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One sang its death-song almost in her ear. Another tore through her coat. Then she turned and made her way slowly up the hill to the paralyzed town.
Down in the vale beneath, Death swung his scythe with long, sweeping strokes. The two machine guns poured a flaming sheet of lead into the little camp below. The shacks fell like houses of cards. The tents caught fire, and were whirled blazing aloft by the brisk wind. Men dropped like chaff from a mill. Hysterical, screaming women rushed hither and yon to save their young, and were torn to shreds by the merciless fusillade from above. Babes stood for a moment bewildered, and then sank with great, gaping wounds in their little, quivering bodies. And over all brooded the spirit of the great manipulator, Ames, for the protection of whose sacred rights such ghastly work is done among civilized men to-day.
That night, while the stars above Avon drew a veil of gray between them and the earth below, that they might not see the red embers and stark bodies, Carmen came slowly, and with bent head, into the office of the Express. As she approached Hitt’s door she heard him in earnest conversation with Haynerd.
“Yes,” the editor was saying, “I had a mortgage placed on the Express to-day, but I couldn’t get much. And it’s a short-term one, at that. Stolz refused point blank to help us, unless we would let him dictate the policy of the paper. No, he wouldn’t buy outright. He’s still fighting Ames for control of C. and R. And I learn, too, that the Ketchim case is called for next week. That probably means an attempt by Ames to smoke Stolz out through Ketchim. It also means that Carmen––”
“Yes; what about her?”
“That she will be forced to go upon the stand as a witness.”
“Well?”
“And that, as I read it, means a further effort on Ames’s part to utterly discredit her in the eyes of the world, and us through her association with the Express.”
“But––where is she, Hitt? No word from her since we got the news of the massacre at Avon this afternoon! Nothing happened to her, do you think?”
Hitt’s face was serious, and he did not answer. Then Carmen herself came through the open door. Both men rose with exclamations of gladness to welcome her. The girl’s eyes were wet, and her wonted smile had gone.
“Mr. Hitt,” she said, “I want a thousand dollars to-night.”
“Well!” Hitt and Haynerd both sat down hard.
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“I must go back to Avon to-morrow,” she announced. “And the money is for the––the people down there.” Her voice caught, and her words stumbled.
The two men looked at each other blankly. Then Hitt reached out and took her hand. “Tell us,” he said, “about the trouble there to-day.”
Carmen shook her head. “No,” she said, “we will not talk about evil. You––you have the money? A thousand––”
“I have that much on deposit in the bank now, Carmen,” he replied gravely. His thought was on the mortgage which he had signed that morning.
“Then write me a check at once, and I will deposit it in the Avon bank when I get there to-morrow. I must go home now––to see mother.”
“But––let me think about it, Carmen. Money is––well, won’t less than that amount do you?”
“No, Mr. Hitt. Write the check now.”
Hitt sighed, but made no further protest. If the Express must founder, then this money were well spent on the stricken people of Avon. He took out his book, and immediately wrote the check and handed it to the girl.
“Hitt,” said Haynerd, after Carmen had left them and he had exhausted his protests over the size of the check, “something’s killing that girl! And it isn’t only the trouble at Avon, either! What is it? I believe you know.”
Hitt shook his head. “She’s no longer in this world, Ned. She left it two days ago.”
“Eh? Say! News about that Rincón fellow?”
But Hitt would say nothing to further illuminate his cryptic remark, and Haynerd soon switched to the grim topic of the industrial war in progress at Avon.
“What are we coming to?” he cried. “What’s going to be the end? A social and industrial system such as ours, which leaves the masses to starve and consume with disease under intolerable burdens, that a handful may rot in idleness and luxury, marks us in this latest century as hopelessly insane!”
“Well, Ned, whence came the idea, think you, that it is divine justice for a majority of the people on earth to be poor in order that a few may be rich? And how are we going to get that perverted idea out of the minds of men? Will legislation do it?”
“Humph!” grunted Haynerd. “Legislation arouses no faith in me! We are suffering here because, in our immensely selfish thought of ourselves only, we have permitted the growth of such men as Ames, and allowed them to monopolize the country’s resources. Heavens! Future generations will laugh themselves217sick over us! Why, what sane excuse is there for permitting the commonest necessities of life to be juggled with by gamblers and unmoral men of wealth? How can we ask to be considered rational when we, with open eyes, allow ‘corners’ on foodstuffs, and permit ‘wheat kings’ to amass millions by corralling the supply of grain and then raising the price to the point where the poor washerwoman starves? Lord! We are a nation gone mad! The existence of poverty in a country like America is not only proof positive that our social system is rotten to the core, but that our religion is equally so! As a people we deserve to be incarcerated in asylums!”
“A considerable peroration, Ned,” smiled Hitt. “And yet, one that I can not refute. The only hope I see is in a radical change in the mental attitude of the so-called enlightened class––and yet they are the very worst offenders!”
“Sure! Doesn’t the militia exist for men like Ames? To-day’s work at Avon proves it, I think!”
“Apparently so, Ned,” returned Hitt sadly. “And the only possibility of a change in enlightened people is through a better understanding of what is really good and worth while. That means real, practical Christianity. And of that Ames knows nothing.”
“Seems to me, Hitt, that it ought to stagger our preachers to realize that nineteen centuries of their brand of Christianity have scarcely even begun to cleanse society. What do you suppose Borwell thinks, anyway?”
“Ned, they still cling to human law as necessarily a compelling influence in the shaping of mankind’s moral nature.”
“And go right on accepting the blood-stained money of criminal business men who have had the misfortune to amass a million dollars! And, more, they actually hold such men up as patterns for the youth to emulate! As if the chief end of endeavor were to achieve the glorious manhood of an Ames! And he a man who is deader than the corpses he made at Avon to-day!”
“The world’s ideal, my friend, has long been the man who succeeds in everything except that which is worth while,” replied Hitt. “But we have been bidden to come out from the world, and be separate. Is it not so?”
“Y––e––s, of course. But I can’t take my thought from Avon––”
“And thereby you emphasize your belief in the reality of evil.”
“Well––look at us! The Express stands for righteousness. And now we are a dead duck!”
“Then, if that is so, why not resign your position, Ned? Go seek work elsewhere.”
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“No, sir! Not while the Express has a leg to stand on! Your words are an offense to me, sir!”
Hitt rose and clapped his friend heartily on the back. “Ned, old man! You’re a jewel! Things do look very dark for us, if we look only with the human sense of vision. But we are trying to look at the invisible things within. And there is only perfection there. Come, we must get to work. The Express still lives.”
“But––Carmen?”
Hitt turned and faced him. “Ned, Carmen is not in our hands. She is now completely with her God. We must henceforth wait on Him.”
On the following afternoon at three a little group of Avon mill hands crept past the guards and met in Father Danny’s Mission, down in the segregated vice district. They met there because they dared not go through the town to the Hall. Father Danny was with them. He had slipped into town the preceding night, and remained in hiding through the day. And Carmen was with them, too. She had gone first to the Hall, and then to the Mission, when she arrived again in the little town. And after she had deposited Hitt’s check in the bank she had asked Father Danny to call together some of the older and more intelligent of the mill hands, to discuss methods of disbursing the money.
Almost coincident with her arrival had come an order from Ames to apprehend the girl as a disturber of the peace. The hush of death lay over Avon, and even the soldiers now stood aghast at their own bloody work of the day before. Carmen had avoided the main thoroughfares, and had made her way unrecognized. At a distance she saw the town jail, heavily guarded. Its capacity had been sorely taxed, and many of the prisoners had been crowded into cold, cheerless store rooms, and placed under guards who stood ready to mow them down at the slightest threatening gesture.
“It’s come, Miss Carmen!” whispered Father Danny, after he had quietly greeted the girl. “It’s come! It may be the beginning of the great revolution we’ve all known wasn’t far off! I justhadto get back here! They can only arrest me, anyway. And, oh, God! my poor, poor people!”
He sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands. But soon he sprang to his feet. “No time for mollycoddling!” he exclaimed. “Come, men, we’ll give you checks, and do you get food for the babies. Only, don’t buy of the company stores!”
“We’ll have to, Father,” said one of them. “It’s dangerous not to.”
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“But they’ve never taken cash from you there, ye know. Only your pay scrip.”
“Aye, Father, and they’ve discounted that ten per cent each time. But if we bought at other stores we were discharged. And now we’d be blacklisted.”
“Ah, God, that’s true!” exclaimed the priest. “But now then, Miss Carmen, we’ll begin.”
For an hour the girl wrote small checks, and the priest handed them out to the eager laborers. They worked feverishly, for they knew that at any moment they might be apprehended.
“Ah, you men!” cried Father Danny, at last unable to restrain himself. “Did ye but know that this grand nation is wholly dependent on such as you, its common people! Not on the rich, I say, the handful that own its mills and mines, but on you who work them for your rich masters! But then, ye’re so ignorant!”
“Don’t, Father!” pleaded Carmen, “don’t! They have suffered so much!”
“Ah, lass, it’s but love that I’m dealin’ out to ’em, God knows! And yet, it’s they that are masters of the situation, only they don’t know it! There’s the pity! They’ve no leaders, except such as waste their money and leave ’em in the ditch! The world’s social schemes, Miss Carmen, don’t reach such as these. They’re only sops. And they’ve got the contempt of the wage-earners.”
“The Church, Father, could do much for these people, if––”
“Don’t hesitate, Miss Carmen. You mean, if we didn’t give all our thought to the rich, eh? But still, it’s wholly up to the people themselves, after all. And, mark me, when they do rise, why, such men as Ames won’t know what’s hit ’em!”
The door was thrown violently open at that moment, and a squad of soldiers under the command of a lieutenant entered.
Carmen and Father Danny rose and faced them. The mill hands stood like stone images, their faces black with suppressed rage. The lieutenant halted his men, and then advanced to the girl.
“Is a woman named Carmen Ariza here?” he demanded rudely.
“I am she,” replied the fearless girl.
“Come with us,” he said in a rough voice.
“That she will not!” cried Father Danny, suddenly pulling the girl back and thrusting himself before her.
The lieutenant raised his hand. The soldiers advanced. The mill hands quickly formed about the girl. And then, with a yell of rage, they threw themselves upon the soldiers.
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For a few minutes the little room was a bedlam. The crazed strikers fought without weapons, except such as they could wrest from the soldiers. But they fought to the death. One of them seized Carmen and threw her beneath the table at which she had been working. Above her raged the desperate conflict. The shouting and cursing might have been heard for blocks around. Father Danny stood in front of the table, beneath which lay the girl. He strove desperately to maintain his position, that he might protect her, meantime frantically calling to the mill hands to drag her out to the rear, and escape by the back door.
In the midst of themêléea soldier mounted a chair near the door and raised his rifle. The shot roared out, and Father Danny pitched forward to the floor. Another shot, and still another followed in quick succession. The strikers fell back. Confusion seized them. Then they turned and fled precipitately through the rear exit.
The lieutenant dragged Carmen from beneath the table and out through the door. Then, assembling his men, he gave an order, and they marched away with her up the icy street to the town jail.
CHAPTER 16
With the wreckage which he had wrought strewn about him, J. Wilton Ames sat at his rich desk far above the scampering human ants in the streets below and contemplated the fell work of his own hands. And often and anon as he looked, great beads of perspiration welled out upon his forehead, and his breath came hot and dry. In the waste basket at his feet lay crumpled the newspapers with their shrieking, red-lettered versions of the slaughter at Avon. He was not a coward, this man! But he had pushed that basket around the desk out of his sight, for when he looked at it something rose before him that sent a chill to his very soul. At times his vision blurred; and then he passed his hands heavily across his eyes. He had chanced to read in the grewsome accounts of the Avon massacre that little children had been found among those fallen shacks, writhing in their last agonies. And the reports had said that great, red-dripping holes had been ripped in their thin little bodies by those awful “dum-dum” bullets. God! Why had he used them? And why had the demoniac soldiers down there blown the brains from harmless women and helpless babes? He really had not intended to go so far!
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And yet, he had! Curse them! The brats would have grown up to oppose the vested privileges of the rich! They, too, would have become anarchists and rioters, bent on leveling the huge industrial fabric which such as he had so laboriously erected under the legal protection afforded their sacred rights! He had done well to remove them now! And the great captains of industry would thank him for the example he had thus fearlessly set!
To think of Avon was for him now to think in terms of blood. And yet his carnal soul hourly wrestled sore with thoughts of a wholly different stamp; with those strange emotions which he had felt when in Carmen’s presence; with those unfamiliar sentiments which, had he not fought them back so bitterly, might have made him anew, and––
But the remembrance maddened him. His face grew black, and his mouth poured forth a torrent of foul imprecations and threats upon her and upon those who stood with her. His rage towered again. He smote the desk with his great fist. He fumed, he frothed, he hurled reason from its throne, and bade the Furies again become his counselors.
Upon the desk before him lay the mortgage papers which Hitt had signed. He had bought the mortgage from the bank which had loaned the Express the money. He would crush that sheet now, crush it until the ink dripped black from its emasculated pages! And when it fell into his hands, he would turn it into the yellowest of sensational journals, and hoot the memory of its present staff from ocean to ocean!
Then, his head sunk upon his breast, he fell to wondering if he might not secure a mortgage upon the Beaubien cottage, and turn its occupants into the street. Ah, what a power was money! It was the lever by which he moved the world, and clubbed its dull-witted inhabitants into servile obeisance! Who could stand against him––
That girl!
He sprang to his feet and called Hood. That obedient lackey hastened into his master’s presence.
“The Ketchim trial?” snarled Ames.
“Called for this week, sir,” replied Hood, glad that the announcement could not possibly offend his superior.
“Humph! The––that girl?”
“Brought up from Avon, and lodged in the Tombs, sir.”
“You tell Judge Spencer that if he allows her bail I’ll see that his federal appointment is killed, understand?”
“You may rely upon him, sir.”
Ames regarded the man with a mixture of admiration and utter contempt. For Hood stood before him a resplendent example222of the influence of the most subtle of all poisons, the insidious lure of money. Soul and body he had prostituted himself and his undoubted talents to it. And now, were he to be turned adrift by Ames, the man must inevitably sink into oblivion, squeezed dry of every element of genuine manhood, and weighted with the unclean lucre for which his bony fingers had always itched.
“Will Cass defend Ketchim?” the master asked.
“Oh, doubtless. He knows most about the formation of the defunct Simití company.”
“Well, see him and––you say he’s young, and got a wife and baby? Offer him twenty-five thousand to quit the case.”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do, sir,” returned Hood, shaking his head dubiously. “I’ve had men talking with him regarding the trial, and he––”
“Then get him over here. I’ll see if I can’t persuade him,” growled Ames in an ugly tone.
Hood bowed and went out. A few minutes later Reverend Darius Borwell was ushered into the financier’s private office.
“Mr. Ames,” cried that gentleman of the cloth, “it’s shocking, terribly so, what those unbridled, unprincipled mill hands have drawn upon themselves down in Avon! Goodness! And four members of the Church of the Social Revolution came to my study last evening and demanded that I let them speak to my congregation on the coming Sabbath!”
“Well?”
“Why, I told them certainly not! My church is God’s house! And I shall have policemen stationed at the doors next Sunday to maintain order! To think that it has come to this in America! But, Mr. Ames, is your house guarded? I would advise––”
“Nobody can get within a block of my house, sir, without ringing a series of electric bells,” replied Ames evenly. “I have fifty guards and private detectives in attendance in and about my premises all the time. My limousine has been lined with sheet steel. And my every step is protected. I am not afraid for my life. I simply want to keep going until I can carry out a few plans I have in hand.” His thought had reverted again to the fair girl in the Tombs.
“But now, Borwell,” he continued, “I want to talk with you about another matter. I am drawing up my will, and––”
“Why, my dear Mr. Ames! You are not ill?”
Ames thought of his physician’s constantly iterated warning; but shook his head. “I may get caught in this Avon affair,” he said evasively. “And I want to be prepared. The223President has sent his message to Congress, as you may be aware. There are unpleasant suggestions in it regarding dispossession in cases like my own. I’m coming back by magnanimously willing to Congress a hundred millions, to stand as a fund for social uplift.”
“Ah!” sighed the clergyman. Great was Mammon!
“But the little matter I wish to discuss with you is the sum that I am setting aside for the erection of a new church edifice,” continued Ames, eying the minister narrowly.
“You don’t mean it!” cried that worthy gentleman, springing up and clasping the financier’s hand. “Mr. Ames! So magnanimous! Ah––the amount?”
“Well, will half a million do?” suggested Ames.
The minister reflected a moment. One should not be too precipitate in accepting tentative benefactions. “Ah––we really should have––ah––a trifle more, Mr. Ames. There’s the settlement home, and the commons, you know, and––”
“Humph! Well, we’ll start with half a million,” replied Ames dryly. “By the way, you know Jurges, eh? Reverend William Jurges? Er––have you any particular influence with him, if I may ask?” His sharp eyes bored straight through the wondering divine.
“Why––yes––yes, I know the gentleman. And, as for influence––well, I may––”
“Yes, just so,” put in Ames. “Now there is a trial coming up this week, and Jurges will be called to the stand. I want you to give him the true facts in regard to it. I’ll call Hood, and we’ll go over them in detail now. Then you see Jurges this afternoon, and––say, he’s raising a building fund too, isn’t he?”
The magnate summoned Hood again; and for an hour the trio discussed the forthcoming trial of the unfortunate Philip O. Ketchim. Then Ames dismissed the clergyman, and bade his office boy admit the young lawyer, Cass, who had come in response to Hood’s request.
For some moments after Cass entered the office Ames stood regarding him, studying what manner of man he was, and how best to approach him. Then he opened the conversation by a casual reference to the unsatisfactory business situation which obtained throughout the country, and expressed wonder that young men just starting in their professions managed to make ends meet.
“But,” he concluded with deep significance, “better go hungry than take on any class of business which, though promising good money returns, nevertheless might eventually prove suicidal.” He looked hard at the young lawyer when he paused.
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“I quite agree with you, Mr. Ames,” returned Cass. “But as I am particularly busy this morning, may I ask why you have sent for me? Have you anything that I can––”
“I have,” abruptly interrupted the financier. “We need additions to our legal staff. I thought perhaps you might like to talk over the matter with me, with a view to entering our employ.”
“Why, Mr. Ames, I––I have never thought of––” The young man’s eyes glistened.
“Well, suppose you think of it now,” said Ames, smiling graciously. “I have heard considerable about you of late, and I must say I rather like the way you have been handling your work.”
Cass looked at him with rising wonder. The work which he had been doing of late was most ordinary and routine, and called for no display of legal skill whatever. Suspicions slowly began to rise.
“I’d hate to see you tackle anything at this stage of your career, Mr. Cass, that would bring discredit upon you. And I am afraid your association with Ketchim is going to do just that. But possibly you do not intend to handle further business for him?”
Ketchim, though long confined in the Tombs, had at length secured bail, through the not wholly disinterested efforts of his uncle, Stolz, the sworn enemy of Ames. And, because of his loyal efforts in behalf of Ketchim, Stolz had insisted that Cass be retained as counsel for the latter when his trial should come up.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Cass,” said Ames suddenly. “Mr. Hood will take you on at a salary of, say, five thousand to start with. We’ll try you out for a few weeks. Then, if we don’t mutually fit, why, we’ll quietly separate and say nothing. How about it?”
Cass thought hard. Half of that salary would have looked large to him then. But––
“May I ask,” he slowly said in reply, “what class of work Mr. Hood would give me to start with?”
“Why, nothing of great importance, perhaps, while you are getting into the harness. Possibly court work, as a starter. You’ve had experience in that, eh?”
Cass reflected again. The temptation was tremendous. That little house which he had passed and stopped to look at so wistfully every night on his way home was now within his grasp.
He glanced up at the great man, sitting so calmly before him. Then he thought suddenly of Avon. Then of Carmen.
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“Mr. Ames,” he said, “if I enter your employ, it must be with the stipulation that I shall have nothing to do with the Ketchim trial.”
Ames’s face went suddenly dark. “If you enter my employ, sir, it will be with the stipulation that you do as I say,” he returned coldly.
And then the young lawyer saw through the mask. And his anger flamed high at what he discerned behind it. He rose and faced the great man.
“Mr. Ames,” said he, “you have made a mistake. I am poor, and I need business. But I have not as yet fallen so completely under the spell of fortune-hunting as to sell my honor to a man like you! To enter your employ, I now see, would mean the total loss of character and self respect. It would mean a lowering of my ideals, whatever they may be, to your own vulgar standard. I may have done wrong in becoming associated with Mr. Ketchim. In fact, I know that I have. But I pledged myself to assist him. And yet, in doing so, I scarcely can blacken my reputation to the extent that I should were I to become your legal henchman. I want wealth. But there are some terms upon which even I can not accept it. And your terms are among them. I bid you good morning.”
Ames gave a snort of anger when Cass went out. Summoning Hood, he vented his great wrath upon that individual’s bald pate. “And now,” he concluded, “I want that fellow Cass so wound up that he will sneak off to a lonely spot and commit suicide! And if you can’t do it, then I’ll accept your resignation!”
“Very well, sir,” replied Hood. “And, by the way, Mr. Ames, I have just learned that Judge Harris, father of the young man who came up with that girl, is in Colombia. Seems that he’s taken some wealthy man down there to look at La Libertad mine.”
“What!” Ames’s eyes snapped fire.
“They believe you put one over on Ketchim, with the help of Monsignor Lafelle, and so they’ve gone down to get titles to that mine.”
“By G––”
“And they say that––”
“Never mind what they say!” roared Ames. “Cable Wenceslas at once to see that those fellows remain permanently in Colombia. He has ways of accomplishing that. Humph! Fools! Judge Harris, eh? Ninny! I guess Wenceslas can block his little game!”
His great frame shook slightly as he stood consuming with rage, and a slight hemorrhage started from his nostrils. He226turned to the lavatory. And as he walked, Hood thought his left foot dragged slightly. But the lawyer made no comment.
And then, with the way well cleared, came the Ketchim trial, which has gone down in history as containing the most spectaculardénoûementin the record of legal procedure in the New World. Had it been concerned, as was anticipated, only with routine legal procedure against the man Ketchim, a weak-souled compound of feeble sycophancy and low morals, it would have attracted slight attention, and would have been spread upon the court records by uninterested clerks with never a second thought. But there were elements entering into it of whose existence the outside world could not have even dreamed. Into it converged threads which now may be traced back to scenes and events in three continents; threads whose intricate windings led through trackless forest and dim-lit church; through court of fashion and hut of poverty; back through the dark mazes of mortal thought, where no light shines upon the carnal aims and aspirations of the human mind; back even to the doors of a palace itself, even to the proudest throne of the Old World.
But none of these elements found expression in the indictment against the frightened defendant, the small-visioned man who had sought to imitate the mighty Ames, and yet who lacked sufficient intelligence of that sort which manifests in such a perversion of skill and power. Ames was a tremendous corruptionist, who stood beyond the laws simply because of the elemental fact that he himself made those laws. Ketchim was a plain deceiver. And his deception was religious fervor. Mingling his theology with fraud, he employed the unholy alliance for the purpose of exploiting the credulous who attended his prayer meetings and commented with bated breath upon his beautiful showing of religious zeal. He was but one of a multitude afflicted with the “dollar mania.” His misfortune was that his methods were so antique that they could not long fail of detection. And it was because of his use of the mails for the purpose of deceit that the indictment had been drawn against Philip O. Ketchimet al.by the long-suffering, tolerant complainant, called the people.
Nominally the people’s interests were in the hands of the Public Prosecutor, a certain smug young worldling named Ellis. But, as that gentleman owed his appointment to Ames, it is not surprising that at his right hand sat Hood and his well trained staff. Nominally, too, Judge Spencer conducted the trial strictly upon its merits, not all of which lay with the people. But the judge might have been still prosecuting petty cases227back in the unknown little district from which he came, had it not been for the great influence of Ames, long since, who had found him on a certain occasion useful. And so the jury panel contained none but those who, we may be very sure, were amenable to the tender pressure of a soft hand lined with yellow gold. And only those points of evidence were sustained which conduced to the incrimination of the miserable defendant. Ketchim was doomed before the trial began.
And yet, to subserve the dark schemes of Ames, and to lengthen the period of torture to which his victims should be subjected, the trial was dragged through many days. Besides, even he and his hirelings were bound to observe the formalities.
It was at the suggestion of Cass that no effort had been made to procure bail for Carmen after her arrest. The dramatic may always be relied upon to carry a point which even plain evidence negatives. And she, acquiescing in the suggestion, remained a full two weeks in the Tombs before Ames’s eager counsel found their opportunity to confront her on the witness stand and besmirch her with their black charges. The Beaubien was prostrated. But, knowing that for her another hour of humiliation and sorrow had come, she strove mightily to summon her strength for its advent. Father Waite toiled with Cass day and night. Hitt and Haynerd, without financial resources, pursued their way, grim and silent. The Express was sinking beneath its mountainous load. And they stood at the helm, stanch to their principles, not yielding an iota to offers of assistance in exchange for a reversal of the policy upon which the paper had been launched.
“We’re going down, Hitt,” said Haynerd grimly. “But we go with the flag flying at the mast!”
Yet Hitt answered not. He was learning to know as did Carmen, and to see with eyes which were invisible.
It was just when the jury had been impaneled, after long days of petty wrangling and childish recrimination among the opposing lawyers, that Stolz came to Ames and laid down his sword. The control of C. and R. should pass unequivocally to the latter if he would but save Ketchim from prison.
Then Ames lay back and roared with laughter over his great triumph. C. and R! Poof! He would send Stolz’ nephew to prison, and then roll a bomb along Wall Street whose detonation would startle the financial world clean out of its orbit! Stolz had failed to notice that Ames’s schemes had so signally worked out that C. and R. was practically in his hands now! The defeated railroad magnate at length backed out of the Ames office purple with rage. And then he pledged himself to hypothecate his entire fortune to the rescue of his worthless nephew.
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Thus, in deep iniquity, was launched the famous trial, a process of justice in name only, serving as an outlet for a single man’s long nurtured personal animosities. The adulterous union of religion and business was only nominally before the bar. The victims, not the defendant only, not the preachers, the washerwomen, the factory girls, the widows, and the orphans, whose life savings Ketchim had drawn into his net by the lure of pious benedictions, but rather those unfortunates who had chanced to incur the malicious hatred of the great, legalized malefactor, Ames, by opposition to his selfish caprice, and whose utter defeat and discrediting before the public would now place the crown of righteous expediency upon his own chicanery and extortion and his wantonly murderous deeds.
The prosecution scored from the beginning. Doctor Jurges, utterly confused by the keen lawyers, and vainly endeavoring to follow the dictates of his conscience, while attempting to reconcile them with his many talks with Darius Borwell, gave testimony which fell little short of incriminating himself. For there were produced letters which he had written to members of his congregation, and which for subtlety and deception, though doubtless innocently done, would have made a seasoned promoter look sharp to his own laurels.
Then Harris was called. He had been summoned from Denver for the trial. But his stuttering evidence gave no advantage to either side. And then––crowning blunder!––Cass permitted Ketchim himself to take the stand. And the frightened, trembling broker gave his own cause such a blow that the prosecution might well have asked the judge to take the case from the jury then and there. It was a legalfaux pas; and Cass walked the floor and moaned the whole night through.
Then, as per program, the prosecution called Madam Beaubien. Could not that sorrowing woman have given testimony which would have aided the tottering defense, and unmasked the evil genius which presided over this mock trial? Ah, yes, in abundance! But not one point would the judge sustain when it bordered upon forbidden territory. It was made plain to her that she was there to testify against Ketchim, and to permit the Ames lawyers to bandy her own name about the court room upon the sharp points of their cruel cross-questions and low insinuations.
But, she protested, her knowledge of the Simití company’s affairs had come through another person.
And who might that be?
Mr. J. Wilton Ames.
Ah! But Mr. Ames should give his own testimony––for was it not he who had, not long since, legally punished the229witness on a charge of defamation of character? The witness was dismissed. And the spectators knew that it was because the righteous prosecution could no longer stain its hands with one who bore such a tarnished name as she.
And then, taunted and goaded to exasperation, the wronged woman burst into tears and flayed the bigamist Ames there before the court room crowded with eager society ladies and curious, non-toiling men. Flayed him as men are seldom flayed and excoriated by the women they trample. The bailiffs seized her, and dragged her into an ante-room; the judge broke his gavel rapping for order, and threatened to clear the court; and then Cass, too young and inexperienced to avoid battle with seasoned warriors, rose and demanded that Madam Beaubien be returned to the stand.
The astonished judge hesitated. Cass stood his ground. He turned to the people, as if seeking their support. A great murmur arose through the court room. The judge looked down at Ames. That man, sitting calm and unimpassioned, nodded his head slightly. And the woman was led back to the chair.
“It may have an important bearing upon the case, Your Honor!” cried the young lawyer for the defense. “Mr. Ames is to take the stand as an important witness in this case. If Madam Beaubien brings such a charge against him, it gives us reason to believe his honor peccable, and his testimony open to suspicion!”
It was a daring statement, and the whole room gasped, and held its breath.
“I object, Your Honor!” shouted the chief prosecutor, Ellis. “The lawyer for the defense is in contempt of court! Madam Beaubien has been shown to be a––”
“The objection is sustained!” called the judge. “The charge is utterly irrelevant! Order in the court!”
“His first wife’s portrait––is in a glass window––in his yacht!”cried the hysterical Beaubien. Then she crumpled up in a limp mass, and was led from the chair half fainting.
At the woman’s shrill words a white-haired man, dressed in black, clerical garb, who had been sitting in the rear of the room close to the door, rose hastily, then slowly sat down again. At his feet reposed a satchel, bearing several foreign labels. Evidently he had but just arrived from distant lands.
Consternation reigned throughout the room for a few minutes. Then Cass, believing that the psychological moment had arrived, loudly called Carmen Ariza to the stand. The dramatic play must be continued, now that it had begun. The battle which had raged back and forth for long, weary days, could be won, if at all, only by playing upon the emotions of the jury,230for the evidence thus far given had resulted in showing not only the defense, but likewise the Beaubien, and all who had been associated with the Simití company, including Cass himself, to be participators in gross, intentional fraud.
The remaining witness, the girl herself, had been purposely neglected by the prosecution, for the great Ames had planned that she must be called by the defense. Then would he bring up the prostitute, Jude, and from her wring testimony which must blast forever the girl’s already soiled name. Following her, he would himself take the stand, and tell of the girl’s visits to his office; of her protestations of love for him; of her embracing him; and of a thousand indiscretions which he had carefully garnered and stored for this triumphant occasion.
But the judge, visibly perturbed by the dramatic turn which the case seemed to be taking, studied his watch for a moment, then Ames’s face, and then abruptly adjourned court until the following day. Yet not until Cass had been recognized, and the hounded girl summoned from her cell in the Tombs, to take the stand in the morning for––her life!
CHAPTER 17
In the days to come, when the divine leaven which is in the world to-day shall have brought more of the carnal mind’s iniquity to the surface, that the Sun of Truth may destroy the foul germs, there shall be old men and women, and they which, looking up from their work, peep and mutter of strange things long gone, who shall fall wonderingly silent when they have told again of the fair young girl who walked alone into the crowded court room that cold winter’s morning. And their stories will vary with the telling, for no two might agree what manner of being it was that came into their midst that day.
Even the bailiffs, as if moved by some strange prescience, had fallen back and allowed her to enter alone. The buzz of subdued chatter ceased, and a great silence came over all as they looked. Some swore, in awed whispers, when the dramatic day had ended, and judge and jury and wrangling lawyer had silently, and with bowed heads, gone quiet and thoughtful each to his home, that a nimbus encircled her beautiful head when she came through the door and faced the gaping multitude. Some said that her eyes were raised; that she saw not earthly things; and that a heavenly presence moved beside her. Nor may we lightly set aside these tales; for, after the curtain had fallen upon the wonderful scene about to be enacted, there was231not one present who would deny that, as the girl came into the great room and went directly to the witness chair, God himself walked at her side and held her hand.
“Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
Through the mind of that same white-haired man in the clerical garb ran these words as he watched the girl move silently across the room. She seemed to have taken on a new meaning to him since the previous day. And as he looked, his eyes grew moist, and he drew out his handkerchief.
But his were not the only eyes that had filled then. Hitt and Haynerd bent their heads, that the people might not see; Miss Wall and the Beaubien wept silently, and with no attempt to stay their grief; Jude buried her head in her hands, and rocked back and forth, moaning softly. Why they wept, they knew not. A welter of conflicting emotions surged through their harassed souls. They seemed to have come now to the great crisis. And which way the tide would turn rested with this lone girl.
For some moments after she was seated the silence remained unbroken. And as she sat there, waiting, she looked down at the man who sought to destroy what he might not possess. Some said afterward that as she looked at him she smiled. Who knows but that the Christ himself smiled down from the cross at those who had riven his great heart?
But Ames did not meet her glance. Somehow he dared not. He was far from well that morning, and an ugly, murderous mood possessed him. And yet, judged by the world’s standards, he had tipped the crest of success. He had conquered all. Men came and went at his slightest nod. His coffers lay bursting with their heavy treasure. He was swollen with wealth, with material power, with abnormal pride. His tender sensibilities and sympathies were happily completely ossified, and he was stone deaf and blind to the agonies of a suffering world. Not a single aim but had been realized; not a lone ambition but had been met. Even the armed camp at Avon, and the little wooden crosses over the fresh mounds there, all testified to his omnipotence; and in them, despite their horrors, he felt a satisfying sense of his own great might.
The clerk held up the Bible for the girl to give her oath. She looked at him for a moment, and then smiled. “I will tell the truth,” she said simply.
The officer hesitated, and looked up at the judge. But the latter sat with his eyes fixed upon the girl. The clerk did not press the point; and Carmen was delivered into the hands of the lawyers.