THE SAD CASE OF LOONEY BIDDLE
Archie was a soul, and, as is the case with most souls, came easily to him. He treatment. And when, on the day, Lucille returned to the Hermitage, all and affection, and no to Beauty’s Eyes and the that got into them, he was of a to some solid of this magnanimity. Few wives, he was aware, have had the and what not to from occasionally the in the direction of the above-mentioned topics. It had not needed this on her part to him that Lucille was a and a and one of the very best, for he had been of these since the moment he had met her: but what he did was that she to be in no manner. And it a happy to him that her birthday should be along in the next week or so. Surely, Archie, he up some of a not gift for that occasion—something that would make a with the dear girl. Surely something would come along to his for just length of time to him to spread himself on this great occasion.
And, as if in direct answer to prayer, an almost aunt in England suddenly, out of an sky, no less a than five hundred across the ocean. The present was so and that Archie had the of one who participates in a miracle. He felt, like Herbert Parker, that the was not forsaken. It was the of thing that a fellow’s in nature. For nearly a week he about in a happy trance: and when, by and enterprise—that is to say, by Reggie Tuyl that the New York Giants would win the opening game of the series against the Pittsburg team—he to his capital, what it to was that life had nothing more to offer. He was actually in a position to go to a thousand for Lucille’s birthday present. He in Mr. Tuyl, of taste in these he had a high opinion, and him off to a jeweller’s on Broadway.
The jeweller, a stout, man, on the and the which he had out of its of plush. Archie, on the other of the counter, the searchingly, that he more about these things; for he had a of idea that the merchant was to do him in the eyeball. In a chair by his side, Reggie Tuyl, asleep as usual, despondently. He had permitted Archie to him into this shop; and he wanted to something and go. Any of Reggie.
“Now this,” said the jeweller, “I do at eight hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Grab it!” Mr. Tuyl.
The him approvingly, a man after his own heart; but Archie looked doubtful. It was all very well for Reggie to tell him to it in that careless way. Reggie was a millionaire, and no by the or the or what not; but he himself was in an different position.
“Eight hundred and fifty dollars!” he said, hesitating.
“Worth it,” Reggie Tuyl.
“More than it,” the jeweller. “I can you that it is value than you on Fifth Avenue.”
“Yes?” said Archie. He took the and it thoughtfully. “Well, my dear old jeweller, one can’t say than that, can one—or two, as the case may be!” He frowned. “Oh, well, all right! But it’s that are so on these little thingummies, isn’t it? I to say, can’t see what they see in them. Stones, and all that. Still, there it is, of course!”
“There,” said the jeweller, “as you say, it is, sir.”
“Yes, there it is!”
“Yes, there it is,” said the jeweller, “fortunately for people in my line of business. Will you take it with you, sir?”
Archie reflected.
“No. No, not take it with me. The is, you know, my wife’s from the country to-night, and it’s her birthday to-morrow, and the thing’s for her, and, if it was about the place to-night, she might see it, and it would of the surprise. I to say, she doesn’t know I’m it her, and all that!”
“Besides,” said Reggie, a now that the was concluded, “going to the ball-game this afternoon—might pocket picked—yes, have it sent.”
“Where shall I send it, sir?”
“Eh? Oh, shoot it along to Mrs. Archibald Moffam, at the Cosmopolis. Not to-day, you know. Buzz it in thing to-morrow.”
Having the satisfactory deal, the off the manner and chatty.
“So you are going to the ball-game? It should be an contest.”
Reggie Tuyl, now—by his own standards—completely awake, took to this remark.
“Not a of it!” he said, decidedly. “No contest! Can’t call it a contest! Walkover for the Pirates!”
Archie was to the quick. There is that about which and the in the bosoms. It is almost for a man to live in America and not by the game; and Archie had long been one of its adherents. He was a whole-hearted of the Giants, and his only against Reggie, in other respects an man, was that the latter, money had been from steel-mills in that city, had an for the Pirates of Pittsburg.
“What rot!” he exclaimed. “Look what the Giants did to them yesterday!”
“Yesterday isn’t to-day,” said Reggie.
“No, it’ll be a worse,” said Archie. “Looney Biddle’ll be for the Giants to-day.”
“That’s just what I mean. The Pirates have got him rattled. Look what last time.”
Archie understood, and his nature at the innuendo. Looney Biddle—so-called by an public as the result of marked eccentricities—was the left-handed New York had in the last decade. But there was one on Mr. Biddle’s otherwise scutcheon. Five before, on the occasion of the Giants’ of Pittsburg, he had gone to pieces. Few native-born partisans, up to from the cradle, had been into a on that occasion than Archie; but his at the that that of thing again.
“I’m not saying,” Reggie, “that Biddle isn’t a very pitcher, but it’s to send him against the Pirates, and somebody ought to stop it. His best friends should interfere. Once a team a rattled, he’s any good against them again. He his nerve.”
The of this sentiment.
“They come back,” he said, sententiously.
The blood of the Moffams was now stirred. Archie his friend sternly. Reggie was a good chap—in many respects an egg—but he must not be allowed to talk of this about the left-handed of the age.
“It to me, old companion,” he said, “that a small is at this juncture. How about it?”
“Don’t want to take your money.”
“You won’t have to! In the of the old I, friend of my and of my years, shall be yours.”
Reggie yawned. The day was very hot, and this was making him again.
“Well, just as you like, of course. Double or on yesterday’s bet, if that you.”
For a moment Archie hesitated. Firm as his was in Mr. Biddle’s left arm, he had not to do the thing on this scale. That thousand of his was for Lucille’s birthday present, and he he ought to it. Then the that the of New York was in his hands him. Besides, the was negligible. Betting on Looney Biddle was like on the of the sun in the east. The thing to to Archie a and investment. He that the jeweller, until he him but to earth and him to his and talk on a plane, had started that cost about two thousand. There would be time to in at the shop this after the game and the one he had for one of those. Nothing was too good for Lucille on her birthday.
“Right-o!” he said. “Make it so, old friend!”
Archie walked to the Cosmopolis. No came to his perfect contentment. He no about Reggie from another thousand dollars. Except for a little small in the of the Messrs. Rockefeller and Vincent Astor, Reggie had all the money in the world and to lose. He a air as he entered the and to the cigar-stand to a cigarettes to see him through the afternoon.
The girl the cigar him with a smile. Archie was popular with all the employés of the Cosmopolis.
“’S a great day, Mr. Moffam!”
“One of the and best,” Archie. “Could you me out two, or possibly three, cigarettes of the description? I shall want something to at the ball-game.”
“You going to the ball-game?”
“Rather! Wouldn’t miss it for a fortune.”
“No?”
“Absolutely no! Not with old Biddle pitching.”
The cigar-stand girl laughed amusedly.
“Is he this afternoon? Say, that feller’s a nut? D’you know him?”
“Know him? Well, I’ve him and so forth.”
“I’ve got a girl friend who’s to him!”
Archie looked at her with positive respect. It would have been more dramatic, of course, if she had been to the great man herself, but still the that she had a girl friend in that position gave her a of halo.
“No, really!” he said. “I say, by Jove, really! Fancy that!”
“Yes, she’s to him all right. Been close on a months now.”
“I say! That’s interesting! Fearfully interesting, really!”
“It’s about that guy,” said the cigar-stand girl. “He’s a nut! The who said there’s of room at the top must have been of Gus Biddle’s head! He’s about m’ girl friend, y’ know, and, they have a fuss, it like he of right off the handle.”
“Goes in off the end, eh?”
“Yes, sir! Loses what little he’s got. Why, the last time him and m’ girl friend got to was when he was going on to Pittsburg to play, about a month ago. He’d been out with her the day he left for there, and he had a or something, and he started making low, about her Uncle Sigsbee. Well, m’ girl friend’s got a disposition, but she c’n mad, and she just left him and told him all was over. And he off to Pittsburg, and, when he started in to the opening game, he just couldn’t keep his mind on his job, and look what them done to him! Five in the innings! Yessir, he’s a nut all right!”
Archie was concerned. So this was the of that disaster, that which had puzzled the press from to coast.
“Good God! Is he often taken like that?”
“Oh, he’s all right when he hasn’t had a with m’ girl friend,” said the cigar-stand girl, indifferently. Her in was tepid. Women are too often like this—mere butterflies, with no for the of life.
“Yes, but I say! What I to say, you know! Are they now? The good old Dove of Peace its little and all that?”
“Oh, I everything’s and just now. I m’ girl friend yesterday, and Gus was taking her to the last night, so I everything’s and smooth.”
Archie a of relief.
“Took her to the movies, did he? Stout fellow!”
“I was at the picture last week,” said the cigar-stand girl. “Honest, it was a scream! It was like this—”
Archie politely; then in to a bite of lunch. His equanimity, by the of the in the one’s armour, was restored. Good old Biddle had taken the girl to the last night. Probably he had her hand a in the dark. With what result? Why, the would be like one of those who used to for the of in the Middle Ages. What he meant to say, the girl would be at the game this afternoon, him on, and good old Biddle would be so full of and that there would be no him.
Encouraged by these thoughts, Archie with an mind. Luncheon concluded, he to the to his and from the boy with he had left them. It was while he was this financial operation that he that at the cigar-stand, which the coat-and-hat alcove, his friend the had in with another girl.
This was a looking woman in a dress and a large of a and species. Archie to her attention, she gave him a out of a pair of eyes, then, as if she did not think much of him, to her and their conversation—which, being of an private and nature, she conducted, after the manner of her kind, in a which into every of the lobby. Archie, waiting while the for a bill, was to every word.
“Right from the start I he was in a mood. You know how he gets, dearie! Chewing his upper lip and looking at you as if you were so much his feet! How was I to know he’d fifteen fifty-five playing poker, and anyway, I don’t see where he a to work off his on me. And I told him so. I said to him, ‘Gus,’ I said, ‘if you can’t be and and when you take me out, why do you come at all? Was I or right, dearie?”
The girl the her conduct. “Once you let a man think he use you as a door-mat, where were you?”
“What then, honey?”
“Well, after that we to the movies.”
Archie started convulsively. The from his dollar-bill in his hand. Some of it and across the floor, with the in pursuit. A had to take in his mind.
“Well, we got good seats, but—well, you know how it is, once start going wrong. You know that of mine, the one with the and and the feather—I’d taken it off and it him to when we in, and what do you think that fell’r’d done? Put it on the and it under the seat, just to save himself the trouble of it on his lap! And, when I him I was upset, all he said was that he was a and not a hatstand!”
Archie was paralysed. He paid no attention to the hat-check boy, who was trying to him to accept treasure-trove to the amount of forty-five cents. His whole being was on this which had upon him like a wave. No possible room for remained. “Gus” was the only Gus in New York that mattered, and this and female him was the Girl Friend, in hands rested the of New York’s followers, the of the Giants, and the of his thousand dollars. A from his lips.
“Well, I didn’t say anything at the moment. It just how them can work on a girl’s feelings. It was a Bryant Washburn film, and somehow, I see him on the screen, nothing else to matter. I just that goo-ey feeling, and couldn’t start a if you asked me to. So we go off to have a soda, and I said to him, ‘That sure was a film, Gus!’ and would you me, he says out that he didn’t think it was such a much, and he Bryant Washburn was a pill! A pill!” The Girl Friend’s voice with emotion.
“He never!” the cigar-stand girl.
“He did, if I die the next moment! I wasn’t more than half-way through my and maple, but I got up without a word and left him. And I ain’t a of him since. So there you are, dearie! Was I right or wrong?”
The cigar-stand girl gave approval. What men like Gus Biddle needed for the of their was an occasional good right where it would do most good.
“I’m you think I right, dearie,” said the Girl Friend. “I I’ve been too weak with Gus, and he’s took of it. I s’pose I’ll have to him one of these old days, but, me, it won’t be for a week.”
The cigar-stand girl was in of a fortnight.
“No,” said the Girl Friend, regretfully. “I don’t I out that long. But, if I speak to him a week, well—! Well, I be going. Goodbye, honey.”
The cigar-stand girl to to an customer, and the Girl Friend, walking with the and steps which character, for the swing-door leading to the street. And as she went, the which had Archie its hold. Still the forty-five which the boy to proffer, he in her wake like a and came upon her just as she was into a car. The car was full, but not too full for Archie. He his five into the box and for a strap. He looked upon the hat. There she was. And there he was. Archie rested his left ear against the of a long, strongly-built man in a who had him into the car and was his strap, and pondered.
