Leesburg, Washington-Baltimore and the University of Lima. You are a
Confederate yourself, sir?”
“Southron, yes sir, I am that and mighty proud of it. Now look a-here,
boy: I’ll lay all my cards on the table, face up. Youre a free man and
you aint getting any pay here. Now how’d you like to do a little job
for me? They’s good money in it; and I imagine I’d be able to fix up
one of those deals—what do they call em? scholarships—at the University
of Leesburg, after.”
A scholarship at Leesburg. Where the Department of History was engaged
on a monumental project—nothing less than a compilation of all known
source material on the War of Southron Independence! It was only with
the strongest effort that I refrained from agreeing blindly.
“It sounds fine, Mr—?”
“Colonel Tolliburr. Jest call me cunnel.”
There wasnt anything remotely military in his bearing. “It sounds good
to me, Colonel. What is the job?”
He clicked his too regular teeth thoughtfully. “Hardly anything at all,
m’boy, hardly anything at all. Just want you to keep a list for me.”
He seemed to think this a complete explanation. “What kind of list,
Colonel?”
“Why, list of the people that come in here steady. Especially the ones
don’t seem to buy anything, just talk to your boss. Names if you know
em, but that aint real important, and a sort of rough description.
Like five foot nine, blue eyes, dark hair, busted nose, scar on right
eyebrow. And so on. Nothing real detailed. And a list of deliveries.”
Was I tempted? I don’t really know. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I’m afraid I
can’t help you.”
“Not even for that scholarship and say, a hundred dollars in real
money?”
I shook my head.
“They’s no harm in it, boy. Likely nothing’ll come of it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Two hundred? I’m not talking about yankee slugs, but good CSA bills,
each with a picture of President Jimmy right slapdash on the middle of
it.”
“It’s not a matter of money, Colonel Tolliburr.”
He looked at me shrewdly. “Think it over, boy. No use being hasty.” He
handed me a card. “Any time you change your mind come and see me or
send me a telegram.”
I watched him out of the store. The Grand Army must be annoying the
mighty Confederacy. Tyss ought to know about the agent’s interest. And
I knew I would be unable to tell him.
“Suppose,” I asked Enfandin the next day, “suppose one were placed in
the position of being an involuntary assistant in a—to a....”
I was at a loss for words to describe the situation without being
incriminatingly specific. I could not tell him about Tolliburr and
my clear duty to let Tyss know of the colonel’s espionage without
revealing Tyss’s connection with the Grand Army and thus uncovering my
deceit in not warning Enfandin earlier. Whatever I said or failed to
say, I was somehow culpable.
He waited patiently while I groped, trying to formulate a question
which was no longer a question. “You can’t do evil that good may come
of it,” I burst out at last.
“Quite so. And then?”
“Well.... That might mean eventually giving up all action entirely,
since we can never be sure even the most innocent act may not have bad
consequences.”
He nodded. “It might. The Manichaeans thought it did; they believed
good and evil balanced and man was created in the image of Satan. But
certainly there is a vast difference between this inhuman dogma and
refusing to do consciously wicked deeds.”
“Maybe,” I said dubiously.
He looked at me speculatively. “A man is drowning in the river. I have
a rope. If I throw him the rope he may not only climb to safety but
take it from me and use it to garrote some honest citizen. Shall I
therefore let him drown because I must not do good lest evil come of
it?”
“But sometimes they are so mixed up it is impossible to disentangle
them.”
“Impossible? Or very difficult?”
“Um.... I don’t know.”
“Are you not perhaps putting the problem too abstractly? Is not perhaps
your situation—your hypothetical situation—one of being accessory
to wrong rather than facing an alternative which means personal
unhappiness?”
Again I struggled for noncommittal words. He had formulated my dilemma
about the Grand Army so far as it connected with giving up my place in
the bookstore or telling him of Tyss’s bias. Yet not entirely. And why
could I not let Tyss know of Colonel Tolliburr’s visit, which it was
certainly my duty to do? Was this overscrupulousness only a means of
avoiding any unpleasantness?
“Yes,” I muttered at last.
“It would be very nice if there were no drawbacks ever attached to the
virtuous choice. Then the only ones who would elect to do wrong would
be those of twisted minds, the perverse, the insane. Who would prefer
the devious course if the straight one were just as easy? No, no, my
dear Hodge; one cannot escape the responsibility for his choice simply
because the other way means inconvenience or hardships or tribulation.”
“Must we always act, whether we are sure of the outcome of our action
or not?”
“Not acting is also action; can we always be sure of the outcome of
refusing to act?”
Was it pettiness that made me contrast his position as an official of
a small yet fairly secure power, well enough paid to live comfortably,
with mine where a break with Tyss meant beggary and no further chance
of fulfilling the ambition every day more important to me? _Did_
circumstances alter cases, and was it easy for Enfandin to talk as he
did, unconfronted with harsh alternatives?
“You know, Hodge,” he said as though changing the subject, “I am what
they call a career man, meaning I have no money except my salary. This
might seem much to you, but it is really little, particularly since
protocol says I must spend more than necessary. For the honor of my
country. At home I have an establishment to keep up where my wife and
children live—”
I had wondered about his apparent bachelorhood.
“—because to be rudely frank, I do not think they would be happy or
safe in the United States on account of their color. Besides these
expenses I make personal contributions for the assistance of black men
who are—how shall we say it?—unhappily circumstanced in your country,
for I have found the official allotment is never enough. Now I have
been indiscreet; you know state secrets. Why do I tell you this?
Because, my friend, I should like to help. Alas, I cannot offer money.
But this I can do, if it will not offend your pride: I suggest you live
here—it will be no more uncomfortable than the arrangements you have
described in the store—and attend one of the colleges of the city. A
medal or an order from the Haitian government judiciously conferred
on an eminent educator—decorations cut so nicely across color-lines,
perhaps because they don’t show their origin to the uninitiated—should
take care of tuition fees. What do you say?”
What could I say? That I did not deserve his generosity? The statement
would be meaningless, a catchphrase, unless I explained that I’d not
been open with him, and now even less than before was I able to do
this. Or could I say that bare minutes earlier I had thought enviously
and spitefully of him? Wretched and happy, I mumbled incoherent
thanks, began a number of sentences and left them unfinished, lapsed
into dazed silence.
But the newly opened prospect cut through my introspection and
scattered my self-reproaches. The future was too exciting to dwell in
any other time; in a moment we were both sketching rapid plans and
supplementing each other’s designs with revisions of our own. Words
tumbled out; ideas were caught in mid-expression. We decided, we
reconsidered, we returned to the first decisions.
I was to give Tyss two weeks’ notice despite the original agreement
making such nicety superfluous; Enfandin was to discuss matriculation
with a professor he knew. My employer raised a quizzical eyebrow at my
information.
“Ah, Hodgins, you see how neatly the script works out. Nothing left to
chance or choice. If you hadnt been relieved of your trifling capital
by a man of enterprise whose methods were more successful than subtle
you might have fumbled at the edge of the academic world for four years
and then, having substituted a wad of unrelated facts for common sense
and whatever ability to think you may have possessed, fumbled for the
rest of your life at the edge of the economic world. You wouldnt have
met George Pondible or gotten here where you could discover your own
mind without adjustment to a professorial iron maiden.”
“I thought it was all arbitrary.”
He gave me a reproachful look. “Arbitrary and predetermined are not
synonymous, Hodgins, nor does either rule out artistry. Mindless
artistry of course, like that of the snowflake or crystal. And how
artistic this development is! You will go on to become a professor
yourself and construct iron maidens for promising students who might
become your competitors. You will write learned histories, for you
are—havent I said this before?—the spectator type. The part written
for you does not call for you to be a participant, an instrument
for—apparently—influencing events. Hence it is proper that you report
them so future generations may get the illusion they arent puppets.”
He grinned at me. At another time I would have been delighted to pounce
on the assortment of inconsistencies he had just offered; at the moment
I could think of nothing but my failure to mention the Confederate
agent’s visit. It almost seemed his mechanist notions were valid and I
was destined always to be the ungrateful recipient of kindness.
“All right,” he said, swallowing the last of his bread and half-raw
meat; “so long as your sentimentality impels you to respect obligations
I can find work for you. Those boxes over there go upstairs. Pondible’s
bringing a van around for them this afternoon.”
Ive heard the assumption that working in a bookstore must be light and
pleasant. Many times during the years with Roger Tyss I had reason
to be thankful for my strength and farm training. The boxes were
deceptively small but so heavy they could only have been solidly packed
with paper. Even with Tyss carrying box for box with me I was vastly
relieved when I had to quit to run an errand.
When I got back he went out to make an offer on someone’s library.
“There are only four left. The last two are paper-wrapped; didnt have
enough boxes.”
It was characteristic of him to leave the lighter packages for me. I
ran up the stairs with one of the two remaining wooden containers.
Returning, I tripped on the lowest step and sprawled forward.
Reflexively I threw out my hands and landed on one of the paper
parcels. The tight-stretched covering cracked and split under the
impact; the contents—neatly tied rectangular bundles—spilled out.
I had learned enough of the printing trade to recognize the brightly
colored oblongs as lithographs, and I wondered as I stooped over to
gather them up why such a job should have been given Tyss rather than a
shop specializing in this work. Even under the gaslight the colors were
hard and vigorous.
Then I really looked at the bundle I was holding. ESPAÑA was enscrolled
across the top; below it was the picture of a man with long nose and
jutting underlip, flanked by two ornate figure fives, and beneath
them the legend, CINCO PESETAS. Spanish Empire banknotes. Bundles and
bundles of them.
I needed neither expert knowledge nor minute scrutiny to tell me there
was a fortune here in counterfeit money. The purpose in forging Spanish
currency I could not see; that it was no private undertaking of Tyss’s
but an activity of the Grand Army I was certain. Puzzled and worried,
I rewrapped the bundles of notes into as neat an imitation of the
original package as I could contrive.
The rest of the day I spent casting uneasy glances at the mound of
boxes and watching with apprehension the movement of anyone toward
them. Death was the penalty for counterfeiting United States coins; I
had no idea of the punishment for doing the same with foreign paper but
I was sure even so minor an accessory as myself would be in a sad way
if some officious customer should stumble against one of the packages.
Tyss in no way acted like a guilty man, or even one with an important
secret. He seemed unaware of any peril; doubtless he was daily in
similar situations, only chance and my own lack of observation had
prevented my discovering this earlier.
Nor did he show anxiety when Pondible failed to arrive. Darkness came
and the gaslamps went on in the streets. The heavy press of traffic
outside dwindled, but the incriminating boxes remained undisturbed near
the door. At last there was the sound of uncertain wheels slowing up
outside and Pondible’s voice admonishing, “Wh-whoa!”
I rushed out just as he was dismounting with slow dignity. “Who goes?”
he asked; “Vance and give a countersign.”
“It’s Hodge,” I said. “Let me help you.”
“Hodge! Old friend; not seen long time!” (He had been in the store only
the day before.) “Terrible sfortune, Hodge. Dri-driving wagon. Fell
off. Fell off wagon I mean. See?”
“Sure, I see. Let me hitch the horse for you. Mr Tyss is waiting.”
“Avoidable,” he muttered, “nuvoidable, voidable. Fell off.”
Tyss took him by the arm. “You come with me and rest awhile. Hodgins,
you better start loading up; youll have to do the delivering now.”
Rebellious refusal formed in my mind. Why should I be still further
involved? He had no right to demand it of me; in self-protection I was
bound to refuse. “Mr Tyss....”
“Yes?”
Two weeks would see me free of him, but nothing could wipe out the debt
I owed him. “Nothing. Nothing,” I murmured and picked up one of the
boxes.
_8._ _IN VIOLENT TIMES_
He gave me an address on Twenty-Sixth Street. “Sprovis is the name.”
“All right,” I said as stolidly as I could.
“Let them do the unloading. I see there’s a full feedbag in the van;
that’ll be a good time to give it to the horse.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll load up another consignment and drive with you to the
destination. Take the van back to the livery stable. Here’s money for
your supper and carfare back here.”
He thinks of everything, I reflected bitterly. Except that I don’t want
to have anything to do with this.
Driving slackly through the almost empty streets my resentment
continued to rise, drowning, at least partly, my fear of being for some
unfathomable reason stopped by a police officer and apprehended. Why
should I be stopped? Why should the Grand Army counterfeit pesetas?
The address, which I had trouble finding on the poorly lit
thoroughfare, was one of those four-storey stuccos at least a century
old, showing few signs of recent repair. Mr Sprovis, who occupied the
basement, had one ear distinctly larger than the other, an anomaly I
could not help attributing to a trick of constantly pulling on the
lobe. He, like the others who came out with him to unload the van, wore
the Grand Army beard.
“I had to come instead of Pon—”
“No names,” he growled. “Hear? No names.”
“All right. I was told you’d unload and load up again.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I slipped the strap of the feedbag over the horse’s ear and started
toward Eighth Avenue.
“Hey! Where you going?”
“To get something to eat. Anything wrong with that?”
I felt him peering suspiciously at me. “Guess not. But don’t keep us
waiting, see? We’ll be ready to go in twenty minutes.”
I did not like Mr Sprovis. In the automatic lunchroom where the dishes
were delivered by a clever clockwork device as coins were deposited
in the right slots, I gorged on fish and potatoes, but my pleasure at
getting away for once from the unvarying bread and heart was spoiled by
the thought of him. And I was at best no more than half through with
the night’s adventure. What freight Sprovis and his companions were now
loading in the van I had no idea. Except that it was nothing innocent.
When I turned the corner into Twenty-Sixth Street again, the shadowy
mass of the horse and van was gone from its place by the curb. Alarmed,
I broke into a run and discovered it turning in the middle of the
block. I jumped and caught hold of the dash, pulling myself aboard.
“What’s the idea?”
A fist caught me in the shoulder, almost knocking me back into the
street. Zigzags of shock ran down my arm, terminating in numbing pain.
Desperately I clung to the dash.
“Hold it,” someone rumbled; “it’s the punk who came with. Let him in.”
Another voice, evidently belonging to the man who’d hit me, admonished,
“Want to watch yourself, chum. Not go jumping like that without
warning. I might of stuck a shiv in your ribs instead of my hand.”
I could only repeat, “What’s the idea of trying to run off with the
van? I’m responsible for it.”
“He’s responsible, see,” mocked another voice from the body of the van.
“Aint polite not to wait on him.”
I was wedged between the driver and my assailant; my shoulder ached and
I was beginning to be really frightened now my first anger had passed.
These were “action” members of the Grand Army; men who regularly
committed battery, mayhem, arson, robbery and murder. I had been both
foolhardy and lucky; realizing this it seemed diplomatic not to try for
possession of the reins.
I could hear the breathing and mumbling of others in back, but it didnt
need this to tell me the van was over-loaded. We turned north on Sixth
Avenue; the street lights showed Sprovis driving. “Gidap, gidap,” he
urged, “get going!”
“That’s a horse,” I protested; “not a locomotive.”
“What do you know?” came from behind; “And we thought we was on the
Erie.”
“He’s tired,” I persisted, “and he’s pulling too much weight.”
“Shut up,” ordered Sprovis quietly. “Shut up.” The quietness was not
deceptive; it was ominous. I shut up.
Speed was stupid on several counts. For one thing it called attention
to the van at a time when most commercial vehicles had been stabled for
the night and the traffic was almost entirely carriages, buggies, hacks
and minibiles. I visualized the suspicious crowd which would gather
immediately if our horse dropped from exhaustion. There was no hope
that consciousness of an innocuous cargo made Sprovis bold; whatever we
carried was bound to be as incriminating as the counterfeit bills.
Disconnected scraps of conversation drifted from Sprovis’ companions.
“I says, ‘Look here, youre making a nice profit from selling abroad.
Either you....’”
“And of course he put it all on a twenty-dollar ticket even though....”
“‘ ... my taxes,’ he says. ‘You worry about your taxes,’ I says; ‘I’m
worried about your contributions.’”
A monotonous chuffing close behind us forced itself into my
consciousness; when we turned eastward in the Forties I exclaimed,
“There’s a minibile following us!”
Even as I spoke the trackless engine pulled alongside and then darted
ahead to pocket us by nosing diagonally toward the curb. The horse must
have been too weak to shy; he simply stopped short and I heard the
curses of the felled passengers behind me.
“Not the cops anyway!”
“Cons for a nickel!”
“Only half a block from—”
“Quick, break out the guns—”
“Not those guns; one bang and we’re through. Air pistols, if anybody’s
got one. Hands or knives. Get them all!”
They piled out swiftly past me; I remained alone on the seat, an
audience of one, properly ensconced. A few blocks away was the small
park where Tirzah used to meet me. It was not believable that this was
happening in one of New York’s quietest residential districts in the
year 1942.
An uneven, distorting light emphasized the abnormal speed of the
incident that followed, making the action seem jumpy, as though the
participants were caught at static moments, changing their attitudes
between flashes of visibility. The tempo was so swift any possible
spectators in the bordering windows or on the sidewalks wouldnt have
had time to realize what was going on before it was all over.
Four men from the minibile were met by five from the van. The odds were
not too unequal, for the attackers had a discipline which Sprovis’
force lacked. Their leader attempted to parley during one of those
seconds of apparent inaction. “Hay you men—we got nothing against you.
They’s a thousand dollars apiece in it for you—”
A fist smacked into his mouth. The light caught his face as he
was jolted back, but I hardly needed its revelation to confirm my
recognition of Colonel Tolliburr’s voice.
The Confederate agents had brass knuckles and black-jacks, Colonel
Tolliburr had a sword-cane which he unsheathed with a glinting
flourish. The Grand Army men flashed knives; no one seemed to be using
air pistols or spring-powered guns.
Both sides were intent on keeping the clash as quiet and inconspicuous
as possible; no one shouted with anger or screamed in pain. This
muffled intensity made the struggle more gruesome; the contenders
fought their natural impulses as well as each other. I heard the impact
of blows, the grunts of effort, the choked-back cries, the scraping of
shoes on pavement and the thud of falls. One of the defenders fell, and
two of the attackers, before the two remaining Southrons gave up the
battle and attempted escape.
With united impulse they started for the minibile, evidently realized
they wouldnt have time to get up power, and began running down the
street. Their moment of indecision did for them. As the four Grand
Army men closed in I saw the Confederates raise their arms in the
traditional gesture of surrender. Then they were struck down.
I crept noiselessly down on the off-side of the van and hastened
quietly away in the protection of the shadows.
_9._ _BARBARA_
For the next few days reading was pure pretense. I used the opened
book to mask my privacy while I trembled not so much with fear as
with horror. I had been brought up in a harsh enough world and murder
was no novelty in New York; I had seen slain men before, but this was
the first time I had been confronted with naked, merciless savagery.
Though I believed Sprovis would have had no qualms about despatching an
inconvenient witness if I had stayed on the van, I had no particular
fear for my own safety, for my knowledge of what had happened became
less dangerous daily. The terror of the deed itself however remained
constant.
I was not concerned solely with revulsion. Inquisitiveness looked out
under loathing to make me wonder what lay behind the night’s events.
What had really happened, and what did it all mean?
From scraps of conversation accidentally heard or deliberately
eavesdropped, from the newspapers, from deduction and remembered
fragments, I reconstructed the picture which made the background. Its
borders reached a long way from Astor Place.
For years the world had been waiting, half in dread, half in
resignation, for war to break out between the world’s two Great Powers,
the German Union and the Confederate States. Some expected the point
of explosion would be the Confederacy’s ally, the British Empire; most
anticipated at least part of the war would be fought in the United
States.
The scheme of the Grand Army, or of that part of it which included
Tyss, was apparently a farfetched and fantastic attempt to circumvent
the probable course of history. The counterfeiting was an aspect of
this attempt which was nothing less than trying to force the war to
start, not through the Confederacy’s ally, but through the German
Union’s—the Spanish Empire. With enormous amounts of the spurious
currency circulated by emissaries posing as Confederate agents, the
Grand Army hoped to embroil the Confederacy with Spain and possibly
preserve the neutrality of the United States. It was an ingenuous idea
evolved, I see now, by men without knowledge of the actual mechanics of
world politics.
If I ever had any sentimental notions about the Army they vanished now.
Tyss’s mechanism may not have been purposefully designed to palliate,
but it made it easy to justify actions like Sprovis’. I had no such
convenient way of numbing my conscience. But even as I brooded over the
weakness and cowardice which made me an accomplice, I looked forward to
my release. I had not seen Enfandin since his offer; in a week I would
leave the bookstore for his sanctuary, and I resolved my first act
should be to tell him everything. And then that dream was exploded just
as it was about to be realized.