A week passed, and Samuel did not see his divinity again. He lived upon the memory of their brief interview, and while he trimmed the hedges he was dreaming the most extravagant dreams of rescues and perilous escapes. For the first time he began to find that his work was tedious; it offered so few possibilities of romance! If only he had been her chauffeur, now! Or the guide who escorted her in her tramps about the wilderness! Or the man who ran the wonderful motor-boat that was shaped like a knife blade!
Samuel continued to ponder, and was greatly worried lest the commonplace should ingulf him. So little he dreamed how near was a change!
Bertie Lockman had been away for a few days, visiting some friends, and he came back unexpectedly one afternoon. Samuel knew that he had not been expected, for always there were great bunches of flowers to be placed in his room. The gardener happened to be away at the time the motor arrived, and so Samuel upon his own responsibility cut the flowers and took them into the house. He left them in the housekeeper's workroom and then set out to find that functionary, and tell her what he had done. So, in the entrance to the dining room, he stumbled upon his young master, giving some orders to Peters, the butler.
As an humble gardener's boy, Samuel should have stepped back and vanished. Instead he came forward, and Bertie smiled pleasantly and said, “Hello, Samuel.”
“Good afternoon, Master Albert,” said Samuel.
“And how do you like your work?” the other asked.
“I like it very well, sir,” he replied; and then added apologetically, “I was bringing some flowers.”
The master turned to speak to Peters again; and Samuel turned to retire. But at that instant there came the sound of a motor in front of the house.
“Hello,” said Bertie. “Who's that?” and turned to look through the entrance hall. Peters went forward to the door; and so Samuel was left standing and watching.
A big red touring car had drawn up in front of the piazza. It was filled with young people, waving their hands and shouting, “Bertie! Oh, Bertie!”
The other appeared to be startled. “Well, I'll be damned!” he muttered as he went to meet them.
Of course Samuel had no business whatever to stand there. He should have fled in trepidation. But he, as a privileged person, had not yet been drilled into a realization of his “place.” And they were such marvelous creatures—these people of the upper world—and he was so devoured with the desire to know about them.
There were two young men in the motor, of about his master's age, and nearly as goodly to look at. And there were four young women, of a quite extraordinary sort. They were beautiful, all of them—nearly as beautiful as Miss Gladys; and perhaps it was only the automobile costumes, but they struck one as even more alarmingly complex.
They were airy, ethereal creatures, with delicate peach blow complexions, and very small hands and feet. They seemed to favor all kinds of fluffy and flimsy things; they were explosions of all the colors of the springtime. There were leaves and flowers and fruits and birds in their hats; and there were elaborate filmy veils to hold the hats on. They descended from the motor, and Samuel had glimpses of ribbons and ruffles, of shapely ankles and daintily slippered feet. They came in the midst of a breeze of merriment, with laughter and bantering and little cries of all sorts.
“You don't seem very glad to see us, Bertie!” one said.
“Cheer up, old chap—nobody'll tell on us!” cried one of the young men.
“And we'll be good and go home early!” added another of the girls.
One of the party Samuel noticed particularly, because she looked more serious, and hung back a little. She was smaller than the others, a study in pink and white; her dress and hat were trimmed with pink ribbons, and she had the most marvelously pink cheeks and lips, and the most exquisite features Samuel had ever seen in his life.
Now suddenly she ran to young Lockman and flung her arms about his neck.
“Bertie,” she exclaimed, “it's my fault. I made them come! I wanted to see you so badly! You aren't mad with us, are you?”
“No,” said Bertie, “I'm not mad.”
“Well, then, be glad!” cried the girl, and kissed him again. “Be a good boy—do!”
“All right,” said Bertie feebly. “I'll be good, Belle.”
“We wanted to surprise you,” added one of the young fellows.
“You surprised me all right,” said Bertie—a reply which all of them seemed to find highly amusing, for they laughed uproariously.
“He doesn't ask us in,” said one of the girls. “Come on, Dolly—let's see this house of his.”
And so the party poured in. Samuel waited just long enough to catch the rustle of innumerable garments, and a medley of perfumes which might have been blown from all the gardens of the East. Then he turned and fled to the regions below.
One of the young men, he learned from the talk in the servants' hall, was Jack Holliday, the youngest son of the railroad magnate; it was his sister who was engaged to marry the English duke. The other boy was the heir of a great lumber king from the West, and though he was only twenty he had got himself involved in a divorce scandal with some actor people. Who the young ladies were no one seemed to know, but there were half-whispered remarks about them, the significance of which was quite lost upon Samuel.
Presently the word came that the party was to stay to dinner. And then instantly the whole household sprang into activity. Above stairs everything would move with the smoothness of clockwork; but downstairs in the servants' quarters it was a serious matter that an elaborate banquet for seven people had to be got ready in a couple of hours. Even Samuel was pressed into service at odd jobs—something for which he was very glad, as it gave him a chance to remain in the midst of events.
So it happened that he saw Peters emerging from the wine cellar, followed by a man with a huge basket full of bottles. And this set Samuel to pondering hard, the while he scraped away at a bowl of potatoes. It was the one thing which had disconcerted him in the life of this upper world—the obvious part that drinking played in it. There were always decanters of liquor upon the buffet in the dining room; and liquor was served to guests upon any—and every pretext. And the women drank as freely as the men—even Miss Gladys drank, a thing which was simply appalling to Samuel.
Of course, these were privileged people, and they knew what they wanted to do. But could it be right for anyone to drink? As in the case of suicide, Samuel found his moral convictions beginning to waver. Perhaps it was that drink did not affect these higher beings as it did ordinary people! Or perhaps what they drank was something that cheered without inebriating! Certain it was that the servants got drunk; and Samuel had seen that they took the stuff from the decanters used by the guests.
It was something over which he labored with great pain of soul. But, of course, all his hesitations and sophistries were for the benefit of his master—that it could be right for Samuel himself to touch liquor was something that could not by any chance enter his mind.
The dinner had begun; and Samuel went on several errands to the room below the butler's pantry, and so from the dumb-waiter shafts he could hear the sounds of laughter and conversation. And more wine went up—it was evidently a very merry party. The meal was protracted for two or three hours, and the noise grew louder and louder. They were shouting so that one could hear them all over the house. They were singing songs—wild rollicking choruses which were very wonderful to listen to, and yet terribly disturbing to Samuel. These fortunate successful ones—he would grant them the right to any happiness—it was to be expected that they should dwell in perpetual merriment and delight. But he could hear the champagne corks popping every few minutes. And COULD it be right for them to drink!
It grew late, and still the revelry went on. A thunderstorm had come up and was raging outside. The servants who were not at work, had gone to bed, but there was no sleep for Samuel; he continued to prowl about, restless and tormented. The whole house was now deserted, save for the party in the dining room; and so he crept up, by one of the rear stairways, and crouched in a doorway, where he could listen to the wild uproar.
He had been there perhaps ten minutes. He could hear the singing and yelling, though he could not make out the words because of the noise of the elements. But then suddenly, above all the confusion, he heard a woman's shrieks piercing and shrill; and he started up and sprang into the hall. Whether they were cries of anger, or of fear, or of pain, Samuel could not be certain; but he knew that they were not cries of enjoyment.
He stood trembling. There rose a babel of shouts, and then again came the woman's voice—“No, no—you shan't, I say!”
“Sit down, you fool!” Samuel heard Bertie Lockman shout.
And then came another woman's voice—“Shut up and mind your business!”
“I'll tear your eyes out, you devil!” shrilled the first voice, and there followed a string of furious curses. The other woman replied in kind and Samuel made out that there was some kind of a quarrel, and that some of the party wanted to interfere, and that others wanted it to go on. All were whooping and shrieking uproariously, and the two women yelled like hyenas.
It was like the nightmare sounds he had heard from his cell in the police station, and Samuel listened appalled. There came a crash of breaking glass; and then suddenly, in the midst of the confusion, he heard his young master cry, “Get out of here!”—and the dining room door was flung open, and the uproar burst full upon him.
A terrible sight met his eyes. It was the beautiful and radiant creature who had kissed Bertie Lockman; her face was now flushed with drink and distorted with rage—her hair disheveled and her aspect wild; and she was screaming in the voice which had first startled Samuel. Bertie had grappled with her and was trying to push her out of the room, while she fought frantically, and screamed: “Let me go! Let me go!”
“Get out of here, I say!” cried Bertie, “I mean it now.”
“I won't! Let me be!” exclaimed the girl.
“Hurrah!” shouted the others, crowding behind them. Young Holliday was dancing about, waving a bottle and yelling like a maniac, “Go it, Bertie! Give it to him, Belle!”
“This is the end of it!” cried Bertie. “I'm through with you. And you get out of here!”
“I won't! I won't!” screamed the girl again and again. “Help!” And she flung one arm about his neck and caught at the doorway.
But he tore her loose and dragged her bodily across the entrance hall. “Out with you!” he exclaimed. “And don't ever let me see your face again!”
“Bertie! Bertie!” she protested.
“I mean it!” he said. “Here Jack! Open the door for me.”
“Bertie! No!” shrieked the girl; but then with a sudden effort he half threw her out into the darkness. There was a brief altercation outside, and then he sprang back, and flung to the heavy door, and bolted it fast.
“Now, by God!” he said, “you'll stay out.”
The girl beat and kicked frantically upon the door. But Bertie turned his back and staggered away, reeling slightly. “That'll settle it, I guess,” he said, with a wild laugh.
And amidst a din of laughter and cheers from the others, he went back to the dining room. One of the other women flung her arms about him hilariously, and Jack Holliday raised a bottle of wine on high, and shouted: “Off with the old love—on with the new!”
And so Bertie shut the door again, and the scene was hid from Samuel's eyes.
For a long while, Samuel stood motionless, hearing the swish of the rain and the crashing of the thunder as an echo of the storm in his own soul. It was as if a chasm had yawned beneath his feet, and all the castles of his dreams had come down in ruins. He stood there, stunned and horrified, staring at the wreckage of everything he had believed.
Then suddenly he crossed the drawing-room and opened one of the French windows which led to the piazza. The rain was driving underneath the shelter of the roof; but he faced it, and ran toward the door.
The girl was lying in front of it, and above the noise of the wind and rain he heard her sobbing wildly. He stood for a minute, hesitating; then he bent down and touched her.
“Lady,” he said.
She started. “Who are you?” she cried.
“I'm just one of the servants, ma'am.”
She caught her breath. “Did he send you?” she demanded.
“No,” said he, “I came to help you.”
“I don't need any help. Let me be.”
“But you can't stay here in the rain,” he protested. “You'll catch your death.”
“I want to die!” she answered. “What have I to live for?”
Samuel stood for a moment, perplexed. Then, as he touched her wet clothing again, common sense asserted itself. “You mustn't stay here,” he said. “You mustn't.”
But she only went on weeping. “He's cast me off!” she exclaimed. “My God, what shall I do?”
Samuel turned and ran into the house again and got an umbrella in the hall. Then he took the girl by the arm and half lifted her. “Come,” he said. “Please.”
“But where shall I go?” she asked.
“I know some one in the town who'll help you,” he said. “You can't stay here—you'll catch cold.”
“What's there left for me?” she moaned. “What am I good for? He's thrown me over—and I can't live without him!”
Samuel got the umbrella up and held it with one hand; then with his other arm about the girl's waist, he half carried her down the piazza steps. “That she-devil was after him!” she was saying. “And it was Jack Holliday set her at it, damn his soul! I'll pay him for it!”
She poured forth a stream of wild invective.
“Please stop,” pleaded Samuel. “People will hear you.”
“What do I care if they do hear me? Let them put me in jail—that's all I'm fit for. I'm drunk, and I'm good for nothing—and he's tired of me!”
So she rushed on, all the way toward town. Then, as they came to the bridge, she stopped and looked about. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“To a friend's house,” he said, having in mind the Stedmans.
“No,” she replied. “I don't want to see anyone. Take me to some hotel, can't you?”
“There's one down the street here,” he said. “I don't know anything about it.”
“I don't care. Any place.”
The rain had slackened and she stopped and gathered up her wet and straggled hair.
There was a bar underneath the hotel, and a flight of stairs led up to the office. They went up, and a man sitting behind the desk stared at them.
“I want to get a room for this lady,” said Samuel. “She's been caught in the rain.”
“Is she your wife?” asked the man.
“Mercy, no,” said he startled.
“Do you want a room, too?”
“No, no, I'm going away.”
“Oh!” said the man, and took down a key. “Register, please.”
Samuel took the pen, and then turned to the girl. “I beg pardon,” he said, “but I don't know your name.”
“Mary Smith,” she answered, and Samuel stared at her in surprise. “Mary Smith,” she repeated, and he wrote it down obediently.
The man took them upstairs; and Samuel, after helping the girl to a chair, shut the door and stood waiting. And she flung herself down upon the bed and burst into a paroxysm of weeping. Samuel had never even heard the word hysterics, and it was terrifying to him to see her—he could not have believed that so frail and slender a human body could survive so frightful a storm of emotion.
“Oh, please, please stop!” he cried wildly.
“I can't live without him!” she wailed again and again. “I can't live without him! What am I going to do?”
Samuel's heart was wrung. He went to the girl, and put his hand upon her arm. “Listen to me,” he said earnestly. “Let me try to help you.”
“What can you do?” she demanded.
“I'll go and see him. I'll plead with him—perhaps he'll listen to me.”
“All right!” she cried. “Anything! Tell him I'll kill myself! I'll kill him and Dolly both, before I'll ever let her have him! Yes, I mean it! He swore to me he'd never leave me! And I believed him—I trusted him!”
And Samuel clenched his hands with sudden resolution. “I'll see him about it,” he said. “I'll see him to-night.”
And leaving the other still shaking with sobs, he turned and left the room.
He stopped in the office to tell the man that he was going. But there was nobody there; and after hesitating a moment he went on.
The storm was over and the moon was out, with scud of clouds flying past. Samuel strode back to “Fairview,” with his hands gripped tightly, and a blaze of resolution in his soul.
He was just in time to see the automobile at the door, and the company taking their departure. They passed him, singing hilariously; and then he found himself confronting his young master.
“Who's that?” exclaimed Bertie, startled.
“It's me, sir,” said Samuel.
“Oh! Samuel! What are you doing here?”
“I've been with the young lady, sir.”
“Oh! So that's what became of her!”
“I took her to a hotel, sir.”
“Humph!” said Bertie. “I'm obliged to you.”
The piazza lights were turned up, and by them Samuel could see the other's face, flushed with drink, and his hair and clothing in disarray. He swayed slightly as he stood there.
“Master Albert,” said Samuel very gravely, “May I have a few words with you?”
“Sure,” said Bertie. He looked about him for a chair and sank into it. “What is it?” he asked.
“It's the young lady, Master Albert.”
“What about her?”
“She's very much distressed, sir.”
“I dare say. She'll get over it, Samuel.”
“Master Albert,” exclaimed the boy, “you've not treated her fairly.”
The other stared at him. “The devil!” he exclaimed.
“You must not desert her, sir! It would be a terrible thing to have on your conscience. You have ruined and betrayed her.”
“WHAT!” cried the other, and gazed at him in amazement. “Did she give you that kind of a jolly?”
“She didn't go into particulars”—said the boy.
“My dear fellow!” laughed Bertie. “Why, I've been the making of that girl. She was an eighteen-dollar-a-week chorus girl when I took her up.”
“That might be, Master Albert. But if she was an honest girl—”
“Nonsense, Samuel—forget it. She'd had three or four lovers before she ever laid eyes on me.”
There was a pause, while the boy strove to get these facts into his mind. “Even so,” he said, “you can't desert her and let her starve, Master Albert.”
“Oh, stuff!” said the other. “What put that into your head? I'll give her all the money she needs, if that's what's troubling her. Did she say that?”
“N—no,” admitted Samuel disconcerted. “But, Master Albert, she loves you.”
“Yes, I know,” said Bertie, “and that's where the trouble comes in. She wants to keep me in a glass case, and I've got tired of it.”
He paused for a moment; and then a sudden idea flashed over him. “Samuel!” he exclaimed “Why don't you marry her?”
Samuel started in amazement. “What!” he gasped.
“It's the very thing!” cried Bertie. “I'll set you up in a little business, and you can have an easy time.”
“Master Albert!” panted the boy shocked to the depths of his soul.
“She's beautiful, Samuel—you know she is. And she's a fine girl, too—only a little wild. I believe you'd be just the man to hold her in.”
Bertie paused a moment, and then, seeing that the other was unconvinced, he added with a laugh, “Wait till you've known her a bit. Maybe you'll fall in love with her.”
But Samuel only shook his head. “Master Albert,” he said, in a low voice, “I'm afraid you've not understood the reason I've come to you.”
“How do you mean?”
“This—all this business, sir—it's shocked me more than I can tell you. I came here to serve you, sir. You don't know how I felt about it. I was ready to do anything—I was so grateful for a chance to be near you! You were rich and great, and everything about you was so beautiful—I thought you must be noble and good, to have deserved so much. And now, instead, I find you are a wicked man!”
The other sat up. “The dickens!” he exclaimed.
“And it's a terrible thing to me,” went on Samuel. “I don't know just what to make of it—
“See here, Samuel!” demanded the other angrily. “Who sent you here to lecture me?”
“I don't see how it can be!” the boy exclaimed. “You are one of the fit people, as Professor Stewart explained it to me; and yet I know some who are better than you, and who have nothing at all.”
And Bertie Lockman, after another stare into the boy's solemn eyes, sank back in his chair and burst into laughter. “Look here, Samuel!” he exclaimed. “You aren't playing the game!”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“If I'm one of the fit ones, what right have you got to preach at me?”
Samuel was startled. “Why sir—” he stammered.
“Just look!” went on Bertie. “I'm the master, and you're the servant. I have breeding and culture—everything—and you're just a country bumpkin. And yet you presume to set your ideas up against mine! You presume to judge me, and tell me what I ought to do!”
Samuel was taken aback by this. He could not think what to reply.
“Don't you see?” went on Bertie, following up his advantage. “If you really believe what you say, you ought to submit yourself to me. If I say a thing's right, that makes it right. If I had to come to you to have you approve it, wouldn't that make you the master and me the servant?”
“No, no—Master Albert!” protested Samuel. “I didn't mean quite that!”
“Why, I might just as well give you my money and be done with it,” insisted the other.
“Then you could fix everything up to suit yourself.”
“That isn't what I mean at all!” cried the boy in great distress. “I don't know how to answer you, sir—but there's a wrong in it.”
“But where? How?”
“Master Albert,” blurted Samuel—“it can't be right for you to get drunk!”
Bertie's face clouded.
“It can't be right, sir!” repeated Samuel.
And suddenly the other sat forward in his chair. “All right,” he said—“Maybe it isn't. But what are you going to do about it?”
There was anger in his voice, and Samuel was frightened into silence. There was a pause while they stared at each other.
“I'm on top!” exclaimed Bertie. “I'm on top, and I'm going to stay on top—don't you see? The game's in my hands; and if I please to get drunk, I get drunk. And you will take your orders and mind your own business. And what have you to say to that?”
“I presume, sir,” said Samuel, his voice almost a whisper, “I can leave your service.”
“Yes,” said the other—“and then either you'll starve, or else you'll go to somebody else who has money, and ask him to give you a job. And then you'll take your orders from him, and keep your opinions to yourself. Don't you see?”
“Yes,” said Samuel, lowering his eyes—“I see.”
“All right,” said Bertie; and he rose unsteadily to his feet. “Now, if you please,” said he, “you'll go back to Belle, wherever you've left her, and take her a message for me.”
“Yes, sir,” said Samuel.
“Tell her I'm through with her, and I don't want to see her again. I'll have a couple of hundred dollars a month sent to her so long as she lets me alone. If she writes to me or bothers me in any way, she'll get nothing. And that's all.”
“Yes, sir,” said Samuel.
“And as for you, this was all right for a joke, but it wouldn't bear repeating. From now on, you're the gardener's boy, and you'll not forget your place again.”
“Yes, sir,” said Samuel once more, and stood watching while his young master went into the house.
Then he turned and went down the road, half dazed.
Those had been sledge-hammer blows, and they had landed full and hard. They had left him without a shred of all his illusions. His work, that he had been so proud of—he hated it, and everything associated with it. And he was overwhelmed with perplexity and pain—just as before when he had found himself in jail, and it had dawned upon him that the Law, an institution which he had revered, might be no such august thing at all, but an instrument of injustice and oppression.
In that mood he came to the hotel. Again there was no one in the office, so he went directly to the room and knocked. There was no answer; he knocked again, more heavily.
“I wonder if she's gone,” he thought, and looked again at the number, to make sure he was at the right room. Then, timidly, he tried the door.
It opened. “Lady,” he said, and then louder, “Lady.”
There was no response, and he went in. Could she be asleep? he thought. No—that was not likely. He listened for her breathing. There was not a sound.
And finally he went to the bed, and put his hand upon it. Then he started back with a cry of terror. He had touched something warm and moist and sticky.
He rushed out into the hall, and as he looked at his hand he nearly fainted. It was a mass of blood!
“Help! Help!” the boy screamed; and he turned and rushed down the stairs into the office.
The proprietor came running in. “Look!” shouted Samuel. “Look what she's done!”
“Good God!” cried the man. And he rushed upstairs, the other following.
With trembling fingers the man lit the gas; and Samuel took one look, and then turned away and caught at a table, sick with horror. The girl was lying in the midst of a pool of blood; and across her throat, from ear to ear, was a great gaping slit.
“Oh! oh!” gasped Samuel, and then—“I can't stand it!” And holding out one hand from him, he hid his face with the other.
Meantime the proprietor was staring at him. “See here, young fellow,” he said.
“What is it?” asked Samuel.
“When did you find out about this?”
“Why, just now. When I came in.”
“You've been out?”
“Why of course. I went out just after we came.”
“I didn't see you.”
“No. I stopped in the office, but you weren't there.”
“Humph!” said the man, “maybe you did and maybe you didn't. You can tell it to the police.”
“The police!” echoed Samuel; and then in sudden horror—“Do you thinkIdid it?”
“I don't know anything about it,” replied the other. “I only know you brought her here, and that you'll stay here till the police come.”
By this time several people had come into the room, awakened by the noise. Samuel, without a word more, went and sank down into a chair and waited. And half an hour later he was on his way to the station house again—this time with a policeman on either side of him, and gripping him very tightly. And now the charge against him was murder!
The same corpulent official was seated behind the desk at the police station; but on this occasion he woke up promptly. “The chief had better handle this,” he said, and went to the telephone.
“Where's this chap to go?” asked one of the policemen.
“We're full up,” said the sergeant. “Put him in with Charlie Swift. The chief'll be over in a few minutes.”
So once more Samuel was led into a cell, and heard the door clang upon him.
He was really not much alarmed this time, for he knew it was not his fault, and that he could prove it. But he was sick with horror at the fate of the unhappy girl. He began pacing back and forth in his cell.
Then suddenly from one corner growled a voice: “Say, when are you going to get quiet?”
“Oh, I beg pardon,” said Samuel. “I didn't know you were here.”
“What are you in for?” asked the voice.
“For murder,” said Samuel.
And he heard the cot give a sudden creak as the man sat up. “What!” he gasped.
“I didn't do it,” the boy explained hastily. “She killed herself.”
“Where was this?” asked the man.
“At the Continental Hotel.”
“And what did you have to do with it?”
“I took her there.”
“Who was she?”
“Why—she called herself Mary Smith.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“Up at 'Fairview.'”
“At 'Fairview'!” exclaimed the other.
“Yes,” said Samuel. “The Lockman place.”
“ALBERT Lockman's place?”
“Yes.”
“How did she come to be there?”
“Why, she was—a friend of his. She was there to dinner.”
“What!” gasped the man. “How do you know it?”
“I work there,” replied Samuel.
“And how did she come to go to the hotel?”
“Master Albert turned her out,” said Samuel. “And it was raining, and so I took her to a hotel.”
“For the love of God!” exclaimed the other; and then he asked quickly, “Did you tell the sergeant that?”
“No,” said the boy. “He didn't ask me anything.”
The man sprang up and ran to the grated door and shook it. “Hello! Hello there!” he cried.
“What's the matter?” growled a policeman down the corridor.
“Come here! quick!” cried the other; and then through the grating he whispered, “Say, tell the cap to come here for a moment, will you?”
“What do you want?” demanded the policeman.
“Look here, O'Brien,” said the other. “You know Charlie Swift is no fool. And there's something about this fellow you've put in here that the cap ought to know about quick.”
The sergeant came. “Say,” said Charlie. “Did you ask this boy any questions?”
“No,” said the sergeant, “I'm waiting for the chief.”
“Well, did you know that girl came from Albert Lockman's place?”
“Good God, no!”
“He says she was there to dinner and Lockman turned her out of the house. This boy says he works for Lockman.”
“Well, I'm damned!” exclaimed the sergeant. And so Samuel was led into a private room.
A minute or two later “the chief” strode in. McCullagh was his name and he was huge and burly, with a red face and a protruding jaw. He went at Samuel as if he meant to strike him. “What's this you're givin' us?” he cried.
“Why—why—” stammered Samuel, in alarm.
“You're tryin' to tell me that girl came from Lockman's?” roared the chief.
“Yes, sir!”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“It's true, sir!”
“What're you tryin' to give me, anyhow?” demanded the man.
“But it's true, sir!” declared Samuel again.
“You tell me she was there at dinner?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Come! Quit your nonsense, boy!”
“But she was, sir!”
“What do you expect to make out of this, young fellow?”
“But she was, sir!”
Apparently the chief's method was to doubt every statement that Samuel made, and repeat his incredulity three times, each time in a louder tone of voice and with a more ferocious expression of countenance. Then, if the boy stuck it out, he concluded that he was telling the truth. By this exhausting method the examination reached its end, and Samuel was led back to his cell.
“Did you stick to your story?” asked his cellmate.
“Of course,” said he.
“Well, if it is true,” remarked the other, “there'll be something doing soon.”
And there was. About an hour later the sergeant came again and entered. He drew the two men into a corner.
“See here, young fellow,” he said to Samuel in a low voice. “Have you got anything against young Lockman?”
“No,” replied Samuel. “Why?”
“If we let you go, will you shut up about this?”
“Why, yes,” said the boy, “if you want me to.”
“All right,” said the sergeant. “And you, Charlie—we've got you dead, you know.”
“Yes,” said the other, “I know.”
“And there's ten years coming to you, you understand?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“All right. Then will you call it a bargain?”
“I will,” said Charlie. “You'll skip the town, and hold your mouth?”
“I will.”
“Very well. Here's your own kit—and you ought to get through them bars before daylight. And here's fifty dollars. You take this young fellow to New York and lose him. Do you see?”
“I see,” said Charlie.
“All right,” went on the sergeant. “And mind you don't play any monkey tricks!”
“I'm on,” said Charlie with a chuckle.
And without more ado he selected a saw from his bag and set to work at the bars of the window. The sergeant retired; and Samuel sat down on the floor and gasped for breath.
For about an hour the man worked without a word. Then he braced himself against the wall and wrenched out one of the bars; then another wrench, and another bar gave way; after which he packed up his kit and slipped it into a pocket under his coat. “Now,” he said, “come on.”
He slipped through the opening and dropped to the ground, and Samuel followed suit. “This way,” he whispered, and they darted down an alley and came out upon a dark street. For perhaps a mile they walked on in silence, then Charlie turned into a doorway and opened the door with a latch key, and they went up two flights of stairs and into a rear room. He lit the gas, and took off his coat and flung it on the bed. “Now, make yourself at home,” he said.
“Is this your room?” asked Samuel.
“Yes,” was the reply. “The bulls haven't found it, either!”
“But I thought we were to go out of town!” exclaimed the other.
“Humph!” laughed Charlie. “Young fellow, you're easy!”
“Do you mean you're not going?” cried Samuel.
“What! When I've got a free license to work the town?”
Samuel stared at him, amazed. “You mean they wouldn't arrest you?”
“Not for anything short of murder, I think.”
“But—but what could you do?”
“Just suppose I was to tip off some newspaper with that story? Not here in Lockmanville—but the New York Howler, we'll say?”
“I see!” gasped Samuel.
Charlie had tilted back in his chair and was proceeding to fill his pipe. “Gee, sonny,” he said, “they did me the greatest turn of my life when they poked you into that cell. I'll get what's coming to me now!”
“How will you get it?” asked the boy.
“I'm a gopherman,” said the other.
“What's that?” asked Samuel.
“You'll have to learn to sling the lingo,” said Charlie with a laugh. “It's what you call a burglar.”
Samuel looked at the man in wonder. He was tall and lean, with a pale face and restless dark eyes. He had a prominent nose and a long neck, which gave him a peculiar, alert expression that reminded Samuel of a startled partridge.
“Scares you, hey?” he said. “Well, I wasn't always a gopherman.”
“What were you before that?”
“I was an inventor.”
“An inventor!” exclaimed Samuel.
“Yes. Have you seen the glass-blowing machines here in town?”
“No, I haven't.”
“Well, I invented three of them. And old Henry Lockman robbed me of them.”
“Robbed you!” gasped the boy amazed.
“Yes,” said the other. “Didn't he rob everybody he ever came near?”
“I didn't know it,” replied Samuel.
“Guess you never came near him,” laughed the man. “Say—where do you come from, anyhow? Tell me about yourself.”
So Samuel began at the beginning and told his story. Pretty soon he came to the episode of “Glass Bottle Securities.”
“My God!” exclaimed the other. “I thought you said old Lockman had never robbed you!”
“I did,” answered Samuel.
“But don't you see that he robbed you then?”
“Why, no. It wasn't his fault. The stock went down when he died.”
“But why should it have gone down when he died, except that he'd unloaded it on the public for a lot more than it was worth?”
Samuel's jaw fell. “I never thought of that,” he said.
“Go on,” said Charlie.
Then Samuel told how he was starving, and how he had gone to Professor Stewart, and how the professor had told him he was one of the unfit. His companion had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was staring at him.
“And you swallowed all that?” he gasped.
“Yes,” said Samuel.
“And you tried to carry it out! You went away to starve!”
“But what else was there for me to do?” asked the boy.
“But the Lord!” ejaculated the other. “When it came time for ME to starve, I can promise you I found something else to do!”
“Go on,” he said after a pause; and Samuel told how he had saved young Lockman's life, and what happened afterwards.
“And so he was your dream!” exclaimed the other. “You were up against a brace game, Sammy!”
“But how was I to know?” protested the boy.
“You should read the papers. That kid's been cutting didoes in the Tenderloin for a couple of years. He wasn't worth the risking of your little finger—to say nothing of your life.”
“It seems terrible,” said Samuel dismayed.
“The trouble with you, Sammy,” commented the other, “is that you're too good to live. That's all there is to your unfitness. You take old Lockman, for instance. What was all his 'fitness'? It was just that he was an old wolf. I was raised in this town, and my dad went to school with him. He began by cheating his sisters out of their inheritance. Then he foreclosed a mortgage on a glass factory and went into the business. He was a skinflint, and he made money—they say he burned the plant down for the insurance, but I don't know. Anyway, he had rivals, and he made a crooked deal with some of the railroad people—gave them stock you know—and got rebates. And he had some union leaders on his pay rolls, and he called strikes on his rivals, and when he'd ruined them he bought them out for a song. And when he had everything in his hands, and got tired of paying high wages, he fired some of the union men and forced a strike. Then he brought in some strike-breakers and hired some thugs to slug them, and turned the police loose on the men—and that was the end of the unions. Meanwhile he'd been running the politics of the town, and he'd given himself all the franchises—there was nobody could do anything in Lockmanville unless he said so. And finally, when he'd got the glass trade cornered, he formed the Trust, and issued stock for about five times what the plants had cost, and dumped it on the market for suckers like you to buy. And that's the way he made his millions—that's the meaning of his palace and all the wonders you saw up there. And now he's dead, and all his fortune belongs to Master Albert, who never did a stroke of work in his life, and isn't 'fit' enough to be a ten-dollar-a-week clerk. And you come along and lie down for him to walk on, and the more nails he has in his boots the better you like it! And there's the whole story for you!”
Samuel had been listening awe-stricken. The abysmal depths of his ignorance and folly!
“Now he's got his money,” said the other—“and he means to keep it. So there are the bulls, to slam you over the head if you bother him. That's called the Law! And then he hires some duffer to sit up and hand you out a lot of dope about your being 'unfit'; and that's called a College! Don't you see?”
“Yes,” whispered Samuel. “I see!”
His companion stabbed at him with his finger. “All that was wrong with you, Sammy,” he said, “was that you swallowed the dope! That's where your 'unfitness' came in! Why—take his own argument. Suppose you hadn't given up. Suppose you'd fought and won out. Then you'd have been as good as any of them, wouldn't you? Suppose, for instance, you'd hit that son-of-a-gun over the head with a poker and got away with his watch and his pocketbook—then you'd have been 'fitter' than he, wouldn't you?”
Samuel had clutched at the arms of his chair and was staring with wide-open eyes.
“You never thought of that, hey, Sammy? But that's what I found myself facing a few years ago. They'd got every cent I had, and I was ready for the scrap heap. But I said, 'Nay, nay, Isabel!' I'd played their game and lost—but I made a new game—and I made my own rules, you can bet!”
“You mean stealing!” cried the boy.
“I mean War,” replied the other. “And you see—I've survived! I'm not pretty to look at and I don't live in a palace, but I'm not starving, and I've got some provisions salted away.”
“But they had you in jail!”
“Of course. I've done my bit—twice. But that didn't kill me; and I can learn things, even in the pen.”
There was a pause. Then Charlie Swift stood up and shook the ashes out of his pipe. “Speaking of provisions,” he said, “these midnight adventures give you an appetite.” And he got out a box of crackers and some cheese and a pot of jam. “Move up,” he said, “and dip in. You'll find that red stuff the real thing. My best girl made it. One of the things that bothered me in jail was the fear that the bulls might get it.”
Samuel was too much excited to eat. But he sat and watched, while his companion stowed away crackers and cheese.
“What am I going to do now?” he said half to himself.
“You come with me,” said Charlie. “I'll teach you a trade where you'll be your own boss. And I'll give you a quarter of the swag until you've learned it.”
“What!” gasped Samuel in horror. “Be a burglar!”
“Sure,” said the other. “What else can you do?”
“I don't know,” said the boy.
“Have you got any money?”
“Only a few pennies. I hadn't got my wages yet.”
“I see. And will you go and ask Master Albert for them?”
“No,” said Samuel quickly. “I'll never do that!”
“Then you'll go out and hunt for a job again, I suppose? Or will you start out on that starving scheme again?”
“Don't!” cried the boy wildly. “Let me think!”
“Come! Don't be a summer-boarder!” exclaimed the other. “You've got the professor's own warrant for it, haven't you? And you've got a free field before you—you can help yourself to anything you want in Lockmanville, and the bulls won't dare to lift a finger! You'll be a fool if you let go of such a chance.”
“But it's wrong!” protested Samuel. “You know it's wrong!”
“Humph!” laughed Charlie. And he shut the top of the cracker box with a bang and rose up. “You sleep over it,” he said. “You'll be hungry to-morrow morning.”
“That won't make any difference!” cried the boy.
“Maybe not,” commented the other; and then he added with a grin: “Don't you ask me for grub. For that would be charity; and if you're really one of the unfit, it's not for me to interfere with nature!”
And so all the next day Samuel sat in Charlie's room and faced the crackers and cheese and the pot of jam, and wrestled with the problem. He knew what it would mean to partake of the food, and Charlie knew what it would mean also; and feeling certain that Samuel would not partake upon any other terms, he left the covers off the food, so that the odors might assail the boy's nostrils.
Of course Samuel might have gone out and bought some food with the few pennies he had in his pocket. But that would have been merely to postpone the decision, and what was the use of that? And to make matters ten times worse, he owed money to the Stedmans—for he had lived upon the expectation of his salary!
In the end it was not so much hunger that moved him, as it was pure reason. For Samuel, as we know, was a person who took an idea seriously; and there was no answer to be found to Charlie's argument. Doubtless the reader will find a supply of them, but Samuel racked his wits in vain. If, as the learned professor had said, life is a struggle for existence, and those who have put money in their purses are the victors; and if they have nothing to do for the unemployed save to let them starve or put them in jail; then on the other hand, it would seem to be up to the unemployed to take measures for their own survival. And apparently the only proof of their fitness would be to get some money away from those who had it. Had not Herbert Spencer, the authority in such matters, stated that “inability to catch prey shows a falling short of conduct from its ideal”? And if the good people let themselves be starved to death by the wicked, would that not mean that only the wicked would be left alive? It was thoughts like this that were driving Samuel—he had Bertie Lockman's taunts ringing in his ears, and for the life of him he could not see why he should vacate the earth in favor of Bertie Lockman!
So breakfast time passed, and dinner time passed, and supper time came. And his friend spread out the contents of his larder again, and then leaned over the table and said, “Come and try it once and see how you like it!”
And Samuel clenched his hands suddenly and answered—“All right, I'll try it!”
Then he started upon a meal. But in the middle of it he stopped, and set down an untasted cracker, and gasped within himself—“Merciful Heaven! I've promised to be a burglar!”
The other was watching him narrowly. “Ain't going to back out?” he asked.
“No,” said Samuel. “I won't back out! But it seems a little queer, that's all.”