not changed the latter as to wealth or position or inclination, and he
was still a frequent visitor at the Banner. He always came in alone now,
for Maudie had gone the way of all the half-world, and reached depths to
which Mr. Skaggs's job prevented him from following her. However, he
mourned truly for his lost companion, and to-night he was in a
particularly pensive mood.
Some one was playing rag-time on the piano, and the dancers were
wheeling in time to the music. Skaggsy looked at them regretfully as he
sipped his liquor. It made him think of Maudie. He sighed and turned
away.
"I tell you, Sadness," he said impulsively, "dancing is the poetry of
motion."
"Yes," replied Sadness, "and dancing in rag-time is the dialect
poetry."
The reporter did not like this. It savoured of flippancy, and he was
about entering upon a discussion to prove that Sadness had no soul, when
Joe, with blood-shot eyes and dishevelled clothes, staggered in and
reeled towards them.
"Drunk again," said Sadness. "Really, it 's a waste of time for Joe to
sober up. Hullo there!" as the young man brought up against him; "take a
seat." He put him in a chair at the table. "Been lushin' a bit, eh?"
"Gi' me some'n' drink."
"Oh, a hair of the dog. Some men shave their dogs clean, and then have
hydrophobia. Here, Jack!"
They drank, and then, as if the whiskey had done him good, Joe sat up in
his chair.
"Ha'ie 's throwed me down."
"Lucky dog! You might have known it would have happened sooner or later.
Better sooner than never."
Skaggs smoked in silence and looked at Joe.
"I 'm goin' to kill her."
"I would n't if I were you. Take old Sadness's advice and thank your
stars that you 're rid of her."
"I 'm goin' to kill her." He paused and looked at them drowsily. Then,
bracing himself up again, he broke out suddenly, "Say, d' ever tell y'
'bout the ol' man? He never stole that money. Know he di' n'."
He threatened to fall asleep now, but the reporter was all alert. He
scented a story.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "did you hear that? Bet the chap stole it
himself and 's letting the old man suffer for it. Great story, ain't it?
Come, come, wake up here. Three more, Jack. What about your father?"
"Father? Who's father. Oh, do' bother me. What?"
"Here, here, tell us about your father and the money. If he did n't
steal it, who did?"
"Who did? Tha' 's it, who did? Ol' man di' n' steal it, know he di' n'."
"Oh, let him alone, Skaggsy, he don't know what he 's saying."
"Yes, he does, a drunken man tells the truth."
"In some cases," said Sadness.
"Oh, let me alone, man. I 've been trying for years to get a big
sensation for my paper, and if this story is one, I 'm a made man."
The drink seemed to revive the young man again, and by bits Skaggs was
able to pick out of him the story of his father's arrest and conviction.
At its close he relapsed into stupidity, murmuring, "She throwed me
down."
"Well," sneered Sadness, "you see drunken men tell the truth, and you
don't seem to get much guilt out of our young friend. You 're
disappointed, are n't you?"
"I confess I am disappointed, but I 've got an idea, just the same."
"Oh, you have? Well, don't handle it carelessly; it might go off." And
Sadness rose. The reporter sat thinking for a time and then followed
him, leaving Joe in a drunken sleep at the table. There he lay for more
than two hours. When he finally awoke, he started up as if some
determination had come to him in his sleep. A part of the helplessness
of his intoxication had gone, but his first act was to call for more
whiskey. This he gulped down, and followed with another and another. For
a while he stood still, brooding silently, his red eyes blinking at the
light. Then he turned abruptly and left the club.
It was very late when he reached Hattie's door, but he opened it with
his latch-key, as he had been used to do. He stopped to help himself to
a glass of brandy, as he had so often done before. Then he went directly
to her room. She was a light sleeper, and his step awakened her.
"Who is it?" she cried in affright.
"It 's me." His voice was steadier now, but grim.
"What do you want? Did n't I tell you never to come here again? Get out
or I 'll have you taken out."
She sprang up in bed, glaring angrily at him.
His hands twitched nervously, as if her will were conquering him and he
were uneasy, but he held her eye with his own.
"You put me out to-night," he said.
"Yes, and I 'm going to do it again. You 're drunk."
She started to rise, but he took a step towards her and she paused. He
looked as she had never seen him look before. His face was ashen and his
eyes like fire and blood. She quailed beneath the look. He took another
step towards her.
"You put me out to-night," he repeated, "like a dog."
His step was steady and his tone was clear, menacingly clear. She shrank
back from him, back to the wall. Still his hands twitched and his eye
held her. Still he crept slowly towards her, his lips working and his
hands moving convulsively.
"Joe, Joe!" she said hoarsely, "what 's the matter? Oh, don't look at me
like that."
The gown had fallen away from her breast and showed the convulsive
fluttering of her heart.
He broke into a laugh, a dry, murderous laugh, and his hands sought each
other while the fingers twitched over one another like coiling serpents.
"You put me out--you--you, and you made me what I am." The realisation
of what he was, of his foulness and degradation, seemed just to have
come to him fully. "You made me what I am, and then you sent me away.
You let me come back, and now you put me out."
She gazed at him fascinated. She tried to scream and she could not. This
was not Joe. This was not the boy that she had turned and twisted about
her little finger. This was a terrible, terrible man or a monster.
He moved a step nearer her. His eyes fell to her throat. For an instant
she lost their steady glare and then she found her voice. The scream was
checked as it began. His fingers had closed over her throat just where
the gown had left it temptingly bare. They gave it the caress of death.
She struggled. They held her. Her eyes prayed to his. But his were the
fire of hell. She fell back upon her pillow in silence. He had not
uttered a word. He held her. Finally he flung her from him like a rag,
and sank into a chair. And there the officers found him when Hattie
Sterling's disappearance had become a strange thing.
XV
"DEAR, DAMNED, DELIGHTFUL TOWN"
When Joe was taken, there was no spirit or feeling left in him. He moved
mechanically, as if without sense or volition. The first impression he
gave was that of a man over-acting insanity. But this was soon removed
by the very indifference with which he met everything concerned with his
crime. From the very first he made no effort to exonerate or to
vindicate himself. He talked little and only in a dry, stupefied way. He
was as one whose soul is dead, and perhaps it was; for all the little
soul of him had been wrapped up in the body of this one woman, and the
stroke that took her life had killed him too.
The men who examined him were irritated beyond measure. There was
nothing for them to exercise their ingenuity upon. He left them nothing
to search for. Their most damning question he answered with an apathy
that showed absolutely no interest in the matter. It was as if some one
whom he did not care about had committed a crime and he had been called
to testify. The only thing which he noticed or seemed to have any
affection for was a little pet dog which had been hers and which they
sometimes allowed to be with him after the life sentence had been passed
upon him and when he was awaiting removal. He would sit for hours with
the little animal in his lap, caressing it dumbly. There was a mute
sorrow in the eyes of both man and dog, and they seemed to take comfort
in each other's presence. There was no need of any sign between them.
They had both loved her, had they not? So they understood.
Sadness saw him and came back to the Banner, torn and unnerved by the
sight. "I saw him," he said with a shudder, "and it 'll take more
whiskey than Jack can give me in a year to wash the memory of him out of
me. Why, man, it shocked me all through. It 's a pity they did n't send
him to the chair. It could n't have done him much harm and would have
been a real mercy."
And so Sadness and all the club, with a muttered "Poor devil!" dismissed
him. He was gone. Why should they worry? Only one more who had got into
the whirlpool, enjoyed the sensation for a moment, and then swept
dizzily down. There were, indeed, some who for an earnest hour
sermonised about it and said, "Here is another example of the pernicious
influence of the city on untrained negroes. Oh, is there no way to keep
these people from rushing away from the small villages and country
districts of the South up to the cities, where they cannot battle with
the terrible force of a strange and unusual environment? Is there no way
to prove to them that woollen-shirted, brown-jeaned simplicity is
infinitely better than broad-clothed degradation?" They wanted to
preach to these people that good agriculture is better than bad
art,--that it was better and nobler for them to sing to God across the
Southern fields than to dance for rowdies in the Northern halls. They
wanted to dare to say that the South has its faults--no one condones
them--and its disadvantages, but that even what they suffered from these
was better than what awaited them in the great alleys of New York. Down
there, the bodies were restrained, and they chafed; but here the soul
would fester, and they would be content.
This was but for an hour, for even while they exclaimed they knew that
there was no way, and that the stream of young negro life would continue
to flow up from the South, dashing itself against the hard necessities
of the city and breaking like waves against a rock,--that, until the
gods grew tired of their cruel sport, there must still be sacrifices to
false ideals and unreal ambitions.
There was one heart, though, that neither dismissed Joe with gratuitous
pity nor sermonised about him. The mother heart had only room for grief
and pain. Already it had borne its share. It had known sorrow for a lost
husband, tears at the neglect and brutality of a new companion, shame
for a daughter's sake, and it had seemed already filled to overflowing.
And yet the fates had put in this one other burden until it seemed it
must burst with the weight of it.
To Fannie Hamilton's mind now all her boy's shortcomings became as
naught. He was not her wayward, erring, criminal son. She only
remembered that he was her son, and wept for him as such. She forgot his
curses, while her memory went back to the sweetness of his baby prattle
and the soft words of his tenderer youth. Until the last she clung to
him, holding him guiltless, and to her thought they took to prison, not
Joe Hamilton, a convicted criminal, but Joey, Joey, her boy, her
firstborn,--a martyr.
The pretty Miss Kitty Hamilton was less deeply impressed. The arrest
and subsequent conviction of her brother was quite a blow. She felt the
shame of it keenly, and some of the grief. To her, coming as it did just
at a time when the company was being strengthened and she more
importantly featured than ever, it was decidedly inopportune, for no one
could help connecting her name with the affair.
For a long time she and her brother had scarcely been upon speaking
terms. During Joe's frequent lapses from industry he had been prone to
"touch" his sister for the wherewithal to supply his various wants.
When, finally, she grew tired and refused to be "touched," he rebuked
her for withholding that which, save for his help, she would never have
been able to make. This went on until they were almost entirely
estranged. He was wont to say that "now his sister was up in the world,
she had got the big head," and she to retort that her brother "wanted to
use her for a 'soft thing.'"
From the time that she went on the stage she had begun to live her own
life, a life in which the chief aim was the possession of good clothes
and the ability to attract the attention which she had learned to crave.
The greatest sign of interest she showed in her brother's affair was, at
first, to offer her mother money to secure a lawyer. But when Joe
confessed all, she consoled herself with the reflection that perhaps it
was for the best, and kept her money in her pocket with a sense of
satisfaction. She was getting to be so very much more Joe's sister. She
did not go to see her brother. She was afraid it might make her nervous
while she was in the city, and she went on the road with her company
before he was taken away.
Miss Kitty Hamilton had to be very careful about her nerves and her
health. She had had experiences, and her voice was not as good as it
used to be, and her beauty had to be aided by cosmetics. So she went
away from New York, and only read of all that happened when some one
called her attention to it in the papers.
Berry Hamilton in his Southern prison knew nothing of all this, for no
letters had passed between him and his family for more than two years.
The very cruelty of destiny defeated itself in this and was kind.
XVI
SKAGGS'S THEORY
There was, perhaps, more depth to Mr. Skaggs than most people gave him
credit for having. However it may be, when he got an idea into his head,
whether it were insane or otherwise, he had a decidedly tenacious way of
holding to it. Sadness had been disposed to laugh at him when he
announced that Joe's drunken story of his father's troubles had given
him an idea. But it was, nevertheless, true, and that idea had stayed
with him clear through the exciting events that followed on that fatal
night. He thought and dreamed of it until he had made a working theory.
Then one day, with a boldness that he seldom assumed when in the sacred
Presence, he walked into the office and laid his plans before the
editor. They talked together for some time, and the editor seemed hard
to convince.
"It would be a big thing for the paper," he said, "if it only panned
out; but it is such a rattle-brained, harum-scarum thing. No one under
the sun would have thought of it but you, Skaggs."
"Oh, it 's bound to pan out. I see the thing as clear as day. There 's
no getting around it."
"Yes, it looks plausible, but so does all fiction. You 're taking a
chance. You 're losing time. If it fails----"
"But if it succeeds?"
"Well, go and bring back a story. If you don't, look out. It 's against
my better judgment anyway. Remember I told you that."
Skaggs shot out of the office, and within an hour and a half had boarded
a fast train for the South.
It is almost a question whether Skaggs had a theory or whether he had
told himself a pretty story and, as usual, believed it. The editor was
right. No one else would have thought of the wild thing that was in the
reporter's mind. The detective had not thought of it five years before,
nor had Maurice Oakley and his friends had an inkling, and here was one
of the New York _Universe's_ young men going miles to prove his idea
about something that did not at all concern him.
When Skaggs reached the town which had been the home of the Hamiltons,
he went at once to the Continental Hotel. He had as yet formulated no
plan of immediate action and with a fool's or a genius' belief in his
destiny he sat down to await the turn of events. His first move would be
to get acquainted with some of his neighbours. This was no difficult
matter, as the bar of the Continental was still the gathering-place of
some of the city's choice spirits of the old regime. Thither he went,
and his convivial cheerfulness soon placed him on terms of equality with
many of his kind.
He insinuated that he was looking around for business prospects. This
proved his open-sesame. Five years had not changed the Continental
frequenters much, and Skaggs's intention immediately brought Beachfield
Davis down upon him with the remark, "If a man wants to go into
business, business for a gentleman, suh, Gad, there 's no finer or
better paying business in the world than breeding blooded dogs--that is,
if you get a man of experience to go in with you."
"Dogs, dogs," drivelled old Horace Talbot, "Beachfield 's always talking
about dogs. I remember the night we were all discussing that Hamilton
nigger's arrest, Beachfield said it was a sign of total depravity
because his man hunted 'possums with his hound." The old man laughed
inanely. The hotel whiskey was getting on his nerves.
The reporter opened his eyes and his ears. He had stumbled upon
something, at any rate.
"What was it about some nigger's arrest, sir?" he asked respectfully.
"Oh, it was n't anything much. Only an old and trusted servant robbed
his master, and my theory----"
"But you will remember, Mr. Talbot," broke in Davis, "that I proved your
theory to be wrong and cited a conclusive instance."
"Yes, a 'possum-hunting dog."
"I am really anxious to hear about the robbery, though. It seems such an
unusual thing for a negro to steal a great amount."
"Just so, and that was part of my theory. Now----"
"It 's an old story and a long one, Mr. Skaggs, and one of merely local
repute," interjected Colonel Saunders. "I don't think it could possibly
interest you, who are familiar with the records of the really great
crimes that take place in a city such as New York."
"Those things do interest me very much, though. I am something of a
psychologist, and I often find the smallest and most
insignificant-appearing details pregnant with suggestion. Won't you let
me hear the story, Colonel?"
"Why, yes, though there 's little in it save that I am one of the few
men who have come to believe that the negro, Berry Hamilton, is not the
guilty party."
"Nonsense! nonsense!" said Talbot; "of course Berry was guilty, but, as
I said before, I don't blame him. The negroes----"
"Total depravity," said Davis. "Now look at my dog----"
"If you will retire with me to the further table I will give you
whatever of the facts I can call to mind."
As unobtrusively as they could, they drew apart from the others and
seated themselves at a more secluded table, leaving Talbot and Davis
wrangling, as of old, over their theories. When the glasses were filled
and the pipes going, the Colonel began his story, interlarding it
frequently with comments of his own.
"Now, in the first place, Mr. Skaggs," he said when the tale was done,
"I am lawyer enough to see for myself how weak the evidence was upon
which the negro was convicted, and later events have done much to
confirm me in the opinion that he was innocent."
"Later events?"
"Yes." The Colonel leaned across the table and his voice fell to a
whisper. "Four years ago a great change took place in Maurice Oakley. It
happened in the space of a day, and no one knows the cause of it. From a
social, companionable man, he became a recluse, shunning visitors and
dreading society. From an open-hearted, unsuspicious neighbour, he
became secretive and distrustful of his own friends. From an active
business man, he has become a retired brooder. He sees no one if he can
help it. He writes no letters and receives none, not even from his
brother, it is said. And all of this came about in the space of
twenty-four hours."
"But what was the beginning of it?"
"No one knows, save that one day he had some sort of nervous attack. By
the time the doctor was called he was better, but he kept clutching his
hand over his heart. Naturally, the physician wanted to examine him
there, but the very suggestion of it seemed to throw him into a frenzy;
and his wife too begged the doctor, an old friend of the family, to
desist. Maurice Oakley had been as sound as a dollar, and no one of the
family had had any tendency to heart affection."
"It is strange."
"Strange it is, but I have my theory."
"His actions are like those of a man guarding a secret."
"Sh! His negro laundress says that there is an inside pocket in his
undershirts."
"An inside pocket?"
"Yes."
"And for what?" Skaggs was trembling with eagerness.
The Colonel dropped his voice lower.
"We can only speculate," he said; "but, as I have said, I have my
theory. Oakley was a just man, and in punishing his old servant for the
supposed robbery it is plain that he acted from principle. But he is
also a proud man and would hate to confess that he had been in the
wrong. So I believed that the cause of his first shock was the finding
of the money that he supposed gone. Unwilling to admit this error, he
lets the misapprehension go on, and it is the money which he carries in
his secret pocket, with a morbid fear of its discovery, that has made
him dismiss his servants, leave his business, and refuse to see his
friends."
"A very natural conclusion, Colonel, and I must say that I believe you.
It is strange that others have not seen as you have seen and brought the
matter to light."
"Well, you see, Mr. Skaggs, none are so dull as the people who think
they think. I can safely say that there is not another man in this town
who has lighted upon the real solution of this matter, though it has
been openly talked of for so long. But as for bringing it to light, no
one would think of doing that. It would be sure to hurt Oakley's
feelings, and he is of one of our best families."
"Ah, yes, perfectly right."
Skaggs had got all that he wanted; much more, in fact, than he had
expected. The Colonel held him for a while yet to enlarge upon the views
that he had expressed.
When the reporter finally left him, it was with a cheery "Good-night,
Colonel. If I were a criminal, I should be afraid of that analytical
mind of yours!"
He went upstairs chuckling. "The old fool!" he cried as he flung himself
into a chair. "I 've got it! I 've got it! Maurice Oakley must see me,
and then what?" He sat down to think out what he should do to-morrow.
Again, with his fine disregard of ways and means, he determined to trust
to luck, and as he expressed it, "brace old Oakley."
Accordingly he went about nine o'clock the next morning to Oakley's
house. A gray-haired, sad-eyed woman inquired his errand.
"I want to see Mr. Oakley," he said.
"You cannot see him. Mr. Oakley is not well and does not see visitors."
"But I must see him, madam; I am here upon business of importance."
"You can tell me just as well as him. I am his wife and transact all of
his business."
"I can tell no one but the master of the house himself."
"You cannot see him. It is against his orders."
"Very well," replied Skaggs, descending one step; "it is his loss, not
mine. I have tried to do my duty and failed. Simply tell him that I came
from Paris."
"Paris?" cried a querulous voice behind the woman's back. "Leslie, why
do you keep the gentleman at the door? Let him come in at once."
Mrs. Oakley stepped from the door and Skaggs went in. Had he seen
Oakley before he would have been shocked at the change in his
appearance; but as it was, the nervous, white-haired man who stood
shiftily before him told him nothing of an eating secret long carried.
The man's face was gray and haggard, and deep lines were cut under his
staring, fish-like eyes. His hair tumbled in white masses over his
pallid forehead, and his lips twitched as he talked.
"You 're from Paris, sir, from Paris?" he said. "Come in, come in."
His motions were nervous and erratic. Skaggs followed him into the
library, and the wife disappeared in another direction.
It would have been hard to recognise in the Oakley of the present the
man of a few years before. The strong frame had gone away to bone, and
nothing of his old power sat on either brow or chin. He was as a man who
trembled on the brink of insanity. His guilty secret had been too much
for him, and Skaggs's own fingers twitched as he saw his host's hands
seek the breast of his jacket every other moment.
"It is there the secret is hidden," he said to himself, "and whatever it
is, I must have it. But how--how? I can't knock the man down and rob him
in his own house." But Oakley himself proceeded to give him his first
cue.
"You--you--perhaps have a message from my brother--my brother who is in
Paris. I have not heard from him for some time."
Skaggs's mind worked quickly. He remembered the Colonel's story.
Evidently the brother had something to do with the secret. "Now or
never," he thought. So he said boldly, "Yes, I have a message from your
brother."
The man sprung up, clutching again at his breast. "You have? you have?
Give it to me. After four years he sends me a message! Give it to me!"
The reporter looked steadily at the man. He knew that he was in his
power, that his very eagerness would prove traitor to his discretion.
"Your brother bade me to say to you that you have a terrible secret,
that you bear it in your breast--there--there. I am his messenger. He
bids you to give it to me."
Oakley had shrunken back as if he had been struck.
"No, no!" he gasped, "no, no! I have no secret."