CHAPTER XVI
STOP, THIEF!
I was pretty nervous when I took charge of the news stand that evening.Amanda King had an appointment with the dentist and had left everythingtopsyturvey. I was still straightening up when people began to come downto dinner.
Miss Cobb walked over to the news stand, and she'd cut the white yokeout of her purple silk. She looked very dressy, although somewhat thin.
"Everybody has dressed for dinner to-night, Minnie," she informed me."We didn't want Mr. von Inwald to have a wrong idea of American society,especially after Mr. Carter's ridiculous conduct this afternoon, andI wonder if you'll be sweet enough to start the phonograph in theorchestra gallery as we go in--something with dignity, you know--thewedding march, or the overture from Aida."
"Aida's cracked," I said shortly, "and as far as I'm concerned, Mr.von Inwald can walk in to his meals without music, or starve to deathwaiting for the band."
But she got the phonograph, anyhow, and put the elevator boy in thegallery with it. She picked out some things by Caruso and Tetrazziniand piled them on a chair, but James had things to himself up there, andplayed The Spring Chicken through three times during dinner, with MissCobb glaring at the gallery until the back of her neck ached, and thedining-room girls waltzing in with the dishes and polka-ing out.
Mr. Moody came out when dinner was over in a fearful rage and made forthe news stand.
"One of your ideas, I suppose," he asserted. "What sort of a night amI going to have after chewing my food to rag-time, with my jaws doing askirt-dance? Why in heaven's name couldn't you have had something slow,like Handel's Largo, if you've got to have music?"
But dinner was over fifteen minutes sooner than usual. James cake-walkedeverybody out to My Ann Elizer, and Miss Cobb was mortified to death.
Two or three things happened that night. For one, I got a good look atMiss Julia Summers. She was light-haired and well-fleshed, with an uglyface but a pleasant smile. She wore a low-necked dress that made MissCobb's with the yoke out look like a storm collar, and if she had abroken heart she didn't show it.
"Hello," she cried, looking at my hair, "are you selling tobacco here orare you the cigar-lighter?"
"Neither," I answered, looking over her head. "I am employed as theextinguisher of gay guests."
"Good," she said, smiling. "I'm something fine at that myself. SupposeI stay here and help. If I watch that line of knitting women I'll becrotcheting Arabella's wool in my sleep to-night."
Well, she was too cheerful to be angry with. So she stayed around for awhile, and it was amazing how much tobacco I sold that evening. Men whousually bought tobies bought the best cigars, and when Mr. Jennings cameup, scowling, and I handed him the brand he'd smoked for years, she tookone, clipped the end of it as neat as a finger nail and gave it to him,holding up the lighter.
"I'm not going to smoke yet, young woman," he said, glaring at her. Butshe only smiled.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I've been waiting hungrily until somediscriminating smoker would buy one of those and light it. I love thearoma."
And he stood there for thirty minutes, standing mostly on one foot onaccount of the gouty one, puffing like a locomotive, with her sniffingat the aroma and telling him how lonely she felt with no friends aroundand just recovering from a severe illness.
At eight o'clock he had Mrs. Hutchins bring him his fur-lined coat andhe and Miss Julia took Arabella, the dog, for a walk on the veranda!
The rest of the evening was quiet, and I needed it. Miss Patty and Mr.von Inwald talked by the fire and I think he told her something--notall--of the scene in the spring-house. For she passed Mr. Pierce at thefoot of the stairs on her way up for the night and she pretended not tosee him. He stood there looking up after her with his mouth set, and atthe turn she glanced down and caught his eye. I thought she flushed,but I wasn't sure, and at that minute Senator Biggs bought threetwenty-five-cent cigars and told me to keep the change from a dollar.I was so surprised at the alteration in him that I forgot Miss Pattyentirely.
About twelve o'clock, just after I went to my room, somebody knocked atthe door. When I opened, the new doctor was standing in the hall.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said, "but nobody seems to know where thepharmacy clerk is and I'll have to get some medicine."
"If I'd had my way, we'd have had a bell on that pharmacy clerk longago," I snapped, getting my keys. "Who's sick?"
"The big man," he replied. "Biggs is his name, I think, a senator orsomething."
I was leading the way to the stairs, but I stopped. "I might have knownit," I said. "He hasn't been natural all evening. What's the matter withhim? Too much fast?"
"Fast!" He laughed. "Too much feast! He's got as pretty a case ofindigestion as I've seen for some time. He's giving a demonstrationthat's almost theatrical."
Well, he insisted it was indigestion, although I argued that it wasn'tpossible, and he wanted ipecac.
"I haven't seen a pharmacopoeia for so long that I wouldn't know one ifI met it," he declared, "but I've got a system of mnemonics that neverfails. Ipecac and colic both end with 'c'--I'll never forget thatconjunction. It was pounded in and poured in in my early youth."
Well, the pharmacy was locked, and we couldn't find a key to fit it. Andwhen I suggested mustard and warm water he jumped at the idea.
"Fine!" he said. "Better let me dish out the spring-water and you takemy job! Lead on, MacDuff, to the kitchen."
Although it was only midnight there was not a soul about. A hall leadsback of the office to the kitchen and pantries, and there was a lowlight there, but the rest was dark. We bumped through the diet kitchenand into the scullery, when we found we had no matches. I went back forsome, and when I got as far as the diet kitchen again Doctor Barnes wasthere, just inside the door.
"Sh!" he whispered. "Come into the scullery. The kitchen is dark, butthere is somebody in there, fumbling around, striking matches. I supposeyou don't have such things as burglars in this neck of the woods?"
Well, somebody had broken into Timmons' candy store a week before andstolen a box of chewing-gum and a hundred post-cards, and I told him soin a whisper.
"Anyhow, it isn't the chef," I said. "He's had a row with the bath manand is in bed with a cut hand and a black eye, and nobody else has anybusiness here."
We tiptoed into the scullery in the dark: just then somebody knockeda kettle down in the kitchen and it hit the stove below with a crash.Whoever was there swore, and it was not Francois, who expresses hisfeelings mostly in French. This was English.
There's a little window from the kitchen into the scullery as well asa door. The window had a wooden slide and it was open an inch or so. Wecouldn't see anything, but we could hear a man moving around. Once hestruck a match, but it went out and he said "Damn!" again, and began tofeel his way toward the scullery.
Doctor Barnes happened to touch my hand and he patted it as if to tellme not to be frightened. Then he crept toward the scullery door andwaited there.
It swung open slowly, but he waited until it closed again and the manwas in the room. Then he yelled and jumped and there was the sound ofa fall. I could hardly strike the match--I was trembling so--but when Idid there was Mr. Dick lying flat on the floor and the doctor sitting onhim.
"Mister Dick!" I gasped, and dropped the match.
"Something hit me!" Mr. Dick said feebly, and when I had got a candlelighted and had explained to Doctor Barnes that it was a mistake, hegot off him and let him up. He was as bewildered as Mr. Dick and prettynearly as mad.
We put him--Mr. Dick--in a chair and gave him a glass of water, andafter he had got his breath--the doctor being a heavy man--he said hewas trying to find something to eat.
"Confound it, Minnie," he exclaimed, "we're starving! It seems to methere are enough of you here at least to see that we are fed. Not a bitesince lunch!"
"But I thought you had the basket," I explained. "I left it at thespring-house, and when I went back it was gone."
/> "So that was it!" he answered. And then he explained that just about thetime they expected their supper they saw a man carry a basket stealthilythrough the snow to the deer park. It was twilight, but they watched himfrom the window, and he put the basket through the barbed-wire fence andthen crawled after it. Just inside he sat down on a log and, openingthe basket, began to eat. He was still there when it got too dark to seehim.
"If that was our dinner," he finished savagely, "I hope he choked todeath over it."
Doctor Barnes chuckled. "He didn't," he said, "but he's got the worstcase of indigestion in seven counties."
Well, I got the mustard and water ready with Mr. Dick standing by hopingMr. Biggs would die before he got it, and then I filled a basket for theshelter-house. I put out the light and he took the basket and startedout, but he came back in a hurry.
"There's somebody outside talking," he said. I went to the door with himand listened.
"The sooner the better," Mike was saying. "I'm no good while I've got iton my mind."
And Mr. Thoburn: "To-morrow is too soon: they're not in the mood yet.Perhaps the day after. I'll let you know."
I didn't get to sleep until almost morning, and then it was to dreamthat Mr. Pierce was shouting "Hypocrites" to all the people in thesanatorium and threatening to throw glasses of mustard and warm water atthem.