Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 39

Madame slid out of her bed and reached for her neatly folded garments.

"Wait in the hall, Armand; I will be with you in ten minutes." And she was, wrapped and hatted.

Once in the workroom, she cast a deep and searching woman-glance at the pale girl in the chair. Her face was so sweet with motherliness and love and pity, and that profound comprehension the best women show to each other, that I felt my throat contract. Gathered into Madame's embrace, Mary Virginia clung to her old friend dumbly. Madame had but one question:

"My child, have you told John Flint and my son what this trouble of yours is?"

"Yes; I had to, I had to!"

"Thank the good G.o.d for that!" said my mother piously. "Now we will go home, dearest, and you can sleep in peace--you have nothing more to worry about!"

The clasp of the comforting arms, the sweet serenity of the mild eyes, and above all the little lady's perfect confidence, aroused Mary Virginia out of her torpor. She felt that she no longer stood alone at the mercy of the merciless. Bundled in the wraps my mother had provided, she paused at the door.

"I think you will forgive me any trouble I may cause you, because I am sure all of you love me. And whatever comes, I will be brave enough to face and to bear it. Padre, dear Padre, you understand, don't you?"

"My child, my darling child, I understand."

"I'll be back in half an hour, parson," the b.u.t.terfly Man remarked meaningly. Then the three melted into the night.

Left alone, I was far from sharing Madame's simple faith in our ability to untangle this miserable snarl. I knew now the temper of the men we had to deal with. I also understood that in cases like this the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady. Seen from a certain point of view, if ever men deserved an unconditional and thorough killing, these two did. Yet this homicidal specter turned me cold, for Mary Virginia's sake.

For Eustis himself I could see nothing but ruin ahead, but I wished pa.s.sionately to help the dear girl who had come to me in her stress.

But what was one to do? How should one act?

I sat there dismally enough, my chin sunk upon my breast; for as a plotter, a planner, a conspirator, I am a particularly hopeless failure. I have no sense of intrigue, and the bare idea of plotting reduces me to stupefaction.

Perhaps because I am a priest by instinct, I always discover in myself the instant need of prayer when confronted by the unusual and the difficult. I have prayed over seemingly hopeless problems in my time and I think I have been led to a clear solution of many of them.

Major Cartwright insists that this is merely because I bring desire and will to bear upon a given point and so release an irresistible natural force. He says prayer is as much a science as, say, mathematics--such and such its units, and such and such its fixed results. Well, maybe so. All I know is that when I beseech aid I think I receive it.

So I ran over to the church and let myself in. I felt that at least for a few minutes I must kneel before the altar and implore help for her who was like my own child to me.

The empty church was quite black save for the sanctuary lamp and the little red votive lights burning before the statues of the saints and of our Lady. All these many little lights only cast the veriest ghosts of brightness upon the darkness, but the white altar was revealed by the larger glow of the sanctuary lamp. There it shone with a mild and pure l.u.s.ter, unfailing, calm, steady, burning through the night, the sign and symbol of that light of Love which cannot fail, but burns and burns and burns forever and forever before an altar that is the infinite universe itself.

My little-faith, my ready-to-halt faith, raised its head above the encompa.s.sing waters; the wild turmoil and torment died away: ... after the earthquake and the fire and the whirlwind, the still small voice....

Then I, to whom life at best can only be working and waiting, was for a s.p.a.ce able to pray for her to whom life should be "_as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a clear morning without clouds; and as the tender gra.s.s by clear s.h.i.+ning after rain_." I remembered her as she had first come to me, a little loving child to fill my empty heart, the poor clay heart that cannot even hold fast to the love of G.o.d but by these frail all-powerful ties of simple human affection. And when I thought of her now, so young and so sore-beset, a bird caught in the snare of the fowler, I beat my breast for pity and for grief. Oh, how should I help her, how!

I turned my head, and there stood St. Stanislaus upon his pedestal, the memorial lights flickering upon his long robe, his smooth boy's face, his sheaf of lilies. I regarded him rather absently. Something stirred in my consciousness; something I always had to remember in connection with St. Stanislaus....

Across my mind as across a screen flashed a series of pictures--a mangled tramp carried into the Parish House, my mother watching with a concerned and shocked face, and the hall mud-stained by the trampling feet of the clumsy bearers; the s.h.a.ggy Poles, caps off, turning over to me as to high authority the heavy oilskin package they had found; I opening that package later and standing amazed and startled before its contents; and that same package, hidden under my ca.s.sock, carried over to the church and placed for security and secrecy in the keeping of the little saint. Well, that had been quite right; there had been nothing else to do; one had to be secret and careful when one had in one's keeping the tools of that notorious burglar, Slippy McGee.

Small wonder that I did not connect those pictures with the fate of Mary Virginia Eustis! No, I did not immediately grasp their tremendous bearing upon the pet.i.tions I was repeating. And all the while, with a dull insistence, an enraging persistence, they flickered before the eyes of my memory--the Poles, the screaming cursing tramp; Westmoreland pondering aloud as to why he had been permitted to save so apparently worthless a life; and the little saint hiding from the eyes of men all traces of lost Slippy McGee. Nor, more curiously yet, did I connect them with the b.u.t.terfly Man. The b.u.t.terfly Man was somebody else altogether, another and a different person, a man of whom even one's secretest thoughts were admiring and respectful. He was so far removed from the very shadow of such things as these, that it did one's conscience a sort of violence to think of him in connection with them. I tried to dismiss the memories from my mind. I wished to concentrate wholly upon the problem of Mary Virginia.

And then that mysterious, hidden self-under-self that lives in us far, far beneath thought and instinct and conscience and heredity and even consciousness itself, rose to the surface with a message:

_Slippy McGee had been the greatest cracksman in all America...._ "Honest to G.o.d, skypilot, I can open any box made, easy as easy!" ...

_And even as his tools were hidden in St. Stanislaus, Slippy McGee himself was hidden in John Flint_.

Recoiling, I clung to the altar railing. What dreadful thing was I contemplating, what fearful temptation was a.s.sailing me, here under the light of the sanctuary lamp? I looked reproachfully at St.

Stanislaus, as if that seraphic youth had betrayed my confidence. I suspected him of being too anxious to rid himself of the ambiguous trust imposed upon him without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he was secretly irked at the use to which his painted semblance had been put, and seized this first opportunity to extricate himself from a position in which the boldest saint of them all might well hesitate to find himself.

I began to consider John Flint as he was, the work he had accomplished, the splendid structure of that life slowly and laboriously made over and lived so cleanly in the light of day. Not only had that old evil personality been sloughed off like a larval skin; he had come forth from it another creature, a being lovable, wise, tender, full of charm. Even the hint of melancholy that was becoming more and more a part of him endeared him to others, for the broader and brighter the light into which he was steadily mounting, the more marked and touching was this softening shadow.

And I who had been the _accoucheur_ of his genius, I who had watched and prayed and ministered beside the cradle of his growth, was I of all men to threaten his overthrow? Alas, what madness was upon me that I was evoking before the very altar the grim ghost of Slippy McGee?

There pa.s.sed before me in procession the face of Laurence with all its boyish bloom stripped from it and the glory of its youth vanished; and the bowed and humbled head of James Eustis, one of the large and n.o.ble souls of this world; and the innocent beauty of Mary Virginia, wistfully appealing; followed them the beautiful ruthless face of Hunter, dazzlingly blonde, gold-haired as Baldur; and the piglike eyes and heavy jowl of Inglesby, brutally dominant; and then the dear whimsical visage of the b.u.t.terfly Man himself. They pa.s.sed; and I fell to praying, with a sort of still desperation, for all of us.

And all the while the steady and rosy light of the sanctuary lamp fell upon me, and the little lights flickered before the silent saints. I took myself in hand, forced myself into self-control. I did not minimize one risk nor slur one danger. I knew exactly what was at stake. And having done this, I decided upon my course:

"If he has thought of this himself, then I will help. But if he has not, I will not suggest it, no, no matter what happens."

I told myself I would say ten more Hailmarys, and I said them, with an Ourfather at the end. And without further praying I got to my feet.

The church seemed to be full of breathless whisperings, as if it watched and listened while I moved over to Stanislaus and tipped him backward. He is a rather heavy and sizable boy for all his saintly slimness. Up in the hollow inside, in the crook of his arm, lay the oilskin package he had kept these long years through, waiting for to-night.

"If ever you prayed for mortals in peril, pray, for the love of G.o.d, for all of us this night!" I told him. And with the package in a fold of my ca.s.sock I went back across the dark garden and let myself into the b.u.t.terfly Man's rooms, and was hardly inside the door when he himself returned.

"Didn't meet a soul. And they got in without waking anybody in the house," said he complacently, rubbing his hands before the fire. "I waited until they showed a light upstairs. She's all right, now Madame's with her."

"Have you--have you thought of anything--any way, John?" I quavered, and wondered if he heard my heart dunting against my ribs.

"Why, I've thought that she's got until to-morrow night to come to terms," said he, and turned to face me. "And she can't accept them.

n.o.body could--that is, not a girl like her. As for Inglesby, he might push Eustis under, but he wouldn't have been so c.o.c.ksure of _her_ if it wasn't for those letters. She's been afraid of what might happen if Eustis or Laurence found out about them--somebody ran the risk of being put to bed with a shovel. There's where they had her. A bit unbearable to think of, isn't it?" He spoke so mildly that I looked up with astonishment and some disappointment.

"Why," said I, ruefully, "if that's as far as you've gone, we are still at the starting point."

"No need to go farther and fare worse, parson," said he, equably. "I saw that the first minute I could see anything but red. Yet do you know, when she was telling us about it, I thought like a fool of everything but the right thing, from sandbagging and shanghaing Inglesby, down to holding up Hunter with an automatic?

"When I got my reason on straight, I went back to the starting point--the letters, parson, the letter in the safe in Hunter's office.

Given the letters she'd be free--the one thing Inglesby doesn't want to happen. We've got to have those letters."

My mouth was parched as with fever and I saw him through a blur.

"I don't know," he went on, "if you agree with me, parson, but to my mind the best way to fight the devil is with fire. What did you do with those tools?"

"_Tools?_" in a dry whisper. "_Tools_, John?"

"Tools. Kit. Layout. You had them. Could you put your hand on them in a hurry to-night? Don't stare so, man! And for the Lord's love don't you tell me you destroyed them! What did you do with my tools?"

The four winds roared in my ears, and one lifted the hair on my scalp, as if the Rider on the Pale Horse had pa.s.sed by. By way of reply I placed a heavy package on the table before him, slumped into my chair, and covered my face with my hands. Oh, Stanislaus, little saint, what had we done between us to-night to the b.u.t.terfly Man?

When I looked up again he had risen. With his hands gripping the edge of the table until the knuckles showed white, and his neck stretched out, he was staring with all his eyes. A low whistle escaped him.

Wonder, incredulity, a sort of ironic amus.e.m.e.nt, and a growing, iron-jawed determination, expressed themselves in his changing countenance. Once or twice he wet his lips and swallowed. Then he sat down again, deliberately, and fixed upon me a long and somewhat disconcerting stare, as if he were rearranging and tabulating his estimate of Father Armand Jean De Rance. He took his head in his hands, and with slitted eyes considered the immediate course of action to which the possession of that package committed him. One surmised that he was weighing and providing for every possible contingency.

Tentatively he spread out his fine hands, palms uppermost, and flexed them; then, turning them, he laid them flat upon the table and again spread out his fingers. They were notable hands--shapely, supple, strong as steel, the thin-skinned fingertips as delicate and sensitive of touch as the antennae he was used to handling. They were even more capable than of old, because of the exquisite work they had been trained to accomplish, work to which only the most skilled lapidary's is comparable. Apparently satisfied, he drew the bundle toward him.

Before he opened it he lifted those cool, blue, and ironic eyes to mine; and I am sure I was by far the paler and more shaken of the two.

"They were in the crook of St. Stanislaus' arm." I tried to keep my voice steady. "I was praying--when you were gone." Somehow, I did not find it easy to explain to him. "And ... I remembered.... And I brought them with me ... so in case you also ... remembered--" I could go no further. I broke into a sort of groaning cry: "Oh, John, John!

My son, my son!"