As the watching party broke up, a telephone message from 603the offices of Calvin & Calvin winged its way to Sands Park, and from the shades there came silently a great company of automobiles with hooded lights. One separated from the others and shot down into the Valley of the Wahoo. The others went into Market Street.
At three o’clock the work there was done. The office of the Harvey Tribune was wrecked, and in one automobile rode Amos Adams, a prisoner, while before him, surrounded by a squad of policemen, rode Grant Adams, bound and gagged.
Around the policemen the mob gathered, and at the city limits the policemen abandoned Grant and Amos. Their instructions were to take the two men out of town. The policemen knew the mob. It was not Market Street. It was the thing that Market Street had made with its greed. The ignorance of the town, the scum of the town–men, white and black, whom Market Street, in thoughtless greed the world over, had robbed as children of their birthright; men whose chief joy was in cruelty and who lusted for horror. The mob was the earth-bound demon of Market Street. Only John Kollander in his brass buttons and blue soldier clothes and stuttering Kyle Perry and one or two others of the town’s respectability were with the mob that took Grant Adams and his father after the policemen released the father and son at the city limits. The respectables directed; the scum and the scruff of the town followed, yelping not unlike a pack of hungry dogs.
John Kollander led the way to the country club grounds. There was a wide stretch of rolling land, quiet, remote from passing intruders, safe; and there great elm trees cast their protecting shade, even in the starlight, over such deeds as men might wish to do in darkness.
It was nearly four o’clock and the clouds, banked high in the west, were flaming with heat lightning.
On the wide veranda of the country club alone, with a siphon and a fancy, square, black bottle, sat Judge Thomas Van Dorn. He was in his shirt sleeves. His wilted collar, grimy and bedraggled, lay on the floor beside him. He was laughing at something not visible to the waiter, who sat drowsing in the door of the dining room, waiting for the Judge either to go to sleep or to leave the club in his car. 604The Judge had been singing to himself and laughing quietly at his own ribaldry for nearly an hour. The heat had smothered the poker game in the basement and except for the Judge and the waiter the club house was deserted. The Judge hit the table with the black bottle and babbled:
“Dog bit a rye straw,
Dog bit a riddle-O!
Dog bit a little boy
Playing on a fiddle-O!”
Then he laughed and said to the sleepy waiter: “Didn’t know I could sing, did you, Gustave!”
The waiter grinned. The Judge did not hear a footstep behind him. The waiter looked up and saw Kyle Perry.
“Oh, I know a maid
And she’s not afraid
To face–