The Steampunk Megapack

by Jay Lake

She smiled at him bewitchingly as she relieved him of the squalling infant, and Ikey looked the very picture of contentment. Why shouldn’t he? He had never for a single instant had cause to regret his marriage, and the pleased air of proprietorship with which he surveyed her would have made any woman proud; so she smiled at him again, and Ikey’s world was all rose-pink and beautiful.

  “I’ll take him in the park a while. Ikey,” she said; “perhaps the fresh air will send him off to sleep.”

  “Nothin’ else will,” said Ikey. “I’ve tried all the other stunts; sometimes the last shot sinks the ship, though; you go ahead and have a try. Say, but you’re the swell guy this afternoon! They’ll be thinkin’ your husband’s one o’ these society dudes! Go on; you cut along into the park afore I fall in love with you all over again!”

  So Mrs. Ikey, smiling sweetly at her lord and master, put the baby into a brand new hundred dollar perambulator and wheeled him off to Central Park, while Ikey stayed at home to cogitate.

  As a matter of fact, Ikey never did go about much in the afternoons; quite naturally he slept rather late, and ate his breakfast when other people were eating their luncheons; and after that he liked to sit about and read the paper. But this afternoon he was more than usually anxious to stay indoors and think.

  He had five thousand dollars in his coat-pocket, and he was undecided what to do with it. Added to what Mrs. Ikey had salted down already, it was still not quite enough money to retire on; doubled it would just do. And Ikey was by birth, and upbringing, and instinct, and inclination, first and last, a born gambler. Mrs. Ikey had weaned him of the habit at the time she married him; but the desire still remained; and here was a gorgeous opportunity for one big, final plunge without consulting Mrs. Ikey.

  If he lost the money she would know nothing about it, for he had said nothing to her yet about his haul of the night before; and if he doubled it, or trebled it—Gee! It was almost too good to think about. He was still undecided when Mrs. Ikey came back two hours later with the child.

  He noticed that his wife seemed to be singularly disturbed about something on her return, but he asked her no questions; Ikey had ideas of his own about the management of women, and having found them successful in practise, he acted up to them.

  It was a part of his fixed policy never to meet trouble half-way, and to wait until his wife chose to make a disturbance before attempting to find out the reason for it or to quell it. So he sat back in his arm-chair, and held his tongue, and waited. But he had not to wait for long.

  She put the infant to bed in another room, and in less than ten minutes’ time she was back again into the parlor to talk to him; and Ikey, irritated into a condition of extreme sensitiveness by his abstention from coffee and cigarettes, knew at once, even before she put her arms round his neck, that something big was coming.

  “Where were you last night, Ikey?” she asked him.

  “Business, as usual,” said Ikey, who hated talking “shop” when he saw no necessity for it.

  “I’ll tell you why I want to know. When I was going into the park just now, Ikey, I passed one of the prettiest, sweetest-looking girls I ever saw. She was sitting on one of the seats crying. I sat down on the seat beside her; I simply couldn’t go past her, Ikey, she looked so sad and miserable; and after a while I got into conversation with her. One couldn’t sit there and say nothing; it was simply heart-breaking; so I spoke to her after a while, and asked her if I couldn’t do anything for her, or help her in any way.”

  “And she touched you for a five-spot, I suppose?” said Ikey.

  “Oh, no! She wasn’t that kind at all. She said no, and got up and wanted to go away; she was evidently an awfully nice girl, and didn’t like talking to strangers. But I held her back, and after a minute or two I convinced her that I really wanted to hear her story and see whether I couldn’t help her. She said she was sure I couldn’t help her, but she told me the story.”

  “Some ‘con’ game, I’ll bet!” remarked Ikey in an undertone.

  “It seems she is engaged to be married. The man she is going to marry, or was going to—she can’t marry him now—lives in San Francisco, and he sent her five thousand dollars, all the money he had in the world, to keep for him until he came to New York.”

  “What a rummy!” murmured Ikey.

  “She put the money in a bureau drawer and went out to a dance; and while she was away somebody came into the room and forced the drawer open and took it. Was it you, Ikey?”

  Ikey said nothing.

  “Because if it was you, Ikey, I’d like you to give it back to her. She’s a nice girl—you’d never believe how nice until you’d seen her—and taking her money is the cruelest shame I ever heard of; I wouldn’t stand for it a minute; Ikey, I wouldn’t, really! Was it you, Ikey?”

  Ikey said nothing.

  “Of course, Ikey, if you had taken it I should quite understand that you did it not knowing the circumstances; you couldn’t possibly have known. And I’m ever so sure you wouldn’t do a mean thing like that with your eyes open, would you, Ikey? And now that you do know, and supposing you did take the money, you’ll give it back, won’t you, Ikey?”

  Ikey still said nothing, and she laid one hand on each of his shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. And Ikey hung his head. He still said nothing.

  “Now, Ikey, you know when we married we both of us promised we’d never tell each other any lies, whatever we might agree to tell other people—didn’t we? You’re not going back on that promise now, Ikey, are you? Was it you that took that five thousand dollars, Ikey?”

  “Yep,” groaned Ikey, “I took it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I got it here.”

  “Well, then, give it back.”

  “You bet your life I’ll give it back!” said Ikey, turning at last, as any worm will turn, and throwing her hands off his shoulders. Then he grasped her shoulders in turn and shook her almost savagely.

  “See here, my gal! I love you good and plenty, and we’ve got on good together. I’ve told you no lies, and you haven’t told me any, an’ that was part o’ the bargain. But there was another part to that bargain, and you seem to be forgettin’ it. How about your promisin’ not to chip in until I gave the word? Now didn’t you promise?”

  “Yes, Ikey,” she answered, “I promised. But this isn’t exactly chipping in. This is different. That girl has got to have her money back! I’d hate to think I was spending so much as a penny of it—it would make me wretched. Think how happy we’ve been, Ikey! You wouldn’t like to take away that girl’s chance of being happy too, would you, Ikey? She’s a good girl, and a nice girl; she never harmed anybody in her life. You couldn’t do it, Ikey! I know you couldn’t! You’re not mean enough!”

  Ikey swore. Never mind what he said; this is a moral story; it is sufficient to say that Ikey felt his determination slipping away from under him, and that he swore.

  “How d’you know it’s the right girl?” he asked. “How d’you know it ain’t one o’ these here wise molls pulling off a ‘con’ game? Did she give you her address by any chance?

  “Yes. I asked her for it. Her name’s Lizzie Wingfield, and she lives in that big apartment house four blocks away from here on the north side of the street—the Harlemia it’s called—and she rents a back bedroom in one of the flats on the second floor. Now, Ikey, does that tally? Wasn’t that the one?”

  Ikey nodded.

  “And you’ll give it back?”

  I’ll see!” said Ikey, getting up and reaching for his hat. “Lemme think it over; I’ll see!”

  “Very well, Ikey; think it over! But if you want me to go on loving you, think twice, Ikey, and let it be yes both times!”

  “Now isn’t that just like a woman?” mumbled Ikey as he started down the stairs.

  When Ikey reached the bottom of the stairs he paused for a moment in the hallway. He was thinking of that gambling notion of his again, and the thought of it was singularly sweet. Horses wer
e his pet fancy.

  He knew nothing about horses themselves, but he knew all about their form on paper, and there had been a time, not so very long ago, when Ikey was known personally to every book-maker on the turf.

  “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed suddenly, laying his long index-finger to the side of his extraordinary nose. “That’s a swell idea! A1. Couldn’t beat it! If I win I’ll do what the missus says, give the gal back her money, suit myself and the missus and everybody else, and be five or ten thousand in. And if I lose I’ll be no worse off, anyhow! It’s a bet! I’ll do it!”

  He walked about eight blocks to let the idea soak in, and on the way it occurred to him that there might be some difficulty about placing a big bet on the course unless he made arrangements for it.

  So he turned into a hotel where there were writing-tables provided in the foyer, and wrote the following letter:

  DEAR ABE:

  You’ve not seen me for quite a while, but I ain’t dead yet not by a darn sight. I’ve only been a bit broke, that’s all, and you know I always bet big, and never bet at all unless I’ve got the cash. I’m coming down to the course on Saturday next, and if you’re there I’m going to have a try for some of your money; I’m bringing down about five thousand of the real thing with me, and I’m going to make a real big splurge with it. I’ve got some inside dope about a certain horse that’ll act on your bank-roll like a Turkish bath; It’ll thin her out considerable. So bring along plenty of mazuma with you, and get ready to leave it behind you with a good grace, for I shall surely clean you out. Hoping this finds you as it leaves me, A1, believe me,

  Yours till the last bell rings,

  IKEY HOLE.

  He sealed the letter and addressed it to Mr. Abraham Maxstein, turf accountant, and he posted it with a grin that savored of pleasant recollections.

  That done, he strolled, home again leisurely, and told his wife that he would take an early opportunity of returning the money. When she pressed him for information as to the exact date on which he would do it, he answered “within a week,” and not another word could she get out of him.

  When she finally left off nagging him about it, he settled down in his shirt-sleeves to the careful study of a Turf Guide, and he got so much interest out of it that he had to he summoned twice to dinner for the first time in history.

  CHAPTER IV

  Enter the Hero! The Plot Gets Thicker Still

  Now we must see what Lizzie Wingfield is doing all this time. A young lady who has just lost five thousand dollars, to say nothing of her hopes of an early wedding, at one swift, sudden swoop cannot fail to be interesting, even if she is too unhappy to be amusing.

  As we have seen, a strange lady met her in the park and talked to her, and was very sympathetic, and found out her address; but that hadn’t helped her in the least so far as she could see; she was still hopeless, and from time to time she still wept.

  She had written to San Francisco—a long, tearful letter, in which she told Walter Bavin all about it—how the money had disappeared, and how she had informed the police, and how rude the police had been, and how she would never forgive herself even if he forgave her, which she had no right to expect he would do, and oh! reams and reams of that kind of thing; the extra postage on the letter had cost her thirty cents. And all she had to do then was sit down and wait for the answer.

  She could hardly be expected to be happy. Letters take several days to get to San Francisco, and answers take several other days to come back again; she figured it out closely, and saw no prospect whatever of getting an answer before Saturday, and waiting for it was just like sitting in an electric chair and waiting for the warden’s assistant to turn on the current.

  Why shouldn’t she weep? The suspense was partly broken on the Wednesday, for she received a telegram from Walter—Walter Bavin—that evening; but it was so short, and the contents of it were so unexpected and so altogether irrelevant that she extracted very little encouragement from it; in fact the only consolation she drew from it at all was the fact that he had apparently forgotten to cancel his engagement. It ran:

  Your letter received. Say nothing. Inform nobody. Await my letter.

  WALTER BAVIN.

  Now what the dickens could that mean? What sort of consolation could a poor girl drag out of that? She puzzled over it, and worried about it, and lay awake at night trying to read all sorts of possible and impossible meanings in between the two brief lines, until she became very nearly ill.

  But there was nothing else for it but to wait for the promised letter, and obey orders in the mean time by holding her tongue; and no woman, young or old, likes to do that.

  She would very likely have gone mad, and spoiled the story in that way, if she hadn’t been a school-teacher; but school-teachers are so used to putting up with diabolically ingenious torment at the hands of other people that the ordinary slings and arrows of outrageous fortune don’t break them down as they would ordinary people. She kept a sort of half-Nelson on her sanity, and wept and waited.

  Then came the letter. It was shorter than usual. There were two whole pages less of love-stuff; she knew that because she read them first. The beginning of the middle part amazed her, because Walter Bavin appeared to care much less about the loss of the five thousand dollars than he did about its loss becoming known.

  There were two whole pages of reiterated commands to her to hold her tongue, though he only used that coarse expression once; all the other times he expressed it quite courteously but firmly none the less.

  By the time that she had skimmed through the first seven pages of the letter she was almost ready to scream for she had been brought up to always know the reason why of things, and her every instinct tended in that direction, and here was a long-drawn-out pen-and-ink mystery that cut off her woman’s one prerogative of talking without a word of explanation. But she read on. And presently she did scream.

  Her whole world, or all that the vanished five thousand dollars had left of it, her faith in humanity, her hopes for the future, and, worst of all, her belief in her lover seemed to be sliding away from under her feet.

  The room rocked and swayed; the electric light above her head seemed to he going round and round and round; and the letter swam before her eyes until she couldn’t read it; and then big tears began to fall on it; and the storm broke. Never mind what she did then.

  It is neither decent nor amusing to intrude on the privacy of a young woman at the moment when the crisis of her life arrives, and she stands stripped suddenly of faith and hope and charity to face the world alone, This is part of what she read:

  Those fifty one-hundred-dollar bills were stolen from the trust company of which I am cashier, although they were not stolen from my department, and as yet the directors do not suspect me. They will, though, if you advertise the loss of them, and then it will be all up.

  So—he had lied to her! He had said they were his savings, and all the time he knew they were stolen money. He had—But let us draw the curtain, and leave her alone. We can’t help her, or at least not yet, and the agony of a fellow creature, especially of a lonely fellow creature, is not a pleasing spectacle.

  CHAPTER V

  In Which Ikey Makes a Killing, and Enjoys Himself

  Watch Ikey now. He is off to Aqueduct races in a chess-board suit of gray with a red stripe in it; he is wearing a purple tie fastened with his lucky topaz stick-pin, and a broad-brimmed derby hat with a low crown, and purple socks that just show over the edge of his shiny brown shoes.

  He doesn’t look a bit like the same Ikey. His furtive look is gone completely, and he strides along with quite a jaunty air, smoking a twenty-five-cent cigar with a big red and gold band round it. Cigars were not included in his oath of abstinence.

  He has eaten fish for breakfast, because he always has good luck on the days when he eats fish; and he has given half a dollar to a blind man, and has patted a spotty dog; and when he got out of bed he carefully put his left slipper on his right foo
t; and he has bought a new pack of cards at the nearest stationer’s and cut the ace of diamonds at the first try; in fact he has left no stone unturned and no deed undone that could help to make the day auspicious. And to crown it all, as he walked toward the railway station, he saw a skew-bald horse between the shafts of a grocer’s cart and two milk-white horses immediately afterward.

  “Gee!” said Ikey to himself. “This is my lucky day! I know it!”

  He wasn’t known as Keyhole Ikey on the race-course. Not a bit of it. There they all greeted him as “Old King Cole,” and were uncommonly glad to see him. As Old King Cole, and “Coley” for short, he had accumulated in days gone by a reputation as a “fall guy” and a “good spender” and a “sucker”—just the sort of man they like to see at a race meeting.

  Naturally it was the bookies who liked him the best, and they greeted him most effusively; but on this occasion Ikey had very little to say to any of them. He kept his own counsel, and worked his way gradually to where Abe Maxstein, a Hebrew gentleman of plethoric paunch and purple countenance, was bellowing out the odds on the first race.

  “Hullo!” shouted Abe. “Why, dash my Sam if here ain’t Old King Cole again! Lookin’ like a winner, too! How goes it, Coley?”

  “Fine!” answered Ikey. “How’s yourself? Get my letter?”

  “Sure thing. What’s your fancy in the first race?”

  “Nix!” said Ikey. “Ain’t bettin’ on the first race.”

  “Never! You standin’ out while there’s anythin’ on four legs runnin’. I don’t believe it! What’s come over you all of a sudden?”

  “Goin’ to have a plunge on the third,” answered Ikey, his face screwed up knowingly, and that remarkable nose of his twitching thirteen to the dozen; “a feller I know pretty well slipped me the dope.”

  “All right, Coley, name your gee! You can get all you want here. I’ll lay you the odds against any horse you like in the third race—here’s the list—now, then, what’s your fancy?”

  “Guess I’ll wait till the numbers go up,” answered Ikey.

  “No, you don’t! Come on now! I’ll lay you a fair price and give you a run for your money. If the horse don’t run you get your money back. Now then, which is it?”