The Penalty Part 34

"What you want?" he asked aggressively.

"I want me thumb bandaged."

"You cut him--eh?"

Bubbles lowered his voice. "On a barnacle."

"Come in back here," said Mr. Blicker roughly. "I fix him." But once out of sight in the depths of the store, his manner changed, and he patted Bubbles enthusiastically on the back. "You have found out some things?"

"Sure--lots."

The chemist, without commenting, began to treat the cut thumb, washing, disinfecting, and bandaging. Then, very loud, for the benefit perhaps of the lovers at the soda-counter, "So," he said, "I let you out the back door."

And he actually opened a door, slammed it shut, and turned a key in the lock. But it was a closet door. Then with a finger on his lips he pointed to a narrow staircase and, his own feet making a great tramping, led the way up it. Upon the top steps they found Mr. Lichtenstein, nervously puffing clouds of tobacco smoke,

"'Bout given you up," he said. "Good boy!"

"Better talk by the parlor," said Blicker; "here is too exposed."

When the door of the stuffy little parlor had closed behind them, the proprietor began to smile and beam. But Mr. Lichtenstein looked grave and troubled. It was not for pleasure that he sometimes found occasion to put dangerous work in the hands of children.

"Hurt your thumb bad?" he asked.

Bubbles shook his head and plunged into his story. Now and then the German laughed, but the red-haired, pug-nosed Jew appeared to sink deeper and deeper into his own thoughts, only showing by an occasional question that he was following the boy's narrative. Bubbles wished to dwell at length and with comment upon the use of the pa.s.sage for disposing of dead bodies, but to Mr. Lichtenstein this appeared to be merely a natural by-product of its construction.

"It wasn't dug for that," he said. "How big is the main excavation?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I want me thumb bandaged"]

"'Bout as big as a small East Side dance-hall."

Mr. Liechtenstein turned to the German. "Hold a lot of loot--what?"

"I bet me," said the German, and washed his hands with air.

"Lot o' what?" asked Bubbles.

"Loot--gold, silver, jewels, bullion."

"Your ideas," said the German, "is all idiot. No mans is such a darn fool as to think he can get away by such a business--no mans, that is, but is crazy."

"Blizzard is crazy," said Mr. Lichtenstein simply. "It wasn't until we hit on that hypothesis that we made any progress. Bubbles, did you ever hear of the Ma.s.sacre of Saint Bartholomew?"

"Sure," said Bubbles, "they shot him full of arrows."

"That was Saint Sebastian," corrected the Jew. "Now listen, this is history. On the night of August 24, 1572, two thousand men, distinguished from other men by white c.o.c.kades in their hats, on the order of a crazy man, at the tolling of a bell, drew their swords, murdered everybody in a great city who opposed their leaders, and made themselves absolute masters of the place. What two thousand men did in Paris during the Middle Ages, ten thousand men acting in concert could do in New York to-day. If a man rose up with the power to command such a following, with the ability to keep his plans absolutely secret, with the genius to make plans in which there were no flaws, he could loot Maiden Lane, the Sub-Treasury, Tiffany's, the Metropolitan Museum--_and get away with it_."

Mr. Lichtenstein's small eyes glittered. He was visibly excited. And so was Mr. Blicker.

"He will loot the Metropolitan Museum," said this one, "but what will he do with the metropolitan police?"

"Well," said Mr. Lichtenstein, "I am only supposing. But suppose some fine night a building somewhere central was blown up with dynamite.

Suppose the sound was so big that it could be heard in every part of greater New York. Suppose at the sound every policeman in greater New York was shot dead in his tracks--"

Bubbles's hair began to bristle. "Say," he cried in his excitement, "the straw hats--the soft straw hats that Blizzard makes and don't sell--they're the white c.o.c.kades!"

Mr. Blicker guffawed. Mr. Lichtenstein rose and paced the room.

"And that proves," he exclaimed, "that nothing is to happen when you and I are wearing straw hats--but in winter. Bubbles, you're a bright boy!"

"You are both so bright," said Mr. Blicker, "you keep me all the time laughing."

"Well," said Mr. Lichtenstein, "that may be, but suppose you tell me why Blizzard makes straw hats and don't sell 'em. Tell me why he's dug such a great hole under his house with a pa.s.sage leading to the river, and ships. Tell me why O'Hagan is drilling men in the West. Tell me why Blizzard has gone out of the white-slave business. It fetched him in a pretty penny."

"I think I can answer the last question," said Bubbles.

"Do then."

"I think," said the small boy, "that he's got some good in him somewhere, and I know he's dead gone on my Miss Ferris. I think he's ashamed o' some o' the things he's done."

Mr. Lichtenstein considered this at some length. Then he said: "Well, that's possible. But it's an absolutely new idea to me. Blizzard _ashamed_? Hum!"

x.x.xI

"True that policemen take money in exchange for protection? True that they practise blackmail and extortion? Of course it's true. Whenever a big temptation appears loose in a city half the people who get a look at it trip and fall. Oh, I'd like to reform this city, Miss Barbara--and this country. I'd like to be dictator for six months."

"Who wouldn't?" said Barbara. "But what would you do? Where would you begin?"

"I should be drastic at first," said the legless man, "and kind later.

I'd begin," he went on, his eyes smiling, "with a general ma.s.sacre of incompetents--old men with too little money, young men with too much--old maids, aliens, incurables, the races that are too clever to work, the races that are too stupid, habitual drunkards, spreaders of disease, the women who abolished the canteen, the women who wear aigrettes. After that I should destroy all possibilities of graft."

"How?" asked Barbara.

"Why," said he, "the simplest way in the world--legalize the business that now pays for protection. There would be no more of them than there are now, and they could be regulated and kept to confined limits of cities. Don't blame the police for graft: blame all who believe that human nature can be abolished by law. But," and this time his whole face smiled, "I shall never be dictator. The thing to do is to start a new country, and make no mistakes."

And he proceeded, sometimes seriously but for the most part whimsically, to outline his model republic, while Barbara worked and listened, sometimes with amus.e.m.e.nt, sometimes with a sense of being uplifted and thrilled by the man's plausible originality. Since she had but the vaguest recollection of history, and none whatever of economics, it was easy for the man to play the constructive statesman. Nor were his schemes always foolish and illogical, since the book of human nature had been always in his library, and of all its volumes had been most often read.

"Ah!" said the legless man at last, "if I were younger, and whole!"

Whenever he referred to his maimed condition Barbara, to whom it was no longer physically shocking, was uncomfortable and distressed, changing the subject as swiftly as might be. But now, stopping her work short off, her hands hanging at her sides, she began to speak of the matter.

"I suppose," she said, "it's almost life and death to you--sometimes, that you'd give almost anything, take any chance to be--the way you were meant to be. My father believes that some day people can have anything that they've lost restored--a hand or an arm. He's made experiments along those lines ever since he made his mistake with you, and it all works out beautifully with monkeys and dogs and guinea-pigs and rabbits. Just now he is in Colorado to try it on a man. There's a man out there in jail for life, who has a brother that lost his right hand in some machinery. The well brother has offered to let father cut off his hand, and graft it on the maimed brother's wrist. I've just had a letter--it's been done. He thinks it's all right, but he can't be sure yet. Please don't say anything about it because--well, because people are still queer about these things. In the old days people burned the best doctors, and now they want to lynch vivisectors and almost anybody who's really trying to make health more or less contagious."

"Do you believe I could be made whole?" exclaimed Blizzard, his eyes glittering as with a sudden hope. "My G.o.d! Even if they weren't much use to me, I'd give my soul to look like a real man--my soul! Do you know what I'd rather do than anything in this whole world--just once? I'd rather draw myself to my full height--just once--than be Napoleon Bonaparte. If all the treasure in this city were mine to give, I'd give it to walk the length of a city block on my own feet, looking down at the people instead of always up--always up--until the leverage of your eyes twists the back of your brain in everlasting torment."