The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack 01

by George Allan England

  The outlook, on the whole, was cheering. Gabriel broke into a whistle, as he swung along the highway, and slashed cheerfully with his heavy stick at the dusty bushes by the roadside. A vigorous, pleasing figure of a man he made, striding onward in his blue flannel shirt and corduroys, stout boots making light of distance, somewhat rebellious black hair clustering under his cap, blue eyes clear and steady as the sunlight itself. There must have been a drop of Irish blood somewhere or other in his veins, to have given him that ruddy cheek, those eyes, that hair, that quick enthusiasm and that swiftness to anger—then, by reaction, that quick buoyancy which so soon banished everything but courageous optimism from his hot heart.

  Thus the man walked, all his few worldly belongings—most precious among them his union card and his red Socialist card—packed in the knapsack strapped to his broad shoulders. And as he walked, he formulated his plans.

  “Niagara for mine,” he decided. “It’s there these hellions mean to start their devilish work of enslaving the whole world. It’s there I want to be, and must be, to follow the infernal job from the beginning and to nail it, when the right time comes. I’ll put in a day or two with my old friend, Sam Underwood, up in the Bronx, and maybe tell him what’s doing and frame out the line of action with him. But after that, I strike for Niagara—yes, and on foot!”

  This decision came to him as strongly desirable. Not for some time, he knew, could the actual work of building the Air Trust plant be started at Niagara. Meanwhile, he wanted to keep out of sight, as much as possible. He wanted, also to save every cent. Again, his usual mode of travel had always been either to ride the rods or “hike” it on shanks’ mare. Bitterly opposed to swelling the railways’ revenues by even a penny, Armstrong in the past few years of his life had done some thousands of miles, afoot, all over the country. His best means of Socialist propaganda, he had found, was in just such meanderings along the highways and hedges of existence—a casual job, here or there, for a day, a week, a month—then, quick friendships; a little talk; a few leaflets handed to the intelligent, if he could find any. He had laced the continent with such peregrinations, always sowing the seed of revolution wherever he had passed; getting in touch with the Movement all over the republic; keeping his finger on the pulse of ever-growing, always-strengthening Socialism.

  Such had his habits long been. And now, once more adrift and jobless, but with the most tremendous secret of the ages in his possession, he naturally turned to the comfort and the calming influence of the broad highway, in his long journey towards the place where he was to meet, in desperate opposition, the machinations of the Air Trust magnates.

  “It’s the only way for me,” he decided, as he turned into the road leading toward Saint George and the Manhattan Ferry. “Flint and Herzog will be sure to put Slade and the Cosmos people after me. Blacklisting will be the least of what they’ll try to do. They’ll use slugging tactics, sure, if they get a chance, or railroad me to some Pen or other, if possible. My one best bet is to keep out of their way; and I figure I’m ten times safer on the open road, with a few dollars to stave off a vagrancy charge, and with two good fists and this stick to keep ‘em at a distance, than I would be on the railroads or in cheap dumps along the way.

  “The last place they’ll ever think of looking for me will be the big outdoors. Their idea of hunting for a workman is to dragnet the back rooms of saloons—especially if they’re after a Socialist. That’s the limit of their intelligence, to connect Socialism and beer. I’ll beat ‘em; I’ll hike—and it’s a hundred to one I land in Niagara with more cash than when I started, with better health, more knowledge, and the freedom that, alone, can save the world now from the most damnable slavery that ever threatened its existence!”

  Thus reasoning, with perfect clarity and a long-headedness that proved him a strategist at four-and-twenty, Gabriel Armstrong whistled a louder note as he tramped away to northward, away from the hateful presence of Herzog, away from the wage-slavery of the Oakwood Heights plant, away—with that precious secret in his brain—toward the far scene of destined warfare, where stranger things were to ensue than even he could possibly conceive.

  Saturday morning found him, his visit with Underwood at an end, already twenty miles or more from the Bronx River, marching along through Haverstraw, up the magnificent road that fringes the Hudson—now hidden from the mighty river behind a forest-screen, now curving on bold abutments right above the sun-kissed expanses of Haverstraw Bay, here more than two miles from wooded shore to shore.

  At eleven, he halted at a farm house, some miles north of the town, got a job on the woodpile, and astonished the farmer by the amount of birch he could saw in an hour. He took his pay in the shape of a bountiful dinner, and—after half an hour’s smoke and talk with the farmer, to whom he gave a few pamphlets from the store in his knapsack—said good-bye to all hands and once more set his face northward for the long hike through much wilder country, to West Point, where he hoped to pass the night.

  Thus we must leave him, for a while. For now the thread of our narration, like the silken cord in the Labyrinth of Crete, leads us back to the Country Club at Longmeadow, the scene, that very afternoon, of the sudden and violent rupture between the financier and Catherine Flint.

  Catherine, her first indignation somewhat abated, and now vastly relieved at the realization that she indeed was free from her loveless and long-since irksome alliance with Waldron, calmly enough returned to the club-house. Head well up, and eyes defiant, she walked up the broad steps and into the office. Little cared she whether the piazza gossips—The Hammer and Anvil Club, in local slang—divined the quarrel or not. The girl felt herself immeasurably indifferent to such pettinesses as prying small talk and innuendo. Let people know, or not, as might be, she cared not a whit. Her business was her own. No wagging of tongues could one hair’s breadth disturb that splendid calm of hers.

  The clerk, behind the desk, smiled and nodded at her approach.

  “Please have my car brought round to the porte-cochère, at once?” she asked. “And tell Herrick to be sure there’s plenty of gas for a long run. I’m going through to New York.”

  “So soon?” queried the clerk. “I’m sure your father will be disappointed, Miss Flint. He’s just wired that he’s coming out tomorrow, to spend Sunday here. He particularly asks to have you remain. See here?”

  He handed her a telegram. She glanced it over, then crumpled it and tossed it into the office fireplace.

  “I’m sorry,” she answered. “But I can’t stay. I must get back, tonight. I’ll telegraph father not to come. A blank, please?”

  The clerk handed her one. She pondered a second, then wrote:

  Dear Father:

  A change of plans makes me return home at once. Please wait and see me there. I’ve something important to talk over with you.

  Affectionately,

  Kate.

  Ordinarily people try to squeeze their message to ten words, and count and prune and count again; but not so, Catherine. For her, a telegram had never contained any space limit. It meant less to her than a post-card to you or me. Not that the girl was consciously extravagant. No, had you asked her, she would have claimed rigid economy—she rarely, for instance, paid more than a hundred dollars for a morning gown, or more than a thousand for a ball-dress. It was simply that the idea of counting words had never yet occurred to her. And so now, she complacently handed this verbose message to the clerk, who—thoroughly well-trained—understood it was to be charged on her father’s perfectly staggering monthly bill.

  “Very well, Miss Flint,” said he. “I’ll send this at once. And your car will be ready for you in ten minutes—or five, if you like?”

  “Ten will do, thank you,” she answered. Then she crossed to the elevator and went up to her own suite of rooms on the second floor, for her motor-coat and veils.

  “Free, thank heaven!” she breathed, with infinite relief, as she stood before the tall mirror, adjusting these for the long tri
p. “Free from that man forever. What a narrow escape! If things hadn’t happened just as they did, and if I hadn’t had that precious insight into Wally’s character—good Lord!—catastrophe! Oh, I haven’t been so happy since I—since—why, I’ve never been so happy in all my life!

  “Wally, dear boy,” she added, turning toward the window as though apostrophizing him in reality, “now we can be good friends. Now all the sham and pretense are at an end, forever. As a friend, you may be splendid. As a husband—oh, impossible!”

  Lighter of heart than she had been for years, was she, with the added zest of the long spin through the beauty of the June country before her—down among the hills and cliffs, among the forests and broad valleys—down to New York again, back to the father and the home she loved better than all else in the world.

  In this happy frame of mind she presently entered the low-hung, swift-motored car, settled herself on the luxurious cushions and said “Home, at once!” to Herrick.

  He nodded, but did not speak. He felt, in truth, somewhat incapable of quite incoherent speech. Not having expected any service till next day, he had foregathered with others of his ilk in the servants’ bar, below-stairs, and had with wassail and good cheer very effectively put himself out of commission.

  But, somewhat sobered by this quick summons, he had managed to pull together. Now, drunk though he was, he sat there at the wheel, steady enough—so long as he held on to it—and only by the redness of his face and a certain glassy look in his eye, betrayed the fact of his intoxication. The girl, busy with her farewells as the car drew up for her, had not observed him. At the last moment Van Slyke waved a foppish hand at her, and smirked adieux. She acknowledged his good-bye with a smile, so happy was she at the outcome of her golf-game; then cast a quick glance up at the club windows, fearing to see the harsh face of Wally peeping down at her in anger.

  But he was nowhere to be seen; and now, with a sudden acceleration of the powerful six-cylinder engine, the big gray car moved smoothly forward. Growling in its might, it swung in a wide circle round the sweep of the drive, gathered speed and shot away down the grade toward the stone gates of the entrance, a quarter mile distant.

  Presently it swerved through these, to southward. Club-house, waving handkerchiefs and all vanished from Kate’s view.

  “Faster, Herrick,” she commanded, leaning forward, “I must be home by half past five.”

  Again he nodded, and notched spark and throttle down. The car, leaping like a wild creature, began to hum at a swift clip along the smooth, white road toward Newburgh on the Hudson.

  Thirty miles an hour the speedometer showed, then thirty-five and forty. Again the drunken chauffeur, still master of his machine despite the poison pulsing in his dazed brain, snicked the little levers further down. Forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, the figures on the dial showed.

  Now the exhaust ripped in a crackling staccato, like a machine gun, as the chauffeur threw out the muffler. Behind, a long trail of dust rose, whirling in the air. Catherine, a sportswoman born, leaned back and smiled with keen pleasure, while her yellow veil, whipping sharply on the wind, let stray locks of that wonderful red-gold hair stream about her flushed face.

  Thus she sped homeward, driven at a mad race by a man whose every sense was numbed and stultified by alcohol—homeward, along a road up which, far, far away, another man, keen, sober and alert, was trudging with a knapsack on his broad back, swinging a stick and whistling cheerily as he went.

  Fate, that strange moulder of human destinies, what had it in store for these two, this woman and this man? This daughter of a billionaire, and this young proletarian?

  Who could foresee, or, foreseeing, could believe what even now stood written on the Book of Destiny?

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CATASTROPHE!

  For a time no danger seemed to threaten. Kate was not only fearless as a passenger, but equally intrepid at the wheel. Many a time and oft she had driven her father’s highest-powered car at dizzying speeds along worse roads than the one her machine was now following. Velocity was to her a kind of stimulant, wonderfully pleasurable; and now, realizing nothing of the truth that Herrick was badly the worse for liquor, she leaned back in the tonneau, breathed the keen slashing air with delight, and let her eyes wander over the swiftly-changing panorama of forest, valley, lake and hill that, in ever new and more radiant beauty, sped away, away, as the huge car leaped down the smooth and rushing road.

  Dust and pebbles flew in the wake of the machine, as it gathered velocity. Beneath it, the highway sped like an endless white ribbon, whirling back and away with smooth rapidity. No common road, this, but one which the State authorities had very obligingly built especially for the use of millionaires’ motor cars, all through the region of country-clubs, parks, bungalows and summer-resorts dotting the west shore region of the Hudson. Let the farmer truck his produce through mud and ruts, if he would. Let the country folk drive their ramshackle buggies over rocks and stumps, if they so chose. Nothing of that sort for millionaires! No, they must have macadam and smooth, long curves, easy grades and—where the road swung high above the gleaming river—retaining walls to guard them from plunging into the palisaded abyss below.

  At just such a place it was, where the road made a sharper turn than any the drunken chauffeur had reckoned on, that catastrophe leaped out to shatter the rushing car.

  Only a minute before, Kate—a little uneasy now, at the truly reckless speeding of the driver, and at the daredevil way in which he was taking curves without either sounding his siren or reducing speed—had touched him on the shoulder, with a command: “Not quite so fast, Herrick! Be careful!”

  His only answer had been a drunken laugh.

  “Careful nothing!” he slobbered, to himself. “You wanted speed—an’ now—hc!—b’Jesus, you get—hc!—speed! I ain’t ‘fraid—are—hc!—you?”

  She had not heard the words, but had divined their meaning.

  “Herrick!” she commanded sharply, leaning forward. “What’s the matter with you? Obey me, do you hear? Not so fast!”

  A whiff of alcoholic breath suddenly told her the truth. For a second she sat there, as though petrified, with fear now for the first time clutching at her heart.

  “Stop at once!” she cried, gripping the man by the collar of his livery. “You—you’re drunk, Herrick! I—I’ll have you discharged, at once, when we get home. Stop, do you hear me? You’re not fit to drive. I’ll take the wheel myself!”

  But Herrick, hopelessly under the influence of the poison, which had now produced its full effect, paid no heed.

  “Y’—can’t dri’ thish car!” he muttered, in maudlin accents. “Too big—too heavy for—hc!—woman! I—I dri’ it all right, drunk or sober! Good chauffeur—good car—I know thish car! You won’t fire me—hc!—for takin’ drink or two, huh? I drive you all ri’—drive you to New York or to—hc!—Hell! Same thing, no difference, ha! ha!—I—”

  A sudden blaze of rage crimsoned the girl’s face. In all her life she never had been thus spoken to. For a second she clenched her fist, as though to strike down this sodden brute there in the seat before her—a feat she would have been quite capable of. But second thought convinced her of the peril of such an act. Ahead of them a long down-grade stretched away, away, to a turn half-hidden under the arching greenery. As the car struck this slope, it leaped into ever greater speed; and now, under the erratic guidance of the lolling wretch at the wheel, it began to sway in long, unsteady curves, first toward one ditch, then the other.

  Another woman would have screamed; might even have tried to jump out. But Kate was not of the hysteric sort. More practical, she.

  “I’ve got to climb over into the front seat,” she realized in a flash, “and shut off the current—cut the power off—stop the car!”

  On the instant, she acted. But as she arose in the tonneau, Herrick, sensing her purpose, turned toward her in the sudden rage of complete intoxication.

  “Naw—naw y’ don
’t!” he shouted, his face perfectly purple with fury and drink. “No woman—he!—runs this old boat while I’m aboard, see? Go on, fire me! I don’t give—damn! But you don’t run—car! Sit down! I run car—New York or Hell—no matter which! I—”

  Hurtling down the slope like a runaway comet, now wholly out of control, the powerful gray car leaped madly at the turn.

  Catherine, her heart sick at last with terror, caught a second’s glimpse of forest, on one hand; of a stone wall with treetops on some steep abyss below, just grazing it, on the other. Through these trees she saw a momentary flash of water, far beneath.

  Then the leaping front wheels struck a cluster of loose pebbles, at the bend.

  Wrenched from the drunkard’s grip, the steering wheel jerked sharply round.

  A skidding—a crash—a cry!

  Over the roadway, vacant now, floated a tenuous cloud of dust and gasoline-vapor, commingled.

  In the retaining-wall at the left, a jagged gap appeared. Suddenly, far below, toward the river, a crashing detonation shattered harsh echoes from shore to shore.

  Came a quick flash of light; then thick, black, greasy smoke arose, and, wafting through the treetops, drifted away on the warm wind of that late June afternoon.

  A man, some quarter of a mile to southward, on the great highway, paused suddenly at sound of this explosion.

  For a moment he stood there listening acutely, a knotted stick in hand, his flannel shirt, open at the throat, showing a brown and corded neck. The heavy knapsack on his shoulders seemed no burden to that rugged strength, as he stood, poised and eager, every sense centered in keen attention.

  “Trouble ahead, there, by the Eternal!” he suddenly exclaimed. His eye had just caught sight of the first trailing wreaths of smoke, from up the cliff. “An auto’s gone to smash, down there, or I’m a plute!”