“Makes the fancy chuckle, while the heart doth ache.”
XXVI.
My enemies caused it to be widely believed that Wild Week was my deliberate contrivance for the sole purpose of enriching myself. Thus they got me a reputation for almost superhuman daring, for Satanic astuteness at cold-blooded calculation. I do not deserve the admiration and respect which my success-worshiping fellow-countrymen lay at my feet. True, I did greatly enrich myself; but not until the Monday after Wild Week.
Not until I had pondered on men and events with the assistance of the newspapers my detective protectors and jailers permitted to be brought aboard—not until the last hope of turning Wild Week to the immediate public advantage had sputtered out like a lost man’s last match, did I think of benefiting myself, of seizing the opportunity to strengthen myself for the future. On Monday morning I said to Sergeant Mulholland: “I want to go ashore and send some telegrams.”
The sergeant is one of the detective bureau’s “dress-suit men.” He is by nature phlegmatic and cynical. His experience has put over that a veneer of weary politeness. We had become great friends during our enforced inseparable companionship. For Joe, who looked on me somewhat as a mother looks on a brilliant but erratic son, had, as I soon discovered, elaborated a wonderful program for me. It included a watch on me day and night, lest, through rage or despondency, I should try to do violence to myself. A fine character, that Joe! But, to return, Mulholland answered my request for shore leave with a soothing smile. “Can’t do it, Mr. Blacklock,” he said. “Our orders are positive. But when we put in at New London and send ashore for further instructions, and for the papers, you can send your telegrams.”
“As you please,” said I. And I gave him a cipher telegram to Joe—an order to invest my store of cash, which meant practically my whole fortune, in the gilt-edged securities that were to be had for cash at a small fraction of their actual value.
This on the Monday after Wild Week, please note. I would have helped the people to deliver themselves from the bondage of the bandits. They would not have it. I would even have sacrificed my all in trying to save them in spite of themselves. But what is one sane man against a stampeded multitude of maniacs? For confirmation of my disinterestedness, I point to all those weeks and months during which I waged costly warfare on “The Seven,” who would gladly have given me more than I now have, could I have been bribed to desist. But when I was compelled to admit that I had overestimated my fellow-men, that the people wear the yoke because they have not yet become intelligent and competent enough to be free, then and not till then did I abandon the hopeless struggle.
And I did not go over to the bandits; I simply resumed my own neglected personal affairs and made Wild Week at least a personal triumph.
There is nothing of the spectacular in my make-up. I have no belief in the value of martyrs and martyrdom. Causes are not won—and in my humble opinion never have been won—in the graveyards. Alive and afoot and armed, and true to my cause, I am the dreaded menace to systematic and respectable robbery. What possible good could have come of mobs killing me and the bandits dividing my estate?
But why should I seek to justify myself? I care not a rap for the opinion of my fellow-men. They sought my life when they should have been hailing me as a deliverer; now they look up to me because they falsely believe me guilty of what I regard as an infamy.