The Penalty Part 42

Blizzard is planning a revolution. You are to be one of the leaders. You imagine that one of the h.e.l.l-governed Latin republics is to be the seat of operations, or you wouldn't have gone into the thing. But Blizzard is after bigger game than undeveloped wildernesses. Mr. Allen, you are part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government of New York City."

"Say that again."

The stranger smiled. "O'Hagan at the last made a clean breast of everything. He had to. I came West to make him."

"At the _last_? What does that mean?"

"When a man won't talk you have to make him--even if you fix him so that he can never talk again."

"Is O'Hagan _dead_?"

"He had his choice. But he _had_ to talk. If I had let him off afterward--I couldn't have gotten away with the information. One of us had to go out, and I had the power to decide which. I chose that O'Hagan should be the one. He was a man steeped in crime. I am not."

"You killed him?"

"I am a very poor talker if I have conveyed another meaning. I tracked him into the mountains. He shot me twice before I could get my hands on him. I twisted the truth out of him, and then as I was about to faint like a school-girl, and as my information was precious, I flung him over a cliff. If I hadn't, you see, he could have fixed me while I was unconscious."

The man's voice was very quiet, very matter-of-fact. Wilmot stared at him with a sort of wondering horror, for he knew that the man was telling the truth.

"He shot you twice. That was some time yesterday. You've seen a doctor?"

"There was none, and I had to ride all night to get here."

"Are you badly hit?"

The stranger drew back his coat and disclosed a shirt twice perforated over the abdomen and dark with dried and thickening blood. "Please don't try to do anything. There's no help. The damage is where it doesn't show. Only listen, please, and believe, and be frank with me."

Wilmot nodded gravely. "I don't know who you are," he said, "but you are hurt, and if you'd rather talk than try to do something about it, of course I'll listen."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I twisted the truth out of him, and then flung him over a cliff"]

"You are in wrong on the revolution," said the stranger. "It is not to come off in South America, but in the city of New York. If Blizzard's plans carry, this will happen. On the 15th of January there will be an explosion of dynamite loud enough to be heard from, the Battery to the Bronx. At that signal two-thirds of the police force, at the moment on active duty, will be shot dead in their tracks. The a.s.sa.s.sins, distinguished from law-abiding citizens by straw hats of a peculiar weave--"

"I have such a hat in my trunk."

"Are to a.s.semble together with that third of the police force whom it was not necessary to annihilate, at the Sub-Treasury in Wall Street.

Here they will receive further orders--some to loot the Sub-Treasury, some to loot banks, some Tiffany's, some the great wholesale jewellers of Maiden Lane. You, perhaps, as a man of superior talk and breeding, would be sent with a picked crew of Polacks, dagoes, and other high-minded patriots to rifle the Metropolitan Museum of Art--"

"Look here, did O'Hagan--"

"He did. Meanwhile all communication by telephone, by telegraph, by cable between New York and the outer world will be cut off. For at least twenty-four hours the city will be in Blizzard's power, at his, disposition."

"How about communication by train?"

"Trains will come into the Grand Central and the Pennsylvania, but they will not go out."

"A man could jump into an automobile and carry the news."

"Ferries will stop running. Bridges will be closed."

The idea of looting New York had fired Wilmot's imagination. It was a possibility to which he had never before given any thought,

"But," he objected, "there must be a flaw somewhere."

"Probably," admitted the stranger. "For there is a flaw in Blizzard's mind. It is the only way to account for him. He stands on the verge of insanity."

"Suppose the plan carries. The city has been looted. What next?"

"The stuff is hidden under Blizzard's house in Marrow Lane in cellars that he has been preparing for years. A pa.s.sage leads from these cellars to a pier on the East River. Either he gets away with his loot in a stolen liner, or he finds that he may live on in New York, or perhaps in Washington."

"I don't see that."

"What effect would a successful revolution in New York have upon the discontented and the murderous of other cities? Are the criminals of San Francisco, Denver, Chicago to be outdone by the criminals of the effete East? I tell you, Mr. Allen, that sometimes in mad visions the legless beggar sees upon his brows a kingly crown."

"But the rest of the police--the garrison at Governor's Island?"

"O'Hagan was Blizzard's right-hand man, his general in the West. For the honor of being his left-hand man there are two aspirants--the mayor of New York City and the police commissioner--nor will the lieutenant-governor of our great State hold his hands behind his back and shake his head when the loot is being distributed."

"Are you _joking?"_

"No, Mr. Allen. I am dying. Now listen. I a.s.sume that you are no longer with Blizzard."

"What an a.s.s I've been!"

"You are to find Abe Lichtenstein and tell him what I have told you. The boy Bubbles will put you on his track. As for money which Blizzard has advanced to you--" The stranger fumbled in his breast pocket and brought forth a much-soiled sheet of paper. "This locates outlying mining claims in Utah. They will make you rich. One-third to you--one-third to Miss Barbara Ferris--one-third to the boy Bubbles. You will tell him that I was his brother--different mothers, but the same father."

"_You_ are Harry West," and Wilmot looked with compa.s.sionate interest upon the man who, if only for a brief period of time, had once stood first in Barbara's affections.

Under the strain of talking West's voice had grown weaker. "Miss Barbara," he said quietly, "is in great danger from my father--"

"_Your_ father?"

"Didn't I tell you? Oh, yes. He is my father--Blizzard. That is why I don't mind dying. When the city is in confusion, and without any laws save of his own dictation, Miss Barbara will be in terrible danger. Many years from now, when it can do no harm with you, tell her, please, that in my life I had the incomparable privilege--"

Wilmot leaped to his feet. "Is there a doctor here? This man is dying."

But the Spartan, the wolf Death gnawing at his vitals, had said all that it was necessary for him to say. Wilmot Allen's strong arm about him, his mouth vaguely smiling, he fell heavily forward as if under the weight of a new and overpowering wonder and knowledge.

XLII

Nothing so makes for insomnia as a man's knowledge that he has made a fool of himself. Between Chicago and New York Wilmot Allen did not even have his berth made up. He visited the dining-car at the proper intervals, hardly conscious of what he ordered or ate. He bought newspapers, books, magazines, and opened none of them. For the most part he looked out the window of his compartment into rushing daylight or darkness. His mind kept travelling the round of a great circle that began and ended in humiliation. He had been as confiding in Blizzard's hands as an undeveloped child of seven. He had been teaching men whose creed was murder and anarchy how to handle weapons. He had taken at their face value words uttered by an emperor among scoundrels; had asked no material or leading questions, and was in his conscience paying the penalty for having s.n.a.t.c.hed at tainted money with which to relieve himself of obligations that pressed till they hurt.

Beginning in humiliation, the circle of his thoughts ascended time after time to Barbara, only to fall from the high and tender lights which memories and antic.i.p.ations of her brought into them, back to that darkness in which he struggled to give himself "a little the best of things" and could not.

On arriving in New York a man of more complex mental processes would have tried first of all to get the precious information which he carried into the possession of Lichtenstein, but Wilmot felt that he could have no peace until he had seen Blizzard, spoken his mind, and washed his hands of him. That he would then put his own life in danger did not occur to him, and would not have altered his determination if it had.