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

his hand he clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously.

Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech.

“Me?” said the youngster. “I’m doin’ to the drug ’tore for mamma. She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med’cin.”

“Now, now, now!” said Morley. “Such a big man you are to be doing errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that the cars don’t run over him. And on the way we’ll have some chocolates. Or would he rather have lemon drops?”

Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money.

On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound.

“Aqua pura, one pint,” said he to the druggist. “Sodium chloride, ten grains. Fiat solution. And don’t try to skin me, because I know all about the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes.”

“Fifteen cents,” said the druggist, with a wink after he had compounded the order. “I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is the regular price.”

“To gulls,” said Morley, smilingly.

He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child’s arms and escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85 cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge.

“Look out for the cars, sonny,” he said, cheerfully, to his small victim.

Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner of his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky with vile, cheap candy from the Italian’s fruit stand.

Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of inexpensive Château Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so genuinely that the waiter ventured to premise that good news had come his way.

“Why, no,” said Morley, who seldom held conversation with anyone. “It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know what three divisions of people are easiest to overreach in transactions of all kinds?”

“Sure,” said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by the careful knot of Morley’s tie; “there’s the buyers from the dry goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from Staten Island, and⁠—”

“Wrong!” said Morley, chuckling happily. “The answer is just⁠—men, women and children. The world⁠—well, say New York and as far as summer boarders can swim out from Long Island⁠—is full of greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, François.”

“If yez t’inks it’s on de bum,” said the waiter, “Oi’ll⁠—”

Morley lifted his hand in protest⁠—slightly martyred protest.

“It will do,” he said, magnanimously. “And now, green Chartreuse, frappé and a demitasse.”

Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore.

A joyful party of four⁠—two women and two men⁠—fell upon him with cries of delight. There was a dinner party on⁠—where had he been for a fortnight past?⁠—what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded and engulfed him⁠—he must join them⁠—tra la la⁠—and the rest.

One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: “See what I can do with him?” and added her queen’s command to the invitations.

“I leave you to imagine,” said Morley, pathetically, “how it desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at 8.”

The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an arc light down the frolicsome way.

Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and laughing gleefully to himself. “ ‘Front,’ ” he chanted under his breath; “ ‘front’ does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it in! Men, women and children⁠—forgeries, water-and-salt lies⁠—how they all take it in!”

An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street cars to the sidewalk at Morley’s side.

“Stranger,” said he, “excuse me for troubling you, but do you know anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He’s my son, and I’ve come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know what I done with his street and number.”

“I do not, sir,” said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy in them. “You had better apply to the police.”

“The police!” said the old man. “I ain’t done nothin’ to call in the police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could⁠—”

“I told you I did not,” said Morley, coldly. “I know no one by the name of Smithers, and I advise you to⁠—”

“Smothers not Smithers,” interrupted the old man hopefully. “A heavyset man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth out, about five foot⁠—”

“Oh, ‘Smothers!’ ” exclaimed Morley. “Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in the next house to me. I thought you said ‘Smithers.’ ”

Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do it for a dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the ninety-eight-cent one that the railroads⁠—according to these watchmakers⁠—are run by.

“The Bishop of Long Island,” said Morley, “was to meet me here at 8 to dine with me at the Kingfishers’ Club. But I can’t leave the father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. Swithin, Mr. Smothers, we