City and town life -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
And the two men looked at the screen before them, just as the backward
sway of the crowd had ceased and horror was finding a gasping voice upon
the lips of the women; for there, walking as naturally as life, out of
the background of the picture, came David Lewis with his dark sleeves
rolled up, his peaked army hat on the back of his head, a bucket in his
hand, and as he stopped and grinned at the crowd--between the
lightning-flashes of the kinetoscope--they could see him wave his free
hand. He stood there while a laugh covered his features, and he put his
hand in his pocket and drew out a key-ring, which he waved, holding it
by some long, stemlike instrument. Then he snapped back into nothing.
And the operator of the machine, being in a hurry to catch the
ten-thirty train, went on with his picture-show and gave us President
McKinley and Mark Hanna sitting on the front steps of the home in
Canton, then followed the photograph of the party around the big table
signing the treaty of peace. As the crowd loosened and dissolved, Larmy
and the reporter stood silently waiting. Then, when they could get away
together, the reporter said:
"Come, let's go over to the shop and think about this thing."
When they opened the office door, the rank odour of the machinery came
to them with sickening force. They left the front door open and raised
the windows. The reporter began using a chisel on the top of a little
box with a Government frank on it, that had been placed upon the
music-box in the corner.
"We may as well see what David sent home," he grunted, as he jerked at
the stubborn nails, "anyway, I've got a theory."
Larmy was smoking hard. "Yes," he replied after a time; "we might as
well open it now as any time. The letter said all his things would be
found there. I guess he didn't have a great deal. Poor little devil,
there was no one much to get things for but you fellows and maybe me, if
he thought of us."
By this time the box was opened, and the reporter was scooping things
out upon the floor. There was an army uniform, that had something clinky
in the pockets, and wrapped in a magenta silk handkerchief was a carved
piece of ivory. In a camera plate-box was a rose, faded and crumbly, a
chip-diamond ring, a bangle bracelet, a woman's glove and a photograph.
These Larmy looked at as he smoked. They meant nothing to him, but the
reporter dived into the clothes for the clinky things. He came up with a
bunch of keys, and on it was the long brass lever which unlocked the
music in the box.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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