The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (free ereaders txt) 📗

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"Not for publication," warned Fetner.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[Pg 1224] 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[Pg 1225] 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[Pg 1226] 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[Pg 1227] 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."[Pg 1228]

"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."

"It is sort of funny. I'd saved a good deal—I'm the saving sort—and the tenner you gave me that night—you remember, the night of the dinner—happened to fetch my pile up to exactly five hundred. So I says to myself that here was my chance to make a break for freedom—independence, you understand."

"We're the very deuce for independence down our way."

"Yes, indeed, sir. I was awfully sorry to hear about the trouble you got in at college; but, if you don't mind my saying so now, you boys were going it a little that night."

"Going it? What night? There were several."

"The red-fire night. You tipped me ten for that dinner."

"Did I? I hope you have it yet, Mr.—"

"James Wilkins, sir. Did you see Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Culver as you passed through San Francisco?"

"I did. How did you happen to know that I knew them?"

"I remember that they were chums of yours at college. We heard lots of college gossip at St. Dunstan's. I called on them in San Francisco, and Mr. Thorpe got me half-fare rates here. I've opened a restaurant here, and am doing a good business. Some of the officers who knew me at the St. Dunstan kind of made my place fashionable. Lieutenant Sommers, of the cavalry, won't dine anywhere else."[Pg 1229]

"Sommers? I expected to find him here."

"He's just gone out with an expedition. He told me that you'd be along, and that I was to see that you didn't starve. I've named my place the St. Dunstan, and I'd like you to call there—I remember your favorite dishes."

"That's very decent of you."

Mr. Wilkins looked frequently toward the entrance, with seeming anxiety. "I wish the proprietor of this place would come in," he said at last. "Lieutenant Sommers left me a check on this house for a hundred—Mr. Sommers roomed here, and left his money with the office. I need the cash to pay a carpenter who has built an addition for me. Kind of funny to be worth not a cent less than five thousand gold, in stock and good will, and be pushed for a hundred cash."

"If you've Mr. Sommers' check, I'll let you have the money—for St. Dunstan's sake."

"If you could? Of course, you know the lieutenant's signature?"

"As well as my own. Quite right. Here you are. Where is your restaurant?"

"You cross the Lunette, turn toward the bay—ask anybody. Hope to see you soon. Good day."

Some officers called on Carrington, as they had been told to do by the absent Sommers. When introductions were over, one of them handed a paper to Carrington, saying gravely: "Sommers told me to give this to you. It was published in San Francisco the day after you left, and reached here while you were in Japan."

What Carrington saw was a San Francisco newspaper story of his encounter with the Palace Hotel detective, an account of his famous dinner at the St. Dunstan, some selections of his other college pranks, allusion to the fact that he was a classmate of two San Franciscans, Messrs.[Pg 1230] Thorpe and Culver, the whole illustrated with pictures of Carrington and Presidio—the latter taken from the rogues' gallery. "Very pretty, very pretty, indeed," murmured Carrington, his eyes lingering with thoughtful pause on the picture of Presidio. "Could we not celebrate my fame in some place of refreshment—the St. Dunstan, for instance?"

They knew of no St. Dunstan's.

"I foreboded it," sighed Carrington. He narrated his recent experience with one James Wilkins, "who, I now opine, is Mr. Presidio. It's not worth troubling the police about, but I'd give a pretty penny to see Mr. Presidio again. Not to reprove him for the error of his ways, but to discover the resemblance which has led to this winsome newspaper story."

The next day one of the officers told Carrington that he had learned that Presidio and his wife, known to the police by a number of names, had taken ship the afternoon before.

"I see," remarked Carrington. "He needed exactly my tip to move to new fields. He worked me from the article in the paper, which he had seen and I had not. Clever Presidio!"

When Tommy, the hall-boy, on the night of Mr. Holt's first Tenderloin assignment, went to inform the police, Carrington, looking about the apartment to discover the extent of his loss, found on a table a letter superinscribed, "Before sending for the police, read this." He read:

"Dear Mr. Carrington: Since we met in Manila I have been to about every country on top of the earth where a white man's show could be worked. It's been up and down, and down and up, the last turn being down. In India I got some sleight-of-hand tricks which are new to[Pg 1231] this country; but here we land, wife and me, broke. Nothing but our apparatus, which we can't eat; and not able to use it, because we are shy on dress clothes demanded by the houses where I could get engagements. In that condition