Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

It may have been that the chiefs bark was worse than his bite. At any rate no great amount of apprehension was shown by the culprits before him. One of them cleared his throat inoffensively. “By the way, Chief, I understand that rookie, Smith, has been swiping bananas from Tony on the comer again, and getting the squad a bad name after you told him to pay for them.”

The chief took pause and considered this point.

The others seemed to get the idea at once. “They tell me he darned near wrecked a Chinese laundry because the Chinks tried to pass him somebody else’s shirts. You could hear the screeching for miles.” Doyle put the artistic finishing touch. “I overheard him say he wouldn’t be seen dead wearing the kind of socks you do. He was asking me did I think you had lost an election bet or just didn’t know any better.”

The chief had become dangerously quiet all at once. A faint drumming sound from somewhere on the desk told what he was doing with his fingers. “Oh, he did, did he?” he remarked, very slowly and very ominously.

At this most unfortunate of all possible moments the door blew open and in breezed the maligned one in person. He looked very tired and at the same time enthusiastic, if the combination can be imagined. Red rimmed his eyes, blue shadowed his jaws, but he had a triumphant look on his face, the look of a man who has done his job well and expects a kind word. “Well, Chief,” he burst out, “it’s over! I got both of’em. Just brought ’em in. They’re in the back room right now—”

An oppressive silence greeted him. Frost seemed to be in the air. He blinked and glanced at his three pals for enlightenment.

The silence didn’t last long, however. The chief cleared his throat. “Hrrrmph. Zat so?” he said with deceptive mildness. “Well now, Smitty, as long as your engine’s warm and you’re hitting on all six, just run over to Joe Pasternack’s marathon dance and put the skids under it. It’s been going on in that old armory on the west side—”

Smitty’s face had become a picture of despair. He glanced mutely at the clock on the wall. The clock said four — a.m., not p.m. The chief, not being a naturally hard-hearted man, took time off to glance down at his own socks, as if to steel himself for this bit of cruelty. It seemed to work beautifully. “An election bet!” he muttered cryptically to himself, and came up redder than ever.

“Gee, Chief,” pleaded the rookie, “I haven’t even had time to shave since yesterday morning.” In the background unseen nudgings and silent strangulation were rampant.

“You ain’t taking part in it, you’re putting the lid on it,” the chief reminded him morosely. “First you buy your way in just like anyone else and size it up good and plenty, see if there’s anything against it on moral grounds. Then you dig out one Toodles McGuire from under, and don’t let her stall you she’s of age either. Her old lady says she’s sixteen and she ought to know. Smack her and send her home. You seal everything up tight and tell Pasternack and whoever else is backing this thing with him it’s all off. And don’t go ’way. You stay with him and make sure he refunds any money that’s coming to anybody and shuts up shop good and proper. If he tries to squawk about there ain’t no ordinance against marathons, just lemme know. We can find an ordinance against anything if we go back far enough in the books—”

Smitty shifted his hat from northeast to southwest and started reluctantly toward the great outdoors once more. “Anything screwy like this that comes up, I’m always It,” he was heard to mutter rebelliously. “Nice job, shooing a dancing contest. I’ll probably get bombarded with powder-puffs—”

The chief reached suddenly for the heavy brass inkwell on his desk, whether to sign some report or to let Smitty have it, Smitty didn’t wait to find out. He ducked hurriedly out the door.

“Ah, me,” sighed the chief profoundly, “what a bunch of crumbs. Why didn’t I listen to me old man and join the fire department instead!”

Young Mr. Smith, muttering bad language all the way, had himself driven over to the unused armory where the peculiar enterprise was taking place. “Sixty cents,” said the taxi-driver.

Smitty took out a little pocket account-book and wrote down Taxi-fare — $1.20. “Send me out after nothing at four in the morning, will he!” he commented. After which he felt a lot better.

There was a box-office outside the entrance but now it was dark and untenanted. Smitty pushed through the unlocked doors and found a combination porter and doorman, a gentleman of color, seated on the inside, who gave him a stub of pink pasteboard in exchange for fifty-five cents, then promptly took the stub back again and tore it in half. “Boy,” he remarked affably, “you is either up pow’ful early or up awful late.”

“I just is plain up,” remarked Smitty, and looked around him.

It was an hour before daylight and there were a dozen people left in the armory, which was built to hold two thousand. Six of them were dancing, but you wouldn’t have known it by looking at them. It had been going on nine days. There was no one watching them any more. The last of the paid admissions had gone home hours ago, even the drunks and the Park Avenue stay-outs. All the big snow-white arc lights hanging from the rafters had been put out, except one in the middle, to save expenses. Pasternack wasn’t in this for his health. The one remaining light, spitting and sizzling way up overhead, and sending down violet and white rays that you could see with the naked eye, made everything look ghostly, unreal. A phonograph fitted with an amplifier was grinding away at one end of the big hall, tearing a dance-tune to pieces, giving it the beating of its life. Each time the needle got to the end of the record it was swept back to the beginning by a sort of stencil fitted over the turn-table.

Six scarecrows, three men and three girls, clung ludicrously together in pairs out in the middle of the floor. They were not dancing and they were not walking, they were tottering by now, barely moving enough to keep from standing still. Each of the men bore a number on his back. 3, 8, and 14 the numbers were. They were the “lucky” couples who had outlasted all the others, the scores who had started with them at the bang of a gun a week and two days ago. There wasn’t even a coat or vest left among the three men — or a necktie. Two of them had replaced their shoes with carpet-slippers to ease their aching feet. The third had on a pair of canvas sneakers.

One of the girls had a wet handkerchief plastered across her forehead. Another had changed into a chorus-girl’s practice outfit — shorts and a blouse. The third was a slip of a thing, a mere child, her head hanging limply down over her partner’s shoulder, her eyes glazed with exhaustion.

Smitty watched her for a moment. There wasn’t a curve in her whole body. If there was anyone here under age, it was she. She must be Toodles McGuire, killing herself for a plated loving-cup, a line in the newspapers, a contract to dance in some cheap honky-tonk, and a thousand dollars that she wasn’t going to get anyway — according to the chief. He was probably right, reflected Smitty. There wasn’t a thousand dollars in the whole set-up, much less three prizes on a sliding scale. Pasternack would probably pocket whatever profits there were and blow, letting the fame-struck suckers whistle. Cor-ner-lizards and dance-hall belles like these couldn’t even scrape together enough to bring suit. Now was as good a time as any to stop the lousy racket.

Smitty sauntered over to the bleachers where four of the remaining six the armory housed just then were seated and sprawled in various attitudes. He looked them over. One was an aged crone who acted as matron to the female participants during the brief five-minute rest-periods that came every half-hour. She had come out of her retirement for the time being, a towel of dubious cleanliness slung over her arm, and was absorbed in the working-out of a crossword puzzle, mumbling to herself all the while. She had climbed halfway up the reviewing stand to secure privacy for her occupation.