Part 14 (1/2)
”Oh, slus.h.!.+” says I. ”Don't play so rough, Piddie.”
I was onto him, all right. I've seen these hot-air plungers before. They follow up a stock for weeks, and buy and sell in six figures, and reckon up how they've hit the market for great chunks--but it's all under their lids. You can't spend pipe dreams, if you win; and if you lose, it don't shrink the size of your really truly roll. It's almost as satisfyin' as walkin by the back door of a bakery when you're hungry.
That kind of game is about Piddie's size, too. All it calls for is plenty of imagination, and he's got that by the bale. I was kind of glad to see him enjoyin' himself so innocent, and now and then I'd help along the excitement.
”Heard about how Morgan's tryin' to get hold of Blitzen?” I'd say, and Piddie would p.r.i.c.k up his ears like a fox-terrier sightin' a rat.
”Who told you?” Piddie'd ask.
”Why,” I'd say, ”I got it straight from a delicatessen man that lives on the same block with a man that runs a hot dog cart in John-st. Don't want anything closer'n that, do you!”
Then Piddie'd look kind of foolish, and go off and call down some one good and hard, just to relieve his feelin's.
First thing I knew, though, Piddie was havin' star-chamber sessions with a seedy-lookin' piker that wore an actor's overcoat and a brunette collar that looked like it had been wished onto his neck about last Thanksgivin'. They'd get together in a corner of the reception room and whisper away for half an hour on a stretch. If it hadn't been Piddie, I'd put it down for a hard-luck tale with a swift touch for a curtain; but no one that ever took a second look at Piddie would ever waste their time tryin' a touch on him. So I guessed the gent was a bucketshop tout who was tryin' to interest Piddie in some kind of a deal.
Still, I couldn't get any picture of Piddie takin' a chance with real money. It wa'n't until I seen him walkin' around stary-eyed one day, and gettin' nervous by the minute, that I could believe he's really been rung in. He was goin' through all the motions, though, of a man that's shoved everything, win or lose, on the red, and it was a circus to keep tabs on him. He makes a bluff at bein' awful busy with the billbook; but he couldn't stay at the desk more'n three minutes at a spell. Inside of an hour I counted four times that he washed his hands and six drinks of water that he had.
”You'll be damp enough to need wringin' out, if you keep that up,” says I.
”Keep what up?” says he. Honest, he was so rattled he didn't know whether he was usin' the roller towel or runnin' over the ticker tape.
Half an hour before lunchtime he skips out and leaves word with me that maybe he'll be back late.
”All right,” says I. ”If the boss calls for you I'll tell him he'll have to shut down the shop until you blow in again.”
Maybe you've seen symptoms like that in a hired man. It gen'rally means that there's somethin' doin' in ponies or margins, and that next payday is goin' to seem a long ways off. If I'd been asked to give a guess, I should have put it as about two hundred bucks that Piddie had thrown into the market. Anyway, it wa'n't enough to knock the props out of call-money quotations; so I was lettin' Piddie do all the worryin'.
He didn't show back at twelve-thirty, nor at twelve-forty-five. Some one else did, though. She was a nice little lady, one of the smooth-haired, big-eyed kind, as soft talkin' and as gentle actin' as the heroine in ”No Weddin' Cake for Her'n,” just before she gets to the weepy scenes.
You could see by the punky mill'nery and the last season's drygoods that she'd just drifted in from Mortgagehurst, New Jersey. The little snoozer she has by the hand was a cute one, though. When he gets a glimpse of my sunset top piece he sings out:
”O-o-o-o, mama! Burny, burn!”
”Why, Hemmingway!” says she. ”I am surprised. Naughty, naughty!”
”Don't worry, lady,” says I. ”The kid's got it dead right--it's one of them kind.”
Then I wets my finger and shows him how it'll go ”S-z-z!” when I touch it off. That gets a laugh out of little Hemmingway, and in a minute we're all good friends.
She's Mrs. Piddie, of course, and she's a brick. Say, how is it these two-by-fours can pull out such good ones so often? Why, if she'd been got up accordin' to this year's models, and could have thrown the front she ought to, she'd have been fit for a first-tier box at the grand op'ra.
”Chee!” thinks I. ”Did she pick Piddie in the dark?”
She'd come in to drag him out shoppin' and hypnotize him into loosenin'
up. It was a case of gettin' things for little Hemmingway.
”Me, I go have new s'oes, an' new coat wif pockets too,” says he.
Say, they wins me, kids like that do. There's some I ain't got any use for, the kind brought up in hotels and boardin' houses that learn to play to the gallery before they can feed themselves, and others I could name; but clean, grinnin' youngsters, with big eyes that take in everything, they're good to have around. And, little Hemmy was a star. I got so int'rested showin' him things in the office that I clean forgot about Piddie and what he was up to.
”He will be back soon, won't he?” says Mrs. Piddie.
Now if you give me time I can slick up an answer so it'll sound like the truth and mean something else; but as an offhand liar I'm a frost.
Somehow I always has to swaller somethin' before I can push out a cold dope. Course, I knew he'd got to be back before long; but I see right off that this wa'n't any day for a fam'ly reunion. Piddle wa'n't goin'