The Shock By Grant Trask Reeves
WHEN “Rube” Reynolds crawled out of bed and began to dress, it was near to noontime. Within his head, to all feeling, a gigantic, throbbing trip hammer was seemingly striving to pound its way through his skull with regular, painful thumps. His lips felt parched and drawn, and a sickish, bitter taste stayed upon his tongue, as if his mouth was crammed with coarse, moldy earth, and by no means of futile gulping could he swallow the stuff.
Out of the confused muddle of his brain flashed a thought of morning practice.
“Guess’ll have to skip breakfast to get out to the field on time,” he thought.
But a glance at his watch, lying upon the bureau, made him aware that haste was useless; for probably at that moment his fellow members of the Sox were leaving the ball park for their homes and boarding places. Again he had missed a morning session on the home grounds of the Sox, and he sullenly wondered what Manager Kineally would say.
Slowly he continued to don his clothes. At times the bed, the chairs, and other articles of furniture seemed to be dancing and whirling weirdly about the room; and when he leaned forward to lace his shoes, his throbbing head pained as though it would burst.
Moving to the bureau he pulled out a lower drawer and brought forth a bottle partially filled with a brownish liquid. To his lips he tipped it, and for several seconds his Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively to a gurgling accompaniment.
Barely at the halfway mark, between twenty and thirty years, Reynolds had already reached the stage where a morning drink seemed a necessity. He lowered the bottle, its contents emptied by half, to the bureau top; and an artificial sense of buoyancy pervaded his being. The throbbing pain in his head was deadened to a dull ache, and the burning flavor of the liquor upon his tongue had washed away the moldy taste.
He dully pondered as to what had taken place on the previous evening, but his remembrances of events occurring after eleven o’clock or thereabouts on the night before were decidedly limited. Some one had escorted him to the front door of his lodging house; he had dizzily ascended the stairs and managed to open the door of his room—that was all he could recall.
A gentle tapping on the door broke in upon his thoughts.
“What is it?” he grunted.
“Mr. Kineally wishes to see you,” was the reply. The voice belonged to his landlady.
Reynolds hesitated momentarily. He was tempted to have the landlady say that he was not at home. But what was the use! Kineally would “bawl him out” later; so why not have it over with!
“All right! Send him up!” Reynolds answered.
He had hardly time to whisk the bottle from the bureau to its place in the drawer when an imperative rapping threatened the door panel.
“Come in!” he called.
As the door swung inward a big, brawny form filled the doorway, almost from casing to casing. The square-jawed visage of Owen Kineally, with its twinkling eyes and smiling lips, had appeared on sporting pages the country over; but now the smile was missing. His eyebrows were puckered forward, as Reynolds had sometimes seen them when Kineally took a parting shot at a nearsighted, obstinate umpire.
The big manager remained standing, his gaze upon the ball player.
“G’ morning!” Reynolds greeted, as he continued the knotting of his scarf.
“Good afternoon!” retorted the manager. And he added: “You’re fined fifty dollars.”
Reynolds whirled about.
“What for?” he demanded, his voice raised to nearly a shout.
“For not showing up at morning practice, and for drunkenness last night. You’re half drunk now.”
“You’re a——” Reynolds hesitated to speak the word.
His lips were curled back in an ugly snarl, and he glared rebelliously into the steady, piercing eyes of the manager. Silently they faced each other—Reynolds, the tiger; Kineally, the lion. Both were equally tall, though the manager was stockier than his black-eyed, dark-complexioned pitcher. Kineally removed his panama and combed his fingers through his reddish-brown hair.
“Your face is as flushed as if you had a fever,” he said. “Your eyes are bloodshot, and late hours have smooched half-moons of charcoal under them, so’s any one could tell that you are traveling straight plumb to the dogs!”
Reynolds muttered inarticulately.
“Yes, that’s where you’re bound!” continued the manager. “I’m not old enough to be your father, but I’ve been kicking around in this world for some fifteen or sixteen years longer than you have, and I’ve had plenty of chance to learn that a pitcher, or any other ball player, can’t work as battery mate with Old Demon Booze and last long in the diamond game.
“You were the best pitcher on my staff last year, and you twirled your team into a championship; but now you’re a-hitting the toboggan just as fast as any one can. When you are sober and in good physical condition there isn’t a better man ever toed the slab than you are; and that’s why I haven’t traded you during the past month. I hoped you’d wake up and cut out the booze and the gang of high-living sports you are traveling with; but if you don’t get your eyes open and quit drinking before we start on the Western trip, I’ll try to make a deal with some other club, and trade you before the other managers get wise to the fact that you are drinking yourself out of the game.”
Reynolds mumbled something.
“What?” Kineally asked.
“I guess some o’ those other managers’d be glad to get me,” Reynolds repeated.
“Yes, until they found that you were a souse,” Kineally added; “and then they’d shunt you back to the minors in double-quick. You’d probably last a year or two in the bushes, and then some little one-horse minor-league outfit would give you your unconditional release; and you’d be a has-been, while you were yet a kid. Some future, eh?”
Reynolds slouched against the bureau, his hands deep in his pockets. A sullen, defiant expression distorted his features.
Kineally wiped a handkerchief across his forehead.
“I’ll be hanged if I know why I’ve stood for your drinking and violation of training rules as long as I have!” he exclaimed. “I reckon it’s because I remember what a likable, clean young duffer you were when I first bought you from that little bush league up-country.”
As he paused, the manager happened to glance past the ball player at a picture standing on the bureau. It was the photograph of a girl, in her early twenties; and the face—the expression of the eyes—the mouth and chin—portrayed that rare combination of beauty of character as well as of feature.
The manager pointed toward the picture.
“To ask a personal question, Rube,” he began; “is she your sister?”
Following the direction of Kineally’s extended finger, Reynolds shook his head.
Kineally’s eyes gleamed his satisfaction. Another avenue of appeal was open!
“Then she must be your sweetheart, for I know that you’re not married,” he stated; and he added earnestly: “I suppose you hope to be married some day?”
Reynolds failed to reply. His liquor-inflamed brain was busy mobilizing the little devils of rage and rebellion. What right had Kineally to catechize him, he angrily pondered. Who gave the manager a license to butt into his private life?
“Why don’t you quit the booze and go straight, for her sake if not your own?” the manager inquired, after an interval. “You can hardly expect a decent girl, like the original of that picture must be, to marry a drunken sot, such as continuing your present pace will make you.”
Drunken sot! No decent girl would marry him! Even through his liquor-soaked brain, Reynolds realized that the words rang true; but their very truth was like the red rag fluttered before the bull.
“You’re a liar!” he rasped. And he sprang toward the manager, one fist lunging forward as he leaped. Though heavily built, Kineally was quick on his feet. Swiftly he side-stepped and parried the blow. Reynolds whirled about and rushed a second time. Again and again his fists struck out, and Kineally took blow after blow on his hands and arms, turning them all aside. Obsessed by his whisky-stimulated wrath, Reynolds forgot all his knowledge of boxing. His one thought was to beat down the big man before him, who so steadily blocked the punches, and kept forcing him backward without striking a blow.
Back, step by step, they went, until Reynolds stumbled. Instantly the manager closed in, grasping the pitcher’s wrists and endeavoring to force him down into a chair. Back and forth they struggled, reeling about the room, until, with a crash, they brought up against the bureau. With a sudden twist, Reynolds wrenched one hand free from the manager’s viselike grip. The pitcher reached behind him and groped over the bureau top; and an instant afterward something flashed through the air, thudding dully against the manager’s head.
Reynolds heard a gasp, and the fingers about his wrist relaxed. The manager’s knees buckled forward, and he crumpled backward on the rug—a motionless heap.
Breathing heavily, Reynolds stood above the inert form, a heavy brass ash tray still grasped in his fist. Particles of blood dotted its edge. For a moment, brute satisfaction was reflected from his face. Then his expression changed to that of alarm. Why did Kineally lie so still? Why was the fallen man’s face so pale? Dropping to his knees, Reynolds pressed a hand against the manager’s shirt front. The pitcher’s hand was trembling, and his own heart pounding furiously, as he fumbled anxiously about on the manager’s breast. He could feel no action, and a crimson stain, like red ink on a sheet of blotting paper, was spreading, with ragged circumference, upon the manager’s hair.
The pitcher grasped the manager’s shoulders and shook the deathlike form.
“Kineally! Kineally! Owen Kineally!” he cried.
He jumped to his feet and seized the water pitcher, pouring all of the stale fluid it contained over the manager’s face; but the eyes remained closed; the form still.
Slowly Reynolds backed away from the prostrate man.
“Heavens!” he whispered. “He—he’s dead! I’m a murderer!”
And with the words came another thought. He had killed Kineally! They would arrest him! Into his vision flashed the picture of a chair with straps on its arms, legs, and back, and a few solemn spectators gathered about. No, they mustn’t catch him! He must get away!
Moving hurriedly about, and ever averting his gaze from the form on the floor, he donned a few garments for street wear. Ready to leave, he spied the picture upon the bureau. He snatched it up and turned it over. Penned on its back in a feminine hand was: “From Dora to Bob.”
Hastily tucking it into his inside pocket, he opened the door and stepped into the hall. His nerveless fingers swung the door shut, and he trod softly down the stairs.
When the evening train coughed into Farmhill station, Reynolds, clad in a dark suit, and with his cloth hat pulled far down over his eyes, swung off on the side farthest from the station, and making a detour to avoid the well-lighted section of the town, he struck out into the country.
Once during his flight, while changing trains at a junction, he had heard one diminutive newsboy mention the name “Reynolds” to another grimy-faced little urchin, and Rube had stolen a sidelong glance at the bunch of papers folded beneath the boy’s arm. The paper, being folded in the middle, prevented him from reading the whole of the big black headline, but on the side of the sheet near to him he spelled out: “M-U-R-D——”
As he tramped along in the soft dust of the country road, with the frogs and insects peeping and shrilling strange noises out of the dusk of the night, his thoughts rose in rebellion. It wasn’t murder! Murder was something fearful—something repulsive, and he hadn’t intended to—to kill Kineally. He had struck in self-defense! He strove to convince himself that such had been the case, but every frog—every insect kept shrilling: “Murder—murder—it was murder!”
Not until he reached the Whately farm did he realize that it would be impossible for him to see Dora that night. The chimes of a church in a distant town were sounding the curfew hour, when he paused by the stone wall encircling that part of the Whately farm. Why he had returned to Farmhill, he did not know. Something had seemed to draw him to that little town in the valley; and he wanted to see Dora just once more before disappearing to some far corner of the world, where no one would know him, where no one could find him.
For a moment he thought of boldly entering the house, but he quickly dismissed the idea. They must have read the papers and knew of his crime. Noel Whately and his wife had always liked young Bob Reynolds; and Dora—he knew that Dora’s regard was more than friendship for him, but he hesitated to thrust himself, branded as a criminal, into that family circle.
He easily vaulted the stone wall and moved around the house to the barn. As he picked his way across the barn-yard, another thought came to him. What folly his return to Farmhill was! It would only make more painful the breaking of the ties!
“I mustn’t see her!” he whispered to himself.
But no train left the town until early morning, so he resolved to stay in the barn until nearly daylight, and then return to the station.
As he neared the barn, a prolonged sniff caused him to start and crouch near to the ground. Then he remembered. It was Wolf, the dog—the companion, who had accompanied Dora and him on their tramps across the fields, and on their fishing trips to the lake.
“Wolf!” he called softly.
The big collie came bounding through the darkness.
“Still, Wolf! Be still, boy!” he commanded.
To his relief, the dog recognized him and refrained from barking. Two paws pressed against his knee, and the animal whined joyously.
“Go back, Wolf!” he ordered, as he patted and fondled the collie.
Reluctantly, the dog turned toward his kennel, and Reynolds slid open the door of the barn. A restless horse tramped in his stall and a frightened rat scuttled across the floor, as he felt about in the darkness and found the ladder leading upward. Nimbly he ascended to the loft, and, creeping far over to the wall, he stretched himself upon the odorous hay.
He closed his eyes, but sleep would not come. He faintly heard the clock in the farmhouse striking the hour. After an age of sleeplessness, it tinkled again. The smell of the sun-dried grass brought remembrances of his boyhood, and he thought of the plans he and Dora had made for the future. Then he remembered the “good fellows” of the city, with their invitations to “have another,” and their shallow praise. He groaned in despair. He had severed himself from all of the real joys of life, and now he was but a hunted thing—to prowl forever from place to place, in his efforts to escape the relentless hand of the law.
As he lay there, an almost uncontrollable desire to scratch a match, that he might relieve the awful blackness, possessed him.
“I can’t,” he reflected. “It might set fire to the place.”
Suddenly he sat up, gasping, with a whistling intaking of breath. What had he heard! Again they came! The faint strains of music were permeating the loft, as if some stringed instrument was being played close by. He dug his fingers into his ears, hoping that the sounds might be the product of his imagination. But no! As he removed his fingers, they continued; a strange, weird tune, unlike anything he had ever heard before.
Again he jammed his fingers into his ears to shut out the sounds. Had his crime driven him mad? Was he haunted, he wondered fearfully. With unsteady, trembling legs, he made his way to the ladder and lowered himself downward. He crouched in an unoccupied stall and waited. A rat squeaked beside him, but he failed to move. He was listening for that fearsome music; and whenever he closed his eyes, the white face of Kineally would spring before his vision.
Of what avail was his freedom if this continued, he thought. Ideas of giving himself up entered his mind; but he remembered the high-backed chair with its straps and its horrible death-dealing wires. What a death! No! He couldn’t surrender himself! But still, if he was to be forever haunted, why, maybe it would be better. Maybe it——
With a start, Reynolds awoke—not from sound sleep, but from one of the fitful dozes, into which he had lapsed just before the gray light of morning began to lighten the barn. With an ejaculation of self-rebuke, he sprang up and stood, blinking, in the shaft of sunlight which blazed through a cobwebby, dusty window. He, who had intended to depart before sunrise, had overslept. He could hear persons moving about in the farmhouse, as well as the occasional rattling of crockery and the sputter of grease in a frying pan.
Then footsteps sounded outside of the barn, and before he could turn—could dart to cover—the door slid back, and a girl stood before him. Her face, crowned by a wavy mass of fine-spun, fair hair, was the flesh-and-blood likeness of that portrayed by the picture he carried in his pocket. She wore neither hat nor bonnet, and a dotted bungalow apron covered her from shoulders to ankles. She stared in amazement, her brows puckering as she noted the rumpled condition of his clothing—his drawn features and his bloodshot eyes.
“Why, Bob!” she exclaimed perplexedly. “What—why—how——”
As she paused, he moved forward a step, his nails biting into the palms of his clenched fists. Oh, how he longed to take her in his arms and tell her the whole miserable story! Little beads of moisture surged into his eyes; and in a moment she was close to him, resting her hands on his shoulders.
“Tell me, Bob!” she said anxiously. “Tell me what is the matter. Why didn’t you come to the house? Why are your clothes all mussed up?”
Choking back his emotions, he hesitatingly placed his hands on her arms.
“D—don’t you know?” he inquired brokenly.
“Know what?” she demanded.
“I—I——” He hesitated to say the words. “Heavens, Dora, you must have read last night’s paper! Don’t you know that I’m a—a murderer? Oh, Dora, I’m a murderer!”
Her fingers clinched convulsively through his coat and pinched into his shoulders.
“I’ve killed a man—the man who was giving me a chance!” he groaned. “All because of the cursed drink!” And, with his head bowed on her shoulder, he poured forth the story of his fight with Kineally—of his trip to Farmhill—and of his night in the barn. Then his arms relaxed and he gently tried to push her away.
“Don’t touch me, girl!” he told her. “I’m a murderer—not fit to touch!”
Her arms slipped about his neck, and she held him closer.
“I won’t leave you—I won’t!” she cried. “Oh, Bob! don’t you know that I love you? We’ll go somewhere together.”
“No!” he protested. “Why, Dora, I’m haunted. I lay up there in the loft last night and heard music—that dreadful, unearthly music; and Kin—his face kept coming before me out of the darkness. No; I’m going to give myself up and have it over with.”
With the passion and entreaty of one who loved, she argued, but he steadily persisted in his resolve. He gently drew her arms from about his neck. She made one final appeal.
“Wait, Bob!” she pleaded. “Let me go into the house and get last night’s paper. I’m sure that there wasn’t any—any murder headline on it.” And she darted from the stable.
Her mother, busy in the kitchen, glanced up in surprise at the flushed cheeks and excited eyes of the girl.
“What in the world——” she began, but Dora interrupted.
“Where is last night’s paper, mother?” she asked.
“On the sitting-room table, I think,” Mrs. Whately replied.
Dora hurried from the room. The paper was not on the sitting-room table, and she searched frantically about the room. Finally she found it, half hidden under a pillow on the lounge, where her father had left it the evening before. Spreading out the first page, she read:
MURDOCK TESTIFIES.
Iron King Goes Before Congressional Committee.
Nowhere on the page was Reynolds’ name mentioned. She hurriedly rustled over page after page, until at last, on one of the sporting pages, she discovered a small paragraph commenting on his poor pitching of the day previous. Paper in hand, she sped back to the barn. Reynolds was not in sight.
“Bob!” she called softly; but received no answer.
Into the loft she climbed, but he was not there. As she stood on the hay, she became aware of a peculiar sound. Music! That was what it resembled, and across her mind flashed the words of Bob. For some seconds she listened in bewilderment, and then the little wrinkles of perplexity cleared from her forehead. She climbed higher upon the hay, until she reached a tiny window, far up near the roof. Over its opening were stretched several taut elastics—the work of her little brother. With each gust of breeze they vibrated and twanged, making sounds not unlike the music of a harp or a zither.
Descending from the loft, she hurried out of the barn. The man whom she loved must have taken advantage of her absence to hasten away, she reasoned, that he might carry out his resolve to surrender himself to the authorities. So down the dusty road she hurried, determined to overtake him ere he should reach the town.
A great gray touring car hummed its way along the country road, a continuous cloud of dust, like rising smoke, trailing in its wake. A big, burly man, with tanned features, and whose eyes were obscured by masking goggles, gripped the wheel; while beside him sat another man, not so big, but with a bristling black mustache and keen piercing eyes.
“Remember, Mac!” the big man was saying; “if we find him I don’t want the newspaper men or anybody else to ever hear a word of this. I called on you for help because you are a friend of mine as well as a police inspector, trained in the ways of tracing men.”
“Don’t you worry, Owen!” the other replied. “Never a word will get out. Nine times out of ten a young fellow who has committed a crime, or thinks he has, will risk a trip to his home or old surroundings. If we don’t find the boy somewhere about Farmhill, we’ll change our tactics. He must have landed quite a crack on your skull,” he added.
“He surely did,” the big man agreed. “I was unconscious for a half hour or more; and I guess your idea, that he imagined he’d finished me, and was thus frightened into running away, is right.”
The man with the wiry mustache nodded and tightly gripped the side of the car as they jounced over a particularly high bump in the road.
“But if the experience proves to be the shock necessary to break the boy away from the drink and that gang he was traveling with,” continued the big man; “why, I’ll be mighty thankful that he struck the blow. He’s not only a wonderful pitcher, but I like him. He—look, Mac, look! So help me, John Rogers! Look ahead, there!”
Appearing around a bend in the roadway, from behind the trees of the roadside, a solitary figure was tramping toward them.
Stopping the engine and jamming his foot against the brake pedal, the big man jerked the car to an abrupt stop beside the young fellow, who had turned out and halted by the edge of the road, waiting for the automobile to pass.
“Rube!” the big man cried, pushing his goggles up on his forehead and springing from the car.
The man by the roadside stood as if paralyzed. He stared wildly at the big man who had leaped from the automobile.
“K—Kineally!” came from between his lips in a throaty whisper. “Kineally! Owen Kineally!”
He slowly—fearfully extended a hand as if to touch the big manager—to make sure that he was a reality and not the fantasy of a haunted mind.
The big man quickly reached forth and firmly grasped the hand.
“It’s me, all right, Rube!” he assured, with the flicker of a smile. “It takes a mighty hard wallop to put a tough old geezer like me down for good.”
Drawing free his hand, the young fellow dropped upon one knee in the dusty, sun-scorched grass of the roadside, and burying his face in his arm, he gave vent to his pent-up emotions, his body shaking with convulsive, boyish sobs of relief. The bareheaded girl, who had appeared around the bend of the road and was hurrying toward them, was unnoticed by Kineally and the inspector.
“I—I’m glad! I’m glad!” the kneeling man choked out. “I’m going to stay here away from the drink, and so help me, Heaven, I’ll never touch another drop!”
The big man rested a hand on the young fellow’s shoulder.
“No, I don’t think you will drink any more, boy!” he said. “But,” he continued, “you are coming back with me, and I’ll make you the greatest pitcher in the game, and you and the girl can marry and be happy.”
Before the young fellow could reply, the girl was beside them, her eyes aglow and her bosom rising and falling rapidly as she breathed. Many a picture of Owen Kineally had smiled at her from among the pages of newspapers, and she recognized the big man standing over Reynolds. Unmindful of the others, she dropped to her knees beside the man she loved, and with her arms about his neck, she murmured: “Oh, but I’m happy, Bob! I’m so happy!!”