“How about decorations?” Hughie suggested. “Like Fourth of July or Halloween.”
Mack’s eyes looked off into space and his lips were parted. He could see it all. “Hughie,” he said, “I think you got something there. I never would of thought you could do it, but by God you really rang a duck that time.” His voice grew mellow and his eyes looked into the future. “I can just see it,” he said. “Doc comes home. He’s tired. He drives up. The place is all lit up. He thinks somebody’s broke in. He goes up the stairs and by God the place has got the hell decorated out of it. There’s crepe paper and there’s favors and a big cake. Jesus, he’d know it was a party then. And it wouldn’t be no little mouse fart party neither. And we’re kind of hiding so for a minute he don’t know who done it. And then we come out yelling. Can’t you see his face? By God, Hughie, I don’t know how you thought of it.”
Hughie blushed. His conception had been much more conservative, based in fact on the New Year’s party at La Ida, but if it was going to be like that why Hughie was willing to take credit. “I just thought it would be nice,” he said.
“Well, it’s a pretty nice thing,” said Mack, “and I don’t mind saying when the surprise kind of wears off, I’m going to tell Doc who thought it up.” They leaned back and considered the thing. And in their minds the decorated laboratory looked like the conservatory at the Hotel del Monte. They had a couple more drinks, just to savor the plan.
Lee Chong kept a very remarkable store. For instance, most stores buy yellow and black crepe paper and black paper cats, masks and papier-mache pumpkins in October. There is a brisk business for Halloween and then these items disappear. Maybe they are sold or thrown out, but you can’t buy them say in June. The same is true of Fourth of July equipment, flags and bunting and skyrockets. Where are they in January? Gone — no one knows where. This was not Lee Chong’s way. You could buy Valentines in November at Lee Chong’s, shamrocks, hatchets and paper cherry trees in August. He had firecrackers he had laid up in 1920. One of the mysteries was where he kept his stock since his was not a very large store. He had bathing suits he had bought when long skirts and black stockings and head bandanas were in style. He had bicycle dips and tatting shuttles and Mah Jong sets. He had badges that said “Remember the Maine” and felt pennants commemorating “Fighting Bob.” He had mementos of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 — little towers of jewels. And there was one other unorthodoxy in Lee’s way of doing business. He never had a sale, never reduced a price and never remaindered. An article that cost thirty cents in 1912 still was thirty cents although mice and moths might seem to some to have reduced its value. But there was no question about it. If you wanted to decorate a laboratory in a general way, not being specific about the season but giving the impression of a cross between Saturnalia and a pageant of the Flags of all Nations, Lee Chong’s was the place to go for your stuff.
Mack and the boys knew that, but Mack said. “Where we going to get a big cake? Lee hasn’t got nothing but them little bakery cakes.”
Hughie had been so successful before he tried again. “Why’n’t Eddie bake a cake?” he suggested. “Eddie used to be fry cook at the San Carlos for a while.”
The instant enthusiasm for the idea drove from Eddie’s brain the admission that he had never baked a cake.
Mack put it on a sentimental basis besides. “It would mean more to Doc,” he said. “It wouldn’t be like no God damned old soggy bought cake. It would have some heart in it.”
As the afternoon and the whiskey went down the enthusiasm rose. There were endless trips to Lee Chong’s. The frogs were gone from one sack and Lee’s packing case was getting crowded. By six o’clock they had finished the gallon of whiskey and were buying half pints of Old Tennis Shoes at fifteen frogs a crack, but the pile of decorating materials was heaped on the floor of the Palace Flophouse — miles of crepe paper commemorating every holiday in vogue and some that had been abandoned.
Eddie watched his stove like a mother hen. He was baking a cake in the wash basin. The recipe was guaranteed not to fail by the company which made the shortening. But from the first the cake had acted strangely. When the batter was completed it writhed and panted as though animals were squirming and crawling inside it. Once in the oven it put up a bubble like a baseball which grew tight and shiny and then collapsed with a hissing sound. This left such a crater that Eddie made a new batch of batter and filled in the hole. And now the cake was behaving very curiously for while the bottom was burning and sending out a black smoke the top was rising and falling glueyly with a series of little explosions.
When Eddie finally put it out to cool, it looked like one of Bel Geddes’ miniatures of a battlefield on a lava bed.
This cake was not fortunate, for while the boys were decorating the laboratory Darling ate what she could of it, was sick in it, and finally curled up in its still warm dough and went to sleep.
But Mack and the boys had taken the crepe paper, the masks, the broomsticks and paper pumpkins, the red, white, and blue bunting, and moved over the lot and across the street to the laboratory. They disposed of the last of the frogs for a quart of Old Tennis Shoes and two gallons of 49-cent wine.
“Doc is very fond of wine,” said Mack. “I think he likes it even better than whiskey.”
Doc never locked the laboratory. He went on the theory that anyone who really wanted to break in could easily do it, that people were essentially honest and that finally, there wasn’t much the average person would want to steal there anyway. The valuable things were books and records, surgical instruments and optical glass and such things that a practical working burglar wouldn’t look at twice. His theory had been sound as far as burglars, snatch thieves, and kleptomaniacs were concerned, but it had been completely ineffective regarding his friends. Books were often “borrowed.” No can of beans ever survived his absence and on several occasions, returning late, he had found guests in his bed.
The boys piled the decorations in the anteroom and then Mack stopped them. “What’s going to make Doc happiest?” he asked.
“The party!” said Hazel.
“No,” said Mack.
“The decorations?” Hughie suggested. He felt responsible for the decorations.
“No,” said Mack, “the frogs. That’s going to make him feel best of all. And maybe by the time he gets here, Lee Chong might be closed and he can’t even see his frogs until tomorrow. No, sir,” Mack cried. “Them frogs ought to be right here, right in the middle of the room with a piece of bunting on it and a sign that says, Welcome Home, Doc.”