Heney and Langdon, who had had, perhaps, some inkling of an adverse decision, went grimly on. Enemies of Prosecution, backed by an enormous fund, were setting innumerable obstacles in their way. Witnesses disappeared or changed their testimony. Jurors showed evidence of having been tampered with. Through a subsidized press an active propaganda of Innuendo and Slander was begun.
Calhoun's trial still loomed vaguely in the distance. Heney, overworked and harassed in a multitude of ways--keyed to a battle with ruffians, gun-men and shysters as well as the ablest exponents of law, developed a nervousness of manner, a bitterness of mind which sometimes led him to extremes.
"He isn't sleeping well," his faithful bodyguard confided to Frank one afternoon when they met on Van Ness avenue. "He comes down in the morning trying to smile but I know he feels as though he'd like to bite my head off. I can see it in his eyes. He needs a rest."
"Mr. Calhoun evidently thinks so, too," retorted Stanley. "The Honorable Pat is trying to retire him."
"He'll never succeed," said the other explosively. "Frank Heney's not that kind. He'll fight on till he drops.... But I hate to see those boughten lawyers ragging him in court."
Langdon, more phlegmatic of temperament, stood the gaff with less apparent friction. Hiram Johnson gave aid now and then which was always of value. There was a dauntless quality about the man, a rugged double-fisted force which made him feared by his opponents.
Frank Stanley looked in at the second Ruef trial. He found it a kaleidoscope of dramatic and tragic events. Heney, who had been the target for a volley of insinuations from Ruef's attorneys, was nervous and distraught. Several times he had been goaded into altercation; had struck back with a bitterness that showed his mounting anger. Stanley noted that he was "on edge," and rather looked for "fireworks," as the reporters called these verbal duels of the Prosecution trials. But he was astonished to see Heney turn upon an unoffending juryman in sudden fury. The man had a fat, good-natured Teuton face with small eyes and a heavy manner. His name was Morris Haas. He had asked to be excused but the judge had not granted his plea.
Now he seemed to cower in exaggerated fright before the Prosecutor's pointed finger. A little hush ensued. A tense dramatic pause. Then Heney branded Haas before the court-room as a former convict.
The man broke down utterly. Many years before he had served a short term in prison. After his release he had married, raised a family, "lived a respectable life," as he pleaded in hysterical extenuation. He kept a grocery store.
Haas stumbled from the court-room and Frank followed him. He could not help but feel a certain pity for the poor wretch, wailing brokenly that he was "ruined." He could never face his friends again. His customers would leave him. Frank learned the details of his ancient crime; he also ascertained that Haas had lived rightly since. The incident rankled. He wrote a guarded story of the affair. But he did not mention one episode of Haas' exposure. As the man staggered out Frank had heard another whisper sympathetically, "I would kill the man who did that to me."
Justice often has its cruel, relentless aspects. Haas, with his weak, heavy face, stayed in Stanley's memory. An ordinary man might have tried again and won. But Haas was drunken with self-pity and the melancholy of his race. He would brood and suffer. Frank felt sorry for the man, and, somehow, vaguely apprehensive.
Ruef's trial ended in a disagreement of the jury. It was a serious blow. Most of the San Francisco papers heaped abuse upon the Prosecution, its attorneys and its judges.
Matters dragged along until the 13th of November. Gallagher was on the witness stand. He testified with the listlessness of many repetitions to the sordid facts of San Francisco's betrayal by venal public servants. It was all more or less perfunctory. Everyone had heard the tale from one to half a dozen times.
Heney was at the attorneys' table talking animatedly with an assistant. The jury had left the room and Gallagher stepped down from the stand to have a word with the prosecutor. A few feet away was Heney's bodyguard lolling, plainly bored by the testimony. There was the usual buzz of talk which marks a lull in court proceedings.
Into this scene came with covert tread a wild, dramatic figure. No one noted his approach. Morris Haas, glittering of eye, dishevelled, mad with loss of sleep and brooding, had crept into the court-room unheeded. He approached the attorneys' table stealthily.
All at once Frank saw him standing within a foot of Heney. Something glittered in his outstretched hand. Frank shouted, but his warning lost itself in a wild cry of revengeful accusation. There was a sharp report; smoke rose. An acrid smell of exploded powder hung upon the air. Heney, with a cry, fell backward. Blood spurted from his neck.
Once more the city was afire with men's passions. Haas was rushed to the county jail and Heney to a hospital, where it was found, amid great popular rejoicing, that the wound was not a fatal one. Had it been otherwise no human power could have protected Haas from lynching.
A great mass meeting was held. Langdon, Phelan, Mayor Taylor pleaded for order. "Let us see to it," said the last, "that no matter who else breaks the law, we shall uphold it." This became the keynote of the meeting. Rudolph Spreckels, who arrived late, was greeted with tumultuous cheering.
Frank and Aleta were impressed by the spontaneity of the huge popular turnout. "It means," said the girl, as they made their exit, "that San Francisco is again aroused to its danger. What a great, good natured, easy-going body of men and women this town is! We feed on novelty and are easily wearied. That's why so many have back-slid who were strong for the Prosecution at first."
"Yes, you're right," answered Frank. "We alternate between spasms of Virtue and comfortable inertias of Don't-care-a-Damn! That's San Francisco!"
"The Good Gray City," he added after a little silence. "We love it in spite of its faults and upheavals, don't we, Aleta?"
"Perhaps because of them." She squeezed his arm. For a time they walked on without speaking. "How is your settlement work progressing?" he asked at length.
But she did not answer, for a shrieking newsie thrust a paper in her hand. "Buy an extra, lady," he importuned her. "All about Morris Haas' suicide!"
She tossed him a coin and he rushed off, shrilling his tragic revelation. Huge black headlines announced that Heney's assailant had shot himself to death in his cell.
While Heney lay upon the operating table of a San Francisco hospital, three prominent attorneys volunteered to take his place. They were Hiram Johnson, Matt I. Sullivan and J.J. Dwyer. Ruef's trial went on with renewed vigor three days after the attempted killing, though the defendant's attorneys exhausted every expedient for delay. It was a case so thorough and complete that nothing could save the prisoner. He was found guilty of bribing a Supervisor in the overhead trolley transaction and sentenced to serve fourteen years in San Quentin penitentiary.
Frank was in the court-room when Ruef's sentence was imposed. The Little Boss seemed oddly aged and nerveless; the old look of power was gone from his eyes. Frank recalled Ruef's plan of a political Utopia. The man had started with a golden dream, a genius for organization which might have achieved great things. But his lower self had conquered. He had sold his dream for gold. And retribution was upon him.
Frank thought of Patrick Calhoun, large, blustering, arrogant with the pride of an old Southern family; the power of limitless wealth between him and punishment; a masterful figure who had broken a labor union and who scoffed at Law. And Eugene Schmitz, once happy as a fiddler. Schmitz was trying to face it out in the community. Frank could not tell if that was courage or a sort of impudence.
During the holidays Frank visited his parents in San Diego. His granduncle, Benito Windham, had died abroad. And his mother was ailing. Frank and his father discussed the Prosecution.
"It has had its day," the elder Stanley said. "Your public is listless, sick of the whole rotten mess. They've lost the moral perspective. All they want is to have it over."
"I guess I feel the same way." Frank's eyes were downcast.
Sometimes Frank met Norah France at Aleta's apartment, but she carefully avoided further mention of the topic they had talked of on election night. Frank liked her poetry. With a spirit less morbid she would have made a name for herself he thought.
Aleta was doing more and more settlement work. She had been playing second lead at the theater and had had a New York offer. Frank could not understand why she refused it. But Norah did, though she kept the secret from Frank.
"Do you know how many talesmen have been called in the Calhoun trial?" Aleta asked, looking up from the newspaper. "There were nearly 1500 in the Ruef case. They called that a record." She laughed.
"Of course Pat Calhoun would wish to outdo Abe Ruef," said Frank. "That's only to be expected. He's had close to 2500, I reckon."
"Not quite," Aleta referred to the printed sheet. "Your paper says 2370 veniremen were called into court. That's what money can do. If he'd been some poor devil charged with stealing a bottle of milk from the doorstep, how long would it take to convict him?"
"It's a rotten world," the other girl spoke with a sudden gust of bitterness. "A world without honor or justice."
"Or a nightmare," said Frank, with a glance at Aleta.
"Well, if it is, I'm going to wake up soon--in one way or another," said Norah. "I will promise you that." To Frank the words seemed ominous. He left soon afterward.
The Calhoun trial dragged interminably. Heney, not entirely recovered from his wound, but back in court, faced a battery of the country's highest priced attorneys. There were A.A. and Stanley Moore, Alexander King, who was Calhoun's law partner in the South; Lewis F. Byington, a former district attorney; J.J. Barrett, Earl Rogers, a sensationally successful criminal defender from Los Angeles, and Garret McEnerney. Heney had but one assistant, John O'Gara, a deputy in Langdon's office.
For five long months the Prosecution fought such odds. Heney lost his temper frequently in court. He was on the verge of a nerve prostration. Anti-prosecution papers hinted that his faculties were failing. Langdon more or less withdrew from the fight. He was tired of it; had declined to be a candidate for the district attorneyship in the Fall. Heney was the Prosecution's only hope. He consented to run; which added to his legal labors the additional tasks of preparing for a campaign.
It was not to be wondered at that Heney failed to convict Calhoun. The jury disagreed after many ballots. A new trial was set. But before a jury was empanelled the November ballot gave the Prosecution its "coup de grace."
P.H. McCarthy was elected Mayor. Charles Fickert defeated Heney for the district attorneyship. An anti-Prosecution government took office.
"Big Jim" Gallagher, the Prosecution's leading witness, disappeared.
Fickert sought dismissal of the Calhoun case and finally obtained it.
San Francisco heaved a sigh of relief and turned its attention toward another problem. Its people planned a great world exposition to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.
With the close of the Graft trials, San Francisco put its shoulders in concerted effort to the wheel. There were rivals now. San Diego claimed a prior plan. New Orleans was importuning Congress to support it in an Exposition. The Southern city sent its lobbying delegation to the Capitol. San Francisco seemed about to lose.
But the city was aroused to one of its outbursts of pioneer energy. The Panama-Pacific International Exposition Company was organized. A meeting was called at the Merchants' Exchange. There, in two hours, $4,000,000 was subscribed by local merchants.
Frank journeyed East with a party of "Exposition Boosters" after the memorable meeting in the Merchants' Exchange. The import of that afternoon's work had been flashed around the world. It swung the tide of public sentiment from New Orleans toward the Western Coast. Congress heard the clink of Power in those millions. President Taft discerned a spirit of efficiency that would guarantee success. He did not desire another Jamestown fiasco. He had an open admiration for the city which in four years could rebuild itself from ashes, suffer staunchly through disrupting ordeals of political upheaval and unite its forces in a mighty plan to entertain the World.
Frank went to the White House for an interview. He clasped the large, firm hand which had guided so many troubled ships of state for the Roosevelt regime, looked into the twinkling eyes that hid so keen a force behind their kindness. Stanley soon discovered that in this big, bluff President his city had a friend.
"What shall I say to the people at home for you, Mr. President? Will you give me a message?"
The Chief Executive was thoughtful for an instant. Then he said, "Go back, my boy, and tell them this from me, 'SAN FRANCISCO KNOWS HOW!'"
Frank left the White House, eager and enthusiastic; sought a telegraph office. On the following day Market street blazed with the slogan.
In New York, where he went from Washington, Frank heard echoes of that speech. San Francisco's cause gained new and sudden favor. Frank found the Eastern press, which hitherto had favored New Orleans, was veering almost imperceptibly toward the Golden Gate.
He met many San Franciscans in New York. John O'Hara Cosgrave was editing Everybody's Magazine, "Bob" Davis was at the head of the Munsey publications, Edwin Markham wrote world-poetry on Staten Island, "in a big house filled with books and mosquitoes," as a friend described it. "Bill" and Wallace Irwin were there, the former "batching" in a flat on Washington Square. All of them were glad to talk of San Francisco.
Charley Aiken, editor of Sunset Magazine, was with the boosters. Stanley met him in New York. He had a plan for buying the publication from its railroad sponsors; making it an independent organ of the literary West. Things were looking up for San Francisco.
Frank was glad to get back. He had enjoyed his visit to the East. But it was mighty good to ride up Market street again. It looked quite as it did before the fire. One would have found it difficult to believe that this new city with its towering, handsome architecture, had lain, a few years back, the shambles of the greatest conflagration history has known.
On Christmas eve Frank and Aleta went down town to hear Tetrazzini sing in the streets. The famous prima donna faced an audience which numbered upward of a hundred thousand. They thronged--a joyous celebrant, dark mass--on Market, Geary, Third and Kearny streets. Every window was ablaze, alive with silhouetted figures. Frank, who had engaged a window in the Monadnock Block, could not get near the entrance. So he and Aleta stood in the street.
"It's nicer," she whispered happily, "to be here among the people.... I feel closer to them. As if I could sense the big Pulse of Life that makes us all brothers and sisters."
Frank looked down at her understandingly, but did not speak. Tetrazzini had begun her song. Its first notes floated faintly through the vast and unwalled auditorium. Then her voice grew clearer, surer.
Never had those bustling, noisy streets known such a stillness as prevailed this night. The pure soprano which had thrilled a world of high-priced audiences rang out in a wondrous clarion harmony. It moved many people to tears. The response was overwhelming. Something in that vast human pack went out to the singer like a tidal wave. Not the deafening fusilade of hand-clapping nor the shouted "Bravos!" It was something deeper, subtler. Tetrazzini stepped forward. Tears streamed from her eyes. She blew impulsive kisses to the crowd.
The pageant of the months went on. A coal merchant by the name of Rolph had displaced P.H. McCarthy as Mayor of San Francisco. He had installed what was termed "a business administration." San Francisco seemed pleased with the result. Power of government had returned to the "North of Market Street."
San Francisco had been selected by Congress as the site of the exposition. It was scheduled for 1915 and the Panama Canal approached completion.
Frank was living with his father at the Press Club. His mother was dead. He had given up newspaper work, except for an occasional editorial. Through his father's influence he had found publication for a novel. He was something of a public man now, despite his comparative youth.
Occasionally he saw his Uncle Robert. Two of his cousins had married. The third, an engineer, had gone to Colorado. Robert Windham and his wife were planning a year of travel.
Sometimes Windham and his nephew talked of Bertha. It was a calmer, more dispassionate talk as time went on, for years blunt every pain. One day the former said, with tentative defiance, "I suppose you'll think there's something wrong about me, boy.... But I loved her mother deeply. Honestly--if one can call it that. If I'd had a certain kind of--well, immoral--courage, I'd have married her.... Just think how different all our lives would have been. But I hadn't the heart to hurt Maizie; to break with her ... nor the courage to give up my position in life. So we parted. I didn't know then--"
"That you had a daughter?" questioned Frank. His uncle nodded. "Perhaps it would have made a difference ... perhaps not."
Aleta had a week's vacation. They were playing a comedy in which she had no part. So she had gone to Carmel to visit her friend Norah France.
Frank decided to look in on them. He had been oddly shaken by the talk with his uncle. What tragedies men hid beneath the smooth exteriors of successful careers? He had always thought his uncle's home a happy one. Doubtless it was--happy enough. Love perhaps was not essential to successful unions. Frank wondered why he had not asked Aleta Boice to be his wife. They were good comrades, had congenial tastes. They would both be better off; less lonely. A sudden, long-forgotten feeling stirred within his heart. He had missed Aleta in the past few days. Why not go to her now; lay the question before her? Perhaps love might come to them both.
For years thereafter Frank was haunted by the wraiths of vain conjecture--morbid questionings of what might have occurred if he had caught the train for Monterey that afternoon. For he was not to seek Aleta at Carmel. An official of the Exposition Company met Frank on the street. They talked a shade too long. Frank missed the train by half a minute. He shrugged his shoulders petulantly, found his father at the club. That evening they attended a comedy.
He was not yet out of bed when the office telephoned him the next morning. "Didn't he know Norah France rather well?" the City Editor inquired. Frank admitted it sleepily.
Had he a picture of her?
Frank denied this. No. He didn't know where one might be obtained. Had Norah printed a poem or something? W-h-a-a-t!
The voice at the telephone repeated its message. "Norah France was found dead in her room at Carmel this morning. Suicide probably. Empty vial and a letter.... The Carmel authorities haven't come through yet."
Frank began to dress hurriedly. Again the telephone rang. Wire for him. Should they send it up? No, he would be down in a minute.
The telegram was from Aleta. It read: "Am returning noon train. See you at my apartment six P.M."
Stanley did not see his father in the dining room. He gulped a cup of coffee and went down to the office. He had planned an editorial for today. But his mind was full of Norah France just now.
Poor child! How she had loved life in her strangely vivid moods! And how she had brooded upon its injustice in her alternating tempers of depression! He remembered now Aleta's mention of a love affair that turned out badly. Aleta had gone down to hearten her friend from these dolors. And he recalled, with a desperate, tearing remorse, a casual-enough remark of Norah's: "You always cheer me up, Frank, when you come to see me."
He recalled, as well, her comment, months before, that she would awake from her dream in one way or another. Well, she had fulfilled her promise. God grant, he thought passionately, that the awakening had been in a happier world.
At six o'clock he went to Aleta's apartment. She had not yet arrived but presently she came. He saw that she had been crying. She could scarcely speak.
"Frank, let us walk somewhere," she said. "I can't go upstairs; it's too full of memories. And I can't sit still. I've got to keep moving--fast."
They strode off together, taking a favorite walk through the Presidio toward the Beach. From a hill-top they saw the Exposition buildings rising from what once had been a slough.
Aleta paused and looked down.
"It's easier to bear--up here," she spoke in an odd, weary monotone, as if she were thinking aloud. "This morning ... I think, if Norah had left anything in the bottle ... I'd have taken it, too."
"Why did she do it?" Frank asked quickly.
Aleta faced him. "Norah loved a man ... he wasn't worthy. She could see no hope. I wished, Frank, that you might have been there yesterday. You used to cheer her so!"
"Don't!" he cried out sharply.
The Exposition progressed marvelously. Often Frank and Aleta climbed the winding Presidio ascent and gazed upon its growing wonders.
"Beauty will come out of it all," she said one day. "Out of our travail and sorrow and sin. I wish that Norah was here. She loved beauty so!"
"Perhaps she is here.... Who knows?"
She looked at him startled. He was staring off across the Exposition site, toward the Golden Gate, where a great ship, all its sails spread, swam mysteriously luminous with the sunset.
"It's beautiful," he said, a catch in his voice. "It's like life ... coming home in the end ... after long strivings with tempest and wave. I wonder--" he turned to her slowly, "Aleta, will it be like that with us?"
"Home!" she spoke the word tenderly. "I wonder what it's like ... I've never known."
He drew his breath sharply. "Aleta--will you marry me?"
Her eyes filled but she did not answer. Presently she shook her head.
He looked at her dumbly, questioning. "You don't love me, Frank," she said at last.
He could not answer her. His eyes were on the ground. A hundred thoughts came to his mind; thoughts of an almost overwhelming tenderness; thoughts of reverence for her; of affection, comradeship. But they were not the right thoughts. They were not what she wanted.
Presently they turned and went toward the town together.
A Fairyland of gardens and lagoons sprung into existence. Great artists labored with a kind of beauty-madness in its making. Nine years after San Francisco lay in ashes its doors opened to the world. From Ruins had grown a Great Dream, one so beautiful and strong, it seemed unreal.
Aleta and Frank went often. To them the Exposition was a rhapsody of silent music and they seldom broke its harmonies with speech.
Frank had not recurred to the question he had asked on Presidio Hill. But out of it had come an unspoken compact, a comradeship of spirit that was very sweet.
They stood one day on the margin of Fine Arts Lagoon, gazing down at the marvelous reflections of the great dome and its pillared colonnade. "Frank," the girl said almost in a whisper, "I believe that Love is God's heart, beating, beating ... through the Whole of Life." He turned and saw that her eyes were radiant. "And I think that when we feel its rhythm in us, it's like a call. A call to--"
"What?" he asked abashed.
"Service.... Frank," she faced him questioningly, half fearful. "You'll forgive me, won't you? I--I'm going away."
She expected protest, exclamation. Instead he asked her, very quietly: "To Europe, Aleta? The Red Cross?"
"Yes," she said, surprised. "How did you know?"
"I--I'm going, myself. As a stretcher bearer."
"Then--" her eyes were stars, "you've felt it, too?"
He nodded.
On the deck of an outbound steamer stood two figures. The sky was gray. Drifts of fog hung plume-like over Alcatraz, veiled the Exposition domes and turrets in a mystic glory. Sometimes it was like a great white nothingness; then, as if by magic, Color, Forms and Beauty leaped forth like some startling vision from a Land of Make Believe.
The woman at the stern-rail stretched forth her arms. "Goodbye," her words were like a song, a song of heartbreak, mixed with exultation. "Goodbye, Oh my City of Dreams!"
"We will come back," said the man shakily. "We will come with new peace in our hearts."
"Perhaps," she replied, "but it will not matter. San Francisco will go on, big, generous, unafraid in its sins and virtues. Oh, Frank, I love it, don't you? I want it to be the greatest city in the world!"
He made no answer but he caught her hand and pressed it. The fog came down about them like a mantle and shut them in.