big a fool -- no, you don't think I'm a fraud. I can tell it by your voice. . . . Now, listen, and I'll give you a pointer that will prove it to you. Of course you've had this murder case worked over by your staff of bright young blockheads. Half of the second but- ton on old Mrs. Norcross's nightgown is broken off. I saw it when I took the garnet ring off her finger. I thought it was a ruby. . . . -- Stop that! it won't work.'
Kernan turned to Woods with a diabolic smile.
'I've got him going. He believes me now. He didn't quite cover the transmitter with his hand when he told somebody to call up Central on another 'phone and get our number. I'll give him just one more dig, and then we'll make a 'get-away.'
'Hello! . . . Yes. I'm here yet. You didn't think -- I'd run from such a little subsidized, turn- coat rag of a newspaper, did you? . . . Have me inside of forty-eight hours? Say, will you quit being funny? Now, you let grown men alone and at- tend to your business of hunting up divorce cases and street-car accidents and printing the filth and scandal that you make your living by. Good-by, old boy -- sorry I haven't time to call on you. I'd feel perfectly safe in your sanctum asinorum. Tra-la!'
'He's as mad as a cat that's lost a mouse,' said Kernan, hanging up the receiver and coming out.
'And now, Barney, my boy, we'll go to a show and enjoy ourselves until a reasonable bedtime. Four hours' sleep for me, and then the west-bound.'
The two dined in a Broadway restaurant. Kernan was pleased with himself. He spent money like a prince of fiction. And then a weird and gorgeous musical comedy engaged their attention. Afterward there was a late supper in a grillroom, with champagne, and Kernan at the height of his com- placency.
Half-past three in the morning found them in a corner of an all-night cafe, Kernan still boasting in a vapid and rambling way, Woods thinking moodily over the end that had come to his usefulness as an upholder of the law.
But, as he pondered, his eye brightened with a speculative light.
'I wonder if it's possible,' be said to himself, 'I won-der if it's pos-si-ble!
And then outside the cafe the comparative stillness of the early morning was punctured by faint, uncer- tain cries that seemed mere fireflies of sound, some growing louder, some fainter, waxing and waning amid the rumble of milk wagons and infrequent cars. Shrill cries they were when near -- well-known cries that conveyed many meanings to the ears of those of the slumbering millions of the great city who waked to hear them. Cries that bore upon their significant, small volume the weight of a world's woe and laugh- ter and delight and stress. To some, cowering be- neath the protection of a night's ephemeral cover, they brought news of the hideous, bright day; to others, wrapped in happy sleep, they announced a morning that would dawn blacker than sable night. To many of the rich they brought a besom to sweep away what had been theirs while the stars shone; to the poor they brought -- another day.
All over the city the cries were starting up, keen and sonorous, heralding the chances that the slip- ping of one cogwheel in the machinery of time had made; apportioning to the sleepers while they lay at the mercy of fate, the vengeance, profit, grief, reward and doom that the new figure in the calen- dar had brought them. Shrill and yet plaintive were the cries, as if the young voices grieved that so much evil and so little good was in their irresponsible hands. Thus echoed in the streets of the helpless city the transmission of the latest decrees of the gods, the cries of the newsboys -- the Clarion Call of the Press.
Woods flipped a dime to the waiter, and said: 'Get me a Morning Mars.'
When the paper came he glanced at its first page, and then tore a leaf out of his memorandum book and began to write on it with the little old pencil.
'What's the news?'' yawned Kernan.
Woods flipped over to him the piece of writing:
'The New York Morning Mars:
'Please pay to the order of John Kernan the one thousand dollars reward coming to me for his arrest and conviction.
'BARNARD WOODS.'
'I kind of thought they would do that,' said Woods, 'when you were jollying them so hard. Now, Johnny, you'll come to the police station with me.'
From near the village of Harmony, at the foot of the Green Mountains, came Miss Medora Martin to New York with her color-box and easel.
Miss Medora resembled the rose which the autum- nal frosts had spared the longest of all her sister blossoms. In Harmony, when she started alone to the wicked city to study art, they said she was a mad, reckless, headstrong girl. In New York, when she first took her seat at a West Side boardinghouse table, the boarders asked: 'Who is the nice-looking old maid?'
Medora took heart, a cheap hall bedroom and two art lessons a week from Professor Angelini, a retired barber who had studied his profession in a Harlem dancing academy. There was no one to set her right, for here in the big city they do it unto all of us. How many of us are badly shaved daily and taught the two-step imperfectly by ex-pupils of Bastien Le Page and Gerome? The most pathetic sight in New York -- except the manners of the rush-hour crowds -- is the dreary march of the hopeless army of Me- diocrity. Here Art is no benignant goddess, but a Circe who turns her wooers into mewing Toms and Tabbies who linger about the doorsteps of her abode, unmindful of the flying brickbats and boot-jacks of the critics. Some of us creep back to our native vil- lages to the skim-milk of 'I told you so'; but most of us prefer to remain in the cold courtyard of our mistress's temple, snatching the scraps that fall from her divine table d'hote. But some of us grow weary at last of the fruitless service. And then there are two fates open to us. We can get a job driving a grocer's wagon, or we can get swallowed up in the Vortex of Bohemia. The latter sounds good; but the former really pans out better. For, when the grocer pays us off we can rent a dress suit and -- the cap- italized system of humor describes it best -- Get Bo- hemia On the Run.
Miss Medora chose the Vortex and thereby fur- nishes us with our little story.
Professor Angelini praised her sketches excessively. Once when she had made a neat study of a horse- chestnut tree in the park he declared she would be- come a second Rosa Bonheur. Again -- a great art- ist has his moods -- he would say cruel and cutting things. For example, Medora had spent an after- noon patiently sketching the statue and the archi- tecture at Columbus Circle. Tossing it aside with a sneer, the professor informed her that Giotto had once drawn a perfect circle with one sweep of his hand.
