Chapter VII: Part 7

And then, as if ashamed of so much politeness, he hung his head and squeezed the toe of his shoe between the spokes of the railing. The old woman folded her arms in the shawl and gazed on him with a fond smile that showed the few loose, yellow teeth that always wobbled in their gums when she spoke. Presently she turned to Malachi again:

“Ye mustn’t think haard o’ him, Misther Nol’n, he’s a bit back’ard shp’akin’ to th’ loikes o’ ye, ye moind, but he’s a good b’y, an’ he’d never got into throuble if it hadn’t been for this bad comp’ny he be’s dhragged into. Shure, he niver shtays out later’n tin o’clock o’ noights widout tellin’ me p’here he’s been. This afthernoon Oi was shcrubbin’ awaay all alone, an’ who should come in all o’ a suddint but him, bless th’ b’y, an’ saay, ‘Ma,’ he says, ‘Alderman Nol’n got me a paardon an’ Oi--’”

“That’s all right, Misthress McGlone--”

“An’ God’ll bless ye, sor,” the old woman broke in, unable to restrain the flood of tears that filled her filmy eyes and zigzagged down her cheeks. She cried softly a moment, then suddenly looked up in a crafty, cunning way.

“They’s wan thing, Misther Nol’n,” she said, “some wan was so good,” she looked all about to make sure that none was within hearing, and lowered her voice to a rough whisper, “as to sind me a ton o’ coal in a pushcaart th’ day. Oi wonder now who could that be?”

The alderman raised his heavy face with fine innocence.

“Where did it come from?” he asked.

“Misther Degnan’s yaards,” the woman answered.

“Thin I suppose’t was Degnan himsilf sint it.”

“Aw, there now!” the old woman cried, with the triumph of a vindicated prophet. “Oi knowed ye’d saay that, Oi knowed ye’d saay that--but, shure Oi think’t was yersilf done it.”

“L’ave off, l’ave off, now,” said Malachi almost roughly, “’tis no place, do ye mind, fer a woman, an’ no place fer th’ laad.” He gave the boy a penetrating glance that made the shifting eyes fall suddenly. “An’ ’tis late--did ye come down on th’ caar?”

The old woman’s tears running down her cheeks had left stains in the wrinkles, and she began plucking at something under her shawl. Presently she drew forth a handkerchief folded in a soft little white square, fresh and clean from the iron, and shaking it out she dabbed at her weak old eyes and wiped away the tear stains. Her voice was a whisper again.

“Aw, Misther Nol’n,” she began, “it’s been a haard winther on the poor, an’ Oi’ve had to save th’ pinnies, shure they’re scarce enough, an’ th’ laad with no job an’ me a poor widow woman. God forgive me”--her voice sank still lower, and into the whisper came a hard, rebellious note--“but some noights Oi’ve gone without me supper--”

“But why didn’t ye tell?” asked Malachi, looking up in concern.

“Oi’d die first!” she whispered hoarsely, while her wet eyes blazed. “It’ll niver be said Oi’m a beggar, an’ Oi wouldn’t have tould anny wan but you, sor”--she gave him a coaxing smile through her tears, and bent her head to one side in a way that seemed to recall her girlhood--“an’ maybe, sor, ye’d not saay annything ’bout it--there’s a good man, now. Oi’ve kep’ up th’ insurance an’ there’ll be enough to give me a dacent bur’al whin Oi die. Ye’ll excuse me fer”--she stretched a hand from the shawl and touched him on the shoulder--“fer runnin’ on loike this, but Oi couldn’t shlape th’ noight till Oi’d come down to thank ye--God bless ye, sor, Oi’ll pray fer ye every noight. We’ll be goin’ now.” She took a step toward the door, but turned back again, with that pleading inclination of the head, that smile, showing her long, wabbling teeth.

“Ye must excuse me, sor,” she said, “fer throublin’ ye so, but ye’re a koind, saft-hearted man--ye couldn’t git th’ laad a job now--shure Oi know ye couldn’t--he’s an hones’ b’y an’ a willin’ worker, sor, whin he can git annything to do--ye must excuse me, sor.”

Malachi was deeply chagrined. He actually got up and peeped again around the corner of the partition, and then said hastily, so as to close a painful and scandalous incident:

“Let th’ b’y come down an’ see me in th’ marnin’, ma’am, an’ here’s a bit o’ caar fare fer ye. Do ye go now an’ take th’ caar home. ’Tis a long waays fer ye to walk, ye niver ought a done it.”

The old woman objected at first, but finally consented to accept the coin on the basis of a loan, and then, blessing him again and again, courtesied herself in an old-fashioned, rheumatic way out of the door. And then Malachi tilted up his glass and drained the last drop. The toddy had grown quite cold.

The law of moral reaction sent the gang home early that evening, and by ten o’clock it was plain that the day’s work was done. Malachi had the bartender help him on with the frieze overcoat, and was adjusting his hat to a skull that still was sore, when the door opened. Malachi turned with a scowl, when the draft struck him, and saw Sullivan, the ward committeeman, and Brennan, Malachi’s political residuary legatee. Brennan’s eyes were sparkling merrily, his red face was round with laughter, and he came in with a breeze like the March day.

“Hello, Mal’chi,” he called, smiting the bar with the thick of his fist, “ain’t goin’ home, are you? It’s just the shank of the evening. What’ll you have?” Then, as one who likes to think he has special privileges, he said to the bartender aside: “Give’s a nice little drink of whisky.”

Malachi neither moved nor spoke. Brennan felt his coldness and flashed the intelligence to Sullivan.

“Just saw Jim Degnan,” he said, grasping the sweating whisky bottle.

“You did, did you?” said Malachi, in a challenging tone.

“Yes,” said Brennan, determined to be genial. “He tells me you’re goin’ back to Ireland in the spring.”

“He does, does he?” again challenged Nolan.

“Didn’t you tell ’im?”

“If I did, did I tell ’im phat spring?”

“Well, I s’posed as a matter of course he meant this spring.”

Brennan bent over to measure his drink and to hide some confusion. “And I thought--you know what you said, Mal’chi--I was goin’ to have Mike here call the convention and round up the nomination--”

“Th’ hell you was! Th’--hell--you--was!” Malachi’s growing amazement lengthened the pauses between his words.

“Why, didn’t you say you’d t’row the nomination to me when you quit?”

Brennan’s color deepened to an angry red.

“Did ye iver see such narve!” said Malachi, ignoring the question. “Mike’ll call th’ convintion fer soon enough, but whin I’m not a candydate in me own waard, I’ll tell ye mesilf, Willum Brennan.”

“Well, don’t get mad about it, Mal’chi,” said Brennan, who was getting mad himself. He shoved the bottle on to Sullivan, and blinked his small eyelids a moment. “Of course, Mal’chi, it’s just as you say.”

“Well, now, ye’re talkin’, Willum.” Malachi never could brook anything like interference in his ruling of the First Ward. “Whin I’m done, ye can have th’ nomination, same’s I told ye, but this spring I’m a candydate mesilf, do ye mind that now?” He drew closer to the bar in his softened humor, and now that the question at last had been decided, and in the only way it could have been decided, he suddenly became himself again.

“When do you want the convention called for, Mr. Nolan?” asked Sullivan.

“Sathurday,” replied Malachi promptly.

“Where?”

“Oh, same as usual--in the back ind of th’ plaace here.” Malachi jerked his thick thumb toward the rear end of the saloon, where the gloom was deep. “Prim’ries fer Friday.”

“All right,” said Sullivan.

Then no one spoke for a while. Finally, however, Brennan said, in a hesitating way:

“If you’re goin’ back to the council, Mal’chi, what’s the matter with me takin’ the legislative nomination in the district?”

“It’s time enough to saay good marnin’ to th’ divil whin ye meet ’im, Willum.”

There was silence again, until Brennan said:

“Well, I can’t help thinkin’ it’s a fine trip to Ireland you’re losin’.”

“’Tis so,” assented Malachi.

“Yes,” sighed Brennan. And he saw his ambition pass from him. But presently he was saying in his old, cheery tone:

“Ain’t you goin’ to take somethin’?”

Malachi leaned his big body against his bar, and over his shoulder, out of the corner of his mouth, he said:

“Seegaar.”

The bartender slid the box along the counter and rang up another ten cents on the cash register.

“Well, here’s lookin’ at you,” said Brennan, raising the little tumbler.

“Dhrink heaarty,” said Malachi Nolan.

* * * * *

The long day was done, and Malachi, in shirt-sleeves and stockinged feet, sat in his big plush rocking-chair, his legs stretched out before him, taking his ease at his own hearth. When he had come home at midnight, Nora, who always sat up for him, had insisted upon brewing him a cup of tea, under the impression, common to a certain class of women, that it has great medicinal qualities. Malachi had sipped it obediently, though he had not cared for it after all the mineral waters he had drunk that day, and had enjoyed far more than the tea the freckled Irish face of his daughter, as he gravely goggled at her over the rim of the saucer into which he had poured the beverage to cool it. They were in what Malachi called the parlor of their flat, though Nora had lately taken to calling it the drawing-room. It was furnished mostly in pieces upholstered in plush. Over the mantelpiece hung a large crayon portrait of a woman whose face, despite the insipidity the canvasing artist had given it, still showed the toil she had endured, if it told little of her strong character, while that disregard for expense which was expressed in the gilt frame marked it as a memorial of the dead. It was, of course, the face of Malachi’s wife, and when Nora, in her new culture, had hinted at hanging it in his bedroom, she had, for the first time in her life, quailed before that stubborn spirit with which her father ruled the First Ward. The few books on the center-table treated mostly of religious subjects, though there were queer bound volumes of Irish poetry, and on the wall there were one or two etchings in oaken frames. In a corner was a crucifix with a candle before it. But the one object in the room that dominated all the rest with its aggressive worldliness, was an upright piano, and Nora now sat swinging on the stool, her back to the instrument, her elbows behind her on the keys. She had partly prepared for bed, for she wore a flannel wrapper and her brilliant black hair hung in a braid down her back. Celtic blue eyes lighted up her face, and now they smiled under their long, black lashes upon this big saloon-keeper whom half the city feared, as if the simple sight of him were reward enough for her long hours of waiting.

Malachi finished his cup of tea and hurriedly inserted a cigar in the hole at the corner of his mouth, and thus confirmed in comfort, he said:

“Nora, child, do ye sing now--phat was that--it wint hummin’ t’rough me head th’ daay. Well, well, well, let me see now--hum-m-m-m--it goes something like--”

And he hummed a quavering old tune:

“‘I saw the Shannon’s purple flood
Flow by the Irish town.’”

Then he stopped and shook his grizzled head. “Shure, now, I’m forgettin’ it intirely; ye know, though, somethin’ about:

“‘Whin down the glin rode Sarsfield’s min,
And they wore the jackets green.’

“Sing it onct, fer th’ ould man.”

“But, father,” the girl laughed, though she began screwing up the piano stool, “it’s too late, the neighbors will object.”

“Niver mind th’ neighbors,” commanded the alderman in the tone he used at a primary, “sing it.”

“But it’s forbidden in the lease after ten o’clock,” the girl protested, leafing over her music. “What if the landlord--”

“It’s time to say good marnin’ to th’ divil, Nora, whin ye meet ’im.”

Nora fixed herself on the stool, fingered the keys, finding a soft minor chord. The old man closed his eyes, slid farther down in his plush chair, and just as he was prepared to listen, she suddenly stopped in the provoking way amateur musicians cultivate, to say:

“But, father, that’s such an old song, wouldn’t you rather I’d sing the Intermezzo from _Cavalerie_?”

Malachi opened his eyes with a start and sat bolt upright.

“Naw,” he said, “none o’ thim fur’n op’res--phat’s the use of yer goin’ to th’ convint all those years?” But his voice quickly softened. “Do ye go on now, Nora, darlin’, there’s a good gur-rl.”

And so she sang, and the alderman sank in his chair, with his big arms in their shirt-sleeves thrown over his head, closed his eyes again, stretched out his stockinged feet. The smoke from his cigar ascended to the chandelier, and now and then when he remembered the words of a line, he hummed them behind closed lips, in unison with his daughter. When the song was done Nora whirled around, clasped her hands in a school-girl’s ecstasy and said:

“Oh, father, that song makes me homesick--homesick for a place I never saw. You won’t run again, will you, father, will you? And we’ll go to Ireland in the spring, won’t we? Tell me, in the spring?”

A pain struck through Malachi Nolan’s heart, a pain that was made only more poignant when, with her American fear of the sentimental, Nora joked:

“I must see our ancestral cabin.”

Malachi could not open his eyes. For once he was afraid. He did not move for a long time. But at last he sighed and set his jaw, and said:

“Well, Nora--if ye saay so--in the spring.”

* * * * *

Malachi Nolan sat bolt upright in his seat in the Pullman. He was clothed in his decent black suit, and he wore his black cravat tucked stiffly under the collar that so tightly bound his thick, red neck. On his glossy shirt front the great diamond, four carats in weight, rose and fell with his heavy breathing. At his feet was a new yellow valise; beside him, wedging him tightly into his seat, was Nora’s luggage, her new bag, the roll of steamer rugs, her little umbrella, her plaid cape, and all the things she had got at the suggestion of friends who were interested in her journey across the sea to Ireland. Nora, in her new traveling gown, was prettier than Malachi had ever seen her. She sat in the front seat of the section, leaning against the double window, her elbow on its narrow sill, her chin meditatively in her palm. There had been some talk between them as the heavy train pulled out of the Van Buren Street station, and in the bustle of getting away, of arranging her bags and her bundles, and all that, Nora had beamed with pleasure, and a fine and happy excitement had sparkled through the long, black lashes of her blue Irish eyes. But as the train plunged recklessly out through the bewildering yards, she had noticed her father casting wistful glances at this or that familiar object sweeping so swiftly and irrevocably away. There was the Harrison Street police station which he had visited on so many mornings to help some poor devil out of the toils; the shops shutting down for the night, their workers trooping homeward, dead tired after the long hours; the Twelfth Street viaduct, marking the limits of his ward; the slips in the south branch of the dirty Chicago River, where big schooners still lay torpid at their winter moorings, the crossings at Sixteenth Street, then the dear old Archey Road. A silence had fallen upon him that reacted upon her, and she grew still, and rode on in the swaying train, gazing soberly out upon the ragged edges of that Chicago she was leaving behind for the first time in her life.

The black porter, in spotless white jacket, was going through the car with his stool, pulling down the inverted globes of the lamps with his ventilating stick and lighting the four little gas-jets; the travelers in the car were settling themselves accustomedly for the long ride to New York, there was even a prospect of some cheer in the dinner which was soon to be served in the dining-car, but the alderman seemed not to notice any of these things.

Malachi had never traveled much. His only trips had been those biennial ones to Springfield, when he had headed the First Ward delegation to the state conventions; sometimes he had gone down there while the legislature was in session; and once he had journeyed to Washington with the Marching Club to attend the inauguration ceremonies. But that was all. On these trips he had gone with his own kind, and doubtless enjoyed them, but now, this evening, it was plain that he was not comfortable. He could not smoke, for one thing, and the round hole in the corner of his mouth looked forlorn in its present lack of a cigar. He must have thought, once or twice, of escaping to the smoking-room, but each time he had remembered Nora, and so had sat on, heavy, imponderable and solemn.

After a while the porter got the little lights to burning, and they illumed, though inadequately, the long coach, its heavy trappings, its bell cord, the suspended hats and wraps swaying from side to side, as it creaked and groaned over so many switches and curves and crossings to get out of town. They rushed by mills, with furnaces blazing like infernos in the gathering twilight, and black, stubby chimneys lighting the dull sky with flames; at last they were in the outskirts where the city helplessly degenerates into naked flat buildings, finally, into low cottages scattered here and there in little broken rows, with high board-walks in front of them.

Then Malachi, stooping painfully, unbuckled his new valise and took from it a newspaper. Before he unfolded it, he drew out his spectacles and calmly adjusted them to his nose. Then opening the paper he began to read. He read carefully and slowly, first the front page, column after column, then the second page, and so on, methodically, through all the pages. His lips moved slightly as he read, for he had to pronounce the words to himself to get their full meaning. When Malachi had read to the last line of the last column of the last page of his newspaper, he did not fold and lay it aside. He turned back to the first page and studied the picture there. It was the daily cartoon, and the central figure was intended for Malachi himself. That there could be no question of identity, the prudent artist had labeled it “Bull Nolan.” The figure was one that Malachi had seen in the papers, in varying situations, for years, with the aldermanic paunch, the massive chain and charm, the bullet head, the stubble of hair, the bell-crowned hat, the braided plaid clothes, broad-soled shoes and checkered spats, the briskly radiating lines to symbolize the diamond. But at last the inevitable cigar had gone out, the First Ward no longer peeped on a ballot, secure and safe, from his waistcoat pocket. The gentleman with high hat, side whiskers, gloves and cane, who, labeled “Citizen,” impersonated the better element, had it now, and while he was still self-contained, there was a look of almost holy triumph in his face.

Malachi studied the cartoon a long time, never changing expression. But even when he finished he did not fold the paper carefully and put it back in his valise, nor bestow his spectacles in his waistcoat pocket. He had suffered many lapses in his methodical habits of late, and they were growing easy now. He turned to the editorial page, where a line in big types, heading a leading editorial, had caught his little eye. It said: “The Passing of Malachi Nolan.” Malachi began to read, slowly and carefully, pronouncing each word to himself:

“Citizens not only of the First Ward, but of the entire city, are to
be congratulated upon the signal victory the Municipal Reform League
has won in its campaign against Malachi Nolan. This man, who so long
has misrepresented the ward mentioned in the city council, has at
last been dislodged, and driven to the obscurity of private life,
where his pernicious and dangerous tendencies, if not altogether
abated, will at least be confined to a narrower sphere of activity.
In announcing his retirement from politics, he gives as a reason
his desire to pay a visit to his native land, but the public, while
speeding his departure, will readily penetrate the gauzy excuse
he advances for it. They know that he has been forced to fly from
a field rendered utterly untenable by the onslaughts of those
public-spirited gentlemen who at great personal sacrifice have so
freely contributed of their means, their energies and their time to
the work of the Municipal Reform League, and to them and the press
they will ascribe the credit and the praise. It would seem, however,
that the Honorable Bull Nolan has lost none of his presumption, for
he insolently declares that he leaves as his personal representative
and successor in the aldermanic chair one of his henchmen, William
Brennan. But the people will take care of Mr. Brennan at the proper
time. They will see to it that Nolan’s successor shall not be a man
whose political methods are such as will enable him to take vacation
trips in Europe, and with the abundant encouragement they have now
received, will continue to widen this breach already made in the
walls of corruption and dishonesty and carry on the splendid work for
good government and honest politics--”

Malachi did not read any further. The lights in the car were poor, after all, and then, his eyes were not so good as they used to be. He folded the paper carefully, looked all about, then hid it at last behind him. Then he bestowed his spectacles in his waistcoat pocket, and, like Nora, looked out of the window. They had gone through South Chicago, they had passed One-hundredth Street. They looked out now upon the dull prairies that sprawled flat all about them, with no sign of spring as yet, but dead and desolate, broken only by a black and stunted tree here or there. At wide, wide intervals a lonely gas lamp twinkled bravely in a legal way as if to preserve the prescription of what was only technically a street. The prairies stretched away until they faded into the gray gloom of the March evening, and they had left Chicago at last behind.

THE PARDON OF THOMAS WHALEN

The private secretary turned reluctantly from his open window beside which the trees bathed their young leaves in the sparkling sunshine of the June morning to confront the throng that awaited audience with the governor. The throng was larger than usual, for the state convention was to be held on the morrow. Every county in the state was represented in the crowd that trampled the red carpet, crushed the leather chairs and blew the smoke of campaign cigars into the solemn faces of former governors standing in their massive gilt frames with their hands on ponderous law books. In one corner a woman huddled, pinching a handkerchief to her eyes. Now and then she sobbed aloud. When Leonard Gilman, the private secretary, saw her he knew it at once for a pardon case, and paid no further attention to her. Big countrymen in Sunday clothes, who wore the red badges of delegates, slapped him on the back, city ward-heelers of checkered lives and garments called him “Len.”

There was an odor of perspiration in the room, distinguishable even in the heavy fumes of tobacco. The real leaders, of course, William Handy and the others, were over at the executive mansion, with the governor, completing the final arrangements for his renomination. The governor held the convention in the hollow of his hand.

The woman huddled in her corner until eleven o’clock, and then Gilman, happening into her quarter of the room, asked her what she wanted, listening with official respect for her reply. It was an old story to him. When she told him he smiled a strange smile and turned away. At noon the governor ran the gauntlet of the waiting crowd and gained the sanctuary of his private office. Once there, breathing a sigh of relief, he stood for a moment in one of the tall windows looking out upon the smooth lawns stretching lazily in the sun, and rolling away to the elms surrounding the state house. He was a tall man and strong. If he had a physical fault, it was that he carried his head too low, denoting him a thinker, but if his gaze was fixed upon the earth, his thoughts were in the stars. Presently he shook his splendid head vigorously, wrapped his long coat determinedly about him, and settled himself at his desk.

Gilman entered, bearing a pile of papers demanding the governor’s personal attention, but the morning conference was very brief on this day. As Gilman turned to go, the governor said:

“I desire to be alone to-day. I have that speech of acceptance to write. If Handy comes, send him in, but no one else.”

Gilman laid his hand upon the door-knob and the governor asked:

“No one of importance out there, is there?”

“No,” said Gilman. “There’s a woman--what do you think she wants?”

“A pardon, of course.”

“Yes, but for whom? You’d never guess in a thousand years.” Gilman was smiling.

“Then tell me.”

“Tom Whalen!” Gilman laughed at the humor of it.

The governor’s features relaxed with a smile, but quickly his brow contracted again, and he said:

“Well--poor things--I pity them. I could wash my hands in women’s tears every week.”

“Well,” said Gilman, opening the door, “I told her she could see you. I’ll slide her out.”

The governor bent to his desk, but just as the door was closing he called:

“Oh, Gilman!”

Gilman stopped.

“Don’t do that--tell her I’ll see her after a while.”

Gilman, as he returned to his desk, smiled and shook his head at the governor’s weakness.

Thomas Whalen was a life convict in the penitentiary. The crime was committed on the night of the election at which John Chatham had been chosen chief executive of his state. Whalen was a boss in the nineteenth ward and a Chatham man. The campaign had developed such bitterness that Whalen found it necessary to name himself a judge of election in the fourth precinct of his ward. Many times during the day blue patrol wagons had rolled into the precinct.

The polling place of the fourth precinct was a small barber shop in Fifteenth Street. During the evening, as the ballots were being counted, it had become apparent that an altercation was in progress behind the yellow blinds. It was abruptly terminated by a shot. The lights in the shop were extinguished at the same moment. A man burst from the door and fled. When the police arrived, they found a dead election judge face downward on the table. His name had been Brokoski. The bullet had passed entirely through his body, and reddened with his blood the ballots that gushed from the overturned box. The window at his back had been completely shattered by the ball as it flew out into the alley. This was a large bullet, a thirty-eight caliber. The police found a revolver gleaming in the light of the dark lanterns they flashed down the alley. It was a thirty-eight caliber with one empty chamber. It was evident that the murderer had discarded it in his flight. A lieutenant of police at the Market Place police station easily identified the gun as one he had given to Whalen several weeks previously. The judges and clerks had rushed after Whalen. The shock, the sudden failure of light, the horror of the dead man in the dark had jangled their nerves. They were too excited to give a clear account of the affair. They knew that Whalen and Brokoski, sitting on opposite sides of the table, had been quarreling. They had heard the shot, had been blinded by the flash, and had seen Whalen bolt. Brokoski had fallen heavily upon the table, and died with an oath upon his lips.

Gilman never forgot that wild night. He had spent it with the governor at the headquarters of the state central committee. In the dawn, when the east was yellowing, and sparrows began to scuffle and splutter on the eaves of the federal building looming dour just over the way, the news of the murder and frauds had come to them. The governor’s face, white with excitement and fatigue, had suddenly darkened. Had it been the shadow cast by the passing of a great ambition?

* * * * *

At the close of the long day the woman, beckoned by Gilman into the governor’s presence, lingered on the threshold of the chamber. The room was full of shadows. The figure of the governor, standing in the tall window, shut out the waning light, and was silhouetted, big and black, against the twilight sky. He did not hear the woman enter. She coughed to attract his attention. This did not arouse him from his reverie, and after a moment’s timid hesitation, she said:

“May I come in?”

The governor turned. “Be seated, madam,” he said. “I shall be quite frank with you. I am acquainted with this case, and do not believe it to be one justifying executive clemency.”

When she spoke her voice was tremulous.

“Will you hear my story?”

“You may proceed,” the governor replied. He had pushed the papers aside and was drumming lightly with his long, white fingers on his desk.

The woman nervously pleated her handkerchief, fearing to begin. “You must excuse me,” she said presently, “I can not tell my story very well. I do not come here for mercy or anything like that. It is only a matter of justice.”

Had it not been for the gloom, she might have seen a smile steal over the face of the dark figure at the desk. Once plunged into her narrative, her words flowed rapidly, until--suddenly she ceased to speak.

“That was five years ago,” she said, her voice dropping to a sadly reminiscent whisper. “We were to have been married that spring, but--I would rather not tell the rest.”

The woman probably felt her cheeks flush with warmth.

The governor could hear her quick breathing. In a minute he said kindly:

“Well?”

The woman hesitated an instant, and then fairly blurted out the rest of her tale. The governor, through the darkness, saw the woman lean, panting, toward him. Convulsively she pressed her hands to her face. She collapsed in tears. When her sobs became more regular, though still labored, the governor said:

“And Whalen--he knew this?”

“He must have known.”

“Then why did he not tell?”

The woman hung her head and said, in a low voice:

“I was mistaken, sir. The other woman lied.”

“Ah, I see.” The governor turned and looked out of the windows. The old-fashioned iron lamps on the broad steps that led up to the state house were blinking in the dark trees, and the arc light swinging in the street swayed the shadows of their foliage back and forth on the white walks. A flash of heat lightning quivered over the purple outlines of the elms.

The governor sat for a long time in somber silence. The woman could hear the ticking of his watch. Presently he drew it from his pocket and struck a match.

“It is growing late,” he said. “The tale you tell is a very remarkable tale. My time is so fully occupied that it will be impossible for me to devote any thought to it just now. If you will leave your address with my secretary I shall communicate with you. Meanwhile--do not talk.”

When the private secretary had conducted the woman from the room the governor went to his window. The voices of the June night floated up to him, but he no longer heard their music. For the second time, at the name of Whalen, and even in the darkness, there swept over his face the shadow of the passing of a great ambition.

The convention met. The secretary never got down to _S_ in calling the roll of counties, and the governor was renominated by acclamation. But never in all the exciting scenes of those two days, in the black moment of suspense before the roll-call began, in the white instant of agony pending the poll of the Richland County delegation, in the golden hour of triumph, when he stood pale and bending before the mad applause rolling up to him in mighty billows, did he forget the name of Thomas Whalen, or did the face of that woman pass from him. They followed him persistently, they glimmered in his dreams. There was no escape from their pursuit.

After a week in which he found no ease, with the determination that characterized him when once aroused, he undertook a judicial investigation of the case. He obtained a transcript of record, and read it as carefully as if he had been retained in the case and sought error upon which to carry it to the supreme court. In the familiar work he found for a time relief.

Gilman, meanwhile, had forgotten the incident of the woman’s visit. The idea of pardoning Tom Whalen was too preposterous to merit serious consideration. But, when the governor told him to go to the penitentiary and interview Whalen, and then to the city and the locality of the crime for the purpose of learning all he could about Brokoski’s death, he damned himself for having mentioned the fact of the woman’s presence on that crowded, tobacco-clogged, perspiring morning. And as he left the capitol he resolved that his visit should be astonishingly barren of results.

Inside the warden’s private office at the penitentiary he saw Whalen. The man had found the convict’s friend, consumption, and Gilman hardly knew him. When the private secretary told him of the application for his pardon, Whalen only smiled. Gilman found him strangely reticent, and after an effort to induce him to talk, said:

“Whalen, really now, did you kill Brokoski?”

The striped convict picked at the cap he held in his lap. A bitter smile wrinkled his pale, moist face.

“Suspected again, eh?” he said, without looking up.

Finally Whalen tired of the examination. He breathed with difficulty, but that may have been due to his disease. At last he raised his shaven head.

“Mr. Gilman,” he said, “I see what you’re getting at. I have told you I did not commit the crime for which I am here. For that matter, any of the three thousand other prisoners within these walls and wearing these clothes will tell you the same thing. I don’t know whether you believe me or not. It doesn’t make much difference. It doesn’t matter what becomes of me any more. I ain’t long for this world. So just let it drop--what’s the use of opening it up again?”

“But you haven’t answered my question,” said Gilman, interested in spite of himself, for a great fear was growing up within him; “you have not told me who did kill Brokoski.”

The convict lifted his eyelids slowly, and fastened his vision upon his interlocutor. And then he said very deliberately and distinctly:

“No, Mr. Gilman, and I never will!”

Gilman left the penitentiary with more than its gloom upon him. He declined the warden’s effusive invitation to stay to dinner. He wanted to get away. He could not forget the shine in Whalen’s eyes. And the fear within possessed him.

When he reached the city, after dining at the chop house where his old friends foregathered, he went out to Fifteenth Street. Costello had sold his barber shop, and the place had become a saloon. The saloon was quiet that night. Gilman drank with the bartender, and, of course, talked about the Brokoski killing. The bartender had made a study of that case, and discussed it with the curled lip of the specialist.

“They didn’t do a t’ing to Tom but t’row the hooks into ’im all right, all right. It was a case of him in the stripes from the start. Say, them lawyer guys and fly-cops’d frost you.”

Then carefully locating the actors in the tragedy, he reproduced it vividly before Gilman’s eyes. Brokoski had faced the wall where the hole was. Whalen’s back had been to it. Brokoski had sat with his back to the window. The barkeeper plunged his red hands into a drawer, rattled a corkscrew, a knife, a revolver and a jigger, and then drew out a small piece of lead. It was a thirty-eight caliber bullet.

“That’s the boy that done Brokoski,” he said.

“Where did you get it?” asked Gilman, with the mild awe a curio excites in men.

The bartender pointed to a ragged hole in the wainscoting.

“Dug it out o’ there with the icepick. I’m a Sherlock, see? Sure,” he sneered, “it might ’a’ bounced off the Polock’s breast.”

The man wiped his towel over the bar in disgust.

Then seriously:

“On the dead, Mr. Gilman, if Tom had his rights, he’d be sent back to the ward to die.”

Gilman was troubled. He returned in the morning and examined the premises carefully. At two-twenty that afternoon he was on the Limited, flying back to the capital.

That evening he was sitting with the governor in the library of the executive mansion. The windows were open and the odor of lilacs was borne in from the summer night. A negro who had served half a dozen governors, shuffled into the room, bearing a tray.

“That’s excellent whisky,” observed the private secretary.

“That was excellent whisky, Gilman,” said the governor, “before you were born.”

The private secretary was rolling a cigarette. He rolled it with unusual deliberation, licking the rice paper many times before trusting himself to paste it down.

The governor bit the end from a black cigar. A blazing match passed between them.

Then Gilman told of his interview with Whalen. He did not display much spirit in the telling. When he had done, he flecked the ash from his cigarette in a thoughtful way. Resting his forearms on his knees, he regarded the floor between his feet.

“Has it ever struck you as peculiar,” he said, “that the bullet was not introduced in evidence?”

“No,” said the governor, “not very.”

The private secretary paused. When he had done he laughed. The governor was seriously silent for many minutes, and then he said:

“Leonard, I want you to tell me your theory of this whole business.”

Gilman sat up. “Well,” he said, “had it never occurred to you that it would have been significant to determine where that bullet lodged as showing its direction? It bored a hole clear through Brokoski, but at which end had it entered?”

“I presume the medical testimony settled that,” replied the governor. He seemed to find a species of relief in this thought.

“Yes,” Gilman said, “but the medical testimony was bad. It consisted of the conclusions of a young doctor who examined Brokoski’s body after it had grown cold. He accepted Whalen’s guilt as an established fact. He assumed that the bullet entered at the breast. There was then nothing to do but to trace its course through the tissues of the body. If his views were correct, the ball would have lodged somewhere behind Brokoski.”

“But it flew out into the alley,” argued the governor, “and shattered the window in doing so.”

“True,” assented Gilman, “and yet you assume all the while that Whalen fired the shot. Of course the circumstances attending the tragedy, the occasion, the quarrel, Whalen’s flight, and the finding of his gun, lent strong color to that presumption.”

“But the shattered window,” the governor interpolated.

“Yes, and the shattered window. Now,” he continued, “a surgeon, experienced in gunshot wounds, might have been able to distinguish in such a wound as Brokoski’s, the point of the missile’s entrance from the point of exit. Of course it is not certain. The youth the police called did not think such an inquiry important, whereas it was vital. A pistol fired point-blank at a man would blacken his breast with powder. The velocity of the ball, fired at such range might have been sufficient to knock the man over backward, instead of allowing him to fall upon his face as he did. Then, there’s the window. It was shattered, the police said, by the ball. Even the glass in the upper sash was broken. The frame on the outside was blackened by powder, the stains even now being visible. Now, a bullet flying the distance it must have traversed between Whalen’s hand and the window, would, in all probability, simply have perforated the glass with a round, clean hole. But the weapon having been fired in close proximity, the concussion shattered the whole window.”

After a silence Gilman resumed:

“Now then, assume that the bullet entered Brokoski’s back and emerged from his breast. The conclusion deduced from the circumstances I have suggested, is impregnable when that bullet is located in a position in front of Brokoski.”

During the recital the governor lay in his deep chair, his arms across his breast, his finger-tips together. He regarded Gilman through half-closed eyes. A thoughtful observer would have said that he had heard the essential elements of the tale before. When he spoke, after a silence which had begun to annoy the private secretary, he said:

“Well, your hypothesis is tenable. In fact, it is one of the prettiest cases I ever saw put together.”

Gilman stirred uneasily.

“But did you learn anything as to the identity of the person, who, if your suppositions are correct, killed Brokoski?”

“That’s the weak point,” Gilman promptly admitted. “A sufficient motive is utterly lacking, if we eliminate partisan hatred. It was shown that Whalen killed him in an impulse of passion, and that alone saved him from the death penalty. But I feel that my reasoning is valid. The conviction was strengthened by Whalen’s manner and expression the other day. He never killed Brokoski, I tell you.” Gilman smote his thigh for emphasis. “Why he chooses to die in prison a silent martyr I don’t know--but the woman does.”

The governor assumed a sitting posture.

“Damn it!” exclaimed Gilman, after a momentary silence, “if those stupid police had examined the mud in the alley beneath the window that night, they would have found tracks that would have changed the course of this whole business.”

The governor bent farther forward, burying himself in an intense concentration of mind. For a time interminable to Gilman, he sat thus. His cigar went out. The ice in his glass melted, spun on the crystal brim, and sank with a tiny splash and tinkle. The little pile of burned cigarettes, the black ends of consumed cigars, the mass of tobacco ash deposited in a whisky glass, absorbed its tepid liquid, and stunk. The room grew chill, and the mists of the fountain which played in mournful solitude beneath the rocking elms in the grounds, permeated the atmosphere. The brooding night added her terrors and her cares.

Gilman took a sip of liquor, lighted a fresh cigarette, rose, and walked up and down the room. He thought of the election, so near at hand. He looked at the governor bowed there before him. What was Whalen, or the woman, or anybody to him? Let the prisoner die! What was he to the governor? John Chatham’s party needed him, his country needed him, his time needed him, mankind and human progress needed him. If he pardoned Whalen, what was to become of him? The conviction of Brokoski’s murderer alone could save him from such apparent stultification, here on the eve of an election at which, in the foolish phrase of modern politics, he sought vindication. Was this conviction possible? The bare thought halted Gilman beside the governor. He laid a hand on his shoulder.

“These abstruse propositions wouldn’t stand before a jury in a criminal court,” he said. “Let Whalen stay.”

The governor lifted his head.

“But you just now said that he was not Brokoski’s murderer.”

Gilman hesitated. When he spoke, he said:

“A jury of twelve sworn men has said that he is.”

* * * * *

Two days after the private secretary’s return, the newspapers were full of stories concerning his movements. Whalen’s picture was exploited, correspondents sought the governor for interviews, and the _Courier_ charged that, in his desperation, he intended to pardon Whalen, that he might have, in his campaign, the assistance of that skilled and unscrupulous manipulator. The pack of country newspapers took up the _Courier’s_ cry. Whalen’s illness was either ignored, or referred to as feigned, at the direction of prison authorities and the governor. And yet a certificate pigeonholed in Gilman’s desk, signed by the prison physician, stated that Thomas Whalen had pulmonary tuberculosis and was in a moribund condition.

In his office in the city William Handy, the chairman of the state central committee, read these newspaper stories, and swore as he did so. That night the shrewdest and maddest politician in the state stole out of town. The next morning Gilman was surprised when the big man burst through the door marked “private,” brushed by him and entered, unannounced, the governor’s chambers. Before the stately door swung to behind him, Gilman heard him demand:

“What’s all this I hear about your pardoning Tom Whalen?”

The private secretary did not hear the governor’s reply, for with deliberate step he had crossed the room and closed the door. He heard nothing clearly, for Handy’s voice came to him smothered, and the governor’s not at all. Once he thought he heard “mawkish sentiment,” and “the action of a political imbecile,” but what he mostly distinguished was muffled profanity. The young man for the first time in his experience was delighted when his bell buzzed just then. When he entered upon the scene, the governor, rocking complacently in his high-backed chair, was saying:

“But what if it’s my duty?”

“Duty be damned!” shouted Handy, rising to his feet, and smiting the desk with a heavy fist he had had folded during the conversation. The wrath which the politician had kept bottled up overnight had burst out at last.

“I am running this campaign,” he cried, “and as long as I do run it, I do not propose to tolerate such incredible folly as pardoning Tom Whalen.”

Gilman, wide-eyed, gazed in amaze at the two men. Handy stood glaring at the governor, his fist fastened where it had fallen. The governor’s lips were tightly compressed. A sheet of scarlet swept over his dark face. Both men were strong-willed. The tensity of such a moment could not long endure. Its contagion spread to Gilman’s nerves. The governor’s splendid frame seemed to dilate, and Gilman suddenly became conscious that the admiration he had always given the man had never before measured up to the fullness of John Chatham’s deserts. It was with relief that he saw the governor’s glance turn from Handy to bend on him.

“Gilman,” he said, “have a pardon made out for Thomas Whalen.”

This answer to Handy’s threats was punctuated by a flash from the governor’s eyes.

“And Gilman--” the governor continued.

“Yes, sir.”

“Wire that woman--what’s her name?”

“Barry?”

“Yes--Barry--wire her to come. I think I shall prefer to tell her myself.”

Handy dropped, heavy with exhaustion, into his chair. He tried to speak, but had trouble with his articulation. When he mastered his tongue, he could only blurt:

“Now you have done it, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” said the governor in gentle assent, “I have done it.” The sigh that ended this remark was one in which a heart-burdening care was dissipated. It was a sigh that resolved a vast difficulty.

When the woman came the next morning, Gilman led her at once into the governor’s presence. Before him lay a large document, lettered in preposterous script, lined in red ink. The woman knew this imitation parchment to be the pardon of Thomas Whalen. The governor rose and stood until she had seated herself, and then said, drawing the pardon on the desk to him, “I have decided to grant the application for Whalen’s pardon.”

The woman’s fingers clawed the carved arms of the chair. Gilman stared with parted lips. The governor continued as he hastily scanned the pardon:

“I take this action because circumstances recently revealed lead me to believe that Whalen is innocent.”

The governor dipped his pen in the ink.

“They form a very abstruse proposition,” he said, poising his pen nicely in his fingers, “and I am not sure that every one can grasp it.”

The governor spoke meditatively. The two persons in the room silently regarded him. Something in the man, in the moment, impelled awe. He set his hand to the paper to write, but paused an instant longer. His eyes wandered from the document. As he raised them over her, the woman bowed her head. Out through the open window, out through the summer morning, over the wimpling foliage of the trees, far, far away they gazed. And then he sighed, as a woman sighs, and turning, signed the pardon of Thomas Whalen. A moment he sat still as an ancient statue, and then dropping the pen on the desk, he turned toward Gilman with a smile. The action relieved the young man from the spell which bound him.

“Are you going before the people with that story I worked up?” he cried.

Fiercely, without awaiting a reply to a question already answered, he wheeled on the woman.

“Do you see what he has done? He has given up all--he has killed himself! He says Whalen is innocent--and doesn’t even know upon whom to fasten suspicion! Don’t you--my God, woman--can’t you see?”

Slowly the situation was borne in upon her understanding. Her mouth opened with a gasp, her eyes widened.

“Why!” she said, jerking her words from a choking throat. “He knows who did it. I told him. It was--me.”

The door latch clicked behind her. She turned in the direction whence came the sound, and repeated, as if the interrupter contradicted her:

“Yes, I did it. I killed Brokoski.”

Her strength failed her. She sobbed convulsively.

“Yes--I--did--it,” she repeated. “I--did--it.”

Gilman stared in wonder. Here, then, was the person who had stood in the alley beneath the window that night, whose footprints would have led him to the solution of his mystery, to the end of his clever chain. The problem of her motive for slaying Brokoski alone remained. He longed to ask her, but she had collapsed unconscious in her chair. Turning to the governor he implored light. A word informed him of the accidental killing of Brokoski by a jealous woman who was trying to shoot his vis-à-vis. Then he demanded in tones reproachful:

“Why did you not tell me this?”

“Because,” the man quietly responded, “I do not war on women.”

The door whose latch had clicked had opened wide, and William Handy entered, smiling.

Governor Chatham was assorting papers on his desk, as a man would whose routine work had received a trifling interruption. Handy remained on his feet.

“John,” he said, “John, I take off my hat to you. I admire your nerve. I recognized it years ago, that day you presided over our convention in the old seventh district--remember?--the day you turned me down so hard. Remember?”

The governor smiled.

“This ain’t flattery,” said Handy, seating himself in a leather chair. “You’re not only all I’ve said, you’re a devil of a good fellow to boot.”

Handy spoke seldom. He never wrote letters, but sent word, according to an ancient maxim uttered by one of the political fathers. But when he did speak, he spoke bluntly, in the same tone in which he would have called a man a liar. The governor raised his hand to stay Handy’s compliments.

“Yes, John,” he persisted. “You’re a hell of a good fellow, but,” he added, “you’re a damn poor politician.”

There was the faintest shadow of a smile on the governor’s face. Handy closed his eyes until they were the merest slits. He puffed his cigar back to life.

His head was wrapped in scarfs of smoke.

“When does the grand jury sit?” he inquired, after a time.

“Not till the December term.”

“We can have a special one impaneled. I’ll have Donnelly call it.”

Donnelly was a judge of dignity and erudition, and Handy spoke of him as if he were his hired man, which he was.

“The boys’ll be glad to get Tom back in the nineteenth. O’Rourke says--”