Short Fiction by O. Henry (librera reader txt) 📕

You want to hurry. I’ve got to get back home. The house is only three blocks from here.”

Before ten minutes had sped the captain with a dozen men stole with their guide into the hallway of a dark and virtuous-looking building in which many businesses were conducted by day.

“Third floor, rear,” said the Kid, softly. “I’ll lead the way.”

Two axemen faced the door that he pointed out to them.

“It seems all quiet,” said the captain, doubtfully. “Are you sure your tip is straight?”

“Cut away!” said the Kid. “It’s on me if it ain’t.”

The axes crashed through the as yet unprotected door. A blaze of light from within poured through the smashed panels. The door fell, and the raiders sprang into the room with their guns handy.

The big room was furnished with the gaudy magnificence dear to Denver Dick’s western ideas. Various well-patronized games were in progress. About fifty men who were in the room rushed upon the police in a grand break for personal liberty. The plain-clothes men had to do a little club-swinging. More than half the patrons escaped.

Denver Dick had graced his game with his own presence that night. He led the rush that was intended to sweep away the smaller body of raiders, But when he saw the Kid his manner became personal. Being in the heavyweight class he cast himself joyfully upon his slighter enemy, and they rolled down a flight of stairs in each other’s arms. On the landing they separated and arose, and then the Kid was able to use some of his professional tactics, which had been useless to him while in the excited clutch of a 200-pound sporting gentleman who was about to lose $20,000 worth of paraphernalia.

After vanquishing his adversary the Kid hurried upstairs and through the gambling-room into a smaller apartment connecting by an arched doorway.

Here was a long table set with choicest chinaware and silver, and lavishly furnished with food of that expensive and spectacular sort of which the devotees of sport are supposed to be fond. Here again was to be perceived the liberal and florid taste of the gentleman with the urban cognomenal prefix.

A No. 10 patent leather shoe protruded a few of its inches outside the tablecloth along the floor. The Kid seized this and plucked forth a black man in a white tie and the garb of a servitor.

“Get up!” commanded the Kid. “Are you in charge of this free lunch?”

“Yes, sah, I was. Has they done pinched us ag’in, boss?”

“Looks that way. Listen to me. Are there any peaches in this layout? If there ain’t I’ll have to throw up the sponge.”

“There was three dozen, sah, when the game opened this evenin’; but I reckon the gentlemen done eat ’em all up. If you’d like to eat a fust-rate orange, sah, I kin find you some.”

“Get busy,” ordered the Kid, sternly, “and move whatever peach crop you’ve got quick or there’ll be trouble. If anybody oranges me again tonight, I’ll knock his face off.”

The raid on Denver Dick’s high-priced and prodigal luncheon revealed one lone, last peach that had escaped the epicurean jaws of the followers of chance. Into the Kid’s pocket it went, and that indefatigable forager departed immediately with his prize. With scarcely a glance at the scene on the sidewalk below, where the officers were loading their prisoners into the patrol wagons, he moved homeward with long, swift strides.

His heart was light as he went. So rode the knights back to Camelot after perils and high deeds done for their ladies fair. The Kid’s lady had commanded him and he had obeyed. True, it was but a peach that she had craved; but it had been no small deed to glean a peach at midnight from that wintry city where yet the February snows lay like iron. She had asked for a peach; she was his bride; in his pocket the peach was warming in his hand that held it for fear that it might fall out and be lost.

On the way the Kid turned in at an all-night drug store and said to the spectacled clerk:

“Say, sport, I wish you’d size up this rib of mine and see if it’s broke. I was in a little scrap and bumped down a flight or two of stairs.”

The druggist made an examination. “It isn’t broken,” was his diagnosis, “but you have a bruise there that looks like you’d fallen off the Flatiron twice.”

“That’s all right,” said the Kid. “Let’s have your clothesbrush, please.”

The bride waited in the rosy glow of the pink lamp shade. The miracles were not all passed away. By breathing a desire for some slight thing⁠—a flower, a pomegranate, a⁠—oh, yes, a peach⁠—she could send forth her man into the night, into the world which could not withstand him, and he would do her bidding.

And now he stood by her chair and laid the peach in her hand.

“Naughty boy!” she said, fondly. “Did I say a peach? I think I would much rather have had an orange.”

Blest be the bride.

The Shocks of Doom

There is an aristocracy of the public parks and even of the vagabonds who use them for their private apartments. Vallance felt rather than knew this, but when he stepped down out of his world into chaos his feet brought him directly to Madison Square.

Raw and astringent as a schoolgirl⁠—of the old order⁠—young May breathed austerely among the budding trees. Vallance buttoned his coat, lighted his last cigarette and took his seat upon a bench. For three minutes he mildly regretted the last hundred of his last thousand that it had cost him when the bicycle cop put an end to his last automobile ride. Then he felt in every pocket and found not a single penny. He had given up his apartment that morning. His furniture had gone toward certain debts. His clothes, save what were upon him, had descended to his manservant for back wages. As he sat there was not