Blackie blew down the stem of his pipe, preparatory to re-filling the bowl. There was a quizzical light in his black eyes. The little heap of burned matches at his elbow was growing to kindling wood proportions. It was common knowledge that Blackie’s trick of lighting pipe or cigarette and then forgetting to puff at it caused his bill for matches to exceed his tobacco expense account.
“You talk,” chuckled Blackie, “like you meant it. But sa-a-ay, girl, it’s a lonesome game, this retirin’ with a fortune. I’ve noticed that them guys who retire with a barrel of money usually dies at the end of the first year, of a kind of a lingerin’ homesickness. You c’n see their pictures in th’ papers, with a pathetic story of how they was just beginnin’ t’ enjoy life when along comes the grim reaper an’ claims ’em.”
Blackie slid down in his chair and blew a column of smoke ceilingward.
“I knew a guy once—newspaper man, too—who retired with a fortune. He used to do the city hall for us. Well, he got in soft with the new administration before election, and made quite a pile in stocks that was tipped off to him by his political friends. His wife was crazy for him to quit the newspaper game. He done it. An’ say, that guy kept on gettin’ richer and richer till even his wife was almost satisfied. But sa-a-ay, girl, was that chap lonesome! One day he come up here looking like a dog that’s run off with the steak. He was just dyin’ for a kind word, an’ he sniffed the smell of the ink and the hot metal like it was June roses. He kind of wanders over to his old desk and slumps down in the chair, and tips it back, and puts his feet on the desk, with his hat tipped back, and a bum stogie in his mouth. And along came a kid with a bunch of papers wet from the presses and sticks one in his hand, and—well, girl, that fellow, he just wriggled he was so happy. You know as well as I do that every man on a morning paper spends his day off hanging around the office wishin’ that a mob or a fire or somethin’ big would tear lose so he could get back into the game. I guess I told you about the time Von Gerhard sent me abroad, didn’t I?”
“Von Gerhard!” I repeated, startled. “Do you know him?”
“Well, he ain’t braggin’ about it none,” Blackie admitted. “Von Gerhard, he told me I had about five years or so t’ live, about two, three years ago. He don’t approve of me. Pried into my private life, old Von Gerhard did, somethin’ scand’lous. I had sort of went to pieces about that time, and I went t’ him to be patched up. He thumps me fore ‘an’ aft, firing a volley of questions, lookin’ up the roof of m’ mouth, and squintin’ at m’ finger nails an’ teeth like I was a prize horse for sale. Then he sits still, lookin’ at me for about half a minute, till I begin t’ feel uncomfortable. Then he says, slow: ‘Young man, how old are you?’
“‘O, twenty-eight or so,’ I says, airy.
“‘My Gawd!’ said he. ‘You’ve crammed twice those years into your life, and you’ll have to pay for it. Now you listen t’ me. You got t’ quit workin’, an’ smokin’, and get away from this. Take a ocean voyage,’ he says, ’an’ try to get four hours sleep a night, anyway.’
“Well say, mother she was scared green. So I tucked her under m’ arm, and we hit it up across the ocean. Went t’ Germany, knowin’ that it would feel homelike there, an’ we took in all the swell baden, and chased up the Jungfrau—sa-a-ay, that’s a classy little mountain, that Jungfrau. Mother, she had some swell time I guess. She never set down except for meals, and she wrote picture postals like mad. But sa-a-ay, girl, was I lonesome! Maybe that trip done me good. Anyway, I’m livin’ yet. I stuck it out for four months, an’ that ain’t so rotten for a guy who just grew up on printer’s ink ever since he was old enough to hold a bunch of papers under his arm. Well, one day mother an’ me was sittin’ out on one of them veranda cafes they run to over there, w’en somebody hits me a crack on the shoulder, an’ there stands old Ryan who used t’ do A. P. here. He was foreign correspondent for some big New York syndicate papers over there.
“‘Well if it ain’t Blackie!’ he says. ‘What in Sam Hill are you doing out of your own cell when Milwaukee’s just got four more games t’ win the pennant?’