The Gate Crasher

My eyes fell on something up against the wall that looked like a gas meter. I opened it and discovered it to be full of plugs and coils of wire. There were three copper switches with insulated handles. That gave me an idea. I pulled one of the switches down but nothing happened. Then I pulled another one down and nothing happened. Finally I pulled the third one down and all the roof lights went out. People started to laugh and shout. Without wasting a moment’s time I opened the door and slipped out. It shut behind me with a terrific crash, but I didn’t mind as long as no one could see me. I kept moving forward in the darkness and confusion, trying to get as far away from the kitchen as I could before the lights went up again, as they were sure to at any minute. Several times I stumbled over chairs and ran into people. “Isn’t it awful?” I heard a woman’s voice say close by me.

Suddenly I felt something smooth and slippery under my feet. I realized that it must be the dance floor. The music had stopped completely. People were standing very still and every one kept saving: “Don’t move or well lose each other.” Then the strings of lanterns overhead flashed on again as suddenly as they had gone out. Every one laughed and clapped their hands. “There, that’s much better!”

And I discovered Joyce Nichols standing not two feet away from me. It was as though something had led me to her in the dark. She had chosen to run contrary to the fashion for once, and had on a wide, ankle-length skirt that made her look like a Dresden doll.

“Teddy!” she cried the moment she saw me, “what brought you here so late?”

I mumbled some excuse or other.

“I thought you were trying to renege. I’ve been saving the twelfth and the fourteenth for you,” she explained. “I didn’t want you to have the thirteenth because it brings bad luck.”

“I don’t want to dance with any one but you, Joyce,” I told her. “I’ll sit over there in the corner and watch you until it’s my turn.”

She came looking for me between the seventh and eighth dances and pressed a string of pearls into my hand.

“Put this in your pocket for me like a good boy, will you Teddy?” she said. “There’s something the matter with the catch and I’m afraid I’ll lose it.”

Between the tenth and eleventh the lights went out again. I wondered who was monkeying with the circuit this time. Possibly a fuse had blown out. The current went on again in about a minute’s time, and I expected every one to finish the dance. It was the one before my turn came to dance with Joyce and I wanted them to get it over with. But no one seemed to be dancing. Instead they had all gathered about a very excited old lady who was having hysterics about something. She was stout and rather overrouged, and in her excitement she kept flinging her arms about like two windmills. She ended by fainting away, and they carried her over to one side and laid her on a cane settee.

“She has lost her pearls,” I heard some one say.

The first thing I knew two men in street clothes, detectives I suppose, walked over to me and growled: “What are you doing here, young fellow?”

I looked at them thunderstruck. “I... I’m waiting for some one,” I faltered.

“Well trouble you to stand up for a minute.”

One of them went through my clothes and suddenly pulled out Joyce’s siring of pearls.

“Here it is!” he said.

His companion gripped my shoulder like iron.

“But those... those—” I tried to explain, and the words froze on my lips from sheer horror of the predicament I was in.

“Never mind that now,” they said brutally. “We got you with the goods.”

Every one had gathered about us, staring at me. I could read hatred and disgust in every eye.

Suddenly there was a rustle of silk and a flash of aquamarine blue, and Joyce had forced her way through the crowd.

“Those are my pearls!” she cried to the detectives. “What are you doing with them?”

“How does he come to have ’em in his pocket if they’re yours?” they grunted.

“The catch broke and I asked him to keep them for me while I danced,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. “Is it any of your business?”

The man that had been taking tickets at the entrance earlier in the evening now stepped forward.

“Just a minute!” he said. “Ask him how he got in here anyway.”

Once to every gate-crasher comes the moment when he’s found out and no possible stall will save him. This was mine now. I guessed. Frankie had said it was bound to happen sooner or later and Frankie had been right: it had. I had crashed one gate too many.

“How about it?” sneered the committeeman. “Thought you’d put one over, didn’t you?”

Before I could answer Joyce stamped her foot. “He came with me, of course. Didn’t he, Mother?” She turned to her mother for corroboration.

“Why, Joyce—” stammered her mother, not knowing what to say.

“Mother, you know he did!” Joyce insisted, giving her a desperate look.

“I’m sorry, Miss Nichols,” said the committeeman humbly. “My mistake. I apologize.”