Chapter 14

Thus two weeks passed. Donald showed no sign of the improvement which should ordinarily be looked for in the third week, and it was apparent to the doctors and nurses who attended him that the young Laird was not making a fight to get well--that his tremendous physical resistance was gradually being undermined. His day-nurse it was who had the courage, womanlike, to bring the matter to an issue.

"He's madly in love with that Nan girl he's always raving about," she declared. "From all I can gather from his disconnected sentences, she has left Port Agnew forever, and he doesn't know where she is. Now, I've seen men--little, weak men--recover from a worse attack of typhoid than this big fellow has, and he ought to be on the up-grade now, if ever--yet he's headed down-hill. About next week he's going to start to coast, unless Nan Brent shows up to take him by the hand and lead him back up-hill. I believe she could do it--if she would."

"I believe she could, also," the doctor agreed. "Perhaps you've noticed that, although his family have listened to him rave about her, they have never given the slightest indication that they know what he is raving about. The girl's tabu, apparently."

"The Laird appears to be a human being. Have you spoken to him about this--Nan girl?"

"I tried to--once. He looked at me--and I didn't try any more. The fact is," the doctor added, lowering his voice, "I have a notion that old Hector, through Daney, gave the girl money to leave the country."

"If he knew what an important personage she is at this minute, he'd give her more money to come back--if only just long enough to save his son. Have you spoken to Mr. Daney?"

"No; but I think I had better. He has a great deal of influence with The Laird, and since I have no doubt they were in this conspiracy together, Daney may venture to discuss with the old man the advisability of bringing the girl back to Port Agnew."

"If she doesn't appear on the scene within ten days--"

"I agree with you. Guess I'll look up Mr. Daney."

He did. Daney was at his desk in the mill office when the doctor entered and, without the least circumlocution, apprised him of the desperate state to which Donald was reduced.

"I tell you, Mr. Daney," he declared, and pounded Daney's desk to emphasize his statement, "everything that medical science can do for that boy has been done, but he's slipping out from under us. Our last hope lies in Nan Brent. If she can be induced to come to his bedside, hold his hand, and call him pet names when he's rational, he'll buck up and win out. There are no dangerous physical complications to combat now. They are entirely mental."

While the physician was speaking, Andrew Daney's face had gradually been taking on the general color-tones of a ripe old Edam cheese. His chin slowly sagged on his breast; his lips parted in horror and amazement until, finally, his mouth hung open slackly, foolishly; presently, two enormous tears gathered in the corners of his eyes and cascaded slowly across his cheeks into his whiskers. He gripped the arms of his chair.

"O God, forgive me!" he moaned. "The Laird doesn't know where she is, and neither do I. I induced her to go away, and she's lost somewhere in the world. To find her now would be like searching a haystack for a needle."

"But you might telegraph a space-ad to every leading newspaper in the country. The Laird can afford to spend a million to find her--if she can be found in a hurry. Why, even a telegram from her would help to buck him up."

But Andrew Daney could only sway in his chair and quiver with his profound distress.

"The scandal!" he kept murmuring, "the damned scandal! I'll have to go to Seattle to send the telegrams. The local office would leak. And even if we found her and induced her to come back to save him, she'd--she'd have to go away again--and if she wouldn't--if he wouldn't permit her--why, don't you see how impossible a situation has developed? Man, can Donald McKaye wed Nan Brent of the Sawdust Pile?"

"My interest in the case is neither sentimental nor ethical. It is entirely professional. It appears to me that in trying to save this young fellow from the girl, you've signed his death warrant; now it is up to you to save him from himself, and you're worrying because it may be necessary later to save the girl from him or him from the girl. Well, I've stated the facts to you, and I tried to state them to The Laird. Do as you think best. If the boy dies, of course, I'll swear that he was doomed, anyhow, due to perforation of the intestines."

"Yes, yes!" Daney gasped. "Let The Laird off as lightly as you can."

"Oh, I'll lie cheerfully. By the way, who is this girl? I haven't been in Port Agnew long enough to have acquired all the gossip. Is she impossible?"

"She's had a child born out of wedlock."

"Oh, then she's not a wanton?"

"I'm quite sure she is not."

"Well, I'll be damned! So that's all that's wrong with her, eh?" Like the majority of his profession, this physician looked up such a _contretemps_ with a kindly and indulgent eye. In all probability, most of us would if we but knew as many of the secrets of men as do our doctors and lawyers.

Long after the doctor had left him alone with his terrible problem, Mr. Daney continued to sit in his chair, legs and arms asprawl, chin on breast. From time to time, he cried audibly:

"O Lord! O my God! What have I done? What shall I do? How shall I do it? O Lord!"

He was quite too incoherent for organized prayer; nevertheless his agonized cry to Omnipotence was, indeed, a supplication to which the Lord must have inclined favorably, for, in the midst of his desolation and bewilderment, the door opened and Dirty Dan O'Leary presented himself.

XXIX

Thanks to the constitution of a Nubian lion, Dirty Dan's wounds and contusions had healed very rapidly and after he got out of hospital, he spent ten days in recuperating his sadly depleted strength. His days he spent in the sunny lee of a lumber pile in the drying-yard, where, in defiance of the published ordinance, he smoked plug tobacco and perused the _Gaelic American_.

Now, Mr. O'Leary, as has been stated earlier in this chronicle, was bad black Irish. Since the advent of Oliver Cromwell into Ireland, the males of every generation of the particular tribe of O'Leary to which Dirty Dan belonged had actively or passively supported the battles of Ould Ireland against the hereditary enemy across the Channel, and Dirty Dan had suckled this holy hatred at his mother's breast; wherefore he regarded it in the light of his Christian duty to keep that hate alive by subscribing to the _Gaelic American_ and believing all he read therein anent the woes of the Emerald Isle. Mr. O'Leary was also a member of an Irish-American revolutionary society, and was therefore aware that presently his kind of Irish were to rise, cast off their shackles (and, with the help o' God and the German kaiser) proclaim the Irish Republic.

For several months past, Daniel's dreams had dwelt mostly with bayonet-practice. Ordinary bayonets, however, were not for him. He dreamed his trusty steel was as long as a cross-cut saw, and nightly he skewered British soldiers on it after the fashion of kidneys and bacon _en brochette_. For two months he had been saving his money toward a passage home to Ireland and the purchase of a rifle and two thousand rounds of ammunition--soft-nose bullets preferred--with the pious intention of starting with "th' bhoys" at the very beginning and going through with them to the bloody and triumphant finish.

Unfortunately for Dirty Dan, his battle in defense of Donald McKaye had delayed his sortie to the fields of martyrdom. On the morning that Nan Brent left Port Agnew, however, fortune had again smiled upon The O'Leary. Meeting Judge Moore, who occupied two local offices--justice of the peace and coroner--upon the street, that functionary had informed Dan that the public generally, and he and the town marshal in particular, traced an analogy between the death of the mulatto in Darrow and Mr. O'Leary's recent sojourn in the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital, and thereupon, verbally subpoenaed him to appear before a coroner's jury the following day at ten o'clock A.M., then and there to tell what he knew about said homicide.

Dirty Dan received this summons with outward nonchalance but tremendous secret apprehensions, and immediately fled for advice to no less a person than Andrew Daney.

However, the Fates ordained that Andrew Daney should be spared the trouble of advising Dirty Dan, for as the latter came shuffling down the hall toward Daney's office door, The Laird emerged from his old office and accosted his henchman.

"Well, Dan!" he greeted the convalescent, "how do you find yourself these days?"

"Poorly, sir, poorly," Dirty Dan declared. "Twas only yisterd'y I had to take the other side av the shtreet to av'id a swamper from Darrow, sir."

The Laird smiled.

"Well, Dan, I think it's about time I did something to make you feel better. I owe you considerable for that night's work, so here's a thousand dollars for you, my boy. Go down to southern California or Florida for a month or two, and when you're back in your old form, report for duty. I have an idea Mr. Donald intends to make you foreman of the loading-sheds and the drying-yard when you're ready for duty."

"God bless ye, me lord, an' may the heavens be your bed!" murmured the astounded lumberjack, as The Laird produced his wallet and counted into Dan's grimy quivering paw ten crisp hundred-dollar bills. "Oh, t'ank you, sor; t'ank you a t'ousand times, sor. An' ye'll promise me, won't ye, to sind for me firrst-off if ye should be wan tin' some blackguard kilt?"

"I assure you, Dan, you are my sole official killer," laughed The Laird, and shook the O'Leary's hand with great heartiness. "Better take my advice about a good rest, Dan."

"Sor, I'll be afther havin' the vacation o' me life."

"Good-by, then, and good luck to you, Dan!"

"Good-by, an' God bless ye, sor!"

Five minutes later, Daniel J. O'Leary was in the general store fitting on what he termed a "Sunday suit." Also, he bought himself two white shirts of the "b'iled" variety, a red necktie, a brown Derby hat, and a pair of shoes, all too narrow to accommodate comfortably his care-free toes. Next, he repaired to the barber-shop, where he had a hair-cut and a shave. His ragged red mustache, ordinarily of the soup-strainer pattern, he had trimmed, waxed, and turned up at each end; the barber put much pomade on his hair and combed it in a Mazeppa, with the result that when! Daniel J. O'Leary appeared at the railroad station the following morning, and purchased a ticket for New York City, Hector McKaye, loitering in front of the station on the lookout for Nan Brent, looked at and through Mr. O'Leary without recognizing him from Adam's off ox.

It is, perhaps, superfluous to remark that Dirty Dan was about to embark upon an enterprise designed to make his dreams come true. He was headed for Ireland and close grips with the hated redcoats as fast as train and steamer could bear him.

Now, Mr. O'Leary had never seen Nan Brent, although he had heard her discussed in one or two bunk-houses about the time her child had been born. Also, he was a lumberjack, and since lumberjacks never speak to the "main push" unless first spoken to, he did not regard it as all necessary to bring himself to Hector McKaye's notice when his alert intelligence informed him that The Laird had failed to recognize him in his going-away habiliments. Further, he could see with half an eye that The Laird was waiting for somebody, and when that somebody appeared on the scene, the imp of suspicion in Dirty Dan's character whispered: "Begorra, is the father up to some shenanigans like the son? Who's this girrl? I dunno. A young widder, belike, seem' she has a youngster wit' her."

He saw Nan and The Laird enter into earnest conversation, and his curiosity mastering him, he ventured to inquire of a roustabout who was loading baggage on a truck who the young lady might be. Upon receiving the desired information, he, with difficulty repressed a whistle of amazement and understanding; instantly his active imagination was at work.

The girl was leaving Port Agnew. That was evident. Also, The Laird must have known of this, for he had reached the station before the girl and waited for her. Therefore, he must have had something to do with inducing her to depart. Mr. O'Leary concluded that it was quite within the realm of possibility that The Laird had made it well worth her while to refrain from wrecking the honor of his house, and he watched narrowly to observe whether or not money passed between them.

One thing puzzled Dirty Dan extremely. That was the perfectly frank, friendly manner in which his employer and this outcast woman greeted each other, the earnestness with which they conversed, and the effect of the woman's low-spoken words upon the color of Hector McKaye's face. When The Laird took his leave, the lumberjack noted the increased respect--the emotion, even--with which he parted from her. The lumberjack heard him say, "Good-by, my dear, and good luck to you wherever you go"; so it was obvious Nan Brent was not coming back to Port Agnew. Knowing what he knew, Mr. O'Leary decided that, upon the whole, here was good riddance to the McKaye family of rubbish that might prove embarrassing if permitted to remain dumped on the Sawdust Pile.

"Poor gurrl," he reflected as he followed Nan aboard the train. "She have a sweet face, that she have, God forgive her! An be th' Rock av Cashel, she have a v'ice like an angel from heaven."

He sat down in a seat behind her and across the aisle, and all the way to Seattle he stared at the back of her neck or the beautiful rounded profile of her cheek. From time to time, he wondered how much Hector McKaye had paid her to disappear out of his son's life, and how that son would feel, and what he would say to his father when he discovered his light o' love had flown the cage.

The following morning Mr. O'Leary boarded a tourist-sleeper on the Canadian Pacific, and, to his profound amazement, discovered that Nan Brent and her child occupied a section in the same car.

"Begorra, she couldn't have shtuck the ould man very deep at that, or 'tis in a standard shleeper an' not a tourist she'd be riding," he reflected. "What the divil's up here at all, at all, I dunno."

Dirty Dan saw her enter a taxicab at the Grand Central Station in New York.

"I wonder if the young Caddyheck himself'll meet her here," Mr. O'Leary reflected, alive with sudden suspicion, and springing into the taxicab that drew in at the stand the instant the taxi bearing Nan and her child pulled out, he directed the driver to follow the car ahead, and in due course found himself before the entrance to a hotel in lower Broadway--one of that fast disappearing number of fifth-class hotels which were first-class thirty years ago.

Dirty Dan hovered in the offing until Nan had registered and gone up to her room. Immediately he registered also, and, while doing so, observed that Nan had signed her real name and given her address as Port Agnew, Washington. With unexpected nicety, Dirty Dan decided not to embarrass her by registering from Port Agnew also, so he gave his address as Seattle.

For two days, he forgot the woes of Ireland and sat round the stuffy lobby, awaiting Nan Brent's next move. When he saw her at the cashier's window paying out, he concealed himself behind a newspaper, and watched her covertly as the clerk gave instructions to the head porter regarding the disposition of her baggage. The instant she left the hotel, accompanied by her child, Dirty Dan approached the porter and said with an insinuating smile:

"I'd give a dollar to know the address the young lady wit' the baby bhoy give you f'r the delivery av her trunk."

The porter reached for the dollar and handed Dirty Dan a shipping tag containing the address. Mr. O'Leary laboriously wrote the address in a filthy little memorandum-book, and that afternoon made a point of looking up Nan's new habitation. He discovered it to be an old brownstone front in lower Madison Avenue, and a blue-and-gold sign over the area fence indicated to Mr. O'Leary that, from an abode of ancient New York aristocracy, the place had degenerated into a respectable boarding-house.

"'Tis true," Dirty Dan murmured. "She's given the young fella the go-by. Hurro! An' I'm bettin' I'm the only lad in the wide, wide wurrld that knows where she's gone. Faith, but wouldn't Misther Donald pay handsomely for the information in me little book."

Having, as he judged, followed the mystery to its logical conclusion, Mr. O'Leary was sensible of a sudden waning of his abnormal curiosity in Nan Brent's affairs. He acknowledged to himself that he had spent time and money on a matter that was absolutely none of his business, but excused himself upon the ground that if he hadn't investigated the matter thoroughly, his failure to do so might annoy him in the future. If, for no other reason than the desirability of being on the inside track of this little romance of a rich man's son, his action was to be commended. People have no business disappearing without leaving a trace or saying good-by to those that love them. Dirty Dan hadn't the least idea of selling his information to Donald McKaye, but something in his peculiar mental make-up caused him to cherish a secret for its own sake; he had a true Irishman's passion for being "in the know," and now that he was in it, he was tremendously satisfied with himself and dismissed the entire matter from his mind. Old Ireland and her woes were again paramount, so Mr. O'Leary presented himself before the proper authorities and applied for a passport to visit Ireland.

Now, while Daniel J. did not know it, one of the first questions the applicant for a passport is required to answer is his reason for desiring to make the journey, and during the Great War, as everybody of mature years will recall, civilians were not permitted to subject themselves to the dangers of a ruthless submarine war without good and sufficient reason. Mr. O'Leary had a reason--to his way of thinking, the noblest reason in all the world; consequently he was proud of it and not at all inclined to conceal it.

"I'm goin' over there," he declared, with profane emphasis, "to kill all the damned English I can before they kill me."

His interlocutor gravely wrote this reply down in Mr. O'Leary's exact language and proceeded to the other questions. When the application was completed, Dirty Dan certified to the correctness of it, and was then smilingly informed that he had better go back where he came from, because his application for a passport was denied. Consumed with fury, the patriot thereupon aired his opinion of the Government of the United States, with particular reference to its representative then present, and in the pious hope of drowning his sorrows, went forth and proceeded to get drunk.

When drunk, Mr. O'Leary always insisted, in the early stages of his delirium, on singing Hibernian ballads descriptive of the unflinching courage, pure patriotism and heroic sacrifices of the late Owen Roe O'Neill and O'Donnell Abu. Later in the evening he would howl like a timber-wolf and throw glasses, and toward morning he always fought it out on the floor with some enemy. Of course, in the sawmill towns of the great Northwest, where folks knew Mr. O'Leary and others of his ilk, it was the custom to dodge the glasses and continue to discuss the price of logs. Toward Dirty Dan, however, New York turned a singularly cold shoulder. The instant he threw a glass, the barkeeper tapped him with a "billy"; then a policeman took him in tow, and the following morning, Dirty Dan, sick, sore, and repentant was explaining to a police judge that he was from Port Agnew, Washington, and really hadn't meant any harm. He was, therefore, fined five dollars and ordered to depart forthwith for Port Agnew, Washington, which he did, arriving there absolutely penniless and as hungry as a cougar in midwinter. He fled over to the mill kitchen, tossed about five dollars worth of ham and eggs and hot biscuit into his empty being, and began to take stock of life. Naturally, the first thing he recalled in mind was The Laird's remark that Donald planned to make him foreman of the loading-sheds and drying-yards; so he wasted no time in presenting himself before Donald's office door. To his repeated knocking there was no reply, so he sought Mr. Daney.

"Hello, Dan! You back?" Daney greeted him. "Glad to see you. Looking for Mr. Donald?"

"Yes, sor; thank you, sor."

"Mr. Donald is ill in the company's hospital. We're afraid, Dan, that he isn't going to pull through."

"Glory be!" Mr. O'Leary gasped, horrified on two counts. First, because he revered his young boss, and, second, because the latter's death might nullify his opportunity to become foreman of the loading-sheds and drying-yard. "Sure, what's happened to the poor bhoy?"

Before Daney could answer, a terrible suspicion shot through the agile and imaginative O'Leary brain. In common with several million of his countrymen, he always voiced the first thought that popped into his head; so he lowered that member, likewise his voice, peered cunningly into Andrew Daney's haggard face, and whispered:

"Don't tell me he tried to commit suicide, what wit' his poor broken heart an' all!"

It was Andrew Daney's turn to peer suspiciously at Dirty Dan. For a few seconds, they faced each other like a pair of belligerent game-cocks. Then said Daney:

"How do you know his heart was broken?"

Dirty Dan didn't know. The thought hadn't even occurred to him until ten seconds before; yet, from the solemnity of Daney's face and manner, he knew instantly that once more his feet were about to tread the trails of romance, and the knowledge imbued him with a deep sense of importance.

He winked knowingly.

"Beggin' yer pardon, Misther Daney an' not m'anin' the least offinse in life, but--I know a lot about that young man--yis, an' the young leddy, too--that divil a sowl on earth knows or is goin' to find out." He tried a shot in the dark. "That was a clever bit o' wurrk gettin' her out o' Port Agnew--"

Andrew Daney's hands closed about Dirty Dan's collar, and he was jerked violently into the latter's office, while Daney closed and locked the door behind them. The general manager was white and trembling.

"You damned, cunning mick, you!" he cried, in a low voice. "I believe you're right. You do know a lot about this affair--"

"Well, if I do, I haven't talked about it," Dirty Dan reminded him with asperity.

"You knew the girl had left Port Agnew and why, do you not?" Daney demanded.

"Of course I do. She left to plaze The Laird an' get rid o' the young fella. Whether Th' Laird paid her to go or not, I don't know, but I'll say this: 'If he gave her anythin' at all, 'twas damned little.'"

"He didn't give her a red cent," Daney protested.

"I believe you, sor," Mr. O'Leary assured him, as solemn as a Supreme Court justice. "I judged so be the way she traveled an' the hotel she shtopped at."

Daney made another dive at the returned prodigal, but Mr. O'Leary evaded him.

"Where did she travel, and what hotel did she put up at?" the general manager demanded.

"She traveled to the same places an' put up at the same hotels that I did," Dirty Dan replied evasively, for his natural love for intrigue bade him hoard his secret to the last.

Daney sat down and said very quietly: "Dan, do you know where Nan Brent may be found?"

"Where she _may_ be found? Faith, I can tell you where she can be found--but I'll not."

"Why not?"

"Because 'tis her secret, an' why should I share it wit' you, m'anin' no disrespect, sor, at that?"