Wayne laughed and threw away his cigarette.
“You’re a mighty good fellow, Jimmy Paddock, but you’re a sentimentalist, that’s all. There may be some of that in me down underneath somewhere, but I doubt it. Anyhow, I’ll take a peep at your little party to-night; I dare say it won’t do me any harm.”
CHAPTER XII
THE SHADOWS AGAINST THE FLAME
“DO I know the place? Sure!” said Joe Denny when Wayne ordered the chauffeur to be ready with the limousine at eight o’clock. The runabout was in the shop and the limousine was a next year’s model that Wayne had just acquired. “He’s the wonder, this Father Jim.”
“What’s that?” demanded Wayne.
“Father Jim, they call him out at Ironstead. Say, he knows how to put the boys to work.”
“What line of study have you tackled?”
“Me study? Say, you’re not on to me. I’m one of the professors.”
Wayne glared at him without speaking and the former ball player explained, with unmistakable pride and a gradual lapse into the vernacular.
“I’m the baseball professor. We’re going to put up a nine in the spring that will make anything else look sick that gets in front. Say, they’re good people out there. It’s a new one on me, that kind of religion; all friendly and sociable-like, and the strong, glad hand. He don’t ask you to sign the pledge or come to church. He says he ain’t running in opposition to the saloons, he’s just going to put up a better show. But he’s made a deal with the tank joints. He’s told all of ’em that if they sell to a fellow what’s loaded or to hurry-the-can kids he’ll prosecute ’em and have their license took up. He goes into the saloons and talks to the bosses quite confidential-like and tells ’em he doesn’t object to their business as such. He says the workin’ man’s entitled to sip his suds the same as the gents in the Allequippa Club; but the bar-keep ought to throw out any man that gets loaded, which is not being a gent any more. He talks kind o’ natural and reasonable, like he had been a bar-keep himself some time. Say, it’s a sure thing he could do his own bouncin’ all right. There was a Roumanian low-brow out there who cheered himself with alcohol straight and went over to the parish house to clean it out. He butted in and kicked open the door where the geography class was learnin’ all about Afriky where the niggers and monks come from. The kids in the night school skidooed for the home plate, seein’ the fire in the Roumanian’s eye. ‘This is a hell of a place,’ he yells, and reached for the Father. Father Jim caught him one under the ear and knocked ’im over a big globe they have out there to find the North Pole on. The bum thought the earth had caved in on ’im for sure and laid on his back bleatin’ like a sick sheep. Some of the kids had got the cops and when they chased in the Father was pourin’ ice water on the Roumanian, delicate-like. ‘We’ll give him about six months for this,’ says the sergeant; ‘don’t bother, Father, to clean him up—he’ll come to in the wagon all right,’ says the sergeant. ‘Sorry, boys, you’ve been put to the trouble,’ says Father Jim, settin’ the earth on its right end again, ‘but my friend was late to his lesson to-night and came in so fast he had heart failure,’ says Father Jim. ‘Step downstairs, officers, and the night cookin’ class will give you some coffee,’ says Father Jim. And if he didn’t put the slob to sleep in his own bed—honest to God he did!