Chapter 15

"But a girl," said Barbara, "who thinks she's sure and then finds she isn't, hurts the people she's fondest of. In extreme eases she breaks hearts and spoils lives."

"Hearts," said her father, "that can be broken are very weak. Lives that can be spoiled by disappointment and injured pride aren't worth preserving. If you have nothing more serious on your conscience than having, in all good faith, encouraged a few young men, found that you were wrong, and sent them away with bees in their bonnets, I'm sure I envy you."

Barbara simply shook her head.

"When you do find the right man, Barbara, you'll make up to him with showers of blessings for whatever cold rains you've shed on others.... What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?"

"He went away," said Barbara, and she sat looking steadily across the lake, her chin on her hand, her eyes troubled.

XXXV

In many ways the life which Barbara led at Clovelly was calculated to rest her mind. She developed a passion for exercise, and when night came was too full of tired good health to read or talk. Since the estate was to be hers one day, she found the wish to know her way intimately about it, and since there were three thousand acres, for the most part thick forests spread over rocky hills, she could contemplate weeks of delightful explorations. To discover ponds, brooks, and caves that belong to other people has its delights, but to go daily up and down a lovely country discovering lovely things that belong to yourself is perhaps the most delightful way of passing time that has been vouchsafed to any one.

On these explorations Barbara's chosen companion was Bubbles. He was no longer a mere Buttons: her interest and belief in the child had passed beyond the wish to see him develop into a good servant. She wished to make something better of him--or if there is nothing better than a good servant, something more showy and ornamental.

He was sharp as a needle; and he was honest. He was not too old to be moulded by good influences, schools, and associations into a man with proper manners, and an upper-class command of the English language. He should go to one of the New England church schools, later to college, then he should choose a career for himself and be helped into harness. So she planned his future. In the meanwhile she wished to see the thin, spindly body catch up with the big, intelligent head. Although his muscles were tough and wiry he had a delicate look which troubled her, and a cough which to her inexperienced and anxious ears suggested a consumptive tendency.

Dr. Ferris laughed at this, but to satisfy her he gave the boy a thorough questioning and a thorough looking over. "Any of your family consumptives, Bubbles?"

"Don't think so, sir."

"Well, you're not. Heart and lungs are sound."

"Miss Barbara says she doesn't like my cough."

"Yes," said the surgeon, "it worries her quite a good deal. And I advise you to stop it."

"But my throat gets tickling, and--"

"Your throat gets tickling because you are an inveterate cigarette smoker. And that's the reason why you are undersized and under-nourished. How long have you smoked?"

"I don't remember when I didn't."

"Can't you stop?"

"I stopped once for two days, and then I took a pack of smokers that wasn't mine. That was about the only thing I ever stole."

"But if you gave me your word not to smoke any more till you're twenty-one, couldn't you keep that promise?"

"I could try," said Bubbles, evincing very little confidence,

"Will you try?" said the surgeon. "Hello, what's this?"

The boy in lifting his left arm had disclosed a dark-brown birthmark shaped like the new moon. All amusement had gone out of Dr. Ferris's eyes; and he had that look of tragic memories that so often put an end to his smiling and optimistic moods.

"Do you remember your father?"

"No, sir."

"Mother living?"

Bubbles hesitated. "She's in an asylum. She's crazy."

"What was your father's name?"

Bubbles shook his head.

The surgeon considered for a moment. "Well," he said, at length, and once more smiling, "put your clothes on, and then go to Miss Ferris and promise her that you won't smoke any more. What asylum did you say your mother was in?"

"Ottawan."

"Do you ever see her?"

"No, sir. She don't like to see me."

"What is her name, Bubbles?"

"Jenny Ward."

Dr. Ferris ordered a car, and in less than two hours he was talking with the superintendent of Ottawan about the patient, Jenny Ward.

"The boy," he was saying, "is a protégé of my daughter's. She means to educate him, and we are naturally interested in his antecedents. I wonder if she has any lucid recollection of the father?"

"When she first came she seemed to have lucid moments. Even now she never makes trouble for any one, except that sometimes she wakes in the night screaming. She has been very pretty."

"H'm!" said Dr. Ferris. "You think she couldn't tell me anything about the boy's father?"

"I know she couldn't. When she was examined after being committed, it was found that her tongue had been cut out."

The woman, upon being visited, proved a meek, gentle, pathetic creature, eager to please. As the superintendent reported, she had been very pretty. She would have been pretty still, but for her utterly vacant look.

The doctor questioned her, but she made no effort, it seemed, even to understand the questions. Given a pencil and paper she seemed to take pleasure in making dots, dashes, and scrawls; but she made no mark that in any way represented a letter of the alphabet. Confronted with a printed page, she thrust it aside.

"Very likely she never could read or write," said the superintendent; "usually when you give 'em a pencil they make letters by an act of muscular memory."

In the corridor outside the woman's room, they encountered one of those nurses who are used in managing the violent insane. He was a huge fellow, with a dark, strong, and somewhat forbidding face. He nodded to the superintendent and passed. Dr. Ferris looked after him down the corridor, had a sudden thought, and communicated it to his host in a quick undertone.

"I say, Gyles! Look here a moment"

The huge nurse turned on his heel, and came towering back to them.

"Have you ever assisted in looking after the woman Jenny Ward?" and he pointed toward the door of her room.

"No, sir."

"Dr. Ferris wishes to try an experiment."

"Yes, sir."

"He wishes you to throw open the door of her room, and to enter quickly--upon your knees."

"On my knees?"

"Yes."

"All right, sir." The man shrugged his big shoulders, and, his face sullen and annoyed, knelt at the door of Jenny Ward's room, unlocked it, flung it open, and entered quickly.

Over his head the doctors saw an expression of fear, almost unearthly, come over the woman's face. And she filled her room and the corridor without with a hoarse and horrible screaming.

Instantly the big nurse rose to his feet, and came out of the room. His face was passionately angry. And he said:

"It's a shame to frighten her like that."

The superintendent's eyes fell before the glare in those of the employee, and he murmured something about "necessary experiment--had to be done."

XXXVI

"There's no room for doubt in my mind," said Dr. Ferris. "The coincidence of the birthmarks, most unusual in shape and texture, the poor woman's behavior at sight of a man who at first glance appeared to be without legs--"

"Yes," said Barbara, "but I go more on a certain expression that Bubbles sometimes has and that makes him look like his father. You see, I've done both their heads, and studied them closer than anybody else."

"Do you suppose the boy knows?"

She shook her head. "I think not. He's too--too decent. If he thought that Blizzard was his father, he wouldn't say the things that I have heard him say about him. He's the most loyal child."

"Do you suppose Blizzard knows?"

"Why, of course. A man could hardly have a son without knowing him--especially a man who lives with his ears to the ground and his mind in touch with everything in the city."

Dr. Ferris smiled a little. "Well," he said, "shall we tell Bubbles?"

"Why should we? I shouldn't like to be told out of a clear sky that I had such and such a father. It doesn't seem in the least necessary."

But before the day was out Barbara thought best to tell Bubbles. He came to her, with a slightly important air, which he did his best to conceal, and said that he wished to go to the city for a few days, on business.

"Sure the business isn't free untrammelled smoking?"

Bubbles was offended. "If I hadn't given you my word," he said, "you might think that. I told you when we came that I might have to go back any time on business. I got to go. Honest, Miss Barbara."

"Well, that settles it, Bubbles. But don't you think as long as I'm trying to give you some of the things you've missed, that you might take me a little more into your confidence?"

She maintained a discreet and serious countenance, although she wished very much to laugh.

The boy studied her face gravely with grave eyes. "The ABC of my business," he said presently, "is knowing who to trust. I know you won't blab, Miss Barbara, 'r else I wouldn't tell you. There's a society in New York City for putting down grafts and crimes. There's a rich man back of it. And there's more kinds o' people working for it than you'd guess in a year. There's even policemen workin' for it--"

"But it's their business to put down crime."

Bubbles shook his head sadly. "The chief business of the society is to put down police graft in crime," he said. "But there's heaps o' side businesses. Harry West, he's one of us. He's way high up. I'm way low down. But when I'm called to do what I can, I got to do it. There's one member younger'n me. And there's Fifth Avenue swells belongs, and waiters, and druggists, and bootblacks, and men in hardware stores, and barkeepers--"

"What sort of work do you have to do?"

"To go places and find out things."

"Why, then you're a detective, Bubbles."

A look of contempt swept into the child's face. "Detectives is in business," he said, "for what they can get out of it. We're in it because the house we live in is dirty and full of rats, and we want to make it clean."

The boy had raised his voice a little, and Barbara found herself thrilling to it.

"But, Bubbles," she objected, "you can't go to school and college and keep up this work at the same time."

"If I get education," said Bubbles, "it's so's to be fitter for the work when I come out. But I can't give the work up till the job I'm on is finished. It wouldn't be square."

"Can you tell me the job?"

"I'm one o' them that's helpin' to get the old un where he's wanted."

"What old one?"

"Blizzard."

Barbara was very much taken aback. "The man I made the bust of?"

"We can send him to the chair any time. But what's the use? He knows things that we got to know before we pass him up."

"But, Bubbles, how can you help?"

"Oh, I'm little. I can get into little places. They wouldn't want me if I weren't of use."

"But I don't like the idea of your running down Blizzard, Bubbles."

"Why not, Miss Barbara? There's no one in the city that's _needed_ as much as him."

"Aside from that, Bubbles--I'm willing to grant that--there's a reason why I think you should have nothing to do with running him down."

"It's got to be an awful good one, Miss Barbara--not just good to you, and maybe to me, but to men higher up."

"I think it would be good enough for the very highest up, Bubbles. Will you take my word for it?"

"Yes, Miss Barbara. But _they_ won't take my word for your word."

"No," she said, "of course not."

She considered for a few moments. Then she said: "Bubbles, I'm going to tell you my reason. I hope I'm not doing wrong. It's a serious thing for me to tell you and for you to know. There is very little doubt but that Blizzard is your father."

"Say that again, please," said Bubbles.

"Blizzard is probably your father."

Bubbles took the news very coolly. His eyes sparkled; but he made no exclamations of surprise or chagrin. Instead he said: "_That_ accounts for it."

"Accounts for what?"

"Oncet he caught me in his house. He said the next time he'd skin me alive. If I hadn't been his son he'd a skun me that time. Do you get me, Miss Barbara? He's my father, sure. But--" Now chagrin, wonder, and perplexity were written in Bubbles's face. "Why," he said, "it makes everything different. He never done anything for me; but if he's my father--"

"You can't very well spy on him, can you, Bubbles? You've got to stand aside and leave all that to others."

"I got to see the Head, Miss Barbara. I got to ask him."

"Who is the head, Bubbles?"

"I'd tell you in a minute, Miss Barbara, only we're all swore to tell no one. But what he says goes with me. It's got to be that way, else we'd never get nowhere."

XXXVII

Mr. Abe Lichtenstein looked up from a mass of writing. "So," he smiled, "you got your few days off?"

"Mr. Lichtenstein," said Bubbles, his eyes big, his voice trembling, "an awful thing has happened."

"You can tell me nothing bad but I can tell you something worse. What has happened?"

"The old un is my father!"

"Yes," said Lichtenstein, "I have thought of that. You are sure?"

"I'm sure enough not to want to have anything more to do with huntin' him. But that's for you to say. I do what you say."

"I won't ask you to go on," said Lichtenstein; "but you're still with us, Bubbles? You're still for cleaning up the dirty house and making it fit for human beings to live in?"

"Yes, sir."

"As far as your father's concerned you'll be neutral."

"Meaning I won't do nothing against him, nor for him?"

The red-headed Jew nodded. "You won't do like Rose?"

"Rose?"

Lichtenstein's face became very cold and grim. "She's gone over to him body and soul. Bubbles, and heart and mind. For weeks she's fooled us with nonsense--stuff they've made up together. Worse, she's broken every oath she ever swore. Our strength was secrecy. Well, your father knows the name of every agent in our society. Oh, he's got it all out of her! Everything!"

"Does he know that you are--"

"Yes, confound him, he does. And my life is about as safe in this city as that of the average cat in the Italian quarter. My life isn't the important thing. It's what I've got in my head--cold facts. See all this stuff? That's what's in my head going down on paper for the first time. It's to guide the man that takes my place--to help him over some of the hard places--three hundred sheets of it already, and only a week since I began."

"Rose!" exclaimed Bubbles.

"There was none better--none smarter--till she fell in love--_fell_ in love!"

"Does he know I'm one of us, Mr. Lichtenstein?"

"Why, yes. I suppose she'll have given even the children away." Mr. Lichtenstein's eye roamed over the suite of rich rooms with their elaborate gambling-paraphernalia. "Not much doing," he smiled, "since Rose went over. The tip's out that I'm wanted. Nobody drops in for a quiet game. Bubbles, you tell people when you're a man and I'm gone, that I wasn't only a gambler. Tell 'em I took money from people who had plenty but wouldn't take the trouble to do right with it, and tell 'em I used that money to do right--to help make dirty things clean."

He turned and regarded the face of the black marble clock on the mantel-piece. As he looked the face of the clock was violently shattered, and so, but on a lower level, was a pane of glass in the window immediately opposite.

Abe Lichtenstein fell face down upon his unfinished manuscript.

XXXVIII

Then he began to speak in a quiet voice. "Never touched me. Bubbles. Pull that cord at the right of the window. That will close the curtains. Careful not to show yourself. The man that fired that shot thinks he got me. I fell over to make him think so and to keep him from shooting again. Now then"--the curtain had been drawn over the window with the broken pane--"let's see what sort of a gun our friend uses, and then perhaps we can spot our friend. Did you hear the shot?"

"No, sir. There was a noise just when the clock broke like when a steel girder falls on the sidewalk."

"That noise was just _before_ the clock broke, Bubbles. And it was loud enough to drown the noise of our friend's gun. Clever work, though, to _have_ to pull the trigger at a given moment, and to make such a close shot. Probably had his gun screwed in a vise."

Meanwhile Lichtenstein had extracted from the ruined clock a .45-calibre bullet of nickel steel. A glance at the grooves made by the rifling of the barrel from which it had been expelled caused him to raise his colorless eyebrows and smile cynically.

"New government automatic, Bubbles," he said, "and the funny part of it is they've only been issued to officers so far, and the factory hasn't put 'em on sale yet."

"Must have been stole from an officer, then," said Bubbles.

"You steal her jewels from an actress," said Lichtenstein, "her mite from the widow, its romances from the people, but you don't steal his side arms from an American army officer. No. Somebody in the factory has let the weapon that fired this slip out. It doesn't matter--it's just a little link in the long chain."

He seated himself calmly at the table and set down in black and white the fact that he had been very nearly murdered by a bullet fired from the new army pistol. Then he began to gather up the sheets of his manuscript.

"Now I wonder," he said, "where I can go to finish this document? I don't want them to 'get' me until I've paved the way for the man that comes after me. Now then--the secret passage isn't only for the wicked."

Kneeling on the clean hearth, Mr. Lichtenstein caused the ornamental cast-iron back of the fireplace to swing outward upon a hinge. Reaching a long arm into the disclosed opening, he unfastened and pushed ajar the iron back of a fireplace in the next house.

Bubbles, crawling through first, found himself in a somewhat overdressed pink and blue bedroom. The lace curtains were too elaborate. The room was luxurious and vulgar. Among the photographs on the centre-table reposed a champagne-bottle, three parts empty, and two glasses, in which a number of flies were heavily crawling.

Lichtenstein, having carefully replaced the fire-backs, rose smiling, and clapped a hand upon Bubbles's shoulder.

"Now then, Bubbles," he said, "push that bell-button by the door four times, and we'll see what Mrs. Popple can do to get us out of this. Never met Mrs. Popple? She's one of us, and at heart a good one."

The lady in question came swiftly in answer to the four rings. At first sight she passed for a woman of hard and forbidding aspect; filmy laces and a clinging kimona of rose-pink silk neither softened nor made feminine the alabaster-colored face with its thin, straight mouth, heavy hairy eyebrows, and clean-cut Greek nose. Only her costume and her hair, indescribably fine, and indescribably yellow, betrayed that there were follies in her nature. But the moment she spoke you liked her. She had a slow, deep, beautiful voice, and the slowness of her speech was offset by the fewness of her words.

"What's wrong, Abe?"

Lichtenstein explained briefly, and added: "Now how are we to get out of this without being spotted and followed?"

"Easy," said Mrs. Popple. She went to a vast wardrobe painted white, and pulled the creaking doors wide open. "Wedge the man into one dress," she said, "pad the boy into another. Send 'em off in a taxi. Now, boy. Is this Bubbles? Pleased to meet you. I'm old enough to be your grandmother."

The words were a command, and the boy, much embarrassed, began to take off his coat.

"Get busy, Abe. Can take your own things along in a suit-case. I don't look, see? I'm looking out duds for you. What's that? Razor? Find everything in medicine-closet over wash-basin in bath-room."

Lichtenstein disappeared, and gave forth presently the rasping sounds of a man shaving in a hurry. And in the meanwhile, always swift and sure, Mrs. Popple initiated Bubbles into the ABC's of female attire.

"No trouble about a straight front for you," she chuckled, and gave a sudden strong tug at the laces of Bubbles's corsets. He gasped, and the tears came to his eyes.

"Mind to take little steps," she said, "and don't swing your arms." She clasped a blond wig upon his head, and drew back to see the effect.

"Abe," she called, "she's a pippin!"

A moment later she frowned, almost savagely, laid her finger on her lips, knelt at the fireplace, thrust her head far in and listened intently.

Lichtenstein, one side of his face in lather, appeared at the bath-room door. His eyes on the crouching figure of Mrs. Popple, he continued calmly and methodically to shave himself.

After an interval the woman rose, and shook her head.

"Can't make out who's in there," she whispered. "Have Lizzie watch front window see who goes out."

Lichtenstein nodded, washed the tag ends of lather from his face, and proceeded in dead silence to dress himself as a lady of somewhat doubtful age, looks, and position. But Bubbles would have made a very pretty girl, if Mrs. Popple had not insisted on powdering his face till it was as white as that of a clown.

"Won't do to be conspicuous," she explained.

Lichtenstein packed the things which he and Bubbles had taken off into a suit-case marked "A.P." (Amelia Popple), and led the way downstairs. A little later a taxicab drew up at the curb, and the two disguised secret-service agents sauntered down the high steps of Mrs. Popple's brownstone house, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and got in.

"Where to?" said the driver, with rather a bold leer. The average lady who descended or ascended Mrs. Popple's steps; was not considered respectable even by taxi-drivers.

It had been agreed that Bubbles, having of the two the more feminine adaptabilities of voice, should do the talking.

"Grand Central," he said.

XXXIX

Barbara was reading "Smoke" and did not wish to be interrupted by a "young person" (in the footman's words) who refused to give her name. Nevertheless she was weakly good-natured in such matters, and closing her book said: "Very well--in here, John."

A moment later the young person was shown into the living-room. Barbara was still more annoyed, for young faces covered with powder were odious to her. But suddenly the young person's mouth curled into a captivating grin, and the young person trotted forward in a very un-young-personish way, and cried triumphantly:

"It's me--Bubbles."

And Bubbles followed Barbara's gratifying exclamations of surprise and inquiry with a syncopated outburst of explanation, finishing with: "And Mr. Lichtenstein said I was to throw us on your mercy, and ask if he could stay to finish his writing, and he's stepped into some bushes off the driveway to put on his own clothes. And please, Miss Barbara, he's just the finest and bravest ever, and don't care what happens to him, only he says they're bound to get him now everything's found out, and he's just got to finish writing down what he carries in his head."

"Of course," said Barbara, "we'll have to tell my father; but all will be well. Mr. Lichtenstein shall stay. Bring him to me when he's finished changing, and then you'd best change, and if you don't want to have a sore face wash all that nasty stuff off it."

Lichtenstein had already changed, and was coming up the driveway carrying a suit-case. Bubbles brought him at once, and with great pride, to Barbara. Mr. Lichtenstein had never seen her before. In his bow there was a trace of Oriental elaboration. And his curiously meagreish, pug-nosed sandy face beamed with pleasure and admiration.

"I thought I knew my New York, Miss Ferris," he said, "but it seems I was mistaken."