild over you?" comes back
Skip.
Old Jones gazes up at Skip kind of mild and puzzled. Then he shakes his
head slow. "No," says he. "Not me. If--if they did I--I must have
forgot."
Which sets the bunch to howlin' at Skip. "There! Maybe that'll hold you,
eh?" someone remarks. And as they drift off Jonesey tackles a slice of
lunch-room pie placid.
It struck me as rather neat, comin' from the old boy. He must have
forgot! I had a chuckle over that all by myself. What could Jonesey have
to forget? They tell me he's been with the Corrugated twenty years or
more. Why, he must have been on the payroll before some of them young
sports was born. And for the last fifteen he's held the same old
job--assistant filin' clerk. Some life, eh?
About all we know of Old Jones is that he lives in a little back room
down on lower Sixth Avenue with a mangy green parrot nearly as old as he
is. They say he baches it there, cookin' his meals on a one-burner oil
stove, never reportin' sick, never takin' a vacation, and never gettin'
above Thirty-third Street or below Fourteenth.
Course, so far as the force is concerned, he's just so much dead wood.
Every shake-up we have somebody wants to fire him, or pension him off.
But Mr. Ellins won't have it. "No," says he. "Let him stay on." And you
bet Jonesey stays. He drills around, fussin' over the files, doing
things just the way he did twenty years ago, I suppose, but never
gettin' in anybody's way or pullin' any grouch. I've got so I don't
notice him any more than as if he was somebody's shadow passin' by. You
know, he's just a blank. And if it wasn't for them bond-room humorists
cuttin' loose at him once in a while I'd almost forget whether he was
still on the staff or not.
It was this same afternoon, along about 2:30, that I gets a call from
Old Hickory's private office and finds this picturesque lookin' bird
with the three piece white lip whiskers and the premature Panama lid
glarin' indignant at the boss.
"Torchy," says Mr. Ellins, glancin' at a card, "this is Senor Don Pedro
Cassaba y Tarragona."
"Oh, yes!" says I, just as though I wasn't surprised a bit.
"Senor Don Pedro and so on," adds Old Hickory, "is from Havana, and for
the last half hour he has been trying to tell me something very
important, I've no doubt, to him. As it happens I am rather busy on some
affairs of my own and I--er--Oh, for the love of soup, Torchy take him
away somewhere and find out what it's all about."
"Sure!" says I. "This way, Seenor."
"Perdone," says he. "Say-nohr."
"Got you," says I, "only I may not follow you very far. About all the
Spanish I had I used up this noon orderin' an omelet, but maybe we can
get somewhere if we're both patient. Here we are, in my nice cozy corner
with all the rest of the day before us. Have a chair, Say-nohr."
He's a perky, high-colored old boy, and to judge by the restless black
eyes, a real live wire. He looks me over sort of doubtful, stroking the
zippy little chin tuft as he does it, but he ends by shruggin' his
shoulders resigned.
"I come," says he, "in quest of Senor Captain Yohness."
"Yohness?" says I, tryin' to look thoughtful. "No such party around here
that I know of."
"It must be," says he. "That I have ascertained."
"Oh, well!" says I. "Suppose we admit that much as a starter. What about