The Incendiary Part 12

"That's a hinstrument Hi hown w'ich Hi wouldn't show to the Pelican 'imself, but Bobbs shall see it and feel it if he likes."

"Is it a file?"

"A wery little file."

"How did you smuggle it in?"

"Just in a little plug o' smoke, Bobbs, w'ich a friend sent me for my 'ealth, w'ich is poor, as my bloomin' a.s.sociates around me 'ere frequently observe. n.o.body'd look for a little rat's tooth laid crossways in a little plug o' smoke, with the 'andle alongside of it, would they, Bobbs?"

"Are you sawing the bars?"

"Ham I? It's all done."

"You've sawed them through?"

"And poor little hinnocent Bobbs never 'eard me."

Dobbs went off in a peal of laughter.

"But how do you hide the cuts in the bars when any one comes?"

"Wot'll stop a leak in a gas-pipe? Soap. Wot'll 'ide a slice in a sawed bar? Gum."

"Gum?"

"You see, chummy, the wentilation is poor in 'ere. There's a green mildew on my floor and the bloomin' spiders is too silent to be sociable company. But you never 'eard me 'ollerin', Bobbs."

Indeed, he always lay low during the outbreaks. His methods were more secretive. He was the villain by trade.

"But my sympathy is with the bloomin' mutineers hall the time. So I pick away with my rat's tooth w'en the others is 'ollerin' and even green little hinnocent Bobbs cawn't 'ear me."

The rasping sound ill.u.s.trated his meaning.

"Ee won't trust me, but Hi trust 'im. We'll see who can keep a secret, and who leaks."

There was a sound as if something had been slid out of the wall on the other side and of a sudden Dobbs' whisper became startlingly distinct.

"Honly a few minutes, Bobbs. Hi 'old the plaster in my pockets, and the rat's tooth in my fingers w'ile Hi gnaw and gnaw." The tool began working rapidly and dexterously. In a short time Dobbs spoke again: "Tap 'em till you feel it 'ollow, and shove on the 'ollow spot."

Robert tapped the wall.

"Shove 'arder."

Robert gave a stiff push with his elbow. The brick was loosened and gave way.

"Now, catch it, chummy."

Slowly the Englishman shoved the brick toward Robert, till it protruded from his side of the cell. It would have fallen on the bed if Robert had not caught it. After the brick came a hand and the striped sleeve of a convict's arm. It was a characteristic hand, broad, with spatulate fingernails and a black star on the fleshy ball between forefinger and thumb. But the cracksman must have fallen out with his own likeness as Iago, for his thumb-nail was clean as a whistle. Between the fingers lay a tiny file of rarest workmans.h.i.+p. Its teeth were set almost as sharply as those of a saw, and the steel was tempered to the hardness of adamant.

"'Ow's that for a tooth, Bobbs?"

Floyd took it for a moment, but a step was heard coming along the corridor. It was Longlegs.

"Quick, Bobbs, put back the brick."

Dobbs' voice grew hoa.r.s.e with excitement. Robert replaced the block on his side, and heard the convict doing the same on the other. As Longlegs pa.s.sed, Dobbs fell into a tremendous spasm of coughing. The turnkey hastened to the end of the corridor, jangling his keys as if deriding the derision with which he was greeted all the way. He had run his gantlet too often to heed the jeers and grimaces he met. There was a sound as if he were unlocking the farther door and then relocking it from the outside.

"That's a very useful cough," whispered Dobbs to Floyd. It had ceased all of a sudden. "It drives undesirable acquaintances about their business and it procures me admission to the 'ospital, w'ich is a sociable and communicative quarter. Hi'm a-winkin'."

Robert was beginning to understand things. The cracksman was malingering. It was through the hospital that he communicated with his friends outside.

"And Hi 'ope that Dobbs 'as given ample proof to Bobbs that ee his deservin' of 'is confidence."

Robert looked down and started at the temptation before him. The file lay in his hand.

CHAPTER XV.

A TRIP TO HILLSBOROUGH.

The life of Emily Barlow during this balmy month of summer might be described as an oscillation in criss-cross between her home and the studio in one direction, and s.h.a.garach's office and the state prison in the other. For in spite of Robert's protest she had returned several times to pour the sunlight of her sympathy into his cell, and the convicts, either because the latent manhood in them went out to a brave girl doing battle for her lover, or because Dobbs had exercised his influence in her behalf, offered no repet.i.tion of their first affront.

The point of intersection between these two much-traveled routes was a certain down-town corner, where Emily was already becoming a familiar figure to the policeman who escorted ladies over the crossing. A more disagreeable feature of her pa.s.sage of this point was the frequent appearance there of Mr. Arthur Kennedy Foxhall. But Emily, like other golden-haired girls, was accustomed to rude glances from men, and had learned to tolerate them as we accept turbid weather, muddy streets and the other unavoidable miseries of life.

She had been riding in the steam car fully fifteen minutes before she could determine in what direction the hostile influence lay. It could not be the mere uncertainty of her journey. Even if Bertha were not with the Arnolds at Hillsborough, it did not follow that her sweetheart was lost. At first broadly pervasive, like an approaching fog, the malign presence had gradually begun to locate itself near her, and it was with a sudden shock, like the first splash of a long-delayed shower, that she realized she was under observation from the pa.s.senger in front.

He had never turned around since they had left the station. To all appearances he was buried in a magazine. There was not even a sidewise position to indicate that he was keeping her within the field of his vision. Yet Emily knew that every sense of the man was alert in her direction, and that by a sort of diffused palpation, like that of the blind, he was aware of her slightest gesture. She thought of moving back to escape the oppression, or forward into another car. But the station platforms on either side lay in full view of the windows, and she felt that the relief would be only temporary. He would follow her out.

Who was the stranger? She was certain she had never seen his round, shaven face before, yet she felt that it was some one whose fortunes were bound in with hers, some one whom she would recognize, when his name was uttered, as a familiar. All efforts to dispel this dim fear were fruitless. She tried to gaze out at the skimming landscape, but some subtle force gripped her muscles and turned her head to the front. She closed her eyes, but the image still floated before her and she knew it was there to thwart her purpose and work her lover harm.

Fully fifty minutes of the ride had been rendered wretched to Emily by these doubts and fears, when the conductor entered to collect the tickets for Hillsborough. The man in front seemed to jerk himself out of his fit of absorption. He fumbled for his oblong blue card, on which Emily espied the lettering "Hillsborough." But the hand which delivered it struck a numbness in her heart. It was broad and fleshy, with the fingernails which are said to betray the professional criminal, and a star worked in black ink on the protuberance between forefinger and thumb. Robert had described this peculiarity in his cell-acquaintance, Bill Dobbs. If it were he, this was a strange situation in which to find the solitary cracksman. Perhaps it was one of his "hospital days."

"Hillsborough! Hillsborough!" came the announcement from both ends of the car, followed by the usual banging of doors. Emily started for the rear exit, which was the nearer. Once alighted, she walked leisurely forward along the platform. A side glance upward revealed Bill Dobbs just leaving his seat and pa.s.sing to the rear, exactly in her footsteps. When he caught her eye he smiled. It was true. He was pursuing her. Her spirits sank, and she did not quicken her pace. The engine stood champing like an impatient horse beside her, for she was almost abreast of the tender.

"All aboard!" the uniformed trainmen were crying. Emily glanced around. Bill Dobbs was just entering the station door, apparently taking no more notice of her than of the drivers soliciting his custom. But she knew that her least movement was under his cognizance. With a quick jump she placed her foot on the step, and, catching a conductor's hand, remounted the moving train. A backward glance, as she sunk into her seat, discovered Bill Dobbs sauntering up the road.

An interval of regret seized Emily when she reviewed her conduct calmly. Had she, indeed, escaped some unknown danger? Or was she the victim of a girl's foolish illusion? She was beginning to chide herself as a prey to superst.i.tion when the realities of her predicament suddenly forced themselves upon her by the reappearance of the conductor.

"What is the next station, please?"

"Elmwood."

"How far is that?"

"Two miles."

Two miles. To be carried two miles beyond Hillsborough into the neighboring towns.h.i.+p! Possibly the Arnold estate lay midway between, but it was more probable that she would be footsore and spent before she reached the house where Bertha was supposed to be living. There was an extra fare to pay, a brief whirling glimpse of woodland and meadow, and then the engine slacked up again before a cottage-like, rustic station.

A circle of 12-year-olds desisted from their romp to watch the sweet lady approaching them.

"Little boy, could you direct me to the Arnold mansion?" she said to the oldest.

"Arnold mansion? Don't know any Arnolds round here."

"They live in Hillsborough. How far is that?"

"Oh, I know," put in a tot in tires. "That's the lady that has the gardens way over on the Hillsborough line."

"'Bout five miles from here, isn't it, Chester?" said another.

"Can't I get a carriage to drive me there?" Emily felt equal to five miles or twenty, now that she was once started, but if feasible she would have preferred to let some four-footed creature do the walking.

"Well," said Chester, "you see the coach is up at the academy and I guess it won't come down till the game is over. You might get a wagon."

"Oh, well, somebody may give me a ride. Which way does Hillsborough lie?"

"Follow this road straight along, till you come to the bridge. That's the Hillsborough line and I guess anybody over there will tell you."

Emily thanked her guides and sped off on her long trudge. Behind her she heard the boys' shrill chirps, mingled with the light soprano of girlhood, running up and down the bright gamut of pleasure. How melodious their joyous inflections were, compared with the harsh syllables she was accustomed to hear from the children of the pavements. How much richer and deeper this country stillness than the everlasting murmur of the city, which makes silence only a figure of speech to the dwellers within its walls.

But is not all silence figurative and relative, thought Emily, a mere hint at some magnificent placid experience, only possible in its purity to the inhabitants of outer s.p.a.ce? Even the countryside was not still. Plump sparrows, dusting themselves in the road, never ceased their brawling. The shy brown thrush swerved across her path at intervals and bubbled his song from the thickets. The meadowlark left his tussock-hidden nest to greet the world proudly from the pasture rock, and far away the phoebe's plaintive utterance of his lost love's name pierced the sibilance of the trees.

"There's a loam for you," said an old gardener, spading an oval plot on a lawn. His bulbs and potted sproutings were arranged at one side. "Feel. 'Twouldn't soil a queen's hands. Dry as meal and brown as a berry. Same for two feet down."

Emily took up a handful to please the old man. It crumbled between her fingers like the soft brown sugar which grocers display in crocks, though not, as youthful customers sometimes think, to be scooped and paddled with by idle hands.

"I can see roses in that, miss," said the gardener, turning up a deep spadeful for her inspection. But time was precious and she shortened the commonplaces, breaking away toward Hillsborough.

All that was visible of Elmwood was a cl.u.s.ter of cottages about the station and a few outlying farms. A brick building crowning its highest hill was probably the academy to which her guides had referred. On both sides the country opened out in great reaches of level fertility, groves of dark trees rising at intervals where the pools lay that nourished their roots. Now they sprung up by the roadside and overarched her with drooping boughs.

Looking upward, as she walked, almost alone, Emily felt herself the center of a greater mystery, embracing, as it were, that in which her sweetheart was entangled. Nights of vigil had begun to overstring her nerves. That strange doubling of impressions which attacks us in such moods, making a kind of mirage of the mind, came over her. Everything about her seemed familiar, as old as her infancy, as the world itself. Elmwood! She had babbled the name in her cradle days, her earliest rambles had been through its gra.s.sy paths. Yonder silver-birch, whose delicately scalloped foliage rose and drooped in long strings, as if the foamy spurt of a fountain should be frozen in its fall, had it not printed itself on her memory somewhere a thousand times before? The three urchins pa.s.sing her from behind, surely their faces were not strange.

It may be Emily was right about the urchins and that there was no mirage in her recollection of them. She had been present on the morning when Ellen's body was found and they may have stood by her side in the crowd.

"I'm stiff, Whistler," said one of them in the broad drawl of the city gamin.

"Don't expect to be limber after ridin' twenty miles on a car truck, do yer, Turkey? What place is this, anyway?"

"I'll stump yez to come over in the swamp and get some little frogs," said urchin number three, who was no other than our crabbed young acquaintance, Toot Watts.

Emily wondered, as she saw them disappear down in the meadows, whether they had really been her fellow-pa.s.sengers all the way from the city. How dingy they were! Not a point of color except the peachy cheeks of Whistler and the golden glow at the end of Turkey's cigarette.

When she reached the academy playground she thought she must have covered two miles. There was a game in progress between two baseball clubs of rival academies and the sight of sportive youths and cheering onlookers was welcome to her after so long a spell of solitude. She was unhappily ignorant of the rudiments of that most scientific of games. "Fly" and "grounder" to her were simply undistinguishable terms of a barbaric technical jargon. But the sparkle of eager eyes and the motion of active limbs, set off by graceful costumes, was, perhaps, more apparent to her than if appreciation of the spectacle had been overwhelmed by interest in the match.

What breeding in the salute, in the very tones, when one of the outfielders, chasing a hit out of bounds, begged pardon for jostling against her ever so little. For a moment, admiring the liberal swing of his arm, as he made the long throw home, though the most womanly of women, she envied men the bodily freedom which they deny to their sisters. Presumably the play was successful, for its result was greeted with plaudits, and the club afield closed in toward the plate.

Beyond the ball ground, under a clump of willows, Emily was surprised to come upon her three fellow-pa.s.sengers once more. They must have cut through the meadows on the other side of the academy. The grove made a screen completely hiding them from the playground, and there was no one else about. Against a rocky wall three bicycles were resting.

"Let's take a ride, fellers," said the one who had been addressed as "Turkey."

"Cheese it. There's somebody comin'," protested the Whistler.

"Come on. I'm sick of this. Them fellers can't play a little bit."

"On'y a little ride around. They'll never know," added Toot.

Turkey boldly led the way, mounting like a veteran. Toot followed quickly, and finally the Whistler, finding himself abandoned by his comrades, swallowed his scruples and joined them. His was a girl's wheel, but he overtook his companions easily.

"Boys! Stop!" Emily found herself calling out a remonstrance. All three turned their heads at this shrill command, but it only made them speed away more rapidly. The road was downhill here, and the pedals whirled around like the crank-shaft of a flying locomotive. Should she turn back and give the alarm? It was a good stretch for limbs already weary and with an unknown number of miles before them. Besides, this was probably nothing worse than a boyish prank. If only city-street boys were like country-academy boys, she sighed. Perhaps they would be if they all had natty uniforms to wear and a bicycle apiece. No doubt the gamins would soon turn about, although they acted as though her outcry had frightened them; and the last she saw of them they were pedaling for dear life toward the city, twenty miles away.

Circ.u.mstances were to be greatly altered when Emily met these young racers again.

CHAPTER XVI.

STAMPEDE AND AVALANCHE.

Is there in all the world a sight more wholesome and comforting to the tired wayfarer than a loaded hay-cart? When Emily spied one ahead of her she felt a little throb of pleasure in her bosom and at once hastened her step to overtake it. The farmer was asleep on the seat, with a sundown over his face.

"Perhaps I had better wake him," thought Emily. "Won't your horse run away?"

"Run away?" The peaked old face was wide open of a sudden. "Guess not, miss, not with that load on. Dobbin ain't no pony. Step aboard? How far are you baound?"

"I am looking for the Arnold mansion."

"Arnold mansion? This is just the kerridge you want to take. Mrs. Arnold's a putty close neighbor of aours."

Grateful for the offer, Emily climbed into the creaky seat under the fragrant, overhanging load.

"You b'long in Foxtaown, I s'pose?"

"No. I'm from the city."

"All the way from the city? Well, I declare. I thot I knew all the Elmwood leddies. I s'pose things are putty brisk in taown these days?"