"Well, as soon as you told me over the telephone that you were bent and determined on going to Bellevue, though I do not see why you should be in such a hurry about it and taking chances on setting up an inflammation in your injured arm, because even though you do know the poor crazed creature you can't be of any help—"
"I don't know her. I never saw her in my life."
"Then why—"
"That part can wait. I'll explain later. You were saying that as soon as you talked with me over the telephone you did something. What was it?"
"Oh, yes, I called up Doctor Steele, chief surgeon in the psychopathic ward, who happens to be a friend of mine and one of us besides"—he tapped the badge he wore under his coat lapel—"and told him I was bringing you down to see this woman, and he volunteered some information of the case in advance of your coming. I've forgotten just what hecalled the form of insanity which has seized her—it's a jaw-breaking Latin name—but anyhow, he said his preliminary diagnosis convinced him that it must have been coming on her for some time; that it was marked by delusions of persecution and by an exaggerated ego, causing its victims to imagine themselves the objects of plots engineered by the most distinguished personages, such as rulers and high dignitaries; and that while in this state a man or a woman suffering from this particular brand of lunacy was apt to shift his or her suspicion from one person to another—first perhaps accusing some perfectly harmless and well-meaning individual, who might be a relative or a near friend, and then nearly always progressing to the point in his or her madness where the charge was directed against some famous character."
"Did you hear anywhere any mention made of a daughter—the red-haired child of twelve years ago?" inquired Miss Smith.
"To be sure I did, but I'd forgotten about her," said Mullinix. "Mrs. Sheehan told me that somewhere in her excited narrative Mrs. Vinsolving did say something about the daughter. As nearly as I can recall, she told Mrs. Sheehan that five or six weeks ago, or some such matter, her daughter had tried to kill her and that she thought then the daughter had gone mad, but that now she knew the girl had joined the Kaiser's gang for pay. I made amental note of this part of the rigmarole at the time Mrs. Sheehan was repeating it to me, and then it slipped my mind. But now putting that yarn alongside of what Doctor Steele tells me about the symptoms of the disease, I see the connection—first the daughter, then the strange servant girl and finally the Kaiser. But say, I wonder why the daughter hasn't been keeping some sort of a guard over the poor demented creature? What can she have been thinking about herself to let her mother go running foot-loose round the country, nursing these changing delusions?"
"She couldn't very well help herself," put in Miss Smith. "The daughter is in an asylum—put there five weeks ago on the mother's complaint."
"But heavens alive, how could that have happened?"
"Very easily—under the laws of this state," she answered grimly. Then speaking more quickly: "I've changed my mind about going to Bellevue with you. Please tell the driver to take me to the Grand Central Station. I don't know what train I'm going to catch, except that it's the next one leaving on the Hudson River Division for up state. You go on then, please, to the hospital and find out all you can about this case and call me on the long-distance to-night—no, that won't do either. I don't know where I'll be. I may be in Peekskill or in Albany—I can't say which. I tellyou—I'll call you at eight o'clock; that will be better.
"No, no!" she went on impetuously, reading on his face the protest he meant to utter. "My wrist is well bandaged and giving me no pain. I'm thinking now of what a poor brave girl had on both her wrists when last I saw her and of what she must have been enduring since then. I'll explain the biggest chapter of the story to you on the way over before you drop me at the station."
At the Grand Central she left behind a thoroughly astonished gentleman. He was clear on some points which had been puzzling him from time to time during this exceedingly busy morning, but still much mystified to make out the meaning of Miss Smith's farewell remark as he put her aboard her train.
"I only wish one thing," she had said. "I only wish I might take the time to stop at the village of Pleasantdale and break the news to a certain Doctor McGlore who lives there. I trust I am not unduly cattish, but I dearly would love to watch the expression on his face when he heard it. I think I'd do it, too, if I were not starting on the most imperative errand that ever called me in my life."
A week later, to the day, two expected visitors were ushered into the private chamber of the governor at Albany—one of them a small, exceedingly well-groomed and good-lookingwoman in her thirties, and one a slender pretty girl with big brown eyes and wonderful auburn hair.
"Governor," said Miss Smith, "I want the pleasure of introducing to you the gamest girl in the whole world—Margaret Vinsolving."
He took the firm young hand she offered him. "Miss Vinsolving," he said, "in the name of the State of New York and on behalf of it I ask your forgiveness for the great and cruel wrong which unintentionally was done to you."
"And I want to thank you for what you have done for me, sir," she answered him simply.
"Don't thank me," he said. "You know the one to thank. If I had not set the machinery of my office in motion on your behalf within five minutes after your benefactress here reached me the other day I should have deserved impeachment. But I should never have lived to face impeachment. I'm sure the slightest sign of hesitation on my part would have been the signal for your advocate to brain me with my own inkstand." His face sobered. "But, my child, for my own information there are some things I want cleared up. Why in the face of the monstrous charges laid against you did you keep silent—that is one of the things I want to know?"
Before answering, the girl glanced inquiringly at her companion.
"Tell him," counseled Miss Smith.
Steadily the girl made answer.
"When my poor mother accused me of trying to kill her I realized for the first time that her mind had become affected. No one else, though, appeared to suspect the real truth. Perhaps this was because she seemed so normal on every other subject. So I decided to keep silent. I thought that if I were taken away from her for a while possibly the separation and with it the lifting of the imaginary fear of injury at my hands, which had upset her, might help her to regain her reason and no outsider be ever the wiser for it. I am young and strong; I believed I could bear the imprisonment without serious injury to me. I believe yet—for her sake—I could have borne it. And I knew—I realized what would happen to her if she were placed in such surroundings as I have been in and made to pass through such experiences as those through which I have passed. I felt that all hope of a cure for her would then be gone forever. And I love my mother." She faltered, her voice trembling a bit, then added: "That is why I kept silent, sir."
"But, my dear child," he said, "what a wrong thing for you to have done. It was a splendid, chivalrous, gallant sacrifice, but it was wrong. And if you don't mind I'd like to shake hands with you again."
"You see, sir, there was no one with whomI might advise in the emergency that came upon me without warning," she explained. "I had no confidante except my mother, and she—through madness—had turned against me. I had no friend then—I have one now, though."
And she went to Miss Smith and put her head on the elder woman's shoulder.
With her arms about the girl, Miss Smith addressed the governor.
"We are going away a while together for a rest," she told him. "We both need it. And when we come back she is going to join me in my work. Some day Margaret will be a better interior decorator than her teacher can ever hope to be."
"Then from now on, so far as you two are concerned, this ghastly thing should be only an unhappy dream which you'll strive to forget, I'm sure," he said. "It's all over and done with, isn't it?"
"Over and done with for her—yes," said Miss Smith. "But how about your duty as governor? How about my duty as a citizen? Shouldn't we each of us, you in your big way and I in my small way, work to bring about a reform in the statutes under which such errors are possible? Think, governor, of what happened to this child! It may happen again to-day or to-morrow to some other equally innocent sufferer. It might happen to any one of us—to me or to someone dear to you."
"Miss Smith," he stated, "if ever ithappens to you I shall take the witness stand on your account and testify to two things: First, that you are the sanest human being in this state; and second, that you certainly do know how to play a hunch when you get one. If I had your intuition, plus my ambition, I wouldn't be governor—I'd be running for president. And I'd win out too!"
When the draft came to our town as it came to all towns it enmeshed Jeff Poindexter, who to look at him might be any age between twenty-one and forty-one. Jeff had a complexion admirably adapted for hiding the wear and tear of carking years and as for those telltale wrinkles which betray care he had none, seeing that care rarely abode with him for longer than twenty-four hours on a stretch. Did worry knock at the front door Jeff had a way of excusing himself out of the back window. But this dread thing they called a draft was a worry which just opened the door and walked right in—and outside the window stood a jealous Government, all organized to start a rookus if anybody so much as stepped sideways.
Jeff had no ambition to engage in the jar and crash of actual combat; neither did the idea of serving in a labor battalion overseasappeal to one of his habits. The uniform had its lure, to be sure, but the responsibilities presaged by the putting on of the uniform beguiled him not a whipstitch. Anyhow, his ways were the ways of peace. As a diplomat he had indubitable gifts; as a warrior he felt that he would be out of his proper element. So when answering a summons which was not to be disregarded Jeff appeared before the draft board he was not noticeably happy.
"Unmarried, eh?" inquired his chief inquisitor.
"Yas, suh—I means, naw, suh," stated Jeff. "I ain't never been much of a hand fur marryin' round."
He forced an ingratiating smile. The smile fell as seed on barren soil—fell and died there.
"Mother and father? Either one or both of them living?"
Never had Jeff looked more the orphan than as he stood there confessing himself one. He fumbled his hat in his hands.
"No dependents at all then, I take it?"
"Yas, suh, dey shorely is," answered Jeff smartly, hope rekindling within him.
"Well, who is it that you help support—if it's anybody?"
"Hit's Jedge Priest—tha's who. Jedge, he jes' natchelly couldn't git 'long noways 'thout me lookin' after him, suh. The older he git the more it seem lak he leans heavy on me."
"Well, Judge Priest may have to lean onhimself for a while. Uncle Sam needs every able-bodied man he can get these times and you look to be as strong as a mule. Here, take this card and go on through that door yonder to the second room down the hall and let Doctor Dismukes look you over."
Jeff cheered up slightly. He knew Doctor Dismukes—knew him mighty well. In Doctor Dismukes' hands he would be in the hands of a friend. Beyond question the doctor would understand the situation as this strange and most unsympathetic white man undoubtedly did not.
But Doctor Dismukes, all snap and smartness, went over him as though he had never seen him before in all his life. If Jeff had been a horse for sale and the doctor a professional horse coper, scarcely could the examination have been carried forward with a more businesslike dispatch.
"Jeff," said the doctor when he had finished and the other was rearranging his wardrobe, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself for being so healthy. Take your teeth now—your teeth are splendid. I only wish I had a set like 'em."
"Is dey?" said Jeff despondently, for the first time in his life regretting his unblemished ivory.
"They certainly are. You wouldn't need a gun, not with those teeth you wouldn't—you could just naturally bite a German in two."
Jeff shivered. The very suggestion was abhorrent to his nature.
"Please suh, don't—don't talk lak that," he entreated. "I ain't cravin' to bite nobody a-tall, 'specially 'tis Germans. Live an' let live—tha's my sayin'."
"Yep," went on the doctor, prolonging the agony for the victim, "your teeth are perfect and your lungs are sound, your heart action is splendid and I know something about your appetite myself, having seen you eat. Black boy, listen to me! In every respect you are absolutely qualified physically to make a regular man-eating bearcat of a soldier"—he paused—"in every respect excepting one—no, two."
If a drowning man clutching for a straw might be imagined as coincidentally asking a question, it is highly probable he would ask it in the tone now used by Jeff.
"Meanin'—meanin' w'ich, suh?"
"I mean your feet. You've got flat feet, Jeff—you've got the flattest feet I ever saw. I don't understand it either. So far as I've been able to observe you've spent the greater part of your life sitting down. Somebody must have hit you on the head with an ax when you were standing on a plowshare and broke your arches down."
It was an old joke, but it fitted the present case, and Jeff, not to be outdone in politeness, laughed louder at it than its maker did. Indeed Jeff felt he had reason to laugh; a great load was lifting from his soul.
"Jeff," went on the doctor, "deeply thoughit may grieve both of us, it nevertheless is my painful duty to inform you that you have two perfectly good exemptions from military service—a right one and a left one. Now grab your hat and get out of here."
"Boss," cried Jeff, "Ise gone. Exemptions, tek me away frum yere!"
So while many others went away to fight or to learn how to fight, as the case might be, Jeff stayed behind and did his bit by remaining steadfastly cheerful. Never before, sartorially speaking, had he cut so splendid a figure as now when such numbers of young white gentlemen of his acquaintance were putting aside civilian garb to put on khaki. Jeff had one of those adaptable figures. The garments to which he fell heir might never have fitted their original owner, but always they would fit Jeff. Gorgeous in slightly worn but carefully refurbished raiment, he figured in the wartime activities of the colored population and in ostensibly helpful capacities figured in some of the activities of the white folks too.
Going among his own set his frequent companion was that straw-colored light of his social hours, Ophelia Stubblefield. It helped to reconcile Jeff to the rigors of the period of enforced rationing as he reflected that the same issues and causes which made lump sugar a rarity and fat meat a scarcity had rid him of his more dangerous competition in the quarter where his affections centered. Particularly onone account did he feel reconciled. A spirit of the most soothful resignation filled him when he gave thought to the moral certainty that the most formidable and fearsome of his rivals, that bloody-minded bravo, Smooth Crumbaugh, would daunt him never again with threats of articular dismemberment with a new-honed razor. For Smooth Crumbaugh was gone and gone for good. First the draft had carried him away and then the pneumonia had carried him off. War had its compensations after all.
Wearing Ophelia upon one arm and wearing in the crook of the other a high hat which once had been the property of a young man now bossing an infantry battalion in the muddiest part of France, Jeff appeared prominently in the Armistice celebration at the First Ward Colored Baptist Church. Still so accoutered—Ophelia on his one hand and the high hat held in proper salute against his breast—he served upon the official reception committee headed by the Rev. Potiphar Grasty and by Prof. Rutherford B. H. Champers, principal of the Colored High School, which greeted the first returning squad of service men of color.
Home-comers who had been clear across the ocean brought back with them almost unbelievable but none the less fascinating accounts of life and customs in foreign parts. The tales these traveled ones had to tell were eagerly listened to and as eagerly passed along, doweredat each time of retelling with prodigal enlargements and amplifications the most generous.
A ferment of discontent began to stir under the surface of things; a sort of inarticulate rebellion against existing conditions, which presently manifested itself in small irritations at various points of contact with the white race. It was nothing tangible as yet, nothing upon which one might put a hand or cap with a word of comprehensive description. Indeed it had been working for weeks like a yeast in the minds of sundry black folk before their Caucasian neighbors began to sense it at all, and for this there was a reason easily understandable by anyone born and reared in any sizable town in any one of the older states lying below Mason and Dixon's Line. For in each such community there are two separate and distinct worlds—a black one and a white one—interrelated by necessities of civic coördination and in an economic sense measurably dependent one upon the other, and yet in many other aspects as far apart as the North Pole is from the South.
Regarding what the white world is feeling and thinking and saying, the lesser black world that is set down within it is nearly always better informed than is the other and larger group touching on new movements and growing sentiments amongst the darker-skinned factors. Into the white man's house, serving in this or that domestic capacity, goes the negro as anobservant witness to the moods and emotions of his or her employer and bringing away an understanding of the family complexities and the current trend of opinion as it shapes itself beneath that roof.
But the white man, generally speaking, views the negro's private life only from the outside, and if he be a Southern-born white man, wise in his generation, seeks to look no further, for surface garrulity and surface exuberance do not deceive him, but serve only to make him realize all the more clearly that he is dealing with members of what at heart is one of the most secretive and sensitive of all the breeds of men. But since this started out to be the chronicle of an episode largely relating to Jeff Poindexter and one other and not a psychological study of actions and reactions as between the two most numerous races in this republic, it is perhaps as well that we should get on with our narrative.
If the leaven of unrest, vague and formless as it was at the outset, properly might be said to date from the time of the return of divers black veterans, it took on shape and substance after the advent of one Dr. J. Talbott Duvall, an individual engaging in manner, and in language, dress and deportment fascinating beyond degree; likewise an organizer by profession and a charmer of the opposite sex by reason of qualifications both natural and acquired.
A doctor he was, as witness the handle tohis name, and yet a doctor of any known variety he was not. Confessedly he was no doctor of medicine, though his speech dripped gorgeous ear-filling Latin words which sounded as though they might be the names of difficult and sinister diseases; nor was he doctor of divinity, though speedily he proved himself to be at home in pulpits. He was not a horse doctor or a corn doctor or a conjure doctor or a root-and-herb doctor or a healer by faith or the laying on of hands. His title, it seemed, was his by virtue of a degree conferred upon him by a college—a white man's college—somewhere in the North. His accent was that of a traveled cosmopolite superimposed upon the speech of a place away off somewhere called the West Indies. He had money and he spent it; he had a wardrobe of distinction and he wore it; he had a gift for argumentation and he exercised it; he had a way with the ladies and he used it. His coming had created a social furor; his subsequent ministrations amounted to what for lack of a better word is commonly called a sensation.
If there were those who from motives, let us say, of envy looked with the jaundiced eye of disfavor upon his mounting popularity and his constantly widening scope of influence they mainly kept their own counsel or at least refrained from voicing their private prejudices in public places. One gets fewer bumps traveling with the crowd than against it.
Even so bold a spirit and customarily so outspoken a speaker as Aunt Dilsey Turner, Judge Priest's black cook of many years' incumbency, saw fit somewhat to dissemble on the occasion of a call paid by Sister Eldora Menifee, who came dressed to kill and inspired by the zeal of the new convert to win yet other converts. Entering by way of the alley gate one fine forenoon, Sister Eldora found Aunt Dilsey sitting in the kitchen doorway hulling out a mess of late green peas newly picked from the house garden.
"Sist' Turner," began the visitor, "I hopes I ain't disturbin' you by runnin' in on you this mawnin'."
"Honey," said Aunt Dilsey, "you're jes' ez welcome ez day is frum night. Lemme fetch you a cheer out yere on the gallery." And she made as if to heave her vast comfortable bulk upright.
"No'm, set right where you is," begged Sister Menifee. "I ain't got only jes' a few minutes to stay. Things is mighty pressin' with me. I got quite a number of my lady frien's to see to-day an' you happens to be the fust one on de list."
"Is tha' so?" inquired Aunt Dilsey. Her tone was cordiality itself, but one less carried away by the enthusiasm of the mission which had brought her than Sister Eldora Menifee was might have caught a latent gleam of hostility in the elder woman's eye. "Well, go on, Ise lis'enin'."
"Well, Sist' Turner, ef you's heared 'bout de work I been doin' lately I reckin mebbe you kin guess whut brung me to yore do'. I is solicitin' you fur yore fellership ez a reg'lar member of de ladies' auxiliary of de new s'ciety w'ich Doct' J. Talbott Duvall is got up."
"Meanin' perzactly w'ich s'ciety? Dis yere Doct' Duvall 'pears to be so busy gittin' up fust one thing an' then 'nother seems lak I ain't been able to keep track of his doin's, 'count of my bein' so slow gittin' round on my feet by reason of de rheumatism."
"Meanin' de Shinin' Star Cullid Uplift and Progress League—dat's de principalest activity in w'ich he's now engaged. De dues is one dollar down on 'nitiation an' twenty cents a week an'—"
"Wait jes' one minute, Sist' Menifee, ef you please. 'Fore we gits any furder 'long answer me dis one question Ise fixin' to ast you—do dis yere new lodge perpose to fune'lize de daid?"
"We ain't tuck up dat point yit; doubtless we'll come to de plans fur dat part later. Fur de time bein' de work is jes' to form de ladies' auxiliary an' git de main objec's set fo'th."
"Lis'en, chile. Me, I don't aim never so long as I lives an' keeps my reason to jine no lodge w'ich don't start out fust thing by fune'lizin' de daid. Ise thinkin' now of de case of dat pore shif'less Sist' Clarabelle Hardin dat used to live out yere on Plunkett's Hill. She up an'jined one of dese newfandangle' lodges w'ich didn't have nothin' to it but a fancy name an' a fancy strange nigger man runnin' it, an' right on top of dat she up an' died 'thout a cent to her back. An' you know whut happen den? Well, I'm gwine tell you. Dat pore chile laid round de house daid fur gwine on three days an' den she jes' natchelly had to git out to de cemetery de bes' way she could. Not fur me, honey, not fur me. Dey got to have de money in de bank waitin' an' ready to bury de fus' member dat passes frum dis life before dey gits a cent of mine."
"But dis yere lodge is gwine have a more 'portant puppose 'en jes' to fune'lize de daid," protested Sister Eldora. "We aims to do somethin' fur de livin' whilst yet dey's still alive. Curious you ain't tuck notice of de signs of de times ez dey's been expounded 'mongst de people by Doct' Duvall. He sho' kin 'splain things in a way to mek you a true believer." The advocate of the new order of things sank her voice to a discreet half whisper. "Sist' Turner, we aims at gittin' mo' of de rights dat's due us. We aims to see dat de pore an' de lowly an' de downtrodden-on is purtected in dey rights. We aims—"
"Num'mine whut you aims at—de question is, is you gwine be able hit whar you aims? An' lemme tell you somethin' more, Sist' Eldora Menifee. I ain't needin' no ladies' auxiliary to tell me whut my rights is. Neither Iain't needin' to pay out no twenty cents a week to find out neither. W'en it comes to dat, all de ladies' auxiliary w'ich I needs is jes' me, myse'f. I knows good an' well whut my rights is already an' Ise gwine have 'em, too, or somebody'll sho' git busted plum wide open. Mind you, I ain't sayin' nothin' 'ginst dis new man nur 'ginst dem w'ich chooses to follow 'long after his teachin's. Ise jes' sayin' dat so fur ez my jinin' in wid dis yere lodge is concern' you's wastin' yore breath. Better pass along, honey, to de nex' one on dat list of your'n, 'thout you's a mind to stay yere an' watch me dish up Jedge Priest's vittles fur 'im."
"Mebbe if Doct' Duvall wuz to come hisse'f an' mek manifest to you de high pupposes—" began Sister Eldora. But Aunt Dilsey cut her off short.
"Wouldn't mek no diffe'nce ef he come eighty times a day an' twice ez offen on Sunday. Anyway, I reckins my day fur jinin' things is done over."
There was a dead weight of finality in her words. She rose heavily. As Sister Menifee departed Aunt Dilsey became aware of the presence of Jeff Poindexter. He was emerging from behind the door.
"Been hidin' inside dat kitchen lis'enin', I s'pose?" demanded Aunt Dilsey.
"Couldn't help frum hearin'," admitted Jeff. It was evident that he was not deeply grievedover the failure of Sister Menifee to make headway against Aunt Dilsey's opposition. "At the last you suttinly give dat woman her marchin' orders, didn't you, Aunt Dilsey?"
"An' sech wuz my intention frum de start off," she confided. "Minute she come th'ough dat back gate yonder I knowed whut she wuz comin' fur an' I wuz set an' ready wid de words waitin' on de tip of my tongue."
"Me, I don't fancy dat Duvall neither," stated Jeff. "I ain't been sayin' much 'bout him one way or 'nother but I been doin' a heap o' steddyin'."
"Yas, I knows all 'bout dat too," snapped Aunt Dilsey. "I got eyes in my haid. You los' yore taste fur dis yere big-talkin', fine-lookin' man jes ez soon ez he started sparkin' round dat tore-down limb of a 'Phelia Stubblefield. Whut ails you is you is jealous; hadn't been fur dat I lay you'd be runnin' round wid yore tongue hangin' out suckin' in ever'thing he sez ez de gospil truth same ez a lot of dese other weak-minded ones is doin'. Oh, I know you, boy, frum ze ground up! An' furthermo' I knows dis Doct' Duvall likewise also, even ef I ain't never seen him but oncet or twicet sence fust he come yere to dis town all dress' up lak a persidin' elder. I don't lak his looks an' I don't lak his ways, jedgin' by whut I hears of 'em frum dis one an' dat one, an' most in special I don't lak his color. He ain't clear brown lak whut I is, an' he ain't muddy black lak whutyou is, neither he ain't high yaller lak some is. To me he looks most of all lak de ground side of a nickel wahtermelon. An' in all de goin' on sixty-two yeahs of my life I ain't never seen no pusson callin' theyselves Affikins dat had dat kind of a sickly greenish-yaller-whitish complexion but whut trouble come pourin' frum 'em sooner or later, an' most gin'rally sooner, lak manna pourin' from de gourd of de Prophet Jonah. Dat man is a ravelin' wolf, ef ever I seen one."
"Whut kind of a wolf did you say, Aunt Dilsey?" asked Jeff.
"Consult de Scriptures an' you won't be so ignunt," she answered crushingly. "Consult de Scriptures an' you'll read whar de ravelin' wolf come down on de fold, an' whut he done to de fold after he'd done come down on it wuz more'n aplenty. An' now, boy, you git on out of my kitchen an' go on 'bout yore business—ef you's got any business, w'ich I doubts. I ain't got no mo' time to waste on you den whut I is on dat flighty-haided Eldora Menifee, a-traipsin' round frum one back do' to 'nother with her talk 'bout ladies' auxiliaries an' gittin' yo rights fur a dollah down an' twenty cents a week."
Jeff faded away. It was comforting in a way to find Aunt Dilsey on his side, even though her manner rather indicated she resented the fact that he was on hers. A few evenings later he found out something else. He was made toknow that in another and entirely unsuspected quarter the endeavors of the diligently crusading and organizing Duvall person had roused more than a passing curiosity.
One evening, supper being over, Judge Priest lingered on in his low-ceiled dining room smoking his corncob pipe while Jeff cleared away the supper dishes. It was the same high-voiced deliberately ungrammatical Judge Priest that the kindly reader may recall—somewhat older than at last accounts, somewhat slower in his step—but then he never had been given to fast movements—and perhaps just a trifle balder.
"Wuz dey anythin' else you wanted, jedge, 'fore I locks up the back of the house an' lights out?" Jeff inquired when the table had been reset for breakfast.
"Yes, I think mebbe there wuz," drawled the old man. He hesitated a moment almost as though at a loss for a proper phrasing of the thing he meant to say next. Then: "Jeff, what's come over your race in this town here lately?"
"Meanin' w'ich, suh?" countered Jeff. "Me, I ain't notice nothin' out of the way—nothin' particular."
"Haven't you? Well, I think I have. Jeff, I don't want to be put in the position of pryin' into the private and the personal affairs of other folks, reguardless of color. I have to do enough of that sort of thing in my official capacity when I'm settin' in judgment up at thebig cote house. But unless I can get some confidential information frum you I don't know where else I'm likely to git it, and at the same time I sort of feel as ef I should try to get hold of it somewheres or other ef it's humanly possible."
"Yas, suh."
"Now heretofore in this community the two races—white and black—have got along purty tolerably well together. We managed to put up with your shortcomings and you managed to put up with ours, which at times may have been considerable of a strain on both sides. Still we've done it. But it seems to me here of late there's been a kind of an undercurrent of discontent stirrin' amongst your people—and no logical reason fur it either, so fur as I kin see. Yet there it is.
"There wuz that rumpus two-three weeks ago down in Market Square. A little more and that affair could have growed into a first-class race riot. And here last Saturday night followed that mix-up out by the Union Depot when Policeman Gip Futtrell got all carved up and two darkies got purty extensively shot. And night before last the trouble that occurred on that Belt Line car out in Hollandville; that looked mighty threatenin', too, fur a while. And in between all these more serious things a lot of little unpleasantnesses keep croppin' up—always takin' the form of friction between whites and blacks.
"One of these here occurrences might be what you'd call an accident and two of them in rapid succession a coincidence, but it looks to me like now it's gittin' to be a habit. It's leadin' to bad blood and what's worse it's leadin' to a lot of spilt blood and our city gittin' a bad name and all that.
"And I know the respectable black folks in this town don't want that to happen any more than the respectable white people do.
"Now then, Jeff, whut's at the bottom of all this—I mean on your side of the color line? Who's stirrin' up old grudges and kindlin' new ones? I've sort of got my own private suspicions, but I'd like to see ef your ideas run along with mine. Got any suggestions as to the underlying causes of this ill feelin' that's sprung up so lately and without any good reason for it either so fur ez I kin see?"
Now ordinarily Jeff would have held firmly to the doctrine that white folks should tend to their business and let black folks tend to theirs. For all his loyalty to his master, a certain race consciousness in him would have bade him keep hands off and tongue locked. But here a strong personal prejudice operated to steer Jeff away from what otherwise would have been his customary course.
"Jedge," he said, drawing a pace or two nearer his employer, "did you ever hear tell of a pale-yaller party w'ich calls hisse'f Doct' J. Talbott Duvall dat come yere a few weeks ago?"
"Ah, hah!" said the judge as though satisfied of the correctness of a prior conclusion. "I thought possibly my mind might be on the right track. Yes, I've heard of him and I've seen him. Whut of him?"
"Jedge, I trusts you won't tell nobody else whut I'm tellin' you, but dat's sho' de one dat's at the bottom of the whole mess. He's the one dat's plantin' the pizen. Me, I ain't had no truck wid him myse'f, but dat ain't sayin' I don't know whut he's doin', case I do. He calls hisse'f a organizer."
"Ah, hah! And whut is he organizin'?"
"Trouble, jedge. Dat's whut—trouble fur a lot of folks. Jedge, fo' we goes any further lemme ast you a coupler questions, please, suh. Is it true dat over dere in some of dem Youropean countries black folks is jes' the same ez white folks, ef not more so?"
Choosing his words, the old man elucidated his understanding of the social order as it prevailed in certain geographical divisions and subdivisions of the continent of Europe.
"Yas, suh, thanky, suh," said Jeff when the judge had finished. "I reckin mebbe one main trouble over dere is, jedge, dat dem folks ain't been raised de way you an' me is."
"Jeff," said the judge, "I'm inclined to think probably you're right."
"Yas, suh. Now den, jedge, here's one mo' thing. Is it true dat in all dem furrin countries—Russia an' Germany an' Bombay an' all—dat the po' people, w'ite or black or whutever dey color is, is fixin' to rise up in they might an' tek the money an' de gover'mint an' de fine houses an' the cream of ever'thing away frum dem dat's had it all 'long?"
Again the judge expounded at length, touching both upon upheavals abroad and on discords nearer home. Next it was Jeff's turn to make disclosures having a purely local application and he made them. Listening intently, Judge Priest puckered his bald brow into furrows of perplexity.
"Jeff," he said finally, "I'm much obliged to you fur tellin' me all this. It backs up what I'd sort of figgered out all by myself. The whole world appears to be engaged in standin' on its esteemed head at this writin'. I reckin when old Mister Kaiser turned loose the war he didn't stop to think that mebbe the war was only one of a whole crop of evils he wuz lettin' out of his box of tricks. Or mebbe he didn't care—bein' the kind of a person he wuz. And I'm prone to believe also that when the Germans stopped fightin' us with guns they begun fightin' us with other weapons almost as dangersome to our peace of mind and future well-bein'. Different parts of this country are in quite a swivet—agitators preachin' bad doctrine—some of 'em drawin' pay from secret enemies across the sea fur preachin' it, too, I figger—and a lot of highly disagreeable disturbances croppin' up here and there. But Iwas hopin' that mebbe our little corner of the world wouldn't be pestered. But now it looks ez ef we weren't goin' to escape our share of the trouble."
"Jedge," asked Jeff, "ain't they some way dis Duvall pusson could be fetched up in cote? I suttinly would admire to see dat yaller man wearin' a striped suit of clothes."
"Well, Jeff," said the judge, "I doubt either the legality or the propriety of such a step, ef you get what I mean. From whut you tell me I don't see where he's really broken any laws. He's got a right to come here and organize his societies and lodges and things so long as he don't actually come out in the open and preach violence. He's got a perfect right under the law to organize this here new drill company you speak about. I sometimes think that ef all the young men in this country had been required to do a little more drillin' in years gone by we'd be feelin' somewhat safer to-day. Anyway, it's a mighty great mistake sometimes to make a martyr out of a rascal. Puttin' him in jail, unless you're absolutely certain that a jail is where he properly belongs, gives him a chance to raise the cry of persecution and gives his followers an excuse to cut loose and smash up things. You git my drift, don't you?"
"Yas, suh, think I do. Well den, suh, ef I wuz runnin' dis town seems to me I'd git a crowd of strong-minded gen'elmen together some evenin' in the dark of the moon an' let 'emcall on dis yere slick-haided half-strainer an' invite him to tek his foot in his hand an' marvil further. Ef one of 'em wuz totin' a rope in his hand sorter keerless lak it might help. Ropes is powerful influential. An' the sight of tar an' feathers meks a mighty strong argument, too, Ise heared tell."
"Jeff," said the judge, "I'm astonished that you'd even suggest sech a thing! Mob law is worse even than no law at all. Besides," he added—and now there was a small twinkle in his eye to offset to a degree the severity in his tones—"besides, the feller that was bein' called on by the committee might decline to take the hint and then purty soon you might have another self-made martyr on your hands. But ef he ran away on his own hook now—ef something came up that made him go of his own accord and go fast and cut a sort of a cheap figure in the eyes of his deluded followers whilst he was goin'—that'd be a different thing altogether. Start a crowd of folks, white or black or brown, to laughin' at a feller and they'll quit believin' in him. Worshipin' a false god and laughin' at him at the same time never has been successfully done yit."
He sucked his pipe. "Jeff," he resumed, "what do you know, ef anything, about the past career and movements of this here J. Talbott Et Cetery?"
Jeff knew a good deal—at second hand. Didn't the object of his deepest aversionspersist in almost nightly calls upon the object of his deepest affections? Paying such calls, didn't the enemy spend hours—hours upon hours doubtless—pouring into Ophelia's ear accounts of his recent triumphs as an uplifter in other towns and other states? Didn't the fascinated and flattered Ophelia in turn recount these tales to one whose opportunities for traveling and seeing the great world had been more circumscribed? Had not Jeff writhed in jealous misery the while he heard the annals of a rival's successes? So Jeff made prompt answer.
"Yas, suh, I suttinly does. Ise heared a right smart 'bout dis yere Duvall's past life frum—frum somebody. 'Cordin' to the way he norrates it, he wuz in Nashville, Tennessee 'fore he come yere; an' 'fore dat in Mobile, Alabama; an' 'fore dat in Little Rock, Arkansaw. Seem lak w'en he ain't organizin' or speechifyin' he ain't got nothin' better to do den run round amongst young cullid gals braggin' 'bout the places he's been an' the things he done whilst in 'em."
Jeff spoke with an enhanced bitterness.
"I see. Then I take it ef he spends so much time in seekin' out female society that he's not a married man?"
"So he say—so he say! But, Jedge Priest, ef ever I looked on the spittin'-image of a natchel-born marryin' nigger, dat ver' same Duvall is de one."
Judge Priest seemed not to have heard thislast. He sat for a bit apparently studying the tips of his square-toed, low-quarter shoes.
"Jeff," he said when he had given his feet a long half minute of seeming consideration, "I would like to know some facts about the previous life and general history of the individual we've been discussin'—I really would. In fact my curiosity is sech that I might even be willin' to spend a little money out of my own pocket, ef needs be, in order to find out. So I was jest wonderin' whether you wouldn't like to take a little trip, with all expenses paid, and tour round through some of our sister states and make a few private inquiries. It occurs to me that everything considered you might make a better job of it as an amateur investigator than a regular professional detective of a different color might. Do you know where by any chance you could git hold of a good photograph of this here individual—I mean without lettin' him know anything about it?"
"Yas, suh, dat I does," stated Jeff briskly.
The conference between master and man lasted perhaps fifteen minutes longer before Jeff was dismissed for the night. Mainly it dealt with ways, means and purposes. Upon the heels of it, within forty-eight hours two events—seemingly nowise related or bearing one upon the other—occurred. An ornately framed photograph lately bestowed as a gift and treasured as a trophy of sentimental value mysteriously vanished from the mantelpiece ofthe front room of Ophelia Stubblefield's pa's house; and Jefferson Poindexter, carrying a new and very shiny suitcase, unostentatiously left town late at night on a southbound train.
Darktown in Nashville knew him for a brief space as a visiting nobleman with money in all his pockets and apparently nothing of importance to do except to spend it in divertisements suitable to the social instincts of a capitalist of leisure. In Mobile at the Elite Colored Beauty Parlors for the first time in his life he tendered his finger nails for ministrations at the hands of a dashing chocolate-ice-cream-colored manicurist and spent the remainder of that same afternoon in a sunny spot, glistening pleasantly.
If in both these cities and likewise in Little Rock, which next he favored with his presence, he made himself known to brothers of his particular lodge—the Afro-American Order of Supreme Kings of the Universe has a large and a widely distributed membership—and if under the sacred pledge of secrecy which only may be broken on pain of mutilation and death by torture he—with the aid of these fraternal allies of his—conducted certain discreet inquiries, why, that was his own private business. Assuredly, so far as surface indications counted, he appeared to have no business other than pleasurable pursuits. From Little Rock he turned his face southeastward, landing at Macon, Georgia, where he lingered on for upward of a week, breaking his visit only by a day'sside trip to a smaller town south of Macon. Altogether Jeff was an absentee from his favorite haunts back home for the greater part of a month.
He reached town on a Monday. Betimes Tuesday morning, inspired outwardly by the zeal of one just won over from skepticism to the immediate advisability of following a sapient course, he sought opportunity to become a member in good standing of the Shining Star Colored Uplift and Progress League, a simple ceremony and a brief, since it involved merely the signing of one's name on Dotted Line A of a printed form card and the paying of a dollar into the hand of Dr. J. Talbott Duvall. On Tuesday evening the league met in stated session at Hillman's Hall on Yazoo Street and Jeff was early on hand, visibly enthusiastic and professedly ready to do all within his power to further the aims and intents of the organization. As a brand snatched from the burning he was elevated before the eyes of the assemblage so that all might see him and mark his mien of newborn fervor, for Doctor Duvall, following his custom, called to places upon the platform the proselytes enrolled since the previous meeting, to the end that older members might observe the physical proof of a steady and a healthful growth.
So there sat Jefferson in the very front row of wooden chairs, where all might behold him and he might behold all and sundry. Abouthim were his recent fellow converts. Almost directly behind him was a door giving upon a side entrance; there was another door serving similar purposes upon the opposite side of the stage. Beyond him to the left in the center of the stage were grouped the honorary officers of the league, flanking and supporting their chief.
Being an honorary officer carried with it, as the title might imply, honor and prominence second only to that enjoyed by the president-organizer, but it entailed no great weight of responsibility, since practically all the actual work of the league had from the very outset been generously assumed by Doctor Duvall. It was he who cared for the funds, he who handled disbursements, he who conducted the proceedings, he who made the principal addresses on meeting nights, he who between meetings labored without cessation to spread educational propaganda. That he found time for all these purposeful endeavors and yet crowded in such frequent opportunity for mingling socially among the lambs of his flock—notably the ewe lambs—was but evidence, accumulating daily, of his genius for leadership and direction.
This night the session opened with a prayer—by Doctor Duvall; an eloquent and a moving prayer indeed, its sonorous periods set off and adorned with noble big words and quotations in foreign tongues. The prayer would be followed, it had been announced, by the reading of the minutes of the previous session, afterwhich Doctor Duvall would speak at length with particular reference to things lately accomplished and the even more important things in contemplation for the near future.
Standing for the prayer, Jeff could look out over what a master of words before now has fitly described as a sea of upturned faces—faces black, brown and yellow. Had he been minded to give thought to details he might have noted how at every polysyllabic outburst from the inspired invocationist old Uncle Ike Fauntleroy, himself accounted a powerful hand at wrestling with sinners in prayer, was visibly jolted by admiration; might, if he had had a head for figures, have kept count of the hearty amens with which Sister Eldora Menifee punctuated each pause when Doctor Duvall was taking a fresh breath; might have cast a side glance upon Ophelia Stubblefield in a new and most becoming hat with ostrich plumage grandly surmounting it. But under the hand which he held reverently cupped over his brow Jeff's eyes were fixed upon a certain focal point,—to wit, the door of the main entrance at the length of the hall from him. It was as though Jeff waited for something or somebody he was expecting.
Nor did he have so very long to wait. The prayer was done and well done. In its wake, so to speak, there spouted up from every side veritable geysers of hallelujahs and amens. The honorary secretary, Brother Lemuel Diuguid,smelling grandly of expensive hair ointments—Brother Diuguid being by calling a head barber—stood up to read the minutes of the preceding regular session, and having read them sat down again. A friendly and flattering bustle of anticipation filled the body of the hall as Doctor Duvall rose and moved one pace forward and—raising a hand for silence—began to speak. But he had no more than begun, had progressed no farther than part way of his first smoothly launched sentence, when he was made to break off by an unseemly interruption at the rear. The honorary grand inner guard on duty at the far street door, after a brief and unsuccessful struggle with unseen forces, was observed to be shoved violently aside from his post. Bursting in together there entered two strangers—a tall yellow woman and a short black man, and both of them of a most grim and determined aspect. He moved fast, this man, but even so his companion moved faster still. She was three paces ahead of him when, bulging impetuously past those who sprang into the center aisle as though to halt her onward rush—all others present being likewise up on their feet—she came to a halt near the middle of the hall and, glaring about her defiantly, just double-dog-dared any present to lay so much as the weight of one detaining finger upon her. There was something about her calculated to daunt the most willing of volunteer opponents, and so while those at a safedistance demanded the ejection of the intruders, those nearer her hesitated.
"Th'ow me out?" she whooped, echoing the words of outraged and startled members of the Shining Star. "I'd lak to see de one dat's gwine try it! An' 'fo' anybody talk 'bout th'owin' out lettum heah me whilst I sez my say!"
Towering until she seemed to increase in stature by inches, she aimed a long and bony finger dead ahead.
"Ax dat slinky yaller man up yonder on dat flatfo'm ef he gwine give de order to th'ow me out!" she clarioned in a voice which rose to a compelling shriek. "But fust off ax him whut he meant—marryin' me in Mobile, Alabama, an' den runnin' 'way frum his lawful wedded wife under cover of de night! Ax him—dat's all, ax him!"
"An' ax him one thing mo'!" It was the voice of her short companion rising above the tumult. "Ax him whut he done wid de funds of de s'ciety he 'stablished at Little Rock, Arkansaw, all of w'ich he absconded wid dis last spring!"
As though the same set of muscles controlled every neck the heads of all swung about, their eyes following where the accusers pointed, their ears twitching for the expected blast of denial and denunciation which would wither these mad and scandalous detractors in their tracks.
Alas and alackaday! With his splendid figure suddenly all diminished and shrunken, withdistress writ large and plain upon his features, the popular idol was step by step flinching backward from the edge of the platform—was step by step inching, edging toward the side door in the right-hand wall.
And in this same instant the stunned assemblage realized that Jeff Poindexter, by nimble maneuvering, had thrust himself between the retreating figure and the exit, and Jeff was crying out: "Not dis way out, Doct' Duvall. Not dis way! The one you married down below Macon is waitin' fur you behin' dis do'!"
The doctor stopped in midflight and swung about and his eye fell upon the right-hand door and he moved a yard or two in that direction; but no more than a yard or two, for again Jeff spoke in warning, halting him short:
"Not dat way neither! The one frum dat other town whar you uster live is waitin' outside dat do'—wid a pistil! Seems lak you's entirely s'rounded by wives dis evenin'!"
To the verge of the footlights the beset man darted, and like a desperate swimmer plunging from a foundering bark into a stormy sea he leaped far out and projected himself, a living catapult, along the middle aisle. He struck the tall yellow woman as the irresistible force strikes the supposedly immovable object of the scientists' age-old riddle, but on his side was impetus and on hers surprise. She was bowled over flat and her hands, clutching as she went down, closed, but on empty and unresisting air.Literally he hurdled over the stocky form of the little black man behind her, but as the other flitted by him the fists of the stranger knotted firmly into the skirts of its wearer's long black frock coat and held on. There was a rending, tearing sound and as the back breadth of the garment ripped bodily away from the waistband there flew forth from the capsized tail pockets a veritable cloudburst of currency—floating, fluttering green and yellow bills and with them pattering showers of dollars and halves and dimes and quarters and nickels.
That canny instinct which had led the fugitive apostle of the uplift to hide the collected funds of the league upon his person rather than trust to banks and strong boxes was to prove his ruination financially but his salvation physically. While those who had believed in him, now forgetting all else, scrambled for the scattered money—their money—he fled out of the unguarded door and was instantly gone into the shielding night—a sorry shape in a bob-tailed garment.
At a somewhat later hour Judge Priest in his living room was receiving from Jefferson Poindexter a much lengthier and more elaborated account of the main occurrences of the evening at Hillman's Hall than has here been presented. Speaking as he did in the dual rôle of spectator and of an actuating force in the events of that crowded and exciting night, Jeff spared nodetails. He had come to the big scene of his narrative when his master interrupted him:
"Hold on a minute, Jeff! I don't know ez I get the straight of it all yit. I rather gathered frum whut you told me yesterday when you landed back home and made your report that you'd only been able to dig up one certain-sure wife of this feller's—the one that came along with you and that little Arkansaw darky. You didn't say anything then about bein' able to prove he wuz a bigamist."
"Huh, jedge, I didn't have to prove it! Dat man wuz more'n jes' a plain bigamist. He sho' wuz a trigamist, an' ef the full truth wuz knowed I 'spects he wuz a quadrupler at the very least. He proved it hisself—way he act' w'en the big 'splosion come."
"But the two women you told him were waitin' behind those side doors for him—how about them?"
"Law, jedge, dey wuzn't dere—neither one of 'em wuzn't. Jes' lak I told you yistiddy, I couldn't find only jest one woman dat nigger'd married an' run off frum, an' her I fetched 'long wid me. But lak I also told you, I got kind of traces of one dat uster live below Macon but w'ich is now vanished, an' ever'whar else I went whar he'd lived befo' he come yere de signs wuz manifold dat he wuz a natchel-born marryin' fool, jes' lak I 'spicioned fust time ever I see him. So w'en he started fur dat fust do' I taken a chancet on him an' w'en I seenhow he cringed an' ducked back I taken another chancet on him, an' the subsequent evidences offers testimony dat both times I reckined right. Jedge, the late Doct' Duvall muster married some powerful rough-actin' gals in his time ef he thought the Mobile one wuz the gentlest out of three. Well, anyway, suh, the ravelin' wolf is gone frum us, an' fur one I ain't 'spectin' him back never no mo'. An' I reckin dat's the main pint wid you an' me both."
"The ravelin' whut?"
"Dat's whut Aunt Dilsey called him oncet, speechifyin' to me 'bout him—the ravelin' wolf. Only he suttinly did look he wuz comin' unraveled mighty fast the last I seen of him."
You might have called Vincent C. Marr a self-made man and be making no mistake about it. For he was self-made; not merely self-assembled, as so many men are who attain distinction in this profession or that calling. Entirely through his own efforts, with only his native wit to light the way for him, he had pulled himself up, step by step, from the very bottom of his trade to the very top of it. His trade was the applied trade of crookedness; his pursuit the pursuit of other folks' cash resources. He had the envy and admiration of his friends in allied branches of the same general industry; he had the begrudged respect of his official enemies, the police; while his accomplishments—the tricks he pulled, the coups he scored, the purses he garnered—were discussed and praised by the human nits and lice of the Seamy Side, just as the achievements in a legitimate field of a Hill or a Schwab or a Rockefeller might be talked of among petty shopkeepers and little business men. He had, as thephrase goes, everything—imagination, resource, ingenuity, audacity, utter ruthlessness.
Yet it would seem hard to conceive a more humble beginning than his had been. His father was a cobbler in a little West Virginia coal town. At sixteen he ran away from home to go with a small circus. This circus was a traveling shield for all manner of rough extortioners. Card sharps, shell workers, petermen, sneak thieves, pickpockets, even burglars rode its train. They had a saying that the owner of this show sold the safe-blowing privileges outright but retained a one-third interest in the hold-up concession. That was a whimsical exaggeration of what perhaps had a kern of truth in it. Certainly it was the fact of the case that the owner depended more upon his lion's cut of the swag which the trailing jackals amassed than upon the intake at the ticket windows. Bad weather might kill his business for a week; a crop failure might lame it for a month; but the graft was as sure as anything graftified can be. When the runaway youth, Vince Marr, inserted himself beneath the protecting wing of this patron he knew exactly whither his ultimate ambitions tended. He had no vague boyish design to serve a 'prenticeship as stake driver or roustabout in the hope some day of graduating into a rider or a tumbler, a ringmaster or a clown. He joined out in order that among these congenial influences he might the quicker become an accomplished thief.
Starting as a novice he had to carve out his own little niche in company where the competition already was fierce. His rise, though, was rapid. So far as the records show he was the first of the Monday guys. He developed the line himself and gave to it its name. A Monday guy was a plunderer of clotheslines. He followed the route of the daily street parade; rather he followed a route running roughly parallel to it. He set out coincidentally with it and he aimed to have his pilfering stint finished when the parade was over. He prowled in alleys and skinned over back fences, progressing from house yard to house yard while the parade passed through the streets upon which the houses faced. From kitchen boilers and laundry heaps, from wash baskets and drying ropes, he skimmed the pick of what was offered—silk shirts, fancy hose, women's embroidered blouses, women's belaced under-things. His work was made comparatively easy for him, since the dwellers of the houses would be watching the parade.
His strippings he carried to the show lot and there he hid them away. That night in the privilege car the collections of the day would be disposed of by sale or trade to members of the troupe and the affiliated rogues. Especially desirable pieces might be reserved to be shipped on to a professional receiver of stolen goods in a certain city. Naturally, pickings were at their best on a Monday, for since Mother Eve on thefirst Monday hanged her fig leaf out to dry, Monday has been wash day the world over. Hence the name for the practitioner of the business.
Vince Marr did not very long remain a Monday guy. The risks were not very great, everything considered. Suppose detection did come; suppose the cry of "Stop thief!" was raised. Who would quit watching a circus parade to join in a hunt for a marauder already vanished in a maze of outbuildings and alleyways? Still there were risks to be taken, and the rewards on the whole were small and uncertain. Before he reached his nineteenth year young Marr was the manager of a weighing pitch. Apparently he had but one associate in the enterprise; as a matter of fact he had four. In the place where holidaying crowds gathered—on a circus lot, at a street carnival, outside the gates of a county fair—he and his visible partner would set up his weighing device, and then stationing himself near it he would beseech you to let him guess your correct weight. If he guessed within three pounds of it, as recorded by the machine, you owed him a nickel; if he failed to guess within three pounds of it you owed him nothing. "Take a chance, brother!" he would entreat you with friendly jovial banter. "Be a sport—take a chance!" Let us say you accepted his proposition. Swiftly he would flip with his hands along your sides, would slap your flanks, would pinch you gently as though testing your flesh forsolidity, then would call out loudly so that all within earshot might hear: "I figure that the gentleman weighs—let me see—exactly one hundred and forty-seven pounds." Or perhaps he would predict: "This big fellow will pull her down at two hundred and eight pounds, no more and no less." Then you placed yourself in the swinging seat of the machine with your feet clear of the earth, and his partner duly weighed you. Sometimes Marr guessed your weight; quite as often, though, he failed to come within three pounds of it and you paid him nothing for his pains. It was difficult to figure how so precarious a means of income could be made to yield a proper return unless the scales were dishonest.
The scales were honest enough. The real profits were derived from quite a different source. Three master dips—pickpockets—were waiting for you as you moved off; they attended to your case with neatness and dispatch. Their work was expedited for them by reason that already they knew where you carried your valuables. Once Marr ran his swift and practiced fingers over your body he knew where your watch was, your wallet, your purse for small change, your roll of bills.
A code word in his patter advertised to his confederates exactly whereabouts upon your person the treasure was carried. Really the business gave splendid returns. It was Marr, though, who had seized upon it when it merelywas a catchpenny carnival device and made of it a real money earner. Moreover, the pickpockets took the real peril. Even in the infrequent event of the detection of them there was no evidence to justify the suspicion that the proprietors of the weighing machine were accessories to the pocket looting. Vince Marr was like that—always playing safe for himself, always thinking a jump ahead of his crowd and a jump and a half ahead of the police.
He was never the one to get into a rut and stay there. Long before the old-time grafting circuses grew scarce and scarcer, and before the street-fairing concessions progressed out of their primitive beginnings into orderly and recognized organizations, he had quitted both fields for higher and more lucrative ramifications of his craft. Ask any old-time con man who ostensibly has reformed. If he tells you the truth—which is doubtful—he will tell you it was Chappy Marr who really evolved the fake foot-racing game, who patched up the leaks in the wireless wire-tapping game, who standardized at least two popular forms of the send game, who improved marvelously upon three differing versions of the pay-off game.
All the time he was perfecting himself in his profession, fitting himself for the practice of it in its highermost departments. He learned to tone down his wardrobe. He polished his manners until they had a gloss on them. He labored assiduously to correct his grammar, andso well succeeded at the task that except when he was among associates and relapsed into the argot of the breed, he used language fit for a college professor—fit for some college professors anyway. At thirty he was a glib, spry person with a fancy for gay housings. At forty-five, when he reached the top of his swing, he had the looks, the vocabulary and the presence of an educated and a traveled person.
He had one technical defect, if defect it might be called. In the larger affairs of his unhallowed business he displayed a mental adaptability, a talent to think quickly and shift his tactics to meet the suddenly arisen emergency, which was the envy of lesser underworld notables; but in smaller details of life he was prone to follow the line of least resistance, which is true of the most of us, honest and dishonest men the same. For instance, though he had half a dozen or more common aliases—names which he changed as he changed his collars—he pursued a certain fixed rule in choosing them, just as a man in picking out neckties might favor mixed weaves and varied patterns but stick always to the same general color scheme. He might be Vincent C. Marr, which was his proper name, or among intimates Chappy Marr. Then again he might be Col. Van Camp Morgan, of Louisiana; or Mr. Vance C. Michaels, a Western mine owner; or Victor C. Morehead; he might be a Markham or a Murrill or a Marsh or a Murphy as the occasion and the rôle and his humor suited.Always, though, the initials were the same. Partly this was for convenience—the name was so much easier to remember then—but partly it was due to that instinct for ordered routine which in a reputable sphere of endeavor would have made this man rather conventional and methodical in his personal habits, however audacious and resourceful he might have been on his public side and his professional. He especially was lucky in that he never acquired any of those mouth-filling nicknames such as Paper Collar Joe wore, and Grand Central Pete and Appetite Willie and the Mitt-and-a-Half Kid and the late Soapy Smith—picturesque enough, all of them, but giving to the wearers thereof an undesirable prominence in newspapers and to that added extent curtailing their usefulness in their own special areas of operation.
Nor had he ever smelled the chloride-of-lime-and-circus-cage smell of the inside of a state's prison; no Bertillon sharp had on file his measurements and thumb prints, nor did any central office or detective bureau contain his rogues-gallery photograph. Times almost past counting he had been taken up on suspicion; more than once had been arrested on direct charges, and at least twice had been indicted. But because of connections with crooked lawyers and approachable politicians and venal police officials and because also of his own individual canniness, he always had escaped conviction andimprisonment. There was no stink of the stone hoosgow on his correctly tailored garments, and no barber other than one of his own choosing had ever shingled Chappy Marr's hair. Within reason, therefore, he was free to come and go, to bide and to tarry; and come and go at will he did until that unfortuitous hour when the affair of the wealthy Mrs. Propbridge and her husband came to pass.
When the period of post-wartime inflation came upon this country specialized thievery marched abreast with legitimate enterprise; with it as with the other, rewards became tremendously larger; small turnovers were regarded as puny and contemptible, and operators thought in terms of pyramiding thousands of dollars where before they had been glad to strive for speculative returns of hundreds. By now Chappy Marr had won his way to the forefront of his kind. The same intelligence invoked, the same energies exercised, and in almost any proper field he would before this have been a rich man and an honored one. By his twisted code of ethics and unmorals, though, the dubious preëminence he enjoyed was ample reward. He stood forth from the ruck and run, a creator and a leader who could afford to pass by the lesser, more precarious games, with their prospect of uncertain takings, for the really big and important things. He was like a specialist who having won a prominent position may now say that he will accept only such patients as hepleases and treat only such cases as appeal to him.
This being so, there were open to him two especially favored lines: he might be a deep-sea fisherman, meaning by that a crooked card player traveling on ocean steamers; or he might be the head of a swell mob of blackmailers preying upon more or less polite society. For the first he had not the digital facility which was necessary; his fingers lacked the requisite deftness, however agile and flexible the brain which directed the fingers might be. So Chappy Marr turned his talents to blackmailing. Blackmailing plants had acquired a sudden vogue; nearly all the wise-cracking kings and queens of Marr's world had gone or were going into them. Moreover, blackmailing offered an opportunity for variety of scope and ingenuity in the mechanics of its workings which appealed mightily to a born originator. Finally there was a paramount consideration. Of all the tricks and devices at the command of the top-hole rogue it was the very safest to play. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the victim had his social position or his business reputation to think of, else in the first place he would never have been picked on as a fit subject for victimizing. Therefore he was all the more disposed to pay and keep still, and pay again.