“Okay,” he muttered.
“Let’s go then,” Tink cried. “Don’t forget I try my hand first on him.”
With eyes dancing with merry excitement, Tink ran down the brass buttons on the officer’s coat and leaped to the street in a graceful bound.
Jonathon Blake stood on the corner of Forty-second and Broadway wrestling with a rather interesting problem. He was trying to decide whether he should spend his last dollar and then leap into the Hudson River, or just step in front of a truck now and be done with it.
He was a tall, dark-haired young man, and his serge suit could have doubled for a mirror any time, any place. He was a playwright. Ordinarily playwrights do not spend their time contemplating self-extinction. Only hungry playwrights who have been forcibly ejected from every manager’s office on Broadway are subject to this peculiar form of mental doldrums.
Jonathon fitted into this last group and that was reason enough, it seemed to him, for stepping recklessly into the street into the path of a huge, rumbling van.
He actually did it without thinking? One instant he was pondering the problem and the next split second he was waiting for the inevitable and crushing impact of the heavy truck.
A horrible tortured squeal tore from brake drums and the truck came to a shuddering, jerky stop, bumper grazing the leg of Jonathon’s trousers. It was a miraculous, almost incredible escape, and the milling pedestrians were breathlessly horrified.
Jonathon struggled through them as swiftly as he could and hurried down the street. Just his luck, he decided miserably. Couldn’t even do a decent job of committing suicide. Every other bloke could, if he wanted, dispatch himself with neatness and vigor, but not Jonathon Blake. He strode dejectedly along, completely unaware of the two Leprechauns perched on his shoulder.
“First blood,” Tink said jubilantly to the glowering Nastee. “I saved him from the truck. Now let’s see what you can do.”
“You’ll see,” Nastee promised grimly.
At Forty-first street Jonathon decided to have a cup of coffee. He might as well spend his dollar, he realized, before jumping into the river. He was no hoarder.
He entered a smart restaurant, catering to the show business crowd, and slumped into a seat next to a young girl. He didn’t bother to look at her, just mumbled his order to the waitress and continued to think his gloomy thoughts.
When the coffee arrived, he reached for the cup, but before he could touch it, something jigged his elbow and the cup tipped its contents into the lap of the girl seated next to him.
She cried out instinctively, and then they were both on their feet and he was trying vainly to mop up the mess with his handkerchief. The waitress and the manager hurried over and Jonathon felt like an awkward, clumsy oaf, with ten thumbs.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said miserably, dabbing ineffectually at her skirt with his handkerchief. “Awfully clumsy of me.”
“Yes, wasn’t it?” the girl said frostily.
Jonathan took a good look at her then for the first time. The top of her smooth blonde head came up just even with his shoulder, and she was put together very neatly, with just the right curves in the right places. Her large blue eyes were frosted with anger now and there were twin spots of color in the creamy white of her cheeks.
Jonathon felt his spirits lifting at the sight of this girl. Suddenly it seemed awfully important that she didn’t think him an impossible clown.
“Please,” he said humbly, “I know I don’t deserve it but won’t you smile just once so I’ll know you’re not too angry with me.”
The girl hesitated for an instant, and then she noticed Jonathon’s clean, dark, good looks and wide shoulders. She smiled then. Not a big smile but just enough to let Jonathon know she wasn’t really mad.
He sat down next to her feeling very happy and very reckless.
“Since I’ve messed up things so terribly,” he said, “won’t you let me buy breakfast?” He slipped his hand covertly into his pocket and reassured himself that the dollar was still there.
For a fraction of a second the girl deliberated. Then she smiled, a big smile this time.
“I think that would be very nice,” she said gaily.
Breakfast while it lasted, was one of the most delightful meals he had ever eaten. They talked of everything and anything and time slipped by rapidly. Finally the girl glanced at her watch and sighed regretfully. Jonathon called for a check and reached for his dollar bill. It wasn’t in the pocket he thought it was. He tried his other side pocket. It wasn’t there. Something like panic crawled into his throat and stuck there.
Hurriedly he went through his other pockets. His vest, even his watch pocket he turned inside out. A cold clammy sweat broke out on his brow. What would she think? Naturally, that he was just some cheap cadger who was trying to sponge her for a meal. Or else just a blustering fourflusher. His heart began to pound against his ribs like a frightened bullfrog.
Tink and Nastee were sitting on the edge of the counter, swinging their legs.
“That’s two in a row for you,” Tink said. “First you knocked the cup over and now you’ve stolen his money.”
Nastee grunted.
“The spilled coffee didn’t work like it should have. I’ll bet you had something to do with the way they got together so nice and chummy. She won’t think much of him when he has to ask her to pay the check though.”
Jonathon mopped his forehead nervously with his handkerchief.
“Is there anything wrong?” the girl asked quietly. There was the barest trace of frigidity in her voice.
“No, no,” Jonathon lied. “Everything’s just fine.”
He picked up the check and stood up.
The walk to the cashier’s desk was like the Last Mile. He thought desperately of dropping to the floor, and feigning unconsciousness or illness. But he didn’t. He walked on like a zombie or a man going to a dentist. At the desk he fumbled uncertainly with the check until the cashier reached out and plucked it from his nerveless fingers.
This was the end. As he waited for her to total the check, he thought bitterly of what he would do if he ever caught the pickpocket who had lifted his dollar.
The ringing of the cash register disrupted his murderous reverie. It didn’t just ring once as the sale was recorded. It rang steadily and clangingly like a fire alarm. Jonathon looked at the girl anxiously.
She was smiling cheerfully as if it was nothing unusual for a well-behaved cash register to suddenly go off like an alarm clock.
“What’s the matter?” he asked stupidly.
“Nothing,” the girl answered, with a bright smile. She shoved his check back to him. It was stamped with a big gold star.
“You’re the one-hundred-thousandth customer this year,” she explained. “The meal is on us. Congratulations.”
Jonathon felt a flood of sheer relief course through his body. His knees were filling with water and his head was getting light and dizzy. Luck like this was incredulous.
“Saved by the bell,” he said fervently.
He turned and joined the girl who was waiting at the door. Now he could ask her name, ask her to let him see her again. Dizzying, delightful thoughts were churning through his head. He was going to lick this writing game, he knew. He also knew that when that happened he’d probably have a certain important question to ask this girl. That, he decided fleeingly, was the silliest thought of all. See a girl for a half hour and decide you’re in love with her. Those things just didn’t happen.
He took her by the arm and they went outside.
Tink was dancing gleefully on Jonathon’s shoulder.[8]
“Pretty neat,” he chortled. “Pretty neat, wasn’t it?”
Nastee barely grunted.
“You mean fixing that cash machine, I suppose,” he said sulkily. He turned over and scowled. “I’m getting mad now.”
8
Irish folklore is full of beliefs about the “little people,” both good and bad. Perhaps the most famous of them all are the leprechauns, who are said to be invisible, except to true Irishmen, and only to them on certain occasions. They are, insist the Irish, the “voice” we call conscience.