The Life of the Party Page 2

really it is; so--so cute and everything. AndI don't know what I should have done without you to help in the gamesand everything. There's no use denying it, Mr. Leary--you were the lifeof the party, absolutely!"

  At least twice during the night Mrs. Carroway had told Mr. Leary this,and now as he bade her farewell she was saying it once more inpractically the same words, when Mrs. Carroway's coloured maid, Blanche,touched him on the arm.

  "'Scuse me, suh," apologised Blanche, "but the hall man downstairs hesend up word jes' now by the elevator man 'at you'd best be comin' righton down now, suh, effen you expects to git a taxicab. He say to tell youthey ain't but one taxicab left an' the driver of 'at one's beenwaitin' fur hours an' he act like he might go way any minute now. 'At'swhut the hall man send word, suh."

  Blanche had brought his overcoat along and held it up for him, impartingto the service that small suggestion of a ceremonial rite which themembers of her race invariably do display when handling a garment ofrichness of texture and indubitable cost. Mr. Leary let her help himinto the coat and slipped largess into her hand, and as he steppedaboard the waiting elevator for the downward flight Mrs. Carroway'svoice came fluting to him, once again repeating the flattering phrase:"You surely were the life of the party!"

  II

  It was fine to have been the life of the party. It was not quite so fineto discover that the taxicab to which he must entrust himself for thelong ride up to West Eighty-fifth Street was a most shabby-appearingvehicle, the driver of which, moreover, as Mr. Leary could divine evenas he crossed the sidewalk, had wiled away the tedium of waiting byindulgence in draughts of something more potent than the chill air oflatish November. Mr. Leary peered doubtfully into the illuminatedcountenance but dulled eyes of the driver and caught a whiff of a breathalcoholically fragrant, and he understood that the warning relayed tohim by Blanche had carried a subtle double meaning. Still, there was noother taxicab to be had. The street might have been a byway in oldPompeii for all the life that moved within it. Washington Square, facinghim, was as empty as a graveyard generally is at this hour, and thesemblance of a conventional graveyard in wintertime was helped out by alight snow--the first of the season--sifting down in large damp flakes.

  Twice and thrice he repeated the address, speaking each time sharply anddistinctly, before the meaning seemed to filter into the befoggedintellect of the inebriate. On the third rendition the latter rousedfrom where he was slumped down.

  "I garcia, Steve," he said thickly. "I garcia firs' time only y'hollowed s'loud I couldn und'stancher."

  So saying he lurched into a semiupright posture and fumbled for thewheel. Silently condemning the curse of intemperance among the workingclasses of a great city Mr. Leary boarded the cab and drew the skirts ofhis overcoat down in an effort to cover his knees. With a harsh gratingof clutches and an abrupt jerk the taxi started north.

  Wobbling though he was upon his perch the driver mechanically steered areasonably straight course. The passenger leaning back in the depths ofthe cab confessed to himself he was a trifle weary and more than atrifle sleepy. At thirty-seven one does not dance and play children'sgames alternately for six hours on a stretch without paying for theexertion in a sensation of let-downness. His head slipped forward on hischest.

  III

  With a drowsy uncertainty as to whether he had been dozing for hours oronly for a very few minutes Mr. Leary opened his eyes and sat up. Thecar was halted slantwise against a curbing; the chauffeur was jammeddown again into a heap. Mr. Leary stepped nimbly forth upon thepavement, feeling in his overcoat pocket for the fare; and then herealised he was not in West Eighty-fifth Street at all; he was not inany street that he remembered ever having seen before in the course ofhis life. Offhand, though, he guessed he was somewhere in that mysticmaze of brick and mortar known as Old Greenwich Village; and, for afurther guess, in that particular part of it where business during theselast few years had been steadily encroaching upon the ancient residencesof long departed Knickerbocker families.

  The street in which he stood, for a wonder in this part of town, ran afairly straight course. At its western foot he could make out throughthe drifting flakes where a squat structure suggestive of a North Riverfreight dock interrupted the sky line. In his immediate vicinity thestreet was lined with tall bleak fronts of jobbing houses, all dark andall shuttered. Looking the other way, which would be eastward, he couldmake out where these wholesale establishments tailed off, to besucceeded by the lower shapes of venerable dwellings adorned with thedormered windows and the hip roofs which distinguished a bygonearchitectural period. Some distance off in this latter direction thevista between the buildings was cut across by the straddle-bug structureof one of the Elevated roads. All this Mr. Leary comprehended in a quickglance about him, and then he turned on the culprit cabman with rage inhis heart.

  "See here, you!" he snapped crossly, jerking the other by the shoulder."What do you mean by bringing me away off here! This isn't where Iwanted to go. Oh, wake up, you!"

  Under his vigorous shaking the driver slid over sideways until hethreatened to decant himself out upon Mr. Leary. His cap falling offexposed the blank face of one who for the time being has gone dead tothe world and to all its carking cares, and the only response he offeredfor his mishandling was a deep and sincere snore. The man was hopelesslyintoxicated; there was no question about it. More to relieve his owndeep chagrin than for any logical reason Mr. Leary shook him again; thenet results were a protesting semiconscious gargle and a furthercareening slant of the sleeper's form.

  Well, there was nothing else to do but walk. He must make his way afootuntil he came to Sixth Avenue or on to Fifth, upon the chance of findingin one of these two thoroughfares a ranging nighthawk cab. As a lastresort he could take the Subway or the L north. This contingency,though, Mr. Leary considered with feelings akin to actual repugnance. Hedreaded the prospect of ribald and derisive comments from chance fellowtravellers upon a public transportation line. For you should know thatthough Mr. Leary's outer garbing was in the main conventional there werestrikingly incongruous features of it too.

  From his neck to his knees he correctly presented the aspect of agentleman returning late from social diversions, caparisoned in ahandsome fur-faced, fur-lined top coat. But his knees were entirelybare; so, too, were his legs down to about midway of the calves, wherethere ensued, as it were, a pair of white silk socks, encircled by pinkgarters with large and ornate pink ribbon bows upon them. His feet werebestowed in low slippers with narrow buttoned straps crossing theinsteps. It was Miss Skiff, with her instinct for the verities, who hadinsisted upon bows for the garters and straps for the slippers, thesebeing what she had called finishing touches. Likewise it was due to thatyoung lady's painstaking desire for appropriateness and completeness ofdetail that Mr. Leary at this moment wore upon his head a verywide-brimmed, very floppy straw hat with two quaint pink-ribbonstreamers floating jauntily down between his shoulders at the back.

  For reasons which in view of this sartorial description should beobvious, Mr. Leary hugged closely up to the abutting house fronts whenhe left behind him the marooned taxi with its comatose driver asleepupon it, like one lone castaway upon a small island in a sea ofemptiness, and set his face eastward. Such was the warmth of hisannoyance he barely felt the chill striking upon his exposed netherlimbs or took note of the big snowflakes melting damply upon his thinlyprotected ankles. Then, too, almost immediately something befell whichupset him still more.

  He came to where a wooden marquee, projecting over the entrance to ashipping room, made a black strip along the feebly lighted pavement. Ashe entered the patch of darkness the shape of a man materialised out ofthe void and barred his way, and in that same fraction of a secondsomething shiny and hard was thrust against Mr. Leary's daunted bosom,and in a low forceful rumble a voice commanded him as follows: "Put upyour mitts--and keep 'em up!"

  Matching the action of his hands everything in Mr. Leary seemed tostart skyward simultaneously. His hair on his scalp straighte
ned, hisbreath came up from his lungs in a gasp, his heart lodged in his throat,and his blood quit his feet, leaving them practically devoid ofcirculation and ascended and drummed in his temples. He had a horrid,emptied feeling in his diaphragm, too, as though the organs customarilyresident there had caught the contagion of the example and gone north.

  "That's nice," spake the fearsome stranger. "Now stay jest the way youare and don't make no peep or I'll have to plug you wit' this here gat."

  "THAT'S NICE," SPAKE THE FEARSOME STRANGER. "NOW STAYJEST THE WAY YOU ARE AND DON'T MAKE NO PEEP OR I'LL HAVE TO PLUG YOUWIT' THIS HERE GAT"]

  His right hand maintained the sinister pressure of the weapon againstthe victim's deflated chest, while his left dexterously