“Look sick,” Craddock commented. “Been drinking?”
“You know I don’t drink.”
“Smoking too much, perhaps. How are your nerves?”
“Thay! I’m all right, I thaid!”
“It’s all right to try to influence yourself that way, Tham, and I admire a man who won’t give up; but when a man is really sick, he’d better call a doctor.”
“Well, my goodneth,” Tham cried. “I ain’t thick! Ith everybody in thith town crathy?”
“Run down at the heels, too,” Craddock commented. “Business must have been bad with you lately. You wouldn’t be a bad-looking chap, Tham, if you’d spruce up a bit. But some men don’t know how to dress.”
“Ith that tho?”
“Well, take care of yourself, Tham, old boy. I’ve got a little business on now, but I’ll have my eye on you a little later. I’ll get you yet, old-timer!”
Detective Craddock hurried on down the street. Thubway Tham stood at the curb and watched the seething traffic without seeing it. Was he sick? Did he look pale?
He stepped back to a show window and looked at his reflection there.
“I am all right,” he stubbornly declared again. “I juth need a thave and a hair cut and a mathage. Thith thuit ith an old one, too. I need thome new thenery!”
Then and there, in some peculiar manner and without being heralded, twin ideas were born in the brain of Thubway Tham. The first was that if a man got seedy as to clothes and general appearance, that condition was reflected in his thoughts and manner. So, to be full of “pep,” and alive to the experiences of the moment, a man should dress well and force himself to respect himself, thus forcing other folk to do the same.
The second idea was that Nifty Noel enjoyed a reputation for sartorial display that should be dimmed and put in the background.
“He ith no better lookin’ than I am,” Thubway Tham declared to himself. “The thilly ath thinkth he ith the only man that can wear clothe.”
Tham chuckled as he walked on up the street, slowly, allowing the twin ideas to expand. He had ample funds, and he really needed clothes. Why not play a double game? Why not purchase clothing that would influence his disposition and health, and at the same time dim the luster of Nifty Noel, dude of New York’s underworld?
“It would be a good thtunt,” Thubway Tham decided, after due reflection. “It ith a long time thinthe I have given anybody a thock. It thall be done!”
Tham walked briskly now, and stopped to look in at the windows of establishments that catered to gentlemen who desired to wear clothing that would attract attention. Presently he turned and walked back, and went into a store he had noticed, one noted for its window displays. A salesman took Tham in charge, and there followed a lengthy conversation.
The salesman was an artist in his line, without doubt. He made suggestions—some of them with his hand before his lips to hide a smile—and Thubway Tham accepted the majority of the suggestions as excellent.
Finally, Thubway Tham departed from the establishment with several large bundles beneath his arms, and left behind a sum of money that substantially increased the salesman’s totals for the week.
II.
For business reasons, Thubway Tham lived in a lodging house that was conducted by a reformed convict, and where the other tenants were gentlemen liable at any time to a visit from the police. The rooms were small and not over-clean, the hallways were dark, the stairs were rickety.
The landlord, who really operated quite a decent place of its kind, had a habit of sitting behind the battered desk in the office, from where he could watch every one who entered or left the place. It was his habit, too, to speak to men of his ilk of the good old days when he had been an active criminal, the burden of his song being that criminals of the present day were a ladylike brood who feared to crack a skull or carry a gun.
Thubway Tham, having listened to these recitals often, had become a sort of pet of the landlord’s. He always greeted Thubway Tham with a smile and a wave of his hand, and had been known, upon two occasions, to give Tham a cigar.
It was no more than natural, then, that the landlord was waiting to see Tham leave the place the following morning. Tham was regular—he generally went down the stairs and out for his breakfast at the same hour.
The landlord glanced at the clock on the morning after Tham made his purchases, and wondered why Tham did not put in an appearance; it was fifteen minutes past the hour. For an instant he had a fleeting thought that Tham might be ill and confined to his bed, but he decided to wait half an hour longer before climbing the rickety stairs to ascertain whether that was the truth.
And then he blinked his eyes and got up slowly from his chair, his hand reaching mechanically in a drawer of the desk, where he kept an old revolver about which he had woven many fanciful tales. Down the rickety stairs was coming a man that the landlord felt sure he never had seen before.
Nifty Noel in all his glory never had been arrayed like this. The landlord saw, first, a suit of clothes that fairly shrieked its presence. The pattern, to say the least, had not been designed with a thought toward modesty. The style was more than ultra-fashionable.
Then there was a shirt that made Joseph’s coat a thing of drab inconspicuousness. There were yellow gloves and spats to match, and a hat with a yellow ribbon for a band. This being who descended the rickety stairs also carried a stick like a willow wand.
The landlord blinked his eyes again and decided to allow the gun to remain in the desk and resort to his fists. He opened and closed his hands, shot out his lower jaw, gritted his teeth, and narrowed his eyes.
“Say, you!” he called in stentorian tones.
The being turned to face him, and the landlord collapsed.
“Thay it,” Thubway Tham advised. “I wath thinkin’ of thomethin’ and didn’t mean to path without thpeakin’.”
“Is—is that you, Tham?”
“It thertainly ith! Did you think it wath a cop?”
“No cop would dare appear at headquarters dressed like that, Tham,” the landlord said, his tone sorrowful. “I didn’t think it of you, Tham. Here I’ve been your close friend, and all that, and let everybody know it—”
“What theemth to be the matter?” Tham wanted to know.
“You must have been workin’ too hard, Tham, and it’s touched your brain. You ain’t goin’ insane with age, are you?”
“Thay!”
“Is that a shirt, Tham?”
“Thome thirt!”
“I’ll say it is. I’ll remark that it certainly, without doubt, all others to the contrary, is some shirt. Looks like it had been made out of scraps!”
“Thay! I paid good coin for that thirt.”
“Have those gloves faded, Tham, or is that their natural color? My eyes ain’t as good as they were once, and I’ve only got one at that; but them gloves—”
“Your act ith good,” Tham commented.
“And the band around your hat is lemon, Tham—lemon! It’s as yellow as a stool pigeon, Tham! To think I have lived to see this. And everybody in this end of town knows that you’re a friend of mine. What have I ever done to you, Tham, that you should bring my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave?”
“I’ll bring them to the grave, all right, if you don’t thtop your nonthenthe,” Tham declared. “Ith it thomethin’ awful if a man dretheth up now and