Where Your Treasure Is. Holman Day
I had promised that the reading was free.
Well, the reading was free.
But once the victim had ventured inside the curtains and after the free reading, the professor handed over the chart and demanded three dollars for it.
Disputes ended promptly, for Big Mike was always present. The vocabulary of that bellowing bull was limited to two words in those séances—“Three dollars!”
Of course I had to find this out before long or stand convicted in these records as liar and half-wit combined.
I also found out about the gazara game, Mr. Dawlin’s special project.
There was an oblong box in which were stacked leather envelopes, each envelope bearing a numbered card.
Mr. Dawlin seemed to be a very generous individual; he would allow patrons to win considerable money by picking prize envelopes into which he had slipped crisp bills; he also seemed to be a careless operator. For instance, he would quite openly put a twenty or a fifty dollar bill into the envelope holding the card numbered 0. Then he would shuffle the envelopes and with carelessness utterly blind would leave the corner of that card sticking up a bit, revealing the upper part of the numeral. Feverishly excited patrons would bid high for the privilege of drawing first—sometimes almost as high as the prize itself, for Mr. Dawlin had plainly left a good thing exposed. But, strangely enough, what had seemed like the figure 0 was revealed in the drawing as the figure 9 with an exaggerated upper loop. If the patron made moan and let out the secret of his grief, Mr. Dawlin reproached him for trying to take advantage of an oversight in an honest game. Such was the activity known as “gazara” in our establishment! I don’t know who gave the game that designation. I believe that in Maccabees a town of that name is spoken of—and being in Apocrypha seems well placed. It may be that the game started there—at the same time the gold-brick game was hatched in Gomorrah. Both schemes must be very ancient—for they are true, tried, and certain.
Mr. Dawlin had much information to give me regarding games in general. He told me about his brother Ike, a proficient gold-brick artist. He said that if I cared to go into that line he would put me next to his brother. Mr. Dawlin, as had the others of his fraternity, complimented me on my honest looks. When I dared to suggest that the gold-brick scheme must be known to everybody, and all played out, he laughed at my ignorance. He said that getting a whole lot for a little always had been a bait for human greed and always would be; as to getting at the yaps in these days, it was only a matter of fresh style of approach and men like his brother were thinking up new methods of approach all the time.
Men who needed money in a hurry to make up a balance were almost always ready to gamble heavily and desperately.
He said his brother had a deal on at that very time, but that it was too late for me to get in on that, for the thing was all set and pretty near ready to be pulled off. It was an up-country case, of course.
“Plant by ‘Peacock’ Pratt,” said Davdin. That was a new name for my roster of rascality, and I stuck it into a mental pigeonhole. “Pratt is a white-vest operator. Paunch scenery!” He saw that I wasn’t catching him very well and explained that Pratt affected the manner of a prosperous Westerner who regularly stoned neighbors’ chickens out of his garden with gold nuggets.
Speaking of gold, I was not specially dissatisfied with the rake-off I was getting from these precious rascals, though, of course, it was small as compared with my diver’s wages. But standing in the sunshine under a plug-hat with nothing to do but gabble nonsense was a softer snap than grubbing under muddy water with a diver’s helmet stuck over my head. I was truly in a way to succumb to the blandishments of my cheap screak and settle down into the practice of roguery.
But I had some sense of shame left in me. I kept on that disguising mustache when I was before the public. It was not much of a mask, to be sure, but it comforted me a bit to know that it made me look unlike myself.
And that’s why the Sortwell boys from Levant did not recognize me when they halted on the sidewalk one day and listened to my barking.
There they were, the two of them, grown up to manhood; but they were mighty green specimens. They were looking at the banners rather than at me. I wagered with myself that it was the first time they had ever been in the big city; even one trip would have rounded off some of the rough comers they were showing. For instance, they surely would have had experience with such a peep-show as we were running and would not have been tempted.
They walked over to the painted maiden and asked her if she could recommend the show; they grinned and gaped at her amorously. She fawned on them and they bought tickets and went in. I wasn’t a bit sorry, nor did I try to stop them. My last expenence with the gang in Levant had not implanted in me any hankering to hug and kiss the Sortwell boys.
I watched for them to come out, for I felt pretty sure that they would be properly trimmed and I anticipated secret relish in looking on their faces. I told myself I didn’t care. If a good jolt should be handed to them it would help in satisfying my grudge against the town which had sent me flying. Bitterness was in me at that moment. I was glad I was out of the jay place. If I had stayed there I would be looking just like those simpering rubes who had gone in like lambs to be sheared. I’d never want to go back to that town, I decided all over again.
When they came out each one carried one of Professor Jewelle’s charts, and they were crying like great calves—actually guffling slobbering sobs. They went away a little distance and stood on the sidewalk, looking at each other and scruffing tears from their eyes with the palms of their hands. Awhile back if somebody had told me I would see a couple of big, larruping chaps from Levant doing that on the street in broad daylight, I’d have predicted a good laugh for myself.
Well, there was nothing like that in my case!
A lump swelled in my throat. I don’t know what it was—whether ’twas homesickness, longing for my own people of my own kind, spectacle of boys who had gone barefoot with me, sight of their sorrow, mindfulness of what the cruel city had done to me, reflection that I had helped in a measure to get them into their scrape—I say I don’t know just what it was. But my throat gripped and tears flowed up into my eyes. Those poor devils, who were children in spite of their size, were helplessly adrift—I could see that. Something special must have happened to them.
I seem to be stopping to analyze my emotions. At the time I was doing nothing of the sort. I felt a comforting sense that I was not a rascal down in my heart, in spite of what I had done and of the job I was holding down.
I left my rostrum, ran into the little office, and tipped Dawlin’s bottle of whisky against my upper lip; the alcohol dissolved the gum and I ripped off the mustache. Then I chased along after the Sortwell boys. They were far up the street, plugging slowly with bowed shoulders.
When I came close upon them I took my time to get my breath and control my emotions. Then I called to them, and they turned around and stared at me with eyes which expressed all the range of feelings between interrogation and stupefaction.
“Well, haven’t you anything to say to an old friend?” I asked.
“It ain’t you,” faltered the older. “It may look like you, but it ain’t.”
“There ain’t anything in this place that’s looking like it really is,” whimpered the younger. “There was a card with a zero on it and it wasn’t a zero—it was a nine—and he took our money.”
“Have you lost your money, boys?”
“All of it—every scrimptom of it,” bawled the older. “We ’ain’t got anything to get home with. We saved up to come down and see the city for a couple of days—and now it’s all gone.”
“We worked all winter logging—sweating and freezing in Cale Warson’s swamp—to earn that money, and that hell-hound down there took it and jammed it into his pants pocket. And how’ll we get home?”
Oh, I knew what logging in a swamp was! I knew what sort of wages were paid and how hard it is to save! That