"Huh!" says I, glancin' over to where Hartley is springin' sort of a sheepish smile at a buck private who's pattin' him on the back, "I think you can most call it a job now."

CHAPTER X

THE CASE OF OLD JONESEY

And then again, you can't always tell. I forget whether it was Bill Shakespeare first sprung that line, or Willie Collier; but whoever it was he said a whole bookful at once. Wise stuff. That's it. And simple, too. Yet it's one of the first things we forget.

But to get the point over I expect I'll have to begin with this bond-room bunch of ours at the Corrugated. They're the kind of young sports who always think they can tell. More'n that they always will, providin' they can get anybody to listen. About any subject you can name, from whether the government should own the railroads to describin'

the correct hold in dancin' the shimmy.

This particular day though it happens to be babidolls. Maybe it wasn't just accident, either. I expect the sudden arrival of spring had something to do with the choice of topic. For out in Madison Square park the robins were hoppin' busy around in the flower beds, couples were twosing confidential on the benches, lady typists were lunchin' off ice cream cones, and the Greek tray peddlers were sellin' May flowers.

Anyway, it seemed like this was a day when romance was in the air, if you get me. I think Izzy Grunkheimer must have started it with that thrillin' tale of his about how he got rung in on a midnight studio supper down in Greenwich Village and the little movie star who mistook him for Charley Zukor. Izzy would spin that if he got half an openin'.

It was his big night. I believe he claims he got hugged or something.

And he always ends up by rollin' his eyes, suckin' in his breath and declarin' pa.s.sionate: "Some queen, yes-s-s!"

But the one who had the floor when I strolls into the bond room just before the end of the noon hour is Skip Martin, who helped win the war by servin' the last two months checkin' supplies for the front at St.

Nazaire. He was relatin' an A. W. O. L. adventure in which a little French girl by the name of Mimi figured prominent, when Budge Haley, who was a corporal in the Twenty-seventh and got all the way to Coblenz, crashed in heartless.

"Cheap stuff, them base port fluffs," says Budge. "Always beggin' you for chocolate or nickin' you for francs some way. And as for looks, I couldn't see it. But say, you should have seen what I tumbled into one night up in Belgium. We'd plugged twenty-six kilometers through the mud and rain that day and was billeted swell in the town hall. The mess call had just sounded and I was gettin' in line when the Loot yanks me out to tote his bag off to some lodgin's he'd been a.s.signed five or six blocks away.

"Maybe I wasn't good and sore, too, with everything gettin' cold and me as a refugee. I must have got mixed up in my directions, for I couldn't find any house with a green iron balcony over the front door noway.

Finally I takes a chance on workin' some of my French and knocks at a blue door. Took me some time to raise anybody, and when a girl does answer all I gets out of her is a squeal and the door is slammed shut again. I was backin' off disgusted when here comes this dame with the big eyes and the grand d.u.c.h.ess airs.

"'Ah le bon Dieu!' says she gaspy. 'Le soldat d'Amerique! Entrez, m'sieur.' And say, even if I couldn't have savvied a word, that smile would have been enough. Did I get the glad hand? Listen; she hadn't seen anything but Huns for nearly four years. Most of that time she'd spent hidin' in the cellar or somewhere, and for her I was the dove of peace.

She tried to tell me all about it, and I expect she did, only I couldn't comprenez more'n a quarter of her rapid fire French. But the idea seemed to be that I was a he-angel of the first cla.s.s who deserved the best there was in the house. Maybe I didn't get it, too. The Huns hadn't been gone but a few hours and the peace dinner she'd planned was only a sketchy affair, as she wasn't dead sure they wouldn't come back. When she sees me though, she puts a stop order on all that third-rate stuff and tells the cook to go the limit. And say, they must have dug up food reserves from the sub-cellar, for when me and the Countess finally sits down----"

"Ah, don't pull that on us!" protests Skip Martin. "We admit the vintage champagne, and the pate de foie gras, but that Countess stuff has been overdone."

"Oh, has it?" says Budge. "You mean you didn't see any hangin' 'round the freight sheds. But this is in Bastogne, old son, and there was her Countess mark plastered all over everything, from the napkins to the mantelpiece. Maybe I don't know one when I get a close-up, same as I did then. Huh! I'm telling you she was the real thing. Why, I'll bet she could sail into Tiffany's tomorrow and open an account just on the way she carries her chin."

"Course she was a Countess," says Izzy. "I'll bet it was some dinner, too. And what then?"

"It didn't happen until just as I was leavin'," says Budge. "'Sis,' says I, 'vous etes un-un peach. Merci very much.' And I was holdin' out my hand for a getaway shake when she closes in with a clinch that makes this Romeo and Juliet balcony scene look like an old maid's farewell.

M-m-m-m. Honest, I didn't wash it off for two days. And, countess or not, she was some grand little lady. I'll tell the world that."

"Look!" says one of our n.o.ble exempts. "You've even got old Jonesey smackin' his lips."

That gets a big laugh from the bunch. It always does, for he's one of our permanent jokes, old Jones. And as he happens to be sittin' humped over here in the corner brushin' traces of an egg sandwich from his mouth corners, the josh comes in kind of pat.

"Must have been some lady killer in his time, eh?" suggests Skip Martin.

That gets across as a good line too, and Skip follows it up with another. "Let's ask him, fellers."

And the next thing old Jones knows he's surrounded by this grinnin'

circle of young hicks while Budge Haley is demandin': "Is it so, Jonesey, that you used to be a reg'lar chicken hound?"

I expect it's the funny way he's gone bald, with only a fringe of grayish hair left, and the watery blue eyes behind the dark gla.s.ses, that got us callin' him Old Jones. Maybe the bent shoulders and his being deaf in one ear helps. But as a matter of fact, I don't think he's quite sixty. To judge by the fringe, he once had a crop of sandy hair that was more or less curly. Some of the color still holds in the bristly mustache and the ear tufts. A short, chunky party with a stubby nose and sort of a solid-lookin' chin, he is.

But there never is much satisfaction kiddin' Jonesey. You can't get his goat. He just holds his hand up to his ear and asks kind of bored: "Eh, what's that?"

"How about them swell dames that used to go wild over you?" comes back Skip.

Old Jones gazes up at Skip kind of mild and puzzled. Then he shakes his head slow. "No," says he. "Not me. If--if they did I--I must have forgot."

Which sets the bunch to howlin' at Skip. "There! Maybe that'll hold you, eh?" someone remarks. And as they drift off Jonesey tackles a slice of lunch-room pie placid.

It struck me as rather neat, comin' from the old boy. He must have forgot! I had a chuckle over that all by myself. What could Jonesey have to forget? They tell me he's been with the Corrugated twenty years or more. Why, he must have been on the payroll before some of them young sports was born. And for the last fifteen he's held the same old job--a.s.sistant filin' clerk. Some life, eh?

About all we know of Old Jones is that he lives in a little back room down on lower Sixth Avenue with a mangy green parrot nearly as old as he is. They say he baches it there, cookin' his meals on a one-burner oil stove, never reportin' sick, never takin' a vacation, and never gettin'

above Thirty-third Street or below Fourteenth.

Course, so far as the force is concerned, he's just so much dead wood.

Every shake-up we have somebody wants to fire him, or pension him off.

But Mr. Ellins won't have it. "No," says he. "Let him stay on." And you bet Jonesey stays. He drills around, fussin' over the files, doing things just the way he did twenty years ago, I suppose, but never gettin' in anybody's way or pullin' any grouch. I've got so I don't notice him any more than as if he was somebody's shadow pa.s.sin' by. You know, he's just a blank. And if it wasn't for them bond-room humorists cuttin' loose at him once in a while I'd almost forget whether he was still on the staff or not.

It was this same afternoon, along about 2:30, that I gets a call from Old Hickory's private office and finds this picturesque lookin' bird with the three piece white lip whiskers and the premature Panama lid glarin' indignant at the boss.

"Torchy," says Mr. Ellins, glancin' at a card, "this is Senor Don Pedro Ca.s.saba y Tarragona."

"Oh, yes!" says I, just as though I wasn't surprised a bit.

"Senor Don Pedro and so on," adds Old Hickory, "is from Havana, and for the last half hour he has been trying to tell me something very important, I've no doubt, to him. As it happens I am rather busy on some affairs of my own and I--er--Oh, for the love of soup, Torchy take him away somewhere and find out what it's all about."

"Sure!" says I. "This way, Seenor."

"Perdone," says he. "Say-nohr."

"Got you," says I, "only I may not follow you very far. About all the Spanish I had I used up this noon orderin' an omelet, but maybe we can get somewhere if we're both patient. Here we are, in my nice cozy corner with all the rest of the day before us. Have a chair, Say-nohr."

He's a perky, high-colored old boy, and to judge by the restless black eyes, a real live wire. He looks me over sort of doubtful, stroking the zippy little chin tuft as he does it, but he ends by shruggin' his shoulders resigned.

"I come," says he, "in quest of Senor Captain Yohness."

"Yohness?" says I, tryin' to look thoughtful. "No such party around here that I know of."

"It must be," says he. "That I have ascertained."

"Oh, well!" says I. "Suppose we admit that much as a starter. What about him? What's he done?"

"Ah!" says the Senor Don Pedro, spreadin' out his hands eloquent. "But that is a long tale."

It was, too. I expect that was what had got him in wrong with Old Hickory. However, he tackles it once more, using the full-arm movement and sprinklin' in Spanish liberal whenever he got stuck. Course, this fallin' back on his native tongue must have been a relief to him, but it didn't help me out much. Some I could guess at, and when I couldn't I'd get him to repeat it until I worked up a hunch. Then we'd take a fresh start. It's surprisin', too, how well we got along after we had the system doped out.