Читать книгу A Self-Made Thief - Footner Hulbert - Страница 7

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HEBERDON was frisked and his gun taken from him. Forming in procession, they wended their way out of the yard and back up the line toward the street crossing where the automobiles had been left. Midway in the procession walked the chauffeur with his hand in Heberdon's collar. This connection was in sharp contrast to all of Heberdon's former relations with taxicab drivers.

The men, still heated with excitement, talked about Heberdon as if he were an inanimate object or were not there at all. They displayed no particular animus against him, but in a way were almost kindly disposed as to one who had furnished the excuse for a madly exciting and successful man-hunt.

"Gee! If he'd kept on to the river, we'd never have got him. He could have slipped on a ferry."

"Aw, they always do the wrong thing, them crooks. Lose their heads when they want it most."

"He don't look like an old-timer, do he? Bet this was his first job."

"Well, he's got all the pep scared out of him now all right, all right."

"Don't look right human, does he?"

"Oh, you can tell he's a bad one. Got a shifty eye."

Heberdon at first was merely dazed. But the exercise of walking restored his faculties, and the future began to unroll itself before his mind's eye in colours hideously vivid. The loss of his secure and desirable place in the world—he could see his respectable relatives disowning him in horror; shame, disgrace, jail! Bitterest of all to his vanity was the thought of the triumph of his clubmates; he made sure they would triumph. Heberdon lived on his vanity. A sick feeling of desperation seized him. He looked around him furtively.

They were now streaming along the double-tracked line. The approach of another long freight, this one bound in at a good rate of speed, forced them all to take to a ditch. Heberdon saw his chance. It was a desperate one, but better death under the wheels than—

Wrenching himself free, he sprang across the track immediately in front of the looming engine. The breath of the monster was hot on his neck, but he found himself safe on the other side—and none had cared to follow. For the moment he was safe. On the other side of the long train, let the men shout themselves hoarse if they wanted.

In a trice Heberdon was over the high fence that bounded the right of way, across a dingy yard and through a working man's humble cottage before the startled eyes of the housewife. He cut diagonally across a main street, and turned down another that led away at right angles from the railway. From the little houses women and children looked curiously after the running figure, but prudently forbore to take up the chase. He turned two more corners, and, feeling comparatively safe, slowed down to a walk. As a walker, nobody noticed him.

He considered his situation anxiously. He was not by any means out of danger, for they had him awkwardly cornered in a peninsula of Princesboro. On his right was the East River a half-mile or so distant. The ferry-houses were now well behind him, and he dared not retrace his steps. Somewhere in front of him, he knew, was the mouth of Oldtown Creek, and to the left was Central Avenue, the automobile thoroughfare which was presumably patrolled by those looking for him. The nearest bridge over the creek was that which carried Central Avenue across. He finally decided to make for Central Avenue, watch his chance of getting across, and then cross the creek by one of the bridges higher up. If it had only been a neighbourhood where taxicabs were to be had!

At the next corner he turned to the left again. Crossing the first street, to his dismay he saw figures of men far to the left, their attitude proclaiming them searchers. Before he could get out of sight one perceived him and raised a shout. The hunt was on again.

Heberdon realised that it was the bright band around his hat, visible as far as he was, which had betrayed him. How vainly he cursed it now. Why hadn't he thrown it away? He had the cap in his pocket to take its place. Luck was certainly against him!

Swerving to the right, he ran blindly down the street, with his pursuers in full cry. This was another tactical error, but he was becoming confused now. Still, he had two blocks start, and there was no automobile to run him down. Attracted by the shouting, people rushed out of the little houses. Fearful of being tripped up or seized by some bolder spirit, Heberdon took to the middle of the road.

Two blocks ahead of him the street ended at the bank or the creek. Heberdon could see a strip of foul, black water. Before this he had realised his mistake in taking this direction, and at the last corner he essayed to turn toward Central Avenue again. But a fresh shout greeted him from this direction. An automobile was approaching with men on the running-board. Heberdon stopped short with despair in his heart. Escape was cut off in three directions. There was only one way left, to the south. Whirling about he saw that he was cut off there, too, by a bend in the creek.

For a moment he hung in indecision at the crossroads, his wild eyes darting this way and that. The approaching men were yelling like fiends. Better the water than the men. Heberdon ran down the remaining short block and across the wharf at the end and jumped into the oily creek.

Heberdon was a swimmer—or had been a swimmer in boyhood—and he instinctively struck out, much hampered by his clothes. The stream was only forty or fifty yards wide at this point, more of the nature of a canal. The outgoing tide helped him more than his own efforts; he was carried swiftly away from the wharf. The silly hat floated away on an independent course.

Heberdon had made perhaps a third of the way across when his pursuers began to arrive on the wharf. None offered to follow him into the foul water, but all contented themselves with yelling imprecations after him. One man pulled a revolver and began to shoot. Heberdon's heart turned to water. "Inhuman brute!" he thought. "I'm done!"

He kept under water as well as he could, and what with that and the poorness of the marksman's aim, the ammunition was exhausted without any damage to the swimmer.

Before the man could reload, the tide carried Heberdon around the bend out of his range of vision. Some had started to run away, evidently in the hope of cutting him off below, and Heberdon had heard the automobile start off. It would naturally make for the bridge a quarter of a mile upstream.

Somehow Heberdon found himself across the creek. At the point of exhaustion he pulled himself up a rotting ladder on an old bulkhead. Some of his pursuers had come out lower down across the stream, but he was safely out of their reach. He was more anxious about the automobile.

He found himself in a paved way between great bonded warehouses, shuttered and silent. There was no one about on his side. He started to run weakly over the cobblestones.

The smelly water squished out of his shoes, and left a wet trail as he ran. He came out on a street paralleling the creek. There were people here, and he dared not run, though this was the street down which he expected the automobile to appear. He got around a corner and found himself in a block of lumber and coal yards and small factories.

Aware of the danger of being trapped again, nevertheless he could run no further. His heart was bursting. The tall piles of boards drying in the air offered good cover. There was no one watching at the gate of the lumber yard. He ran in and twisted and turned through the alleys between the lumber until even terror could carry him no farther. He flung himself down and lay there gasping.

By-and-by the sound of an automobile in the street outside brought him to his feet again. It was not necessarily the automobile he feared, but the mere sound was enough to start him going. He staggered on until he came to the other side of the yard which fronted on the broad expanse of the East River. The matchless panorama brought no joy to Heberdon's heart. It was only another wall cutting off escape.

On the river-front some men were loading lumber on a lighter. Heberdon was careful not to expose himself to them. By keeping behind the piles, and watching his chance to dart across open spaces, he contrived to circle around them, and to gain the boundary fence at the lower side of the yard. Here in a slip on the waterfront his glazed eyes were brightened by the sight of a skiff, a way of escape without returning to the street.

There were no oars in the boat, but a hasty search finally revealed them hidden under some boards. Heberdon cast off and pulled out of the slip with inept strokes; what matter if he was venturing in his inexperience on perilous waters or small boats? Anything was better than what lay behind him.

There was only one way to go, for the tide was running out faster than he could pull against it. So much the better for him; Princesboro and Oldtown Creek were left safely behind. He pulled but feebly, letting the tide carry him as it would, taking care only to avoid the ends of the piers. He was now off the district of Johnsburgh, with the great black sugar refineries stretched alongshore, and ahead of him the far-flung span of the Johnsburgh Bridge, with the trolley-cars and automobiles threading their way across like spiders on a web.

As he was carried down-stream the river traffic ever increased and the unpractised oarsman's heart was continually in his mouth, with the tugs, lighters, and ferries that came at him from every side, bearing down on him with contemptuous disregard for a mere rowboat, and kicking up great waves behind that threatened to swamp him. Even more alarming were the great car-floats swinging around helpless in the grip of the tide. Had he escaped one danger only to fall victim to another? Heberdon, with his unstrung nerves, was ready to weep.

He reflected that a general alarm would shortly be out for him, if indeed his description was not already in the hands of every policeman in the five boroughs. The sight of a natty little launch with a big P. D. on the bow, smartly bucking the tide, reminded him that there were police on the water, too. He almost had heart failure when it bore down on him. But it passed without stopping. The next one might have later information. It was up to him to find a hiding-place.

Yet he dared not land either. As long as it was daylight his drenched and bedraggled appearance would render him fatally conspicuous in the streets. A pier higher than its neighbours and with a clear space beneath offered a solution. He allowed the skiff to drift beneath it, and, making sure from the high-water mark on the piles that the tide would not presently rise and crush his skiff under the overhead sleepers, he made his painter fast and determined to wait there until dark.

For a long time he sat gazing out on the bright river from its gloomy hiding-place in a daze of fatigue, not thinking about anything in particular. The tide lapped and sucked at the piles, and the sounds of the outer world reached him reverberating hollowly over the surface of the water. Gradually drowsiness overcame him. Once he heard the scamper of little feet on the overhead beam, and started up in affright. But even the thought of rats could not keep him awake. He slept.

When he awoke it was beginning to grow dark on the river outside, the water gleamed like a sapphire in the evening light. The sounds of traffic had almost ceased. He resolved to wait yet a while. He was stiff and sore all over and his head ached continually from the emanations of the sewer-laden water.

It was pitch-dark where he was, and, what with the smell of corruption and the threatening chuckle of the water, a nightmare cavern. He imagined that he saw snaky shadows in every corner. His damp clothes clung to him heavily. How sickeningly he longed for light, warmth, and the sound of human voices! The thought of the club was like an unattainable Elysium.

He was crouching between the two thwarts of his skiff. Suddenly a heavy body dropped in the stern, landing within a few inches of him, and almost rolling the skiff under. A grunt of terror was forced from Heberdon's lungs, and like an animal he scrambled to the point of the bow. He clung there, paralysed with fear. The place suggested nameless things. He could see nothing but a darker shadow in the stern. It was creeping toward him, feeling for a weapon. His throat was constricted; he could not make a sound. The thing fumbled with an oar.

Heberdon, in the expectation of a blow, suddenly recovered the use of his limbs, and like an ape, half-leaped, half-scrambled to the joist overhead. He lay upon it, gripping it between elbows and knees. The creature below jabbed viciously with the oar at the place where he had just been. Meeting with no resistance, the shape crept farther forward in the skiff. Heberdon could then have dropped on its back, but not for worlds would he have come to grips with the loathsome thing.

It fumbled at the painter, freed it, and with a push against the piles propelled the boat out from under the pier. The tide was now running up. Heberdon was so relieved to be rid of the shape that he let the boat go without a thought. Not until he perceived, in the fading light outside, it was a man like himself, did the reaction set in and, mixed with the feeling of relief and impotent rage, convulsed him. But he did not curse him nor seek to call him back, for it was an ominously burly figure with a gorilla-like head sunk between his shoulders. Heberdon never saw his face. The skiff was quickly carried out of his range of vision.

Where the man had come from Heberdon never knew. He must have lain concealed under the floor of the pier, like a gigantic wood-louse. There are no doubt many underground routes in the city that people who live on the surface never suspect. As for Heberdon, blocked in front and behind by girders running in the other direction, there was no possible escape save by dropping into the water. He dreaded it as a shell-shocked man dreads a battle, but finally he had to let himself drop, gasping.

In the water he pulled himself shoreward from pile to pile. It was quite dark now, but he dared not venture outside, because he heard quiet voices just overhead, working people, no doubt, taking the evening air on the water-front. He could not call for help, of course, without giving an account of himself. At the shore end of the pier extended a long bulkhead, smooth and greasy, affording him no finger-hold. Up and down he searched in vain for a ladder or a break. It was like the futile struggles of an insect, bumping its head against the side of a water-pail.

He swam a distance of blocks, it seemed to him, and his strength was rapidly failing when he came at last to a place where the bulkhead was rotten and the interstices between the planks afforded him a precarious hand-and-foot hold. He drew himself out and sat down on the stringpiece to recover himself. Fortunately in this place there were no loiterers, but by that time he would not have cared if there had been.

He was in the factory district of Johnsburgh, silent and deserted at this time of night. After having wrung the water from his clothes as best he could, he started up-town, heading for the bridge terminal. Some time passed before he could nerve himself to cross the brightly lighted plaza. He thought of the other plaza with a shudder. A street clock told him it was after ten.

He dared not expose himself in a lighted trolley-car, and was obliged to drag his weary body across the two-mile span in the comparative obscurity of the promenade. And on the Manhattan side he had yet another two miles to walk to Gramercy Park.

When he finally reached his own building, it was fortunately closed for the night, the hall attendant gone. Otherwise he must still have been a wanderer. He let himself in with a thankful heart, and, climbing the stairs, closed his own door behind him with a sob of relief, and, flinging himself on the couch without undressing, slept again.