diff options
Diffstat (limited to '78650-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 78650-0.txt | 224 |
1 files changed, 224 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/78650-0.txt b/78650-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9fb28ce --- /dev/null +++ b/78650-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,224 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78650 *** + + + + + + The Framed Fifty + + By KARL DECKER + + _Fifty dollars was the face value of that bill framed + over the bar--but it was worth more to sentimental old + Mike O'Donnell than to any one else._ + + [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from + Argosy All-Story Weekly April 6, 1929.] + + +Over the center of O'Donnell's bar hung a fifty-dollar bill ornately +framed in mahogany and gilt. + +It was to Mike O'Donnell what the gin-bottle-eyed god N'buango is to +the tribal chief of the Mampasis. It was his fetish and his faith. + +An old custom this, of framing the first bill taken over the bar, a +custom fallen into decay in the United States since the coming in of +the Volstead law. + +To O'Donnell, however, the Volstead law now meant no more than a +dry-sweeping ordinance to an Eskimo. O'Donnell had left the Volstead +law far behind him. + +When that wrecker of barkeepers' happiness had fallen upon his native +land O'Donnell migrated. Packing up everything he had--bar, bottles, +chromos of attractive ladies in attractive if unconventional poses, and +the framed fifty-dollar bill--Mike O'Donnell had taken ship to Havana. +There he set up his establishment line for line, bottle for bottle, keg +for keg, as it had been when it was "Mike's Place" on Broadway. And +squarely over the center of the bar was placed his talisman, the framed +fifty-dollar bill. O'Donnell would have left everything behind rather +than that. + +It was part of him, of his prosperity. + +Years might come and years might go, but O'Donnell would never forget +that first night of freedom and independence. He had served his time as +an apprentice. He had mixed 'em and shaken 'em and poured 'em straight +for years, in the days before the cash register had cast its blight +over the bartending fraternity. Making his own change, trusted by his +boss, he had played fair with that boss. He had never at any time held +out more than twenty per cent, but this, thriftily hoarded, had set him +up in business. + +Rare good fortune was his when it fell to his lot to locate on a +Broadway corner in the Thirties, when that section was the very heart +and center of New York and the Tenderloin police station the busiest in +the world. + +Now, from the vantage point of his safeguarded retreat in la Calle +Dragones in Havana he grew to look back upon those early days with +something of dislike and displeasure. Nostalgia never affected him. He +was glad to be in Havana. + +During the long, drowsy summer months he did better than he had ever +done in the United States. A steady trade in the American colony and +scores of tourists drifting in day by day kept his bank account sturdy +and kept him out of the red. He was growing older, but he handled the +trade himself. To put in an assistant would mean putting in a cash +register, and O'Donnell was decided and firm in his refusal to permit +the ghoulish chimes of Dayton to ring out across his bar. + +In winter he flourished like a palm tree in a flooded oasis. + +The élite of his own country flocked in upon him. Ladies whose names he +knew from the society columns as well as he had known the politicians +of his own ward in New York, came fluttering gayly into his bar, +calling it "quaintly homelike," perched on stools, they ate +frankfurters and sauerkraut and chile con carne as though to Havana +bred. Men famous and widely heralded by the press called him by his +first name and seemed pleased at his recognition of them. + +It was paradise to O'Donnell. New York had never been like this. + + * * * * * + +And always after one of his pleasanter evenings, before drawing the +heavy steel blinds in front of his door and starting off for his home +in Jesus del Monte, O'Donnell looked for a moment upon the framed +fifty-dollar bill as though burning incense before it. + +He could never forget the night it came to him, back on Broadway. + +His was not a crowded opening. In the street outside, a sweeping, +whistling wind drove the massed snowflakes in a white cloud across his +windows. On the pavement, where it drifted, there were white hills four +feet deep. + +He had set his opening for six o'clock in the evening, and at that +black hour only a scant half dozen of his friends appeared. + +But among them was "Red" Walker, smiling, debonair, sheltered in one of +the huge tan overcoats popular among the wise ones of Broadway in those +days. Young Mr. Walker exuded prosperity. + +"The first bill goes into the frame?" queried Red. + +"Sure, sir," said O'Donnell. "The first bill over this bar will hang +over this bar as long as I live." + +"Then frame that," said Red, tossing a fifty-dollar bill on the counter. + +It was opposed to all the ethics and conventions of bar openings. One +is supposed to buy the first drink with a one-dollar bill. It is a +purely economic proposition, that takes only a small amount out of +circulation and cripples the finances of the establishment not at all. +Every one present realized Red had made a faux pas. + +But the effect upon O'Donnell was as though he had stepped upon a high +tension wire. The economics of the situation affected him not at all. +Whatever of thrift and canny calculation there might have been in his +blood took a vacation. He flushed with pride--a pride that sent the +blood dashing through his body as though under fifty pounds pressure. +He lifted the bill proudly and tenderly. + +"It'll always hang over my head, Mr. Walker," he said. + +They might have a fifty-dollar bill framed in Delmonico's, he thought, +although he had never been in the place; or that newly opened castle +of magnificence on Thirty-Third Street, the Astoria, might be able to +show some such trophy; but he alone of all the humbler sort in his +profession could display such an evidence of high-class trade. He was +smitten with a quality of pride that almost became arrogance. + +"You'll always keep it in the frame?" asked Red. + +"As long as I live," said O'Donnell almost devoutly. + +"That makes me the godfather of the joint," said Red. "Another round +for everybody." + +And then, taking a handful of change that almost wrecked O'Donnell's +till, Red Walker disappeared into the white-blown night. + +He never came back. Long after, O'Donnell gathered from conversation +in front of his bar that Red Walker had done two stretches in stir, +one in Joliet and another in San Quentin; and he worried and sorrowed +as if over a wayward son. He always had the feeling that some day the +debonair youth who had become godfather to "Mike's Place" would come +swinging jubilantly through his slatted doors. + + * * * * * + +But when he set up shop in Havana this feeling died. He felt now that +he was cut off forever from the man to whom he felt, in some vague +fashion, he owed his fattened prosperity. In the bar business so much +depends upon the auspices under which one makes the first plunge. This +ranks not with superstition, but with folklore. + +More than a third of a century had been tossed into the discard when +O'Donnell one night discovered that when he wished he might retire. + +The statement from his bank over which he pored at his desk told him +this. In Spanish though it was, he knew what the figure meant. With no +children to think about and only one aged sister, an annuity that would +bring him in a yearly fortune lay ready to his hand. + +But then the whirl of the arrival of a crowd of Americans changed the +trend of his purpose. After all, he liked what he was doing too well to +quit. + +In the bar were women in pearls, men in evening clothes; folk fresh +from the many delights of an Havana afternoon, preparing for the +delights of an Havana night, were waiting for him. They wanted +cocktails, the kind he had made in the old days when the number of +varieties could be counted on the fingers of one hand. + +The joshing, kindly meant, the praise of his skill, the happy gay +atmosphere, strengthened the old man's decision. He would tend bar so +long as he could stand on the grating. + +And as they left, Mike shot one swift look at the framed fifty-dollar +bill. + +How Red Walker would have fitted into this environment! Red was refined +and had a snappy line, to use the language of these later days. He +would wise-crack with the best of them. He would have belonged. + +"That's a pretty bill you've got up there," said a gray man in gray +clothes and a gray hat who stood in front of the bar; an inconspicuous +man, the sort one would never notice whether alone or in a crowd. + +"Yes," snapped O'Donnell, suddenly laconic. The man looked like a dick. + +"Lemme see it," said the gray one. + +"Why?" asked O'Donnell, but there was nothing of the old pugnacity in +his tone. + +"Hand it down," said the other, and O'Donnell, clambering upon a chair, +detached the small frame and laid it reverently on the counter. + +The man in gray squinted at it for a moment then ripped the backing +off and took out the bill. As a mere formality he tossed upon the bar +a small gold pin he took from his vest pocket. It was a United States +Secret Service operative's badge. + +"We are working here with the co-operation of the Cuban government," +he said. Then he took a fountain pen from his pocket and across the +bill in red ink scrawled the word "Counterfeit." + +"How long you had it?" he asked. + +"Thirty-six years," groaned O'Donnell huskily through dry, parched lips. + +"Well, you're an innocent party, all right," said the man in gray. +"This is some of old Paul Schwartz's work, and he's been dead for +twenty years. We got all his plates. Never made a vignette yet that +didn't squint. Red Walker used to shove for him, and Red died in +Atlanta." + + + THE END. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78650 *** |