by Sewell Ford
CHAPTER IX
LATE RETURNS ON POPOVER
"Well?" says I, keepin' my feet up on the desk and glancin' casual overthe brass rail. "What's your complaint, Spaghetti?"
It's a wrong guess, to begin with; but I wa'n't even takin' the troubleto place him accurate. He's some kind of a foreigner, and that'senough. Besides, from the fidgety way he's grippin' his hat in bothhands, and the hesitating sidlin' style he has of makin' his approach,I figured he must be a stray that had got the wrong number.
"If--if you please, Sir," says he, bowin' elaborate and humble, "Mr.Robert Ellins."
"Gwan!" says I. "You read that on the floor directory. You don't knowMr. Robert."
"But--but if you please, Sir," he goes on, "I wish to speak with him."
"You do, eh?" says I. "Now, ain't that cute of you? Think you canpick out any name on the board and drift in for a chat, do you? Comenow, what you peddlin'--dollar safety-razors, bullpups, or what?"
He ain't a real live wire, this heavy-faced, wide-shouldered,squatty-built party with the bumper crop of curly black hair. Heblinks his big, full eyes kind of solemn, starin' at me puzzled, andabout as intelligent as a cow gazin' over a fence. An odd lookin' ginkhe was, sort of a cross between a dressed up bartender on his day offand a longshoreman havin' his picture taken.
"Excuse," says he, rousin' a little, "but--but it is not to peddle. Iwould wish to speak with Mr. Robert Ellins."
"Well, then, you can't," says I, wavin' towards the door; "so beat it!"
This don't make any more impression than as if I'd tried to push himover with one finger. "I would wish," he begins again, "to speakwith----"
"Say, that's all on the record," says I, "and the motion's been denied."
"But I----" he starts in once more, "I have----"
Just then Piddie comes turkeyin' over pompous and demands to know whatall the debate is about.
"Look what wants to see Mr. Robert!" says I.
"Impossible!" says Piddie, takin' one look. "Send him away at once!"
"Hear that?" says I to Curlylocks. "Not a chance! Fade, Spaghetti,fade!"
The full force of that decision seems to penetrate his nut; for hegulps hard once or twice, the muscles on his thick throat swells uprigid, and next a big round tear leaks out of his off eye and tricklesdown over his cheek. Maybe it don't look some absurd too, seein' signsof such deep emotion on a face like that.
"Now, none of that, my man!" puts in Piddie, who's as chicken heartedas he is peevish. "Torchy, you--you attend to him."
"What'll I do," says I, "call in a plumber to stop the leak?"
"Find out who he is and what he wants," says he, "and then pack himoff. I am very busy."
"Well," says I, turnin' to the thick guy, "what's the name?"
"Me?" says he. "I--I am Zandra Popokoulis."
"Help!" says I. "Popo--here, write it on the pad." But even when he'sdone that I can't do more than make a wild stab at sayin' it. "Oh yes,thanks," I goes on. "Popover for short, eh? Think Mr. Robert wouldrecognise you by that?"
"Excuse, Sir," says he, "but at the club he would speak to me as Mike."
"Oh, at the club, eh?" says I. "Say, I'm beginnin' to get a glimmer.Been workin' at one of Mr. Robert's clubs, have you?"
"I am his waiter for long time, Sir," says Popover.
Course, the rest was simple. He'd quit two or three months ago to takea trip back home, havin' been promised by the head steward that hecould have his place again any time inside of a year. But imagine thebase perfidy! A second cousin of the meat chef has drifted inmeanwhile, been set to work at Popover's old tables, and the result isthat when Mike reports to claim his job he gets the cold, heartlesschuck.
"Why not rustle another, then?" says I.
You'd thought, though, to see the gloomy way he shakes his head, thatthis was the last chance he had left. I gather too that club jobs arefairly well paid, steadier than most kinds of work, and harder to pickup.
"Also," he adds, sort of shy, "there is Armina."
"Oh, always!" says I. "Bunch of millinery in the offing. It neverfails. You're her steady, eh?"
Popover smiles grateful and pours out details. Armina was a fine girl,likewise rich--oh, yes. Her father had a flower jobbin' business onWest 28th-st.--very grand. For Armina he had ideas. Any would-beson-in-law must be in business too. Yet there was a way. He wouldtake in a partner with two hundred and fifty dollars cash. And Mr.Popokoulis had saved up nearly that much when he'd got this fool notionof goin' back home into his head. Now here he was flat broke andcarryin' the banner. It was not only a case of goin' hungry, but oflosin' out on the fair Armina. Hence the eye moisture.
"Yes, yes," says I. "But the weeps won't help any. And, even if Mr.Robert would listen to all this sad tale, it's ten to one he wouldn'tbutt in at the club. I might get a chance to put it up to him, though.Suppose you drop in to-morrow sometime, and I'll let you know."
"But I would wish," says Popover, "to speak with----"
"Ah, ditch it!" I breaks in weary. "Say, you must have been takin'militant lessons from Maud Malone. Look here! If you're bound tostick around and take a long chance, camp there on the bench. Mr.Robert's busy inside, now; but if he should get through beforelunch--well, we'll see. But don't go bankin' on anything."
And it was a lovely sample of arrested mental anguish that I has beforeme for the next hour or so,--this Popokoulis gent, with his great,doughy face frozen into a blank stare, about as expressive as ahalf-baked squash pie, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall, and onlynow and then a spasm in his throat showin' that he was still thinkin'an occasional thought.
Course, Piddie discovers him after a while and demands pettish, "Thatperson still here! Who is he?"
"Club waiter with a mislaid job," says I.
"What!" says Piddie. "A waiter? Just a common waiter?"
I couldn't begin to put in all the deep disgust that Piddie expresses;for, along with his fondness for gettin' next to swell people, he seemsto have a horror of mixin' at all with the common herd. "Waiters!" hesniffs. "The scum of mankind. If they had a spark of courage, or agleam of self respect, or a teaspoonful of brains, they wouldn't bewaiters. Bah!"
"Also I expect," says I, "if they was all noble specimens of manhoodlike us, Sherry's and Rector's would have to be turned into automaticfood dispensaries, eh?"
"No fear!" says Piddie. "The lower classes will always produce enoughspineless beings to wear aprons and carry trays. Look at that onethere! I suppose he never has a thought or an ambition above----"
Bz-z-z-zt! goes the buzzer over my desk, and I'm off on the jump forMr. Robert's room. I wa'n't missin' any of his calls that mornin'; fora partic'lar friend of mine was in there--Skid Mallory. Remember Skid,the young college hick that I helped find his footin' when he first hitthe Corrugated? You know he married a Senator's daughter, and gotboosted into an assistant general manager's berth. And Skid's beenmaking good ever since. He'd just come back from a little trip abroad,sort of a delayed weddin' tour, and you can't guess what he'd pulledoff.
I'd only heard it sketched out so far, but it seems while him and youngMrs. Mallory was over there in Athens, or some such outlandish place,this late muss with the Turks was just breakin' loose. Skid he leavesWifey at the hotel one mornin' while he goes out for a little stroll;drifts down their Newspaper Row, where the red ink war extras are sothick the street looks like a raspberry patch; follows the drum musicup as far as City Hall, where the recruits are bein' reviewed by theKing; listens to the Greek substitute for "Buh-ruh-ruh! Soak 'em!" andthe next thing he knows he's wavin' his lid and yellin' with the bestof 'em.
It must have stirred up some of that old football fightin' blood ofhis; for he'd organized a regular cheerin' section, right thereopposite to the royal stand, and was whoopin' things up like it wasfourth down and two to go on the five-yard line, when all of a suddenover pikes a Colonel or something from the King's staff and beginspoundin' S
kid on the back gleeful.
It's a young Greek that used to be in his engineerin' class, back inthe dear old college days. He says Skid's just the man he wants tocome help him patch up the railroad that the Turks have been puttin' onthe blink as they dropped back towards headquarters. Would he? Why,him bein' railroad construction expert of the Corrugated, this wasright in his line! Sure he would!
And when Mrs. Mallory sees him again at lunchtime he's all costumed asa Major in the Greek army, and is about to start for the scene ofatrocities. That's Skid, all over. He wasn't breathin' out any idlegusts, either. He not only rebuilds their bloomin' old line better'nnew, so they can rush soldiers and supplies to the front; but after themuss is all over he springs his order book on the gover'ment and landssuch a whackin' big contract for steel rails and girders that OldHickory decides to work day and night shifts in two more rollin' mills.
Course, since it was Mr. Robert who helped me root for Skid in thefirst place, he's tickled to death, and he tells me confidential howthey're goin' to get the directors together at a big banquet thatevenin' and have a reg'lar lovefeast, with Skid at the head of thetable.
Just now I finds Mr. Robert pumpin' him for some of the details of hisexperience over there, and after I lugs in an atlas they sent me outfor, so Skid can point out something on the map, I just naturally hangsaround with my ear stretched.
"Ah, that's the place," says Skid, puttin' his finger on a dot,"Mustapha! Well, it was about six miles east from there that we hadour worst job. Talk about messes! Those Turks may not know how tobuild a decent railroad, but believe me they're stars at wrecking aline thoroughly! At Mustapha they'd ripped up the rails, burned theties, and blown great holes in the roadbed with dynamite. But I soonhad a dozen grading gangs at work on that stretch, and new bridgesstarted, and then I pushed on alone to see what was next.
"That was when I got nearest to the big noise. Off across the hillsthe Turks were pounding away with their heavy guns, and I was anxiousfor a look. I kept going and going; but couldn't find any of ourpeople. Night was shutting in too, and the first thing I knew I wasn'tanywhere in particular, with nothing in sight but an old sheep pen. Itried bunking there; but it wasn't restful, and before daylight I wentwandering on again. I wanted to locate our advance and get a cup ofcoffee.
"I must have gone a couple of miles farther, and it was getting light,when a most infernal racket broke loose not one hundred yards ahead.Really, you know, I thought I'd blundered into the midst of a battle.Then in a minute the noise let up, and the smoke blew away, and there,squatting behind a machine gun up on the side of a hill, was one loneGreek soldier. Not another soul in sight, mind you; just this absurd,dirty, smoke-stained person, calmly feeding another belt of cartridgesinto his gun!
"'Hello!' says I. 'What the deuce are you doing here?'--'Holding thehill, Sir,' says he, in good United States. 'Not all alone?' says I.He shrugs his shoulders at that. 'The others were killed or hurt,'says he. 'The Red Cross people took them all away lastnight,--Lieutenant, Sergeant, everyone. But our battery must keep thehill.' 'Where's the rest of the advance, though?' says I. 'I don'tknow,' says he. 'And you mean to say,' says I, 'you've been here allnight with the Turkish artillery hammering away at you?' 'They are badshots, those Turks, very bad,' says he. 'Also they send infantry todrive me away, many times. See! There come some more. Down there!Ah-r-r-r! You will, will you?' And with that he turns loose his bigpepperbox on a squad that had just started to dash out of a ravine andrush him. They were coming our way on the jump. Scared? Say, ifthere'd been anything to have crawled into, I'd have been in it! Asthere wasn't, I just flattened myself on the ground and waited until itwas all over.
"Oh, he crumpled 'em up, all right! He hadn't ground out one belt ofcartridges before he had 'em on the run. But I want to tell you Ididn't linger around to see how the next affair would turn out. Ilegged it back where I'd come from, and by nine o'clock I was behindour own lines, trying to find out what sort of campaign this was thatleft one machine gun to stave off the whole Turkish army. Of course noone knew anything very definite. The best guess was that our advancehad been swung off for a flank movement, and that this particularone-man battery had been overlooked. I don't even know whether he waspicked up again, or whether the Turks finally got him; but let me tellyou, talk as much about your gallant Bulgarians as you like, some ofthose little Greeks were good fighters too. Anyway, I'll take off myhat any day to that one on the hill."
"Gee!" I breaks out. "Some scrapper, what?"
At which Mr. Robert swings around and gives me a look. "Ah!" says he."I hadn't realized, Torchy, that we still had the pleasure of yourcompany."
"Don't mention it," says I. "I was just goin' to--er--by the way, Mr.Robert, there's a poor scrub waitin' outside for a word with you, anold club waiter. Says you knew him as Mike."
"Mike?" says he, looking blank.
"His real name sounds like Popover," says I. "It's a case ofretrievin' a lost job."
"Oh, very well," says Mr. Robert. "Perhaps I'll see him later. Notnow. And close the door after you, please."
So I'm shunted back to the front office, so excited over that war storythat I has to hunt up Piddie and pass it on to him. It gets him too.Anything in the hero line always does, and this noble young Greek doin'the come-one-come-all act was a picture that even a two-by-fourimagination like Piddie's couldn't fail to grasp.
"By Jove, though!" says he. "The spirit of old Thermopylae all overagain! I wish I could have seen that!"
"As close as Skid did?" says I. "Ah, you'd have turned so green they'dtaken you for a pickled string bean."
"Oh, I don't pretend to be a daredevil," admits Piddie, with a suddenrush of modesty. "Still, it is a pity Mr. Mallory did not stay longenough to find out the name of this unknown hero, and give it to theworld."
"The moral of which is," says I, "that all heroes ought to carry theirown press agents with 'em."
We'd threshed it all out, Piddie and me, and I'd gone back to my desksome reluctant, for this jobless waiter was still sheddin' his gloomaround the reception room, and I was just thinkin' how it would be toput a screen in front of him, when Mr. Robert and Skid comes out arm inarm, swappin' josh about that banquet that was to be pulled off.
"Of course you'll come." Mr. Robert is insistin'. "Only a fewdirectors, you know. No, no set speeches, or anything like that. Butthey'll want to hear how you came to get that big order, and about someof the interesting things you saw over there, just as you've told me."
I had hopped up and was holdin' the gate wide open, givin' Skid all thehonors, and Mr. Robert was escortin' him out to the elevator, when Inotices that this Popover party has got his eye on the boss and isstandin' right where he's blockin' the way.
"Hey, Poppy!" says I in a stage whisper. "Back out! Reverse yourself!Take a sneak!" But of all the muleheads! There he stands, grippin'his hat, and thinkin' only of that lost job.
"All right," Skid is saying; "but remember now, no floral tributes, orgushy introductions, or sitting in the spotlight for me atthis--er--er---- Well, as I'm a living mortal!" He gets this last outafter a gasp or two, and then stops stock still, starin' straight infront of him.
"What is it?" says Mr. Robert. "What's up?" And we sees that SkidMallory has his eyes glued to this waiter shrimp.
"In the name of all that's good," says he, "where did you come from?"
You can't jar Popover, though, by any little thing like that. When hegets an idea in his dome it's a fixture there. "I would wish tospeak," says he, "with Mr. Ellins."
"Yes, yes, another time," says Mr. Robert hasty.
"But see here!" says Skid, still gazin' steady. "Don't you rememberme? Take a good look now."
Popover gives him a glance and shakes his head. "Maybe I serve you atthe club, Sir," says he.
"Club be blowed!" says Skid. "The last time I saw you you were servinga machine gun, six miles east of Mustapha. Isn't that so?"
"I knew it!" exclaims Skid. "I'd have bet a thousand--same curly hair,same shoulders, same eyes. Ellins, here's that lone hero I was tellingyou about. Here!"
"But--hut that's only Mike," says Mr. Robert, gazin' from one to theother. "Used to be a waiter at the club, you know."
"I don't care what he used to be," says Skid, "or what he is now, Iwant to shake hands with him."
Popover he pinks up and acts foolish about swappin' grips; but Skidinsists.
"So you beat 'em out in the end, did you?" Skid goes on. "Justnaturally put it all over that whole bunch of Turks, didn't you? Buthow did it happen?"
"I don't know," says Popover, fingerin' his hat nervous. "I am verybusy all the time, and--and I have nothing to eat all night. You see,all other Greek soldiers was hurt; and me, I must stay to keep theTurks from the hill. Very busy time, Sir. And I am not much forfight, anyway."
"Great Scott!" says Skid. "He says he's not much for--but see here,how did it end?"
Popover gives a shoulder shrug. "Once more they run at me after yougo," says he, "and then come our brave Greek General with big army andchase Turks away. And the Captain say why am I such big fool as tostay behind. That is all I know. Three weeks ago I am discharged frombeing soldier. Now I come back here, and I have no more my good job.I am much sorry."
"Think of that!" breaks out Skid. "Talk about the ingratitude ofRepublics! Why, England would have given him the Victoria Cross forthat! But can't something or other be done about this job of his?"
"Why, certainly," says Mr. Robert. "Here, let's go back into myoffice."
"Hey, Popover," says I, steerin' him respectful through the gate."Don't forget to tell them about Armina too."
And as the three of 'em streams in, with the waiter in the middle, Iturns to find Piddie gazin' at the sight button-eyed.
"Wa'n't you sayin' how much you'd like to see the lone hero of thehill?" says I. "Well, take a good look. That's him, the squatty one.Uh-huh. Mike, alias Popover, who quit bein' a waiter to fight for hiscountry, and after he'd licked all the Turks in sight comes pikin' backhere to hunt around for his tray again. Say, all of 'em ain't suchscum, are they?"
It was a great old banquet too; for Skid insists that if they must havea conquerin' hero to drink to Mr. Popokoulis is the only real thing insight. Mike wouldn't stand for a seat at the table, though; so theycompromised by havin' him act as head waiter. Skid tells the storyjust the same, and makes him stand out where they can all see him.There was some cheerin' done too. Mr. Robert was tellin' me about itonly this mornin'.
"And you've got him his old place at the club, eh?" says I.
"No," says he. "I've arranged to buy out a half interest in aflorist's shop for Mr. Popokoulis."
"Oh!" says I. "Backin' him for the Armina handicap, eh? It ought tobe a cinch. Some chap, that Popover, even if he was a waiter, eh?It's tough on Piddie, though. This thing has tied all his ideas indouble bow-knots."