Two Recalls
There remains three duties to be performed before the curtain fallsupon the patched comedy. Two have been promised: the third is noless obligatory.It was set forth in the program of this tropic vaudeville thatit would be made known why Shorty 0'Day, of the Columbia DetectiveAgency, lost his position. Also that Smith should come again to tellus what mystery he followed that night on the shores of Anchuria whenhe strewed so many cigar stumps around the coconut palm during hislonely night vigil on the beach. These things were promised; buta bigger thing yet remains to be accomplished--the clearing up of aseeming wrong that has been done according to the array of chronicledfacts (truthfully set forth) that have been presented. And one voice,speaking, shall do these three things.Two men sat on a stringer of a North River pier in the City of NewYork. A steamer from the tropics had begun to unload bananas andoranges on the pier. Now and then a banana or two would fall froman overripe bunch, and one of the two men would shamble forward,seize the fruit and return to share it with his companion.One of the men was in the ultimate stage of deterioration. As far asrain and wind and sun could wreck the garments he wore, it had beendone. In his person the ravages of drink were as plainly visible.And yet, upon his high-bridged, rubicund nose was jauntily percheda pair of shining and flawless gold-rimmed glasses.The other man was not so far gone upon the descending Highway of theIncompetents. Truly, the flower of his manhood had gone to seed--seedthat, perhaps, no soil might sprout. But there were still cross-cutsalong where he travelled through which he might yet regain the pathwayof usefulness without disturbing the slumbering Miracles. This manwas short and compactly built. He had an oblique, dead eye, likethat of a sting-ray, and the moustache of a cocktail mixer. We knowthe eye and the moustache; we know that Smith of the luxurious yacht,the gorgeous raiment, the mysterious mission, the magic disappearance,has come again, though shorn of the accessories of his former state.At his third banana, the man with the nose glasses spat it from himwith a shudder."Deuce take all fruit!" he remarked, in a patrician tone of disgust."I lived for two years where these things grow. The memory of theirtaste lingers with you. The oranges are not so bad. Just see if youcan gather a couple of them, O'Day, when the next broken crate comesup."Did you live down with the monkeys?" asked the other, made tepidlygarrulous by the sunshine and the alleviating meal of juicy fruit."I was down there, once myself. But only for a few hours. That waswhen I was with the Columbia Detective Agency. The monkey peopledid me up. I'd have my job yet if it hadn't been for them. I'lltell you about it."One day the chief sent a note around to the office that read: 'SendO'Day here at once for a big piece of business.' I was the crackdetective of the agency at that time. They always handed me the bigjobs. The address the chief wrote from was down in the Wall Streetdistrict."When I got there I found him in a private office with a lot ofdirectors who were looking pretty fuzzy. They stated the case.The president of the Republic Insurance Company had skipped withabout a tenth of a million dollars in cash. The directors wantedhim back pretty bad, but they wanted the money worse. They saidthey needed it. They had traced the old gent's movements to wherehe boarded a tramp fruit steamer bound for South America that samemorning with his daughter and a big gripsack--all the familyhe had."One of the directors had his steam yacht coaled and with steam up,ready for a trip; and he turned her over to me, cart blongsh. Infour hours I was on board of her, and hot on the trail of the fruittub. I had a pretty good idea where old Wahrfield--that was his name,J. Churchill Wahrfield--would head for. At that time we had a treatywith about every foreign country except Belgium and that bananarepublic, Anchuria. There wasn't a photo of old Wahrfield to behad in New York--he had been foxy there--but I had his description.And besides, the lady with him would be a dead-give-away anywhere.She was one of the high-flyers in Society--not the kind that havetheir pictures in the Sunday papers--but the real sort that openchrysanthemum shows and christen battleships."Well, sir, we never got a sight of that fruit tub on the road.The ocean is a pretty big place; and I guess we took differentpaths across it. But we kept going toward this Anchuria, wherethe fruiter was bound for."We struck the monkey coast one afternoon about four. There was aratty-looking steamer off shore taking on bananas. The monkeys wereloading her up with big barges. It might be the one the old man hadtaken, and it might not. I went ashore to look around. The scenerywas pretty good. I never saw any finer on the New York stage.I struck an American on shore, a big, cool chap, standing aroundwith the monkeys. He showed me the consul's office. The consul wasa nice young fellow. He said the fruiter was the ~Karlsefin~, runninggenerally to New Orleans, but took her last cargo to New York. ThenI was sure my people were on board, although everybody told me thatno passengers had landed. I didn't think they would land until afterdark, for they might have been shy about it on account of seeing thatyacht of mine hanging around. So, all I had to do was to wait and nab'em when they came ashore. I couldn't arrest old Wahrfield withoutextradition papers, but my play was to get the cash. They generallygive up if you strike 'em when they're tired and rattled and shorton nerve."After dark I sat under a coconut tree on the beach for a while,and then I walked around and investigated that town some, and it wasenough to give you the lions. If a man could stay in New York and behonest, he'd better do it than to hit that monkey town with a million."Dinky little mud houses; grass over your shoe tops in the streets;ladies in low-neck-and-short-sleeves walking around smoking cigars;tree-frogs rattling like a hose cart going to a ten blow; bigmountains dropping gravel in the back yards, and the sea lickingthe paint off in front--no, sir--a man had better be in God's countryliving on free lunch than there."The main street ran along the beach, and I walked down it, andthen turned up a kind of lane where the houses were made of polesand straw. I wanted to see what the monkeys did when they weren'tclimbing coconut trees. The very first shack I looked in I saw mypeople. They must have come ashore while I was promenading. A manabout fifty, smooth face, heavy eyebrows, dressed in black broadcloth,looking like he was just about to say, "Can any little boy in theSunday school answer that?' He was freezing on to a grip that weighedlike a dozen gold bricks, and a swell girl--a regular peach, witha Fifth Avenue cut--was sitting on a wooden chair. An old black womanwas fixing some coffee and beans on a table. The light they had comefrom a lantern hung on a nail. I went and stood in the door, and theylooked at me, and I said:"Mr. Wahrfield, you are my prisoner. I hope, for the lady's sake,you will take the matter sensibly. You know why I want you.'"'Who are you?' says the old gent."'O'Day,' says I, 'of the Columbia Detective Agency. And now, sir,let me give you a piece of good advice. You go back and take yourmedicine like a man. Hand 'em back the boodle; and maybe they'll letyou off light. Go back easy, and I'll put in a word for you. I'llgive you five minutes to decide." I pulled out my watch and waited."Then the young lady chipped in. She was one of the genuinehigh-steppers. You could tell by the way her clothes fit andthe style she had that Fifth Avenue was made for her."'Come inside,' she says. 'Don't stand in the door and disturb thewhole street with that suit of clothes. Now, what is it you want?'"'Three minutes gone,' I said. 'I'll tell you again while the othertwo tick off.'"'You'll admit being the president of the Republic, won't you?'"'I am,' says he.'Well, then,' says I, 'it ought to be plain to you. Wanted, inNew York, J. Churchill Wahrfield, president of the Republic InsuranceCompany."'Also the funds belonging to said company, now in that grip, inthe unlawful possession of said J. Churchill Wahrfield.'"'Oh-h-h-h!' says the young lady, as if she was thinking, 'you wantto take us back to New York?'"'To take Mr. Wahrfield. There's no charge against you, miss.There'll be no objection, of course, to your returning with yourfather.'"Of a sudden the girl gave a tiny scream and grabbed the old boyaround the neck. 'Oh, father, father!' she says, kind of contralto,'can this be true? Have you taken money that is not yours? Speak,father!' It made you shiver to hear the tremolo stop she put on hervoice."The old boy looked pretty bughouse when she first grappled him,but she went on, whispering in his ear and patting his offshouldertill he stood still, but sweating a little."She got him to one side and they talked together a minute, and thenhe put on some gold eyeglasses and walked up and handed me the grip."'Mr. Detective,' he says, talking a little broken, 'I concludeto return with you. I have finished to discover that life on thisdesolate and displeased coast would be worse than to die, itself.I will go back and hurl myself upon the mercy of the Republic Company.Have you brought a sheep?'"'Sheep!' says I; 'I haven't a single--'"'Ship,' cut in the young lady. 'Don't get funny. Father is ofGerman birth, and doesn't speak perfect English. How did you comeup?'"The girl was all broke up. She had a handkerchief to her face,and kept saying every little bit, '0h, father, father!' She walkedup to me and laid her lily-white hand on the clothes that had painedher at first. I smelt a million violets. She was a lulu. I toldher I came in a private yacht."'Mr. O'Day,' she says. 'Oh, take us away from this horrid countryat once. Can you! Will you! Say you will.'"'I'll try,' I said, concealing the fact that I was dying to get themon salt water before they could change their mind."One thing they both kicked against was going through the town tothe boat landing. Said they dreaded publicity, and now that theywere going to return, they had a hope that the thing might yet bekept out of the papers. They swore they wouldn't go unless I gotthem out to the yacht without any one knowing it, so I agreedto humor them."The sailors who rowed me ashore were playing billiards in a bar-roomnear the water, waiting for orders, and I proposed to have them takethe boat down the beach half a mile or so, and take us up there.How to get them word was the question, for I couldn't leave the gripwith the prisoner, and I couldn't take it with me, not knowing butwhat the monkeys might stick me up."The young lady says the old colored woman would take them a note.I sat down and wrote it, and gave it to the dame with plain directionswhat to do, and she grins like a baboon and shakes her head."Then Mr. Wahrfield handed her a string of foreign dialect, and shenods her head and says, 'See, senor' maybe fifty times, and lightsout with the note."'0ld Augusta only understands German,' said Miss Wahrfield, smilingat me. 'We stopped in her house to ask where we could find lodging,and she insisted upon our having coffee. She tells us she was raisedin a German family in San Domingo.'"'Very likely,' I said. 'But you can search me for German words,except ~nix verstay~ and ~noch einst~, I would have called that"See, senor" French, though, on a gamble.'"Well, we three made a sneak around the edge of town so as not tobe seen. We got tangled in vines and ferns and the banana bushesand tropical scenery a good deal. The monkey suburbs was as wildas places in Central Park. We came out on the beach a good halfmile below. A brown chap was lying asleep under a coconut tree,with a ten-foot musket beside him. Mr. Wahrfield takes up the gunand pitches it into the sea. 'The coast is guarded,' he says.'Rebellion and plots ripen like fruit.' He pointed to the sleepingman, who never stirred. 'Thus,' he says, 'they perform trusts.Children!'"I saw our boat coming, and I struck a match and lit a piece ofnewspaper to show them where we were. In thirty minutes we wereon board the yacht."The first thing, Mr. Wahrfield and his daughter and I took the gripinto the owner's cabin, opened it up, and took an inventory. Therewas one hundred and five thousand dollars. United States treasurynotes in it, besides a lot of diamond jewelry and a couple of hundredHavana cigars. I gave the old man the cigars and a receipt for therest of the lot, as agent for the company, and locked the stuff upin my private quarters."I never had a pleasanter trip than that one. After we got to seathe young lady turned out to be the jolliest ever. The very firsttime we sat down to dinner, and the steward filled her glass withchampagne--that director's yacht was a regular floating Waldorf-Astoria--she winks at me and says, 'What's the use to borrow trouble,Mr. Fly Cop? Here's hoping you may live to eat the hen that scratcheson your grave.' There was a piano on board, and she sat down to itand sung better than you give up two cases to hear plenty times. Sheknew about nine operas clean through. She was sure enough ~bon ton~and swell. She wasn't one of the 'among others present' kind; shebelonged on the special mention list!"The old man, too, perked up amazingly on the way. He passed thecigars, and says to me once, quite chipper, out of a cloud of smoke,'Mr. O'Day, somehow I think the Republic Company will not give methe much trouble. Guard well the gripvalise of the money, Mr. O'Day,for that it must be returned to them that it belongs when we finishto arrive.'"When we landed in New York I 'phoned to the chief to meet us inthat director's office. We got in a cab and went there. I carriedthe grip, and we walked in, and I was pleased to see that the chiefhad got together that same old crowd of moneybugs with pink facesand white vests to see us march in. I set the grip on the table.'There's the money,' I said."'And your prisoner?' said the chief."I pointed to Mr. Wahrfield, and he stepped forward and says:"'The honor of a word with you, sir, to explain.'"He and the chief went into another room and stayed ten minutes.When they came back the chief looked as black as a ton of coal."'Did this gentleman,' he says to me, 'have this valise inhis possession when you first saw him?'"'He did,' said I."The chief took up the grip and handed it to the prisoner witha bow, and says to the director crowd: 'Do any of you recognizethis gentleman?'"They all shook their pink faces."'Allow me to present,' he goes on, 'Senor Miraflores, presidentof the republic of Anchuria. The senor has generously consentedto overlook this outrageous blunder, on condition that we undertaketo secure him against the annoyance of public comment. It is aconcession on his part to overlook an insult for which he mightclaim international redress. I think we can gratefully promise himsecrecy in the matter.'"They gave him a pink nod all round."'O'Day,' he says to me. 'As a private detective you're wasted.In a war, where kidnapping governments is in the rules, you'd beinvaluable. Come down to the office at eleven.'"I knew what that meant."'So that's the president of the monkeys,' says I. 'Well,why couldn't he have said so?'"Wouldn't it jar you?"
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