Chapter VI: Cousin Egbert Intervenes (2)

It looked like hysterics then, especially when she noticed Buck Devine helping pile Sandy's chips up in front of him till they looked like a great old English castle, with towers and minarets, and so on, Sandy having played his hunch strong and steady. She waited for another turn that come nothing important to any of 'em; then she drew Leonard out and made him take her for a glass of lemonade out where Aggie Tuttle was being Rebekkah at the Well, because they charged two bits for it at the bar and Aggie's was only a dime. The sale made forty cents Aggie had took in on the evening.

Racing back to Ye Olde Tyme Gambling Denne, she gets another hard blow; for Sandy has not only win another of his magic numbers but has bought up the bar for the evening, inviting all hands to brim a cup at his expense, whenever they crave it--nobody's money good but his; so Cora is not only out what she would of made by following his play but the ten cents cash she has paid Aggie Tuttle. She was not a woman to be trifled with then. She took another lemonade because it was free, and made Len take one that he didn't want. Then she draws three dollars from him and covers the three numbers with reckless and noble sweeps of her powerful arms. The game was on again.

Cousin Egbert by now was looking slightly disturbed, or _outré_, as the French put it, but tries to conceal same under an air of sparkling gayety, laughing freely at every little thing in a girlish or painful manner.

"Yes," says he coquettishly; "that Sandy scoundrel is taking it fast out of one pocket, but he's putting it right back into the other. The wheel's loss is the bar's gain."

I looked over to size Sandy's chips and I could see four or five markers that go a hundred apiece.

"I admire your roguish manner that don't fool any one," I says; "but if we was to drink the half of Sandy's winnings, even at your robber prices, we'd all be submerged to the periscope. It looks to me," I goes on, "like the bazaar-robbing genius is not exclusively a male attribute or tendency."

"How many of them knitted crawdabs you sold out there at your booths?" he demands. "Not enough to buy a single Belgian a T-bone steak and fried potatoes."

"Is that so, indeed?" I says. "Excuse me a minute. Standing here in the blinding light of your triumph, I forgot a little matter of detail such as our sex is always wasting its energies on."

So I call Sandy and Buck away from their Belgian atrocities and speak sharply to 'em.

"You boys ought to be ashamed of yourselves," I says--"winning all that money and then acting like old Gaspard the Miser in the Chimes of Normandy! Can't you forget your natural avarice and loosen up some?"

"I bought the bar, didn't I?" asks Sandy. "I can't do no more, can I?"

"You can," I says. "Out in that big room is about eighteen tired maids and matrons of Red Gap's most exclusive inner circles yawning their heads off over goods, wares, and merchandise that no one will look at while this sinful game is running. If you got a spark of manhood in you go on out and trade a little with 'em, just to take the curse off your depredations in here."

"Why, sure!" says Sandy. He goes back to the layout and loads Buck's hat full of red and blue chips at one and two dollars each. "Go buy the place clean," he says to Buck. "Do it good; don't leave a single object of use or luxury. My instructions is sweeping, understand. And if there's a harness booth there you order a solid gold collar for old Jerry, heavily incrusted with jewels and his initials and mine surrounded by a wreath. Also, send out a pint of wine for every one of these here maids and matrons. Meantime, I shall stick here and keep an eye on my large financial interests."

So Buck romps off on his joyous mission, singing a little ballad that goes: "To hell with the man that works!" And Sandy moves quickly back to the wheel.

I followed and found Cora barely surviving because she's lost nine of her three-dollar bets while Sandy was away, leaving her only about a hundred winner. Len was telling her to "be brave, Pettie!" and she was saying it was entirely his fault that they hadn't already got their neat little home; but she would have it before she left the place or know the reason why.

It just did seem as if them three numbers had been resting while Sandy was away talking to me. They begin to show up again the minute he resumed his bets, and Cora was crowding onto the same with a rising temperature. Yes, sir, it seemed downright uncanny or miraculous the way one or the other of 'em showed up, with Sandy saying it was a shame to take the money, and Cora saying it was a shame she had to bet on all three numbers and get paid only on one.

Of course others was also crowding these numbers, though not so many as you'd think, because every one said the run must be at an end, and they'd be a fool to play 'em any farther; and them that did play 'em was mostly making ten-cent bets to be on the safe side. Only Sandy and Cora kept right on showing up one Egbert Floud as a party that had much to learn about pulling off a good bazaar.

It's a sad tale. Cousin Egbert had to send out twice for more cash, Cora Wales refusing to take his check on the Farmers and Merchants National for hers. She said she was afraid there would be some catch about it. I met Egbert out in the hall after the second time she'd made him send and he'd lost much of his sparkle.

"I never thought it was right to strike a lady without cause," he says bitterly; "but I'd certainly hate to trust myself with that frail out in some lonely spot, like Price's Addition, where her screams couldn't be heard."

"That's right," I says; "take it out on the poor woman that's trying to win a nice bungalow with big sawed corners sticking out all over it, when that cut-throat Sandy Sawtelle has win about twice as much! That ain't the light of pure reason I had the right to expect from the Bazaar King of Red Gap."

"That's neither here nor there," says he with petulance. "Sandy would of been just as happy if he'd lost the whole eighteen dollars him and Buck come in here with."

"Well," I warns him, "it looks to me like you'd have to apply them other drastic methods you met with in this deadfall at the San Francisco Fair--strong-arm work or medicine in the drinks of the winners, or something like that--if you want to keep a mortgage off the old home. Of course I won't crowd you for that two dollars you promised me for every one that goes out of the hall. You can have any reasonable time you want to pay that," I says.

"That's neither here nor there," he says. "Luck's got to turn. The wheel ain't ever been made that could stand that strain much longer."

And here Luella Stultz comes up and says Mrs. Wales wants to know how much she could bet all at once if she happened to want to. I could just see Cora having a sharp pain in the heart like a knife thrust when she thought what she would of win by betting ten dollars instead of one. Cousin Egbert answers Luella quite viciously.

"Tell that dame the ceiling sets the limit now," says he; "but if that ain't lofty enough I'll have a skylight sawed into it for her."

Then he goes over to watch, himself, being all ruined up by these plungers. Leonard was saying: "Now don't be rash, Pettie!" And Pettie was telling him it was his negative mind that had kept her from betting five dollars every clip, and look what that would mean to their pile!

Cousin Egbert give 'em one look and says, right out loud, Leonard Wales is the biggest ham that was ever smoked, and he'd like to meet him, man to man, outside; then he goes off muttering that he can be pushed so far, but in the excitement of the play no one pays the least attention to him. A little later I see him all alone out in the hall again. He was scrunched painfully up in a chair till he looked just like this here French metal statue called _Lee Penser_, which in our language means "The Thinker." I let him think, not having the heart to prong him again so quick.

And the game goes merrily on, with Sandy collecting steadily on his hunch and Cora Wales telling her husband the truth about himself every time one of these three numbers didn't win; she exposed some very distressing facts about his nature the time she put five apiece on the three numbers and the single-o come up. It was a mad life, that last hour, with a lot of other enraged ladies round the layout, some being mad because they hadn't had money to play the hunch with, and others because they hadn't had the nerve.

Then somebody found it was near midnight and the crowd begun to fall away. Cousin Egbert strolls by and says don't quit on his account--that they can stick there and play their hunch till the bad place freezes over, for all he cares; and he goes over to the bar and takes a drink all by himself, which in him is a sign of great mental disturbance.

Then, for about twenty minutes, I was chatting with the Mes-dames Ballard and Price about what a grand success our part had been, owing to Sandy acting the fool with Cousin Egbert's money, which the latter ain't wise to yet. When I next notice the game a halt has been called by Cora Wales. It seems the hunch has quit working. Neither of 'em has won a bet for twenty minutes and Cora is calling the game crooked.

"It looks very, very queer," says she, "that our numbers should so suddenly stop winning; very queer and suspicious indeed!" And she glared at Cousin Egbert with rage and distrust splitting fifty-fifty in her fevered eyes.

Cousin Egbert replied quickly, but he kind of sputtered and so couldn't have been arrested for it.

"Oh, I've no doubt you can explain it very glibly," says Cora; "but it seems very queer indeed to Leonard and I, especially coming at this peculiar time, when our little home is almost within my grasp."

Cousin Egbert just walked off, though opening and shutting his hands in a nervous way, like, in fancy free, he had her out on her own lot in Price's Addition and was there abusing her fatally.

"Very well!" says Cora with great majesty. "He may evade giving me a satisfactory explanation of this extraordinary change, but I shall certainly not remain in this place and permit myself to be fleeced. Here, darling!"

And she stuffs some loose silver into darling's last pocket that will hold any more. He was already wadded with bills and sagging with coin, till it didn't look like the same suit of clothes. Then she stood there with a cynical smile and watched Sandy still playing his hunch, ten dollars to a number, and never winning a bet.

"You poor dupe!" says she when Sandy himself finally got tired and quit. "It's especially awkward," she adds, "because while we have saved enough to start our little nook, it will have to be far less pretentious than I was planning to make it while the game seemed to be played honestly."

Cousin Egbert gets this and says, as polite as a stinging lizard, that he stands ready to give her a chance at any game she can think of, from mumblety-peg up. He says if she'll turn him and Leonard loose in a cellar that he'll give her fifty dollars for every one she's winner if he don't have Len screaming for help inside of one minute--or make it fifteen seconds. Len, who's about the size of a freight car, smiles kind of sickish at this, and says he hopes there's no hard feelings among old friends and lodge brothers; and Egbert says, Oh, no! It would just be in the nature of a friendly contest, which he feels very much like having one, since he can be pushed just so far; but Cora says gambling has brutalized him.

Then she sees the cards on the table and asks again about this game where you play cards with yourself and mebbe win a thousand dollars cold. She wants to know if you actually get the thousand in cash, and Egbert says:

"Sure! A thousand that any bank in town would accept at par."

She picks up the deck and almost falls, but thinks better of it.

"Could I play with my own cards?" she wants to know, looking suspicious at these. Egbert says she sure can. "And in my own home?" asks Cora.

"Your own house or any place else," says Egbert, "and any hour of the day or night. Just call me up when you feel lucky."

"We could embellish our little nook with many needful things," says Cora. "A thousand dollars spent sensibly would do marvels." But after fiddling a bit more with the cards she laid 'em down with a pitiful sigh.

Cousin Egbert just looked at her, then looked away quick, as if he couldn't stand it any more, and says: "War is certainly what that man Sherman said it was."

Then he watches Sandy Sawtelle cashing in his chips and is kind of figuring up his total losses; so I can't resist handing him another.

"I don't know what us Mes-dames would of done without your master mind," I says; "and yet I'd hate to be a Belgian with the tobacco habit and have to depend on you to gratify it."

"Well," he answers, very mad, "I don't see so many of 'em getting tobacco heart with the proceeds of your fancy truck out in them booths either!"

"Don't you indeed?" I says, and just at the right moment, too. "Then you better take another look or get your eyes fixed or something."

For just then Sandy stands up on a chair and says:

"Ladies and gents, a big pile of valuable presents is piled just at the right of the main entrance as you go out, and I hope you will one and all accept same with the welcome compliments of me and old Jerry, that I had to take eleven stitches in the hide of. As you will pass out in an orderly manner, let every lady help herself to two objects that attract her, and every gent help himself to one object; and no crowding or pulling I trust, because some of the objects would break, like the moustache cup and saucer, or the drainpipe, with painted posies on it, to hold your umbrels. Remember my words--every lady two objects and every gent one only. There is also a new washboiler full of lemonade that you can partake of at will, though I guess you won't want any--and thanking you one and all!"

So they cheer Sandy like mad and beat it out to get first grab at the plunder; and just as Cousin Egbert thinks he now knows the worst, in comes the girls that had the booths, bringing all the chips Buck Devine had paid 'em--two hundred and seventy-eight dollars' worth that Egbert has to dig down for after he thinks all is over.

"Ain't it jolly," I says to him while he was writing another check on the end of the bar. "This is the first time us ladies ever did clean out every last object at a bazaar. Not a thing left; and I wish we'd got in twice as much, because Sandy don't do things by halves when his money comes easy from some poor dub that has thought highly of himself as a thinker about money matters." He pretends not to hear me because of signing his name very carefully to the check. "And what a sweet little home you'll build for the Wales family!" I says. "I can see it now, all ornamented up, and with one of these fancy bungalow names up over the front gate--probably they'll call it The Breakers!"

But he wouldn't come back; so I left him surrounded by the wreck of his former smartiness and went home. At the door where the treasures had been massed not a solitary thing was left but a plush holder for a whisk broom, with hand-painted pansies on the front; and I decided I could live without that. Tim Mahoney was there, grouching round about having to light up the hall next night for the B'nai B'rith; and I told him to take it for himself. He already had six drawnwork doilies and a vanity box with white and red powder in it.

As I go by the Hong Kong Quick Lunch, Sandy and three or four others is up on stools; the Chinaman, cooking things behind the counter, is wearing a lavender-striped silk dressing sacque and a lace boudoir cap with pink ribbons in it. Yes; we'd all had a purple night of it!

Next day about noon I'm downtown and catch sight of Cousin Egbert setting in the United States Grill having breakfast; so I feel mean enough to go in and gloat over him some more. I think to find him all madded up and mortified; but he's strangely cheerful for one who has suffered. He was bearing up so wonderful that I asked why.

"Ain't you heard?" says he, blotting round in his steak platter with a slice of bread. "Well, I got even with that Wales outfit just before daylight--that's all!"

"Talk on," I beg, quite incredulous.

"I didn't get to bed till about two," he says, "and at three I was woke up by the telephone. It's this big stiff Len Wales, that had ought to have his head taken off because it only absorbs nourishment from his system and gives nothing in return. He's laughing in a childish frenzy and says is this me? I says it is, but that's neither here nor there, and what does he want at this hour? 'It's a good joke on you,' he says, 'for the little woman got it on the third trial.' 'Got what?' I wanted to know. 'Got that solitaire,' he yells. 'And it's a good joke on you, all right, because now you owe her the thousand dollars; and I hate to bother you, but you know how some women are that have a delicate, high-strung organization. She says she won't be able to sleep a wink if you don't bring it up to her so she can have all our little treasure under her pillow; and I think, myself, it's better to have it all settled and satisfactory while the iron's hot, and you'd probably prefer it that way, too; and she says she won't mind, this time, taking your check, though the actual money would be far more satisfactory, because you know what women are--"

"Say! He raves on like this for three minutes, stopping to laugh like a maniac about every three words, before I can get a word in to tell him that I'm a delicate, high-strung organization myself, if you come right down to it, and I can't stand there in my nightgown listening to a string of nonsense. He chokes and says: 'What nonsense?' And I ask him does he think I'd pay a thousand dollars out on a game I hadn't overlooked? And he says didn't I agree to in the presence of witnesses, and the cards is laid out right there now on the dining-room table if I got the least suspicion the game wasn't played fair, and will I come up and look for myself! And I says 'Not in a thousand years!' Because what does he think I am!

"So then Mis' Wales she breaks in and says: 'Listen, Mr. Floud! You are taking a most peculiar attitude in this matter. You perhaps don't understand that it means a great deal to dear Leonard and me--try to think calmly and summon your finer instincts. You said I could not only play with my own cards at any hour of the night or day, but in my own home; and I chose to play here, because conditions are more harmonious to my psychic powers--' And so on and so on; and she can't understand my peculiar attitude once more, till I thought I'd bust.

"It was lucky she had the telephone between us or I should certainly of been pinched for a crime of violence. But I got kind of collected in my senses and I told her I already had been pushed as far as I could be; and then I think of a good one: I ask her does she know what General Sherman said war was? So she says, 'No; but what has that got to do with it?' 'Well, listen carefully!' I says. 'You tell dear Leonard that I am now saying my last word in this matter by telling you both to go to war--and then ask him to tell you right out what Sherman said war was.'

"I listened a minute longer for her scream, and when it come, like sweet music or something, I went to bed again and slept happy. Yes, sir; I got even with them sharks all right, though she's telling all over town this morning that I have repudiated a debt of honour and she's going to have that thousand if there's any law in the land; and anyway, she'll get me took up for conducting a common gambling house. Gee! It makes me feel good!"

That's the way with this old Egbert boy; nothing ever seems to faze him long.

"How much do you lose on the night?" I ask him.

"Well, the bar was a great help," he says, very chipper; "so I only lose about fourteen hundred all told. It'll make a nice bunch for the Belgians, and the few dollars you ladies made at your cheap booths will help some."

"How will your fourteen hundred lost be any help to the Belgians?" I wanted to know; and he looked at me very superior and as crafty as a fox.

"Simple enough!" he says in a lofty manner. "I was going to give what I win, wasn't I? So why wouldn't I give what I lose? That's plain enough for any one but a woman to see, ain't it? I give Mis' Ballard, the treasurer, a check for fourteen hundred not an hour ago. I told you I knew how to run one of these grafts, didn't I? Didn't I, now?"

Wasn't that just like the old smarty? You never know when you got him nailed. And feeling so good over getting even with the Wales couple that had about a thousand dollars of his money that very minute!

* * * * *

Still from the dimly lighted bunk house came the wail of Sandy Sawtelle to make vibrant the night. He had returned to his earlier song after intermittent trifling with an extensive repertoire:

There's a broken heart for every light on Broadway,
A million tears for every gleam, they say.
Those lights above you think nothing of you;
It's those who love you that have to pay....

It was the wail of one thwarted and perishing. "Ain't it the sobbing tenor?" remarked his employer. "But you can't blame him after the killing he made before. Of course he'll get to town sooner or later and play this fourteen number, being that the new reform administration, with Lon Price as Mayor, is now safely elected and the game has opened up again. Yes, sir; he's nutty about stitches in a mule. I wouldn't put it past him that he had old Jerry kicked on purpose to-day!"