THE STRAITS OF CHANCE
How his flight ended Durkin never clearly remembered. He had a dim and
uneasy memory of the lapse of time, either great or little, the
confused recollection of waking to his senses and fighting his way free
from a smothering weight of wet and clinging clothes. As he struggled
to his feet a stab of pain shot through his left hand, and up through
his forearm. It was so keen and penetrating that he surmised, in his
blank and unreasoning haste, that he must have torn a chord or broken a
bone in his wrist. But on a matter like that, he felt, he could now
waste no time.
If he had, indeed, been unconscious, he concluded, it had been but
momentary. For as he groped about in search of his hat, dazed and
bruised, he found himself still alone and unmolested. Creeping through
the apartment-house cellar, and out past the door of the snoring and
still undisturbed janitor, he crouched for a waiting moment or two
behind an overloaded garbage-can, in the area.
Hearing nothing, he staggered up the narrow stairs to the level of the
sidewalk, wet and ragged and disheveled, blackened and soiled and
begrimed. The street seemed deserted.
He felt sick and faint and shaken, but he would not give up. He
half-stumbled, half-staggered along, splashing through little pools of
rain held in depressions of the stone sidewalk, supporting himself on
anything that offered, hoping, if this were indeed the end, that he
might crawl away into some dark and secluded corner of the city, to
hide the humiliating ignominy of it all.
In front of a Chinese laundry window he saw that he could go no
further. His first impulse was to creep inside, and make an effort to
bribe his way to secrecy, although he knew that within another quarter
of an hour the tightening cordon of the police would entirely surround
the block.
As he swayed there, hesitating, he heard the thunder of hoofs and the
rumble of wheel-tires on the soggy asphalt. His first apprehensive
thought was that it would prove to be a patrol-wagon, with police
reserves from some neighboring precinct. But as he blinked through the
darkness he made out a high-platformed Metropolitan Milk Company's
delivery-wagon swinging down toward him.
He staggered, with a slow and heavy wading motion, out to the centre of
the street, a strange and spectral figure, with outstretched arms,
uttering a sharp and halting cry or two.
The driver pulled up, thirty long and dreary feet past him.
"What in hell d'you want?" he demanded irately, raising his whip to
start his team once more, as he caught a clearer view of the seemingly
drunken figure.
"I'll give you a fiver," said Durkin thickly, "if you'll gi' me a lift!"
He held the money in his hand, as he stumbled and panted to the
wagon-step. That put an end to all argument.
"Climb in, then--quick!" cried the big driver, as he caught his
passenger by a tattered coat sleeve and helped him up into the
high-perched seat.
"But for the love o' God, who's been doin' things to you?" he went on,
in amazement, as he saw the bruised and bleeding and ash-colored face.
"They threw me out o' their damned dope shop!" cried Durkin, with an
only half-simulated thickness of utterance, as he jerked a shaking
thumb toward the lights of the Chinese laundry. "And I guess--I'm--I'm
a bit knocked out!"
For he felt very weak and faint and weary, though the cold rain and the
open night air beat on his upturned face with a sting that was
gratefully refreshing.
"They certainly did make a mess o' you!" chortled the unmoved driver,
as they rumbled westward and took the corner with a skid of the great
wheels that struck fire from even the wet car-tracks. He tucked the
bill down in his oil-coat pocket.
"Feelin' sick, ain't you?"
"Yes!"
"Where d'you want to go?" he asked more feelingly.
"Where d'you go?" parried Durkin.
"Hoboken Ferry, for th' Lackawanna Number Eight!"
"Then that'll do me," answered the other weakly.
He leaned back in his high and rocking seat, grasping the back rail
with his right hand. He felt as if the waves of a troubled and
tumultuous sea were throwing him up, broken and torn, on some island of
possible safety. He felt dizzy, as though he were being tossed and
plunged forward to some narrow bar of impending release and rest. He
did not ask of himself just what seas boomed and thundered on the
opposing side of that narrow stretch of promised security. He knew
that they were there, and he knew that the time would soon come when he
must face and feel them about him. He had once demanded rest; but he
knew that there now could be no rest for him, until the end. He might
hide for a day or two, like a hunted animal with its hurt, but the
hounds of destiny would soon be at his heels again. All he asked, he
told himself, was his man's due right of momentary relapse, his
breathing spell of quietness. He was already too stained and scarred
with life to look for the staidly upholstered sanctuaries, the padded
seclusions of simple and honest wayfarers. He was broken and undone,
but his day would come again.
He looked at his limp and trailing left hand. To his consternation, he
saw that it dripped blood. He tried to push back his coat sleeve, but
the pain was more than he could endure. So with his right hand he
lifted the helpless arm up before his eyes, as though it were something
not his own flesh and blood, and for the first time saw the splinter of
bone that protruded from the torn flesh, just below the wrist-joint.
He felt for his handkerchief, dizzily, and tried to bandage the wound.
This he never accomplished, for with a sudden little gasp he fainted
away, and fell prone across the oil-skinned lap of the big driver.
That astounded person drew up in alarm at the side entrance of a
street-corner saloon. He was on the point of repeating his sturdy call
for help, when a four-wheeler swung in beside his wagon-step, and
delivered itself of a square-shouldered, heavy-jawed figure, muffled to
the ears in a rain-coat. The newcomer took in the situation with a
rapid and comprehensive glance of relief.
"So there he is, at last!" he said, as he came forward and caught up
the relaxed and still unconscious figure.
"Where'd you get a license for buttin' in on this?" expostulated the
surprised driver.
"Buttin' in?" cried the man in the raincoat, as he lifted the limp
figure in his great, gorilla-like arms. "This isn't buttin' in--this
is takin' care o' my own friends!"
"Friend o' yours, then, is he?" queried the weakening driver.
"A friend o' mine!" cried the other angrily, for his man was already
safely in the cab. "You damned can-slinger, d'you suppose I'm wastin'
cab-fare doin' church rescue work? Of course he's a friend o' mine.
"And not only that," he added, under his breath, as he swung up into
the cab and gave the driver the number of Penfield's uptown house, "and
not only that--he's a friend o' mine who's worth just a little over a
quarter of a million to me!"