Chapter XLI

Wilmot Allen was surprised and annoyed at being called back to New York by his employer. He had not "gotten over" Barbara in the least, but the great West had entered his blood. Thanks to financial arrangements with Blizzard he had lived a life free from care, and indeed had grown and developed in many ways, just as a forest tree will, to which air and sunlight has been admitted by removing its nearest neighbors, together with all their claims upon the rainfall and the tree-food locked up in the forest soil,

He had grown in body and mind. Wall Street, that had seemed so broad and important to him, now seemed narrow and insignificant. It was better for a man, a good horse between his knees, to find out what lay beyond the Ridges than whether steel was going up or down. He looked back upon his past life, not, it is true, with contempt and loathing, but with amused tolerance, as a man wise and reliable looks back upon the pranks of his boyhood.

He loved Barbara with all his heart, but no longer with the feeling that the loss of her would put an end to all the possibilities of life. Indeed he was coolly resolved in the event of her marrying somebody else to marry somebody else himself. The thought of children and a home had grown very dear to him. In short, he had assimilated a characteristic of the great unsettled West, where the ratio of the male of the species to the female is often as great as ten to one.

But if the year did not cure him of Barbara he would get her if he could.

To the main line was a day's journey over a single-track road abounding in undeveloped way stations, at which an insatiable locomotive was forever stopping to drink. At one of these stations a young man taller and broader even than Wilmot himself, and like him bearded and brown as autumn leaves, boarded the train laboriously and came down the aisle occasionally catching at the backs of seats for support.

A second look assured Wilmot that the stranger was not drunk, but sick or hurt, and he was wondering whether or not to offer him assistance, when the stranger suddenly stopped and smiled, steadied himself with one hand, and held out the other.

"I heard that you would be on this train," he said simply, "so I managed to catch it, too. May I sit with you?"

Wondering, Wilmot made room for the stranger and waited developments. But as these were not at once forthcoming he felt that he must break a silence which seemed awkward to him. And he turned his head and saw that the man had fainted.

A request for whiskey addressed to a car containing a dozen men accustomed to wrest metals from the earth was not in vain. Wilmot chose the nearest of twelve outstretched flasks, and was obliged to refuse a thirteenth in the kindly hand of the conductor.

"Fed better?"

"Thanks, I'm all right."

The twelve miners withdrew tactfully to their seats.

"Sure?"

"Sure. Just let me sample that brand again. Good. Now if you don't mind I'll say what I came to say."

"But aren't you hurt--isn't there something to do?"

"I've _been_ hurt. I'm just weak. Don't think about it. But you're Mr. Wilmot Allen all right, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"It's hard to be sure of a man you never knew and who's grown a beard since you saw him last."

"I assure you," Wilmot smiled, "that I'm only waiting to reach a first-class barber-shop."

"Perhaps you will change your mind."

"Why should I?"

"You know a man named O'Hagan?"

Wilmot nodded.

"I had a talk with him up in the mountains yesterday. He spoke truth for once. You know a man in New York--Blizzard?"

"He's been a good friend to me."

"Why?" asked the stranger.

"I don't know. I've asked myself that question a thousand times."

"He's helped you with your debts in return for your services in teaching a lot of foreigners to shoot straight?"

Wilmot frowned.

"Did it ever occur to you that he could have obtained half a dozen teachers for a tenth of the money?"

"That _has_ occurred to me," said Wilmot stiffly.

"Obviously then he has some ulterior use for you."

"Very possibly."

"Please don't take offence. There are reasons why you shouldn't. I am coming to them. Remember, O'Hagan talked to me, and talked truth. Blizzard is planning a revolution. You are to be one of the leaders. You imagine that one of the hell-governed Latin republics is to be the seat of operations, or you wouldn't have gone into the thing. But Blizzard is after bigger game than undeveloped wildernesses. Mr. Allen, you are part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government of New York City."

"Say that again."

The stranger smiled. "O'Hagan at the last made a clean breast of everything. He had to. I came West to make him."

"At the _last_? What does that mean?"

"When a man won't talk you have to make him--even if you fix him so that he can never talk again."

"Is O'Hagan _dead_?"

"He had his choice. But he _had_ to talk. If I had let him off afterward--I couldn't have gotten away with the information. One of us had to go out, and I had the power to decide which. I chose that O'Hagan should be the one. He was a man steeped in crime. I am not."

"You killed him?"

"I am a very poor talker if I have conveyed another meaning. I tracked him into the mountains. He shot me twice before I could get my hands on him. I twisted the truth out of him, and then as I was about to faint like a school-girl, and as my information was precious, I flung him over a cliff. If I hadn't, you see, he could have fixed me while I was unconscious."

The man's voice was very quiet, very matter-of-fact. Wilmot stared at him with a sort of wondering horror, for he knew that the man was telling the truth.

"He shot you twice. That was some time yesterday. You've seen a doctor?"

"There was none, and I had to ride all night to get here."

"Are you badly hit?"

The stranger drew back his coat and disclosed a shirt twice perforated over the abdomen and dark with dried and thickening blood. "Please don't try to do anything. There's no help. The damage is where it doesn't show. Only listen, please, and believe, and be frank with me."

Wilmot nodded gravely. "I don't know who you are," he said, "but you are hurt, and if you'd rather talk than try to do something about it, of course I'll listen."

"You are in wrong on the revolution," said the stranger. "It is not to come off in South America, but in the city of New York. If Blizzard's plans carry, this will happen. On the 15th of January there will be an explosion of dynamite loud enough to be heard from, the Battery to the Bronx. At that signal two-thirds of the police force, at the moment on active duty, will be shot dead in their tracks. The assassins, distinguished from law-abiding citizens by straw hats of a peculiar weave--"

"I have such a hat in my trunk."

"Are to assemble together with that third of the police force whom it was not necessary to annihilate, at the Sub-Treasury in Wall Street. Here they will receive further orders--some to loot the Sub-Treasury, some to loot banks, some Tiffany's, some the great wholesale jewellers of Maiden Lane. You, perhaps, as a man of superior talk and breeding, would be sent with a picked crew of Polacks, dagoes, and other high-minded patriots to rifle the Metropolitan Museum of Art--"

"Look here, did O'Hagan--"

"He did. Meanwhile all communication by telephone, by telegraph, by cable between New York and the outer world will be cut off. For at least twenty-four hours the city will be in Blizzard's power, at his, disposition."

"How about communication by train?"

"Trains will come into the Grand Central and the Pennsylvania, but they will not go out."

"A man could jump into an automobile and carry the news."

"Ferries will stop running. Bridges will be closed."

The idea of looting New York had fired Wilmot's imagination. It was a possibility to which he had never before given any thought,

"But," he objected, "there must be a flaw somewhere."

"Probably," admitted the stranger. "For there is a flaw in Blizzard's mind. It is the only way to account for him. He stands on the verge of insanity."

"Suppose the plan carries. The city has been looted. What next?"

"The stuff is hidden under Blizzard's house in Marrow Lane in cellars that he has been preparing for years. A passage leads from these cellars to a pier on the East River. Either he gets away with his loot in a stolen liner, or he finds that he may live on in New York, or perhaps in Washington."

"I don't see that."

"What effect would a successful revolution in New York have upon the discontented and the murderous of other cities? Are the criminals of San Francisco, Denver, Chicago to be outdone by the criminals of the effete East? I tell you, Mr. Allen, that sometimes in mad visions the legless beggar sees upon his brows a kingly crown."

"But the rest of the police--the garrison at Governor's Island?"

"O'Hagan was Blizzard's right-hand man, his general in the West. For the honor of being his left-hand man there are two aspirants--the mayor of New York City and the police commissioner--nor will the lieutenant-governor of our great State hold his hands behind his back and shake his head when the loot is being distributed."

"Are you _joking?"_

"No, Mr. Allen. I am dying. Now listen. I assume that you are no longer with Blizzard."

"What an ass I've been!"

"You are to find Abe Lichtenstein and tell him what I have told you. The boy Bubbles will put you on his track. As for money which Blizzard has advanced to you--" The stranger fumbled in his breast pocket and brought forth a much-soiled sheet of paper. "This locates outlying mining claims in Utah. They will make you rich. One-third to you--one-third to Miss Barbara Ferris--one-third to the boy Bubbles. You will tell him that I was his brother--different mothers, but the same father."

"_You_ are Harry West," and Wilmot looked with compassionate interest upon the man who, if only for a brief period of time, had once stood first in Barbara's affections.

Under the strain of talking West's voice had grown weaker. "Miss Barbara," he said quietly, "is in great danger from my father--"

"_Your_ father?"

"Didn't I tell you? Oh, yes. He is my father--Blizzard. That is why I don't mind dying. When the city is in confusion, and without any laws save of his own dictation, Miss Barbara will be in terrible danger. Many years from now, when it can do no harm with you, tell her, please, that in my life I had the incomparable privilege--"

Wilmot leaped to his feet. "Is there a doctor here? This man is dying."

But the Spartan, the wolf Death gnawing at his vitals, had said all that it was necessary for him to say. Wilmot Allen's strong arm about him, his mouth vaguely smiling, he fell heavily forward as if under the weight of a new and overpowering wonder and knowledge.