"Well, then, here are a dozen John Doe warrants. They will be your
authority for whatever you may find it necessary to do in arresting
these men. Now come out here and pick your company."
He led the way to the main hall, glanced over the throng that still
pervaded it, and cried in a resonant voice:
"Volunteers wanted for dangerous service."
His discouraging form of statement did not dismay all of the company
before him. At least fifty men stepped forward at the call.
"Take your pick," said Coleman with a wave of his hand. "If they
haven't revolvers, I will supply them. You'd better take the clubs for
ordinary service."
I selected a score of men whose faces showed vigor and determination,
looked to their arms, directed them to the pile of pick-handles, and
when each man had satisfied himself of the virtue of his weapon by
knocking down an imaginary enemy, I led the way to the street.
"Where are we going?" asked one of the men with the easy familiarity of
the volunteer.
"Secret service," I replied. "Don't make any more noise than you have
to." If we were to arrest the conspirators without bloodshed it was
necessary to take them by surprise, and we approached their
meeting-place with as much caution as I could contrive.
The House of Blazes blinked more furtively than ever on the darkness.
The outer door was but half opened, and the lights within burned but
dimly. Yet a faint murmur that thrilled the air gave warning of many
voices in converse, and stray gleams of light from the shuttered windows
above bore ample witness to the fact that there was hidden activity in
the den of the revolutionists.
I posted a number of men in position to prevent escape through the
windows, and instructed the remainder to await my signal outside the
main entrance. Then pushing open the swinging door, I entered the
saloon.
The long room was almost deserted. A man in an apparent stupor sat with
his head on a table in the dim light at the farther end of the place.
Another lay on a bench snoring in drowsy intoxication. A short,
round-faced young fellow with a dirty white apron stood behind the bar,
and looked up with cheerful expectancy as I entered.
"Take me to the Council," I said peremptorily. "I am just from Mr.
Parks."
"The Council!" stammered the man. "I don't--I don't know what you
mean."
At the sound of my voice, the fat pasty face of H. Blasius appeared
through the doorway at the right of the bar.
"Ah, Meestaire--Meestaire--friend of Park," he said, recognizing me and
coming forward. "I salute a brozaire in arms." And he would have
embraced me but for my nimbleness in avoiding his odious clutch.
"I have come for orders," I said. "I must see the Council."
"Ah," he cried, "you have come to give your ar-rms to ze inauguration of
ze gr-rand r-revolution." And he rolled out his "r's" in a way to make
the revolution very grand indeed.
"I have brought more than my arms," I said. "I have the first company
of our troops outside."
"_Mon Dieu_!" he cried, his pasty face growing paler, and his blinking
eyes opening wider in alarm. "_Mon Dieu_! You have come mooch too soon.
Ze police will cast ze blow of an eye upon zem, ze alar-rm will sound,
and Zip! away goes ze chance of winning by surprise."
"That's so," I exclaimed, with the accent of one overwhelmed at
conviction of a lack of judgment. "I will bring my men in and march them
up to the Council-room where they can lie hid till the hour comes."
"_Non! non!_" cried H. Blasius in alarm. "No one can go to ze
Council-room. Zere is no Council-room." His old distrust had overcome
the alcoholic enthusiasm with which he had received me, and his eyes
blinked cunningly upon me. Then he gave an apprehensive glance at the
door by which he had entered, and I was confirmed in the suspicion that
it led to the rooms of the conspirators.
"Well, if you won't take me up, I must go by myself. My business must be
laid before the Council at once." And I moved with determination toward
the suspected door.
H. Blasius placed himself in the way with arms outstretched.
"_Non--non!_" he cried. "You can not _entrez_ wizout ze _mot
d'ordre_--ze password."
"Give it to me, then," I demanded. "You are delaying the Council's
business."
He was overawed a little by my authoritative tone, but before he could
bring his tongue to answer me, the barkeeper accidentally dropped a
glass on the floor, and the men whom I had stationed at the door,
mistaking the crash for the sounds of conflict, rushed in to my rescue.
"The Vigilantes!" cried the barkeeper in dismay, at the sight of the
badges and the pick-handles.
"_Mon Dieu!_ we are betrayed!" cried H. Blasius, whirling around with a
step toward the door that led to the Council-room.
I divined his purpose. He was bent on warning the conspirators. With
one bound I had him by the collar, and with a fierce wrench dragged him
back and flung him against the bar, spluttering inarticulate protests.
The barkeeper had seized a revolver, but before he could raise it, he
was in the hands of my men. He submitted without resistance and with
the cheerful spirit of one to whom the outcome is a matter of small
importance.
"Keep that man quiet," I said, with the hope that the noise of struggle
had not reached the Council-room. Then I gripped H. Blasius by his fat
throat.
"Give me the countersign!" I demanded.
He gave a scream of terror and dropped to his knees.
"Have pity--do not keel me. _Mon Dieu_! I am one good citizen. I make
no plots wiz ze r-revolutionists."
"The countersign," I repeated grimly, tightening my grip on his throat,
while two of my assistants reinforced my argument by prodding him in the
sides with their sticks.
"Leeberty--leeberty or deat',"--Mr. H. Blasius pronounced it
"debt"--"zat is ze countersign," he gasped through his constricted
windpipe. And assured by his eyes that he was telling the truth, I
flung him into the arms of my men.
"Shut off his wind if he tries to give a warning," I said, and with a
word I picked a squad from my company and gave them brief instructions:
"Follow me up the stairs. Don't make a noise. And when I give the
signal push me through the door."
A dim illumination filtered through a ground-glass transom at the top of
the stairway, and the murmur of voices that floated down gave evidence
that a busy meeting was in progress.
I walked up the stairs with bold step, and my men crept cautiously after
me. At the top was a landing, large enough to hold my squad, and I
signed to them to collect behind me. Then I gave three resounding blows
on the door--a compelling summons that I had learned as a lawyer's clerk
in serving papers on unwilling defendants. There is some mystic virtue
in the slow triple knock that brings the most wary from their holes. At
my rap there was a sudden hush of voices. Then some one by the door
cried:
"Who is there?"
"A friend you are expecting."
"If you are a friend, give the countersign."
"Liberty or Death."
At this reply the door opened cautiously for a few inches, and a man
peeped through the crack.
"Now!" I cried. And with the force of six men behind me I shot forward,
flung the door wide open, and sent its guardian sprawling backward, as I
was projected a dozen feet into the Council-room. The room was large,
and around a large table in front of a pulpit-like platform sat twelve
or fifteen men. The Council and its advisers were in session.
At my unceremonious entrance the conspirators gave a prompt exhibition
of their qualities. Waldorf, Reddick and Seabert sprang to their feet,
and their hands went to their pockets with the evident purpose of
drawing their revolvers. Others ran from side to side of the room,
wildly seeking some way of escape. Two crawled under the table. The
rest remained motionless in their chairs, looking with dull apprehension
at our sudden irruption.
There were more of the conspirators than I had reckoned on meeting. But
we had the advantage of surprise, and signing to two of my men to hold
the door, I walked calmly forward with the others.
"Gentlemen," I said to the startled group, "you are under arrest."
"The devil we are!" cried Waldorf, snatching a revolver out of his
pocket and snapping it at me.
There was a deafening report, and a bullet clipped my ear, but before
Waldorf could raise the hammer a second time a rap from a pick-handle
laid him sprawling limply across the table. Reddick's weapon was
knocked from his hand with a blow that broke his wrist. Seabert was
seized and thrown before he could get his revolver out of his pocket,
and a fiery little German in spectacles, who shot a hole in his coat in
an excited attempt to draw his weapon, fell limply to the floor and
squirmed like a shot rabbit at a skull-cracking stroke from a
Vigilante's club.
It was after all but a tame affair. For men who were planning to seize
a city and overturn a nation, there was an absurdly small supply of
fighting blood among them. The sprawling figure of Waldorf, lying face
upward on the table with the blood trickling over his forehead, the
fiery German in a limp heap on the floor, and the sight of Reddick and
Seabert disabled, took all the fight out of the rest of the company.
They submitted without resistance to be searched, disarmed and bound.
"Where are the rifles?" I demanded, when these preliminaries had been
completed.
"Don't know of any rifles," said Seabert sullenly. "Never had any."
The arrested company at once became unanimous on this point. There were
never any rifles in their possession. They became so insistent in the
denial that I jumped to the conclusion that the arms could not be far
away, and looked about for their hiding-place. The ornamental work
behind the platform and about the hall gave opportunity for concealed
doorways and false partitions, but when they were sounded none could be
uncovered.
"There's room for them under that platform," I said at last; and by the
falling countenances of the conspirators I saw that I had hit upon the
hiding-place.
The flooring was ripped off the platform, and we uncovered something
more than four hundred rifles with a well-filled cartridge-belt strapped
to each. Encouraged by this success we ransacked the place to discover
the rest of the Council's armament, but had at last to give it up with
the conclusion that the remainder of the thousand guns had already been
distributed to the clubs.
A messenger sent in haste to the headquarters of the Committee of Safety
brought a train of express-wagons with orders to hurry the arms and
ammunition to Horticultural Hall, and send the prisoners to the City
Prison and Receiving Hospital. And stationing a guard to receive any of
the revolutionary spirits who might come seeking the Council's
instructions, I set off for the headquarters of the Committee of Safety.
The House of Blazes, as I took my last look at it, seemed smothered in
an atmosphere of angry discomfiture, as it scowled at us from its
blinking windows, fit tomb of the evil purposes it had harbored.
*CHAPTER XXIX*
*A TONGUE OF FIRE*
We had reached Union Square on our return to the Committee's
headquarters, when the night air burst into a clangor of alarm. There
was a sudden chorus of shrieking whistles, a distant tintinnabulation of
gongs, and the great bell in the fire house on Brenham Place thrilled
the air with its tolling vibrations.
"Box fifty-nine!" cried one of the men who had counted the strokes.
"Where's that?"
"It's the Mail docks, I'll bet!" cried another. "They've been
threatening to burn 'em."
I turned to look, and the guess was confirmed. A glare of red had
flamed up in the southeastern sky, and the fire was already under good
headway.
"It's the third alarm," said a sentinel who stood by the corner. "The
Committee's been sending men down there already."
The sharp cry of commanding voices echoed from Horticultural Hall, men
were climbing into express-wagons and hurrying off on the gallop, and
our way was blocked for a minute by a company that marched rapidly out
of the building, quickened its pace to a run, and sped down Post Street.
Instead of clubs they carried rifles, and I surmised that the armament
of the Council of Nine was being turned against the Council's purposes.
Within the hall all was excitement; cries of command rose sharply as
companies were assembled by zealous officers, and squads were marching
out as rapidly as they could be armed.
William T. Coleman met me by the door of the office.
"Well, it seems to have begun at last," he said. "The Mail docks have
been set afire, and the report comes that the Chinamen down there are
being killed by a big mob."
"There was talk of burning the _City of Tokio_ with the thousand coolies
it has brought," I said, with a shudder at the thought of the
barbarities that were perhaps being enacted on the threatened dock.
"The _Tokio_ isn't in yet," said Coleman. "The report of her arrival
was a mistake."
"I don't believe there's any real fight in the mob," I said. "We have
just cut the head off the beast."
Coleman grasped my hand.
"I'm obliged to you for the work you have done," he said. "The guns you
sent in will be put to good use. And now would you mind taking a
company down to the docks?"
"Not at all," I returned unhesitatingly, resolved to live up to the
figure I had assumed in his eyes.
"You have something of an interest down there," he added. "Kendrick's
lumber-yards are right near the docks, and you may want to do something
to protect them." Then turning to the despatching officer, he said:
"Put Brixton's company under command of Captain Hampden. Brixton won't
be back to-night."
"I should like," I said, "to add to it the men I have brought back from
the House of Blazes. In affairs of this sort it's some advantage to be
acquainted with your men, and we've rubbed shoulders to-night in a way
that is better than an introduction."
Coleman looked at the dozen men who lined up at my call, and gave a nod
of assent.
"Enroll Captain Hampden's volunteers with the company," he said. "That
will give him about sixty men. Now get down to the docks on the double
quick. Remember that the first thing to be looked out for is the
fire-hose. In times like this it carries the life-blood of the city.
If any one tries to cut it, shoot him." And with this curt direction he
waved us forward.
The rosy glow that illumined the southeastern sky had spread and
deepened since we entered the hall. The ruddy light rose and fell in
sudden tides, as the eddying-clouds of smoke reflected or obscured the
fierce flames that leaped below them.
The sound of the fire-bell and the reddened sky had been a signal to
other ears and eyes than those of the Vigilantes. Market Street was a
hurrying stream of men and women and children, carried along by a common
impulse, like wreckage on flood waters. Bands of young hoodlums rushed
down the street with blackguardly cries, rudely jostling those who
neglected to make way for them. A sibilant clamor of excited voices
filled the air,--hoarse shouts of men, yells from the hoodlums and
shrill chatter from the women and children, roused by the thrill of
them.
At the corner of Beale and Harrison Streets we were halted by a densely
packed mass of people striving vainly to press forward to a point from
which they could get a closer view of the conflagration, now but a block
away. The roar of flames could be heard above the volume of rattling
sound that came from the massed confusion of firemen, rioters,
Vigilantes and spectators. A ruddy glare illumined the great throng.
Waves of heat reached us even at this distance, and farther down the
street we could see men protecting their faces from the burning
effulgence by holding their arms before their eyes. The great furnace
sent up swift peaks of flame that fell as suddenly as they rose, and
gave place to rolling clouds of smoke that turned the blaze to a dull
red glow.
Before I could give the order to charge a passage through the crowd, a
fire-engine dashed up with the clatter of galloping horses, the wild
shouts of the firemen, the ringing of gongs and the cries of the
frightened spectators. The throng pressed aside, and by some magic of
contraction made a lane for the swift horses as they drew the engine up
to the hydrant. At this moment the engine across Harrison Street, that
had been whirring away with convulsive energy, gave vent to a splutter
of steam, slowed down, and came to a stop. A fireman came running over
to the newly arrived engine from its fellow across the street,
scattering in his train an eruption of oaths that gave a verbal effect
that was comparable to the shower of sparks from his engine.
"Look out for your hose!" he shouted wrathfully. "They've just cut ours
again."
"Where's the police?" cried the captain of the new engine, as he gave
orders to couple the hose to the hydrant.
"There's one policeman to the block, an' if he ain't dead he ought to
be," returned the wrathful engineer. "They was talking about what the
Vigilantes was a-goin' to do, but I ain't seen none of 'em. I reckon
they's a-holdin' a promenade concert up to Horticultural Hall, and ain't
got time to come down here. If you want your hoodlums knocked out,
you'll have to do it yourself." And running back to his engine he
suited action to word by seizing a stick and clearing a space about it
with fierce flourishes and fiercer words.
"Here are your Vigilantes," I shouted. "Now lay your lines of hose side
by side, and I'll see that there's no more cutting."
"Well, clear the track for us then!" cried the captain with a volley of
excited oaths. "Can't you see that my men are blocked there?"
I stationed half my company by the engines, formed the other half into a
wedge, and rushed them down the hill. They plowed a wide lane through
the massed throng, and the firemen ran behind them hauling the lines of
hose, and howling orders and encouragement at every step. Along the
path I dropped out man after man, with instructions to keep the crowd
back, and shoot the first person who attempted to touch the hose. When
I was satisfied that the lines were secure, I followed the advance guard
down the slope to the corner of Beale and Bryant Streets.
Here I could for the first time see the full extent of the
conflagration.
A bold bluff nearly one hundred feet high at First and Bryant Streets
diminishes gradually till it permits Beale Street to descend by a
moderate grade to the level of the wharves. Between the face of this
bluff and the docks lay a medley of warehouses, coal-bunkers and
lumber-yards, all now involved in a conflagration that turned the
amphitheater between the bluff and the bay into a furnace filled with
tossing, leaping flames of weird diversity of color. The warehouses
were filled with sea stores and the spoil of commerce from many lands;
one was stocked with barrels of whale-oil and other products of the
Arctic trade; and over them all flickered red, green, orange and yellow
flames, in endless confusion. The coal-bunkers gave off great clouds of
smoke, while the fiercest flames shot up from the oil warehouses and the
blazing lumber-piles. Now and then a dull explosion, followed by a
temporary dimming of the light at the eastern end of the furnace,
pointed out the location of the oil; then a black cloud would roll up
and drift away, and in a moment red and smoky flames would leap three
hundred feet in air with a vicious eagerness that made them seem almost
a sentient agent of destruction.
The wharves appeared to be yet untouched by the fire, but they were
visibly in imminent danger, and, above the roar of the flames, the
shouts of the firemen and the clamor of the crowd, we could plainly hear
the cries of the sailors as they strove to move their vessels from the
perilous neighborhood.
At the foot of the hill the heat was blistering. Planks a hundred feet
from the blaze were smoking; the light was blinding, and even the
boldest of the spectators had retired half-way up the hill. Yet two
engines had been pushed forward almost to the border of the
flame-covered area; and the firemen, attacking the conflagration with
reckless energy, could be seen dragging their hose over planks that
still glowed with half-extinguished embers.
At the entrance to this inferno my eye was caught by a reminder of
difficulties that stirred my heart to a leap of apprehension. A long
sign-board that had been set across the gate to the lumber-yards, now
twisted and ready to fall from the half-burned uprights that supported
it, bore across its face the words, "The Kendrick Lumber and Milling
Co." Another of Wharton Kendrick's activities was destroyed, and
hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of his property was now
represented by a few acres of roaring flames. For a minute I was struck
motionless with the fear that this loss might prove the final blow, and
bring down in one avalanche the accumulated difficulties that I had
evaded or postponed.
Then I was roused to attention by the words:
"Here is the man who can tell you all about it; he's the one that turned
in the alarm."
The speaker wore the badge of an assistant chief of the fire department,
and he was addressing two young men who held pencil and paper in their
hands and looked eagerly at a roughly dressed man who seemed to be dazed
at the destruction that was going on about him.
"Yes, I'm the man," he said slowly. "I'm a watchman. I was over there
on the wharf--the Beale Street wharf. A while ago--it was a long time
ago--"
"Never mind the long while ago--tell us about to-night," interrupted one
of the young men impatiently.
"That's what I was telling you about," said the man in an injured tone.
"It was a long while ago--to-night. I looked over here just the other
side of that oil warehouse--there's only one wall left to it now--an' I
saw a fellow strike a match. I thought he was goin' to light his pipe,
but he took a box from under his arm an' stuck the match in it. The box
flared up as though it was full o' shavings, an' then he stuck it under
a lumber-pile. I hollered at him, an' he ran. Then the fire started
up, an' I got to the fire-box an' turned in the alarm. Then there was
hell to pay." The man made this announcement in a dull, matter-of-fact
way that gave a touch of comedy-in-tragedy to his words.
"What sort of looking man was he?" I asked.
"Oh, he was an oldish man--an old man--tall, an' sort of stooped."
"Stout or thin?"
"Thin, I guess--he was too far away for me to say for sure, an' bein' as
I was kind of flustered by the fire, too."
At his words an illuminating light came to my mind. The fire was not
directed at the Pacific Mail docks. It was set to destroy the yards of
the Kendrick Lumber and Milling Company, and it had succeeded. It was
the crowning stroke of Peter Bolton's assault on Wharton Kendrick's
fortune.
I wondered whether Peter Bolton had himself set the match to the
lumber-pile. The description by the watchman fitted him, and he did not
lack the will for the deed. But it was so foreign to his cautious
temper to take the risks of committing such a crime with his own hand
that I hesitated to believe. Yet when he had once resolved upon such a
step, it might well have seemed safer to him to perform the act himself,
than to confide it to an accomplice who might betray him.
I was turning over this problem in my mind, and watching with
unconscious eyes the bold and resolute efforts of the firemen to fight
back the flames, when I was roused by a flight of stones. Two of them
struck the nearest engine; one knocked the hat off a man of my company;
and a fireman was struck down, only to jump to his feet in a moment with
a torrent of oaths. The fire chief roared a profane but vigorous
condemnation of the assault, and devoted its authors to an even warmer
place than the furnace that blazed before us.
"That's the fifth time we've got it," said the engineer, backing up his
chief with a contribution of blistering words.