The Boss of Little Arcady | Page 6

thing was ominous. Yet, might it not merely denote that Potts wished to enter upon his new life well barbered? The bulging bag supported this possibility, and yet I was ill at ease.
Reaching my office, I sought to engage myself with the papers of an approaching suit, but it was impossible to ignore the darkling cloud of disaster which impended. I returned to the street anxiously.
On my way to the City Hotel, where I had resolved to await like a man what calamity there might be, I again passed the barber-shop.
Harpin Cust now leaned, gracefully attentive, on the back of the empty chair, absently swishing his little whisk broom. Before him was planted Potts, his left foot advanced, his head thrown back, reading to Harpin from a spread page of the Argus. I divined that he was reading Solon's comment upon himself, and I shuddered.
As I paused at the door of the hotel Potts emerged from the barber-shop. In one hand he carried his bag, in the other his cane and the Little Arcady Argus. His hat was a bit to one side, and it seemed to me that he was leaning back farther than usual. He had started briskly down the street in the opposite direction from me, but halted on meeting Eustace Eubanks. The Colonel put down his bag and they shook hands. Eustace seemed eager to pass on, but the Colonel detained him and began reading from the Argus. His voice carried well on the morning air, and various phrases, to which he gave the full meed of emphasis, floated to me on the gentle breeze. "That peerless pleader and Prince of Gentlemen," came crisply to my ears. Eustace appeared to be restive, but the Colonel, through caution, or, perhaps, mere friendliness, had moored him by a coat lapel.
The reading done, I saw that Eustace declined some urgent request of the Colonel's, drawing away the moment his coat was released. As they parted, my worst fears were confirmed, for I saw the Colonel progress flourishingly to the corner and turn in under the sign, "Barney Skeyhan; Choice Wines, Liquors, and Cigars."
"What did he say?" I asked of Eustace as he came up.
"It was exceedingly distasteful, Major." Eustace was not a little perturbed by the encounter. "He read every word of that disgusting article in the Argus and then he begged me to go into that Skeyhan's drinking-place with him and have a glass of liquor. I said very sharply, 'Colonel Potts, I have never known the taste of liquor in my whole life nor used tobacco in any form.' At that he looked at me in the utmost astonishment and said: 'Bless my soul! Really? Young man, don't you put it off another day--life is awful uncertain.' 'Why, Colonel,' I said, 'that isn't any way to talk,' but he simply tore down the street, saying that I was taking great chances."
"And now he is reading his piece to Barney Skeyhan!" I groaned.
"Rum is the scourge of our American civilization," remarked Eustace, warmly.
"Barney Skeyhan's rum would scourge anybody's civilization," I said.
"Of course I meant all civilization," suggested Eustace, in polite help to my lame understanding.
Precisely at nine o'clock Potts issued from Skeyhan's, bearing his bag, cane, and Argus as before. He looked up and down the quiet street interestedly, then crossed over to Hermann Hoffmuller's, another establishment in which our civilization was especially menaced. He was followed cordially by five of Little Arcady's lesser citizens, who had obviously sustained the relation of guests to him at Skeyhan's. In company with Westley Keyts and Eubanks, I watched this procession from the windows of the City Hotel. Solon Denney chanced to pass at the moment, and we hailed him.
"Oh, I'll soon fix that," said Solon, confidently. "Don't you worry!"
And forthwith he sent Billy Durgin, who works in the City Hotel, to Hoffmuller's. He was to remind Colonel Potts that his train left at eleven-eight.
Billy returned with news. Potts was reading the piece to Hoffmuller and a number of his patrons. Further, he had bought, and the crowd was then consuming, the two fly-specked bottles of champagne which Hoffmuller had kept back of his bar, one on either side of a stuffed owl, since the day he began business eleven years before.
Billy also brought two messages to Solon: one from Potts that he had been mistaken about the attitude of Little Arcady toward himself--that he was seeing this more clearly every minute. The other was from Hoffmuller. Solon Denney was to know that some people might be just as good as other people who thought themselves a lot better, and would he please not take some shingles off a man's roof?
Solon, ever the incorrigible optimist, said, "Of course I might have waited till he was on the train to give him