Richard Connell

“ The girl looked again, and made out a small, bent figure sitting there, chin on hands, eyes turned toward the lighted hall, ears toward the music and the buzz and laughter of the guests.
“Why, it’s Velvet Pants!” she exclaimed.
“Shall I chase him away?” asked Pete, swelling out his chest and looking belligerent. Janey laid a restraining hand on his arm.
“No; don’t chase him, Pete. Let him stay. The poor fellow’s probably lonesome. Everybody is here but him.”
“He deserves to be lonesome,” said Pete; “he’s yella.” ”

“ Ben Crosby kept saying. “I called you a coward—and you went in and faced a mad bull without batting an eyelash.”
“It was nuzzing,” murmured the small brown man.
“Nothing to face a mad bull?”
Velvet Pants shrugged his shoulders.
“But I am a toreador,” he said. “In my country—Andalusia—I keel one, two, t’ree bull every Sunday for fun. Why should I fear bulls? I know bulls.” ”

“ The animal, distracted, stood blinking at the little man. Within a few feet of the bull, Velvet Pants halted. With magnificent nonchalance he blew a cloud of smoke into the bull’s face, and then they saw a flash of something red. It was Ben Crosby’s red flannel undershirt that a few moments before had been drying on the line. The small man had flicked it across the bull’s face.
Defender Monarch forgot for the moment his plan for smashing Janey Crosby; he saw the red, and he plunged toward it. The women turned their heads away, the men clenched their teeth. ”

“ He appeared to be trying by pantomime to convey the idea that he had been forcibly seized in his native land, which was remote, had been pressed into service aboard a ship, had escaped at a port, had fled on a train, and had dropped, or been dropped, at Crosby Corners. Farm-hands were scarce, and if a man had two hands and at least one good eye, they did not delve into his past or his pedigree; they put him to work. It was thus that the small, scared man in the velvet trousers entered the employ of Ben Crosby, richest farmer in that region. ”

“ Pete High growled, “but she will.”
On Saturday afternoons most of Crosby Corners, men, women, and children, comes to Sandy Bottom, bringing bathing suits. It is not a very big pool; at its deepest part it is not much over six feet deep.
How it happened that the small man with the velvet trousers should be passing Sandy Bottom that Saturday noon at the precise moment when freckled Johnny Nelson was floundering in the water and calling loudly for help does not matter. Why Johnny Nelson should be drowning at all is something of a puzzle, for he was the best swimmer in the county. ”

“ He spoke mechanically, as if the words had been often rehearsed.
“I haf no gif’ for you on your birthday, Mees Crosby, but I haf learn a song American to seeng for you. I hear heem on funnygraf. I hope you like.” ”