IX—A GRISLY GAME OF BOWLS
I DID not bother with any of the victualing houses in that low-down locality. I led the Sortwell boys uptown and ushered them into a very fancy restaurant. I could see that their opinion of my greatness was growing all of the time. I could not induce them to touch the bill of fare or even look at it. They gaped in such a frightened way when I mentioned fancy dishes, that I helped to set them at ease by ordering steak and potatoes. They ate to the last scrap, cleaning their plates with morsels of bread, even as grateful pups lick their platters. They confessed that they had not dared to go into an eating-house, and I remembered that first day when I had roamed the streets of the city.
I wanted to ask questions about Levant, but I delayed. Dave Sortwell, the older, opened up the subject, but he did not do it very gracefully.
“I reckon they can’t slur the Sidneys after this, like they have always done past back,” he said. “Here you are, something big down here in the city—and your uncle Deck is first selectman of Levant.”
So my uncle had achieved his political ambition! When I heard that news I had inside me a feeling of apprehension which I could scarcely account for.
“Elected last week at the March town-meeting,” affirmed Ardon, the brother. “We younger fellows that have come of voting age went for him—most all of us, because he say’s he is going to turn politics in our town upside down and dance a jig on the bottom of ’em.”
“He was into the tavern the other night, pretty well teaed up,” giggled Dave, “and he said he was going to gallop Judge Kingsley to hell and stand over him with a red-hot gad while he shoveled brimstone. He has got it in for the judge—and a good many folks in Levant ain’t sorry. Judge Kingsley has always gouged folks.”
“Did they put the judge out of the treasurership—did my uncle bring that about?” Hearing that the feud was on worse than ever made my heart sick. I had been hoping!
“O Lord, no! I guess the judge is forever fixed in that job. Folks can’t seem to think of anybody else as treasurer. He’s a financier,” said Dave, reverently. “He knows all about handling money. Folks trust to him for that.”
“But you say my uncle—”
“Your uncle is doing most of the saying. Folks stand round and listen. I don’t know what he is trying to do to the judge. Nobody seems to know. Guess he can’t do much of anything except talk. You know, yourself, Ross, how he keeps sparked up most of the time. Maybe he don’t know just what he says, himself.”
I began to skirt the edges of conditions in Levant, asking questions about this one and that, showing as much indifference as I could. But the Sortwell boys showed even more indifference about their home town. It was all too familiar to them. They were displaying increasing interest in me, and were emboldened to ask questions, now that their early awe was wearing off.
I found out—and I was rather surprised—that the folks in Levant had not heard a word about me since I left the town. I had rather expected that Dodovah Vose would drop some hint as to what had become of me—and yet, on reflection, I could see that prudence required him to keep still. He had helped a prisoner to escape, and could not well let anybody suspect that he knew the whereabouts of that prisoner.
“I’ll tell you, boys,” I said, when they had flanked me with questions from every approach and had finally and fairly pounced on me to find out what I was doing for a living and how I was so important, “I am hitched up with big business interests who don’t allow their men to talk. I’d tell you if I could tell anybody. It isn’t one special kind of business—it’s all kinds—a sort of a syndicate—a combination. You understand!”
They hastened to say that they did—and I was glad of that because I didn’t understand, myself.
“But you’ll let us say that you’re in this big business, won’t you? When we get back home we want to tell all of ’em that they’d better not slur you any more.”
“I suppose the backbiters have been busy, eh?”
“Oh, not much nowadays except somebody remarks once in a while that you had to skip the town. You know how such things pop up in talk. Your uncle being prominent nowadays, you get mentioned once in a while. But Dodovah Vose has always stood up for you!”
“And a lot of folks didn’t believe what that detective said. He wasn’t a real detective, anyway. He was only a deputy sheriff from Pownal,” added Ardon, and the next minute I felt like hugging the boy. “I was always ashamed of how us fellows put you in bad, Ross, and so I owned up when Celene Kingsley asked me—”
I couldn’t help it! I came right up in my chair. “Celene Kingsley asked you?”
He misunderstood my heat.
“Don’t be mad, Ross! I stood up for you, I say! I was sorry for what I did. I was ashamed.”
“But you said Celene Kingsley asked you something!”
“Well, I can’t remember whether she came right to me and asked me or whether it just happened that the thing came up somewhere or—”
“But you would surely remember if she came to you!” I could not conceive of Celene coming to anybody without it marking a mile-stone in life.
However, the Sortwell boy had plainly decided to be non-committal until he had a better line on my feelings in the affair.
“I don’t want you to be mad because I talked it over, Ross. I stood up for you!”
“But did she come asking?”
“We-e-ll, I guess she must have asked—or—or something! Anyway, it came up in talk—somehow—”
Confound his haziness!
“And of course I stood up for you. It was only right! I told her how you tried to bust up the Skokums! I said you threatened to bat out the brains of the whole of us if we didn’t stop cutting-up. I told her that they hadn’t ought to have arrested you that night, for you was trying to stop us from raiding her father’s house to grab that detective. You said something about a home being a castle—or—or something. Anyway, Ross, I did the best I knew how—I ain’t so much good in talk as you are. Honestly, I did the best I could to put you straight when she asked. Yes, I reckon she did ask.”
I was looking at him with such rapturous expression that his face cleared of uncertainty regarding my feelings.
“Sure, she must have asked, for I wouldn’t go to blart-ing that around, making the rest of us out as pirates, unless she had pinned me down. I reckon she did just that! Pinned me down. But I was glad to help you out that much!”
It came to me with a rush of sentiment that all I had done that day for the Sortwell boys had been fully paid for long in advance, and I was sorry because a whole lot of my actions had really been dictated by my selfishness and my desire to show off.
I reached across the table and took his hand.
“Ardon, I’m going to own up that I have had a lot of bitter thoughts about the folks in Levant since I left home. But if I had known that I had only one friend there like you have been in this matter, I would have put all the bad things out of my mind.”
“I only told the truth, Ross.”
“But that’s the hardest job a man undertakes to do in a lot of cases.” I was thinking just then how hard I would find it to own up about myself, and how I had secured that money from the clutches of the rogues in Dawlin’s joint. And there I was, making a lot of capital out of that deceit!
But after what I had just heard I was resolved to go ahead and make more capital out of my pretensions to greatness.
“You’re going to let us say that you have made good, aren’t you?” asked Dave.
“I’d like to get back into the good opinion of the old town, boys. If you feel like saying something nice about me when you get back to Levant, I’ll be grateful.”
“Say, if we don’t blow your horn!” they cried in concert.
“But not too loud, boys! I don’t want to have too big a reputation to live up to when I come back home.”
They stood up and clapped me on the back.
“By gorry! you will come, won’t you, and show ’em?” pleaded Dave. “Come and show ’em!”
“But there’s one thing to be thought of first,” I said, with a grin. “Has my uncle Deck stopped threatening to kill me on sight?”
That stirred their memories and fetched a laugh.
“He wouldn’t dare to give you as much as one yip if you walked up to him looking like you do now,” said Dave.
The thought which he suggested was comforting; so much in this world does depend on outside appearances. The hankering in me to go back was whetted; just to make a show in the face and eyes of Levant, to stop their tongues for good and all! But I was conscious that deep under those cheaper motives was something more compelling. I had felt the thrust of it after Ardon Sortwell had told me of his confession to Celene. She, at least, knew that I had not been a renegade, and she had taken enough interest in me to make sure on that point.
“When are you coming back, Ross?” demanded Dave.
“Don’t tell anybody I am coming back, boys. Promise me that.”
They did.
“But you may say that you saw me in the city, and that I am doing well, and sent my best regards to all my friends.”
“We’ll make their cussed old ears sing,” declared Ardon. “Don’t you worry about us!”
“If I can arrange my business so as to leave it, I may run up later.”
I showed them some of the city sights that afternoon and they started for home that night—and I saw to it that they were safely aboard their train.
That I should dream of Levant that night was entirely natural. They were enticing dreams and they made me homesick and I found out that I was not such a bold man, after all, in spite of the shell I had grown; I felt very much like a boy when I woke next morning. I was hungry for my own folks.
In my haste to be gone I forgot all my caution. I went down to the water-front just as if there were no such person as a vengeful Anson C. Doughty.
I had cached, temporarily, my diving equipment. I went to the storage-man and arranged for its care, paying in advance.
Then I was bold enough to go hunting up Jodrey Vose because I wanted to carry some fresh and direct message to his brother in order to secure continued favor in the case of the tavern-keeper; he certainly had been my best friend in Levant. I intended to lodge with him and I dreaded his keen questioning in case I went to him with lies about when I had seen his brother last.
I found the captain on his lighter and we had a good talk during his rest-spell.
“I’m sorry it has turned out for you as it has, young Sidney. But it’s a good idea for you to run up to the old town and hang round with Dod for a while and sort of get your feet placed all over again. Maybe something will turn up down this way later!”
“Anson C. Doughty’s toes, perhaps.”
He wagged his head, soberly.
“I’m glad you came down to take leave, son, but you’re running chances. Anson C. Doughty is mighty ugly. He was beaten up in front of his crew—and folks haven’t got done talking and he knows they are talking. You’d better be hipering, I reckon.”
He sent one of the helpers to his cabin for a parcel and he put it into my hands.
“It’ll be handier than sending it by express to Dod,” he said. “It’s a skull I found in the dock. Tell him to make up a pirate yarn to go with it.”
Being thus equipped with full credentials as to my continued comfortable standing with Jodrey Vose, for the purposes of my further intimacy with Dodovah Vose, I started up the wharf in excellent spirits, my thoughts on my home-going.
And half-way to the street I fairly bumped into Anson C. Doughty. It was no coincidence—I ought to have reckoned on that meeting—the manager was regularly up and down the wharf at all hours of the day. But, as I have said, I had lost my caution. I had met him once face to face, and had not been recognized. But I was no longer wearing that mustache.
He swore a blue streak and danced back and forth in front of me, waving his hairy hands to shoo me back. He looked just as much like a cockroach as ever.
“You belong in State prison and you’re going there,” he snarled.
There were two wharf loafers near by, the only men in sight. He called to them, and they came to us, a couple of husky stevedores.
“You know me!” shouted Doughty. “You two men hold this sucker till I can fetch a cop. Hold him! Don’t let him get away!”
He ran off toward the street.
I had not a chance to get away from those big chaps on that narrow wharf—and it was plain that they knew Anson C. Doughty and recognized his authority in those quarters.
So here were all my fresh plans, my hankering for home, my new-laid reputation for Levant consumption about to be kicked into the black depths of tophet by the grudge of Anson C. Doughty!
I could see that the stevedores despised my size because I was wearing a plug-hat; they glowered at me with the natural enmity the man in overalls feels for the dandy. It was perfectly damnable—that situation! To be arrested—to be shown up for what I was—the thought screwed my desperation to the breaking-point.
I pulled my wallet and began to flick out bills.
“He’s only trying to get back at me on account of a grudge, fellows; he’s using you for tongs,” I told them. “I was one of the divers and I batted him when he insulted me! I want to get out of town! Here’s a piece of money! He won’t give you anything.”
I had the skull under my arm and my wallet in my hands, and I wasn’t paying much attention to the men while I counted out money.
“Who was the gink who told us to hold the guy?” muttered one of the men. “Was it Doughty?”
“Sure! You know him,” said his companion.
“But he don’t know us!”
“He won’t remember who you are!” I hastened to put in. “Take some money, and—”
“You bet we’ll take some money,” barked the two of them in chorus, and the next instant one of them clutched me and the other grabbed wallet, money and all, and they ran away, ducked into an alley between storehouses, and disappeared.
I was free at a high price.
I ran after them, of course, but they were nowhere in sight when I reached the parallel wharf, and so I started for the street; and Anson C. Doughty saw me, for he was running up and down the sidewalk, wildly hunting for a policeman. When he undertook to head me off I pitched the wrapped skull at him with all my might; it plunked him squarely in the face and dropped him, and then went bounding along the pavement at a lively clip. I was conscious that a lot of people were looking on and that a hullabaloo was started. But in spite of that I stopped to pick up the skull before I fled from the place. I reckon I must have felt considerable of a sense of responsibility where the interests of my friends, the Voses, were concerned!
I got through a short street on the jump, caught a passing car and when I was once aboard I was lost to pursuers—I was merely one of the city’s mass, and my garments testified for me.
I dug down into my pockets and found a few crumpled bills and some silver—the loose money I carried outside my wallet. The whole of it amounted to mighty little—only about enough to take me to Levant, as I remembered what the train fare had been.
I did not stop to figure on any further resources; I did not dare to go and seek aid from any of my acquaintances; I did not go back to my room for any of my belongings. Panic was on me. To be caught at that time meant the toppling of my cardboard house of hopes and reputation. I did not know to what extent Anson C. Doughty would throw out his drag-net—but I was pretty sure that he would drop all his other business for a time and attend strictly to what concerned me. He surely was the angriest man I had seen in many a day when he went down under the impact of that package.
To get out of that city just as quickly as I could, before he could set persons on my trail, or put spies at the city’s outlets, was the only sensible course open to me.
So in less than half an hour I found myself on the train, homeward bound, just as much of a fugitive from the city as I had been in other days when I headed toward it.
I had a little spare change in my pocket and a skull under my arm.