WOLVES IN THE FOLD
Mallory's heart sank to its usual depth, but Marjorie had another of
her inspirations. She startled everybody by suddenly beckoning and
calling: "Excuse me, Mr. Robber. Come here, please."
The curious gallant edged her way, keeping a sharp watch along the
line: "What d'you want?"
Marjorie leaned nearer, and spoke in a low tone with an amiable smile:
"That lady who wanted to kiss you has a bracelet up her sleeve."
The robber stared across his mask, and wondered, but laughed, and
grunted: "Much obliged." Then he went back, and tapped Kathleen on the
shoulder. When she turned round, in the hope that he had reconsidered
his refusal to make the trade, he infuriated her by growling: "Excuse,
me, miss, I overlooked a bet."
He ran his hand along her arm, and found her bracelet, and
accomplished what Mallory had failed in, its removal.
"Don't, don't," cried Kathleen, "it's wished on."
"I wish it off," the villain laughed, and it joined the growing heap
in the feed-bag.
Kathleen, doubly enraged, broke out viciously: "You're a common,
sneaking----"
"Ah, turn round!" the man roared, and she obeyed in silence.
Then he explored Mrs. Whitcomb, but with such small reward that he
said: "Say, you'd oughter have a pocketbook somewheres. Where's it
at?"
Mrs. Whitcomb brushed furiously: "None of your business, you low
brute."
"Perdooce, madame," the scoundrel snorted, "perdooce the purse, or
I'll hunt for it myself."
Mrs. Whitcomb turned away, and after some management of her skirts,
slapped her handbag into the eager palm with a wrathful: "You're no
gentleman, sir!"
"If I was, I'd be in Wall Street," he laughed. "Now you can turn
round." And when she turned, he saw a bit of chain depending from her
back hair. He tugged, and brought away the locket, and with laying the
tress on her shoulder, and proceeded to sound Ashton for hidden
wealth.
And now Mrs. Temple began to sob, as she parted with an old-fashioned
brooch and two old-fashioned rings that had been her little vanities
for the quarter of a century and more. The old clergyman could have
wept with her at the vandalism. He turned on the wretch with a
heartsick appeal:
"Can't you spare those? Didn't you ever have a mother?"
The robber started, his fierce eyes softened, his voice choked, and he
gulped hard as he drew the back of his hand across his eyes.
"Aw, hell," he whimpered, "that ain't fair. If you're goin' to remind
me of me poor old mo-mo-mother----"
But the one called Jake--the Claude Duval who had been prevented from
a display of human sentiment, did not intend to be cheated. He
thundered: "Stop it, Bill. You 'tend strictly to business, or I'll
blow your mush-bowl off. You know your Maw died before you was born."
This reminder sobered the weeping thief at once, and he went back to
work ruthlessly. "Oh, all right, Jake. Sorry, ma'am, but business is
business." And he dumped Mrs. Temple's trinkets into the satchel. It
was too much for the little old lady's little old husband. He fairly
shrieked:
"Young man, you're a damned scoundrel, and the best argument I ever
saw for hell-fire!"
Mrs. Temple's grief changed to horror at such a bolt from the blue:
"Walter!" she gasped, "such language!"
But her husband answered in self-defence: "Even a minister has a right
to swear once in his lifetime."
Mallory almost dropped in his tracks, and Marjorie keeled over on him,
as he gasped: "Good Lord, Doctor Temple, you are a--a minister?"
"Yes, my boy," the old man confessed, glad that the robbers had
relieved him of his guilty secret along with the rest of his private
properties. Mallory looked at the collapsing Marjorie, and groaned:
"And he was in the next berth all this time!"
The unmasking of the old fraud made a second sensation. Mrs. Fosdick
called from far down the aisle: "Dr. Temple, you're not a detective?"
Mrs. Temple shouted back furiously: "How dare you?"
But Mrs. Fosdick was crying to her luscious-eyed mate: "Oh, Arthur,
he's not a detective. Embrace me!"
And they embraced, while the robbers looked on aghast at the sudden
oblivion they had fallen into. They focussed the attention on
themselves again, however, with a ferocious: "Here, hands up!" But
they did not see Mr. and Mrs. Fosdick steal a kiss behind their
upraised arms, for the robber to whose lot Mallory fell was gloating
over his well-filled wallet. Mallory saw it go with fortitude, but
noting a piece of legal paper, he said: "Say, old man, you don't want
that marriage license, do you?"
The robber handled it as if it were hot--as if he had burned his
fingers on some such document once before, and he stuffed it back in
Mallory's pocket. "I should say not. Keep it. Turn round."
Meanwhile the other felon turned up another beautiful pile of bills in
Dr. Temple's pocket. "Not so worse for a parson," he grinned. "You
must be one of them Fifth Avenue sky-shaffures."
And now Mrs. Temple's gentle eyes and voice filled with tears again:
"Oh, don't take that. That's the money for his vacation--after thirty
long years. Please don't take that."
Her appeals seemed always to find the tender spot of this robber's
heart, for he hesitated, and called out: "Shall we overlook the
parson's wad, podner?"
"Take it, and shut up, you mollycoddle!" was the answer he got, and
the vacation funds joined the old gewgaws.
And now everybody had been robbed but Marjorie. She happened to be at
the center of the line, and both men reached her at the same time: "I
seen her first," the first one shouted.
"You did not," the other roared.
"I tell you I did."
"I tell you I did." They glared threateningly at each other, and their
revolvers seemed to meet, like two game cocks, beak to beak.
The porter voiced the general hope, when he sighed: "Oh, Lawd, if
they'd only shoot each other."
This brought the rivals to their evil senses, and they swept the line
with those terrifying muzzles and that heart-stopping yelp: "Hands
up!"
Bill said: "You take the east side of her, and I'll take the west."
"All right."
And they began to snatch away her side-combs, the little gold chain at
her throat, the jewelled pin that Mallory had given her as the first
token of his love.
The young soldier had foreseen this. He had foreseen the wild rage that
would unseat his reason when he saw the dirty hands of thieves laid
rudely on the sacred body of his beloved. But his soldier-schooling
had drilled him to govern his impulses, to play the coward when there
was no hope of successful battle, and to strike only when the moment
was ripe with perfect opportunity.
He had kept telling himself that when the finger of one of these men
touched so much as Marjorie's hem, he would be forced to fling himself
on the profane miscreant. And he kept telling himself that the moment
he did this, the other man would calmly blow a hole through him, and
drop him at Marjorie's feet, while the other passengers shrank away in
terror.
He told himself that, while it might be a fine impulse to leap to her
defence, it was a fool impulse to leap off a precipice and leave
Marjorie alone among strangers, with a dead man and a scandal, as the
only rewards for his impulse. He vowed that he would hold himself in
check, and let the robbers take everything, leaving him only the name
of coward, provided they left him also the power to defend Marjorie
better at another time.
And now that he saw the clumsy-handed thugs rifling his sweetheart's
jewelry, he felt all that he had foreseen, and his head fought almost
in vain against the white fire of his heart. Between them he trembled
like a leaf, and the sweat globed on his forehead.
The worst of it was the shivering terror of Marjorie, and the pitiful
eyes she turned on him. But he clenched his teeth and waited, thinking
fiercely, watching, like a hovering eagle, a chance to swoop.
But the robbers kept glancing this way and that, and one motion would
mean death. They themselves were so overwrought with their own ordeal
and its immediate conclusion, that they would have killed anybody.
Mallory shifted his foot cautiously, and instantly a gun was jabbed
into his stomach, with a snarl: "Don't you move!"
"Who's moving?" Mallory answered, with a poor imitation of a careless
laugh.
And now the man called Bill had reached Marjorie's right hand. He
chortled: "Golly, look at the shiners."
But Jake, who had chosen Marjorie's left hand, roared:
"Say, you cheated. All I get is this measly plain gold band."
"Oh, don't take that!" Marjorie gasped, clenching her hand.
Mallory's heart ached at the thought of this final sacrilege. He had
the license, and the minister at last--and now the fiends were going
to carry off the wedding ring. He controlled himself with a desperate
effort, and stooped to plead: "Say, old man, don't take that. That's
not fair."
"Shut up, both of you," Jake growled, and jabbed him again with the
gun.
He gave the ring a jerk, but Marjorie, in the very face of the weapon,
would not let go. She struggled and tugged, weeping and imploring:
"Oh, don't, don't take that! It's my wedding ring."
"Agh, what do I care!" the ruffian snarled, and wrenched her finger so
viciously that she gave a little cry of pain.
That broke Mallory's heart. With a wild, bellowing, "Damn you!" he
hurled himself at the man, with only his bare hands for weapons.