Waifs And Strays

by Charles de Lint

  　　“I’m lung-weary, my friend,” said I. “The best I can do is three cents.”

  　　“And you look like a gentleman, too,” said he. “What brung you down?—boozer?”

  　　“Birds,” I said fiercely. “The brown-throated songsters carolling songs of hope and cheer to weary man toiling amid the city’s dust and din. The little feathered couriers from the meadows and woods chirping sweetly to us of blue skies and flowering fields. The confounded little squint-eyed nuisances yawping like a flock of steam pianos, and stuffing themselves like aldermen with grass seeds and bugs, while a man sits on a bench and goes without his breakfast.

  　　Yes, sir, birds! look at them!”

  　　As I spoke I picked up a dead tree branch that lay by the bench, and hurled it with all my force into a close congregation of the sparrows on the grass. The flock flew to the trees with a babel of shrill cries; but two of them remained prostrate upon the turf.

  　　In a moment my unsavory friend had leaped over the row of benches and secured the fluttering victims, which he thrust hurriedly into his pockets. Then he beckoned me with a dirty forefinger.

  　　“Come on, cully,” he said hoarsely. “You’re in on the feed.”

  　　Thank you very much!

  　　Weakly I followed my dingy acquaintance. He led me away from the park down a side street and through a crack in a fence into a vacant lot where some excavating had been going on. Behind a pile of old stones and lumber he paused, and took out his birds.

  　　“I got matches,” said he. “You got any paper to start a fire with?”

  　　I drew forth my manuscript story of the sparrows, and offered it for burnt sacrifice. There were old planks, splinters, and chips for our fire. My frowsy friend produced from some interior of his frayed clothing half a loaf of bread, pepper, and salt.

  　　In ten minutes each of us was holding a sparrow spitted upon a stick over the leaping flames.

  　　“Say,” said my fellow bivouacker, “this ain’t so bad when a fellow’s hungry. It reminds me of when I struck New York first—about fifteen years ago. I come in from the West to see if I could get a job on a newspaper. I hit the Madison Square Park the first mornin’ after, and was sitting around on the benches. I noticed the sparrows chirpin’, and the grass and trees so nice and green that I thought I was back in the country again. Then I got some papers out of my pocket, and—”

  　　“I know,” I interrupted. “You sent it to the Sun and got $15.”

  　　“Say,” said my friend, suspiciously, “you seem to know a good deal.

  　　Where was you? I went to sleep on the bench there, in the sun, and somebody touched me for every cent I had—$15.”

  　　HEARTS AND HANDS

  　　At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound B. & M. express. In one coach there sat a very pretty young woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious comforts of an experienced traveler. Among the newcomers were two young men, one of handsome presence with a bold, frank countenance and manner; the other a ruffled, glum-faced person, heavily built and roughly dressed. The two were handcuffed together.

  　　As they passed down the aisle of the coach the only vacant seat offered was a reversed one facing the attractive young woman. Here the linked couple seated themselves. The young woman’s glance fell upon them with a distant, swift disinterest; then with a lovely smile brightening her countenance and a tender pink tingeing her rounded cheeks, she held out a little gray-gloved hand. When she spoke her voice, full, sweet, and deliberate, proclaimed that its owner was accustomed to speak and be heard.

  　　“Well, Mr. Easton, if you will make me speak first, I suppose I

  　　must. Don’t vou ever recognize old friends when you meet them in the West?”

  　　The younger man roused himself sharply at the sound of her voice, seemed to struggle with a slight embarrassment which he threw off instantly, and then clasped her fingers with his left hand.

  　　“It’s Miss Fairchild,” he said, with a smile. “I’ll ask you to excuse the other hand; “it’s otherwise engaged just at present.”

  　　He slightly raised his right hand, bound at the wrist by the shining “bracelet” to the left one of his companion. The glad look in the girl’s eyes slowly changed to a bewildered horror. The glow faded from her cheeks. Her lips parted in a vague, relaxing distress.

  　　Easton, with a little laugh, as if amused, was about to speak again when the other forestalled him. The glum-faced man had been watching the girl’s countenance with veiled glances from his keen, shrewd eyes.

  　　“You’ll excuse me for speaking, miss, but, I see you’re acquainted with the marshall here. If you’ll ask him to speak a word for me when we get to the pen he’ll do it, and it’ll make things easier for me there. He’s taking me to Leavenworth prison. It’s seven years for counterfeiting.”

  　　“Oh!” said the girl, with a deep breath and returning color. “So that is what you are doing out here? A marshal!”

  　　“My dear Miss Fairchild,” said Easton, calmly, “I had to do something.

  　　Money has a way of taking wings unto itself, and you know it takes money to keep step with our crowd in Washington. I saw this opening in the West, and—well, a marshalship isn’t quite as high a position as that of ambassador, but—”

  　　“The ambassador,” said the girl, warmly, “doesn’t call any more. He needn’t ever have done so. You ought to know that. And so now you are one of these dashing Western heroes, and you ride and shoot and go into all kinds of dangers. That’s different from the Washington life.

  　　You have been missed from the old crowd.”

  　　The girl’s eyes, fascinated, went back, widening a little, to rest upon the glittering handcuffs.

  　　“Don’t you worry about them, miss,” said the other man. “All marshals handcuff themselves to their prisoners to keep them from getting away.

  　　Mr. Easton knows his business.”

  　　“Will we see you again soon in Washington?” asked the girl.

  　　“Not soon, I think,” said Easton. “My butterfly days are over, I

  　　fear.”

  　　“I love the West,” said the girl irrelevantly. Her eyes were shining softly. She looked away out the car window. She began to speak truly and simply without the gloss of style and manner:

  　　“Mamma and I spent the summer in Denver. She went home a week ago because father was slightly ill. I could live and be happy in the West. I think the air here agrees with me. Money isn’t everything.

  　　But people always misunderstand things and remain stupid—”

  　　“Say, Mr. Marshal,” growled the glum-faced man. “This isn’t quite fair. I’m needing a drink, and haven’t had a smoke all day. Haven’t you talked long enough? Take me in the smoker now, won’t you? I’m half dead for a pipe.”

  　　The bound travelers rose to their feet, Easton with the same slow smile on his face.

  　　“I can’t deny a petition for tobacco,” he said, lightly. “It’s the one friend of the unfortunate. Good-bye, Miss Fairchild. Duty calls, you know.” He held out his hand for a farewell.

  　　“It’s too bad you are not going East,” she said, reclothing herself with manner and style. “But you must go on to Leavenworth, I

  　　suppose?”

  　　“Yes,” said Easton, “I must go on to Leavenworth.”

  　　The two men sidled down the aisle into the smoker.

  　　The two passengers in a seat near by had heard most of the conversation. Said one of them: “That marshal’s a good sort of chap. Some of these Western fellows are all right.”

  　　“Pretty young to hold an office like that, isn’t he?” asked the other.

  　　“Young!” exclaimed the first speaker, “why—Oh! didn’t you catch on?

  　　Say—did you ever know an officer to handcu
ff a prisoner to his right hand?”

  　　THE CACTUS

  　　The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative . A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one’s gloves.

  　　That is what Trysdale was doing, standing by a table in his bachelor apartments. On the table stood a singular-looking green plant in a red earthen jar. The plant was one of the species of cacti, and was provided with long, tentacular leaves that perpetually swayed with the slightest breeze with a peculiar beckoning motion.

  　　Trysdale’s friend, the brother of the bride, stood at a sideboard complaining at being allowed to drink alone. Both men were in evening dress. White favors like stars upon their coats shone through the gloom of the apartment.

  　　As he slowly unbuttoned his gloves, there passed through Trysdale’s mind a swift, scarifying retrospect of the last few hours. It seemed that in his nostrils was still the scent of the flowers that had been banked in odorous masses about the church, and in his ears the lowpitched hum of a thousand well-bred voices, the rustle of crisp garments, and, most insistently recurring, the drawling words of the minister irrevocably binding her to another.

  　　>From this last hopeless point of view he still strove, as if it had become a habit of his mind, to reach some conjecture as to why and how he had lost her. Shaken rudely by the uncompromising fact, he had suddenly found himself confronted by a thing he had never before faced —his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked self. He saw all the garbs of pretence and egoism that he had worn now turn to rags of folly. He shuddered at the thought that to others, before now, the garments of his soul must have appeared sorry and threadbare.

  　　Vanity and conceit? These were the joints in his armor. And how free from either she had always been—But why—

  　　As she had slowly moved up the aisle toward the altar he had felt an unworthy, sullen exultation that had served to support him. He had told himself that her paleness was from thoughts of another than the man to whom she was about to give herself. But even that poor consolation had been wrenched from him. For, when he saw that swift, limpid, upward look that she gave the man when he took her hand, he knew himself to be forgotten. Once that same look had been raised to him, and he had gauged its meaning. Indeed, his conceit had crumbled; its last prop was gone. Why had it ended thus? There had been no quarrel between them, nothing—

  　　For the thousandth time he remarshalled in his mind the events of those last few days before the tide had so suddenly turned.

  　　She had always insisted upon placing him upon a pedestal, and he had accepted her homage with royal grandeur. It had been a very sweet incense that she had burned before him; so modest (he told himself);

  　　so childlike and worshipful, and (he would once have sworn) so sincere. She had invested him with an almost supernatural number of high attributes and excellencies and talents, and he had absorbed the oblation as a desert drinks the rain that can coax from it no promise of blossom or fruit.

  　　As Trysdale grimly wrenched apart the seam of his last glove, the crowning instance of his fatuous and tardily mourned egoism came vividly back to him. The scene was the night when he had asked her to come up on his pedestal with him and share his greatness. He could not, now, for the pain of it, allow his mind to dwell upon the memory of her convincing beauty that night—the careless wave of her hair, the tenderness and virginal charm of her looks and words. But they had been enough, and they had brought him to speak. During their conversation she had said:

  　　“And Captain Carruthers tells me that you speak the Spanish language like a native. Why have you hidden this accomplishment from me? Is there anything you do not know?”

  　　Now, Carruthers was an idiot. No doubt he (Trysdale) had been guilty (he sometimes did such things) of airing at the club some old, canting Castilian proverb dug from the hotchpotch at the back of dictionaries.

  　　Carruthers, who was one of his incontinent admirers, was the very man to have magnified this exhibition of doubtful erudition.

  　　But, alas! the incense of her admiration had been so sweet and flattering. He allowed the imputation to pass without denial.

  　　Without protest, he allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious bay of Spanish scholarship. He let it grace his conquering head, and, among its soft convolutions, he did not feel the prick of the thorn that was to pierce him later.

  　　How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was! How she fluttered like a snared bird when he laid his mightiness at her feet! He could have sworn, and he could swear now, that unmistakable consent was in her eyes, but, coyly, she would give him no direct answer. “I will send you my answer to-morrow,” she said; and he, the indulgent, confident victor, smilingly granted the delay. The next day he waited, impatient, in his rooms for the word. At noon her groom came to the door and left the strange cactus in the red earthen jar. There was no note, no message, merely a tag upon the plant bearing a barbarous foreign or botanical name. He waited until night, but her answer did not come. His large pride and hurt vanity kept him from seeking her.

  　　Two evenings later they met at a dinner. Their greetings were conventional, but she looked at him, breathless, wondering, eager.

  　　He was courteous, adamant, waiting her explanation. With womanly swiftness she took her cue from his manner, and turned to snow and ice. Thus, and wider from this on, they had drifted apart. Where was his fault? Who had been to blame? Humbled now, he sought the answer amid the ruins of his self-conceit. If—

  　　The voice of the other man in the room, querulously intruding upon his thoughts, aroused him.

  　　“I say, Trysdale, what the deuce is the matter with you? You look unhappy as if you yourself had been married instead of having acted merely as an accomplice. Look at me, another accessory, come two thousand miles on a garlicky, cockroachy banana steamer all the way from South America to connive at the sacrifice—please to observe how lightly my guilt rests upon my shoulders. Only little sister I had, too, and now she’s gone. Come now! take something to ease your conscience.”

  　　“I don’t drink just now, thanks,” said Trysdale.

  　　“Your brandy,” resumed the other, coming over and joining him, “is abominable. Run down to see me some time at Punta Redonda, and try some of our stuff that old Garcia smuggles in. It’s worth the, trip.

  　　Hallo! here’s an old acquaintance. Wherever did you rake up this cactus, Trysdale?”

  　　“A present,” said Trysdale, “from a friend. Know the species?”

  　　“Very well. It’s a tropical concern. See hundreds of ‘em around Punta every day. Here’s the name on this tag tied to it. Know any Spanish, Trysdale?”

  　　“No,” said Trysdale, with the bitter wraith of a smile—“Is it Spanish?”

  　　“Yes. The natives imagine the leaves are reaching out and beckoning to you. They call it by this name—Ventomarme. Name means in English, ‘Come and take me.’”

  　　THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR

  　　I was walking in Central Park with Avery Knight, the great New York burglar, highwayman, and murderer.

  　　“But, my dear Knight,” said I, “it sounds incredible. You have undoubtedly performed some of the most wonderful feats in your profession known to modern crime. You have committed some marvellous deeds under the very noses of the police—you have boldly entered the homes of millionaires and held them up with an empty gun while you made free with their silver and jewels; you have sandbagged citizens in the glare of Broadway’s electric lights; you have killed and robbed with superb openness and absolute impunity—but when you boast that within forty-eight hours after committing a murder you can run down and actually bring me face to face with the detective assigned to apprehend you, I must beg leave to express my doubts—remember, you are in New York.”

  　　Avery Kn
ight smiled indulgently.

  　　“You pique my professional pride, doctor,” he said in a nettled tone. “I will convince you.”

  　　About twelve yards in advance of us a prosperous-looking citizen was rounding a clump of bushes where the walk curved. Knight suddenly drew a revolver and shot the man in the back. His victim fell and lay without moving.

  　　The great murderer went up to him leisurely and took from his clothes his money, watch, and a valuable ring and cravat pin. He then rejoined me smiling calmly, and we continued our walk.

  　　Ten steps and we met a policeman running toward the spot where the shot had been fired. Avery Knight stopped him.

  　　“I have just killed a man,” he announced, seriously, “and robbed him of his possessions.”

  　　“G’wan,” said the policeman, angrily, “or I’ll run yez in! Want yer name in the papers, don’t yez? I never knew the cranks to come around so quick after a shootin’ before. Out of th’ park, now, for yours, or I’ll fan yez.”

  　　“What you have done,” I said, argumentatively, as Knight and I walked on, “was easy. But when you come to the task of hunting down the detective that they send upon your trail you will find that you have undertaken a difficult feat.”

  　　“Perhaps so,” said Knight, lightly. “I will admit that my success depends in a degree upon the sort of man they start after me. If it should be an ordinary plain-clothes man I might fail to gain a sight of him. If they honor me by giving the case to some one of their celebrated sleuths I do not fear to match my cunning and powers of induction against his.”

  　　On the next afternoon Knight entered my office with a satisfied look on his keen countenance.

  　　“How goes the mysterious murder?” I asked.

  　　“As usual,” said Knight, smilingly. “I have put in the morning at the police station and at the inquest. It seems that a card case of mine containing cards with my name and address was found near the body.

  　　They have three witnesses who saw the shooting and gave a description of me. The case has been placed in the hands of Shamrock Jolnes, the famous detective. He left Headquarters at 11:30 on the assignment.