CHAPTER VICALEB CONOVER RUNS AWAY
The following Monday morning found Caleb at the Capital ready and waiting for the battle which lay before him. He had arrived from Granite late Sunday night; with Caine and with one or two personal followers on whose timely aid, he knew from experience, he might count.
For two days there had been a ceaseless downpour of rain. Conover and Caine, draped in long waterproof coats, stood at the entrance of their hotel, looking out on the flooded streets and dingy, streaming sky. They were waiting for the carriage that was to bear them to the State House. Caine glanced ever at his watch, his armor of habitual bored indifference worn perilously thin. Conover, on the other hand, showed no more emotion than if he were on his way to luncheon. As Caine’s hand, for the tenth time, crept toward his watch pocket, the Fighter remarked:
“I can save you the trouble of lookin’, son, by tellin’ you the startlin’ news that it’s just about thirty seconds later’n it was when you took out your watch before. What’s your worry? We’re in lots of time. As long as we get there when the Assembly’s called to order it’s all we care. I’ve done ev’rything thatcanbe done. All I’m goin’ to the lobby for is to jack those able statesmen up when Blacarda starts to stampede ’em. I’ve made my arrangements with each man who’s goin’ to vote our way. An’, as I figger out, we’ll kill that Starke bill by two votes. Easy that many. But there’s four or five Assemblymen that need my fatherly eye on ’em when the bill comes up. Otherwise they’ll sure bolt. I know ’em. While I’m there I’m like your friend Napoleon; worth 40,000 men. Or, 40,000 dollars, if you like it better that way. I’ve got my grip on the reins. Don’t you fret.”
“I heard something just now,” said Caine. “Something that it will surprise you to learn. I had it from the ‘Star’s’ Legislature correspondent. It seems Blacarda tried to prevent your coming to the Capital at all. I’m rather surprised at his playing such a trick. But I suppose it goes to prove that a man is known by the company he promotes. He heard you were due from Granite on the 5.30 train this morning. And he paid the engineer $600 to have the locomotive break down thirty miles from here. You would have been stalled there until too late to be of any use. The Assembly would have met and—”
“An’ stampeded,” finished Caleb stolidly. “An’ the Starke bill would’ve gone through an’ we’d a’ been licked. Quite so. That’s why I changed my plans, the last minute, an’ came here last night.”
“You knew of Blacarda’s move?” cried Caine in amazement.
“Son,” yawned Conover, “it’s my business to know things. An’ there’s plenty little I don’t know when it comes to .22 calibre en’mies like Blacarda. The engineer took the cash an’ then brought the whole story to me. Us railroad men pull together, you know. I told him to keep his $600 an’ let the engine break down accordin’ to schedule. Then I came on another train last night. Didn’t you see how pleased Blacarda looked when he came into thehotel? He knows he ain’t got a ghost of a chance with his Starke bill, while I’m on deck in the State House lobby. Here’s our carriage. Come on, since you’re in such a hurry.”
The two men splashed out through the sheets of rain toward the waiting vehicle. Caine stood aside to let Conover step in. As the latter’s foot was on the step, the hotel telegraph clerk came running out, calling the Fighter’s name and holding up a slip of yellow paper whose message-ink was still wet.
“Just came!” announced the clerk, handing Conover the dispatch. “I thought you were still in the hotel. Lucky I caught you before you started!”
Caleb made no reply. He was reading, and re-reading, the telegram. Caine, watching him impatiently, saw the Fighter’s face turn a muddy gray.
Then, shouting to the driver: “Union Station! Go like Hell!” Conover was in the carriage. Caine, all at a loss, had barely time to scramble in after him before Caleb had slammed shut the door. The horseswere off at full speed; the wheels dashing a cascade of mud blotches through the vehicle’s lowered sash.
“What is the matter?” insisted Caine, as Conover huddled—inert, bulky, wordless—in one corner; “whom are you to meet at the station? I thought all the Assemblymen—”
“I’m goin’ to catch the 9.32 to Granite if we can make it,” growled Conover. “Shut up an’ let me think. Here!”
He shoved the tight-squeezed ball of yellow paper toward Caine. The latter, as he took the telegram, noted the sudden clammy chill of the Fighter’s hand and saw that his lips were dry as a fever-patient’s. Never before had Caine seen him nervous, and he turned with redoubled interest to the unfolding of the crumpled dispatch. It bore a woman’s signature—that of Desirée’s aunt—and Caine, marveling, ran his eyes over the body of the message:
“Dey taken dangerously ill last night. Delirious. Calls for you all time. Come if can.”
The banal wording, the crude phrasing for the sake of saving expense—every detail of the telegram jarred upon Caine’s fastidious taste. But a new thought made him turn, incredulous, upon Conover.
“I’m awfully,awfullysorry to hear this,” said he. “But—but of course you can’t think of leaving everything at the State House to-day and—”
“State House?” muttered Conover, dully.
“Don’t you understand?” cried Caine, gripping thedazed, limp giant by the shoulder and trying to shake him back to his senses. “Don’t you understand the Steeloid fight will be on in an hour or so? You can’t desert us and run off to Granite like this.”
“Take your hands off me,” mumbled Conover, pettishly. “Lord, how I hate to be pawed! Can’t that driver go any faster’n a hearse? I’ll miss the—”
“Conover!” fairly shouted Caine. “Brace up, man! What ails you? I never saw you like this. Have you lost your head? The Steeloid fight comes up, in the Assembly, to-day. Your fortune and mine hang on your killing the Starke bill. You say, yourself, that unless you’re at the State House we’ll lose. Youcan’tget to Granite and back before the session closes. If—”
“I’m not comin’ back,” said Caleb in utter weariness. “She’s—Dey’s sick. ‘Dangerously ill,’ the tel’gram said. An’ she’s callin’ all the time forme. If the 9.32 is on time I ought to be to her house by noon. Maybe before.”
“Look here, old man!” pleaded Caine. “Of course I’m sorrier about Miss Shevlin than I can say. But she will have the best possible medical care. And you can’t help her by rushing off like this. Think of all that depends on your being at the State House, to-day. You can catch the six o’clock train for Granite this evening, just as well. For all our sakes, don’t desert us now! If Blacarda gets the Starke bill through the Assembly—”
“Don’t bother me,” snarled Conover, shifting hisbig body to move out of reach of the appealing hand. “What—what d’ye s’pose can be the matter with her? She was all right yesterday noon. Train leaves in four minutes, an’—”
Caine broke in on the Fighter’s speech with a final plea for sanity. He had an almost uncanny feeling at his own proximity to this demoralized hulk of what had until now been the strongest man of his world. He did not know the shaking, muttering, putty-faced being who in a trice had tossed away both their hopes of fortune. Yet Caine would not yield.
“If you’ll only stay just long enough for the Starke bill to be voted on,” he implored. “You can have a Special to take you back. Or, call up her doctor on the long-distance telephone before you start, and find out if her illness is really dangerous. Perhaps her aunt—”
“She’s callin’ for me,” reiterated Caleb, in the same dead tones. “I thought about the long-distance ’phone. But there’s no time for that before the 9.32 starts. I—Good! Here’s the station! An’ two minutes to spare.”
Out of the carriage he jumped and made off at a shambling run for the tracks; Caine close at his heels. At the car platform the Fighter turned; scribbled a few lines on a card and handed it to Caine.
“Here,” he ordered with a ghost of his old authority. “Have that telegram sent off in a rush. It’ll clear up the tracks for me when we strike the C. G. & X. line, an’ let us in a half-hour earlier. Do as I say.Don’t bother me! I’ve no time to fool with the measly Steeloid deal now.”
For an hour and a half Caleb Conover stared with unseeing, glazed eyes at the gray skies and rain-rotted fields as his train sped toward Granite. He had a curious numbness in his head. A dumb nausea gripped him. For the first time in his life, he could not think consecutively. All his mind and body seemed to centre around one hideous truth: Desirée Shevlin was terribly ill. Perhaps dying. She wanted him. And he was not there.
He had never known until now that he had an imagination. Yet, during the century-long train ride, the pressure on his brain lifted a bit from time to time and he could see the dainty, dark little head turning endlessly from side to side on its tumbled hot pillow; the white face whence the glow and life had been stricken; the delirium hoarse voice calling—ever calling—forhim.
She had been so bright, so happy, so strong—only the day before. She had gone driving with him after church. She had been telling him about a country visit she was going to make—to-day—yes, she was to have started to-day. This noon. And on the same drive—what was it she had worn? It had gone prettily with her eyes, whatever it was. Those eyes of hers had such odd, wonderful little lights in them. What color were they? And what was it Caine had told her they held—oh, yes—‘prisonedlaughter.’ That was a queer sort of phrase. But she had seemed to like it.
Why hadn’t the old fool who built the engine made one that could travel faster than a hand car?
The express—thanks to Caleb’s track-clearing telegram—rolled into Granite station a full half hour ahead of time. Long before the cars came to a lurching halt under the sheds, Conover, with all an old-time railroad man’s deftness, had swung off the moving train and had started down the platform at a run. Through bevies of departing passengers he clove a rough, unapologetic way. Station hands leaped nimbly aside and gazed in gaping amaze after their hurrying President. Past the platform, through the vaulted waiting room toward the street beyond; and, at the outer door—
“Caleb!”
Conover halted, dumbfounded, shaking, at the call. There in the doorway he stood, his face a dull purple, his eyes bulging, staring down at—Desirée Shevlin.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she marvelled. “You said you were to be at the Capital till to-morrow. Isn’t it the squunchiest, trickliest day you ever saw? If I hadn’t promised ever and ever so solemnly to go out to Jean’s on the eleven-forty, I’d—”
“GoodLord!”
It was as though all the engines on the C. G. & X. were letting off steam at once. And, with the ejaculation,the cloud of horror was wiped clean from the Fighter’s brain. He was, on the moment, his old self; alive and masterful in every atom of his mighty body.
“Caleb!” the girl was saying, plaintively, as she gazed up at him with her head on one side, “is your hatwishedon?”
“I’m sorry I forgot!” he laughed, excitedly, doffing the wet derby with one hand and slapping her vigorously on her little rain-coated shoulder with the other. “I came all the way back to Granite to tell you I’m tickled to death to see you lookin’ so well. An’—an’—to tell you I’m goin’ to beat Blacarda yet!”
“CalebConover!” she gasped. “Whatdo you think you are talking about? Are you—”
But Conover had vanished—swallowed up in the recesses of the dark station. Desirée looked after him, round-eyed.
“I sometimes think,” she confided to the silver handle of her umbrella, “that Caleb will neverquitegrow up!”