Baby Mine

CHAPTER XXVII

Propelled by a large red fist, attached to the back of his badly wilted collar, the writhing form of Jimmy was now thrust through the outer door.

“Let go of me,” shouted the hapless Jimmy.

The answer was a spasmodic shaking administered by the fist; then a large burly officer, carrying a small babe in his arms, shoved the reluctant Jimmy into the centre of the room and stood guard over him.

“I got him for you, sir,” announced the officer proudly, to the astonished Alfred, who had just managed to untwine Zoie's arms and to struggle to his feet.

Alfred's eyes fell first upon the dejected Jimmy, then they travelled to the bundle of long clothes in the officer's arms.

“My boy!” he cried. “My boy!” He snatched the infant from the officer and pressed him jealously to his breast. “I don't understand,” he said, gazing at the officer in stupefaction. “Where was he?”

“You mean this one?” asked the officer, nodding toward the unfortunate Jimmy. “I caught him slipping down your fire-escape.”

“I KNEW it,” exclaimed Zoie in a rage, and she cast a vindictive look at Jimmy for his awkwardness.

“Knew WHAT, dear?” asked Alfred, now thoroughly puzzled.

Zoie did not answer. Her powers of resource were fast waning. Alfred turned again to the officer, then to Jimmy, who was still flashing defiance into the officer's threatening eyes.

“My God!” he exclaimed, “this is awful. What's the matter with you, Jimmy? This is the third time that you have tried to take my baby out into the night.”

“Then you've had trouble with him before?” remarked the officer. He studied Jimmy with new interest, proud in the belief that he had brought a confirmed “baby-snatcher” to justice.

“I've had a little trouble myself,” declared Jimmy hotly, now resolved to make a clean breast of it.

“I'm not asking about your troubles,” interrupted the officer savagely, and Jimmy felt the huge creature's obnoxious fingers tightening again on his collar. “Go ahead, sir,” said the officer to Alfred.

“Well,” began Alfred, nodding toward the now livid Jimmy, “he was out with my boy when I arrived. I stopped him from going out with him a second time, and now you, officer, catch him slipping down the fire-escape. I don't know what to say,” he finished weakly.

“I do,” exclaimed Jimmy, feeling more and more like a high explosive, “and I'll say it.”

“Cut it,” shouted the officer. And before Jimmy could get further, Alfred resumed with fresh vehemence.

“He's supposed to be a friend of mine,” he explained to the officer, as he nodded toward the wriggling Jimmy. “He was all right when I left him a few months ago.”

“You'll think I'm all right again,” shouted Jimmy, trying to get free from the officer, “before I've finished telling all I——”

“That won't help any,” interrupted the officer firmly, and with another twist of Jimmy's badly wilted collar he turned to Alfred with his most civil manner, “What shall I do with him, sir?”

“I don't know,” said Alfred, convinced that his friend was a fit subject for a straight jacket. “This is horrible.”

“It's absurd,” cried Zoie, on the verge of hysterics, and in utter despair of ever disentangling the present complication without ultimately losing Alfred, “you're all absurd,” she cried wildly.

“Absurd?” exclaimed Alfred, turning upon her in amazement, “what do you mean?”

“It's a joke,” said Zoie, without the slightest idea of where the joke lay. “If you had any sense you could see it.”

“I DON'T see it,” said Alfred, with hurt dignity.

“Neither do I,” said Jimmy, with boiling resentment.

“Can you call it a joke,” asked Alfred, incredulously, “to have our boy——” He stopped suddenly, remembering that there was a companion piece to this youngster. “The other one!” he exclaimed, “our other boy——” He rushed to the crib, found it empty, and turned a terrified face to Zoie. “Where is he?” he demanded.

“Now, Alfred,” pleaded Zoie, “don't get excited; he's all right.”

“How do you know?” asked the distracted father.

Zoie did not know, but at that moment her eyes fell upon Jimmy, and as usual he was the source of an inspiration for her.

“Jimmy never cared for the other one,” she said, “did you, Jimmy?”

Alfred turned to the officer, with a tone of command. “Wait,” he said, then he started toward the bedroom door to make sure that his other boy was quite safe. The picture that confronted him brought the hair straight up on his head. True to her promise, and ignorant of Jimmy's return with the first baby, Aggie had chosen this ill-fated moment to appear on the threshold with one babe on each arm.

“Here they are,” she said graciously, then stopped in amazement at sight of the horrified Alfred, clasping a third infant to his breast.

“Good God!” exclaimed Alfred, stroking his forehead with his unoccupied hand, and gazing at what he firmly believed must be an apparition, “THOSE aren't MINE,” he pointed to the two red mites in Aggie's arms.

“Wh—why not, Alfred?” stammered Aggie for the want of something better to say.

“What?” shrieked Alfred. Then he turned in appeal to his young wife, whose face had now become utterly expressionless. “Zoie?” he entreated.

There was an instant's pause, then the blood returned to Zoie's face and she proved herself the artist that Alfred had once declared her.

“OURS, dear,” she murmured softly, with a bashful droop of her lids.

“But THIS one?” persisted Alfred, pointing to the baby in his arms, and feeling sure that his mind was about to give way.

“Why—why—why,” stuttered Zoie, “THAT'S the JOKE.”

“The joke?” echoed Alfred, looking as though he found it anything but such.

“Yes,” added Aggie, sharing Zoie's desperation to get out of their temporary difficulty, no matter at what cost in the future. “Didn't Jimmy tell you?”

“Tell me WHAT?” stammered Alfred, “what IS there to tell?”

“Why, you see,” said Aggie, growing more enthusiastic with each elaboration of Zoie's lie, “we didn't dare to break it to you too suddenly.”

“Break it to me?” gasped Alfred; a new light was beginning to dawn on his face.

“So,” concluded Zoie, now thoroughly at home in the new situation, “we asked Jimmy to take THAT one OUT.”

Jimmy cast an inscrutable glance in Zoie's direction. Was it possible that she was at last assisting him out of a difficulty?

“You 'ASKED Jimmy'?” repeated Alfred.

“Yes,” confirmed Aggie, with easy confidence, “we wanted you to get used to the idea gradually.”

“The idea,” echoed Alfred. He was afraid to allow his mind to accept too suddenly the whole significance of their disclosure, lest his joy over-power him. “You—you—do—don't mean——” he stuttered.

“Yes, dear,” sighed Zoie, with the face of an angel, and then with a languid sigh, she sank back contentedly on her pillows.

“My boys! My boys!” cried Alfred, now delirious with delight. “Give them to me,” he called to Aggie, and he snatched the surprised infants savagely from her arms. “Give me ALL of them, ALL of them.” He clasped the three babes to his breast, then dashed to the bedside of the unsuspecting Zoie and covered her small face with rapturous kisses.

Feeling the red faces of the little strangers in such close proximity to hers, Zoie drew away from them with abhorrence, but unconscious of her unmotherly action, Alfred continued his mad career about the room, his heart overflowing with gratitude toward Zoie in particular and mankind in general. Finding Aggie in the path of his wild jubilee, he treated that bewildered young matron to an unwelcome kiss. A proceeding which Jimmy did not at all approve.

Hardly had Aggie recovered from her surprise when the disgruntled Jimmy was startled out of his dark mood by the supreme insult of a loud resounding kiss implanted on his own cheek by his excitable young friend. Jimmy raised his arm to resist a second assault, and Alfred veered off in the direction of the officer, who stepped aside just in time to avoid similar demonstration from the indiscriminating young father.

Finding a wide circle prescribed about himself and the babies, Alfred suddenly stopped and gazed about from one astonished face to the other.

“Well,” said the officer, regarding Alfred with an injured air, and feeling much downcast at being so ignominiously deprived of his short-lived heroism in capturing a supposed criminal, “if this is all a joke, I'll let the woman go.”

“The woman,” repeated Alfred; “what woman?”

“I nabbed a woman at the foot of the fire-escape,” explained the officer. Zoie and Aggie glanced at each other inquiringly. “I thought she might be an accomplice.”

“What does she look like, officer?” asked Alfred. His manner was becoming more paternal, not to say condescending, with the arrival of each new infant.

“Don't be silly, Alfred,” snapped Zoie, really ashamed that Alfred was making such an idiot of himself. “It's only the nurse.”

“Oh, that's it,” said Alfred, with a wise nod of comprehension; “the nurse, then she's in the joke too?” He glanced from one to the other. They all nodded. “You're all in it,” he exclaimed, flattered to think that they had considered it necessary to combine the efforts of so many of them to deceive him.

“Yes,” assented Jimmy sadly, “we are all 'in it.'”

“Well, she's a great actress,” decided Alfred, with the air of a connoisseur.

“She sure is,” admitted Donneghey, more and more disgruntled as he felt his reputation for detecting fraud slipping from him. “She put up a phoney story about the kid being hers,” he added. “But I could tell she wasn't on the level. Good-night, sir,” he called to Alfred, and ignoring Jimmy, he passed quickly from the room.

“Oh, officer,” Alfred called after him. “Hang around downstairs. I'll be down later and fix things up with you.” Again Alfred gave his whole attention to his new-found family. He leaned over the cradle and gazed ecstatically into the three small faces below his. “This is too much,” he murmured.

“Much too much,” agreed Jimmy, who was now sitting hunched up on the couch in his customary attitude of gloom.

“You were right not to break it to me too suddenly,” said Alfred, and with his arms encircling three infants he settled himself on the couch by Jimmy's side. “You're a cute one,” he continued to Jimmy, who was edging away from the three mites with aversion. In the absence of any answer from Jimmy, Alfred appealed to Zoie, “Isn't he a cute one, dear?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, VERY,” answered Zoie, sarcastically.

Shutting his lips tight and glancing at Zoie with a determined effort at self restraint, Jimmy rose from the couch and started toward the door.

“If you women are done with me,” he said, “I'll clear out.”

“Clear out?” exclaimed Alfred, rising quickly and placing himself between his old friend and the door. “What a chance,” and he laughed boisterously. “You're not going to get out of my sight this night,” he declared. “I'm just beginning to appreciate all you've done for me.”

“So am I,” assented Jimmy, and unconsciously his hand sought the spot where his dinner should have been, but Alfred was not to be resisted.

“A man needs someone around,” he declared, “when he's going through a thing like this. I need all of you, all of you,” and with his eyes he embraced the weary circle of faces about him. “I feel as though I could go out of my head,” he explained and with that he began tucking the three small mites in the pink and white crib designed for but one.

Zoie regarded him with a bored expression'

“You act as though you WERE out of your head,” she commented, but Alfred did not heed her. He was now engaged in the unhoped for bliss of singing three babies to sleep with one lullaby.

The other occupants of the room were just beginning to relax and to show some resemblance to their natural selves, when their features were again simultaneously frozen by a ring at the outside door.