Blarney Stone

“ Tescheron that afternoon, it was after three o'clock, and I had to see Flanagan.
Luckily I found the coroner at his office and was received by him with that warmth of greeting and cordiality which springs from a political genius, said to be derived by contact with the Blarney Stone. At any rate, it makes its successful appeal to human nature and constitutes the capital of Tammany leaders holding their own against all reformers who fail to take into account the hearts of the poor. There wasn't anything in the world he wouldn't do for me. ”

“ All his chips were pushed forward to the center of the table.
On Blackwell’s face were mapped his thoughts. Curly saw his stodgy mind working on the problem, studying helplessly the poker eyes of his easy placid enemy. Was Soapy bluffing? Or had he baited a hook for him to swallow? The faintest glimmer of amusement drifted across the face of Stone. He might have been a general whose plans have worked out to suit him, waiting confidently for certain victory. The longer the convict looked at him the surer he was that he had been trapped. ”

“ Stone was seated before the fire, reading the newspaper. A comprehensive cigar was securely wedged in the corner of his mouth, and his long legs, culminating in their ungainly feet, dangled like overweighted pendulums from the arm of the chair.
Sprague laughed. He advanced on Stone, executing a hornpipe like a maniac, and laughed still louder when the American gazed up at him without a semblance of a smile. He slapped him on the back like a fool, and laughed again at his discomfiture. The world—even the Gray's Inn Road—was an intensely amusing place that morning. ”

“ I tell you I’m being eaten up alive by something.”
“Did you ever read a certain essay on the ‘Power of Imagination,’ Piper?” asked Stone. “If you ever have, you should realize that a person may make himself very miserable by conceiving all sorts of foolish things.”
“No, I’ve never read your old essay,” howled Sleuth, thrashing around in the bag. “But I tell you this is no imagination; this is the real thing. Light the lantern, somebody, for the love of Mike! I’m burning up. I’m all afire.”
“But there ain’t no fire in the bag—there can’t be,” asserted Crane relentlessly. ”

“ You can talk openly and freely, Stone, and your secrets will be guarded.”
Stone nodded, and the glitter in his eyes became more pronounced.
“You are right, Doctor Follansbee,” he said. “I can’t figure out how you know, but I want to get rid of Win Crawford. I—I want to get rid of him before he gets rid of me.”
His heavy face was wrinkled into a mask of cunning—the foolish, vacant cunning of the insane.
“He thinks he’s clever,” Stone went on; “thinks I don’t know what he’s going to do. But I’m as cute as he is, and I’ve tumbled to him.” ”

“ Oh, wake up, man! There are lots of good things left in life if you only get out and look for them.”
Stone gazed fixedly into the darkness.
“Please don't say any more,” he said. “It won't do any good, and I don't like to hear it; it's worse than the laugh.”
“Look here, Stone,” said Sprague firmly, “you're going to stay with me in London. We're going to take rooms that I know of in the Gray's Inn Road—not a very salubrious neighborhood for a man with slathers of money, but cheap and central for me. You'll come to the rehearsals and take an interest in 'Lorette' in spite of yourself. ”

“ After that you can go back to the hotel.”
He did not know that Nick’s ruse in regard to the bell had spoiled Stone’s alibi. Had he been aware of the fact, it would have given him much food for thought, but it would not have affected his words to Stone, for they were spoken merely for effect.
“And in the morning,” he added, “you will find Mr. Crawford as well as he ever was in his life.”
“You are sure of that?” Stone asked eagerly. “The drug can’t possibly do him any permanent harm?”
“On my professional honor, it cannot,” Follansbee assured him. ”

“ Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, as preceptor; and of Mr. Stone and Mr. Scott as sub-governor and sub-preceptor. The two former were favourites of Lord Lincoln, the ministerial nephew: Stone was the bosom-confidant of the Duke of Newcastle: Scott, as well as the solicitor-general, Murray, and Cresset, the favourite of the princess, were disciples of Lord Bolingbroke, and his bequest to the late prince. Stone, in general a cold, mysterious man, of little plausibility, had always confined his arts, his application, and probably his views, to one or two great objects. ”

“ Tenison took the instant to lean impressively across the bar. He pointed a long finger at Stone: "Tom," he said, with measured emphasis, "no man can pull a gun here tonight and get away with it. That'll be enough."
Stone scowled: "Harry, this scout is through; nobody wants him any longer in this country," he said.
"Take your quarrel somewhere else tonight—this is my celebration—do you get me, Tom?"
Under the implied threat of the determined gambler the hammer of Stone's gun came down: "I c'n get along with any man that'll do what's right," asserted Stone, trying to keep his head clear. ”

“ He finally made his way out to the southward and, in wide circuit, dodging and skulking when night riders came hurrying to and fro, he at last managed by daybreak to get in view of the flagstaff, only to find dozens of Indians watching the post and skulking between him and the desired refuge. At last—but Stone shut him off:
"Take two companies, major," he ordered, "march for the wood camp and see what you can find. You know what to do."
So again was Blenke, the silent, in spite of prejudice and prediction, the hero of the occasion. ”

“ Yet the details imparted to him were explicit enough, holding far more promise than what he imagined Lyman had told Healy, which appeared to be nothing more than the general location of the placer and the glittering wall of quartz. The simile of the old prospector was ever vivid in Stone's imagination, the cliff of milky-white rock stretching away up until it merged with the blackness, the gold shining like stars in the Milky Way until that, too, faded gradually in the murk. ”

“ Follansbee went on triumphantly. “Make as much—or as little—of it as you can. Let me remind you of something else, too. Any charge you may try to bring against me will involve Stone and give a lot of undesirable publicity to his mental condition. It will involve you, too, for if he’s as dangerous as you claim he is, the newspapers and the public will ask why you allowed him to go about of his own free will, to live unmolested at a hotel, and all the rest of it. More than [185] that, the revelations that will inevitably follow will make your friend Crawford very sore. ”

“ They did not know the nature of this descent until Stone switched on his torch and they saw all about them, strewing the floor of the place, the crumbled remnants, dried-up heads that leered at them, broken off from the brittle trunks, bits of brown bone sticking out from what had once been flesh. Stone saw Healy swiftly cross himself while Larkin shuddered and Harvey leaned over and was frankly sick. Stone felt inclined to emulate him. ”

“ All talk and speculation lay dead and in the past. The gathering was seated with a rustling sound that echoed dully and impatiently.
Stone reached the podium and paused, looking frightened. Surely the pretense of enlightenment and self-importance in which he characteristically wrapped his 'fellow Americans' would ring false in those halls, sullen and filled with ghosts.
He laid down his papers, despairing to speak. Never before had he felt himself so plainly laid out on the surgeon's table, under the unblinking eye of the camera, waiting for the knife. He wrestled back the lump in his throat. ”

“ He started ahead, as if to go to Harvey and Larkin with his suggestion.
"You stay where you are," said Stone, "or I'll blow your cowardly head off." Healy turned with a snarl. "You will, will you?" he said. "You forget I hold the joker in this deal. With me out of it where are you?"
"If you show your yellow lining at this stage of the game," said Stone, "they'll jump us. Go ahead, if you want to. I won't shoot you. I'll let the Indians handle you. They'll get us anyway if we weaken but I fancy the rest of us will have an easier out than you. They won't get me alive. ”

“ There were wise nods, and whisperings, and men riding up and going off again in a hurry. There had been a good deal of lawlessness of late, for which Soapy Stone’s band of followers was held responsible. Just as plainly as if he had heard the arguments of Dutch and Kite Bonfils he knew that they were urging the others to make an example of him. Most of these men were well up to the average for the milk of human kindness. They were the squarest citizens in Arizona. But Flandrau knew they would snuff out his life just the same if they decided it was best. ”

“ The big chest laboured, was convulsed, and then quiet.
"He's gone!" said Healy, his voice sharp with greed and anger. "Gone—and he never told us where it was. Wasted his time talking about his fool wife and kid."
"Forget that," said Stone, crisply, himself trembling with excitement. "He was trying to tell us in his own way. Keep the women out of it, Healy. Give me that whisky. Lefty."
The Cockney did so, his eyes still glittering as he watched Stone's efforts to get some liquor between the old prospector's teeth, worn and stained, but stubbornly resisting. ”

“ Fleming Stone was of a most attractive personality. He was nearly fifty years old, with graying hair and a kindly, responsive face.
At dinner he had won the admiration of all by his tact and interesting conversation. At the table the business upon which he had come had not been mentioned, but now the group assembled in the library felt that the time had come to talk of the matter.
It was a strangely-assorted household. Tom Willard, though the only relative of the Van Normans present, was in no way the head of the house. ”

“ But it gave no hint as to where the hiding-place might be.
Stone pondered long and deeply over the statement that the gems were in some crypt, and, as he thought, a great inspiration came to him.
"Of course!" he said to himself, "it is that! It can be nothing else!"
But he confided his new theory to nobody; he only began to ask more questions.
He quizzed Iris as to her Chicago visit, and [Pg 236] wanted a detailed account of every minute she had spent there. Then he asked her more particularly about the house where she was taken in the little motor car. ”

“ A few hours later Stone came upon Sprague stretching a wallaby skin on the wall of camp No. 4.
Their meeting was as demonstrative as Anglo-Saxons usually allow such things to be.
“Come into the smoking room,” said Sprague, “and help yourself to the whisky and soda.”
Stone seated himself on a packing case, and allowed his pale-blue eyes to wander over the mural decorations.
“First and foremost,” he drawled, “I want to tell you that you may think you're a cow-puncher—or its Australian equivalent—but you're not. You're a dramatist, with a play on Broadway that's making things hum. ”

“ ON THE THRESHOLD. “On the contrary,” declared Roger earnestly, as he once more rose from his chair, “I hold quite a different opinion of you, Stone. You have had a tough time of it, and any fellow in your place with an ounce of real blood in his body might have done just what you did. Every chap is human, and if you had submitted to insults and injury without resentment you would have been a soft mark. ”

“ As Ally drew it slowly along, the tiny shreds of the abutilon petals and the slender filaments of the stamens followed it. On touching it they adhered slightly to the surface, as magnetized objects to a magnet. "Is Stonie eating them?" said Ally. "Is that what he lives on?" This persistent disposition on Ally's part to speak of the stone as a living and sentient thing, childish as it was, and as we all the while knew it to be, heightened our half superstitious sense of mystery in the thing. For the first time Mrs. Allen's face experienced a shade of the same feeling. ”

“ Stone, old man, last night Rollins left me hanging precariously to the edge of the broken ice while he skated off, yelling to his friends. On the other hand, Bunk Lander took a chance and pulled me out. He saved my life, Ben, for I wasn’t able to get out alone, with the current dragging at me the way it did. If anybody reckons that a Grant is going to forget a thing of that sort, he’s making a mighty big mistake. ”

“ Stone had never been in love, had never felt the stir to mate in his careless progress through life. Most of the women he had intimately known were not the mating sort.
He switched back to Healy and to Harvey. What had the Desert Rat meant by asking Healy if "he was going through with it, if he was going to stick?" Through with what? If Harvey and Healy were leagued it would be policy for Stone to form an alliance with Larkin. But at present they all faced a common peril in the Indians. ”

“ He don’t know a thing. And you get revenge on him all right. Sam will run with him and his friends while he’s here. Consequence is, when they find the kid where we leave him they’ll sure guess Curly for one of his pardners. Tell you his ticket is good as bought to Yuma. He’s a horse thief. Why shouldn’t he be a train robber, too. That’s how a jury will argue.”
Blackwell grumbled something under his breath.
Stone’s voice grated harshly. “Me too. If he crosses my trail I’m liable to spoil his hide before court meets. No man alive can play me for a sucker and throw me down. Not Soapy Stone.” ”

“ Mr. Blackwood refused to be a man.
Yet Branwell had his chance. He went to London, but nothing came of it. He went to Bradford and had a studio there, but nothing came of it. He lived for a brief period in a small provincial Bohemia. It was his best and happiest period, but nothing came of it beyond the letters and the reams of verse he sent to Leyland the sculptor. There was something brilliant and fantastic about the boy that fascinated Leyland. But a studio costs money, and Branwell had to give his up and go back to Haworth and the society of John Brown the stone-mason and grave-digger. ”