I finally emboldened myself to thrust aside a leaf of the latticed portal. It was my first appearance inside |“A Cat in a Strange Garret.”| a saloon, and I never had tasted any intoxicant. In my diffidence and ignorance of the proper course to pursue, I subsided into the first vacant fauteuil. For, on one side, against the wall, were rude, wooden fauteuils, almost all occupied by middle-aged cherry-nosed individuals. Extending the full length of the other side was a bar crowded with fast-looking younger men, each with a glass before him. Doubtless because of my verdancy, several commenced eyeing me, making remarks, and laughing. The nearest bar-tender immediately inquired: “Doll-baby, what’ll yer have ter drink?”
“Nothing.”
“Jackass! Every bloke dat comes inter dis here joint has ter take somethink!”
“Then give me a glass of beer,” I replied hardly above a whisper. In my embarrassment, I imbibed the beverage almost at a swallow. That gave all the witnesses hysterics. They assured me: “We only sip it!” They addressed me as “Siss!” “Pet!” “Fairie!” I did not immediately perceive the significance of the last appellation. I was encircled. Particularly two sailors ingratiated themselves. They requested me to purchase “schnapps” for them because impecunious. I provided glass after glass, for they were bewitchingly gallant. All the other individuals were kidding me: “The doll-baby likes the blue-jackets, sure Mike!” “Sailor-boy, take off your suit and make it a present to her!” “How I wish I was one of Uncle Sam’s boys and I’d git steeped in schnapps too!” I was mortified by such observations, and as soon as the sailor-boys invited me, departed under their escort.
I hired a chamber at a third-class hotel nearby. |A Transformation Not Bargained For.| I gave them funds to secure another. For we did not desire that the clerk perceive that we were all to occupy the identic room. We pretended the sailors and I were unacquainted....
They finished by inserting a handkerchief into my buccal cavity, tying a strip of the bed linen over it, binding my hands behind my back, and fastening my lower extremities to the bed springs so that I could not even kick. They then departed with my wallet and outer clothing.
After an hour of helplessness, I discovered that the partition to the adjacent chamber was scarcely more than cardboard. Because I perceived sounds of the entrance of an individual. I could even hear his breathing. I discerned the words: “How I wish I had three hundred dollars!”
I commenced a continuous jouncing up and down. The uninterrupted tintinnabulation of the springs attracted the individual’s attention and he addressed me. I could respond only with a low gurgling. The clerk soon liberated me. I had to confess everything. But he manifested sympathy and donated a nickel for carfare.
One blue-jacket was of about my own measurements. Evidently he intended to desert. For he had abandoned his uniform. I was compelled to attire myself therein and boarded a car for my domicile.
My house-key had remained in my appropriated habiliments. How to enter was my problem. If I rang, my arrival at midnight costumed as a sailor would disclose everything. I hoped the butler had neglected to secure the covering of the coal-hole in front of the basement windows.