The Red Mouse Part 42

The politician strode to the door angrily, bl.u.s.tering, but with his hand on the k.n.o.b, he paused. A new situation was confronting him--a thing imminent, concrete. To cross the threshold meant a blow; Broderick crept back to Murgatroyd.

"Do you mean this, Murgatroyd?" he queried.

Murgatroyd was busy at his desk and did not look up as he remarked:--

"This interview is over."

Rebuffed once more, Broderick crept to the door, but again he came back, and whispered uncertainly:--

"So you want to be United States Senator, eh? The best job that we've got?" He hesitated for an instant before asking:--

"Can I be of any help?"

Murgatroyd laid down his pen and looked up, smiling.

"Now you are talking sense, Broderick. Yes, you and Thorne can help me."

"Thorne! Great Scott! I never thought of him! Why, he's the organisation nominee, and I'm tied up with him! Say, honest, Murgatroyd, I can't go back on him--Murgatroyd, you can't make it--for even I can't undo all that's been done. Thorne has been slated for that job for months."

"You've got to sponge him off the slate, then," returned the prosecutor.

"I'll be everlastingly confounded if I do!" returned Broderick.

Murgatroyd pressed a b.u.t.ton; Mixley came in on the jump.

"Mixley," began Murgatroyd.

"Hold on!" said Broderick, "I'll help you----"

Murgatroyd nodded.

"Warmly, energetically, enthusiastically----"

"Oh, all that," interrupted Broderick.

"Mixley," said the chief, "you can hold those warrants--until after the next Senatorial election."

Broderick gasped; Mixley's nod as he left the room spoke volumes.

"Broderick," said Murgatroyd, looking him in the eye, "you mean business--you're going to back me straight?"

"Not because I want to, but because I've got to," returned the politician. "It seems I must...."

He paused and returned Murgatroyd's glance significantly. After a moment, he said:--

"Well, fork over, then...."

Murgatroyd smiled.

"How much?..."

"Thorne will spend and has spent a lot of money," answered Broderick; "and you've got to----"

"How much will it take?" asked Murgatroyd.

"How much have you got left?" responded Broderick.

XV

One afternoon, many, many months after the interview just described, a few keen observers among the pa.s.sengers on an incoming Southwestern Express--pulling with final, smooth, exhaustive effort into its eastern terminal--noted with considerable amus.e.m.e.nt that the pulses of one of their number had quickened to such a degree, that evidently their owner found it quite impossible to resist the temptation to leave her seat and politely push forward to the vestibule of the car, where she waited until the train came to a full stop. And so it happened that Shirley Bloodgood led the first flight of men who were hurrying up the long lanes of the station toward a roped-off s.p.a.ce where groups of people waited expectantly for relatives and friends. Not that Shirley looked forward to seeing a familiar face among them; on the contrary she was fully aware,--since she had neglected to telegraph to any one the time of her arrival,--that there was not one chance in a thousand of any of her acquaintances being there; it was merely that she had fallen under the spell of that subtle spirit of unrest and haste, which all travellers, however phlegmatic, recognise the moment they breathe the air of the metropolis. One quick, scrutinising glance, it is true, the girl threw around and about her, as she pa.s.sed through the crowd, but there was no disappointment on her face as now, looking neither to the right nor to the left, she brushed past what seemed to her a hundred cabbies each intent on making her their legitimate human prey.

Once clear of the exit she turned to the porter who was carrying her bag, tipped him, and directing his attention to an urchin in the centre of a howling mob of youthful street Arabs ready to pounce upon her bag the instant the porter dropped it, she cried:--

"Give it to him--him!"

It was a chubby, little, Russian Jew with red cheeks and glistening eyes whom she selected, and, with a howl of disappointment, the other ragam.u.f.fins opened up a lane to let the victor get his spoils, stood while Shirley and her escort marched off, and then swooped down upon another victim.

"Come with me," said Shirley to the boy; and suiting her pace to his running stride, she turned her face toward the west.

As Shirley walked rapidly along, the even pavement felt resilient to her well-shod feet. The keen air brought new vigour into her face, into her body, and in it--partial stranger as she was--she detected that which the metropolitan never scents: the salt vapour of the sea. Thousands of men and women pa.s.sed her, and to one and all, figuratively speaking, she opened wide her arms. The glitter of a thousand lights found an answering sparkle in her eyes.

"There is nothing in the world like it! It will ever be home--the real home to me!" cried Shirley, half-aloud. "The noise, the bustle, the crowds, the life--Oh, how I do love it all!"

For a considerable time Shirley had been living on the heights of Arizona--a wilderness crowded with s.p.a.ce, dotted here and there with human beings. Leaving her mother out there until, under new and altered circ.u.mstances, she could arrange their home in the big city that belonged to her,--and to-day, more than ever, she knew that she belonged to the big city, that in truth she was one of its people,--she had come all the way through without stopping, reasoning that in that way just so much less time would elapse before she could return and fetch her. In the West--a land where men stood out in bold relief, because they were few, they had pointed out to her rugged specimens noted for their physical prowess, their dare-devil recklessness of life. And viewing these swaggering heroes, with the sense of personal achievement, however remote, strong upon them, a vague longing had crept into her inner consciousness.

"Oh, if I were only a man!" she had said to herself.

But now, as she swept along on the right side of the sidewalk, facing the crowd that pa.s.sed her on the left, she knew and felt that here was the place of the real struggle, the battle-ground, the fiery furnace that men were tested in. Out in Arizona, it had been man to man; but here in New York, it was one man against a million. And yet, woman-like, she thought that were she uns.e.xed, she could meet this struggle with tireless energy, could strike where men had failed, could crowd her way up, inch by inch, to the top. And thus communing with herself, Shirley walked on and on, feeling that she could walk on forever through this rush of home-going-folk--people who had done something that day with their hands--people who had unconsciously pushed the earth another twenty-four hours upon his journey.

All of a sudden there came a strong tug at her skirts followed by a youthful voice that called:--

"Say, lady,"--setting down Shirley's bag in mild protest--"youse don't belong so far away! Ain't we got too far?"

After an instant of confusion, Shirley conceded the fact with a frank laugh.

"What am I thinking of!" she cried, "I want to go to the Bellerophon."

"This way then, lady," returned her small guide; and picking up her bag he turned southwards.

At sight of the unpretentious hostelry, which rejoiced in the distinction of possessing such a resounding name, Shirley was conscious of a variety of emotions. For a time, in the old days, it had been the fashion to patronise the Bellerophon, and Murgatroyd had been the first to take her there. On more than one occasion she had lunched with him and he had always been most enthusiastic over the respectful service, the wonderful cuisine and the quiet of the place. It was infinitely nicer, he had said, to have their luncheon there than to go to any of the huge, noisy caravansaries like the skysc.r.a.ping, five-acre, concrete Monolith on the avenue. And she had agreed with him. Another time, he had explained to her that he was a one-club man; a man with few friends; and that, when tired out after a long, hard day's work, he greatly preferred a corner, all to himself, in the Bellerophon to dining with half-formed acquaintances at the club. In this, likewise, she had sympathised thoroughly with his point of view. And so, not unnaturally, it came about that Shirley had had little difficulty, on her long journey east, in convincing herself that it was merely her liking for the Bellerophon, and not at all anything more subtle that had caused her to decide upon this quaint, old hotel for her lonely stay in the metropolis. Besides, Miriam and she had often been there together, and for that matter, had grown to regard it as their own especial discovery.

But, now, when she had crossed the portal, when the boy had dropped her bag at the feet of the Bellerophon porter,--charging her quite double, as the price of her unpardonable absentmindedness,--a flood of memories swept over her, and her face flushed and she laughed in an irritated sort of way on realising that all the time she had been thinking solely of Murgatroyd.

Murgatroyd! Would the man's name never be out of her thoughts! For a time, out west, it is true, she had been so engrossed in the cares and griefs of her almost hermit-like existence, that she had been able to look back upon the old scenes as chapters in some pathetic story book; but now, the odd, little prints on the walls all about her, the slender old gentlemen--aristocrats--who strolled to and fro, everything about the place recalled vividly the man who, not so very long ago, had been a part and parcel of her existence.