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Page 38
Bean knew Cassidy by that time, and his inspection of the apartment was
perfunctory. Cassidy would be a buckler and shield to the dog, in his
absence. Cassidy would love him. The dog, on his spread forefeet,
touched his chest to the ground and with ears erect, eyes agleam, and
inciting soprano gurgles invited the world to a mad, mad, game.
Cassidy only said, "Aw, g'wan! _Would_ you, now!" But each word was a
caress. And Cassidy became Bean's janitor.
He moved the next day, bringing his effects in a cab. The cabman
professed never to have seen a dog as "classy" as Nap, and voiced the
cheerful prophecy that in any bench show he would make them all look
like mutts. He received a gratuity of fifty cents in addition to the
outrageous fee he demanded for coming so far north, although he had the
appearance of one who uses liquor to excess, and could probably not have
qualified as a judge of dogs.
Bean's installation, under the guidance of Cassidy, was effected without
delay. The apartment proved to be entirely suitable for a king in
abeyance. There was a bedroom, a parlour, an alcove off the latter that
Cassidy said was the libr'y an' a good place f'r a dawg t' sleep, and
beyond this was a feminine diminutive of a kitchen, prettily called a
"kitchenette."
Bean felt like an insect in such a labyrinth of a place. He forgot where
he put things, and then, overcome by the vastness and number of rooms,
forgot what he was looking for, losing himself in an abstracted and
fruitless survey of the walls. He must buy things to hang on the walls,
especially over certain stains on the wall of the parlour, or
throne-room, to which in the heat of battle, doubtless, certain items of
the late Dutch lunch had been misdirected.
But he knew what to buy. Etchings. In the magazine stories he read,
aside from the very rich characters who had galleries of old masters,
there were two classes: one without taste that littered its rooms with
expensive but ill-advised bric-a-brac; and one that wisely contented
itself with "a few good etchings." He bought a few good etchings at a
department store for $1.97 each, and felt irreproachable. And when he
had arranged his books--about Napoleon I and ancient Egypt--he was ready
to play the game of living. Mrs. Cassidy "did" his rooms, and Cassidy
already showed the devotion of an old and tried retainer. The Cassidys
made him feel feudal.
At night, while Nap fought a never-decided battle with a sofa-pillow, or
curled asleep on the couch with a half-inch of silly pink tongue
projecting from between his teeth, he read of Egypt, the black land,
where had been the first great people of the ancient world. He devoured
the fruit of the lotus, the tamarisk, the pomegranate, and held cats to
be sacred. (Funny, that feeling he had always had about cats--afraid of
them even in childhood--it had survived in his being!) There he had
lived and reigned in that flat valley of the Nile, between borders of
low mountains, until his name had been put down in the book of the dead,
and he had gone for a time to the hall of Osiris.
Or, perhaps, he read reports of psychical societies, signed by men with
any number of capital letters after their names: cool-headed scientists,
university professors, psychologists, grave students all, who were
constantly finding new and wonderful mediums, and achieving
communication with the disembodied. He could tell them a few things;
only, of course, he wouldn't make a fool of himself. He could _show_
them something, too, when the secret agents of Professor Balthasar came
bringing It.
Or he looked into the opal depths of his shell, and saw visions of his
greatness to come, while Nap, unregarded, wrenched away one of his
slippers and pretended to find it something alive and formidable, to be
growled at and shaken and savagely macerated.
* * * * *
There came, on a certain fair morning, a summons from Breede, who was
detained at his country place by the same malady that Bulger had once so
crudely diagnosed. Bean was to bring out the mail and do his work there.
The car waited below.
At another time the expedition might have attracted him. He had studied
pictures of that country place in the Sunday papers. Now it meant a
separation from his dog, who was already betraying for the Cassidys a
greater fondness than the circumstances justified; and it meant an
absence from town at the very time when the secret agents might happen
along with It. Of course he could refuse to go, but that would cost him
his job, and he was not yet even the director of an express company.
Dejectedly he prepared for the journey.
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