Chapter 4

The young man had taken the revolver from the limp fingers of the burglar and was holding it in his hand. Winthrop gave what was half a laugh and half a sigh of compassion.

"So, that's Carey?" he said.

There was a sudden silence. The young man with the stern face made no answer. His head was bent over the revolver. He broke it open, and spilled the cartridges into his palm. Still he made no answer. When he raised his head, his eyes were no longer stern, but wistful, and filled with an inexpressible loneliness.

"No, _I_ am Carey," he said.

The one who had blundered stood helpless, tongue-tied, with no presence of mind beyond knowing that to explain would offend further.

The other seemed to feel for him more than for himself. In a voice low and peculiarly appealing, he continued hurriedly.

"He is my doctor," he said. "He is a young man, and he has not had many advantages--his manner is not--I find we do not get on together. I have asked them to send me some one else." He stopped suddenly, and stood unhappily silent. The knowledge that the strangers were acquainted with his story seemed to rob him of his earlier confidence. He made an uncertain movement as though to relieve them of his presence.

Miss Forbes stepped toward him eagerly.

"You told me I might wait in the library," she said. "Will you take me there?"

For a moment the man did not move, but stood looking at the young and beautiful girl, who, with a smile, hid the compassion in her eyes.

"Will you go?" he asked wistfully.

"Why not?" said the girl.

The young man laughed with pleasure.

"I am unpardonable," he said. "I live so much alone--that I forget." Like one who, issuing from a close room, encounters the morning air, he drew a deep, happy breath. "It has been three years since a woman has been in this house," he said simply. "And I have not even thanked you," he went on, "nor asked you if you are cold," he cried remorsefully, "or hungry. How nice it would be if you would say you are hungry."

The girl walked beside him, laughing lightly, and, as they disappeared into the greater hall beyond, Winthrop heard her cry: "You never robbed your own ice-chest? How have you kept from starving? Show me it, and we'll rob it together."

The voice of their host rang through the empty house with a laugh like that of an eager, happy child.

"Heavens!" said the owner of the car, "isn't she wonderful!" But neither the prostrate burglars, nor the servants, intent on strapping their wrists together, gave him any answer.

As they were finishing the supper filched from the ice-chest, Fred was brought before them from the kitchen. The blow the burglar had given him was covered with a piece of cold beef-steak, and the water thrown on him to revive him was thawing from his leather breeches. Mr. Carey expressed his gratitude, and rewarded him beyond the avaricious dreams even of a chauffeur.

As the three trespassers left the house, accompanied by many pails of water, the girl turned to the lonely figure in the doorway and waved her hand.

"May we come again?" she called.

But young Mr. Carey did not trust his voice to answer. Standing erect, with folded arms, in dark silhouette in the light of the hall, he bowed his head.

Deaf to alarm bells, to pistol shots, to cries for help, they found her brother and Ernest Peabody sleeping soundly.

"Sam is a charming chaperon," said the owner of the car.

With the girl beside him, with Fred crouched, shivering, on the step, he threw in the clutch; the servants from the house waved the emptied buckets in salute, and the great car sprang forward into the awakening day toward the golden dome over the Boston Common. In the rear seat Peabody shivered and yawned, and then sat erect.

"Did you get the water?" he demanded, anxiously.

There was a grim silence.

"Yes," said the owner of the car patiently. "You needn't worry any longer. We got the water."

III

THE KIDNAPPERS

During the last two weeks of the "whirlwind" campaign, automobiles had carried the rival candidates to every election district in Greater New York.

During these two weeks, at the disposal of Ernest Peabody--on the Reform Ticket, "the people's choice for Lieutenant-Governor--" Winthrop had placed his Scarlet Car, and, as its chauffeur, himself.

Not that Winthrop greatly cared for Reform, or Ernest Peabody. The "whirlwind" part of the campaign was what attracted him; the crowds, the bands, the fireworks, the rush by night from hall to hall, from Fordham to Tompkinsville. And, while inside the different Lyceums, Peabody lashed the Tammany Tiger, outside in his car, Winthrop was making friends with Tammany policemen, and his natural enemies, the bicycle cops. To Winthrop, the day in which he did not increase his acquaintance with the traffic squad, was a day lost.

But the real reason for his efforts in the cause of Reform, was one he could not declare. And it was a reason that was guessed perhaps by only one person. On some nights Beatrice Forbes and her brother Sam accompanied Peabody. And while Peabody sat in the rear of the car, mumbling the speech he would next deliver, Winthrop was given the chance to talk with her. These chances were growing cruelly few. In one month after election day Miss Forbes and Peabody would be man and wife. Once before the day of their marriage had been fixed, but, when the Reform Party offered Peabody a high place on its ticket, he asked, in order that he might bear his part in the cause of reform, that the wedding be postponed. To the postponement Miss Forbes made no objection. To one less self-centred than Peabody, it might have appeared that she almost too readily consented.

"I knew I could count upon your seeing my duty as I saw it," said Peabody much pleased, "it always will be a satisfaction to both of us to remember you never stood between me and my work for reform."

"What do you think my brother-in-law-to-be has done now?" demanded Sam of Winthrop, as the Scarlet Car swept into Jerome Avenue. "He's postponed his marriage with Trix just because he has a chance to be Lieutenant-Governor. What is a Lieutenant-Governor anyway, do you know? I don't like to ask Peabody."

"It is not his own election he's working for," said Winthrop. He was conscious of an effort to assume a point of view both noble and magnanimous.

"He probably feels the 'cause' calls him. But, good Heavens!"

"Look out!" shrieked Sam, "where you going?"

Winthrop swung the car back into the avenue.

"To think," he cried, "that a man who could marry--a girl, and then would ask her to wait two months. Or, two days! Two months lost out of his life, and she might die; he might lose her, she might change her mind. Any number of men can be Lieutenant-Governors; only one man can be----"

He broke off suddenly, coughed and fixed his eyes miserably on the road. After a brief pause, Brother Sam covertly looked at him. Could it be that "Billie" Winthrop, the man liked of all men, should love his sister, and--that she should prefer Ernest Peabody? He was deeply, loyally indignant. He determined to demand of his sister an immediate and abject apology.

At eight o'clock on the morning of election day, Peabody, in the Scarlet Car, was on his way to vote. He lived at Riverside Drive, and the polling-booth was only a few blocks distant. During the rest of the day he intended to use the car to visit other election districts, and to keep him in touch with the Reformers at the Gilsey House. Winthrop was acting as his chauffeur, and in the rear seat was Miss Forbes. Peabody had asked her to accompany him to the polling-booth, because he thought women who believed in reform should show their interest in it in public, before all men. Miss Forbes disagreed with him, chiefly because whenever she sat in a box at any of the public meetings the artists from the newspapers, instead of immortalizing the candidate, made pictures of her and her hat. After she had seen her future lord and master cast his vote for reform and himself, she was to depart by train to Tarrytown. The Forbes's country place was there, and for election day her brother Sam had invited out some of his friends to play tennis.

As the car darted and dodged up Eighth Avenue, a man who had been hidden by the stairs to the Elevated, stepped in front of it. It caught him, and hurled him, like a mail-bag tossed from a train, against one of the pillars that support the overhead tracks. Winthrop gave a cry and fell upon the brakes. The cry was as full of pain as though he himself had been mangled. Miss Forbes saw only the man appear, and then disappear, but, Winthrop's shout of warning, and the wrench as the brakes locked, told her what had happened. She shut her eyes, and for an instant covered them with her hands. On the front seat Peabody clutched helplessly at the cushions. In horror his eyes were fastened on the motionless mass jammed against the pillar. Winthrop scrambled over him, and ran to where the man lay. So, apparently, did every other inhabitant of Eighth Avenue; but Winthrop was the first to reach him and kneeling in the car tracks, he tried to place the head and shoulders of the body against the iron pillar. He had seen very few dead men; and to him, this weight in his arms, this bundle of limp flesh and muddy clothes, and the purple-bloated face with blood trickling down it, looked like a dead man.

Once or twice when in his car, Death had reached for Winthrop, and only by the scantiest grace had he escaped. Then the nearness of it had only sobered him. Now that he believed he had brought it to a fellow man, even though he knew he was in no degree to blame, the thought sickened and shocked him. His brain trembled with remorse and horror.

But voices assailing him on every side brought him to the necessity of the moment. Men were pressing close upon him, jostling, abusing him, shaking fists in his face. Another crowd of men, as though fearing the car would escape of its own volition, were clinging to the steps and running boards.

Winthrop saw Miss Forbes standing above them, talking eagerly to Peabody, and pointing at him. He heard children's shrill voices calling to new arrivals that an automobile had killed a man; that it had killed him on purpose. On the outer edge of the crowd men shouted: "Ah, soak him," "Kill him," "Lynch him."

A soiled giant without a collar stooped over the purple, blood-stained face, and then leaped upright, and shouted: "It's Jerry Gaylor, he's killed old man Gaylor."

The response was instant. Every one seemed to know Jerry Gaylor.

Winthrop took the soiled person by the arm.

"You help me lift him into my car," he ordered. "Take him by the shoulders. We must get him to a hospital."

"To a hospital? To the Morgue!" roared the man. "And the police station for yours. You don't do no get-away."

Winthrop answered him by turning to the crowd. "If this man has any friends here, they'll please help me put him in my car, and we'll take him to Roosevelt Hospital."

The soiled person shoved a fist and a bad cigar under Winthrop's nose.

"Has he got any friends?" he mocked. "Sure, he's got friends, and they'll fix you, all right."

"Sure!" echoed the crowd.

The man was encouraged.

"Don't you go away thinking you can come up here with your buzz wagon and murder better men nor you'll ever be and----"

"Oh, shut up!" said Winthrop.

He turned his back on the soiled man, and again appealed to the crowd.

"Don't stand there doing nothing," he commanded. "Do you want this man to die? Some of you ring for an ambulance and get a policeman, or tell me where is the nearest drug store."

No one moved, but every one shouted to every one else to do as Winthrop suggested.

Winthrop felt something pulling at his sleeve, and turning, found Peabody at his shoulder peering fearfully at the figure in the street. He had drawn his cap over his eyes and hidden the lower part of his face in the high collar of his motor coat. "I can't do anything, can I?" he asked.

"I'm afraid not," whispered Winthrop. "Go back to the car and don't leave Beatrice. I'll attend to this."

"That's what I thought," whispered Peabody eagerly. "I thought she and I had better keep out of it."

"Right!" exclaimed Winthrop. "Go back and get Beatrice away."

Peabody looked his relief, but still hesitated.

"I can't do anything, as you say," he stammered, "and it's sure to get in the 'extras,' and they'll be out in time to lose us thousands of votes, and though no one is to blame, they're sure to blame me. I don't care about myself," he added eagerly, "but the very morning of election--half the city has not voted yet--the Ticket----"

"Damn the Ticket!" exclaimed Winthrop. "The man's dead!"

Peabody, burying his face still deeper in his collar, backed into the crowd. In the present and past campaigns, from carts and automobiles he had made many speeches in Harlem, and on the West Side, lithographs of his stern, resolute features hung in every delicatessen shop, and that he might be recognized, was extremely likely.

He whispered to Miss Forbes what he had said, and what Winthrop had said.

"But you DON'T mean to leave him," remarked Miss Forbes.

"I must," returned Peabody. "I can do nothing for the man, and you know how Tammany will use this--They'll have it on the street by ten. They'll say I was driving recklessly; without regard for human life. And, besides, they're waiting for me at headquarters. Please hurry. I am late now."

Miss Forbes gave an exclamation of surprise.

"Why, I'm not going," she said.

"You must go! _I_ must go. You can't remain here alone."

Peabody spoke in the quick, assured tone that at the first had convinced Miss Forbes his was a most masterful manner.

"Winthrop, too," he added, "wants you to go away."

Miss Forbes made no reply. But she looked at Peabody inquiringly, steadily, as though she were puzzled as to his identity, as though he had just been introduced to her. It made him uncomfortable.

"Are you coming?" he asked.

Her answer was a question.

"Are you going?"

"I am!" returned Peabody. He added sharply: "I must."

"Good-by," said Miss Forbes.

As he ran up the steps to the station of the elevated, it seemed to Peabody that the tone of her "good-by" had been most unpleasant. It was severe, disapproving. It had a final, fateful sound. He was conscious of a feeling of self-dissatisfaction. In not seeing the political importance of his not being mixed up with this accident, Winthrop had been peculiarly obtuse, and Beatrice, unsympathetic. Until he had cast his vote for Reform, he felt distinctly ill-used.

For a moment Beatrice Forbes sat in the car motionless, staring unseeingly at the iron steps by which Peabody had disappeared. For a few moments her brows were tightly drawn. Then, having apparently quickly arrived at some conclusion, she opened the door of the car and pushed into the crowd.

Winthrop received her most rudely.

"You mustn't come here!" he cried.

"I thought," she stammered, "you might want some one?"

"I told--" began Winthrop, and then stopped, and added--"to take you away. Where is he?"

Miss Forbes flushed slightly.

"He's gone," she said.

In trying not to look at Winthrop, she saw the fallen figure, motionless against the pillar, and with an exclamation, bent fearfully toward it.

"Can I do anything?" she asked.

The crowd gave way for her, and with curious pleased faces, closed in again eagerly. She afforded them a new interest.

A young man in the uniform of an ambulance surgeon was kneeling beside the mud-stained figure, and a police officer was standing over both. The ambulance surgeon touched lightly the matted hair from which the blood escaped, stuck his finger in the eye of the prostrate man, and then with his open hand slapped him across the face.

"Oh!" gasped Miss Forbes.

The young doctor heard her, and looking up, scowled reprovingly. Seeing she was a rarely beautiful young woman, he scowled less severely; and then deliberately and expertly, again slapped Mr. Jerry Gaylor on the cheek. He watched the white mark made by his hand upon the purple skin, until the blood struggled slowly back to it, and then rose.

He ignored every one but the police officer.

"There's nothing the matter with HIM," he said. "He's dead drunk."

The words came to Winthrop with such abrupt relief, bearing so tremendous a burden of gratitude, that his heart seemed to fail him. In his suddenly regained happiness, he unconsciously laughed.

"Are you sure?" he asked eagerly. "I thought I'd killed him."

The surgeon looked at Winthrop coldly.

"When they're like that," he explained with authority, "you can't hurt 'em if you throw them off the Times Building."

He condescended to recognize the crowd. "You know where this man lives?"

Voices answered that Mr. Gaylor lived at the corner, over the saloon. The voices showed a lack of sympathy. Old man Gaylor dead was a novelty; old man Gaylor drunk was not.

The doctor's prescription was simple and direct.

"Put him to bed till he sleeps it off," he ordered; he swung himself to the step of the ambulance. "Let him out, Steve," he called. There was the clang of a gong and the rattle of galloping hoofs.

The police officer approached Winthrop. "They tell me Jerry stepped in front of your car; that you wasn't to blame. I'll get their names and where they live. Jerry might try to hold you up for damages."

"Thank you very much," said Winthrop.

With several of Jerry's friends, and the soiled person, who now seemed dissatisfied that Jerry was alive, Winthrop helped to carry him up one flight of stairs and drop him upon a bed.

"In case he needs anything," said Winthrop, and gave several bills to the soiled person, upon whom immediately Gaylor's other friends closed in. "And I'll send my own doctor at once to attend to him."

"You'd better," said the soiled person morosely, "or, he'll try to shake you down."

The opinions as to what might be Mr. Gaylor's next move seemed unanimous.

From the saloon below, Winthrop telephoned to the family doctor, and then rejoined Miss Forbes and the Police officer. The officer gave him the names of those citizens who had witnessed the accident, and in return received Winthrop's card.

"Not that it will go any further," said the officer reassuringly. "They're all saying you acted all right and wanted to take him to Roosevelt. There's many," he added with sententious indignation, "that knock a man down, and then run away without waiting to find out if they've hurted 'em or killed 'em."

The speech for both Winthrop and Miss Forbes was equally embarrassing.

"You don't say?" exclaimed Winthrop nervously. He shook the policeman's hand. The handclasp was apparently satisfactory to that official, for he murmured "Thank you," and stuck something in the lining of his helmet. "Now, then!" Winthrop said briskly to Miss Forbes, "I think we have done all we can. And we'll get away from this place a little faster than the law allows."

Miss Forbes had seated herself in the car, and Winthrop was cranking up, when the same policeman, wearing an anxious countenance, touched him on the arm. "There is a gentleman here," he said, "wants to speak to you." He placed himself between the gentleman and Winthrop and whispered: "He's 'Izzy' Schwab, he's a Harlem police-court lawyer and a Tammany man. He's after something, look out for him."

Winthrop saw, smiling at him ingratiatingly, a slight, slim youth, with beady, rat-like eyes, a low forehead, and a Hebraic nose. He wondered how it had been possible for Jerry Gaylor to so quickly secure counsel. But Mr. Schwab at once undeceived him.

"I'm from the Journal," he began, "not regular on the staff, but I send 'em Harlem items, and the court reporter treats me nice, see! Now about this accident; could you give me the name of the young lady?"

He smiled encouragingly at Miss Forbes.

"I could not!" growled Winthrop. "The man wasn't hurt, the policeman will tell you so. It is not of the least public interest."

With a deprecatory shrug, the young man smiled knowingly.

"Well, mebbe not the lady's name," he granted, "but the name of the OTHER gentleman who was with you, when the accident occurred." His black, rat-like eyes snapped. "I think HIS name would be of public interest."

To gain time Winthrop stepped into the driver's seat. He looked at Mr. Schwab steadily.

"There was no other gentleman," he said. "Do you mean my chauffeur?" Mr. Schwab gave an appreciative chuckle.

"No, I don't mean your chauffeur," he mimicked. "I mean," he declared theatrically in his best police-court manner, "the man who to-day is hoping to beat Tammany, Ernest Peabody!"

Winthrop stared at the youth insolently.

"I don't understand you," he said.

"Oh, of course not!" jeered "Izzy" Schwab. He moved excitedly from foot to foot. "Then who WAS the other man," he demanded, "the man who ran away?"

Winthrop felt the blood rise to his face. That Miss Forbes should hear this rat of a man, sneering at the one she was to marry, made him hate Peabody. But he answered easily:

"No one ran away. I told my chauffeur to go and call up an ambulance. That was the man you saw."

As when "leading on" a witness to commit himself, Mr. Schwab smiled sympathetically.

"And he hasn't got back yet," he purred, "has he?"

"No, and I'm not going to wait for him," returned Winthrop. He reached for the clutch, but Mr. Schwab jumped directly in front of the car.

"Was he looking for a telephone when he ran up the elevated steps?" he cried.

He shook his fists vehemently.

"Oh, no, Mr. Winthrop, it won't do--you make a good witness. I wouldn't ask for no better, but, you don't fool 'Izzy' Schwab."

"You're mistaken, I tell you," cried Winthrop desperately. "He may look like--like this man you speak of, but no Peabody was in this car."

"Izzy" Schwab wrung his hands hysterically.

"No, he wasn't!" he cried, "because he run away! And left an old man in the street--dead, for all he knowed--nor cared neither. Yah!" shrieked the Tammany heeler. "HIM a Reformer, yah!"

"Stand away from my car," shouted Winthrop, "or you'll get hurt."

"Yah, you'd like to, wouldn't you?" returned Mr. Schwab, leaping, nimbly to one side. "What do you think the Journal'll give me for that story, hey? 'Ernest Peabody, the Reformer, Kills an Old Man, AND RUNS AWAY.' And hiding his face, too! I seen him. What do you think that story's worth to Tammany, hey? It's worth twenty thousand votes!" The young man danced in front of the car triumphantly, mockingly, in a frenzy of malice. "Read the extras, that's all," he taunted. "Read 'em in an hour from now!"

Winthrop glared at the shrieking figure with fierce, impotent rage; then, with a look of disgust, he flung the robe off his knees and rose. Mr. Schwab, fearing bodily injury, backed precipitately behind the policeman.

"Come here," commanded Winthrop softly. Mr. Schwab warily approached. "That story," said Winthrop, dropping his voice to a low whisper, "is worth a damn sight more to you than twenty thousand votes. You take a spin with me up Riverside Drive where we can talk. Maybe you and I can 'make a little business.'"

At the words, the face of Mr. Schwab first darkened angrily, and then, lit with such exultation that it appeared as though Winthrop's efforts had only placed Peabody deeper in Mr. Schwab's power. But the rat-like eyes wavered, there was doubt in them, and greed, and, when they turned to observe if any one could have heard the offer, Winthrop felt the trick was his. It was apparent that Mr. Schwab was willing to arbitrate.