LITMIR.BIZ

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A glass of beer and a cigar? He laughed. He could see William Grogan, his elbow crooked on the polished bar of yonder great hotel, drinking beer and confiding to the blasé bartender that he had just deposited a fortune in the Corn Exchange and was aching to find some congenial soul to help him to spend it. He laughed, blew a kiss toward the hotel, and went on.

      Nevertheless, he celebrated. A few doors south from the hotel he ran afoul a pipe-shop. He had always wanted a real meerschaum pipe; a lump of clay as big as your fist, with flowing mermaids emerging at various angles. The pipe was worth seven dollars in money and not a picayune in utility. Human teeth weren't grown that could stand the drag of that pipe. I know; I have seen it. I suppose it was not the pipe really; the fun lay in the fact that something he had always coveted and could not afford was now his for the mere physical effort of paying out the money. I believe the feel of that pipe in his pocket convinced him as much as anything that he was truly awake.

      Pipe in pocket and peace in heart, he stepped forth into the sunshine again. Well, here was little old Broadway, famed in story-books and theater magazines and Sunday newspapers, the home of provincial millionaires and chorus-girls, Fort Lobster and Fort Champagne and Fort Tip. William had the native New-Yorker's tolerant contempt for the thoroughfare. He called it the ​"collar on the beer," the rat-trap for "boobs" and "hicks" and "come-ons," the coal-chute for papa's money. No doubt his prejudice had been sown and nurtured by the Sunday newspapers. Dutifully each Sunday they recorded the Broadway exploits of this torn-fool or that. The Great White Way: waste, extravagance, wild-oats, cold-blood and old-blood and lack-mercy. On the other hand, he admired the physical beauty of it; at night he knew it had no counterpart in all the wide world.

      "Some old highway," he murmured, aloud, "but it 'll never dig a nickel out of my jeans."

      He wandered on, peering into this window and that, full of lively interest in everything he saw. By and by he summoned a carpet. It carried his spirit in one direction, while his feet led him in another, toward his destiny. Without realizing it, he turned off Broadway and crossed over to Fifth Avenue. Here the fashionable curio-shops attracted him. There were art-galleries, too, and windows full of strange-looking carpets and rugs. Presently he paused before a window which had an art-gallery air, but wasn't. Printers' ink instead of oil ruled. There were great ships going down to sea, tropical isles, the Nile country, India, China, Japan; Arabs, camels, elephants, rickshaws, and bewildering temples. He looked up at the sign overhead.

      "Well, what do you know about that?" he murmured. "Little ol' Thomas Cook and Willie Grogan! Well, say!"

      ​But he did not move on. With one hand propping an elbow and the other hand stroking his chin, he continued to stare at the brilliant lithographs and strange coins and paper money. Suddenly he knew what it was he wanted. He drew out his bank-book and eyed the deposit: $28,500.

      "Sure, Mike!"

      He chuckled and stepped into the office of Thos. Cook & Son, who are agents for Bagdad carpets. A dozen persons were scattered about, interviewing clerks. There was one idle clerk, and boldly William approached him. He hadn't the least idea where he was going, but he knew he was going somewhere, that he was going to tie himself up in such a manner as to prevent caution from overcoming this marvelously likable impulse. All his life he had held himself on the leash, and now bang! went the leather. He swallowed two or three times; his throat was still dry from the fever he had acquired at the law offices of Hargreave, Bell & Davis. The clerk smiled reassuringly.

      "Anything I can do for you, sir?"

      "I want to take a trip around the world," said William. The words went down-hill rapidly, due to his inability to project them in a level tone.

      If the clerk had turned upon him scornfully with a "Beat it, bo, while the beating's good!" William would have faded from the scene like one of those double-exposures which still mystified him at the movies. But the clerk continued to smile, and said, affably, "This is the right place for that."

      Eventually, William decided upon the ship ​Ajax. The boat left harbor on August 15th for a six months' cruise of the world, landing at San Francisco some time along in February. The fare included all travel on land and water. It offered the tail-end of summer in Italy and the fall and winter in the Orient.

      "That's the dope for me," declared William, calming himself. "But say, I haven't got the cash with me. How'll I fix it?"

      "Make a deposit of one hundred," said the clerk, still smiling. William certainly did not look like a tour of the world, but this clerk had seen many a celluloid collar, and they were deceiving things.

      The joy of taking a roll of money out of your pocket, money that was absolutely and wholly yours, money that did not legally belong to creditors, honest money! To pay out one hundred dollars for the first time in your life! To consummate a bargain that was to carry you to the far ends of the world, just by the mere wave of your hand! Rainbows were real, after all.

      As the clerk accepted the notes, William observed the difference between his own and the other's finger-nails. He was thunderstruck! Certainly he could not go traveling with finger-nails like these. True, he scrubbed them twice a day, but the grime had penetrated beyond the reach of ordinary soap and water and bristles. He put the receipt for his deposit in his wallet, and departed, chin out, chest high. He had done it; no side-stepping now; he had to go or forfeit his ​hundred, and that he would never do, not if he had to be wheeled in an invalid's chair to the pier. And yesterday he'd been wondering if he could afford to go to Coney for the Sunday! Wasn't he the gay little bird!

      But his fingers began to worry him seriously. Something must be done. Hitherto he had held in contempt manicured fingers; but Uncle Michael's legacy had switched his outlook on to the main trunk, among the thunderbolts.

      There were manicurists in all the hotel barber-shops, so he resolutely directed his steps to a famed Broadway caravansary and sought the basement. In a corridor off the barber-shop he saw a row of little tables and at each table sat a pretty girl. He could see that most of them knew it; and all of them were chewing gum. That was nothing. So far as William knew, all women chewed gum. He was not above a cud himself once in a while. He entered the corridor and sat down at a table, assuming a nonchalance he did not feel, for on general principles William laid his course in wide circles where women were concerned. He was less bashful than suspicious. However, being a New-Yorker born, nothing less than the inside of a church could abash him. The girl laid aside her magazine and eyed him haughtily.

      "Here's a real job," he said, spreading out his formidable hands.

      The girl noted his fine eyes, and the ice around her lips crackled a little. She took a hand and studied it with frank doubtfulness. Then she ​looked at the clock. It was quarter past eleven. "I don't know," she said. "I'm off at five."

      "Some job, huh? Well, I never came into these wax-works before."

      "Thought not. I've a friend who might do it in less time."

      "What's her name and address?"

      "It's a he-friend. He works out at Bronx; manicures the elephants in the spring."

      "Zowie! Some smoke to that one, believe me! What league are you pitching for? The truth is, duchess, I'm a journeyman plumber by birth, and an uncle of mine has just left me a million silver washers. I'm about to enter the gay life, and I want to do it with pink nails."

      "Going to the funeral?" It was all in a day's work: Isobel de Montclair for the swells and fresh guys and Nellie Casey for the stevedores.

      "Nope. The funeral has went. Now, laying aside the hook, can you do the job with these hams, Virginia style?"

      "If it was anybody but you, Aloysius, I might say nay. But you'll have to buy me a new set of tools."

      "You're on."

      The girl stuck her gum under the marble top of the little table and fell to work. It was a job, but she knew her business. William gave her half a dollar, the first sizable tip he had ever laid down. The girl looked at the coin, then up at William, puzzled. The red hair, the freckles, and the celluloid collar did not dovetail

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