into the greater hall beyond, Winthrop heard her cry: “You never robbed
your own ice-chest? How have you kept from starving? Show me it, and
we’ll rob it together.”
The voice of their host rang through the empty house with a laugh like
that of an eager, happy child.
“Heavens!” said the owner of the car, “isn’t she wonderful!” But neither
the prostrate burglars, nor the servants, intent on strapping their
wrists together, gave him any answer.
As they were finishing the supper filched from the ice-chest, Fred was
brought before them from the kitchen. The blow the burglar had given him
was covered with a piece of cold beefsteak, and the water thrown on him
to revive him was thawing from his leather breeches. Mr. Carey expressed
his gratitude, and rewarded him beyond the avaricious dreams even of a
chauffeur.
As the three trespassers left the house, accompanied by many pails of
water, the girl turned to the lonely figure in the doorway and waved her
hand.
“May we come again?” she called.
But young Mr. Carey did not trust his voice to answer. Standing erect,
with folded arms, in dark silhouette in the light of the hall, he bowed
his head.
Deaf to alarm bells, to pistol shots, to cries for help, they found her
brother and Ernest Peabody sleeping soundly.
“Sam is a charming chaperon,” said the owner of the car.
With the girl beside him, with Fred crouched, shivering, on the step, he
threw in the clutch; the servants from the house waved the emptied
buckets in salute, and the great car sprang forward into the awakening
day toward the golden dome over the Boston Common. In the rear seat
Peabody shivered and yawned, and then sat erect.
“Did you get the water?” he demanded, anxiously.
There was a grim silence.
“Yes,” said the owner of the car patiently. “You needn’t worry any
longer. We got the water.”
III
THE KIDNAPPERS
During the last two weeks of the “whirlwind” campaign, automobiles had
carried the rival candidates to every election district in Greater New
York.
During these two weeks, at the disposal of Ernest Peabody—on the Reform
Ticket “the people’s choice for Lieutenant-Governor”—Winthrop had placed
his Scarlet Car, and, as its chauffeur, himself.
Not that Winthrop greatly cared for Reform or Ernest Peabody. The
“whirlwind” part of the campaign was what attracted him; the crowds, the
bands, the fireworks, the rush by night from hall to hall, from Fordham
to Tompkinsville. And while, inside the different Lyceums, Peabody
lashed the Tammany Tiger, outside, in his car, Winthrop was making
friends with Tammany policemen, and his natural enemies, the bicycle
cops. To Winthrop, the day in which he did not increase his acquaintance
with the traffic squad was a day lost.
But the real reason for his efforts in the cause of Reform was one he
could not declare. And it was a reason that was guessed perhaps by only
one person. On some nights Beatrice Forbes and her brother Sam
accompanied Peabody. And while Peabody sat in the rear of the car,
mumbling the speech he would next deliver, Winthrop was given the chance
to talk with her. These chances were growing cruelly few. In one month
after election day Miss Forbes and Peabody would be man and wife. Once
before the day of their marriage had been fixed, but, when the Reform
Party offered Peabody a high place on its ticket, he asked, in order
that he might bear his part in the cause of reform, that the wedding be
postponed. To the postponement Miss Forbes made no objection. To one
less self-centred than Peabody, it might have appeared that she almost
too readily consented.
“I knew I could count upon your seeing my duty as I saw it,” said
Peabody, much pleased; “it always will be a satisfaction to both of us
to remember you never stood between me and my work for reform.”
“What do you think my brother-in-law-to-be has done now?” demanded Sam
of Winthrop, as the Scarlet Car swept into Jerome Avenue. “He’s
postponed his marriage with Trix just because he has a chance to be
Lieutenant-Governor. What is a Lieutenant-Governor anyway, do you know?
I don’t like to ask Peabody.”
“It’s not his own election he’s working for,” said Winthrop. He was
conscious of an effort to assume a point of view both noble and
magnanimous. “He probably feels the ‘cause’ calls him. But, good
Heavens!”
“Look out!” shrieked Sam; “where are you going?”
Winthrop swung the car back into the avenue.
“To think,” he cried, “that a man who could marry—a girl, and then would
ask her to wait two months. Or two days! Two months lost out of his
life, and she might die; he might lose her; she might change her mind.
Any number of men can be Lieutenant-Governors; only one man can be——”
He broke off suddenly, coughed, and fixed his eyes miserably on the
road. After a brief pause, Brother Sam covertly looked at him. Could it
be that “Billie” Winthrop, the man liked of all men, should love his
sister, and that she should prefer Ernest Peabody? He was deeply,
loyally indignant. He determined to demand of his sister an immediate
and abject apology.
At eight o’clock on the morning of election day, Peabody, in the Scarlet
Car, was on his way to vote. He lived at Riverside Drive, and the
polling-booth was only a few blocks distant. During the rest of the day
he intended to use the car to visit other election districts, and to
keep him in touch with the Reformers at the Gilsey House. Winthrop was
acting as his chauffeur, and in the rear seat was Miss Forbes. Peabody
had asked her to accompany him to the polling-booth, because he thought
women who believed in reform should show their interest in it in public,
before all men. Miss Forbes disagreed with him, chiefly because whenever
she sat in a box at any of the public meetings the artists from the
newspapers, instead of immortalizing the candidate, made pictures of her
and her hat. After she had seen her future lord and master cast his vote
for reform and himself, she was to depart by train to Tarrytown. The
Forbes’s country place was there, and for election day her brother Sam
had invited out some of his friends to play tennis.
As the car darted and dodged up Eighth Avenue, a man who had been hidden
by the stairs to the Elevated, stepped in front of it. It caught him,
and hurled him, like a mail-bag tossed from a train, against one of the
pillars that support the overhead tracks. Winthrop gave a cry and fell
upon the brakes. The cry was as full of pain as though he himself had
been mangled. Miss Forbes saw only the man appear, and then disappear,
but Winthrop’s shout of warning, and the wrench as the brakes locked,
told her what had happened. She shut her eyes, and for an instant
covered them with her hands. On the front seat Peabody clutched
helplessly at the cushions. In horror his eyes were fastened on the
motionless mass jammed against the pillar. Winthrop scrambled over him,
and ran to where the man lay. So, apparently, did every other inhabitant
of Eighth Avenue; but Winthrop was the first to reach him, and kneeling
in the car tracks, he tried to place the head and shoulders of the body
against the iron pillar. He had seen very few dead men; and to him, this
weight in his arms, this bundle of limp flesh and muddy clothes, and the
purple-bloated face with blood trickling down it, looked like a dead
man.
Once or twice when in his car Death had reached for Winthrop, and only
by the scantiest grace had he escaped. Then the nearness of it had only
sobered him. Now that he believed he had brought it to a fellow man,
even though he knew he was in no degree to blame, the thought sickened
and shocked him. His brain trembled with remorse and horror.
But voices assailing him on every side brought him to the necessity of
the moment. Men were pressing close upon him, jostling, abusing him,
shaking fists in his face. Another crowd of men, as though fearing the
car would escape of its own volition, were clinging to the steps and
running boards.
Winthrop saw Miss Forbes standing above them, talking eagerly to
Peabody, and pointing at him. He heard children’s shrill voices calling
to new arrivals that an automobile had killed a man; that it had killed
him on purpose. On the outer edge of the crowd men shouted: “Ah, soak
him!” “Kill him!” “Lynch him!”
A soiled giant without a collar stooped over the purple, blood-stained
face, and then leaped upright, and shouted: “It’s Jerry Gaylor, he’s
killed old man Gaylor.”
The response was instant. Every one seemed to know Jerry Gaylor.
Winthrop took the soiled person by the arm.
“You help me lift him into my car,” he ordered. “Take him by the
shoulders. We must get him to a hospital.”
“To a hospital? To the Morgue!” roared the man. “And the police station
for yours. You don’t do no get-away.”
Winthrop answered him by turning to the crowd. “If this man has any
friends here, they’ll please help me put him in my car, and we’ll take
him to Roosevelt Hospital.”
The soiled person shoved a fist and a bad cigar under Winthrop’s nose.
“Has he got any friends?” he mocked. “Sure, he’s got friends, and
they’ll fix you, all right.”
“Sure!” echoed the crowd.
The man was encouraged.
“Don’t you go away thinking you can come up here with your buzz wagon
and murder better men nor you’ll ever be and——”
“Oh, shut up!” said Winthrop.
He turned his back on the soiled man, and again appealed to the crowd.
“Don’t stand there doing nothing,” he commanded. “Do you want this man
to die? Some of you ring for an ambulance and get a policeman, or tell
me where is the nearest drug store.”
No one moved, but every one shouted to every one else to do as Winthrop
suggested.
Winthrop felt something pulling at his sleeve, and turning, found
Peabody at his shoulder, peering fearfully at the figure in the street.
He had drawn his cap over his eyes and hidden the lower part of his face
in the high collar of his motor coat.
“I can’t do anything, can I?” he asked.
“I’m afraid not,” whispered Winthrop. “Go back to the car and don’t
leave Beatrice. I’ll attend to this.”
“That’s what I thought,” whispered Peabody eagerly. “I thought she and I
had better keep out of it.”
“Right!” exclaimed Winthrop. “Go back and get Beatrice away.”
Peabody looked his relief, but still hesitated.
“I can’t do anything, as you say,” he stammered, “and it’s sure to get
in the ‘extras,’ and they’ll be out in time to lose us thousands of
votes, and though no one is to blame, they’re sure to blame me. I don’t
care about myself,” he added eagerly, “but the very morning of
election—half the city has not voted yet—the Ticket——”
“Damn the Ticket!” exclaimed Winthrop. “The man’s dead!”
Peabody, burying his face still deeper in his collar, backed into the
crowd. In the present and past campaigns, from carts and automobiles he
had made many speeches in Harlem, and on the West Side lithographs of
his stern, resolute features hung in every delicatessen shop, and that
he might be recognized was extremely likely.
He whispered to Miss Forbes what he had said, and what Winthrop had
said.
“But you _don’t_ mean to leave him,” remarked Miss Forbes.
“I must,” returned Peabody. “I can do nothing for the man, and you know
how Tammany will use this. They’ll have it on the street by ten. They’ll
say I was driving recklessly; without regard for human life. And,
besides, they’re waiting for me at head-quarters. Please hurry. I am
late now.”
Miss Forbes gave an exclamation of surprise.
“Why, I’m not going,” she said.
“You must go! _I_ must go. You can’t remain here alone.”
Peabody spoke in the quick, assured tone that at the first had convinced
Miss Forbes his was a most masterful manner.
“Winthrop, too,” he added, “wants you to go away.”
Miss Forbes made no reply. But she looked at Peabody inquiringly,
steadily, as though she were puzzled as to his identity, as though he
had just been introduced to her. It made him uncomfortable.
“Are you coming?” he asked.
Her answer was a question.
“Are you going?”
“I am!” returned Peabody. He added sharply: “I must.”
“Good-by,” said Miss Forbes.
As he ran up the steps to the station of the Elevated, it seemed to
Peabody that the tone of her “good-by” had been most unpleasant. It was
severe, disapproving. It had a final, fateful sound. He was conscious of
a feeling of self-dissatisfaction. In not seeing the political
importance of his not being mixed up with this accident, Winthrop had
been peculiarly obtuse, and Beatrice, unsympathetic.
Until he had cast his vote for Reform, he felt distinctly ill-used.
For a moment Beatrice Forbes sat in the car motionless, staring
unseeingly at the iron steps by which Peabody had disappeared. For a few
moments her brows were tightly drawn. Then, having apparently quickly
arrived at some conclusion, she opened the door of the car and pushed
into the crowd.
Winthrop received her most rudely.
“You mustn’t come here!” he cried.
“I thought,” she stammered, “you might want some one?”
“I told—” began Winthrop, and then stopped, and added—“to take you away.
Where is he?”
Miss Forbes flushed slightly.
“He’s gone,” she said.
In trying not to look at Winthrop, she saw the fallen figure, motionless
against the pillar, and with an exclamation, bent fearfully toward it.
“Can I do anything?” she asked.
The crowd gave way for her, and with curious pleased faces, closed in
again eagerly. She afforded them a new interest.
A young man in the uniform of an ambulance surgeon was kneeling beside
the mud-stained figure, and a police officer was standing over both. The
ambulance surgeon touched lightly the matted hair from which the blood
escaped, stuck his finger in the eye of the prostrate man, and then with
his open hand slapped him across the face.
“Oh!” gasped Miss Forbes.
The young doctor heard her, and looking up, scowled reprovingly. Seeing
she was a rarely beautiful young woman, he scowled less severely; and
then deliberately and expertly, again slapped Mr. Jerry Gaylor on the
cheek. He watched the white mark made by his hand upon the purple skin,
until the blood struggled slowly back to it, and then rose.
He ignored every one but the police officer.
“There’s nothing the matter with _him_,” he said. “He’s dead drunk.”
The words came to Winthrop with such abrupt relief, bearing so
tremendous a burden of gratitude, that his heart seemed to fail him. In
his suddenly regained happiness, he unconsciously laughed.
“Are you sure?” he asked eagerly. “I thought I’d killed him.”
The surgeon looked at Winthrop coldly.
“When they’re like that,” he explained with authority, “you can’t hurt
’em if you throw them off _The Times_ Building.”
He condescended to recognize the crowd. “You know where this man lives?”
Voices answered that Mr. Gaylor lived at the corner, over the saloon.
The voices showed a lack of sympathy. Old man Gaylor dead was a novelty;
old man Gaylor drunk was not.
The doctor’s prescription was simple and direct.
“Put him to bed till he sleeps it off,” he ordered; he swung himself to
the step of the ambulance. “Let him out, Steve,” he called. There was
the clang of a gong and the rattle of galloping hoofs.
The police officer approached Winthrop. “They tell me Jerry stepped in
front of your car; that you wasn’t to blame. I’ll get their names and
where they live. Jerry might try to hold you up for damages.”
“Thank you very much,” said Winthrop.
With several of Jerry’s friends, and the soiled person, who now seemed
dissatisfied that Jerry was alive, Winthrop helped to carry him up one
flight of stairs and drop him upon a bed.
“In case he needs anything,” said Winthrop, and gave several bills to
the soiled person, upon whom immediately Gaylor’s other friends closed
in. “And I’ll send my own doctor at once to attend to him.”
“You’d better,” said the soiled person morosely, “or he’ll try to shake
you down.”
The opinions as to what might be Mr. Gaylor’s next move seemed
unanimous.
From the saloon below, Winthrop telephoned to the family doctor, and
then rejoined Miss Forbes and the police officer. The officer gave him
the names of those citizens who had witnessed the accident, and in
return received Winthrop’s card.
“Not that it will go any further,” said the officer reassuringly.
“They’re all saying you acted all right and wanted to take him to
Roosevelt. There’s many,” he added with sententious indignation, “that
knock a man down, and then run away without waiting to find out if
they’ve hurted ’em or killed ’em.”
The speech for both Winthrop and Miss Forbes was equally embarrassing.
“You don’t say?” exclaimed Winthrop nervously. He shook the policeman’s
hand. The handclasp was apparently satisfactory to that official, for he
murmured “Thank you,” and stuck something in the lining of his helmet.
“Now, then!” Winthrop said briskly to Miss Forbes, “I think we have done
all we can. And we’ll get away from this place a little faster than the
law allows.”
Miss Forbes had seated herself in the car, and Winthrop was cranking up,
when the same policeman, wearing an anxious countenance, touched him on
the arm. “There is a gentleman here,” he said, “wants to speak to you.”
He placed himself between the gentleman and Winthrop and whispered:
“He’s ‘Izzy’ Schwab, he’s a Harlem police-court lawyer and a Tammany
man. He’s after something, look out for him.”
Winthrop saw, smiling at him ingratiatingly, a slight, slim youth, with
beady, rat-like eyes, a low forehead, and a Hebraic nose. He wondered
how it had been possible for Jerry Gaylor to so quickly secure counsel.
But Mr. Schwab at once undeceived him.
“I’m from _The Journal_,” he began, “not regular on the staff, but I
send ’em Harlem items, and the court reporter treats me nice, see! Now
about this accident; could you give me the name of the young lady?”
He smiled encouragingly at Miss Forbes.
“I could not!” growled Winthrop. “The man wasn’t hurt, the policeman
will tell you so. It is not of the least public interest.”
With a deprecatory shrug, the young man smiled knowingly.
“Well, mebbe not the lady’s name,” he granted, “but the name of the
_other_ gentleman who was with you, when the accident occurred.” His
black, rat-like eyes snapped. “I think _his_ name would be of public
interest.”
To gain time Winthrop stepped into the driver’s seat. He looked at Mr.
Schwab steadily.
“There was no other gentleman,” he said. “Do you mean my chauffeur?” Mr.
Schwab gave an appreciative chuckle.
“No, I don’t mean your chauffeur,” he mimicked. “I mean,” he declared
theatrically in his best police-court manner, “the man who to-day is
hoping to beat Tammany, Ernest Peabody!”
Winthrop stared at the youth insolently.
“I don’t understand you,” he said.
“Oh, of course not!” jeered “Izzy” Schwab. He moved excitedly from foot
to foot. “Then who _was_ the other man,” he demanded, “the man who ran
away?”
Winthrop felt the blood rise to his face. That Miss Forbes should hear
this rat of a man sneering at the one she was to marry, made him hate
Peabody. But he answered easily:
“No one ran away. I told my chauffeur to go and call up an ambulance.
That was the man you saw.”
As when “leading on” a witness to commit himself, Mr. Schwab smiled
sympathetically.
“And he hasn’t got back yet,” he purred, “has he?”
“No, and I’m not going to wait for him,” returned Winthrop. He reached
for the clutch, but Mr. Schwab jumped directly in front of the car.
“Was he looking for a telephone when he ran up the Elevated steps?” he
cried.
He shook his fists vehemently.
“Oh, no, Mr. Winthrop, it won’t do—you make a good witness. I wouldn’t
ask for no better, but, you don’t fool ‘Izzy’ Schwab.”
“You’re mistaken, I tell you,” cried Winthrop desperately. “He may look
like—like this man you speak of, but no Peabody was in this car.”
“Izzy” Schwab wrung his hands hysterically.
“No, he wasn’t!” he cried, “because he run away! And left an old man in
the street—dead, for all he knowed—nor cared neither. Yah!” shrieked the
Tammany heeler. “_Him_ a Reformer, yah!”
“Stand away from my car,” shouted Winthrop, “or you’ll get hurt.”
“Yah, you’d like to, wouldn’t you?” returned Mr. Schwab, leaping nimbly
to one side. “What do you think _The Journal_ ’ll give me for that
story, hey? ‘Ernest Peabody, the Reformer, Kills an Old Man, AND RUNS
AWAY.’ And hiding his face, too! I seen him. What do you think that
story’s worth to Tammany, hey? It’s worth twenty thousand votes!” The
young man danced in front of the car triumphantly, mockingly, in a
frenzy of malice. “Read the extras, that’s all,” he taunted. “Read ’em
in an hour from now!”
Winthrop glared at the shrieking figure with fierce, impotent rage;
then, with a look of disgust, he flung the robe off his knees and rose.
Mr. Schwab, fearing bodily injury, backed precipitately behind the
policeman.
“Come here,” commanded Winthrop softly. Mr. Schwab warily approached.
“That story,” said Winthrop, dropping his voice to a low whisper, “is
worth a damn sight more to you than twenty thousand votes. You take a
spin with me up Riverside Drive where we can talk. Maybe you and I can
‘make a little business.’”
At the words, the face of Mr. Schwab first darkened angrily, and then
lit with such exultation that it appeared as though Winthrop’s efforts
had only placed Peabody deeper in Mr. Schwab’s power. But the rat-like
eyes wavered, there was doubt in them, and greed, and, when they turned
to observe if any one could have heard the offer, Winthrop felt the
trick was his. It was apparent that Mr. Schwab was willing to arbitrate.
He stepped gingerly into the front seat, and as Winthrop leaned over him
and tucked and buckled the fur robe around his knees, he could not
resist a glance at his friends on the sidewalk. They were grinning with
wonder and envy, and as the great car shook itself, and ran easily
forward, Mr. Schwab leaned back and carelessly waved his hand. But his
mind did not waver from the purpose of his ride. He was not one to be
cajoled with fur rugs and glittering brass.
“Well, Mr. Winthrop,” he began briskly. “You want to say something? You
must be quick—every minute’s money.”
“Wait till we’re out of the traffic,” begged Winthrop anxiously, “I
don’t want to run down any more old men, and I wouldn’t for the world
have anything happen to you, Mr.—” He paused politely.
“Schwab—Isadore Schwab.”
“How did you know _my_ name?” asked Winthrop.
“The card you gave the police officer.”
“I see,” said Winthrop. They were silent while the car swept swiftly
west, and Mr. Schwab kept thinking that for a young man who was afraid
of the traffic, Winthrop was dodging the motor cars, beer vans, and iron
pillars, with a dexterity that was criminally reckless.
At that hour Riverside Drive was empty, and after a gasp of relief, Mr.
Schwab resumed the attack.
“Now, then,” he said sharply, “don’t go any further. What is this you
want to talk about?”
“How much will _The Journal_ give you for this story of yours?” asked
Winthrop.
Mr. Schwab smiled mysteriously.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because,” said Winthrop, “I think I could offer you something better.”
“You mean,” said the police-court lawyer cautiously, “you will make it
worth my while not to tell the truth about what I saw?”
“Exactly,” said Winthrop.
“That’s all! Stop the car,” cried Mr. Schwab. His manner was commanding.
It vibrated with triumph. His eyes glistened with wicked satisfaction.
“Stop the car?” demanded Winthrop, “what do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Mr. Schwab dramatically, “that I’ve got you where I want
you, thank you. You have killed Peabody dead as a cigar butt! Now I can
tell them how his friends tried to bribe me. Why do you think I came in
your car? For what money _you_ got? Do you think you can stack up your
roll against the _New York Journal’s_, or against Tammany’s?” His shrill
voice rose exultantly. “Why, Tammany ought to make me judge for this!
Now, let me down here,” he commanded, “and next time, don’t think you
can take on ‘Izzy’ Schwab and get away with it.”
They were passing Grant’s Tomb, and the car was moving at a speed that
Mr. Schwab recognized was in excess of the speed limit.
“Do you hear me?” he demanded, “let me down!”
To his dismay Winthrop’s answer was in some fashion to so juggle with
the shining brass rods that the car flew into greater speed. To “Izzy”
Schwab it seemed to scorn the earth, to proceed by leaps and jumps. But,
what added even more to his mental discomfiture was, that Winthrop
should turn, and slowly and familiarly wink at him.