The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon Part 40

Tidbury considered.

"Wadjuh got?"

The venerable Steinbock enumerated rapidly, "Bear, bandit, policeman, Turk, golliwog, ballet girl, kewpie, pantaloon, Uncle Sam, tramp, diver, Lord Fauntleroy, devil----"

The ears of Mr. Epps twitched at the last word.

"Devil?"

"Yes," said Mr. Steinbock; "a swell rig; nice red suit; hasn't been worn a dozen times." He leaned forward toward Tidbury and whispered, "And I'll throw in a brand-new pair of horns and a tail!"

"I'll take it!" cried Tidbury. "Where can I hang my pants?"

After an interval there emerged from the depths of the Steinbock establishment a small uncertain figure m.u.f.fled in an old raincoat. The coat was short and from beneath it protruded bright red legs and a generous length of red tail, with a spike on the end of it that gave forth sharp metallic sounds as it b.u.mped along the pavement. A derby hat concealed one horn, but the other was visible; the face was Mephistophelian in its general character, but softened and rounded--the countenance of a rather amiable minor devil.

Tidbury Epps paused on a street corner to get his bearings. He had read somewhere that woodsmen, lost in the forest, can find the points of the compa.s.s because moss always grows on the north side of trees. He was carefully investigating a lamp-post for a trace of moss when a beady-eyed urchin approached him with outthrust hand.

"Give us one, mister?"

"One what?"

"A sample."

"Sample of what?"

"Ain't you advertising something?"

Tidbury drew himself up.

"No," he said with dignity. "How do I get to Wazzington Square?"

"Aw, chee," the urchin said in disgust, "you're one of them artist guys!

Was.h.i.+ngton Square is two blocks south and three blocks west."

With every corpuscle in his small frame aglow with an excitement he had never before experienced Tidbury Epps started in determined search of the Pagan Rout. A grim purpose had been forming in his brain. So Martha Ritter thought he was quiet, eh? Hydeman had sn.i.g.g.e.red at him, had he?

Just wait till Terrible Battling Epps reached the ball and discovered the well-fed person of Mr. Hydeman in clerical garb. There would be fireworks, he promised himself. No one was going to steal the girl of Terrible Epps and get away with it.

These, and thoughts of a similar trend, reeled through the brain of Tidbury as he hurried with a series of skips and now and then a short sprint along the curbstone.

So busy did he become planning a dramatic descent on Hydeman that he forgot the directions of the urchin, and soon found himself hopelessly astray in an eel tangle of streets, as he repeated, "Two blocks wes' and three blocks souse. Or was it three blocks souse and two blocks wes'?"

Gripping his tail firmly in his hand he tried both plans. Pa.s.sers-by eyed him with the blase curiosity of New Yorkers, as he pa.s.sed at a dog trot.

Sometimes they nudged each other and remarked, "Artist. Goin' to this here Pagan Rout. Pretty snootful, too. Lucky stiff."

No one ventured to impede his slightly erratic progress; after half an hour of wandering he stopped, mopped his brow and observed, "Ought to be there by now."

As he said this he saw two figures across the street, two ladies of mature mold, picking their way along. It was their garb which made him give a shout of triumph and follow them. For one, who was fat, was dressed as a colonial dame with powdered hair, and the other, who was fatter, was a forty-year-old edition of Little Red Riding Hood; her hair was in pigtails, but she was discreetly skirted to the ankle bones. He followed these masqueraders with the wary steps of an Indian stalking a moose, until they turned into the bas.e.m.e.nt of a towering building of brick, from which issued the melodic sc.r.a.ping of fiddles and the pleasing bleating of horns. His heart skipped a beat. The Pagan Rout!

The devil's doorway.

Tidbury Epps shucked off his raincoat and derby hat, tossed them at a fire hydrant, put on his mask, dropped his tail, squared his red shoulders, knotted up his small fists, drew in a deep breath and plunged into the hall. So engrossed was he in these preparations that he failed to note a home-made poster nailed outside the door. It read:

COME ONE, COME ALL THE LADIES' AID SOCIETY WILL GIVE A COSTUME PARTY IN THE CHURCH BAs.e.m.e.nT TO-NIGHT

With a rolling gait Tidbury Epps entered the hall. Figures eddied about him in a dance, and, somewhat surprised, Tidbury noted that it was very like the old-fas.h.i.+oned waltzes he had seen in Calais, Maine. The waltzers evidently regarded dancing as a business of the utmost seriousness; their lips, beneath their dominoes, were rigid and severe, save when they counted softly but audibly, "One, two, three, turn. One, two, three, turn." In vain Tidbury searched the room for Jake the gorilla, the beaded lady, the organ-grinding pirate and the bimbo from the bamboo isle. He concluded that Jake's flasks had been too much for them. And he saw no gypsy or Hydeman. Indeed, as he watched the restrained and sober waltzers he could not escape the conviction that the Pagan Rout, for an inst.i.tution so widely known for impropriety, was singularly decent in the matter of costume. There were Priscillas in ample skirts, farmerettes in baggy overalls, milkmaids in Mother Hubbards, Pilgrim fathers, sailors, and Chinese in voluminous kimonos.

Tidbury, a little dazed in a corner, began to think that he had overestimated the glamour of sin.

He perceived that the obese Red Riding Hood was standing at his elbow, gazing at him with some curiosity.

He lurched toward her, and administered a slap of good-fellows.h.i.+p on her plump shoulder.

"'Lo, cutie," he remarked in accents slightly blurred. "Where's Cleopotter?"

The lady gave vent to a squeal of surprise.

"Sir," she said, "I do not know Miss Potter."

She sniffed the atmosphere in the vicinity of Mr. Epps, gave a little cluck of horror, and scurried away like a duck from a hawk.

The eyes of Mr. Epps followed her flight and he saw that she headed straight for a man who sat in a distant corner of the hall; the man was masked, but Tidbury felt every muscle in his five feet three inches of body stiffen as he saw that the man in the corner wore the garb of the clergy. Hydeman!

Red Riding Hood whispered in his ear and pointed an accusing finger toward Tidbury; the man in the corner gazed earnestly at the diminutive red devil teetering on red hoofs. By now Tidbury had spied another figure, sitting next to the masked preacher. She was a gypsy. And as she gazed at her companion she c.o.c.ked her head to one side.

With tail bouncing along the floor after him Tidbury started briskly in their direction at a lope. Within a yard of them he reined himself down, and stood, with a hand on either hip, glaring at the cleric and the gypsy.

Hydeman stood up. He seemed larger, rounder than the a.s.sistant to the sales manager known to Tidbury in business hours, but the fierce fire of jealousy burned within Mr. Epps--and he was not to be daunted by size.

"So it's you, is it?" he remarked with biting emphasis.

"Naturally," said the man. "Whom did you expect it to be?"

His voice had a soft sweet note in it, not at all like the sharp staccato of Hydeman's crisp business New Yorkese.

"He's making fun of me," said Tidbury, and the spirit of Terrible Battling Epps wholly possessed him.

"You thought I was a dead one, eh?" remarked Mr. Epps. "Well, I'm going to show you that sometimes the quiet ones come to life and----"

The other eyed him sternly.

"Young man," he said, "I fear that you are er--a bit--er--under the weather. I fear you are not one of us."

"Not one of you?" roared Tidbury with pa.s.sion mounting. "You're darn right I'm not one of you--you low, immoral Greenwich Villagers, leading innocent girls astray." He waved a thin red arm toward the gypsy.

The music had stopped in the midst of a bar; the masqueraders were crowding about. The accused ecclesiastic glared down at the small devil before him.

"How dare you say such a thing of me?" he demanded. "Who are you?"

"You know well enough who I am, Milt Hydeman," cried Tidbury, breathing jerkily. "I'm Terrible Battling Epps, and----"