drank mine and it wasn’t so good. Ben took a sip of his and pretended it was all right. But he had told the truth when he said he didn’t like Bacardi.
I won’t go into details regarding the dinner except to relate that three separate items were highly flavored with cheese, and Ben despises cheese.
“Don’t you care for cheese, Mr. Drake?” asked Mr. Thayer, noticing that Ben was not exactly bolting his food.
“No,” replied the guest of honor.
“He’s spoofing you, Ralph,” said Mrs. Thayer. “Everybody likes cheese.”
There was coffee, and Ben managed to guzzle a cup before it was desecrated with pure cream.
We sat down to bridge.
“Do you like to play families or divide up?”
“Oh, we like to play together,” said I.
“I’ll bet you don’t,” said Mrs. Thayer. “Suppose Ralph and you play Mr. Drake and me. I think it’s a mistake for husbands and wives to be partners. They’re likely to criticize one another and say things that leave a scar.”
Well, Mr. Thayer and I played against Ben and Mrs. Thayer and I lost sixty cents at a tenth of a cent a point. Long before the evening was over I could readily see why Mrs. Thayer thought it was a mistake to play with her husband and if it had been possible I’d have left him a complete set of scars.
Just as we were getting to sleep, Mrs. Thayer knocked on our door.
“I’m afraid you haven’t covers enough,” she called. “There are extra blankets on the shelf in your closet.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We’re as warm as toast.”
“I’m afraid you aren’t,” said Mrs. Thayer.
“Lock the door,” said Ben, “before she comes in and feels our feet.”
All through breakfast next morning we waited in vain for the telephone call that would yield Irene’s message. The phone rang once and Mrs. Thayer answered, but we couldn’t hear what she said. At noon Ben signalled me to meet him upstairs and there he stated grimly that I might do as I choose, but he was leaving Liberty Hall ere another sun had set.
“You haven’t any excuse,” I reminded him.
“I’m a genius,” he said, “and geniuses are notoriously eccentric.”
“Geniuses’ wives sometimes get eccentric, too,” said I, and began to pack up.
Mr. Thayer had gone to Philadelphia and we were alone with our hostess at luncheon.
“Mrs. Thayer,” said Ben, “do you ever have premonitions or hunches?”
She looked frightened. “Why, no. Do you?”
“I had one not half an hour ago. Something told me that I positively must be in New York tonight. I don’t know whether it’s business or illness or what, but I’ve just got to be there!”
“That’s the strangest thing I ever heard of,” said Mrs. Thayer. “It scares me to death!”
“It’s nothing you need be scared of,” said Ben. “It only concerns me.”
“Yes, but listen,” said Mrs. Thayer. “A telegram came for you at breakfast time this morning. I wasn’t going to tell you about it because I had promised that you wouldn’t be disturbed. And it didn’t seem so terribly important. But this hunch of yours puts the matter in a different light. I’m sorry now that I didn’t give you the message when I got it, but I memorized it and can repeat it word for word: Mr. Ben Drake, care of Mr. Ralph Thayer, Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. In Nile song, second bar of refrain, bass drum part reads A flat which makes discord. Should it be A natural? Would appreciate your coming to theater tonight to straighten this out as harmony must be restored in orchestra if troupe is to be success. Regards, Gene Buck.
”
“It sounds silly, doesn’t it?” said Ben. “And yet I have known productions to fail and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars just because an author or composer left town too soon. I can well understand that you considered the message trivial. At the same time I can thank my stars that this instinct, or divination, or whatever you want to call it, told me to go home.”
Just as the trainmen were shouting “Board!” Mrs. Thayer said:
“I have one more confession to make. I answered Mr. Buck’s telegram. I wired him. Mr. Ben Drake resting at my home. Must not be bothered. Suggest that you keep bass drums still for a week.
And I signed my name. Please forgive me if I have done something terrible. Remember, it was for you.”
Small wonder that Ben was credited at the Lambs’ Club with that month’s most interesting bender.
There Are Smiles
At the busy corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-sixth Street there was, last summer, a traffic policeman who made you feel that he didn’t have such a terrible job after all. Lots of traffic policemen seem to enjoy abusing you, sadistic complex induced by exposure to bad weather and worse drivers, and, possibly, brutal wives. But Ben Collins just naturally appeared to be having a good time whether he was scolding you or not; his large freckled face fairly beamed with joviality and refused to cloud up even under the most trying conditions.
It heartened you to look at him. It amused you to hear him talk. If what he said wasn’t always so bright, the way he said it was.
Ben was around thirty years old. He was six feet four inches tall and weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds. This describes about eighty percent of all the traffic officers between Thirty-second Street and the Park. But Ben was distinguished from the rest by his habitual good humor and—well, I guess you’d have to call it his subtlety.
For example, where Noonan or Wurtz or Carmody was content with the stock “Hey! Get over where you belong!” or “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Ben was wont to finesse.
“How are you, Barney?” he would say to a victim halted at the curb.
“My name isn’t Barney.”
“I beg your pardon. The way you was stepping along, I figured you must be Barney Oldfield.”
Or, “I suppose you didn’t see that red light.”
“No.”
“Well,
