My Roomy | Page 5

up with the club and begin to have a pay day I'll only get a hundred bucks at a time, and I'll owe that to some o' you fellers. I wisht we could win the pennant and get in on that World's Series dough. Then I'd get a bunch at once."
"What would you do with a bunch o' dough?" I ast him.
"Don't tell nobody, sport," he says; "but if I ever get five hundred at once I'm goin' to get married."
"Oh!" I says. "And who's the lucky girl?"
"She's a girl up in Muskegon," says Elliott; "and you're right when you call her lucky."
"You don't like yourself much, do you?" I says.
"I got reason to like myself," says he. "You'd like yourself, too, if you could hit 'em like me."
"Well," I says. "you didn't show me no hittin' to-day."
"I couldn't hit because I was laughin' too hard," says Elliott.
"What was it you was laughin' at?" I says.
"I was laughin' at that pitcher," he says. "He thought he had somethin' and he didn't have nothin'."
"He had enough to whiff you with," I says.
"He didn't have nothin'!" says he again. "I was afraid if I busted one off him they'd can him, and then I couldn't never hit agin him no more."
Naturally I didn't have no comeback to that. I just sort o' gasped and got ready to go to sleep; but he wasn't through.
"I wisht you could see this bird!" he says.
"What bird?" I says.
"This dame that's nuts about me," he says.
"Good-looker?" I ast.
"No," he says; "she ain't no bear for looks. They ain't nothin' about her for a guy to rave over till you hear her sing. She sure can holler some."
"What kind o' voice has she got?" I ast.
"A bear," says he."
"No," I says; "I mean is she a barytone or an air?"
"I don't know," he says; "but she's got the loudest voice I ever hear on a woman. She's pretty near got me beat."
"Can you sing?" I says; and I was sorry right afterward that I ast him that question.
I guess it must of been bad enough to have the water runnin' night after night and to have him wavin' that razor round; but that couldn't of been nothin' to his singin'. Just as soon as I'd pulled that boner he says, "Listen to me!" and starts in on 'Silver Threads Among the Gold.' Mind you, it was after midnight and they was guests all round us tryin' to sleep!
They used to be noise enough in our club when we had Hofman and Sheckard and Richie harmonizin'; but this bug's voice was louder'n all o' theirn combined. We once had a pitcher named Martin Walsh--brother o' Big Ed's--and I thought he could drownd out the Subway; but this guy made a boiler factory sound like Dummy Taylor. If the whole hotel wasn't awake when he'd howled the first line it's a pipe they was when he cut loose, which he done when he come to "Always young and fair to me." Them words could of been heard easy in East St. Louis.
He didn't get no encore from me, but he goes right through it again--or starts to. I knowed somethin' was goin' to happen before he finished--and somethin' did. The night clerk and the house detective come bangin' at the door. I let 'em in and they had plenty to say. If we made another sound the whole club'd be canned out o' the hotel. I tried to salve 'em, and I says:
"He won't sing no more."
But Elliott swelled up like a poisoned pup.
"Won't I?" he says. "I'll sing all I want to."
"You won't sing in here," says the clerk.
"They ain't room for my voice in here anyways," he says. "I'll go outdoors and sing."
And he puts his clothes on and ducks out. I didn't make no attemp' to stop him. I heard him bellowin' 'Silver Threads' down the corridor and dawn the stairs, with the clerk and the dick chasin' him all the way and tellin' him to shut up.
Well, the guests make a holler the next mornin'; and the hotel people tells Charlie Williams that he'll either have to let Elliott stay somewheres else or the whole club'll have to move. Charlie tells John, and John was thinkin' o' settlin' the question by releasin' Elliott.
I guess he'd about made up his mind to do it; but that afternoon they had us three to one in the ninth, and we got the bases full, with two down and Larry's turn to hit. Elliott had been sittin' on the bench sayin' nothin'.
"Do you think you can hit one today?" says John.
"I can hit one any day," says Elliott.
"Go up and hit that lefthander, then," says John, "and remember there's nothin' to laugh at."
Sallee was workin'--and workin' good; but that