第16章

THE ENCHANTED PROFILE

There are few Caliphesses.Women are Scheherazades by birth, predilection, instinct, and arrangement of the vocal cords.The thousand and one stories are being told every day by hundreds of thousands of viziers' daughters to their respective sultans.But the bowstring will get some of 'em yet if they don't watch out.

I heard a story, though, of one lady Caliph.It isn't precisely an Arabian Nights story, because it brings in Cinderella, who flourished her dishrag in another epoch and country.So, if you don't mind the mixed dates (which seem to give it an Eastern flavour, after all), we'll get along.

In New York there is an old, old hotel.You have seen woodcuts of it in the magazines.It was built--let's see--at a time when there was nothing above Fourteenth Street except the old Indian trail to Boston and Hammerstein's office.Soon the old hostelry will be torn down.

And, as the stout walls are riven apart and the bricks go roaring down the chutes, crowds of citizens will gather at the nearest corners and weep over the destruction of a dear old landmark.Civic pride is strongest in New Bagdad; and the wettest weeper and the loudest howler against the iconoclasts will be the man (originally from Terre Haute)

whose fond memories of the old hotel are limited to his having been kicked out from its free-lunch counter in 1873.

At this hotel always stopped Mrs.Maggie Brown.Mrs.Brown was a bony woman of sixty, dressed in the rustiest black, and carrying a handbag made, apparently, from the hide of the original animal that Adam decided to call an alligator.She always occupied a small parlour and bedroom at the top of the hotel at a rental of two dollars per day.

And always, while she was there, each day came hurrying to see her many men, sharp-faced, anxious-looking, with only seconds to spare.

For Maggie Brown was said to be the third richest woman in the world;

and these solicitous gentlemen were only the city's wealthiest brokers and business men seeking trifling loans of half a dozen millions or so from the dingy old lady with the prehistoric handbag.

The stenographer and typewriter of the Acropolis Hotel (there! I've let the name of it out!) was Miss Ida Bates.She was a hold-over from the Greek classics.There wasn't a flaw in her looks.Some old-timer paying his regards to a lady said: "To have loved her was a liberal education." Well, even to have looked over the black hair and neat white shirtwaist of Miss Bates was equal to a full course in any correspondence school in the country.She sometimes did a little typewriting for me, and, as she refused to take the money in advance, she came to look upon me as something of a friend and protege.She had unfailing kindliness and a good nature; and not even a white-lead drummer or a fur importer had ever dared to cross the dead line of good behaviour in her presence.The entire force of the Acropolis, from the owner, who lived in Vienna, down to the head porter, who had been bedridden for sixteen years, would have sprung to her defence in a moment.

One day I walked past Miss Bates's little sanctum Remingtorium, and saw in her place a black-haired unit--unmistakably a person--pounding with each of her forefingers upon the keys.Musing on the mutability of temporal affairs, I passed on.The next day I went on a two weeks'

vacation.Returning, I strolled through the lobby of the Acropolis, and saw, with a little warm glow of auld lang syne, Miss Bates, as Grecian and kind and flawless as ever, just putting the cover on her machine.The hour for closing had come; but she asked me in to sit for a few minutes on the dictation chair.Miss Bates explained her absence from and return to the Acropolis Hotel in words identical with or similar to these following:

"Well, Man, how are the stories coming?"

"Pretty regularly," said I."About equal to their going."

"I'm sorry," said she."Good typewriting is the main thing in a story.

You've missed me, haven't you?"

"No one," said I, "whom I have ever known knows as well as you do how to space properly belt buckles, semi-colons, hotel guests, and hairpins.But you've been away, too.I saw a package of peppermint-

pepsin in your place the other day."

"I was going to tell you all about it," said Miss Bates, "if you hadn't interrupted me.

"Of course, you know about Maggie Brown, who stops here.Well, she's worth $40,000,000.She lives in Jersey in a ten-dollar flat.She's always got more cash on hand than half a dozen business candidates for vice-president.I don't know whether she carries it in her stocking or not, but I know she's mighty popular down in the part of town where they worship the golden calf.

"Well, about two weeks ago, Mrs.Brown stops at the door and rubbers at me for ten minutes.I'm sitting with my side to her, striking off some manifold copies of a copper-mine proposition for a nice old man from Tonopah.But I always see everything all around me.When I'm hard at work I can see things through my side-combs; and I can leave one button unbuttoned in the back of my shirtwaist and see who's behind me.I didn't look around, because I make from eighteen to twenty dollars a week, and I didn't have to.

"That evening at knocking-off time she sends for me to come up to her apartment.I expected to have to typewrite about two thousand words of notes-of-hand, liens, and contracts, with a ten-cent tip in sight; but I went.Well, Man, I was certainly surprised.Old Maggie Brown had turned human.