STORY XVI. There are no more Christmas stories to write. Children is exhausted, and newspaper items, the next best, are manufactured by clever young journalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessimistic view of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are reduced to very questionable sources, facts and philosophy. We will begin with whichever you choose to call it. Then are pestilential little animals, with which we have to cope under a bewildering variety of conditions, especially when childish sorrows overwhelm them, or we put to our wits end. We exhaust our paltry store of consolation, and then beat them, sobbing, to sleep. Then we grovel in the dust of a million years, and ask God why. Thus we call out of the rat trap. As for the children, no one understands them except old maids, hunchbacks, and shepherd dogs. Now comes the facts in the case of the ragdoll, the Tadardimalian, and the 25th of December. On the 10th of that month, the child of the millionaire lost her ragdoll. There were many servants in the millionaire's palace on the Hudson, and these ransacked the house and grounds, but without finding the lost treasure. The child was a girl of five, and one of those perverse little beasts that often wound the sensibilities of wealthy parents by fixing their affections upon some vulgar, inexpensive toy, instead of upon diamond-studded automobiles and pony-fatons. The child grieved slowly and truly, a thing inexplicable to the millionaire, to whom the ragdoll market was about as interesting as Bay State Gas, and to the lady, the child's mother, who was all form, that is, nearly all, as you shall see. The child cried inconsolably, and grew hollow-eyed, knock-kneed, spindling, and quarry-kilverty in many other respects. The millionaire smiled and tapped his coffers confidently. The pick of the output of the French and German toy-makers was rushed by special delivery to the mansion, but Rachel refused to be comforted. She was weeping for her rag-child, and was for a high protective tariff against all foreign foolishness. Even doctors with the finest bedside manners and stopwatches were called in. One by one they chattered futilely about pepto-manganate of iron and sea voyages and hypo-phosphites until their stopwatches showed that Bill rendered was under the wire for show or place. Then, as men, they advised that the ragdoll be found as soon as possible and restored to its mourning parent. The child sniffed at therapeutics, chewed a thumb, and wailed for her Betsy. And all this time cable-grams were coming from Santa Claus, saying that he would soon be here and in joining us to show a true Christian spirit and light up on the pool-rooms and taunting policies and platoon-systems long enough to give him a welcome. Everywhere the spirit of Christmas was diffusing itself. The banks were refusing loans, the pawnbrokers had doubled their gang of helpers, people bumped your shins on the streets with red sleds, Thomas and Jeremiah bubbled before you on the bars, while you waited on one foot. Holy reese of hospitality were hung in windows of the stores, they who had them were getting their furs. You hardly knew which was the best bet in balls, three, high, moth, or snow. It was no time at which to lose the ragdoll or your heart. If Dr. Watson's investigating friend had been called in to solve this mysterious disappearance, he might have observed on the millionaire's wall a copy of The Vampire. That would have quickly suggested, by induction, a rag and a bone in a hank of hair. Flip, a scotch terrier, next to the ragdoll in a child's heart, frisks through the halls. The hank of hair, aha, ex, the unfound quantity represented the ragdoll. But the bone, well, when dogs find bones they, done. It were an easy and fruitful task to examine Flip's forefeet. Look, Watson, earth, dried earth between the toes. Of course, the dog. But Sherlock was not there. Therefore it devolves. But topography and architecture must intervene. The millionaire's palace occupied a lordly space. In front of it was a lawn, close mowed as a South Ireland man's face, two days after a shave. At one side of it, and fronting on another street, was a plaissance trimmed to a leaf, and the garage and stables. The scotch pup had ravished the ragdoll from the nursery, dragged it to a corner of the lawn, dug a hole, and buried it after the manner of careless undertakers. There you have the mystery solved. And no checks to write for the hypodermic wizard or Fippen notes to toss to the sergeant. Then let's get down to the heart of the thing, tiresome readers. The Christmas heart of the thing. Fuzzy was drunk. Not riotously or helplessly or loquaciously, as you or I might get, but decently, appropriately, and inoffensively, as becomes a gentleman down on his luck. Fuzzy was a soldier of misfortune. The road, the haystack, the park bench, the kitchen door, the bitter round of elimos scenery beds with shower bath attachment, the petty pickings and ignoble garnered largesse of great cities. These formed the chapters of his history. Fuzzy walked toward the river, down the street that bounded one side of the millionaire's house and grounds. He saw a leg of Betsy, the lost ragdoll, protruding like the clue to a little Pugetian murder mystery from its untimely grave in a corner of the fence. He dragged forth, though maltreated infant, tucked it under his arm, and went on his way, crooning a road song of his brethren that no doll that has been brought up to a sheltered life should hear. Well, for Betsy that she had no ears, and well that she had no eyes, save unseeing circles of black, for the faces of Fuzzy and the scotch terrier were those of brothers, and the heart of no ragdoll could withstand twice to become the prey of such fearsome monsters. Though you may not know it, Grogan's saloon stands near the river and near the foot of the street down which Fuzzy traveled. In Grogan's Christmas cheer was already rampant. Fuzzy entered with his doll. He fancied that as a mummer at the Feast of Saturn, he might earn a few drops from the wassail cup. He sat Betsy on the bar and addressed her loudly and humorously, seasoning his speech with exaggerated compliments and endearments, as one entertaining his lady-friend. The loafers and bibbers around caught the farce of it and roared. The bartender gave Fuzzy a drink. Oh, many of us carry ragdolls. One for the lady, suggested Fuzzy impudently, and tucked another contribution to art beneath his waistcoat. He began to see possibilities in Betsy. His first night had been a success. Visions of a vaudeville circuit about town dawned upon him. In a group near the stove sat Pigeon McCarthy, Black Riley, and one ear Mike, well and unfavorably known in the tough shoestring district that blackened the left bank of the river. They passed a newspaper back and forth among themselves. The item that each solid and blunt forefinger pointed out was an advertisement headed $100 reward. To earn it, one must return the ragdoll lost, strayed or stolen from the millionaire's mansion. It seemed that grief still ravaged, unchecked, in the bosom of the two faithful child. Flip, the terrier, capered and shook his absurd whisker before her, powerless to distract. She wailed for her Betsy in the faces of walking, talking, momma-ing, and eye-closing French mables and violets. The advertisement was a last resort. Black Riley came from behind the stove and approached Fuzzy in his one-sided parabolic way. The Christmas mummer, flushed with success, had talked Betsy under his arm, and was about to depart to the filling of impromptu dates elsewhere. Say, Beau, said Black Riley to him. Where did you cop out that doll? This doll? asked Fuzzy, touching Betsy with his forefinger, to be sure that she was the one referred to. Why, this doll was presented to me by the Emperor of Baluchistan. I have seven hundred others in my country home in Newport. This doll? Geez, the funny business, said Riley. You swiped it or picked it up at the house on the hill. Where, but never mind that. You want to take fifty cents for the rags and take it quick? Me brother's kid at home might be wanting to play with it. Hey, what? He produced the coin.  Go to the office of Sarah Bernhard's manager and propose to him that she be released from a knight's performance to entertain the tacky town lyceum and literary coterie. You will hear the duplicate of Fuzzy's laugh. Black Riley gauged Fuzzy quickly with his blueberry eye as a wrestler does.  But he refrained. Fuzzy was fat and solid and big. Three inches of well-nourished corporaity, defended from the winter winds by dingy linen, intervened between his vest and trousers. Countless small circular wrinkles running around his coat sleeves and knees guaranteed the quality of his bone and muscle. His small blue eyes, bathed in the moisture of altruism and wusiness, looked upon to you kindly, yet without abatement. He was whiskily, whiskily, fleshily formidable. So Black Riley temporized. What you take for it, then? he asked. Money, said Fuzzy with husky firmness, cannot buy her. He was intoxicated with the artist's first sweet cup of attainment, to set a faded blue, earth-stained ragdoll on a bar, to hold mimic converse with it, and to find his heart leaping with the sense of plot it's earned, and his throat scorching with free libations poured in his honor, could base coin by him from such achievements? You will perceive that Fuzzy had the temperament. Fuzzy walked out with the gait of a trained sea lion in search of other cafes to conquer. Though the dusk of twilight was hardly yet apparent, lights were beginning to spangle the city like popcorn bursting in a deep skillet. Christmas Eve, impatiently expected, was peeping over the brink of the hour. Millions had prepared for its celebration. Towns would be painted red. You yourself have heard the horns and dodged the capers of the Saturn Allians. Pigeon McCarthy, Black Riley, and one-ear Mike, held a hasty converse outside Grogan's. They were narrow-chested, pallid striplings, not fighters in the open, but more dangerous in their ways of warfare than the most terrible of Turks. Fuzzy, in a pitched battle, could have eaten the three of them. In a go-as-you-please encounter, he was already doomed. They overtook him just as he and Betsy were entering Costigan's Casino. They deflected him and shoved the newspaper under his nose. Fuzzy could read and more.  Give me a week to think it over. The soul of a real artist is quenched with difficulty. The boys carefully pointed out to him that advertisements were soulless, and that the deficiencies of the day might not be supplied by the morrow. A cool hundred, said Fuzzy thoughtfully and mushily. Boys, said he, you are true friends. I'll go up and claim the reward. The show business is not what it used to be. Night was falling more surely. The three tagged at his sides to the foot of the rise on which stood the millionaire's house. Their Fuzzy turned upon them acrimoniously.  Go away. They went away. A little away. In Pigeon McCarthy's pocket was a section of one-inch gas pipe, eight inches long. In one end of it, and in the middle of it, was a lead plug. One half of it was packed tight with solder.  One ear-mic relied upon a pair of brass snucks, an heirloom in the family. Why, fetch and carry, said Black Riley, when someone will do it for you. Let him bring it out to us. Hey, what?  These guys make me tired, said one ear-mic, sadly. Ain't progress ever appealed to none of you? Sprinkle a little gasoline on him, and drop him on the drive. Well? Fuzzy entered the millionaire's gate, and zigzagged toward the softly glowing entrance of the mansion. The three goblins came up to the gate and lingered, one on each side of it, one beyond the roadway. They fingered their cold metal and leather, confident. Fuzzy rang the doorbell, smiling foolishly and dreamily. An atavistic instinct prompted him to reach for the button of his right glove. But he wore no gloves, so his left hand dropped, embarrassed. The particular menial, whose duty it was to open doors to silks and laces, shied at first sight of Fuzzy. But a second glance took in his passport, his card of admission, his surety of welcome, the lost ragdoll of the daughter of the house dangling under his arm. Fuzzy was admitted into a great hall, dim with the glow from unseen lights. The hurling went away and returned with a maid and a child. The doll was restored to the morning one. She clasped her lost darling to her breast, and then, with the inordinate selfishness and candor of childhood, stamped her foot and whined hatred and fear of the odious being who had rescued her from the depths of sorrow and despair.  The child bawled and was dragged away, hugging her Betsy close. There came the secretary, pale, poised, polished, gliding in pumps, and worshipping, pomp, and ceremony. He counted out into Fuzzy's hand ten, ten dollar bills, then dropped his eye upon the door, transferred it to James, its custodian, indicated the obnoxious earner of the reward with the other, and allowed his pumps to waft him away to secretarial regions. James gathered Fuzzy with his own commanding optic and swept him as far as the front door. When the money touched Fuzzy's dingy palm, his first instinct was to take to his heels, but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his. It had been given him. It and Oh! what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye. He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder. He was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting. And he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that he craved. The fairy doll had waved a wand with her rag-stuffed hand, and now, wherever he might go, the enchanted palaces with shining foot rests and magic red fluids and gleaming glassware would be open to him. He followed James to the door. He paused there as the flunky drew open the great mahogany portal for him to pass into the vestibule. Beyond the wrought iron gates in the dark highway, Black Riley and his two pals casually strolled, fingering under their coats the inevitably fatal weapons that were to make the reward of the ragdoll theirs. Fuzzy stopped at the millionaire's door and bethought himself. Like little sprigs of mistletoe on a dead tree, certain living green thoughts and memories began to decorate his confused mind. He was quite drunk, mind you, and the present was beginning to fade. Those wreaths and festoons of holly, with their scarlet berries making the great hall gay, where had he seen such things before? Somewhere he had known polished floors and odors of fresh flowers in winter, and—and someone was singing a song in the house that he thought he had heard before. Someone singing and playing a harp. Of course, it was Christmas. Fuzzy thought he must have been pretty drunk to have overlooked that. And then he went out of the present, and there came back to him out of some impossible, vanished and irrevocable past, a little, pure white, transient, forgotten ghost, the spirit of no bless oblige. Upon a gentleman certain things devolve. James opened the outer door. A stream of light went down the graveled walk to the iron gate. Black Riley, McCarthy, and one ear Mike saw, and carelessly drew their sinister cordon closer about the gate. With a more imperious gesture than James's master had ever used, or could ever use, Fuzzy compelled the menial to close the door. Upon a gentleman certain things devolve, especially at the Christmas season. It is customary, he said to James, the flustered, when a gentleman calls on Christmas Eve to pass the compliments of the season with the lady of the house.  I shall not move step till I pass compliments season with lady of the house. Understand? There was an argument. James lost. Fuzzy raised his voice and sent it through the house unpleasantly. I did not say he was a gentleman. He was simply a tramp being visited by a ghost. A sterling silver bell rang. James went back to answer it, leaving Fuzzy in the hall. James explained somewhere to someone. Then he came and conducted Fuzzy into the library. The lady entered a moment later. She was more beautiful and holy than any picture that Fuzzy had seen. She smiled and said something about a doll. Fuzzy didn't understand that. He remembered nothing about a doll. A footman brought in two small glasses of sparkling wine on a stamped sterling silver waiter. The lady took one. The other was handed to Fuzzy. As his fingers closed on the slender glass stem, his disabilities dropped from him for one brief moment. He straightened himself, and time, so disobliging to most of us, turned backward to accommodate Fuzzy. Forgotten Christmas ghosts, whiter than the false beards of the most opulent Chris Kringle, were rising in the fumes of Grogan's whiskey. What had the millionaire's mansion to do with the long, wanes-coated Virginia Hall, where the riders were grouped around a silver punch-bowl drinking the ancient toast of the house? And why should the patter of the cab horse's hoofs on the frozen street be, in any wise, related to the sound of the saddled hunters stamping under the shelter of the West Veranda? And what had Fuzzy to do with any of it? The lady, looking at him over her glass, let her condescending smile fade away like a false dawn. Her eyes turned serious. She saw something beneath the rags and scotch-terrier whiskers that she did not understand, but it did not matter. Fuzzy lifted his glass and smiled vacantly. "'Pardon, lady,' he said, but couldn't leave without exchanging compliments season with Lady the House. Gents principles, gentlemen, do show.' And then he began the ancient salutation that was a tradition in the house when men wore lace ruffles and powder. The blessings of another year. Fuzzy's memory failed him. The lady prompted, "'Be upon this hearth.' "'The guest?' stammered Fuzzy. And upon her, who continued the lady with a leading smile. "'Oh, cut it out,' said Fuzzy, ill-manneredly. "'I can't remember. Drink hearty!' Fuzzy had shot his arrow. They drank. The lady smiled again, the smile of her cast. James enveloped and reconducted him toward the front door. The harp music still softly drifted through the house. Outside, Black Riley breathed on his cold hands and hugged the gate. "'I wonder,' said the lady to herself, musing. "'Who?' "'But there were so many who came. I wonder whether memory is a curse or a blessing to them after they have fallen so low.' Fuzzy and his escort were nearly at the door. The lady called, "'James!' James stalked back obsequiously, leaving Fuzzy waiting unsteadily, with his brief spark of the divine fire gone. Outside, Black Riley stamped his cold feet and got a firmer grip on his section of gas pipe. "'You will conduct this gentleman,' said the lady. "'Downstairs. Then tell Lewis to get out the Mercedes and take him to whatever place he wishes to go.' End of Story 16 Compliments of the Season Story 17 of Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million by O. Henry This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Cotty, Gurney, Illinois. Story 17 A Night in New Arabia The great city of Baghdad on the subway is Calafriden. Its palaces, bazaars, cons, and byways are thronged with al-Rashid's and diver's disguises, seeking diversion and victims for their unbridled generosity. You can scarcely find a poor beggar whom they are willing to let enjoy his spoils unsuckered, nor a wrecked unfortunate upon whom they will not re-shower the means of fresh misfortune. You will hardly find anywhere a hungry one who has not had the opportunity to tighten his belt in gift libraries, nor a poor pundit who has not blushed at the holiday basket of celery-crowned turkey forced resoundingly through his door by the alamos-sinery press. So then, fearfully through the haroon-haunted streets creep the one-eyed calendars, the little hunchback and the barber's sixth brother, hoping to escape the ministrations of the roving horde of Calafoid sultans. Entertainment for many Arabian nights might be had from the histories of those who have escaped the largesse of the army of commanders of the faithful. Until dawn you might sit on the enchanted rug and listen to such stories as are told of the powerful genie, Rock F. F. Ler, who sent the forty thieves to soak up the oil-plant of Alibaba, of the good Calaf Karnagy, who gave away palaces, of the seven voyages of Sailbad, the sinner, who frequented wooden excursion steamers among the islands, of the fisherman in the bottle, of the barmasidus' boarding-house, of Aladdin's rise to wealth by means of his wonderful gas meter. But now there are being ten sultans to one share his odd. She is held too valuable to be in fear of the bow-string. In consequence, the arts of narrative languishes. And, as the lesser Califfs are hunting the happy poor and the resigned unfortunate from cover to cover, in order to heap upon them strains mercies and mysterious benefits, too often comes the report from Arabian headquarters that the captive refused to talk. This reticence, then, in the actors who perform the sad comedies of their philanthropy-scourged world, must, in a degree, account for the shortcomings of this painfully gleaned tale, which shall be called the story of the Caliph who alleviated his conscience. Old Jacob Spragens mixed for himself some scotch and lithia water at his twelve hundred dollar oak sideboard. Inspiration must have resulted from its imbibition, for immediately afterward he struck the quartered oak soundly with his fist, and shouted to the empty dining room, By the coacovans of hell, it must be that ten thousand dollars. If I can get that squared, it'll do the trick. Thus, by the commonest artifice of the trade, have gained your interest. The action of the story will now be suspended, leaving you grumpily to consider a sort of dull biography beginning fifteen years before. When Old Jacob was young Jacob, he was a breaker boy in a Pennsylvania coal mine.  Anyhow, Jacob was one. But, instead of dying of overwork at nine, and leaving his helpless parents and brothers at the mercy of the Union Stryker's Reserve Fund, he hitched up his Galeuses, put a dollar or two in a side proposition now and then, and at forty-five was worth twenty million dollars. There now, it's over. Hardly had time to yawn, did you? I've seen biographies that, but let us dissemble. I want you to consider Jacob Spraggan's Esquire. After he had arrived at the seventh stage of his career, the stages meant our first, humble origin, second, deserved promotion, third, stockholder, fourth, capitalist, fifth, trust-magnate, sixth, rich, malefactor, seventh, caliph, eighth, ex. The eighth stage shall be left for the higher mathematics. At fifty-five, Jacob retired from active business. The income of Azar was still rolling in on him from coal, iron, real estate, oil, railroads, manufactories, and corporations. But none of it touched Jacob's hands in a raw state. It was a sterilized increment, carefully cleaned and dusted and fumigated, until it arrived at its ultimate stage of untainted, spotless checks in the white fingers of his private secretary. Jacob built a three-million-dollar palace on a corner lot, fronting on Nabob Avenue, city of New Baghdad, and began to feel the mantle of the late H. A. Rashid descending upon him. Eventually Jacob slipped the mantle under his collar, tied it in a neat foreign hand, and became a licensed harrier of our Mesopotamian proletariat. When a man's income becomes so large that the butcher actually sends him the kind of stake he orders, he begins to think about his sole salvation. Now, the various stages or classes of rich men must not be forgotten. The capitalist can tell you to a dollar the amount of his wealth. The trust magnate estimates it. The rich malo factor hands you a cigar and denies that he has bought the P.D. and Q. The caliph merely smiles and talks about Hammerstein and the musical lasses. There is a record of tremendous altercation at breakfast in a where-to-dine well tavern between a magnate and his wife. The rift within the loot being that the wife calculated their fortune at a figure of three million dollars higher than did her future divorcee.  After all, we are all human, Count Tolstoy, R. Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us. Don't lose heart because the story seems to be degenerating into a sort of moral essay for intellectual readers. There will be dialogue and stage business pretty soon. When Jacob first began to compare the eyes of needles with the camels in the zoo, he decided upon organized charity. He had his secretary send a check for one million to the Universal Benevolent Association of the Globe. You may have looked down through a grating in front of a decayed warehouse for a nickel that you had dropped through, but that is neither here nor there. The association acknowledged receipt of his favor of the twenty-fourth U.L.T. with enclosure, as stated. Separated by a double line, but still mighty close to the matter under the caption of Audities of the Days News in an Evening Newspaper, Jacob Spragans read that one, Jasper Sparges, had donated one hundred thousand dollars to the U.B.A. of G. A camel may have a stomach for each day in the week, but I dare not venture to accord him whiskers, for fear of the great displeasure at Washington. But if he have whiskers, surely not one of them will seem to have been inserted in the eye of a needle by that effort of that rich man to enter the K of H. The right is reserved to reject any and all bids, signed S. Peter, Secretary and Gatekeeper. Next, Jacob selected the best endowed college he could scare up and presented it with a two hundred thousand dollar laboratory. The college did not maintain a scientific course, but it accepted the money and built an elaborate lavatory instead, which was no diversion of funds so far as Jacob ever discovered. The faculty met and invited Jacob to come over and take his ABC degree. Before sending the invitation, they smiled, cut out the sea, added the proper punctuation marks, and all was well. While walking on the campus before being Captain Gound, Jacob saw two professors strolling nearby. Their voices, long adapted to indoor acoustics, undesignedly reached his ear. There goes the latest chevalier the industry, said one of them, to buy a sleeping powder from us, he gets his degree tomorrow. In for au conscienté, said the other, let's eave off a brick out of him. Jacob ignored the Latin, but the brick pleasantry was not too hard for him. There was no Mandragora in the honorary draft of learning that he had bought. That was before the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act. Jacob weiried of philanthropy on a large scale. If I could see folks made happier, he said to himself, if I could see him myself and hear him express their gratitude for what I'd done for him, it would make me feel better. This donating funds to institutions and societies is about as sad as factory is dropping money into a broken slot machine. So Jacob followed his nose, which led him through unswept streets to the homes of the poorest. The very thing, said Jacob, I will charter two river steamboats, pack them full of these unfortunate children and, say, ten thousand dolls and drums and a thousand freezers of ice cream, and give them a delightful outing up the sound. The sea breezes on that trip ought to blow the taint off some of this money that keeps coming in faster than I can work it off my mind.  Words came out of the post office slit, smooth, husky words with gloves on them, but sounding as if they might turn to bare knuckles any moment. Say, sport, do you know where you are at? Well, this is Michael Grady's district you're butting into. See, Mike's got the stomachache privilege for every kid in this neighborhood. See, and there's any picnics or red balloons to be doubted out here. Mike's money pays for him. See, don't you bud in or something will be handed to you. Used to settlers and reformers with your sociologies and your millionaire detectives have got this district in a hell of a fix anyhow. Who is your college students and professors roughhousing the soda water stands and them rubber neck coaches fill in the streets. The folks down here are afraid to go out of the houses. Now you leave them to Mike. Dave belongs to him and he knows how to handle them. Keep on your own side of the town.  Or do you want a scrap with Michael Grady for DeSanta Claus Belt in this district? Clearly that spot in the moral vineyard was preempted. So Caleb Spragans menaced no more people in the bazaars of the east side. To keep down his growing surplus, he doubled his donations to organized charity, presented the YMCA of his native town, with a $10,000 collection of butterflies, and sent a check to the famine sufferers in China big enough to buy new emerald eyes and diamond filled teeth for all their gods. But none of these charitable acts seem to bring peace to the Caleb's heart. He tried to get a personal note into his benefactions by tipping bellboys and waiters ten and twenty dollar bills. He got well snickered at and derided for that by the minions who, except with respect, gratuities commensurate to the service performed. He sought out an ambitious and talented but poor young woman and bought for her the star part in a new comedy. He might have gotten rid of $50,000 more of his cumbersome money in this philanthropy if he had not neglected to write letters to her. But she lost the suit for lack of evidence, while his capital still kept piling up, and his opticos nidolorum camolibus, or rich man's disease, was unreleaved. In Caleb Spragun's $3,000,000 home lived his sister Henrietta, who used to cook for the coal miners in a twenty-five cent eating-house in Coke Town, Pennsylvania, and who now would have offered John Mitchell only two fingers of her hand to shake, and his daughter Celia, nineteen, back from boarding school and from being polished off by private instructors in the restaurant languages, and those etudes and things. Celia is the heroine. Lest the artist's delineation of her charms on this very page humbug your fancy, take from me her authorized description. She was a nice looking, awkward, loud, rather bashful, brown-haired girl, with a shallow complexion, bright eyes, and a perpetual smile. She had a wholesome, Spragun's inherited love for plain food, loose clothing, and the society of the lower classes. She had too much health and youth to feel the burden of wealth. She had a wide mouth that kept the peppermint pepsin tablets, rattling like hail from the slot machine, wherever she went. And she could whistle horn pipes. Keep this picture in mind, and let the artist do his worst. Celia looked out of her window one day, and gave her heart to the grocer's young man. The receiver thereof was at that moment engaged in conceding immortality to his horse, and calling down upon him the ultimate fate of the wicked. So he did not notice the transfer. The horse should stand still when you are lifting a crate of strictly new-laid eggs out of the wagon. Young lady reader, you would have liked that grocer's young man yourself, but you wouldn't have given him your heart, because you are saving it for a riding-master, or a shoe manufacturer with a torped liver, or something quiet but rich in gray tweeds at Palm Beach. Oh, I know about it. So I am glad the grocer's young man was for Celia, and not for you. The grocer's young man was slim and straight and as confident and easy in his movements as the man in the back of the magazines, who wears the new frictionless roller suspenders. He wore a gray bicycle cap on the back of his head, and his hair was straw-colored and curly, and his sunburned face looked like one that smiled a good deal when he was not preaching the doctrine of everlasting punishment to delivery wagon horses. He slung imported A-1 fancy groceries about, as though they were only the stuff he delivered at boarding houses, and when he picked up his whip, your mind instantly recalled Mr. Tackett and his air with the buttonless foils. Tradesmen delivered their goods at a side gate at the rear of the house. The grocer's wagon came about ten in the morning. For three days Celia watched the driver when he came, finding something new each time to admire in the lofty and almost contemptuous way he had of tossing around the choicest gifts of Pomona series in the canning factories. Then she consulted Annette. To be explicit, Annette McCorkle, the second housemaid who deserves a paragraph herself. Annette fletcherized large numbers of romantic novels, which she obtained at a free public library branch, donated by one of the biggest caliphs in the business. She was Celia's side-kicker in Chum, though Aunt Henrietta didn't know it. You may hazard a bean or two. Oh, canary-bird seed! exclaimed Annette. Ain't it a quarken situation? You're an heiress and falling in love with him on sight. He's a sweet boy, too, and above his business.  He never pays no attention to me. He will to me, said Celia. Riches, began Annette, unsheathing the not unjustifiable feminine sting. Oh, you're not so beautiful, said Celia with her wide disarming smile.  That's fair. Now I want you to lend me one of your caps and an apron, Annette. Oh, marshmallow's! cried Annette. I see. Ain't it lovely? It's just like Lerlene, the left-handed, or a button-homemaker's wrongs. I'll bet he'll turn out to be a count. There was a long hallway, or passageway, as they called it in the land of the kernels, with one side lattice, running along the rear of the house. The grocer's young man went through this to deliver his goods. One morning he passed a girl in there, with shining eyes, sallow complexion, and wide, smiling mouth, wearing a maids cap and apron. But as he was combered with a basket of early drum-head lettuce and trophy tomatoes, and three bunches of asparagus, and six bottles of the most expensive queen olives, he saw no more than that she was one of the maids. But on his way out, he came up behind her, and she was whistling, Fisher's hornpipe, so loudly, and clearly, that all the picolos in the world should have disjointed themselves and crept into their cases for shame. The grocer's young man stopped, and pushed back his cap until it hung on his collar button behind. "'That's out of sight, kid,' said he. "'My name is Celia, if you please,' said the whistler, dazzling him with a three-inch smile. "'That's all right. I'm Thomas MacLeod. What part of the house do you work in?' "'I'm the—the second parlor maid.' "'Do you know the Falling Waters?' "'No,' said Celia. "'We don't know anybody. We got rich too quick. That is, Mr. Spraggins did.' "'I'll make you acquainted,' said Thomas MacLeod. "'It's a stress-pee, the first cousin to a hornpipe.'" If Celia's whistling put the picolos out of commission, Thomas MacLeod's surely made the biggest flutes hunt their holes. He could actually whistle base. When he stopped, Celia was ready to jump into his delivery-wagon and ride with him clear to the end of the pier and onto the ferry-boat of the Sharon Line. "'I'll be around to-morrow at ten-fifteen,' said Thomas, with some spinach in a case of carbonic. "'I'll practice that, what you may call it,' said Celia. "'I can whistle a fine second.'" The processes of courtship are personal and do not belong to general literature. They should be chronicled in detail only in advertisements of iron tonics and in the secret bylaws of the woman's auxiliary of the ancient order of the rat trap. But genteel writing may contain a description of certain stages of its progress without intruding upon the province of the X-ray or of parked policemen. A day came when Thomas MacLeod and Celia lingered at the end of the Lattice's passage. "'16 a week isn't much,' said Thomas, letting his cap rest on his shoulder blades. Celia looked through the Lattice's work and whistled a dead march. Shopping with Aunt Henrietta the day before, she had paid that much for a dozen handkerchiefs. "'Maybe I'll get a raise next month,' said Thomas. "'I'll be around to-morrow at the same time, with a bag of flour and the laundry soap.' "'All right,' said Celia. "'Anette's married cousin pays only twenty dollars a month for a flat in the Bronx.' Never for a moment did she count on the Spragun's money. She knew Aunt Henrietta's invincible pride of caste and Pa's mightiness as a colossus of cash, and she understood that if she chose Thomas, she and her grosser's young man might go whistle for a living. Another day came. Thomas, violating the dignity of Nabob Avenue with, the Devil's Dream, whistled keenly between his teeth. "'Raised to 18 a week yesterday,' he said. Been pricing flats around Morningside. "'You want to start untying those apron strings and unpinning that cap, old girl?' "'Oh, Tommy,' said Celia with her broadest smile. "'Won't that be enough? I got Betty to show me how to make a cottage pudding. I guess we could call it a flat pudding if we wanted to.' "'And tell no lie,' said Thomas. "'And I can sweep and polish and dust. Of course, a parlor maid learns that, and we could whistle duets of evenings.' The old man said he'd raise me to twenty at Christmas, if Brian couldn't think of any harder name to call a Republican than a postponer,' said the grocer's young man. "'I can sew,' said Celia, and I know that you must make the gas company's man show his badge when he comes to look at the meter, and I know how to put up quince jam and window curtains. "'Boy, you're all right, Cel. Yes, I believe you can pull it off on eighteen.'" As he was jumping into the wagon, the second parlor maid braved discovery by running swiftly to the gate. "'And, oh, Tommy, I forgot,' she called softly. "'I believe I could make your neckties.' "'Forget it,' said Thomas, decisively. "'And another thing,' she continued. "'Sliced cucumbers at night will drive away cockroaches.' "'And sleep, too, you bet,' said Mr. MacLeod. "'Yes, I believe if I have a delivery to make on the west side this afternoon, I'll look in at a furniture store I know over there.'" It was just as the wagon dashed away that old Jacob Spragans struck the sideboard with his fist and made the mysterious remark about ten thousand dollars that you perhaps remember. Which justifies the reflection that some stories, as well as life, and puppies thrown into wells, move around in circles, painfully but briefly we must shed light on Jacob's words. The foundation of his fortune was made when he was twenty. A poor coal-digger, ever hear of a rich one, had saved a dollar or two and bought a small tract of land on a hillside on which he tried to raise corn, not a nubbin. Jacob, whose nose was a divining rod, told him there was a vein of coal beneath. He bought the land from the miner for one hundred and twenty five dollars and sold it a month afterward for ten thousand dollars. Luckily the miner had enough left of his sale money to drink himself into a black coat opening in the back as soon as he heard the news. And so for forty years afterward we find Jacob illuminated with the sudden thought that if he could make restitution of this sum of money to the heirs or signs of the unlucky miner, respite and the penthe might be his. And now must come swift action, for we have here some four thousand words and not a tear shed and never a pistol, joke, safe, nor bottle cracked. Old Jacob hired a dozen private detectives to find the heirs, if any existed, of the old miner, Hugh MacLeod. Get the point? Of course I know as well as you do that Thomas is going to be the heir. I might have concealed the name, but why always hold back your mystery till the end? I say, let it come near the middle, so people can stop reading there if they want to. After the detectives had trailed false clues about three thousand dollars, I mean miles, they cornered Thomas at the grocery and got his confession that Hugh MacLeod had been his grandfather, and that there were no other heirs. They arranged a meeting for him and old Jacob one morning in one of their offices. Jacob liked the young man very much. He liked the way he looked straight at him when he talked, and the way he threw his bicycle cap over the top of a rose colored vase on the center table. There was a slight flaw in Jacob's system of restitution. He did not consider that the act, to be perfect, should include confession, so he represented himself to be the agent of the purchaser of the land who had sent him to refund the sale price for the ease of his conscience. Well, sir, said Thomas. This sounds to me like an illustrated postcard from South Boston, with, we're having a good time here, written on it. I don't know the game. Is this ten thousand dollars money, or do I have to save so many coupons to get it? Old Jacob counted out to him twenty five hundred dollar bills. That was better, he thought, than a check. Thomas put them thoughtfully into his pocket. Grandfather's best thanks, he said, to the party who sends it. Jacob talked on, asking him about his work, how he spent his leisure time, and what his ambitions were. The more he saw and heard of Thomas, the better he liked him. He had not met many young men in Baghdad, so frank and wholesome. I would like to have you visit my house, he said. I might help you in investing or laying out your money. I am a very wealthy man. I have a daughter about grown. And I would like for you to know her. There are not many young men I would care to have call on her. I'm obliged, said Thomas. I'm not much at making calls. It's generally the side entrance for mine. And besides, I'm engaged to a girl that has the Delaware peach crop killed in the blossom. She's a parlor maid in a house where I deliver goods. She won't be working there much longer, though. Say, don't forget to give your friend my grandfather's best regards. You'll excuse me now. My wagon's outside with a lot of green stuff that's got to be delivered. See you again, sir. At eleven, Thomas delivered some bunches of parsley and lettuce at the Spragans mansion. Thomas was only twenty-two, so as he came back, he took out the handful of five hundred dollar bills and waved them carelessly. Annette took a pair of eyes as big as creamed onion to the cook. I told you he was a count, she said, after relating. He never would carry on with me. What you say he showed money, said the cook. Hundreds of thousands, said Annette, carried around loose in his pockets, and he never would look at me. It was paid to me today. Thomas was explaining to Celia outside. It came from my grandfather's estate. Say, Seal, what's the use of waiting now? I'm going to quit the job tonight. Why can't we get married next week? Tommy, said Celia. I'm no parlor maid. I've been fooling you. I miss Spragans. Celia, Spragans. The newspapers say I'll be worth forty million dollars some day. Thomas pulled his cap down straight on his head for the first time since we have known him. I suppose then, said he, I suppose then you'll not be marrying me next week. But you can whistle. No, said Celia. I'll not be marrying you next week. My father would never let me marry a grocer's clerk. But I'll marry you tonight, Tommy, if you say so. Old Jacob Spragans came home at 9.30 p.m. in his motor car. The make of it you will have to surmise sorrowfully. I am giving you unsubsidized fiction. Had it been a streetcar, I could have told you its voltage and the number of wheels it had. Jacob called for his daughter. He had bought a ruby necklace for her, and wanted to hear her say what a kind, thoughtful, dear old dad he was. There was a brief search in the house for her, and then came Annette, glowing with the pure flame of truth and loyalty, well mixed with envy and histrionics. Oh, sir, said she, wondering if she should kneel. Miss Celia's just this minute running away out of the side gate with a young man to be married. I couldn't stop her, sir. They went in a cab. What young man? Roared, old Jacob. A millionaire, if you please, sir. A rich nobleman in disguise. He carries his money with him, and the red peppers and the onions was only to blind us, sir. He never did seem to take to me. Jacob rushed out in time to catch his car. The chauffeur had been delayed by trying to light a cigarette in the wind. Here, Gaston or Mike, or whatever you call yourself, scoot around the corner quicker than blazes and see if you can see a cab. If you do, run it down.   Pa! shrieked Celia. Grandfather's remorseful friends agent, said Thomas. Wonder what's on his conscience now. A thousand thunders, said Gaston or Mike, I have no other match. Young man, said old Jacob severely. How about that parlor mage you were engaged to? A couple of years afterward, old Jacob went into the office of his private secretary. The amalgamated missionary society solicits a contribution of $30,000 toward the conversion of the Koreans. Said the secretary. Pass them up, said Jacob. The University of Plumville writes that its yearly endowment fund of $50,000 that you bestowed upon it is past due. Tell them it's been cut out. The Scientific Society of Clam Cove, Long Island, asks for $10,000 to buy alcohol to preserve specimens. Wastebasket. The Society for Providing Healthful Recreation for Working Girls wants $20,000 from you to lay out a golf course. Tell them to see an undertaker. Cut them all out, went on Jacob. I've quit being a good thing. I need every dollar I can scrape or save. I want you to write to the directors of every company that I'm interested in and recommend a 10% cut in salaries. And say, I noticed half a cake of soap lying in a corner of the hall as I came in. I want you to speak to the scrub woman about waste. I've got no money to throw away. And say, we've got vinegar pretty well in hand, haven't we? The Globe, Spice, and Seasons Company, said secretary, controls the market at present. Raise vinegar two cents a gallon. Notify all our branches. Suddenly, Jacob Spragens' plump red face relaxed into a pulpy grin. He walked over to the secretary's desk and showed a small red mark on his thick forefinger. Bid it, he said. Darned if he didn't, and he hadn't had the two three weeks. Jakey MacLeod, my silliest kid. He'll be worth a hundred millions by the time he's 21 if I can pile it up for him. As he was leaving, old Jacob turned at the door and said, Better make that vinegar raise three cents instead of two. I'll be back in an hour and sign the letters. The true history of the caliph Haroun al-Rashid relates that, toward the end of his reign, he worried of philanthropy and caused, to be beheaded, all his former favorites and companions of his Arabian knights rambles. Happy are we, in these days of enlightenment, when the only death warrant the caliphs can serve on us is in the form of a tradesman's bill. End of Story 17. A Night in New Arabia. Story 18 of Strictly Business. More stories of the Four Million by O. Henry. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Caudy, Gurney, Illinois. Story 18. The Girl and the Habit. Habit. A tendency or aptitude acquired by custom or frequent repetition. The critics have assailed every source of inspiration, save one. To that one we are driven for our moral theme. When we levied upon the masters of old, they gleefully dug up the parallels to our columns. When we strove to set forth real life, they reproached us for trying to imitate Henry George, George Washington, Washington Irving, and Irving Batchelor. We wrote of the West and the East, and they accused us of both Jesse and Henry James. We wrote from our heart, and they said something about a disordered liver. We took a text from Matthew, or, er, yes, Deuteronomy, but the preachers were hammering away at the inspiration idea before we could get into type. So, driven to the wall, we go for our subject matter to the reliable, old, moral, unassailable, vatimicum, the unabridged dictionary. Ms. Merriam was a cashier at Hinkels. Hinkels is one of the big downtown restaurants. It is in what the papers call the Financial District. Each day from 12 o'clock to 2, Hinkels was full of hungry customers, messenger boys, stenographers, brokers, owners of mining stock, promoters, inventors with patents pending, and also people with money. The cashiership at Hinkels was no sin assure. Hinkel egged and toasted and griddle caked and coffied, a good many customers, and he lunched, as good a word as dined, many more. It might be said that Hinkels' breakfast crowd was a contingent, but his luncheon patronage amounted to a horde. Ms. Merriam sat on a stool at a desk enclosed on three sides by a strong, high fencing of woven brass wire. Through an arched opening at the bottom, he thrust your waiter's check and the money, while your heart went pit-a-pat. For Ms. Merriam was lovely and capable. She could take forty-five cents out of a two-dollar bill and refuse an offer of marriage before you could, next, lost your chance, please don't shove. She could keep cool and collected while she collected your check, give you the correct change, win your heart, indicate the toothpick stand, and rate you to a quarter of a cent better than Bradstreet could to a thousand in less time than it takes to pepper an egg with one of Hinkel's casters. There is an old and dignified allusion to the fierce light that beats upon a throne. The light that beats upon the young lady cashier's cage is also something fierce. The other fellow is responsible for the slang. Every male patron of Hinkel's, from the ADT boys up to the curb-stone brokers, adored Ms. Merriam. When they paid their checks, they wooed her with every while known to Cupid's art. Between the meshes of the brass railing, went smiles, winks, compliments, tender vows, invitations to dinner, size, languishing looks, and merry banter that was wafted pointedly back by the gifted Ms. Merriam. There is no coin of vantage more effective than the position of young lady cashier. She sits there, easily queen of the court of commerce. She is duchess of dollars and duvours, countess of compliments and coin, leading lady of love and luncheon.  You count the cheery word or two that she tosses you, as misers count their treasures, and you pocket the change for a five, uncomputed. Perhaps the brass-bound inaccessibility multiplies her charms. Anyhow, she is a shirt-waisted angel, immaculate, trim, manicured, seductive, bright-eyed, ready, alert, psyche, seercy, and aughty in one, separating you from your circulating medium after your sirloin medium. The young men who broke bread at Hinkels never settled with the cashier without an exchange of badinage and open compliment. Many of them went to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints of theater tickets and chocolates. The older men spoke plainly of orange blossoms, generally withering the tentative petals by after allusions to Harlem flats. One broker, who had been squeezed by copper, proposed to Miss Merriam more regularly than he ate. During a brisk lunch-and-hour, Miss Merriam's conversation, while she took money for checks, would run something like this. Good morning, Mr. Haskins. Sir, it's natural, thank you. Don't be quite so fresh. Hello, Johnny. Ten, fifteen, twenty. Chase along now or they'll take the letters off your cap. Beg pardon, count it again, please. Oh, don't mention it. Vodville? Thanks. Not on your moving picture. I was to see Carter and had a gabbler on Wednesday night with Mr. Simmons. Excuse me, I thought that was a quarter. Twenty-five and seventy-fives a dollar. Got that ham and cabbage habit yet? I see, Billy. Who are you addressing? Say, you'll get all that's coming to you in a minute. Oh, fudge! Mr. Baskett, you're always fooling. No? Well, maybe I'll marry you some day. Three, four, and sixty-five is five. Kindly keep them remarks to yourself, if you please. Ten cents? Excuse me, the check calls for seventy. Well, maybe it is a one instead of a seven. Oh, do you like it that way, Mr. Saunders? Some prefer a pump. But they say this Cleo de Meridae does suit refined features. And ten is fifty. Hike along there, buddy. Don't take this for a Coney Island ticket booth. Huh? Why, Macy's. Don't it fit nice? Oh, no, it isn't too cool. These lightweight fabrics is all the go this season. Come again, please. That's the third time you've tried to—what? Forget it. That led quarters an old friend of mine. Sixty-five? Must have had your salary raised, Mr. Wilson. I seen you on Sixth Avenue Tuesday afternoon, Mr. De Forest. Swell? Oh, my. Who is she? What's the matter with it? Why, it ain't money. What? Columbian half? Well, this ain't South America. Yes, I'd like the mixed best. Friday, awfully sorry. But I take my jujitsu lessons on Friday. Thursday, then. Thanks. That's sixteen times I've been told that this morning. I guess I must be beautiful. Got that out, please. Who do you think I am? Why, Mr. Westbrook. Do you really think so? The idea. One, eighty and twenty's a dollar. Thank you ever so much, but I don't ever go automobile riding with gentlemen. Your aunt? Well, that's different, perhaps. Please don't get fresh. Your check was fifteen cents, I believe. Kindly step aside and let— Hello, Ben. Coming around Thursday evening? There's a gentleman going to send around a box of chocolates, and forty and sixty is a dollar, and one is two. About the middle of one afternoon, the dizzy goddess Vertigo, whose other name is Fortune, suddenly smote an old, wealthy, and eccentric banker while he was walking past Hinkels, on his way to a streetcar. A wealthy and eccentric banker who rides in streetcars is— Move up, please. There are others. A Samaritan, a Pharisee, a man, and a policeman, who were first on the spot, lifted banker McRamsie and carried him into Hinkels' restaurant. When the aged but indestructible banker opened his eyes, he saw a beautiful vision bending over him, with a pitiful, tender smile, bathing his forehead with beef tea, and chafing his hands with something frappé out of a chafing-dish. Mr. McRamsie sighed, lost a vest button, gazed with deep gratitude upon his fair preserverous, and then recovered consciousness. To the seaside library, all who are anticipating a romance, banker McRamsie had an aged and respected wife, and his sentiments toward Miss Merriam were fatherly. He talked to her for half an hour with interest, not the kind that went with his talks during business hours. The next day he brought Mrs. McRamsie down to see her. The old couple were childless. They had only a married daughter living in Brooklyn. To make a short story shorter, the beautiful cashier won the hearts of the good old couple. They came to Hinkels again and again. They invited her to their old-fashioned, but splendid home in one of the East Seventies. Miss Merriam's winning loveliness, her sweet frankness, and impulsive heart took them by storm. They said a hundred times that Miss Merriam reminded them so much of their lost daughter. The Brooklyn matron, Nee Ramsie, had the figure of Buddha and a face like the ideal of an art photographer. Miss Merriam was a combination of curves, smiles, rose leaves, pearls, satin, and hair tonic posters. Enough of the fatuity of parents. A month after the worthy couple became acquainted with Miss Merriam, she stood before Hinkel one afternoon and resigned her cashiership. They're going to adopt me, she told the bereft restaurateur. They're funny old people, but regular deers, and a swell home they have got. Say, Hinkel, there isn't any use of talking. I'm on the ala cart to wear brown duds and goggles in a whiz wagon, or marry a duke at least. Still, I somehow hate to break out of the old cage. I've been cashiering so long I feel funny doing anything else. I'll miss joshing the fellows awfully when they line up to pay for the buckwheat sand, but I can't let this chance slide. And they're awfully good, Hinkel. I know I'll have a swell time. You owe me nine sixty-two and a half for the week. Cut out the half if it hurts you, Hinkel. And they did. Miss Merriam became Miss Rosa McRamsie, and she graced the transition. Beauty is only skin deep, but the nerves lie very near to the skin. Nerve, but just here will you oblige by perusing again the quotation with which this story begins? The McRamsies poured out money like domestic champagne to polish their adopted one. Milleners, dancing masters, and private tutors got it. Miss, er, McRamsie was grateful, loving, and tried to forget Hinkels. To give ample credit to the adaptability of the American girl, Hinkels did fade from her memory and speech most of the time. Not everyone will remember when the Earl of Heightsbury came to East 70 Street, America. He was only a fair to medium Earl, without debts, and he created little excitement. But you will surely remember the evening when the Daughters of Benevolence held their bazaar in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. For you were there, and you wrote a note to Fanny on the hotel paper, and mailed it, just to show her that—you did not? Very well. That was the evening the baby was sick, of course. At the bazaar the McRamsies were prominent. Ms. Mer, or McRamsie, was exquisitely beautiful. The Earl of Heightsbury had been very attentive to her, since he dropped in to have a look at America. At the charity bazaar, the affair was supposed to be going to be pulled off to a finish. And Earl is as good as a duke, better. His standing may be lower, but his outstanding accounts are also lower. Our ex-young lady cashier was assigned to a booth. She was expected to sell worthless articles to knobs and snobs at exorbitant prices. The proceeds of the bazaar were to be used for giving the poor children of the slums a Christmas stint. Say, did you ever wonder where they get the other three hundred and sixty-four? Ms. McRamsie, beautiful, palpitating, excited, charming, radiant, fluttered about in her booth. An imitation brass network with a little arched opening fenced her in. Along came the Earl, assured, delicate, accurate, admiring, admiring greatly, and faced the open wicket. You look charming, you know. Pond my words you do, my dear," he said beguilingly. Ms. McRamsie whirled around. Cut that joshing out, she said, coolly and briskly. Who do you think you were talking to? Your check, please. O Lordy! Patrons of the bazaar became aware of a commotion and pressed around a certain booth. The Earl of Heightsbury stood nearby, pulling a pale blonde and puzzled whisker. Ms. McRamsie is fainted, someone explained. End of Story Eighteen. The Girl and the Habit. Story Nineteen of Strictly Business. More Stories of the Four Million by O. Henry. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Coddy, Gurney, Illinois. Story Nineteen. The Proof of the Pudding. Spring winked a vitreous optic at editor Westbrook of the Minerva magazine and deflected him from his course. He had lunched at his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which is by way of saying that he turned eastward in 26th Street, safely forted the spring frauchette of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, and meandered along the walks of Budding Madison Square. The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed a pastoral. The color motif was green, the presiding shade at the creation of man and vegetation. The callow grass between the walks was the color of vertigree, a poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that had breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting tree buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the garnishings of the fish-course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky above was of that pale aquamarine tint that ballroom poets rhyme with true and sue and coup. The one natural and frank color visible was the ostensible green of the newly painted benches, a shade between the color of a pickled cucumber and that of a last year's fast black cravenette raincoat. But to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the landscape appeared a masterpiece. And now, whether you are of those who rush in or of the gentle concourse that fears to tread, you must follow in a brief invasion of the editor's mind. Editor Westbrook's spirit was contented and serene. The April number of the Minerva had sold its entire edition before the tenth day of the month. A news dealer in Keokuk had written that he could have sold fifty copies more if he had them. The owners of the magazine had raised his, the editor's, salary. He had just installed in his home a jewel of a recently imported cook who was afraid of policemen. And the morning papers had published in full a speech he had made at a publisher's banquet. Also there were echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of a splendid song that his charming young wife had sung to him before he left his uptown apartment that morning. She was taking enthusiastic interest in her music of late, practicing early and diligently. When he had complimented her on the improvement in her voice, she had fairly hugged him for joy at his praise. He felt, too, the benign, tonic medicament of the trained nurse, spring, tripping softly down the wards of the convalescent city. While editor Westbrook was sauntering between the rows of park benches, already filling with vagrants in the guardians of lawless childhood, he felt his sleeve grasped and held. Suspecting that he was about to be panhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, and saw that his captor was Daw, Shackleford Daw, dingy, almost ragged, the gentile, scarcely visible in him, through the deeper lines of the shabby. While the editor is pulling himself out of his surprise, a flashlight biography of Daw is offered. He was a fiction writer, and one of Westbrook's old acquaintances. At one time they might have called each other old friends. Daw had some money in those days, and lived in a decent apartment house near Westbrook's. The two families often went to theaters and dinners together. Mrs. Daw and Mrs. Westbrook became dearest friends. Then one day a little tentacle of the octopus, just to amuse itself, engurgitated Daw's capital, and he moved to the Grimersie Park neighborhood, where one, for a few grotes per week, may sit upon one's trunk under eight branched chandeliers and opposite Carrara marble mantles and watch the mice play upon the floor. Daw thought to live by writing fiction. Now and then he sold a story. He submitted many to Westbrook. The Minerva printed one or two of them. The rest were returned. Westbrook sent a careful and conscientious personal letter with each rejected manuscript, pointing out in detail his reasons for considering it unavailable. Editor Westbrook had his own clear conception of what constituted good fiction. So had Daw. Mrs. Daw was mainly concerned about the constituents of the scanty dishes of food that she managed to scrape together. One day Daw had been spouting to her about the excellencies of certain French writers. At dinner they sat down to a dish that a hungry schoolboy could have encompassed at a gulp. Daw commented. It's ma poissant hash, said Mrs. Daw. It may not be art, but I do wish you would do a five-course Myrian Crawford cereal with an Ella Wheeler-Wilcox sonnet for dessert. I'm hungry. As far as this from success was Shackleford Daw when he plucked editor Westbrook's sleeve in Madison Square. That was the first time the editor had seen Daw in several months. Why, Shack, is this you? said Westbrook. Somewhat awkwardly, for the form of his phrase seemed to touch upon the other's changed appearance. Sit down for a minute, said Daw, tugging at his sleeve. This is my office. I can't come to yours looking as I do. Oh, sit down. You won't be disgraced. Those half-plucked birds on the other benches will take you for a swell porch climber. They won't know you are only an editor. Smoke, Shack? said editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously upon the virulent green bench. He always yielded gracefully when he did yield. Daw snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or a girl pecks at a chocolate cream. I have just, began the editor. Oh, I know, don't finish, said Daw. Give me a match. You have just ten minutes to spare. How did you manage to get past my office boy and invade my sanctum? There he goes now, throwing his club at a dog that couldn't read the keep-off-the-grass signs. How goes the writing? asked the editor. Look at me, said Daw, for your answer. Now don't put on that embarrassed, friendly, but honest look and ask me why I don't get a job as a wine agent or cab driver. I'm in the fight to a finish. I know I can write good fiction and I'll force you fellows to admit it yet. I'll make you change the spelling of regrets to C-H-E-Q-U-E before I'm done with you. Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetly sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression. The copyrighted expression of the editor be ligared by the unavailable contributor. Have you read the last story I sent you? The Alarm of the Soul? asked Daw. Carefully, I hesitated over that story, Shaq. Really, I did. It had some good points. I was writing you a letter to send with it when it goes back to you. I regret. Never mind the regrets, said Daw, grimly. There's neither Savne or Sting in him anymore. What I want to know is why. Come now, out with the good points first. The story, said Westbrook, deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, is written around an almost-original plot. Characterization, the best you've done. Construction, almost as good, except for a few weak joints, which might be strengthened by a few changes and touches. It was a good story, except— I can write English, can't I? Interrupted Daw. I have always told you, said the editor, that you had a style. Then the trouble is— Same old thing, said editor Westbrook. You work up to your climax like an artist, and then you turn yourself into a photographer. I don't know what form of obstinate madness possesses you, but that is what you do with everything that you write. No, I will retract the comparison with the photographer. Now and then, photography, in spite of its impossible perspective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth. But you spoil every denoimance by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to the literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses and paint them in the high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed envelopes at your door. Oh, fiddles and footlights! cried Daw derisively. You've got that old sawmill drama kink in your brain yet. When the man with the black mustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie, you are bound to have the mother kneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say, May I have in witness that I will rest neither night nor day till the heartless villain that has stolen me child, feels the weight of another's vengeance. Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency. I think, said he, that in real life the woman would express herself in those words or in very similar ones. Not in a six hundred nights run anywhere but on the stage, said Daw hotly. I'll tell you what she'd say in real life. She'd say, what? Bessie led away by a strange man. Good Lord! It's one trouble after another. Get my other hat. I must hurry around to the police station. Why wasn't somebody looking after her? I'd like to know. For God's sake, get out of my way or I'll never get ready. Not that hat, the brown one with the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy. She's usually shy of strangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy, how I'm upset. That's the way she'd talk, continued Daw. People in real life don't fly into heroics in blank firsts at emotional crises. They simply can't do it. If they talk at all on such occasions, they draw from the same vocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up their words and ideas a little more. That's all. Shaq, said editor Westbrook impressively, did you ever pick up the mangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a streetcar, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the distracted mother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief and despair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips? I never did, said Daw. Did you? Well, no, said editor Westbrook with a slight frown. But I can well imagine what she would say. So can I, said Daw. And now the fitting time had come for editor Westbrook to play the oracle and silence his opinionated contributor. It was not for an unarrived fictionist to dictate words to be uttered by the heroes and heroines of the Minerva magazine, contrary to the theories of the editor thereof. My dear Shaq, said he, if I know anything of life I know that every sudden, deep, and tragic emotion in the human heart calls forth an apposite, concordant, conformable, and proportionate expression of feeling. How much of this inevitable accord between expression and feeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence of art it would be difficult to say? The sublimely terrible roar of the lioness that has been deprived of her cubs is dramatically as far above her customary wine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances of leer are above the level of his senile vaporings. But it is also true that all men and women have what may be called a subconscious dramatic sense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion, a sense unconsciously acquired from literature in the stage, that prompts them to express those emotions in language befitting their importance and histrionic value. And in the name of the seven sacred saddle blankets of Sagittarius, where did the stage and literature get the stunt? asked Daw. From life, answered the editor triumphantly. The story writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently but dumbly. He was beggared for words with which to formulate adequately his dissent. On a bench nearby, a frowsy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived that his moral support was due a downtrodden brother. Punch him one, Jack. He called hoarsely to Daw. What's he come making a noise like a penny arcade for amongst gentlemen that comes into square to set and think? Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of leisure. Tell me, asked Daw with truculent anxiety, what is special faults in the alarm of the soul caused you to throw it down? When Gabriel Murray, said Westbrook, goes to his telephone and is told that his fiancee has been shot by a burglar. He says, I do not recall the exact words, but I do, said Daw.  And then to his friend, say Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make a big hole? It's kind of hard luck, ain't it? Could you give me a drink from the sideboard, Tommy? No, straight, nothing on the side. And again continued the editor without pausing for argument. When Bernice opens the letter from her husband informing her that he has fled with the manicure girl, her words are, let me see. She says, interposed the author, well, what do you think of that? Absurdly inappropriate words, said Westbrook, presenting an anticlimax, plunging the story into hopeless bathes. Worse yet, they mirror life falsely. No human being ever entered bono colloquialisms when confronted by sudden tragedy. Wrong, said Daw, closing his unshaven jaws doggedly. I say no man or woman ever spouts highfalutin' talk when they go up against a real climax. They talk naturally and a little worse. The editor rose from the bench with his air of indulgence and inside information. Say, Westbrook, said Daw, pinning him by the lapel, would you have accepted the alarm of the soul if you had believed that the actions and words of the characters were true to life in the parts of the story that we discussed? It is very likely that I would, if I believed that way, said the editor, but I have explained to you that I do not. If I could prove to you that I am right, I am sorry, Shaq, but I'm afraid I haven't time to argue any further just now. I don't want to argue, said Daw. I want to demonstrate to you from life itself that my view is the correct one. How could you do that? asked Westbrook in a surprised tone. Listen, said the writer seriously. I have thought of a way. It is important to me that my theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized as correct by the magazines. I have fought for it for three years and am down to my last dollar, with two months' rent due. I have applied the opposite of your theory, said the editor, in selecting the fiction for the Minerva magazine. The circulation has gone up from ninety thousand to four hundred thousand, said Daw. Whereas it should have been boosted to a million. You said something to me just now about demonstrating your pet theory. I will, if you give me about half an hour of your time. I'll prove to you that I am right. I'll prove it by Louise. Your wife? exclaimed Westbrook. How? Well, not exactly by her, but with her, said Daw. Now, you know how devoted and loving Louise has always been. She thinks I'm the only genuine preparation on the market that bears the old doctor's signature. She's been fonder and more faithful than ever, since I've been cast for the neglected genius part. Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life companion, agreed the editor. I remember what inseparable friends she and Mrs. Westbrook once were. We are both lucky chaps, Shaq, to have such wives. You must bring Mrs. Daw up some evening soon, and we'll have one of those informal chafing dish suppers that we used to enjoy so much. Later, said Daw, when I get another shirt, and now I'll tell you my scheme, when I was about to leave home after breakfast, if you can call tea and oatmeal breakfast, Louise told me she was going to visit her aunt in 89th Street. She said she would return at three o'clock. She was always on time to a minute. It is now, Daw glanced toward the editor's watch pocket, 27 minutes to three, said Westbrook, scanning his timepiece. We have just enough time, said Daw. We will go to my flat at once. I will write a note, address it to her, and leave it on the table where she will see it as she enters the door. You and I will be in the dining room, concealed by the portiers. In that note I'll say that I have fled from her forever, with an affinity who understands the needs of my artistic soul, as she never did. When she reads it we will observe her actions and hear her words. Then we will know which theory is the correct one. Yours or mine. Oh, never! exclaimed the editor, shaking his head. That would be inexcusably cruel. I could not consent to have Mrs. Daw's feelings played upon in such a manner. Brace up, said the writer. I guess I think as much of her as you do. It's for her benefit as well as mine. I've got to get a market for my stories in some way. It won't hurt Louise. She's healthy and sound. Her heart goes as strong as a ninety-eight cent watch. It'll last for only a minute, and then I'll step out and explain to her. You really owe it to me to give me a chance, Westbrook. Editor Westbrook, at length, yielded, though but half willingly. And in the half of him, that consented, lurked the vivisectionist that is in all of us. Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his place. Pity-tiz that there are not enough rabbits and guinea pigs to go around. The two experimenters in art left the square and hurried eastward and then to the south until they arrived in the Grimurcy neighborhood. Within its high iron railings the little park had put on its smart coat of vernal green and was admiring itself in its fountain mirror. Outside the railings the hollow square of crumbling houses, shells of a bygone gentry, leaned as if in ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of the vanished quality. Sick transit gloria herbis. A block or two north of the park, Daw steered the editor again eastward. Then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but narrow flat-house, burdened with a floridly over-decorated façade. To the fifth story they toiled, and Daw, panting, pushed his latch-key into the door of one of the front flats. When the door opened, editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, how meanly and meagerly the rooms were furnished. Get a chair if you can find one, said Daw, while I hunt up pan and ink. Hello, what's this? Here's a note from Louise. She must have left it there when she went out this morning. He picked up an envelope that lay on the center table and tore it open. He began to read the letter that he drew out of it, and, once having begun it aloud, he so read it through to the end. These are the words that editor Westbrook heard. Dear Shackelford, by the time you get this I will be about a hundred miles away and still a-going. I've got a place in the chorus of the Occidental Opera Company, and we start on the road today at twelve o'clock. I didn't want to starve to death, and so I decided to make my own living. I'm not coming back. Mrs. Westbrook is going with me. She said she was tired of living with a combination phonograph, iceberg, and dictionary, and she's not coming back either. We've been practicing the songs and dances for two months on the quiet. I hope you will be successful and get along all right. Goodbye, Louise. Da, drop the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, and cried out in a deep, vibrating voice. My God, why has thou given me this cup to drink? Since she is false, then let thy heaven's fairest gifts, faith and love, become the jesting bywords of traitors and veens. Editor Westbrook's glasses fell to the floor. The fingers of one hand fumbled with a button on his coat, as he blurted between his pale lips.   Ain't it hell, now, Shackelford, ain't it? End of Story 19, The Proof of the Pudding


Rwy'n cael ei wneud, ac mae'r next item of business this afternoon is consideration of business motion 1719 in the name of Graham Day on behalf of the Bureau, setting out revisions to this week's business. Can I ask Graham Day to move the motion? Move, Presiding Officer. Thank you very much. No one wishes to speak against the motion, therefore the question is that motion 1719 be agreed. Are we agreed? Yes. Thank you. The next item is topical questions and the first question is from Liam McArthur. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on reports that firearms police were deployed to routine incidents that did not require a weapon more than 5,000 times in the last year. Minister Ash Denham. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Police Scotland is a service where the vast majority of officers are not routinely armed. The changes to the deployment model, which was considered by the Scottish Police Authority in December 2017 and introduced last May, followed extensive consultation by Police Scotland with a wide range of organisations, including members of the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee. Those changes have allowed armed officers to utilise their core policing skills and attend incidents where speed of response or vulnerability was a key factor. The incidents referred to equate to around 0.3 per cent of the total number of incidents that Police Scotland officers attend each year. The deployment of armed officers is an operational matter for the chief constable and is overseen by the Scottish Police Authority. I spoke to the chair of the SPA today and was informed that the SPA board members had already planned to consider the first year of their revised deployment at their next board meeting, which is scheduled to take place later on this month. Liam McArthur. Minister, for that response, the minister referred to the commitment to keep Parliament and the public updated. This is indeed critical. We all recall Police Scotland adopting a fundamentally different policy in 2013, allowing firearms officers carrying weapons to do all routine duties, having received the SPA and not told anyone else. In his evidence to the Justice Committee in January, the cabinet secretary said that the community impact of the deployment model continues to be assessed. At that point, Police Scotland was considering an independent evaluation by the Scottish Institute of Policing. Has this yet been undertaken and when will it be published? That has been undertaken and this is part of the substantive papers that will go before the board for discussion at their next meeting in May. The decision to make the change was done so as a consensible use of police time in order to be able to respond to incidents where speed of response and vulnerability was a key issue. I spoke to the SPA chair, Susan Deacon, this morning and she assured me that this is being done in a proportionate way. It is important to keep in consideration that Police Scotland responds to about 1.8 million incidents per year. The responses of incidents that we are discussing right now are just 0.3 per cent. There is obviously a monitoring process that is in place to consider this. Police Scotland reports to the board regularly, they do this on a quarterly basis. As I mentioned in my previous answer, they had already planned to discuss this issue in more detail at the next board meeting. It is important to restate that we are not routinely arming police officers, but there is a proportionate approach that measures the use of police resources and is obviously subject to the proper oversight. I thank the minister for that response and assume that the report that is being prepared will indeed be published. Five of the eight legacy forces had the policy of firearm officers storing weapons in the boot of their armed response vehicles and undertaking routine duties unarmed. Weapons were only accessed when firearms were necessary or when the public or police officers were in imminent risk. The SPA refused to include that in its consultation and options back in 2014, only including visible courage, covert courage or threat to life deployment. Does the minister believe that the previous model is worthy of further consideration? I think that this is a matter for the police authority that they are and have informed them. They are keeping under review. They are obviously due to substantively look at this issue at their next board meeting and it would obviously be up to them to decide on whether they wanted to change that model at all. Just to reassure the member that we are not routinely arming police officers, it is just 0.3 per cent of incidents where armed response officers would attend. There are criteria for that as well where the police officers would be sent out by a tactical unit to issues where speed of response was important. I am sure that the member would appreciate that, at times, speed of response to things such as missing persons, incidents such as domestic violence, speed of response is of the essence. However, the SPA is keeping that issue under review and Police Scotland reports to it on a quarterly basis. I have no objection to the nearest officer who has been able to attend incidents to speed up police response. Does the minister accept that some of those deployments may have been unnecessary if the SNP hadn't slashed front-line policing? I think that the member will not be surprised to hear that I do not agree with that analysis. This change to deployment model was a measured approach in order to use capacity appropriately. It is only used in a small number of cases, as I have already said, where speed of response is important. I think that the member has just alluded in his question to the fact that he does not have an issue with the nearest unit of police officers responding to an incident. I think that we would all in the chamber agree that that is appropriate, at times, in order to keep our communities safe. Mylton McGregor. Thank you, Presiding Officer. In an earlier answer, the minister mentioned missing people. Can I ask the minister how many missing and vulnerable people have been traced or assisted by officers deployed in the armed response vehicles since their roles were extended last year? According to information provided by Police Scotland, more than 3,500 missing and vulnerable people have been traced or assisted by officers deployed in armed response vehicles since their roles were extended. These officers have provided medical assistance at over 600 incidents and dealt with more than 1,000 road traffic matters, including collisions, speeding and drink driving offences. John Finnie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The minister will be aware that there is an obligation in Police Scotland to continually assess, risk assess the situation and how they deploy officers. I am sure that she will join me in welcoming the welcome reduction in firearms-related incidents that we heard about last week. Will that be reflected in a downturn in the number of officers who are being deployed? The Government, on the one hand, says that it will not interfere in operational policing but clearly is giving the green light to more overt arming, including the use of taser. Just to reassure the member, I am sure that he is aware that there are over 17,000 police officers in Scotland. The number of armed response police is actually 524, so just to reassure the member that there is only a small proportion. I think that that equates to about 3 per cent of police officers. I am sure that the member will also welcome me in seeing the police stats this morning that showed that we have over 1,000 police officers in Scotland. That number is up since 2007, so I am sure that the member will welcome that as well. To reassure the member again, the Police Scotland reports on the issue and is keeping a close eye on it. That is reported to the Scottish Police Authority, who are reviewing it and will look at the matter in detail at their board meeting in May. 2. Monica Lennon To ask the Scottish Government whether it will agree to a public inquiry into issues relating to the collection of clinical waste and its impact on the NHS. I do not consider a public inquiry necessary, given that the Government has taken a number of steps to ensure that clinical waste continues to be collected without a negative impact on our NHS. 3. Monica Lennon's contingency measures were activated on 7 December 2018, when healthcare environmental services withdrew collection services from the majority of NHS boards. These arrangements ensure that waste is appropriately stored, collected and disposed of, in line with industry regulations and there has been no disruption to NHS services. 4. Monica Lennon I thank the Cabinet Secretary for her reply. It is disappointing that the Scottish Government is not supporting a full public inquiry. I agree with Professor Hugh Pennington, a leading expert in bacteriology, that a public inquiry should be held in the interests of patient and staff safety, taxpayers' money and to protect our NHS from failed private contracts. 5. Monica Lennon Does the Cabinet Secretary believe that she is a duty to get to the bottom of this clinical waste scandal so that it can never be repeated? The nature of the clinical waste scandal, as Ms Lennon characterises it, is that a company breached its contractual obligations to our health service in Scotland. Having done that and having failed to take up the opportunity of the additional 20 days to meet those contractual obligations, which were part of the contract in which they were afforded, our contingency measures, which we had planned for, given the difficulties that they were experiencing with NHS south of the border, were activated. Those contingency measures continue. The framework agreement was in place and was out to tender. That had to be delayed because of the change in market circumstances. A new contractor has been awarded. That new contract is effective from 1 April with the usual transitionary period and will take full effect from a date in August. With all that in mind, I do not believe that the scandal is either of this Government's making if it is such a thing or, indeed, of NHS Scotland's making. I think that all our attention should be focused on that company meeting its obligations not only to the health service in Scotland but to its employees. That is not the right focus to be made towards this Government. In terms of what Professor Pennington said, I have a great deal of respect, of course, for his expertise and his knowledge. When I look at what he said, he said, from what I have heard, I prefer to base my actions and my decisions on the basis of evidence and proven evidence. That is what I will continue to do. I thank the cabinet secretary for her further response. Unfortunately, this chamber has heard very little of the evidence. The cabinet secretary will recall that, at the start of this year, Scottish Labour asked her to pause the procurement process to bring in the contract back into the NHS. The private sector is right. The private sector has failed. The cabinet secretary has previously said that it has put the NHS at risk. Over the weekend, there have been media reports that contingency plans are costing double what the old contract costed. Perhaps the cabinet secretary can confirm if that is accurate. Given the delays, I hear what she said about the transition period, but we understand that today we are a bit behind with the contract. Given the delays and given it will cost £100 million over 10 years, will the cabinet secretary give further consideration to bringing the contract back into public hands? The contract has been awarded. To change that, it risks the Government being held in breach of contract. I am not prepared to put the Government at risk in that regard. The contract has been awarded. I do not know where Ms Lennon gets her information. We have heard that, but my understanding is that we are on track for Trudebe to take full responsibility for that contract from the date in August that has been agreed. Contingency arrangements continue, and there will be a phase transition between contingency and the new contractor. As I said when I made my statement on 23 January, I will come back to the chamber and update them, either through an inspired question or by other means, on the final cost of the contingency arrangements. I also said in that statement that contingency arrangements, by their very nature, cost more. However, the numbers that Ms Lennon is quoting are numbers that I suspect do not take account of the necessary and sensible deduction that she would make from the cost of the contingency arrangements. The cost in normal course had met her contractual obligations, which, unfortunately, she did not. Can I ask the cabinet secretary specifically about the 200 tonnes of waste that is still stored at the company's site in shorts, and ask if the liquidation of the company and its associated companies is going to have an adverse impact on the timing of the disposal of that particular waste? I am grateful to Mr Neil for that question. The recent SEPA inspections have not identified any significant environmental risk and no risk to the wellbeing of local communities, but SEPA continues to monitor the situation on both sites, both at shorts and at Dundee, on a weekly basis. On the recent liquidation of the company, I am awaiting further information as to whether or not that allows SEPA to act in a different way from the manner in which it is currently acting, and I am happy to advise the member of that once I have that additional information. Graham Simpson We have had reports of waste piling up at health centres, of it being uncollected from GP practices. Can the cabinet secretary assure us that that is not continuing? Can she say where the waste will be taken when that new contract comes into effect? The cabinet secretary has made a number of assertions and reports, all of them, when they come to my attention and have been investigated. Where there have been difficulties in the early part of the contingency arrangements in December and January, those were resolved. The cycle of collection follows the cycle in terms of the contingency arrangements, follows the same cycle as was the case in the HES contract. In other words, more clinical waste is of greater risk to the public, is collected more frequently than clinical waste, for example, from dental surgeries or wherever, but the collection rotation remains exactly on the same cycle as it was under the HES contract. Where there are any further reports, there have been a number of media reports and so on. Those are always investigated by my officials and by SEPA, and so far they have either found to be false or out of date, or where they have highlighted discrepancies and mistakes that have been made, they have been corrected. At this point, the monitoring continues. There is no risk to the public or to the environment, and we continue to keep a close eye on the situation. As I said to Mr Neil with respect to the new status in terms of the company's liquidation, when we have additional information on what that may do in terms of SEPA's actions, I will ensure that members are informed. The transportation of the waste under the HES contract, I would want to be absolutely accurate in my response to the member on that, so if he is content, I will write to him with that detail. I do not have it in front of me. I will happily share that with him later today.