The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII

As the reporters, in the full flood of after-theater crowds, stood talking to the officer, a young man hurrying past abruptly stopped and stepped to Duane's side.

"Well, Tommy, what's up with you?" the officer asked. Holt noted that Tommy, besides being breathed, was excited. His coat and hat had the provisional look of the apparel of house servants out of livery, and his trousers belonged to a livery suit. Tommy hesitated, glancing at Duane's companions, but the officer said: "Tell your story: these are friends of mine."

"I was just on my way to the station house to see the captain, but I'm glad I met you, for we don't want the papers to say anything, and there's always reporters around the station."

Holt would have stepped back, but Fetner detained him, while Duane said cheerfully: "You're a cunning one, Tommy. Now, what's wrong?"

"Well," began the youth in the manner of a witness on the stand, "I was on duty in the hall this evening and noticed one of our tenants, Mr. Porter H. Carrington, leave the house about ten o'clock. I noticed that he had no overcoat, which I thought was queer, for I'd just closed the front door, because it was getting chilly."

At the mention of the name Holt started, and now paid close attention to the story.

"I was reading the sporting extra by the hall light," Tommy continued, "when, in about twenty minutes, Mr. Carrington returned—that is, I thought it was Mr. Carrington—and he says to me, 'Tommy, run up to my dressing-room and fetch my overcoat.' 'Yes, sir,' I says; 'which one?' for he has a dozen of 'em. 'The light one I wore to-day,' he says, and I starts up the stairs, his apartment being on the next floor, thinking I'd see the coat he wanted on a chair if he'd worn it to-day. I'd just got to his hall and was unlocking the door, when he comes up behind me and says, 'I'll get it, Tommy; there's something else I want.' So in he goes, handing me a dime, and I goes back to the hall. In about fifteen minutes he comes downstairs wearing an overcoat and carrying a bundle, tosses me the key and starts for the door. He's the kind that never carries a bundle, so I says to him, 'Shall I ring for a messenger to carry your package?' 'No,' says he, and leaves the house."

Tommy paused, and there was a shake of excitement in his voice when he resumed: "In five minutes Mr. Carrington comes back without any overcoat, and says, Tommy, run upstairs and get me an overcoat.' I looks, and he was as sober as I am at this minute, Mr. Duane, and I begins to feel queer. It sort of comes over me all of a sudden that the voice of the other man I'd unlocked the door for was different from this one. But I'd been reading the baseball news, and didn't notice much at the time. So I says, hoping it was some kind of a jolly, 'Did you lose the one you just wore out, sir?' 'I wore no coat,' he says, giving me a look. Well, he goes to his apartment, me after him, and there was things flung all over the place, and all the signs of a hurry job by a sneak-thief. Mr. Carrington was kind of petrified, but I runs downstairs and tells the superintendent, and he chases me off to the station. The superintendent was mad and rags me good, for there never was a job of that kind done in the house. But the other man was the same looking as the real, so how was I to know?"

Duane started off with Tommy, and winked to the reporters to follow. At the Quadrangle, a bachelor apartment house noted for its high rents and exclusiveness, Duane was met at the entrance by the superintendent, who told the officer that there was nothing in the story, after all. It was a lark of a friend of his, Mr. Carrington had said, and was annoyed that news of the affair had been sent to the police. The superintendent was glad that Tommy had not reached the station house. Duane looked inquiringly at the superintendent, who gravely winked.

"Good night," said Duane, holding out his hand. "Good night," replied the other, taking the hand. "You won't report this at the station?" "No," said Duane, who then put his hand in his pocket and returned to the reporters. He told them what the superintendent had said.

"What do you make out of it?" asked Fetner.

"Nothing," the officer replied. "If I tried to make out the cases we are asked not to investigate, I'd have mighty little time to work on the cases we are wanted in. If Mr. Carrington says he hasn't been robbed, it isn't our business to prove that he has been. You won't print anything about this?"

Fetner said he would not. To have done so after that promise would have closed a fruitful source of Tenderloin stories. The reporters left the officer at Broadway and resumed their interrupted walk to supper. "Lots of funny things happen in the Tenderloin," Fetner remarked, in the manner of one dismissing a subject.

"But," exclaimed Holt, quite as excited as Tommy had been, "I know Carrington."

"So does every one," answered Fetner, "by name and reputation. He's just a swell—swell enough to be noted. Isn't that all?"

"He was a couple of classes ahead of me at college," continued Holt. "I didn't know him there—one doesn't know half of one's own class—but his family and mine are old friends, and without troubling himself to know me, more than to nod, he sometimes sent me word to use his horses when he was away. Before I left college and went to work on a Boston paper, Carrington started on a trip around the world. My people heard of him through his people at times, and learned that he was doing a number of crazy things, among them getting lost in all sorts of No-man's-lands. His people were usually asking the State Department to locate him, through the diplomatic and consular services."

"Then this is one of his eccentricities," commented Fetner.

"How can you treat it like that?" exclaimed Holt. "I think it is a fascinating mystery, and I'm going to solve it."

"Not for publication," warned Fetner.

"For my own satisfaction," declared Holt, with great earnestness.

When the superintendent of the Quadrangle had shaken hands with the officer he turned to Tommy and said: "You go up to Mr. Carrington. He wants to see you."

"Tommy," said Mr. Carrington, "I think this is a joke on you."

This view of the event was such a relief to Tommy that he grinned broadly.

"It is certainly a joke on you. Now, Thomas, did my friend make himself up to look so much like me that you could not have told the difference, even if you were not distracted by the discomfiture of the New York nine this season?"

"I can't say how much he looked like you, and how much he didn't. I naturally thought he was you—that's all."

"Not all, Thomas: nothing is all. He asked in an easy, nice voice for a coat, so you thought he was somebody who had a coat here. How did you know whose coat he preferred?"

"Because I thought he was you."

"If I had not been the last tenant to leave the house before that, would you have thought so? If Mr. Hopkins had just left, and that man had come in and asked for 'My coat,' wouldn't you have got Mr. Hopkins' coat?"

"Mr. Hopkins did go out after you," Tommy admitted, reluctantly.

"Oh, he did, eh? Well, Hopkins is always going out. I never knew such a regular out-and-outer as Hopkins. He should reform. It's a joke on you, Thomas, and if I were you I wouldn't say anything about it."

"I ain't going to say anything," declared Tommy. "If I don't lose my job for it, I'll be lucky."

"I'll see that you do not lose your job. What police did you see?"

"Only a plain-clothes man I know, and a couple of his side-partners. They won't say anything, for the superintendent fixed them."

Mr. Carrington secured his college degree a year after his class. The delay resulted from an occurrence which he never admitted deserved a year's rustication. By mere chance he had learned the date of the birthday of one of the least known and least important instructors, and decided that it would be well to celebrate it. So he made the acquaintance of the instructor and invited him to a birthday dinner. A large and exultant company were the instructor's fellow guests at the St. Dunstan, and there was jollity that seemed out of drawing with the dominant lines of the guest of honor; yet the scope of the celebration was extended until it included the burning of much red fire and explosion of many noisy bombs at a late hour, as the instructor was making a speech of thanks in the yard, surrounded by the dinner guests, heartily encouraging him. It seemed that upon the manner in which the affair was to be presented to the Faculty depended the dismissal of the instructor or the rustication of Mr. Carrington; and the latter managed to present the case so as to save the instructor. If he had foreseen all the consequences of taking all the blame for an occurrence promptly distorted in report into the aspect of a riotous carousal, perhaps Mr. Carrington would not have sacrificed himself for a neutral personality which had so recently swum into his ken. One consequence was a letter from Mr. Draper Curtis, of New York, commanding Mr. Carrington to cease correspondence with Miss Caroline Curtis; and a note from Caroline, in which a calmer man than a distracted lover would have seen signs of parental censorship, wherein that young lady said that she had read her father's letter and added her commands to his. She had heard from many sources, as had numerous indignant relatives and friends, the particulars of the shocking affair which had compelled the Faculty to discipline Mr. Carrington; and she could but agree with her family that her happiness would rest upon insecure ground if trusted to the inciter and principal offender in such a terrible transaction. He was to forget her at once, as she would try to forget him.

Caroline and her mamma sailed for Europe the next day, and several letters Carrington wrote to her, giving a less censurable version of the little dinner to the little instructor, were returned to him unopened.

After receiving his delayed degree Carrington began a tour around the world. In the court of the Palace Hotel, the day of his departure from San Francisco, a commonplace-looking man stepped up to him briskly, and said, placing a hand on his shoulder: "Presidio, you've got a nerve to come back here. You, to the ferry; or with me to the captain!"

Carrington turned his full face toward the man for the first time as he brushed aside the hand with some force. The man reddened, blinked, and then stammered: "Excuse me, but you did look so—Say, you must excuse me, for I see that you are a gentleman."

"Isn't Presidio a gentleman?" Carrington asked, good-naturedly, when he saw that the man's confusion was genuine.

"Why, Presidio is—do you mind sitting down at one of these tables? I feel a little shaky—making such a break!"

He explained that he was the hotel's detective, and had been on the city's police force. In both places he had dealings with a confidence man, called Presidio—after the part of the city he came from. Presidio was an odd lot; had enough skill in several occupations to earn honest wages, but seemed unable to forego the pleasure of exercising his wit in confidence games and sneak-thievery. Among his honest accomplishments was the ability to perform sleight-of-hand tricks well enough to work profitably in the lesser theater circuits. He had married a woman who made part of the show Presidio operated for a time—a good-looking woman, but as ready to turn a confidence trick as to help her husband's stage work, or do a song and dance as an interlude. They had been warned to leave San Francisco for a year, and not to return then, unless bringing proof that they had walked in moral paths during their exile.

"And you mistook me for Presidio?" asked Carrington, with the manner of one flattered.

"For a second, and seeing only your side face. Of course, I saw my mistake when you turned and spoke to me. Presidio is considered the best-looking crook we've ever had."

"Now, that's nice! Where did you say he's gone?"

"I don't know."

Carrington found that out for himself. He first interrupted his voyage by a stop of some weeks in Japan. Later, at the Oriental Hotel in Manila, the day of his arrival there, he saw a man observing him with smiling interest, a kind of smile and interest which prompted Carrington to smile in return. He was bored because the only officer he knew in the Philippines was absent from Manila on an expedition to the interior; and the man who smiled looked as if he might scatter the blues if he were permitted to try. The stranger approached with a bright, frank look, and said, "Don't you remember me, Mr. Carrington?"

"No-o."

"I was head waiter at the St. Dunstan."

"Oh, were you? Well, your face has a familiar look, somehow."

"Excuse my speaking to you, but I guess your last trip was what induced me to come out here."

"That's odd."