Photoplay/Volume 36/Issue 3/Monahan the Menace

"Tug" Monahan	Sadie

THE mellow chimes of a gilt-edged Parisian clock sounded midnight as a man and a woman entered the magnificent pavilion and paused for a moment, as though dazzled by the cascade of light that streamed like honey from the lofty crystal chandeliers.

Then, without speaking, they began their fateful pilgrimage down the thick, claret colored rug, watched by careless eyes from the triple tier of marble balconies spaced by Moorish arches. On they went, unheeding the richly tasselled hangings of blue and olive, the uniformed sentries, the galleries of regal paintings, the patrician outline of satin covered furniture. The girl walked with the remoteness of a French aristocrat, her rather plain face transfigured by a rapt idealism; the man plodded beside her with head bowed in thought, enormous hands clenched, until a sound like hushed thunder warned him that a multitude was pouring through the doors behind them.

He had barely grasped the girl's arm before the mob was barking at their heels, sweeping them helplessly forward, not to a guillotine, but into the crisp gloom of an autumn evening in Detroit, for the show was over.

A biting wind hurried them along Bagley Avenue, but although Miss Sadie Allen's legs were protected by only the sheerest chiffon, she showed no sign of returning to normalcy until Grand Circus Park was reached.

Once there she allowed her dreamy brown eyes to wander casually over her hulking escort; then, wincing at this mundane spectacle, they vaulted once more to the heavens and a long, luxurious sigh escaped from her generous mouth.

"Gee," she murmured, "but he certainly is swell!"

"Yeah," sneered Mr. Tug Monahan, "beginnin' with his head."

"The grace of him," said the girl softly, ignoring this coarse allusion. "The elegant way he grabbed hold of the heroine without even ruffling his silk dressing gown. I just sat there and pretended it was me alone in the twilight with Carlos Cabrillo! No wonder all you clumsy gorillas are jealous of him."

MR. MONAHAN, who was built on the general lines of a Windsor ferryboat, scowled ferociously. He did this without effort, for nature had topped his torso with a set of second-hand features to which some of nature's children had added a smashed nose and cauliflower ears.

"What!" he bawled. "Jealous of a guy who looks like me bootblack? Go on, Sadie, you're nuts. It just naturally riles me to hear you rave about such a fake, that's all."

"Be careful who you're calling a fake," said Sadie hotly. "Didn't you see him throw those eight men down a flight of stairs?"

Tug leered incredulously. "Don't you suppose them birds had instructions to take a dive?"

"Certainly not," sniffed Sadie. "Haven't you read how Carlos always lets the villains try their hardest? 'He conquers them,'" she quoted from memory, 'by virtue of his superior skill and agility, due to his boyhood training in old Barcelona, where he practiced dodging wild bulls on the family estate.'"

"He couldn't dodge my left hook," declared Mr. Monahan, "and what's more, maybe he'll get a chance to try it."

"That's right, talk big with twenty states between you," scoffed Miss Allen. "What use has California for a third-rate prizefighter, anyway?"

"Plenty," said Tug grimly, "and don't be knockin' your future husband. I'm goin' to battle in four semi-finals out there and I leave for the coast tomorrow night. I'd of told you this before if you'd quit gurglin' about Carlos. Listen, baby, you'd better forget that slinkin' shadow and marry me while you're able. Then you won't have to work in no laundry."

Sadie's broad and unfashionable bosom heaved rapidly. She knew in her heart that her chances were few, but she realized that Tug would never be harassed by sex-starved damsels, and her daily perusal of "Advice to the Lovelorn" had satisfied her that the proper thing was to keep him guessing—for a while.

​"———, I couldn't," she faltered. "Perhaps a girl could get used to that face of yours across the table but she'd always be pining for Carlos. Everything about him is perfect, Tug, he's the best man I've ever seen."

"I can see where I've got to sock that guy," said Mr. Monahan viciously, as he hailed a Cass Avenue bus. "The chances are thousands of dizzy dames all over the country are sobbin' about him, and it's a bet that he wouldn't leave none of you even butter his hair. It's up to me to slough him in the name of all us ordinary fellows, and I'll make that profile of his look like a crumpled fender."

MISS ALLEN eyed him tantalizingly. "I'll tell him that next time I write," she stated.

"Huh?" said her startled companion. "Don't ask me to swallow that. I'm no whale."

"We've been corresponding for three months. Choke on it, if you'd rather."

"I suppose he sends out a circular to all his invisible girl friends, hey? What does he use—a stencil?"

"He writes a classy, dignified letter, on grand purple paper. I keep them all tied with ribbon under my pillow."

"Listen," said the disgruntled swain, "this is the last time I'll fork up six bits for you to gape at that Spanish squawker. I might as well have had a dummy beside me tonight, but I'm not as thick as I look."

He lapsed into an uneasy silence while the bus bumped and bounded uptown until it reached Ferry Street, where the pair alighted. Sadie walked thoughtfully to her boarding house steps and had about decided to smooth Mr. Monahan's feathers with a caress when she was suddenly imprisoned by two muscular arms.

"Come on, give us a kiss," growled Tug, scorning the correct preliminaries for such a favor, and leaning over, he impressed several inexpert salutes on various parts of the struggling lady's countenance. "Yell for Carlos, baby," he chuckled, "and maybe he'll drop out of a tree, or somethin', like he done in the picture."

The seething Sadie, with all a female's fury at being anticipated, scratched herself loose and ran up to the door. "You roughneck!" she panted. "You big homely palooka! Don't you ever come near me again and I hope Carlos murders you."

"You look swell when you're mad," observed Mr. Monahan, commencing to amble cornerward, much pleased at this turn of the tide, "and you can tell me the rest tomorrow." He proceeded a few steps, then looked back. The door was slightly ajar and a white face watched anxiously through the opening. "Michigan Central—four-thirty," he called, and the door shut with a petulant slam.

The cavalier departed feel- ​ing rather sportive, a condition that remained until five minutes before the Twilight Limited pulled out for Chicago on the following afternoon. An apparently chastened Sadie, on parole from the laundry, pounced upon him from the shadow of a pillar, and they enacted one of those stilted railroad station farewells in which two unimportant people are quite sure that the whole world is eavesdropping.

Miss Allen allotted him several refined kisses, carefully closing her eyes each time in an endeavor to conjure up the coveted Carlos, while the unknowing Tug grinned his satisfaction. Then, disinterring a square of cardboard from a capacious pocket, he handed it to her.

"THIS'LL help you to remember you belong to a he-man," he announced. "Take a look at that left hand, baby, it can do a lot more than answer mash notes."

Miss Allen gazed ruefully upon an 8 x 12 gloss print of a partly nude savage posed strainedly in a belligerent attitude and managing to look uncommonly like a two hundred pound simian. And as she examined the lumpy Hercules, stray admonitions from the morning paper's love lore seeped through her brain. One of them, "Never let him get too sure of you," sounded quite plausible, and so she trusted a nebulous adviser instead of her own heart.

"It looks sort of coarse," she murmured, "but maybe I'll keep it out of sight under my pillow."

"That's talkin" said Tug, mounting to the observation platform, only to halt with one leg dangling over the rail. "But say, wait a minute. Not alongside that sap Carlos. You'd better burn them letters, hey, Sadie?"

Miss Allen cast a wary eye up the platform and saw the conductor signal. "Burn nothing," she said coolly. "Of course, I could find room on my dresser for this chromo, providing I moved one of the six I have of Carlos to a nice frame on the wall. Thanks for the idea."

"What's the idea of the sudden switch?" bleated the pugilist. "You were callin' me honey a minute ago."

"It means that Carlos is still the best man," advised Sadie. "Imagine this shopworn face of yours compared with his. Ugh!"

"I'll kill that sissy!" howled Tug, as the train began to move. "All right, you two-timer, go on back and sharpen collars if you don't want to marry the next champ."

"You couldn't swing a towel for a real fighter," shrilled the girl, "and here's what you get for insulting a lady." Her capable hands ripped the offending photograph into shreds and scattered them over the track while the heavy weight stared bovinely. "So long, stupid," tinkled Sadie, blowing a sarcastic kiss, as the worried warrior, brandishing his huge fists in impotent rage, was borne swiftly into the dusk registering a most excellent quality of bestial hate.

FOUR days later, Mr. Monahan drifted into San Francisco along with the morning mist and, after considerable bragging to cynical sports editors, he proceeded to create havoc amongst the pugilistic flotsam that adorned the preliminaries. After half paralyzing his opponents with a series of hideous expressions, he finished the affairs with a flurry of gore-producing wallops but there was nothing personal in the execution.

Like all crusaders his eyes were fixed on a sublime goal, and every hook, jab and uppercut landed theoretically on the debonair Carlos. His plans were simple. After accumulating a stake he would invade Hollywood, ambush his rival, return to Detroit fortified with press clippings and a bankroll, and drag the wilful Sadie to the altar.

At the end of his sixth battle Tug found himself with a popularity caused more by his battered countenance than his microscopic ability, a libelous cartoon in the Chronicle and an offer from a Los Angeles promoter to show his wares at the Hollywood Stadium.

Pushing over a home guard at Fresno on the way south, the elated Mr. Monahan, feeling the day of vengeance drawing closer, pranced out before a scintillating audience in the screen colony and tangled briefly with an ungainly Mexican. The spirit of Carlos seemed to hover tormentingly around the swarthy one, so Tug glared him into a state of catalepsy and administered the knockout after two rounds of cruelly slow punishment.

Then, lurching through the crowd to an accompaniment of ribald remarks anent his appearance, he retired to the dressing room and stretched himself luxuriously on a rubbing slab. Tomorrow, he decided, he'd find out where Carlos lived and—

"HEY, boxfighter," piped a voice from the doorway.

Mr. Monahan rolled over and surveyed a roly-poly little man with eyes like shoe buttons. Beside him stood a dark, good looking youth carelessly dressed in flannel trousers and an orange slipover.

"A face you've got!" said the little man admiringly, edging closer. "Maybe you'd like to cash in on it, yes?"

"If you're a manager, beat it," grunted Tug. "I don't make enough jack to cut with any camp stool colonels."

"Listen, ugly," said the dark youth in a melodious baritone, "this is Mr. Abraham Zoop, president of Stupefaction Pictures, and he's getting ready to offer you a job in the movies. Flap your ears if you know what's good for you."

"That's right," nodded Mr. Zoop. "New faces I'm always lookink for and anyone with a mush like yours would make a niftick menace."

Tug scratched his head and did some heavy thinking. "Yeah?" he inquired suspiciously. "What is it?"

"A guy who preys upon purity," Mr. Zoop informed him. "Not that you ever catch up to it, y'understand, thanks to Will Hays and the Quebec censors, but ain't it a swell occupation? You insult the gal for five reels and take a slam in the jaw for the blowoff."

"Real highbrow stuff," put in the other man. "You'll be as full of frustration as a Greenwich Village playlet."

"Too much language." husked the mystified Tug. "All I got was somethin' about a rap in the jaw."

"It ain't real," beamed Mr. Zoop, "and think of gettink paid for chasink Rosie Redpath—is that obnoxious? Look, I'm laughink! Anyhow, Carlos wouldn't hurt you."

Mr. Monahan leaped from the slab and draped himself sketchily with a ragged towel. "Who," he bellowed.

"This sheiker right with me," announced the president. "Carlos Cabrillo, himself."

"HE socks me," inquired the raging prize fighter. "Not if I'm sensible, he don't."

"Why not?" countered Abie. "A couple dozen wouldn't make a dent in that schnozzle you got."

The unheeding Mr. Monahan was busily scrutinizing the rakish youth. "Just a second," he said abruptly. "This fellow isn't Carlos. Where's his dress suit? Where's his sideburns? Go on, he's no Spaniard; he talks like he comes from Brooklyn."

"You big stumblebum!" shouted Mr. Cabrillo, his vanity severely stung. "Brooklyn, your eye. I'm from the Bronx and no Detroit gaseater gets gay with me. If you're mixing the real me up with those passionate pictures of ​mine, you'd better change your act. I'm only the Cordovan Kid from eight to five."

Tug stared incredulously. Was this the deluded Sadie's velvety idol? Impossible—yet as he stared Carlos unconsciously fell into a theatrical posture and turned the famous profile to the light. Mr. Monahan's righteous anger flared anew but freshly born brain waves concerning a humiliating revenge kept him silent, and he merely wrinkled his countenance under the stress of unaccustomed thought.

"You feel dizzie?" asked the solicitous Mr. Zoop, not recognizing the symptoms.

"Somethin' just came to me," said Mr. Monahan in the manner of an artist who has decided to paint a square egg. "What's the wages for this racket?"

"Three hundred a week," promised Abie, "and a contract stuck full of whereases. More money if you have to talk, but at first we'll get plenty footage with that hairy ape front of yours. Where do you live? I'll send an automobile to bring you over to Culver City in the morning."

Tug gave him the information and headed for a shower as the picture men withdrew. The lances of icy water stimulated him to flights of fancy and soon he was grinning at the forthcoming slaughter of Mr. Cabrillo. "Bang—smack in the bugle!" he chanted. "Zip—off goes an eyebrow! Slam—a little more red on them ruby lips!" and in the midst of his shadow boxing Mr. Monahan stepped upon the soap, gyrated wildly for an instant and then crashed profanely to the unresponsive tiles.

HIS entry into the picture industry caused a ripple of curiosity among the blasé toilers at the Stupefaction Studios and it became part of the day's routine to inspect Tug's murderous features. Women stared timidly, the pretty men with thankfulness and the less fortunate menaces regarded him enviously. No makeup was allowed to conceal the Monahan countenance; only a slight coating of vaseline brought out the highlights like the seams and ridges on a topographical map, and even this slippery substance was transformed into "leopard oil" by the publicity department.

After a few days of practice he was added to the cast of "Docks and Derelicts" and put in a pleasant time leering through trap doors at Rosie Redpath garbed in negligible trifles, or scuffling with her in dimly lit alleys. The flamboyant Rosie, diffusing the fragrance of Parma violets, seemed, to Tug's bleary vision, an unsuitable type for a waterfront denizen, but he pursued her with all the dishonorable intentions ordered by the director.

Next morning saw the dawn of the day of retribution. Announcement was made that fight scenes would be filmed, and as the plot required a wharf for the locale, the cast motored down to San Pedro where one had been rented from a steamship company. Tug, with the uncanny attraction of the criminal for his victim, clambered in beside the shiny Carlos and, dissembling as much as possible, launched into speech.

"A handsome guy like you must get a flock of mash notes," he fished.

"Nine hundred a week." said the star.

"Tangled up with any dames?"

"Three, and they certainly keep me busy."

MR. MONAHAN burned with silent fury. And this was the bird who had the inside track with feminine hearts!

"Look here, big fellow," said Carlos, watching him closely. You don't seem to like me. What's the trouble? I get on first rate with everybody else." Tug grew slightly purple as he nursed his wrongs. "Or perhaps you're trying to keep in character so as to give a good performance. If that's it, good luck to you."

Mr. Monahan mumbled indistinctly and maintained a murky silence for the rest of the trip. They reached the wharf to find the cameras ready for them, and under the prodding of an assistant director Tug changed into greasy overalls and armed himself with a dangerous looking wrench made of balsa wood. Carlos, already dressed in a first mate's uniform, freshened his makeup and then attached the hated sideburns, which were composed of real hair glued to strips of adhesive tape.

"I'll need you two in about an hour," said the director as he shunted them to the end of the dock, "and you'd better rehearse that scrap while you're waiting. You come rushing at Carlos, Monahan, and scowl your prettiest. He defies you. Then you plunge forward swinging the wrench—one, two, three, slow tempo. Full steps each time and follow through with every blow. Carlos backs up but as you get ready for the fourth wallop he pops you a couple, and you stagger into the railing which gives way with you."

"Guess again," suggested Tug with an apprehensive glance at the water forty feet below.

"Don't get upstage with me," cautioned the director. "I won't stand for it from anyone who supports themselves. When I put you in position for this shot the third blow will bring you opposite a section of railing that's been sawed. You simply tumble through into a net just under the edge, so there's no danger. A stunt man does a real fall that will be snapped from below later on. Don't forget, now—one, two, three swipes and go halfway with the fourth. Then Carlos cracks you, and you fade, but be sure to give me hatred, agony and evil on the way."

"I'll slip you a lensful," promised Mr. Monahan, as he squared off with Carlos and blundered through the timed action like a horse on ​a treadmill. Half an hour of this made him letter perfect and he retired to a coil of rope to drowse, listening scornfully as the director admonished the six other villains. It developed that the script called for a running fight during which Carlos wrecked the entire crew and ended with a triumphant leap into a motor boat containing the lustrous Rosie.

"Some hero," muttered Mr. Monahan, inspecting his bony knuckles. "I'll hero him. One, two, th———"

A slim shadow fell across his outstretched legs and he looked up to meet the interested gaze of a girl with soft brown hair and a happy, oval face.

"Oh, hello," said the new arrival. "You're the new menace, I guess. How do you like the movies?"

TUG surveyed her with growing admiration. Here was someone worthwhile. No petulant droop to her mouth, her glossy hair was not brittle from sprayed brilliantine and her eyes were as honest as Sadie's. A great loneliness took possession of the recumbent battler, and the urge to confide in her became overwhelming. Normally as friendly as a St. Bernard, he felt that here was a woman who would understand, a miscue of which even Napoleon was capable.

"I'm easin' out of the game after today," he said cautiously. "Say, you're not an actress, are you?"

"Why, no."

"Do you work for the company?"

"No," said the girl once more, "I hang around and watch them work once in a while."

"What do you think of this Carlos Cabrillo?"

The girl's eyebrows drew down sharply. "Carlos," she echoed. "Why, for———"

"Never mind," said Tug, interpreting her expression as one of distaste. "Just you watch for the fireworks in our fight scene." He rapidly outlined the business, then winked knowingly. "But that ain't all," he whispered.

"Really?" said the girl carelessly. "Have you made some improvements?"

"That's what's got me all fagged out," confessed the genius. "I didn't know thinkin' was so wearin', and I've got to tell somebody about it. Listen, after I fake that one, two, three stuff Carlos will be lookin' for me to pull the next one, but I'll cross him, see? I'll land with my left, drop the phoney wrench, and crack him with my right. I'll learn him to go around stealin' other women, even if it is by long distance."

"So that's it," said the brown haired damsel, regarding him from suddenly narrowed eyes. "What a refreshing lover you must be, going to all this trouble. Well, I expect I'd better not be in the way when they begin, but I certainly will be watching you." She sauntered away, nodding here and there, and finally was lost from view in a little knot of onlookers.

"Monahan up!" shouted the director, scurrying to the battleground. "Now, I want you to come running into the picture, my bucko, until you reach this chalk mark. Then you glare until I whistle, and after that you go into the scrap. Carlos, where's Carlos!"

"Right here," called Mr. Cahrillo, approaching from the rear. His well built figure was set off by the navy blue uniform and his profile beneath a gold braided cap would have sent Sadie into transports of ecstasy. His black eyes smouldered at Tug for an instant; then he smiled with the scornful superiority of a foregone winner. "All set," he told the director, and immediately assumed a salt water swagger.

The cameras began to whir at the director's signal, and Mr. Monahan, supposedly a lustful stoker, came galloping down the dock. Stopping dutifully at the whitened line, he bared his teeth in a fearsome grimace while three deftly held sheets of tin reflected the sun into his uneven countenance. A few bars of an unpopular theme song sent him forward with the exaggeratedly slow action necessary to movie conflict, and Carlos went backward in perfect harmony. The balsa wood wrench swung ferociously as Tug stalked his handsome rival. One! Two!

Carlos, instead of retreating with the third blow, froze in his tracks and rocked the astonished Tug with a left to the wind that drove him against the rail. Grunting with anguish, the counterfeit stoker tried to straighten up, but a looping uppercut knocked him through the weakened support. Then panic broke loose on the dock, for the force of the blow had sent Mr. Monahan to the outer edge of the protecting net, whence he bounded into the air and described a blurred arc before vanishing under a couple of waves.

A flurry of advice reached him as he came to the surface, but on opening his mouth to yell, he shipped several quarts of the Pacific Ocean and disappeared once more, thrashing helplessly. It was all too apparent that the redoubtable menace could not swim. A rope was lowered and frantic orders were dispatched for ​ ​"That's all you need to know now."

In November, Mr. Monahan had been an unlovely chrysalis; by March, he burst forth a gaudy Hollywood butterfly somewhat dazzled by his own brilliance. Cruelty being the natural offset to chivalry, thereby making the hero's inevitable triumph all the more glorious, the vindictive Tug pursued his rôles of ruffianism as fast as one director could hand him to another.

A desultory correspondence had been carried on with the rebellious Miss Allen, although, acting on a hint from Carlos, Tug said nothing about their friendship.

When the first ripples of success reached Detroit, she affected to believe that she was being taken for a ride, and then receded coyly until the arrival of an engagement ring completed her surrender.

THE release date of "Docks and Derelicts" endeared Mr. Monahan with that large section of the public which loves vicarious terror. Condescending bon mots trickled from the pens of viperish critics and Sadie, watching the waterfront idyll with more than a little awe, decided that spinach would do if you couldn't have broccoli, and wired Tug that she would leave for the coast on the next train.

Five days later she was walking sturdily up the ramp at the Southern Pacific station in Los Angeles, looking eagerly for Tug's familiar thatch, when an untidy young man touched her arm.

"I got a ten spot that says you're Sadie Allen," he said huskily.

That spruce young woman eyed him with disfavor. The accoster was garbed in a wrinkled linen suit, his hair was like a tangle of brush wood and he had needed a shave for the past three days.

"That's my name," she nodded. "What's the matter with my Tug?"

"He's on location, the big tomato," said the young man, grinning evilly, "and after hearing him brag about his swell looking girl I thought I'd get a peek at her so I told him I'd meet you."

He appropriated her luggage and led the way to a glistening roadster.

"Hop in, momma," he invited, "and I'll roll you out to the hotel."

Miss Allen congealed with dignity. "Don't get so familiar," she cautioned.

"And why not," chuckled her companion, "after you raving about me for months." He pushed her roughly into a seat and climbed over her.

"Limber up your eyes, baby," he advised, "and then congratulate yourself at being this close to your Carlos."

"Do you mean to say," stammered Sadie, "that you're———"

"THE kid himself," said Mr. Cabrillo, hiccuping slightly as he started the car. "This is a break for you, queenie, for what did I do but leave eight frails in Beverly Hills weeping their eyes out for me."

Sadie stole a quick glance at the chiselled profile, now a mere pasty outline as his jaw hung slack.

A feeling of revulsion gripped her, yet she was unable to tear her eyes from the magnet. So this was the way heroes looked when they weren't being prompted!

Plainly, the lambent Carlos was as earthy as any street cleaner.

She sat dumb with misery until the car slid to anchor down an unfrequented side road on the fringes of Elysian Park.

"You look like a live wire," cooed Mr. Cabrillo, undulating toward her in exactly the same manner he used in "Wrecks of Sex," "so I guess I'll put my trade mark on you." And, getting a half nelson on the shrinking Sadie, he bent his bristly face to hers, but not, a close observer would have noted, all the way. "Kiss me," he demanded, and it became unpleasantly appar1ent that he was addicted to the eating of licorice.

This final blow spurred the horror-stricken girl to hasty action, and breaking loose by main strength, she faced the shattered idol. "Drive me to that hotel or I'll have Tug attend to you," she warned.

"He won't be back until late this evening," sneered Carlos. "What right has that ugly ogre to a princess like you, anyhow? Come on, give me that kiss."

"I wouldn't give you the right time," rasped Sadie, "and Tug is a fine, big, upright man, and I love him."

"You mean to say you'd pass me up for that crackpot?" asked Mr. Cabrillo, fishing another stick of licorice from his pocket.

"I certainly do!" cried Sadie. "I thought you were so wonderful, but you're nothing but a wrong number to me. I should have had sense enough to know that before I almost lost my Tug. Are you going to take me to that hotel or do I have to scratch that swell nose of yours?"

"Heh, heh," sniffed Mr. Cabrillo, registering disdain. "Well, there's plenty of other dames who'll let me trample on their hearts, girlie, so I guess I'll sidetrack you."

He drove swiftly to the Roosevelt and deposited Miss Allen with the doorman.

"You wouldn't change your mind?" he said insinuatingly.

"Beat it," ordered his passenger, "before I forget I'm a lady."

"All right," growled Carlos, "but mark my words, you proud hussy, you haven't seen the last of me."

Then for a moment the engaging smile that thrilled feminine hearts flooded his unshaven face.

"Good luck, Sadie," he said clearly, and as she turned curiously, he swerved the car quickly into the traffic before he started laughing.

EIGHT o'clock found Sadie watching the soft purple dusk of the California evening creep across the ragged foothills to sponge out the pastel shades of twilight. The pattern of life was being woven out in all that mysterious blur, but where, pondered Miss Allen somewhat impatiently, was the homespun thread that belonged to her? Truly, love was more exasperating than ironing an accordion-plaited shirt.

The purple was melting into velvety blackness when the door crashed open to reveal Mr. Monahan bulging from a new shepherd's plaid suit with an expression of mixed apology and joy.

Having profited by a close study of Carlos' technique, he advanced determinedly and enfolded Miss Allen in a classic embrace, to which she yielded without undue struggling.

Tug was no parlor snake, she told herself as a rib or two creaked dangerously. Here he was, starched, pressed and scrubbed to a fresh virility that overcame such handicaps as a squashed proboscis.

Finally, after ten minutes of the usual amorous nothings, he came up for air.

"I'd of got here sooner, but we've been doin' desert stuff out in the Mojave for the last three weeks, and I wanted to get cleaned up," he advised. "Did Carlos take good care of you, honey?"

"DON'T mention him, the rowdy scalawag," shrilled Sadie.

"Hey," admonished her suitor, "you don't want to be knockin' him like that. Why, if he hadn't managed to get away a day before me, there'd been nobody to meet you. Although," mused Mr. Monahan, wrinkling his brow, "just why they held me over is beyond me, because I didn't do nothin' to speak of."

"He tried to play you for a sucker, that's all."

"You can't talk that way about my pal," asserted the mystified Tug. "Shame on you, after him helpin' me with the church arrangements and all. Maybe he still looked weary after three weeks of inhalin' sand but, he's a swell actor and a swell gentleman for lookin' after you when he could have been ​home with his wife and kids. What's got into you, anyhow———you used to be nuts about him."

"Wife and kids!" screeched Sadie. "Oh, the, the———"

"Cut it out," said Mr. Monahan sternly. "He's a grand guy, and I wouldn't harm a hair of his head. Furthermore, he's just what you used to call him and he'll play the part tomorrow."

"I hate him," sobbed the girl. "All I want is you."

"That's a kayo line," chuckled Tug as he kissed her, "but we can't get along without Carlos. Whoever heard of a classy weddin' without a best man?"