The Empire State Express had not travelled many miles when Eliot
Beekman's attention was directed to a strange-looking man who sat
across the aisle, facing him. From time to time the man's face flushed
and gave little nervous starts and twitches, and, every now and then,
he mumbled to himself. At first Beekman figured out that the man was
recovering from an unaccustomed debauch; but afterwards he changed his
mind: he decided that he was crazy.
"Glad to get away from New York," confided the stranger, breaking in on
Beekman's meditations, and tapping him on the knee. "The farther away I
get the better I like it."
Beekman somewhat resented this interference with his comfortable
somnolence, but he straightened up and smiled and answered:
"For my part New York's home to me. I feel sick, somehow, when I'm away
from it."
The man swung about and glanced nervously at the changing landscape,
and then suddenly turned back again and exhibited a pocket volume with
flexible covers.
"Dante's Inferno," he declared, pointing to the book. "Ever delve
into it? I've just recently been through a little inferno of my own,"
he went on. "I brought this with me, because I've got to keep before
my mind the fact that some people have gone through more than I have.
At least, so it seems to me. At the same time, I don't know that I'm
ready to change places with any of the chaps in here." He tapped the
book. "Neat little volume," he commented, rattling on nervously and
without apparently keeping much track of what he was saying. "See the
frontispiece," he said, leaning over towards Beekman. "It's Dante
himself. I wonder why he always wears that headgear? Never see him
without it! Always reminds me of a little verse on how to tell the
names of busts."
"'I recognise Dante because he's tab-eared.' Tab-eared, you know," he
went on, "is his peculiar sort of headgear. All sculptors give it to
him." He resumed in sing-song fashion:
"'I recognise Dante, because he's tab-eared,
And Virgil I know by his wreath,
Old Homer I tell by his rough, shaggy beard,
And the rest--_by the names underneath_.'"
Beekman laughed aloud.
"Good! Mighty good!" he cried. "Especially 'and the rest by the names
underneath.' A flash of genius that."
The man turned over several pages in his book and began to read
steadily, rumpling his hair, from time to time, as he did so. Once he
looked up, only to find Beekman staring hard at the top of his head.
"Looking at my Heidelberg scar?" he asked hastily, pulling a lock of
hair over it. "It was an ugly one, I can tell you, and almost did for
me, too. Sometimes, you know I've thought it dented me a little in the
skull." He pushed back the hair, again exhibiting the long, deep cut.
"It throbs there once in a while--it's throbbing now."
His conversation became incoherent, and from it Beekman gathered only
snatches.
"I don't know how to go about it," he continued, as though talking to
himself. "It's the taxes chiefly. If I can get rid of the tax sales,
that farm is just the thing for me. Old farm," he explained, looking up
at Beekman, "somewhere in Erie County. Thought I'd take a look at it.
Been in the family for years, but neglected it; now I want to live on
it, bury myself, get away from New York, from the Inferno back to Eden,
don't you know."
He laughed a quick, nervous laugh, and jerked himself away once more,
his face twitching while he mumbled.
"A man labouring under some strange and unusual excitement," thought
Beekman, "and yet...."
The stranger was on his feet now, and going down the aisle paused
before a chair that was occupied by a tired mother and her
two-and-a-half-year-old child. Weary, mortified, her temper gone, the
woman was trying to appease the crying babe.
Taking up the child in his arms, the stranger sat it on his knee, let
it play with his watch, rattled his keys, adopted a hundred lively
pranks for the benefit of the child; and the infant, soothed and
cheered by this new and agreeable personality, sank at last into a
peaceful sleep.
"Nothing like a child," he said to Beekman, "to make the future seem
worth while. Talk about Eden--there's no Eden, no happiness, without
them. I love children, this one, all of them."
Beekman once more lapsed into drowsiness, his thoughts, in a confused
way, resting on the eccentric character beside him. When he awoke the
train was pulling into Buffalo. Touching the stranger by the arm, as
he was preparing to alight, he quoted: "'And the rest by the names
underneath.'" And added, as he raised his hat: "Thanks. I'll not forget
that."
Nor did he soon forget it. For indeed through many months to come he
carried with him the memory of that nervous, haunted, tired face with
the restless, hopeless eyes, the memory of this unknown man with the
scar deep and long and wide upon his forehead--the scar from Heidelberg.
* * * * *
At ten o'clock that morning Peter V. Wilkinson was closeted with
Colonel Morehead in Colonel Morehead's office at 120 Broadway.
"Glad you left that Flomerfelt proposition downstairs, Peter," said
Morehead, "because, for one thing, I don't like him."
"Well, I do," retorted Wilkinson positively. "As a matter of fact, I
like him because I can't get along without him. He's a wonder!" he went
on enthusiastically. "Any time you want a thing put through, and don't
care how it's done, you hire my man Flomerfelt. In this whole crisis,
Flomerfelt, in my opinion, is worth his weight in gold. Why, the man
has a hold on nearly everybody that I know."
"Well, he hasn't one on me," returned the lawyer.
"He has on me, then," said his client, "but I don't mind. He gets good
pay from me; and he can make any given man do almost anything he wants
him to do--that's Flomerfelt. I never stop thanking my good fortune
that I've got him on my side. He's the kingpin in this mix-up, let me
tell you, Morehead."
The Colonel laughed.
"I was inclined to think, Peter, that I might be some pumpkins myself,"
he suggested. "I may be, before we're through."
"No use of talking," protested his client, "Flomerfelt can do things
that you can't do, and never thought of doing. If I get out of this
scrape, it will be Flomerfelt's doing...."
The lawyer leaned back in his revolving chair. He was a lean personage,
all bone and gristle, with a lean nose and shrewd, sharp eyes.
"Peter," he said, "a bunch of indictments for perjury, larceny and
forgery are dangerous things." He looked at his watch. "Confound it!"
he went on. "Why the dickens couldn't the Court agree to take our plea
at ten this morning. By eleven everybody in town will know about it,
everybody that can will be there. If the papers hadn't got on to it
early this morning we'd have had no trouble. We could have slipped in
and out--done the trick, and nobody the wiser. But now.... By the way,"
he added, "that reminds me--I want that man Beekman over here. I'll
call him up."
Eliot Beekman's office said he was out--said he was not in New
York--that he'd left that morning on the Empire State Express for
Buffalo.
"Well, where is he in Buffalo?" asked Morehead.
They told him--at the Iroquois Hotel.
"Tell him that Colonel Morehead called him up," said the Colonel; "and
that I want to see him the minute he returns."
Wilkinson nervously tapped his foot upon the floor.
"I can't see what you want of Beekman?" he said.
Morehead's eyes narrowed.
"I want him to defend you, if these indictments come to trial, as
probably they shall."
"What! That young fellow who calls at my house to see Leslie!" returned
Wilkinson. "Why, we want the highest-priced counsel we can get. I want
you, and Patrick Durand, but not one of the submerged like Beekman."
"I want to tell you that Beekman isn't one of the submerged, as you
say. He's got a practice here that yields him at least seventy-five
hundred a year, which means that he's a wonderful man, because he's
only thirty, or a little under, with no political pull. He makes his
living out of the law pure and simple, not out of Wall Street, or real
estate deals, or the criminal classes, either."
"Well, then, if he's not a criminal lawyer, we certainly do not want
him," protested the Colonel's rich client.
"I like Beekman," proceeded the Colonel, ignoring the comment,
"because, in a measure, he reminds me of myself, though he has
something that I never had. Like me, he's a free lance. He never hooked
up in partnership with anybody. When he tries a case he does it as I
do--not with his associate holding his hand on one side and a couple of
assistants holding his hand on the other--but alone with a couple of
scraps of paper, and the rest of his case in his head. I like Beekman
first-rate." He hitched his chair close to Wilkinson's. "But that isn't
the point. The gist of the whole thing is this: There's one thing that
Beekman can do better than any other lawyer in New York; one thing that
he can do that most lawyers can't do at all. He is able to impress his
jury with his own absolute belief in his client's cause. He's sincere,
and the jury know it. And that's three-quarters of the battle. Oh,
we'll all be there, Peter, on the show-down, but you can imagine me
trying to impress a jury with my belief in my client's honesty, can't
you? Oh, yes, my cleverness is conceded; they'd all laugh, and say,
'Strike one for the Colonel,' and all that sort of thing. But ten
chances to one they'd find the other way. I wish I had that strange
thing that Beekman has got! All my life I've wanted it."
Wilkinson fidgeted about. He didn't see this as the Colonel did.
Nevertheless he answered:
"What you say goes, Morehead!"
The Colonel jerked his head and became the least bit more confidential.
"But the trick is to be sure that Beekman actually does believe in you.
But, Peter, we're fortunate in one respect--I would have retained him
anyway--but this development is certainly fortuitous: He wants to marry
your daughter Leslie."
Wilkinson's face reddened; his Van Dyke bristled with opposition.
"I'd like to see him get the chance!" he cried. "Leslie has got to
marry well, and she's just the hard-headed little girl who'll do it,
too. Beekman marry Leslie! Not if I know it!"
The lawyer sank back wearily.
"The question of who marries your daughter, Wilkinson, is no concern
of mine. That Beekman wants to marry her, is enough for me. Let him
want to--let him see her all he wants to--you can fix the ultimate
proceedings in your own way. But for the present, somebody has got to
build up in Beekman a great and immovable faith in you. He must be
educated up to the belief that you are as straight as a string. Let his
teacher be the girl; she'll make the best one, for she believes in you
herself."
Wilkinson pressed his hand against his face.
"And she's always got to believe in me," he groaned. "We must see to
that."
The Colonel gripped his arm.
"And whatever happens, Peter," he concluded, "I don't want Beekman ever
to meet this man Giles Ilingsworth, for he's another of your honest
chaps; and if Beekman before your trial should hear from the lips of
Giles Ilingsworth his own story of the case, he's going to believe
it. Do you understand?" The lawyer grinned, adding: "For I believe it
myself."
Fifteen minutes later a Mastodon turned into Franklin Street from
Broadway and rolled easily down the hill toward the Criminal Courts
Building, next door to the Tombs. In the car were four men: Peter V.
Wilkinson, Colonel Morehead, his counsel; Roy Pallister, Wilkinson's
private secretary, and Wilkinson's chauffeur.
"Great guns!" cried Wilkinson when they were half way down the street;
"look at the crowds! Why, everybody in New York is here!"
"I heard on the street this morning," said Morehead, who rather enjoyed
his client's discomfiture, "that the disgruntled depositors had
deserted the front doors of the Interstate and the Tri-State, and had
formed here, waiting to see you----"
Morehead got no further, for at that moment the car abruptly stopped,
as if on the brink of a precipice. A dirty fist was thrust into the
car, and an extra shoved into their faces.