"Just a few," pleads Eggy, "and for ten minutes only."
"It might be sport," suggests Pinckney.
"I"ll take a chance," says I. "We can disinfect afterwards."
Eggy dashes off, and after a lively jabberin" below comes back with his selected specimens. Not a one looks as though he"d been over more"n a year, and some are still wearin" the outlandish rigs they landed in.
Then Eggy begins introducin" "em. And, say, you"d hardly know him for the same bashful, wispy party that Swifty had dragged in a little while before. Honest, as he warms to it, he sort of swells up and straightens, he squares his shoulders, his voice rings out confident, and his eyes behind the thick gla.s.ses are all aglow.
"We will dispense with names," says he; "but here is a native of Sicily.
He is about thirty-five years old, and he worked in the salt mines for something like twelve cents a day from the time he was ten until he came over here under contract to a padrone a few months ago. So you see his possibilities for mental development have been limited. But his muscles have been put to use in helping dig a new subway for us. We hope, however, that in the future his latent talents may be brought out. That being the case, he is possibly the grandfather of the man who in 1965 will write for us an American opera better than anything ever produced by Verdi. Why not?"
We gawps at the grandfather of the musical genius of 1965 and grins.
He"s a short, squatty, low-browed party with gold rings in his ears and a smallpox-pitted face. He gazes doubtful at Eggleston durin" the talk, and at the finish grins back at us. Likely he thought Eggy"d been makin"
a comic speech.
"An ingenious prophecy," says Mr. Hubbard; "but unfortunately all Italians are not Verdis."
"Few have the chance to be," says Eggy. "That is what America should mean to them,--opportunity. We shall benefit by giving it to them too.
Look at our famous bands: at least one-third Italians. Why, nine-tenths of the music that delights us is made for us by the foreign born! Would you drive all those into the sea?"
"Absurd!" says Mr. Hubbard. "I referred only to the lower cla.s.ses, of course. But let"s get on. What next?"
Eggy looks over the line, picks out a square-jawed, bull-headed, pie-faced Yon Yonson, with stupid, stary, skim-milk eyes, and leads him to the front. "A direct descendant of the old Vikings," says he, "a fellow countryman of the heroic Stefansson, of Amundsen. Just now he works as a longsh.o.r.eman. But give him a fair chance, and his son"s son will turn out to be the first Admiral of the Federal Fleet of Commerce that is to be,--a fleet of swift government freighters that shall knit closely together our ports with all the ports of the Seven Seas.
Gentlemen, I present to you the ancestor of an Admiral!"
Pinckney chuckles and nudges Mr. Hubbard. Yonson bats his stupid eyes once or twice, and lets himself be pushed back.
"Go on," says J. Q., scowlin". "I suppose you"ll produce next the grandfather of a genius who will head the National Pie Bureau of the next century?"
"Not precisely," says Eggy, beckonin" up a black-haired, brown-eyed Polish Jewess. "A potential grandmother this time. She helps an aunt who conducts a little kosher delicatessen shop in a Hester-st. bas.e.m.e.nt. Her granddaughter is to organize the movement for communal dietetics, by means of which our children"s children are all to be fed on properly cooked food, scientifically prepared, and delivered hot at a nominal price. She will banish dyspepsia from the land, make obsolete the household drudge, and eliminate the antique kitchen from twenty million homes. Perhaps they will put up a statue in her memory."
"Humph!" snorts Mr. Hubbard. "Is that one of H. G. Wells" silly dreams?"
"You flatter me," says Eggy; "but you give me courage to venture still further. Now we come to the Slav." He calls up a thin, peak-nosed, wild-eyed gink who"s wearin" a greasy waiter"s coat and a coffee-stained white shirt. "From a forty-cent table d"hote restaurant," goes on Eggleston. "An alert, quick-moving, deft-handed person--valuable qualities, you will admit. Develop those in his grandson, give him the training of a National Academy of Technical Arts, bring out the repressed courage and self-confidence, and you will produce--well, let us say, the Chief Pilot of the Aero Transportation Department, the man to whom Congress will vote an honorary pension for winning the first Washington-to-Buenos Ayres race in a three-hundred-foot Lippmann Stabilized quadroplane, carrying fifty pa.s.sengers and two tons of mail and baggage."
Mr. Hubbard gazes squint-eyed at the waiter and sniffs.
"Come, now, who knows?" insists Eggy. "These humble people whom you so despise need only an opportunity. Can we afford to shut them out? Don"t we need them as much as they need us?"
"Mr. Ham," says J. Q., shuttin" his jaws grim, "my motto is, "America for Americans!""
"And mine," says Eggy, facin" him defiant, "is "Americans for America!""
"You"re a scatterbrained visionary!" snaps J. Q. "You and your potential grandfather rubbish! What about the grandsons of good Americans? Do you not reckon them in at all in your----"
"Whe-e-e-e! Whoop!" comes from the hall, the front office door is kicked open joyous, and in comes a tall, light-haired, blue-eyed young gent, with his face well pinked up and his hat on the back of his head. He"s arm in arm with a shrimpy, Frenchy lookin" party wearin" a silk lid and a frock coat. They pushes unsteady through Eggy"s ill.u.s.trious ancestor bunch and comes to parade rest in the center of the stage.
"Winthrop!" gasps Mr. Hubbard.
"Eh?" gasps the young gent, starin" round uncertain until he locates J.
Q. Then he makes a stab at straightenin" up. ""S a" right, Governor," he goes on, ""s a" right. Been givin" lil" lu-luncheon to for"n rep"sen"tives. Put "em all out but An-Andorvski, and he"s nothing but a fish--deuced Russian fish. Eh, Droski?"
Believe me, with J. Q. Hubbard turnin" purple in the gills, and all them cheap foreigners lookin" on bug-eyed, it wa"n"t any humorous scene. With the help of the waiter and the longsh.o.r.eman they loads Winthrop and his friend into a taxi, and Pinckney starts with "em for the nearest Turkish bath. The grandfather debate is adjourned for good.
I was talkin" it over with Swifty Joe, who, havin" been born in County Kerry and brought up in South Brooklyn, is sore on foreigners of all kinds. Course, he sides hearty with Mr. Hubbard.
"Ahr-r-r-chee!" says he. "That Hamand b.o.o.b, stickin" up for the Waps and Guineas, he--he"s a nut, a last year"s nut!"
"Hardly that, Swifty," says I. "A next year"s nut, I should say."
CHAPTER XIV
CATCHING UP WITH GERALD
"It seemed so absurdly simple at first too," says J. Bayard Steele, tappin" one of his pearl-gray spats with his walkin" stick. "But now--well, the more I see of this Gerald Webb, the less I understand."
"Then you"re comin" on," says I. "In time you"ll get wise to the fact that everybody"s that way,--no two alike and every last one of us neither all this nor all that, but constructed complicated, with a surprise package done up in each one."
"Ah! Some of your homespun philosophy, eh?" says J. Bayard. "Interesting perhaps, but inaccurate--quite! The fellow is not at all difficult to read: it"s what we ought to do for him that is puzzling."
Which gives you a line, I expect, on this little debate of ours. Yep!
Gerald is No. 8 on Pyramid Gordon"s list. He"d been a private secretary for Mr. Gordon at one time or another; but he"d been handed his pa.s.sports kind of abrupt one mornin", and had been set adrift in a cold world without warnin".
"In fact," goes on Steele, "I am told that Gordon actually kicked him out of his office; in rather a public manner too."
"Huh!" says I. "I expect he deserved it, then."
"Not at all," says Steele. "I"ve looked that point up. It was over a letter which Gordon himself had dictated to Webb not forty-eight hours before; you know, one of his hot-headed, arrogant, go-to-blazes retorts, during the thick of a fight. But this happened to be in reply to an ultimatum from the Reamur-Brooks Syndicate, and by next morning he"d discovered that he was in no position to talk that way to them. Well, as you know, Pyramid Gordon wasn"t the man to eat his own words."
"No," says I, "that wa"n"t his fav"rite diet. So he made Gerald the goat, eh?"
"Precisely!" says Steele. "Called him in before the indignant delegation, headed by old Reamur himself, and demanded of poor Webb what he meant by sending out such a letter. The youngster was so fl.u.s.tered that he could only stammer a confused denial. He started sniveling. Then Gordon collared him and booted him into the corridor. That should have closed the incident, but a few moments later back comes Webb, blubbering like a whipped schoolboy, and perfectly wild with rage. He was armed with a mop that he"d s.n.a.t.c.hed from an astonished scrubwoman, and he stormed in whimpering that he was going to kill Gordon. Absurd, of course. A mop isn"t a deadly weapon. Some of the clerks promptly rushed in and held Webb until an officer could be called. Then Pyramid laughed it off and refused to prosecute. But the story got into the papers, you may remember; and while more or less fun was poked at Gordon, young Webb came in for a good share. And naturally his career as a private secretary ended right there."
"Yes," says I. "If I was takin" on a secretary myself, I wouldn"t pick one that was subject to fits of mop wieldin". What happened to him after that? How low did he fall?"
J. Bayard tosses over a fancy business card printed in three colors and carryin" this inscription in old English letterin":
AT THE SIGN OF THE BRa.s.s CANDLESTICK Tea Room and Gift Shop Mr. Gerald Webb, Manager.
"Oh, well," says I, "that ain"t so bad. Must have run across a backer somewhere."
"His sisters," says Steele. "He has five, and some of the four married ones are quite well to do. Then there is Evelyn, the old maid sister, who went in with him. It"s from her I"ve found out so much about Gerald.
Nice, refined, pleasant old maid; although somewhat plain featured. She tells me they have a shop at some seash.o.r.e resort in summer,--Atlantic City, or the Pier,--and occasionally have quite a successful season.
Then in the fall they open up again here. The last two summers, though, they"ve barely made expenses, and she fears that Gerald is becoming discouraged."