I say I’ve never been able to tell how it happened, but here’s my guess: you’ve seen the same thing pulled pretty nearly every time you’ve seen one of these slapstick movie comedies. Let’s make it unanimous and say every time. There’s three comedians, the first one swings at the second one, the second one ducks it, and the third one gets it. Then reverse, and so on.
That fellow that stood between Jim and me didn’t see me: but somebody must have yelled at him; he ducked, and—bam! I got Jim—and believe me, it wasn’t any little love-pat.
Now, maybe that stuff is funny in the movies, but—well, put yourself in my place. Considering the way things were between Jim and me, I had a nice, easy little job explaining to Jim that when I biffed him on the brow I was trying to do him a service, didn’t I? I’ll say I did.
But I tackled it. Jim came through without many serious injuries after all; and that night I met him in the hotel and started in to square myself. He heard me through. And then he came back at me with this:
“Tell it to Sweeney! Do I look like a sucker? Trying to help me, eh? Well, believe me, you took a funny way of going at it! Look! There’s the place where you helped me—I’m wearing it yet. A little more of that kind of help and I’d have gone to a hospital.
“So you’re trying to square yourself, are you? Afraid I’ll give you the worst of it, huh? Don’t let that worry you—I’m not your kind. You’ll get all that’s coming to you, and that’s all you’ll get.
“Trying to help me! You acted like it. Tell it to Sweeney—d’ye get me? Tell it to Sweeney! And do it now. You’ve got one second to move along—before I bean you!”
Well, Jim was a good deal older man than me, and so of course I didn’t want to hurt him; and this hotel was a perfectly respectable place, and so I didn’t want to start anything; and so—well, I sort of drifted away from Jim. I could see it wasn’t any use, anyway.
And I’ll give Jim credit; during the rest of the season I got all that was coming to me from him—just as he said I would—and maybe a little bit more. I mean that in trying not to let any personal affairs come between him and his duty, Jim actually gave me something a little better than an even break. But that was Jim Riordan, all over; a white man and a square-shooter. I’ll say so.
But off the field—it was different. There were several times when Jim and I would have staged a first-class two-man brawl if there hadn’t been somebody handy by to step in between us.
Those were the times when I had started in, once more, to try and tell Jim how it happened. But it wasn’t a particle of use. First off he’d tell me again to tell this fellow Sweeney about it; and then—but never mind. Anyway, Jim certainly had it in for yours sincerely.
And so now no doubt you understand why dad got the way he did when Louise—that was her name, and she was Jim Riordan’s daughter—informed him that his “friend,” Mr. Bud Reynolds, had dropped in for a little call. All in all, it must have been quite a surprise to Jim—the same as it was to me.
Now they say that everything comes to a good waiter; and maybe there’s something in it. Anyway, on the afternoon of the day following Louise’s little surprise party for Jim and me, I hadn’t been holding down a certain street-corner, not far from where Jim Riordan lived, for more than a couple of hours or so, when along came Louise. She looked me right in the eye, and walked on without paying any more attention to me than as if I was the corner lamp-post or something.
Well, I wasn’t surprised at that. I had figured that maybe something of the sort might happen. Of course Jim had told her his side of the story. What surprised me was that I had the nerve to chase after her and insist on her listening to my side of the argument.
If anybody had told me twenty-four hours before that I would have the brass to chase up a young lady on the street that had just handed me the ice—or even if she hadn’t—I would have thought that he was crazy. But I’ll tell the world it makes a big difference—when your number’s called.
So that’s what I did; and I made good. I had to. After a while she believed me. As for the rest, she had seen me at the ballparks any number of times; and at the dance the night before, she had been pretty sure as to who I was even before we unmasked.
Jim Riordan was always pretty close- mouthed about his business affairs, and so she hadn’t heard about the trouble between Jim and me. And she knew that as umpires go, Jim was a good deal more popular with the players than the average. And probably that’s all that needs any explanation, except I might say that up to the time Louise pulled that little joke I didn’t know that Jim Riordan lived in this man’s town or where; and I certainly didn’t know that he had a daughter.
Somehow a fellow never seems to think of a baseball umpire as being human, and maybe having a wife and kids and all that sort of stuff, anyhow.
Well, anyway, that was the situation. And now, if this was one of those regular five-reelers, I would start in and stall for a ample of thousand feet, showing Louise’s and my troubles with the heavy father—of course that’s what these stage folks would call Jim—and all that. But I’m not going to do anything of the sort. I’m going to cut out all that stuff and crash right into the final spool, with just a word or so to sort of connect things up.
After that first—or second—time, Louise and I saw each other pretty frequently—when Jim wasn’t looking. I’m not saying that I was stuck on this gumshoe business, but there didn’t seem to be any way out of it; and so what else could we do?
Of course we had to see each other. A month—six weeks—passed, and things were still just the same. I lay awake nights and stayed awake days trying to dope out some way of squaring myself with Jim Riordan. Nothing doing. And get this. I would never hear that old wedding march, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and know that it was meant for me, until Jim was squared. I got that straight from Louise—and she meant it.
It was a deadlock. Then:
One night I took Louise to a show, and afterwards we went to a restaurant for a bite to eat. The name of the place was Delgado’s.
The waiter had brought our things and gone away again, when I happened to glance across the room, and—
“Look who’s here!” I said to Louise, and showed her which way to look.
“Dad!” she gasped.
“Right—the very first time,” I said.
It looked like we were up against it. Jim was supposed to be out of town, and Louise had put up some sort of an excuse to her mother, and—but what’s the use of going into all that? Anyway, there we were—and there was Jim! And he wasn’t sitting very far from us, either. He must have come back unexpectedly—unexpectedly is right—on a late train, and dropped in there for a bite or two before going home.
“What shall we do?” asked Louise.
There was just one chance. If we didn’t move, and Jim didn’t get too curious about his neighbors, we might get away with it yet, because our table was partly concealed from Jim by one of a row of columns that ran down the center of the room. So I said:
“Sit tight—and keep your nerve.”
We hunched in back of that pillar the best way we could, and sat tight. Neither of us ate anything. I had felt pretty hungry when we came in, but now I seemed to have lost my appetite somehow.
But Jim didn’t appear to be troubled that way at all. Did I say that Jim had probably dropped in for a bite or two before going home? I take it back. After a while it began to look as if he had dropped in for a meal or two, and probably two.
But everything comes to an end, and finally, when Louise looked as if she was