Pepper/The Ivory Hunters

HE June day was at its fairest and also, if the truth be told, its hottest. John Phillips, whose dignity was such that no one ever called him Jack, sprawled on the window-seat of his room in Westmorly, thinking doggedly of frozen ice-packs at the Poles, of the snow-clad steppes of Siberia, and of tall, tinkling glasses, shining with white mint. Across the room Ted Sewall, who was so jovial that no one ever addressed him as Theodore, smoked a particularly venomous new pipe, and thought of romance and adventure and knighthood and Billie Burke. At the center-table, idly toying with a little heap of colored chips, sat J. P. McHenry, thinking how he would have saved thirty-nine dollars if he hadn't been so confident in the efficacy of three aces and a pair of kings. They were all sophomores, and they were all very hot and uncomfortable.

Phillips readjusted himself more carefully to the cushions, and yawned with the utter frankness of youth in repose.

"I wish—I—had a drink!" he remarked, patting his mouth tenderly.

"Gee! Women are funny people," said Sewall, under the impression that he had contributed something original to the conversation.

"Just found it out?" inquired Pepper shortly. Now about this game—"

It was a cash game, Pepper," Phillips reminded him. "You made that rule yourself last fall. Cash in twenty-four hours: twenty to me, and eighteen to Ted; nineteen to Ted."

"This girl," mused Sewall, "is funny even for a Wellesley girl. She collects things." McHenry looked up, and instantly returned to the pile of chips.

"Autographs, bugs, or postage stamps?" asked Phillips. "I knew one once who was daffy over butterflies. It was positively sickening to listen to her talk."

"No; she s a very unusual girl. She's gathering up little ivory ornaments to set around in a cabinet, you know. She showed me cats and dogs and elephants and all sorts of sickly little microbes. And like a plain idiot, I said I'd get her something to add to the outfit. What do you suppose she wants?"

"An ivory skull," said Phillips, with disconcerting promptness.

Sewall gasped: "Why—why, how did you know?"

"Simplest thing in the world," grinned Phillips. "I didn't know who you meant until you got as far as the collection. It's that little Kentuckian, isn't it? Well, the last time I went out there to call she asked me if I knew where she could find an ivory skull. I just put two and two together."

"Sweet little fancy, isn't it? I'm hanged if I believe in women's colleges anyway."

"I think," said McHenry, "you're darned lucky she isn't collecting pearl necklaces, if you want to know."

"Well, I had to say something, so I said I'd find one of the fool things for her; and she said of course I was joking, so of course I said I wasn't. Now I've got to go in town and buy one. Want to come along?"

Phillips glanced out at the sun-baked vista of Arrow Street, and hesitated.

"The answer is, No," stated McHenry.

"Well, you come in anyway, John. I know it looks hot, but you think of the cool, cool game room of the Touraine, and the cool, cool theater where there's a sprightly show this afternoon at the witching hour of about ten minutes late. We'll buy the fool skull, and then we'll go to the Touraine and drink cooling drafts, and then we'll go and sneer at the actors. Are you with me?"

"As a matter of fact, Ted, I was thinking of chasing up one of those skulls myself."

"Oh, you were?"

"I sure was. I wonder how much they cost?"

"Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty dollars' opined McHenry, building a leaning tower of patriotically hued chips.

"Ouch!"

"I was planning to buy mine out of what Pepper owes me," said Sewall. "When are you coming across, Pep?" "To-morrow morning."

"I'll have mine sent out to-morrow C. O. D. That is, if you're sure you'll pay up then."

"I'll settle," agreed McHenry, smiling down at the leaning tower. "Only I think it's pretty middling idiotic for both of you fellows to start out after the same thing. Only one of you can get there first. Why don't you match for it?"

"Well—" said Phillips.

"Well—" said Sewall.

"I promised her I'd make a try for it—"

"I said I'd bring one out to-morrow night," said Sewall.

McHenry shrugged his shoulders.

"I see," he conceded joyously. "Lots of romance in this deal, isn't there? Well, let's make it a sporting proposition. I'll give you two to one."

They shook their heads simultaneously.

"No, but John's so blamed slow that I'll give him an hour's start, and bet I'll beat him to it."

"Let me in on that, too," begged Pepper. "I've got to get that thirty-nine back some way."

"Not a chance, Pep."

"This is my last offer," he warned them. "You've got to give me a chance to get back at you, or else I'll do it anyway."

"I'm going in now," declared Sewall, completely ignoring McHenry. "I happen to want to make a hit with that Wellesley person, and this looks like a good way to do it. I'm sorry for you, John, because when I show up with the trophy she'll think you're a pretty languid sort of detective."

"Joke away, brave boy, joke away," said Phillips kindly; and as soon as Sewall had set out to take a trolley car in Harvard Square, he hurried to the neighboring garage and chartered a taxicab. In the meantime McHenry sat at the table and continued to grin. It began to appear as though he wouldn't lose his thirty-nine dollars after all!

Stepping briskly from the car at Park Street, Sewall strolled into a famous jeweler's, where he expected to find the best assortment of ivory skulls in all the city. The salesman, however, shook his head. "Never heard of one," he responded. "You'd better try the department stores."

"I'll try Bigelow's," said Sewall scathingly. "This joint was never up-to-date, anyway."

He went down the heated cañon of the next street, and stated his errand to a sympathetic clerk.

"No, we haven't any ivory skulls," said the man, "but we have several animals. Perhaps you'd care to look at them?"

"I wouldn't, thank you," retorted Sewall, and he retraced his steps to Washington Street with the consciousness that it was certainly growing hotter. He proceeded with somewhat less jauntiness and assurance to the next shop, where the manager apologized for the hiatus in ivory goods, and sent him to the Arts and Crafts. He toiled manfully up the steep hill to the tiny showroom near the State House, only to receive the sincere regrets of the Arts and Crafts, who offered to make the trinket to order in six weeks at a cost of forty-one dollars and a quarter.

"Much obliged," said Sewall, "but I couldn't wait even as long as six days."

Yes, the sun was certainly growing warmer. Sewall's collar was rapidly liquefying, and little beads of perspiration stood out on his resolute countenance, but he advanced firmly against the battle-line of the department stores, and picked out the biggest of them for his initial attempt. A floor-walker sent him to the second floor front; and a haughty cynic in a lace shirt-waist sent him back to the ground floor rear. At length a kindly errand boy directed him to an obscure comer where some delicacies in carved ivory rested under glass, awaiting esoteric purchasers.

"Good morning," said Sewall bravely. "I want a small ivory skull."

"Well," soothed the presiding expert, "I don't know that I've got one. The—the ivory carvers struck last fall. But wouldn't you like to see some of the animals? The bears are very charming. Fourteen ninety-eight for the largest."

"A skull was what I wanted," said Sewall.

"I did have some elephants. Perhaps you'd care to look over the Swiss bears while I'm hunting."

"Hunt your blamedest!" commanded Sewall, shifting his weight wearily. He was absent-mindedly fingering the carved animals when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, and turned to behold Phillips, much wilted as to linen, and flushed as to face.

"Hello, John. Got him yet?"

"Not yet. I was up in the jewelery department, and they sent me down here. Gk)t yours?"

"I'm sorry," reported the salesman at that moment. "The skulls are out of stock, but these bears—"

"Good morning," said Sewall, with scant courtesy.

"Good night!" said Phillips. They walked away together; they neared the revolving doors; and they heard a gentle voice behind them.

"I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but would you mind stepping into the manager's room for a moment?"

"I would," said Phillips belligerently, "unless he's got better air in there than he has out here."

"I hope you won't cause me any unnecessary trouble," volunteered the store detective.

"Trouble!" repeated Phillips, feeling his underwear cleave stickily to his ribs. "Trouble! Why, I don't see where there's any trouble coming! Do you?" Already a circle of avid bargain hunters was forming around them. Wide eyes surveyed them curiously—whispers penetrated the armor of their modesty—some one in the background said very distinctly, ''"Shoplifters!" ''

"Perhaps we'd better trot along with him," suggested Sewall apprehensively. "It's a mistake somewhere—but look at this crowd! I'm hanged if I want to get into a mess—"

"Not by a darned sight!" flashed Phillips. "See here, you! My name's John Phillips, and I live at Westmorly Court, Cambridge. If the manager's so blithering anxious to see me, he can come out there and see me!" The crowd pressed closer—the crowd is always on the side of the law when there's any fun in it—and trade languished in the vicinity as merchandizers and customers alike flocked to join the swelling, sweltering circle.

"Search 'em!" advised a courageous little hundred-pound book-keeper well out of reach.

"They're shoplifters!"

"Don't they look depraved!"

"Git off my toes! I wanna see, too—"

"Oh, mercy! They're a-going to fight!"

"What hangdog faces!"

"Ooooh! Ain't they rough lookin'—"

"You come along with me," ordered the store detective, putting out his hand.

"We'd better compromise' said Sewall hastily.

"You lay that paw on me just once, and I'll change your map for you!" promised Phillips, backing against the ribbon-counter. He had lost his temper completely; and his hat felt like a fireless cooker on his head. He saw red—it was the detective's hair—and he focussed on it steadily. The crowd drew in its breath sharply, when a tall, important-looking man came shouldering his way through the press, and arrived just in time to prevent justifiable homicide.

"Mr. Kelly!" he said. "Mr. Kelly!"

"Yes, sir."

The man lowered his voice to a harsh whisper.

"You get this mob away from here somehow! It's an asinine blunder! The clerk found the elephant under the counter! Break up this crowd somehow! And if any apology can be made to these gentlemen—"

Phillips eyed him evenly, and turned his back. "Get out of my way!" he said deliberately to the bargain-hunters.

Once on the sidewalk—a button ripped from his coat, his shirt clinging to his skin, his collar hopelessly gone, and his tie spotted where the color had begun to run, he paused long enough to tender Sewall a lingering gaze of appraisal.

"You shouldn't be so cocky," Sewall explained in the tone of a philosopher. "We might have got into a whale of a mess, and it doesn't pay."

"Across the street," stated Phillips, "I seem to see a portal which beckons to me, and says, 'What's yours?'"

"Even now I'll bet I beat you to it," said Sewall, skipping over the car-tracks. "Gee! Women are funny people!"

"Funnier than that," agreed the football man, as the swinging doors closed behind them.

The bartender was a man of parts. He shook things in a frosted cooler until the joy of life returned, and the adventurers began to realize that sufficient unto the day is the refreshment thereof. They each took two long, greenish, satisfying drafts, and returned to the trail of the miniature ivory skull, but before they parted, they stopped at a haberdasher's and bought clean collars.

At one o'clock the thermometer in the kiosk on the Common registered ninety in the shade. John Phillips, however, was very rarely in the shade. He had applied in vain at all the department stores, and was checking off the curio shops as rapidly as he could. Carved ivory animals, skeletons, birds and reptiles he found in great profusion, but regardless of the demand for skulls, the supply was strictly a minus quantity.

"Skulls!" said Phillips to himself. "If she wants a genuine, life-sized, solid ivory skull, why in thunder didn't she simply tell me to come out and call on her?"

It was already matinée time, but instead of dropping into a convenient theater to sneer at the actors, he chartered another taxicab, and headed for the Old Curiosity Shop. First, however, he stopped at a haberdasher's, and bought another clean collar.

"I want a miniature ivory skull," he said to the antiquarian.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I haven't one in the place. Would anything else in ivory do? Here are some quaint novelties. Take this Swiss bear, for instance; carved all by hand, and very tasty."

"Pardon me," observed Phillips, mopping his face with a very damp handkerchief. "I thought I mentioned a skull?"

"Why, yes—but these are bears—"

Scorning the Swiss bears, he left. At the door he ran headlong into the arms of Ted Sewall, who brightened wearily at sight of him.

"Nothing doing," Phillips told him. "But you wouldn't be here if you'd found one!"

"No. Had anything to eat?"

"Sandwich." They were on the sidewalk; where a buxom young woman peered intently at Phillips, and suddenly flung herself into his arms.

"Oh, Spike, Spike!" she sobbed, almost strangling him with the vehemence of her affection. "Oh, Spike! Where have you been this week?"

"For the love of Mike!" roared Phillips, struggling to disengage himself.

The young woman wept bitterly, withdrew a step to gaze into his eyes, and clutched him again. Sewall was paralyzed and impotent.

"Oh, I've looked for you everywhere!" she cried. "Spike, darling, how could you be so cruel!"

"Good Lord!" howled Sewall, coming to his senses. "Here's another crowd coming!"

They broke away from the uncomforted lady and bounced into the waiting taxicab.

"Drive like the devil—anywhere!" bawled Phillips, while still on the wing.

The taxi drew out from the curb, gathered speed, and left the Old Curiosity Shop and the lonely lady far in its wake. As Phillips essayed to arrange his tumbled attire he suddenly discovered that his watch was missing, and he announced the fact in terse but vivid terms. Some of them were hitherto unpublished. "Not much use going back," said Sewall feebly. "Gee! This is a great little tea-party! I smelled something like that when she first nailed you."

"We'll stop at Headquarters," said Phillips grimly. "No use going back there. Christmas! It was only a ten-dollar watch, but gee! how I do hate to be stung! And by an old gag like that, too! Only I was so surprised I never thought of anything but getting away." "Here's a Japanese joint," burst out Sewall. "I saw it first"

"Stop the car!" shrieked Phillips. "The deuce you did!"

Side by side they made the door, and in unison they demanded an ivory skull.

The Japanese was obliging. He tried to direct his remarks half-way between them, and ventured to suggest that although he didn't have any ivory skulls, nevertheless he was willing to sell them a carved Swiss bear in imitation ivory. He further befriended them by the intimation that pawn-shops in Castle Square cater to the cosmopolitan trade.

"Your Wellesley friend is a great little joker," observed Phillips, but he swabbed his face thoroughly, and gave instructions to his chauffeur. Sewall hesitated in the offing.

"Say, John," he remarked diffidently, "it's getting hotter and hotter all the time. There's no need of our going over the same ground, you know. Let's compromise."

"You mean that you'll tell me where you've been if I tell you where I've been? It's a bargain," said Phillips promptly. "Well, I've covered the antique shops from A to Z."

"So have I. And the jewelers, and the department stores."

"Yes, and the Jap places and the novelty joints."

"Did you go down Charles Street? Holy smoke! Wasn't it hot?"

"Hotter than bye-and-bye," agreed Phillips willingly. "I've bought four collars already to-day, and I'll bet I've taken off ten pounds."

"Three collars and a clean shirt," said Sewall. "Well—we still have the pawnshops."

"Bet I beat you to it," offered Phillips, with determination writ large upon his moist features.

"Well, give me a lift to Castle Square, anyhow, will you?" Phillips pondered. "I'll tell you what I'll do. We'll go around together, and stop everywhere we think there's a chance. And we'll take turns asking. I've got enough of this solitaire sleuthing on a hot day to last me several centuries."

"The only regret I have," said Sewall, clambering into the taxi, "is that we couldn't ring Pepper McHenry in on this. I'd give a lot to get him humping around town on a wild-goose chase. Serve him right. Do you suppose—do you suppose we could get him started on this thing, John? He's put it over on us so many times that I'd darned well like to get back at him."

"Let's take care of our own picnic first," said Phillips sententiously.

Three o'clock came, and four; and at a quarter past the hour a taxicab stopped with much squealing of brakes before a loan-broker's on Columbus Avenue. Two disheveled Harvard undergraduates descended therefrom, and limped painfully over the hot bricks, and in under the symbolic cluster of gilded balls. They were footsore, ill-tempered, sticky with ineffable stickiness, but still of inflexible determination. They leaned gratefully against a show-case, and Sewall, whose turn it was to ask, asked for ivory skulls.

"Never seen one," alleged the broker, "but I got some of this here Swish stuff—I got a carved ivory bear, and a shess set—"

"Let's go home!" panted Sewall, conscious that the last vestige of loyalty to the cause was boiled out of him. He had entered this place with unswerving resolution; but the dead, heavy air and the grinding fatigue in his bones had in the twinkling of an eye metamorphosed him to a confirmed anti-suffragist. He solemnly vowed, also, that he would never marry anybody who collected things. He professed great love for J. P. McHenry, who had suggested that it was idiotic for two men to search the same town for the same trinket on the same day, and that they had better match to see who would undertake the quest. He believed implicitly that he would have lost the match—he hoped so. Then Phillips took his arm, and together they went slowly from the display of Swiss bears which the broker had set out for their inspection.

As they emerged from the pawnshop in sodden discomfort they encountered a half dozen descendants of the knight-errant species—those doughty warriors who scour the streets in pursuit of whatever manner of escapade seems commensurate with the risk. These undesirable citizens regarded Sewall's club hatband with astonishment, and guffawed.

"Why, Cuthbert!" shrilled the leader in a falsetto meant to be insultingly feminine.

"What's that?" asked Phillips eagerly.

"Ooooh! Little pug-dog, ain't he?"

"Look at his fists, boys! Maybe he's another one o' them white hopes! Don't get excited, Cuthbert—there's seven of us!"

"Yes," said Phillips calculatingly, "you seven—and who else?"

At the first onslaught the taxi chauffeur retired within his car, and held the door shut with both hands. By and bye, when the occasion seemed ripe, he slipped from the other side, across the street, and rang the police call. When the reserves arrived they saw six pairs of heels disappearing around the nearest comer, and two badly battered Harvard men nursing their bruises as they sat on the largest hoodlum, who was carefully explaining their pedigrees to them. To make sure of equal justice for all, the reserves requisitioned the taxicab, and took the entire party to the station house, where the deskman hailed the hoodlum fraternally as "Jimmy," booked charges and counter-charges of assault and battery, and remarked that he intended to teach these Harvard roughnecks a good lesson.

"My uncle," said the ragamuffin called Phillips, holding his clothes together modestly, "my uncle happens to be the lieutenant governor of this State, so perhaps you'd like to be a little careful in your language!"

"My father," said Sewall, twirling the ring of straw which he fondly supposed was still a hat, "happens to be the district attorney of—"

"Well," said the sergeant generously, "my mother's Queen Cleopatry—what of it?"

Here the chauffeur, hot on the scent of his bill, ranged alongside the desk, and nodded familiarly to the sergeant.

"Hello, alderman!" said the visible manifestation of the law. "Know these guys?"

"Sure I know 'em," admitted the ex-alderman from the ninth ward, and he bent far over the railing and held conference. While the boys trembled with utter exhaustion and the suffocating atmosphere of the room, the sergeant shook his head soberly from time to time, but at last he made a gesture of concession, and said dryly, "All right—if you say so—if they didn't start it. All right, anything you say. We'll let 'em all go!"

"You what?" demanded Phillips, straightening himself.

"You're discharged."

"Be easy, John!" pleaded Sewall.

"Discharged from what? For the love of Mike, man, you don't think you're a judge, do you? And—and we insist on prosecuting this fellow—"

"You shut up!" snapped Sewall. "I've had enough trouble to last me the rest of my natural life. I'm going back to Cambridge."

Accordingly, the ex-alderman drove them out to Westmorly at a pace not quite ten miles an hour better than the speed limit. Three times on the way they shouted through the flexible speaking tube for him to halt. On two of these occasions they were passing doors of the "What's Yours?" variety, and the other time they had caught sight of an antique shop, and wanted to see if the owner had any ivory skulls. He hadn't, but he had a good stock of carved Swiss bears, and couldn't understand why they were so impolite to him.

Upstairs to Sewall's room the two men stumbled. Their clothes were torn and soiled, their faces were red and bruised, their hats were gone, and they were very, very tired. With one impulse they sank into chairs and swore long and heartily. Sewall was the first to move. He rose languidly, peeled off his garments, arrayed himself in a gaudy dressing-gown, and started for the door.

"Wait!" panted Phillips.

"Can't!" said Sewall.

Shortly afterwards, when the football man limped down the tiled steps to the swimming pool, he saw Sewall floating on his back in four feet of water. Phillips was too exhausted to dive—he merely fell over the side, and floated, too. In the course of a few minutes he felt renewed enough to attempt a feat of strength, so that he swam towards his friend and painstakingly ducked him.

"Quit that!" said Sewall, feebly splashing water in his face.

"Cooler?"

"Lots!"

"Admit you're an ass?"

"Long ago. Do you?"

"Sure I do," conceded Phillips, standing on his head. "Woosh!"

"Feeling better, old top! The old ginger's coming back! I can feel it! I can feel it!"

"Cheerful little day, wasn't it? How do you like Kentucky girls, Teddy?"

"Come on to the manager's office!" retorted Sewall. "Oh, Spike, Spike, how I love you!"

"Ted," the big man warned him, "some day you'll get me all peevish, and I'll slay you! Women are prunes, anyway! Gee! I'm beginning to feel civilized again! Where'll we have dinner?"

Ted Sewall was putting the finishing touches to his costume, and rejoicing in the contact of fresh linen when Pepper McHenry wandered into his room, and sat down on the table.

"What luck, old hound?" he inquired genially.

"Luck!" retorted Sewall. "Don't mention it!"

"Didn't find what you wanted?"

"No," said Sewall abruptly. "I don't believe there is such a thing."

"Is it anything like this?" asked Pepper, producing a bit of carved ivory from a waistcoat pocket, and placing it on the table. Sewall fell upon it ecstatically.

"You wizard!" he shouted. "Why—Pep! Why, you old bloodhound! Where in thunder did you get that? What do you want for it? You'll sell it to me, won't you? It isn't any use to you."

"Why, I thought it would make a nice watch-charm—"

"Get out! Look here. Pep, be a good sport I I'll buy it from you! What's the price?"

"Those things are pretty expensive, Ted—"

"Come on, Pep, come on! Name a figure!"

"Well—there's that little poker debt—"

"Oh, be reasonable!"

McHenry waved his hand indifferently.

"I'm not awfully anxious to get rid of it," he said. "If you want it, you can have it, Ted, and we'll just cancel that little debt of this morning—"

"Give it to me!" exclaimed Sewall, fastening upon the little ivory skull, and gloating. "We'll call it off. Pep! This belongs to me, and the debt is off! Gosh! I'm glad I've got this thing! And won't John Phillips be sore as a hound when he finds it out!"

"I'll bet my bootware he will," agreed McHenry, departing hastily.

The two ivory hunters, freshly clothed, bathed and razored, strolled arm in arm out into the cool air of the June evening. In their hearts was peace, and in their viscera was an overwhelming, human hunger. Yet somewhere in Sewall's cosmos lurked the germ of a deeper, more permanent satisfaction—for he knew that he had in his pocket the means of pleasing her.

"Before we eat," said Phillips, "let's walk down to Leavitt's. I've got to get some tobacco."

They rounded the corner of Westmorly, and turned towards the Square, when Phillips suddenly grasped his friend's arm with a grip which wrung a muffled howl from the luckless Sewall.

"There!" he gasped. "Right there! Right under our noses!"

Just around the turn from their own dormitory was a tiny novelty shop, and in the window, facing the world with expressions of marvelous contempt on their finely carved features, a dozen miniature ivory skulls rested on a narrow strip of black velvet. A small card flanking them announced the selling price as two dollars!

"The r-robber!" stuttered Sewall, holding out the skull which McHenry had sold him for nineteen dollars to compare it with those in the shop window.

"The—the crook!" blurted Phillips, fumbling in his own pocket for the skull which McHenry had given him in consideration of the cancellation of a twenty-dollar debt. And there were a dozen more skulls in the windows of a shop under the very shadow of their own boundary.

"Stung!" they said together, and made for the nearest telephone.

"Oh, Mr. Sewall," said the little Kentuckian breathlessly, when she heard Ted's shaking voice over the wire. "Oh, how sweet of you—oh, what a shame! You see, Mr. McHenry spent all day yesterday in town looking for one, and couldn't find one anywhere—but early this morning he found one right in Harvard Square, and sent it out by special messenger—it's a darling—I'm so sorry, but it was perfectly dear of you—but Mr. Sewall, what I really want most of anything is one of those sweet little Swiss bears!"

There are some things you simply can't say to a lady; but the worst of it was, that Sewall and Phillips couldn't even say them to McHenry. Their vocabularies weren't large enough, and, furthermore, he had locked his door. They had to content themselves with vituperation through the keyhole, but finally McHenry began to play his banjo, and there was no use! Even at that he needn't have added insult to injury. There wasn't the slightest excuse for his protruding his head through the window as they passed under it, and shouting "Boneheads!"