TWO MEN FROM KATINKA

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 35, 11 February 1937, Page 23

TWO MEN FROM KATINKA

(By A. P. GARLAND.)

(SHORT STORY.)

44 r pHE n:i!y heart a man ct.n afford 1 who wants to get on in fliusiness is wan you can stbrike matches 1 oil,' 1 remarked Patrick Clancy, retired { and ret mi med confidence trickster over a two continents. "If you're soft you're luct. I'll tell you a ease. v -It a- the time I was over in the „ States and had started out to vend an elegant brand of gold mining shares all over tno Middle West. A fellah in yew Vork had invented the name 'Katinka tiold Fields' for me, and the scrip was all done in gold lettering that alone was worth every penny of the 10 dollars a share I was asking. e "Well, tliraveiling In the tlirain " through the State of lowa, I came across an oul.l gazabo of a farmer, name of Parr, and got talking to him until I brought up the question of Katinka r Gold Mines. t ""W hatsays he, with surprise, •You've been to Katinka?' ' "•Been?' says I. Why I cut the first sod of the gold mines myself.' l 'oh,' says he. 'And did you meet many missionaries when y'ou were there ?' "'No,' says I. 'They kept mostly to * the towns and didn't venture much'into c the jungle where there was lions, tigers, c lamas —a regular young zoo, all rolind! * We did see wan missionary, but only the rubber heels of liim. H» was dis- e appearing down an alligator's main thoroughfare at the time.' ' t e "Well, I went on spinning yarns like j that, and it ended up in this man Parr , asking me to stay over a few days at » his place at Moreton, which was only a ( few miles ahead. " I "A beautiful, sad-eyed girl, resemb- j ling Tarr as much as I do a set of bag- , pipes, met us at the station and drove ' us to the farm in a flivver. He intro- ' duce her as his daughter Tessie and , said, 'Imagine, girl. He's been to , Katinka.' "She took the news without starting ' a temperature or anything, but when , her mother, a bony, elderly dame, as , homely as a potato fork, heard the same thing she nearly leaped off the floor. " 'Sakes alive,' says she. 'Been to , Katinka!' Then she turns to the hired j man and says, 'Jake, take the flivver over to Windybush and ask Mr. Salter • to com§ over. Tell him there's a visitor who's been to Katinka.' "Over supper they told me all about this Salter bird. He had left Moreton seven years before for a missionary school in New York and had only got back a few weeks since, after five years' missionary work in Katinka in Central Africa. There had been receptions and jamborees for the returned hero, and a fund raised for him that was now nearly ten thousand dollars. "Then the old lady, as proud as Punch, added, 'He and Tessie are going to be marired soon.' "I had a glimpse of the girl when they announced this, and it didn't look to me as if 6he was as delighted as the parents, "A few minutes after Jake came back to say that Mr. Salter had a bout of malaria and wouldn't be able to leave his bed for three or four days. " 'O.K.' says I to myself. 'That'll stop him from stumping me with questions about Katinka.' "But £that night I took a long time to go asleep owing to fits of sobbing in the room next door, and I guessed who was sobbing. "The next morning I was late at breakfast, and Mrs. Parr, over a chat, showed me a picture of Mr. Salter which had just come from the framer's. "The photograph was of a cleanshaven fat-faced man, no Apollo, about SO yeare of age, and with a great scar running down the left cheek. " 'He got that in Katinka preaching the Word,' explained the old dame

proudly. 'A witch doctor flung a spear at him.' " 'Yes,' says T, 'and rang the bell. I bet he got a coconut for that shot.' "'You must wait and see him. Mr. Clancy,' says she. He's a wonderful man.' "'I will.' says I. And knew I was a dam fool. "After breakfast I went for a stroll through the woods to think things over, when in a small clearing I came across Tessie weeping under a tree, while a young man was clutching her round the ■waist. As soon as they saw me they broke away. • • • • " 'Sorry,' says I. 'I didn't mean to intrude.' "The girl fidgeted and bit her lip. " 'Mr. Clancy,' says she, pleading-like, •will you please not—not tell father and mother you've—" "Then she broke down, and the young man. solemn as a judge, took her place. " 'Tessie and I,' says he, 'are—were sweethearts. We were only waiting till I was twenty-one to ask her parents' consent for us to marry. But now—now she's, going to marry Mr. Salter, and—and I'm going away. I—l only came to say good-bye and—' " 'My boy,' says I. 'Pathrick Clancy's no chatterbox. Then I turned to the tP rl - . j, " 'Tessie,' says I. 'You don t love this Salter. Why are you marrying him?'

"She looked at me helplessly, but the boy eanie to the rescue. He told me that lessie was a foundling and only an adopted daughter of the Parrs, and that they had done so much for her that at all costs she was going to please them bv marrying Salter, who thev thought would make her the finest husband in the world. Telling me this was too much for the lad, and his lip quivered.

"Then up steps Pathrick Clancv, Don Quicksliot and Saint George off "horseback.

Listen, you two,' says 1.. 'You can ease your minds. The marriage with Salter is off, and is going to stay off.'" The two stared at me half-paralysed. " Can J ou prevent it?' said the lad. I can and will,' X. 'Tessie's no more going to marry this Salter bird than she's going to marry me.' "The young man looked me right between the eyes, ° Mr. Clancy,' says he, 'if you save Tessie from marrying a man she hates, I'' 111 go through hell for you!* "I held out my hand to him. Shake,' says I. "Now I want to be driven to some town about 10 miles or so away from here, where I can talk on the long-distance 'phone to New York without being overheard or noticed.' I can do that,' says the young man, eagerly. "Three days later the town of Moreton was a scene of excitement that made the French Revolution look like a sewing bee. "That morning two dark men. with faces hewn out of solid granite, and wearing hard hats as if they'd «rown 'em, arrived by train and took into custody wan Charles Salter, the man from Ratinka, the hero-missionary, who had baptised niggers a battalion at a time, and had come home to gather the honours and collect the doings. "And what a riot there was when the local pastors, deacons and plate-pushers heard of it! They came swarming down to the gaol, headed by old man Parr, and armed with shuotguns and things, demanding the release of the man-of-God Salter or Among those present was decidedly not me. "The two hard-faced men, chewing their tobacco like gentlemen, just laughed. " 'We're Federal policemen,' says they, 'and don t you dare to start anything. " 'This suy.' says they, 'ain't no missionary. He's just Sky pilot Charlie, who was sent up the river for 10 years, six months ago, for bank robbery and pounding a cashier. He broke out of prison two months ago and nearly killed a warder. We got a private wire that he was down here, and we came along to fetch him back to where he belongs. If you don't believe it, come up here and see the picture of him in prison clothes.' "Some of them went up, and what they saw was enovgh. They all went away with their tails between thoir legs, and no man had a word to say to his neighbour. "An hour later Skvpilot Charlie went back East to finish his time." Clancy looked at me with a. compla-' ccnt smile on his face. "I don't need to ask," said I, "who was it that tripped up Salter. The point is, how did you guess he was a crook and a gaolbird?" "How did I guess?" said Clancy. "It wasn't a guess. It was a certainty. Sure, there wasn't a crook or gangster in Xew York that I didn't know. That is, if he was any class. And Skvpilot Charlie was one of the toughest gangsters that ever stepped Br6adwav. And he knew me. Oh, yes. Here, I'll tell you why.

"Wan day, three years or so before I struck Moreton, there was a row over cards in a speakeasy in Harlem, and Charlie drew a gun on another fellah. He'd have bored a hole in him,- too, only for me. But at four yards range I laid him out with a glass jug, me being a Tipperary stone-thrower by birth and a deadly marksman with half-brick or chunk of pavement. "I opened his cheek nice and scientific like, and when Mrs. Parr showed me his photograph, though it had been touched up a bit and the clothes were different, I knew Charlie at wanee by the scar. Can a man recognise his own handiwork or not? Tell me that." He halted for a moment and looked reminiscent. "Them were the days," he murmured softly. Then, in a matter-of-fact tone, "So there I was, having wasted a good four days of ray valuable time for the sake of a young couple that I'd never set eyes on again. And even now I knew that I couldn't settle down to work off any of my gold shares on the local chawbacons. So I decided to move off and seek pastures new. "But. Tessie and Frank drove me over tp the station and made a fuss of me, and it was nice to hear the young couple telling me what a grand fellah I was. "Then, just as I was stepping into the thrain, Frank shook hands with me, and Tessie flung her arms around me.

"And me. Pathrick Clancy, confidenceman and the rest of it, with my bag full of unsold share certificates, rolled away westward in the thrain with song birds fluttering in my foolish heart."