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Alex the Great
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCING ALEX THE GREAT
Girls, listen – if friend hubby comes home to-night and while hurlin' the cat off his favorite chair, remarks that he's got a scheme to make gold out of mud or pennant winners out of the St. Looey Cardinals, don't threaten to leave him flat and accuse him of givin' aid and comfort to the breweries. Turn the gas out under the steak, be seated and register attention – because maybe he has!
Scattered around all the department stores, coal mines, butcher shops, the police force and banks, there's guys which can sing as well as Caruso, lead a band better than Sousa, stand Dempsey on his ear, show Rockefeller how to make money or teach Chaplin some new falls. Yet these birds go through life on eighteen dollars every Saturday with prospects, and never get their names in the papers unless they get caught in a trolley smash-up. They're like a guy with the ice cream concession at the North Pole. They got the goods, but what of it? As far as the universe is concerned it's a secret – they're there with chimes on, but nobody knows it but them!
Y'know this stuff about us all bein' neck and neck when we hit the nursery may be true, but, believe me, some guys are born to run second! They get off on the wrong foot, trailin' the leaders until the undertaker stops the race. They plod through life takin' orders from guys that don't know half as much about any given thing as they do; they never get a crack at the big job or the big money, although accordin' to Hoyle they got everything that's needed for both. Take Joey Green who used to be so stupid at dear old college that the faculty once considered givin' him education by injectin' it into his dome with a hypodermic. At forty he comes back to the campus to make 'em a present of a few new buildin's out of last month's winnin's from the cruel world. Where is Elbert Huntington, which copped all the diplomas, did algebra by ear and was give medals for out-brainin' the class? Where is he, teacher? And the echo chirps, "Workin' for Joey Green, drawin' twenty a week and on the payroll as No. 543!"
The answer to this little thumb sketch is easy. Elbert Huntington had brains and Joey Green had confidence. Elbert expected to dumfound the world with what he knew, and Joey did dumfound it with what he didn't. Now if Joseph made good with nothin' but nerve, what could a guy do that had brains and nerve both?
I'll tell you.
After we won the world's series in 1914 and the dough had been divided up to the satisfaction of everybody but the guys that was in on the split, me and the wife had figured on one of them trips to Europe. You prob'bly know the kind I mean, "$900 and up. Bus to hotel on fifth morning out included." I had looked forward to this here expedition for thirty years, like a guy looks forward to eight o'clock the night he's gonna call on his first girl. We had learned French and Eytalian off of a phonograph record and from givin' them spaghetti dives a play. Also, I had collected a trousseau that would of made John Drew take arsenic if he'd ever of flashed me when I was dolled up for the street.
Prob'ly you have seen somethin' in the papers about how the old country was closed to traffic right then. From what I hear it was all dug up like lower Broadway and tourists had to detour by way of So. America, so we never got nearer Europe than the Williamsburg Bridge, and you can't see a thing from there.
Well, when we found out that as far as trips to Europe was concerned they was nothin' stirrin', the wife took both bank books and went down to Lakewood, while I stayed in New York as a deposit on the new flat. I went to the station with her and I'll betcha from the fond farewells we give each other, people must of thought she was gonna take the veil or somethin', instead of just goin' to entomb herself in Jersey for a month. I swore I'd be in every night at ten, although that's kinda late to start out for the night, and she promised not to get in no bridge mêlées where the sum they battled for was over six bits. Then we took some more bows on the lovin' good-by stuff, and I'm alone in the big city.
I managed somehow to live through the day, but the next afternoon I lured a bunch up to the flat for a little pinochle. I begin by invitin' two guys, but by the time we got to Harlem we was a dozen strong. Once inside the portals, it turns out that only six of them is wild about pinochle, so the rest of 'em take up the rugs, start the victrola and give themselves up to dancin'. Pretty soon the telephone rings with great violence. I grabbed the receiver and learned it was the woman which lives underneath.
"Them steamfitters you got rehearsin' up there has got to call it a day!" she says. "Otherwise I'll moan to the landlord. The chandelier has left the ceilin' already and four pieces of my chocolate set is busted. I never heard tell of such carryin' on!"
"Wait till you been here a little longer," I says, "I ain't carryin' on, me and some boy friends of mine is tryin' to kill a dull afternoon and – "
"If them's friends makin' that racket," she butts in, "I hope I have moved when your enemies call! What am I gonna do about that chocolate set, hey? D'ye hear – there goes another piece!"
"If I was in your place," I tells her, "I'd drink coffee, and if your furnishings is all as frail as that chocolate set you're featurin', you better grab hold of the piano, because I'm gonna sneeze!"
"Don't you dare make no cracks about my furniture!" she yells. "I got my opinion of what you do for a livin' when you can afford to be home in the daytime!"
"I make chocolate sets," I says. "We're workin' on one now and – "
"Wait till my husband comes home!" she cuts in. "He'll take care of you!"
"I don't need nobody to take care of me," I comes back, "I'm self supportin'."
"Why don't you let go there?" yells Eddie Brannan. "Are you and that dame doin' an act or what?"
Zip! she hangs up and just then the front door-bell makes good.
"See who it is!" I calls to one of the gang, sittin' in the game again. "Tell 'em I'm in Brazil and – "
Oh, boy!
One of them dead silences took place in the hall and – in walks the wife!
For the next five seconds it was so quiet in that flat that a graveyard would seem like a locomotive works alongside of it. Joe Leity starts to whistle soft and low, Abe Katz opens the dumbwaiter and looks down to see what kind of a jump it is and I dropped a hundred aces on the floor. The rest of the gang eases over to the door.
"Why – ah – eh – ah, what does this mean?" I says kinda weak. "I thought you had went to Lakewood."
"Well," she says, turnin' the eyes, that used to fill the Winter Garden every night, on the gang, "where d'ye figure I am now? I'll give you three guesses!"
"Ahem!" says Joe Leity, "I guess I'll blow! I – "
"Me, too!" pipes the gang like a chorus and does a few more vamps to the door.
"Why don't you introduce your friends?" says the wife. "Or maybe you just run across these boys yourself when you come in, heh?"
"Excuse!" I says. "This here's Joe Leity, Abe Katz, Phil Young, Red Dailey, Steve – "
"Never mind callin' the roll," she butts in. "I'll let it go en masse. I'm delighted to meet you all, and I hope you won't run away simply because I'm here."
"Oh, no – not at all – we ain't runnin' away!" they says.
"There's no reason for you boys runnin' anyways," the wife goes on, "because the elevator is right outside now and I think the boy is holdin' the car for you – "
They
