"You may go to the hotel, Antonio," says Van Ness, "and await me there.

I am surprised and grieved at your beastly conduct!"

Tony hands Van Ness a gun and the bottle of nitro-glycerine.

"Alla right!" he says. "Tony he'sa go. But watcha this two fel' they wanna feexa you. The little fel' you can shoota--but the bigga stiffa whosa knocka me down, he'sa needa more than that! Taka thisa bottle and throw it at heem harda. That'sa blow heem away so far, it taka four thousand dollar for heem to come back on sheepa, thirda cla.s.s!"

Van Ness puts the gun and the nitro in Tony's pocket.

"Begone, sir!" he says. "I'll jolly well attend to you later!"

Tony gathers up his junk and throwin' a last glare at me and the Kid, beats it.

Van Ness turns to the Kid, stickin' the eyegla.s.s back in the toga.

"Ah--and now, Scanlan," he says, "will you be good enough to explain the cause of the--ah--bitter animosity you have for me?"

The Kid frowns and scratches his head.

"Somebody has been kiddin' you," he tells him. "I ain't got _nothin'_ for you! Where d'ye get that animosity thing?"

Van Ness sighs so hard it like to blowed our hats off.

"It is beastly plain to me," he says, "that I am about as popular in Film City as a cloudburst at a picnic! I am snubbed, ridiculed, vulgarly and subtly insulted! Also I am white and human and--ah--I must confess it has penetrated my skin. _You_ are particularly bitter against me--why?"

The Kid studies him for a minute.

"Listen!" he answers finally. "Are you on the level with this? D'ye really wanna know, or are you simply askin' me so's you can pull one of them witty remarks on the way I answer you--_and get walloped on the beak_?"

Van Ness did somethin' then I never seen him do before and only once afterward. _He grinned_! The Roman toga fell off his shoulders, and he leans over with his hands on his hips. On the level, his whole face seemed to change! And then--

Oh, boy!

"Listen, guy!" pipes this big, dignified whatnot. "I'm on the level, all right and I want the lowdown on this thing, d'ye make me?" (Me and the Kid nearly went dead on our feet listenin'.) "As for wallopin' me on the beak, well--you may be welterweight champion out here, but if you start anything with _me_, I'll remove you from the t.i.tle, d'ye get that?"

Woof!

The Kid and me falls back against a rock, fightin' for air!

"Oh, Lady!" whispers the Kid, fannin' himself with his hat. "Did you hear what I did?"

"Call me at seven!" I gasps.

"Well--?" drawls Van Ness, lookin' us over.

"They's just one thing I'd like to know," murmurs the Kid, wipin' his forehead with my handkerchief in the excitement. "What part of dear old England was _you_ born in?"

Van Ness grins some more.

"Brooklyn!" he says, jerkin' out the eye gla.s.s again and stickin' it on his eye. "Surely, my man," he goes on, with that old silly stare of his; "surely you have heard of jolly old Brooklyn--what?"

"I know it well!" says the Kid. "It's on the wrong end of the bridge!

But where d'ye get the 'my man' thing? And what have you been goin'

around like a Swiss duke or somethin', when it turns out you're only a roughneck from Brooklyn? You wanna know why you don't belong, and don't fit in here, eh? Well, you big hick, where d'ye get that Sedate Sam stuff?" He slaps Van Ness on the arm. "Why in the Hail Columbia don't you bust out and giggle now and then, hey?"

"Why don't I?" snarls Van Ness, "Don't you think I'd _like_ to? Don't you think I would if I could, you b.o.o.b?"

"Would if you _could_?" repeats the Kid. "What's the matter--have you got lockjaw?"

"No!" roars Van Ness, so sudden that we both sidestepped. "No! Not lockjaw, worse! _Dignity_!"

"Have you give the mud baths at Hot Springs a play?" I asks.

"Stop it!" he sneers. "Cease that small time comedy! I'm the most dignified person in the world--the undisputed champion! I'm Frowning Frank and Imposing Ike rolled into one. It hurts me more than it does you, but I can't help it! I fail to remember the last time I enjoyed a hearty laugh and I know it will be a darned long s.p.a.ce before I'll snicker again. My laugher has gone unused for so long that it's atrophied and won't work. I've tried warming it up by going home at night and guffawing before the mirror, but the result is only a mirthless giggle--a ghostly chortle! Of course, I wouldn't dare attempt to laugh in public!"

"Do what?" asks the Kid.

"Laugh!" answers Van Ness bitterly. "I can't even let myself think of doing it--why, it would ruin me! My dignity is all I have. It's my stock in trade and without it I would lose my income! Were I to unbend and shatter the air with harmless cachinnation, it would be thought at once that I had been drinking!" He stopped and sighed some more. "It began ten years ago," he goes on. "I was playing small parts in a stock company and one week I was cast for a Roman senator. Being anxious to make good, I made that n.o.ble so dignified that the local critics dismissed the play with a few paragraphs and gave half a column to my stately bearing! That started it, and from that time I've played nothing but Romans, kings, governors, cardinals and similar roles, calling for my infernal talent in the one direction. Mechanically I grew to playing them _on and off_, yet all the time within me burns the desire to do rough and tumble, yes, by Heaven, slapstick comedy! But alas, I lack the moral courage to throw off the yoke!"

"Well, Mister Van Ness--" I begins, when the silence begun to hurt, "I--"

"Not Van Ness!" he interrupts. "The name is as false as my manner! My name is Fink, Eddie Fink, and please don't add the Mister. When a lad I had a nickname, but, alas, I--"

"What was it?" b.u.t.ts in the Kid.

He hesitates.

"Well, it was rather frivolous," he says. "As indeed I was myself--a happy, carefree youth! The boys called me Foolish--Foolish Fink!" He throws out his chest like he just realized how he had been honored at the time.

Me and the Kid both had a coughin' fit.

"Let's go over to Montana Bill's," I says, when I thought it was safe to look up, "and we'll talk it over."

"Yeh!" chimes in the Kid. "Over a tray of private stock!" He laughs and slaps alias Van Ness on the shoulder. "Cheer up! Foolish Fink, will you have a little drink? Woof, woof! I'm a poet!"

"Thanks!" says Van Ness. "But I'm on the wagon. I stopped drinking five years ago, because under the influence of alcohol I've been known to act the fool!"

"You ain't the only one!" says the Kid. "Anyhow I never touch it myself and Johnny here only uses it on his hair! But come on over--you can have your pants pressed or take a shine, I'm gonna buy, and you might as well get in on it. Bill's got a laughin' hyena in a cage outside, and maybe you could get him to rehea.r.s.e you!"

About a week after that, the society bunch in Frisco comes over to Film City to act in a picture for the benefit of the electric fan fund for Greenland, or somethin' like that. About fifty of the future corespondents, known to the trade as the younger set, blows over in charge of a dame who had pa.s.sed her thirty-sixth birth and bust day when Napoleon was a big leaguer. She had did well by herself though and when dressed for the street, they was harder things to look at than her. Also, when her last husband died, he left her a bankroll that when marked in figures on paper looked like it was the number of Southerners below Washington. A little bit of a guy, which turned around when you yelled "G. Herbert Gale" at him, breezed over with her and at first I had him figured as a detective seekin' divorce evidence, because he stuck to that dame like a cheap vaudeville act does to the American flag. He trailed a few paces behind her everywhere she went, callin' her "Mrs. Roberts-Miller" in public and "Helen Dear" when he figured n.o.body was listenin'. It was easy to see that he had crashed madly in love with this charmer, but as far as she was concerned they was nothin' stirrin'.

Except that G. Herbert was inclined to be a simp, he wasn't a bad guy at that. He mixed well and bought freely, although he was riveted to the water wagon himself. He bragged to me in fact that the nearest he ever come to alcohol in his life was once when he used it to clean his diamonds.

But G. Herbert was the guy that invented the ancient and honorable order of village cut-ups. I never asked him what the G stood for in his name, I guessed it the first day he was in our midst. It meant "Giggle!" This here Herbert person was a laughin' fool! The first time I talked with him I thought I was cheatin' myself by only bein'

Scanlan's manager. I figured I ought to be in vaudeville knockin' 'em dead for five hundred a week, because G. Herbert roared at everything I said. He screamed with mirth at all the old ones and had hysterics over three or four witty remarks I remembered from a show I seen the night of the Johnstown flood. I thought, of course, it was the way I put the stuff over, and I was just gonna give the Kid my fare-you-well, when I seen G. Herbert standin' by a practical undertakers shop that was fixed up for a fillum. The little simp was standin' over a coffin laughin' his head off!

That cured me, but him and the Kid become great little pals. I found out later it was on account of G. Herbert snickerin' at the Kid's comedy. Scanlan hadn't discovered it was a habit with this guy, and he claimed here was a feller that knowed humor when he seen it.

One afternoon I see Scanlan and Miss Vincent whisperin' together like yeggmen outside a postoffice. They called me over, and the Kid tells me that the society bunch was gonna leave us flat on the midnight train, and before they blowed, Potts was gonna give 'em a dinner and dance. All the movie crowd was to mix with Frisco's four hundred, so's that both could enjoy the experience and say they took a chance once in their lives.