|BY and by Atlanta was reached. Slowly and with a clanging bell the
train crept into the grimy switch-yards bordered by sooty iron furnaces,
factories, warehouses, planing-mills, and under street bridges and on
into the big depot. Here his ears were greeted with the usual jumble,
din, and babble of voices, the escaping of steam, the calls of
train-porters. Hoag left the car, joined the jostling human current on
the concrete pavement, and was soon in the street outside. Formerly he
had ridden to his hotel in a trolley-car, but none was in sight, and
seeing a negro cabman signaling to him with a smile and a seductive wave
of his whip he went forward and got in.
“Kimball House,” he said to the man, and with a snap of the latch the
door was closed upon him.
Rumbling over the cobblestones, through the active scene which was
bisected by the thoroughfare, he strove in vain to recapture the
sensation he had formerly had on such outings--the sensation that he was
where enjoyment of a certain sensual sort could be bought. Formerly the
fact that he was able to pay for a cab, that he was headed for a hotel
where servants would obey his beck and call, where food, drinks, and
cigars would be exactly to his taste, and where he would be taken for
a man of importance, would have given a certain elation of spirits, but
to-day all this was changed.
Had he been driving to an undertaker's to arrange the details of his
own burial, he could, not have experienced a more persistent and weighty
depression. Indeed, the realization of an intangible fate, of which
death itself was only a part, seemed to percolate through him. His
body was as dead as stone, his soul never more alive, more alert, more
desperate.
At the desk in the great noisy foyer of the hotel, where the clerks knew
him and where he paused to register, he shrank from a cordiality and
recognition which hitherto had been welcome enough. Even the clerks
seemed to be ruthless automatons in whose hands his fate might rest.
As one of them carelessly penciled the number of his room after lois
signature, and loudly called it out to a row of colored porters, he had
a sudden impulse to silence the voice and whisper a request for another
room the number of which was to be private; but he said nothing, and was
led away by a bell-boy.
They took the elevator to the fifth floor. The boy, carrying his bag,
showed him to a chamber at the end of a long, empty corridor. The
servant unlocked the door, threw it open, and, going in, put down the
bag and raised the sash of the window, letting in the din of the street
below. Then he waited for orders.
“A pint of best rye whisky, and ice water!” Hoag said. “Bring 'em right
away, and some cigars--a dozen good ones. Charge to my account.”
“All right, boss,” the porter bowed and was gone. Hoag sat down by
the window and glanced out. He noticed a trolley-car bound for a
pleasure-resort near the city. It had been a place to which on warm days
he had enjoyed going. There was an open-air theater there, and he had
been fond of getting a seat in the front row, and smiling patronizingly
at the painted and powdered players while he smoked and drank. But this
now was like a thing which had lived, died, and could not be revived.
He had, for another amusement, lounged about certain pool-rooms and
bucket-shops, spending agreeable days with men of wealth and speculative
tendencies--men who loved a game of poker for reasonable stakes and who
asked his advice as to the future market of cotton or wheat; but from
this, too, the charm had flown.
“What is a man profited--” The words seemed an echo from some voice
stilled long ago--a voice weirdly like that of his mother, who had been
a Christian woman. The patriarchal countenance of Silas Tye, that humble
visage so full of mystic content and placid certitude, stood before his
mind's eye. Then there was Paul, a younger disciple of the ancient one.
And, after all, what a strange and wonderful life had opened out before
the fellow! Why, he had nothing to avoid, nothing to regret, nothing to
fear.
The bell-boy brought the whisky and cigars, and when he had gone Hoag
drank copiously, telling himself that the stimulant would restore his
lost confidence, put to flight the absurd fancies which had beset him.
He remained locked in his room the remainder of the afternoon. It was
filled with the smoke of many cigars, and his brain was confused by the
whisky he kept drinking. Looking from the window, he saw that night had
fallen. The long streets from end to end were ablaze with light. Groping
to the wall, he finally found an electric button and turned on the
current. He had just gone back to the window when there was a rap on
his door. He started, fell to quivering as from the sheer premonition of
disaster, and yet he called out:
“Come in!”
It was the bell-boy.
“A letter for you, sir,” he announced, holding it forward. “A colored
gen'man lef' it at de desk jes' er minute ergo.”
Hoag had the sensation of falling from a great height in a dizzy dream.
“Whar is he?” he gasped, as he reached for the envelope.
“He's gone, sir. He tol' de clerk ter please have it tuck up quick, dat
it was some important news, an' den he went off in er hurry.”
“Did--did you know 'im?” Hoag fairly gasped.
“Never seed 'im befo', sir; looked ter me like er country nigger--didn't
seem ter know which way ter turn.”
When the boy had gone Hoag looked at the inscription on the letter. He
had seen the writing before.
“Captin Jimmy Hoag, Kimball House, City of Atlanta,” was on the outside.
He sank down into his chair and fumbled the sealed envelope in his numb
fingers. His brain was clear now. It had never been clearer. Presently
he opened the envelope and unfolded the sheet.
It ran as follows:
_One place is as good as another. You cannot git away. We got you, and
your time is short. Go to the end of the earth and we will be there to
meet you. By order of his (Blak X Buck) mark._
With the sheet crumpled in his clammy hand, Hoag sat still for more
than an hour. Then he rose, shook himself, and took a big drink of
whisky, He resolved that he would throw off the cowardly paralysis that
was on him and be done with it. He would go out and spend the evening
somewhere. Anything was better than this self-imprisonment in solitude
that was maddening.
Going down to the office, he suddenly met Edward Peterson as he was
turning from the counter. The young man smiled a welcome as he extended
his hand.
“I was just going up to your room,” he said. “I happened to see your
name on the register while I was looking for an out-of-town customer of
ours who was due here to-day. Down for long?”
“I can't say--I railly can't say,” Hoag floundered. “It all
depends--some few matters to--to see to.”
“I was going to write you,” the banker continued, his face elongated and
quite grave. “I regard you as a friend, Mr. Hoag--I may say, as one of
the best I have. I'm sure I've always looked after your interests at
this end of the line as carefully as if they had been my own.”
“Yes, yes, I know that, of course.” Hoag's response was a hurried
compound of impatience, indifference, and despair.
Peterson threw an eager glance at some vacant chairs near by and touched
Hoag's arm. “Let's sit down,” he entreated. “I want to talk to you. I
just can't put it off. I'm awfully bothered, Mr. Hoag, and if anybody
can help me you can.” Hoag allowed himself to be half led, half dragged
to the chair, and he and his companion sat down together.
“It's about Miss Ethel,” Peterson went on, desperately, laying an
appealing hand on Hoag's massive knee. “The last time I saw her at your
house I thought she was friendly enough, but something is wrong now,
sure. She won't write often, and when she does her letters are cold and
stiff. I got one from her mother to-day. Mrs. Mayfield seems bothered.
She doesn't seem fully to understand Miss Ethel, either.”
“I don't know anything about it.” Hoag felt compelled to make some
reply. “The truth is, I haven't had time to--to talk to Eth' lately,
and--”
“But you told me that you _would_.” Peterson's stare was fixed and full
of suppressed suspense. “I've been depending on you. My--my pride is--I
may say that my pride is hurt, Mr. Hoag. My friends down here consider
me solid with the young lady, and it looks as if she were trying to pull
away and leave me in the lurch. I don't see how I can stand it. I've
never been turned down before and it hurts, especially when folks have
regarded the thing as practically settled. Why--why, my salary has been
raised on the strength of it.”
Hoag's entire thoughts were on the communication he had just received.
He expected every moment to see his assassin stalk across the tiled
floor from one of the many entrances and fire upon him. Peterson's voice
and perturbation were as vexatious as the drone of a mosquito. Of what
importance was another's puppy love to a man on the gallows looking for
the last time at the sunshine? He rose to his feet; he laid his hand on
the young man's shoulder.
“You must let me alone to-night,” he bluntly demanded. “I've got a
matter of important business on my mind and I can't talk to you. You
must, I tell you; you must!”
“All right, all right!” Peterson stared and gasped as if smitten in
the face. “I'll see you in the morning. You'll come around to the bank,
won't you?”
“Yes, yes--in the morning. I'll be round.” When he was alone Hoag
strolled back to the bar-room. He familiarly nodded to the barkeeper,
and smiled mechanically as he called for whisky. He drank, lighted a
cigar, leaned for an instant against the polished counter, and then,
seeing a man entering whom he knew and wished to avoid, he turned back
into the foyer. Presently he went to the front door and glanced up and
down the street. A cab was at the edge of the sidewalk, and the negro
driver called out to him:
“Ca'iage, boss? Any part de city.”
“All right, I'm with you,” Hoag went to the cab, whispered an address,
got in, and closed the door. With a knowing smile the negro mounted his
seat and drove away. At the corner he turned down Decatur Street, and
presently drove into a short street leading toward the railroad. Here
the houses on either side of the way had red glass in the doors, through
which crimson rays of light streamed out on the pavement. The cab was
about to slow up at one of the houses when Hoag rapped on the window.
The driver leaned down and opened the door.
“What is it, boss?”
“Take me back to the hotel,” was the command.
The driver paused in astonishment, then slowly turned his horse and
started back.
“It might happen thar, and Jack would find out about it,” Hoag leaned
back and groaned. “That would never do. It is bad enough as it is, but
that would be worse. He might grow up an' be ashamed even to mention me.
Henry is tryin' to do right, too, an' I'd hate for him to know.”