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Title: The champion
Author: Charles Egbert Craddock
Release date: September 17, 2024 [eBook #74435]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1902
Credits: Peter Becker, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHAMPION ***
THE CHAMPION
BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY MARY N. MURFREE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published September, 1902._
[Illustration: "I CAN'T HIDE IT! I BURNT THE COPY."]
THE CHAMPION
CHAPTER I
The devil was looking out of the window. Yet the traffic in the streets
was unchecked. The cable-cars whizzed past with a clanging clamor.
Great rumbling vans laden with freight alternated with carriages
rolling noiselessly on rubber-tired wheels. The sidewalks were crowded
with pedestrians. Men and boys, ladies and little children, boldly came
and went over the neighboring crossing, although they could plainly see
the devil's head poking out of a high window in the newspaper building
and hear the shrill tones of the devil's voice as he discoursed to his
friend within.
For in fact this was not the old Enemy of Mankind, but a small
imp--commonly known as a printer's devil--who by virtue of a beguiling
chirp of "Copy!" served as a means of communication between the foreman
of the composing-room and the editorial staff.
"That's wher' they set her up!" he said, pointing to the composing-room
in an explanatory way, and with a paw copiously smeared with ink.
There were streaks of this commodity on his face also, although his
functions had no concern with it. Still the devil is not the only fiend
who dabbles in printer's ink without a call.
His friend, Peter Bateman, a heavy, thickset boy, with a broad, sullen,
flushed face and a lowering eye, cast a glance at the cases visible
through the open door from the hall.
"Wher' do the boss do the writin' at?" he asked, in a hoarse, wheezy
voice.
The devil tossed his red head. "Boss don't hev ter write none!" he
retorted arrogantly. "_Foreman_ is what _we_ call him--bes' printer in
these 'ere Newnited States!"
"But wher' do the feller stay what hes ter write?" persisted Pete.
"Oh,--_him_?" responded the devil, disparagingly. "They puts him in a
little 'rinktum,' they call it, all by himself. _He_ ain't much force!
He can't write a word if folks git ter gabblin' ter him. Why, sometimes
when I jes' say 'Copee' ter him, he looks like he will go out of his
mind! They hev ter hire a whole passel o' other fellers ter help him
_jes' do the writin'_. They hev got a double row of desks for a lot of
'em in that long room. They are all orful slow. Sometimes I be kep'
yappin' 'Copee' at 'em all day so I can't stay abed o' night--ef I eats
toler'ble hearty,--but jes' keeps jumpin' out an' yappin' 'Copee' in my
sleep, till my mother gits afeard I'll fetch the perlice with my noise."
He grinned at the recollection of these somnolent vagaries. Then in
his self-assumed duties as cicerone to his friend, showing the plant
of the daily newspaper, as the rooms were nearly deserted at this
hour, he duly exhibited the type-setting machine, a comparatively new
acquisition in this southwestern city, and not altogether popular in
the composing-room, where much of the work was still done by hand.
"It _is_ a go, of course," said the devil discriminatingly, reflecting
the sentiment of his elders, "but I tell you now, this machine ain't in
it for speed an' percision with a reg'lar old-fashioned, gilt-edged,
greased-lightning compositor like Bob Platt,--that's our foreman, ye
know! That's the kind o' printer I'm goin' ter be,--ye kin bet yer hat!"
He hesitated and seemed a trifle out of countenance for a moment after
he had said this. For when he had first been employed in the office, a
raw little country lad, his admiration of the printer's craft had been
so great, his ambition so exuberant, his ingenuous emulation so open
that he had immediately announced his determination to be some day a
champion compositor and stand preëminent at the case! The galley-boys
and junior printers, of the variety called "cubs," would have been
more or less than human had they failed to improve so promising an
opportunity for fun. They guyed him unmercifully, and they called
him "the Champion" so relentlessly that there was no one employed
about the paper, from the engine-room to the "rinktum" (sanctum) of
the editor-in-chief, who was unaware of the application of this proud
designation. The little devil, Edward Macdonald by name, winced and
wilted under the ridicule of his fellows, but it had no deterrent
effect upon his determination and the great object of his ambition.
He accounted it the chief feat of manual dexterity; and he thought
the greatest sight the city could afford was the spectacle of Bob
Platt swiftly distributing type, while the bits of metal rattled like
a furious hail into their appropriate boxes. Even now he was volubly
pitying Peter Bateman that he had never beheld this phenomenon, and
possibly was fated never to witness it.
Then, with the enthusiasm of a predestined compositor, he declared,
"I'd ruther stand at the case when I gits my growth than be the bigges'
editor goin'!"
They presently sauntered out again into the dusky hall, dimly
illumined by a flickering gas-jet here and there, for twilight was at
hand, and leaned once more against the sill of the window.
"Them reporters hev the bes' time o' any o' the staff. Them men skeet
around town till they are wore ter nothin' but eyes and lead pencil!
They see everything!--always on the go! An' hev compliments o' the
season all hours,--an' free passes ter the theaytre, lemme tell ye!"
An impressive silence ensued. Then a shadow crossed Ned's ink-streaked
face, which was the paler because of the fading of his freckles,
natural concomitant of his red hair, by reason of his indoor work.
"Now look at me!" the devil resumed in a tone calculated to invite
contrast. "I hev ter stay cooped up 'ere half the day an' nigh all
night, an' I work an' work, an' I pays all my wages over ter my mother;
I never keep a cent for myself. I ain't grudgin' her nor my little
sister neither--but ain't I goin' ter see inside a theaytre never no
more?"
He thrust his hands into his empty pockets. His heart was swelling. He
breathed hard. Suddenly Pete, his thin lips askew, his eyes narrowed
to the merest slits, till it seemed surprising that so much slyness
could look out thence, nodded his head again and again, till the motion
seemed automatic, as if he were a queer bit of bobbing machinery.
"What d' ye mean by that?" cried Edward, observing him dubiously,
mystified and in some sort offended by this enigmatic dumb show.
Pete's bullet head became stationary; pride and munificence were alike
expressed in his features.
"_I_ kin give ye a free pass ter the theaytre," he declared with
magnified importance. "I'm the boss,--an' don't ye forget it."
"Wha'--wha'--wha' say?" stuttered Ned excitedly.
Pete glanced apprehensively over his shoulder in the closing twilight.
"D' ye know Gorham's theaytre?" he asked.
Edward nodded.
"It's got a window,--a back window,--what ain't more 'n eight feet off
'n the ground." Pete made this announcement in a mysterious gurgling
whisper.
Edward stared.
"Ef ye'll boost me, I'll lean out an' reach down an' give ye a lift,"
Pete explained.
The devil stood aghast at this bold scheme.
"S'pose the play-actors war ter nab us?" he suggested in an appalled
staccato.
Pete snapped scornful fingers in the air. "Then we'll be put out o' the
door, an' that's the way the tony folks goes out what ain't obleeged to
come in at the window."
Ned laughed in sympathy. The novelty of the adventure tempted him.
Opportunity favored him. There was always a lull in the pressure of
his duties at this hour. Much of the "copee" was already in type,
and until the later dispatches should begin to come in the work of
the office would not show that increasing momentum which was wont to
culminate in the final rush of going to press. He knew that he could be
back before he would be needed, and still see a good bit of the play.
This certainty reënforced the longing for the lights and the crowd
and the splendor of the scenic display. But something--an ill-defined
something--held him back. He remembered afterward that, though so
subtle a sensation, it was for the moment as strong as if a material
hand had clutched him. It was not his habit of honesty, for just then
he did not realize that this was stealing,--that in surreptitiously
seeing the play he absolutely robbed the management of the price of his
appropriate seat among the gallery gods. Perhaps it was the instinct of
filial obedience.
"My mother can't abide for me ter go to the theaytre nohow," he
reflected. "But some folks say that it is eddication for a boy. But my
mother, she say from all she hears it's apter ter eddicate him ter be
a hoodlum than anything else,--an' if a boy wants real eddication the
Public School is yawnin' fur him."
He remembered this as he ran down the stairs beside Pete. He hesitated
even at the street door.
"Come on--we're in for a orful bully time!" wheezed Pete. "Few folks
kin go ter the theaytre this-a-way!"
Ned put his doubts behind him and started up the avenue. "Shucks!" he
argued within himself, "a boy to suit my mother's notions couldn't ever
have no fun an' see the sights and know what's goin' on. An' she hain't
never had no schoolin' sca'cely, and has lived way back in the country
mighty nigh all her life. She never was in a theaytre in her born days."
Night had come at last, but its black mantle, which elsewhere enveloped
the world, was here torn into dun-colored fringes and spangled about
with gas-jets and electric lights. Up and down the façades of distant
buildings the illuminated windows shone like swarms of golden bees. The
incandescent street lamps stretched in glittering files on either side
of the ascending avenue, converging and converging till they seemed
to meet in a rising planet in the limits of the far east. Above their
brilliant ranks now and again swayed a central arc-light, displaying a
splendid focus of intense white lustre, and flinging the luminous rays
of its encircling aureola far into the surrounding darkness. Below were
dimmer lights of yellow or blue which marked the progress of the cable
cars. They crashed and banged as they passed. The imperative strokes
of the gong sounded now and again to clear the way. The shriller
bells jangled sharply. The passengers stood in the aisles packed
like sardines, or clung to the platforms of the already crowded open
grip-car.
"They are all goin' ter Gorham's," crowed Pete, rejoicing in the
prospective crowds as if he had a share in the receipts.
Ned began to think it a fine thing too. He had all the afflatus of
public amusement. To be one of a great joyful crowd seemed to him to
multiply the pleasure by the multitude. His step grew light. He heard
the light steps behind him. Everybody was going, and he was going too.
The theatre was well filled before they came in sight of the massive
building. In front of it on the sidewalk was a gilded standard
supporting a pyramid of gas-jets. A circle of boys sat beneath this
with fans to sell, for the May weather was growing warm and the
palm-leaf industry was looking up. The boys had besieged the crowd
as it was entering the theatre, and now they waited to waylay the
belated pleasure-seeker. At a distance the pyramid, with the circle of
fluttering palm leaves beneath it, looked like some strange, gigantic,
many-petaled flower.
Pete stopped short at the sight.
"Bust them fellers! We mustn't let on ter them."
"_Naw_, sir! Naw, _sir_!" exclaimed Ned, with emphasis.
Both turned at once from the broad avenue, scuttled hastily down a side
street, then plunged into the mysterious darkness of an alley. In a
moment they were under the back window of the theatre.
A mellow dim light from within showed that the sash was lifted. The
tremulous wail of a violin drifted out to them. The orchestra had
begun to tune their instruments. There was no time to lose. Ned turned
hurriedly to Pete.
"Up with ye,--I'll boost."
To his surprise Pete drew back. His face was concealed by the darkness,
and his hoarse voice was sunk to a husky mutter.
"Hey? wha' say?" demanded Ned.
Pete grew more intelligible.
"I hain't never been in there," he remonstrated, as if the adventure
were altogether Ned's scheme. "I dunno wher' I might come out at. I
might jump right inter a--a--hornet's nest."
"I say!" exclaimed Ned sarcastically. "But if you are weakening I'll go
fust."
"Well,--I wuz thinkin' as much," muttered Pete.
Ned needed no boosting. The foundation of the building was of rough
stone, and offered some hold for his fingers and feet. He was a light
weight, even for his tender years, and as wiry and active as a cat. Up
and up he went till his grimy, ink-streaked paws clutched the outer
moulding of the window frame,--a scientific jerk, and his hands and
knees were on the sill.
He paused to listen. He heard only the orchestra. The music was now in
full swing. He peeped cautiously within, then drew back his head with a
suddenness which almost precipitated him from the window.
"Is ennybody there?" gasped Pete, ready to run.
"Dunno!" panted Ned.
He peeped cautiously within once more. He was becoming accustomed to
the dim light, and this time he saw distinctly close to the window a
great gilded dragon, that had added to its ancient glories the triumph
of frightening the devil almost out of his wits.
At this second glance Ned understood the nature of the object. He eyed
it with less fear and increasing curiosity. He had seen nothing like
this monster at the Zoo, which furnished all his knowledge of Natural
History, and with antique myths his acquaintance was slight.
"Well,--I should smile!" he ejaculated, gravely staring.
The dragon was perennially smiling, with a wide pasteboard mouth, and
some big pasteboard teeth.
Ned was in a strange world,--a great world of shams, where the trees
were clots of green paint on immense canvas sheets stretched on
tottering wooden frames, where hospitable castles had no substance,
where mountain crags were trestles of various heights supporting spring
mattresses, covered with dusty imitations of mosses and vines, on which
desperate leaps might safely be made. There were ropes and pulleys,
and windlasses, and drop-scenes, and swaying borders in the "flies"
overhead in place of a firmament. There were squares here and there on
the floor, which he knew were trapdoors, whence he had seen gnomes and
elves spring up, when once there had been given a Christmas performance
with free admission to working children.
Deep shadows gloomed on every hand, seeming the deeper because of the
flood of light which irradiated the unseen region beyond the great
"flats." No human creature was visible. Only one sound could now be
heard,--a clear, resonant, tutored voice, reciting stately lines.
Somehow the tones awed him.
He became aware in another moment that Pete was vaguely scuffling about
the foundation of the building; he leaned far out of the window and
stretched down both his arms.
"Hurry up, Pete," he adjured his friend; "they're just a-goin' it on
the stage!"
Looking down, he thought the height of the window was considerably more
than eight feet from the ground. Pete had a grievously foreshortened
aspect. In fact he seemed little more than an old cap, bobbing about
vivaciously on the paving-stones. These gyrations were in vain. Except
during a spasmodic endeavor to walk up the wall like a fly which Pete
called "climbing," he did not leave the earth at all, for he had not
the fly's peculiar and special facilities. He was too clumsy to climb,
too inactive, much too fat.
When he slid down for the last time, panting, bruised, exhausted, and
almost ready to cry, Ned sought to encourage him to further exertions.
"Naw, sir!" replied Pete angrily. "I ain't goin' ter try it nare
'nother time,--break my neck along of your fool tricks the fust thing I
know. Come down out of that window! I ain't a-goin' ter let ye see the
play-actors if I can't. Come down!"
The printer's devil stared as he sat in the window.
"Ye mus' be sick!" he exclaimed eloquently. "I got in 'ere myself, an'
'ere I'm goin' ter stay."
"Naw, ye ain't!--naw, ye ain't!" The old soft cap nodded with malicious
significance.
"Who is able ter take me out?--ye ain't, fur sure!" the devil retorted
from his lofty perch.
The shapeless old cap emitted but one word. "Perlice."
Ned was silent for a moment. The old cap bobbed about very merrily,
for Pete executed a double shuffle of derision and triumph.
"Perlice hes got nothin' ter do with me," Ned declared stoutly. "The
theaytre folks would jes' put me outer doors,--an' they hes got ter
ketch me fust." He wagged his red head as much as to say that this
should be a tough job.
Pete still danced.
"Perlice will take ye ter the lock-up for beatin' fifty cents outer the
theaytre folks."
The devil snapped his fingers.
The dance paused for the more serious business of argument. "An' for
breakin' in the back window, an' mebbe stealin' di'monds an' fine
fixin's outer the star's dressin'-room. I'm goin' ter the station right
now with that tale," added the shameless Pete. "Come down out o' that
there window or go ter jail,--you bet!"
He looked up anxiously. How he grudged the pleasure that he could not
share!
Ned, although startled, surprised, and angry, perceived the net that
circumstance was beginning to weave about him. But he would not listen
to the counsels of prudence,--for when had he ever taken a dare?
Besides, he hardly believed that Pete meant to make good his threat.
"They'll need something more than yer word, ye lyin' hoodlum!" he said,
shaking his fist at the shabby old cap below. "Ef the perlice kin
find a cobweb o' proof that I stole actor's di'monds I'll go ter jail
without wunking a wink."
With this boast he sprang down and disappeared amidst the glooms within.
The clouds were parting before the rising moon. Its golden rays fell
upon the empty window. The dragon looked out and grinned. Pete stood in
baffled anger and astonishment listening to his friend's stealthy steps
till the sound died away in the distance. Then settling his cap more
firmly on his head, he ran swiftly down the alley, up the side street,
and out upon the broad avenue.
CHAPTER II
Meantime Ned was timorously skulking about in that strange, unkempt,
haggard world known as "behind the scenes." He realized that it was to
him a foreign world, and he bore himself with the alert suspiciousness
of an alien. He kept an anxious lookout for the red jackets of the
scene-shifters, and whenever he saw them bespangling the gray shadows
of those dreary canvas vistas he dodged dexterously behind other
"flats" and into deeper glooms.
"I've got to keep my eye peeled or some o' them fellers will ketch me
sure!" he said to himself.
Once down one of these aisles a sudden veritable scene showed at the
end of the perspective, through a wide door opening upon a room tinted
in green, the color being very keen amidst the dun shadows without
and the brilliant artificial illumination within. There, seemingly
lounging or waiting, were groups of men and women, richly and quaintly
attired, but with a prosaic every-day pose and gesture and expression
of countenance, the effect curiously at variance with the suggestions
of the antique garb they wore. This incongruity was not perceptible in
a figure that he descried suddenly approaching, clad in a gown of soft
shimmering white silk as in everlasting youth and beauty,--so radiant,
so poetic, so unreal an apparition to the boy that Ned, stopping to
stare, lost all sense of his identity. She, who was to be Ophelia,
catching a glimpse of his pale, wistful, astonished little face in the
glooms, with its big dark eyes and curling red hair, as he stood as
if rooted to the spot, cast a half-amused smile on him as she passed.
Her maid was following at a distance with a shawl, and Ned, suddenly
realizing his peril, hastily darted behind one of the tombstones which
even now were placed in readiness, awaiting the graveyard scene, and
then once more dodged from flat to flat and from trestle to trestle.
He hardly knew in what direction he was tending, till all at once a
flood of light broke upon him and he stood in the wings. The broad
spread of the stage lay before him,--gorgeous with the presence of
royalty and soldiery, of lords and ladies, of jesters and pages,--the
"counterfeit presentment" of the palaces of old, and of the splendid
past. It was rounded by the dazzling crescent of the foot-lights that
clasped this charmed sphere as the new moon clasps the old. There was a
ceaseless shimmer above them, and through it he could see heads, heads,
heads. The house was crowded from parquet to gallery. Now and then the
audience broke into enthusiastic applause.
As Ned stood staring it did not occur to him that he was in the direct
way of any actor going on or coming off the stage, until a sudden step
sounded close at hand behind the wing. It was only an accident that he
did not electrify audience and players by rushing out upon the stage,
for the powers behind the scenes had far more terrors for him than
public opinion. As he shrank back toward the wall, looking eagerly
about him for a refuge, he stumbled against the oddly fashioned chair
in which Hamlet had sat during the second scene of the first act, and
which now by accident or design had been thrust aside here. The devil
sprang upon the rich crimson velvet cushions, and the Prince of Denmark
was none the wiser.
No one else was the wiser. The high arms of the chair shielded Ned from
observation as the step drew near and passed,--others still came and
went in quick succession. He had a full view of the stage. He was in no
danger of discovery unless a special search should be made for him. He
had the choicest opportunity for enjoyment--but somehow the zest was
gone. His conscience had roused itself and laid hold upon him. Instead
of following the incidents of the play enacted before him he was vainly
striving to justify himself to that implacable inward monitor. This was
not stealing, he stoutly asseverated. It was only a lark,--and all for
fun! But conscience--even a small boy's conscience--is the most potent
of all moral forces, and he suffered a poignant pang for every mill of
the half dollar which was the price of his appropriate seat among the
gallery gods.
When at last he resolutely tore his mind from this subject he could
not apply it to the pleasure of the moment. He began to wonder if Pete
would really make good his threat,--if Pete would dare to charge him
with stealing from the dressing-rooms, and burglary and what not.
"There would have to be something stole fust, an' then they would have
ter trace it ter me," he said to reassure himself, for he was a sharp
boy, and amply conversant with this world's ways.
Despite his reasoning, however, he glanced over his shoulder ever
and anon, expecting to see a big man in a blue uniform with a police
officer's badge on his breast.
When a tall man in dark garments appeared suddenly close at hand he
thought for a moment that his worst forebodings were realized. At a
second glance he saw that this man was clad in black, not blue, and
wore a high silk hat set far back on his light brown hair. He had a
light brown beard, a florid face, and eager, excited blue eyes. He
continually twirled his eye-glasses in his hand with a gesture so
nervous that it made the devil nervous too, and when compelled to
desist from this occupation by the necessity of placing the glasses
upon the bridge of his sharp hooked nose, he utilized the interval by
thrusting his hands into his pockets, where, judging by the sound,
he restlessly rattled his silver change or bunch of keys. An alert,
impulsive man, eager, unreasonable, and irritable, Ned thought him, and
afterward the devil had cause to strengthen this opinion. The boy was
near enough to hear his words, although spoken in a low tone, for he
stood far back and well out of sight of the audience.
"Well--insurance now--the premium comes pretty heavy," the manager was
saying, for this was Mr. Gorham, the manager and owner of the theatre.
"Has to be kept up, though,--no use kicking," replied a wiry, extremely
thin, pallid, and wrinkled elderly gentleman who had joined the other.
Ned guessed that this was an intimate personal friend of the manager,
since their talk was of his private affairs.
And because of this fact it seemed very odd to the boy that a certain
subordinate player awaiting his cue in the wings should evidently be
eager to hear.
"Eavesdropper!" thought Ned, indignantly.
It seemed less heinous that he himself should overhear this
conversation, since it was accidental on his part, and, at this time at
least, he thought it meant nothing to him.
Ned eyed the actor narrowly, and did not like the man's looks. His
attitude was very singular. He was almost behind one of the wings, and
quite out of sight of the two friends. His face was very red, even
beneath the rouge. He looked coarse and awkward in his gaudy costume,
and leaned so heavily against the great frame of the scene that it
tottered with his weight. He had a piece of ice in a towel which he
continually applied to the back of his neck and the top of his head. He
did this with the dexterity of an expert, but almost mechanically, for
his eyes were fixed first on one speaker's face, then on the other's.
"Of course the insurance wants to be kept up," said the manager,
frantically jingling the coin in his pocket. "Though," he added with
an afterthought, "I don't see why--I've insured this building and the
properties for fifteen years, and never had a loss by fire." He stroked
his beard reflectively. "Wish I had now all the premiums I've paid in
my time," he said almost piteously.
"When did the policy in the Rising Phœnix expire?" demanded his friend.
"To-day at noon. I refused to renew. I'm done with that agent, at all
events!" His eyes flashed, and he twirled his eye-glasses with a fierce
gesture. "Whatever I do, I'll have no more dealings with _him_."
Mr. Gorham's expression changed suddenly to one of bland politeness as
he bowed agreeably to a lady, who had been very dignified and stiffly
splendid on the stage as the queen, and withal robustly youthful, but
coming off she looked old and tired. She was so heavily whited and
rouged that her facial expression was wholly lost, and her eyes seemed
to be the only natural feature of her face, and to look out with a
sort of forlorn reality above the simpering sham of her wreck of a
countenance.
The elderly skeleton-like friend of the manager shook his bones
together, so to speak, and then stepped forward with alacrity and
offered his hand to the lady, greeting her as an old acquaintance.
Somehow Ned resented his assured courtly manner, which might have
graced a man of finer appearance and fresher youth. It seemed an
assumption on his part. "Maybe he thinks very well of his bones," Ned
speculated. "Does he suppose he is pretty?" Ugly though he was, the
lady did not scorn him, but kindly told him about a new granddaughter
she had, and showed him a telegram. She smiled, and nodded most
benignly in receiving his polite congratulations, and then sailed on
toward the green-room.
The subordinate actor at the wing suddenly dropped the towel and the
lump of ice. He had caught his cue, and with a stiff, ungainly gait
he strode upon the stage. The star had returned also, and with his
reappearance the plaudits broke forth.
"There he is again!" exclaimed the manager enthusiastically. "He is
playing in fine form to-night,--every inch the Prince of Denmark!"
Ned, too, was looking at the stage from his nook in the great man's
chair behind the wing. The by-play behind the scenes had absorbed him
hitherto, but he grew intensely interested when the star spoke to the
actor who had lurked and listened in the wings. Hamlet seemed to be
instructing him how to play a part, and in honest fact the subordinate
had shown in a scene in the previous act that he stood in grievous need
of such tuition.
"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly
on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had
as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much
with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent,
tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire
and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me
to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion
to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who,
for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows
and noise; I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant;
it out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it."
All at once was presented a strange, unexpected attraction, not set
down in the bills. The four or five players to whom this is addressed
are wont to receive it with bows of acquiescence, intelligent glances
at each other and at their instructor to express comprehension,
concurrence of opinion, and willingness. The actor who had lurked and
listened had the rôle of the "first player," and was the spokesman of
the party. He led these demonstrations with sufficient discretion, but
when his cue was given he responded with a hoarse drunken thickness
ornamented with an unmistakable hiccup.
"I'se warrant yer (hic) honor!"
His potations before he made his first appearance this evening had not
been so deep as to intoxicate him, but he had since reinforced them
heavily. He had sought to sober himself by a cold application to the
head and neck before again "going on;" the heated air, however, and the
excitement were fast doing away with its good effects.
Hamlet, striving to maintain his composure and self-possession in the
presence of the audience, addressed the second long exhortation chiefly
to the others. He could not have devised a worse expedient. The "first
player," eager to assert his precedence among his fellows, and to
impress the star with the conviction that he was perfectly sober and
reliable, gave such prominence to his acquiescent dumb show that it
became extravagant and uncouth, and before the lines of the admonition
were concluded he was bowing about the stage like a clown.
There was a vague, suppressed titter in the parquet. A sharp, sibilant
hiss swept down from the gallery. The other mock players, forgetting
their appropriate pantomime, stood as still as if stricken into stone.
The equilibrium of the great star was fairly shaken. There was a quiver
singularly like stage fright in those clear melodious tones, but he
gallantly persisted to the end, and gave the "first player" his cue.
"Reformed!" exclaimed the "first player" automatically,--he had
forgotten every word of his lines but this. "We've reformed," he
reiterated, "an'--an'--we ain't never goin' ter do it no more," he
declared, leering facetiously at the audience.
"Come off! Come off!" insisted the frenzied stage manager, in a
sepulchral undertone from behind the scenes.
But the sodden idiot advanced to the foot-lights beyond the reach of
the sheltering curtain which would fain have gathered him in.
The star bowed with dignity and retired, and the "first player" began
his explanation to the audience amidst a storm of hisses.
"Gen'elmen an' lad'es,--I mean _lad'es_ an' gen'elmen," the gallant
soul corrected himself,--"want ter make a little speege,--I forgot
lines--(hic) prompter throws me the word,--but (hic) he's got no teeth,
for I can't make him out,--go look at book,--boss is a-callin' me
now,--make it all right,--(hic)--be back d'rec'ly."
The bell jangled eloquently for the curtain to fall.
"Let it down on him,--don't care if it kills him!" was heard in the
frantic managerial tones from the wings.
The characteristically good-natured American audience burst into roars
of laughter, and the curtain came down amidst a storm of sarcastic
applause before, and not upon, the gravely bowing "first player."
The great star was with some difficulty beguiled into going on with
the play. The uproarious audience was quieted--nay, melted--by the
sight of the managerial distress and the terms of the heart-broken
apology which was offered. The curtain was rung up; the performance
recommenced at the entrance of Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern;
and these preliminaries arranged, the stage manager, the manager of the
theatre, his friend of the skeleton-like contour, the leader of the
orchestra, a number of the minor members of the company, and a strong
detachment of self-constituted "bosses" went in a different spirit to
reckon with the author of all this woe.
Why nobody "nabbed" Ned was always a mystery to him afterward.
Forgetting himself at the crisis he sprang boldly out of his chair and
participated in the varied excitements ensuing behind the scenes as
freely as if he owned the theatre. Perhaps he might not have been so
eager to hear and see had he divined the influence that this incident
would exert on his immediate future. He followed the "management" and
the crowd of "supes," scene-shifters, call-boys, and "dead-heads" to
the door of the dressing-room where the unlucky "first player" was to
be called to account.
This personage had divested himself of his stage toggery and stood
there in his every-day clothes, a coarse, slouching, red-faced man in
a brownish suit and a checked shirt. Within the room another actor was
hastily arraying himself in the gaudy attire which the "first player"
had been accustomed to wear as the "Player King." The substitute
was almost pathetic in his anxiety as he dressed himself, nervously
repeating aloud the "lines" and giving not an instant's notice to the
crowd of bystanders about the open door nor to the interview between
the management and the "first player."
This was sufficiently stormy. The unfortunate "first player" got his
walking-papers in no measured terms. Mr. Gorham took occasion to
interject some very severe remarks, although the affair was really
none of his business, the grievance lying between the manager of the
company and the actor.
"It's none of _your_ funeral, anyhow," cried the goaded "first player"
indignantly.
He snapped his fingers in Gorham's face, giving the high silk hat,
which was always precariously perched on its owner's head, a fillip
that sent it rolling on the floor among the crowd.
Gorham's arrogant and peremptory manners made him a very unpopular
man. Nevertheless it might have been an accident--although it looked
singularly like design--that the hat was in a moment trampled into a
shapeless wreck by twoscore sturdy feet.
Even when under no provocation, he showed in every gesture how vehement
and impulsive was his nature. Now, insulted in his own theatre, he
shook off the slight restraints which he acknowledged. It suited his
humor to consider the "first player's" demonstration as a blow. He
looked positively tigerish as he sprung upon the actor. The energy of
his wrath gave much "power to his elbow;" the blows that fell from his
clenched fist had a wonderfully resonant compact sound,--it made Ned
wince to think that a man's head and face received them. The "first
player" could do little to defend himself. The crowd, that always turns
to the successful side, lifted not a finger to aid or protect him.
And high above all the tumult the "Player King," putting on now his
robes of state, and now his tinsel crown, daubing his grave anxious
face with red and white, repeated his "lines" heedless of the commotion.
In less time than it can be told, the actor, fearfully beaten, was
partly dragged and partly kicked to the back window, and there was
thrust bodily forth. A heavy thud outside told of a heavy fall.
Manager Gorham turned from the window, wiping the blood from his hands
upon his handkerchief, and looking about in sarcastic triumph at the
crowd that had trampled upon his hat. Ned was astonished to observe
that these men seemed to have forgotten their share in that little
transaction, for several who had been most demonstrative in that
expression of contempt spoke to Gorham now with earnest respectfulness,
and in grave reprehension of the poor wretch whose sore bones lay
out on the flagging in the alley. The manager gave a short, fierce,
snort-like response, and as he turned abruptly he almost ran over Ned.
"Get out of my way, boy, or I'll kill you!" he exclaimed irritably.
Ned, roused to a realization of the situation, shrank back among the
huge flats. It was only the general excitement which prevented his
discovery. Gorham must have thought him one of the call-boys. Ned stole
swiftly away from shadow to shadow, from flat to flat, till he reached
his old retreat. He sprang into the chair and sat there panting,
feeling much like a mouse regaining its hole after a perilous but
successful tour of the pantry.
The stage was again before him, all glitter and splendor. The play
of Hamlet--that subtlest delineation of the subtlest character ever
conceived by the mind of man--was once more in its triumphal progress.
The audience hung breathless on every word. Ned cared now for none of
it. He was discouraged,--cast down. He was still young and ingenuous
enough to be grieved by those contemptible phases of human nature
exhibited in the manager, when he so brutally proved himself the
master in his own house, in the truckling spirit of the crowd, in the
degradation and coarse vice of the actor, the forlorn "first player."
As to himself--he too was much to blame. He was pierced with a full
realization of the wickedness of his presence here.
"My mother would call it _stealin'_, an' nothin' shorter," he said,
remembering her homely, direct phrase.
Then he had a vivid mental picture of her. He knew that again and again
she was going down the long steep flights of stairs to the street door
to peer into the dark thoroughfare, wondering at his continued absence,
and trembling to think of the many temptations that lead a boy to crime
in a great city.
Whatever may be the beneficial educational effects of seeing the play
of Hamlet from the gallery, they are certainly lacking in a view stolen
from the wings, with fifty cents heavy on the conscience, nothing at
all on the stomach, a great and growing dread of discovery, and a
morbid presentiment that something terrible is about to happen.
Was it not far better, Ned thought, to be at home, singing with his
mother their simple songs about the Good Shepherd, according to their
wont in those evenings when he was at leisure from the office? The
kettle used to join in with a will and make the duet a trio; the fire
would roar it into a chorus; the monkey-stove would get red hot with
sheer good will; his mother's face, usually so pale, would glow like
a rosy girl's; the two-year-old sister would babble her admiration
of the kerosene lamp. And he would feel that, being the only son of
his mother and she a widow, he occupied a highly responsible and
dignified position, and that it behooved him to be frugal and steady
and sensible, and hard-working like a man, for his father, a Scotch
emigrant, in dying had left his family quite alone in this western
country. Thus Ned would infuse his importance into his quavering
alto as he sang, until it seemed, to him and his mother at least, as
sonorous and as grand as the biggest double bass. Ah,--surely, surely
better these gentle innocent joys than any stolen pleasures.
He began to think of trying to escape by the window at which he had
entered. Then a frantic terror seized him. Was the man still lying
there where he had been thrown? Ned had heard the heavy thud on the
flagging of the alley,--had any one heard the man walk away? He had
been severely beaten, and that, too, while intoxicated. He had been
hurled out of the window,--a serious fall! Had he risen?--would he ever
rise again?
Ned began to shiver. He concluded to await the close of the performance
and follow the employees out of the side door,--there must surely be
some such exit if only he knew where to find it.
He could not have explained why he was afraid to seek to escape by the
window, but he said to himself that if the man had been killed by the
fall he would not be the first to discover it. His own wrong-doing here
to-night had made him sensitive to suspicion, for wrong-doing always
fosters cowardice. A brave heart implies a clear conscience.
He strove to pacify his impatience as he waited.
"I was mighty sharp-set to come!" he said sarcastically.
Once or twice he gave a sudden start and sat upright on the crimson
cushions of the great luxurious chair.
Once or twice shadows wavered across the brilliantly lighted stage,--he
rubbed his eyes. The words he heard meant nothing; the figures he saw
became grotesque, mingled, ill-defined. They were suddenly gone,--an
interval,--an utter blank--
* * * * *
All was dark about him. He thought he was in bed at home. He strove to
turn over,--his bed was too short,--too narrow. In amazement he began
to feel about him,--there were soft velvet cushions beneath him,--heavy
wood carving on either side. His heart sprang into his mouth. He had
fallen asleep in Hamlet's chair. Actors and audience were gone,--he
wondered that the stir of the crowd had failed to wake him. The theatre
was dark and deserted, the doors were locked, and beneath the walls lay
perhaps the body of a dead man.
He started up trembling at the thought. The moon's pallid light fell
through one of the lofty windows above the gallery and quivered in
ghostly fashion upon the stage where erstwhile the filial Dane had
hearkened to the hollow voice of the spectre of a murdered sire. The
white glimmer gave wan and wavering glimpses of the scenery of this
strange mimic world. Mountains loomed up in the clare-obscure. A
painted galleon on a painted ocean was bravely sailing away, bound for
nowhere.
Suddenly--was that a moving shadow among the motionless shadows? Ned
stared hard at it. There was no mistake. The moonlight showed an
indistinct figure advancing stealthily down the stage.
Far, far away a great clock struck one. The single tone, as it invaded
the silence, had a weird abruptness. It sent a chill through Ned's
heart. A superstitious terror had laid hold upon him. With starting
eyes fixed upon the apparition, he shrank softly back into his hiding
place.
CHAPTER III
The apparition advanced a few paces down the centre of the stage. As
it stood there in the fainting shimmer of the moonbeams, its head
stretched forth as if it scented the dawn, Ned could hear nothing but
the tumultuous beating of his own heart.
The figure paused thus only for a moment. Then it leaped into the air
and cut a wiry caper.
To people more conversant with the traditional manners and customs of
ghosts this might seem so gross a departure from spectral etiquette as
to induce doubt of the genuineness of the manifestation. But to the
boy the grotesque gesture seemed horribly uncanny. He sprang from his
seat--his limbs failed him and he sank back; he sought to scream--not a
sound came from his dry and parched lips.
"Ye're too drunk yit fur this biz, pard." A hoarse, half-suppressed
voice issued from the wings.
A short, thickset, bow-legged man was emerging thence, and the figure
on the stage turned to meet him.
"Pshaw!" said the tall apparition contemptuously. "I'm as sober as the
bishop."
And what was this? A familiar voice; and now that Ned looked again, a
familiar figure. No ghost,--only the sorry "first player," whom Ned had
imagined as lying dead outside on the flagging of the alley.
"I mus' be gittin' weak in the upper story!" the boy said to himself.
He was so rejoiced to be freed from his superstitious terrors, so
glad, too, to see the "first player" in full life and to know that no
tragedy had that night been enacted under this roof save the tragedy
of Hamlet, that he laughed slyly as he rested his chin on the high arm
of the chair, and with merry eyes watched the men. He hardly cared to
speculate upon the strange fact of their presence here at this hour.
He was only waiting for them to be gone that he might make his escape
at last.
"I don't want no mo' o' these crazy shines, though, ef ye do be so
mighty sober," said the short man sulkily. "Somebody out there--the
night watchman, mebbe--will hear ye trampling in 'ere, an' then wher'
will we be?"
"A-scootin' up the alley," with a free gesture of his right arm. The
"first player" was difficult to repress.
The surly, thickset man--Ned could not see his face, but his slouch,
his voice, his manner were full of malignant intimations--evidently
thought best to change his tone with his tipsy companion. He put down a
five-gallon galvanized iron can that he had been carrying, and stared
with an admirable imitation of surprise at the "first player."
"Why,--look-a-here, if ye jes' wanter have a little aggervation with
the perlice an' skeer Gorham by lettin' him know that we hev broke into
his theatre, _I'm_ with ye every time! He warn't mean enough, nohow,
for the way that ye have laid off ter pay him back! He never done
nothin' but kick ye like ye were a cur, an' beat ye half blind, an'
fling ye out o' the window! 'Twould have been assault with intent ter
kill if a pore man had done all that, but rich Gorham,--pshaw! that's
nothin'. Jes' let's stir up a little fuss an' fetch the perlice,--ter
skeer _him_! Ho! Ho! _We_ ain't afeared of the peelers. 'Ere goes the
ballet."
He danced off in the moonlight, shaking his fingers in the air with
wild gesticulations and kicking his short bandy legs high, right and
left,--but softly, softly, as if he were shod with felt.
The "first player" stood for a moment bewildered by this wild scheme
to scare the manager. Its absurdity seemed to sober him. He strode off
suddenly after the dancing figure. A clutch stopped it.
"You fool," he said, with an oath, "I mean to burn the house to the
ground, and you know it!"
"Well, warn't I agreeable,--if there's no insurance?" replied the
bow-legged man.
"I tell you I heard from Gorham's own mouth that the policy expired
yesterday at noon. He and the agent had a burst-up, and he wouldn't
renew. I heard him tell that deadheaded crony of his; you know Gorham
has got a tongue that is set on a pivot and wags at both ends."
The stocky, bandy-legged figure swayed back and forth with extravagant
manifestations of delight. "That gets Gorham! I'd have been sorry for
the Insurance Company if it wuz ter lose, ye know. Sorry fur true! I
always had a soft place in my heart for a corporation--pore motherless
thing!"
His prominent teeth gleamed,--it was as much a snarl as a smile.
"We are wastin' time," he said suddenly, with an air of returning to
business. "Take this can o' kerosene an' empty it on the floor of the
green-room, while I fix the other combustibles."
The "first player" stood amazed. "You blamed idiot!" he exclaimed,
"there's oil enough on these canvases to send the whole place a-flaring
like perdition."
The thickset man's fierceness returned.
"Who is killin' this cat," he snarled angrily,--"you or me? I had my
grudge agin this theatre jes' a-dunnin' night an' day ter be paid, an'
I promised ter help ye _ef I bossed the job_; ain't that the trade?"
"The shortest way," muttered the "first player," yielding the point. He
caught up the can and disappeared in the direction of the green-room.
The stocky figure on the stage was so suddenly joined by another that
Ned rubbed his eyes, thinking he saw two where there was but one.
"I got the star's wardrobe out o' the dressin'-room," the newcomer said
in an agitated whisper.
"Keep dark," said the thickset man,--he nodded toward the exit where
the "first player" had disappeared. "He don't suspicion nothin'; he
thinks there ain't a soul here but him an' me. He bargained that
nothing should be took! He said that he ain't a thief, an' the goods
would get us found out. But _you_ just make the haul anyhow,--but make
it sly, for true."
The two rascals went through the dumb show of much merry scorn of the
"first player's" stipulations.
"Our pals have tolled off the night watchman,--an' they're workin' at
the safe now. Dynamite is the word,--it's a time lock, they think."
This was overwhelming to Ned, who had not dreamed that the receipts
were kept in the theatre over night,--a considerable sum must have been
realized from that crowded house.
The newcomer was starting off. The thickset scamp beckoned him back.
"Did the star leave anything besides the rich costumes?"
"Left gloves."
The attitude of the stocky figure expressed disappointment.
"Left handkerchief."
The disappointment evidently deepened.
"Left studs on dressing-table--diamonds--very fine!"
The speaker disappeared, with a triumphant wave of the hand.
The bandy-legged rascal, inflated with the pride of the moment, strode
down to the dark foot-lamps.
"The keerlessness of one man blesses the keerfullness of another," he
declaimed, addressing the empty auditorium.
This was doubtless the finest presentation of a villain ever seen upon
these boards, for this was the genuine article.
Whether a light suddenly sprang up in one corner of the building,
whether Ned heard the crackling of burning timber and canvas, or
whether these impressions were delusions of his own over-excited brain,
he could never say. He was possessed by the fear of being burned alive
in the intricacies of this place, knowing no door, and no window save
the one at which he had entered.
This anxiety dominated even his terror of being discovered by these
rascals, although he knew they would have wrung his neck without a
moment's compunction to prevent him from blabbing. He sprang up and
stole tremulously off through the darkness, striving to rouse his
fainting memory and his instinct for locality, and to find the window.
How many times he circled around the dusky labyrinth he never knew.
All at once he felt a great lightening of his spirits, for he saw
suddenly before him a black oblong space which he instantly discerned
to be a door. Noiselessly, lightly, he sped to the aperture to find
himself in the dark corridor of the building. This passage, of course,
followed the direction of the wall of the semicircular auditorium, but
this fact was not apparent to Ned, except as revealed gradually by
the sense of touch, for no longer did he have even the faint light of
the remote windows above the gallery, and the darkness was intense,
almost total, indeed. Sometimes a vague glimmer came from doors a bit
ajar, and giving upon the dim auditorium within, but these occurred at
long intervals, and looking fearfully over his shoulder he could not
distinguish the portal by which he had entered. It was gone,--vanished
in the gloom! As he stood gazing back for this one landmark, which he
had thought he might keep as guide, he heard a sound in the utter
silence that made him quail,--a regular throbbing beat which he
recognized presently as the plunging of his own heart. He must needs
have courage, he reasoned within himself, as he leaned back faint and
tremulous against the wall, or he would perish here like a rat in a
trap.
He began now to press on swiftly, some orderly instinct of his nature
soothed and his spirit quieted by the release from the chaos of
unaccustomed objects which had confused him behind the scenes. The
smooth corridor, the absence of all obstruction, the sense of progress,
as if so conventional a passage must lead to some objective point of
exit, some chance of escape, encouraged him. He had known little as to
the usual construction of theatres, but rallying his faculties, his
memory, his intuition, his observation, he began to appreciate where he
was. The wall on his left hand, he reflected, must inclose those stores
by which the greater frontage on the street was utilized; in their
rear the immense semicircular auditorium of the theatre filled the
space, for the shops were of a kind that required no great conveniences
of storage,--he remembered them now, a florist's establishment, a
tobacconist's stand, a photographer's gallery,--and most of the rooms
of the upper stories were occupied as offices. Thus the lofty windows
above the gallery gave the auditorium of the theatre its only source of
ventilation and of light except, indeed, from artificial means. A door
opened on the side street, and some windows were in the rear, and the
house was provided with no other exit in front than a great door, at
the end of a long, tunnel-like lobby, opening upon the broad avenue,
which served for the admission and the dispersal of the audience.
Even while he was mentally recapitulating these points he became
suddenly uncertain as to this unique source of light, for as he
progressed the darkness about him had become visibly mitigated. It
was dimness rather than obscurity now,--a medium dull indeed, but
which permitted the discrimination of surrounding objects. Ned paused
suspiciously. Silence reigned,--dead silence! No conflagration as
yet! He asked himself if he could be approaching some door or window,
some opportunity of exit hitherto unknown to him, for the corridor,
the periphery, as it were, of the semicircular auditorium, was light
enough now for him to distinguish the curving walls on either hand, the
terra-cotta tints predominating in their frescoed panels, the darker
terra-cotta tone of the carpet beneath his feet,--nay, as he came to
the point of intersection with the lobby leading to the street door he
saw the gilded frames of the portraits of famous actors on the walls,
and recognized Booth, Barrett, McCullough, and Irving! The great door
was fast shut--no hope thence. The little wicket of the barricade
across the lobby, that served to hold back the press of the people
from the ticket-taker, was ajar, and from the box-office, at one side,
came a dim suffusion of light. He stood still with a wildly beating
heart,--for he heard from an inner room beyond the office the sibilant,
cautious tone of a half whisper, and now and again the metallic clink
of some instrument dexterously handled. The thieves were still working
at the safe,--and as yet it held fast!
It was instinct rather than a realized prudence that set the frightened
boy scurrying like a rabbit away from that dangerous zone of light.
Miscreants such as these, suddenly discovered in their nefarious job,
would not hesitate at murder, more than at larceny and arson, and his
bones in the midst of the débris of the great fire would never be found
to tell his forlorn fate. But that the wall guided him from the foyer
and along the corridor, he could not have regained the stage door; he
hardly knew how he had reached it; he realized only that he was once
more in the inextricable tangle of flats and wings and ropes and stage
furniture behind the scenes, and wildly seeking the window at which he
had gained entrance to this troublous episode in his life.
Still the moonbeams streamed through those lofty casements above the
gallery and down upon the immaterial audience of thronging shadows
in the place of the brilliant assemblage so lately vanished thence.
With melancholy intimations, the white sheeny radiance sent vague,
phantasmal gleams across the broad spread of the stage and along the
dreary vistas of the wings, where the sham misery of imagination is
wont to ape the real tragedy of life. Here the contrast with the utter
darkness was so sharp, the setting for a single figure so conspicuous,
that Ned scuttled hastily across the stage, himself like a wavering
shadow, and plunged into the turmoil of confusion beyond, searching
here and there and everywhere for the back window at which he had
entered.
He had lost in a measure the self-control which he had hitherto
staunchly maintained. He was awkward, clumsy, agitated. More than
once he tangled his foot in a swaying rope; here and there he ran
plumply against the huge canvas-covered frames, and set up a quivering
totter along their great heights; he wondered that he did not scream
outright when at last he fairly fell, plunging bodily into a mimic
boat adjusted on rockers to simulate the tossing of the waves.
Nevertheless, hearing the floor resound with the impact of his fall,
he had the presence of mind to lie still at the bottom of the craft,
listening and fearing that the noise might have roused the thieves to
apprehension and a tour of discovery. This would doubtless have ensued,
but fortunately for him another sound pervaded the theatre just at that
moment, and overpowered the concussion of his fall,--a dull, low roar
it was, then utter silence.
Ned knew that the safe had been forced at last, and that the explosion
had served to avert the discovery of his presence through the crash
of his noisy misadventure. He rose from the boat, trembling, weak,
but animated with a new hope. The finding of the craft here intimated
that he was near the wall, where it had doubtless been heedlessly
thrust aside, for it had naught to do with the play of Hamlet, and the
furnishings of the castle of Elsinore filled all the foreground. He
must now be near the rear wall, where was the window at which he had
entered.
Suddenly he saw before him the dim, wan square in the gloom. The next
moment despair fell anew upon him. The sash was down, and secured by
some patent device which he had never before seen, and which baffled
his trembling fingers.
Then he did scream,--a shrill, muffled cry,--so unlike his sturdy
boyish halloo that he hardly recognized his own voice. Somehow it
rescued him from the torpor that was stealing over him. He knew that it
would rouse those within to a danger of which they had not dreamed. In
another moment he might be helpless in their hands.
Instantly he tore off his shoe. One blow with its heel, and the
shivered glass was flying in every direction. Through the broken pane
he hastily jumped, with the shoe still in his hand. He fell heavily to
the ground, and lay crouching in the shadow close in to the wall.
He had indeed given the alarm. There were swift steps within, and then
an agitated whispering at the window.
The men were evidently frightened at first, but soon sought to reassure
themselves. It was nothing, they said,--the glass was doubtless broken
by some accident; a passer-by might have thrown a stone, or perhaps
a cracked pane had loosened and fallen out at this crucial moment.
"I know that there hollerin' mus' have been a long way off yonder
somewhers, anyhow," declared the thickset man. "It sounded sorter
muffled an' far-like."
The "first player" seemed to acquiesce, and then silence ensued.
When Ned felt that he could breathe, he gathered up his sore bones
and ran down the alley, up the side street, and out upon the broad,
deserted avenue. The lamps were all out, municipal thrift trusting
for illumination to the wavering moon. A blue light glimmering far
up the dusky hill told him that the "owl car" had just passed. An
hour or so must elapse before another would appear, for they ran at
long intervals. He looked about for a policeman. He saw none. The
city seemed dead. He was unfamiliar with this quarter of the town,
but as he sped along he came within sight of a city square. There he
knew, under the trees, were often tramps, spending the night on the
benches,--sometimes loafers of a better class belated and sleeping off
the effect of their potations. Doubtless some of them would know where
was the nearest police station or fire-alarm. All that he had seen
seemed now so like a dream that he wondered whether after all he were
not mistaken, whether the "first player" could really intend to burn
the theatre.
As he paused for breath he glanced back in the direction of the
building and diagonally across the darkly massed trees of the
square. The high steeple of the cathedral was purpling slowly in
the dun-colored gloom. Its gilded cross sprang suddenly into view,
emblazoned upon the night like a sign in the sky. The dense foliage of
the square was outlined against an angry crimson glare in the distance,
ever widening and ever deepening. Into its midst a yellow pennon of
flame flaunted to the breeze. The heavy tones of a fire-bell smote the
silence suddenly.
There was a movement under the trees. The loungers on the benches were
waking. Far up dark intersecting streets came the swift footfalls
of boys, who spring up mysteriously at any hour of the night or
day, eager to crowd around a fire. There was too the heavy tread of
unseen policemen striding through the gloom. The sharp gong of the
hose-carriage clamoring in the distance cleared a pass-way for the
swinging gallop of its white horses. As it flashed around the corner
and whirled out of sight in a second it looked like the chariot and
coursers of Phœbus called out on a false alarm of dawn. Two or three
hoarse drunken voices were aimlessly calling "Fi-ah! Fi-ah!" and one
small boy, excitedly tangling his suspenders as he sought to adjust
them, ran along in the middle of the street ceaselessly vociferating,
"Number Six is a-comin'!"
And sure enough here was Number Six cumbrously rocking and swaying up
the street, a big, polished, glittering monster, leaving a glowing
path of live coals behind it and emitting a cloud of the blackest
smoke. The driver of the engine was whipping like mad; its horses were
plunging and rearing, and straining every nerve and muscle; its guard
of honor, all the boys in the ward, ran admiringly on either side. Ned
joined them from force of habit, taking the way back to the burning
theatre, dodging at the first crossing the sudden on-rush of the team
of the hook-and-ladder truck.
The smoke had hidden the moon and stars. Its murky canopy overhung the
massive building and the vast crowd, all illuminated by the angry red
flames darting from roof and windows. The jets of water rose high in
dusky, half-descried curves, and fell hissing into the conflagration
within. There were many of these ill-defined arches spanning the grim
panorama, for Number Nine was in the alley, two other engines stood in
the side street, two were in front of the building, and still three
others guarded the safety of the block above. The firemen in their
helmets and uniforms, some enveloped in long rubber coats, were here,
there, and everywhere. They might have seemed the weird spirits of the
flame, seen through its writhings and contortions as if they were in
its very midst. Presently word was passed about the crowd that their
efforts were subduing the terrible element. Ned watched with painful
anxiety their exertions. He remembered many a scene like this when he
had reveled in the noise and excitement, when a fire had seemed only a
grand spectacular display, its interest heightened by the commensurate
danger and gallant courage of the firemen. Then he had had no thought
of the loss which it represented, the distress, the men thrown out of
employment, a great financial factor blotted from commercial progress.
Now, how feverishly he hoped that the building might be saved,--that
the deep iniquity of which he had gained full knowledge by his own
wrong-doing might be thwarted! He felt that he could hardly live
carrying this secret, and yet he had already promised himself never
to divulge it. He said to himself that he might not always be able to
keep the curb on circumstance. His story might be doubted, or only half
believed. He might draw suspicion on himself,--implicate himself in
the crime of arson. That meant the Penitentiary,--and a long term. His
narrative would be in part a confession. He had choused the management
out of half a dollar,--and that was stealing! He must first impeach
his own honesty, then ask to be believed when he accused others. And
what might not these others say in contradiction and recrimination!
Were they not as likely to be believed as he? Certainly a boy who stole
could scarcely hope he would not be suspected of other crimes if there
were any evidence against him. Ned dreaded too the malignity of the
men,--if they were capable of firing the theatre they were capable
of falsely accusing him. No!--no!--he would never tell that he had
witnessed any drama on those boards save the tragedy of Hamlet.
Was the fire less than before? They said so. It seemed to him hotter,
redder, fiercer. Before long he knew that the fight was hopeless. The
west wall gave way. Through the great gaps the stage became visible.
The flames were licking up first one and then another of the many
heavy "sets." As the lurid glare was flung upon some representation of
Alpine heights or moonlit lake, or grim castle battlements or bosky
woodland scene,--idealized infinitely in its unique frame of wreathing
flames,--the crowd gave it "hands," as an audience is wont to applaud
some fine new manifestation of the scene-painter's art.
It seemed to Ned, knowing what he did, very melancholy. He shook his
head, and his heart was heavy.
As he stood there a familiar face attracted his attention.
"Is that you, Tom?" he called out.
"Nothin' shorter," replied a stout, undersized boy, nodding a round
bullet head, surmounted by an old gray cap.
"Wher' 's Pete?" demanded Ned, for this was Pete's brother.
"I s'posed he wuz along of you. I seen ye together after dark a-makin'
off."
"Naw,--he hain't been with me sence." Ned hesitated.
A look of blank surprise was on Tom's face. "I made sure he wuz with
you," he said. "Pete hain't been home this night."
CHAPTER IV
When Master Peter Bateman ran away after seeing his friend into the
theatre and past the dragon he did not run far.
That curious, gigantic flower, with petals of fluttering palm leaves
and pistil and stamens of pyramidal gas-jets, was still a-bloom in the
darkness, and a friendly hail from beneath it arrested his steps.
"Hy're, Pete," sang out half a dozen boyish voices.
"Hev a smoke?" and a soggy stump of a cigar was extended with a grimy
paw and a wide grin of invitation. This grin surrounded another stump
of a cigar, which was all aglow and precariously held between the
squirrel-teeth of a youngster of twelve.
"Sim Gray hes been round inquirin' after ye, Pete," added the boy. "He
tole us if we seen ye ter tell ye ter wait fur him 'ere. He'll be
'long d'rec'ly."
This message obliterated for the moment Pete's recollection of his
errand to the station.
"What's Sim Gray a-wantin' of me, I wonder?" he said, a trifle
dubiously. For Pete, slippery and sly as he was, had often been a
target for the practical jokes of a clique of bigger boys, of which
Sim Gray was a prominent member. The simplicity incident to Pete's
comparatively tender years was an odd contrast to the duplicity of his
moral nature; and the tricky ignoramus, overreached and bamboozled, was
a more amusing spectacle to these more knowing fellows than any honest
"greeny" could furnish. But beyond making a fool of him they had done
him no harm hitherto, and Pete was rather proud of being in request by
a person of Sim Gray's inches and importance.
Pete sat down on the curbstone to wait, took the stump of cigar which
had been gleaned from the dirty sidewalk, lighted it at the grinning
monkey's beside him, and summoning all the strength of stomach for
which boys are noted, tried hard to smoke it.
Sim Gray was one of those weak and wicked young fellows with a pocket
full of money and a taste for low company, who are forever the prey
of other young fellows not so weak, and yet more wicked. His father
was very respectable, socially and financially, and more than once he
had been obliged to strain this double respectability to the utmost to
keep the name of this hopeful scion out of the police reports and the
scion himself out of jail. The boy had reformed time and again. He had
been sent away from home and kept under the strictest surveillance.
Now, however, as he had been permitted to return, he was secretly
associating with his former intimates, who sponged upon him and fleeced
him as of yore, and stood ready to throw the blame upon him at the
first approach of trouble. To him they seemed only lively, good-natured
young fellows who knew the "ropes" and were "seeing life." The police
understood them more accurately as young scamps, who had been often
suspected of small crimes which generally could not be proved upon
them; nevertheless more than one of the party had seen the inside of a
jail. This fact reinforced Pete's hesitation to join them when Sim Gray
and his friends came along, which they presently did.
Sim Gray was a spindling specimen of seventeen, with light, lank hair,
big bloodshot light eyes, and a fawn-colored suit,--the coat much
soiled with leaning against dirty bars.
He gave Pete a wink and a grimace as he passed, but he said nothing. It
was one of the others who called out, "Come on, Pete,--we'll give ye a
beer; Sim's goin' ter set 'em up."
Pete was still dubious, but flattered. He rose, flung away the cigar
stump, and took account with his shaken stomach to ascertain if it
could stand a beer at Sim Gray's expense.
They proceeded down several side streets to a low saloon. There were
gaudy immoral pictures on the walls; the floor was filthy with
"tobacco juice;" the glasses were sadly smeared when Sim Gray undertook
to "set 'em up." Pete was most cordially entreated. He had not one
beer only, but several. Sim Gray, aided and abetted by the others,
hospitably insisted that Pete should "smile" again and yet once more.
Pete grew immensely important and pleased. It never occurred to him
that they were systematically fuddling him, so that they might enjoy
the spectacle of his degradation. When his silly antics proclaimed him
fairly on his first "drunk" a howl of delight went up from the young
hoodlums; the older besotted habitués of the saloon chuckled over their
glasses; even the saturnine bar-tender was in high glee, and offered
another beer at the expense of the institution.
The hubbub at last attracted the attention of a policeman in the
vicinity. It was well, perhaps, that it was he on this beat, for
this man was a teetotaler and a member of a temperance society. The
sound of "drunk and disorderly" was to him like the trumpet to the
war-horse, and "running them in" he accounted the chief of his duties
and his dearest pleasure. He appeared suddenly in the doorway with a
countenance as stern and fixed as if it were carved in stone.
"Wh-wh-why--I wuz jes' goin' ter the station ter see you!" exclaimed
Pete, springing up at the sight of the glitter of the buttons on the
blue uniform, and with an abrupt realization of the purpose with which
he had quitted the theatre.
A wild yell of coarse laughter from the crowd greeted Pete's
announcement.
"You can't go none too soon," said the policeman, collaring Pete.
Then he looked about him severely. "I'd love to lock you all up," he
exclaimed fervently.
Nobody laughed now. He was known to construe the law very strictly.
"When you teach a boy to drink you teach him to lie, to thieve, and
worse, for here"--he struck the bar with his clenched fist--"is the
place where a man puts the rope around his own neck."
So he went out and left silence behind him. Pete's drunken mood shifted
to gravity as he was propelled along the street by the policeman's
strong hand on his collar. Being now in trouble himself, he became all
the more anxious to report Ned. He told his story, incoherently enough,
however, hampered by the wanderings of his fevered brain, the tricks
of his thickened tongue, and much interrupted by the sarcastic and
incredulous comments of the policeman.
"He--he--he is a-stealin'! He--he's a-a-a-a-stealin' star's
di'monds--right now--outer dressin'-room"--expounded Pete eagerly.
"Mighty likely," exclaimed the policeman in irony.
"Gorham's Theaytre,--got in by back window," spluttered Pete.
"I believe you!" The policeman gave a gruff laugh.
Pete soon ceased to care that his captor seemed to regard this but
as a drunken vagary. Before they reached the lock-up he was growing
very ill. He was barely conscious of being thrust into a tiny darkened
room where there was a narrow bunk. He fell upon it, and there he lay
sleeping the sleep of the very drunk until late the next day.
He woke with a splitting headache. For a time he was conscious of
nothing but this fact. It was suddenly aggravated by a harsh, grating
noise. The key was turning reluctantly in the lock. He frowned sullenly
and looked over his shoulder. The policeman who had arrested him was
standing in the doorway.
Then Pete realized where he was and recollected all that had happened.
He had never imagined that he could be so disgraced. Everybody whom he
knew would find it out, for his name would be printed in the police
reports in the daily papers,--in Ned's paper too. Ned himself would
read it. He remembered the threats he had made against Ned,--that he
would give information against Ned to the police, forsooth,--that he
would compass Ned's arrest! These threats were not fulfilled as he had
promised himself. It would be but natural that Ned should gloat over
his coarse, foolish degradation. Because he could not remain sober till
he reached the station he must spend the night in the lock-up while Ned
was enjoying the play. "An' the gump would never have drempt o' gittin'
in the theaytre if it hadn't a-been fur me," he thought.
His mortification and self-reproach gave way at once to a surly
jealousy and malignity, for it is more characteristic of such a boy as
Pete Bateman, when forced by circumstances to recognize his faults, to
seek to blame and injure others and find parallel misdeeds in their
conduct, rather than to repent and amend.
"A cheatin' scamp,--I wisht I had Ned 'ere now," he thought virulently.
These feelings were in his heart when the policeman spoke.
"Boy," he said gravely, "now that ye're sorter sober I want ye ter
tell that story again that ye told las' night about that burned
theatre."
Pete started up in his bunk,--his headache forgotten. He had not before
thought of this chance. Although Ned could not be caught in the active
perpetration of the misdeed, he could still be accused of having
climbed into the window of the theatre with nefarious designs.
"Maybe I'll make it lively fur him yet," Pete reflected with
satisfaction.
Then he drawled with an affectation of indifference, "I never said
nothin' 'bout no _burned_ theaytre sence I wuz born."
As he thus corrected the policeman his broad face was ornamented with
an expression of importance and extreme rectitude. His narrow eyes were
downcast as if in reflection, and his manner intimated that he was
willing, but did not seek to impart information. He noticed, however,
that a man in citizen's dress, a thin, genteel, unobtrusive person, had
entered too, and closed the door, but he did not see that upon the
mention of the burned theatre this man slyly touched with the toe of
his boot the broad, burly foot of the tall policeman, as an admonition
not to put that clumsy member into Pete's explanation.
"Well,--what _did_ you say, then?" the policeman asked.
"I said that a boy had clomb inter the back winder o' Gorham's
Theaytre. An' I begged an' plead with him ter come out, 'cause I knowed
he wuz goin' ter steal outer the star's dressin'-room."
"What was he going to steal?" demanded the man in citizen's dress.
Pete hesitated. He was not quite sure as to what kind of portable
property was most likely to be found in the orbit of "stars."
"Di'monds wuz what he had set his head fur," he replied at last, quite
recklessly.
He wanted to disgrace Ned by preferring a criminal charge against
him. He did not suppose that it could be sustained, for he did not
imagine that the star had lost anything. But it gave the minor fraud of
surreptitiously entering at the back window a heinous aspect, which
would insure to Ned some unpleasant experiences as a sequel for the
pleasure which Pete's suggestion had given to him, and which Pete could
not share. He was acute enough to realize that if he merely reported
Ned's adventure and success in seeing the play without paying his way,
the management could scarcely be expected to take the trouble necessary
to punish this offense, already a matter of the past. That window sash
would be securely closed hereafter, and a stricter watch maintained.
He noticed with satisfaction, therefore, that at the mention of the
word "diamonds" the big policeman opened his eyes very wide, and cast a
significant glance at the man in citizen's dress, as who should say, "I
told you so."
The other man seemed to refuse to respond to the policeman's openly
expressed excitement.
"Did the boy have any accomplices?" he asked coolly. "Was he helping
anybody,--or was anybody helping him?"
"Not as I knows on," replied Pete.
There was so deep a disappointment in the policeman's honest face that
Pete was moved to detail the story all over again, not perceiving
wherein was the lack so evidently regretted.
"Whether he actially stole anything or not I dunno," he remarked
virtuously in conclusion; "I fairly wrastled in prayer with him ter git
him ter come down outer that window."
"And how are we to know that you did not go in with him and help
steal?" suddenly asked the man dressed in black.
Pete looked up with a galvanic start. He fairly gasped. Then his breath
and logic returned together.
"Because," he cried with a voice singularly like the voice of
innocence, "I guv the alarm ter the police straight off. I wuz locked
up 'ere an' fas' asleep 'fore ten o'clock."
"Fur a fac'." The policeman nodded regretfully. "I never believed a
word that he said, the kid was that drunk. Ye never seen a kid so
drunk."
Somehow Pete began to feel a trifle proud of his achievement.
"Oh, I'm a gay bird when I git started," he said with a callow chirp
that was meant for a laugh; but his voice was as weak as his stomach.
The man in citizen's dress was visibly impressed. He no longer strove
to pretend indifference. He and the policeman consulted earnestly, but
in a very low and guarded tone for a few moments. Then they both went
out, locking the door, and leaving Pete lying on the bed and holding
his splitting head in both his hands. His pride was no panacea for
these pangs.
The policeman came back presently, hurried and peremptory. Pete was
hustled up. Very dubious and slow was Pete. His reluctance was noticed
by his captor.
"Shake it up, boy," he exclaimed impatiently. "Ye ain't goin' in fur a
drunk an' disorderly _now_. Ye're jus' goin' before a magistrate for a
private examination 'bout them di'monds an' that burned theatre."
"Is the theaytre burned?" faltered Pete, astounded. "Burned?--fur a
fac'?"
"Ter the ground. But stir yer stumps, boy. I can't wait here all day."
It never occurred to Pete until he was in the presence of the
magistrate and in the act of swearing to the statement which he had
already made to the policeman that the affairs of this great world
are not regulated after the haphazard fashion of boys and their
puerile feuds and follies. Pete had involved himself in the tremendous
machinery of the law, and in its inexorable course what might not
befall such an atom! He dared not vary a word, for there beside him
stood the policeman and the man in citizen's dress, whom he now
understood to be a detective. They were both listening attentively. Any
change, any faltering, might implicate him in he knew not what crimes
perpetrated at the theatre last night, with which he was sure, too, Ned
had naught to do.
Pete roused his memory to repeat the story exactly as he had told it at
first. He had never before exerted so great a strain on his faculties.
He tried to gauge the impression it produced, and he observed the
gravity with which the subject was treated. This filled him with the
wildest apprehensions. He had heretofore thought that Ned might be
arrested and might have to appear in the police court, which would
mortify him within an inch of his life, but he had anticipated nothing
more serious. Now he understood that there was an investigation on
foot, instituted by the manager-owner of the theatre, the manager and
actors of the traveling company, the merchants who had had stocks of
goods in the adjoining stores, and others who had sustained losses by
the fire, all of whom would unite in the prosecution of the criminals
when captured. There was no prophesying what might happen,--what Ned
when arrested would say and perhaps swear to against him.
Pete was a moral quicksand. There was nothing stable in his character.
Even his duplicity could not be counted on. Although quaking in
the very clutches of the law, he was revolving in his mind such
double-dealing as should protect him against the problematic lies which
Ned might tell, when he in his turn should be arrested. For none is so
quick to suspect others of falsehood as a liar. Pete made his scheme,
and watched events, and waited.
The warrant for Ned's arrest was already issued. Pete thought the men
were talking in a strangely unguarded manner, considering his presence.
They had forgotten him, he concluded sagely. His sly eyes glittered
through their narrow slits as he reflected how he could take advantage
of their imprudence. Ned was not to be arrested immediately, he
understood. The detective was to "shadow" him in the hope of seeing him
communicate with some of the gang of thieves and incendiaries who had
robbed and burned the theatre, for they naturally concluded that he was
only an accomplice of others, as a boy alone could hardly have plotted
and executed a crime of such magnitude.
"Shadder him as ye may, ye'll never arrest him. I'll tip him the wink
ter skedaddle outer town," Pete thought triumphantly.
For he was ready to undo all he had done, since his malignity was
likely to rebound upon himself. He did not doubt his ability to recall
the irrevocable. Pete perhaps likened himself to that "man in our town--
Who was so wondrous wise,
He jumped into a brier-bush
And scratched out both his eyes.
And when he found his eyes were out,
With all his might and main
He jumped into another bush,
And _scratched them in_ again."
Now the law of the land is not that kind of a bush. Pete,
metaphorically speaking, was still stone blind.
He had a vague realization of this fact when the policeman said
agreeably, "Come, youngster, we've got to go back. Ye'll get some
breakfast then--if ye're able ter eat it."
Pete was amazed and half frightened. Then he straightened himself up
like a man.
"I've got a right ter my trial _now_,--like other drunk an'
disorderlies," he protested. "I wanter go home."
"Cheese it!" the policeman succinctly admonished him. "Ye're ter be
held fur a witness against they arrest that other boy."
"But they ain't got no right ter lock _me_ up--an' me jes' a witness,"
blustered Pete.
The policeman laughed lazily, languidly turning his quid of tobacco
between his teeth. "A boy is never such a fool as when he undertakes
ter know everything! I've seen a magistrate commit a slippery witness
ter _jail_ in default o' bond fur safe-keeping against a trial. But
it's just the lock-up ye're goin' ter,--you ain't had _your_ trial
yet,--an' 't ain't fur long. Come on. Stir yer stumps."
So all the rest of that day Pete lay upon his narrow bunk, bemoaning
his luck that he had ever seen Ned, groaning because of his aching
head and flimsy stomach, wondering what had really happened at the
theatre, what part Ned could have borne in it, what Ned would say when
confronted with his false and perjured friend, and how the familiar
building looked lying low and in ruins.
Dreary enough, to be sure,--with the charred heaps of timber and
bricks, the smouldering embers and ashes, and the smoke still curling
up into the May sunshine. The east wall, although tottering and with
great blackened gaps, still stood. Against one of the frescoed panels
and close to the ruins of a proscenium box was a gilded mask of Folly
in alto-rilievo. The decorator had substituted for the more usual
delineations of comedy and tragedy a jester's head and bauble and, on
the opposite side of the proscenium, as the antithesis of frivolity,
the type of heroism, a knight's helmet with closed visor and the point
of a lance. This mask had fallen with the west wall, but the smirched
face of Folly, surmounted by the smoke-grimed cap and bells, still
leered fantastically down upon the ruins. It was not without sarcastic
suggestions. Where so much of worth had perished Folly yet remained. It
was a prominent object and attracted much attention. As Ned, who was
out on an errand, paused among a knot of idlers and shading his eyes
with his hand looked up, its grimace seemed to him less jocose than
sinister. He thought of all that he and it had witnessed last night.
This was a secret between them. He resolved that he would be as dumb
as the dumb image. Neither had made a sign as yet--save--all at once
a grotesque fancy crossed him! In the flicker of the sunshine and the
shimmering undulations of the smoke the face looked at him--and winked!
He knew that this was only a fancy, but it frightened him. Was he going
to be ill? he asked himself. Was he losing his self-control, his hold
on his sharp wits? He turned away hastily. He felt that he could not
maintain his self-possession in the presence of the crowd if Folly
should again mysteriously, fraternally, sign to him.
He turned away so very hastily that he ran against a man--a thin,
genteel, unobtrusive person--in citizen's dress, who was standing just
behind him. As Ned made a rough boyish gesture of apology he lifted his
pale agitated face. The man's keen gray eyes scanned it closely.
CHAPTER V
Ned gave scant heed to his work that day, so absorbed was he in
reviewing the last night's scenes, in considering his position, and
in anxious forebodings. Now and then he sought to comfort himself by
reflecting that doubtless the worst was over,--only Pete knew that
he had been to the theatre, and how could Pete, how could any one,
imagine that he had not come out with the other people behind the
scenes--employees, actors, and the many various supernumeraries--by way
of the side door?
After a time he became alarmed lest his manner betray the trouble that
beset him. Once when he opened the door of one of the editorial rooms
and called out "Copee!" to apprise the magnate presiding at the desk
that the printers were waiting, he was dismayed to hear, instead of his
wonted peremptory chirp, such a strained, sharp cry that he hardly
recognized his own voice.
A young man, trying to sustain the heavy draught upon the imagination
which writing a book-notice without reading the book must always
impose, turned from his work with a growl.
"That confounded boy's throat needs oiling! He is just one all-fired
creak!" he cried irritably.
The little rebuff wounded Ned as an intentional cruelty might have
done. His anxiety had made him sensitive and sore. Generally he felt
amply able to take care of himself, and his mental attitude toward
others might be described in the simple phrase, "Look out!" He was
usually ready and efficient in any work entrusted to him, but to-day he
was awkward, under foot, out of time and place, and very inattentive
and slow to understand. His pallid face wore a hunted, pleading look,
of which he was unconscious; and he was on the point of bursting into
tears when a momentary notice of it elicited a word of sympathy.
He had been sent to the "funny man's" desk in the adjoining room to
hurry him up. The "funny man," as the junior compositors called the wit
of the staff, did not mind being hurried. There was a laugh still in
his eyes as his pencil traced the final words. His face was so ruddy
as to accent the light tint of his blond hair as it blowsed over his
forehead. He was a robust man with a fine digestion, and the sight of
unhappiness was abhorrent to him.
"Hungry?" he asked with a comical intonation as the little devil waited.
Ned's face mantled with a sickly smile,--very readily, indeed, for the
"funny man's" reputation for wit was so well established that everybody
laughed at everything he said, and he did not have to crack a _bona
fide_ joke more than once or twice a year to sustain it. Thus he became
chary of his good things.
Ned's face was more pitiful with the sickly smile upon it than in
anxious gravity.
The good-natured man's finger and thumb were inserted in the pocket of
his waistcoat.
"Methinks," he said with mock seriousness, "methinks the goodly goober
is the fruit of the earth in which thy soul most delighteth."
He twirled a silver quarter of a dollar across the desk, and the devil
caught it.
"With best wishes for your digestion," said the "funny man" politely.
And the devil laughed again.
Little did either foresee the damage that coin was to do--even though
diverted from the purchase of peanuts.
For the devil felt the need of a change of air.
A proofreader and his copyholder, engaged in their trying exercises
hard by, had shown some impatience of this puerile dialogue carried on
at full voice. Being silently motioned out by the "funny man" with a
facetious air of mock mystery, Ned had nothing to do for a time after
rendering up his copy in the composing-room, but to lean on the sill of
the high window in the hall of the fifth story and await orders.
As he looked out he saw that the sun was tending toward the west,
the mansard roofs and domes and steeples defined sharply against the
dazzling cumulus clouds. The city stretched out so far beneath it that
one might fancy it must come to the ground within the corporate limits.
Ned loved to imagine that its fiery cresset, falling and falling, was
caught at last on the distant tower of the water-works, for always
as it disappeared behind those huge timbers the white effulgence of
the electric light burst suddenly forth and blazed there, the Sun of
Science, through all the dark midnights. It was, however, too early
as yet for this illusion. The golden lustre of the afternoon still
dominated the lengthening shadows; the church spires glinted; the
points of the myriads of lightning-rods burned as if tipped with living
fire; that fat, prosperous exile, the English sparrow, was yet up
and about, busy in the accomplishment of his equivocal mission here;
the cloud of smoke, rollicking out of the chimneys of a furniture
factory over the way, was white and gold and fawn-colored, and gleamed
iridescent against the azure sky; the shadow of this ethereal thing,
that itself had no substance, chased it hilariously down the street,
leaving, truant-like, the fires and the toiling men and the clanking
machinery below.
Perhaps the motion roused a sort of emulation in the jaded boy; perhaps
only the wind suggested the idea as it dipped over the tall chimneys
and softly touched his cheek with a cinder, and tossed his slightly
curling red hair.
"I ought ter go to the Pawk an' git some fresh air," he said. "That's
jes' what's the matter with me."
He fingered the coin in his pocket. It seemed singularly opportune that
it should have been given to him, for in conscience he could not spend
his small wages on car-fare, and the park was out of walking distance
unless he had plenty of time at his disposal.
In that interval between the day's work and the rush which precedes
going to press at night he made his way out, and was soon whizzing
swiftly along in the cable car toward the southern terminus of the road.
He sat quite undisturbed for a time, lulled by the monotonous motion,
finding the sunshine warm and cheery, and all forgetful of the fire
and last night's scenes. He was on the point of falling asleep in his
corner when he roused himself with a sudden start. Perhaps it was only
his guilty conscience that kept his fears alert, or perhaps it was
that odd, mesmeric sensation which one experiences when becoming the
subject of a steady, stealthy gaze. It has been described as a feeling
as if there were a cobweb on one's cheek. At any rate, Ned, sitting
bolt upright, knew, although he did not see, that a tall, thin man on
the opposite seat had just been keenly staring at him; but now this
stranger was gazing pensively out of the window.
Somehow his face seemed singularly familiar,--yet Ned could not at
once recollect having seen it before. Oddly enough, it brought back
the thought of last night's terrible scenes, of his heavy, felonious
secrets, the dismal black walls of the burned theatre, the distress of
many men thrown suddenly out of employment, the imagined despair of
the ruined owner. Where had he ever seen this man? Ned wondered. Why
should his face be thus associated with these suggestions?
Suddenly he remembered the gilded mask of Folly, the silly wink, the
knowing grimace! This was the man against whom he had run as he fled
from his own foolish fancy.
It seemed strange to him that he should meet this man at the scene of
the fire, and now again on the way to the park; but in a moment he was
arguing within himself that the encounter had no significance,--every
idler in the town had been that day to the burned theatre, and the park
was of course a public resort. It was only an accident. For what could
the man have to do with him?
"I'm so full o' secrets," he said to himself, "that I feel like a pack
o' dynamite,--ef anybody was ter tech me I believe I'd bust!"
The renewal of all his anxieties had destroyed the pleasure and the
expected benefits of the jaunt. In vain for Ned the trees, in their
fresh May verdure, leaned over the broad drives and walks, while the
young birds in the branches discussed with their parents the propriety
of postponing bed-time for half an hour longer. All the children were
still up, they argued,--and that was very true, for the park swarmed
with small specimens of humanity, and the perennial perambulator was on
the march. In vain the fountains tossed up their spray of rainbows. In
vain refreshing sounds came from the lake, where water-fowl splashed
in and out of the ripples, and the beat of oars sent a skiff skimming
about, and a swan, resting motionless on the reflection of the evening
sky, suggested the starry Swan whose element is the sky itself.
From the greensward and in the midst of beds of coleus, that gleamed
like huge jewels of garnet or topaz, rose a great pedestal of polished
granite, surmounted by a statue in bronze. It had been erected in honor
of some great man. Ned did not know of whom, and he had never cared
to ask. Now he looked at it speculatively as he sat down on a bench
opposite.
"An' what did he ever do to make him great?" he demanded of himself.
The answer came promptly from his sharp common sense, "Did right!"
There was the secret of greatness in a nutshell. For those great men
who were not good as well are certainly not honored for that wherein
they failed. Always what was done right predominated. And those men
who do right in the small details of the simplest daily life, although
the result may be inconspicuous, are as great as any who leave their
memory in bronze. Ned knew this,--that a printer's devil has as fine
an opportunity for heroism as he "who taketh a city." And he had been
ambitious morally as well as mentally.
"But what can I do now?" he thought. How could he tell his story, and
make reparation, and quiet his conscience without danger of being
believed the accomplice of the men who had stolen the money and the
star's diamonds, and burned the beautiful theatre, and ruined the
manager for their revenge and wicked malice? If he should confess that
he had choused the management out of half a dollar he impeached his
own honesty. Could he then consistently ask to be believed innocent of
other crimes?
Besides, what good would his confession do now? The rascals were no
doubt far enough away by this time. The theatre was burned, the money
and diamonds were gone, the manager was ruined; and Ned thought that
unless he held his tongue with unparalleled discretion he might be
punished for the crimes of the absconded scamps.
As he sat there, his elbows on his knees, his hat drawn down, his face
pale and grave, his hands holding his throbbing head, the fact that
he was troubled in his mind and tortured by his conscience was very
evident to a tall, quiet, thin man, with an unobtrusive manner and a
pensive aspect, who chanced to saunter by more than once.
Ned did not notice him, however. Only now and then by an effort he tore
his attention from the subject that so absorbed him, and upbraided
himself for wasting his opportunity for the beneficial influences of a
change of air, of scene, of thought that might of itself serve to solve
the problems which racked him. He lifted his head and addressed himself
to an earnest attempt to divert his mind. It was rare, since his life
was spent in vibration between the business portions of the city and
the tenement district, that he saw the equipages of people of wealth
and fashion, which now flashed by in quick succession. He noticed that
they were filled with the silken shimmer of dainty attire and bright
pink-and-white faces, which seemed to bloom in the delicate shadow of
the quivering lace or fringe of parasols; these parasols, being white
or violet or of roseate hue, were themselves of flower-like suggestion,
resembling some species of convolvuli. An automobile astonished his
gaze rather more than it surprised the sophisticated horses, but it
was to these animals he awarded the palm as a means of locomotion. In
them he felt a sort of proprietary interest. He noted the value of
their fine form; he appraised their glossy coats; he narrowed his eyes
to discriminate details of their harness, often so slight as to seem
barely to restrain their activities, and hiding no point of beauty
or grace. His infancy had been spent in a horse-raising country, but
his interest was really apart from memory, and only stimulated by
having heard his father's enthusiastic talk of notable favorites which
he had seen or shod, for the Scotch emigrant had first settled as a
wheelwright and blacksmith in New Arcady, Kentucky, and there he had
remained until the last few years of his life.
The sleek, whirling spokes, as they caught the light and glittered,
soon dazzled Ned's tired eyes; the gay voices that floated down to
him seemed all out of tune with the melancholy conditions of his
struggling, troubled existence. Only once did he look up with keen
and spontaneous attention; a tandem, a thing much in vogue in this
place, of fine blood bays went by like the wind,--so fast indeed that
he hardly recognized the manager and his elderly skeleton-like friend.
Ned rose from his seat to stare after them in doubt and eagerness, all
unmindful that a man on a bench in the shade of a tree opposite had
noted his excitement, and the identity of the parties who had elicited
it, and was steadily gazing at him.
Ned did not seat himself again, but began to wander along the shores
of the lake. There was all about it a hedge or border of the Southern
plant called _Yucca gloriosa_, and its bayonet-like leaves and tall
shafts with their white pendent liliaceous blossoms were reflected
in the smooth water, all as motionless as if the whole were some
softly vivid aquarelle. Presently a skiff, freighted with children,
came gliding along with ripples about its prow and a wake of foam in
which the reflections were lost for a time, the snowy blossoms only
gradually sketched anew on the surface as by some trembling, tentative,
unpracticed brush. The detective, now strolling along the broad drive,
could ill keep his eye upon the boy as he dawdled among the tall,
flowering spikes; even less when Ned abruptly came to a stand-still to
gaze fixedly upon the countenance of a swan, waddling in its ungainly
style up the green bank toward a small, daintily befrilled, rosy child,
who with her nurse's arm protectively about her waist, was making bold
to offer the bird a bit of cracker in disregard of the mandatory sign,
"Don't feed the Swans."
The detective found it yet more difficult to dispose of himself
appropriately when, as he still incidentally followed the boy, Ned
paused in further reaches of the park to gaze through a high fence,
which was constructed in a pretty, rustic fashion, and which served to
keep in a few deer. One of these had a fawn, and the little creature
was beside its mother. The boy had not known before that these
animals are dappled with white in early youth, and this indisputable
presentment of the fact brought him bolt upright against the fence,
where he stared in the interstices while both hands grasped the
structure.
The officer could not follow his example, without attracting attention,
for what is eminently sane in one stage of human development would
be evidence of an unbalanced mind in a more advanced age and a
different station of life. He was not, however, willing to pass on,
lest he lose sight of the boy; and something, he could not say what,
convinced him that there was an objective point in Ned's wanderings,
albeit he himself, perhaps, was as yet unconscious whither, in his
undiscriminated mental processes, his steps were tending. The officer
met the emergency by pausing in the middle of the road and taking out a
cigar. The wind was stirring anew, and thus he was enabled to make the
business of deliberately lighting it a longer operation than was really
necessary. More than one match flickered and was extinguished by the
freakish gusts, although he appeared to shield carefully the timorous
flame with his hand. This enabled him to stand still until Ned was once
more forging ahead, when the genteel-looking man in citizen's dress
again began to stroll along, swinging his cane and leisurely puffing
his cigar. He needed its solace, for a sharp nettling irritation was
beginning to be very prominent in his consciousness. "I'd rather shadow
a grasshopper than a boy," he said to himself, for there seemed to be
some chance to restrain the mere activities of the one, and he could
not be sure what the vagaries of the other implied. He prided himself
on his experience. He had outwitted noted crooks in his time. He felt
fully competent to divine any usual motive of flight or aggression or
craft or wickedness, but the interest of standing still as Ned was now
doing and kicking at a frog as it hopped from one side of the road to
the other was something he could not appreciate. It seemed so casual,
so inconsistent with any other motive than mere idle diversion, that he
would have been minded to leave Ned in this choice batrachian company
were he not lured on and on by the hope of finding the boy making an
effort to communicate with the older and more important conspirators
in the crime. The unique difficulties of the situation, too, appealed
to his vanity in invention. What to do while Ned was engaged with the
frog he did not, for one moment, know. The next, with a sentiment of
discovery, he drew out his watch, having observed a dial on the tower
of a small building down a glade so steep that the clock was not many
feet higher than his head as he stood on the hillside; he affected to
compare the timepieces and then to reset his watch, and to wind it
carefully anew. He had not completed this ruse, which he was exploiting
in the most natural manner possible, when Ned suddenly started forward
at a brisk pace and evidently with a definite goal in view.
The boy had all at once recognized the impulse in his mind to which
he had been unconsciously tending. He desired counsel. His nature was
frank, not secretive. He had only feared to divulge his knowledge of
the crime lest a worse thing befall him, and he distrusted the people
he knew, all more or less strangers to him and naturally devoid of any
special interest in him or his welfare. When in the longing to open his
heart he had thought of his mother, the impulse was checked by the
doubt of her capacity to cope with the situation. She was even more
ignorant of the ways of this world than he himself, he argued, for he
knew town life, while she, suspiciously restricting her intercourse
even with her nearest neighbors, was hardly more sophisticated now than
if she had never left her rural home in New Arcady, Kentucky, where
she was born. Moreover she would scold,--alack, for poor femininity!
She would ask him why he had done this, and why he had not done
that,--all irrevocable, all a part of the immutable past,--and withal
she would be as helpless as he himself to take up now the tangled
present and unravel its tortuous coils. If only his father had lived!
And so Ned suddenly bethought himself of certain of his father's old
friends,--friends in the sense of patrons in that far-away country home
he had left,--men whose horses he had shod, whose good opinion had been
his meat and bread, whose relinquished favor he had always regretted,
whose names and exploits were forever on his lips to the day of
his death. These were men of note in their section, of substance,
of sophistication, of breeding. How often had Ned heard his father
describe their genial traits, their lordly traditions, and liberal
ways! Doubtless these portraits of the rural magnates were idealized
under the softening touch of regretful memory and the roseate haze of
distance, but Ned did not appreciate this. He only realized that they
were of such station, character, and worldly knowledge as to render
them above suspicion and eminently capable of advising him accurately
as to his duty and danger in the matter. He thought they would believe
his story; they would befriend him and protect him. And what so easy
as to seek their advice and assistance! There in that deep cut lay the
railroad, the parallel steel bars even now jangling faintly with the
vibratory resonance of a far-off train. Should he leave at midnight
after his work was over, he would be in that bucolic paradise at noon.
Only a few hours' stay, and the night would bring him back, and till
all was over and explained, his mother might never know of his absence,
being pacified with the subterfuge of a press of work at the printing
office.
It was a compact, resolute little shadow, stepping decisively and
briskly along, that blurred and blotted out the dapplings of the
chestnut and maple leaves, all fair and fresh and whole, which were
imprinted by the sunshine in their graceful entirety on the smooth,
broad, sandy stretch that led to the little station. The determination,
though so suddenly taken, was definite in Ned's mind, and as he entered
the building and walked over to the ticket-seller's window he had not
a doubt as to his best course now. The man that the little aperture
framed was blond, clean-shaven, young, with a steel blue eye and a
cardigan jacket which he had donned to save the sleeves of the natty
coat hanging on a hook beside his desk, and indeed the frayed sleeves
of the jacket told of the wear and tear incident to driving a pen. He
fixed upon Ned those matter of course, disconcerting eyes peculiar to
the human automaton, whose business it is to do the same mechanical
thing a thousand times a day and to repeat the same mechanical words.
Ned demanded the price of a ticket, his little grimy paw already on
his cheap buckskin wallet, hid away among less valuable stowage in the
museum of his pockets.
"To New Arcady, Kentucky? Twelve dollars!" said the man. Ned felt
his hair rise,--more than a month's wages! And was he to beg or beat
his way back? The prospect in which he had begun to rejoice was
dwindling, fading, vanishing like a mirage! And it had been so hopeful!
He wondered, when he thought of this, might he not steal a ride
thither,--beat his way! Nay,--had he not yet enough of beating his way?
"Want the ticket? Then move on," said the ticket agent as Ned still
vaguely clung to the window, as if he thus kept a clutch on his
ephemeral hope. He shook his head, unclasped his hand, and slipped
away. "What can I do for you, sir?" the agent asked sharply of a
gentleman who was now standing silently at the window, seeming scarcely
less dazed and wool-gathering than Ned had been. "Oh, time-table?" The
automaton ungraciously flung it out, and went back to his writing with
an air which seemed to ask if all the fools who wanted to go nowhere,
and whom he wished were there, were coming this day to block up his
window, and interrupt his work, and impede traffic.
Ned left the tall, thin gentleman in the station building engaged in
the study of the time-table. But he did not long remain there. As the
dejected little lad, who had not realized how he had been upborne by
his secret hope of help and counsel from his father's old friends till
it was snatched from him, took his way along the darkening shadowy
paths, the tall man was once more swiftly afoot, and although he
passed Ned and walked openly in advance he was determined no more
to lose trace of the boy. The idea of quitting the city, which the
inquiry at the station had revealed, precipitated the necessity of
prompt action. Very little more time could now be accorded to the
line of investigation which the detective was pursuing,--the hope of
discovering the boy in communication with the incendiaries. It would
be necessary to arrest him forthwith, lest he escape from the town,
and with him vanish the only clue as yet developed of the origin and
perpetrators of the crime. Nevertheless the detective determined that
he would still seek in this limited interval to secure some inkling,
some vestige of a theory, that might lead to the unmasking of the
principals in this nefarious affair. Thus he was acutely conscious of
the patter of the small feet as they came nimbly along behind him;
when at last they began to lag he turned from the road and sat down on
a bench by the wayside, and there Ned noticed him for the first time
since they had been in the park, and remembered when and where he had
before seen him. Ned was relieved to observe as he passed that the man
seemed to take no heed of him. He did not even look up. Perhaps in his
turn Ned would not have again thought of the stranger, so frequently
encountered, had he not turned back as he reached the big iron gate
to gaze regretfully over the great green stretch of the park. The man
was just rising from the bench under the tree; he stretched his limbs
with much deliberation, caught up his cane and came slowly down the
broad walk toward the gate. He too was about to leave the place. Ned
could not have said why, but he determined that he would not ride back
to town in the same car. He loitered. There were two of the cable
double-cars waiting on the track. The foremost was nearly full of
passengers,--the other altogether empty.
"I'll take the car that he leaves," Ned said to himself. Impressed with
the idea that he was watched, he had half expected that the man would
hesitate and wait for him.
To his surprise the stranger strode past without so much as a glance
toward him and stepped upon the platform of the foremost car.
"I'm the biggest fool in town!" thought Ned in scorn for his terrors,
turning nevertheless toward the other car.
"Go on!" said the grip-man of the empty cable car. "This car is going
to turn in."
Ned went on, dismayed by the possibility that the man had noticed and
understood this effort to avoid him, but when he too stepped upon the
rear platform of the foremost car and the cumbrous vehicle started off,
he saw that the man had bought the evening paper and was already deeply
absorbed in its contents.
"He ain't even thinking about me," Ned reflected, much reassured. "He
ain't even looked ter see if I took the kyar or no."
The boy who had sold the paper still stood in the doorway. He was a
squabby little fellow of eight or ten, with carrot-tinted hair, a
broad, dirty, freckled face, a wide mouth with several front teeth
missing, a beguiling blue eye, and a persuasive lisp, although his
voice was keyed to a blatant whine. He scanned the faces of the men
in the car with a precocious attention and business tact at once
ludicrous and pathetic as he recited the headlines of the news
columns. There was something very appealing in his innocent and earnest
eyes and long list of enormities.
"All about the bloody murder at the wharf!" he sang out suddenly.
There was no response. The car whizzed on. Nobody talked. There was not
even smoking here, although from the "grip" visible ahead, the wind
brought back the fragrance of cigars.
"Executhion at the Jail-yard! Two murdererth on the thame gallowth!
Dying thpeech an' confethion!--Their neckth were broke!" he added
suddenly, the last clause of his own motion and by way of explanation.
His air demanded, who could resist such fascinating reading as that!
Still there was no response. That belled cat, the conductor, was taking
the fares, and ever and anon the sharp tones of his bell-punch jangled
on the air.
The disappointed little boy fetched a heavy sigh. He could remain on
the car fare-free as long as he was selling or seeking to sell his
papers, but if merely in transit he must pay like other people. It was
a long way back to the business portion of the town for those fat,
short legs, which had already been abundantly exercised to-day, and the
little boy racked his brains for more scareheads. Then with eternally
springing hope he blurted out:
"All about the grave robbery! Goulth still at large."
He cocked his beguiling eye up at a gray-bearded gentleman
distinguished by a mild, refined aspect and a clerical coat.
The old clergyman looked disgusted.
The boy had sold but one paper on this trip, and the car was already
approaching the outskirts of the town. There was a tremulo in his voice
which in any other person of his years, less hardy and self-reliant
than a newsboy, would have preceded a burst of tears. With him it only
preceded a shrill squawk:
"Gorham's theaytre burned,--latest detailth, total dethructhion!"
Ned winced. He thought of the fiery, impulsive owner. How would he
endure the loss, the humbled pride, the day of small things! With
the weight of the recollection of his own wrong-doing Ned felt as
if he were responsible for the moral ordeal as well as the material
disaster--although he had no concern with either--which the manager
seemed destined to encounter.
"Heavy Inthurance. New York Companies," the boy sang out unexpectedly.
Ned started as suddenly as if he had been shot.
"'Ere, boy," he said, fishing out of his pocket the change of the
silver quarter which the "funny man" had bestowed upon him. "Gimme that
paper."
The little fat boy in the door stared, his mouth open in astonishment
and exhibiting the vacant spaces where his teeth ought to be. He had
never known a small working boy such as Edward to buy a daily paper.
He thought Ned was guying him until he took another look at the
outstretched hand with the proffered nickel. Then he gravely handed
over the folded journal. The elderly gentleman of clerical aspect
looked down at Ned with a smile; he saw in the occurrence only an
amusing affectation of mannish tastes and habits. It had a far graver
meaning to another person in the car, who was openly staring at Ned,
with a new light kindling in his eyes and an expression of triumph in
the curl of his lip.
Ned was cowering back, making a feint of opening the paper, and yet
all a-quiver with the realization that he had betrayed himself. How
could a poor boy, such as he was, be supposed to take an interest in
Gorham's insurance? He feared his eagerness upon the mention of the
subject might intimate to the man--if this were really a detective who
had watched and followed him--that he possessed some knowledge of the
fire, connected with the question of insurance. It might even imply the
truth,--arson! Only he would be numbered with the incendiaries. He had
given the detective the clue,--Insurance!
Ned presently made an effort to seem to read the paper,--he could
not pin his mind to a single syllable. It was scant comfort to him
now--since he had given himself away--to know that the First Player and
he must have overheard _only a part_ of Gorham's conversation with his
friend, and that in refusing to renew his policy in the Rising Phœnix
Insurance Company because of a quarrel with the agent he had at once
placed the risk elsewhere. Thus the burned theatre was amply insured
in other companies, and Gorham's loss would be slight, comparatively
speaking, by reason of the disaster.
The lamp had been lighted in the car, although it was not yet quite
dark. Ned could see still as they whizzed along on some considerable
elevation the wide spread of the city stretching in dusky undulations
against the sky, which had now grown gray, portending rain. Beyond some
dip, full of roofs, massive blocks of business houses rose, frowning
and gloomy, while between surged smoke and dust in fantastic, haggard
clouds that suggested witches and demons and undreamed-of powers of
the air. The mazes of the telegraph and telephone wires now and then
became visible, meshed and webbed about the town as if it were caught
and held fast in the toils of some big scientific spider. Oh, it was a
dreary evening,--long did Ned remember it! Even the most commonplace
things had strange and sinister effects. The air was pulsing with
rhythmic vibrations; the earth throbbed tumultuously; from a square
railed inclosure in the middle of the street a column of black smoke
gushed suddenly forth as if spewed from the pits of hell, and a
locomotive was shrieking like a demon as it rushed out from the long
tunnel beneath the avenue where the cable car rolled heavily on and on,
its gong clamoring at every intersecting street, and now and again in
a tumult of jarring warning lest some enterprising vehicle usurp the
track.
Once more Ned looked at the detective. The detective was looking at
Ned. For that moment they understood each other.
But the sharp boy of a town is no match for the sharp man of a town.
The quiet personage in plain black clothes folded up his newspaper,
put it in his breast pocket, then turning slightly in his seat, looked
out of the window at the rows of decorous, even handsome residences
which they were now passing. The gilded numbers were distinct upon the
illuminated transoms, for within the gas was already lighted. He seemed
to scan each with interest, as if he sought some particular number.
Presently he rose, passed to the platform, quietly swung himself off,
and walked slowly and meditatively to the sidewalk.
Ned sat amazed as the progress of the car soon left him behind. He
began to think that he had been mistaken from the first,--that he had
neither been watched nor followed. The man had looked attentively
at him to be sure,--but what of that? The white-haired gentleman of
clerical aspect had also looked at him with interest. Ned felt quite
certain now that influenced by his own secret anxiety he had magnified
the danger, and fancied suspicion in every casual careless stranger.
He was sure that he had encountered no detective.
Ned could not see through the buildings on either hand. He could not
know that the few passers along a side street were staring in mild
surprise at a grave, genteel-looking man, dressed in black, who was
running at full speed as if for his life. When this man reached a broad
avenue parallel to the one which he had quitted he did not slacken his
pace, but plunged down another side street, then through an alley, and
out once more upon a thoroughfare. There he hailed a passing car and
sprang upon it. He had calculated time and distance very narrowly, for
as the car made a broad curve, turning down a street at right angles
with the avenue it had just traversed, it came upon the track close
behind a car with a blue light, the one which he had left not five
minutes earlier, which was still rolling down the street in a straight
line.
As he looked through the window at the vehicle in advance his sharp
eyes were quick to detect the slim little figure of the printer's
devil still sitting close to the door, and he felt that whether it were
instinct which had warned the boy or inadvertence on his own part in
bringing his surveillance too close, it had been cleverly counteracted.
CHAPTER VI
The detective pondered seriously upon all these things as he sat there.
He wondered that as yet the boy should have done nothing to indicate
his partners in a crime so far beyond his own scope. More than all, he
wondered how the little printer's devil should know or care anything
about the insurance of the theatre, and what the question of the
insurance had to do with his surreptitious entrance and the theft of
the diamonds and other portable valuables.
The fire had been at first supposed to be the result of accident or
of carelessness on the part of the theatre's employees, until Peter
Bateman's story had suggested to the police the possibility that theft
had necessitated that sequence of pillage, which is incendiarism. Thus
the detective had believed that the theatre had been robbed by some
gang of thieves, of whom Ned was but the humble tool, and then fired
to conceal the traces of the more profitable crime. Now this conclusion
was shaken,--and again and again he asked himself in perplexity and
doubt what the question of the insurance could have had to do with the
crime.
The more he thought of it the more he was convinced that this was to
be a singular and difficult case. Properly worked up it would reflect
much credit on the officer who should finally bring it to a successful
issue. Once in the course of his varied speculations on the subject he
came very close indeed to the truth; he canvassed the possibility that
the theatre was burned from motives of malice or revenge, for Gorham
was a man who made and kept bitter enemies. But the fact that any
fool must know that so large and valuable a property was always amply
insured would, he thought, prevent antagonism or reprisal from taking
that form, since the loss would fall most heavily upon the various
companies who had assumed the risk,--vague, unimagined corporations,
beyond the scope of malice or antagonism, foreign to the thought of an
incendiary.
Still meditating aimlessly about the question of insurance, he began
to wonder if Gorham were not actually a gainer rather than a loser by
the fire. The theatre's furnishings were getting shabby and out of
style; much of the scenery was old; the site had become, by reason of
one of those swift expansions of the commercial section of the town, so
common in our growing southwestern cities, more valuable by far than
the building itself; the season had not been very prosperous,--too much
legitimate drama to cope successfully with spectacular opposition. The
smaller theatres drew the crowds, and light opera was the vogue. More
than all, there was of record a rather heavy mortgage on the structure
itself, which showed that the owner had needed money in considerable
emergencies. Taken all in all, Gorham was doubtless in better financial
case now, a richer man to-day than yesterday.
All at once the detective began to put two and two methodically
together. Gorham, by reason of the heavy insurance, had profited by
the burning of the theatre. The boy, who was known to have secretly
entered the house, presumably for the purpose of theft, had unwittingly
manifested a tumult of excited interest upon the sheer mention of
the insurance of the building,--a matter usually absolutely alien
to one of his age, his class, and his ignorance; when in a state
of obviously alert suspicion he became aware that this incongruity
had been observed, he grew so restive under surveillance, evidently
recognizing its menace, that the officer, not wishing to make an arrest
prematurely, was obliged to withdraw, and only shadow him from afar.
_Insurance!_ Had the boy indeed done nothing to indicate the
perpetrator of the crime!
The car was now passing the ruins of the theatre. The smoke, still
curling slowly into the air, had a certain luminous quality, reflected
from the dying embers. Red lanterns here and there marked the lines
of the débris, where the brick walls had fallen across the sidewalks
and street, blocking the way, and served as a warning to the benighted
passer-by. One of these lanterns cast a dull flush upon the gilded
mask of Folly high on the frescoed wall, still grotesquely leering
down upon the melancholy scene. As the lurid glare gradually faded in
the distance, the detective, his conclusion reached at last, silently
nodded his head, decisively, aggressively.
For this astute person had come to believe that Gorham had himself
fired his own theatre!
He believed the boy, entering for the purpose of theft and concealed
among the scenery, had accidentally gained a knowledge of the manager's
crime,--else why should a lad of his years, a mere child, feel an
interest in so remote a subject as the details of the insurance of
the building? He doubtless went or was sent there with the object of
stealing, nefarious enough! but burning the building could work an
advantage to no one but the owner, who would get the big insurance
money! Thus the detective deduced that Gorham himself had committed
the crime which in double-dealing, joining with the "star," the
manager of the theatrical company, and the insurance companies, he now
pretended to cause to be investigated by the police.
The detective's anxiety to discover the printer's devil in seeking to
communicate with some criminal, some noted "crook," on the subject of
the theatre, changed to an alert expectation. He believed the boy would
seek to communicate with Gorham,--he would make use of his knowledge of
the crime in an effort to extort money.
When Ned at last left the car the detective had become so cautious as
to follow only at a very considerable distance, so extra-hazardous had
his surveillance become, so alertly suspicious seemed the boy. Down and
down Ned took his way, through streets that grew more dirty and dingily
lighted as he went. The tall, gloomy tenement houses on either hand,
for miles, it seemed, apparently leaned toward each other across the
way, to limit the sky and exclude the air from the sad purlieus below.
Some women were quarreling in shrill, shrewish accents on a corner;
one reeled as she walked, and hard by there was a saloon that exuded
a dim glow of untrimmed kerosene lamps, a pervasive odor of beer and
whiskey, and a series of dirty, frowzy customers of both sexes at all
hours of the day and night. It had a more remote trade, too; now and
then a child, tangle-haired, begrimed, unnaturally sharp of eye and
tongue, yet still suggestive of that universal promise of youth,--dim,
dim, not a possibility, hardly a dream, only intimating a higher
purpose in its creation,--scuttled out with a pitcher of beer, bearing
it carefully away to some drink-sodden wretch in a forlorn attic. The
clouds had thickened; they seemed to Ned to-night, though never before,
to resemble the clouds of sin and sorrow and suffering that hang over
the homes of the wicked and weak, and to prefigure the bursting of the
vials of wrath. And search the sky as he would, he could discern no
star.
When he had toiled up four flights of a dark, rickety staircase, and
opened a door in the rear of the mansard roof, the sudden contrast
of the scene within smote upon his quivering nerves, his quickened
perceptions, as if he had never before beheld it. The floor was scoured
white, and throughout the atmosphere was the pungent aroma of coarse
yellow soap. The clean patchwork quilts on the two beds were as gay
with many colors as Joseph's coat. The monkey-stove sought to atone for
its many misdeeds emblazoned on the smoke-blackened walls, and glowed
to a scarlet hue, and upon it simmered the savory dish of onion stew
that he loved. His sickly, puny little sister, seated on a home-woven
rug in the centre of the floor, found plenteous entertainment in
banging a tin cup with an iron spoon, while her mother was busied in
the task of wrapping hundreds of bonbons in gayly fringed papers, for
this work for the candy factory could be done at home, and the care
of the child prevented her from going out to secure better paid work
elsewhere.
"That child is the bane of yer life," her neighbors sometimes said,
with a species of antagonism toward the hindrance, born, it seemed,
only to be a clog and a dead-weight. "Ye had better sen' it to the
'sylum, or somewher's, an' git some use of yerself."
Ned's mother returned no comment, no reply, to these suggestions;
sometimes it seemed as if she had some impediment in her speech,
so silent she had become, so taciturn with her neighbors. The
fact that she was country-bred was shown abundantly in her stolid
uncommunicativeness, her vague terror of all the ways of the great city
outside of these four walls, her old-fashioned code of manners and
morals, and the painfully wrought and maintained cleanliness of her
surroundings. No slight task it was, to be sure, to "pack" the water
which plentifully drenched floors, tables, pots, kettles, windows,
up four flights of steep stairs from the hydrant in the yard! Small
wonder that poverty and dirt are so often concomitant. It had been an
evil day for her and her simple, untutored husband when some vague,
distorted ambition had moved him to despise the small havings of a
country-side blacksmith and seek to become a "horse-shoer" among the
often mythical advantages of a large town. He had little of the canny
thrift characteristic of his Scotch nationality. He was an open-handed,
jovial, florid, red-haired, fiery-tempered man,--over sanguine and
credulous. The many deceptions practiced upon greenhorns, the greater
expense of living, the fierce competition of an already crowded trade,
baffled and bewildered the sturdy fellow. He worked as long as he
had work, but when he was idle he began to drink more and more, and
perhaps at last it was no great misfortune to his family when one of
the pestilences which decimate the tenement region laid this once fair
stalk of wheat low with the "cheat." He left his wife, Ned, and the
puny, sickly little girl as remote, as alien from their old, country
home, as if that haven of humble, hearty comfort were in a foreign
planet. They lived as best they might on the boy's wages and the few
jobs of coarse washing that she could get to do at home. It was the
pride of both mother and son that they had maintained this precarious
existence on these slender means now for more than a year, and in this
fact they saw a glad augury for the future.
Her face always wore, however, an apprehensive, appealing expression,
although Ned remembered when it had been otherwise. As she turned
it toward him now all her perseverance, her self-sacrifice, her
deprivations, her honest, persistent uprightness, her mingled fears
and faith in some fair future for him touched his heart with a potent
force. He cast but one glance at her and burst instantly into tears.
"What ails ye, sonny?" she asked soothingly, and with an intonation
that promised partisanship, earnest and loving; for sometimes he came
home with great griefs of editorial tyranny, or fault-finding and
injustice in the composing-rooms, or the guying of some facetiously
disposed junior reporter, or in a revolt of indignation against the
pressure of new and severe regulations--when his partisan mother would
straightway vilify his enemies (for the nonce), till he would be sorry
for them and rouse himself to protest and remonstrate in their defense.
But now Ned shook his head and would say nothing.
His silence evidently alarmed her. She perceived that his trouble
was far more serious than the usual misadventures in the day's work.
Once or twice she urged him to speak, but in vain. She looked at him
apprehensively for a moment longer, and not without anger. Then as
if appreciating the futility of remonstrance, she turned away to the
table, took up a flaunting red and gilded paper, and with mechanical
swiftness and dexterity twisted the fringed ends.
"Boys are hard to know how to deal with," she remarked. "They can't
l'arn no sense, and they ain't got no instinct. A boy ought ter know
by nature that he hev got two friends what can't wish him nothing but
well. One is his God in Heaven, and the t'other is his mother on
earth,--and them is the ones he trusts the least an' trusts the last."
"The harm is done now," sobbed Ned.
"Undo it, then," said his mother sternly.
Ned walked to the window, and heavily leaning against the sill, looked
out at the gloomy night. When he had first lost the fear that he
had been "spotted" by the detective he had felt almost glad of the
discovery that the insurance companies only would sustain the loss by
the fire, for these, being corporations vague to his mind, impersonal,
of presumably illimitable wealth, did not appeal very strongly to his
limited experience for sympathy. He was glad that the manager whom he
had defrauded would not suffer from the villainy he had witnessed.
This feeling had served in some sort to blunt his conscience and numb
his sense of his own wrong-doing. Now, however, among the familiar
surroundings of home,--sacred as an altar, a temple, even though only
an attic in the tenement district,--he regained his normal poise; he
realized how his mother would regard it. He winced from the sheer
recollection of the old-fashioned phrase with which she was wont to
characterize such shifty dealings. "Stealin', an' nothin' shorter!"
It was indeed theft. She would think that he had stolen the price of
admission to the theatre as absolutely as if he had picked Manager
Gorham's pocket. What did it matter to him whose was the loss in the
burning of the beautiful theatre! The fact remained. He was a thief.
The aspect of dishonesty had never been so odious to him as now.
Hitherto he had carried his mother's teaching in one hand and his
trusty conscience in the other, and with a fair accord between them he
had gone triumphantly through the multiform temptations which assail a
small boy struggling for a living amidst the turmoils of a great town.
Now it was all over. He could never again feel aught but contempt for
himself. In his poignant pang of despair he had a strong impulse to
confess to his mother. He glanced over his shoulder at her, but she
had gone back wearily but unfalteringly to her work, and he relapsed
once more to staring dismally out over the roofs about him, mostly on a
lower level than the windows of this "sky parlor."
Scores of chimney-pots loomed up close at hand. Despite their smoky,
gloomy, unsocial aspect, this insensate crew served in some sort as
company for the boy. They were always there,--they saw him depart
in the morning, they waited for him to come home at night. They had
stories to tell him. He loved a vague, fanciful sense of community
interests with the unknown firesides below them. He pictured to himself
the families clustered about these invisible hearths. Every fantastic
wreath of soot-bespangled smoke curling out from these grimy tubes
indited for him an idyl on the fair page of the sky. What tragic, or
poetic, or romantic episodes were kindled with the homely fires cooking
the supper--and ended in smoke!
When winds were abroad and went rioting about the chimney-pots,
whistling and singing, the smoke affected too a jovial mien, and came
rushing and rollicking up to join its boisterous playfellows, who now
would sweep vast clouds of it aside in tenuous dispersal in the air,
and now would roll up great curling lengths of it like so many yards
of dusky ribbon, tucking it back into the chimney-pots whence it had
sought to issue forth. What roaring farces in the house-top regions
these wild days! What sense of hilarity, of joyous motion, of jocund
voice! "Ha! ha! ha!" said the winds. "What a high old time!"
Whenever the moon was up, weird, dark shadows would haunt the
chimney-pots, and go skulking slyly over the roofs, and Ned's
imagination would conjure into the air beings far more strange than his
simple mythical friends whom he had placed in order about their unknown
hearths below. If it were in the glad summer-time these gruesome shapes
would so far abandon their port of terror as to dance with the misty
images of the smoke to the music of a brass band, which played in a
city square, distant indeed, but not altogether out of earshot. In the
winter the snow-covered roofs reflected the silvery lunar sheen and
shimmered. The chimney-pots were often begirt with zones of icicles.
Grotesque gargoyles of frozen slush and sleet blocked the water-spouts
and hung far over the eaves. A star with a chill crystalline
palpitation would look down. Far, far away the deep, mellow tones of
the cathedral bells would ring out the Angelus. And winter or summer he
loved it all, for his heart was light, his conscience clear, and this
was Home!
But now the atmosphere was murky; the clouds were low; the swift gleams
of lightning were beginning to quiver among the chimney-pots, that
seemed in the uncertain fluctuations to move, to wince, to start aside,
to draw back as in fright. Suddenly resonant torrents were beating upon
the roof; the tin gutters clamored; the mutterings of thunder swelled
to sonorous emphasis.
Ned felt all at once refreshed, elated,--a sense often induced by a
rain-fall long delayed. Perhaps the interval of rest had calmed his
nerves; and had restored his jaded faculties. A new idea suddenly
sprang into his mind.
He did not hesitate; he turned briskly, got down from a shelf an
ink-bottle,--nearly empty from evaporation rather than exhausted by
service,--tore a blank page from an old copy-book which he had used in
his short attendance at the public school, and proceeded at once to
indite some straggling characters. He had addressed an envelope before
he looked up at his mother, who was silently watching him.
"I want some money out o' my wages," he said stoutly, assuming an
air as of a moneyed man who demands what is his own by rights. Then,
"Tain't fur no harm," he added reassuringly.
He had feared her questions, which he was resolved he would not answer.
Without a word, however, she pointed at the drawer of the table. If he
would not voluntarily give her his confidence she would not attempt to
coerce it. She did not even ask nor look to see what sum he took.
The envelope was sealed, and presently Ned was flying along through
street after street with the rain pelting in his face and the wind
bantering him for the loan of his hat. He did not care! His heart was
so much lighter! He saw from afar the great red and blue bottles in
the illuminated windows of a drug-store, and here he paused and went
within and with much circumspection bought a postage-stamp; then he
plunged out in the rain again, making straight for a certain box under
a gleaming lamp in the distance that sent its quivering shafts of light
far through the gloom.
He brought up under the lamp-post, agitated, anxious, but still
unswerving. He looked about him expectantly, watchfully,--it might
have seemed even fearfully to one noting his attitude from a distance.
But he had no longer any fear. The moment was fraught with peculiar
importance to him. He had posted many letters for employers, but never
one for himself, and never before nor after one like this. A man beyond
the furthest limits of the lamp's aureola of misty light had paused
too, breathing hard. He was not used to running so far nor running so
fast. He thought the boy's look and attitude very suspicious, as Ned,
realizing the supreme significance of the moment and the value of this
letter to him, slowly and solemnly dropped it into the box, and then
swiftly scudded off down the street.
When the letter-carrier next came to this box the detective was lurking
in its vicinity. He whispered a request and mentioned a name, but the
postman shook his head with all the dignity of one invested with a
little brief authority, and it seemed that "the regulations" were the
only words his tongue would deign to frame. "Why, what harm can it
do to let me see the outside of the letters?" insisted the detective
plausibly. The postman's head wagged to and fro more slowly under the
well applied force of argument.
"The handwriting on the outside of the envelope alone will tell me
all that I want to know; it is a very important crime which I am
investigating."
The postman's head ceased to vibrate. Yet he was slow and thoughtful
as he laid his hand on the box. As the detective waited eagerly for
it to be opened he looked rather like a fox,--so keen, and so crafty,
and so alertly expectant. The letters, as they were slowly shuffled
before his eyes, he perceived belonged unmistakably to commercial
correspondence,--neat, compact, evidently the work of practiced
scribes,--except only one; this was blurred and smirched, with a
crumpled envelope and a wildly diagonal address, which moreover was
grievously misspelled. He stared with breathless interest and curiosity
at the scrawling characters:--
Manger A. J. Gorm
Manger Gorm's Theter.
In less than half an hour the detective was in close conference with
his chief. "That is all," he said, concluding his account of these
incidents. "I think I have caught the boy communicating with the
criminal. The criminal is the owner himself,--and that letter in my
opinion is the boy's attempt to extort money from Gorham by threatening
to blab all he knows."
CHAPTER VII
There was a strange procession in the streets early in the morning.
Its line of march lay through the principal business quarters of the
city, and everywhere its advent was greeted with wild hurrahs. In
fact it did much of its own cheering. The enthusiasm for itself which
pervaded its ranks was of a gratifying fervor. It was kindly esteemed,
too, by others. Very seldom do the solid business men of a city look
upon a procession of strikers--for these were strikers--with the benign
indulgence accorded this noisy crew. And very seldom do respectable
citizens of any town appear in such dingy boots as those which covered
the feet of some genteel people.
For this was a procession of striking boot-blacks and newsboys, and for
a time the sun had a corner on "shining."
Banners fluttered to the breeze; quaint standards were held aloft.
One bore this strange device, "BLOOD OR PIE," and elicited a peal of
laughter whenever it came around a corner.
As far as the interests of their trades were concerned the strikers
might have forgotten their grand display within a week, for they were
soon underbidding each other, and the price of a "shine" had fallen to
the old familiar nickel before the sun was fairly through his job that
day.
But they long remembered, perhaps for years, the electric thrill that
quivered through the ranks of the procession when a well-known police
officer signaled to the vanguard to halt. The boys brought up suddenly,
surprised and perhaps a little frightened.
The officer strode up and tapped Ned on the shoulder. Though neither
bootblack nor newsboy, Ned was a friend of the strikers. He was a
public character among his fellows, and the ruling spirit of this
demonstration, which had been long in preparation. He had stood at the
head of the column without a qualm, for he had felt in clearing his
conscience last night as if he had cleared off all old scores.
Nobody so astonished now as Ned!
"What fur?" he gasped. The officer lifted the warrant slightly out
of his breast pocket, and pointing his big thumb toward it replied
succinctly,--
"Housebreaking, larceny, and arson."
"My eye!" exclaimed a little newsboy, concentrating an amazed stare
upon the diminutive alleged housebreaker, thief, and incendiary.
Ned's heart sank,--all his forebodings realized,--all his scheming in
vain! He had much ado to keep from bursting into tears. Yet he was
helplessly wondering how they had come to suspect him of knowing aught
of the burning of the theatre or the theft of the money and diamonds,
when he had so persistently kept his own counsel.
The officer would tell nothing as he hurried the boy along. The gaping
procession followed, still mechanically bearing aloft the banners
which Ned's own ingenuity had devised and constructed.
"Ye'll find out soon enough," was all his laconic captor would say.
Ned found out only when the warrant was read and Peter Bateman was
testifying before the magistrate.
The fat boy's cheeks were flabby and white. A cold perspiration
glistened in his hair, which stood up straight and stubbly above
his forehead. His eyes seemed very close together indeed. He was
greatly frightened and agitated, and the magistrate, who had a keener
discrimination of the merits of a good dinner than of the various
phases of human nature, encouraged him, and spoke kindly to him
whenever he faltered. He seemed very reluctant to give his testimony,
and the justice accounted this aversion to accuse his friend a fine
trait of character, and regarded Pete yet more favorably.
Pete cast but one glance at Ned. He withdrew his eyes hastily and kept
them fixed appealingly on the justice's face. He told his story glibly
enough when once fairly at it, for he had spent the interval since
he was last before the magistrate in reciting it again and again to
himself, that he might not let it vary with the sworn statement which
he had previously made.
"I ain't goin' ter git busted now fur perjury--sure pop," he said to
himself.
Even in its midst he was wondering how he could tell it at all with the
consciousness of Ned's fiery eyes fixed upon him. It would be too much
to say that he had no remorse. He did wish that Ned could know that
he had not intended to bring affairs to this pass,--that he had only
lied, as boys often lie, for petty spite, and had never imagined the
far-reaching consequences that had ensued. If Pete had been a receptive
subject for a moral lesson he might now have learned what a terrible
engine for evil even a diminutive lie can be. But he was only asking
himself how could he be expected to foresee such a coincidence as the
probable pillage of the theatre, supplemented by the burning of the
building.
Still, the realization of all the evil he had wrought came upon him
with such crushing force at the end of his story that he burst into
tears and convulsive sobs and presented quite an edifying spectacle of
sympathizing and grieving friendship.
"Well,--well," said the acute magistrate soothingly, "you have done the
best you could,--you are a good boy."
"He's a liar!" Ned flamed out suddenly. "A liar! A liar!"
The next moment Ned saw that this outburst of wrath had done him harm.
It seemed that only a turbulent and vicious character would thus
meet reluctant accusation with vociferous abuse. The justice coldly
and sternly ordered him to be silent. The spectators looked askance
at him. Earlier they had not been without sympathy and a hopeful
expectation that the boy could show his innocence. At the outset, when
informed by the magistrate of his right to counsel at every stage of
the proceedings, Ned's prompt refusal to send for a lawyer won him
favor, as it indicated an evident belief that his innocence could be
easily established without aid. His vehement negative raised a laugh,
however, at the expense of the profession, for it was Ned's conviction
that lawyers are a pragmatical, exacting tribe, and far more likely to
complicate matters than to simplify them.
There was a stir of uncertainty and curiosity when the magistrate asked
the little defendant if he wished to make any statement concerning the
circumstances in the case and in contradiction of the testimony given
against him, informing him at the same time that he could waive making
such a statement at present, and that such waiver could not be used
against him either now or afterward at his trial. It seemed in evident
expectation of an immediate discharge that Ned declined to avail
himself of this opportunity to postpone the issue and prepare for it.
In fact he believed he could dissipate the unfortunate impressions
which he had created by telling a plain, straightforward story about
the scheme to see the play, and what was said by Pete in his fantastic
threats while at the window.
"I can tell you all about it in three minutes 'thout no lawyer," he
declared, and forthwith plunged tumultuously into the narration.
At this moment a little judicious kindness might have elicited all that
the boy had seen and heard. The justice, however, did not encourage
him as he had encouraged Pete. He seemed inimical and severe, and when
Ned hesitated in small matters glanced at him sharply. He evidently
regarded Ned as a case of precocious hoodlum. Once more the frightened
boy thought his safety lay in silence. He was only suspected as yet, he
argued within himself. Nothing could be proved against him except that
he got into the building at the window. He knew that in several of the
States boys no older than he was had been convicted of felonies and
sentenced to the penitentiary. Therefore he feared that his own extreme
youth would be regarded as a very slight palliation of the crime of
which he stood accused, and that he might be locking the doors of the
State prison upon himself for a long term if he should tell all and his
story be disbelieved or misinterpreted.
Instead of the firm, coherent detail of the facts exactly as they
had happened, with which he had been proceeding, he began, as these
thoughts surged through his mind, to stumble,--to repeat his words, to
fall on long, reflective pauses; and finally he ceased abruptly in the
middle of a sentence.
The magistrate had occasionally looked up impatiently; he elevated
his eyebrows, pursed his lips inquiringly, and now laid down his pen
outright.
"Is that all?" he said.
"Naw, sir," Ned admitted, in grievous agitation.
Perhaps his youth and his hard straits and the terrible future which
seemed impending over him touched the justice. He gave a little line.
He felt that he hardly exceeded the intention of the restrictions of
his office in prompting the defendant, helping him out, in view of his
youth, inexperience, and friendlessness,--giving him a chance to tell
his story and establish, if it might, his innocence.
"Do you want to tell how you saw the play?"
"Yes, sir," said Ned, plucking up heart of grace.
"And how you got out?"
"Got out of the window wher' I got in."
"Do you want to tell why you did not go out at the back door?"
"Didn't know wher' 't wuz," replied Ned.
All these facts were being incorporated in the written statement of
Ned's own account of himself, which when finished would be read to him,
and which he might sign or not, as he would, but the magistrate would
annex the reason for no signature in case he should refuse. It was
beginning to take a definite value, and the two returned to this unique
method of getting at the facts with renewing spirit. Alas for the next
question!
"Do you want to tell why you did not follow the employees to the back
door?"
Ned did not answer. His face fell.
The justice looked surprised and disappointed. He returned to the
effort.
"You were afraid of being seen by some of them? Was that the reason you
did not follow them?"
Ned still was silent.
The justice was obviously ill at ease. He had ventured upon an
innovation in a very important matter, which he felt was unjustifiable
unless some valuable result were to accrue. There was something
singular in the case, and he had his qualms in committing the boy to
jail without a fair opportunity to show his innocence. For this he had
already gone far. The fact would not be mended nor marred by going
further.
"Did you leave any one in the theatre?" he queried.
"Yes, sir," faltered Ned.
"How many did you leave there?" demanded the magistrate briskly, seeing
the possibility of shifting the crime from such narrow shoulders.
"Three men." (General sensation.)
"Give their names," said the magistrate, fingering his pen and feeling
his hand upon the heart of the mystery.
"Dunno their names."
"But you could identify them?"
To his great displeasure Ned would not answer. The magistrate
persisted. "Did you want to describe them? Was that your intention?"
Still Ned refused to speak.
The justice looked at him, baffled. There were few persons present,
and most of them the miniature strikers. But he discerned in the
countenances of the officers and a lawyer or two, besides those
representing the prosecutors, an alert appreciation of his departure
from the methods of his office and the letter of the law.
"Come, come, now,--what were they doing?"
Ned looked down at his convulsively working hands and said
nothing,--knowing not what to say and what to leave unsaid.
"What o'clock was it when you left?" The magistrate essayed as he
supposed an easy inquiry. He wished not to have it said that with an
unprecedented course of questioning he had reduced the prisoner to
silence when the law expressly provides what shall be asked of him,
and that with his consent, by the examining magistrate. He could not
conceive that the interrogation as to the hour when one quitted a
theatre could prove an embarrassment. It failed, however, to reopen
verbal communication. Ned heard again far away that tolling bell of the
night strike the mystic note of one o'clock, the single weighty tone,
impressive, awe-inspiring, with the recollection of the darkness and
the strangeness of his awakening.
Once more he said nothing.
The justice at last desisted in irritation. He had not acquitted
himself to his satisfaction, and he began to be more acutely ill
at ease as he noted two or three newspaper reporters in the room,
who had been attracted by the rumor of unusual circumstances in
the examination which had already gotten wind. One of the reporters
suddenly addressed the magistrate, and to Ned's surprise and his deep
mortification he recognized a representative of the paper which he also
served in his humble capacity.
"May it please your honor," said the reporter courteously, "I know the
defendant very well, and can testify to his general good character."
The justice, thoroughly out of temper, replied testily, "To please me
you would have to testify to a good deal more than that."
"I thought from your manner that you would be glad to be able to avoid
committing so young a lad." The reporter sought to justify himself.
Now this comment upon the course which the justice had seen fit to
take, since he himself did not altogether approve it, was the most
unfortunate that could have been made in Ned's interest. That it was
disapproved by the detective, the officers, and the lawyers of the
parties who were grievous sufferers by the crime in which Ned had
contrived to become entangled and who naturally, from the magnitude
of the losses, were not disposed to leniency, was most obvious from
their general facial expression, although no overt indication of
dissatisfaction had been adventured.
"Fortunately _you_ are not here to _think_!" retorted the justice.
His large head, with its fat jowl, was canted slightly backward as he
spoke, his hands were lightly clasped across his capacious stomach, and
he looked at the reporter from under the half-closed lids of small,
narrow, unfriendly eyes.
The reporter was of a type of man calculated to be particularly
unacceptable to the burly demagogue of a justice. The blond, handsome
youngster was something of a fop. Indeed, he went by the sobriquet
of "dude reporter" in the composing-room. He was nevertheless a very
efficient newspaper man, he came of good people, he was essentially a
gentleman, and he was of a specially kind and amiable disposition. He
could no more have refrained from seeking to help Ned at this pinch
than if the boy were drowning before his eyes. He had been silent at
first, although he stared as if he thought he had the nightmare when
the spectacle of the forlorn little printer's devil in custody broke
upon his astonished gaze. He had, however, waited to interfere till the
moment when the justice's decision seemed imminent, hoping that Ned
had some ground of defense, some testimony to offer that would serve
to extricate him. Now he could wait no longer, and he braved the wrath
of the justice, and, what was much more formidable to him, the gleeful
relish of two reporters from other papers, who were even now writing
him up before his eyes as fast as their waggish pencils could travel.
"Ned!" he cried indignantly, "why don't you answer his honor? You know
that you _can't_ be guilty of all those crimes. Tell him about the
affair!"
The justice was for a moment as one petrified. Then he rallied his
faculties. "Young man," he said menacingly, "do you know where you
are?"
One of the gayly facetious reporters added "at" to the sentence, and
thus it stood in the printed columns in the morning.
"I beg your honor's pardon," said the dude reporter humbly, "but noting
your honor's kind efforts to make the child divulge the names of the
wicked men who may be utilizing his youth and ignorance to conceal
their crimes of larceny and arson, I ventured to speak to him. He knows
me very well, and I thought I might aid your honor by reason of my long
acquaintance with him. He is a very good boy--"
"Must be," interrupted the justice sarcastically,--"not at all
obstinate."
--"and greatly valued by his employers. I felt that you would like that
any one who could should testify in his behalf."
"If you have anything specific to say on that head you may speak,--that
is, if he will permit you,--you see that he has no counsel; otherwise
it is not worth while to administer the oath."
The dude reporter reflected doubtfully, all unmindful of the flying
pencils of the other reporters "scooping" him on the spot. But when
he came to consider his knowledge of Ned he was compelled to perceive
that it was in the nature of things negative and trivial, and would do
more harm adduced than neglected. Of what avail to detail the puerile
little incidents of which such a boy's life was made up? When Ned fell
into disgrace because the office cat was reduced to misery and despair
by reason of a tin can tied to its tail, it required no great knowledge
of character to discover that this was the joyous work of a certain
roguish office-boy, and to relieve Ned of suspicion, which only fell
upon him because he was the younger of the two. Ned dined with this
cat daily, dividing with it the meagre contents of the little tin pail
which he brought from home. He went about much of the time with the
cat in his arms, although scornfully admonished to "Hush-a-bye your
baby!" by this office-boy, who could be mocking as well as roguish.
The too dainty staff, as Ned considered them, were often scandalized
by the cat's appearance in triumph, bearing a big, live rat through
the editorial rooms, and not to be diverted from a tour of the place
till the devil could be found, and the notable capture exhibited to
its human friend. Ned seemed to delight in little services of utility,
offered gratuitously and evidently with no expectation of reward; but
this only proved the kindness of heart of this gentle little devil, and
as the reporter racked his brains he realized that many of the facts
possible to cite in his favor were only of this nature. Ned would see
to it that a great array of pencils well sharpened were laid ready for
use on each desk before the editorial work commenced daily, although
this was none of his duty, more properly falling within the functions
of the negligent office-boys. The night editor, the proud possessor of
a spherical pincushion fashioned by an ingenious female relative, on
frugal holiday gifts intent, was helplessly wont to see it roll its
rotundities out of reach whenever needed, followed by reluctant feet
and hearty maledictions, till he found it one day secured against the
wall by a wire ingeniously wrought basket-wise, effectually restraining
its activities thereafter. Another editorial pincushion was of a dark
hue, on a dusky desk, in a dim corner, often secluded altogether from
discovery till it was rendered easily visible to the naked eye in any
weather by a neatly adjusted frill of white tissue paper fashioned
by the deft fingers of the devil, and daily renewed. The boy never
forgot anything that might serve the comfort of others, slight though
were his powers to promote this. The door of the editorial room had
creaked from time immemorial till Ned and a drop of oil came. If a
budget of papers was forgotten and left at home, if a personal errand
was to be swiftly done, and the leaden-footed office-boys recoiled and
protested against it as impracticable and contended that they were
hired for no such miracles of speed, "Lemme go fur 'em," Ned would
beg; "I'll git 'em as soon as the printers let me off!" To be sure Ned
had his trifling rewards, his favors being duly reciprocated in the
way of small change, but these tokens were obviously unexpected, the
simple little boy regarding them rather as free-will gratuities, mere
gifts from sheer kindness, than as payment for services. No wonder
the dude reporter was willing to exert himself. But how could he urge
these trifling indicia of temperament and character, albeit Ned's
opportunities were commensurately small? The reporter hesitated, and
the sarcastic justice remarked at last, "May I remind your wisdom that
the court awaits your pleasure?"
The blond young man--the very wave of his dainty cow-lick on his
handsome forehead was an offense to the bluff justice--flushed, but
replied with good temper,--
"Your honor knows that in the nature of things but little can be said
for a mere child, whose opportunities for wrong-doing are limited as
well as--"
"Perhaps not so limited as one might well think!" the magistrate
interposed significantly.
"He has no position of trust, of course, but he has been faithful over
the few things in his care. I know the boy to be greatly esteemed by
his employers,--hard-working, punctual, careful, honest so far as I
have ever heard or observed, eager to please, industrious, cheerful,
willing, the most kindly disposed little fellow I ever saw in my life."
The justice rapped impatiently on his desk. "_This_ is not to the
purpose," he said. "Will you give bail for him?"
"In ignorance of the circumstances of the crime?--no, your honor, I
will not."
"Will the paper go on his bail-bond?"
"_I_ cannot speak for the management, naturally."
The justice, with the air of a man whose time has been unwarrantably
wasted, turned back to the defendant. He inquired of Ned in curt
accents if he could find bail, evidently expecting the negative answer
which he received. In view of the testimony against him and the
prisoner's own statement the justice declared that it was impossible
to consider his release. There was anger in the magistrate's eye and
impatience in the bang of his blotting-pad as he signed the "mittimus"
commanding the officer who had made the arrest to deliver the prisoner
to the jailer of the county.
There the printer's devil was to await his trial at the next term
of the criminal court; and Peter Bateman, when duly arraigned among
the "drunk-and-disorderlies" in the police court, escaped with a
reprimand because of his youth and the fact of a first offense, and was
discharged and at liberty once more.
When the door of Ned's cell fairly closed upon him he could do nothing
but throw himself on the floor in a frenzy of weeping. For a time
he could think only of the disgrace,--the shame to himself and to
his mother. Presently ideas more practical, more immediate in their
effects, usurped this sentiment. He remembered her desolation,--her
destitution. His wages would be lost to the little family while he was
locked up here,--for how long,--oh, for how long! If they would only
let him work,--on his wages had he and his mother lived,--if they only
would let him work for his mother, he would care for nothing besides.
He broke once more into loud cries and sobs. How could the little
household live without him and his weekly wage! They would starve--they
would die! He beat as frantically as futilely on the door. He tried the
strong bars at the window till every muscle in his arms ached.
When exhaustion brought calmness at last, he sat down and tried to
think quietly of what could be done. He entertained now no intention
of appealing to his father's old patrons to whom he had contemplated
applying for counsel, for guidance, in a difficult emergency. Now,
as he was tarnished by an actual criminal charge, he knew they would
look askance upon him. He was aware that his mother had never, in her
most stringent financial needs, considered seeking for help or charity
from them, and hence he judged the tie was not of a kind that might
justify money aid. His father's name, for old sake's sake, Ned had
fancied might warrant an appeal for advice, but he knew it would be
futile as an urgency to them to risk money or to go upon his bond, and
naturally so! If those who were acquainted with him personally could
not venture thus, how could he expect it from strangers in effect, who
had known his father indeed, but in humble guise and long ago, and
whose attention could be brought now to Ned himself, only as a most
precocious suspect of crime? He did not blame even the dude reporter
for declining, but was grateful to him for the good word he had taken
the trouble to say.
Ned's mind soon left the details of the future. Try as he might,
it would not go forward. It would only travel over and over again
the familiar ground of the singular events at the theatre and the
detective's story in the magistrate's court to-day. Ned gave, however,
no special heed to the episode, as recounted, of mailing the letter;
that only proved to him that he was watched then, and now he knew that
he had been watched all day. He had no idea that the letter was of
any particular importance to the police. The detective had included
its mention in his testimony for purposes of his own. He did not
disclose the fact that he had ascertained to whom it was addressed. He
only wished to discover by the expression of the boy's face whether
Ned attached any significance to a possible disclosure of this
correspondence; but there was no added shade of fear or anxiety upon
it, and the wily detective was for the nonce baffled.
CHAPTER VIII
The letter continued to be an interesting subject of speculation to
the detective. His theory that Gorham had burned his own theatre, and
that the boy, being a party to the crime or having knowledge of it,
was seeking to extort money, had taken a strong hold upon him. He was
determined to discover the contents of that letter.
Of course no one as yet except the chief of police knew that suspicions
of Mr. Gorham were entertained. As the manager was a man of wealth and,
in that sense, of influence and position, it was necessary to observe
great caution in proceeding. The merest whisper of such suspicion would
offer deadly offense to Gorham if he were innocent, and doubtless would
entail consequences yet more serious to any speculator on the subject.
If on the contrary he were guilty, it would be wise not to give him
the alarm prematurely. Therefore very quietly and furtively did the
detective address himself to the duty of investigating Gorham.
In common with most people connected with the theatre, Mr. Gorham was a
late riser. These important events of the morning had happened before
he was up. They had served to wake him earlier than usual. He had been
informed of the suspicions against Ned, and being notified of his
subsequent arrest, at once telephoned a lawyer and was thus present by
his counsel at the examination.
The detective had become acquainted with some of his habits, and had
learned that his letters, which before the fire were sent to his office
at the theatre, were now left by his orders at the hotel where he
lived. His business of late years had not been altogether satisfactory
or successful, and he probably did not yearn for the contents of his
letters as appetizers; he was wont to lay them aside unopened until
breakfast was concluded.
The obliging waiter who served him at table had to this extent given
him away, for and in consideration of a quarter of a dollar to him in
hand paid by the detective. The attendant, however, mistook the officer
for a creditor or a subscription agent merely, who wished to seize the
manager at an auspicious moment when he might be made to pay up or
subscribe or do something equally desperate.
The detective, the wily fox, had determined to be with Gorham at the
instant when he should open Ned's letter.
"I'll ask to be allowed to read the letter, and I'll see how he takes
that," thought the detective.
He contrived to meet Gorham in the corridor of the hotel just when he
had finished his breakfast, and at once addressed him on the pretext
of reporting the details of the investigation of the burning of the
theatre, which the manager had joined the other sufferers by the fire
in instituting, and the "shadowing" of the boy whom Pete had accused of
entering the building with the avowed purpose of theft.
They walked while talking to the door of the hotel; and standing on
the broad stone steps outside, Gorham paused to light his cigar. He
listened to the particulars of the capture of the boy and the scenes
in the committing magistrate's court without a show of feeling of any
sort while he puffed his cigar into a glow. Then he threw the blazing
match aside, thrust both hands into his pockets, and stared fixedly at
the big, velvety red leaves of a hanging basket in a window hard by.
His whole aspect was calculated to intimate to the detective that the
recital was wearisome to the last degree and it would be well to have
done with it.
How the wily fox watched him!
"He wrote a letter last night,--the boy did," the detective said slowly.
Gorham still stared absently at the great red, velvety leaves. He
was satisfied with the amount for which the property was insured; he
was busy with his plans for the future; he was already tired of the
subject of the fire; he believed it the result of an accident or the
carelessness of the night watchman. This official had testified at
the trial that morning that an acquaintance, a minor employee of the
theatre, a scene-shifter, passing on the street late in the night, had
paused on the corner for a casual friendly word; he had been seized
with the conviction that he smelled fire, and then opining that it
issued from the basement of the theatre, he had accompanied the night
watchman thither, and they were turning over the varied assortments
in the property-room and hunting among the tangles of ropes and lifts
and stage machinery, and examining the furnace-room and pervading
the place while the house was actually in flames above their heads.
The scene-shifter, too, had given testimony to the same effect. In
this connection Gorham was recollecting the difficulty which he had
experienced, in common with every householder perhaps, in forcing
employees of whatever sort to observe even a minimum of caution in
dealing with fire and lights. He thought the police were on a false
scent and were magnifying the clue of the chance entrance of the
boy--a child's device to steal a sight at a "show"--into a complicity
with house-breakers and thieves and incendiaries.
The street was unusually quiet at this moment. Then a great transfer
rattled by, its jarring turbulence filling the sunshine that blazed
beyond the scalloped shadow of the awning, and calling up a hollow,
tremulous echo from a cave which it was said lay under the town.
What strange, high-colored dreams of the outside world must these
prosaic vibrations take quivering into the darkened existence of the
troglodytes--if any such mystic cave-dwellers could be here! What
shadowy, picturesque fancies the echo led coyly out in the sunshine!
The manager took his cigar from his lips and gazed pensively into
the air. He had been thinking of trying the "spectacular" in a
certain sort and on a grand scale when he should rebuild. Here was an
idea,--some fantastic play, an opera perhaps, light but romantic, which
should call for caverns, gnomes, grotesque conceits, subterranean
splendors--all wrought with the newest mechanical contrivances and
electric effects. He was trying to recall some story, some old romance,
some half-forgotten heroic poem which would lend itself to these modern
facilities of representation.
He would not have believed then that he was never to rebuild his
theatre,--that in less than an hour the thought would be odious to him.
He was paying scant heed to the detective's words. The officer could
but see that fact. The boy might burden the postal service with his
missives for aught that Gorham cared. "Or else," thought the man of
suspicion, "he is very cleverly pretending indifference."
"The letter was addressed to you," said the detective suddenly.
There was an abrupt change of manner.
"To me!" exclaimed Gorham sharply.
He thrust his cigar between his teeth and with a hasty gesture drew
from his breast pocket the budget of letters which he had placed there
unopened.
He instantly distinguished the aspect of Ned's letter from the others.
He stared hard at the eccentric handwriting; then he ripped open
the crumpled envelope. It contained half a dollar wrapped within a
page evidently torn from an old copy-book, on which, without date or
signature, two words were scrawled.
"_Conscience Money_," he read, amazed.
He looked from the bit of paper to the money. He looked from the money
to the bit of paper. Then he handed both to the detective.
The detective silently gazed at the letter. With his head set
inquiringly askew he looked more like a fox than ever,--very sly,
very wise, so very wise as to appreciate that there are a few
things--exceedingly few--which even _he_ could not explain.
For _this_ could not be construed as an attempt to _extort_ money!
The manager broke the silence with a laugh.
"I understand," he said. "This is the boy who says that he got into
the theatre without paying--and it seems that his conscience nabbed
him!"
And he laughed again.
His face changed as once more he fixed his eyes on the simple scrawl.
"And afterward he was arrested! Poor little chap!" he ejaculated
gravely. And again, "Poor little chap!"
With a sudden look of determination, or rather of impulse, for Gorham
rarely acted from deliberate intention, he set his hat firmly on his
head, threw the half-smoked cigar into the gutter, and without another
word strode off abruptly down the street, leaving the detective staring
blankly after him.
With the same swift, resolute step Gorham presently took his way to
a great, many-storied building, and paused at the office of a broker
whose name was emblazoned on the glass door.
Here he pushed through the outer room, where several clerks,
office-boys, and typewriters, a telephone, and a stock indicator
seemed to be the presiding genii of the place. It was a very quiet day;
there was an interval of stagnation in the market; and without ceremony
he approached the inner door.
"Admission free?" he threw over his shoulder to a clerk, with an
agreeable smile.
He hardly waited for the formal reply that Mr. Vanbigh was disengaged
and would be pleased to see him. Gorham evidently had no doubts as to
his welcome, for he opened the door of the inner room without so much
as a tap on the panel.
Here he found at a desk a man still young, albeit his hair was whitened
here and there and showed only a suggestion of its pristine auburn
hue; his eyes were grave and had that steady, concentrated look
characteristic of those who deal much with money in the abstract, as it
were, as if they appreciated its elusive quality and fugitive tendency
and kept a sharp lookout for unexpected vagaries. Nevertheless there
was something in his aspect, even in the lines of his firm mouth, with
its slightly compressed lips, that betokened geniality, and the tones
of his voice were kind.
"Jim, I want you to do me a favor," said the manager without preamble.
He disregarded the chair close at hand and perched himself on the edge
of the desk.
"You couldn't do me a greater favor than to ask one," said the broker,
whose first thought was of course of the market, of bulls and bears,
and he was prepared to do his utmost in the financial arena, for this
was a friend whom he valued indeed. His well-controlled face changed as
Gorham plunged into Ned's story; this was far from the sort of thing
which he had expected, and taken by surprise he could not all at once
adjust his mind to the point of view. He listened vaguely, perceiving
no way in which this could concern any service that he could render
Gorham, until at last the manager concluded with the blunt request,--
"Now Jim, I want you to go down and bail the little fellow."
The broker recoiled aghast. "_I?_ Why, the boy would jump the ranch! I
should lose the money!"
The manager explained. "I'll stand in behind you. If the boy runs away
and you have to pay the money I'll make it good. _I_ can't go on the
bail-bond, you see, because it wouldn't do for me to appear as one of
the prosecutors in the case and surety on the bond as well! Even if _I_
could get out of the case now against him, the other prosecutors would
hold on to him."
Vanbigh said nothing. He looked at once surprised, distrustful,
troubled.
Gorham talked on impulsively. "This is the first genuine case of
conscience I have seen for many a year! Believe a boy who couldn't
endure to chouse me out of half a dollar burned my theatre! No, sir! I
tell you I have lived so long by sham heroics and sham sentiment--and I
am so sick of shams, and the world is generally such a big, shameless
sham--that I'm mighty apt to know a genuine thing when I see it by
the sheer force of contrast. _That_ boy won't jump the town! A boy
with all that conscience to carry _couldn't_ run away! He is innocent.
And this is a terrible charge. He is helpless and he ought to be
befriended. I want you to give bail for him!"
The broker was not only dubious--he was becoming greatly embarrassed as
well.
"Suppose," he suggested in a constrained voice, "it should be
discovered somehow that I am not acting for myself in bailing him, but
for _you_."
Gorham snapped his fingers. "I don't care! I don't intend to leave
that little boy to languish in jail for months, for a year perhaps,
till his trial comes off. I tell you the idea of doing this little
good turn freshens me all over. I feel as if I had been on a big drunk
and somehow got a gourd of cold water from a little spring under a
hillside, where I used to stop to drink when I was a boy driving the
cows from the pasture. I _have_ been drunk,--on artificiality, and
worldliness, and selfishness."
"But," remonstrated the broker. Then he paused.
"But what, man?" exclaimed Gorham impatiently.
The broker went red and was silent. Indeed, how could he find words to
suggest seriously to a man of unblemished integrity that by this act
of charity, as for mitigating circumstances men from sheer motives of
humanity sometimes refuse to prosecute, he might compromise himself. He
might be suspected of having connived at the burning of the theatre for
the sake of the insurance money and then having secretly furnished bail
for the captured accomplice for fear that the boy, if left in prison,
would reveal and incriminate his principal.
"Oh, surely, surely,--no one could ever imagine such an absurdity!"
thought Vanbigh, deeming this but a bit of over alert and captious
caution.
Gorham was beginning to show unmistakable signs of anger, even offense.
Yet he was only the more determined.
"Jim," he said in a different tone, "you and all your family have
always protested yourselves under great obligations to me."
He paused as if for a reply.
"You know what we feel for you!" Vanbigh replied warmly. He lifted
earnest eyes as he spoke.
For Gorham had been a schoolfellow of Vanbigh's elder brother, and
although later in life they had drifted apart in point of association,
there had always been that affectionate tie of old reminiscence between
them. Only some two or three years earlier than the present they had
chanced to meet in New Orleans, where they were lingering still at
the time of the outbreak of one of the terrible pestilences of yellow
fever. Gorham, when his friend succumbed, one of the first cases,
nursed him like a brother, would not leave him, although he could then
have escaped in the general panic-stricken exodus, never left him,
indeed, for an instant, and after his death, being detained by the
quarantine, contracted the infection and came very near death himself,
alone and among strangers. People said that it was a mere impulse of
Gorham's,--but the relatives of his friend felt and expressed great
gratitude. He himself had never before mentioned it.
"I know what you all _said_," he remarked significantly. "I never
doubted it before." He would have paid "good money" to an actor who
could command a tone of so subtle an inflection as to make such a hit
as that!
The broker rose and put on his hat.
"I shall not let you doubt it again!" he protested.
"You are a good fellow, Jim!" cried Gorham, with great satisfaction in
carrying his point.
"But it must be understood that I cannot undertake to act for you,
under the circumstances; if the boy takes flight I lose the money
myself," Vanbigh resumed.
He was thinking himself justified in this after all. He could have the
boy kept under surveillance without his knowledge, and at the first
suspicious intimation of flight his bondsmen could surrender him.
Vanbigh felt that he could hardly refuse Gorham aught in reason, and
believing the boy innocent of the crime Gorham had evidently set his
heart on bail for him. "But where am I to find another bondsman?" the
broker exclaimed, realizing that these considerations would scarcely
have weight with any other person. "The law, as you know, requires two
sureties on the bond."
"Get Frank," suggested Gorham easily; for Frank was the broker's
younger brother.
"Frank will kick like a mule!" Vanbigh said reflectively, rather
wincing from the prospective fraternal conflict.
"Frank always kicks like a whole team!" commented Gorham. "But you can
manage him."
The broker shook his head doubtfully. He appreciated, for indeed he
had learned from experience, that a conflict with those of one's own
household presents special and difficult belligerent elements. He was
expectant of a controversy rather than disappointed by his brother
Frank's attitude when, repairing to his residence for lunch, he
broached the matter and requested the fraternal coöperation; for Frank
promptly refused. Any disinterested spectator would have thought Frank
the more formidable figure in any encounter, domestic or otherwise.
Frank was an amateur athlete, and as he sat in the comfortable library
lighting his cigar after luncheon, the contour of his strong, shapely
limbs under his light fawn-tinted spring suit, the pose of his blond
head on his broad shoulders, the strength of his grip suggested in
the mere manner of using his fingers, in casting away the match, all
intimated a muscular reserve power none the less formidably apparent
for being relaxed.
"I am beholden to you, Jim," he replied satirically. "Seem to think I
am insane!"
The windows of the room looked out upon the wide woodland vistas of
the driving-park just across the street. The heavy velvet carpet,
the antique tall bookcases of time-darkened mahogany that lined the
walls, even the spacious mirror above the marble mantelpiece,--all
were obviously relics of the past. The contour of the old-fashioned
square brick house, faced with gray stone, bespoke its condition as
overtaken by the march of municipal progress, rather than any choice
of the fashionable site in the vicinity of the park. In fact it was
the habit of the household to bewail the approach of the town, that
in its swift strides and wealthy expansion had overhauled their quiet
suburban home. But the approach of town had really worked them no
harm, either material or sentimental. They were none the worse for the
letter-box and lamp-post on the corner, and the splendid residences of
the newcomers that made up the solid blocks of the vicinity had served
to enormously enhance the value of the property. From the windows
of the library and the drawing-rooms one might never know that the
driving-park across the street was not still the "old woods" of years
ago, save for the broad, smooth, well-kept roads winding deep among
the vistas of the forest trees; and the sylvan tangles were no less
picturesque now, because highly appreciated and carefully conserved
by the taste of the park commissioners, than heretofore, when not
considered at all. Even the sound of the town was but a dull murmur as
it came in at the open windows; one could not discriminate the bang of
the cable car which had set Jim down at the corner. They were to all
intents and purposes as far away from city life and city thoughts as
if the woodland opposite, that cast so welcome and soft a green shadow
through the lace curtains and gave so verdant and vernal a sylvan view,
were really a wilderness instead of its graceful simulacrum.
"It's just as well, perhaps, that nobody told Gorham that _he_ seemed
insane when he fairly threw his life away, as he thought, rather
than desert poor Phil,--who after all had no sort of claim on him,"
the broker replied, lighting his cigar also, but with quick, nervous
gestures.
Frank was smoking hard. "Did you ask me to bail _Jasper Gorham_?" he
demanded sarcastically, between two mighty puffs.
"I did _not_, indeed!" responded his brother, and then there was
silence, save for a subdued clatter of dishes from the dining-room
beyond a cross hall, and the sound of some pleasant feminine voices on
a side veranda, upon which it opened.
Frank was more apathetic than his brother, and better held in hand, but
nevertheless the tone of this rejoinder struck home.
"You ask me," Frank began to justify himself, holding his cigar to one
side and waving the smoke from his head with his other hand,--"you
ask me to play stalking-horse for Gorham, to _pretend_ to go on the
bail-bond of this young criminal while Gorham is really his security."
"Frank," said the elder brother coolly, "I should really be warranted
in throwing you out of the window."
"Lay hold!" said the athlete complacently.
Then there was silence for a time, and the two smoked quietly, now and
again eying each other calmly, as if there had been no passage of arms
between them.
The ladies were coming in from the veranda. Frank had a vague sensation
of uneasiness. He was of that type of man who seeks to exclude women
from the discussion of business and who doubts the propriety of their
holding property in their own right, even more than the policy of
extending to them the suffrage. But the broker's coolness in the
feminine presence implied the conviction that after all it would be
men who would control whatever extension of privilege the future might
hold for women. He was contemplating even now an intention of enlisting
the interest of these as against the fraternal kicker. It was he,
therefore, who renewed the subject immediately upon their entrance.
"You are mistaken, Frank," he said. "I gave Jasper Gorham to understand
distinctly that in any event we would act on our own responsibility,
and lose any money that may be lost,--if the boy should escape
surveillance."
"What is it that Mr. Gorham wants?" demanded their mother, younger of
aspect than one would expect from the presence of these stalwart sons.
Her hair was abundant, though white, and waved heavily back from a
strong, sweet, animated face with fine, well-set blue eyes. She was
clad still in a mourning dress in memory of the son who had perished
in the pestilence, and her voice trembled on the syllables of the
manager's name.
The younger lady paused, too, at the sound, and turned her head
inquiringly. She wore a dainty house-gown, but even its tones were
black and white. She had dark hair rolled _à la Pompadour_, and on her
soft pink-and-white face was an incongruous expression of determination
that glanced brightly, too, in her clear gray eyes. She had taken a
baby of six months of age from a white-capped nurse, and was just
consigning him to the arms of his uncle, for this was Jim's wife.
"Gorham wants to avoid imprisoning a boy--a mere child--who is somehow
concerned in the fire and robbery--suspected of knowing something about
the affair," explained the elder Vanbigh.
"Just like him!" cried both women, in a breath.
"Of course he will prosecute the little lad, if the evidence should
warrant it, but he thinks it the unlikeliest thing in the world that
the boy is guilty at all, and until there is more developed against the
child he hates to lock him up for months and months! It would do no
good for Gorham to refuse to prosecute him, for the other prosecutors
would hold on to him. So the little boy has gone to jail. Gorham is
terribly wrought up about it."
"But can't you arrange it somehow, James?" his mother asked. "I should
so like for you to be able to do something for Mr. Gorham." She sighed
as she spoke.
No adequate requital of their obligations had been possible, of course.
They had not been able to further Gorham's plans in any respect. He was
a rich man, and reputed even richer than he was. He had no speculative
tendency outside of the theatrical business. As for social prestige,
he was not of their sort, and their circle not his. In truth, he had
not cared often to meet these tearful, exacting women, who regarded him
as a hero, and whose ideals so far exceeded his imagination and his
ambition.
"Gorham asked _me_ to go on the bail-bond," continued the broker,
"although he said I should lose nothing if the boy absconds; but
I wouldn't agree to that, and I asked Frank, for him,--but Frank
wouldn't."
"Oh, _Frank_!" The poignant duet rose like a wail, and the athlete
cowered behind his nephew's pink ribbon shoulder-knots and white frock
as the child bounced and gurgled and squealed beguilingly at him.
"Do you think you are right to set them on me?" said the strong man
weakly.
"Quit carousing with the baby and talk sense!" his brother adjured him.
"Oh, _Frank_! remember!" cried his mother in tears.
"Oh, _Frank_, money was nothing then! No friends, no help, every
creature but Mr. Gorham fleeing from the plague-stricken!" cried
Frank's sister-in-law.
"And how thoughtful for us--for _me_!--to remember and bring me my
son's last words, his last messages!" The tears choked his mother's
utterance.
"And then," said the younger woman, weeping in sympathy,--"to recall
every incident,--the details of the treatment,--to make us feel that
everything was done for poor Phil that we could have had done, had we
been with him too! I don't see _how_ we could bear to think of Phil,
except that Mr. Gorham was with him to the last."
"And listened to his latest sigh and closed his eyes in death!" said
his mother.
"And then he almost died too; he risked his life--to make sure that
Phil had every chance for his own! Oh,--_Frank_!"
"Yes, yes,--he followed him to the gates of death and was only turned
back by a miracle, it seemed--oh, _Frank_!"
"But it can't be a question of money with Frank," said his
sister-in-law, wiping her eyes. "_Frank_ would not stand on a question
of mere money!"
"He thinks that we may be misconstrued," explained her husband. "And
at first I was doubtful. But now it seems very plain. Gorham naturally
does not want to keep this child cooped up in jail so long. He'll
prosecute him fast enough if the boy seems to have really had anything
to do with the crime or any guilty knowledge of it. But Gorham doesn't
believe this. He thinks the facts will come out the sooner if the boy
is footloose and free. Of course he will be kept under surveillance all
the time, and could hardly run away if he wished. We are in no sort of
danger of losing the money, as far as that goes, and really _I_ could
not refuse Gorham,--he was so intent upon it!"
"Oh,--_Frank_!" cried his mother.
"Oh,--_Frank_!" cried his brother's wife.
"Where's my hat?" said the athlete faintly. "Take the baby before I
drop him! I'm fairly knocked out! Let me go! Come, Jim!"
On the way down town Frank was again over the traces once or twice, but
kicking was in vain, and he was going easily in harness, although fully
realizing the awkwardness of the situation, when late in the afternoon
they were admitted to the jail. As the door of the cell opened, the
jailer with grim humor said to Ned, "I'm sorry to part with you, my
boy,--the next time you come you must make us a longer visit!"
Ned turned his flushed, swollen, tear-stained face with a stare of
blank amazement. He did not understand what the jailer meant, and he
showed no recognition whatever of the newcomers.
The jailer suddenly noted the fact that the two gentlemen were
evidently total strangers to Ned. He paused in his banter to look
wonderingly from one to the other.
"I've come to bail you, youngster," said the elder of the two,
affecting a familiarity which he by no means felt. "Get your hat!"
Ned mechanically obeyed. He was afraid to ask an explanation,--to speak
a word,--lest it be discovered in some way that the extraordinary good
luck in this deliverance was all a mistake.
The jailer still stared,--more than ever after the great gate had
opened and let them out on the street. The two gentlemen walked on in
advance, while Ned followed with an officer. The magistrate's office
was but a little distance up the street on the opposite side, and
there Ned, scarcely believing his eyes, watched the bold flourishes
with which his two sureties signed his bail-bond, entering into an
undertaking in the penal sum of one thousand dollars each for his
appearance at the next term of the Criminal Court.
When these formalities were concluded he and his new friends came out
together still in silence. He glanced instinctively over the way at the
grim walls of the jail. There at the gate the jailer stood. He peered
after them in the closing dusk as they walked silently away,--peered
after them till the night seemed to swallow them up. "This beats all!"
he ejaculated.
And still wondering he went back into his stronghold.
CHAPTER IX
It seemed to Ned that the best use he could make of his liberty was to
pound Pete Bateman.
When, still silent, he parted from his silent bondsmen, he went without
delay to his false friend's home. He took the alleyway, as he always
did, being pretty sure of finding the boys at this hour in the back
yard splitting kindling or bringing in the wash from the clothesline,
or engaged in similar small domestic duties. In fact he heard the sound
of chopping wood as he opened the gate.
The sound abruptly ceased when he thrust in his head.
It had grown quite dark. He could not guess whether the figure with the
shapeless cap bending over the kindling were Pete or Tom, until after
an astonished gaze at the intruder it skulked behind a wash-tub set
high on a wooden bench.
That was Pete--every time!
Now and again the old cap peeped hastily out from behind the wash-tub
and was as hastily withdrawn.
Ned still stood at the gate. He hardly knew what had become of his
resolve. He tried to rally it by thinking of the fate in store for him
when this interval of liberty should be at an end and the day set for
his trial dawn.
Here was the lying witness at his mercy. He could thrash him, and
thrash him well,--for fat Pete was no fighter. But somehow he felt that
a boy who hid behind his mother's wash-tub ought to be allowed to stay
there. Pete did not seem worth a good substantial licking.
As Ned stood undecided one of his mother's injunctions flashed through
his memory.
"Ef ye can't git yer consent ter return good fur evil," she often said,
"hold yer hands ennyhow from harmin' them ez have hurt ye."
All his troubles, first and last, had come from disregarding that
simple, uncultured mother's simple precepts.
Ned shut the gate and walked away.
His account of the day's proceedings seemed a wild, terrible story
to the panic-stricken woman who sat cowering in the little room that
opened on the vistas of chimney-pots and clouds and stars. He found her
in tears. She had just learned of his arrest through a message from the
managing editor of the paper, who sent to say that he had arranged to
have Ned's wages paid to her during the boy's imprisonment as regularly
as if he were still at work. The editor had some charitable hobbies
which thus liberally expressed themselves, aided in this instance by
his confrères of the various departments of the paper. For although the
editorial force deemed Ned the tool of the incendiaries and thieves,
and thought that his obstinate silence was strangely incriminating,
they still had faith enough in him to believe him the victim of a
deception, and innocent of all intentional wrong-doing; that he was
somehow the dupe of an over-reaching craft, and the forlorn scapegoat
of the real criminals. Even thus, the situation was discreditable to
the last degree, and well calculated to alienate whatever friends
the little lad had been able to make for himself. But when the "dude
reporter," who had hied himself straightway to the office, detailed the
strange disasters that had befallen the printer's devil, the editorial
force remembered a thousand trifling benefactions received at his
small, willing, ink-smirched hands, and a subscription, circulated
among the desks, aggregated a sum sufficient to justify a promise of
the continuance of the payment of his weekly wages for the indefinite
time of his incarceration, till his trial should set the question of
his guilt or innocence at rest.
Ned's presence at liberty once more could not reassure his mother. Long
after he had gone to announce his release to his employers and resume
his work she crouched pale and chill beside the monkey-stove, although
the air was warm and languorous. Her mind was filled with terror for
the future and with those ever unavailing regrets for the past and the
simple country home of her youth.
As Ned reached the newspaper building and looked up at the brilliantly
illuminated windows flaring against the dark sky, he had a renewed
sense of the blessedness of liberty and the privilege of labor, and
once more the singular manner in which bail had come to him recurred to
his mind.
His surprise, however, at the sensation which the story of his release
produced in the sensation-seasoned composing-room soon effaced every
other impression.
"Hold on a minute," said the foreman, interrupting the recital in its
midst.
He stepped into the office of the managing editor, and presently that
magnate came out, looking alert and inquisitive and catechistic, as a
newspaper man will when there is a mystery in the air.
From some subtle instinct Ned knew that the foreman had made
representations which the managing editor had pronounced preposterous,
and had refused to believe.
"So you were bailed, were you?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," replied Ned.
The editor fitted the tips of his fingers together very accurately
while he looked hard at Ned. He spoke slowly and impressively.
"Considering the very serious nature of the crimes with which you are
charged and the amount fixed for bail, your sureties must repose a
great deal of confidence in you. I hope that you will not abuse it."
"Naw, sir, I ain't got no notion o' runnin' away," declared Ned stoutly.
Both the editor and the foreman were looking at him very gravely.
"Who were your bondsmen?" asked the editor.
"Sir?" said Ned, bewildered by their manner.
"Who gave bail for you?" The editor varied the phrase.
"I dunno, sir," replied the little devil.
The foreman grinned triumphantly.
"_Don't know?_" echoed the editor amazed.
"Naw, sir," admitted Ned. "I disremember their names. I never seen
either o' them till to-day."
Strange as he had thought the occurrence at first, it appeared still
more strange now when he saw how others regarded it. They found it
difficult, too, to believe that two men whom Ned had never before seen,
whose very names he did not know, would each stake a thousand dollars
upon his honesty when he was accused of house-breaking, larceny, and
arson, and had just been committed to jail after his examining trial.
The managing editor, who had known him long, had done all that was
liberal, sympathetic, and sensible. That two strangers should be
even asked to go upon his bail-bond seemed to Ned a wild impulsive
vagary,--as indeed it was.
It did not seem so to the others. Business men do not account for
the assumption of financial liabilities on the basis of an impulsive
vagary. There was a very stern expression on the editor's face as
he turned away. This journal had done much to unmask corruption in
high places, and to uphold the standard of public morals and private
integrity. That it was not altogether too good for this world and a
very human newspaper after all was manifest in its overweening and
puffed up pride in its career of righteousness. It had waxed bold and
censorious,--it was even esteemed insolent and trenching upon the
reckless,--with its successes and its impunity, and it spoke out very
openly without fear or favor.
Ned with a sinking heart began to experience a vague but troublous fear
that further disasters were impending because of this. A little later
he chanced to be passing through the local room. He was obliged to
pause in his errand to the city editor, for that personage himself was
blocking the aisle as he stood and conferred with a reporter at one of
the tables.
The reporter, eager and over-zealous as a cub-reporter is apt to be,
had sprung up as if to meet so good an assignment halfway, clutching
his precious note-book to his bosom in his frenzy of haste and
repeating his orders as if to fix them in his mind. "Yes, sir,--go to
the jail to-night, even if I can't get a peep at the bail-bond till
to-morrow."
Ned did not understand,--why was he going to the jail?
The boy's face bore so pointed an inquiry that the city editor noticed
it as he turned around and almost stumbled over the printer's devil
with the message from the foreman of the composing-room. The city
editor did not reply to the urgency for "local copee."
"Hey, boy," he said irritably, "always under foot!" Ned fancied that
the editor would prefer that he should not have heard the reporter's
assignment.
But this was no "scoop," the boy argued sagely. The detail of the
examining trial would be in all the other papers in the morning. And a
bail-bond could no more be hidden than a city that is set on a hill.
He fancied later that an effort was made in the editorial departments
of the paper to allay his suspicions that aught unusual was perceived
about the affair. Nothing more was asked of him, nor mentioned in his
presence. The editors and the elder members of the reportorial staff
maintained without apparent strain this check upon their personal and
professional curiosity. But he could detect the "cub-reporters," the
devil's natural enemies, looking at him sometimes with an eager greed
to discuss the matter with him that could not be disguised. "Like a dog
at a bone," thought Ned, in dismay. For he realized that the editors
had serious purposes in this scheming silence. They evidently desired
that he should not take alarm prematurely, and, reporting from the
paper on his own account, instead of for it, convey warnings to others
of the storm brewing there.
Their caution, however, did not extend to the composing-room. They
regarded the printers as in some sort appurtenances of those precincts
and with no functions nor interests beyond,--the mere tongue as it were
of the paper, while the editorial force represented the subtler and
essential powers of speech. It is needless to say that the compositors
took no such inarticulate view of themselves. Ned heard much in these
days among the cases which he could not understand and which therefore
made him wince. The printers never tired of asking questions about
the unexpected bail, even when at work, thus infringing the rule of
comparative silence usually preserved. They maintained, however, an
affectation of the most careless and casual interest, pausing in the
midst of an interrogatory, for instance, to slip the last stick off
upon the galley, and not resuming till the type was locked to take
the galley proof. They received his replies with sly winks at each
other, significant leers, and similar demonstrations, until the boy,
bewildered and angry, grew sullen and would not answer at all. He
perceived in dismay that his silence added to their excitement and
interest, and he began to believe that they too entertained strange
suspicions about the affair of the bail-bond. He discovered that they
made an effort to sound Peter Bateman and to find out from him if he
knew anything of the mysterious reason which actuated Ned's sureties in
going on his bail-bond and thus effecting his release from jail, where
otherwise he must have languished for many weary months.
Peter Bateman's domestic relations were such as to prevent him from
being altogether secure or happy in the time intervening between
Ned's committal and trial, even if he had not dreaded the ordeal of
testifying again and in the criminal court. The Bateman family were
under no illusions concerning him, although they did not dream that
he had deliberately borne false witness against his former friend,
but they thought his rectitude was of that nature and tenuity to be
judiciously fortified, and many were the lectures unceasingly dinned
into his unwilling ears on the evils of lying, and the hard fate of the
liar both in this world and the next. Knowing as he did that he had
already deeply involved himself, these were hard things to hear, and
under the menace of the open word and the secret thought Pete fell away
till his contour no longer resembled the Bologna sausage as of yore!
He lay awake at night and he wept much behind the stove during the
day. He almost felt that if he had another chance he would actually
tell the truth! Second chances, however, are rare in this world, and
the inexorable law, in particular, holds out few opportunities for
changing one's mind. His father and mother and grandfather were afraid
to trust him out of their sight, not knowing what he might be at.
Under the circumstances they could not say that he had done aught that
was implicating, but they knew Pete of old and would hardly have been
surprised at any development which would involve him and release Ned
from the trouble. They berated Ned, notwithstanding, without limit,
citing what he must have been to reach at last the fate at hand for him
now. And so deceitful! they would exclaim in horror.
"Ned seemed lots more reliable than our Petey! At a pinch I'd ruther
have trusted Ned in the cake-shop than Petey," Mrs. Bateman would
declare.
"I wouldn't trust Pete there nohow,--without he wore a muzzle!" said
Pete's grandfather, who was the proprietor of a little bakery, and
Pete was not so fat for nothing!
He had not the heart now to purloin so much as a macaroon. No murderer
ever dreaded an encounter with the ghost of the defunct victim more
quailingly than Pete feared meeting Ned. He lived too in absolute
terror of the junior "typos" and galley-boys, who he fancied had
entered into a conspiracy to decoy him out and thrash him by way
of partisanship for Ned, for now and again Pete contemplated the
unvarnished truth and was for the nonce oblivious of the fact that only
his own guilty conscience and Ned were aware that he had sworn falsely
and maliciously in the effort to compass the ruin of his friend. So
often, however, did some fellow employee of Ned's come to the shop
that it might well warrant Pete's conclusion. He had persuaded his
grandfather to let him "tend shop" as a subterfuge to keep him indoors
and protect him from the chance encounter he feared. He had made the
most sacred promises in regard to devouring the stock, for Pete's
capacities in this line were formidable, and so far he had kept his
pledge, for his appetite had vanished. "I'd ruther ye had teeth like
mine," his grandfather had said, showing an eight-dollar set in a
grin, "for then ye could hypothecate 'em, and with that security in
the safe I'd feel more sure o' ye!" But Pete had begun to repent of
his bargain, now that the curiosity of the composing-room had turned
in his direction. He could sometimes have screamed with affright when
the little bell on the door of the cake-shop tinkled as it opened,
announcing an entrance, and, sent from the back room to wait on
the customer, he would behold on the other side of the counter the
round, rosy face and preternaturally sharp, alert eyes of one of the
cub-printers. But for the counter between them Pete could not have
stood his ground. The junior employees of the paper developed a taste
for tarts that must have wrought stomachic havoc and financial wreck.
In these crucial interviews the vacillating gourmand invariably found
it difficult to determine exactly what it was that he wanted to eat.
"Cream-puffs,--have you heard anything more about the fire?"
"Naw! an' don't wanter!" replies Pete.
"Not _those_,--some with chocolate a-top. Who do _you_ think set the
theatre afire?"
"Dunno! Chocolate ain't never on cream-puffs, nohow."
"Well--what's _that_ then? Do you think that Ned knows who burnt it?"
"I dunno nuthin' 'bout Ned! _Them?_ just plain chocolate cake."
"Well--you swore to lots about Ned, considering you don't 'know
nothing' about him. I wonder he doesn't thrash you!"
"He dassent!" cries Pete tumultuously.
Whereupon the cub holds up his chin and looks critically over the
counter at Pete, who sidles back and forth under this menacing
gaze, and wonders if the cub can jump over the counter, and if
anybody--grandpa, even "mommer"--is within call!
"Why don't you thrash Ned, then! They tell me he called you a liar in
open court! And he is a small boy."
Pete begins to nod his head menacingly. "He'll git somethin' worse'n
the lie when his trial comes off!"
"Where did he ever know the men who bailed him, anyhow?"
"In the theayter, mebbe,--they all burnt it together!" retorts Pete
hardily.
"_Look-a-here!_ you seem to know a _deal_, my hearty! More than is
healthy!" declares the cub, with the affectation of a long, speculative
look, which wilts Pete.
"Oh, take your cake an' go along!" exclaims Pete. "I ain't goin' to
talk no mo'!"
"Just like Ned! He doesn't talk any nowadays. For the same reason, I
reckon. Might tell too much!"
"Oh, take your cake an' go!" screams Pete in desperation.
"Where is it? Oh, on the counter; well,--is _that_ coffee cake or
currant bun? One thing is certain--there will be a reporter at the
trial!" the cub-printer adds with a menacing inflection, as one should
say, "The judgment day is a-coming along!"
Under this stress Pete tries to rally, realizing that he is even now
metaphorically face to face with the public. "Must I wrap up the coffee
cake?" with a smile that would be an appropriate concomitant of a
raging toothache.
"About as well as anything," and with a look indicative of the boxer
latent in every man and a disposition to trounce Pete, which with
difficulty he holds in leash, the cub-printer goes his way to his
fellows of the composing-room and reports no progress.
Again and again scenes almost exactly similar to this took place, with
only a change as to the identity of Pete's interlocutor, and as often
he pleaded with his parents to be released from the duties he had been
so anxious to assume in "tendin' shop." But they believed, and not
without reason, that the street awaited Pete's idle time and there
mischief lurked, and thus with his gnawing conscience and his miserable
fears and his sadly jocose martyrdom he counted the days, and repented
of the past, and dreaded the future, and kept a lively and anxious
lookout for Ned!
He was but secondary indeed in Ned's consideration. Ned did not even
ask what transpired in the visits which he knew the galley-boys and
printer-cubs made to the Bateman shop, when they returned, without news
indeed, but munching their purchases from paper bags with the name of
the elder Bateman printed thereon. Why should they go? What discovery
could the elder printers anticipate in sending them on these bootless
errands? The attitude of mind of the printers seemed to him the more
formidable because he knew it was shared in the editorial rooms, where,
however, all its manifestations were carefully cloaked from him. Yet
he often noted indicia which convinced him that the suspicions of
the editorial force were by no means allayed. He could not divine
these suspicions nor whom they concerned. He grew more alarmed, and a
conversation which chanced to come to his ears one day occasioned him
much troubled meditation.
He was going into the "rinktum" of the editor-in-chief for copy. The
door stood slightly ajar. He made no noise and for some moments his
entrance was unnoticed. The crack reporter of the paper in a mysterious
undertone was detailing something about the burned theatre to the
editor-in-chief. There were present other editors of the various
departments. Their faces all wore that excited, absorbed look which
Ned had noticed whenever the name of Gorham was mentioned. One hasty
scribe, in leaving off writing to come to listen, had thrust his pen
behind his ear with an eager awkwardness that left a smear upward from
the eyebrow and gave him an unwonted Mephistophelian aspect.
"Gorham says he is not going to rebuild his theatre," continued the
reporter.
The ensuing silence had all the effect of an interrogation point.
"Says he is going to build stores only, strictly commercial purposes,"
pursued the interviewer.
There was a murmur of surprise, which could not, however, be construed
as an interruption.
"He said he had concluded to go out of the theatrical business,--he
had got sick of it; I asked why, and--and"--The young man broke into a
laugh of mingled scorn and enjoyment. It was expressive, but clogged
utterance.
"Why?" demanded the coterie in chorus.
"His mother was a Methodist," exclaimed the young sprig with another
burst of hilarity.
A moment of dumb amazement.
"Has he just found that out?" asked the editor at last.
The writer who had smeared his face with ink accented its effect with a
sneer. "Just found it out when he has gotten rid of a ruinous piece of
property, converted into a splendid commercial building site, and with
his pockets full of spot cash, his insurance."
"Ah, but his pockets are not full of cash," said the interviewer.
"I was just coming to that. The insurance companies haven't as yet
ponied up. They have paid nothing. They seem 'rather slow,' he said. He
supposes there must be 'a little hitch' somewhere,--it is a large sum
with each company,--but he expects it presently. That is what he said.
Upon my word I can't make him out. He told it all as innocently as a
baby."
Ned could not make them out. He hardly felt that he understood the
language in which they spoke, so little meaning did their words convey
to him. He puzzled over this conversation often, but without result.
He encountered this spirit even at the foreman's house, where formerly
he had loved to go. When he had first been employed at the office the
foreman had chanced to send him to his dwelling for some forgotten
article, and Bob Platt, who was a breezy, jovial soul and keenly
relished a jest or quip with scant regard to its point or quality, if
but it was merry, found much enjoyment in the account which he received
of the country child's first encounter with a parrot, an honored
member of the Platt household. Thereafter he encouraged Ned's presence
there that he might himself have a laugh at the boy's overpowering
astonishment at the loquacious accomplishments of the bird and his
simple-minded horror of its profanity.
"You see I ought to have sent it to Sunday-school when it was young!"
Bob Platt seriously explained, and the new importation from the
backwoods believed this at the time, as he would then have believed
anything that Bob Platt chose to tell him, especially about that _lusus
naturæ_, a bird that could talk and swear!
Later he came to know Bob Platt as "a mighty kind man, but will have
his joke!" This just appraisement was brought about chiefly through
Mrs. Platt's interference to prevent the devil from being "bedeviled"
beyond the point of comfort and good-nature. She would not permit his
mystification about city ways and his implicit reliance on the gay
fables invented by Bob Platt, which Ned would have accepted as if they
were gospel truth.
"Don't let him humbug you, Eddy!" she would interrupt warningly, at the
very crisis of the fun.
For Bob Platt was by no means "boss" at home! His ascendency ceased at
the threshold of the composing-room. Mrs. Platt gave Ned good, sound
information and admonition to counteract the wondrous stories of the
foreman, which the credulous boy was prepared to swallow whole coming
from that source, so great was his confidence in Bob Platt, and to say
truth his serious-minded wife spoiled many a good and harmless joke.
Mrs. Platt gradually became a genuine partisan of the lad. His kindly
disposition was early appreciated by her. Indeed, only the day after
he had first been sent there he had stopped on his way down town, for
her neat home lay in a quiet cul-de-sac, with half a dozen other pretty
cottages, opening off a genteel street between the dreary tenement
region where he lived and the business portion of the city. After a
neighborly country fashion he wanted to know if she had any "yerrands"
which he might do for her on his way back, "bein' as you ain't got no
boys, an' nothin' but girls," he explained sympathetically and with an
expression of genuine pity.
Despite her intolerance of jokes at his expense Mrs. Platt thought his
commiseration very funny, but she had her own reasons to feel deeply
the lad's simple effort at courtesy and proffer of kind offices. Her
heart was the more tender in the knowledge that she had not long to
live. A persistent bronchial affection, with which she had warred
for years, which had kept them poor, devouring money and care and
time like some veritable monster, had, still unappeased, developed
into consumption, now so unmistakable that even Bob Platt's laugh was
often petrified on his jovial face by the perception of the fierce and
ghastly fate that stood awaiting his household in the near future. She
accepted Ned's politeness in the spirit in which it had been offered,
and sometimes made him proud and pleased in executing some trifling
commission. He came at last to be more genuinely useful, and often
was intrusted with the escort of the four small girls of the family to
the Sunday-school; and by this means Mrs. Platt got in some missionary
work, for at that Sunday-school Ned heard of many comfortable things
his spirit had not known before.
The four Platt girls had also some secular pleasures in which he
participated, and the chief of these was called by them "viewin' the
percession!" Never was there a muster of militia or a parade of firemen
or a wonderful exhibition of bicyclists through the streets that they
were not present to see. Whenever the exaction of the payment of some
grotesque election bet set the community agog over the spectacle of
one commercial magnate propelling another in a wheelbarrow through the
principal thoroughfares, preceded by a band of music, and with all the
teeth of the town a-grin in evidence of relish, the keenest cackle of
callow laughter came from the four Platts and their attendant printer's
devil. Never a circus tent was pitched and the elephant made the
tour of the town that Ned, with each hand held tight by the smaller
girls while the two elder followed close behind within clutch of his
protective jacket, did not hie himself with his charges to some coigne
of vantage particularly adapted to joyously see all that there was to
be seen. It was always Mrs. Platt who thanked the boy, but it was Bob
who owed him special gratitude on these occasions, for but for this
substitute he must needs have played squire of dames himself, for the
Platt girls would take no denial, and their father had long ago lost a
living interest in elephants.
Nowadays, however, Ned was aware that it was Bob Platt himself who took
special note of him whenever he chanced to appear at the house, far
more rarely though it was than heretofore; for the boy was both proud
and sensitive, and he feared lest some allusion to his arrest and that
terrible day behind the bars escape these friends of happier times.
"I want to set Ned to talking," Platt would urge when his wife would
object to his interference with the lad.
"No! you get no 'scoops' here!" she would declare. For she believed
that Bob Platt would not spare his grandmother had the ancient dame
been capable of furnishing the paper with a genuine "scoop."
She had herself earnestly remonstrated with Ned and urged him to make
a clean breast of the whole affair, and she believed faithfully that
the boy had been terrorized into silence rather than was guilty of
crime. When he resisted her arguments by simply maintaining a dumb
persistence, she felt it was the part of wisdom to torment him no more.
"Give him a chance to recover his spirits and his confidence in people!
His whole life is at stake, and he shan't be scooped just for the
paper!"
But she could not prevent the parrot from calling "Fi-ah! Fi-ah!
Fi-ah!" as it often did, nor hinder Ned's guilty start at the sound.
It would suddenly rouse him from his reverie, when he sat on the steps
of the little side porch where the parrot's cage hung in a honeysuckle
vine, and Bob Platt would mark the demonstration with an unconsciously
knowing look as he smoked his pipe beneath the flowering tendrils.
The parrot had no sinister intention in the matter. The call was only
one of its mimetic accomplishments acquired by much repetition, for
there was an engine-house only a block away, and the bird had been
accustomed to this shrill alarm for years.
Often Ned had been to this engine-house when the men were at their
drill, and he generally escorted the four Platt girls, who could not
squeal loud enough nor shrill enough to express their admiration,--not
of the splendidly efficient men, swinging down so quickly into place,
all equipped and ready in one swift moment as it seemed, but of the
horses and their preternatural wisdom in taking up their proper
position of their own initiative, without a word of command, at the
familiar signal. Of these horses, the favorite was "John Smith," an
ancient warrior indeed, who had fought fire many a year before any of
the Platt girls were born! Superannuated in fact he was, and had been
sold to a dairyman. He himself declined the transfer, and came back to
the engine-house at every alarm in the district, scattering the cans
from the wagon as he galloped till the streets seemed to be flowing
with milk and honey. His loyalty carried the day and he was easily
repurchased, the milkman declaring he must give up either the horse or
the dairy. At each drill the Platt girls sued for permission to pat the
triumphant animal, albeit he took no more notice of their little rosy
paws than of so many apple-blossoms. This had always been an enjoyable
occasion to Ned, who also admired deeply the veteran "John Smith;" but
now he declined to go with the girls.
"I want to see an' hear no more about a fire while I live!" he declared
doggedly.
"Fi-ah! Fi-ah! Fi-ah!" clamored Poll, catching at the word, fluttering
her green and gold wings, and turning her head, with its crooked beak,
downward while she held on to her perch with her hooking claws.
Ned winced anew at the sharp cry, and Bob Platt looked significantly at
his wife. "_Try_ him!" the look said openly. "_You_ can get something
out of him!"
But it was needless for Ned to brace himself for resistance. Mrs. Platt
would not interfere. Her kindness to him was not diminished even after
she had been to see his mother for the first time and had experienced
a cold reception. She had heard from Ned in the early days of her
acquaintance with the boy that his mother held aloof from strangers,
and she had approved of this trait in the simple country woman
transplanted to a new sphere, and said that she thought the better of
Mrs. Macdonald for it. Perhaps she did not expect this reserve in her
turn, when she went to urge the brightest view, and counsel hope and
cheerfulness, and adduce reasons to believe that all the disaster would
be finally explained and smoothed away. She thought, however, that the
attitude of Ned's mother was not unnatural, and that her experience was
not calculated to foster much confidence in city people and city ways.
Despite Mrs. Platt's caution and resolve to report, as it were, naught
of the details of her visit, Bob Platt contrived to ascertain from his
wife the fact that Ned's mother knew no more than they did of the whole
strange affair, that Ned had kept his own counsel, and that she had
evidently never before heard the names of the two men who had given
bail for his appearance at the next term of the Criminal Court, and
thus released him from jail.
All this served to increase the strength of the foreman's suspicions.
Ned grew conscious of this accession of wonder and doubt that began
to envelop him like a veritable atmosphere. So strong were these
suspicions that they began to take on the quality of a grim certainty
and definite menace. He was aware that they concerned others even more
than himself, but who and how he could not for his life divine. He
often went over in his mind the details of all the conversations he
had heard; he recapitulated the impressions made upon him by gestures,
significant glances, all the indicia of unexpressed sentiment, and
strove to deduce the meaning of it all and its effect on the future.
But these speculations at last availed naught, and as the time for his
trial approached the recollection was displaced by his anxiety on his
own account, and the deep despondency which the sight of his mother's
distress induced in him.
One evening--the long lingering summer twilight still lay upon the
roofs and spires--he strolled into the composing-room. It was quite
deserted,--a gas-jet here and there, burning dim and low, only accented
the gloom. Through the open window he could hear the gay chorus of an
opera _al fresco_ in a neighboring beer-garden. In emulation, perhaps,
a mocking-bird in a cage in a barber-shop below mounted his perch and
filled the gas-lit atmosphere, redolent of bay rum and eau de cologne,
with his soft ecstatic roundelay. Ned soon tired of looking out of the
window. He had not read at all of late; he had been so absorbed by
his troubles that he had not cared to keep posted with the times. As
to self-education, of which he had once been so ambitious, he asked
himself bitterly what was the use of education to a boy who might
spend years and years--the best years of his life--behind the bars.
This evening, however, the old craving came back to him in a measure.
He stood irresolute for a moment. Then he turned to the case near by.
He was not very expert in deciphering written characters. He often
sought by practice to remedy this deficiency. He found generally
ample exercise for this inability in the crabbed chirography of the
editor-in-chief. Now as he turned up the gas he recognized the august
scrawl of that magnate in the "copy" perched above the case.
The next instant his heart gave a great bound. His blood rushed to his
head, beating tumultuously for a moment; then it receded, leaving him
pale and dizzy, and feeling as if he were likely to faint.
For he saw written there the name of the manager-owner of the theatre,
coupled with an odious accusation of burning the building, which no one
could know so well as Ned was odiously false.
Ned now learned for the first time that the hot-headed Gorham had taken
offense at some expressions in relation to the affair which the paper,
surcharged with its grave suspicions, had inadvertently let fall.
He had construed this as a reflection upon himself. Arrogant in his
innocence, he had published a card--somewhat braggadocio in its tone,
it must be confessed--in which he defied the editor to speak out his
suspicions plainly, or be branded forever as a coward and a calumniator.
It was the editor's reply which Ned had chanced upon. The newspaper,
through its many resources of procuring information, had learned that
the insurance companies were on the point of formally refusing to make
good the loss on the score of fraud; legal proceedings would doubtless
be instituted on both sides. The time for the paper's "scoop" had
arrived opportunely with the moment when it was necessary for the
editor to answer the allegations against himself.
He had spoken, therefore, and spoken to the point. It had made a very
disastrous showing for the owner, although the editor avoided distinct
averments. He permitted it to be seen that the manager had given cause
for the strongest inferences against him, even to the extent that
he had procured the destruction of his own theatre for the sake of
securing the money for which it was insured. The point that struck
Ned's attention chiefly was the declaration that the boy who had been
accused of complicity in the crime and arrested had been bailed by
parties who were total strangers to the prisoner and all his friends.
When interviewed, one of these sureties, a well-known broker, had
given the most casual answers, excusing himself by reason of a flurry
in certain stocks in which his customers were largely interested, and
which absorbed his attention. The other bondsman, a brother of the
broker, admitted frankly and boldly that he had never seen the boy till
he went on his bond, and "wouldn't know him now from a gate-post;"
and although he and his brother had acted entirely on their own
responsibility in the matter and would make good the bond should the
boy forfeit the bail, they undertook the liability solely to oblige Mr.
Gorham, their close friend, who did not desire to keep so young a lad
imprisoned so long a time, while there was still doubt of his guilt,
and who had even offered to stand in behind them and pay the money
himself should the boy give them the slip. Thus, the editor argued, Mr.
Gorham played the double part of prosecutor and in effect bondsman for
the prisoner.
Ned's hand shook. So it was to Manager Gorham he was indebted for his
liberty. He could not for his life imagine why Gorham had come to his
relief. But he was sharp enough to see, when it had been put before
the mind in this plain way, that most outsiders would take the same
view of it that the editor did; it was evidently the journal's opinion
that the manager feared that the boy, if refused bail, would speak out
and accuse him of himself burning or procuring the destruction of the
building. The editor concluded, perhaps by way of vindicating his own
courage and "taking the dare," by advising the insurance companies to
pay nothing till their investigations should have been pushed in this
direction, and he recommended the owner of the theatre to the kind
attention of the grand jury and the attorney for the State.
Ned, in an agony of remorse and anxiety, clung to the case, almost
overpowered by the realization how evil a thing concealment is, and
what ruin it had wrought here. The incendiaries, he reflected, had
doubtless made their escape in this long interval. He and his fears and
his groundless reasoning were responsible for that,--for more!--for the
blasting of an honest man's character and the wreck of his fortune, for
the insurance companies would pay naught! It seemed a grotesque libel
on likelihood, but the manager might even be arrested, tried, and serve
a long term in the penitentiary, charged with burning his own house to
defraud the insurance companies, because of the wickedness of a gang of
knaves and a foolish boy's folly.
Ned grew more and more alarmed as he read again and again those strong
logical statements that would forever blast the man who had befriended
him at his utmost need, for the paper was a power in the land, and the
editor's word weighed with all sorts of people. Ned might now have
confessed all,--he thought of this once. The habit of concealment,
however, does not give way readily. It yields only after the exhaustion
of its uttermost resources. He asked himself who would now believe
him? He was already accounted a mere tool and accomplice, and his puny
efforts to whitewash such smirches as those intricate blots and tangles
of loop-letters had put upon the manager's name would be ludicrously
futile. He felt that he could measure the incredulity of the public.
He could measure, too, its credulity, alack, when all the town would
read to-morrow the editor's reply!
The town never read it!
In a paroxysm of rage and fear Ned suddenly clutched the sheet and
thrust it into the gas-jet. The blaze leaped up. Distinct shadows
started forth from the murky glooms. The motion alarmed him. He glanced
fearfully over his shoulder. He was still quaking at his own deed when
the "copy" fell, a cinder. But perhaps his purpose was not yet served,
he argued, for the article might have been set up. He looked at the
imposing stone. The type was all ready, and in the chase,--the proof
had been taken,--the revised smirched sheets lay hard by, all bearing
the cabalistic sign O.K., the fiat of the press reader.
"They won't look at it again before the form is locked and goes to
press," Ned said tremulously, for an audacious new idea had flashed
into his mind. The article had compactly filled one third of a column.
He swept the types of this space from the stone and replaced them at
random in the boxes. Then selecting a larger variety, he began some of
the fastest type-setting ever done in that composing-room. For copy
he had gotten hold of a new prospectus of the paper, which was still
in manuscript. Judiciously leaded he thought it might fill the blank
space, and this substitute for the article which he had done away with
he judged was innocent enough. He worked on hard and desperately,--he
did not know how long.
At length he was slipping the last "stick" off upon the galley; he
hastily shunted the type from the galley to the stone in the space that
the obnoxious editorial had occupied; he readjusted the "furniture" by
a stroke of luck, as it were, and turning away to the window he perched
himself upon the sill and gazed demurely at the moon as a step upon the
stairs announced an approach.
CHAPTER X
The step on the stairs was an unsteady step. The foreman reeled into
the room. Ned's eyes brightened. Would not Bob Platt's opportune spree
seem the explanation of any difficulty that might arise on account of
the lost copy, and also of any deficiency in the type-setting?
Still he hardly felt secure from detection until he saw the foreman
with the quoins and the shooting-stick in his hand. Not so tipsy was
Bob Platt that he was not now as always the deft and experienced
handicraftsman. A blow from the mallet here and a blow there,--the
locking was done; and Ned, feeling tipsy himself, dizzy with
excitement, crept out and sat down on the dark staircase.
He wished no one to hear how he panted, for he could hardly breathe as
he reflected on his daring deed. His eyes were hot; he wanted no one
to see the exultant gleam that was chasing the fright out of them.
Now and then he squirmed aside to escape a big foot that brought a
burly shadow lumbering up the stairs, for the printers were coming in
again; so presently were the latest dispatches and the last of the
copy. The telephone bell continually jingled. There was once more
the stir of haste and work and confusion in the composing-room,--the
setting up of the final columns for the other forms. Ned listened
occasionally, expecting to hear his name called. But Bob Platt did not
need him. It seemed a long time that he sat there, gazing up through
the narrow stair window at the stars, those fair and foreign worlds,
glittering so high above the roofs, above the clouds, above the winds.
He heard now and then the agitated voice of the telegraph editor. Once
a reporter came up the stairs in great bounds and with a momentum as
if he had been flung from a catapult. Doubtless he thought he had a
"scoop." "It's a fake, I bet," thought Ned, recovering his normal
size, for he had shrunken to very small proportions to avoid that
headlong rush. He had the best of reasons in his own experience to know
how very thin some of these scoops were.
He realized how the hour was wearing on when he heard the rattle of the
mailing wagons on the stones in the side street. It must be midnight.
Suddenly the thunder of the printing-press broke forth, clank, clank,
clamor and clank. The air was vibrating with its regular, rhythmic
throbs. The building palpitated with it as if it were alive. It was
like the beating heart of a great full-pulsed civilization.
"They're printing my work right now," cried Ned with all the pride of
an author.
Then a twinge of anxiety seized him. He remembered his limited
opportunities, and he had the grace to hope that there were not too
many mistakes in the type-setting.
But such a sight has rarely been seen as that presented by the third
column of the second page when the reeking sheets came from the press.
It was probably discovered by the more distant subscribers receiving
the journal by mail before the paper, as personified by its employees,
knew what had happened to itself.
The town, the immediate vicinity, also read it betimes. And
certainly, although the enormity was caught in the second edition and
hastily replaced with an article already in type on the tariff, the
editor-in-chief was an object of pity the next morning, when opening
complacently the folds of the journal, his eye fell on Ned's handiwork
in the midst of the wit and wisdom of the important editorials. There,
instead of the severe "reply" that should prove he was no merely
malicious calumniator of innocence and integrity, was a typographical
caricature of the prospectus of the paper.
Wildly leaded, with inverted u's and n's and p's and d's, incredibly
"fat," it drunkenly and disconnectedly protested its devotion to the
best interests of the public; "the People's Paper," it reiterated, with
every inadvertent caper the printer's art is heir to. It bragged of
its facilities, its presses, its talented writers, its supplements,
and with orthographical vagaries to which the phonetic craze presents
a soberly conventional aspect it pointed with pride to its career as a
popular educator. Such "spells" as Ned had perpetrated! Lastly, with a
crookedness that was very like a typographic leer, it begged to call
attention to its handsome appearance.
Rude Boreas was but a piping reed to the way the staff roared with
wrath. Ned arrived at the office in the midst of the storm. He had a
confused sense of the general desolation; then the surroundings were
canceled by the sight of the foreman's face, pale and agitated.
"What ails the boss?" he demanded of a junior compositor.
"The grand bounce!" responded that worthy.
Ned winced. This was an unexpected turn of affairs. He remembered the
foreman's wife, who had fallen into a hopeless stage of consumption,
and their four small and helpless girls.
"He has been tight afore this, a-many a time," said Ned doggedly,
trying to justify himself in his own mind for not having foreseen this
possibility. Scheme as he might, things went worse and worse. "He has
been drunk time and time again."
"Never like this," said the young typo, bursting with laughter. "My
eye! When I first saw that column I thought I had the jim-jams myself."
In the investigations that were in progress the foreman admitted
that he had been very drunk the previous night. Therefore he was at
the mercy of anything that circumstantial evidence could prove upon
him. The fact was elicited by reference to the proof that the article
in question had been set up correctly. "And then," he confessed, "I
came up here as drunk as a mink--a mule--after everything was in the
chase, to lock the form, and like a tom-fool I must have set up this
prospectus from the new copy, and I don't know _how_ I could have
knocked the type into this crazy pi."
This seemed the only reasonable solution of the mystery, and it was
accepted without demur or question. While Ned went about his ordinary
work he listened anxiously to the sound of the editor's voice as he
still bemoaned himself with his confrères in the "rinktum." Time
had softened his sorrows only a very little. His tones were still
pervaded by rage and grief, modulated but slightly by an appreciation
of futility. It was like the subsiding anguish of a bull-dog when the
burglar is gone!
Ned could but hope that the "bouncing" of the foreman would be
reconsidered. This Bob Platt was a good fellow, and heretofore his
weakness for strong drink had never interfered with his capable
performance of duty. He had been in the office twenty years as man and
boy; and now he was to be chucked out of it for an offense which he had
never committed.
"He oughtn't ter have been drunk," thought Ned.
And this was very true!
Bob Platt was a good printer, however; gilt-edged, Ned argued, taking
courage,--and could no doubt easily find work elsewhere, with all his
experience as foreman and capacity in management. Then Ned reflected
that this story would be likely to create a ripple in typographic
circles, and employers would be indisposed to engage a printer whose
sprees expressed themselves in such fantastic publicity. Bob Platt
might fail to get work. And there was the sick wife, and there were the
small girls.
Ned once more began the profitable and pleasant occupation of hoping
against hope. The staff would _never_ part with Bob Platt. Ned hardly
believed they could run the paper without him.
The printer's devil would not realize the mischief he had
unintentionally done till he saw Bob Platt standing in the door of the
composing-room, leaving behind him his friends, his twenty years of
industry and capacity, and the trustworthy reputation they had earned
for him, all lost, as completely canceled as the editor's copy.
He was trying to carry it off jauntily. His hat was stuck on one side.
He chewed hard on his quid of tobacco. He laughed as he nodded over his
shoulder to the group of printers in the composing-room. "Be good to
yourselves, boys! So long!"
Ned saw the haggard change in his face as he turned. He was going out
empty-handed, with a dying wife and four small girls, to meet the cold,
hard, tight-fisted, grinding world. Ned knew how cold, how hard, how
tight-fisted, how grinding that world is!
"Say!" he screamed suddenly, throwing himself upon Bob Platt, "I done
it! I done it! I done it, myself. If they hang me for it I can't hide
it! I burnt the copy an' distributed the type of that editorial, an'
fixed the purspectus in its place"--he remembered how awfully it
looked--"as well as I could." The champion concluded with a sob.
Bob Platt stood for a moment staring, motionless.
"You Black-eyed Bamboozler of Beelzebub!" he exclaimed, with an
unconscious alliterative habit contracted from the corrupting influence
of headlines.
He might have been expected to fall on the self-accuser's neck for
joy. He did nothing of the sort. He clutched Ned by the nape of that
structure, and the doughty devil's feet hardly touched the floor once
in the rapid transit to the "rinktum."
"Here's this Imp of Iniquity," cried the foreman indignantly, "who says
that he distributed the type and canceled the copy and set up that
prospectus on purpose!"
"What on earth"--they mentioned a different region--"did you do it
for?" rose the editorial chorus.
"'Cause," sobbed the champion censor of the press, "I didn't want that
copee ter be printed. 'T warn't true!"
There was a short silence.
The conclave of editors stood aghast at the idea of printing truth only!
The managing editor was the first to recover his faculties. "You are
the boy who was arrested about this affair of Gorham's Theatre, I
believe?" he said.
"Yes, sir," sobbed Ned. "An' Mr. Gorham never had no more to do with
burnin' that theaytre than I had. 'T was ter _spite him_ it was burned."
"Then you know who did burn it?"
The managing editor had fairly cornered Ned, but the obstinate boy
refused to reply. For a time threats and persuasions were alike
useless. Only by strongly representing to him that Gorham would be
ruined unless the matter were cleared up was the truth sifted out
little by little.
Mr. Gorham was finally summoned, and a full explanation ensued. He
fairly foamed at the mouth with rage when with much difficulty he was
at last made to understand the nature and extent of the suspicions
harbored against him. He promptly identified the several malefactors
from Ned's description of them, called in the police, and gave such
details of their associates, habits, and habitat that before nightfall
one of them, the bandy-legged scamp, who had once been employed about
the theatre as a supernumerary actor, was arrested and safely lodged in
jail. He "squealed" very promptly and earnestly in the hope of being
allowed the benefit of "State's evidence," and by his means the star's
diamonds were traced through a variety of "fences" and recovered; his
accomplice in this theft was also apprehended by the trail of the
stolen costumes, and somewhat later the "first player" was captured and
cast for a rôle with a long run behind the bars. Ned was much relieved
when it was now made known that the company had lost nothing by the
forcing of the safe in the theatre, for contrary to the usual habit the
receipts were not left on that occasion in the office of the building
and the criminals had gained practically nothing in bursting the lock.
Ned was amazed to see how the truth does prevail, how readily and
implicitly his story was believed when it was given from the witness
stand, and how promptly he was acquitted. Gorham took advantage of
every technicality and prosecuted the villains to the extremest limit
of the law. They deserved all that they got, which was indeed good
measure, but in his observation of Gorham in these days Ned became
more and more aware that impulse is a poor substitute for principle as
a basis of action, and that although impulse may serve as an excuse
for much that is fierce or weak, it detracts from the merit of what is
good. Gorham's kindly whim which restored him to liberty was no whit
more kindly than the severe editor's lecture bidding him observe what
great evils may grow from a cowardly concealment of the truth.
"It would have ruined us all but for the gilt-edged way the champion
set that type," the managing editor presently observed aside, with a
laugh, to his colleague. And with the recollection the editor-in-chief,
whose copy was canceled by the devil, was at last able to laugh too.
For those strong and false accusations of Gorham, which would have laid
the paper liable for libel, were never published, and the insurance
companies made good the loss by the fire in great haste and with many
plausible and polite excuses for the previous delay.
Peter Bateman's perjury was committed in so important a case that it
did not escape notice. On the trial he broke down and confessed, hoping
to elude punishment on the strength of his penitence. In fact he was
so limp, so tearful, so flabby, so fat, that he produced a youthful,
irresponsible impression, and narrowly missing the State Prison, he was
sent to the Reform School, where it is to be hoped he is learning that
there is some policy as well as piety in keeping the ninth commandment.
Ned continues to work in the composing-room bossed by Bob Platt. For
on the memorable day when the champion's exploit of type-setting
was explained, the whole editorial corps turned to and besought the
discharged foreman, unjustly accused and maltreated, to remain, and
after much insistence he gracefully yielded.
But Bob Platt learned a lesson too, and has joined the Sons of
Temperance.
Often now when the evening is lingering long on the spires and domes
and mansard roofs, and the moon rises up from among them somewhere, as
if she were a resident of the town rarely straying beyond the corporate
limits, and the mocking-bird mounts his perch in the barber-shop
below and sings his roundelay,--poor captive troubadour!--and the
stars muster one by one, and the composing-room is dusky save for a
dim gas-jet here and there, and is filled with mellow shadows and
mellow memories too, the foreman and the devil are wont to lean on
the window-sill and look out and enjoy the interval of rest, and the
touch of the breeze, and the faint, fading, roseate flush in the west,
and laugh as they talk over again in much amity this exploit of the
champion's type-setting.
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._
* * * * *
BOOKS BY
"Charles Egbert Craddock."
(MARY N. MURFREE.)
THE CHAMPION. With a Frontispiece. 12mo, $1.20, _net_.
IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25.
DOWN THE RAVINE. For Young People. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.
THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
IN THE CLOUDS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS. For Young People. 16mo, $1.00.
THE DESPOT OF BROOMSEDGE COVE. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
HIS VANISHED STAR. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
THE MYSTERY OF WITCH-FACE MOUNTAIN. 16mo, $1.25.
THE YOUNG MOUNTAINEERS. Illustrated 12mo, $1.50.
THE JUGGLER. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
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