BOOK IIIAll day long Archie Koerner and Curly Jackson had ridden in the empty box-car. They had made themselves as comfortable as they could, and had beguiled the time with talk and stories and cigarettes. Now and then they had fallen asleep, but not for long, for their joints ached with the jolting of the train, and, more than all else, there was a constant concern in their minds that made them restless, furtive and uneasy. The day was warm, and toward noon the sun beat down, hotter and hotter; the car was stifling, its atmosphere charged with the reminiscent odors of all the cargoes it had ever hauled. Long before daylight that morning they had crawled into the car as it stood on a siding in a village a hundred miles away. Just before dawn the train came, and they heard the conductor and brakeman moving about outside; now and then they caught the twinkle of their lanterns. Then the car was shunted and jolted back and forth for half an hour; finally the train was made up, and pulled out of the sleeping village they were so glad to get away from. With the coming of the dawn, they peeped out to see the sun come up over the fields. They watched the old miracle in silence until they saw a farmer coming across the field with a team. The farmer stopped, watched the train go by, then turned and began to plow corn."Pipe the Hoosier," Curly had said, the sight of a human being relieving the silence imposed by nature in her loneliness. "We call 'em suckers. He'll be plowing all day, but next winter he'll be sitting by a fire--and we'll--we'll be macing old women for lumps at the back doors."Archie was not much affected by Curly's sarcastic philosophy; he had not yet attained to Curly's point of view.Two days before, at evening, they had left the city and spent the first half of the night on foot, trudging along a country road; then a freight-train had taken them to a little town far to the south, where, in the small hours of the morning, they had broken into a post-office, blown open the safe with nitroglycerin, and taken out the stamps and currency. Curly considered the venture successful, though marred by one mishap: in the explosion the currency had been shattered and burned. But he had carefully gathered up the remnants, wrapped them in a paper, and stowed them away in his pocket with the stamps. The next day they hid in a wood. Curly made a fire, cooked bacon, and brewed tea in a tomato can, and these, with bread, had made a meal for them. Then he had carefully sorted the stamps, and had hidden in the ground all the five- and ten-cent stamps, preserving only those of the one- and two-cent denominations. After that he had lain down on the grass and slept.While Curly slept, Archie sat and examined with an expert's loving interest and the fascination of a boy a new revolver he had stolen from a hardware store in the city three days before. Curly at first had opposed the theft of the revolver, but had finally consented because he recognized Archie's need; Archie had had no revolver since he was sent to the workhouse. The one he had when he was arrested had been confiscated--as it is called--by the police, and given by Bostwick to a friend, a lawyer who had long wanted a revolver to shoot burglars in case any should break into his home. Curly had consented to Archie's stealing the revolver, but he had commanded him to take nothing else, and had waited outside while Archie went into the hardware store. Archie had chosen a fine one, a double-acting, self-cocking revolver of thirty-eight caliber, like those carried by the police. He had been childishly happy in the possession of this weapon; he had taken it out and looked at it a hundred times, and had been tempted when they were alone in the woods to take a few practice shots, but when Curly ordered him not to think of such nonsense, he drew the cartridges, aimed at trees, twigs, birds, and snapped the trigger. Every little while in the box-car that day he had taken it out, looked at it, caressed it, turned it over in his palm, delicately tested its weight, and called Curly to admire it with him. He thought much more of the revolver than he did of the stamps and blasted currency they had stolen, and Curly had spoken sharply to him at last and said:"If you don't put up that rod, I'll ditch it for you."Archie obeyed Curly, but when he had restored the revolver to his pocket, he continued to talk of it, and then of other weapons he had owned, and he told Curly how he had won the sharp-shooter's medal in the army.But finally, in his weariness, Archie lost interest even in his new revolver, and when Curly would not let him go to the door of the car and look out, lest the trainmen should see them and force them into an encounter, Archie had fallen asleep in a corner.It was a relief to Curly when Archie went to sleep, for in addition to his joy in his revolver, Archie had been excited over their adventure. Curly was in many ways peculiar; he was inclined to be secretive; he frequently worked alone, and his operations were as much a mystery to his companions and to Gibbs as they were to the police. He had had his eye on the little post-office at Trenton for months; it had called to him, as it were, to come and rob it. It had advantages, the building was old; an entrance could be effected easily. He had stationed Archie outside to watch while he knocked off the peter, and Archie had acquitted himself to Curly's satisfaction. The affair came off smoothly. Though it was in the short summer night, no one had been abroad; they got away without molestation. Now, as they drew near the city, Curly felt easy.Late in the afternoon Curly saw signs of the city's outposts--the side-tracks were multiplying in long lines of freight-cars. Then Curly wakened Archie, and when the train slowed up, they dropped from the car.It was good to feel once more their feet on the ground, to walk and stretch their tired, numb muscles, good to breathe the open air and, more than all, good to see the city looming under its pall of smoke. They joined the throngs of working-men; and they might have passed for working-men themselves, for Curly wore overalls, as he always did on his expeditions, and they were both so black from the smoke and cinders of their journey, that one might easily have mistaken their grime for that of honest toil.They came to the river, pressed up the long approach to its noble bridge, and submerged themselves in the stream of life that flowed across it, the stream that was made up of all sorts of people--working-men, clerks, artisans, shop-girls, children, men and women, the old and the young, each individual with his burden or his care or his secret guilt, his happiness, his hope, his comedy or his tragedy, losing himself in the mass, merging his identity in the crowd, doing his part to make the great epic of life that flowed across the bridge as the great river flowed under it--the stream in which no one could tell the good from the bad, or even wish thus to separate them, in which no one could tell Archie or Curly from the teacher of a class in a Sunday-school. Here on the bridge man's little distinctions were lost and people were people merely, bound together by the common possession of good and bad intentions, of good and bad deeds, of frailties, errors, sorrows, sufferings and mistakes, of fears and doubts, of despairs, of hopes and triumphs and heroisms and victories and boundless dreams.Beside them rumbled a long procession of trucks and wagons and carriages, street-cars moved in yellow procession, ringing their cautionary gongs; the draw in the middle of the bridge vibrated under the tread of all those marching feet; its three red lights were already burning overhead. Far below, the river, growing dark, rolled out to the lake; close to its edge on the farther shore could be descried, after long searching of the eye, the puffs of white smoke from crawling trains; vessels could be picked out, tugs and smaller craft, great propellers that bore coal and ore and lumber up and down the lakes; here and there a white passenger-steamer, but all diminutive in the long perspective. Above them the freight-depots squatted; above these elevators lifted themselves, and then, as if on top of them, the great buildings of the city heaved themselves as by some titanic convulsive effort in a lofty pile, surmounted by the high office buildings in the center, with here and there towers and spires striking upward from the jagged sky-line. All this pile was in a neutral shade of gray,--lines, details, distinctions, all were lost; these huge monuments of man's vanity, or greed, or ambition, these expressions of his notions of utility or of beauty, were heaped against a smoky sky, from which the light was beginning to fade. Somewhere, hidden far down in this mammoth pile, among all the myriads of people that swarmed and lost themselves below it, were Gusta and Dick Ward, old man Koerner and Marriott, Modderwell and Danner, Bostwick and Parrish, and Danny Gibbs, and Mason, and Eades, but they were lost in the mass of human beings--the preachers and thieves, the doctors and judges, and aldermen, and merchants, and working-men, and social leaders, and prostitutes--who went to make up the swarm of people that crawled under and through this pile of iron and stone, thinking somehow that the distinctions and the grades they had fashioned in their little minds made them something more or something less than what they really were.IIAnd yet, after having crossed the bridge in the silence that was the mysterious effect of the descent of evening over the city, after having been gathered back again for a few moments into human relations with their fellow mortals, Archie and Curly became thieves again. This change in them occurred when they saw two policemen standing at the corner of High Street, where the crowd from the bridge, having climbed the slope of River Street, began to flow in diverging lines this way and that. The change was the more marked in Archie, for at sight of the policemen he stopped suddenly."Look!" he whispered."Come on!" commanded Curly, and Archie fell into step. "You never want to halt that way; it don't make any difference with harness bulls, but if a fly dick was around, it might put him hip."It was a relief to Archie when at last they turned into Danny Gibbs's; the strange shrinking sensation he had felt in the small of his back, the impulse to turn around, the starting of his heart at each footfall behind him, now disappeared. It was quiet at Gibbs's; the place was in perfect order; in the window by the door, under the bill which pictured two pugilists, the big cat he had seen now and then slinking about the place was curled in sleep; and two little kittens were playing near her. At one of the tables, his head bowed in his hands, was the wreck of a man Archie had so often seen in that same attitude and in that same place--the table indeed seemed to be used for no other purpose. Gibbs himself was there, in shirt-sleeves, leaning over the evening paper he had spread before him on his bar. He was freshly shaven, and was reading his paper and smoking his cigar in the peace that had settled on his establishment; his shirt was fresh and clean; the starch was scarcely broken in its stiff sleeves, and Archie was fascinated by the tiny red figures of horseshoes and stirrups and jockey caps that dotted it; he had a desire to possess, some day, just such a shirt himself. At the approaching step of the two men, Gibbs looked up suddenly, and the light flashed blue from the diamond in the bosom of his shirt. Curly jerked his head toward the back room. Gibbs looked at Curly an instant and then at Archie, a question in his glance."Sure," said Curly; "he's in." Then Gibbs carefully and deliberately folded his paper, stuck it in one of the brackets of his bar, and went with the two men into the back room. There he stood beside the table, his hands thrust into his pockets, his cigar rolling in the corner of his mouth, his head tilted back a little. Archie was tingling with interest and expectation."Well," said Gibbs, in an introductory way.Curly was unbuttoning his waistcoat; in a moment he had drawn from its inner pocket a package, unwrapped it, and disclosed the sheets of fresh new stamps, red and green, and stiff with the shining mucilage. He counted them over laboriously and separated them, making two piles, one of the red two-cent stamps, another of the green one-cent stamps, while Gibbs stood, squinting downward at the table. When Curly was done, Gibbs counted the sheets of postage stamps himself."Just fifty of each, heh?" he asked when he had done."That's right," said Curly."That's right, is it?" Gibbs repeated; a shrewdness in his squint."Yes," Curly said."Sixty per cent.," said Gibbs."All right," said Curly."I can't give more for the stickers just now," Gibbs went on, as if the men were entitled to some word of explanation; "business is damned bad, and I'm not making much at that.""That's all right," said Curly somewhat impatiently, as one who disliked haggling."That goes with you, does it, Dutch?" Gibbs said to Archie."Sure," said Archie, glancing hastily at Curly, "whatever he says goes with me all right." And then he smiled, his white teeth showing, his face ruddier, his blue eyes sparkling with the excitement he felt--smiled at this new name Gibbs had suddenly given him.Curly had thrust his hand into another pocket meanwhile, and he drew out another package, done up in a newspaper. He laid this on the table, opened it slowly, and carefully turning back the folds of paper, disclosed the bundle of charred bank-notes. Gibbs began shaking his head dubiously as soon as he saw the contents."I can't do much with that," he said. "But you leave it and I'll see.""Well, now, that's all right," said Curly, speaking in his high argumentative tone; "I ain't wolfing. You can give us our bit later.""All right," said Gibbs, and carefully doing up the parcels, he took them and disappeared. In a few moments he came back, counted out the money on the table--ninety dollars--and then went out with the air of a man whose business is finished.Curly divided the money, gave Archie his half, and they went out. The bar-room was just as they had left it; the wreck of a man still bowed his head on his forearms, the cat was still curled about her kittens. Gibbs had taken down his paper, and resumed his reading."I'm going to get a bath and a shave," Curly said. He passed his hand over his chin, rasping its palm on the stubble of his beard. Archie was surprised and a little disappointed at the hint of dismissal he felt in Curly's tone. He wished to continue the companionship, with its excitement, its interest, its pleasure, above all that quality in it which sustained him and kept up his spirits. He found himself just then in a curious state of mind; the distinction he had felt but a few moments before in the back room with Gibbs, the importance in the success of the expedition, more than all, the feeling that he had been admitted to relationships which so short a time before had been so mysterious and inaccessible to him,--all this was leaving him, dying out within, as the stimulus of spirits dies out in a man, and Archie's Teutonic mind was facing the darkness of a fit of despondency; he felt blue and unhappy; he longed to stay with Curly."Look at, Dutch," Curly was saying; "you've got a little of the cush now--it ain't much, but it's something. You want to go and give some of it to your mother; don't go and splash it up in beer."It pleased Archie to have Curly call him Dutch. There was something affectionate in it, as there is in most nicknames--something reassuring. But the mention of his mother overcame this sense; it unmanned him, and he looked away."And look at," Curly was going on, "you'll bit up on that burned darb; you be around in a day or two."Curly withdrew into himself in the curious, baffling way he had; the way that made him mysterious and somewhat superior, and, at times, brought on him the distrust of his companions, always morbidly suspicious at their best. Archie disliked to step out of Gibbs's place into the street; it seemed like an exposure. He glanced out. The summer twilight had deepened into darkness. The street was deserted and bare, though the cobblestones somehow exuded the heat and turmoil of the day that had just passed from them. Archie thought for an instant of what Curly had said about his mother; he could see her as she would be sitting in the kitchen, with the lamp on the table; Gusta would be bustling about getting the supper, the children moving after her, clutching at her skirts, retarding her, getting in her way, seeming to endanger their own lives by scalding and burning and falling and other domestic accidents, which, though always impending, never befell. The kitchen would be full of the pleasant odor of frying potatoes, and the coffee, bubbling over now and then and sizzling on the hot stove--Archie had a sense of all these things, and his heart yearned and softened. And then suddenly he thought of his father, and he knew that the conception of the home he had just had was the way it used to be before his father lost his leg and all the ills following that accident had come upon the family; the house was no longer cheerful; the smell of boiling coffee was not in it as often as it used to be; his mother was depressed and his father quarrelsome, even Gusta had changed; he would be sure to encounter that lover of hers, that plumber whom he hated. He squeezed the roll of bills in his pocket; suddenly, too, he remembered his new revolver and pressed it against his thigh, and he had pleasure in that. He went out into the street. After all, the darkness was kind; there were glaring and flashing electric lights along the street, of course; the cheap restaurant across the way was blazing, people were drifting in and out, but they were not exactly the same kind of people in appearance that had thronged the streets by day. There was a new atmosphere--a more congenial atmosphere, for night had come, and had brought a change and a new race of people to the earth--a race that lived and worked by night, with whom Archie felt a kinship. He did not hate them as he was unconsciously growing to hate the people of the daylight. He saw a lame hot-tamale man in white, hobbling up the street, painfully carrying his steaming can; he saw cabmen on their cabs down toward Cherokee Street; he saw two girls, vague, indistinct, suggestive, flitting hurriedly by in the shadows; the electric lights were blazing with a hard fierce glare, but there were shadows, deep and black and soft. He started toward Cherokee Street; he squeezed the money in his pocket; he was somehow elated with the independence it gave him. At the corner he paused again; he had no plan, he was drifting along physically just as he was morally, following the line of least resistance, which line, just then, was marked by the lights along Market Place. He started across that way, when all at once a hand took him by the lapel of his coat and Kouka's black visage was before him. Archie looked at the detective, whose eyes were piercing him from beneath the surly brows that met in thick, coarse, bristling hairs across the wide bridge of his nose."Well," said Kouka, "so I've got you again!"Archie's heart came to his throat. A great rage suddenly seized him, a hatred of Kouka, and of his black eyes; he had a savage wish to grind the heel of his boot heavily, viciously, remorselessly into that face, right there where the eyebrows met across the nose--grinding his heel deep, feeling the bones crunch beneath it. For some reason Kouka suddenly released his hold."You'd better duck out o' here, young fellow," Kouka was saying. "You hear?"Archie heard, but it was a moment before he could fully realize that Kouka knew nothing after all."You hear?" Kouka repeated, bringing his face close to Archie's."Yes, I hear," said Archie sullenly, as it seemed, but thankfully."Don't let me see you around any more, you--"Archie, saved by some instinct, did not reply, and he did not wait for Kouka's oath, but hurried away, and Kouka, as he could easily feel, stood watching him. He went on half a block and paused in a shadow. He saw Kouka still standing there, then presently saw him turn and go away.Archie paused in the shadow; he thought of Kouka, remembering all the detective had done to him; he remembered those forty days in the workhouse; he thought of Bostwick, of the city attorney, of the whole town that seemed to stand behind him; the bitterness of those days in the workhouse came back, and the force of all the accumulated hatred and vengeance that had been spent upon him was doubled and quadrupled in his heart, and he stood there with black, mad, insane thoughts clouding his reason. Then he gripped his roll of money, he pressed his new revolver, and he felt a kind of wild, primitive, savage satisfaction,--the same primitive satisfaction that Kouka, and Bostwick, the city attorney, the whole police force, and the whole city had seemed to take in sending him to the workhouse. And then he went on toward the tenderloin.IIIGibbs, never sure that the police would keep their word with him, rose earlier than usual the next morning, ate his breakfast, called a cab--he had an eccentric fondness for riding about in hansom-cabs--and was driven rapidly to the corner of High and Franklin Streets, the busiest, most distracting corner in the city. There the enormous department store of James E. Bills and Company occupied an entire building five stories high. The store was already filled with shoppers, mostly women, who crowded about the counters, on which all kinds of trinkets were huddled, labeled with cards declaring that the price had just been reduced. The girls behind the counters, all of whom were dressed in a certain extravagant imitation of the women who came every day to look these articles over, were already tired; their eyes lay in dark circles that were the more pronounced because their cheeks were covered with powder, and now and then they lifted their hands, their highly polished finger-nails gleaming, to the enormous pompadours in which they had arranged their hair. Many of the women in the store, clerks and shoppers, wore peevish, discontented expressions, and spoke in high ugly voices; the noise of their haggling filled the whole room and added to the din made by the little metal money-boxes that whizzed by on overhead wires, and increased the sense of confusion produced by the cheap and useless things which, with their untruthful placards, were piled about everywhere. The air in the store was foul and unwholesome; here and there pale little girls who carried bundles in baskets ran about on their little thin legs, piping out shrill numbers.Gibbs was wearied the moment he entered, and irritably waved aside the sleek, foppish floor-walker. The only person to whom he spoke as he passed along was a private detective leaning against one of the counters; Gibbs had already had dealings with him and had got back for him articles that had been stolen by certain women thieves who were adept in the art of shoplifting. Gibbs went straight back to the elevator and was lifted out of all this din and confusion into the comparative quiet of the second floor, where the offices of the establishment occupied a cramped space behind thin wooden partitions. Gibbs entered the offices and glanced about at the clerks, who worked in silence; on each of them had been impressed a subdued, obedient demeanor; they glanced at Gibbs surreptitiously. It was plain that all spirit had been drilled out of them; they were afraid of something, and, driven by their necessities, they toiled like machines. Gibbs felt a contempt for them as great as the contempt he felt for the floor-walkers below, a contempt almost as great as that he had for Bills himself. A timid man of about forty-five, with a black beard sprouting out of the pallor of his skin, came up, and lifted his brows with amazement when Gibbs, ignoring him, made plainly for the door that was lettered: "Mr. Bills.""Mr. Bills is engaged just now," the man said in a hushed tone."Well, tell him Mr. Gibbs is here.""But he's engaged just now, sir; he's dictating." The man leaned forward and whispered the word "dictating" impressively.But Gibbs kept on toward the door; then the man blocked his way."Tell him if you want to," said Gibbs, "if not, I will."It seemed that Gibbs might walk directly through the man, who retreated from him, and, having no other egress, went through Mr. Bills's door. A moment more and he held it open for Gibbs.Bills was sitting at an enormous desk which was set in perfect order; on either side of him were baskets containing the letters he was methodically answering. Bills's head showed over the top of the desk; it was a round head covered with short black hair, smoothly combed and shining. His black side-whiskers were likewise short and smooth. His neck was bound by a white collar and a little pious, black cravat, and he wore black clothes. His smoothly-shaven lips were pursed in a self-satisfied way; he was brisk and unctuous, very clean and proper, and looked as if he devoutly anointed himself with oil after his bath. In a word, he bore himself as became a prominent business man, who, besides his own large enterprise, managed a popular Sunday-school, and gave Sunday afternoon "talks" on "Success," for the instruction of certain young men of the city, too mild and acquiescent to succeed as anything but conformers."Ah, Mr. Gibbs," he said. "You will excuse me a moment."Bills turned and resumed the dictation of his stereotyped phrases of business. He dictated several letters, then dismissed his stenographer and, turning about, said with a smile:"Now, Mr. Gibbs."Gibbs drew his chair close to Bills's desk, and, taking a package from his pocket, laid out the stamps."One hundred sheets of twos, fifty of ones," he said.Bills had taken off his gold glasses and slowly lowered them to the end of their fine gold chain; he rubbed the little red marks the glasses left on the bridge of his nose, and in his manner there was an uncertainty that seemed unexpected by Gibbs."I was about to suggest, Mr. Gibbs," said Bills, placing his fingers tip to tip, "that you see our Mr. Wilson; he manages the mail-order department, now.""Not for mine," said Gibbs decisively. "I've always done business with you. I don't know this fellow Wilson."Bills, choosing to take it as a tribute, smiled and went on:"I think we're fully stocked just now, but--how would a sixty per cent. proposition strike you?""No," said Gibbs, as decisively as before."No?" repeated Bills."No," Gibbs went on, "seventy-five."Bills thought a moment, absently lifting the rustling sheets."How many did you say there were?""They come to one-fifty," said Gibbs; "count 'em."Bills did count them, and when he had done, he said:"That would make it one-twelve-fifty?""That's it.""Very well. Shall I pass the amount to your credit?""No; I'll take the cash.""I thought perhaps Mrs. Gibbs would be wanting some things in the summer line," said Bills.Gibbs shook his head."We pay cash," said he.Bills smiled, got up, walked briskly with a little spring to each step and left the room. He returned presently, closed the door, sat down, counted the bills out on the leaf of his desk, laid a silver half-dollar on top and said:"There you are."Gibbs counted the money carefully, rolled it up deliberately and stuffed it into his trousers pocket.Gibbs had one more errand that morning, and he drove in his hansom-cab to the private bank Amos Hunter conducted as a department of his trust company. Gibbs deposited his money, and then went into Hunter's private office. Hunter was an old man, thin and spare, with white hair, and a gray face. He sat with his chair turned away from his desk, which he seldom used except when it became necessary for him to sign his name, and then he did this according to the direction of a clerk, who would lay a paper before him, dip a pen in ink, hand it to Hunter, and point to the space for the signature. Hunter was as economical of his energy in signing his name as in everything else; he wrote it "A. Hunter." He sat there every day without moving, as it seemed, apparently determined to eke out his life to the utmost. His coachman drove him down town at ten each morning, at four in the afternoon he came and drove him home again. It was only through the windows of the carriage and through the windows of his private office that Hunter looked out on a world with which for forty years he had never come in personal contact. His inert manner gave the impression of great age and senility; but the eyes under the thick white brows were alert, keen, virile. He was referred to generally as "old Amos."Gibbs went in, a parcel in his hand."Just a little matter of some mutilated currency," he said.Old Amos's thin lips seemed to smile."You may leave it and we'll be glad to forward it to Washington for you, Mr. Gibbs," he said, without moving.Gibbs laid the bundle on old Amos's desk, and, taking up a bit of paper, wrote on it and handed it to Hunter."Have you a memorandum there?" asked Hunter. He glanced at the paper and wrote on the slip:"A. H."Then he resumed the attitude that had scarcely been altered, laid his white hands in his lap and sat there with his thin habitual smile.Gibbs thanked him and went away. His morning's work among the business men of the city was done.IVIt promised to be a quiet evening at Danny Gibbs's. There had been a vicious electrical storm that afternoon, but by seven o'clock the lightning played prettily in the east, the thunder rolled away, the air cooled, and the rain fell peacefully. The storm had been predicted to Joe Mason in the rheumatism that had bitten his bones for two days, but now the ache had ceased, and the relief was a delicious sensation he was content simply to realize. He sat in the back room, smoking and thinking, a letter in his hand. Gibbs's wife had gone to bed--she had been drinking that day. Old Johnson, the sot who, by acting as porter, paid Gibbs for his shelter and the whisky he drank--he ate very little, going days at a time without food--had set the bar-room in order and disappeared. Gibbs was somewhere about, but all was still, and Mason liked it so. From time to time Mason glanced at the letter. The letter was a fortnight old; it had been written from a workhouse in a distant city by his old friend Dillon, known to the yeggs as Slim. Mason had not seen Dillon for a year--not, in fact, since they had been released from Dannemora. This was the letter:OLD PAL--I thought I would fly you a kite, and take chances of its safe arrival at your loft. I was lagged wrong, but I am covered and strong and the bulls can't throw me. I am only here for a whop, and I'll hit the road before the dog is up. I have filled out a country jug that can be sprung all right. We can make a safe lamas. There is a John O'Brien at 1:30 A. M., and a rattler at 3:50. The shack next door is a cold slough, and the nearest kip to the joint is one look and a peep. There is a speeder in the shanty, and we can get to the main stem and catch the rattler and be in the main fort by daylight. The trick is easy worth fifty centuries. Now let me know, and make your mark and time. I am getting this out through a broad who will give it to our fall-back, you know who.Yours in durance vile,SLIM.Mason had not answered the letter, and only the day before Dillon had appeared, bringing with him a youth called Squeak. And now this night, as Mason sat there, he did not like to think of Dillon. Dillon had traveled hundreds of miles by freight-trains to be with Mason, to give him part in his enterprise; he had been to the little town and examined the bank; he had even entered it by night alone. He had laid his plans, and, like all his kind, could not conceive of their miscarrying. He had estimated the amount they would procure; he considered five thousand dollars a conservative estimate. It was the big touch, of which they were always dreaming as a means of reformation. But Mason had refused. Then Dillon asked Curly, and Curly refused. Mason gave Dillon no reason for his refusal, but Curly contended that summer was not the time for such a big job; the nights were short and people slept lightly, with open windows, even if the old stool-pigeon was not up. Dillon had taunted him and hinted contemptuously at a broad. They had almost come to blows. Finally Dillon had left, taking with him Mandell and Squeak and Archie--all eager to go.Mason sat there and thought of Dillon and his companions. He could imagine them on the John O'Brien, jolting on through the rain, maybe dropping off when the train stopped, to hide under some water-tank, or behind some freight-shed--he had done it all so many, many times himself. Still he tried not to think of Dillon, for he could not do so without a shade of self-reproach; it seemed like pigging to refuse Dillon as he had; they had worked so long together. Dillon's long, gaunt figure presented itself to his memory as crouching before some old rope mold, a bit of candle in his left hand, getting ready to pour the soup, and then memory would usually revert to that night when Dillon had suddenly doused the candle--but not before Mason had caught the gleam in his eyes and the setting of his jaw--and, pulling his rod, had barked suddenly into the darkness. Then the flight outside, the rose-colored flashes from their revolvers in the night, the race down the silent street--white snow in the fields across the railroad tracks, and the bitter cold in the woods.He shook his head as if to fling the memories from him. But Dillon's figure came back, now in the front rank of his company, marching across the hideous prison yard, his long legs breaking at the middle as he leaned back in the lock-step. Mason tried to escape these thoughts, but they persisted. He got a newspaper, but understood little of what he read, except one brief despatch, which told of a tramp found cut in two beside the tracks, five hundred dollars sewed in his coat. The despatch wondered how a hobo could have so much money, and this amused Mason; he would tell Gibbs, and they would have a laugh--their old laugh at the world above them. Then they themselves would wonder--wonder which one of the boys it was; it might be weeks before the news would reach them in an authoritative form. He enjoyed for a moment his laugh at the stupid world, the world which could not understand them in the least, the world which shuddered in its ignorance of them. Then he thought of Dillon again. Dillon had never refused him; he had not refused him that evening in northern Indiana, when the sheriff and the posse of farmers, armed with pitchforks and shot-guns and old army muskets, had brought them to bay in the wheat stubble; his ammunition had given out, but old Dillon, with only three cartridges left, had stood cursing and covering his retreat. Mason was beginning to feel small about it, and yet--Dillon did not understand; when he came back he would explain it all to him. This notion gave him some comfort, and he lighted his cigar, turned to his newspaper again, and listened for the rain falling outside. Suddenly there was a noise, and Mason started. Was that old Dillon crouching there beside him, his face gleaming in the flicker of the dripping candle? He put his hand to his head in a kind of daze."Je's!" he exclaimed. "I'm getting nutty."He was troubled, for his head had now and then gone off that way in prison--they called it stir simple. Mason sat down again, but no longer tried to read. He heard the noise in the bar-room, the noise of high excitement, and he wondered. His curiosity was great, but he had learned to control his curiosity. He could hear talking, laughing, cursing, the shuffle of feet, the clink of glasses--some sports out for a time, no doubt. In a moment the door opened and Gibbs appeared."Where's Kate?" he demanded."She went to bed half an hour ago," said Mason. "Why--what's the excitement?""Eddie Dean's here--come on out." Gibbs disappeared; the door closed.Mason understood; no wonder the place thrilled with excitement. He had heard of Eddie Dean. Down into his world had come stories of this man, of his amazing skill and cleverness, of the enormous sums he made every year--made and spent. Dean had the fascination for Mason that is born of mystery; he had had Dean's methods and the methods of other big-mitt men described to him; he had heard long discussions in sand-house hang-outs and beside camp-fires in the woods, but the descriptions never described; he could never grasp the details. He could understand the common, ordinary thefts; he could see how a pickpocket by long practice learned his art, but the kind of work that Dean did had something occult in it. How a man could go out, wearing good clothes, and, without soiling his fingers, merely by talking and playing cards, make such sums of money--Mason simply could not realize it. Surely it was worth while to have a look at him. He started out, then he remembered; he passed his hand over the stubble of hair that had been growing after the shaving at the workhouse, and he picked up his low-crowned, narrow-brimmed felt hat--the kind worn by the brakemen he now and then wished to be taken for--pulled it down to his eyebrows, and went out.Eddie Dean, who stood at the bar in the blue clothes that perfectly exemplified the fashion of that summer, was described in the police identification records as a man somewhat above medium size, and now, at forty, he was beginning to take on fat. His face was heavy, and despite the fact that his nose was twisted slightly to one side, and his upper lip depressed where it met his nose, the women whom Dean knew considered him handsome. His face was smooth-shaven and blue, like an actor's, from his heavy beard. His mouth was large, and his lips thin; he could close them and look serious and profound; and when he smiled and disclosed the gold fillings in his teeth, he seemed youthful and gay. His face showed vanity, a love of pleasure, vulgarity, selfishness, sensuality accentuated by dissipation, and the black eyes that were so sharp and bright and penetrating were cruel. Mason, however, could not analyze; he only knew that he did not like this fellow, and merely grunted when Gibbs introduced him, and Dean patronizingly said, without looking at him:"Just in time, my good fellow."Then he motioned imperiously to the bartender, who took down another wine-glass, wiped it dexterously, and set it out with an elegant flourish and filled it. Mason watched the golden bubbles spring from the hollow stem to the seething surface. He did not care much for champagne, but he lifted his glass and looked at Dean, who was saying:"Here's to the suckers--may they never grow less."The others in the party laughed. Besides Gibbs, who was standing outside his own bar like a visitor, there were Nate Rosen, a gambler, dressed more conspicuously than Dean; a small man in gray, with strange pale eyes fastened always on Dean; and a third man in tweeds, larger than either, with broad shoulders, heavy jaw and an habitual scowl. Beyond him, apart, with the truckling leer of the parasite, stood a man in seedy livery, evidently the driver of the carriage that was waiting outside in the rain.Dean's history was the monotonous one of most men of his kind. Having a boy's natural dislike for school, he had run away from home and joined a circus. At first he led the sick horses, then he was hired by one of the candy butchers and finally allowed to peddle on the seats; there he learned the art of short change, and when he had mastered this he sold tickets from a little satchel outside the tents; by the time he was twenty-five he knew most of the schemes by which the foolish, seeking to get something for nothing, are despoiled of their money. He was an adept at cards; he knew monte and he could work the shells; later he traveled about, cheating men by all kinds of devices, aided by an intuitive knowledge of human nature. He could go through a passenger train from coach to coach and pick out his victims by their backs. As he went through he would suddenly lose his balance, as if by the lurching of the train, and steady himself by the arm of the seat in which his intended victim sat. His confederate, following behind, would note and remember. Later, he would return and invite him to make a fourth hand at whist or pedro or some other game. Dean would do the rest. He went to all large gatherings--political conventions, especially national conventions, conclaves, celebrations, world's fairs, the opening of any new strip of land in the West, the gold-fields of Alaska, and so on. He had roamed all over the United States; he had been to Europe, and Cuba, and Jamaica, and Old Mexico; he had visited Hawaii; he boasted that he had traveled the whole world over--"from St. Petersburg to Cape Breton" was the way he put it, and it impressed his hearers all the more because most of them had none but the most confused notion of where either place was. He boasted, too, that United States senators, cabinet officers, congressmen, governors, financiers and other prominent men had been among his victims, and many of these boasts were justified--by the facts, at least.The atmosphere of the bar-room had been changed by the arrival of Dean. It lost its usual serenity and quivered with excitement. The deference shown to Dean was marked in the attitude of the men in his suite; it was marked, too, by the bartender's attitude, and even in that of Gibbs, though Gibbs was more quiet and self-contained, bearing himself, indeed, quite as Dean's equal. He did not look at Dean often, but stood at his bar with his head lowered, gazing thoughtfully at the glass of mineral water he was drinking, turning it round and round in his fingers, with a faint smile on his lips. But no one could tell whether the amusement came from his own thoughts or the little adventures Dean was relating."No, I'm going out in the morning," Dean was saying, the diamond on his white, delicate hand flashing as he lifted his glass."Which way?" asked Gibbs."I'm working eastward," said Dean. "Here!" he turned to the bartender, "let's have another--and get another barrel of water for Dan."He smiled with what tolerance he could find for a man who did not drink."How much of that stuff do you lap up in a week, Dan?""Oh, I don't know," Gibbs said. He was not quick at repartee."Well, slush up, but don't make yourself sick," Dean went on.The bartender, moving briskly about, pressed the cork from a bottle, poured a few drops into Dean's glass, and then proceeded to fill the other glasses."Well, how's the graft?" Gibbs asked presently."Oh, fairly good," said Dean. "A couple of bucks yesterday." He switched his leg with the slender stick he carried.Gibbs's eyes lighted with humorous interest and pleasure."They were coming out of St. Louis," Dean went on, and then, as if he had perhaps given an exaggerated impression of the transaction, he went on in a quick, explicatory way: "Oh, it didn't amount to much--just for the fun of the thing, you know. But say, who do you think I saw in St. Louis?""Don't know," said Gibbs, shaking his head."Why, old Tom Young.""No!" exclaimed Gibbs, looking up in genuine interest and surprise."Sure," said Dean."What's he doing?""He made the big touch, quit the business, got a farm in Illinois, and settled down with Lou. The girl's grown up, just out of a seminary, and the boy's in college. He said he'd like me to see the place, but he wouldn't take me out 'cause the girl was home then. Remember the old joint in the alley?"Gibbs's eyes kindled with lively memories."Remember that afternoon Bob's man came down for the brace-box? I can see Tom now--he gets the box and says, 'Tell Bob not to frisk him.' God! They sent that mark through the alley that afternoon to a fare-you-well. And they had hell's own time keepin' the box in advance of 'em--it was the only one in the alley. Remember?"Gibbs remembered, but that did not keep Dean from relating the whole story."What became of Steve Harris?" Dean asked."He's out with the rag, I guess," Gibbs replied."I heard Winnie sold her place.""Oh, yes," said Gibbs; "bought a little home in the swell part--quiet street and all that--and they're living there happy as you please.""Well, that's good," said Dean. "Steve and me was with the John Robinson show in the old days. He was holdin' a board for the monte tickets, and old Pappy King was cappin' for the game. I remember one night in Danville, Kentucky"--and Dean told another story. The stories were all alike, having for their theme the despoilment of some simpleton who had tried to beat Dean or his confederates at one of their own numerous games."I was holding the shingle for Jim Steele when he was playing the broads, you understand. He was the greatest spieler ever. I can see him now, taking up the tickets, looking around and saying: 'Is there a speculator in the party?'"Dean's face was alight with the excitement of dramatizing the long-past scene. He laid his stick on the bar and bent over, with his white fingers held as if they poised cards. He was a good mimic. One could easily imagine the scene on the trampled grass, with the white canvas tents of the circus for a background."Dick Nolan and Joe Hipp were capping, and Dick would come up--he had the best gilly make-up in the world, you understand, a paper collar, a long linen duster and big green mush--he'd look over the cards--see?"--Dean leaned over awkwardly like a country-man, pointing with a crooked forefinger--"and then he'd say, 'I think it's that one.'"His voice had changed; he spoke in the cracked tone of the farmer, and his little audience laughed."Well, the guy hollers, you understand, but at the come-back they're all swipes--working in the horse tents; you'd never know 'em. And then," Dean went on, with the exquisite pleasure of remembering, "old Ben Mellott was there working the send--you remember Ben, Dan?"Gibbs nodded."Jake Rend was running the side-show, and old Jew Cohen had a dollar store--a drop-case, you know."Gibbs nodded again. Dean grew meditative, and a silence fell on the group."We had a great crowd of knucks, too; the guns to-day are nothing to them. Those were the days, Dan. Course, there wasn't much in it at that."Dean meditated over the lost days a moment, and then he grew cheerful again."I met Luke Evans last fall, Dan," he began again. "In England. The major and I were running between London and Liverpool, working the steamer trains, and him and me--"And he was off into another story. Having taken up his English experience, Dean now told a number of vulgar stories, using the English accent, which he could imitate perfectly. While in the midst of one of them, he suddenly started at a footfall, and looked hastily over his shoulder. A man came in, glanced about, and came confidently forward."Good morning, Danny," he said, in a tone of the greatest familiarity.Gibbs answered the greeting soberly, and then, at a sign from the man, stepped aside rather reluctantly and whispered with him. Dean eyed them narrowly, took in the fellow's attire from his straw hat to his damp shoes, and, when he could catch Gibbs's eye, he crooked his left arm, touched it significantly, and lifted his eyebrows in sign of question. Gibbs shook his head in a negative that had a touch of contempt for the implication, and then drew the man toward the bar. Without the man's seeing him or hearing him, Dean touched his arm again and said to Gibbs softly:"Elbow?""No," said Gibbs, "reporter."Then he turned and, speaking to the new-comer, he presented him to Dean, saying:"Mr. Jordon, make you acquainted with Mr. Wales, of theCourier.""Glad to meet you, Mr. Jordon," said the newspaper man."Ah, chawmed, I'm suah," said Dean, keeping to the English accent he had just been using. "I say, won't you join us?"The bartender, at a glance from Dean, produced another bottle of champagne; the newspaper man's eyes glistened with pleasure, Dean was taking out his cigarette case. Wales glanced at the cigarettes, and Dean hastened to proffer them. In conversation with the reporter Dean impersonated an English follower of the turf who had brought some horses to America. As he did this, actor that he was, he became more and more interested in his impromptu monologue, assumed the character perfectly and lived into it, and the others there who knew of the deceit he was practising on the reporter--he was nearly always practising some sort of deceit, but seldom so innocently as now--were utterly delighted; they listened to his guying until nearly midnight, when Dean, having sustained the character of the Englishman for more than two hours, grew weary and said he must go. As he was leaving he said to the reporter:"You've been across, of course? No? Well, really now, that's quite too bad, don't you know! But I say, whenever you come, you must look me up, if you don't mind, at Tarlingham Towers. I've a bit of a place down in the Surrey country; I've a beast there that's just about up to your weight. Have you ever ridden to the hounds?"The reporter was delighted; he felt that a distinction had been conferred upon him. Wishing to show his appreciation, he asked Dean, or Jordan, as he was to him, if he might print an interview. Dean graciously consented, and the reporter left for his office, glad of a story with which to justify to his city editor, at least partly, his wasted evening.When Dean had gone, taking his three companions with him, Gibbs and Mason sat for a long while in the back room."So that's Eddie Dean!" said Mason."Yes," said Gibbs, "that's him.""And what's his graft?""Oh," said Gibbs, "the send, the bull con, the big mitt, the cross lift--anything in that line.""And those two other guys with him?" asked Mason."That little one is Willie the Rat, the other is Gaffney.""Sure-thing men, too?""Yes, they're in Ed's mob."Mason was still for a while, then he observed:"Je's! He did make a monkey of that cove!"Gibbs laughed. "Oh, he's a great cod! Why, do you know what he did once? Well, he went to Lord Paisley's ball in Quebec, impersonating Sir Charles Jordon--that's why I introduced him as Mr. Jordon to-night." Gibbs's eyes twinkled. "He went in to look for a rummy, but the flatties got on and tipped him off.""He's smart.""Yes, the smartest in the business. He's made several ten-century touches."Gibbs thought seriously a moment and then said:"No, he isn't smart; he's a damn fool, like all of them.""Fall?""Yes, settled twice; done a two-spot at Joliet and a finiff at Ionia."Mason knit his brows and thought a long time, while Gibbs smoked. Finally Mason shook his head."No," he said, "no, Dan, I don't get it. I can understand knocking off a peter--the stuff's right there. All you do is to go take it. I can understand a hold-up, or a heel, or a prowl; I can see how a gun reefs a britch kick and gets a poke--though I couldn't put my hand in a barrel myself and get it out again--without breaking the barrel. I haven't any use for that kind, which you know--but these sure-thing games, the big mitt and the bull con--no, Dan, I can't get hip."Gibbs laughed."Well, I can't explain it, Joe. You heard him string that chump to-night."Mason dropped that phase of the question and promptly said:"Dan, I suppose there's games higher up, ain't they?"Gibbs laughed a superior laugh."Higher up? Joe, there's games that beat his just as much as his beats yours. I could name you men--" Then he paused.Mason had grown very solemn. He was not listening at all to Gibbs, and, after a moment or two, he looked up and said earnestly:"Dan, what you said a while back is dead right. I'm a damn fool. Look at me now--I've done twenty years, and in all my time I've had less than two thousand bucks."Gibbs was about to speak, but Mason was too serious to let himself be interrupted."I was thinking it all over to-night, and I decided--know what I decided?"Gibbs shook his head."I decided," Mason went on, "to square it without waiting for the big touch." Gibbs was not impressed; the good thieves were always considering reformation. "I know I can't get anything to do--I'm too old, and besides--well, you know." Mason let the situation speak for itself. "I'm about all in, but I was thinking, Dan, this here place you've got in the country, can't you--" Mason hesitated a little--"can't you let me work around there? Just my board and a few clothes?" Mason leaned forward eagerly."You know, Joe," said Gibbs, seeing that Mason was serious, "that as long as I've got a place you can have a home with me. I'm going to take Kate out there and live. I've got the place almost paid for."Mason leaned back, tried to speak, paused, swallowed, and moistened his lips."I worried about Slim to-night," he managed to say presently. It was hard for him to give utterance to thoughts that he considered sentimental. "My treating him so, you see--that I decided; I want to try it. That's why I wouldn't go with him; he didn't understand, but maybe I can explain. As I was thinking to-night, my head went off again--that stir simple, you know."He raised his hand to his head and Gibbs was concerned."You'd better take a little drink, Joe," he said.After Gibbs had brought the whisky, they sat there and discussed the future until the early summer dawn was red.
BOOK II
I
All day long Archie Koerner and Curly Jackson had ridden in the empty box-car. They had made themselves as comfortable as they could, and had beguiled the time with talk and stories and cigarettes. Now and then they had fallen asleep, but not for long, for their joints ached with the jolting of the train, and, more than all else, there was a constant concern in their minds that made them restless, furtive and uneasy. The day was warm, and toward noon the sun beat down, hotter and hotter; the car was stifling, its atmosphere charged with the reminiscent odors of all the cargoes it had ever hauled. Long before daylight that morning they had crawled into the car as it stood on a siding in a village a hundred miles away. Just before dawn the train came, and they heard the conductor and brakeman moving about outside; now and then they caught the twinkle of their lanterns. Then the car was shunted and jolted back and forth for half an hour; finally the train was made up, and pulled out of the sleeping village they were so glad to get away from. With the coming of the dawn, they peeped out to see the sun come up over the fields. They watched the old miracle in silence until they saw a farmer coming across the field with a team. The farmer stopped, watched the train go by, then turned and began to plow corn.
"Pipe the Hoosier," Curly had said, the sight of a human being relieving the silence imposed by nature in her loneliness. "We call 'em suckers. He'll be plowing all day, but next winter he'll be sitting by a fire--and we'll--we'll be macing old women for lumps at the back doors."
Archie was not much affected by Curly's sarcastic philosophy; he had not yet attained to Curly's point of view.
Two days before, at evening, they had left the city and spent the first half of the night on foot, trudging along a country road; then a freight-train had taken them to a little town far to the south, where, in the small hours of the morning, they had broken into a post-office, blown open the safe with nitroglycerin, and taken out the stamps and currency. Curly considered the venture successful, though marred by one mishap: in the explosion the currency had been shattered and burned. But he had carefully gathered up the remnants, wrapped them in a paper, and stowed them away in his pocket with the stamps. The next day they hid in a wood. Curly made a fire, cooked bacon, and brewed tea in a tomato can, and these, with bread, had made a meal for them. Then he had carefully sorted the stamps, and had hidden in the ground all the five- and ten-cent stamps, preserving only those of the one- and two-cent denominations. After that he had lain down on the grass and slept.
While Curly slept, Archie sat and examined with an expert's loving interest and the fascination of a boy a new revolver he had stolen from a hardware store in the city three days before. Curly at first had opposed the theft of the revolver, but had finally consented because he recognized Archie's need; Archie had had no revolver since he was sent to the workhouse. The one he had when he was arrested had been confiscated--as it is called--by the police, and given by Bostwick to a friend, a lawyer who had long wanted a revolver to shoot burglars in case any should break into his home. Curly had consented to Archie's stealing the revolver, but he had commanded him to take nothing else, and had waited outside while Archie went into the hardware store. Archie had chosen a fine one, a double-acting, self-cocking revolver of thirty-eight caliber, like those carried by the police. He had been childishly happy in the possession of this weapon; he had taken it out and looked at it a hundred times, and had been tempted when they were alone in the woods to take a few practice shots, but when Curly ordered him not to think of such nonsense, he drew the cartridges, aimed at trees, twigs, birds, and snapped the trigger. Every little while in the box-car that day he had taken it out, looked at it, caressed it, turned it over in his palm, delicately tested its weight, and called Curly to admire it with him. He thought much more of the revolver than he did of the stamps and blasted currency they had stolen, and Curly had spoken sharply to him at last and said:
"If you don't put up that rod, I'll ditch it for you."
Archie obeyed Curly, but when he had restored the revolver to his pocket, he continued to talk of it, and then of other weapons he had owned, and he told Curly how he had won the sharp-shooter's medal in the army.
But finally, in his weariness, Archie lost interest even in his new revolver, and when Curly would not let him go to the door of the car and look out, lest the trainmen should see them and force them into an encounter, Archie had fallen asleep in a corner.
It was a relief to Curly when Archie went to sleep, for in addition to his joy in his revolver, Archie had been excited over their adventure. Curly was in many ways peculiar; he was inclined to be secretive; he frequently worked alone, and his operations were as much a mystery to his companions and to Gibbs as they were to the police. He had had his eye on the little post-office at Trenton for months; it had called to him, as it were, to come and rob it. It had advantages, the building was old; an entrance could be effected easily. He had stationed Archie outside to watch while he knocked off the peter, and Archie had acquitted himself to Curly's satisfaction. The affair came off smoothly. Though it was in the short summer night, no one had been abroad; they got away without molestation. Now, as they drew near the city, Curly felt easy.
Late in the afternoon Curly saw signs of the city's outposts--the side-tracks were multiplying in long lines of freight-cars. Then Curly wakened Archie, and when the train slowed up, they dropped from the car.
It was good to feel once more their feet on the ground, to walk and stretch their tired, numb muscles, good to breathe the open air and, more than all, good to see the city looming under its pall of smoke. They joined the throngs of working-men; and they might have passed for working-men themselves, for Curly wore overalls, as he always did on his expeditions, and they were both so black from the smoke and cinders of their journey, that one might easily have mistaken their grime for that of honest toil.
They came to the river, pressed up the long approach to its noble bridge, and submerged themselves in the stream of life that flowed across it, the stream that was made up of all sorts of people--working-men, clerks, artisans, shop-girls, children, men and women, the old and the young, each individual with his burden or his care or his secret guilt, his happiness, his hope, his comedy or his tragedy, losing himself in the mass, merging his identity in the crowd, doing his part to make the great epic of life that flowed across the bridge as the great river flowed under it--the stream in which no one could tell the good from the bad, or even wish thus to separate them, in which no one could tell Archie or Curly from the teacher of a class in a Sunday-school. Here on the bridge man's little distinctions were lost and people were people merely, bound together by the common possession of good and bad intentions, of good and bad deeds, of frailties, errors, sorrows, sufferings and mistakes, of fears and doubts, of despairs, of hopes and triumphs and heroisms and victories and boundless dreams.
Beside them rumbled a long procession of trucks and wagons and carriages, street-cars moved in yellow procession, ringing their cautionary gongs; the draw in the middle of the bridge vibrated under the tread of all those marching feet; its three red lights were already burning overhead. Far below, the river, growing dark, rolled out to the lake; close to its edge on the farther shore could be descried, after long searching of the eye, the puffs of white smoke from crawling trains; vessels could be picked out, tugs and smaller craft, great propellers that bore coal and ore and lumber up and down the lakes; here and there a white passenger-steamer, but all diminutive in the long perspective. Above them the freight-depots squatted; above these elevators lifted themselves, and then, as if on top of them, the great buildings of the city heaved themselves as by some titanic convulsive effort in a lofty pile, surmounted by the high office buildings in the center, with here and there towers and spires striking upward from the jagged sky-line. All this pile was in a neutral shade of gray,--lines, details, distinctions, all were lost; these huge monuments of man's vanity, or greed, or ambition, these expressions of his notions of utility or of beauty, were heaped against a smoky sky, from which the light was beginning to fade. Somewhere, hidden far down in this mammoth pile, among all the myriads of people that swarmed and lost themselves below it, were Gusta and Dick Ward, old man Koerner and Marriott, Modderwell and Danner, Bostwick and Parrish, and Danny Gibbs, and Mason, and Eades, but they were lost in the mass of human beings--the preachers and thieves, the doctors and judges, and aldermen, and merchants, and working-men, and social leaders, and prostitutes--who went to make up the swarm of people that crawled under and through this pile of iron and stone, thinking somehow that the distinctions and the grades they had fashioned in their little minds made them something more or something less than what they really were.
II
And yet, after having crossed the bridge in the silence that was the mysterious effect of the descent of evening over the city, after having been gathered back again for a few moments into human relations with their fellow mortals, Archie and Curly became thieves again. This change in them occurred when they saw two policemen standing at the corner of High Street, where the crowd from the bridge, having climbed the slope of River Street, began to flow in diverging lines this way and that. The change was the more marked in Archie, for at sight of the policemen he stopped suddenly.
"Look!" he whispered.
"Come on!" commanded Curly, and Archie fell into step. "You never want to halt that way; it don't make any difference with harness bulls, but if a fly dick was around, it might put him hip."
It was a relief to Archie when at last they turned into Danny Gibbs's; the strange shrinking sensation he had felt in the small of his back, the impulse to turn around, the starting of his heart at each footfall behind him, now disappeared. It was quiet at Gibbs's; the place was in perfect order; in the window by the door, under the bill which pictured two pugilists, the big cat he had seen now and then slinking about the place was curled in sleep; and two little kittens were playing near her. At one of the tables, his head bowed in his hands, was the wreck of a man Archie had so often seen in that same attitude and in that same place--the table indeed seemed to be used for no other purpose. Gibbs himself was there, in shirt-sleeves, leaning over the evening paper he had spread before him on his bar. He was freshly shaven, and was reading his paper and smoking his cigar in the peace that had settled on his establishment; his shirt was fresh and clean; the starch was scarcely broken in its stiff sleeves, and Archie was fascinated by the tiny red figures of horseshoes and stirrups and jockey caps that dotted it; he had a desire to possess, some day, just such a shirt himself. At the approaching step of the two men, Gibbs looked up suddenly, and the light flashed blue from the diamond in the bosom of his shirt. Curly jerked his head toward the back room. Gibbs looked at Curly an instant and then at Archie, a question in his glance.
"Sure," said Curly; "he's in." Then Gibbs carefully and deliberately folded his paper, stuck it in one of the brackets of his bar, and went with the two men into the back room. There he stood beside the table, his hands thrust into his pockets, his cigar rolling in the corner of his mouth, his head tilted back a little. Archie was tingling with interest and expectation.
"Well," said Gibbs, in an introductory way.
Curly was unbuttoning his waistcoat; in a moment he had drawn from its inner pocket a package, unwrapped it, and disclosed the sheets of fresh new stamps, red and green, and stiff with the shining mucilage. He counted them over laboriously and separated them, making two piles, one of the red two-cent stamps, another of the green one-cent stamps, while Gibbs stood, squinting downward at the table. When Curly was done, Gibbs counted the sheets of postage stamps himself.
"Just fifty of each, heh?" he asked when he had done.
"That's right," said Curly.
"That's right, is it?" Gibbs repeated; a shrewdness in his squint.
"Yes," Curly said.
"Sixty per cent.," said Gibbs.
"All right," said Curly.
"I can't give more for the stickers just now," Gibbs went on, as if the men were entitled to some word of explanation; "business is damned bad, and I'm not making much at that."
"That's all right," said Curly somewhat impatiently, as one who disliked haggling.
"That goes with you, does it, Dutch?" Gibbs said to Archie.
"Sure," said Archie, glancing hastily at Curly, "whatever he says goes with me all right." And then he smiled, his white teeth showing, his face ruddier, his blue eyes sparkling with the excitement he felt--smiled at this new name Gibbs had suddenly given him.
Curly had thrust his hand into another pocket meanwhile, and he drew out another package, done up in a newspaper. He laid this on the table, opened it slowly, and carefully turning back the folds of paper, disclosed the bundle of charred bank-notes. Gibbs began shaking his head dubiously as soon as he saw the contents.
"I can't do much with that," he said. "But you leave it and I'll see."
"Well, now, that's all right," said Curly, speaking in his high argumentative tone; "I ain't wolfing. You can give us our bit later."
"All right," said Gibbs, and carefully doing up the parcels, he took them and disappeared. In a few moments he came back, counted out the money on the table--ninety dollars--and then went out with the air of a man whose business is finished.
Curly divided the money, gave Archie his half, and they went out. The bar-room was just as they had left it; the wreck of a man still bowed his head on his forearms, the cat was still curled about her kittens. Gibbs had taken down his paper, and resumed his reading.
"I'm going to get a bath and a shave," Curly said. He passed his hand over his chin, rasping its palm on the stubble of his beard. Archie was surprised and a little disappointed at the hint of dismissal he felt in Curly's tone. He wished to continue the companionship, with its excitement, its interest, its pleasure, above all that quality in it which sustained him and kept up his spirits. He found himself just then in a curious state of mind; the distinction he had felt but a few moments before in the back room with Gibbs, the importance in the success of the expedition, more than all, the feeling that he had been admitted to relationships which so short a time before had been so mysterious and inaccessible to him,--all this was leaving him, dying out within, as the stimulus of spirits dies out in a man, and Archie's Teutonic mind was facing the darkness of a fit of despondency; he felt blue and unhappy; he longed to stay with Curly.
"Look at, Dutch," Curly was saying; "you've got a little of the cush now--it ain't much, but it's something. You want to go and give some of it to your mother; don't go and splash it up in beer."
It pleased Archie to have Curly call him Dutch. There was something affectionate in it, as there is in most nicknames--something reassuring. But the mention of his mother overcame this sense; it unmanned him, and he looked away.
"And look at," Curly was going on, "you'll bit up on that burned darb; you be around in a day or two."
Curly withdrew into himself in the curious, baffling way he had; the way that made him mysterious and somewhat superior, and, at times, brought on him the distrust of his companions, always morbidly suspicious at their best. Archie disliked to step out of Gibbs's place into the street; it seemed like an exposure. He glanced out. The summer twilight had deepened into darkness. The street was deserted and bare, though the cobblestones somehow exuded the heat and turmoil of the day that had just passed from them. Archie thought for an instant of what Curly had said about his mother; he could see her as she would be sitting in the kitchen, with the lamp on the table; Gusta would be bustling about getting the supper, the children moving after her, clutching at her skirts, retarding her, getting in her way, seeming to endanger their own lives by scalding and burning and falling and other domestic accidents, which, though always impending, never befell. The kitchen would be full of the pleasant odor of frying potatoes, and the coffee, bubbling over now and then and sizzling on the hot stove--Archie had a sense of all these things, and his heart yearned and softened. And then suddenly he thought of his father, and he knew that the conception of the home he had just had was the way it used to be before his father lost his leg and all the ills following that accident had come upon the family; the house was no longer cheerful; the smell of boiling coffee was not in it as often as it used to be; his mother was depressed and his father quarrelsome, even Gusta had changed; he would be sure to encounter that lover of hers, that plumber whom he hated. He squeezed the roll of bills in his pocket; suddenly, too, he remembered his new revolver and pressed it against his thigh, and he had pleasure in that. He went out into the street. After all, the darkness was kind; there were glaring and flashing electric lights along the street, of course; the cheap restaurant across the way was blazing, people were drifting in and out, but they were not exactly the same kind of people in appearance that had thronged the streets by day. There was a new atmosphere--a more congenial atmosphere, for night had come, and had brought a change and a new race of people to the earth--a race that lived and worked by night, with whom Archie felt a kinship. He did not hate them as he was unconsciously growing to hate the people of the daylight. He saw a lame hot-tamale man in white, hobbling up the street, painfully carrying his steaming can; he saw cabmen on their cabs down toward Cherokee Street; he saw two girls, vague, indistinct, suggestive, flitting hurriedly by in the shadows; the electric lights were blazing with a hard fierce glare, but there were shadows, deep and black and soft. He started toward Cherokee Street; he squeezed the money in his pocket; he was somehow elated with the independence it gave him. At the corner he paused again; he had no plan, he was drifting along physically just as he was morally, following the line of least resistance, which line, just then, was marked by the lights along Market Place. He started across that way, when all at once a hand took him by the lapel of his coat and Kouka's black visage was before him. Archie looked at the detective, whose eyes were piercing him from beneath the surly brows that met in thick, coarse, bristling hairs across the wide bridge of his nose.
"Well," said Kouka, "so I've got you again!"
Archie's heart came to his throat. A great rage suddenly seized him, a hatred of Kouka, and of his black eyes; he had a savage wish to grind the heel of his boot heavily, viciously, remorselessly into that face, right there where the eyebrows met across the nose--grinding his heel deep, feeling the bones crunch beneath it. For some reason Kouka suddenly released his hold.
"You'd better duck out o' here, young fellow," Kouka was saying. "You hear?"
Archie heard, but it was a moment before he could fully realize that Kouka knew nothing after all.
"You hear?" Kouka repeated, bringing his face close to Archie's.
"Yes, I hear," said Archie sullenly, as it seemed, but thankfully.
"Don't let me see you around any more, you--"
Archie, saved by some instinct, did not reply, and he did not wait for Kouka's oath, but hurried away, and Kouka, as he could easily feel, stood watching him. He went on half a block and paused in a shadow. He saw Kouka still standing there, then presently saw him turn and go away.
Archie paused in the shadow; he thought of Kouka, remembering all the detective had done to him; he remembered those forty days in the workhouse; he thought of Bostwick, of the city attorney, of the whole town that seemed to stand behind him; the bitterness of those days in the workhouse came back, and the force of all the accumulated hatred and vengeance that had been spent upon him was doubled and quadrupled in his heart, and he stood there with black, mad, insane thoughts clouding his reason. Then he gripped his roll of money, he pressed his new revolver, and he felt a kind of wild, primitive, savage satisfaction,--the same primitive satisfaction that Kouka, and Bostwick, the city attorney, the whole police force, and the whole city had seemed to take in sending him to the workhouse. And then he went on toward the tenderloin.
III
Gibbs, never sure that the police would keep their word with him, rose earlier than usual the next morning, ate his breakfast, called a cab--he had an eccentric fondness for riding about in hansom-cabs--and was driven rapidly to the corner of High and Franklin Streets, the busiest, most distracting corner in the city. There the enormous department store of James E. Bills and Company occupied an entire building five stories high. The store was already filled with shoppers, mostly women, who crowded about the counters, on which all kinds of trinkets were huddled, labeled with cards declaring that the price had just been reduced. The girls behind the counters, all of whom were dressed in a certain extravagant imitation of the women who came every day to look these articles over, were already tired; their eyes lay in dark circles that were the more pronounced because their cheeks were covered with powder, and now and then they lifted their hands, their highly polished finger-nails gleaming, to the enormous pompadours in which they had arranged their hair. Many of the women in the store, clerks and shoppers, wore peevish, discontented expressions, and spoke in high ugly voices; the noise of their haggling filled the whole room and added to the din made by the little metal money-boxes that whizzed by on overhead wires, and increased the sense of confusion produced by the cheap and useless things which, with their untruthful placards, were piled about everywhere. The air in the store was foul and unwholesome; here and there pale little girls who carried bundles in baskets ran about on their little thin legs, piping out shrill numbers.
Gibbs was wearied the moment he entered, and irritably waved aside the sleek, foppish floor-walker. The only person to whom he spoke as he passed along was a private detective leaning against one of the counters; Gibbs had already had dealings with him and had got back for him articles that had been stolen by certain women thieves who were adept in the art of shoplifting. Gibbs went straight back to the elevator and was lifted out of all this din and confusion into the comparative quiet of the second floor, where the offices of the establishment occupied a cramped space behind thin wooden partitions. Gibbs entered the offices and glanced about at the clerks, who worked in silence; on each of them had been impressed a subdued, obedient demeanor; they glanced at Gibbs surreptitiously. It was plain that all spirit had been drilled out of them; they were afraid of something, and, driven by their necessities, they toiled like machines. Gibbs felt a contempt for them as great as the contempt he felt for the floor-walkers below, a contempt almost as great as that he had for Bills himself. A timid man of about forty-five, with a black beard sprouting out of the pallor of his skin, came up, and lifted his brows with amazement when Gibbs, ignoring him, made plainly for the door that was lettered: "Mr. Bills."
"Mr. Bills is engaged just now," the man said in a hushed tone.
"Well, tell him Mr. Gibbs is here."
"But he's engaged just now, sir; he's dictating." The man leaned forward and whispered the word "dictating" impressively.
But Gibbs kept on toward the door; then the man blocked his way.
"Tell him if you want to," said Gibbs, "if not, I will."
It seemed that Gibbs might walk directly through the man, who retreated from him, and, having no other egress, went through Mr. Bills's door. A moment more and he held it open for Gibbs.
Bills was sitting at an enormous desk which was set in perfect order; on either side of him were baskets containing the letters he was methodically answering. Bills's head showed over the top of the desk; it was a round head covered with short black hair, smoothly combed and shining. His black side-whiskers were likewise short and smooth. His neck was bound by a white collar and a little pious, black cravat, and he wore black clothes. His smoothly-shaven lips were pursed in a self-satisfied way; he was brisk and unctuous, very clean and proper, and looked as if he devoutly anointed himself with oil after his bath. In a word, he bore himself as became a prominent business man, who, besides his own large enterprise, managed a popular Sunday-school, and gave Sunday afternoon "talks" on "Success," for the instruction of certain young men of the city, too mild and acquiescent to succeed as anything but conformers.
"Ah, Mr. Gibbs," he said. "You will excuse me a moment."
Bills turned and resumed the dictation of his stereotyped phrases of business. He dictated several letters, then dismissed his stenographer and, turning about, said with a smile:
"Now, Mr. Gibbs."
Gibbs drew his chair close to Bills's desk, and, taking a package from his pocket, laid out the stamps.
"One hundred sheets of twos, fifty of ones," he said.
Bills had taken off his gold glasses and slowly lowered them to the end of their fine gold chain; he rubbed the little red marks the glasses left on the bridge of his nose, and in his manner there was an uncertainty that seemed unexpected by Gibbs.
"I was about to suggest, Mr. Gibbs," said Bills, placing his fingers tip to tip, "that you see our Mr. Wilson; he manages the mail-order department, now."
"Not for mine," said Gibbs decisively. "I've always done business with you. I don't know this fellow Wilson."
Bills, choosing to take it as a tribute, smiled and went on:
"I think we're fully stocked just now, but--how would a sixty per cent. proposition strike you?"
"No," said Gibbs, as decisively as before.
"No?" repeated Bills.
"No," Gibbs went on, "seventy-five."
Bills thought a moment, absently lifting the rustling sheets.
"How many did you say there were?"
"They come to one-fifty," said Gibbs; "count 'em."
Bills did count them, and when he had done, he said:
"That would make it one-twelve-fifty?"
"That's it."
"Very well. Shall I pass the amount to your credit?"
"No; I'll take the cash."
"I thought perhaps Mrs. Gibbs would be wanting some things in the summer line," said Bills.
Gibbs shook his head.
"We pay cash," said he.
Bills smiled, got up, walked briskly with a little spring to each step and left the room. He returned presently, closed the door, sat down, counted the bills out on the leaf of his desk, laid a silver half-dollar on top and said:
"There you are."
Gibbs counted the money carefully, rolled it up deliberately and stuffed it into his trousers pocket.
Gibbs had one more errand that morning, and he drove in his hansom-cab to the private bank Amos Hunter conducted as a department of his trust company. Gibbs deposited his money, and then went into Hunter's private office. Hunter was an old man, thin and spare, with white hair, and a gray face. He sat with his chair turned away from his desk, which he seldom used except when it became necessary for him to sign his name, and then he did this according to the direction of a clerk, who would lay a paper before him, dip a pen in ink, hand it to Hunter, and point to the space for the signature. Hunter was as economical of his energy in signing his name as in everything else; he wrote it "A. Hunter." He sat there every day without moving, as it seemed, apparently determined to eke out his life to the utmost. His coachman drove him down town at ten each morning, at four in the afternoon he came and drove him home again. It was only through the windows of the carriage and through the windows of his private office that Hunter looked out on a world with which for forty years he had never come in personal contact. His inert manner gave the impression of great age and senility; but the eyes under the thick white brows were alert, keen, virile. He was referred to generally as "old Amos."
Gibbs went in, a parcel in his hand.
"Just a little matter of some mutilated currency," he said.
Old Amos's thin lips seemed to smile.
"You may leave it and we'll be glad to forward it to Washington for you, Mr. Gibbs," he said, without moving.
Gibbs laid the bundle on old Amos's desk, and, taking up a bit of paper, wrote on it and handed it to Hunter.
"Have you a memorandum there?" asked Hunter. He glanced at the paper and wrote on the slip:
"A. H."
Then he resumed the attitude that had scarcely been altered, laid his white hands in his lap and sat there with his thin habitual smile.
Gibbs thanked him and went away. His morning's work among the business men of the city was done.
IV
It promised to be a quiet evening at Danny Gibbs's. There had been a vicious electrical storm that afternoon, but by seven o'clock the lightning played prettily in the east, the thunder rolled away, the air cooled, and the rain fell peacefully. The storm had been predicted to Joe Mason in the rheumatism that had bitten his bones for two days, but now the ache had ceased, and the relief was a delicious sensation he was content simply to realize. He sat in the back room, smoking and thinking, a letter in his hand. Gibbs's wife had gone to bed--she had been drinking that day. Old Johnson, the sot who, by acting as porter, paid Gibbs for his shelter and the whisky he drank--he ate very little, going days at a time without food--had set the bar-room in order and disappeared. Gibbs was somewhere about, but all was still, and Mason liked it so. From time to time Mason glanced at the letter. The letter was a fortnight old; it had been written from a workhouse in a distant city by his old friend Dillon, known to the yeggs as Slim. Mason had not seen Dillon for a year--not, in fact, since they had been released from Dannemora. This was the letter:
OLD PAL--I thought I would fly you a kite, and take chances of its safe arrival at your loft. I was lagged wrong, but I am covered and strong and the bulls can't throw me. I am only here for a whop, and I'll hit the road before the dog is up. I have filled out a country jug that can be sprung all right. We can make a safe lamas. There is a John O'Brien at 1:30 A. M., and a rattler at 3:50. The shack next door is a cold slough, and the nearest kip to the joint is one look and a peep. There is a speeder in the shanty, and we can get to the main stem and catch the rattler and be in the main fort by daylight. The trick is easy worth fifty centuries. Now let me know, and make your mark and time. I am getting this out through a broad who will give it to our fall-back, you know who.
SLIM.
Mason had not answered the letter, and only the day before Dillon had appeared, bringing with him a youth called Squeak. And now this night, as Mason sat there, he did not like to think of Dillon. Dillon had traveled hundreds of miles by freight-trains to be with Mason, to give him part in his enterprise; he had been to the little town and examined the bank; he had even entered it by night alone. He had laid his plans, and, like all his kind, could not conceive of their miscarrying. He had estimated the amount they would procure; he considered five thousand dollars a conservative estimate. It was the big touch, of which they were always dreaming as a means of reformation. But Mason had refused. Then Dillon asked Curly, and Curly refused. Mason gave Dillon no reason for his refusal, but Curly contended that summer was not the time for such a big job; the nights were short and people slept lightly, with open windows, even if the old stool-pigeon was not up. Dillon had taunted him and hinted contemptuously at a broad. They had almost come to blows. Finally Dillon had left, taking with him Mandell and Squeak and Archie--all eager to go.
Mason sat there and thought of Dillon and his companions. He could imagine them on the John O'Brien, jolting on through the rain, maybe dropping off when the train stopped, to hide under some water-tank, or behind some freight-shed--he had done it all so many, many times himself. Still he tried not to think of Dillon, for he could not do so without a shade of self-reproach; it seemed like pigging to refuse Dillon as he had; they had worked so long together. Dillon's long, gaunt figure presented itself to his memory as crouching before some old rope mold, a bit of candle in his left hand, getting ready to pour the soup, and then memory would usually revert to that night when Dillon had suddenly doused the candle--but not before Mason had caught the gleam in his eyes and the setting of his jaw--and, pulling his rod, had barked suddenly into the darkness. Then the flight outside, the rose-colored flashes from their revolvers in the night, the race down the silent street--white snow in the fields across the railroad tracks, and the bitter cold in the woods.
He shook his head as if to fling the memories from him. But Dillon's figure came back, now in the front rank of his company, marching across the hideous prison yard, his long legs breaking at the middle as he leaned back in the lock-step. Mason tried to escape these thoughts, but they persisted. He got a newspaper, but understood little of what he read, except one brief despatch, which told of a tramp found cut in two beside the tracks, five hundred dollars sewed in his coat. The despatch wondered how a hobo could have so much money, and this amused Mason; he would tell Gibbs, and they would have a laugh--their old laugh at the world above them. Then they themselves would wonder--wonder which one of the boys it was; it might be weeks before the news would reach them in an authoritative form. He enjoyed for a moment his laugh at the stupid world, the world which could not understand them in the least, the world which shuddered in its ignorance of them. Then he thought of Dillon again. Dillon had never refused him; he had not refused him that evening in northern Indiana, when the sheriff and the posse of farmers, armed with pitchforks and shot-guns and old army muskets, had brought them to bay in the wheat stubble; his ammunition had given out, but old Dillon, with only three cartridges left, had stood cursing and covering his retreat. Mason was beginning to feel small about it, and yet--Dillon did not understand; when he came back he would explain it all to him. This notion gave him some comfort, and he lighted his cigar, turned to his newspaper again, and listened for the rain falling outside. Suddenly there was a noise, and Mason started. Was that old Dillon crouching there beside him, his face gleaming in the flicker of the dripping candle? He put his hand to his head in a kind of daze.
"Je's!" he exclaimed. "I'm getting nutty."
He was troubled, for his head had now and then gone off that way in prison--they called it stir simple. Mason sat down again, but no longer tried to read. He heard the noise in the bar-room, the noise of high excitement, and he wondered. His curiosity was great, but he had learned to control his curiosity. He could hear talking, laughing, cursing, the shuffle of feet, the clink of glasses--some sports out for a time, no doubt. In a moment the door opened and Gibbs appeared.
"Where's Kate?" he demanded.
"She went to bed half an hour ago," said Mason. "Why--what's the excitement?"
"Eddie Dean's here--come on out." Gibbs disappeared; the door closed.
Mason understood; no wonder the place thrilled with excitement. He had heard of Eddie Dean. Down into his world had come stories of this man, of his amazing skill and cleverness, of the enormous sums he made every year--made and spent. Dean had the fascination for Mason that is born of mystery; he had had Dean's methods and the methods of other big-mitt men described to him; he had heard long discussions in sand-house hang-outs and beside camp-fires in the woods, but the descriptions never described; he could never grasp the details. He could understand the common, ordinary thefts; he could see how a pickpocket by long practice learned his art, but the kind of work that Dean did had something occult in it. How a man could go out, wearing good clothes, and, without soiling his fingers, merely by talking and playing cards, make such sums of money--Mason simply could not realize it. Surely it was worth while to have a look at him. He started out, then he remembered; he passed his hand over the stubble of hair that had been growing after the shaving at the workhouse, and he picked up his low-crowned, narrow-brimmed felt hat--the kind worn by the brakemen he now and then wished to be taken for--pulled it down to his eyebrows, and went out.
Eddie Dean, who stood at the bar in the blue clothes that perfectly exemplified the fashion of that summer, was described in the police identification records as a man somewhat above medium size, and now, at forty, he was beginning to take on fat. His face was heavy, and despite the fact that his nose was twisted slightly to one side, and his upper lip depressed where it met his nose, the women whom Dean knew considered him handsome. His face was smooth-shaven and blue, like an actor's, from his heavy beard. His mouth was large, and his lips thin; he could close them and look serious and profound; and when he smiled and disclosed the gold fillings in his teeth, he seemed youthful and gay. His face showed vanity, a love of pleasure, vulgarity, selfishness, sensuality accentuated by dissipation, and the black eyes that were so sharp and bright and penetrating were cruel. Mason, however, could not analyze; he only knew that he did not like this fellow, and merely grunted when Gibbs introduced him, and Dean patronizingly said, without looking at him:
"Just in time, my good fellow."
Then he motioned imperiously to the bartender, who took down another wine-glass, wiped it dexterously, and set it out with an elegant flourish and filled it. Mason watched the golden bubbles spring from the hollow stem to the seething surface. He did not care much for champagne, but he lifted his glass and looked at Dean, who was saying:
"Here's to the suckers--may they never grow less."
The others in the party laughed. Besides Gibbs, who was standing outside his own bar like a visitor, there were Nate Rosen, a gambler, dressed more conspicuously than Dean; a small man in gray, with strange pale eyes fastened always on Dean; and a third man in tweeds, larger than either, with broad shoulders, heavy jaw and an habitual scowl. Beyond him, apart, with the truckling leer of the parasite, stood a man in seedy livery, evidently the driver of the carriage that was waiting outside in the rain.
Dean's history was the monotonous one of most men of his kind. Having a boy's natural dislike for school, he had run away from home and joined a circus. At first he led the sick horses, then he was hired by one of the candy butchers and finally allowed to peddle on the seats; there he learned the art of short change, and when he had mastered this he sold tickets from a little satchel outside the tents; by the time he was twenty-five he knew most of the schemes by which the foolish, seeking to get something for nothing, are despoiled of their money. He was an adept at cards; he knew monte and he could work the shells; later he traveled about, cheating men by all kinds of devices, aided by an intuitive knowledge of human nature. He could go through a passenger train from coach to coach and pick out his victims by their backs. As he went through he would suddenly lose his balance, as if by the lurching of the train, and steady himself by the arm of the seat in which his intended victim sat. His confederate, following behind, would note and remember. Later, he would return and invite him to make a fourth hand at whist or pedro or some other game. Dean would do the rest. He went to all large gatherings--political conventions, especially national conventions, conclaves, celebrations, world's fairs, the opening of any new strip of land in the West, the gold-fields of Alaska, and so on. He had roamed all over the United States; he had been to Europe, and Cuba, and Jamaica, and Old Mexico; he had visited Hawaii; he boasted that he had traveled the whole world over--"from St. Petersburg to Cape Breton" was the way he put it, and it impressed his hearers all the more because most of them had none but the most confused notion of where either place was. He boasted, too, that United States senators, cabinet officers, congressmen, governors, financiers and other prominent men had been among his victims, and many of these boasts were justified--by the facts, at least.
The atmosphere of the bar-room had been changed by the arrival of Dean. It lost its usual serenity and quivered with excitement. The deference shown to Dean was marked in the attitude of the men in his suite; it was marked, too, by the bartender's attitude, and even in that of Gibbs, though Gibbs was more quiet and self-contained, bearing himself, indeed, quite as Dean's equal. He did not look at Dean often, but stood at his bar with his head lowered, gazing thoughtfully at the glass of mineral water he was drinking, turning it round and round in his fingers, with a faint smile on his lips. But no one could tell whether the amusement came from his own thoughts or the little adventures Dean was relating.
"No, I'm going out in the morning," Dean was saying, the diamond on his white, delicate hand flashing as he lifted his glass.
"Which way?" asked Gibbs.
"I'm working eastward," said Dean. "Here!" he turned to the bartender, "let's have another--and get another barrel of water for Dan."
He smiled with what tolerance he could find for a man who did not drink.
"How much of that stuff do you lap up in a week, Dan?"
"Oh, I don't know," Gibbs said. He was not quick at repartee.
"Well, slush up, but don't make yourself sick," Dean went on.
The bartender, moving briskly about, pressed the cork from a bottle, poured a few drops into Dean's glass, and then proceeded to fill the other glasses.
"Well, how's the graft?" Gibbs asked presently.
"Oh, fairly good," said Dean. "A couple of bucks yesterday." He switched his leg with the slender stick he carried.
Gibbs's eyes lighted with humorous interest and pleasure.
"They were coming out of St. Louis," Dean went on, and then, as if he had perhaps given an exaggerated impression of the transaction, he went on in a quick, explicatory way: "Oh, it didn't amount to much--just for the fun of the thing, you know. But say, who do you think I saw in St. Louis?"
"Don't know," said Gibbs, shaking his head.
"Why, old Tom Young."
"No!" exclaimed Gibbs, looking up in genuine interest and surprise.
"Sure," said Dean.
"What's he doing?"
"He made the big touch, quit the business, got a farm in Illinois, and settled down with Lou. The girl's grown up, just out of a seminary, and the boy's in college. He said he'd like me to see the place, but he wouldn't take me out 'cause the girl was home then. Remember the old joint in the alley?"
Gibbs's eyes kindled with lively memories.
"Remember that afternoon Bob's man came down for the brace-box? I can see Tom now--he gets the box and says, 'Tell Bob not to frisk him.' God! They sent that mark through the alley that afternoon to a fare-you-well. And they had hell's own time keepin' the box in advance of 'em--it was the only one in the alley. Remember?"
Gibbs remembered, but that did not keep Dean from relating the whole story.
"What became of Steve Harris?" Dean asked.
"He's out with the rag, I guess," Gibbs replied.
"I heard Winnie sold her place."
"Oh, yes," said Gibbs; "bought a little home in the swell part--quiet street and all that--and they're living there happy as you please."
"Well, that's good," said Dean. "Steve and me was with the John Robinson show in the old days. He was holdin' a board for the monte tickets, and old Pappy King was cappin' for the game. I remember one night in Danville, Kentucky"--and Dean told another story. The stories were all alike, having for their theme the despoilment of some simpleton who had tried to beat Dean or his confederates at one of their own numerous games.
"I was holding the shingle for Jim Steele when he was playing the broads, you understand. He was the greatest spieler ever. I can see him now, taking up the tickets, looking around and saying: 'Is there a speculator in the party?'"
Dean's face was alight with the excitement of dramatizing the long-past scene. He laid his stick on the bar and bent over, with his white fingers held as if they poised cards. He was a good mimic. One could easily imagine the scene on the trampled grass, with the white canvas tents of the circus for a background.
"Dick Nolan and Joe Hipp were capping, and Dick would come up--he had the best gilly make-up in the world, you understand, a paper collar, a long linen duster and big green mush--he'd look over the cards--see?"--Dean leaned over awkwardly like a country-man, pointing with a crooked forefinger--"and then he'd say, 'I think it's that one.'"
His voice had changed; he spoke in the cracked tone of the farmer, and his little audience laughed.
"Well, the guy hollers, you understand, but at the come-back they're all swipes--working in the horse tents; you'd never know 'em. And then," Dean went on, with the exquisite pleasure of remembering, "old Ben Mellott was there working the send--you remember Ben, Dan?"
Gibbs nodded.
"Jake Rend was running the side-show, and old Jew Cohen had a dollar store--a drop-case, you know."
Gibbs nodded again. Dean grew meditative, and a silence fell on the group.
"We had a great crowd of knucks, too; the guns to-day are nothing to them. Those were the days, Dan. Course, there wasn't much in it at that."
Dean meditated over the lost days a moment, and then he grew cheerful again.
"I met Luke Evans last fall, Dan," he began again. "In England. The major and I were running between London and Liverpool, working the steamer trains, and him and me--"
And he was off into another story. Having taken up his English experience, Dean now told a number of vulgar stories, using the English accent, which he could imitate perfectly. While in the midst of one of them, he suddenly started at a footfall, and looked hastily over his shoulder. A man came in, glanced about, and came confidently forward.
"Good morning, Danny," he said, in a tone of the greatest familiarity.
Gibbs answered the greeting soberly, and then, at a sign from the man, stepped aside rather reluctantly and whispered with him. Dean eyed them narrowly, took in the fellow's attire from his straw hat to his damp shoes, and, when he could catch Gibbs's eye, he crooked his left arm, touched it significantly, and lifted his eyebrows in sign of question. Gibbs shook his head in a negative that had a touch of contempt for the implication, and then drew the man toward the bar. Without the man's seeing him or hearing him, Dean touched his arm again and said to Gibbs softly:
"Elbow?"
"No," said Gibbs, "reporter."
Then he turned and, speaking to the new-comer, he presented him to Dean, saying:
"Mr. Jordon, make you acquainted with Mr. Wales, of theCourier."
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Jordon," said the newspaper man.
"Ah, chawmed, I'm suah," said Dean, keeping to the English accent he had just been using. "I say, won't you join us?"
The bartender, at a glance from Dean, produced another bottle of champagne; the newspaper man's eyes glistened with pleasure, Dean was taking out his cigarette case. Wales glanced at the cigarettes, and Dean hastened to proffer them. In conversation with the reporter Dean impersonated an English follower of the turf who had brought some horses to America. As he did this, actor that he was, he became more and more interested in his impromptu monologue, assumed the character perfectly and lived into it, and the others there who knew of the deceit he was practising on the reporter--he was nearly always practising some sort of deceit, but seldom so innocently as now--were utterly delighted; they listened to his guying until nearly midnight, when Dean, having sustained the character of the Englishman for more than two hours, grew weary and said he must go. As he was leaving he said to the reporter:
"You've been across, of course? No? Well, really now, that's quite too bad, don't you know! But I say, whenever you come, you must look me up, if you don't mind, at Tarlingham Towers. I've a bit of a place down in the Surrey country; I've a beast there that's just about up to your weight. Have you ever ridden to the hounds?"
The reporter was delighted; he felt that a distinction had been conferred upon him. Wishing to show his appreciation, he asked Dean, or Jordan, as he was to him, if he might print an interview. Dean graciously consented, and the reporter left for his office, glad of a story with which to justify to his city editor, at least partly, his wasted evening.
When Dean had gone, taking his three companions with him, Gibbs and Mason sat for a long while in the back room.
"So that's Eddie Dean!" said Mason.
"Yes," said Gibbs, "that's him."
"And what's his graft?"
"Oh," said Gibbs, "the send, the bull con, the big mitt, the cross lift--anything in that line."
"And those two other guys with him?" asked Mason.
"That little one is Willie the Rat, the other is Gaffney."
"Sure-thing men, too?"
"Yes, they're in Ed's mob."
Mason was still for a while, then he observed:
"Je's! He did make a monkey of that cove!"
Gibbs laughed. "Oh, he's a great cod! Why, do you know what he did once? Well, he went to Lord Paisley's ball in Quebec, impersonating Sir Charles Jordon--that's why I introduced him as Mr. Jordon to-night." Gibbs's eyes twinkled. "He went in to look for a rummy, but the flatties got on and tipped him off."
"He's smart."
"Yes, the smartest in the business. He's made several ten-century touches."
Gibbs thought seriously a moment and then said:
"No, he isn't smart; he's a damn fool, like all of them."
"Fall?"
"Yes, settled twice; done a two-spot at Joliet and a finiff at Ionia."
Mason knit his brows and thought a long time, while Gibbs smoked. Finally Mason shook his head.
"No," he said, "no, Dan, I don't get it. I can understand knocking off a peter--the stuff's right there. All you do is to go take it. I can understand a hold-up, or a heel, or a prowl; I can see how a gun reefs a britch kick and gets a poke--though I couldn't put my hand in a barrel myself and get it out again--without breaking the barrel. I haven't any use for that kind, which you know--but these sure-thing games, the big mitt and the bull con--no, Dan, I can't get hip."
Gibbs laughed.
"Well, I can't explain it, Joe. You heard him string that chump to-night."
Mason dropped that phase of the question and promptly said:
"Dan, I suppose there's games higher up, ain't they?"
Gibbs laughed a superior laugh.
"Higher up? Joe, there's games that beat his just as much as his beats yours. I could name you men--" Then he paused.
Mason had grown very solemn. He was not listening at all to Gibbs, and, after a moment or two, he looked up and said earnestly:
"Dan, what you said a while back is dead right. I'm a damn fool. Look at me now--I've done twenty years, and in all my time I've had less than two thousand bucks."
Gibbs was about to speak, but Mason was too serious to let himself be interrupted.
"I was thinking it all over to-night, and I decided--know what I decided?"
Gibbs shook his head.
"I decided," Mason went on, "to square it without waiting for the big touch." Gibbs was not impressed; the good thieves were always considering reformation. "I know I can't get anything to do--I'm too old, and besides--well, you know." Mason let the situation speak for itself. "I'm about all in, but I was thinking, Dan, this here place you've got in the country, can't you--" Mason hesitated a little--"can't you let me work around there? Just my board and a few clothes?" Mason leaned forward eagerly.
"You know, Joe," said Gibbs, seeing that Mason was serious, "that as long as I've got a place you can have a home with me. I'm going to take Kate out there and live. I've got the place almost paid for."
Mason leaned back, tried to speak, paused, swallowed, and moistened his lips.
"I worried about Slim to-night," he managed to say presently. It was hard for him to give utterance to thoughts that he considered sentimental. "My treating him so, you see--that I decided; I want to try it. That's why I wouldn't go with him; he didn't understand, but maybe I can explain. As I was thinking to-night, my head went off again--that stir simple, you know."
He raised his hand to his head and Gibbs was concerned.
"You'd better take a little drink, Joe," he said.
After Gibbs had brought the whisky, they sat there and discussed the future until the early summer dawn was red.