Arthur Stringer

“ And I heard a silvery little bell begin to ring in my heart, like a bird in an orchard, heralding spring.
"Stop the car!" I suddenly commanded, once the real, the glorious meaning of those six words of Mary's had sunk through to that strange core of things we call our Soul.
"What for?" demanded Mary, mechanically releasing the clutch and throwing the brake-pedal down. She sat staring startled into my face as we came to a stop. "What for?" she repeated.
"Because we must never run anything down again," I solemnly informed her. ”

“ And I had just made sure that she was still alive, that she was still breathing, when I became conscious of the fact that a second man, who had run along beside the car shaking his fist up at its driver, was standing close beside me. He was an elderly man, a venerable-looking man, a man with silvery hair and a meek and threadbare aspect. He was wringing his hands and moaning in his misery as he stared down at the girl stretched out on my overcoat. ”

“ Crotty! The very name of Crotty took my thoughts suddenly winging back to yet another street-accident, an accident in which I myself had figured so actively and so unfortunately. For Crotty was the name of the man, I remembered, who had confirmed my chauffeur Latreille's verdict as to the victim of that never-to-be-forgotten Hallow-e'en affair. Crotty was the individual who had brought word to Latreille that we had really killed a man. And Crotty was not a remarkably common name. ”

“ A milk-wagon, just beyond the corner, made me suddenly think of Phaethon and his coursers of the stellar trails. I felt an itching to get back to my desk, to shake out the wings of creation. I wanted to write once more. It would never again be about those impossible Alaskan demigods of the earlier days, but about real men and women, about the people I had met and known and struggled into an understanding of. Life, I began to feel, was a game, a great game, a game well worth watching, doubly well worth trying to interpret. ”

“ Another quick wrench and twist freed my bound wrist, and before even a second shout of warning could escape from any of them I was on my feet with the revolver balanced in my right hand and fire in my eye.
"Back up, every one o' you," I commanded. For I was hot now, hot as a hornet. And if one of that worthy trio had ventured a move not in harmony with my orders I am morally certain that I should have sent a bullet through him. ”

“ The next moment Latreille forced my wrists down in front of me, jerked a handkerchief from my pocket, and with it tied my crossed hands close together. Then he turned and curtly motioned to Crotty.
"Here," he commanded. "Bring that gun and guard this pin-head! If he tries anything, let him have it, and have it good!"
Slowly and deliberately Latreille rose to his feet. He paused for a moment to wipe the blood and dust from his face. Then he turned to Mary Lockwood, who stood with her back against the wall and her tightly clenched fists pressed close to her sides. ”

“ Coincidences, I told myself, were things which popped up altogether too often on the printed page, and occurred altogether too seldom in actual life. It was a lazy man's way of reaching his end, that trick of riding the bumpers of Invention, of swinging and dangling from the over-wrenched arm-socket of Coincidence. ”

“ Then came the sound of a match being struck, the scrape of a chair-leg, and the clump of a fist on the table-top, followed by a quietly contented laugh.
"It's a pipe!" announced a solemnly exultant voice. And I knew the speaker to be my distinguished ex-chauffeur. "It's sure one grand little cinch!"
"Nothing's a cinch until you get the goods in your jeans," contended Crotty, with the not unnatural skepticism of age. ”

“ This brought a snort of contempt from Latreille.
"I tell you again old Lockwood'll fight you to the drop of the hat. The girl's your meat. She's your mark. You've got her! And if you've only got the brains to milk her right she's good for forty thousand. She's weakened already. She's on the skids. And she's got a pile of her own to pull from!"
"Forty thousand?" echoed the other, with a smack of the lips.
"That's thirteen thousand a-piece," amended Latreille largely, "with one over for Car-Step Sadie."
"Cut out that name," commanded Crotty.
"Well, Babbie then, if that suits you better. ”

“ I still tried to tell her. "These three here are claim fakers; nothing but criminals. They're bleeding you! They're blackmailing you!"
A brief but portentous silence fell on that room as the bewildered girl looked from one face to the other. But it lasted only a moment. The tableau was suddenly broken by a movement from Latreille. And it was a quick and cat-like movement. With one sweep of the hand he reached out and snatched the oblong of blue paper from Mary Lockwood's fingers. ”

“ This speak-easy, I noticed as I slid it back the merest trifle, opened on the "beer parlor," at the immediate rear of the bar-room itself, the "parlor" where the thirsty guest might sit at one of the little round tables and consume his "suds" or his fusel-oil whisky at his leisure. And the whole place impressed me as the sort of thing that still made civilization a mockery and suburban recreation a viper that crawled on its belly. ”

“ I asked her, stung to the heart by the mute suffering which I could only too plainly see on her milk-white face.
"No," she told me as she motioned for the girl's uncle to climb into the car. "This is something I've got to do myself."
"And it's something that'll have to be paid for, and well paid for," declaimed our silvery-haired old friend as he stowed away his cotton handkerchief and took up his slightly triumphant position in that Nile-green roadster. ”

“ She's my Babbie. She's my niece. She's all I have," was his reply. "But they've killed her."
"Acting that way won't help things!" I told him, almost angrily. Then I looked up, still angrily, to see what had become of the Nile-green car. It had drawn in close beside the curb, not thirty feet away. I could see a woman stepping down from the driving-seat. All I noticed, at first, was that her face seemed very white, and that as she turned and moved toward us her left hand was pressed tight against her breast. It struck me, even in that moment of tension, as an indescribably dramatic gesture. ”

“ Latreille didn't answer me. He merely stood there with studious and half-closed eyes, a serpent-like squint of venom on his colorless face. It was, in fact, old Crotty who broke the silence.
"We'll do our talkin', young fellow, when the right time comes. And when we do, you're goin' to pay for an outrage like this, for an unprovoked assault on decent citizens!"
"Well, the time's come right now," I promptly announced, for I had caught the sound of Belton's quick step on the stairs. ”

“ But those three conspirators must have consulted together, for after a moment of silence I caught the sound of steps crossing the floor.
"He'll just slip up and make sure the patient can be seen," I heard the suave old rascal intone. And I had merely time to edge back and dodge about the basement stairhead as the room-door was flung open and Latreille stepped out in the hall. The door closed again as he vanished above-stairs.
When he returned, he didn't step back into the room, but waited outside and knocked on the closed door. This brought old Crotty out in answer to the summons. ”

“ And I felt in my bones that it must be Belton and his men. Then I remembered Mary and her question.
"I'll tell you what you can do," I said, pointing toward Latreille. "You can ask this man what it was I ran down in my car last Hallow-e'en." ”

“ But never before, I feel sure, did anything quite so cheering come through that sordid little speak-easy. I was no longer afraid of that malignant-looking trio so contentedly exulting over their ill-gotten victory.
"Well, it's a cinch," went on the droning voice, "if The Doc'll only cut out the dope for a couple o' days and your Babbie doesn't get to buckin' over the footboard!"
"It ain't Babbie I'm worryin' over," explained old Crotty. "That girl'll do what's expected of her. She's got to. I've wised her up on that. ”

“ But time's precious and I'm going to talk plain."
"Shoot!" she said after a moment of hesitation followed by another moment of silent appraisal.
"The cops are rounding up The Doc and old Crotty for claim faking. They're also coming here, Bab, to gather up a girl called Car-Step Sadie for dummy-chucking under the car of that Lockwood woman and bleeding her for one hundred and ten bones, and—"
"Those bulls 've got nuttin' on me!" broke out the disturbingly dishabille figure in soiled linen, as she stood staring at me with a sort of mouse-like hostility in her crafty young eyes. ”