The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Knowledge house
with his peculiar card at the next large estate. It happened to be that of the Clifton Garneaus. Here, as if by magic, the same audience was granted him.
He went on—it was a hot day, and men who could not afford to do so were carrying their coats on the public highway, but Jim, a native of southernmost Georgia, was as fresh and cool at the last house as at the first. He visited ten houses that day. Anyone following him in his course might have taken him to be some gifted bootlegger.
There was something in his unexpected demand for the adolescent members of the family which made hardened butlers lose their critical acumen. As he left each house a close observer might have seen that fascinated eyes followed him to the door and excited voices whispered something which hinted at a future meeting.
The second day he visited twelve houses. He might have kept on his round for a week and never seen the same butler twice but it was only the palatial, the amazing houses which intrigued him.
On the third day he did a thing that many people have been told to do and few have done—he hired a hall. Exactly one week later he sent a wire to Miss Amanthis Powell saying that if she still aspired to the gaiety of the highest society she should set out for Southampton by the earliest possible train. He himself would meet her at the station.
Jim Powell was no longer a man of leisure, so when she failed to arrive at the time her wire had promised he grew restless. He supposed she was coming on a later train, turned to go back to his project—and met her entering the station from the street side.
“Why, how did you——”
“Well,” said Amanthis, “I arrived this morning instead, and I didn’t want to bother you so I found a respectable boarding house on the Ocean Road.”
She was quite different from the indolent Amanthis of the porch hammock, he thought. She wore a suit of robin’s-egg blue and a rakish young hat with a curling feather—she was attired not unlike those young ladies between sixteen and twenty who of late were absorbing his attention. Yes, she would do very well.
He bowed her profoundly into a taxi-cab and got in beside her.
“Isn’t it about time you told me your scheme?” she suggested.
“Well, it’s about these society girls up here.” He waved his hand airily. “I know ’em all.”
“Where are they?”
“Right now they’re with Hugo. You remember—that’s my body-servant.”
“With Hugo!” Her eyes widened. “Why? What’s it all about?”
“Well, I got—I got sort of a school, I guess you’d call it.”
“A school?”
“It’s a sort of academy. And I’m the head of it. I invented it.”
He flipped a card from his case as though he were shaking down a thermometer.
“Look.”
She took the card. In large lettering it bore the legend
JAMES POWELL; J. M.
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar”
She stared in amazement.
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar?” she repeated in awe.
“Yes mamm.”
“What does it mean? What——do you sell ’em?”
“No mamm, I teach ’em. It’s a profession.”
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar? What’s the J. M.?”
“That stands for Jazz Master.”
“But what is it? What’s it about?”
“Well, you see, it’s like this. One night when I was in New York I got talkin’ to a young fella who’d been drinking some. He was one of my fares. And he’d taken some society girl somewhere and lost her.”
“Lost her?”
“Yes mamm. He forgot her, I guess. And he was right worried. Well, I got to thinkin’ that these girls nowadays—these society girls—they lead a sort of dangerous life and my course of study offers a means of protection against these dangers.”
“You teach ’em to use brassknuckles?”
“Yes mamm, if necessary. Look here, you take a girl and she goes into some café where she’s got no business to go. Well then, her escort he gets a little too much to drink an’ he goes to sleep an’ then some other fella comes up and says ‘Hello, sweet mamma’ or whatever one of those mashers says up here. What does she do? She can’t scream, on account of no real lady’ll scream nowadays. She just reaches down in her pocket and slips her fingers into a pair of Powell’s Defensive Brassknuckles, debutante’s size, executes what I call the Society Hook, and Wham! that big fella’s on his way to the cellar.”
“Well—what’s the guitar for?” whispered the awed Amanthis. “Do they have to knock somebody over with the guitar?”
“No, mamm!” exclaimed Jim in horror. “No mamm! In my course no lady would be taught to raise a guitar against anybody. I teach ’em to play. Shucks! you ought to hear ’em. Why, when I’ve given ’em two lessons you’d think some of ’em was colored.”
“And the dice?”
“Dice? I’m related to a dice. My grandfather was a dice. I teach ’em how to make those dice perform. I protect pocketbook as well as person.”
“Did you——Have you got any pupils?”
“Mamm I got all the really nice, rich people in the place. What I told you ain’t all. I teach lots of things. I teach ’em the Boodlin’ Bend—and the Mississippi Sunrise. Why, there was one girl she came to me and said she wanted to learn to snap her fingers. I mean really snap ’em—like they do. She said she never could snap her fingers since she was little. I gave her two lessons and now Wham! Her daddy says he’s goin’ to leave home.”
“When do you have it?” demanded the weak and shaken Amanthis.
“Three times a week. You’ll just be one of the pupils. I got it fixed up that you come from very high-tone people down in New Jersey. I told ’em your daddy was the man that had the original patent on lump sugar.”
She gasped.
“So all you got to do,” he went on, “is to pretend you never saw any barber.”
They were now at the south end of the village and Amanthis saw a row of cars parked in front of a two-story building. The cars were all low, long, rakish and of a brilliant hue. Then she was ascending a narrow stairs to the second story. Here, painted on a door from which came the sounds of music and voices were the words:
JAMES POWELL; J. M.
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar”
Mon.—Wed.—Fri.
Hours 3-5 P.M.
“Now if you’ll just step this way——” said the Principal, pushing open the door.
Amanthis found herself in a long, bright room, populated with girls and men of about her own age. The scene presented itself to her at first as a sort of animated afternoon tea but after a moment she began to see, here and there, a motive and a pattern to the proceedings.
The students were scattered into groups, sitting, kneeling, standing, but all rapaciously intent on the subjects which engrossed them. From six young ladies gathered in a ring around some indistinguishable objects came a medley of cries and exclamations—plaintive, pleading, supplicating, exhorting, imploring and lamenting—their voices serving as tenor to an undertone of mysterious clatters.
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