Where Your Treasure Is. Holman Day
confinement after a time and the desire to go out is dulled; there are persons who have voluntarily remained in bed in perfect health for years; but, once the plunge outside is made, the desire for further liberty grows by what it grasps in the blessedness of outdoors. I determined to be free from then on and to test the quality of that freedom. It was astonishing what confidence I felt in myself when I walked abroad in that rig, casting side-glances at myself in store windows as I walked. It is amazing what the right sort of clothes will do for a man’s grip and grit.
I went down to the docks and walked about, deliberately seeking to put myself in the path of Anson C. Doughty. He did come face to face with me after a time, looked at me with considerable interest, for plug-hats were none too common in that locality, and passed on with bland indifference. My transition was too much for him; I was the butterfly that had emerged from the pupa of a diving-dress. After that I bestowed no further thought on dangers to be apprehended from Anson C. Doughty.
I was more concerned with speculation on where my next meal was coming from, for I was flat broke. I suppose that fact had something to do with driving me out on the street; it was not wholly proud eagerness to show myself in that suit of clothes.
All of a sudden I received direct proof that a plug-hat is occasionally something to conjure by.
Perhaps it is on the principle that advertising pays; a man with slick, silk headgear is supposed to be at least something which can be classed under the title of “professor.” At any rate, I was hailed by that title by a man who stood in a broad doorway. I stopped and he had something interesting to say to me.
VIII—“TAKING IT OUT” ON A SUIT OF CLOTHES
THAT doorway was solidly banked with banners frescoed in gaudy colors and roughly painted; they advertised a show within. A few glances I had time to give while I walked toward the man who had hailed me, revealed that there were on tap such features as “Petrified Mormon Giant,” “Siamese Susie,” “Mammoth Peruvian Cockatoo,” and others. Over the door was heralded in big letters: “Dawlin’s Mammoth Wonder Show.”
I guessed that the man in the doorway might be Dawlin. He wore a corduroy suit, with gaiters, and a broad-brimmed cowboy hat was canted on one side of his head. By the way in which he was looking me over I could see that I was suiting him.
“Hitched up with a show?” he asked.
I told him that I was not, and I said it with considerable curtness. To be sure, the personality and garb of Showman Shrady had formed my early ideal, and I ought to have felt gratified, I suppose, when this man took me for a showman. But I was pricked a little by the thought that my appearance seemed to grade me on that plane. “Want to hitch on?”
“What makes you think I’m in the show business?”
“I had you sized that way on account of the scenery.” I gathered that he meant my clothes.
“I don’t see any circus signs on this suit of mine,” I told him.
“Oh, say, I didn’t mean to offend—but it’s usually only sports and professionals who tog that way down in this part of the town. If you’re a gent you seem to be off your beat.”
There was nothing offensive about the man—he seemed a good-humored chap who was a little cheeky.
“Well, what if I had been a showman—what about it?”
“I was going to offer you a lay—here at the door.”
“Selling tickets?”
“Good gad, no, man! I want you for the spiel—for the oratory—tongue-work—hooking the hicks! You’re rigged out just right. You must know that the better the front we put on at the door, the better the business inside! But excuse me if I got the tags shifted!”
I swung my cane with one hand and with the other hand in my pocket sifted coins through my fingers. There were not many coins. I needed more in a hurry. It had been impressed on me that in spite of all my pride in my attire I did not look like a “gent”; it was certain that I did not feel like one. Disappointment was curdling pride in me; my clothes had gone back on me. I entertained a sort of a grudge against them. All of a sudden I made up my mind to get back at those garments which had cost me so much money and now repaid me in contentment so niggardly.
“It would be all new business for me. Can I do it, do you suppose?” I asked the man.
“Looks are half the battle. You’ve got capital in your clothes to start with. You don’t look like a souse! The last two I have had on the door pawned their rigs for rum. I’ve got the patter stuff all written out. All you’ve got to do is study it and reel it off like you used to recite pieces in school.”
“What’s the pay?”
Seeing surrender in my face, he winked and crooked his finger in invitation to me to follow him inside. He led me into a narrow little office. He offered a drink and a cigar, and I refused both.
“Gee! Some principles, hey? Now, if you’re a church member I reckon you won’t stand for the lay!”
“I’m devilish far from being a church member,” I told him.
“I don’t like to open up too much till I know a little something about you. Can you tell me?”
I told him enough to make him pretty much at ease.
“Do you know any of the right kind in this locality—the sporting bunch?”
I gave a roster of acquaintances that made his eyes glisten.
“Oh, then, you’re all right!” he cried, slapping my knee. “In my business a fellow has to try the ice before he slides out too far. I’m coming right across to you.” He waved his hand to indicate his establishment. “This show is only a hinkumginny, you know!”
“I thought so,” I said, calmly. I hadn’t the least idea what he meant, but I knew that one needed to act wise with wise gentlemen.
“We run the gazara game and phrenology.”
I nodded and winked an eye as if I had been quite sure of that fact right along.
He scratched a few figures on a wisp of paper and pushed it to me across the desk-slide on which he had set out the whisky-glasses.
“That’s the split,” he said, grinning. Still it was all Greek to me.
“I know places doing half our business and paying twice as much—and every once in a while having to settle a squeal, at that! But I’ve got a cousin at headquarters—see? Nothing to it! Now you can understand what a sweet little pudding you’re pulling alongside of.”
I was wishing I could understand better, though I was developing a dim notion that he was talking about money paid for protection from the law. He pulled back the paper and tore it up.
“Only fifty a week,” he said; “it’s nothing. I’m thinking of throwing in another twenty-five without their asking. It beats laying up treasures in heaven!”
I agreed.
“Now as to a lay for you! Of course, first of all, I have to grab off my fifty of the net—it’s my show and my pull! Then there’s the ‘Prof’—Professor Jewelle. He has his twenty-five per cent. I’ll tell you straight, now, I have been getting by with those dickerdoodles I’ve had out on the stand for fifteen per cent., and ‘prof’ and I have divided the other ten. But they were crumby! Their suits were wrinkled worse than an elephant’s dewlap, and the nap of their plug-hats was fruzzled up like the fur in the mane of the Australian witherlick. No pull to that class! The jaspers jogged right past without being a mite impressed. If you grab in with us your looks