Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 263, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1910 — The Parsimonious Cocktail [ARTICLE]

The Parsimonious Cocktail

By Edgar franklin.

Here is Something Better Than Savings-Banks or U. S. Bonds. Bet the habit.

Copyright, The Frank A. MUnsey Co. CHAPTER V{l. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RE-ACTION. The automobile whirred off up-town as in the old days. It felt good. Banks wondered exceedingly at the marked satisfaction he was experiencing. Not an hour ago, he remembered, he had been grudging the cost of the oil and the gasolene; Just low his entire being whs suffused with a profound happiness at the possession of an automobile! He was warm —warm all through. A spirit of unwonted generosity seemed to be upon him. Instead oil the parsimony that had been upon him al« his life, and more particularly since the night before, he wanted to spend money! Yes, he wanted to spend it, and if he couldn’t spend it he wanted to give it away! He was halt tempted to lean over and make his chauffeur a present of a few hundreds on the spot; he controlled the impulse only with a violent effort! He settled back and patted down the roll of money in his trousers. He had had considerable Inst night, he recalled, and there had been several cash payments that morning, and Harris ‘had brought in the regular monthly cash allowance for the house and Banks had forgotten to give it to the housekeeper. In the light of a streetlamp he pulled out. the roll and counted it. He laughed aioud, there >was twelve thousand dollars in cash there! Well, now to find a place to spend it! They swung into Broadway and started up-town. A minute or two and the curbman was opening the door for Banks—and Banks was handing* him a ten-dollar bill and bestowing a bright smile with it. The merest hint as to the address of that hotel would identify it; therefore, we will omit the merest hint. Suffice it that the place is one of thbse where you pay five times what a thing is worth and then renumerate the waiter, the bus, the captain, and the headwaiter for receiving it. Banks strolled in, with the music of a, dozen servile “good evenings” greeting his ears. He made for the main restaurant. A uniformed highwayman relieved him of his coat and hat and received the first installment of the evening’s tip. Another, in evening clothes, bowed aim into the apartment —and from the center a yell of delight went up! Banks started, smiling. There, at the biggest table in the room, were Tate and Seabright and Barkus, all smiling joyfully, all waving their hands to him! The strange, new warmth within hi n bubbled up- He went over with a rush and was thrust into the vacant chair. And Seabright cried exuberantly: •We're having a little meal here, Worden, We haven’t ordered yet. You do the hard work and give the order.” Banks grinned broadly as he picked UP the bill of fare. "What he asked involuntarily. • That duck, at five dollars a portion, seems to head the ifst,” said Tate happily. “We’ve ordered ten portions of that already, though. Dig up something new!” ■ Well, here, for ten dollars a portion, we can have—" , "Waiter!” vociferated Barkus, I

don’t know what it is, tout. Mr. Banks has found something at ten dollars a portion! Bring ten portions of it quick! ” Voices rose in wild suggestion. Banks, smiling, .discovered new dishes and roared them at the waiters who clustered around. Tate devoted himself to the wine-list and shrieked directions at something like a hundred dollars apiece! Seabright wandered, carefree, among the desserts with the iargest prices. He ordered all he saw. He devised new ones and had the chief cook brought up to estimate on them. And then, for a while, calm settled upon the scene. It was only for a while, however. Mr. Banks discovered, to his horror, that the table waß bar© of flowers; and he summoned the head-waiter with: “Got any more of those orchids we had here for the dinner two week 3 ago?” The head-waiter opened his eyes. “They—they cost five dollars apiece sir!" “Well', get in another hundred for this table!” thundered Mr. Banks. “Who the dickens ever heard of eating without orchids?” “But it may be impossible—” “You chase nut every bell-boy and clbrk in the establishment, aud it won’t be impossible. I—” “Here!” Bqjkus cose and waved a cluster of thousand-dollar bills. “We want orchids at every place! Get four hundred instead of one hundred, and have them put in four jars!” “And send out and get. cut-glass jars, too!” added Mr. Tate, as he wafted a hundred-dollar note across the table. The head-waiter gathered up the money and staggered out of sight. After which the fun began in real earnest! The meal, of course, was the starting point. It took just eleven waiters to deliver that meal and serve it properly. Justly, they should have had little hand trucks to bring iji the stuff, as is was they managed by lugging in hugh trays between two and three mem Things were served. More things were served. Still more things were served. And at about the time the third installment landed, the florist’s men began to totter in with orchids and the pr6prietor of the cut-glass house, roused from his evening’s rest for the purpose, entered with the bowls and jars.

It was all very pretty. There could be no two ways about that. It was also expensive. But wasn’t expensive enough, it occurred to Banks, as the wild warmth surged through him! “Say, a little diamond sunburst would be the thing for each of those clusters!” he announced blithely. The others cheered frahtically. Waiters were despatched, with new handfuls of bills. They returned shortly and arranged little diamond contrivances in the center of each cluster. The 1 diamond contrivances cost seven thousand dollars, and Seabright paid for them—and nobody could swear that his immense roll of money was in any way diminished! Whereupon, matters paling, Banks conceived a new idea as he placed one dollar s worth of duck between his teeth. “See here!” he cried. “It’s about time we financed that Consolidated Cold Water deal!” “That’s right!” said Seabright enthusiastically. “Let’s get that over with tonight, Worden! ” “And I’m in on that, too!” roared Tate cheerfully. “I come tight in on that also!” “And me, too!” added Barkus. "Say. Banks! Send for Qanforth, the fellow that’s running the concern! Get him here now and let’s have it over with tonight!” Banks scribbled something on a paper and summoned the waiter; and as the man left he remarked: ‘Tv* sent for Danforth. He’ll be here in a very little while, I imagine. Meanwhile, let’s get something more

expensive to eat.” Why dwell upon the hbrrid scene? The mad riot went on. Chefs were called and waiters, and finally the proprietor himself. Dishes were ordered and brought and consumed greedily—not because they were particularly appetizing, but because they cost too much. People stared and commented. It mattered not. New dishes, new wines were brought. Banks went to the length of giving the waiter—his waiter—twenty dollars as a preliminary tip. The others followed suit enthusiastically; and a minute or two later one might have seen a line of waiters standing on their heads in the pantry and singing something about “Harrigan.” Danforth arrived. When a man like Danforth has a proposition like Consolidated Cold Water to float, he is bound to arrive. He sat down with a dazed smile. He had expected something, but he had hardly expected all that seemed to be in sight. Banks came to the point gloriously. “Old man,” he cried, “we’ve been taking over this Consolidated Cold Water business and we've decided to float the whole business between ourselves. We’re going tq seal it up tonight, and tomorrow you can come around and get any IboSe change that’s due.” 1 „ “Thank you!” said Mr: Danforth pleasantly. “She’s going to take eleven millions for the start, isn’t she?” “Yes, Mr. Banks.” “Well, suppose the four of us sling in five hundred thousand apiece to • night? That’ll bind it?” ' ' ‘‘Two—two—two million dollars certainly will bind it!” gurgled Mr. Danforth. “She jgoes!” cried Banks as he reached for his check book, and the others followed suit. Pens scratched. Mr. Danforth smiled. “If you would just as soon make them out to me personally—Charles Danforth?” he suggested. “It will be handier.” “She goes again!” Banks puffed out from the side of his mouth which the cigar didn’t occupy, as he tore out the check and handed it over. “I wonder if I could have those certified tonight?” speculated Mr. Danforth. “Gimme a telephone, waiter!” said Mr. Banks.

He called up one of the day-and-night institutions and directed that certain checks payable to Charles Dan-, forth be certified on presentation within half an hour. He received, presumably, assurances that the job would be done in fitting and proper fashion. Whereupon Danforth vanished like a happy and beautiful dream and Banks leaned back and chuckled: “That’s a good night's work! That means a billion a year for all of us, for some time to come. That means—” He stopped. There seemed to be a commotion behind him, and the others were smiling broadly. He turned —and there was Dr. Rausenfeld, Just hurling aside six waiters and forcing his way to the table. He came to it with a powerful rush. He dragged back a chair and settled himself quiveringly. “Gentlemen!” he cried. “Well?” Tate sat back and laughed merrily. “Have some champagne, old man! ” “I cannot—cannot drink!” explained the doctor agitatedly. “I come to say to you something dreadful, gentlemen! It is that—that Seaman, my man with those light hair—you have antagonize him, Mr. Banks! You have tell him when you should ask him, Mr. Banks! You have attack him with the speech, Mr. Banks, and you have ask him for the treatment. And instead, because of the anger which is growing within him, he give you the antidote for the treatment' He make you spend money —not save it!" “Hooray for'Him!” yelled Banks. “And more tig that!” pursued the

doctor. “I have discovered—now, too late —to the extreme regret, that ray treatment reacts,—that It, turns itself around the way you say it,, and when, it wears off the man spends mo'i money as ever before!*’ “And that’s why we’re blowing the coin!" bubbled Barkus. “Three cheers for Doc!” chorused Tate wildly. “And if some of the other twentyfive which I have treat,” the discoverer of the spending antitoxin went on feverishly, “the same thing shall occur, then I shall have to leave the country. “ ‘ ' ' ' A roar went up from the doorway of the room. A crowd was there, and a crowd so boisterous that some* of the women in the restaurant shrank back instinctively. It was a wild crowd; it was a crowd of young men, and young men whose Yadeh were known all over town 'as those of the wildest of the wealthy wild. They streamed in, roaring lustily. Their hands seemed to be filled with bills of substantial denomination, and they were scattering them broadcast and cheering! Dr. Rausenfeld dropped back in his chair. “My patients—all my patient!" he gasped. “And she has reacted absolute!” The quartet at the table rose and Seered senselessly. The newcomer's pied the excellent doctor and took to cheering more frantically as the/ surrounded him. For a second or so he paused; then, with a wild yell, he burst through the lines and dashed out. “Forgif me!” he cried back. “Der steamer Wienerschnitzel sails at midnight, and by her I sail! Goodbye forever-—und forgif me!” He was gone! And the crowd started after him—not the crowd alone, but Banks and Tate and the others. They chased him out of the hotel. They saw him enter a cab; They flourished green and yellow bills and hired every cab in the neighborhood to chase him. Whereupon there started down Broadway the maddest. pursuit upon record! It was a short, crazy race. They went down the White Way for a dozen blocks —a line of a dozen cabs with every horse galloping his best. They switched west, them and made toward the water-front. They raced down the water-front with RauseKfeld still in the lead and gaining a little. They slid to a standstill at the pier. Rausenfeld was still ahead and galloping furiously on his own account. A bugle was blowing somewhere as the others hurtled after him; and it must have been the last call, for juqt as Rausenfeld gained the deck the gangplank was drawn in suddenly and the thirty gentlefnen on the wharf were left to shriek to their hearts’ content as the big boat began to warp out. They did it. They roared. They cheered. They rolled fifty-dollar bills into pellets and shied them at the dazed, lolling figure in the darkness by the rail. They produced gold pieces ** and hUried them at him, shouting the While —and, be it noted, that Dr. Rausenfeld gathered them all together and stood on them. And then, amid a frenzied chorus of) cheers, the steamer gained motion ahd drew out and—EPILOGUE. An epilogue is always a senseless sort of thing. Sometimes, however, like a good many other senseless things, it is necessary. Therefore this epilogue. Mr. Banks sat in his usual chair be fore the writing-table. The noonday sunshine streamed down on him. His> head ached. He felt rather odd. Indeed, in a word, he felt himself again Please keep these facts in mind. In the few words allowable,.you may not have gained an altogether clear idea of Mr. Banks’ character; suffice it that when he felt normal he felt odd. Harris sat in another chair, opposite. Harris was puzzled, not ap much be cause his employer was glowering, btt because the bills hadn’t been paid yesterday. Harris had been meditating on that all night long. “Harris!” said Banks. “Yes, sir?” said Harris. “Send for Jenkins!” Jenkins was . sent for. He came presently and winked at Harris. “How much money was in my clothes?” asked Banks. “I told you to look.” "Forty cents, sir!” said Jenkins. “Are you sure?” ’ “Yes, sir.” “Go, Jenkins,” said Mr. Banks. And that out of twelve thousand dollars! And that out of twelve thousand dollars! And that—

What had struck him last night, anyway? It certainly had not been drink because Banks was used to that sort of wine. Moreover, he had hardly touched it, atid — “Harris !* ! “Yes, sir!” '*». “See what Consolidated Cold Water is quoted at this morning!” “Consolidated—Cold—Water, sir?” The secretary gasped aloud. “Certainly. See what it’s quoted at. "But Consolidated Cold Water went into the hands of a receiver yesterday afternoon, sir!” said Harris. “It was. showtfup altogether. T&ere was nothing in it whatever and the man—Danforth —wasn’t that his name?—has been lost trpek of this morning completely!” / * ” Banks looked up, rather fishily. “Harris,” he saldi “go and call up the bank and see whether a check I ghvA Danforth yesterday has been paid. Go oft somewhere where I cant

hear you and call up!” Harris left. He was back within five minutes smiling. _ '- I "'W “Yes, sir,” he said. “The check was paid all right, and several othgrs with it, the teller said: That is, your check was paid in full by the Day-and-Night people, and some others were fixed so that Mr. Saiiforth could collect them this morning, first thing. He hai not turned up, but—” '* t! * Something in Banks’ face stopped him short. Harris faded into h'iS little chair and wondered. Banks didn’t wonder. He knew! He simply sat In his own chair and stared—and stared—and stated—and stared at the floor. Once in a while, you know, there are occasions wherein you can do nothing but sit and simply stare at the floor. This was one Of the occasions. (The End.)