Thousand Berries a Week

by C. S. Montanye

 

Thousand Berries a Week~

^By C. S. Montanye~

(COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE)

CHAPTER I.

A PET AMBITION.

BASEBALL is a great national game. So is love. Baseball is played by both sexes. So is love. What goes to-day for both, to-morrow is “out.” Both are games hard to dope. In either you never know what’s going to happen from one minute to the next.

Rosie was the wife’s younger sister. She came all the way to Trenton from Centropolis, Ohio. She was about seventeen or so, and what is known to the trade as a “fast worker.” Rosie’s ambition in life was to dress like a vamp and keep a half a dozen chaps on the string at the same time. She liked ice-cream sodas, nut sundaes, and baseball. She usually got up in the morning in time for lunch. This wasn’t so bad considering she had been strolling around with some handsome steam fitter until the moon went out.

Grace, the wife, thought the world and all of Rosie. Grace’s pet ambition was to marry Rosie to some wealthy young man. Lots of people have peculiar ambitions.

Personally, I liked Rosie with all her faults. She called me Uncle Ed and had a habit of dropping in to see me at my sporting-goods store—whenever she needed money. She usually stopped in once a day. But as I say, I liked her.

And I felt sorry for her when the Trenton Tigers, Joe Bain’s hard-hitting, baseball nine, returned from their mid-August tour of the Jersey wilds and brought along Jerry Duke, alias the, “Million Dollar Money Hound.”

Jerry was the multiplication kid of the western hemisphere.

CHAPTER II.

AN UNUSUAL SIGHT.

IT was a little past one o’clock on a hot Saturday, and business at my sporting-goods pavilion was booming. Two children came in and bought a ten-cent baseball. Then they asked for a pass for the afternoon’s game between the Tigers and the Ridgewood Raiders. They had hardly gone when Joe Bain, the manager of the local team, drove up in his demon flivver, jumped out, and came in.

“Have you seen anything of Rosie, Ed?” Bain asked.

“Now that you mention it,” I answered; “I do remember seeing her at dinner last night.”

Bain, who liked my young sister-in-law about the same as a pawnbroker likes interest, fanned himself with a near-Panama hat and looked around the store as if he thought I had hidden Rosie away on a shelf. “I want to take her down to the game this afternoon,” he explained. “It’s going to be a sizzler. The Ridgewood bunch are playing great ball. And I guess you know the pace the Tigers have been going along at for the past month.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about it," I said. “They’re copping two games out of every seven.”

Bain overlooked my remark. He kept fanning himself with his hat and began to look under the counters as if my wife’s sister was concealing herself there. “I want Rosie to see Jerry in action,” he continued. “I want to treat her to an unusual sight.”

“Then let her see you spend a dollar all at once,” I said. “Who may Jerry be?”

Bain looked hard at me. “Did you ever hear anything about the Jamestown flood or the Spanish-American War, Ed? ‘Who may Jerry be?’ You’re supposed to be a baseball fan and yet you ask a question like that. I’m ashamed of you.”

“You needn’t be. Grace is a fan, but up until last month she thought Babe Ruth was a chorus girl. I do recall a Jerry who used to pal around with Tom in the old days before prohibition. What is he doing now for a living?”

Bain snickered. “Jerry is a pitcher. He’s a discovery of mine. I picked him up,two weeks ago when we were in Sawtel. Out there they call him the Million Dollar Money Hound. He has an income of a thousand berries a week. Not so bad, eh?”

“Not at all. I suppose he blows the thousand on candy and cigars and so has to play ball for a living,” I remarked.

“Jerry Duke,” Bain said imperturbably, “plays ball to keep his mind occupied, and because he’s one of these baseball fiends who is unhappy unless he’s in action. He can’t bear idleness, money or no money. He was born with a twirler’s glove on his left hand and all he thinks about is the game. He’s a pitching marvel.

“I gave him the toughest kind of a try-out,” Bain continued, “and he came through smiling, with the varnish uncracked. I’ve got him now under a three-year contract. The minute a big-league scout sees him I’m a made man. All I have to do then is to get measured up for a diamond-studded limousine, a winter palace at Palm Beach, and a hundred and seventy-nine suits of clothes. Awful, eh?”

“Frightful. Do I understand that you’re going to uncork this pitching member of the industrious rich this afternoon, Joe?”

Bain nodded. “I’m going to send him in against the Raiders and let him work the whole nine stanzas. Duke is one of those iron wonders that thrive on plenty of hard work. If you want to treat your eyes to a good time be at the park at three.”

Bain began telling me a lot more about the sensation of Sawtel, but fortunately he was interrupted by the appearance of Rosie and my wife.

Rosie was advertising white silk, rouge, and peroxide. She resembled a Follies girl who had missed the train after the troupe had played Trenton. She carried a black-and-white parasol of the same design as a prisoner’s suit. Her lips were so red that they seemed on fire. She had a glow in her eyes that drove men to the river. She was awful easy to look at, and terribly hard to forget.

“Ed,” the wife said, “we just dropped in to find out if you’re going to close the store at two o’clock.”

“If you know of any one who wants to buy anything, I’ll keep open all afternoon,” I replied.

“Don’t be funny,” Grace snapped. “We’re going out to the game later. We want to know if you’re coming along, too. We’d love to have you.”

“Sure, to buy the tickets,” I said.

This was Bain’s cue to step forward. “Come with me,” he chirped, “and sit in a box.”

“Why, that’s sweet of you, Joe,” Rosie said. “We accept gladly.”

“And don’t fail to see the Million Dollar Money Hound,” I put in.

The wife sniffed. “No dog is worth a sum like that!” she said. “What is it, a Pekingese?”

By the time I had finished laughing, Joe Bain was almost as red as Rosie’s lips. He went into particulars and Grace apologized for her faux pas.

“Jerry is a nice name. Is he cute?” Rosie asked.

Bain shrugged. “He’s got good pitching sense and a great arm,” he answered. “That’s all that is necessary.”

After some more chatter all three left. Ten minutes later I began to close up the store. Just as I was locking the front door the two kids who had bought the baseball came up and asked me to refund their ten cents. Owing to the excessive heat they had decided to invest in ice-cream cones.

CHAPTER III.

“LIKE FRENCH PASTRY.”

THE hottest place in Trenton was down at the ball park, and I discovered this fact about five minutes after I was in the box with my wife and her sister. A tissue-paper suit felt like a fur coat. Rosie watched the Tigers warm up and I watched the rouge on her cheeks melt. Grace used a fan.

“Aren’t you overheated, deary?” she asked Rosie.

My sister-in-law shook her head. “Not particularly so. Why?”

“Your complexion is leaving you,” I said.

Rosie gave me a glance that brought the thermometer down about twenty degrees. “Do you think my color is artificial?” she asked frostily.

“No, I don’t think it,” I answered.

Grace read between the lines and rushed to the defense of her sister. Blows were prevented by the appearance of Joe Bain. He had the richest young man in Sawtel in tow and proceeded at once to introduce us all to him.

“Jerry,” Bain said, “these are the finest people in town. Ed, here, owns that big sporting-goods store you saw when you came up from the station last night.”

“Twenty per cent off to professionals,” I said, handing Duke a card and a catalogue.

Sawtel’s Million Dollar Money Hound didn’t look any different from other young men of his age. He appeared to have a couple of eyes, a nose; mouth, arms, legs, and hair on his head. He was tall and rather thin. He seemed to be a little nervous. This nervousness increased whenever he looked at Rosie, which was all the time. Just before he left our box to go to the Tiger dugout he stepped on his own foot and apologized to Bain.

“Well, what do you think of the Duke?” I asked my wife and sister-in-law when we were alone again.

“Not a whole lot,” Rosie said indifferently.

“A very ordinary person,” Grace murmured.

“Bain tells me that Duke has an income of one thousand dollars a week,” I remarked.

“Of course,” Rosie said quickly, “you can’t expect me to form an opinion of him when I don’t know him. He isn’t as handsome as Wallace Fairbanks; still he’s very attractive. Did you happen to notice how tanned he was?”

“Yes, I did,” Grace said. “I guess I was a little hasty in saying what I did. Now that I think it over I can see he is a very charming young man and very good looking. Ed, I want you to speak to Joe Bain and see if you can’t induce Mr. Duke to have dinner with us to-night. Understand, I’m not overanxious to have him meet Rosie, but since he is a stranger in town——”

“Say not another word,” I interrupted. “I get the point. You feel sorry for him and you love to cook for company and wash extra dishes. You’ve always been crazy about entertaining people on hot summer nights. I’ll speak to Bain a little later. Perhaps the rest of the team would like to come, too.”

“Mr. Duke will be enough,” the wife answered frigidly.

After a while the game began. Harry Hurley, Trenton’s best catcher, handled Duke’s delivery. The Sawtel Dollar King was everything Bain had claimed he was with a little more added to it. The Ridgewood Raiders boasted an aggregation of the heaviest hitters in the league. And Duke was working with a strange team on a strange lot. That didn’t mean anything to him, however. He pitched perfect ball and nothing in the least perturbed him.

He had a peculiar, snappy way of shooting the pill over the platter. He wound up similar to a crab being pulled out of a net. He had wonderful control, speed, and a lot of stuff on the ball. For four straight innings he held the Raiders to a few stray hits and didn’t let a man get beyond first. He handed them an assortment of fast-breaking curves and some smoky, straight ones that had the Ridgewood crowd calling for the cops.

In the sixth inning Duke got just a little wild. The first two Raiders walked. The visiting fans thought they had his nanny and began to ride him. Their kidding seemed to steady Duke. He settled down and blanked the next three up with hardly an effort, leaving the two he had passed anchored on the first and second sacks.

At the end of the eighth he clouted out a clean homer that cleared, the bases for a quartet of runs. The game concluded with him on the mound, dealing the same variety of air-tight ball that made the local fans shout themselves hoarse.

“A perfectly marvelous pitcher!” Rosie cried when the game was over. “Wonderful!”

“Go and speak to Joe Bain,” the wife ordered.

I did so and the result was that when seven o’clock came and we were sitting down to dinner in the dining room of the bungalow, Jerry Duke was across the table from Rosie.

He might have been a gusher on the diamond, but at a dining-room table he was little better than an oil can. From the minute that Duke began at the soup, his conversation concerned nothing but the town of Sawtel, New Jersey. He rattled along like a worn-out flivver. He gave us the population of the burg at the last census. He told us what the assets and liabilities were of the Sawtel National Bank, how much it had cost to sewer the town, and how many shingles there were on the roof of the Methodist Church. By the time dessert was served I was trying to decide whether to hurl one plate at him or two.

I figured on a pleasant evening with more information concerning Sawtel. When dinner was over we went out on the porch. The minute we hit it Rosie made me forget and forgive a lot of her past errors.

“Are you fond of walking, Mr. Duke?” she asked.

The pitcher shot a hungry look at our porch swing. “Not when I’m tired,” he said. “It’s sort of a warm evening. Suppose we all sit down together. I know that you’re interested in hearing how Sawtel has grown in the last two years.”

“Naturally,” the wife murmured in her best company voice.

“We’re crazy to hear all about it,” I said, longing for a rock.

“Some other night,” Rosie cut in. “I haven’t had a nice walk in the last three days and how am I going to keep my figure if I don’t exercise? Please, Mr. Duke, you’re surely not too tired ”

The Million Dollar Money Hound cast another lingering look at the porch swing, heaved a sigh, and followed Rosie down the porch steps.

A minute later we heard the front gate shut.

“Heaven,” I said, “will forgive Rosie’s lie about not having had a walk in three, days, I’m sure.”

Grace folded her hands in her lap. “A thousand dollars a week is an awful lot of money,” she said.

“There’s a few things that money doesn’t cover,” I snarled. “Sawtel, New Jersey, is one of them!”

Grace looked across the lawn. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they liked each other, Ed? There’s no good reason why they shouldn’t, either. You probably didn’t notice, but Rosie is looking her best to-night. She’s a beautiful girl. I suppose if they marry she’ll have to live in Sawtel.”

“This is the first time I ever felt really sorry for her,” I said.

I don’t know what time it was when Duke brought my sister-in-law back to the bungalow. At one o’clock Grace left me to wait up. It seemed like a month later when the front gate shut and I heard Rosie humming.

“What do you think of him?” I asked sleepily, after I had locked the windows on the front door, and taken the sidewalk in.

“He’s like French pastry,” she answered.

“How do you mean?” I asked. “Indigestible?”

“No; delicious!” she said with no large amount of enthusiasm.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DARK SECRET.

FOR a week nothing much happened. The Tigers played four games. Two were in Trenton, one was at Mill River, and the other at Asbury Park. Duke pitched all four of them. In consequence the Tigers made a clean sweep. With Bain working the Sawtel wonder every day the Tigers had climbed up to second place in the league’s standing. They were three games behind the Newark White Sox.

Jerry Duke was the idol of the town. To prove how much Trenton thought of him they let him rave about Sawtel to his heart’s content. That seemed to me to be not only the proof of popularity but the greatest test courage could be put to.

About two weeks after the game with the Ridgewood Raiders I got back to the bungalow one evening and found the wife slightly agitated.

“Ed,” she cried, “guess what’s happened?”

“Rosie’s given up rouge,” I ventured. “Or Duke has quit talking about Sawtel.”

“They’re engaged! They’re engaged to be married!” Grace said excitedly. “But keep this tight under you hat. Don’t go running around town telling every one you know. As yet it’s a secret; only a few people know it. Well, can’t you say something?”

“Sure,” I replied; “but if I did the board of censors would slap a fine on me.”

“A thousand dollars a week! Think of it!” the wife said.

“Money don’t cover everything,” I said soberly. “Poor Rosie—shipped to Sawtel and linked to a phonograph with only one record in its cabinet.”

I didn’t say anything to my young sister-in-law that gave her the idea that I knew what had happened. And she kept her engagement to Duke very quiet. It was still a dark secret. Three days later only ninety people in the town knew about it. But they weren’t the talking kind.

Rosie bore up nobly under the strain. More than once I saw a wild look in her eyes when anybody mentioned a word that began with s-a-w and ended in t-e-l. As Grace said, one thousand berries a week was so much and a girl would endure a lot to marry a man who received that amount each and every week.

Grace and I were on the porch a few nights after the engagement. We had been there about a half hour when Joe Bain showed up.

“I suppose,” he said, “Rosie is out with Jerry?”

“You’re a good supposer. Do you care?” I asked curiously.

“Well,” Bain said, “he’s an awfully good pitcher—the best Trenton ever had.”

“A really charming young man,” Grace murmured.

“Did he ever tell you about the thriving town of Sawtel?” I asked Bain.

The manager of the Tigers sat up as quickly as if I had shot him. “Tell me about it? That’s the only thing he knows! I have got so that if anybody mentions that burg in my presence homicidal tendencies seize me. If he wasn’t such a star in the box he’d have a pair of wings on his back and be playing a flute in an angel orchestra. What chance is there of seeing Rosie after Jerry brings her back here?”

“Hardly any,” I told him.

“They keep very late hours,” Grace said.

“Early hours,” I corrected.

Bain looked at his watch. “Well, I’m only a manager and not a pitcher and so I’ve got to get a good night’s sleep. When you see Rosie give her my regards. You don’t suppose there’s anything serious between Duke and her, do you?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” the wife said.

“Where do you get such strange ideas?” I inquired.

Bain looked at the moon that had defied prohibition by getting full. “He’s just the kind of a chap to appeal to a young girl. I guess he spends money like water. Don’t you think so, Ed?”

“I can’t say,” I answered. “I never spent any water.”

Bain wandered toward the steps. “Well, good night. I suppose you’ll be out to-morrow afternoon to watch the Tigers knock the White Sox kicking?”

“We’ll be there,” Grace promised.

“If,” I said, amending her statement, “you pass us into a box free of charge.”

Bain said he would and the next afternoon did. As the game promised to be one of the best of the season Trenton had turned out in gala array. The White Sox had brought their own delegation of rooters from Newark. The stands and bleachers had the fans sitting on each other’s shoulders. We piped Rosie, wearing a new straw hat, at the right of the grand stand back of the safety net.

“To look at her,” Grace cooed, when we caught her attention and waved, “I ask you, would any one admit that she came from Ohio?”

“No one from Centropolis, anyway,” I said.

The wife handed me a look that had icicles hanging on it. “You’re as humorous as a starving man with ten small children!” she snapped.

CHAPTER V.

LULL IN THE STORM.

THE game began a few minutes later.

I guess it was the first time the Newark White Sox had ever been treated so unkindly. Duke won the distinction of Being the first pitcher to hold the Sox entirely scoreless. He held them to seven singles and the ninth was the only round where they got as many as two hits. Not a Sox runner reached third during the game.

With the pride of Sawtel working like well-oiled machinery, the Tigers ended the second frame with Harry Hurley, the catcher, tripling into the outfield and scoring on a sacrifice fly. In the third stanza the Tigers added another tally to their credit after two were out. With the Sox at bat in the fourth inning, the Newarks tried hard to get to Duke but failed dismally. He worked with a broad smile and teased them over. In the last half of this session the Tigers were helped along by Newark’s errors. Hurley singled, stole second and went to third when the Newark catcher chucked past the sack. The Trenton pitcher walked and the pair worked a double steal successfully, Hurley scoring.

There was a lull in the storm until the seventh inning. Duke remained as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar. In the seventh the Tigers staged a batting fest. The Trenton right fielder fouled out. The Trenton third baseman singled, but died stealing. Hurley rapped out a one-bagger, and while Duke was at bat the Newark pitcher caught the Tiger catcher off first. The White Sox baseman threw wild to second and Hurley reached the bag safely. He scored a minute later on a clean two-bagger of Duke’s.

Then the Trenton shortstop hit to the Sox pitcher, who lost his head and threw past first. The shortstop anchored on first and Duke pulled up at third. With the delighted howls of Trenton rising on the summer air the Tigers’ second baseman came through with a single that sent the exile from Sawtel home. The busy inning was brought to a close with a pop fly the Sox short leaped for and smothered.

The last two frames were uneventful. The final count was ten-nothing, with Trenton yammering.

“Thus ends the lesson,” I said to the wife. “Let’s go home and see what’s in the ice box for dinner.”

We found Rosie waiting for us outside of the gate. For a wonder Duke wasn’t with her.

“Joe Bain is giving the team a celebration dinner up at the Holly House,” she explained, “and so Jerry won’t be with us to-night.”

“That’s sad,” I murmured. “We won’t be able to hear a thing about Sawtel. I call it tough.”

“You’re horrid, Ed,” the wife said.

I noticed, however, that Rosie didn’t rush to the defense of her Jerry.

When we reached the bungalow we perceived a figure sitting on the top step of the porch.

“It’s that traveling salesman friend of yours from Philadelphia,” Grace whispered. “I know because I can see his purple socks from here!”

“His name is Charlie Brennan, isn’t it?” my wife's' sister said.

“You’ve got a memory like a bill collector,” I told her.

When we opened the front gate Brennan got up and came down to meet us. He sold baseball goods for a wholesale Philadelphia house and always looked in on us when he came to Trenton. He was a short, stout egg, not as young as he had been once, or as old as he would be.

“Sorry I couldn’t squeeze in to see the game,” Brennan said, after he had passed his hand around. “There wasn’t a seat left and every knot hole around the park was occupied. I hear the Tigers cleaned up.”

“Your hearing is perfect,” I said. “You’ve got a good pair of ears.”

“Will you stop and have some supper with us, Mr. Brennan? We’d love to have you,” the wife lied heroically.

I saw Brennan steal a glance at Rosie. “Thanks. I’ll be glad to if I’m not putting you out any.”

The wife threw a nice meal together. After I chased the flies out of the dining room we all sat down together. Brennan amused us with stories of his experiences on the road.

“Did you ever happen to take a trip out to Sawtel?” he asked us, after a time.

I looked at Grace. Grace looked at Rosie. Rosie looked at the ceiling as if she had never seen it before. I managed to say that we had never been to the town in question. Believe me, it was some effort getting the words out, and using the hated name.

“I’ll tell the world that Sawtel is one hustling little burg,” Brennan resumed. “It’s a tiny place tucked away in the very corner of the State. But, take it from me, what they don’t know about push and enterprise is minus nothing. They have a chamber of commerce that’s really wonderful. Its members believe there’s nothing in the world like advertising. And that reminds me of Jerry Duke, who is pitching now for the Tigers. I suppose you know Duke?”

“We’ve heard of him,” I admitted.

Brennan chuckled. “I knew Jerry when he was a kid. He’s a hustler if there ever was one. And a great ball player. He deserves all his success.”

“Mr. Duke,” Rosie said, “is a very wealthy young man. Back in Saw—his home town, I should say—he’s one of its wealthiest citizens.”

Brennan laid down his knife and fork. “Is that what he told you? You mustn’t believe everything that Jerry says. He likes to kid a lot. Out in Sawtel they call him the Million Dollar Money Hound because he’s always thinking up stunts to make money and multiplying what he does make by a hundred. His latest one is good. The ferocious chamber of commerce which I mentioned gives Duke an income of ten dollars a week for boosting and advertising Sawtel whenever he’s away from it. Jerry’s a great lad!”

Grace helped herself to a glass of water. She appeared a trifle wilted. Perhaps it was the heat, or the strain of the afternoon’s game. Rosie looked across at Brennan.

“Are you sure about that?” she asked in a funny voice.

“You bet I am,” he answered. “One of the members of the chamber of commerce told me himself.”

My young sister-in-law laid down her napkin and stood up.

“Where are you going, deary?” Grace queried in a limp voice.

Rosie looked back over her shoulder. “To use the telephone. I want to call up the Holly House and break an engagement I made with one of the members of the team. I’ll be back in a minute.”

When dinner was over I looked at my watch. “If you’ll pardon me for a few minutes,” I remarked to Brennan, “I’ll step down to Sycamore Street and buy the cigars.”

“I’ve got some good ones here,” he said.

“I’ll buy better ones,” I answered. “When we celebrate we want the best!”

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE PORCH.

THE clerk at the cigar store delayed me twenty minutes talking about the Tiger-Sox game. He played a couple of verbal innings for my benefit. When I got back to the bungalow the wife was on the porch.

No one else was around.

“Where’s Brennan?” I asked.

Grace looked up. “He left about five minutes ago. I guess he thought you weren’t coming back.”

I helped myself to the chair beside her. “Where’s Rosie?” I inquired. “Upstairs in her room crying her eyes out on account of her busted engagement?”

The wife shook her head. “No,” she replied. “She and Mr. Brennan went down to the open-air movies together. I heard her telling him that he had nice eyes. Isn’t it too bad that he wears purple socks, Ed?”