Listen! If you ever wake up some mornin' with an idea for something new—whether it's a soup, a vaudeville act or a religion—and you expect to cash on it, go to the nearest hardware store and ask the guy behind the counter how much he'll take for all the locks in the joint. Take 'em at any price and fasten 'em on the door of the safe where you keep the idea—the same bein' your mouth—and then throw the keys in any good, deep river!

If the inventors of stud poker, movin' pictures, the alligator pear, pneumonia and so forth had gone around talkin' about them things before they got 'em patented they never would of took in a nickel on their idea, but their friends would be draggin' down the royalties yet! The minute you tip another guy to your stunt it's yours and his both. He mightn't mean to steal your stuff, but he can't help himself. The more he thinks about it, the better he likes it, and it ain't long before he gets believin' it was his idea anyways and where do you get off by claimin' you thought of it?

I admit freely that you can't cash on your scheme unless you get it before the world, but the thing is to wait till you got it covered with so many copyrights and patents that not even the James Boys could steal it and then tell 'em all at once!

If Edgar Simmons had of did that, he'd be a rich millionaire to-day instead of havin' to cut his winnin's with Alex. Edgar had an idea, and he didn't know what to do with it.

Alex did!

The wife and I is sittin' down to the evenin' meal one night, when the telephone rings. Only one of us got up.

"Hello!" I says.

"Hello!" is the answer. "This is Alex. What would you say to me runnin' up there to supper to-night?"

"Nothin'," I answers. "I see where they was a guy got pinched only last week for swearin' over the phone!"

"Look here!" he says, kinda peeved. "Do you want me to come up there to-night or don't you?"

"Don't you!" I says.

"They's plenty of places where they would be glad to have me to dinner," he snarls. "Places that is just as good as yours!"

"How do you know how good they are?" I says. "You ain't never tried no dinners nowheres else but up here."

"They ain't no man can keep me from seein' my cousin!" he says. "Tell Alice I'll be right up!"

I hung up the phone.

"Well," I says to the wife, "I got bad news for you."

"Who was it?" she asks, droppin' the knittin' layout on the floor.

"That trick relative of yours," I tells her. "He's comin' up here for dinner again, so I guess I'll go down to the corner and play a little pinochle."

"You ought to be the weather man," says the wife, "you're such a rotten guesser! You ain't goin' nowheres. You're gonna stay here and help entertain Alex."

"Entertain him?" I says. "What d'ye think I am—a trained seal or somethin'?"

"Don't kid yourself!" she says. "You ain't even makin' the money I could get with a trained seal! You gotta stop this pinochle thing—you don't see Alex wastin' his time playin' pinochle with a lotta loafers!"

"You bet you don't!" I comes back. "You'll never see Alex playin' no game where they's a chance of the other guy winnin'! He wouldn't bet zero was cold! And don't be callin' my friends loafers—every one of them guys is successful business men!"

"That mob you hid out in here one night looked like a lotta plumbers to me!" she says. "Any man who sits up half the night playin' cards is a loafer!"

"One of them loafers I while away my time with lives in the next flat," I says, "and the dumbwaiter door is wide open."

"I don't care," says the wife, flushin' all up. "Let him hear me!"

"I ain't stoppin' him," I says. "But you don't want it to get rumored all over New York that you and me is quarrelin', do you?"

The wife's answer is nothin'. She walks over to the window and looks out on Manhattan, doin' a soft shoe dance with one toe on the floor. If bein' good lookin' was water, she'd be Niagara Falls. You've seen her picture many a time on a can of massage cream—which she never touched in her life! The label claims it was this stuff that put her over, but she don't know whether rouge is for red cheeks or measles. They ain't a day goes by without some movie company pesterin' her to sign up, and she can write her own ticket when it comes to salary. Well, I'm in dutch again, but I don't care! This here knockout is wed to me, and they ain't nothin' can give me the blues!

"Listen!" I says. "Honey, we only been wed ten years—and here we are scrappin' already!"

She turns on the weeps and I'm across the floor like a startled rabbit. We come to terms in about five minutes, and as far as a disinterested stranger could of seen, everything is O.K. again.

"Well," I says, finally, "you ain't mad at me no more, heh, honey?"

She wags her head, no.

"We got that all settled, heh?" I says.

Her head is on my shoulder and why shouldn't it be, and she says yes.

They is a pause. To bust it up, I coughs.

"If that pest Alex wasn't comin' here to-night," I says, "we might go to the theatre."

"The movies hurts my eyes!" she answers, givin' me a sarcastical smile.

"D'ye mean to give the neighbors the idea I have never staked you to nothin' but the movies?" I hollers, gettin' sore, naturally enough.

"Don't be callin' my cousin no pest!" she says and—well, we're off again!

In less than five minutes, some new-comers which has a flat across the hall, knocks on the dumbwaiter bell furiously. I answered.

"Why don't you people let go?" inquires a harsh voice. "We can't stand that tourney in there no longer!"

"They ain't no way of puttin' a man in jail for movin'," I says.

"The idea of a man hollerin' at his wife like that!" comes a female voice in back of this guy.

"Shut up—I'm doin' this!" exclaims her lovin' spouse,—and then they had a mêlée of their own!

In the middle of this our doorbell rings and in comes Alex.

"They should of named this apartment house the Verdun," he says. "They seems to be a battle goin' on here every time I come up! I could hear every word you people was sayin' as plain as day, away out in the hall!"

"What did you come in for then?" I asks him. "Especially as you could hear this was the rush hour!"

He ignores me and kisses the wife—a thing he knows gets me wild.

"Now, boys!" butts in the wife, splittin' her world famous grin fifty-fifty, "let's stop quarrelin'. They ain't a reason on earth why we can't be friends, even if we are relatives."

"When are you gonna have dinner?" asks Alex.

"This here's eatless night with us," I says. "Not to give you a short answer."

"Don't pay no attention to him, Alex," says the wife. "You know you can eat here whenever you want."

"Sure!" I says. "Don't mind me. All I gotta do is pay for this stuff—that's all!"

The wife gimme a bitter glance.

"That's right," she says. "Tell the world that I have wed a tightwad!"

"What d'ye mean?" I hollers. "I'm as loose as ashes with my money and they ain't nobody knows it better than you. I don't even moan over the monthly phone bill, which from the last one you musta been callin' up friends in Australia!"

"Here!" butts in Alex. "This thing's gotta stop! Come on, kiss and make up. The first thing you know the Red Cross will be openin' a branch here. If I didn't know how much you people loved each other, I'd get the idea that you was really angry."

"Of course we love each other!" I says. "We only pull this now and then so's we won't get sickenin' to the neighbors by billin' and cooin' all the time! Ain't I right, honey?"

"Are you sorry?" inquires the wife.

"Sorry?" I says. "Why, I'd go out and buy a tube of carbolic acid if it wasn't so high!"

With that they was peace.

We're just sittin' down to a well-earned meal, when the bell rings again. Actin' as maid is one of the best things I do around my five rooms, if you count the bath, so I answered it. They was a man and a woman standin' there and my heart run up to play with my tonsils when I seen them. I figured they was a couple more guests for dinner and you knew what they're askin' for steak these days.

"I'm sorry to bother you," says the dame, "but we are the people who live in the flat right under yours."

"If you think we're too noisy, moan to the landlord!" I says, "I gotta right to stage an argument in my flat whenever I so choose!"

She giggles. The guy that was with her don't make a sound.

"Why, I'm sure we never heard any noise from above," she says. "I think you and your wife are no doubt the quietest folks in the whole house."

Oh, boy!!!

"How long have you been deaf?" I says.

"You're just like your wife claims," she grins. "Full of life and fun! But I'm keepin' you from your food, ain't I? I wanted to know if you'd let Mister Simmons climb down your fire escape."

"Feed him some veronal," I says, "and he'll no doubt be O.K. in the mornin'. The first day is always tough!"

"Why, what do you mean?" she says. "I merely asked if my husband could climb down your fire escape."

I seen I had wild pitched the first time, so I tried my luck again.

"Is your joint on fire?" I says.

"Oh, no!" she tells me. "But we are locked out. My husband invented a new kind of lock—he's always inventing something that will do everything but work. He put this lock on our door and now he can't open it himself! Isn't that killing?"

"A riot!" I admits. "Come right in."

The wife is gettin' nervous at me bein' out there so long, and when she heard a female voice laughin', of course that didn't help matters none. She meets this dame half way in the hall and the minute they seen each other they fall together in fond embrace. I found out later they'd known each other as long as a week and the last time they met was an hour before.

Well, we get introduced all around and then this bird which invented a lock that nobody on earth could open, includin' himself, goes out on the fire escape followed by his charmin' wife. They entered their flat by the novel method of usin' the kitchen window. This guy didn't open his mouth from the time he come in till he went out, and when spoke to, he blushed all over and acted like he wished to Heaven he could hide under the sofa. His wife, though, had nothin' against conversation as a sport. She was talkin' when she come in and she went out the same way. I never seen nobody in my life who could talk as fast and frequent as this dame and if her husband had hung that trick lock on her tongue he would of made himself solid with me!

"That's that lovely Mrs. Simmons," says the wife, when they had went. "It's too bad her husband ain't a live one."

"Gettin' married has buried many a good man!" I says.

"It didn't change you none," she says. "You was a dead one when I got you!"

"Here!" butts in Alex. "Don't you people get started again! I wanna finish my supper in peace. What's wrong with Mister Simmons?"

"He ain't got no pep," says the wife. "They's many a more ambitious man than he is with a tomb around him! He's been keepin' books for twenty dollars a week since the discovery of arithmetic, and he ain't got a raise since they blowed up the Maine. He's afraid to ask for more money for fear the boss will find out he's on the pay roll and fire him. They's one ounce more brains in a billiard ball than they is in his head. He—"

"Wait!" interrupts Alex. "This here sounds interestin' to me. In the first place, they ain't a doubt in my mind but what you got that feller figured all wrong! Like all the rest of you simple minded and innocent New Yorkers, you get brains and imagination mixed. They is a big difference! Brains is what puts a man over, and imagination is what keeps him back. The ideal combination is all brains and no imagination! The feller with brains sets his mind on what he wants, forgets everything else, goes to it and gets it. He don't for a minute consider what might happen if he fails, or that the thing he proposes has never been done before, or that maybe his scheme ain't really as good as he first thought it was. Why don't he think of them things? Because he ain't got no imagination! The imaginative feller is beat from the start. He keeps thinkin' from every possible angle, what might happen to him if he fails and, by the time he gets that all figured out, his idea is cold and his enthusiasm for it has drowned in the sea of possibilities his roamin' mind has created! The feller which said, 'look before you leap!' might of been clever, but I bet he thought a five-dollar bill was as big as they made 'em till he went to his grave! If I'd had imagination, I'd never of come to New York and made good. I'd of been afraid the town was too big for me. Now this feller Simmons, I'll betcha, is simply sufferin' from a case of too much imagination. He must have somethin' in his head or he couldn't even keep books. It takes brains to balance accounts, the same as it takes money to pay 'em. Am I right?"

"What d'ye say, if we go to the movies?" I says.

Alex gets up in disgust.

"Is that all the interest I'm gettin' here?" he asks.

"This ain't no bank!" I tells him.

"Be still!" says the wife. "I heard every word you said, Alex dear. I think you're horribly interestin'. But I still claim Simmons is a fat-head whose butcher bill gives him trouble every month! He never takes that poor wife of his nowheres, but a walk past the Fifth Avenue Library, and she don't know if they have dancin' or swimmin' in cabarets. He's always drawin' things on pieces of paper, and he sits up half the night inventin' what-nots that would be all right, if they wasn't useless."

"Yes," says Alex, "and some day he'll hit on somethin' that'll prob'ly make him famous!"

"I wanna see Beryldine Nearer in 'The Vaccinated Vampire'," I says, reachin' for my hat. "I seen her last week in 'Almost A Fiend' and she was a knockout!"

"Shut up!" says the wife. "What was you sayin', again, Alex?"

"I says it's the dreamer which has made the world what it is to-day," he goes on, strikin' a pose. "He thinks of somethin' and the practical feller comes along and makes money out of it. Take—"

"They ain't no man can keep me from the movies!" I butts in. "I ain't gonna be late and only see half of this picture. I done that too often! You and Alice can fight it out amongst yourselves if—"

"All right!" says the wife. "Come on, we'll all go. I admit freely I'm crazy to see Beryldine Nearer again, myself. I seen a gown on her in the last picture which I think I can duplicate in time for Mrs. Martin's card party. We'll ask Mr. and Mrs. Simmons to go with us too. The poor dear, it'll be a treat for her."

"It'll be a treat for her husband, too!" I says. "I ain't gonna take the whole neighborhood to the movies. You must think I'm the Liberty Loan, don't you?"

The wife comes over and kisses me.

"Now, dear," she says. "Don't be so close across the chest. Won't you take 'em for me?"

Well, when all Broadway used to roll over and play dead when she pulled that smile, what chance have I got?

"I'd take carbolic for you!" I answers, givin' her a squeeze. "Go ahead, honey, invite the first two pagefuls outa the phone book if you want and I'll take 'em all!"

"There you go," she says. "No wonder we're not wealthy! If it wasn't for me holdin' you down, we wouldn't have a nickel. I'll call down and tell Mrs. Simmons to get ready—they may have an engagement themselves!"

"I doubt if I'm lucky enough for that to happen!" I says.

Well, I missed out again. They come up all right, and Mrs. Simmons is tickled to death. When set for the street, she was a pretty good looker herself, but Simmons ain't even got a hat with him.

"Mister Simmons prefers to stay at home," says his wife, causin' my heart to leap with joy. "He has some important work to do, haven't you, dear?"

Simmons flushes all up.

"Why—eh—yes—quite so—much obliged—excuse me," he stutters, backin' away like he thought I'd wallop him for not goin'.

Alex is lookin' at him strangely.

"Pardon me," he says. "We just been talkin' over some of the wonderful ideas you been workin' on. I have a inventive twist in my brains myself and that lock you put together interests me very much. Could I see it?"

Simmons brightens up in a flash and commences to grin.

"I'd be very glad indeed to show it to you," he says. "Very glad! Its a—"

Alex goes over and puts his arm on his shoulder.

"You folks run along to the movies," he tells us. "Mr. Simmons and me is got a little conference on—eh, Simmons?" He prods him in the ribs and giggles.

Simmons wags his head. A guy with two glass eyes could see he was tickled silly.

I dragged the rest of 'em out.

Well, we come in from the movie around eleven o'clock and stopped in the Simmons flat. They had dragged me into a delicatessen parlor on the way back and put the bee on me for a cold lunch. We was to eat it in Mrs. Simmons's flat. All she furnished was............