Part 15

Mrs. Rogaum also chattered, the significance of Theresa’s absence all the more painfully emphasized by this.

The officer did not at first get the import of this. He was only interested in the facts of the present case.

“You say she was here when you come? Where was you?”

“I say I vass for my daughter loog. I come here, und der vooman vass here now alretty.”

“Yes. What time was this?”

“Only now yet. Yussed a half-hour.”

Officer Maguire had strolled up, after chasing away a small crowd that had gathered with fierce and unholy threats. For the first time now he noticed the peculiar perturbation of the usually placid German couple.

“What about your daughter?” he asked, catching a word as to that.

Both old people raised their voices at once.

“She haf gone. She haf run avay. Ach, himmel, ve must for her loog. Quick--she could not get in. Ve had der door shut.”

“Locked her out, eh?” inquired Maguire after a time, hearing much of the rest of the story.

“Yes,” explained Rogaum. “It was to schkare her a liddle. She vould not come ven I called.”

“Sure, that’s the girl we saw walkin’ with young Almerting, do ye mind? The one in the white dress,” said Delahanty to Maguire.

“White dress, yah!” echoed Rogaum, and then the fact of her walking with some one came home like a blow.

“Did you hear dot?” he exclaimed even as Mrs. Rogaum did likewise. “_Mein Gott, hast du das gehoert?_”

He fairly jumped as he said it. His hands flew up to his stout and ruddy head.

“Whaddy ya want to let her out for nights?” asked Maguire roughly, catching the drift of the situation. “That’s no time for young girls to be out, anyhow, and with these toughs around here. Sure, I saw her, nearly two hours ago.”

“Ach,” groaned Rogaum. “Two hours yet. Ho, ho, ho!” His voice was quite hysteric.

“Well, go on in,” said Officer Delahanty. “There’s no use yellin’ out here. Give us a description of her an’ we’ll send out an alarm. You won’t be able to find her walkin’ around.”

Her parents described her exactly. The two men turned to the nearest police box and then disappeared, leaving the old German couple in the throes of distress. A time-worn old church-clock nearby now chimed out one and then two. The notes cut like knives. Mrs. Rogaum began fearfully to cry. Rogaum walked and blustered to himself.

“It’s a queer case, that,” said Officer Delahanty to Maguire after having reported the matter of Theresa, but referring solely to the outcast of the doorway so recently sent away and in whose fate they were much more interested. She being a part of the commercialized vice of the city, they were curious as to the cause of her suicide. “I think I know that woman. I think I know where she came from. You do, too--Adele’s, around the corner, eh? She didn’t come into that doorway by herself, either. She was put there. You know how they do.”

“You’re right,” said Maguire. “She was put there, all right, and that’s just where she come from, too.”

The two of them now tipped up their noses and cocked their eyes significantly.

“Let’s go around,” added Maguire.

They went, the significant red light over the transom at 68 telling its own story. Strolling leisurely up, they knocked. At the very first sound a painted denizen of the half-world opened the door.

“Where’s Adele?” asked Maguire as the two, hats on as usual, stepped in.

“She’s gone to bed.”

“Tell her to come down.”

They seated themselves deliberately in the gaudy mirrored parlor and waited, conversing between themselves in whispers. Presently a sleepy-looking woman of forty in a gaudy robe of heavy texture, and slippered in red, appeared.

“We’re here about that suicide case you had to-night. What about it? Who was she? How’d she come to be in that doorway around the corner? Come, now,” Maguire added, as the madam assumed an air of mingled injured and ignorant innocence, “you know. Can that stuff! How did she come to take poison?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the woman with the utmost air of innocence. “I never heard of any suicide.”

“Aw, come now,” insisted Delahanty, “the girl around the corner. You know. We know you’ve got a pull, but we’ve got to know about this case, just the same. Come across now. It won’t be published. What made her take the poison?”

Under the steady eyes of the officers the woman hesitated, but finally weakened.

“Why--why--her lover went back on her--that’s all. She got so blue we just couldn’t do anything with her. I tried to, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Lover, eh?” put in Maguire as though that were the most unheard-of thing in the world. “What was his name?”

“I don’t know. You never can tell that.”

“What was her name--Annie?” asked Delahanty wisely, as though he knew but was merely inquiring for form’s sake.

“No--Emily.”

“Well, how did she come to get over there, anyhow?” inquired Maguire most pleasantly.

“George took her,” she replied, referring to a man-of-all-work about the place.

Then little by little as they sat there the whole miserable story came out, miserable as all the wilfulness and error and suffering of the world.

“How old was she?”

“Oh, twenty-one.”

“Well, where’d she come from?”

“Oh, here in New York. Her family locked her out one night, I think.”

Something in the way the woman said this last brought old Rogaum and his daughter back to the policemen’s minds. They had forgotten all about her by now, although they had turned in an alarm. Fearing to interfere too much with this well-known and politically controlled institution, the two men left, but outside they fell to talking of the other case.

“We ought to tell old Rogaum about her some time,” said Maguire to Delahanty cynically. “He locked his kid out to-night.”

“Yes, it might be a good thing for him to hear that,” replied the other. “We’d better go round there an’ see if his girl’s back yet. She may be back by now,” and so they returned but little disturbed by the joint miseries.

At Rogaum’s door they once more knocked loudly.

“Is your daughter back again?” asked Maguire when a reply was had.

“Ach, no,” replied the hysterical Mrs. Rogaum, who was quite alone now. “My husband he haf gone oudt again to loog vunce more. Oh, my! Oh, my!”

“Well, that’s what you get for lockin’ her out,” returned Maguire loftily, the other story fresh in his mind. “That other girl downstairs here to-night was locked out too, once.” He chanced to have a girl-child of his own and somehow he was in the mood for pointing a moral. “You oughtn’t to do anything like that. Where d’yuh expect she’s goin’ to if you lock her out?”

Mrs. Rogaum groaned. She explained that it was not her fault, but anyhow it was carrying coals to Newcastle to talk to her so. The advice was better for her husband.

The pair finally returned to the station to see if the call had been attended to.

“Sure,” said the sergeant, “certainly. Whaddy ya think?” and he read from the blotter before him:

“‘Look out for girl, Theresa Rogaum. Aged 18; height, about 5, 3; light hair, blue eyes, white cotton dress, trimmed with blue ribbon. Last seen with lad named Almerting, about 19 years of age, about 5, 9; weight 135 pounds.’”

There were other details even more pointed and conclusive. For over an hour now, supposedly, policemen from the Battery to Harlem, and far beyond, had been scanning long streets and dim shadows for a girl in a white dress with a youth of nineteen,--supposedly.

Officer Halsey, another of this region, which took in a portion of Washington Square, had seen a good many couples this pleasant summer evening since the description of Theresa and Almerting had been read to him over the telephone, but none that answered to these. Like Maguire and Delahanty, he was more or less indifferent to all such cases, but idling on a corner near the park at about three a.m., a brother officer, one Paisly by name, came up and casually mentioned the missing pair also.

“I bet I saw that couple, not over an hour ago. She was dressed in white, and looked to me as if she didn’t want to be out. I didn’t happen to think at the time, but now I remember. They acted sort o’ funny. She did, anyhow. They went in this park down at the Fourth Street end there.”

“Supposing we beat it, then,” suggested Halsey, weary for something to do.

“Sure,” said the other quickly, and together they began a careful search, kicking around in the moonlight under the trees. The moon was leaning moderately toward the west, and all the branches were silvered with light and dew. Among the flowers, past clumps of bushes, near the fountain, they searched, each one going his way alone. At last, the wandering Halsey paused beside a thick clump of flaming bushes, ruddy, slightly, even in the light. A murmur of voices greeted him, and something very much like the sound of a sob.

“What’s that?” he said mentally, drawing near and listening.

“Why don’t you come on now?” said the first of the voices heard. “They won’t let you in any more. You’re with me, ain’t you? What’s the use cryin’?”

No answer to this, but no sobs. She must have been crying silently.

“Come on. I can take care of yuh. We can live in Hoboken. I know a place where we can go to-night. That’s all right.”

There was a movement as if the speaker were patting her on the shoulder.

“What’s the use cryin’? Don’t you believe I love yuh?”

The officer who had stolen quietly around to get a better view now came closer. He wanted to see for himself. In the moonlight, from a comfortable distance, he could see them seated. The tall bushes were almost all about the bench. In the arms of the youth was the girl in white, held very close. Leaning over to get a better view, he saw him kiss her and hold her--hold her in such a way that she could but yield to him, whatever her slight disinclination.

It was a common affair at earlier hours, but rather interesting now. The officer was interested. He crept nearer.

“What are you two doin’ here?” he suddenly inquired, rising before them, as though he had not seen.

The girl tumbled out of her compromising position, speechless and blushing violently. The young man stood up, nervous, but still defiant.

“Aw, we were just sittin’ here,” he replied.

“Yes? Well, say, what’s your name? I think we’re lookin’ for you two, anyhow. Almerting?”

“That’s me,” said the youth.

“And yours?” he added, addressing Theresa.

“Theresa Rogaum,” replied the latter brokenly, beginning to cry.

“Well, you two’ll have to come along with me,” he added laconically. “The Captain wants to see both of you,” and he marched them solemnly away.

“What for?” young Almerting ventured to inquire after a time, blanched with fright.

“Never mind,” replied the policeman irritably. “Come along, you’ll find out at the station-house. We want you both. That’s enough.”

At the other end of the park Paisly joined them, and, at the station-house, the girl was given a chair. She was all tears and melancholy with a modicum possibly of relief at being thus rescued from the world. Her companion, for all his youth, was defiant if circumspect, a natural animal defeated of its aim.

“Better go for her father,” commented the sergeant, and by four in the morning old Rogaum, who had still been up and walking the floor, was rushing stationward. From an earlier rage he had passed to an almost killing grief, but now at the thought that he might possibly see his daughter alive and well once more he was overflowing with a mingled emotion which contained rage, fear, sorrow, and a number of other things. What should he do to her if she were alive? Beat her? Kiss her? Or what? Arrived at the station, however, and seeing his fair Theresa in the hands of the police, and this young stranger lingering near, also detained, he was beside himself with fear, rage, affection.

“You! You!” he exclaimed at once, glaring at the imperturbable Almerting, when told that this was the young man who was found with his girl. Then, seized with a sudden horror, he added, turning to Theresa, “Vot haf you done? Oh, oh! You! You!” he repeated again to Almerting angrily, now that he felt that his daughter was safe. “Come not near my tochter any more! I vill preak your effery pone, du teufel, du!”

He made a move toward the incarcerated lover, but here the sergeant interfered.

“Stop that, now,” he said calmly. “Take your daughter out of here and go home, or I’ll lock you both up. We don’t want any fighting in here. D’ye hear? Keep your daughter off the streets hereafter, then she won’t get into trouble. Don’t let her run around with such young toughs as this.” Almerting winced. “Then there won’t anything happen to her. We’ll do whatever punishing’s to be done.”

“Aw, what’s eatin’ him!” commented Almerting dourly, now that he felt himself reasonably safe from a personal encounter. “What have I done? He locked her out, didn’t he? I was just keepin’ her company till morning.”

“Yes, we know all about that,” said the sergeant, “and about you, too. You shut up, or you’ll go down-town to Special Sessions. I want no guff out o’ you.” Still he ordered the butcher angrily to be gone.

Old Rogaum heard nothing. He had his daughter. He was taking her home. She was not dead--not even morally injured in so far as he could learn. He was a compound of wondrous feelings. What to do was beyond him.

At the corner near the butcher shop they encountered the wakeful Maguire, still idling, as they passed. He was pleased to see that Rogaum had his Theresa once more. It raised him to a high, moralizing height.

“Don’t lock her out any more,” he called significantly. “That’s what brought the other girl to your door, you know!”

“Vot iss dot?” said Rogaum.

“I say the other girl was locked out. That’s why she committed suicide.”

“Ach, I know,” said the husky German under his breath, but he had no intention of locking her out. He did not know what he would do until they were in the presence of his crying wife, who fell upon Theresa, weeping. Then he decided to be reasonably lenient.

“She vass like you,” said the old mother to the wandering Theresa, ignorant of the seeming lesson brought to their very door. “She vass loog like you.”

“I vill not vip you now,” said the old butcher solemnly, too delighted to think of punishment after having feared every horror under the sun, “aber, go not oudt any more. Keep off de streads so late. I von’t haf it. Dot loafer, aber--let him yussed come here some more! I fix him!”

“No, no,” said the fat mother tearfully, smoothing her daughter’s hair. “She vouldn’t run avay no more yet, no, no.” Old Mrs. Rogaum was all mother.

“Well, you wouldn’t let me in,” insisted Theresa, “and I didn’t have any place to go. What do you want me to do? I’m not going to stay in the house all the time.”

“I fix him!” roared Rogaum, unloading all his rage now on the recreant lover freely. “Yussed let him come some more! Der penitentiary he should haf!”

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” Theresa told her mother, almost a heroine now that she was home and safe. “He’s Mr. Almerting, the stationer’s boy. They live here in the next block.”

“Don’t you ever bother that girl again,” the sergeant was saying to young Almerting as he turned him loose an hour later. “If you do, we’ll get you, and you won’t get off under six months. Y’ hear me, do you?”

“Aw, I don’t want ’er,” replied the boy truculently and cynically. “Let him have his old daughter. What’d he want to lock ’er out for? They’d better not lock ’er out again though, that’s all I say. I don’t want ’er.”

“Beat it!” replied the sergeant, and away he went.

WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR?

It was a sweltering noon in July. Gregory, after several months of meditation on the warning given him by his political friend, during which time nothing to substantiate it had occurred, was making ready to return to the seaside hotel to which his present prosperity entitled him. It was a great affair, the Triton, about sixty minutes from his office, facing the sea and amid the pines and sands of the Island. His wife, ‘the girl,’ as he conventionally referred to her, had been compelled, in spite of the plot which had been revealed or suggested, owing to the ailing state of their child, to go up to the mountains to her mother for advice and comfort. Owing to the imminence of the fall campaign, however, he could not possibly leave. Weekdays and Sundays, and occasionally nights, he was busy ferreting out and substantiating one fact and another in regard to the mismanagement of the city, which was to be used as ammunition a little later on. The mayor and his “ring,” as it was called, was to be ousted at all costs. He, Gregory, was certain to be rewarded if that came to pass. In spite of that he was eminently sincere as to the value and even the necessity of what he was doing. The city was being grossly mismanaged. What greater labor than to worm out the details and expose them to the gaze of an abused and irritated citizenship?

But the enemy itself was not helpless. A gentleman in the publishing business of whom he had never even heard called to offer him a position in the Middle West which would take him out of the city for four or five years at the least, and pay him six or seven thousand dollars a year. On his failure to be interested some of his mail began to disappear, and it seemed to him as though divers strange characters were taking a peculiar and undue interest in his movements. Lastly, one of the politicians connected with his own party called to see him at his office.

“You see, Gregory, it’s this way,” he said after a short preamble, “you have got a line as to what’s going on in connection with that South Penyank land transfer. The mayor is in on that, but he is absolutely determined that the public is not going to find it out, and so is his partner, Tilney--not until after the election, anyhow. They are prepared to use some pretty rough methods, so look out for yourself. You’re fond of your wife, are you? Well, keep her close beside you, and the kid. Don’t let them get you away from her, even for a moment, where you shouldn’t be. You saw what happened to Crothers two or three years ago, didn’t you? He was about to expose that Yellow Point Ferry deal, but of course no one knew anything about that--and then, zip!--all at once he was arrested on an old charge of desertion, an old debt that he had failed to pay was produced and his furniture seized, and his wife was induced to leave him. Don’t let them catch you in the same way. If you have any debts bring them to us and let us see what we can do about them. And if you are interested in any other woman, break it off, send her away, get rid of her.”

Gregory viewed him with an irritated, half-pitying smile.

“There isn’t any other woman,” he said simply. Think of his being faithless to “the girl” and the kid--the blue-eyed, pink-toed kid!

“Don’t think I’m trying to pry into your affairs,” went on the politician. “I’m just telling you. If you need any further advice or help, come to me. But whatever you do, look out for yourself,” and with that he put on his high silk hat and departed.

Gregory stood in the center of his office after his visitor had gone, and gazed intently at the floor. Certainly, from what he had discovered so far, he could readily believe that the mayor would do just what his friend had said. And as for the mayor’s friend, the real estate plunger, it was plain from his whispered history that no tricks or brutalities were beneath him. Another politician had once said in describing him that he would not stop short of murder, but that one would never catch him red-handed or in any other way, and certainly that appeared to be true. He was wealthier, more powerful, than he had ever been, much more so than the mayor.

Since he and his wife had come to this seaside hotel several things had occurred which caused him to think that something might happen, although there was no evidence as yet that his suspicions were well-founded. An unctuous, over-dressed, bejeweled, semi-sporty widow of forty had arrived, a business woman, she indicated herself to be, conducting a highly successful theatrical agency in the great city, and consequently weltering in what one of Gregory’s friends was wont to describe as “the sinews of war.” She abounded in brown and wine-colored silks, brown slippers and stockings, a wealth of suspiciously lustrous auburn hair. Her car, for she had one, was of respectable reputation. Her skill and willingness to risk at whist of good report. She was, in the parlance of the hotel clerks and idlers of the Triton veranda, a cheerful and liberal spender. Even while Mrs. Gregory was at Triton Hall, Mrs. Skelton had arrived, making herself comfortable in two rooms and bath on the sea front, and finding familiar friends in the manager and several stalwart idlers who appeared to be brokers and real estate dealers, and who took a respectable interest in golf, tennis, and the Triton Grill. She was unctuous, hearty, optimistic, and neither Gregory nor his wife could help liking her a little. But before leaving, his wife had casually wondered whether Mrs. Skelton would be one to engage in such a plot. Her friendliness, while possible of any interpretation, was still general enough to be free of suspicion. She might be looking for just such a situation as this, though--to find Gregory alone.

“Do be careful, dear,” his wife cautioned. “If you become too doubtful, leave and go to another place. At least that will compel them to provide another set of people.” And off she went, fairly serene in her faith in her husband’s ability to manage the matter.

Thus, much against his will, at first, Gregory found himself alone. He began to wonder if he should leave, or weather it out, as he expressed it to himself. Why should he be driven from the one comfortable hotel on this nearest beach, and that when he most needed it, away from a region where he was regularly encountering most of his political friends, particularly at week-ends? For so near a place it had many advantages: a delightful golf course, several tennis courts, food and rooms reasonably well above complaint, and a refreshing and delightful view of the sea over a broad lawn. Besides it was absolutely necessary for him to be in the nearby city the greater portion of every single working day. His peculiar and pressing investigation demanded it and a comfortable place to rest and recuperate at night was also imperative.

“It’s beautiful here,” he said to himself finally, “and here is where I stick. I haven’t a car, and where is there any other place as convenient? Besides, if they’re going to follow me, they’re going to follow me.”

In consequence, he traveled meditatively back and forth between this place and the city, thinking of what might happen. Becoming a little doubtful, he decided to call on Frank Blount and talk it over with him. Blount was an old newspaper man who had first turned lawyer and then broker. Seemingly clientless the major portion of the time, he still prospered mightily. A lorn bachelor, he had three clubs, several hotels, and a dozen country homes to visit, to say nothing of a high power car. Just now he was held unduly close to his work, and so was frequenting this coast. He liked golf and tennis, and, incidentally, Gregory, whom he wished to see prosper though he could not quite direct him in the proper way. Reaching the city one morning, Gregory betook him to Blount’s office, and there laid the whole case before him.

“Now, that’s the way it is,” he concluded, staring at the pink cheeks and partially bald head of his friend, “and I would like to know what you would do if you were in my place.”

Blount gazed thoughtfully out through the high towers of the city to the blue sky beyond, while he drummed with his fingers on the glass top of his desk.