Читать книгу The Apple of Discord (Earle Ashley Walcott) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - Earle Ashley Walcott - Страница 4

With the morning's light I looked carefully over the captured overcoat for identifying marks by which I might trace the elusive spy who was so near ending my life. A hasty survey of the garment when I had reached my room had revealed nothing by which I might learn of the owner; but after a night's sleep the detective instinct burned within me, and I was persuaded that there was something about it to differentiate it from other overcoats, if only I had the keenness to discover it. The garment was of cheap material, and even the maker's name had disappeared from it. There was nothing individual about it, and not even a handkerchief was to be found in its pockets. But when I was about to abandon search once more, a small inside pocket attracted my attention, and, diving within it, I brought out a square of paper, three or four inches wide. The detective instinct within me raised a shout of triumph, and I opened the paper with the conviction that it would bear some address that would lead me to the spy. The detective instinct became more humble to find that the paper bore only a few sprawling characters that were reminiscent of a Chinese laundry or a Canton tea-chest.

Nevertheless, it was the only clue in my possession, and during the day I made several attempts to secure a translation of the marks. But nightfall came without success, and, reinforced by a good dinner, I turned my steps south of Market Street to keep my appointment with Clark.

"Here's the place," said the policeman, pointing across Natoma Street to the corner building, from which lights flashed and sounds of laughter and drunken song floated out on the night air. "We call it the House of Blazes."

Even in the semi-darkness left by the street-lamps and the lights that streamed from the windows, I could see that it was a rambling two-story frame building, with signs of premature age upon it. The neighborhood was far from select, but the House of Blazes had characteristics of evil all its own. Above, the small windows scowled dark, stealthy, mistrustful, as though they sought to escape the eye of the officer of the law who stood by my side. Below, the broader windows, ablaze with lamps, and the swinging half-doors, through which we could see the feet of men and the occasional hat of a taller customer, made a show of openness. But it all seemed the bravado of the criminal who ventures forth by daylight, aggressively assertive of his self-confidence and ready to take to his heels at the first sign that he is recognized by the police. Across the windows and on a swinging sign were painted letters proclaiming that wines and liquors were to be had within and that H. Blasius was the owner.

"It doesn't look to be just the place for a stranger to show his money in," I said lightly.

"It's about as tough as they make 'em," growled the policeman. "There's a sight more throuble in that darty den than in all the others on the beat."

I thanked the policeman and bade him good night.

"Good night, sor. I'm hoping you won't need anything more from me, sor. But just blow a whistle if ye are in chance of throuble, and I'll do my best for ye."

And with this cheerful parting ringing in my ears, I swung back the doors and stepped into the saloon, with the shadow of a wish that the Council of Nine had shown better taste in headquarters.

I found myself in a long, low-ceiled room, lighted by a dozen lamps that struggled to overpower the tobacco smoke that filled it. A dingy, painted bar stretched half-way down the side of the room, and behind it a cracked mirror and a gaudy array of bottles served for ornament and use. Below the bar the room jutted back into an L, where a half-dozen tables were scattered about. The floor was littered with sawdust, trampled and soiled with many feet, and mottled with many a splotch of tobacco juice.

I looked about for Clark and his companions. Five or six loungers leaned against the bar, listening to a stout, red-faced Irishman, who was shaking his fist vigorously as an accompaniment to a loud denunciation of the Chinese. There was something about the man that drew a second look, though at first glance I thought I had recognized the symptoms of the saloon politician. He had a bristling brown mustache, a shrewd mouth, and a strong aggressive jaw. A little above the medium height, with compact, heavy frame, and broad shoulders that betokened strength, he was a type of the substantial workman.

Beyond the oratorical Irishman with his denunciations of "the haythen divils," stood a man with hat drawn down over his eyes, half hiding his sallow face, and with hands deep in his pockets, who glanced furtively from side to side, as if in suspicion that an enemy was about. Something faintly stirred in memory at the sight of him, but he shuffled out of the saloon as I passed him, and it was not until he was gone that I connected him with the spy whose overcoat lay in my room. It was too late to follow him, for, before I had recalled the vagrant memory, a short fat old man waddled slowly forward and stood before me with the air of a proprietor. I divined that I was face to face with H. Blasius.

"Vat vill you have, mine friend?" he inquired deliberately.

I looked into his fat pasty face, that gave back an unhealthy almost livid pallor to the light that shone upon it, and caught the glance of his shifty bleary eyes under their puffy lids, and a shudder of repulsion ran through me. He was a man of sixty or more. His face, clean-shaven except for a mustache and chin-tuft stained with tobacco juice, revealed to the world every line that a wicked life had left upon it.

He rubbed his fat, moist hands on the dingy white apron that he wore, gave a tug at his mustache, and waited for my reply.

"I'm looking for Mr. Clark," I said.

"Non – no soch man is here," he said suspiciously. "I have no one of zat name."

"I'm quite sure he's here," I said. "And I must see him."

The brow of H. Blasius darkened, and he looked about slowly as though he meditated calling for assistance to hasten my departure.

"I don't vant ze trouble," he had begun, when I caught sight of my man at a table in the alcove at the other end of the long room.

"There he is now," I interrupted. "There'll be no trouble, if you don't make it yourself."

I was gone before H. Blasius had brought his wits to understand my meaning, and in a moment stood beside a group of men who were sitting around the farther table, beer glasses before them and pipes in hand, listening to an excited young man with a shock of long, tawny hair, who pounded the table to strengthen the force of his argument. As he came to a pause, I put my hand on the shoulder of a tall, awkward, spare-built man, with a stubby red beard, who was listening with effort, and evidently burning to reply to the fervid young orator. It was Clark, and he rose clumsily and shook hands with effusion.

"I'm glad you come, Mr. Hampden; I'd about give you up. Boys, this is Mr. Hampden, the friend I was telling you about. Won't you take this chair, sir, and spend the evening with us? We was having a little discussion about the Revolution."

"The Revolution!" I exclaimed. "Well, that's a safe antiquarian topic."

"Oh," stammered Clark, "it isn't the old Revolution. That's too far back for us. It's the coming Revolution we're talking about, when all men are to be equal and share alike in the good things of the earth. Parks, here, thinks he knows all about it." And he waved his hand toward the oratorical young man, who looked on the world with eyes that seemed to burn with the light of fever.

Parks accepted this as an introduction, and acknowledged it with a nod as I took a seat. I looked at him with keen interest, for I knew his name as one of the nine leaders who had banded themselves to right the wrongs of the world – with the incidental assistance of Peter Bolton. Then I looked about the rest of the group as Clark spoke their names, and was disappointed to find that a little spectacled German, with a bristling black beard, was the only other member of the Council at the table.

"Hope to know you better, Mr. Hampden," said Parks. "You don't look to be one of us."

"If it's a secret society, I can't say that I've been initiated," I said. "But I hope you'll count me as one of you for an occasional evening. What do you happen to be, if I may ask?"

"We," said Parks, leaning forward and gazing fiercely into my eyes, "we represent the people. We are from the masses."

"I'm afraid, then," I returned with a laugh, "you'll have to count me as one of you. I can't think of any way in which my name gets above the level of the lower ten million."

"Sir," cried Parks, shaking his finger in my face and speaking rapidly and excitedly, "your speech betrays you. You speak of the lower ten million. They are not the lower – no, by Heaven! Your heart is not with the people. There is nothing in you that beats responsive to their cry of distress. You may be as poor as the rest of us, but your feelings, your prejudices are with the despoilers of labor, the oppressors of the lowly. You are – "

What further offense of aristocracy he would have charged upon my head I know not, for Clark reached over and seized his arm.

"Hold on!" he cried. "Mr. Hampden is our guest and a good fellow, so don't be too hard on him. He ain't educated yet. That's all the matter with him. Give him time."

Parks' voice had been rising and his utterance had been growing more rapid and excited, but he lowered his tones once more.

"No offense, Hampden, but my blood boils at the wrongs inflicted on the downtrodden slaves of the wage system, and I speak my mind."

"Oh, go ahead," I said. "It doesn't worry me. Come to think of it, Mr. Parks, you don't seem to be one of the slaves of the wage system yourself. You are, I take it from your words and ways, a man of education and something more."

"Sir," said Parks, striking the table angrily, "it is my misfortune."

"Misfortune?" I laughed inquiringly, and the others laughed in sympathy.

"Misfortune – yes, sir. I repeat it. I have had schooling and to spare. And if it wasn't for that, I could raise this city in arms in a month."

My left-hand neighbor was an old man, a little bent with years, who had been looking about the table with dreamy eye. But at Parks' boastful words his face lighted and he gave a cackling laugh.

"Heh, heh! He's right," he said, addressing the rest of us. "There's a crowd of thieves and robbers on top and they need a taking-down. Parks is just the one to do it."

"You're wrong, Merwin," said Parks, calming down and looking at the old man reflectively. "I'm not the one to do it."

"And why not?" I asked.

"It's the cursed education you speak of," said Parks fiercely. "I am with the masses, but not of them. They mistrust me. Try as I will I can't get their confidence. I can't rouse them. They shout for me, they applaud me, but I can't stir them as they must be stirred before the Revolution can begin."

"What sort of man do you want?" I asked.

"He must be a man of the people," said Parks.

"By which you mean a day-laborer, I judge."

Parks ignored the interruption and went on:

"He must have eloquence, courage, and he must understand men; he must be a statesman by nature – a man of brains. But he must be one of the class he addresses."

"But how are you going to get a man of brains out of that class?" I inquired.

Parks struck the table a sounding blow with his fist, shook his head until his shock of hair stood out in protest, and glared at me fiercely.

"Do you mean to deny," he began hotly, "that brains are born to what you call the lowest classes? Do you deny the divine spark of intelligence to the sons of toil? Do you say that genius is sent to the houses of the rich and not to those of the poor? Do you dare to say that the son of a banker may have brains and that the son of a hodman may not?"

"By no means, my dear fellow. I only say if he has brains he won't be a hodman."

"I've known some pretty smart hodmen in my time," said Clark, when he saw that Parks had no answer ready. "I knew a fellow who made four hundred dollars on a contract. But," he added regretfully, "he lost it in stocks."

"I'm afraid that instance doesn't prove anything, Clark," said Merwin with a thin laugh. "He should have had brains enough to keep out of stocks."

"There's not many as has that," said a heavy-jowled Englishman who sat across the table. "I wish I had 'em myself."

"I'm afraid you're right, Mr. Hampden," said Clark. "We can't get a leader from the hodman class."

Parks leaned forward and spoke quietly and impressively.

"By God, we must!" he said. "I'll be the brains. I'll find the hodman for the mouth, and I'll teach him to talk in a way to set the world on fire."

"And then what?" I asked.

Parks gave his head a shake, and closed his lips tightly as though he feared that some secret would escape them. But the excitable little German with spectacles and a bushy black beard gave me an answer.

"Leeberty, equality, fraternity!" he exclaimed.

"And justice," added the heavy-jowled Englishman.

"These are words, and very good ones," I returned. "But what do you mean by them? You have these things now, or you don't have them – just as you happen to look at it. It usually depends on whether you are successful or not. What does all this mean in action?"

"For one thing," said the square-jawed man seriously, "it means an end of the sort of robbery by law that our friend Merwin here has suffered. Now, twenty years ago he was a prosperous contractor. He took a lot of contracts from old Peter Bolton for filling in some of these water-front blocks down here. He spent two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, d'ye know, and has been lawing for it ever since."

I turned and looked at the face of the old man with more interest. The case of Merwin against Bolton was celebrated in the law books. It was now before the Supreme Court for the sixth time. In the trial court the juries had invariably found for Merwin with costs and interest, and the appellate court had as invariably sent the case back for retrial on errors committed by the lower court, until it had become an impersonal issue, a jest of the law, a legal ghost, almost as far removed from affairs of to-day as "Shelley's case" of unblessed memory.

Merwin looked up quickly, the dreamy gaze no longer clouding his eye.

"I have been kept out of my property for more than twenty years, sir," he said. "It has been a great wrong. If you are interested I should like to tell you about it."

"I am pretty well informed about it already," I replied. "You have been much abused." The legal jest had become a living tragedy, and I felt a glow of shame for the futility of the law that had been unable to do justice to this man.

"I have been made a poor man," said Merwin. "My money was stolen from me by Peter Bolton, and I tell you, sir, he is the greatest scoundrel in the city." And in a sudden flash of temper he struck his fist upon the table.

"He ought to be hanged," said the heavy-jowled man.

"No, no," cried Parks. "It isn't Bolton you should blame. It is the system that makes such things possible. Bolton himself is but the creature of circumstances. As I have reason to know, his heart is stirred by thoughts of better things for humanity. Hang Bolton and another Bolton would take his place to-morrow. Abolish the system, and no man could oppress his neighbor."

"But how are you going to abolish it?" I asked. "It won't go for fine words."

"Rouse the people," cried Parks with passion. "The men who are suffering from these evils are the strength of the nation. Those who profit by the evils are a small minority. Once the people rise in their might the oppressors must fly or be overwhelmed."

"Here's to guns, and the men who know how to use them!" said the heavy-jowled man, draining his glass.

"Oui, oui! Vive la barricade!" croaked a harsh voice behind me, and I turned to see the pasty face of H. Blasius over my shoulder.

"Shut up!" said Parks. "We're not ready to talk of guns and barricades."

At this moment a sudden noise of scuffle and angry voices rose above the sounds of conversation and argument that filled the room. Some one made an abortive attempt to blow a police whistle; curses and blows thrilled the air; and then the swinging doors fell apart and a man staggered in, holding dizzily to the door-post for support. His hat was crushed, his clothing torn, and his face covered with blood that seemed to blind him.

As he staggered into the saloon, ten or twelve young men, hardly more than boys, crowded after him, striking at him with fists and clubs. Their faces were hard at best, the lines written upon them by vice and crime giving plain warning to all who might read; but now rage and hatred and lust for blood lighted their eyes and flushed their cheeks, till they might have stood as models for escapes from the infernal regions.

"The cop!" cried a voice; and others took it up, and I recognized in the battered man the policeman who had shown me my way.

"He's the cop as got Paddy Rafferty sent across the bay for ten years," shouted one of the hoodlums, striking a blow that was barely warded off.

"Kick him!" "Do him up!" "Kill him!" came in excited chorus from all parts of the room and swelled into a roar that lost semblance of articulate sound.

Parks and I jumped to our feet at the first sound of the riot.

"Here! this won't do!" said Parks roughly, throwing me back in my chair. "Sit down! You'll get killed without doing any good. I'll settle this." And before I could remonstrate he was running down the room shouting wrathfully.

As I got to my feet again, I saw him pulling and hauling at the mob, shouting lustily in the ears of the men as he threw them aside.

"Come on!" I cried. "We must take a hand in this." And at my call Clark and the Englishman and the little German rose and followed in the wake of the young agitator.

Parks worked his way into the crowd, shouting, appealing, using hands and tongue and body at once to carry his point. He was soon at the side of the policeman, who swayed, half raised his arms, and would have fallen had Parks' arm not come to steady him. The shouting hoodlums paused at this reinforcement. Then the leader, with a curse, struck wildly at Parks' face, and the cries of rage rose louder than before. At this moment, however, the tall, broad-shouldered Irishman, whom I had noticed at my entrance, deftly caught the hoodlum with a blow on the chin that sent him back into the midst of his band.

"Hould on!" he shouted in a resonant voice. "There's to be fair play here! Here's two against the crowd to save a man's life. If there's any more men here let them come next us."

"Here are four," I cried, and our reinforcement shouldered through the throng to the side of the two defenders. The tumult stilled for a little, and Parks seized the moment to burst into indignant speech. He had a high, keen, not unpleasant voice, though it thrilled now with anger and scorn, as he denounced the assault.

"He's the cop that got Paddy Rafferty sent up, I tell you," replied one of the hoodlums. "We said we'd fix him and we done it."

"Well, you get home now or you'll be fixed yourself, sonny," said Parks. "The cops will be on you in just three minutes by the watch. Git!"

"Come on, youse!" said the leader sullenly, rubbing his jaw and giving a spiteful glance at the stout Irishman. "We'll fix these tarriers some other time," – and the band slunk out into the darkness.

"That's the kind of cattle that keep back the cause," cried Parks, turning to the crowd with keen eye for the opportunity for speech. And he went on with rude eloquence to expound the "rights of the people," which I judged from his language to be the right to work eight hours for about eight dollars a day and own nobody for master.

"Well said for you, Mr. Parks!" said the Irishman. "I'm of your way of thinkin'. My name's Kearney – Denis Kearney – maybe you've heard of me."

"Maybe I have," said Parks. "I hope to hear more of you, Mr. Kearney. You came in the nick of time to-night."

The policeman now sat in a chair with his face washed and his head bound up in a cloth, and with a sip of liquor was recovering strength and spirit.

"There comes the boys," he said. "They've heard of the shindy." And in another minute four policemen burst into the place.

"Cowdery's gang!" was the brief comment of the commanding officer. "We'll have them under lock and key before morning."

H. Blasius had assumed a most pious expression in a most inconspicuous position behind the bar, but dropped it as the policemen left.

"I've found my hodman," whispered Parks to me.

"Where?"

"Here. He isn't a hodman, but he's just as good. He's a drayman with a voice like a fog-horn and a gift of tongue."

"And the brains?"

"I carry them under my hat," said Parks.

"What's his name?"

"Mr. Kearney – Mr. Hampden," said Parks, raising his voice and introducing me gravely. Then, taking the arm of his new-found treasure, Parks walked out of the saloon.