"What You Want"
Night had fallen on that great and beautiful city known as Bagdad-
on-the-Subway. And with the night came the enchanted glamour
that belongs not to Arabia alone. In different masquerade the
streets, bazaars and walled houses of the occidental city of
romance were filled with the same kind of folk that so much
interested our interesting old friend, the late Mr. H. A. Rashid.
They wore clothes eleven hundred years nearer to the latest styles
than H. A. saw in old Bagdad; but they were about the same people
underneath. With the eye of faith, you could have seen the
Little Hunchback, Sinbad the Sailor, Fitbad the Tailor, the
Beautiful Persian, the one-eyed Calenders, Ali Baba and Forty
Robbers on every block, and the Barber and his Six Brothers, and
all the old Arabian gang easily.
But let us revenue to our lamb chops.
Old Tom Crowley was a caliph. He had $42,000,000 in preferred stocks
and bonds with solid gold edges. In these times, to be called a
caliph you must have money. The old-style caliph business as
conducted by Mr. Rashid is not safe. If you hold up a person nowadays
in a bazaar or a Turkish bath or a side street, and inquire into his
private and personal affairs, the police court'll get you.
Old Tom was tired of clubs, theatres, dinners, friends, music, money
and everything. That's what makes a caliph--you must get to despise
everything that money can buy, and then go out and try to want
something that you can't pay for.
"I'll take a little trot around town all by myself," thought old Tom,
"and try if I can stir up anything new. Let's see--it seems I've
read about a king or a Cardiff giant or something in old times who
used to go about with false whiskers on, making Persian dates with
folks he hadn't been introduced to. That don't listen like a bad
idea. I certainly have got a case of humdrumness and fatigue on
for the ones I do know. That old Cardiff used to pick up cases of
trouble as he ran upon 'em and give 'em gold--sequins, I think it
was--and make 'em marry or got 'em good Government jobs. Now,
I'd like something of that sort. My money is as good as his was
even if the magazines do ask me every month where I got it. Yes,
I guess I'll do a little Cardiff business to-night, and see how it
goes."
Plainly dressed, old Tom Crowley left his Madison Avenue palace,
and walked westward and then south. As he stepped to the sidewalk,
Fate, who holds the ends of the strings in the central offices of
all the enchanted cities pulled a thread, and a young man twenty
blocks away looked at a wall clock, and then put on his coat.
James Turner worked in one of those little hat-cleaning
establishments on Sixth Avenue in which a fire alarms rings when
you push the door open, and where they clean your hat while you
wait--two days. James stood all day at an electric machine that
turned hats around faster than the best brands of champagne ever
could have done. Overlooking your mild impertinence in feeling a
curiosity about the personal appearance of a stranger, I will give
you a modified description of him. Weight, 118; complexion, hair
and brain, light; height, five feet six; age, about twenty-three;
dressed in a $10 suit of greenish-blue serge; pockets containing
two keys and sixty-three cents in change.
But do not misconjecture because this description sounds like a
General Alarm that James was either lost or a dead one.
_Allons!_
James stood all day at his work. His feet were tender and
extremely susceptible to impositions being put upon or below
them. All day long they burned and smarted, causing him much
suffering and inconvenience. But he was earning twelve dollars
per week, which he needed to support his feet whether his feet
would support him or not.
James Turner had his own conception of what happiness was, just
as you and I have ours. Your delight is to gad about the world in
yachts and motor-cars and to hurl ducats at wild fowl. Mine is to
smoke a pipe at evenfall and watch a badger, a rattlesnake, and an
owl go into their common prairie home one by one.
James Turner's idea of bliss was different; but it was his. He
would go directly to his boarding-house when his day's work was
done. After his supper of small steak, Bessemer potatoes, stooed
(not stewed) apples and infusion of chicory, he would ascend to
his fifth-floor-back hall room. Then he would take off his shoes
and socks, place the soles of his burning feet against the cold bars
of his iron bed, and read Clark Russell's sea yarns. The delicious
relief of the cool metal applied to his smarting soles was his
nightly joy. His favorite novels never palled upon him; the sea
and the adventures of its navigators were his sole intellectual
passion. No millionaire was ever happier than James Turner
taking his ease.
When James left the hat-cleaning shop he walked three blocks out
of his way home to look over the goods of a second-hand
bookstall. On the sidewalk stands he had more than once picked
up a paper-covered volume of Clark Russell at half price.
While he was bending with a scholarly stoop over the marked-down
miscellany of cast-off literature, old Tom the caliph sauntered by.
His discerning eye, made keen by twenty years' experience in the
manufacture of laundry soap (save the wrappers!) recognized
instantly the poor and discerning scholar, a worthy object of his
caliphanous mood. He descended the two shallow stone steps that
led from the sidewalk, and addressed without hesitation the object
of his designed munificence. His first words were no worse than
salutatory and tentative.
James Turner looked up coldly, with "Sartor Resartus" in one hand
and "A Mad Marriage" in the other.
"Beat it," said he. "I don't want to buy any coat hangers or town
lots in Hankipoo, New Jersey. Run along, now, and play with your
Teddy bear."
"Young man," said the caliph, ignoring the flippancy of the hat
cleaner, "I observe that you are of a studious disposition. Learning
is one of the finest things in the world. I never had any of it worth
mentioning, but I admire to see it in others. I come from the West,
where we imagine nothing but facts. Maybe I couldn't understand
the poetry and allusions in them books you are picking over, but I
like to see somebody else seem to know what they mean. I'm worth
about $40,000,000, and I'm getting richer every day. I made the
height of it manufacturing Aunt Patty's Silver Soap. I invented
the art of making it. I experimented for three years before I got
just the right quantity of chloride of sodium solution and caustic
potash mixture to curdle properly. And after I had taken some
$9,000,000 out of the soap business I made the rest in corn and
wheat futures. Now, you seem to have the literary and scholarly
turn of character; and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll pay for your
education at the finest college in the world. I'll pay the expense
of your rummaging over Europe and the art galleries, and finally set
you up in a good business. You needn't make it soap if you have any
objections. I see by your clothes and frazzled necktie that you are
mighty poor; and you can't afford to turn down the offer. Well,
when do you want to begin?"
The hat cleaner turned upon old Tom the eye of the Big City, which
is an eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment
suspended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of
challenge, curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may
think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship
that must be hidden when one walks among the "stranger bands."
For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever
sits, dwells, drinks, rides, walks or sleeps in the adjacent chair,
house, booth, seat, path or room.
"Say, Mike," said James Turner, "what's your line, anyway--shoe
laces? I'm not buying anything. You better put an egg in your
shoe and beat it before incidents occur to you. You can't work off
any fountain pens, gold spectacles you found on the street, or trust
company certificate house clearings on me. Say, do I look like I'd
climbed down one of them missing fire-escapes at Helicon Hall?
What's vitiating you, anyhow?"
"Son," said the caliph, in his most Harunish tones, "as I said, I'm
worth $40,000,000. I don't want to have it all put in my coffin
when I die. I want to do some good with it. I seen you handling
over these here volumes of literature, and I thought I'd keep you.
I've give the missionary societies $2,000,000, but what did I get
out of it? Nothing but a receipt from the secretary. Now, you are
just the kind of young man I'd like to take up and see what money
could make of him."
Volumes of Clark Russell were hard to find that evening at the Old
Book Shop. And James Turner's smarting and aching feet did not
tend to improve his temper. Humble hat cleaner though he was, he
had a spirit equal to any caliph's.
"Say, you old faker," he said, angrily, "be on your way. I don't
know what your game is, unless you want change for a bogus
$40,000,000 bill. Well, I don't carry that much around with me.
But I do carry a pretty fair left-handed punch that you'll get if
you don't move on."
"You are a blamed impudent little gutter pup," said the caliph.
Then James delivered his self-praised punch; old Tom seized him
by the collar and kicked him thrice; the hat cleaner rallied and
clinched; two bookstands were overturned, and the books sent
flying. A copy came up, took an arm of each, and marched them
to the nearest station house. "Fighting and disorderly conduct,"
said the cop to the sergeant.
"Three hundred dollars bail," said the sergeant at once,
asseveratingly and inquiringly.
"Sixty-three cents," said James Turner with a harsh laugh.
The caliph searched his pockets and collected small bills and change
amounting to four dollars.
"I am worth," he said, "forty million dollars, but--"
"Lock 'em up," ordered the sergeant.
In his cell, James Turner laid himself on his cot, ruminating. "Maybe
he's got the money, and maybe he ain't. But if he has or he ain't,
what does he want to go 'round butting into other folks's business for?
When a man knows what he wants, and can get it, it's the same as
$40,000,000 to him."
Then an idea came to him that brought a pleased look to his face.
He removed his socks, drew his cot close to the door, stretched
himself out luxuriously, and placed his tortured feet against the
cold bars of the cell door. Something hard and bulky under the
blankets of his cot gave one shoulder discomfort. He reached under,
and drew out a paper-covered volume by Clark Russell called
"A Sailor's Sweetheart." He gave a great sigh of contentment.
Presently, to his cell came the doorman and said:
"Say, kid, that old gazabo that was pinched with you for scrapping
seems to have been the goods after all. He 'phoned to his friends,
and he's out at the desk now with a roll of yellowbacks as big as a
Pullman car pillow. He wants to bail you, and for you to come out
and see him."
"Tell him I ain't in," said James Turner.
-THE END-
[William Sidney Porter]O Henry's short story: "What You Want"
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
