CHAPTER IV

REVELRY

College boys on a party are traditionally opposed to quiet, and Sport O'Malley's "coming out" party for Rudy Bronson scarcely was an exception to the rule. Within an hour, the booth in which the half dozen boys were crowded had become the focus of general attention. Within two, their hilarity was such that old Bland replaced his frowns and warnings with the even sterner edict that they quit the place.

This the whoopee-makers were loath to do. The evening was nearing its height. Bennie, the orchestra leader, had his men drawn to the last possible notch of syncopation. He was showing well what he had learned under Whiteman and Lopez and Ben Bernie. Showing it so well that the floor was packed with dancers.

Around the gliding figures, seeking booth openings, waiters scurried like black and white rabbits. Sound blazed like light. And over all was that tremulous, excited note which comes to a festivity only when its participants are very young and very alive.

"Aw, we don't want to go just yet, Mr. Bland!" Sport cried, waving his arms at The Magic Lantern's proprietor. "Gee, things are just beginning to get good. I'll make these guys be quiet."

"Yes, and who's going to make you keep quiet?" Bland demanded. "You're the noisiest one of the bunch."

"Why, Mr. Bland, I am surprised!"

"I'll make him quiet down, Mr. Bland," Rudy interposed. "I guess we have been pretty noisy. But we'll cool off a little bit."

"Sure, we will that," Sport seconded him. "Fact is, I'll go out and cool off now." He rose majestically, pointing at the others. "And if there is so much as one peep out of you bozos before I get back, I'll help Mr. Bland throw you forth upon your ears."

"You and who else?"

"Me and Mr. Bland, of course. He's all right."

"Who's all right?"

As one voice they answered: "Bland's all right."

Rudy got the uproarious Sport by the arm, and pulled him toward the door. "Lay off that stuff," he cautioned. "Gosh, I came down here and masqueraded as your brother, and gave a solo, just to get you in right--and then you try to toss away all that I've done for you by yelling like a hoodlum!"

"I know," Sport admitted. "But that guy burns me up, Rudy. Why can't he have some of the good traits of his daughter?"

"You're pretty fond of this girl, aren't you, Sport?" Rudy asked slowly.

"Oh, boy! You're conservative! I'm cuh-razy about that baby."

Rudy studied Sport for a moment. He liked the gay and light-hearted sophomore, and he knew that the boy was doing himself anything but good by the terrific pace he was hitting. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps this girl Molly, with her influence over Sport, might cause him to change some of the habits that eventually must be his undoing.

"You wait here a minute, Sport," he said, as they reached a bench under a tree outside the long, lighted building. "I want to go in and get some cigarettes. Stay here, now; I'll be right back."

"Oke," said Sport, relaxing comfortably against the tree trunk. "I'll be delighted to wait, old son."

In the doorway of The Magic Lantern, Rudy stood for an agitated moment, seeking in all that mad scene to win a glimpse of Molly Bland. A number of hails went up for him from the booth he so recently had quitted with Sport in tow, but he paid no more attention to them than to the university songs booming out under the baton of the orchestra leader. He frowned. That girl might be able to do Sport incalculable good.

The door to Bland's office gave directly upon the resort's main room, and to this door he now saw Molly Bland making her way across the dance floor. He plunged forward. "Miss Bland!"

The girl turned, acknowledged the hail with a cold glance, but failed to pause. Scowling, Rudy hurried to her side. "There's something I'd like to say to you!" he said, putting out a detaining hand.

Brushing away his hand, the girl stopped. Her eyes were cold in a pink face. "And there's something I want to say to you! What kind of a brother are you to let Sport drink the way he does? If you think it's smart--or amusing, or anything else--you have far different opinions than I do!"

Rudy grinned. "That's fine!" he cried. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear! You see," he explained hurriedly, "Sport's introduction of me as his brother was just a little joke. I'm not his brother--but I am his friend. And I hate to see him use liquor the way he does almost as much as you do. He's outside now--I wondered if perhaps I might ask you to go out and speak to him about it?"

The girl's eyes softened. "Say, you are nice," she said. "Where have you been? I wish that Sport had a few more friends like you."

"Never mind that," Rudy returned, his color heightening. "You just go out there and talk to Sport the way you talked to me."

"I will!" Molly assured him decisively, and with a brisk run of steps went through the door and out into the night. Rudy sank into an unoccupied booth. What fools young men were! How they wasted themselves and their opportunities in idle folly. Here was Sport O'Malley, one of the cleverest chaps he knew, burning his candle at both ends--and attacking the middle with an acetylene torch!

And to what purpose? Little that had anything to do with the career in modern music upon which he had pinned his rather casual ambitions. Well, it would be different in his own case. He would allow nothing to stand in his way. Nothing! And there would be no need for any girl to go out and berate him for destroying himself. He smiled ironically. Which was probably a good thing--so long as there was no girl who cared enough about him to mind whether or not he drank himself blind.

At that moment there was a small burst of newcomers, accompanied by an obligato of youthful laughter. Rudy's pulses quickened as he saw that among them was Jean Whitehall. She was escorted by the very attentive captain of the football team, while the president of the student body hung on the outskirts of the crowd, glowering with a resentment doubtless caused by that fact. In his official capacity, he frowned on The Magic Lantern, and he was there only because Jean had insisted upon seeing the place as a sort of prelude to the farewell dance her sorority was giving that night.

Rudy sank more deeply into the obscurity of the booth. For some odd reason he did not wish Jean to see him there--in his role of inconspicuous freshman. Rather, a silent voice counseled, let him wait until he could bring himself to her notice in a fitting manner. And then there would be no recollection in her mind of the poor fumbling boy who had failed in everything he had attempted at the University.

He found her gorgeously beautiful. For the moment he could not take his eyes from her glittering presence. When the party had been seated, with Jean as the colorful hub around which it revolved, Rudy slipped out of the booth and made for the outside door. When he was Rudy Bronson, the famous musician, there would be time to think of her. But until then----

In the sudden transition from the blazing light of the interior of The Magic Lantern to the cool dark of the night, Rudy had difficulty in adjusting his sight. He stumbled forward, and was almost upon the tree beneath which he had left Sport when he heard Molly's voice speaking, quietly and yet with a strange dignity:

"Oh, I know you're not too potted to walk--or to talk, Sport. But you're under the influence of liquor, nevertheless. And," suddenly her voice flared, "I hate it! You can't know how I hate it! You see," she went on with more calm, "before we came here, Dad used to have a saloon. I was only a very little girl, then; but night after night I've listened for him to come home. I always could tell by his step on the walk whether or not he'd been drinking with his customers. That was in the old days, Sport. You probably don't know anything about saloons, but, oh, I do! I've listened to Dad and Mother go over the question time and time again."

Almost against his will Rudy was forced to remain as an eavesdropper to the girl's troubled story. To walk away now might startle her, cause her to cease the even flow of words which he was certain Sport O'Malley needed as much as he needed anything on earth.

"It went along that way for what seemed ages," Molly continued, "until I got to hate anything in any way associated with alcohol, and I've never lost my horror of it... So you see it's hardly because you're a drinker that I care for you. I'm not the kind of person who thinks it is smart for you boys to make whoopee. Fun is fun, of course; but I'll bet that quiet friend of yours, the blond, has as much fun as any of you."

At this interjection of his name into the discussion, Rudy thought it time to make his appearance. Coughing slightly, he came around the trunk of the tree, holding a packet of cigarettes in his hand.

"Ah, there," he said in greeting.

Sport looked up listlessly. "Hello, Rudy. Do you know Molly Bland? Her father owns the place here. She's just been telling me that I drink too much."

"I guess most of the fellows do quite a bit of that nowadays," Rudy answered. "Prohibition is a swell idea--but when are we going to have it?"

"That's just it," Sport said with the air of one who has done much thinking on a subject. "If the stuff were either not forbidden, or impossible to get, everything would be all right. But you're tempted both ways as it is now."

For an instant Rudy feared that Sport was about to let slip the fact that the liquor which had stimulated him had been purchased in The Magic Lantern. A sudden thought came to Rudy. He had been supposing that it was old Bland who was doing the bootlegging in the resort. But it easily might be Nick, the floor man, or one of the waiters. Characteristically, he was seeking to think well of a stranger until definite and indisputable evidence had been presented to cause him to think otherwise.

Glancing at Sport and Molly, Rudy saw in their absorption in one another that they wished to be alone. With a brief "Guess I'll be trotting back inside," he turned in the direction of The Magic Lantern. But almost to the lighted doorway he paused. He suddenly knew that he wanted anything except to rejoin the party in Sport's booth, busy, as he knew, at their hilarious game of slopping drinks surreptitiously together. Let them carry on without him.

Slipping around a corner of the building, he located a second bench and meditatively got out his cigarettes. Stranger though he was to the sort of entertainment that was bubbling inside the building at his back, it even lacked the fascination of the unknown.

He looked reflectively at the lighted end of his cigarette. Imagine getting to be like this Bland--lying to your family, holding yourself up as a sort of plaster saint to the college authorities, and peddling booze while you did it. Almost against his will he was being forced to the conclusion that it was the proprietor himself who was doing the bootlegging in the resort.

And if it were Bland, what a chance he was taking! Running the risk that some empty-headed college boy would expose him. And then what? Imagine having to face a break like that!

Naturally, if trouble came, it would mean the end of Molly's chances for any sort of success at the University, where she intended entering, Sport had said, in the fall. Why she would have even a worse time than he, Rudy Bronson, had had!

Voices sifted out into the night. "Everything is all fine. He can complain. Imagine what sort of a reception Bland would get if he went running down to the desk with the yelp that somebody had gone south with a load of his hooch! Just imagine, if you can!"

Rudy glanced around. Behind and above him he saw a pale blotch of window. "You're sure everything's all set down there?" Against the coarse, guttural tones which Rudy recognized as belonging to Nick, the head-waiter, a second man's voice scratched weakly.

"Sure, everything's set," the first speaker agreed heartily. "We'll be waiting with the cars by the S.P. bridge. All you have to do is pull up there--and give us a hand unloading the stuff. I'll have the cars there to take it where I want it to go. Then you turn around and come back, and tell Bland that you got hijacked." He'll steam a little, maybe; but don't worry about him cracking to anybody. There's nobody that he can crack to. Who me? I'll get mine! And you'll get yours, too, when I get it.

"But that ain't all. It ain't just the dough. I'm sicka this collitch bunch, and I'm sicka Bland. It was just like him to try and beat my time, after finding out what kind of dough I been making selling the stuff to these kids. Well, I'll show him who's going to do the peddling here! I'll give him a jolt that will send him back to his soda pop and sandwiches for keeps. And if he smells a rat and gives me the air, all right. I'm sicka it around here anyway."

Rudy slid along the wall and around a corner of the building, laughter bumping his heart against his ribs. A cross-up! A frame, which, at the prices current for liquor, would cost Bland plenty. His face tilted toward the stars. And how the old fool deserved it! Trying to destroy Molly's apparently authentic affection for Sport because Sport drank--and all the while making himself rich by encouraging other boys like Sport to the same habit! Yes, he deserved to lose every cent that he would lose, and the irony of the jest was that he must take that loss without complaint. For the head-waiter was right, there was nobody to whom Bland dared complain.

Then Rudy's laughter halted in mid-career. Nobody? But wasn't there? Would the old man take his loss quietly? Rudy lighted a fresh cigarette. Old Bland was apt to do anything but that! He had a temper--Sport's experiences with him was testimony to that--and before he stopped to think it over, he might get hot-headed and spill the whole affair to the police. And then where would he be? How would he explain that he owned any liquor at all--much less a truck-load? And then where would little Molly be? Gee!

There was only one thing to do. The old man must be told. He raced up the steps. Inside the door of The Magic Lantern he paused. Jean and her party had left. Rudy was glad. With the evening nearing its close, the revelry was at its noisiest pitch. The room was a swirling, trooping mass of figures, and Rudy saw immediately that finding the proprietor in the few precious minutes that remained before his hired man started out with the truck of liquor was going to be impossible unless luck favored him. His teeth caught fretfully on his lower lip. The old man just had to know!

Then, so close that he could touch him with an outstretched hand, he found Bland talking with a tall dark man. Rudy promptly broke in upon their conversation. "Say, Mr. Bland, there's something very important that you should know about! I'm not fooling!"

The proprietor eyed him coldly. "I thought I had your promise to keep those boys quiet, Mr. O'Malley." He motioned to the now vacant booth. "But they got even noisier than before--and out they went! I only let them stay because you were with them, and apparently sober, but when you walked out like that I saw that you weren't to be trusted any more than the rest of them."

"Sure, I know I did," Rudy began; "but listen----"

"I'm not interested! If you boys can't come here and conduct yourselves as you should, I don't want you to come. Rules are rules, and laws are laws. And that's all there is to it." He started with his companion in the direction of his office. "And now, excuse me."

"But, Mr. Bland!"

"You heard what I said." Bland's heavy shoulder shunted him to one side. The office door slammed. A latch clicked.

Crimsoning, Rudy regarded its solid paneling. And this was the man he was trying to save from a frame-up! What a pleasure it would be to see them get away with every nickel the wretched old hypocrite owned! ... But for the sake of Molly, the girl whom he knew to be the one person capable of putting Sport O'Malley on his feet, he dared not let that frame-up go through.

Rudy whirled, making for the exit. In the dusk outside he paused, searching for Sport. In an instant his eyes located him, sitting dejected and alone, on the bench by the tree.

Grasping him by the wrist, Rudy jerked him to his feet. "Don't ask any questions!" he cried. "Just come with me!" And then with the dazed Sport in tow, he plunged off down the road in the direction of the disappearing tail-light of old Bland's delivery truck.