We did. Goggles shook us up some on the way down, but we hit Broadway in time for breakfast.
CHAPTER VI
You didn't happen to see Pinckney at the last Horse Show, did you? Well, you'd never known him for the same ambulance fare that dropped into the Studio that day. He's been on the 'rock for two months now, and his nerves are as steady as a truck horse. There's more meat on him, too, than there was. I don't have to have a dustpan ready, in case I should jolt him one.
But say, next time any two-by-four chappy floats in here for a private course, I gets plans and specifications before I takes him on. No more Rajah business in mine. See?
There's another thing, too. I'm thinkin' of hirin' a husky boy with a club to do the turnkey act for me. Or maybe I could get out an injunction against myself to keep me from leavin' home. What I need is a life sentence to stay in little old New York. It's the only place where things happen reg'lar and sensible. If you see rocks flyin' round in the air, or a new building doin' the hoochee-coochee an' sheddin' its cornices, or manhole covers poppin' off, you know just what's up—nothing but a little stick dynamite handled careless, or some mislaid gas touched off by a plumber.
But the minute I lets some one lead me across a ferry, or beyond the Bronx, the event card is on the blink, and I'm a bunky-doodle boy. Long's I don't get more'n a mile from Forty-Second-st., I'm Professor McCabe, and the cops pass me the time of day. Outside of that I'm a stray, and anyone that gets the fit ties a can to me.
It was my mix-up with that Blenmont aggregation that stirs me up. Pinckney was at the bottom of this, too. Course, I can't register any kick; for when it comes to doing the hair-trigger friendship act, Pinckney's the real skookum preferred. But this was once when he slipped me a blank.
Looked like bein' fed with a spoon, too, at the start. All I had to do was to take the one-thirty-six out to Blenmont, put in an hour with Jarvis, catch the three-fifty back, and charge anything I had the front to name. What's more, I kind of cottoned to Jarvis, from the drop of the hat.