"Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Jordan Shayne," Hugo wrote. Then he paused in thought. He began again. "I met your son in Marseilles and was with him most of the time until his death." He hesitated. "In fact, he died in my arms from the effect of the same shell which sent me to this hospital. He is buried in Carcy cemetery, on the south side. It is for that reason I take the liberty to address you."I thought that you would like to know some of the things that he did not write to you. Your son enlisted because he felt the war involved certain ideals that were worthy of preservation. That he gave his life for those ideals must be a source of pride to you. In training he was always controlled, kindly, unquarrelsome, comprehending. In battle he was aggressive, brilliant, and more courageous than any other man I have ever known."In October, a year ago, he was decorated for bringing in Captain Crouan, who was severely wounded during an attack that was repulsed. Under heavy shell fire Tom went boldly into no man's land and carried the officer from a shell pit on his back. At the time Tom himself sustained three wounds. He was mentioned a number of times in the dispatches for his leadership of attacks and patrols. He was decorated a second time for the capture of a German field officer and three of his staff, a coup which your son executed almost single-handed."Following his death his company made an attack to avenge him, which wiped out the entire enemy position along a sector nearly a kilometre in width and which brought a permanent advantage to the Allied lines. That is mute testimony of his popularity among the officers and men. I know of no man more worthy of the name 'American,' no American more worthy of the words 'gentleman' and 'hero.'"I realize the slight comfort of these things, and yet I feel bound to tell you of them, because Tom was my friend, and his death is grievous to me as well as to you."Yours sincerely,"(Lieutenant)Hugo Danner"
"Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Jordan Shayne," Hugo wrote. Then he paused in thought. He began again. "I met your son in Marseilles and was with him most of the time until his death." He hesitated. "In fact, he died in my arms from the effect of the same shell which sent me to this hospital. He is buried in Carcy cemetery, on the south side. It is for that reason I take the liberty to address you.
"I thought that you would like to know some of the things that he did not write to you. Your son enlisted because he felt the war involved certain ideals that were worthy of preservation. That he gave his life for those ideals must be a source of pride to you. In training he was always controlled, kindly, unquarrelsome, comprehending. In battle he was aggressive, brilliant, and more courageous than any other man I have ever known.
"In October, a year ago, he was decorated for bringing in Captain Crouan, who was severely wounded during an attack that was repulsed. Under heavy shell fire Tom went boldly into no man's land and carried the officer from a shell pit on his back. At the time Tom himself sustained three wounds. He was mentioned a number of times in the dispatches for his leadership of attacks and patrols. He was decorated a second time for the capture of a German field officer and three of his staff, a coup which your son executed almost single-handed.
"Following his death his company made an attack to avenge him, which wiped out the entire enemy position along a sector nearly a kilometre in width and which brought a permanent advantage to the Allied lines. That is mute testimony of his popularity among the officers and men. I know of no man more worthy of the name 'American,' no American more worthy of the words 'gentleman' and 'hero.'
"I realize the slight comfort of these things, and yet I feel bound to tell you of them, because Tom was my friend, and his death is grievous to me as well as to you.
"Yours sincerely,
"(Lieutenant)Hugo Danner"
Hugo posted the letter. When the answer came, he was once again in action, the guns chugging and rumbling, the earth shaking. The reply read:
"Dear Lieutenant Danner:"Thank you for your letter in reference to our son. We knew that he had enlisted in some foreign service. We did not know of his death. I am having your statements checked, because, if they are true, I shall be one of the happiest persons alive, and his mother will be both happy and sad. The side of young Tom which you claim to have seen is one quite unfamiliar to us. At home he was always a waster, much of a snob, and impossible to control. It may be harsh to say such things of him now that he is dead, but I cannot recall one noble deed, one unselfish act, in his life here with us."That I have a dead son would not sadden me. Tom had been disinherited by us, his mother and father. But that my dead son was a hero makes me feel that at last, coming into the Shayne blood and heritage, he has atoned. And so I honour him. If the records show that all you said of him is true, I shall not only honour him in this country, but I shall come to France to pay my tribute with a full heart and a knowledge that neither he nor I lived in vain."Gratefully yours,"R. J. Shayne"
"Dear Lieutenant Danner:
"Thank you for your letter in reference to our son. We knew that he had enlisted in some foreign service. We did not know of his death. I am having your statements checked, because, if they are true, I shall be one of the happiest persons alive, and his mother will be both happy and sad. The side of young Tom which you claim to have seen is one quite unfamiliar to us. At home he was always a waster, much of a snob, and impossible to control. It may be harsh to say such things of him now that he is dead, but I cannot recall one noble deed, one unselfish act, in his life here with us.
"That I have a dead son would not sadden me. Tom had been disinherited by us, his mother and father. But that my dead son was a hero makes me feel that at last, coming into the Shayne blood and heritage, he has atoned. And so I honour him. If the records show that all you said of him is true, I shall not only honour him in this country, but I shall come to France to pay my tribute with a full heart and a knowledge that neither he nor I lived in vain.
"Gratefully yours,
"R. J. Shayne"
Hugo reread the letter and stood awhile with wistful eyes. He remembered Shayne's Aunt Emma, Shayne's bitter calumniation of his family. Well, they had not understood him and he had not wanted them to understand him. Perhaps Shayne had been more content than he admitted in the mud of the trenches. The war had been a real thing to him. Hugo thought of its insufficiencies for himself. The world was not enough for Shayne, but the war had been. Both were insufficient for Hugo Danner. He listened to the thunder in the sky tiredly.
Two months later Hugo was ordered from rest billets to the major's quarters. A middle-aged man and woman accompanied by a sleek Frenchman awaited him. The man stepped forward with dignified courtesy. "I am Tom Shayne's father. This is Mrs. Shayne."
Hugo felt a great lack of interest in them. They had come too late. It was their son who had been his friend. He almost regretted the letter. He shook hands with them. Mrs. Shayne went to an automobile. Her husband invited Hugo to a café. Over the wine he became suddenly less dignified, more human, and almost pathetic. "Tell me about him, Danner. I loved that kid once, you know."
Hugo found himself unexpectedly moved. The man was so eager, so strangely happy. He stroked his white moustache and turned away moist eyes. So Hugo told him. He talked endlessly of the trenches and the dark wet nights and the fire that stabbed through them. He invented brave sorties for his friend, tripled his accomplishments, and put gaiety and wit in his mouth. The father drank every syllable as if he was committing the whole story to memory as the text of a life's solace. At last he was crying.
"That was the Tom I knew," Hugo said softly.
"And that was the Tom I dreamed and hoped and thought he would become when he was a little shaver. Well, he did, Danner."
"A thousand times he did."
Ralph Jordan Shayne blew his nose unashamedly. He thought of his patiently waiting wife. "I've got to go, I suppose. This has been more than kind of you, Mr. Danner—Lieutenant Danner. I'm glad—more glad than I can say—that you were there. I understand from the major that you're no small shakes in this army yourself." He smiled deferentially. "I wish there was something we could do for you."
"Nothing. Thank you, Mr. Shayne."
"I'm going to give you my card. In New York—my name is not without meaning."
"It is very familiar to me. Was before I met your son."
"If you ever come to the city—I mean, when you come—you must look us up. Anything we can do—in the way of jobs, positions—" He was confused.
Hugo shook his head. "That's very kind of you, sir. But I have some means of my own and, right now, I'm not even thinking of going back to New York."
Mr. Shayne stepped into the car. "I would like to do something." Hugo realized the sincerity of that desire. He reflected.
"Nothing I can think of—"
"I'm a banker. Perhaps—if I might take the liberty—I could handle your affairs?"
Hugo smiled. "My affairs consist of one bank account in the City Loan that would seem very small to you, Mr. Shayne."
"Why, that's one of my banks. I'll arrange it. You know and I know how small the matter of money is. But I'd appreciate your turning over some of your capital to me. I would consider it a blessed opportunity to return a service, a great service with a small one, I'm afraid."
"Thanks," Hugo said.
The banker scribbled a statement, asked a question, and raised his eyebrows over the amount Hugo gave him. Then he was the father again. "We've been to the cemetery, Danner. We owe that privilege to you. It says there, in French: 'The remains of a great hero who gave his life for France.' Not America, my boy; but I think that France was a worthy cause."
When they had gone, Hugo spent a disturbed afternoon. He had not been so moved in many, many months.
Now the streets of Paris were assailed by the colour of olive drab, the twang of Yankee accents, the music of Broadway songs. Hugo watched the first parade with eyes somewhat proud and not a little sombre. Each shuffling step seemed to ask a rhythmic question. Who would not return to Paris? Who would return once and not again? Who would be blind? Who would be hideous? Who would be armless, legless, who would wear silver plates and leather props for his declining years? Hugo wondered, and, looking into those sometimes stern and sometimes ribald faces, he saw that they had not yet commenced to wonder.
They did not know the hammer and shock of falling shells and the jelly and putty which men became. They chafed and bantered and stormed every café and cocotte impartially, recklessly. Even the Legion had been more grim and better prepared for the iron feet of war. They fell upon Hugo with their atrocious French—two young men who wanted a drink and could not make the bar-tender understand.
"Hey,fransay," they called to him, "comment dire que nous voulez des choses boire?"
Hugo smiled. "What do you birds want to drink?"
"God Almighty! Here's a Frog that speaks United States. Get the gang. What's your name, bo?"
"Danner."
"Come on an' have a flock of drinks on us. You're probably dying on French pay. You order for the gang and we'll treat." Eager, grinning American faces. "Can you get whisky in this God-forsaken dump?"
"Straight or highball?"
"That's the talk. Straight, Dan. We're in the army now."
Hugo drank with them. Only for one moment did they remember they were in the army to fight: "Say, Dan, the war really isn't as tough as they claim, is it?"
"I don't know how tough they claim it is."
"Well, you seen much fightin'?"
"Three years."
"Is it true that the Heinies—?" His hands indicated his question.
"Sometimes. Accidentally, more or less. You can't help it."
"And do them machine guns really mow 'em down?"
Hugo shrugged. "There are only four men in service now who started with my company."
"Ouch!Garçon! Encore!An' tell him to make it double—no, triple—Dan, old man. It may be my last." To Hugo: "Well, it's about time we got here an' took the war off your shoulders. You guys sure have had a bellyful. An' I'm goin' to get me one right here and now. Bottoms up, you guys."
Hugo was transferred to an American unit. The officers belittled the recommendations that came with him. They put him in the ranks. He served behind the lines for a week. Then his regiment moved up. As soon as the guns began to rumble, a nervous second lieutenant edged toward the demoted private. "Say, Danner, you've been in this before. Do you think it's all right to keep on along this road the way we are?"
"I'm sure I couldn't say. You're taking a chance. Plane strafing and shells."
"Well, what else are we to do? These are our orders."
"Nothing," Hugo said.
When the first shells fell among them, however, Danner forgot that his transference had cost his commission and sadly bereft Captain Crouan and his command. He forgot his repressed anger at the stupidity of American headquarters and their bland assumption of knowledge superior to that gained by three years of actual fighting. He virtually took charge of his company, ignoring the bickering of a lieutenant who swore and shouted and accomplished nothing and who was presently beheaded for his lack of caution. A month later, with troops that had some feeling of respect for the enemy—a feeling gained through close and gory association—Hugo was returned his commission.
Slowly at first, and with increasing momentum, the war was pushed up out of the trenches and the Germans retreated. The summer that filled the windows of American homes with gold stars passed. Hugo worked like a slave out beyond the front trenches, scouting, spying, destroying, salvaging, bending his heart and shoulders to a task that had long since become an acid routine. September. October. November. The end of that holocaust was very near.
Then there came a day warmer than the rest and less rainy. Hugo was riding toward the lines on acamion. He rode as much as possible now. He had not slept for two days. His eyes were red and twitching. He felt tired—tired as if his fatigue were the beginning of death—tired so that nothing counted or mattered—tired of killing, of hating, of suffering—tired even of an ideal that had tarnished through long weathering. Thecamionwas steel and it rattled and bumped as it moved over the road. Hugo lay flat in it, trying to close his eyes.
After a time, moving between the stumps of a row of poplars, they came abreast of a regiment returning from the battle. They walked slowly and dazedly. Each individual was still amazed at being alive after the things he had witnessed. Hugo raised himself and looked at them. The same expression had often been on the faces of the French. The long line of the regiment ended. Then there was an empty place on the road, and the speed of the truck increased.
Finally it stopped with a sharp jar, and the driver shouted that he could go no farther. Hugo clambered to the ground. He estimated that the battery toward which he was travelling was a mile farther. He began to walk. There was none of the former lunge and stride in his steps. He trudged, rather, his head bent forward. A little file of men approached him, and, even at a distance, he did not need a second glance to identify them. Walking wounded.
By ones and twos they began to pass him. He paid scant attention. Their field dressings were stained with the blood that their progress cost. They cursed and muttered. Someone had given them cigarettes, and a dozen wisps of smoke rose from each group. It was not until he reached the end of the straggling line that he looked up. Then he saw one man whose arms were both under bandage walking with another whose eyes were covered and whose hand, resting on his companion's shoulder, guided his stumbling feet.
Hugo viewed them as they came on and presently heard their conversation. "Christ, it hurts," one of them said.
"The devil with hurting, boy," the blinded man answered. "So do I, for that matter. I feel like there was a hot poker in my brains."
"Want another butt?"
"No, thanks. Makes me kind of sick to drag on them. Wish I had a drink, though."
"Who doesn't?"
Hugo heard his voice. "Hey, you guys," it said. "Here's some water. And a shot of cognac, too."
The first man stopped and the blind man ran into him, bumping his head. He gasped with pain, but his lips smiled. "Damn nice of you, whoever you are."
They took the canteen and swallowed. "Go on," Hugo said, and permitted himself a small lie. "I can get more in a couple of hours." He produced his flask. "And finish off on a shot of this."
He held the containers for the armless man and handed them to the other. Their clothes were ragged and stained. Their shoes were in pieces. Sweat had soaked under the blind man's armpits and stained his tunic. As Hugo watched him swallow thirstily, he started. The chin and the hair were familiar. His mind spun. He knew the voice, although its tenor was sadly changed.
"Good God," he said involuntarily, "it's Lefty!"
Lefty stiffened. "Who are you?"
"Hugo Danner."
"Hugo Danner?" The tortured brain reflected.
"Hugo! Good old Hugo! What, in the name of Jesus, are you doing here?"
"Same thing you are."
An odd silence fell. The man with the shattered arms broke it. "Know this fellow?"
"Do I know him! Gee! He was at college with me. One of my buddies. Gosh!" His hand reached out. "Put it there, Hugo."
They shook hands. "Got it bad, Lefty?"
The bound head shook. "Not so bad. I guess—I kind of feel that I won't be able to see much any more. Eyes all washed out. Got mustard gas in 'em. But I'll be all right, you know. A little thing like that's nothing. Glad to be alive. Still have my sex appeal, anyhow. Still got the old appetite. But—listen—what happened to you? Why in hell did you quit? Woodman nearly went crazy looking for you."
"Oh—" Hugo's thoughts went back a distance that seemed infinite, into another epoch and another world—"oh, I just couldn't stick it. Say, you guys, wait a minute." He turned. Hiscamion-driver was lingering in the distance. "Wait here." He rushed back. The armless man whistled.
"God in heaven! Your friend there can sure cover the ground."
"Yeah," Lefty said absently. "He always could."
In a moment Hugo returned. "I got it all fixed up for you two to ride in. No limousine, but it'll carry you."
Lefty's lip trembled. "Gee—Jesus Christ—" he amended stubbornly; "that's decent. I don't feel so dusty to-day. Damn it, if I had any eyes, I guess I'd cry. Must be the cognac."
"Nothing at all, Lefty old kid. Here, I'll give you a hand." He took Lefty's arm over his shoulder, encircled him with his own, and carried him rapidly over the broken road.
"Still got the old fight," Lefty murmured as he felt himself rushed forward.
"Still."
"Been in this mess long?"
"Since the beginning."
"I should have thought of that. I often wondered what became of you. Iris used to wonder, too."
"How is she?"
"All right."
They reached the truck. Lefty sat down on the metal bottom with a sigh. "Thanks, old bean. I was just aboutkaputt. Tough going, this war. I saw my first shell fall yesterday. Never saw a single German at all. One of those squdgy things came across, and before I knew it, there was onion in my eye for a goal." The truck motor roared. The armless man came alongside and was lifted beside Lefty. "Well, Hugo, so long. You sure were a friend in need. Never forget it. And look me up when the Krauts are all dead, will you?" The gears clashed. "Thanks again—and for the cognac, too." He waved airily. "See you later."
Hugo stalked back on the road. Once he looked over his shoulder. The truck was a blur of dust. "See you later. See you later. See you later." Lefty would never see him later—never see anyone ever.
That night he sat in a quiet stupor, all thought of great ideal, of fine abandon, of the fury of justice, and all flagrant phrases brought to an abrupt end by the immediate claims of his own sorrow. Tom Shayne was blasted to death. The stinging horror of mustard had fallen into Lefty's eyes. All the young men were dying. The friendships he had made, the human things that gave in memory root to the earth were ripped up and shrivelled. That seemed grossly wrong and patently ignoble. He discarded his personal travail. It was nothing. His life had been comprised of attempt and failure, of disappointment and misunderstanding; he was accustomed to witness the blunting of the edge of his hopes and the dulling of his desires when they were enacted.
Even his great sacrifice had been vain. It was always thus. His deeds frightened men or made them jealous. When he conceived a fine thing, the masses, individually or collectively, transformed it into something cheap. His fort in the forest had been branded a hoax. His effort to send himself through college and to rescue Charlotte from an unpleasant life had ended in vulgar comedy. Even that had been her triumph, her hour, and an incongruous strain of greatness had filtered through her personality rather than his. Now his years in the war were reduced to no grandeur, to a mere outlet for his savage instinct to destroy. After such a life, he reflected, he could no longer visualize himself engaged in any search for a comprehension of real values.
His mind was thorny with doubts. Seeing himself as a man made hypocritical by his gifts and the narrowness of the world, discarding his own problem as tragically solved, Hugo then looked upon the war as the same sort of colossal error. A waste. Useless, hopeless, gaining nothing but the temporal power which it so blatantly disavowed, it had exacted the price of its tawdry excitement in lives, and, now that it was almost finished, mankind was ready to emerge blank-faced and panting, no better off than before.
His heart ached as he thought of the toil, the effort, the energy and hope and courage that had been spilled over those mucky fields to satisfy the lusts and foolish hates of the demagogues. He was no longer angry. The memory of Lefty sitting smilingly on the van and calling that he would see him later was too sharp an emotion to permit brain storms and pyrotechnics.
If he could but have ended the war single-handed, it might have been different. But he was not great enough for that. He had been a thousand men, perhaps ten thousand, but he could not be millions. He could not wrap his arms around a continent and squeeze it into submission. There were too many people and they were too stupid to do more than fear him and hate him. Sitting there, he realized that his naïve faith in himself and the universe had foundered. The war was only another war that future generations would find romantic to contemplate and dull to study. He was only a species of genius who had missed his mark by a cosmic margin.
When he considered his failure, he believed that he was not thinking about himself. There he was, entrusted with special missions which he accomplished no one knew how, and no one questioned in those hectic days. Those who had seen him escape machine-gun fire, carry tons, leap a hundred yards, kill scores, still clung to their original concepts of mankind and discredited the miracle their own eyes had witnessed. Too many strange things happened in that blasting carnival of destruction for one strange sight or one strange man to leave a great mark. Personal security was at too great a premium to leave much room for interest and speculation. Even Captain Crouan believed he was only a man of freak strength and Major Ingalls in his present situation was too busy to do more than note that Hugo was capable and nod his head when Hugo reported another signal victory, ascribing it to his long experience in the war rather than to his peculiar abilities.
As he sat empty-eyed in the darkness, smoking cigarettes and breathing in his own and the world's tragic futility, his own and the world's abysmal sorrow, that stubborn ancestral courage and determination that was in him still continued to lash his reason. "Even if the war is not worth while," it whispered, "you have committed yourself to it. You are bound and pledged to see it to the bitter end. You cannot finish it on a declining note. To-night, to-morrow, you must begin again." At the same time his lust for carnage stirred within him like a long-subdued demon. Now he recognized it and knew that it must be mastered. But it combined with his conscience to quicken his sinews anew.
It was a cold night, but Hugo perspired. Was he to go again into the holocaust to avenge a friend? Was he to live over those crimson seconds that followed the death of Shayne, all because he had helped a blind friend into acamion? He knew that he was not. Never again could his instinct so triumph over his reason. That was the greatest danger in being Hugo Danner. That, he commenced to see, was the explanation of all his suffering in the past. The idea warmed and encouraged him. Henceforth his emotions and sentiments would be buried even deeper than his first inbred caution had buried them. He would be a creature of intelligence, master of his caprice as well as of the power he possessed to carry out that caprice.
He lit a fresh cigarette and planned what he would do. On the next night he would prepare himself very carefully. He would eat enormously, provide himself with food and water, rest as much as he could, and then start south and east in a plane. He would drive it far into Germany. When its petrol failed, he would crash it. Stepping from the ruins, he would hasten on in the darkness, on, on, like Pheidippides, till he reached the centre of the enemy government. There, crashing through the petty human barriers, he would perform his last feat, strangling the Emperor, slaying the generals, pulling the buildings apart with his Samsonian arms, and disrupting the control of the war.
He had dreamed of such an enterprise even before he had enlisted. But he had known that he lacked sufficient stamina without a great internal cause, and no rage, no blood-madness, was great enough to drive him to that effort. With amazement he realized that a clenched determination depending on the brain rather than the emotions was a greater catalyst than any passion. He knew that he could do such a thing. In the warmth of that knowledge he completed his plan tranquilly and retired. For twelve hours, by order undisturbed, Hugo slept.
In the bright morning, he girded himself. He requisitioned the plane he needed through Major Ingalls. He explained that requirement by saying that he was going to bomb a battery of big guns. The plane offered was an old one. Hugo had seen enough of flying in his French service to understand its navigation. He ate the huge meal he had planned. And then, a cool and grim man, he made his way to the hangar. In fifteen minutes his last adventure would have commenced. But a dispatch rider, charging on to the field in a roaring motor cycle, announced the signing of the Armistice and the end of the war.
Hugo stood near his plane when he heard the news. Two men at his side began to cry, one repeating over and over: "And I'm still alive, so help me God. I wish I was dead, like Joey." Hugo was rigid. His first gesture was to lift his clenched fist and search for an object to smash with it. The fist lingered in the air. His rage passed—rage that would have required a giant vent had it occurred two days sooner. He relaxed. His arm fell. He ruffled his black hair; his blacker eyes stared and then twinkled. His lips smiled for the first time in many months. His great shoulders sagged. "I should have guessed it," he said to himself, and entered the rejoicing with a fervour that was unexpected.
There must be in heaven a certain god—a paunchy, cynical god whose task it is to arrange for each of the birthward-marching souls a set of circumstances so nicely adjusted to its character that the result of its life, in triumph or defeat, will be hinged on the finest of threads. So Hugo must have felt coming home from war. He had celebrated the Armistice hugely, not because it had spared his life—most of the pomp, parade, bawdiness, and glory had originated in such a deliverance—but because it had rescued him from the hot blast of destructiveness. An instantaneous realization of that prevented despair. He had failed in the hour of becoming death itself; such failure was fortunate because life to him, even at the end of the war, seemed more the effort of creation than the business of annihilation.
To know that had cost a struggle—a struggle that took place at the hangar as the dispatch-bearer rode up and that remained crucial only between the instant when he lifted his fist and when he lowered it. Brevity made it no less intense; a second of time had resolved his soul afresh, had redistilled it and recombined it.
Not long after that he started back to America. The mass of soldiers surrounding him were undergoing a transition that Hugo felt vividly. These men would wake up sweating at night and cry out until someone whispered roughly that there were no more submarines. A door would slam and one of them would begin to weep. There were whisperings and bickerings about life at home, about what each person, disintegrated again to individuality, would do and say and think. Little fears about lost jobs and lost girls cropped out, were thrust back, came finally to remain. And no one wanted life to be what it had been; no one considered that it could be the same.
Hugo wrote to his family that the war was ended, that he was well, that he expected to see them some time in the near future. The ship that carried him reached the end of the blue sea; he was disembarked and demobilized in New York. He realized even before he was accustomed to the novelty of civilian clothes that a familiar, friendly city had changed. The retrospective spell of the eighties and nineties had vanished. New York was brand-new, blatant, rushing, prosperous. The inheritance from Europe had been assimilated; a social reality, entirely foreign and American, had been wrought and New York was ready to spread it across the parent world. Those things were pressed quickly into Hugo's mind by his hotel, the magazines, a chance novel of the precise date, the cinema, and the more general, more indefinite human pulses.
After a few days of random inspection, of casual imbibing, he called upon Tom Shayne's father. He would have preferred to escape all painful reminiscing, but he went partly as a duty and partly from necessity: he had no money whatever.
A butler opened the door of a large stone mansion and ushered Hugo to the library, where Mr. Shayne rose eagerly. "I'm so glad you came. Knew you'd be here soon. How are you?"
Hugo was slightly surprised. In his host's manner was the hardness and intensity that he had observed everywhere. "I'm very well, thanks."
"Splendid! Cocktails, Smith."
There was a pause. Mr. Shayne smiled. "Well, it's over, eh?"
"Yes."
"All over. And now we've got to beat the spears into plowshares, eh?"
"We have."
Mr. Shayne chuckled. "Some of my spears were already made into plows, and it was a great season for the harvest, young man—a great season."
Hugo was still uncertain of Mr. Shayne's deepest viewpoint. His uncertainty nettled him. "The grim reaper has done some harvesting on his own account—" He spoke almost rudely.
Mr. Shayne frowned disapprovingly. "I made up my mind to forget, Danner. To forget and to buckle down. And I've done both. You'll want to know what happened to the funds I handled for you—"
"I wasn't particularly—"
The older man shook his head with grotesque coyness. "Not so fast, not so fast. You were particularly eager to hear. We're getting honest about our emotions in this day and place. You're eaten with impatience. Well—I won't hold out. Danner, I've made you a million. A clean, cold million."
Hugo had been struggling in a rising tide of incomprehension; that statement engulfed him. "Me? A million?"
"In the bank in your name waiting for a blonde girl."
"I'm afraid I don't exactly understand, Mr. Shayne."
The banker readjusted his glasses and swallowed a cocktail by tipping back his head. Then he rose, paced across the broad carpet, and faced Hugo. "Of course you don't understand. Well, I'll tell you about it. Once you did a favour for me which has no place in this conversation." He hesitated; his face seemed to flinch and then to be jerked back to its former expression. "In return I've done a little for you. And I want to add a word to the gift of your bank book. You have, if you're careful, leisure to enjoy life, freedom, the world at your feet. No more strife for you, no worry, and no care. Take it. Be a hedonist. There is nothing else. I've lain in bed nights enjoying the life that lies ahead of you, my boy. Vicariously voluptuous. Catchy phrase, isn't it? My own. I want to see you do it up brown."
Hugo rubbed his hand across his forehead. It was not long ago that this same man had sat at anestaminetand wept over snatches of a childhood which death had made sacred. Here he stood now, asking that a life be done up brown, and meaning cheap, obvious things. He wished that he had never called on Tom's father.
"That wasn't my idea of living—" he said slowly.
"It will be. Forget the war. It was a dream. I realized it suddenly. If I had not, I would still be—just a banker. Not a great banker. The great banker. I saw, suddenly, that it was a dream. The world was mad. So I took my profit from it, beginning on the day I saw."
"How, exactly?"
"Eh?"
"I mean—how did you profit by the war?"
Mr. Shayne smiled expansively. "What was in demand then, my boy? What were the stupid, traduced, misguided people raising billions to get? What? Why, shells, guns, foodstuffs. For six months I had a corner on four chemicals vitally necessary to the government. And the government got them—at my price. I owned a lot of steel. I mixed food and diplomacy in equal parts—and when the pie was opened, it was full of solid gold."
Hugo's voice was strange. "And that is the way—my money was made?"
"It is." Mr. Shayne perceived that Hugo was angry. "Now, don't get sentimental. Keep your eye on the ball. I—" He did not finish, because Mrs. Shayne came into the room. Hugo stared at him fixedly, his face livid, for several seconds before he was conscious of her. Even then it was only a partial consciousness.
She was stuffed into a tight, bright dress. She was holding out her hand, holding his hand, holding his hand too long. There was mascara around her eyes and they dilated and blinked in a foolish and flirtatious way; her voice was syrup. She was taking a cocktail with the other hand—maybe if he gave her hand a real squeeze, she would let go. A tall, sallow young man had come in behind her; he was Mr. Jerome Leonardo Bateau, a perfect dear. Mrs. Shayne was still holding his hand and murmuring; Mr. Shayne was patting his shoulder; Mr. Bateau was staring with haughty and jealous eyes. Hugo excused himself.
In the hall he asked for Mr. Shayne's secretary. He collected himself in a few frigid sentences. "Please tell Mr. Shayne I am very grateful. I wish to transfer my entire fortune to my parents in Indian Creek, Colorado. The name is Abednego Danner. Make all arrangements."
A faint "But—" followed him futilely through the door. In the space of a block he had cut a pace that set other pedestrians gaping to a fast walk.
Hugo sat in Madison Square Park giving his attention in a circuit to the Flatiron Building, the clock on the Metropolitan Tower, and the creeping barrage of traffic that sent people scampering, stopped, moved forward again. He had sat on the identical bench at the identical time of day during his obscure undergraduate period. To repeat that contemplative stasis after so much living had intervened ought to have produced an emotion. He had gone to the park with that idea. But the febrile fires of feeling were banked under the weight of many things and he could suffer nothing, enjoy nothing and think but one fragmentary routine.
He had tried much and made no progress. He would be forced presently to depart on a different course from a new threshold. That idea went round and round in his head like a single fly in a big room. It lost poignancy and eventually it lost meaning. Still he sat in feeble sunshine trying to move beyond stagnancy. He remembered the small man with the huge roll of bills who had moved beside him and asked for a cup of coffee. He remembered the woman who had robbed him; silk ankles crossed his line of vision, and a gusty appetite vaporized even as it steamed into the coldness of his indecision.
He was without money now, as he had been then, so long ago. He budged on the bench and challenged himself to think.
What would you do if you were the strongest man in the world, the strongest thing in the world, mightier than the machine? He made himself guess answers for that rhetorical query. "I would—I would have won the war. But I did not. I would run the universe single-handed. Literally single-handed. I would scorn the universe and turn it to my own ends. I would be a criminal. I would rip open banks and gut them. I would kill and destroy. I would be a secret, invisible blight. I would set out to stamp crime off the earth; I would be a super-detective, following and summarily punishing every criminal until no one dared to commit a felony. What would I do? What will I do?"
Then he realized that he was hungry. He had not eaten enough in the last few days. Enough for him. With some intention of finding work he had left Mr. Shayne's house. A call on the telephone from Mr. Shayne himself volunteering a position had crystallized that intention. In three days he had discovered the vast abundance of young men, the embarrassment of young men, who were walking along the streets looking for work. He who had always worked with his arms and shoulders had determined to try to earn his living with his head. But the white-collar ranks were teeming, overflowing, supersaturated. He went down in the scale of clerkships and inexperienced clerkships. There was no work.
Thence he had gone to the park, and presently he rose. He had seen the clusters of men on Sixth Avenue standing outside the employment agencies. He could go there. Any employment was better than hunger—and he had learned that hunger could come swiftly and formidably to him. Business was slack, hands were being laid off; where an apprentice was required, three trained men waited avidly for work. It was appalling and Hugo saw it as appalling. He was not frightened, but, as he walked, he knew that it was a mistake to sit in the park with the myriad other men. Walking made him feel better. It was action, it bred the thought that any work was better than none. Work would not hinder his dreams, meantime.
When he reached Forty-second Street he could see the sullen, watchful groups of men. He joined one of them. A loose-jointed, dark-faced person came down a flight of stairs, wrote on a blackboard in chalk, and went up again. Several of the group detached themselves and followed him—to compete for a chance to wash windows.
A man at his side spoke to him. "Tough, ain't it, buddy?"
"Yeah, it's tough," Hugo said.
"I got three bones left. Wanna join me in a feed an' get a job afterward?"
Hugo looked into his eyes. They were troubled and desirous of companionship. "No, thanks," he replied.
They waited for the man to scribble again in chalk.
"They was goin' to fix up everybody slick after the war. Oh, hell, yes."
"You in it?" Hugo asked.
"Up to my God-damned neck, buddy."
"Me, too. Guess I'll go up the line."
"I'll go witcha."
"Well—"
They waited a moment longer, for the man with the chalk had reappeared. Hugo's comrade grunted. "Wash windows an' work in the steel mills. Break your neck or burn your ear off. Wha' do they care?" Hugo had taken a step toward the door, but the youth with the troubled eyes caught his sleeve. "Don't go up for that, son. They burn you in them steel mills. I seen guys afterward. Two years an' you're all done. This is tough, but that's tougher. Sweet Jesus, I'll say it is."
Hugo loosened himself. "Gotta eat, buddy. I don't happen to have even three bones available at the moment."
The man looked after him. "Gosh," he murmured. "Even guys like that."
He was in a dingy room standing before a grilled window. A voice from behind it asked his name, age, address, war record. Hugo was handed a piece of paper to sign and then a second piece that bore the scrawled words: "Amalgamated Crucible Steel Corp., Harrison, N. J."
Hugo's emotional life was reawakened when he walked into the mills. His last nickel was gone. He had left the train at the wrong station and walked more than a mile. He was hungry and cold. He came, as if naked, to the monster and he did it homage.
Its predominant colour scheme was black and red. It had a loud, pagan voice. It breathed fire. It melted steel and rock and drank human sweat, with human blood for an occasional stimulant. On every side of him were enormous buildings and woven between them a plaid of girders, cables, and tracks across which masses of machinery moved. Inside, Thor was hammering. Inside, a crane sped overhead like a tarantula, trailing its viscera to the floor, dangling a gigantic iron rib. A white speck in its wounded abdomen was a human face.
The bright metal gushed from another hole. It was livid and partially alive; it was hot and had a smell; it swept away the thought of the dark descending night. It made a pool in a great ladle; it made a cupful dipped from a river in hell. A furnace exhaled sulphurously, darting a snake's tongue into the sky. The mills roared and the earth shook. It was bestial, reptilian—labour, and the labour of creation, and the engine that turned the earth could be no more terrible.
Hugo, standing sublimely small in its midst, measured his strength against it, soaked up its warmth, shook his fist at it, and shouted in a voice that could not be heard for a foot: "Christ Almighty! This—is something!"
"Name?"
"Hugo Danner."
"Address?"
"None at present."
"Experience?"
"None."
"Married?"
"No."
"Union?"
"What?"
"Lemme see your union card."
"I don't belong."
"Well, you gotta join."
He went to the headquarters of the union. Men were there of all sorts. The mills were taking on hands. There was reconstruction to be done abroad and steel was needed. They came from Europe, for the most part. Thickset, square-headed, small-eyed men. Men with expressionless faces and bulging muscles that held more meaning than most countenances. They gave him room and no more. They answered the same questions that he answered. He stood in a third queue with them, belly to back, mouths closed. He was sent to a lodging-house, advanced five dollars, and told that he would be boarded and given a bed and no more until the employment agency had taken its commission, and the union its dues. He signed a paper. He went on the night shift without supper.
He ran a wheelbarrow filled with heavy, warm slag for a hundred feet over a walk of loose bricks. The job was simple. Load, carry, dump, return, load. On some later night he would count the number of loads. But on this first night he walked with excited eyes, watching the tremendous things that happened all around him. Men ran the machinery that dumped the ladle. Men guided liquid iron from the furnaces into a maze of channels and cloughs, clearing the way through the sand, cutting off the stream, making new openings. Men wheeled the slag and steered the trains and trams and cranes. Men operated the hammers. And almost all of the men were nude to the waist, sleek and shining with sweat; almost all of them drank whisky.
One of the men in the wheelbarrow line even offered a drink to Hugo. He held out the flask and bellowed in Czech. Hugo took it. The drink was raw and foul. Pouring into his empty stomach, it had a powerful effect, making him exalted, making him work like a demon. After a long, noisy time that did not seem long a steam whistle screamed faintly and the shift was ended.
The Czech accompanied Hugo through the door. The new shift was already at work. They went out. A nightmare of brilliant orange and black fled from Hugo's vision and he looked into the pale, remote chiaroscuro of dawn.
"Me tired," the Czech said in a small, aimless tone.
They flung themselves on dirty beds in a big room. But Hugo did not sleep for a time—not until the sun rose and day was evident in the grimy interior of the bunk house.
That he could think while he worked had been Hugo's thesis when he walked up Sixth Avenue. Now, working steadily, working at a thing that was hard for other men and easy for him, he nevertheless fell into the stolid vacuum of the manual labourer. The mills became familiar, less fantastic. He remembered that oftentimes the war had given a more dramatic passage of man's imagination forged into fire and steel.
His task was changed numerous times. For a while he puddled pig iron with the long-handled, hoe-like tool.
"Don't slip in," they said. It was succinct, graphic.
Then they put him on the hand cars that fed the furnaces. It was picturesque, daring, and for most men too hard. Few could manage the weight or keep up with the pace. Those who did were honoured by their fellows. The trucks were moved forward by human strength and dumped by hand-windlasses. Occasionally, they said, you became tired and fell into the furnace. Or jumped. If you got feeling woozy, they said, quit. The high rails and red mouths were hypnotic, like burning Baal and the Juggernaut.
Hugo's problems had been abandoned. He worked as hard as he dared. The presence of grandeur and din made him content. How long it would have lasted is uncertain; not forever. On the day when he had pushed up two hundred and three loads during his shift, the boss stopped him in the yard.
A tall, lean, acid man. He caught Hugo's sleeve and turned him round. "You're one of the bastards on the furnace line."
"Yes."
"How many cars did you push up to-day?"
"Two hundred and three."
"What the hell do you think this is, anyway?"
"I don't get you."
"Oh, you don't, huh? Well, listen here, you God-damned athlete, what are you trying to do? You got the men all sore—wearing themselves out. I had to lay off three—why? Because they couldn't keep up with you, that's why. Because they got their guts in a snarl trying to bust your record. What do you think you're in? A race? Somebody's got to show you your place around here and I think I'll just kick a lung out right now."
The boss had worked himself into a fury. He became conscious of an audience of workers. Hugo smiled. "I wouldn't advise you to try that—even if you are a big guy."
"What was that?" The words were roared. He gathered himself, but when Hugo did not flinch, did not prepare himself, he was suddenly startled. He remembered, perhaps, the two hundred and three cars. He opened his fist. "All right. I ain't even goin' to bother myself tryin' to break you in to this game. Get out."
"What?"
"Get out. Beat it. I'm firing you."
"Firing me? For working too hard?" Hugo laughed. He bent double with laughter. His laughter sounded above the thunder of the mill. "Oh, God, that's funny. Fire me!" He moved toward the boss menacingly. "I've a notion to twist your liver around your neck myself."
The workers realized that an event of some magnitude was taking place. They drew nearer. Hugo's laughter came again and changed into a smile—an emotion that cooled visibly. Then swiftly he peeled up the sleeve of his shirt. His fist clenched; his arm bent; under the nose of his boss he caused his mighty biceps to swell. His whole body trembled. With his other hand he took the tall man's fingers and laid them on that muscle.
"Squeeze," he shouted.
The boss squeezed. His face grew pallid and he let go suddenly. He tried to speak through his dry mouth, but Hugo had turned his back. At the brick gate post he paused and drew a breath.
His words resounded like the crack of doom. "So long!"
In the next four weeks Hugo knew the pangs of hunger frequently. He found odd jobs, but none of them lasted. Once he helped to remove a late snowstorm from the streets. He worked for five days on a subway excavation. His clothes became shabby, he began to carry his razor in his overcoat pocket and to sleep in hotels that demanded only twenty-five cents for a night's lodging. When he considered the tens of thousands of men in his predicament, he was not surprised at or ashamed of himself. When, however, he dwelt on his own peculiar capacities, he was both astonished and ashamed to meander along the dreary pavements.
Hunger did curious things to him. He had moments of fury, of imagined violence, and other moments of fantasy when he dreamed of a rich and noble life. Sometimes he meditated the wisdom of devouring one prodigious meal and fleeing through the dead of night to the warm south. Occasionally he considered going back to his family in Colorado. His most bitter hours were spent in thinking of Mr. Shayne and of accepting a position in one of Mr. Shayne's banks.
In his maculate, threadbare clothes, with his dark, aquiline face matured by the war he was a sharp contrast of facts and possibilities. It never occurred to him that he was young, that his dissatisfaction, his idealism, hisWeltschmertzwere integral to the life-cycle of every man.
At the end of four weeks, with hunger gnawing so avidly at his core that he could not pass a restaurant without twitching muscles and quivering nerves, he turned abruptly from the street into a cigar store and telephoned to Mr. Shayne. The banker was full of sound counsel and ready charity. Hugo regretted the call as soon as he heard Mr. Shayne's voice; he regretted it when he was ravishing a luxurious dinner at Mr. Shayne's expense. It was the weakest thing he had done in his life.
Nevertheless he accepted the position offered by Mr. Shayne. That same evening he rented a small apartment, and, lying on his bed, a clean bed, he wondered if he really cared about anything or about anyone. In the morning he took a shower and stood for a long time in front of the mirror on the bathroom door, staring at his nude body as if it were a rune he might learn to read, an enigma he might solve by concentration. Then he went to work. His affiliation with the Down Town Savings Bank lasted into the spring and was terminated by one of the oddest incidents of his career.
Until the day of that incident his incumbency was in no way unusual. He was one of the bank's young men, receiving fifty dollars weekly to learn the banking business. They moved him from department to department, giving him mentally menial tasks which afforded him in each case a glimpse of a new facet of financial technique. It was fairly interesting. He made no friends and he worked diligently.
One day in April when he had returned from lunch and a stroll in the environs of the Battery—returned to a list of securities and a strip from an adding machine, which he checked item by item—he was conscious of a stirring in his vicinity. A woman employee on the opposite side of a wire wicket was talking shrilly. A vice-president rose from his desk and hastened down the corridor, his usually composed face suddenly white and disconcerted. The tension was cumulative. Work stopped and clusters of people began to chatter. Hugo joined one of them.
"Yeah," a boy was saying, "it's happened before. A couple o' times."
"How do they know he's there?"
"They got a telephone goin' inside and they're talkin' to him."
"I'll be damned."
The boy nodded rapidly. "Yeah—some talk! Tellin' him what to try next."
"Poor devil!"
"What's the matter?" Hugo asked.
The boy was glad of a new and uninformed listener. "Aw, some dumb vault clerk got himself locked in, an' the locks jammed an' they can't get him out."
"Which vault? The big one?"
"Naw. The big one's got pipes for that kinda trouble. The little one they moved from the old building."
"It's not so darn little at that," someone said.
Another person, a man, chuckled. "Not so darn. But there isn't air in there to last three hours. Caughlin said so."
"Honest to God?"
"Honest. An' he's been there more than an hour already."
"Jeest!" There was a pregnant, pictorial silence. Someone looked at Hugo.
"What's eatin' you, Danner? Scared?"
His face was tense and his hands were opening and closing convulsively. "No," he answered. "Guess I'll go down and have a look."
He rang for an elevator in the corridor and was carried to the basement. In the small room on which the vault opened were five or six people, among them a woman who seemed to command the situation. The men were all smoking; their attitudes were relaxed, their voices hushed.
One repeated nervously: "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ."
"That won't help, Mr. Quail. I've sent for the expert and he will probably have the safe open in a short time."
"Blowtorches?" the swearing man asked abruptly.
"Absurd. He would cook before he was out. And three feet of steel and then two feet more."
"Nitroglycerin?"
"And make jelly out of him?" The woman tapped her finger-nails with her glasses.
Another arrival, who carried a small satchel, talked with her in an undertone and then took off his coat. He went first to a telephone on the wall and said: "Gi' me the inside of the vault. Hello.... Hello? You there? Are you all right?... Try that combination again." The safe-expert held the wire and waited. Not even the faintest sounds of the attempt were audible in the front room. "Hello? You tried it?... Well, see if those numbers are in this order." He repeated a series of complicated directions. Finally he hung up. "Says it's getting pretty stuffy in there. Says he's lying down on the floor."
People came and went. The president himself walked in calmly and occupied a chair. He lit a cigar, puffed on it, and stared with ruminative eyes at the shiny mechanism on the front of the safe.
"We are doing everything possible," the woman said to him crisply.
"Of course," he nodded. "I called up the insurance company. We're amply covered." A pause. "Mrs. Robinson, post one of the guards to keep people from running in and out of here. There are enough around already."
No one had given Hugo any attention. He stood quietly in the background. The expert worked and all eyes were on him. Occasionally he muttered to himself. The hands of an electric clock moved along in audible jerks. Nearly an hour passed and the room had become hazy with tobacco smoke. The man working on the safe was moist with perspiration. His blue shirt was a darker blue around the armpits. He lit a cigarette, set it down, whirled the dials again, lit another cigarette while the first one burned a chair arm, and threw a crumpled, empty package on the floor.
At last he went to the phone again. He waited for some time before it was answered, and he was compelled to make the man inside repeat frequently. The new series of stratagems was without result. Before he went again to his labours, he addressed the group. "Air getting pretty bad, I guess."
"Is it dark?" one of them asked tremulously.
"No."
Fifteen minutes more. The expert glanced at the bank's president, hesitated, struggled frenziedly for a while, and then sighed. "I'm afraid I can't get him out, sir. The combination is jammed and the time-lock is all off."
The president considered. "Do you know of anyone else who could do this?"
The man shook his head. "No. I'm supposed to be the best. I've been called out for this—maybe six times. I never missed before. You see, we make this safe—or we used to make it. And I'm a specialist. It looks serious."
The president took his cigar from his mouth. "Well, go ahead anyway—until it's too late."
Hugo stepped away from the wall. "I think I can get him out."
They turned toward him. The president looked at him coldly. "And who are you?"
Mrs. Robinson answered. "He's the new man Mr. Shayne recommended so highly."
"Ah. And how do you propose to get him out, young man?"
Hugo stood pensively for a moment. "By methods known only to me. I am certain I can do it—but I will undertake it only if you will all leave the room."
"Ridiculous!" Mrs. Robinson said.
The president's mouth worked. He looked more sharply at Hugo. Then he rose. "Come on, everybody." He spoke quietly to Hugo. "You have a nerve. How much time do you want?"
"Five minutes."
"Only five minutes," the president murmured as he walked from the chamber.
Hugo did not move until they had all gone. Then he locked the door behind them. He walked to the safe and rapped on it tentatively with his knuckles. He removed his coat and vest. He planted his feet against the steel sill under the door. He caught hold of the two handles, fidgeted with his elbows, drew a deep breath, and pulled. There was a resonant, metallic sound. Something gave. The edge of the seven-foot door moved outward and a miasma steamed through the aperture. Hugo changed his stance and took the door itself in his hands. His back bent. He pulled again. With a reverberating clang and a falling of broken steel it swung out. Hugo dragged the man who lay on the floor to a window that gave on a grated pit. He broke the glass with his fist. The clerk's chest heaved violently; he panted, opened his eyes, and closed them tremblingly.
Hugo put on his coat and vest and unlocked the door. The people outside all moved toward him.
"It's all right," Hugo said. "He's out."
Mrs. Robinson glanced at the clerk and walked to the safe. "He's ruined it!" she said in a shrill voice.
The president was behind her. He looked at the handles of the vault, which had been bent like hair-pins, and he stooped to examine the shattered bolts. Then his eyes travelled to Hugo. There was a profoundly startled expression in them.
The clerk was sobbing. Presently he stopped. "Who got me out?"
They indicated Hugo and he crossed the floor on tottering feet. "Thanks, mister," he said piteously. "Oh, my God, what a wonderful thing to do! I—I just passed out when I saw your fingers reaching around—"
"Never mind," Hugo interrupted. "It's all right, buddy."
The president touched his shoulder. "Come up to my office." A doctor arrived. Several people left. Others stood around the demolished door.
The president was alone when Hugo entered and sat down. He was cold and he eyed Hugo coldly. "How did you do that?"
Hugo shrugged. "That's my secret, Mr. Mills."
"Pretty clever, I'd say."
"Not when you know how." Hugo was puzzled. His ancient reticence about himself was acting together with a natural modesty.
"Some new explosive?"
"Not exactly."
"Electricity? Magnetism? Thought-waves?"
Hugo chuckled. "No. All wrong."
"Could you do it on a modern safe?"
"I don't know."
President Mills rubbed his fingers on the mahogany desk. "I presume you were planning that for other purposes?"
"What!" Hugo said.
"Very well done. Very well acted. I will play up to you, Mr.—"
"Danner."
"Danner. I'll play up to this assumption of innocence. You have saved a man's life. You are, of course, blushingly modest. But you have shown your hand rather clearly. Hmmm." He smiled sardonically. "I read a book about a safe-cracker who opened a safe to get a child out—at the expense of his liberty and position—or at the hazard of them, anyhow. Maybe you have read the same book."
"Maybe," Hugo answered icily.
"Safe-crackers—blasters, light fingers educated to the dials, and ears attuned to the tumblers—we can cope with those things, Mr.—"
"Danner."
"But this new stunt of yours. Well, until we find out what it is, we can't let you go. This is business, Mr. Danner. It involves money, millions, the security of American finance, of the very nation. You will understand. Society cannot afford to permit a man like you to go at large until it has a thoroughly effective defence against you. Society must disregard your momentary sacrifice, momentary nobleness. Your process, unknown by us, constitutes a great social danger. I do not dare overlook it. I cannot disregard it even after the service you have done—even if I thought you never intended to put it to malicious use."
Hugo's thoughts were far away—to the fort he had built when he was a child in Colorado, to the wagon he had lifted up, to the long, discouraging gauntlet of hard hearts and frightened eyes that his miracles had met with. His voice was wistful when, at last, he addressed the banker.
"What do you propose to do?"
"I shan't bandy words, Danner. I propose to hang on to you until I get that secret. And I shall be absolutely without mercy. That is frank, is it not?"
"Quite."
"You comprehend the significance of the third degree?"
"Not clearly."
"You will learn about it—unless you are reasonable."
Hugo bowed sadly. The president pressed a button. Two policemen came into the room. "McClaren has my instructions," he said.
"Come on." Hugo rose and stood between them. He realized that the whole pantomime of his arrest was in earnest. For one brief instant the president was given a glimpse of a smile, a smile that worried him for a long time. He was so worried that he called McClaren on the telephone and added to his already abundant instructions.
A handful of bystanders collected to watch Hugo cross from the bank to the steel patrol wagon. It moved forward and its bell sounded. The policemen had searched Hugo and now they sat dumbly beside him. He was handcuffed to both of them. Once he looked down at the nickel bonds and up at the dull faces. His eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch.
Captain McClaren received Hugo in a bare room shadowed by bars. He was a thick-shouldered, red-haired man with a flabby mouth from which protruded a moist and chewed toothpick. His eyes were blue and bland. He made Hugo strip nude and gave him a suit of soiled clothes. Hugo remained alone in that room for thirty hours without food or water. The strain of that ordeal was greater than his jailers could have conceived, but he bore it with absolute stoicism.
Early in the evening of the second day the lights in the room were put out, a glaring automobile lamp was set up on a table, he was seated in front of it, and men behind the table began to question him in voices that strove to be terrible. They asked several questions and ultimately boiled them down to one: "How did you get that safe open?" which was bawled at him and whispered hoarsely at him from the darkness behind the light until his mind rang with the words, until he was waiting frantically for each new issue of the words, until sweat glistened on his brow and he grew weak and nauseated. His head ached splittingly and his heart pounded. They desisted at dawn, gave him a glass of water, which he gulped, and a dose of castor oil, which he allowed them to force into his mouth. A few hours later they began again. It was night before they gave up.
The remnant of Hugo's clenched sanity was dumbfounded at what followed after that. They beat his face with fists that shot from the blackness. They threw him to the floor and kicked him. When his skin did not burst and he did not bleed, they beat and kicked more viciously. They lashed him with rubber hoses. They twisted his arms as far as they could—until the bones of an ordinary man would have become dislocated.
Except for thirst and hunger and the discomfort caused by the castor oil, Hugo did not suffer. They refined their torture slowly. They tried to drive a splinter under his nails; they turned on the lights and drank water copiously in his presence; they finally brought a blowtorch and prepared to brand him. Hugo perceived that his invulnerability was to stand him in stead no longer. His tongue was swollen, but he could still talk. Sitting placidly in his bonds, he watched the soldering iron grow white in the softly roaring flame. When, in the full light that shone on the bare and hideous room, they took up the iron and approached him, Hugo spoke.
"Wait. I'll tell you."
McClaren put the iron back. "You will, eh?"
"No."
"Oh, you won't."
"I shan't tell you, McClaren; I'll show you. And may God have mercy on your filthy soul."
There were six men in the room. Hugo looked from one to another. He could tolerate nothing more; he had followed the course of President Mills's social theory far enough to be surfeited with it. There was decision in his attitude, and not one of the six men who had worked his torment in relays could have failed to feel the chill of that decision. They stood still. McClaren's voice rang out: "Cover him, boys."
Hugo stretched. His bonds burst; the chair on which he sat splintered to kindling. Six revolvers spat simultaneously. Hugo felt the sting of the bullets. Six chambers were emptied. The room eddied smoke. There was a harsh silence.
"Now," Hugo said gently, "I will demonstrate how I opened that safe."
"Christ save us," one of the men whispered, crossing himself.
McClaren was frozen still. Hugo walked to the wall of the jail and stabbed his fist through it. Brick and mortar burst out on the other side and fell into the cinder yard. Hugo kicked and lashed with his fists. A large hole opened. Then he turned to the men. They broke toward the door, but he caught them one by one—and one by one he knocked them unconscious. That much was for his own soul. Only McClaren was left. He carried McClaren to the hole and dropped him into the yard. He wrenched open the iron gate and walked out on the street, holding the policeman by the arm. McClaren fainted twice and Hugo had to keep him upright by clinging to his collar. It was dark. He hailed a cab and lifted the man in.
"Just drive out of town," Hugo said.
McClaren came to. They bumped along for miles and he did not dare to speak. The apartment buildings thinned. Street lights disappeared. They traversed a stretch of woodland and then rumbled through a small town.
"Who are you?" McClaren said.
"I'm just a man, McClaren—a man who is going to teach you a lesson."
The taxi was on a smooth turnpike. It made swift time. Twice Hugo satisfied the driver that the direction was all right. At last, on a deserted stretch, Hugo called to the driver to stop. McClaren thought that he was going to die. He did not plead. Hugo still held him by the arm and helped him from the cab.
"Got any money on you?" Hugo asked.
"About twenty dollars."
"Give me five."
With trembling fingers McClaren produced the bill. He put the remainder of his money back in his pocket automatically. The taxi-driver was watching, but Hugo ignored him.
"McClaren," he said soberly, "here's your lesson. I just happen to be the strongest man in the world. Never tell anybody that. And don't tell anyone where I took you to-night—wherever it is. I shan't be here anyway. If you tell either of those two things, I'll eat you. Actually. There was a poor devil smothering in that safe and I yanked it open and dragged him out. As a reward you and your dirty scavengers were put to work on me. If I weren't as merciful as God Himself, you'd all be dead. Now, that's your lesson. Keep your mouth shut. Here is the final parable."
Still holding the policeman's arm, he walked to the taxi and, to the astonishment of the driver, gripped the axle in one hand, lifted up the front end like a derrick, and turned the entire car around. He put McClaren in the back seat.
"Don't forget, McClaren." To the driver: "Back to where you picked us up. The bird in the back seat will be glad to pay."
The red lamp of the cab vanished. Hugo turned in the other direction and began to run in great leaps. He slowed when he came to a town. A light was burning in an all-night restaurant. Hugo produced the five-dollar bill.
"Give me a bucket of water—and put on about five steaks. Five."