Chapter 16

Since the compliment was obviously sincere, Barbara took pleasure in it, and the pleasure showed in her charming face. "And Bubbles says," said she, "that you are the 'finest ever.' I'm glad if staying here is going to help the cause. You can be as private as you like--" But a sudden change had come over Lichtenstein's face, the smile had vanished, the eyes grown sharp, even stern. "What is your maid's name?" he asked abruptly.

"My maid? Why, what about her?"

"She passed just now--by that door. I saw her in the mirror at the end of the room. What's her name?"

"Marion--" Barbara hesitated.

"O'Brien?"

"Yes, O'Brien."

"I thought so. She's in Blizzard's pay. If she has recognized me--Shut the door into the hall, Bubbles."

The door being shut, Lichtenstein crossed the room and stood near it, his hand on the knob. For nearly a minute he neither moved nor changed expression. Then a smile flickered about his mouth, and, sure of his effect, with a sharp gesture he flung the door wide open, and discovered Miss Marion O'Brien kneeling in the opening. He caught her by the wrist, drew her to her feet, and into the room.

"Marion!" exclaimed Miss Ferris.

XL

There was a long silence during which Miss O'Brien tried to look defiant, and succeeded only in shedding a few tears. Barbara had always liked the girl, and now felt profoundly sorry for her. Liechtenstein, too, seemed sorry and at a loss for words. The position was difficult. The O'Brien's eavesdropping warranted her discharge, and nothing more. She would go straight to Blizzard and disclose Lichtenstein's whereabouts. But this in itself was merely an annoyance, as in the meanwhile the secret service head could go elsewhere. There was nothing for it but to discharge her and let her go. So Lichtenstein said presently, and then wrote with a pencil on a card. This card he handed to the maid.

"Give that to your employer," he said. On the card was written: "If anything happens to me you will be indicted for the Kaparoff business, and there is enough evidence in a safe place to make you pay the penalty. Lichtenstein."

"And now, Miss Ferris," he said, "it will be as well to let this girl first telephone to her master to say that I am here, and second to pack her trunks and go."

Barbara smiled, but not unkindly, at Marion, and nodded her brightly colored head. "I think that will be best, Marion."

The maid turned without a word and started for the hall-door, but was brought to a trembling stop by sudden words from Bubbles.

"Miss Barbara," said he, "ask her where your diamond bow-knot went!"

"Oh," exclaimed Lichtenstein, "an excuse for keeping an eye on her, perhaps. That was what we needed. How about this bow-knot, Marion?"

The guilt in the girl's face must have been obvious to the dullest eye.

"Oh," said Barbara, "is it good enough? She'd communicate with him somehow. This isn't the Middle Ages. Marion, if by any chance any of my things have gotten mixed with yours, please leave them on my dressing-table."

Marion, very red in the face, lurched out of the room.

"I can't very well give her a character," said Barbara.

Lichtenstein laughed. "Plenty of worse girls," he said, "receive excellent characters daily. And now I suppose I ought to put distance between this house and myself."

Barbara lifted her eyebrows. "Why?"

"Why? She's probably working the telephone now."

"I know," said Barbara, "but if you pretend to go, and then come back, this would be the last home in the world that Blizzard would suspect you of hiding in. Marion will tell him her story. And he certainly won't look for you here."

Lichtenstein's face was wreathed in smiles, "So be it," he said, "and I shall sit at your feet to learn."

"Can you drive a car?" asked Barbara.

"What kind of a car?"

"A Stoughton? But if you can drive any kind you can drive a Stoughton. We'll lend you a car and you shall take a long run and come back when it's dark. If you start at once, Marion will know of it. Meanwhile I'll tell my father all about everything. But first of all I'm dying with curiosity to know what you wrote on that card. That's all I can say. Of course if I'm not to be told--"

Had she asked for his dearest secret Lichtenstein could not have refused it, and he told her what he had written on the card.

"But why," said Barbara, "if you have a criminal, so to speak, where you want him--why let him be free to make more mischief? I ask merely for information."

"If he were punished for an ordinary crime," said Lichtenstein, "justice would be cheated. But if we can really get him where we want him, why, not only crime will be tried and found guilty, but the whole fabric of the police--yes, and the administration of the law. Therefore," and his voice was cold as marble, "it would be inadvisable to run him in for such picayune crimes as twisting lead pipe round young women and throwing them overboard, or otherwise delicately quieting tongues that might be made to wag against him. And now if you are going to lend me a car--"

XLI

Wilmot Allen was surprised and annoyed at being called back to New York by his employer. He had not "gotten over" Barbara in the least, but the great West had entered his blood. Thanks to financial arrangements with Blizzard he had lived a life free from care, and indeed had grown and developed in many ways, just as a forest tree will, to which air and sunlight has been admitted by removing its nearest neighbors, together with all their claims upon the rainfall and the tree-food locked up in the forest soil,

He had grown in body and mind. Wall Street, that had seemed so broad and important to him, now seemed narrow and insignificant. It was better for a man, a good horse between his knees, to find out what lay beyond the Ridges than whether steel was going up or down. He looked back upon his past life, not, it is true, with contempt and loathing, but with amused tolerance, as a man wise and reliable looks back upon the pranks of his boyhood.

He loved Barbara with all his heart, but no longer with the feeling that the loss of her would put an end to all the possibilities of life. Indeed he was coolly resolved in the event of her marrying somebody else to marry somebody else himself. The thought of children and a home had grown very dear to him. In short, he had assimilated a characteristic of the great unsettled West, where the ratio of the male of the species to the female is often as great as ten to one.

But if the year did not cure him of Barbara he would get her if he could.

To the main line was a day's journey over a single-track road abounding in undeveloped way stations, at which an insatiable locomotive was forever stopping to drink. At one of these stations a young man taller and broader even than Wilmot himself, and like him bearded and brown as autumn leaves, boarded the train laboriously and came down the aisle occasionally catching at the backs of seats for support.

A second look assured Wilmot that the stranger was not drunk, but sick or hurt, and he was wondering whether or not to offer him assistance, when the stranger suddenly stopped and smiled, steadied himself with one hand, and held out the other.

"I heard that you would be on this train," he said simply, "so I managed to catch it, too. May I sit with you?"

Wondering, Wilmot made room for the stranger and waited developments. But as these were not at once forthcoming he felt that he must break a silence which seemed awkward to him. And he turned his head and saw that the man had fainted.

A request for whiskey addressed to a car containing a dozen men accustomed to wrest metals from the earth was not in vain. Wilmot chose the nearest of twelve outstretched flasks, and was obliged to refuse a thirteenth in the kindly hand of the conductor.

"Fed better?"

"Thanks, I'm all right."

The twelve miners withdrew tactfully to their seats.

"Sure?"

"Sure. Just let me sample that brand again. Good. Now if you don't mind I'll say what I came to say."

"But aren't you hurt--isn't there something to do?"

"I've _been_ hurt. I'm just weak. Don't think about it. But you're Mr. Wilmot Allen all right, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"It's hard to be sure of a man you never knew and who's grown a beard since you saw him last."

"I assure you," Wilmot smiled, "that I'm only waiting to reach a first-class barber-shop."

"Perhaps you will change your mind."

"Why should I?"

"You know a man named O'Hagan?"

Wilmot nodded.

"I had a talk with him up in the mountains yesterday. He spoke truth for once. You know a man in New York--Blizzard?"

"He's been a good friend to me."

"Why?" asked the stranger.

"I don't know. I've asked myself that question a thousand times."

"He's helped you with your debts in return for your services in teaching a lot of foreigners to shoot straight?"

Wilmot frowned.

"Did it ever occur to you that he could have obtained half a dozen teachers for a tenth of the money?"

"That _has_ occurred to me," said Wilmot stiffly.

"Obviously then he has some ulterior use for you."

"Very possibly."

"Please don't take offence. There are reasons why you shouldn't. I am coming to them. Remember, O'Hagan talked to me, and talked truth. Blizzard is planning a revolution. You are to be one of the leaders. You imagine that one of the hell-governed Latin republics is to be the seat of operations, or you wouldn't have gone into the thing. But Blizzard is after bigger game than undeveloped wildernesses. Mr. Allen, you are part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government of New York City."

"Say that again."

The stranger smiled. "O'Hagan at the last made a clean breast of everything. He had to. I came West to make him."

"At the _last_? What does that mean?"

"When a man won't talk you have to make him--even if you fix him so that he can never talk again."

"Is O'Hagan _dead_?"

"He had his choice. But he _had_ to talk. If I had let him off afterward--I couldn't have gotten away with the information. One of us had to go out, and I had the power to decide which. I chose that O'Hagan should be the one. He was a man steeped in crime. I am not."

"You killed him?"

"I am a very poor talker if I have conveyed another meaning. I tracked him into the mountains. He shot me twice before I could get my hands on him. I twisted the truth out of him, and then as I was about to faint like a school-girl, and as my information was precious, I flung him over a cliff. If I hadn't, you see, he could have fixed me while I was unconscious."

The man's voice was very quiet, very matter-of-fact. Wilmot stared at him with a sort of wondering horror, for he knew that the man was telling the truth.

"He shot you twice. That was some time yesterday. You've seen a doctor?"

"There was none, and I had to ride all night to get here."

"Are you badly hit?"

The stranger drew back his coat and disclosed a shirt twice perforated over the abdomen and dark with dried and thickening blood. "Please don't try to do anything. There's no help. The damage is where it doesn't show. Only listen, please, and believe, and be frank with me."

Wilmot nodded gravely. "I don't know who you are," he said, "but you are hurt, and if you'd rather talk than try to do something about it, of course I'll listen."

"You are in wrong on the revolution," said the stranger. "It is not to come off in South America, but in the city of New York. If Blizzard's plans carry, this will happen. On the 15th of January there will be an explosion of dynamite loud enough to be heard from, the Battery to the Bronx. At that signal two-thirds of the police force, at the moment on active duty, will be shot dead in their tracks. The assassins, distinguished from law-abiding citizens by straw hats of a peculiar weave--"

"I have such a hat in my trunk."

"Are to assemble together with that third of the police force whom it was not necessary to annihilate, at the Sub-Treasury in Wall Street. Here they will receive further orders--some to loot the Sub-Treasury, some to loot banks, some Tiffany's, some the great wholesale jewellers of Maiden Lane. You, perhaps, as a man of superior talk and breeding, would be sent with a picked crew of Polacks, dagoes, and other high-minded patriots to rifle the Metropolitan Museum of Art--"

"Look here, did O'Hagan--"

"He did. Meanwhile all communication by telephone, by telegraph, by cable between New York and the outer world will be cut off. For at least twenty-four hours the city will be in Blizzard's power, at his, disposition."

"How about communication by train?"

"Trains will come into the Grand Central and the Pennsylvania, but they will not go out."

"A man could jump into an automobile and carry the news."

"Ferries will stop running. Bridges will be closed."

The idea of looting New York had fired Wilmot's imagination. It was a possibility to which he had never before given any thought,

"But," he objected, "there must be a flaw somewhere."

"Probably," admitted the stranger. "For there is a flaw in Blizzard's mind. It is the only way to account for him. He stands on the verge of insanity."

"Suppose the plan carries. The city has been looted. What next?"

"The stuff is hidden under Blizzard's house in Marrow Lane in cellars that he has been preparing for years. A passage leads from these cellars to a pier on the East River. Either he gets away with his loot in a stolen liner, or he finds that he may live on in New York, or perhaps in Washington."

"I don't see that."

"What effect would a successful revolution in New York have upon the discontented and the murderous of other cities? Are the criminals of San Francisco, Denver, Chicago to be outdone by the criminals of the effete East? I tell you, Mr. Allen, that sometimes in mad visions the legless beggar sees upon his brows a kingly crown."

"But the rest of the police--the garrison at Governor's Island?"

"O'Hagan was Blizzard's right-hand man, his general in the West. For the honor of being his left-hand man there are two aspirants--the mayor of New York City and the police commissioner--nor will the lieutenant-governor of our great State hold his hands behind his back and shake his head when the loot is being distributed."

"Are you _joking?"_

"No, Mr. Allen. I am dying. Now listen. I assume that you are no longer with Blizzard."

"What an ass I've been!"

"You are to find Abe Lichtenstein and tell him what I have told you. The boy Bubbles will put you on his track. As for money which Blizzard has advanced to you--" The stranger fumbled in his breast pocket and brought forth a much-soiled sheet of paper. "This locates outlying mining claims in Utah. They will make you rich. One-third to you--one-third to Miss Barbara Ferris--one-third to the boy Bubbles. You will tell him that I was his brother--different mothers, but the same father."

"_You_ are Harry West," and Wilmot looked with compassionate interest upon the man who, if only for a brief period of time, had once stood first in Barbara's affections.

Under the strain of talking West's voice had grown weaker. "Miss Barbara," he said quietly, "is in great danger from my father--"

"_Your_ father?"

"Didn't I tell you? Oh, yes. He is my father--Blizzard. That is why I don't mind dying. When the city is in confusion, and without any laws save of his own dictation, Miss Barbara will be in terrible danger. Many years from now, when it can do no harm with you, tell her, please, that in my life I had the incomparable privilege--"

Wilmot leaped to his feet. "Is there a doctor here? This man is dying."

But the Spartan, the wolf Death gnawing at his vitals, had said all that it was necessary for him to say. Wilmot Allen's strong arm about him, his mouth vaguely smiling, he fell heavily forward as if under the weight of a new and overpowering wonder and knowledge.

XLII

Nothing so makes for insomnia as a man's knowledge that he has made a fool of himself. Between Chicago and New York Wilmot Allen did not even have his berth made up. He visited the dining-car at the proper intervals, hardly conscious of what he ordered or ate. He bought newspapers, books, magazines, and opened none of them. For the most part he looked out the window of his compartment into rushing daylight or darkness. His mind kept travelling the round of a great circle that began and ended in humiliation. He had been as confiding in Blizzard's hands as an undeveloped child of seven. He had been teaching men whose creed was murder and anarchy how to handle weapons. He had taken at their face value words uttered by an emperor among scoundrels; had asked no material or leading questions, and was in his conscience paying the penalty for having snatched at tainted money with which to relieve himself of obligations that pressed till they hurt.

Beginning in humiliation, the circle of his thoughts ascended time after time to Barbara, only to fall from the high and tender lights which memories and anticipations of her brought into them, back to that darkness in which he struggled to give himself "a little the best of things" and could not.

On arriving in New York a man of more complex mental processes would have tried first of all to get the precious information which he carried into the possession of Lichtenstein, but Wilmot felt that he could have no peace until he had seen Blizzard, spoken his mind, and washed his hands of him. That he would then put his own life in danger did not occur to him, and would not have altered his determination if it had.

The lure of Barbara, however, drew him aside from the direct path to Marrow Lane. He had resolved not to see her for a year, but thought it right to break through that resolution in order to tell her at first hand of Harry West's death. But the janitor told him that Miss Ferris had not been coming to the studio for a long time. She had had no word from her. She had left one day by the back stair without her hat; a little later the legless beggar had left by the front door. His expression had been enough to frighten a body to death. Yes, the boy had come one day in a taxicab and gone away with her things. He had refused to answer any questions. She had never thought very highly of him as a boy. No, the bust upon which Miss Ferris had been at work had not been removed. No, the gentleman could not see it. Orders were orders.... Yes, the gentleman could see it. After all there had been no orders recently.

She led the way upstairs, her hand tightly closed upon a greenback. She unlocked and flung open the door of Barbara's studio, remarking that nothing in it had been touched since that lady's departure.

Wilmot noticed much dust, an overturned chair, and then his eyes rose to the bust of Blizzard as to a living presence. The expression of that bestial fallen face made his spine feel as if ants were crawling on it. And he turned away with disgust and hatred. "Oh, Barbs, Barbs, what a wrong-headed little darling you are!" But he added: "And Lord, what a talent she's got!"

Blizzard was not in his office. But he was upstairs and expected Mr. Allen.

A girl who had been wonderfully pretty told Wilmot these things. She would have been wonderfully pretty still, for she was very young, if she had not looked so tired, so unhappy, so broken-spirited. Did Rose still love the man for whom she had betrayed her friends and her own better nature? Yes. But she had learned that she was no more to him than a plaything--to caress or to break as seemed most amusing to him. At first until the novelty of her had worn off he had shown her a sufficiency of brusque tenderness. Latterly as his great plans matured he had been all brute. Sometimes he made her feel that he was so surfeited with her love that he considered killing her.

Sideways, with eyes haunted by shame and tragedy, she gave the handsome bearded youth a look of compassion. "In here, please," she said.

The door closed behind Wilmot with an ominous click, and he found himself face to face with the legless beggar. In this one's eyes, seen above a table littered with pamphlets and writings, was none of that mock affability to which he had formerly treated Wilmot Allen. He looked angry, dangerous, poisonous. And he broke into a harsh, ugly laugh.

"It takes you," he said, "to rush in where angels fear to tread. Welcome to my parlor! What a fool! My God! You heard what Harry West had to say before he died, and you came straight here."

"I don't know how you know it. But I did talk to your son. I did hear what he said. And I came here to tell you. And to tell you that there will be no more dealings between us. I am going straight from here to tell the proper authorities what I know."

"Aren't you going to punch my face first? That's what you'd like to do. It's in your eyes. But you're afraid."

"I am not afraid," said Wilmot, "and you know it."

For answer the legless man picked up a silver dollar from among the papers in front of him, and broke it savagely into four pieces. "Afraid!" he said. "Afraid! Afraid!"

Wilmot took a step forward. "It would give me the greatest pleasure," he said quietly, "to knock your head off. Unfortunately you are a cripple."

Blizzard said nothing, and presently, white with anger and contempt, Wilmot turned and tried the handle of the door by which he had entered. Blizzard laughed.

"This door is locked," said Wilmot.

"You are a prisoner in this house."

"I am, am I?"

Quick as lightning he had drawn and levelled at the legless man an automatic pistol of the largest calibre. The legless man did not move an inch, change expression, or take his eyes from Wilmot's.

Wilmot advanced till only the table separated them. "You will," he said, "climb out of that chair, and let me out of this house, walking in front of me."

The legless beggar appeared to consider the matter. There was silence. Wilmot shifted the position of his feet, and the floor boards under them creaked.

Blizzard appeared to have made up his mind. He spread his hands on the table as if to help himself out of his chair. The palm of his right hand, unknown to Wilmot, covered an electric push-button.

"Perhaps," said Blizzard, "you won't be in such a hurry to go after you hear that Miss Barbara Ferris is also a prisoner in this house--"

In horror and bewilderment Wilmot allowed the muzzle of his automatic to swerve. In that moment the palm of the legless man's right hand pressed upon the button, and the square of the floor upon which Wilmot stood dropped like the trap of a gallows, and he fell through the opening into darkness.

He was neither stunned nor bruised, and he began to grope about for the pistol which in the sudden descent had been knocked from his hand. The only light came from the open trap in the floor above. Something fell softly at his feet; he picked it up. It was a cloth, saturated with chloroform. He flung it from him, and began with a new haste to grope and fumble for his pistol.

Another cloth fell, and another. Distant and ugly laughter fell with them. More cloths, and already the air in the place reeked with chloroform.

He no longer knew what he was looking for, and when at last his hand closed upon the stock of the automatic, he did not know what it was that he had found.

Another cloth fell.

XLIII