The Walking Delegate Part 34

As he waited before the warrant clerk's desk he saw Mr. Baxter, on his way to the door, brush by Foley, and in the moment of pa.s.sing he saw Foley's lips move. He did not hear Foley's words. They were two, and were: "First round!"

A few minutes later Tom was led down a stairway, through a corridor and locked in a cell.

Chapter XX

TOM HAS A CALLER

Late in the afternoon, as Tom lay stretched in glowering melancholy on the greasy, dirt-browned board that did service as chair and bed to the transitory tenants of the cell, steps paused in the corridor without and a key rattled in his door. He rose dully out of his dejection. A scowling officer admitted a man, round and short and with side whiskers, and locked the door upon his back.

"This is a pretty how-to-do!" growled the man, coming forward.

Tom stared at his visitor. "Why, Mr. Driscoll!" he cried.

"That's who the most of my friends say I am," the contractor admitted gruffly.

He deposited himself upon the bench that had seated and bedded so much unwashed misfortune, and, his back against the cement wall, turned his sour face about the bare room. "This is what I call a pretty poor sort of hospitality to offer a visitor," he commented, in his surly voice.

"Not even a chair to sit on."

"There is also the floor; you may take your choice," Tom returned, nettled by the other's manner. He himself took the bench.

Mr. Driscoll stared at him with blinking eyes, and he stared back defiantly. In Tom's present mood of wrath and depression his temper was tinder waiting another man's spark.

"Huh!" Mr. Driscoll ran his pudgy forefinger easefully about between his collar and his neck, and removing his spectacles mopped his purple face.

"What's this funny business you've been up to now?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" Tom demanded, his irritation mounting.

"You ought to read the papers and keep posted on what you do. I just saw a _Star_. There's half a page of your face, and about a pint of red ink."

Tom groaned, and his jaws clamped ragefully.

"What I read gave me the impression you'd been having a sort of private Fourth of July celebration," Mr. Driscoll pursued.

Tom turned on the contractor half savagely. "See here! I don't know what you came here for, but if it was for this kind of talk--well, you can guess how welcome you are!"

Mr. Driscoll emitted a little chuckling sound, or Tom thought for an instant he did. But a glance at that sour face, with its straight pouting mouth, corrected Tom's ears.

"Now, what was your fool idea in blowing up the Avon?"

Tom uprose wrathfully. "Do you mean to say you believe the lies those blackguards told this morning?"

"I only know what I read in the papers."

"If you swallow everything you see in the papers, you must have an awful maw!"

"Yes, I suppose you have got some sort of a story you put up."

Tom glared at his pudgy visitor who questioned with such an exasperating presumption. "Did I ask you here?" he demanded.

The contractor's eyes snapped, and Tom expected hot words. But none came. "Don't get hot under the collar," Mr. Driscoll advised, running his comforting finger under his own. "Come, what's your side of the story?"

Tom was of half a mind to give a curt refusal. But his wrong was too great, too burning, for him to keep silent upon it. He would have talked of it to any one--to his very walls. He took a turn in the cell, then paused before his old employer and hotly explained his innocence and Foley's guilt.

While Tom spoke Mr. Driscoll's head nodded excitedly.

"Just what I said!" he cried when Tom ended, and brought his fist down on his knee. "Well, we'll show him!"

"Show him what?" Tom asked.

Mr. Driscoll stopped his fist midway in another excited descent. He stood up, for he saw the officer's scowling face at the grated front of the cell. "Oh, a lot of things before he dies. As for you, keep your courage up. What else's it for?"

He held out his hand. Tom took it with bewildered perfunctoriness.

Mr. Driscoll pa.s.sed through the door, held open by the officer. Outside he turned about and growled through the bars: "Now don't be blowing up any more buildings!"

Tom, stung anew, would have retorted in kind, but Mr. Driscoll's footsteps had died away down the corridor before adequate words came to him.

It was about an hour later that the officer appeared before his cell again and unlocked his door. "Come on," he said shortly.

Tom, supposing he was at length to be removed to the county jail, put on his hat and stepped outside the cell. He had expected to find policemen in the corridor, and to be handcuffed. But the officer was alone.

Two cells away he saw Jake's malignant face peering at him through the bars. "I guess this puts us about even!" Jake called out.

Tom shook his fist. "Wait till the trial! We'll see!" he cried vengefully.

"Shut up, youse!" shouted the surly watchman. He pushed Tom through the corridor and up a stairway. At its head Tom was guided through a door, and found himself in the general hall of the police station.

"Here youse are," said the officer, starting for the sergeant's desk.

"Come on and sign the bail bond."

Tom caught his arm. "What's this mean?" he cried.

"Don't youse know? Youse're bailed out."

"Bailed out! Who by?"

"Didn't he tell youse?" Surprise showed in the crabbed face of the officer. "Why, before he done anything he went down to talk it over with youse."

"Not Mr. Driscoll?"

"I don't know his name. That red-faced old geezer in the gla.s.ses.

Huh!--his coin comes easier'n mine."

Tom put his name to the bond, already signed by Mr. Driscoll, and stumbled out into the street, half blinded by the rush of sunlight into his cell-darkened eyes, and struck through with bewilderment at his unexpected liberation. He threw off a number of quizzing reporters, who had got quick news of his release, and walked several aimless blocks before he came back to his senses. Then he set out for Mr. Driscoll's office, almost choking with emotion at the prospect of meeting Ruth again. But he reached it too late to spend his thanks or to test his self-control. It was past six and the office was locked.