The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Beneficent BurglarThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Beneficent BurglarAuthor: Charles Neville BuckRelease date: December 3, 2021 [eBook #66872]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: The Ridgway Company, 1911Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BENEFICENT BURGLAR ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Beneficent BurglarAuthor: Charles Neville BuckRelease date: December 3, 2021 [eBook #66872]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: The Ridgway Company, 1911Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
Title: The Beneficent Burglar
Author: Charles Neville Buck
Author: Charles Neville Buck
Release date: December 3, 2021 [eBook #66872]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United States: The Ridgway Company, 1911
Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BENEFICENT BURGLAR ***
THE BENEFICENT BURGLARbyzCharles Neville Buck
byzCharles Neville Buck
The agitated transit of Mr. Lewis Copewell through the anteroom of the Honorable Alexander Hamilton Burrow created a certain stir. With all the lawless magnificence of a comet that runs amuck through the heavens, he burst upon the somewhat promiscuous assemblage already seated there. The assemblage sat in dumb and patient expectancy. Quite obviously it was a waiting-list, already weary with enforced procrastination. Its many eyes were anxiously focussed on the door that sequestered the great man in the aloofness of his sanctum.
A young woman gazed across her typewriter at the supplicants seeking audience, with a calm hauteur which seemed to say, “Wait, varlets, wait! The great do not hurry.”
They returned her gaze sullenly but in silence. None ventured to penetrate beyond her desk to the portal forbiddingly placarded, “Private.” None, that is, until Mr. Copewell arrived.
“Where’s Aleck?” demanded that gentleman, mopping his perspiring brow with a silk handkerchief. “I want to see him quick!”
The young woman looked up blankly. She knew that Mr. Copewell and her employer were, in their private capacities, on terms of intimacy, but duty is duty, and law is impartial. Many persons wanted to see him quick. Since the triumph of civic reform had converted the attorney who paid her salary from a mere Aleck, who was even as other Alecks, into Alexander the Great, she felt that his friends in private life must adapt themselves to the altered condition of affairs.
Accordingly her reply came with frigid dignity. “Mr. Burrow instructed that he was not to be, on any account, interrupted.”
“Huh?” Into Mr. Copewell’s surprised voice crept the raucous note that the poet describes as “like the growl of the fierce watch-dog.”
“Huh?”
The young woman became glacial. “Mr. Burrow can’t see you.”
The glance which Mr. Copewell bent on this deterring female for a moment threatened to thaw her cold reserve into hot confusion. The waiting assemblage shuffled its feet, scenting war.
At the same moment the private door swung open and Mr. Burrow himself stood on the threshold. At the sight of him several gentlemen who were patriotically willing to serve their city in the police and fire departments came respectfully to their feet. One contractor, who had for sale a new paving-block, saluted in military fashion. Mr. Lewis Copewell took a belligerent stride toward the door as though he meant to win through by force of assault.
But Mr. Burrow made violence unnecessary. His smile revealed a welcoming row of teeth, which in modern America means “dee-lighted.”
“Trot right in, old chap,” he supplemented.
The young woman looked crestfallen. She felt that her chief had failed to hold up her hands in the stern requirements of discipline.
“Good morning, everybody!” rushed on Mr. Burrow, with a genial wave of his hand and a smile of benediction for the waiting minions. This second Alexander the Great knew that you can abuse a man’s patience if you are a person of importance and smile blandly enough. Some of the Cæsars could even massacre and remain popular—but they had to smile very winningly. “Terribly busy! Must make all interviews brief this morning,” went on the new dictator. “Must get over to the City Hall!” Then in view of congealing acidity on the visages of three newspaper men, he added, since no man is great enough to offend a reporter: “I’ll have a big story for you boys to-morrow. You know I’m your friend.” He swept Mr. Copewell into the private office and the door slammed on his smile.
“I haf been sedding here for an hour alretty,” confided Alderman Grotz to his next neighbor. The Alderman’s heavy lids blinked with a stolid, bovine disapproval. “Der more I vait, der more I do not see him. Id iss nod right!” Alderman Grotz was reported to carry the lager and bratwurst vote about in the pocket of his ample, plaid waistcoat. Such discrimination against him was venturesome politics.
“That guy that went in there ain’t like us,” explained Tommy Deveran, whose florid oratory had been the machine’s prized asset until the drift of political straws had guided him toward reform. “He wears silk half-hose where you an’ me wears cotton socks. This here is a classy, high-brow administration. Myself not bein’ no cotillion-leader, I’m goin’ to beat it!” The Hon. Thomas rose and beat it in all the majesty of affronted dignity.
Inside, Mr. Copewell threw his hat and stick on the desk and himself into a chair. He commenced to speak and suddenly stopped. A fine flow of high-pressure language was arrested by the sight of Chief-of-Police Swager, sitting just across the room. The Chief rose and took up his gold-trimmed cap. The new administration had added to the pulchritude of its police officials by more jaunty uniforms. The Colonel felt conscious of a distinguished and military bearing.
“I’m going to shift Captain McGarvey from the Tenderloin—if you don’t object,” he announced.
Mr. Burrow did not object. He did not know who Captain McGarvey was, but that fact he did not mention. “What for, Chief, what for?” he inquired brightly. His air was that of a field-marshal for whom no little thing is too small to merit consideration.
“Well,” thoughtfully pursued Colonel Swager, “I doubt if he’s on the level, though I haven’t got him dead to rights yet—can’t prefer charges. McGarvey’s a machine hold-over and he’s likely to be a little blind in one eye where some of the thieves and yeggs that used to buy protection are concerned. ‘Rat’ Connors was seen last night, down at Corkhill’s place. You know ‘Rat’ Connors?”
Mr. Burrow had not that honor. The name was not on the membership books of his clubs. “Let’s see—” he repeated carefully, “Rat Connors, Rat Connors. I don’t, at the moment, seem to place him.”
“Second-story man, drum-snuffer, stone-pincher, porch-climber—general all-round expert,” illuminatingly itemized the Chief, “variously wanted for a large assortment of felonies. McGarvey ought to have ditched him.”
“Ah, yes, quite so,” agreed Mr. Burrow. Mr. Copewell petulantly shifted in his chair. These matters seemed to him extremely trivial in view of his own more engrossing affairs.
“This Connors party,” enlarged the Chief, halting a moment by the door and inspecting with pride the gold oak-leaves that went around his cap like a garland of greatness, “he’s a solemn little runt with one front tooth broke and one finger gone off the left hand. He’s got straight black hair and a face like a rat. He looks like a half-witted kid, but he’s there with the goods.”
Mr. Burrow nodded. “Go right after him, Chief,” he authorized, “I give youcarte blanche.”
Exit the Chief, and in his wake appears at the door the accusing face of the young woman stenographer.
“Alderman Grotz insists——” she began.
“Impossible!” sighed Mr. Burrow dropping into an easy chair. “I’m rushed to death just now.” He gazed off across the roofs and searched his pockets for a cigarette. “Let him wait—let ’em all wait,” he murmured restfully. “That’s good politics.” Then, turning to Copewell, whose frantic pacing of the floor disturbed his composure, he demanded:
“What’s your trouble?”
“Trouble!” exploded the visitor. “Trouble! Why it’s plural multiplied by many, then squared and cubed and——”
“Well, just for a starter, give us one or two and build up from that,” suggested Mr. Burrow placidly. “Another girl, I’ll bet.”
“Another girl!” snorted Mr. Copewell. “There isn’t any other girl! All the rest are counterfeits! There never was but one girl, and I’m going to lose her!” This with deep stress of tragedy. “You must help me.”
“Certainly, I’ll help you.” Mr. Burrow waved his cigarette with airy assurance. “But what’s the matter? Can’t you lose her yourself?”
On the facetious and Honorable Alexander Mr. Copewell permitted the withering blight of his scorn to beat for one awful moment in silence, then he proceeded to enlighten. “I’ve got to steal this girl, or it’s all off. You’ve got to help steal her!”
Mr. Burrow appeared shocked. “But my dear lad,” he demurred, “I’m supervising a police force and a city administration in the interests of Righteousness with a large R. I doubt if it would be just exactly appropriate for me to go into the girl-stealing business on the side.”
“All politicians steal,” dogmatized Mr. Copewell, who had failed to be properly impressed with the piety of the new administration. “It’s time you were learning your new trade.”
“If it comes to that,” explained Mr. Burrow with a smile, “I have subordinates who——”
“I tell you this is serious!” interrupted the other tempestuously. “It’s desperate!”
“I’m very —— busy,” evasively suggested the new political power.
“If you’re too —— busy to help an old friend who needs you,” stormed Mr. Copewell, “you can eternally go to ——”
“Hold on! Hold on!” placated the other before Mr. Copewell had enjoyed the opportunity of designating the locality to which Mr. Burrow had his permission to go. “I merely meant to point out that when you want something done, it is well to go to a busy man. The other kind never have time.”
Mr. Copewell crossed and stood tensely before Mr. Burrow. When he spoke it was with the hushed voice of a man who divulges an unthinkable conspiracy:
“They are going to send her to Europe!”
“You don’t tell me?” observed Mr. Burrow pleasantly. “Well, what’s the matter with Europe?”
Mr. Copewell looked as much astonished as though he had been suddenly called on for proof that Purgatory is not pleasant in August. His voice almost broke.
“They are sending her—so that she may forget me!”
“You can send a girl to Europe,” reassured his friend, “but you can’t make her—sane.”
“They don’t have to make her sane—she is perfectly sane now!” retorted Lewis with commendable heat.
“Then why,” inquired the lawyer logically, “should it be necessary to send her to Europe?”
“It’s not necessary. It’s hideous!” Emotion strangled Mr. Copewell. “They are packing her off—because she lovesme!”
“Oh!” Mr. Burrow’s voice was apologetic. “I thought you said she was sane.”
Mr. Copewell’s reply may be omitted. In fact the Editor insists upon its being omitted. The following is an inadequate indication of its tenor: “——!——!!——!!!——!!!!——!!!!!”
“Going to send her to Europe,” mused Mr. Burrow as though he had not heard. Then he inquiringly raised his brows and added, “Who?”
“Who? What?” repeated Mr. Copewell, bewildered.
“Who are they going to send to Europe?”
“You are insufferable! That’s precisely what I’ve been telling you—the One Girl—Mary, of course—Mary Asheton.”
The Honorable Alexander Hamilton spoke soothingly: “You just said the only lady in the world. You didn’t say which only one. Statistics show that in America alone there are perhaps twenty millions.”
“Mary!” breathed Mr. Copewell with fervor.
“‘Mary is a grand old name,’” recitatively acknowledged Mr. Burrow. “Who objects to this match between you and this young person, Mary?”
“Her family—fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts—everybody like that.”
“Then I gather from your somewhat disjointed statement,” Mr. Burrow summarized with concise, court-room clarity, “that the situation is this: It ispracticallya unanimous verdict that the marriage is undesirable, ill-advised and impossible.”
“On the contrary, both Mary and I know——”
Mr. Burrow raised a deprecating hand and interrupted. “I said practically unanimous. I admit, of course, that you and the young woman hold dissenting opinions. There is always a minority report.”
“I’m not trying to marry the majority. I’m not a Turk.”
“How long have you known this particular Only One?”
“A year.”
“How long an interval elapsed between introduction and proposal?”
“A month.”
Mr. Burrow groaned.
“Abject surrender! No brave defense of your heart, no decently stern resistance! Why, Stoessel held Port Arthur a hundred days and more—though he was hungry!” After a momentary pause he inquired sternly, “If you proposed eleven months ago, why in thunder are you just now planning this abduction?”
Mr. Copewell blushed. “It took her some time to decide.”
“It didn’t take you long, poor creature!” Mr. Burrow studied a stick of sealing-wax with a judicially wrinkled brow. “Mind you,” he generously acceded, “I’m not censuring the young woman. It’s the female vocation to lure men. Can’t blame ’em. Can’t blame spiders for weaving filmy traps, but I am very, very sorry for flies and fools that rush in where angels fear the web.”
“I don’t need your sympathy. It’s merely crass ignorance,” snapped Mr. Copewell. “If you only knew her!”
“I don’t,” snapped Mr. Burrow back at him, “but I know her sex. I know that women differ from other birds of prey in only one particular and the distinction is in favor of the other birds of prey.”
“That’s a lie, of course, but I haven’t time to argue it.”
“The difference is,” calmly pursued Mr. Burrow, “that the others wear their own feathers. Women wear those of the others.”
The office door opened. The head of the young woman stenographer appeared. Her voice was chilling. “Alderman Grotz says——”
“Say to Mr. Grotz,” replied the Hon. Alexander Hamilton in a voice loud enough to carry, “that it is very good of him to wait. If he’ll indulge me—just ten minutes longer——” His voice trailed off ingratiatingly as the door closed, and he turned again on his visitor. “No woman in the world could reduce me to so maudlin a condition in a month! No, nor in a century. Now, having warned you in behalf of friendship, I’m entirely ready to help you ruin yourself. What’s the idea?”
This was the moment for which Mr. Copewell had waited. He began with promptness.
“Mary has telephoned me. She lives in Perryville, two hundred and fifty miles away. They won’t let me see her.”
“They won’t let him see her!” commiserated Mr. Burrow with melancholy.
“This trip to Europe was planned on the spur of the moment. It was meant to surprise us. It did. She starts to-morrow, unless——”
“Unless you interfere to-day,” prompted Mr. Burrow. Mr. Copewell became intense. “She slipped away from home when she learned it, and we planned it all by ’phone. I can’t go to Perryville—they would watch us both. I must stay here till the last minute and establish an alibi. Mary leaves there this evening on the train that reaches here about midnight, which makes no regular stops between. She starts unaccompanied, but is to be met at the station here in Mercerville by her aunt, Mrs. Stone, who is to chaperone the European trip. It is to be strictly and personally conducted.”
“I know Mrs. Stone,” grinned Mr. Burrow. “I can recommend her as a reliable duenna.”
“But I leave here on a train that starts west at the same time hers starts east. Those trains pass each other about half-way. Both are through expresses and neither makes any regular stop between Mercerville and Perryville.”
“I am following you.” Once the plan involved action, the Hon. Alexander Hamilton Burrow became interested.
“I have got, quite secretly of course, an order from the train-despatcher’s office. In pursuance, my train stops at Jaffa Junction, which it reaches at ten o’clock to-night. Her train also stops at Jaffa Junction, forty minutes later. We both disembark. When aunty goes to the Mercerville station there will be no Mary there!”
“Almost you had persuaded me,” said Mr. Burrow sadly, “but if any additional shred of evidence were necessary to establish the lunacy of this enterprise, it is the selection of Jaffa Junction as an objective point for elopement. Were you ever in Jaffa Junction? A tank, a post-office and a streak of mud!”
“It may lack certain advantages,” defended Mr. Copewell, “but it is a strategic position. You don’t seem to grasp the strenuousness of this undertaking—or the peril. Mary is sent across the ocean on twenty-four hours’ notice. She is put on the train at Perryville by her family. The train does not, so it is presumed, stop till it reaches here. Here a grim relentless aunt catches her on the fly and keeps her bouncing! Good Heavens, man, the only chance I have is train-robbery in between—and Jaffa Junction is gloriously in between!”
“What part do I play in this praiseworthy enterprise? Do you want my police to lock aunty up, so that she can’t telephone to mama?”
“Worse than that. When we drop off that train at Jaffa Junction, unless we have some way to beat it quick, our last predicament will be worse than our first. We will need an automobile and a trustworthy chauffeur. He can also be best man, and officiate at swearing to things when we get the license. You and your six-cylinder car have been elected.”
“Are you quite sure,” inquired Mr. Burrow in a chastened voice, “that you don’t overestimate my merits?”
“I am willing to give you a try,” was the generous response. “It would be nice and considerate if we could get it all finished up in time to wire aunty that we are perfectly well married before she grows hysterical about Mary. Mary is very fond of her family and would appreciate a little attention like that.”
“And have you considered the time it takes to drive one hundred and twenty miles over those infernal, hog-backed roads?” queried Mr. Burrow with suspicious politeness.
“Really, I can’t say, but it’s only ten o’clock now. You can start as soon as you’re ready, you know. You have about thirteen hours.”
“I salaam before your unparalleled nerve! Do you realize that I have public duties to perform?”
Mr. Copewell shrugged his shoulders.
The stenographer’s brown head was thrust into the door.
“Alderman Grotz says——” she began.
“Send him right in,” exclaimed Mr. Burrow energetically. “Ah, Mr. Grotz, I’m very sorry indeed to have kept you waiting! Miss Farrish, tell the other gentlemen I have just received urgent news that will call me out of town until to-morrow. ’Phone over to the City Hall and make my apologies to the Mayor. Call up the garage and have my car ready for a long trip in a half-hour; telephone to my rooms and have my man pack a suit-case and rush it over to the garage. Let’s see—yes, I believe that’s all, thank you.”
The allegation that Love laughs at locksmiths has become more generally accepted than verity warrants. In point of fact the locksmith has never been altogether without the honors of war, and during the last century or two he has made commendable progress in the matter of bolts and tumblers and burglar-proof devices.
Love was supervising the packing of Mary Asheton’s steamer-trunks and was particularly interested in the single suit-case surreptiously intended for the Jaffa Junction trousseau. Love giggled as he looked on, but the giggle was rather hysterical. “Helikes that black gown,” said Mary, alone in her room with Love. “I wore it the evening he proposed the last time—no, it was the third from the last time.”
The small god, Love, approved of Mary. Her red-brown hair, hanging in braids, was very thick and long. About her temples were soft, tendril-like curls of the variety that is most valuable to Love in his business, because they are more enmeshing and binding than some of the other links he is supposed to forge with the aid of his stout smith, Hymen. He approved of her deep violet eyes, liquid with the electric potency of personality. He approved of her willowy slenderness and the grace of her carriage.
Love made an inventory of these assets, for like Napoleon Bonaparte he was arraying his forces against all Europe. As he realized the enormity of the proposition he sternly set his chubby features and clasped his hands at his back in a truly Corsican attitude. There was no room in the suit-case for his favorite gown! Mary Asheton sighed deeply as she acknowledged it. She felt that, in the unfortunate matter of paucity of raiment, the late Miss Flora McFlimsy of Madison Square had nothing on her.
There was a hazardous point ahead which the god was gravely considering. Mary would be entrusted to the personal care of the conductor, and that functionary might feel warranted in asking questions when his fair young charge desired to leave the train late at night, unchaperoned and unescorted. Mary was thinking of that, too. Now if “Captain” McDonald was in command of this run, all might yet be well. “Captain” McDonald knew her very well and liked her very well and was gifted with susceptibility and kindliness. But if “Captain” Fallow was in charge, peril loomed large ahead.
“Captain” Fallow spelled Duty with heavy, black, capital letters. Had he lived in the old Salem days, his hymn-singing basso would have boomed loud and devout over all lesser sounds whensoever there was a scold-ducking or a witch-burning. Mary had never run away with a man before. She felt poignantly sensible of her inexperience. The fact that she was running away with an absent man made it even harder.
Finally, she was on the train. Looking through dark windows she found herself taking a dark view of life. She was frightened. If a woman is not frightened on her first elopement, she is likely to be unfeminine. Presently the conductor came and dropped to the arm of the next chair. Providentially it was “Captain” McDonald.
“So you’re going to take a tour, Miss Mary?” was his original remark.
Mary smiled. She wanted to cry, but she had to win the “Captain,” and she had found that her smile was usually an effective way to begin. If that failed, she could cry later.
“You know, Miss Mary,” the conductor’s eyes grew reflective, “I’ve thought now and again it’s strange you don’t get married.” He hastened to add with gallantry, “I’m sure it ain’t for lack of opportunity.”
Mary gasped, then she leaned forward and laid her hand on the conductor’s arm.
“Are you a really-truly friend of mine?” she demanded in a catchy, half-sobbing voice.
“Any time you ain’t got a ticket you can ride with me,” the official assured her. “But I guess you’ll marry one of them markeeses or dooks and after that you’ll ride on them dinky European trains with tin engines.”
There are times when good men swear, merely because polite language fails of forcefulness. At such crises vigorous young women, being denied that form of superlative, have recourse to slang.
“You’ve got another guess coming,” said Mary stoutly.
“I’m pleased to hear you say so,” commended “Captain” McDonald. “There’s plenty of good young men in America.”
“I’m—I’m going to marry the best of them to-night,” confided Mary. “I’m running away this very minute! He’s going to meet me at Jaffa Junction!”
The trainman’s face clouded dubiously. The girl’s heart began beating panic time. The dice of Fate were rolling.
“Your folks don’t know about this?” he inquired.
She shook her head. “They—they drove me to it!”
“Who’s your young man?” asked the “Captain.” She informed him.
“Captain” McDonald sat pondering inscrutably for a long while. The girl’s breast heaved convulsively in suspense. The small god stood by in Napoleonic posture, but whether it was the posture of Austerlitz or Waterloo he did not himself know.
“I don’t see nothing the matter with Mr. Copewell, ma’am,” the man at last adjudicated, “but I promised to see you safe to Mercerville. It’s apt to look kind of careless-like to lose a young lady that’s put in your charge.”
“But I’m of age!”
The conductor’s face brightened. It was a new situation and he was willing to avail himself of technical defenses. “Then I guess you can do what you like, but I wish you hadn’t told me in advance.”
“I was afraid,” naïvely explained Mary Asheton, “you wouldn’t let me get off at Jaffa Junction.”
Again the train director thought deeply. Finally he announced himself. “I’m ordered to stop my train at Jaffa Junction. I don’t know who gets off there, see? But the brakeman will open up the vestibule door and—may you never regret it, ma’am!”
While these matters were transpiring, the sister express was rushing west. On the west-bound train “Captain” Fallow chanced to be in command, and “Captain” Fallow was peeved. Sundry irritating delays had marred his run from Pittsburg. His firemen had been hefting coal into the engine’s cavernous maw in a Titanic effort to mend the time-losses. The locomotive had been roaring along with a streaming wake of black smoke lying level from its stack. At Mercerville only twenty minutes were left standing in the way of a perfect score, and at Mercerville the conductor had received orders to stop at an ungodly and forlorn tank-town in the midst of emptiness, known by the opprobrious name of Jaffa Junction!
“Captain” Fallow was fully prepared to be irascible with the Jaffa Junction party. Accordingly, when he discovered Mr. Lewis Copewell in the last seat of the last coach he eyed him without enthusiasm.
“I believe, Captain,” commented Mr. Copewell pleasantly, “you have instructions to drop me at Jaffa Junction?”
The “Captain’s” glance became flinty.
“So you are that Jaffa Junction party?” The manner of saying it indicated that the designation carried black opprobrium. Mr. Copewell nodded complacently. “Captain” Fallow’s stern visage became more granite-like.
“My train is twenty minutes late now,” he accused, “and that jay town is one of them places where a lot of lame old ladies tries to board the train every time you stop there. It takes a Jaffa Junction prominent citizen five minutes to climb into a coach!” Mr. Copewell politely attempted to simulate an interest in the characteristics of Jaffa Junction’s prominent citizens. “Indeed?” he said.
“Captain” Fallow went on curtly. “I ask you as a favor to hop off quick when we get there. I’ll have the rear vestibule open and you can fly out as soon as you feel the train slowing down. Your place will be our only stop this side of Perryville, see? If you can jump down without our coming to a dead stop, it will save time.”
Mr. Copewell smiled. “My dear Captain,” he reassured, “I hold various championships for getting off trains. To-night I mean to break all my past records. I’m in a hurry myself.”
“Captain” Fallow’s face softened. “Remember,” he emphasized, “first stop is your destination.”
In view of the fact that he was on his way to meet the one lady of his heart and to foil Fate and Family, Mr. Copewell might have been presumed to be wide awake. In point of actuality, the reverse was true.
Last night, anxiety and indignation had murdered sleep. To-day, action and preparation had assaulted his vitality. Now, with success at his elbow, a delightful languor stole upon him. Gradually his rosy dreams became rosier, more somnolent! His head fell on his chest. Behold, the bridegroom fell snoring!
Some time later the conductor passed through the train and, arriving at the front vestibule of the front coach, made a discovery.
There, crouching very modestly in the shaded corner next to the rear end of the baggage-car, was a somewhat undersized youth with straight, black hair and an expression of innocence which somehow did not seem to sit naturally on his rat-like countenance.
The conductor eyed him accusingly. “Where’s your ticket?” he inquired without preamble.
The youth smiled with a disarming candor.
“Honest, pal,” he confided, “you kin search me! I was just goin’ through me clothes fer it when you come out. I was just sayin’ ter meself, ‘Son,’ says I, ‘where in ——isdat ducket?’”
“Ducket, eh!” repeated “Captain” Fallow. There was a pitiless, inquisitorial note in his voice, which the young man construed as ominous.
The young man bit his lip in annoyance. It was borne in upon him that he had made a most unfortunate choice of words. In police glossaries the term “ducket” is defined as thief and hobo vernacular for a railroad-ticket.
“You come up front with me,” suggested the conductor, pushing the youth ahead of him. In the baggage-coach ahead Mr. “Rat” Connors, for it was none other than he, was treated to a very creditable amateur production of the Third Degree. But Mr. Connors had made his one mistake and they wrung from him no further self-incrimination. He was unaccustomed to the ways of travel, he said, because he had to stay at home and work very hard to support a widowed mother and several small brothers and sisters. He had lost his ticket. He had no more money. He was sorry, extremely sorry—but what could he do?
He could get off, the conductor assured him, and to emphasize the suggestion he reached for the cord and signalled to the engineer. Mr. Connors stood supinely near the open door of the baggage-coach while the baggage-man and a brakeman ranged themselves at his back to assist him in alighting.
The train slowed down with a jarring wrench which startled Mr. Copewell out of a halcyon dream into a disturbed sense of being almost too late. Wildly seizing his hat and grip, he made a lunge through the open vestibule door. It was a highly creditable lunge. It carried him from a flat-footed nap out into the darkness in something like two seconds and a quarter.
He was not yet really awake. He acted subconsciously and in obedience to a sense of imperative haste. When he landed, blinking, on the side of the track and saw about him, instead of village lights, only inky silhouettes of the forest primeval, he felt that he had made a mistake. Already the tail-lights were receding. Mr. Copewell rubbed his eyes and inquired of his subjective self whether he were still dreaming. His subjective self said “No.” Thereupon Mr. Copewell sprinted after the tail-lights. Mr. Copewell was going some, but the shriek of the whistle drowned his shouting, and the rear-end lanterns were whisked like runaway comets from before his outstretched hands. He stumbled on a projecting tie—and the train was gone!
The wedding-guest who beat his breast because his journey to the ceremony was interrupted had no valid cause of complaint as compared with this would-be bridgeroom who stood bereft on the cinders.
He dropped limply to the ground and covered his face with his hands. About him stretched the unbroken gloom of singular blackness. Nowhere was the glimmer of a light. Nowhere, it seemed, was a human habitation. Somewhere a girl was rushing on an express train toward a broken tryst! No one would meet her save a woman-hating best man! What could he do? For a time he did nothing but sit stunned in the darkness, a hundred yards from his abandoned baggage.
It was in just such desperate exigencies as this that chagrined warriors of antiquity were wont to fall upon their swords. Unhappily he had no sword upon which to fall. In the midst of crisis and defeat he sat and strove to evolve out of chaos some bright plan by which he, stranded in juxtaposition to the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, might, in the space of a few minutes, transport himself across an unknown distance and be married at Jaffa Junction.
It has been commented that at the average wedding the bridgeroom has a minor and insignificant rôle. Mr. Copewell had discovered a sure method, in the parlance of theatrical folk, of fattening the part. The male contracting party has only to stay away.
Suddenly he was aroused out of his apathy by the realization that he was not the only living being in that section of rural America. The discovery brought both surprise and comfort. There had drifted to his ears a plaintive singing voice, evidently not far away. The voice was a tenor and it floated through the thick night with the insistent melancholy of a lone minstrel who sings in adversity. Mr. Copewell could quite plainly distinguish the words of the ballad. They were these:
“Jay Gould’s daughter afore she died,Done signed a paper, so de bums can’t ride.”
“Jay Gould’s daughter afore she died,Done signed a paper, so de bums can’t ride.”
“Jay Gould’s daughter afore she died,Done signed a paper, so de bums can’t ride.”
“Jay Gould’s daughter afore she died,
Done signed a paper, so de bums can’t ride.”
There was a silence, then the voice swelled and grew more melancholy, as though the singer were invoking verse and notes for the voicing of his own piteous plight:
“Or if they do ride, they must ride the rods,And trust their souls in the hands of Gawd!”
“Or if they do ride, they must ride the rods,And trust their souls in the hands of Gawd!”
“Or if they do ride, they must ride the rods,And trust their souls in the hands of Gawd!”
“Or if they do ride, they must ride the rods,
And trust their souls in the hands of Gawd!”
The voice dwelt lingeringly on the final chord, then broke off in a deep-drawn sigh.
Suddenly it flashed on Mr. Copewell that there was need of quick action. For a while the minutes could hardly be too full of action.
The gentleman whose voice Mr. Copewell heard singing beside him in the wilderness was not, himself, without his troubles. Trouble resembles the star in the drama, who comes in various make-ups and reading various lines, but always demanding the center of the stage and claiming the white glare of the spotlight.
Mr. Copewell, longing for the soft voice of the lady of his heart, believed in his soul that no misfortune could equal that of a marriage ruthlessly interrupted by the chance hostility of Fate. Mr. Rat Connors was equally certain that Destiny does her worst when she thwarts a dash for freedom and fortune.
Mr. Rat Connors had more than a bowing acquaintance with Vicissitude, the hope-scuttling Lord of Life. Vicissitude, in its latest guise, had come wearing the mantle of Reform to the city of Mercerville, where rich treasures had heretofore awaited enterprise and where the new régime had blasted prospects. Mr. Connors wished most wishfully that the gentlemen responsible for this spoil-sport amendment of régime were, for two minutes, in his power and that he held in his right hand a serviceable fragment of lead pipe.
Only last night a warning had been given him at Corkhill’s Exchange that it would be most expedient for him to leave town. Corkhill’s Exchange was, in the argot of such as Mr. Connors, “de dump w’ere de woid is passed ter cut loose or lie low.” The word just now was not merely to lie low but to fly far.
“Take it from me, Rat,” the bartender had confided, “an’beatit! De new Chief ain’t goin’ ter run t’ings on de old plan. De bulls ain’t goin’ ter take de divvy an’ keep d’eir faces shut no more. McGarvey’s due ter get de ax. If you hangs round here, you’ll be ditched an’ settled an’ de key t’rowed away, see? McGarvey tipped dat off hisself, an’ it’s straight. He said de best he could do fer youse guys was ter warn youse ter make quick getaways, see?”
This advice, being interpreted, meant that an end had come to the old régime under which Corkhill’s Exchange had operated as a neutral zone where police and criminals maintained anentente cordialeon a monetary basis. That was the work of the Hon. Alexander Hamilton Burrow and his confréres. It was very inconvenient for Mr. Rat Connors.
So Mr. Connors, being just then short of funds, had planned a double event in the way of a flight and acoup. There was a certain country house near Perryville where the treasure was alluring, and if Mr. Connors could reach it he thought he saw a way to mend his fortunes. It was the journey thither which “Captain” Fallow had frustrated.
But to return to immediate conditions—Mr. Copewell wished to learn the time. He struck a match to consult his watch. Then he groaned again. His watch had stopped! Without knowledge of the hour he was a storm-tossed mariner deprived of a compass. In a rudimentary fashion the paralyzed brain of Mr. Copewell had begun to take up again the task of thought.
Thought had carried him this far. Mary Asheton would necessarily take one of the horns of her dilemma. She would either leave the train at Jaffa Junction, as per program, to find herself at the mercy of a rude and woman-hating man, or she would receive a quick and unsoftened warning from the aforesaid brutal person, in which event she would continue on her way, heartbroken, to aunty and Europe. If she were indeed marooned at Jaffa Junction, the essential thing was to establish communication with that point. Hence, the first step was to find a telephone. If, on the other hand, Burrow had warned her, the one indispensable step was to flag the east-bound train as it passed his own isolated spot.
Without knowledge of time or place he could not risk leaving the track, because he could have no idea when the train might pass. Perhaps this minstrel, whose voice had come to him through the curtain of darkness, might have a watch. Perhaps he might become an ally. Without a lantern Mr. Copewell could not flag the train unless he built a fire. Obviously, therefore, he must kindle a blaze and open negotiations with the unknown singer. Under the sudden stimulus of revivified hope Mr. Copewell became facetious. “Hello, you, Caruso!” he shouted.
Even before Mr. Copewell hailed him Mr. Connors had noted that the man who appeared in the night so near him was dressed too well to be a fellow vagabond. His photographic eyes had recorded this fact when the sputtering match had caught a red reflection on the watch-case with the glint and color of gold. It might have been wiser, reflected Mr. Connors, to have remained silent and slipped up on this gentleman in the official capacity of a thief in the night. His tell-tale song had, however, made that impossible, so he decided upon permitting events to shape them selves. If it came to a crisis, Rat had, in his inside pocket, his “cannister” which was of .38 caliber and dependable.
“Hello yourself, bo!” responded Mr. Connors with affability. “Did you git t’rowed off de dangler, too?”
“I beg your pardon?” inquired Mr. Copewell. It began to dawn on him that this person might after all be an undesirable companion.
“Did yer light on yer neck offen de hurry-up train?” elucidated the other, coming amicably forward and striking a match. The two men regarded each other in the temporary illumination.
“No,” said Mr. Copewell, “I got off by mistake.”
“Same here,” declared Mr. Connors. “De conductor guy made de mistake. De brakeman helped him.”
For a moment Mr. Copewell stood hesitant. Mr. Connors was not just the man he would have selected to assist in retrieving his disastrously threatened life, but there was small choice of collaborators.
“Have you a watch?” he demanded. “Mine has stopped.”
“Sorry,” replied Mr. Connors with a grin. “I loaned me ticker ter a pal.”
Mr. Copewell turned on his heel and began foraging for firewood. Mr. Connors looked on without comment. When the blaze was at last glowing prosperously, its radius of light revealed to him the suit-case which lay near the track a short distance away.
“Now I don’t know you and you don’t know me,” tersely began Mr. Copewell. “It is vitally important to me to telephone to Jaffa Junction. When the Eastern express comes by, it is also important to flag it. Do you know this country? Do you know where there’s a farmhouse?”
Mr. Connors shook his head.
“Neither do I,” went on Mr. Copewell. “Now, whatever you do for me, you get paid for. I can’t be in two places at once and I’m going to hunt for a ’phone. I’ll be back shortly, but if I miss that train I want you to flag it and ask whether Miss Asheton is on board. If she is, you must give the conductor a note for her.”
Mr. Connors was eying the suit-case. He thought the absence of the other man would afford him a better chance to investigate its possible value. “Sure,” was his ready response. “I’d do most anyt’ing fer a pal.”
Mr. Copewell tore a page from his notebook and hastily scribbled this message:
Dearest: Am caught in the Mill of the Inexorable. I can’t explain now. I’ll follow you to Europe and it will only mean a delay. I love you. Reserve judgment and you will understand.
Dearest: Am caught in the Mill of the Inexorable. I can’t explain now. I’ll follow you to Europe and it will only mean a delay. I love you. Reserve judgment and you will understand.
He then plunged into the smothering tangle of the hills. Had he been told that there existed in his State such void and unpeopled wastes, he would, as a patriotic citizen, have resented the charge. He climbed a tree, remembering that all the correspondence courses in woodcraft advise survey from an eminence. The net results were a bark-scraped face, bruised shins and spoiled wedding-clothes. But at last, with a leap of joy, he descried a dim light off to the left. Where there are lights there is humanity, and where there is humanity there may be information—possibly even a telephone.