Astonished even more than he had been when she first questioned the
propriety of Consuello's living alone in the city, John hurried into the
house after his mother and found her in a chair beside a table in the
living room, her head buried in her arms.
"Mother!" he exclaimed, anxiously. "What is wrong? Are you ill? Don't,
mother, don't cry. Speak to me, speak to me."
She did not answer. He stepped forward quickly and lifted her face
between his hands, tenderly. He saw that her eyes were filled with
tears.
"Please," she said, drawing back her head. He dropped his arms to his
sides. "Please, I must be alone," she said.
"Tell me, tell me, what is it?" he begged.
Rising a trifle unsteadily to her feet she walked past him to the door.
He wheeled as she was about to step out of the room and caught her in
his arms.
"Mother, dearest," he pleaded, "what is it? Is it because you do not
approve? Is it so terrible that she must work to live and that she plays
in pictures? Surely, you can't think wrong of her?"
Slowly she nodded her head. He stepped back in amazement. How could she
possibly think such things?
"I had hoped, because she was a friend of yours, that she would be what
you thought her," Mrs. Gallant said, tremulously.
"Why, mother, what are you talking about?" he gasped. "She is my friend
and there is nothing to make me think that she is anything but what I
believed her to be, a dear, kind friend."
Mrs. Gallant clasped her hands at her waist and straightened her
shoulders.
"She dared--dared to receive you alone in her dressing room," she said.
"John, don't you understand what that means? Don't you know how wrong it
was? Do decent girls do such things? An actress! I've heard enough about
them. An actress who allows herself to be kissed and held in men's arms!
An associate of--"
He raised his hand quickly.
"Mother!" he expostulated, "you can't say that. You can't, you can't."
For a moment they stood facing each other and an expression of despair
crossed her features as she whirled around and left the room. John stood
stunned until he heard the door of her bedroom close. With a heavy sigh
he threw himself into a chair and bowed his head in his hands, staring
distractedly at the design in the rug under his feet.
Until far into the night he sat there, thinking, thinking, thinking.
Mingled exasperation and perplexity racked his brain and finally he
attempted to collect his thoughts and reason it all out. It was
ridiculous, he thought, and yet so serious. Gradually he came to study
the entire situation from the viewpoint of his mother and by doing so he
came to a solution of the difficulty. His heart softened toward her and
he found an excuse for her antipathy for Consuello.
Primarily, he understood his mother's great love for him, her desire to
protect him, guard his happiness and assure his success in life was the
cause for the unreasonable attitude she had taken toward the girl who
had been so kind to him. Perhaps his mother still clung to her
hastily-formed idea that he was in love and that his "undisciplined
heart"--the descriptive words were fresh in his mind from his reading
again of "David Copperfield"--would lead him into trouble.
And then he easily comprehended her aversion to motion pictures and
those who played in them, insupportable by facts as it was. The strict,
narrow training she had received as a girl had nurtured in her an
abhorrence of public performers, particularly actors and actresses,
whom she regarded without exception as libertines. This misconception
had been increased by the scandalous and equally slanderous stories that
had reached her ears concerning motion pictures and the life led by
those engaged in the producing of photoplays in Hollywood.
The faults of one or two who became involved in scandal of some sort she
gave to all. Because a motion picture actress, as human as any other
woman and as liable to imperfection, sought a divorce in the courts she
instantly, in Mrs. Gallant's mind, became an immoral character. A motion
picture actor attacked by a blackmailer because of his wealth and
prominence, was adjudged guilty of whatever wrong of which he was
accused. It was an unfair and unjust attitude common to thousands of
women as wholesome in character, as kindly and merciful in disposition
and as saintly to those who loved them and were loved by them, as Mrs.
Gallant.
In his unsuspecting delight in being able to explain to his mother why
Consuello lived apart from her parents, he had completely overlooked her
foible in disliking motion picture players simply because they were
members of that profession. Likewise he had forgotten precaution by
telling her that Consuello had received him in her dressing room. He
had been unable to tell her that Consuello, although she enjoyed work
and had a pride in it, had entered the pictures to provide for her aging
parents. The confidence, as he regarded it, that Consuello had placed in
him in informing him that she and Gibson were engaged to be married, he
could not, he felt, reveal.
He pondered for a time over a disconcerting thought that possibly it had
not been proper after all, for Consuello to have allowed him to see her
in her dressing room, alone, without having previously mentioned to
Gibson her intention of doing such a thing. It had been obvious that
Gibson was genuinely surprised when he found John with her. He finally
dismissed any apprehension created by this thought by recalling
Consuello's apparent guilelessness.
He fatigued his brain in a vain endeavor to decide upon some means of
overcoming his mother's prejudice. Setting aside the fact that he wanted
them to be friends, to know and find in each other the things he admired
in them, the principle of the whole affair concerned him. He remembered
how different his father had been, how tolerant, how ready to withhold
adverse judgment of a person until both sides of the story had been
heard.
Weary, unhappy, disconcerted, he went to his bedroom and puzzled over
his problem until he fell asleep. Mrs. Gallant had composed herself,
somewhat severely, when he saw her in the morning at breakfast. There
was a trace of haggardness in her face that told him she, too, had spent
a restless night.
"Mother, dear," he said, holding her in his arms before he left for
work, "you know how much I love you." She seemed to yield a little in
response to his tenderness.
"I know, my boy," she said, "and you must realize how much I care for
you."
"Oh, I do, I do," he said, "you have always been a wonderful, wonderful
mother to me. Remember, nothing must come between us."
Her severe aspect, which, he knew, she assumed to compose herself,
disappeared and the love that she bore him as her first and only son
shone in her eyes as she kissed him when he left. It was like the kisses
she had given him when he was a grammar school boy.
Later in the day John met an old friend whom he had almost forgotten. It
was the scrawny youth with the twisted nose and the husky voice who had
been a second in his corner the night he fought Battling Rodriguez to
get money to pay for his father's funeral. He remembered the youth as
Murphy when he met him lounging at the counter of a cigar stand at the
entrance to one of Spring street's most celebrated saloons, which now
was converted into a soft drink and lunch establishment and which was
frequented by men who loitered in and around it for the associations it
held for them and the memory of other days.
Murphy, a brown paper cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth,
hailed him as he passed.
"If it ain't da Gallant kid!" he said, speaking from beneath the visor
of his cloth cap, pulled tightly around his ears. They shook hands.
"Hello, Murphy, what have you been doing since the night that Mexican
nearly killed me?" asked John, feeling somehow that he owed the second
something for the care he had taken of him after he had staggered from
the ring, bruised and battered.
"Oh, da same old stuff, da same old stuff," Murphy replied. "Haven't
been doin' any more fightin', have ya?"
"No," said John, with a laugh, "the beating the Battler gave me was
enough. You know, it's a good man who knows when he has had enough."
"Ya didn't seem to know when ya had enough da night ya mixed it with da
Battler," said Murphy. "Ya took a beltin' that night and came up for
more as long as ya could."
"Let's step inside; I'll buy you a drink of whatever they have," John
invited.
Over steins of near-beer which Murphy drank with a wry face John learned
that Battling Rodriguez had fought himself to the top and was now boxing
main events at Vernon, at the American Legion stadium in Hollywood and
occasionally in San Francisco and San Diego. He told Murphy that he was
working on the newspaper, endeavoring to develop himself into a
reporter.
They were about to leave and had turned away from the bar when there was
a scuffle of feet at the front door. John was startled to see a number
of men rush in and form a line across the front of the long room.
It flashed into his head that the men were bandits. One of them, he saw,
had a gun in his hand. But this suspicion was quickly routed from his
mind when one of the men, apparently the leader, stepped forward and
shouted a command:
"Get in the corner, there, you birds, you're pinched," he ordered.
John recognized the men as deputy sheriffs and for a moment he was
nonplussed. Then he stepped forward to explain there was no cause for
them to arrest them.
"In the corner, I said, in the corner," shouted the foremost of the
deputies, pushing John back. "Get over there or I'll put you there,
see!"
John "saw." He stepped back into the corner of the room which the deputy
indicated, joining a group of a dozen men herded there by the other
deputies who swept through the "saloon." Murphy, beside him, whispered
in his ear:
"Don't get excited, kid, it's nuttin'; just another phoney pinch, dat's
all."
"But what for?" asked John.
"Loiterin' around a handbook joint. You'll be squared, kid, you'll be
squared. Stick with me and you'll come out on top; ten bucks to the
good."
One of the deputies marched up to the corner, pushing a young fellow
before him.
"Tried to duck out the back door," the deputy explained to his brother
officers. He shoved his prisoner into the group in the corner. "I guess
that's all of them. Let's get them out of here. Come on, you birds, out
the door; step lively and no funny business."
Murphy was at his side as they walked out into the street, guarded on
each side by the deputies. A motor truck was backed up to the curb and
in it were fifteen or twenty men, young and old, laughing and smoking.
A crowd of men and women, spectators to the raid, thronged the sidewalk
on either side.
John stepped to the side of one of the deputies.
"Listen, old man," he said. "I'm a reporter."
The deputy stepped back in mock surprise.
"You don't say so!" he exclaimed. "A reporter, eh? Well, you ain't
nobody, see! Why, one of your pals we got in there told me he was the
sheriff's nephew. Another one tried to bull me that he was one of
Gibson's men."
"Gibson!" exclaimed John. Then it dawned on him; this was one of the
police commissioner's "personally conducted" raids, his first attack on
"Gink" Cummings, without a doubt.
"Yes, Gibson," said the deputy. "What about it?"
"Is this one of Gibson's raids?" he asked.
"You guessed it," snapped the deputy. "Now, get along there. Hop on that
truck with the rest of the gents and see if you can't get consolation
from the sheriff's nephew and the bird that tried to bull me he was
working for Gibson."
"But I am a reporter," protested John. "You'll find out soon enough."
"Don't get gay!" threatened the deputy. "Don't get gay!"
John scrambled on the truck.
"Come right along, brother, join our party," said a red-faced man in a
brown check suit and a greasy derby hat, who reached down to help John
up.
The truck was now crowded with standing men. Three of the deputies swung
themselves up on the back of it to act as a rear guard. Murphy squirmed
through the tightly packed load until he reached John's side again.
"Listen, kid," he said in his husky voice. "If you want to find out
something about dis game, just keep your trap shut and do what Tim
Murphy tells you. Get me? I was tipped to dis raid but I didn't know it
was coming so soon or I'd got ya out of it, see? It's a phoney, see.
There's ten bucks in it for ya if ya go through with it like I tell ya,
see?"
"What are you talking about, Murphy?" John demanded.
"I know what I'm talkin' about and don't you forget it," Murphy said.
"Just do what I tell ya, will ya?"
"All right," he agreed.
The truck turned to the left at First and Spring streets and struggled
up the grade at First west of Broadway, backing into the curb in front
of the central police station. By the time they were leaving the truck
John had decided to "go through with it," as Murphy had suggested. It
would be an adventure, at least, and Murphy's repeated assertions that
it was "a phoney" invited investigation. He knew that a word to Kenyon,
the police reporter for his paper, would get him out of his trouble, but
he concluded he had nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain by
following Murphy's whispered instructions.
Herded into an alley-way leading back to the desk sergeant's room were,
John estimated, more than 150 other men and boys, arrested like himself
and evidently brought to headquarters in other trucks. In this crowd he
learned that every place along Spring street where it was suspected that
a handbook on the races at Tia Juana was being operated had been raided
simultaneously by squads of deputy sheriffs detailed to the command of
Police Commissioner Gibson by the sheriff. Over the heads of the crowd
he caught a glimpse of Gibson himself surrounded by Kenyon and the other
police reporters. He saw Gibson pose for a photograph with the crowd of
men he had arrested as a background. Once, he thought, he had a glimpse
of Brennan in conversation with Police Chief Sweeney.
"Have ya got ten bucks on ya?" asked Murphy.
"Why?" he asked.
"Dat's da bail," explained Murphy.
"I've got it," he said. "Have you yours?"
"Murphy's always got his bail money wid him," the twisted nose youth
grinned. "Remember, now, stick wid me."
"Right-o," said John.
"Gwan!" Murphy made the word the acme of disgust. "If I hadn't seen ya
mix it wid de Battler I'd bust ya for dat," he said. Evidently "right-o"
was not a word calculated to win in Twisted Nose's vocabulary.
Slowly, like a line of theatergoers approaching the box office, the
crowd worked its way toward the desk sergeant's counter, where two
police officers were booking the prisoners, receiving $10 in bail from
each and handing them a receipt for the money. Murphy and John finally
reached the counter.
"Murphy--Tim Murphy," said John's companion, stepping up to the desk and
speaking before the desk sergeant asked him his name, as if it was an
old ceremony which he knew by heart.
"Murphy--Tim Murphy," repeated the officer at the huge book. "If no one
was looking, Murphy, I'd slip you out the back door for having a name
like that."
Murphy handed over his $10 in bail, received his receipt slip and
stepped to one side to wait for John.
"Gallant--John Gallant," said John, following Murphy's lead.
"Ten bucks," said the desk sergeant.
"No, I mean what am I arrested for?"
"Oh, you're particular, are you? Well, it's loitering in a gambling
resort and playing the handbook. I suppose you'll ask for a jury trial?"
inquired the officer, with pretended politeness.
He produced his $10 and was given a receipt. Murphy tugged at his arm.
"Come on," he whispered. "Da sooner we get back da better."
John followed him out into the street. Turning to the right, Murphy
walked rapidly down First street toward Broadway, his arm hooked to
John's.
"Now, Murphy," he said, "tell me what's this all about--what are you
going to do?"
"Well, listen, kid, and I'll spill it to ya," Murphy said, talking as
they walked. "Dis raid was all a phoney, get me?"
"A phoney?"
"Ya, a phoney! Fixed, framed, phoney, see? I get my orders da other day.
A friend o' mine tips me. He steers me dat de handbooks are goin' to be
pulled and if I'm pinched for me to go through with it and there'll be
ten bucks in it for me."
"How?" asked John, impatiently.
"I'll get my ten bucks from da boss for bein' a good little boy and
gettin' pinched, see? It's dis way: Dis new commissioner, Gibson, wants
to make a big play, get me? He wants to do a grandstand on da bookmakers
and de 'Gink's' for him, see?"
"The 'Gink'?" exclaimed John. "'Gink' Cummings?"
"Sssh, not so loud, not so loud," cautioned Murphy.
"You mean to tell me that the 'Gink' is helping Gibson?" John demanded,
coming to a standstill.
"Come on," said Murphy, tugging at his arm. "I didn't say dat, did I?
All I said was dat da 'Gink' was for him pulling the bookies. Search me,
why. I figures it dat da 'Gink' has split with da bookies and is out to
teach 'em to behave."
"Then this raid was just what Cummings wanted?"
"Dat's it. If it wasn't we wouldn't be gettin' our ten back and ten on
top of it. I was steered to hang around a bookmaking joint for a few
days so dat when Gibson and his deputies come there would be somebody to
get pinched, see?"
"And were all those other men tipped to do the same thing?"
"Sure. Dey got a few suckers but de bunch was all in on the know."
"But how did the 'Gink' know beforehand that the raid was going to be
made?"
"Say," expostulated Murphy, "ask me some-pun easy, will ya? Da 'Gink'
knows everything before it happens, see? If he didn't he wouldn't be da
'Gink,' dat's all."
A thrill went through John. He was "in on the know," as Murphy had put
it. What a discovery he had made! What would Brennan say when he told
him? What would the mayor say? And what would Gibson say?
They were back before the place in which they had been arrested. Murphy
turned, guiding John by the arm with him.
"Now keep your trap shut and let me do da talkin', see?" he admonished
as they went through the swinging doors.
Inside things were exactly as they had been before the raid, except that
there were twice as many in the long room. John recognized the red-faced
man in the brown check suit and the greasy derby hat who had helped him
on to the truck as he stood at the bar, a glass of near-beer in front of
him and chatting with the bartender, who was pulling on his white coat
again.
Murphy led him to the back room and rapped on a door.
"Come in," a voice called.
Murphy opened the door and entered, beckoning to John with a jerk of the
head to follow him.