Captivating Mary Carstairs Part 5

"Didn't you notice his wrists when he held them up to light his cigarette? Full of little scars."

Peter whistled. "So morphine is his trouble, is it? Listen!"

From down the river rose a faint roar, like the sound of many voices a long way off. While the two men listened, it subsided and then rose again.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Varney. "Look at your student of manners and customs now."

The man in the boat was still plainly discernible, his face picked out by the moon in greenish white. But there was no longer any lethargy in his manner. He was bending his back to his best stroke--an excellent one it was--and driving his light bark rapidly down the stream.

"My bet," said Varney, "is that he hears those shouts, and they mean something to him--something interesting and important."

"Larry, be a sport! Let's follow this thing along and find out what it all means."

"Oh, I'm willing to drop into town for a little reconnoissance, if you like. Maybe we can pick up something that will help us in our business."

"Spoken like a scholar and a gentleman. One minute while I get on my clothes. Oh--by the way! Er--this new--robe of mine doesn't look like a Mother Hubbard, does it?"

"In my opinion," said Varney, "two things could not well be more utterly unlike."

Peter was back in five minutes, clothed and in his right mind. His falling foot hit the center-line of the gig with a thump, and they shot away toward the town wharf.

They bade the boat wait their signal in the shadows a little upstream, and jumped out upon the old and rotting landing. A street ran straight before them, up a steep hill and into the heart of the town, and they took it, guided by a burst of still distant laughter and hoa.r.s.e shouts.

Toiling up the evil sidewalk, they looked about curiously at the town which was to engage their attention for the next day or so. Over everything hung that vague air of dejection and moral decay which is so hard to define and so easy to detect. The street was lit with feeble electric lights which did little more than nullify the moon. Gra.s.s grew at its pleasure through the broken brick pavement; and even in that dimness, it was very evident that the White Wing department had been taking a long vacation.

Varney's eye took in everything. It occurred to him that this was a most extraordinary place for the family of the exquisite and well-fixed Elbert Carstairs to live. Hard on the heels of that came another thought and he stopped.

"What's the matter?" said Peter.

"We simply mustn't get mixed up in any doings here, you know. Can't afford it. Whatever is going on, our role must be that of quiet onlookers only. Remember that."

"Quiet onlookers it is. h.e.l.lo! Did you see that?"

"What?"

"Old duck in a felt hat walking behind us, a good distance off--I'd heard him for some time. He stopped when we stopped, and when I turned then I was just in time to see him go skipping up the side street."

"Well, what of it?"

"Not a thing. I'm interested in the sights of the town, that's all.

Listen to those hoodlums, will you?"

In the middle of that block rose a great public building of florid and hideous architecture, absurdly expensive for so small a town, and running fast to seed. On the corner ahead, at the crest of the slope, stood the handsomest and most prosperous-looking building they had yet seen. Its long side was cut by many windows, all brilliantly lit up, and above the lower tier ran the gold-lettered legend:

WINES & LIQUORS. THE OTTOMAN. D. RYAN.

"When the saloon-keeper is the richest man in town," observed Peter, "look out for trouble."

A roar of laughter, mingled with various derisive cries, broke out just then, now from very near. The next minute the two men reached the brow of the hill, and both stopped involuntarily, arrested by the tableau which met their gaze beyond.

They stood on the upper side of a little rectangular "square," at the lower edge of which, some fifty yards away, were gathered possibly thirty or forty jostling and noisy men. Facing them, standing on a carriage-block at the curb, stood a cool little man obviously engaged in making a speech. The commonness of the men and the rough joviality of their mood were the more accentuated by the supreme dignity of the orator. He was a very small man, with pink cheeks and eye-gla.s.ses, beautifully made and still more beautifully dressed; and for all their boisterous "jollying" his auditors appeared rather to like him than the contrary.

The men from the _Cypriani_ crossed the square and came up with the merry-making Hunstonians. Varney's gaze went round the circle of faces and saw inefficiency, shiftlessness, and failure everywhere stamped upon them. Suddenly his wandering eye was arrested by a face of quite a different sort. Directly opposite stood the eccentric young man of the row-boat, watching the show out of listless eyes whose expression never changed.

"On that horse-block," said Peter, raising his voice to carry above an outburst of catcalls and allegedly humorous comment, "stands the Hunston Reform Movement. Giving 'em a ripping talk, too--all out of Bryce, Mill, and the other fellows."

But at that moment, as luck had it, the oratory came to a sudden end. A sportive bull-pup, malevolently released by some one in the crowd, danced up to the horse-block, barking joyfully, and made a lightning dive for the spellbinder's legs. The spellbinder dexterously side-stepped; the dog's aim was diverted from that fleshy portion of the thigh which his fancy had selected; but his snapping teeth closed firmly in the tail of the pretty light-gray coat, which the little man wore rather long according to the mode of the day. And there he swung, kicking and snarling, squirming and grunting, in the liveliest fashion imaginable.

Merry pandemonium broke out among the onlookers; they howled with shameless delight. It was hardly a pleasant scene to witness, though redeemed by the little orator's gameness. His face, when he took in what had happened to him, slowly turned the color of a sheet of white paper.

With indescribable dignity, he descended from his rostrum, carrying the dog along, and walked out into the ring. In front of a tall, loose-jointed, scraggly-mustached fellow he paused, and stared him in the eye with steady fixity.

"T-t-take your d-d-d.a.m.ned d-dog off me, Hackley," he said, stuttering badly, but very cool.

But Hackley backed away, shaking his head and bellowing with laughter.

In an ecstasy of delight, the onlookers began pressing more closely about the men, narrowing the circle. And then it was that Peter, quite forgetting his role of quiet onlooker and unable for his life to restrain himself longer, put his shoulder to the ring and broke a vigorous way through. He touched the little orator on the arm.

"No need to trouble the gentleman," Varney heard him say pleasantly.

"Just hold the position a moment, please." And so saying he swung back his foot.

It landed with an impact that was loud and not agreeable to the ear. The dog dropped with a frightful howl and, yelping madly, fled.

Simultaneously, cries arose about the ringside, and the dog's owner, an alcoholic blaze in his eye, spat bitterly into his two palms and headed straight for Peter.

"What in the blank-blank d' yer mean by kickin' my blank dog, you blank-blankety-blank, you?" he inquired.

"I meant that he was behaving as no dog should," explained Peter, "and the same remark applies to you."

He was not without skill at fisticuff, was Hackley. With the speed of a tiger, he let out first his left fist, then his right, at Peter Maginnis's head. But instead of arriving there, they collided with a forearm which had about the resiliency of a two-foot stone-wall.

Simultaneously, Peter released his famous left-hook--had of the Bronx Barman at ten dollars a lesson--and the fight was over.

Mr. Hackley's head struck first, and struck pa.s.sionately; men picked him up and bore him limply from the field. And Peter, a tiny spot of red in the corner of his right eye, spoke thus to the horseshoe of watching faces:

"You're a devil of a fine gang of red-hot sports, aren't you, boys? A whole regiment of you with no more decency than to pick on one man like this. I come from a white man's country where this kind of thing doesn't go--thank G.o.d! And any man who has formed a bad opinion of my manners and my general style of conversation can just step out into the ring and let me explain my system to him."

But n.o.body accepted that invitation. Possibly the rub was that no one cared to see that left-hook work again, at his own expense, or to encourage any trouble to come athwart his quiet career. At any rate, there were a few mutterings here and there; and then some one sang out:

"None fer mine, Mister! I ain't took out my life insurance yet."

There was a general laugh at this, and with that laugh Peter knew that all hope of more fighting was gone. He bade them a sardonic good-night, hooked his arm through the orator's (who actually showed signs of an intention to resume his speech), and bore him off down the street.

The three men walked half a block in silence, and then the little stranger stopped short.

"I say," he said in a faintly unsteady voice, "I want to thank you for taking that confounded dog off me. In another minute he might have torn my coat, don't you know?"

"Oh, that's all right," said Peter, repressing a smile. "Kicking dogs is rather a specialty of mine, and it isn't often I get the chance to attend to two of them in one evening. I wouldn't give the episode another thought."

The little man gave a sudden fierce laugh. "Oh, certainly not! It's a mere bagatelle for a candidate for Mayor to get a hand-out like that from a gathering of voters!"

"Mayor! I beg your pardon! Of course I didn't quite understand."