II
IN WHICH THOMAS SNOBBE, ESQ., OF YONKERS, UNFOLDS A TALE

The second dinner of the Dreamers had been served, all but the coffee, when Mr. Billy Jones, of the Oracle, rapped upon the table with a dessert-spoon and called the members to order.

“Gentlemen,” said he, when all was quiet, “we have reached the crucial crisis of our club career. We have eaten the stuff of which our dreams were to be made, and from what I can gather from the reports of those who are now seated about this festal board – and I am delighted to note that the full membership of our organization is here represented – there is not a single one of you who is unprepared for the work we have in hand, and, as master of ceremonies, it becomes my pleasant duty to inform you that the hour has arrived at which it behooveth us to begin the narration of those tales which – of those tales which I am certain – yes, gentlemen, very certain – will cause the unlaid ghosts of those masters of the story-tellers’ art – ”

“Is this a continued story Billy is giving us?” observed Tenafly Paterson.

“No,” replied Bedford Parke, with a laugh; “it is only a life sentence.”

“Get him to commute it!” ejaculated Hudson Rivers.

“Order, gentlemen, order!” cried the master of ceremonies, again rapping upon the table. “The members will kindly not interrupt the speaker. As I was saying, gentlemen,” he continued, “we are now to listen to the narration of tales which I am convinced will cause the unlaid ghosts of the past grand masters of the story-tellers’ art to gnash their spirit teeth with anguish for that they in life failed to realize the opportunities that were theirs in not having told the tales to which we are about to listen, and over which, when published, the leading living literary lights will writhe in jealousy.”

When the applause which greeted these remarks had subsided, Mr. Jones resumed:

“That there may be no question of precedence among the gifted persons from whom we are now to hear, I have provided myself with a small leathern bottle, such as is to be seen in most billiard-parlors, within which I have placed twelve numbered ivory balls. These I will now proceed to distribute among you. When you receive them, I request that you immediately return them to me, that I may arrange the programme according to your respective numbers.”

Mr. Jones thereupon distributed the ivory balls, and when the returns had been made, according to his request, he again rose to his feet and announced that to Mr. Thomas Snobbe, of Yonkers, had fallen the lot of telling the first story, adding that he took great pleasure in the slightly supererogative task that devolved upon him of presenting Mr. Snobbe to his audience. Mr. Snobbe’s health was drunk vociferously, after which, the stenographer having announced himself as ready to begin, the distinguished son of Yonkers arose and told the following story, which he called

VAN SQUIBBER’S FAILURE

You can’t always tell what kind of a day you are going to have in town in October just because you happen to have been in town on previous October days, and Van Squibber, for that reason, was not surprised when his man, on waking him, informed him that it was cold out. Even if he had been surprised he would not have shown it, for fear of demoralizing his man by setting him a bad example. “We must take things as they come,” Van Squibber had said to the fellow when he engaged him, “and I shall expect you to be ready always for any emergency that may arise. If on waking in the morning I call for a camel’s-hair shawl and a bottle of Nepaul pepper, it will be your duty to see that I get them without manifesting the slightest surprise or asking any questions. Here is your next year’s salary in advance. Get my Melton overcoat and my box, and have them at the Rahway station at 7.15 to-morrow morning. If I am not there, don’t wait for me, but come back here and boil my egg at once.”

This small bit of a lecture had had its effect on the man, to whom thenceforth nothing was impossible; indeed, upon this very occasion he demonstrated to his employer his sterling worth, for when, on looking over Van Squibber’s wardrobe, he discovered that his master had no Melton overcoat, he telegraphed to his tailor’s and had one made from his previous measure in time to have it with Van Squibber’s box at the Rahway station at the stipulated hour the following morning. Of course Van Squibber was not there. He had instructed his man as he had simply to test him, and, furthermore, the egg was boiled to perfection. The test cost Van Squibber about $150, but it was successful, and it was really worth the money to know that his man was all that he should be.

“He’s not half bad,” said Van Squibber, as he cracked the egg.

“It’s wintry,” said Van Squibber’s man on the morning of the 5th of October.

“Well,” Van Squibber said, sleepily, “what of that? You have your instructions as to the bodily temperature I desire to maintain. Select my clothing, as usual – and mark you, man, yesterday was springy, and you let me go to the club in summery attire. I was two and a half degrees too warm. You are getting careless. What are my engagements to-day?”

“University settlement at eleven, luncheon at the Actors’ at one, drive with the cynical Miss Netherwood at three, five-o’clock tea at four – ”

“What?” cried Van Squibber, sharply.

“At fuf – five, I should say, sir,” stammered the embarrassed man.

“Thought so,” said Van Squibber. “Proceed, and be more careful. The very idea of five-o’clock tea at four is shocking.”

“Dinner with the Austrian ambassador at eight, opera at eleven – ”

“In October? Opera?” cried Van Squibber.

“Comic,” said the man. “It is Flopper’s last night, sir, and you are to ring down the curtain.”

“True,” said Van Squibber, meditatively – “true; I’d forgotten. And then?”

“At midnight you are to meet Red Mike at Cherry Street and Broadway to accompany him to see how he robs national banks, for the Sunday Whirald.”

“What bank is it to be?”

“The Seventeenth National.”

“Gad!” cried Van Squibber, “that’s hard luck. It’s my bank. Wire Red Mike and ask him to make it the Sixteenth National, at once. Bring me my smoking-jacket and a boiled soda mint drop. I don’t care for any breakfast this morning. And, by-the-way, I feel a little chilly. Take a quinine pill for me.”

“Your egg is ready, sir,” said the man, tremulously.

“Eat it,” said Van Squibber, tersely, “and deduct the Café Savarin price of a boiled egg from your salary. How often must I tell you not to have my breakfast boiled until I am boil – I mean ready until I am ready for it?”

The man departed silently, and Van Squibber turned over and went to sleep.

An hour later, having waited for his soda mint drop as long as his dignity would permit, Van Squibber arose and dressed and went for a walk in Central Park. It was eccentric of him to do this, but he did it nevertheless.

“How Travers would laugh if he saw me walking in Central Park!” he thought. “He’d probably ask me when I’d come over from Germany,” he added. And then, looking ahead, a thing Van Squibber rarely did, by-the-way – for you can’t always tell by looking ahead what may happen to you – his eyes were confronted by a more or less familiar back.

“Dear me!” he said. “If that isn’t Eleanor Huyler’s back, whose back is it, by Jove?”

Insensibly Van Squibber quickened his pace. This was also a thing he rarely did. “Haste is bad form,” he had once said to Travers, who, on leaving Delmonico’s at 7.20, seemed anxious to catch the 7.10 train for Riverdale. Insensibly quickening his pace, he soon found himself beside the owner of the back, and, as his premonitions had told him, it was Eleanor Huyler.

“Good-morning,” he said.

“Why, Mr. Van Squibber!” she replied, with a terrified smile. “You here?”

“Well,” returned Van Squibber, not anxious to commit himself, “I think so, though I assure you, Miss Huyler, I am not at all certain. I seem to be here, but I must confess I am not quite myself this morning. My man – ”

“Yes – I know,” returned the girl, hastily. “I’ve heard of him. He is your alter ego.”

“I had not noticed it,” said Van Squibber, somewhat nonplussed. “I think he is English, though he may be Italian, as you suggest. But,” he added, to change the subject, “you seem disturbed. Your smile is a terrified smile, as has been already noted.”

“It is,” said Miss Huyler, looking anxiously about her.

“And may I ask why?” asked Van Squibber, politely – for to do things politely was Van Squibber’s ambition.

“I – I – well, really, Mr. Van Squibber,” the girl replied, “I am always anxious when you are about. The fact is, you know, the things that happen when you are around are always so very extraordinary. I came here for a quiet walk, but now that you have appeared I am quite certain that something dramatic is about to occur. You see – you – you have turned up so often at the – what I may properly call, I think, the nick of time, and so rarely at any other time, that I feel as though some disaster were impending which you alone can avert.”

“And what then?” said Van Squibber, proudly. “If I am here, what bodes disaster?”

“That is the question I am asking myself,” returned Miss Huyler, whose growing anxiety was more or less painful to witness. “Can your luck hold out? Will your ability as an averter of danger hold out? In short, Mr. Van Squibber, are you infallible?”

The question came to Van Squibber like a flash of lightning out of a clear sky. It was too pertinent. Had he not often wondered himself as to his infallibility? Had he not only the day before said to Travers, “You can’t always tell in advance just how a thing you are going into may turn out, even though you have been through that thing many times, and think you do.”

“I do lead a dramatic life,” he said, quietly, hoping by a show of serenity to reassure her. “But,” he added, proudly, “I am, after all, Van Squibber; I am here to do whatever is sent me to do. I am not a fatalist, but I regard myself as the chosen instrument of fate – or something. So far, I have not failed. On the basis of averages, I am not likely to fail now. Fate, or something, has chosen me to succeed.”

“That is true,” said Eleanor – “quite true; but there are exceptions to all rules, and I would rather you would fail to rescue some other girl from a position of peril than myself.”

That Miss Huyler’s words were prophetic, the unhappy Van Squibber was to realize, and that soon, for almost as they spoke the cheeks of both were blanched by a dreadful roar in the bushes beside the path upon which they walked.

“Shall I leave you?” asked Van Squibber, politely.

“Not now – oh, not now, I beg!” cried Miss Huyler. “It is too late. The catastrophe is imminent. You should have gone before the author brought it on. Finding me defenceless and you gone, he might have spared me. As it is, you are here, and must fulfil your destiny.”

“Very well,” returned Van Squibber. “That being so, I will see what this roaring is. If it is a child endeavoring to frighten you, I shall get his address and have my man chastise his father, for I could never strike a child; but if it is a lion, as I fear, I shall do what seems best under the circumstances. I have been told, Miss Huyler, that a show of bravery awes a wild beast, while a manifestation of cowardice causes him to spring at once upon the coward. Therefore, if it be a lion, do you walk boldly up to him and evince a cool head, while I divert his attention from you by running away. In this way you, at least, will be saved.”

“Noble fellow!” thought Eleanor to herself. “If he were to ask me, I think I might marry him.”

Meanwhile Van Squibber had investigated, and was horror-struck to find his misgivings entirely too well founded. It was the lion from the park menagerie that had escaped, and was now waiting in ambush to pounce upon the chance pedestrian.

“Remember, Eleanor,” he cried, forgetting for the moment that he had never called her by any but her last name with its formal prefix – “remember to be brave. That will awe him, and then when he sees me running he will pursue me.”

Removing his shoes, Van Squibber, with a cry which brought the hungry beast bounding out into the path, started on a dead run, while Miss Huyler, full of confidence that the story would end happily whatever she might do, walked boldly up to the tawny creature, wondering much, however, why her rescuer had removed his shoes. It was strange that, knowing Van Squibber as well as she did, she did not at once perceive his motive in declining to run in walking-shoes, but in moments of peril we are all excusable for our vagaries of thought! You never can tell, when you are in danger, what may happen next, for if you could you would know how it is all going to turn out; but as it is, mental disturbance is quite to be expected.

For once Van Squibber failed. He ran fast enough and betrayed enough cowardice to attract the attention of ten lions, but this special lion, by some fearful idiosyncrasy of fate, which you never can count on, was not to be deceived. With a louder roar than any he had given, he pounced upon the brave woman, and in an instant she was no more. Van Squibber, turning to see how matters stood, was just in time to witness the final engulfment of the fair girl in the lion’s jaws.

“Egad!” he cried. “I have failed! And now what remains to be done? Shall I return and fight the lion, or shall I keep on and go to the club? If I kill the lion, people will know that I have been walking in the park before breakfast. If I continue my present path and go to the club, the fellows will all want to know what I mean by coming without my shoes on. What a dilemma! Ah! I have it; I will go home.”

And that is what Van Squibber did. He went back to his rooms in the Quigmore at once, hastily undressed, and when, an hour later, his man returned with the soda mint drop, he was sleeping peacefully.

That night he met Travers at the club reading the Evening Moon.

“Hello, Van!” said Travers. “Heard the news?”

“No. What?” asked Van Squibber, languidly.

“Eleanor Huyler has disappeared.”

“By Jove!” cried Van Squibber, with well-feigned surprise. “I heard the boys crying ‘Extra,’ but I never dreamed they would put out an extra for her.”

“They haven’t,” said Travers. “The extra’s about the lion.”

“Ah! And what’s happened to the lion?” cried Van Squibber, nervously.

“He’s dead. Got loose this morning early, and was found at ten o’clock dying of indigestion. It is supposed he has devoured some man, name unknown, for before his nose was an uneaten patent-leather pump, size 9¾ B, and in his throat was stuck the other, half eaten.”

“Ha!” muttered Van Squibber, turning pale. “And they don’t know whose shoes they were?” he added, in a hoarse whisper.

“No,” said Travers. “There’s no clew, even.”

Van Squibber breathed a sigh of relief.

“Robert!” he cried, addressing the waiter, “bring me a schooner of absinthe, and ask Mr. Travers what he’ll have.” And then, turning, he said, sotto voce, to himself, “Saved! And Eleanor is revenged. Van Squibber may have failed, but his patent-leather pumps have conquered.”