"Thank you, Commissioner," murmured Peter, watching him with wondering eyes.
Commissioner Kondorman felt round in an inside pocket and brought out a small box from which he carefully took something that glittered in the morning sunlight. Bending over the bed, he pinned it on the night-shirt of Peter Mullaney. Peter felt it; stopped breathing; felt it again; slowly pulled it out so that he could look at it.
"It was Officer John Gaffney"s," said the Commissioner, and his voice was trying hard to be official and formal, but it was getting husky. "He was a brave officer. I wanted another brave officer to have his shield."
"But, Commissioner," cried Peter, winking very hard with both eyes, for they were blurring, "haven"t you made a mistake? You must have got the wrong man. Don"t you remember? I"m the one that said the Tropic of Capricorn is in the Bronx!"
"Officer Mullaney," said Commissioner Kondorman in an odd voice, "if a cop like you says the Tropic of Capricorn is in the Bronx, then, by the lord Harry, that"s where the Tropic of Capricorn is."
VIII: _Mr. Braddy"s Bottle_
--1
"This," said Mr. William Lum solemnly, "is the very las" bottle of this stuff in these United States!"
It was a dramatic moment. He held it aloft with the pride and tender care of a recent parent exhibiting a first-born child. Mr. Hugh Braddy emitted a long, low whistle, expressive of the awe due the occasion.
"You don"t tell me!" he said.
"Yes, siree! There ain"t another bottle of this wonderful old hooch left anywhere. Not anywhere. A man couldn"t get one like it for love nor money. Not for love nor money." He paused to regard the bottle fondly.
"Nor anything else," he added suddenly.
Mr. Braddy beamed fatly. His moon face--like a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound Kewpie"s--wore a look of pride and responsibility. It was his bottle.
"You don"t tell me!" he said.
"Yes, siree. Must be all of thirty years old, if it"s a day. Mebbe forty. Mebbe fifty. Why, that stuff is worth a dollar a sniff, if it"s worth a jit. And you not a drinking man! Wadda pity! Wadda pity!"
There was a shade of envy in Mr. Lum"s tone, for Mr. Lum was, or had been, a drinking man; yet Fate, ever perverse, had decreed that Mr.
Braddy, teetotaler, should find the ancient bottle while poking about in the cellar of his very modest new house--rented--in that part of Long Island City where small, wooden cottages break out in cl.u.s.ters, here and there, in a species of munic.i.p.al measles.
Mr. Braddy, on finding the treasure, had immediately summoned Mr. Lum from his larger and more pretentious house near by, as one who would be able to appraise the find, and he and Mr. Lum now stood on the very spot in the cellar where, beneath a pile of old window blinds, the venerable liquor had been found. Mr. Braddy, it was plain, thought very highly of Mr. Lum"s opinions, and that great man was good-naturedly tolerant of the more placid and adipose Mr. Braddy, who was known--behind his back--in the rug department of the Great Store as "Ole Hippopotamus."
Not that he would have resented it, had the veriest cash boy called him by this uncomplimentary but descriptive nickname to his face, for Mr.
Braddy was the sort of person who never resents anything.
"Y"know, Mr. Lum," he remarked, crinkling his pink brow in philosophic thought, "sometimes I wish I had been a drinking man. I never minded if a man took a drink. Not that I had any patience with these here booze fighters. No. Enough is enough, I always say. But if a fella wanted to take a drink, outside of business hours, of course, or go off on a spree once in a while--well, I never saw no harm in it. I often wished I could do it myself."
"Well, why the dooce didn"t you?" inquired Mr. Lum.
"As a matter of solid fact, I was scared to. That"s the truth. I was always scared I"d get pinched or fall down a manhole or something. You see, I never did have much nerve." This was an unusual burst of confidence on the part of Mr. Braddy, who, since he had moved into Mr.
Lum"s neighborhood a month before, had played a listening role in his conferences with Mr. Lum, who was a thin, waspy man of forty-four, in ambush behind a fierce pair of mustachios. Mr. Braddy, essence of diffidence that he was, had confined his remarks to "You don"t tell me!"
or, occasionally, "Ain"t it the truth?" in the manner of a Greek chorus.
Now inspired, perhaps, by the discovery that he was the owner of a priceless bottle of spirits, he unbosomed himself to Mr. Lum. Mr. Lum made answer.
"Scared to drink? Scared of anything? Bosh! Tommyrot! Everybody"s got nerve. Only some don"t use it," said Mr. Lum, who owned a book called "The Power House in Man"s Mind," and who subscribed for, and quoted from, a pamphlet for successful men, called "I Can and I Will."
"Mebbe," said Mr. Braddy. "But the first and only time I took a drink I got a bad scare. When I was a young feller, just starting in the rugs in the Great Store, I went out with the gang one night, and, just to be smart, I orders beer. Them was the days when beer was a nickel for a stein a foot tall. The minute I taste the stuff I feel uncomfortable. I don"t dare not drink it, for fear the gang would give me the laugh. So I ups and drinks it, every drop, although it tastes worse and worse. Well, sir, that beer made me sicker than a dog. I haven"t tried any drink stronger than malted milk since. And that was all of twenty years ago.
It wasn"t that I thought a little drinking a sin. I was just scared; that"s all. Some of the other fellows in the rugs drank--till they pa.s.sed a law against it. Why, I once seen Charley Freedman sell a party a genuine, expensive Bergamo rug for two dollars and a half when he was pickled. But when he was sober there wasn"t a better salesman in the rugs."
Mr. Lum offered no comment; he was weighing the cob-webbed bottle in his hand, and holding it to the light in a vain attempt to peer through the golden-brown fluid. Mr. Braddy went on:
"I guess I was born timid. I dunno. I wanted to join a lodge, but I was scared of the "nitiation. I wanted to move out to Jersey, but I didn"t.
Why, all by life I"ve wanted to take a Turkish bath; but somehow, every time I got to the door of the place I got cold feet and backed out. I wanted a raise, too, and by golly, between us, I believe they"d give it to me; but I keep putting off asking for it and putting off and putting off----"
"I was like that--once," put in Mr. Lum. "But it don"t pay. I"d still be selling shoes in the Great Store--and looking at thousands of feet every day and saying thousands of times, "Yes, madam, this is a three-A, and very smart, too," when it is really a six-D and looks like h.e.l.l on her.
No wonder I took a drink or two in those days."
He set down the bottle and flared up with a sudden, fierce bristling of his mustaches.
"And now they have to come along and take a man"s liquor away from him--drat "em! What did our boys fight for? Liberty, I say. And then, after being mowed down in France, they come home to find the country dry! It ain"t fair, I say. Of course, don"t think for a minute that I mind losing the licker. Not me. I always could take it or leave it alone. But what I hate is having them say a man can"t drink this and he can"t drink that. They"ll be getting after our smokes, next. I read in the paper last night a piece that asked something that"s been on my mind a long time: "Whither are we drifting?""
"I dunno," said Mr. Braddy.
"You"d think," went on Mr. Lum, not heeding, as a sense of oppression and injustice surged through him, "that liquor harmed men. As if it harmed anybody but the drunkards! Liquor never hurt a successful man; no, siree. Look at me!"
Mr. Braddy looked. He had heard Mr. Lum make the speech that customarily followed this remark a number of times, but it never failed to interest him.
"Look at me!" said Mr. Lum, slapping his chest. "Buyer in the shoes in the Great Store, and that ain"t so worse, if I do say it myself. That"s what nerve did. What if I did used to get a snootful now and then? I had the self-confidence, and that did the trick. When old man Briggs croaked, I heard that the big boss was looking around outside the store for a man to take his place as buyer in the shoes. So I goes right to the boss, and I says, "Look here, Mr. Berger, I been in the shoes eighteen years, and I know shoes from A to Z, and back again. I can fill Briggs" shoes," I says. And that gets him laughing, although I didn"t mean it that way, for I don"t think humor has any place in business.
""Well," he says, "you certainly got confidence in yourself. I"ll see what you can do in Briggs" job. It will pay forty a week." I knew old Briggs was getting more than forty, and I could see that Berger needed me, so I spins on him and I laughs in his face. "Forty popcorn b.a.l.l.s!" I says to him. "Sixty is the least that job"s worth, and you know it."
Well, to make a long story short, he comes through with sixty!"
This story never failed to fascinate Mr. Braddy, for two reasons. First, he liked to be taken into the confidence of a man who made so princely a salary; and, second, it reminded him of the tormenting idea that he was worth more than the thirty dollars he found every Friday in his envelope, and it bolstered up his spirit. He felt that with the glittering example of Mr. Lum and the constant hara.s.sings by his wife, who had and expressed strong views on the subject, he would some day conquer his qualms and demand the raise he felt to be due him.
"I wish I had your crust," he said to Mr. Lum in tones of frank admiration.
"You have," rejoined Mr. Lum. "I didn"t know that I had, for a long, long time, and then it struck me one day, as I was trying an Oxford-brogue style K6 on a dame, "How did Schwab get where he is? How did Rockefeller? How did this here Vanderlip? Was it by being humble?
Was it by setting still?" You bet your sweet boots it wasn"t. I just been reading an article in "I Can and I Will," called "Big Bugs--And How They Got That Way," and it tells all about those fellows and how most of them wasn"t nothing but newspaper reporters and puddlers--whatever that is--until one day they said, "I"m going to do something decisive!" And they did it. That"s the idea. Do something decisive. That"s what I did, and look at me! Braddy, why the devil don"t you do something decisive?"
"What?" asked Mr. Braddy meekly.
"Anything. Take a plunge. Why, I bet you never took a chance in your life. You got good stuff in you, Braddy, too. There ain"t a better salesman in the rugs. Why, only the other day I overheard Berger say, "That fellow Braddy knows more about rugs than the Mayor of Bagdad himself. Too bad he hasn"t more push in him.""
"I guess mebbe he"s right," said Mr. Braddy.
"Right? Of course, he"s right about you being a crack salesman. Why, you could sell corkscrews in Kansas," said Mr. Lum. "You got the stuff, all right. But the trouble is you can sell everything but yourself. Get busy! Act! Do something! Make a decision! Take a step!"
Mr. Braddy said nothing. Little lines furrowed his vast brow; he half closed his small eyes; his round face took on an intent, scowling look.
He was thinking. Silence filled the cellar. Then, with the air of a man whose mind is made up, Hugh Braddy said a decisive and remarkable thing.
"Mr. Bill Lum," he said, "I"m going to get drunk!"