Mortmain
by Arthur Cheney Train · English · Gutenberg #37346 · 484,809 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Mortmain
Author: Arthur Cheney Train
Release date: September 8, 2011 [eBook #37346]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORTMAIN ***
Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
MORTMAIN
[Illustration: "'The problem, gentlemen, of limb-grafting has been
solved.'" (Page 4)]
MORTMAIN
BY ARTHUR TRAIN
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1928
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY ESS ESS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1906, 1907, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY ASSOCIATED SUNDAY MAGAZINES
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
[Illustration: THE SCRIBNER PRESS]
To
AMOS
ESNESTO AND SANDRO
CONTENTS
PAGE
MORTMAIN 1
THE RESCUE OF THEOPHILUS NEWBEGIN 65
THE VAGABOND 109
THE MAN HUNT 131
NOT AT HOME 239
A STUDY IN SOCIOLOGY 251
THE LITTLE FELLER 269
RANDOLPH, '64 275
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
"'The problem, gentlemen, of limb-grafting has been
solved!'" Frontispiece
"Mortmain . . . lay motionless on the floor" 22
"His blunt fingers twisted into the flesh deeper and deeper" 56
"She . . . studied the faces alternately" 156
"The distinguished Flynn burst into a deluge of oratory" 262
"He caught sight of the waiting Maria" 266
"'Back,' he shouted" 296
MORTMAIN
I
Sir Penniston Crisp was a man of some sixty active years, whose ruddy
cheeks, twinkling blue eyes, and convincingly innocent smile suggested
forty. At thirty he had been accounted the most promising young surgeon
in London; at forty he had become one of the three leading members of
his profession; at fifty he had amassed a fortune and had begun to
accept only those cases which involved complications of true scientific
interest, or which came to him on the personal application of other
distinguished physicians.
Like many another in the medical world whose material wants are
guaranteed, he found solace and amusement only in experimentation along
new lines of his peculiar hobbies. His days were spent between his
book-lined study with its cheery sea-coal fire and his adjacent
laboratory, where three assistants, all trained Bachelors of Science,
conducted experiments under his personal direction.
His daily life was as well ordered as his career had been. Rising at
seven, Sir Penniston partook of a meager breakfast, attended to his
trifling personal affairs, read his newspaper, dictated his letters, and
by nine was ready to don his uniform and receive his sterilized
instruments from his young associate, Scalscope Jermyn, a capable and
cheerful soul after Crisp's own heart. An operating theater adjoined the
laboratory, and here the baronet made it a point to perform once each
week, in the presence of various surgeons who attended by invitation, a
few difficult and dangerous operations upon patients sent to him from
the City Hospital.
When Jermyn was with his familiars he was wont to refer to his master as
the "howlingist cheese in surgery." This was putting it mildly, for,
although Sir Penniston was indubitably, if you choose, quite the
"howlingist cheese" in surgery, he was also a pathfinder, an explorer
into the mysteries of the body and the essence of vitality in bone and
tissue. He could do more things to a cat in twenty minutes than would
naturally occur in the combined history of a thousand felines. He could
handle the hidden arteries and vessels of the body as confidently and
accurately as you or I would tie a shoe string. He had housed a tramp
for thirteen months and inserted a plate-glass window in that
gentleman's exterior in order that he might with the greater certainty
study the complicated processes of a digestion stimulated after a
chronic lack of food. He experimented on men, women, children,
elephants, apes, ostriches, guinea pigs, rabbits, turtles, frogs, and
goldfish. He could alter the shape of a nose, or perfect an irregular
ear in the twinkling of an instrument; remove a human heart and insert
it still beating without inconvenience to its owner; and was as much at
home among the vessels of Thebesius as he was on Piccadilly Circus.
He was single, kept but one servant--a Jap--neither smoked nor drank,
attended the worst play he could find every Saturday night, and gave
ponderous dinners to his professional brethren on Wednesdays. He was the
dean of his order, and bade fair to remain so for a long time to come--a
calm, passionless craftsman in flesh and bone. His rivals frequently
were heard to say that there was nothing surgical in heaven or earth
that Crisp would not undertake. A faint odor of chloroform followed his
well-regulated progress through existence.
On the morning upon which this narrative opens Sir Penniston had entered
his laboratory with that urbanity so characteristic of him. A white
frock hung jauntily upon his well-filled, if slenderly nourished,
proportions, his blue eyes sparkled with good-natured activity, and his
long, muscular hands rubbed themselves together in a manner which
signified that they were anxious to be at the skilled work in which
their owner took so keen a pleasure. Scalscope was already on hand, and
with a bundle of dripping instruments in his grasp met his master
halfway between the minor operating table and the antiseptic bath.
"Ah, good morning, Scalscope! How is the Marchioness of Cheshire this
fine morning?"
Scalscope smiled deferentially at the little joke.
"I presume you mean Lady Tabitha? Her ladyship is doing
splendidly--better, I fancy, than could be expected under the
circumstances."
"Excellent, Scalscope! Delightful! Where is she?"
At that moment a large Maltese cat, cognizant by some unknown instinct
that she was the subject of this matutinal conversation, stalked slowly
out of a patch of sunshine and rubbed herself between Sir Penniston's
broadcloth-covered calves. The surgeon bent over and felt carefully of
her foreleg, but the feline did not flinch; on the contrary, she
screwed round her head and thrust it into the doctor's hand.
"Perfect!" exclaimed Sir Penniston, his face lighting with a smile of
scientific satisfaction. "Absolutely perfect! Scalscope, you have lived
to participate in the highest achievement of modern surgery! Is the
patient in the operating room? Very good. The gentlemen assembled?
Excellent! While you are administering the somni-chloride I will
announce our success."
He bowed to the other assistants and, followed by the Marchioness of
Cheshire, opened the door which led to the platform of the operating
theater. Some dozen or fifteen professional-looking gentlemen rose as he
made his appearance and bowed. A young woman with her arm in a sling sat
by the table attended by a couple of women nurses.
"Good morning, gentlemen! Good morning!" remarked Sir Penniston. "Mr.
Jermyn, will you kindly prepare the patient? My friends, I have the
pleasure of being able to announce to you, and thus permitting you in a
measure to share in, what I regard as the most extraordinary achievement
of our profession."
A murmur of interest and appreciation made itself audible from the
physicians who had resumed their seats upon the benches. If Sir
Penniston regarded anything as remarkable, it must indeed be so, and
they awaited his next words expectantly.
"The problem, gentlemen, of limb-grafting has been solved!" he announced
modestly.
The assembled surgeons gazed at one another in amazement.
"You may perhaps recall," continued the baronet, "that it has for years
been my particular hobby, or, I should more properly say, theory, that
there was no reason in the world why, if a severed finger or a nose
could be replaced by surgery, the same should not be true of a major
part, such as a hand or leg; and why, if a limb once severed could be
replaced upon its stump, another person's might not be used.
"Many gentlemen eminent in our profession, some of whom I believe I see
before me, gave it as their opinion that such an operation was
impossible. A few--and most of these, I regret to say, were upon the
other side of the Atlantic--agreed with me that it could and would
ultimately be accomplished. I studied the problem for years. Was it our
inability to nourish a part once severed or so to reënervate it as to
unite tendons, muscles, or bone? The latter surely gave no trouble.
Tendons were sutured every day, and under favorable circumstances their
functions were restored, while nerves were frequently sutured and
functional restoration recorded.
"The question, therefore, seemed to narrow itself down to whether or not
it was impossible to restore an arterial supply once cut off. Veins, of
course, were frequently cut and sutured, and performed perfectly
afterwards. Was there no way to restore an artery? In other words, could
a limb once severed be sufficiently nourished to restore it? This, then,
became my special study--a fascinating study indeed, involving as it did
the possibilities of untold benefit to mankind."
Sir Penniston paused and glanced toward the table upon which was
extended the now almost unconscious form of the patient. There was still
plenty of time for him to conclude his remarks.
"With a view, therefore, to observing whether a thin glass tube would be
tolerated in a sterilized state within an artery (the only possible
means I could devise to allow a continued flow of blood and
contemporaneous restoration), I made a number of half-inch pieces to
suit the caliber of a dog's femoral, constricted them very slightly to
an hour-glass shape, and smoothed their ends by heat, so that no surface
roughness should induce clotting. Cutting the femorals across, I tied
each end on the tube by a fine silk thread, and tied the thread ends
together. Primary union resulted, and the dog's legs were as good as
ever! The first step had been successfully accomplished."
The assembled surgeons clapped their hands faintly in token of
appreciation, and one or two murmured, "My word!-- Extraordinary!--
Marvelous!" Sir Penniston bowed slightly and resumed:
"I now added one more step to my experiments. I dissected out the
trachial artery and vein near the axilla of a dog's forelimb, and,
holding these apart, amputated the limb through the shoulder muscles and
sawed through the bone, leaving the limb attached only by the vessels. I
then sutured the bone with a silver wire and the nerves with fine silk.
Each muscle I sutured by itself with catgut, making a separate series of
continuous suturing of the _fascia lata_ and skin. The leg was then
enveloped in sterilized dressing, a liberal use of iodoform gauze being
the essential part. Over all, cotton and a plaster jacket were placed,
leaving him three legs to walk on. The dog's leg united perfectly."
The assembled gentlemen broke into loud applause. The patient was lying
motionless, her deep inspirations showing that she was under the
anæsthetic. But Sir Penniston was now lost in the enthusiasm of his
subject.
"Thus, gentlemen, I demonstrated that, if in an amputated limb an
artery could be left, the limb would survive the division and reuniting
of everything else, and had good ground for the belief that if an
arterial supply could be restored to a completely amputated limb, _that_
limb also might be grafted back to its original or to a corresponding
stump.
"The final experiment only remained--the complete amputation of a limb
and its restoration--a combination of all the others--difficult,
dangerous, delicate--and requiring much preparation, assistance, and
time. I finally selected a healthy cat, amputated its foreleg, inserted
a glass tube in the artery, and sutured bone, muscles, nerves, and skin.
Complete restoration occurred! And after four months you have here
before you this morning the cat herself, fat, well, and strong, and as
good as ever!--Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!"
The Marchioness of Cheshire ran quickly to Sir Penniston and leaped into
his lap, while the gentlemen left the benches and hastened forward to
seize the master's hand and to examine the cat in wonder.
"There is nothing, therefore, in the way of grafting which cannot be
successfully undertaken. A human arm or leg crushed at thigh or
shoulder, and requiring amputation, would admit of Esmarch's bandage
being applied to expel its blood and of being used after amputation. Why
not another man's blood as well as its owner's? No reason in the world!
Had we here a suitable forearm ready to be applied I have no doubt but
that I could successfully replace it upon the stump of the one I am now
about to remove. Hereafter, so long as there are limbs enough to go
round--so long as the demand does not transcend the supply--none of our
patients need fear the permanent loss of a member!"
The surgeons overwhelmed him with their congratulations, but Sir
Penniston modestly waived them aside. His triumph was the triumph of
science--and its purity was not marred by any thought of personal
glorification.
"The Crispan operation," some one whispered. The others caught it up.
"The Crispan operation," they repeated. A slight look of gratification
made itself apparent upon Sir Penniston's rosy countenance.
"Thank you, gentlemen! Thank you! Mr. Jermyn, is the patient quite
ready? Yes? We will proceed, gentlemen. My instruments, if you please."
Among those who left the operating theater an hour later was Sir Richard
Mortmain.
II
The opalescent light from the bronze electric lamp on the mahogany
writing table disclosed two gentlemen, whose attitudes and expressions
left no doubt as to the serious import of their discussion. At the same
time the _membra disjecta_ of afternoon tea which remained upon the teak
tabaret, together with the still smoking butt of an Egyptian cigarette
distilling its incense in a steadily perpendicular gray column toward
the ceiling from a jade jar used as an ash receiver, showed that for one
of them at least the situation had admitted of physical amelioration.
The gentleman beside the table had rested his high, narrow forehead upon
the delicate fingers of his left hand, and with contracted eyebrows was
gazing in a baffled manner toward his companion, who had extended his
limbs at length before the heavy chair in which he reclined, and with
his elbows upon its arms was holding his finger tips lightly against
each other before his face. To those who knew Ashley Flynt this meant
that the last word had been spoken, and that nothing remained but to
accept the situation as he stated it and follow his advice.
His heavy yet shrewd countenance, whose florid hue bespoke a modern
adjustment of golf to a more traditional use of port, had that cold,
vacant look which it displayed when the mind behind the mask had
recorded Q. E. D. beneath its unseen demonstration. The gentleman at
the table twitched his shoulders nervously, slowly raised his head, and
leaned back into his chair.
"And you say that there is absolutely nothing which can be done?" he
repeated mechanically.
"I have already told you, Sir Richard," replied Flynt in even, incisive
tones, "that the last day of grace expires to-morrow. Unless the three
notes are immediately taken up you will be forced into bankruptcy. Your
property and expectations are already mortgaged for more than they are
worth. Your assets of every sort will not return your creditors--I
should say your creditor--fifteen per cent. Seventy-nine thousand
pounds, principal and interest--can you raise it or even a substantial
part of it? No, not five thousand! You have no choice, so far as I can
see, but to go into bankruptcy, unless--" He hesitated rather
deprecatingly.
"Well!" cried Sir Richard impatiently, "unless----"
"Unless you marry."
The baronet drew himself up and a flush crept into his cheeks and across
his forehead.
"As your legal adviser," continued Flynt unperturbed, "I give it as my
opinion that your only alternative to bankruptcy is a suitable marriage.
Of course, for a man of your position in society a mere engagement might
be enough to----"
Sir Richard sprang quickly to his feet and stepped in front of his
solicitor.
"To induce the money lenders to advance the amount necessary to put me
on my feet? Bah! Flynt, how dare you make such a suggestion! If you were
not my solicitor--Good heavens, that I should ever be brought to this!"
Flynt shrugged his shoulders.
"So far as that goes, bankruptcy is the cheapest way to pay one's
debts."
His client uttered an ejaculation of disgust. Then suddenly the red
deepened in his cheeks and he clenched his white hand until the thin
blue veins stood out like cords.
"Curse him!" he cried in a voice shaken by anger. "Curse him now and
hereafter! Why did I ever take advantage of his pretended generosity? He
meant to ruin me! Why was I ever born with tastes that I could not
afford to gratify? Why must I surround myself with music and flowers and
marbles? He saw his chance, stimulated my extravagance, seduced my
intellect, and now he casts me into the street a beggar! How I hate him!
I believe I could _kill_ him!"
Sir Richard turned quickly. The door had opened to admit the silent,
deferential figure of Joyce, the butler.
"Pardon me, Sir Richard. A clerk from Mr. Flynt's office, sir, with a
package. Shall I let him in?"
Mortmain still stood with his fist trembling in mid-air, and it was a
moment before he regained sufficient control of himself to reply:
"Yes, yes; let him in."
The butler nodded to some one just behind him, and a nondescript,
undersized man cringingly entered the room and stood hesitatingly by the
threshold.
"Have you the papers, Flaggs?" inquired Flynt.
"Here, sir," replied the other, drawing forth a bundle tied with red
tape and handing it to his employer.
"Very good. You need not return to the office. Good night."
"Good night, sir. Thank you, sir," mumbled Flaggs, and casting a
furtive, beetling glance in the direction of Sir Richard, he shambled
out.
The solicitor followed him with his eye until the door had closed behind
him, and then shrugged his shoulders for the second time.
"My dear Sir Richard," he remarked, "many of our most distinguished
peers have gone through bankruptcy. It will all be the same a year
hence. Society will be as glad as ever to receive you. Your name will
command the same respect and likely enough the same credit. Bankruptcy
is still eminently respectable. As for Lord Russell--try to forget him.
It is enough that you owe him the money."
Mortmain's anger had been followed by the reaction of despair. Now he
groped for a cigarette, and, drawing a jeweled match box from his
pocket, lit it with trembling fingers.
Flynt arose.
"That's right!" he exclaimed; "just be sensible about it. Meet me
to-morrow at my office at ten o'clock and we will call in Lord Russell's
solicitors for a consultation. It will be amicable enough, I assure you.
Well, I must be off. Good night." He extended his hand, but Mortmain had
thrust his own into his trousers' pockets.
"And you say nothing can prevent this?"
"Why, yes," returned Flynt in a sarcastic tone; "I believe two things
can do so."
"Indeed," inquired Sir Richard. "What may they be?"
Flynt had stepped impatiently to the door, which he now held half open.
Sir Richard had failed to send him a draft for his last bill.
"A fire from heaven to consume the notes--coupled with the death of Lord
Russell--or your own. Good night!"
The door closed abruptly and Sir Richard Mortmain was left alone.
"The death of Lord Russell or my own!" he repeated with a harsh laugh.
"Agreeable fellow, Flynt!" Then the bitter smile died out of his face
and the lines hardened. Over on the heavy onyx mantel, between two
grotesque bronze Chinese vases from whose ponderous sides dragons with
bristling teeth and claws writhed to escape, a Sèvres clock chimed six,
and was echoed by a dim booming from the outer hall.
Mortmain glanced with regret about the little den that typified so
perfectly the futility of his luxurious existence. The deadened walls
admitted hardly a suggestion of the traffic outside. By a flower-set
window the open piano still held the score of "Madame Butterfly," the
opening performance of which he was to attend that evening with Lady
Bella Forsythe. A bunch of lilies of the valley stood at his elbow upon
the massive table that never bore anything upon its polished surface but
an ancient manuscript, an etching, or a vase of flowers. Delicate
cabinets showed row upon row of grotesque Capodimonte, rare Sèvres and
Dresden porcelains, jade, and other examples of ceramic art. Two
Rembrandts, a Corot, and a profile by Whistler occupied the wall space.
The mantel was given over to a few choice antique bronzes, covered with
verdigris. The only concession to modern utilitarianism was an extension
telephone standing upon a bracket in the corner behind the fireplace.
The sole surviving member of his family, Mortmain had inherited from
his father, Sir Mortimer, a discriminating intellect and artistic
tastes, united with a gentle, engaging, and unambitious disposition,
derived from his Italian mother. Carelessly indifferent to his social
inferiors, or those whom he regarded as such, he was brilliantly
entertaining with his equals--a man of moods, conservative in habit, yet
devoted to society, expensive in his mode of life, given to
hospitality--and a spendthrift. These qualities combined to make him
caviare to the general, an enigma to the majority, and the favorite of
the few, whose favorite he desired to be. He had never married, for his
calculation and his laziness had jumped together to convince him that he
could be more comfortable, more independent, and more free to pursue his
music and kindred tastes, if single. Altogether, Sir Richard, though
perhaps a trifle selfish, was by no means a bad fellow, and one whose
temperament fitted him to be what he was--a leader in matters of taste,
a connoisseur, and an esteemed member of the gay world.
No doubt, as Flynt had suggested, he could have liberated himself
financially by donning the golden shackles of an aristocratic marital
slavery. But his soul revolted at the thought of marrying for money, not
only at the moral aspect of it, but because a certain individual
tranquillity had become necessary to his mode of life. He was forty and
a creature of habit. A conventional marriage would be as intolerable as
earning his living. On the other hand, the odium of a bankruptcy
proceeding, the publicity, the vulgarity of it, and the loss of prestige
and position which it would necessarily involve brought him face to face
with the only alternative which Flynt had flung at him in parting--the
death of Lord Russell or his own.
He had known that without being told. Months before, the silver-mounted
pistol which was to round out his consistently inconsistent existence
had been concealed among the linen in the bureau of his Louis XV
bedroom, but it was to be invoked only when no other course remained.
That nothing else did remain was clear. Flynt had read his client's
sentence in that brutally unconscious jest.
On the day of his interview with Flynt he was one of the most highly
regarded critics of music and art in London, and his own brilliant
accomplishments as a virtuoso had been supplemented by a lavish
generosity toward struggling painters and musicians who found easy
access to his purse and table, if not to his heart.
He had introduced Drausche, the Austrian pianist, to the musical world
at a heavy financial loss and had made several costly donations to the
British Museum, in addition to which his collection of scarabs was one
of the most complete on record and demanded constant replenishing to
keep up to date. His expensive habits had required money and plenty of
it, and when his patrimony had been exhausted he had mortgaged his
expectations in his uncle's estate to launch the Austrian genius. It had
been a lamentable failure. Mortmain's friends had said plainly enough
that Drausche could play no better than his patron. This of itself
implied no mean talent, but the public had resolutely refused to pay
five shillings a ticket to hear the pianist, and the money was gone. Sir
Richard had found himself in the hollow position of playing Mæcenas
without the price, and rather than change his pose and his manner of
life had borrowed twenty-five thousand pounds four years before from an
elderly peer, who combined philanthropy and what some declared to be
usury with a high degree of success.
There were those who hinted that this eminently respectable aristocrat
robbed Peter more than he paid Paul, but Lord Gordon Russell was a man
with whose reputation it was not safe to take liberties. The next year
Mortmain had renewed his note, and, in order to save his famous
collection from being knocked down at Christie's, had borrowed
twenty-five thousand more. The same thing happened the year after, and
now all three notes were three days overdue.
Sir Richard responded to the announcement of the little Sèvres clock by
pressing a button at the side of his desk, which summons was speedily
answered by Joyce.
"My fur coat, if you please, Joyce."
"Very good, sir." Joyce combined the eye of an eagle with the stolidity
of an Egyptian mummy.
Mortmain arose, stepped to the fire, rubbed his thin, carefully kept
fingers together, then seated himself at the piano and played a few
chords from the overture. As he sat there he looked anything but a
bankrupt upon the eve of suicide--rather one would have said, a young
Italian musician, just ready to receive and enjoy the crowning pleasures
of life. The thin light of the heavily shaded lamps brought out the
ivory paleness of his face and hands, and the delicate, sensitive
outline of his form, as with eyes half closed and head thrown back he
ran his fingers with facile skill across the keyboard.
"Your coat, sir," said Joyce.
Mortmain arose and presented his arms while the servant deftly threw on
the seal-lined garment, and handed his master his silk hat, gloves, and
gold-headed stick.
"I am going for a short walk, Joyce. I shall be back by seven. You can
reach me at the club, if necessary."
Joyce held open the door of the study and then hurried ahead through the
luxuriously furnished hall to push open the massive door at the
entrance. On the threshold Mortmain turned and, looking Joyce in the
eye, said sharply:
"Why did you let that fellow Flaggs follow you to the door of my study,
instead of leaving him in the hall?"
"I beg pardon, sir," replied the servant, "but he slipped behind me
afore I knew it, sir. He was a rum one, anyway, sir--a bit in liquor, I
fancy, sir."
Mortmain turned and passed out without reply. He hated intruders and had
not liked the way in which Flynt had calmly received the clerk in his
private study. On the whole, he regarded the solicitor as presuming.
It was dark already and the street lamps glowed nebulously through the
gathering fog. The air was chilly, and a thick mealy paste, half sleet,
half water, formed a sort of icing upon the sidewalk, which made walking
slippery and uncomfortable. Few people were abroad, for fashionable
London was in its clubs and boudoirs, and the workers trudged in an
entirely different direction.
The club was but a few streets away, and it was only ten minutes after
the hour when he entered it and strolled carelessly through the rooms.
No one whom he cared particularly to see was there, and the fresh, if
bitter, December air outside seemed vastly preferable to the stuffy
atmosphere of the smoke-filled card and reading rooms. Therefore, as he
had nearly an hour before it would be time to dress, he left the club,
and, with the vague idea of extending his evening ramble, turned
northward. Unconsciously he kept repeating Flynt's words: "The death of
Lord Russell or your own." Then, without heed to where he was going, he
fell into a reverie, in which he pondered upon the emptiness and
uselessness of his life.
At length he entered a large square, and found himself asking what was
so familiar in the picket fence and broad flight of steps that led up to
the main entrance of the mansion on the corner. A wing of the house made
out into a side street and presented three brilliantly lighted windows
to the night. Two were empty, but on the white shade of the third, only
a few feet above the sidewalk, appeared the sharp shadow of a man's head
bending over a table. Now and then the lips moved as if their owner were
addressing some other occupant of the chamber. It was the head of an old
man, bald and shrunken.
Mortmain muttered an oath. What tricks was Fate trying to play with him
by leading his footsteps to the house of the very man who, on the
following morning, would ruin him as inevitably and inexorably as the
sun would rise! A wave of anger surged through him and he shook his fist
at the shadow on the curtain, exclaiming as he had done in his study
half an hour before, "Curse him!"
"Ain't got much bloomin' 'air, 'as 'e, guv'nor?" said a thick voice at
his elbow.
Sir Richard started back and beheld by the indistinct light of the
street lamp the leering face of Flaggs, the clerk.
"Tha'sh yer frien' S'Gordon Russell," continued the other with easy
familiarity. "A bloomin' bad un, says I. 'Orrid li'l bald 'ead! Got'sh
notes, too. _Your_ notes, S'Richard. Don't like 'im myself!"
Mortmain turned faint. This wretched scrivener had stumbled upon or
overheard his secret. That he was drunk was obvious, but that only made
him the more dangerous.
"Take yourself off, my man. It's too cold out here for you," ordered the
baronet, slipping a couple of shillings into his hand.
"Than' you, S'Richard," mumbled Flaggs, leaning heavily in Mortmain's
direction. "I accept this as a 'refresher.' Although you've never given
me a retainer! Ha! ha! Not so bad, eh? Lemme tell you somethin'. 'Like
to kill 'im,' says you? Kill 'im, says I. Le's kill 'im together. 'Ere
an' now! Eh?"
"Leave me, do you hear?" cried the baronet. "You're in no condition to
be on the street."
Flaggs grinned a sickly grin.
"Same errand as you, your worship. Both 'ere lookin' at li'l old bald
'ead. Look at 'im now----"
He raised his finger and pointed at the window, then staggered backward,
lost his balance, and fell over the curb along the gutter. In another
instant a policeman had him by the collar and had jerked him to his
feet. The fall had so dazed the clerk that he made no resistance.
"I 'ope 'e didn't hoffer you no violence, Sir Richard," remarked the
bobby, touching his helmet with his unoccupied hand. "Hit's
disgraceful--right in front of Lord Russell's, too!"
"No, he was merely offensive," replied Mortmain, recognizing the
policeman as an old timer on the beat. "Thank you. Good night."
The baronet turned away as the bobby started toward the station house,
conducting his bewildered victim by the nape of the neck. Without
heeding direction, Mortmain strode on, trying to forget the drunken
Flaggs and the little bald head in the window. The clerk's words had
created in him a feeling of actual nausea, so that a perspiration broke
out all over his body and he walked uncertainly. After he had covered
half a mile or so, the air revived him, and, having taken his bearings,
he made a wide circle so as to avoid Farringham Square again, and at the
same time to approach his own house from the direction opposite to that
in which he had started. He still felt shocked and ill--the same
sensation which he had once experienced on seeing two navvies fighting
outside a music hall. He remembered afterwards that there seemed to be
more people on the streets as he neared his home, and that a patrol
wagon passed at a gallop in the same direction. A hundred yards farther
on he saw a long envelope lying in the slush upon the sidewalk, and
mechanically he picked it up and thrust it in the pocket of his coat.
Joyce came to the door just as the hall clock boomed seven. Sir Richard
had been gone exactly an hour.
"Fetch me a brandy and soda," ordered the baronet huskily, and stepped
into the study without removing his furs. The fire had been replenished
and was cracking merrily, but it sent no answering glow through Sir
Richard's frame. The shadow of the little bald head still rested like a
weight upon his brain, and his hands were moist and clammy. He thrust
them into his pockets and came into contact with the wet manila cover
of the envelope, and he drew it forth and tossed it upon the table as
Joyce entered with the brandy.
The butler removed his master's coat and noiselessly left the room,
while Mortmain drained the glass and then carelessly examined the
envelope. The names of "Flynt, Steele & Burnham" printed in the upper
left-hand corner caught his eye. The names of his own solicitors! That
was a peculiar thing. Perhaps Flynt had dropped it--or Flaggs. He turned
it over curiously. It was unsealed, as if it had formed one of a package
of papers. The baronet lifted the envelope to the lamp and peeped within
it. There were three thin sheets of paper covered with writing, and
unconsciously he drew them forth and examined them. At the foot of each,
in delicate, firm characters, appeared his own name staring him
familiarly in the face. In the corners were the unmistakable figures
£25,000. He rubbed his forehead and read all three carefully. There
could be no doubt of it--they were his own three notes of hand to Lord
Gordon Russell. Fate was playing tricks with him again.
"A fire from heaven to consume the notes," Flynt had said. Here were the
notes--there was the fire. Had Heaven perhaps really interposed to save
him? Was this chance or Providence? With a short breath the baronet
grasped the notes and took a step toward the hearth. As he did so the
extension telephone by the mantel began to ring excitedly. His heart
thumped loudly as, with a feeling of guilt, he relaid the notes upon the
table and seized the telephone.
"Yes--yes--this is Mortmain!"
"Richard," came the voice of a friend at the club in anxious tones, "are
you there? Are you at home?"
"Yes--yes!" repeated the baronet breathlessly. "What is it?"
"Have you heard the news--the news about Lord Russell?"
Mortmain's head swam with a whirl of premonition.
"No," he replied, trying to master himself, while the perspiration again
broke out over his body. "What news? What has happened?"
"Lord Russell was murdered in his library at half after six this
evening. Some one gained access to the room and killed the old man at
his study table."
"Killed Lord Russell!" gasped Sir Richard. "Have they caught the
murderer?"
"No," continued his friend. "The assassin escaped by one of the windows
into the street. The police have taken possession. There is nothing to
indicate who did the deed. There was blood everywhere. His secretary, a
man named Leach, was discharged two days ago and a general alarm has
been sent out for him."
"This is terrible," groaned Sir Richard in horror.
"It is, indeed. I thought you ought to know. I may see you at the opera.
If not--good night."
The receiver fell from the baronet's fingers, and the room grew black as
he clutched at the mantel with his other hand. He staggered slightly,
tried to regain his equilibrium, and in so doing upset one of the bronze
dragon vases which grinned down upon him.
The vase fell, and the baronet clutched at it in its descent. It was too
late. The heavy bronze crashed downward to the floor carrying Sir
Richard with it, and one of the verdigris-covered dragon's fangs pierced
his right hand.
Mortmain uttered a moan and lay motionless on the floor. The little
Sèvres clock ticked off forty seconds and then softly chimed the
quarter, while the blood from the baronet's hand spurted in a tiny
stream upon the rug.
[Illustration: "Mortmain . . . lay motionless on the floor."]
III
When Sir Richard Mortmain next opened his eyes after his fall he found
himself in his bedchamber. The curtains were tightly drawn, allowing
only a shimmer of sunshine to creep in and play upon the ceiling; an
unknown woman in a nurse's uniform was sitting motionless at the foot of
his bed; the air was heavy with the pungent odor of iodoform, and his
right arm, tightly bandaged and lying extended upon a wooden support
before him, throbbed with burning pains. Too weak to move, unable to
recall what had brought him to such a pass, he raised his eyebrows
inquiringly, and in reply the nurse laid her finger upon her lips and
reaching toward a stand beside the bed held a tumbler containing a glass
tube to the baronet's lips. Mortmain sucked the contents from the
tumbler and felt his pulse strengthen--then weakness manifested itself
and he sank back, his lips framing the unspoken question, "What has
happened?"
The nurse smiled--she was a pretty, plump young person--not the kind Sir
Richard favored (Burne-Jones was his type), and whispered:
"You have been unconscious over twelve hours. You must lie still. You
have had a bad fall and your hand is injured."
In some strange and unaccountable way the statement called to Mortmain's
fuddled senses a confused recollection of a scene in Hauptmann's "Die
Versunkene Glöcke," and half unconsciously he repeated the words:
"I _fell_. I--fe--l--l!"
"Yes, you did, indeed!" retorted the pretty nurse. "But Sir Penniston
will never forgive me if I let you talk. How is your arm?"
"It burns--and burns!" answered the baronet.
"That horrid vase crushed right through the palm. Rather a nasty wound.
But you will be all right presently. Do you wish anything?"
Suddenly complete mental capacity rushed back to him. The disagreeable
scene with Flaggs, the finding of the notes, the news of Russell's
murder, and his accident. The murder! He must learn the details. And the
notes. What had he done with them? He could not recollect, try hard as
he would. Were they on the table? His head whirled and he grew suddenly
faint. The nurse poured out another tumbler from a bottle and again held
the tube to his lips. How delicious and strengthening it was!
"Please get me a newspaper!" said Sir Richard.
"A newspaper!" cried the nurse. "Nonsense! I'll do no such thing!"
"Then please see if there are some papers in an envelope lying on the
writing table in my private study."
The nurse seemed puzzled. Where aristocratic patients were concerned,
particularly if they were in a weakened condition, she was accustomed to
accommodate them. She hesitated.
"At once!" added Sir Richard.
The nurse tiptoed out of the room, and in the course of a few moments
returned.
"The butler says that Mr. Flynt's clerk, a man named Faggs, or Flaggs,
or something of the sort, came back for them half an hour ago. He
explained that he thought Mr. Flynt might have left some papers by
mistake, and the butler supposed it was all right and let him have them.
The name of your solicitors was upon the envelope."
Sir Richard stared at her stupidly. A queer feeling of horror and
distrust pervaded him, the very same feeling which his first sight of
the clerk had inspired in him. What could Flaggs have known of the
notes? The clerk himself could not have committed the ghastly deed,
since he had been under arrest at the time--but might he not have been
an accomplice? Were the notes part of some terrible plot to enmesh
_him_, Sir Richard Mortmain, in the murder? Was it a scheme of
blackmail? The blood surged to his head and dimmed his eyesight. But why
had Flaggs taken them away? Had he left them on the street hoping that
Sir Richard would find them and bring them into the house, so that he
could testify to having found them in the study? But, if so, why had he
risked the possibility of their having been destroyed before he could
regain them? Such a supposition was most unlikely. It must have been
merely chance. The fellow had probably sneaked in simply to see what he
could find. And what had he found! A shiver of terror quenched for an
instant the burning of Mortmain's body. A horrible vision of himself
standing outside the window of Lord Gordon Russell took shape before
him. What if people should say--! He had been heard by Joyce and the
clerk to express his hatred of the old man and his willingness to kill
him. In addition there were the notes, overdue and about to be
protested, which Flaggs had found in his study within twelve hours of
Lord Russell's murder. Motive enough for any crime. Moreover, the
policeman had seen him loitering there at almost the exact moment of the
homicide!
These momentous facts came crashing down upon his brain with the weight
of stones, numbing for an instant his exquisite torture--then reason
reasserted herself. Lord Russell was dead. If circumstances seemed to
point in his direction, he had only to deny that the notes had been in
his possession, and certainly his word would be taken as against that of
the drunken clerk of a solicitor. Moreover, the notes were obviously not
in the possession of the executors. Should, by any chance, no memoranda
of them remain he might never be called upon to honor them. At all
events, his bankruptcy had, for the time at least, been averted. Even
were their existence known, legal procedure would intervene to give him
time to evolve some means of escape--perhaps, in default of aught else,
a marriage of convenience. Sir Richard, in spite of the burning pain in
his right arm, leaned back his head with a sensation of relief.
A soft knock came at the door and he heard the nurse's voice murmuring
in low tones; then the curtain was partially raised and he recognized
the figures of Sir Penniston Crisp and his young assistant.
"Ah, my dear Mortmain! When you left me yesterday morning I hardly
expected to see you so soon again. And how do you find yourself?" was
the baronet's cheery salutation.
Sir Richard smiled faintly.
"Rather a nasty wound," continued the surgeon. "Fickles, hand me those
bandage scissors. Well, we must take a look at it." And he seated
himself comfortably by the bedside.
Miss Fickles, who had elevated Sir Richard to a sitting posture, now
handed Sir Penniston the scissors, and the great physician leisurely cut
the bandage from the arm. Mortmain winced with pain and closed his eyes.
For an instant the outer air soothed the burning palm and forearm, then
the blood crept into the veins and the pain became veritable agony.
"Hm!" remarked Sir Penniston. "I must open this up. It needs attending
to."
He might well say so, for the edges of the wound showed tinges of
yellow, and the hand itself was torn pitifully.
"Scalscope, pass those instruments to Miss Fickles, and open that bottle
of somni-chloride. I shall have to give you a whiff of anæsthetic,
Mortmain. These little exploring expeditions are apt to be painful,
however gentle we try to be. Just enough to make you a mere
spectator--you will not lose consciousness. Wonderful, isn't it? I'm
afraid I shall have to pick out some slivers of bone and trim off the
edges a little. It will only take a moment or two. Then a nice bandage
and you will be quite at ease."
While Jermyn was emptying Sir Penniston's bag of its heterogeneous
contents, Miss Fickles boiled the surgeon's implements in a tray of
water over a tiny electric stove, and then arranged them in order upon a
soft bed of padded cotton. Scalscope pulled a table to the bedside, and
laid out with military precision rolls of linen, absorbents, antiseptic
gauze, scissors, tape, thread, needles, and finally the little bottle of
somni-chloride. The nurse lowered Sir Richard back upon the pillow and
quickly twisted a fresh towel into a cone.
"How science leaps onward," continued Sir Penniston, meditatively
taking the cone in his left hand. "Anodyne, ether, chloroform, nitrous
oxide, ethyl-chloride, and at last the greatest of all boons,
somni-chloride! And all within my lifetime--that is really the most
extraordinary part of it. Ah, what are the miracles of art to the
miracles of science? Think of being able at last, as you heard me
announce, to feel sure of never permanently losing a limb!"
He allowed a single drop from the bottle to fall into the cone. Even as
it descended it resolved itself into a lilac-colored volatile filling
the cone like a horn of plenty. Sir Penniston held it with a smile just
over Mortmain's head and suffered it to escape gently downward. At the
first faint odor the baronet felt a perfect calm steal over his tired
brain, at the second he seemed translated from his body and hovering
above it, retaining the while an almost supernatural acuteness of eye
and ear. Of bodily pain he felt nothing. Then Crisp inverted the cone
and poured out the lilac smoke in a faint iridescent cloud, which eddied
round the baronet's head and filled his nostrils with the sweet
fragrance of an old-fashioned garden. Its perfume almost smothered him,
and for a moment his eyes were blurred as if he had inhaled a breath of
strong ammonia. Then his sight cleared and he no longer smelled the
flowers. The surgeon laid down the cone and took up a small, thin knife.
"Fickles, hold the wrist; you, Scalscope, the fingers. Thank you, that
will do nicely."
Mortmain watched with fascinated interest as Sir Penniston applied the
point to his palm. Then the surgeon suddenly raised his head and looked
pityingly at Sir Richard. At the same moment the effect of the
somni-chloride began to wear off and the baronet felt a throbbing in
his hand. Jermyn also cast a glance of compassion at the patient, while
Miss Fickles turned away her head as if unable to bear the sight of his
suffering.
"My poor Mortmain," said the surgeon. "I fear you can never use this
hand again."
Mortmain caught his breath and choked.
"What do you mean?" he gasped, and the effort sent a sharp pain through
his lungs. "Not use my hand again?" His words sounded like the roar of a
waterfall.
"I fear you cannot. It is an ugly-looking wound. I am sorry to say you
will have to lose your hand. We shall be lucky if we can save the arm."
Mortmain felt an extraordinary pity for himself. He sobbed aloud. He had
been vaguely aware that certain unfortunate persons in lowly
circumstances occasionally lost their limbs. He was accustomed to
contribute handsomely toward the homes for cripples and the blind, but
he had never associated such an affliction with himself. He could not
appreciate the proximity of it. There must be a mistake--or an
alternative.
"No, no, no!" he exclaimed heavily. "Surely, you can restore my hand by
treatment. I do not care how painful or tedious it may be. Why, I _must_
have my hand. I have it now. Leave it as it is. I shall recover in
time."
Sir Penniston smiled cheerfully.
"I am sorry," he repeated, and Mortmain fancied that he detected a gleam
of exultation in his eye. "Nothing can save it. Gangrene has already set
in. The verdigris of the vase has poisoned the flesh. Do you think I
would trifle with you? That is not my business. Be a man. It is hard;
true enough. But it might be much worse."
"But my music!" cried Mortmain in agony. "I shall be a miserable
cripple! A fellow with an empty sleeve or a stuffed hand in a glove!
Horrible!" He groaned.
"You have still another," remarked the surgeon calmly. "Bind up this
arm," he ordered, turning sharply to Jermyn. "Mortmain, I shall have to
amputate your hand at the wrist within twelve hours. Do you desire a
consultation? I assure you any physician would unhesitatingly give the
same opinion. Still, if you desire----"
The room swam about the baronet, and for an instant the two surgeons
seemed like two ogres hovering aloft with bloodthirsty faces glowering
down at his helpless body.
Scalscope finished the bandage and tied the ends. Then he looked across
at Crisp and remarked:
"How fortunate, Sir Penniston, that your experiments have been concluded
in time to save Sir Richard. He will be the very first to benefit by
your great discovery!"
Crisp smiled responsively.
"What is that?" cried Mortmain. "Save me? What do you mean?"
"Merely this, Mortmain. That if you are willing I may still give you a
hand in place of this ruined one. It is possible, as I announced
yesterday, to graft another in its place."
Mortmain stared stupidly at Sir Penniston. A great weight seemed
stifling him.
"Did you really _mean_ it?" he gasped.
"Precisely," returned the surgeon. "It will be difficult, but not
particularly dangerous."
"Another's hand!" groaned the baronet.
"And why not?" eagerly continued the surgeon. "Surely some one will be
found who can be induced for a proper consideration to assist in an
operation that will restore to usefulness so distinguished a member of
society."
"But is it _right_?" gasped Mortmain. "Is it lawful to maim a
fellow-creature merely to serve oneself?" The idea disgusted him.
"As you please," remarked Crisp dryly. "If you are to avail yourself of
this opportunity, which has never been offered to another, you must say
so at once. If you are indifferent to the loss of your hand or distrust
my skill, there is nothing left but to amputate and be done with it."
"It cannot be right!" moaned Mortmain. "I know it is a wicked thing."
"Right?" sneered Crisp. "Why, I almost believe that it would be a sin if
I let this opportunity go by."
"What is that?" cried Miss Fickles sharply.
There was a sharp knock at the door and Ashley Flynt entered, with a
strange look on his face. Like a flash it occurred to Mortmain that the
solicitor had called to see him about the bankruptcy. He looked again,
and a terrible thought possessed him that it was for something else that
the lawyer had come. Was it about the murder? Was he already suspected?
Apprehension dwarfed the horror of Sir Penniston's suggestion.
"Ah, Flynt," said the surgeon, "I am glad you have come. You can advise
our friend here. I have offered to give him a new hand in place of the
one which he must lose. He's afraid that it is unlawful. Come, give us
an opinion!"
Flynt sank silently into an armchair and rested his finger tips lightly
together.
"Flynt," cried Mortmain, "what a terrible thing it is to deprive a
fellow-creature of a limb. Is it legal? Is it not criminal?"
Flynt gazed fixedly at Sir Richard for a moment without replying.
"Situations sometimes arise," he remarked in a toneless voice, "where
the results desired, even if they do not justify the means employed, at
least render legal opinions superfluous."
"I do not understand you," groaned Mortmain. "Do you mean that what Sir
Penniston proposes is a crime?"
"I mean that in a transaction of such moment the purely legal aspect of
the case may be of slight importance."
"Exactly!" exclaimed Sir Penniston, whose face had assumed an expression
of uneasiness. "To be sure! How plain he puts things, Mortmain. The law
does not concern us when the integrity of the human body is involved."
"But if I require and insist upon your advice?" continued Mortmain. "You
know that you are my solicitor."
"In a matter of this kind I should refuse to give an opinion in a
specific case touching the interest of a client," returned Flynt.
"I must know the law!" cried the baronet.
"Very well," replied Flynt. "I have examined the statutes and find that
the maiming of another (save where such maiming is necessary to preserve
his life or health), even with his consent, is a felony. That is the
law, if you must have it."
"Well, well!" exclaimed Crisp. "There are so many laws that one can't
help violating some of them every day. What an absurd statute! It only
shows how ignorant our legislators used to be! I am sure there were no
scientific men in Parliament. It is nonsensical."
Flynt gave a short laugh and arose.
"My dear Sir Richard," he remarked dryly, "this is entirely a matter for
your own conscience and that of your physician. I trust that you will
soon recover. I have an important engagement. I must beg you to excuse
me."
"Gad, sir," cried Crisp, making a wry face toward the door as it closed
behind the solicitor, "what a fellow that is! You might as well try to
wring juice out of a paving stone. I feel quite irritated by him."
"If I consent," said Mortmain, "do you think you can find a proper
person to--to----"
"My dear Mortmain," responded Sir Penniston eagerly, "leave that to us.
You may be sure that we shall accept no hand that is not perfect in
every way and adapted to your particular needs. You need give yourself
not the slightest uneasiness upon that score, I assure you. Of course,
you will have to pay for it, but I am convinced that in an affair of
this kind a satisfactory adjustment can easily be made--say, two hundred
pounds down and an annuity of fifty pounds. How does that strike you?
Why, it would be a godsend to many a poor fellow--say a clerk. He earns
a beggarly five pounds a month. You give him two hundred pounds and as
much a year for doing nothing as he was earning working ten hours a
day."
The pains in Mortmain's hand had begun again with renewed intensity and
his whole arm throbbed in response. He felt excited and feverish, and
his thoughts no longer came with the same clearness and consecutiveness
as before. It was evident to him that Crisp's diagnosis was correct. But
shocking as was the realization that he, who had been in the prime of
health but a few hours before, must now undergo a major operation, it
was as nothing compared with the moral difficulty in which he found
himself. All his inherited tendencies drew him back from a violation of
the law, particularly a violation which included the maiming of a
fellow-being; and so, for that matter, did all his acquired tastes and
characteristics. On the other hand, his confidence in Crisp's skill and
knowledge was such that he never for an instant doubted his ability
successfully to achieve that which he had proposed.
"But the law! The law!" cried Mortmain in a last and almost pathetic
effort to oppose that which he now in reality desired. Crisp laughed
almost sneeringly.
"What is the law? The law is for the general good, not the individual.
Are we to follow it blindly when to do so would be suicidal? Bah! The
law never dares transgress the sacred circle of a physician's
discretion."
"I suppose that is quite true!" exclaimed Sir Richard faintly. "I leave
it to you. Do as you think best. I will follow your instructions. But I
am suffering. My hand tortures me horribly. Let us have it over with as
soon as possible. How soon can you make your arrangements?"
"By this afternoon, Sir Richard."
Mortmain sank back. In his eagerness he had half raised himself from the
pillow, and now a sensation of nausea accompanied by dizziness took
possession of him. He saw things dimly and in distorted forms. There
was a strange roaring in his head as of a multitude of waters and he
perceived that Crisp and Jermyn were talking eagerly together. He caught
disconnected words muttered hurriedly in low tones. They moved slowly
toward the door and he distinctly heard Crisp say as they passed out:
"Yes, Flaggs is the very man!"
The words filled him with a nameless terror.
"Stop!" he cried, "stop! I will have nothing to do with that man--do you
hear? Stop! Comeback!" But the door closed, and Mortmain, helpless and
trembling, again fell back and shut his eyes.
IV
It was cold in the train--icy cold, and in spite of his fur coat Sir
Richard found himself shivering. Only his arm hanging in a splint burned
with the fires of hell, as if imps with red-hot pincers were slowly
tearing apart the nerves. Sir Penniston, sitting opposite, smiled
encouragingly at him.
There were several people in the carriage. The lamps had been lighted
and in the corner, beside a large black case, sat Jermyn. Next to him
came Joyce, looking exceedingly respectable and very solemn. But the
other three he did not remember to have seen before--that tall,
white-whiskered man in the otter collar: he probably had been presented
and Sir Richard had forgotten. Then there was a big, broad-shouldered
fellow in a soft cap, and next to him a slender, white-faced youth whose
chin was buried in the depths of his coat collar, and whose hands were
thrust deep into his pockets. The big man looked out the window
occasionally and inquired the time, but the youth beside him kept his
eyes fast shut and hardly moved. Had he not been sitting bolt upright
Sir Richard fancied that the latter might have been taken for a corpse.
"Woxton next stop, gentlemen!" announced the guard, opening the door for
an instant as the train paused at a way station. A cold blast of air
followed and Mortmain's teeth chattered. It was quite dark in the
compartment and he felt very weak and miserable. He could not remember
getting aboard the train, but the purport of it all was unmistakable.
The agonies of the morning rushed back across his memory, and his hand
throbbed and twisted within the splint. He felt sick and faint and the
atmosphere of the carriage seemed suffocating.
"How much farther is it?" inquired the man in the otter collar. "We've
been traveling for hours!"
"Only eight miles," answered Crisp cheerfully. "It certainly has seemed
an unearthly distance."
There was a long silence punctuated only by the puffing of the engine
and the shriek of the whistle. Suddenly the pale young man whimpered.
The sound sent a chill to the marrow of Sir Richard's spine.
"If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee--"
whispered the youth. Then he fell to sobbing in the depths of his
collar, but without opening his eyes.
"Come, come, my man! None of that!" cried Crisp angrily. "You're a lucky
fellow! Why, your fortune is as good as made."
Mortmain shuddered.
"If thy hand offend thee--" he repeated to himself. "If thy hand
offend----"
Then he became conscious of still another presence somewhere--a presence
that watched him furtively, but hungrily, with eager, greedy eyes. He
stared along the seats and into the crannies. Could it have been a face
at the window? No, the black night rushed by steadily and blankly. And
yet he could not convince himself that another face had not been there a
moment before.
The train slowed up with a screeching of the brakes and came to a stop.
The door was flung open; his companions hurriedly arose, and the
broad-shouldered young man placed his arm protectingly about the baronet
and assisted him to the platform. A fine snow was sifting down silently
over the lamplit road and upon two large depot wagons standing beside
the station. Again Mortmain was conscious of a presence. He glanced
quickly across the platform and thought he saw a shadow spring from a
rear carriage and leap into the darkness of the bushes.
"What was that?" he gasped.
But the others paid no attention, being busily engaged in deporting
their cases and portmanteaus. The train started on again. Only the
station agent was left, his lantern making an opaque circle in the
intense darkness of the snow-filled night.
The horses champed impatiently, and as quickly as was possible the party
divided and climbed into the wagons, Crisp, the nurse, and Mortmain
entering the last. The doors were slammed to and they started. Still
Mortmain felt convinced that they were not alone. Looking back just as
they were leaving the dim lights of the station, he could have sworn
that he saw the figure of a man running steadily along behind, crouching
low against the road. To the south a distant glow bespoke the presence
of a village, but the wagons swung sharply to the north and plunged into
a wood.
A drowsiness had come over the baronet and he pressed close to the
nurse, terrified and shaken by the dread of some approaching peril. This
hired man seemed nearer to him than any other living soul. He cried
softly, fearing to be observed, and the tears coursed down his hot
cheeks and lost themselves in his furs. Now and then he would listen
intently for the sound of some one running, but he could hear nothing
save the crunch of the wheels and the jingle of the harness. Yet he knew
that just behind them, clinging to their wheel, was pressing that
mysterious figure that had leaped into the darkness beside the station.
After what seemed an hour, a bend in the road disclosed a single light
not far ahead and in a few moments the wagons stopped before a high
wall. The party got out and Crisp opened the gate. Mortmain stared
fixedly down the road, waiting for the unbidden guest to creep swiftly
into view.
"Here we are!" cried Sir Penniston. "Wait a moment until I notify the
farmer."
As the surgeon hastened up the paved walk to the cottage, the wagons
turned and started back at a brisk trot, like a home-going funeral
procession. All the windows were dark and Mortmain clung sobbing to the
nurse's arm.
"Hit's all right, sir," whispered the latter sympathetically. "Hit's all
right!"
Slowly the party made their way to the porch. A light appeared in the
lower windows, then the door was opened. The nurse, half carrying the
baronet, helped him into the hall and seated him upon a wooden chair. As
the door closed Mortmain saw a shadow at the gate.
"Look! Look!" he cried. The warm air swallowed him up; he felt a rush of
blood to his neck and face; the figures about him swayed and swam in the
dim light; there was a stabbing pain in his hand and he knew no more.
V
When Mortmain was able to reappear in society he was astonished to find
that the murder of Lord Russell was no longer a matter of interest or of
discussion. The temporarily shocked and horrified community had
apparently within a short time placidly accepted it, and apart from
occasional references in the newspapers, it was rapidly becoming a mere
matter of history, taking its proper chronological place in the long
list of London's unsolved mysteries. It had been given out at the time
that the horrible death of his old friend had so prostrated the baronet
that he had been threatened with total collapse, and had only been
restored to health by remaining in bed under the constant care of a
certain distinguished physician. At times Mortmain was almost inclined
to believe this himself, for the ghastly night at the lonely farmhouse,
his ensuing illness and slow recovery, seemed, in the full swing of the
London season and contrasted with the brilliant colors of its
festivities, less actuality than a dreadful nightmare which continually
obtruded itself upon his recollection. He had resumed his place in
fashionable life with his old assurance, picking up his cards where he
had left them lying face downward upon the table. Within a week he was
again "among those present" at every gathering of note, and he had
dropped hints of his intention to give a new and unique musical
entertainment which was to surpass anything of the kind theretofore
attempted. He had also resumed his attentions to Lady Bella Forsythe
with a definite purpose--that of rendering himself financially
impregnable.
But Sir Richard was not the same. His glass showed him to be paler than
of yore, his eyes more deeply sunken, his hair touched at the edges with
a ghost of white, the lines of his mouth more firmly marked. His friends
jokingly told him that he was growing old. He had paid a heavy price for
what he had bought, yet it was not loss of vitality, not physical shock
alone that had thus aged him, but a ghastly, damning fact that never
left him for an instant, waking or sleeping: _the fact that the man had
died_. They had not told him at first--it might have affected his cure.
The result upon his spiritual being when he learned of it had been no
less disastrous. _The man had died._ There was no longer any pensioner
to claim his annuity; no creditor even to demand the price of his awful
bargain; no witness to testify to its hideous terms--he had fled the
jurisdiction of all earthly courts. Sir Richard was free. But the
thought of that life forfeited to his own egotism was a millstone about
his neck, bowing him forever to the ground.
He intentionally talked frankly of Lord Russell. The old man had been
highly respected and, indeed, moderately prominent in philanthropic
circles. Mortmain had made a point of going personally to see the
bas-relief erected to his memory. He learned that the next of kin was a
Devon man who never came up to town, and that the executors had taken
possession almost immediately and disposed of the house to an American
millionaire, who was even now remodeling the historic mansion, inserting
Grecian columns and putting on a Château de Nevers roof. Of course he
inspected this with friends, was properly disgusted, and seized the
opportunity to gratify his curiously morbid hunger for the details of
the murder. He learned that, though few of the facts were known to the
public, opinion had crystallized into a settled acceptance that the
murderer had made good his escape and that the identity of the murderer
was known. In fact, the silence of Scotland Yard was rendered nugatory
by the reward of £1,000 offered by the County Council for the
apprehension of Saunders Leach, the recently discharged secretary of the
philanthropist. Nothing had been heard of him since Lord Russell's
butler had admitted him to the house, an hour or two before the murder,
upon his representation that he had come to look over some papers at the
request of his erstwhile master. The butler, a most respectable person,
had introduced him into the library, where Lord Russell was, and
departed. He had recalled afterwards--it had come out at the hearing at
the Central Criminal Court--that he had heard the sound of voices raised
at a high pitch, but, as his master was at times somewhat querulous,
this had not particularly attracted his attention. An hour later, when
he had brought the evening papers, he had discovered the aged man lying
face downward upon his desk, and a window, bearing the bloody traces of
the assassin, open to the night. And Leach had vanished--as if he had
never lived.
The thing most puzzling to Sir Richard, as to everybody else, was the
failure of any apparent motive for so ghastly a deed. Leach, according
to old Floyd the butler, had been a very decent sort of fellow, rather
sickly Floyd took him to be, without any particular faults or virtues.
It seemed to outrage reason to suppose that an anæmic little clerk
could have murdered a helpless old man simply out of revenge for having
lost his place. And then nothing had been stolen--that is, nobody but
Sir Richard knew that anything had been stolen. Yet the public and the
London County Council pronounced unhesitatingly as established fact that
Saunders Leach was the assassin, and that he should be hunted down to
the very ends of the world and, if need be, followed into the next. Only
Scotland Yard remained silent after annexing the contents of the room,
the windows, the carpet, and even portions of the faded paper from the
very walls themselves. Then Parliament went into a convulsion over a
proposed excise alteration and London forgot the murder of Lord Russell
in its feverish interest in the expected legislative abortion. There was
an appeal to the country; a premier retired to Italy; some few thousands
were added to the credit column of the national ledger at the expense of
a ministry, and once more the advent of royalty at St. James's dazzled
the cockney eye and filled the cockney mouth to the stultification of
the cockney brain. Lord Russell was forgotten--as completely as Saunders
Leach--as totally as an isle sunk beneath the waters of oblivion.
The first time Sir Richard had essayed to write he had been deliciously
horrified at the ease with which his pencil had followed the pressure of
his new fingers. His recent clothes added an extra inch to his sleeves,
and his broad cuffs fully concealed the white seam that ran around his
wrist. The hand itself served his purposes well enough, but unmistakably
it was not his own. He never laid the two together--never let his eyes
fall upon the vicarious fingers if he could avoid it, for inevitably a
sickening sensation of repulsion followed. His own fingers were long
and tapering, the nails fine with pronounced "crowns," the back of the
hand slender and smooth; the new one was broader and hairy, the fingers
shorter and square at the ends, the nails thick and dull with no
"crowns," and the veins blue and prominent. There were too many pores!
He loathed the thing, tell himself as often as he would that it was
nothing but a mechanical device to supplement Nature. Physically he felt
as if he were wearing a glove that was too small for him, into which he
had been forced to stuff his hand. This seemed to produce a tight,
swollen sensation which was the only indication of his abnormal
condition. He ate, drove, used his keys, articulated his fingers, and
even wrote with the same muscular freedom as before. His chirography
actually and undeniably exhibited the same general characteristics, only
intensified and with less certainty of stroke and pen-pressure. The
letters which had previously been merely somewhat original in structure
as suited a man of fashion, now became humpbacked and deformed. It was
as though the spiritual qualities of Sir Richard's penmanship had shrunk
away, leaving only the grotesque residue of a dwarfed and evil nature.
But apart from the question of chirography one other manifestation
constantly reminded Mortmain of his crime. This was an itching in the
grafted hand whenever its possessor became angry or excited. Even hard
physical exercise produced the same phenomenon. It seemed as if Nature,
having provided for the circulation of a certain amount of blood, found
on reaching this particular extremity that the supply exceeded the power
of reception. If angered, he found himself indulging in ungovernable
fits of passion, with his eyes suffused and his head buzzing. At times
he experienced an almost irresistible impulse to throttle somebody. On
the slightest provocation the fingers of his right hand would curve and
clutch, and a fierce longing seize him to compass the extinction of life
in some animate being--to feel the slackening of the muscles in some
victim--an emotion elemental, barbarous, cruel, but keen, masterful and
pervading. He had an exhilarating sensation of strength and vitality new
to him. Moreover, his attitude toward his fellow-men had imperceptibly
altered. Before his operation he had hated all evil doers and been
strongly loyal to government and law; now he sympathized with the
lawbreakers. In defying society and deliberately violating its statutes,
he had allied himself with its enemies.
This he realized and accepted. At any moment he might be called upon to
face a criminal prosecution for the felony of mutilation; and there was
still the peculiar and inexplicable silence of Flaggs in regard to the
papers which he had taken away with him on the morning after the murder.
No word had ever passed between them on the subject, and yet the notes
were outstanding and in the hands of a more dangerous holder than even
Lord Russell himself. By merely handing them to the executors, Flaggs
could not only throw Sir Richard into bankruptcy, but could place him in
the awkward position of having suppressed the notes at the time of Lord
Russell's death. That, too, would lead to a still further and more
delicate complication. He would naturally be asked how he had secured
possession of the notes. It would be clear that they were in Lord
Russell's hands at the time of the murder. Flaggs would explain that
_he_ had procured them from Sir Richard. So far as _he_ was concerned,
he had been safely "jugged" at the time of the murder. He could call a
score of sergeants, matrons, and bobbies to prove that, and establish it
by the police records themselves. Where, then, people would want to
know, had Sir Richard obtained them? It would be a hard question to
answer in such a way that the answer would carry any sort of conviction
with it.
No one, of course, would believe that he had found them, as in fact was
the case. Any such explanation would excite instant suspicion. If he
should say that he had paid them and had received the notes from Lord
Russell's lawyers, inquiry would at once demonstrate that the lawyers
had never had possession of the notes, or received any money from Sir
Richard. If he said that he had taken the money to Lord Russell and
received the notes _from him_, his own evidence would place him upon the
scene of the murder at approximately the moment of it. Further, no draft
in payment of the notes would be found among Lord Russell's papers, and
the suspicion would immediately arise that he had proffered a forged
draft to secure possession of the notes, and then murdered the old man
to get it back.
It was indeed a predicament of the worst sort. In Sir Richard the
horrible unfairness of it bred a hatred for a society in which such
things were possible. He looked at any moment to find himself made the
defendant in a criminal prosecution, just or unjust--the unjust the more
difficult of the two to escape. He needed money--money to fight with,
money to live on, money to keep up his hollow pretense of
respectability. And as his attitude toward society gradually changed,
the dead-alive thing at his wrist with the white seam throbbed and
itched until Mortmain longed fiercely to tear it off. At night he would
dream--and this dream repeated itself over and over again--that he was
fastened to some miserable convict, shackled by the wrist in such a way
that somehow they two had grown together, and as he struggled in his
sleep his fellow would turn into the grinning, jeering image of
Flaggs--Flaggs fastened to him by a bond of burning, itching
flesh--Flaggs joined to him like a Siamese twin, flesh of his flesh,
blood of his blood--until by some unnatural evolution _he_ became Flaggs
and could see his own wretched shape writhing at the other end of their
mutual arm. Then shaking, chilled, and covered with perspiration he
would awake and look for Flaggs beside him, and hold his hand to the
blue night-light only to find the seam about his wrist and the
dead-white hand throbbing until he thought he should go mad.
By day he was haunted by the vision of Flaggs watching his house and
following him along the streets. He could not get the fellow out of his
mind. This terror of the drunken clerk became a positive obsession. As
he walked the streets or drove in his brougham through the park he was
constantly planning out what he should say when they should finally come
together--when Flaggs should call for him, summon him as his own. Could
he defy him? Could he palliate him? The hand twitched at the thought of
it. He fancied that Flaggs followed him everywhere in various disguises,
running swiftly behind, dodging into doorways and up side streets when
he turned around. And this habit of turning around and glancing
furtively up and down grew on Sir Richard, and with it grew the itching
in his hand, until he suspected that people shook their heads and said
that his illness had undermined his health more than they had supposed.
It was no bodily illness that thus affected Sir Richard, but spiritual
degeneration. He went from dinner party to dinner party and from
musicale to musicale, paying court to Lady Bella Forsythe as if no
grotesque face were peering from behind the arras of his brain. Yet in
reality he was preparing to meet Flaggs in the final struggle for
supremacy. Flaggs, like death and the tax man, was coming--_when_? He
could not tell, but inevitably. And he must be ready, armed _cap-a-pie_
to meet him on every ground. He had at last resolved to marry Lady
Bella. It was an essential in his campaign to defeat Flaggs. There must
be plenty of money--money, that was what he needed, what he wanted. It
was partly for Lady Bella that he had planned his musical entertainment,
for, in addition to its practical desirability, if he purposed to retain
his position in the social world, it would afford an excellent
opportunity for presenting himself to her as a person worthy of her own
high station and acquaintance. His own music--! Alas! the brain was
willing, but the fingers were powerless. Where before he had produced
the most delicate of harmonies there now resulted nothing but harsh
discords. The hand would not stretch an octave!
The Milbank Street house blazed into the early evening with a thousand
lights. All day long wagons of roses and asters had stood before the
doors, and aproned men had staggered into the hall with pots of flowers
and stands of palms. Confectioners' wagons, loads of camp chairs, and
now a large awning were the indubitable evidences of what was afoot.
Night came on. The white cloth on the carpet across the sidewalk was
trampled to a dirty gray. The orchestra began to arrive, and, shedding
their coats in the servants' entrance, toiled up the back stairs and
tentatively made their way through the flower-banked halls to the
conservatory. Sir Richard sitting in his den and awaiting the arrival of
his first guests could hear the musicians tuning their basses and
testing the wood winds. But there was no music in Sir Richard's soul.
All day long he had been haunted by the ghost of Flaggs scuttling behind
him, and his hand had seemed swollen and discolored. Well, if he could
but get through the night, could succeed in his suit with Lady Bella, he
would go away and rest. Perhaps he would leave London forever--Lady
Bella was very fond of Rome. The sounds of the instruments grew more
confused and louder, the violins mingling with the others. Occasionally
the trombones would boom out and the kettles rumble ominously. Outside
splashes of rain began to fall against the windows, and the wind,
catching in the hollow column of the awning, swept into the halls and
through the open door into the den. Mortmain looked at his watch and
found it was ten o'clock. People would be arriving soon. His hand
twitched and he lighted a cigarette. There was a great deal of traffic
in the front hall--too much. He closed the door and poured out a
thimbleful of brandy. Well, a day or two and he would be rid of Flaggs
forever! Then he heard a low knock. He tried to cheat himself into the
belief that it was Joyce.
"Come in," he cried, but his voice was husky.
Flaggs stood before him.
"I have been expecting you," said Mortmain. It did not seem strange that
he should make this declaration.
"Yes?" queried Flaggs.
"What do you want?" demanded the baronet.
"Ten thousand pounds," answered the clerk. "To-morrow."
Mortmain broke into a harsh laugh.
"Ha! my good fellow! What do you think I am--a Croesus? Come, come, I'll
give you fifty--and I get the notes, eh?"
"Ten thousand pounds," repeated Flaggs stubbornly, "by to-morrow noon,
or I hand you over to the police."
The blood jumped into Sir Richard's face and his dexter hand throbbed
and tingled.
"You miserable rascal!" he cried. "You wretched blackmailer! How dare
you come into my house? Do you know that I could _kill_ you? And no one
would ever be the wiser! Take a few pounds and be off with you or I'll
summon the police myself."
"Not so fast, not so fast, Sir Richard," muttered Flaggs. "I don't think
you'll call the police."
The look on the white scowling face before him told Sir Richard that the
fellow meant to do his business. A haunting fear seized hold upon him
like that which he had experienced in the depot wagon--a feeling that
behind this grotesque, dwarfed figure of a man lurked the hand of Fate.
"That's right. Be reasonable," said Flaggs soothingly. "Some folks would
think ten thousand pounds was cheap to escape the gallows," he added in
lower tones.
"Gallows!" cried Sir Richard, his anger rising. He knew the fellow's
game now. He was being lied to. Flaggs was trying to frighten, to bully
him. "The gallows, my friend, ceased to be the punishment for felony in
1826--even for blackmail!"
"But not for murder," retorted Flaggs with a ghastly smile. "Not for
murder!"
"Enough of this!" exclaimed Sir Richard, but his knees were trembling.
"Here are a hundred pounds. Go!" He put his hand to his breast pocket.
Flaggs laughed.
"Look!" he cried, pulling from the lining of his hat a printed slip
which he unfolded and handed to the baronet.
Mortmain took it in dread and held it to the light.
"_Murder in the first degree defined._
"_The taking of the life of a human being by another
with malice prepense or in the commission of a
felony._"
The last six words were underlined in red ink.
"Well?" he asked, but the word stuck in his throat.
"Well?" returned the other. "It's plain enough, isn't it? What more do
you want?"
"It is not plain, you blackguard."
"Maiming is a felony. You know that. Amputation is maiming. Flynt told
you so. The fellow that sold you that hand of yours died of it, didn't
he?"
Mortmain uttered an exclamation of horror. He looked down at the fearful
thing and it seemed to him to be the color of death. "They can never
prove it!" he cried faintly. "They can't prove it! They cannot!"
"Yes, they can! I saw it done," remarked Flaggs. "I saw him buried in
the garden. He is there yet--minus his hand."
"You villain!" gasped Mortmain. The room reeled, and Flaggs danced
before him, gibbering with glee. The light darkened and brightened again
and seemed to swing in circles.
"Pull yourself together, Sir Richard!" remarked Flaggs mockingly. "Pull
yourself together! Isn't it worth ten thousand pounds or one hundred
thousand pounds? But I'm reasonable. Only ten thousand pounds! Come,
come! Let me have it!"
"_No!_" shouted Mortmain. "Not if I die for it."
"Then you _will_ die for it," said Flaggs.
The sound of the fiddles came through the closed door of the study. The
cries of the lackeys and the roll of carriages arriving and departing
could be heard in the front.
"You will die for it, as there is a God in heaven, if I choose!"
Mortmain stood silent. He had a presentiment of what Flaggs was going to
say.
"A word from me," continued the clerk, "and you hang for the _murder of
Lord Russell_. Everyone knows you hated him. Flynt, Joyce, and I heard
you say you would kill him. You owed him seventy-five thousand pounds
and it was two days overdue. He would have ruined you next day. The
officer saw you outside his window within five minutes of the murder,
and so did I. There was nothing taken but the notes--nothing. They were
found in your possession the next morning. How did they get there? The
case is complete. The notes convict you. I've got them. They are yours
for ten thousand pounds--only ten thousand pounds."
"You villain," shouted Mortmain, springing toward him.
The door from the hall opened and Joyce entered letting in the warm
breath of roses and the loud strains of a waltz.
"Lady Bella has arrived, Sir Richard," he announced.
"Tell her I am coming," said Mortmain, starting for the door.
"Wait!" shrieked Flaggs, his face horribly distorted. "Wait!" Joyce had
retired.
Mortmain paused with clinched fists.
"Isn't it worth ten thousand pounds to save a guilty man--a man who
can't escape?"
"Why, you fool!" cried Mortmain, suddenly regaining his self-control.
"Such evidence is valueless. My word is worth _yours_ ten times over,
and I deny that you found the notes in my house. I say that _you_ are
the murderer. And I believe you are!"
"Not so fast! Not so fast!" leered Flaggs. "You know I was 'in quod' at
the time. Don't forget that! And there's one more bit of evidence that
nails you. You can't escape. You're done. I've got you--_the murderer's
thumb marks on the glass_!"
"The devil take you!" yelled Mortmain, the blood suffusing his eyes.
"The devil has _you_ already!" retorted Flaggs. "He's part of you. You
_are_ the devil. Whose hand is that? Tell me that! _Whose hand is
that?_"
Mortmain turned an agonized face toward his tormentor. His spirit was
gone. He was ready to fall upon his knees, but he could not move. He
raised his left hand pitifully as if to shield himself from the coming
blow, and yet his parched lips uttered the soundless word:
"Whose?"
Flaggs gave a dry laugh.
"_It belonged to Saunders Leach!_"
With a sickening of the heart the baronet realized for the first time
the terrible alternative which confronted him.
His selfish willingness to violate the law and mutilate a fellow human
being merely to gratify his own vanity had plunged him into an abyss
from which there seemed no escape. "Murder in the first degree defined:
the taking of the life of a human being by another with malice prepense
_or in the commission of a felony_." By a cruel yet extraordinary chance
he, the needless yet deliberate lawbreaker, had purchased the very hand
which had slain his enemy--from the murderer himself, who was only too
anxious to get rid of it. By an equally hideous but astonishing
coincidence this devil's contract had proved in fact the death warrant
of the murderer, and Mortmain had been his involuntary executioner.
Saunders Leach had paid the penalty of his crime, but Mortmain carried
dangling at the end of his dexter forearm the living evidence that he,
and not Leach, was the assassin. The coil of the rope of fate, at one
end of which hung the limp body of the common criminal, had fallen upon
the neck of his aristocrat brother, and it needed but a word from Flaggs
to send him spinning from the gallows. Should he seek to show that the
finger prints upon the window of Lord Russell's library were not his
own, and by this means to creep from beneath the meshes of the net of
circumstantial evidence in which he was entangled, he would, in the same
breath, be forced to confess that he was guilty of the murder of
Saunders Leach--murder, as the result of the latter's mutilation--murder
under the literal interpretation of the statute. Was ever rat so nicely
trapped? The horror of the thing turned Mortmain into a madman. He
sprang at the clerk in a delirium of rage, his right hand clutched
Flaggs tightly by the throat, and its blunt fingers twisted into the
flesh deeper and deeper. It was done so quickly that the clerk was
unable to escape. His eyes started forward, his tongue protruded, and
his mouth frothed as he made ineffectual attempts to break the baronet's
hold.
"You've got me, eh?" muttered Mortmain, gritting his teeth. "I think
not, Mr. Flaggs!"
The door opened and Joyce entered in much agitation. The orchestra had
burst into a triumphant march and the sounds of many footsteps echoed in
the hall outside.
"Everybody is arrivin', Sir Richard!" exclaimed the butler, "an' Lady
Bella has gone into the music room. His Grace of Belvoir was just askin'
for you. Here are two gentlemen who wish to see you important, sir." He
held the door open and two men in Inverness coats entered and stood
irresolutely near the door.
Mortmain released his grasp upon the neck of Flaggs, who lurched toward
the corner and fell motionless behind a table.
"Sir Richard Mortmain?" inquired the taller of the two, a man of massive
build and with iron-gray mustache and hair.
"The same," replied Mortmain, his fingers still twitching from the
ferocity of his clutch upon the clerk.
The two strangers bowed.
"We have a card to you from Lieutenant Foraker--a friend of yours, I
believe. Permit me," and the tall man stepped forward and extended a
card to the baronet.
Mortmain mechanically took it between the thumb and forefinger of his
right hand. It felt like celluloid and a trifle slippery. But the
stranger did not release his own hold upon it.
"Pardon me, I have given you the wrong card," he exclaimed
apologetically, and withdrawing the bit of board from Mortmain's fingers
he opened a wallet and fumbled with the contents. As he did so he handed
the first card to his companion, who stepped into the light of the lamp,
and examined it carefully through a small microscope which he drew from
his pocket.
[Illustration: "His blunt fingers twisted into the flesh deeper and
deeper."]
"They are _the same_," remarked the stranger of the microscope to the
iron-gray man.
"What is all this?" cried Mortmain in an unnatural voice. His head swam.
On the mantel the verdigris-covered dragon's face grinned mockingly at
him--it was the face of Flaggs.
"Sir Richard," replied the iron-gray man gravely, "I am Inspector
Murtha, of Scotland Yard."
Mortmain started back and his right hand twitched again. Through the
silence came the measures of "The Flower Song."
"I regret to say," continued the other, "that it is my most unpleasant
duty to arrest you for the murder of Lord Gordon Russell."
At the same instant the veil of Sir Richard's mental temple was rent in
twain; out of a blackness so intense that it seemed substantive he saw
the two inspectors from Scotland Yard fleeing away and diminishing in
size until they seemed but puppets gesturing at the edge of an infinity
of white desert; then with equal velocity they were carried forward
again, growing bigger and bigger until they loomed like giants in his
immediate foreground swinging huge scimitars and waving their arms
frantically; the strains of the violins changed to voices shouting so
sharply that they pained his ears, and waves of light and cosmic
darkness over which scintillated a dazzling aurora followed one another
in startling succession, until suddenly his soul, shot out of a tunnel,
as it were, landed abruptly in a warm meadow covered with daisies, which
dissolved before his eyes into the familiar chamber on Milbank Street. A
gray mist floated hissing up through the ceiling, the chairs rocked with
a strange rotary swing, and the two inspectors smiled cheerfully at him
through a broad and painful band of London sunshine. He swallowed
rapidly, and a horrible faintness seized him which gave place to a queer
sort of anger.
"There's--some--mistake!" he stuttered. The chairs anchored themselves
and the ceiling assumed its normal tint.
"No mistake at all," replied Sir Penniston Crisp.
The problem was too much for the baronet and he gave it up. The
murderer's hand no longer twitched, but it loomed white and loathsome
from the bed before him, as if dead already, somehow--part of
a--yes--what were those things? Bandages?
Crisp and Jermyn saw a look of agonized bewilderment pass over the
baronet's face.
"Did they bring me here from the Old Bailey?" he asked. "Am I out on
bail?"
Crisp laughed.
"That's one way of putting it," he remarked. "Yes, you're out on bail,
and in another second or two you will be entirely free."
"I'm glad you're going to take that thing off again," said Mortmain.
"How could you have done it?"
"It's all right," returned Crisp soothingly.
Then Mortmain suddenly understood. But he waited shrewdly.
"What day is this?" he asked in an innocent manner.
"December 5th," replied Jermyn.
"When did I have that fall; you know--the one that made it necessary for
you to amputate?"
"Your accident happened yesterday evening, but there is no necessity for
amputation," returned Crisp. "Now, my dear fellow, just lie back, will
you?--and don't ask questions. That somni-chloride is still lingering
in your head. I shall have to be going in a minute."
Mortmain obeyed the surgeon's instructions, but he was hard at work
thinking the thing out logically. It was clear that there had been no
amputation, no arrest, no inspectors from Scotland Yard. That scene with
Flaggs, horribly distinct as it still was, had had no actuality. But
where did fact end and illusion begin? Had the notes been taken? Had
there been a murder? Was he a bankrupt? The different propositions
entangled themselves helplessly with one another. At the end of a minute
he asked deliberately:
"Miss Fickles, did a man take some papers from my table this morning?"
"Yes, Sir Richard," replied the nurse.
Mortmain's heart sank.
"Er--was--did anything happen to Lord Russell?" he asked the surgeon
faintly.
"Yes. But don't talk or think of it, Mortmain. I order you! Do you
understand?"
A ripple of perspiration broke out on his forehead and it seemed as if a
film had rolled off his vision. Of course, he had taken the chloride
just after Miss Fickles had gone downstairs for him, and then Crisp and
Jermyn had come. He had felt so miserable! And now he felt so much
better! He opened his eyes, the same Sir Richard that had inhaled the
anæsthetic so obediently.
"I am quite myself now, Sir Penniston," he asserted quietly. "I want to
ask one more question. Flynt was not here, was he?"
"No, of course not."
"And we have not left the room? No railroad trip, eh?"
"No."
"Thank you," said the baronet. "May I have a cup of coffee?"
What reply this preposterous demand would have invited will never be
known, for at that moment a knock came upon the door and Joyce asked if
Sir Richard could see Mr. Flynt.
"I _must_ see him!" said Mortmain.
"Oh, very well!" laughed Crisp. "You're getting better rapidly."
Flynt entered with a breezy manner which he allowed himself to assume
only when something really desirable had definitely occurred.
"Good morning, Sir Penniston! Good morning, Sir Richard!" he remarked
without sitting down. "I really had to come in and tell you the good
news. The executors have just read Lord Russell's will----"
"Mr. Flynt! Mr. Flynt!" interrupted Sir Penniston.
"Oh, it's all right!" continued Flynt with a laugh. "Better than a
tonic. You see, Fowler, the only next of kin, was just sailing for New
Guinea, and it had to be done at once. I really did Lord Russell an
injustice. May I speak before these gentlemen?"
"Certainly," whispered Mortmain, his eyes fastened feverishly upon the
lawyer.
"Well, to put it briefly, he has made you a great gift! Here, read it!"
and he handed the baronet a typewritten sheet. Mortmain read it eagerly,
although his eyes pained him somewhat:
"To my friend, Sir Richard Mortmain, I devise and
bequeath the sum of five thousand pounds, and take it
upon myself to express the earnest hope that he will
before long publish his views upon art in such a form
that the public at large may have the opportunity to
profit by that which hitherto has been the privilege
only of the few. I desire, moreover, to express my
high personal regard for him and my admiration for his
whole-souled devotion to the arts, and I hereby
instruct my executors to cancel and destroy all
evidences of indebtedness owing to me by said Mortmain
and to treat said indebtedness as null, void and of no
effect, provided, nevertheless, that within six months
of my demise said Mortmain shall assign to the
directors of the Corporation of the British Museum all
his collections of ceramics, bronzes, china,
chronometers, scarabs, including the Howard
Collection, his cabinets of gems and cameos, including
the famous head of Alexander on an onyx of two strata
and the _altissimo relievo_ on cornelian--Jupiter
Ægiochus--the four paintings by Watteau in his music
room, and the paintings by Corot and Whistler from his
library. As the said moneys borrowed from me from time
to time by said Mortmain were, to my knowledge,
principally made use of by him for the purpose of
purchasing and enlarging said collections, which have
increased in value to no inconsiderable extent by
virtue of his care and discrimination since he
acquired them, I am prepared to regard said loans to
him in effect as gifts impressed with a trust in favor
of our National Museum, provided, however, that said
Mortmain is willing to accept the same and execute the
terms thereof as heretofore set forth within six
months; but nothing herein shall be taken to affect
the right of said Mortmain to take up and pay off said
indebtedness within said time, if he shall see fit to
do so, in which case the provisions of this codicil
shall be without any force or effect whatsoever, save
that I instruct my executors to receive said moneys
and hold the same in trust, however, for such
scientific and artistic uses as said Mortmain shall
direct, preference being given to the needs of the
British Museum along the lines of antique works of art
and Egyptology."
As Sir Richard laid down the paper his eyes filled and he turned away
his head.
"A good old man!" said Flynt reverently.
"Indeed he was!" assented Crisp.
"I must know one thing," whispered Mortmain after a few moments. "Did
you send your clerk here this morning to get some papers?"
"Yes, to be sure. I had almost forgotten--I sent Flaggs after an
envelope which I fancied I dropped last evening," answered the lawyer.
"Which _you_ had dropped?" asked Mortmain stupidly.
"Why, certainly. I had the papers connected with Lord Russell's loans
sent here. Flaggs brought 'em--and I dropped an envelope. I _did_ drop
it, because Flaggs found it here this morning."
"What was in it?" asked Sir Richard eagerly.
Flynt elevated his brows.
"Why, if you don't mind my speaking of it, there were some old notes of
yours which had been renewed at various times. I make a practice of
keeping the originals as a matter of precaution."
"Oh!" sighed Mortmain. "_Old_ notes?"
"_Old_ notes," answered Flynt. "Notes taken up and renewed by others."
"Ah!" sighed Mortmain again. "You _did_ drop them, but not in the
study. I found them on the street. They gave me quite a turn."
"Well, we will tear them up now," laughed Flynt.
"Pardon me, sir," said Joyce, opening the door and handing a long box to
Miss Fickles; "some roses with Lady Bella Forsythe's compliments, and
'opin' as 'ow you'll soon be all right again, sir."
THE RESCUE OF THEOPHILUS NEWBEGIN
I
The _Dirigo_ was a one-hundred-and-twenty-two foot gunboat, spick and
span from the Cavite yard--lithe as a panther, swift as a petrel, gray
as the mists off Hi-tai-sha--and she was his very own. The biggest,
reddest day in all his twenty-three years of life was when the Admiral's
order had come to leave the _Ohio_, where he had acted as a sort of
apotheosized messenger boy and general escort to civilians' fat wives,
and to proceed at once to Shanghai to assume command of her, provision
and await further orders. It had cost him nine dollars and seventy-five
cents to cable the joyful news adequately to his mother in Baltimore,
and although the family resources were small--his father had died a
lieutenant commander the year before--she had cabled back a "good luck
and God bless you" to him. He only got as an ensign a paltry one hundred
and twenty-eight dollars per month, and out of it came his mess bills
and other expenses, but for all that he had enough to go down Nanking
road and buy his mother a handsome mandarin cloak--Harry Dupont was
going back on leave--and then to invite all the fellows he knew in
Shanghai harbor to a jamboree at the club. It was going on at the time
this story opens, boisterously and uproariously as befits the blow-out
of a twenty-three-year old ensign who has just received his first
command. The older civilians, who were drinking their comfortable
"B & S" on the veranda, merely shrugged their shoulders as an impromptu
refrain rose louder and louder to the pounding of bottles and the jingle
of silverware.
Here's to the Kid and the _Dirigo_,
He's off for a cruise on the Hwang-ho!
The officers of the squadron, not wishing to spoil the fun, slipped off
to the billiard room or the bridge tables, or strolled back to the bar.
Most of them had letters to write for the American mail, which would
leave the following morning, and more than one sighed as he glanced
toward the upper veranda from below the club house. They knew how many
and how long the years would be before any of those boys would be called
"captain"--well, let them enjoy themselves! What was the use of
croaking? There were compensations--of a sort. Even if one's people
_were_ all on the other side of the globe or migrating from boarding
house to boarding house in a vain endeavor to keep up with the changes
in the billets of their husbands and fathers, one was still an officer
of Uncle Sam's navy.
So reflected Follansbee, executive officer of the flagship _Ohio_, which
had slipped into Woosung, ten miles below Shanghai, just as the sunset
gun on the forts was echoing over the closely packed junks along the
water front, and while the boy was engrossed to the extent of total
oblivion with the club steward over the decoration of his dinner table
and the choice between various highly recommended brands of Scotch and
Irish. Follansbee was a good sort, who had already waited thirty-five
years to get his battleship and was waiting still, and he had seen Jack
Russell, the boy's father, die the year before at Teng-chan of a
combination of liver and disappointment, all too common among naval
officers in the East. Follansbee's own liver was none of the best, but
he had cut down on the drink, and, anyhow, his wife was coming out on
the _Empress of India_ next month. He hoped to God the _Ohio_ wouldn't
be ordered to Sulu or some place impossible for her to follow him. That
boy of Russell's--he liked that boy, he was all to the good; knew his
place and kept his mouth shut. Follansbee wasn't going to butt in and
spoil his fun. It would do him good to get a little drunk. He remembered
when he got _his_ first gunboat--thirty years ago. Whew! Follansbee
stared up at the veranda, then sighed again and started down the _bund_.
Shanghai harbor was alive with light. The murmur of the city rose and
fell on the soft, fragrant air, shockingly penetrated every now and then
by the discordant shrieks of swiftly hurrying launches. The _bund_ was
crowded with coolies, some toiling with heavy loads, others pulling
their 'rikishas. Here and there flashed the colored lanterns of
pedestrians. Beyond the junks lay many cruisers sweeping the starlit
night with their quickly moving searchlights. Then one of these took him
bang between the eyes and he stumbled and fell against some one coming
up the walk.
"Where the deuce--!" shouted a clear young voice angrily. Then the note
changed. "I beg pardon, sir--these confounded lights--I didn't see you
at all."
Follansbee returned the midshipman's salute.
"Don't mention it!" he growled. "But what are you doing ashore? I
thought you had the deck."
"I did, but I'm trying to find Russell. The Admiral wants him. I took
the ship's launch to the _Dirigo_ and they said there he was ashore and
hadn't left any word, only that he'd be back late. Have you seen him?"
"Can't you _hear_ him?" inquired Follansbee laconically.
A figure in white duck loomed suddenly into view on the veranda rail
waving a bottle and shouting at the top of his lungs:
"I've got command of the _Dirigo_
An' I'm off for a cruise on the Hwang-ho!"
followed by a tremendous chorus accompanied by cracking glass and
unearthly yells.
"Do I!" exclaimed the midshipman under his breath. "Is that him?"
At that moment a searchlight illumined the figure in question and the
midshipman answering his own question, "Yes, that's him," scrambled on
up the steps.
Follansbee wondered how long it would take to deliver the Admiral's
order and felt his way gingerly through the crowded street.
When the midshipman burst panting upon them they were standing on their
chairs with their arms around one another's necks shouting the swinging
chorus of
"The good old summer ti-i-me!
Oh, the good old summer ti-i-me!
For she's my tootsie-wootsie in
The good old summer ti-i-me!"
"Come on up! There's plenty of room on my chair!" cried the boy
excitedly, at sight of the midshipman, "we've only just begun." His
face was very, very red and his eyes were very, very bright.
"Oh, the good old summer time!
Oh, the good old----"
"Here, what's the matter with you? Let me alone! What?"
He dropped his arms and climbed soberly enough down to the veranda floor
while his comrades continued their refrain.
"Orders! From the Admiral! Is he here? I didn't know that the _Ohio_ had
come in. With you in a jiffy."
"Don't wait," urged the midshipman, "it's important!"
The boy turned white.
"It isn't--bad news?" he asked apprehensively.
"No, no," answered the other quickly, remembering the news the boy had
had the year before. "Just orders."
"Well, I won't spoil their fun," said the boy, echoing the sentiments
earlier expressed by Follansbee. "Back in a minute, fellows: I've got to
telephone! On with the dance, let joy be unrefined!"
While they slipped through the door the chorus changed again, and as the
boy seized his cap, sprang down the steps and started for the launch
landing, high above and behind him, he could still hear them singing:
"Here's to the Kid and the _Dirigo_,
He's off for a cruise on the Hwang-ho!"
II
"You sent for me, sir?"
Jack Russell stood in the doorway of the Admiral's cabin on the _Ohio_,
cap in hand. The Admiral had been poring over some papers on his desk
and for a moment did not dissect the voice from the whirring of the
electric fan over his head, but as the boy took a step or two forward he
turned and nodded.
"Oh, it's you, Russell. I didn't mean to disturb you on shore, but I've
something for you to do and the sooner you start the better."
The boy awaited his words breathlessly--his first orders.
"It's rather a mean job, but I've nobody else available and, if you make
good--of course, you _will_ make good--in fact, it's rather a chance to
distinguish yourself."
"Thank you, sir."
The Admiral paused as if surely to observe the effect of his words.
"I want you to rescue a couple of missionaries."
The boy's countenance remained immobile.
"I received word this evening," continued the Admiral, picking up a
half-smoked cigar, "that the rebellion has spread into Hu-peh and as far
south as Kui-chan. They have murdered three American missionaries. Most
of the others have escaped and have been reported safe, but nothing can
be learned of two missionaries at Chang-Yuan--very estimable people,
highly thought of in their denomination."
"Yes, sir," said the boy, his eyes beaming on the Admiral.
"You are to start at once--at once, understand, and go up the river past
Hankow and Yochow. At Tung-an you reach the treaty limits, but you
haven't time to explain, and probably explanations wouldn't do any good.
There are two old forts there, and you'll just have to run by
them--that's all. It is six hundred miles to Hankow. With luck you can
be there easily inside of four days, but Chang-Yuan isn't on the
Yang-tse-Kiang--it's on the Yuang-Kiang somewhere on Lake Tung-ting.
You've got to find it first, and the charts are of no use. The trouble
is that the lake dries up in winter and in summer overflows all the
country round. If you can't get a local guide who knows the channel you
will have to trust to luck. The fact that it's in the forbidden
territory adds one more difficulty, but if I know Jack Russell's
son----"
"Oh, thank you, sir!" cried the boy. "What a chance!" he added half to
himself.
"Yes, it is a chance," answered the Admiral, "and I'm glad you've got
it, but if you get aground among the rioting natives!--well, it's got to
be done."
"I have no interpreter, sir," said the boy.
"Smith has secured one," replied the Admiral, "and through him we have
found a Shan-si-man who says he knows the river above Hankow and is
willing to act as guide. They are on the lower deck waiting. You will,
of course, have the government pilot as far as Hankow. Now, good luck to
you. I expect to be here for two weeks and you will report to me at
once on your return your success or failure." He held out his hand.
"Good luck to you again."
The boy shook hands with the Admiral but still remained standing beside
him.
"Well?" said the Admiral. "Is there anything else?"
"Yes," replied the boy apologetically, "you have not given me
the--gentleman's name."
"Bless my soul! So I haven't!" exclaimed the Admiral, fumbling among his
papers, then raising one to the light: "The Rev. Theophilus Newbegin,"
he read slowly, "and wife."
The boy saluted his Admiral and retired with a respectful "Good night,
sir." Once in the privacy of the wardroom companionway, however, he
began to giggle, which giggle speedily expanded into a loud guffaw on
his reaching the main deck. It sounded vaguely like "Newbegin." He
leaned against the forward awning pole, shaking with laughter.
"I say, what's the joke?" inquired the midshipman approaching him from
the shadow of the main turret. "Let a fellow in, won't you?"
But the boy still shook silently without replying.
"Oh, go on! What's the joke?" repeated the other. "Did 'Whiskers' give
you a 'Laughing Julip'?"
"Newbegin!" exploded the boy. "Newbegin!"
"New begin what?" persisted the midshipman irritably. "Have you gone
dotty? I hope you didn't act that way in 'Whiskers'' cabin. I believe
you're drunk!"
The boy suddenly jerked himself together.
"Look here, Smith, you shut up. I'm your rankin' officer and I won't
have such language. I'll tell you the joke--when I know whether it is
one or not."
Smith made a face at him.
"By the way, smarty," continued the boy, "have you got two Chinks for
me? If you have, send 'em along. I'm off to the _Dirigo_ on the launch."
"Yes, I got 'em at the English consul's. Say, what's up? Can't you tell
a feller?"
"Mr. Smith, send those two Chinks to the gangway!" thundered the boy.
The midshipman turned and walked hastily around the turret.
"Here you, Yen, come out of there!" he called.
Two Chinamen arose from the deck where they had been sitting
crosslegged, leaning against the turret, and shuffled slowly forward.
"Here are your Chinks!" growled Smith, still aggrieved.
The ensign paid no further attention to him but pushed the nearest
Chinaman toward the gangway.
"Get along, boys," he remarked, "your Uncle William is in a hurry." As
the smaller of the two seemed averse to haste he gave him a slight
forward impetus with his pipe-clayed boot. The two descended more
rapidly and he followed. A sudden regret took possession of him as he
thought of the possibility of his never seeing Smith again--of his dying
of thirst, aground in a dried-up lake--or of being tortured to death in
a cage in a Chinese prison.
"Good-by, Smithy," he called over his shoulder. But there was no answer.
The launch was bobbing at the foot of the steps, its screw churning the
water into a boiling froth that reflected a million strange gleams
against the warship's water line. The Chinamen hesitated.
"Get along, boys," he repeated, stepping into the stern sheets. "We've
got a long way to go and we might as well begin--Newbegin."
The Chinamen huddled under the launch's canopy, the boy gave the word to
go ahead, the bell rang sharply and the launch started on its long trip
up to Shanghai.
Slowly the _Ohio_ receded from him, somber, implacable, sphinxlike. On
her bridge a man was wigwagging to the _Oregon_ with an electric signal.
The searchlights from the war vessels arose and wavered like huge
antennæ feeling for something through the night, now and again paving a
golden path from the launch to the ships. The illusion was that the
vessels were moving away from the launch, not the launch from them. Out
of the zone of the searchlights the water was black and lonesome. Just
as soon as the ships got far enough away to appear stationary the launch
seemed racing through the water at a hundred miles an hour. Other
launches shrieked past bearing to their ships officers who had just come
down by train to Woosung. Up the Whompoa River the ten-mile-distant
lights of Shanghai cast a dim, nebulous glow against the midnight sky.
Two hours later the little _Dirigo_ seemed to loom out of the darkness
and come rapidly toward them as the launch ran up to her gangway.
"Is that you, McGaw?" called the boy sharply. "Here are two Chinks, an
interpreter and another one. Fix 'em up somewhere. We start up the
Yang-tse as soon as you can get up steam. I want to make Nanking by day
after to-morrow sunrise. Send ashore and get the pilot. Don't waste any
time, either."
"All right, sir," answered the midshipman, "we can start in half an
hour, sir."
The boy ran up the ladder, followed slowly by the Chinamen. At the cabin
companionway he paused and looked at his watch. It was half after one
o'clock.
"Here you, boys," he shouted after the Chinamen, "come down into my
cabin, I want to speak to you."
He led the way down into his tiny wardroom and threw himself into a
wicker chair placed at the focus of two electric fans. The thermometer
registered ninety degrees Fahrenheit, but it was almost as hot on deck
as below, and below various thirst alleviators were at hand. He poured
out a whisky and soda and beckoned to the Chinamen to draw nearer. The
first was short, fat, and jovial, with chronic humor creases about his
mouth, and his hair done in a long orthodox cue which hung almost to the
heels of his felt slippers. The other, the Shan-si man, was tall and
square-shouldered, and he carried his chin high and his arms folded in
front of him. His cue was curled flat on his head, and on his face was
the expression of him who walks with the immortal gods.
"What's your name?" asked the boy, waving the Manila cheroot he was
lighting at the fat Chinaman. The little man grinned instantly, his face
breaking into stereotyped wrinkles like an alligator-skin wallet.
"Me--Yen. Charley Yen. Me belong good fella," he added with confidence.
"Mucha laugh."
"Who's the other chap?" inquired the boy. "He no mucha laugh, eh?"
Yen shrugged his shoulders and, looking straight in front of him, held
voluble discourse with his comrade.
"He no say," he finally replied. "He velly ploud. He say his ancestors
belong number one men before Uncle Sam maka live. He say it maka no
diffence. You maka pay, he maka show. Name no matter."
"Well, I'm sort of proud myself," remarked the boy, hiding a smile by
sucking on his cheroot. "Tell this learned one that I know just how he
feels. Tell him I'm going to call him 'Mr. Dooley' after the most
learned man in America."
Yen addressed a few remarks to the Shan-si man who murmured something in
reply.
"He tanka you."
"I suppose you're a Christian?" asked the boy, suddenly recollecting the
object of his expedition.
"I belong Clistian, allasame you," answered Yen, assuming a quasi-devout
expression. "Me believe foreign man joss allight."
The boy regarded him thoughtfully.
"Me b'lieve Chinee joss pigeon, too," added Yen cheerfully. "Me mucha
b'lieve. B'lieve everyt'ing. Me good fun."
"Yes," said the boy, "how about 'Dooley'?--is he a Christian?"
Yen turned, but at his first liquid syllable the man from Shan-si drew
himself up until it seemed that his shoulders would touch the cabin
roof, and burst forth into a torrent of speech. Yen translated rapidly,
scurrying along behind his sentences like a carriage dog beneath an
axletree.
No, he was no Christian. The sword of Hung-hsui-chuen had slain his
ancestors. Twenty millions of people had perished by the sword of the
Taipings. The murderous cry of "Sha Yao"[1] had laid the land desolate.
He was faithful to the gods of his ancestors.
[Footnote 1: "Slay the Idolaters."]
"Tell 'Dooley' I lika him. Say I think he's a good sport," said the boy,
nodding at the Shan-si man.
"He say mucha tanks," translated Yen.
"Ask him if he knows Lake Tung-ting."
Mr. Dooley conveyed to the boy through Yen that he had been once to
Chang-Yuan. The lake was wide in summer and he had been there at that
time. He took pleasure in the service of the American Captain. But the
Captain must be patient. He was a musk buyer, buying musk in western
Szechuan on the Thibetan border. Two years ago he had saved five hundred
taels and returned home to bury his family--nine persons counting his
wife--all of whom had perished in the famine. The famine was very
devastating. Then he married again one whom he had left at home. He
allowed her ten taels a year. She could live on one pickle of wheat and
she had the rest to spend as she liked. He preferred better the musk
buying and returned. He gave the Captain much thanks.
"That is very interesting," said the boy. "You may go."
There was a tremendous rattling of chains along the sides, the steam
winch began to click, and the two Chinamen vanished silently up the
companionway. The boy leaned back in his wicker chair and gazed
contemplatively about him at the shotgun and sporting rifle over the
bookcase, the piles of paper-covered novels, the pointer dog coiled up
on the transom, the lithographs fastened to the walls, and the
photographs of his father and mother. He took another sip of whisky and
water and, putting down the glass, thought of how proud his father would
have been to see him in his first command. He had the happy
consciousness of having done well, and he was going to make good--the
Admiral had said so. He had had a bully time in the East so far, away
ahead of what he had dreamed when at the Naval Academy. That winter at
Newchwang, racing the little Manchurian ponies over the springy turf of
the polo ground, shooting the big golden pheasants, wandering on leave
through the country, stopping at the Chinese inns and taking chances
among the Hanghousers. It had been great. Hong Kong had been great. It
had been good fun to play tennis and drink tea with the
pink-and-white-faced English girls. Well, he was off! His naval career
had really begun. He lit another cheroot and strolled leisurely on deck
to superintend the operation of heaving up the anchors.
Slowly the _Dirigo_ floated away from the lights of Shanghai, felt her
way cautiously down the Wompoa to Woosung and into the broad expanse of
the Yang-tse. Anchored well out lay the _Ohio_ black against the coming
dawn. A band of crimson clouds swept the lowlands to the east and
between them the tide flowed in an oily purple flood.
III
A heavy jar followed by a motionless silence awoke the boy at ten
o'clock the next morning. The electric fans were still going and he had
a thick taste in his mouth, but he had hardly time to notice these
things before he dashed up the companionway and out upon the deck. To
starboard the water extended to the horizon, to port a thin line of
brown, a shade deeper in color than the water, marked the bank of the
great river. Alongside helplessly floated a junk with a great gash in
her starboard beam. She was loaded with crockery, and several bales of
blue-and-white rice bowls had tumbled into the water, their contents
bobbing about like a flock of clay pigeons. The boy saw instantly that
owing to the fact that the junk was built in compartments she was in no
danger of sinking, and could easily reach shore. Her captain, a
half-naked man in a straw hat the size of a small umbrella, was
chattering like a monkey at Charley Yen, and a Chinese woman, with a
black-eyed baby of two years or thereabouts, sat idly in the stern
evincing no particular interest in the accident. The man at the wheel
explained that the junk had suddenly tacked. The boy felt in his pocket
and, pulling out a Mexican dollar, tossed it to the junk man, who,
having rubbed it on his sleeve and bitten it, began to chatter anew to
Charley Yen.
"What does he say?" asked the boy.
"He say Captain belong number one man--he mucha tanks," answered Yen
with a grin. What a waste! he added. The fellow had sailed on the feast
day of Sai-Kao because on that day the Likin or native customs were
closed. The gods had punished him. He had no complaint to make and had
made none. As the _Dirigo_ shot ahead the junk man sprang into the water
and began rescuing his rice bowls. They passed no other junk that day,
and the leaden sky did not change its shade. Save for the driving of the
screw they might have been anchored in the midst of a coffee-colored
ocean. Not even a bird relieved the eager search of the eye for relief
from the immeasurable brown. The heat continued intense, and was even
more unbearable than when the sun's rays created a fictitious contrast
of shadow. Early in the afternoon Yen called the boy's attention to a
couple of dolphins which were following them, racing first with the
_Dirigo_ and then with each other. Indeed, they were all three very much
alike, and the majestic sweep and rush of the gray-white sides as they
rose from the water inspired him with a sense of companionship. How far
would they follow, these faithlessly faithful wanderers of the sea? At
sunrise the next morning they picked up Nanking and the river gave more
evidence of life, but they kept on and soon the city and its walls faded
behind them. At noon they passed Wu-hu, at the same hour next day
Kiukiang, and when the boy rose on the morning of the third day out, the
black mass of crowded up-country junks on the water front of Hankow,
swarming like mosquitoes or water flies about a stagnant pool, loomed
into view. The river was full of sampans and fishing boats. The man from
Shan-si, who had not spoken since the night in the cabin, raised his
arm, and pointing to the pagoda repeated majestically to Yen the words
of the ancient Chinese proverb:
"Above is Heaven's Hall,
Below are the cities of Su and Hang."
During the day they passed Kia-yu and Su-ki-kan, and late in the
afternoon swept into sight of Yo-chow. The Shan-si man announced that
Tung-ting was not so very far away. He even volunteered that this was
the greatest country under "Heaven's Hall" for the exportation of
bristles, feathers, fungus, musk, nutgalls, opium, and safflower. The
place presented a crowded, if not particularly ambitious, appearance.
The shore was jammed, as usual, with thousands of junks, and above the
town the muddy banks were lined with Hunan timber and bamboo rafts. From
the bridge of the _Dirigo_ the boy caught from time to time swiftly
shifting views of vast swampy plains, with a ragged line of scattered
distant mountains. Then they passed beyond the bend in the river and
suddenly entered what seemed another ocean, a northwest passage to
Cathay. As far as the eye could reach stretched an illimitable void of
waters, turbid, motionless. A rocky point, some ten feet higher than the
surrounding plain, just gave a foothold for a small temple, a two-story
Ting-tse or pavilion, and a lighthouse shaped like a square paper
lantern. Ten minutes later it was a black spot in their boiling, brown
wake. They were in Tung-ting, that desolate waste of mud, water, and
sandhill islands, half swamp, half lake that rises into being by virtue
of the expanding spring torrents, and sinks into its spongelike alluvial
bed as mysteriously as it comes.
"Whew!" whistled the boy, "I only hope 'Dooley' knows where he's at. I
wish we'd taken on a _lao-ta_ at Hankow. This hole must be a hundred
miles long and it's just about ten feet deep!"
In fact, the quartermaster had already called the boy's attention to the
long grasses that swung idly upon the top of the water, and to the fact
that here and there patches of bottom could be seen.
"Where is Chang-Yuan in all this mess?" he inquired of 'Dooley' who with
Yen occupied a place beside him on the bridge.
The Shan-si pointed to a conical-shaped island several miles distant
which raised itself steeply out of the water, on which the boy could see
through his glasses clung a Chinese village. Flocks of wild fowl
speckled the middle distance with a single lone fisherman on the
starboard bow.
"He says," interrupted Yen, "Sim-wu have got on that island. This place
belong very good for Chinaman--have got plenty of rice. Plenty water
summer time. Winter time water all finish. He says he no think enough
water for this boat. Little more far--about thirty li--have got 'nother
island--after while catchee Chang-Yuan."
"Ask him how fast his bloomin' lake is drying up," directed the boy.
The Shan-si man shrugged his shoulders.
"He says," announced Yen, "if fish belong thirsty they drink water
plenty quick. Fish no thirsty plenty water. Sometime fish drink one foot
water in four days."
The sun, which up to this time had been visible only as a dim circle in
the gray western sky, suddenly broke through with scorching intensity
and at the same moment the _Dirigo_ slid gracefully upon a mudbank, half
turned, and slid gracefully off again. The boy bit his lips and stared
hopelessly at the yellow plain of water all about him. Then he shook his
fist at the Shan-si man.
"Tell him," he roared, "that if we get aground in his infernal lake,
I'll hang him up by the thumbs and cut off his head."
Yen conveyed the message.
"Even so," replied the Shan-si, through the interpreter, "the will of
the Captain is my will and my head is at the Captain's service, but even
the gods cannot prevent the fish from drinking up the lake."
IV
"Ugh! What a town!" exclaimed the boy as the _Dirigo_ dropped anchor
Sunday morning a hundred yards off the embankment of Chang-Yuan. A
broiling sun beat pitilessly upon the deck of the gunboat and upon the
half mile of mud and ooze which lay along the water edge of the town.
Even in summer Chang-Yuan was well above the water, the shore pitching
steeply to the level of the lake. Down this incline was thrown all the
waste and garbage of the town, and in the slime grubbed and rooted a
horde of Chinese dogs and pigs and a score of human scavengers. Just
above the _Dirigo_ hung a house of entertainment, from the rickety
balcony of which a throng of curious citizens stared down inquisitively.
To the left stood a guild house and a pagoda, and five noble flights of
stone steps crowned with archways led from the water to the roadway, but
these last were so covered with slime that climbing up and over the muck
seemed preferable to risking a fall on their treacherous surfaces.
"Ugh! What a hole!" repeated the boy. "Hah! Get away there you!" he
shouted at the _sampans_ which swarmed around the _Dirigo_. "Here you,
Yen, tell the beggars to keep off!"
This Yen did, assuring the occupants of the boats that boiling oil would
be distributed upon them if they did not retire.
So this was Chang-Yuan! The boy sniffed the malodorous air and wrinkled
his nose.
"What though the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's Isle,
Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile!
Gee! I wish the old boy that wrote that could have seen this place!
Every prospect pleases! Only _man_ is vile! This town is a sort of human
pigsty so far as I can see. And I'll bet there is a fat old _erfu_
hiding in the middle of this rabbit warren who makes a good thing out of
it, you bet!"
The crowd on the embankment was growing momentarily larger, a silent,
slit-eyed crowd of uncanny yellow faces. Beyond and under the distant
line of blue hills thin columns of smoke marked the sites of the towns
devastated by the inconsiderate Wu. A friend of Yen's had told the
latter all about it. He had come aboard and had breakfasted, and for
five hundred cash had been induced to admit that at the present juncture
Chang-Yuan was a most unhealthy place for missionaries, that the
inhabitants were quite ready to join Wu, and that when he arrived there
would be the Chinese devil to pay. He offered for five hundred cash more
to act as guide to the _erfu_'s house. On the whole, it seemed desirable
to accept his proposition. Half an hour later a boat put off from the
_Dirigo_ containing the boy, Yen, the friend, and four bluejackets. The
crowd on the embankment almost pushed one another off the edge in their
eagerness to watch the white devils climbing up the steps, and hardly
allowed room for the boy and his squad to force a way through them.
Chang-Yuan was a typical example of an inland Chinese town, with dirty,
narrow streets, swarming with human vermin. A throng followed close at
the Americans' heels as they marched to the _erfu_'s house, but quailed
before the bodyguard who rushed out threateningly at them. It took half
an hour before the _erfu_ could receive them and then they were ushered
into a dim room where a flabby old man, with a sly, vacant face sat
crosslegged before a curtain. Through Yen, the boy explained that he had
called as an act of official courtesy, and that he had come to remove
certain American missionaries from danger which he understood existed by
virtue of the proximity of the rebel Wu. The _erfu_ listened without
expression. Then he spoke into the air.
He was much honored at the visit of the American naval officer. But what
could a poor old man like himself do against the great Wu? He had no
soldiers. The townsfolk were ready to join the rebels. It was only a
question of time. He could do nothing. He regretted extremely his
inability to furnish assistance to the Americans.
The boy asked if it was true that the rioters were on their way and
might reach the town that afternoon. The _erfu_ said it was so. Then,
after warning him that the United States Government would hold him
responsible for the lives of its citizens, the boy retired, convinced
that the sooner he got his missionaries away the better it would be for
them.
V
The Rev. Theophilus Newbegin had just concluded divine service upon the
veranda of the mission. Beyond the iron gateway a crowd of twenty or so
onlookers still lingered, commenting upon the performance which they had
witnessed, and jeering at the Chinese women who had just hurried away.
Two of the women were carrying babies and all had had the cholera the
season before. Because they had not died they attended service and were
objects of hatred to their relatives. The Rev. Newbegin closed his Bible
and wiped his broad, shining forehead with a red silk handkerchief. He
was a large man who had once been fat and was now thin. Owing to the
collapse of his too solid flesh his Chinese garments hung baggily upon
his person and gave him an unduly emaciated appearance.
Mrs. Newbegin was still stout. Ten years of mission life had not
disturbed her vague placidity and she sat as contentedly upon the
veranda in Chang-Yuan as she had sat in her garden summer-house in
distant Bangor, Maine, whence she and her husband had come. The fire of
missionary zeal had not diminished in either of them. The word had come
to them one July morning from the lips of an eloquent local preacher,
and full of inspiration they had responded to the call and departed "for
the glory of the Lord."
And China had swallowed them up. Twice a year, sometimes oftener, a
boat brought bundles of newspapers and magazines, and a barrel or two
containing all sorts of valueless odds and ends, antiquated books,
games, and ill-assorted clothing. These barrels were the great annoyance
of their lives. Often as he dug into their variegated contents the meek
soul of the Rev. Theophilus rebelled at being made the repository of
such junk.
"One would think, Henrietta," sadly sighed Newbegin, "that the good
people at home imagined that we spent our time playing parchesi and the
Mansion of Happiness, and reading Sandford and Merton."
Once came a suit of clothes entirely bereft of buttons, and most of the
undergarments were adapted to persons about half the size of the
missionary and his wife, but the Rev. Newbegin had a little private
fortune of his own and it cost very little to live in Chang-Yuan.
The crowd at the gate had been bigger than usual this Sunday, and during
the service had hurled a considerable quantity of mud and sticks and a
few dead animals which now remained in the foreground, but this was due
entirely to the new hatred of the foreign devils engendered by the
rioters, and many of those who to-day howled at the gate of the compound
had been glad enough six months before to creep to the veranda and beg
for medicine and food. Now all was changed. The victorious Wu was coming
to drive these child eaters from the land. Already he had laid the
country waste for miles to the north and west, and had slain three witch
doctors and hung their bodies upon pointed stakes before the temple
gates. He was marching even now with his army from Tung-Kuan--a distance
of fifteen miles. Nominally loyal to the dynasty, the inhabitants of
Chang-Yuan eagerly awaited his coming. The white devils pretended to
heal the sick but in reality they poisoned them and caused the sickness
themselves. Those who survived their potions had an evil spirit. The
crowd at the gate licked its lips at what would take place when Wu
should arrive. There would be a fine bonfire and a great killing of
child eaters. Their hatred even extended to the daughter of the foreign
devil--her whom once they had been wont to call "The Little White
Saint," who had nursed their children through the cholera and brought
them rice and rhubarb during the famine. Wu would come during the day
and then--! The uproar at the gate grew louder. Newbegin laid his moist
hand upon that of his wife and looked warningly at her as there came a
rustle of silk inside the open door and their niece made her appearance.
Margaret Wellington, now eighteen years old, had lived with them at
Chang-Yuan for ten years. Her father, a naval officer, had died the year
they had come out from America and they had picked up the little girl,
the daughter of Newbegin's deceased only sister, at Hong Kong and
brought her with them. Since then she had been as their daughter,
working with them and entering enthusiastically into all their
missionary labors. Sometimes they regretted not being able to give her a
better education, and that she had no white companions but themselves,
but the girl herself never seemed to miss these things and they believed
that what was best for them was best for her. Were they not earning
salvation? And was she not also? Was it not better for her to live in
the Lord than to dwell in the tents of wickedness? Great as was their
love for her it was nothing to their love for the Lord Jesus. For that
they were ready and eager to lay down their lives--and hers.
"Chi says the rioters are coming," said Margaret. Her hair was done in
the Chinese fashion, and she was clad in Chinese dress from head to
foot, for she had outgrown all her English clothes years ago and there
were no others to take their place.
"Yes, dear," answered her aunt, "I am afraid they are."
"He says they will kill us," continued the girl. She articulated her
English words in a way peculiar to herself, due to her strange
up-bringing, but there was no fear in her brown eyes, and the paleness
of her face was due only to the heat.
The mob at the gate set up a renewed yelling at sight of her.
"Dear, dear!" said her uncle irresolutely, "I don't believe it will be
as bad as that. They will calm down by and by." He really felt very
badly about Margaret. To be killed was all in the day's work so far as
Henrietta and he were concerned. They had anticipated it sooner or later
almost as a matter of course, but Margaret----
A stick hurtled across the compound and fell on the veranda at his feet.
He knew that it would take but little to excite the mob at the gate to
frenzy, but he had made no preparations to defend the compound, for it
would have been quite useless. In that swarming city what could one aged
missionary and two women do to protect themselves? Chi, the only male
convert, was hardly to be depended upon and all the rest were women. No,
when the time came they would surrender their lives and accept
martyrdom. It was for that that they had come to China. Newbegin's mind
worked slowly, but he was a man of infinite courage.
"Dear, dear!" he repeated, looking toward the gate.
"Cowards!" cried the girl, her eyes flashing. "Ungrateful people! They
will kill us, and Chi, and Om, and Su, and the other women and their
babies. We must do something to protect them."
"Dear me! Dear me!" stammered her uncle again, rubbing his eyes. The
crowd at the gate had fallen back and a strange vision had taken its
place. Involuntarily he removed his hat. The girl uttered a cry of
astonishment as the gate swung open and a young man in a white duck
uniform entered the compound followed by four erect figures also in
white and carrying rifles on their shoulders.
"Bless me!" exclaimed Newbegin, "it looks like a naval officer!"
The boy came straight to the veranda and touched his cap.
"Are you the Rev. Theophilus Newbegin?" he inquired.
"I am," answered the missionary, holding out his hand.
"I am John Russell, ensign in command of the U. S. gunboat _Dirigo_. I
have been sent by Admiral Wheeler to assist you to leave Chang-Yuan."
"Bless me!" exclaimed the Rev. Theophilus. "Very kind of him, I'm sure!
And you, too, of course, and you, too! Henrietta, let me introduce you
to Ensign Russell. Er--won't those--er--gentlemen come inside and sit
down?" he added, staring vaguely at the squad of bluejackets.
"Oh, they're all right!" said the boy, shaking hands with Mrs. Newbegin,
and wondering what sort of a queer old guy this was whom he had been
sent to rescue. "Beastly hot, isn't it? Do you have it like this
often?"
"Eight months in the year," said Mrs. Newbegin, "but we're used to it."
At this moment the boy became conscious of the presence of one whom he
at first took to be the prettiest Chinese girl he had ever seen.
"Let me present my niece--Ensign Russell," said Newbegin.
The boy held out his hand but the girl only smiled.
"It is very good of you to come so far to help us," said the girl.
"Oh, no trouble at all!" exclaimed the boy without taking his eyes from
her face. "I'm glad I got here in time," he added.
"Did you come on a ship?" asked the girl.
"Just a little gunboat," he answered, "but that makes me think. This
plagued lake is sinking all the time. I got aground in half a dozen
places. We've got to start right along back. I'm by no means sure we can
get out as it is, but it's better than staying here. You'd oblige me by
packing up as quickly as possible."
"Eh?" said the Rev. Theophilus, with something of a start, "what's
that?"
"Why, that we've got to start right along or we'll be stuck here and
won't be able to get away at all."
"But I can't abandon the mission!" said Newbegin in wonder.
"Certainly not!" echoed his wife placidly. "After all these years we
cannot desert our post!"
"But the rioters!" ejaculated the boy. "You'll be murdered! Wu will be
here before night, they tell me, and there was a precious crowd of
ruffians at the gate as I came along. Why, you can't stay to be
killed!"
Newbegin shook his head.
"You do not understand," he said slowly. "We came out here to rescue
these people from idolatry. Some of them have adopted Christianity.
There are forty women and children converts. There are others who are
almost persuaded; if we abandon them now we shall undo all our labor.
No! we must stay with them, and die with them, if necessary, but we
cannot go away now."
"Great Scott!" cried the boy, "do you mean to say that----"
"We cannot desert our post," repeated Mrs. Newbegin, looking fondly at
her husband.
"But--but--" began the boy.
"Even if we die, there is the example," said Newbegin.
The boy was puzzled. Of missionaries he had a poor enough opinion in
general, and this one looked like a great oaf and so did his fat wife,
but in the most ordinary way and with the commonest of accents he was
talking of "dying for the example." Then his eyes returned to the girl
who had been watching him intently all the time.
"But," he exclaimed, "certainly you won't place your niece in such
danger?"
"No," said Newbegin, "that would not be right."
"No," repeated the wife, "she had better go back."
"I will not go back," cried the girl, "unless you go, too! This is my
home. Your work is my work. I cannot leave Om and Su and their babies."
"Good God!" muttered the boy hopelessly. "Don't you see you _must_ come?
You _can't_ stay here to be murdered by the rioters! I can't _let_ you!
On the other hand, I can only stay here an hour or two at the most. The
_Dirigo_ is almost aground as it is and we shall have the dev--deuce of
a time getting out of the lake."
"Well," said Newbegin calmly, "I have told you that we cannot accept
your offer. We are very grateful, of course, but it's impossible. It
would not do; no, it would not do. A missionary expects this kind of a
thing. I wish Margaret would go, but what can I do, if she won't go? I
can't make her go."
"I want to stay with you," said Margaret, taking his hand. "I will never
leave you and Aunt Henrietta."
The boy swore roundly to himself. The crowd of Chinese had returned to
the gate, and the air of the compound stank in his nostrils. He took out
his watch.
"It's eleven o'clock," he said firmly. "At five I shall leave
Chang-Yuan; till then you have to make up your minds. I will return in
an hour or so."
Newbegin shook his head.
"Our answer will be the same. We are very grateful. I am sorry not to
seem more hospitable. Have you seen the temple and the pagoda?"
"No," answered the boy. "I suppose I might as well do the town, now I'm
here."
"I will show you the temple," said Margaret timidly. "They know me
there, I nursed the child of the old priest. I will take you."
"Yes," said Newbegin, "they all like Margaret, and I seem to be
unpopular now. Will you not take dinner with us?"
"Thank you," said the boy, "take dinner with _me_. Perhaps Mrs. Newbegin
would like to see the gunboat, and I have some photographs of the new
cruisers."
Margaret gazed beseechingly at her.
"Very well," said Newbegin, "if you will stop for us on your way back
from the temple we shall be quite ready, but I must return at once after
dinner in order to assemble the members of the mission."
The girl led the way to the gate.
"I'm sure you will not need the soldiers," she said; "it is but a short
distance." The crowd, observing that the bluejackets had remained inside
the compound, crowded close at the boy's heels as they threaded the
streets to the temple.
"I spend a good deal of time here," said the girl; "sometimes it is the
only cool place."
The boy paid the small charge for admission and followed his guide up
the dim, winding stairs. It was dank and quiet; the priest had remained
at the gate. From the blue-green shadows of the recesses upon the
landings a score of Buddhas stared at them with sightless eyes. Suddenly
they emerged into the clear air upon the platform of the top story and
the girl spoke for the first time since they had entered.
"There is Chang-Yuan," she said.
The boy gazed down curiously. Below them blazed thousands of highly
finished roofs, picturesque enough from this height, while beyond the
town the soup-colored waters of the lake stretched limitless to the
horizon. He could see the embankment and the little _Dirigo_ at anchor,
the _sampans_ still swarming around it. To the south lay a country of
swamps and of paddy fields; to the north the line of hills and the smoke
of the burning towns.
They sat down on a stone bench and gazed together at the uninviting
prospect. He was beset with curiosity to ask her a thousand questions
about herself, yet he did not know how to begin. She solved the problem
for him, however.
"I have lived here since I was eight years old," she remarked,
apparently being unable to think of anything else to say.
The boy whistled between his teeth.
"Do you enjoy it?" he asked.
"I don't know," she replied, "I don't know anything else. Sometimes it
seems dull and one has to work very hard, but I think I like it."
"But what do you do," he inquired, "to amuse yourself?"
"I read," she said, "and play with Om and Su. I have taught them some
American games. Do you know parchesi and the Mansion of Happiness?"
"Yes, I've played them," he admitted cautiously. "But do you never see
any white people except your uncle and aunt?"
"Why, no," she said. "Two summers ago, after the cholera, we visited Dr.
Ferguson at Chang-Wing--that is over there. He is a medical missionary,
but I did not like him because he asked me to marry him. He was sixty
years old. Do you think it was right?"
"Right!" cried the boy. "It was a wicked sin."
"Well, he is the only white man I have met except you," said the girl.
"Of course, I can remember a little playing with boys and girls a long,
long time ago. Where is your ship?"
"That little white one down there. Can you see?" said the boy, pointing.
"Oh, is that it?" she asked. "Where are its sails?"
"There aren't any," he answered; "it goes by steam."
"I have read the 'Voyage of the Sunbeam,'" she said, "it is a beautiful
book. It came out last year in a box. I have nearly twenty books in
all."
The boy bit his lips. He was getting angry--angry that an American girl
should have been imprisoned in such a hole all her young life--such a
girl, too! What right had an elderly man and woman, even though they
enjoyed the privilege of consanguinity, to exile a beautiful child from
her native country and bring her up for the glory of God in a stewing,
stinking, cholera-infested, famine-ridden Chinese village?
"It is strange to find you here," he said finally. "I expected only some
freckle-faced, jimmy-jawed, psalm-singing woman, who would tumble all
over herself to get away."
She looked at him puzzled for a moment and then burst into a ripple of
laughter.
"What funny things you say!" she cried. "I suppose it is strange to find
me here, but why should I have freckles or a--what did you call it--a
jimmy-jaw? I do sing psalms. But my being here is no stranger than that
you should be here. I have often wished some young man would come. You
are the first I have known. I am tired of only women."
For a moment he was almost shocked at the open implication, but her
frank eyes and matter-of-fact tone told him that the girl could not
flirt. It was out of her sphere of existence.
"Would you like to get married?" he hazarded.
"Oh, yes!" she cried. "To a young man!"
"But suppose you had to go away?"
She looked a little puzzled for a moment.
"Of course, I should not like to leave Om and Su, and I wouldn't leave
uncle and aunt, but sometimes--sometimes I have wondered if one couldn't
serve God in a pleasanter place and do just as much good."
"Are there any men converts?" he asked.
"Only Chi," she replied, "and I am quite sure he is an idolater at
heart. Besides," she added, with a droll look in her eyes, "Chi is a
gambler and is always drinking _samshu_. He had been drinking it this
morning. I have often spoken to uncle about it, but he has not got the
heart to send him away."
The boy laughed.
"I have a certain amount of sympathy with Chi," said he. "If I lived
here I should be as bad as he is. I should think you would die of the
heat and the smells, and never seeing anybody."
"Oh, it's not so bad," she said spiritlessly. "You see, I have to work
pretty hard. There are nearly twenty families now where there is
sickness, and in case of anything contagious I go there and nurse.
Sometimes I get very tired, but it keeps me occupied and so I suppose I
don't think about--other things."
"It's terrible to think of leaving you here," he said. "Can't you
persuade your uncle and aunt that their duty does not require them to
lay down their lives needlessly?"
"No," she answered, "nothing would persuade them that it was not their
duty to remain; nothing could persuade _me_ of that."
"And you would not leave them?" he urged, almost tenderly.
"Oh, how _could_ I? I must stay with them! Don't you see?" She took hold
of his hand and held it. It was quite natural and totally unconscious.
"That is what missionaries are for."
A thrill traveled up the nerves of his arm and accelerated the motion of
his heart.
"That is not what _you_ are for," he said quietly.
"I must! I must!" she repeated. "Oh, I should like to go with you, but I
can't."
"But think of yourself!" he cried harshly. "Your uncle and aunt can die
for the glory of God if they choose, but they've no right to let you
die, too, just out of loyalty to them. It's cruel and wrong. It makes me
sick to think of you penned up here in this nasty, yellow place all
these years when you ought to have been going to school, and riding and
sailing, and playing tennis, and having a good time."
"Oh!" she protested.
"No, hear me out," he insisted, "and having a good time! You can serve
God and yet be happy, can't you? And your place isn't here in the midst
of cholera and famine and malaria. It's different with people who have
lived their lives, but with you, so young and fresh and pretty."
"Oh!" she cried joyfully, "do you think I am pretty? I'm so glad!"
"Do I!" he replied hotly. "Too pretty to be allowed to go wandering
around these crooked Chinese streets--" he checked himself. "I say it's
a shame! And now to stay here, after all, to be butchered!" He jumped to
his feet and ground his teeth.
She gazed at him, startled, and said reproachfully:
"I don't think it is right for you to say things like that. 'Whoso
loseth his life for my sake shall find it.' Don't you remember?"
He made no reply, realizing the hopelessness of his position.
"Come," he said, "let us go back."
She was afraid she had offended him but was too timid to do more than to
take his hand and let him lead her gently down the winding stairs.
At the gate of the temple they found the crowd augmented by several
hundred persons, who closed in behind and marched along to the compound.
Mr. and Mrs. Newbegin were waiting on the veranda and the marines had
been having a little _samshu_. The boy was by no means sorry to have the
company of his escort for the rest of their walk, and the party made
good time to the _Dirigo_. The _bund_ was alive with spectators and so
was the whole long line of shore. There were Chinese everywhere, on the
beach, on rafts, in _sampans_, swimming in the water, all around,
wherever you looked there were a dozen yellow faces--waiting--waiting
for something. Even in the broil of that inland sun the chills crept up
the boy's spine.
The Rev. Theophilus and his wife were much pleased with the gunboat and
sat in the cabin in the draught of the two electric fans sipping
lemonade, while the boy showed the girl over the _Dirigo_. He had made
one last passionate appeal to the missionary and his wife, who had again
flatly refused to leave the city. Margaret had likewise reasserted her
determination not to desert them. The boy was in despair and cursed them
to himself for stupid, bigoted fools. He was showing the girl his little
stateroom with its tiny bookcase and pictures and she had paused
fascinated before one which showed a group of young people gathered on a
smooth lawn with tennis rackets in their hands. All were smiling or
laughing. Margaret could not tear herself away from it.
"How happy they look!" she whispered. "How fresh and clean and cool
everything is! What are those things in their hands?"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"The round things that look like nets," she explained.
The boy gasped.
"Tennis rackets! Do you mean to say you've never seen a tennis racket?"
"I don't think so." She hesitated. "Perhaps ever so long ago when I was
a little girl, but I've forgotten."
The boy's anger flamed to a white heat as he glanced out through the
stateroom door to where the Rev. Theophilus and wife sat stolidly
luxuriating in the artificial draught.
"When I was a child we lived for a while in Shanghai. My father's ship
was there," she added.
"Your father in the navy?" cried the boy hoarsely. "What was his name?"
"Wellington," she answered. "He was a commander. He died at Hong Kong
ten years ago."
"Wellington! Richard Wellington? He was in my father's class at
Annapolis!" cried the boy. Then he groaned and bit his lips. "Oh!--oh!
it's a crime!"
He dropped on one knee and took her hands.
"Poor little girl!" he almost sobbed, "poor little girl! Think of it!
Ten years! Poor child!"
Margaret laid one hand on his head.
"I am quite happy," she said calmly.
"Happy!" He gave a half-hysterical laugh and shook his fist at the door.
Then he leaned over and whispered eagerly:
"You're tired, dear. Lie down for a few minutes and rest. Do--to please
me."
She smiled. "To please you," she repeated, as she leaned back among the
cushions which he placed for her, and he closed the door.
"Your niece is going to take a little nap," he explained to the
missionary. "Here are some prints of the new battleships. I must ask you
to excuse me for a moment. Saki will serve dinner directly."
"Oh, certainly--of course," murmured Newbegin, recovering from
semi-consciousness.
The boy sprang up the hatch.
"Here, McGaw!" he ejaculated, rushing to where his midshipman stood
watching the swarm of _sampans_ that covered the lake around the
_Dirigo_. "Get up steam! Do you hear? Get up steam as fast as you can!
I'm going to hike out of this!"
"All right, sir," replied McGaw in a rather surprised tone. "We can't
get off any too soon to please me. Did you ever see such a hole? Hello!
What's all that?" He pointed to a highly decorated _sampan_ coming
rapidly toward them, before which the others parted of their own accord,
making a broad line of water to the _Dirigo_.
"By Godfrey! It's the mandarin!" cried the boy. "Where's Yen? Here you,
Yen! Go make mucha laugh for the _erfu_!"
The _sampan_, however, turned out not to contain the _erfu_. A small,
fat Chinaman in the mandarin's livery stood up and bawled to Yen through
his hands.
"He say," translated Yen over his shoulder, "Wu no come. Viceroy soldier
man make big fight--kill plenty--Wu finish. Allight now everybody.
Missionary come back. Wu no make smoke, anyway. He long, long way off.
This fella lika Melican naval officer maka lil _kumsha_[2] for good
news. _Kumsha_ for maka mucha laugh."
[Footnote 2: Present, gratuity.]
"What!" roared the boy. "Pay him! Tell him to go to hell!"
McGaw watched the boy as he stamped up and down the deck running his
hands through his hair and wondered if he had a touch of sun. The
mandarin's messenger still remained in an attitude of expectancy in the
bow of the _sampan_. Suddenly the midshipman saw his superior officer
rush to the side of the _Dirigo_ and throw a Mexican silver dollar at
the Chinaman, who caught it with surprising dexterity.
"Tell him," shouted the boy to Yen, "to say to the _erfu_ that he could
not find us, that we had gone away before he could deliver his message!"
The fat Chinaman prostrated himself in the _sampan_.
"He say allight," remarked Yen.
"Do you believe what he said?" demanded the boy threateningly of McGaw.
"Sure," said the midshipman, "that's right enough! That old friend of
Yen's was out here again about an hour ago, snooping around, drunk as a
lord. He'd been loading up on _samshu_ ever since he went ashore. He
says that Wu was killed over a month ago, that his head is on a temple
gate five hundred miles north of here, and that the smoke over there is
caused by burning brush on the hillsides. The rebellion is all over
until next year. It's a great note for us, isn't it?"
But the boy made no reply. He was staring straight through McGaw out
across the lake. Suddenly he stepped close to the midshipman and
muttered quietly:
"Say, old man, for the sake of old times, can you forget all that?"
"Sure," gasped McGaw, convinced that his previous suspicions had been
correct.
"Then forget it and get up steam!" said the boy, turning sharply on his
heel.
VI
The click of the anchor engine was followed by the throbbing of the
_Dirigo_'s screw, but both the Rev. Theophilus and wife supposed them to
be the whirr of an unseen electric fan. Saki's dinner was exceptionally
good, and there was a cold bottle of vichy for the missionary, who
lingered a long time after the coffee to tell about the ravages of the
cholera the year before. When at last they ascended to the deck there
was nothing to be seen of Chang-Yuan but a glare of tile roofs on the
distant horizon.
"Bless me!" remarked the Rev. Theophilus, gazing stupidly at the
coffee-colored waves about them. "What is the meaning of all this? Where
are we going? I must go ashore. I have no time for pleasure sailing!"
"Certainly not!" echoed his wife. "Kindly return at once! Why, we are
miles from Chang-Yuan!"
And then it was, according to McGaw, that the boy more than rose to the
occasion and verified the prophecy of the Admiral, though under a
somewhat different interpretation, that he would "make good," for,
standing by Margaret's side, he saluted the missionary and with eyes
straight to the front delivered himself of the following preposterous
statement:
"I exceedingly regret that my orders do not permit me to exercise the
discretion necessary to return as you request. The Admiral commanding
the Asiatic squadron specifically directed me to proceed at once to
this place and rescue the Rev. Theophilus Newbegin and wife. I was given
no option in the matter. I was to _rescue_ you, that is all. I received
no instructions as to what to do in the event that you preferred not to
be rescued, and I interpret my orders to mean that I am to rescue you
whether you like it or not. Everything will be done for your entire
comfort and Saki has already prepared my stateroom for Mrs. Newbegin. I
trust that you will not blame me for obeying my orders."
"Bless me!" stammered the Rev. Theophilus. "Dear me! I really do not
know what to say! I am exceedingly disturbed. It seems to me like an
unwarrantable interference--not on your part, of course, but on that of
the Government. But," he added apologetically, "we cannot blame you for
obeying your orders, can we, Henrietta?"
But Mrs. Newbegin's ordinarily vacuous face bore a new and radiant
expression.
"I see the hand of Providence in this, Theophilus!" she said.
"Yes--yes!" he answered, wiping his forehead. "God moves in a mysterious
way--in an astonishing way, I might say." He looked regretfully over his
shoulder toward the fast-vanishing Chang-Yuan.
Margaret slipped her hand into his and laid her head on his arm. "I am
so glad, uncle!" she whispered. He patted her cheek.
"Yes, yes, it is probably better this way," he sighed. "Henrietta, let
us retire to the cabin and consider what has happened. My young friend,
be assured we bear you no ill will for your involuntary action in this
matter."
* * * * *
Four evenings later under the snapping stars of the midsummer heaven
Margaret Wellington and Jack Russell sat side by side in two camp chairs
on the bridge of the _Dirigo_. The gunboat was sweeping round the great
curve of the Yang-tse above Hankow and to starboard the pagodas of
Wu-chang rose dimly through the lights of the city. Below in the hot
cabin sat the Rev. Theophilus and his wife reading "The Spirit of
Missions."
"And now," said the boy, as he drew her hand through his, "you are going
to be happy forever and always. The world is full of wonderful things
and nice, kind people who are trying to do good and yet have a jolly
time while they are doing it. And you will have the dearest mother a
girl ever had. How proud she'll be of you! Now promise to forgive me;
you know why I did it! Do you suppose I'd have dared to do it if I
hadn't?"
"Yes," she answered happily, "I knew why you did it and I forgive you,
only, of course, it really was very wicked. But----"
The sentence was never finished--to the delight of the government pilot
behind them.
"What do you think my uncle will say when we tell him?" she laughed.
"He'll say, 'Bless me! Dear me! I don't know!'" answered the boy, and
they both giggled hysterically.
Abaft the black shadow of the smokestack Yen and the Shan-si man stood
in silence watching the two on the bridge. The Shan-si man raised his
arm once more in the direction of Wu-chang and made a joke.
"Above is Heaven's Hall!" said he. "Below are--the two most foolish
things in all the world--a boy and a girl!"
THE VAGABOND
"There is no essential incongruity between crime and
culture."
--_Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying."_
It was five o'clock, Sunday afternoon, and the slanting sunbeams had
crawled across the bed and up the walls and vanished somehow into the
ceiling when Voltaire McCartney came to himself, kicked off the
patchwork quilt, elevated his torso upon one elbow and took an
observation out of the dingy window. The prospect of the Palisades to
the northwest was undimmed, for the wind was blowing fresh from the sea
and the smoke from the glucose factory on the Jersey side was making
straight up the river in a long, black horizontal bar, behind which the
horizon glowed in a brilliant, translucent mass of cloud. McCartney
swung his thin legs clear of the bed and fumbled with his left hand in
the pocket of a plaid waistcoat dangling from the iron post. The act was
unconscious, equivalent to the automatic groping for one's slippers
which perchance the reader's own well-regulated feet perform on similar
occasions. The pocket in question yielded a square of white tissue,
which the fingers deftly folded, transferred to the other hand, and then
filled with tobacco. Like others nourished upon stimulants and
narcotics, McCartney awoke _absolutely_, without a trace of drowsiness,
nervously ready to do the next thing, whatever that might chance to be.
His first act was to pull on his shoes, the second to slip his
suspenders over his rather narrow shoulders, and the third to light the
cigarette. Then he sauntered across the room to the window sill, upon
which slept profoundly a small tortoise-shell cat, and picked up a
pocket volume, well worn, which he shook open at a point designated by a
safety match. For several moments he devoured the page with his eyes,
his hollow face filled with peculiar exaltation. Then he expelled a
cloud of smoke sucked from the glowing end of his cigarette, tossed away
the butt, and thrust the book into his hip pocket.
"O would there were a heaven to hear!
O would there were a hell to fear!
Ah, welcome fire, eternal fire,
To burn forever and not tire!
"Better Ixion's whirling wheel,
And still at any cost to feel!
Dear Son of God, in mercy give
My soul to flames, but--let me _live_!"
He turned away from the window, and pale against the gaudy west his
profile shone drawn and haggard. Restlessly he filched his pocket for
another cigarette, and tossed himself wearily into a painted rocker. The
cat awakened, elongated herself in a prodigious and voluptuous yawn of
her whole body, dropped to the floor and leaped with a single spring
into her master's lap. He stroked her sadly.
"Isabeau! My poor Isabeau! I envy you--creature perfect in symmetry,
perfect in feeling!"
The cat rubbed her head against the buttons of his coat. McCartney
leaned back his head. The little room was bare of ornament or of
furniture other than the chair, save for a deal table at the foot of the
bed, bearing a litter of newspapers and yellow pad paper.
"I am discouraged by the street,
The pacing of monotonous feet!"
murmured the man in the rocker. The light died out above the Palisades;
the cat snuggled down between her master's legs.
"Dear Son of God, in mercy give
My soul to flames, but let me _live_!"
he added softly. Then he lifted the cat gently to the floor, threw on a
short, faded reefer coat, and opened the door.
"Well, Isabeau, it's time for us to go out and earn our supper!"
* * * * *
McCartney gazed solemnly down from the small rostrum upon which he was
standing at the end of the saloon without so much as a smile in answer
to the roar of appreciation with which his time-worn anecdote had been
received.
"Dot's goot!" shouted an abdominal "Dutchman," pounding the table with
his beer mug. "Gif us 'n odder!"
"Ya!" exclaimed his _confrère_. "Dot feller, he was a corker, eh?" He
put up his hands and making a trumpet of them bawled at McCartney:
"Here, kommen sie unt haf a glass bier mit us!"
Three teamsters, a card sharp, a porter, two cabbies, and a dozen
unclassables nodded their heads and stamped, while the bartender passed
up a foaming stein to the performer. McCartney blew off the froth, bowed
with easy grace to the assembled company, and drank. Then he descended
to the table occupied by the Germans.
"May you all have better luck than the gentleman in my story," he
remarked. "But I for one shall go straight to the other place. Heaven
for climate--hell for society, eh? Hoch der Kaiser!"
The Germans threw back their heads and laughed boisterously.
"Make that beer a sandwich, will you? Here, Bill, bring me a slice of
cold beef and a cheese sandwich!"
The bartender opened a small ice chest and produced the desired edibles,
to which variation in their offered hospitality the two interposed no
objection, being in fact somewhat in awe of their intellectual, if not
distinguished, guest. As McCartney ate he produced a handful of
transparent dice.
"Ever see any dice like those?" he asked, rolling them across the wet
table. The first German examined them with approval.
"Dose is pooty, eh?" he remarked to his neighbor. "I trow you for die
Schnapps, eh?"
McCartney watched them covetously as they emptied the leathern shaker,
solemnly counting the spots at the conclusion of each cast.
"Here, let me show you how," volunteered their guest. "Poker hands." He
rattled the dice and poured them forth. They came up indiscriminately.
"Not so goot, eh?" commented the German. "I'll trow you. I'll trow
ennyboty mit _clear_ dice. Venn dey ain't loated I can trow mit
ennyboty." He held them up to the light. "Dese is clear--goot."
"Three times for a dollar," said McCartney.
"So," answered the German. He threw carefully, and counted two sixes, an
ace, a three, and a five. He left in the sixes and threw the others.
This time he got an ace and two fives. Once more he put them back, but
accomplished no better result.
"Now, I'll show you," said McCartney, and emptied the shaker. The dice
tumbled upon the table to the tune of two aces, two deuces, and a five.
He put back the deuces and the five and threw another ace, a three, and
a five.
"I win," he remarked. "You don't know how!"
"Vat's dot? Don't know how, eh!" roared the other. "I trow you for fife
dollars, see? Gif me dose leetle dice." He threw with a heavy bang that
shook the table. This time he got two sixes, two aces, and a five, and
put back the latter. Securing another ace he leaned back and took a
heavy draught of beer. "Full house! Beat dat eef you can!"
McCartney tossed the dice carelessly upon the board for two fours, one
ace, and two fives. To the amazement of the Germans, he left in the ace
and returned the other four to the shaker. This time he got two more
aces. His last throw gave him another ace and a five.
"Zum teuffel!" growled the German, thrusting his hand into his pocket
and drawing forth a dirty wad of bills. "Here, take your money!" He
handed McCartney six dollars.
"Kind sirs, good night," remarked McCartney, thrusting the bills into
his waistcoat pocket and arising from his place. "I must betake me
hence. Experience is the only teacher. Let me advise you never to play
games of chance with strangers."
The two Germans stared at him stupidly.
"You don't understand? Permit me. You saw the dice were not loaded? Very
good! You examined them? Very good again. Your powers of observation are
uncultivated, merely. The stern mother of invention--that is to say
necessity--has obeyed the law of evolution. Three of the dice in my
pocket bear no even numbers. The information is well worth your six
dollars. Again, good night."
"Betrüger!" cried the loser of the six dollars, arising heavily and
upsetting his beer. "Dot feller skivinded us mit dice geloaded! _Sheet!
Sheet!_"
They blundered toward the side entrance, while McCartney side-stepped
into an adjacent portal. Long Acre Square gleamed from end to end. Above
him an electric display, momentarily vanishing and reappearing, heralded
the attributes of the cigar sacred to the Scottish bard. Peering through
the haze generated by the countless lights a few tiny stars repaid
diligent search. A scanty number of pedestrians was abroad. The pantheon
of delights shone silent save for an occasional clanging car. The
Germans passed in search of an officer, excitedly jabbering about the
"sheet," their angry expressions reverberating along the concrete,
fading gradually into the hum of the lower town.
Then slowly into view crept one of those anachronisms of the
metropolis--a huge, shaggy horse slowly stalking northward, dragging a
rickety express wagon whereon reposed a semisomnolent yokel. Hitched by
its shafts to the tail of the wagon trailed a decrepit brougham
(destined, probably, for country-depot service), behind this a
debilitated Stanhope buggy, followed by a dogcart, a phaeton, a
buckboard, with last of all a hoodless Victoria. This picturesquely
mournful procession of vanished respectability staggered hesitatingly
past our hero, who regarded it with vast amusement. To his fanciful
imagination it appeared like the fleshless vertebræ of a sea serpent
slowly writhing into the obscurity of the night. Occasionally one of the
component dorsals would strike an inequality in the pavement and start
upon a brief frolic of its own, swinging out of line at a tangent until
hauled back into place again by the pull of the shaggy horse. Sometimes
all started in different directions at one and the same time, and the
semblance to a skeleton snake was heightened--even the ominous rattle
was not wanting. The Victoria looked restful to McCartney, whose legs
were always tired.
"Why should we fret that others ride?
Perhaps dull care sits by their side,
And leaves us foot-men free!"
he hummed to himself, recollecting an old college glee.
"All the same that old bandbox looks not uncomfortable. How long is it
since I have used a cushion! Poverty makes a poor bedfellow!"
As the last equipage swung by, McCartney took a few steps in the same
direction and clambered in. He had become a "foot-man" in fact, but a
very undignified and luxurious one, who lay back with his feet crossed
against the box in front of him. Of all the lights on Broadway none
glowed so comfortingly for McCartney as the tip of his cigarette.
"My prayer is answered," he remarked softly to himself. "Thus do I
escape the 'monotonous feet.' Had I only Isabeau I should have attained
the height of human happiness--to have dined, to smoke, to ride on
cushions under the starlight, to have six dollars, and not to know
where one is going--a plethora of gifts. So I can spare Isabeau for the
nonce. Doubtless she would not particularly care for the delights of
locomotion."
Thus Voltaire sailed northward, noticed only by solitary policemen and
lonely wayfarers. Near Eightieth Street his eye caught the burning
circle of a clock pointing at half-past nine, and he stretched himself
and yawned again. They were passing the vestibule of an old church which
contrasted quaintly with the more ambitious modern architecture of the
neighborhood. From the interior floated out the gray unison of a hymn.
McCartney swung himself to the ground and listened while the skeleton
rattled up the avenue.
"Egad!" thought he, "yon prayerful folk are not troubled with my
disorder. Hell is for them what Jersey City is for me--a vital reality."
A woman, her head shrouded in a worn gray shawl, approached timidly and
stationed herself near the door. McCartney could see that she was
weeping and that she had a baby in her arms. He grumbled a bit to
himself at this business. It did not suit his fancy--his scheme. Having
planned a continuation of this night of comedy so auspiciously begun, he
disliked any incongruity.
"Broke?" he inquired without rising. The woman nodded.
"What's the matter?"
"Dan cleared out the flat and skipped yesterday afternoon. We've had
nothing to eat--me and the kid--all day."
"Let's look at your hands."
The woman held out a thin, rough, red hand. McCartney gave it a glance
and continued:
"What's your kid's name?"
"Catherine."
McCartney gazed at her intently.
"Look here, do you think those folks in there would help you?"
"I don't know. It's better than the Island."
"Don't try it," advised McCartney. "They'd think you were working some
game on 'em. Leave this graft to me."
The woman started back, half frightened, but McCartney's smile reassured
her.
"Here's yours on account." He handed her the five-dollar bill he had
secured from the Germans. "_I_ know how. _You_ don't. _You_ need it. _I_
don't." He waved aside her thanks. "Now go home, and, listen to me,
don't take Dan back--he's no good."
The woman hurried away, and with her departure silence fell again.
McCartney seated himself upon the curb and lit still another cigarette,
eying the door expectantly. Once he arose and dropped a piece of silver
into the poorbox inside the porch, listening intently to the loud rattle
it made in falling. It was clearly the sole occupant, for no answering
clink came in response.
"Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun,"
softly murmured McCartney.
"You will be lonely in there all by yourself, little one. Here's a
brother to keep you company," said he, pushing in another.
The hymn ceased and the congregation began to pass out. McCartney
retired into the darkness of a corner, scrutinizing every face among the
worshipers. Last of all came a little old man scuffling along with the
aid of a cane. His snowy beard gave him an aspect singularly benign.
McCartney laughed to himself.
"Grandpapa, I trust we shall become better acquainted," he remarked
under his breath, as he followed the old fellow down the street.
* * * * *
The loud vibrations of the bell in the deserted rooms of the floor below
brought no immediate response, and instead of a brighter blaze of
hospitality, the light in the hall was hurriedly extinguished. McCartney
only pressed his thumb to the round receptacle of the bell the more
assiduously, repeating the process at varying intervals until the light
again illumined the door. A shadow hesitated upon the lace curtain, then
the door itself was slowly, doubtfully opened, and the old man shuffled
into the vestibule, peering suspiciously through the iron fretwork.
McCartney, without going too close--he knew well the dread of human
eyes, face to face--looked nonchalantly up and down the street,
realizing that he must give his quarry time to regain the
self-possession this midnight visit had shattered. After a pause the
bolt was shot and the door opened upon its chain.
"Was that you ringing? What do you want?"
"Yes, it was I who rang. I trust you'll excuse the lateness of my call.
It's imperative for me to see you."
"Who are you? And what do you want to see me about?"
"My name is Blake. Blake of the _Daily Dial_. It is a personal matter."
"Don't know you. Don't know any Blake. Don't read the _Dial_. What is
the personal matter?"
"For God's sake, sir, let me speak with you! It's a matter of life and
death. Don't deny me, sir. Hear me first."
The little old man closed the door a couple of inches.
"Want money, eh?"
"Help, sir. Only a word of sympathy. I've a dying child----"
"Can't you come round in the morning?"
"It will be too late then. I implore you to listen to me for only a few
moments. I've been waiting two hours upon the sidewalk for you to
return, and it's too late for me to go elsewhere."
The door opened sufficiently for the old man to thrust his face close to
the crack and inspect his visitor from head to heels. Evidently
McCartney's appearance and the manner of his speech had made an
impression which was now struggling with prudence and common sense. The
deacon, moreover, had a reputation to support. It would not do to turn
an applicant away who might be in dire extremity--and who might go
elsewhere and carry the tale with him.
"Won't a bed ticket do you, eh? And come in the morning?"
McCartney saw the vacillation in the other's mind.
"I'm sorry, but I must see you now, if at all. To-morrow might be too
late."
The owner of the house closed the door, unslipped the chain and
retreated inside the hall to the foot of the stairs, leaving the way
free for his visitor to follow. McCartney entered, hat in hand, and
shut the door behind him, catching at a glance the austerity of the
furniture and walls. To him every inch of the Brussels carpet, the
ponderous, polished walnut hatrack, the massive blue china stand with
its lonely umbrella and stout bamboo cane, and the heavily framed oil
copy of St. John spoke eloquently.
"I must ask your pardon again, sir, for disturbing you. But a man of
your character, as you have no doubt discovered, must suffer for the
sake of his reputation. I----"
McCartney swayed and seized a yellow-plush _portière_ for support. In a
moment he had regained control of himself--apparently.
"A touch of faintness. I haven't eaten since morning." He looked around
for a chair. The old man made a show of concern.
"Nothing to eat! Dear me! Well, well! Come in and sit down. Perhaps I
can find something."
Deacon Andrews led the way past the stairs and swung open the door to
the dining room. It had a musty smell, just a hint of the prison pen at
noon time, and McCartney shuddered. The old man disappeared into the
darkness, struck a sulphur match, a fact noted by his guest, and with
some difficulty lighted a gas jet in a grotesquely proportioned
chandelier. The gas, which had blazed up, he turned down to half its
original volume.
"There, sit down," said he, pointing to a mahogany chair shrouded in a
ticking cover, and settled himself in another on the opposite side of a
great desert of table. McCartney did as he was bidden, mentally
tabulating the additional facts offered to his observation by the
remainder of the room. There was evident the same bare vastness as in
the outer hall. Two more oils, one of mythological, the other of
religious purport, balanced each other over the wings of a huge black
carven sideboard. For the rest the yellow and brown wall paper repeated
itself interminably into the shadow.
"Feel better?" asked the deacon.
"Yes, much," answered McCartney. "I'm used to going without food. The
body can stand suffering better than the mind--and the heart."
"Let's try and fix up the body first," remarked the deacon, opening a
compartment beneath the sideboard. "Here, try some of these," and he
placed a plate of water biscuits upon the table.
McCartney essayed more or less successfully to eat one, while the old
man retreated into the pantry and, after a hollow ringing of water upon
an empty sink, returned with a thick tumbler of Croton.
"Good, eh? Nothing like plain flour food and Adam's ale! Now, what is it
you want to say? I must be getting to bed."
McCartney hastily swallowed the last of the biscuit and leaned forward.
"If I could be sure my dear wife and child could have this to-night, I
should be happy indeed. Oh, sir, poverty can be borne--but to see those
whom we love suffer and be powerless to help them--I can hardly address
myself to you, sir. I have never asked for charity before. I'm a
hard-working man. I had a good position, a little home of my own, and a
wife and child whom I loved devotedly. I care for nothing else in the
world. Then came the chance that ended so disastrously for us. I thought
it was the tide in my affairs, you know, that might lead on to fortune.
My wife was offered a position in a traveling company at sixteen
dollars a week, and they agreed to take me with them as press agent at
thirty-five--fifty dollars a week all told. Can you blame us?"
"I don't approve of play acting," said the deacon.
"Don't think the less of my wife for that. She meant it for the best."
McCartney's face worked and he brushed his eyes with the back of his
hand.
"Look here, what's the use wasting time," interrupted the deacon. "How
do I know who you are?"
"You have only my word, sir, that is true."
"What did you say you did for a living?"
"I'm a reporter. I live by my pen, sir, and I write articles on various
subjects for the newspapers. I have even written a very modest book. But
the modern public has crude taste in literature," sighed McCartney.
"Well, go on, now, and tell me about your trip or whatever it was," said
the deacon.
"I gave up for the time, as I said, the precarious livelihood of a space
writer. We sublet our rooms. I spent what little money I had saved upon
a costume for my wife, and we started out making one-night stands."
"What was the name of your play?" inquired the deacon abruptly.
"'The two Orphans,'" replied McCartney without hesitation. "We got along
well enough until we reached Rochester, and there the show broke
down--went to the wall. We were stranded, without a cent, in a
theatrical boarding house. My wife was taken down with pneumonia and
little Cathie----"
"Little what?" asked the deacon.
"Short for Catherine--caught the croup. We had nowhere to turn. I pawned
my watch to pay our board bill. We were sleeping in a single room--the
three of us. For days I tramped the streets of Rochester looking for
some work to do, but I was absolutely friendless and could find nothing.
My wife got a little better, but little Catherine seemed to grow worse.
I pawned my wife's wedding ring, all my clothes but those I have on,
even my baby's tiny little bracelet we bought for her on her second
birthday--O God, how I suffered! We talked it all over and decided that
as New York was the only place where I was known, I had better return
and earn enough money to send for them as soon as I could. The manager
let me use his pass back to the city. I reached here three days ago, but
I have found no work of any sort. Some of the press boys have shared
their meals with me, but for the moment I'm penniless. Meantime my wife
is lying sick in a strange household and my little girl may be dying!"
McCartney sobbed brokenly. "I'm at my last gasp. I've nowhere to sleep
to-night. No money to buy breakfast. I can't even pay for a postage
stamp to write to them!"
"What street did you stay in at Rochester?"
"1421 Maple Avenue," shot back McCartney. "I wish you could see my
little Catherine--she's such a tiny ball of sunshine. Every morning she
used to come and wake me, and say, 'Come, daddy, come to breaf-crust!'
She couldn't pronounce the word right--I hope she never will. She called
the little dog I gave her a fox 'terrial' dog. Some people say children
are all alike. If they could only see _her_--if she's still alive. Why
_I_ wouldn't give ten cents to live if I could only make sure Edith
would have enough to get along on and give Catherine a decent education.
I want that girl to grow up into a fine noble woman like her mother. And
to think the last time I saw her she was lying in a stuffy hall bedroom
in a third-class lodging house, her little forehead burning with fever,
with my poor sick wife stretched beside her, fearing to move lest she
should wake the child. She may be dead by this time, for I've had no
work for three days, and I've been able to send them nothing--nothing!
They may have been turned out into the streets, for the board bill was a
week overdue when I left them. Don't you see it drives me nearly mad?
I'm worse off a thousand times than if I stayed there with them.
Sometimes I think there can't be any God, for if there was He'd never
let me suffer so. And all for a little money--just because I can't pay
the fare back to my sick wife and dying baby--my poor, sweet, little
baby!"
McCartney's voice broke and he buried his haggard face on his arms. For
a moment or two neither spoke, then the deacon sighed deeply.
"You do seem to have had hard luck," he remarked awkwardly. McCartney
was still too overcome with emotion to reply.
"I reckon I'll have to break my rule and help you without references. I
don't believe in giving, as a rule, unless you know who you are giving
to."
He put his hand in his pocket.
"But I'll do it this time." He placed two quarters upon the table.
"There, half a dollar'll keep you nicely for a while. Of course, there's
no use sendin' money to Rochester. Your landlady can't turn sick folks
into the street, and if she does they can go to the hospital----"
He paused, startled by the look on McCartney's face, for the latter had
risen like an avenging angel, white and trembling. Pointing at the two
harmless coins, he cried:
"Is that your answer to the appeal of a starving man? Is that all your
religion has done for you? Is that how you obey your Lord's teachings?
'Cup of cold water' indeed! Cold water! Cold water! That's what you've
got instead of blood; you withered old epidermis! You miserable,
dried-up apology for a human being!" He paused for breath, sweeping the
room with indignant scorn.
"I know your kind! You old Christian Shylock! You bought those chromos
at an auction! You took that old sideboard for a debt--yes, a debt at
eighteen per cent interest. You don't pay a cent of taxes. You sing
psalms and bag your trousers with kneeling on the platforms at prayer
meetings and then loan out the church's money to yourself on worthless
securities. You're too mean to keep a cat, for the cost of her milk. You
read a penny newspaper and take books out of a circulating library. You
put a petticoat on these chairs so your miserly little body won't wear
out the seats."
The lean vagabond half shouted his anathema, the pallor of his face and
brow darkening red from the violence of his passion. It was the very
ecstasy of anger. Before it the little man with the white hair shrank
into himself, diminishing into his chair, seeking moral opportunity of
escape.
McCartney looked at the two coins contemptuously.
"Bah!" he exclaimed in disgust. "Half a dollar for a dying child and a
starving woman, to say nothing of a shelterless man!" He broke into a
mirthless laugh. "Allow me to return your generous answer to my
application for assistance. A code of morals of my own, which doubtless
you would not appreciate, compels me to restore what is obviously ten
times more precious to the donor than to the recipient."
He filliped the two coins across the table into the lap of his host, who
still crouched furtively with his head near the table.
"It makes me sick to look at you! Who could gaze without disgust upon
the spectacle of an ossified creature like yourself, creeping through
bare, deserted old age toward a grave mortgaged to the devil? Ugh! It is
the horridest spectacle I have seen in a month."
"You're mad!" muttered the old man with hoarse fearfulness.
"Sometimes, but not now!" retorted McCartney. "I'll hold my evening
session for Misers a moment longer. I pity you, Lord Pinhead Penurious!
I pity you that you should have gone through life, a small term of say
sixty years, in such stupidity. Sixty years of grubbing, of weighing
meat and adding figures, of watching the prices fools pay for stocks,
and how many days of _life_? How many good deeds? Oh, marvelous lack of
wit! What know you of real happiness? Let me introduce myself, since
you're so blind. What do you think I am, my good old Noddy Numbskull?"
"Crazy!" gasped the old man. "Do be quiet! Let me get you something more
to eat."
"A thief, at your service. Oh, don't start! I'll not carry away your
mahogany sideboard nor your bronze chandelier. I steal only to keep
myself in purse--to eat. You dig to add to the column of figures in your
pass book. I walk among the gods. My brain is worth twenty gray bags
like yours. I have thoughts and dreams in terms to you unintelligible. I
can live more in a week than haply you have done in the course of your
whole crawling existence. What do you know of the spirit? Behind your
altar sits a calf of gold. You grovel before it and slip out at the
bottom the shekels you drop in at the top. To you the moon will always
be made of green cheese, that 'orbed maiden with white fire laden'! Your
hands are callous from counting money, your brain is----"
The old fellow arose. "Leave my house! Get out of here!"
He was an absurd figure, not more than five feet high, in his black
broadcloth suit and string tie, as he faced McCartney's blazing eyes,
and the latter laughed at him.
"I will fast enough. But you see I'm having a sensation--_living_. I'm
doing good. Oh, yes, I am. If not to you, at least to myself. Do you
think I'll ever forget little 'Cathie'? God! How I could have loved a
real child! And I've only a cat." He laughed again. "I don't blame you
for thinking me crazy--even you. Come, now, wasn't my picture of the
phthisic wife and moaning child worth a place on the line--I mean,
wasn't it good, eh? Worth more than two beggarly quarters? It gave me a
thrill--what I need--it'll keep me alive for another twenty-four hours,
without this." He held up a nickel-plated hypodermic syringe. It shone
in the gaslight, and the old man started back and held out his hands.
"Don't shoot!" he cried in senile terror.
"Carrion!" cried McCartney. "Why do I waste my time on you? Why? Because
I'm in your debt. I owe you little Catherine. I shall never forget her.
And you, you--you are her foster father! God forbid!"
The old man sat down resignedly at the extreme side of the table.
"By God, I pity you!" exclaimed the lean man. "Do you hear that? _I_
pity _you_--_I_!--a wretched, drugged, wilted, useless bundle of nerves
twisted into the image of a man; a chap born with a silver spoon, with
gifts, who tossed them all into the gutter--threw 'a pearl away richer
than all his tribe'; a miserable creature who can't live without this"
(he pressed the needles into his wrist), "and yet I wouldn't change with
you! I'm more of a man than you. My very wants are sweeter than any joys
your brutish senses can ever feel.
"O would there were a heaven to hear!
O would there were a hell to fear!
Dear Son of God, in mercy give
My soul to flames, but let me live!
"You don't know what that means! Haven't the vaguest idea. You're a
mummy. You'll be the same ten thousand years from now. I suppose you
think I made it up, eh?
"I am discouraged by the street,
The pacing of monotonous feet.
"That's all _you_ want. You couldn't understand anything else, and yet
it's my torture, and my salvation!"
The glow came back into McCartney's eyes and he repeated:
"Yes, that picture of little Catherine was worth more than two quarters.
It ought to have been good for twenty dollars. It's worth more than that
to me."
McCartney's voice had grown strong and clear.
The old fellow looked at him sharply and changed his tone. He must get
this madman out of his house. He must humor him.
"Come, come, that's all right. Cheer up! Why, I had a little girl of my
own once."
McCartney pierced him through and through with swimming eyes.
"And her memory was only worth two miserable quarters? You lie, you
wretched old man, you lie!"
The old fellow started back. The door banged. McCartney was gone.
THE MAN HUNT
I
_Note._--Action takes place about the year 1915.
Ralston strode briskly up Fifth Avenue, conscious all about him of the
electric pressure of War. It was six o'clock--the hour when the hard
outlines of the tops of office buildings and the prosaic steeples of
contemporary religion, flushed with rose, and "fretted with golden
fire," melt with a glow of unreality into the darkening blue. Here and
there in the eastern sky tiny points trembled elusively, and a molten
crescent followed him along the housetops, its pale disk growing each
instant brighter.
Wheel traffic on the avenue, between the hours of nine and seven, had
been suspended, and many pedestrians preferred the icy inequality of the
street to the crowds upon the pavements. For the most part the movement
was northward, meeting at the corners transverse streams of clerks and
salesgirls jostling one another, arm in arm, down the side streets. Here
and there could be seen an officer in service coat, with sword dangling
beneath, and occasional knots of soldier boys in the uniform of the
National Guard.
A little lad with an air of vast importance ran just ahead of Ralston,
unlocking the bases of the electric lights and, in some mysterious way,
turning them on. To his intense gratification he had succeeded in
distancing his fellow across the way by half a block. Above the shuffle
of feet could be heard the cries of the newsmen, "Extra! Extra!
President calls for twenty new regiments! Latest extra! Twelfth to the
front." These, clutching huge bundles of papers to their breasts, hurled
themselves against the tide of humanity, appearing from all directions
and sweeping down like vultures upon any individual wayfarer so
unfortunate as to have his hand momentarily in his pocket. Their bundles
quickly disappeared. Then they would run panting to the corners where
the paper wagons were in waiting. It was a scene full of inspiration to
Ralston, but it impressed him that, after all, the crowd seemed
primarily interested in its own affairs--its business, its cold ears,
its suppers.
For the newspapers the war had created a fierce, insatiable public maw.
Circulations sprang by leaps into the millions. Extras followed one
another by minutes. For the people in the shops it meant night work and
longer hours; for society, something new to talk about; for the
theaters, packed houses which roared at topical songs in which "war"
rhymed with "bore," "rations" with "nations," "company" with "bump any,"
"foes" with "toes," "sword" with "board," and gloried in "Eddie" Foy and
"Jo" Weber dressed as major generals. "Light Cavalry" and "Dixie" had
superseded all other selections upon the musical programmes, and special
rows of seats were reserved for "officers in uniform." The bars were
jammed, traveling men sat in more thickly serried ranks than usual in
the hotel windows, and Slosson's Billiard Parlors were lined with
standing spectators. The commercial life of the city boiled over. Only
the brokers came home early.
As Ralston entered Madison Square he found himself entangled in a dense
throng wedged around an improvised scaffolding, upon which was displayed
the electric-lighted bulletin of one of the big dailies. A man in a
yellow-and-black-striped sweater was rapidly painting with a brush upon
a blackboard in some white liquid the latest marching orders:
"_Twelfth Regiment leaves via Penn. R. R. to-morrow 7 A.M._"
"_Terrible Riots in Tokio._"
"_R. W. Ralston appointed Second Assistant Secretary of
the Navy._"
As he fought his way through the crush he heard his name repeated on all
sides, and a strange exaltation took possession of him. He had a curious
desire to call out: "Yes. I'm Ralston! The Ralston up there! I'm he!
That one! I'm Ralston!"
He felt like a prince suddenly called from seclusion to rule his people.
He was going to do things which these garlic-breathing folk would spell
out and marvel at. How often his name would flash across the square or
play duskily upon the curtains at the theaters, linked with generals and
"fighting" admirals. He laughed with the joy of it, that he, the
settled-down man of the world, the hunter, the manager of estates, the
student of literature, the lover of poetry, was going to play the
popular hero.
He broke through the outer ring of the crowd and made for the park. A
huge flag draped the porch of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. The flush in the
west had faded to a streaky white and the stars had sprung from behind
their curtains. A white beam of light played steadily from the tower of
the Garden into the north. When it should swing to the south actual
hostilities would have commenced. All the windows in the office
buildings gleamed with activity. As he looked back he could see the man
in the sweater erasing his name with a sponge, and his heart sank with
momentary disappointment. Some new thing was coming over the wires hot
with the fire of war. At the same moment he heard up the avenue the
faint tapping of drums and the shriek of the fifes.
A line of mounted police burst into the square. The throng in front of
the bulletin board surged over to the park. Then with a clash of cymbals
and a prolonged rattle from the drums a full band burst into "There'll
be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night." The regimental flags came into
view. In the light of the stars, in the dying of the day, in the moment
of his exaltation, Ralston recognized the colors of his old regiment.
Had he chosen he might have been marching at the head of his company
even then. The crowd, cheering, forced him to the curb and into the
street. With brimming eyes he doffed his hat and saluted the colors.
As he did so a sudden wild yell went up from the multitude. From one
side of the square to the other reigned pandemonium. The very sound of
the band was drowned in the uproar. From the top of the Flatiron
Building a stream of rockets broke into the sky, and with a single
movement the throng turned and gazed tensely at the Garden Tower, as the
white shaft of light slowly swung into the south.
II
The little white house on East Twenty-fifth Street was ablaze with light
as Ralston eagerly mounted the low stoop and pressed the bell. The
visitor knocked the slush from his overshoes, slapped the left pocket of
his coat as if to make certain that something was still safely there,
stepped quickly across the threshold when the butler opened the door,
handed the man his hat, threw off his fur coat upon an ebony chair, and
only paused, and that but for a moment, at the entrance of the
drawing-room. He was a tall, clean-built, brisk young man, thoroughly
American in type, with an alert face, which, if not handsome, was
nevertheless agreeable and attractive--a man, in a word, whom one would
not hesitate to address upon the street, provided the question was
pertinent and the information essential.
It was clear from his manner that he was no stranger, but to-day there
were more women than usual at Miss Evarts's Monday afternoon, and the
lights and chatter seemed a bit confusing to one whose mind was charged
with the importance of a newly acquired responsibility. Miss Evarts was
an old friend of his mother's, who, somewhat to his amused annoyance,
took it upon herself to assume toward him a sort of sisterly attitude,
which allowed her the privileges of relationship without prejudice to a
certain degree of elderly sentiment. Attendance upon her selectly
Bohemian gatherings
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