Port O' Gold Part 68

"Do you know that Aleta Boice loves you?"

He looked at her annoyed and disturbed by the question.

"No, I don't," he answered slowly. "Nor do I understand just what you're driving at, Miss France."

"If you'll forgive me," her eyes were upon him, "I am driving at masculine obtuseness ... and Aleta's happiness."

"Then you're wasting your time," he spoke sharply. "Aleta loves another.... She's told me so."

"Did she tell you his name?"

"No, some prig of a professor, probably.... Thinks he's 'not her kind.'"

"Yes ... let's have another cup of coffee. Yes, Aleta told me that."

Frank signalled to the waiter. "She's anybody's kind," he said, forcibly.

"But not yours, Mr. Stanley."

"Mine? Why not?"

"Because you don't love her." Norah's tone was sad, half bitter. "Will you forgive me? I'm sorry I provoked you.... But I had to know....

Aleta's such a dear. She's been so good to me."

The Christmas holidays brought handsome stock displays to all the stores. San Francisco was still flush with insurance money but there was a pinch of poverty in certain quarters. The Refugee Camps had been cleared, public parks and squares restored to their normal state.

Langdon and Heney worked on. Another jury brought a verdict of "not guilty" at the second trial of a trolley-bribe defendant. Some of the newspapers had changed by almost imperceptible degrees, were veering toward the cause of the defense.

Then, like a thunderbolt, in January, 1908, came news that the Appellate Court had set aside the conviction of Ruef and Schmitz. Technical errors were a.s.signed as the cause of this decision. The people gasped. But some of the newspapers defended the Appellate Judges' decree.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xVIII

THE SHOOTING OF HENEY

Heney and Langdon, who had had, perhaps, some inkling of an adverse decision, went grimly on. Enemies of Prosecution, backed by an enormous fund, were setting innumerable obstacles in their way. Witnesses disappeared or changed their testimony. Jurors showed evidence of having been tampered with. Through a subsidized press an active propaganda of Innuendo and Slander was begun.

Calhoun's trial still loomed vaguely in the distance. Heney, overworked and hara.s.sed in a mult.i.tude of ways--keyed to a battle with ruffians, gun-men and shysters as well as the ablest exponents of law, developed a nervousness of manner, a bitterness of mind which sometimes led him to extremes.

"He isn't sleeping well," his faithful bodyguard confided to Frank one afternoon when they met on Van Ness avenue. "He comes down in the morning trying to smile but I know he feels as though he'd like to bite my head off. I can see it in his eyes. He needs a rest."

"Mr. Calhoun evidently thinks so, too," retorted Stanley. "The Honorable Pat is trying to retire him."

"He'll never succeed," said the other explosively. "Frank Heney's not that kind. He'll fight on till he drops.... But I hate to see those boughten lawyers ragging him in court."

Langdon, more phlegmatic of temperament, stood the gaff with less apparent friction. Hiram Johnson gave aid now and then which was always of value. There was a dauntless quality about the man, a rugged double-fisted force which made him feared by his opponents.

Frank Stanley looked in at the second Ruef trial. He found it a kaleidoscope of dramatic and tragic events. Heney, who had been the target for a volley of insinuations from Ruef's attorneys, was nervous and distraught. Several times he had been goaded into altercation; had struck back with a bitterness that showed his mounting anger. Stanley noted that he was "on edge," and rather looked for "fireworks," as the reporters called these verbal duels of the Prosecution trials. But he was astonished to see Heney turn upon an unoffending juryman in sudden fury. The man had a fat, good-natured Teuton face with small eyes and a heavy manner. His name was Morris Haas. He had asked to be excused but the judge had not granted his plea.

Now he seemed to cower in exaggerated fright before the Prosecutor's pointed finger. A little hush ensued. A tense dramatic pause. Then Heney branded Haas before the court-room as a former convict.

The man broke down utterly. Many years before he had served a short term in prison. After his release he had married, raised a family, "lived a respectable life," as he pleaded in hysterical extenuation. He kept a grocery store.

Haas stumbled from the court-room and Frank followed him. He could not help but feel a certain pity for the poor wretch, wailing brokenly that he was "ruined." He could never face his friends again. His customers would leave him. Frank learned the details of his ancient crime; he also ascertained that Haas had lived rightly since. The incident rankled. He wrote a guarded story of the affair. But he did not mention one episode of Haas' exposure. As the man staggered out Frank had heard another whisper sympathetically, "I would kill the man who did that to me."

Justice often has its cruel, relentless aspects. Haas, with his weak, heavy face, stayed in Stanley's memory. An ordinary man might have tried again and won. But Haas was drunken with self-pity and the melancholy of his race. He would brood and suffer. Frank felt sorry for the man, and, somehow, vaguely apprehensive.

Ruef's trial ended in a disagreement of the jury. It was a serious blow.

Most of the San Francisco papers heaped abuse upon the Prosecution, its attorneys and its judges.

Matters dragged along until the 13th of November. Gallagher was on the witness stand. He testified with the listlessness of many repet.i.tions to the sordid facts of San Francisco's betrayal by venal public servants.

It was all more or less perfunctory. Everyone had heard the tale from one to half a dozen times.

Heney was at the attorneys' table talking animatedly with an a.s.sistant.

The jury had left the room and Gallagher stepped down from the stand to have a word with the prosecutor. A few feet away was Heney's bodyguard lolling, plainly bored by the testimony. There was the usual buzz of talk which marks a lull in court proceedings.

Into this scene came with covert tread a wild, dramatic figure. No one noted his approach. Morris Haas, glittering of eye, dishevelled, mad with loss of sleep and brooding, had crept into the court-room unheeded.

He approached the attorneys' table stealthily.

All at once Frank saw him standing within a foot of Heney. Something glittered in his outstretched hand. Frank shouted, but his warning lost itself in a wild cry of revengeful accusation. There was a sharp report; smoke rose. An acrid smell of exploded powder hung upon the air. Heney, with a cry, fell backward. Blood spurted from his neck.

Once more the city was afire with men's pa.s.sions. Haas was rushed to the county jail and Heney to a hospital, where it was found, amid great popular rejoicing, that the wound was not a fatal one. Had it been otherwise no human power could have protected Haas from lynching.

A great ma.s.s meeting was held. Langdon, Phelan, Mayor Taylor pleaded for order. "Let us see to it," said the last, "that no matter who else breaks the law, we shall uphold it." This became the keynote of the meeting. Rudolph Spreckels, who arrived late, was greeted with tumultuous cheering.

Frank and Aleta were impressed by the spontaneity of the huge popular turnout. "It means," said the girl, as they made their exit, "that San Francisco is again aroused to its danger. What a great, good natured, easy-going body of men and women this town is! We feed on novelty and are easily wearied. That's why so many have back-slid who were strong for the Prosecution at first."

"Yes, you're right," answered Frank. "We alternate between spasms of Virtue and comfortable inertias of Don't-care-a-d.a.m.n! That's San Francisco!"

"The Good Gray City," he added after a little silence. "We love it in spite of its faults and upheavals, don't we, Aleta?"

"Perhaps because of them." She squeezed his arm. For a time they walked on without speaking. "How is your settlement work progressing?" he asked at length.

But she did not answer, for a shrieking newsie thrust a paper in her hand. "Buy an extra, lady," he importuned her. "All about Morris Haas' suicide!"

She tossed him a coin and he rushed off, shrilling his tragic revelation. Huge black headlines announced that Heney's a.s.sailant had shot himself to death in his cell.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xIX

DEFEAT OF THE PROSECUTION

While Heney lay upon the operating table of a San Francisco hospital, three prominent attorneys volunteered to take his place. They were Hiram Johnson, Matt I. Sullivan and J.J. Dwyer. Ruef's trial went on with renewed vigor three days after the attempted killing, though the defendant's attorneys exhausted every expedient for delay. It was a case so thorough and complete that nothing could save the prisoner. He was found guilty of bribing a Supervisor in the overhead trolley transaction and sentenced to serve fourteen years in San Quentin penitentiary.