A Cool Million (15 page)

Laughing heartily, the two
millionaires move along the street. In their way lie the four dead bodies and
they almost trip over them. They exit cursing the street cleaning department
for its negligence.

The “Chamber of American Horrors,
Animate and Inanimate
Hideosities
,” reached Detroit
about a month after the two friends had joined it. It was while they were
playing there that
Lem
questioned Mr. Whipple about
the show. He was especially disturbed by the scene in which the millionaires
stepped on the dead children.

“In the first place,” Mr. Whipple
said, in reply to
Lem’s
questions, “the grandmother
didn’t have to buy the bonds unless she wanted to. Secondly, the whole piece is
made ridiculous by the fact that no one can die in the streets. The authorities
won’t stand for it.”

“But,” said
Lem
, “I thought you were against the capitalists?”

“Not all capitalists,” answered
Shagpoke
. “The
distinc
tion
must be made between bad capitalists and good
capitalists, between the parasites and the creators. I am against the
parasitical international bankers, but not the creative American capitalists,
like Henry Ford for example.”

“Are not capitalists who step on the
faces of dead children bad?”

“Even if they are,” replied
Shagpoke
, “it is very wrong to show the public scenes of
that sort. I object to them because they tend to foment bad feeling between the
classes.”

“I see,” said
Lem
.

“What I am getting at,” Mr. Whipple
went on, “is that Capital and Labor must be taught to work together for the
general good of the country. Both must be made to drop the materialistic
struggle for higher wages on the one hand and bigger profits on the other. Both
must be made to realize that the only struggle worthy of Americans is the
idealistic one of their country against its enemies, England, Japan, Russia,
Rome and Jerusalem. Always remember, my boy, that class war is civil war, and
will destroy us.”

“Shouldn’t we then try to dissuade
Mr.
Snodgrasse
from continuing with his show?” asked
Lem
innocently.

“No,” replied
Shagpoke
.
“If we try to he will merely get rid of us. Rather must we bide our time until
a good opportunity presents itself, then denounce him for what he is, and his
show likewise. Here, in Detroit, there are too many Jews, Catholics and members
of unions. Unless I am greatly mistaken, however, we will shortly turn south.
When we get to some really American town, we will act.”

Mr. Whipple was right in his
surmise. After playing a few more Midwestern cities,
Snodgrasse
headed his company south along the Mississippi River, finally arriving in the
town of Beulah for a one-night stand.

“Now is the time for us to act,”
announced Mr. Whipple in a hoarse whisper to
Lem
,
when he had obtained a good look at the inhabitants of Beulah. “Follow me.”

Our hero accompanied
Shagpoke
to the town barber shop, which was run by one
Keely
Jefferson, a fervent Southerner of the old school.
Mr. Whipple took the master barber to one side. After a whispered colloquy, he
agreed to arrange a meeting of the town’s citizens for
Shagpoke
to address.

By five o’clock that same evening,
all the inhabitants of Beulah who were not colored, Jewish or Catholic
assembled under a famous tree from
whose
every branch
a Negro had dangled at one time or other. They stood together, almost a
thousand strong, drinking Coca-Colas and joking with their friends. Although
every third citizen carried either a rope or a gun, their cheerful manner
belied the seriousness of the occasion.

Mr. Jefferson mounted a box to
introduce Mr. Whipple.

“Fellow townsmen, Southerners,
Protestants, Americans,” he began. “You have been called here to listen to the
words of
Shagpoke
Whipple, one of the few Yanks whom
we of the South can trust and respect. He
ain’t
no
nigger-lover, he don’t give a damn for Jewish culture,
and he knows the fine Italian hand of the Pope when he sees it. Mr. Whipple…”

Shagpoke
mounted the box which Mr. Jefferson vacated and waited for the cheering to
subside. He began by placing his hand on his heart. “I love the South,” he
announced. “I love her because her women are beautiful and chaste, her men
brave and gallant, and her fields warm and fruitful. But there is one thing
that I love more than the South…my country, these United States.”

The cheers which greeted this avowal
were even wilder and hoarser than those that had gone before it. Mr. Whipple
held up his hand for silence, but it was fully five minutes before his audience
would let him continue.

“Thank you,” he cried happily, much
moved by the enthusiasm of his hearers. “I know that your shouts rise from the
bottom of your honest, fearless hearts. And I am grateful because I also know
that you are cheering, not me, but the land we love so well.

“However, this is not a time or
place for flowery
speeches,
this is a time for action.
There is an enemy in our midst,
who
, by boring from
within, undermines our institutions and threatens our freedom. Neither hot lead
nor cold steel
are
his weapons, but insidious
propaganda. He strives by it to set brother against brother, those who have not
against those who have.

“You stand here now, under this
heroic tree, like the free men that you are, but tomorrow you will become the
slaves of Socialists and Bolsheviks. Your sweethearts and wives will become the
common property of foreigners to maul and mouth at their leisure. Your shops
will be torn from you and you will be driven from your farms. In return you
will be thrown a stinking, slave’s crust with Russian labels.

“Is the spirit of Jubal Early and
Francis Marion then so dead that you can only crouch and howl like hound dogs?
Have you forgotten Jefferson Davis?

“No?

“Then let those of you who remember
your ancestors strike down
Sylvanus
Snodgrasse
, that foul conspirator, that viper in the bosom
of the body politic. Let those…”

Before Mr. Whipple had quite
finished his little talk, the crowd ran off in all directions, shouting “Lynch
him! Lynch him!” although
a good three-quarters
of its
members did not know whom it was they were supposed to lynch. This fact did not
bother them, however. They considered their lack of knowledge an advantage
rather than a hindrance, for it gave them a great deal of leeway in their
choice of a victim.

Those of the mob who were better
informed made for the opera house where the “Chamber of American Horrors” was
quartered.
Snodgrasse
, however, was nowhere to be
found. He had been warned and had taken to his heels. Feeling that they ought
to hang somebody, the crowd put a rope around Jake Raven’s neck because of his
dark complexion. They then fired the building.

Another section of
Shagpoke’s
audience, made up mostly of older men, had
somehow gotten the impression that the South had again seceded from the Union.
Perhaps this had come about through their hearing
Shagpoke
mention the names of Jubal Early, Francis Marion and Jefferson Davis. They ran
up the Confederate flag on the courthouse pole, and prepared to die in its
defense.

Other, more practical-minded
citizens proceeded to rob the bank and loot the principal stores, and to free
all their relatives who had the misfortune to be in jail.

As time went on, the riot grew more
general in character. Barricades were thrown up in the streets. The heads of
Negroes were paraded on poles. A Jewish drummer was nailed to the door of his
hotel room. The housekeeper of the local Catholic priest was raped.

Lem
lost
track of Mr. Whipple when the meeting broke up, and was unable to find him
again although he searched everywhere. As he wandered around, he was shot at
several times, and it was only by the greatest of good luck that he succeeded
in escaping with his life.

He managed this by walking to the
nearest town that had a depot and there taking the first train bound northeast
Unfortunately
, all his money had been lost in the opera
house fire and he was unable to pay for a ticket. The conductor, however, was a
good-natured man. Seeing that the lad had only one leg, he waited until the
train slowed down at a curve before throwing him off.

It was only a matter of twenty miles
or so to the nearest highway, and
Lem
contrived to
hobble there before dawn. Once on the highway, he was able to beg rides all the
way to New York City, arriving there some ten weeks later.

Times had grown exceedingly hard
with the inhabitants of that once prosperous metropolis and
Lem’s
ragged, emaciated appearance caused no adverse comment. He was able to submerge
himself in the great army of unemployed.

Our hero differed from most of that
army in several ways, however. For one thing, he bathed regularly. Each morning
he took a cold plunge in the Central Park
lake
on
whose shores he was living in a piano crate. Also, he visited daily all the
employment agencies that were still open, refusing to be discouraged or grow
bitter and become a carping critic of things as they are.

One day, when he timidly opened the
door of the “Golden Gates Employment Bureau,” he was greeted with a welcoming
smile instead of the usual jeers and curses.

“My boy,” exclaimed Mr. Gates, the
proprietor, “we have obtained a position for you.”

At this news, tears welled up in
Lem’s
good eye and his throat was so choked with emotion
that he could not speak.

Mr. Gates was surprised and nettled
by the lad’s silence, not realizing its cause. “It’s the opportunity of a
lifetime,” he said chidingly. “You have heard of course of the great team of
Riley and Robbins. They’re billed wherever they play as ‘Fifteen Minute’s of
Furious Fun with Belly
Laffs
Galore.’ Well, Moe Riley
is an old friend of mine. He came in here this morning and asked me to get him
a `stooge’ for his act. He wanted a one-eyed man, and the minute he said that,
I thought of you.”

By now
Lem
had gained sufficient control over himself to thank Mr. Gates, and he did so
profusely.

“You almost didn’t get the job,” Mr.
Gates went on, when he had had enough of the mutilated boy’s gratitude. “There
was a guy in here who heard Moe Riley talking to me, and we had some time
preventing him from poking out one of his eyes so that he could qualify for the
job. We had to call a cop.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” said
Lem
sadly.

“But I. told Riley that you also had
a wooden leg, wore a toupee and store teeth, and he wouldn’t think of hiring
anybody but you.”

When our hero reported to the Bijou
Theater, where Riley and Robbins were playing, he was stopped at the stage door
by the watchman, who was suspicious of his tattered clothes. He insisted on
getting in, and the watchman finally agreed to take a message to the comedians.
Soon afterwards, he was shown to their dressing room.

Lein
stood
in the doorway, fumbling with the piece of soiled cloth that served him as a
cap, until the gales of laughter with which Riley and Robbins had greeted him
subsided. Fortunately, it never struck the poor lad that he was the object of
their merriment or he might have fled.

To be perfectly just, from a certain
point of view, not a very civilized one it must be admitted, there was much to
laugh at in our hero’s appearance. Instead of merely having no hair like a man
prematurely bald, the gray bone of his skull showed plainly where he had been
scalped by Chief
Satinpenny
. Then, too, his wooden
leg had been carved with initials, twined hearts and other innocent insignia by
mischievous boys.

“You’re a wow!” exclaimed the two
comics in the argot of their profession. “You’re a riot! You’ll blow them out
of the back of the house. Boy, oh boy,
wait
till the
pus-pockets and fleapits get a load of you.”

Although
Lem
did not understand their language, he was made exceedingly happy by the evident
satisfaction he gave his employers. He thanked them effusively.

“Your salary will be twelve dollars
a week,” said Riley, who was the businessman of the team. “We wish we could pay
you more, for you’re worth more, but these are hard times in the theater.”

Lem
accepted without quibbling and they began at once to rehearse him. His role was
a simple one, with no spoken lines, and he was soon perfect in it. He made his
debut on the stage that same night. When the curtain went up, he was discovered
standing between the two comics and facing the audience. He was dressed in an
old Prince Albert, many times too large for him, and his expression was one of
extreme sobriety and dignity. At his feet was a large box the contents of which
could not be seen by the audience.