“Old Man Singleton,” I said, “is credited with having had more to do with it than any other one person, by those who are on the inside.”
“The old coot!” said Ed. And then added wryly: “I hope he gets as stiff in his knee joint as I am and lives forever! He's made a bum of me!”
It was three or four weeks after my talk with Ed that I read in the papers of a peculiar accident of which Old Man Singleton had been the victim. A head of cabbage, he said, had fallen out of a tree and hit him on his own head one evening as he was walking alone in Central Park. He had been dazed by the blow for a moment; and when he regained his feet a considerable sum of money which he had been carrying was gone. He was sure that he had been struck by a head of cabbage, for a head of cabbage lay on the pathway near him when he was helped to his feet. He did not pretend to be able to say how a head of cabbage could have gotten into one of the park trees.
The police discredited his story, pointing out that likely the old man, who was near-sighted, had blundered against a tree in the dusk and struck his head. The head of cabbage, they told the reporters, could have had nothing to do with it; it could not have come into contact with his head at all, unless, indeed, some one had put it into a sack and swung it on him like a bludgeon; and this, the police said, was too absurd to be considered. For why should a crook use a head of cabbage, when the same results might have been attained with the more usual blackjack, stick or fist?
Old Man Singleton was not badly hurt; and as regarded the loss of the money, he never said, nor did his family ever say, just how large the sum was. Mr. Singleton had the vague impression that after the cabbage fell out of the tree and hit him he had been helped to his feet by a man who limped and who said to him: “Kale is given to them that can best use it, to have and to hold.”
He did not accuse this person, who disappeared before he was thoroughly himself again, of having found the money which had evidently dropped from his pocket when the cabbage fell from the tree and hit him, but he was suspicious, and he thought the police were taking the matter too lightly; he criticized the police in an interview given to the papers. The police pointed out the irrelevance of the alleged words of the alleged person who limped, and intimated that Mr. Singleton was irrational and should be kept at home evenings; as far as they were concerned, the incident was closed.
But I got another slant at it, as Ed might have said. Last winter I was talking at my club with a friend just back from Cuba, where the rum is red and joy is unconfined.
“I met a friend of yours,” he said, “by the name of Ed down there, who is running a barroom and seems to be quite a sport in his way. Sent his regards to you. Must have made it pay—seems to have all kinds of money. Named his barroom 'The Second Thought.' Asked him why. He said nobody knew but himself, and he was keeping it a secret—though you might guess. Wants you to come down. Sent you a message. Let's see: what was it? Oh, yes! Cryptic! Very cryptic! Wrote it down—here it is: 'Kale! Kale! The gang's all here.' Make anything out of it? I can't.”
I could, though I didn't tell him what. But I shall not visit Ed in Cuba; I consider him an immoral person.