Mortmain Part 30

The girl, who had remained silent, now spoke again:

"Be careful, Jim; this man can make trouble for us."

Sullivan looked sharply at her, but evidently nothing about her appearance or speech excited his suspicions.

"Mr. Sullivan," continued Ralston from his seat in the horsehair rocker, "I don't mean you any harm. In fact, I can do you a good turn now and then if you'll help me out. All I want is my coin for turning up this chap Steadman. I know he's no good. He's anybody's money. He's nothing to me. But it's all in my day's work. Now, don't think me disagreeable.

I want Steadman, you want--well, you don't want certain little incidents of your career to get to the ears of the district attorney--the Shackleton bonds, for example. Now, don't be alarmed. I haven't the slightest intention of giving you away, but, come now, let's be on the level with each other."

Sullivan cast an evil look at him.

"You think you've got something on me, eh? Prove it! What bonds did you say?"

Ralston saw that he had nearly made a slip.

"Quite right," said he. "I said Shackleton bonds--I was _thinking_ of Shackleton. Of course I meant the Mercantile bonds. But if you have any doubt about my sincerity I might go into the Masterson matter----"

But Sullivan was on his feet, his eyes staring, and his face as pale as it had been on the floor of "The Martin."

"For Heaven's sake!" he implored.

Ralston rose.

"Come! Come! Is it a bargain? You help me and I help you. Where is he?"

"I'll go with you," muttered Sullivan. "Where's my coat?" He looked around anxiously. There was no doubt as to the effectiveness of the reference to the Masterson case.

"Get me a coat," he ordered of the girl. Florence Davenport left the room, leaving the two men facing one another--the criminal and the gentleman. It would have been hard to say which looked the more haggard.

The light of the dim lamp made the rings around Ralston's eyes look like huge horn-rimmed spectacles, and his mouth was drawn to a thin line.

Inside his head was beginning to sing and the corners of his lids to twitch. He knew the symptoms. He was beginning to "fade out." But he was getting warm now and he paid no heed to himself.

The girl returned, bringing in her arms a pile of new silk-lined black overcoats. Ralston remembered the incident afterwards, but at the time it did not impress him. It is doubtful whether he knew definitely the meaning of the term--"a fence."

Mechanically he selected a coat to fit him and Sullivan did the same.

The Davenport girl put on the smallest.

"Gimme a hat," said Sullivan.

Again the girl departed and presently returned with an odd collection of old felt hats of various styles. Now, fully arrayed, Sullivan felt his way gingerly to the door. A pale gleam filtered through the grating. The bolt was shot back and Ralston found himself in the fresh morning air.

A white, misty light filled the sky like a diaphanous, pulsating sheet.

If you looked for it it was gone, but as you watched the opposite houses you knew it to be there. Night was struggling with the day, and the cohorts of darkness were barely in the ascendant. The tang of the breeze told the story, filtering in from the river. But the lamps showed brighter than ever. On his box the cabman slumbered, while his steed did likewise in cabhorse fas.h.i.+on.

Sullivan reached up and shook the man roughly. Across the end of the street heavy vans were making their way eastward, filling the little niche in which they stood with a deafening clatter.

"Drive up Broadway," ordered Sullivan.

The cabman removed his hat, ran his finger around the sweatband and replaced it on his head.

"Hully gee!" he repeated reminiscently. Several yanks were required to hoist the horse into a position appropriate to locomotion, and when action was achieved the animal started as if walking on eggs. Sullivan and Ralston took Miss Davenport in her black overcoat between them.

Ralston could not tell whether the sky above was white or blue.

Slowly they dragged out into Barrow Street and turned into Green Street.

Once or twice they pa.s.sed a lonely pedestrian or a stray policeman. Soon they saw the lights of the elevated structure at Jefferson Market and caught the moving windows of the trains. A line of truck wagons was moving slowly southward, the drivers sleeping, unmindful of their route.

Milk wagons jangling from Hudson Avenue added a livelier note. There was a smell of morning everywhere.

Suddenly Ralston knew he saw white and not blue above the housetops.

The thought filled him with a nervous anxiety to lose no time, and he pushed up the manhole and ordered the cabby to make haste.

"What do you think I am--a bloomin' steamboat?" inquired the cabby in sleepy wrath.

They wheeled into Sixth Avenue and Ralston noticed that the surface cars which pa.s.sed already had some pa.s.sengers. Men were standing in twos and threes upon the street corners. Most of them were smoking clay pipes. He wondered what manner of men went to work at this hour. They pa.s.sed Fourteenth Street and found many persons walking westward--at nightfall they would plod back. It was a long, long way to go to work. No one had spoken in the cab as yet.

"Funny how small the city seems at night," said the girl.

Although there was a germ of psychological truth in the remark, Ralston could think of nothing in reply. He had often noticed the same phenomenon. Of an afternoon, with Fifth Avenue crowded to the curbs, the distance from his club to Forty-second Street appeared immense. By night it seemed no more than a block or two. Now, as they rode northward in the graying light, the distances which his mental cyclometer ticked off seemed small and their pace inordinately slow.

Sullivan had maintained a consistent silence. The Masterson affair had effectually put a quietus upon his belligerency. Ralston was overwhelmed with sleep. There was a weight behind each of his eyeb.a.l.l.s that seemed forcing them downward and outward, and the humming in the back of his head had returned. A faint odor of violets and rice powder emanated from the overcoat beside him. Now and again the small head, with its piles of brown hair and old slouch hat, would begin to incline gradually and gently in his direction, only to be raised again when the brim of the hat touched his shoulder. He leaned his own head in the corner and closed his eyes.

Instantly a heavy curtain, warm, fragrant, deliciously soothing, seemed drawn over him. He found himself talking to Ellen in Miss Evarts's drawing-room. He felt again the elation of his appointment, the gratefulness of appreciation. The man was painting in his name on the blackboard--the man in the yellow-and-black sweater, and he heard the crowd spelling it out and repeating it. Once again he experienced the thrill it had occasioned him the night before. He realized anew the extent to which his selection had brought him into the public eye--the influence which the success or failure of his appointment would have upon the Administration.

The President had been already severely criticised for giving important places to comparatively young and untried men--men of the silk-stocking cla.s.s--and the President had but a doubtful hold upon the people.

Several canards had been started which, in the face of recent socialistic propaganda, had made considerable headway. The yellow journals were denouncing the war as imperialistic, as an excuse for an ambitious executive to play the part of a Caesar or a Napoleon. They charged that he was surrounding himself with the rich and powerful, and their sons. He was contrasted with Lincoln and Jefferson. In a word, the Administration was in a ticklish position.

Then upon Ralston's wearied brain flashed the picture of his meeting with Colonel Duer; the tawdry, tarnished environment of his search for the worthless Steadman; his arrival at "The Martin" at two in the morning; his open solicitation of a woman's acquaintance, and the consequent free fight in which, so far as the onlookers knew, he might have killed her companion; then, and most unpleasant of all, his flight, bearing away his victim with him. How could he explain _that_? Why, the thing must have been wired to every morning paper in the country. He could see the headlines:

a.s.sISTANT SECRETARY OF NAVY KILLS MAN

FIGHT AROSE OVER WOMAN IN RESTAURANT

A NEW SCANDAL FOR THE PRESIDENT TO HUSH UP

He shuddered at the thought of it. If he gave himself up and declared that he had struck in self-defense, how could he explain having dashed away with the woman in a hansom? Where had he gone? _Why_ had he gone there? His lips were sealed. He _could_ make no statement without publicly avowing the whole object of his night's work--the necessity for finding Steadman, and Steadman's relations with Ellen. He saw column after column of interviews with himself, real and imaginary. The most sacred pa.s.sages of Ellen's life would be made public property, dressed up to suit the editor's fancy, and sold on the corner for a penny.

The possibility sickened him. There was nothing to be done but to resign and go away. In that way only could the Administration be relieved from a most embarra.s.sing situation, and by no other means could Ellen be saved from the humiliation incident to a truthful explanation of the affair. Then, too, he must continue his search. He could not give it up now. He must find Steadman, even while a fugitive from justice himself.

He _would_ find him.

He opened his eyes. They were still following Sixth Avenue beneath the elevated tracks. It had grown brighter. Sullivan had lighted a cigar.

Ralston found himself trembling with excitement. A sweat had broken out all over him. Across the way, on the opposite corner, he saw the lights of a telegraph office, and he raised the manhole and told the cabby to stop.

"What's up?" inquired Sullivan, removing his cigar.

"I've got to send a telegram," said Ralston unsteadily.

Sullivan looked at him with suspicion.

"You ain't givin' me the double cross, eh?"

"I give you my word I'm not," replied Ralston. "It's only a matter of private business."