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"It it was a long time ago," says Jonesey. "Perdone," breaks in Don Pedro. "Were you not known as Señor El Capitan?" "Me?" says Jonesey. "Why I some might have called me that." "Great guns!" I gasps. "See here, Jonesey; you don't mean to say you've got the ring too?" "The ring?" says he, tryin' to look blank. But at the same time I notice his hand go up to his shirt front sort of jerky.
"That that was a long time ago," says Jonesey. And if you will believe me, that's about all he would say. Wasn't even much excited over the fact that a hundred thousand dollar sugar plantation was about to be wished on him. Oh, yes, he'd go down with Don Pedro and take possession. Was the grave of Donna Mario there? Then he would go, surely. "I I would rather like to," says Old Jonesey.
Some of the color still holds in the bristly mustache and the ear tufts. A short, chunky party with a stubby nose and sort of a solid-lookin' chin, he is. But there never is much satisfaction kiddin' Jonesey. You can't get his goat. He just holds his hand up to his ear and asks kind of bored: "Eh, what's that?" "How about them swell dames that used to go wild over you?" comes back Skip.
I had a chuckle over that all by myself. What could Jonesey have to forget? They tell me he's been with the Corrugated twenty years or more. Why, he must have been on the payroll before some of them young sports was born. And for the last fifteen he's held the same old job assistant filin' clerk. Some life, eh?
"Hal-lup," says I. "Jonesey, do you mean to say you're the same one who sailed with Dynamite Johnny, risked your neck to go poking around Havana, made love to the Governor General's niece, trussed him up like a roasting turkey when he interfered, and escaped with her in the palace coach through whole rafts of soldiers who'd have been made rich for life if they'd shot you on sight? You!"
That gets across as a good line too, and Skip follows it up with another. "Let's ask him, fellers." And the next thing old Jones knows he's surrounded by this grinnin' circle of young hicks while Budge Haley is demandin': "Is it so, Jonesey, that you used to be a reg'lar chicken hound?"
Course, so far as the force is concerned, he's just so much dead wood. Every shake-up we have somebody wants to fire him, or pension him off. But Mr. Ellins won't have it. "No," says he. "Let him stay on." And you bet Jonesey stays. He drills around, fussin' over the files, doing things just the way he did twenty years ago, I suppose, but never gettin' in anybody's way or pullin' any grouch.
"You've even got old Jonesey smackin' his lips." That gets a big laugh from the bunch. It always does, for he's one of our permanent jokes, old Jones. And as he happens to be sittin' humped over here in the corner brushin' traces of an egg sandwich from his mouth corners, the josh comes in kind of pat. "Must have been some lady killer in his time, eh?" suggests Skip Martin.
I finds Jonesey with his head in a file drawer, as usual, and without spillin' anything of the joke I leads him in and lines him up in front of Don Pedro. "Listen, Jonesey," says I. "This gentleman comes from Havana. Were you ever there?" "Why, ye-e-e-es. Once I was," says Jonesey, sort of draggy, as if tryin' to remember. "You were?" says I. "How? When?"
In fact, I don't believe there's anybody by the name of Yes, there is one Jones here, but he can't be the party. He isn't that kind of a Jones." "But if he is Señor Jones who knows?" insists Don Pedro. Then I has to stop and grin. Huh! Old Jonesey bein' suspected of ever pullin' stuff like that. Say, why not have him in and tax him with it. "Just a sec.," says I. "You can take a look yourself."
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