The Fifth Wheel, O. Henry
The Fifth Wheel
O. Henry
Category: Short Stories
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"The Fifth Wheel" takes us to the frigid streets of New York, where the homeless struggle for shelter. Among them is Thomas McQuade, once a coachman, now fallen on hard times. He befriends Freddy, another downtrodden soul. Their tales reveal the city's unforgiving nature, especially for the vulnerable. Unexpectedly, Thomas is ushered into a lavish mansion by a mysterious automobilist. Inside, he encounters an otherworldly room filled with riches and a strange, animated owl. The host promises fortune and alludes to an enigmatic Chaldean Chiroscope.

The Fifth Wheel

by
O. Henry

The Fifth Wheel

The ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold. They were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The Bed Liners stamped their freezing feet, looked at the empty benches in Madison Square whence Jack Frost had evicted them, and muttered to one another in a confusion of tongues.

The Flatiron Building, with its impious, cloud-piercing architecture looming mistily above them on the opposite delta, might well have stood for the tower of Babel, whence these polyglot idlers had been called by the winged walking delegate of the Lord.

Standing on a pine box a head higher than his flock of goats, the Preacher exhorted whatever transient and shifting audience the north wind doled out to him. It was a slave market. Fifteen cents bought you a man. You deeded him to Morpheus; and the recording angel gave you credit.

The preacher was incredibly earnest and unwearied. He had looked over the list of things one may do for one’s fellow man, and had assumed for himself the task of putting to bed all who might apply at his soap box on the nights of Wednesday and Sunday.

That left but five nights for other philanthropists to handle; and had they done their part as well, this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and the rent man and business go to the deuce.

The hour of eight was but a little while past; sightseers in a small, dark mass of pay ore were gathered in the shadow of General Worth’s monument. Now and then, shyly, ostentatiously, carelessly, or with conscientious exactness one would step forward and bestow upon the Preacher small bills or silver. Then a lieutenant of Scandinavian coloring and enthusiasm would march away to a lodging house with a squad of the redeemed.

All the while the Preacher exhorted the crowd in terms beautifully devoid of eloquence — splendid with the deadly, accusative monotony of truth. Before the picture of the Bed Liners fades you must hear one phrase of the Preacher’s — the one that formed his theme that night. It is worthy of being stenciled on all the white ribbons in the world.

“No man ever learned to be a drunkard on five-cent whisky.”

Think of it, tippler. It covers the ground from the sprouting rye to the Potter’s Field.

A clean-profiled, erect young man in the rear rank of the bedless emulated the terrapin, drawing his head far down into the shell of his coat collar. It was a well-cut tweed coat; and the trousers still showed signs of having flattened themselves beneath the compelling goose. But, conscientiously, I must warn the milliner’s apprentice who reads this, expecting a Reginald Montressor in straits, to peruse no further. The young man was no other than Thomas McQuade, ex-coachman, discharged for drunkenness one month before, and now reduced to the grimy ranks of the one-night bed seekers.

If you live in smaller New York you must know the Van Smuythe family carriage, drawn by the two 1,500-pound, 100 to 1-shot bays. The carriage is shaped like a bath-tub.

In each end of it reclines an old lady Van Smuythe holding a black sunshade the size of a New Year’s Eve feather tickler. Before his downfall Thomas McQuade drove the Van Smuythe bays and was himself driven by Annie, the Van Smuythe lady’s maid. But it is one of the saddest things about romance that a tight shoe or an empty commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic of any Cupid-worshiper. And Thomas’s physical troubles were not few.

Therefore, his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost lady’s maid than it was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dancing, crawling, and wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal campus of the Bed Line army.

Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and intercourse.

The Bed Liner standing at his right was a young man of about his own age, shabby but neat.

“What’s the diagnosis of your case, Freddy?” asked Thomas, with the freemasonic familiarity of the damned — “Booze? That’s mine. You don’t look like a panhandler. Neither am I. A month ago I was pushing the lines over the backs of the finest team of Percheron buffaloes that ever made their mile down Fifth Avenue in 2.85. And look at me now! Say; how do you come to be at this bed bargain-counter rummage sale.”

The other young man seemed to welcome the advances of the airy ex-coachman.

“No,” said he, “mine isn’t exactly a case of drink. Unless we allow that Cupid is a bartender. I married unwisely, according to the opinion of my unforgiving relatives. I’ve been out of work for a year because I don’t know how to work; and I’ve been sick in Bellevue and other hospitals for months. My wife and kid had to go back to her mother. I was turned out of the hospital yesterday. And I haven’t a cent. That’s my tale of woe.”

“Tough luck,” said Thomas. “A man alone can pull through all right. But I hate to see the women and kids get the worst of it.”

Just then there hummed up Fifth Avenue a motor car so splendid, so red, so smoothly running, so craftily demolishing the speed regulations that it drew the attention even of the listless Bed Liners. Suspended and pinioned on its left side was an extra tire.

When opposite the unfortunate company the fastenings of this tire became loosed. It fell to the asphalt, bounded and rolled rapidly in the wake of the flying car.

Thomas McQuade, scenting an opportunity, darted from his place among the Preacher’s goats. In thirty seconds he had caught the rolling tire, swung it over his shoulder, and was trotting smartly after the car. On both sides of the avenue people were shouting, whistling, and waving canes at the red car, pointing to the enterprising Thomas coming up with the lost tire.

One dollar, Thomas had estimated, was the smallest guerdon that so grand an automobilist could offer for the service he had rendered, and save his pride.

Two blocks away the car had stopped. There was a little, brown, muffled chauffeur driving, and an imposing gentleman wearing a magnificent sealskin coat and a silk hat on a rear seat.

Thomas proffered the captured tire with his best ex-coachman manner and a look in the brighter of his reddened eyes that was meant to be suggestive to the extent of a silver coin or two and receptive up to higher denominations.

But the look was not so construed. The sealskinned gentleman received the tire, placed it inside the car, gazed intently at the ex-coachman, and muttered to himself inscrutable words.

“Strange — strange!” said he. “Once or twice even I, myself, have fancied that the Chaldean Chiroscope has availed. Could it be possible?”

Then he addressed less mysterious words to the waiting and hopeful Thomas.

“Sir, I thank you for your kind rescue of my tire. And I would ask you, if I may, a question. Do you know the family of Van Smuythes living in Washington Square North?”

“Oughtn’t I to?” replied Thomas. “I lived there. Wish I did yet.”

The sealskinned gentleman opened a door of the car.

“Step in please,” he said. “You have been expected.”

Thomas McQuade obeyed with surprise but without hesitation. A seat in a motor car seemed better than standing room in the Bed Line. But after the lap-robe had been tucked about him and the auto had sped on its course, the peculiarity of the invitation lingered in his mind.

“Maybe the guy hasn’t got any change,” was his diagnosis. “Lots of these swell rounders don’t lug about any ready money. Guess he’ll dump me out when he gets to some joint where he can get cash on his mug. Anyhow, it’s a cinch that I’ve got that open-air bed convention beat to a finish.”

Submerged in his greatcoat, the mysterious automobilist seemed, himself, to marvel at the surprises of life. “Wonderful! amazing! strange!” he repeated to himself constantly.

When the car had well entered the crosstown Seventies it swung eastward a half block and stopped before a row of high-stooped, brownstone-front houses.

“Be kind enough to enter my house with me,” said the sealskinned gentleman when they had alighted. “He’s going to dig up, sure,” reflected Thomas, following him inside.

There was a dim light in the hall. His host conducted him through a door to the left, closing it after him and leaving them in absolute darkness. Suddenly a luminous globe, strangely decorated, shone faintly in the centre of an immense room that seemed to Thomas more splendidly appointed than any he had ever seen on the stage or read of in fairy tales.

The walls were hidden by gorgeous red hangings embroidered with fantastic gold figures. At the rear end of the room were draped portières of dull gold spangled with silver crescents and stars. The furniture was of the costliest and rarest styles. The ex-coachman’s feet sank into rugs as fleecy and deep as snowdrifts. There were three or four oddly shaped stands or tables covered with black velvet drapery.

Thomas McQuade took in the splendors of this palatial apartment with one eye. With the other he looked for his imposing conductor — to find that he had disappeared.

“B’gee!” muttered Thomas, “this listens like a spook shop. Shouldn’t wonder if it ain’t one of these Moravian Nights’ adventures that you read about. Wonder what became of the furry guy.”

Suddenly a stuffed owl that stood on an ebony perch near the illuminated globe slowly raised his wings and emitted from his eyes a brilliant electric glow.

With a fright-born imprecation, Thomas seized a bronze statuette of Hebe from a cabinet near by and hurled it with all his might at the terrifying and impossible fowl. The owl and his perch went over with a crash. With the sound there was a click, and the room was flooded with light from a dozen frosted globes along the walls and ceiling. The gold portières parted and closed, and the mysterious automobilist entered the room. He was tall and wore evening dress of perfect cut and accurate taste.

A Vandyke beard of glossy, golden brown, rather long and wavy hair, smoothly parted, and large, magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave him a most impressive and striking appearance. If you can conceive a Russian Grand Duke in a Rajah’s throne-room advancing to greet a visiting Emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his manner. But Thomas McQuade was too near his d t’s to be mindful of his p’s and q’s. When he viewed this silken, polished, and somewhat terrifying host he thought vaguely of dentists.

“Say, doc,” said he resentfully, “that’s a hot bird you keep on tap. I hope I didn’t break anything. But I’ve nearly got the williwalloos, and when he threw them 32-candle-power lamps of his on me, I took a snap-shot at him with that little brass Flatiron Girl that stood on the sideboard.”

“That is merely a mechanical toy,” said the gentleman with a wave of his hand. “May I ask you to be seated while I explain why I brought you to my house. Perhaps you would not understand nor be in sympathy with the psychological prompting that caused me to do so. So I will come to the point at once by venturing to refer to your admission that you know the Van Smuythe family, of Washington Square North.”

“Any silver missing?” asked Thomas tartly. “Any joolry displaced? Of course I know ’em. Any of the old ladies’ sunshades disappeared? Well, I know ’em. And then what?”

The Grand Duke rubbed his white hands together softly.

“Wonderful!” he murmured. “Wonderful! Shall I come to believe in the Chaldean Chiroscope myself? Let me assure you,” he continued, “that there is nothing for you to fear. Instead, I think I can promise you that very good fortune awaits you. We will see.”

“Do they want me back?” asked Thomas, with something of his old professional pride in his voice. “I’ll promise to cut out the booze and do the right thing if they’ll try me again. But how did you get wise, doc? B’gee, it’s the swellest employment agency I was ever in, with its flashlight owls and so forth.”

With an indulgent smile the gracious host begged to be excused for two minutes. He went out to the sidewalk and gave an order to the chauffeur, who still waited with the car. Returning to the mysterious apartment, he sat by his guest and began to entertain him so well by his witty and genial converse that the poor Bed Liner almost forgot the cold streets from which he had been so recently and so singularly rescued.

A servant brought some tender cold fowl and tea biscuits and a glass of miraculous wine; and Thomas felt the glamour of Arabia envelop him. Thus half an hour sped quickly; and then the honk of the returned motor car at the door suddenly drew the Grand Duke to his feet, with another soft petition for a brief absence.

Two women, well muffled against the cold, were admitted at the front door and suavely conducted by the master of the house down the hall through another door to the left and into a smaller room, which was screened and segregated from the larger front room by heavy, double portières. Here the furnishings were even more elegant and exquisitely tasteful than in the other. On a gold-inlaid rosewood table were scattered sheets of white paper and a queer, triangular instrument or toy, apparently of gold, standing on little wheels.

The taller woman threw back her black veil and loosened her cloak. She was fifty, with a wrinkled and sad face. The other, young and plump, took a chair a little distance away and to the rear as a servant or an attendant might have done.

“You sent for me, Professor Cherubusco,” said the elder woman, wearily. “I hope you have something more definite than usual to say. I’ve about lost the little faith I had in your art. I would not have responded to your call this evening if my sister had not insisted upon it.”

“Madam,” said the professor, with his princeliest smile, “the true Art cannot fail. To find the true psychic and potential branch sometimes requires time. We have not succeeded, I admit, with the cards, the crystal, the stars, the magic formulæ of Zarazin, nor the Oracle of Po. But we have at last discovered the true psychic route. The Chaldean Chiroscope has been successful in our search.”