“Well, sez I, that man has been watchin’ you. He’s Mr. Pinkerton himself, and as soon as he makes out his official report to Superintendent Byrnes you gets the job. He thanks me an’ I give him the fivespot. He goes home an’ tells ev’rybody for the names I spring was so good he didn’t see through the con. But, of course, I’ve got to give the fixer a bit. An’ say, that’s the trouble with graftin’. You’ve got to fix too many people to keep from gettin’ a holler. But none of it now. I stick to what I says, that ev’ry hand that comes up to the window is a hand ag’in’ you, and will do you if it can. You’re goin’ to get short change, all right, but don’t do no old-fashioned graftin’. I tell you there’s only one way to get it honest, an’ if the band is playin’ while you’re sellin’, it will keep your line movin’ at the window, an’ it’s a poor evenin’ you can’t pick up fifteen at least that was left and nobody hurt. Of course, I calls them back—but I never could holler loud.”
The Ticket Man took out a solid gold watch, with a stop movement, and his initials in diamonds on the back.
“Well, guess I better get at it,” and he left and went to the ticket wagon, where on the inside he sat on a little stool with the tickets in one hand and the change on the other side.
Then the hands began to come up and he was at work again.
THE CONCERT MANAGER TELLS THE BOYS AN ELEPHANT YARN.
The concert manager looked like a corn doctor who had dressed up to go to the City Hall for his license. He always wore a long black coat, and when a healthy ray of sunshine hit it square in the back it threw off a glare like a locomotive reflector. He had a smooth face, wore his hair long, and it was his proudest boast that once down in Texarkana he had been asked if he was William Jennings Bryan. As the question was put by a swarthy Democrat who wanted to buy “sumthin’,” he said he was, and they both liquored up the rest of the afternoon, and no discoveries.
The Concert Manager had sifted the English language down to about nine five-syllable words, and the rest of his talk was only ordinary. His voice was his big hit. He could stand on the elevated stage between Ring One and Ring Two, and no matter what was going on hit every ear drum with his gag about “directly after the performance,” “you need not leave your seats,” and that “the gentlemanly ushers would soon pass along selling tickets.” His voice got him all of the announcing, and he had a shape that always cast him for some big guy with fake whiskers when they were doing anything spectacular for the entree.
He loved to address the multitude. Let the gang sit down on the ring bank for a chat before the night show, and it was he to cut in with a talk—something he knew all about and which had the rest of the boys winging before he hit the end of the first chapter. He had more different kinds of talk than any man in the outfit, and he always yearned to be handing it out. In the winter he ran a hall show with a company that would take a fall out of anything from “Hamlet” to a melodrama with three big effects and a wholesale killing in each act. The gang was telling hard luck stories when he came across the track, and he was ready with one at the first cue.