Now the thing is – why did I keep a guy like that on my club for the lengthy space of seven years? The newspaper birds claimed Hector had seen me murder somebody or somethin', because they says I wouldn't let him in a ball park with a ticket, if he didn't have somethin' on me that must be kept from the world at any price. Well, it wasn't nothin' like that – but it was somethin' just as good, as the grocer says. Me and Hector was kids together in the same ward, and when we started out to dumfound the world, he had a bankroll which his beloved father left him and I had nothin' but freckles. I practically lived off that guy till me and real money became well acquainted, so I couldn't see him get the worst of it now. It would of broke his heart if he ever got shoved outa organized baseball – he was a maniac about the game! So Hector drawed his dough every season, come what may – and at that I was doin' no more than he did for me.
I managed to keep him busy in some way about the park – always with a uneyform on – and now and then I let him pitch an innin' when we had the game locked away in the safe deposit vault. In all the seven years, he never missed a single day showin' up at the park and he was the rottenest ball player that ever stood under a shower. Them was Hector's two records!
Well, I dragged Alex out to the ball park the next day and pointed out Hector to him. We was playin' St. Looey and along around the sixth innin' we had the game sewed up so tight that they couldn't of won it in a raffle. I took out Harmon and sent Hector in to pitch.
"Gaze over this bird carefully, Alex!" I says, "because he's the baby you're gonna pay off on! I claim you are now peerin' at the champion dub of the world. If you can make a winner outa him or discover what he has failed to develop that would make him one, I'll not only pay my end of our bet with a grin, but I'll throw in a weddin' chest of silver for you and Eve Rossiter!"
"Write that down!" says Alex; "and sign your full name to it!"
"You don't think I'd welsh on you, do you?" I says, gettin' sore.
"I don't know if they's enough ink in this or not," he answers, handin' me a fountain pen. "Write it on the back of this card."
When the crowd sees Hector strollin' out to the box, they give him his usual reception, which was the same as the Kaiser would have got if he'd walked down Broadway along in April, 1917. The first guy up for St. Looey hit a roller through the box and Hector stood on his left shoulder tryin' to pick it up. The runner only got as far as second before Hector arose. The next guy put a neat round hole in the right field fence, makin' it two runs. Well, before it was three out they had got four more and the only guy connected with the St. Looey team that didn't get a hit was the owner. They only quit slammin' the pill because they had batted themselves sick and could no longer stagger up to the plate.
Hector comes to bat in the next innin' with the bases as full as a miner on pay night. He lets two go by, right in the slot, and he fell down skinnin' his nose, swingin' at the next for the third and last strike.
I removed him by hand and sent in a ball player to pitch the rest of the game.
"Well, Alex," I says on the way home, "what do you think of your patient?"
"Is he as bad as that every day?" he asks me.
"No," I says. "He was Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson to-day, alongside of what he usually is!"
"Hmmph!" grunts Alex. "I can see he ain't a ball player, anyway."
"You been readin' 'Sherlock Holmes,'" I says.
"Baseball ain't everything!" declares Alex, rubbin' his nose. "And the point we have to consider is – what can he do?"
"That's easy!" I says. "How much is seven from seven?"
"Why – nothin'," says Alex.
"That's Hector!" I says.
With that I told him Hector's pedigree from the time he crossed my path when an infant, to date. I left out nothin' and laid it on good and thick. I explained how Hector had been the world's most consistent failure from the time he had been introduced as "It's a boy!" up to the time of writin' and when I got all through, Alex grins like a wolf.
"A most promisin' case!" he says. "This here's somethin' that's gonna put me on my mettle, right at the start. The tougher a thing looks, the more appetizin' it strikes me! Now I'll take it for granted that this man's got no strong points. All right – that's nothin' but a detail! You've told me a lot of hard things about him, but you ain't said he ain't human – and if he's human he's got a weakness! A well-developed weakness in a man has often been turned into glitterin' gold. Does he drink?"
"Let's save time," I says. "Hector don't know whether whiskey and beer is drinks, or the battery for to-day's game. He couldn't tell you offhand whether tobacco was a thing to chew and smoke or the latest fox trot. The only woman he ever met twice was his mother, and he thinks sayin' 'Darnation!' in earnest is the same as homocide. His only love is baseball and his only weakness is his stomach!"
"Aha!" says Alex. "I knew we'd get at it! He's fond of food, eh?"
"Fond of it?" I says. "Why, this guy can do more things with a steak than Edison can do with a pint of electricity! He took me to a dinner he cooked himself one night and the only thing I recognized on the table was the water. Everything was fixed up after his own recipes and at the drop of a hat he can tell you how many of them calories and proteins they is in a pea!"
"That's enough!" hollers Alex. "He's as good as over right now! He simply picked the wrong trade when he took up baseball, and I'll get him a job as chef in one of the famous hotels so – "
"Don't make me laugh!" I cuts him off. "Would I of bet you, if it was as easy as that? They ain't a chance on earth – I thought of that years ago. Hector wouldn't boil water for money – he only cooks that stuff up for himself. He – "
"A true artist, eh?" says Alex, kinda thoughtful. "That makes it all the better! Bring him up for dinner to-morrow night and let me study him. In a week I'll collect that little bet from you and then I'll be ready to take on the next case."
"You certainly stand well with yourself, don't you?" I sneers. "Well, lemme give you a little tip. Don't try to get that bird to give up baseball, because they ain't a Chinaman's chance of that! The only chance you got is to put him over as a ball player, and if you can do that, I can sell electric fans to the Esquimaux!"
"Bring him up to-morrow night," says Alex, grinnin' like a wolf. "This looks like a cinch to me!"
I went to Hector in the clubhouse the next afternoon. He had had a hard day playin' the White Sox – from the bench.
"Where are you goin' to-night?" I asks him.
He flushes up a bit.
"Well, Mac," he says, "I have finally found a joint where they know how to cook 'em without abusin' 'em and I was figurin' on goin' there first, so – "
"Cook what?" I butts in.
"Alligator pears!" he says. "Y'know they is a lot of nourishment in them babies when they're properly prepared and – "
"You'll be around at that beanery to-morrow night!" I shuts him off. "To-night you're comin' up and have dinner with me."
He gets one shade redder.
"Why," he stammers, "Ahumph! That – er – that's terrible fine of you, Mac, but on the level, I – y'know this place is the only one in New York where they can cook them things and I'm a hound after them! I – "
"Come on!" I says. "We're gonna give the subway a play. The wife's expectin' you and I got a friend that's crazy to meet you. Are you gonna throw me down?"
He backs away and ruffles his hair.
"Mac," he says, "I'll have dinner with you to-night on one condition!"
"Shoot!" I says.
"Well, Mac," he tells me, "they ain't no doubt in my mind that your wife is some cook, but if I'm gonna eat this stuff – I – well, I demand the privilege of cookin' it!"
"Where d'ye get that stuff?" I says. "Why – "
"Lemme do this, Mac," he says, "and you'll never regret it. I can hang it on any chef in New York for money and you'll eat the greatest meal you ever got outside of in your life!"
Well, this was new stuff to me, but I figured I was gonna get five hundred bucks outa it by way of Alex, so I fell.
"All right!" I says. "Come up and cook your head off. I'm game! But if you're as good a cook as you are a ball player, I can see where me and the wife suspends friendly relations for about a year!"
Alex is already on hand when we get to the house and I introduced him to Hector.
"Howdy!" he says. "I seen you pitch the other day and I must say it was a treat! The support they give you was brutal or you'd of shut them other fellers out with ease."
"You know it!" says Hector. "If they's any one thing I can do, it's play baseball. That's my dish!"
The wife horns in.
"I'm so glad to meet you, Mister Sells," she says, givin' Hector the old oil. "My husband talks of nothin' but you night and day!"
Which was true – only not the way she meant it.
"That's fine!" says Hector. "Me and Mac has been friends since they burnt Rome. Where's the kitchen?"
I showed him, and the wife shakes her head as much as to say, "Another rummy, eh?" I steered Hector over to the ice box and told him to go ahead and run wild. When I come out, Alex is featurin' his famous grin, and I gotta show the wife my breath. In about ten minutes the kitchen door opens and Hector's head pops out. His hands is full of flour and so's his suit for that matter, but his face is all lit up like Coney Island.
"I don't wanna be no bother, Mrs. Mac," he pipes, "but could a man get a apron around here?"
We got him inside of some gingham, and he disappeared into the kitchen again.
"Where d'ye get them birds?" says the wife, noddin' after him.
"Sssh!" says Alex. "That feller there is gonna make us all rich before the month is over! We'll have more money than we can count and – "
"Oh, won't that be grand!" says the wife, who'd believe Alex if he told her Missouri started the war. "Then I can have everything I want."
"I thought that happened when you got me," I says.
"Still," she sighs, payin' me no attention as usual, "money ain't everything."
"No," says Alex, "but it'll get it!"
"We always was used to money," goes on the wife, gettin' kinda doped under the influence of the sweet and savory odors which was comin' from the kitchen. "You know, Alex, that our family was connected with the best people in Vermont."
"They ain't got a thing on a telephone operator," I says. "They get connected with the best people in the United States every day!"
I don't get a tumble from either of them.
"There was Great-uncle Ed," proceeds the wife, kinda dreamy. "If he hadn't died so sudden, he'd of been worth a million."
I tried my luck again.
"That's the one that turned out to be a carbolic acid fiend, ain't it?" I says.
At this point, the greatest meal that ever played a date at our flat, come outa the kitchen escorted by Hector. One whiff of that layout and the greatest chef in the world would of gone out and bought a revolver. Hector is nothin' but smiles.
"Give this a whirl!" he says. "And lemme know what you think of it. I didn't have much to work with – only lamb chops, vegetables and the like, but I did what I could."
Oh, boy! – that was some feed! Conversation lagged a bit for about half a hour, while we fell to and demolished this stuff, and Hector swells up like a human yeast cake under the kind words that come his way. Finally, we had to quit eatin' for lack of further accommodations and the wife tells Hector that they ain't no doubt about it, as a cook he wins the garage.
"Oh, that's nothin'," he says; gettin' an attack of modesty. "I'm kinda fussy about my food and I been figurin' out different ways of cookin' up stuff to get the best outa it, for years. That's the only amusement I got. I ain't so much as a cook, but you oughta see me play ball, heh, Mac?"
The old glitter comes into Alex's eyes.
"I seen you play ball, Mister Sells," he says, "and you are a knockout! But what you just said about food interests me more. I'm kinda odd regardin' vittles myself and what I seen in the paper to-day has got me worried sick."
"What was that?" says Hector.
"Well," says Alex, "there's gonna be a fearful shortage of all kinds of meats and vegetables, because all the available food in the U. S. is about to be seized for the army. This time next year we'll all prob'ly be livin' on bread and water and lucky to get it!"
Hector gets as white as precipitated chalk.
"You don't mean it!" he gasps, gettin' half outa his chair.
"It's a fact," says Alex. "I was only readin' it this mornin'."
I thought Hector was gonna fall dead at our feet.
"But – but what am I gonna do?" he says, kinda dazed.
"What are you gonna do?" I sneers. "What are we all gonna do?"
"You don't get me!" he says. "It's all well enough for you guys which can eat common ordinary food like ham and eggs and steaks and chops, but I can't go that stuff! All the time I ain't out at the ball park I'm experimentin' with different kinds of stuff to eat, and if they go to work and shut off all them rare vegetables and so forth on me – well, I don't eat, that's all!"
He gets up and reaches for his hat.
"Well," says Alex, "I can see that you and me is pretty much alike. I can't eat porterhouse steaks and French lamb chops as a steady diet, either! My stomach craves them rare dishes the same as yours does, and it sure looks like you and me is gonna starve to death when this food conservation thing goes through!"
Hector slaps his hands together and squares his jaw.
"I ain't gonna starve!" he says. "They has got to be 1,500 calories and a amount of proteins in proportion go into my system every day. Not only that, its gotta be in a tasty form! I'm gonna go home and figure this thing out so's I'll be took care of when the government grabs off all the food supplies. They must be somethin' a man can do! Good night, folks – and thanks for the use of the kitchen."
With that he blows.
"I think he's a nut!" remarks the wife, when the hall door bangs.
"Leave him be!" says Alex, rubbin' his hands together, a habit that gets my goat. "I got him started now and – "
"Say!" I says. "I didn't see nothin' in no paper about the government gonna seize all the eats. I think you was kiddin' Hector, myself!"
"You didn't see the Civil War, either, did you?" says Alex. "I suppose you don't believe that, eh? I told you I was gonna put this feller over and if you'll leave me be, I will! I told you every man had an ace buried somewhere, didn't I? Well, Hector's ace is his mad infatuation for his stomach. He's never played it yet, because there's been no reason to do so. As long as he had the money, he could buy the stuff and hash it up in any way his peculiar tastes desired. Once he thinks he can't do that, he'll put all he's got under his hat into findin' a way to get all them proteins and calories he wants. I've given him somethin' he never had before – an incentive – and – "
"What do you figure Hector's gonna do to startle the world?" I says.
"Search me!" says Alex, grinnin', "but we'll all get paid off on whatever it is, you can gamble on that!"
The wife sniffs.
"I never heard tell of no man that couldn't eat porterhouse steaks!" she says.
"I seen a lot of them to-day," says Alex, puttin' on his coat.
"Where?" asks the wife.
"I was passin' the Evergreen Cemetery!" says Alex. "Good night, all!"
The next day, Hector comes to me before the game and you never seen such a change in a guy in your life! He looked like he hadn't slept a wink since they buried Washington and he's as nervous as a steam drill.
"Mac," he says, "I wanna ask two favors off of you, the first I asked in a long while."
"Shoot, Hector!" I tells him. "You know I can deny you nothin'."
"I want a week off and the loan of five hundred bucks," he says.
"I'll tell you," I says. "Take two weeks off and forget about the five hundred, heh?"
"No, Mac – I gotta have the dough!" he says. "With what I got saved up, I figure it'll be ample."
"Ample for what?" I asks.
"I can't tell no man nothin' about it now," he answers, "but when I come back from my vacation, I'll let you in on it. I don't like to say this, Mac – but when I was slippin' it to you, I never asked whether you wanted it to get a hair cut with or to try and put Wall Street on the bum. If – "
"That's enough!" I cuts him off, takin' out the roll. "Here you are, Hector – and if you want any more they's plenty of it where that come from!"
They was – in the mint.
When Hector had put some distance between himself and the ball park, I begin to think the thing over. If he did pull any startlin' stunt, I stood to lose a thousand bucks, not countin' the weddin' gift, to Alex. They was five hundred more I'd invested right then, makin' fifteen hundred in all, which I considered was gettin' into money. For all I knowed, Hector and Alex might be framin' me and they ain't no man livin' who loves bein' a sucker.
I decided right then and there to shoot another nickel on the thing and I called up the Ryan Detective Agency. Mike Ryan had been a friend of me and Hector since we'd been in baseball. I told him the whole layout and asked for a report on the activities of Hector the followin' day, if possible.
It was three days before I seen Ryan's report. He give it to me himself by mouth.
"Say!" he says. "This Hector bird has gone nutty, and I suppose bein' friends of his, you and me had better have him put away where he can't do himself no violence."
"What's he doin'?" I asks.
"Well," says Ryan, "I'll give you the dope since he left the ball park on Monday. The first thing he does is go to the bank and draw out every nickel he's got. Then he moves from the hotel to Cereal Crossin', N. J. This burg casts eleven votes for president every four years and they all work on the same farm. Hector hires a shack away out in the middle of the woods there and, from then on, boxes and crates begins to arrive for him from everywheres but Brazil. I met up with a Secret Service guy who had dropped in to get a line on what kinda bombs Hector was makin' before pinchin' him, and we went through this express stuff durin' the night. The first crate we tackled contained all the glassware in the world of a medical nature. They was bottles, test tubes, bowls and all the stuff usual found in a practical anarchist's workshop. After the first peep, the Secret Service guy wanted to run right over and fit Hector with iron bracelets, but I got him to hold off long enough to look over the rest of the stuff. We went through every box and what d'ye think we found in 'em?"
"I wasn't there," I says. "Tell me."
"Well," says Ryan, grinnin', "when all this stuff was assembled, it would make a first class delicatessen shop and that's all! They was meats, cheese, olive oil, fish, vegetables, pickles, mustard and about fifteen other eatables I never seen or heard tell of before in my life! We busted a lot of it open, lookin' for explosives, but they was all on the level. Why, that bird's got enough stuff down there to keep him in food for the rest of his life!"
I bust out laughin'.
"Ha, ha!" I says. "That's it! The poor fathead went and fell for that bunk Alex handed him and he's gone and laid in that stuff so's he won't starve when the government seizes the food supplies. Can you tie that?"
"I always thought he was a little queer," says Ryan. "Especially when he claims he's a ball player. Let's get him in some nice, private sanitarium somewheres and I'll split the bill with you."
"Leave him alone!" I says. "I'll take care of this myself. If he stays there long enough, I gotta chance to win a piece of money and – "
"All right!" says Ryan. "It ain't no milk outa my coffee, but that bird oughta be under lock and key!"
I could hardly wait to tell Alex about Hector's first step towards success. I rung him up immediately and give him the dope, windin' up by askin' when he'd be ready to pay me off.
"Pay you off?" he says. "Save that comedy for Cousin Alice! Just you leave Hector be now; from what you tell me everything's goin' fine and – "
"Goin' fine?" I hollers. "When that poor simp buries himself in Jersey with all the food in the world, do you call that makin' good?"
"Gimme a week!" says Alex. "He said he'd be back then, and if he ain't shown somethin' by that time, you get the check."
"Fair enough!" I says, "and have it certified."
The followin' Monday night, Alex as usual is honorin' me and the wife with his presence at dinner. I was in such good humor that I didn't as much as wince when he calls for another piece of roast beef, makin' an even eight. Hector had failed to appear as advertised and the noted Success Developer had promised to pay me off before he left. They was a ring at the bell and the wife ushers in Hector, ruinin' the night for me!
"I would of reported at the ball park this afternoon like I promised," he says, "only I was in a burg where the only time a train ever stopped there was when one went off the track."
I hardly knowed it was the same Hector which went away the week before. His cheeks was filled out past the legal limit and he had a color that would make an insurance company let him write his own policy. He was Alfred Q. Health – that's all!
"I'm sorry to see you people eatin' the flesh of the cow, roasted in an unscientific manner," he says. "One slab of that is shy just forty-eight calories and they's more proteins in a filetted bean!" He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a little package. "If I can draw up a chair here," he says, "I'll have dinner with you."
"I'll get another plate," says the wife, "and some coffee – "
"Not a thing!" says Hector. "I got mine with me!" With that he unwraps the package and pulls out a thing about the size of a deck of cards. I thought at first it was a razor hone, but Hector bites into it. "Just a glass of water," he says, "though with this a man don't even need that!"
Alex bounces outa his chair and gimme the laugh.
"What's that?" he hollers at Hector.
"That," says Hector, "is the last word in calories, protein and nourishment! It contains each and every juice and sustainin' part of all meats and vegetables known to man, with a little glutein invention of my own combined. It has got it forty ways on all other patent foods, because it's not only nourishin', it's so darned tasty that once you eat it you get the habit, like dope or somethin', and you can't eat anything else! It'll keep forever without ice or preservatives. You don't need liquids with it, it supplies its own juices. It's got a kick like booze and they ain't no alcohol in it. I invented it and I been livin' on it all week. Look me over and – "
"Gimme a bite!" yells Alex.
He grabs this weird lookin' slab of gue and takes a mouthful.
"Oh, lady!" he hollers. "They's just two things I wanna know. What does it cost to make this stuff, and will it stand scientific tests?"
"It costs about two cents a square, roughly speakin'," says Hector, "and it'll stand any test in the world! Three of them things is the day's food for a healthy man and – "
"Will you lend me one for two days?" asks Alex, reachin' for his coat and hat.
Hector pulls out another package.
"Sure!" he says. "I brung one along for you, because you claimed you was the same as me when it come to – "
But Alex and the trick cake of collapsible food was gone!
He showed up at the ball park the end of the week, when Hector was pitchin' against the Red Sox. They got seven runs off him in the second innin' and I was just yankin' him out, when Alex come runnin' down to the dugout.
"Hector!" he hollers. "You're a rich man! No more baseball for yours – why, you can buy a team if you want it and – "
"I thought you claimed you never drank," I says.
"What is your friend ravin' about?" inquires Hector.
Alex answers by shovin' a pink slip of paper into his hands. It was the first check for fifty thousand bucks I ever seen in my life and it was signed by the secretary of the U. S. treasury!
"Why – what kinda stuff is this?" mutters Hector, turnin' the check over and over. "It's made out to me! Why – who – where – who give you – "
