HUNIS HAND SEEN IN PLOTS 1 страница

Oh Mademoiselle from Arnientières
Parleyvoo
Oh Mademoiselle from Armentières
Parleyvoo
Hasn't been ---- for forty years
Hankypanky parleyvoo

wrecks mark final day at La Baule; syndicated wage
earners seize opportunity to threaten employers unprepared
for change. LAYS WREATH ON TOMB OF LAFAY-
ETTE. Richest Negress is Dead. Yale Dormitories stormed
by Angry Mob of Soldiers. Goldmine in Kinks.

TIGHTENS SCREW ON BERLIN

Oh he took her upstairs and into bed
And there he cracked her maidenhead
Hankypanky parleyvoo

NO DROP IN PRICES TO FOLLOW PEACE SAY
BUSINESS MEN

KILLS SELF AT DESK IN OFFICE

MODERN BLUEBEARD NOW VICTIM OF MELANCHOLIA

He is none other than General Minus of the old Russian
Imperial General Staff, who, during the Kerensky régime, was
commander of troops in the region of Minsk. Paris policemen
threaten to join strike movement, allow it to send into France
barrels bearing the mystic word Mistelles. One speculator is
said to have netted nearly five million francs within a week.

Oh the first three months and all went well
But the second three months she began to swell
Hankypanky parleyvoo

large financial resources, improved appliances and abun-
dant raw materials of America should assist French genius in
restoring and increasing industrial power of France, joining
hands in the charming scenery, wonderful roads, excellent
hotels, and good cookery makes site of Lyons fair crossed by

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the 45th parallel. Favored by great mineral resources its future
looms incalculably splendid. Any man who attempts to take
over control of municipal functions here will be shot on sight,
Mayor Ole Hanson remarked. He is a little man himself but
has big ideas, a big brain, and big hopes. Upon first meeting
him one is struck by his resemblance to Mark Twain

RICHARD ELLSWORTH SAVAGE

Dick and Ned felt pretty rocky the morning they sighted
Fire Island lightship. Dick wasn't looking forward to land-
ing in God's Country with no money and the draft board
to face, and he was worried about how his mother was
going to make out. All Ned was complaining about was
wartime prohibition. They were both a little jumpy from
all the cognac they'd drunk on the trip over. They were
already in the slategreen shallow seas off Long Island;
no help for it now. The heavy haze to the west and then
the low boxlike houses that looked as if they were drowned
in the water and then the white strip of beach of the Rock-
aways; the scenicrailways of Coney Island; the full green
summer trees and the grey framehouses with their white
trim on Staten Island; it was all heartbreakingly like home.
When the immigration tug came alongside Dick was sur-
prised to see Hiram Halsey Cooper, in khaki uniform and
puttees, clambering up the steps. Dick lit a cigarette and
tried to look sober.

"My boy, it's a great relief to see you. . . . Your
mother and I have been . . . et . . ." Dick interrupted
to introduce him to Ned. Mr. Cooper, who was in the
uniform of a major, took him by the sleeve and drew him
up the deck. "Better put on your uniform to land.""All
right, sir, I thought it looked rather shabby.""All the
better. . . . Well, I suppose it's hell over there . . . and

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no chance for courting the muse, eh? . . . You're coming
up to Washington with me tonight. We've been very un-
easy about you, but that's all over now . . . made me
realize what a lonely old man I am. Look here, my boy,
your mother was the daughter of Major General Ells-
worth, isn't that so?" Dick nodded. "Of course she must
have been because my dear wife was his niece. . . . Well,
hurry and put your uniform on and remember . . . leave
all the talking to me."

While he was changing into the old Norton-Harjes
uniform Dick was thinking how suddenly Mr. Cooper had
aged and wondering just how he could ask him to lend him
fifteen dollars to pay the bill he'd run up at the bar.

New York had a funny lonely empty look in the
summer afternoon sunlight; well here he was home. At
the Pennsylvania station there were policemen and plain-
clothes men at all the entrances demanding the registra-
tion cards of all the young men who were not in uniform.
As'he and Mr. Cooper ran for the train he caught sight of
a dejectedlooking group of men herded together in a cor-
ner hemmed by a cordon of sweating cops. When they
got in their seats in the parlorcar on the Congressional
Mr. Cooper mopped his face with a handkerchief. "You
understand why I said to put your uniform on. Well, I
suppose it was hell?"

"Some of it was pretty bad," said Dick casually. "I
hated to come back though."

"I know you did, my boy. . . . You didn't expect to
find your old mentor in the uniform of a major . . . well,
we must all put our shoulders to the wheel. I'm in the
purchasing department of Ordnance. You see the chief of
our bureau of personnel is General Sykes; he turns out to
have served with your grandfather. I've told him about
you, your experience on two fronts, your knowledge of
languages and . . . well . . . naturally he's very much

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interested. . . . I think we can get you a commission
right away."

"Mr. Cooper, it's . . ." stammered Dick, "it's extraor-
dinarily decent . . . damn kind of you to interest yourself
in me this way."

"My boy, I didn't realize how I missed you . . . our
chats about the muse and the ancients . . . until you had
gone." Mr. Cooper's voice was drowned out by the roar
of the train. Well, here I am home, something inside
Dick's head kept saying to him.

When the train stopped at the West Philadelphia sta-
tion the only sound was the quiet droning of the electric
fans; Mr. Cooper leaned over and tapped Dick's knee,
"Only one thing you must promise . . . no more peace
talk till we win the war. When peace comes we can put
some in our poems. . . . Then'll be the time for us all
to work for a lasting peace. . . . As for that little incident
in Italy . . . it's nothing . . . forget it . . . nobody ever
heard of it." Dick nodded; it made him sore to feel that
he was blushing. They neither of them said anything until
the waiter came through calling, "Dinner now being
served in the dining car forward."

In Washington (now you are home, something kept
saying in Dick's head) Mr. Cooper had a room in the
Willard where he put Dick up on the couch as the hotel
was full and it was impossible to get another room any-
where. After he'd rolled up in the sheet Dick heard Mr.
Cooper tiptoe over and stand beside the couch breathing
hard. He opened his eyes and grinned. "Well, my boy,"
said Mr. Cooper, "it's nice to have you home . . . sleep
well," and he went back to bed.

Next morning he was introduced to General Sykes:
"This is the young man who wants to serve his country,"
said Mr. Cooper with a flourish, "as his grandfather served
it. . . . In fact he was so impatient that he went to war
before his country did, and enlisted in the volunteer ambu-

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lance service with the French and afterwards with the
Italians." General Sykes was a little old man with bright
eyes and a hawk nose and extremely deaf. "Yes, Ellsworth
was a great fellow, we campaigned against Hieronimo to-
gether . . . Ah, the old west . . . I was only fourteen at
Gettysburg and damme I don't think he was there at all.
We went through West Point in the same class after the
war, poor old Ellsworth. . . . So you've smelled powder
have you, my boy?" Dick colored and nodded.

"You see, General," shouted Mr. Cooper, "he feels he
wants some more . . . er . . . responsible work than was
possible in the ambulance service."

"Yessiree, no place for a highspirited young fellow.
. . . You know Andrews, Major . . ." The General was
scribbling on a pad. "Take him to see Colonel Andrews
with this memorandum and he'll fix him up, has to decide
on qualifications etc. . . . You understand . . . good
luck, my boy." Dick managed a passable salute and they
were out in the corridori Mr. Cooper was smiling broadly.
"Well, that's done. I must be getting back to my office.
You go and fill out the forms and take your medical exami-
nation . . . or perhaps that'll be at the camp . . . Any-
way come and lunch with me at the Willard at one. Come
up to the room." Dick saluted smiling.

He spent the rest of the morning filling out blanks.
After lunch he went down to Atlantic City to see his
mother. She looked just the same. She was staying in a
boarding house at the Chelsea end and was very much
exercised about spies. Henry had enlisted as a private
in the infantry and was somewhere in France. Mother said
it. made her blood boil to think of the grandson of General
Ellsworth being a mere private, but that she felt confident
he'd soon rise from the ranks. Dick hadn't heard her
speak of her father since she used to talk about him when
he was a child, and asked her about him. He had died
when she was quite a little girl leaving the family not too

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well off considering their station in life. All she remem-
bered was a tall man in blue with a floppy felt hat caught
up on one side and a white goatee; when she'd first seen a
cartoon of Uncle Sam she'd thought it was her father. He
always had hoarhound drops in a little silver bonbonnière
in his pocket, she'd been so excited about the military
funeral and a nice kind army officer giving her his handker-
chief. She'd kept the bonbonnière for many years but it
had had to go with everything else when your poor father
. . . er . . . failed.

A week later Dick received a war department envelope
addressed to Savage, Richard Ellsworth, 2nd Lieut. Ord.
Dept., enclosing his commission and ordering him to pro-
ceed to Camp Merritt, N. J., within 24 hours. Dick found
himself in charge of a casuals company at Camp Merritt
and wouldn't have known what on earth to do if it hadn't
been for the sergeant. Once they were on the transport it
was better; he had what had been a first class cabin with
two other 2nd Lieutenants and a Major; Dick had the drop
on them all because he'd been at the front. The transport
was the Leviathan; Dick began to feel himself again when
he saw the last of Sandy Hook; he wrote Ned a long letter
in doggerel that began:

His father was a jailbird and his mother had no kale
He was much too fond of cognac and he drank it by the pail
But now he's a Second Lieut and supported by the State.
Sports a handsome uniform and a military gait
And this is the most terrific fate that ever can befall
A boy whose grandpa was a Major-General.

The other two shavetails in the cabin were nondescript
youngsters from Leland Stanford, but Major Thompson
was a Westpointer and stiff as a ramrod. He was a middle-
aged man with a yellow round face, thin lips and nose-
glasses. Dick thawed him out a little by getting him a
pint of whiskey through his sergeant who'd gotten chummy

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with the stewards, when he got seasick two days out, and
discovered that he was a passionate admirer of Kipling and
had heard Copeland read Danny Deever and been very
much impressed. Furthermore he was an expert on mules
and horseflesh and the author of a monograph: The Span-
ish Horse. Dick admitted that he'd studied with Copeland
and somehow it came out that he was the grandson of the
late General Ellsworth. Major Thompson began to take
an interest in him and to ask him questions about the don-
keys the French used to carry ammunition in the trenches,
Italian cavalry horses and the works of Rudyard Kipling.
The night before they reached Brest when everybody was
flustered and the decks were all dark and silent for the
zone, Dick went into a toilet and reread the long kidding
letter he'd written Ned first day out. He tore it up into
small bits, dropped them in the can and then flushed it
carefully: no more letters.

In Brest Dick took three majors downtown and ordered
them a meal and good wine at the hotel; during the eve-
ning Major Thompson told stories about the Philippines
and the Spanish war; after the fourth bottle Dick taught
them all to sing Mademoiselle from Armentières. A few
days later he was detached from his casuals company and
sent to Tours; Major Thompson, who felt he needed
somebody to speak French for him and to talk about
Kipling with, had gotten him transferred to his office. It
was a relief to see the last of Brest, where everybody was
in a continual grouch from the drizzle and the mud and
the discipline and the saluting and the formations and the,
fear of getting in wrong with the brasshats.

Tours was full of lovely creamystone buildings buried in
dense masses of bluegreen late summer foliage. Dick was
on commutation of rations and boarded with an agreeable
old woman who brought him up his café au lait in bed
every morning. He got to know a fellow in the Personnel
Department through whom he began to work to get Henry

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transferred out of the infantry. He and Major Thompson
and old Colonel Edgecombe and several other officers
dined together very often; they got so they couldn't do
without Dick who knew how to order a meal comme il
faut, and the proper vintages of wines and could parleyvoo
with the French girls and make up limericks and was the
grandson of the late General Ellsworth.

When the Post Despatch Service was organized as a
separate outfit, Colonel Edgecombe who headed it, got
him away from. Major Thompson and his horsedealers;
Dick became one of his assistants with the rank of Captain.
Immediately he managed to get Henry transferred from
the officers' school to Tours. It was too late though to get
him more than a first lieutenancy.

When Lieutenant Savage reported to Captain Savage
in his office he looked brown and skinny and sore. That
evening they drank a bottle of white wine together in
Dick's room. The first thing Henry said when the door
closed behind them was, "Well, of all the goddam lousy
grafts . . . I don't know whether to be proud of the
little kid brother or to sock him in the eye."

Dick poured him a drink. "It must have been Mother's
doing," he said. "Honestly, I'd forgotten that granpa was
a general."

"If you knew what us guys at the front used to say
about the S.O.S."

"But somebody's got to handle the supplies and the
ordnance and . . ."

"And the mademosels and the vin blanc," broke in
Henry.

"Sure, but I've been very virtuous. . . . Your little
brother's minding his p's and q's, and honestly I've been
working like a nigger."

"Writing loveletters for ordnance majors, I bet. . . .
Hell, you can't beat it. He lands with his nose in the but-
ter every time. . . . Anyway I'm glad there's one suc-

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cessful member of the family to carry on the name of the
late General Ellsworth."

"Have a disagreeable time in the Argonne?"

" Lousy . . . until they sent me back to officers' school."

"We had a swell time there in the ambulance service in
'17."

"Oh, you would."

Henry drank some more wine and mellowed up a little.
Every now and then he'd look around the big room with
its lace curtains and its scrubbed tile floor and its big four-
poster bed and make a popping sound with his lips and
mutter: "Pretty soft." Dick took him out and set him up
to a fine dinner at his favorite bistro and then went around
and fixed him up with Minette, who was the bestlooking
girl at Madame Patou's.

After Henry had gone upstairs, Dick sat in the parlor a
few minutes with a girl they called Dirty Gertie who had
hair dyed red and a big floppy painted mouth, drinking
the bad cognac and feeling blue. "Vous triste?" she said,
and put her clammy hand on his forehead. He nodded.
"Fièvre . . . trop penser . . . penser no good . . . moi
aussi." Then she said she'd kill herself but she was afraid,
not that she believed in God, but that she was afraid of
how quiet it would be after she was dead. Dick cheered her
up, "Bientot guerre finee. Tout le monde content go back
home." The girl burst out crying and Madame Patou
came running in screaming and clawing like a seagull.
She was a heavy woman with an ugly jaw. She grabbed the
girl by the hair and began shaking her. Dick was flustered.
He managed to make the woman let the girl go back to
her room, left some money and walked out. He felt ter-
rible. When he got home he felt like writing some verse.
He tried to recapture the sweet and heavy pulsing of
feelings he used to have when he sat down to write a poem.
But all he could do was just feel miserable so he went to
bed. All night half thinking half dreaming he couldn't

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get Dirty Gertie's face out of his head. Then he began
remembering the times he used to have with Hilda at
Bay Head and had a long conversation with himself about
love: Everything's so hellishly sordid . . . I'm sick of
whores and chastity, I want to have love affairs. He began
planning what he'd do after the war, probably go home
and get a political job in Jersey; a pretty sordid prospect.

He was lying on his back staring at the ceiling that was
livid with dawn when he heard Henry's voice calling his
name down in the street outside; he tiptoed down the cold
tiled stairs and let him in.

"Why the hell did you let me go with that girl, Dick?
I feel like a louse . . . Oh Christ . . . mind if I have
half this bed, Dick? I'll get me a room in the morning."
Dick found him a pair of pyjamas and made himself small
on his side of the bed. "The trouble with you, Henry," he
said, yawning, "is that you're just an old Puritan . . . you
ought to be more continental."

"I notice you didn't go with any of those bitches your-
self."

"I haven't got any morals but I'm finnicky, my dear,
Epicurus' owne sonne," Dick drawled sleepily.

"S -- t I feel like a dirty dishrag," whispered Henry.
Dick closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Early in October Dick was sent to Brest with a despatch
case that the Colonel said was too important to entrust to
an enlisted man. At Rennes he had to wait two hours for
the train, and was sitting eating in the restaurant when a
doughboy with his arm in a sling came up to him saying,
"Hello, Dick, for crying out loud." It was Skinny Murray.
"By gosh, Skinny, I'm glad to see you . . . it must be
five or six years . . . Gee, we're getting old. Look, sit
down . . . no, I can't do that."

"I suppose I ought to have saluted, sir," said Skinny
stiffly.

"Can that, Skinny . . . but we've got to find a place to

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talk . . . got any time before your train? You see it's me
the M.P.'s would arrest if they saw me eating and drink-
ing with an enlisted man. . . . Wait around till I've fin-
ished my lunch and we'll find a ginmill across from the
station. I'll risk it.""I've got an hour I'm going to
the Grenoble leave area."

"Lucky bastard . . . were you badly wounded, Skin-
ny?""Piece of shrapnel in the wing, captain," said Skinny,
coming to attention as a sergeant of M.P.'s stalked stiffly
through the station restaurant. "Those birds gimme the
willies."

Dick hurried through his lunch, paid, and walked
across the square outside the station. One of the cafés had
a back room that looked dark and quiet. They were just
settling down to chat over two beers when Dick remem-
bered the despatch case. He'd left it at the table. Whisper-
ing breathlessly that he'd be back he ran across the square
and into the station restaurant. Three French officers were
at the table. "Pardon, messieurs." It was still where he'd
left it under the table. "If I'd lost that I'd have had to
shoot myself," he told Skinny. They chatted about Tren-
ton and Philadelphia and Bay Head and Dr. Atwood.
Skinny was married and had a good job in a Philadelphia
bank. He had volunteered for the tanks and was winged
by a bit of shrapnel before the attack started, damn lucky
for him, because his gang had been wiped out by a black
maria. He was just out of hospital today and felt pretty
weak on his pins. Dick took down his service data and said
held get him transferred to Tours; just the kind of fellow
they needed for a courier. Then Skinny had to run for
his train, and Dick, with the despatch case tightly wedged
under his arm, went out to stroll around the town daintily
colored and faintly gay under the autumn drizzle.

The rumor of the fake armistice set Tours humming
like a swarm of bees; there was a lot of drinking and back-
slapping and officers and enlisted men danced snakedances

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in and out of the officebuildings. When it turned out to be
a false alarm Dick felt almost relieved. The days that fol-
lowed everybody round the headquarters of the Despatch
Service wore a mysterious expression of knowing more than
they were willing to tell. The night of the real armistice
Dick ate supper a little deliriously with Colonel Edge-
combe and some other officers. After dinner Dick happened
to meet the colonel in the courtyard out back. The colonel's
face was red and his moustache bristled. "Well, Savage,
it's a great day for the race," he said, and laughed a great
deal. "What race?" said Dick shyly. "The human race,"
roared the colonel.

Then he drew Dick aside: "How would you like to go to
Paris, my boy? It seems that there's to be a peace con-
ference in Paris and that President Wilson is going to
attend it in person . . . seems incredible . . . and I've
been ordered to put this outfit at the disposal of the Ameri-
can delegation that's coming soon to dictate the peace, so
we'll be Peace Conference couriers. Of course I suppose if
you feel you have to go home it could be arranged."

"Oh, no, sir," broke in Dick hurriedly. "I was just be-
ginning to worry about having to go home and look for a
job. . . . The Peace Conference will be a circus and any
chance to travel around Europe suits me." The colonel
looked at him with narrowed eyes. "I wouldn't put it just
that way . . . service should be our first thought . . .
naturally what I said is strictly confidential.""Oh, strictly,"
said Dick, but he couldn't help wearing a grin on his face
when he went back to join the others at the table.

Paris again; and this time in a new whipcord uniform
with silver bars at his shoulders and with money in his
pockets. One of the first things he did was to go back to
look at the little street behind the Pantheon where held

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lived with Steve Warner the year before. The tall chalky-
grey houses, the stores, the little bars, the bigeyed children
in the black smocks, the youngsters in caps with silk hand-
kerchiefs around their necks, the Parisian drawl of the
argot: it all made him feel vaguely unhappy; he was won-
dering what had happened to Steve. It was a relief to get
back to the office where the enlisted men were moving in
newly arrived American rolltop desks and yellow varnished
card index cases.

The hub of this Paris was the hôtel de Crillon on the
place de la Concorde, its artery the rue Royale where
arriving dignitaries, President Wilson, Lloyd George and
the King and Queen of the Belgians were constantly parad-
ing escorted by the garde republicaine in their plumed
helmets; Dick began living in a delirium of trips to Brus-
sels on the night express, lobster cardinal washed down
with Beaune on the red plush settees at Larue's, champagne
cocktails at the Ritz bar, talk full of the lowdown over a
demie at the Café Weber; it was like the old days of the
Baltimore convention, only he didn't give a damn any
more; it all hit him cockeyed funny.

One night soon after Christmas, Colonel Edgecombe
took Dick to dinner at Voisin's with a famous New York
publicity man who was said to be very near to Colonel
House. They stood a moment on the pavement outside the
restaurant to look at the tubby domed church opposite.
"You see, Savage, this fellow's the husband of a relative of
mine, one of the Pittsburgh Staples . . . smooth . . . it
seems to me. You look him over. For a youngster you seem
to have a keen eye for character."

Mr. Moorehouse turned out to be a large quietspoken
blueeyed jowly man with occasionally a touch of the south-
ern senator in his way of talking. With him were a man
named Robbins and a Miss Stoddard, a fraillooking woman
with very transparent alabaster skin and a sharp chirpy
voice; Dick noticed that she was stunningly welldressed.

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The restaurant was a little too much like an Episcopal
church; Dick said very little, was very polite to Miss
Stoddard and kept his eyes and ears open, eating the
grandducal food and carefully tasting the mellow wine
that nobody else seemed to pay any attention to. Miss
Stoddard kept everybody talking, but nobody seemed to
want to commit themselves to saying anything about the
peace conference. Miss Stoddard told with considerable
malice about the furnishings of the hôtel de Mûrat and
the Wilsons' colored maid and what kind of clothes the
President's wife, whom she insisted on calling Mrs. Galt,
was wearing. It was a relief when they got to the cigars
and liqueurs. After dinner Colonel Edgecombe offered to
drop Mr. Moorehouse at the Crillon, as his staffcar had
come for him. Dick and Mr. Robbins took Miss Stoddard
home in a taxicab to her apartment opposite Nôtre Dâme
on the left bank. They left her at her door. "Perhaps you'll
come around some afternoon to tea, Captain Savage," she
said.

The taximan refused to take them any further, said it was
late and that he was bound home to Noisy-le-sec and
drove off. Robbins took hold of Dick's arm. "Now for
crissake let's go and have a decent drink. . . . Boy, I'm
sick of the bigwigs.""All right," said Dick, "where'll we
go?" Walking along the foggy quay, past the shadowy bulk
of Nôtre Dâme, they talked scatteringly about Paris and
how cold it was. Robbins was a short man with an impudent
bossy look on his red face. In the café it was only a little
less chilly than in the street. "This climate's going to be
the death of me," said Robbins, snuggling his chin down
in his overcoat. "Woolly underwear's the only answer,
that's one thing I've learned in the army," said Dick
laughing.