CHAPTER VI

KITE TAKES A HAND

That Radabaugh should have arrested Lutcher was almost as though he had arrested Kite himself; and Wint knew it. It brought matters to an issue, direct and unavoidable. Lutcher, for all practical purposes, was Kite. His arrest meant an open defiance to the head and front of the opposition. Wint, characteristically, leaped at the chance. He might have been more lenient with a lesser man.

He asked the marshal: “Where is he?”

“Locked up,” said Radabaugh.

“In the calaboose?”

“Yeah. Him and the fire horses are all little pals together.”

“You’ve got the evidence?”

“Sure.”

“No doubt about it?”

“Not a bit. I’ll tell you--”

“That can wait till morning. What does he say?”

“Acts like he wasn’t surprised. Acts like he expected it. Matter of fact, he pretty near invited me to pinch him.”

Wint nodded to himself. “That means they’re looking for trouble.”

“I’d say so.”

“Haven’t seen Kite, have you?”

“Hear he’s out of town. Be back Thursday.”

“All right. We’ll hold Lutcher till then and have it out.”

Wint heard a gulp that told him Radabaugh was shifting that bulge in his cheek. “He’s wanted to furnish bail,” the marshal said.

“Nothing doing,” Wint told him.

“We-ell--he’s got a right to want to.”

“We’re sound sleepers here. You couldn’t raise me with the telephone,” Wint suggested.

“Lutcher’s all dressed up in a yellow vest and everything; and he didn’t fetch his jail pajamas with him.”

“He can sleep in the yellow vest.”

“It’s your funeral,” Radabaugh decided philosophically. “Whatever you say.”

“That’s right.” And Wint added: “I’m glad you got him, Jim. Good work.”

“Oh, he weren’t so much to get. I told you he put himself in the way of it.”

“Just the same, you had good nerve.”

“We-ell--maybe so.”

Wint went back to bed; but he didn’t go to sleep. He was tingling with the pleasurable excitement of combat; and he was immensely pleased at this chance to give evidence of the sincerity of his fight for a clean Hardiston. Those orders to Radabaugh which had become something like a proverb in Hardiston.... This was their test. He meant that they should meet the test.

He could not decide whether the incident would help him or hurt him at the polls; it was impossible to tell. But--he did not care. Hurt or help, his course would be the same. Unchangeable. Lutcher should get the limit. Whatever the evidence justified. The rest was on the lap of the gods. Let them take care of it.

It may have been an hour or two before he was asleep again; and he woke in the morning a little tired because of the sleep he had lost. But the cold tub revived him; he was cheerful enough when he came down to breakfast; and when his father appeared, Wint told him the news.

“Something doing, dad,” he said.

Chase looked at him in quick and surprised interest; and he asked: “What? What do you mean, Wint?”

“Did you hear the telephone last night, about midnight?”

“No.”

“I did,” said Mrs. Chase. “I thought I heard the bell; but your father was asleep, and I wasn’t sure. I came to the head of the stairs, but you were already down.”

“I answered as quickly as I could. The bell only rang once or twice.”

“Who was it?” Chase asked quickly.

“Radabaugh. Jim. The marshal. He’s arrested Lutcher.”

“Lutcher! What for?”

“Bootlegging!”

Chase uttered an involuntary exclamation. “Lutcher? He’s Kite’s right-hand man.”

“Absolutely.”

“Radabaugh arrested him?”

“Yes.”

“Has he got a case?”

“Jim always has a case, when he makes an arrest.”

“But Lutcher.... He’s shrewd. Knows how to cover his tracks.”

“He didn’t cover well enough this time.” Wint’s elation was singing in his voice.

“But he--”

“As a matter of fact,” said Wint, “Radabaugh thinks Lutcher allowed himself to be caught. Thinks he wanted to get arrested.”

“By God, that doesn’t sound reasonable!”

“He’ll be sorry.”

“They’ve got something up their sleeves, Wint.”

“So have I!”

“You--What?”

“My arms,” said Wint cheerfully. “With a fist on each one and a punch in each fist.”

Chase looked uncertain. “They’ll try some trick.”

Wint touched the other’s arm. “Don’t worry. They’ve got to fight in the open, now. The time’s short. And I’m not afraid of them in the open.”

“They’re treacherous. They’ll strike behind your back.”

“I’m not worried.”

But the older man was worried. He said little more; nevertheless his concern was plain. Wint was sorry, a little disappointed. His father’s uneasiness did not affect his own confidence. He was as sure of himself as before. But he had expected his father to be as confident as himself, as sure. To him, the matter of Lutcher simply offered an opportunity for a telling blow; but it was evident that to his father the incident was rather a threat than an opportunity.

He and his father walked downtown together; they separated when Wint turned aside toward the fire-engine house where his office was. The older man gave him a word of warning there. “Go carefully, Wint,” he urged. “Watch yourself.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Be sure of the law, Wint. Don’t make a mistake. They would jump on it.”

“That’s Foster’s job. And I’m no ... I’ve studied up a bit.”

“Take care.”

“Right, dad.”

They separated, and Wint went on to his office. Radabaugh was not there, but he appeared a little later. “I’ve just had Lutcher up to Sam O’Brien’s for breakfast,” he explained. “He wanted to go to the hotel; but I told him Sam had the contract to victual the city prisoners.”

Wint chuckled. “Where is he now?”

“Down in the calaboose.”

“Does he still want to furnish bail?”

“Says he does.”

“Kite comes home to-morrow, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’ll let Lutcher out on bail till then. I’m curious to hear what Kite will have to say.”

Radabaugh shifted the plug in his cheek. “Think he’ll have anything to say?”

“Don’t you?”

“We-ell, he might.”

“Bring Lutcher up, and we’ll turn him loose.”

Lutcher came. Wint chuckled inwardly at sight of what Radabaugh had called a yellow vest. It was an ornate affair; no doubt of it. He was inclined to expect an outbreak from Lutcher, but the big, bald man was cheerfully amiable. Wint said: “Sorry we had to hold you in jail. The marshal tried to get me, but I’m a sound sleeper.”

“Well, the bed wasn’t soft,” Lutcher admitted. “But I can stand it.”

“I’m going to hold you till to-morrow,” Wint said. “Unless you want to plead guilty and accept sentence now.”

“Guilty? No, sir. You can’t pin anything on me, Wint. You ought to know that.”

“We’ll see,” Wint told him. “Want to stay in jail, or furnish bail?”

“Bail, of course. I can get any one.”

“I’d rather have money.”

“Check any good?”

“I’ll cash it before you leave here.”

Lutcher said amiably that that was all right, and asked the amount. Wint said “Four hundred.” And Lutcher whistled, and protested: “That’s pretty hard.”

“Harder than the bed in the calaboose?”

Lutcher grinned, and wrote. Wint took the check and his hat and left Lutcher with the marshal. He went to the bank, drew the money, and deposited the cash to the city’s account. “Just so there can be no question of stopping payment on that check,” he explained.

Back at his office, he told Lutcher he was free to go. Lutcher, contriving to look dapper and well-dressed in spite of his night, took himself away. Then Wint turned to the marshal.

“Now, Jim, how about it?” he asked. “What’s the case against him?”

Radabaugh shifted the knob in his cheek to clear the way for speech; and he sat down, and hitched his trousers up, and opened his coat and put his thumbs in his armholes. “We-ell,” he said, “it was like this.”

He had been scouting around for two weeks past, he said, according to Wint’s orders, without discovering anything. But the afternoon before, an automobile had come into town with some boxes in the tonneau and a stranger driving. It made some stir on Main Street; and then it drove openly enough to Lutcher’s place, on the alley. He had seen the boxes carried up Lutcher’s stair.

“First off,” he explained, “I figured it couldn’t be what it looked like. Didn’t seem as if they’d be so open about it. Lutcher had been lying low. I figured they might be aiming to get me excited, just to make a fool of me. So I held off a spell.

“But the thing stuck in my head. They might be trying a game, and they might not. I decided to keep an eye on Lutcher’s place, and I did. All that afternoon.”

Wint said: “They were brazen, eh?”

“I’d say so,” Radabaugh agreed; and he shifted his plug and went on.

“Nothing happened, particular, all afternoon. I et my supper; and after it was dark, I took another walk down that way. Met Jack Routt coming out of the alley; and he stopped me and talked to me. It was on his breath. Plain enough. He must have knowed that; must have meant me to smell it. He was so darned open, I suspicioned there was a trick. So I still held off.

“But I took a walk through the alley about nine o’clock. All quiet. A light in Lutcher’s place, that was all. Some men up there. I wondered.

“I walked through again, after a while. Sounded like they was having a game. Finally, about a quarter past eleven, I come along through, and some one yelled. Sounded boozy. So I says to myself: ‘Jim, you’re the goat. You got to bite, if it’s only to see the joke.’ So I went up the stairs. Quiet.”

“No search warrant?” Wint asked.

“Why, no,” said Radabaugh innocently. “I was just dropping in for a drink, like I’d done before. Some time back.”

Wint grinned. “Of course. Go ahead.”

“We-ell, the door wasn’t locked,” said Radabaugh. “So I knew I was meant to come in. And I went in. On in where they were. Four of them. Tuttle, and Harley, and Gates, and this Lutcher. I went in; and Tuttle throws a five-dollar bill to Lutcher and says: ‘Here’s for that last bottle, Lutch.’

“Lutcher took it. And he’d seen me before he took it. Then he got up and says: ‘Hello, Jim. Have a drink?’

“So I told him to come along.”

He stopped; it was evident that his story was done. Wint nodded. “Well, that’s plain enough,” he agreed.

“It’s my evidence against theirs,” Radabaugh reminded him. “But that’s the way it’s got to be.”

“Your evidence is good enough for me.”

“Sure. But he’ll fight.”

“We can’t help that,” Wint reminded him. “All we can do is--soak him.” There was a sudden heat in his voice; and Radabaugh eyed him curiously and asked:

“In earnest, ain’t you?”

“Absolutely,” said Wint.

“Well, it never hurt any, to be in earnest. Go to it, boss.”

* * * * *

Hardiston talked it over that day, and wondered what Wint would do. Most people thought he would sentence Lutcher; some declared he would wait till after election, for fear of influencing the vote. Sam O’Brien laughed at this view. “Wint wasn’t ever afraid of anything,” he declared. “Why man, you make me laugh. He’ll soak Lutcher so hard Lutcher’ll need to be wrung out like a sponge.”

There were others who were loyal to Wint; and there were some few--not very vociferous except among those of like views--who were loyal to Lutcher. But for the most part, people waited. Waited for Kite to come home. This was his fight; that was understood. Lutcher was his man.

He came on the early morning train next day; and his coming was marked. Lutcher met him at the train. They came up the hill from the station together, and went to the Bazaar, and were alone there for a little while. Routt joined them presently. Routt would represent Lutcher in court, he said. But Kite laughed at that.

“It will never come to court, man,” he told Routt. “You know that.”

“I’m not so sure,” Jack objected.

“Then we’ll smash that young rip, flat as an egg,” said Kite harshly, with a gesture of his clenched fist. “But he’ll crawl, I say.”

Lutcher got up. “I’m willing to see that,” he declared amiably. “Come along and stage the show.”

So they went down to the fire-engine house together, and they found the council room where Wint held court crowded with Hardiston folk who wanted to see what was going to happen. Radabaugh was there; and he told them Wint was in his office, in the rear. Kite bade Routt and Lutcher sit down. “I want to see the Mayor,” he told Radabaugh, in a peremptory tone. “Take me in.”

Radabaugh shifted the bulge in his cheek, and told Kite to stay where he was. “I’ll see if he wants to see you,” he said, and went into Wint’s office. A moment later, he appeared at the door and beckoned to Kite, and there was an instant’s hush in the big room as every one watched Kite go in. Then they began to whisper and talk together; and instantly were still again, trying to hear what Wint and Kite were saying. Radabaugh had shut the door behind Kite and stood, with his back against it, indolently studying the crowd.

They tried to hear; but they did not hear anything except a murmur of voices now and then. They could only guess at what had been said from what happened when Kite had been with Wint five minutes, or perhaps ten. At the end of that period, the door opened so suddenly that Radabaugh was thrown off balance. He stumbled to one side, and Wint came out and sat down at his desk. Kite was on Wint’s heels; he whispered to Wint fiercely, but Wint, without heeding Kite, said to the clerk:

“Call Lutcher’s case.”

And at that Kite looked at Wint for a moment with a red and furious face, and then he turned and bolted for the stairs and was gone.

Wint’s countenance was steady, his lips were white. He heard Radabaugh’s story of the arrest of Lutcher; and when it was done, he asked Routt, who was appearing for Lutcher, whether the man denied anything. Routt hesitated, uncertain what Kite would wish him to do. He whispered with Lutcher. Then he stood up and said:

“He has decided to plead guilty, your Honor.”

Wint nodded, consulted in a low voice with Foster, and said: “Two hundred and costs.”

That was all. While Routt and Lutcher arranged the payment of the fine, the crowd began to disperse, a few lingering in the hope of some fresh sensation. And those who lingered and those who went their way were agreeing, one with another, that this matter was not ended.

“Kite’s got something up his sleeve,” Gates told Bob Dyer. “You wait and see.”

And Dyer nodded, and grinned, and said: “Yes, wait till old V. R. takes a hand.”

When every one was gone except Radabaugh, and Foster, and one or two others, Wint got up and went into his office and shut the door.