Mooney

“ Then he nodded his head. ‘Oh, hello, Mooney,’ says he. ‘Sorry, but I can’t talk with you now. I’m in a hurry to get my mail.’ Well, Mooney stepped out of the way, but I declare if he didn’t look foolish. Yes, and mad. He ain’t used to havin’ folks shove him to one side much nowadays, I guess.”
The important Mr. Mooney was not the only person “shoved to one side” by Foster Townsend. Mrs. Wheeler, whose summer home was opened late in May, called at the mansion soon after her arrival.
“The man was almost rude to me,” she confided to Mrs. Colton. ”

“ We could see distinctly what we were about, even in the thicket behind the water tank, shaded somewhat by the wood. Here Mooney untied his bundle.
It contained three suits of overalls such as are worn by railroad men, blue trousers and a sort of blue coat; they were not new. Mooney was too clever a person, as I came afterward to realize, to make his party conspicuous by any new article.
This was the disguise for our bodies. For head covering Mooney had three sugar sacks dyed black, with round holes for the eyes and mouth. These we pulled over our heads. ”

“ The door was open and Mooney and White came in. White was very carefully dressed. He wore a new overcoat and derby hat and he carried a leather suit case. He looked precisely like one of the thousand traveling men who go about over the country. When the two men got into the car, I did not know who was with White, Mooney was so changed. ”

“ I suppose we remained there for perhaps twenty minutes, until the lights of the town disappeared and the train trailed out into the great open country.
Then Mooney proceeded to put his plan for the holdup into operation.
He went over to the door of the express car and knocked on it. One of the biggest men I have ever seen opened the door. Mooney’s weapon seemed to appear suddenly almost in the man’s face. He stepped back with a little cry, and we were instantly in the express car with the door closed and locked behind us. ”

“ And now, finally in the great haul which they were at last able to make, the only result was White’s capture and imprisonment for a term of years, equal practically, for life. The thing ended also in disaster no less for Mooney.
I have often wondered who this man really was and what was his origin.
I think he had been in nearly every country, and he was familiar with practically every device that could be of service to his profession. He was a skilled electrician; a very wizard at it. The manager of the circus was glad to carry him along although he had practically no duties. ”

“ Mooney took the leather suit case from my hand.
“Shoot any man that moves,” he said hoarsely.
Then he went to work at the safe. The big messenger was so close to the safe door that Mooney had literally to push his body out of the way with his foot. Mooney got some tools out of the dress-suit case, drilled the combination, and put in a charge of nitroglycerine.
He did it quickly, with incredible skill.
Then he ordered the express messenger to move up to the end of the car. ”

“ But here in a northern city he was overtaken by a misfortune which no man could foresee and to which all are subject, no matter how wily or skillful.
He was taken desperately ill and he realized his condition immediately. He took the traveling bag to an express company and shipped it to Canada to a fictitious person. Then he looked about for a lodging house. He was afraid to go to a hospital; and, yet, from what Maggie afterward said, Mooney was even then, in the first few hours of his illness, certain that he had reached the end of his career. ”

“ She nodded, her dark eyes once again shadowed, her cheeks slightly reddening beneath his steady gaze.
"Why, I can scarcely feel greatly flattered at being made the subject of such a choice," Winston acknowledged with frankness. "The very conception brings me uneasiness in fear lest my presence may be unwelcome now that Mooney has been safely left behind. Yet it yields me boldness also, and I venture to ask Miss Norvell what she would probably have answered had Mooney been left out of the problem entirely?" ”

“ His hat was in his hand now, but he tossed it lightly upon the table without waiting for an invitation.
“Good evening, Cap’n Townsend,” he said. “Well, here I am, you see.”
“Glad to see you, Mooney,” declared the captain. “It was good of you to come. You are pretty busy these days, I expect. Have a chair.”
Mooney took the chair which was offered him. He crossed his knees.
“Why, yes,” he admitted. “Yes, I am pretty busy just now, that’s a fact. Never too busy to oblige an old friend though. I happened to be in Trumet when your letter came and I was very glad to drive up and see you. ”

“ Won’t you, Mooney? Not if I make her? Won’t you? Won’t you?”
‘“No,” says Mooney, “I won’t. And if anybody asks me any more, I’ll run away, and never come back again.”
‘“Mr. Grig,” says the old gentleman, “the stars must be obeyed. You have not changed your mind because of a little girlish folly—eh, Mr. Grig?”
‘Tom, gentlemen, had had his eyes about him, and was pretty sure that all this was a device and trick of the waiting-maid, to put him off his inclination. ”

“ Mooney, sympathetically, and proffering the heroine of the story a chunk of spice-cake.
"You'd been better to ha' stayed at home. Poor folks don't have no chanst in them high-toned places."
"Why don't you take off yer shoes like us, and let yer feet spread out?—it'll rest them," suggested Mrs. Mooney, now passing me a peace-offering of coffee-cake, and tightening her mouth in a grim determination to be civil. ”

“ Bland hailed it as a reprieve from whatever act of daring he dreaded. "We must wait until he goes," he whispered eagerly. "He might look in."
Dawes nodded, and Mooney, whose quick ear apprised him very exactly of the position of the approaching gaoler, rose from his knees radiant. The sour face of Gimblett appeared at the trap cell-door.
"All right?" he asked, somewhat—so the three thought—less sourly than usual.
"All right," was the reply, and Mooney added, "Good-night, Mr. Gimblett."
"I wonder what is making the old man so cheerful," thought Gimblett, as he got into the next corridor. ”

“ He did not send for a doctor. He knew perfectly well that death was on him. He had contracted the swift deadly pneumonia which at that time was devastating the country like a plague.
Maggie reached the city that evening and Mooney told her what to do. He pointed out that the German lodging-house keeper had already hit upon his identity and the house was being watched, for he had noticed a window across the street, back of a barber shop, that always had the shade pulled down. ”

“ Mooney, with the furious facetiousness reserved for hustling tough witnesses.
“Well, I suppose she’s something west of the Skelligs by now,” replied Jer Keohane with great composure.
An appreciative grin ran round the Court. The fact that the goat had died of the kick and been “given the cliff” being regarded as an excellent jest.
Mr. Mooney consulted his notes:
172
“Well, now, about this fight,” he said, pleasantly, “did you see your sister catch Mrs. Brickley and pull her hair down to the ground and drag her shawl off of her?” ”

“ Mrs Mooney glanced instinctively at the little gilt clock on the mantelpiece as soon as she had become aware through her revery that the bells of George’s Church had stopped ringing. It was seventeen minutes past eleven: she would have lots of time to have the matter out with Mr Doran and then catch short twelve at Marlborough Street. She was sure she would win. To begin with she had all the weight of social opinion on her side: she was an outraged mother. She had allowed him to live beneath her roof, assuming that he was a man of honour, and he had simply abused her hospitality. ”

“ Mooney,” said he, addressing a pale, mild-featured woman in a widow's cap and black gown, “you can't expect to hear from Dublin for a week or ten days to come. It takes some time to administer; but if you are in want of a few pounds—”
“No, sir, thank you,” said she, in a low voice; “but as I can't go back to the place again,—as I 'll never be able to live there now—”
“Don't be in a hurry, Mrs. Mooney, do nothing rash. None of us know what we can do till we 're tried. ”

“ And say, kid, that woman ain't so—bad."
The Very Young Husband exclaimed impatiently:
"Oh, don't give me any of that, Mooney! Blanche Devine's a town character. Even the kids know what she is. If she's got religion or something, and wants to quit and be decent, why doesn't she go to another town—Chicago or some place—where nobody knows her?"
That motion of Alderman Mooney's thumb against the smooth pipebowl stopped. He looked up slowly. ”

“ What human creatures could thus whisper in the sky?
Mooney and White returned presently in no very pleasant mood. I think the time taken with the thing made them uneasy. White had the loot sack and we started along across the field, to where we had left the automobile on the road.
It was then that I got the explanation of the mysterious voices.
There were three hobos riding on the top of the mail car. They had been witnesses of everything that had occurred. They sat there like immense buzzards outlined against the dim light of the sky. Mooney stopped a moment. ”

“ Mooney and the Queen helped her to her feet.
"It's them pickles and them rotten cold lunches you girls eat," declared Mrs. Mooney, who was fond of talking on the nutritious properties of food. "Now I says, the Lord only give me one stummick, and when that's wore out he'll never give me another, and I can't never buy one with no money, and I never put anything in that stummick at noon but a good cold beer and a good hot plate of soup, and that's what you ought to do. Only cost you five cents for the both of them together, down to Devlin's place. ”

“ It came like the crack of doom, and Breen got it—got it—and it seemed to burst the floodgates of his memory open, seemed to touch that dormant chord, and he knew, knew as he knew that he had a God, what he had done.
They found the order that made the meeting point Elktail tucked in Mooney’s jumper when, after they got the crane at work, they hauled him out from under his engine. Who was Mooney? Engineer of the freight. They found him before they did any of his train crew, or his fireman either, for that matter. Dead? Yes. ”

“ The men in the engine cab made no resistance. The fire man merely stood with his mouth open, like a child before a ghost. The engineer had some composure.
“Don’t shoot,” he said; “what’s the order?”
Mooney, told the engineer to stop opposite a fire he would see on the right hand side of the track about a mile further on. With the pistol at his temple the engineer was not slow to obey this direction. Mooney had told White to build a fire beside the track when he reached the point about two miles west. ”

“ Maggie went to the station, got the traveling bag, put it into the taxicab and set about to carry out the remainder of Mooney’s directions.
The detective called up headquarters and gave the alarm. The police at once went about spreading the usual net for Maggie and then they determined to arrest Mooney. They were now convinced that the man’s illness was a pretense; and, a few minutes later, the detective and three officers suddenly burst into the room where Mooney sat in bed propped up with pillows, gasping for breath, in the closing stages of pneumonia. ”

“ Mooney leaned back in his chair and regarded me for some time, his hand moving about his face.
“You will be a stranger here,” he said, “and a reliable person or White would have passed you up. He has the eye of the devil for seeing through a man. Here’s a dollar.”
He took a paper dollar out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it to me.
“Do two things,” he said, “and don’t talk; go out and get something to eat and after that hunt up a piece of quarter-inch pipe about two feet long; slip it up your coat sleeve and be at the entrance of the big circus tent at eight o’clock.” ”

“ O’Mooney exclaimed, “I hate cats almost as much as old women; and if I had been the English minister, I would have laid the dog-tax upon cats.”
“If you had been the Irish minister, you mean,” said the stranger, smiling; “for I perceive now you are a countryman of my own.”
“How can you think so, sir?” said O’Mooney: “you have no reason to suppose so from my accent, I believe.”
“None in life—quite the contrary; for you speak remarkably pure English—not the least note or half note of the brogue ”

“ Mooney, and the pungent sizzling of a block of soft coal in the open grate.
Doctor O'Fallon had read the blotters through from cover to cover and now sat twirling his thumbs, until he could stand it no longer—his nerves demanded movement. Just as he rose softly in order not to disturb the sleeper, he heard a voice monotonously calling from a distance: "Mr. Michael Mooney! Mr. Michael Mooney!" and as the sound penetrated to the reading-room the president and board of directors awoke with a start.
In the doorway stood the hotel page-boy. "Morning pipers for Mr. ”

“ When he met his friends he had always a good one to tell them and he was always sure to be on to a good thing-that is to say, a likely horse or a likely artiste. He was also handy with the mits and sang comic songs. On Sunday nights there would often be a reunion in Mrs. Mooney's front drawing-room. The music-hall artistes would oblige; and Sheridan played waltzes and polkas and vamped accompaniments. Polly Mooney, the Madam's daughter, would also sing. ”

“ Foster Townsend received the gratifying assurance concerning his robust appearance with a rather dubious shake of the head.
“I don’t know, Mooney,” he observed. “When a man of my age has been as sick as I was he doesn’t get up again in a minute. ”

“ What he said was the truth, but he was not certain that the highwayman, standing a few feet behind him covering him with a weapon, would believe what he said. He knew the stories of such holdups: how express messengers had been ordered to open safes and when they refused, or where unable to do so, they had been promptly shot.
I think the man expected to be shot, as he squatted there beside the safe, his big body loose, his face covered with sweat. Mooney saw instantly that the man was telling the truth. I do not know that he was, in fact, paying any attention to what the man said. ”