If a sweepstake ticket plopped an $86,000 fortune in your lap today, what would you do with the money? Here's the story of a young man who did exactly what he felt like doing with it-and what a time he had!
One Sweepstakes, well done
by Francis M. Cockrell
Illustrated by Mario Copper
WITH A SMALL hand ax concealed in the sleeve of his topcoat, Terry Dodd walked up Fifth Avenue, whistling cheerily between his teeth. For Terry knew what he was going to do first. After that he would just let nature take her course.
 |
| "For the 'Window," Terry explained casually, handing the salesman an extra thousand-dollar bill, and with a lovely crash he drove the grand new swoopish-looking car through the plate-glass window of the salesroom. continued on page 165 |
Still whistling cheerily, he sauntered along back of the show windows and when he came to a certain one he nonchalantly slipped the catch and climbed in. He was in the window with the composition figure of a pretty young man in pale pink silk pajamas. He was too pretty. He looked just the sort of dope that ought to wear those things. Wriggling the hand ax from his sleeve, Terry got to work with great gusto.
Swish went the hand ax, and off came an arm. Zoop went the hand ax, and there was a fine gash in the torso. Swish again, and the pretty head flew from the dainty body. This was real fun.
It was about then that Terry, glancing up from his sport, saw a girl-and right there nature began to take her course. Because she was a lovely girl in the way a princess should be lovely; she had dark flashing eyes and a velvet skin; she had an air of poise and slim, excitingly curved lines. She had stepped from a limousine and now paused on the edge of the little crowd that had gathered.
Terry's eyes widened, the hand ax slipped from his fingers and he slipped from the window.
"Here!" he said, and shoved about seven hundred dollars at the haughtiest- looking of a bunch of fellows in striped pants and wing collars who were rushing toward him from all aisles. "I hope this will reimburse you for the sheer joy wrecking your window has afforded me. I must run now. So sorry!"
And before the man could get his breath Terry was out the door.
She was still there!
He took a deep breath. He walked up to her and took her arm gently but firmly and said, "Quickly! We've not a moment to lose. Not over two weeks, in fact." He was leading her down the street. "My, my," he rushed on, "you certainly do look stunning in that rig. You sure do look fine in that long mink coat. You do indeed."
She was coming with him! She was walking along beside him. He'd better not stop talking.
"By the way, I certainly am having a delightful time. Of course I know it's-"
She had been looking at him thoughtfully. "You know," she interrupted now, "I think perhaps you are. How long have you been wanting to do that?"
"Over eight months," Terry told her.
"The thing haunted me. Those soulful eyes. I even tried going a block out of my way, but still I couldn't get it out of my mind! It came and leered at me in my dreams. It made faces at me when I went by. It made me sick."
"Wonderful!" she breathed.
"It wasn't at all," Terry said. "But no matter. Won't you join me? There's plenty of room. I-"
"Room? In what?"
They had turned off Fifth Avenue onto a cross street.
"Well"-Terry looked around-"what would you like it in? A wagon perhaps?"
She looked at the wagon, parked against the. curb, and at the large, fatherly-looking horse between its shafts. Then she looked at Terry. "I've never had a wagon," she said wistfully.
"You poor thing," Terry said, and he bought the wagon for four hundred dollars and engaged the driver to drive for them!
They were now riding up Fifth Avenue. The horse's hoofs went clop-clop up-on the pavement. Inside him Terry's heart went clop-clop too, with happiness.
This was swell. This was the way he had thought it would be. He glanced sidewise at the girl beside him. It was even better, in fact. If he had ever had any doubts they were gone now. But for that matter, he hadn't had many, once he had thought of this.
At first, when he had found out he had won eighty-six thousand dollars in the Belgravian Hospitals Sweepstakes, he had been sort of worried. It was such a lot of money.
You could do so many things with that much money. Buy a big house or a yacht or make a movie or take trips all over the world. Put it in a. bank and have an income of something or other the rest of your life.
You could-the fact was, Terry had found, you could darn near go nuts just trying to figure out what to do with that much cash. He had become almost morbid, trying to decide. And finally he had wondered whether, if you couldn't choose between a lot of things, you really wanted any of them very much.
But by the time the ticket had been confirmed and he got the money, Terry had quit·worrying. He had made a resolve arid he was going to stick to it. He was going to find out what it was like to go around doing all the things that came into his head, just as fast as they came, with a complete disregard for expense, He was going to keep on finding out until he was broke. There was something sort of -sort of grand and vast about the idea that appealed to him.
So he had arranged a two-weeks vacation at the advertising agency where he worked. Mr. Knoblock had thought he'd throw up his job, but Terry told him a couple of weeks would be ample.
He had got the money in cash. The Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue had been right there, though, for the income tax.
"Oh, yes," Terry had told him blithely, counting out the money, as though something over twenty-four thousand dollars really didn't mean much in a man's life. "You're sure that'll be enough?" he had asked solicitously. "You're sure that'll tide you over?"
Terry smiled now, reminiscently, as he remembered, the deputy collector's. face as he had looked at him nervously and backed away. Oh, it was a little thing, perhaps, but he had liked it. And he had thought at the time it was an auspicious start; for certainly it proved he wasn't going to have any twinges of pain at parting with money.
Terry glanced again at the girl beside him. Well, it had been an auspicious start that was well lived up to. And this was just the beginning, too!
Thinking of that, Terry whistled a. happy little tuneless tune.
They came past the church at Forty-ninth Street. Cars swerved to each side of them, honking at each other, but over the din of traffic the calm clop-clop of the horse's hoofs continued to come up to them.
The girl stole a glance at the blond young man beside her, and her heart got in rhythm to the hoofbeats, too. There was something about the young man.
He turned to her now and smiled. "It's rather nice, I think," he said. "We might go some place. Would you like that?"
"Where-where shall we go?" she asked. She was still slightly shaken by the rapidity of the whole thing.
"Well, there's Middlecreek, Missouri. And Chicago."
"Aren't they a bit far?" she said. "And it's chilly. Don't you think it's chilly?"
"Now that you mention it, yes," he said. "Perhaps we got this wagon too soon. Something warmer. A car, possibly."
"That's a nice one," she said, pointing to a. car in the window of the Franz- Merche showrooms. It was a long glittering black thing with such lines that it made you feel it was going eighty miles an hour just sitting there in the window. She watched Terry curiously.
"Not bad," he said calmly. "It's sort of -swoopish looking." He had the driver stop, and then helped her down.
She let him lead her into the showroom but she was frankly skeptical to begin with, and even more so when she saw his diffident air with the salesman.
"That's rather pretty, isn't it?" he said timidly.
The salesman took stock of his manner and his clothes, which obviously were not tailor-made, and said loftily, "Yes, it's nice enough. Seventeen thousand dollars."
"Uh-I wonder what you could give me on a trade-in?" Terry pointed from the window. "The horse goes with it."
The salesman merely looked acid at that and didn't even answer. Terry shrugged and went out. The girl followed him, looking as though she had known all along he wouldn't buy the car. But when she got to the curb he had already given the wagon back to the driver and was kissing the horse good-by. Even so, as he led her back into the store once more she was still dubious. The salesman grew loftier all the time.
"If you're really interested in a car," he said, "our Mr. Balder will be glad to show you some nice reconditioned models which are in the basement and which-"
"I guess this'll do," Terry broke in mildly. "Most anything to get around in, you know, if it runs all right." His manner underwent a subtle change as he hauled money from his topcoat pocket. "You won't think me rude if I pay in cash, I hope," he said. "Nothing personal, of course," and he smiled a sweet, highly insulting smile, "but so many salespeople have been raising my checks lately. No end of bother."
The salesman's manner too, the girl noticed, underwent a change, though it was anything but subtle, and he took the seventeen one-thousand-dollar bills, muttering unintelligibly.
Then Terry got in behind the wheel of the car and looked at her and said, "Well?" He had bought it.
He had bought it just like that. She got into the car, a bit weakly. Things were moving awfully fast!
"Oh, yes," he said, and waved another bill at the salesman.
"I-that is-what is this?" the salesman mumbled.
"It's for the window," was the casual explanation, and with a crash and tinkle Terry drove out through the plate glass.
Crossing the sidewalk, he turned up Fifth Avenue, just managed to beat a traffic light and swung to the left hurriedly. He cut through an alley.
"I left him plenty of money for the window," he explained, "but there's no use waiting for the police. They'd probably just ask a lot of useless questions."
"Uh," said the girl. "Uh, yes." She had seen the bill he gave the salesman. It was another thousand. She was still dazed from it all, though her uppermost emotion was one of admiration.
Nevertheless, when he presently said, "I guess we might as well get on to Chicago," she wrinkled her brow, for it was evident by now that he was not a young man given to idle remarks. "In a purely platonic way, of course," he added.
"Of course," she murmured absently. She was looking out the window at New York, which only an hour before had been something she knew about; something predictable. They stopped for a red light, and she reached instinctively for the door handle.
But then she remembered how casual and careless he had looked, handing out seventeen thousand dollars for a car and another thousand for a window he used only once; and she took her hand back from the door and looked at him again. For she was a girl who had seen not nearly enough of that sort of thing. Also, she was a girl who could make a decision when the time came to make one.
Her lips set in a tight, firm little line. "All right! Let's go, then. Let's do."
Terry felt like yelling "Wheeee!" but he managed to wave his hand casually and say only, "Chicago's over that way isn't it?"
She said she thought so, and he said, "My name's Terry Dodd."
"How do you do?" she said. "I'm Evelyn Fehnwick."
"I see," Terry said. "Not the Fehnwicks with the large bank and the Fehnwick Building and all that."
"Yes," she said.
"Oh," Terry said, and gulped a small gulp, for which you couldn't blame him.
Her father had seventeen or some odd number of millions like that, and here she was going to Chicago with him. "Your father-will-will he like this?"
"Not at all," she said, and Terry, pull- ing hastily to the curb, said hollowly, "Wouldn't you like to have a drink?"
She said she might, so he bought her champagne and himself successive drinks of Scotch until he had a grip on himself.
In the next five days they went to Chicago. That wasn't bad time, considering that they drove seven hundred more miles than people generally do, going to Chicago. Also, they did a lot of things. Some of them were expensive- stopping in each town to free everyone who was in jail because he couldn't pay a fine ran up quite a total-but they were all fun. It was a whole day before they got tired of the Ferris wheel they bought in Louisville. And they did get to Chicago.
"You can't deny that we did get here," Evelyn said, as they sat down to dinner in a hotel overlooking the lake.
"You'll excuse me a moment?" Terry said. "I want to buy a dog." And he disappeared from the dining room, to return in about fifteen minutes with a large dog which seemed to be chiefly great Dane, though there were strong indications that a horse had crept into the strain not far back.
"What a lovely dog," Evelyn said calmly, for after all she had been with Terry five days now.
"He is rather nice, isn't he? Name is Adelbert. This is Adelbert," he repeated to the head waiter who had hurried to their table. "Please see he's not disturbed."
"I'm sorry, sir, but dogs are not allowed in-"
"He likes it here," Terry said. "He thinks it's fine. Don't you, Adelbert?" Adelbert looked noncommittal. "You see?" Terry said. "And you'll grow to love him in time. I want to reserve a table for him, by the way. He lies under them. How much for this one?" He indicated the table next to theirs.
"Fifty dollars," the head waiter said, as though he thought he saw a solution.
"He'll take it for breakfast, too." Terry handed the man a hundred. To Adelbert: "All right, boy. Lie down." Adelbert licked his hand once, gently, and lay down. Terry then shoved him under the table so that only his head and his front feet stuck out beneath the cloth. "It's the only way you can do it," he told the waiter. "When he walks under them, they always turn over."
The head waiter opened his mouth twice, swallowed once, and retired.
"By the way," Evelyn said, looking up from the newspaper with which the management provided its guests. "I've been meaning to ask you-are you crazy? You do such crazy things."
"Not at all," he assured her. He had caught a glimpse of the paper himself. He sounded preoccupied. "I want to do the things I do. I'd be crazy if I didn't."
"But if you want to do crazy things, then aren't--"
"What's the matter? Aren't you having fun?"
"Oh, very much," she said hastily. "I- I just wondered." She smiled at him "You know. How you happened to- well, you know."
"Oh," Terry said. "Well, you see I had this sweepstakes money, and there were so many things you could do with it, but I couldn't decide what. So I wondered if I really wanted to do any of them. And then I always had wondered what it would be like if you went around doing everything you wanted to do. So here we are, and a sound scheme it was, too," he pointed out, "for otherwise I'd never have been in that store window or spoken to you just because I liked your looks so much and asked you to join me and all."
"I think that's lovely!" she said. "By the way" -she indicated the paper - "we're being sought."
"Yeah," Terry said. "I-noticed that."
There were headlines: HEIRESS MISSING. SEARCH FOR EVELYN FEHNWICK, DAUGHTER OF WALL STREET BARON, CONTINUES. FEAR FOUL PLAY. WIDELY VARYING REPORTS.
Several people, the article stated, had identified her from pictures as being in the company of an erratic young man who spent money in foolish ways as if it were water. No pictures of him were available, but it was believed that he was one Terence Dodd, a recent winner of eighty-six thousand dollars in the Belgravian Sweepstakes. Owing to the fact that they appeared each time in some entirely unexpected spot, searchers so far had missed them. But police of six states and many cities, the article concluded, were on the lookout and it was hoped the girl would be rescued before Dodd, suspected of being a lunatic, had dealt foully with her.
"Ahem," Terry observed. "They may find you, too. I expect the net is closing in."
"Perhaps we'd better do something. I'll call Daddy tonight and let him know where I am and tell him not to bother about me any more because I'm all right and came of my own free will."
"Will he relish that?"
"I suppose not. But I guess-oh, that's another thing, I keep forgetting. You know, I expect I'm compromised."
"A little bit, maybe," Terry said. "Not much though, with separate rooms and everything."
"Still," she said, "perhaps you'd better marry me."
It was some time before Terry answered. Then he sighed and said carefully, "No. No, I'm afraid not."
"Why not?" she asked; but though she persisted, he wouldn't say anything but "No." That night she called her father and told him where she was. She was no daughter of his, her father said, among other things.
"Father says I'm living in sin," she told Terry the next day, as they drove south from Chicago, "I guess you had better marry me, at that."
"No, I can't."
"But why?"
"I-I only make thirty a week. If it takes that for me, I guess I'd have to make at least sixty to get married."
"Two can live as cheaply as one," she said.
"That's just a myth," Terry told her. I" could work, too."
He shook his head. "I couldn't have my wife working. It wouldn't be dignified."
They rode on a mile or so, and Adelbert, from the rear seat, put his nose on the back of the front seat and said, "Ummmmmm, ummmmm." So they stopped and let him out.
"But you'll live in sin with me," she accused, "and ruin my spotless reputation. Only," she added, a bit wistfully, "it's not very sinful." "Just technically," Terry said gloomily.
"Yes!" she said shortly. "
Just technically!" So he turned and kissed her then be- cause he'd been wanting to for nearly six days, anyhow.
"How-how's that?"
"It's better," she said. "It's better but you're not very savage." '
Terry said he would try to be more savage next time. Adelbert pawed at the door. They let him in and drove on.
The next few days proved as interesting as had their journey to Chicago. Indeed, Terry said the hook-and-Iadder truck was the best yet; but Evelyn said she liked the old showboat which they got hold of in St. Louis.
In Middlecreek they'll tell you at length about the time Terry Dodd came back. . .
It was the dernedest thing. At first hardly anyone knew him. He came up Main Street from the depot after the freight from St. Louis went through, wearing overalls and an old sweater.
He walked around and spoke to everybody he passed on the street. It didn't seem to bother him much when people didn't remember him.
Course everybody remembered him when they thought about it; he was that Dodd kid who left town about six years before, when the uncle he was living with died. He hadn't come to much, had he? Lived out on Maple Street, they did, in that little shack next to where old Billy Bates lives.
Course nobody paid so much attention to Dodd, but you couldn't expect 'em to. Middlecreek is a busy little town. In the afternoon he just hung around the Chocolate Shop and talked to anyone who would talk to him. Mostly boys his age. He'd say it was nice to see them again, and they'd say yeah, it was fine; so long. Except Brock Merton. Brock talked to him, but then Brock never had much to do.
Dodd asked Jimmy-Jimmy Clewes, he runs the Chocolate Shop-why Jimmy didn't celebrate his return and buy him a drink. Came right out and asked for it like that. And Jimmy bought him one, too. You couldn't blame Jimmy if he was kind of reluctant; but he bought him a nickel glass of beer. And then this Dodd says, real serious:
"I'm sorry, Jimmy. I didn't know you were so short of beer as all that. I appreciate the honor but I better not drink this up. You may run out."
It was funny. Jimmy didn't know whether to get mad or not, because he couldn't tell whether Dodd was being sarcastic or not.
Brock bought him some drinks, and Brock didn't have much money, either. Well, about four in the afternoon Dodd asks Brock how he'd like to have a case or so of Scotch.
"How'd you like to have a million bucks?" Brocks says, looking out through the door at a long black auto with a swell-looking girl and the biggest dog you ever lay eyes on in it. It had just driven up.
"Not very much," Dodd tells Brock, "but I get the idea."
And in a minute he strolls outside and stands on the curb where some of the boys are looking and saying, "Some car," and "Some dog," and Jeff Peters, he says, "Some baby."
"Not bad, at that," Dodd says, and if he don't step down off the curb and go lean on the door of the car! "Don't I remember you?" he says to the girl.
"I hope so," she says.
"Would you like for me to drive awhile?" he asks.
"Please do," she kind of coos.
And she slides over, and he gets in! That's not all. He toots the horn, and when Jimmy comes out, he says sort of airy, "A couple of cases of your best Scotch, James, my good fellow."
Jimmy-he runs the drug store next door to the Chocolate Shop, too, and it sells liquor-Jimmy swallows a couple of times and says, "That'll cost you a hundred and four bucks "
"Here you are," the girl says, ann she hauls all the money you ever saw out of her purse and gives Jimmy a hundred and four dollars.
"Just send the whisky out to Brock," Dodd says. Then he calls to Brock, "Let's take a ride, Brock."
Brock comes out and gets in the back seat, and they drive off. They go out on Maple Avenue and talk to old Billy Bates, and then they come back and stop at Burns' Sporting Goods Store, and then they go to the bank.
And Dodd tells Thad Brown, he's the banker, what he wants. This girl gives him all the money out of her purse, and he looks at it a minute and then takes a hundred-dollar bill out of it and stuffs that in his pocket. He gives the rest to Brown. Almost ten thousand dollars.
He says whenever Burns brings in a bill signed by Billy Bates for Thad to pay it. And he says whenever Brock brings in any kind of bill he's to pay that, too. And he says to Brock:
"Now, you keep an eye on him. Be sure he's always got plenty of coal and food and whisky and so forth."
He goes on to explain to Thad that this money is for Billy Bates to buy baseball bats and footballs and uniforms and things like that, at Burns', and give them to kids until the money runs out.
"And if Billy dies first," he tells Brock, "why, you finish up the job, or else get someone you can trust, if you're leaving town or anything."
"I'll probably be around," Brock says. Then he chuckles. "Boy, Billy sure is gonna have him a time."
Well, can you tie it? Thad Brown tries to reason with this Dodd but it don't do any good. Thad tells him Billy is just a worthless old drunk and there's plenty of deserving cases in Middlecreek and why don't Dodd take care of them?
But Dodd says that's exactly it. Everybody is always thinking about the deserving cases and the undeserving cases don't get anything.
"What the hell!" Dodd says. "Billy'll enjoy himself, won't he? The kids’ll like it, won't they? Well?"
Then he and this girl go out and get into the car and drive on out of town.
Well, of course what with the papers and all it wasn't any trick to figure out he was this Terry Dodd that won that sweepstakes ticket and was doing all those crazy things, like buying Ferris wheels and old river boats, and driving through windows and getting people out of jail, and all.
But what nobody here could figure out was why in the world he . . .
About a mile out of town Terry said hesitantly, "I guess I-well, we might as well get back, I suppose."
"Yes," she said softly.
"I guess I sort of lost my head back there," Terry said. She didn't say anything.
"We could have gone on awhile longer," he said. And a little later: "You see, when I was nine, Billy-he used to be a big-league ballplayer a long time ago-he used to play catch with me. Only we didn't have any gloves, and we had an old ten-cent ball all out of shape. And one afternoon he came home with a swell fielder's mitt and a big-league ball and gave them to me. Only we didn't get to use them very long. It turned out he had stolen them. He was in jail a couple of weeks. He didn't seem to-regret it much." He sighed and stopped talking.
She didn't say anything. She was looking away from him, out the window.
Terry stopped the car. Then she turned toward him and kissed him very conclusively.
"You," she said, "you-" She stopped and blinked rapidly a couple of times and smiled. "I guess we might as well go on," she said. There was a suggestion of mist in her eyes. They went on . . .
They came through the Holland Tunnel and turned north.
"Well," he said, "here we are."
She said, "Yes."
"It's been very nice, hasn't it?" he said, the way you'd say, "Well, they foreclosed on the old homestead yesterday."
"Yes," she said. "You won't-you won't marry me?"
"No."
"You won't let me work?"
"No,"
"If we weren't married, could I work?"
"How could I stop you?"
"And we could live together?"
"No. I-I respect American womanhood too much."
"I'm not American womanhood," she said irritably.
"You're the flower of it," Terry said.
"You're too kind," she murmured. And a little later: "You've used up the money, but what about the car and Adelbert?"
"I guess I can give them to someone. Someone who'll give them a good home."
"You could give them to me," she said. "Little souvenirs." She tried to sound cheerful.
"All right. Maybe I could come see Adelbert sometimes. I'll miss him."
"We can work out a visiting schedule." Her voice caught.
"Yeah." They had come to Forty-second Street, and he pulled the car to the curb. "Well, it's been awfully nice," he said glumly. "Really delightful."
"Just-just too lovely," she said.
'"I must be running now." He got out.
"Do come to see us sometime."
"It's so nice of you to ask me," Terry said, and then he turned and went down the street.
The next day after lunch Evelyn and her father resumed shouting at each other in the living room of the Fehnwick apartment on East Sixty-ninth Street.
"You've got to give him a job!" she shouted.
"You're out of your mind!" her father shouted. He was a stern, slightly florid man.
"You've got to get him a job for Sixty a week," Evelyn said, "so he'll marry me. All my life," she went on, "I've had dinned into me the value of a dollar. I'm sick of it. And I've found a man who really knows the value of a dollar. A man with a grasp on things; a large, expansive viewpoint. Besides," she added, "I love him."
"You've been-" her father began, but she cut him off.
"Living in sin!" She shouted it. "I'm sick of hearing that, too. It wasn't nearly sinful enough, in case you're interested. And if you don't get him the job I'm going to get one myself and go live with him whether he likes it or not."
"I won't!" he shouted.
"You will!" she shouted.
"He needn't bother," Terry said, coming in just ahead of the butler, who was looking baffled. "Because I've just been down at the agency, and a guy was there from Majestic Films, seeing about some magazine layouts. You see, we've been in the papers some-"
"Been in the papers!" Mr. Fehnwick roared, a shade more florid.
"Yes, yes," Terry murmured placatingly to Mr. Fehnwick. He went on to Evelyn, "So this man said he was sure Majestic would give me a job in the publicity department. He said anybody that got in the papers that much without even trying would have a cinch thinking of ways to get movie stars into them if he put his mind on it. So I went over there with him, and sure enough he was right. I've got a job with them, and it's for sixty a week!"
"Wonderful!" Evelyn said, moving toward him.
"Why don't you come along, sir?" Terry asked Mr. Fehnwick respectfully. "If you've nothing else to do."
"Where-where are you going?"
"Why, to get married," Terry said.
"Now?"
"Don't you think it's time?"
"Well"-Mr. Fehnwick coughed-"well, perhaps you're right."
"Incidentally," Evelyn said, as they moved into the foyer and she picked up her hat, "now that you're marrying me, you'll have Adelbert and the car again."
Terry frowned. "That's true. Well, I guess-I hardly know what to-I suppose we can give-"
Evelyn assumed charge. "No, dear. We'll keep Adelbert and sell the car. He costs quite a lot to feed, you know. Though I dare say we can sell the car for enough to last him a long time."
"Maybe enough over to buy a baby?" Terry suggested.
"Just a little one," she said, blushing.
"Well, yes," Terry said. "At first."
"You know," she murmured, "I was going to get a job and come live with you. I'm sort of sorry. I mean, I've never lived in sin with any-that is, really-and now I'll never know what it would be like."
"Don't you feel bad," Terry said, taking her in his arms. "Sin's sin, whether you're living 'in it or not."
"Ahem," said Mr. Fehnwick, but no one seemed to hear him.
-------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment