Love and Learn (Witwer)/Chapter 3
"When fortune favors a man too much, she makes him a fool!"
Neither Napoleon, Nero, Alexander, Jack Johnson, Mark Antony nor Bill Hohenzollern was the composer of that remark, though, honestly, I bet they all thought it about the time the world was giving them the air. However, the boy who originally pulled the above wise crack was Mr. Publius Syrus, who was current in dear old Syria during the fiscal year of 77 b.c. Two thousand annums after Publius gave up the struggle, Jimmy Burns, a professional bellhop—age, twenty; color, white; nationality, Broadway-American—decided to find out for himself whether or not Pubby's statement was true.
It is!
One morning during a slight lull in the daily hostilities between me and the number-seeking guests, I am reading my favorite book—the Morning Squawk, the newspaper that made the expression "It is alleged" famous, or maybe it was the other way around. Spattered all over the front page is a highly sensational account of the latest adventures of one of these modern prodigal sons—in round numbers, Carlton Van Ryker, whose father celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday by entering a tomb in a horizontal position and leaving his only progeny two paltry $500,000 bank notes. The young millionaire with the name like a Pullman and a soft collar had been stepping high, wide and fast with his pennies and at the time of going to press was the plot of an "alienation of my wife's affections" suit, a badly mismanaged shooting affair, and various other things that would keep his mind off the weather for quite a spell. While'm drinking all this in with my lustrous orbs, along comes Mons. James Joseph Aloysius Burns, who was either the hero of this episode in my exciting career, or else he wasn't.
"Kin you feature a cuckoo like this dizzy Van Ryker havin' all that sugar," he snorts, nodding angrily at the newspaper, "whilst us regular white folks is got to slave like Uncle Tom or we don't eat? Is that fair?"
"Cheer up, Jimmy," I says with a smile. "We don't get much money, that's a fact, but then we can laugh out loud. That's more than Van Ryker can do! Look at the pushing around he's getting because he hauled off and inherited a million, poor fellow; he"
"That mug was runed by too much jack!" butts in Jimmy. "He's what you call a weak sister. He wasn't built to handle important money—you got to be born that way! Knowin' how to spend money is a gift. I got the gift, but I ain't got the money!"
"And you never will have the money, frittering away your life hopping bells in a hotel, Jamesy—not to give you a short answer," I says. "When they assembled you they left out the motor—ambition!"
"Blah!" says Jimmy courteously. "That's what you think. I got plenty ambition. My ambition is to wake up every morning for the rest of my life with a twenty dollar bill in my kick! Believe me, Cutey, I often wish I was a Wall Street bond messenger, a bootlegger or even a professional reformer—but I ain't never had a shot at no big dough like that. Why, if it was rainin' tomato bouillon, I'd be there with a knife instead of a spoon!"
"As if that would stop you!" I remark sweetly. I once saw James eat. "It seems to me you're always craving excitement," I went on, dealing out some wrong numbers. "Only last week you told me you had a massage."
"Go ahead and kid me," says Jimmy. "You should bite your nails—you're a woman, a good looker with more curves than a scenic railway, and they ain't no way you kin lose! But it's different here. It seems to me I been workin' for a livin' since the doc says 'It's a boy!' and the chances is I'll be workin' for a livin' till the doc says 'Get the embalmer'!"
Don't you love that?
"Why don't you check out of the bellhopping game and try your luck at something with a future in it?" I ask him, though, really, I'm about as interested in Jimmy's biography as I am in the election returns at Tokio. "If I was a man, this town wouldn't have me licked!"
"Apple sauce!" sneers Jimmy politely. "A guy without money has got the same chance in New York as a ferryboat salesman would have on the Sara Desert. It takes jack to make jack. With a bank roll I could make my name as well known as Jonah's, and I'd spot him his whale?"
"What do you do with your nickels?" I ask him. "I don't doubt that Chaplin and Fairbanks get more wages than you bellboys, but I thought your tips ran into better figures than they have in the Follies."
"Say, Cutey, be yourself!" says James scornfully. "Most of the eggs in this trap is as tight as the skin on a grape—they wouldn't give a thin dime to see Tutankh-Amen walk up Fifth Avenoo on his hands! I could be railroaded to Sing Sing for what I think of them babies. Why should I have to carry suitcases and hustle ice water for a lot of monkeys like that?"
"Don't put on dog, Jimmy," I smile. "The guests of the St. Moe are every bit as good as you are, even if you are a haughty bellhop and they are lowly millionaires. Suppose you had a million, what would you do with it?"
"Well," says Jimmy thoughtfully, "the first thing I'd do wouldst be to get me a education—not that I'm no dumb Isaac by no means, but they's a few lessons like algeometry, matriculation, mock geography and the like which I could use. I wouldn't get all tangled up with no wild women or pull none of the raw stuff which this Van Ryker jobbie done, that's a cinch! They'd be no horseplay what the so ever, as far as I was concerned. What I'd do wouldst be to crash into some business, make my pile and my name and not do no playin' around till I was about fifty and independent for life. Ain't it a crime when I got them kind of intentions to make good and no nonsense about it, that somebody don't slip me a million?"
"It's an outrage, Jimmy," I agree, allowing a giggle to break jail. "Still, all men are born equal and if it's actually possible that you haven't got a million, why, you must have thrown your chances away. When Eddie Windsor was your age, for instance, he had made himself Prince of Wales!"
"Me and him begin life in a different type of cradle!" says Jimmy. "And that stuff about everybody bein' equal when they're born is the oyster's ice skates. The only way me and them wealthy millionaires was even is that we was all babies!"
This debate between me and Jimmy was about like Adam and a monkey arguing over which of 'em was our first ancestor—we could have found plenty of people to side with both of us. Then again, the customers was beginning to snap into it for the day and craved the voice with the smile. I got as busy at the switchboard as a custard pie salesman on a movie comedy lot, so I gave the money-mad James the air for the time being.
A couple of weeks later, or maybe it was a jolly old fortnight, Hon. Guy Austin Tower returns from a voyage to Europe, and then the fun began!
Guy would be a face card in any deck—he's a real fellow, no fooling. Even the parboiled Jimmy Burns, who thinks everybody guilty till proved innocent, is one of Guy's fans. Guy just sprays Jimmy and the rest of the hired help with princely tips and doesn't dime them to death as most of the other inmates do.
Well, Guy got a welcome from the St. Moe staff that would have tickled a political boss. Honestly, he brought something back for everybody! What he brought back for me was some perfectly gorgeous Venetian lace and his sixty-fifth request that I renounce the frivolous pleasures of the telephone switchboard and enter matrimony.
I accepted the lace, which drove Hazel Killian wild with envy, but on the wedding bells I claimed exemption. I liked Guy, but I was by no means in love with him—or with anyone else! From what I'd been able to observe from my perch at the St. Moe switchboard, there was a bit too much "moan" in matrimony, really!
I meet five hundred representatives of the sillier sex every day, and treat 'em all with equal chilly politeness till they get out of line. Then I turn off the politeness, just giving 'em the chill, and honest, when I want to be cold—which is generally—I'd turn a four-alarm fire into an iceberg with a glance!
Well, Guy Tower hadn't been back in the St. Moe a week when he began showering attentions on me from the point where he left off before he sailed away. Honestly, he dinnered and theatered me silly! Hazel watched me carelessly toy with this good-looking young gold mine with unconcealed feelings of covetousness. She simply couldn't understand why I didn't grab this boon from Heaven and marry him while he was stupefied with my charms. Hazel is no eyesore herself and suffered from a lifelong ambition to become a bird in a gilded cage. She craved a millionaire, and in desperation she offered to match coins with me for Guy, but I indignantly refused. I know Hazel—she's a dear, but she'd have Rockefeller penniless in a month and every shop on Fifth Avenue sporting a "Closed to Restock" sign. She's just a pretty baby who loves to go buy buy and she makes 'em give till it hurts, don't think she doesn't!
Another person who got upset over Guy's inability to keep away from me was Jerry Murphy. My bounding around with Guy fills Jerry with pain and alarm and he keeps me supplied with laughs by constantly warning me of the pitfalls and temptations that surround a little telephone girl who steps out with a millionaire.
"If 'at big mock orange makes one out of the way crack to you, Cutey, just tip me off, and I'll ruin him!" says Jerry with a menacing growl. "I can't cuddle up to the idea of you goin' out with him all the time. Don't let him go to work and lure you somewheres away from easy callin' distance of help!"
"Cut yourself a piece of cake!" I says. "Mister Tower is a perfect gentleman, Jerry, and it would be impossible for him to act like anything else if he and I were alone on an island in the middle of the Pacific."
"Say, listen, Cutey," says Jerry, wincing, "don't mention 'at alone on a island stuff in my presence! 'At's what I been dreamin' about me and you for a year. If we ever get on a ship together, I'll wreck it as sure as you're born!"
Now, wasn't he a scream?
Well, at one of our dinner dates about a month after his return, Guy shows up haggard and wan and apparently all in. Generally a fellow who couldn't do enough for his stomach, he ordered this night with the enthusiasm of a steak fiend week-ending at a vegetarian friend's. When the nourishment arrived, Guy just dallied and toyed with it. Afterwards we favored the dance floor with a visit, and instead of tripping his usual wicked ballroom he acted like he had an anvil in each of his pumps. A dozen times during the evening he had to tap back a yawn, and really I began to get steamed up. I'm not used to seeing my boy friends pass out on me!
"I hope I'm not keeping you awake, Mr. Tower," I remarked frigidly as we returned to our table and the nineteenth yawn slipped right through his fingers, in spite of his well meant attempt to push it back.
"Forgive me!" says Guy quickly, and a flush brings some color to his face for the first time that night. "I—the fact is, Gladys, I don't believe I've had a dozen hours' sleep in the past week!"
"Then you've been cheating," I smile, "for you've always left me around midnight. Is she a blonde or a brunette, or have you noticed?"
Guy laughs and, leaning over, pats my hand.
"As if I would ever notice any girl but you!" he says, getting daringly original. "Oh, it isn't a girl, Gladys—though there is a woman at the bottom of the thing, at that. I'll explain that paradoxical statement. Rosenblum wants my next play to open his new Thalia Theater, which will be completed within two months—and I haven't the ghost of an idea, not the semblance of a plot! I've paced the floor like a caged animal, smoking countless cigarettes and drinking oceans of black coffee. I've written steadily for hours at a stretch and then torn the whole business up in disgust. That's what's kept me awake at night—that and my daily battles with this infernal Rosenblum!"
"How come?" I ask him in surprise. "I don't see the percentage in battling with the man who puts your plays on Broadway, Guy."
"He wants me to write a risqué farce, one of those loathsome—er—pardon me—bedroom things—for Yvette D'Lys," says Guy angrily, "and I ab-so-lute-ly will not do it! I refuse to prostitute my art for the sordid box office! I"
"Hold everything!" I butt in. "Shakespeare wasn't below writing bedroom farces, and I think even you'll admit that he got some favorable mention as a playwright."
"Shakespeare write a bedroom farce!" gasps Guy. "Why, my dear girl, you—which of his marvelous plays could you possibly twist into that?"
"Othello," I says promptly. "In act five they clown all over the boudoir! You should go to the theater oftener."
For a second Guy looks puzzled, then he grins and the lines around his navy-blue eyes relax.
"You are delightful," he says. "If I cannot get mental stimulus from you, then I am indeed uninspired! Nevertheless, I am not going to do as Rosenblum requests. I have never written anything salacious or even suggestive, and I never will! Furthermore, I don't believe Miss D'Lys or any actress likes to play that kind of a part. It is managers of the Rosenblum type that force those roles on them—callous, dollar-grabbing, cynical pessimists, who take it for granted that all women are bad!"
"Any man who takes it for granted that all women are bad is no pessimist, Guy," I says thoughtfully. "He's an optimist!"
"Great!" says Guy, slapping the table with his hand. "May I use that epigram in my play?"
"I'll loan it to you," I tell him. "If I break out with the writing rash myself some day, I'll want it back. And now let me hear some of the ideas you tore up in disgust—maybe one of them is the real McCoy. Trot 'em out and I'll give you my honest opinion."
Well, he did and I did. Guy rattled off a half-dozen plots, which failed to thicken and merely sickened. Honestly, they had everything in 'em but the Battle of Gettysburg, and really they were fearful—about as new and exciting as a beef stew, which is just what I told him, being a truthful girl.
Guy sighs and looks desperate.
"Gladys," he says, "I simply must have a play ready to open the Thalia in less than eight weeks! You know that my interest in playwriting is anything but mercenary—good heavens, I have more money than I know what to do with. What I want is to see my name on another Broadway success, and I'm absolutely barren of ideas! I've simply struck a dry spell, such as all writers do, occasionally. At this moment I'd give twenty-five thousand dollars for an original plot!"
I drew a deep breath and stared at him.
"Don't kid about that kind of money, Guy," I says solemnly. "And—don't tempt me!"
"I never was more serious in my life!" he quickly assures me. "Why, have you an idea? By Jove, Gladys, if you have—if you are the goddess from the machine"
"Be of good cheer," I interrupt. "I'll go home and sleep over matters, which is what you better do, too—you look like you fell out of a well or something, really! I'll see you tomorrow. I don't think I'll have a plot for you by then, but"
"Naturally—still, if you even have a suggestion that I might use," says Guy eagerly, "I"
"I say I don't think I'll have a plot by then, I know I'll have one!" I finish.
And I did, really!
When I got home that night I went right to bed, but somehow Mr. Slumber and me couldn't seem to come to terms. My brain just refused to call it a union day but kept mulling over Guy and his magnanimous offer of twenty-five thousand lire for a plot. Good heavens, he could buy a plot with a house and barn on it for that! Then my half sleepy mind turns to Jimmy Burns, the gloomy bellhop, whose deathless ambition is to corral a fortune and dumfound Europe with his progress from then on. Suddenly these two trains of thought collide with a crash and out of the wreck comes an idea that I think will make Jimmy Burns famous and give Guy Tower his play! That trifling matter being all settled, I turned over and slept the sleep of the just.
The very next evening I propositioned Guy, who listened with flattering attention. After telling him I had his play all set, I furnished him with a short but interesting description of the life, habits and desires of James Joseph Aloysius Burns. I then proposed that Guy place his twenty-five thousand to the bellboy's credit for one month, James to be allowed free rein with the jack. If Burns has increased the amount at the end of thirty days, he is to return the original twenty-five thousand to Guy. If not, he must give back whatever amount he has left. All the principals are to be sworn to secrecy and that's all there is to my scheme—it's as simple as the recipe for hot chocolate!
"If Jimmy Burns is really miscast in life and has a brain and business ability far above hopping bells," I explain, "why, the use of twenty-five thousand for thirty days might make him one of the world's most famous men! It's a sporting chance, Guy—will you gamble?"
Guy looks somewhat perplexed. He stares into my excited face and clears his throat nervously.
"Well—I—of course, I am interested in anything you suggest, Gladys," he says. "I—eh—I suppose I am unusually stupid this evening, but I cannot see how my dowering this bellboy will assist me in writing my play."
"Listen," I says. "You claimed you'd put out twenty-five thousand for a plot, didn't you? Well, believe me, the movements of Jimmy Burns with twenty-five thousand dollars to do what he wants with will supply all the ideas you can handle—if you don't think so, you're crazy!"
"But" begins Guy.
"Don't butt!" I cut him off, impatiently. "You're not the goat yet and you won't be if you listen to teacher. All you have to do is give Jimmy the sugar, watch his stuff for the next thirty days, and you'll get a true to life masterpiece for your drama—probably a play that will show the making of a financial, scientific or artistic Napoleon! If you can't get a play out of the effect of sudden wealth on a lowly bellhop, then you got no business in the same room with a typewriter!"
Guy rubs his chin, smooths back his wavy hair and gazes out of the window at New York City.
"By Jove!" he busts out suddenly, slapping his hands together, "the thing is fantastic—grotesque—but I'll do it!"
So it came to pass that the next day Guy, Jimmy Burns, and myself met by appointment in the cashier's office of the Plumbers & Physicians National Bank. As I was on my lunch hour and minutes were at a premium, there was little time squandered on preliminaries, Guy making his proposition to the thunderstruck James in simple words of one syllable. At first, M. Burns refused to believe he wasn't being kidded, then he got hysterical with delight. When the startled cashier solemnly asked for his signature and handed him a bank book showing there was $25,000 to his credit in the vaults, Jimmy broke down and cried like a baby!
"Now listen to me, young man," I tell the panting Burns when he has hid the bank book in his shoe to the open amusement of Guy and the wondering cashier. "You want to get an immediate rush of brains to the head and make that twenty-five thousand mean something, because that's the last you get if you cry your eyes out! That's all there is, there isn't any more, get me? You been going around squawking about what a world-beater you'd be if you had money. Well, now you got plenty of it and we look for big things from you. No clowning, remember, you must make good! Is all that clear?"
Still in a happy trance, Jimmy Burns removes his cap with a start.
"Ye-ye-yes, ma'am!" he gulps, the first time he was ever polite to anyone, before or since.
Well, really, the effect of that $25,000 suddenly showered on Jamesy was every bit as startling as I expected—only in a slightly different way than I fondly hoped! Those pennies went right to his shapely head, and instead of stimulating his brain, why, they just removed it altogether. First of all, Jimmy got a wild and uncontrollable desire to leave the art of bellhopping flat on its back. Not satisfied to resign his portfolio in a dignified way, he kidded the guests, insulted the manager, rode Jerry Murphy till Jerry wanted his heart, and wound up by punching Pete Kift, the bell captain, right on the nose. By an odd coincidence, these untoward actions got Jimmy the gate.
The plutocrat bellhop's next imitation was to apply for the most expensive suite in the hotel. They just laughed Hon. Burns off, telling him there was nothing but standing room left in the inn and try to get that! But Guy Tower came to the rescue and got Jimmy the suite as Guy wanted to keep his experiment under as close observation as possible while making notes for his play. Once settled in his gorgeous apartment, Jimmy swelled up like a mump and run his former colleagues ragged getting him ice water, stationery, telegram blanks and drug store gin. He staggered around in the most fashionable lobby in New York making cracks like "Hey, d'ye think Prohibition will ever come back?" to astounded millionaires and their ladies. Honestly, he was a wow! When one of the fellows he used to work with called him "Jimmy," the née bellboy angrily insists that the manager fire him for undue familiarity, remarking, "A guy has got to keep them servants in their proper places!"
He sent a wire to the Standard Oil Company asking if they couldn't use a younger man in Rockefeller's place, paid the dinge elevator pilots a dollar twenty times a day to stop the car and tie his shoe laces, panicked the highest priced tailor in Manhattan by ordering seven suits of "mufti," having read that the King of England occasionally dresses in that, and generally misplayed his hand till everybody was squawking and in no time at all Jimmy Burns was about as popular as a mad dog in the St. Moe hotel. He failed to go through college like he promised he would, but he certainly went through everything else, and only for Guy, Jimmy would have been streeted fifty times a day!
The next desire that attacks James is the ambition to see his name in the newspapers, so he advertises for apress agent. The first publicity purveyor who showed up made James think he was good by using nothing but adjectives in his conversation and asking for a honorarium of $250 the week. Mr. Burns thought the salary was more than reasonable, but as he's the type that would ask Coolidge for a reference, he demanded one from the candidate for the job.
"You have asked the man who owns one—just a minute!" says the press agent cheerily, and not at all abashed he dashes out of the room. I heard all this when he stopped at my switchboard with Jimmy and asked me where the writing room was. In five minutes he's back, waving a paper in Jimmy's face.
"Look that over!" he says.
James read it out loud for my entertainment. According to this testimonial, the bearer had did about everything in the publicity line but act as press representative for a school where middle-aged eagles are eaught how to fly. James seems to get quite a kick out of it.
"I think I'll take this guy," he remarks, as he looks up from the reference.
"Fine!" says the delighted applicant. "That's a good thought. I'll snap right into it and"
"Tomato sauce!" butts in James sneeringly. "I don't wish no part of you, the baby I want to hire is the bozo which wrote this recommendation of you. He's good, what I mean, a letter writin' idiot!"
"A bit odd that we should both be thinking the same thing," says Mr. Press Agent coolly. "As a matter of fact, I wrote that recommendation myself. So now that I'm engaged as your publicity expert, let me have a few of your photos and"
The following morning nearly every front page in town displayed a picture of James Burns and this glaring headline:
Bell boy left million by guest he once loaned dime!
That was the press agent's first effort and, as far as I was ever able to see, his last. But it got ample results!
Within a week, Jimmy Burns had discovered what millions have discovered before his little day—that the mere possession of lucre does not mean happiness, and for some it means positive misery! Not only did James become the prey of the charity solicitors, confidence workers, stock swindlers, "yes men," phoney promotors and other parasites that infest the hotel, but he was constantly in boiling water through his cuckoo escapades growing out of sudden wealth that sent his brains on location. After purchasing a diamond as big as Boston, only brighter, he bought the highest priced horseless carriage he could find in the market and the same identical day it slipped out of his hands and tried to climb the steps of the Fifth Avenue library. The gendarmes pinched him for reckless driving, though Jimmy protested that it wasn't really "wreckless" as he had plenty wreck, and his worship tossed the trembling James into the hoosegow for three days, remarking, "I'll teach you rich men a lesson!" Then the income tax beagles read that newspaper headline and came down on Burns like a cracked ceiling. So all in all, Jimmy was finding few chuckles connected with his pieces of eight.
When the rich but unhappy James got out of the Bastille, he decided to throw a party in his costly suite at the St. Moe for his former associates of the bellhops' bench. As Jimmy confided to me, apparently his only friend, he felt the immediate need of mixing with people who spoke his language. He wanted to forget his troubles and get back on a friendly footing with the boys, who had severed diplomatic relations with him on account of his acting like he was Sultan of Goitre or something when he became a thousandaire over night. Jimmy felt that a first-class soirée would do the trick.
The party came off as advertised, but all it meant to the poor little rich man was more grief! It was really a respectable enough affair, no hats being broken or that sort of thing, and a pleasant time was had by all with the slight exception of the charming host. Our hero made two fatal mistakes. The first was not inviting Jerry Murphy and the second was laying in a stock of canny Scotch for medicinal purposes, in case any of his guests should get stricken with the dread disease of thirst. The result was that an epidemic of parched throats broke out early in the evening and pretty soon the other habitués of the St. Moe began complaining bitterly about the unusually boisterous race riot that was being staged with a top-heavy cast on the sixth floor, Mr. Williams, the manager, who liked Jimmy Burns and arsenic the same way, called upon Jerry Murphy to quell the disturbance and Jerry licked his lips with delight. The man-mountain house detective run all the way upstairs, figuring the elevators too slow to whisk him to a job as tasty to him as cream is to puss. Jerry pounded on the door of Jimmy's salon and demanded admittance. Recognizing his voice, James climbed unsteadily on a chair, opened the transom and peered with a rolling eye at Jerry.
"Go roll yer hoop—hic—you big shtiff, thish is gen'lmen's—hic—gen'lmen's blowout!" says Jimmy, carelessly pouring a pitcher of water, cracked ice and all, on Jerry's noble head. "Hic—shee kin you laugh that off!"
Foaming at the mouth and uttering strange cries, the infuriated Jerry broke through the door and the panic was on! The beauty and chivalry present fled before the charging sleuth like they'd flee before a charging hippo, but the unfortunate Jimmy got left at the post. After cuffing him around the room till the sport palled on him, Jerry dragged James off to durance vile and once again Jamesy is put under glass, this time credited with illegally—possessing spirits frumenti. They held him under lock and key all night and it took all of Guy Tower's influence and quite a few of his quarters to get Jerry to withdraw the charge and free Jimmy the next morning.
Well, honestly, I felt sorry for Jimmy Burns, who was certainly taking cruel and unusual punishment and being made to like it. I thought perhaps if I injected a lady into the situation it might make things a bit more pleasant for him, so I introduced Hazel Killian to the "millionaire bellboy," as the newspapers were still calling James. O sole mia! as they say in Iowa, what an off day my brain was having when it cooked up that idea! With visions clouding her usually painstaking taste, of the Riviera, Paris, Monte Carlo, gems, yachts, Boles-Joyce limousines or what have you, Hazel took to Jimmy like a goldfish takes to a bowl and our evening expeditions now consisted of your correspondent and Guy, assisted by Hazel and Jimmy. We went everywhere together, with James insisting upon paying most of the bills. But while Jimmy was civil enough to Hazel, he simply showered his attentions on your little friend Gladys, grabbing every chance to make the most violent love to me. This greatly annoyed Guy and Hazel and equally greatly amused me—Jimmy was just a giggle to me, not a gasp!
In the meanwhile, Mr. Williams and Jerry Murphy had banded together to make James sick and tired of living in the Hotel St. Moe. He seldom found his room made up, there was always something wrong with the lights, the water and the steam, none of the help would answer his bells, and when he hollered for service he was told he would find it in the dictionary under S. But Pete Kift pulled the worst trick of all on him. With the radiant Hazel on his arm and Guy keeping military distance behind, Jimmy was proudly strutting through the lobby one fine evening. All were resplendent in evening clothes, and to show you I'm not catty I'll say that Hazel in an evening gown would attract attention away from the Yosemite. As the party neared the desk, Pete Kift suddenly looks at Jimmy and bawls "Front!" at the top of his bull elephant's voice, and mechanically responding to the habit of a lifetime, poor Jimmy Burns grabs an amazed guest's suitcase and hastily starts for the elevator! The witnesses just screamed when they grasped the situation and recognized James as the ex-bellhop. Even Guy smiled, but it was different with Hazel, who could have shot down Mr. Burns on the spot in cold blood. As for Jimmy, well, honestly, he would have welcomed the bullet!
Nevertheless, in spite of this fox pass Hazel believed Jimmy had actually inherited an even million, and evidently James had not gone out of his way to make her think different. So one day Hazel tells me she's determined to make Jimmy her very own. When she adds that he has sworn to star her in a musical comedy or back her in a movie production, I nearly passed out! Can you imagine Jimmy, with only a few thousand left, making any such maniacal promises as that to a girl with a memory like Hazel's? Oo la la, what a fine disturbance James was readying himself for!
As I had vowed to say nothing about how Jimmy got his bankroll, I couldn't very well give the ambitious Hazel the lowdown on matters, but I did try most earnestly to lay her off him. I got nowhere! Refusing to be warned, Hazel point-blankly accused me of having a yen for Jimmy myself, and then she set sail for this gilded youth in dead earnest.
Well, knowing nothing of Hazel's plans with regard to himself, the doomed Jimmy kept on entertaining like his first name was Astor, his middle name Vanderbilt and his last name Morgan. He took me, Hazel and Guy to the races at Belmont Park and stabled us all in a box. As James had loudly declared that he knew more about horses than Vincent Ibañez, we all played his feed box tips for five races and we learned about losers from him. When the sixth and last scramble arrived, Guy had donated $1,500, I had sent in $50, and Hazel had parted with $80 to the oral books and was fit to be tied! What Jimmy lost, nobody knows. Anyhow, he gazed over the program for the sixth race, a mile handicap, and suddenly let out a yell.
"Hot dog!" he says, much excited. "Here's where we all get independent for life! They's a beagle in this dash by the name of Bellhop and if that ain't a hunch then Pike's Peak's a pimple. Get down on this baby with the family jools and walk outa here rancid with money!"
We split a contemptuous grin between us and presented it to Jimmy before getting down on the favorite in a last attempt to break even on the day. Jimmy milled his way back to our box, flushed and panting, and gayly announced that he had shot the works on Bellhop's nose. He said we were all paranoiacs for not doing the same. Well, it was all over in a twinkling! The favorite found the handicap of our bets a bit too much and finished an even last. Bellhop tripped the mile in something like 0.96 and won from here to the Ruhr, clicking off $15,000 for Mr. James Joseph Aloysius Burns. James then announced his intention of buying the horse and presenting it to Hazel for Arbor Day, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that me and Guy talked him out of it. Hazel gave us a murderous glare and for the rest of the day you couldn't have got a nail file between her and Jimmy, honestly!
Whirling back to New York in Jimmy's car, now steered by a uniformed chauffeur, I began to reprove James for this gambling and stepping out when he should be using his money and time to secure his future. What about all his promises to me? How about all the big things he was going to do? When was he going to enter business, or whatever he thought he could do best?
"Don't make me laugh!" says Jimmy, tapping an imported cigarette on a solid gold case. "I'm sittin' pretty. What a sucker I'd be to pester myself about work when I got all this sugar!"
"Of course," says Hazel, nestling closer to him. "Imagine a millionaire working!"
And the only thing that really burned me up was Jimmy's grin at Guy and the sly dig in the ribs he gave me, the little imp!
Well, from then on Jimmy had lots of luck and all of it bad. The fellow who invented money was a clever young man, but he really should have stayed around the laboratory for another couple of hours and invented an antidote for the trouble it brings. The well-to-do ex-bellhop used his jack as a wedge to get into one jam after another, till finally came the worst blow of all, and Miss Hazel Killian delivered it.
It seems that Hazel got fatigued waiting for Jimmy to unbelt the roll and star her in a musical comedy or a super-production, so she requested a showdown. Jiminy checked up and discovered he had blown all but about five thousand of his ill gotten gains, and as trustworthy reports had reached him that it would take about ten times that much to group a show around the beauteous Hazel, he calmly told her all bets were off. Hazel promptly fainted, but Jimmy's idea of first aid being an alarmed glance and a dash for the door, she quickly snapped out of it and demanded ten thousand dollars for the time she put in entertaining him.
"Aha—a gold digger, hey?" says Jimmy indignantly. "So you wish ten grand for entertainin' me? Where d'ye get that stuff? They ain't no ten thousand dollars' worths of laughs in you for me, I'll tell the world! Take the air!"
Infuriated beyond speech, Hazel brought suit for $100,000 against James the following day, charging that promising young man had promised to wed her. Further, deponent sayeth not!
That was the end of the high life for Jimmy Burns. Honestly, he was scared stiff and he got little comfort from me, for I was absolutely disgusted with the way he had carried on from the time Guy gave him that money. Opportunity had knocked on this little fool's door and he had pretended he wasn't at home. Not only that, but I felt he had got me in wrong with Guy Tower, whose $25,000 investment for a plot now seemed a total loss. I told Guy tearfully how sorry I was that my scheme had failed to pan out, but he cut me off in the middle of my plea for forgiveness, his face a mass of smiles.
"My dear girl, you owe me no apology," says Guy, patting my shoulder. "It is I who owe you a debt of gratitude. I've written a farce-comedy around Jimmy's adventures with the twenty-five thousand, and Rosenblum predicts it will be the hit of the season! I've never seen him so enthusiastic. Your idea was more than successful, and Jimmy is welcome to whatever he has left of the money when the time limit expires!"
Wasn't that lovely?
In the meantime, the miserable Jimmy had tried to forget his worries again by mixing with his former fellow workmen about the hotel. Jerry Murphy and Pete Kift wouldn't give him a tumble, so he sat on the bellhop's bench all night, trying to square things with his ex-playmates. But now that he was a "millionaire" they put on the ice and treated him like a maltese would be treated at a mouse's reception.
A great longing comes over Jimmy to be a carefree bellboy again, without the burden of wealth. He felt the irresistible call of the ice water, the stationery and the tip! So, unable to lick the temptation, he sneaked the baggage of a few guests upstairs and was promptly run out of the hotel by the other boys for poaching on their preserves. To make things perfect, a couple of days later he was served with the papers in Hazel's suit.
Unable to cope with the situation and hysterical with fear, Jimmy rushed to the switchboard and made an appeal to me that would have melted a Chinese executioner. He placed the blame for the trouble he was in on my georgetted shoulders—manlike—and insisted that I had to get him out of the mess. The legal documents Hazel had him tagged with smacked to the terrified Jimmy of pitiless judges, stern juries, jail—perhaps even the gallows! Honestly, James was in fearful shape, no fooling. I shut off his moans finally, and told him to get rid of whatever money he had left and I would take on myself the horrible job of explaining everything to Hazel. With a wild whinny, Jimmy dashed out of the hotel without even thanking me, gambled his remaining ducats in one wild stock market plunge—and two days later the ticker informed him that he was worth $25,000 again!
But money was now smallpox to Jimmy Burns. It was just three weeks and four days since Guy Tower gave him the original $25,000, and under the agreement Jimmy still had three days left to splurge. Nothing stirring! What he wanted to do now was to get rid of his wealth, as I had told him Hazel's barristers would never let her sue him should they find out the defendant had no more nickels. Jimmy wanted to go to law with Hazel the same way he wanted to part with his ears, so he busts in on Guy and tells him to take back his gold because he don't wish any part of it. Before the astonished Guy can open his mouth, Jimmy hurls twenty-five one thousand dollar bills on the table and flees the room!
Well, being an important customer of the St. Moe, Guy got Jimmy back his old job hopping bells, broke, but happy for the first time in a month. Then Guy insisted on me accepting a small royalty from his play for producing Jimmy Burns as the plot. That left everybody taken care of but the raging Hazel, who declared herself off me for life and was packed and ready to leave me alone in New York. Guy solved that problem and made Hazel crazily happy by engaging her to play herself in his comedy, "Money to Burns."