Later in the day the chairman of the lecture committee called to pay his respects, and in the course of our conversation I told him of my experience with Conk.
"I congratulate you most heartily," said he, laughing. "You came off rather better than an exchange professor from Germany who came out here last year to give a course of lectures at our agricultural college. He asked Conk in his pleasant German way for more spacious quarters, and Conk's answer was, 'Sure I can give ya more space.' And taking the professor's suitcase in one hand, and the professor in the other, he rushed them both to the front door, threw the suitcase out into the street, and, pushing the professor gently out after it, remarked, 'There—I guess there's room, enough for ya out there.'"
Whether the chairman was a mind reader or not I do not know; but I do know that in response to my telepathic calls for help he turned to the Only Muse and suggested that in view of certain possibilities which might incapacitate me from filling my engagement at the lecture hall that night we had much better move over to his house, where we would find a warm welcome.
"That's fine!" said I, rising with alacrity. "Just you take her over with you now, and I'll see Conk, and pay my bill, and come over as soon as I can with our luggage."
The plan was promptly carried out, and after seeing the Only Muse safely on her way to other quarters I went to number thirty-two, gathered up our traps, and with trepidation in my soul approached the landlord. This time I found him sitting in the office, before the window, staring Nature out of countenance.
"Well, Mr. Landlord," I said, as affably as I knew how, "I—I've come to—to settle up. It seems we were expected to stay with Dr. and Mrs. Soandso. We—er—we didn't know it when we arrived—and I—I'm sorry to leave you; but—er—but of course—"
"Thank God!" the landlord returned explosively, rising and seizing my hand in a viselike grip that even to remember two years later causes me anguish. "That's the first good news I've had to-day. I been running this blankety blank blank joint for seven years now, and it's cost me over thirty thousand dollars already, and every time I see a blinkety blank blank boarder come in through that front door it makes me so dashed sick that I feel like nailin' the blankety blank door up so tight old Beelzybub himself'd have to come down through the chimbley to get inside!"
It was at this point that Conk and I parted company at the beginning of what I am inclined to think might have ripened into a lifelong friendship. I had got his point of view! Strange as his conception of hospitality seemed superficially to be, there was reason in him, and I began to perceive that he had some mighty good points. Frankness was one of them, and gratitude, and one of the incidents of his career as narrated to me later by one of his neighbors was convincing proof that, in sporting parlance, the old fellow was a good loser.
It seems that a certain traveling man of great nerve force stopped overnight some years ago with Conk, probably occupying number thirty-two. It was a fearfully hot night, and the room became unbearably stuffy. For a long time the suffering guest strove to open the window, but without results. Prayer, condemnation, muscular force, all alike were powerless to move it. Finally in desperation the unhappy visitor threw on his dressing robe, and stalked down to the office to make complaint.
"It's hotter than Tophet in that room of mine," he protested, "and I've been monkeying with that dod-gasted window of yours for the last hour, and the dinged thing won't give an inch!"