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The Phonograph and the Graft, by O. Henry

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The Phonograph and the Graft
by O. Henry, 1904



I LOOKED in at the engine-room of the Bloomfield-Cater Mfg. Co. (Ltd.), for the
engineer was Kirksy, and there was a golden half-hour between the time he shut
down steam and washed up that I coveted. For Kirksy was an improvisatore, and he
told stories from the inside outward, finely leaving his spoken words and his
theme to adjust themselves as best they might.
I found Kirksy resting, with his pipe lighted, smutfaced and blue overalled.
"'Tis a fair afternoon," I said, "but bids to be colder."
"Did I ever tell you," began Kirksy honorably, "about the time Henry Horsecollar
and me took a phonograph to South America?" and I felt ashamed of my subterfuge,
and dropped into the wooden chair he kicked toward me.
"Henry was a quarter-breed, quarter-back Cherokee, educated East in the idioms
of football and West in contraband whiskey, and a gentleman, same as you or me.
He was easy and romping in his ways; a man about six foot, with a kind of
rubber-tire movement. Yes, he was a little man about five foot five, or five
foot eleven. He was what you would call a medium tall man of average smallness.
Henry had quit college once, and the Muscogee jail three times--once for
introducing, and twice for selling, whiskey in the Territories. Henry
Horsecollar never let any cigar stores come up and stand behind him. He didn't
belong to that tribe of Indians.
"Henry and me met at Texarkana, and figured out this phonograph scheme. He had
$360 which came to him out of a land allotment in the reservation. I had run
down from Little Rock on account of a distressful scene I had witnessed on the
street there. A man stood on a box and passed around some gold watches, screw
case, stem-winders, Elgin movement, very elegant. Twenty bucks they cost you
over the counter. At three dollars the crowd fought for the tickers. The man
happened to find a valise full of them handy, and he passed them out like
putting hot biscuits on a plate. The backs were hard to unscrew, but the crowd
put its ear to the case, and they ticked mollifying and agreeable. Three of
those watches were genuine tickers; but the rest, they were only kickers. Hey?
Why, empty cases with one of them horny black bugs that fly around electric
lights in 'em. Them bugs kick off minutes and seconds industrious and beautiful.
The man I was speaking of cleaned up $288, and went away, because he knew that
when it came time to wind watches in Little Rock an entomologist would be
needed, and he wasn't one.
"So, as I say, Henry had $360 and I had $288. The phonograph idea was Henry's,
but I took to it freely, being fond of machinery of all kinds.
"'The Latin races,' says Henry, explaining easy in his idioms he learned at
college, 'are peculiarly adapted to be victims of the phonograph. They possess
the artistic temperament. They yearn for music and color and gayety. They give
up wampum to the hand-organ man or the four-legged chicken when they're months
behind with the grocery and the breadfruit tree.'
"'Then,' says I, 'we'll export canned music to the
Latins; but I'm mindful of Mr. Julius Caesar's account of 'em where he says,
"Omnia Ganglia in tres partes divisa est," which is the same as to say, "We will
need all of your gall in devising means to tree them parties."' I hated to make
a show of education, but I was disinclined to be overdone in syntax by a mere
Indian, to whom we owe nothing except the land on which the United States is
situated.
"We bought a fine phonograph in Texarkana--one of the best make--and half a
trunkful of records. We packed up, and took the T. and P. for New Orleans. From
that celebrated centre of molasses and disfranchised coon songs we took a
steamer for--yes, I think it was South America or Mexico--I am full of inability
to divulge the location of it--'tis on the rural delivery route, 'tis colored
yellow on the map, and branded with the literature of cigar boxes.
"We landed on a smiling coast at a town they denounced by the name, as near as I
can recollect, of Sore-toe-kangaroo. 'Twas a palatable enough place to look at.
The houses were clean and white, sticking about among the scenery like
hard-boiled eggs served with lettuce. There was a block of skyscraper mountains
in the suburbs, and they kept pretty quiet, like they were laying one finger on
their lips and watching the town. And the sea was remarking 'Sh-sh-sh!' on the
beach; and now and then a ripe cocoanut would fall kerblip in the sand, and that
was all there was doing. Yes, I judge that town was considerably on the quiet. I
judge that after Gabriel quits blowing his horn, and the car starts, with
Philadelphia swinging to the last strap, and Pine Gulley, Arkansas, hanging on
to the hind rail, Sore-toe-kangaroo will wake up and ask if anybody spoke.
"The captain went ashore with us, and offered to conduct what he seemed to like
to call the obsequies. He introduced Henry and me to the United States Consul,
and a roan man, the head of the Department of Mercenary and Licentious
Dispositions, the way it read upon his sign.
"'I touch here again a week from to-day,' says the captain.
"'By that time,' we told him, 'we'll be amassing wealth in the interior towns
with our galvanized prima donna and correct imitations of Sousa's band
excavating a march from a tin mine.'
"'Ye'll not,' says the captain. 'Ye'll be hypnotized. Any gentleman in the
audience who kindly steps upon the stage and looks this country in the eye will
be converted to the hypothesis that he's but a fly in the Elgin creamery. Ye'll
be standing knee deep in the surf waiting for me, and your machine for making
Hamburger steak out of the hitherto respected art of music will be playing
"There's no place like home."
"Henry skinned a twenty off his roll, and received from the Bureau of Mercenary
Dispositions a paper bearing a red seal and a dialect story, and no change.
"Then we got the consul full of red wine, and struck him for a horoscope. He was
a thin, youngish kind of man, I should say past fifty, sort of French-Irish in
his affections, and puffed up with disconsolation. Yes, he was a flattened kind
of a man, in whom drink lay stagnant, inclined to corpulence and misery. Yes, I
think he was a kind of Dutchman, being very sad and genial in his ways.
"'The marvelous invention,' he says, 'entitled the phonograph, has never before
invaded these shores. The people have never heard it. They would not believe it
if they should. Simple-hearted children of nature, progress has never condemned
them to accept the work of a can-opener as an overture, and rag-time might
incite them to a bloody revolution. But you can try the experiment. The best
chance you have is that the populace may not wake up when you play. There's two
ways,' says the consul, 'they may take it. They may become inebriated with
attention, like an Atlanta colonel listening to "Marching through Georgia," or
they will get excited and transpose the key of the music with an axe and
yourselves into a dungeon. In the latter case,' says the consul, 'I'll do my
duty by cabling to the State Department, and I'll wrap the Stars and Stripes
around you when you come to be shot, and threaten them with the vengeance of the
greatest gold export and financial reserve nation on earth. The flag is full of
bullet holes now,' says the consul, 'made in that way. Twice before,' says the
consul, 'I have cabled our Government for a couple of gunboats to protect
American citizens. The first time the Department sent me a pair of gum boots.
The other time was when a man named Pease was going to be executed here. They
referred that appeal to the Secretary of Agriculture. Let us now disturb the
senor behind the bar for a subsequence of the red wine.'
"Thus soliloquized the consul of Sore-toe-kangaroo to me and Henry Horsecollar.
"But, notwithstanding, we hired a room that afternoon in the Calle de los
Angeles, the main street that runs along the shore, and put our trunks there.
'Twas a good-sized room, dark and cheerful, but small. 'Twas on a various
street, diversified by houses and conservatory plants. The peasantry of the city
passed to and fro on the fine pasturage between the sidewalks. 'Twas, for the
world, like an opera chorus when the Royal Kafoozlum is about to enter.
"We were rubbing the dust off the machine and getting fixed to start business
the next day when a big, fine-looking white man in white clothes stopped at the
door and looked in. We extended the invitations, and he walked inside and sized
us up. He was chewing a long cigar, and wrinkling his eyes, meditative, like a
girl trying to decide which dress to wear to the party.
"'New York?' he says to me finally.
"'Originally, and from time to time,' I says, 'Hasn't it rubbed off yet?'
"'It's simple,' says he, 'when you know how. It's the fit of the vest. They
don't cut vests right anywhere else. Coats, maybe, but not vests.'
"The white man looks at Henry Horsecollar and hesitates.
"'Injun,' says Henry; 'tame Injun.'
"'Mellinger,' says the man--'Homer P. Mellinger. Boys, you're confiscated.
You're babes in the wood without a chaperon or referee, and it's my duty to
start you going. I'll knock out the props and launch you proper in the pellucid
waters of Sore-toe-kangaroo. You'll have to be christened, and if you'll come
with me I'll break a bottle of wine across your bows, according to Hoyle.'
"Well, for two days Homer P. Mellinger did the honors. That man cut ice in
Sore-toe-kangaroo. He was It. He was the Royal Kafoozlum. If me and Henry was
babes in the wood, he was a Robin Redbreast from the topmost bough. Him and me
and Henry Horsecollar locked arms and toted that phonograph around and had
wassail and diversions. Everywhere we found doors open we went in and set the
machine going, and Mellinger called upon the people to observe the artful music
and his lifelong friends, the two Senors Americanos. The opera chorus was
agitated with esteem, and followed us from house to house. There was vina toto
and vino blanco to drink with every tune. The aborigines had acquirements of a
pleasant thing in the way of drinks that gums itself to the recollection. They
chop off the end of a green cocoanut, and pour in on the liquor of it French
brandy and gin. We had them and other things.
"Mine and Henry's money was counterfeit. Everything was on Homer P. Mellinger.
That man could find rolls of bills in his clothes where Hermann the Wizard
couldn't have conjured out an omelette. He could have founded universities and
had enough left to buy the colored vote of his country. Henry and me wondered
what his graft was. One evening he told us.
"'Boys,' says he, 'I've deceived you. Instead of a painted butterfly, I'm the
hardest worked man in this country. Ten years ago I landed on its shores, and
two years ago on the point of its jaw. Yes, I reckon I can get the decision over
this ginger-cake commonwealth at the end of any round I choose. I'll confide in
you because you are my countrymen and guests, even if you have committed an
assault upon my adopted shores with the worst system of noises ever set to
music.
"'My job is private secretary to the President of this Republic, and my duties
are running it. I'm not headlined in the bills, but I'm the mustard in the salad
dressing. There isn't a law goes before Congress, there isn't a concession
granted, there isn't an import duty levied, but what H. P. Mellinger he cooks
and seasons it. In the front office I fill the President's inkstand and search
visiting statesmen for dynamite; in the back room I dictate the policy of the
government. You'd never guess how I got the pull. It's the only graft of its
kind in the world. I'll put you wise. You remember the topliner in the old
copy-books--"Honesty is the best policy." That's it. I'm the only honest man in
this republic. The government knows it; the people know it; the boodlers know
it; the foreign investors know it. I make the government keep its faith. If a
man is promised a job he gets it. If outside capital buys a concession they get
the goods. I run a monopoly of square dealing here. There's no competition. If
Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he'd have my address
inside of two minutes. There isn't big money in it, but it's a sure thing, and
lets a man sleep of nights.'
"Thus Homer P. Mellinger made oration to me and Henry Horsecollar in
Sore-toe-kangaroo. And, later, he divested himself of this remark:
"'Boys, I'm to hold a soiree this evening with a gang of leading citizens, and I
want your assistance. You bring the musical corn sheller and give the affair the
outside appearance of a function. There's important business on hand, but it
mustn't show. I can talk to you people. I've been pained for years on account of
not having anybody to blow off and brag to. I get homesick sometimes, and I'd
swap the entire perquisites of office for just one hour to have a stein and a
caviare sandwich somewhere on Thirty-fourth Street, and stand and watch the
street cars go by, and smell the peanut roaster at old Giuseppe's fruit stand.'
"'Yes,' said I, 'there's fine caviare at Billy Renfrow's cafe, corner of
Thirty-fourth and--"
"'God knows it,' interrupts Mellinger, 'and if you'd told me you knew Billy
Renfrow I'd have invented tons of ways of making you happy. Billy was my side
kicker in New York. That is a man who never knew what crooked was. Here I am
working Honesty for a graft, but that man loses money on it. Carrambos! I get
sick at times of this country. Everything's rotten. From the Executive down to
the coffee pickers, they're plotting to down each other and skin their friends.
If a mule driver takes off his hat to an official, that man figures it out that
he's a popular idol, and sets his pegs to stir up a revolution and upset the
administration. It's one of my little chores as private secretary to smell out
these revolutions and affix the kibosh before they break out and scratch the
paint off the government property. That's why I'm down here now in this mildewed
coast town. The Governor of the district and his crew are plotting to uprise.
I've got every one of their names, and they're invited to listen to the
phonograph to-night, compliments of H. P. M. That's the way I'll get them in a
bunch, and things are on the programme to happen to them.'
"We three were sitting at table in the cantina of the Purified Saints. Mellinger
poured out wine, and was looking some worried; I was thinking.
"'They're a sharp crowd,' he says, kind of fretful. 'They're capitalized by a
foreign syndicate after rubber, and they're loaded to the muzzle for bribing.
I'm sick,' goes on Mellinger, 'of comic opera. I want to smell East River and
wear suspenders again. At times I feel like throwing up my job, but I'm d-n fool
enough to be sort of proud of it. "There's Mellinger," they say here, "Por Dios!
you can't touch him with a million." I'd like to take that record back and show
it to Billy Renfrow some day; and that tightens my grip whenever I see a fat
thing that I could corral just by winking one eye--and losing my graft. By ----!
they can't monkey with me. They know it. What money I get I make honest and
spend it. Some day I'll make a pile and go back and eat caviare with Billy.
To-night I'll show you how to handle a bunch of corruptionists. I'll show them
what Mellinger, private secretary, means when you spell it with the cotton and
tissue paper off.'
"Mellinger appears shaky, and breaks his glass against the neck of the bottle.
"I says to myself, 'White man, if I'm not mistaken there's been a bait laid out
where the tail of your eye could see it.'
"That night, according to arrangements, me and Henry took the phonograph to a
room in a 'dobe house in a dirty side street, where the grass was knee high.
'Twas a long room, lighted with smoky oil lamps. There was plenty of chairs and
a table at the back end. We set the phonograph on the table. Mellinger was
there, walking up and down, disturbed in his predicaments. He chewed cigars and
spat 'em out, and he bit the thumb nail of his left hand.
"By and by the invitations to the musicale came sliding in by pairs and threes
and spade flushes. Their color was of a diversity, running from a three-days'
smoked meerschaum to a patent-leather polish. They were as polite as wax, being
devastated with enjoyments to give Senor Mellinger the good evenings. I
understood their Spanish talk--I ran a pumping engine two years in a Mexican
silver mine, and had it pat--but I never let on.
"Maybe fifty of 'em had come, and was seated, when in slid the king bee, the
Governor of the district. Mellinger met him at the door and escorted him to the
grand stand. When I saw that Latin man I knew that Mellinger, private secretary,
had all the dances on his card taken. That was a big, squashy man, the color of
a rubber overshoe, and he had an eye like a head waiter's.
"Mellinger explained, fluent, in the Castilian idioms, that his soul was
disconcerted with joy at introducing to his respected friends America's greatest
invention, the wonder of the age. Henry got the cue and run on an elegant
brass-band record and the festivities became initiated. The Governor man had a
bit of English under his hat, and when the music was choked off he says:
"'Ver-r-ree fine. Gr-r-r-r-racias, the American gentleemen, the so esplendeed
moosic as to playee.'
"The table was a long one, and Henry and me sat at the end of it next the wall.
The Governor sat at the other end. Homer P. Mellinger stood at the side of it. I
was just wondering how Mellinger was going to handle his crowd, when the home
talent suddenly opened the services.
"That Governor man was suitable for uprisings and policies. I judge he was a
ready kind of man, who took his own time. Yes, he was full of attentions and
immediateness. He leaned his hands on the table and imposed his face toward the
secretary man.
"'Do the American Senors understand Spanish?' he asks in his native accents.
"'They do not,' says Mellinger.
"'Then, listen,' goes on the Latin man, prompt. 'The musics are of sufficient
prettiness, but not of necessity. Let us speak of business. I well know why we
are here, since I observe my compatriots. You had a whisper yesterday, Senor
Mellinger, of our proposals. To-night we will speak out. We know that you stand
in the President's favor, and we know your influence. The government will be
changed. We know the worth of your services. We esteem your friendship and aid
so much that'--Mellinger raises his hand, but the Governor man bottles him up.
'Do not speak until I have done.'
"The Governor man then draws a package wrapped in paper from his pocket, and
lays it on the table by Mellinger's hand.
"'In that you will find one hundred thousand dollars in money of your country.
You can do nothing against us, but you can be worth that for us. Go back to the
capital and obey our instructions. Take that money now. We trust you. You will
find with it a paper giving in detail the work you will be expected to do for
us. Do not have the unwiseness to refuse.'
"The Governor man paused, with his eyes fixed on Mellinger, full of expressions
and observances. I looked at Mellinger, and was glad Billy Renfrow couldn't see
him then. The sweat was popping out on his forehead, and he stood dumb, tapping
the little package with the ends of his fingers. The Colorado maduro gang was
after his graft. He had only to change his politics, and stuff six figures in
his inside pocket.
"Henry whispers to me and wants the pause in the programme interpreted. I
whisper back: 'H. P. is up against a bribe, senator's size, and the coons have
got him going.' I saw Mellinger's hand moving closer to the package. 'He's
weakening,' I whispered to Henry. 'We'll remind him,' says Henry, 'of the peanut
roaster on Thirty-fourth Street, New York.'
"Henry stooped and got a record from the basketful we'd brought, slid it in the
phonograph, and started her off. It was a cornet solo, very neat and beautiful,
and the name of it was 'Home, Sweet Home.' Not one of them fifty odd men in the
room moved while it was playing, and the Governor man kept his eyes steady on
Mellinger. I saw Mellinger's head go up little by little, and his hand came
creeping away from the package. Not until the last note sounded did anybody
stir. And then Homer P. Mellinger takes up the bundle of boodle and slams it in
the Governor man's face.
"'That's my answer,' says Mellinger, private secretary, 'and there'll be another
in the morning. I have proofs of conspiracy against every man of you. The show
is over, gentlemen.'
"'There's one more act,' puts in the Governor man. 'You are a servant, I
believe, employed by the President to copy letters and answer raps at the door.
I am Governor here. Senors, I call upon you in the name of the cause to seize
this man.'
"That brindled gang of conspirators shoved back their chairs and advanced in
force. I could see where Mellinger had made a mistake in massing his enemy so as
to make a grand-stand play. I think he made another one, too; but we can pass
that, Mellinger's idea of a graft and mine being different, according to
estimations and points of view.
"There was only one window and door in that room, and they were in the front
end. Here was fifty odd Latin men coming in a bunch to obstruct the legislation
of Mellinger. You may say there were three of us, for me and Henry,
simultaneous, declared New York City and the Cherokee Nation in sympathy with
the weaker party.
"Then it was that Henry Horsecollar rose to a point of disorder and intervened,
showing, admirable, the advantages of education as applied to the American
Indian's natural intellect and native refinement. He stood up and smoothed back
his hair on each side with his hands as you have seen little girls do when they
play.
"'Get behind me, both of you,' says Henry.
"'What is it to be?' I asked.
"'I'm going to buck centre,' says Henry, in his football idioms. 'There isn't a
tackle in the lot of them. Keep close behind me and rush the game.'
"That cultured Red Man exhaled an arrangement of sound's with his mouth that
caused the Latin aggregation to pause, with thoughtfulness and hesitations. The
matter of his proclamation seemed to be a co-operation of the Cherokee college
yell with the Carlisle war-whoop. He went at the chocolate team like the flip of
a little boy's nigger shooter. His right elbow laid out the Governor man on the
gridiron, and he made a lane the length of the crowd that a woman could have
carried a step-ladder through without striking anything. All me and Mellinger
had to do was to follow.
"In five minutes we were out of that street and at the military headquarters,
where Mellinger had things his own way.
"The next day Mellinger takes me and Henry to one side and begins to shed tens
and twenties.
"'I want to buy that phonograph,' he says. 'I liked that last tune it played.
Now, you boys better go back home, for they'll give you trouble here before I
get the screws put on 'em. If you happen to ever see Billy Renfrow again, tell
him I'm coming back to New York as soon as I can make a stake--honest.'
"'This is more money,' says I, 'than the machine is worth.'
"''Tis government expense money,' says Mellinger, 'and the government's getting
the tune grinder cheap.'
"Henry and I knew that pretty well, but we never let Homer P. Mellinger know
that we had seen how near he came to losing his graft.
"We laid low until the day the steamer came back. When we saw the captain's boat
on the beach me and Henry went down and stood in the edge of the water. The
captain grinned when he saw us.
"'I told you you'd be waiting,' he says. 'Where's the Hamburger machine?'
"'It stays behind,' I says, 'to play "Home, Sweet Home." '
"'I told you so,' says the captain again. 'Climb in the boat.'
"And that," said Kirksy, "is the way me and Henry Horsecollar introduced the
phonograph in that Latin country along about the vicinity of South America."