FOR all the cry and call of politics, and folk to see me whom I would
not see, that night, and throughout the following day--and even though
the latter were one of election Fate to decide for the town's mastery--I
never stirred from Blossom's side. She, poor child! was as one desolate,
dazed with the blow that had been dealt her. She lay on her pillow,
silent, and with the stricken face that told of the heart-blight fallen
upon her.
Nor was I in much more enviable case, although gifted of a rougher
strength to meet the shock. Indeed, I was taught by a despair that
preyed upon me, how young Van Flange had grown to be the keystone of my
arch of single hope, now fallen to the ground. Blossom's happiness had
been my happiness, and when her breast was pierced, my own brightness
of life began to bleed away. Darkness took me in the folds of it as in
a shroud; I would have found the grave kinder, but I must remain to be
what prop and stay I might to Blossom.
While I sat by my girl's bed, there was all the time a peril that kept
plucking at my sleeve in a way of warning. My nature is of an inveterate
kind that, once afire and set to angry burning, goes on and on in
ever increasing flames like a creature of tow, and with me helpless to
smother or so much as half subdue the conflagration. I was so aware
of myself in that dangerous behalf that it would press upon me as a
conviction, even while I held my girl's hand and looked into her vacant
eye, robbed of a last ray of any peace to come, that young Van Flange
must never stray within my grasp. It would bring down his destruction;
it would mean red hands for me and nothing short of murder. And, so,
while I waited by Blossom's side, and to blot out the black chance of
it, I sent word for Inspector McCue.
The servants, on that day of awful misery, conveyed young Van Flange
from the room. When he had been revived, and his injuries dressed--for
his head bled from a gash made by the door, and his shoulder had been
dislocated--he was carried from the house by the brougham that brought
him, and which still waited at the gate. No one about me owned word of
his whereabouts. It was required that he be found, not more for his sake
than my own, and his destinies disposed of beyond my reach.
It was to this task I would set Inspector McCue. For once in a way, my
call was for an honest officer. I would have Inspector McCue discover
young Van Flange, and caution him out of town. I cared not where he
went, so that he traveled beyond the touch of my fingers, already
itching for the caitiff neck of him.
Nor did I think young Van Flange would resist the advice of Inspector
McCue. He had reasons for flight other than those I would furnish. The
very papers, shouted in the streets to tell how I had re-taken the town
at the polls, told also of the failure of the brokerage house of Van
Flange; and that young Van Flange, himself, was a defaulter and his
arrest being sought by clients on a charge of embezzling the funds which
had been intrusted to his charge. The man was a fugitive from justice;
he lay within the menace of a prison; he would make no demur now when
word and money were given him to take himself away.
When Inspector McCue arrived, I greeted him with face of granite. He
should have no hint of my agony. I went bluntly to the core of the
employ; to dwell upon the business would be nothing friendly to my
taste.
“You know young Van Flange?” Inspector McCue gave a nod of assent.
“And you can locate him?”
“The proposition is so easy it's a pushover.”
“Find him, then, and send him out of the town; and for a reason, should
he ask one, you may say that I shall slay him should we meet.”
Inspector McCue looked at me curiously. He elevated his brow, but in the
end he said nothing, whether of inquiry or remark. Without a reply he
took himself away. My face, at the kindliest, was never one to speak of
confidences or invite a question, and I may suppose the expression of
it, as I dealt with Inspector McCue, to have been more than commonly
repellent.
There abode another with whom I wanted word; that one was Morton; for
hard by forty years he had not once failed me in a strait. I would ask
him the story of those Blackberry stocks. A glance into my steel box had
showed me the bottom as bare as winter boughs. The last scrap was
gone; and no more than the house that covered us, and those two hundred
thousand dollars in bonds that were Blossom's, to be left of all our
fortune.
My temper was not one to mourn for any loss of money; and yet in this
instance I would have those steps that led to my destruction set forth
to me. If it were the president of Blackberry Traction who had taken
my money, I meditated reprisal. Not that I fell into any heat of hatred
against him; he but did to me what Morton and I a few years further back
had portioned out to him. For all that, I was coldly resolved to have my
own again. I intended no stock shifts; I would not seek Wall Street for
my revenge. I knew a sharper method and a surer. It might glisten less
with elegance, but it would prove more secure. But first, I would have
the word of Morton.
That glass of exquisite fashion and mold of proper form, albeit
something grizzled, and like myself a trifle dimmed of time, tendered
his congratulations upon my re-conquest of the town. I drew him straight
to my affair of Blackberry.
“Really, old chap,” said Morton, the while plaintively disapproving of
me through those eyeglasses, so official in his case, “really, old
chap, you walked into a trap, and one a child should have seen. That
Blackberry fellow had the market rigged, don't y' know. I could have
saved you, but, my boy, I didn't dare. You've such a beastly temper when
anyone saves you. Besides, it isn't good form to wander into the stock
deals of a gentleman, and begin to tell him what he's about; it isn't,
really.”
“But what did this Blackberry individual do?” I persisted.
“Why, he let you into a corner, don't y' know! He had been quietly
buying Blackberry for months. He had the whole stock of the road in his
safe; and you, in the most innocent way imaginable, sold thousands of
shares. Now when you sell a stock, you must buy; you must, really! And
there was no one from whom to buy save our sagacious friend. Gad! as the
business stood, old chap, he might have had the coat off your back!” And
Morton glared in horror over the disgrace of the situation.
While I took no more than a glimmer of Morton's meaning, two things were
made clear. The Blackberry president had stripped me of my millions; and
he had laid a snare to get them.
“Was young Van Flange in the intrigue?”
“Not in the beginning, at least. There was no need, don't y' know. His
hand was already into your money up to the elbow.”
“What do you intend by saying that young Van Flange was not in the
affair in the beginning?”
“The fact is, old chap, one or two things occurred that led me to think
that young Van Flange discovered the trap after he'd sold some eight or
ten thousand shares. There was a halt, don't y' know, in his operations.
Then later he went on and sold you into bankruptcy. I took it from
young Van Flange's manner that the Blackberry fellow might have had some
secret hold upon him, and either threatened him, or promised him, or
perhaps both, to get him to go forward with his sales; I did, really.
Young Van Flange didn't, in the last of it, conduct himself like a free
moral or, I should say, immoral agent.”
“I can't account for it,” said I, falling into thought; “I cannot
see how young Van Flange could have been betrayed into the folly you
describe.”
“Why then,” said Morton, a bit wearily, “I have but to say over what
you've heard from me before. Young Van Flange was in no sort that man of
gifts you held him to be; now really, he wasn't, don't y' know! Anyone
might have hoodwinked him. Besides, he didn't keep up with the markets.
While I think it beastly bad form to go talking against a chap when he's
absent, the truth is, the weak-faced beggar went much more to Barclay
than to Wall Street. However, that is only hearsay; I didn't follow
young Van Flange to Barclay Street nor meet him across a faro layout by
way of verification.”
Morton was right; and I was to hear a worse tale, and that from
Inspector McCue.
“Would have been here before,” said Inspector McCue when he came to
report, “but I wanted to see our party aboard ship, and outside Sandy
Hook light, so that I might report the job cleaned up.”
Then clearing his throat, and stating everything in the present tense,
after the police manner, Inspector McCue went on.
“When you ask me can I locate our party, I says to myself, 'Sure thing!'
and I'll put you on to why. Our party is a dope fiend; it's a horse to a
hen at that very time he can be turned up in some Chink joint.”
“Opium?” I asked in astonishment. I had never harbored the thought.
“Why, sure! That's the reason he shows so sallow about the gills, and
with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket. When he lets up on the bottle,
he shifts to hop.”
“Go on,” said I.
“Now,” continued Inspector McCue, “I thought I knew the joint in which
to find our party. One evenin', three or four years ago, when the
Reverend Bronson and I are lookin' up those Barclay Street crooks, I see
our party steerin' into Mott Street. I goes after him, and comes upon
him in a joint where he's hittin' the pipe. The munk who runs it has
just brought him a layout, and is cookin' the pill for him when I shoves
in.
“Now when our party is in present trouble, I puts it to myself, that
he's sure to be goin' against the pipe. It would be his idea of gettin'
cheerful, see! So I chases for the Mott Street hang-out, and there's our
party sure enough, laid out on a mat, and a roll of cotton batting under
his head for a pillow. He's in the skies, so my plan for a talk right
then is all off. The air of the place is that thick with hop it would
have turned the point of a knife, but I stays and plays my string out
until he can listen and talk.
“When our party's head is again on halfway straight, and he isn't such a
dizzy Willie, I puts it to him that he'd better do a skulk.
“'You're wanted,' says I, 'an' as near as I make the size-up, you'll
take about five spaces if you're brought to trial. You'd better chase;
and by way of the Horn, at that. If you go cross-lots, you might get
the collar on a hot wire from headquarters, and be taken off the train.
Our party nearly throws a faint when I says 'embezzlement.' It's the
first tip he'd had, for I don't think he's been made wise to so much as
a word since he leaves here. It put the scare into him for fair; he was
ready to do anything I say.'
“'Only,' says he, 'I don't know what money I've got. And I'm too dippy
to find out.'
“With that, I go through him. It's in his trousers pocket I springs a
plant--fifteen hundred dollars, about.
“'Here's dough enough and over,' says I; and in six hours after, he's
aboard ship.
“She don't get her lines off until this morning, though; but I stays by,
for I'm out to see him safe beyond the Hook.”
“What more do you know of young Van Flange?” I asked. “Did you learn
anything about his business habits?”
“From the time you start him with those offices in Broad Street, our
party's business habits are hop and faro bank. The offices are there;
the clerks and the blackboards and the stock tickers and the tape
baskets are there; but our party, more'n to butt in about three times
a week and leave some crazy orders to sell Blackberry Traction, is never
there. He's either in Mott Street, and a Chink cookin' hop for him;
or he's in Barclay Street with those Indians, and they handin' him out
every sort of brace from an 'end-squeeze' or a 'balance-top,' where they
give him two cards at a clatter, to a 'snake' box, where they kindly
lets him deal, but do him just the same. Our party lose over a
half-million in that Barclay Street deadfall during the past Year.”
“I must, then,” said I, and I felt the irony of it, “have been
indirectly contributing to the riches of our friend, the Chief of
Police, since you once told me he was a principal owner of the Barclay
Street place.”
Inspector McCue shrugged his shoulders professionally, and made no
response. Then I questioned him as to the charge of embezzlement; for I
had not owned the heart to read the story in the press.
“It's that Blackberry push,” replied Inspector McCue, “and I don't think
it's on the level at that. It looks like the Blackberry president--and,
by the way, I've talked with the duffer, and took in all he would
tell--made a play to get the drop on our party. And although the trick
was put up, I think he landed it. He charges now that our party is a
welcher, and gets away with a bunch of bonds--hocked 'em or something
like that--which this Blackberry guy gives him to stick in as margins
on some deal. As I say, I think it's a put-up job. That Blackberry
duck--who is quite a flossy form of stock student and a long shot from
a slouch--has some game up his sleeve. He wanted things rigged so's he
could put the clamps on our party, and make him do as he says, and pinch
him whenever it gets to be a case of must. So he finally gets our party
where he can't holler. I makes a move to find out the inside story; but
the Blackberry sport is a thought too swift, and he won't fall to my
game. I gives it to him dead that he braced our party, and asks him,
Why? At that he hands me the frozen face, springs a chest, and says he's
insulted.
“But the end of it is this: Our party is now headed for Frisco. When he
comes ashore, the cops out there will pick him up and keep a tab on him;
we can always touch the wire for his story down to date. Whenever you
say the word, I can get a line on him.”
“Bring me no tales of him!” I cried. “I would free myself of every
memory of the scoundrel!”
That, then, was the story--a story of gambling and opium! It was these
that must account for the sallow face, stooped shoulders, hollow eyes,
and nights away from home. And the man of Blackberry, from whom Morton
and I took millions, had found in the situation his opportunity. He laid
his plans and had those millions back. Also, it was I, as it had been
others, to now suffer by Barclay Street.
“And now,” observed Inspector McCue, his hand on the door, but turning
with a look at once inquisitive and wistful--the latter, like the
anxious manner of a good dog who asks word to go upon his hunting--“and
now, I suppose, you'll be willin' to let me pull that outfit in Barclay
Street. I've got 'em dead to rights!” The last hopefully.
“If it be a question,” said I, “of where a man shall lose His money, for
my own part, I have no preference as to whether he is robbed in Barclay
Street or robbed in Wall. We shall let the Barclay Street den alone, if
you please. The organization has its alliances. These alliances cannot
be disturbed without weakening the organization. I would not make the
order when it was prayed for by the mother of young Van Flange, and she
died with the prayer on her lips. I shall not make it now when it is I
who am the sufferer. It must be Tammany before all; on no slighter terms
can Tammany be preserved.”
Inspector McCue made no return to this, and went his way in silence. It
was a change, however, from that other hour when I had been with him
as cold and secret as a vault. He felt the flattery of my present
confidence, and it colored him with complacency as he took his leave.
Roundly, it would be two months after the election before Tammany took
charge of the town. The eight weeks to intervene I put in over that list
of officers to be named by me through the mayor and the various chiefs
of the departments. These places--and they were by no means a stinted
letter, being well-nigh thirty thousand--must be apportioned among the
districts, each leader having his just share.
While I wrought at these details of patronage, setting a man's name to a
place, and all with fine nicety of discrimination to prevent jealousies
and a thought that this or that one of my wardogs had been wronged, a
plan was perfecting itself in my mind. The thought of Blossom was ever
uppermost. What should I do to save the remainder of her life in peace?
If she were not to be wholly happy, still I would buckler her as far as
lay with me against the more aggressive darts of grief. There is such a
word as placid, and, though one be fated to dwell with lasting sorrow,
one would prefer it as the mark of one's condition to others of
tumultuous violence. There lies a choice, and one will make it, even
among torments. How could I conquer serenity for Blossom?--how should
I go about it to invest what further years were hers with the restful
blessings of peace? That was now the problem of my life, and at last I
thought it solved.
My decision was made to deal with the town throughout the next regime
as with a gold mine. I would work it night and day, sparing neither
conscience nor sleep; I would have from it what utmost bulk of treasure
I might during the coming administration of the town's affairs. The game
lay in my palm; I would think on myself and nothing but myself; justice
and right were to be cast aside; the sufferings of others should be no
more to me than mine had been to them. I would squeeze the situation
like a sponge, and for its last drop. Then laying down my guiding staff
as Chief, I would carry Blossom, and those riches I had heaped together,
to regions, far away and new, where only the arch of gentle skies should
bend above her days! She should have tranquillity! she should find rest!
That was my plan, my hope; I kept it buried in my breast, breathed of it
to no man, not even the kindly Morton, and set myself with all of that
ferocious industry which was so much the badge of my nature to its
carrying forth. Four years; and then, with the gold of a Monte Cristo,
I would take Blossom and go seeking that repose which I believed must
surely wait for us somewhere beneath the sun!
While I was engaged about those preliminaries demanded of me if the
machine were to begin its four-years' reign on even terms of comfort,
Morton was often at my shoulder with a point or a suggestion. I was glad
to have him with me; for his advice in a fog of difficulty such as mine,
was what chart and lighthouse are to mariners.
One afternoon while Morton and I were trying to hit upon some man of
education to take second place and supplement the ignorance of one
whom the equities of politics appointed to be the head of a rich but
difficult department, the Reverend Bronson came in.
We three--the Reverend Bronson, Morton, and myself--were older now than
on days we could remember, and each showed the sere and yellow of his
years. But we liked each other well; and, although in no sort similar
in either purpose or bent, I think time had made us nearer friends than
might have chanced with many who were more alike.
On this occasion, while I engaged myself with lists of names and lists
of offices, weighing out the spoils, Morton and the Reverend Bronson
debated the last campaign, and what in its conclusion it offered for the
future.
“I shall try to be the optimist,” said the Reverend Bronson at last,
tossing up a brave manner. “Since the dying administration was not so
good as I hoped for, I trust the one to be born will not be so bad as I
fear. And, as I gather light by experience, I begin to blame officials
less and the public more. I suspect how a whole people may play the
hypocrite as much as any single man; nor am I sure that, for all its
clamors, a New York public really desires those white conditions of
purity over which it protests so much.”
“Really!” returned Morton, who had furnished ear of double interest to
the Reverend Bronson's words, “it is an error, don't y' know, to give
any people a rule they don't desire. A government should always match a
public. What do you suppose would become of them if one were to suddenly
organize a negro tribe of darkest Africa into a republic? Why, under
such loose rule as ours, the poor savage beggars would gnaw each other
like dogs--they would, really! It would be as depressing a solecism as a
Scotchman among the stained glasses, the frescoes, and the Madonnas of
a Spanish cathedral; or a Don worshiping within the four bare walls and
roof of a Highland kirk. Whatever New York may pretend, it will always
be found in possession of that sort of government, whether for virtue
or for vice, whereof it secretly approves.” And Morton surveyed the good
dominie through that historic eyeglass as though pleased with what he'd
said.
“But is it not humiliating?” asked the Reverend Bronson. “If what you
say be true, does it not make for your discouragement?”
“No more than does the vulgar fact of dogs and horses, don't y' know!
Really, I take life as it is, and think only to be amused. I remark
on men, and upon their conditions of the moral, the mental, and the
physical!--on the indomitable courage of restoration as against the
ceaseless industry of decay!--on the high and the low, the good and the
bad, the weak and the strong, the right and the wrong, the top and the
bottom, the past and the future, the white and the black, and all those
other things that are not!--and I laugh at all. There is but one thing
real, one thing true, one thing important, one thing at which I
never laugh!--and that is the present. But really!” concluded Morton,
recurring to affectations which for the moment had been forgot, “I'm
never discouraged, don't y' know! I shall never permit myself an
interest deep enough for that; it wouldn't be good form. Even those
beastly low standards which obtain, as you say, in New York do not
discourage me. No, I'm never discouraged--really!”
“You do as much as any, by your indifference, to perpetuate those
standards,” remarked the Reverend Bronson in a way of mournful severity.
“My dear old chap,” returned Morton, growing sprightly as the other
displayed solemnity, “I take, as I tell you, conditions as I find them,
don't y' know! And wherefore no? It's all nature: it's the hog to
its wallow, the eagle to its crag;--it is, really! Now an eagle in a
mud-wallow, or a hog perching on a crag, would be deuced bad form!
You see that yourself, you must--really!” and our philosopher glowered
sweetly.
“I shall never know,” said the Reverend Bronson, with a half-laugh,
“when to have you seriously. I cannot but wish, however, that the town
had better luck about its City Hall.”
“Really, I don't know, don't y' know!” This deep observation Morton
flourished off in a profound muse. “As I've said, the town will get
what's coming to it, because it will always get what it wants. It always
has--really! And speaking of 'reform' as we employ the term in politics:
The town, in honesty, never desires it; and that's why somebody must
forever attend on 'reform' to keep it from falling on its blundering
nose and knees by holding it up by the tail. There are people who'll
take anything you give them, even though it be a coat of tar and
feathers, and thank you for it, too,--the grateful beggars! New York
resembles these. Some chap comes along, and offers New York 'reform.'
Being without 'reform' at the time, and made suddenly and sorrowfully
mindful of its condition, it accepts the gift just as a drunkard takes a
pledge. Like the drunkard, however, New York is apt to return to its old
ways--it is, really!”
“One thing,” said the Reverend Bronson as he arose to go, and laying
his hand on my shoulder, “since the Boss of Tammany, in a day of the
machine, is the whole government and the source of it, I mean to come
here often and work upon our friend in favor of a clean town.”
“And you will be welcome, Doctor, let me say!” I returned.
“Now I think,” said Morton meditatively, when the Reverend Bronson had
departed, “precisely as I told our excellent friend. A rule should ever
fit a people; and it ever does. A king is as naturally the blossom of
the peasantry he grows on as is a sunflower natural to that coarse
stem that supports its royal nod-dings, don't y' know. A tyranny, a
despotism, a monarchy, or a republic is ever that flower of government
natural to the public upon which it grows. Really!--Why not? Wherein
lurks the injustice or the inconsistency of such a theory? What good
is there to lie hidden in a misfit? Should Providence waste a man's
government on a community of dogs? A dog public should have dog
government:--a kick and a kennel, a chain to clank and a bone to gnaw!”
With this last fragment of wisdom, the cynical Morton went also his way,
leaving me alone to chop up the town--as a hunter chops up the carcass
of a deer among his hounds--into steak and collop to feed my hungry
followers.
However much politics might engage me, I still possessed those hundred
eyes of Argus wherewith to watch my girl. When again about me she had no
word for what was past. And on my side, never once did I put to her the
name of young Van Flange. He was as much unmentioned by us as though he
had not been. I think that this was the wiser course. What might either
Blossom or I have said to mend our shattered hopes?
Still, I went not without some favor of events. There came a support to
my courage; the more welcome, since the latter was often at its ebb. It
was a strangest thing at that! While Blossom moved with leaden step, and
would have impressed herself upon one as weak and wanting sparkle, she
none the less began to gather the color of health. Her cheeks, before
of the pallor of snow, wore a flush like the promise of life. Her face
gained rounder fullness, while her eyes opened upon one with a kind of
wide brilliancy, that gave a look of gayety. It was like a blessing! Nor
could I forbear, as I witnessed it, the dream of a better strength for
my girl than it had been her luck to know; and that thought would set me
to my task of money-getting with ever a quicker ardor.
Still, as I've said, there was the side to baffle. For all those roses
and eyes like stars, Blossom's breath was broken and short, and a little
trip upstairs or down exhausted her to the verge of pain. To mend her
breathing after one of these small household expeditions, she must find
a chair, or even lie on a couch. All this in its turn would have set my
fears to a runaway if it had not been for that fine glow in her cheeks
to each time restore me to my faith.
When I put the question born of my uneasiness, Blossom declared herself
quite well, nor would she give me any sicklier word. In the end my fears
would go back to their slumbers, and I again bend myself wholly to that
task of gold.
Good or bad, to do this was when all was said the part of complete
wisdom. There could be nothing now save my plan of millions and a final
pilgrimage in quest of peace. That was our single chance; and at it, in
a kind of savage silence, night and day I stormed as though warring with
walls and battlements.