A few days later, after she had taken her daily two hours' walk, Selma
went into the secluded part of Washington Park and spent the rest of
the morning writing. Her walk was her habitual time for thinking out
her plans for the day. And when it was writing that she had to do, and
the weather was fine, that particular hillside with its splendid shade
so restful for the eyes and so stimulating to the mind became her
work-shop. She thought that she was helped as much by the colors of
grass and foliage as by the softened light and the tranquil view out
over hills and valleys.
When she had finished her article she consulted the little nickel watch
she carried in her bag and discovered that it was only one o'clock.
She had counted on getting through at three or half past. Two hours
gained. How could she best use them. The part of the Park where she
was sitting was separated from the Hastings grounds only by the winding
highroad making its last reach for the top of the hill. She decided
that she would go to see Jane Hastings--would try to make tactful
progress in her project of helping Jane and David Hull by marrying them
to each other. Once she had hit upon this project her interest in both
of them had equally increased. Yes, these gained two hours was an
opportunity not to be neglected.
She put her papers into her shopping bag and went straight up the steep
hill. She arrived at the top, at the edge of the lawn before Jane's
house, with somewhat heightened color and brightened eyes, but with no
quickening of the breath. Her slim, solid little body had all the
qualities of endurance of those wiry ponies that come from the regions
her face and walk and the careless grace of her hair so delightfully
suggested. As she advanced toward the house she saw a gay company
assembled on the wide veranda. Jane was giving a farewell luncheon for
her visitors, had asked almost a dozen of the most presentable girls in
the town. It was a very fashionable affair, and everyone had dressed
for it in the best she had to wear at that time of day.
Selma saw the company while there was still time for her to draw back
and descend into the woods. But she knew little about
conventionalities, and she cared not at all about them. She had come
to see Jane; she conducted herself precisely as she would have expected
any one to act who came to see her at any time. She marched straight
across the lawn. The hostess, the fashionable visitors, the
fashionable guests soon centered upon the extraordinary figure moving
toward them under that blazing sun. The figure was extraordinary not
for dress--the dress was plain and unconspicuous--but for that
expression of the free and the untamed, the lack of self-consciousness
so rarely seen except in children and animals. Jane rushed to the
steps to welcome her, seized her extended hands and kissed her with as
much enthusiasm as she kissed Jane. There was sincerity in this
greeting of Jane's; but there was pose, also. Here was one of those
chances to do the unconventional, the democratic thing.
"What a glorious surprise!" cried Jane. "You'll stop for lunch, of
course?" Then to the girls nearest them: "This is Selma Gordon, who
writes for the New Day."
Pronouncing of names--smiles--bows--veiled glances of
curiosity--several young women exchanging whispered comments of
amusement. And to be sure, Selma, in that simple costume, gloveless,
with dusty shoes and blown hair, did look very much out of place. But
then Selma would have looked, in a sense, out of place anywhere but in
a wilderness with perhaps a few tents and a half-tamed herd as
background. In another sense, she seemed in place anywhere as any
natural object must.
"I don't eat lunch," said Selma. "But I'll stay if you'll put me next
to you and let me talk to you."
She did not realize what an upsetting of order and precedence this
request, which seemed so simple to her, involved. Jane hesitated, but
only for a fraction of a second. "Why, certainly," said she. "Now
that I've got you I'd not let you go in any circumstances."
Selma was gazing around at the other girls with the frank and pleased
curiosity of a child. "Gracious, what pretty clothes!" she cried--she
was addressing Miss Clearwater, of Cincinnati. "I've read about this
sort of thing in novels and in society columns of newspapers. But I
never saw it before. ISN'T it interesting!"
Miss Clearwater, whose father was a United States Senator--by
purchase--had had experience of many oddities, male and female. She
also was attracted by Selma's sparkling delight, and by the magnetic
charm which she irradiated as a rose its perfume. "Pretty clothes are
attractive, aren't they?" said she, to be saying something.
"I don't know a thing about clothes," confessed Selma. "I've never
owned at the same time more than two dresses fit to wear--usually only
one. And quite enough for me. I'd only be fretted by a lot of things
of that kind. But I like to see them on other people. If I had my way
the whole world would be well dressed."
"Except you?" said Ellen Clearwater with a smile.
"I couldn't be well dressed if I tried," replied Selma. "When I was a
child I was the despair of my mother. Most of the people in the
tenement where we lived were very dirty and disorderly--naturally
enough, as they had no knowledge and no money and no time. But mother
had ideas of neatness and cleanliness, and she used to try to keep me
looking decent. But it was of no use. Ten minutes after she had
smoothed me down I was flying every which way again."
"You were brought up in a tenement?" said Miss Clearwater. Several of
the girls within hearing were blushing for Selma and were feeling how
distressed Jane Hastings must be.
"I had a wonderfully happy childhood," replied Selma. "Until I was old
enough to understand and to suffer. I've lived in tenements all my
life--among very poor people. I'd not feel at home anywhere else."
"When I was born," said Miss Clearwater, "we lived in a log cabin up in
the mining district of Michigan."
Selma showed the astonishment the other girls were feeling. But while
their astonishment was in part at a girl of Ellen Clearwater's position
making such a degrading confession, hers had none of that element in
it. "You don't in the least suggest a log cabin or poverty of any
kind," said she. "I supposed you had always been rich and beautifully
dressed."
"No, indeed," replied Ellen. She gazed calmly round at the other girls
who were listening. "I doubt if any of us here was born to what you
see. Of course we--some of us--make pretenses--all sorts of silly
pretenses. But as a matter of fact there isn't one of us who hasn't
near relatives in the cabins or the tenements at this very moment."
There was a hasty turning away from this dangerous conversation. Jane
came back from ordering the rearrangement of her luncheon table. Said
Selma:
"I'd like to wash my hands, and smooth my hair a little."
"You take her up, Ellen," said Jane. "And hurry. We'll be in the
dining-room when you come down."
Selma's eyes were wide and roving as she and Ellen went through the
drawing-room, the hall, up stairs and into the very prettily furnished
suite which Ellen was occupying. "I never saw anything like this
before!" exclaimed Selma. "It's the first time I was ever in a grand
house. This is a grand house, isn't it?"
"No--it's only comfortable," replied Ellen. "Mr. Hastings--and Jane,
too, don't go in for grandeur."
"How beautiful everything is--and how convenient!" exclaimed Selma. "I
haven't felt this way since the first time I went to the circus." She
pointed to a rack from which were suspended thin silk dressing gowns of
various rather gay patterns. "What are those?" she inquired.
"Dressing gowns," said Ellen. "Just to wear round while one is
dressing or undressing."
Selma advanced and felt and examined them. "But why so many?" she
inquired.
"Oh, foolishness," said Ellen. "Indulgence! To suit different moods."
"Lovely," murmured Selma. "Lovely!"
"I suspect you of a secret fondness for luxury," said Ellen slyly.
Selma laughed. "What would I do with such things?" she inquired.
"Why, I'd have no time to wear them. I'd never dare put on anything so
delicate."
She roamed through dressing-room, bedroom, bath-room, marveling,
inquiring, admiring. "I'm so glad I came," said she. "This will give
me a fresh point of view. I can understand the people of your class
better, and be more tolerant about them. I understand now why they are
so hard and so indifferent. They're quite removed from the common lot.
They don't realize; they can't. How narrow it must make one to have
one's life filled with these pretty little things for luxury and show.
Why, if I lived this life, I'd cease to be human after a short time."
Ellen was silent.
"I didn't mean to say anything rude or offensive," said Selma,
sensitive to the faintest impressions. "I was speaking my thoughts
aloud.... Do you know David Hull?"
"The young reformer?" said Ellen with a queer little smile. "Yes--quite
well."
"Does he live like this?"
"Rather more grandly," said Ellen.
Selma shook her head. A depressed expression settled upon her
features. "It's useless," she said. "He couldn't possibly become a
man."
Ellen laughed. "You must hurry," she said. "We're keeping everyone
waiting."
As Selma was making a few passes at her rebellious thick hair--passes
the like of which Miss Clearwater had never before seen--she explained:
"I've been somewhat interested in David Hull of late--have been hoping
he could graduate from a fake reformer into a useful citizen. But--"
She looked round expressively at the luxury surrounding them--"one
might as well try to grow wheat in sand."
"Davy is a fine fraud," said Ellen. "Fine--because he doesn't in the
least realize that he's a fraud."
"I'm afraid he is a fraud," said Selma setting on her hat again. "What
a pity? He might have been a man, if he'd been brought up properly."
She gazed at Ellen with sad, shining eyes. "How many men and women
luxury blights!" she cried.
"It certainly has done for Davy," said Ellen lightly. "He'll never be
anything but a respectable fraud."
"Why do YOU think so?" Selma inquired.
"My father is a public man," Miss Clearwater explained. "And I've seen
a great deal of these reformers. They're the ordinary human variety of
politician plus a more or less conscious hypocrisy. Usually they're
men who fancy themselves superior to the common run in birth and
breeding. My father has taught me to size them up."
They went down, and Selma, seated between Jane and Miss Clearwater,
amused both with her frank comments on the scene so strange to her--the
beautiful table, the costly service, the variety and profusion of
elaborate food. In fact, Jane, reaching out after the effects got
easily in Europe and almost as easily in the East, but overtaxed the
resources of the household which she was only beginning to get into
what she regarded as satisfactory order. The luncheon, therefore, was
a creditable and promising attempt rather than a success, from the
standpoint of fashion. Jane was a little ashamed, and at times
extremely nervous--this when she saw signs of her staff falling into
disorder that might end in rout. But Selma saw none of the defects.
She was delighted with the dazzling spectacle--for two or three
courses. Then she lapsed into quiet and could not be roused to speak.
Jane and Ellen thought she was overwhelmed and had been seized of
shyness in this company so superior to any in which she had ever found
herself. Ellen tried to induce her to eat, and, failing, decided that
her refraining was not so much firmness in the two meals-a-day system
as fear of making a "break." She felt genuinely sorry for the silent
girl growing moment by moment more ill-at-ease. When the luncheon was
about half over Selma said abruptly to Jane:
"I must go now. I've stayed longer than I should."
"Go?" cried Jane. "Why, we haven't begun to talk yet."
"Another time," said Selma, pushing back her chair. "No, don't rise."
And up she darted, smiling gayly round at the company. "Don't anybody
disturb herself," she pleaded. "It'll be useless, for I'll be gone."
And she was as good as her word. Before any one quite realized what
she was about, she had escaped from the dining-room and from the house.
She almost ran across the lawn and into the woods. There she drew a
long breath noisily.
"Free!" she cried, flinging out her arms. "Oh--but it was DREADFUL!"
Miss Hastings and Miss Clearwater had not been so penetrating as they
fancied. Embarrassment had nothing to do with the silence that had
taken possession of the associate editor of the New Day.
She was never self-conscious enough to be really shy. She hastened to
the office, meeting Victor Dorn in the street doorway. She cried:
"Such an experience!"
"What now?" said Victor. He was used to that phrase from the ardent
and impressionable Selma. For her, with her wide-open eyes and ears,
her vivid imagination and her thirsty mind, life was one closely packed
series of adventures.
"I had an hour to spare," she proceeded to explain. "I thought it was
a chance to further a little scheme I've got for marrying Jane Hastings
and David Hull."
"Um!" said Victor with a quick change of expression--which, however,
Selma happened not to observe.
"And," she went on, "I blundered into a luncheon party Jane was giving.
You never saw--you never dreamed of such style--such dresses and dishes
and flowers and hats! And I was sitting there with them, enjoying it
all as if it were a circus or a ballet, when--Oh, Victor, what a silly,
what a pitiful waste of time and money! So much to do in the world--so
much that is thrillingly interesting and useful--and those intelligent
young people dawdling there at nonsense a child would weary of! I had
to run away. If I had stayed another minute I should have burst out
crying--or denouncing them--or pleading with them to behave themselves."
"What else can they do?" said Victor. "They don't know any better.
They've never been taught. How's the article?"
And he led the way up to the editorial room and held her to the subject
of the article he had asked her to write. At the first opportunity she
went back to the subject uppermost in her mind. Said she:
"I guess you're right--as usual. There's no hope for any people of
that class. The busy ones are thinking only of making money for
themselves, and the idle ones are too enfeebled by luxury to think at
all. No, I'm afraid there's no hope for Hull--or for Jane either."
"I'm not sure about Miss Hastings," said Victor.
"You would have been if you'd seen her to-day," replied Selma. "Oh, she
was lovely, Victor--really wonderful to look at. But so obviously the
idler. And--body and soul she belongs to the upper class. She
understands charity, but she doesn't understand justice, and never
could understand it. I shall let her alone hereafter."
"How harsh you women are in your judgments of each other," laughed
Dorn, busy at his desk.
"We are just," replied Selma. "We are not fooled by each other's
pretenses."
Dorn apparently had not heard. Selma saw that to speak would be to
interrupt. She sat at her own table and set to work on the editorial
paragraphs. After perhaps an hour she happened to glance at Victor.
He was leaning back in his chair, gazing past her out into the open; in
his face was an expression she had never seen--a look in the eyes, a
relaxing of the muscles round the mouth that made her think of him as a
man instead of as a leader. She was saying to herself. "What a
fascinating man he would have been, if he had not been an incarnate
cause."
She felt that he was not thinking of his work. She longed to talk to
him, but she did not venture to interrupt. Never in all the years she
had known him had he spoken to her--or to any one--a severe or even an
impatient word. His tolerance, his good humor were infinite.
Yet--she, and all who came into contact with him, were afraid of him.
There could come, and on occasion there did come--into those
extraordinary blue eyes an expression beside which the fiercest flash
of wrath would be easy to face.
When she glanced at him again, his normal expression had returned--the
face of the leader who aroused in those he converted into
fellow-workers a fanatical devotion that was the more formidable
because it was not infatuated. He caught her eye and said:
"Things are in such good shape for us that it frightens me. I spend
most of my time in studying the horizon in the hope that I can foresee
which way the storm's coming from and what it will be."
"What a pessimist you are!" laughed Selma.
"That's why the Workingmen's League has a thick-and-thin membership of
thirteen hundred and fifty," replied Victor. "That's why the New Day
has twenty-two hundred paying subscribers. That's why we grow faster
than the employers can weed our men out and replace them with
immigrants and force them to go to other towns for work."
"Well, anyhow," said the girl, "no matter what happens we can't be
weeded out."
Victor shook his head. "Our danger period has just begun," he replied.
"The bosses realize our power. In the past we've been annoyed a little
from time to time. But they thought us hardly worth bothering with.
In the future we will have to fight."
"I hope they will prosecute us," said Selma. "Then, we'll grow the
faster."
"Not if they do it intelligently," replied Victor. "An intelligent
persecution--if it's relentless enough--always succeeds. You forget
that this isn't a world of moral ideas but of force.... I am afraid of
Dick Kelly. He is something more than a vulgar boss. He SEES. My
hope is that he won't be able to make the others see. I saw him a
while ago. He was extremely polite to me--more so than he ever has
been before. He is up to something. I suspect----"
Victor paused, reflecting. "What?" asked Selma eagerly.
"I suspect that he thinks he has us." He rose, preparing to go out.
"Well--if he has--why, he has. And we shall have to begin all over
again."
"How stupid they are!" exclaimed the girl. "To fight us who are simply
trying to bring about peaceably and sensibly what's bound to come about
anyhow."
"Yes--the rain is bound to come," said Victor. "And we say, 'Here's an
umbrella and there's the way to shelter.' And they laugh at OUR
umbrella and, with the first drops plashing on their foolish faces,
deny that it's going to rain."
The Workingmen's League, always first in the field with its ticket, had
been unusually early that year. Although it was only the first week in
August and the election would not be until the third of October, the
League had nominated. It was a ticket made up entirely of skilled
workers who had lived all their lives in Remsen City and who had
acquired an independence--Victor Dorn was careful not to expose to the
falling fire of the opposition any of his men who could be ruined by
the loss of a job or could be compelled to leave town in search of
work. The League always went early into campaign because it pursued a
much slower and less expensive method of electioneering than either of
the old parties--or than any of the "upper class" reform parties that
sprang up from time to time and died away as they accomplished or
failed of their purpose--securing recognition for certain personal
ambitions not agreeable to the old established bosses. Besides, the
League was, like the bosses and their henchmen, in politics every day
in every year. The League theory was that politics was as much a part
of a citizen's daily routine as his other work or his meals.
It was the night of the League's great ratification meeting. The next
day the first campaign number--containing the biographical sketch of
Tony Rivers, Kelly's right-hand man ... would go upon the press, and on
the following day it would reach the public.
Market Square in Remsen City was on the edge of the power quarter, was
surrounded by cheap hotels, boarding houses and saloons. A few years
before, the most notable citizens, market basket on arm, could have
been seen three mornings in the week, making the rounds of the stalls
and stands, both those in the open and those within the Market House.
But customs had rapidly changed in Remsen City, and with the exception
of a few old fogies only the poorer classes went to market. The
masters of houses were becoming gentlemen, and the housewives were
elevating into ladies--and it goes without saying that no gentleman and
no lady would descend to a menial task even in private, much less in
public.
Market Square had even become too common for any but the inferior
meetings of the two leading political parties. Only the Workingmen's
League held to the old tradition that a political meeting of the first
rank could be properly held nowhere but in the natural assembling place
of the people--their market. So, their first great rally of the
campaign was billed for Market Square. And at eight o'clock, headed by
a large and vigorous drum corps, the Victor Dorn cohorts at their full
strength marched into the centre of the Square, where one of the stands
had been transformed with flags, bunting and torches into a speaker's
platform. A crowd of many thousands accompanied and followed the
procession. Workingmen's League meetings were popular, even among
those who believed their interests lay elsewhere. At League meetings
one heard the plain truth, sometimes extremely startling plain truth.
The League had no favors to ask of anybody, had nothing to conceal, was
strongly opposed to any and all political concealments. Thus, its
speakers enjoyed a freedom not usual in political speaking--and Dorn
and his fellow-leaders were careful that no router, no exaggerator or
well intentioned wild man of any kind should open his mouth under a
league banner. THAT was what made the League so dangerous--and so
steadily prosperous.
The chairman, Thomas Colman, the cooper, was opening the meeting in a
speech which was an instance of how well a man of no platform talent
can acquit himself when he believes something and believes it is his
duty to convey it to his fellow-men. Victor Dorn, to be the fourth
speaker and the orator of the evening, was standing at the rear of the
platform partially concealed by the crowd of men and women leaders of
the party grouped behind Colman. As always at the big formal
demonstrations of the League, Victor was watching every move. This
evening his anxiety was deeper than ever before. His trained political
sagacity warned him that, as he had suggested to Selma, the time of his
party's first great crisis was at hand. No movement could become
formidable with out a life and death struggle, when its aim frankly was
to snatch power from the dominant class and to place it where that
class could not hope to prevail either by direct means of force or by
its favorite indirect means of bribery. What would Kelly do? What
would be his stroke at the very life of the League?--for Victor had
measured Kelly and knew he was not one to strike until he could destroy.
Like every competent man of action, Victor had measured his own
abilities, and had found that they were to be relied upon. But the
contest between him and Kelly--the contest in the last ditch--was so
appallingly unequal. Kelly had the courts and the police, the moneyed
class, the employers of labor, had the clergy and well-dressed
respectability, the newspapers, all the customary arbiters of public
sentiment. Also, he had the criminal and the semi-criminal classes.
And what had the League?
The letter of the law, guaranteeing freedom of innocent speech and
action, guaranteeing the purity of the ballot--no, not guaranteeing,
but simply asserting those rights, and leaving the upholding of them
to--Kelly's allies and henchmen! Also, the League had the power of
between a thousand and fifteen hundred intelligent and devoted men and
about the same number of women--a solid phalanx of great might, of
might far beyond its numbers. Finally, it had Victor Dorn. He had no
mean opinion of his value to the movement; but he far and most modestly
underestimated it. The human way of rallying to an abstract principle
is by way of a standard bearer--a man--personality--a real or fancied
incarnation of the ideal to be struggled for. And to the Workingmen's
League, to the movement for conquering Remsen City for the mass of its
citizens, Victor Dorn was that incarnation.
Kelly could use violence--violence disguised as law, violence candidly
and brutally lawless. Victor Dorn could only use lawful means--clearly
and cautiously lawful means. He must at all costs prevent the use of
force against him and his party--must give Kelly no pretext for using
the law lawlessly. If Kelly used force against him, whether the
perverted law of the courts or open lawlessness, he must meet it with
peace. If Kelly smote him on the right cheek he must give him the left
to be smitten.
When the League could outvote Kelly, then--another policy, still of
calmness and peace and civilization, but not so meek. But until the
League could outvote Kelly, nothing but patient endurance.
Every man in the League had been drilled in this strategy. Every man
understood--and to be a member of the League meant that one was
politically educated. Victor believed in his associates as he believed
in himself. Still, human nature was human nature. If Kelly should
suddenly offer some adroit outrageous provocation--would the League be
able to resist?
Victor, on guard, studied the crowd spreading out from the platform in
a gigantic fan. Nothing there to arouse suspicion; ten or twelve
thousand of working class men and women. His glance pushed on out
toward the edges of the crowd--toward the saloons and alleys of the
disreputable south side of Market Square. His glance traveled slowly
along, pausing upon each place where these loungers, too far away to
hear, were gathered into larger groups. Why he did not know, but
suddenly his glance wheeled to the right, and then as suddenly to the
left--the west and the east ends of the square. There, on either side
he recognized, in the farthest rim of the crowd, several of the men who
did Kelly's lowest kinds of dirty work--the brawlers, the repeaters,
the leaders of gangs, the false witnesses for petty corporation damage
cases. A second glance, and he saw or, perhaps, divined--purpose in
those sinister presences. He looked for the police--the detail of a
dozen bluecoats always assigned to large open-air meetings. Not a
policeman was to be seen.
Victor pushed through the crowd on the platform, advanced to the side
of Colman. "Just a minute, Tom," he said. "I've got to say a word--at
once."
Colman had fallen back; Victor Dorn was facing the crowd--HIS
crowd--the men and women who loved him. In the clear, friendly,
natural voice that marked him for the leader born, the honest leader of
an honest cause, he said:
"My friends, if there is an attempt to disturb this meeting, remember
what we of the League stand for. No violence. Draw away from every
disturber, and wait for the police to act. If the police stop our
meeting, let them--and be ready to go to court and testify to the exact
words of the speaker on which the meeting was stopped. Remember, we
must be more lawful than the law itself!"
He was turning away. A cheer was rising--a belated cheer, because his
words had set them all to thinking and to observing. From the left of
the crowd, a dozen yards away from the platform, came a stone heavily
rather than swiftly flung, as from an impeded hand. In full view of
all it curved across the front of the platform and struck Victor Dorn
full in the side of the head.
He threw up his hands.
"Boys--remember!" he shouted with a terrible energy--then, he staggered
forward and fell from the platform into the crowd.
The stone was a signal. As it flew, into the crowd from every
direction the Beech Hollow gangs tore their way, yelling and cursing
and striking out right and left--trampling children, knocking down
women, pouring out the foulest insults. The street lamps all round
Market Square went out, the torches on the platform were torn down and
extinguished. And in a dimness almost pitch dark a riot that involved
that whole mass of people raged hideously. Yells and screams and
groans, the shrieks of women, the piteous appeals of children--benches
torn up for weapons--mad slashing about--snarls and singings of
pain-stricken groups--then police whistles, revolvers fired in the air,
and the quick, regular tramp of disciplined forces. The
police--strangely ready, strangely inactive until the mischief had all
been done entered the square from the north and, forming a double line
across it from east to west, swept it slowly clean. The fighting ended
as abruptly as it had begun. Twenty minutes after the flight of that
stone, the square was empty save a group of perhaps fifty men and women
formed about Victor Dorn's body in the shelter of the platform.
Selma Gordon was holding his head. Jane Hastings and Ellen Clearwater
were kneeling beside him, and Jane was wiping his face with a
handkerchief wet with whisky from the flask of the man who had escorted
them there.
"He is only stunned," said Selma. "I can feel the beat of his blood.
He is only stunned."
A doctor came, got down on his knees, made a rapid examination with
expert hands. As he felt, one of the relighted torches suddenly lit up
Victor's face and the faces of those bending over him.
"He is only stunned, Doctor," said Selma.
"I think so," replied the doctor.
"We left our carriage in the side street just over there," said Jane
Hastings. "It will take him to the hospital."
"No--home," said Selma, who was calm. "He must be taken home."
"The hospital is the place for him," said the doctor.
"No--home," repeated Selma. She glanced at the men standing round.
"Tom--Henry--and you, Ed--help me lift him."
"Please, Selma," whispered Jane. "Let him be taken to the hospital."
"Among our enemies?" said Selma with a strange and terrible little
laugh. "Oh, no. After this, we trust no one. They may have arranged
to finish this night's work there. He goes home--doesn't he, boys?"
"That's right, Miss Gordon," replied one of them.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Here's where I drop the case,"
said he.
"Nothing of the kind," cried Jane imperiously. "I am Jane
Hastings--Martin Hastings' daughter. You will come with us, please--or
I shall see to it that you are not let off easily for such a shameful
neglect of duty."
"Let him go, Jane," said Selma. "There will be a doctor waiting. And
he is only stunned. Come, boys--lift him up."
They laid him on a bench top, softened with the coats of his followers.
At the carriage, standing in Farwell Street, they laid him across the
two seats. Selma got in with him. Tom Colman climbed to the box
beside the coachman. Jane and Miss Clearwater, their escorts and about
a score of the Leaguers followed on foot. As the little procession
turned into Warner Street it was stopped by a policeman.
"Can't go down this way," he said.
"It's Mr. Dorn. We're taking him home. He was hurt," explained Colman.
"Fire lines. Street's closed," said the policeman gruffly.