CHAPTER IV
LOVE OR HATE
Thus a week passed, in the course of which the heart of the girl was torn by conflicting emotions. Love clashed with hate and self-pity with self-reproach. Was it true—what he had said? Had she administered the final kick to a man who was down—who, loving her—and deep down in her heart she knew that he did love her—had come to her in the extremity of his need for a word of encouragement?
Now that he was gone she realized how much he had meant to her. How, in spite of his reckless disregard of life's serious side, she loved him. Try as she would she could not forget the look of deep hurt that dulled his eyes at her words.
Had she not been justified? Had he not needed just that to bring him to a realization of his responsibilities? Had she not, at the sacrifice of her own love, spurred and strengthened his purpose to make good? Or, had she, by raising a barrier between them, removed his one incentive to great effort?
Over and over the girl pondered these things. One moment her heart cried out for his return, and the next she reiterated her undying hate for the man in whose power it was so sorely to wound her with a word.
And so she sat one evening before an open fire in the library which had been the scene of their parting. Mechanically she turned the pages of a novel, but her mind was elsewhere, and her eyes lingered upon the details of the room.
"He stood there," she mused, "and I here—and then—those awful words. And, oh! the look in his eyes that day as the portières closed between us—and he was gone. Where?"
Somehow the idea obsessed her that he had gone to sea. She pictured him big and strong and brave, battling before the mast on some wallowing, storm-hectored trading ship outbound, bearing him away into the melting-pot of strange world-ways.
Would he come clean through the moil, winning honor and his place among men? And thus would he some day return—toher? Or would the sea claim him for her own, roughen him, and buffet him about through the long years among queer Far Eastern hell-ports where, jostling shoulder to shoulder with brutish men and the women who do not care, he would drink deep and laugh loud among the flesh-pots of society's discards?
The uncertainty was terrible to the girl, and she forced her thoughts into the one channel in which there was a ray of comfort.
"At least," she murmured, "he has ceased to be a menace to Charlie."
"Mr. Hiram Carmody, miss."
The old manservant who had been with the Mantons always, stood framed in the inverted V of the parted portières.
Ethel started. Why had he called? During the lifetime of her father the elder Carmody had been a frequent visitor in the Manton home.
Was it about Bill? Was he sick? Had there been an accident, and was he hurt—possibly dead? There was an icy grip at her heart, though her voice was quite firm as she replied:
"I will see Mr. Carmody at once, Craddon."
As the man silently withdrew from the doorway a new thought came to her.
Could it be that Bill was still in New York? That his going away had been an empty threat? And was he now trying to bring about a reconciliation through the medium of his father? How she could despise him for that!
Her lips thinned, and there was a hint of formality in her greeting as she offered her hand to the tall, gray-haired man who advanced toward her.
"Well, well! Miss Ethel," he began, "all alone with a book and a cozy fire. That is what I call solid comfort." He crossed the room and extended his hands to the blaze.
"It is a long time since you have called, Mr. Carmody."
"Yes. We old fellows rarely drift outside the groove of our fixed orbit. One by one we drop out, and as each one passes beyond it shortens the orbit of the others. The circle is always contracting—never expanding. The last one of us will be found in his dotage never venturing beyond the circle of his own fireside until he, too, shall answer the call."
The voice held a note of sadness which touched the girl deeply, and she suddenly noted that the fine patrician face had aged.
"You should not speak of being old," she said gently. "Why, you are called the Wizard of Wall Street."
"A man is only as old as he feels. Until recently I have considered myself a young man. But of late I feel that I am losing my grip."
"Isn't that a dangerous admission? If it should become known on the Street——"
"Ha!"—the heavy gray eyebrows met with a ferocity which belied the smile that curved the thin lips—"if it were but whispered upon the Street the wolves would be at my throat before morning. But they would have a fight on their hands! However, all that is beside the purpose. I suppose you are wondering why I called?"
The girl was momentarily at a loss for a reply. "Why, I—You know you are always welcome here."
"Yes, yes. But, as you must have surmised, I called with a definite object in view. A matter that concerns you and—er, my son."
The girl turned a shade paler.
"I do not understand," she replied.
"Nor do I. I have come to you at the risk of being thought a meddling old fool! But the fact is, I have several times lately heard your name mentioned in connection with William's, and recently there came into my possession this packet of letters addressed to my son in a feminine hand and bearing the Manton crest."
The girl's face flushed as she took the proffered packet and waited for him to continue.
"Fred Manton was my best friend," went on the old man, "and I won't see harm come to his daughter, if I can prevent it. You two may be just friends; you may be engaged—or married, for all I know. My son never deemed it worth while to take me into his confidence. In either case, I am here—and I will have my say. I shall put myself in the place of your father and speak as, I believe, he would have spoken. I may seem harsh and bitter toward my own son, but remember, Miss Ethel, I have had vastly more experience in the ways of the world than you have—and I know whereof I speak.
"Slight as is the difference between your ages, you are but an inexperienced girl, as the world knows experience, and William is a man—and a man, I am sorry to say, who is no fit associate for a woman like you."
Surprised and perplexed the girl felt her anger rise against this man. Instinctively she rallied to Bill's defense:
"He is not bad at heart!" she said resentfully.
"What worse can you say?" returned Carmody with a harsh laugh. "Of all expressions coined to damn a man with faint praise, there is only one more effective: 'He means well.'"
Ethel was thoroughly angry now. She drew herself up, and her blue eyes darkened as she faced him.
"That is not so!" she cried. "Bill isnotbad at heart! And hedoesmean well! Whose fault is it that he has grown up reckless and wild? Who is to blame? What chance has he had? What have you done for him? Filled his pockets with money and packed him off to school. Filled his pockets with money and sent him to college. Filled his pockets with money and shipped him abroad.
"Then, without consulting his taste or desire, you peremptorily thrust him into a business which he loathes—on an office boy's salary and an allowance out of all proportion to his requirements.
"You say he has never taken you into his confidence. Have you ever invited that confidence? Have you ever sought his companionship—even his acquaintance?"
The man was astonished at her vehemence. Uncomfortably he found himself forced to the defensive.
"He had his chance. I placed him in the bank that he might learn the business as I learned it. If he had had the right stuff in him he would have made good. As it was, he attended to his duties in the most perfunctory and superficial manner. He showed not the slightest interest in the business. In fact, his position could have been ably filled by the veriest gutter-snipe. Andheis the man who one day, in all probability, would have come into control of the Carmody millions! And he would have scattered them in a riot of dissipation the length and breadth of Broadway.
"But I have forestalled him. He is foot-loose—gone, God knows where, to follow the fortune of adventure, perhaps, at the ends of the earth. For in him, transmitted in some unaccountable manner through the blood of the gentlest, sweetest little woman who ever warmed a heart, is the restless spirit of the roistering, fighting McKims."
"Is it the boy's fault that he is a McKim?" returned the girl a little sharply. "Who chose his mother? Of all men you should be the last to speak disparagingly of a McKim. Turn the pages of history and you will find written large in the story of the upbuilding of nations the name of McKim. Carmody gold is the cabala of Carmody suzerainty. But the McKim name has been carved deep in the annals of nations by sheer force of the personalities behind blades of naked steel.
"Even now the crying world-need for men—big men—is as great as in the days when the fighting McKims deserted their hearthstones to answer the call of the falchion's clash or the cannon's roar. And some day you will realize this—when your bank messenger makes good!"
The old man regarded her with a look of admiration.
"You love him!" he said quietly.
The girl started. Her eyes flashed and the play of the firelight gave an added touch of crimson to her cheeks.
"I do not love him! I—Ihate him!" Her voice faltered, and the man saw that she was very near to tears.
"A strange hate, this, Miss Ethel. A strange and a most dangerous hate for a girl to hold against a man who is athief."
CHAPTER V
"THIEF!"
"A man who is a thief!" The words fell distinctly from Carmody's lips with the studied quiet of desperation. Ethel stared wild-eyed at the speaker, and in the frozen silence of the room her tiny fists doubled until the knuckles whitened.
Noting the effect upon the girl, he continued, speaking more rapidly now that the dreaded word had been uttered.
"I had no wish to tell you this thing. It is a secret I would gladly have kept locked within my own breast. But I came here this evening with a purpose—to save, in spite of herself, if need be, the daughter of my dead friend from a life of suffering which would inevitably fall to the lot of any pure-hearted woman who linked her life with that of an unscrupulous scoundrel, in whom even common decency is dead, if, indeed, it ever lived."
"He isnota thief! He——" began Ethel vehemently, but the man interrupted her.
"Wait until you have heard the facts. Last week, on Friday, there was entrusted to my son's care for delivery a heavy manila envelope containing fifty thousand dollars' worth of negotiable bonds. It was a matter of vital importance that these be delivered within a specified time. Ignoring this fact, he pocketed the bonds, and, in company with a number of his acquaintances, indulged in a drunken spree which culminated after midnight in a disgraceful street scene in the Broadway theatre district.
"The following morning, when I confronted him, he flouted me to my face, whereupon I virtually disinherited him. Not wishing to turn him away penniless, I handed him a check for a considerable amount which he saw fit to destroy melodramatically in my presence. Upon my request for the return of the securities, he handed me an envelope identical with that in which the bonds had been placed. I carried the packet to the bank where it was opened and found to contain not the bonds—but those letters.
"To avoid a scandal I made good the loss. I learned later, through investigation, that upon leaving home he came directly to this house, where he remained for upward of a half-hour.
"Further than this I know nothing of his movements except that he reëntered the taxi and proceeded down-town. At Thirty-Fourth Street, where the chauffeur slowed down for instructions, he found the cab empty."
"Andtheseare the facts upon which you base your accusation?" asked the girl coldly. "You, his own father!"
"To an unbiased mind the evidence allows but one interpretation."
"But his eyes! Oh, can't you see there has been some mistake? His eyes are not the eyes of a thief!"
"There has been no mistake. A most thorough search of the premises has failed to disclose a trace of the missing securities. In his desk from which he took the substituted packet were found several similar envelopes, but these contained only worthless rubbish—newspaper clippings of sporting events and the like.
"No, Miss Ethel, when William Carmody left my house that morning he carried with him those bonds. And he came here, knowing that he was a thief, with his pocket bulging with plunder!
"As I told you, I know nothing of the relations existing between you and my son. I only hope that he has gone forever out of your life, as he has gone out of mine."
The light died out of the girl's eyes and her voice sounded strangely dull as she replied:
"Yes, he has gone out of my life—maybe forever. He came to me here, to tell me that he was going away to make good. And I—I was not big enough to see it. I sent him away with a sneer. Bill is no thief. For what he has been you are to blame—you and the Carmody money. For the first time in his life he has a fair chance. He has left New York the man you made him. He will return the man he makes himself. Oh! If—if I only——"
"There, there, Miss Ethel, your loyalty is admirable, if misplaced——"
"Don't speak to me of loyalty! I have been as narrow and asmeanas—asyouhave!"
"My dear girl, you are overwrought. The sooner we learn that William Carmody has ceased to exist the better it will be for both of us. I bid you good-night."
The girl sank into the depths of her big chair and watched the sputtering little jet-flames lick futilely at the artificial logs of the fireplace. Believing herself alone, she was startled by the sound of footsteps hurrying noisily across the room. The next instant a tousle-headed boy with eyes ablaze was at her side working her hands like pump-handles.
"By Jimmy, Eth, you're a brick—the way you gave it to him! You bet I'll tell Bill how you stuck up for him."
"Charlie Manton! You were listening—eavesdropping."
"I didn't! I wasn't! I mean I couldn't help hearing! The door of the den was open and I was in there studying. Old man Carmody is an old liar!"
"Charlie!"
"Well, he is, and you know it! I hate him! You bet he wouldn't dare call Bill a thief to his face! Bill could lick forty-seven like him with one hand tied behind his back. Bill is square. He wouldn't swipe a million dollars—let alone a rotten, measly fifty thousand!"
"Charlie Manton! What kind of talk is that? You ought to be ashamed!"
"Well, I ain't—so there! And I'm Bill's friend, and I ain't afraid to say so, either. You do love Bill—and you know it! You can claim you hate him till you're black in the face, but you can't foolme! What did you stick up for him for if you hated him? I bet old man Carmody swiped the bonds himself!"
"Stop right there! Aren't you ashamed to speak so disrespectfully of Mr. Carmody? He was an old friend of father's."
"I don't care if he was. I'm an old friend of Bill's, too. And Billain'ta thief, no matter what he says!"
"You go to bed this minute. I am surprised and mortified to think that you would be so contemptible as to listen to other people's affairs."
"'Taint any worse than lying!"
The boy stamped angrily from the room, and the girl sat long by the fire and, one by one, fed letters to the flames.
CHAPTER VI
THE CROOKED GAME
"Clickity-click, clickity-click, clickity-click," the monotonous song of the rails told off the miles as the heavy train rushed westward between the endless cornfields of a flat middle State. To the well-built athletic young man who was one of the four occupants of the little end-room, smoking compartment, the outlook was anything but cheerful.
As far as the eye could reach long rows of shriveled husks, from which the season's crop of yellow ears had been torn, flapped dejectedly against their dried and broken stalks. Here and there a square of rich, black loam, freshly turned, bespoke the forehanded farmer; while in the fields of his neighbors straggling groups of cattle and hogs gleaned half-heartedly in the standing roughage.
"Not much for scenery, is it?" The offensively garrulous passenger directed his remarks to the young man, who abstractedly surveyed the landscape. "No, sir," he continued, "you've got to go West for Scenery. Ever been West?"
The young man nodded without removing his gaze from the window.
"I live in Coloraydo," the other persisted. "Went out there for my health—and I stayed. Johnson's my name. I'm in the mining business."
His eyes swept the compartment to include the others in the too evident geniality of their glance.
"Now that we're all acquainted," he ventured—"how about a little game of seven-up, just to pass away the time? How about you, dad?"
Thus flippantly he addressed the ruddy-faced, middle-aged gentleman in gray tweeds, whose attention was apparently concentrated upon the lengthening ash of his cigar.
With enthusiasm undampened by the curtness of the latter's refusal, he turned to the remaining passenger—a youth upon whose lip sprouted a tenderly pruned mustache, so obviously new that it looked itchy.
"How about you, captain?" The top-heavy youth closed his magazine and unlocked a brain-cell.
"I don't mind." He ostentatiously consulted a very gold watch. "Must be in Chicago this evening," he muttered quite audibly, pulling a ten, twent, thirt frown that caused his labial foliage to rustle with importance.
He drew from his pocket a card upon which the ink was scarcely dry and handed it to the effervescent Johnson, who read aloud:
Mr. LINCOLN S. TARBELMunicipal Investigator
Mr. LINCOLN S. TARBELMunicipal Investigator
Mr. LINCOLN S. TARBEL
Municipal Investigator
"You see," explained its owner, "it has reached the ears of the managing editor of my paper in South Bend that vice in various forms flourishes in Chicago! Thereupon he immediately sent for me and ordered a sweeping investigation."
Further information was forestalled by the entrance of a suave-mannered individual who introduced himself as a cigar salesman, and who was readily induced to take a hand in the game.
The lightning-like glances that passed between the newcomer and the Western Mr. Johnson, while entirely unnoted by the investigator of municipal vice, aroused the interest of the athletic young man to the point of assenting to make the fourth. Here, evidently, was something about to be pulled off, and he decided to be actively among those present.
The game progressed through several uneventful deals. Suddenly Johnson, scrutinizing a hand dealt him by the cigar salesman, emitted a low whistle.
"If we were playing poker now I'd have something to say!"
"Oh, I don't know! I've got some poker hand myself," opined the dealer. "Discard one, to make a five-card hand, and I bet you five dollars I beat you."
"You're on!" Each produced a bill which he handed to the athletic young man to hold.
"Three eights and a pair of deuces," boasted the Westerner, exposing the full hand upon the board.
"Beats three kings," admitted the other, ruefully laying down his hand. The winner pocketed the money with an exaggerated wink in the direction of the newspaper youth who had been an interested spectator.
The game progressed, and before many deals another challenge was passed and accepted between the two. This time it was the salesman who profited to the extent of twenty-five dollars which he received from the stakeholder with the remark that he would bet his whole roll on a jack full any old day.
The elderly gentleman smoked in silence and amused himself by mentally cataloguing the players. Suddenly his attention became riveted.
What he saw jarred harshly upon his estimate of the athletic young man who, at the conclusion of his deal, dexterously slipped some cards beneath the table from his pile of tricks, then, bunching the pack, passed it to the Westerner for the next deal.
He was on the point of exposing this cheap bit of knavery when the young man glanced in his direction. Something in the steady gaze of the gray eyes, though for the life of him he could not have told what, stayed his purpose, and he settled into his seat, more puzzled than before.
"If it had been any one of the others," he thought to himself; "and then to think that he turns around and with a look virtually makes me a party to his tuppenny trickery!"
His reflections were cut short by a sharp exclamation from the investigator of vice who, in spite of his desire to appear composed, was evidently laboring under great excitement.
"I'll bet twenty-five dollars I've got the best poker hand this time!" He was staring at his tight-gripped cards. Johnson looked his hand over—and with a careless:
"Here's where I get even," tossed the amount to the athletic young man, who laid his cards upon the table. The cigar salesman broke in:
"Hold on! I'm in on this, too! Got a pretty fair hand myself. And just to show you sports I'm game, I'll make it a hundred."
He passed a handful of bills to the stakeholder and glared defiantly at the newspaper person who was in the act of returning a bill-fold to his pocket.
"Why, that is all I've got!" he gasped, "and it's expense-money!"
"Well, of course," the other replied, "if you don't care to see my hand, and I don't mind telling you it's more than a middling good one——"
"I'll bet"—the hand that extracted the neatly folded bills from the leather case shook and the voice rose to a ludicrous falsetto—"I've got you beat, and if I had any more money with me I'd come back at you."
"You've got a watch there," remarked Mr. Johnson. "Let's see it. I ain't going to stay for the raise. My three sevens don't look as good as they did."
"I paid fifty dollars for it!" piped the youth, passing the watch across the board. Both men examined it.
"Oh, well, I don't know anything about watches, but I'll take your word for it. Stick her up—here's the fifty."
"I've gotfouraces!" squealed the reporter as he spread them out face upward. He stared wildly at the other, and his hands made wet marks where they touched the board.
"No good," remarked his opponent blandly. "Mine's hearts—all in a row, with the jack at the top." One by one he laid them down—a straight flush. South Bend stared incredulously at the cards.
"All right, Mr. Stakeholder," laughed the salesman, "pass over the kale. Just slip out a five for your trouble."
"Just a minute." The voice of the stakeholder was quiet and his lips smiled. The two across the board bristled aggressively and the plucked one sniffled.
"Well"—there was an ugly note in the cigar salesman's voice—"a straight flush beats four aces, don't it?"
"Oh, yes, there is no question as to that. Are these the same cards we have been using?"
"Of course they are! What do you mean?" asked the dealer.
"Oh, nothing. I just wanted to know. Our friend here has the right to know that he got a square deal. Count the cards." The look of apprehension on the faces of the two men faded into smiles.
"Sure thing. That's fair enough," acquiesced the dealer, proceeding to gather the cards from the board. Slowly and deliberately he counted; "fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two," he finished. "Here, captain, count them yourself." He handed them to the youth, who mechanically ran them through.
"They are all here," he admitted.
"Now, that is funny," smiled the stakeholder, "because last deal I dropped several cards onto the floor. This gentleman saw me do it."
He nodded toward the elderly gentleman, who was now keenly interested, and reached under the table.
"See—here they are. And, by the way, the nine and ten of hearts are among them. And now, you cheap crooks," he added as he flung a handful of bills onto the board, "take your money and beat it!"
The two men opposite looked for an instant into the narrowing gray eyes, noted a certain tightening of the square jaw and the clenching of a pair of very capable fists, and tarried not upon further orders. Sweeping the money into their pockets they quit the compartment, casting venomous back glances toward the young man whose lips could smile while his eyes threatened.
"Here is yours, kid. And let me put you wise to something. The first thing you do when you strike Chicago, buy a ticket to South Bend. They are waiting for you in the wicked town—they can see you coming. The next ones will spring a real live game, green goods, or wire tapping. They will roll you before you can locate a rescue mission. About the only form of vice they will give you time to investigate will be what the taxi boy does to you.
"The cold-deck stunt you just fell for, sonny, is so old it totters. It is the identical trick that started the coolness between Brutus and Julius Cæsar."
CHAPTER VII
THE WRECK
The early darkness of late autumn settled over the flat country. Tiny lights twinkled from distant farmhouses as the Limited plowed through the night.
The athletic young man continued to stare moodily out of the window.
The black expanse of country became more thickly studded with lights. They flashed in the foreground in regular constellations as the train whizzed with undiminished speed past tall block towers and tiny suburban stations.
Long parallel rows, narrowing to a point under a distant hazy nimbus, marked the course of the outreaching arteries of a great city. Warning bells clanged peremptorily at the lowered gates of grade crossings.
The car wheels crashed noisily over an ever-increasing number of frogs and switch points, an occasional brilliantly illuminated trolley car crept slowly over its rails, and the hundreds of green and red and yellow lights of the widening railroad yards lent a variety of color to the scene.
That infallible harbinger of an approaching terminal, the colored porter, had appeared in the doorway, whisk-broom in hand, when—suddenly—there was a grinding jar; the heavy coach trembled through its length, and from forward came a muffled roar followed by the tearing crash of riven metal.
The car reared upward—higher and higher it climbed to the accompaniment of the terrible crunching grind that proclaims undirected power and benumbs the brain with the horrid possibilities of energy uncontrolled. When almost perpendicular the sleeper toppled and crashed sidewise across other tracks at right angles to its course.
New sounds supplanted the mighty noise of tearing and rending—little sounds—the sharp jangle of smashing glass, and the thin wail of an infant. These were borne to the young man's ears as from a distance.
It was very dark and he was conscious of a great weight which seemed to be crushing the breath from his body. He raised his arms and tore at the thing on his chest. It yielded slightly to the pressure of his hands but remained immovable. He reached above it and encountered metal—a large iron cylinder with projecting pipes twisted and bent. Frantically he tore at the weight, exerting to the utmost the mighty strength of his shoulders. Inch by inch he worked it sidewise, using the pipes as levers until at length it rolled free and settled with a crash among the wreckage at his side. The other—the thing that yielded—he lifted easily and sat up, filling his exhausted lungs with great drafts of cool air.
His head ached terribly. He passed his hand across his forehead and withdrew it wet and dripping. He struck a match and as the tiny flame flickered and went out he struck another and another.
At his side lay the torso of the young reporter, his head mashed by the heavy water-cooler. He shuddered as he realized that this was the thing he had lifted from his chest.
In the opposite corner the elderly man struggled to release his arm from the grip of a wedging timber. The body of the porter, doubled grotesquely, partially protruded from under a seat.
His last match died out and he crept to the side of the imprisoned man. A heave at the timber satisfied him as to the futility of accomplishing anything in the darkness and without tools.
He stood erect and groped for the door of the compartment which he located in the ceiling almost directly above him. Drawing himself through the aperture, he made the narrow passage, but such was the position of the car that it was only with the greatest difficulty he succeeded in worming his way along, using the dividing wall as a floor.
He gained the body of the coach, and from the darkness about him came groans and curses mingled with great gasping sobs, and that most terrible of all sounds, the shriek of a woman in the night-time.
He located a window and, smashing the glass with his elbow, crawled through.
From every direction men were running toward the scene of the wreck, calling to each other in hoarse, throaty bellows, while here and there in the darkness lanterns flashed.
Sick and dizzy he lowered himself to the ground and staggered across some tracks. He snatched a lantern from the hand of a bewildered switchman and stumbled again toward the overturned car.
Others swarmed upon it. He heard the blows of axes and the smashing of glass. Already an army of men were engaged in the work of rescue.
Inert forms were passed through windows into waiting arms to be deposited in long, ghastly rows upon the cinders of the road-bed, under the flaring torches. A cold, drizzling rain was falling and the smell of smoke was in the air.
A group of firemen hurried past carrying hand-extinguishers. The lantern-light gleamed wetly upon their black rubber coats and metal helmets, from under the brims of which their set faces showed grimly white. Far up the track an ambulance gong clanged frantically.
The young man reëntered the coach through a window and made his way slowly toward the smoking compartment, pushing his lantern before him. Reaching the door, he peered over the edge.
Some one was kneeling beside the elderly man, working swiftly by the narrow light of an electric pocket lamp. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light of the interior, he realized that the elderly man seemed to be resisting the efforts of the other who knelt upon his unpinioned arm. From between the lips, which were forced wide apart, protruded the ends of a handkerchief—he was gagged!
The hands of the kneeling man worked rapidly, but not in the prying loose of the timber which lay across the other's arm. From the side pocket of his coat, where it evidently had been hurriedly thrust, dangled a watch chain which the young man recognized as belonging to the dead reporter.
Suddenly the atrocity of the situation dawned upon him. He had heard of such things, of the ghouls who haunt the scenes of great disaster, preying upon the bodies of the dead—robbing the helpless.
With a curse he seized the wirebound railway lantern. At the sound the man looked up—it was the cigar salesman. The young man swung the weapon with all his might. It cut the air in a descending arc, but the other avoided the blow and the heavy lantern crashed against the wall and went out.
Without an instant's hesitation he dived through the opening and met the fiend as he was rising to his feet. Together they rolled among the wreckage. While no match for his antagonist in size, the pickpocket was tough and wiry and apparently uninjured. He fought viciously, with the violence of desperation.
The athlete could hear the voice of the elderly man, who with his free hand had torn the gag from his mouth, roaring encouragement. He received a stinging blow on the cheek from which the warm blood gushed instantly. Knucks, he thought, the cur!
Suddenly his groping hand came in contact with the other's throat just above the rim of his collar. Instantly his fingers closed about yielding flesh, their ends biting deep between the muscles.
As the clutch tightened the man redoubled his efforts. His body writhed and he lashed out furiously with hands and feet. Blows rained upon the young man's head but he burrowed close, shielding his face—and always his grip tightened—the finger ends drawing closer and closer together.
He was only half-conscious now and the blows ceased to hurt. He experienced a sense of falling from a great height. His subconscious mind concentrated upon one idea—to maintain his hold. He must grip tighter and ever tighter.
The other ceased to struggle and lay limp beneath his body, but of this he knew nothing. The muscles of his arms were rigid, the clamped fingers, nearly together now, were locked, and all the world was a blank.
CHAPTER VIII
NEW FRIENDS
William Carmody opened his eyes to a sense of drowsy contentment and well-being. That the elegantly appointed room over which his glance traveled was not his room, disturbed him not at all.
He realized that his head was heavily bandaged and that the white-capped, linen-clad young woman at the window was a nurse. He watched her fingers move swiftly and surely in the fashioning of a small round of needlework.
Her face was turned from him but somehow he knew that she was young and, in a dreamy sort of way, hoped she was pretty. He thought of attracting her attention but decided to prolong the suspense—the chances were against it—so many girls are not.
He closed his eyes and tried to think. The fact that he was in a strange room with his head swathed in bandages, and that a young and possibly pretty nurse sat at the window, evidently for the purpose of ministering to him, suggested a hospital.
Young Carmody had never been in a hospital, but the atmosphere of this room did not in any way conform to his rather vague notion of what a hospital should be. There was no long row of white beds all just alike, nor white walls, nor tiled floors over which people tip-toed to and fro and talked in hurried, low-voiced tones; nor was the air laden with the smell of drugs which he had always associated in his mind with such places. He must ask the nurse.
He was so drowsily comfortable that it was with an effort he opened his eyes. A rebellious lock of hair strayed from under her cap as she leaned over her work. The sunlight caught it and through the rich threads of its length shot tiny glints of gold.
"Ethel!" The name sprang involuntarily from his lips and even as he spoke he smiled at the thought. The girl laid aside her work and crossed to the bed.
"You called?" she asked, and the man realized vaguely that her voice was low and very pleasant.
"Yes—that is, no—I mean, youarepretty, aren't you?" He smiled frankly up at her, and somehow the smile was contagious—she even blushed slightly.
"You must excuse me this time," he continued, "I must have been thinking out loud."
"You seem to be a—well, a rather abrupt young man," she smiled. "But you must not try to think—yet. And my name is not Ethel."
"Oh, that's all right. You can't help that, you know—I mean, I think your name is very pretty—whatever it is," he floundered. "The truth is, I don't seem to be able to say what I do mean. But really I am not a fool, although I don't suppose you will ever believe it."
"There, you have talked quite enough. The doctor said you must rest and not get excited." She smoothed the covers with little pats of her soft hands.
"But what I want to know," he persisted, with a frown of perplexity, "is, where am I?"
"You are all right," she soothed. "You are here."
"But why am I here?"
"Because. Now go to sleep like a good boy. The doctor will be here before long and he will hold me responsible for your condition."
Oddly enough her answers seemed eminently sufficient and satisfactory, and he closed his eyes and slept contentedly.
Hours later he was awakened by the opening of a door.
A tall, dark man, with a brown beard neatly trimmed to a point, entered closely followed by an elderly man who carried his arm in a sling, and whom young Carmody recognized as his fellow-passenger of the smoker.
At once the whole train of recent events flashed through his brain: the wild escapade on Broadway, the scene with his father, his parting with Ethel Manton, the wreck, and his fight in the dark—each in its proper sequence.
He was very wide awake now and watched the brown-bearded man eagerly as he picked up a chart from the table and scrutinized it minutely.
"How is the head?" the man asked, with his fingers on the pulse.
"Fine, doctor. Wouldn't know I had one if it were not for these bandages. And your arm, sir?" he added, with a smile of recognition toward the elderly man.
"Doing fairly, thank you. It is broken, but our friend here thinks it will come along all right."
The doctor, with a nod of approval returned the watch to his pocket and was preparing to leave when his patient detained him with a question.
"I have not been able to locate myself. This is not a hospital, is it?"
"Hardly," smiled the other, "although it answers the purpose admirably. This is the Brownstone Hotel."
"With rooms at twenty per!" gasped the invalid. "Doctor, some one has blundered. After buying my railroad ticket I had just four dollars left, and no chance in the world of getting hold of any more until I connect with a job."
The men laughed.
"I must be going," said the doctor. "You two can chat for a while. Don't tire yourself out, young man, and in a day or two you will be fit as a fiddle. Wish I had your physique! That system of yours is a natural shock absorber. We run across them once in a long while—half-killed one day and back the next hunting for more on the rebound."
At the door he paused: "Take care of yourself, eat anything that looks good to you, smoke if you want to, talk, read, sleep, and in the morning we will let you get up and stretch your legs. Good by!"
"Some doctor, that," laughed the patient. "Does a man good just to hear him talk. Most of them go away leaving the patient guessing whether the next visit will be from them or the undertaker—and rather hoping for the latter. But with this fellow the professional man is swallowed up in the human being—he fairly radiates life."
The other smiled as he settled himself into the chair near the bedside, vacated by the physician.
"Yes, he is a great doctor. Stands well toward the head of his profession. We have no finer in the Northwest." Young Carmody's face clouded.
"But how am I to pay for all this? It is all well enough for you to laugh, but to me it is a serious matter. I——"
"Young man, you are my guest. I don't know who you are, nor where you came from, but, by gad, I know a man when I see one! From the time you sat in that game to save that poor young fool from being fleeced until you dove into that black hole and throttled that skunk——"
"They caught him, did they?"
"Caught him! They had to pry him loose! You have got the grip of the devil himself. The police surgeon told me they would have to put a whole new set of plumbing in his throat. Said he wouldn't have believed that any living thing, short of a gorilla, could have clamped down that hard with one hand.
"And there I had to lie pinned down and watch him go through a dead man's pockets—it was our friend the reporter. And then he turned around and calmly went through mine. Gad! If I'd had a gun! All the time he kept up a run of talk, joking about the wreck and the easy pickings it gave him.
"He was disappointed when he failed to find you—said he owed you something for gumming his game. Well, he found you all right—and when he gets out of the hospital he is slated for twenty years in Joliet." The man paused and glanced at his watch.
"Bless my soul! It is after two o'clock! We will have luncheon served here."
"It is a peculiar situation," mused the invalid. "The last thing I remember is being in the thick of a railroad wreck, and here I wake up in bed, with a trained nurse in the room, to find myself the guest of a man whose name I do not even know."
"Appleton—H. D. Appleton, of Minneapolis. I am a lumberman—just returning from the National Lumberman's Convention in Buffalo. And yours?"
He was interrupted by a tap at the door and a couple of waiters entered bearing trays.
CHAPTER IX
BILL GETS A JOB
After luncheon, over cigars, the conversation again became personal. Appleton regarded the younger man thoughtfully.
"You spoke of being temporarily out of funds. Allow me to loan you what you require."
"Thank you, sir, but I could not think of it. I am already deeply indebted to you. If it were only a temporary embarrassment I wouldn't mind. But I have no definite plans. I must find work, and I freely confess I don't know exactly how to go about it. It might be a long time before I could repay the loan. Then, too, if a man is broke he will tackle the first job that comes along, whereas if he had money in his pocket he would be tempted to wait for something better, no matter what was offered."
"If you work it right you can easily get a couple of thousand out of the railroad company—damages, you know."
The younger man looked up quickly. "Not me," he smiled. "I have not sustained any loss to speak of. That crack on the head when the coach tipped over didn't even knock me out. And as for the pummeling I got afterward with the knucks—that was my own lookout—the railroad company is not to blame for that. No. Getting something for nothing is not playing the game—it savors too strongly of the methods of our friend the pickpocket."
As he talked the elder man subjected him to a careful scrutiny. He noted the deep-set, unwavering eyes, the smiling lips, and the firm, square set of the jaw.
"So you are really in earnest about going to work?"
"In earnest! Mr. Appleton, you have just witnessed a fair demonstration of the demands of my appetite," with a nod toward the array of empty dishes. "I am subject to those attacks on an average of three times a day. In my pocket are just four one-dollar bills. Can you guess the answer?"
The lumberman smiled.
"What kind of position were you thinking of? What is your business?"
"Haven't any. And I am not thinking of a position—what I want is ajob."
"Know anything about lumber?"
"No."
The two smoked in silence while the waiters removed the remains of the luncheon. When the door closed behind them the lumberman spoke. He dropped the conversational tone and his words cut crisp and to the point:
"Young man, I can use you. If you are foot-loose and are willing to work, I will give you your chance. I am going to put it up to you straight and let you decide for yourself.
"I can use you in my office at a very fair salary. In two or three years you will, in all probability, become a valuable clerk—later, a lumber salesman at a good salary and better commissions.
"Your duties will not be strenuous, and as you enlarge your acquaintance you will naturally assume the social position to which you are entitled.
"Or I can use you in the woods. Send you into a logging camp to learn the business where it starts. Up there the work is not easy. Instead of a salary you will receive wages—and you will earn them—every cent of them. There are no snap jobs in a logging camp. Everybody, from the boss down, works—and works hard. Instead of roast lamb and green peas you will eat salt pork and baked beans.
"You will be called a lumberjack—a social pariah. Your associates will be big men—some good and some bad—bad as they make them—and all rough. Good and bad, they would rather fight than eat, and they would rather watch others fight than fight.
"In summer you can loaf and blow in your wages, or you can go into the mills and learn how lumber is made—learn to tell at a glance whether a log will saw to the best profit into bridge timber or lath.
"It is no sinecure—the life of the logging camp. A hundred times you will be called upon to face battle, murder, and sudden death, and it will be up to you to make good.
"In the office I have clerks who will be found at the same desk twenty years from now. And in the woods I have hundreds of swampers, skidders, and sawyers who will always be swampers, skidders and sawyers. I have camp bosses who will always be camp bosses, and a few who will become lumbermen.
"But the man who comes up through that school is the man who learns the game—the man who eventually will sit behind locked doors and talk in millions, while the office-made salesman is out on the road dickering in car-loads."
He paused and relighted his cigar.
"And you are offering me the choice of these jobs?"
"Just so. Take your time. Think it over carefully and give me your answer in the morning."
"I have already made up my mind. If it is just the same to you I will go to the woods. I need the exercise," he grinned.
"By the way, you have not told me your name."
"Bill," he answered, and watched the blue smoke curl upward from the end of his cigar.
"Bill what?" Appleton regarded him through narrowing lids.
"Bill," he repeated. "Just Bill, for the present—and no references. Sometime—if I make good, perhaps—but surely Bill ought to be name enough for a lumberjack."
"Well, Bill, you are hired! Most men would call me a fool! Maybe I am—but it's got to be proven. I came up through the woods myself and I know men. It is my business to know men. A name is nothing to me—nor references. Both are easy to get. I hire men—not names. And as for references—I don't pay for past performances. It is up to you to make good!
"I like your eyes. There is honesty in those eyes—and purpose. Your mother's eyes, I should say." The young man turned his face away and the blood surged upward, reddening the skin below the white bandages.
Thoughts of his mother crowded his brain—the beautiful, gentle girl-mother, who used to snatch him up and hold him close—way back in the curly-locks days.
He remembered her eyes—deep, soft blue eyes that shone bright and mysterious with love for the little boy—so often such a bad, self-willed little boy—and he thought of the hurt in those eyes. It was his very worst punishment in the long ago—to read the pain and sorrow in those eyes.
"No, no, no!" he murmured. "Not her eyes—not mother's! Oh, I am glad that she did not live to know—" He stopped abruptly and faced the other, speaking quietly:
"Mr. Appleton, I am not a criminal—not a fugitive from justice—as you may have guessed. But I have been an—an awful fool!" The older man arose and extended his hand:
"Good-by, Bill. You better sleep now. I will see you in the morning."
As the door closed behind Appleton, the pleasant-voiced nurse appeared at the bedside. She straightened the covers, patted the pillows into shape, and fed the patient medicine out of a spoon. She hesitated when she finished and smiled down at him.
"Would you like to send any messages," she asked—"telegrams, to let your people know you are safe?"
Young Carmody returned the smile. The nurse looked into his face and knew that behind the smile was sadness rather than mirth.
"No," he said; "there is no one to tell." She leaned over and laid soft fingers on his bandaged brow.
"Isn't—isn't there a real Ethel—somewhere?" He did not resent the question of the sweet-faced nurse.
"Yes," he answered, "thereisa real Ethel—but she would not care. Nobody cares."