FullReads

At that hour, in a hovel in the Jamaica negro quarter of the capital of San Coloquin, General Coreos y Dulce, friend of composers and masters of science, was dying of nothing at all but sick hope and coldly creeping fear, and a belief that he had pneumonia.

A thousand and more miles away the president of the Citrus and Southern Steamship Company was writing his resignation. His old friend, the chairman of the board of directors, again begged: “But this means the ruin of the company, Ben. We can’t go on without you. ”

“I know, Billy,” the president sighed, “but I’m all in. If we could have found someone to carry out my ideas I could have pulled through—and the company could have. Shame we were fooled about that McGee fellow. If we hadn’t wasted so much time looking him over we might have had time to find the right man, and he’d have taken enough worry off my shoulders so that—Well, I’ll about pass out in three months, I reckon, old man. Let’s have one more go at pinochle. I have a hunch I’m going to get double pinochle. ”

About half an hour after that, and half a continent away, Palmer McGee left the home of the president of the M. & D. R. R. He walked as one dreaming. The railroad president had said: “I don’t know what the trouble is, my boy, but you haven’t been worth a hang for quite a while now. And you’re drinking too much. Better go off some place and get hold of yourself. ”

McGee crawled to the nearest telegraph office that was open, and sent a wire to the Buffalo & Bangor, accepting their offer in the purchasing department. The salary was not less than the one he had been receiving, but there was little future. Afterward he had a cocktail, th
e fourth that evening.

It cannot be authoritatively determined whether it was that evening or the one before that a barber named Discopolos first actually struck his wife, and she observed, “All right, I’ll leave you. ” The neighbors say that though this was the first time he had mauled her, things had been going badly with them for many months. One of them asserts that the trouble started on an evening when Discopolos had promised to come home to supper but had not shown up till one-thirty in the morning. It seems that, though he had forgotten it, this had been her birthday, and she, poor mouse, had prepared a feast for them.

But it is certainly known that at the same hour on the same evening there was much peace and much study of the newspaper comics in the house of the Stodeports on Scrimmins Street.

Willis stooped to pull the tail of Adolphus Josephus Mudface, now a half-grown cat. Mrs. Stodeport complained: “Now, Willie, do let that cat alone! He might scratch you, and you’ll get fleas and things. No telling what-all might happen if you go patting and fooling with—”

Mr. Stodeport yawningly interrupted: “Oh, let the child alone! Way you go on, might think something dreadful would happen, just because he strokes a cat. I suppose probably he might get one of these germs, and spread it, and before he got through with it, maybe be the cause of two-three people taking sick! Ha, ha, ha! Or maybe he might make somebody rob a bank or something just awful! Ha, ha, ha! You better hold in your imagination, Mamma! We-ell—”

Mr. Stodeport yawned, and put the cat out, and yawned, and wound the clock, and yawned, and went up to bed, still chuckling over his fancy about Willis having a mysterious effect on persons five or six blocks away.