A private chivalry

Comparing it with the fortnight of yesterdays, Brant reckoned the day of his meeting with Dorothy as one worthy of anniversaries. In good truth, his confession had stopped something short of its climax, and of the coveted personal absolution; but it was comforting to remember that he had spoken plainly, and that she had bidden him go forward hopefully. Notwithstanding the untimely interruption, there could be no reasonable doubt of the major fact: that she fully understood his parable and its application—understood and was glad, and would have let him go on but for the interruption.

So much for the good; and as for the ill, the rebuff at the church gate went for little. Being so well assured of the daughter’s—he was about to say “love,” but he changed it to “sympathy”—being so well assured of the daughter’s sympathy, he could afford to wait for reinstatement in the good graces of the mother. Women, even such women as the Mrs. Langfords, are not implacable, he reasoned; and when he should have shown how sincere he was, her resentment—her natural resentment, he was willing to call it—would be allayed, and she would see the injustice of her sentence of ostracism. Wherein he showed forth an unknowledge of womankind common to very young men, and to some older ones whose walk in life has led them much apart from women worth the knowing.

In the exuberance of his self-congratulation Brant lost sight of the one redeeming thread in the thought-woven fabric of the day, which thread was a brotherly concern for Antrim, and a half-formed resolve to turn bearwarden to the foolish one. By evening the half-formed resolve took permanent shape; and since a physician must first know something of the disease and the cause of it, he began by trying to breach Antrim’s reticence at the supper table. For reasons good and sufficient, the effort was bootless; and Brant, driven from ear to eye evidence, and having, moreover, considerable skill in diagnosing the symptoms of bottle sickness, saw with concern that Antrim was tottering on the verge of the abyss.

From that to keeping a solicitous eye on him was but a step; and when Antrim went upstairs, Brant, whose room was just across the corridor from the chief clerk’s, went too, mounting guard with a light, a book, and with his door ajar. For a long time there was no stir in the opposite room; but just as he was beginning to hope that Antrim had gone to bed, the door opened and the chief clerk hurried out.

Brant’s first impulse was to follow and bring him back without ceremony. Then he reflected that it is an ill thing to meddle, even with the best of motives, and so cast about for a plausible excuse. Luckily, he found one ready to his hand. The papers containing the evidence against Harding were in the drawer of his writing table, and in view of the late stirrings in that pool it would be well to put them under lock and key. There was a safe in Antrim’s office, and the errand would give him a chance to probe Antrim’s wound, and so haply he might find the bullet or the arrowhead, or whatever it might be that was rankling therein.

So he put the papers in his pocket and went out; and taking it for granted that Antrim would make straight for the nearest barroom, lost a half hour or more in a fruitless search among the drinking places. When he had widened the search circle to the farthest limits of the quasi-respectable district, outside of which Antrim would not be likely to venture, he stumbled upon Jarvis and stopped to inquire of him.

“Say, Jarvis, have you seen anything of Harry Antrim this evening?”

The reporter nodded. “Um-hm; saw him heading for his office half an hour ago, plugging along with his head down and his hands in his pockets. What’s struck him lately?”

“I don’t know,” replied the bearwarden truthfully enough; “much obliged.” But when he would have gone on, Jarvis turned and went with him.

“Going to hunt him up? I’ll mog along with you. The old man says the president of the C. E. & W. is coming in on a special, and I’d like to get the facts for an item.”

“Can’t you telephone?” asked Brant, remembering the nature of his errand.

“I suppose I could, but I don’t mind the walk. Say, it’s queer about Harry, isn’t it? Never saw a man let go all holds at once like he has.”

“He will get over it; it’s nothing worse than a fit of the blues,” said Brant, taxing his ingenuity meanwhile for an expedient which would rid him of the reporter.

“Blues nothing! Fit of the ‘jimmies,’ if he doesn’t pull up pretty short. He isn’t built right to carry bug juice in bulk, and that is just about what he is trying to do.”

“What was it you said to me about preaching last night?” asked Brant, as they climbed the stair to the railway offices.

“Never mind about that; you were preaching at me, and I didn’t need it. Now, with a fellow like Harry it’s different——”

They were at the door of the train despatcher’s room, and Brant paused. “Better ask Disbrow about the special,” he said, with a glance at the darkened transom of the superintendent’s office. “Harry doesn’t seem to be here.”

The reporter acted upon the suggestion; and when he was alone in the corridor Brant went quickly to the door of the darkened office. It was ajar, and when he pushed it open the light from the hall fell full upon the figure of the chief clerk lying inert and helpless across the open desk.

Brant took in the situation at a glance, closed the door softly, and walked back toward the despatcher’s room. Jarvis was a good fellow, but he already knew too much about Antrim’s affair, and he must be got rid of at all hazards. He met the reporter as the latter was coming out of Disbrow’s door.

“Get what you wanted?” he inquired.

“No. You railroad fellows are all of a piece when it comes to giving up anything that the public would care to read about. Disbrow says he doesn’t know anything about a special train—didn’t know the president was coming. Between you and me and the gatepost, I think he doesn’t know much of anything.”

“Then you’ll have to forego the item.”

“Forego nothing! I’ll hang around this old shack till morning, now, but what I’ll find out about that train.”

Brant laughed. “I like your persistence, even if it is a little out of proportion to the object. Come into my office here and sit down and smoke a cigar while I try my hand at it. I owe you a good turn, anyway.”

Brant unlocked the door of the chief engineer’s rooms, and, telling the reporter to make himself comfortable while he waited, left him. But since it was no time for half measures he took the precaution to set the catch of the nightlatch as he closed the door, locking Jarvis in.

Hurrying back to the superintendent’s office, he turned on the light and tried to rouse Antrim, shaking him roughly and sparing neither blows nor abuse. Nothing coming of this, he was beginning to despair of any measure of success which should antedate the end of the reporter’s patience, when his eye lighted upon the unfinished letter to the train despatcher. Written as it had been, in the dark, it was a barely legible scrawl, but he made shift to decipher it, pieced it out with Jarvis’s information and Disbrow’s ignorance, and knowing much more about building railways than about operating them, jumped at once to the conclusion that the special train was rushing onward to certain destruction. Wherefore he forgot the imprisoned reporter, overlooked the very obvious expedient of notifying the despatcher by word of mouth, and fell upon Antrim with renewed buffetings to which the assumed exigencies lent stinging vigour.

No sudorific could hold out long against such an heroic antidote, and with the first signs of returning consciousness Brant dragged his patient to the wash basin in the corner of the room and held his head under the cold faucet. Antrim came up gasping and struggled feebly with his tormentor, but Brant thrust him down again and held him until he found speech and sanity wherewith to protest.

“For Heaven’s sake, let up—you’ll drown me!” gasped the victim, and Brant desisted.

“Got your grip again so it will stay?” he inquired grimly.

Antrim staggered back against the wall and groped for the towel which Brant handed him.

“I should hope so. What’s the matter? What have you been doing to me?”

“Matter enough. Drop that towel and come over here.” Brant was dragging him back to the desk. “Read that letter, quick, and tell me what to do, before somebody gets killed!” he commanded.

Antrim sank into the chair. “Great Scott! I feel as if I had been brayed in a mortar!” he groaned. Then he took up the letter and read it.

“Well?” said Brant impatiently. “Pull your wits together and tell me what I am to do—or is it too late to do anything?”

The chief clerk blinked at the clock and was evidently unable to see its dial. “Will you tell me what time it is?” he said. “I can’t seem to see very well.”

“It is ten minutes past nine.”

“‘Between nine and ten,’ he said,” muttered Antrim, quoting the misplaced message. Then to Brant: “Maybe there is time enough. Can you run a typewriter, Brant?”

“Yes—after a fashion.”

“Then let me give you a letter. I couldn’t write it with a pen to save my life.”

Brant jerked the cover from the machine and thrust in a sheet of paper. “Go ahead.”

Antrim handed him the unfinished letter.

“Just copy that, if you will, and I’ll tell you what to add.”

“But, man alive! have we got to sit here and fool with red tape when every minute may be worth a dozen lives?”

“It isn’t so bad as all that,” said Antrim soberly enough. “The train can’t get past Lone Pine without orders for this division. But I’m a ruined man if Disbrow doesn’t get that letter before Lone Pine calls him up. Don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then I’ll explain. The general manager is on that train, and he wired me this morning for regardless orders over this division. I answered that they would be given—and they haven’t been. If there is a balk at Lone Pine, every operator on the line will know that some one has fallen down, and you can trust the general manager to find out who that some one is. And when he finds out, I’m done.”

“I see,” said Brant, and forthwith he turned and fell upon the typewriter. When he had written to the break in the unfinished letter, Antrim dictated:

“Will reach Lone Pine Junction between nine and ten this P. M., and you will arrange to give it right of way to Denver over all other trains.”

Brant finished with a flourish and jerked the sheet out of the rolls. “Can you make out to sign it?” he asked.

“I guess so,” responded the chief clerk, and he dipped his pen and made the supposition good, though with no little difficulty. “Now, if you will copy it in that book and tell me how I’m to get it to Disbrow at this late hour without giving myself away, we’ll see what comes of it.”

Brant took an impression of the letter, laying his plans meanwhile.

“Can’t trust Disbrow, I suppose?” he asked.

“Yes; but he will hold it over me.”

“Then we won’t give him a chance. Let me have an envelope.”

When the letter was inclosed and addressed, Brant told the chief clerk to sit still and wait for him. He was back in a few minutes, and Antrim had not to ask if his errand had been successful.

“How did you manage it?” he queried.

“Never you mind about that. I got two letters to-day in the train mail that didn’t belong in our office.”

“Oh. What did Disbrow say?”

“Nothing much. Swore a little on general principles, and said it was lucky I found it before the old man had time to raise Cain. It took me longer because I had to go and bake it over a gas jet; it was wet, you know.”

Antrim swallowed a lump in his throat and pulled himself together to meet the demands of the occasion.

“Brant, you have played the Good Samaritan to-night, if you never did before. You have pulled me out of the deepest hole I ever got into.”

“No, I haven’t; but I am going to. Now tell me how the thing happened.”

Antrim told the story of the day’s miseries, concluding with the curious experience in the darkness.

“It’s all plain enough but the miracle, and that is beyond me,” he confessed. “Did I know what I was about? or was I beginning to ‘see things’?”

“A little of both, I guess,” said Brant, and as he spoke the key of the incandescent lamp snapped and left them in the darkness. Brant laughed and got up to turn it on again.

“That is doubtless the snap you heard, and it accounts for the blindness. As for the rest, your brain was simply making another hunt for the missing clew. Does that satisfy you?”

“It will have to, I guess.”

“Well, then, it is my turn. I want to know why you have been making a bally idiot of yourself for the last week or so.”

Antrim hung his head. “Because I haven’t any better sense, I suppose.”

“That doesn’t go. Give me the facts.”

“There is only one to give: Isabel won’t marry me.”

“Oh, she won’t? And so you are going to make a howling wilderness of yourself because a young woman doesn’t happen to know her own mind. Is that it?”

“But she does know her own mind,” Antrim protested.

“Oh, nonsense! You are no boy, and you ought to know better. If you love her—and I take that for granted—all you have to do is just to hang on and wait; and that is what you are going to do, if I can make you.”

Antrim smiled wearily. “The way I feel at this present moment, anybody could make me do anything. I am as weak as a cat, and as sore as if I had been through a prize fight.—What on earth is that?”

“That” was a furious pounding on a near-by door, and Brant sprang up, oversetting his chair in his haste.

“It’s Jarvis—that’s what it is!” he exclaimed. “Blest if I didn’t forget all about him! Sit in the dark a minute, will you?” and he turned off the light and went to liberate the captive.

“Nice fellow, you are!” began Jarvis wrathfully when the door was opened. “Lock a man up while you go off and go to sleep——”

Brant broke in with an apology which ran smoothly and without a break until he had walked the reporter down the stair and out into the street. Then he gave Jarvis the required information about the president’s special, and hastened back to Antrim to explain the interruption.

“You see, I had to do something with him,” he concluded. “He is a good fellow, but he talks too much, and the less said about this business of yours the better.”

“I should say so,” agreed Antrim ruefully, adding, “but it’s no use; the whole town must know about it by this time. I haven’t been at it very long, but I haven’t been hiding my light under a bushel.”

“Oh, I don’t know about the publicity. A man doesn’t fill the public eye quite as much as he is apt to think. Besides, you have made your last appearance in the idiotic rôle. Beginning right now, you are going to break it short off and be yourself again. When did you eat last?”

“Supper, last night.”

“Humph! I thought as much. No wonder you had wheels in your head! Let me help you into your overcoat, and we’ll go up to Elitch’s.”

“I don’t believe I could eat anything, if it was to save my life,” objected Antrim, rising laboriously.

“Yes, you can—you have got to; and then you are going to let me take you home and put you to bed; and if we hear of any more foolishness, you will come in for a manhauling that you won’t get over for a week.”

Antrim reached backward for the sleeves of the overcoat and groaned piteously.

“Great Moses! I feel as if I’d had that already. What the mischief do you suppose makes me so stiff and sore?”

Brant’s laugh lacked sympathy. “It is one of the after-effects, I fancy; look out you don’t bring it on again.” And he tucked Antrim’s arm under his own and led him uptown, carrying out his programme to the letter, and playing his new rôle of bearwarden until he had seen his charge safe in bed.

When he reached his own room he found the packet of papers still in his pocket and tossed it carelessly across to the table. Then he thought better of it, and put the envelope back in his pocket.

“It is climbing into the plane of responsibilities, and my conscience isn’t clean enough yet to handle it,” he mused. “Just now I feel as if I should like to burn the stuff and give the beggar a chance for his life; and yet I suppose there are plenty of purists who would say that I am an accessory in the murder of Henry Brinton for not giving his murderer up to justice. I wonder what she would say about it? If I knew, that is what I should do.” He stretched his arms and yawned sleepily. “Heigho! it’s a queer old round world, from any point of view; but since the morning and the evening of this blessed day, I’m rather glad to be in it.”

With which altruistic reflection he went to bed to dream that he was about to be hanged for the murder of one Henry Brinton.