A LIGHT FROM THE EAST GOES OUT
To be in the heart of a great country, fifteen hundred miles from the
Atlantic, and two thousand miles from the Pacific, to be forbidden the
public highway of the train, and to have one's objective point
India,--this is by no means an easy problem, even to the oriental mind.
And who could know what was going on in the being that crept away into
the storm, strong with the instinct of hiding and of cunning. He must
have balanced all things. To go westward, where the great steamers plied
toward the Orient, this would seem the natural course; and yet that way
lay interminable prairies and empty stretches, and again deserts and
piled mountains, without shelter and without food. It is easier to hide
among people than amid solitudes. On crowded city streets, we jostle
without seeing.
It was no great feat to transform the once Swami of the flowing robes
and lofty port into a hulking skulking negro tramp, like the sturdy
villains of ancient days, sleeping in woody nooks by day, and pursuing
his slow journey under the stars, answering the look of such human
beings as he met with suspicion, keeping to the hamlets where police
officers were scarce and knowledge of the criminal world scarcer, and
where solitary house-wives, whose men were in the field, could be
persuaded, half through charity and half through fear, to dole out food.
Ah, but it was a weary journey. The world, of whose littleness we boast
when we think of steam and electricity, grows very sizable again when a
man comes back to the elemental means of progress--his own two legs. As
for the smaller world in which he had been living--the world of luxury
and of worshiping disciples--he laughed silently to think what a mirage
it was and always had been.
Down the Mississippi he crept, sometimes peering from between the great
trees that flanked its steep banks, as the red Indians did long ago, to
see the boats of the white man go serenely up and down that mighty
swirling current, and stopping even in his self-absorption to feel a
little of the beauty when the great river spread itself into the
shimmering expanse of Lake Pipin, or to remember, at Winona, the
picturesque legend that he had heard of the deserted Chippewa maiden who
here threw herself from the overhanging rocks into the pitiless rush of
waters below, and left only her ghost and her sweet-sounding name to the
spot. He halted to inspect the great monolith, a hundred feet in height,
of Sugar Loaf.
He had an idea that in some little town to the south he might venture to
board a straggling cross-country train to Chicago; and, once in the
thick of men again, he believed himself safe. He had always been wary
enough to keep on his person a certain sum of money. Such as it was, it
might serve his purpose. It also tickled his sense of humor to think
that--shabby black wayfarer that he was--he had in his pocket a check
for five thousand dollars, that he could not cash, and a handful of
rubies that were enough to awaken the suspicions of the least
suspicious. But still, day after day and night after night, he plodded
patiently on his way down the water course, until at last, at Prairie du
Chien, two hundred miles from St. Etienne, he felt that he might comfort
his inner man with hot food, and his weary legs with a bed and a
pillow. He prowled along the streets of the country town looking for
some cheap lodging-house where such as he, a humble, cringing, dog-like
fellow, might find shelter. He looked through a dusty window and saw a
shaggy-bearded, roughly-dressed man shoveling food with a knife, and he
felt that he had found the right place.
The proprietor of the establishment sat at a small table absorbed in the
perusal of a week-old Sunday newspaper. He growled out a "Guess so.
Sausages; baked beans; coffee," to Ram Juna's polite inquiry. It neither
looked nor smelled inviting, but the Hindu submitted to fate and
swallowed a hasty and unpalatable meal.
"Can you tell me where I can get a bed for the night?" he asked, turning
to his host.
The evident refinement in his voice made that worthy look up from his
literary occupation in some startled curiosity.
"They ain't many places where they take niggers," he said with an
unpleasant grin. "But I guess you might find a berth at Sally Munn's, if
you ain't too particular about morals. She's a merlatter herself; keeps
a place 'bout six houses down, first street to the left." The man
stared impudently as he spoke, but Ram Juna said, "Thank you," with his
usual politeness as he went out. The Hindu noted the impudent stare, but
he went away with an indifferent air.
"See here!" said the proprietor to his single other customer, "ain't
this picture in the paper the very image of that black feller that just
skipped?"
"Say, it's him!"
"We'd ought to look this up. There's a big reward offered."
While Ram Juna slept, lying in all his day clothes, some subtle
subconsciousness kept watch, became aware of disturbance, and roused his
body to attention. He got up, tiptoed to the open window and looked out
at the group of men standing below in the darkness.
"Aw, shut up, Sal," one of them was saying to an angry woman in the
doorway. "We ain't goin' to raid ye, though Lord knows you wouldn't have
no kick comin' if we did. What we want is that black feller that come
to-night. We suspect he's one of a gang of counterfeiters that the St.
Etienne police are after; and we ain't goin' to lose the chance of the
reward. You fellers keep right under the window, and I'll take you six
up stairs with me. He's big and he may show fight. Get your guns ready.
Don't shoot to kill. We want to deliver him alive. But you needn't be
afraid to use a ball on him."
Ram Juna drew away from the window and smiled his old Buddha smile. With
clumsy creaking precautions they mounted the stair. The moment for the
climax came; there was a rush all together, a breaking down of the shaky
door. The crew burst into the room--an empty room--and stared puzzled
and stupefied at the walls and at each other.
"Well, if that don't beat all!" ejaculated the sheriff. "Where in ----
has that fellow disappeared to?"
"They say," said Josiah Strait, a lank westernized Yankee, "that them
Hindu jugglers and lamas, and so forth, has supernatural gifts, and I
begin to believe it."
* * * * *
Something over a month later, Mr. Early burst in on Mr. and Mrs.
Percival as they dawdled over the breakfast-table.
"It's no time to be paying calls, I know," he apologized, "but I've had
such a sensation this morning that I had to come over and share it.
Yes, there are times when a man wishes that he had a wife to talk to!"
"What is it, Early?" Dick asked indifferently.
Mr. Early was waving a bit of paper about in a way quite hysterical.
"Do you see that?" he cried exultantly. "I never expected to see it
again, but I declare it is worth its price. I was going over my bank
accounts the first thing this morning and I found it."
"How do you expect us to know what it is when you're fanning it about
that way?" Dick demanded.
"It's a check, man, a check for five thousand that I gave Ram Juna the
very day of his unceremonious departure." Lena turned scarlet, and Mr.
Early noticed it with fresh glee. "A check I gave Ram Juna," he
repeated. "It's been cashed, with four indorsements, in New Orleans. Now
how did he manage that, tell me. The Swami is one of the great geniuses
of the age. Of course I wanted to see the rascals punished, and it makes
me hot to think how they used my house and all that, but, by Jove! I'm
glad they haven't Ram Juna. From New Orleans, a seaport, mind you! I am
willing to make a good-sized bet that he's well on his way to his
favorite Himalayas by this time, ready to meditate on the syllable 'Om'
for the rest of his life. Oh, it's too good! How he must laugh in his
sleeve at the rest of the world! But how did he get that check cashed?"
"Well, if I were in your place, I should have it traced back," said
Dick, the practical.
"Of course I shall," exclaimed Mr. Early. "Of course I shall. I shall
put it in the hands of the police at once, for I'm sure of one thing, if
it helps to root out any sinners, Swami Ram Juna won't be among them.
He's gone for good, take my word for it; and as for the other rascals, I
hope with all my heart they may suffer." He nodded jubilantly at Mrs.
Percival, and she flushed again.
"It's a very good joke, certainly," said Dick, "but rather an expensive
one for you, I should say, Early."
"Oh, I shall get five thousand dollars' worth of satisfaction out of
it," Mr. Early went on enthusiastically. "And I'm proud of the Swami,
proud of him. And the splendid simplicity of him! I was talking
yesterday with the detective that ferreted him out. The plunder they
found in my little room was perfectly primitive. He had practically no
tools to make the cleverest counterfeits in years. A deft hand and a
wonderful thumb had the Swami."
"What are they going to do with the big ruby in his turban?" asked Lena.
"Oh, that is one of the chief things that I came to tell you about. You,
my dear Mrs. Percival, have especial reason to be interested in this."
He turned, brimming with information, to Lena, "The captain of police
took it to Brand's--the jeweler, you know--to be appraised. Now isn't
this the crown of the whole story? Brand tells him that it is paste!"
Dick sat back in his chair and laughed with abandon, and laughed again.
"And what about my rubies'?" screamed Lena, springing to her feet.
"I have not the slightest doubt that they are paste, too. Everything he
touched was fraud."
"I'm glad of it! I'm glad of it!" cried Dick, with a new access of
mirth. "The old rascal! Giving my wife jewels! Why, Lena, you couldn't
wear his stuff anyway, after all this fracas. It will do to trim a
Christmas tree."
But Lena, with angry face, tapped the floor nervously with her gaudy
small slipper, and made no reply to her husband's hilarity.
Even to her slow-working mind it was evident that she had paid a high
price for some worthless bits of glass. This conferring of a favor was
indeed a bond.
She wondered what Mr. Early thought of her; what Dick would say if he
ever discovered.