CHAPTER VI

You didn't happen to see Pinckney at the last Horse Show, did you? Well,
you'd never known him for the same ambulance fare that dropped into the
Studio that day. He's been on the 'rock for two months now, and his
nerves are as steady as a truck horse. There's more meat on him, too,
than there was. I don't have to have a dustpan ready, in case I should
jolt him one.

But say, next time any two-by-four chappy floats in here for a private
course, I gets plans and specifications before I takes him on. No more
Rajah business in mine. See?

There's another thing, too. I'm thinkin' of hirin' a husky boy with a
club to do the turnkey act for me. Or maybe I could get out an
injunction against myself to keep me from leavin' home. What I need is a
life sentence to stay in little old New York. It's the only place where
things happen reg'lar and sensible. If you see rocks flyin' round in the
air, or a new building doin' the hoochee-coochee an' sheddin' its
cornices, or manhole covers poppin' off, you know just what's
up--nothing but a little stick dynamite handled careless, or some
mislaid gas touched off by a plumber.

But the minute I lets some one lead me across a ferry, or beyond the
Bronx, the event card is on the blink, and I'm a bunky-doodle boy.
Long's I don't get more'n a mile from Forty-Second-st., I'm Professor
McCabe, and the cops pass me the time of day. Outside of that I'm a
stray, and anyone that gets the fit ties a can to me.

It was my mix-up with that Blenmont aggregation that stirs me up.
Pinckney was at the bottom of this, too. Course, I can't register any
kick; for when it comes to doing the hair-trigger friendship act,
Pinckney's the real skookum preferred. But this was once when he slipped
me a blank.

Looked like bein' fed with a spoon, too, at the start. All I had to do
was to take the one-thirty-six out to Blenmont, put in an hour with
Jarvis, catch the three-fifty back, and charge anything I had the front
to name. What's more, I kind of cottoned to Jarvis, from the drop of the
hat.

He was waitin' at the station for me, with a high-wheeled cart, and a
couple of gingery circus horses hitched one in front of the other like
two links of wienerwurst. They were tryin' to play leap-frog as the
train comes in; but it didn't seem to worry Jarvis any more'n if he was
drivin' a pair of mail-wagon plugs.

One of those big pink-and-white chaps, Jarvis was, with nice blue eyes
and ash