Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/keeban00balm
KEEBAN
* * * * * *
By Edwin Balmer
RESURRECTION ROCK
THE BREATH OF SCANDAL
KEEBAN
_In collaboration with_ William MacHarg
THE BLIND MAN’S EYES
THE INDIAN DRUM
* * * * * *
KEEBAN
by
EDWIN BALMER
[Illustration: Logo]
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1923
Copyright, 1923,
By Edwin Balmer.
All rights reserved
Published April, 1923
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I MY BROTHER FINDS HIMSELF IN TWO PLACES
AT ONCE 1
II AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH 14
III I HAVE AN ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER 31
IV I SIT IN ON FATE 48
V THE UNDERWORLD INTRUDES 60
VI AND I FAIL TO PREVENT A BUMP-OFF 72
VII I KEEP MY OWN COUNSEL 87
VIII A LADY DISCREDITS ME 98
IX I SEEK THE UNDERWORLD 107
X AND LEARN THE WAYS OF ITS LOGIC 116
XI THE THIEVES’ BALL 134
XII I DISCOVER “THE QUEER” 153
XIII AND LEARN THE SOOTHING EFFECTS OF FOND
DU LAC TWINS 173
XIV I TAKE GOVERNMENT ORDERS 185
XV IN WHICH I ASSIST A GET-AWAY 196
XVI I WALK INTO A PARLOR 210
XVII CHIEFLY DEVOTED TO A GAS CALLED KX 219
XVIII DORIS APPEARS AND VANISHES 239
XIX I HEAR OF THE GLASS ROOM 248
XX DORIS AND I ARE TAKEN TO IT 256
XXI DORIS ENTERS THE GLASS ROOM 267
XXII A CROAKING AND FINIS 287
KEEBAN
I
MY BROTHER FINDS HIMSELF IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE.
The quick, quiet unlocking and then the closing of the hall door on
the floor below told me that Jerry had come in; so I sat up, roused as
I always was when I felt him about. He put life into any place,--even
into an Astor Street marble mansion in the somnolence of two-thirty on
a morning after everybody else has gone to bed.
Since my light was on, although it was only a shaded reading lamp and
although the double blinds before my window must have prevented more
than the merest glint outside, I was sure Jerry had noticed from the
street that I was awake; for he notices everything; and everything
bears to him a meaning which he has the clear head and the nervous
energy to make out. I never realized, till I began analyzing Jerry, how
much more you need than a brain for thinking; to get anywhere, you must
have a sort of habitual energy to tackle incidents and carry them in
your mind beyond the first, simple registry of the observed fact.
Take that evening we came home late together, when my cousin Janet with
her new husband was stopping with us. They’d arrived only that day,
and Jerry hadn’t seen Janet since she married and he had never met
Lew Hollings at all or heard anything about him except that they were
married and were to visit us. It was a very hot night and they’d gone
to their rooms early to rest from the train. We’d given them our best
guest rooms,--the pair of bedrooms on the third floor in front with a
dressing room in between. I noticed, as we approached the house, that
the dressing room light was burning and the bedrooms both were dark
with the windows open. Somebody’d forgotten the light; that’s all it
meant to me. Jerry looked up at the house.
“Why, that’s too bad, Steve!” he said. “That” was so plain to him that
it didn’t occur to him that he needed to explain when he finished. “I
thought Janet and Hollings were getting along all right.”
“They are,” I said. “They’re perfectly happy. What gave you the sudden
idea they’re not?”
“Oh, closed doors on a night when it’s eighty-eight and no breeze,
Steve. Neither has a door open, even to the dressing room; they don’t
know the light’s on. They’ve each shut themselves in one room without
opening a door even for a current of air to-night.”
“You’re crazy, Jerry,” I said. “I had dinner with them. There’s nothing
the matter.” That was what my people thought too until Janet and Lew
separated, openly, a couple of weeks later.
Jerry came into my room and, as soon as I saw him, I flung my book to
the foot of the bed; for it was perfectly plain, even to my sort of
wits, that something mighty amazing to him had happened. He was pale
and his blue eyes looked positively big; he has fine eyes, Jerry; you
like them, though they take hold of you and seem to look through you;
the reason you like them, in spite of this, is that while finding out
something of you, they grant you a good deal of him. So they told me
now that Jerry was afraid; and, though we have been companions for
twenty-eight years--that is, since we were babies--and though that
companionship includes service in the Argonne, I had never seen him so
afraid before.
He’d come upstairs with his overcoat on, over his evening clothes, for
he’d been at Ina Sparling’s wedding, and he hadn’t even dropped his hat
downstairs.
“How long you been home, Steve?” he asked, coming beside me.
“Since half-past twelve,” I said.
“Awake all the time?”
“Yes, Jerry.”
“Anybody call for me?”
“No.”
“You’ve not heard the ’phone at all?”
“No. What’s the matter, old fellow?”
“Dot!” said Jerry, staring down at me without now seeing me at all.
“Dorothy Crewe?” I asked, in the way I have of asking perfectly obvious
questions.
“Yes, Steve.”
“Oh; you’ve quarrelled?” I said, imagining I saw a light. “That’s it.”
“I’d trade a good many quarrels for what happened--probably, Steve.”
“To her?” I said again, stupidly.
He did not exactly nod his head but he inclined it a trifle lower. “The
damnedest thing, Steve; the queerest affair!” he said, looking quickly
at me again. He brushed my book to the floor and dropped on the foot of
the bed and sat there, staring straight ahead without speaking for a
minute while he listened for sounds in the street or below; but there
was nothing.
He swung about and demanded of me suddenly, “You noticed Dot to-night?”
“Of course, old fellow. Besides, she was with you most of the time.”
He jerked, wincing at that; and Jerry’s not jerky. He’s excitable and
capable, I’ve always felt, even of violence. But he possesses not one
bad nerve; he might hit in anger but he would hit perfectly steadily if
he hit to kill.
“Yes, of course she was with me. I was responsible for her to-night.
Did you notice what she was wearing, Steve?”
“Blue dress, wasn’t it--pale blue? She certainly was stunning, Jerry.”
“Her necklace, Steve; didn’t you see it? Those damned diamonds and
sapphires her father brought back from abroad with him!”
“Of course I saw them. So--she lost them to-night, did she? Or they
were stolen? That’s it?” But I realized by this time it was far more
than that.
“Steve, let’s go over it just as it happened,” Jerry entreated. “When
did you leave the Sparlings’?”
“Twelve o’clock. Ten minutes after,” I added more precisely and he did
not question me further on that; he knows I always keep track of time.
“You saw Dot about midnight?”
“Within a quarter of an hour of the time I left, Jerry.”
“When did you see me last?”
He tried not to--I thought--but he could not help bending toward me a
little and he could not keep his voice from going a little up and down.
“Why, at the door when I went, Jerry!” I said, my own voice cracking a
little, excited from him.
“At the door of the Sparlings at ten minutes after twelve, Steve?” he
begged of me.
“Why, yes, Jerry.”
“I, Steve? You saw me there?”
“Why not? What is it, Jerry? I’ve told you I did.”
“You know me; or you ought to know me, if any one in the world does.
And you wouldn’t joke about it with me, would you, Steve? If all the
rest of them were doing it, if they’d sworn you in, too, in the hoax,
you’d tell me the truth now, wouldn’t you? For you see Dot’s taken! If
she’s not really taken, I believe she is; that’s the same to me! Oh, I
know you wouldn’t be in on anything like that against me!”
“Dot taken? Where? How? What is it that’s happened?”
“That’s what no one knows, Steve. Oh--we’ve got to go over it just
as it came on. Up to half-past eleven, you know everything. That is,
there’s nothing in particular to tell. We were all at the Sparlings’
dancing about after the wedding; about half-past eleven people began
drifting over to the Drake to Casoway’s dance. Dot and I meant to go;
with Jim and Laura Townsend in their car. In the coat room I was held
up a few minutes finding my things; this was still at the Sparlings’,
Steve. When I came down to the carriage door, I couldn’t find Dot. The
Townsends were gone; somebody said she’d gone with them, so I followed
on in the next machine for the Drake. Don’t know whose it was; just
some people said, ‘Going to the Drake? Get in.’ So I got in and soon
as I got to the Drake went on a hunt for Dot but couldn’t find her
right away. Awful jam there, Steve; couldn’t find the Townsends for
twenty minutes; then they said they hadn’t brought Dot. Thought maybe
the Westmans might have; they came over at the same time. So I chased
up Sally Westman; she hadn’t brought Dot; but I ran on Tom Downs just
coming in; this was twelve o’clock then, Steve.
“‘Hello, Jerry,’ he said to me. ‘How the devil’d you beat me over here?’
“‘When’d you leave the Sparlings’?’ I said.
“‘Just now; oh, three minutes ago.’
“‘Was Dorothy Crewe over there?’ I said.
“‘When I left?’ Tom said. ‘Why, certainly; she was with you. You said
you were coming over; but not right away. But you seem to have passed
me.’
“‘I’ve been here half an hour,’ I said, and he laughed and went on.
Thought I was joking and I thought he simply remembered seeing me with
Dot before I came over and he got mixed on his time. I wasn’t sure even
that Dot had stayed at the Sparlings’, so I asked some more people who
had just come over; and they’d just left her at the Sparlings’ with
_me_, Steve!”
I didn’t try to say anything now; he was trying to tell me as quickly
as he could.
“They were positive about it and wondered how I got over so quick.
Steve, I tell you it sent a shiver through me right then. I decided
to go back to the Sparlings’ to get her; so I ’phoned and Gibson,
Sparling’s man, you know, answered. I know his voice. I said:
“‘Is Miss Crewe still there, Gibson?’
“‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Just in the next room.’
“‘Let me speak with her,’ I said.
“‘Yes, sir,’ said Gibson. ‘Who shall I say?’
“‘Fanneal,’ I said.
“‘Mr. Stephen Fanneal?’ said Gibson.
“I thought everybody was going crazy; how could Gibson mix up your
voice and mine, Steve? ‘Jerry Fanneal,’ I told him, only to have him
come back with a ‘What, sir?’ So I told him again; and he gave me, ‘But
Mr. Jeremy Fanneal is here, sir.’
“That got a ‘what’ out of me, Steve. ‘Right there now?’ I got after
Gibson.
“‘Yes, sir.’
“‘You can see him, Gibson?’
“‘Yes, sir; just this minute he passed in the hall with Miss Crewe.’
“‘Get him to the ’phone then, right away,’ I said.
“‘What name shall I give him, sir?’ said Gibson.
“‘Never mind the name. Tell him he’s wanted on the ’phone.’ And then,
by God, Steve, he talked to me!”
I was leaning toward Jerry now. “Who?”
“Myself, Steve! Don’t look at me as if I’m a loon. I tell you that
fellow who came to the ’phone gave me a jump higher than yours.
He didn’t talk exactly like me; I mean, didn’t say words I’d have
said--quite; but he said ’em the way I speak, Steve. After I’d heard
him, ‘Who in the devil are you?’ I said.
“‘Jerry Fanneal,’ he said, cool. ‘Who’s this?’
“Of course that left me without a comeback! ‘You’re with Dorothy
Crewe?’ I said. ‘Let me talk to her!’
“‘All right,’ he said; and like a fool I waited three minutes for
somebody to come. Of course nobody did; and I couldn’t rouse anybody
else; he’d left the receiver off. But in four minutes I came to and
grabbed a cab and got over to the Sparlings’ to find I’d just gone
half a minute before with Dorothy. I’d taken her alone in a cab for
the Drake; they wanted to know what was the matter; why I’d come back?
Where was Dorothy? I didn’t wait to explain; I cut back to the Drake;
but she didn’t come; and I didn’t come! I mean the other fellow that
was me never showed up anywhere. Nobody saw more of us than me after
that. There I was, all right; where was Dorothy?
“By God, Steve; it’s near three now; and she never came; she’s not
gone home or anywhere else where she would go. If it wasn’t for those
damned diamonds and sapphires they hung on her to-night, I might
believe there’s a chance for a joke somewhere. But she’s a couple of
hundred thousand on her neck to-night; or anyway, she had, Steve. And
the papers were telling all about it; ‘Harrison Crewe brings to Chicago
royal jewels’ and all that stuff; you saw it, Steve.--I’ve been to the
Crewes’; just came from them. They don’t think anything’s happened;
nothing’s ever happened in their family, you know. Things only happen
to other people--things like what may be happening to Dorothy, Steve!
Of course I couldn’t make myself awfully clear; all they feel what
has happened is that Dorothy, probably for good reasons of her own,
dropped me and went off from the Sparlings’ with somebody else and I’m
overexcited about it. They don’t think it’s time yet to call in the
police. You know them; I worried them but not to the point of having in
the police and the newspapers on an affair of their own. But I called
headquarters on my way out of their building, from the porter’s room
under their apartment. Told police to call me here; so you’ll take any
call for me, won’t you? I’m going out on the street again and I’ll
’phone you for report within every fifteen minutes. Have it now, Steve?”
“Yes,” I said, to try to help him. It wasn’t true, yet truer, perhaps
than “no”; for I did have the essential fact which was that he
tremendously feared that harm had come to Dorothy Crewe through an
extraordinary event which he, himself, could not yet make out.
“Get dressed then, Steve; and stay here for me.”
I stood up; he stared me over again and started for the door but
caught at my telephone on the stand in the corner. It is an extension
of one of the instruments downstairs and the bell is below; but it
can be plainly heard in my room, especially at night. It had not even
jingled, I’m sure. So Jerry’s grab at the receiver was solely from his
impatience; and when he had it up, no one was on the line; he had to
give central the order: “Police; central detective bureau.” When he had
them, “This is Jeremy Fanneal, of ----” he gave our telephone number
and house number on Astor Street. “I called you a while ago asking you
to call me immediately if you---- _What?_” Then I was trying to get
to him; but he heard it first. “Steve! They have her! They found her
in the street in her blue dress and her light hair! Dot, Steve! Her
necklace is gone but there’s marks.--Oh, Steve, they’re waiting for me
to come and identify her.”
I took hold of him. “She’s dead?”
“They think so; or as good as dead.”
I held to him. “You wait for me,” I said, “or I’ll not let you go.
You’ll save time in the end. Your word, Jerry.”
He looked at me straight. “You’ll jump, Steve,” was all he said.
II
AND ESCAPES FROM BOTH.
I got into my clothes in a minute; Jerry hadn’t been able to remain in
the house, but I found him walking up and down beside the cab which he
had kept.
“Chicago Avenue police station,” he said to the driver, and he was in
ahead of me. “They took her there,” he told me, “from where they found
her--on West Division Street near the river.”
He had no doubt whatever that she was Dorothy Crewe--his Dot whom he
had loved; and, for what had come to her, he was holding himself guilty.
“Steve, she thought she was going with me!” he cried out. “It was my
Keeban! There is a Keeban, you see; my Keeban took her away and killed
her!”
I jerked in spite of myself. You, of course, cannot understand
why without this word of explanation. Jerry and I, as most of our
acquaintances know--and the Chicago papers, in their occasional
discussions of the Fanneals, always veiledly refer to the fact--are not
blood brothers. It is a perfectly evident fact to any one who has seen
both of us; for I am the Fanneal type,--tall and with big bones, strong
and spare in flesh but slow moving; my features are Rhode Island Yankee
transplanted to Illinois, regular enough but too angular; too much
nose, a bit too much chin, also. My hair is sandy brown; my eyes blue.
Jerry’s eyes are blue but mine have no quality of the living color of
his; when I set the word down, it suggests that our eyes, at least, are
alike, whereas we are nowhere more different. Mine are merchants’ eyes,
come down from ten recorded generations of cautious traders; Jerry’s
are--who knows? Jerry’s long, graceful body is not so strong but twice
as quick as mine; Jerry’s clear, dark skin and his soft, black hair on
his daredevil head; his small-boned but strong hands; the laugh and
the lilt of him and his _élan_ are--French, perhaps? Or Spanish, or
Italian? All three together or none, but some other marvellous blend
of energetic, passionate people? No one can say, least of all, Jerry
himself. For one day, when I was about two years old and my nurse had
me playing carefully by myself in a selected and remote spot in Lincoln
Park, Jerry appeared under the trees and ran across the grass to play
with me. Of course my nurse immediately jumped to protect me from
contamination from a dark stranger, though it is remembered that he
was clean and nicely clothed; she tried to send him away and, when he
wouldn’t go but eluded her and hugged me--and I hugged him--she parted
us and tried to take him back to his mother. But she couldn’t find
his mother or any one else who claimed him; she couldn’t find even a
policeman. (Obviously I had no memory of my own about this but was told
it long afterwards.) Then my mother was driven by that way and found
Jerry and me together.
It seemed that mother considered my nurse to blame for Jerry becoming
detached from his own party; my mother always fixed blame for
occurrences; also, she always felt responsibility. She felt that now
for Jerry and took him in her carriage and brought him home where she
kept him isolated in a guest room while she had the police notified
and advertisements put in the papers. She said she would persist in
efforts to return Jerry to his parents until she got results; the
authorities--she thought--were too careless about such matters and too
soon gave up, and merely sent a child to an institution. Accordingly,
Jerry remained at our house; and then, when my mother’s efforts
brought no result, she still kept him. A child’s specialist examined
him and found him reassuringly sound, with excellent development,
no ascertainable defects or hereditary taints, all senses acute,
and decidedly “bright.” Apparently, he was about two years old; “of
European parentage” was as far as the doctor would commit himself.
“French,” my mother decided. “He says his name is ‘Jerry.’ I don’t
think that it is his name; it probably represents ‘mon cheri.’”
“Spanish,” my father always said, for no reason, I believe, other than
he thought my mother was too positive and also he particularly liked
the Spanish. They couldn’t help liking Jerry, who knew, besides his
name, only the usual hundred or so ordinary words which a child picks
up first; English words, they were, at first spoken with a marked
French accent, my mother said.
So they let Jerry and me play together; I was an only child. A
companion, therefore, was “good for me”; and we have been together
ever since. I cannot remember a time when there was not Jerry; he
cannot consciously recall any home previous to ours or any one previous
to us,--besides the nameless “mama” and “papa” whom he asked for, at
first, and “Keeban.”
Keeban, apparently, was another child; a brother or sister; or perhaps
only a playmate. Jerry could not describe him, of course; he could only
go about looking for and asking for Keeban. Naturally, as time went on,
my mother and father replaced Jerry’s own nameless mama and papa; but I
never replaced Keeban; and Jerry never forgot him. As we became older,
Jerry’s idea of Keeban became at the same time more imaginary and more
definite; for Keeban changed from some one for whom Jerry searched to
some one always with us,--an imaginary companion, a third to us two,
interesting, always up to something and most convenient to accuse when
we were caught in heinous wrong.
I can remember, when we were about seven, asking Jerry what Keeban was
like. I did not consider that Keeban represented a real person; he was,
to me, merely one of Jerry’s interesting imaginations.
“Keeban,” said Jerry, “is another me. Don’t you never have a Keeban,
too?”
“No,” I said; but I had Jerry’s--that other imaginary boy, the
duplicate of Jerry, who came to see us, whom we played with, who did
extraordinary things and went away. Then, gradually, we dropped him;
that is, Jerry ceased to mention him and we stopped having him “come.”
I think I forgot him until we were in Princeton University together; a
lot of us had been to New York over the week-end and after we’d been
back a few days, Jim Townsend dropped into Jerry’s and my room, when
Jerry was out, and said:
“Steve, I wouldn’t say a word against Jerry to anybody but you; but you
ought to know how queer he is sometimes.”
“When?” I said.
“Last Saturday in New York; I was down on the east side with a bunch
of our class, just knocking about the ordinary way, when we ran on
Jerry in a rum lot, I tell you. He pretended not to recognize any of
us; in fact, he was in a bunch that tried to rough us; we had rather
a go. When it was over, I got at Jerry, he made me so damn mad going
in with that lot of muckers against us. I told him what I thought and
he looked at me as cool as could be. ‘Who do you think I am?’ he asked
me, as though I didn’t know him in Bowery ‘suitings’; for he had on
the whole get-up of his friends, Steve. I gave him up, I tell you; and
he wasn’t drunk, either. Since he didn’t know me, I decided I wouldn’t
know him, next time I saw him here; so I passed him outside just now
without speaking. He came after me and asked why. I told him; and what
do you suppose he did? Denied he’d even been on the east side Saturday;
he said I hadn’t seen him; that wasn’t he.”
“It wasn’t, Jim,” I said. “Jerry was with me all Saturday on Broadway.
We never got east of Fifth Avenue at all.”
“That’s right, Steve. Stand up for him; I would, too,” Jim said; and
nothing I could say would shake him that he’d seen Jerry. He was so
sure about it, and so were the rest of the bunch who’d been with him,
that it got me wondering, particularly when I remembered later that
Jerry hadn’t stayed with me all Saturday; we were separated for a
couple of hours.
I said nothing to him about it; and it soon blew over until, a couple
of months later, another bunch of fellows from the college ran into
Jerry on the same side of town, but peacefully, this time; so
peacefully, in fact, that he borrowed a hundred dollars from them. Said
he would be in trouble down there unless he had the money. I heard
about this from several men and then from Jerry.
“Tell me straight, Steve; do you believe I do queer things?” he asked
me suddenly one night.
“Of course not,” I said.
“I know you wouldn’t think it when I’m myself; but do you think there’s
a chance that sometimes I’m not myself and I go queer--like that fight
with Jim Townsend a few weeks ago; and borrowing a hundred dollars from
Davis in New York last Saturday. I swear to you, Steve, I haven’t the
slightest remembrance of even seeing Fred or any of the fellows with
him who saw me and saw him hand me the hundred.”
“They must have gone queer themselves,” I said.
“No,” said Jerry. “What they say is true. I don’t remember seeing them;
but I feel it.”
“Feel what?” I said.
“That they did meet me; for there’s another me about, Steve; you know
I’ve felt that. I know now he must be one of two things--either another
personality living in me which turns Jerry Fanneal off, sometimes,
and turns on--Keeban, Steve, like the dual personality cases in
the psychology books; or he must be a real, physical duplicate of
me--Keeban; that’s possible, too, of course. But the way I feel him
usually is another way; and the one way he can’t possibly be; he seems
to be me going on and growing up and living my life, as it would have
been, if I’d never come to you, Steve. So, that way, sometimes he seems
more me than myself; for I seem to be somebody else and he, when I
think of him that way, seems to be me.”
We couldn’t get any further than that; Jerry and I went to New York
the next day and poked about the district where Davis claimed to have
met Jerry, but we couldn’t find trace of anybody like him. Jerry paid
the hundred to Davis, I remember; he considered himself in some way
responsible and soon the incident passed off as the fight had; Jerry
lived it down and nothing like it occurred again for years, until this
night when Jerry, at the Drake, talked to himself at the Sparlings and
he went back to the Sparlings to learn that he had just that moment
gone out with Dorothy Crewe.
If what Jerry had just told me was exactly true, there was--of
course--no explanation of it but one; there existed, physically,
another Jerry. I could not say to myself that Jerry had not told me
the truth as he knew it; but I could not help wondering how much of it
he knew. Was he actually at the Drake at the same time “he” also was at
the Sparlings’; could he have talked to “himself”; and done the other
things he related? Or was there, living outside of him most of the
time, Keeban--the man he would have become had he never come to us--who
occasionally, at long intervals, could take command of Jerry’s body?
That idea had never seized me until to-night as I sat beside him in the
cab which was hurrying us to the police station where Dorothy Crewe
lay; for now I no longer doubted, either, that she was Dot.
Ahead on the dark and still street showed lighted windows and a police
ambulance stood end to the curb; we saw it was empty and so we went at
once into the station.
In a little, dingy room a girl lay on the stretcher by which she had
been carried; an ambulance doctor and two police detectives bent over
her. The police turned to us when we entered.
Jerry stepped ahead of me but over his shoulder I saw Dorothy Crewe.
She lay almost as if she were asleep in her pale blue dress in which
she had danced that night; her hair was beautiful as ever--corn-color
hair, little disarranged; her face and neck and arms were white and run
with red where cuts and scratches showed. There were signs of street
soil on her dress but none on her body; some one had washed them away.
“She’s not dead!” Jerry cried; then, in a whisper, “How is she?”
Said the ambulance surgeon, “We don’t know.”
“But she’s not dead!”
“No; not yet, anyway.”
Jerry’s face hovered over hers as he searched hers; then, very softly,
he kissed her. “You’ll not die!” he whispered to her; then, to the
surgeon, “Don’t let her die, doctor,” he said.
“What’s happened here?” I asked the officers.
It seemed that she’d been found in the street by a patrolman walking
his beat; he thought she was dead so he sent her to the station. Now,
having found life in her, the doctor was for taking her to a hospital;
but he honestly thought it no use at all.
“What do you know?” the police came back at us.
“She’s Dorothy Crewe,” Jerry told them, and added her father’s name and
number of his home. “To-night I took her to a dance at the Sparlings’.
She had a necklace--here.”
Gently he touched her throat where were marks made by him who had
snatched at her necklace and torn it away.
“Diamonds and sapphires,” Jerry went on and seemed to forget what he
said.
A police captain named Mullaney kept at me. “When did she leave Mr.
Sparling’s?”
“About half-past twelve,” I said. “She was going from there to a dance
at the Drake hotel given by Mr. Casoway. She never arrived there.”
“Go on,” said the captain.
Jerry went on. “She left the Sparlings’ wearing, besides what she has
on, a blue silk cloak and a necklace of diamonds and sapphires on a
platinum chain, which her father brought her from Paris.”
“Perhaps you’ve read about it,” I put in. “They were supposed to be
worth a quarter million.”
“I suppose,” said Jerry, “they were gone when you found her.”
“She had on her a quarter million in stones!” the captain repeated.
“Well, that makes it some plainer, sir. They was off her when we found
her. Now go right on, Mr. Fanneal. She left Mr. Sparling’s big house on
the Drive to go to the Drake hotel at half-past twelve, you say? She
didn’t go off, at that hour, alone?”
Jerry swung quickly and looked at me. “I’ll tell ’em, Steve!”
“Go ahead,” I said. God knows, I didn’t want to. I had no idea how to
tell it; my thoughts, on the subject of Keeban, were absolutely a blob,
just then.
“She did not leave alone, Captain,” Jerry told. “There is some
confusion over who she went with. That was why, when she did not come
to the Drake or return home, we became alarmed and I telephoned to you.
Some people thought she went away with me; but she did not.”
“Go on,” said Mullaney again.
“You’ll find a good many that say she went with me, Captain; Gibson,
the doorman, and probably Mrs. Sparling and some of the guests. But it
wasn’t me, Captain.”
Mullaney squinted his eyes as he looked at Jerry and then he looked at
me.
“Where was you, Mr. Steve Fanneal?” he challenged.
“I’d gone home, then.”
“Then where was you?” he swung back to Jerry.
“I’d gone to the Drake.”
“Leavin’ your partner at Mr. Sparling’s? I thought you said you took
her there.”
“I did.”
“Then why didn’t you take her away?”
“I’ll tell him, Jerry,” I said; for I felt the sudden strength of his
suspicion. At first, he had spoken alike to Jerry and to me; but now he
treated me and my word in one way and Jerry and his word in another. I
was the known, actual son of Austin Fanneal; Jerry, as everybody knew,
was the waif of any blood from anywhere.
“You can’t, Steve,” Jerry warned.
But there, like the fool I was, I started to tell.
Two big men in uniform came in and each took an arm of Jerry.
The doctor was doing things during most of this time; now and then I
noticed a hypodermic needle.
Dorothy Crewe breathed and her eyelids fluttered; she opened her eyes.
Only the grimy ceiling was in her sight; she stared at this and then
saw a blue coat, and some realization and remembrance began to reach
her; and she jerked and shivered violently.
Jerry started to her, pulling the two big men with him. The motion made
her turn her eyes and she saw Jerry; and she screamed!
It sent me shaking; it dropped Jerry down, hiding his face. She was
convulsing in a spasm of hysteria. “He! He! He! He!----” She seemed to
try to cry “He did it” but she could only scream “he, he,” until it
went into a crazy laugh.
The doctor tried to calm her; the big men dragged Jerry away. He was
making no resistance, God knows; he was limp. Could a man go against a
thing more awful than he’d just met? Here was the girl he loved; she’d
trusted herself to him and she believed that, for the diamonds about
her neck, he’d attacked her!
She told something more in that scream of a laugh; she told a little,
at least, of how she had struggled before she’d been strangled and
knocked senseless and thrown into the street. And she had thought Jerry
did it!
I stepped along beside him. “Keeban,” he whispered desperately to me.
“You see there’s Keeban.”
It meant nothing at all to the police. To me? What did I know?
“Go back to her, Steve,” Jerry begged. “But, old fellow!” he held me.
“What?”
“You’ll believe there’s Keeban? Think, Steve! If you don’t, you’ll
believe I did that!”
“No! I know you couldn’t.”
“And you’ll keep on knowing? You’ll always know?”
“Jerry!” I cried.
“Your word, Steve?”
“Of course.”
“Go back, now, to her.”
I left him to be dragged, limp, down the corridor between the big,
uniformed men.
In the grimy room, Dorothy Crewe had lost consciousness again; she was
quiet; there was nothing I could do for her.
A pair of shots sounded; a couple more, almost together; and yells.
I knew the trouble before they shouted it to us; Jerry had got away.
Instantly, without a jerk of warning, he had sprung from their hands as
they dragged him, all limp the second before; he was out of a door and
gone; and their loud bullets bagged them nothing.
They were all about the streets and alleys searching for him when I
came out to the ambulance beside the stretcher on which was Dorothy
Crewe.
“I’ll not go with you to the hospital,” I told the surgeon. “I’ll go
to her people; don’t ’phone them.” And so, while the police looked for
Jerry, I went to Dorothy’s people and tried to tell them--Keeban.
Keeban? Of course they did not believe. Stunned themselves, they
thought me mildly maddened by what had happened. Keeban! What did I
truthfully know of him? I got back home at last and stopped at Jerry’s
room, which had always been next to mine; I opened the door and in the
dark looked in. “Keeban!” I said to myself. “By God, there’s a Keeban;
there has to be!”
And, careful not to wake my own people, I went into my room.
III
I HAVE ENCOUNTER BY THE RIVER.
As long as I stayed by myself, I had some luck at believing; but there
was morning and the newspapers and telephone calls. I had to tell my
father then, and mother; and they talked with the police. They talked
with Mrs. Sparling and Gibson and fifty others who were at the dance.
And also they talked with Dorothy.
She was conscious now but in complete collapse, and her prostration,
added to what she said, gave the final proof against Jerry. She’d loved
him, too, it seemed; and he’d attacked and robbed her.
There’s no sense in stringing here the sensations the papers spread;
they were perfectly plain and obvious. “Foster Son of Millionaire
Attacks and Robs Society Girl”; and “Foundling of Fanneals Turns
Brute”; and “Waif Reared to Riches Reverts to Original Savagery” and
all that tosh. They dogged my people and me, the servants and even our
office force. They ran articles by “professors,” cheap alienists,
psychoanalysts and the rest of the ruck running after sensation.
Jerry had “reverted”; that was the seed of their stuff. He carried
in his blood a “complex” which suddenly caused him to cast off all
the restraints and habits of thought and conduct which our family had
drilled into him and to plan and effect the robbery of the jewels about
Dorothy Crewe’s neck. The dance and drink that night had inflamed him,
they said; then something flared up inside him and he forgot all that
we had grafted into him, forgot even his own obvious advantage in
remaining the son of Austin Fanneal, for the “primordial, overpowering
instinct for violence.”
I found nothing to put against all this. I talked to the people whom
Jerry had told me he’d seen at the Drake at the time when Gibson and
the rest said he was at the Sparlings’. Townsend and Sally Westman and
Downs admitted they’d seen Jerry at the Drake but they all believed
they’d become confused in guessing at the time. It was earlier that
he was over there, they thought; then he must have gone back to the
Sparlings’ and taken Dorothy away. I got no help from them.
How could I tell them of Keeban? My own mother was sorry for me when
I told her. She took the strong line she always does; she considered
herself to blame for having taken in Jerry, twenty-eight years ago, and
with no knowledge of his blood, rearing a child with unknown capacities
for crime and putting him into a position to harm others.
Dorothy’s people that day proclaimed a reward of ten thousand dollars
for the taking of Jerry Fanneal, dead or alive; and my father, on that
same day, put up ten more. He sent pictures of Jerry to all the papers
and himself supplied the minute descriptions telegraphed to St. Louis,
Cleveland, Denver, Philadelphia, New York, everywhere.
They set the whole world after Jerry while I--I, in those days, went
down to business and tried to do it, there in my office with my name on
the door, next to the door which had borne Jerry’s name.
But now his name was gone. They dissolved it with acid, so that no one
could see that the gold leaf on the glass had ever formed his initial;
and they burned every sheet of paper with his name on it. So there by
day, beside his empty office, I tried to do business and, when the day
was over, I walked by the river.
The Chicago River, as many may know, cuts the city like a great, wide
Y with long, narrow, irregular arms, one reaching northwest and the
other southwest from the top of the short, straight shank which is the
east-and-west channel from Lake Michigan. Not to the lake, remember,
for the Chicago River flows in the opposite direction from the natural
current, since men have turned it around to carry water from the lake
up the shank of the Y and then up the southwest branch to the drainage
canal and to the Illinois and the Mississippi rivers. It is a useful,
but not the most fervent Chicagoan can call it a pleasing stream, even
in its valuable reaches on the main channel east and west, and where
the south branch turns past the most precious property of the city.
Here and there are modern warehouses with a hundred yards or so of
decent, new dock between the bridges which cross the channel every
block or so, but most of the buildings forming the river bank show
straight up-and-down walls of narrow, tall, none-too-clean windows and
cheap brick, badly painted. At the bottom of the wall, there may be
only a pile strip to support the structure, but more frequently the
buttress before the slow flow of the water is a couple of yards wide,
offering a loading platform for ships which may tie up alongside or for
the flat steam scows of the Merchants Lighterage Company which ply up
and down the river.
Our building backs on the river, not far from its bend to the south
and frequently, at the end of the day’s work, Jerry and I would go
out by the river way and along on the strip of platform beside the
water. Instantly it took us from the world of streets and dust and
carts and trucks and taxicabs, from the traffic pound and clatter;
there a five-thousand-ton steamer, deep-laden, slips up beside one so
silently that you hardly hear the plash of the bow wave washing before
it and the lap of the eddies on the timber under your feet; you hear
the sudden, clear voices of seamen; bells sounding from engine-room
depths; now the whole air rumbles with a tremendous, unlandlike blast
as the vessel blows for the opening of the bridge, under which scurries
a black tug, lake bound, dipping her banded funnel for clearance.
Watermen scull an open boat across the oily current on river business
of their own. Before you and above reach the bridges bearing the
streets; but they seem now concerned with affairs of another world.
No one else ever took that walk with Jerry and me; we had idled along
the river hours on end together, following the black band of the narrow
timber causeway above the water to which, here and there, elusive,
unidentified doors would open. Somewhere along there, if anywhere,
Jerry was likely to look for me, I thought, if he wanted me alone and
unwitnessed. So, after Jerry was gone, I kept up by myself the habit we
had formed together; and on the seventh night I came this way--it was
Monday evening and the ninth day after Jerry disappeared--one of those
doors to the water suddenly opened beside me.
The hour, which was half-past five, was more afternoon than evening,
but the darkness was almost of night; for the month had turned to
November, and between the brick walls of the canyon where the black
river flowed there was less light from the sky than from the few
windows where yellow bulbs glowed. It was so cool as to feel frosty as
I walked against the fresh breeze blowing in from the lake.
“Steve!” said a girl’s voice, hailing me.
I turned, and, in the light which came through the doorway, I found
a trim young person gazing at me. As the illumination which came from
a single, unshaded electric bulb set on a blank wall opposite the
door was behind her, I could see at first only that she wore a dark,
tailored suit and a small, dark hat over hair which was unbobbed,
abundant and light in color--almost as light as Dorothy Crewe’s had
been.
“Steve, do you want to talk with Jerry?” she asked me calmly. “Come in,
then.”
She stepped back, and I stepped after her. As soon as I was in, she
closed the door; and there was Jerry standing in the corner back of the
door.
“Hello, Steve,” he greeted me without emotion.
“Hello, Jerry,” I said, and tried to show as little, but I was feeling
more than ever before in my life. For here we were, Jerry and I, who’d
spent all our lives together; here we were alone with that girl, who’d
evidently come with him. I looked at her again and made sure I didn’t
know her.
“This is Christina, Steve,” Jerry told me in that same, dull voice,
purposely deadened to keep out emotion. “Christina,” he said to her,
“this is Steve.”
“Who’s Christina, Jerry?” I said; stupid thing to ask. He knew it was
stupid and he smiled, as Jerry always did; he was used to my being
stupid. He simply nodded toward her to say, “You see; there she is.”
I stared from her and looked about the room, which was a square, bare
place with whitewashed walls, corresponding to an ordinary cellar room.
Considered from the street side of the building, a hundred feet or so
away, it was a cellar, though its riverside door was eight or ten feet
above the water. A single window, with a drawn blind, was beside that
door; in the opposite wall, beside the light, was another door, leading
either to a basement cavern which could have no outside light, or to a
stair; I could not know, for the door was closed and bolted.
The floor was cracked cement, strewn with straw and wisps of excelsior;
old, open boxes and barrels stood about and a broken desk and chairs.
Evidently the place had once been used as a shipping room but had been
deserted. I tried to locate it in connection with some particular
building, but failed, for I had not kept track how far I’d walked.
Suddenly Jerry told me, as though he’d seen my thought, “We’re back of
Linthrop’s old warehouse, Steve.”
Then I knew that the building above us was empty; and I knew, as I
gazed at Jerry, that he’d chosen this place to stop me because of his
uncertainty of me.
And here I stood before Jerry shaking with my uncertainty of him! He
saw it. An impulse swept over me to seize him and drag him through
that door to an arrest; for the instant, I stood before Jerry, not as
his brother who believed in him--I who had given my word to believe
in him--but as a representative of society which hunted him for his
treacherous, savage attack upon Dorothy Crewe. For the instant, I saw
him as others thought,--my brother with a beast inside him which had
struck, through him, at Dorothy Crewe.
Then the sight of his face heaped upon me too many other memories of
Jerry and me through twenty-eight years. He was not quite as he had
been; how could he be? He was hunted for crime; for nine days he had
known that all his world--all the world which we had made his--believed
he had committed that attack on Dorothy Crewe. And she had believed!
So it showed in his eyes; it lined his lip stiffer and more defiantly;
it cast something harder into his whole countenance. Of course his
clothes made him different, too, for he had on a heavy, badly cut suit
of cheap wool such as roustabouts and deckhands wear; he had a Mackinaw
coat and cap on the chair behind him.
“I’ve got to get out, Steve,” he said to me. “That’s why I stopped you.”
“You’ve been here all the time?”
He nodded. “In Chicago,” he said.
The girl had been keeping away from us, but she stepped up beside him;
and I saw again the corn color of her hair, which was like Dorothy
Crewe’s. She had blue eyes, too; otherwise, she was not like Dorothy.
She was pert and bold, this girl--a sort to get what she went after.
What was she to Jerry? I wondered. Where had he found her? What was her
business here to-night with him?
“He’s got to have coin, Steve, don’t you see?” she said to me.
“Why?”
“Why?” She laughed at me. “Ain’t nobody after him? Oh, perhaps you
ain’t heard? You don’t read the papers; maybe you don’t read. Can’t
Steve read, Jerry?”
Jerry made no reply but to shake his head a little at her; then he
watched me.
“D’you suppose,” Christina continued to me, “it’s worth nothing to
nobody--whoever sees him or gives him a hand or a cot or a meal--to
do a squeal? Is everybody in this city so elegantly fixed that nobody
could possibly find any use for twenty thousand smackers?”
“Keep still, Christina,” Jerry said.
“How much do you need?” I asked him.
“How much can you drag with you?” the girl kept at me. “When you got to
buy yourself past bulls and beefers, who can drag down twenty thou by
simply settin’ the squeal, how far do you suppose a dime’ll go toward
squarin’ ’em?”
“Cut it, Christina,” Jerry said this time. “Steve doesn’t know how to
be mean.”
“Don’t this time,” she shot at me. “Have it with you along here at ten
to-morrow night. If the old man can stick up ten thou to get him, can’t
you find something like it to help him away?” And she switched out the
light.
I replied but stood in the dark and heard the door to the warehouse
unbolted; I heard their steps within, echoing away. Outside, on the
platform beside the river, somebody approached but did not stop. The
warehouse went quiet and there was nobody by the river, so I stepped
out.
Here I was, where I had gone in, and I tried to think how I’d changed
from ten minutes before. I’d talked to Jerry; or hadn’t I?
It was strange that never once, when he was before me and I was
speaking to him, I doubted he was Jerry; yet I’d sworn to him, on that
night they arrested him, that I’d believe Keeban existed also; I’d
believe Keeban robbed Dorothy Crewe and threw her into the street.
Consequently, I ought to believe that the man with Christina might be
Keeban. But I didn’t; I didn’t believe in Keeban at all just now; and
yet a few minutes ago, I did.
I went home and said nothing to my people; I said nothing about this
to any one at all. I stayed by myself that evening and, about eleven
o’clock, I walked down by the edge of the lake beyond that strip of
park which turns in front of the homes on the Drive and near which we
live.
“Steve!” a voice whispered to me; and I jumped about.
Jerry had come up beside me at the edge of the lake. This time he was
alone.
He was not in deckhand’s garb and Mackinaw coat; he wore a plain, dark
jacket and felt hat. I could not plainly see his face; the light from
the lamps on the Drive gave me only glints on his cheekbone and nose
and chin and in his eyes turned to mine, but enough to make me know
Jerry.
Then I remembered I’d known the man in the warehouse basement for Jerry
when he was speaking to me.
“Hello,” I said.
“Steve, he called on you to-day!”
“Who?”
“Keeban!”
I stopped and thought a minute; and I was shaking. “Oh,” I asked him,
“where was that?”
“You know,” he came back. “I don’t; but didn’t he see you?”
“Yes,” I said; and went right on. “What was over our old beds when we
slept together in the north room?”
“You didn’t ask him that?” this fellow said.
“No; but I’m asking you.”
“Oh, a picture of the _Constitution_ fighting the _Guerrière_, Steve,
you old fool!”
“Anything peculiar about it?”
“I’d cracked the glass across the lower right corner, shooting my air
rifle in the room, disobeying mother. She never would have it mended.”
“What was opposite?”
“The charge up San Juan hill. Anything else?”
“No; that’s enough. You’re--Jerry. How do you know about that other
meeting?”
“I don’t; that’s why I’m asking you. But I’ve been waiting for it and I
got the hunch he’d reached you to-day.”
“Keeban?”
“He goes by the name of Vine just now; Harry Vine. There was somebody
with him?”
“A girl,” I admitted.
“Light haired?”
“As light,” I said slowly and deliberately, “as Dorothy Crewe’s.”
He had to draw breath deep after that. “Steve, how _is_ Dot?”
“Don’t you see the papers?”
“Of course.”
“Well, they’ve told the truth about her condition.”
Again he drew deep breath; then he struck his hands together. “I’ll
cure her, Steve, by the only way. I’ll show her Keeban! But we’ve got
to be careful--awfully, awfully careful, don’t you see? I’ve got to
catch him, not scare him away. Suppose he goes off forever; suppose
he’s drowned, body lost; suppose he’s burnt; suppose a dozen wrong
things, Steve, and I can never show him. Then I’ve got to be Keeban
forever; nobody but you will ever believe! Will they?”
“Nobody,” I agreed.
“Come, then; to-morrow’s our chance. No word to the ‘bulls’ or he’ll
hear it and not show up. We have to handle this ourselves and close.
Who was with him? Christina?”
“That’s what he called her.”
“She talked for him?”
“Come to think of it, Jerry, she did, mostly.”
“That’s why he had her; my voice gives him most trouble. Sometimes he
gets it perfectly; then he goes off into things I’d never say. He knows
it but doesn’t know what to say. He’s so near perfect for me that he
fooled you, you see; no wonder he fooled Dot.”
“No.”
“What did he ask of you?”
“Money.”
“How much?”
“He left that to me but suggested--Christina did--ten thousand dollars.”
“Um,” said Jerry and set to thinking.
I did some myself. “What did he want with ten thousand dollars if he
has Dorothy’s diamonds?” I demanded.