Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
Before he finally arrested him, “Jimmie” Sniffen had seen the man with the golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times. Twice, unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round Hill where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie knew people do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not deceived. He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and secretly vowed to “stalk” him. From that moment, had the stranger known it, he was as good as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his sleeve for “stalking” and “path-finding,” not to boast of others for “gardening” and “cooking,” can outwit any spy. Even had, General Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie Sniffen would have been one. Because, by birth he was a boy, and by inheritance, a scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen; and with Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to when the acres of the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road to the coach road to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on one of his hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted weasles will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the cow-paths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as familiar as his own kitchen garden, nor explain why, when you could not see a Pease and Elliman “For Sale” sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could see in the highest branches a last year's bird's nest.
Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
“But there ain't no panthers in Westchester,” Jimmie would reassure himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still Jimmie remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that when he raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther. “Mebbe dad told me it happened to grandpop,” Jimmie would explain, “or I dreamed it, or, mebbe, I read it in a story book.”
The “German spy” mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was spending the week end with “Squire” Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides being a justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President of the Country Club, was also a local “councilman” for the Round Hill Scouts, he brought his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen in Belgium and of the part they were playing in the great war. It was his peroration that made trouble.
“And any day,” he assured his audience, “this country may be at war with Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit. You can begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield, Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and then they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven and New York Central railroads, and march straight through this village. I haven't the least doubt,” exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet, “that at this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as blackberries. They are here to select camp sites and gun positions, to find out which of these hills enfilade the others and to learn to what extent their armies can live on the country. They are counting the cows, the horses, the barns where fodder is stored; and they are marking down on their maps the wells and streams.”
As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the door, Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. “Keep your eyes open!” he commanded. “Watch every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be prepared!'”
That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they saw spiked helmets.
Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
“Next time you talk to my scouts,” he declared, “you'll talk on 'Votes for Women.' After what you said to-night every real estate agent who dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away from Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites.”
“YOU are not!” retorted his friend, “you own half the county now, and you're trying to buy the other half.”
“I'm a justice of the peace,” explained Van Vorst. “I don't know WHY I am, except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it is trouble. The Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and I have to fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians, they send me Black Hand letters. And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for a German spy who is selecting gun sites. And he will turn out to be a millionaire who is tired of living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to 'own his own home' and his own golf-links. And he'll be so hot at being arrested that he'll take his millions to Long Island and try to break into the Piping Rock Club. And, it will be your fault!”
The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie liked to pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the top of a hill and on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if, himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit, squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to General Washington. The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in the fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along the same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken prisoner, and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom shot. Or else why on his sleeve was the badge for “stalking.” But always to have to make believe became monotonous. Even “dry shopping” along the Rue de la Paix when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field. The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy, but the enemy of his country.
In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor from the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian arrow-heads. And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor to a secret cave of his own, though on some one else's property, where one not only could dig for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor was delighted, but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week following Jimmie was again disappointed.
On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book, and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of New York City. Seven millions of people without water! With out firing a shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and at the risk of his life by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he followed the runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam, was the State Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the Panama Canal. Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From the heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man working alone upon a basin of concrete. The man was a German-American, and already on Jimmie's list of “suspects.” That for the use of the German artillery he was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was only too evident. But closer investigation proved that the concrete was only two inches thick. And the hyphenated one explained that the basin was built over a spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect a fountain and raise gold fish. It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told him his troubles. The young judge proved unsympathetic. “My advice to you, Jimmie,” he said, “is to go slow. Accusing everybody of espionage is a very serious matter. If you call a man a spy, it's sometimes hard for him to disprove it; and the name sticks. So, go slow—very slow. Before you arrest any more people, come to me first for a warrant.”
So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying shingles along a blue chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and Jimmie was carrying a dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a new barn. He made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young man in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed to be always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and, from the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie mistrusted him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It had not been raining, but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed that while the dew was still on the leaves the young man had been forcing his way through underbrush. The stranger must have remembered Jimmie, for he laughed and exclaimed:
“Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now, or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!”
Jimmie smiled in sympathy. “It's early to be hungry,” said Jimmie; “when did you have your breakfast?”
“I didn't,” laughed the young man. “I went out to walk up an appetite, and I lost myself. But, I haven't lost my appetite. Which is the shortest way back to Bedford?”
“The first road to your right,” said Jimmie.
“Is it far?” asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very hungry was evident.
“It's a half-hour's walk,” said Jimmie
“If I live that long,” corrected the young man; and stepped out briskly.
Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut him from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that distance, and, then, diving into the wood that lined the road, “stalked” him. From behind a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one in the road behind him, also leave it and plunge into the woods.
He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a runner stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead of him he heard the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who knew his way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad shoulders of the stranger, and again could follow his progress only by the noise of the crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed the stranger had reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered, that led to Middle Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also reached it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road, he approached warily. But, he was too late. There was a sound like the whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of him from where it had been hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into the highway. The stranger was at the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust, the car raced toward Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it bore a Connecticut State license; that in the wheel-ruts the tires printed little V's, like arrow-heads.
For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty miles he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they lured him south, they were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and fresh-spread tarvia. Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as in his copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he catch up with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset as he passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the skyline, in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous as a flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And the stranger was in no haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face east toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to splash and as the sky grew black the figure on the hilltop faded into the darkness. And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen it, there suddenly flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from cover. It was no longer to be endured. The spy was signalling. The time for caution had passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the top of the hill, and found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone wall, forced his way through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath to listen. Just beyond him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was tripping and tumbling. Joyfully, it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned hot. It sounded as though from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie shook his fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the coming storm and the tossing tree-tops, he raised his voice.
“You wait!” he shouted. “I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring a gun.”
Next time, was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over the chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his borrowing the family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his shirt buttoned his license to “hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps or other devices.”
He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested more spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an impatient shake of the head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had seen he could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What he had seen was his warrant—plus the shotgun.
As a “pathfinder” should, he planned to take up the trail where he had lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a warmer trail. Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the night before, two lines of little arrow-heads pointed the way. They were so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest the car should be just beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent grew hot. The tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and Jimmie broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the right, and in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires had pressed deep into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the car. It was empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should he seek the spy on the nearest hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car. Between lying in ambush and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did not climb the hill nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked that hill.
Flat on the ground, hidden in the golden-rod he lay motionless. Before him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys. Six miles away to his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich. Directly before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests, green fields, gray stone walls, and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash of white, that quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had washed the air. Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the glare of the August sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as those in a colored photograph; and as still.
In his excitement the scout was trembling.
“If he moves,” he sighed happily, “I've got him!”
Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which he had found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but the top was crowned with a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing an ancient boundary, ran a stone wall, moss-covered and wrapped in poison-ivy. In places, the branches of the trees, reaching out to the sun, overhung the wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the hill into sectors. He began at the right, and slowly followed the wall. With his eyes he took it apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised his head, Jimmie would have seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like the reflection of the sun upon a window-pane, something flashed, Jimmie knew he had found his spy. A pair of binoculars had betrayed him. Jimmie now saw him clearly. He sat on the ground at the top of the hill opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak, his back against the stone wall. With the binoculars to his eyes he had leaned too far forward, and upon the glass the sun had flashed a warning.
Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward, like a crab he wriggled free of the golden-rod, and hidden by the contour of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill opposite. When he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which he had seen the stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live wire, stepped on tip-toe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it. The binoculars hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was spread a map. He was marking it with a pencil, and as he worked, he hummed a tune.
Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered him.
“Throw up your hands!” he commanded.
The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no sign that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little sun-filled valley. They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed by some deep and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the sun-filled valley some place of greater moment, some place far distant.
Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but still smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief. These were followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm. “Don't point that thing at me!” shouted the stranger. “Is it loaded?” With his cheek pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length of the brown barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open palms. They accented his expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to be exclaiming, “Can such things be?”
“Get up!” commanded Jimmie.
With alacrity the stranger rose.
“Walk over there,” ordered the scout. “Walk backward. Stop! Take off those field-glasses and throw them to me.” Without removing his eyes from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed them to the stone wall. “See here!” he pleaded, “if you'll only point that damned blunderbuss the other way, you can have the glasses, and my watch, and clothes, and all my money; only don't—”
Jimmie flushed crimson. “You can't bribe me,” he growled. At least, he tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or because he was excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's words he seemed rather the more amazed.
“I'm not trying to bribe you,” he protested. “If you don't want anything, why are you holding me up?”
“I'm not,” returned Jimmie, “I'm arresting you!”
The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. “Oh,” he cried, “I see! Have I been trespassing?”
With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over the wall. “If you try to rush me,” he warned, “I'll shoot you full of buckshot.”
The stranger took a hasty step BACKWARD. “Don't worry about that,” he exclaimed. “I'll not rush you. Why am I arrested?”
Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his shoulder, and again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and menacing.
“The name on them” he accused, “is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?” The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied gravely, “That's the name of the firm that makes them.”
Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. “Hah!” he cried, “made in Germany!”
The stranger shook his head.
“I don't understand,” he said. “Where WOULD a Weiss glass be made?” With polite insistence he repeated, “Would you mind telling me why I am arrested, and who you might happen to be?”
Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he did so, for the first time the face of the stranger showed that he was annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But the penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he saw, “Correct range, 1,800 yards”; “this stream not fordable”; “slope of hill 15 degrees inaccessible for artillery.” “Wire entanglements here”; “forage for five squadrons.”
Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the gun motioned toward the base of the hill. “Keep forty feet ahead of me,” he commanded, “and walk to your car.” The stranger did not seem to hear him. He spoke with irritation.
“I suppose,” he said, “I'll have to explain to you about that map.”
“Not to me, you won't,” declared his captor. “You're going to drive straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to HIM!”
The stranger tossed his arms even higher. “Thank God!” he exclaimed gratefully.
With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a willing captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van Vorst's he exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie held the shotgun against the base of his skull was an extenuating circumstance.
They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a bag of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a gun, the Judge hastily descended. The sight of the spy hunter filled him with misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting German spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was great. And now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the hands of the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added presence of a butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur increased his sense of security. Their presence seemed to afford a feeling of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a halt, he breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of deep relief.
Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was not entirety successful.
“I got him!” he cried. “I didn't make no mistake about THIS one!”
“What one?” demanded Van Vorst.
Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his head. He seemed to wish to assure himself that it was still there.
“THAT one!” cried Jimmie. “He's a German spy!”
The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was indignation, anger, reproach.
“Jimmie!” he cried.
Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his “Exhibit A.” “Look what he's wrote,” commanded the scout. “It's all military words. And these are his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in GERMANY! I been stalking him for a week. He's a spy!”
When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it. Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes they showed that he was puzzled.
But he greeted the prisoner politely.
“I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed,” he said. “I'm only glad it's no worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the idea that every stranger he sees—”
The prisoner quickly interrupted.
“Please!” he begged, “Don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well. Might I speak with you—ALONE?” he asked.
Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room, that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.
“I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park,” he said. “She must have been a great loss to you?”
“She was,” said Van Vorst. “The week before she broke her back, I refused three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?”
The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
“I brought you inside,” he said, “because I didn't want your servants to hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's feelings. He's a fine boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I threw him off twice, but to-day he caught me fair. If I really had been a German spy, I couldn't have got away from him. And I want him to think he has captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much credit as though he had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he DID capture.”
Van Vorst pointed to the map. “My bet is,” he said, “that you're an officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall manoeuvres. Am I right?”
The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
“You're warm,” he said, “but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's the Real Thing.” From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it on the table. “I'm 'Sherry' McCoy,” he said, “Captain of Artillery in the United States Army.” He nodded to the hand telephone on the table.
“You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide, Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask THEM. I'm not picking out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of defense for Americans when the Germans come!”
Van Vorst laughed derisively.
“My word!” he exclaimed. “You're as bad as Jimmie!”
Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
“And you, sir,” he retorted, “are as bad as ninety million other Americans. You WON'T believe! When the Germans are shelling this hill, when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons, maybe, you'll believe THEN.”
“Are you serious?” demanded Van Vorst. “And you an army officer?”
“That's why I am serious,” returned McCoy. “WE know. But when we try to prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly—in underhand ways, for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and accuse us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to prepare under cover. That's why I've had to skulk around these hills like a chicken thief. And,” he added sharply, “that's why that boy must not know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down at Washington, and I'll have my ears boxed.”
Van Vorst moved to the door.
“He will never learn the truth from me,” he said. “For I will tell him you are to be shot at sunrise.”
“Good!” laughed the Captain. “And tell me his name. If ever we fight over Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of scouts. And give him this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes from you.”
But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. “You mustn't,” he begged; “I never knowed you'd shoot him! I wouldn't have caught him, if I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be shot at sunrise.” At the prospect of unending nightmares Jimmie's voice shook with terror. “Make it for twenty years,” he begged. “Make it for ten,” he coaxed, “but, please, promise you won't shoot him.”
When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying not to smile.
“I gave Jimmie your ten dollars,” said Van Vorst, “and made it twenty, and he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he begged me to spare your life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty years in a fortress. I drink to your good fortune.”
“No!” protested Captain McCoy, “We will drink to Jimmie!”
When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs had again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once more attempted to depart; but he was again delayed.
Other visitors were arriving.
Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat were white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it had just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted at Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot with anger.
“A gray touring-car,” he shouted. “It stopped here. We saw it from that hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way. Where did he go?”
“Who?” demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, “Captain McCoy?”
The man exploded with an oath. The driver with a shove of his elbow, silenced him.
“Yes, Captain McCoy,” assented the driver eagerly. “Which way did he go?”
“To New York,” said Van Vorst.
The driver shrieked at his companion.
“Then, he's doubled back,” he cried. “He's gone to New Haven.” He stooped and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
“What do you want with him?” he called “Who are you?”
Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the car the words of the driver were flung back. “We're Secret Service from Washington,” he shouted. “He's from their embassy. He's a German spy!”
Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a curtain of white, whirling dust.
Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP
I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in Suffolk, and every one in London assured me that at their house there would be the kind of a Christmas house party you hear about but see only in the illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised mistletoe, snapdragon, and Sir Roger de Coverley. On Christmas morning we would walk to church, after luncheon we would shoot, after dinner we would eat plum pudding floating in blazing brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the waits singing “God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.”
To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in my gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children, of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls, skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them, sometimes explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my wealthiest patient gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation, and in all New York would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him save myself. By cable I advised postponement. Having lived in lawful harmony with his appendix for fifty years, I thought, for one week longer he might safely maintain the status quo. But his cable in reply was an ultimatum. So, on Christmas eve, instead of Hallam Hall and a Yule log, I was in a gale plunging and pitching off the coast of Ireland, and the only log on board was the one the captain kept to himself.
I sat in the smoking-room, depressed and cross, and it must have been on the principle that misery loves company that I foregathered with Talbot, or rather that Talbot foregathered with me. Certainty, under happier conditions and in haunts of men more crowded, the open-faced manner in which he forced himself upon me would have put me on my guard. But, either out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the fictitious gayety of our few fellow-passengers, or because the young man in a knowing, impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from dinner time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and icicles, was blown in from the deck and wished all a merry Christmas.
Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not some of the passengers testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smoking-room crowd would have quarantined me as his accomplice. On the first night I met him I was not certain whether he was English or giving an imitation. All the outward and visible signs were English, but he told me that, though he had been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of his years in India, playing polo, he was an American. He seemed to have spent much time, and according to himself much money, at the French watering-places and on the Riviera. I felt sure that it was in France I had already seen him, but where I could not recall. He was hard to place. Of people at home and in London well worth knowing he talked glibly, but in speaking of them he made several slips. It was his taking the trouble to cover up the slips that first made me wonder if his talking about himself was not mere vanity, but had some special object. I felt he was presenting letters of introduction in order that later he might ask a favor. Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or in New York would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a banker, I could not tell. But in forcing himself upon me, except in self-interest, I could think of no other motive. The next evening I discovered the motive.
He was in the smoking-room playing solitaire, and at once I recalled that it was at Aix-les-Bains I had first seen him, and that he held a bank at baccarat. When he asked me to sit down I said: “I saw you last summer at Aix-les-Bains.”
His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it for some particular card.
“What was I doing?” he asked.
“Dealing baccarat at the Casino des Fleurs.”
With obvious relief he laughed.
“Oh, yes,” he assented; “jolly place, Aix. But I lost a pot of money there. I'm a rotten hand at cards. Can't win, and can't leave 'em alone.” As though for this weakness, so frankly confessed, he begged me to excuse him, he smiled appealingly. “Poker, bridge, chemin de fer, I like 'em all,” he rattled on, “but they don't like me. So I stick to solitaire. It's dull, but cheap.” He shuffled the cards clumsily. As though making conversation, he asked: “You care for cards yourself?”
I told him truthfully I did not know the difference between a club and a spade and had no curiosity to learn. At this, when he found he had been wasting time on me, I expected him to show some sign of annoyance, even of irritation, but his disappointment struck far deeper. As though I had hurt him physically, he shut his eyes, and when again he opened them I saw in them distress. For the moment I believe of my presence he was utterly unconscious. His hands lay idle upon the table; like a man facing a crisis, he stared before him. Quite improperly, I felt sorry for him. In me he thought he had found a victim; and that the loss of the few dollars he might have won should so deeply disturb him showed his need was great. Almost at once he abandoned me and I went on deck. When I returned an hour later to the smoking-room he was deep in a game of poker.
As I passed he hailed me gayly.
“Don't scold, now,” he laughed; “you know I can't keep away from it.”
From his manner those at the table might have supposed we were friends of long and happy companionship. I stopped behind his chair, but he thought I had passed, and in reply to one of the players answered: “Known him for years; he's set me right many a time. When I broke my right femur 'chasin,' he got me back in the saddle in six weeks. All my people swear by him.”
One of the players smiled up at me, and Talbot turned. But his eyes met mine with perfect serenity. He even held up his cards for me to see. “What would you draw?” he asked.
His audacity so astonished me that in silence I could only stare at him and walk on.
When on deck he met me he was not even apologetic. Instead, as though we were partners in crime, he chuckled delightedly.
“Sorry,” he said. “Had to do it. They weren't very keen at my taking a hand, so I had to use your name. But I'm all right now,” he assured me. “They think you vouched for me, and to-night they're going to raise the limit. I've convinced them I'm an easy mark.”
“And I take it you are not,” I said stiffly.
He considered this unworthy of an answer and only smiled. Then the smile died, and again in his eyes I saw distress, infinite weariness, and fear.
As though his thoughts drove him to seek protection, he came closer.
“I'm 'in bad,' doctor,” he said. His voice was frightened, bewildered, like that of a child. “I can't sleep; nerves all on the loose. I don't think straight. I hear voices, and no one around. I hear knockings at the door, and when I open it, no one there. If I don't keep fit I can't work, and this trip I got to make expenses. You couldn't help me, could you—couldn't give me something to keep my head straight?”
The need of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob our fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I meanly dodged it. I told him professional etiquette required I should leave him to the ship's surgeon.
“But I don't know HIM,” he protested.
Mindful of the use he had made of my name, I objected strenuously:
“Well, you certainly don't know me.”
My resentment obviously puzzled him.
“I know who you ARE,” he returned. “You and I—” With a deprecatory gesture, as though good taste forbade him saying who we were, he stopped. “But the ship's surgeon!” he protested, “he's an awful bounder! Besides,” he added quite simply, “he's watching me.”
“As a doctor,” I asked, “or watching you play cards?”
“Play cards,” the young man answered. “I'm afraid he was ship's surgeon on the P. & O. I came home on. There was trouble that voyage, and I fancy he remembers me.”
His confidences were becoming a nuisance.
“But you mustn't tell me that,” I protested. “I can't have you making trouble on this ship, too. How do you know I won't go straight from here to the captain?”
As though the suggestion greatly entertained him, he laughed.
He made a mock obeisance.
“I claim the seal of your profession,” he said. “Nonsense,” I retorted. “It's a professional secret that your nerves are out of hand, but that you are a card-sharp is NOT. Don't mix me up with a priest.”
For a moment Talbot, as though fearing he had gone too far, looked at me sharply; he bit his lower lip and frowned.
“I got to make expenses,” he muttered. “And, besides, all card games are games of chance, and a card-sharp is one of the chances. Anyway,” he repeated, as though disposing of all argument, “I got to make expenses.”
After dinner, when I came to the smoking-room, the poker party sat waiting, and one of them asked if I knew where they could find “my friend.” I should have said then that Talbot was a steamer acquaintance only; but I hate a row, and I let the chance pass.
“We want to give him his revenge,” one of them volunteered.
“He's losing, then?” I asked.
The man chuckled complacently.
“The only loser,” he said.
“I wouldn't worry,” I advised. “He'll come for his revenge.”
That night after I had turned in he knocked at my door. I switched on the lights and saw him standing at the foot of my berth. I saw also that with difficulty he was holding himself in hand.
“I'm scared,” he stammered, “scared!”
I wrote out a requisition on the surgeon for a sleeping-potion and sent it to him by the steward, giving the man to understand I wanted it for myself. Uninvited, Talbot had seated himself on the sofa. His eyes were closed, and as though he were cold he was shivering and hugging himself in his arms.
“Have you been drinking?” I asked.
In surprise he opened his eyes.
“I can't drink,” he answered simply. “It's nerves and worry. I'm tired.”
He relaxed against the cushions; his arms fell heavily at his sides; the fingers lay open.
“God,” he whispered, “how tired I am!”
In spite of his tan—and certainly he had led the out-of-door life—his face showed white. For the moment he looked old, worn, finished.
“They're crowdin' me,” the boy whispered. “They're always crowdin' me.” His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like that of a child complaining of something beyond his experience. “I can't remember when they haven't been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always movin' me on. Moved me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris, and now they've shut me out of London. I opened a club there, very quiet, very exclusive, smart neighborhood, too—a flat in Berkeley Street—roulette and chemin de fer. I think it was my valet sold me out; anyway, they came in and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on this. It's my last chance!”
“This trip?”
“No; my family in New York. Haven't seen 'em in ten years. They paid me to live abroad. I'm gambling on THEM; gambling on their takin' me back. I'm coming home as the Prodigal Son, tired of filling my belly with the husks that the swine do eat; reformed character, repentant and all that; want to follow the straight and narrow; and they'll kill the fatted calf.” He laughed sardonically. “Like hell they will! They'd rather see ME killed.”
It seemed to me, if he wished his family to believe he were returning repentant, his course in the smoking-room would not help to reassure them. I suggested as much.
“If you get into 'trouble,' as you call it,” I said, “and they send a wireless to the police to be at the wharf, your people would hardly—”
“I know,” he interrupted; “but I got to chance that. I GOT to make enough to go on with—until I see my family.”
“If they won't see you?” I asked. “What then?”
He shrugged his shoulders and sighed lightly, almost with relief, as though for him the prospect held no terror.
“Then it's 'Good-night, nurse,'” he said. “And I won't be a bother to anybody any more.”
I told him his nerves were talking, and talking rot, and I gave him the sleeping-draft and sent him to bed.
It was not until after luncheon the next day when he made his first appearance on deck that I again saw my patient. He was once more a healthy picture of a young Englishman of leisure; keen, smart, and fit; ready for any exercise or sport. The particular sport at which he was so expert I asked him to avoid.
“Can't be done!” he assured me. “I'm the loser, and we dock to-morrow morning. So tonight I've got to make my killing.”
It was the others who made the killing.
I came into the smoking-room about nine o'clock. Talbot alone was seated. The others were on their feet, and behind them in a wider semicircle were passengers, the smoking-room stewards and the ship's purser.
Talbot sat with his back against the bulkhead, his hands in the pockets of his dinner coat; from the corner of his mouth his long cigarette-holder was cocked at an impudent angle. There was a tumult of angry voices, and the eyes of all were turned upon him. Outwardly at least he met them with complete indifference. The voice of one of my countrymen, a noisy pest named Smedburg, was raised in excited accusation.
“When the ship's surgeon first met you,” he cried, “you called yourself Lord Ridley.”
“I'll call myself anything I jolly well like,” returned Talbot. “If I choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I don't have to give my name to every meddling busybody that—”
“You'll give it to the police, all right,” chortled Mr. Smedburg. In the confident, bullying tones of the man who knows the crowd is with him, he shouted: “And in the meantime you'll keep out of this smoking-room!”
The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded. Talbot rose and with fastidious concern brushed the cigarette ashes from his sleeve. As he moved toward the door he called back: “Only too delighted to keep out. The crowd in this room makes a gentleman feel lonely.”
But he was not to escape with the last word.
His prosecutor pointed his finger at him.
“And the next time you take the name of Adolph Meyer,” he shouted, “make sure first he hasn't a friend on board; some one to protect him from sharpers and swindlers—”
Talbot turned savagely and then shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, go to the devil!” he called, and walked out into the night.
The purser was standing at my side and, catching my eye, shook his head.
“Bad business,” he exclaimed.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I'm told they caught him dealing from the wrong end of the pack,” he said. “I understand they suspected him from the first—seems our surgeon recognized him—and to-night they had outsiders watching him. The outsiders claim they saw him slip himself an ace from the bottom of the pack. It's a pity! He's a nice-looking lad.”
I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to call himself Meyer.
“They accused him of travelling under a false name,” explained the purser, “and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters. Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it seems Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard! It was a silly ass thing to do,” protested the purser. “Everybody knows Meyer hasn't a brother, and if he hadn't made THAT break he might have got away with the other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless ahead to Mr. Meyer and to the police.”
“Has he no other way of spending his money?” I asked.
“He's a confounded nuisance!” growled the purser. “He wants to show us he knows Adolph Meyer; wants to put Meyer under an obligation. It means a scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk; and,” he added with disgust, “these smoking-room rows never helped any line.”
I went in search of Talbot; partly because I knew he was on the verge of a collapse, partly, as I frankly admitted to myself, because I was sorry the young man had come to grief. I searched the snow-swept decks, and then, after threading my way through faintly lit tunnels, I knocked at his cabin. The sound of his voice gave me a distinct feeling of relief. But he would not admit me. Through the closed door he declared he was “all right,” wanted no medical advice, and asked only to resume the sleep he claimed I had broken. I left him, not without uneasiness, and the next morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine thrill. I found him walking the deck carrying himself nonchalantly and trying to appear unconscious of the glances—amused, contemptuous, hostile—that were turned toward him. He would have passed me without speaking, but I took his arm and led him to the rail. We had long passed quarantine and a convoy of tugs were butting us into the dock.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Doesn't depend on me,” he said. “Depends on Smedburg. He's a busy little body!”
The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me. He spoke in a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the incident no longer was of interest.
“They were watching me,” he said. “But I knew they were, and besides, no matter how close they watched I could have done what they said I did and they'd never have seen it. But I didn't.”
My scepticism must have been obvious, for he shook his head.
“I didn't!” he repeated stubbornly. “I didn't have to! I was playing in luck—wonderful luck—sheer, dumb luck. I couldn't HELP winning. But because I was winning and because they were watching, I was careful not to win on my own deal. I laid down, or played to lose. It was the cards they GAVE me I won with. And when they jumped me I told 'em that. I could have proved it if they'd listened. But they were all up in the air, shouting and spitting at me. They believed what they wanted to believe; they didn't want the facts.”
It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling the truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not stuck to it. So, rather harshly, I said:
“They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph Meyer, either. Why did you think you could get away with anything like that?”
Talbot did not answer.
“Why?” I insisted.
The boy laughed impudently.
“How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?” he protested. “It was a good name, and he's a Jew, and two of the six who were in the game are Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought they might stick by me.”
“But you,” I retorted impatiently, “are not a Jew!”
“I am not,” said Talbot, “but I've often SAID I was. It's helped—lots of times. If I'd told you my name was Cohen, or Selinsky, or Meyer, instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought I was a Jew.” He smiled and turned his face toward me. As though furnishing a description for the police, he began to enumerate:
“Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic, according to taste. Do you see?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“But it didn't work,” he concluded. “I picked the wrong Jew.”
His face grew serious. “Do you suppose that Smedburg person has wirelessed that banker?”
I told him I was afraid he had already sent the message.
“And what will Meyer do?” he asked. “Will he drop it or make a fuss? What sort is he?”
Briefly I described Adolph Meyer. I explained him as the richest Hebrew in New York; given to charity, to philanthropy, to the betterment of his own race.
“Then maybe,” cried Talbot hopefully, “he won't make a row, and my family won't hear of it!”
He drew a quick breath of relief. As though a burden had been lifted, his shoulders straightened.
And then suddenly, harshly, in open panic, he exclaimed aloud:
“Look!” he whispered. “There, at the end of the wharf—the little Jew in furs!”
I followed the direction of his eyes. Below us on the dock, protected by two obvious members of the strong-arm squad, the great banker, philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was waiting.
We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set; the face of a man intent upon his duty, unrelenting. Without question, of a bad business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I turned to speak to Talbot and found him gone.
His silent slipping away filled me with alarm. I fought against a growing fear. How many minutes I searched for him I do not know. It seemed many hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was empty and dismantled, and by that I was reminded that if for any desperate purpose Talbot were seeking to conceal himself there now were hundreds of other empty, dismantled cabins in which he might hide. To my inquiries no one gave heed. In the confusion of departure no one had observed him; no one was in a humor to seek him out; the passengers were pressing to the gangway, the stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck to deck, down lane after lane of the great floating village, I raced blindly, peering into half-opened doors, pushing through groups of men, pursuing some one in the distance who appeared to be the man I sought, only to find he was unknown to me. When I returned to the gangway the last of the passengers was leaving it.
I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when a white-faced steward touched my sleeve. Before he spoke his look told me why I was wanted.
“The ship's surgeon, sir,” he stammered, “asks you please to hurry to the sick-bay. A passenger has shot himself!”
On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his chest lay bare. Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly darkened.
I must have exclaimed aloud, for the doctor turned his eyes.
“It was HE sent for you,” he said, “but he doesn't need you. Fortunately, he's a damned bad shot!”
The boy's eyes opened wearily; before we could prevent it he spoke.
“I was so tired,” he whispered. “Always moving me on. I was so tired!”
Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to bar them out, the two detectives pushed into the doorway. They shoved me to one side and through the passage made for him came the Jew in the sable coat, Mr. Adolph Meyer.
For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owl-like eyes, staring at the face on the pillow.
Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the hand of the card-sharp.
“Heine!” he begged. “Don't you know me? It is your brother Adolph; your little brother Adolph!”