Strictly Business by O. Henry

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"Say, doc," said he resentfully, "that's a hot bird you keep on tap.
I hope I didn't break anything. But I've nearly got the williwalloos,
and when he threw them 32-candle-power lamps of his on me, I took a
snap-shot at him with that little brass Flatiron Girl that stood on the
sideboard."

"That is merely a mechanical toy," said the gentleman with a wave of his
hand. "May I ask you to be seated while I explain why I brought you to
my house. Perhaps you would not understand nor be in sympathy with the
psychological prompting that caused me to do so. So I will come to the
point at once by venturing to refer to your admission that you know the
Van Smuythe family, of Washington Square North."

"Any silver missing?" asked Thomas tartly. "Any joolry displaced? Of
course I know 'em. Any of the old ladies' sunshades disappeared? Well,
I know 'em. And then what?"

The Grand Duke rubbed his white hands together softly.

"Wonderful!" he murmured. "Wonderful! Shall I come to believe in the
Chaldean Chiroscope myself? Let me assure you," he continued, "that
there is nothing for you to fear. Instead, I think I can promise you
that very good fortune awaits you. We will see."

"Do they want me back?" asked Thomas, with something of his old
professional pride in his voice. "I'll promise to cut out the booze and
do the right thing if they'll try me again. But how did you get wise,
doc? B'gee, it's the swellest employment agency I was ever in, with its
flashlight owls and so forth."

With an indulgent smile the gracious host begged to be excused for two
minutes. He went out to the sidewalk and gave an order to the chauffeur,
who still waited with the car. Returning to the mysterious apartment,
he sat by his guest and began to entertain him so well by his witty and
genial converse that the poor Bed Liner almost forgot the cold streets
from which he had been so recently and so singularly rescued. A servant
brought some tender cold fowl and tea biscuits and a glass of miraculous
wine; and Thomas felt the glamour of Arabia envelop him. Thus half an
hour sped quickly; and then the honk of the returned motor car at the
door suddenly drew the Grand Duke to his feet, with another soft
petition for a brief absence.

Two women, well muffled against the cold, were admitted at the front
door and suavely conducted by the master of the house down the hall
through another door to the left and into a smaller room, which was
screened and segregated from the larger front room by heavy, double
portieres. Here the furnishings were even more elegant and exquisitely
tasteful than in the other. On a gold-inlaid rosewood table were
scattered sheets of white paper and a queer, triangular instrument or
toy, apparently of gold, standing on little wheels.

The taller woman threw back her black veil and loosened her cloak. She
was fifty, with a wrinkled and sad face. The other, young and plump,
took a chair a little distance away and to the rear as a servant or an
attendant might have done.

"You sent for me, Professor Cherubusco," said the elder woman, wearily.
"I hope you have something more definite than usual to say. I've about
lost the little faith I had in your art. I would not have responded to
your call this evening if my sister had not insisted upon it."

"Madam," said the professor, with his princeliest smile, "the true Art
cannot fail. To find the true psychic and potential branch sometimes
requires time. We have not succeeded, I admit, with the cards, the
crystal, the stars, the magic formulae of Zarazin, nor the Oracle of
Po. But we have at last discovered the true psychic route. The Chaldean
Chiroscope has been successful in our search."

The professor's voice had a ring that seemed to proclaim his belief in
his own words. The elderly lady looked at him with a little more
interest.

"Why, there was no sense in those words that it wrote with my hands on
it," she said. "What do you mean?"

"The words were these," said Professor Cherubusco, rising to his full
magnificent height: "_'By the fifth wheel of the chariot he shall
come.'_"

"I haven't seen many chariots," said the lady, "but I never saw one with
five wheels."

"Progress," said the professor--"progress in science and mechanics has
accomplished it--though, to be exact, we may speak of it only as an
extra tire. Progress in occult art has advanced in proportion. Madam, I
repeat that the Chaldean Chiroscope has succeeded. I can not only answer
the question that you have propounded, but I can produce before your
eyes the proof thereof."

And now the lady was disturbed both in her disbelief and in her poise.

"O professor!" she cried anxiously--"When?--where? Has he been found? Do
not keep me in suspense."

"I beg you will excuse me for a very few minutes," said Professor
Cherubusco, "and I think I can demonstrate to you the efficacy of the
true Art."

Thomas was contentedly munching the last crumbs of the bread and fowl
when the enchanter appeared suddenly at his side.

"Are you willing to return to your old home if you are assured of a
welcome and restoration to favor?" he asked, with his courteous, royal
smile.

"Do I look bughouse?" answered Thomas. "Enough of the footback life for
me. But will they have me again? The old lady is as fixed in her ways as
a nut on a new axle."

"My dear young man," said the other, "she has been searching for you
everywhere."

"Great!" said Thomas. "I'm on the job. That team of dropsical
dromedaries they call horses is a handicap for a first-class coachman
like myself; but I'll take the job back, sure, doc. They're good people
to be with."

And now a change came o'er the suave countenance of the Caliph of
Bagdad. He looked keenly and suspiciously at the ex-coachman.

"May I ask what your name is?" he said shortly.

"You've been looking for me," said Thomas, "and don't know my name?
You're a funny kind of sleuth. You must be one of the Central Office
gumshoers. I'm Thomas McQuade, of course; and I've been chauffeur of
the Van Smuythe elephant team for a year. They fired me a month ago
for--well, doc, you saw what I did to your old owl. I went broke on
booze, and when I saw the tire drop off your whiz wagon I was standing
in that squad of hoboes at the Worth monument waiting for a free bed.
Now, what's the prize for the best answer to all this?"

To his intense surprise Thomas felt himself lifted by the collar and
dragged, without a word of explanation, to the front door. This was
opened, and he was kicked forcibly down the steps with one heavy,
disillusionizing, humiliating impact of the stupendous Arabian's shoe.

As soon as the ex-coachman had recovered his feet and his wits he
hastened as fast as he could eastward toward Broadway.

"Crazy guy," was his estimate of the mysterious automobilist. "Just
wanted to have some fun kiddin', I guess. He might have dug up a dollar,
anyhow. Now I've got to hurry up and get back to that gang of bum bed
hunters before they all get preached to sleep."

When Thomas reached the end of his two-mile walk he found the ranks of
the homeless reduced to a squad of perhaps eight or ten. He took the
proper place of a newcomer at the left end of the rear rank. In a file
in front of him was the young man who had spoken to him of hospitals and
something of a wife and child.

"Sorry to see you back again," said the young man, turning to speak to
him. "I hoped you had struck something better than this."

"Me?" said Thomas. "Oh, I just took a run around the block to keep warm!
I see the public ain't lending to the Lord very fast to-night."

"In this kind of weather," said the young man, "charity avails itself of
the proverb, and both begins and ends at home."

And the Preacher and his vehement lieutenant struck up a last hymn of
petition to Providence and man. Those of the Bed Liners whose windpipes
still registered above 32 degrees hopelessly and tunelessly joined in.

In the middle of the second verse Thomas saw a sturdy girl with
wind-tossed drapery battling against the breeze and coming straight
toward him from the opposite sidewalk. "Annie!" he yelled, and ran
toward her.

"You fool, you fool!" she cried, weeping and laughing, and hanging upon
his neck, "why did you do it?"

"The Stuff," explained Thomas briefly. "You know. But subsequently nit.
Not a drop." He led her to the curb. "How did you happen to see me?"

"I came to find you," said Annie, holding tight to his sleeve. "Oh, you
big fool! Professor Cherubusco told us that we might find you here."

"Professor Ch---- Don't know the guy. What saloon does he work in?"

"He's a clairvoyant, Thomas; the greatest in the world. He found you
with the Chaldean telescope, he said."

"He's a liar," said Thomas. "I never had it. He never saw me have
anybody's telescope."

"And he said you came in a chariot with five wheels or something."

"Annie," said Thoms solicitously, "you're giving me the wheels now. If
I had a chariot I'd have gone to bed in it long ago. And without any
singing and preaching for a nightcap, either."

"Listen, you big fool. The Missis says she'll take you back. I begged
her to. But you must behave. And you can go up to the house to-night;
and your old room over the stable is ready."

"Great!" said Thomas earnestly. "You are It, Annie. But when did these
stunts happen?"

"To-night at Professor Cherubusco's. He sent his automobile for the
Missis, and she took me along. I've been there with her before."

"What's the professor's line?"

"He's a clearvoyant and a witch. The Missis consults him. He knows
everything. But he hasn't done the Missis any good yet, though she's
paid him hundreds of dollars. But he told us that the stars told him we
could find you here."

"What's the old lady want this cherry-buster to do?"

"That's a family secret," said Annie. "And now you've asked enough
questions. Come on home, you big fool."

They had moved but a little way up the street when Thomas stopped.

"Got any dough with you, Annie?" he asked.

Annie looked at him sharply.

"Oh, I know what that look means," said Thomas. "You're wrong. Not
another drop. But there's a guy that was standing next to me in the bed
line over there that's in bad shape. He's the right kind, and he's got
wives or kids or something, and he's on the sick list. No booze. If you
could dig up half a dollar for him so he could get a decent bed I'd like
it."

Annie's fingers began to wiggle in her purse.

"Sure, I've got money," said she. "Lots of it. Twelve dollars." And then
she added, with woman's ineradicable suspicion of vicarious benevolence:
"Bring him here and let me see him first."

Thomas went on his mission. The wan Bed Liner came readily enough. As
the two drew near, Annie looked up from her purse and screamed:

"Mr. Walter-- Oh--Mr. Walter!

"Is that you, Annie?" said the young man meekly.

"Oh, Mr. Walter!--and the Missis hunting high and low for you!"

"Does mother want to see me?" he asked, with a flush coming out on his
pale cheek.

"She's been hunting for you high and low. Sure, she wants to see you.
She wants you to come home. She's tried police and morgues and lawyers
and advertising and detectives and rewards and everything. And then she
took up clearvoyants. You'll go right home, won't you, Mr. Walter?"

"Gladly, if she wants me," said the young man. "Three years is a long
time. I suppose I'll have to walk up, though, unless the street cars are
giving free rides. I used to walk and beat that old plug team of bays we
used to drive to the carriage. Have they got them yet?"

"They have," said Thomas, feelingly. "And they'll have 'em ten years
from now. The life of the royal elephantibus truckhorseibus is one
hundred and forty-nine years. I'm the coachman. Just got my
reappointment five minutes ago. Let's all ride up in a surface car--that
is--er--if Annie will pay the fares."

On the Broadway car Annie handed each one of the prodigals a nickel to
pay the conductor.

"Seems to me you are mighty reckless the way you throw large sums of
money around," said Thomas sarcastically.

"In that purse," said Annie decidedly, "is exactly $11.85. I shall take
every cent of it to-morrow and give it to professor Cherubusco, the
greatest man in the world."

"Well," said Thomas, "I guess he must be a pretty fly guy to pipe off
things the way he does. I'm glad his spooks told him where you could
find me. If you'll give me his address, some day I'll go up there,
myself, and shake his hand."

Presently Thomas moved tentatively in his seat, and thoughtfully felt an
abrasion or two on his knees and his elbows.

"Say, Annie," said he confidentially, maybe it's one of the last dreams
of booze, but I've a kind of a recollection of riding in an automobile
with a swell guy that took me to a house full of eagles and arc lights.
He fed me on biscuits and hot air, and then kicked me down the front
steps. If it was the _d t's_, why am I so sore?"

"Shut up, you fool," said Annie.

"If I could find that funny guy's house," said Thomas, in conclusion,
"I'd go up there some day and punch his nose for him."

VI

THE POET AND THE PEASANT

The other day a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communion
with nature all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an editor.

It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine breath of the fields, the
song of birds, and the pleasant chatter of trickling streams.

When the poet called again to see about it, with hopes of a beefsteak
dinner in his heart, it was handed back to him with the comment:

"Too artificial."

Several of us met over spaghetti and Dutchess County chianti, and
swallowed indignation with slippery forkfuls.

And there we dug a pit for the editor. With us was Conant, a
well-arrived writer of fiction--a man who had trod on asphalt all his
life, and who had never looked upon bucolic scenes except with
sensations of disgust from the windows of express trains.

Conant wrote a poem and called it "The Doe and the Brook." It was a
fine specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a poet who had
strayed with Amaryllis only as far as the florist's windows, and whose
sole ornithological discussion had been carried on with a waiter. Conant
signed this poem, and we sent it to the same editor.

But this has very little to do with the story.

Just as the editor was reading the first line of the poem, on the next
morning, a being stumbled off the West Shore ferryboat, and loped slowly
up Forty-second Street.

The invader was a young man with light blue eyes, a hanging lip and
hair the exact color of the little orphan's (afterward discovered to be
the earl's daughter) in one of Mr. Blaney's plays. His trousers were
corduroy, his coat short-sleeved, with buttons in the middle of his
back. One bootleg was outside the corduroys. You looked expectantly,
though in vain, at his straw hat for ear holes, its shape inaugurating
the suspicion that it had been ravaged from a former equine possessor.
In his hand was a valise--description of it is an impossible task; a
Boston man would not have carried his lunch and law books to his office
in it. And above one ear, in his hair, was a wisp of hay--the rustic's
letter of credit, his badge of innocence, the last clinging touch of the
Garden of Eden lingering to shame the gold-brick men.

Knowingly, smilingly, the city crowds passed him by. They saw the raw
stranger stand in the gutter and stretch his neck at the tall buildings.
At this they ceased to smile, and even to look at him. It had been
done so often. A few glanced at the antique valise to see what Coney
"attraction" or brand of chewing gum he might be thus dinning into his
memory. But for the most part he was ignored. Even the newsboys looked
bored when he scampered like a circus clown out of the way of cabs and
street cars.

At Eighth Avenue stood "Bunco Harry," with his dyed mustache and shiny,
good-natured eyes. Harry was too good an artist not to be pained at the
sight of an actor overdoing his part. He edged up to the countryman, who
had stopped to open his mouth at a jewelry store window, and shook his
head.

"Too thick, pal," he said, critically--"too thick by a couple of inches.
I don't know what your lay is; but you've got the properties too thick.
That hay, now--why, they don't even allow that on Proctor's circuit any
more."

"I don't understand you, mister," said the green one. "I'm not lookin'
for any circus. I've just run down from Ulster County to look at the
town, bein' that the hayin's over with. Gosh! but it's a whopper. I
thought Poughkeepsie was some punkins; but this here town is five times
as big."

"Oh, well," said "Bunco Harry," raising his eyebrows, "I didn't mean
to butt in. You don't have to tell. I thought you ought to tone down
a little, so I tried to put you wise. Wish you success at your graft,
whatever it is. Come and have a drink, anyhow."

"I wouldn't mind having a glass of lager beer," acknowledged the other.

They went to a cafe frequented by men with smooth faces and shifty eyes,
and sat at their drinks.

"I'm glad I come across you, mister," said Haylocks. "How'd you like to
play a game or two of seven-up? I've got the keerds."

He fished them out of Noah's valise--a rare, inimitable deck, greasy
with bacon suppers and grimy with the soil of cornfields.

"Bunco Harry" laughed loud and briefly.

"Not for me, sport," he said, firmly. "I don't go against that make-up
of yours for a cent. But I still say you've overdone it. The Reubs
haven't dressed like that since '79. I doubt if you could work Brooklyn
for a key-winding watch with that layout."

"Oh, you needn't think I ain't got the money," boasted Haylocks. He drew
forth a tightly rolled mass of bills as large as a teacup, and laid it
on the table.

"Got that for my share of grandmother's farm," he announced. "There's
$950 in that roll. Thought I'd come to the city and look around for a
likely business to go into."

"Bunco Harry" took up the roll of money and looked at it with almost
respect in his smiling eyes.

"I've seen worse," he said, critically. "But you'll never do it in them
clothes. You want to get light tan shoes and a black suit and a straw
hat with a colored band, and talk a good deal about Pittsburg and
freight differentials, and drink sherry for breakfast in order to work
off phony stuff like that."

"What's his line?" asked two or three shifty-eyed men of "Bunco Harry"
after Haylocks had gathered up his impugned money and departed.

"The queer, I guess," said Harry. "Or else he's one of Jerome's men.
Or some guy with a new graft. He's too much hayseed. Maybe that his--I
wonder now--oh, no, it couldn't have been real money."

Haylocks wandered on. Thirst probably assailed him again, for he dived
into a dark groggery on a side street and bought beer. At first sight
of him their eyes brightened; but when his insistent and exaggerated
rusticity became apparent their expressions changed to wary suspicion.

Haylocks swung his valise across the bar.

"Keep that a while for me, mister," he said, chewing at the end of a
virulent claybank cigar. "I'll be back after I knock around a spell. And
keep your eye on it, for there's $950 inside of it, though maybe you
wouldn't think so to look at me."

Somewhere outside a phonograph struck up a band piece, and Haylocks was
off for it, his coat-tail buttons flopping in the middle of his back.

"Divvy, Mike," said the men hanging upon the bar, winking openly at one
another.

"Honest, now," said the bartender, kicking the valise to one side. "You
don't think I'd fall to that, do you? Anybody can see he ain't no jay.
One of McAdoo's come-on squad, I guess. He's a shine if he made himself
up. There ain't no parts of the country now where they dress like that
since they run rural free delivery to Providence, Rhode Island. If he's
got nine-fifty in that valise it's a ninety-eight cent Waterbury that's
stopped at ten minutes to ten."

When Haylocks had exhausted the resources of Mr. Edison to amuse he
returned for his valise. And then down Broadway he gallivanted, culling
the sights with his eager blue eyes. But still and evermore Broadway
rejected him with curt glances and sardonic smiles. He was the oldest of
the "gags" that the city must endure. He was so flagrantly impossible,
so ultra rustic, so exaggerated beyond the most freakish products of the
barnyard, the hayfield and the vaudeville stage, that he excited only
weariness and suspicion. And the wisp of hay in his hair was so genuine,
so fresh and redolent of the meadows, so clamorously rural that even a
shell-game man would have put up his peas and folded his table at the
sight of it.

Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone steps and once more
exhumed his roll of yellow-backs from the valise. The outer one, a
twenty, he shucked off and beckoned to a newsboy.

"Son," said he, "run somewhere and get this changed for me. I'm mighty
nigh out of chicken feed. I guess you'll get a nickel if you'll hurry
up."

A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy's face.

"Aw, watchert'ink! G'wan and get yer funny bill changed yerself. Dey
ain't no farm clothes yer got on. G'wan wit yer stage money."

On a corner lounged a keen-eyed steerer for a gambling-house. He saw
Haylocks, and his expression suddenly grew cold and virtuous.

"Mister," said the rural one. "I've heard of places in this here town
where a fellow could have a good game of old sledge or peg a card at
keno. I got $950 in this valise, and I come down from old Ulster to see
the sights. Know where a fellow could get action on about $9 or $10? I'm
goin' to have some sport, and then maybe I'll buy out a business of some
kind."

The steerer looked pained, and investigated a white speck on his left
forefinger nail.

"Cheese it, old man," he murmured, reproachfully. "The Central Office
must be bughouse to send you out looking like such a gillie. You
couldn't get within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in them Tony
Pastor props. The recent Mr. Scotty from Death Valley has got you beat
a crosstown block in the way of Elizabethan scenery and mechanical
accessories. Let it be skiddoo for yours. Nay, I know of no gilded halls
where one may bet a patrol wagon on the ace."

Rebuffed once again by the great city that is so swift to detect
artificialities, Haylocks sat upon the curb and presented his thoughts
to hold a conference.

"It's my clothes," said he; "durned if it ain't. They think I'm a
hayseed and won't have nothin' to do with me. Nobody never made fun of
this hat in Ulster County. I guess if you want folks to notice you in
New York you must dress up like they do."

So Haylocks went shopping in the bazaars where men spake through their
noses and rubbed their hands and ran the tape line ecstatically over the
bulge in his inside pocket where reposed a red nubbin of corn with an
even number of rows. And messengers bearing parcels and boxes streamed
to his hotel on Broadway within the lights of Long Acre.

At 9 o'clock in the evening one descended to the sidewalk whom Ulster
County would have foresworn. Bright tan were his shoes; his hat the
latest block. His light gray trousers were deeply creased; a gay blue
silk handkerchief flapped from the breast pocket of his elegant English
walking coat. His collar might have graced a laundry window; his blond
hair was trimmed close; the wisp of hay was gone.

For an instant he stood, resplendent, with the leisurely air of a
boulevardier concocting in his mind the route for his evening pleasures.
And then he turned down the gay, bright street with the easy and
graceful tread of a millionaire.

But in the instant that he had paused the wisest and keenest eyes in the
city had enveloped him in their field of vision. A stout man with gray
eyes picked two of his friends with a lift of his eyebrows from the row
of loungers in front of the hotel.

"The juiciest jay I've seen in six months," said the man with gray eyes.
"Come along."

It was half-past eleven when a man galloped into the West Forty-seventh
Street Police Station with the story of his wrongs.

"Nine hundred and fifty dollars," he gasped, "all my share of
grandmother's farm."

The desk sergeant wrung from him the name Jabez Bulltongue, of Locust
Valley farm, Ulster County, and then began to take descriptions of the
strong-arm gentlemen.

When Conant went to see the editor about the fate of his poem, he was
received over the head of the office boy into the inner office that is
decorated with the statuettes by Rodin and J. G. Brown.

"When I read the first line of 'The Doe and the Brook,'" said the
editor, "I knew it to be the work of one whose life has been heart to
heart with Nature. The finished art of the line did not blind me to that
fact. To use a somewhat homely comparison, it was as if a wild, free
child of the woods and fields were to don the garb of fashion and walk
down Broadway. Beneath the apparel the man would show."

"Thanks," said Conant. "I suppose the check will be round on Thursday,
as usual."

The morals of this story have somehow gotten mixed. You can take your
choice of "Stay on the Farm" or "Don't Write Poetry."

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