Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 207
“I have been since, yer honor,” he said, “but not then. The boys just used ter drop in social, like.”
“Why, this is the most disgraceful story I ever heard,” exclaimed Wagger. “Why are you telling it to me?”
“You kept asking me questions,” the crook answered simply.
“Well, I won’t ask you any more,” declared the magistrate. “Decidedly not. I should think I’d go quite mad listening to all this. Can’t see why I’m not.”
“Not what?” asked Jo.
“Not mad,” said the magistrate, not thinking.
“Not mad at who?” asked Jo.
“I’m not mad at anybody,” he retorted.
“Aren’t you mad at Little Arthur?” she continued.
“Stop asking me questions,” he suddenly roared at the girl. “I hate the very sight of Little Arthur. My God, I’m nervous. Any of you boys got an aspirin?”
A clerk passed a box of aspirin tablets up to the magistrate. He tried to open the tin container, but somehow failed to manage it.
“Can’t do it,” he said hopelessly. “Never can. Never have been able to. Why do they make them that way?”
“Let me try,” offered Liz. “I know how.”
“It’s irregular,” said the nervous man, “but I must have a pill.”
Deftly Liz opened the small tin container, removed a tablet, and passed the open box back to the magistrate. The tablet she placed under her tongue. Magistrate Wagger was following her movements with fascinated eyes.
“Don’t you take any water?” he asked her.
“I like ’em better dry,” said Liz. “Under my tongue.”
Wagger looked slightly shocked.
“I should think it would be uncomfortable,” he ventured. “Can you talk all right? No impediment at all?”
“You get sort of used to it,” she told him.
“Well, I won’t try now,” said the magistrate. “But I will later.” He popped the tablet into his mouth, drained another glass of water, then glared hatefully at the Bishop.
“You’re old enough to know better than to be going round like that,” he said. “Just drawers and a split shirt, and the drawers are coming down in my face. Yank ’em up!” The Bishop complied promptly, and the magistrate continued. “That’s better,” he said. “And remember, if you don’t care what you show, I care about what I look at. I’m very nervous now, and I want you to tell me exactly who you are. Don’t try to say you’re Little This or That, because I won’t be able to stand it.”
“My name is Waller,” replied the Bishop in his most impressive voice. “Bishop Waller.”
“Is the first part a name or a title?” asked the magistrate.
“It designates the office I hold in the Episcopal Church,” said the Bishop calmly.
Magistrate Wagger never knew how he overcame the confused, distorted impulses that beset him at that moment. From mahogany his face turned purple. His eyes grew and grew until they ached in his head. Several times he swallowed. Finally he spoke.
“I don’t believe you,” he said in a cracked voice. “And you can’t say I didn’t give you a fair warning.” He turned to his clerk. “When I come to sentencing this mob,” he said, “remind me to tack on some extra time to this ruffian’s term for attempting to hide behind the skirts of the Church.” He rested a pair of weary eyes on Liz. “Will you please show me what you are concealing beneath that raincoat?” he asked.
“Not on your life,” said Liz. “I knew the legal mind was accurate, but I didn’t know it was nasty.”
“Are you calling me nasty?” Wagger asked in a voice hushed by incredulity.
“I was referring to the legal mind,” hedged Liz.
“Well, my mind is legal,” snapped the baited jurist.
“So is mine,” replied Liz. “It’s perfectly legal to have a mind, isn’t it?”
“It all depends on how you use it,” he told her. “How did we get on this subject?”
“I don’t know,” said Liz.
“Neither do I,” admitted the magistrate. “I’m feeling terribly baffled by all these digressions. Will you tell what you have concealed under that raincoat if you won’t let me see?”
“Everything I’ve got,” said Liz, “is underneath this raincoat.”
“And what have you got?” asked the magistrate, not to be outwitted.
“What would you expect?” the lady demanded. “Fish scales, or feathers?”
“How do you mean, feathers?” the magistrate stubbornly persisted. “Or fish scales, for instance?”
“Oh, God,” breathed Liz, casting her eyes to heaven. “Take a look for yourself.”
With this she threw open the raincoat, and the magistrate, after one dazed look, uttered a wild cry and collapsed on his desk. For a few moments there was confusion in the court, but Wagger did not care. At last he raised a stricken face and looked severely at Liz.
“That was a terrible thing to do,” he told her. “You nearly gave me a stroke.”
“You were asking for it,” said Liz.
“Perhaps,” he admitted fairly. “But I never thought it was possible for a woman to be so — so much, if you get what I mean.”
“Without any trouble at all,” she replied. “You’d be surprised to know that once I had a very lovely figure.”
“May I ask,” put in Horace Sampson, “is this a trial or an informal gathering?”
“You may not,” retorted the magistrate. “Keep a civil tongue in your head. I’ve got enough on my hands.”
“Enough what on your hands?” asked Jo.
“I don’t know,” said Wagger.
“I understood you to say you had enough tongue on your hands,” persisted Jo.
“My dear young woman,” the magistrate almost pleaded, “how could I possibly have enough tongue on my hands?”
“Oh, so you like tongue?”
“I didn’t say so.”
“But,” protested the girl, “you just asked me how you could ever possibly get enough tongue on your hands.”
“I meant just tongue,” he explained. “Not enough tongue. As a matter of fact, I’d hate to have tongue on my hands. Don’t fancy the idea at all.”
“How about a dog’s tongue?” she asked him.
“Whose dog?” he wanted to know. “I have no dog.”
“That’s too bad,” said Jo. “Well, then, the tongue of any dog you name.”
“Good God!” cried the magistrate, suddenly realizing the lengths to which this girl had led him. “Is this tongue discussion going to continue on indefinitely? I don’t care if it’s a dog’s tongue or an elephant’s tongue. Keep them off my hands.”
“I’m not going to put tongue on your hands,” Josephine replied defensively. “I was just asking.”
“All right. All right,” Wagger said in a weary voice. “Now let me ask you some questions. To begin with, how did you get that way?”
“Well, your honor,” began Jo easily, “it was like this. You see, there was a fog and — —”
“What fog?” interrupted the magistrate.
Jo looked puzzled.
“How do you mean, what fog?” she asked. “You can’t name a fog or bring along a sample.”
“Where and when was this fog?” he demanded.
“All over,” said Jo. “I forget just when.”
Magistrate Wagger looked thoroughly disheartened.
“Tell it your way,” he muttered. “I won’t believe you anyhow.”
“And there were a lot of naked people, your honor,” the girl continued.
“There still are,” he said moodily.
“And these naked people,” went on the girl, “took off all our clothes.”
“Just where is the fog at this point?” asked Wagger, not caring whether she told him or not.
“There isn’t any fog any more,” she replied.
“Then I don’t see why you introduced the fog in the first place,” he answered. “Are you trying to interest me in a dirty story, young lady?”
“It isn’t so dirty,” protested Jo. “Just in spots, your honor.”
Suddenly the magistrate’s eyes dilated. He leaned far over his desk and fixed his wild bloodshot eyes on the middle section of Jo’s raincoat.
“Why are you doing that?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“Doing what?” demanded Jo.
“You must know what you’re doing,” he replied.
“Occasionally I don’t,” she told him.
“Why does your coat go like that?” demanded the magistrate. “I insist on knowing.”
Glancing down, Jo was interested to observe that from the appearance of her raincoat she had suddenly grown very fat. Jumping to conclusions, she looked reproachfully at Peter.
“Peter,” she said, “we’ll have to make that wedding snappy. This looks like a rush order.”
“It’s not that,” he assured her. “Your stomach is a little upset.”
“Your coat,” said the judge, almost whispering. “It thrusts itself out, then suddenly collapses. Are you doing it?”
“No, sir,” replied Jo. “I mean, yes.”
“Then don’t,” pleaded the magistrate.
Jo gave Havelock Ellis a vicious squeeze, and the duck gave an equally vicious squawk. Magistrate Wagger looked startled, then peered searchingly at the prisoners before him.
“Who made that offensive noise?” he wanted to know. “It constitutes contempt of court. Come! Speak up!”
“I’ll readily agree,” rumbled the long silent philosopher, “that the noise was both offensive and contemptible, but I assure you, sir, I wouldn’t have made it if I could, which I greatly doubt.”
“How you go on!” the magistrate complained. “Who made that unusual noise? I want to know.” At this moment the squawk was repeated and Josephine’s stomach gave a brisk outward lunge. Wagger’s eyes were popping. He had partly risen from his chair. “There it goes again,” he breathed. “It went ‘way out this time.” He sank back in his chair and once more mopped his forehead. “Young lady,” he resumed, “are you deliberately making stomachs at me?”
“Not deliberately,” answered Jo, finding it increasingly difficult to restrain the aroused Ellis. “My stomach is just on its own. I have no control over it.”
“I’ll have no control over mine if this keeps up,” he assured her. “That aspirin didn’t do a bit of good. I . . .” His voice died away in his chair. “For the love of God, what’s that?” he cried, pointing at Josephine’s stomach.
Jo looked at her stomach, as did everyone else within peering distance. Officers and court attendants moved a little away. Under the circumstances they were not to be blamed. Braver men than they have been unnerved by lesser sights. Protruding from the raincoat at Josephine’s stomach was a long, purple, snake-like head which was looking fixedly at Magistrate Wagger out of two yellow, malevolent eyes. With her free hand Jo thrust the head of the duck back beneath the coat. The air was filled with squawks. Ellis was protesting in the worst language she knew how to use.
“That,” said Jo at last, feeling somewhat confused herself, “that was merely my handbag.”
“Merely,” wheezed the haggard Wagger. “Just a simple little handbag, eh — a mere trifle?” Then his indignation got the upper hand. “Does a handbag hurl maledictions in a foreign tongue?” he thundered. “Does a handbag peer at one out of fierce yellow eyes that look as if they had brooded on the flames of hell itself? Does a handbag have a long, death-dealing beak?”
“Yes, sir,” cut in Jo. “It’s a novelty handbag — a funny one. I open the beak and put things in — small change and lipstick and all sorts of things.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” demanded Wagger, “that you actually open that beak?”
“Why not?” Jo replied with a shrug.
“Well, I wouldn’t do it if they made me a justice of the Supreme Court,” he said decisively. For a moment or so he tapped nervously on his desk with his skinny fingers. “Young lady,” he resumed, “I don’t believe that handbag story at all. I can’t believe it. There was too much life and animation in what I saw — too much noise. Are you by any chance an unfortunate freak? That head seemed almost a part of you to me.”
“Not at all,” replied the girl. “We are quite independent, I assure you.”
It was at this point that Havelock Ellis took it into her head to prove the accuracy of Jo’s words. She had been missing things too long, had the duck, Ellis. She would find out for herself what all this was about. With a vicious tug and a beating of wings, she burst Jo’s coat asunder and with a wild cry of triumph fluttered to the magistrate’s desk. But her cry was not nearly so wild as the one that tore itself from Wagger’s throat as he abandoned the dignity of his office and sought safety behind his chair. Ellis made a vicious snap at the rear part of the departing man. Contact was established and Wagger’s speed increased. After this gesture of contempt the duck settled down on the desk and remained perfectly still.
“It bit me,” chattered the magistrate. “I’m poisoned perhaps! What’s it going to do next?”
“Maybe she’ll lay an egg,” was Jo’s calm reply. “She’s done about everything else.”
“Do you mean that duck would have the temerity to lay an egg on the desk of a city magistrate?” quavered the little man behind the chair.
“She never has yet,” said Jo, “but when that duck makes up her mind to lay an egg, I feel convinced she’d produce it on the desk of the mayor himself.”
“Oh!” lamented the magistrate. “Oh, dear, oh, dear! What a way for a girl to talk! What are we going to do? I won’t touch that duck.” Suddenly he was stung by a new and fearful consideration. “Lock all the doors,” he cried. “Don’t let a reporter out. If this gets into the papers I’ll never hear the end of it. ‘Duck Lays Egg on Magistrate Wagger’s Desk’ — I can see it already in headlines.” He looked at the demoralized policemen. “If you boys will take that duck away, back go your badges and buttons,” he promised them.
“That’s my duck,” said Jo, sweeping the squatting bird from the desk. “I’ve had a lot of trouble with that duck. If she lays an egg, that’s going to be mine, too.”
“Keep both the duck and her egg,” screamed Wagger. “Do you think I want them? I wish I could tell you what to do with the damn duck.”
“I’m afraid you’d be asking too much, your honor,” Jo replied demurely.
At this moment a reporter approached the magistrate and spoke rapidly to him in an undertone. Slowly the little man’s face cleared.
“You won’t mention the duck?” he asked the reporter.
“Not a word,” the other declared. “We’ll stick to the straight story.”
“And how did you get the story?” Wagger wanted to know.
“Why, if that gentleman in the drawers is Bishop Waller,” the reporter said, “then naturally the people with him must be those who left the ferry in the fog.”
“I wish they’d never been found,” Magistrate Wagger replied. “I wish they’d been lost at sea forever and forever.”
“I recognized Peter Van Dyck myself,” the reporter went on, “in spite of his informal appearance.”
“If you write a funny story about us,” Peter spoke up promptly, “I’ll call in a flock of reporters and tell about the duck and what the magistrate wanted the young lady to do with it.”
“I didn’t say it,” shouted Wagger. “I only wished it.”
“Then I’ll tell the world what you wished she would do with the duck,” said Peter.
“Don’t do it, Mr. Van Dyck, I beg you,” the magistrate pleaded. “This reporter is going to be nice. You be nice, too. That’s a good chap.” For a moment the courtroom was still as Wagger sat at his desk and brooded upon the many wrongs that had been done him. His indignation rose. He could contain it no longer. He spoke.
“Are you Bishop Waller?” he asked in a voice of velvet gentleness.
“I assured you I was,” said the Bishop.
“A bishop of the Episcopal Church?” continued the magistrate.
“I am, sir,” the Bishop replied.
“Then I have made a slight mistake,” said Wagger, his voice still soft and sweet, “and I hope you won’t mind if I ask you to take your naked gang and get the hell out of my courtroom.”
His voice ended in a snarl, and he sank back in his chair, his eyes tightly closed.
“Have they gone?” he asked at length, pressing a hand to each temple.
“They have, sir,” answered an officer.
“Thank God for that,” muttered Wagger.
They had gone. They were in a taxicab with the reporter headed for the Half-Moon Hotel. As they drove away from the court, an expensive-looking car of foreign make followed them down the street. The philosopher glanced through the window and studied the imposing tower of the hotel they were approaching. It was capped by a replica of the adventurous ship from which the hotel derived its name. Many windows looked out upon the sea from the mounting structure standing out picturesquely against the blue.
“An altogether charming seaside caravansary,” murmured Mr. Sampson. “I think we should do well there. It does justice to Hendrik Hudson.”
“Who did he ever lick?” asked Little Arthur from his seat on the floor of the cab.
“Oh, he just knocked about the river in a boat,” said Josephine.
“A ferry captain,” concluded the hopeless dip. “I don’t want ter hear another word.”
“He was a Dutchman,” put in Peter proudly.
“I’d try to keep that quiet,” said Jo.
Arrived at the Half-Moon, the reporter considerately led them through the street entrance, which fortunately for the guests as well as themselves was a large secluded hall cut off from the lounge and lobby above. Here they were met by the manager, who, although warned over the telephone by the reporter, could not repress a look of astonishment when he gazed at his prospective guests.
“We need a flock of rooms,” said Peter.
“You need much more than that,” the manager replied with a gracious smile. “If you meet any of my guests in the hallways, I hope you won’t mind if I ask you in a loud voice if you enjoyed the masquerade.”
