WHAT should it be?--this gallows-brand to show like a bruised ribbon of
evil about the throat of Blossom! Anne gave me the story of it. It was
a birthmark; that hangman fear which smote upon the mother when, for the
death of Jimmy the Blacksmith, I was thrown into a murderer's cell, had
left its hideous trace upon the child. In Blossom's infancy and in her
earliest childhood, the mark had lain hidden beneath the skin as seeds
lie buried and dormant in the ground. Slowly, yet no less surely, the
inveterate years had quickened it and brought it to the surface; it had
grown and never stopped--this mark! and with each year it took on added
sullenness. The best word that Anne could give me was that it would so
continue in its ugly multiplication until the day of Blossom's death.
There could be no escape; no curing change, by any argument of medicine
or surgery, was to be brought about; there it glared and there it would
remain, a mark to shrink from! to the horrid last. And by that token,
my plans of a drawing room for Blossom found annihilation. Anne had
said the truth; those dreams that my girl should shine, starlike, in the
firmament of high society, must be put away.
It will have a trivial sound, and perchance be scoffed at, when I say
that for myself, personally, I remember no blacker disappointment than
that which overtook me as I realized how there could come none of those
triumphs of chandeliers and floors of wax. Now as I examine myself,
I can tell that not a little of this was due to my own vanity, and a
secret wish I cherished to see my child the equal of the first.
And if it were so, why should I be shamed? Might I not claim integrity
for a pride which would have found its account in such advancement? I
had been a ragged boy about the streets. I had grown up ignorant; I
had climbed, if climbing be the word, unaided of any pedigree or any
pocketbook, into a place of riches and autocratic sway. Wherefore, to
have surrounded my daughter with the children of ones who had owned
those advantages which I missed--folk of the purple, all!--and they to
accept her, would have been a victory, and to do me honor. I shall
not ask the pardon of men because I longed for it; nor do I scruple to
confess the blow my hopes received when I learned how those ambitions
would never find a crown.
Following my sight of that gallows mark, I sat for a long time
collecting myself. It was a dreadful thing to think upon; the more,
since it seemed to me that Blossom suffered in my stead. It was as if
that halter, which I defeated, had taken my child for a revenge.
“What can we do?” said I, at last.
I spoke more from an instinct of conversation, and because I would have
the company of Anne's sympathy, than with the thought of being answered
to any purpose. I was set aback, therefore, by her reply.
“Let Blossom take the veil,” said Anne. “A convent, and the good work of
it, would give her peace.”
At that, I started resentfully. To one of my activity, I, who needed the
world about me every moment--struggling, contending, succeeding--there
could have come no word more hateful. The cell of a nun! It was as
though Anne advised a refuge in the grave. I said as much, and with no
special choice of phrases.
“Because Heaven in its injustice,” I cried, “has destroyed half her
life, she is to make it a meek gift of the balance? Never, while I live!
Blossom shall stay by me; I will make her happy in the teeth of Heaven!”
Thus did I hurl my impious challenge. What was to be the return, and the
tempest it drew upon poor Blossom, I shall unfold before I am done. I
have a worm of conscience whose slow mouth gnaws my nature, and you may
name it superstition if you choose. And by that I know, when now I sit
here, lonesome save for my gold, and with no converse better than the
yellow mocking leer of it, that it was this, my blasphemy, which wrought
in Heaven's retort the whole of that misery which descended to dog my
girl and drag her down. How else shall I explain that double darkness
which swallowed up her innocence? It was the bolt of punishment, which
those skies I had outraged, aimed at me.
Back to my labors of politics I went, with a fiercer heat than ever. My
life, begun in politics, must end in politics. Still, there was a mighty
change. I was not to look upon that strangling mark and escape the
scar of it. I settled to a savage melancholy; I saw no pleasant moment.
Constantly I ran before the hound-pack of my own thoughts, a fugitive,
flying from myself.
Also, there came the signs visible, and my hair was to turn and lose
its color, until within a year it went as white as milk. Men, in the
idleness of their curiosity, would notice this, and ask the cause. They
were not to know; nor did Blossom ever learn how, led by Anne, I had
crept upon her secret. It was a sorrow without a door, that sorrow of
the hangman's mark; and because we may not remedy it, we will leave it,
never again to be referred to until it raps for notice of its own black
will.
The death of the Widow Van Flange did not remove from before me the
question of young Van Flange and his degenerate destinies. The Reverend
Bronson took up the business where it fell from the nerveless fingers of
his mother on that day she died.
“Not that I believe he can be saved,” observed the Reverend Bronson;
“for if I am to judge, the boy is already lost beyond recall. But there
is such goods as a pious vengeance--an anger of righteousness!--and I
find it in my heart to destroy with the law, those rogues who against
the law destroy others. That Barclay Street nest of adders must be
burned out; and I come to you for the fire.”
In a sober, set-faced way, I was amused by the dominie's extravagance.
And yet I felt a call to be on my guard with him. Suppose he were to
dislodge a stone which in its rolling should crash into and crush the
plans of the machine! The town had been lost before, and oftener than
once, as the result of beginnings no more grave. Aside from my liking
for the good man, I was warned by the perils of my place to speak him
softly.
“Well,” said I, trying for a humorous complexion, “if you are bound for
a wrestle with those blacklegs, I will see that you have fair play.”
“If that be true,” returned the Reverend Bronson, promptly, “give me
Inspector McCue.”
“And why Inspector McCue?” I asked. The suggestion had its baffling
side. Inspector McCue was that honest one urged long ago upon Big
Kennedy by Father Considine. I did not know Inspector McCue; there
might lurk danger in the man. “Why McCue?” I repeated. “The business of
arresting gamblers belongs more with the uniformed police. Gothecore is
your proper officer.”
“Gothecore is not an honest man,” said the Reverend Bronson, with
sententious frankness. “McCue, on the other hand, is an oasis in the
Sahara of the police. He can be trusted. If you support him he will
collect the facts and enforce the law.”
“Very well,” said I, “you shall take McCue. I have no official control
in the matter, being but a private man like yourself. But I will speak
to the Chief of Police, and doubtless he will grant my request.”
“There is, at least, reason to think so,” retorted the Reverend Bronson
in a dry tone.
Before I went about an order to send Inspector McCue to the Reverend
Bronson, I resolved to ask a question concerning him. Gothecore should
be a well-head of information on that point; I would send for Gothecore.
Also it might be wise to let him hear what was afoot for his precinct.
He would need to be upon his defense, and to put others interested upon
theirs.
Melting Moses, who still stood warder at my portals, I dispatched upon
some errand. The sight of Gothecore would set him mad. I felt sorrow
rather than affection for Melting Moses. There was something unsettled
and mentally askew with the boy. He was queer of feature, with the
twisted fantastic face one sees carved on the far end of a fiddle.
Commonly, he was light of heart, and his laugh would have been comic had
it not been for a note of the weird which rang in it. I had not asked
him, on the day when he went backing for a spring at the throat of
Gothecore, the reason of his hate. His exclamation, “He killed me
mudder!” told the story. Besides, I could have done no good. Melting
Moses would have given me no reply. The boy, true to his faith of Cherry
Hill, would fight out his feuds for himself; he would accept no one's
help, and regarded the term “squealer” as an epithet of measureless
disgrace.
When Gothecore came in, I caught him at the first of it glowering
furtively about, as though seeking someone.
“Where is that Melting Moses?” he inquired, when he saw how I observed
him to be searching the place with his eye.
“And why?” said I.
“I thought I'd look him over, if you didn't mind. I can't move about
my precinct of nights but he's behind me, playin' th' shadow. I want to
know why he pipes me off, an' who sets him to it.”
“Well then,” said I, a bit impatiently, “I should have thought a
full-grown Captain of Police was above fearing a boy.”
Without giving Gothecore further opening, I told him the story of the
Reverend Bronson, and that campaign of purity he would be about.
“And as to young Van Flange,” said I. “Does he still lose his money in
Barclay Street?”
“They've cleaned him up,” returned Gothecore. “Billy Van Flange is gone,
hook, line, and sinker. He's on his uppers, goin' about panhandlin' old
chums for a five-dollar bill.”
“They made quick work of him,” was my comment.
“He would have it,” said Gothecore. “When his mother died th' boy got
his bridle off. Th' property--about two hundred thousand dollars--was
in paper an' th' way he turned it into money didn't bother him a bit.
He came into Barclay Street, simply padded with th' long
green--one-thousand-dollar bills, an' all that--an' them gams took it
off him so fast he caught cold. He's dead broke; th' only difference
between him an' a hobo, right now, is a trunk full of clothes.”
“The Reverend Bronson,” said I, “has asked for Inspector McCue. What
sort of a man is McCue?” Gothecore wrinkled his face into an expression
of profound disgust.
“Who's McCue?” he repeated. “He's one of them mugwump pets. He makes a
bluff about bein' honest, too, does McCue. I think he'd join a church,
if he took a notion it would stiffen his pull.”
“But is he a man of strength? Can he make trouble?”
“Trouble?” This with contempt. “When it comes to makin' trouble, he's a
false alarm.”
“Well,” said I, in conclusion, “McCue and the dominie are going into
your precinct.”
“I'll tell you one thing,” returned Gothecore, his face clouding up, “I
think it's that same Reverend Bronson who gives Melting Moses th' office
to dog me. I'll put Mr. Whitechoker onto my opinion of th' racket, one
of these days.”
“You'd better keep your muzzle on,” I retorted. “Your mouth will get you
into trouble yet.”
Gothecore went away grumbling, and much disposed to call himself
ill-used.
During the next few days I was to receive frequent visits from the
Reverend Bronson. His mission was to enlist me in his crusade against
the gamblers. I put him aside on that point.
“You should remember,” said I, as pleasantly as I well could, “that I am
a politician, not a policeman. I shall think of my party, and engage in
no unusual moral exploits of the sort you suggest. The town doesn't want
it done.”
“The question,” responded the Reverend Bronson warmly, “is one of
law and morality, and not of the town's desires. You say you are a
politician, and not a policeman. If it comes to that, I am a preacher,
and not a policeman. Still, I no less esteem it my duty to interfere for
right. I see no difference between your position and my own.”
“But I do. To raid gamblers, and to denounce them, make for your success
in your profession. With me, it would be all the other way. It is quite
easy for you to adopt the path you do. Now I am not so fortunately
placed.”
“You are the head of Tammany Hall,” said the Reverend Bronson solemnly.
“It is a position which loads you with responsibility, since your power
for good or bad in the town is absolute. You have but to point your
finger at those gambling dens, and they would wither from the earth.”
“Now you do me too much compliment,” said I. “The Chief of Tammany is a
much weaker man than you think. Moreover, I shall not regard myself as
responsible for the morals of the town.”
“Take young Van Flange,” went on the Reverend Bronson, disregarding my
remark. “They've ruined the boy; and you might have saved him.”
“And there you are mistaken,” I replied. “But if it were so, why should
I be held for his ruin? 'I am not my brother's keeper.'”
“And so Cain said,” responded the Reverend Bronson. Then, as he was
departing: “I do not blame you too much, for I can see that you are the
slave of your position. But do not shield yourself with the word that
you are not your brother's keeper. You may be made grievously to feel
that your brother's welfare is your welfare, and that in his destruction
your own destruction is also to be found.”
Men have rallied me as superstitious, and it may be that some grains
of truth lie buried in that charge. Sure it is, that this last from the
Reverend Bronson was not without its uncomfortable effect. It pressed
upon me in a manner vaguely dark, and when he was gone, I caught
myself regretting the “cleaning up,” as Gothecore expressed it, of the
dissolute young Van Flange.
And yet, why should one feel sympathy for him who, by his resolute
viciousness, struck down his own mother? If ever rascal deserved ruin,
it was he who had destroyed the hopes of one who loved him before all!
The more I considered, the less tender for the young Van Flange I grew.
And as to his destruction carrying personal scathe for me, it might
indeed do, as a flourish of the pulpit, to say so, but it was a thought
too far fetched, as either a warning or a prophecy, to justify one in
transacting by its light his own existence, or the affairs of a great
organization of politics. The end of it was that I smiled over a
weakness that permitted me to be disturbed by mournful forebodes, born
of those accusing preachments of the Reverend Bronson.
For all that my reverend mentor was right; the sequel proved how those
flames which licked up young Van Flange were to set consuming fire to my
own last hope.
It would seem that young Van Flange, as a topic, was in everybody's
mouth. Morton, having traction occasion for calling on me, began to talk
of him at once.
“Really!” observed Morton, discussing young Van Flange, “while he's
a deuced bad lot, don't y' know, and not at all likely to do Mulberry
credit, I couldn't see him starve, if only for his family. So I set him
to work, as far from the company's money as I could put him, and on the
soberish stipend of nine hundred dollars a year. I look for the best
effects from those nine hundred dollars; a chap can't live a double life
on that; he can't, really!”
“And you call him a bad lot,” said I.
“The worst in the world,” returned Morton. “You see young Van Flange is
such a weakling; really, there's nothing to tie to. All men are vicious;
but there are some who are strong enough to save themselves. This fellow
isn't.”
“His family is one of the best,” said I.
For myself, I've a sincere respect for blood, and some glimpse of it
must have found display in my face.
“My dear boy,” cried Morton, “there's no more empty claptrap than this
claptrap of family.” Here Morton adorned his high nose with the eyeglass
that meant so much with him, and surveyed me as from a height. “There's
nothing in a breed when it comes to a man.”
“Would you say the same of a horse or a dog?”
“By no means, old chap; but a dog or a horse is prodigiously a different
thing, don't y' know. The dominant traits of either of those noble
creatures are honesty, courage, loyalty--they're the home of the
virtues. Now a man is another matter. He's an evil beggar, is a man;
and, like a monkey, he has virtues only so far as you force him to adopt
them. As Machiavelli says: 'We're born evil, and become good only by
compulsion.' Now to improve a breed, as the phrase is, makes simply for
the promotion of what are the dominant traits of the creature one has in
hand. Thus, to refine or emphasize the horse and the dog, increases them
in honesty, loyalty, and courage since such are top-traits with those
animals. With a monkey or a man, and by similar argument, the more you
refine him, the more abandoned he becomes. Really,” and here Morton
restored himself with a cigarette, “I shouldn't want these views to find
their way to my club. It would cause the greatest row ever in our set;
it would, really! I am made quite ill to only think of it.”
“What would you call a gentleman, then?” I asked.
Morton's theories, while I in no manner subscribed to them, entertained
me.
“What should I call a gentleman? Why I should call him the caricature of
a man, don't y' know.”
The Reverend Bronson had been abroad in his campaign against those
sharpers of Barclay Street for perhaps four weeks. I understood, without
paying much heed to the subject, that he was seeking the evidence of
their crimes, with a final purpose of having them before a court. There
had been no public stir; the papers had said nothing. What steps
had been taken were taken without noise. I doubted not that the
investigation would, in the finish, die out. The hunted ones of Barclay
Street were folk well used to the rôle of fugitive, and since Gothecore
kept them informed of the enemy's strategy, I could not think they would
offer the Reverend Bronson and his ally, McCue, any too much margin.
As yet, I had never seen this McCue. By that, I knew him to be an honest
man. Not that one is to understand how none save a rogue would come to
me. I need hardly explain, however, that every policeman of dark-lantern
methods was eagerly prone to make my acquaintance. It was a merest
instinct of caution; the storm might break and he require a friend. Now
this McCue had never sought to know me, and so I argued that his record
was pure white.
This did not please me; I preferred men upon whom one might have some
hold. These folk of a smooth honesty go through one's fingers like
water, and no more of a grip to be obtained upon one of them than upon
the Hudson. I made up my mind that I would see this McCue.
Still I did not send for him; it was no part of my policy to exhibit
concern in one with whom I was strange, and who later might open his
mouth to quote it against me. McCue, however, was so much inclined to
humor my desire, that one afternoon he walked into my presence of his
own free will.
“My name is McCue,” said he, “Inspector McCue.” I motioned him to a
chair. “I've been told to collect evidence against certain parties in
Barclay Street,” he added. Then he came to a full stop.
While I waited for him to proceed in his own way and time, I studied
Inspector McCue. He was a square-shouldered man, cautious, keen,
resolute; and yet practical, and not one to throw himself away in the
jaws of the impossible. What he had come to say, presently proved my
estimate of him. On the whole, I didn't like the looks of Inspector
McCue.
“What is your purpose?” I asked at last. “I need not tell you that I
have no official interest in what you may be about. Still less have I a
personal concern.”
Inspector McCue's only retort was a grimace that did not add to his
popularity. Next he went boldly to the object of his call.
“What I want to say is this,” said he. “I've collected the evidence I
was sent after; I can lay my hands on the parties involved as keepers
and dealers in that Barclay Street den. But I'm old enough to know that
all the evidence in the world won't convict these crooks unless the
machine is willing. I'm ready to go ahead and take my chances. But I'm
not ready to run against a stone wall in the dark. I'd be crazy, where
no good can come, to throw myself away.”
“Now this is doubtless of interest to you,” I replied, putting some
impression of distance into my tones, “but what have I to do with the
matter?”
“Only this,” returned McCue. “I'd like to have you tell me flat, whether
or no you want these parties pinched.”
“Inspector McCue,” said I, “if that be your name and title, it sticks in
my head that you are making a mistake. You ask me a question which you
might better put to your chief.”
“We won't dispute about it,” returned my caller; “and I'm not here to
give offense. I am willing to do my duty; but, as I've tried to explain,
I don't care to sacrifice myself if the game's been settled against me
in advance. You speak of my going to the chief. If arrests are to be
made, he's the last man I ought to get my orders from.”
“If you will be so good as to explain?” said I.
“Because, if I am to go on, I must begin by collaring the chief. He's
the principal owner of that Barclay Street joint.”
This was indeed news, and I had no difficulty in looking grave.
“Captain Gothecore is in it, too; but his end is with the restaurant
keeper. That check-cashing racket was a case of flam; there was a
hold-out went with that play. The boy, Van Flange, was always drunk,
and the best he ever got for, say a five-hundred-dollar check, was
three hundred dollars. Gothecore was in on the difference. There's the
lay-out. Not a pleasant outlook, certainly; and not worth attempting
arrests about unless I know that the machine is at my back.”
“You keep using the term 'machine,'” said I coldly. “If by that you mean
Tammany Hall, I may tell you, sir, that the 'machine' has no concern in
the affair. You will do your duty as you see it.”
Inspector McCue sat biting his lips. After a moment, he got upon his
feet to go.
“I think it would have been better,” said he, “if you had met me
frankly. However, I've showed you my hand; now I'll tell you what my
course will be. This is Wednesday. I must, as you've said yourself, do
my duty. If--mark you, I say 'If'--if I am in charge of this case on
Saturday, I shall make the arrests I've indicated.”
“Did you ever see such gall!” exclaimed the Chief of Police, when I
recounted my conversation with Inspector McCue. Then, holding up his
pudgy hands in a manner of pathetic remonstrance: “It shows what I told
you long ago. One honest man will put th' whole force on th' bum!”
Inspector McCue, on the day after his visit, was removed from his place,
and ordered to a precinct in the drear far regions of the Bronx. The
order was hardly dry on the paper when there descended upon me the
Reverend Bronson, his eyes glittering with indignation, and a protest
against this Siberia for Inspector McCue apparent in his face.
“And this,” cried the Reverend Bronson, as he came through the door,
“and this is what comes to an officer who is willing to do his duty!”
“Sit down, Doctor,” said I soothingly, at the same time placing a chair;
“sit down.”