Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 252
“Don’t make my task any harder,” MacQuirk panted, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. “If we all pull ourselves together everything will be all right.”
Just for something to do, Mr. Bland leaned over and chattered into Dr. MacQuirk’s left ear. The doctor almost dropped him, so profoundly was he moved.
“That,” he declared emphatically, “was about the worst sound I’ve ever heard. If you value your life and limb don’t do it again.”
Out into the sunlight emerged this quaint little procession. Several passers-by stopped to witness the spectacle. By the time they had reached the taxi a tidy crowd had gathered. Suddenly Mr. Bland’s weight took a decided upward turn, and the doctor, to his infinite mortification, found himself holding a naked man in his arms. For a moment he swayed on the sidewalk, struggling gamely to support his burden.
“Put me down, you damn’ fool!” shouted Mr. Bland. “Don’t hold me up to the crowd as if I were an offering.”
“All right,” muttered the doctor. “All right. There’s nothing to get excited about.”
“Oh, no,” snarled Mr. Bland. “Nothing at all. Would you suggest I dance naked on the pavement for the edification of the crowd?”
Before Dr. MacQuirk could be any more encouraging he sank with a deep sigh and a naked Bland to the sidewalk. The crowd was mute with stupefaction for a moment, then out of the silence a woman’s voice was heard.
“Close your eyes this minute, Betty,” cried the voice. “That man is all naked.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Mom,” Betty replied. “I could tell that at a glance. He’s not so hot.”
“Well,” quoth a lazy voice from the crowd, “considering he was a skeleton a moment ago I think he’s done very well.”
“He’s scarcely more than a skeleton now,” observed a feminine voice. “And I thought my husband was thin.”
“Mind your own business,” Mr. Bland shouted furiously. “If you had any sense of decency you’d get to hell out of here.”
Busy was barking passionately and making frantic lunges at whatever parts of the doctor he could find.
“Mr. Bland! Mr. Bland!” sobbed MacQuirk. “Your knee is in my stomach, and your dog’s got hold of my leg.”
“Are you crying?” asked Mr. Bland.
“A little,” admitted the doctor. “I told you I had a bad night.”
“Well, I slept like a top,” said Mr. Bland, “but I could cry like a baby myself.”
The crowd parted, and Officer Burke once more appeared on the scene. For a full minute he stood looking down at the tangled bodies on the sidewalk, then, after scratching his head, he brought himself to ask a question.
“What’s the meaning of all this?” Officer Burke demanded.
“Officer,” said Mr. Bland, “it hasn’t any meaning. The whole thing is perfectly ridiculous.”
“This man is a patient,” put in the doctor with great presence of mind. “A serious nervous case. I’m trying to get him back to my office.”
“What’s he doing naked out here?” asked Burke.
“I was giving him a physical examination,” said the doctor.
“Right out in public?” exclaimed the officer. “You oughter know better than that. I’ve a good mind to back up the wagon.”
“You and your old wagon,” Mr. Bland grumbled. “I bet you haven’t got a wagon.”
Before the officer could think up an answer to this, Lorna inadvertently fired the revolver and Busy turned to a skeleton.
“It’s all right, officer,” said Lorna quietly. “It’s the doctor’s gat. We were going to shoot my husband if he started to run away.”
It is doubtful if Burke had ever been so hopelessly confused. There were too many situations with which he had to deal. There was the naked maniac on the pavement. There was the irresponsible lady with a revolver. And there was the animated skeleton of a dog barking furiously in the face of the laws of God and man. Finally there was the watching crowd. With this Officer Burke could deal. Abandoning the other problems to their own solution, he once more charged down on the spectators.
“Clear out of here,” he shouted, “every mother’s son of you, or I’ll back up the wagon.”
“While this diversion was in progress Mr. Bland rose from the pavement. He picked up the winded physician and draped him over his shoulder for the sake of protection. MacQuirk did not cover much of Mr. Bland, but he did serve the purpose of making his wearer feel a little less naked.
“Let’s go back and get my clothes,” said Mr. Bland to Lorna. “That damn-fool dog has lost his flesh again.”
“Don’t I know!” replied Lorna. “Between you and that dog my life isn’t worth living. There’s always a skeleton.”
“Put me down, Mr. Bland,” pleaded the doctor. “This is most undignified. What will my patients think?”
“Sorry, old chap,” said Mr. Bland, “but I simply must wear you. What little protection you afford is absolutely essential. Figure it out for yourself.”
“Say, lady,” said the taxicab driver, “is anybody going to use me?”
“What’s the matter with you?” snapped Lorna. “Aren’t you having a good time?”
“I am that, lady,” conceded the driver, “but I ain’t getting paid for it.”
“Oh,” said Lorna, “the doctor will settle up later.”
“Don’t listen to her,” shouted MacQuirk as he was borne into the house.
If the doctor’s first appearance had caused a sensation, his reappearance created a panic.
“First, the doctor goes out carrying a skeleton,” summed up the well-dressed, middle-aged gentleman, “and then a naked man comes in carrying the doctor. An odd sort of business.”
“And we’re supposed to be here for our nerves,” complained the wan lady. “I think I’m going to have an attack.”
“Let me out!” another patient suddenly cried in a strangled voice. “Look! Look! The living skeleton of a little something.”
Still barking under his breath like a thunderstorm on the ebb, the skeleton of Busy followed Lorna across the room and disappeared into the doctor’s office.
“Hey, Doc,” called Mr. Bland, pointing to what was left of his dog. “Are you convinced now?”
From his own operating table MacQuirk raised a weary head.
“Thoroughly,” he said. “Miss Malloy, please go out and dismiss my patients. Tell them I’ve had a sudden attack of frenzy — tell them anything. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never get over this.”
“They’re all gone already,” announced the nurse when she returned. “All except the mental case. She still wants some spinach.”
“Well, what are we going to do?” MacQuirk asked distractedly. “I haven’t any spinach to give her. And if I did give her some spinach I would be establishing a dangerous precedent. First thing you know, mental cases would be dropping in, demanding a square meal.”
“Have you,” asked Mr. Bland, “by any chance a drink to give us?”
“Why didn’t I think of it before?” replied the doctor. “Of course, of course, most certainly. A drink is the very thing. Miss Malloy, if you please. You know where the stuff is. Didn’t sleep a wink last night.”
By the time Lorna and Mr. Bland were ready to leave, the square dog had regained his body and the exhausted physician a sunnier outlook on life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE TRAVELING BEARD
THE express train was swarming with commuters. And Mr. Bland was one of them. Some were reading papers, others playing cards, and some were impatiently awaiting their opportunity to explain the N.R.A. to others who were explaining it to them.
Quintus Bland was far from happy. He had no confidence in himself. Although he had retained his flesh for nearly twenty-four hours he had no definite assurance it would not fade away at any moment.
He would hate to become a skeleton among so many well-dressed and well-fed gentlemen. They would never understand. They were too firmly rooted in convention — too all-fired orthodox. They might have their own failings, but they were the failings of the average man. They might sin and commit crimes, but they would do so according to well-established lines. And yet, thought Mr. Bland, here was a trainload of problems, each individual intent on solving his own. After all, there was something admirable in the way these men accepted their destiny, which seemed to be largely that of catching trains, taking other men’s orders, keeping their automobiles in shape and their homes intact. And above all they had to maintain a certain prosperous front. In spite of failure and reverses they had to meet the commuting standard and keep their troubles to themselves. A smug lot, perhaps, but partly so because of the insecurity of their own economic futures. They had to keep up the pretense. At home their wives were doing the same thing, while in the privacy of their own houses they scanned newspaper advertisements of alluring wearing apparel with broodingly envious eyes that held but little hope.
The tragedy of this train, Mr. Bland continued to reflect, was that most of its inmates were in a position to glimpse without grasping the full possibilities of a good, fat, materialistic life, the only one their training and traditions had equipped them to understand. They lived on the fringe of security, desperately clinging to prospects, and often their wives grew old and bitter with those prospects unfulfilled. They themselves never grew old, for that is against the laws of commuting which say that a man must always be brisk and snappy until suddenly he dies and another commuter takes up his fallen cards or moves into his seat. Mr. Bland found himself wondering if it would not be a better thing to be so hopelessly poor that all this strain and pretense would become unnecessary and a man would be able to be his natural slovenly self, always about two thirds binged.
These thoughts passed through his mind as the familiar landscape passed by his eyes. Seated by the window, he protected himself from observation with a newspaper which he did not read. The gentleman seated beside him he knew only slightly, but the gentleman had no intention of letting matters rest at that. He was one of those exceedingly trying persons who believed that the more people you knew the better off you were. He had a ruddy face, a thick body, and virtually no mind at all. He could talk for a long time in a loud voice in the face of polite indifference or hostile opposition. His success in the advertising world was assured. Already he sat at the speakers’ table whenever the Advertising Club stepped out. He was one of those elbowing individuals whose faces stand out with shocking vividness whenever a flashlight picture is taken of groups. And he had a disconcerting habit of thrusting his head round Mr. Bland’s newspaper to see what he was reading and then telling him about it with the addition of his own personal views on the subject.
This morning he was a little baffled, for Mr. Bland had not had the enterprise to turn past the women’s page before he had abandoned reading entirely. The thick man, whose name was Blutter, was puzzled by his silent neighbor’s preoccupation with matters exclusively pertaining to the home, the table, and the adornment of the feminine body.
“Interesting page, that,” he said at a venture. “It has always been my claim that the average American husband is far more interested in his home than is the average American wife.”
“He doesn’t have to live in it so much,” retorted Mr. Bland, his lips closely approaching a snarl.
“Perhaps there’s a little something in that,” Mr. Blutter strode confidently on in his speech, “but I still maintain — and I have an insight into things through years of advertising experience — that the average American husband is far more competent to deal with domestic problems than the average American wife. In fact, I know he is.”
“Then that’s all settled,” said Bland with dangerous mildness. “You appear to be pretty well sold on the average American husband. You must be one yourself.”
Mr. Blutter did not get within jumping distance of this remark.
“Yes and no,” he stated. “I am essentially a creative man, being, as I am, in the advertising profession, but in every other respect I daresay I represent the point of view of the average American husband.”
“You must be no end of a comfort to your wife,” observed Mr. Bland. “After she’s had a long day of petty frustration about the house, no doubt you come home and set things straight with one large, inclusive gesture.”
This observation was too sharply barbed to escape the notice of Mr. Blutter, as dumb as that gentleman was.
“As an average American husband,” he retorted with some heat, “I’m not ashamed to say that I enter directly into all matters pertaining to the home and its management. Mrs. Blutter, I am proud to say, finds my coöperation not unhelpful.”
“I’m either too drunk to eat,” announced Mr. Bland, “or the cook is too drunk to cook. We seldom eat at our house, and when we do, the meal, such as it is, almost always ends up in a row. As a matter of fact, my wife and myself only maintain a home in order to have a quiet place in which to fight. We’re both fond of the lower diversions of life and spend most of our time either acquiring or getting rid of a hangover.”
Mr. Blutter’s eyes bulged behind his glasses.
“You’re a whole pack of cards, Mr. Bland,” he said with an uncertain laugh. “I’ll bet you run an A-1 plant, you and the missus. I knew a chap like you once. Name of Dobbs. Always comical. Never took life seriously, but at heart one of the finest fellows you’d want to meet. Mighty good company, but of course he couldn’t last. Not in the advertising world, he couldn’t. You have to have get up and go there and keep your eyes open.”
“On what?” Mr. Bland asked innocently.
“Your clients’ interests,” replied Mr. Blutter.
“What about the buying public?” pursued Mr. Bland.
“The what?” said Mr. Blutter, as though the buying public were a new idea to him. “Oh, yes, the buying public. It’s my business to educate it to purchase the right products.”
The word Mr. Bland employed at this point has recently become quite the vogue in the best circles of society, although for years it has been unmelodiously shouted through the streets by the commoner run of man. It popped so explosively now from Mr. Bland’s lips that the good Blutter was at first startled and then offended.
“To who?” he asked with faint truculence.
“To you,” said Mr. Bland.
“Then right back at you,” retorted the advertising ace, feeling he had held his own in a difficult exchange.
Quintus Bland grunted and retired behind his paper. A man like Blutter was bad for his soul. He hoped that for the good of the advertising profession there were not many Blutters in it. Not much good hoping a silly thing like that. All professions were overcrowded with Blutters. Blutters ran the world and retarded its progress. There were Blutter statesmen and Blutter generals and, doubtless, Blutter safecrackers. Blutter was a frame of mind throughout all walks of life.
Idly, as he watched the flying billboards, Mr. Bland began to compose an aimless bit of doggerel in which the words “splutter,” “clutter,” and “gutter” were employed to rhyme insultingly with that of Blutter.
In the meantime that individual had closed his eyes, the better to concentrate on the problems of the day. They were not quite insuperable. A big client was coming to town, and it would be his, Blutter’s, duty to entertain him. Speakeasies, a show, more speakeasies — perhaps girls. Mentally Mr. Blutter smacked his lips. It would be a relief to give Mrs. Blutter the gate for a change, especially when acting in the line of duty. The average American husband would lose his flair for business if he did not step out occasionally. And the less the average American wife knew about such steppings the better for domestic relations. It was not so much cheating as toning a fellow up.
In spite of the fascination of his anticipatory debauch, Mr. Blutter was not completely satisfied with himself. That word Mr. Bland had flung at him still rankled in his mind. He, Blutter, had failed to impress sufficiently this long, crude, scoffing creature at his side. He would retain his good nature and try again.
Accordingly Blutter reopened his eyes and thrust his head round the barrier of Mr. Bland’s paper. Then with startling suddenness Blutter’s head sprang back as if it had been rudely pushed. For a moment he sat in dazed silence, his eyes still blinking from what they had seen. Then he made another try, this time more circumspectly. He had been right the first time. The man sitting beside him had the face of a grinning skull. And even as he looked, the fleshless face turned slowly toward him and two vacant eyeholes peered inquiringly into his.
“Who are you looking at?” croaked the skull.
“I — I — I confess I don’t know,” stammered Mr. Blutter. “There was a gentleman sitting there named Bland, but he must have slipped out.”
“Slipped out?” repeated the skull disapprovingly. “Slipped out on what?”
“You know,” Blutter faltered. “He just went away.”
Suddenly the skull thrust itself into Blutter’s horrified face.
“Rats!” snapped the skull with an ominous click of its teeth. “Rats, I repeat. No more loose talking. Who am I?”
By this time Blutter’s eyes had discovered the hands of the skull. The sight of those fleshless fingers clawing the morning newspaper struck terror to his heart. “I don’t know who you are,” he said in a strained voice, “but I think I’d better be going.”
“You’ll stay right where you are,” replied the skull, once more approaching itself to Mr. Blutter’s face.
“Don’t!” gasped Mr. Blutter. “I think I’m going to die. Do you want to kill me?”
“Yes,” said the skull, “I want to kill you, and I will, too, if you even so much as budge.”
“Tickets!” came the voice of the conductor from a few seats down the aisle.
The skull promptly retired behind its newspaper, and when it next emerged it had amazingly grown a beard.
“What do you think of the beard, you rat?” demanded the skull. “How did I do it?”
Mr. Blutter had thrust a handkerchief into his mouth to keep himself from screaming. He now removed this self-inflicted gag and struggled to make his trembling lips form coherent words.
