The Promise Part 6

"All right, Mr. Stakeholder," laughed the salesman, "pa.s.s over the kale. Just slip out a five for your trouble."

"Just a minute." The voice of the stakeholder was quiet and his lips smiled. The two across the board bristled aggressively and the plucked one sniffled.

"Well"--there was an ugly note in the cigar salesman's voice--"a straight flush beats four aces, don't it?"

"Oh, yes, there is no question as to that. Are these the same cards we have been using?"

"Of course they are! What do you mean?" asked the dealer.

"Oh, nothing. I just wanted to know. Our friend here has the right to know that he got a square deal. Count the cards." The look of apprehension on the faces of the two men faded into smiles.

"Sure thing. That's fair enough," acquiesced the dealer, proceeding to gather the cards from the board. Slowly and deliberately he counted; "fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two," he finished. "Here, captain, count them yourself." He handed them to the youth, who mechanically ran them through.

"They are all here," he admitted.

"Now, that is funny," smiled the stakeholder, "because last deal I dropped several cards onto the floor. This gentleman saw me do it."

He nodded toward the elderly gentleman, who was now keenly interested, and reached under the table.

"See--here they are. And, by the way, the nine and ten of hearts are among them. And now, you cheap crooks," he added as he flung a handful of bills onto the board, "take your money and beat it!"

The two men opposite looked for an instant into the narrowing gray eyes, noted a certain tightening of the square jaw and the clenching of a pair of very capable fists, and tarried not upon further orders.

Sweeping the money into their pockets they quit the compartment, casting venomous back glances toward the young man whose lips could smile while his eyes threatened.

"Here is yours, kid. And let me put you wise to something. The first thing you do when you strike Chicago, buy a ticket to South Bend. They are waiting for you in the wicked town--they can see you coming. The next ones will spring a real live game, green goods, or wire tapping.

They will roll you before you can locate a rescue mission. About the only form of vice they will give you time to investigate will be what the taxi boy does to you.

"The cold-deck stunt you just fell for, sonny, is so old it totters. It is the identical trick that started the coolness between Brutus and Julius Caesar."

CHAPTER VII

THE WRECK

The early darkness of late autumn settled over the flat country. Tiny lights twinkled from distant farmhouses as the Limited plowed through the night.

The athletic young man continued to stare moodily out of the window.

The black expanse of country became more thickly studded with lights.

They flashed in the foreground in regular constellations as the train whizzed with undiminished speed past tall block towers and tiny suburban stations.

Long parallel rows, narrowing to a point under a distant hazy nimbus, marked the course of the outreaching arteries of a great city. Warning bells clanged peremptorily at the lowered gates of grade crossings.

The car wheels crashed noisily over an ever-increasing number of frogs and switch points, an occasional brilliantly illuminated trolley car crept slowly over its rails, and the hundreds of green and red and yellow lights of the widening railroad yards lent a variety of color to the scene.

That infallible harbinger of an approaching terminal, the colored porter, had appeared in the doorway, whisk-broom in hand, when--suddenly--there was a grinding jar; the heavy coach trembled through its length, and from forward came a m.u.f.fled roar followed by the tearing crash of riven metal.

The car reared upward--higher and higher it climbed to the accompaniment of the terrible crunching grind that proclaims undirected power and benumbs the brain with the horrid possibilities of energy uncontrolled. When almost perpendicular the sleeper toppled and crashed sidewise across other tracks at right angles to its course.

New sounds supplanted the mighty noise of tearing and rending--little sounds--the sharp jangle of smashing gla.s.s, and the thin wail of an infant. These were borne to the young man's ears as from a distance.

It was very dark and he was conscious of a great weight which seemed to be crushing the breath from his body. He raised his arms and tore at the thing on his chest. It yielded slightly to the pressure of his hands but remained immovable. He reached above it and encountered metal--a large iron cylinder with projecting pipes twisted and bent.

Frantically he tore at the weight, exerting to the utmost the mighty strength of his shoulders. Inch by inch he worked it sidewise, using the pipes as levers until at length it rolled free and settled with a crash among the wreckage at his side. The other--the thing that yielded--he lifted easily and sat up, filling his exhausted lungs with great drafts of cool air.

His head ached terribly. He pa.s.sed his hand across his forehead and withdrew it wet and dripping. He struck a match and as the tiny flame flickered and went out he struck another and another.

At his side lay the torso of the young reporter, his head mashed by the heavy water-cooler. He shuddered as he realized that this was the thing he had lifted from his chest.

In the opposite corner the elderly man struggled to release his arm from the grip of a wedging timber. The body of the porter, doubled grotesquely, partially protruded from under a seat.

His last match died out and he crept to the side of the imprisoned man.

A heave at the timber satisfied him as to the futility of accomplishing anything in the darkness and without tools.

He stood erect and groped for the door of the compartment which he located in the ceiling almost directly above him. Drawing himself through the aperture, he made the narrow pa.s.sage, but such was the position of the car that it was only with the greatest difficulty he succeeded in worming his way along, using the dividing wall as a floor.

He gained the body of the coach, and from the darkness about him came groans and curses mingled with great gasping sobs, and that most terrible of all sounds, the shriek of a woman in the night-time.

He located a window and, smashing the gla.s.s with his elbow, crawled through.

From every direction men were running toward the scene of the wreck, calling to each other in hoa.r.s.e, throaty bellows, while here and there in the darkness lanterns flashed.

Sick and dizzy he lowered himself to the ground and staggered across some tracks. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a lantern from the hand of a bewildered switchman and stumbled again toward the overturned car.

Others swarmed upon it. He heard the blows of axes and the smashing of gla.s.s. Already an army of men were engaged in the work of rescue.

Inert forms were pa.s.sed through windows into waiting arms to be deposited in long, ghastly rows upon the cinders of the road-bed, under the flaring torches. A cold, drizzling rain was falling and the smell of smoke was in the air.

A group of firemen hurried past carrying hand-extinguishers. The lantern-light gleamed wetly upon their black rubber coats and metal helmets, from under the brims of which their set faces showed grimly white. Far up the track an ambulance gong clanged frantically.

The young man reentered the coach through a window and made his way slowly toward the smoking compartment, pushing his lantern before him.

Reaching the door, he peered over the edge.

Some one was kneeling beside the elderly man, working swiftly by the narrow light of an electric pocket lamp. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light of the interior, he realized that the elderly man seemed to be resisting the efforts of the other who knelt upon his unpinioned arm. From between the lips, which were forced wide apart, protruded the ends of a handkerchief--he was gagged!

The hands of the kneeling man worked rapidly, but not in the prying loose of the timber which lay across the other's arm. From the side pocket of his coat, where it evidently had been hurriedly thrust, dangled a watch chain which the young man recognized as belonging to the dead reporter.

Suddenly the atrocity of the situation dawned upon him. He had heard of such things, of the ghouls who haunt the scenes of great disaster, preying upon the bodies of the dead--robbing the helpless.

With a curse he seized the wirebound railway lantern. At the sound the man looked up--it was the cigar salesman. The young man swung the weapon with all his might. It cut the air in a descending arc, but the other avoided the blow and the heavy lantern crashed against the wall and went out.

Without an instant's hesitation he dived through the opening and met the fiend as he was rising to his feet. Together they rolled among the wreckage. While no match for his antagonist in size, the pickpocket was tough and wiry and apparently uninjured. He fought viciously, with the violence of desperation.

The athlete could hear the voice of the elderly man, who with his free hand had torn the gag from his mouth, roaring encouragement. He received a stinging blow on the cheek from which the warm blood gushed instantly. Knucks, he thought, the cur!

Suddenly his groping hand came in contact with the other's throat just above the rim of his collar. Instantly his fingers closed about yielding flesh, their ends biting deep between the muscles.