Jewel Weed Part 41

While Ram Juna slept, lying in all his day clothes, some subtle subconsciousness kept watch, became aware of disturbance, and roused his body to attention. He got up, tiptoed to the open window and looked out at the group of men standing below in the darkness.

"Aw, shut up, Sal," one of them was saying to an angry woman in the doorway. "We ain't goin' to raid ye, though Lord knows you wouldn't have no kick comin' if we did. What we want is that black feller that come to-night. We suspect he's one of a gang of counterfeiters that the St.

Etienne police are after; and we ain't goin' to lose the chance of the reward. You fellers keep right under the window, and I'll take you six up stairs with me. He's big and he may show fight. Get your guns ready.

Don't shoot to kill. We want to deliver him alive. But you needn't be afraid to use a ball on him."

Ram Juna drew away from the window and smiled his old Buddha smile. With clumsy creaking precautions they mounted the stair. The moment for the climax came; there was a rush all together, a breaking down of the shaky door. The crew burst into the room--an empty room--and stared puzzled and stupefied at the walls and at each other.

"Well, if that don't beat all!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the sheriff. "Where in ---- has that fellow disappeared to?"

"They say," said Josiah Strait, a lank westernized Yankee, "that them Hindu jugglers and lamas, and so forth, has supernatural gifts, and I begin to believe it."

Something over a month later, Mr. Early burst in on Mr. and Mrs.

Percival as they dawdled over the breakfast-table.

"It's no time to be paying calls, I know," he apologized, "but I've had such a sensation this morning that I had to come over and share it.

Yes, there are times when a man wishes that he had a wife to talk to!"

"What is it, Early?" d.i.c.k asked indifferently.

Mr. Early was waving a bit of paper about in a way quite hysterical.

"Do you see that?" he cried exultantly. "I never expected to see it again, but I declare it is worth its price. I was going over my bank accounts the first thing this morning and I found it."

"How do you expect us to know what it is when you're fanning it about that way?" d.i.c.k demanded.

"It's a check, man, a check for five thousand that I gave Ram Juna the very day of his unceremonious departure." Lena turned scarlet, and Mr.

Early noticed it with fresh glee. "A check I gave Ram Juna," he repeated. "It's been cashed, with four indors.e.m.e.nts, in New Orleans. Now how did he manage that, tell me. The Swami is one of the great geniuses of the age. Of course I wanted to see the rascals punished, and it makes me hot to think how they used my house and all that, but, by Jove! I'm glad they haven't Ram Juna. From New Orleans, a seaport, mind you! I am willing to make a good-sized bet that he's well on his way to his favorite Himalayas by this time, ready to meditate on the syllable 'Om'

for the rest of his life. Oh, it's too good! How he must laugh in his sleeve at the rest of the world! But how did he get that check cashed?"

"Well, if I were in your place, I should have it traced back," said d.i.c.k, the practical.

"Of course I shall," exclaimed Mr. Early. "Of course I shall. I shall put it in the hands of the police at once, for I'm sure of one thing, if it helps to root out any sinners, Swami Ram Juna won't be among them.

He's gone for good, take my word for it; and as for the other rascals, I hope with all my heart they may suffer." He nodded jubilantly at Mrs.

Percival, and she flushed again.

"It's a very good joke, certainly," said d.i.c.k, "but rather an expensive one for you, I should say, Early."

"Oh, I shall get five thousand dollars' worth of satisfaction out of it," Mr. Early went on enthusiastically. "And I'm proud of the Swami, proud of him. And the splendid simplicity of him! I was talking yesterday with the detective that ferreted him out. The plunder they found in my little room was perfectly primitive. He had practically no tools to make the cleverest counterfeits in years. A deft hand and a wonderful thumb had the Swami."

"What are they going to do with the big ruby in his turban?" asked Lena.

"Oh, that is one of the chief things that I came to tell you about. You, my dear Mrs. Percival, have especial reason to be interested in this."

He turned, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with information, to Lena, "The captain of police took it to Brand's--the jeweler, you know--to be appraised. Now isn't this the crown of the whole story? Brand tells him that it is paste!"

d.i.c.k sat back in his chair and laughed with abandon, and laughed again.

"And what about my rubies'?" screamed Lena, springing to her feet.

"I have not the slightest doubt that they are paste, too. Everything he touched was fraud."

"I'm glad of it! I'm glad of it!" cried d.i.c.k, with a new access of mirth. "The old rascal! Giving my wife jewels! Why, Lena, you couldn't wear his stuff anyway, after all this fracas. It will do to trim a Christmas tree."

But Lena, with angry face, tapped the floor nervously with her gaudy small slipper, and made no reply to her husband's hilarity.

Even to her slow-working mind it was evident that she had paid a high price for some worthless bits of gla.s.s. This conferring of a favor was indeed a bond.

She wondered what Mr. Early thought of her; what d.i.c.k would say if he ever discovered.

CHAPTER XXI

A LIGHT IN THE WEST GOES DOWN

The strenuousness of the fall campaign almost wiped these events from d.i.c.k's mind. Day after day he spent in bringing home his points to the man on the street and in the workshop. Much of it was dreary and monotonous work, but he kept doggedly at it. It seemed his whole life, now. And night after night Mr. Preston, d.i.c.k and Ellery tried to put fire into some dingy little hall-full of men. To Percival's surprise, Norris developed a plain common-sense variety of eloquence that appealed to his audiences quite as much as did d.i.c.k's more fervid eloquence.

Ellery invariably spoke straight to some well-known condition. But they hammered and pounded and reasoned and explained; they tried emotion, and logic and everything except bribes to win their ground, until their speeches began to sound automatic to themselves, their voices grew hoa.r.s.e, and they moved like men in a dream.

"If there were one day more of this," d.i.c.k said to Norris, as they tramped home late on the night before election, and felt a certain restfulness in the November starlight, "I should send down a wheezing nasal phonograph to grind out my speech. I am played out. Everything I say sounds like tommy-rot."

"It does grow hollow. The worst of it is it robs me of my evenings with Madeline."

"Um!" said d.i.c.k. "When are you to be married?"

"About Christmas. The death of Golden, poor fellow, shoves me up a peg on the editorial staff, and justifies me in facing matrimony. Mr. Elton is good enough to give us a little home. They are a family to hang to, d.i.c.k. I feel as though I had 'belongings' for the first time since I lost my own father and mother. Madeline and I shall make rather a small beginning, but, as you know, she has not set her heart on luxuries."

"No," said d.i.c.k slowly. "You are a lucky fellow, Ellery. You're going to get away ahead of me in the long run. Preston said yesterday that the honors of this campaign were yours. He has been a fine figure-head, and I have hollered loud, but you've hollered deepest, and the public knows it. I guess that's the real reason that you've been shoved ahead on the staff. Here's your boarding-house. Good night, old fellow. To-morrow night our labors will be over."

"I hope yours will have just begun, Mr. Alderman," Norris retorted.

The polls closed in uncertainty and for three days speculation filled the papers, and election bets remained unpaid. Then the decks cleared.

Mr. Preston was elected mayor by a narrow plurality; and out of the eighteen aldermen, the reform element had carried seven, d.i.c.k Percival among them, to victory. The Munic.i.p.al Club counted its gains and was jubilant, for this meant that, if the city council pa.s.sed any objectionable measure, their iniquity could be vetoed by the mayor, and the bad men of the city fathers lacked one of the two-thirds majority which they would need to carry their legislation over the executive's veto.

d.i.c.k took Lena and went away for a fortnight's rest, but came back looking old and dissatisfied.

It was understood that the first battle in the new council would be over the lighting franchise, which was about to expire and which the company in power wished to renew. There had been some talk of an attempt to force it through before the old council went out of power, but even Billy Barry's henchmen refused to commit themselves to so unpopular a measure on the very eve of election; for St. Etienne had been paying a notoriously high price for notably bad lighting, and the citizen, usually a meek animal, had been stirred to a realization of his injuries by wholesale exposition of the truth.

But now there were new councils of war, and Billy swore more intricate oaths than he had ever been known to produce in days of yore. He was still in possession of his aldermanic seat, but a little uncertain whether it was a throne or a stool of repentance. Still Billy talked loudly of the things he meant to do; and, as usual in his troubles, went to consult the delphic Mr. Murdock; and Mr. Murdock went to see Mr.

Early; and Mr. Early, after very much demur, went to see Mr. Percival.

Sebastian did not like to mix himself publicly in politics, and the reformers were his friends.

Still, one evening just before the franchise was introduced, Mr. Early did drop in on d.i.c.k in a friendly sort of way. Percival took him to his own sanctum, and settled down with him to the friendly communion of cigars.

Mr. Early hesitated and was manifestly ill at ease, which gave d.i.c.k a pleasurable amus.e.m.e.nt while he waited to hear the discomfort unfolded.

At last Sebastian said: "d.i.c.k, you know I am a man of art rather than of politics, and of course I am in entire sympathy with the idea of clean government; but I want to talk to you about this lighting business."