Snow on the Headlight Part 11

"But what was it, Mr. Moran, that you said about the train going in the ditch?"

"I have a little motto of my own," said the engineer, with his quiet smile, "which makes the delay of an express train inexcusable, and I was repeating it to George, as I had done scores of times before. It is that there are only two places for an express train; she should either be on time or in the ditch. It may have been rather reckless advice to a new runner, but I was feeling a mite reckless myself; but, above all the grief and disappointments (for the disgrace of my fireman's downfall was in a measure mine) arose the desire that Blackwings should not be disgraced; such is the love of the engineer for his engine."

The old engineer had shown much feeling, more than was usual for him to display, while talking about his engine, and the reporter was impressed very favorably. "This has been most interesting to me," said the journalist; "and now I must leave you to your book, or to your bed,"

and then the two men shook hands again and parted.

It was almost midnight when a closed carriage stopped at the general office of the Burlington Company, and the man who had been representing _The London Times_ stepped out.

The Philosopher, who was still on duty, touched his cap and led the visitor to the private office of the general manager.

"By Jove, Watchem," said the railway man, advancing to meet his visitor, "I had nearly given you up--what success?"

"Well," said the great detective, removing his heavy coat, "I have had a talk with Moran. Why, I know that fellow; he is the hero of the celebrated Thorough-cut train robbery, and he ought to be wearing a medal instead of irons."

"What! for attempting to blow up an engine?" asked the general manager.

"He never did it," said the dark man positively. "He may know who did do it, but he will not tell, and he ought to be discharged."

"He will never be until he is proved innocent," said the railroad man.

"One of the conditions," began the detective deliberately, "upon which I took charge of this business was that I should have absolute control of all criminal matters and I am going to ask you to instruct the prosecuting attorney's office to bring this man before Judge Meyer to-morrow morning and ask that he be discharged."

"The prosecuting attorney will never consent," said the general manager.

"He believes the man guilty."

"And what do I care for his opinion or his prejudice? What does it matter to the average attorney whether he convicts or acquits, so long as his side wins? Before we proceed further with this discussion, I want it distinctly understood that Dan Moran shall be released at once. The only spark of pleasure that comes into the life of an honest detective, to relieve the endless monotony of punishing the wicked, is the pleasure of freeing those wrongfully accused. Dan Moran is innocent; release him and I will be personally responsible for him and will agree to produce him within twenty-four hours at any time when he may be wanted."

The general manager was still inclined to hold his ground, but upon being a.s.sured that the Watchem detective agency would throw the whole business over unless the demands of the chief were acceded to, he yielded, and after a brief conference the two men descended, the Philosopher closed the offices and went his way.

CHAPTER FIFTEENTH

Scores of criminals, deputies and strikers were rounded up for a hearing before Judge Meyer. So great was the crowd of defendants that little room was left for the curious. The first man called was a laborer, a freight handler, whose occupation had gone when the company ceased to handle freight. The charge against him was a peculiar one. His neighbor, a driver for one of the breweries, owned a cow, which, although she gave an abundance of milk at night, had ceased almost entirely to produce at the morning milking. The German continued to feed her and she waxed fat, but there was no improvement, and finally it was decided that the cow should be watched. About four A. M. on the following morning a small man came and leaned a ladder against the high fence between the driver's back-yard, and that of the laborer. Then the small man climbed to the top of the fence, balanced himself carefully, hauled the ladder up and slid it down in the Dutchman's lot. All this was suspicious, but what the driver wanted was positive proof, so he choked his dog and remained quiet until the man had milked the cow and started for the fence. Now the bull-dog, being freed from his master's grasp, coupled into the climber's caboose and hauled him back down the ladder. It was found upon examination that a rubber hot-water bag, well filled with warm milk, was dangling from a strap that encircled the man's shoulders, shot-pouch fashion.

Upon being charged, the man pleaded guilty. At first, he said, he had only taken enough milk for the baby, who had been without milk for thirty-six hours. The thought of stealing had not entered his mind until near morning of the second night of the baby's fast. They had been up with the starving child all night, and just before day he had gone into the back-yard to get some fuel to build a fire, when he heard his neighbor's cow tramping about in the barn lot, and instantly it occurred to him that there was milk for the baby; that if he could procure only a teacupful, it might save the child's life. He secured a ladder and went over the fence, but being dreadfully afraid he had taken barely enough milk to keep the baby during the day and that night they were obliged to walk the floor again. It was only a little past midnight when he went over the fence for the second time. Upon this occasion he took more milk, so that he was not obliged to return on the following night, but another day brought the same condition of affairs and over the fence he went, and he continued to go every night, and the baby began to thrive as it had not done in all its life.

Finally the food supply began to dwindle, he was idle, and his wife was unable to do hard work; they had other small children who now began to cry for milk, and the father's heart ached for them and he went over the fence one night prepared to bring all he could get. That day all the children had milk, but it was soon gone and then came the friendly night and the performance at the back fence was repeated.

Emboldened by success the man had come to regard it as a part of his daily or nightly duty to milk his neighbor's cow, but alas! for the wrong-doer there comes a day of reckoning, and it had come at last to the freight handler. The freight agent who was called as a witness testified as to the good character of the man previously, but he was a thief. Put to the test it had been proven that he would steal from his neighbor simply to keep his baby from starving, so he went to the workhouse, his family went to the poor-house, and the strike went on.

"If you were to ask who is responsible for this strike," said the philosophic tramp to Patsy, "which has left in its wake only waste, want, misery, and even murder, the strikers would answer 'the company'; the company, 'the strikers'; and if Congress came in a private car to investigate, the men on either side would hide behind one another, like cattle in a storm, and the guilty would escape. The law intends to punish, but the law finds it so hard to locate the real criminals in a great soulless corporation, or in a conglomeration of organizations whose aggregate membership reaches into the hundreds of thousands, that the blind G.o.ddess grows weary, groping in the dark, and finally falls asleep with the cry of starving children still ringing in her ears."

Now an officer brought engineer Dan Moran, the alleged dynamiter, into court for a special hearing. He wore no manacles, but stood erect in the awful presence of the judge, unfettered and unafraid.

Mr. Alexander, the lawyer for the strikers, having had a hint from Billy Watchem, the detective, asked that the prisoner be discharged, but the young man who had been sent down from the office of the prosecuting attorney, being behind the procession, protested vigorously. In the midst of a burning argument, in which the old engineer was unmercifully abused, the youthful attorney was interrupted to receive a message from the general manager of the Burlington route. Pausing only long enough to read the signature, the orator continued to pour his argument into the court until a second messenger arrived with a note from his chief. It was brief and he read it: "Let go; the house is falling in on you"; and he let go. It was a long, hard fall, so he thought he would drop a little at a time. The court was surprised to see the attorney stop short in what he doubtless considered the effort of his life, and ask that the prisoner be released on bail. Now the prosecuting attorney glanced at Mr. Alexander, but that gentleman was looking the other way. "Does that proposition meet with the approval of the eminent counsel on the other side?"

"No," said the other side.

"Then will you take the trouble to make your wishes known to the court?"

"No, you will do that for me," said the eminent counsel, with a coolness that was exasperating. "It would be unsafe to shut off such a flow of eloquence all at once. Ask the court, please, to discharge the prisoner."

"Never," said the young lawyer, growing red to the roots of his perfectly parted hair. The counsel for the defence reached over the table and flipped the last message toward the lawyer, at the same time advising the young man to read it again. Then the young man coughed, the old lawyer laughed, the judge fidgeted on his bench, but he caught the prayer of the youthful attorney, it was answered, and Dan Moran received his freedom.

"Do you observe how the law operates?" asked the Philosopher, who had been the bearer of the message from the general manager, of Patsy Daly as they were leaving the court.

"I must confess," said Patsy, "that I am utterly unable to understand these things. Here is a lawyer abusing a man--an honest man at that--unmercifully, and all of a sudden he asks the court to discharge the prisoner. It's beyond me."

"But the side play! Didn't you get on to the message that blackguard received? He had a hunch from the prosecuting attorney who had been hunched by the general manager, who, as I happened to know, was severely, but very successfully hunched by Billy Watchem, to the effect that this man was innocent and must be released. It was the shadow-hand of old 'Never Sleep,' that did the business and set an innocent man free, and hereafter, when I cuss a copper I'll say a little prayer for this man whose good deeds are all done in the dark, and therefore covered up."

"Thank you," said Patsy, "I should never have been able to work it out myself."

"Well, it is not all worked out yet," said the Philosopher, "and will not be until we come up for a final hearing, in a court that is infallible and unfoolable; and what a lot of surprises are in store for some people. It is not good to judge, and yet I can't help picturing it all to myself. I see a sleek old sinner, who has gone through this life perfectly satisfied with himself, edging his way in and sidling over where the sheep are. Then in comes this poor devil who went to jail this morning--that was his first trip, but the road is easy when you have been over it once--and he, having been herding all along with the goats, naturally wanders over that way. Then at the last moment I see the Good Shepherd shooing the sleek old buck over where the goats are and bringing the milk-thief back with him, and I see the look of surprise on the old gentleman's face as he drops down the 'goat-chute.'"

CHAPTER SIXTEENTH

In time people grew tired of talking and reading about the strike, and more than one man wished it might end. The strikers wished it too, for hundreds of them were at the point of starvation. The police courts were constantly crowded, and often overflowed and filled the morgue. Misery, disappointment, want, and hunger made men commit crimes the very thought of which would have caused them to shudder a year ago. One day a desolate looking striker was warming his feet in a cheap saloon when a well-dressed stranger came and sat near him and asked the cause of his melancholia.

"I'm a striker," said the man; "and I have had no breakfast. More than that, my wife is hungry at home and she is sick, too. She's been sick ever since we buried the baby, three weeks ago. All day yesterday I begged for work, but there was nothing for me to do. To-day I have begged for money to buy medicine and food for her, but I have received nothing, and now my only hope is that she may be dead when I go home to-night, empty-handed and hungry."

The stranger drew his chair yet nearer to that of the miserable man and asked in a low tone why he did not steal.

"I don't know how," said the striker, looking his questioner in the face. "I have never stolen anything and I should be caught at my first attempt. If not, it would only be a question of time, and if I must become a thief to live we might as well all die and have done with it.

It'll be easier anyway after she's gone, and that won't be long; she don't want to live. Away in the dead of night she wakes me praying for death. And she used to be about the happiest woman in the world, and one of the best, but when a mother sits and sees her baby starve and die, it is apt to harden her heart against the people who have been the cause of it all. I think she has almost ceased to care for me, for of course she blames me for going out with the strikers, but how's a man to know what to do? If I could raise the price I think I'd take a couple of doses of poison home with me and put an end to our misery. She'd take it in a holy minute."

"Don't do that," said the stranger, dabbing a silk handkerchief to his eyes, one after the other. "And don't steal, for if you do once you will steal again, and by and by you'll get bolder and do worse. I've heard men tell how they had begun by lifting a dicer in front of a clothing store, or stealing a loaf of bread, and ended by committing murder. They can't break this way always--brace up."

The switchman went over to the bar where a couple of non-union men were shaking dice for the drinks. He recognized one of them as the man who had taken his place in the yards, but he scarcely blamed him now.

Perhaps the fellow had been hungry, and the striker knew too well what that meant. Presently, the switchman went back to the stove and began to b.u.t.ton his thin coat up about his throat.

"I'm dead broke myself," said the well-dressed stranger, "but I'm going to help you if you'll let me."

As the striker stared at the stranger the man took off a sixty-dollar overcoat and hung it over the switchman's arm. "Take it," he said, "it's bran new; I just got it from the tailor this morning. Go out and sell it and bring the money to me and I'll help you."

When the striker had been gone a quarter of an hour the well-dressed man strolled up to the bar and ordered a c.o.c.ktail. Fifteen minutes later he took another drink and went out in front of the saloon. It was cold outside and after looking anxiously up and down the street the philanthropist reentered the beer-shop and warmed himself by the big stove. At the end of an hour he ordered another dose of nerve food and sat down to think. It began to dawn upon him that he had been "had," as the English say. Perhaps this fellow was an impostor, a professional crook from New York, and he would sell the overcoat and have riotous pastime upon the proceeds.

"The wife and baby story was a rank fake--I'm a marine," said the well-dressed man taking another drink. It seemed to him that the task of helping the needy was a thankless one, and he wished he had the overcoat back again. He had been waiting nearly two hours when the switchman came in. "I had a hard time finding a purchaser," explained the striker, "and finally when I did sell it I could only get twelve dollars and they made me give my name and tell how I came to have such a coat. I suppose they thought I had stolen it and I dare say I looked guilty for it is so embarra.s.sing to try to sell something that really doesn't belong to you, and to feel yourself suspected of having stolen it."

"And you told them that a gentleman had given the coat to you to sell because he was sorry for you?"