"I believe you have a car here for me--Mr. Bean," he said briskly. It was the first time in all his life that he had spoken of himself as "Mr.
Bean!" He threw his shoulders back even farther when he had achieved it.
The soiled person whom he addressed merely called to another soiled person who, near at hand, seemed to be beating an unruly car into subjection. The second person merely ducked his head backward and over his right shoulder.
"All right, all right!" said the first person, and then to Bean, "All right, all right!"
The car was before him, a large, an alarming car--and red! It was as red as the unworn cravat. Good thing it was getting dark. He wouldn"t like to go out in the daytime in one as red as that, not at first.
He ran his eyes critically over it, trying to look disappointed.
"Good shape?" he demanded.
"How about it, Joe? She all right?"
Joe perceptibly stopped hammering.
"Garrumph-rumph!" he seemed to say.
"Well?" said the first person, eying Bean as if this explained everything.
"Take a little spin," said Bean.
"Paul!"
Paul issued from the office, a shock-headed, slouching youth in extreme negligee, a half-burned cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He yawned without dislodging the cigarette.
"Gentleman wants to g"wout." Paul vanished.
Nap had already leaped to a seat in the red car. He had learned what those things were for.
Paul reappeared, trim in leathern cap, well-fitting Norfolk jacket and shining puttees.
"Never know he only had on an undershirt," thought Bean, struck by this swiftly devised effect of correct dressing. He sat in the roomy rear seat beside Nap, leaning an elbow negligently on the arm-rest. He watched Paul shrewdly in certain mysterious preparations for starting the car. An observer would have said that one false move on Paul"s part would have been enough.
The car rolled out and turned into the wide avenue half a block away.
"Where to, Boss?" asked Paul.
"Just around," said Bean. "Tea and things!"
They glided swiftly on.
"Oh, just a little old last year"s car!" said Bean, frowning royally at a couple of mere foot people who turned to stare.
What would that flapper do next?
He surrendered to the movement. Drunkenly he mused upon a wild inspiration to bring Ram-tah out and give him a ride in this big red car. It appealed to him much. Ram-tah would almost open his eyes at the novelty of that progress. But he felt that this was no safe thing to do.
He would be arrested. The whole secret might come out.
He had retained no sense of direction, but he was presently conscious of the river close at his side, and then the car, with warning blasts, curved up to a much lighted building and halted. A large man in uniform came solicitously to help him descend and gave him a fragment of cardboard which he knew would redeem his motor.
He was seated at a table looking down upon the shining river.
"Tea and things," he said to the waiter.
"Yes, sir; black or green, sir?"
"Bottle ginger ale!" How did he know whether he wanted black or green tea. No time to be fussy.
He began a lordly survey of the people at neighbouring tables--people who had doubtless walked there, or come in hired cabs, at the best.
Hired cabs had yesterday seemed impressive to him; now they were rather vulgar. Of course, there might be circ.u.mstances--
He froze like a pointing dog. At a table not twenty feet distant, actually in the flesh, sat the Greatest Pitcher the World Has Ever Known. For a moment he could only stare fixedly. The man was simply _there_! He was talking volubly to two other men, and he was also eating a mere raspberry ice!
It showed how things "worked around," once you got started. Hadn"t his whole life been a proof of this? How many times had he wished he might happen upon that Pitcher just as he was now, in street clothes--to look at him, study him! He wished _he_ had ordered raspberry ice instead of ginger ale, which he didn"t like. He would order one anyway.
It was all Ram-tah. If you knew you were a king, you needn"t ever worry again. You sat still and let things come to you. After all, a king was greater than a pitcher, if you came down to it--in some ways, certainly.
He stared until the group left the table. He could actually have touched the Pitcher as he pa.s.sed. Would wonders never cease?
Two men in uniform helped him into the big red car again, tenderly, as if he were fragile. He had meant to return to the garage, but now he saw the more dignified way was to stop at his own house. Further, Paul should take him to the office in the morning and call for him at four-thirty again. He wouldn"t be afraid to ride in the red car even in daylight now. Sitting there not twenty feet from that Pitcher!
"Eight o"clock in the morning," he said curtly to Paul as he descended.
And Paul touched his leather cap respectfully as the car moved off.
Ca.s.sidy lounged near in shirt sleeves.
"I see three was kilt-up in wan yistaday in th" Bur-ronx," said Ca.s.sidy interestedly.
"Good thing for the tired business man, though," said Bean, yawning in a bored way. "And that fellow of mine is careful."
Then his seeming boredom vanished.
"Say, you can"t guess who I saw just now. Close to him as I am to you this minute--"
Solitary in the big red car, descending the crowded lanes of the city the next morning, Bean"s sensations were conceivably those that had been Ram-tah"s at the zenith of his power. There was the fragrant and cherished memory of the Greatest Pitcher, and a car to ride solitary in that simply blared the common herd from before it. People in street-cars looked enviously out at him. He lolled urbanely, with a large public manner. When you were a king you behaved like one, and the world knelt to you. Great pitchers sitting under the same roof with you; red motor-cars; fumed oak dining-rooms; flappers; brokers; shares. He wished he had thought to chew an unlighted cigar in this resplendent chariot.
There seemed to be almost a public demand for it. Certain things were expected of a man!
"Be here at four-thirty," he directed.
And Paul, his fellow, glancing up along the twenty-two stories of the office building, was impressed. He considered it probable that the bored young man owned this building. "The guys that have gits!" thought Paul.
Bean was preposterously working once more, playing the part of a cog on the wheel. Another day, it seemed, of that grotesque nonsense, even after the world"s Greatest Pitcher had sat not twenty feet from him the night before, eating raspberry ice. But events could not long endure _that_ strain. Before the day was over Breede would undoubtedly "fire"
him, with two or three badly chosen words; actually go through the form of discharging a man who had once ruled all Egypt with a kindly but an iron hand!
Of course, the fellow was unconscious of this, as he still must be of the rare joke the flapper was exquisitely holding over his head. His demeanour toward Bean betrayed no recognition of shares or pitchers or big red cars, nor of the ever-impending change in their relationship. He dictated fragments of English words, and Bean reconstructed them with the cunning of a Cuvier. He felt astute, robust, and disrespectful. Just one wrong word from Breede and all would be over between them. The poor old wreck didn"t dream that he had nursed a flapper in his bosom, a flapper that would just perfectly have what she wanted--and no good fussing.