Barbershop Adventure

When the Post Man entered the shop yesterday the chairs were full of customers, and for a brief moment he felt a thrill of hope that he might escape, but the barber’s eye, deadly and gloomy fixed itself upon him.

“You’re next,” he said, with a look of diabolical malevolence, and the Post Man sank into a hard chair nailed to the wall, with a feeling of hopeless despair.

In a few moments there was a rattle and a bang, the customer in the chair was thrown violently on his feet, and fled out of the shop pursued by the African who was making vicious dabs at him with a whisk broom full of tacks and splinters.

The Post Man took a long look at the sunlight, pinned a little note to his tie with his scarf pin, giving his address, in case the worst should happen, and settled into the chair.

He informed the barber, in answer to a stern inquiry, that he did not want his hair cut, and in turn received a look of cold incredulity and contempt.

The chair was hurled to a reclining position, the lather was mixed, and as the deadly brush successively stopped all sense of hearing, sight and smell, the Post Man sank into a state of collapse, from which he was aroused by the loud noise of a steel instrument with which the barber was scraping off the lather and wiping it on the Post Man’s shirt sleeve.

“Everybody’s riding bicycles now,” said the barber, “and it’s going to be very difficult for the fashionable people to keep it an exclusive exercise. You see, you can’t prevent anybody from riding a bicycle that wants to, and the streets are free for everyone. I don’t see any harm in the sport, myself, and it’s getting more popular every day. After a while, riding will become so general that a lady on a wheel will not create any more notice than she would walking. It’s good exercise for the ladies, and that makes up for their looking like a bag full of fighting cats slung over a clothes line when they ride.

“But the pains they do take to make themselves mannish! Why can’t a lady go in for athletics without trying to look and dress tough? If I should tell you what one of them did the other day you wouldn’t believe it.”

The barber here glared so fiercely at the Post Man that he struggled up to the top of the lather by a superhuman effort and assured the artist that anything he said would be received with implicit faith.

“I was sent for,” continued the barber, “to go up on McKinney Avenue and was to bring my razor and shaving outfit. I went up and found the house.

“A good-looking young lady was riding a bicycle up and down in front of the gate. She had on a short skirt, leggings, and a sack coat, cut like a man’s.

“I went in and knocked and they showed me into a side room. In a few minutes the young lady came in, sat down on a chair and an old lady whom I took to be her ma dropped in.

“ ‘Shave,’ said the young lady. ‘Twice over, and be in a hurry; I’ve an engagement.’

“I was nearly knocked down with surprise, but I managed to get my outfit in shape. It was evident that that young lady ruled the house. The old lady said to me in a whisper that her daughter was one of the leaders among the girls who believed in the emancipation of women, and she had resolved to raise a moustache and thus get ahead of her young lady companions.

“The young lady leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.

“I dipped my brush in the lather and ran it across her upper lip. As soon as I did so she sprang to her feet, her eyes flashing with rage.

“ ‘How dare you insult me!’ she stormed, looking as if she would like to eat me up. ‘Leave the house, immediately,’ she went on.

“I was dumbfounded. I thought perhaps she was a trifle flighty, so I put up my utensils and started for the door. When I got there, I recovered my presence of mind enough to say:

“Miss, I am sure I have done nothing to offend you. I always try to act a gentleman whenever it is convenient. In what way have I insulted you?

“ ‘Take your departure,’ she said angrily. ‘I guess I know when a man kisses me.’

“And so I left. Now, what do you think of that?” asked the barber, as he pushed about an ounce of soap into the Post Man’s mouth with his thumb.

“I think that’s a pretty tough story to believe,” said the Post Man, summoning up his courage.

The barber stopped shaving and bent a gaze of such malignant and cool ferocity upon his victim that the Post Man hastened to say:

“But no doubt it occurred as you have stated.”

“It did,” said the barber. “I don’t ask you to take my word for it. I can prove it. Do you see that blue mug on the shelf, the third from the right? Well, that’s the mug I carried with me that day. I guess you’ll believe it now.”

“Speaking of bald heads,” went on the barber, although no one had said a word about bald heads, “reminds me of how a man worked a game on me once right here in Houston. You know there’s nothing in the world that will make hair grow on a bald head. Lots of things are sold for that purpose, but if the roots are dead nothing can bring them to life. A man came into my shop one day last fall and had a shave. His head was as bald and smooth as a tea cup. All the tonics in the world couldn’t have started one hair growing there. The man was a stranger to me, but said he ran a truck garden out on the edge of town. He came in about three times and got shaved and then he struck me to fix him up something to make his hair grow.”

The barber here reached back upon a shelf and got a strip of sticking plaster. Then he cut a gash along the Post Man’s chin and stuck the plaster over it.

“When a man asks for a hair tonic,” continued the barber, “in a barbershop he always gets it. You can fix up a mixture that a man may use on his head for a long time before he finds it is doing him no good. In the meantime he continues to shave in your shop.

“I told my customer that I had invented a hair tonic that if its use were persisted in would certainly cause the hair to grow on the smoothest head. I sat down and wrote him out a formula and told him to have it prepared at a drug store and not to give away the information, as I intended after a while to have it patented and sell it on a large scale. The recipe contained a lot of harmless stuff, some salts of tartar, oil of almonds, bay rum, rose water, tincture of myrrh and some other ingredients. I wrote them down at random just as they came into my head, and half an hour afterwards I couldn’t have told what it was composed of myself. The man took it, paid me a dollar for the formula and went off to get it filled at a drug store.

“He came back twice that week to get shaved, and he said he was using it faithfully. Then he didn’t come any more for about two weeks. He dropped in one afternoon and hung his hat up, and it nearly knocked me down when I saw that the finest kind of a suit of hair had started on his head. It was growing splendidly, and only two weeks before his head had been as bald as a door knob.

“He said he was awfully pleased with my tonic, and well he might be. While I was shaving him I tried to think what the ingredients were that I had written down for him to use, but I couldn’t remember the quantities or half the things I had used. I knew that I had accidentally struck upon a tonic that would make the hair grow, and I knew furthermore that that formula was worth a million dollars to any man if it would do the work. Making hair grow on bald heads, if it could be done, would be better than any gold mine ever worked. I made up my mind to have that formula. When he was about to start away I said carelessly:

“ ‘By the way, Mr. Plunket, I have mislaid my memorandum book that has the formula of my tonic in it and I want to have a bottle or two prepared this morning. If you have the one I gave you I’d like to make a copy of it while you are here.’

“I must have looked too anxious, for he looked at me for a few minutes and then broke out into a laugh.

“ ‘By Jiminy,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe you’ve got a copy of it anywheres. I believe you just happend to hit on the right thing and you don’t remember what it was. I ain’t half as green as I look. That hair grower is worth a fortune, and a big one, too. I think I’ll just keep my recipe and get somebody to put the stuff up and sell it.’

“He started out, and I called him into the back room and talked to him half an hour.

“I finally made a trade with him and bought the formula back for $250 cash. I went up to the bank and got the money which I had there saving up to build a house. He then gave me back the recipe I had given him and signed a paper relinquishing all rights to it. He also agreed to sign a testimonial about the stuff having made his hair grow out in two weeks.”

The barber began to look gloomy and ran his fingers inside the Post Man’s shirt collar, tearing out the button hole, and the collar button flew out the door across the sidewalk into the gutter.

“I went to work next day,” said the barber, “and filed application at Washington for a patent on my tonic and arranged with a big drug firm in Houston to put it on the market for me. I had a million dollars in sight. I fixed up a room where I mixed the tonic⁠—for I wouldn’t let the druggists or anybody else know what was in it⁠—and then the druggists bottled and labeled it.

“I quit working in the shop and put all my time into my tonic.

“Mr. Plunket came into the shop once or twice within the next two weeks and his hair was still growing finely. Pretty soon I had about $200 worth of the tonic ready for the market, and Mr. Plunket was to come in town on Saturday and give me his testimonial to print on advertising dodgers and circulars with which I was going to flood the country.

“I was waiting in the room where I mixed my tonic about 11 o’clock Saturday when the door opened and Mr. Plunket came in. He was very much excited and very angry.

“ ‘Look here,’ he cried, ‘what’s the matter with your infernal stuff?’

“He pulled off his hat, and his head was as shiny and bare as a china egg.

“ ‘It all came out,’ he said roughly. ‘It was growing all right until yesterday morning, when it commenced to fall out, and this morning there wasn’t a hair left.’

“I examined his head and there wasn’t the ghost of a hair to be found anywhere.

“ ‘What’s the good of your stuff,’ he asked angrily, ‘if it makes your hair grow and then all fall out again?’

“ ‘For heaven’s sake, Mr. Plunket,’ I said, ‘don’t say anything about it or you’ll ruin me. I’ve got every cent I’ve got in the world invested in this hair tonic, and I’ve got to get my money back. It made your hair grow, give me the testimonial and let me sell what I’ve got put up, anyway. You are $250 ahead on it and you ought to help me out of it.’

“He was very mad and cut up quite roughly and said he had been swindled and would expose the tonic as a fraud and a lot of things like that. Finally he agreed that if I would pay him $100 more he would give me the testimonial to the effect that the tonic had made his hair grow and say nothing about its having fallen out again. If I could sell what I had put up at $1.00 per bottle I would come out about even.

“I went out and borrowed the money and paid it to him and he signed the testimonial and left.”

“Did you sell your tonic out?” asked the Post Man, trying to speak in a tone calculated not to give offense.

The barber gave him a look of derisive contempt and then said in a tone of the utmost sarcasm:

“Oh, yes, I sold it out. I sold exactly five bottles, and the purchasers, after using the mixture faithfully for a month, came back and demanded their money. Not one of them that used it ever had a new hair to start on his head.”

“How do you account for its having made the hair grow on Mr. Plunket’s head?” asked the Post Man.

“How do I account for it?” repeated the barber in so dangerous a tone that the Post Man shuddered. “How do I account for it? I’ll tell you how I account for it. I went out one day to where Mr. Plunket lived on the edge of town and asked for him.

“ ‘Which Mr. Plunket?’ asked a man who came out to the gate?

“ ‘Come off,’ I said, ‘the Plunket that lives here.’

“ ‘They’ve both moved,’ said the man.

“ ‘What do you mean by “both?” ’ I said, and then I began to think, and I said to the man:

“ ‘What kind of looking men were the Plunkets?’

“ ‘As much like as two peas,’ said the man. ‘They were twins, and nobody could tell ’em apart from their faces or their talk. The only difference between ’em was that one of ’em was as bald-headed as a hen egg and the other had plenty of hair.’ ”

“Now,” said the barber as he poured about two ounces of bay rum down the Post Man’s shirt front, “that’s how I account for it. The bald-headed Plunket would come in my shop one time and the one with hair would come in another, and I never knew the difference.”

When the barber finished the Post Man saw the African with the whisk broom waiting for him near the front door, so he fled by the back entrance, climbed a brick wall and escaped by a side street.