Believe You Me! Part 18

"Hey! get me a pail of water, quick!" says the cop. I did it, and then, I will certainly give him credit for it, he grabbed up the bundle and plunged it in with both hands just as Anna come in at the door.

Believe you me, I never saw anything so funny as what happened then. The cop took his hands out the water and stood there dripping and staring at her.

"h.e.l.lo, Anna!" he says. "What you doing here?"

"Ay bane working!" says Anna. "How you bane, Mike?"

"Pretty good!" he says. "But kind of busy with a bomb we got here. Stand off while I take a look. It has quit ticking and I guess it's drownded!"

He lifted the wet bundle out, and the minute Anna sees it she set up a yell as good as one of her pet parrot's.

"That bane mine!" she says, making a grab for it. But Mike held her off.

"Yours, eh?" he says, severely. _"Yours!_ Well, we'll just have a look at it, my girl!"

With which he undid the string, unfolded the oilcloth, and there was a big new alarm-clock with the price still on it--2 beans--and a round, heavy cheese!

"Bane youst a present from may feller!" says Anna coyly.

Well, did we feel cheap? We did. And in addition to that Mike, the smart and brave young cop, was disappointed something terrible.

"Who is this Anna?" I asked him soon's I got my breath.

"Oh, a Swede girl--I know her a long time," he says foolishly. "Used to entertain me in the bas.e.m.e.nt when I was on the regular force. She's _some_ cook! You're lucky to have her."

And just then this ex-pro-German Bolshevist cook we was so lucky to have starts to yell again!

"Frits! Oy! Frits!" she says. "He bane gone! Make un yoump back!"

And sure enough, there was Frits on the fire-escape of the flat next to us. He had give one hop and a flutter and got across, where he sat, silent for once in his life and giving us the evil-eye.

"Yoump back," says the cook in pa.s.sionate entriety. "Yoump back to your Aniky that you love! All day you yell you love may an' now you leave may!"

And as she said them words still another weight was lifted from my shoulders, although not from hers, for instead of jumping back, that radical bird which it seemed was not a radical after all and acting like the most conventional parrot in the world, commenced to climb up the fire-escape of the other apartment house, like he was leaving us forever.

"Yoump!" implored Anna, but he just climbed, instead.

"Here, wait, and I'll get him!" says Mike. "Glad to do it, Anna. I can step across easy enough!"

Anna held his coat, and he swung hisself over to the other side almost as neat as a picture-actor, and commenced following that mean-hearted bird up and up, story after story, until that animal led him in at a open window about three flats above. We waited in silence and, believe you me, I had about commenced to believe that bird and he was never coming out again, when down comes Mike, the bird tucked into his vest, his face simply purple with excitement. I never seen any acrobat work swifter or quieter than he did. He landed on the kitchen floor and closed the window behind him before he even give Anna her bird.

"The telephone!--quick! The telephone--headquarters at once--I've got that guy this time at last! And to think that a d.a.m.n bird had to find him for me!"

And it was the truth. Frits, far from being an alien, was a good little American parrot and had actually led the cop to the very place he had been looking for all that while, and they arrested two guys and everything!

And after they got through the phone rang and there was Goldringer's voice.

"The aeroplane has come, Miss La Tour," he says. "When will you be over?"

"First thing in the morning!" I says, relieved to think of a quiet day ahead. Ain't it grand to have work you love to do? It's so restful!

VI

THE GLAD HAND

I

I SEE a piece in the paper where that ex-leading headliner of the old German Big-Time Circuit, William Hohenzollern, him that used to appear in the spiritualistic act known as "Me and G.o.d," claims he had no hand in starting those fireworks in Europe which has recently ended in a Fourth of July celebration. And although myself a good American and looking with doubt upon any statement known to be German, I am sort of inclined to believe him. At any rate, to believe that he was not the whole cheese in the matter, but only a sort of limp limberger, or swiss, and full of holes. Because it's my experience personally myself, that a strong personality with a clean-cut idea can usually get a thing done if they elect theirself boss and stick on the job until it is finished, but if they call a committee meeting and discuss the action before them, the whole idea is likely to get stalled. Why, look at Congress! Not that I, being a mere lady of the female sect, know why or how they get stalled, or on just what. But it's a cinch they do and are, and you can prove it by any editorial page in the country. And it seems that Billy the Bone-head, confessed to the reporter, which managed to get this Sunday story printed, that a committee meeting of Yonkers or something was called about the war, he, Bill the Badman, not having the bean to go to it alone, and it was them ruined the war, or so he says. Which goes to show that not alone in the theatrical and moving-picture worlds do the heads of departments alibi their flivvers, but also in the King-business, and it's a habit which may even yet ruin the former, as it pretty near has the latter, unless they quit s.h.i.+rking and deliver better goods. Because if the Head Has-Been had had any real thinker and had thought up the war all by his little self and forced it on his book-keeper, cas.h.i.+er and so forth, he might of got away with it like Napoleon and Rockefeller and Eva Tanguay and a lot of them which has thrust riches and success upon theirselves.

But no committee can ever do that sort of thing. It takes a single-handed personality, and I guess mabe the biggest bluff Germany has had to confess to is her ex-leader. He seems the A-1 example of how true it is that well-known tailors' ad, "Clothes make the man." Also it inspires me to invent a quotation to hang beside the famous one of Shakespeare's, I think it is "Do it now!" which you see so often, mine being "Do it yourself!" Well, you will if you are the able one on a committee. Everybody which has served on one knows that every committee is composed of the one which does all the work and three to six others which uses most of their vitality and imagination in thinking up excuses and offering them.

Well, anyways, the foregoing is why I simply eliminated the other members of my Theatrical Ladies' Committee of Welcome to Our Returning Heroes. And eliminating them was so simple, too. I just didn't call any committee. And why would I, what with the knowledge I had gained through former experiences? Believe you me, a lady which learns by experience is a great little time-saver, although admittedly rare, but in my line you don't fall out of a air-plane more than once, and any successful picture actress and dancer like myself will tell you the same. So as to committees, none for me, thanks just the same, as the man said to the soda clerk the morning of July first, 1919 A. D., which is Latin for Anti-Drinking. Not that I will ever again try to get into the strong-character cla.s.s with the aforementioned celebrities, for a reputation for doing anything well is as good as a signed contract to do it. And my advice to young girls is, don't let it be known you can do anything well or you'll have to deliver constantly. Look as ignorant as possible whenever anything is suggested except the thing you are burning to get after, or your time will be taken up with a lot of useless side-lines that get you nowheres. There is a person for every job if you just let the job alone until the right person finds it. Did you ever notice the way simps which can't do a thing always get it done for them?

You have! Well--from this on, here's where I look like a poor fish whenever anybody outside of a motion-picture magnate or a theatrical manager makes a noise like work to be done.

All the amateur stuff can be taken care of by the sweet womanly women who ain't got anybody to support except their dressmakers, and not by a mere professional earning near a hundred thousand a year like I. My final lesson on working with volunteer boards and committees is a un-wept memory, and believe you me, that Chateau Terry battle had nothing on some of the War Relief Committee board rooms I seen in executive session and keep the home fires burning is right, we done it, especially the White Kittens Belgian Relief, which it's a fact we nearly split over whether we'd print our postcard appeals on pink or yellow cards!

Well, anyways, I suppose these relief committees was a big help to them that was on them if not to any one else, and after all a lot of money somehow got left to do good with after expenses was paid. But the biggest relief I know of come from relieving ourselfs of them relief committees, and the last of all was the Welcome Home one.

I wouldn't of gone on it in the first place only I was so low in my mind. And who wouldn't be a little low even with my cheery disposition after such a morning as I went through, first commencing with the loss of Maude.

Not that I had ever liked her nor 'Frisco, her husband, either, but losing her was worse than living with her any day, and when Ma come in and broke the news I wasn't in any mood for it, struggling as I was over the joint contract which Goldringer had just sent on from Los Angeles as a nice surprise and welcome for Jim which we were expecting to hear he would be leaving France any day now. It called for seventy-five thousand per each of us for six joint pictures, our expenses to the coast, and I was holding out for a car while there and a special publicity man of our own to be paid by them, but chosen by us, meaning Rosco, which has so faithfully let the public know every time I sneezed these last five years and has a way of disguising a two column ad so's the editor thinks it's a news item.

Well, anyways, I was reading through all that foreign language portion of this contract and had waded past about a page of "to wit, viz.: party of the first part" stuff, which sounds like it didn't mean anything, but is where they sometimes slip one over on you, when in come Ma with a big home-made cruller partly in her hand and partly in her face. She was dreadfull agitated but had to get rid of the first part of the second party before she could speak, and I put in a few seconds of watchful waiting, wondering how could she do it, for Ma had put on at least thirty lbs. the last few months and believe you me, she was no slif before then, weighing some amount she would never tell just what and anybody knows what that means with a woman. But up to just recent she had gone through spells where she was making at least the faint motions of dieting, or when not that, sighing and saying she hadn't really ought to over every second helping but taking it. Do you get me? You do!

Since she had heard Jim was coming back, however, she had taken to eating everything in sight regardless. It give me real pleasure to think of any mother-in-law feeling that way about her daughter's husband and dancing partner coming back, for with many mothers it is nothing of the kind. So I made no remarks upon the cruller, and finally Ma give a gulp and gasped out the bad news.

"Maude is gone!" she says.

"Gone?" says I. "Whatter you mean, gone?"

"I can't find her no place!" says Ma. "And I looked everywheres!"

This give me a most unpleasant feeling down my back, and I got to my feet in a hurry.

"Are you sure she ain't hid?" I says, "like the last time," I says.

"Come and see for yourself!" says Ma, and I went, you can bet on that!

And sure enough, she wasn't in the box. Ma lifted the wire off the top and lifted out the two old sofa cus.h.i.+ons we had put in for comfort and only Maude's husband, 'Frisco, was there. He was as usual lying in about five coils like a boiler-heater, with his wicked-looking flat head on the top, and he stuck out his oyster fork of a tongue, and give us a little hiss, much as to say, why was we always disturbing him. But no Maude.

"Ma!" I began, catching a guilty look on her face. "Ma Gilligan, you left that snake out again! After all the times I ast you not to!"