Acclamation of Gibson's frustration of the plot of "Red Mike" to wreck
the "Lark" grew in volume the following day. The train wrecker hovered
between life and death at the receiving hospital and, during his
conscious periods, cursed the police commissioner incessantly. There was
talk of Gibson as a recall candidate for mayor, but he met it with
repeated declarations that he had no political ambitions.
During the morning, at P. Q.'s order, Brennan and John with reporters
from the other papers, besieged the city hall seeking an interview with,
or statement from, the mayor on Gibson's demand for Chief Sweeney's
removal and the situation in general.
"Nothing to say at all, boys, nothing at all," the mayor said. "If I
have anything for you I'll call you."
Regardless of this promise the reporters camped in the ante-room to the
mayor's office, listing those who entered for conference with the city's
chief executive officer and speculating on the outcome of the political
war. It was John's first sight of the mayor and he considered him a
rather mild little man, pleasant faced and of an attractive although
somewhat easy-going personality. The men with whom he conferred were
his political advisers, most of them business men whose names were
familiar to John as interested in civic enterprise.
While the other reporters were busily engaged in conversation John saw
the mayor's secretary signal with a nod of his head for Brennan to step
into another room. With a remark that he was going to the telephone
Brennan slipped into the room and John saw the secretary whisper in his
ear.
At one o'clock, an interval between editions, the other reporters went
out for lunch. Brennan and John followed them into the corridor and John
saw Brennan wink to him.
"See you later, boys," Brennan said, "got some stuff I have to get out."
When they were alone Brennan told John to follow him and they returned
to the mayor's office. They were met in the ante-room by the secretary,
who ushered them into the room where the mayor was leaning back in a big
easy chair, his feet crossed and perched on his desk, and blowing thin
clouds of smoke into the air from a slender cigar.
The secretary closed the door behind them and John heard the lock click
shut. The mayor looked at them without changing his position.
"Who's your friend?" he asked, nodding to John.
"John Gallant, Mr. Mayor," Brennan said. "Gallant is helping me on this
story. You can trust him as much as you trust me."
John shook hands with the mayor.
"As you say, Brennan," he said. "I suppose you have an idea why I sent
for you."
Brennan nodded.
"Whatever we say here now isn't for publication, you understand,"
admonished the mayor.
"Perfectly."
The mayor puffed at his cigar and gazed up at the ceiling. For fully a
minute nothing was said. Then he jerked his feet from the desk, sat
upright in the chair and leaned forward.
"Brennan," he said, "am I a fool?"
John almost gasped in astonishment at the mayor's question. He was about
to smile when he noticed that the faded blue eyes of the mild little man
at the desk were glittering with anything but an amused light.
"I've never thought so," said Brennan.
"Well," said the mayor, leaning back in his chair again, "everyone I've
talked with here today says I am and I was beginning to think they might
be right."
"For appointing Gibson?" asked Brennan.
"No, for thinking what I can't help thinking about him," said the mayor,
rising from his chair and beginning to pace back and forth across the
room, his hands thrust into his pockets, the cigar clenched between his
teeth.
They waited for him to continue.
"Brennan," he said, stopping short in his striding, "you know what I
think of you. You've helped me before and if I'm right this time you can
help me again and land the biggest story you ever got in your life. If
I'm wrong, then I am a fool and the sooner I get out of office the
better it will be for me and the city."
He went back to his chair.
"Do you know what I've been thinking?" he asked.
"That Gibson isn't straight," said Brennan.
"Exactly," said the mayor. "And you can guess who I think is behind
him."
"'Gink' Cummings," said Brennan.
"You're right again," the mayor thumped the desk with his fist. "It's
the 'Gink,' as sure as I'm sitting here. That's what I told those who
were here to see me today and everyone of them called me a fool. I may
be, but I have a man-sized hunch that I'm not."
"Gink" Cummings, boss of the underworld, behind Gibson? Impossible. It
was nothing but a weak attempt at retaliation, John thought. The mayor's
advisers were right. He was a fool! Why did Brennan sit there and listen
to such stuff?
"Now, get me right," continued the mayor. "I have nothing except a
hunch that Gibson is backed by the 'Gink.' I haven't the slightest bit
of real evidence to form a basis for my suspicion, but I believe I can
see a pretty deep game in this."
"Go ahead, let's see if you figure it out the way I do," said Brennan.
"All right," said the mayor. "In the first place, the 'Gink' has been
against me, trying to get me ever since I took office, you know that?"
Brennan nodded.
"He tried everything he could think of and I've beat him every time. He
knows he can't stay in Los Angeles unless I'm out of office. So what's
he to do? He gets a man like Gibson, starts this so-called clean-up
campaign to get Gibson political power, stages or directs this 'Lark'
wreck business and figures I'll quit so that Gibson can slip in here
under the guise of a reformer, but really a figurehead, a puppet, to
appease the churches and other organizations standing for a clean city
and law enforcement while the 'Gink' bosses things from behind the
scenes.
"It's been done before. It's an old trick and it works almost every
time. Haven't you noticed that Gibson began his attack as soon as I
appointed him commissioner and that he has never said a word about the
'Gink' whom he knows just as well as I do is the city's worst enemy?
This fellow Gibson is only a masquerader."
"That's the way I figured it might be," said Brennan, as the mayor
paused, "but there is one obstacle. How did the 'Gink' ever get Gibson?
How did Gibson, who seems to have plenty of money and a social position,
ever fall into the 'Gink's' hands? What was his motive?"
The mayor smiled for the first time since they entered the room.
"Ah, Brennan, my boy, that's exactly what everyone asks me," he said.
"But I haven't been asleep. When Gibson started all this business I got
busy and I know a few things that help a lot. There seems to be plenty
of reason for Gibson to be working for the 'Gink.'"
"How?" asked Brennan.
"Well," continued the mayor, "I'll only tell you what I know now. Gibson
was highly recommended to me when I appointed him; you may be sure the
'Gink' was that careful. But I wasn't the only one who was tricked.
There were others, the ones who recommended him.
"I've been digging into Gibson's past a little and I find that about
three years ago, at the time I was elected, he was broke, flat broke. He
had a social position through his family. His father and mother, who
are well known and well respected and who are dead, left him only a
little. Three years ago he was in debt and then, suddenly, from some
mysterious source, money began to flow into his hands. I don't know
where it comes from, but he has it.
"He paid all he owed and began building up a reputation as a fine young
fellow, so that he now has the esteem of men and women and organizations
that count for much. His motive? Money!"
"That's a long shot, Mr. Mayor," said Brennan, "a long, long shot."
"I know it," said the mayor. "That's why I called you in here, today."
"That's all the information you have?" asked the reporter.
"That's all I have," the mayor said. "But it's been done before and it
seems to me that Gibson isn't so smart that he could make the moves he
has alone. You know the 'Gink.' You know how clever he is and how
painstaking and patient he is in everything he does. What do you say?"
"It's a long shot, but it's worth it," Brennan said. "If you're going
through with it you can begin by sitting tight, keeping Sweeney in
office and working as hard as you can to get evidence that will break
Gibson and the 'Gink'--if they are partners--once and for all."
The mayor rose from his chair and began his pacing back and forth
again. He pushed out his short, thin legs to twice the length of his
ordinary stride. He tossed the stub of his cigar over his shoulder and
it fell at John's feet. He snapped his teeth on the end of a fresh cigar
and thrust his hands into his pockets.
He crossed over to a window looking down on Broadway and his nervousness
disappeared as he gazed into the throbbing thoroughfare below him. From
where he was sitting John could see that the mayor had a fond look in
his eyes as he watched the roaring traffic of the principal street of
the great city that had honored him by electing him to its highest
office.
Finally he turned and came slowly back to his desk. He stood erect
beside it and John saw a look of determination come over the features he
had considered so mild and pleasing.
"By God"--he used the name of the Creator softly, reverently, as if he
were invoking aid from the Almighty--"Brennan, I'll do it."
* * * * *
Sunday morning John and his mother prepared for Consuello's visit to
their modest little bungalow home. There was little that he could do to
help, as Mrs. Gallant had arranged everything and spent most of the time
in the kitchen preparing the dinner which he saw was to be one of the
repasts his father had so often termed a "feast fit for a king."
"My boy is truly a man now," she said to him. "Do you realize that this
is the first time you have ever invited a girl to your home?"
He laughed as he took her in his arms to pet her.
"Mother, dearest," he said, "I know what you have been thinking, but you
are wrong. Consuello is a wonderful girl and sometimes I cannot
understand why she has been so kind to me. She is only a friend,
dearest, and you mustn't think that your boy is in love with her or that
she is in love with him."
Mrs. Gallant smiled up to him.
"You think a lot of her," she said.
"I do," he admitted. "She has been so very kind. She believes I am
helping someone she seems really to care for."
"Yes, yes, I understand," Mrs. Gallant said. "You run along now and let
me finish what I have to do."
In the living room he picked up the volume of "David Copperfield" he had
been reading through for the first time since his father's death. Musing
as he turned the pages he thought how thankful he was to his father for
having made reading interesting to him. He remembered that the books his
father had read to him and had given him to read, books that crammed
the small bookcase near the fireplace and filled every shelf and table
in the room, were the very best--Dickens, Thackeray, Washington Irving,
Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Addison, and of the later writers, Kipling,
O. Henry, Anatole France, Mark Twain, Barrie.
"If I ever have a boy I will teach him to read as my father taught me,"
he said to himself.
Consuello arrived a few minutes before three. He saw through the window
the machine in which they had ridden to her father's ranch the previous
Sunday draw up to the curb outside. He watched her descend from the
tonneau, speak to the chauffeur, who touched his cap, and turn toward
the walk leading to the house. She wore the same dainty white dress she
wore each time he had seen her and a white, summery, wide-brimmed hat.
He went out to meet her.
"You see," she said, "I'm not one of those who believe in being
fashionably late. What a pretty little place you have."
His mother met them at the door. She had doffed her kitchen apron and
her face was slightly flushed--from the heat of the range, he knew--as
she smiled at Consuello with an extended hand.
"Miss Carrillo, my mother," John said.
"I'm happy to meet you, Miss Carrillo," Mrs. Gallant said. "John has
spoken so often to me of you that I really feel I know you."
"I have been so anxious to meet you--to know you," Consuello said. "I,
too, feel I know you because he has told me so much about you. I only
wish I had been thoughtful enough to have had you with us last Sunday.
The next time you must be with us."
Consuello was unaffected, John thought, in her praise of his mother's
dinner. She insisted upon aiding in the removal of plates from the table
and for the most part her conversation was with Mrs. Gallant. What
delicious salad, she must have the dressing recipe if Mrs. Gallant would
be so kind as to give it to her. She told in details that were
meaningless to John of the Spanish dishes her mother prepared, of the
barbecue feasts of the old days she remembered as a child.
He could see that his mother was interested, pleased, and he was
relieved that Consuello alleviated the awkwardness imposed by the
absence of someone to wait upon them. He left the table once to answer a
ring at the door and found Mrs. Sprockett's husband there, coatless and
collarless as usual.
"Is Maude here?" asked Mrs. Sprockett's husband, trying to appear as
though he was not peering past John, which he was.
John was certain that Mrs. Sprockett's husband knew as well as he did
that Mrs. Sprockett was not with them. He had more than a suspicion that
Mr. Sprockett, having seen the automobile bring Consuello, had crossed
the street out of pure curiosity.
"No," he said, shortly, an impulse rising in him to add, "and you know
it."
"I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Sprockett's husband, humbly. "She didn't
say, you know--I thought she might have--the baby----"
As on the night of his father's death John heard the Sprockett infant,
who, he had a vague idea, was the eleventh or twelfth, wailing somewhere
in the Sprockett home.
"No trouble," he said, shutting the door in the other's face.
They had been in the living room an hour after dinner when Mrs. Gallant
rose.
"You must excuse me, Miss Carrillo," she said. "There is a neighborly
duty I must attend to. Please remain until I return; it won't be long."
John was rather disappointed that his mother should leave them, but he
understood how she was constantly being required for one reason or
another by the neighbors. Alone, their conversation took another course.
"And as things are now, after he has demonstrated his courage in a way
that leaves no doubt, are there still those who are horrid enough to
doubt Mr. Gibson?" she asked.
He was bound by the confidence he had entered into with Brennan not to
reveal any part of the mayor's view of Gibson and his suspicion that the
commissioner was the tool of "Gink" Cummings. The mayor, however, had
publicly taken his stand of "sitting tight," as Brennan had suggested,
and had flatly refused to oust Chief Sweeney.
"Yes," he answered. "Their doubt seems to have been made even stronger
by what he did in preventing the wreck of the 'Lark.'"
Her eyes opened in astonishment.
"How?" she asked. "How can they possibly doubt him now?"
He explained to her Brennan's view that Gibson's frustration of "Red
Mike's" plot was a "grandstand play," without mentioning Brennan. She
sat silent for several minutes after he had concluded. Then, raising her
head and looking directly at him, she said:
"Because we are friends I will tell you why I know so certainly that
what you say cannot be true. Mr. Gibson and I have known each other
since our school days. His father and mother were near and dear to my
father and mother. He has been almost like a brother to me.
"I believe I know him for what he is, a gentleman. I don't think there
is anything of his plans in this crusade that he has not told me. He is
kind enough to feel that I have his interest at heart, that I want him
to succeed, for his own sake, for the sake of his family and his name.
"He has no other motive in all this but to do what he has pledged
himself to do--make Los Angeles a better place to live in. He is purely
an altruist. When he has accomplished what he has set out to do he will
retire from public life altogether with the satisfaction of knowing he
has stood for law and order and decency, that he has done something for
the city in which he lives and which he loves. That will be his only
reward, the satisfaction he feels within himself."
She paused, her eyes downcast.
"There is one other reward--that is, he says it will be a reward--that
he tells me he will claim if he is successful," she said, softly.
He knew what she meant and he wondered if she would say it.
"There is a girl he loves and who believes she loves him," she said.
So, perhaps, Brennan had guessed it when he speculated, "Sometimes it's
a girl."
"The girl, has she--the reward, has it been promised him?" he asked.
He saw the tinge of crimson steal into her cheeks.
"She--it has," she answered, softly.
"I understand now," he said. "I know now why he faced death the way he
did. What man would not?"
This last he spoke quietly, as if to himself.
"Can you think of him as insincere, as faithless, as selfish, as greedy
for power?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"I've told you things that are sacred," she said. "I have told you
because I regard you as a friend. I liked you from the moment we
met----"
"And I said you were beautiful?" he interrupted.
She smiled back to him.
"And you said I was beautiful," she repeated. "But not simply because
you said it, but because I thought you meant it."
"I often wonder how I had courage to say that to you and to tell you I
dreamed of meeting you again," he said. "I have often wondered why you
have been so kind, why you are interested in me at all. At first I
thought it was only--only what you might call pity and I resented it."
"Why is it we have such thoughts?" she said. "Why must we always impute
a misconceived motive?"
"Because deceit has its place in the human heart, I suppose," he said,
and, strangely, he thought of the mayor's regard of Gibson as a
figurehead of hypocritical virtue who sold himself for money. How
terrible it would be if that were true!
As if by mutual unspoken assent they talked of other things, of books,
of plays, of life, until Mrs. Gallant returned, apologizing again for
her absence. A few minutes later the automobile which had brought
Consuello glided up to a halt in front of the house and, glancing at her
wrist watch, she arose.
"I must be going," she said. "It's my turn now to thank you for a
wonderful day, Mrs. Gallant; you will promise to meet father and mother,
won't you?"
"I would be delighted," Mrs. Gallant said.
They escorted her to the waiting automobile. John imagined he saw Mrs.
Sprockett and her husband peering out of the window of the Sprockett
house across the street.