CHAPTER XXVIII
WITH THE PICK-HANDLE BRIGADE
If I had stopped to consider how fully the safety of Wharton Kendrick–to say nothing of his niece–depended upon me, I should perhaps have found courage to decline the dangerous mission. But William T. Coleman's commanding eye was upon me; and after a gulp to moisten my dry throat, I replied with an attempt to put a cheerful spirit into my voice:
"Very well; but I'd like to take a man or two along–merely as a guaranty to the Council that I'm not joking."
Coleman smiled.
"Oh, I didn't expect you to go alone. Take as many men as you like. Will twenty be enough?"
I thought so.
"Well, then, here are a dozen John Doe warrants. They will be your authority for whatever you may find it necessary to do in arresting these men. Now come out here and pick your company."
He led the way to the main hall, glanced over the throng that still pervaded it, and cried in a resonant voice:
"Volunteers wanted for dangerous service."
His discouraging form of statement did not dismay all of the company before him. At least fifty men stepped forward at the call.
"Take your pick," said Coleman with a wave of his hand. "If they haven't revolvers, I will supply them. You'd better take the clubs for ordinary service."
I selected a score of men whose faces showed vigor and determination, looked to their arms, directed them to the pile of pick-handles, and when each man had satisfied himself of the virtue of his weapon by knocking down an imaginary enemy, I led the way to the street.
"Where are we going?" asked one of the men with the easy familiarity of the volunteer.
"Secret service," I replied. "Don't make any more noise than you have to." If we were to arrest the conspirators without bloodshed it was necessary to take them by surprise, and we approached their meeting-place with as much caution as I could contrive.
The House of Blazes blinked more furtively than ever on the darkness. The outer door was but half opened, and the lights within burned but dimly. Yet a faint murmur that thrilled the air gave warning of many voices in converse, and stray gleams of light from the shuttered windows above bore ample witness to the fact that there was hidden activity in the den of the revolutionists.
I posted a number of men in position to prevent escape through the windows, and instructed the remainder to await my signal outside the main entrance. Then pushing open the swinging door, I entered the saloon.
The long room was almost deserted. A man in an apparent stupor sat with his head on a table in the dim light at the farther end of the place. Another lay on a bench snoring in drowsy intoxication. A short, round-faced young fellow with a dirty white apron stood behind the bar, and looked up with cheerful expectancy as I entered.
"Take me to the Council," I said peremptorily. "I am just from Mr. Parks."
"The Council!" stammered the man. "I don't–I don't know what you mean."
At the sound of my voice, the fat pasty face of H. Blasius appeared through the doorway at the right of the bar.
"Ah, Meestaire–Meestaire–friend of Park," he said, recognizing me and coming forward. "I salute a brozaire in arms." And he would have embraced me but for my nimbleness in avoiding his odious clutch.
"I have come for orders," I said. "I must see the Council."
"Ah," he cried, "you have come to give your ar-rms to ze inauguration of ze gr-rand r-revolution." And he rolled out his "r's" in a way to make the revolution very grand indeed.
"I have brought more than my arms," I said. "I have the first company of our troops outside."
"Mon Dieu!" he cried, his pasty face growing paler, and his blinking eyes opening wider in alarm. "Mon Dieu! You have come mooch too soon. Ze police will cast ze blow of an eye upon zem, ze alar-rm will sound, and Zip! away goes ze chance of winning by surprise."
"That's so," I exclaimed, with the accent of one overwhelmed at conviction of a lack of judgment. "I will bring my men in and march them up to the Council-room where they can lie hid till the hour comes."
"Non! non!" cried H. Blasius in alarm. "No one can go to ze Council-room. Zere is no Council-room." His old distrust had overcome the alcoholic enthusiasm with which he had received me, and his eyes blinked cunningly upon me. Then he gave an apprehensive glance at the door by which he had entered, and I was confirmed in the suspicion that it led to the rooms of the conspirators.
"Well, if you won't take me up, I must go by myself. My business must be laid before the Council at once." And I moved with determination toward the suspected door.
H. Blasius placed himself in the way with arms outstretched.
"Non–non!" he cried. "You can not entrez wizout ze mot d'ordre--ze password."
"Give it to me, then," I demanded. "You are delaying the Council's business."
He was overawed a little by my authoritative tone, but before he could bring his tongue to answer me, the barkeeper accidentally dropped a glass on the floor, and the men whom I had stationed at the door, mistaking the crash for the sounds of conflict, rushed in to my rescue.
"The Vigilantes!" cried the barkeeper in dismay, at the sight of the badges and the pick-handles.
"Mon Dieu! we are betrayed!" cried H. Blasius, whirling around with a step toward the door that led to the Council-room.
I divined his purpose. He was bent on warning the conspirators. With one bound I had him by the collar, and with a fierce wrench dragged him back and flung him against the bar, spluttering inarticulate protests.
The barkeeper had seized a revolver, but before he could raise it, he was in the hands of my men. He submitted without resistance and with the cheerful spirit of one to whom the outcome is a matter of small importance.
"Keep that man quiet," I said, with the hope that the noise of struggle had not reached the Council-room. Then I gripped H. Blasius by his fat throat.
"Give me the countersign!" I demanded.
He gave a scream of terror and dropped to his knees.
"Have pity–do not keel me. Mon Dieu! I am one good citizen. I make no plots wiz ze r-revolutionists."
"The countersign," I repeated grimly, tightening my grip on his throat, while two of my assistants reinforced my argument by prodding him in the sides with their sticks.
"Leeberty–leeberty or deat',"–Mr. H. Blasius pronounced it "debt"–"zat is ze countersign," he gasped through his constricted windpipe. And assured by his eyes that he was telling the truth, I flung him into the arms of my men.
"Shut off his wind if he tries to give a warning," I said, and with a word I picked a squad from my company and gave them brief instructions:
"Follow me up the stairs. Don't make a noise. And when I give the signal push me through the door."
A dim illumination filtered through a ground-glass transom at the top of the stairway, and the murmur of voices that floated down gave evidence that a busy meeting was in progress.
I walked up the stairs with bold step, and my men crept cautiously after me. At the top was a landing, large enough to hold my squad, and I signed to them to collect behind me. Then I gave three resounding blows on the door–a compelling summons that I had learned as a lawyer's clerk in serving papers on unwilling defendants. There is some mystic virtue in the slow triple knock that brings the most wary from their holes. At my rap there was a sudden hush of voices. Then some one by the door cried:
"Who is there?"
"A friend you are expecting."
"If you are a friend, give the countersign."
"Liberty or Death."
At this reply the door opened cautiously for a few inches, and a man peeped through the crack.
"Now!" I cried. And with the force of six men behind me I shot forward, flung the door wide open, and sent its guardian sprawling backward, as I was projected a dozen feet into the Council-room. The room was large, and around a large table in front of a pulpit-like platform sat twelve or fifteen men. The Council and its advisers were in session.
At my unceremonious entrance the conspirators gave a prompt exhibition of their qualities. Waldorf, Reddick and Seabert sprang to their feet, and their hands went to their pockets with the evident purpose of drawing their revolvers. Others ran from side to side of the room, wildly seeking some way of escape. Two crawled under the table. The rest remained motionless in their chairs, looking with dull apprehension at our sudden irruption.
There were more of the conspirators than I had reckoned on meeting. But we had the advantage of surprise, and signing to two of my men to hold the door, I walked calmly forward with the others.
"Gentlemen," I said to the startled group, "you are under arrest."
"The devil we are!" cried Waldorf, snatching a revolver out of his pocket and snapping it at me.
There was a deafening report, and a bullet clipped my ear, but before Waldorf could raise the hammer a second time a rap from a pick-handle laid him sprawling limply across the table. Reddick's weapon was knocked from his hand with a blow that broke his wrist. Seabert was seized and thrown before he could get his revolver out of his pocket, and a fiery little German in spectacles, who shot a hole in his coat in an excited attempt to draw his weapon, fell limply to the floor and squirmed like a shot rabbit at a skull-cracking stroke from a Vigilante's club.
It was after all but a tame affair. For men who were planning to seize a city and overturn a nation, there was an absurdly small supply of fighting blood among them. The sprawling figure of Waldorf, lying face upward on the table with the blood trickling over his forehead, the fiery German in a limp heap on the floor, and the sight of Reddick and Seabert disabled, took all the fight out of the rest of the company. They submitted without resistance to be searched, disarmed and bound.
"Where are the rifles?" I demanded, when these preliminaries had been completed.
"Don't know of any rifles," said Seabert sullenly. "Never had any."
The arrested company at once became unanimous on this point. There were never any rifles in their possession. They became so insistent in the denial that I jumped to the conclusion that the arms could not be far away, and looked about for their hiding-place. The ornamental work behind the platform and about the hall gave opportunity for concealed doorways and false partitions, but when they were sounded none could be uncovered.
"There's room for them under that platform," I said at last; and by the falling countenances of the conspirators I saw that I had hit upon the hiding-place.
The flooring was ripped off the platform, and we uncovered something more than four hundred rifles with a well-filled cartridge-belt strapped to each. Encouraged by this success we ransacked the place to discover the rest of the Council's armament, but had at last to give it up with the conclusion that the remainder of the thousand guns had already been distributed to the clubs.
A messenger sent in haste to the headquarters of the Committee of Safety brought a train of express-wagons with orders to hurry the arms and ammunition to Horticultural Hall, and send the prisoners to the City Prison and Receiving Hospital. And stationing a guard to receive any of the revolutionary spirits who might come seeking the Council's instructions, I set off for the headquarters of the Committee of Safety. The House of Blazes, as I took my last look at it, seemed smothered in an atmosphere of angry discomfiture, as it scowled at us from its blinking windows, fit tomb of the evil purposes it had harbored.
CHAPTER XXIX
A TONGUE OF FIRE
We had reached Union Square on our return to the Committee's headquarters, when the night air burst into a clangor of alarm. There was a sudden chorus of shrieking whistles, a distant tintinnabulation of gongs, and the great bell in the fire house on Brenham Place thrilled the air with its tolling vibrations.
"Box fifty-nine!" cried one of the men who had counted the strokes. "Where's that?"
"It's the Mail docks, I'll bet!" cried another. "They've been threatening to burn 'em."
I turned to look, and the guess was confirmed. A glare of red had flamed up in the southeastern sky, and the fire was already under good headway.
"It's the third alarm," said a sentinel who stood by the corner. "The Committee's been sending men down there already."
The sharp cry of commanding voices echoed from Horticultural Hall, men were climbing into express-wagons and hurrying off on the gallop, and our way was blocked for a minute by a company that marched rapidly out of the building, quickened its pace to a run, and sped down Post Street. Instead of clubs they carried rifles, and I surmised that the armament of the Council of Nine was being turned against the Council's purposes.
Within the hall all was excitement; cries of command rose sharply as companies were assembled by zealous officers, and squads were marching out as rapidly as they could be armed.
William T. Coleman met me by the door of the office.
"Well, it seems to have begun at last," he said. "The Mail docks have been set afire, and the report comes that the Chinamen down there are being killed by a big mob."
"There was talk of burning the City of Tokiowith the thousand coolies it has brought," I said, with a shudder at the thought of the barbarities that were perhaps being enacted on the threatened dock.
"The Tokio isn't in yet," said Coleman. "The report of her arrival was a mistake."
"I don't believe there's any real fight in the mob," I said. "We have just cut the head off the beast."
Coleman grasped my hand.
"I'm obliged to you for the work you have done," he said. "The guns you sent in will be put to good use. And now would you mind taking a company down to the docks?"
"Not at all," I returned unhesitatingly, resolved to live up to the figure I had assumed in his eyes.
"You have something of an interest down there," he added. "Kendrick's lumber-yards are right near the docks, and you may want to do something to protect them." Then turning to the despatching officer, he said: "Put Brixton's company under command of Captain Hampden. Brixton won't be back to-night."
"I should like," I said, "to add to it the men I have brought back from the House of Blazes. In affairs of this sort it's some advantage to be acquainted with your men, and we've rubbed shoulders to-night in a way that is better than an introduction."
Coleman looked at the dozen men who lined up at my call, and gave a nod of assent.
"Enroll Captain Hampden's volunteers with the company," he said. "That will give him about sixty men. Now get down to the docks on the double quick. Remember that the first thing to be looked out for is the fire-hose. In times like this it carries the life-blood of the city. If any one tries to cut it, shoot him." And with this curt direction he waved us forward.
The rosy glow that illumined the southeastern sky had spread and deepened since we entered the hall. The ruddy light rose and fell in sudden tides, as the eddying-clouds of smoke reflected or obscured the fierce flames that leaped below them.
The sound of the fire-bell and the reddened sky had been a signal to other ears and eyes than those of the Vigilantes. Market Street was a hurrying stream of men and women and children, carried along by a common impulse, like wreckage on flood waters. Bands of young hoodlums rushed down the street with blackguardly cries, rudely jostling those who neglected to make way for them. A sibilant clamor of excited voices filled the air,–hoarse shouts of men, yells from the hoodlums and shrill chatter from the women and children, roused by the thrill of them.
At the corner of Beale and Harrison Streets we were halted by a densely packed mass of people striving vainly to press forward to a point from which they could get a closer view of the conflagration, now but a block away. The roar of flames could be heard above the volume of rattling sound that came from the massed confusion of firemen, rioters, Vigilantes and spectators. A ruddy glare illumined the great throng. Waves of heat reached us even at this distance, and farther down the street we could see men protecting their faces from the burning effulgence by holding their arms before their eyes. The great furnace sent up swift peaks of flame that fell as suddenly as they rose, and gave place to rolling clouds of smoke that turned the blaze to a dull red glow.
Before I could give the order to charge a passage through the crowd, a fire-engine dashed up with the clatter of galloping horses, the wild shouts of the firemen, the ringing of gongs and the cries of the frightened spectators. The throng pressed aside, and by some magic of contraction made a lane for the swift horses as they drew the engine up to the hydrant. At this moment the engine across Harrison Street, that had been whirring away with convulsive energy, gave vent to a splutter of steam, slowed down, and came to a stop. A fireman came running over to the newly arrived engine from its fellow across the street, scattering in his train an eruption of oaths that gave a verbal effect that was comparable to the shower of sparks from his engine.
"Look out for your hose!" he shouted wrathfully. "They've just cut ours again."
"Where's the police?" cried the captain of the new engine, as he gave orders to couple the hose to the hydrant.
"There's one policeman to the block, an' if he ain't dead he ought to be," returned the wrathful engineer. "They was talking about what the Vigilantes was a-goin' to do, but I ain't seen none of 'em. I reckon they's a-holdin' a promenade concert up to Horticultural Hall, and ain't got time to come down here. If you want your hoodlums knocked out, you'll have to do it yourself." And running back to his engine he suited action to word by seizing a stick and clearing a space about it with fierce flourishes and fiercer words.
"Here are your Vigilantes," I shouted. "Now lay your lines of hose side by side, and I'll see that there's no more cutting."
"Well, clear the track for us then!" cried the captain with a volley of excited oaths. "Can't you see that my men are blocked there?"
I stationed half my company by the engines, formed the other half into a wedge, and rushed them down the hill. They plowed a wide lane through the massed throng, and the firemen ran behind them hauling the lines of hose, and howling orders and encouragement at every step. Along the path I dropped out man after man, with instructions to keep the crowd back, and shoot the first person who attempted to touch the hose. When I was satisfied that the lines were secure, I followed the advance guard down the slope to the corner of Beale and Bryant Streets.
Here I could for the first time see the full extent of the conflagration.
A bold bluff nearly one hundred feet high at First and Bryant Streets diminishes gradually till it permits Beale Street to descend by a moderate grade to the level of the wharves. Between the face of this bluff and the docks lay a medley of warehouses, coal-bunkers and lumber-yards, all now involved in a conflagration that turned the amphitheater between the bluff and the bay into a furnace filled with tossing, leaping flames of weird diversity of color. The warehouses were filled with sea stores and the spoil of commerce from many lands; one was stocked with barrels of whale-oil and other products of the Arctic trade; and over them all flickered red, green, orange and yellow flames, in endless confusion. The coal-bunkers gave off great clouds of smoke, while the fiercest flames shot up from the oil warehouses and the blazing lumber-piles. Now and then a dull explosion, followed by a temporary dimming of the light at the eastern end of the furnace, pointed out the location of the oil; then a black cloud would roll up and drift away, and in a moment red and smoky flames would leap three hundred feet in air with a vicious eagerness that made them seem almost a sentient agent of destruction.
The wharves appeared to be yet untouched by the fire, but they were visibly in imminent danger, and, above the roar of the flames, the shouts of the firemen and the clamor of the crowd, we could plainly hear the cries of the sailors as they strove to move their vessels from the perilous neighborhood.
At the foot of the hill the heat was blistering. Planks a hundred feet from the blaze were smoking; the light was blinding, and even the boldest of the spectators had retired half-way up the hill. Yet two engines had been pushed forward almost to the border of the flame-covered area; and the firemen, attacking the conflagration with reckless energy, could be seen dragging their hose over planks that still glowed with half-extinguished embers.
At the entrance to this inferno my eye was caught by a reminder of difficulties that stirred my heart to a leap of apprehension. A long sign-board that had been set across the gate to the lumber-yards, now twisted and ready to fall from the half-burned uprights that supported it, bore across its face the words, "The Kendrick Lumber and Milling Co." Another of Wharton Kendrick's activities was destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of his property was now represented by a few acres of roaring flames. For a minute I was struck motionless with the fear that this loss might prove the final blow, and bring down in one avalanche the accumulated difficulties that I had evaded or postponed.
Then I was roused to attention by the words:
"Here is the man who can tell you all about it; he's the one that turned in the alarm."
The speaker wore the badge of an assistant chief of the fire department, and he was addressing two young men who held pencil and paper in their hands and looked eagerly at a roughly dressed man who seemed to be dazed at the destruction that was going on about him.
"Yes, I'm the man," he said slowly. "I'm a watchman. I was over there on the wharf–the Beale Street wharf. A while ago–it was a long time ago–"
"Never mind the long while ago–tell us about to-night," interrupted one of the young men impatiently.
"That's what I was telling you about," said the man in an injured tone. "It was a long while ago–to-night. I looked over here just the other side of that oil warehouse–there's only one wall left to it now–an' I saw a fellow strike a match. I thought he was goin' to light his pipe, but he took a box from under his arm an' stuck the match in it. The box flared up as though it was full o' shavings, an' then he stuck it under a lumber-pile. I hollered at him, an' he ran. Then the fire started up, an' I got to the fire-box an' turned in the alarm. Then there was hell to pay." The man made this announcement in a dull, matter-of-fact way that gave a touch of comedy-in-tragedy to his words.
"What sort of looking man was he?" I asked.
"Oh, he was an oldish man–an old man–tall, an' sort of stooped."
"Stout or thin?"
"Thin, I guess–he was too far away for me to say for sure, an' bein' as I was kind of flustered by the fire, too."
At his words an illuminating light came to my mind. The fire was not directed at the Pacific Mail docks. It was set to destroy the yards of the Kendrick Lumber and Milling Company, and it had succeeded. It was the crowning stroke of Peter Bolton's assault on Wharton Kendrick's fortune.
I wondered whether Peter Bolton had himself set the match to the lumber-pile. The description by the watchman fitted him, and he did not lack the will for the deed. But it was so foreign to his cautious temper to take the risks of committing such a crime with his own hand that I hesitated to believe. Yet when he had once resolved upon such a step, it might well have seemed safer to him to perform the act himself, than to confide it to an accomplice who might betray him.
I was turning over this problem in my mind, and watching with unconscious eyes the bold and resolute efforts of the firemen to fight back the flames, when I was roused by a flight of stones. Two of them struck the nearest engine; one knocked the hat off a man of my company; and a fireman was struck down, only to jump to his feet in a moment with a torrent of oaths. The fire chief roared a profane but vigorous condemnation of the assault, and devoted its authors to an even warmer place than the furnace that blazed before us.
"That's the fifth time we've got it," said the engineer, backing up his chief with a contribution of blistering words.
I looked about for the assailants.
"It's those fellows up there on top of the bluff," said the fire chief. "They've been pelting the firemen and the police for half an hour. They can't reach this end of the line very well, but they've made it hot for our men up near First Street. I hear they've killed some of the Vigilantes up there. The Vigilantes tried to rush 'em, but it's up a hundred foot of narrow stair, and they had to give it up. I wish the whole gang up there was pitched into the middle of the fire."
I looked up at the bluff, and saw a black mass lining its upper edge. Two or three hundred men and boys were clustered along its front, yelling and throwing stones. It was evident that their position could not be taken from the front. In no place was there less than fifty feet of sheer ascent. But I recalled that the bluff was open to attack from the rear by the way of First Street.
"I'll settle those fellows," I said.
"I'll see that you get the department medal, if you do," returned the fire chief. "But you can't get up there without wings."
After stationing guards along the line of hose, I still had twenty-five men who could be spared for other service. Most of them were still standing by the engines at the top of the Beale Street hill. So I made my way back to the corner, and with a few words explained the purpose of the expedition we were about to undertake. They had heard the report that a number of the Vigilantes had been killed by the hoodlums, and burning with indignation they welcomed the chance to inflict vengeance on the rioters.
"Keep together," I cautioned them, as we pushed our way through the mob of sightseers and mischief-makers up Harrison Street to First. Evil faces in the crowd gave us savage glances of dislike. But the white band on the arm that marked the members of the Safety Committee, the warning word of "Here come the Vigilantes," and the display of pick-handles, served to discourage the thought of molesting us. There was mass enough among the rough element in that crowd to swallow us ten times over, but they knew that we represented the force of law and government, and the rage for mischief fell to a muttering of threats as we passed.
When we had forced our way through the mass of sightseers to a distance of fifty yards from the edge of the bluff, there was a sudden shot, followed by an answering rattle that sounded like the firing of a pack of giant fire-crackers. Screams of women and shouts of men reinforced the noise of the guns, and we were borne backward in a terrified rush of the crowd. The infection of panic was hard to resist, but I succeeded in giving a steadying word to my men, and they breasted the current till the ground cleared before us. Then I saw that my manoeuver had been anticipated. A company of the Vigilantes had made a flank attack on the hoodlum position from the west by way of Bryant Street. We ran forward to reinforce the company, and I offered our services to its captain.
"They fired on us," he said, "and we've cleaned 'em out, I guess. Here's one fellow shot, anyhow. They've been throwing rocks down on the firemen below, and knocked out half a dozen of them–killed two of 'em, I heard. The cowardly brutes! Hunt 'em out, boys! There's some of 'em left in those yards along the bluff."
I made a dash along the edge of the bluff, and was rewarded by flushing a half-dozen hoodlums who rose from behind an outhouse, like quail from a clump of bushes, and hastily scrambled over a fence. I called to them to halt or we would shoot, and was over the fence after them in an instant. Most of my men were too old for fast work of this sort, but a glance behind me showed that half a dozen had followed me.
The hoodlums had led the way to a cul-de-sac of buildings, and were cursing as they scattered here and there in the effort to find a way out. The form and voice of their leader, and his running stride stirred faintly the chords of memory. I tried vainly to recall where I had seen him before, and the elusive recollection multiplied my desire to capture him. In this resolve chance favored me. A stumble sent him to the ground, and before he could rise I was on top of him, and held a revolver against his head.
"Damn you!" he cried, puffing hoarsely in the effort to regain his breath.
"Take it quietly," I advised him, "or you'll lose what little brains you have."
"Damn you!" he repeated. "Let me up, or I'll kill you."
This time his tone and words stirred memory to definiteness. I had in my hands the fellow whose knife-thrust had been near ending my career, and whose gift of an overcoat had led me to Big Sam. and the train of events which followed upon my visit to the King of Chinatown. Here, then, was an agent of Bolton, and perhaps of Big Sam as well, leading one of the hoodlum gangs in its career of riot and arson. And I felt, as I gripped his throat, that I had within my hand the proof of Bolton's criminal conspiracy. If this man could be got to talk, the jail would close on Peter Bolton in the hour of his triumph; and the furnace that roared and glowed below us would bring ruin to his plans as swiftly as it had consumed the property of his enemy.