Honest Dan said _his_ figures showed there was about two born every _second_.
He leads us into a great big hall that was filled with statues, pictures, rugs, sofas, women and fatheads. The furnishings of this joint would make Buckingham Palace look like a stable. It must have ruined the Kid"s five thousand just to lay in scenery for that one room alone. The statues and pictures was nearly all devoted to one subject, and that was why should people wear clothes--especially women? The victims is all lollin" around on them plush sofas, drinkin" tea and lookin" like a ten-year-old kid at church or a guy waitin" in the doctor"s office to find out if he"s got consumption or chilblains. It was as quiet as a Sunday in Philadelphia and they was also a very strong smell of burnin" glue, which Honest Dan said was sacred incense that always had to be used by the professor before he could work.
Among the decorations was a very large dame sittin" over in a corner dressed within a inch of her life. I suppose she had ears, a neck and hands, but you couldn"t tell right away whether she had or not, because them parts of her anatomy, as the feller says, was buried under a carload of diamonds. You could see by her face that at one time she had probably been a swell-lookin" dame, but them days was all over.
Still, she was makin" a game try at comin" back, and from her complexion she must have been kept busy day and night openin" bottles and cans signed on the outside by Lillian Russell and etc.
This dame was havin" the best time of anybody in the joint. She was sittin" up very straight and solemn with both chins restin" in her glitterin" hands and from the look in her eyes some Sunday paper had just claimed she was the best lookin" woman in America and the like.
A guy wouldn"t have to be no Sherlock Holmes to see that this was the bird that was bein" readied for the big killin" by Honest Dan and his trick professor. The rest of them was just what you might call the chorus.
Sittin" right beside the stout party was a kid that had just dropped in from the cover of a magazine. She was the kind of female that could come down to breakfast with the mumps and her hair in curl papers, fry the egg on the wrong side and yet make the lucky guy across the table go out whistlin" and pityin" his unwed friends. You know how them dames look when they have give some time to _dollin" up_, don"t you?
Well, this one had everything; take it from me, she was a knockout!
She"s tappin" the floor with a cla.s.sy little foot and tryin" to see can she pull a silk handkerchief apart with her bare hands, the while registerin" this, "This-medium-thing-is-the-bunk-and-I-wish-I-was-out-of-here!"
I doped her as the stout dame"s daughter, hittin" .1000 on the guess as I found out later.
"Well," whispers Honest Dan to the Kid, "what d"ye think of the place?"
"Some joint!" says the Kid. "Listen--I got a new one. The most magnificently, male mauler on earth! How"s that--poor, eh?"
"What does it mean?" asks Honest Dan.
"It means _me_, Stupid!" pipes the Kid. "I"m havin" some cards made up with that on it. The sagacious, sanguine and scandalous Scanlan, welterweight walloper of the world! Where"s the professor?"
"Sssh!" whispers Honest Dan. "Lay off that _professor_ gag here.
That"s small town stuff--he"s a mahatma now! He"s in one of his silences, but if you keep quiet I"ll take you around and show you how he works."
He takes us through a little door that leads into a dark room which was a steal on the old chamber of horrors at the Eden Musee. It was full of ghost pictures drawed by artists who had no use for prohibition, and they was plenty of skulls and stuff like that layin" around where they would do the most good. At the far end is a small wire gratin" with a Morris chair on the other side of it. Honest Dan explains that that"s where the come-ons sit while the professor ma.s.sages their soul. They never see him, Dan figurin" in that way it would be harder to pick the professor out at police headquarters when the district attorney got around to him. We hadn"t been there a minute, when the curtain at the other end of the room opens and in blows the stout dame, floppin" down in the chair with a sigh as the professor pulls open the grate to feed her the oil. Dan pulls us back in the dark, and I notice she was so excited that she shook all over like a ten cent portion of cornstarch or Instant Desserto and her breath was comin" in short little gasps.
Honest Dan is takin" a inventory of the couple of quarts of diamonds she wore and figurin" the list price on his shirt cuffs. When he got through, he dug me in the ribs and says it looks like a big winter.
The professor starts to talk with a strong Ellis Island dialect, tellin" the dame that he"s just been in a trance, give the sacred crystal the once over and took up her case with a few odd ghosts. The result was that a spirit which was in the know had just give him a tip that she was no less than the tenth regular reincarnation of Cleopatra, who did a big time act in one with a guy called Marc Anthony which was now doin" a single or had jumped to the movies or somethin" like that.
The stout dame gets up off the chair and waves her handkerchief.
"Merciful Heavens!" she remarks loudly. "I knew it!"
Then she pulls a funny fall and faints!
The professor hisses at Dan to get him a cigarette, and the West Indian hall boys drag the stout dame into the chair from which she had slipped followin" the professor"s sure-fire stuff about Cleopatra. He s.n.a.t.c.hes a few drags out of the cigarette before the dame comes to and when she does, he goes on and says yes she is Cleopatra, they ain"t no doubt about that part of it and she must have noticed the strange power she had over men all her life, hadn"t she? The stout dame sighs and nods her head. The professor then tells her that she has been in wrong and unhappy all her life, because she had never met her mate. The same bein" a big, husky, red-blooded cave man which would club her senseless and carry her off to his lair. Had she ever met anybody like that?
The stout dame says not lately, but when poor Henry and her had first got wed he was a Sat.u.r.day night ale-hound and once or twice he had--but never mind, she won"t speak ill of the dead. The professor says he can see that n.o.body of the real big-league calibre has crossed her path as yet and that her husband"s spirit had told him in confidence only the other day that one night he got to thinkin" what a poor worm he was to be married to Cleopatra, and it had been too much for his humble soul which bust.
The dame nods and starts to weep.
"Poor Hennerey!" she says. "He ain"t stopped lyin" yet. I should never have wed him, but how did I know that my fatal beauty would prove his undoing?"
"Ain"t that rich?" pipes Honest Dan in my ear.
The professor has a coughin" spell, and when he calmed himself, he says he has just got in touch with Marc Anthony and he"s pullin" the wires to have him come back to earth so"s their souls can be welded together again and if she will come back in a week, he"ll be able to tell her some big news. He said it was bein" whispered around among the spirits that Marc Anthony was on earth now, eatin" his n.o.ble heart out because he couldn"t find her.
Then he suddenly shuts the gate, and the dame staggers out, overcome with joy and the smell of that incense which would have made a glue factory quit. Honest Dan beats it around and opens the door for her.
They wouldn"t take a nickel off her then, because they was savin" her for the big play.
About a week after our visit to the Temple of the Inner Star, the Kid comes runnin" up to my room at the hotel one mornin" and busts in the door. He"s got a newspaper in his hand and he slams it down on the bed and kicks a innocent chair over on its side.
"I hope they give him eighty years!" he hollers.
"Who"s your friend?" I asks him.
"Friend!" he screams. "Why, the big psalm-singin" stiff, I"ll murder him!"
"They"s just one thing I"d like to know, Kid," I says. "Who?"
"That cheap, pan-handlin" crook that Dan Leduc wished on me!" he yells.
"That rotten snake I kept from dyin" in the gutter, that baby-stealin"
rat which claims he"s a medium! Professor Bunko--that"s who!"
I grabbed up the paper and all over the front page is a picture of Miss Vincent. Underneath it says this,
"Famous Film Star Rumored Engaged to Millionaire."
"Well," I says, "what has this here social note got to do with the Professor?"
"What has a jockey got to do with horse-racin"?" bellers the Kid. "Why the big hick, I"ll go down there and strangle him right out loud before them high-brow simps of his! I"ll have him pinched and I hope he gets life! I"ll--"
He went on like that for half an hour, and when he finally cools off he explains that the professor had guaranteed to dust off his charmers and charm Miss Vincent so hard that she wouldn"t even give a pleasant smile to n.o.body but the Kid. All Scanlan had to do was follow the professor"s dope and they"d be nothin" to it but slippin" the minister and payin" the railroad people for the honeymoon. The Kid had gone ahead and done like the professor said, startin" off with the letter requestin" a lock of her hair clipped at eleven eighteen on a rainy Sunday night. Then he telegraphed her to bathe her thumbs in hot oolong tea every Friday at noon and send him the leaves in a red envelope. He followed that up with a note demandin" a ring that she had first dipped in the juice of a stewed poppy, and then held in back of her while she said, "Alagazza, gazzopi, gazzami" thirteen times.
I guess the professor overplayed the thing a bit, because the only action the Kid got was a short note from Miss Vincent in which she said that as long as he had started right in to drink the minute he hit New York, their friendship was all over. The next thing was that notice in the paper.
The Kid"s idea was to go right down and wreck the Temple of the Inner Star, windin" up by havin" Honest Dan and his bunk medium pinched. I showed him where it would do no good, because he had set "em up in business and if they was crooked the jury would figure that and put the Kid"s name on one of them indictments. He calmed off finally and said he"d be satisfied to let it go at half killin" "em both and makin" a b.u.m out of the Temple of the Inner Star.
We got down there in a few minutes, and Honest Dan meets us at the door. He"s all excited and says the time has come for the big hog killin", after which they"re gonna blow New York, because they been tipped off that the new police commissioner is about to startle the natives with a raid. The Kid starts to bawl him out, when the big stout dame is ushered into the room and Dan hustles us into the professor"s shrine in the rear.
As soon as she gets inside, the professor tells her to prepare for a shock. She shivers all over, grabbin" the side of the chair and takin"
a long whiff out of a little green bottle. Then she says she"ll try and be brave, and to let her have the works. The professor says he has finally dug up Marc Anthony, and all the spirits is in there tryin" for them, so"s they can be brought together. He told her to go right back to her rooms at the Fitz-Charlton and he would send out the old thought waves for Marc. Just when he"d get him, he didn"t know--it might be a day, a week or a month, but she was to sit there all dolled up to receive him and wait. He said she would know Marc, because he would have a snake tattooed on the third finger of his right hand in memory of the way Cleopatra kissed off. That"s all he was allowed to give out just now, he winds up.
Well, the stout dame thanks him about six hundred times and waddles out darn near hysterical. She grabs hold of her daughter and hisses in her ear,
"Oh, Gladys, they"ve found him! My beloved Marc Anthony is coming to claim me for his own. Then we will return to Egypt, and, sitting upon a golden throne--"
Friend daughter pulls a weary smile and leads Cleopatra to the door.
"Oh, don"t, mother!" she says. "Don"t! If you only knew how all this sickens me! This man has hypnotized you! Why don"t you listen to me and take that trip to California where--"
"What!" squeals the stout dame. "What? Be away when my Marc comes?
How dare you think of such a thing! I did that once and if you have read your ancient history, you must remember the terrible result!"
Daughter sighs, shakes her head and they go out.