Quirk's story was soon told. As I already expected, drink had become his master. The school had fallen away, his wife had died, and in a fit of despondency he had—he said accidentally, but I believe intentionally—overturned a lamp and set fire to the house. Now he lodged in a small hotel farther down the road, living from hand to mouth, and doing a day's work here and there when chance offered. I gave him fifty dollars and bade him good-bye, for he had no accommodations to offer us even had I been able to induce Hawkins to remain there. Thus I realized that the only refuge I ever had from the outside world, the only real home I had ever known, was gone. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to deposit my evil load.
We drove on for a space, and now Hawkins awoke and began to clamor for food. Where was I taking him? he demanded to know. And why was I togged out like a bricklayer? He announced that he had had enough of this kind of travelling and insisted on going to a hotel and having a decent meal. I tried to reason with him and explained that it was only for a day or so, and that presumably we would go to Boston or some other city, where he should have everything that money could buy. But he leered at me and said he had plenty of promises already; that we had promised him that he would get into no trouble if he signed his original affidavit, and that, unless he were treated like a gentleman, he would go back to New York and get other lawyers. He must have seen me turn white at his threat, for from that moment he held it over me, constantly repeating it and insinuating that I was not so anxious to save him as to save myself, which, alas! I could not gainsay.
Soon we came to a small town and here Hawkins flatly refused to go any farther. There was a hotel on the main street, and the fellow clambered out of the buggy and staggered into the bar and called loudly for whiskey. There was nothing for it but to put up the horse in the stable and do as my prisoner demanded. So we had dinner together, Hawkins talking in a loud, thick voice that made the waitresses and other guests stare at him and me as if we were some sort of outlandish folk; and after the meal was over he dragged me to the nearest clothier and ordered new ready-made suits for both of us. He had now imbibed much more than was good for him; and when I took out my roll of bills to pay for what we had bought he snatched it out of my hand and refused to give it back. For a moment I almost surrendered myself to despair. I had had no sleep for two nights, I was overwhelmed with mortification and disgust, and here I was in a country store pranked out like a popinjay, the keeper of a half-crazy wretch who made me dance to any tune he chose to pipe; but I pulled myself together and cajoled Hawkins into leaving the place and giving me back a small part of the money.
There was a train just leaving for Boston and my companion insisted upon taking it, saying that he proposed to spend the money that Dillingham had so kindly furnished him with. I never knew how he discovered the part Dillingham was playing in this strange drama; but if no one told him, he at any rate divined it somehow, and from this moment he assumed the lead and directed all our movements. It is true that I persuaded him to go to one of the smaller and less conspicuous hotels, but he at once sent for another tailor, ordered an elaborate meal for supper, with champagne, and procured a box at one of the theatres, whither I was obliged to escort him. Neither would he longer permit me to occupy the same room with him —precious privilege!—but engaged a palatial suite for himself, with a parlor, while I had a small and modest room farther down the hall. In some respects this suited me well, however, since I was now able to induce him to have his meals served upstairs. Yet I began to see the foolishness of thinking that we could elude the police should they set out to seek seriously for us, since, apart from changing our names, we were making no effort at disguising ourselves.
The day after our arrival, Hawkins slept late and I slipped out about ten o'clock and wandering aimlessly came to Barristers' Hall, where twenty years before old Tuckerman Toddleham had his office. The day was warm and humid, like that upon which so long ago I had visited the old lawyer when a student at Harvard and had received from him my sentence. Even as then, some birds were twittering around the stone window-ledges. An impulse that at the moment was beyond my control led me up the narrow, dingy stairs to the landing where the lawyer's office had been. A green-baize door, likely enough the same one, still hung there—where the lawyer's office had been. Naught about the room was altered. There were the bookcases, with their glass doors and green-silk curtains; the threadbare carpet, the portrait of the Honorable Jeremiah Mason over the fireplace; the old mahogany desk; the little bronze paper- weight in the shape of a horse; the books, brown and faded with years; and at the desk—I brushed my hand across my eyes—at the desk sat old Tuckerman Toddleham himself!
For the first time in my entire existence, so far as I can now remember, I was totally nonplussed and abashed. I could not have been more astonished had I walked into the family lot in the Salem cemetery and found my grandfather sitting on his own tombstone; but there the old lawyer surely was, as certainly as he had been there twenty years before; and the same sensations that I had always experienced as a child while in his presence now swept over me and made me feel like a whipped school-boy. Not for the world would I have had him see me and be forced to answer his questions as to my business in the city of Boston; so, holding my breath, I tiptoed out of the door, and the last vision I ever had of him was as he sat there absorbed in some legal problem, bending over his books, the sunlight flooding the mote-filled air of the dusty office, the little bronze horse standing before him on the desk and the branches of the trees outside casting flickering shadows upon the walls and bookcases. Canny old man! He had never put his neck in a noose! I envied him his quiet life among his books and the well-deserved respect and honor that the world accorded him.
Ruminating in this strain, I threaded my way through the crowd in Court Street, and was about to return to my hotel, when to my utter horror I beheld Hawkins, in all his regalia, being marched down the hill between two business-like-looking persons, who were unmistakably officers of police. He walked dejectedly and had lost all his bravado. There was no blinking the fact that in my absence he had managed somehow to stumble into the hands of the guardians of the law and was now in process of being transported back to New York.
For a moment my circulation stopped abruptly and a clammy moisture broke out upon my back and forehead. Unostentatiously I slipped into a cigar store and allowed the trio to pass me by. So the jig was up! Back I must go, after my fruitless nightmare with the wretch, to consult with my partner as to what was now to be done. I reached the city late that evening, but not before I had read in the evening papers a full account of the apprehension of the fugitive, including my own part in the escape; and it now appeared that the police had been fully cognizant of all our doings, including the manner of our abduction of Hawkins from our office. They had, under the instructions of the district attorney, simply permitted us to carry out our plan in order to use the same as evidence against us at the proper time, and had followed us every step of the way to Worcester and on our drive to Methuen.
My heart almost failed me as I thought of how foolish I had been to undertake this desperate journey myself, instead of sending some one in my place for by so doing I had stamped myself as vitally interested in my client's escape. Fearful to go to my own home, lest I should find myself in the hands of the police, I spent the night in a lodging-house on the water-front, wondering whether Hawkins had already made his confession to the district attorney in return for a promise of immunity; for I well knew that such a promise would be forthcoming and that Hawkins was the last man in the world to neglect the opportunity to save himself at our expense.
Next morning I telephoned Gottlieb and met him by appointment at a hotel, where we had a heated colloquy, in which he seemed to think that I was totally to blame for the failure of our attempt. He was hardly himself, so worn out was he with anxiety, not having heard from me until he had read of Hawkins's apprehension in Boston; but, now that I was able to talk things over with him, we agreed that any effort to spirit our client away would have been equally unsuccessful, and that the one course remaining for us to pursue was to put on as bold a front as possible and let the law take its course. It was equally useless for us to try to conceal our own whereabouts, for all our movements were undoubtedly watched; and the best thing to do, it seemed to us, was to go as usual to our office and to act as nearly as possible as if nothing had happened.