Part 24 (2/2)
”In the first place,” he began after we were comfortably seated, ”I knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and uneasy and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he did not rise and give them his seat. I decided from his appearance that he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.
”Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquis.h.i.+ng his seat to a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly, impelled to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that one of his eyes had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red and inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round marks about the size of the end of an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his patent leather shoes were a number of deep imprints shaped like ovals cut off square at one end.
”Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort--and that is along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of trampling French heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that he had been in conflict with the amazonian troops. And as he was a man of intelligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such dangers unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk.
Therefore, when he got on the car his anger at the treatment he had received was sufficient to make him keep his seat in spite of his traditions of Southern chivalry.”
”That is all very well,” I said, ”but why did you insist upon daughters--and especially two daughters? Why couldn't a wife alone have taken him shopping?”
”There had to be daughters,” said Jolnes, calmly. ”If he had only a wife, and she near his own age, he could have bluffed her into going alone. If he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone. So there you are.”
”I'll admit that,” I said; ”but, now, why two daughters? And how, in the name of all the prophets, did you guess that one was adopted when he told you he had three?”
”Don't say guess,” said Jolnes, with a touch of pride in his air; ”there is no such word in the lexicon of ratiocination. In Major Ellison's b.u.t.tonhole there was a carnation and a rosebud backed by a geranium leaf. No woman ever combined a carnation and a rosebud into a boutonniere. Close your eyes, Whatsup, and give the logic of your imagination a chance. Cannot you see the lovely Adele fastening the carnation to the lapel so that papa may be gay upon the street? And then the romping Edith May dancing up with sisterly jealousy to add her rosebud to the adornment?”
”And then,” I cried, beginning to feel enthusiasm, ”when he declared that he had three daughters--”
”I could see,” said Jolnes, ”one in the background who added no flower; and I knew that she must be--”
”Adopted!” I broke in. ”I give you every credit; but how did you know he was leaving for the South to-night?”
”In his breast pocket,” said the great detective, ”something large and oval made a protuberance. Good liquor is scarce on trains, and it is a long journey from New York to Fairfax County.”
”Again, I must bow to you,” I said. ”And tell me this, so that my last shred of doubt will be cleared away; why did you decide that he was from Virginia?”
”It was very faint, I admit,” answered Shamrock Jolnes, ”but no trained observer could have failed to detect the odour of mint in the car.”
XIX
THE LADY HIGHER UP
New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless, for the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze was south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of feminine gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixty-five feet above the heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on Manhattan pointed her vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in the direction of her exalted sister on Liberty Island. The lights of the great Garden were out; the benches in the Square were filled with sleepers in postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures in Dore's ill.u.s.trations of the Inferno would have straightened into tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden--its constancy shown by its weatherc.o.c.k ways, its innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift flight to catch a Harlem train--remained poised with its arrow pointed across the upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally it would have pa.s.sed fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose duty it is to offer a cast-ironical welcome to the oppressed of other lands.
Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steams.h.i.+p lines began to cut steerage rates. The translators, too, have put an extra burden upon her. ”Liberty Lighting the World” (as her creator christened her) would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size of it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to ”enlighten” the world (as our learned civic guardians ”Englished” it) requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua schoolma'am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid, cla.s.sic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel the shadows of the world and teach it its A, B, C's.
”Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!” called a clear, rollicking soprano voice through the still, midnight air.
”Is that you, Miss Diana? Excuse my not turning my head. I'm not as flighty and whirly-whirly as some. And 'tis so hoa.r.s.e I am I can hardly talk on account of the peanut-hulls left on the stairs in me throat by that last boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio. 'Tis after being a fine evening, miss.”
”If you don't mind my asking,” came the bell-like tones of the golden statue, ”I'd like to know where you got that City Hall brogue. I didn't know that Liberty was necessarily Irish.”
”If ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications ye'd not need to ask,” replied the offsh.o.r.e statue. ”If ye wasn't so light-headed and giddy ye'd know that I was made by a Dago and presented to the American people on behalf of the French Government for the purpose of welcomin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of New York. 'Tis that I've been doing night and day since I was erected.
Ye must know, Miss Diana, that 'tis with statues the same as with people--'tis not their makers nor the purposes for which they were created that influence the operations of their tongues at all--it's the a.s.sociations with which they become a.s.sociated, I'm telling ye.”
”You're dead right,” agreed Diana. ”I notice it on myself. If any of the old guys from Olympus were to come along and hand me any hot air in the ancient Greek I couldn't tell it from a conversation between a Coney Island car conductor and a five-cent fare.”
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