XXIII
Danny Gibbs, having recovered from the debauch into which Archie's fate had plunged him, sat in his back room reading the evening paper. His spree had lasted for a week, and the whole tenderloin had seethed with the excitement of his escapades. Now that it was all over and reason had returned, he had made new resolutions, and a certain moral rehabilitation was expressed in his solemn demeanor and in the utter neatness of his attire. He was clean-shaven, his skin glowed pink from Turkish baths, his gray hair was closely trimmed and soberly parted, his linen was scrupulously clean; he wore new clothes of gray, his shoes were polished and without a fleck of dust. His meditations that evening might have been profoundly pious, or they might have been dim, foggy recollections of the satisfaction he had felt in heaping scathing curses on the head of Quinn, whom he had met in Eva Clason's while on his rampage. He had cursed the detective as a representative of the entire race of policemen, whom he hated, and Quinn had apparently taken it in this impersonal sense, for he had stood quietly by without resenting Gibbs's profane denunciation. But whatever Gibbs's meditations, they were broken by the entrance of a woman.
She was dressed just as she had always been in the long years Gibbs had known her, soberly and in taste; she wore a dark tailor suit, the jacket of which disclosed at her full bosom a fresh white waist. She was gloved and carried a small hand-bag; the bow of black ribbon on her hat trembled with her agitation; she was not tall, but she was heavy, with the tendency to the corpulence of middle years. Her reddish hair was touched with gray here and there, and, as Gibbs looked at her, he could see in her flushed face traces of the beauty that had been the fatal fortune of the girlhood of Jane the Gun.
"Howdy, Dan," she said, holding out her gloved hand.
"Hello, Jane," he said. "When'd you come?"
"I got in last night," she said, laying her hand-bag on the table. "Give me a little whisky, Dan." She tugged at her gloves, which came from her moist hands reluctantly. Gibbs was looking at her hands,–they were as white, as soft and as beautiful as they had ever been. One thing in the world, he reflected in the saddened philosophy that had come to him with sobriety, had held unchanged, anyway.
"I said a little whisky, Dan!" she spoke with some of her old imperiousness.
"No," he said resolutely, "you don't need any. There's nothing in it." He was speaking out of his moral rehabilitation. She glanced at him angrily; he saw that her brown eyes, the brown eyes that went with her reddish hair and her warm complexion, were flaming and almost red. He remembered to have seen them flame that dangerous red before. Still, it would be best to mollify her.
"There ain't any more whisky in town," he said, "I've drunk it all up."
She laughed as the second glove came off with a final jerk.
"I heard you'd been hitting the pots. Isn't it a shame! The poor kid! I heard it's a kangaroo."
Gibbs made no comment.
"He was a raw one, too, wasn't he?"
"Well, he's a young Dutchman–he filled in with the mob several moons back."
"What was the rap?"
"He boosted a rod, and they settled him for that; he got a stretch. Then he was in when they knocked off the peter in that P. O. down in Indiana."
"That's what I couldn't get hip to; Mason wasn't–"
"No, not that time; they had him wrong; but you know what them elbows are."
"They must have rapped hard."
"Yes, they gave them a five spot. But the Dutch wasn't in on that Flanagan job, neither was Curly. That was rough work–the cat, I s'pose."
Jane, her chin in her hands, suddenly became intent, looking straight into Gibbs's eyes.
"Dan, that's what I want to get wise to."
Her cheeks flamed to her white temples, her breast rose tumultuously, and as she looked at Gibbs her eyes contracted, the wrinkles about them became deeper and older, and they wore the hard ugly look of jealous suspicion. But presently her lip quivered, then slowly along the lower lashes of her eyes the tears gathered.
"What's the matter, Jane?"
"You don't know what I've stood for that man!" she blazed out. "I could settle him. I could send him to the stir. I could have him touched off!" She had clenched her fist, and, at these last words, with their horrible possibility, she smote it down on the table. "But he knew I wouldn't be a copper!" She ended with this, and fumbling among a woman's trinkets in her hand-bag, she snatched out a handkerchief and hastily brushed away the tears. Gibbs, appealed to in all sorts of exigencies, was at a loss when a woman wept. She shook with weeping, until her hatred was lost in the pity she felt for herself.
"I never said a word when you flew me the kite to keep under cover that time he plugged Moon."
"No, you were good then."
"Yes," she said, looking up for approval, "I was, wasn't I? But this time–I won't stand for it!"
"I'm out o' this," said Gibbs.
"Well," she went on, "his mouthpiece wrote me not to show here. But I was on at once. Curly knew I was hip from the start"–her anger was rising again. "It was all framed up; he got that mouthpiece to hand me that bull con, and he's even got McFee to–"
"McFee!" said Gibbs, starting at the name of the inspector. "McFee! Have you been to him?"
"Yes, I've been to him!" she said, repeating his words with a satirical curl of the lip. "I've been to him; the mouthpiece sent me word to lay low till he sprung him; Curly sent me word that McFee said I wasn't to come to this town. Think I couldn't see through all that? I was wise in a minute and I just come, that's what I did, right away. I did the grand over here."
"What was it you thought they had framed up?" asked Gibbs innocently. "I can't follow you."
"Aw, now, Dan," she said, drawing away from the table with a sneer, "don't you try to whip-saw me."
"No, on the dead!"
"What was it? Why, some moll, of course; some tommy."
Gibbs leaned back and laughed; he laughed because he saw that this was simply woman's jealousy.
"Look here, Jane," he said, "you know I don't like to referee these domestic scraps–I know I'll be the fall guy if I do–but you're wrong, that's all; you've got it wrong."
She looked at him, intently trying to prove his sincerity, and anxious to be convinced that her suspicions were unfounded, and yet by habit and by her long life of crime she was so suspicious and so distrustful–like all thieves, she thought there were no honest people in the world–that her suspicions soon gained their usual mastery over her, and she broke out:
"You know I'm not wrong. I went to see McFee."
"What did he say?" asked Gibbs, with the interest in anything this lord that stood between him and the upper world might say.
"Why, he said he wouldn't say nothing."
"Did he say you could stay?"
"Well," she hesitated an instant, "he said he didn't want me doing any work in town; he said he wouldn't stand for it."
"No, you mustn't do any work here." Gibbs spoke now with his own authority, reinforcing that of the detective.
"Oh, sin not leery!" she sneered at him. "I'm covered all right, and strong. You're missing the number, that's all. I'm going to camp here, and when I see her, I'll clout her on the kurb; I'll slam a rod to her nut, if I croak for it!"
"Jane," said Gibbs, when he had looked his stupefaction at her, "you've certainly gone off your nut. Who in hell's this woman you're talking about?"
"As if you don't know! What do you want to string me for?"
Gibbs looked at her with a perfectly blank face.
"All right, have it your way."
"Well," she said presently, with some doubt in her mind, "if you don't know and just to prove to you that I do know, it's the sister of that young Koerner!"
Gibbs looked at her a long time in a kind of silent contempt. Then he said in a tone that dismissed the subject as an absurdity:
"You've passed; the nut college for you."
Jane fingered the metal snake that made the handle of her bag; now and then she sighed, and after a while she was forced to speak–the silence oppressed her:
"Well, I'll stay and see, anyway."
"Jane, you're bug house," said Gibbs quietly.
Somehow, at the words, she bowed her head on her hands and wept; the black ribbon on her hat shook with her sobbing.
"Oh, Dan, I am bug house," she sobbed; "that's what I've been leery of. I haven't slept for a month; I've laid awake night after night; for four days now I've been going down the line–hunting her everywhere, and I can't find her!"
She gave way utterly and cried. And Gibbs waited with a certain aspect of stolid patience, but in reality with a distrust of himself; he was a sentimental man, who was moved by any suffering that revealed itself to him concretely, or any grief or hardship that lay before his own eyes, though he lacked the cultured imagination that could reveal the sorrows and the suffering that are hidden in the world beyond immediate vision. But she ceased her weeping as suddenly as she had begun it.
"Dan," she said, looking up, "you don't know what I've done for that man. I was getting along all right when I doubled with him; I was doing well–copping the cush right along. I was working under protection in Chi.; I gave it all up for him–"
She broke off suddenly and exclaimed irrelevantly:
"The tommy buster!"
Gibbs started.
"No," he protested, "not Curly!"
"Sure!" she sneered, turning away in disgust of his doubt.
"What made you stand for it?"
"Well," she temporized, forced to be just, "it was only once. I had rousted a goose for his poke–all alone too–" She spoke with the pride she had always had in her dexterity, and Gibbs suddenly recalled the fact that she had been the first person in all their traditions who could take a pocketbook from a man, "weed" and replace it without his being aware; the remembrance pleased him and his eyes lighted up.
"What's the matter?" she demanded suddenly.
"I was thinking of the time you turned the old trick, and at the come-back, when the bulls found the sucker's leather on him with the put-back, they booted him down the street; remember?"
Jane looked modest and smiled, but she was too full of her troubles now for compliments, though she had a woman's love for them.
"I saw the sucker was fanning and I–well, Curly comes up just then and he goes off his nut and he–gives me a beating–in the street."
She saw that the circumstances altered the case in Gibbs's eyes, and she rather repented having told.
"He said he didn't want me working; he said he could support me."
Gibbs plainly thought well of Curly's wish to be the sole head and support of his nomadic family, but he recognized certain disadvantages in Curly's attitude when he said:
"You could get more than he could."
"Course, that's what I told him, but he said no, he wouldn't let me, and, Dan, you know what I did? Why, I helped him; he used to bust tags on the rattlers, and he hoisted express-wagons–I knew where to dispose of the stuff–furs and that sort, and we did do pretty well. I used to fill out for him, and then I'd go with him to the plant at night and wait with the drag holding the horses–God! I've sat out in the jungle when it was freezing, sat out for hours; sometimes the plant had been sprung by the bulls or the hoosiers; it made no difference–that's how I spent my nights for two winters. I know every road and every field and every fence corner around that town. It gave me the rheumatism, and I hurt my back helping him load the swag. You see he didn't have a gager and didn't have to bit up with any one, but he never appreciated that! And now he's lammed, he's pigged, that's what he's done; he's thrown me down–but you bet I'll have my hunk!"
"That won't get you anything," Gibbs argued. "Anyway," he added, as if he had suddenly discovered a solution, "why don't you go back on the gun now?"
She was silent a moment, and, as she sat there, the tears that were constantly filling her eyes welled up again, and she said, though reluctantly and with a kind of self-consciousness:
"I don't want to, Dan. I'm getting old. To tell the truth, since I've been out of it, I'm sick of the business–I–I've got a notion to square it."
Gibbs was so used to this talk of reform that it passed him idly by, and he only laughed. She leaned her cheek against her hand; with the other hand she twisted and untwisted the metal snake. Presently she sighed unconsciously.
"What are you going to do now?" Gibbs asked presently.
"I'm going to stay here in town till I see this woman."
"But you can't do any work here."
"I don't want to do any work, I tell you."
"How'll you live?"
"Live!" she said scornfully. "I don't care how; I don't care if I have to carry the banner–I'll get a bowl of sky-blue once in a while–and I'll wash dishes–anything!" She struck the table, and Gibbs's eyes fastened on her white, plump little fist as it lay there; then he laughed, thinking of it in a dish-pan, where it had never been.
"Well, I'll do it!" she persisted, reading his thought and hastily withdrawing the fist. "I'm going to get him!" She looked at Gibbs for emphasis.
"Jane," he said quietly, "you want to cut that out. This is no place for you now–this town's getting on the bum; they've put it to the bad. It's time to rip it. This rapper–"
"Oh, yes, I've heard–what's this his name is now?"
"Eades."
"What kind is he?"
"Oh, he's a swell lobster."
"They tell me he's strong."
"He's the limit."
Her eyes lighted up suddenly and she sat upright.
"Then I'll go see him!"
"Jane!" Gibbs exclaimed with as much feeling as he ever showed. He saw by the flashes of her eyes that her mind was working rapidly, though he could not follow the quick and surprising turns her intentions would take. He had a sudden vision, however, of her sitting in Eades's office, talking to him, passing herself off, doubtless, for the respectable and devoted wife of Jackson; he knew how easily she could impose on Eades; he knew how Eades would be impressed by a woman who wore the good clothes Jane knew how to wear so well, and he felt, too, that in his utter ignorance of the world from which Jane came, in his utter ignorance of life in general, Eades would believe anything she told him; and becoming thus prejudiced in the very beginning, make untold work for him to do in order to save his friend.
"Jane," he said severely, "you let him alone; you hear?"
She had risen and was drawing on her gloves. She stood there an instant, smiling as if her new notion pleased her, while she pressed down the fingers of her glove on her left hand. Then she said pleasantly:
"Good-by, Dan. Give my love to Kate."
And she turned and was gone.
XXIV
Elizabeth had heard her father enter and she imagined him sitting in the library, musing by the fire, finding a tired man's comfort in that quiet little hour before dinner. Sensitive as ever to atmospheres, Elizabeth felt the coziness of the hour, and looked forward to dinner with pleasure. For days she had been under the gloom of Archie's conviction; she had never followed a murder case before, but she had special reason for an interest in this. She had helped Marriott all she could by wishing for his success; she had felt his failure as a blow, and this, with the thought of Gusta, had caused her inexpressible depression. But by an effort she had put these thoughts from her mind, and now in her youth, her health, her wholesomeness, the effect of so much sorrow and despair was leaving her. She had finished her toilet, which, answering her mood, was bright that evening, when she heard Dick enter. Half the time of late he had not come home at all, sometimes days went by without her seeing him. She glanced at the little watch on her dressing-table; it was not yet six and Dick was home in time for dinner; perhaps he would spend the evening at home. She hoped he had not come to dress for some engagement that would take him away. Her father, she knew, would be happy in the thought of the boy's spending an evening with him; almost pathetic in his happiness. Of late, more and more, as she noted, the father had yearned toward the son; the lightest word, a look, a smile from Dick was sufficient to make him glow with pleasure. It made Elizabeth sad to see it, and it made her angry to see how her mother fondled and caressed him, excusing him for, if not abetting him in, all his excesses. But these thoughts were interrupted just then by Dick's voice. He was in the hall outside, and he spoke her name:
"Bess!"
The tone of the voice struck her oddly. He had pushed open the door and hesitated on the threshold, peering in cautiously. Then he entered and carefully closed the door behind him. She scented the odor of Scotch whisky, of cigarettes, in short, the odor of the club man. His face, which she had thought ruddy with the health, the exuberance, the inexhaustible vitality of youth, she saw now to be really unhealthy, its ruddy tints but the flush of his dissipations. Now, his face went white suddenly, as if a mask had been snatched from it; she saw the weakness and sensuousness that marred it.
"Dick!" she said, for some reason speaking in a whisper. "What's the matter? Tell me!"
At first a great fear came to her, a fear that he was intoxicated. She knew by intuition that Dick must frequently have been intoxicated; but she had never seen him so, and she dreaded it; she could have borne anything better than that, she felt. He sank on to the edge of her bed and sat there, rocking miserably to and fro, his overcoat bundled about him, his hat toppling on the side of his head, a figure of utter demoralization.
"Dick!" she said, going to him, "what is it? Tell me!"
She took him by the shoulders and gave him a little shake. He continued to rock back and forth and to moan;
"Oh, my God!" he said presently. "What am I going to do!"
Elizabeth gathered herself for one of those ordeals which, in all families, there is one stronger than the rest to meet and deal with.
"Here, sit up." She shook him. "Sit up and tell me what ails you." The fear that he was intoxicated had left her, and there was relief in this. "And take off your hat." She seized the hat from his head and laid it on the little mahogany stand beside her bed. "If you knew how ridiculous you look!"
He sat up at this and weakly began drawing off his gloves. When he had them off, he drew them through his hand, slapped them in his palm, and then with a weary sigh, said:
"Well, I'm ruined!"
"Oh, don't be dramatic!" She was herself now. "Tell me what scrape you're in, and we'll see how to get you out of it." She was quite composed. She drew up a chair for him and one for herself. Some silly escapade, no doubt, she thought, which in his weakness he was half glad to make the most of. He had removed his overcoat and taken the chair she had placed for him. Then he raised his face, and when she saw the expression, she felt the blood leave her cheeks; she knew that the trouble was real. She struggled an instant against a sickness that assailed her, and then, calming herself, prepared to meet it.
"Well?" she said.
"Bess," he began fearfully, and his head dropped again. "Bess"–his voice was very strange–"it's–the–bank."
She shivered as if a dead cold blast had struck her. In the moment before there had swept through her mind a thousand possibilities, but never this one. She closed her eyes. There was a sharp pain in her heart, exactly as if she had suddenly crushed a finger.
"The bank!" she exclaimed in a whisper. "Oh, Dick!"
He hung his head and began to moan again, and to rock back and forth, and then suddenly he leaned over, seized his head in his two hands and began to weep violently, like a child. Strangely enough, to her own surprise, she found herself calmly and coolly watching him. She could see the convulsive movements of his back as he sobbed; she could see his fingers viciously tearing at the roots of his hair. She sat and watched him; how long she did not know. Then she said:
"Don't cry, Dick; they'll hear you down-stairs."
He made an effort to control himself, and Elizabeth suddenly remembered that he had told her nothing at all.
"What do you mean," she asked, "by the bank?"
"I mean," he said without uncovering his face, and his hands muffled his words, "that I'm–into it."
Ah, yes! This was the dim, unposited thought, the numb, aching dread, the half-formed, unnamed, unadmitted fear that had lurked beneath the thought of all these months–underneath the father's thought and hers; this was what they had meant when they exchanged glances, when now and then with dread they approached the subject in obscure, mystic words, meaningless of themselves, yet pregnant with a dreadful and terrible import. And now–it had come!
"How much?" she forced herself to ask.
He nodded.
"It's big. Several–"
"What?"
"Hundreds."
"Hundreds?"
He hesitated, and then,
"Thousands," he said, tearing the word from him.
"How many thousands?" she asked, when she could find the courage.
Again he cowered before the truth. She grew impatient.
"Tell me!" she commanded. "Don't be a coward." He winced. "Sit up and face this thing and tell me. How many thousands have you stolen?"
She said it in a hard, cold voice. He suddenly looked up, his eyes flashed an instant. He saw his sister sitting there, her hands held calmly in her lap, her head inclined a little, her chin thrust out, her lips tightly compressed, and he could not meet her; he collapsed again, and she heard him say pitifully, "Don't use that word." Then he began to weep, and as he sobbed, he repeated:
"Oh, they'll send me to the penitentiary–the penitentiary–the penitentiary!"
The word struck Elizabeth; her gray eyes began to fill.
"How much, Dick?" she asked gently.
"Five–a–"
"More?"
He nodded
"How much more?"
"Twice as much."
"Ten, then?"
He said nothing; he ceased sobbing. Then suddenly he looked up and met her glance.
"Bess," he said, "it's twenty-three thousand!"
She stared at him until her tears had dried. In the silence she could hear her little watch ticking away on the dressing-table. The lights in the room blazed with a fierce glare.
"Does Mr. Hunter know?"
"Yes."
"When did he find out?"
"This morning. He called me in this afternoon."
"Does any one else know?"
"Yes."
"Who?"
Dick hung his head and began to fumble his watch-chain.
"Who, Dick?"
"One other man."
"Who? Tell me."
"Eades."
She closed her eyes and leaned back; she dropped her arms to her sides and clutched her chair for support. For a long while they did not speak. It was Dick at last who spoke. He seemed to have regained his faculties and his command.
"Bess," he said, "Eades will have no mercy on me. You know that."
She admitted it with a slow nod of her head, her eyes still closed.
"Something must be done. Father–he must be told. Will–will you tell him?"
She sat a moment–it seemed a long moment–without moving, without opening her eyes; and Dick sat there and watched her. Some of the color had come to his face. His eyes were contracting; his face was lined with new scheming.
"Will you tell him, Bess?"
She moved, opened her eyes slowly, wearily, and sighed:
"Yes."
She got up.
"You're not going to tell him now?"
He stretched out a hand as if to detain her.
"Yes, now. Why not?" She rose with difficulty, paused, swayed a little and then went toward the door. Dick watched her without a word. His hand was in the pocket of his coat. He drew out a cigarette.
She went down the stairs holding the baluster tightly; her palm, moist from her nervousness, squeaked on the rail as she slid it along. She paused in the library door. Her father was lounging in his chair under the reading-lamp, his legs stretched toward the fire. She could just see the top of his head over the chair, the light falling on his gray hair.
"That you, Betsy?"
The cheer and warmth of his tone smote her; again her eyes closed in pain.
"Yes, it's I," she said, trying for a natural tone, and succeeding, at least, in putting into her voice a great love–and a great pity. She bent over the back of the chair, and laid her hands on his head, gazing into the fire. The touch of her hands sent a delicious thrill through Ward; he did not move or speak, wishing to prolong the sensation.
"Dear," she said, "I have something to tell you."
The delicious sensation left him instantly.
"Can you bear some bad news–some bad, bad news?"
His heart sank. He had expected something like this–the day would come, he knew, when she would leave him. But was it not unusual? Should not Eades have spoken–should not he have asked him first? Her arms were stealing about his neck.
"Some bad news–some evil news. Something very–"
She had slipped around beside him and leaned over as if to protect him from the blow she was about to deliver. Her voice suddenly grew unnatural, tragic, sending a shudder through him as she finished her sentence with the one word:
"Horrible!"
"What is it?" he whispered.
"Be strong, dear, and brave; it's going to hurt you."
"Tell me, Bess," he said, sitting up now, his man's armor on.
"It's about Dick."
"Dick!"
"Yes, Dick–and the bank!"
"Oh-h!" he groaned, and, in his knowledge of his own world, he knew it all.