FTER he had once learned to play the banjo, McHenry played it regularly every morning and evening, and at all other times when he felt the joy of living, until dissuaded by physical violence, or moral suasion. When he remembered to lock the door, as in the present instance, the only solution to the problem of universal peace was for the man whose room was directly over his to draw a baseball bat quickly but firmly across the radiator coils, thus creating an accompaniment so immeasurably superior in tonal quality to the banjo that McHenry generally gave up in disgust, with the loud remark that the world was going to the dogs, and nobody appreciated good music.
The man upstairs had just laid down his bat in grim triumph, and McHenry had once more unbarred his portal, when Monk Spinden came in with the morning papers, and helped himself to Pepper's cigarettes.
"I can't tell you, old fellow," said Spinden, inhaling luxuriously, "how glad I am to see you still keep these things in your room. I've heard that tobacco injures the health."
"Monk," said his host, "I'd brain you—if you had anything to brain!"
The civilities having been accomplished, Spinden disposed himself on McHenry's divan, and blew smoke rings at the ceiling.
"I heard a whale of a row last night when I went past the Lampoon Building," he remarked. "What was it, another initiation?"
"It was all of that," said McHenry reminiscently. "There was a large, corpulent neophyte built on the classic lines of a hack—and the candidates gave a play, a sort of allegorical farce, in which there had to be a typhoon. Well, this two-hundred-and-sixty-pound lad was the typhoon, and, after he had about six steins of punch in him, I want to tell you that he was a pretty good imitation of two typhoons. He broke three chairs and one window, and we've made a rule that hereafter no candidates' play can have anything more allegorical than a gentle breeze."
"It seems to me," said Spinden severely, "that you funny men on the Lampoon are much too convivial. It ought to be stopped—unless you send me an invitation to your next punch. Here—want to see the papers?"
"Thanks," said McHenry, accepting them. He turned to the sporting page of the Herald, and read it carefully. Spinden smoked, and watched him. McHenry pawed over the financial columns, utterly disregarded the editorials, and came to rest at the local news. Suddenly his jaw dropped startlingly—and Spinden lighted his second cigarette, and looked out of the window.
"Holy mackerel!" breathed McHenry, tightening his grip on the Herald, and devouring the first column with all the symptoms of mental indigestion.
"Anything interesting, Pepper?"
"Why—why—"
"Go on—read it, if it's any good!"
McHenry wet his lips, and breathed stertorously. Then, with eyes opened very wide, and a mouth which twitched in spite of his wrath and indignation, he slowly read the following item of political and social importance:
"Holy—mackerel!" said McHenry, dropping the paper to the floor.
"Ha—rather good, you know!" volunteered Spinden, in the accent popularly supposed to be English. "The idea—Pepper McHenry on the water wagon! Woosh!"
He placed his cigarette much too carefully on the window ledge, and rolled on the divan in paroxysms of mirth. In an instant McHenry was upon him, struggling for the hold which the handbooks say is unbreakable. The handbooks never assumed that one of a hundred and thirty pounds would attempt to practise manhandling on one of a hundred and sixty, so that the results were not in the least according to the illustrations. McHenry was deposited, panting, on the floor.
"You did that, Spinden!" he croaked. "I know you did! You—you—"
"If you call me any more names," promised his guest, resuming the cigarette, "I'll throw you in the ash barrel, Pep. Anyway, now we're square."
"Square! You play a trick like that on a man you can lick, and call it square!"
"Pause, dear friend," said Spinden amicably. "Let's walk hand in hand through the dim vista of the past. Perhaps you don't recall a little episode of freshman year. One Spinden, a trustful youth with no acquaintances in Cambridge, met one McHenry on the avenue on the first day of college, and took him for an upperclassman—that was because you were so darned cocky, Pep. Said Spinden asked for a little advice, after which he dashed over to Mem to apply for membership in the Dining Association. The auditor was very decent until I said that my application was backed by a prominent sophomore. Then he grinned, and said that since there was room for only sixteen hundred men in the joint, I needn't worry."