Shorty McCabe | Page 2

label on a tin trunk.
"I'm a mitt juggler," says I, "and they call me Shorty McCabe. What's your line?"
"I've heard of you," he says. "Permit me," and he hands out a pasteboard that read:
LEONIDAS MACKLIN DODGE Commissioner-at-Large
"For what?" says I.
"It all depends," says Mr. Dodge. "Sometimes I call it a brass polisher, then again it's a tooth-paste. It works well either way. Also it cleans silver, removes grease spots, and can be used for a shaving soap. It is a product of my own lab'ratory, none genuine without the signature."
"How does it go as a substitute for beef and?" says I.
"I've never quite come to that," says he, "but I'm as close now as it's comfortable to be. My gold reserve counts up about a dollar thirty-nine."
"You've got me beat by a whole dollar," says I.
"Then," says he, "you'd better let me underwrite your next issue."
"There's a friend of mine up to Forty-second Street that ought to be good for fifty," says I.
"I've had lots of friendships, off and on," says he, "but never one that I could cash in at a pinch. I'll stay by until you try your touch."
Well, the Forty-second Street man had been gone a month. There was others I might have tried, but I didn't like to risk gettin' my fingers frost-bitten. So I hooks up with Leonidas and we goes out with a grip full of Electro-Polisho, hittin' the places where they had nickel-plated signs and brass hand rails. And say! I could starve to death doing that. Give me a week and two pairs of shoes and I might sell a box or so; but Dodge, he takes an hour to work his side of the block and shakes out a fist full of quarters.
"It's an art," says he, "which one must be born to. After this you carry the grip."
That's the part I was playin' when we strikes the Tuscarora. Sounds like a parlor car, don't it? But it was just one of those swell bachelor joints--fourteen stories, electric elevators, suites of two and three rooms, for gents only. Course, we hadn't no more call to go there than to the Stock Exchange, but Leonidas Macklin, he's one of the kind that don't wait for cards. Seein' the front door open and a crowd of men in the hall, he blazes right in, silk hat on the back of his head, hands in his pockets, and me close behind with the bag.
"What's up; auction, row or accident?" says he to one of the mob.
Now if it had been me that butted in like that I'd had a row on my hands in about two minutes, but in less time than that Leonidas knows the whole story and is right to home. Taking me behind a hand-made palm, he puts me next. Seems that some one had advertised in a mornin' paper for a refined, high-browed person to help one of the same kind kill time at a big salary.
"And look what he gets," says Leonidas, wavin' his hand at the push. "There's more'n a hundred of 'em, and not more'n a dozen that you couldn't trace back to a Mills hotel. They've been jawing away for an hour, trying to settle who gets the cinch. The chap who did the advertising is inside there, in the middle of that bunch, and I reckon he wishes he hadn't. As an act of charity, Shorty, I'm going to straighten things out for him. Come on."
"Better call up the reserves," says I.
But that wa'n't Mr. Dodge's style. Side-steppin' around to the off edge of the crowd, just as if he'd come down from the elevator, he calls out good and loud: "Now then, gentlemen; one side, please, one side! Ah, thank you! In a moment, now, gentlemen, we'll get down to business."
And say, they opened up for us like it was pay day and he had the cash box. We brought up before the saddest-lookin' cuss I ever saw out of bed. I couldn't make out whether he was sick, or scared, or both. He had flopped in a big leather chair and was tryin' to wave 'em away with both hands, while about two dozen, lookin' like ex-bath rubbers or men nurses, were telling him how good they were and shovin' references at him. The rest of the gang was trying to push in for their whack. It was a bad mess, but Leonidas wasn't feazed a bit.
"Attention, gentlemen!" says he. "If you will all retire to the room on the left we will get to work. The room on the left, gentlemen, on the left!"
He had a good voice, Leonidas did, one of the kind that could go against a merry-go-round or a German band. The crowd stopped pushin' to listen, then some