"Mister 44"

Chapter I B

I RACE up, kid,” said Sadie. “ It’ll be six o’clock before you know it.”

She mopped the cold, moist forehead of No. 12 with a four-cent cotton handkerchief and spoke softly, as a mother might.

No. 12 leaned indifferently against the windowframe. The air came in reluctantly and sluggishly and was hot, but it was fresher than the air in the packing-room. A thin, pale face lifted itself to Sadie’s and a pair of tired eyes returned thanks for the ministrations.

“ I’d ’a’ been all right if he hadn’t picked on me,” said No. 12. “He’s always pickin’. Ain’t it hot?”

“ Some hot,” assented Sadie. “ But don’t you care, kid. As for him ” — she nodded toward the center of the room — “ what do you care if he does pick? ’Tisn’t like havin’ a man pick on you. He’s a shrimp.”

“Wish I was like you,” murmured No. 12 wistfully. “ But when he starts at me I get all fluttered. Gee, I wish it was six ! ”

The packing and delivery department of the Challenge Shirt Company was filled with a smothering sultriness. The odor of newly made garments seemed to stifle the air’s feeble life.

Thirty girls worked listlessly, eyes on the clock. They were slowing down, like tired runners near the end of a long journey. Flannel shirts did not disappear into pasteboard boxes so rapidly as an hour before. Neither did boys who carried away the boxes move with forenoon alacrity. The symptoms of a day nearly spent were unmistakable.

The voice was petulant and shrill. It came from a collarless man who wiped his face as he talked. He was little and young, with a beaklike nose, a pallid skin, and faded eyes that watered unpleasantly. Exasperation and futility struggled within his narrow breast. Sadie turned slowly and surveyed him with calm eyes. Eighteen was her number.

“Get to work, No. 18,” croaked the little man. He tried to be menacing, but the pose signified no menace to Sadie.

“ I was tryin’ to do something for No. 12,” she said in an even voice. “ The poor kid’s about in.” ' “You get them olive-drabs into them boxes,” retorted the little man. “ No need for you to loaf because No. 12 is loafin’.”

“ You win,” observed Sadie placidly.

She went to her place at the long table and began putting shirts into boxes with skilled but deliberate

SADIE CHRISTENS THE SHRIMP n hands. The little man glared. It was a full minute before Sadie spoke again, and then it was like an addition to her last words.

“ No. 12’d be doing this, too, if you’d leave her alone. The heat didn’t get her; it was the pickin’.”

The little man, who had turned to rasp at a laggard boy, whirled about.

“ Who’s boss here? ” he demanded.

“ Too hard for me,” commented Sadie as she slid the cover on a box and lifted her eyes for a few seconds to contemplate the questioner.

“ I’m boss.”

“ You certainly are a grand question-and-answer department, Mr. Ferguson.”

There was faint emphasis on the mister. It was not lost upon the packing department. Momentarily hands that were packing away shirts paused. Two girls whispered. When Sadie and the superintendent battled the output of the Challenge Shirt Company marked time in its march to the consumer.

“ You know the rules — work and no back talk,” snapped Ferguson. “ You lookin’ for a fine? ”

Sadie made no answer, but inspected an olive-drab critically.

“ I say you want to be fined? ”

“ Leap to it,” advised Sadie.

“ Twenty-five cents,” said Ferguson as he turned for a tour of table-inspection.

Idle hands were galvanized into motion.

Sadie smiled tolerantly. It was not in her nature to cry when she was hurt. Gayly she put olive-drabs into boxes. But she was hurt.

i2 “MISTER 44”

There never was a time when a twenty-five-cent fine failed to hurt a seven-dollar-a-week envelope. A ten-cent fine was a severe loss; a quarter fine achieved the dignity of financial embarrassment. It amounted almost' to involuntary bankruptcy when you were putting fifty cents a week into a savings-bank and twenty cents into a sick-benefit fund.

Just why Sadie subscribed to the sick benefit she did not clearly know. She was never sick; but other girls were sick, often, and it seemed like a good idea, for the twenty cents helped somebody, if not Sadie.

Six o’clock was near. Sluggard hands, whose owners suddenly feared Sadie’s fate, worked with imitation energy. Sadie, however, kept her even pace ; she never hurried, yet she could put more shirts into more boxes in a nine-hour day than any of her sister workers.

Her manner gave no trace of the little tragedy that was bringing her day to a close. She hummed softly. Twenty-five cents meant staying away from the movies five nights. It was a blow, but she would manage to survive it.

She did not notice that Ferguson had paused again at her table until he leaned across it and said tentatively :

“ Say, Sadie.”

“No. 1 8,” she corrected.

“ Now, listen, Sadie.”

“ Line’s busy.”

“ Quit kiddin’,” he said with an uneasy laugh. “ You and me don’t want to be bad friends.”

“Who said so? Why not?”

Sadie’s eyes widened in affected surprise as she bestowed a measuring glance across the table.

Ferguson leaned his elbows on a pile of shirts and looked up at her.

“ Listen, now,” he protested. “ I ain’t mad, Sadie. But you had no call to talk back. It’s against rules. I gotta have discipline, y’ know.”

“Then why don’t you get it?” asked Sadie smoothly.

Ferguson winced, frowned, and began again.

“ I just had to fine you after what was said. Didn’t I?”

“ Sure ; for the public good,” nodded Sadie.

“ Lemme tell you something, Sadie. I can forget to send a fine-slip to the desk.”

“ I bet you can,” assented Sadie cordially.

“ And I — ”

“ Only don’t.”

“ And now, Sadie, tie a can on that stuff. I was goin’ to say — ”

“ If you forget to turn in the fine, I won’t, Mr. Ferguson.”

Now she paused in her task of stacking up shirts, lifted one from a pile, shook it out, and tossed it aside.

“ Thirty-eight label on a thirty-six,” she observed.

Ferguson examined the garment critically.

“ Guess you’re right,” he commented admiringly. “ You’re a wonder on catchin’ wrong sizes, Sadie.”

“ Uh-huh,” said Sadie as her eyes rested appraisingly on the person of the superintendent. The glance conveyed no meaning to Ferguson.

“ About that fine,” he resumed. “ Wanta know how not to pay it? ”

“ No. Can’t upset my bookkeepin’ now; I got it all set down.”

“ Y’ know that picnic, Sadie? ” Ferguson’s voice was wheedling.

“ Sure. I read the poster.”

“ You hadn’t ought to have turned me down like you done. But it ain’t too late yet.”

“ Still a chance to get in under the wire? ” queried Sadie.

“You bet there is! And no fine-slip, neither — if you go.”

“ Sounds easy,” she commented. “ Say the word and save a quarter — just like that!” And she snapped her fingers.

Ferguson nodded.

“ No, Mr. Ferguson,” she said slowly, shaking her head. “ It wouldn’t be fair to the quarter to play that kind of a dirty trick on it.”

Ferguson gulped and hesitated, then returned to the attack.

“ Listen, now, Sadie; just listen! Will you? ”

“I did listen — plenty. I got an earful. Now you listen: The company saves a quarter on Sadie this week. It can’t lose that quarter if it tries. If it’s in my envelope Saturday night I’ll call a special meetin’ of the board of directors, hand it over, and notify the stockholders there’s a new dividend cornin’. That quarter’s got a life sentence, Mr. Ferguson.”

The superintendent met Sadie’s steady gaze and held his ground, for the way for retreat with honor was not yet open. He was gurgling a sentence in his throat when Sadie asked suddenly:

“You’re a thirty-four. Yes?”

“ I don’t get you. You mean — ”

“ Chest.”

Ferguson shifted his weight to the other foot.

“ I wear thirty-sixes. I can wear a thirty-four, but—”

“ You’re wearin’ a thirty-four now, and it’s flappin’,” she interrupted. “ You mean you can wear a thirty-two. Don’t kid Sadie. I got an eye for sizes; you told me so yourself.”

The superintendent straightened his body stiffly.

“Fourteen collar?” queried Sadie sweetly.

Ferguson began to stutter.

“ And a six-and-a-quarter hat,” she added, nodding. “ Correct me, Mr. Ferguson, if I get you wrong.”

She spoke placidly, even solicitously, but there was a telltale glint of hardness in her gray eyes. A hush had fallen upon the packing department, broken only by the sound of Sadie’s voice.

“ I’ve got nothin’ against that picnic, but I’ve got a lot against you, Ferguson.” Sadie had dropped the accented mister.

“ I wouldn’t insult a movie by walkin’ in with you. You’ve picked on me because I won’t go. Not bein’ a man, I expect that’s your privilege. You’ve been lookin’ for a chance to fine me; watchin’ for me to break a rule. The whole room knows it.

“ Well, you got your chance. Shake hands with

1 6 yourself. You’re gettin’ another chance right now, too. It’s worth half a dollar to speak a piece to you. I’m speakin’ it.

“ You want my reason for not goin’? This is it, Ferguson: You ain’t fit to be seen with me. Maybe that sounds proud. All right; I am proud.”

Sadie paused for an instant. The superintendent stood in awed fascination.

“ Even if you were decent, Ferguson,” she went on without a trace of excitement, “ you’re not big enough to take me anywhere. That’s reason enough to stand by itself. You’re a thirty-four — scant. I’ll allow that, but it’s charity.

“ Anything over a thirty-two shirt on you is throwin’ away goods and boostin’ the high cost of livin’. You’re undersized, mind and body; you ain’t healthy to look at. You’re drivin’ me to smoked spectacles.

“ You’re just naturally mean and little. Now, you keep away from me except when you got orders to give. Next time you speak to me I’m No. 18. I don’t want to spank you, but if I get any more ‘ Sadie ’ from you I might have to.

“ You can put another quarter on that fine now, and maybe they’ll make you president of the company for reducin’ operatin’ expenses.”

Sadie hesitated; then leaned forward across the table and said with terrible distinctness:

“ Do you know what kind of an insect you are, Ferguson? You’re a shrimp! ”

Ferguson, like a man dazed, backed slowly away from the table, fell over a stool, sprawled for an instant on the floor, and then made a dash for the cutting-room. The packing department, uncertain whether to laugh, cheer, or utter cries of astonishment and dismay, did none of those things, but resumed the business of putting shirts into boxes.

Sadie liked that word “ shrimp.” She never saw one, being an inland girl, but she knew instinctively that a shrimp was little and very much like Ferguson. Anyhow, Sadie was sure it was some sort of an insect.

She had borrowed it from the vocabulary of a ranchman, a person in whom she had taken immediate and tremendous interest. He had come one day to order a gross of olive-drabs for the ranch-hands out in Montana. Sadie had been called in to sort sizes.

Olive-drabs from that day had had a peculiar fascination for her. Cowboys wore them, she learned; so did miners and prospectors, and even “ swells ” who hunted and fished just for fun. Olive-drabs spelled adventure for Sadie — and outdoors. That, after all, was the main thing — outdoors.

“What sizes?” Sadie had asked the rancher.

“ Forties up to forty-sixes.”

Sadie’s eyes had begun to glow.

“ Cowboys must be easy to look at,” she commented. “Want a few thirty-sixes?”

“ No shrimps in my country, sister,” said the rancher. “ Do I look like one? ”

“ No-o,” admitted Sadie. “You’re kinda strainin’ the buttons on that forty-two you’re wearin’.”

She treasured shrimp. Every time she looked i8 at Ferguson the word popped into her mind. To Sadie it was more than merely descriptive of her boss. It became a unit of size. She standardized men according to it.

A shrimp was the smallest possible — a sort of No. i, Triple A. Then came the peewees, and after the peewees the sparrows. None of them got to be men until they attained Sadie’s minimum, forty-inch chests and sixteen collars.

They might go as far beyond that as nature willed and still please Sadie. She had no maximum.

Ferguson was still in the cutting-room when the * hands of the packing department clock touched six.

A gong rang, and thirty girls, in various stages of languor, turned toward the locker-room. Sadie walked over to No. 12 and patted her shoulder.

“ Feelin’ better, kid? ” she asked.

No. 12 nodded; then said in an awed whisper:

“ They all heard you say it. They’re passin’ it round now among the drivers. What’s a shrimp, Sade?”

“ A thirty-four, deary.”

Smiling, Sadie went to the locker-room. She was in a hurry to get outdoors. She wanted to breathe. Something seemed to fetter her lungs, even in the big room. She wanted space and sky and open places — as much of the big outdoors as she could find in Buffalo.

Bigness and outdoors occupied the same pigeonhole in Sadie’s mind. She worshiped both. Big people were her people; outdoors was her place, even if only a dream place.

Big men were outdoor men; if they chanced to be elsewhere, they were misplaced. True, mere bigness was not all that Sadie worshiped; but it was a fundamental, a foundation on which she reared her ideals.

Because she came from an Ohio farm to a city factory she had not renounced her gospel. The farm was out under the sky; but it was a little farm, set close to a little village. Better than the city, perhaps, as Sadie might have admitted; but there are livings to be earned in this world, and hers was one of them.

The farm was outdoors at its smallest — a sort of shrimp outdoors. The city was big, she acknowledged. But it was the wrong kind of bigness — a shut-in bigness. It was man-made. Sadie wanted the kind that was God-made.

Sadie was big herself. Five feet eight she stood, bare-footed and with her hair down. There was a mark on the door in her hall bedroom to attest it, put there by No. 12, who had to stand on a chair to do it.

Sadie was glad she was big. It was even better than being handsome, and she was both. Any time you saw Sadie she was worth contemplating. Just for a moment, then, contemplate her somewhat in detail:

Five feet eight, as specified. Straight and supple, like a sapling, but not so slender. Sadie was rounded and full-bosomed. She was a forty herself. The penny scales said that she weighed one hundred and fifty-four pounds, and they spoke wisdom. If you asked her her age, she said she was twenty-four, and she spoke the truth.

Why she had a head of classic shape must remain a mystery. You couldn’t prove eugenics by Sadie. There was nothing classic about the heads of the folk back in Ohio, nor did they share Sadie’s bigness. She topped her father by two inches, while her mother was only shoulder high.

Somewhere in the long ago there may have been ancestors with classic heads and stalwart bodies; if so, she never heard of them. She remembered only her grandfather, whose head was level and honest, but not classic.

Sadie’s brow was broad and serene. Her eyes were gray, and they also were serene, for serenity and Sadie were interchangeable terms. Through those calm and steady eyes she looked upon the world curiously, frankly, and unafraid, like a child.

She had a nose as large as a 154-pound girl ought to have, beautifully straight in the bridge and delicate in the nostrils. It ran generations back of the Ohio farm.

Her mouth was ample in size, firm, good-natured, and humorous. But it could be serious, too. And whatever else it was, it never failed to be sincere.

Her lips were full and red. Sadie could curl the lower one in fine scorn, although there was no harm in her. Her chin showed more than good modeling; it revealed courage and independence.

Newly cast bronze possesses the only color corresponding to Sadie’s hair. The quantity of that hair fairly appalled her, for she had to do it up herself, seven dollars a week leaving nothing for the wages of a maid. It fell below her waist when she unloosed it; ravishing to look at, the very dickens to comb.

Sculptors made statues of Juno because they never met Sadie. She was not Juno’s little sister; she was her twin. Nobody ever called her pretty; it would have been ridiculous. She was merely handsome.

And healthy! Sadie bloomed perennially, like a gorgeous flower, all in whites and pinks and creams. Even the factory could not stop her from blooming.

The influence of environment may be demonstrated by scientists in a million ways, but not by Sadie. Like eugenics, it was a doctrine that fell by the wayside when you looked at her — which you usually did. The factory might put its mark on the Shrimp and on No. 12, but not on Juno’s sister.

If you have paid attention to what Sadie said to the Shrimp — and how she said it — you suspect something. Much book learning was not hers. In fact, very little of it had chanced her way. Her mind was all right; it was quick, alert, and astonishingly retentive — a very sane and normal mind. It was rather philosophic, too; and it had a clean, direct way of getting to the point of things. It played no tricks on die; it gave no illusions. Above all, being her mmd, it could not be -else than serene.

She knew that book-learning was a strange land, only to be viewed by her from the edges, for'she had neither time nor resources to explore it. She had regrets, of course; but she gave no time to sorrow or brooding.

She accepted her limitations, but always with a reservation — “some day!” There was honest raw material in that mind of Sadie’s; if it had not been used, at least it was unspoiled.

The row with the Shrimp had not disturbed her. She had almost forgotten it as she walked out of the factory. Probably she would have dismissed it for the evening if a clerk at the office window had not handed her a slip as she passed. The slip read :

No. 1 8, Packing Dept. 50c. fine for violation of rule 8. Reported by Ferguson, supt.

“Well, I had him right,” said Sadie as she crumpled the paper.

No. 12 sidled up to her on the street and whispered indignantly :

“Listen, Sade! No. 22 says she’s seen shrimps and they ain’t insects, like you said.”

“ I should be anxious, honey,” said Sadie.

CHAPTER II sadie’s Friday jinx

EVEN a girl without a beau cannot sit in a seven-by-ten room on an early September evening, no matter if she did squander half a dollar in telling a man he was a shrimp. So, after she had eaten her dinner, Sadie Hicks wandered out into the street.

That Sadie had no beau was beyond the understanding of the girls in the packing department, although it was clear as crystal to her. Of course, it took a big man to “ go with ” Sadie. But there were big men in the factory. Sadie eliminated them easily; the outdoor test settled them.

With the teamsters it took a little more than the outdoor test, yet they went with the others. They were not for her. She was not conscious of holding herself superior to them; she simply did not need them in her scheme of things. And when Sadie did not need anybody, that person who did not soon sense the fact was a dullard indeed.

When she walked of an evening, however, she was not alone. She had an invisible escort. His name she did not even know. He was merely her ideal. He was constantly by her side, walking on the street, 23 sitting at the movies, standing at soda-fountains, riding on trolley-cars.

Sadie took a lot of comfort out of him. For one thing, she did not have to share him with anybody. He was all hers. None of the other girls could even so much as look at him. She held him incommunicado in the prison of her imagination.

He was a creature of many personalities, but these were merely his outer cloaks. Underneath he was always the same.

That was one charm of having an ideal for a companion. Sadie could dress him as she pleased and make him what she willed, but she always knew that, in any guise, he was his same sturdy self.

He was big, of course. He was brave and he was kind. Sometimes he was handsome, sometimes ugly — but always rugged.

Whether he was rich or poor she did not know nor care. She never pried into his purse. He and Sadie were tremendous friends.

So they walked the crowded pavement together, the factory, the boxes of shirts and the Shrimp forgotten. They paused to study a lithograph in front of a movie palace :

THE WISTFUL HEART A Drama qf the City in Three Reels

Sadie and her ideal moved on — quickly. On the next block they paused again, where the poster said:

A FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

HOW THE BANKER’S DAUGHTER WON THE MAN OF HER HEART

Two Parts

Sadie shrugged her broad shoulders and led the way again.

Presently there was a long pause ; another poster caught Sadie’s eye from the opposite side of the street. There were men and horses, lariats and six-shooters.

THE MENACE OF MONTANA

THE THIRD ADVENTURE OF

DICK ELLISON

IN TWO THRILLING REELS,

WITH A COMPANY OF

SIXTY PEOPLE First Time in City

“ Montana ! ” whispered Sadie.

She knew “ Dick Ellison.” She had a vivid memory of the first time he ever galloped across a screen. The second adventure, too, was stored away in her mind. She had followed him through canons, across swollen rivers, up the mountainsides, wherever there were thrills and perils and tasks for big men to do.

Was she to miss the third adventure? Sadie opined not.

2 6

It was not until she laid her nickel at the threshold of the little doorway in the pane of glass that Sadie remembered something else — Rule No. 8 and the fifty-cent fine. She hesitated, for she had resolved —

The nickel disappeared and a red ticket popped out through the opening. Sadie sighed, but not sadly. She took the ticket.

“ It wasn’t exactly my fault,” she murmured as she passed inside. “ That girl is awful quick at grabbin’ nickels.”

You have doubtless seen the third adventure of Dick Ellison and have a tingling memory of the stage-coach that lurched so close to the edge of the precipice; therefore, it is unnecessary to tell what Sadie saw. Her ideal took his seat beside her, of course. That it was occupied by the corporeal person of a gum-chewing girl was no difficulty at all; the girl did not even know that Sadie’s ideal was there.

In the middle of the first reel a curious thing happened. Sadie’s ideal left her side and became suddenly visible upon the screen. No, he did not become Dick Ellison. He was still a person without a name. But Sadie knew him in an instant, for all that, and she smiled softly.

It was not a new experience for her; he had done the same thing often, and always without warning or explanation. She knew he would come back to her when the machine ceased to click, for the movie people were merely borrowing him for a little.

To-night his hairy chaps proclaimed him a cowboy. He rode like the wind and shot like a rapidfire automatic.

“ A good forty-two,” murmured Sadie as she watched him.

Faithful always, he was by her side as she walked out.

“ You did fine to-night,” she whispered to him.

You may think he was on the screen again when Dick Ellison’s third adventure once more began to unwind. But he was not. He had left with Sadie. If you stayed to see the show a second time you saw the same figure, it is true; and he did the same things, without a hair’s breadth variation.

But the soul had gone out of him, and that was something you could not see. Only Sadie could, for he was her ideal and not yours.

Back in the seven-by-ten room Sadie sat on the edge of her bed, braiding burnished bronze into thick strands. Even after the braids were finished she sat there, thinking. Although she seemed to be in Buffalo, she was really in Montana. She had been there ever since the middle of the first reel.

Her process of thought involved many little wrinklings of her forehead, occasional frowns, much pursing of the lips, and now and then a short, halfembarrassed laugh. At least twice she blushed.

“ I guess it’s all right,” she said aloud, rising suddenly and going over to her little table. “ It’s not like flirting. It’s just saying hello. He won’t mind.”

Sadie opened a box of note-paper, spread a sheet on the back of a magazine, and began to write. She wrote slowly and with many pauses.

After a while she laid down her pen and examined her work critically. First she read it in silence ; then again, voicing the words softly, to get an idea of how it sounded. Then, with a vivid flush in her cheeks, she tore the paper into small pieces.

Another sheet of paper came out of the box and there was more writing, with much laborious penmanship and continuous struggle with the spelling of words. Pauses, burdened with little scowls and smiles, indicated where commas ought to be, but were not.

Writing a letter was not so simple to Sadie as putting shirts into boxes, while writing this kind of a letter was a problem of particular intricacy, to be solved without the aids of precedent or experience.

“ Sounds kinda foolish,” commented Sadie as she reread it. She tore it up.

Ultimately, after fingering a third sheet of paper, she returned it to the box and shook her head slowly.

“ ’Tisn’t that it’s not proper,” she mused; “although, of course, it’s not regular. But if it’s done at all, it’s got to be done right, and the way I do it doesn’t listen good. Maybe he wouldn’t understand, and I wouldn’t want him to get a wrong idea.

“ Gee, but I could use an education for about three minutes ! ”

Sadie took off her shoes and stockings, blew out the lamp, groped her way to the bed like a statuesque ghost, and lay down. The room was warm, and the little window, opened to its widest, was a poor substitute for a ventilator. But it was not the lack of air that kept Sadie awake. It was a puzzled brain.

Fifteen minutes later she arose briskly, located the matches, and relighted the lamp. She was smiling now, and there was a confident look in her eyes.

The third sheet of paper emerged from the box and the pen began to write. Her fingers moved steadily but cautiously; her expression was one of calm satisfaction. All the hesitation, the frowns, and the other signals of perplexity had vanished.

She blotted her letter carefully, held it at arm’s length, and read it. A proud little toss of her head and a faint chuckle announced the verdict.

Out went the light again and into bed went Sadie. The letter was under her pillow. She was asleep in five minutes.

Morning in the packing-room of the Challenge Shirt Company found Sadie in a state outwardly of placidity, but inwardly of turmoil. Occasionally she raised a hand to her breast with affected carelessness to feel if “ it ” was still safe. The soft crackle of paper under the touch of her fingers reassured her each time.

Ordinarily Sadie paid no attenton to the destination labels on the pasteboard boxes. All she was required to do was to put into each box what its slip called for. But now she examined labels diligently, though furtively. The task she had set herself was fraught with such an element of chance that she began to think by the time the noon gong rang that it

3o “ MISTER 44 ”

might be weeks, months, perhaps years, before she accomplished it.

First, it must be an olive-drab. Second, it must be going to Montana. Third, it must be a forty-four.

That constituted no impossible combination, of course. But when thirty girls besides Sadie were packing shirts it added thirty to one against her, in addition to the initial odds. She could not appeal for assistance, even to No. 12. The girls would ask questions and Sadie had no information for them.