Bunker Bean Part 12

"I'll call him Nap," promised Bean. He had ceased to feel blamable for the shortcomings of Napoleon I, but it was just as well not to have the name used too freely.

When he issued to the street, the excited dog on a leash, he was prouder than most kings have ever had occasion to be.

Now, he went to inspect flats. He would at last have "apartments," and in a neighbourhood suitable for a growing dog. He bestowed little attention on the premises submitted to his view, occupying himself chiefly with observing the effect of his dog on the various janitors.

Some were frankly hostile; some covertly so. Some didn't mind dogs--but there was rules. And some defeated themselves by a display of over-enthusiasm that manifestly veiled indifference, or perhaps downright dislike.

But a janitor was finally encountered who met the test. In ten seconds Bean knew that Ca.s.sidy would be a friend to any dog. He did not fawn upon the animal nor explode with praise. He merely bestowed a glance or two upon the distinguished head, and later rubbed the head expertly just back of the erect ears; this, while he exposed to Bean the circ.u.mstances under which one steam-heated apartment, suitable for light housekeeping, chanced to be vacant. The parties, it appeared, was givin' a Dutch lunch to a gang of their friends at 5 A.M. of a morning, and that was bad enough in a place that was well kep' up; but in the sicin' place they got sc.r.a.ppin', which had swiftly resulted in an ambulance call for the host and lessee, and the patrol wagon for his friends that were not in much better shape thimselves, praise Gawd. But the place was all cleaned up again and would be a jool f'r anny young man that could take a drink, or maybe two, and then stop.

Bean knew Ca.s.sidy by that time, and his inspection of the apartment was perfunctory. Ca.s.sidy would be a buckler and s.h.i.+eld to the dog, in his absence. Ca.s.sidy would love him. The dog, on his spread forefeet, touched his chest to the ground and with ears erect, eyes agleam, and inciting soprano gurgles invited the world to a mad, mad, game.

Ca.s.sidy only said, "Aw, g'wan! _Would_ you, now!" But each word was a caress. And Ca.s.sidy became Bean's janitor.

He moved the next day, bringing his effects in a cab. The cabman professed never to have seen a dog as "cla.s.sy" as Nap, and voiced the cheerful prophecy that in any bench show he would make them all look like mutts. He received a gratuity of fifty cents in addition to the outrageous fee he demanded for coming so far north, although he had the appearance of one who uses liquor to excess, and could probably not have qualified as a judge of dogs.

Bean's installation, under the guidance of Ca.s.sidy, was effected without delay. The apartment proved to be entirely suitable for a king in abeyance. There was a bedroom, a parlour, an alcove off the latter that Ca.s.sidy said was the libr'y an' a good place f'r a dawg t' sleep, and beyond this was a feminine diminutive of a kitchen, prettily called a "kitchenette."

Bean felt like an insect in such a labyrinth of a place. He forgot where he put things, and then, overcome by the vastness and number of rooms, forgot what he was looking for, losing himself in an abstracted and fruitless survey of the walls. He must buy things to hang on the walls, especially over certain stains on the wall of the parlour, or throne-room, to which in the heat of battle, doubtless, certain items of the late Dutch lunch had been misdirected.

But he knew what to buy. Etchings. In the magazine stories he read, aside from the very rich characters who had galleries of old masters, there were two cla.s.ses: one without taste that littered its rooms with expensive but ill-advised bric-a-brac; and one that wisely contented itself with "a few good etchings." He bought a few good etchings at a department store for $1.97 each, and felt irreproachable. And when he had arranged his books--about Napoleon I and ancient Egypt--he was ready to play the game of living. Mrs. Ca.s.sidy "did" his rooms, and Ca.s.sidy already showed the devotion of an old and tried retainer. The Ca.s.sidys made him feel feudal.

At night, while Nap fought a never-decided battle with a sofa-pillow, or curled asleep on the couch with a half-inch of silly pink tongue projecting from between his teeth, he read of Egypt, the black land, where had been the first great people of the ancient world. He devoured the fruit of the lotus, the tamarisk, the pomegranate, and held cats to be sacred. (Funny, that feeling he had always had about cats--afraid of them even in childhood--it had survived in his being!) There he had lived and reigned in that flat valley of the Nile, between borders of low mountains, until his name had been put down in the book of the dead, and he had gone for a time to the hall of Osiris.

Or, perhaps, he read reports of psychical societies, signed by men with any number of capital letters after their names: cool-headed scientists, university professors, psychologists, grave students all, who were constantly finding new and wonderful mediums, and achieving communication with the disembodied. He could tell them a few things; only, of course, he wouldn't make a fool of himself. He could _show_ them something, too, when the secret agents of Professor Balthasar came bringing It.

Or he looked into the opal depths of his sh.e.l.l, and saw visions of his greatness to come, while Nap, unregarded, wrenched away one of his slippers and pretended to find it something alive and formidable, to be growled at and shaken and savagely macerated.

There came, on a certain fair morning, a summons from Breede, who was detained at his country place by the same malady that Bulger had once so crudely diagnosed. Bean was to bring out the mail and do his work there.

The car waited below.

At another time the expedition might have attracted him. He had studied pictures of that country place in the Sunday papers. Now it meant a separation from his dog, who was already betraying for the Ca.s.sidys a greater fondness than the circ.u.mstances justified; and it meant an absence from town at the very time when the secret agents might happen along with It. Of course he could refuse to go, but that would cost him his job, and he was not yet even the director of an express company.

Dejectedly he prepared for the journey.

"Better take some things along," suggested Tully, who had conveyed the order to him. "He may keep you three or four days."

Bulger followed him to the hall.

"Look out for Grandma, the Demon!" warned Bulger. "'F I was the old man I'd slip something in her tea."

"Who--who is she?" demanded Bean.

"Just his dear, sweet old mother, that's all! Talk you to death--suffergette! Oh! say!"

Reaching the street, his gloom was not at all lightened by the discovery of the flapper in the waiting car. She gave him the little double-nod and regarded him with that peculiar steely kindness he so well remembered. It was undoubtedly kind, that look, yet there was an implacable something in its quality that dismayed him. He wondered what she exactly meant by it.

"Get in," commanded the flapper, and Bean got in.

"Tell him where to go for your things."

Bean told him.

"I'm glad it's on our way. Pops is in an awful state. He swore right out at his own mother this morning, and he wants you there in a hurry. Maybe we'll be arrested for speeding."

Bean earnestly hoped they would. Pops in health was ordeal enough. But he remained silent, trusting to the vigilance of an excellent constabulary. The car reached the steam-heated apartment without adventure, however, and he quickly secured his suit-case and consigned the dog for an uncertain period to a Ca.s.sidy, who was brazenly taking more than a friendly interest in him. Ca.s.sidy talked bluntly of how "we"

ought to feed him, as if he were already a part owner of the animal.

The car flew on, increasing a speed that had been unlawful almost from the start. He wondered what the police were about. He might write a sharp letter to the newspapers, signed, "Indignant Pedestrian," only it would be too late. He was being volleyed at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour into the presence of a man who had that morning sworn at his mother. He wished he could, say for one day, have Breede back there on the banks of the Nile--set him to work building a pyramid, or weeding the lotus patch, foot or _no_ foot! He'd show him!

He switched this resentment to the young female at his side. He wanted her to quit looking at him that way. It made him nervous. But a m.u.f.fled glance or two at her disarmed this feeling. She was all right to look at, he thought, had pretty hands and "all that"--she had stripped off her gloves when they reached the open country--and she didn't talk, which was what he most feared in her s.e.x. He recalled that she had said hardly a word since the start. He might have supposed himself forgotten had it not been for that look of veiled determination which he encountered as often as he dared.

A young dog dashed from a gateway ahead of them and threatened the car furiously. They both applied imaginary brakes to the car with feet and hands and taut nerves. The puppy escaping death by an inch, trotted back to his saved home with an air that comes from duty well performed. They looked from the dog to each other.

"I'd make them against the law," said Bean.

"How could you? The idea!"

"I mean motors, not dogs."

"Oh! Of course!"

They had been brought a little together.

"You go in for dogs?" asked the flapper.

He hesitated. "Going in" for dogs seemed to mean more. "I've got only one just now," he confessed.

Wooded hills flew by them, the white road flickered forward to their wheels.

"You interested in the movement?" demanded the flapper again.

"Yes," he said.

"Granny will be delighted to know that. So many young men aren't."

"What make is it?" he inquired, preparing to look enlightened when told the name of the vehicle in which they rode.

"Oh, I mean the Movement--_the_ movement!"

"Oh, yes," he faltered. "Greatly interested!" He remembered the badge on her jacket, and Bulger's warning about Grandma, the Demon.

"Granny and I marched in the parade this year, clear down to Was.h.i.+ngton Square. If she wasn't so old we'd both run over to London and get arrested in the Strand for breaking windows."

Bean shuddered.

"We're making our flag now for the next parade--big blue cloth with a gold star for every state that has raised woman from her degradation by giving her a vote."

He shuddered again. Although of legal years for the franchise, he had never voted. If you tried to vote some ward-heeler would challenge you and you'd like as not be hauled off to the lock-up. And what was the good of it! The politicians got what they wanted. But this he kept to himself.