The Life of the Party Read online

premonition that all was not going well and his brainwhirled anew.

  "But I prefer to be taken to the station house," he began.

  "And who are you to be preferrin' anything at all?" countered Switzer."I'll phone back to the station where I am and what I've done; thoughthat part of it's no business of yours. I'll be doin' that after I'vearrainged you over to Jefferson Market."

  "Jeff--Jefferson Market!"

  "Sure, 'tis to Jefferson Market night court you're headin' this minute.Where else? They're settin' late over there to-night; the magistrate isexpectin' some raids somewheres about daylight, I dope it. Anyhow,they're open yet; I know that. So it'll be me and you for JeffersonMarket inside of five minutes; and I'm thinkin' you'll get quite areception."

  Jefferson Market! Mr. Leary could picture the rows upon rows of gloatingeyes. He heard the incredulous shout that would mark his entrance, theswell of unholy glee from the benches that would interrupt theproceedings. He saw stretched upon the front pages of the early editionsof the afternoon yellows the glaring black-faced headlines:

  WELL-KNOWN LAWYER CLAD IN PINK ROMPERS HALED TO NIGHT COURT

  He saw--but Switzer's next remark sent a fresh shudder of apprehensionthrough him, caught all again, as he was, in the coils of accursedcircumstance.

  "Magistrate Voris will be gettin' sleepy what with waitin' for themraids to be pulled off, and I make no doubt the sight of you will puthim in a good humour."

  And Magistrate Voris was his rival for the favours of Miss MillyHollister! And Magistrate Voris was a person with a deformed sense ofhumour! And Magistrate Voris was sitting in judgment this moment atJefferson Market night court. And now desperation, thrice compounded,rent the soul of the trapped victim of his own misaimed subterfuge.

  "I won't be taken to any night court!" he shouted, wresting himselftoward the edge of the sidewalk and dragging his companion along withhim. "I won't go there! I demand to be taken to a station house. I'm asick man and I require the services of a doctor."

  "Startin' to be rough-house all over again, huh?" grunted Switzervindictively. "Well, we'll see about that part of it, too--right now!"

  Surrendering his lowermost clutch, the one in the silken seat of thesuit of his writhing prisoner, he fumbled beneath the tails of hisovercoat for the disciplinary nippers that were in his righthand reartrousers pocket.

  With a convulsive twist of his body Mr. Leary jerked himself free of themittened grip upon his neckband, and as, released, he gave a deerlikelunge forward for liberty he caromed against a burdened ash can upon thecurbstone and sent it spinning backward; then recovering sprang onwardand outward across the gutter in flight. In the same instant he heardbehind him a crash of metal and a solid thud, heard a sound as of ascrambling solid body cast abruptly prone, heard the name of Deityprofaned, and divined without looking back that the ash can,conveniently rolling between the plump legs of the personified Arm ofthe Law, had been Officer Switzer's undoing, and might be his salvation.

  VIII

  With never a backward glance he ran on, not doubting as a hare beforethe beagle, but following a straight course, like unto a hunted roebuck.He did not know he could run so fast, and he could not have run so fastany other time than this. Beyond was a crossing. It was blind instinctthat made him double round the turn. And it was instinct, quickened andguided by desperation, that made him dart like a rose-tinted flash upthe steps to the stoop of an old-fashioned residence standing justbeyond the corner, spring inside the storm doors, draw them to behindhim, and crouch there, hidden, as pursuit went lumbering by.

  Through a chink between the door halves he watched breathlessly whileSwitzer, who moved with a pronounced limp and rubbed his knees as helimped, hobbled halfway up the block, slowed down, halted, glared abouthim for sight or sign of the vanished fugitive, and then misled by afalse trail departed, padding heavily with a galoshed tread, round thenext turn.

  With his body still drawn well back within the shadow line of theoverhanging cornice Mr. Leary, coyly protruded his head and took visualinventory of the neighbourhood. So far as any plan whatsoever hadformed in the mind of our diffident adventurer he meant to bide where hewas for the moment. Here, where he had shelter of a sort, he wouldrecapture his breath and reassemble his wits. Even so, the respite fromthose elements which Mr. Leary dreaded most of all--publicity,observation, cruel jibes, the harsh raucous laughter of thepopulace--could be at best but a woefully transient one. He was notresigned--by no means was he resigned--to his fate; but he was helpless.For what ailed him there was no conceivable remedy.

  Anon jocund day would stand tiptoe on something or other; GreenwichVillage would awaken and bestir itself. Discovery would come, and forthhe would be drawn like a shy, unwilling periwinkle from its shell, oncemore to play his abased and bashful role of free entertainer toguffawing mixed audiences. For all others in the great city there werehavens and homes. But for a poor, lorn, unguided vagrant, enmeshed inthe burlesque garnitures of a three-year-old male child, what haven wasthere? By night the part had been hard enough--as the unresponsiveheavens above might have testified. By the stark unmerciful sunlight; bythe rude, revealing glow of the impending day how much more scandalouswould it be!

  His haggard gaze swept this way and that, seeking possible succour wherereason told him there could be no succour; and then as his vision piecedtogether this outjutting architectural feature and that into a coherentpicture of his immediate surroundings he knew where he was. The one bitof chancy luck in a sequence of direful catastrophes had brought himhere to this very spot. Why, this must be West Ninth Street; it had tobe, it was--oh joy, it was! And Bob Slack, his partner, lived in thisidentical block on this same side of the street.

  With his throat throbbing to the impulse of new-born hope he emergedcompletely from behind the refuge of the storm doors, backed himself outand down upon the top step, and by means of a dubious illuminationpercolating through the fanlight above the inner door he made out thefigures upon the lintel. This was such and such a number; therefore BobSlack's number must be the second number to the eastward, at the nextdoor but one.

  IX

  Five seconds later a fleet apparition of a prevalent pinkish tone gave aranging house cat the fright of its life as former darted past latter tovault nimbly up the stone steps of a certain weatherbeatenfour-story-and-basement domicile. Set in the door jamb here was avertical row of mail-slots, and likewise a vertical row of electric pushbuttons; these objects attesting to the fact that this house, once upona time the home of a single family, had eventually undergone thetransformation which in lower New York befalls so many of its kind, andhad become a layer-like succession of light-housekeeping apartments, oneapartment to a floor, and the caretaker in the basement.

  Since Bob Slack's bachelor quarters were on the topmost floor BobSlack's push button would be the next to the lowermost of the battery ofbuttons. A chilled tremulous finger found that particular button andpressed it long and hard, released it, pressed it again and yet again.And in the interval following each period of pressing the finger's ownerhearkened, all ears, for the answering click-click that would tell himthe sleeper having been roused by the ringing had risen and pressed themaster button that released the mechanism of the street door's lock.

  But no welcome clicking rewarded the expectant ringer. Assuredly BobSlack must be the soundest sleeper in the known world. He who waitedrang and rang and rerang. There was no response.

  Eventually conviction was forced upon Mr. Leary that he must awaken thecaretaker--who, he seemed dimly to recall as a remembrance of pastvisits to Bob Slack, was a woman; and this done he must induce thecaretaker to admit him to the inside of the house. Once within thebuilding the refugee promised himself he would bring the slumberousSlack to consciousness if he had to beat down that individual's doordoing it. He centred his attack upon the bottom push button of all.Directly, from almost beneath his feet, came the sound of an areawaywindow being unlatch
ed, and a drowsy female somewhat crossly inquired toknow who might be there and what might be wanted.

  "It's a gentleman calling on Mr. Slack," wheezed Mr. Leary with his headover the balusters. He was getting so very, very hoarse. "I've beenringing his bell, but I can't seem to get any answer."

  "A gentleman at this time o' night!" The tone was purely incredulous.

  "Yes; a close friend of Mr. Slack's," assured Mr. Leary, striving to putstress of urgency into his accents, and only succeeding in imparting anadded hoarseness to his fast-failing vocal cords. "I'm his law partner,in fact. I must see him at once, please--it's very important, verypressing indeed."

  "Well, you can't be seein' him."

  "C-can't