IV. A CHAPTER FROM THE LIFE OF AN ANT
SOMEONE said once—the rest of us subsequently repeating it on occasion—that this world is but an ant hill, populated by many millions of ants, which run about aimlessly or aimfully as the case may be. All of which is true enough. Seek you out some lofty eminence, such as the top floor of a skyscraper or the top of a hill, and from it, looking down, consider a crowded city street at noon time or a county fairground on the day of the grand balloon ascension. Inevitably the simile will recur to the contemplative mind.
The trouble, though, with the original coiner of the comparison was that he did not go far enough. He should have said the world was populated by ants—and by anteaters. For so surely as we find ants, there, too, do we find the anteaters. You behold the ants bustling about, making themselves leaner trying to make them-selves fatter; terrifically busied with their small affairs; hiving up sustenance against the hard winter; gnawing, digging and delving; climbing, crawling, building and breeding—in short, deporting themselves with that energy, that restless industry which so stirred the admiration of the Prophet of old that, on his heavenward pilgrimage, he tarried long enough to tell the sluggard—name of the sluggard not given in the chronicles—to go to the ant and consider of her.
The anteater for the moment may not actually be in sight, but be assured he is waiting. He is waiting around the corner until the ant has propagated in numbers amounting to an excess; or, in other words, until the class that is born every second, singly—and sometimes as twins—has grown plentiful enough to furnish a feasting. Forth he comes then, gobbling up Brer Ant, along with his fullness and his richness, his heirs and his assigns, his substance and his stock in trade.
To make the illustration concrete, we might say that were there no ants there would be no Wall Street; and by the same token were there no anteaters there would be no Wall Street either. Without anteaters the ants would multiply and replenish the earth beyond computation. Without ants the anteaters would have to live upon each other—which would be bad for them but better for the rest of creation. War is the greatest of the anteaters—it feeds upon the bodies of the ants. Kings upon their thrones, devisers of false doctrines, crooked politicians, grafters, con men, card sharks, thimbleriggers—all these are anteaters battening on the substance of simple-hearted, earnest-minded ants. The ant believes what you tell him; the greedsome anteater thrives upon this credulity. Roughly, then, for purposes of classification, one may divide the world at large into two groups—in this larger group here the ants, in that smaller group there the anteaters.
So much, for purposes of argument, being conceded, we may safely figure Emanuel Moon as belonging in the category of the ants, pure and simple—reasonably pure and undeniably simple. However, at the time whereof I write I doubt whether it had ever occurred to anyone to liken him to an ant. His mother had called him Mannie, his employers called him plain Moon, and to practically everybody else he was just little Mr. Moon, who worked in the Commonwealth Bank. He had started there, in the bank, as office boy; by dint of years of untiring fidelity to the interests of that institution he had worked up to the place of assistant cashier, salary seventy-five dollars a month. Privately he nursed an ambition to become, in time, cashier, with a cashier's full powers. It might be added that in this desire he stood practically alone.
Emanuel Moon was a little man, rising of thirty-five, who believed that the Whale swallowed Jonah, that if you swore a certain form of oath you were certain of hell-fire, and that Mr. Hiram Blair, president of the Commonwealth Bank, hung the Big Dipper. If the Bible had put it the other way round he would have believed as sincerely that it was Jonah who swallowed the Whale. He had a wistful, bashful little smile, an air of being perpetually busy, and a round, mild eye the colour of a boiled oyster. He also had a most gentle manner and the long, prehensile upper lip that is found only in the South American tapir and the confirmed clarinet player. Emanuel Moon had one besetting sin, and only one—he just would play the clarinet.
On an average of three nights a week he withdrew himself from the company assembled about the base-burner stove in the parlour if it were winter, or upon the front porch of Mrs. Teenie Morrill's boarding house if it were seasonable weather, and went up to his room on the third floor and played the clarinet. Some said he played it and some that he merely played at it. He knew Annie Laurie off by heart and for a term of years had been satisfied in that knowledge. Now he was learning another air—The Last Rose of Summer.
He prosecuted his musical education on what he called his off evenings. Wednesday night he went to prayer meeting and Sunday night to the regular church service. Tuesday night he always spent at his lodge; and perhaps once in a fortnight he called upon Miss Katie Rouser, who taught in the High School and for whom he was believed to entertain sentiments that did him credit, even though he had never found words in which to voice them.
At the lodge he served on the committees which did the hard work; that, as a general proposition, meant also the thankless work. If things went well someone else took the credit; if they went ill Emanuel and his colabourers shared the blame. The conditions had always been so—when he was a small boy and when he was a youth, growing up. In his adolescence, if there was a picnic in contemplation or a straw ride or a barm dance, Mannie had been graciously permitted by common consent of all concerned to arrange with the livery-stable man for the teams, to hire the coloured string band, to bargain with the owner of the picnic grounds or the barn, to see to ice for the ice-water barrel and lemons for the lemonade bucket.
While he thus busied himself the other youths made dates for the occasion with all the desirable girls. Hence it was that on the festal date Emanuel went partnerless to the party; and this was just as well, too, seeing that right up until the time of starting he would be completely occupied with last-moment details, and, after that, what with apologising for any slipups that might have occurred, and being scolded and ordered about on errands and called upon to explain this or that, would have small time to play the squire to any young person of the opposite sex, even had there been one convenient.
It was so at the bank, where he did more work than anybody and got less pay than anybody. It was so, as I have just stated, at the lodge. In a word, Emanuel had no faculty as an executive, but an enormous capacity for executing. The earth is full of him. Whereever five or more are gathered together there is present at least one of the Emanuel Moons of this world.
It had been a hot, long summer, even for a climate where the summers are always long and nearly always hot; and at the fag end of it Emanuel inclined strongly toward a desire for a short rest. Diffidently he managed to voice his mood and his need to Mr. Blair. That worthy gentleman had but just returned home, a giant refreshed, after a month spent in the North Carolina mountains. He felt so fit, so fine, so robust, he took it as a personal grievance that any about him should not likewise be feeling fit. He cut Emanuel off pretty short. Vacations, he intimated, were for those whose years and whose services in behalf of humanity entitled them to vacations; young men who expected to get along in business had best rid their thoughts of all such pampered hankerings.
Emanuel took the rebuke in good grace, as was his way; but that evening at the supper table he created some excitement among his fellow boarders by quietly and unostentatiously fainting, face forward, into a saucer of pear preserves that was mostly juice. He was removed to his room and put to bed, and attended by Doctor Lake. The next morning he was not able to go to the bank. On being apprised of the situation Mr. Blair very thoughtfully abated of his previous resolution and sent Emanuel word that he might have a week or even ten days off—at his own expense—wherein to recuperate.
Some thirty-six hours later, therefore, Emanuel might have been found on board the fast train bound for Louisville, looking a trifle pulled down and shaky, but filled with a great yearning. In Louisville, at a certain establishment doing a large mail-order business, was to be had for thirty-eight dollars, list price, fifteen and five off for cash, a clarinet that was to his present infirm and leaky clarinet as minted gold is to pot metal.
To be sure, this delectable instrument might be purchased, sight unseen, but with privilege of examination, through the handy medium of the parcel post; the house handling it was in all respects reliable and lived up to the printed promise of the catalogue, but to Emanuel half the pride and pleasure of becoming its proprietor lay in going into the place and asking to see such and such a clarinet, and fingering it and testing its tone, and finally putting down the money and carrying it off with him under his arm. He meant, first of all, to buy his new clarinet; for the rest his plans were hazy. He might stay on in Louisville a few days or he might go elsewhere. He might even return home and spend the remainder of his vacation perfecting himself in his still faulty rendition of The Last Rose of Summer.
For an hour or so after boarding the train he viewed the passing scenery as it revealed itself through the day-coach window and speculated regarding the personalities of his fellow passengers. After that hour or so he began to nod. Presently he slumbered, with his head bobbing against the seat-back and one arm dangling in the aisle. A sense of being touched half roused him; a moment later he opened his eyes with the feeling that he had lost his hat or was about to lose it. Alongside him stood a well-dressed man of, say, thirty-eight or forty, who regarded him cordially and who held between the long, slender fingers of his right hand a little rectangle of blue cardboard, having punch marks in it.
“Excuse me, friend,” said this man, “but didn't this fall out of your hat? I picked it up here on the floor alongside you.”
“I reckon maybe it did,” said Emanuel, removing his hat and noticing that the customary decoration conferred by the conductor was absent from its band. “I'm certainly much obliged to you, sir.”
“Don't mention it,” said the stranger. “Bet-ter stick it in good and tight this time. They might try to collect a second fare from you if you couldn't show your credentials. Remember, don't you, the story about the calf that ate up his express tag and what the old nigger man said about it?”
The stranger's accent stamped him as a Northerner; his manner revealed him indubitably as a man of the world—withal it was a genial manner. He bestowed a suit case alongside in the aisle and slipped into the seat facing Emanuel. Emanuel vaguely felt flattered. It had promised to be rather a lonely journey.
“You don't mind my sitting here a bit, do you?” added the man after he was seated.
“Not at all—glad to have you,” said Emanuel, meaning it. “Nice weather—if it wasn't so warm,” he continued, making conversation.
It started with the weather; but you know how talk runs along. At the end of perhaps ten minutes it had somehow worked around to amusements—checkers and chess and cards.
“Speaking of cards now,” said the stranger, “I like a little game once in a while myself. Helps the time to pass away when nothing else will. Fact is, I usually carry a deck along with me just for that purpose. Fact is, I've got a new deck with me now, I think.” He fumbled in the breast pocket of his light flannel coat and glanced about him. “Tell you what—suppose we play a few hands of poker—show-down, you know—for ten cents a corner, say, or a quarter? We could use my suit case for a card table by resting it on our knees between us.” He reached out into the aisle.
“I'm much obliged,” said Emanuel with an indefinable sense of pain at having to decline so friendly an invitation; “but, to tell you the truth, I make it a point never to touch cards at all. It wouldn't do—in my position. You see, I'm in a bank at home.”
With newly quickened alertness the stranger's eyes narrowed. He put the cards back into his pocket and straightened up attentively. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I see. Well, that being the case, I don't blame you.” Plainly he had not been hurt by Emanuel's refusal to join in so innocent a pastime as dealing show-down hands at ten cents a side. On the contrary he warmed visibly. “A young man in a bank can't be too careful—especially if it's a small town, where everybody knows everybody else's business. You let a young fellow that works in a bank in a small town, or even a medium-sized town, play a few hands of poker and, first thing you know, it's all over the place that he's gambling and they've got an expert on his books. Let's see now—where was it you said you lived?” Emanuel told him.
“Well, now, that's a funny thing! I used to know a man in your town. Let's see—what was his name? Parker? Parsons?” He paused. Emanuel shook his head.
“Perkins? Perkins? Could it have been Perkins?” essayed the other tentatively, his eyes fixed keenly on the ingenuous countenance of his opposite; and then, as Emanuel's head nodded forward affirmatively: “Why, that's the name—Perkins,” proclaimed the stranger with a little smile of triumph.
“Probably J. W. Perkins,” said Emanuel. “Mr. J. W. Perkins is our leading hardware merchant. He banks with us; I see him every day—pretty near it.”
“No; not J. W. Perkins,” instantly confessed his companion. “That's the name all right enough, but not the initials. Didn't this Mr. Perkins have a brother, or a cousin or something, who died?”
“Oh, I know who you mean, now,” said Emanuel, glad to be able to help with the identification. “Alfred Perkins—he died two years ago this coming October.”
“How old was he?” The Northerner had the air about him of being determined to make sure.
“About fifty, I judge—maybe fifty-two or three.”
“And didn't they use to call him Al for short?”
“Yes; nearly everybody did—Mr. Al Perkins.”
“That's the party,” agreed the other. “Al Perkins! I knew him well. Strange, now, that I can't think where it was I met him—I move round so much in my business, being on the road as a travelling man, it's hard keeping track of people; but I know we spent a week or two together somewhere or other. Speaking of names, mine is Caruthers—John P. Caruthers. Sorry I haven't got a card with me—I ran out of cards yesterday.”
“Mine,” said our townsman, “is Emanuel Moon.”
“Glad to know you, Mr. Moon,” said Mr. Caruthers as he sought Emanuel's right hand and shook it heartily.
“Very glad indeed. You don't meet many people of your name—Oh, by Jove, that's another funny thing!”
“What?” said Emanuel.
“Why,” said Mr. Caruthers, “I used to have a pal—a good friend—with your name; Robert Moon it was. He lived in Detroit, Michigan. Fine fellow, Bob was. I wonder could old Bob Moon have been your cousin?”
“No,” said Emanuel almost regretfully; “I'm afraid not. All my people live South, so far as I know.”
“Well, anyhow, you'd enjoy knowing old Bob,” went on the companionable Mr. Caruthers. “Have a smoke?”
He produced both cigars and cigarettes. Emanuel said he never smoked, so Mr. Caruthers lighted a cigar.
Up to this point the conversation had been more or less general. Now, somehow, it took a rather personal and direct trend. Mr. Caruthers proved to be an excellent listener, although he asked quite a number of leading questions as they went along. He evinced a kindly curiosity regarding Emanuel's connection with the bank. He was interested in banks, it seemed; his uncle, now deceased, had been, he said, a very prominent banker in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Emanuel had a rôle that was new to him; a pleasing rôle though. Nearly always in company he had to play audience; now he held the centre of the stage, with another listening to what he might say, and, what was more, listening with every sign of, deep attention. He spoke at length, Emanuel did, of the bank, its size, its resources, its liabilities, its physical appearance and its personnel, leading off with its president and scaling down to its black janitor. He referred to Mr. Blair's crustiness of manner toward persons of lesser authority, which manner, he hastened to explain, was quite all right if you only understood Mr. Blair's little ways.
He mentioned in passing that Herb Kivil, the cashier, was addicted to tennis, and that on Tuesdays and Fridays, when Herb left early to play tennis, he, Moon, closed up the vault and took over certain other duties which ordinarily fell to Herb. From the bank he progressed by natural stages to Mrs. Morrill's boarding house and from there to his own individual tastes and likings. In this connection it was inevitable that the subject of clarinet playing should obtrude. Continuing along this strain Emanuel felt moved to disclose his principal object in journeying to Louisville at this particular time.
“There's a store there that carries a clarinet that I'm sort of interested in,” he stated—but got no farther, for here Mr. Caruthers broke in on him.
“Well, sir, it's a mighty little world after all,” he exclaimed. “First you drop your punch check out of your hat and I come along and pick it up, and I sit down here and we get acquainted. Then I find out that I used to know a man in your town—Abner Perkins.”
“Alfred,” corrected Mr. Moon gently.
“Sure—Alfred Perkins. That's what I meant to say but my tongue slipped. Then you tell me your name, and it turns out I've got a good friend that, if he's not your own cousin, ought to be on account of the name being the same. One coincidence right after another! And then, on top of all that, you tell me you want to buy a new clarinet. And that's the most curious part of it all, because—— Say, Moon, you must have heard of Galling & Moore, of Boston, New York, and Paris, France.”
“I can't say as I ever did. I don't seem to place them,” admitted Emanuel.
“If you're interested in a clarinet you ought to know about them, because Gatling & Moore are just the biggest wholesale dealers in musical instruments in the United States; that's all—just the whole United States. And I—the same fellow that's sitting right here facing you—I travel this territory for Gatling & Moore. Didn't I say this was a small world?”
A small world indeed—and a cozily comfortable one as well, seeing that by its very compactness one was thrown into contact with so pleasing a personality as this Mr. John Caruthers betrayed. This was the thought that exhilarated Mr. Emanuel Moon as he answered:
“You sell clarinets? Then you can tell me exactly what I ought to pay—”
“No; don't get me wrong,” Mr. Caruthers hastened to explain. “I said I travelled for Gatling & Moore. You see, they sell everything, nearly—musical instruments is just one of their lines. I handle—er—sporting goods—playing cards, poker chips, guns, pistols, athletic supplies; all like that, you understand. That's my branch of the business; musical goods is another branch.
“But what I was going to suggest was this: Izzy Gottlieb, who's the head of the musical department in the New York office, is one of the best friends I've got on this earth. If I was to walk in and say to Izzy—yes, even if I was to write in to him and tell him I had a friend who was figuring on buying a clarinet—I know exactly what old Izzy would do. Izzy would just naturally turn the whole shop upside down until he found the niftiest little old clarinet there was in stock, and as a favour to me he'd let us have it at just exactly cost. That's what good old Izzy would do in a blooming minute. Altogether it ought to come to about half what you'd pay for the identical same article out of a retail place down in this country.”
“But could you, sir—would you be willing to do that much for a stranger?” Stress of emotion made Emanuel's voice husky.
“If you don't believe I would do just that very thing, why, a dime'll win you a trip to the Holy Land!” answered back the engaging Caruthers beamingly and enthusiastically.
Then his tone grew earnest: “Listen here, Moon: no man that I take a liking to is a stranger to me—not any more. And I've got to own up to it—I like you. You're my kind of a man—frank, open, on the level; and yet not anybody's easy mark either. I'll bet you're a pretty good hand at sizing up people offhand yourself. Oh, I knew you'd do, the minute I laid eyes on you.”
“Thank you; much obliged,” murmured Emanuel. To all intents he was overcome.
“Now, then,” continued his new-found friend warmly, “let me suggest this: You go ahead and look at the clarinet that this piking Louisville concern's got for sale if you want to, but don't buy. Just look—there's no harm in that. But don't invest.
“I'm on my way back to New York now to—to lay in my new lines for the trade. I'll see old Izzy the first thing after I blow in and I'll get the niftiest clarinet that ever played a tune—get it at actual cost, mind you! I'll stick it down into one of my trunks and bring it back with me down this way.
“Let's see”—he consulted a small memorandum book—“I ought to strike this territory again in about ten days or two weeks. We'll make it two weeks, to be sure. Um—this is Wednesday. I'll hit your town on Tuesday, the twenty-ninth—that's two weeks from yesterday. I ought to get in from Memphis sometime during the afternoon. I'll come to your bank to find you. You're always there on Tuesdays, ain't you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Emanuel. “Don't you remember my telling you that on Tuesdays Herb Kivil always left early to play tennis and I closed up?”
“So you did,” confirmed Mr. Caruthers. “I'd forgotten your telling me that.”
“For that matter,” supplemented Emanuel, “I'm there every day till three anyhow, and sometimes later; so if—”
“We'll make it Tuesday, the twenty-ninth, to be sure,” said Mr. Caruthers with an air of finality.
“If you should want the money now—” began Emanuel; and he started to haul out the little flat leather purse with the patent clasp wherein he carried his carefully saved cash assets.
With a large, generous gesture the other checked him.
“Hold on!” counselled Caruthers. “You needn't be in such a hurry, old boy. I don't even know what the thing is going to cost yet. Izzy'll charge it to me on the books and then you can settle with me when I bring it to you, if that's satisfactory.”
He stood up, carefully flicking some cigar ashes off the trailing ends of his four-in-hand tie, and glanced at a watch.
“Well, it's nearly six o'clock. Time flies when a fellow is in good company, don't it? We'll be in Louisville in less than an hour, won't we?—if we're on time. I've got to quit you there; I'm going on to Cincy to-night. Tell you what—let's slip into the diner and have a bite and a little nip of something together first—I want to see as much of you as I can. You take a little drink once in a while, don't you?”
“I drink a glass of light beer occasionally,” admitted Emanuel.
Probably in his whole life he had consumed as much as five commercial quarts of that liquid, half a pint at a time.
“Fine business!” said Caruthers. “Beer happens to be my regular stand-by too. Come on, then.” And he led the way forward for the transported Emanuel.
They said at the bank and at the boarding house that Moon looked better for his week's lay-off, none of them knowing, of course, what had come into the little man's dun-coloured life.
On the twenty-eighth of the month he was so abstracted that Mr. Blair, desiring his presence for the moment in the president's office, had to call him twice, a thing which so annoyed Mr. Blair that the second time he fairly shouted Emanuel's name; and when Emanuel came hurrying into his presence inquired somewhat acidly whether Emanuel was suffering from any auricular affection. On the morning of the twenty-ninth Emanuel was in quite a little fever of anticipation. The morning passed; the noon or dinner hour arrived and passed.
It was one-thirty. The street drowsed in the early autumnal sunshine, and in front of his bookstore, in a tilted-back chair, old Mr. Wilcox for a spell slumbered audibly. There is a kind of dog—not so numerous since automobiles have come into such general and fatal use—that sought always the middle of the road as a suitable spot to take a nap in, arousing with a yelp when wheels or hoofs seemed directly over him and, having escaped annihilation by an eighth of an inch, moving over perhaps ten feet and lying down again in the perilous pathway of traffic. One of this breed slept now, undisturbed except by flies, at the corner of Front and Franklin. For the time being he was absolutely safe. Emanuel had been to his dinner and had returned. He was beginning to worry. About two-thirty, just after the cashier had taken his tennis racket and gone for the day, Emanuel answered a ring at the telephone.
Over the wire there came to him the well-remembered sound of the blithe Carutherian voice:
“That you, old man?” spake Mr. Caruthers jovially. “Well, I'm here, according to promise. Just got in from down the road.”
“Did—you—bring—it?” inquired Emanuel, almost tremulously.
“The clarinet? You bet your life I brought it—and she's a bird too.”
“I'm ever so much obliged,” said Emanuel. “I don't know how I can ever thank you—going to all that trouble on my account. Are you at the hotel? I'll be over there just as soon as I can close up—I can't leave here till three.”
“Stay right where you are,” bade his friend. “I'll be over to see you inside of fifteen or twenty minutes.”
He was as good as his word. At ten minutes before three he walked in, the mould of city fashion in all his outward aspects; and when Emanuel had disposed of Mr. Herman Felsburg, who dropped in to ask what Felsburg Brothers' balance was, and when Mr. Felsburg had gone, Caruthers' right hand and Emanuel's met in an affectionate clasp across the little shelf of the cashier's window. Followed then an exchange of inquiries and assurances touching on the state of health and well-being of each gentleman.
“I'd like mightily to ask you inside,” said Emanuel next, anxious to extend all possible hospitalities; “but it's strictly against the rules. Take a chair there, won't you, and wait for me—I'll be only a few minutes or so.”
Instead of taking one of the row of chairs that stood in the front of the old-fashioned bank, Mr. Caruthers paused before the wicket, firing metropolitan pleasantries across at the little man, who bustled about inside the railed-off inclosure, putting books and papers in their proper places.
“Everybody's gone but me, as it happens,” he explained, proud to exhibit to Mr. Caruthers the extent and scope of his present responsibilities.
“Nobody on deck but you, eh?” said Caruthers, looking about him.
“Nobody but me,” answered back Emanuel; “and in about a minute and a half I'll be through too.”
The cash was counted. He carried it into the depths of the ancient and cumbersome vault, which blocked off a section of the wall behind the cashier's desk, and in their appointed niches bestowed, also, certain large ledgerlike tomes. He closed and locked the inner steel door and was in the act of swinging to the heavy outer door.
“Look here a minute!” came sharply from Mr. Caruthers.
It was like a command. Obeying involuntarily, Emanuel faced about. From under his coat, where it had been hidden against his left side, Mr. Caruthers, still standing at the wicket, was drawing forth something long and black and slim, and of a most exceeding shininess—something with silver trimmings on it and a bell mouth—a clarinet that was all a clarinet should be, and yet a half brother to a saxophone.
“I sort of thought you'd be wanting to get a flash at it right away,” said Mr. Caruthers, holding the magnificent instrument up in plain sight. “So I brought it along—for a surprise.”
With joy Emanuel Moon's round eyes widened and moistened. After the fashion of a rabbit suddenly confronted with lettuce his lower face twitched. His overhanging upper lip quivered to wrap itself about that virgin mouthpiece, as his fingers itched to fondle that slender polished fountain of potential sweet melodies. And he forgot other things.
He came out from behind the counter and almost with reverence took the splendid thing from the smiling Mr. Caruthers. He did remember to lock the street door as they issued to the sidewalk; but from that juncture on, until he discovered himself with Caruthers in Caruthers' room on the third floor of the hotel, diagonally across the street and down the block from the bank, and was testing the instrument with soft, tentative toots and finding to his extreme gratification that this clarinet bleated, not in sheeplike bleats, as his old one did, but rather mooed in a deep bass voice suggestive of cows, all that passed was to Mr. Moon but a confused blur of unalloyed joyousness.
Indeed, from that point thenceforward he was not quite sure of anything except that, over his protests, Mr. Caruthers declined to accept any reimbursement whatsoever for the cost of the new clarinet, he explaining that, thanks to the generosity of that kindly soul, Izzy Gottlieb, the requisite outlay had amounted to so trifling a sum as not to be worthy of the time required for further discussion; and that, following this, he played Annie Laurie all the way through, and essayed the first bars of The Last Rose of Summer, while Mr. Caruthers sat by listening and smoking, and seemingly gratified to the utmost at having been the means of bringing this pleasure to Mr. Moon.
If Mr. Caruthers was moved, in chance intervals, to ask certain questions touching upon the banking business, with particular reference to the methods employed in conducting and safeguarding the Commonwealth Bank, over the way, Emanuel doubtlessly answered him full and truthfully, even though his thoughts for the moment were otherwise engaged.
In less than no time at all—so it appeared to Emanuel—six o'clock arrived, which in our town used to mean the hour for hot supper, except on Sunday, when it meant the hour for cold supper; and Emanuel reluctantly got up to go. But Caruthers would not listen to any suggestions of their parting for yet a while. Exigencies of business would carry him on his lonesome way the next morning; he had just stopped over to see Emanuel, anyway, and naturally he wished to enjoy as much of his society as was possible during a sojourn so brief.
“Moon,” he ordered, “you stay right where you are. We'll have something to eat together here. I'll call a waiter and we'll have it served up here in this room, so's we can be sort of private and sociable, and afterward you can play your clarinet some more. How does that little programme strike you?”
It struck Emanuel agreeably hard. It was rarely that he dined out, and to dine under such circumstances as these, in the company of so fascinating and so kindly a gentleman as Mr. John P. Caruthers, of the North—well, his cup was simply overflowing, that's all.
“I'd be glad to stay,” he said, “if you don't think I'm imposing on your kindness. I was thinking of asking you to go to Mrs. Morrill's with me for supper—if you would.”
“We can have a better time here,” said Caruthers. He stepped over to the wall telephone. “Have a cocktail first? No? Then neither will I. But a couple of bottles of beer won't hurt us—will it?”
Emanuel was going to say a small glass of beer was as much as he ever imbibed at a sitting, but before he could frame the statement Caruthers was giving the order.
It was at the close of a most agreeable meal when Emanuel, following Mr. Caruthers' invitation and example, had emptied his second glass of beer and was in the act of putting down the tumbler, that a sudden sensation of drowsiness assailed his senses. He bent back in his chair, shaking his head to clear it of the mounting dizziness, and started to say he believed he would step to the window for a breath of fresh air. But, because he felt so very comfortable, he changed his mind. His head lolled over on one side and his lids closed down on his heavy eyes. Thereafter a blank ensued.
When Emanuel awoke there was a flood of sunshine about him. For a moment he regarded an unfamiliar pattern of wall paper, the figures of which added to their unfamiliarity by running together curiously; he was in a strange bed, fully dressed, and as he moved his head on the rumpled pillow he realised that he had a splitting headache and that a nasty dryish taste was in his mouth. He remembered then where he was and what had happened, and sat up with a jerk, uttering a little remorseful moan.
The disordered room was empty. Caruthers was gone and Caruthers' suit case was gone too. Something rustled, and a folded sheet of hotel note paper slid off the bed cover and fell upon the floor. With trembling fingers he reclaimed the paper, and, opening it, he read what was scrawled on it in pencil:
“Dear Old Scout: I'm sorry! I didn't suppose one bottle of beer would put you down and out. When you took the count all of a sudden, I figured the best thing to do was to let you sleep it off; so I got you into the bed. You've been right there all night and nobody's any the wiser for it except me. Sorry I couldn't wait until you woke up, but I have to catch the up train; so I've paid my bill and I'm beating it as soon as I write this. Your clarinet is with you. Think of me sometimes when you tootle on it. I'll let you hear from me one of these days.
“Yours in haste,