alacrity. "I'm glad you have grasped the situation so soon. That makes
it easier for me. Now, what I have been trying to tell you is this. I
received a letter about you to-night. It seems that before leaving New
York you converted bonds and mortgages belonging to Miss Martha Field,
which she had intrusted to you, into ready money. And that you took
this money with you. Now, as this is the first place you have stopped
since leaving New York, except Gibraltar, where you could not have
banked it, you must have it with you now, here in this town, in this
hotel, possibly in this room. What else you have belonging to other
poor devils and corporations does not concern me. It's yours as far as
I mean to do anything about it. But this sixty thousand dollars which
belongs to Miss Field, who is the best, purest, and kindest woman I
have ever known, and who has given away more money than you ever
stole, is going back with me to-morrow to New York." Holcombe leaned
forward as he spoke, and rapped with his knuckles on the table. Allen
confronted him in amazement, in which there was not so much surprise
at what the other threatened to do as at the fact that it was he who
had proposed doing it.
"I don't understand," he said, slowly, with the air of a bewildered
child.
"It's plain enough," replied the other, impatiently. "I tell you I
want sixty thousand dollars of the money you have with you. You can
understand that, can't you?"
"But how?" expostulated Allen. "You don't mean to rob me, do you,
Harry?" he asked with a laugh.
"You're a very stupid person for so clever a one," Holcombe said,
impatiently. "You must give me sixty thousand dollars--and if you
don't, I'll take it. Come, now, where is it--in that box?" He pointed
with his finger toward a square travelling-case covered with black
leather that stood open on the table filled with papers and blue
envelopes.
"Take it!" exclaimed Allen. "You, Henry Holcombe? Is it you who are
speaking? Do I hear you?" He looked at Holcombe with eyes full of
genuine wonder and a touch of fear. As he spoke his hand reached out
mechanically and drew the leather-bound box toward him.
"Ah, it is in that box, then," said Holcombe, in a quiet, grave tone.
"Now count it out, and be quick."
"Are you drunk?" cried the other, fiercely. "Do you propose to turn
highwayman and thief? What do you mean?" Holcombe reached quickly
across the table toward the box, but the other drew it back, snapping
the lid down, and hugging it close against his breast. "If you move,
Holcombe," he cried, in a voice of terror and warning, "I'll call the
people of the house and--and expose you."
"Expose me, you idiot," returned Holcombe, fiercely. "How dare
_you_ talk to me like that!"
Allen dragged the table more evenly between them, as a general works
on his defenses even while he parleys with the enemy. "It's you who
are the idiot!" he cried. "Suppose you could overcome me, which would
be harder than you think, what are you going to do with the money? Do
you suppose I'd let you leave this country with it? Do you imagine for
a moment that I would give it up without raising my hand? I'd have you
dragged to prison from your bed this very night, or I'd have you
seized as you set your foot upon the wharf. I would appeal to our
Consul-General. As far as he knows, I am as worthy of protection as
you are yourself, and, failing him, I'd appeal to the law of the
land." He stopped for want of breath, and then began again with the
air of one who finds encouragement in the sound of his own voice.
"They may not understand extradition here, Holcombe," he said, "but a
thief is a thief all the world over. What you may be in New York isn't
going to help you here; neither is your father's name. To these people
you would be only a hotel thief who forces his way into other men's
rooms at night and--"
"You poor thing," interrupted Holcombe. "Do you know where you are?"
he demanded. "You talk, Allen, as though we were within sound of the
cable-cars on Broadway. This hotel is not the Brunswick, and this
Consul-General you speak of is another blackguard who knows that a
word from me at Washington, on my return, or a letter from here would
lose him his place and his liberty. He's as much of a rascal as any of
them, and he knows that I know it and that I may use that knowledge.
_He_ won't help you. And as for the law of the land"--Holcombe's
voice rose and broke in a mocking laugh--"there is no law of the land.
_That's why you're here!_ You are in a place populated by exiles
and outlaws like yourself, who have preyed upon society until society
has turned and frightened each of them off like a dog with his tail
between his legs. Don't give yourself confidence, Allen. That's all
you are, that's all we are--two dogs fighting for a stolen bone. The
man who rules you here is an ignorant negro, debauched and vicious and
a fanatic. He is shut off from every one, even to the approach of a
British ambassador. And what do you suppose he cares for a dog of a
Christian like you, who has been robbed in a hotel by another
Christian? And these others. Do you suppose they care? Call out--cry
for help, and tell them that you have half a million dollars in this
room, and they will fall on you and strip you of every cent of it, and
leave you to walk the beach for work. Now, what are you going to do?
Will you give me the money I want to take back where it belongs, or
will you call for help and lose it all?"
The two men confronted each other across the narrow length of the
table. The blood had run to Holcombe's face, but the face of the other
was drawn and pale with fear.
"You can't frighten me," he gasped, rallying his courage with an
effort of the will. "You are talking nonsense. This is a respectable
hotel; it isn't a den of thieves. You are trying to frighten me out of
the money with your lies and your lawyer's tricks, but you will find
that I am not so easily fooled. You are dealing with a man, Holcombe,
who suffered to get what he has, and who doesn't mean to let it go
without a fight for it. Come near me, I warn you, and I shall call for
help."
Holcombe backed slowly away from the table and tossed up his hands
with the gesture of one who gives up his argument. "You will have it,
will you?" he muttered, grimly. "Very well, you _shall_ fight for
it." He turned quickly and drove in the bolt of the door and placed
his shoulders over the electric button in the wall. "I have warned
you," he said, softly. "I have told you where you are, and that you
have nothing to expect from the outside. You are absolutely in my
power to do with as I please." He stopped, and, without moving his
eyes from Allen's face, drew the revolver from the pocket of his coat.
His manner was so terrible that Allen gazed at him, breathing faintly,
and with his eyes fixed in horrible fascination. "There is no law,"
Holcombe repeated, softly. "There is no help for you now or later. It
is a question of two men locked in a room with a table and sixty
thousand dollars between them. That is the situation. Two men and
sixty thousand dollars. We have returned to first principles, Allen.
It is a man against a man, and there is no Court of Appeal."
Allen's breath came back to him with a gasp, as though he had been
shocked with a sudden downpour of icy water.
"There is!" he cried. "There _is_ a Court of Appeal. For God's
sake, wait. I appeal to Henry Holcombe, to Judge Holcombe's son. I
appeal to your good name, Harry, to your fame in the world. Think what
you are doing; for the love of God, don't murder me. I'm a criminal, I
know, but not what you would be, Holcombe; not that. You are mad or
drunk. You wouldn't, you couldn't do it. Think of it! _You_,
Henry Holcombe. _You._"
The fingers of Holcombe's hand moved and tightened around the butt of
the pistol, the sweat sprang from the pores of his palm. He raised the
revolver and pointed it. "My sin's on my own head," he said. "Give me
the money."
The older man glanced fearfully back of him at the open window,
through which a sea breeze moved the palms outside, so that they
seemed to whisper together as though aghast at the scene before them.
The window was three stories from the ground, and Allen's eyes
returned to the stern face of the younger man. As they stood silent
there came to them the sound of some one moving in the hall, and of
men's voices whispering together. Allen's face lit with a sudden
radiance of hope, and Holcombe's arm moved uncertainly.
"I fancy," he said, in a whisper, "that those are my friends. They
have some idea of my purpose, and they have come to learn more. If you
call, I will let them in, and they will strangle you into silence
until I get the money."
The two men eyed each other steadily, the older seeming to weigh the
possible truth of Holcombe's last words in his mind. Holcombe broke
the silence in a lighter tone.
"Playing the policeman is a new role to me," he said, "and I warn you
that I have but little patience; and, besides, my hand is getting
tired, and this thing is at full cock."
Allen, for the first time, lowered the box upon the table and drew
from it a bundle of notes bound together with elastic bandages.
Holcombe's eyes lighted as brightly at the sight as though the notes
were for his own private pleasures in the future.
"Be quick!" he said. "I cannot be responsible for the men outside."
Allen bent over the money, his face drawing into closer and sharper
lines as the amount grew, under his fingers, to the sum Holcombe had
demanded.
"Sixty thousand!" he said, in a voice of desperate calm.
"Good!" whispered Holcombe. "Pass it over to me. I hope I have taken
the most of what you have," he said, as he shoved the notes into his
pocket; "but this is something. Now I warn you," he added, as he
lowered the trigger of the revolver and put it out of sight, "that any
attempt to regain this will be futile. I am surrounded by friends; no
one knows you or cares about you. I shall sleep in my room to-night
without precaution, for I know that the money is now mine. Nothing you
can do will recall it. Your cue is silence and secrecy as to what you
have lost and as to what you still have with you."
He stopped in some confusion, interrupted by a sharp knock at the door
and two voices calling his name. Allen shrank back in terror.
"You coward!" he hissed. "You promised me you'd be content with what
you have." Holcombe looked at him in amazement. "And now your
accomplices are to have their share, too, are they?" the embezzler
whispered, fiercely. "You lied to me; you mean to take it all."
Holcombe, for an answer, drew back the bolt, but so softly that the
sound of his voice drowned the noise it made.
"No, not to-night," he said, briskly, so that the his voice penetrated
into the hall beyond. "I mustn't stop any longer, I'm keeping you up.
It has been very pleasant to have heard all that news from home. It
was such a chance, my seeing you before I sailed. Good-night." He
paused and pretended to listen. "No, Allen, I don't think it's a
servant," he said. "It's some of my friends looking for me. This is my
last night on shore, you see." He threw open the door and confronted
Meakim and Carroll as they stood in some confusion in the dark hall.
"Yes, it is some of my friends," Holcombe continued. "I'll be with you
in a minute," he said to them. Then he turned, and, crossing the room
in their sight, shook Allen by the hand, and bade him good-night and
good-by.
The embezzler's revulsion of feeling was so keen and the relief so
great that he was able to smile as Holcombe turned and left him. "I
wish you a pleasant voyage," he said, faintly.
Then Holcombe shut the door on him, closing him out from their sight.
He placed his hands on a shoulder of each of the two men and jumped
step by step down the stairs like a boy as they descended silently in
front of him. At the foot of the stairs Carroll turned and confronted
him sternly, staring him in the face. Meakim at one side eyed him
curiously.
"Well?" said Carroll, with one hand upon Holcombe's wrist.
Holcombe shook his hand free, laughing. "Well," he answered, "I
persuaded him to make restitution."
"You persuaded him!" exclaimed Carroll, impatiently. "How?"
Holcombe's eyes avoided those of the two inquisitors. He drew a long
breath, and then burst into a loud fit of hysterical laughter. The two
men surveyed him grimly. "I argued with him, of course," said
Holcombe, gayly. "That is my business, man; you forget that I am a
District Attorney--"
"_We_ didn't forget it," said Carroll, fiercely. "Did _you_?
What did you do?"
Holcombe backed away up the stairs shaking his head and laughing. "I
shall never tell you," he said. He pointed with his hand down the
second flight of stairs. "Meet me in the smoking-room," he continued.
"I will be there in a minute, and we will have a banquet. Ask the
others to come. I have something to do first."
The two men turned reluctantly away, and continued on down the stairs
without speaking and with their faces filled with doubt. Holcombe ran
first to Reese's room and replaced the pistol in its holder. He was
trembling as he threw the thing from him, and had barely reached his
own room and closed the door when a sudden faintness overcame him. The
weight he had laid on his nerves was gone and the laughter had
departed from his face. He stood looking back at what he had escaped
as a man reprieved at the steps of the gallows turns his head to
glance at the rope he has cheated. Holcombe tossed the bundle of
notes, upon the table and took an unsteady step across the room. Then
he turned suddenly and threw himself upon his knees and buried his
face in the pillow.
The sun rose the next morning on a cool, beautiful day, and the
Consul's boat, with the American flag trailing from the stern, rose
and fell on the bluest of blue waters as it carried Holcombe and his
friends to the steamer's side.
"We are going to miss you very much," Mrs. Carroll said. "I hope you
won't forget to send us word of yourself."
Miss Terrill said nothing. She was leaning over the side trailing her
hand in the water, and watching it run between her slim pink fingers.
She raised her eyes to find Holcombe looking at her intently with a
strange expression of wistfulness and pity, at which she smiled
brightly back at him, and began to plan vivaciously with Captain Reese
for a ride that same afternoon.
They separated over the steamer's deck, and Meakim, for the hundredth
time, and in the lack of conversation which comes at such moments,
offered Holcombe a fresh cigar.
"But I have got eight of yours now," said Holcombe.
"That's all right; put it in your pocket," said the Tammany chieftain,
"and smoke it after dinner. You'll need 'em. They're better than those
you'll get on the steamer, and they never went through a
custom-house."
Holcombe cleared his throat in some slight embarrassment. "Is there
anything I can do for you in New York, Meakim?" he asked. "Anybody I
can see, or to whom I can deliver a message?"
"No," said Meakim. "I write pretty often. Don't you worry about me,"
he added, gratefully. "I'll be back there some day myself, when the
law of limitation lets me."
Holcombe laughed. "Well," he said, "I'd be glad to do something for
you if you'd let me know what you'd like."
Meakim put his hands behind his back and puffed meditatively on his
cigar, rolling it between his lips with his tongue. Then he turned it
between his fingers and tossed the ashes over the side of the boat. He
gave a little sigh, and then frowned at having done so. "I'll tell you
what you _can_ do for me, Holcombe," he said, smiling. "Some
night I wish you would go down to Fourteenth Street, some night this
spring, when the boys are sitting out on the steps in front of the
Hall, and just take a drink for me at Ed Lally's; just for luck. Will
you? That's what I'd like to do. I don't know nothing better than
Fourteenth Street of a summer evening, with all the people crowding
into Pastor's on one side of the Hall, and the Third Avenue L cars
running by on the other. That's a gay sight; ain't it now? With all
the girls coming in and out of Theiss's, and the sidewalks crowded.
One of them warm nights when they have to have the windows open, and
you can hear the music in at Pastor's, and the audience clapping their
hands. That's great, isn't it? Well," he laughed and shook his head.
"I'll be back there some day, won't I," he said, wistfully, "and hear
it for myself."
"Carroll," said Holcombe, drawing the former to one side, "suppose I
see this cabman when I reach home, and get him to withdraw the charge,
or agree not to turn up when it comes to trial."
Carroll's face clouded in an instant. "Now, listen to me, Holcombe,"
he said. "You let my dirty work alone. There's lots of my friends who
have nothing better to do than just that. You have something better to
do, and you leave me and my rows to others. I like you for what you
are, and not for what you can do for me. I don't mean that I don't
appreciate your offer, but it shouldn't have come from an Assistant
District Attorney to a fugitive criminal."
"What nonsense!" said Holcombe.
"Don't say that; don't say that!" said Carroll, quickly, as though it
hurt him. "You wouldn't have said it a month ago."
Holcombe eyed the other with an alert, confident smile. "No, Carroll,"
he answered, "I would not." He put his hand on the other's shoulder
with a suggestion in his manner of his former self, and with a touch
of patronage. "I have learned a great deal in a month," he said.
"Seven battles were won in seven days once. All my life I have been
fighting causes, Carroll, and principles. I have been working with
laws against law-breakers. I have never yet fought a man. It was not
poor old Meakim, the individual, I prosecuted, but the corrupt
politician. Now, here I have been thrown with men and women on as
equal terms as a crew of sailors cast away upon a desert island. We
were each a law unto himself. And I have been brought face to face,
and for the first time in my life, not with principles of conduct, not
with causes, and not with laws, but with my fellow men."
THE BOY ORATOR OF ZEPATA CITY
The day was cruelly hot, with unwarranted gusts of wind which swept
the red dust in fierce eddies in at one end of Main Street and out at
the other, and waltzed fantastically across the prairie. When they had
passed, human beings opened their eyes again to blink hopelessly at
the white sun, and swore or gasped, as their nature moved them. There
were very few human beings in the streets, either in Houston Avenue,
where there were dwelling-houses, or in the business quarter on Main
Street. They were all at the new court-house, and every one possessed
of proper civic pride was either in the packed court-room itself, or
standing on the high steps outside, or pacing the long, freshly
calcimined corridors, where there was shade and less dust. It was an
eventful day in the history of Zepata City. The court-house had been
long in coming, the appropriation had been denied again and again; but
at last it stood a proud and hideous fact, like a gray prison,
towering above the bare, undecorated brick stores and the frame houses
on the prairie around it, new, raw, and cheap, from the tin statue on
the dome to the stucco round its base already cracking with the sun.
Piles of lumber and scaffolding and the lime beds the builders had
left still lay on the unsodded square, and the bursts of wind drove
the shavings across it, as they had done since the first day of
building, when the Hon. Horatio Macon, who had worked for the
appropriation, had laid the corner-stone and received the homage of
his constituents.
It seemed a particularly happy and appropriate circumstance that the
first business in the new court-room should be of itself of an
important and momentous nature, something that dealt not only with the
present but with the past of Zepata, and that the trial of so
celebrated an individual as Abe Barrow should open the court-house
with _éclat_, as Emma Abbott, who had come all the way from San
Antonio to do it, had opened the new opera-house the year before. The
District Attorney had said it would not take very long to dispose of
Barrow's case, but he had promised it would be an interesting if brief
trial, and the court-room was filled even to the open windows, where
men sat crowded together, with the perspiration running down their
faces, and the red dust settling and turning white upon their
shoulders.
Abe Barrow, the prisoner, had been as closely associated with the
early history of Zepata as Colonel Macon himself, and was as widely
known; he had killed in his day several of the Zepata citizens, and
two visiting brother-desperadoes, and the corner where his
gambling-house had stood was still known as Barrow's Corner, to the
regret of the druggist who had opened a shop there. Ten years before,
the murder of Deputy Sheriff Welsh had led him to the penitentiary,
and a month previous to the opening of the new court-house he had been
freed, and arrested at the prison gate to stand trial for the murder
of Hubert Thompson. The fight with Thompson had been a fair fight--so
those said who remembered it--and Thompson was a man they could well
spare; but the case against Barrow had been prepared during his
incarceration by the new and youthful District Attorney, "Judge" Henry
Harvey, and as it offered a fitting sacrifice for the dedication of
the new temple of justice, the people were satisfied and grateful.
The court-room was as bare of ornament as the cell from which the
prisoner had just been taken. There was an imitation walnut clock at
the back of the Judge's hair-cloth sofa, his revolving chair, and his
high desk. This was the only ornament. Below was the green table of
the District Attorney, upon which rested his papers and law-books and
his high hat. To one side sat the jury, ranch-owners and prominent
citizens, proud of having to serve on this the first day; and on the
other the prisoner in his box. Around them gathered the citizens of
Zepata in close rows, crowded together on unpainted benches; back of
them more citizens standing and a few awed Mexicans; and around all
the whitewashed walls. Colonel John Stogart, of Dallas, the prisoner's
attorney, procured obviously at great expense, no one knew by whom,
and Barrow's wife, a thin yellow-faced woman in a mean-fitting showy
gown, sat among the local celebrities at the District Attorney's
elbow. She was the only woman in the room.
Colonel Stogart's speech had been good. The citizens were glad it had
been so good; it had kept up the general tone of excellence, and it
was well that the best lawyer of Dallas should be present on this
occasion, and that he should have made what the citizens of Zepata
were proud to believe was one of the efforts of his life. As they
said, a court-house such as this one was not open for business every
day. It was also proper that Judge Truax, who was a real Judge, and
not one by courtesy only, as was the young District Attorney, should
sit upon the bench. He also was associated with the early days and
with the marvellous growth of Zepata City. He had taught the young
District Attorney much of what he knew, and his long white hair and
silver-rimmed spectacles gave dignity and the appearance of calm
justice to the bare room and to the heated words of the rival orators.
Colonel Stogart ceased speaking, and the District Attorney sucked in
his upper lip with a nervous, impatient sigh as he recognized that the
visiting attorney had proved murder in the second degree, and that an
execution in the jail-yard would not follow as a fitting sequence.
But he was determined that so far as in him lay he would at least send
his man back to the penitentiary for the remainder of his life.