The Neer-Do-Well | Page 9

and in the end he allowed himself to
be persuaded.
It is often through just such sudden, inconsequent decisions, influenced
perhaps by the merest trifles, that a man's life is made great or small;
just such narrow forkings of the trail may divert him into strange
adventurings, or into worlds undreamed of. Kirk Anthony, twenty-six
years old, with a heritage at hand, and with an average capacity for
good or evil, chose the turning that led him swiftly from the world he

knew into an alien land.
Numbed as they were by the excesses of the evening, it did not take the
young men long to lose all clear and vivid remembrance of this recent
experience; for the time had come when Nature was offering her last
resistance, and their brains were badly awhirl. Of all the four, Jefferson
Locke was the only one who retained his wits to the fullest--a
circumstance that would have proved him the owner of a remarkably
steady head had it not been for the fact that he had cunningly
substituted water for gin each time it came his turn to drink. It was a
commentary upon the state of his companions that they did not notice
the limpid clearness of his beverage.
Dawn found them in an East Side basement drinking-place frequented
by the lowest classes. Ringold was slumbering peacefully, half
overflowing the wet surface of a table; Anthony had discovered
musical talent in the bartender and was seated at a battered piano,
laboriously experimenting with the accompaniment to an Irish ballad;
Higgins and Locke were talking earnestly. It was the slackest, blackest
hour in an all-night dive; the nocturnal habitues had slunk away, and
the day's trade had not yet begun. Higgins, drawn and haggard beneath
his drunken flush, was babbling incessantly; Locke, as usual, sat facing
the entrance, his eyes watchful, his countenance alert. In spite of the
fact that he had constantly plied his companion with liquor in the hope
of stilling his tongue, Higgins seemed incapable of silence, and kept
breaking forth into loud, garbled recitals of the scene at Padden's,
which caused the Missourian to shiver with apprehension. To a sober
eye it would have been patent that Locke was laboring under some
strong excitement; for every door that opened caused him to start, every
stranger that entered made him quake. He consulted his watch
repeatedly, he flushed and paled and fidgeted, then lost himself in
frowning meditation.
"Grandes' fellow I ever met," Higgins was saying for the hundredth
time. "Got two faults, tha's all; he's modesht an' he's lazy--he won't
work."
"Anthony?"
"Yes."
Locke stirred himself, and, leaning forward, said: "You and he are good
friends, eh?"

"Best ever."
"Would you like to play a joke on him?"
"Joke? Can't be done. He's wises' guy ever. I've tried it an' always get
the wors' of it. Yes, sir, he's wise guy. Jus' got two faults: he won't
work an'--"
"Look here! Why don't you make him work?"
"Huh?" Higgins turned a pair of bleared, unfocusable eyes upon the
speaker.
"Why don't somebody make him work?"
The lean-faced youth laughed moistly.
"Tha's good joke."
"I mean it."
"Got too much money. 'S old man puts up reg'lar."
"Listen! It's a shame for a fine fellow like him to go to the dogs."
Higgins nodded heavily in agreement. "Why don't you send him away
where he'll have to rustle? That's the joke I meant."
"Huh?" Again the listener's mind failed to follow, and Locke repeated
his words, concluding: "It would make a new man of him."
"Oh, he wouldn't work. Too lazy."
"He'd have to if he were broke."
"But he AIN'T broke. Didn't I tell you 's old man puts up reg'lar? Fine
man, too, Misser Anthony; owns railroads."
"I'll tell you how we can work it. I've got a ticket for Central America
in my pocket. The boat sails at ten. Let's send him down there."
"Wha' for?"
Locke kept his temper with an effort. "To make a man of him. We'll go
through his clothes and when he lands he'll be broke. He'll HAVE to
work. Don't you see?"
"No." Anthony's friend did not see. "He don't want to go to Central
America," he argued; "he's got a new autom'bile."
"But suppose we got him soused, went through his pockets, and then
put him aboard the boat. He'd be at sea by the time he woke up; he
couldn't get back; he'd have to work; don't you see? He'd be broke
when he landed and have to rustle money to get back with. I think it's
an awful funny idea."
The undeniable humor of such a situation finally dawned upon
Higgins's mind, and he burst into a loud guffaw.

"Hey there! Shut up!" Anthony called from the piano. "Listen here!