Torchy Part 12

Come, you'd better be going now."

It was a case of "Here's your hat--what's your hurry!"

"Say," says I, "don't you go to swallowin' any tale about the Lady Mildred havin' a brother that's a crook. There's lots of Morgans besides her and J. P."

But all Aunt Laura does is hold the door open for me; so I beats it, feelin' about as chipper as though I'd been turnin' State's evidence.

The more I thinks of it, the cheaper I feels. Here I'd been playin'

myself for Mr. Foxy Cute, and had let an old lemon squeezer like Aunt Laura wring me dry!

Just what she's got up her sleeve about the penitentiary business, I didn't know; but I wa'n't long in findin' out. Next day there was all kinds of a row. Aunt Laura has looked up the invitation list for the weddin', and, sure enough, among the also rans was a Mr. William Morgan, with a State penitentiary address. With that, and what she'd heard over the 'phone, Aunt Laura makes out a strong case. Was she goin' to stand by and see her only nephew marry into a family of jailbirds? Not if she could help it! So she calls in Mr. Robert and puts the layout before him.

It looks like a bad mess, with Mildred on the toboggan; for Mr. Robert has said he'd see what could be done. He don't promise anything; but Benny's always been such a willin' performer that he guesses maybe he can talk him out of wantin' to get married. He didn't know Benny, though. These short, fat, dimpled boys are just the ones to fool you, and when it came to tellin' Benny about Brother Bill, that was doin'

time, Benny works his lips at high speed sayin' that he don't believe it.

"Anyway," says Benny, "it ithn't Bill I'm marrying. I don't give a cuth for him. I'd juth ath thoon marry Mildred if her whole doothed family wath in jail."

"That settles it, Benny," says Mr. Robert. "If that's the way you feel.

I'll stand by you."

Maybe Aunt Laura wa'n't wild, though, when she finds she can't block the game. I was handlin' the office switchboard the afternoon she calls Mr.

Robert up to give him the rake-over, and the old girl warms up the wires until she near has the lightnin' arresters out of business. It comes out too that she's sore on Benny's bein' married because she sees the finish of her steady job as boss of the house on the avenue. She can't queer Mr. Robert though.

"Benny seems to have a clear idea as to just whom he wants to marry,"

says he, "and that's enough for me. If Miss Morgan has a brother in the penitentiary, and Benny doesn't mind, I'm sure I don't. I've known lots of fellows who wished their brothers-in-law were in the same place.

Anyway, he'll not trouble us by showing up at the wedding, even if she did send him an invitation."

That's the kind of a sport Mr. Robert is. He's dead game, and when you've got him for a friend you'll know who to send for if you should ever get run in. So we goes along gettin' ready for the weddin' same's if nothin's happened. It's billed for a church hitch; but there ain't been any advertisin' done, so they don't expect any crowd. Look when they has it too--right at lunch time!

"Chee!" says I to Mr. Robert, who's running the thing, "you must be playin' for a frost. Now if you'd hire one of them Third-ave. halls and band, you might give 'em somethin' of a send-off; but it'll be hard to tell this racket from one of these noonday prayin' bees they has down in the wholesale crock'ry district."

Mr. Robert says that Benny bein' so bashful, and Mildred not knowin'

many folks on East, they wanted to make it as quiet as they could.

"It'll have a pantomime show beat to death on quiet," says I. "Put me on the door, will you, so's I can keep awake jos.h.i.+n' the sidewalk cop?"

Mr. Robert says he thinks that'll be a good place for me, as they ain't goin' to let anyone in without a ticket and I'm used to shuntin' cranks.

But say, I'm so rattled when I get inside of that suit they sent around for me to wear that I don't know whether I'm goin' up or comin' down.

Honest, that coat made me feel like I was wearin' a dress. I didn't mind the striped pants,--they was all to the good,--but them skirts flappin'

around my knees was the limit.

Think I had the face to spring that outfit on the folks at the boardin'

house? Never in a year! Why, some of them Lizzie girls rangin' the block would have guyed me out of the borough. I just folds the thing inside out over my arm, like it was some one's overcoat I was takin' around to have a b.u.t.ton s.h.i.+fted, and when I gets to the church I slides up into the gallery and makes a quick change. Mr. Robert looks me over and says no one would guess it was me.

"I'm hopin' they don't," says I.

But as soon as the carriages begun comin' and I gets busy callin' for the seat checks, I forgets how I looks and stops huntin' for some place to stow my hands. It was a cinch job. There was only a few lady b.u.t.t-ins that had strayed over from the shoppin' district and smelled out a free show.

"We're intimate friends of the bride," says a pair of 'em; "but we've forgotten our tickets."

"That's good, but musty. b.u.t.t out, please," says I.

Chee! but I ain't used up so much politeness since I can remember! It was wearin' them clothes did it, I guess.

Well, I was gettin' to feel real gay, for most everyone that was due was inside, and I hadn't made any breaks to speak of, and it was near time for the Lady Mildred to be floatin' in, when I pipes off a tall, husky-lookin' gent, with a funny black lid and an umbrella tucked under one arm, gawpin' up at the sign on the church.

"Tourist from Punk Hollow lookin' for the Flatiron Buildin'," says I to myself; but the next minute he comes meanderin' up the steps, fis.h.i.+n' a card out of his pocket. You can bet I plants myself in the door and calls for credentials!

But, say, he had the goods. There was the ticket, all right, with the name wrote on it, and it didn't need but one squint at the pasteboard for me to break into a cold sweat. It wa'n't anybody else but Mr.

William Morgan!

"Say," says I, as hoa.r.s.e as a huckster, "are you Brother Bill?"

"Why," says he, kind of surprised, but not half so stunned as I thought he'd be,--"why, I suppose I am."

You wouldn't have guessed it. Not that he didn't look the brother part; for he did. He went Mildred two or three inches better in height, and he had snappy black eyes and black hair like hers. The points that goes with a striped suit and the lock step was missin', though. But how you goin' to tell, in these times when our toniest fatwads is sittin' around the mahogany votin' to raise the price of chewin' gum to-day, and gettin' a free haircut to-morrow? There wa'n't any time for me to stand there guessin' whether he'd been pardoned, or had slid down the rain pipe. Somethin' had to be done, and done quick.

"Dodge in here and wait a minute," says I. "There's some word been left for you."

With that I sneaks down the side aisle and into the little cloakroom, where Mr. Robert was keepin' Benny's mind off'n what was comin' to him by makin' him count the geranium leaves in the carpet.

"Mr. Robert," says I, luggin' him off to one side, "you want to give up predictin' the future. Bill's come!"

"What Bill?" says he.

"The one from the rock pile, Brother Bill," says I.

"That's lovely!" says he.

"It's all of that," says I.

"I hope he's not wearing his uniform still," says Mr. Robert.

"Not on the outside," says I. "He looks like he'd pinched a minister's Monday suit somewhere. But it ain't the way he looks that's worryin' me; it's what he's liable to do any minute to put the show on the blink."

"That's so, Torchy," says he. "Can't we get him out of the way somehow?"

"It's a tough proposition," says I; "but if you'll put on a sub for me at the door, and give me leave to make any play that I happens to think of, I'll tackle it."

"Good!" says Mr. Robert. "And I'll make it worth a hundred to you to keep him away from here until it's all over."

"I'm on the job," says I.

As I skips back I grabs my hat out from under a rear seat and makes straight for Brother Bill. "Come on," says I. "She's waitin' for you now. We've got just half an hour to do it in."

Bill, he looks sort of jarred and reluctant; but I has him by the arm and is chasin' him down the steps before he can ask any dippy questions.

First off I thought of runnin' him up the avenue until he's clean winded; but I see by the way he strikes out that it would take more lungs than I've got to do that.

There was a lot of weddin' cabs and such waitin' round the corner, though; so I steers him into the first one that has the ap.r.o.n up, jumps in after him, shoves up the door in the roof, and sings out: