Odd Numbers. Ford Sewell

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СКАЧАТЬ I wished ’em luck and hurried back to report before Pinckney sent a squad of reserves after me.

      “Well!” says he, the minute I gets in. “Let me know the worst at once.”

      “I will,” says I. “He’s married.” It was all I could do, too, to make him believe the yarn.

      “By Jove!” says he. “Think of a chap like Spotty Cahill tumbling into a romance like that! And on Fourth-ave!”

      “It ain’t so well advertised as some other lanes in this town,” says I; “but it’s a great street. Say, what puzzled me most about the whole business, though, was the new name they had for Spotty. Sareef! What in blazes does that mean?”

      “Probably a title of some sort,” says Pinckney. “Like sheik, I suppose.”

      “But what does a Sareef have to do?” says I.

      “Do!” says Pinckney. “Why, he’s boss of the caravan. He – he sits around in the sun and looks picturesque.”

      “Then that settles it,” says I. “Spotty’s qualified. I never thought there was any place where he’d fit in; but, if your description’s correct, he’s found the job he was born for.”

      CHAPTER IV

      A GRANDMOTHER WHO GOT GOING

      Ever go on a grandmother hunt through the Red Ink District? Well, it ain’t a reg’lar amusement of mine, but it has its good points. Maybe I wouldn’t have tackled it at all if I hadn’t begun by lettin’ myself get int’rested in Vincent’s domestic affairs.

      Now what I knew about this Vincent chap before we starts out on the grandmother trail wouldn’t take long to tell. He wa’n’t any special friend of mine. For one thing, he wears his hair cut plush. Course, it’s his hair, and if he wants to train it to stand up on top like a clothes brush or a blacking dauber, who am I that should curl the lip of scorn?

      Just the same, I never could feel real chummy towards anyone that sported one of them self raisin’ crests. Vincent wa’n’t one of the chummy kind, though. He’s one of these stiff backed, black haired, brown eyed, quick motioned, sharp spoken ducks, that wants what he wants when he wants it. You know. He comes to the studio reg’lar, does his forty-five minutes’ work, and gets out without swappin’ any more conversation than is strictly necessary.

      All the information I had picked up about him was that he hailed from up the State somewhere, and that soon after he struck New York he married one of the Chetwood girls. And that takes more or less capital to start with. Guess Vincent had it; for I hear his old man left him quite a wad and that now he’s the main guy of a threshin’ machine trust, or something like that. Anyway, Vincent belongs in the four-cylinder plute class, and he’s beginnin’ to be heard of among the alimony aristocracy.

      But this ain’t got anything to do with the way he happened to get confidential all so sudden. He’d been havin’ a kid pillow mix-up with Swifty Joe, just as lively as if the thermometer was down to thirty instead of up to ninety, and he’s just had his rub down and got into his featherweight serge, when in drifts this Rodney Kipp that’s figurin’ so strong on the defense side of them pipe line cases.

      “Ah, Vincent!” says he.

      “Hello, Rodney!” says Vincent as they passes each other in the front office, one goin’ out and the other comin’ in.

      I’d never happened to see ’em meet before, and I’m some surprised that they’re so well acquainted. Don’t know why, either, unless it is that they’re so different. Rodney, you know, is one of these light complected heavyweights, and a swell because he was born so. I was wonderin’ if Rodney was one of Vincent’s lawyers, or if they just belonged to the same clubs; when Mr. Kipp swings on his heel and says:

      “Oh, by the way, Vincent, how is grammy?”

      “Why!” says Vincent, “isn’t she out with you and Nellie?”

      “No,” says Rodney, “she stayed with us only for a couple of days. Nellie said she hadn’t heard from her for nearly two months, and told me to ask you about her. So long. I’m due for some medicine ball work,” and with that he drifts into the gym. and shuts the door.

      Vincent, he stands lookin’ after him with a kind of worried look on his face that was comical to see on such a cocksure chap as him.

      “Lost somebody, have you?” says I.

      “Why – er – I don’t know,” says Vincent, runnin’ his fingers through the bristles that waves above his noble brow. “It’s grandmother. I can’t imagine where she can be.”

      “You must have grandmothers to burn,” says I, “if they’re so plenty with you that you can mislay one now and then without missin’ her.”

      “Eh?” says he. “No, no! She is really my mother, you know. I’ve got into the way of calling her grammy only during the last three or four years.”

      “Oh, I see!” says I. “The grandmother habit is something she’s contracted comparative recent, eh? Ain’t gone to her head, has it?”

      Vincent couldn’t say; but by the time he’s quit tryin’ to explain what has happened I’ve got the whole story. First off he points out that Rodney Kipp, havin’ married his sister Nellie, is his brother-in-law, and, as they both have a couple of youngsters, it makes Vincent’s mother a grammy in both families.

      “Sure,” says I. “I know how that works out. She stays part of the time with you, and makes herself mighty popular with your kids; then she takes her trunk over to Rodney’s and goes through the same performance there. And when she goes visitin’ other places there’s a great howl all round. That’s it, ain’t it?”

      It wa’n’t, not within a mile, and I’d showed up my low, common breedin’ by suggesting such a thing. As gently as he could without hurtin’ my feelin’s too much, Vincent explains that while my programme might be strictly camel’s foot for ordinary people, the domestic arrangements of the upper classes was run on different lines. For instance, his little Algernon Chetwood could speak nothing but French, that bein’ the brand of governess he’d always had, and so he naturally couldn’t be very thick with a grandmother that didn’t understand a word of his lingo.

      “Besides,” says Vincent, “mother and my wife, I regret to say, have never found each other very congenial.”

      I might have guessed it if I’d stopped to think of how an old lady from the country would hitch with one of them high flyin’ Chetwood girls.

      “Then she hangs out with your sister, eh, and does her grandmother act there?” says I.

      “Well, hardly,” says Vincent, colorin’ up a little. “You see, Rodney has never been very intimate with the rest of our family. He’s a Kipp, and – Well, you can’t blame him; for mother is rather old-fashioned. Of course, she’s good and kind-hearted and all that; but – but there isn’t much style about her.”

      “Still sticks to the polonaise of ’81, and wears a straw lid she bought durin’ the Centennial, eh?” says I.

      Vincent says that about tells the story.

      “And where is it she’s been livin’ all this time that you’ve been gettin’ on so well in New York?” says I.

      “In СКАЧАТЬ