The fellows found Marty hiding behind a garbage can, crying. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he said. “Don’t let them put me in jail.” When they got him in jail and started asking him questions he acted like a kid that’s been caught stealing candy or something. “I won’t do it again,” he said. He’d wipe his eyes with his fists and spread dirt all over his face. “Did she tell on me?” he’d ask.
Of course they had to send Marty to the nut house at Stockton. They were afraid he’d bust loose again. He bawled like a kid for three days after they told him what they were going to do, until they took him away. What worried him was he’d be cooped up and wouldn’t get to go up and down the streets selling papers. The deputy that took him to Stockton said he didn’t fight. He just bawled like a kid.
What made the fellows sore about the whole thing was the way Marge acted when she got out of the hospital. You know how women are. You never know what makes ‘em click. Marge was that way. She got the notion the fellows were to blame. That’s a hot one, isn’t it? How could the fellows been to blame when they weren’t anywhere near when it happened? It made them mad the way she started treating ‘em. When they went into the coffee joint she treated ‘em like dogs, wouldn’t kid with them or anything. Never so much as a smile or a pleasant word. The fellows started staying away from the place, so the owner canned Marge. You couldn’t blame him.
It seemed what Marty did to her and losing her job and all kind of made her screwy herself. Before she left town she met one of the fellows on the street and he told her he was sorry about her losing her job. “If you’d treated the fellows decent,” he said, “the boss would of kept you.” Well, sir, she scratched his face something awful, and he had to slap her good to make her quit. He wasn’t the kind of fellow that hits women, but women haven’t got a right to scratch a fellow’s face when he hasn’t done anything. Old Ironsides, the cop, agreed with the fellow. He told Marge to get out of town or he’d run her out.
The fellows sometimes say how funny it seems without Marty going up and down the streets yelling “Whoa! Whoa!” They sure used to get a kick out of him.
Flowers To the Fair
by Craig Rice
1.
At exactly 8:13 A.M. Mr. Petty arrived. He hung his hat in the locker, just as he had hung it every working day of his life for the last thirty years. He went over to the water cooler where he wet his dry, tense throat with a small sip of water. Then he shuffled down the hall to the door marked: George V. Benson, General Manager.
Mr. Petty waited till his wrist watch showed precisely 8:15. Then he opened the door, walked in, closing it carefully behind him.
Mr. Benson looked up at the little bookkeeper.
“Always prompt, aren’t you, Petty?”
Mr. Petty gulped. “Yes, sir. You said 8:15, sir.”
“So, here you are. At exactly 8:15. Now, if you weren’t the fool you are, Petty, you would have come at 7:15. You would have gone straight to the safe and opened it — you know the combination — and you would have helped yourself, not to a measly three thousand dollars, but to two hundred thousand dollars.”
The little bookkeeper’s eyes opened wide in innocent astonishment. “I couldn’t have done a thing like that,” he stammered. “Why — that would be stealing.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Benson said. “That would have been stealing. So what do you do instead? You pilfer the petty cash, you make false entries on your books, you kite checks, a few measly bucks at a time — for how many months? And when you’re three thousand dollars in the hole and you know the auditors are due in Monday morning, you come to me with a hard luck story. What was it, horses?”
“No, sir,” Mr. Petty said. “That would be gambling!” He paused and looked down at the floor. “Women,” he said meekly.
“Women!”
“Yes sir,” Mr. Petty said. “Women. It’s in my horoscope. I’m a Taurus.”
“That figures,” Benson said. “Now tell me one thing more, Petty. How do you expect to pay this money back?
Mr. Petty looked puzzled. He squirmed uneasily in his chair. “That’s what I was expecting you to tell me. You promised to help me, Mr. Benson.”
Benson said, “Of course, I’ll help you. Everybody knows George Benson has never failed to help a faithful employee out of a jam.” He sat back in his chair and folded his arms silently for a minute while Mr. Petty fidgeted with his hands, as if he had just found he had one too many.
“Tell you what I’ll do, Petty,” Benson said. “Nobody knows about this, nobody except you — and me. I’ll lend you the money, that’s what I’ll do. Just sign this—” he handed a typewritten sheet of paper across the desk — “and you can pay me back ten dollars every week out of your paycheck.” He handed his pen across to the little bookkeeper. “Just a brief statement of the facts. Sort of a confession, you know, just to make it legal.”
Mr. Petty took the pen. His hand shook as he started to write, and paused. “The money,” he said falteringly. “Shouldn’t I — get the money first?”
Mr. Benson’s face took on an expression of injured dignity. “I’m surprised at you, Petty,” he said. “Do you expect me to go around every day with thousands of dollars in my wallet?” He looked at his watch. “The bank closes at one today. And Monday is a bank holiday. Before I take the plane to Pittsburgh this afternoon I’ll leave three thousand dollars in an envelope for you. You’ll find it in the safe, in the petty cash box.”
“But I’ve got things to do first,” Mr. Petty said. “I’ve got to go back over the books. There are things to straighten out before the auditors get here.”
“I’ve thought of that too,” Benson replied. “You’ve got keys to the plant. Tomorrow is Sunday. Come down and let yourself in. Emil, the night watchman, knows you. Tell him you’re working overtime on the books. Get the entries straightened out, put the money back where it belongs, and when the auditors arrive on Monday everything’ll be okay. I’ll take that paper now.”
Mr. Petty scrawled his name on the dotted line and handed the paper back to Benson. “Thank you,” he said, rising to go. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.” He swallowed hard. “You’ve saved my life. How can I ever repay you?”
“You will,” Benson assured the little bookkeeper. “Don’t worry, you will.”
2.
On warm Saturday afternoons it was John J. Malone’s custom to take his ease, with suitable refreshments, at Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar, but on this torrid Saturday afternoon he was still in the office, attending to some urgent business. Maggie, his secretary, was assisting with the technical details.
“I distinctly remember replenishing the Emergency file,” Malone was saying. “Right there in back of Bills Payable.”
“I looked,” Maggie said firmly. “I looked, and it isn’t there. Are you sure you didn’t drink it up one night this week when you were alone in the office? And speaking of bills payable—”
The door opened in the outer office and Maggie went to attend to it.
“If it’s the building agent after the rent tell him the police are dragging the Drainage Canal for my remains,” Malone called after her.
A minute later Maggie was back. “It’s a Mr. Algernon Petty,” she reported. “He says it’s important.”
“Didn’t you tell him I was busy on an important case?” Malone said, in a voice that he knew, by actual test, carried practically out into the hall. Then, under his breath to Maggie, “You’d better call up right away and tell them to send over a quart of the usual.”