But not much. I hadn"t then the rules, given on page 554 of Jarby"s Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, including "How to Wrestle, How to Defend Oneself Against Sudden Attack, Jui Jitsu," et cetery, with wood cuts showing the best holds and how to get them. All this being but one of one thousand and one subjects treated of in this work, the price of which is but five dollars, neatly bound in cloth."
The editor had turned his back and was staring angrily out of the window--sulkily tremulous would be a better description, perhaps--when he suddenly cried out. Eliph" searched hurriedly in his pockets for another pair of spectacles, found them and put them on, and looked where the editor pointed. Across the street the attorney, backed up against the wall of the bank, was defending his face with one arm, and with his right hand seeking to grasp a ship that was raining blows upon his face and head. Someone grasped the whip from behind and wrenched it from the hand of the attorney"s a.s.sailant, and as the man turned angrily, the two in the window saw that it was Colonel Guthrie.
They heard him cursing those who had taken the ship from him, ending by loudly justifying himself for what he had done to the attorney, and saw the attorney step forward to quell the Colonel"s hot words. The Colonel put up both his hands and shouted, and some from the crowd, grasping the attorney about the waist and arms, as if the feared he was about to attack the older man, hurried him away, speaking soothing words to him.
The Colonel rioted on. Nothing could have stopped him. He pulled a copy of the TIMES from his pocket and slapped it with his hand as he abused the attorney for having given T. J. Jones the facts of the article.
He lit it be plainly known, in his anger, that the article called him a giver of graft. The crowd stood silent, as crowds stand about some drunken man, for the Colonel was drunk with wrath, and wordy with it, talking to himself as drunken men do. He finished, and the crowd opened a pa.s.sage through itself to let him pa.s.s, and Skinner, who, in ap.r.o.n and bare arms, had viewed his rival"s wrath from a safe place on the edge of the group, backed away. The Colonel, mumbling, caught sight of him, and with one swift motion of the arm grasped him by the shirt band.
"You!" he shouted, pulling the shirt band until Skinner grew purple in the face. "You! You done it! Why couldn"t you buy them fire-extinguishers like a man? You made me buy up that Dutchman. I wouldn"t "a" had to do it but for you."
He gave the choking butcher an extra shake, and raised his hand to strike him, but again the crowd interfered, and seized the Colonel, and hurried him away.
The butcher stood stupidly and rubbed his neck, waiting for the wits that had been choked out of him to return, and far down the street Mayor St.i.tz, hearing a noise, came out on his front platform and looked up the street. It appeared to him that something was going on, and sticking his awl in the door of his car, he walked blandly up the street to where the remnant of the crowd formed a half circle around the butcher. He crowded through, saying, "Look out, the mayor is coming. Stand one side yet for the mayor!"
The butcher looked and saw before him the round, innocent face of the mayor, topped by the mayor"s round bald head. He raised his large, fat hand, and in vent for all his injured feelings brought it down, smack!
On the smooth bald spot.
"Ouw-etch!" said the mayor.
He was surprised. He backed away and rubbed the top of his head, and what he said next was a rapid string of real, genuine German; exclamations, compound tenses, and irregular verbs and all that makes German a useful, forceful language. As long as he rubbed his head--with a rotary motion--he spoke German; then he stopped rubbing and spoke English.
"So is it you treat your mayor!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Such a town is Kilo, to give mayors a klop on the head! Donnerblitzenvetter! Not so is it in Germany." He turned to the crowd. "A klop on the head! It is not for klops on the head that I am mayor. No. I resign out of this mayor business. Go get another mayor, such as likes klops on the head. I am no mayor. I am resigned."
He turned and walked slowly back to his car, pulled the awl out of the door, and went inside.
The editor moved away from the window. He seated himself at his desk and leaned his head on his arms and thought.
"Headache?" asked Eliph".
"No," said the editor, lifting his head. "I"m trying to think this thing out. Guthrie is in it, and Skinner must be in it, and St.i.tz. And that fellow across the way said you knew something about it, and he said Doc Weaver wrote the article. No," he added hastily, as Eliph" offered to speak, "let me think it out myself."
He leaned his head on his hand, and gazed at the attorney"s office. He drew the week"s copy of the TIMES toward him and read over the article that had caused all the trouble.
"It might be that fire-extinguishers ordinance," he said slowly. "St.i.tz pushed that through. And Skinner had to buy them. And--they were owned by Miss Briggs and the Colonel negotiated the sale." He jumped up and turned over the file of back numbers of the TIMES. He found the announcement he had made of the arrival of Eliph", and the report of the meeting of the city council that had pa.s.sed the fire-extinguishers ordinance. Eliph" had been in town before the ordinance had pa.s.sed.
Eliph" boarded now with Doc Weaver. Again he read the article in the TIMES, seeking for the meanings that Doc knew so well how to hide. He paused at the "Things are seldom what they seem" lines, and considered it. Suddenly he arose and put on his hat.
"Wait here," he said, "I"ll be back."
When he returned he was smiling. He had visited Skinner"s Opera House and had examined the fire-extinguishers where they sat, each on its bracket.
"Hewlitt," he said, "when you told Doc about the fire-extinguishers did you tell him they were lung-testers?"
The little book agent stared at the editor.
"I never told," he exclaimed. "I have never said a word to Doc Weaver, nor to anyone about them. Not a word. I have kept it as sacred as the secret of the Man in the Iron Mask, a full account of whom, together with a wood cut, is given on page 231, together with "All the World"s Famous Mysteries," this being but one feature of Jarby"s----"
"All right," said the editor. "And you never told him about the graft?"
The blank amazement on the book agent"s face was sufficient answer.
"I"ve got to go out," said the editor. "I"ve got some reporting to do.
You"ll excuse me. I want to see St.i.tz. And Skinner. And Guthrie. I wish Doc hadn"t gone to his State Medical Society meeting to-day."
Eliph" went out with the editor, who locked the door behind him.
"Don"t say anything," said the editor, "but I think there will be an extra edition of the TIMES out to-morrow."
CHAPTER XV. Difficulties
Eliph" had said nothing to Doc Weaver about the affair of the fire-extinguishers, he had known nothing of the graft matter, and yet it could not be supposed that Doc Weaver could be a confidant of the attorney"s. The editor was puzzled, but he was sure he was right in the main, and he was nearer learning the truth than he supposed, as he hurried down the street to the mayor"s car-cobbler shop.
He opened the door and stepped inside, but the mayor did not look up with his usual smile; he was sulking, and from time to time he rubbed his head where the butcher had struck him.
"How do, St.i.tz," said the editor. "How"s the mayor?"
The cobbler pulled his waxed threads angrily through a tough bit of leather, and did not look up.
"I am no more a mayor," he said crossly. "I am out of that mayor job. I give him up. I haf been insulted."
"I saw it," the editor a.s.sured him. "He gave you a good whack.
Sounded like a wet plank falling on a marble slab. Mad about the fire-extinguishers business, wasn"t he?"
"And why?" asked the mayor, looking up for the first time, "he has a right to obey those ordinances and not get mad."
"Oh, but he don"t like the way folks will laugh at him when they learn the joke you have played on him. That was a good one."
"Joke?" queried the mayor, growing brighter. "Did I play him one joke?"
"You know," said T. J. "Making him buy those lung-testers of Miss Briggs" when he thought they were fire-extinguishers. I should say it WAS a joke!"
"Sit down," said the mayor; "don"t hang on those straps when seats is enough and plenty. Sit down. So I joked him, yes?"
"Rather," said the editor, "and Guthrie, too, making him pay that graft."
"Sure!" grinned the cobbler. "I got goot grafts. Apples, and potatoes, and celery, and peas, and chickens! Five grafts for one such little ordinances. Grafts is a good business, but now is all over. I quit me that boss-grafter job. I like me not such kloppings on the head. Next comes such riots, and revolutionings. I quit first." He sewed steadily for a while then prepared another thread, waxing it, and twisting the bristle on either end.
"That fire-extinguishers joke," he said, as he ran the ball of wax up and down the thread; "that was a good one, yes? On Skinner. That makes me a revenge on Skinner for such a klop on the head, yes?"
He adjusted the shoe on his knee, and began to sew again.
"Yes," he said, "I am glad I make that joke on Skinner. What was it?"
"Come now!" said T. J. "Don"t pretend such innocence, St.i.tz. Don"t try to fool ME. You knew all the time that those fire-extinguishers were nothing but lung-testers." The mayor looked puzzled, and properly, for he had never heard of lung-testers. "To test lungs," explained the editor. "To show how many pounds a man can blow; how much wind his lungs will hold; a sort of game, like pitching horseshoes. They are not worth anything to Skinner. He paid his money for them for nothing. He will have to buy four genuine fire-extinguishers now. That was what made him mad at you."
When the editor left St.i.tz"s car he had learned all the mayor could tell him, including the undoubted fact that the mayor considered graft a quite legitimate operation, and this particular case a good joke on Skinner and Colonel Guthrie, and that the mayor himself, thinking the joke too good to keep, had told Doc Weaver. The editor easily guessed that Doc had investigated the rest of the affair, and had seen the fire-extinguishers and known them to be not what they seemed. He hurried back to his office to set in type what he had learned.