Match the Synopsis: The Tales of O Henry (4) Quiz

Answer: 'A Harlem Tragedy'

Mame Cassidy and Maggie Fink are old friends who used to work in a paper box factory. Mame and her husband Jack live in the flat below Maggie, and Jack is an alcoholic who regularly beats Mame when he comes home and leaves her covered in bruises. Mame is proud of Jack as she believes his beating her means he cares about her, and whenever he beats her up he always feels sorry the next day and buys her something to make up for it. If she particularly wants something, she even antagonises him. Maggie is jealous as her husband Martin just sits around reading the paper and barely takes an interest in her.

She punches Martin and shouts at him for being lazy, hoping he will hit her. Mame runs upstairs when she hears the noise, only to find Maggie crying because Martin did not hit her - instead, he is washing the clothes.

Answer: 'The Guilty Party'

At the beginning of the story, Lizzie, a twelve-year-old girl, asks her father to play checkers with her and her father sends her out into the street to play with other children. Her mother dislikes her playing in the street as she worries other kids are a bad example, but the father ignores her.

The story moves several years forward, when Lizzie is an adult. 'Kid' Mullally, her boyfriend, tells his friend that he is taking another girl, Annie, to a dance as he is sick of Lizzie's jealousy. Lizzie is now a scruffy, foul-mouthed alcoholic; she fell in love with the Kid while she was playing out in the street as a child, and he got her drunk on beer.

She tells a bartender that she is going to get revenge on the Kid for cheating on her. At a dance, the Kid takes to the floor with Annie and Lizzie storms in and stabs him to death.

A mob chase her outside and she jumps into the East River, drowning herself. The narrator then dreams that he is in heaven and an angel policeman appears with Lizzie, saying that she is under arrest for murder and suicide.

The court officer tells the policeman to let her go, as the real criminal is the man who left her to play in the streets as a child and made her the way she is.

Answer: 'The Last Leaf'

'The Last Leaf' was one of the five films featuring in 'O Henry's Full House', although the plot was modified slightly. In the original story, Johnsy and Sue are a pair of artists living together in Greenwich Village (some readers believe they are implied to be a lesbian couple). Johnsy is seriously ill with pneumonia and on the verge of death.

There is an ivy vine on the wall outside her bedroom and Johnsy has become fixated on it, believing that she will die when the last leaf falls. Sue tells Behrman, an alcoholic painter who lives in their building and sometimes models for her, about the leaf and Behrman says that Johnsy is being ridiculous.

The leaves continue to fall, but the final leaf remains on the vine despite the weather, and Johnsy starts to recover.

The doctor believes Johnsy has a good chance of getting better and also mentions that he is due to see Behrman, who has pneumonia. When Johnsy is better, Sue tells her that Behrman is dead. Doctors had found a palette, a ladder, a lit lantern and some brushes and figured that Behrman had been outside in the cold painting.

He had been painting his final masterpiece: an ivy leaf, which he painted on the night that the last leaf fell.

Answer: 'The Count and the Wedding Guest'

Andy Donovan meets a new tenant at his boarding-house, a Miss Maggie Conway. Two weeks later, he sees her in mourning dress and makes conversation with her, and she tells him that her fiancé is dead. Her fiancé was an Italian count, Fernando Mazzini, who died in a gondola accident.

She shows Andy a picture of the Count in her locket. Andy befriends Maggie and the two are later engaged. Maggie is troubled by Andy's moodiness one night and Andy talks about how Big Mike Sullivan, an influential friend of his, wants to come to their wedding, but refuses to tell Maggie why he doesn't want Big Mike at the wedding.

He asks Maggie if she loves him as much as the Count and Maggie breaks down crying, admitting that she lied about the Count because she had never had a man in her life and noticed how men had been attracted to other women who did have one. Andy is not angry about the revelation; he reveals he knew she was lying all along because the photo in her locket was of Big Mike.

Answer: 'The Tale of a Tainted Tenner'

The narrator of this story is not a person, but a ten-dollar note. The note passes through the hands of several people, including a street hotdog salesman and a butcher, and then into a roll of notes belonging to Old Jack, the owner of a gambling house.

A twenty-dollar note tells the tenner that Old Jack offered a church a load of money, but the church refused to accept it as it was tainted. Old Jack goes to a cafe and gives the tenner to a poor woman who used to work as a bank clerk, and the woman spends it on food.

The tenner ends up in the till in a bakery and meets a one-dollar bill who had been in the change given to the woman for the tenner a week earlier. The one-dollar bill tells the tenner about how the woman had a sick child and bought him bread.

There is a clear hierarchy between notes of different values.

Answer: 'Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet'

Jeff Peters is a conman, or 'grafter', who appears in several of O Henry's stories, often with his friend Andy Tucker. In this story, Peters goes to a town in Arkansas and pretends to be a Native American medicine man selling bottles of fake medicine, but runs afoul of the law.

The landlord of his hotel explains that the only doctor in town is the mayor's brother-in-law and no other medical practitioners are allowed. Peters teams up with Andy Tucker, who is also in town looking for people to scam.

The mayor's servant goes to the hotel and asks Peters to come and see the mayor, who is ill. Peters meets the mayor and his nephew, Mr Biddle, and offers to treat the mayor with 'personal magnetism', which involves him telling the mayor that he is actually fine. Mr Biddle arrests Peters when he comes back the next day and the mayor says that Biddle is actually a detective who has been trailing Peters.

However, Biddle is in on the con - he is Tucker in disguise.

Answer: 'The Hand that Riles the World'

Peters explains to the narrator that he dislikes working with women as a rule, as they have a tendency to turn honest at the worst possible time. He recalls that a friend, Bill Humble, once asked him and Andy Tucker to get him the job of US Marshal. Tucker and Peters go along with it as it might help them in their schemes.

A hotel clerk says that they would have to go to a female lobbyist to get an appointment and puts them in touch with a Mrs Avery. After meeting her, Peters has doubts, but she pulls out an official-looking document.

Unfortunately, Mrs Avery is easily confused and the job she has for Bill Humble is actually postmaster of Dade City, Florida.

Answer: 'The Exact Science of Matrimony'

Peters recalls a scheme that he and Tucker had in Cairo, Illinois, where they set up a marriage agency. Peters approaches the widow of his old friend, Zeke Trotter, who accidentally poisoned himself. Peters reassures her that the job is genuine and that all she needs to do is live in a hotel while they take care of the administrative side.

He and Tucker put an advert in papers all over the country and receive hundreds of letters from lonely men, and charge $2 for a second letter from them. A Secret Service man comes to check on them but is reassured when Peters shows him Mrs Trotter's bank book. Mrs Trotter falls in love with one of the respondents, William Wilkinson, who will only marry her if she gives him $2000. Peters sends Tucker to tell her to withdraw the money from the bank. Before they leave town, Peters asks Tucker if he wants to say goodbye to Mrs Trotter, but Tucker refuses as he has her money: 'William Wilkinson' was him all along.

Answer: 'Conscience in Art'

Peters discusses the crucial difference between his and Andy Tucker's approaches: he gives people something in return for their money, while Tucker just swindles them. He recalls a time when Tucker, tired of targeting small town people, suggested trying a richer urban audience.

They go to Pittsburgh and look for millionaires to swindle, and Tucker befriends Scudder, an oil and gas magnate who has a large and expensive art collection. One of his ornaments is an Egyptian ivory carving of a lotus flower with a woman's face in it, one of only two of its kind.

He has been looking everywhere for the second carving. Tucker finds the second carving in a pawn shop. Peters disguises himself as an antiques expert and offers Scudder money for his carving, but Scudder refuses to sell and asks if he can buy the second carving instead.

When Peters returns to their hotel, Tucker tells him that they need to get out of town as soon as possible. There was no second carving; Tucker had pilfered the original carving from Scudder and Peters had sold it back to him.

Answer: 'The Man Higher Up'

Peters tells the narrator about a time when he got into a lot of trouble in a small Arkansas town when some supposed fruit trees he sold them turned out to be anything but. They confiscate his property and refuse to give it back until one of the trees he sold them bears fruit. Peters wanders into a nearby town and meets Bill Bassett, a burglar and then a third man, Alfred E Ricks, who turns out to be another swindler; he is wanted in Chicago for selling deeds for plots of land which are actually underwater.

The three of them decide to team up and Bassett burgles a bank. Both he and Peters see Ricks as hopeless and not worth bothering about. They go to Arizona and Bassett starts a poker room, but Peters has previously marked the cards Bassett uses and wins all the money that Bassett had burgled. Bassett decides that he would rather stick to burglary.

In the present day, Peters tells the narrator that he has spent the $5000 on mining stock. The narrator warns him that the shares may be a con, but Peters shows him the stock certificate.

The narrator notes that the name of the mining company president is AL Fredericks, and Peters realises too late that 'Ricks' has had the last laugh.