THE COMING OF SLIPPY MCGEE
On a cold gray morning in December two members of my flock, Poles who
spoke but little English and that little very badly, were on their way
to their daily toil in the canning factory. It is a long walk from the
Poles' quarters to the factory, and the workpeople must start early,
for one is fined half an hour's time if one is five minutes late. The
short-cut is down the railroad tracks that run through the mill
district--for which cause we bury a yearly toll of the children of the
poor.
Just beyond the freight sheds, signal tower, and water tank, is a
grade crossing where so many terrible things have happened that the
colored people call that place Dead Man's Crossin' and warn you not to
go by there of nights because the signal tower is haunted and Things
lurk in the rank growth behind the water tank, coming out to show
themselves after dark. If you _must_ pass it then you would better
turn your coat inside out, pull down your sleeves over your hands, and
be very careful to keep three fingers twisted for a Sign. This is a
specific against most ha'nts, though by no means able to scare away
all of them. Those at Dead Man's Crossin' are peculiarly malignant and
hard to scare. Maum Jinkey Delette saw one there once, coming down the
track faster than an express train, bigger than a cow, and waving
both his legs in his hands. Poor old Maum Jinkey was so scared that
she chattered her new false teeth out of her mouth, and she never
found those teeth to the day of her death, but had to mumble along as
best she could without them.
Hurrying by Dead Man's Crossin', the workmen stumbled over a man lying
beside the tracks; his clothing was torn to shreds, he was wet with
the heavy night dew and covered with dirt, cinders, and partly
congealed blood, for his right leg had been ground to pulp. Peering at
this horrible object in the wan dusk of the early morning, they
thought he was dead like most of the others found there.
For a moment the men hesitated, wondering whether it wouldn't be
better to leave him there to be found and removed by folks with more
time at their disposal. One doesn't like to lose time and be
consequently fined, on account of stopping to pick up a dead tramp;
particularly when Christmas is drawing near and money so much needed
that every penny counts.
The thing on the ground, regaining for a fraction of a second a glint
of half-consciousness, quivered, moaned feebly, and lay still again.
Humanity prevailing, the Poles looked about for help, but as yet the
place was quite deserted. Grumbling, they wrenched a shutter off the
Agent's window, lifted the mangled tramp upon it, and made straight
for the Parish House; when accidents such as this happened to men such
as this, weren't the victims incontinently turned over to the Parish
House people? Indeed, there wasn't any place else for them, unless one
excepted the rough room at the jail; and the average small town
jail--ours wasn't any exception to the rule--is a place where a
decent veterinary would scruple to put a sick cur. With him the Poles
brought his sole luggage, a package tied up in oilskin, which they had
found lying partly under him.
We had become accustomed to these sudden inroads of misfortune, so he
was carried upstairs to the front Guest Room, fortunately just then
empty. The Poles turned over to me the heavy package found with him,
stolidly requested a note to the Boss explaining their necessary
tardiness, and hurried away. They had done what they had to do, and
they had no further interest in him. Nobody had any interest in one of
the unknown tramps who got themselves killed or crippled at Dead Man's
Crossin'.
The fellow was shockingly injured and we had some strenuous days and
nights with him, for that which had been a leg had to come off at the
knee; he had lain in the cold for some hours, he had sustained a
frightful shock, and he had lost considerable blood. I am sure that in
the hands of any physician less skilled and determined than
Westmoreland he must have gone out. But Westmoreland, with his jaw
set, followed his code and fenced with death for this apparently
worthless and forfeited life, using all his skill and finesse to
outwit the great Enemy; in spite of which, so attenuated was the man's
chance that we were astonished when he turned the corner--very, very
feebly--and we didn't have to place another pine box in the potter's
field, alongside other unmarked mounds whose occupants were other
unknown men, grim causes of Dead Man's Crossin's sinister name.
The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him quiet in time wore
away. Our man woke up one forenoon clear-headed, if hollow-eyed and
mortally weak. He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan curiosity,
then his eyes came to Clélie and myself, but he did not return the
greetings of either. He just stared; he asked no questions. Presently,
very feebly, he tried to move,--and found himself a cripple. He fell
back upon his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his
lips--a scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a trapped wild
beast. He began to revile heaven and earth, the doctor, myself.
Clélie, clapping her hands over her outraged ears, fled as if from
fiends. Indeed, never before nor since have I heard such a frightful,
inhuman power of profanity, such hideous oaths and threats. When
breath failed him he lay spent and trembling, his chest rising and
falling to his choking gasps.
"You had better be thankful your life is spared you, young man," I
said a trifle sharply, my nerves being somewhat rasped; for I had
helped Westmoreland through more than one dreadful night, and I had
sat long hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the passing of a
soul.
He glared. "Thankful?" he screamed, "Thankful, hell! I've got to have
two good legs to make any sort of a getaway, haven't I? Well, have I
got 'em? I'm down and out for fair, that's what! Thankful? You make me
sick! Honest to God, when you gas like that I feel like bashing in
your brain, if you've got any! You and your thankfulness!" He turned
his quivering face and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered,
heartsick, if I had ever seen a more hopelessly unprepossessing
creature.
It was not so much physical, his curious ugliness; the dreadful thing
was that it seemed to be his spirit which informed his flesh, an
inherent unloveliness of soul upon which the body was modeled, worked
out faithfully, and so made visible. Figure to yourself one with the
fine shape of the welter-weight, steel-muscled, lithe, powerful,
springy, slim in the hips and waist, broad in the shoulders; the arms
unusually long, giving him a terrible reach, the head round,
well-shaped, covered with thick reddish hair; cold, light, and
intelligent eyes, full of animosity and suspicion, reminding you
unpleasantly of the rattlesnake's look, wary, deadly, and ready to
strike. When he thought, his forehead wrinkled. His lips shut upon
each other formidably and without softness, and the jaws thrust
forward with the effect as of balled fists. One ear was slightly
larger than the other, having the appearance of a swelling upon the
lobe. In this unlovely visage, filled with distrust and concentrated
venom, only the nose retained an incongruous and unexpected niceness.
It was a good straight nose, yet it had something of the pleasant
tiptiltedness of a child's. It was the sort of nose which should have
complemented a mouth formed for spontaneous laughter. It looked
lonesome and out of place in that set and lowering countenance, to
which the red straggling stubble of beard sprouting over jaws and
throat lent a more sinister note.
We had had many a sad and terrible case in our Guest Rooms, but
somehow this seemed the saddest, hardest and most hopeless we had yet
encountered.
For three weary weeks had we struggled with him, until the doctor,
sighing with physical relief, said he was out of danger and needed
only such nursing as he was sure to get.
"One does one's duty as one finds it, of course," said the big doctor,
looking down at the unpromising face on the pillow, and shaking his
head. "Yes, yes, yes, one must do what's right, on the face of it,
come what will. There's no getting around _that!_" He glanced at me, a
shadow in his kind gray eyes. "But there are times, my friend, when I
wonder! Now, this morning I had to tell a working man his wife's got
to die. There's no help and no hope--she's got to die, and she a
mother of young children. So I have to try desperately," said the
doctor, rubbing his nose, "to cling tooth and claw to the hope that
there is Something behind the scenes that knows the forward-end of
things--sin and sorrow and disease and suffering and death things--and
uses them always for some beneficent purpose. But in the meantime the
mother dies, and here you and I have been used to save alive a poor
useless devil of a one-legged tramp, probably without his consent and
against his will, because it had to be and we couldn't do anything
else! Now, why? I can't help but wonder!"
We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on the pillow. And I
wondered also, with even greater cause than the doctor; for I had
opened the oilskin package the Poles found, and it had given me
occasion for fear, reflection, and prayer. I was startled and alarmed
beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious and unusual
type,--not such tools as workmen carry abroad in the light of day.
There was no one to whom I might confide that unpleasant discovery. I
simply could not terrify my mother, nor could I in common decency
burden the already overburdened doctor. Nor is our sheriff one to turn
to readily; he is not a man whose intelligence or heart one may
admire, respect, or depend upon. My guest had come to me with empty
pockets and a burglar's kit; a hint of that, and the sheriff had
camped on the Parish House front porch with a Winchester across his
knees and handcuffs jingling in his pockets. No, I couldn't consult
the law.
I had yet a deeper and a better reason for waiting, which I find it
rather hard to set down in cold words. It is this: that as I grow
older I have grown more and more convinced that not fortuitously, not
by chance, never without real and inner purposes, are we allowed to
come vitally into each other's lives. I have walked up the steep sides
of Calvary to find out that when another wayfarer pauses for a space
beside us, it is because one has something to give, the other
something to receive.
So, upon reflection, I took that oilskin package weighted down with
the seven deadly sins over to the church, and hid it under the statue
of St. Stanislaus, whom my Poles love, and before whom they come to
kneel and pray for particular favors. I tilted the saint back upon his
wooden stand, and thrust that package up to where his hands fold over
the sheaf of lilies he carries. St. Stanislaus is a beautiful and most
holy youth. No one would ever suspect _him_ of hiding under his brown
habit a burglar's kit!
When I had done this, and stopped to say three Hail Marys for
guidance, I went back to the little room called my study, where my
books and papers and my butterfly cabinets and collecting outfits
were kept, and set myself seriously to studying my files of
newspapers, beginning at a date a week preceding my man's appearance.
Then:
Slippy McGee
Makes Good His Name Once More.
Slips One Over On The Police.
Noted Burglar Escapes.
said the glaring headlines in the New York papers. The dispatches were
dated from Atlanta, and when I turned to the Atlanta papers I found
them, too, headlining the escape of "Slippy McGee."
I learned that "the slickest crook in America" finding himself
somewhat hampered in his native haunts, the seething underworld of New
York, because the police suspected him of certain daring and
mysterious burglaries although they had no positive proof against him,
had chosen to shift his base of operations South for awhile. But the
Southern authorities had been urgently warned to look out for him; in
consequence they had been so close upon his heels that he had been
surrounded while "on a job." Half an hour later, and he would have
gotten away with his plunder; but, although they were actually upon
him, by what seemed a miracle of daring and of luck he slipped through
their fingers, escaped under their very noses, leaving no clue to his
whereabouts. He was supposed to be still in hiding in Atlanta, though
as he had no known confederates and always worked alone and unaided,
the police were at a loss for information. The man had simply
vanished, after his wont, as if the earth had opened and swallowed
him. The papers gave rather full accounts of some of his past
exploits, from which one gathered that Slippy McGee was a very noted
personage in his chosen field. I sat for a long time staring at those
papers, and my thoughts were uneasy ones. What should I do?
I presently decided that I could and must question my guest. So far he
had volunteered no information beyond the curt statement that his name
was John Flint and he was a hobo because he liked the trade. He had
been stealing a ride and he had slipped--and when he woke up we had
him and he hadn't his leg. And if some people knew how to be obliging
they'd make a noise like a hoop and roll away, so's other people could
pound their ear in peace, like that big stiff of a doctor ordered them
to do.
As I stood by the bed and studied his sullen, suspicious, unfriendly
face, I came to the conclusion that if this were not McGee himself it
could very well be some one quite as dangerous.
"Friend," said I, "we do not as a rule seek information about the
guests in these rooms. We do not have to; they explain themselves. I
should never question your assertion that your name is Flint, and I
sincerely hope it is Flint; but--there are reasons why I must and do
ask you for certain definite information about yourself."
The hand lying upon the coverlet balled into a fist.
"If John Flint's not fancy enough for you," he suggested truculently,
"suppose you call me Percy? Some peach of a moniker, Percy, ain't it?"
"Percy?"
"Sure, Percy," he grinned impudently. "But if you got a grouch against
Percy, can it, and make me Algy. _I_ don't mind. It's not _me_
beefing about monikers; it's you."
"I am also," said I, regarding him steadily and ignoring his
flippancy, "I am also obliged to ask you what is your occupation--when
you are not stealing rides?"
"Looks like it might be answering questions just now, don't it? What
you want to know for? Whatever it is, I'm not able to do it now, am I?
But as you're so naturally bellyaching to know, why, I've been in the
ring."
"So I presumed. Thank you," said I, politely. "And your name is John
Flint, or Percy, or Algy, just as I choose. Percy and Algy are rather
unusual names for a gentleman who has been in the ring, don't you
think?"
"I think," he snarled, turned suddenly ferocious, "that I'm named what
I dam' please to be named, and no squeals from skypilots about it,
neither. Say! what you driving at, anyhow? If what I tell you ain't
satisfying, suppose you slip over a moniker to suit yourself--and go
away!"
"Oh! Suppose then," said I, without taking my eyes from his, "suppose,
then, that I chose to call you--_Slippy McGee_?"
I am sure that only his bodily weakness kept him from flying at my
throat. As it was, his long arms with the hands upon them outstretched
like a beast's claws, shot out ferociously. His face contracted
horribly, and of a sudden the sweat burst out upon it so blindingly
that he had to put up an arm and wipe it away. For a moment he lay
still, glaring, panting, helpless; while I stood and watched him
unmoved.
"Ain't you the real little Sherlock Holmes, though?" he jeered
presently. "Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair and Nick Carter eating
out of your hand! You damned skypilot!" His voice cracked. "You're all
alike! Get a man on his back and then put the screws on him!"
I made no reply; only a great compassion for this mistaken and
miserable creature surged like a wave over my heart.
"For God's sake don't stand there staring like a bughouse owl!" he
gritted. "Well, what you going to do? Bawl for the bulls? What put you
wise?"
"Help you to get well. No. I opened your bag--and looked up the
newspapers," I answered succinctly.
"Huh! A fat lot of good it'll do me to get well now, won't it? You
think I ought to thank you for butting in and keeping me from dying
without knowing anything about it, don't you? Well, you got another
think coming. I don't. Ever hear of a pegleg in the ring? Ever hear of
a one-hoofed dip! A long time I'd be Slippy McGee playing
cat-and-mouse with the bulls, if I had to leave some of my legs home
when I needed them right there on the job, wouldn't I? Oh, sure!"
"And was it," I wondered, "such a fine thing to be Slippy McGee,
flying from the police, that one should lament his--er--disappearance?"
His eyes widened. He regarded me with pity as well as astonishment.
"Didn't you read the papers?" he wondered in his turn. "There don't
many travel in _my_ class, skypilot! Why, I haven't _got_ any
equals--the best of them trail a mile behind. Ask the bulls, if you
want to know about Slippy McGee! And I let the happy dust alone. Most
dips are dopes, but I was too slick; I cut it out. I knew if the dope
once gets you, then the bulls get next. Not for Slippy. I've kept my
head clear, and that's how I've muddled theirs. They never get next to
anything until I've cleaned up and dusted. Why, honest to God, I can
open any box made, easy as easy, just like I can put it all over any
bull alive! That is," a spasm twisted his face and into his voice
crept the acute anguish of the artist deprived of all power to create,
"that is, I could--until I made that last getaway on a freight, and
this happened."
"I am sorry," said I soothingly, "that you have lost your leg, of
course. But better to lose your leg than your soul, my son. Why, how
do you know--"
He writhed. "Can it!" he implored. "Cut it out! Ain't I up against
enough now, for God's sake? Down and out--and nothing to do but have
my soul curry-combed and mashfed by a skypilot with _both_ his legs
and _all_ his mouth on him! Ain't it hell, though? Say, you better
send for the cops. I'd rather stand for the pen than the preaching.
What'd you do with my bag, anyway?"
"But I really have no idea of preaching to you; and I would rather not
send for the police--afterwards, when you are better, you may do so if
you choose. You are a free agent. As for your bag, why--it is--it
is--in the keeping of the Church."
"Huh!" said he, and twisted his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's
good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've
heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all
hell can't pry her loose."
Now I don't know why, but at that, suddenly and inexplicably, as if I
had glimpsed a ray of light, I felt cheered.
"Why, that's it exactly!" said I, smiling. "Once the Church gets real
hold of a thing--or a man--worth while, she holds on so fast that all
hell can't pry her loose. Won't you try to remember that, my son!"
"If it's a joke, suck the marrow out of it yourself," said he sourly.
"It don't listen so horrible funny to me. And you haven't peeped yet
about what you're going to do. I'm waiting to hear. I'm real
interested."
"Why, I really don't know yet," said I, still cheerfully. "Suppose we
wait and see? Here you are, safe and harmless enough for the present.
And God is good; perhaps He knows that you and I may need each other
more than you and the police need each other--who can tell? I should
simply set myself strictly to the task of getting entirely well, if I
were you--and let it go at that."
He appeared to reflect; his forehead wrinkled painfully.
"Devil-dodger," said he, after a pause, "are you just making a noise
with your face, or is that on the level?"
"That's on the level."
His hard and suspicious eyes bored into me. And as I held his glance,
a hint of wonder and amazement crept into his face.
"God A'mighty! I believe him!" he gasped. And then, as if ashamed of
that real feeling, he scowled.
"Say, if you're really on the level, I guess you'd better not be
flashing the name of Slippy McGee around promiscuous," he suggested
presently. "It won't do either you or me any good, see? And say,
parson,--forget Percy and Algy. How was I to know you'd be so white?
And look here: I did know a gink named John Flint, once. Only he was
called Reddy, because he'd got such a blazing red head and whiskers.
He's croaked, so he wouldn't mind me using his moniker, seeing it's
not doing him any good now."
"Let us agree upon John Flint," I decided.
"Help yourself," he agreed, equably.
Clélie, with wrath and disapproval written upon every stiffened line,
brought him his broth, which he took with a better grace than I had
yet witnessed. He even added a muttered word of thanks.
"It's funny," he reflected, when the yellow woman had left the room
with the empty bowl, "it's sure funny, but d'ye know, I'm lots easier
in my mind, knowing you know, and not having to think up a hard-luck
gag to hand out to you? I hate like hell to have to lie, except of
course when I need a smooth spiel for the cops. I guess I'll snooze a
bit now," he added, as I rose to leave the room. And as I reached the
door:
"Parson?"
"Well?"
"Why--er--come in a bit to-night, will you? That is, if you've got
time. And look here: don't you get the notion in your bean I'm just
some little old two-by-four guy of a yegg or some poor nut of a dip.
I'm _not_. Why, I've been the whole show _and_ manager besides. Yep,
I'm Slippy McGee himself."
He paused, to let this sink into my consciousness. I must confess that
I was more profoundly impressed than even he had any idea of. And
then, magnanimously, he added: "You're sure some white man, parson."
"Thank you, John Flint," said I, with due modesty.
Heaven knows why I should have been pleased and hopeful, but I was. My
guest was a criminal; he hadn't shown the slightest sign of
compunction or of shame; instead, he had betrayed a brazen pride. And
yet--I felt hopeful. Although I knew I was tacitly concealing a
burglar, my conscience remained clear and unclouded, and I had a calm
intuitive assurance of right. So deeply did I feel this that when I
went over to the church I placed before St. Stanislaus a small lamp
full of purest olive oil, which is expensive. I felt that he deserved
some compensation for hiding that package under his sheaf of lilies.
The authorities of our small town knew, of course, that another
forlorn wretch was being cared for at the Parish House. But had not
the Parish House sheltered other such vagabonds? The sheriff saw no
reason to give himself the least concern, beyond making the most
casual inquiry. If I wanted the fellow, he was only too glad to let me
keep him. And who, indeed, would look for a notorious criminal in a
Parish House Guest Room? Who would connect that all too common
occurrence, a tramp maimed by the railroad, with, the mysterious
disappearance of the cracksman, Slippy McGee? So, for the present, I
could feel sure that the man was safe.
And in the meantime, in the orderly proceeding of everyday life, while
he gained strength under my mother's wise and careful nursing and
Westmoreland's wise and careful overseeing, there came to him those
who were instruments for good--my mother first, whom, like Clélie, he
never called anything but "Madame" and whom, like Clélie, he presently
obeyed with unquestioning and childlike readiness. Now, Madame is a
truly wonderful person when she deals with people like him. Never for
a moment lowering her own natural and beautiful dignity, but without a
hint of condescension, Madame manages to find the just level upon
which both can stand as on common ground; then, without noise, she
helps, and she conveys the impression that thus noiselessly to help is
the only just, natural and beautiful thing for any decent person to
do, unless, perhaps, it might be to receive in the like spirit.
Judge Mayne's son, Laurence, full of a fresh and boyish enthusiasm,
was such another instrument. He had a handsome, intelligent face, a
straight and beautiful body, and the pleasantest voice in the world.
His mother in her last years had been a fretful invalid, and to meet
her constant demands the judge and his son had developed an angelic
patience with weakness. They were both rather quiet and
undemonstrative, this father and son; the older man, in fact had a
stern visage at first glance, until one learned to know it as the face
of a man trained to restraint and endurance. As for the boy, no one
could long resist the shrewd, kind youngster, who could spend an hour
with the most unlikely invalid and leave him all the better for it. I
was unusually busy just then, Clélie frankly hated and feared the man
upstairs, my mother had her hands full, and there were many heavy and
lonesome hours which Laurence set himself the task of filling. I left
this to the boy himself, offering no suggestions.
"Padre," said the boy to me, some time later, "that chap upstairs is
the hardest nut I ever tried to crack. There've been times when I felt
tempted to crack him with a sledge-hammer, if you want the truth. You
know, he always seemed to like me to read to him, but I've never been
able to discover whether or not he liked what I read. He never asked
me a single question, he never seemed interested enough to make a
comment. But I think that I've made a dent in him at last."
"A dent! In Flint? With what adamantine pick, oh hardiest of miners!"
"With a book. Guess!"
"I couldn't. I give up."
"The Bible!" said Laurence.
The Bible! Had _I_ chosen to read it to him, he would have resented
it, been impervious, suspicious, hostile. I looked at the boy's
laughing face, and wondered, and wondered.
"And how," said I, curious, "did you happen to pitch on the Bible?"
"Why, I got to studying about this chap. I wanted something that'd
_reach him_. I was puzzled. And then I remembered hearing my father
say that the Bible is the most interesting book in the world because
it's the most personal. There's something in it for everybody. So I
thought there'd be something in it for John Flint, and I tried it on
him, without telling him what I was giving him. I just plunged right
in, head over heels. Lord, Padre, it _is_ a wonderful old book, isn't
it? Why, I got so lost in it myself that I forgot all about John
Flint, until I happened to glance up and see that he was up to the
eyes in it, just like I was! He likes the fights and he gloats over
the spoils. He's asking for more. I think of turning Paul loose on
him."
"Well, if after the manner of men Paul fought with wild beasts at
Ephesus," I said hopefully. "I dare say he'll be able to hold his own
even with John Flint."
"I like Paul best of all, myself," said Laurence. "You see, Padre, my
father and I have needed a dose of Paul more than once--to stiffen our
backbones. So I'm going to turn the fighting old saint loose on John
Flint. 'By, Padre;--I'll look in to-morrow--I left poor old Elijah up
in a cave with no water, and the ravens overdue!"
He went down our garden path whistling, his cap on the back of his
head, and I looked after him with the warm and comforting sense that
the world is just that much better for such as he.
The boy was now, in his last high school year, planning to study
law--all the Maynes took to law as a duck to water. Brave,
simple-hearted, direct, clear-thinking, scrupulously honorable,--this
was one of the diamonds used to cut the rough hard surface of Slippy
McGee.