Evening Star Newspaper, July 12, 1931, Page 78

IN A SILVER FRAME “Hurry!” I told Eddie, though all at once I didn't feel like speaking. “Hurry!” Something in the way I sald it caught Enid’s attention and she turned and pointed to me. “Why, look at papa!” she sald and she broke out laughing as if I'd been the funniest thing she’d ever seen in her life. “Why, papa!” she shouted. “Papa, you're going to be seasick!™ “I'm not!” I told her and I spoke sternly. “I'm not going to be seasick!” I was right, too, and the effort I made to look severe prob- ably did a good deal to make me right. I wasn's going to be sick; I already was. I just said “Hurry!” again, in a kind of whisper, and the worst began to happen. After that I whis- pered “Hurry!” whenever I could and every time I said it I could hear Enid break out gig- gling ggain. ‘That is, I heard her for a while, but I got into such a condition that my impressions of external maiters were dimmed and facts had difficulty in penetrating to me. Then I became vaguely aware that Enid wasn't laughing any more and wasn't sick herself, but was in great distress about something. I heard her moan- ing, “Oh, heavens!” and scolding Eddie Bull- finch for not having any ammonia or other remedies on board and for not bzing able to start bis engine. I heard her saying, in gentle tones, “Here, let me hold my cool, wet hand- kerchief on your poor forehead. How horrible that you should suffer so!” From this and other things I discovered that somebody else was beginning to share my fllness. Eddie Bullfinch mistakenly thought I would be interested in hecaring about it, for he got up and leaned over me, speaking in a low, tense voice. “It's going to work!” he said. “You just watch! He's commencing to be something ter- rible! If she could ever stand to let him come within a mile of her after this I'd sell the Shooting Star for 40 cents! You just watch!” *Well, I managed to say “Watch!” in a voice I faintly hoped might convey a little of my opinion of himself. It wasn't Mushmelon I was disliking by this time; it was Eddic Bull- finch. I wouldn't have cared, just then, if Mushmelon and Enid had got actually mar- ried the minute we stepped ashore, just so we stepped ashore. And the worst of it was, my whole zmisery was absolutely useless. We rolled and tossed in that channel for more than two of the worst hours this world’s ever secn, and the longer we stayed the greater was Enid's anguish on Muchmelon's account and the tendered h:r ministrations to him. Finally I-heard Eddie Bullfinch speaking in a desperate voice. “Well, dog-gone it!” he sald, and the next minute he had the Shooting Star going again. As soon a2s we touched the pler where Eddie kept his vile boat I limped right off home to lie down, without even looking back, but that evening, feeling feeble but better, I had a talk with Eddie alone on our front porch. He was in low spirits. “It didn’t do any good at all,” he said. “They're absolutely different from “Who do vo'1 mean?” I asked him. “Women,” hLe said. “I never dreamed but that if she just once saw him going it the way he did—and he certainly did—it would wean her away from him right the minute she saw bim that way, absolutely. Why, I'd have kept that boat out there till now if I hadn't seen there wasn't any hope of it. Why, I'd have kept that boat out there until even I got sick myself— " . *“Don’t say that, Eddie,” I told him. “I hope you wouldn’t have gone to such an extreme.” *“I would!” he said. “But the longer we stayed, the more she nursed him and the mushier she got over his suffering, until finally it was so absolutely sickening I started up the amgine and came back, because I couldn't stand it. The way it looks to me, when a girl gets that way about a wet splash like old Sloppy Weather Mushmelon, why, the more anybody in the worid does to him and the more awful he is himself the more she seems to think of him!"” E groaned and scratched his left ankle with the side of his right shoe—it seemed a kind of desperate motion, the way he did it. “Well,” he said, “it was the last thing and it didn't work. It ccrtainly looks bad!" I agreed with him, and so did Mrs. Massey and so did Clarissa when I talked our trouble over later with them. Clarissa didn't offer any hope, but seemed to feel she understood the case better than her mother and I did. _ "Didn’t I tell you nobody could do anything?" she said. “From the way Enid was always ready to scalp the boy who showed any symp- tom, I knew all along she was oruly piling up symptoms in herself that would all break out togethzr some time on the slightest excuse. You couldn’t find a slighter excuse than Mush- melon Turpie, of course; but that didn’t matter, He just happened to walk in when the breaking- out time in Enid couldn't be postponed any longer. When that time came it didn’t make any difference what kind of & boy walked in— Just so it was one she wasn't used to—he was certain to be it. Papa thought that kind of thing could be ‘dealt with.' Well, we've all done every bit of the dealing with it we could, and if you think it's ever going to do any good, just<@e.in her rcom and look at the frame she put on his picture this afternoon! I ask you!” Enid was out somewhere—with Mushmelon, of course—and after a little while Mrs. Massey and I followed Clarissa’s suggestion. We went into Enid’s room and looked at the frame she'd bought for his photograph. She’'d ordered it from a jewelry house in New York and I've seldom experienced more despairing sensa- tions then when I saw Mushmelon’s kind of softly piggish features ensconced, as you might call it, among those surroundings of orna- solid silver. Mrs. Massey told me Er)d d $90 for that frame, buying it cut of her allowance in preference to a dress she wanted, and if you could forget what was in it nothing could have been more beautiful, “I give up ab-olutely!” I said when I suw it. “She sees him in a frame like that all the time. That's why she bought it. She couldn’t have brought herself to offer that sublime face anything less. It's beyond us. We've been trying to administer remedies in a case where there couldn’'t be any.” That was my conclusion at the hour of my lowest ebb in regard to Enid's delusion, but by the grace of Divine Providence it's a fact that most of our lowest-cbb conclusions aren’t con- clusivé Mushmelon overate himself at a clam- bake and remained in bed for several days, during which we didn’t experience much relief, because Enid kept the telephone going most of the time, worrying the Bullfiinch family about his condition, which she attributed to ptomaine poiscning. Then Eddie Bullfinch came in one ncon and brightened her up by telling her that Mushmelon was so far con- valescent that he had breakfasted on grape- fruit, cereal, bacon, eggs, chops, buckwheat cakes and sirup. Eddie stayed to lunch with us and his ex- pression and general manner were pretty bitter. “Mush’ll be out tomorrov.,” he said. “It's a good thing for my family’s grocery bills that he was sick for a few days!” Then he looked at Enid and asked her, “You been in the Spruce Tree Gift Shop since Mush took sick?” “No,” she said, looking surprised. “Why?” “Oh, nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.* “Why?” she asked him again. “What do you meean?"” “Nothing—nothing at all,” he told her. “I don’t s'pose you'd be interested, though a good many of your girl friends and some of the boys have bsen in there and come out laughing.” Enid frowned at him. “What are you talk- ing about? What do I care who goes in the Spruce Tree Gift Shop and comes out laughing? What's the matter with ycu?” “Nothing,” he sald. “Nothing at all. It's only that they've got the photograph that you gave Mush down there on the counter. It isn't so much the photograph everybody goes in there to laugh over, though.” “What?” Enid said. “What?" “Oh, nothing,” Eddie went on. - “Mush took your photograph down there and he couldn't make up his mind between a nice white celluloid frame and one made of birch bgrk with a picture of an owl stitched onto the top and an Indian in a canoe on the lower part, ter- ribly artistic. This was the one he wanted, but they ask:d him two dollars and a quarter for it and the celluloid frame is only a dollar and nineteen cents, though the picture would have to be cut down some to fit it. He offered them a dollar and sixty cents for the birch- bark one and then went up to one sixty-five, but they stuck out for the full price, so he said he guessed he’d have to take the celluloid, but would think it over and not decide until next day. But that was the day he stuffed himself too full o’ lobsters, clams, sweet potatoes and corn and everything, so they've been waiting for him to come in ever since, and they've kept the photograph out on the counter in the artistic birch-bark frame, hoping it would attract him so much when he saw it again that he’d make up his mind to come through with the full two and a quarter. Pretty near everybody goes in to see it and hear the Spruce Tree people tell about it.” Enid just sat staring at Eddie while he was talking, and when he'd finished I don't think I ever saw her eyes wider or her face redder. “You made it up!” she said. “It's every single a falsehood!” Very Private Detective Continued from Eighth Page gin with, Mr. Connerty,” said Fenderton. *“I will accept your proposition.” “Fine!” said the detective, thrusting his hand at Fenderton. “And forget the stiff stuff, kid—call me Bob. Ccme right in any time and use that table over there.” “All right, Bob,” he said. tomorrow morning, then,” he sald. o'clock?” “Oh, sure! Nine or eleven or two or four— all the same to me, Roper. Any time's oke with me,” and with that Mr. Connerty put his feet on his desk again and opened the evening paper. May Middleton, when Fenderton reached the street, was sitting in the car, and she quite wisely ignored the coldness with which Fenderton had parted from Ler. In some ways Fenderton was difficuit at times; he certainiy did have a good oplnion of himself—and showed it—but he was the nicest boy May knew, and all boys seemed to have perfectly silly opinions of themselves. “Well, Fenderton, did you get the job2” May asked as he got into the limousine. “Certainly,” Fenderton said. “I have placed myself pretty soft, May. Detective work.” “Why, that's just fire, Fenderton. I'm awfully glad.” “Old Sleuth Roper, the gentleman blood- hound, May. I got a pretty soft proposition out of old Connerty, too. if you ask me. I gave the old boy som> pretty straight-from-the- shoulder talk. You should have seen him lap it up. He grabbed me quick, May.” The next morning Fenderton entered Con- nerty's office at exactly 9 o'clock and the eminent detective, as he saw him, dropped his feet from his desk. “Right on the job; that's the boy!" Con- nerty exclaimed. “And luck is with us, kid. I've got a case for you the very first thing, and you can get right out and hustle. Good money, big reward, and it ought to be a cinch for a lad like you. Hand me that paper over there on the table.” “I will begin “Nine " ERE you are!” he said, pointing to a lost or stolen advertisement that was already familiar to Fenderton since it was the one he had lelt at the Intelligencer office. It ran: “Lost or stolen; $25 reward offered. Large brown dog, three white feet, bushy tail; $25 reward will be paid for return to 242 State street and no questions asked.” Down in the street Fenderton stood a mo- ment uncertain just how to proceed i the Mystery of the Vanished Dog. Nothing in any mystery tale he had read suggested how a de- tective would have handled this case. Invari- ably, in the crimes, there was some clue that could be followed—after, of course, it had been ignored by the stodgy brains of the official po- lice forces—but Fenderton did not have even a part of a clue. He lighted one of his few remaining cigarettes and walked slowly toward the more humble part of Westcote, where dog stealers might be supposed ‘to reside, and he spent a number of hours looking with hawk]\ke eyes into back yards, but he saw no traces of the missing Bruno, and it was well after noon when hunger reminded him that he, like all detectives, had a stomach. He went home. ‘The moment Fenderton entered his own yard he heard an eager whine, and a large brown dog with three white feet and a bushy tail came leaping toward him from near the family garage, to grovel at his feet. Bruno had come home. Bending low, Fenderton drew Bruno through the forsythia hedge into the yard of the vacant house next door and thence to the rear of that property, where he tied Bruno to a small grape arbor. “Good old Bruno!” he said, patting him on the head. “You wait here, Pwyg® sand I will bring you a good dinner,” and he left Bruno there and went into his own home. Before eating his lunch Fenderton called up May Middleton and told her to meet him on Main street, in front of 263, in time for the second show at the Palace, after which he ate heartily and put a good quantity of cold sliced lamb in his pocket for Bruno. Fortunately, he felt, he had not told his family of his entrance into the detective field, and having fed Bruno he hurried downtown and climbed two flights to the office of Detective Connerty. He en- tered the office nonchalantly, lighting his very ladt cigarette and casting the match at the tin wastebasket with a careless flip of the wrist. “Dropped in to report, chicf,” he said. *“I got that dog.” “You got—you did what?" demanded Mr. Connerty, letting his feet drop to the floor. “If you will proceed to the vacant house at 240 State street and thence to a grape arbor on the rear of the premises,” said Fenderton, “you will find the dog. The owner resides next door—Mrs. Samuel Roper. I prefer that you do not mention my name.” “Oh! You do, do you?” said Mr. Connerty grinning. “Kid, you're good. You are good! « . . You wait here.” About half an hour later May Middleton was standing on the walk in front of 263 Main street reading the butcher's placards with ap- parent interest, when a heavy man pushed past her and entered the door leading to the upper floors. This was Mr. Robert Connerty and he had just had an unpleasant experience. He had found Bruno tied to the grape arbor, and with the rope in his hand he had walked to the front door of 242 State street. The door, when he rang, was opened by Mrs. Roper her- self. 111 BROUGHT back ycur dog, lady,” said Mr. Connerty, touching his hat. ‘“Twenty-five dollars and no questions asked—that's right, ain’t it?” “Who are you?"” asked Mrs. Roper with man- ifest distaste. “I'm the man that's brought back your dog,” said Mr. Connerty. “Oh, you did, did you?"” said Mrs. Fenderton. “Well, as it happens, the dog came home him- self this morning, and my maid saw my son tie this dog in the next yard not half an hour ago. ‘Why he did it I do not know, but if you don't want me to call the police——" “All right! Al right!” said Mr. Connerty, getting red in the face. “Forget it, lady; forget it!” and that was why he returned to his office without $25. May Middleton, waiting on the street below Mr. Connerty's office, heard a loud voice and a clatter of heels as when some one is pushed downstairs and just manages to retain an up- right position, and a minute later Fendertomn came down the lower flight, straightening his coat and arranging his tie, which was in con- siderable disorder. “Hello, Fenderton,” May said. “I've been waiting an awfully long time. How's the de- tective business, Fenderton?” “Now, listen, May,” Fenderton said to the girl severely. “I don't want to hear ahy more about the detective business, if you please. I'm through with that sort of type. I told this bum Connerty where to go, tco.” “That was nice, Fenderton,” May said in the tone that made her such a pleasant girl to be with. “Then that was it, Fenderton—I was afraid you were falling downstairs, but you were only being kicked out of your job, weren't you? Well, let's—have you got any money, Fenderton?” “No, not today,” said Fenderton. He thought of the $25 reward and sighed. “I've got 45—50 cents,” said May, looking in her purse and poking the coins with her finger. “Let’s go to the Palace, Fenderton—that've got a peachy talkie.” “No, it isn't,” Clarissa told her. “I heard about it this morning at the beach myself, only I thought it wouldn't do any good to mention it.” “What!” Enid said, and she jumped up from the table. “If you heard it, then it was only because Eddie Bullfinch had been around cir- culating it. I'll soon show you what a story- teller he is!” Tmnxennouto(theroomnndwtofth. house, and within half a minute her run- about shot past the dining room windows and turned toward the village. She was back before we'd finished the meal, but she didn't come into the dining room—she ran up the stairs and then we heard the door of her own room flung shut. So pretty soon Mrs. Massey, went up there and came back, looking troubled. She said the door was locked and Enid had told her nothing was the matter but she wasn’t coming down. She kept her door locked all afternoon and didn't come down te dinner or during the evening, either. The next day Mushmelon came around about lunch time, looking condescending and anticipatory. I was out on the porch, bug got up and went inside when I saw him come ing, and Mrs. Massey told me later that he seemed astounded and kind of cross with here self when she told him that Enid had gone for an all-day motorcycle and side-car exe cursion to Lodgeport with Eddie Bullfinch, She also informed me that Exid's wastee basket had contained, that morning, the reme nants of a birch-bark picture frame ond two photographs, the pieces being about ay small as anybody could tear them. “My goodness!” I said. “We were wyong about there being no remedy, after all. ‘Yhe trouble was, it took Mushmelon himself to administer it.” & “No,” she said. “It took Enid. It wasn't Mushmelon or even his bad taste about the frame—not even his stinginess. All that wouldn’t have changed her if nobody else nad known anything about it. What she cow/dn’t stand was being made ridiculous.” “What! Why how could anybody be more ridiculous than she's been ever zince——2" “Oh, yes; she knows that now,” Mrs. Massey told me. *“But, of course, she never could have known that her being in love with him was ridiculous until she saw that she looked ridiculous herself, because a picture of her was being made to look ridiculous. Come and see what she’s done with that beautiful silver frame she bought.” S0 we went into Enid’s room, and there on her pretty little desk was that magnificens frame; and when I saw what the dear child had put in it I stood still and swallowed and began to feel queer around my eyelids. “Well, T declare!” I said. “I certainly think that's pretty touching!” Mrs. Massey looked absent-minded. “I was pleased myself,” she told me. “But I'm afraid it was mostly because that president of the Logansville Chamber of Commerce picture of you was the only loose photograph around the house. I suspect it's temporary. Now she's started, there isn't any telling who'll be the next to occupy that frame—maybe even Eddie Bullfinch himself!” (Copyright, 1931, by Booth Tarkington.) Old Fire Com panics Continued from Seventh Page this old building (no longer standing) inspires many fond recollections, since it was used for a number of years from 1866 as a public school. In 1870 primary grades two and nine were taught here by Miss Mary E. Armistead and Miss Maggie E. Saxton. Samuel Miller was the medal scholar that year in Primary No. 2 and others recognized with diplomas for their good work, were: Geoige Miller, Henry Ferrell, Thomas Roby, Adolph Volk, Dixon Daughton, Willie Rockett, Arthur Rawlings, George Lomax, George Ruff, George Gates, Peyton Wilkerson and Charlie Foos. In primary grade No. 9 George D:neale re- ceived the medal, while those receiving cere tificates of honor included: John Woodiield, Charles Saxton, Philip Nicholson, Charles Crawford, Eddie Kibbey, Willlz Stewart, Marion Thompson, Chiarles Buckingham, George Sond- ers, Eddie Middleton, Edward Bulley and Sam- uel Crawford. Miss Margaret E. Forbes, who achieved dis- tinction as a teacher and official in the publie schools, began her life’s work in 1873 or 1874, in this modest structure, which we erected, according to Sessford, in 1839, on ground then and for many years later ownsd by the Fed- eral Government. Beside the Union enginc house, where the Association of Oldest Inhabitants holds meet- ings, the writer knows of but two other build- ings in the city which date back {o the days of the volunteer firemen, namely, the Frank- Hn on D street, soon to be rcmoved, and the Vigilant hecuse, in Georg>town. The Frankiin, as stated, was erected in 1857, while thé build- ing on the west side of Wisconsin avenue just below M strect was most likely built as early as 1829, since it was on December 12 of that year that the Vigilant company moved to this spot from across the street, where the co rpany had been housed from the date of its organiza- tion. This old company, and its successor, the present No. 5 Engine Company, continued in this old house until 1883, when it movid to the engine house on M street.