Branded Part 7

"No," he Insisted. "You are a part of my work--one of my reasons for existence. Christianity means something, Weyburn, and I am here to define its meaning in specific cases. There is a little legacy of common justice due you, and I shall take it upon myself to see that you get it. As for Zadoc Haddon, you needn't worry about him. I am ashamed to say that he is a member of my own church, but that doesn't prevent him from being a wolf in sheep's clothing. I have told him so to his face, and he has tried to get me ousted--without success, so far."

I saw difficulties and more difficulties for this generous young fellow who was so ready to champion my cause, and it seemed only decent to spare him if I could. But at the end of my protest he summed the situation up in a single sentence:

"What you say about me is all beside the mark; somebody has got to give you the chance you are needing, and the fight may just as well be made here in Springville as anywhere. Sit down again and let's dig a little deeper into that Mexican book of Enock's. I do like his blunt English way of describing things; don't you?"

Though the next three days were full of hopes and despairings for me I shall pa.s.s over them lightly. Each day, though he did not tell me in detail what he was doing, I knew that Whitley was trying his best to find a place for me; and I knew, too, that he was meeting with no success. He was such a fine, upstanding fellow, and so full of holy zeal and enthusiasm, that it was hard for him to acknowledge defeat.

But on the third evening, after a dinner at which he had tried vainly to bridge the gaps that were continually opening out in the talk, he threw up his hands.

"Weyburn," he began, when the pipes were lighted and he had poked the grate fire into a roaring blaze, "don't you know, these last three days have come mighty near to making me lose faith in my kind. It's simply wretched--miserable!"

"I would have saved you if you had been willing to let me," I reminded him.

"The question is much bigger than Bert Weyburn or John Whitley, or both of them put together," he a.s.serted soberly. "It involves the entire fabric of Christianity, and our so-called Christian civilization. The Church is here to shadow forth the spirit and teachings of Christ, or it isn't--one of the two. If it falls in its mission it is a hollow mockery; a thing beneath contempt. I go to my fellow Christians with a simple plea for justice for a man who needs it, and what do I get? I am told, with all the sickening variations, that it won't do; that the thing I am proposing is one of the things that 'isn't done'; that society must be protected, and all that!"

"The mills of the G.o.ds," I suggested.

"Nothing of the sort! It's a radical defect in the existing scheme of things. Heavens and earth, Weyburn, you are not a pariah! a.s.suming that you really did the thing for which you were punished--and I don't believe you did--is that any reason why we should stultify ourselves absolutely and deny the very first principles of the religion we profess? But I mustn't be unfair. Perhaps the fault is partly mine, after all. Perhaps I haven't done my duty by these people."

"No; the fault is not yours," I hastened to say.

"I'm hoping it is; some of it, at least. Just the same, the wretched fact remains. You might be the biggest villain unhung--if only you hadn't pa.s.sed through the courts and the penitentiary. As you thought probably was the case, your story is known all over town; though how it has got such a wide publication in so short a time is more than I can fathom. Men whom I would bank on; men to whom I have felt that I could go in any conceivable extremity, have turned me down as soon as I mentioned your name. The prison story is like a big, brutal, inanimate mountain standing squarely in the way; and I--I haven't the faith needful for its removal!"

Being under the deepest obligation to this dear young fellow who was bruising himself for me, I said what I could to lighten his burden.

But in the midst of it he got up and reached for his hat and overcoat.

"I have just thought of something," he explained hastily; "something that may throw a good bit of light on this thing. You sit right here and toast your shins. I'm going out for a little while."

He was gone for the better part of an hour, during which interval I obeyed his injunction literally, sitting before the fire and basking in its home-like warmth; making the most of the comfort of it all before I should again go forth to face an inclement world. When Whitley came in and flung himself into a chair on the opposite side of the hearth his dark eyes were blazing.

"Weyburn," he began abruptly, "what I have to tell you will stir every evil pa.s.sion you've ever harbored; and yet, in decent justice to you, it must be told. Have you ever suspected that your fight for reinstatement has been deliberately handicapped, right from the beginning?"

"I have suspected it at times; yes," I returned. "But there is no proof."

"There _is_ proof," he shot back. "By the merest chance I stumbled upon it a few minutes ago. I went out with the intention of going to Zadoc Haddon and making him tell me where he got the information that you are the desperate criminal he professes to believe you to be.

While we were sitting here it struck me all at once that this thing was being helped along by some one who had an object in view. At Haddon's house the doorman told me that Haddon had an appointment with an out-of-town customer and had gone to the hotel to keep it; and rather than wait, I went over to the Hamilton House to try to find my man. I didn't find him; but in the lobby of the hotel somebody found me. As I was turning away from the desk after asking for Haddon, a heavy-set young man, neatly dressed, stepped up and asked if my name was Whitley.

I admitted it. Then he asked if I would give him a few minutes, and we went aside to sit facing each other in a couple of the lobby chairs.

Weyburn, that young man is in the employ of a private detective agency, and what he wished to do, and did do, was to warn me that I was sheltering a dangerous criminal in my house!"

In a flash all the small mysteries that had been befogging me for months made themselves transparently clear: the man I had called a traveling salesman who had followed me from the prison gates to the scene of my first humble effort; the memorandum Chief Callahan had consulted; the "outfit" that was to be notified when my next destination was known; the second appearance of the "salesman" on the train at the capital, and his disappearance when he had learned from the conductor the name of my next stopping-place; and after this the long series of hitherto unaccountable blacklistings. My mouth was dry, but I contrived to tell Whitley to go on.

"I will," he conceded; "but you must promise me to control yourself.

Naturally, my first impulse, when this scamp began on me, was to cut him off short and tell him what I thought of the despicable business to which he was lending himself. But the second thought was craftier, and I hope I may be forgiven for yielding to it. By leading him on I got the entire brutal story. It seems that the two old men upon whose complaint you were indicted knew when you were to be paroled. They profess to believe that you are a menace to society; that the prison authorities were at fault in releasing you short of the limit of your sentence. Hence, through his employers, they have set this man upon your track to see to it--I use his own words--that you do not have an opportunity to rob some one else."

I suppose I should have been driven mad with vindictive fury at this plain revelation of the true cause of most of my misfortunes, but there is a point beyond which the beaten man cannot rise to renew the fight, and I had reached and pa.s.sed it. Wherefore I found myself saying, quite calmly:

"Neither Abel Geddis nor Abner Withers would spend one copper penny for any such altruistic reason as this man has given you, Whitley. Their motive is strictly selfish and personal. They are either afraid that I may go back to Glendale and try to expose them; or that I may take the shorter and surer way of balancing the account by killing them--as, at one time, I meant to."

"Oh, but my dear fellow!" Whitley protested. "In that case they would hardly take a course which was calculated to drive you to desperation!"

"You don't understand it all," I rejoined. "Everything has been done secretly, and it is only by the merest chance that I have now learned the truth. This man you have been talking to has been following me, or keeping track of me, ever since I left the penitentiary. I have seen him twice, and I took him to be a traveling salesman--as he doubtless intended I should. You can see how it was designed to work out. With a sufficient amount of discouragement it was reasonable to a.s.sume that the prison bird would finally yield to the inevitable; become a criminal in fact and get himself locked up again out of harm's way."

"You think that was the motive?"

"I am as certain of it as I should be if I could read the minds of those two old plotters in my home town. You see, I've summered and wintered them. The only thing I can't understand is why I have been so blind; why I didn't a.s.sume all this long ago and act accordingly."

"But why, _why_ should they be so utterly lost to every sense of right and justice; to all the promptings of common humanity? It's hideously incredible!"

"I have given you two reasons, and you may take your choice. It is either the fear of death--the fear of the vengeance of a man whose life they have ruined, or else the transaction in which they involved me, and in which they made me their scapegoat, was more far-reaching than I, or anybody in Glendale, supposed it was."

Whitley sat for a full minute staring absently into the fire. Then he said, very gently: "Now that you know the truth, what will you do?"

"I know well enough what I ought to do. We may pa.s.s over the fellow at the Hamilton House; he is only a poor tool in the hands of the master workmen. I bear him no malice of the blood-letting sort. But really, Whitley, I ought to go back to Glendale and rid the earth of those two old villains who have earned their blotting-out."

Again there was a pause, and then: "Well, why don't you do it?"

I laughed rather bitterly.

"Because all the fight has been taken out of me, Whitley. That is the reason and the only reason."

His smile was beatific. "No, it isn't," he denied. "You know you couldn't do it; you couldn't bring yourself to do it. Maybe, in the heat of pa.s.sion . . . but to go deliberately: no, Weyburn; if you think you could do such a thing as that, I can tell you that I know you better than you know yourself."

"I merely said that that was what I ought to do. I know well enough that I shan't do it, but the reason is far beneath that which you are good enough to hint at. I'm a broken man, Whitley; what I have gone through in the past few months has smashed my nerve. You can't understand that--I don't expect you to. But if I should meet those two old men when I leave this house, I should probably run away from them and try to hide."

"But what _will_ you do?" he queried.

"What can I do, more than I've been doing?"

Again a silence intervened.

"I wish I knew how to advise you," Whitley said at length. "If there were only some way in which you might shake off this wretched hired spy!"

"I can't. If I dodge him, he has only to wait until I report myself again to the prison authorities. The one thing I can do is to relieve you of my threatening presence, and I'll do that now--to-night, while the going is good."

He was at the end of his resources, as I knew he must be, and he made no objections. But at train-time he got up and put on his overcoat to accompany me as far as the station. It was a rough night outside, and I tried to dissuade him, but he wouldn't have it that way. "No," he said; "it's my privilege to speed the parting guest, if I can do no more than that," and so we breasted the spitting snow-storm which was sweeping the empty streets, tramping in silence until we reached the shelter of the train-shed.

It was after the train had whistled for the crossing below the town that Whitley asked me again what I intended doing. I answered him frankly because it was his due.

"It has come down to one of two things: day-labor, in a field where a man is merely a number on the pay-roll--or that other road which is always open to the prison-bird."

He put his hand on my shoulder. "You are not going to take the other road, Weyburn," he said gravely.

"I hope not--I hope I shan't be driven to."

"You mustn't make it conditional. I know you are not a criminal; you were not a criminal when you were convicted. You can't afford to begin to be one now."

"Neither can I afford to starve," I interposed. "Other men live by their wits, and so can I, if I'm driven to it. But I'll play fair with you, Whitley. So long as I can keep body and soul together, with a pick and shovel, or any other implement that comes to hand, I'll stick.

I owe you that much, if only for the reason that you are--with the single exception of an old police chief who lives at the other edge of the State--the one really human being I've met since I shook hands with the warden."