The head waiter said nothing. His jaw dropped. He put his hand to his chin undecidedly, then turned and fled, taking the card with him. Glowing with virtue—which, after all, was the purse’s, not his—E. Van Tenner departed, not even tipping the coat-room attendant, to such heights was his courage inspired, and found a chop-house where he supped excellently on a strict Hoover basis, and entered an estimated saving of eighty-five cents, and ten cents extra for the defrauded hat boy.
All that night he slept the deep, sweet sleep of one justified of good deeds. The beggar’s purse, at least equally justified, slept equally well under his pillow. In the morning it started work for him again. It saved him the usual coat-room charge, and rudely checked his mildly emotional impulse to drop a quarter in the tin cup of a pitiable and shivering mendicant cripple who owns two tenement houses on the East Side and has amassed a small fortune by distraining on tenants’ furniture. He hardly knew whether to repeat the entry on the morning’s taxi or not, since he felt it already a habit not to hire a cab when he could conveniently take a car. But he was clearly to the good on one item of a quarter, when in carrying his grip from the elevator he was charged upon by a livered youth. Horror was writ large in that youth’s face; horror that a guest of the golden Von Gorder should carry a grip weighing almost four pounds across ten yards of floor alone and unaided. As Christian strove with Apollyon so strove E. Van Tenner with the liveried youth for that grip, which he finally delivered safe out of the enemy’s hands, and himself bore, triumphant, to the street car.
In the returning train, where he won to the day coach through the stricken hopes of the embattled Red-Caps, he figured out his day’s savings to date as follows:
Station porter............................................$0.15
Parlor car...................................................55
Pullman porter...............................................25
Red-Cap......................................................15
Cable car vs. taxi...........................................35
Chauffeur’s blackmail........................................15
Pride of hotel room that went before a fall in price.......1.00
Washroom hold-up.............................................10
Coat check...................................................10
2d Chauffeur’s supertax......................................25
Cocktail forgone.............................................25
3 Check-room petty larcenies.................................30
1 Theater-ticket-agency grand larceny......................1.65
Cabaret highway robbery......................................85
Victory in wrestling match with hall boy.....................25
Cripple’s curse..............................................25
Cable car vs. taxi [he decided to put it in, including tip] .50
Triumph in footrace with Red-Caps............................15
Parlor-car fare and tip......................................80
Making a grand, impressive, but insufficient total of.....$8.05
Insufficient, because two of the beggar’s War Savings Stamps would cost $8.28. At the Philadelphia terminus he would save fifteen cents more of his accustomed expenditure by dispensing with the porter’s service. Still he would be eight cents short of the total. Suddenly E. Van Tenner felt himself bitterly disappointed. The zest of the game had got into his veins. Had he braved hotel clerks, striven with bell boys, bearded head waiters and outfooted the fleet and determined Red-Cap only to fail in sight of the goal?
Perish the——“Evening papers! All the magazines! Here y’are before the train starts.”
“Evening Sentinel and Sat—” began E. Van Tenner, and dropped his voice and the beggar’s purse simultaneously. “Never mind. Don’t want—I mean need—’em.” For here was his eight cents saved! With a triumphing heart he retrieved the wallet, took out the pencil and entered upon the celluloid tablet the final and victorious eight cents—that is, he thought he had entered it. But lo! the line upon which he had written remained blank. He examined the pencil.
Its point was perfect. The celluloid surface invited it. Again he essayed to set down the consummating eight cents. It was as if he had written with a wand upon water.
“This is not white but black magic,” said E. Van Tenner, appalled.
In response there came back to him again the words of the beggar: “What you save on current expenses without giving up anything that you need or want or aren’t better off without.” Obviously, then, the beggar’s purse was backing up the beggar’s undertaking. It considered that he was better off with than without his favorite reading. E. Van Tenner pursued the boy and spent the eight cents.