The Wolf's Long Howl, Stanley Waterloo [best pdf ebook reader TXT] 📗

he asked her, for she was fond of her father, and he knew that his end must be attained by vast diplomacy. Just how, he had not decided upon. But he felt his way vaguely.

"One thing is certain," he said to himself, "I must keep my temper and cultivate the old man."

He did cultivate Mr. Grampus, and did it so well that after a season the two would even lunch together. It was an anomalous happening, this lunching together, of a poor young man with a rich old one, who had refused a daughter's hand; but such things occur in the grotesque, huge Western money-mart. In Chicago there is a great gulf fixed between business and family relations. Grampus began to consider Simpson an excellent fellow--that is, as one to meet at luncheon, not as a son-in-law. A son-in-law should have money.

There was a skeleton in the Grampus closet, but it was not scandalous, and was never mentioned. Still, to old Mr. Grampus, the guilty one, the skeleton was real and terrible. He, the gruff, overbearing, successful man of business, the one beneath whose gaze clerks shuddered and stenographers turned pale, was afraid to go home at least four nights of the seven nights in the week. He was afraid to meet his wife.

A great club man was Mr. Grampus. He delighted in each evening spent with his old cronies, in the whist-playing, the reminiscences, the storytelling, the arguments, and the moderate smoking and drinking. Unfortunately, he could not endure well the taking into his system of anything alcoholic. He always became perfectly sober within three hours, but a punch or two would give a certain flaccidity to his legs, and when he reached his home the broad steps leading up to the vestibule seemed Alpine-like and perilous. He would almost say to himself, "Beware the pine-tree's withered branch, beware the awful avalanche." But after all it was not the danger of the ascent which really troubled him; it was what would assuredly happen after he had reached the summit. The disaster always came upon the plateau.

The man could fumble in his pockets with much discretion, and could always find his latch-key, for its shape was odd, but with that latch-key he could not find the keyhole in the door. There came a clamor always at the end. When finally he entered, Mrs. Grampus was as alive and alert as any tarantula of an Arizona plain aroused by a noise upon the trap-door of its retreat. And Mrs. Grampus was a wonderful woman. Talk about death's-head! Jason B. Grampus would have welcomed one in place of that pallid creature in a night-dress, who met him when he came in weavingly.

Mrs. Grampus, who was known to her husband's inner consciousness as Sophia, was a slender, blue-eyed woman, soft of voice and by day gentle of manner. Her health was not perfect. She knew this, and so did every one she met. While not an invalid, she in her imagination trembled on the edge of invalidism, and upon this subject she was almost loquacious. She was domestic in her tastes, and ambitious and devoted to her home and family.

She was a model wife and mother, and this, too, she knew; so did her family and friends, for this subject was second in her topics of conversation only to the state of her health; and, furthermore, she was peculiar and almost original in the perfection to which she had brought the fine art of nagging.

Let it not be imagined that she scolded, or said small, mean things, or used any of the processes of the ordinary nagger. Her methods were refined, studied, calculated, and correct. Her style of day-nagging was, to be explicit, to maintain perfect silence as to the grievance under which she suffered--indeed, this was often a profound secret from the first to the last; to adopt the look and bearing of a Christian martyr on the way to the stake, and to keep this demonstration up for days without a gleam of interruption. She shed no tears, made no reproaches; she just looked her agony, sitting, walking, doing anything. This was by day. But at night! How is it that women so have the gift of speech at night? Mrs. Grampus had it in a marvelous degree, and it was the speech which is a thing to dread, penetrating and long-continued. The nerves of Jason B. Grampus were gradually giving way. Some of the finest old gentlemen in every large city in the country know that one's physical condition differs with moods and seasons, and that what may be endured at one time cannot be at another. This lesson was brought forcibly to Jason B. Grampus one morning. He had passed his usual evening at the club, had gone home at the usual hour, and had encountered even more difficulty than usual in discovering the keyhole. He made more than the ordinary degree of noise, and had encountered even more than the usual hour or two of purgatory, subsequently. He came down town in the morning heavy-eyed, with a headache, and with spirits undeniably depressed. He sought what relief he could. He first visited the barber, and that deft personage, accustomed, as a result of years of carefully performed duty to the ways and desires of his customer, shaved him with unusual delicacy, keeping cool cloths upon his head during the whole ceremony, and terminating the exercise with a shampoo of the most refreshing character. An extra twenty-five cents was the reward of his devotion.

Mr. Grampus went to his business somewhat improved in physical condition, and by noon was almost himself again. Still, he had a yearning for human sympathy; he could not help it. He saw young Simpson at a table, the only acquaintance who happened to be in the dining-room when he entered, and, led by a sudden impulse, walked over, sat down opposite the young man whose aspirations he had discouraged, and entered into affable conversation with him. From affability the conversation drifted into absolute confidence. Jason B. Grampus could no more have helped being confidential that day to some one than he could help breathing. He told Simpson of his trouble of the night before, and concluded his account with the earnest and almost pitiful exclamation:

"I'd give fifty thousand dollars for a keyhole one could not miss." Simpson did not reply for a moment. He thought, thought--thought deeply--and then came to him the inspiration of his life. He looked at Grampus half quizzically, but in a manner not to offend, and as if it were merely a jest over a matter already settled, said:

"Would you give your daughter?"

Grampus looked at him puzzled, and then, responding to the joke which seemed but one of hopelessness, he said:

"Well--if I wouldn't!"

He was startled the next second by the uprising of Simpson, who grasped him heartily by the hand, and said:

"I've got the thing! It's a new invention! There is nothing like it in the world! It is going to revolutionize the social relations and make home happy. Write me a note, giving me permission to operate upon your front door!"

The old man sat dazed. It slowly dawned upon his mind that Simpson had caught him in a trap; but the word of Jason B. Grampus had never yet been violated. He thought rapidly himself now. Of course, the young lunatic could not do what he promised! That was impossible. No man could invent a keyhole which a man could not miss at night. There might be some annoyance to it all, but the young fellow could do as he pleased, only to be rebuffed again, this time with no allowance of a subsequent familiarity. And so they parted, the old man wearing a look somewhat perplexed, and the younger one, despite his assumed jaunty air, exhibiting a little of the same quality of expression.

As a matter of fact, Simpson had not the slightest idea of how such a keyhole and latch-key as he had promised could be made, save that on one occasion he had been the author of a practical little invention utilized in a box-factory, and felt that he had a touch of the inventive genius in his nature. But there was his friend Hastings. It was the thought of Hastings which gave him the inspiration when he spoke to Grampus. Hastings was one of the cleverest inventors and one of the most prominent among the younger electricians of the city. They were devoted friends, and they would invent the greatest latch-key in the world, or burn half the midnight oil upon the market. This he was resolved upon. He sought Hastings.

To Hastings Simpson unfolded his tale carefully, leaf by leaf, and interested amazingly that eminent young electrician. Hastings, though now married, the possessor of a baby with the reddest face in all Chicago, and perfectly happy, had himself undergone somewhat of an experience in obtaining the mother of that baby, and so sympathized with Simpson deeply.

"We'll invent that keyhole or latch-key, or break something," was all he said. There were thenceforth meetings every evening between the two--meetings which were sometimes far extended into the night; and the outcome of it all was that one morning, just as the sunbeams came thrusting the white fog over blue Lake Michigan, Simpson sought his own room somewhat weary-eyed, but with a countenance which was simply beatific in expression. The invention had been perfected! What that invention was may as well be described here and now. The first object to be sought was, naturally, a keyhole which could not easily be missed. Of course, this is a non-scientific description of it, but it may convey a fair idea to the average reader. First, instead of the ordinary keyhole there was something exactly resembling the customary mouthpiece through which we whistle upstairs from the ground floor of a flat seeking to attract the people who rarely answer. The only difference between it and the ordinary mouthpiece was that it was set in so that it was even with the woodwork of the door, and did not project at all. This mouthpiece tapered all around inside, and terminated in a keyhole which was rubber-lined. On the other side of this keyhole was a hard surface, padded with rubber, but having just opposite the mouth of the keyhole a small orifice extending through to a metal surface. That metal surface was a section of one of the most powerful horseshoe magnets ever invented in the United States, and was to be imbedded in the woodwork of the door.

It was a huge thing, reaching nearly across the door, and warranted to pull toward it anything magnetic of reasonable dimensions. The keyhole was all the design of Simpson, the electric part of the affair all the invention of Hastings. Combined, they made something beautiful and wonderful.

A key was made and magnetized so thoroughly that never before was a piece of iron so yearningly full of the electric fluid. The whole thing was adjusted against the wall of the room, and then the men brought in the magnetized key to ascertain if their invention would work in practice. Simpson was carrying the key. No sooner had he entered the door than something began to pull him toward the magnet. He walked sideways, like a crab, resistingly, and could not help himself; and then, just as he had nearly reached the bell-shaped keyhole, he was whirled around, as is the end child in a school playground when they are playing "crack-the-whip," fairly in front of the keyhole, and literally hurled toward it, while the key shot fiercely into the lock. But there was not a sound; the rubber cushion had obviated that.

Well, to