WHILE the Widow Van Flange and I sat waiting the coming of Gothecore, the lady gave me further leaves of her story. The name of Van Flange was old. It had been honorable and high in the days of Wouter Van Twiller, and when the town was called New Amsterdam. The Van Flanges had found their source among the wooden shoes and spinning-wheels of the ancient Dutch, and were duly proud. They had been rich, but were now reduced, counting—she and her boy—no more than two hundred thousand dollars for their fortune.
This son over whom she wept was the last Van Flange; there was no one beyond him to wear the name. To the mother, this made his case the more desperate, for mindful of her caste, she was borne upon by pride of family almost as much as by maternal love. The son was a drunkard; his taste for alcohol was congenital, and held him in a grip that could not be unloosed. And he was wasting their substance; what small riches remained to them were running away at a rate that would soon leave nothing.
“But why do you furnish him money?” said I.
“You should keep him without a penny.”
“True!” responded the Widow Van Flange, “but those who pillage my son have found a way to make me powerless. There is a restaurant near this gambling den. The latter, refusing him credit and declining his checks, sends him always to this restaurant-keeper. He takes my son's check, and gives him the money for it. I know the whole process,” concluded the Widow Van Flange, a sob catching in her throat, “for I've had my son watched, to see if aught might be done to save him.”
“But those checks,” I observed, “should be worthless, for you have told me how your son has no money of his own.”
“And that is it,” returned the Widow Van Flange.
“I must pay them to keep him from prison. Once, when I refused, they were about to arrest him for giving a spurious check. My own attorney warned me they might do this. My son, himself, takes advantage of it. I would sooner be stripped of the last shilling, than suffer the name of Van Flange to be disgraced. Practicing upon my fears, he does not scruple to play into the hands of those who scheme his downfall. You may know what he is about, when I tell you that within the quarter I have been forced in this fashion to pay over twenty-seven thousand dollars. I see no way for it but to be ruined,” and her lips twitched with the despair she felt.
While the Widow Van Flange and I talked of her son and his down-hill courses, I will not pretend that I pondered any interference. The gamblers were a power in politics. The business of saving sons was none of mine; but, as I've said, I was willing, by hearing her story, to compliment the Reverend Bronson, who had suggested her visit. In the end, I would shift the burden to the police; they might be relied upon to find their way through the tangle to the advantage of themselves and the machine.
Indeed, this same Gothecore would easily dispose of the affair. Expert with practice, there was none who could so run with the hare while pretending to course with the hounds. Softly, sympathetically, he would talk with the Widow Van Flange; and she would depart in the belief that her cause had found a friend.
As the Widow Van Flange and I conversed, we were brought to sudden silence by a strange cry. It was a mad, screeching cry, such as might have come from some tigerish beast in a heat of fury. I was upon my feet in a moment, and flung open the door.
Gothecore was standing outside, having come to my message. Over from him by ten feet was Melting Moses, his shoulders narrowed in a feline way, crouching, with brows drawn down and features in a snarl of hate. He was slowly backing away from Gothecore; not in fear, but rather like some cat-creature, measuring for a spring.
On his side, Gothecore's face offered an equally forbidding picture. He was red with rage, and his bulldog jaws had closed like a trap. Altogether, I never beheld a more inveterate expression, like malice gone to seed.
I seized Melting Moses by the shoulder, and so held him back from flying at Gothecore with teeth and claws.
“He killed me mudder!” cried Melting Moses, struggling in my fingers like something wild.
When the janitor with whom Melting Moses lived had carried him off—and at that, the boy must be dragged away by force—I turned to Gothecore.
“What was the trouble?”
“Why do you stand for that young whelp?” he cried. “I won't have it!”
“The boy is doing you no harm.”
“I won't have it!” he cried again. The man was like a maniac.
“Let me tell you one thing,” I retorted, looking him between the eyes; “unless you walk with care and talk with care, you are no better than a lost man. One word, one look, and I'll snuff you out between my thumb and finger as I might a candle.”
There must have been that which showed formidable in my manner, for Gothecore stood as though stunned. The vicious insolence of the scoundrel had exploded the powder in my temper like a coal of fire. I pointed the way to my room.
“Go in; I've business with you.”
Gothecore seemed to recall himself to steadiness. Without more words, he entered my door.
With as much dignity as I might summon in the track of such a storm, I presented him to the Widow Van Flange. She had heard the sound of our differences; but, taken with her own troubles, she made no account of them. The Widow Van Flange received the rather boorish salutation of Gothecore in a way politely finished. Upon my hint, she gave him her story. Gothecore assumed a look at once professional and deprecatory.
“An' now you're done, Madam,” said Gothecore, giving that slight police cough by which he intimated for himself a limitless wisdom, “an' now you're done, Madam, let me chip in a word. I know your son; I've knowed Billy Van Flange, now, goin' on three year—ever since he comes out o' college. I don't want to discourage you, Madam; but, to put it to you on th' square, Billy Van Flange is a warm member. I leave it to you to say if I aint right. Yes, indeed! he's as hot a proposition as ever went down th' line.”
Here the eye of Gothecore wandered towards the ceiling, recalling the mad pranks of young Van Flange.
“But these gamblers are destroying him!” moaned the Widow Van Flange. “Is there no way to shield him? Surely, you should know how to punish them, and keep him out of their hands!”
“I know that gang of card sharps in Barclay Street,” remarked Gothecore; “an' they're a bunch of butes at that! But let me go on: I'll tell you what we can do; and then I'll tell you why it won't be fly to do it. In th' finish, however, it will all be up to you, Madam. We'll act on any steer you hand us. If you say 'pinch,' pinch goes.
“But as I was tellin': I'm dead onto Billy Van Flange; I know him like a gambler knows an ace. He hits up th' bottle pretty stiff at that, an' any man who finds him sober has got to turn out hours earlier than I do. An' I'll tell you another thing, Madam: This Billy Van Flange is a tough mug to handle. More'n once, I've tried to point him for home, an' every time it was a case of nothin' doin'. Sometimes he shed tears, an' sometimes he wanted to scrap; sometimes he'd give me th' laugh, an' sometimes he'd throw a front an' talk about havin' me fired off th' force. He'd run all the way from th' sob or th' fiery eye, to th' gay face or th' swell front, accordin' as he was jagged.”
While Gothecore thus descanted, the Widow Van Flange buried her face in her handkerchief. She heard his every word, however, and when Gothecore again consulted the ceiling, she signed for him to go on.
“Knowin' New York as I do,” continued Gothecore, “I may tell you, Madam, that every time I get my lamps on that son of yours, I hold up my mits in wonder to think he aint been killed.” The Widow Van Flange started; her anxious face was lifted from the handkerchief. “That's on th' level! I've expected to hear of him bein' croaked, any time this twelve months. Th' best I looked for was that th' trick wouldn't come off in my precinct. He carries a wad in his pocket; an' he sports a streak of gilt, with a thousand-dollar rock, on one of his hooks; an' I could put you next to a hundred blokes, not half a mile from here, who'd do him up for half th' price. That's straight! Billy Van Flange, considerin' th' indoocements he hangs out, an' th' way he lays himself wide open to th' play, is lucky to be alive.
“Now why is he alive, Madam? It is due to them very gamblin' ducks in Barclay Street. Not that they love him; but once them skin gamblers gets a sucker on th' string, they protect him same as a farmer does his sheep. They look on him as money in th' bank; an' so they naturally see to it that no one puts his light out.
“That's how it stands, Madam!” And now Gothecore made ready to bring his observations to a close. This Billy Van Flange, like every other rounder, has his hangouts. His is this deadfall on Barclay Street, with that hash-house keeper to give him th' dough for his checks. Now I'll tell you what I think. While he sticks to th' Barclay Street mob, he's safe. You'll get him back each time. They'll take his stuff; but they'll leave him his life, an' that's more than many would do.
“Say th' word, however, an' I can put th' damper on. I can fix it so Billy Van Flange can't gamble nor cash checks in Barclay Street. They'll throw him out th' minute he sticks his nut inside the door. But I'll put you wise to it, Madam: If I do, inside of ninety days you'll fish him out o' th' river; you will, as sure as I'm a foot high!”
The face of the Widow Van Flange was pale as paper now, and her bosom rose and fell with new terrors for her son. The words of Gothecore seemed prophetic of the passing of the last Van Flange.
“Madam,” said Gothecore, following a pause, “I've put it up to you. Give me your orders. Say th' word, an' I'll have th' screws on that Barclay Street joint as fast as I can get back to my station-house.”
“But if we keep him from going there,” said the Widow Van Flange, with a sort of hectic eagerness, “he'll find another place, won't he?” There was a curious look in the eyes of the Widow Van Flange. Her hand was pressed upon her bosom as if to smother a pang; her handkerchief went constantly to her lips. “He would seek worse resorts?”
“It's a cinch, Madam!”
“And he'd be murdered?”
“Madam, it's apples to ashes!”
The eyes of the Widow Van Flange seemed to light up with an unearthly sparkle, while a flush crept out in her cheek. I was gazing upon these signs with wonder regarding them as things sinister, threatening ill.
Suddenly, she stood on her feet; and then she tottered in a blind, stifled way toward the window as though feeling for light and air. The next moment, the red blood came trickling from her mouth; she fell forward and I caught her in my arms.
“It's a hemorrhage!” said Gothecore.
The awe of death lay upon the man, and his coarse voice was stricken to a whisper.
“Now Heaven have my soul!” murmured the dying woman. Then: “My son! oh, my son!”
There came another crimson cataract, and the Widow Van Flange was dead.
“This is your work!” said I, turning fiercely to Gothecore.
“Or is it yours?” cries he.
The words went over my soul like the teeth of a harrow. Was it my work?
“No, Chief!” continued Gothecore, more calmly, and as though in answer to both himself and me, “it's the work of neither of us. You think that what I said killed her. That may be as it may. Every word, however, was true. I but handed her th' straight goods.”
The Widow Van Flange was dead; and the thought of her son was in her heart and on her lips as her soul passed. And the son, bleared and drunken, gambled on in the Barclay Street den, untouched. The counters did not shake in his hand, nor did the blood run chill in his veins, as he continued to stake her fortune and his own in sottish ignorance.
One morning, when the first snow of winter was beating in gusty swirls against the panes, Morton walked in upon me. I had not seen that middle-aged fop since the day when I laid out my social hopes and fears for Blossom. It being broad September at the time, Morton had pointed out how nothing might be done before the snows.
“For our society people,” observed Morton, on that September occasion, “are migratory, like the wild geese they so much resemble. At this time they are leaving Newport for the country, don't y' know. They will not be found in town until the frost.”
Now, when the snow and Morton appeared together, I recalled our conversation. I at once concluded that his visit had somewhat to do with our drawing-room designs. Nor was I in the wrong.
“But first,” said he, when in response to my question he had confessed as much, “let us decide another matter. Business before pleasure; the getting of money should have precedence over its dissipation; it should, really! I am about to build a conduit, don't y' know, the whole length of Mulberry, and I desire you to ask your street department to take no invidious notice of the enterprise. You might tell your fellows that it wouldn't be good form.”
“But your franchise does not call for a conduit.”
“We will put it on the ground that Mulberry intends a change to the underground trolley—really! That will give us the argument; and I think, if needs press, your Corporation Counsel can read the law that way. He seems such a clever beggar, don't y' know!”
“But what do you want the conduit for?”
“There's nothing definite or sure as yet. My notion, however, is to inaugurate an electric-light company. The conduit, too, would do for telephone or telegraph, wires. Really, it's a good thing to have; and my men, when this beastly weather softens a bit, might as well be about the digging. All that's wanted of you, old chap, is to issue your orders to the department people to stand aloof, and offer no interruptions. It will be a great asset in the hands of Mulberry, that conduit; I shall increase the capital stock by five millions, on the strength of it.”
“Your charter isn't in the way?”
“The charter contemplates the right on the part of Mulberry to change its power, don't y' know. We shall declare in favor of shifting to the underground trolley; although, really, we won't say when. The necessity of a conduit follows. Any chap can see that.”
“Very well!” I replied, “there shall be no interference the city. If the papers grumble, I leave you and them to fight it out.”
“Now that's settled,” said Morton, producing his infallible cigarette, “let us turn to those social victories we have in contemplation. I take it you remain firm in your frantic resolutions?”
“I do it for the good of my child,” said I.
“As though society, as presently practiced,” cried Morton, “could be for anybody's good! However, I was sure you would not change. You know the De Mudds? One of our best families, the De Mudds—really! They are on the brink of a tremendous function. They'll dine, and they'll dance, and all that sort of thing. They've sent you cards, the De Mudds have; and you and your daughter are to come. It's the thing to do; you can conquer society in the gross at the De Mudds.”
“I'm deeply obliged,” said I. “My daughter's peculiar nervous condition has preyed upon me more than I've admitted. The physician tells me that her best hope of health lies in the drawing-rooms.”
“Let us trust so!” said Morton. “But, realty, old chap, you ought to be deucedly proud of the distinction which the De Mudds confer upon you. Americans are quite out of their line, don't y' know! And who can blame them? Americans are such common beggars; there's so many of them, they're vulgar. Mamma DeMudd's daughters—three of them—all married earls. Mamma DeMudd made the deal herself; and taking them by the lot, she had those noblemen at a bargain; she did, really! Five millions was the figure. Just think of it! five millions for three earls! Why, it was like finding them in the street!
“'But what is he?' asked Mamma DeMudd, when I proposed you for her notice.
“'He's a despot,' said I, 'and rules New York. Every man in town is his serf.'
“When Mamma DeMudd got this magnificent idea into her head, she was eager to see you; she was, really.
“However,” concluded Morton, “let us change the subject, if only to restore my wits. The moment I speak of society, I become quite idiotic, don't y' know!”
“Speaking of new topics, then,” said I, “let me ask of your father. How does he fare these days?”
“Busy, exceeding busy!” returned Morton. “He's buying a home in New Jersey. Oh, no, he won't live there; but he requires it as a basis for declaring that he's changed his residence, don't y' know! You'd wonder, gad! to see how frugal the old gentleman has grown in his old age. It's the personal property tax that bothers him; two per cent, on twenty millions come to quite a sum; it does, really! The old gentleman doesn't like it; so he's going to change his residence to New Jersey. To be sure, while he'll reside in New Jersey, he'll live here.
“'It's a fribble, father,' said I, when he set forth his little game. 'Why don't you go down to the tax office, and commit perjury like a man? All your friends do.'
“But, really! he couldn't; and he said so. The old gentleman lacks in those rugged characteristics, required when one swears to a point-blank lie.”
When Morton was gone, I gave myself to pleasant dreams concerning Blossom. I was sure that the near company and conversation of those men and women of the better world, whom she was so soon to find about her, would accomplish all for which I prayed. Her nerves would be cooled; she would be drawn from out that hypochondria into which, throughout her life, she had been sinking as in a quicksand.
I had not unfolded either my anxieties or my designs to Blossom. Now I would have Anne tell her of my plans. Time would be called for wherein to prepare the necessary wardrobe. She should have the best artistes; none must outshine my girl, of that I was resolved. These dress-labors, with their selections and fittings, would of themselves be excellent. They would employ her fancy, and save her from foolish fears of the De Mudds and an experience which she might think on as an ordeal. I never once considered myself—I, who was as ignorant of drawing-rooms as a cart-horse! Blossom held my thoughts. My heart would be implacable until it beheld her, placed and sure of herself, in the pleasant midst of those most elevated circles, towards which not alone my faith, but my admiration turned its eyes. I should be proud of her station, as well as relieved on the score of her health, when Blossom, serene and even and contained, and mistress of her own house, mingled on equal terms with ones who had credit as the nobility of the land.
Was this the dream of a peasant grown rich? Was it the doting vision of a father mad with fondness? Why should I not so spread the nets of my money and my power as to ensnare eminence and the world's respect for this darling Blossom of mine? Wherein would lie the wild extravagance of the conceit? Surely, there were men in every sort my inferiors, and women, not one of whom was fit to play the rôle of maid to Blossom, who had rapped at this gate, and saw it open unto them.
Home I went elate, high, walking on air. Nor did I consider how weak it showed, that I, the stern captain of thousands, and with a great city in my hands to play or labor with, should be thus feather-tickled with a toy! It was amazing, yes; and yet it was no less sweet:—this building of air-castles to house my Blossom in!
It stood well beyond the strike of midnight as I told Anne the word that Morton had brought. Anne raised her dove's eyes to mine when I was done, and they were wet with tears. Anne's face was as the face of a nun, in its self-sacrifice and the tender, steady disinterest that looked from it.
Now, as I exulted in a new bright life to be unrolled to the little tread of Blossom, I saw the shadows of a sorrow, vast and hopeless, settle upon Anne. At this I halted. As though to answer my silence, she put her hand caressingly upon my shoulder.
“Brother,” said Anne, “you must set aside these thoughts for Blossom of men and women she will never meet, of ballrooms she will never enter, of brilliant costumes she will never wear. It is one and all impossible; you do not understand.”
With that, irritated of too much opposition and the hateful mystery of it, I turned roughly practical.
“Well!” said I, in a hardest tone, “admitting that I do not understand; and that I think on men and women she will never meet, and ballrooms she will never enter. Still, the costumes at least I can control, and it will mightily please me if you and Blossom at once attend to the frocks.”
“You do not understand!” persisted Anne, with sober gentleness. “Blossom would not wear an evening dress.”
“Anne, you grow daft!” I cried. “How should there be aught immodest in dressing like every best woman in town? The question of modesty is a question of custom; it is in the exception one will find the indelicate. I know of no one more immodest than a prude.”
“Blossom is asleep,” said Anne, in her patient way. Then taking a bed-candle that burned on a table, she beckoned me. “Come; I will show you what I mean. Make no noise; we must not wake Blossom. She must never know that you have seen. She has held this a secret from you; and I, for her poor sake, have done the same.”
Anne opened the door of Blossom's room. My girl was in a gentle slumber. With touch light as down, Anne drew aside the covers from about her neck.
“There,” whispered Anne, “there! Look on her throat!”
Once, long before, a man had hanged himself, and I was called. I had never forgotten the look of those marks which belted the neck of that self-strangled man. Encircling the lily throat of Blossom, I saw the fellows to those marks—raw and red and livid!
There are no words to tell the horror that swallowed me up. I turned ill; my reason stumbled on its feet. Anne led me from the room.
“The mark of the rope!” I gasped. “It is the mark of the rope!”
WHAT should it be?—this gallows-brand to show like a bruised ribbon of evil about the throat of Blossom! Anne gave me the story of it. It was a birthmark; that hangman fear which smote upon the mother when, for the death of Jimmy the Blacksmith, I was thrown into a murderer's cell, had left its hideous trace upon the child. In Blossom's infancy and in her earliest childhood, the mark had lain hidden beneath the skin as seeds lie buried and dormant in the ground. Slowly, yet no less surely, the inveterate years had quickened it and brought it to the surface; it had grown and never stopped—this mark! and with each year it took on added sullenness. The best word that Anne could give me was that it would so continue in its ugly multiplication until the day of Blossom's death. There could be no escape; no curing change, by any argument of medicine or surgery, was to be brought about; there it glared and there it would remain, a mark to shrink from! to the horrid last. And by that token, my plans of a drawing room for Blossom found annihilation. Anne had said the truth; those dreams that my girl should shine, starlike, in the firmament of high society, must be put away.
It will have a trivial sound, and perchance be scoffed at, when I say that for myself, personally, I remember no blacker disappointment than that which overtook me as I realized how there could come none of those triumphs of chandeliers and floors of wax. Now as I examine myself, I can tell that not a little of this was due to my own vanity, and a secret wish I cherished to see my child the equal of the first.
And if it were so, why should I be shamed? Might I not claim integrity for a pride which would have found its account in such advancement? I had been a ragged boy about the streets. I had grown up ignorant; I had climbed, if climbing be the word, unaided of any pedigree or any pocketbook, into a place of riches and autocratic sway. Wherefore, to have surrounded my daughter with the children of ones who had owned those advantages which I missed—folk of the purple, all!—and they to accept her, would have been a victory, and to do me honor. I shall not ask the pardon of men because I longed for it; nor do I scruple to confess the blow my hopes received when I learned how those ambitions would never find a crown.
Following my sight of that gallows mark, I sat for a long time collecting myself. It was a dreadful thing to think upon; the more, since it seemed to me that Blossom suffered in my stead. It was as if that halter, which I defeated, had taken my child for a revenge.
“What can we do?” said I, at last.
I spoke more from an instinct of conversation, and because I would have the company of Anne's sympathy, than with the thought of being answered to any purpose. I was set aback, therefore, by her reply.
“Let Blossom take the veil,” said Anne. “A convent, and the good work of it, would give her peace.”
At that, I started resentfully. To one of my activity, I, who needed the world about me every moment—struggling, contending, succeeding—there could have come no word more hateful. The cell of a nun! It was as though Anne advised a refuge in the grave. I said as much, and with no special choice of phrases.
“Because Heaven in its injustice,” I cried, “has destroyed half her life, she is to make it a meek gift of the balance? Never, while I live! Blossom shall stay by me; I will make her happy in the teeth of Heaven!” Thus did I hurl my impious challenge. What was to be the return, and the tempest it drew upon poor Blossom, I shall unfold before I am done. I have a worm of conscience whose slow mouth gnaws my nature, and you may name it superstition if you choose. And by that I know, when now I sit here, lonesome save for my gold, and with no converse better than the yellow mocking leer of it, that it was this, my blasphemy, which wrought in Heaven's retort the whole of that misery which descended to dog my girl and drag her down. How else shall I explain that double darkness which swallowed up her innocence? It was the bolt of punishment, which those skies I had outraged, aimed at me.
Back to my labors of politics I went, with a fiercer heat than ever. My life, begun in politics, must end in politics. Still, there was a mighty change. I was not to look upon that strangling mark and escape the scar of it. I settled to a savage melancholy; I saw no pleasant moment. Constantly I ran before the hound-pack of my own thoughts, a fugitive, flying from myself.
Also, there came the signs visible, and my hair was to turn and lose its color, until within a year it went as white as milk. Men, in the idleness of their curiosity, would notice this, and ask the cause. They were not to know; nor did Blossom ever learn how, led by Anne, I had crept upon her secret. It was a sorrow without a door, that sorrow of the hangman's mark; and because we may not remedy it, we will leave it, never again to be referred to until it raps for notice of its own black will.
The death of the Widow Van Flange did not remove from before me the question of young Van Flange and his degenerate destinies. The Reverend Bronson took up the business where it fell from the nerveless fingers of his mother on that day she died.
“Not that I believe he can be saved,” observed the Reverend Bronson; “for if I am to judge, the boy is already lost beyond recall. But there is such goods as a pious vengeance—an anger of righteousness!—and I find it in my heart to destroy with the law, those rogues who against the law destroy others. That Barclay Street nest of adders must be burned out; and I come to you for the fire.”
In a sober, set-faced way, I was amused by the dominie's extravagance. And yet I felt a call to be on my guard with him. Suppose he were to dislodge a stone which in its rolling should crash into and crush the plans of the machine! The town had been lost before, and oftener than once, as the result of beginnings no more grave. Aside from my liking for the good man, I was warned by the perils of my place to speak him softly.
“Well,” said I, trying for a humorous complexion, “if you are bound for a wrestle with those blacklegs, I will see that you have fair play.”
“If that be true,” returned the Reverend Bronson, promptly, “give me Inspector McCue.”
“And why Inspector McCue?” I asked. The suggestion had its baffling side. Inspector McCue was that honest one urged long ago upon Big Kennedy by Father Considine. I did not know Inspector McCue; there might lurk danger in the man. “Why McCue?” I repeated. “The business of arresting gamblers belongs more with the uniformed police. Gothecore is your proper officer.”
“Gothecore is not an honest man,” said the Reverend Bronson, with sententious frankness. “McCue, on the other hand, is an oasis in the Sahara of the police. He can be trusted. If you support him he will collect the facts and enforce the law.”
“Very well,” said I, “you shall take McCue. I have no official control in the matter, being but a private man like yourself. But I will speak to the Chief of Police, and doubtless he will grant my request.”
“There is, at least, reason to think so,” retorted the Reverend Bronson in a dry tone.
Before I went about an order to send Inspector McCue to the Reverend Bronson, I resolved to ask a question concerning him. Gothecore should be a well-head of information on that point; I would send for Gothecore. Also it might be wise to let him hear what was afoot for his precinct. He would need to be upon his defense, and to put others interested upon theirs.
Melting Moses, who still stood warder at my portals, I dispatched upon some errand. The sight of Gothecore would set him mad. I felt sorrow rather than affection for Melting Moses. There was something unsettled and mentally askew with the boy. He was queer of feature, with the twisted fantastic face one sees carved on the far end of a fiddle. Commonly, he was light of heart, and his laugh would have been comic had it not been for a note of the weird which rang in it. I had not asked him, on the day when he went backing for a spring at the throat of Gothecore, the reason of his hate. His exclamation, “He killed me mudder!” told the story. Besides, I could have done no good. Melting Moses would have given me no reply. The boy, true to his faith of Cherry Hill, would fight out his feuds for himself; he would accept no one's help, and regarded the term “squealer” as an epithet of measureless disgrace.
When Gothecore came in, I caught him at the first of it glowering furtively about, as though seeking someone.
“Where is that Melting Moses?” he inquired, when he saw how I observed him to be searching the place with his eye.
“And why?” said I.
“I thought I'd look him over, if you didn't mind. I can't move about my precinct of nights but he's behind me, playin' th' shadow. I want to know why he pipes me off, an' who sets him to it.”
“Well then,” said I, a bit impatiently, “I should have thought a full-grown Captain of Police was above fearing a boy.”
Without giving Gothecore further opening, I told him the story of the Reverend Bronson, and that campaign of purity he would be about.
“And as to young Van Flange,” said I. “Does he still lose his money in Barclay Street?”
“They've cleaned him up,” returned Gothecore. “Billy Van Flange is gone, hook, line, and sinker. He's on his uppers, goin' about panhandlin' old chums for a five-dollar bill.”
“They made quick work of him,” was my comment.
“He would have it,” said Gothecore. “When his mother died th' boy got his bridle off. Th' property—about two hundred thousand dollars—was in paper an' th' way he turned it into money didn't bother him a bit. He came into Barclay Street, simply padded with th' long green—one-thousand-dollar bills, an' all that—an' them gams took it off him so fast he caught cold. He's dead broke; th' only difference between him an' a hobo, right now, is a trunk full of clothes.”
“The Reverend Bronson,” said I, “has asked for Inspector McCue. What sort of a man is McCue?” Gothecore wrinkled his face into an expression of profound disgust.
“Who's McCue?” he repeated. “He's one of them mugwump pets. He makes a bluff about bein' honest, too, does McCue. I think he'd join a church, if he took a notion it would stiffen his pull.”
“But is he a man of strength? Can he make trouble?”
“Trouble?” This with contempt. “When it comes to makin' trouble, he's a false alarm.”
“Well,” said I, in conclusion, “McCue and the dominie are going into your precinct.”
“I'll tell you one thing,” returned Gothecore, his face clouding up, “I think it's that same Reverend Bronson who gives Melting Moses th' office to dog me. I'll put Mr. Whitechoker onto my opinion of th' racket, one of these days.”
“You'd better keep your muzzle on,” I retorted. “Your mouth will get you into trouble yet.”
Gothecore went away grumbling, and much disposed to call himself ill-used.
During the next few days I was to receive frequent visits from the Reverend Bronson. His mission was to enlist me in his crusade against the gamblers. I put him aside on that point.
“You should remember,” said I, as pleasantly as I well could, “that I am a politician, not a policeman. I shall think of my party, and engage in no unusual moral exploits of the sort you suggest. The town doesn't want it done.”
“The question,” responded the Reverend Bronson warmly, “is one of law and morality, and not of the town's desires. You say you are a politician, and not a policeman. If it comes to that, I am a preacher, and not a policeman. Still, I no less esteem it my duty to interfere for right. I see no difference between your position and my own.”
“But I do. To raid gamblers, and to denounce them, make for your success in your profession. With me, it would be all the other way. It is quite easy for you to adopt the path you do. Now I am not so fortunately placed.”
“You are the head of Tammany Hall,” said the Reverend Bronson solemnly. “It is a position which loads you with responsibility, since your power for good or bad in the town is absolute. You have but to point your finger at those gambling dens, and they would wither from the earth.”
“Now you do me too much compliment,” said I. “The Chief of Tammany is a much weaker man than you think. Moreover, I shall not regard myself as responsible for the morals of the town.”
“Take young Van Flange,” went on the Reverend Bronson, disregarding my remark. “They've ruined the boy; and you might have saved him.”
“And there you are mistaken,” I replied. “But if it were so, why should I be held for his ruin? 'I am not my brother's keeper.'”
“And so Cain said,” responded the Reverend Bronson. Then, as he was departing: “I do not blame you too much, for I can see that you are the slave of your position. But do not shield yourself with the word that you are not your brother's keeper. You may be made grievously to feel that your brother's welfare is your welfare, and that in his destruction your own destruction is also to be found.”
Men have rallied me as superstitious, and it may be that some grains of truth lie buried in that charge. Sure it is, that this last from the Reverend Bronson was not without its uncomfortable effect. It pressed upon me in a manner vaguely dark, and when he was gone, I caught myself regretting the “cleaning up,” as Gothecore expressed it, of the dissolute young Van Flange.
And yet, why should one feel sympathy for him who, by his resolute viciousness, struck down his own mother? If ever rascal deserved ruin, it was he who had destroyed the hopes of one who loved him before all! The more I considered, the less tender for the young Van Flange I grew. And as to his destruction carrying personal scathe for me, it might indeed do, as a flourish of the pulpit, to say so, but it was a thought too far fetched, as either a warning or a prophecy, to justify one in transacting by its light his own existence, or the affairs of a great organization of politics. The end of it was that I smiled over a weakness that permitted me to be disturbed by mournful forebodes, born of those accusing preachments of the Reverend Bronson.
For all that my reverend mentor was right; the sequel proved how those flames which licked up young Van Flange were to set consuming fire to my own last hope.
It would seem that young Van Flange, as a topic, was in everybody's mouth. Morton, having traction occasion for calling on me, began to talk of him at once.
“Really!” observed Morton, discussing young Van Flange, “while he's a deuced bad lot, don't y' know, and not at all likely to do Mulberry credit, I couldn't see him starve, if only for his family. So I set him to work, as far from the company's money as I could put him, and on the soberish stipend of nine hundred dollars a year. I look for the best effects from those nine hundred dollars; a chap can't live a double life on that; he can't, really!”
“And you call him a bad lot,” said I.
“The worst in the world,” returned Morton. “You see young Van Flange is such a weakling; really, there's nothing to tie to. All men are vicious; but there are some who are strong enough to save themselves. This fellow isn't.”
“His family is one of the best,” said I.
For myself, I've a sincere respect for blood, and some glimpse of it must have found display in my face.
“My dear boy,” cried Morton, “there's no more empty claptrap than this claptrap of family.” Here Morton adorned his high nose with the eyeglass that meant so much with him, and surveyed me as from a height. “There's nothing in a breed when it comes to a man.”
“Would you say the same of a horse or a dog?”
“By no means, old chap; but a dog or a horse is prodigiously a different thing, don't y' know. The dominant traits of either of those noble creatures are honesty, courage, loyalty—they're the home of the virtues. Now a man is another matter. He's an evil beggar, is a man; and, like a monkey, he has virtues only so far as you force him to adopt them. As Machiavelli says: 'We're born evil, and become good only by compulsion.' Now to improve a breed, as the phrase is, makes simply for the promotion of what are the dominant traits of the creature one has in hand. Thus, to refine or emphasize the horse and the dog, increases them in honesty, loyalty, and courage since such are top-traits with those animals. With a monkey or a man, and by similar argument, the more you refine him, the more abandoned he becomes. Really,” and here Morton restored himself with a cigarette, “I shouldn't want these views to find their way to my club. It would cause the greatest row ever in our set; it would, really! I am made quite ill to only think of it.”
“What would you call a gentleman, then?” I asked.
Morton's theories, while I in no manner subscribed to them, entertained me.
“What should I call a gentleman? Why I should call him the caricature of a man, don't y' know.”
The Reverend Bronson had been abroad in his campaign against those sharpers of Barclay Street for perhaps four weeks. I understood, without paying much heed to the subject, that he was seeking the evidence of their crimes, with a final purpose of having them before a court. There had been no public stir; the papers had said nothing. What steps had been taken were taken without noise. I doubted not that the investigation would, in the finish, die out. The hunted ones of Barclay Street were folk well used to the rôle of fugitive, and since Gothecore kept them informed of the enemy's strategy, I could not think they would offer the Reverend Bronson and his ally, McCue, any too much margin.
As yet, I had never seen this McCue. By that, I knew him to be an honest man. Not that one is to understand how none save a rogue would come to me. I need hardly explain, however, that every policeman of dark-lantern methods was eagerly prone to make my acquaintance. It was a merest instinct of caution; the storm might break and he require a friend. Now this McCue had never sought to know me, and so I argued that his record was pure white.
This did not please me; I preferred men upon whom one might have some hold. These folk of a smooth honesty go through one's fingers like water, and no more of a grip to be obtained upon one of them than upon the Hudson. I made up my mind that I would see this McCue.
Still I did not send for him; it was no part of my policy to exhibit concern in one with whom I was strange, and who later might open his mouth to quote it against me. McCue, however, was so much inclined to humor my desire, that one afternoon he walked into my presence of his own free will.
“My name is McCue,” said he, “Inspector McCue.” I motioned him to a chair. “I've been told to collect evidence against certain parties in Barclay Street,” he added. Then he came to a full stop.
While I waited for him to proceed in his own way and time, I studied Inspector McCue. He was a square-shouldered man, cautious, keen, resolute; and yet practical, and not one to throw himself away in the jaws of the impossible. What he had come to say, presently proved my estimate of him. On the whole, I didn't like the looks of Inspector McCue.
“What is your purpose?” I asked at last. “I need not tell you that I have no official interest in what you may be about. Still less have I a personal concern.”
Inspector McCue's only retort was a grimace that did not add to his popularity. Next he went boldly to the object of his call.
“What I want to say is this,” said he. “I've collected the evidence I was sent after; I can lay my hands on the parties involved as keepers and dealers in that Barclay Street den. But I'm old enough to know that all the evidence in the world won't convict these crooks unless the machine is willing. I'm ready to go ahead and take my chances. But I'm not ready to run against a stone wall in the dark. I'd be crazy, where no good can come, to throw myself away.”
“Now this is doubtless of interest to you,” I replied, putting some impression of distance into my tones, “but what have I to do with the matter?”
“Only this,” returned McCue. “I'd like to have you tell me flat, whether or no you want these parties pinched.”
“Inspector McCue,” said I, “if that be your name and title, it sticks in my head that you are making a mistake. You ask me a question which you might better put to your chief.”
“We won't dispute about it,” returned my caller; “and I'm not here to give offense. I am willing to do my duty; but, as I've tried to explain, I don't care to sacrifice myself if the game's been settled against me in advance. You speak of my going to the chief. If arrests are to be made, he's the last man I ought to get my orders from.”
“If you will be so good as to explain?” said I.
“Because, if I am to go on, I must begin by collaring the chief. He's the principal owner of that Barclay Street joint.”
This was indeed news, and I had no difficulty in looking grave.
“Captain Gothecore is in it, too; but his end is with the restaurant keeper. That check-cashing racket was a case of flam; there was a hold-out went with that play. The boy, Van Flange, was always drunk, and the best he ever got for, say a five-hundred-dollar check, was three hundred dollars. Gothecore was in on the difference. There's the lay-out. Not a pleasant outlook, certainly; and not worth attempting arrests about unless I know that the machine is at my back.”
“You keep using the term 'machine,'” said I coldly. “If by that you mean Tammany Hall, I may tell you, sir, that the 'machine' has no concern in the affair. You will do your duty as you see it.”
Inspector McCue sat biting his lips. After a moment, he got upon his feet to go.
“I think it would have been better,” said he, “if you had met me frankly. However, I've showed you my hand; now I'll tell you what my course will be. This is Wednesday. I must, as you've said yourself, do my duty. If—mark you, I say 'If'—if I am in charge of this case on Saturday, I shall make the arrests I've indicated.”
“Did you ever see such gall!” exclaimed the Chief of Police, when I recounted my conversation with Inspector McCue. Then, holding up his pudgy hands in a manner of pathetic remonstrance: “It shows what I told you long ago. One honest man will put th' whole force on th' bum!”
Inspector McCue, on the day after his visit, was removed from his place, and ordered to a precinct in the drear far regions of the Bronx. The order was hardly dry on the paper when there descended upon me the Reverend Bronson, his eyes glittering with indignation, and a protest against this Siberia for Inspector McCue apparent in his face.
“And this,” cried the Reverend Bronson, as he came through the door, “and this is what comes to an officer who is willing to do his duty!”
“Sit down, Doctor,” said I soothingly, at the same time placing a chair; “sit down.”