Page:Roads of Destiny (1909).djvu/349

 hammered brass Prince Albert and the oroide gold pants and the amalgamated copper hat, that carried the combination meat-axe, ice-pick, and liberty-pole, and used to stand on the first landing as you go up to the Little Rindslosh?”

“Why, yes,” said I “The halberdier. I never noticed him particularly. I remember I thought he was only a suit of armour. He had a perfect poise.”

“He had more than that,” said Eighteen. “He was me friend. He was an advertisement. The boss hired him to stand on the stairs for a kind of scenery to show there was something doing in the has-been line upstairs. What did you call him—a what kind of a beer?”

“A halberdier,” said I. “That was an ancient man-at-arms of many hundred years ago.”

“Some mistake,” said Eighteen. “This one was n’t that old. He wasn’t over twenty-three or four.

“It was the boss’s idea, rigging a man up in an antebellum suit of tinware and standing him on the landing of the slosh. He bought the goods at a Fourth Avenue antique store, and hung a sign out: “Able-bodied hal—halberdier wanted. Costume furnished.”

“The same morning a young man with wrecked good clothes and a hungry look comes in, bringing the sign with him. I was filling the mustard-pots at my station.

“‘I’m it,’ says he, ‘whatever it is. But I never halberdiered in a restaurant. Put me on. Is it a masquerade?”

“‘I hear talk in the kitchen of a fishball,’ says I.

“‘Bully for you, Eighteen,’ says he. ‘You and I’ll get on. Show me the boss’s desk.’