Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 68
The dogs were upon him now and Lamb, fighting gamely, was borne down beneath their numbers. Then he heard a voice calling and he recognized the voice. Sandra had waded into the seething mass of dogs and was trying to extricate the cat. With his last ounce of energy Mr. Lamb eluded a large red mouth, jumped free from the pack and sprang into the girl’s outstretched arms, where he lay panting and completely through. For a few minutes the dogs swirled dangerously round the girl, then gradually and cursingly withdrew before the commanding light in her eyes.
Holding Mr. Lamb close against her breast, she took him to her room and placed him gently on her bed. Later she brought him a bowl of milk which he drank gratefully. After this she undressed and went to bed, the cat being already asleep.
When she awoke a man was lying in bed with her. The man was Mr. Lamb. This was better than a perfect stranger, but still it was not so good. She saw with relief that he was fully dressed, but quite rumpled. She also realized that as far as clothing was concerned, he had the decided advantage of her. Sandra’s sleeping arrangements were always of a sketchily attractive nature. She smiled to herself as a thought tickled her mind.
“Well, here I am at last in bed with the man I love,” she mused to herself.
Mr. Lamb opened his eyes and looked at her resentfully.
“Whom are you laughing at?” he demanded.
“Oh, nothing,” said Sandra. “But the situation, even you must realize, is highly compromising.”
Mr. Lamb was about to drift back to sleep without deigning to reply when she dug him in the ribs.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “You can’t sleep here.”
Mr. Lamb gave a startled grunt and again eyed her disapprovingly.
“Get out of this bed,” said Sandy.
“Why don’t you get out?” Mr. Lamb protested. “I don’t have to go to work.”
“I can’t get out,” replied Sandy.
“Don’t be silly,” said Lamb. “I’ve seen you in less than nothing before.”
“That was in my professional capacity,” she explained. “This is entirely different.”
“Much better,” said Mr. Lamb, “so far as I’m concerned.”
“And all this time,” the girl replied, “someone is probably listening at the door. Mrs. Cummings doesn’t object to Hebe sleeping with me, but I doubt if she’d carry her tolerance to the point of granting you the same privilege. She saw me going to bed last night with a cat in my arms. If she saw me going to bed this morning with a man occupying the same relative position, things would be hard to explain. Her mind is not oriental enough to understand.”
“Listen,” said Mr. Lamb, as his mind reverted to the events of the previous night. “You damn well saved my life.”
“And for thanks you crawl into bed with me and compromise practically all that remains of my rep,” she replied.
“You deliberately put me in your bed,” he retorted.
“But I little realized you were a lamb in cat’s clothing,” the girl replied.
“Neat but not altogether new,” said Lamb. “Slip me a little good-morning kiss and I’ll try to get the hell out of here.”
“You’re forever getting somebody the hell out of somewhere,” replied Sandy, throwing two lovely arms round his neck and kissing him in no undecided manner.
“Now get out,” she murmured, pushing him from her. “Go and get yourself to hell out of here.”
“We’ll call this a trial trip,” said Mr. Lamb as he eased himself out of bed.
“Pig,” said Sandy with glowing eyes.
“Don’t call me that,” replied Lamb pleadingly. “I might be one at any minute for all I know.”
“You’ll have to stop being things,” said Sandra, “before we can come to terms.”
“I know,” replied Mr. Lamb, “and I’m praying to God I do.”
He went to the window and peered cautiously through one side of the curtain. A long shed roof sloped down almost to the side of the adjoining yard. If he could cross this roof unobserved he might be able to jump into neutral territory. It seemed about the only thing to do.
“I’ll have to try it,” he said to Sandra. “Are there many people in the back of this house?”
“Only about six or seven possible pairs of eyes, but they should all be fixed on their plates at this hour,” she answered easily.
If the truth must be told Sandra did not in the least object to being compromised officially. She was out to get her attenuated Lamb and the sooner she got him divorced the happier she would be. She was abandoned enough to hope that he would be seen when he made his escape from the house.
Mr. Lamb raised the window to its limit and thrust out an inquiring head.
“Hasn’t something slipped your memory?” asked the girl in bed.
Lamb came swiftly across the room and gathering Sandra’s yielding body in his arms held her against him for a moment, then dropping her suddenly as if she had been an old sack, he slid his long form through the window. At the edge of the roof he gathered himself together and sprang into the air, landing neatly in the next yard right beside a lady engaged in cutting flowers. Luckily the lady’s back had been turned when he had made his desperate leap so that she did not have a chance to see his point of departure from the roof.
“Gur-r-r,” said the woman, unable to think of anything else to say as she turned round abruptly. “O-o-o-oh, where did you come from?”
“I was just admiring your roses,” replied Lamb with his most charming smile.
This remark did much to restore the lady to her usual state of assured rectitude.
“They’re not roses?” she said. “They’re sweet peas.”
“My mistake, madam,” apologized Mr. Lamb. “You see I’m rather near-sighted.”
The lady regarded Mr. Lamb’s eyes for a moment as if they were things of glass. Her expression was entirely unsympathetic.
“Well,” she remarked at length, “the next time you want to admire my sweet peas, which you don’t seem to be able to tell from roses, don’t come creeping up behind me like a thief in the night. You’d get just as much fun staying at home admiring an onion, or a cabbage — it’s larger.”
Thereupon she walked jaggily off down her garden path, and Mr. Lamb, feeling remarkably well in spite of his strenuous encounter with the dogs, returned to his home.
“I always suspected,” he observed to himself, “that an investment banker and a second-story man had a great deal in common.”
Chapter XVIII. The World’s Worst Bootlegger
MELVILLE LONG WAS ready to prove himself at last. He was now the proud possessor of much bad whisky and gin. A man in the blot was responsible for its quality. In spite of this damning fact the man continued to enjoy deep and unbroken slumber. Already Mr. Long rejoiced in three customers. His heart was hopeful, and Hebe’s was in very much the same condition. But Hebe did not know all of her Melville. She had an inkling, but no real knowledge of the profundity of that engaging youth’s ignorance of worldly affairs. Everything was set for the initial delivery.
Melville Long had selected his list of prospective customers more or less at random. He prepared it sketchily, according to the appearance of the homes he chanced to pass in his rather purposeless rambles. One house had especially impressed him, and into this house he had insinuated his ingratiating presence. That this house was the residence of Mr. Brickett, the most important bootlegger within a radius of twenty miles, was unknown to Mr. Long.
Mr. Brickett received his caller with his usual urbanity, believing him to be a new customer. His shock was therefore the greater when Mr. Long offered to sell him an unlimited supply of gin and whisky at a price well below Mr. Brickett’s minimum.
Beneath this blow the bootlegger rallied gamely and lent an interested ear to his young competitor’s plans. It seemed, according to Mr. Long, that all the bootleggers in the neighborhood were slow and inordinately expensive poisoners. He, Melville Long, was going to put an end to all that. From now on, all other bootleggers would have to reckon with him. He had no doubt that within a month or so they would either move away or give up the game. Now, all of this interested Mr. Brickett a great deal more than Melville Long realized. And the fateful part of the interview was that both of them placed a certain amount of credence in the words of Mr. Long. In this smooth, well-turned-out young gentleman Mr. Brickett saw the potentialities of a dangerous if not successful rival. In himself Mr. Long saw the possible solution of the liquor question, and the longer he listened to himself talk the clearer and closer grew the solution.
The interview ended on a note of mutual confidence and respect, Mr. Brickett requesting Mr. Long to deliver two cases of gin and one of whisky on the evening now at hand. Upon the departure of the budding young bootlegger, Mr. Brickett got in touch with numerous minions of the law who had reason to love him well, and with these same minions arranged a little surprise party for Mr. Long on the evening of his virgin delivery.
It was to this party that Mr. Lamb in a state of blessed ignorance was being driven. He had been told by Hebe that it was to be a mere pleasure trip, a short spin in the cool of the evening. She wanted her father along to lend an atmosphere of eminent respectability to a rather dubious enterprise. And because she wanted to do well by her father she dropped by and picked up Sandra. Thus they sped with high hopes and hearts aglow to the scene of the treacherous ambush. Mr. Lamb afterwards remarked that the spot should be marked by a double cross.
The car drew up before the residence of Mr. Brickett, and on some flimsy pretext Melville Long, who had been driving, made it known that he had to see a man for a minute. He hurried into the house and was affectionately greeted by the double-dealing Mr. Brickett. If Mr. Long would unload the cases, Mr. Brickett would send some servants to carry them into the house. Mr. Long then returned to the automobile and much to Mr. Lamb’s surprise extracted a box from the trunk on the rear of the car. Mr. Brickett’s servants, it turned out, wore the livery of the police department, and when Mr. Long hurried forward with the box in his arms he found himself on the point of entrusting its safety to one of these gentlemen.
It can be said for Mr. Long that when light dawned in his mind it dawned with sudden clearness. In a blinding flash he saw and comprehended the situation. With a cry of warning he flung the box into Mr. Lamb’s lap — that startled gentleman receiving it with a grunt of pain — and swinging himself to the running-board urged Hebe to take the wheel and to drive practically anywhere at the highest attainable speed. The officer of the law dashed forward to lay hands on Melville Long only to be met with that agile youth’s foot in the pit of his undefended stomach. As several other officers rushed for the car Hebe got it started and swiftly under way. The chug of a motorcycle apprised them of the fact that they were not to be unaccompanied.
Mr. Lamb removed the box from his lap and carefully placed it on the floor of the speeding car. Then he turned questioning eyes on Sandra.
“Is this to be our habitual method of progress?” he inquired. “Because if it is I’d prefer to alight and to let the merry whirl continue without my superfluous presence.”
“Would you leave me here all alone?” demanded Sandra.
“Without a moment’s hesitation if you were mad enough to remain,” Mr. Lamb replied. “Of course, I would much prefer your company.”
By this time Melville had climbed into the back of the car and was about to join the busily occupied Hebe in the front seat.
“Melville, my boy,” asked Mr. Lamb, “may I ask what is in this box that made that officer so angry?”
“It’s just his way,” muttered Long, struggling forward to hide his confusion. “They’re all that way, Mr. Lamb. Don’t mind them.”
“I wouldn’t mind them in the least,” Mr. Lamb replied, “if they didn’t display such feverish interest in us.”
By this time the telephone in Mr. Brickett’s home had been pressed into active service. The key points throughout the country and the state were warned to be on the lookout for Mr. Lamb’s automobile, the license number of which was given with a businesslike description of the automobile itself and its occupants.
Hebe had wheeled into a rough dirt road, and for a few minutes they thought they had lost the motorcycle policeman, but as she stopped the car to enable Long to change places with her they heard a faint but persistent throbbing behind them. Looking back they made out the motorcycle and its implacable rider bounding along in the distance. Both were having rough going of it.
Then began a grim chase which Mr. Lamb to this day views with alarm and disapproval. On the rutted dirt road they more than held their own with the motorcycle, but when this road abruptly deposited them on a main thoroughfare, the persevering policeman began to gain. And when the road eventually placed them in the dead center of a thriving village they were indeed in great trouble, because it was here that two state troopers, also equipped with motorcycles, joined the chase. These alert and determined gentlemen were of a different caliber from that of the flying motor’s former nemesis. They believed in producing revolvers and pointing them at things. The sound of shooting brought joy to their hearts, and they now began to enjoy themselves to their hearts’ content. As the automobile hurriedly cleared the town they yanked out their gats and gave the party ahead what is sometimes known as what for, or a piece of their collective minds. The revolvers spoke eloquently in Mr. Lamb’s ears. He heard the whistle of bullets going by at full speed and he knew that those self-same bullets were busily looking for them. This knowledge brought him scant satisfaction.
“Our two new escorts,” he observed to his daughter, “seem to have an even greater capacity for anger than that other chap. Do you know why they’re trying to murder us all?”
“Well, major,” his daughter called back to him, “this automobile happens to be loaded to the scuppers with gin and whisky, and it seems that our guilty secret is known to practically the entire universe.”
“I knew nothing about it,” replied Mr. Lamb, lurching heavily against Sandra.
“You’re the practically part,” said Hebe. “Now everybody knows except possibly an old gentleman on the extreme peak of Mount Shasta.”
“Does it so happen,” continued Mr. Lamb, as the automobile skidded around a corner and the shooting died away, “that a few samples are lying within easy reach?”
Hebe produced a bottle from a side pocket and passed it to her father. Mr. Lamb received the gin with undisguised relief.
“I might as well be poisoned as shot,” he remarked, raising the bottle to his lips. “If I must meet death face to face I’d prefer to be wearing a broad, fatuous smile.”
“You’re not alone in your preference,” said Sandy. “My throat is parched with panic.”
Mr. Lamb handed her the bottle.
“No foolishness, remember,” he warned her. “This is to be serious drinking.”
Sandra gulped a few swallows of extremely vile gin, relinquished the bottle to Hebe and turned her deep, passionate eyes on the man at her side.
“I’d love to meet death with you,” she murmured. “With your kiss on my lips and our bullet-riddled bodies locked in a last embrace.”
“Bleeding profusely from every pore,” added Mr. Lamb. “Hebe, pass me that bottle quickly. This woman is turning me numb.”
Mr. Lamb drank deeply, clinging with one hand to the swaying car. Sandra relieved him of the bottle and followed his example. Melville Long was too busy to drink. If there was one thing that young man knew it was roads. In his own roadster he had explored the highways and byways of the entire state. He was in the way of being an animated road map. He now called on his knowledge and played a little trick on the state troopers, still hidden from view by a bend in the road.
Turning the car sharply, he drove it at full speed up what appeared to be a private driveway leading to a farmhouse. The road curved round the house and continued surprisingly on through a field of corn, down a short but steep incline, followed the arc of a meadow, and at last lost itself in the shadows of a forest. It was not a road for a large, heavy automobile, but Mr. Long made it so today. Once in the forest he stopped the car and silently took the bottle from Hebe. When he removed it from his lips it was good only for disposal. Hebe produced another one and passed it back to her father. Melville Long got out and listened. For the moment they seemed safe from pursuit.
“The rear mudguards have been dented by five bullets, and there are two holes in the body,” he announced with his usual optimistic smile. “It’s lucky they didn’t hit the trunk. The thing’s full of grog.”
“An act of God,” breathed Sandra.
Daylight was growing thin, and the late summer night was about to open for business. Mr. Lamb was making inroads in the new bottle. The gin was taking effect. He could hardly have felt better.
“Melville,” he asked, “would you mind telling me the name of that near customer of yours? A shade of memory has just passed across my rapidly receding brain.”
“Name of Brickett,” Long answered a little bitterly. “Seemed to be a pleasant sort of man.”
“Oh, he is,” Mr. Lamb continued. “He’s one of the pleasantest and most progressive bootleggers in the neighborhood. I’ve done business with him myself.”
An expression of infinite pity welled up in Hebe’s eyes as she regarded her future husband.
“Darling,” she said, “you’ve proved yourself far beyond any reasonable doubt, and what you’ve proved is that you’re the world’s worst bootlegger barring none.”
“I’m not even that,” the young man answered moodily. “Haven’t sold even one bottle yet. Didn’t ever get started.”
“And what, may I ask, was the reason for all this illicit enterprise?” asked Mr. Lamb.
Melville looked helplessly at Hebe, and she put her hand on his.
“Well, you see, major,” she explained. “We were trying to get married and it was all my fault. I suggested the idea to this billiard ball with a view to obtaining quick and ample funds. I thought it would be better than his just doing nothing. He absolutely refused to ruin me.”
