O Henry

                       Cabbages And Kings


                              XVII

                          Two Recalls


Файл с книжной полки Несененко Алексея


There remains three duties to be performed before the curtain falls
upon the patched comedy.  Two have been promised:  the third is no
less obligatory.

It was set forth in the program of this tropic vaudeville that
it would be made known why Shorty 0'Day, of the Columbia Detective
Agency, lost his position.  Also that Smith should come again to tell
us what mystery he followed that night on the shores of Anchuria when
he strewed so many cigar stumps around the coconut palm during his
lonely night vigil on the beach.  These things were promised; but
a bigger thing yet remains to be accomplished--the clearing up of a
seeming wrong that has been done according to the array of chronicled
facts (truthfully set forth) that have been presented.  And one voice,
speaking, shall do these three things.

Two men sat on a stringer of a North River pier in the City of New
York.  A steamer from the tropics had begun to unload bananas and
oranges on the pier.  Now and then a banana or two would fall from
an overripe bunch, and one of the two men would shamble forward,
seize the fruit and return to share it with his companion.

One of the men was in the ultimate stage of deterioration.  As far as
rain and wind and sun could wreck the garments he wore, it had been
done.  In his person the ravages of drink were as plainly visible.
And yet, upon his high-bridged, rubicund nose was jauntily perched
a pair of shining and flawless gold-rimmed glasses.

The other man was not so far gone upon the descending Highway of the
Incompetents.  Truly, the flower of his manhood had gone to seed--seed
that, perhaps, no soil might sprout.  But there were still cross-cuts
along where he travelled through which he might yet regain the pathway
of usefulness without disturbing the slumbering Miracles.  This man
was short and compactly built.  He had an oblique, dead eye, like
that of a sting-ray, and the moustache of a cocktail mixer.  We know
the eye and the moustache; we know that Smith of the luxurious yacht,
the gorgeous raiment, the mysterious mission, the magic disappearance,
has come again, though shorn of the accessories of his former state.

At his third banana, the man with the nose glasses spat it from him
with a shudder.

"Deuce take all fruit!" he remarked, in a patrician tone of disgust.
"I lived for two years where these things grow.  The memory of their
taste lingers with you.  The oranges are not so bad.  Just see if you
can gather a couple of them, O'Day, when the next broken crate comes
up."

Did you live down with the monkeys?" asked the other, made tepidly
garrulous by the sunshine and the alleviating meal of juicy fruit.
"I was down there, once myself.  But only for a few hours.  That was
when I was with the Columbia Detective Agency.  The monkey people
did me up.  I'd have my job yet if it hadn't been for them.  I'll
tell you about it.

"One day the chief sent a note around to the office that read: 'Send
O'Day here at once for a big piece of business.'  I was the crack
detective of the agency at that time.  They always handed me the big
jobs.  The address the chief wrote from was down in the Wall Street
district.

"When I got there I found him in a private office with a lot of
directors who were looking pretty fuzzy.  They stated the case.
The president of the Republic Insurance Company had skipped with
about a tenth of a million dollars in cash.  The directors wanted
him back pretty bad, but they wanted the money worse.  They said
they needed it.  They had traced the old gent's movements to where
he boarded a tramp fruit steamer bound for South America that same
morning with his daughter and a big gripsack--all the family
he had.

"One of the directors had his steam yacht coaled and with steam up,
ready for a trip; and he turned her over to me, cart blongsh.  In
four hours I was on board of her, and hot on the trail of the fruit
tub.  I had a pretty good idea where old Wahrfield--that was his name,
J. Churchill Wahrfield--would head for.  At that time we had a treaty
with about every foreign country except Belgium and that banana
republic, Anchuria.  There wasn't a photo of old Wahrfield to be
had in New York--he had been foxy there--but I had his description.
And besides, the lady with him would be a dead-give-away anywhere.
She was one of the high-flyers in Society--not the kind that have
their pictures in the Sunday papers--but the real sort that open
chrysanthemum shows and christen battleships.

"Well, sir, we never got a sight of that fruit tub on the road.
The ocean is a pretty big place; and I guess we took different
paths across it.  But we kept going toward this Anchuria, where
the fruiter was bound for.

"We struck the monkey coast one afternoon about four.  There was a
ratty-looking steamer off shore taking on bananas.  The monkeys were
loading her up with big barges.  It might be the one the old man had
taken, and it might not.  I went ashore to look around.  The scenery
was pretty good.  I never saw any finer on the New York stage.
I struck an American on shore, a big, cool chap, standing around
with the monkeys.  He showed me the consul's office.  The consul was
a nice young fellow.  He said the fruiter was the ~Karlsefin~, running
generally to New Orleans, but took her last cargo to New York.  Then
I was sure my people were on board, although everybody told me that
no passengers had landed.  I didn't think they would land until after
dark, for they might have been shy about it on account of seeing that
yacht of mine hanging around.  So, all I had to do was to wait and nab
'em when they came ashore.  I couldn't arrest old Wahrfield without
extradition papers, but my play was to get the cash.  They generally
give up if you strike 'em when they're tired and rattled and short
on nerve.

"After dark I sat under a coconut tree on the beach for a while,
and then I walked around and investigated that town some, and it was
enough to give you the lions.  If a man could stay in New York and be
honest, he'd better do it than to hit that monkey town with a million.

"Dinky little mud houses; grass over your shoe tops in the streets;
ladies in low-neck-and-short-sleeves walking around smoking cigars;
tree-frogs rattling like a hose cart going to a ten blow; big
mountains dropping gravel in the back yards, and the sea licking
the paint off in front--no, sir--a man had better be in God's country
living on free lunch than there.

"The main street ran along the beach, and I walked down it, and
then turned up a kind of lane where the houses were made of poles
and straw.  I wanted to see what the monkeys did when they weren't
climbing coconut trees.  The very first shack I looked in I saw my
people.  They must have come ashore while I was promenading.  A man
about fifty, smooth face, heavy eyebrows, dressed in black broadcloth,
looking like he was just about to say, "Can any little boy in the
Sunday school answer that?'  He was freezing on to a grip that weighed
like a dozen gold bricks, and a swell girl--a regular peach, with
a Fifth Avenue cut--was sitting on a wooden chair.  An old black woman
was fixing some coffee and beans on a table.  The light they had come
from a lantern hung on a nail.  I went and stood in the door, and they
looked at me, and I said:

"Mr. Wahrfield, you are my prisoner.  I hope, for the lady's sake,
you will take the matter sensibly.  You know why I want you.'

"'Who are you?' says the old gent.

"'O'Day,' says I, 'of the Columbia Detective Agency.  And now, sir,
let me give you a piece of good advice.  You go back and take your
medicine like a man.  Hand 'em back the boodle; and maybe they'll let
you off light.  Go back easy, and I'll put in a word for you.  I'll
give you five minutes to decide."  I pulled out my watch and waited.

"Then the young lady chipped in.  She was one of the genuine
high-steppers.  You could tell by the way her clothes fit and
the style she had that Fifth Avenue was made for her.

"'Come inside,' she says. 'Don't stand in the door and disturb the
whole street with that suit of clothes.  Now, what is it you want?'

"'Three minutes gone,' I said. 'I'll tell you again while the other
two tick off.'

"'You'll admit being the president of the Republic, won't you?'

"'I am,' says he.


'Well, then,' says I, 'it ought to be plain to you.  Wanted, in
New York, J. Churchill Wahrfield, president of the Republic Insurance
Company.

"'Also the funds belonging to said company, now in that grip, in
the unlawful possession of said J. Churchill Wahrfield.'

"'Oh-h-h-h!' says the young lady, as if she was thinking, 'you want
to take us back to New York?'

"'To take Mr. Wahrfield.  There's no charge against you, miss.
There'll be no objection, of course, to your returning with your
father.'

"Of a sudden the girl gave a tiny scream and grabbed the old boy
around the neck.  'Oh, father, father!' she says, kind of contralto,
'can this be true?  Have you taken money that is not yours?  Speak,
father!'  It made you shiver to hear the tremolo stop she put on her
voice.

"The old boy looked pretty bughouse when she first grappled him,
but she went on, whispering in his ear and patting his offshoulder
till he stood still, but sweating a little.

"She got him to one side and they talked together a minute, and then
he put on some gold eyeglasses and walked up and handed me the grip.

"'Mr. Detective,' he says, talking a little broken, 'I conclude
to return with you.  I have finished to discover that life on this
desolate and displeased coast would be worse than to die, itself.
I will go back and hurl myself upon the mercy of the Republic Company.
Have you brought a sheep?'

"'Sheep!' says I; 'I haven't a single--'

"'Ship,' cut in the young lady.  'Don't get funny.  Father is of
German birth, and doesn't speak perfect English.  How did you come
up?'

"The girl was all broke up.  She had a handkerchief to her face,
and kept saying every little bit, '0h, father, father!'  She walked
up to me and laid her lily-white hand on the clothes that had pained
her at first.  I smelt a million violets.  She was a lulu.  I told
her I came in a private yacht.

"'Mr. O'Day,' she says.  'Oh, take us away from this horrid country
at once.  Can you!  Will you!  Say you will.'

"'I'll try,' I said, concealing the fact that I was dying to get them
on salt water before they could change their mind.

"One thing they both kicked against was going through the town to
the boat landing.  Said they dreaded publicity, and now that they
were going to return, they had a hope that the thing might yet be
kept out of the papers.  They swore they wouldn't go unless I got
them out to the yacht without any one knowing it, so I agreed
to humor them.

"The sailors who rowed me ashore were playing billiards in a bar-room
near the water, waiting for orders, and I proposed to have them take
the boat down the beach half a mile or so, and take us up there.
How to get them word was the question, for I couldn't leave the grip
with the prisoner, and I couldn't take it with me, not knowing but
what the monkeys might stick me up.

"The young lady says the old colored woman would take them a note.
I sat down and wrote it, and gave it to the dame with plain directions
what to do, and she grins like a baboon and shakes her head.

"Then Mr. Wahrfield handed her a string of foreign dialect, and she
nods her head and says, 'See, senor' maybe fifty times, and lights
out with the note.

"'0ld Augusta only understands German,' said Miss Wahrfield, smiling
at me.  'We stopped in her house to ask where we could find lodging,
and she insisted upon our having coffee.  She tells us she was raised
in a German family in San Domingo.'

"'Very likely,' I said.  'But you can search me for German words,
except ~nix verstay~ and ~noch einst~, I would have called that
"See, senor" French, though, on a gamble.'

"Well, we three made a sneak around the edge of town so as not to
be seen.  We got tangled in vines and ferns and the banana bushes
and tropical scenery a good deal.  The monkey suburbs was as wild
as places in Central Park.  We came out on the beach a good half
mile below.  A brown chap was lying asleep under a coconut tree,
with a ten-foot musket beside him.  Mr. Wahrfield takes up the gun
and pitches it into the sea.  'The coast is guarded,' he says.
'Rebellion and plots ripen like fruit.'  He pointed to the sleeping
man, who never stirred.  'Thus,' he says, 'they perform trusts.
Children!'

"I saw our boat coming, and I struck a match and lit a piece of
newspaper to show them where we were.  In thirty minutes we were
on board the yacht.

"The first thing, Mr. Wahrfield and his daughter and I took the grip
into the owner's cabin, opened it up, and took an inventory.  There
was one hundred and five thousand dollars.  United States treasury
notes in it, besides a lot of diamond jewelry and a couple of hundred
Havana cigars.  I gave the old man the cigars and a receipt for the
rest of the lot, as agent for the company, and locked the stuff up
in my private quarters.

"I never had a pleasanter trip than that one.  After we got to sea
the young lady turned out to be the jolliest ever.  The very first
time we sat down to dinner, and the steward filled her glass with
champagne--that director's yacht was a regular floating Waldorf-
Astoria--she winks at me and says, 'What's the use to borrow trouble,
Mr. Fly Cop?  Here's hoping you may live to eat the hen that scratches
on your grave.'  There was a piano on board, and she sat down to it
and sung better than you give up two cases to hear plenty times.  She
knew about nine operas clean through.  She was sure enough ~bon ton~
and swell.  She wasn't one of the 'among others present' kind; she
belonged on the special mention list!

"The old man, too, perked up amazingly on the way.  He passed the
cigars, and says to me once, quite chipper, out of a cloud of smoke,
'Mr. O'Day, somehow I think the Republic Company will not give me
the much trouble.  Guard well the gripvalise of the money, Mr. O'Day,
for that it must be returned to them that it belongs when we finish
to arrive.'

"When we landed in New York I 'phoned to the chief to meet us in
that director's office.  We got in a cab and went there.  I carried
the grip, and we walked in, and I was pleased to see that the chief
had got together that same old crowd of moneybugs with pink faces
and white vests to see us march in.  I set the grip on the table.
'There's the money,' I said.

"'And your prisoner?' said the chief.

"I pointed to Mr. Wahrfield, and he stepped forward and says:

"'The honor of a word with you, sir, to explain.'

"He and the chief went into another room and stayed ten minutes.
When they came back the chief looked as black as a ton of coal.

"'Did this gentleman,' he says to me, 'have this valise in
his possession when you first saw him?'

"'He did,' said I.

"The chief took up the grip and handed it to the prisoner with
a bow, and says to the director crowd:  'Do any of you recognize
this gentleman?'

"They all shook their pink faces.

"'Allow me to present,' he goes on, 'Senor Miraflores, president
of the republic of Anchuria.  The senor has generously consented
to overlook this outrageous blunder, on condition that we undertake
to secure him against the annoyance of public comment.  It is a
concession on his part to overlook an insult for which he might
claim international redress.  I think we can gratefully promise him
secrecy in the matter.'

"They gave him a pink nod all round.

"'O'Day,' he says to me.  'As a private detective you're wasted.
In a war, where kidnapping governments is in the rules, you'd be
invaluable.  Come down to the office at eleven.'

"I knew what that meant.

"'So that's the president of the monkeys,' says I.  'Well,
why couldn't he have said so?'

"Wouldn't it jar you?"