He could tell a story so vividly, and with such a sense of humor, that one forgot the bad taste it left in the mouth and just capitulated to the bizarre humor of it. Burglars, gangsters, army officers and persons of high degree came casually into his conversation with bewildering effect. To my dying day I’ll never forget his story of a one week’s job as chauffeur to a certain internationally famous family. Carnival life, race driving, hot political campaigns, the low-down on the underworld of three big cities. Before the evening was over all these things had been touched on; Kennedy was jovially drunk, and the flight had sat at his feet and listened with unflagging interest. Never once did he slip and make himself an actor in an illegal episode; he was the looker-on, although admitting to friendship with many a criminal.
Early the next morning I set off on the western patrol. To make a long story short, I ran into some bandits, held them awhile with my machine-guns, but finally lost them, due to a forced landing that resulted in my absence from McMullen for three days. Finally, with my ship repaired, I flew it back to the airdrome just at dusk. As I sat down to a late and lonely dinner, Penoch came in with that dignified, long-striding gait.
“How’s your friend Kennedy?” I asked him promptly.
“Borrowed two hundred bucks for uniforms and such,” he boomed crisply, and sat himself down.
I took one look at him; and that was enough.
“You might as well shoot the works. What’s he been up to?” I inquired. “First, how do the boys like him?”
“They get a great kick out of him. They know he’s not their equal by birth or breeding or anything like that. It’s a sort of patronizing friendship, if you get what I mean. That’s what he gets from most people, and what he resents most when, if and as he gets hep to it.”
I nodded.
“Well, why the woebegone look in your port eye and the stricken stare in the other?” I asked spaciously.