Boston Blackie

by Jack Boyle

  “It belongs to Micky, and here’s the key. You’ll find an oil-stove, coffee and blankets inside. Micky is homesteading the land and has to sleep there once in a while. It will be safe and comfortable for you. You couldn’t risk making a fire in the open, for they’ll be combing the country for you before morning. I’ll come at three to-morrow with a basket of food and all the news there is; then you can plan your get-away. You’ll meet me?”

  “I certainly will, little girl,” Blackie assured her with more warmth in his voice. He was astonished at the complete efficiency of her forethought. “I don’t understand why you’ve done all this for me, a stranger, but I want you to know that I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart—and I never forget a friend or a favor.”

  “Maybe you’ll understand better after you think it over,” Rita answered. “Good night, and do be careful,”—after a second’s hesitation,—“dear.”

  “Good night!” Blackie slipped away in the darkness, refusing to recognize the revelation in the girl’s final word.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE MIRACLE

  Boston Blackie drank Spanish Micky’s coffee and ate Rita’s sandwiches in pitch darkness. He did not think it prudent to light the lantern he found in the cabin. Then he rolled a cigarette and concentrated his acute brain upon the Herculean problem before him. For only thirty-six hours of life remained now to the Cushions Kid!

  The more deeply Blackie studied and analyzed the situation, the more hopeless it appeared. His first plan of escape had offered every chance of success, but a traitor had wrecked it. Spanish Micky had frustrated his second effort—a desperate expedient born of desperate necessity—and roused the prison authorities to double precaution both by day and by night.

  And now—what?

  An hour later, Boston Blackie slipped out of the cabin and picked his way silently through the brush and bowlders to a point that jutted out into the river above the mouth of the prison sewer—which from the first had been the key of his plans. He was thankful that the unknown traitor within the prison had not been able to reveal that too.

  He swam the river noiselessly and landed safely in the shadow of the underground causeway that led to the very foundations of the death-house. Two bars of the great iron grating that protected its mouth were sawed. He had attended to that on the night of the first attempt, when he had lain until dawn beside the sewer, waiting for the boy who never came. Blackie pushed the bars aside, entered the sewer and crawled forward on hands and knees into Stygian blackness.

  On and on he went through air that was foul and gas-laden. He lost all sense of time and distance. His hands and knees were bruised and bleeding. The darkness seemed like a blanket that wrapped itself about him and hindered his progress; and the moldy damp underground odor made him think, instinctively, of a grave. He kept on interminably, and at last a faintly diffused glow broke through the wall of blackness. The air grew fresher, and his reeling senses cleared. He was under the manhole beside the death-house.

  Kneeling under the grating that covered the manhole, Blackie felt for his guns and the bottle of nitro he carried in his breast pocket. Then he pressed upward on the grating. It creaked but held fast. He pressed harder and still harder without result. Finally he threw his whole strength again and again against the crisscrossed steel covering that held him in. It did not budge.

  Once again Chance had intervened to balk him. Not two hours before, a convict employed in the night kitchen had slipped from his post and put back the iron padlock for which Louisiana Slim had substituted a painted wooden one. Believing Blackie must have abandoned all hope of effecting a rescue, Louisiana had ordered this done. It was a final, crushing blow. Fate played too strong a hand for the man crouching below the immovable grating and almost sobbing in an agony of despair.

  He scarcely remembered how he made his weary way back through the tunnel, how he swam the river, how he stumbled back to the cabin and threw himself weakly on a bunk, where he lay through the long night haunted by the vision of a boy standing on a scaffold with a black cap being drawn slowly down ever his frightened face.

  It was scarcely noon the next day when Blackie, gaunt and haggard from exhaustion and seventy-two sleepless hours, heard a motorcar come to a stop on the little-used woodland road that ran along the top of the ridge above the cabin. He slipped out of the log house and into the concealment of a thicket, and unslung his guns. He even hoped the motor contained a posse come to attack his refuge. Anything was better than the maddening ordeal of lying idle and impotent while his watch ticked away the few remaining hours of life left to the boy he had failed to rescue.

  A twig snapped on the trail above the cabin, and he saw Rita hurrying toward him with the lithe, swift, graceful movements of a forest animal—a leopard, beautiful but dangerous to any but those she might choose to call her own. She was dressed for city motoring rather than woods tramping, and she carried a suitcase.

  He called to her, and she rushed to him with a half-stifled cry of welcome and gladness.

  “Oh, Blackie,” she cried, dropping on her knees beside him, “I’m so thankful you’re here now. I was deathly afraid you’d be off somewhere and I’d have to wait. We’ve got to get away from here quick. They know who you are up at the prison, and that there’s a thousand-dollar reward for your capture. Micky recognized your picture this morning on one of the posters in the warden’s office. They’ve found the sawed bars at the entrance of the sewer. As soon as they can gather the men, the whole county will be out to hunt you down.”

  Blackie leaped to his feet, and Rita threw open the suit-case.

  “I’ve brought you clothes, a hat, auto-goggles—all Micky’s,” she continued. “Dress quickly, dear!” The term fell from her lips quite naturally this time. “I’m going to carry you away from under their noses. And, Mr. Boston Blackie,”—she stepped close to him and looked straight into his face to judge the effect of her words,—“whether Mary likes it or not, you’re going to take a nice long auto-drive with another girl—with me.”

  “How did you know about Mary?” he asked.

  “Read about her and you in the paper when the coppers wanted you, stupid!” she answered. “The second I knew you were Boston Blackie, I knew all about you. I have friends in Frisco who know you and have often told me what a wonder you are. I’m glad I didn’t know at first, though. If I had, you might think I fell for you because you are Boston Blackie. Now you will always know that wasn’t the reason. It is just because you—are—you.”

  For once Blackie’s ready tongue was bereft of words. He stood looking down at her dumbly while a premonition of impending difficulty shaped itself in his mind. Her laugh broke the silence.

  “Dress, Blackie,” she cried. “Don’t stand there staring at me like that. Wait till we are in the car and speeding toward Sacramento and safety. Then you’re welcome to stare as long as you like.”

  “Will you drive or shall I?” she asked when they stood beside a high-powered roadster ten minutes later.

  “You drive. I want to think.” “Of me? If so, I’ll drive you round the world and back.”

  “No, Rita—of the boy we’re leaving behind us in the death-cell at the stir—a boy who won’t be a boy this time to-morrow unless a miracle happens. I came up here to save him, and I’ve failed—failed where I would give everything I have or ever will have to succeed.”

  “You’ve done everything a right pal could do, and more, Blackie,” Rita answered, dropping her bantering spirit for one of deep, comforting sympathy. “You’ve risked your life again and again, and you would have had him out now if it had not been for a couple of human rats. When your pal dies, Blackie, it won’t be because you failed him.”

  “He mustn’t die, girl,” Blackie’s teeth snapped with undying resolution. “He isn’t even guilty. He’s hanging because he’s too right to squeal on a yellow-hearted pal. And unless a miracle saves him, he’ll die in the morning. The one last chance is the Go
vernor, and that’s not even a chance, for he’s already turned down a commutation.”

  Blackie was silent as Rita guided the car out of the twisting hill road onto the broad highway that leads to the State capital.

  “I’m going to Abe Ritter, the lawyer,” he continued after a long pause. “He’s a politician and he likes money. He’s close to old Tom Creedon, political boss of Frisco. Creedon elected this governor. I’m going to offer Ritter five thousand dollars—more if he asks it—to get Creedon to go to the Governor for the Kid. Creedon could save him if he would, but—well, he’s cold-blooded as a fish, and he doesn’t need money. I can only pay Ritter to try, and if he fails it’s the end.”

  Blackie’s face was anguish itself as Rita turned her eyes to his.

  “You care very, very much to save this boy, don’t you, dear? You’d give anything in the world to do it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Anything and everything, Rita. He’s almost like a son to me.”

  Many minutes passed, and the glistening dome of the capitol was in sight above the intervening woodland before either spoke.

  “What kind of girl is Mary?” asked Rita suddenly.

  “The best in the world—faithful, true, right in every drop of her blood.”

  A sudden contraction as of pain passed over the girl’s face.

  “I saw her picture in the paper,” she said slowly. “She’s pretty, but not prettier than I am when I wish to be for a man I care for. She can’t be more loyal than I—if I care. Mary couldn’t have served you better than I have when you needed me, could she, Blackie?”

  “You did everything any woman could have done, Rita. They would have got me if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “Well, then,”—she turned to him with eyes from which the hardness had vanished,—“is there a chance for me or not?”

  Her eyes held his unswervingly as she waited for her answer. Blackie did not dodge the issue or pretend to misunderstand.

  “I have Mary,” he said. “We’ve been together in good times and bad, and she has never failed in love or loyalty. I’d hate to be what I would be if I gave her less than that.”

  “Ah! So it’s like that with you.” The girl turned from him quickly, and the car shot forward as her foot pressed the accelerator.

  “I wonder if Mary knows what a lucky, lucky girl she is,” Rita said after a long pause. She sat beside him in silence until the car glided into the city and he directed her to the lawyer’s office.

  “I’ll wait for you. We’ll have dinner together?” she questioned as he climbed out of the car.

  Blackie nodded acquiescence and disappeared. He returned to find a Rita who had cast off the somber mood in which he had left her.

  “What luck and where to?” she queried as he climbed in beside her.

  “To Cary’s. Ritter is going to ’phone me there. There isn’t much hope. Creedon’s our only chance. Ritter is going to see him at once, but he doesn’t expect good news. I’m afraid the end has come, Rita.”

  Halfway through the dinner, she suddenly dropped the jesting mood with which she had tried to help him escape the agonizing anxiety that weighted his mind, and leaned across the table toward him.

  “Blackie,” she said, “I’m done at Folsom. I’m never going back. All my life I have wanted a man like you. Can’t you find one little vacant corner in your heart for me? Very little will make me very happy. I don’t ask much. I don’t ask Mary’s place. I just want to be near enough to you to see you sometimes. Will you let me?”

  Blackie shook his head. He could not lie to her.

  “It’s no use,” he said. “It can’t be.”

  Rita stood up, walked round the table to Blackie and laid her arm on his shoulder.

  “I never knew before there were men like you,” she said softly with a quickly choked sob. “I wish I had—sooner.”

  The waiter’s discreet rap on the door summoned Blackie to the ’phone. His face, when he returned, told his news before he spoke.

  “Nothing doing,” he said. “The last hope is gone.”

  “Oh, my dearest, I’m so sorry,” she cried, “—sorrier than you know.”

  “Will you drive me to the train?” he asked. “I must get back to Frisco before this happens at the prison and try to break it somehow to a little woman I left on her knees praying for the Kid’s life. I don’t know how to tell her. It would be easier to go along with the Kid.”

  They rode in silence to the station, and Blackie climbed from the car too distrait for words of any kind.

  “Aren’t you going to give me your address?” Rita asked. “You promised to in case I should need you some time.”

  He penciled it on a slip of paper and handed it to her. As the girl took it, she caught his hand between both hers with a pressure that made delicate knuckles show white beneath her skin.

  “Anyway,” she whispered, “there’s one comfort that she can’t take from me. I’ve served you as well as she could. I always will serve you, no matter what it costs me. You’ll see. And besides,”—her voice was hard and ruthless again,—“if I had known you first, not Mary or a thousand Marys could take you from me. She’s luckier than I—that’s all. Goodby, Blackie.”

  It was early morning—the morning of the execution—when Boston Blackie left the owl-car, that had carried him from the ferry, and came to the flat where Mary and Happy had their refuge.

  It took all his resolution to force himself to enter and softly climb the stairs. There was no rush from within as he knocked, no door flung frantically open, no faces within, frenzied with grief, to read the death verdict in his face even before he spoke. He rapped again, and then, a new fear spurring him on, unlocked the door and entered, though he realized he might be walking into a police trap. He half hoped he was.

  A swift turn of his flashlight showed him the room was empty. He sat down wearily to wait.

  The door below opened and closed, and light, running steps came flying up the stairway; Blackie rose to his feet and switched on the lights. It had come—the moment when he must kill a woman’s heart as surely as they were killing the Cushions Kid even now.

  The door flew open, and two women came rushing in. As they saw him, both flung themselves into his arms, showering him impartially with kisses and incoherent cries and sobs of wild rapture.

  “Oh, Blackie, Blackie, how did you do it? How did you do it?” cried Happy when at last the power of articulation returned. “My boy is going to live, live, live!” In a wildly trembling hand she waved the newspaper she held. “It’s a miracle—it’s the miracle I’ve prayed for.”

  Blackie snatched the paper from her hand as she sank on her knees vainly trying to put into words the prayer of thankfulness that came straight from her heart. He could scarcely believe his eyes as Mary’s shaking finger directed them to a telegraph dispatch tucked away in an obscure corner. He read: Folsom Prison, Oct. 13.—At midnight a telephone-message from Governor Nelson announced the commutation to life imprisonment of the sentence of death against James Grimes, youthful train-robber, who was to have been executed at dawn this morning. It is understood newly discovered evidence convinced the Governor there is some doubt of the prisoner’s actual guilt of the murder of which he was convicted. All preparations for the execution were complete when the reprieve reached the prison, no previous intimation that it was to be expected having reached Warden Hodgkins. Grimes was at once taken from the death-cell and lodged with the other prisoners. “It is a miracle,” cried Blackie as he comprehended the meaning of the lines. “Mary, Happy, I didn’t do this. I didn’t even know of it. When I left Sacramento at nightfall the last hope was gone.”

  “What!” cried Happy and Mary together.

  “It’s true,” Blackie continued. “I was waiting here to tell you everything was over. Three times I framed an escape for him, and each time a last-minute freak of fate stopped it. I tried to reach the Governor through Boss Creedon, and that failed. I came
back beaten—and find this.” He pointed tremblingly at the few printed lines that had created a new world for four human beings.

  “Mary, itis a God-sent miracle,” he concluded in an awed voice.

  He dropped into a chair with the two women crouching at his knees and told them all that had happened at Folsom. When he had finished, they were staring at him with awed eyes and blank, wondering faces.

  “It doesn’t matter how it happened!” Happy exclaimed at last. “My boy is safe. That is all I want to know. Every night as long as I live I shall thank the good God on my knees for this. And to-night I’m going back to the Spider’s to begin to earn the money to get my boy a full pardon—some day.”

  The child-woman was radiantly happy. That there could be any incongruity in kneeling nightly in a prayer of thankfulness after selling drinks at the Spider’s for the sake of the man so marvelously restored to her—that never entered her mind. Perhaps is wasn’t incongruous. Who shall say?

  Blackie was asleep that afternoon when the woman from whom they rented their flat climbed the stairs to hand Mary a letter addressed to her in a feminine hand. She opened it and read; then she awakened her husband.

  “This letter was addressed to me, Blackie dear,” she said. “But after reading it I am convinced it is meant for you.”

  Blackie roused himself and took it from her. Mary stood beside him looking up into his face with a slyly quizzical smile. This is what he read:

  Thursday Night.

  My dearest:

  Mary won’t mind my calling you that, I hope. For it’s true. You know by now your friend is saved. As I write, the reprieve has been ’phoned to the prison. I hope you are happy as you read this, dearest. I am as I write it.

  Do you remember what I said in the restaurant this afternoon? I said I would do more to serve you, risk more to serve you, sacrifice more to serve you, than you know. I’m going to prove that, Blackie dear, to-night.

  You said this afternoon that Tom Creedon was your pal’s last hope. Your lawyer failed with him. Well, Blackie, I know Tom Creedon too. I met him in Frisco before I went to Folsom, and he fell for me. He’s past fifty, but he tries to turn the clock back thirty years when he’s with a woman—a pretty one like me. I laughed at him in Frisco.