Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 237
“Why didn’t what splash?” asked Mr. Bland.
“That hooker of gin you just drank,” said the girl.
“Oh, that,” Mr. Bland replied. “I’m sure I don’t know. As a matter of fact I know less about myself than you do.”
“I know more than enough,” said Flora.
“There’s nothing like a skeleton to break down maidenly reserve,” Mr. Walling remarked.
“I find this conversation most objectionable,” declared Mr. Bland.
“I object to the whole damned business,” expostulated Chunk Walling. “You’re positively indecent.”
Mr. Bland sat down and crossed his legs with a click.
“Gord,” breathed Flora. “Did you hear that? My blood is just one curdle.”
“Do you think I like it?” snapped Mr. Bland, making another click, this time with his teeth.
“I don’t see how you can,” replied Sam Crawford. “We actually hate it. Can’t you go back?”
“How do you mean?” asked Quintus Bland. “Go back where?”
“Go back to your flesh,” explained Sam. “Be yourself for a change.”
Mr. Bland laughed suddenly and bitterly. It was not a nice sound. The two couples and Lulu moved to the other side of the room, where they huddled together for comfort.
“Don’t do that,” pleaded Lulu. “Make some other noise. I can’t stand that one.”
“Someone will have to send for a doctor,” said the young lady called Elaine. “That’s all there is to it. I must have either a hypodermic or a bottle of whisky or something.”
“Think of me,” commented Quintus Bland. “Imagine how I feel.”
“You’re asking too much of flesh and blood,” replied Flora. “No one wants to imagine how you feel.”
“Well, don’t stand over there all huddled up,” said what remained of Mr. Bland. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”
“You’ve already done it,” put in Lulu. “I’ll never be the same woman. When I think of what might have happened my blood runs cold.”
Mr. Bland rose from the chair and, lifting his arms above his head, stretched himself and yawned. Had he deliberately set out to torture his companions he could not have proceeded more effectively. A gasp of sheer horror came simultaneously from five pairs of lips.
“What is he going to do?” quavered Elaine. “Attack us?”
The framework of Bland moved shockingly across the room. One bony hand clutched the gin bottle, which emitted a clanking sound. Placing the bottle where his lips should have been, he polished off its contents, then unconsciously wiped his teeth with a fleshless arm. The grating noise this made caused even the skeleton to shudder.
“Horror upon horror,” murmured Flora. “And he’s drunk up all the gin.”
“Why his backbone isn’t even moist,” observed Sam, “is still a mystery to me.”
“I’m not at all interested to find out,” Chunk Walling replied. “The details of that skeleton are overshadowed by the whole.”
“And we were going to have such a jolly evening,” Lulu regretfully observed.
“It’s not too late,” said Mr. Bland, reseating himself on the chair. “We can still have a jolly evening. Come over here, Lulu, and sit on my lap.”
Lulu gave vent to a slight scream.
“Did you hear that?” she asked in a shocked voice. “Did you hear what he wants me to do?”
“I’d rather sit on a nest of hornets,” said Elaine.
“Much,” added Flora, with conviction.
Quintus Bland, in spite of the critical condition of his anatomy, found himself growing pleasantly drunk. He had consumed nearly a whole bottle of gin and felt a great deal better for it. He began to feel that his fleshless condition lent him a touch of distinction. After all, what was a skeleton among friends?
“Come on over,” he said to Lulu. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”
“What do you mean by anything?” asked Lulu. “You’ve already done enough.”
“Go on, sit on his lap,” urged Sam. “He might get mad if you don’t. I’d hate that.”
“Yeah?” retorted Lulu, sarcastically. “And I’d go mad if I did.”
“But what can a skeleton do?” said Chunk Walling.
“He might try to kiss me,” Lulu replied, “and twine me in those arms.”
The other two women made noises of distress.
“All right. All right,” said the skeleton of Mr. Bland in a disgusted voice. “Order a couple of bottles and I’ll stand the treat.”
“That’s far more reasonable,” put in Flora. “I’m beginning to like that skeleton.”
“You’re even more depraved than I thought,” said Elaine.
“Is that so?” snapped Flora. “Well, I’d rather have a skeleton for a boy friend than some of those fat swine you lug about.”
“Okay, sister,” replied Elaine. “There’s your skeleton. He’s all yours.”
“Please stop discussing me as if I were not present,” protested Mr. Bland.
“You’re only partly present,” said Chunk Walling.
“Yes,” agreed Lulu. “And the least desirable part, at that. The man is virtually speaking from the grave.”
“Don’t you feel at all dead?” inquired Chunk Walling.
“Not at all,” Quintus Bland replied. “I feel very much alive — raring to go.”
“Why don’t you go?” suggested Elaine. “I, for one, won’t bar your way.”
“Is that nice?” asked Mr. Bland.
“Perhaps not,” the girl replied, “but you don’t seem to realize that you’re a total skeleton — a fleshless man — an animated boneyard.”
“Some day,” said Mr. Bland, maliciously, “you’ll be just like me.”
“Oh, no, I won’t,” Elaine assured him. “When I get in your terrible condition I’m going to cut out night clubs and all other social contacts.”
“The grog will be right up,” Sam Crawford announced, turning from the telephone.
“Those are the first agreeable words I’ve heard today,” said Quintus Bland. “Now we can settle down and take life easy.”
His five companions received this remark in skeptical silence. They were all wondering how life could be taken easily in the presence of a skeleton.
“I long to get drunk,” observed Lulu, “but I’m almost afraid to do it. Wouldn’t it be just awful to forget one’s self with a skeleton?”
“I’d call it impossible,” said Flora, running a critical eye over the uninviting frame of Quintus Bland.
“Is this discussion quite necessary?” he asked in a pained voice.
“If you were a lady you’d say it was,” Elaine replied with a slight tilt of her fine eyebrows.
“The fact that you can envisage such a contingency,” remarked Mr. Bland, “hardly qualifies you to consider yourself a lady.”
“I’m more of a lady than you are a gentleman,” Elaine replied. “You’re merely a beastly old stack of bones.”
“Admitted,” said Mr. Bland, complacently. “I don’t have to be a gentleman. I’m just a drunken skeleton with no moral obligations.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” declared Lulu. “If old Mr. Bones over there gets amorously binged and starts making passes at me you’re going to have a dead model on your hands.”
Mr. Bland’s indignant rejoinder was interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Come in!” Sam Crawford thoughtlessly called out.
A chorus of squeals from the girls and a smothered exclamation from Bland greeted this invitation. Leaping across the room, he hurled himself clatteringly against the door.
“Oh, momma,” breathed Flora, her eyes popping wildly, “modesty isn’t worth it. Did you see that nightmare move?”
“Yes,” murmured Lulu. “And I heard him dash. I’m not going to be able to stand much more of this sort of thing.”
In the meantime Quintus Bland had partially opened the door and thrust out a bony hand and arm, hoping that in the half-light of the hall the waiter would not notice their fleshless condition.
“You can give me the bottles,” he said. “We’ll settle up later. I haven’t any clothes on.”
The statement concerning Bland’s lack of attire was not at all a novel one to the waiter, but the appearance of that ghastly hand with its long clutching fingers was something altogether new and unexpected.
“What sort of a hand is that?” the waiter wanted to know. “I don’t like the looks of it.”
“It’s a trick,” replied Mr. Bland, not knowing what else to say. “A simple trick.”
“It’s a damned dirty trick,” retorted the waiter. “I wouldn’t play it on a dog.”
“Well, I haven’t played it on a dog,” Bland declared. “Give me those bottles and go away.”
“I’ll go away fast enough,” said the waiter, “but it will be a long time before you’ll get me back. Nor will I hand you the bottles. Pick ’em up yourself.”
Placing the bottles at a safe distance from the door, the waiter hurried away. He did not look back to see a long skeleton arm slide through the slit in the door and gather in the bottles. It was just as well for him he missed this petrifying experience.
Quintus Bland closed the door and confronted his five companions. There was a bottle in either hand.
“I’m not getting used to you,” Lulu Summers told him. “No matter how hard I try, you remain just as awful.”
“If you want any of this grog,” he answered with a grim click of his teeth, “you’ll have to make the best of it.”
“What I want to know,” said Chunk Walling, “is how did you get that way. It’s incredible to me. I’d suspect my own eyesight were it not for the fact that four other persons are seeing the same thing.”
“I’m not sure,” replied Mr. Bland, removing a cork from one of the bottles. “I’ve been experimenting with some rare and exceptionally potent chemicals lately. Perhaps they turned the trick.”
“Well,” observed Elaine, “like that waiter said, it certainly is a dirty one.”
“But where are all your organs?” Flora wanted to know. “You must have something or you’d be a dead skeleton.”
“As he should be,” put in Elaine. “Even in times of depression a girl shouldn’t be expected to associate with skeletons with or without organs.”
“I say don’t let’s talk about his organs,” suggested Lulu. “What we can see of him is bad enough.”
“I know,” declared Flora, “but he must have a stomach or else he wouldn’t be able to gulp down liquor the way he’s doing.”
“Maybe he has invisible organs,” said Sam Crawford. “You know, they’re there but we can’t see them.”
“Who wants to see them?” Elaine demanded.
“I would, for one,” replied Mr. Bland. “Being a skeleton is damn’ lonely business.”
“You’re not lonely enough to suit me,” declared Elaine. “You should be dead and buried.”
“I’d like to wring your neck,” said Quintus Bland, dispassionately.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t wrung all our necks,” remarked Lulu, “and left us strewn about the room. He looks mean enough to do it.”
“Do you realize that I’m paying for your night’s enjoyment?” asked Mr. Bland, who had lost most of his gentlemanly instincts together with his flesh.
“Enjoyment!” cried Lulu with a wild laugh. “That’s a hot number. Why, if you kept me to the end of my days you’d never be able to repay me for that moment on the divan.”
“Sure,” agreed Elaine. “He turned a skeleton on you. I’d sue him for mental anguish, and make him pay through the nose, or where it used to be,” she added, glancing with a shudder at the skull of Mr. Bland.
“Look here,” said Sam Crawford. “Stop panning our friend, even if he is a skeleton.”
But Mr. Bland at that moment was beyond panning. Having consumed nearly all of one of the new bottles, he now found himself overcome with a desire to sleep. Accordingly he staggered over to the studio couch and collapsed clatteringly upon it.
“Is he dead or just asleep?” asked Flora.
“That’s difficult to say,” replied Chunk Walling. “You can’t very well feel a skeleton’s pulse.”
“I don’t want to feel any part of him,” said Lulu.
“Let’s get dressed and go downstairs,” Elaine suggested. “Can’t have any fun with a dead or drunken skeleton at one’s elbow.”
“The couch is all his,” agreed Lulu. “I hope he never wakes up.”
“All right,” said Crawford. “We’ll blow for the time being.”
A few minutes later Mr. Bland’s five companions slipped noiselessly from the room. Flora was thoughtful enough to place the remaining bottle within easy reach of the couch.
“Now,” she said, “if he happens to wake up he won’t come barging downstairs in search of a drink.”
Then she switched off the light and quietly left the room.
“God protect us,” she informed the others in a low voice. “I think he’s snoring a little.”
CHAPTER THREE: THE WHITTLES ARE NOT ALARMED
NEARLY an hour later Mr. Bland awoke. Sleep had neither improved his appearance nor refreshed his soul, if a skeleton can be said to possess a soul. From the adjoining room a shaft of light streamed in through the half-opened door. His companions, Mr. Bland decided, were in there enjoying themselves. A sleeping skeleton had probably cramped their style. Accordingly, they had shifted the scene of their unhallowed operations, leaving him quite alone and in comparative darkness.
Sitting on the edge of the couch, Quintus Bland began to feel no end sorry for himself. He was cut off from all human contacts. He was one man against the world. He was not even that. He was an unsightly structure of bones unfit for any strata of society this side of the grave. Also, he was far from sober. He tried to rest his elbows on his knees. The result was not satisfactory. His elbows kept sliding off the bony ridges. When he attempted to clutch his distracted head in his hands, the hollow sound his skull gave forth made him shiver in every bone.
“Firecrackers,” he muttered. “My skull is full of firecrackers. I hate myself from head to foot.”
Perhaps, he mused, if he put on some clothes he might appear more acceptable in the eyes of his fellow men. This might even apply to women, which was much more important. He desperately desired female companionship. He desperately desired his wife, Lorna, but she, the jade, was out somewhere disporting herself licentiously in her black underwear with the lace on it.
This disturbing reflection drove him up from the couch. Women were never able to keep a good thing to themselves. Buy them lovely underthings and they promptly tuck them away for an occasion more interesting than a mere husband. Engaged in these profitless reflections, he passed into the next room. This he found deserted save for a huddled bundle of bedclothing which looked as if it might be concealing an equally huddled body.
Mr. Bland refrained from investigating. In his present condition he felt a little delicate about arousing a slumbering person. The shock might prove too great for an alcoholic heart. Instead he set about searching for his hastily abandoned garments. How terribly things had turned out. Just as he had been about to find consolation in the arms of a beautiful woman this thing had happened. In the twinkling of an eye the beautiful woman had been equally in need of consolation herself. In spite of his unalluring appearance Bland could not help being slightly amused by the memory. What a trying situation. Lulu had accused him of wearing a wig. A wig indeed. For once a woman had been guilty of understatement. No doubt the recollection of her close shave would cure the wench forever of interest in light alliance. But women were hard to discourage. He hoped so.
In the act of dragging his drawers from beneath a pile of clothes Mr. Bland was arrested by the sound of a voice. Considering the circumstances, it was a surprisingly mild voice. It addressed Mr. Bland with the casualness of a boon companion. Even as he listened, the thought flashed through his mind that the speaker must have lived for years in close association with skeletons.
“I beg your pardon,” said the voice. “Would you mind telling me if I am having the disagreeable distinction of watching a skeleton holding a pair of drawers?”
Quintus Bland turned and gazed on the large pale face of a perfect stranger. Written on this innocent countenance was an expression of intense concentration from which all traces of fear were amazingly absent.
“Yes,” replied Mr. Bland. “I’m afraid you are. Why do you ask?”
“Why do I ask?” repeated the man on the bed. “Wouldn’t you ask? Isn’t some small scrap of explanation due me? What, my dear sir, would you do if you were suddenly confronted by a skeleton holding a pair of drawers?”
“I don’t know,” faltered Mr. Bland, “but I don’t think I’d stop long enough to ask many questions.”
“Probably not,” reflected the stranger, “but I’m locked in, and you’re standing between me and that other door.”
“Would you like to leave?” asked Mr. Bland.
“Not if you remain calm,” replied the man. “Not if you act within reason. Of course,” he continued, thoughtfully, “a man in my position doesn’t often run into this sort of thing.”
“Of course not,” agreed Mr. Bland. “There are few positions in which a man does run into this sort of thing.”
“I can’t think of any,” said the stranger. “Not that I haven’t seen lots of bones in my time — a skull here and a thigh there. Once while visiting a museum I was far from pleased by the skeleton of a dinosaur, but he had been extinct for some time, and, I suspect, part of him had been filled in — like a broken fence.”
“I don’t follow you,” remarked Mr. Bland.
“Neither do I,” replied the man. “I rarely if ever do. But please remain reasonable. You are the first real skeleton I’ve ever had any dealings with.”
“Do you mind?” asked Mr. Bland.
“Not at all,” replied the man. “I’m relieved you’re not a pink monkey or a blue dragon or a flock of loathsome reptiles. I’ve seen all of those things in my time, but I like the last least. They upset me terribly.”
“That hooker of gin you just drank,” said the girl.
“Oh, that,” Mr. Bland replied. “I’m sure I don’t know. As a matter of fact I know less about myself than you do.”
“I know more than enough,” said Flora.
“There’s nothing like a skeleton to break down maidenly reserve,” Mr. Walling remarked.
“I find this conversation most objectionable,” declared Mr. Bland.
“I object to the whole damned business,” expostulated Chunk Walling. “You’re positively indecent.”
Mr. Bland sat down and crossed his legs with a click.
“Gord,” breathed Flora. “Did you hear that? My blood is just one curdle.”
“Do you think I like it?” snapped Mr. Bland, making another click, this time with his teeth.
“I don’t see how you can,” replied Sam Crawford. “We actually hate it. Can’t you go back?”
“How do you mean?” asked Quintus Bland. “Go back where?”
“Go back to your flesh,” explained Sam. “Be yourself for a change.”
Mr. Bland laughed suddenly and bitterly. It was not a nice sound. The two couples and Lulu moved to the other side of the room, where they huddled together for comfort.
“Don’t do that,” pleaded Lulu. “Make some other noise. I can’t stand that one.”
“Someone will have to send for a doctor,” said the young lady called Elaine. “That’s all there is to it. I must have either a hypodermic or a bottle of whisky or something.”
“Think of me,” commented Quintus Bland. “Imagine how I feel.”
“You’re asking too much of flesh and blood,” replied Flora. “No one wants to imagine how you feel.”
“Well, don’t stand over there all huddled up,” said what remained of Mr. Bland. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”
“You’ve already done it,” put in Lulu. “I’ll never be the same woman. When I think of what might have happened my blood runs cold.”
Mr. Bland rose from the chair and, lifting his arms above his head, stretched himself and yawned. Had he deliberately set out to torture his companions he could not have proceeded more effectively. A gasp of sheer horror came simultaneously from five pairs of lips.
“What is he going to do?” quavered Elaine. “Attack us?”
The framework of Bland moved shockingly across the room. One bony hand clutched the gin bottle, which emitted a clanking sound. Placing the bottle where his lips should have been, he polished off its contents, then unconsciously wiped his teeth with a fleshless arm. The grating noise this made caused even the skeleton to shudder.
“Horror upon horror,” murmured Flora. “And he’s drunk up all the gin.”
“Why his backbone isn’t even moist,” observed Sam, “is still a mystery to me.”
“I’m not at all interested to find out,” Chunk Walling replied. “The details of that skeleton are overshadowed by the whole.”
“And we were going to have such a jolly evening,” Lulu regretfully observed.
“It’s not too late,” said Mr. Bland, reseating himself on the chair. “We can still have a jolly evening. Come over here, Lulu, and sit on my lap.”
Lulu gave vent to a slight scream.
“Did you hear that?” she asked in a shocked voice. “Did you hear what he wants me to do?”
“I’d rather sit on a nest of hornets,” said Elaine.
“Much,” added Flora, with conviction.
Quintus Bland, in spite of the critical condition of his anatomy, found himself growing pleasantly drunk. He had consumed nearly a whole bottle of gin and felt a great deal better for it. He began to feel that his fleshless condition lent him a touch of distinction. After all, what was a skeleton among friends?
“Come on over,” he said to Lulu. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”
“What do you mean by anything?” asked Lulu. “You’ve already done enough.”
“Go on, sit on his lap,” urged Sam. “He might get mad if you don’t. I’d hate that.”
“Yeah?” retorted Lulu, sarcastically. “And I’d go mad if I did.”
“But what can a skeleton do?” said Chunk Walling.
“He might try to kiss me,” Lulu replied, “and twine me in those arms.”
The other two women made noises of distress.
“All right. All right,” said the skeleton of Mr. Bland in a disgusted voice. “Order a couple of bottles and I’ll stand the treat.”
“That’s far more reasonable,” put in Flora. “I’m beginning to like that skeleton.”
“You’re even more depraved than I thought,” said Elaine.
“Is that so?” snapped Flora. “Well, I’d rather have a skeleton for a boy friend than some of those fat swine you lug about.”
“Okay, sister,” replied Elaine. “There’s your skeleton. He’s all yours.”
“Please stop discussing me as if I were not present,” protested Mr. Bland.
“You’re only partly present,” said Chunk Walling.
“Yes,” agreed Lulu. “And the least desirable part, at that. The man is virtually speaking from the grave.”
“Don’t you feel at all dead?” inquired Chunk Walling.
“Not at all,” Quintus Bland replied. “I feel very much alive — raring to go.”
“Why don’t you go?” suggested Elaine. “I, for one, won’t bar your way.”
“Is that nice?” asked Mr. Bland.
“Perhaps not,” the girl replied, “but you don’t seem to realize that you’re a total skeleton — a fleshless man — an animated boneyard.”
“Some day,” said Mr. Bland, maliciously, “you’ll be just like me.”
“Oh, no, I won’t,” Elaine assured him. “When I get in your terrible condition I’m going to cut out night clubs and all other social contacts.”
“The grog will be right up,” Sam Crawford announced, turning from the telephone.
“Those are the first agreeable words I’ve heard today,” said Quintus Bland. “Now we can settle down and take life easy.”
His five companions received this remark in skeptical silence. They were all wondering how life could be taken easily in the presence of a skeleton.
“I long to get drunk,” observed Lulu, “but I’m almost afraid to do it. Wouldn’t it be just awful to forget one’s self with a skeleton?”
“I’d call it impossible,” said Flora, running a critical eye over the uninviting frame of Quintus Bland.
“Is this discussion quite necessary?” he asked in a pained voice.
“If you were a lady you’d say it was,” Elaine replied with a slight tilt of her fine eyebrows.
“The fact that you can envisage such a contingency,” remarked Mr. Bland, “hardly qualifies you to consider yourself a lady.”
“I’m more of a lady than you are a gentleman,” Elaine replied. “You’re merely a beastly old stack of bones.”
“Admitted,” said Mr. Bland, complacently. “I don’t have to be a gentleman. I’m just a drunken skeleton with no moral obligations.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” declared Lulu. “If old Mr. Bones over there gets amorously binged and starts making passes at me you’re going to have a dead model on your hands.”
Mr. Bland’s indignant rejoinder was interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Come in!” Sam Crawford thoughtlessly called out.
A chorus of squeals from the girls and a smothered exclamation from Bland greeted this invitation. Leaping across the room, he hurled himself clatteringly against the door.
“Oh, momma,” breathed Flora, her eyes popping wildly, “modesty isn’t worth it. Did you see that nightmare move?”
“Yes,” murmured Lulu. “And I heard him dash. I’m not going to be able to stand much more of this sort of thing.”
In the meantime Quintus Bland had partially opened the door and thrust out a bony hand and arm, hoping that in the half-light of the hall the waiter would not notice their fleshless condition.
“You can give me the bottles,” he said. “We’ll settle up later. I haven’t any clothes on.”
The statement concerning Bland’s lack of attire was not at all a novel one to the waiter, but the appearance of that ghastly hand with its long clutching fingers was something altogether new and unexpected.
“What sort of a hand is that?” the waiter wanted to know. “I don’t like the looks of it.”
“It’s a trick,” replied Mr. Bland, not knowing what else to say. “A simple trick.”
“It’s a damned dirty trick,” retorted the waiter. “I wouldn’t play it on a dog.”
“Well, I haven’t played it on a dog,” Bland declared. “Give me those bottles and go away.”
“I’ll go away fast enough,” said the waiter, “but it will be a long time before you’ll get me back. Nor will I hand you the bottles. Pick ’em up yourself.”
Placing the bottles at a safe distance from the door, the waiter hurried away. He did not look back to see a long skeleton arm slide through the slit in the door and gather in the bottles. It was just as well for him he missed this petrifying experience.
Quintus Bland closed the door and confronted his five companions. There was a bottle in either hand.
“I’m not getting used to you,” Lulu Summers told him. “No matter how hard I try, you remain just as awful.”
“If you want any of this grog,” he answered with a grim click of his teeth, “you’ll have to make the best of it.”
“What I want to know,” said Chunk Walling, “is how did you get that way. It’s incredible to me. I’d suspect my own eyesight were it not for the fact that four other persons are seeing the same thing.”
“I’m not sure,” replied Mr. Bland, removing a cork from one of the bottles. “I’ve been experimenting with some rare and exceptionally potent chemicals lately. Perhaps they turned the trick.”
“Well,” observed Elaine, “like that waiter said, it certainly is a dirty one.”
“But where are all your organs?” Flora wanted to know. “You must have something or you’d be a dead skeleton.”
“As he should be,” put in Elaine. “Even in times of depression a girl shouldn’t be expected to associate with skeletons with or without organs.”
“I say don’t let’s talk about his organs,” suggested Lulu. “What we can see of him is bad enough.”
“I know,” declared Flora, “but he must have a stomach or else he wouldn’t be able to gulp down liquor the way he’s doing.”
“Maybe he has invisible organs,” said Sam Crawford. “You know, they’re there but we can’t see them.”
“Who wants to see them?” Elaine demanded.
“I would, for one,” replied Mr. Bland. “Being a skeleton is damn’ lonely business.”
“You’re not lonely enough to suit me,” declared Elaine. “You should be dead and buried.”
“I’d like to wring your neck,” said Quintus Bland, dispassionately.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t wrung all our necks,” remarked Lulu, “and left us strewn about the room. He looks mean enough to do it.”
“Do you realize that I’m paying for your night’s enjoyment?” asked Mr. Bland, who had lost most of his gentlemanly instincts together with his flesh.
“Enjoyment!” cried Lulu with a wild laugh. “That’s a hot number. Why, if you kept me to the end of my days you’d never be able to repay me for that moment on the divan.”
“Sure,” agreed Elaine. “He turned a skeleton on you. I’d sue him for mental anguish, and make him pay through the nose, or where it used to be,” she added, glancing with a shudder at the skull of Mr. Bland.
“Look here,” said Sam Crawford. “Stop panning our friend, even if he is a skeleton.”
But Mr. Bland at that moment was beyond panning. Having consumed nearly all of one of the new bottles, he now found himself overcome with a desire to sleep. Accordingly he staggered over to the studio couch and collapsed clatteringly upon it.
“Is he dead or just asleep?” asked Flora.
“That’s difficult to say,” replied Chunk Walling. “You can’t very well feel a skeleton’s pulse.”
“I don’t want to feel any part of him,” said Lulu.
“Let’s get dressed and go downstairs,” Elaine suggested. “Can’t have any fun with a dead or drunken skeleton at one’s elbow.”
“The couch is all his,” agreed Lulu. “I hope he never wakes up.”
“All right,” said Crawford. “We’ll blow for the time being.”
A few minutes later Mr. Bland’s five companions slipped noiselessly from the room. Flora was thoughtful enough to place the remaining bottle within easy reach of the couch.
“Now,” she said, “if he happens to wake up he won’t come barging downstairs in search of a drink.”
Then she switched off the light and quietly left the room.
“God protect us,” she informed the others in a low voice. “I think he’s snoring a little.”
CHAPTER THREE: THE WHITTLES ARE NOT ALARMED
NEARLY an hour later Mr. Bland awoke. Sleep had neither improved his appearance nor refreshed his soul, if a skeleton can be said to possess a soul. From the adjoining room a shaft of light streamed in through the half-opened door. His companions, Mr. Bland decided, were in there enjoying themselves. A sleeping skeleton had probably cramped their style. Accordingly, they had shifted the scene of their unhallowed operations, leaving him quite alone and in comparative darkness.
Sitting on the edge of the couch, Quintus Bland began to feel no end sorry for himself. He was cut off from all human contacts. He was one man against the world. He was not even that. He was an unsightly structure of bones unfit for any strata of society this side of the grave. Also, he was far from sober. He tried to rest his elbows on his knees. The result was not satisfactory. His elbows kept sliding off the bony ridges. When he attempted to clutch his distracted head in his hands, the hollow sound his skull gave forth made him shiver in every bone.
“Firecrackers,” he muttered. “My skull is full of firecrackers. I hate myself from head to foot.”
Perhaps, he mused, if he put on some clothes he might appear more acceptable in the eyes of his fellow men. This might even apply to women, which was much more important. He desperately desired female companionship. He desperately desired his wife, Lorna, but she, the jade, was out somewhere disporting herself licentiously in her black underwear with the lace on it.
This disturbing reflection drove him up from the couch. Women were never able to keep a good thing to themselves. Buy them lovely underthings and they promptly tuck them away for an occasion more interesting than a mere husband. Engaged in these profitless reflections, he passed into the next room. This he found deserted save for a huddled bundle of bedclothing which looked as if it might be concealing an equally huddled body.
Mr. Bland refrained from investigating. In his present condition he felt a little delicate about arousing a slumbering person. The shock might prove too great for an alcoholic heart. Instead he set about searching for his hastily abandoned garments. How terribly things had turned out. Just as he had been about to find consolation in the arms of a beautiful woman this thing had happened. In the twinkling of an eye the beautiful woman had been equally in need of consolation herself. In spite of his unalluring appearance Bland could not help being slightly amused by the memory. What a trying situation. Lulu had accused him of wearing a wig. A wig indeed. For once a woman had been guilty of understatement. No doubt the recollection of her close shave would cure the wench forever of interest in light alliance. But women were hard to discourage. He hoped so.
In the act of dragging his drawers from beneath a pile of clothes Mr. Bland was arrested by the sound of a voice. Considering the circumstances, it was a surprisingly mild voice. It addressed Mr. Bland with the casualness of a boon companion. Even as he listened, the thought flashed through his mind that the speaker must have lived for years in close association with skeletons.
“I beg your pardon,” said the voice. “Would you mind telling me if I am having the disagreeable distinction of watching a skeleton holding a pair of drawers?”
Quintus Bland turned and gazed on the large pale face of a perfect stranger. Written on this innocent countenance was an expression of intense concentration from which all traces of fear were amazingly absent.
“Yes,” replied Mr. Bland. “I’m afraid you are. Why do you ask?”
“Why do I ask?” repeated the man on the bed. “Wouldn’t you ask? Isn’t some small scrap of explanation due me? What, my dear sir, would you do if you were suddenly confronted by a skeleton holding a pair of drawers?”
“I don’t know,” faltered Mr. Bland, “but I don’t think I’d stop long enough to ask many questions.”
“Probably not,” reflected the stranger, “but I’m locked in, and you’re standing between me and that other door.”
“Would you like to leave?” asked Mr. Bland.
“Not if you remain calm,” replied the man. “Not if you act within reason. Of course,” he continued, thoughtfully, “a man in my position doesn’t often run into this sort of thing.”
“Of course not,” agreed Mr. Bland. “There are few positions in which a man does run into this sort of thing.”
“I can’t think of any,” said the stranger. “Not that I haven’t seen lots of bones in my time — a skull here and a thigh there. Once while visiting a museum I was far from pleased by the skeleton of a dinosaur, but he had been extinct for some time, and, I suspect, part of him had been filled in — like a broken fence.”
“I don’t follow you,” remarked Mr. Bland.
“Neither do I,” replied the man. “I rarely if ever do. But please remain reasonable. You are the first real skeleton I’ve ever had any dealings with.”
“Do you mind?” asked Mr. Bland.
“Not at all,” replied the man. “I’m relieved you’re not a pink monkey or a blue dragon or a flock of loathsome reptiles. I’ve seen all of those things in my time, but I like the last least. They upset me terribly.”
