Evening Star Newspaper, March 17, 1935, Page 89

In the Elevator Continued from page eleven family. It's got to be handled right, this situation. A row of difficulties leapt out to meet him like barbed wire before the German trenches. But his heart was singing. He'd smash the wire like a tank, trample and flatten the dif- ficulties into the ground. Nothing could keep them apart. With a soft thud the car settled to the ground floor, and the passengers in front bustled forth. Morton waited for the girl to go. As she stepped out ahead of him, she gave him one last look over her shoulder. In it he read all the tenderness and merriment of youth. The joy of meeting after what distant ages someone you had known and loved before. Silly, he thought, to dream like this . . . but sweet . . . and perhaps . . . perhaps it might be true. As he followed her down the hall- way, he looked instinctively into the mirror and his hand raised to straighten his tie. Then he stood like a man frozen, staring at his own image in the glass — a strong healthy man of middle age, dressed neatly in black broadcloth, not fat exactly but no slim agility of youth, no clean-cut lines of neck and chin, no flowing waves of brown abundant hair. He looked again in horror. There on his cheek below the left eye he was branded with a sign of ownership. Like a Cupid’'s bow the neat red print of lipstick, where his wife had kissed him, in token for his gift. Lipstick . . . damning as the mark of Cain! So that was why the girl had smiled, the golden girl of dreams. Furiously Packard Morton scrubbed his sleeve across his cheek, smashed his hat down on his head and strode out to the waiting automobile. “‘Step on it, George,” he barked, “must be at the office in twenty minutes.” The chauffeur shrugged his shoulder. “I’'ll do my best, sir, but you know what these red lights are.” “Damn the red lights,” said his master. “Drive through them, drive to hell!” Seven Million Dollars Continued from page ten off on your own. Fine! I'd planned to take you to London and Italy and a lot of places. But as you’ve all took over charge of this circus, I won't have to bother. By tomorrow noon, your steamer tickets will all be ready — call at my travel office for them. “We sail on the Dolorous day after tomorrow. She’s a one-class ship, and we won't be able to give single gents and ladies no cabins to them- selves, also by golly, you buy your own booze. Them as doesn’t claim tickets by six tomorrow afternoon pays their own way back to Jack- rabbit.” The rebels were too dazed to realize much save that from the dining- room door Maybelle Benner was pouring upon Cordwood an admira- tion that was a bit embarrassing, and that she even gave to Percy Wil- loughby such an amiable glance as she might have given to a dish of waffles on a winter morning, and that arm in arm with her was the Sister Tinkerbun whom once they had looked upon as a pot-walloper and a yes-woman. The voyage of the S.S. Dolorous was not very inspiriting. She was a strictly business-like vessel, an old- fashioned craft, which attended only to getting people across the ocean, and provided neither gilded ballrooms, swimming-pools, private baths, red tissue-paper gala caps, nor in any other manner tried to emulate Atlantic City or Yom Kippur. The discon- solate pilgrims (only seventeen had angrily remained behind in Paris, on their own) had all evening long the spectacle of Cordwood, Percy, May- belle, Sister Tinkerbun, Manny Iigen- fritz, Oley Tengbom, and Sime Bendelari being jocular around a large smoking-room table weedy with glasses, but as for themselves, they could dance to a phonograph —or not dance to a phonograph. Worst of all, the now disgraced Cordwood seemed much happier than he had coming over on the Dipsomania. But on the third day out, Cord- wood’s cheerfulness vanished with a great and terrible vanishment. He received — collect — from Jack- rabbit, from Sheriff Pimbury, a radio- gram, *“‘Whole town Jackrabbit burning up doubt if we can save anything except memorial fountain.” He had scarcely finished groaning over the message when he had a second: “Looks like Colonel Blight and gang got away with all cash in bank vaults county treasury postoffice before fire started stop probably set fire stop wire instructions Bert Pim| 5% The third was: “Rescued marble top table seven cocktail shakers lawn- mower bronge statue seems be heathen goddess from your home what want done with these.” Before he dared tell his once friendly neighbors that they had lost all their goods, Cordwood worked for hours with Percy. He would have spent about a million dollars, out of his seven, before he got his lambs all home. They estimated that it would take about three million to rebuild the town and get it started. By golly, that still leaves me three million, and even this traveling didn’t Pan out 30 good. I don’t see any way of getting rid of the rest,” sighed Cordwood. Then he brightened, in memory of 1929: “Except maybe by getting the very best advice from the soundest kind of brokers and bankers and investing in absolutely safe securi- ties on their advice.” When the news of the conflagration was made known to the ship, Mr. Scallion tried to jump overboard. Mrs. Ben Pilshaw, wife of the hay and feed store, went about moaning, “My lovely new overstuffed daven- port!” Irving Berklund wailed, “My radio — just when I thought I'd got- ten Kalamazoo.” But whatever their griefs individually, they joined as one man in blaming Cordwood. Except for him, they would never have left their homes unguarded. Within an hour, there was among all of them a confused but passionate feeling that Cordwood had slipped over to America, probably by aeroplane, and started the fire himself. Indignation meetings were held in every stateroom, in the smoking-room, even in the bathrooms where miserable bather called to bather from his tub. Percy gathered them all into the dining-room after dinner, and Cord- wood announced that he would, if pos- sible, make it good to all of them. They jabbered at him. You bef he’d make it good to them or they'd — . When they stopped for a second to try to think just what they would do, if he failed them, Maybelle Benner shot up and addressed the meeting, un- invited by either party in this war: “I call it real good of Mr. McGash. And just kindly remember that he's under no necessity of doing a single thing. And if he does rebuild for you, out of the goodness of his heart, you'll have new houses, and clean ones, which is more than a lot of you had when we started off! Now 1 advise you to all quiet right down and go make lists of what you think you've lost, or are going to say you've lost, and bring ‘em to Mr. Willoughby, and maybe he’ll get Mr. McGash to allow them.” “I don’t think I /ike that woman, Mrs. Benner, any more,” whispered Mrs. Berklund to Mrs. Mitch. With considerable speed they scat- tered to their several cabins and began frantically to scribble lists on very, very large sheets of paper; and to gal- lop toward Cordwood’s cabin with the lists, to get in first. They must have had exceptional memories — perhaps due to the supe- rior air and water of Jackrabbit County. Among two hundred other items, old Mrs. Peasewick recalled and described in detail sixteen patchwork quilts, a noble antique clock perfect in every way except that since the second battle of Bull Run, no one had been able to make it go, twelve hem- stitched towels none of which had been used for more than a generation, and a library of nineteen books, in- cluding five by Harold Bell Wright. The stocks-in-trade of the various stores and small factories made an impressive showing. Sime Bendelari — though privately he was fond of Cordwood, or at least of Cordwood’s poker and liquor — estimated a stock which would have made a handsome showing in a chain of twenty urban drug-stores, and Cohen & Cabot claimed a loss of such imperial, such fabulous wares as would have set up a New York —even a Chicago — department store. Cordwood received all these claims with scarcely a whimper. He muttered only, “I never noticed any fifty-dollar pajamas in Cohen & Cabot’s!” He would have paid every claim, but Percy and Maybelle were firm. They THIS WEEK clamored about things like insurance, inventories, appraisers. They kept him up all one night, jabbing at him, i agreed to set up a court com- of Percy, Mr. Scallion —a of the first water but an honest — and Judge Kilgore to pass on the claims and to pay what seemed just, receiving from each claimant a receipt and a promise to pay back it pronounce to have been an excess. Night and day, till they landed, this court sat wearily at its foul task, arguing with indignant suitors who explained that in a two-thousand dollar house they had cunningly con- cealed a grand piano, $10,000 in bills, and a couple of tiaras from the smuggled Russian court-jewels. The back looking drab and shabby and insignificant in his supposedly new wardrobe. Not again did he tell happy stories of homicide in lumbercamps to lively parties in the smoking-room. The judges paid out nearly three million, of which, they estimated, Cordwood might get back half a mil- lion . . . Some day. That, felt Cord- wood lugubriously, still left him rather too rich — three million he still had on his books. The night before they landed, Percy came to him with a glorious sug- gestion. Cordwood should stay in New York — if he went back to Jack- rabbit with the clamorous refugees, they would badger him to death. He, the good Percy, would conduct them back, Cordwood would better give him a little personal check, say five hundred or so, and with this Percy would meet all their first needs, in cash . . . . being careful always, he explained, to get legal receipts from them, “Fine! I never did get to see New York. I'll stay couple of weeks or so. Five hundred thousand — that be enough?’ said Cordwood grate- fully. “Maybe I can get Mrs. Benner to stay — with Sister Tinkerbun for Maybelle and Mrs. Tinkerbun were graciously willing to stay, after he had spoken with hoarse eloquence of night clubs and the wonders of Grant'’s tomb, and the three of them saw off at the station the now more nearly forgiving nine hundred. They really had a very good time, in New York. They drank non-alco- holic cocktails in Rockefeller Center. They viewed Roy Chapman Andrews and Will Beebe at the Natural History Museum. But they were not altogether dis- sipated. Came a night when Maybelle demanded: “Cordwood, dear,” “Yes,” said Cordwood. “I want a check for $500,000." Now that was very nearly a blow. Maybelle had been the only person in America who hadn’t tried to touch him. It made him feel lonely. Then hastily, she said : “Oh, no, no, no! Not for myself! To rebuild the Community House in Jackrabbit! We mustn’t let that lovely thing go !’ she maintained earnestly. _“I seel” said Cordwood, happily signing. Next moming, as Maybelle and Sister Tinkerbun were getting per- manent waves — and where they ever learned that there were such things as permanent waves this chronicler has been unable to discover — Cordwood thought it might be well to drop in and see his New York lawyers. They greeted him, he thought, with some coldness. The head of the firm. Mr. Guidelpop, making a brave show with his eye-glasses, demanded, “‘Mr. McGash, I am, if I may say so, a bit worried about your investments. They seem to me, if I may say so, to be diminishing at a dangerous rate. Now this two million dollars that your agent, Colonel Blight, withdrew —— " “Blight? Two million?" “Why yes—on your power of attorney.”” “Could I see that there power of attorney?”’ It was forged. And so it came to pass that Cord- wood McGash, a simple and quite decent fellow who had recently been worrying about the spending of his exorbitant fortune, walked out on the street penniless. He had supposed that he would like it, but in truth, when he thought of sgain batching it, in a tar- paper shack, with greasy tin dishes, he wasn’t entirely happy. Then — to the alarm of the traffic cop at Thirty-fourth and Fifth Avenue — he stopped on the corner and laughed. Idiot! Of course! What foolish- ness! Didn’t good old Percy Willoughby have $500,000 of his? So, happily, he came into his hotel, to find a telegram from Mr. Scallion: “Do you know where Willoughby is? Seems to have disappeared. Got off train at Newark and has not been seen since.” Now Cordwood had been the joy of the hotel. He had always tipped the bell boys a dollar each and the slight- est smile from the elevator starter had been good for a five. They were all a little hurt this morning when, after receiving his telegram, he strode to the elevator without tipping any- body on the way. But, in the elevator, he laughed again. “Well, anyway,” he chuckled,““‘there is no chance that Maybelle will marry me. I dunno that it'll be so bad to be batching it again. Beans are pretty damn good when you cook "em right.” He opened the door to his suite. Maybelle was sitting there. “Five hundred thousand dollars, at five per cent is twenty-five thou- sand dollars a year—and that is more than anybody deserves to have in the world,” she said. “‘You see, the Com- munity House that I was thinking ll!!!ll"is our Community House in “I see,” said Cordwood. “But isn’t it necessary to get a marriage license and a steamer ticket?”’ Maybelle laughed. “I have them all ready,” she said. THE END The Shining Hour Continued from page eight front of which were two chairs of honor for the bride and bri E Visitors from all parts of the Riviera had crowded there to the somewhat unique close to the season’s entertain- ment. There was a tremendous stir when, from the distance, the sounds of the wedding march were heard. Ev: rose and clapped as the procession entered. The bride and bridegroom led the way. The applause was almost deafening when the two arrived at their chairs and stood hand in hand, doing their best to respond to the storm of greetings. Rosa was wearing the wedding dress she had worn night after night but, with its new sig- to have stolen into her expression. A glow of happiness shining in her face brought with it a new dignity. i There was a huge popping of corks. By an excellent piece of staff work, wineflpwedintoevu'ydnsalthe back in her chair, hanging over the side. A second and Jim, who had sprung forward to cover her, fell across the table. Then for a moment there was pandemonium. Dring, thrown on to the floor by Besserley, was held by half a dozen hands. “He’s mad, remember,” shouted. “Don’t kill him. ‘l‘ieBl?u:!"-!ey A small crowd were leaning over the up on a chair with upraised hands. His voice thundered through the room: *““There’s no occasion for alarm. The cartridges just fired were blank. Nei- ther Miss Rosa nor her husband is in any way hurt.” By this time Jim had staggered to his feet. Rosa had fainted, but a moment later she opened her eyes. Her husband lifted her in his arms. Dring, shouting and raving, was car- subsided a little. A representative of the Sporting Club banged on the table for silence. The hubbub died away. In an hour’s time a great car was stealing along the dark road across the frontier and on towards San Remo. Rosa, with eyes still damp, was rest- ing happily in her husband’s arms. Behind them in that tumultuous sup- hand. ““A toast,” he shouted, “to the man who has saved us from the most hate- ful tragedy we could any of us ever have witnessed. To Besserley!”’ Fantastic stories were told after- wards of the number of glasses that were broken and rafters that were splintered after the shouting had died away. THIS WEEK More than four million Tamilies received this issue of THIS WEEK. THIS WEEK is distributed through Mnty-onox great newspapersin the principal cities east of the Rockies. THIS WEEK is made pos- sible by the Weiss Speedry process, o new patented development which permits printing @ magazine in brilliant colorgravure at newspaper speed. [ J It takes 450,000 pounds of paper every week to print THIS WEEK. The pages joined end to end would reach from New York to the middle of the Atlantic— 1500 miles. & & It takes 46,000 pounds of ink, too; black, red, yellow, and blue, to print the stories and illustrations in THIS WEEK—oand the colorful advertisements, of course. [ ] When the presses are go- ing full tilt they turn out 15,000 copies of THIS WEEK every hour — four copies every second —~a full-sized magazine every time the clock ticks ! [ J Reading THIS WEEK gives you a pre-view of the year's best fiction. The stories of its famous authors will appear in book form and in the movies. Read them first in THIS WEEK. [} Ask your news- dealer for the paper with THIS WEEK THE NEW Colrgnavune MAGAZINE