Short Fiction, O. Henry [best books to read for teens TXT] 📗

Her evenings come nearer approaching the dignity of a salon than any occasion, except, perhaps, a Tony Faust and Marguerite reception at the Iron Front.

Miss St. Vitus, whose advent into society’s maze was heralded by such an auspicious display of hospitality, is a slender brunette, with large, lustrous eyes, a winning smile, and a charming ingénue manner. She wears a china silk, cut princesse, with diamond ornaments, and a couple of towels inserted in the back to conceal prominence of shoulder blades. She is chatting easily and naturally on a plush covered tête-à-tête with Harold St. Clair, the agent for a Minneapolis pants company. Her friend and schoolmate, Elsie Hicks, who married three drummers in one day, a week or two before, and won a wager of two dozen bottles of Budweiser from the handsome and talented young hack-driver, Bum Smithers, is promenading in and out the low French windows with Ethelbert Windup, the popular young candidate for hide inspector, whose name is familiar to everyone who reads police court reports.

Somewhere, concealed by shrubbery, a band is playing, and during the pauses in conversation, onions can be smelt frying in the kitchen.

Happy laughter rings out from ruby lips, handsome faces grow tender as they bend over white necks and drooping beads; timid eyes convey things that lips dare not speak, and beneath silken bodice and broadcloth, hearts beat time to the sweet notes of “Love’s Young Dream.”

“And where have you been for some time past, you recreant cavalier?” says Miss St. Vitus to Harold St. Clair. “Have you been worshipping at another shrine? Are you recreant to your whilom friends? Speak, Sir Knight, and defend yourself.”

“Oh, come off,” says Harold, in his deep, musical baritone; “I’ve been having a devil of a time fitting pants on a lot of bowlegged jays from the cotton-patch. Got knobs on their legs, some of ’em big as gourds, and all expect a fit. Did you every try to measure a bowlegged⁠—I mean⁠—can’t you imagine what a jam-swizzled time I have getting pants to fit ’em? Business dull too, nobody wants ’em over three dollars.”

“You witty boy,” says Miss St. Vitus. “Just as full of bon mots and clever sayings as ever. What do you take now?”

“Oh, beer.”

“Give me your arm and let’s go into the drawing-room and draw a cork. I’m chewing a little cotton myself.”

Arm in arm, the handsome couple pass across the room, the cynosure of all eyes. Luderic Hetherington, the rising and gifted night-watchman at the Lone Star slaughter house, and Mabel Grubb, the daughter of the millionaire owner of the Humped-backed Camel saloon, are standing under the oleanders as they go by.

“She is very beautiful,” says Luderic.

“Rats,” says Mabel.

A keen observer would have noted all this time the figure of a solitary man who seemed to avoid the company but by adroit changing of his position, and perfectly cool and self-possessed manner, avoided drawing any especial attention to himself.

The lion of the evening is Herr Professor Ludwig von Bum, the pianist.

He had been found drinking beer in a saloon on East Pecan Street by Colonel St. Vitus about a week before, and according to the Austin custom in such cases, was invited home by the colonel, and the next day accepted into society, with large music classes at his service.

Professor von Bum is playing the lovely symphony in G minor from Beethoven’s “Songs Without Music.” The grand chords fill the room with exquisite harmony. He plays the extremely difficult passages in the obligato home run in a masterly manner, and when he finishes with that grand te deum with arpeggios on the side, there is that complete hush in the room that is dearer to the artist’s heart than the loudest applause.

The professor looks around.

The room is empty.

Empty with the exception of Tictocq, the great French detective, who springs from behind a mass of tropical plants to his side.

The professor rises in alarm.

“Hush,” says Tictocq: “Make no noise at all. You have already made enough.”

Footsteps are heard outside.

“Be quick,” says Tictocq: “give me those socks. There is not a moment to spare.”

“Vas sagst du?”

“Ah, he confesses,” says Tictocq. “No socks will do but those you carried off from the Populist Candidate’s room.”

The company is returning, no longer hearing the music.

Tictooq hesitates not. He seizes the professor, throws him upon the floor, tears off his shoes and socks, and escapes with the latter through the open window into the garden.

III

Tictocq’s room in the Avenue Hotel.

A knock is heard at the door.

Tictocq opens it and looks at his watch.

“Ah,” he says, “it is just six. Entrez, Messieurs.”

The messieurs entrez. There are seven of them; the Populist Candidate who is there by invitation, not knowing for what purpose; the chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, platform No. 2, the hotel proprietor, and three or four Democrats and Populists, as near as could be found out.

“I don’t know,” begins the Populist Candidate, “what in the h⁠—”

“Excuse me,” says Tictocq, firmly. “You will oblige me by keeping silent until I make my report. I have been employed in this case, and I have unravelled it. For the honor of France I request that I be heard with attention.”

“Certainly,” says the chairman; “we will be pleased to listen.”

Tictocq stands in the centre of the room. The electric light burns brightly above him. He seems the incarnation of alertness, vigor, cleverness, and cunning.

The company seat themselves in chairs along the wall.

“When informed of the robbery,” begins Tictocq, “I first questioned the bell boy. He knew nothing. I went to the police headquarters. They knew nothing. I invited one of them to the bar to drink. He said there used to be a little colored boy in the Tenth Ward who stole things and kept them for recovery by the police, but failed to be at the place agreed upon for arrest one time, and had been sent to jail.

“I then began to think. I reasoned. No man, said I, would carry