by Talbot Mundy
Now I’m not a miserable-minded man.
It gets my goat to have to listen too long to a sermon on original sin. I believe in original decency — monkeys are perhaps descended from man, for instance, certainly not man from monkeys — just as I believe in original gold in the everlasting hills. The only thing I ever knew, except toothache, that could make me sleepless is just such a sermon on the baseness of the human race as Allison got off his chest that night.
So I lay awake, listening to Brice’s snoring and wishing that Allison hadn’t set his suit-case so as to keep the door from closing by about an inch. But I was too lazy to get down and move the thing.
It was about midnight when I heard the door of Brice’s compartment open softly. For a moment I thought it was Brice on the prowl. But he snored on, and I heard the door click shut again, as if some pussy-foot had sneaked in. Then Allison, fast asleep, started pitching about as if undergoing in imagination all the torments foretold by Jeremiah. I took advantage of that disturbance to get down from the upper berth without making much noise, and instead of opening the door between the two compartments, which would only have scared the intruder into flight, I slipped out into the corridor through the door of compartment B, closed it behind me, and walked forward to the door of compartment A. I moved the latch, and let the door swing open as if the intruder hadn’t fastened it behind him and the motion of the train had done the rest — then stood back in the dimly lighted corridor and looked in.
It was our white-haired acquaintance Carter, black morning coat and all. He heard the door swing open, but I was in time to see him withdraw his hand from under Brice’s pillow. He started to close the door again, and actually had his hand on it when he caught sight of me.
Now I’ve met with gall from Maine to Shanghai, all the way around the earth and back again — all sorts, all grades, and all degrees; but nothing to equal his. I guess you’ve got to be meek before you can think of such a thesis as he propounded.
“I came to stop Mr. Brice from snoring,” he said. “He’s annoying Mrs. Aintree.”
Mrs. Aintree’s compartment was at the front end of the car, at least fifty feet away, and between ours and hers were thirty colored men, putting up among them such a saw-mill chorus as you’d never hear anywhere outside of a lumber camp or a kraal in Africa. I pushed him back into Brice’s compartment and turned the light on, locking the door behind me.
“Well, really!” he exclaimed; and Brice woke up with a start.
The next thing, Allison came stalking through the communicating door with an old-fashioned dueling-pistol cocked in front of him. In his pajamas, with that pained, intense expression on his face and his long nose following the pistol’s aim, he looked like one of those cartoons of a Frenchman hunting sparrows that they used to print in England when Fashoda was the main topic of discussion. I asked him to put the pistol away, for I’ve seen accidents happen with those things; but he wouldn’t listen to me.
“Well, really!” remarked the silver-haired intruder for the second time.
“Ye’ll know it’s real when ye’ve a bullet in ye!” answered Allison. “Disar-r-m the man, one of ye!”
You might as well have talked about disarming an old woman. If he had had a weapon — and he had none — it would have been perfectly safe to leave him in possession of it. He wasn’t exactly frightened, he was more like Daniel in the lion’s den, obedient to what he considered first principles and confident that some way of escape would open out — a much more difficult kind of man to deal with than the blustering sort, who always throw their hands up when weapons fail.
“Sit down in that corner,” I said, “and tell us what you were looking for under Brice’s pillow. I saw your hand under it.”
“The chiel was sear-r-ching for the gold plate!” put in Allison contemptuously. “That answer’s too obvious to need confir-rmation.”
“Let me go, please,” said our unwilling guest. “I am a member of this party with a perfectly legal right to come and go in the car as I please. I came in here to stop this gentleman from snoring. Let me go, please.”
Allison swore under his breath. Brice looked at me whimsically.
“Did Mrs. Aintree send you on this errand?” I demanded.
“She couldn’t sleep. She asked me to do what I could about it.” An idea occurred to me that instant. If you call it intuition, that doesn’t explain what intuition is, any more than calling the differential calculus a method of fluxions brings you closer to an understanding of it.
“You’d better get out of here,” I said. “Knock next time you’ve any message to deliver!”
He walked out without comment, and I slammed the door behind him, opening it again instantly and stepping out into the corridor to watch. He never once looked back. The impression I got was that he was hurrying to reach his own end of the car before he should be seen by someone else. If that was so he didn’t make it.
As he passed midway down the car the curtain of a lower berth drew back, and a kinky, dusky head appeared. It wasn’t curiosity that drew that head out, but conspiracy. The difference in expression of those two emotions is far too wide to permit of a mistake. Carter appeared disconcerted — really disconcerted for the first time — whispered something hurriedly, and passed on. The kinky head grinned and retired inside the curtains, but only for a minute, for as soon as Carter had regained his own compartment I went and pulled those curtains aside again.
“Sam!”
“Thah?”
He had two false front teeth, which he removed at night, and couldn’t speak at that hour without lisping.
“Follow me down to compartment A.”
He struggled into his overcoat, looking more like a chimpanzee than a human, although owning a good-natured grin that offset certain other peculiarities. His pug nose resembled a dark piece of india-rubber and looked as if you could punch it steadily for an hour or two without causing its owner much inconvenience. He had a retreating jaw that must have been hard to hit in the prize-ring, and one cauliflower ear. Nevertheless, his bright little eyes gleamed with unusual intelligence, as I backed him up against the door of our compartment.
“D’you want to get back into the Federal prison, Sam?”
“Don’t know nothin’ about no Federal prithon, thah.”
“Well, I do know. Your term was reduced to two years and eight months for good behavior. You came out exactly a year and eleven months ago. The point is, d’you want to get in again?”
“Cap’n, how come you athk me that? Good conduc’s ma middle name. Ah signed on thith heah outfit jes’ cause you-all said as you wanted a good conduc’ fightin’ man. Ah’s good conduc’, an’—”
“Certainly. You were living straight, so we decided to give you a chance.”
“That wath thertainly good of you-all, Cap’n.”
“Well then, why don’t you reciprocate?”
“Rethiprocate, thah? Ah don’t ‘zac’ly get youah meanin’?”
“Does Mr. Carter, or does Mrs. Aintree know that you’ve been in jail?”
“Mithith Aintree, she knowth it, thah.”
“How did she find it out?”
“Cap’n, thay, it wath she what put me in! It was she what had me ‘rested in the futht inthtanth.”
“I see. So she came to you now with a proposal?”
“If you all want to call what she thaid a propothal, thath mebbe youah senthe o’ humor, Cap’n. Ah’d call it a threat, Ah would, jes’ like that.”
“Out with it! What did she say?”
“Thaid Ah might do her a thmall favor, an’ ‘lowed she’d do me a big ‘un.”
“Wouldn’t let on about having been in jail, I suppose?”
“That it, thah, Cap’n, ‘zac’ly. ‘F Ah’d send her li’l telegram byum-by, thoon as she gives the word to let ‘er go, she’ll say nothin’ ‘bout my unfortunate ekthperienthe.”
“Telegram to whom?”
“Dunno, Cap’n, thah. Not seen it yet.”
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“Where were you to send it from?”
“Thome thathion along the line, Cap’n.”
“Cautioned you to say nothing about it?”
“Shoah did.”
“Why didn’t you come and tell me?”
“Cap’n, thah, you-all nevah said no word to me ‘bout not thendin’ no telegrams.”
“That’s true. That clears you.”
“Goo’night, Cap’n!”
“Wait a minute! Did Mr. Carter have anything to say about that telegram?”
“No, thah.”
“Then what were you expecting from him when he returned along the car just now?”
“Ah don’t ‘xac’ly know, Cap’n. Mithter Carter, he thaid, Mithith Aintree’th order, an’ he’d go t’your compartment ‘long about thith time an’ get a li’l package f’r me to keep, an’ along come mo’ning he’d tell me what to do with it. Mebbe ordahs ‘ud be for me to take it off’n train an’ go thomewheres, but he’d let me know ‘bout that. Then he come ‘long an’ ain’t got no parthel, an’ he look tho dithappointed I come mighty near laffin’ in his face.”
* * * * *
IT sounded true. Sam Carson had fallen foul of the Mann Act, which like many other laws unavoidably lends itself to blackmail and occasional injustice.
When Strange investigated Sam’s references and discovered that he had been in jail, even the deputy prosecuting attorney who had secured Sam’s conviction admitted that there might have been a miscarriage of justice. He had eloped into another state with Mrs. Aintree’s colored maid at a time when he had a fairly large cash forfeit posted for a match against one of the most notorious ring-sharpers in the game, and the combination of circumstances had been too strong for him.
The woman was persuaded to accuse him, partly by Mrs. Aintree, who resented the inconvenience of losing her personal maid, and partly by the men who stood to keep Sam’s forfeit money if he should fail to appear at the ring-side. Sam may have told the truth when he pleaded not guilty at his trial, and I was pretty nearly certain that he was telling the exact truth to me that night.
“All right, Sam,” I said. “Take anything they give you. If they give you a telegram, get off the train and send it.”
“‘F you thay tho, Cap’n.”
“D’you think you could make a copy of it first?”
“Ah ain’t no writin’ expert, Cap’n. Fightin’s ma peculiarity,” he answered with a grin.
“Can you read?”
“Yeth thah, Ah can read good.”
“Have you a good memory?”
“Ah can ‘member mos’ ev’rythin’ ever happened.”
“If they were to give you a telegram, and you were to read it over twenty or thirty times, d’you think you could memorize the whole of it?”
“Ah’s a fus’-class memorizer. Ah ‘members the ‘zac’ wo’din’ o’ the telegram ‘at Jack Johnson send to his ole mother, time he knock the stuffin’ out o’ Misto’ Jeff at Reno. Ah ‘members—”
“That’ll do. The most interesting part of their telegram will be the name and address of the party it’s sent to. Get that into your head so you’ll remember it a thousand years, if you live that long. Then remember as much of the rest as possible. D’you get me?”
“Ah’ll do ma bes’, Cap’n. Anything to ‘blige.”
“That’s all, except hold your tongue. Don’t say a word to a soul about your talk in here with me tonight.”
“An’ if they all offers me a li’l sweetnin’, Cap’n?”
“Take it. But no blackmail, mind! You’re not to ask them for a cent. If they give you nothing, go ahead and send the telegram just the same. There are no side-pickings on this trip, unless you get hurt in a scrap later on, and in that case we’ll take care of you. Are you all clear on that?”
“All cleah, Cap’n. Goo’night, thah. Goo’night, gents.” He went off looking like a scarecrow in an overcoat with sleeves much too short for his long arms. Delight in being on the inside of conspiracy made him do a sort of double-shuffle down between the berths, and huge hands’ flapping at the ends of loose arms heightened the illusion. But he made good on the memory test.
They left us on a side-track at a wayside junction in Virginia in the early morning, and we had to stay there until nearly noon before a local “mixed” rolled in and they hitched us to its rear end en route for Appleton. Our gang piled out to invade the shortorder places that stood three in a row within fifty yards of the depot, and that gave Mrs. Aintree the perfect opportunity. None of her party left the car, but Brice, Allison, and I watched Sam go lolloping off toward the Western Union office, and presently he came back toward us muttering to himself.
We let him keep on muttering. It wasn’t in the game to let the Aintree party know that we suspected them of using Sam to upset our calculations. He looked well-paid and satisfied, and sat in the car with his feet on the seat in front of him, moving his lips like a monk at prayer, until a crap game started at the Aintree end, and what with one disturbance and another it looked safe enough to send for him to our compartment.
He stood with his back to the door, his enormous feet together, and his hands behind his back, displaying two removable gold teeth in a grin like a souvenir of Halloween, and rattled off his piece as though he went by clockwork and had been over-wound or something.
“MISTO ANTONIO VITTORI RD THREE LAKELOCK CAL DON’TPHONE SEND BY MESSENGER MESSAGE PREPAID COST OF MESSENGER COLLECT DAY-LETTER. XPECT US MIDDLE NEXT WEEK SPARKS OR LITTLE LATER WILL TRY WIRE YOU XAC DATE ARRIVAL BUT ALL CORRESPONDENCE DANGEROUS AT PRESENT STOP MISSING THIRTY-SECOND PLATE ACCOMPANIED IN CHARGE RAMSDEN BRICE ALLISON ALL WHITE ALERT SUSPICIOUS ADVISE UTMOST CAUTION STOP THIS INFORMATION SENT YOU CONDITIONAL YOUR RECIPROCITY STOP WILL RENDER ALL POSSIBLE ASSISTANCE DESPITE GRAVE RISK BUT EXPECT YOU INCLUDE ME IN ANY FUTURE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN AND CONSIDER YOU HARDLY IN POSITION TO REFUSE STOP CONSIDER POP NOW WORTHLESS PERSON SUPERINTENDING THIS TRIP EVIDENTLY HAS PLAN TO UPSET ALL HAS MILLIONAIRE BACKING AND WILL DO JOB THOROUGHLY STOP BE SURE GET IN TOUCH SPARKS TAKING ALL CONCEIVABLE PRECAUTION
SIGNED YOUR PUPIL.”
“What name and address were on the bottom of the telegram?” I asked him.
“Caroline Watts, Nine West Twenty Third Street, New York City, thah.”
Well, with the aid of a pencil and paper, and by dint of making Sam repeat the message over and over, it took about twenty minutes to make sense of it all. He couldn’t remember it unless he said it quickly, and when he said it quickly it was totally impossible to understand him. To him it seemed to have no meaning anyhow, except that he had been told to keep the change out of a twentydollar bill. However, we got the hang of it finally, and let him go forward, well-pleased with himself.
Nor was Sam the only person who was pleased. If the telegram meant anything at all, it was that Bhopal Gosh’s alibi and present address were now in my possession. I had never heard of Lakelock, but knew that Sparks is in Nevada, so it was fair to presume that Lakelock was somewhere near.
Caroline Watts was clearly the nom de plume of Mrs. Aintree. Antonio Vittori was equally certainly Bhopal Gosh. If I could once catch sight of the brute I didn’t doubt I could corner him, so I decided to make Appleton, and after that to cancel all the rest of the schedule and head straight for Sparks, Nevada.
CHAPTER X. “Res egaliter omnibus!”
IT was nearly dark when we arrived at Appleton, among bleak hills that had been stripped of trees. There were a few truck gardens, the inevitable roped cows, unthrifty-looking goats by the dozen, and of course pigs, but nothing that resembled farming. It looked like one of those places that import everything in tin cans, milk included, and the empty cans made up most of the scenery. Yet it wasn’t such a small place. It had evidently spread during the war, and had begun to dwindle subsequently. All the straggling, outlying parts of the town consisted of mere shacks, no longer painted, and inhabited exclusively by colored folk, who had come there for wartime wages and remained because
it was the easiest thing to do. There were rows and rows of empty cottages, and the white folks’ houses, on a hill at one end of the town, wore a deserted look, as did most of the mines, although the pit-head gear in places appeared to be in working order.
Take it on the whole, Appleton was as perfect a place as you could find for brewing discontent. You could hardly be happy there if you tried, what with falling wages, falling population, falling houses, trade, ambition, everything. Mrs. Aintree pointed out her home — a large frame house on a hill-top, standing in considerable grounds, but empty, and I didn’t wonder that she lacked desire to live in it. She said that her late husband had controlled half the mines in the place, but the coal was low-grade stuff and hardly paid for mining any longer.
Mrs. Aintree had engaged the town hall ten days in advance, and the place was placarded with notices of a P.O.P. revival meeting that evening “for members and their friends;” but I turned our gang loose through the town to do a little word-of-mouth advertisement, and, having sat idle in the train so long, they were eating their heads off for mischief. The advance announcements of Noah’s Flood probably sounded something like the news they spread through Appleton.
