Part 23

Yet, presumptuous or not, Hampstead's reasonings had led him quickly to the one outstanding fact: His knowledge of who did steal the diamonds could never be used in his defense. His vindication must depend solely on the inability of Miss Dounay to prove her case. This in itself put him in a negative and an unnatural position, an all but helpless position. His nature was aggressive. He was a fighter, not a "stander." Instead of vindication, he could never get more than a Scotch verdict of "not proven." He would have to face the community with that. Well, thank God, he was strong enough for that; strong enough to simply stand and endure! Yes, testing his moral fiber by the best judgment he could form of what the strain would be like, he felt equal to the load. In the consciousness of this strength, his shoulders stiffened with pride and a sort of eagerness to take up their burden. A sense of triumph even came to him. This self-deluding woman should see how strong he was, and how unshakable was the faith of the community in the integrity of his character.

But when the minister, rather calmed by having hardened himself thus against what appeared to be coming upon him, lifted his eyes suddenly from the deck, he was disconcerted to observe a group of people eyeing him curiously at a distance of some dozen or twenty feet. These were people whom he did not recognize, but some one of them evidently knew him and had pointed him out to the rest. He reflected that they must have been watching him for some time. No doubt they had observed his demeanor as he read the paper, and afterwards when he tossed it away in anger. He must have made quite an exhibition of himself, and it gave him a creepy sensation to catch these curious, unfeeling eyes upon him as if they viewed the struggles of a fly in a spider's web. It made him feel that he was entangled, and he began to realize what a diversion his entanglement would afford this whole metropolitan community, and that to-night, through the headlines in the papers, everybody was watching him just as these people were. He reflected, too, that there is a fascination about watching the fall of a tall tree, of a tall flagpole, or of a tall human being. At the moment Hampstead did not feel so very tall; yet he knew that deservedly or undeservedly, he was upon a position of eminence, and his fall would afford an interesting spectacle.

However, he did not intend to fall. Rising vigorously from his seat, the minister confronted with a smile the group who had been gazing at him. "Good evening, gentlemen," he said pleasantly, and walked toward the front of the boat.

"Some nerve, what!" was a comment that broke out of the group as he passed it. Whether the words were meant for his ears or not, they reached them and caused another smile.

"I'll show them nerve!" he mused, with foolish but very human pride.

Mingling in the crowd which trampled and elbowed its way off the boat, the minister was careful to bear himself with open-eyed good cheer. He kept his chin up, a self-confident smile upon his face, and his eyes roving for a sight of familiar faces. Whenever he caught the eye of an acquaintance, the greeting he bestowed was hearty and betokened a man without the slightest cause for anxiety of any sort.

Nevertheless, it was disturbing to perceive that people rather avoided his eye. Generally quite the reverse was true, and it was rare upon the boat that some one did not approach him and fall into conversation. Yet so subtle is that mysterious psychology of the social impulse that now a mere publication of the fact that he was to be arrested, even accompanied, as it was, by the statement that nobody believed him guilty, had yet sufficient influence to make him shunned. What a silly world it was, after all!

But in making the transfer from the ferry to the suburban train, there was a walk of two hundred feet, with a news stand on the way, and then fresh disillusionment lay in wait for Doctor Hampstead, in the form of a later edition of another Oakland paper.

"CLERIC FLIES ARREST," bawled this headline stridently.

The minister's lip curled sarcastically at sight of this, but he bought the paper, reading as he walked to the car steps. But the sub-head was more disturbing. "Hampstead's Premises Searched," it declared, the types seeming to scream the words exultantly.

Searched--and in his absence! This was outrageous! More; it was alarming, for there were papers in his study which he had good reason for keeping from the eyes of the police. Fortunately, however, the most important of these were in the safe deposit box. He felt deeply grateful now for this box, the key to which was in his pocket; and after a sympathetic thought for Rose, Dick, and Tayna, and the excited, bewildered state in which they must have received the officers, the clergyman turned his mind to a contemplation of this new account in detail, and thereby got his first real taste of what an unfriendly attitude on the part of a newspaper can make of the most innocent circumstances.

Up to now, the minister, his utterances, his denunciations, even his moral crusades, had been popular. The papers had put the most favorable construction upon all his acts. Their columns and their headlines had done him respect and honor. But now this paper had put every circumstance in the worst possible light. It cleverly touched up those scenes in the picture which looked incriminating and left the others unillumined, until one would never gather from the story that there was any reason to doubt the guilt or the guilty flight of the minister.

Hampstead attributed this to mere unfriendliness, never suspecting that in one hour between editions an editor could have subtly sensed a popular readiness to accept the worst view of his case, and deliberately pandered to it as a mere matter of commercial newsmongering; nor that this unfavorable account was to be accepted as the first straw blown up in a hurricane of adverse criticism which would rise and sweep over the city and blow its very hardest in the aisles of All People's Church itself.

The effect of this narrative upon Hampstead's mind was unspeakably oppressive, and he looked up from its perusal with relief and pleasure at finding a well-known physician in the seat beside him. The doctor was prominent in the work of one of the Encina churches, and had been particularly sympathetic with Hampstead in campaigns against petty crime. The minister had a right, therefore, to feel that this man was one of his friends; yet the physician greeted him with a self-conscious air and immediately relapsed into silence. Hampstead endured this until the humor of the situation forced itself upon him.

"Oh, cheer up," he laughed, poking the physician with an elbow. "You probably know worse people than diamond thieves."

The doctor also laughed and disclaimed any sense of gloom, but his was an embarrassed merriment, and he refrained from meeting the eye of the minister. However, after another interval of silence, as if feeling that he should at any rate say something, he reached over and laid a patronizing hand upon the minister's knee.

"Of course, Doctor Hampstead," he suggested, "every one is confident you will be able to prove your innocence."

The minister made an ejaculation that was short and sharp.

The doctor looked at him with surprise, as if questioning whether he heard aright.

"Under the law, I thought a man was presumed to be innocent, and that his accusers had to prove his guilt," went on Hampstead.

The doctor flushed slightly, and while his eyes roved through the car window, declared:

"Well, I am afraid, Doctor Hampstead, you will find that a public man against whom a charge like this is hurled is presumed to be guilty until he proves himself innocent."

"That is your attitude?" inquired Hampstead coldly.

"Oh, by no means," protested the physician.

"It is his attitude all the same," commented the minister to himself, somewhat bitterly, as he descended from the train at the station nearest his home.

"How does he take it?" asked one sage citizen, crowding into the vacant seat beside the physician, while a second leaned over from behind to hear the answer.

"Very much worried," replied the doctor, as gravely and as oracularly as he would have pronounced upon another man's patient. "Very much worried!"

"Would you believe," the physician inquired presently of the first citizen, with a hesitating and extremely confidential air, "would you believe that Doctor Hampstead would say 'hell'--outside of a sermon, I mean?"

"No," answered the man addressed, "I would not," and his eyebrows were lifted, while his whole face expressed surprise, shock, and a desire for confirmation.

"Well," concluded the doctor enigmatically, "neither would I." And that was all Doctor Mann did say upon the subject, yet citizen number one, while casting the dice with citizen number two at the Tobacco Emporium on the corner next the railroad station to see which should pay for their after-dinner smoke, communicated in confidence that the Reverend Hampstead had, in the stress of his emotion, uttered an oath; in fact, and to be specific, had said that his persecutors, all and singular, and this actress woman in particular, could go to hell!

This conference between citizen one and two may have been overheard. An inference that it was so overheard might have been drawn from the columns of _The Sentinel_, which next morning concluded its story of the remarkable developments of the night with the observation that the character of the minister was evidently cracking under the strain, since last night upon the suburban train, when a friend addressed him with a solicitous inquiry, the accused clergyman had broken into a stream of profane objurgations loud enough to be heard above the roar of the train in several seats around. It was added that the reverend gentleman quickly regained control of his feelings and apologized for his form of expression by saying that he had been overworked for a long time and the developments of the day had seriously upset him.

John Hampstead read this particular paragraph in _The Sentinel_ with a sense of utter amazement at the wicked mendacity of public rumor, since what he had said to Doctor Mann was merely "Humph!" uttered with sharp and scornful emphasis.

But there was a far bigger story than that in the morning _Sentinel_. It had to do with those things which happened between the hour when John Hampstead dropped from his train, a little irritated with Doctor Mann, and the hour when he went to bed, but not to sleep.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

*THE ARREST*

As the perturbed minister, hurrying from the train, turned into the short street leading toward his home upon the Bay-side, he was charged upon by Dick and Tayna, both of whom, in the state of their emotion, forgot High School dignity and came rushing upon their uncle with feet thudding like running ostriches. Tayna's cheeks were red as her Titian hair with flaming indignation, and her eyes burned like lights, while her full red lips pouted out: "Isn't it a shame?"

"It's a darn piece of blackmail, that's what it is, and it's actionable, too!"

This oracular verdict, of course, came panting from the lips of Dick, who, over-exerted by his run, stood with arms akimbo, hands holding his sides, and his too heavy head tipping backward on his shoulders, while with scrutinizing eye he studied the face of his uncle.

As for Hampstead, in the devoted loyalty of these fatherless children and the distress of mind which each exhibited, he entirely forgot the sense of hot injustice and wrong burning in his own breast. All the emotion he was then capable of turned itself into sympathy for them and solicitous anticipations as to the effect of the whole wretched business upon his sister Rose. With a sweep of his strong arms, he gathered the two young people to his breast, printing a kiss on Tayna's cheek, which he found burning hot, and squeezing Dick until the stripling gasped and struggled for release as he used to do when a squirming youngster. With his arms still affectionately about the shoulders of the two, Hampstead walked on down the street, palm-studded, with flower-bordered skirts of green on either side and the blue vista of the Bay showing dimly in the growing dusk.

Rose was waiting on the piazza. Her face was very calm, yet to John's keen eye, it bore a look of desperately mustered self-control. With the ready intuition of her sex, she had divined far more completely than her brother how desperate and dangerous was the struggle upon which he was entering, and she was determined to give him every advantage that sympathy, poise, and unwavering loyalty could supply.

"It's all right, Rose, all right," he hastened to assure her, as the steps were mounted. "A mere extravagance of an excited woman that the papers have made into a great sensation. It will melt away like fog. We are helpless for a few days until I can demand and receive a hearing upon preliminary trial. That will show that they have no case at all. Until then, we must simply stand and be strong."

Rose was already in her brother's arms, yet his speech, instead of reassuring her, made the tears flow.

"It is so--so humiliating to think of you defending yourself," she protested, "to hear you talk of their inability to make out a case. It seems so--so lowering, as if you were going to be put on trial just like a criminal."

"Why," replied John, "that's just what it all means. _Just like a criminal!_"

He said the thing strongly enough, but after it came a choke in the throat. He had not really comprehended this before. He had thought of making his defense from the standpoint of the popular idol that he was. As a matter of fact, he was going to trial like any criminal. His vantage ground was merely that of the prisoner at the bar. This prepared him for what Rose had to say next; for subtly perceiving that her brother had sustained an additional shock, her own self-control revived. Wiping her eyes, she turned to lead the way within.

"They," she said solemnly, "are waiting in the study."

"They?" inquired Hampstead.

"There are four men in there," Rose replied. "They want," and her voice threatened to break, "they want you!"

At this bald putting of the horrible fact, Tayna burst into a wail of woe and flung her arms about her uncle, whom she had followed into the hall.

"There, there, girl, don't cry," urged her uncle soothingly. "There is no occasion for it; this is annoying but not necessarily distressing. It is a mere formality of the law which must be complied with. Run along now, all of you, and wash the tears out of your eyes. I will be with you in five minutes. Let us sit down to a happy, cheerful dinner. I confess I am a little upset myself, but not too disturbed to be hungry," and with a weak attempt at grimacing humor, the big man laid a hand upon the region of his diaphragm.

In his study, as Rose had forewarned him, the minister found four men: Searle, Assistant District Attorney; Wyatt, Deputy Sheriff; and two city detectives.

Searle was a suave, resourceful man and the one assistant in the District Attorney's office whom Hampstead had found himself unable to trust; and that rather because of his personal and political associations than for any overt act of which the minister was cognizant.

Wyatt was a bloated person, amiable in disposition, whose excess of egotism was coupled with a paucity of intelligence, yet wholly incorruptible and with an exaggerated sense of duty that made him a capable officer,--a thing with which his breeding, which was obtrusively low, did not interfere.

Hampstead was able to master his feelings sufficiently to greet the quartet urbanely, if not cordially.

"A disagreeable duty, I assure you," conceded Searle.

"A disagreeable experience," laughed Hampstead, but with no great suggestion of levity.

"I guess I don't need to read this to you, Doc," said the Deputy Sheriff, as he opened to Hampstead a document drawn from his pocket. "It is a warrant for your arrest."

The minister took the document and glanced it through, his eyes hesitating for a moment at the name of the complaining witness.

"Alice Higgins?" he asked, with an inquiring glance.

"The true name of the complaining witness and accuser," replied Searle.

"Oh, I see," assented John.

It had never occurred to him that Marien Dounay was only a stage name. Was there anything at all about this woman that was not false, he wondered.

John returned the warrant to Wyatt and caught the look in that officer's eye. A sense of the horrible indignity of arrest came over the minister, a perception of what it meant: this yielding of one's liberty, of one's body to the possession of another, who might be a coarser and more inferior person than one's self. With a guilty flush, John thought how many times in his crusades against the gamblers and small law-breakers he had procured the swearing out of complaints that led to the arrest of scores of men. He had marveled at the venomous hatred which those men later displayed toward himself, regarding him as the author of a public disgrace put upon them, and not upon them alone but upon their families also. Now he understood.

"The bail is fixed at ten thousand dollars," explained Searle smoothly. "When we got your telephone message that you would be home at seven o'clock, I took the liberty of arranging for Judge Brennan to be in his chambers at nine to-night so that you could be there with your bondsmen and not have to spend the night in jail."

"That was very considerate of you," assented the minister, a huskiness in his tone despite himself.

The night in jail! The very idea. And ten thousand dollars bail! He had expected to be released upon his own recognizance. Again that disagreeable intimation of being treated like a common criminal came crowding in with a suffocating effect upon his spirit. But he rallied, exclaiming with another effort at easy urbanity: "Very well, I acknowledge my arrest, and it will be unnecessary to detain you gentlemen further. I shall be glad to meet you with my bondsmen in the judge's chambers."

The Deputy Sheriff coughed in an embarrassed way, but stood stolidly before his prisoner.

"I am sorry, Doctor Hampstead," explained Searle, "but we shall have to search you. Benson's men here will do that."

"Search me?" exclaimed Hampstead, with a sudden sense of insult. "By the appearance of things," he added, while casting a sarcastic look at the signs of disorder about, "I should think this farce had been carried far enough. You did not find the diamonds here. You do not expect to find them upon my person, do you?"

The speaker's tones witnessed a natural indignation and considerable irritability.

"I got to do my duty," replied Wyatt stubbornly, making a sign to the two detectives, who immediately arose and advanced upon the minister.

For an instant the situation was exceedingly tense. Hampstead was a very strong man, and his resentment at what seemed an insult put upon him with malice, was very hot. But good sense triumphed in the interval of thought which the officers diplomatically allowed.

"Oh, of course," he exclaimed with a gesture of submission, "you men are only cogs. Once the machinery of the law is put in motion, you must turn with the other wheels. Pardon my irritation, gentlemen, but the situation is unusual for me and rather hard. I feel the injustice and indignity of it very keenly."

"We appreciate your situation perfectly," said Assistant District Attorney Searle smoothly. "As you say, we are all of us cogs."

Yet the actual search of his person, once entered on, seemed to Hampstead to proceed rather perfunctorily, although at the same time he got from the faces and manner of all four an impression of something they were holding in reserve.

"What is this?" asked one of the detectives dramatically, holding up a long, narrow key with a red rubber band doubled and looped about the neck, which he had just extracted from the minister's pocket.

"That is the key to my safe deposit box at the Amalgamated National," replied Hampstead, naturally enough.

"Then," said Wyatt bluntly, "we've got to search that box."

The minister was instantly on his guard.

Some play of eyes between the four men, accompanied by a subtle change in the expression of their faces, warned him that they must have been apprised of the existence of this box and that the key was the real object of their personal search. Hampstead resolved hastily to defeat them.

"I decline to permit it," he declared shortly. "There are very private papers in that box, things which have been communicated to me in the utmost confidence, and I would not be justified in permitting you--or any one else--to handle them. Under the rules of the bank, without my consent or an order of court, you could not reach the box."

"I have that order of court here," said Searle, speaking up quickly, but with cold precision of utterance, "in a search warrant directed particularly to your safe deposit box."

Like a flash, Hampstead thought that he understood.

"So that is what you are here for, Searle?" he snapped sarcastically, turning and confronting the Assistant District Attorney. "I never have trusted you. I couldn't understand your presence here or your interest in this silly charge; but now I comprehend fully. You have taken advantage of it to get your eyes on the perjury case I have against your bosom friend, Jack Roche. Well, I warn you! This is where I stop and fight!"

But Searle refused to get angry at this bald impugnment of his integrity and motives. No doubt it was his confidence in an ultimate and complete humiliation of the minister that enabled him to maintain an unruffled demeanor while he suggested blandly:

"Perhaps you ought not to proceed further, Doctor Hampstead, without the advice of a lawyer."

The proposal touched the minister in his pride.

"A lawyer?" he objected scornfully. "Thank you, no! My cause requires no expert advocacy. In my experience of the past four years, I have learned quite enough about court practice to cope with this ridiculous burlesque without professional assistance."

Searle, playing his cards deliberately, took advantage of the minister's assumed acquaintance with legal lore to suggest with alacrity:

"You know then, Doctor, that it is useless to fight a court order of this sort, as you spoke of doing in your excitement a moment ago. I think, with the attorneys of your Civic League, you have gone through a safe deposit box or two upon your own account, by means of just such a search warrant as I now exhibit to you."

Again Hampstead's second thought assured him that he was powerless to resist.

"Yes," he confessed resignedly to Searle's speech, after the necessary interval for consideration, "I suppose I must admit it. When I spoke of fighting, I spoke in heat; partly because I feel the gross injustice and bitter wrong this senseless charge is doing to innocent people other than myself, who am also innocent, and partly because, as I have already told you, I utterly distrust your motive in making the whole of this search. You must be as well aware as I that this charge is the work of a woman who, to speak most charitably, is beside herself with excitement."

But Searle only smiled, and observed with urbanity unruffled.

"I am sorry, Doctor, that you distrust me. You may have the privilege, of course, of being present when we examine the contents of the box."

"Naturally I shall insist upon that," said the minister.

"In that case," Searle added with significant emphasis, "I think your observations will convince you that we are solely concerned in a search for the diamonds."