The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories

by George Barr McCutcheon

  “Yes, sir. Martin’s livery, sir. I’ll attend to everything, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  He stood there in the blinding snow, watching his fare struggle to the sidewalk. Then he decided to follow along behind him until the “young gent” was safely within the doors of No. 511. He had driven Mr. Van Pycke before and he knew that it was not a dollar bill.

  Bosworth reached the steps leading up to the rather imposing doorway at No. 511. There was a heavy, stubborn iron gate at the foot, which he had some difficulty in opening because of the snow. While he was working with it, a man came plump up against him. Together they seized upon the gate and yanked with all their might and main.

  “Thanks,” said Buzzy, when it was open.

  “Don’t thank me,” snapped the other. “I’m going in myself.”

  They mounted the six or eight steps to the storm doors, side by side, enveloped in the snow that scuttled around the corner of the big Lackaday hotel next door. With a great stamping of boots they floundered into the shelter of the outer vestibule.

  The light in the hall beyond shone through the glass doors, illuminating the box-like coop in which they paused, each selfishly to occupy himself in catching his breath and at the same time shake the snow from his person. In the act of knocking the snow from the tops of their silk hats they glanced up simultaneously, each having arrived at the moment when it was convenient for him to inquire into the identity of his fellow visitor.

  They stared hard for a moment.

  “Hello, dad! Are you lost?”

  Mr. Van Pycke muttered something into the collar of his coat. Fortunately the wind outside was making such a noise that his son did not hear the remark.

  “Is that you, Bosworth?” he demanded querulously, almost on the instant.

  “Yes, sir,—your long lost son. I—I thought I let you out at Purdwell’s?” Bosworth seemed a bit hazy.

  Mr. Van Pycke cleared his throat. “I didn’t find any one at home.” It did not occur to him to ask why Bosworth was there. “So I came up here, unexpectedly, mind you. I thought perhaps the weather being so dreadful, I’d be sure to find Mrs. Scoville at home. No one would think of going out on a night like this.”

  “Do you suppose the Purdwells went out without thinking?” asked Bosworth, innocently.

  “Ring the bell,” said Mr. Van Pycke, very sharply.

  His son found the button with some difficulty, and gave it a violent and unintentionally prolonged push. In silence they awaited the response of the footman.

  “Is your mistress at home, Bellows?” asked Mr. Van Pycke, as the door was opened part way to allow the indignant inspection of one who had certainly expected beggars.

  Bellows, smileless and resourceful individual, seemed a bit uncertain, not to say upset. He glanced over his shoulder in a very far from imperious manner, apparently expecting the answer to come from the softly lighted hallway behind him.

  “I’ll see, Mr. Van Pycke. Will you step inside?”

  “Get a broom, Bellows, and brush off some of this snow.”

  “Yes, sir.” The footman appeared a moment later with a whisk broom. “It’s a very nawsty night, sir,” he informed them jointly as he began scattering the snow in all directions. From tip to toe he whisked the shivering Mr. Van Pycke, and then turned upon his silent companion. The elder slipped into the warm hall, feeling his nose in considerable agitation.

  “Bellows, come in here and take my coat. By Gad, I wonder if I am likely to catch pneumonia.”

  “In a moment, sir.”

  “You—you think it likely, Bellows? That suddenly?”

  Bosworth stepped inside, and Bellows gently closed the door before turning to the distressed Mr. Van Pycke, senior.

  “Bellows, is my nose frozen?” demanded that gentleman, in tones faint with dread.

  “No, sir. It looks to me to be quite warm, sir.”

  “Is your mistress engaged, Bellows?” inserted Bosworth, quietly. “If she is, I’ll not trouble you to help me off with my coat.”

  “I—I think she is, sir. I’ll see, however.”

  “Very odd,” said Mr. Van Pycke, senior, as the man disappeared down the hall.

  “I think there’s a dinner going on,” said Bosworth, beginning to button up his coat.

  “No one would go to a dinner on such a night as this,” rasped Mr. Van Pycke, who knew all of the eleventh-hour habits of society. He took up his position over a simmering floor register. “I’m wet to my knees. My feet are like ice. I wish that demmed servant would hurry back here and get me a hot drink of some sort. Ring the bell there, Bosworth. I’m—I’m quite sure I feel something stuffy in my chest. Good God, if it should be pneumonia!” His legs trembled violently.

  Bosworth did not ring the bell. He was staring thoughtfully at the floor, and paid no attention to his father’s maunderings. The humor of the situation was beginning to sift through his slowly clearing brain.

  Bellows returned.

  “Mrs. Scoville is at home, and begs the Misters Van Pycke to bear with her for a few minutes. She is at dinner with a few guests. In the drawing-room there are other guests. You will please to make yourselves at home until she leaves the table. The gentlemen are to smoke in the drawing-room tonight.”

  “A crowd?” muttered Bosworth. Then his eyes lighted up with sudden relief. “Thank the Lord, I won’t have to do it.”

  “Do what?” demanded his father.

  Bosworth’s wits were keener. “Go out into the storm without something to warm me up,” he equivocated.

  “Bellows, who is in the drawing-room?” asked Mr. Van Pycke, eying the door with some curiosity. “They’re deuced quiet, whoever they are.”

  Bellows grew very red in the face and resolutely pressed his lips together. He took Mr. Bosworth’s overcoat and hat and laid them carefully on the Italian hall seat before venturing to reply.

  “You can’t hear them for the wind, sir,” he said.

  “Bellows, I’m catching my death,” shivered Mr. Van Pycke. “I feel it coming. Get me something to drink. My God, look at my shoes! They’re sopping wet. Bosworth, don’t stand there like a clothing store model! I must have dry shoes and stockings. I can’t—”

  “A clothing store model?” murmured the footman, strangely perturbed.

  “I can’t run the chance of pneumonia at my age,” went on Mr. Van Pycke. “Bellows, do you suppose there’s a dry pair of trousers in the house? I’m wet to the knees. I must have shoes. Demmit, Bosworth, do something!”

  “My dear father, don’t look at me. I’m using my trousers. I dare say Bellows has an extra suit of livery.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind wearing brown trousers with a yellow stripe down the leg, sir,” began Bellows.

  “Anything,” interrupted Mr. Van Pycke, irritably. “But I must also have shoes.”

  Bellows was thoughtful. “I think, sir, that there is an old pair of riding boots under the stairs, sir. They belonged to poor Mr. Scoville, sir.”

  “I don’t like the idea of wearing other men’s shoes—” objected Mr. Van Pycke, with an apprehensive glance at his son.

  “I don’t think it would matter, sir,” said Bellows, affably. “Mr. Scoville hasn’t worn them in two years and a half.”

  Mr. Van Pycke’s look of horror caused Bellows to realize.

  “I beg pardon, sir. It would be rather grewsome getting into dead men’s boots, sir. I never thought—”

  “That’s undoubtedly what Mr. Van Pycke is contemplating, Bellows,” said Bosworth, slyly.

  “Sir!” snapped Mr. Van Pycke.

  Bellows’ face lighted with the joy of a great discovery. “I have it, sir. If you will wait out here just a few moments, sir, I can have trousers, shoes, and stockings. Have you a notion, sir, as to the size?” He stood back and looked Mr. Van Pycke over carefully. “I think I can fix it, sir.”

  He departed hastily, closing the drawing-room door behind him. Bosworth sat down upon a frail Italian chair and watched his father un
button his shoes while standing on one foot, propped against the wall.

  “Dad, he’s going to sandbag one of the guests and take off his clothes,” the young man said, smiling broadly. His eyes were quite steady now, and merry.

  “Why are you here, sir?” demanded his father, irrelevantly, suddenly remembering that Bosworth had not mentioned his intention to stop at Mrs. Scoville’s.

  The young man was spared the expediency of a reply by the return of Bellows, with a pair of trousers over his arm, shoes and stockings in his hand. He seemed in some haste to close the drawing-room door behind him.

  “You can change in the room at the head of the stairs, sir.”

  Mr. Van Pycke, in his stocking feet, preceded the footman up the stairs, treading very tenderly, as if in mortal fear of tacks.

  Buzzy twirled his thumbs impatiently. He yawned time and again, and more than once cast his glance in the direction of his coat and hat. Never before, in any house, had he been required to sit in a reception hall until the hostess was ready to receive him elsewhere. He could not understand it. Above all places, Mrs. Scoville’s, where the freedom of the house was usually extended to all who in friendship came.

  From behind closed doors—distant closed doors, by the way—came the sound of laughter and joyous conversation, faintly audible to the young man in the hall.

  “I feel like an ass,” said young Mr. Van Pycke, probably to the newel post, there being nothing else quite so human in sight. Then he leaned back with a comfortable smile. “I’ve virtually tried the three eligibles tonight,” he mused. “It’s a satisfaction to feel that they haven’t dismissed me in so many words, and it’s a relief to feel that they haven’t had the actual opportunity to accept me. I’ve done my best. The blizzard disposes. I’ll see Krosson tomorrow about a place in his offices.”

  Mr. Van Pycke came down stairs even more tenderly than he went up. There was a look of pain in his face, and he walked slack-kneed, with his toes turned in a trifle. He was wearing a pair of trousers that had been constructed for a much larger man, except as to height.

  “The shoes are too small and the trousers too big,” he groaned. “I’m leaving my own up there to be dried out. Bellows says they’ll be dry in half an hour. I had to put these on for a while. One can’t go around with—er—nothing on, so to speak.”

  “I’m trying to think who’s in there that wears trousers of that size—and shape,” murmured Bosworth, surveying his father critically.

  “Bah!” rasped the uncomfortable Mr. Van Pycke. “Announce us, Bellows.”

  Bellows opened the drawing-room door, took a quick peep within, and then, standing aside, announced in his most impressive tones:

  “Mr. Van Pycke! Mr. Bosworth Van Pycke!”

  The two gentlemen stepped into the long, dimly lighted room. Bellows disappeared quickly down the hall. Mr. Van Pycke, his sense of dignity increased by the desire to offset the only too apparent lack of it, advanced into the middle of the room, politely smiling for the benefit of a group of ladies and gentlemen congregated at the lower end, near the windows. So far as he could see, they were engaged in the vulgar occupation known as staring.

  Bosworth Van Pycke stopped just inside the door, clapping his hand to his forehead. His mouth fell open and his eyes popped wide with amazement—almost horror. He sat down suddenly in the nearest chair and continued to gaze blankly at the figures down the room. He heard his father say “Good evening” twice, but he heard no response from the group. His abrupt, incontrollable guffaw of understanding and joy caused his now annoyed parent to whirl upon him in surprise.

  “Oh, this is rich!” Bosworth was holding his sides, laughing immoderately.

  “Bosworth!” hissed his father, with a conscious glance at his feet and legs. “What the devil amuses you?”

  For answer his son strode over and clutched him by the arm, turning him around so that he faced the silent, immovable group.

  “See that man back there without trousers? The bare-legged, bare-footed chap? Well, dad, you’ve got on his pants.”

  “Good God!” gasped Mr. Van Pycke, nervously hunting for the bridge of his nose with his glasses. “Is the poor fellow naked?”

  “Half naked, dad, that’s all. Look closely!”

  “Sh! Demmit all, boy, he’d knock me down! And the ladies! What the devil does he mean, undressing in this bare-faced—”

  “Bare-legged, dad.” With a fresh laugh he leaned forward and chucked the nearest lady under the chin. As she was standing directly in front of Van Pycke, senior, that gentleman, in some haste, moved back to avoid the retort physical.

  “Bosworth! How—how dare you?” he gasped.

  “Can’t you see, dad? This is the richest thing I’ve ever known. Don’t be afraid of ’em. They’re wax figures, every one of them!”

  Mr. Van Pycke started. Then he stared.

  “Well, upon my soul!” he gasped. He repeated this remark four or five times during a hasty parade in front of the group, in each instance peering rudely and with growing temerity into the pink and white face of a surpassingly beautiful lady.

  “It seems to me that I recognize this one,” he said, with a cackle of joy. “I’ve seen her in Altman’s window. ‘Pon my soul I have, Bosworth.”

  “I don’t know what Laura’s game is, but, by Jove, it’s ripping, I’ll say that for it,” said Bosworth, his face beaming. “How many of them are there?” He counted. “Fourteen. Seven spiketails and seven directoires. Great!”

  The two gentlemen withdrew to the upper end of the room, to better the effect. From the dining-room, four rooms away, came the more distinct sounds of laughter and conversation.

  “There is a real party out there,” said Bosworth, rubbing his chin contemplatively. “I wonder what’s up?”

  Mr. Van Pycke sat down and twirled his thin mustache, first one side and then the other, murmuring “By Jove!” over and over again in a most perplexed way. Bosworth stood, with his chin between finger and thumb, thoughtfully viewing the inanimate group. For several minutes his face indicated the most penetrating contemplation of the exhibit down the room. He was still a trifle dizzy, but in no danger of losing his attitude of sober reflection.

  There were blond ladies and brunettes, old ladies and young ones, and some who were neither; all beautifully, elaborately gowned in the latest models from Paris. Their starry glass eyes gazed into space with the same innocuous stare that baffles all attempts to divert it through plate-glass windows. Some were sitting, some were standing. Gentlemen in evening clothes, with monocles or opera hats—mostly plebeian persons, from Eighth Avenue, you’d say—stood vaguely but stanchly in juxtaposition to ladies who paid no heed to them, but who, however, were not unique in their abstraction. Fuzzy-mustached gentlemen were they, with pink cheeks and iron-clad shoulders. They stared intently but not attentively at the chandeliers or the wall-paper, unwinking gallants who seemed only conscious of their clothes.

  The effect was startling, even grewsome. For five minutes Bosworth surveyed the waxy, over-dressed group in profound silence, cudgeling his brain for a key to the puzzling exhibition.

  “For the life of me,” he said at last, “I can’t understand it.”

  “I understand it perfectly,” said his father, still somewhat dismayed by the steady gaze of the last pair of blue eyes he had encountered. “Mrs. Scoville is ordering some new gowns, and the—er—modistes have sent up samples. Perfectly clear to me.”

  “I suppose she’s ordering a few suits of men’s garments—garments is what they say in the clothing stores—to lend variety to her wardrobe,” said Bosworth, dryly.

  Mr. Van Pycke coughed indulgently. “Bosworth, you shouldn’t take so many cocktails before—”

  “Yes, father,” interrupted Bosworth, humbly. “I quite agree with you. For a while I thought it might be the cocktails, but now that you see them, too, I am very much relieved.”

  “I am very sorry to see a son of mine—”

  “Hello!”
said Bosworth, his gaze suddenly encountering a table near the fireplace on which were piled a number of small boxes. One could see at a glance that they were jeweller’s boxes. “Looks like Christmas.”

  He got up and strode over to the table.

  “Christmas is a week off,” said Mr. Van Pycke. “What’s up? Some one coming down the chimney? It wouldn’t surprise me, by Jove!”

  His son was gazing, as if thunderstruck, at the contents of more than a dozen boxes of various sizes. He whistled softly, to best express his wonder.

  “Great Scott!” he said, after a moment. “There’s half a million dollars’ worth of dog-collars, pendants, tiaras, rings, and—” He was holding up, for his father’s benefit, a rope of pearls that could not have cost less than a hundred thousand dollars. “Take a look at this, dad!”

  Mr. Van Pycke made his way painfully to his son’s side. “Astounding!” he murmured, touching a tiara with respectful fingers.

  “Say!”

  The two Van Pyckes jumped. The voice that uttered the raucous monosyllable was masculine, and it seemed to burst from a spot not far removed from their elbows. Bewildered, they stared this way and that in quest of the rude owner of that voice.

  “Keep your hands off o’ them jewels,” said the voice, levelly.

  Bosworth’s indignant gaze discovered the man in the very centre of the group of “dummies.” The young man experienced a queer shiver of dismay. Was he losing his senses?

  A pink-cheeked gentleman with a crêpe mustache arose from a chair in the extreme background. He leveled a menacing finger, with Bosworth as the object of its concern.

  “Move back from that table, gents,” remarked the vivified object near the windows. The Messrs. Van Pycke fell back several paces, still staring blankly at the figure.

  Bosworth gulped. “Are you—alive?” he demanded, putting his fingers to his temple.