Part 6

"Glad to get away from New York," confided the stranger, breaking in on Beekman's meditations, and tapping him on the knee. "The farther away I get the better I like it."

Beekman somewhat resented this interference with his comfortable somnolence, but he straightened up and smiled and answered:

"For my part New York's home to me. I feel sick, somehow, when I'm away from it."

The man swung about and glanced nervously at the changing landscape, and then suddenly turned back again and exhibited a pocket volume with flexible covers.

"Dante's Inferno," he declared, pointing to the book. "Ever delve into it? I've just recently been through a little inferno of my own," he went on. "I brought this with me, because I've got to keep before my mind the fact that some people have gone through more than I have. At least, so it seems to me. At the same time, I don't know that I'm ready to change places with any of the chaps in here." He tapped the book. "Neat little volume," he commented, rattling on nervously and without apparently keeping much track of what he was saying. "See the frontispiece," he said, leaning over towards Beekman. "It's Dante himself. I wonder why he always wears that headgear? Never see him without it! Always reminds me of a little verse on how to tell the names of busts."

"'I recognise Dante because he's tab-eared.' Tab-eared, you know," he went on, "is his peculiar sort of headgear. All sculptors give it to him." He resumed in sing-song fashion:

"'I recognise Dante, because he's tab-eared, And Virgil I know by his wreath, Old Homer I tell by his rough, shaggy beard, And the rest--_by the names underneath_.'"

Beekman laughed aloud.

"Good! Mighty good!" he cried. "Especially 'and the rest by the names underneath.' A flash of genius that."

The man turned over several pages in his book and began to read steadily, rumpling his hair, from time to time, as he did so. Once he looked up, only to find Beekman staring hard at the top of his head.

"Looking at my Heidelberg scar?" he asked hastily, pulling a lock of hair over it. "It was an ugly one, I can tell you, and almost did for me, too. Sometimes, you know I've thought it dented me a little in the skull." He pushed back the hair, again exhibiting the long, deep cut. "It throbs there once in a while--it's throbbing now."

His conversation became incoherent, and from it Beekman gathered only snatches.

"I don't know how to go about it," he continued, as though talking to himself. "It's the taxes chiefly. If I can get rid of the tax sales, that farm is just the thing for me. Old farm," he explained, looking up at Beekman, "somewhere in Erie County. Thought I'd take a look at it. Been in the family for years, but neglected it; now I want to live on it, bury myself, get away from New York, from the Inferno back to Eden, don't you know."

He laughed a quick, nervous laugh, and jerked himself away once more, his face twitching while he mumbled.

"A man labouring under some strange and unusual excitement," thought Beekman, "and yet...."

The stranger was on his feet now, and going down the aisle paused before a chair that was occupied by a tired mother and her two-and-a-half-year-old child. Weary, mortified, her temper gone, the woman was trying to appease the crying babe.

Taking up the child in his arms, the stranger sat it on his knee, let it play with his watch, rattled his keys, adopted a hundred lively pranks for the benefit of the child; and the infant, soothed and cheered by this new and agreeable personality, sank at last into a peaceful sleep.

"Nothing like a child," he said to Beekman, "to make the future seem worth while. Talk about Eden--there's no Eden, no happiness, without them. I love children, this one, all of them."

Beekman once more lapsed into drowsiness, his thoughts, in a confused way, resting on the eccentric character beside him. When he awoke the train was pulling into Buffalo. Touching the stranger by the arm, as he was preparing to alight, he quoted: "'And the rest by the names underneath.'" And added, as he raised his hat: "Thanks. I'll not forget that."

Nor did he soon forget it. For indeed through many months to come he carried with him the memory of that nervous, haunted, tired face with the restless, hopeless eyes, the memory of this unknown man with the scar deep and long and wide upon his forehead--the scar from Heidelberg.

* * * * *

At ten o'clock that morning Peter V. Wilkinson was closeted with Colonel Morehead in Colonel Morehead's office at 120 Broadway.

"Glad you left that Flomerfelt proposition downstairs, Peter," said Morehead, "because, for one thing, I don't like him."

"Well, I do," retorted Wilkinson positively. "As a matter of fact, I like him because I can't get along without him. He's a wonder!" he went on enthusiastically. "Any time you want a thing put through, and don't care how it's done, you hire my man Flomerfelt. In this whole crisis, Flomerfelt, in my opinion, is worth his weight in gold. Why, the man has a hold on nearly everybody that I know."

"Well, he hasn't one on me," returned the lawyer.

"He has on me, then," said his client, "but I don't mind. He gets good pay from me; and he can make any given man do almost anything he wants him to do--that's Flomerfelt. I never stop thanking my good fortune that I've got him on my side. He's the kingpin in this mix-up, let me tell you, Morehead."

The Colonel laughed.

"I was inclined to think, Peter, that I might be some pumpkins myself," he suggested. "I may be, before we're through."

"No use of talking," protested his client, "Flomerfelt can do things that you can't do, and never thought of doing. If I get out of this scrape, it will be Flomerfelt's doing...."

The lawyer leaned back in his revolving chair. He was a lean personage, all bone and gristle, with a lean nose and shrewd, sharp eyes.

"Peter," he said, "a bunch of indictments for perjury, larceny and forgery are dangerous things." He looked at his watch. "Confound it!" he went on. "Why the dickens couldn't the Court agree to take our plea at ten this morning. By eleven everybody in town will know about it, everybody that can will be there. If the papers hadn't got on to it early this morning we'd have had no trouble. We could have slipped in and out--done the trick, and nobody the wiser. But now.... By the way," he added, "that reminds me--I want that man Beekman over here. I'll call him up."

Eliot Beekman's office said he was out--said he was not in New York--that he'd left that morning on the Empire State Express for Buffalo.

"Well, where is he in Buffalo?" asked Morehead.

They told him--at the Iroquois Hotel.

"Tell him that Colonel Morehead called him up," said the Colonel; "and that I want to see him the minute he returns."

Wilkinson nervously tapped his foot upon the floor.

"I can't see what you want of Beekman?" he said.

Morehead's eyes narrowed.

"I want him to defend you, if these indictments come to trial, as probably they shall."

"What! That young fellow who calls at my house to see Leslie!" returned Wilkinson. "Why, we want the highest-priced counsel we can get. I want you, and Patrick Durand, but not one of the submerged like Beekman."

"I want to tell you that Beekman isn't one of the submerged, as you say. He's got a practice here that yields him at least seventy-five hundred a year, which means that he's a wonderful man, because he's only thirty, or a little under, with no political pull. He makes his living out of the law pure and simple, not out of Wall Street, or real estate deals, or the criminal classes, either."

"Well, then, if he's not a criminal lawyer, we certainly do not want him," protested the Colonel's rich client.

"I like Beekman," proceeded the Colonel, ignoring the comment, "because, in a measure, he reminds me of myself, though he has something that I never had. Like me, he's a free lance. He never hooked up in partnership with anybody. When he tries a case he does it as I do--not with his associate holding his hand on one side and a couple of assistants holding his hand on the other--but alone with a couple of scraps of paper, and the rest of his case in his head. I like Beekman first-rate." He hitched his chair close to Wilkinson's. "But that isn't the point. The gist of the whole thing is this: There's one thing that Beekman can do better than any other lawyer in New York; one thing that he can do that most lawyers can't do at all. He is able to impress his jury with his own absolute belief in his client's cause. He's sincere, and the jury know it. And that's three-quarters of the battle. Oh, we'll all be there, Peter, on the show-down, but you can imagine me trying to impress a jury with my belief in my client's honesty, can't you? Oh, yes, my cleverness is conceded; they'd all laugh, and say, 'Strike one for the Colonel,' and all that sort of thing. But ten chances to one they'd find the other way. I wish I had that strange thing that Beekman has got! All my life I've wanted it."

Wilkinson fidgeted about. He didn't see this as the Colonel did. Nevertheless he answered:

"What you say goes, Morehead!"

The Colonel jerked his head and became the least bit more confidential.

"But the trick is to be sure that Beekman actually does believe in you. But, Peter, we're fortunate in one respect--I would have retained him anyway--but this development is certainly fortuitous: He wants to marry your daughter Leslie."

Wilkinson's face reddened; his Van Dyke bristled with opposition.

"I'd like to see him get the chance!" he cried. "Leslie has got to marry well, and she's just the hard-headed little girl who'll do it, too. Beekman marry Leslie! Not if I know it!"

The lawyer sank back wearily.

"The question of who marries your daughter, Wilkinson, is no concern of mine. That Beekman wants to marry her, is enough for me. Let him want to--let him see her all he wants to--you can fix the ultimate proceedings in your own way. But for the present, somebody has got to build up in Beekman a great and immovable faith in you. He must be educated up to the belief that you are as straight as a string. Let his teacher be the girl; she'll make the best one, for she believes in you herself."

Wilkinson pressed his hand against his face.

"And she's always got to believe in me," he groaned. "We must see to that."

The Colonel gripped his arm.

"And whatever happens, Peter," he concluded, "I don't want Beekman ever to meet this man Giles Ilingsworth, for he's another of your honest chaps; and if Beekman before your trial should hear from the lips of Giles Ilingsworth his own story of the case, he's going to believe it. Do you understand?" The lawyer grinned, adding: "For I believe it myself."

Fifteen minutes later a Mastodon turned into Franklin Street from Broadway and rolled easily down the hill toward the Criminal Courts Building, next door to the Tombs. In the car were four men: Peter V. Wilkinson, Colonel Morehead, his counsel; Roy Pallister, Wilkinson's private secretary, and Wilkinson's chauffeur.

"Great guns!" cried Wilkinson when they were half way down the street; "look at the crowds! Why, everybody in New York is here!"

"I heard on the street this morning," said Morehead, who rather enjoyed his client's discomfiture, "that the disgruntled depositors had deserted the front doors of the Interstate and the Tri-State, and had formed here, waiting to see you----"

Morehead got no further, for at that moment the car abruptly stopped, as if on the brink of a precipice. A dirty fist was thrust into the car, and an extra shoved into their faces.

WILKINSON WARNED!

RUMOURS RIFE THAT THE CROWD AT CRIMINAL COURT WILL TRY TO KILL----

"Stop the car! Stop the car!" called out Wilkinson frantically. "Look at that murderous gang down there! Go back--go back! Turn the other way--turn the car around, do you hear?"

Morehead held up his hand.

"It's all right, Francois. Go ahead!" he commanded. "Go right ahead and nobody will notice us. We'll go in by the rear entrance; most of the crowd are in front. There are four automobiles there already; they've probably mistaken others for us. The crowd don't know you, Wilkinson, from Adam--wouldn't know you from your pictures in the papers. Besides, there's no danger; there never is, with a New York crowd. Drive on!"

The chauffeur obeyed him.

Now they were on the outskirts of the crowd, and had begun slowly to eat their way through it when, all of a sudden, somebody set up a cry of "Wilkinson!" But quick as a flash, Morehead leaned over the side of the car and shouted to the nearest of the mob:

"Has Wilkinson arrived?"

The answer was "No!" And at once word passed quickly that the car did not contain Wilkinson, but somebody else. Nevertheless, to Wilkinson's fearful eye there was a movement here, there, everywhere, as if the crowd, or some few people in it, had realised the truth.

Presently Morehead caught sight of two officers standing on the steps. To these the Colonel waved an unseen signal, while on the sidewalk Wilkinson's faithful Pinkertons waited, alert, quiet, their hands in their coat pockets.

And so it happened that the Mastodon managed to draw up at the curb before a spacious door, the two officers moving out to meet it, the Pinkertons flanking it on the other side.

"All we have to do, you see," said Colonel Morehead, "is to make a dash behind these uniforms, and a second more and we're inside. The crowd will be fooled."

But the crowd was not fooled. For suddenly there rose upon the air a mighty cry as if from a thousand throats:

"Wilkinson! Wilkinson! He's here! He's here! This way! This way! There's Wilkinson!" A moment's silence, and then more cries of: "Thief! Forger! Perjurer! My money--give me back my money!... Arg-gh Wilkinson ...!"

"Now, Wilkinson," whispered the Colonel, "keep a stiff upper lip; don't turn a hair. Just get out of the car and walk right through. I know crowds--nothing will happen--nothing. Now...."

Colonel Morehead was a man whose orders were generally obeyed. Consequently, in a situation like this, his reassuring words carried great weight, and the men with him in the car, immediately following his example, jumped to their feet. For an instant they stood, exposed to merciless hootings, preparing to alight; and in that very instant there suddenly rang out a revolver shot, and a puff of smoke floated over the densest part of the crowd, while, almost simultaneously, one of the four men in the car, clutching first at the air and then at his throat, plunged head foremost into the street below. Just how it happened the police never knew, but all remembered hearing a voice cry out: "Wilkinson!"

For a moment that seemed hours, the trained Pinkertons failed to rise to the emergency, but then fairly leaping into the machine and dragging the men across the sidewalk, they thrust them into the safety within the hall and closed the doors on them. Out again and into the street dashed the Pinkertons with the two uniformed officers, and there they picked up the body which was lying hideously huddled between the curb and the machine. As for Francois the chauffeur, he had fled.

"Get back there! Get back there!" cried the officers. "If you don't, we'll pull our clubs. Get back! Will you get back ...!"

But the frenzied crowd would not budge. So the officers, with their backs to the machine, plied their clubs viciously about them, but even then the mob persisted.

"It served him right! He got what was coming to him!" came from all sides.

"Get back!" cried the officers, standing guard over the body on the sidewalk. Gently one of them felt of the dead man, opening his clothing at the neck, felt of his heart. Now the officers shook their heads. A man came running through the crowd. "I'm a doctor," he told them; "anything I can do?" He, too, applied the tests. Presently he finished and rose to his feet, and announced:

"He's dead--dead as a door nail."

The policemen carried the body into the huge building and laid it down upon the stones.

"Great heavens! It's little Pallister."

The exclamation fell from the lips of Peter V. Wilkinson as he clutched at Colonel Morehead for support. A moment later, wiping the perspiration from his face, he added:

"And they meant that for me!"

VIII

Despite the efforts of his counsel to pacify him, it was fully half an hour before Peter V. Wilkinson recovered from his fright. Over and over again he wailed in the lawyer's ears, "But they tried to do it, Morehead. They tried to kill me, didn't they?" And when, at last, the replies to this question were not forthcoming, he asked, between little fits of shivering, what plans had been made to get him away, since the police would probably be powerless to drive away the crowd which every moment, he was positive, was increasing because of the excitement and their knowledge now that he was in the building. In a measure, however, he was soon reassured. For after a loud rap on the railing, the Court came in, and glancing commiseratingly at Colonel Morehead, as if apologising for an act of violence, he shot out a stern forefinger towards the officers and cried out in a sonorous tone:

"Clear the court-room at once! Next thing you know we'll have violence here."

This proceeding took some little time, for the court-room was crowded. When at last it was cleared the Court, bowing respectfully to Colonel Morehead, announced:

"If you're ready, Colonel Morehead, we'll have the indictments read."

The Colonel made a grimace.

"We've been reading them all night, your Honour; I know them all by heart; I think we can waive having them read."

"Put the waiver on the record," said the Assistant District Attorney to the stenographer. He nodded toward the Court. "The District Attorney is most particular about this case."

"How do you plead to the first, Colonel?" asked the Court.

"The larceny indictment?"

"Yes."

"Not guilty."

"Forgery--eight counts there, Colonel."

"Not guilty."

"Perjury--these banking reports--how about it?"

"Not guilty," repeated Morehead laconically. "And now, your Honour," he went on, adopting a casual tone, "about bail?"

The Court inclined his head toward the Assistant District Attorney.

"Any suggestions?"

"I move, your Honour," said the assistant, "that bail in these cases,--under the new rule laid down in the Mitchell case,--be fixed at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on each charge."

Colonel Morehead stiffened as with a sudden shock.

"Your Honour," he protested, "this is preposterous! Every defendant is entitled to have bail fixed at a reasonable sum."

"Then," went on the assistant with asperity, "if Colonel Morehead makes a fuss about it, I move, your Honour, to hold this defendant in the Tombs, and without bail, if your Honour please. It is, in this case, discretionary with your Honour. People vs. Mitchell, 193 New York."

His Honour nodded impartially to Colonel Morehead and the Assistant District Attorney.

For a while he gazed into space; finally he said:

"Colonel Morehead, I think that I must fix the bail suggested, if I fix any bail at all."

"This is barbarous, prohibitive, unconstitutional," groaned Morehead. "Why, your Honour, it is a notorious fact that my client is a broken man, financially. Where can he get three-quarters of a million bail?"

The Court's eyes sought the rear wall. He had often dined with Wilkinson, had been entertained at his house, but this made no difference to the Court.

"I think, Colonel," he repeated, this time with a shade more emphasis, "that I must fix the bail suggested, if I am to fix any bail at all."

Wilkinson, the present calamity fresh upon him, was trembling; and pressing against Colonel Morehead, whispered loudly in his ear:

"Let it go at three-quarters of a million, Colonel; we can raise that easy enough."

The Colonel turned white with rage. He looked at the Assistant District Attorney to see if that gentleman had heard the remark. Then, satisfied that he had not, he turned swiftly and ostentatiously upon his client, protesting:

"Mr. Wilkinson, I am managing this case, not you. Be good enough to let me manage it alone." Before proceeding, he wiped his glasses and blinked his eyes. "Your Honour," he said with considerable pathos in his tone, "to fix this bail means that my client must be incarcerated in the Tombs. Who among all his friends will come forward to-day and furnish three-quarters of a million dollars bail? Who, indeed?" He shook his head. "Blessed are they that hath, for to them shall be given. But to him that hath not, shall be taken away, even that he hath. Does your Honour still persist?"

"Colonel Morehead," said the Court, "I shall cheerfully hold this man without bail at all, if you still persist."

Morehead bowed.

"We shall try ..." and his voice rang with the wail of a funeral bell, "we shall try to get bail, your Honour."

"You can't furnish it now?" asked the Court.

"You might as well ask for the moon," returned Wilkinson's counsel, looking the picture of grim despair.

The Court's eyelids never fluttered as he ordered:

"Take the prisoner to the Tombs in default of bail."

"I'll go with you, Wilkinson," declared Morehead, with a peculiar smile.

As they crossed the Bridge of Sighs, they could hear the cries of the crowd below--a crowd frenzied both by the horror of the crime and the escape of Wilkinson.

"Don't be frightened, Wilkinson, this is all right," said Morehead soothingly. "You're going to stay in the Tombs until I get you bail."

"I can put it up in half an hour, you fool!" insisted Wilkinson.

"But you won't," returned his counsel. "Not if I know it. If you put up bail in half an hour, they'll find out where it comes from; and if they find that out, they'll find out all the rest."

Wilkinson dropped his eyes.

"Perhaps you're right, Colonel," he conceded. "Do with me as you will."

"Yes, you must do as I say, or I'll drop this case," warned the Colonel. "And while you're in here, you're not to talk--not a word to anyone--do you understand me?"

"But how long will I be in here? They won't lock me up, will they?"

"Of course they will."

"Not behind the bars--not in a cell?"

Morehead nodded.

"I won't stand for it!" blustered the millionaire.

Morehead caught him by the arm and looked him in the eye.

"You've got to do as I say to the letter, or it means ruin, ruin, do you understand? I know what I'm talking about. You go into a cell without a murmur. The newspapers--all New York will talk about it; everybody will know that Colonel Morehead is gnashing his teeth at the injustice shown you. Morehead is taking an appeal, they will say; but as for you, you'll keep quiet in your cage until I let you out. It won't be long; wait and see."

They passed into the Tombs. A deputy warden nodded to Wilkinson.

"That was a narrow escape you had, Mr. Wilkinson," he said, referring to the tragedy of an hour or so before.

"I--I should think so," faltered Wilkinson, the cold sweat running down his face. "Poor Pallister! Have they got the murderer?"

"No," said the warden, "and I doubt if they'll ever get him, either. Still, you never can tell...."

"If they should find out, you'll let me know at once, won't you?" urged Wilkinson.

The warden promised. The lawyer and his client parted: Colonel Morehead went his way; Wilkinson was shown into a cell.

At one o'clock that day, one of the officials unlocked the door of his cell and took him down into a counsel room. Sitting there at a table was a woman with her face in her hands.

"Oh, father, I couldn't stay away!" she cried, springing to her feet and smiling bravely.

"Leslie--you here--you!" And the next moment he had gathered her in his arms and was patting the head that rested on his shoulders.

"I'm so glad to see you, that you're alive and well," she went on affectionately. "Colonel Morehead told me----"