The Gentleman from Indiana Part 34

The second was to Warren Smith: "Take possession 'Herald.' Dismiss H.

Fisbee. This your authority. Publish McCune papers so labelled which H.

Fisbee will hand you. Letter follows. Beat McCune.

"JOHN HARKLESS."

The author of the curt epistles tossed restlessly on his couch, but the reader of them stared, incredulous and dumfounded, uncertain of his command of gravity. His jaw fell, and his open mouth might have betokened a being smit to imbecility; and, haply, he might be, for Helen had written him from Plattville, pledging his honor to secrecy with the first words, and it was by her command that he had found excuses for not supplying his patient with all the papers which happened to contain references to the change of date for the Plattville convention. And Meredith had known for some time where James Fisbee had found a "young relative" to be the savior of the "Herald" for his benefactor's sake.

"You mean--you--intend to--you discharge young Fisbee?" he stammered at last.

"Yes! Let me have the answers the instant they come, will you, Tom?"

Then Harkless turned his face from the wall and spoke through his teeth: "I mean to see H. Fisbee before many days; I want to talk to him!"

But, though he tossed and fretted himself into what the doctor p.r.o.nounced a decidedly improved state, no answer came to either telegram that day or night. The next morning a messenger boy stumbled up the front steps and handed the colored man, Jim, four yellow envelopes, night messages. Three of them were for Harkless, one was for Meredith.

Jim carried them upstairs, left the three with his master's guest, then knocked on his master's door.

"What is it?" answered a thick voice. Meredith had not yet risen.

"A telegraph. Mist' Tawm."

There was a terrific yawn. "O-o-oh! Slide it--oh--under the--door."

"Yessuh."

Meredith lay quite without motion for several minutes, sleepily watching the yellow rhomboid in the crevice. It was a hateful looking thing to come mixing in with pleasant dreams and insist upon being read. After a while he climbed groaningly out of bed, and read the message with heavy eyes, still half asleep. He read it twice before it penetrated:

"Suppress all newspapers to-day. Convention meets at eleven. If we succeed a delegation will come to Rouen this afternoon. They will come.

"HELEN."

Tom rubbed his sticky eyelids, and shook his head violently in a Spartan effort to rouse himself; but what more effectively performed the task for him were certain sounds issuing from Harkless's room, across the hall. For some minutes, Meredith had been dully conscious of a rustle and stir in the invalid's chamber, and he began to realize that no mere tossing about a bed would account for a noise that reached him across a wide hall and through two closed doors of thick walnut. Suddenly he heard a quick, heavy tread, shod, in Harkless's room, and a resounding bang, as some heavy object struck the floor. The doctor was not to come till evening; Jim had gone down-stairs. Who wore shoes in the sick man's room? He rushed across the hall in his pyjamas and threw open the unlocked door.

The bed was disarranged and vacant. Harkless, fully dressed, was standing in the middle of the floor, hurling garments at a big travelling bag.

The horrified Meredith stood for a second, bleached and speechless, then he rushed upon his friend and seized him with both hands.

"Mad, by heaven! Mad!"

"Let go of me, Tom!"

"Lunatic! Lunatic!"

"Don't stop me one instant!"

Meredith tried to force him toward the bed. "For mercy's sake, get back to bed. You're delirious, boy!"

"Delirious nothing. I'm a well man."

"Go to bed--go to bed."

Harkless set him out of the way with one arm. "Bed be hanged!" he cried.

"I'm going to Plattville!"

Meredith wrung his hands. "The doctor----"!

"Doctor be d.a.m.ned!"

"Will you tell me what has happened, John?"

His companion slung a light overcoat, unfolded, on the overflowing, misshapen bundle of clothes that lay in the bag; then he jumped on the lid with both feet and kicked the hasp into the lock; a very elegantly laundered cuff and white sleeve dangling out from between the fastened lids. "I haven't one second to talk, Tom; I have seventeen minutes to catch the express, and it's a mile and a half to the station; the train leaves here at eight fifty, I get to Plattville at ten forty-seven.

Telephone for a cab for me, please, or tell me the number; I don't want to stop to hunt it up."

Meredith looked him in the eyes. In the pupils of Harkless flared a fierce light. His cheeks were reddened with an angry, healthy glow, and his teeth were clenched till the line of his jaw stood out like that of an embattled athlete in sculpture; his brow was dark; his chest was thrown out, and he took deep, quick breaths; his shoulders were squared, and in spite of his thinness they looked ma.s.sy. Lethargy, or malaria, or both, whatever were his ailments, they were gone. He was six feet of hot wrath and cold resolution.

Tom said: "You are going?"

"Yes," he answered, "I am going."

"Then I will go with you."

"Thank you, Tom," said the other quietly.

Meredith ran into his own room, pressed an electric b.u.t.ton, sprang out of his pyjamas like Aphrodite from the white sea-foam, and began to dive into his clothes with a panting rapidity astonishingly foreign to his desire. Jim appeared in the doorway.

"The cart, Jim," shouted his master. "We want it like lightning. Tell the cook to give Mr. Harkless his breakfast in a hurry. Set a cup of coffee on the table by the front door for me. Run like the deuce! We've got to catch a train.--That will be quicker than any cab," he explained to Harkless. "We'll break the ordinance against fast driving, getting down there."

Ten minutes later the cart swept away from the house at a gait which pained the respectable neighborhood. The big horse plunged through the air, his ears laid flat toward his tail; the cart careened sickeningly; the face of the servant clutching at the rail in the rear was smeared with pallor as they pirouetted around curves on one wheel--to him it seemed they skirted the corners and Death simultaneously--and the speed of their going made a strong wind in their faces.

Harkless leaned forward.

"Can you make it a little faster, Tom?" he said.

They dashed up to the station amid the cries of people flying to the walls for safety; the two gentlemen leaped from the cart, bore down upon the ticket-office, stormed at the agent, and ran madly at the gates, flourishing their pa.s.sports. The official on duty eyed them wearily, and barred the way.

"Been gone two minutes," he remarked, with a peaceable yawn.

Harkless stamped his foot on the cement flags; then he stood stock still, gazing at the empty tracks; but Meredith turned to him, smiling.

"Won't it keep?" he asked.

"Yes, it will keep," John answered. "Part of it may have to keep till election day, but some of it I will settle before night. And that," he cried, between his teeth, "and that is the part of it in regard to young Mr. Fisbee!"

"Oh, it's about H. Fisbee, is it?"

"Yes, it's H. Fisbee."

"Well, we might as well go up and see what the doctor thinks of you; there's no train."

"I don't want to see a doctor again, ever--as long as I live. I'm as well as anybody."