I doped her as the stout dame's daughter, hittin' .1000 on the guess as I found out later.
"Well," whispers Honest Dan to the Kid, "what d'ye think of the place?"
"Some joint!" says the Kid. "Listen – I got a new one. The most magnificently, male mauler on earth! How's that – poor, eh?"
"What does it mean?" asks Honest Dan.
"It means me, Stupid!" pipes the Kid. "I'm havin' some cards made up with that on it. The sagacious, sanguine and scandalous Scanlan, welterweight walloper of the world! Where's the professor?"
"Sssh!" whispers Honest Dan. "Lay off that professor gag here. That's small town stuff – he's a mahatma now! He's in one of his silences, but if you keep quiet I'll take you around and show you how he works."
He takes us through a little door that leads into a dark room which was a steal on the old chamber of horrors at the Eden Musee. It was full of ghost pictures drawed by artists who had no use for prohibition, and they was plenty of skulls and stuff like that layin' around where they would do the most good. At the far end is a small wire gratin' with a Morris chair on the other side of it. Honest Dan explains that that's where the come-ons sit while the professor massages their soul. They never see him, Dan figurin' in that way it would be harder to pick the professor out at police headquarters when the district attorney got around to him. We hadn't been there a minute, when the curtain at the other end of the room opens and in blows the stout dame, floppin' down in the chair with a sigh as the professor pulls open the grate to feed her the oil. Dan pulls us back in the dark, and I notice she was so excited that she shook all over like a ten cent portion of cornstarch or Instant Desserto and her breath was comin' in short little gasps.
Honest Dan is takin' a inventory of the couple of quarts of diamonds she wore and figurin' the list price on his shirt cuffs. When he got through, he dug me in the ribs and says it looks like a big winter.
The professor starts to talk with a strong Ellis Island dialect, tellin' the dame that he's just been in a trance, give the sacred crystal the once over and took up her case with a few odd ghosts. The result was that a spirit which was in the know had just give him a tip that she was no less than the tenth regular reincarnation of Cleopatra, who did a big time act in one with a guy called Marc Anthony which was now doin' a single or had jumped to the movies or somethin' like that.
The stout dame gets up off the chair and waves her handkerchief.
"Merciful Heavens!" she remarks loudly. "I knew it!"
Then she pulls a funny fall and faints!
The professor hisses at Dan to get him a cigarette, and the West Indian hall boys drag the stout dame into the chair from which she had slipped followin' the professor's sure-fire stuff about Cleopatra. He snatches a few drags out of the cigarette before the dame comes to and when she does, he goes on and says yes she is Cleopatra, they ain't no doubt about that part of it and she must have noticed the strange power she had over men all her life, hadn't she? The stout dame sighs and nods her head. The professor then tells her that she has been in wrong and unhappy all her life, because she had never met her mate. The same bein' a big, husky, red-blooded cave man which would club her senseless and carry her off to his lair. Had she ever met anybody like that? The stout dame says not lately, but when poor Henry and her had first got wed he was a Saturday night ale-hound and once or twice he had – but never mind, she won't speak ill of the dead. The professor says he can see that nobody of the real big-league calibre has crossed her path as yet and that her husband's spirit had told him in confidence only the other day that one night he got to thinkin' what a poor worm he was to be married to Cleopatra, and it had been too much for his humble soul which bust.
The dame nods and starts to weep.
"Poor Hennerey!" she says. "He ain't stopped lyin' yet. I should never have wed him, but how did I know that my fatal beauty would prove his undoing?"
"Ain't that rich?" pipes Honest Dan in my ear.
The professor has a coughin' spell, and when he calmed himself, he says he has just got in touch with Marc Anthony and he's pullin' the wires to have him come back to earth so's their souls can be welded together again and if she will come back in a week, he'll be able to tell her some big news. He said it was bein' whispered around among the spirits that Marc Anthony was on earth now, eatin' his noble heart out because he couldn't find her.
Then he suddenly shuts the gate, and the dame staggers out, overcome with joy and the smell of that incense which would have made a glue factory quit. Honest Dan beats it around and opens the door for her. They wouldn't take a nickel off her then, because they was savin' her for the big play.
About a week after our visit to the Temple of the Inner Star, the Kid comes runnin' up to my room at the hotel one mornin' and busts in the door. He's got a newspaper in his hand and he slams it down on the bed and kicks a innocent chair over on its side.
"I hope they give him eighty years!" he hollers.
"Who's your friend?" I asks him.
"Friend!" he screams. "Why, the big psalm-singin' stiff, I'll murder him!"
"They's just one thing I'd like to know, Kid," I says. "Who?"
"That cheap, pan-handlin' crook that Dan Leduc wished on me!" he yells. "That rotten snake I kept from dyin' in the gutter, that baby-stealin' rat which claims he's a medium! Professor Bunko – that's who!"
I grabbed up the paper and all over the front page is a picture of Miss Vincent. Underneath it says this.
"Famous Film Star Rumored Engaged to Millionaire."
"Well," I says, "what has this here social note got to do with the Professor?"
"What has a jockey got to do with horse-racin'?" bellers the Kid. "Why the big hick, I'll go down there and strangle him right out loud before them high-brow simps of his! I'll have him pinched and I hope he gets life! I'll – "
He went on like that for half an hour, and when he finally cools off he explains that the professor had guaranteed to dust off his charmers and charm Miss Vincent so hard that she wouldn't even give a pleasant smile to nobody but the Kid. All Scanlan had to do was follow the professor's dope and they'd be nothin' to it but slippin' the minister and payin' the railroad people for the honeymoon. The Kid had gone ahead and done like the professor said, startin' off with the letter requestin' a lock of her hair clipped at eleven eighteen on a rainy Sunday night. Then he telegraphed her to bathe her thumbs in hot oolong tea every Friday at noon and send him the leaves in a red envelope. He followed that up with a note demandin' a ring that she had first dipped in the juice of a stewed poppy, and then held in back of her while she said, "Alagazza, gazzopi, gazzami" thirteen times.
I guess the professor overplayed the thing a bit, because the only action the Kid got was a short note from Miss Vincent in which she said that as long as he had started right in to drink the minute he hit New York, their friendship was all over. The next thing was that notice in the paper.
The Kid's idea was to go right down and wreck the Temple of the Inner Star, windin' up by havin' Honest Dan and his bunk medium pinched. I showed him where it would do no good, because he had set 'em up in business and if they was crooked the jury would figure that and put the Kid's name on one of them indictments. He calmed off finally and said he'd be satisfied to let it go at half killin' 'em both and makin' a bum out of the Temple of the Inner Star.
We got down there in a few minutes, and Honest Dan meets us at the door. He's all excited and says the time has come for the big hog killin', after which they're gonna blow New York, because they been tipped off that the new police commissioner is about to startle the natives with a raid. The Kid starts to bawl him out, when the big stout dame is ushered into the room and Dan hustles us into the professor's shrine in the rear.
As soon as she gets inside, the professor tells her to prepare for a shock. She shivers all over, grabbin' the side of the chair and takin' a long whiff out of a little green bottle. Then she says she'll try and be brave, and to let her have the works. The professor says he has finally dug up Marc Anthony, and all the spirits is in there tryin' for them, so's they can be brought together. He told her to go right back to her rooms at the Fitz-Charlton and he would send out the old thought waves for Marc. Just when he'd get him, he didn't know – it might be a day, a week or a month, but she was to sit there all dolled up to receive him and wait. He said she would know Marc, because he would have a snake tattooed on the third finger of his right hand in memory of the way Cleopatra kissed off. That's all he was allowed to give out just now, he winds up.
Well, the stout dame thanks him about six hundred times and waddles out darn near hysterical. She grabs hold of her daughter and hisses in her ear.
"Oh, Gladys, they've found him! My beloved Marc Anthony is coming to claim me for his own. Then we will return to Egypt, and, sitting upon a golden throne – "
Friend daughter pulls a weary smile and leads Cleopatra to the door.
"Oh, don't, mother!" she says. "Don't! If you only knew how all this sickens me! This man has hypnotized you! Why don't you listen to me and take that trip to California where – "
"What!" squeals the stout dame. "What? Be away when my Marc comes? How dare you think of such a thing! I did that once and if you have read your ancient history, you must remember the terrible result!"
Daughter sighs, shakes her head and they go out.
Now the Kid has been takin' all this stuff in without lettin' a peep out of him and when the stout dame has left, I figured he'd tear right in to the plotters, so I got ready to hold up my end and reached for a chair. But what d'ye think the Kid did? He falls down on a sofa and starts to laugh! On the level, I bet he snickered out loud for a good fifteen minutes and then he gets up and walks to the door without sayin' a single word to either Dan or the professor, after all that stuff he pulled on me at the hotel!
While we're goin' down in the elevator, Honest Dan tells us that they got a handsome actor who just now is playin' in a show called "Standin' on the Corners, Waitin' for a Job," and they're gonna have him get a snake painted on the third finger of his right hand and shoo him up to the stout dame the next day. After he has been welcome homed, Marc Anthony is gonna say that he's makin' out a check for the professor which throwed them together, and don't she think she ought to send in somethin' also? When she asks what he thinks would be about right, Marc Anthony is gonna say that he guesses she ought to keep the pen she wrote the check with as a souvenir, but that everything else she had, includin' anything a pawnbroker would give a ticket on, would do!
I didn't say nothin' to that, but I was doin' a piece of thinkin' and as soon as we got our feet on Fifth Avenue again, I let go. I told the Kid what I thought of his friend Honest Dan in language that Billy Sunday could have been proud of. When I got through with Dan, I took up the professor and give him a play. I said it was my belief that a couple of safety-first crooks, who would deliberate trim a simple old stout dame out of her dough in that coarse manner, should be taken up to the Metropolitan tower and eased off.
The Kid just grins and starts hummin' under his breath.
By this time I had worked myself up to such a pitch that my goat was chasin' madly about the streets, and to have the Kid act that way was about all I needed. I carefully explained to him just how many kinds of a big, yellah tramp he was, to let the professor crab him with Miss Vincent and get away with it clean. I showed him where he should have at least bent a chair over that guy's head, if he was a real gentleman whose honor had been trifled with and not a four flushin' false alarm.
"Gobs of generous Gazoopis!" he snickers at me when I get through. "Our employees is all new, noisy and Norwegians!"
They was a queer look in his eye, and I figured he must have slipped out in the mornin' at that and dug up a place where prohibition hadn't carried. I stopped right in the middle of the traffic and told him I was goin' up to the Fritz-Charlton the next mornin' and tip the stout dame off, if it was the last thing I did.
He just grins!
The next mornin' I beat it up to Cleopatra's hotel, and, after I have waited an hour, she sends a maid down to see me. The maid tells me to spread my hands out flat on a little table that's standin' there and she examines every finger like a sure enough mechanic looks over a second-hand automobile he's gonna buy to hack with. Finally, she throws my hands down with a disappointed look and her shoulders begins one of them hula dances.
"Viola!" she remarks. "That leetle snake, he is not there! Madame she is not at home – away wit' you!"
Well, I figures I did what I could, so I breezed out and left Cleopatra flat.
Failin' to locate the Kid anywheres, I went on down to the studio and walk right in on the professor and Honest Dan givin' Marc Anthony a dress rehearsal. He was a handsome guy, all right, sickenin'ly so, with one of them soft, mushy faces and wavin' blonde hair. He's had the snake tattooed on his finger, like the part called for, and the way he carries on about how he's gonna give the stout dame the work makes me foam at the mouth. My once favorably known left had all it could do to keep from bouncin' off his chin! Finally, they start him away and Honest Dan tells me how they got it framed up for him to meet Cleopatra. He was to go to the Fritz-Charlton and send up a card that claimed he was the editor of "Society Seethings," and when she comes down to see him, he was to ask her what was her plans for the winter season and a lot of bunk like that. In no way was he to make a crack about bein' Marc Anthony – that would be too raw, but as he was leavin' he was to carelessly let her see that snake on his finger. That was all!
They knowed Cleopatra would do the rest.
I couldn't stand no more, so I hustled back to our hotel, and the minute I get in, the clerk tells me the Kid has been chasin' around lookin' for me all morning so I beat it right up to our suite. The Kid is doin' his road work by canterin' around the room when I come in, and he rushes over and grabs me by the arm.
"When are them yeggmen gonna send Marc Anthony up to Cleopatra?" he demands, all excited.
"He just left a few minutes ago!" I tells him. "Why?"
The Kid gives a yell and jumps over to the door leadin' to our sittin'-room, yankin' it open with one jerk. I thought I'd pass away when I got a flash at what was inside. They was about twenty of the roughest lookin' guys I ever seen in my life, all dolled up in new suits, shoes and hats. Some of them I recognized as ex-heavy-weights, they was a few strikin' longshoremen, a fair sprinklin' of East Side gunmen and here and there what had passed for a actor in the tanks.
"Some layout, eh?" pipes the Kid, rubbin' his hands together. "It took me all mornin' and nearly three hundred bucks to rib them guys up, but they're all desperate, darin' and dolled up!"
"What the – what's the big idea?" I gasps.
"Hold up your hands!" roars the Kid at his rough and readys.
They did – and I got it!
Each and every one of them guys had a snake tattooed on the third finger of his right hand!
The Kid had probably put in the mornin' rehearsin' 'em, because all he had to say now was, "Go to it!" and they beat it. He told me they was all goin' up to the Fritz-Charlton and ask for the stout dame at three minute intervals, show their right hand and claim they was Marc Anthony!
"If that don't show the stout dame that the professor is the bunk and if she don't let out a moan that'll be plainly heard at police headquarters, I'll make Dan a present of the five thousand he took me for!" says the Kid.
In about a hour the telephone begins to ring and I answers it. When the ravin' maniac on the other end of the wire got to where he could control the English language, I found out it was no less than Honest Dan. The main thing he said was for us to come down to the Temple of the Inner Star right away, because him and the professor has got in a terrible jam. We hopped in a taxi and did like he said. Honest Dan is waitin' in the elevator for us, and he looked like the loser in a battle royal. He says the stout dame has just left, and she's in a terrible state. I could believe that easy, because they is nothin' more vicious in the land of the free than a enraged come-on. I'd rather face a nervous wildcat than face a angry boob!
"Somebody put the bee on us!" howls Honest Dan, wringin' his hands. "And a truckload of guys went up to the hotel claimin' they was Marc Anthony in voices that disturbed people in China. They throwed the real Marc out on his lily white ear, and seven of 'em got pinched for disorderly conduct. I understand they was a mêlée up there that would make a football game look like chess and the papers is havin' a field day with the thing! We got to grab Cleopatra's gems and go away from here before the whole plant is uncovered."
"Why," I says, "how are you gonna take the stout dame now? She knows it's a fake, don't she?"
"Fake, hell!" hollers Dan. "She thinks it's on the level! The only thing that bothers her is which one is the right Marc Anthony. She says two of them had such patrician faces that she thinks some of the Caesars has got mixed up with the lot. She's gonna put it up to her late husband, and she's comin' back here any minute to talk with his spirit!" He begins walkin' the floor. "I never seen no dame like that!" he busts out. "She wants to be trimmed! The only thing she seemed to be sore about was the fact that she couldn't pick out the right Marc Anthony. Now we git the chance of a lifetime to grab a roll when she comes back and we ain't got no ghost! If I could only get the guy that sent all them Marc Anthonys up there," he winds up with a yell, "I'd make a ghost out of him!"
He never seemed to think the Kid might have done it, because the Kid was the boy that had set him and the professor up in business and why should he crab his own play?
A little electric buzzer makes good while Honest Dan is ravin' away, and Dan, gettin' white, grabs the Kid by the arm and begs him to come to the rescue.
"Jump in that cabinet there!" he whispers to him. "And when this dame asks if you're Henry, say yes, and tell her the real Marc Anthony is the guy with the blonde hair, and he's now at the City Hospital. That's all you got to say and – "
He shoves the Kid back of the cabinet and me back of a curtain just as Cleopatra blows in with her daughter. Honest Dan tells them to be seated quick, because the professor has just got the spirit of her husband where he's ready to talk to the reporters. The West Indian hall boys sneak around in the back, rattlin' chains and bangin' on pans. Then Dan reaches back and opens the mechanical bellows, and a blast of cold air comes into the room while a white light flashes over the cabinet.
"Now!" whispers Dan to the stout dame, "speak quick!"
At that minute, Dan looked like a guy with a ticket on a hundred to one shot, watchin' it breeze into the stretch leadin' by by a city block.
"Is – is that you Henery?" squeaks Cleopatra in a tremblin' voice.
They's a rustle in the cabinet and then this comes out over the top.
"Generous gobs of Gazoopis! Our employees is ready, reckless and Russian. This guy is crooked, crazy and careless. He will take you for your beautiful, bulgin' bankroll and – "
"Why, Henery!" squawks the dame, jumpin' up off the chair.
I heard the well known dull thud on the other side of the cabinet, and I guess it was Professor Parducci fallin' senseless on the floor. I thought Honest Dan had dropped dead from the way he was hung over a sofa.
"Each and every day," goes on the voice in the cabinet, "each and every day we ship a million lovely loaves – "
"Merciful Heavens!" yells the dame. "A sign! Henery, shall I go back?"
"Back is right!" says the voice. "These guys is cheap crooks and they ain't no Marc Anthony!"
The lights go out and Honest Dan comes to, rushin' over to the stout dame with a million alibis tryin' to be first out of his mouth. I beat it around to the back, but the professor has gone somewheres else while the goin' was fair to medium.
"You have deceived me, you wretch!" screams the stout dame. "You have – "
That's as far as she got, because right in the middle of it she pulls a faint, and daughter eases her to the floor. The Kid hops out of the cabinet and grabs Honest Dan.
"Beat it, you rat," bawls Scanlan, "before I commit mayhem!"
From the way Honest Dan went out of that room, he must have passed Samoa, the first hour!
Daughter reaches up and grabs the Kid's hand.
"I – I – want to thank you," she says, "for saving my mother. I – I don't know what might have happened, if you hadn't been here!"
"That's all right!" pipes the Kid. "D'ye want us to do anything else?"
"Yes," she says. "Will you tell me where you heard that – that description of the – the million lovely loaves?"
"Sure," answers the Kid. "When we was comin' East, we stopped off at a hick burg somewheres and a guy took us over a bakery – "
Daughter claps her hands and laughs.
"Poetic justice!" she says. "That explains everything. My poor, dear father founded that bakery, and those were the last advertisements for it he wrote!"