My interlocutor promptly and fitly put into words the feeling which had long lurked within my consciousness, ashamed to express itself against a monument of dismal pity such as Bartholomew Storrs. “He’s got a nerve!” he asserted.
Warming to him for his pithy analysis of character, I enlarged upon my theme. “He rebukes MacLachan for past drunkenness. He mourns for Schepstein, who occasionally helps out a friend at ten per cent, as a usurer. He once accused old Madame Tallafferr of pride, but he’ll never do that again. He calls the Little Red Doctor, our local physician, to account for profanity, and gets a fresh sample every time. Even against the Bonnie Lassie, whose sculptures you can just see in that little house near the corner”—I waved an illustrative hand—“he can quote Scripture, as to graven images. We all revere and respect and hate him. He’s coming this way now.”
“Good day, Dominie,” said Bartholomew Storrs, as he passed, in such a tone as a very superior angel might employ toward a particularly damned soul.
“That frown,” I explained to my companion, after returning the salutation, “means that I failed to attend church yesterday.”
But the hard, pink man had lost interest in Bartholomew. “Called you Dominie,’ didn’t he?” he remarked. “I thought I had you right. Heard of you from a little red-headed ginger-box named Smith.”
“You know the Little Red Doctor?”
“I met him,” he replied evasively. “He told me to look you up. ‘You talk to the Dominie,’ he says.”
“About what?”
“I’m coming to that.” He leaned forward to place a muscular and confidential hand on my knee. “First, I’d like to do you a little favor,” he continued in his husky and intimate voice. “If you’re looking for some quick and easy money, I got a little tip that I’d like to pass on to you.”
“Evidently the Little Red Doctor told you that my mind was a tottering ruin, which may be quite true; but if it’s a matter of investing in the Peruvian Gold, Rubber Tree, and Perpetual Motion Concession, I’m reluctantly compelled—”