Sharp on the words Mr. Cassidy's manner changed. Here plainly was a person of moods, changeable and tempersome.
"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, and you a large, grown man, to be skihootin' round with them kind of foolish duds on, and your own country at war this minute for decency and democracy?" From this it also was evident that Mr. Cassidy read the editorials in the papers. "You should take shame to yourself that you ain't in uniform instid of baby clothes."
It was the part of discretion, so Mr. Leary inwardly decided, to ignore the fact that the interrogator himself appeared to be well within the military age.
"I'm a bit old to enlist," he stated, "and I'm past the draft age."
"Then you're too old to be wearin' such a riggin'. But, by cripes, I'll say this for you – you make a picture that'd make a horse laugh."
Laughing like a horse, or as a horse would laugh if a horse ever laughed, he rocked to and fro on his heels.
"Sh-sh; not so loud, please," importuned Mr. Leary, casting an uneasy glance toward the lighted windows above. "Somebody might hear you!"
"I hope somebody does hear me," gurgled the temperamental Mr. Cassidy, now once more thoroughly beset by his mirth. "I need somebody to help me laugh. By cripes, I need a whole crowd to help me; and I know a way to get them!"
He twisted his head round so his voice would ascend the hallway. "Hey, fellers and skoirts," he called; "you that's fixin' to leave! Hurry on down here quick and see Algy, the livin' peppermint lossenger, before he melts away with his own sweetness."
Obeying the summons with promptness a flight of the Lawrence P. McGillicuddy's, accompanied for the most part by lady friends, cascaded down the stairs and erupted forth upon the sidewalk.
"Here y'are – right here!" clarioned Mr. Cassidy as the first skylarkish pair showed in the doorway. His manner was drolly that of a showman exhibiting a rare freak, newly captured. "Come a-runnin'!"
They came a-running and there were a dozen of them or possibly fifteen; blithesome spirits, all, and they fenced in the shrinking shape of Mr. Leary with a close and curious ring of themselves, and the combined volume of their glad, amazed outbursts might be heard for a distance of furlongs. On prankish impulse then they locked hands and with skippings and prancings and impromptu jig steps they circled about him; and he, had he sought to speak, could not well have been heard; and, anyway, he was for the moment past speech, because of being entirely engaged in giving vent to one vehement sneeze after another. And next, above the chorus of joyous whooping might be heard individual comments, each shrieked out shrilly and each punctuated by a sneeze from Mr. Leary's convulsed frame; or lacking that by a simulated sneeze from one of the revellers – one with a fine humorous flare for mimicry. And these comments were, for example, such as:
"Git onto the socks!"
"Ker-chew!"
"And the slippers!"
"Ker-chew!"
"And them lovely pink garters!"
"Ker-chew!"
"Oh, you cutey! Oh, you cut-up!"
"Ker-chew!"
"Oh, you candy kid!"
"And say, git onto the cunnin' elbow sleeves our little playmate's sportin'."
"Yes, but goils, just pipe the poilies – ain't they the greatest ever?"
"They sure are. Say, kiddo, gimme one of 'em to remember you by, won't you? You'll never miss it – you got a-plenty more."
"Wot d'ye call wot he's got on 'um, anyway?" The speaker was a male, naturally.
"W'y, you big stoopid, can't you see he's wearin' rompers?" The answer came in a giggle, from a gay youthful creature of the opposite sex as she kicked out roguishly.
"Well, then be chee, w'y don't he romp a little?"
"Give 'um time, cancher? Don't you see he's blowin' out his flues? He's busy now. He'll romp in a minute."
"Sure he will! We'll romp with 'um."
A waggish young person in white beaded slippers and a green sport skirt broke free from the cavorting ring, and behind Mr. Leary's back the nimble fingers of the madcap tapped his spinal ornamentations as an instrumentalist taps the stops of an organ; and she chanted a familiar counting game of childhood:
"Rich man – poor man – beggar man – thief – doctor – loiryer – "
"Sure, he said he was a loiryer." It was Mr. Cassidy breaking in. "And he said his name was Algernon. Well, I believe the Algernon part – the big A. P. A."
"Oh, you Algy!"
"Algernon, does your mother know you're out?"
"T'ree cheers for Algy, the walkin' comic valentine!"
"Algy, Algy – Oh, you cutey Algy!" These jolly Greenwich Villagers were going to make a song of his name. They did make a song of it, and it was a frolicsome song and pitched to a rollicksome key. Congenial newcomers arrived, pelting down from upstairs whence they had been drawn by the happy rocketing clamour; and they caught spirit and step and tune with the rest and helped manfully to sing it. As one poet hath said, "And now reigned high carnival." And as another has so aptly phrased it, "There was sound of revelry by night." And, as the second poet once put it, or might have put it so if so be he didn't, "And all went merry as a marriage bell." But when we, adapting the line to our own descriptive usages, now say all went merry we should save out one exception – one whose form alternately was racked by hot flushes of a terrific self-consciousness and by humid gusts of an equally terrific sneezing fit.
VI
"Here, here, here! Cut out the yellin'! D'you want the whole block up out of their beds?" The voice of the personified law, gruff and authoritative, broke in upon the clamour, and the majesty of the law, typified in bulk, with galoshes, ear muffs and woollen gloves on, not to mention the customary uniform of blue and brass, ploughed a path toward the centre of the group.
"'S all right, Switzer," gaily replied a hoydenish lassie; she, the same who had begged Mr. Leary for a sea-pearl souvenir. "But just see wot Morrie Cassidy went and found here on the street!"
Patrolman Switzer looked then where she pointed, and could scarce believe his eyes. In his case gleefulness took on a rumbling thunderous form, which shook his being as with an ague and made him to beat himself violently upon his ribs.
"D'ye blame us for carryin' on, Switzer, when we seen it ourselves?"
"I don't – and that's a fact," Switzer confessed between gurgles. "I wouldn't a blamed you much if you'd fell down and had a fit." And then he rocked on his heels, filled with joviality clear down to his rubber soles. Anon, though, he remembered the responsibilities of his position. "Still, at that, and even so," said he, sobering himself, "enough of a good thing's enough." He glared accusingly, yea, condemningly, at the unwitting cause of the quelled commotion.
"Say, what's the idea, you carousin' round Noo York City this hour of the night diked up like a Coney Island Maudie Graw? And what's the idea, you causin' a boisterous and disorderly crowd to collect? And what's the idea, you makin' a disturbance in a vicinity full of decent hard-workin' people that's tryin' to get a little rest? What's the general idea, anyhow?"
At this moment Mr. Leary having sneezed an uncountable number of times, regained the powers of coherent utterance.
"It is not my fault," he said. "I assure you of that, officer. I am being misjudged; I am the victim of circumstances over which I have no control. You see, officer, I went last evening to a fancy-dress party and – "
"Well, then, why didn't you go on home afterwards and behave yourself?"
"I did – I started, in a taxicab. But the taxicab driver was drunk and he went to sleep on the way and the taxicab stopped and I got out of it and started to walk across town looking for another taxicab and – "
"Started walkin', dressed like that?"
"Certainly not. I had an overcoat on, of course. But a highwayman held me up at the point of a revolver, and he took my overcoat and what money I had and my card case and – "
"Where did all this here happen – this here alleged robbery?"
"Not two blocks away from here, right over in the next street to this one."
"I don't believe nothin' of the kind!"
Patrolman Switzer spoke with enhanced severity; his professional honour had been touched in a delicate place. The bare suggestion that a footpad might dare operate in a district under his immediate personal supervision would have been to him deeply repugnant, and here was this weirdly attired wanderer making the charge direct.
"But, officer, I insist – I protest that – "
"Young feller, I think you've been drinkin', that's what I think about you. Your voice sounds to me like you've been drinkin' about a gallon of mixed ale. I think you dreamed all this here pipe about a robber and a pistol and an overcoat and a taxicab and all. Now you take a friendly tip from me and you run along home as fast as ever you can, and you get them delirious clothes off of you and then you get in bed and take a good night's sleep and you'll feel better. Because if you don't it's goin' to be necessary for me to run you in for a public nuisance. I ain't askin' you – I'm tellin' you, now. If you don't want to be locked up, start movin' – that's my last word to you."
The recent merrymakers, who had fallen silent the better to hear the dialogue, grouped themselves expectantly, hoping and waiting for a yet more exciting and humorous sequel to what had gone before – if such a miracle might be possible. Nor were they to be disappointed. The dénouement came quickly upon the heels of the admonition.
For into Mr. Leary's reeling and distracted mind the warning had sent a clarifying idea darting. Why hadn't he thought of a police station before now? Perforce the person in charge at any police station would be under requirement to shelter him. What even if he were locked up temporarily? In a cell he would be safe from the slings and arrows of outrageous ridicule; and surely among the functionaries in any station house would be one who would know a gentleman in distress, however startlingly the gentleman might be garbed. Surely, too, somebody – once that somebody's amazement had abated – would he willing to do some telephoning for him. Perhaps, even, a policeman off duty might be induced to take his word for it that he was what he really was, and not what he seemed to be, and loan him a change of clothing.
Hot upon the inspiration Mr. Leary decided on his course of action. He would get himself safely and expeditiously removed from the hateful company and the ribald comments of the Lawrence P. McGillicuddys and their friends. He would get himself locked up – that was it. He would now take the first steps in that direction.
"Are you goin' to start on home purty soon like I've just been tellin' you; or are you ain't?" snapped Patrolman Switzer, who, it would appear, was by no means a patient person.
"I am not!" The crafty Mr. Leary put volumes of husky defiance into his answer. "I'm not going home – and you can't make me go home, either." He rejoiced inwardly to see how the portly shape of Switzer stiffened and swelled at the taunt. "I'm a citizen and I have a right to go where I please, dressed as I please, and you don't dare to stop me. I defy you to arrest me!" Suddenly he put both his hands in Patrolman Switzer's fleshy midriff and gave him a violent shove. An outraged grunt went up from Switzer, a delighted whoop from the audience. Swept off his balance by the prospect of fruition for his design the plotter had technically been guilty before witnesses of a violent assault upon the person of an officer in the sworn discharge of his duty.
He felt himself slung violently about. One mitted hand fixed itself in Mr. Leary's collar yoke at the rear; the other closed upon a handful of slack material in the lower breadth of Mr. Leary's principal habiliment just below where his buttons left off.
"So you won't come, won't you? Well then I'll show you – you pink strawberry drop!"
Enraged at having been flaunted before a jeering audience the patrolman pushed his prisoner ten feet along the sidewalk, imparting to the offender's movements an involuntary gliding gait, with backward jerks between forward shoves; this method of propulsion being known in the vernacular of the force as "givin' a skate the bum's rush."
"Hey, Switzer, lend me your key and I'll ring for the wagon for you," volunteered Mr. Cassidy. His care-free companions, some of them, cheered the suggestion, seeing in it prospect of a prolonging of this delectable sport which providence without charge had so graciously deigned to provide.
"Never mind about the wagon. Us two'll walk, me and him," announced the patrolman. "'Taint so far where we're goin', and the walk'll do this fresh guy a little good – maybe'll sober him up. And never mind about any of the rest of you taggin' along behind us neither. This is a pinch – not a free street parade. Go on home now, the lot of youse, before you wake up the whole Lower West Side."
Loath to be cheated out of the last act of a comedy so unique and so rich the whimsical McGillicuddys and their chosen mates fell reluctantly away, with yells and gibes and quips and farewell bursts of laughter.