WHICH CONCERNS POLITICS AND OTHER LOCAL MATTERS
It was an odd sight against the setting of pretty night and light, idle
talk. Peter's lip tightened.
"He's dead, poor chap!" he said, in a low voice. "Murdered."
"So it seems. We can't be sure from here, though. Where's that watch?
Here--some of you! Lower away the dinghy! Get a move!"
The boats were on their hooks, swung outboard ready for instant use. The
crew, tumbling out swiftly at the call, cleared away one and let it fall
over the side. The young men went down with it, Peter seizing the oars
as his by right. The floating boat with its strange cargo had drifted
close and was now lost in the vast black shadow of the yacht.
"Where is it?"
"I can't--Yes! There it is. Straight back. Now a little to the right.
Way enough!"
Varney, in the stern, leaned out and gripped the drifting gunwale
securely. But it was so dark here that he could see almost nothing.
"He's breathing, I think," he said, his hand against the strange man's
chest. "Pull out into the light."
But just then the arm that lay under the still head unmistakably
twitched.
"Good!" cried Peter and laughed a little. "Strike a match and let's have
a look at him."
Varney fumbled in his pockets, found one and scratched it on the side.
Shielding the flame in his curved hand, he leaned forward and held it
close to that motionless face.
It was a young face, pale and rather haggard, lined about the mouth and
yellow about the eyes; the face of a clever but broken gentleman. Full
of contrasts and a story as it was, it would have been a striking face
at any time; and to the two peering men in the _Cypriani's_ boat, it was
now very striking indeed. For they saw immediately that the curious eyes
were half open and were fixed full upon them.
The match burned Varney's fingers, went out and dropped into the water.
He said nothing. Neither did Peter. The man in the boat did not stir. So
went by a second of profound stillness. Then a somewhat blurred voice
said:
"When a gentleman goes rowing--in a private boat--and is raided by a
pair of unknown investigators--one of them wearing a Mother Hubbard--
who strike matches in his face and make personal remarks--he naturally
awaits their explanations."
The speech fell upon four of the most astonished ears in the State of
New York.
Peter recovered first: the remark about the Mother Hubbard had stung him
a little, even in that dumfounded moment, but he only laughed.
"The fact is, we made absolutely sure that you were a corpse. Our
mistake."
"But God save us!" murmured the young man. "Can't a man die these days
without a yacht-full of anxious persons steaming up and clamping a light
against his eyeball?"
"But can't we do something for you?" asked Varney. "That's what we are
here for."
The young man lay still and thought a moment, which he appeared to do
with some difficulty.
"To be frank," his voice came out of the dark, rather clearer now, "you
can. Give me a match, will you?"
Varney laughed; he produced and handed over a little box of them. Lying
flat on his back in the boat, the young man fished a cigarette out of
his pocket, hurriedly, and stuck it between his lips. The next minute
the spurt of a match cut the air. The two in the ship's boat caught a
brief, flashing glimpse of him--thin white hands raised to thin white
face.
"Something of a _poseur_, aren't you?" suggested Peter pleasantly.
"What's your rôle to-night?"
There followed a fractional pause.
"That of a vagrant student of manners and customs," answered the
colorless voice. "Therefore, to imitate your frankness, you interest me
greatly."
"Those who study manners," said Peter, "should learn them after a while.
Why didn't you sing out, when you saw us hustling to get out a boat, and
tell us not to bother, as you were only playing dead for the lark of the
thing?"
"Singing, whether out or in, is an art at which I can claim small
proficiency. But tell me the time, will you? I seem to have hocked my
watch."
Peter laughed a little ruefully. "It's seven thirty-six--no more and no
less."
The young man sat up with an effort, and uncertainly gathered up his
oars.
"You'll excuse me, then?" he said. "I have an engagement at seven
thirty, and as you see, there is little time to make it."
"We gave you a light," said Peter. "Why not reciprocate? Who the devil
are you?"
"I am a part of all that I have met," said the stranger, pulling off. "I
am wily wandering Ulysses. I am--"
"That will do," said Peter sharply.
He bowed gravely and rowed away. Peter looked after him for some time,
in rather impressive silence.
"What d' you suppose was the matter with the beggar, anyway? He wasn't
drunk."
"Didn't you notice his wrists when he held them up to light his
cigarette? Full of little scars."
Peter whistled. "So morphine is his trouble, is it? Listen!"
From down the river rose a faint roar, like the sound of many voices a
long way off. While the two men listened, it subsided and then rose
again.
"Hello!" said Varney. "Look at your student of manners and customs now."
The man in the boat was still plainly discernible, his face picked out
by the moon in greenish white. But there was no longer any lethargy in
his manner. He was bending his back to his best stroke--an excellent one
it was--and driving his light bark rapidly down the stream.
"My bet," said Varney, "is that he hears those shouts, and they mean
something to him--something interesting and important."
"Larry, be a sport! Let's follow this thing along and find out what it
all means."
"Oh, I'm willing to drop into town for a little reconnoissance, if you
like. Maybe we can pick up something that will help us in our business."
"Spoken like a scholar and a gentleman. One minute while I get on my
clothes. Oh--by the way! Er--this new--robe of mine doesn't look like a
Mother Hubbard, does it?"
"In my opinion," said Varney, "two things could not well be more utterly
unlike."
Peter was back in five minutes, clothed and in his right mind. His
falling foot hit the center-line of the gig with a thump, and they shot
away toward the town wharf.
They bade the boat wait their signal in the shadows a little upstream,
and jumped out upon the old and rotting landing. A street ran straight
before them, up a steep hill and into the heart of the town, and they
took it, guided by a burst of still distant laughter and hoarse shouts.
Toiling up the evil sidewalk, they looked about curiously at the town
which was to engage their attention for the next day or so. Over
everything hung that vague air of dejection and moral decay which is so
hard to define and so easy to detect. The street was lit with feeble
electric lights which did little more than nullify the moon. Grass grew
at its pleasure through the broken brick pavement; and even in that
dimness, it was very evident that the White Wing department had been
taking a long vacation.
Varney's eye took in everything. It occurred to him that this was a most
extraordinary place for the family of the exquisite and well-fixed
Elbert Carstairs to live. Hard on the heels of that came another thought
and he stopped.
"What's the matter?" said Peter.
"We simply mustn't get mixed up in any doings here, you know. Can't
afford it. Whatever is going on, our rôle must be that of quiet
onlookers only. Remember that."
"Quiet onlookers it is. Hello! Did you see that?"
"What?"
"Old duck in a felt hat walking behind us, a good distance off--I'd
heard him for some time. He stopped when we stopped, and when I turned
then I was just in time to see him go skipping up the side street."
"Well, what of it?"
"Not a thing. I'm interested in the sights of the town, that's all.
Listen to those hoodlums, will you?"
In the middle of that block rose a great public building of florid and
hideous architecture, absurdly expensive for so small a town, and
running fast to seed. On the corner ahead, at the crest of the slope,
stood the handsomest and most prosperous-looking building they had yet
seen. Its long side was cut by many windows, all brilliantly lit up, and
above the lower tier ran the gold-lettered legend:
WINES & LIQUORS. THE OTTOMAN. D. RYAN.
"When the saloon-keeper is the richest man in town," observed Peter,
"look out for trouble."
A roar of laughter, mingled with various derisive cries, broke out just
then, now from very near. The next minute the two men reached the brow
of the hill, and both stopped involuntarily, arrested by the tableau
which met their gaze beyond.
They stood on the upper side of a little rectangular "square," at the
lower edge of which, some fifty yards away, were gathered possibly
thirty or forty jostling and noisy men. Facing them, standing on a
carriage-block at the curb, stood a cool little man obviously engaged in
making a speech. The commonness of the men and the rough joviality of
their mood were the more accentuated by the supreme dignity of the
orator. He was a very small man, with pink cheeks and eye-glasses,
beautifully made and still more beautifully dressed; and for all their
boisterous "jollying" his auditors appeared rather to like him than the
contrary.
The men from the _Cypriani_ crossed the square and came up with the
merry-making Hunstonians. Varney's gaze went round the circle of faces
and saw inefficiency, shiftlessness, and failure everywhere stamped
upon them. Suddenly his wandering eye was arrested by a face of quite a
different sort. Directly opposite stood the eccentric young man of the
row-boat, watching the show out of listless eyes whose expression never
changed.
"On that horse-block," said Peter, raising his voice to carry above an
outburst of catcalls and allegedly humorous comment, "stands the Hunston
Reform Movement. Giving 'em a ripping talk, too--all out of Bryce, Mill,
and the other fellows."
But at that moment, as luck had it, the oratory came to a sudden end. A
sportive bull-pup, malevolently released by some one in the crowd,
danced up to the horse-block, barking joyfully, and made a lightning
dive for the spellbinder's legs. The spellbinder dexterously
side-stepped; the dog's aim was diverted from that fleshy portion of the
thigh which his fancy had selected; but his snapping teeth closed firmly
in the tail of the pretty light-gray coat, which the little man wore
rather long according to the mode of the day. And there he swung,
kicking and snarling, squirming and grunting, in the liveliest fashion
imaginable.
Merry pandemonium broke out among the onlookers; they howled with
shameless delight. It was hardly a pleasant scene to witness, though
redeemed by the little orator's gameness. His face, when he took in what
had happened to him, slowly turned the color of a sheet of white paper.
With indescribable dignity, he descended from his rostrum, carrying the
dog along, and walked out into the ring. In front of a tall,
loose-jointed, scraggly-mustached fellow he paused, and stared him in
the eye with steady fixity.
"T-t-take your d-d-damned d-dog off me, Hackley," he said, stuttering
badly, but very cool.
But Hackley backed away, shaking his head and bellowing with laughter.
In an ecstasy of delight, the onlookers began pressing more closely
about the men, narrowing the circle. And then it was that Peter, quite
forgetting his rôle of quiet onlooker and unable for his life to
restrain himself longer, put his shoulder to the ring and broke a
vigorous way through. He touched the little orator on the arm.
"No need to trouble the gentleman," Varney heard him say pleasantly.
"Just hold the position a moment, please." And so saying he swung back
his foot.
It landed with an impact that was loud and not agreeable to the ear. The
dog dropped with a frightful howl and, yelping madly, fled.
Simultaneously, cries arose about the ringside, and the dog's owner, an
alcoholic blaze in his eye, spat bitterly into his two palms and headed
straight for Peter.
"What in the blank-blank d' yer mean by kickin' my blank dog, you
blank-blankety-blank, you?" he inquired.
"I meant that he was behaving as no dog should," explained Peter, "and
the same remark applies to you."
He was not without skill at fisticuff, was Hackley. With the speed of a
tiger, he let out first his left fist, then his right, at Peter
Maginnis's head. But instead of arriving there, they collided with a
forearm which had about the resiliency of a two-foot stone-wall.
Simultaneously, Peter released his famous left-hook--had of the Bronx
Barman at ten dollars a lesson--and the fight was over.
Mr. Hackley's head struck first, and struck passionately; men picked him
up and bore him limply from the field. And Peter, a tiny spot of red in
the corner of his right eye, spoke thus to the horseshoe of watching
faces:
"You're a devil of a fine gang of red-hot sports, aren't you, boys? A
whole regiment of you with no more decency than to pick on one man like
this. I come from a white man's country where this kind of thing doesn't
go--thank God! And any man who has formed a bad opinion of my manners
and my general style of conversation can just step out into the ring and
let me explain my system to him."
But nobody accepted that invitation. Possibly the rub was that no one
cared to see that left-hook work again, at his own expense, or to
encourage any trouble to come athwart his quiet career. At any rate,
there were a few mutterings here and there; and then some one sang out:
"None fer mine, Mister! I ain't took out my life insurance yet."
There was a general laugh at this, and with that laugh Peter knew that
all hope of more fighting was gone. He bade them a sardonic good-night,
hooked his arm through the orator's (who actually showed signs of an
intention to resume his speech), and bore him off down the street.
The three men walked half a block in silence, and then the little
stranger stopped short.
"I say," he said in a faintly unsteady voice, "I want to thank you for
taking that confounded dog off me. In another minute he might have torn
my coat, don't you know?"
"Oh, that's all right," said Peter, repressing a smile. "Kicking dogs is
rather a specialty of mine, and it isn't often I get the chance to
attend to two of them in one evening. I wouldn't give the episode
another thought."
The little man gave a sudden fierce laugh. "Oh, certainly not! It's a
mere bagatelle for a candidate for Mayor to get a hand-out like that
from a gathering of voters!"
"Mayor! I beg your pardon! Of course I didn't quite understand."
Whereupon Peter begged to introduce himself as an ardent amateur
statesman, a student of good government from New Hampshire to New
Zealand and from Plato to Lincoln Steffens, who had--er--come to Hunston
hoping to see something of the fight for reform. The candidate, in turn,
produced cards. It became apparent that he bore the name of J. Pinkney
Hare. And the upshot of the colloquy was that the two young men
presently found themselves invited to call upon Candidate Hare next
morning, and learn something of the situation.
"I'll be delighted," accepted Peter promptly,--"delighted."
"That's settled then. Good-night--and thanks awf'ly for your
assistance."
He pivoted on his trim heels, abruptly, and went away up the side
street.
Peter turned to Varney with a faint grin. "That chap gets his first
lesson in the art of being a reformer to-morrow. Curious, wasn't
it?--stumbling right into the heart of the agitation an hour after we
hit the town."
Varney, who had followed Peter's activities of the last five minutes
with considerable disapproval, did not answer his smile.
"Give me a hasty sketch of your conception of a quiet onlooker, will
you, Peter?"
"Tush!" said Peter. "Why, can't you see that this sort of thing will
make the finest kind of blind? St! Here's our little friend coming back
again."
"I say," called the voice of J. Pinkney Hare out of the gloom.
"Yes?" said Peter.
The candidate drew nearer.
"Our city is not plentifully supplied with amusements," he began in his
somewhat pompous manner. "It just occurred to me that, in lieu of
anything better, you gentlemen might care to go home with me now. I
should be happy to have you--and to reciprocate your courtesy in any way
within my power."
Peter, doubtless remembering the slow time he had been having on the
yacht, brightened instantly and visibly.
"Why, _thanks_. I'll be awfully glad to come. I--er--I'm tremendously
interested in your situation here, I assure you."
Then, catching a warning glance from Varney, who politely declined the
invitation, he apologized to the candidate and drew his captain briefly
aside.
"I'll pick up all the information I can--understand?" he murmured
hurriedly. "And don't you worry. A little flurry in politics will make
the best sort of a cover for you while you sneak around after Mary."
On that the two friends parted. Peter hurried on after the little
reformer, and Varney, turning, continued his way down Main Street toward
the river and the _Cypriani_, not entirely displeased, after all, that
Peter had found some congenial diversion for the evening.
The street was almost a desert. If the unmistakable sounds of revelry by
night meant anything, nearly the whole population was behind him in the
Ottoman bar. But in the middle of the next block, two ragged men,
standing idly and talking together, turned at the sounds of the young
man's steps. One of them, revealed by a near-by shop-light, had straggly
gray whiskers, vacant eyes, and a bad foolish mouth. Both of them stared
at Varney with marked intentness. He had to go quite out of his way to
get round them.
"They don't see strangers every day, I take it," he thought absently;
and suddenly he cast an inquiring eye at the heavens.
The night, so shining half an hour before, was becoming heavily
overcast. Clouds had rolled up from nowhere and blotted out the moon.
About him the night breeze was freshening with a certain significance;
and now unexpectedly there fell upon his ear the faint far rumble of
thunder. Decidedly, there would be rain, and that right soon. Varney
quickened his pace.
At the end of that quiet block he came upon a crimson-cheeked lady,
somewhat past her first youth and over-plump for beauty, who was engaged
in putting up the shutters at her mother's grocery establishment.
Glancing around casually at his approach, her glance became transfixed
into a stare.
"Well!" she exclaimed in surprise and not without coquettishness--"if it
ain't Mr. Ferris!"
"If it ain't Mr. Ferris--what then?" asked Varney. "For, madam, I assure
you that it ain't."
The woman, taken aback by this denial, only stared and had no reply
ready. But the young man, walking on, was set to thinking by this second
encounter, and presently he mused: "I'm somebody's blooming double,
that's what. I wonder whose."
And on that word, as though to get an answer to his speculation, he
suddenly halted and turned.
He had now progressed nearly a block from the buxom young woman of the
grocery. For some time, even before that meeting, he had been aware of
light, steady footsteps behind him on the dark street, gaining on him.
By this time they had come very near; and now as he wheeled sharply,
with a vague anticipation of Peter's "old duck in a felt hat," he found
himself face to face with quite a different figure--that of a thin young
man whom he recognized.
"Bless us!" said Varney urbanely. "It's the student of manners again."
The pale young stranger stopped two paces away and gave back his look
with the utmost composure.
"Still on my studies," said he, in his flat tones--"though I doubt," he
added thoughtfully, "if that fully explains why I have followed you."
"Ah? Perhaps I may venture to ask what would explain it more fully?"
"Oh, certainly. My real motive was to suggest, purely because of a
paternal interest I take in you, that you leave town to-morrow
morning--you and your ferocious friend."
Varney eyed him amusedly. "But is not this somewhat--er--precipitate?"
"Oh, not a bit of it. In fact, you hardly require me to tell you, Beany,
that you were a great fool to come back at all."
"Beany!"
"You don't mind if I sit down?"
A row of packing-cases clogged the sidewalk at the point where they
stood, and the young man dropped down wearily upon one of them, and
leaned back against the store-front.
"Beany?" repeated Varney.
"It was dark down on the river," observed the other slowly, "but the
instant I saw you on the square, I recognized you, and so, my friend,
will everybody else."
"With even better success, I trust, than you have done. For my name is
not Beany, but indeed Varney--Laurence Varney--permit me--"
"Ah, well! Stick it out if you prefer. In any case--"
"But do tell me the name of this individual to whom I bear such a
marked resemblance. I naturally--"
"The individual to whom you bear such a marked, I may say such a very
marked, resemblance," said the stranger, mockingly, "is a certain Mr.
Ferris Stanhope, a prosperous manufacturer of pink-tea literature. You
never heard the name--of course. But never mind about that. I should
advise you both to leave town anyway."
"Is it trespassing too far if I ask--"
"Any one who associates with little Hare, as I have a premonition that
you two will do if you stay, is born to trouble as the sparks fly
upward."
Varney came a step nearer and rested his foot on the edge of the
packing-case.
"Now that," said he, "is by all odds the best thing you've said yet.
Elucidate it a bit, won't you? I admit to some curiosity about that
little tableau in the square--"
"Yes? Well, I owe you one for that box of matches, Beany--er--Mr.--and
it would be rather asinine for you or your pugilistic partner to begin
monkeying with our buzz-saw. I happened, you see, to overhear part of
your talk with J. Pinkney Hare just now. How others might view it I know
not, but to me it seemed only fair to warn you that that interesting
young man must be shunned by the wise. As to the mayoralty, he has as
much chance of getting in as a jack-rabbit has of butting a way through
the Great Wall of China. For we have a great wall here of the sturdiest
variety."
He meant, as he briefly explained, the usual System, and back of it the
usual Boss: one Ryan, owner of the Ottoman saloon and the city of
Hunston, who held the town in the hollow of his coarse hand, and was
slowly squeezing it to death.
"The election," he went on listlessly, "is only two weeks off, but the
rascal isn't lifting a finger. He doesn't have to. To-morrow night he
holds what he calls his annual 'town-meeting'--a fake and a joke. The
trustful people gather, listen to speeches by Ryan retainers, quaff free
lemonade. Nominally, everybody is invited to speak; really only the
elect are permitted to. I saw a reform candidate try it once, and it was
interesting to see how scientifically they put a crimp in him."
"And J. Pinkney Hare?" queried Varney becoming rather interested.
Was everything, the young man explained, that Ryan was not--able,
honest, unselfish, public-spirited. Studying the situation quietly for a
year, he had uncovered a most unholy trail of graft leading to high
places. But when he began to try to tell the people about it, he found
his way hopelessly blocked at every turn.
"He can't even hire a hall," summarized the stranger. "Not to save his
immortal soul. That was the meaning of the ludicrous exhibition a few
minutes ago. In one word, he can't get a hearing. He might talk with the
tongues of men and angels, but nobody will listen to him. It is a dirty
shame. But what in the world can you expect? Lift a finger against the
gang, and, presto, your job's gone, and you can't find another high or
low. Ryan's money goes everywhere--into the schools, the church, the
press. The press. That, of course, is the System's most powerful ally.
The--infamous _Hollaston Gazette_--"
"The _Hollaston Gazette_--is that published here?" asked Varney in
surprise, for the _Gazette_ was famous: one of those very rare
small-town newspapers which, by reason of great age and signal editorial
ability, have earned a national place in American journalism.
"Named after the county. You have heard of it?" said the young man in a
faintly mocking voice, and immediately went on: "The _Gazette_ is eighty
years old. Even now, in these bad times, everybody in the county takes
it. They get all their opinions from it, ready-made. It is their Bible.
A fool can see what a power such a paper is. For seventy-seven years the
_Gazette_ fully deserved it. That was the way it won it. But all that is
changed now. And the paper is making a great deal of money."
"It is crooked, then?"
"I said, did I not, that it was for Ryan?"
He lounged further back in the shadows upon his packing-case; he
appeared not to be feeling well at all. Varney regarded him with puzzled
interest.
"A very depressing little story," he suggested, "but after all, hardly a
novel one. I don't yet altogether grasp why--"
"Your Jeffries of a friend is a red-hot political theorist, isn't he?"
asked the other apathetically. "Our Hunston politicians are practical
men. They are after results, and seek them with small regard, I fear,
to copy-book precepts. You follow me? Rusticating strangers, visiting
sociological students, itinerant idealists, these would do well to speak
softly and walk on the sunny side of the road."
"You appear," said Varney, his curiosity increasingly piqued, "to speak
of these matters with authority--"
"Rather let us say with certitude."
"Possibly you yourself have felt the iron-toothed bite of the machine?"
"I?"
"Why not?"
The young man looked shocked; slowly his pale face took on a look of
cynical amusement. "Yes, yes. Certainly. Who more so?" He appeared to
hesitate a moment, and then added with a laugh which held a curious
tinge of defiance: "In fact, I myself have the honor of being the owner
and editor of the _Gazette_--Coligny Smith, at your service--"
"Coligny Smith!" echoed Varney amazed.
The young man glanced up. "It was my father you have heard of. He died
three years ago. However," he added, with an odd touch of pride, "he
always said that I wrote the better articles."
There was a moment's silence. Varney felt by turns astonished,
disgusted, sorry, embarrassed. Then he burst out laughing.
"Well, you have a nerve to tell me this. Smith. In doing so, you seem to
have brought our conversation to a logical conclusion. I thank you for
your kindly advice and piquant confession, and so, good evening."
Mr. Smith straightened on his packing-case and spoke with unexpected
eagerness.
"Oh--must you go? The night's so young--why not--come up to the Ottoman
and have something? I'll--I'd be glad to explain--"
"I fear I cannot yield to the editorial blandishments this evening."
"Well--I merely--"
"What?"
"Oh, nothing. But remember--you'll get into trouble if you stay."
Varney laughed.
He went on toward his waiting gig feeling vaguely displeased with the
results of his half-hour ashore, and deciding that for the future it
would be best to give the town a wide berth. The privacy of the yacht
better suited his mission than Main Street, Hunston. However, the end
was not yet. He had not reached the landing before a thought came to him
which stopped him in his tracks.