The Walking Delegate Part 52

The plain clothes man hesitated.

"Oh, he can't give us no trouble," said the big policeman.

The handcuffs were pocketed.

"I'm ready," said Foley.

It was arranged that two of the uniformed men were to lead the way out, the big policeman was to come next with Foley, and the two plain clothes men were to be the rearguard.

The big policeman placed an arm round Foley's waist. "I better give youse a lift," he said.

"Oh, I ain't that weak!" returned Foley. "Come on." He started off steadily. Certainly he had regained strength in the last few minutes.

As the six men started a pa.s.sage opened before them. The little group of roughs who had come to Foley's defense a few minutes before now fell in behind.

Half-way to the door Foley stopped, and addressed the crowd at large:

"Where's Keating?"

"Up by the piano," came the answer.

"Take me to him for a minute, won't youse?" he asked of his guard.

They consulted, then turned back. Again a pa.s.sage opened and they marched to where Tom sat, very pale, leaning against the piano. The crowd pressed up, eager to get a glimpse of these two enemies, now face to face for the last time.

"Look out, Tom!" a voice warned, as Foley, with the policeman at his side, stepped forth from his guard.

"Oh, our fight's all over," said Foley. He paused and gazed steadily down at Tom. None of those looking on could have said there was any softness in his face, yet few had ever before seen so little harshness there.

"I don't know of a man that, an hour ago, I'd 'a' rather put out o'

business than youse, Keating," he at length said quietly. "I don't love youse now. But the real article is scarce, an' when I meet it--well, I like to shake hands."

He held out his left hand. Tom looked hesitantly up into the face of the man who had brought him to fortune's lowest ebb--and who was now yet lower himself. Then he laid his left hand in Foley's left.

Suddenly Foley leaned over and whispered in Tom's ear. Then he straightened up. "Luck with youse!" he said shortly and turned to his guards. "Come on."

Again the crowd made way. Foley marched through the pa.s.sage, his head erect, meeting every gaze unshrinkingly. The greater part of the crowd looked on silently at the pa.s.sing of their old leader, now torn and bruised and bleeding, but as defiant as in his best days. A few laughed and jeered and flung toward him contemptuous words, but Foley heeded them not, marching steadily on, looking into every face.

At the door he paused, and with a lean, blood-trickled smile of mockery, and of an indefinite something else--perhaps regret?--gazed back for a moment on the men he had led for seven years. Then he called out, "So-long, boys!" and waved his left hand with an air that was both jaunty and sardonic.

He turned about, and wiping the red drops from his face with his bare left hand, pa.s.sed out of Potomac Hall. Just behind him and his guard came the little group of roughs, slipping covert glances among themselves. And behind them the rest of the union fell in; and the head of the procession led down the broad stairway and forth into the street.

Then, without warning, there was a charge of the roughs. The five officers were in an instant overwhelmed--tripped, or overpowered and hurled to the pavement--and the roughs swept on. The men behind rushed forward, and without any such purpose entangled the policemen among their numbers. It was a minute or more before the five officers were free and had their bearings, and could begin pursuit and search.

But Buck Foley was not to be found.

Chapter x.x.xI

TOM'S LEVEE

It was seven o'clock the next morning. Tom lay propped up on the couch in his sitting-room, his foot on a pillow, waiting for Maggie to come back with the morning papers. A minute before he had asked Ferdinand to run down and get them for him, but Maggie, who just then had been starting out for a loaf of bread, had said shortly to the boy that she would get them herself.

When Maggie had opened the door the night before, while Petersen was clumsily trying to fit Tom's key into the keyhole, the sight of Tom standing against the wall on one foot, his clothes in disorder, had been to her imagination a full explanation of what had happened. Her face had hardened and she had flung up her clenched hands in fierce helplessness.

"Oh, my G.o.d! So you've been at Foley again!" she had burst out. "More trouble! My G.o.d, my G.o.d! I can't stand it any longer!" She would have gone on, but the presence of a third person had suddenly checked her.

She had stood unmoving in the doorway, her eyes flashing, her breast rising and falling. For an instant Tom, remembering a former declaration, had expected her to close the door in his face, but with a gesture of infinite, rageful despair she had stepped back from the door without a word, and Petersen had supported him to the couch. Almost immediately a doctor had appeared, for whom Tom and Petersen had left a message on their way home; and by the time the doctor and Petersen had gone, leaving Tom in bed, her fury had solidified into that obdurate, resentful silence which was the characteristic second stage of her wrath. Her injustice had roused Tom's antagonism, and thus far not a word had pa.s.sed between them.

The nearest newsstand was only a dozen steps from the tenement's door, but minute after minute pa.s.sed and still Maggie did not return. After a quarter hour's waiting Tom heard the hall door open and close, and then Maggie came into the sitting-room. He was startled at the change fifteen minutes had made in her expression. The look of set hardness was gone; the face was white and drawn, almost staring. She dropped the papers on a chair beside the couch. The top one, crumpled, explained the length of her absence and her altered look.

Tom's heart began to beat wildly; she knew it then! She paused beside him, and with his eyes down-turned he waited for her to speak. Seconds pa.s.sed. He could see her hands straining, and hear her deep breath coming and going. Suddenly she turned about abruptly and went into the kitchen.

Tom looked wonderingly after her a moment; then his eyes were caught by a black line half across the top of the crumpled paper: "Contractors Trap Foley." He seized the paper and his eyes took in the rest of the headline at a glance. "Arrested, But Makes Spectacular Escape"; a dozen words about the contractors' plan; and then at the very end, in smallest display type: "Also Exposed in Union." He quickly glanced through the headlines of the other papers. In substance they were the same.

Utterly astounded, he raced through the several accounts of Foley's exposure. They were practically alike. They told of Mr. Baxter's visit to the District Attorney, and then recited the events of the past three weeks just as Mr. Baxter had given them to the official prosecutor: How Foley had tried to hold the Executive Committee up for fifty thousand dollars; how the committee had seen in his demand a chance to get him into the hands of the law, and so rid labor and capital of a common enemy; how, after much deliberation, they had decided to make the attempt; how the sham negotiations had proceeded; how yesterday, to make the evidence perfect, Foley had been given the fifty thousand dollars he had demanded as the price of settlement--altogether a most complete and plausible story. "A perfect case," the District Attorney had called it.

Tom's part in the affair was told in a couple of paragraphs under a subhead.

One of the papers had managed to get in a hurried editorial on Mr.

Baxter's story. "Perhaps their way of trapping Foley smacks strongly of gum-shoe detective methods," the editorial concluded; "but their end, the exposure of a notorious labor brigand, will in the mind of the public entirely justify their means. They have earned the right to be called public benefactors." Such in tone was the whole editorial. It was a prophecy of the editorial praise that was to be heaped upon the contractors in the afternoon papers and those of the next morning.

Tom flung the papers from him in sickened, bewildered wrath. He had expected a personal triumph before the public. He felt there was something wrong; he felt Mr. Baxter had robbed him of his glory, just as Foley had robbed him of his strike. But in the first dazedness of his disappointment he could not understand. He hardly touched the breakfast Maggie had quietly put upon the chair while he had been reading, but sank back and, his eyes on the ceiling with its circle of cl.u.s.tered grapes, began to go over the situation.

At the end of a few minutes he was interrupted by Ferdinand, whom Maggie had sent in with a letter that had just been delivered by a messenger.

Tom took it mechanically, then eagerly tore open the envelope. The letter was from the detective agency, and its greater part was the report of the observations made the previous evening by the detectives detailed to watch Mr. Baxter. Tom read it through repeatedly. It brought Foley's whispered words flashing back upon him: "I give it to youse for what it's worth; Baxter started this trick." He began slowly to understand.

But before he had fully mastered the situation there was a loud knock at the hall door. Maggie opened it, and Tom heard a hearty voice sound out: "Good-mornin', Mrs. Keating. How's your husband?"

"You'll find him in the front room, Mrs. Barry," Maggie answered. "All of you go right in."

There was the sound of several feet, and then Mrs. Barry came in and after her Barry and Pete. "Say, Tom, I'm just tickled to death!" she cried, with a smile of ruddy delight. She held out a stubby, pillowy hand and shook Tom's till her black straw hat, that the two preceding summers had done their best to turn brown, was bobbing over one ear.

"Every rib I've got is laughin'. How're you feelin'?"

"First rate, except for my ankle. How're you, boys?" He shook hands with Barry and Pete.

"Well, you want to lay still as a bed-slat for a week or two. A sprain ain't nothin' to monkey with, I tell you what. Mrs. Keating, you see't your husband keeps still."

"Yes," said Maggie, setting chairs for the three about the couch, and herself slipping into one at the couch's foot.

Mrs. Barry sank back, breathing heavily, and wiped her moist face. "I said to the men this mornin' that I'd give 'em their breakfast, but I wouldn't wash a dish till I'd been over to see you. Tom, you've come out on top, all right! An' n.o.body's gladder'n me. Unless, o' course, your wife."

Maggie gave a little nod, and her hands clasped each other in her lap.

"It's easy to guess how proud you must be o' your man!" Mrs. Barry's red face beamed with sympathetic exultation.

Maggie gulped; her strained lips parted: "Of course I'm proud."

"I wish you could 'a' heard the boys last night, Tom," cried Pete. "Are they for you? Well, I should say! You'll be made walkin' delegate at the very next meetin', sure."