Chapter XIII: Book III: I (2)

He brushed past them in the doorway, and called from the kitchen:

"Besides, you've got orders."

Then Archie remembered; he looked at his mother, at his father, glanced about the little room, barren in the poverty that had entered the home, hesitated, then turned and left them standing there. As he passed through the kitchen he heard little Katie and little Jake breathing in their sleep, and the sound tore his heart.

He was over the fence and in the alley just behind Curly. They ran for a block, darted across a lighted street, then into the black alley again. For several blocks they dashed along, getting on as fast as they could. Then at length Archie, soft from his imprisonment, stopped in the utter abandon of physical exhaustion and stood leaning against a barn.

"God!" he said, "I hain't going another step! I'm all in!"

Curly had been leading the way in the tireless energy of the health his out-of-door life gave him, but when Archie stopped, he paused and stood attent, inclining his head and listening.

The night, almost half gone, was still; sounds that in the daytime and in the earlier evening had been lost in the roar of the city became distinct, trolley-cars sweeping along some distant street, the long and lonesome whistles of railroad engines, now and then the ringing of a bell; close by, the nocturnal movements of animals in the barns that staggered grotesquely along the alley.

"It's all right," said Curly; "we've made a getaway."

He relaxed and slouched over to where Archie stood.

"Where are we, do you know?" he asked.

Archie thought. "That must be Fifteenth Street down there. Yes, there's the gas house." He pointed to a dark mass looming in the night. "And the canal--and yes, Maynard's lumber-yard's right beyond."

"How far from the spill?"

"About three blocks."

"Come on, we must get out on the main stem."

They went on, but in the security they felt at not being followed, they ran no more, but paced rapidly along, side by side. They had not had the time nor the breath for talk, but now suddenly, Archie, in a tone that paid tribute to Curly's powers, expressed the subliminal surprise he had had.

"How did you know the bulls was there?"

"I piked off the elbow just as we went in."

"I didn't see him," said Archie. "Where was he?"

"Right across the street, planted in a doorway."

"How do you suppose he'd spotted us?"

"Oh, he was layin' for you, that's all. He had it all framed up. He thought he'd job you and swell himself."

"What do you think of that now!"

They reached the yard where the black shadows cast by the tall leaning piles of lumber welcomed them like friends, and through this they passed, coming out at length on the railroad. They reconnoitered. The sky of the October night was overcast by thin clouds which, gray at first, turned bright silver as they flew beneath the risen moon.

"The dog's out," said Curly, who had almost as many names for the moon as a poet.

Before them the rails gleamed and glinted; over the yards myriads of switch-lights glowed red and green, sinister and confusing. Not far away a switch-engine stood, leisurely working the pump of its air-brake, emitting steamy sighs, as if it were snatching a moment's rest from its labors. On the damp and heavy air the voices of the engineer and fireman were borne to them. At times other switch-engines slid up and down the tracks. Curly and Archie sat down in the shadow of the lumber and waited. After a while, down the rails a white light swung in an arc, the resting switch-engine moved and began to make up a freight-train.

"Now's our chance," said Curly.

The switch-engine went to and fro and up and down, whistling now and then, ringing its bell constantly, drawing cars back and forth interminably, pulling strings of them here and there, adding to and taking from its train, stopping finally for a few minutes while a heavy passenger-train swept by, its sleeping-cars all dark, rolling heavily, mysteriously, their solid wheels clicking delicately over the joints of the rails.

"I wish we were on that rattler," said Archie, with the longing a departing train inspires, and more than the normal longing. Curly laughed.

"The John O'Brien's good enough for us," he said.

The passenger-train, shrinking in size by swift perceptible degrees as it lost itself in the darkness, soon was gone. The white lantern swung again, and the switch-engine resumed its monotonous labors, confined to the tedious limits of that yard, never allowed to go out into the larger world. Gradually it worked the train it was patiently piecing together over to the side of the yard where Archie and Curly waited. Then, at last, watching their chance, they slipped out, found an open car, sprang into it, slunk out of possible sight of conductor or switchman, and were happy.

The car was bumped and buffeted up and down the yard for an hour; but Archie and Curly within were laughing at having thus eluded the officers. They sat against the wall of the car, their knees to their chins, talking under cover of the noise the cars made. After a while the engine whistled and the train moved.

When they awoke, the car was standing still and a gray light came through the cracks of the door.

"I wonder where we are," said Archie, rubbing his eyes.

Curly got up, stretched, crept to the middle of the car and looked out. Presently Archie heard him say:

"By God!"

He joined him. And there were the lumber piles. It was morning, the city was awake, the grinding of its weary mills had begun. They were just where they had been the night before.

"Marooned!" said Curly, and he laughed.

They decided, or Curly decided, that they must wait. Some of those restless switch-engines would make up another train before long, and in it they might leave the town, in which there was now no place of safety for them. The morning was cold; the chill of the damp atmosphere stiffened them. Just outside, in the lumber-yard, several men were working, and the fugitives must not be seen by them, for they would be as hostile as the whole world had suddenly become. They waited, but the men did not leave. Their task seemed to be as endless as that of the switch-engine. For a long while the railroad yards were strangely still. Now and then Curly crept to the door and peeped out; the lumber-shovers were not twenty feet away. The door on the opposite side of the car was locked. Finally, they grew restless; they decided to go out anyhow.

"Hell!" said Archie. "There's nothing to it. Let's mope."

Something of Archie's recklessness and disregard of consequences affected Curly.

"Well, all right," he said; "come on."

They went to the door of the car. And there, looking full in their faces, was a switchman with a red, rough face and a stubble of reddish beard. The switchman drew back with a curse to express his astonishment, his surprise, the sudden fright that confused and angered him.

"Come out o' that, you hobos," he called, stepping back. The men in the lumber-yard heard his sudden cry, stopped and looked up. The switchman cursed and called again.

Curly and Archie shrank into the darkness of the car. Archie had drawn his revolver.

"Put it up," said Curly, with the anger of his disappointment.

They waited and listened; the switchman's voice was heard no more; he must have gone away.

"He'll blow us to the railroad coppers. Now's our only chance!"

They went to the door, leaped out, bent their heads and ran. And instantly, with the howl of the hunter, the men in the lumber-yard, not knowing Archie or Curly or what they had done, or whether they had done anything, left their work and ran after them, raising the old hue and cry of English justice. Even the engines in the yards joined by sounding sharp, angry blasts on their whistles, and behind the little group that was rapidly becoming a mob, raced the switchman with two of the railroad's detectives.

As swiftly as they could, in their stiffness and their hunger and their cold, Archie and Curly ran down the long yards, over cinders and uneven ties. They ran for a quarter of a mile and the yard narrowed, the tracks began to converge, to unite, marking the beginning of the main line. On either side rose the clayey banks, ahead there was a narrow cut with an elevated crossing; near this was a switchman's shanty. Just then something sang over their heads, a musical humming sound. They knew the sound a bullet makes and dodged into the switchman's shanty, slammed the door behind them, locked it and, a moment later, were at bay with the mob. The crowd surged up to the very door, flung itself against the shanty. Then Curly called:

"Stand back!"

The cry of the crowd was given in a lower, angrier tone; again it hurled itself against the door, and the little shanty, painted in the yellow and white of the railroad, rocked. Another shot pierced the shanty, splintering the boards above their heads. Then Archie stepped to the little window, thrust out his revolver. There was an angry cry outside, then stillness; the crowd gave way, withdrew, and kept its distance.

"Don't push the rod!" Curly commanded. "What in hell ails you?"

"Oh, sin not leery! I'll plug 'em for keeps!"

Curly looked into Archie's white face.

"Are the bulls tailing on?" he asked.

"They're coming strong! Listen!"

"We'd better cave!" urged Curly.

"Like hell!" Archie replied. "They don't drop me without a muss now. If you want to flunk--"

Curly's face flamed and his little eyes pierced Archie.

"Look out, young fellow!" he said, taking a sudden step toward him. Archie looked at him with a sneer. Then Curly stopped.

"Look here, Dutch," he said. "Don't be a fool. We're--"

"I've told you what I'll do," said Archie, all the dogged stubbornness of his nature aroused. Then Curly seemed to lose interest. Outside they could hear the crowd again.

Half an hour passed. They heard the clang of a gong in the near-by street.

"The pie wagon," said Curly.

Archie was quiet. There was a cheer, then a voice, deep, commanding and official:

"Surrender in the name of the law!"

Curly looked a question at Archie.

"What ails you to-day?" asked Archie. "Lost your nerve?"

"I haven't lost my nut."

"We'll give you three minutes," said the voice, "then if you don't come out, holding up your hands, we'll fire."

For what seemed a long time there was utter quiet, then bullets tore through the pine boards of the little shanty and Archie sprang to the window and fired. Curly was squatting on the floor. Archie fired again, and again, and yet again.

"I've only got one left," he said, turning from the window.

"All right, then we'll cave."

Curly got up, went to the door, flung it open and held up his hands. The mob cheered.

But Archie stayed. The officer called again, Curly called, the crowd called; then the shooting began again. Presently Archie appeared in the doorway and looked about with a white, defiant face. And there, before him, a rod away, stood Kouka, revolver in hand. He saw Archie, his brow wrinkled, and he smiled darkly.

"You might as well--" he began.

Archie looked at him an instant, slowly raised his revolver above his head, lowered it in deliberate aim, fired, and Kouka fell to his knees, toppled forward with a groan and collapsed in a heap on the ground, dead.

The crowd was stricken still. Archie stood looking at Kouka, his eyes burning, his face white, his smoking revolver lowered in his hand. A smile came to his pale, tense lips. Then the crowd closed in on him; the policemen, angry and ferocious, caught and pinioned him, began to club him. The crowd pressed closer, growing savage, shaking fists at him, trying to strike him. Suddenly some one began to call for a rope.

Then the policemen, so eager a moment before to wreak their own vengeance on him, were now concerned for his safety. A sergeant gave a command; they dragged Archie toward the patrol wagon. The crowd surged that way, and Archie, bareheaded, his yellow hair disordered, his eyes flashing, his white brow stained with blood, stared about on the policemen and on the crowd with a look of hatred. Then he glanced back to where some men were bending over Kouka, and he smiled again.

"Well, I croaked him all right," he said.

A patrolman struck him with a club; and he staggered as the blow fell with a sharp crash on his head.

"Get on there!" said the sergeant, cursing him. He was thrown into the patrol wagon beside Curly, and he sat there, white, with the blood trickling in two streams from his forehead, his eyes flashing, and the strange smile on his lips whenever he looked back where Kouka lay. The patrol wagon dashed away.

VI

Marriott was sensible of a hostile atmosphere the moment he entered the police station. The desk sergeant glanced at him with disapproval, kept him waiting, finally consulted an inspector, blew savagely into a speaking tube, and said:

"Here's a young lawyer to see Koerner."

The contemptuous description, the tone, the attitude, all expressed the hatred the police had for Archie, a hatred that Marriott realized would extend itself to him for taking sides with Archie. The turnkey, a thin German with cheek-bones that seemed about to perforate his sallow skin, a black mustache, and two black, glossy curls plastered on his low forehead, likewise scowled and showed reluctance.

"How many damned lawyers," he said, taking a corn-cob pipe from his mouth, "is that feller going to have, anyway?"

"Why," asked Marriott in a sudden hope that ignored the man's insolence, "have there been others?"

"Humph!" said the turnkey, jangling his heavy keys. "Only about a dozen."

"Well, I'll see him anyway."

Marriott had waited thus for Archie and for other men who had done crimes; but never for one who had killed a man. He felt a new, unpleasant sensation, a nervous apprehension, just a faint sickness, and then--Archie came.

The boy stepped into the turnkey's room with a certain air of relief; he straightened himself, stretched, and within the flannel undershirt that showed his white, muscular neck to its base, his chest expanded as he filled his lungs with the welcome air. He threw away his cigarette, came forward and pressed Marriott's hand, strongly, with hearty gratitude.

The turnkey led them to a dingy room, and locked them in a closet used as a consulting cabinet by those few prisoners who could secure lawyers. The gloom was almost as thick as the dust in the closet. Marriott thought of all the tragedies the black hole had known; and wondered if Archie had any such thoughts. He could not see Archie's face clearly, but it seemed to be clouded by too many realities to be conscious of the romantic or the tragic side of things. It was essential to talk in low tones, for they knew that the turnkey was listening through the thin, wooden partition. Marriott waited for Archie to begin.

"Well?" he said presently.

"Got a match, Mr. Marriott?" Archie asked.

Marriott drew out his silver match-box, and then looked at Archie's face glowing red in the tiny flame of the light he made for his cigarette. The action calmed and reassured Marriott Archie's face wore no unwonted or tragic expression; if his experience had changed him, it had not as yet set its mark on him. Marriott lighted a cigarette himself.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come," said Archie, dropping to the floor the match he economically shared with Marriott, and then solicitously pressing out its little embers with his foot.

"I got your message only this morning."

"Humph!" sneered Archie. "That's the way of them coppers. I asked 'em to 'phone you the morning they made the pinch."

"Well, they didn't."

"No, they've got it in for me, Mr. Marriott; they'll job me if they can. I was worried and 'fraid I'd have to take some other lawyer."

"They told me you had seen others."

"Oh, some of them guys was here tryin' to tout out a case; you know the kind. Frisby and Pennell, some of them dead ones. I s'pose they were lookin' for a little notoriety."

The unpleasant sensation Marriott felt at Archie's recognition of his own notoriety was lost in the greater disgust that he had for the lawyers who were so anxious to share that notoriety. He knew how Frisby solicited such cases, how the poor and friendless prisoners eagerly grasped at the hopes he could so shamelessly hold out to them, how their friends and relatives mortgaged their homes, when they had them, or their furniture, or their labor in the future, to pay the fees he extorted. And he knew Pennell, the youth just out of law-school, who had the gift of the gab, and was an incorrigible spouter, having had the misfortune while in college to win a debate and to obtain a prize for oratory. His boundless conceit and assurance made up for his utter lack of knowledge of law, or of human nature, his utter lack of experience, or of sympathy. He had no principles, either, but merely a determination to get on in the world; he was ever for sale, and Marriott knew how his charlatanism would win, how soon he would be among the successful of the city.

"I tell you, Archie," he was saying, "I can't consent to represent you if either of these fellows is in the case."

"Who? Them guys? Not much!" Archie puffed at his cigarette. "Not for me. I'm up against the real thing this time." He gave a little sardonic laugh.

It was difficult to discuss the case to any purpose in that little closet with its dirt and darkness, and the repressing knowledge that some one was straining to hear what they would say. Marriott watched the spark of Archie's cigarette glow and fade and glow and fade again.

"We can't talk here," said Archie. "You pull off my hearing as soon as possible, and get me out of here. When I get over to the pogey I'll have a chance to turn around, and we can talk. Bring it on as soon's you can, Mr. Marriott. Won't you? God! It's hell in that crum box, and those drunks snoring and snorting and havin' the willies all night. Can't you get it on to-morrow morning?"

"Can we be ready by then?"

"Oh, there's nothin' to it down here. We'll waive."

"We'll see," said Marriott, with the professional dislike of permitting clients to dictate how their desperate affairs should be managed. "You see I don't know the circumstances of the affair yet. All I know is what I've read in the papers."

"Oh, well, to hell with them," said Archie. "Never mind what they say. They're tryin' to stick me for that Flanagan job. You know, Mr. Marriott, I didn't have nothin' to do with that, don't you?"

Archie leaned forward in an appeal that was irresistible, convincing.

"Yes, I know that."

"All right, I want you to know that. I ain't that kind, you know. But Kouka--well, I got him, but I had to, Mr. Marriott; I had to. You see that, don't you? He agitated me to it; he agitated me to it."

He repeated the word thus strangely employed a number of times, as if it gave him relief and comfort.

"Yes, sir, he agitated me to it. I had to; that's all. It was a case of self-defense."

Marriott was silent for a few moments. Then he asked:

"Have you talked to the police?"

Archie laughed.

"They give me the third degree, but--there was nothin' doin'."

Marriott was relieved to find that he did not have to face the usual admission the police wring from their subjects, but Archie went on:

"Of course, that don't make no difference. They can frame up a confession all right."

"They'd hardly do anything that desperate," said Marriott, though not with the greatest assurance.

"Well," said Archie, "I wouldn't put it past 'em."

Marriott finished his cigarette in a reflective silence, dropped it to the floor and imitated Archie in the care with which he extinguished it. Then he sighed, straightened up and said:

"Well, Archie, let's get down to business; tell me the particulars."

And Archie narrated the events that led up to the tragedy.

"I wanted to see the old people--and the kids--and Gus." He was silent then, and Marriott did not break the silence.

"Say, Mr. Marriott," the boy suddenly asked, "where is Gus?"

"I don't know."

"What's become of her? Do you know that?"

"N-no--," said Marriott. He felt that Archie was eying him shrewdly.

"You know," said Archie in the lowest tone, "I'm afraid, I've got a kind of hunch--that she's--gone wrong."

Marriott feared his own silence, but he could not speak.

"Hell!" Archie exclaimed, in a tone that dismissed the question. "Well, I wanted to go home, and I goes, Curly and me. Kouka followed; he plants himself across the street, gets the harness bulls, and they goes gunning. Curly, he sees him--Curly can see anything. We lammed. The coppers misses us; and we gets on a freight-car. They cuts that car out, and we stays in it all night. Damn it! Did you ever hear o' such luck? Now did you, Mr. Marriott?"

Marriott owned that he had not.

"In the morning," Archie went on, "they lagged us and we ran--they began to shoot, and--"

He stopped.

"Well," he said very quietly. "I had my rod, and barked at Kouka. I got him."

Marriott wished that he could see Archie's face. It was not so dim in there as it had been, or so it seemed to Marriott, for his eyes had accommodated themselves to the gloom, but he could not read Archie's expression. He waited for him to go on. He was intensely interested now in the human side of the question; the legal side might wait. He longed to put a dozen questions to Archie, but he dared not; he felt that he could not profane this soul that had erred and gone astray, by prying out its secrets; he was conscious only of a great pity. He thought he might ask Archie if he had shot, aimed, intentionally; he wished to know just what had been in the boy's heart at that moment: then he had a great fear that Archie might tell him. But Archie was speaking again.

"Say, Mr. Marriott," he said, "could you go out to my home and get me some clothes? I want to make as good a front as I can when I go into court."

"Your clothes seem pretty good; they look new. They gave them to you, I suppose, at the penitentiary?"

Archie laughed.

"I'd look like a jay in them stir clothes," he said. "These--well, these ain't mine," he added simply. "But get me a shirt, if you can, and a collar and--a tie--a blue one. And say, if you can, get word to the folks--tell 'em not to worry. And if you can find Gus, tell her to come down. You know."

Marriott went out into the street, glad of the sunlight, the air, the bustle of normal life. And yet, as he analyzed his sensations, he was surprised to note that the whole affair had lacked the sense of tragedy he had expected; it all seemed natural and commonplace enough. Archie was the same boy he had known before. The murder was but an incident in Archie's life, that was all, just as his own sins and follies and mistakes were incidents that usually appeared to be necessary and unavoidable--incidents he could always abundantly account for and palliate and excuse and justify. Sometimes it seemed that even good grew out of them. Sometimes! Yes, always, he felt, else were the universe wrong. And after all--where was the difference between sins? What made one greater than another? Wherein was the murder Archie had done worse than the unkind word he, Gordon Marriott, had spoken that morning? But Marriott put this phase of the question aside, and tried to trace Archie's deed back to its first cause. As he did this, he became fascinated with the speculation, and his heart beat fast as he thought that if he could present the case to a jury in all its clarity and truth--perhaps--perhaps--

VII

Archie did not have his hearing the next morning. The newspapers said "the State" was not ready, which meant that Allen, the prosecutor, and the police were not ready. Quinn and Allen had conferences. They felt it to be their duty to have Archie put to death if possible, and they were undecided as to which case would the better insure this result. Allen found legal difficulties; there was a question whether or not the murder of Kouka had been murder in the first degree. Hence he wished to have Bridget Flanagan identify Archie.

Several days elapsed, and then one morning, Bentley, the sheriff, brought Bridget Flanagan to the Central Police Station in a carriage. Allen and Cleary and Quinn, with several officers and reporters, were waiting to witness her confrontation of Archie.

The old woman was dressed in black; she wore a black shawl and a black bonnet, but these had faded independently of each other, so that each was now of its own dingy shade. The dress had a brown cast, the shawl a tone of green, the bonnet was dusty and graying, and the black veil that was tightly bound about her brow, like the band of a nun, had been empurpled in the process of decay. She leaned heavily on Bentley, tottering in her weakness, now and then lifting her arms with a wild, nervous gesture. Bentley's huge, disproportionate bulk moved uncertainly beside her, lurching this way and that, as if he feared to step on her feet or her ancient gown, finding it difficult, at arm's length, to support and guide her. But at last he got her to a chair. At the edge of the purplish veil bound across the hairless brows, a strip of adhesive plaster showed. The old woman wearily closed the eyes that had gazed on the horrors of the tragedy; her mouth moved in senile spasms. Now and then she mumbled little prayers that sounded like oaths; and raised to her lips the little ball into which she had wadded her handkerchief. And she sat there, her palsied head shaking disparaging negatives. The police, the detectives, the prosecutor, the reporters looked on. They said nothing for a long time.

Cleary, trying to speak with an exaggerated tenderness, finally said:

"Miss Flanagan, we hate to trouble you, but we won't keep you long. We think we have the man who killed your dear sister--we'd like to have you see him--"

The old woman started, tried to get up, sank back, made a strange noise in her throat, pushed out her hands toward Cleary as if to repulse him and his suggestion, then clasped her hands, wrung them, closed her eyes, swayed to and fro in her chair and moaned, ejaculating the little prayers that sounded like oaths. Cleary waited. Quinn brought a glass of water. Presently the old woman grew calm again; after a while Cleary renewed his suggestion. The old woman continued to moan. Cleary whispered to two policemen and they left the room. The policemen were gone what seemed a long time, but at last they appeared in the doorway, and between them, looking expectantly about him, was Archie Koerner. The policemen led him into the room, the group made way, they halted before the old woman. Cleary advanced.

"Miss Flanagan," he said very gently, standing beside her, and bending assiduously, "Miss Flanagan, will you please take a look now, and tell us--if you ever saw this man before, if he is the man who--"

Wearily, slowly, the old woman raised her blue eyelids; and then she shuddered, started, seemed to have a sudden access of strength, got to her feet and cried out:

"Oh, my poor sister! my poor sister! You kilt her! You kilt her!"

Then she sank to her knees and collapsed on the floor. Bentley ran across the room, brought a glass of water, and stood uncertainly, awkwardly about, while the others bore the old woman to a couch, stretched her out, threw up a window, began to fan her with newspapers, with hats, anything. Some one took the water from the sheriff, pressed the glass to the old woman's lips; it clicked against her teeth.

Then Cleary, Quinn, Bentley, the policemen, the detectives, the reporters, looked at one another and smiled, Cleary bent over the old woman.

"That's all, Miss Flanagan. You needn't worry any more. We're sorry we had to trouble you, but the law, you know, and our duty--"

He repeated the words "law" and "duty" several times. Meanwhile Archie stood there, between the two policemen. He looked about him, at the men in the room, at the old woman stretched on the lounge; finally his gaze fastened on Cleary, and his lips slowly curled in a sneer, and his face hardened into an expression of utter scorn.

"Take him down!" shouted Cleary angrily.

The reporters rushed out. An hour later the extras were on the streets, announcing the complete and positive identification of Archie Koerner by Bridget Flanagan.

"The hardened prisoner," the reports said, "stood and sneered while the old woman confronted him. The police have not known so desperate a character in years."

VIII

Marriott had attended to all of Archie's commissions, save one--that of telling Gusta to go to him. He had not done this because he did not know where to find her. But Gusta went herself, just as she seemed to do most things in life, because she could not help doing them, because something impelled, forced her to do them,--some power that made sport of her, using a dozen agencies, forces hereditary, economic, social, moral, all sorts--driving her this way and that. She had read of the murder, and then, with horror, of Archie's arrest. She did not know he was out of prison until she heard that he was in prison again. She began to calculate the time that had flowed by so swiftly, making such changes in her life. Her first impulse was to go to him, but now she feared the police. She recalled her former visits, that first Sunday at the workhouse, on which she had thought herself so sad, whereas she had not begun to learn what sorrow was. She recalled the day in the police station a year before, and remembered the policeman who had held her arm so suggestively. She read the newspapers eagerly, absorbed every detail, her heart sinking lower than it had ever gone before. When she read that Marriott was to defend Archie, she allowed herself to hope. The next day she read an account of the identification of Archie by the surviving Flanagan sister, and then, when hope was gone, she could resist no longer the impulse to go to him.

She paused again at the door of the sergeant's room, her heart beating painfully with the fear that showed itself in little white spots on each side of her nostrils; then the timid parleying with the officers, the delay, the suspicion, the opposition, the reluctance, until an officer in uniform took her in charge, led her down the iron stairway to the basement, and had the turnkey open the prison doors. Archie came to the bars, and peered purblindly into the gloom. And Gusta went close now, closer than she had ever gone before; the bars had no longer the old meaning for her, they had no longer their old repulsion, and she looked at Archie no more with the old feeling of reproach and moral superiority. In fact, she judged no more; sin had healed her of such faults as self-satisfaction and moral complacency; it had softened and instructed her, and in its great kindness revealed to her her own relation to all who sin, so that she came now with nothing but compassion, sympathy and love. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"Oh, Archie!" she said. "Oh, Archie!"

Archie looked at her and at the officers. Gusta was oblivious; she put her face to the greasy bars, and pressed her lips mutely between them. Archie, who did not like to cry before an officer and before the other prisoners, struggled hard. Then he kissed her, coldly.

"Oh, Archie, Archie!" was all she could say, putting all her anguish, her distress, her sorrow, her impotent desire to help into the varying inflections of her tone.

"Oh, Archie! Archie! _Archie!_"

She spoke his name this last time as if she must find relief by wringing her whole soul into it. Then she stood, biting her lip as if to stop its quivering. Archie, on his part, looked at her a moment, then at the floor.

"Say you didn't do it, Archie."

"Do what?"

"You know--"

"You mean Kouka?"

"Oh, no," she said, impatient with the question.

"That Flanagan job?"

She nodded rapidly.

"Of course not; you ought to know that. Every one knows that--even the coppers." His sentence ended with a sneer cast in the officer's direction. And Gusta sighed.

"I'm so glad!" she said, her bosom rising and falling in relief. "They all said--"

"Oh, that's just the frame-up," said Archie. "They'd job me for it quick enough." He was sneering again at the officer, as incarnating the whole police system, and his face was darkened by a look of all hatred and malignity. The officer smiled calmly.

"I'm so glad," Gusta was smiling now. "But--" she began. Her lip quivered; the tears started afresh. "What about the other?"

"That was self-defense; he agitated me to it. But don't let's talk before that copper there--" He could not avert his look of hatred from the officer, whose face was darkening, as he plucked nervously at his mustache.

"He'd say anything--that's his business," Archie went on, unable to restrain himself.

"Sh! Don't, Archie!" Gusta said. "Don't!"

Archie drew in full breaths, inflating his white chest. The officer returned his look of hatred, his bronzed face had taken on a shade of green; the two men struggled silently, then controlled themselves. Gusta was trying again to choke down her sobs.

"How's father?" Archie asked, after a silence, striving for a commonplace tone.

"He's well,--I guess."

"He knows, does he?"

"I--don't know."

"What! Why--can't you tell him? He could get down here, couldn't he? He had a crutch when I was there."

She was silent, her head drooped, the flowers in her hat brushed the bars at Archie's face. She thrust the toe of a patent-leather boot between the bars at the bottom of the door. The tips of her gloved fingers touched the bars lightly; there was a slight odor of perfume in the entry-way.

"You see," she said, "I--I can't go out there--any more." Her tears were falling on the cement floor, falling beside the iron bucket in which was kept the water for the prisoners to drink.

"Oh!" said Archie coldly.

She looked up suddenly, read the meaning of his changed expression, and then she pressed her face against the bars tightly, and cried out:

"Oh, Archie! Don't! Don't!"

He was hard with her.

"By God!" he said. "I don't know why _you_ should have--oh, hell!"

He whirled on his heel, as if he would go away.

She clung to the bars, pressing her face against them, trying, as it were, to thrust her lips through them.

"Oh, Archie!" she said. "Archie! Don't do that--don't go that way! Listen--listen--listen to your sister! I'm the same old Gus--honest, honest, Archie! Listen! Look at me!"

He had thrust his hands into his pockets and walked to the end of the corridor. He paused there a moment, then turned and came back.

"Say, Gus," he said, "I wish you'd go tell Mr. Marriott I want to see him again. And say, if you go out to the house, see if you can't find that shirt of mine with the white and pink stripes--you know. I guess mother knows where it is. Do that now. And--"

"Time's up," said the officer. "I've got to go."

"And come down to-morrow, Gus," said Archie. She scarcely heard him as she turned to go.

"Hold on!" he called, pressing his face to the bars. "Say! Gus! Come here a minute."

She returned. She lifted her face, and he kissed her through the bars. And she went away, with sobs that racked her whole form.

As she started out by the convenient side door into the alley, the officer laid a hand on her shoulder.

"This way, young woman."

She looked at him a moment.

"You'd better go out the other door," he said.

She climbed the steps behind him, wondering why one door would not do as well as another. She had always gone out that side door before. When they were up-stairs, passing the sergeant's room, he touched her again.

"Hold on," he said.

"What do you want?" she asked in surprise,

"I guess you'd better stay here."

"Why?" she exclaimed. Her surprise had become a great fear. He made no reply, and pushed her into the sergeant's room. Then he whistled into a tube--some one answered. "Come down," he commanded. Presently a woman appeared, a woman with gray hair, in a blue gingham gown something like a nurse's uniform, with a metal badge on her full breast.

"Matron," said the officer, "take this girl in charge."

"Why! What do you mean?" Gusta exclaimed, her eyes wide, her lips parted. "What do you mean? What have I done? What do you--am I--_arrested_?"

"That's what they call it," said the officer.

"But what for?"

"You'll find out in time. Take her up-stairs, Matron."

Gusta looked at the officer, then at the matron. Her face was perfectly white.

The matron drew near, put her arm about her, and said:

"Come with me."

Gusta swayed uncertainly, tottered, then dragged herself off, leaning against the matron, walking as if in a daze.

IX

It had been months since Marriott had gone up those steps at the Wards', and he mounted them that November evening with a regret at the loss of the old footing, and an impatience with the events that had kept him away. He had waited for some such excuse as Gusta's commission now gave him, and the indignation he felt at the girl's arrest was not strong enough to suppress his gratitude for the opportunity the injustice opened to him. He was sure that Elizabeth knew he was to defend Archie; she must know how sensitive he was to the criticism that was implied in the tone with which the newspapers announced the fact. The newspapers, indeed, had shown feeling that Archie should be represented at all. They had published warnings against the law's delays, of which, they said, there had already been too many in that county, forgetting how they had celebrated the success and promptness, the industry and enterprise of John Eades. They had spoken of Archie as if he were a millionaire, about to evade and confound law and justice by the use of money. Marriott told himself, bitterly, that Elizabeth's circle would discuss the tragedy in this same tone, and speak of him with disappointment and distrust; that was the attitude his own friends had adopted; that was the way the lawyers and judges even had spoken to him of it; he recalled how cold and disapproving Eades had been. This recollection gave Marriott pause; would it not now be natural for Elizabeth to take Eades's attitude? He shrank from the thought and wished he had not come, but he was at the door and he had Gusta's message--impossible as it seemed after all these thoughts had crossed his mind.

She received him in her old manner, without any of the stiffness he had feared the months might have made.

"Ah, Gordon," she said. "I'm so glad you came."

She led the way swiftly into the library. A little wood fire, against the chill of the autumn evening, was blazing in the wide fireplace; under the lamp on the broad table lay a book she must have put down a moment before.

"What have you been reading? Oh, _Walden_!" And he turned to her with the smile of their old comradeship in such things.

"I've been reading it again, yes," she said, "and I've wished to talk it over again with you. So you see I'm glad you came."

"I came with a message from--"

"Oh!" The bright look faded from her eyes. "Well, I'm glad, then, that some one sent you to me."

He saw his mistake, and grieved for it.

"I wanted to come," he stammered. "I've been intending to come, Elizabeth, anyway, and--"

He felt he was only making the matter worse, and he hated himself for his awkwardness.

"Well," she was saying, "sit down then, and tell me whom this fortunate message is from."

She leaned back in her chair, rather grandly, he felt. He regretted the touch of formality that was almost an irony in her speech. But he thought it best to let it pass,--they could get back to the old footing more quickly if they did it that way.

"You'd never guess," he said.

"I'll not try. Tell me."

"Gusta."

"Gusta!" Elizabeth leaned forward eagerly, and Marriott thought that he had never before seen her so good to look upon; she was so virile, so alive. He noted her gray eyes, bright with interest and surprise, her brown hair, too soft to be confined in any conventional way, and worn as ever with a characteristic independence that recognized without succumbing to fashion. He fixed his eyes on her hands, white, strong, full of character. And he bemoaned the loss of those months; why, he wondered, had he been so absurd?

"Gusta!" she repeated. "Where did you see Gusta?"

"In prison."

"What! No! Oh, Gordon!" she started with the shock, and Marriott found this attitude even more fascinating than the last; her various expressions changing swiftly, responding with instant sensitiveness to every new influence or suggestion, were all delightful.

"What for? Tell me! Why don't you tell me, Gordon? Why do you sit there?"

Her eyes flashed a reproach at him--and he smiled. He was wholly at ease now.

"For nothing. She's done nothing. She went to see Archie, and the police, stupid and brutal as usual, detained her. That's all; they placed the charge of suspicion against her to satisfy the law. The law!"

He sneered out the word.

Elizabeth had fallen back in her chair with an expression of pain.

"Oh, Gordon!" she said with a shudder. "Isn't it horrible, horrible!"

"Horrible!" he echoed.

"That poor Koerner family! What can the fates be about? You know--you know it all seems to come so near. Such things happen in the world, of course, every day the newspapers, the dreadful newspapers, are filled with them. But they never were real at all, because they never happened to people I knew. But this comes so near. Just think. I've seen that Archie Koerner, and he has spoken to me, and to think of him now, a murderer! Will--they hang him?"

She leaned forward earnestly.

"No," he said slowly. "They may electrocute him though--to use their barbarous word."

"And now Gusta's in prison!" Elizabeth went on, forgetting Archie. "But her message! You haven't given me her message!"

Marriott waited a moment, perhaps in his inability to forego the theatrical possibilities of the situation.

"She wants you--to come to her."

Elizabeth stared at him blankly.

"To come to her?"

"Yes."

"In prison?"

"Yes."

Her brows contracted, her eyes winked rapidly.

"But Gordon, how--how can I?"

"I don't know." He sat at his ease in the great chair, enjoying the meaning, the whole significance of her predicament. He had already appreciated its difficulties, its impossibilities, and he was prepared now to wring from every one of them its last sensation. Elizabeth, with her elbow on the arm of her chair, her laces falling away from her white forearm, bit her lip delicately. She seemed to be looking at the toe of her suede shoe.

"Poor little thing!" She spoke abstractedly, as if she were oblivious to Marriott's presence. He was satisfied; it was good just then to sit, merely, and look at her. "I must go to her." And then suddenly she looked up and said in another tone:

"But how am I to do it, Gordon?"

He did not answer at once and she did not wait for a reply, but went on, speaking rapidly, her eyes in a dark glow as her interest was intensified.

"Isn't it a peculiar situation? I don't know how to deal with it. I never was so placed before. You must see the difficulties, Gordon. People, well, people don't go to such places, don't you know? I really don't see how it is possible; it makes me shudder to think of it! Ugh!" She shrugged her shoulders. "What shall you say to her, Gordon?" She said this as if the problem were his, not hers, and showed a relief in this transfer of the responsibility.

"I don't know yet," he said. "Whatever you tell me."

"But you must tell her something; you must make her understand. It won't do for you to hurt the poor girl's feelings."

"Well, I'll just say that I delivered her message and that you wouldn't come."

"Oh, Gordon! How could you be so cruel? You certainly would not be so heartless as to say I _wouldn't_!"

"Well, then, that you _couldn't_."

"But she would want a reason, and she'd be entitled to one. What one could you give her? You must think, Gordon, we must both think, and decide on something that will help you out. What are you laughing at?"

"Why, Elizabeth," he said, "it isn't my predicament. It's your predicament."

He leaned back in his chair comfortably, in an attitude of irresponsibility.

"How can you sit there," Elizabeth said, "and leave it all to me?"

And then she laughed,--and was grave again.

"Of course," she said. "Well--I'm sure I can't solve it. Poor little Gusta! She was so pretty and so good, and so--comfortable to have around--don't you know? Really, we've never had a maid like her. She was ideal. And now to think of her--in prison! Isn't it awful?"

Marriott sat with half-closed eyes and looked at her through the haze of his lashes. The room was still; the fire burned slowly in the black chimney; now and then the oil gurgled cozily in the lamp.

"What is a prison like, Gordon? Is it really such an awful place?"

Marriott thought of the miserable room in the women's quarters, with its iron wainscoting, the narrow iron bed; the wooden table and chair, and he contrasted it with this luxurious library of the Wards.

"Well," he said, turning rather lazily toward the fire, "it's nothing like this."

"But,"--Elizabeth looked up suddenly with the eagerness of a new idea,--"can't you get her out on bail--isn't that what it's called? Can't you get some kind of document, some writ?--yes, that's it." She spoke with pleasure because she had found a word with a legal sound. "Get a writ. Surely you are a lawyer clever enough to get her out. I always thought that any one could get out of prison if he had a good lawyer. The papers all say so."

"You get in prison once and see," said Marriott.

"Mercy, I expect to be in prison next!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Prisons! We seem to have had nothing but prisons for a year or more. I don't know what started it--first it was that poor Harry Graves, then Archie, and now it's Gusta. And you talk of them and John Eades talks of them--and I had to see them one night taking some prisoners to the penitentiary. I'd never even thought of prisons before, but since then I've thought of nothing else; I've lived in an atmosphere of prisons. It's just like a new word, one you never heard before,--you see it some day, and then you're constantly running across it. Don't you know? It's the same way with history--I never knew who Pestalozzi was until the other day; never had heard of him. But I saw his name in Emerson, then looked him up--now everything I read mentions him. And oh! the memory of those men they were taking to the penitentiary! I'll never escape it! I see their faces always!"

"Were they such bad faces?"

"Oh, no! such poor, pale, pathetic faces! Just like a page from a Russian novel!"

The memory brought pain to her eyes, and she suffered a moment. Then she sat erect and folded her hands with determination.

"We might as well face it, Gordon, of course. I just can't go; you see that, don't you? What shall we do?"

"You might try your Organized Charities." His eyes twinkled.

"Don't ever mention that to me," she commanded. "I never want to hear the word. That's a page from my past that I'm ashamed of."

"Ashamed! Of the Organized Charities?"

"Oh, Gordon, I needn't tell you what a farce that is--you know it is organized not to help the poor, but to help the rich to _forget_ the poor, to keep the poor at a distance, where they can't reproach you and prick your conscience. The Organized Charities is an institution for the benefit of the unworthy rich." Her eyes showed her pleasure in her epigram, and they both laughed. But the pleasure could not last long; in another instant Elizabeth's hands fell to her lap, and she looked at Marriott soberly. Then she said, with hopeless conviction:

"I just can't go, Gordon."

Before Marriott could reply there was a sense of interruption; he heard doors softly open and close, the muffled and proper step of a maid, the well-known sounds that told him that somewhere in the house a bell had rung. In another moment he heard voices in the hall; a laugh of familiarity, more steps,--and then Eades and Modderwell and Mrs. Ward entered the room. Elizabeth cast at Marriott a quick glance of disappointment and displeasure; his heart leaped, he wondered if it were because of Eades's coming. Then he decided, against his will, that it was because of Modderwell. A constraint came over him, he suddenly felt it impossible that he should speak, he withdrew wholly within himself, and sat with an air of detachment.

The clergyman, stooping an instant to chafe his palms before the fire, had taken a chair close to Elizabeth, and he now began making remarks about nothing, his clean, ruddy face smiling constantly, showing his perfect teeth, his eyes roving over Elizabeth's figure.

"Well! Well! Well!" he cried. "What grave questions have you two been deciding this time?"

Elizabeth glanced at Marriott, whose face was drawn, then at Eades, who sat there in the full propriety of his evening clothes, then at her mother, seated in what was considered the correct attitude for a lady on whom her rector had called.

"I think it's good we came, eh, Eades?" the clergyman went on, without waiting for an answer. "It is not good for you to be too serious, Miss Elizabeth,--my pastoral calls are meant as much as anything to take people out of themselves." He laughed again in his abundant self-satisfaction and reclined comfortably in his chair. And he rolled his head in his clerical collar, with a smile to show Elizabeth how he regarded duties that in all propriety must not be considered too seriously or too sincerely. But Elizabeth did not smile. She met his eyes calmly.

"Dear me," he said, mocking her gravity. "It must have been serious."

"It was," said Elizabeth soberly. "It was--the murder!"

"The murder! Shocking!" said Modderwell. "I've read something about it. The newspapers say the identification of Koerner by that poor old woman was complete and positive; they say the shock was such that she fainted, and that he stood there all the time and sneered. I hope, Eades, you will see that the wretch gets his deserts promptly, and send him to the gallows, where he belongs!"

"Marriott here doesn't join you in that wish, I know," said Eades.

"No? Why not?" asked Modderwell. "Surely he--"

"He's going to defend the murderer." Eades spoke in a tone that had a sting for Marriott.

"Oh!" said Modderwell rather coldly. "I don't see how you can do such a thing, Marriott. For your own sake, as much as anybody's, I'm sorry I can't wish you success."

"I wish he hadn't undertaken the task," said Eades.

"I'm sure it must be most disagreeable," said Mrs. Ward, feeling that she must say something.

"Why do you wish it?" said Marriott, suddenly turning almost savagely on Eades.

"Why," said Eades, elevating his brows in a superior way, "I don't like to see you in such work. A criminal practice is the disreputable part of the profession."

"But you have a criminal practice."