Part 2

“Don’t be so literal. You talked across a railing.”

“We didn’t.”

“Do you mean to say you didn’t talk at all?”

“We didn’t say a single word.”

Mifflin shook his head sadly.

“I give you up,” he said. “I thought you were a man of enterprise. What did you do?”

Jimmy sighed softly.

“I used to stand and smoke against the railing opposite the barber’s shop, and she used to walk round the deck.”

“And you used to stare at her?”

“I would look in her direction sometimes,” corrected Jimmy, with dignity.

“Don’t quibble! You stared at her. You behaved like a common rubber-neck, and you know it. I am no prude, James, but I feel compelled to say that I consider your conduct that of a libertine. Used she to walk alone?”

“Generally.”

“And now you love her, eh? You went on board that ship happy, careless, heart-free. You came off it grave and saddened. Thenceforth for you the world could contain but one woman, and her you had lost.”

He groaned in a hollow and bereaved manner, and took a sip from his glass to buoy him up.

Jimmy moved restlessly on the sofa.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked fatuously. He was in the mood when a man says things the memory of which makes him wake up hot all over for nights to come.

“I don’t see what first sight’s got to do with it,” said Mifflin. “According to your own statement, you stood and glared at the girl for five days without stopping for a moment. I can quite imagine that you might glare yourself into love with anyone by the end of that time.”

“I can’t see myself settling down,” said Jimmy thoughtfully. “And until you feel that you want to settle down, I suppose you can’t be really in love.”

“I was saying practically that about you at the club just before you came in. My somewhat neat expression was that you were one of the gipsies of the world.”

“By George, you’re quite right!”

“I always am.”

“I suppose it’s having nothing to do. When I was on the _News_ I was never like this.”

“You weren’t on the _News_ long enough to get tired of it.”

“I feel now I can’t stay in a place more than a week. It’s having this money that does it, I suppose.”

“New York,” said Mifflin, “is full of obliging persons who will be delighted to relieve you of the incubus. Well, James, I shall leave you. I feel more like bed now. By the way, I suppose you lost sight of this girl when you landed?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there aren’t so many girls in the United States. Only twenty million. Or is it forty million? Something small. All you’ve got to do is to search about a bit. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Mr. Mifflin clattered down the stairs. A minute later the sound of his name being called loudly from the street brought Jimmy to the window. Mifflin was standing on the pavement below, looking up.

“Jimmy?”

“What’s the matter now?”

“I forgot to ask. Was she a blonde?”

“What?”

“Was she a blonde?” yelled Mifflin.

“No,” snapped Jimmy.

“Dark, eh?” bawled Mifflin, making night hideous.

“Yes,” said Jimmy, shutting the window.

“Jimmy! I say, Jimmy!”

The window went up again.

“Well?”

“I prefer blondes myself.”

“Go to bed!”

“Very well. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Jimmy withdrew his head, and sat down on the chair Mifflin had vacated. A moment later he rose and switched off the light. It was pleasanter to sit and think in the dark. His thoughts wandered off in many channels, but always came back to the girl on the _Mauretania_. It was absurd, of course. He didn’t wonder that Arthur Mifflin had treated the thing as a joke. Good old Arthur! Glad he had made a success. But was it a joke? Who was it said that the point of a joke was like the point of a needle—so small that it is apt to disappear entirely when directed straight at oneself? If anybody else had told him such a limping romance he would have laughed himself. Only when you are the centre of a romance, however limping, you see it from a different angle. Of course, told baldly, it was absurd. He could see that. But something right at the back of his mind told him that it was not altogether absurd. And yet—— Love didn’t come like that—in a flash. You might just as well expect a house to spring into being in a moment. Or a ship. Or an automobile. Or a table. Or a—— He sat up with a jerk. In another instant he would have been asleep.

He thought of bed, but bed seemed a long way off—the deuce of a way. Acres of carpet to be crawled over, and then the dickens of a climb at the end of it. Besides undressing. Nuisance—undressing. That was a nice dress that girl had worn on the fourth day out. Tailor-made. He liked tailor-mades. He liked all her dresses. He liked her. Had she liked him? So hard to tell if you don’t get a chance of speaking. She was dark. Arthur liked blondes. Arthur was a fool! Good old Arthur! Glad he had made a success! Now he could marry if he liked. If he wasn’t so restless. If he didn’t feel that he couldn’t stop more than a day in any place. But would the girl have him? If they had never spoken it made it so hard to——

At this point he fell asleep.

★ 3 ★ _Mr. McEachern_

At the time when Jimmy slept in his chair, previous to being aroused from his slumbers by the invasion of Spike, a certain Mr. John McEachern, Captain of Police was seated in the parlour of his up-town villa, reading. He was a man built on a large scale. Everything about him was large—his hands, his feet, his shoulders, his chest, and particularly his jaw—which even in his moments of calm was aggressive, and which stood out, when anything happened to ruffle him, like the ram of a battleship. In his patrolman days, which had been passed mainly on the East Side, this jaw of his had acquired a reputation from Park Row to Fourteenth Street. No gang-fight, however absorbing, could retain the undivided attention of the young blood of the Bowery when Mr. McEachern’s jaw hove in sight, with the rest of his massive person in close attendance. He was a man who knew no fear, and he had gone through disorderly mobs like an east wind.

But there was another side to his character. In fact, that other side was so large that the rest of him, his readiness in combat and his zeal in breaking up public disturbances, might be said to have been only an offshoot. For his ambition was as large as his fist and as aggressive as his jaw. He had entered the Force with the single idea of becoming rich, and had set about achieving his object with a strenuous vigour that was as irresistible as his mighty locust-stick. Some policemen are born grafters, some achieve graft, and some have graft thrust upon them. Mr. McEachern had begun by being the first, had risen to the second, and for some years now had been a prominent member of the small and hugely-prosperous third-class, the class which does not go out seeking graft, but sits at home and lets graft come to them.

Though neither his name nor his financial methods suggested it, Mr. McEachern was by birth an English gentleman. His complete history would take long to write. Abridged, it may be told as follows. His real name was John Forrest, and he was the only son of one Eustace Forrest, at one time a major in the Guards. His only other relative was Edward, Eustace’s elder brother, a bachelor. When Mrs. Eustace died, four years after the marriage, the widower, having spent eighteen months at Monte Carlo working out an infallible system for breaking the bank, to the great contentment of M. Blanc and the management in general, proceeded to the gardens, where he shot himself in the orthodox way, leaving many liabilities, no assets, and one son.

Edward, by this time a man of substance in Lombard Street, adopted John, and sent him to a series of schools, beginning with a kindergarten and ending with Eton.

Unfortunately, Eton had demanded from John a higher standard of conduct than he was prepared to supply, and a week after his eighteenth birthday his career as an Etonian closed prematurely. Edward Forrest thereupon delivered his ultimatum. John could choose between the smallest of small posts in his uncle’s business and £100 in bank-notes, coupled with the usual hand-washing and disowning. John had reached out for that money almost before the words had left his uncle’s mouth. He left for Liverpool that day and for New York on the morrow.

He spent his hundred pounds, tried his hand without success at one or two odd jobs, and finally fell in with a friendly policeman, who, observing the young man’s physique, which even then was impressive, suggested that he should join the Force. The policeman, whose name was O’Flaherty, having talked the matter over with two other policemen whose names were O’Rourke and Muldoon, strongly recommended that he should change his name to something Irish, the better to equip him for his new profession. Accordingly, John Forrest ceased to be and Patrolman J. McEachern was born.

In his search for wealth he had been content to abide his time. He did not want the trifling sum which every New York policeman acquires. His object was something bigger, and he was prepared to wait for it. He knew that small beginnings were an annoying but unavoidable preliminary to all great fortunes. Probably Captain Kidd had started in a small way. Certainly Mr. Rockefeller had. He was content to follow in the footsteps of the masters.

A patrolman’s opportunities of amassing wealth are not great. Mr. McEachern had made the best of a bad job. He had not disdained the dollars which came as single spies rather than in battalions. Until the time should arrive when he might angle for whales he was prepared to catch sprats.

Much may be done, even on a small scale, by perseverance. In those early days Mr. McEachern’s observant eye had not failed to notice certain pedlars who obstructed the traffic, divers tradesmen who did the same by the pavement, and restaurant-keepers not a few with a distaste for closing at one o’clock in the morning. His researches in this field were not unprofitable. In a reasonably short space of time he had put by the $3,000 which were the price of his promotion to detective-sergeant. He did not like paying $3,000 for promotion, but there must be sinking of capital if an investment is to prosper. Mr. McEachern “came across”, and climbed one more step up the ladder.

As detective-sergeant he found his horizon enlarged. There was more scope for a man of parts. Things moved more rapidly. The world seemed full of philanthropists anxious to “dress his front” and do him other little kindnesses. Mr. McEachern was no churl. He let them dress his front; he accepted the little kindnesses. Presently he found that he had $15,000 to spare for any small flutter that might take his fancy. Singularly enough, this was the precise sum necessary to make him a captain.

He became a captain. And it was then that he discovered that El Dorado was no mere poet’s dream, and that Tom Tiddler’s Ground, where one might stand picking up gold and silver, was as definite a locality as Brooklyn or the Bronx. At last, after years of patient waiting, he stood like Moses on the mountain, looking down into the Promised Land. He had come to where the big money was.

The book he was reading now was the little note-book in which he kept a record of his investments, which were numerous and varied. That the contents were satisfactory was obvious at a glance. The smile on his face, and the reposeful position of his jaw were proof enough of that. There were notes relating to house property, railroad shares, and a dozen other profitable things. He was a rich man.

This was a fact which was entirely unsuspected by his neighbours, with whom he maintained somewhat distant relations, accepting no invitations and giving none. For Mr. McEachern was playing a big game. Other eminent buccaneers in his walk of life had been content to be rich men in a community where moderate means were the rule. But about Mr. McEachern there was a touch of the Napoleonic. He meant to get back into society—the society of England. Other people have noted the fact—which had impressed itself very firmly on the policeman’s mind—that between England and the United States there are 3,000 miles of deep water. In the United States he would be a retired police-captain; in England an American gentleman of large and independent means with a beautiful daughter.

That was the ruling impulse in his life—his daughter Molly. Though, if he had been a bachelor, he would certainly not have been satisfied to pursue a humble career aloof from graft; on the other hand, if it had not been for Molly he would not have felt, as he gathered in his dishonest wealth, that he was conducting a sort of Holy War. Ever since his wife had died, in his detective-sergeant days, leaving him with a year-old daughter, his ambitions had been inseparably connected with Molly.

All his thoughts were on the future. This New York life was only a preparation for the splendours to come. He spent not a dollar unnecessarily. When Molly was home from school they lived together simply and quietly in the small house which Molly’s taste made so comfortable. The neighbours, knowing his profession and seeing the modest scale on which he lived, told each other that here, at any rate, was a policeman whose hands were clean of graft. They did not know of the stream that poured week by week and year by year into his bank, to be diverted at intervals into the most profitable channels. Until the time should come for the great change, economy was his motto. The expenses of his home were kept within the bounds of his official salary. All extras went to swell his savings.

He closed his book with a contented sigh and lit another cigar. Cigars were his only personal luxury. He drank nothing, ate the simplest food, and made a suit of clothes last for quite an unusual length of time; but no passion for economy could make him deny himself smoke.

He sat on, thinking. It was very late, but he did not feel ready for bed. A great moment had arrived in his affairs. For days Wall Street had been undergoing one of its periodical fits of jumpiness. There had been rumours and counter-rumours, until finally from the confusion there had soared up like a rocket the one particular stock in which he was most largely interested. He had unloaded that morning, and the result had left him slightly dizzy. The main point to which his mind clung was that the time had come at last. He could make the great change now at any moment that suited him.

He was blowing clouds of smoke and gloating over this fact when the door opened, admitting a bull-terrier, a bulldog, and in the wake of the procession a girl in a kimono and red slippers.

★ 4 ★ _Molly_

“Why, Molly,” said the policeman, “what are you doing out of bed? I thought you were asleep.”

He placed a huge arm round her and drew her on to his lap. As she sat there his great bulk made her seem smaller than she really was. With her hair down, and her little red slippers dangling half a yard from the floor, she seemed a child. McEachern, looking at her, found it hard to realise that nineteen years had passed since the moment when the doctor’s raised eyebrows had reproved him for his monosyllabic reception of the news that the baby was a girl.

“Do you know what the time is?” he said. “Two o’clock.”

“Much too late for you to be sitting here smoking,” said Molly severely. “How many cigars do you smoke a day? Suppose you had married some one who wouldn’t let you smoke!”

“Never stop your husband smoking, my dear. That’s a bit of advice for you when you’re married.”

“I’m never going to marry. I’m going to stop at home and darn your socks.”

“I wish you could,” he said, drawing her closer to him. “But one of these days you’re going to marry a prince. And now run back to bed. It’s much too late——”

“It’s no good, father dear. I couldn’t get to sleep. I’ve been trying hard for hours. I’ve counted sheep till I nearly screamed. It’s Rastus’s fault; he snores so.”

Mr. McEachern regarded the erring bulldog sternly.

“Why do you have the brutes in your room?”

“Why, to keep the boogaboos from getting me of course. Aren’t you afraid of the boogaboos getting you? But you’re so big, you wouldn’t mind. You’d just hit them. And they’re not brutes—are you, darlings? You’re angels, and you nearly burst yourselves with joy because auntie had come back from England, didn’t you? Father, did they miss me when I was gone? Did they pine away?”

“They got like skeletons. We all did.”

“You?”

“I should say so.”

“Then why did you send me away?”

“I wanted you to see the country. Did you like it?”

“I hated being away from you.”

“But you liked the country?”

“I loved it.”

McEachern drew a breath of relief. The only possible obstacle to the great change did not exist.

“How would you like to go back to England, Molly?”

“To England. When I’ve just come home?”

“If I went, too?”

Molly twisted round so that she could see his face better.

“There’s something the matter with you, father. You’re trying to say something, and I want to know what it is. Tell me quick, or I’ll make Rastus bite you!”

“It won’t take long, dear. I’ve been lucky in some investments while you were away, and I’m going to leave the Force, and take you over to England and find a prince for you to marry—if you think you would like it.”

“Father! It’ll be perfectly splendid!”

She kissed him.

“What are you looking so thoughtful about, father?”

“Molly, I want to tell you something I have never told you before. I am English. I only took the name McEachern because they thought it would help me in the Force. Our real name is Forrest.”

“Father! But why haven’t you ever told me before?”

“I was afraid you might ask questions and find out things.”

She looked quickly at him.

“I was sent to America,” he went on, “because I was expelled from school for stealing.”

There was a silence. She caught the arm that was round her waist and gave it a little squeeze.

“What does it matter what you did when you were only a boy?” she said.

He did not look at her. There was a dull flush on his cheeks.

“We’ll go home, Molly,” he said. “I had a place in society over there till I threw it away, and, by Heaven, I’m going to get it back for you. You shall have a fair show, whatever I may have done. We shall not take the old name again. None of the return of the black sheep for me! I won’t have people looking down on you because your father——”

“But, father dear, it was so long ago. What does it matter? Who would remember?”

“Never mind. I couldn’t risk it. They might say what they pleased about me, but you’re going to start fair. Who’s to recognise me after all these years? I’m just John McEachern from America, and if anybody wants to know anything about me, I’m a man who has made money on Wall Street—and that’s no lie—and has come over to England to spend it.” Molly gave his arm another squeeze. Her eyes were wet.

“Father dear,” she whispered, “I believe you’ve been doing it all for me. You’ve been slaving away for me ever since I was born, stinting yourself and saving money just so that I could have a good time later on.”

“No, no!”

“It’s true,” she said. She turned on him with a tremulous laugh. “I don’t believe you’ve had enough to eat for years. I believe you’re all skin and bone. Never mind. To-morrow I’ll take you out and buy you the best dinner you’ve ever had out of my own money. We’ll go to the Ritz, and you shall start at the top of the menu and go straight down till you’ve had enough.”

“That will make up for everything. And now don’t you think you ought to be going to bed? You’ll be losing all that color you got on the ship.”

“Soon. Not just yet. I haven’t seen you for such ages.” She pointed at the bull-terrier. “Look at Tommy, standing there and staring. He can’t believe I’ve really come back. Father, there was a man on the _Mauretania_ with eyes exactly like Tommy’s—all brown and bright—and he used to stand and stare just like Tommy’s doing.”

“If I had been there,” said her father wrathfully, “I’d have knocked his head off.”

“No, you wouldn’t, because I’m sure he was really a very nice young man. He had a chin rather like yours, father. Besides, you couldn’t have got at him to knock his head off, because he was travelling second-class.”

“Second-class? Then you didn’t talk with him?”

“We couldn’t. You wouldn’t expect him to shout at me across the railing! Only whenever I walked round the deck he seemed to be there.”

“Staring?”

“He may not have been staring at me. Probably he was just looking the way the ship was going, and thinking of some girl in New York. I don’t think you can make much of a romance out of it, father.”

“I don’t want to, my dear. Princes don’t travel in the second cabin.”

“He may have been a prince in disguise.”

“More likely a commercial traveller,” grunted Mr. McEachern.

“Commercial travellers are often quite nice.”

“Princes are nicer.”

“Well, I’ll go to bed and dream of the nicest one I can think of. Come along, dogs. Stop biting my slipper, Tommy. Why can’t you behave like Rastus? Still, you don’t snore, do you? Aren’t you going to bed soon, father? I believe you’ve been sitting up late and getting into all sorts of bad habits while I’ve been away. I’m sure you have been smoking too much. When you’ve finished that cigar you’re not even to think of another till to-morrow. Promise!”

“Not one!”

“Not one. I’m not going to have my father getting like the people you read about in the magazine advertisements. You don’t want to feel sudden shooting pains, do you?”

“No, my dear.”

“And have to take some awful medicine?”

“No.”

“Then promise.”

“Very well, my dear. I promise.”

As the door closed he threw away the stump he was smoking, and remained for a few moments in thought.

Then he drew another cigar from his case, lit it, and resumed the study of the little note-book.

★ 5 ★ _A Thief in the Night_

How long the light had been darting about the room like a very-much-enlarged firefly Jimmy did not know. It seemed to him like hours, for it had woven itself into an incoherent waking dream of his; and for a moment, as the mists of sleep passed away from his brain, he fancied that he was dreaming still. Then sleep left him, and he realised that the light, which was now moving slowly across the bookcase, was a real light.

That the man behind it could not have been there long was plain, or he would have seen the chair and its occupant. He seemed to be taking the room step by step. As Jimmy sat up noiselessly, and gripped the arms of the chair in readiness for a spring, the light passed from the bookcase to the table. Another foot or so to the left, and it would have fallen on Jimmy.

On it came. From the position of the ray Jimmy could see that the burglar was approaching on his side of the table. Though, until that day, he had not been in the room for two months, its geography was clearly stamped on his mind’s eye. He knew almost to a foot where his visitor was standing. Consequently when, rising swiftly from the chair he made a football dive into the darkness, it was no speculative dive. It had a conscious aim, and it was not restrained by any uncertainty as to whether the road to the burglar’s knees was clear or not.

His shoulder bumped into a human leg. His arms closed instantaneously on it and pulled. There was a yelp of dismay and a crash. The lantern bounced away across the room and wrecked itself on the roof of the steam-heater. Its owner collapsed in a heap on top of Jimmy.

Jimmy, underneath at the fall, speedily put himself uppermost with a twist of his body. He had every advantage. The burglar was a small man, and had been taken very much by surprise, and any fight there might have been in him in normal circumstances had been shaken out of him by the fall. He lay still, not attempting to struggle.