Stop Me⁠—If You’ve Heard This One

On a certain day in the year 1927, Jerry Blades and Luke Garner, young playwrights, entered the Lambs’ Club at the luncheon hour and were beckoned to a corner table by an actor friend, Charley Speed. Charley had a guest, recognized at once by the newcomers as Henry Wild Osborne, famous globetrotter, raconteur and banquet-hall fixture.

“Sit down, boys,” said Charley after he had introduced them to the celebrity. “I’m due at a house committee meeting and you can keep Harry entertained.”

But “Harry” proved perfectly capable of providing his own entertainment and theirs, and he opened up with a barrage of Pats and Mikes, Ikeys and Jakeys, and MacPhersons and MacDonalds that were not only comparatively new but also quite funny, at least so Blades and Garner judged from the wholehearted laughter of the narrator himself.

When he had displayed his mastery of all the different dialects of both hemispheres, he related a few personal adventures, in some of which other big men had played parts and which, to his small audience, were much more interesting than the chronicles concerning fictional Mikes, Sandys and Abes. He told them of Lindbergh, who had accepted an invitation to dine with him in his apartment and had come wearing a hat that did not fit, explaining he had borrowed it at his hotel, not having had a hat of his own since he was a child.

“He’s a man of one idea. He will talk about aviation and nothing else. He dislikes crowds and has had difficulty maintaining a show of good nature in the face of unwelcome attention. He has managed to do so, however, excepting when addressed or referred to as ‘Lucky Lindy,’ a nickname he just can’t stand.

“He was kind enough to ask me to fly with him on Long Island and naturally I jumped at the chance. We took a taxi out to the field and every traffic cop on the way stopped us so they could shake hands with him and pat him on the back. I thought we’d never get there, and when we did get there, that we wouldn’t be able to leave the ground without killing two or three hundred people.

“He said it was like that every time he attempted to go up or land, hundreds of wild-eyed fans crowding around him in spite of the danger. But we did finally get started and it was wonderful. I felt as safe as if I’d been riding in a chair at Atlantic City.”

He told them of Fred Stone, of an occasion when he and Fred had dined together at old Rector’s. At the next table were two famous Princeton football players, each over six feet tall and weighing two hundred and twenty pounds. The sons of Old Nassau had been drinking something contentious and tried to pick a quarrel with him and Stone, though they had no idea who Stone and Osborne were and certainly could have had no reason to “fuss” at either of them.

Fred did not want to make a scene and ignored the athletes’ slurring remarks, but when he and Osborne got up to leave and the Princeton boys followed them and jostled them, the comedian lost his temper, grasped a collegiate throat in each hand, lifted the pair up bodily and knocked their heads together till they were unconscious, and then tossed them into the checkroom.

He told them of having been in the Metropole at supper with Herman Rosenthal the night the gambler was called away from the table and shot to death by four gangsters; of having warned Jim Jeffries not to drink the tea that “poisoned” him just prior to the fight with Jack Johnson; of having tipped off Kid Gleason in 1919 that some of his ballplayers were throwing him down; of having accompanied General Pershing to Marshal Foch’s headquarters when the American commander offered his armies to the Frenchman to do with as he pleased; of having escaped death by eight inches when the Germans dropped their first bombs on Paris; of having taught Lloyd Waner how to avoid always hitting to left field; of having taken Irving Berlin out of “Nigger Mike’s” place and set him to writing songs; of having advised Flo Ziegfeld to dress his chorus in skirts instead of tights; of having suggested and helped organize the Actors’ Equity, and of having informed the Indiana police where to find Gerald Chapman.

He had been everywhere and seen everything, and Blades and Garner envied him his wealth of experience.

He hoped he hadn’t bored them.

“Not at all!” said Blades.

“It’s a treat to listen to you,” said Garner.

“You ought to write a book of memoirs,” said Blades.

“I’ve been urged to many times,” said Osborne, “but I’m never in one place long enough to get at it. I’ve got chronic Wanderlust.”

“So have I,” said Garner, “but it doesn’t do me any good.”

“Poor Luke!” said Blades. “He’d like to live on trains, but he’s only been out of the state once.”

“Not counting two or three trips to Newark,” said Garner.

“Travel is a great thing!” observed Osborne. “It has its drawbacks and discomforts, but one’s experiences and adventures are worth a lot more than they cost.”

“Luke had a queer little experience the only time he went anywhere,” said Blades. “Tell Mr. Osborne about it, Luke.”

“Oh, it’s nothing much. Just a kind of mystery I was mixed up in on the way out to Chicago.”

“Let’s hear it,” said Osborne, assuming a polite interest.

“Well,” said young Garner, “I’ll try to make it brief. About a year ago I had an idea for a play. I wrote one act and read it to George Cohan. He liked it and told me to finish it and bring it to him. When I had finished it, I learned he was in Chicago. I couldn’t wait for him to get back so I decided to go out there and see him, though I had to borrow money for the trip. I was impatient and took the Century.

“In the section across from me there was one of the most beautiful women I ever saw, a young woman about twenty-five, dark, well dressed, full of class, nice-looking. She had a book, one of Fletcher’s detective stories, but I noticed she didn’t turn more than three pages between New York and Albany. Most of the time she just stared at the river.

“She was going to Chicago, too, and I’ll confess that I wished we would become acquainted long before we got there. I wished it, but didn’t believe it, because she was evidently not the kind you could meet unconventionally.

“I went in the diner about seven and was given the only vacant chair at a table for four. My table companions were an elderly couple and a man a little older than I, a man of striking appearance, handsome, and dark enough to suggest Spanish or Italian ancestry.

“The elderly couple finished their meal and left. The ‘Spaniard’ was just beginning to eat when the girl from my car came in and took one of the seats just vacated.

“Her glance and the ‘Spaniard’s’ met. There was mutual recognition and an emotion close to panic on both sides. The man got up hurriedly, put a five-dollar bill on the table and went out of the diner, toward the front end of the train. The girl grasped the table as if she must have something to hang on to. She was quite white and I thought she was going to faint. She didn’t, but her hands shook violently as she wrote her order.

“I pretended I had not observed the little scene and did my best not to look in her direction. I got through as quickly as I I could and relieved her of the embarrassment of my presence. As I was paying my check the waiter asked me if I knew whether the other man was coming back. Before I could reply, the girl said, ‘No’; then bit her lip as if mad at herself for speaking.

“She returned to her section after a long time, over an hour. She sat staring out into the darkness for a half-hour more. Then she got up and stepped across the aisle to me. She said:

“ ‘I must ask you to do me a favor. You will think it’s queer, but I can’t help it. You saw the man leave the table when I sat down. I want you to find him and give him this note. I would ask the porter, but I am afraid he might give it to the wrong person. The man is probably in the club car. Just hand him the note. Then come back and tell me. Will you do it?’

“I found him in the club car, delivered the note she had entrusted to me, and returned and reported.

“She said: ‘I am very, very grateful.’

“And then I went forward to the club car again and sat down to be out of the way when he came to her, as I felt sure he would.

“He was at the desk writing, but soon he rose and left. I was in quite a fever of curiosity and it strained my willpower to stay where I was and not follow him and witness ‘Act Two.’ I tried to read and couldn’t. When I finally turned in, close to midnight, the girl’s berth was dark and the curtains drawn.

“I got up at Elkhart. The curtains were open across the aisle, but there was no sign of the girl. There was still no sign of her as we pulled into Englewood. I called the porter and asked whether he had seen her since the night before. He said why, yes, he had seen her around five o’clock, when he had helped her off the train at Toledo. ‘Toledo!’ I exclaimed. ‘I thought she was going through.’ The porter said he had thought so, too, but she must have changed her mind. I inquired if he had seen her talking with a handsome dark man. He said no; that the only real dark man he had seen on that car was himself, and he wasn’t so handsome.

“I stood on the platform in the La Salle Street Station till all the passengers were off. The girl was not among them; I’m sure of that. But the ‘Spaniard’ was, and escorting him were two men obviously detectives, if they have detectives in Chicago.

“In the two days I was there, I read every story in every paper, trying to find a solution to ‘my mystery,’ but without success. And that’s all there is to it, except that Cohan turned down my play.”

“Very interesting!” Mr. Osborne remarked. “I believe if I had been you, I’d have followed the man and his escort, just to satisfy my curiosity.”

“I’d have done that,” said Garner, “if I hadn’t thought there was still a chance that the girl would appear.”

Charley Speed was back from the committee meeting. He and his guest bade the young playwrights goodbye and went out. Blades and Garner discussed the man they had just met.

“He tells dialect stories well,” said Blades.

“If that’s possible,” said Garner. “To me, his own experiences are a lot more interesting.”

“But I think,” said Blades slowly, “I think somebody else told me that same stuff about Lindbergh and⁠—”

“Yes,” interrupted Garner, “and I’m under the impression that the one about Fred Stone isn’t new to me. In fact, I’m pretty sure I heard it from Rex Beach and that Rex was with Stone when it happened.”

Two years later Blades and Garner, now credited with a couple of Broadway hits, were guests at a “small” dinner party given by Wallace Gore, the publisher. Their host presented them to Mr. Henry Wild Osborne, who acknowledged the introduction as if it were a novelty.

Osborne sat between two adoring women who managed to keep him to themselves through the soup. But he was everybody’s property and soon was regaling the whole table with up-to-the-minute episodes in the careers of O’Brien and Berlinsky. He ran out of them at last and his host said: “Harry, I wonder if you’d mind telling these people about your Chicago trip.”

“What Chicago trip?”

“About the girl and the foreigner.”

“Oh, that!” said Osborne. “Well, if you think they’d be interested.”

“Of course they would!”

“Please, Mr. Osborne!”

“All right, then,” said Osborne; “but I trust you folks not to spread it around. The Chicago police made a secret of the real facts and I promised them I wouldn’t divulge it to any of my friends of the Fourth Estate.”

He took a swallow of wine and began:

“It was a month ago I had a wire from Charles Dawes, asking me to come out there and advise him in a little matter⁠—Well, we won’t go into that. I boarded the Broadway Limited and was settling down to a little session with de Maupassant when I noticed a beautiful girl, an authentic, perfect blonde, in the section across from me.

“I am past the age for train flirtations but this girl held my attention by the expression on her face, a look of ineffable sadness, of tragic longing for⁠—I knew not what.

“I was weaving in my mind a blighted romance with her as its sorrowing heroine, when Andy Mellon, walking through the car, saw me and stopped for a chat. He was with me till dinnertime, when he invited me to dine in his drawing-room, but I declined, saying I had eaten a late luncheon and would do without another meal. In reality, I was in no mood for talk, and shortly after he had gone, I made my way to the diner, trusting he would not uncover my mendacity.

“I told the steward I had no objections to sitting with others provided they were strangers, so he placed me at a table for four. A gray-haired, florid-faced old man and his comfortable fat wife were two of my companions. The third was a splendid, healthy specimen of young manhood, Scandinavian young manhood, a yellow-haired, sturdy son of vikings.

“The old couple finished their simple repast and left. I was ordering and the handsome young giant was beginning to eat when the beautiful blond girl I had observed in the sleeper came in and took one of the seats I just vacated.

“The girl’s eyes and the man’s eyes met, and not for the first time, I could see. For their glance was charged with electricity, a bolt of lightning that struck something akin to terror in each. An instant afterwards, the young man was up from the table, laying a ten-dollar note beside his plate, and then he was gone, fleeing from the mysterious horror of this chance encounter with a woman whom God had never intended to inspire young manhood with anything but burning love.

“And the girl, the young woman⁠—I started from my chair, ready to catch her if she swooned. For it seemed she must swoon, so pale she was. But with a marvelous show of courage she forced herself into a state of pseudo-calmness.

“I bolted my meal in a manner that would have caused my doctor intense mental anguish. I asked the waiter for my check and he, observing the young man’s money lying there, inquired if I knew whether he was coming back. Before I could speak, the girl uttered a sharp, ‘No’; then bit her lip as if in rage that she had said it.

“We were between Harrisburg and Altoona when she appeared again in the sleeper. She stopped beside me and put an unsealed, unaddressed envelope in my hand.

“ ‘It kills me to do this,’ she said in a voice barely audible. ‘I am not accustomed to asking favors from a stranger, but it is necessary and you look kind. I am sure you noticed the man, the young man, who was with us in the dining car, who got up and left when I sat down. I think you will find him in the club car and I want you to give him this. I cannot trust it to the porter. Don’t wait for a reply. Just give it to him, and then come back here and tell me. Will you?’

“I answered, of course I would, and I begged her to inform me if there was something more I could do. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘nothing.’

“The young man was easily found. He was in the club car as she had guessed, staring straight ahead of him.

“Without a word I handed him the envelope, and returned to her and reported. She expressed gratitude with a smile that was more heartrending than tears.

“My instinct, or sense of decency, ordered me not to pry. I took my book to the club car and tried vainly to read, for my brain was consumed with curiosity and anxiety as to what was going on between those two torn souls.

“When at length I turned in, at Pittsburgh, the berth opposite mine was dark and its curtains drawn.

“I rose in the morning as we were rushing through the Indiana town of Plymouth. The curtains across the aisle were open now, but there was no sign of the girl. Nor had she appeared as we slowed up for Englewood. My inquiry of the porter, had he seen her since the preceding night, was answered in the affirmative. ‘Yes, suh. She done leave us three hours ago, at Fort Wayne.’

“I remarked I had thought she was bound for Chicago. ‘She sho’ was Chicago bound,’ said George, ‘but young gals, dey got a “unailable” right to change deir min’.’ I then asked if he had seen her conversing with a big, blond, handsome young man. ‘No, suh. De only man she co’versed to was maself, and ma bes’ frien’s don’t call me handsome or blond neithuh one.’

“I waited on the platform in the Union Station and watched all the passengers as they left the train. The girl was not among them, but the man was, and as he walked out to the taxi stand, I followed him unobtrusively, saw him enter a cab and heard the starter say, ‘Stevens House.’ I went to the Sherman and bathed and changed, and awaited word from my friend the General.

“But I could not get my mind off the queer incidents of the trip and you can imagine the shock it gave me to read, in an afternoon paper, the story of a well-dressed, unidentified young woman who had committed suicide by throwing herself in front of the second section of the Broadway Limited at Fort Wayne.

“My duty was clear. I hurried to police headquarters, stated my name and was received by the chief. I told him I was sure he could earn the thanks of the Fort Wayne authorities and officials of the railroad by sending one of his men with me to the hotel where I believed my ‘friend’ of the train was stopping; that if I could find him, I was sure we would be able to learn the unfortunate girl’s identity and perhaps the reason for her ghastly deed.

“The chief delegated Captain Byrne to accompany me. As we drove up to the door of the hotel we saw policemen dispersing a crowd and other policemen lifting from the sidewalk the body of a man, the young viking, with a bullet wound in his head, a revolver lying near where he had lain and a newspaper clasped in his left hand.

“There were letters in his pocket, merely business letters, addressed to John Janssen, and the initials on his baggage were J. J. He was the son of one of the richest men in Chicago, and he, the young man now dead, had a wife and children in Lake Forest.

“I know who the girl was, too; the police found her name and her picture in young Janssen’s possession. But they didn’t tell his family and no one besides a few policemen and myself is aware that there was a girl in the case. The published reason for his act was temporary insanity induced by illness. And if he was sick, I have been dead for twenty years.”

Osborne’s narrative was over. Dinner was over, too, and Garner and Blades lingered behind the others in the march toward the card room.

“What do you suppose he’s got against brunettes?” said Blades.

“And why,” said Garner, “do you suppose he won’t use the New York Central Lines?”