Front matter (continued 2)

Somehow his face seemed singularly familiar,—yet Ned could not at once recollect having seen it before. Oddly enough, it brought back the thought of last night's terrible scenes, of his heavy, felonious secrets, the dismal black walls of the burned theatre, the distress of many men thrown suddenly out of employment, the imagined despair of the ruined owner. Where had he ever seen this man? Ned wondered. Why should his face be thus associated with these suggestions?

Suddenly he remembered the gilded mask of Folly, the silly wink, the knowing grimace! This was the man against whom he had run as he fled from his own foolish fancy.

It seemed strange to him that he should meet this man at the scene of the fire, and now again on the way to the park; but in a moment he was arguing within himself that the encounter had no significance,—every idler in the town had been that day to the burned theatre, and the park was of course a public resort. It was only an accident. For what could the man have to do with him?

"I'm so full o' secrets," he said to himself, "that I feel like a pack o' dynamite,—ef anybody was ter tech me I believe I'd bust!"

The renewal of all his anxieties had destroyed the pleasure and the expected benefits of the jaunt. In vain for Ned the trees, in their fresh May verdure, leaned over the broad drives and walks, while the young birds in the branches discussed with their parents the propriety of postponing bed-time for half an hour longer. All the children were still up, they argued,—and that was very true, for the park swarmed with small specimens of humanity, and the perennial perambulator was on the march. In vain the fountains tossed up their spray of rainbows. In vain refreshing sounds came from the lake, where water-fowl splashed in and out of the ripples, and the beat of oars sent a skiff skimming about, and a swan, resting motionless on the reflection of the evening sky, suggested the starry Swan whose element is the sky itself.

From the greensward and in the midst of beds of coleus, that gleamed like huge jewels of garnet or topaz, rose a great pedestal of polished granite, surmounted by a statue in bronze. It had been erected in honor of some great man. Ned did not know of whom, and he had never cared to ask. Now he looked at it speculatively as he sat down on a bench opposite.

"An' what did he ever do to make him great?" he demanded of himself.

The answer came promptly from his sharp common sense, "Did right!"

There was the secret of greatness in a nutshell. For those great men who were not good as well are certainly not honored for that wherein they failed. Always what was done right predominated. And those men who do right in the small details of the simplest daily life, although the result may be inconspicuous, are as great as any who leave their memory in bronze. Ned knew this,—that a printer's devil has as fine an opportunity for heroism as he "who taketh a city." And he had been ambitious morally as well as mentally.

"But what can I do now?" he thought. How could he tell his story, and make reparation, and quiet his conscience without danger of being believed the accomplice of the men who had stolen the money and the star's diamonds, and burned the beautiful theatre, and ruined the manager for their revenge and wicked malice? If he should confess that he had choused the management out of half a dollar he impeached his own honesty. Could he then consistently ask to be believed innocent of other crimes?

Besides, what good would his confession do now? The rascals were no doubt far enough away by this time. The theatre was burned, the money and diamonds were gone, the manager was ruined; and Ned thought that unless he held his tongue with unparalleled discretion he might be punished for the crimes of the absconded scamps.

As he sat there, his elbows on his knees, his hat drawn down, his face pale and grave, his hands holding his throbbing head, the fact that he was troubled in his mind and tortured by his conscience was very evident to a tall, quiet, thin man, with an unobtrusive manner and a pensive aspect, who chanced to saunter by more than once.

Ned did not notice him, however. Only now and then by an effort he tore his attention from the subject that so absorbed him, and upbraided himself for wasting his opportunity for the beneficial influences of a change of air, of scene, of thought that might of itself serve to solve the problems which racked him. He lifted his head and addressed himself to an earnest attempt to divert his mind. It was rare, since his life was spent in vibration between the business portions of the city and the tenement district, that he saw the equipages of people of wealth and fashion, which now flashed by in quick succession. He noticed that they were filled with the silken shimmer of dainty attire and bright pink-and-white faces, which seemed to bloom in the delicate shadow of the quivering lace or fringe of parasols; these parasols, being white or violet or of roseate hue, were themselves of flower-like suggestion, resembling some species of convolvuli. An automobile astonished his gaze rather more than it surprised the sophisticated horses, but it was to these animals he awarded the palm as a means of locomotion. In them he felt a sort of proprietary interest. He noted the value of their fine form; he appraised their glossy coats; he narrowed his eyes to discriminate details of their harness, often so slight as to seem barely to restrain their activities, and hiding no point of beauty or grace. His infancy had been spent in a horse-raising country, but his interest was really apart from memory, and only stimulated by having heard his father's enthusiastic talk of notable favorites which he had seen or shod, for the Scotch emigrant had first settled as a wheelwright and blacksmith in New Arcady, Kentucky, and there he had remained until the last few years of his life.

The sleek, whirling spokes, as they caught the light and glittered, soon dazzled Ned's tired eyes; the gay voices that floated down to him seemed all out of tune with the melancholy conditions of his struggling, troubled existence. Only once did he look up with keen and spontaneous attention; a tandem, a thing much in vogue in this place, of fine blood bays went by like the wind,—so fast indeed that he hardly recognized the manager and his elderly skeleton-like friend. Ned rose from his seat to stare after them in doubt and eagerness, all unmindful that a man on a bench in the shade of a tree opposite had noted his excitement, and the identity of the parties who had elicited it, and was steadily gazing at him.

Ned did not seat himself again, but began to wander along the shores of the lake. There was all about it a hedge or border of the Southern plant called Yucca gloriosa, and its bayonet-like leaves and tall shafts with their white pendent liliaceous blossoms were reflected in the smooth water, all as motionless as if the whole were some softly vivid aquarelle. Presently a skiff, freighted with children, came gliding along with ripples about its prow and a wake of foam in which the reflections were lost for a time, the snowy blossoms only gradually sketched anew on the surface as by some trembling, tentative, unpracticed brush. The detective, now strolling along the broad drive, could ill keep his eye upon the boy as he dawdled among the tall, flowering spikes; even less when Ned abruptly came to a stand-still to gaze fixedly upon the countenance of a swan, waddling in its ungainly style up the green bank toward a small, daintily befrilled, rosy child, who with her nurse's arm protectively about her waist, was making bold to offer the bird a bit of cracker in disregard of the mandatory sign, "Don't feed the Swans."

The detective found it yet more difficult to dispose of himself appropriately when, as he still incidentally followed the boy, Ned paused in further reaches of the park to gaze through a high fence, which was constructed in a pretty, rustic fashion, and which served to keep in a few deer. One of these had a fawn, and the little creature was beside its mother. The boy had not known before that these animals are dappled with white in early youth, and this indisputable presentment of the fact brought him bolt upright against the fence, where he stared in the interstices while both hands grasped the structure.

The officer could not follow his example, without attracting attention, for what is eminently sane in one stage of human development would be evidence of an unbalanced mind in a more advanced age and a different station of life. He was not, however, willing to pass on, lest he lose sight of the boy; and something, he could not say what, convinced him that there was an objective point in Ned's wanderings, albeit he himself, perhaps, was as yet unconscious whither, in his undiscriminated mental processes, his steps were tending. The officer met the emergency by pausing in the middle of the road and taking out a cigar. The wind was stirring anew, and thus he was enabled to make the business of deliberately lighting it a longer operation than was really necessary. More than one match flickered and was extinguished by the freakish gusts, although he appeared to shield carefully the timorous flame with his hand. This enabled him to stand still until Ned was once more forging ahead, when the genteel-looking man in citizen's dress again began to stroll along, swinging his cane and leisurely puffing his cigar. He needed its solace, for a sharp nettling irritation was beginning to be very prominent in his consciousness. "I'd rather shadow a grasshopper than a boy," he said to himself, for there seemed to be some chance to restrain the mere activities of the one, and he could not be sure what the vagaries of the other implied. He prided himself on his experience. He had outwitted noted crooks in his time. He felt fully competent to divine any usual motive of flight or aggression or craft or wickedness, but the interest of standing still as Ned was now doing and kicking at a frog as it hopped from one side of the road to the other was something he could not appreciate. It seemed so casual, so inconsistent with any other motive than mere idle diversion, that he would have been minded to leave Ned in this choice batrachian company were he not lured on and on by the hope of finding the boy making an effort to communicate with the older and more important conspirators in the crime. The unique difficulties of the situation, too, appealed to his vanity in invention. What to do while Ned was engaged with the frog he did not, for one moment, know. The next, with a sentiment of discovery, he drew out his watch, having observed a dial on the tower of a small building down a glade so steep that the clock was not many feet higher than his head as he stood on the hillside; he affected to compare the timepieces and then to reset his watch, and to wind it carefully anew. He had not completed this ruse, which he was exploiting in the most natural manner possible, when Ned suddenly started forward at a brisk pace and evidently with a definite goal in view.

The boy had all at once recognized the impulse in his mind to which he had been unconsciously tending. He desired counsel. His nature was frank, not secretive. He had only feared to divulge his knowledge of the crime lest a worse thing befall him, and he distrusted the people he knew, all more or less strangers to him and naturally devoid of any special interest in him or his welfare. When in the longing to open his heart he had thought of his mother, the impulse was checked by the doubt of her capacity to cope with the situation. She was even more ignorant of the ways of this world than he himself, he argued, for he knew town life, while she, suspiciously restricting her intercourse even with her nearest neighbors, was hardly more sophisticated now than if she had never left her rural home in New Arcady, Kentucky, where she was born. Moreover she would scold,—alack, for poor femininity! She would ask him why he had done this, and why he had not done that,—all irrevocable, all a part of the immutable past,—and withal she would be as helpless as he himself to take up now the tangled present and unravel its tortuous coils. If only his father had lived! And so Ned suddenly bethought himself of certain of his father's old friends,—friends in the sense of patrons in that far-away country home he had left,—men whose horses he had shod, whose good opinion had been his meat and bread, whose relinquished favor he had always regretted, whose names and exploits were forever on his lips to the day of his death. These were men of note in their section, of substance, of sophistication, of breeding. How often had Ned heard his father describe their genial traits, their lordly traditions, and liberal ways! Doubtless these portraits of the rural magnates were idealized under the softening touch of regretful memory and the roseate haze of distance, but Ned did not appreciate this. He only realized that they were of such station, character, and worldly knowledge as to render them above suspicion and eminently capable of advising him accurately as to his duty and danger in the matter. He thought they would believe his story; they would befriend him and protect him. And what so easy as to seek their advice and assistance! There in that deep cut lay the railroad, the parallel steel bars even now jangling faintly with the vibratory resonance of a far-off train. Should he leave at midnight after his work was over, he would be in that bucolic paradise at noon. Only a few hours' stay, and the night would bring him back, and till all was over and explained, his mother might never know of his absence, being pacified with the subterfuge of a press of work at the printing office.

It was a compact, resolute little shadow, stepping decisively and briskly along, that blurred and blotted out the dapplings of the chestnut and maple leaves, all fair and fresh and whole, which were imprinted by the sunshine in their graceful entirety on the smooth, broad, sandy stretch that led to the little station. The determination, though so suddenly taken, was definite in Ned's mind, and as he entered the building and walked over to the ticket-seller's window he had not a doubt as to his best course now. The man that the little aperture framed was blond, clean-shaven, young, with a steel blue eye and a cardigan jacket which he had donned to save the sleeves of the natty coat hanging on a hook beside his desk, and indeed the frayed sleeves of the jacket told of the wear and tear incident to driving a pen. He fixed upon Ned those matter of course, disconcerting eyes peculiar to the human automaton, whose business it is to do the same mechanical thing a thousand times a day and to repeat the same mechanical words.

Ned demanded the price of a ticket, his little grimy paw already on his cheap buckskin wallet, hid away among less valuable stowage in the museum of his pockets.

"To New Arcady, Kentucky? Twelve dollars!" said the man. Ned felt his hair rise,—more than a month's wages! And was he to beg or beat his way back? The prospect in which he had begun to rejoice was dwindling, fading, vanishing like a mirage! And it had been so hopeful! He wondered, when he thought of this, might he not steal a ride thither,—beat his way! Nay,—had he not yet enough of beating his way?

"Want the ticket? Then move on," said the ticket agent as Ned still vaguely clung to the window, as if he thus kept a clutch on his ephemeral hope. He shook his head, unclasped his hand, and slipped away. "What can I do for you, sir?" the agent asked sharply of a gentleman who was now standing silently at the window, seeming scarcely less dazed and wool-gathering than Ned had been. "Oh, time-table?" The automaton ungraciously flung it out, and went back to his writing with an air which seemed to ask if all the fools who wanted to go nowhere, and whom he wished were there, were coming this day to block up his window, and interrupt his work, and impede traffic.

Ned left the tall, thin gentleman in the station building engaged in the study of the time-table. But he did not long remain there. As the dejected little lad, who had not realized how he had been upborne by his secret hope of help and counsel from his father's old friends till it was snatched from him, took his way along the darkening shadowy paths, the tall man was once more swiftly afoot, and although he passed Ned and walked openly in advance he was determined no more to lose trace of the boy. The idea of quitting the city, which the inquiry at the station had revealed, precipitated the necessity of prompt action. Very little more time could now be accorded to the line of investigation which the detective was pursuing,—the hope of discovering the boy in communication with the incendiaries. It would be necessary to arrest him forthwith, lest he escape from the town, and with him vanish the only clue as yet developed of the origin and perpetrators of the crime. Nevertheless the detective determined that he would still seek in this limited interval to secure some inkling, some vestige of a theory, that might lead to the unmasking of the principals in this nefarious affair. Thus he was acutely conscious of the patter of the small feet as they came nimbly along behind him; when at last they began to lag he turned from the road and sat down on a bench by the wayside, and there Ned noticed him for the first time since they had been in the park, and remembered when and where he had before seen him. Ned was relieved to observe as he passed that the man seemed to take no heed of him. He did not even look up. Perhaps in his turn Ned would not have again thought of the stranger, so frequently encountered, had he not turned back as he reached the big iron gate to gaze regretfully over the great green stretch of the park. The man was just rising from the bench under the tree; he stretched his limbs with much deliberation, caught up his cane and came slowly down the broad walk toward the gate. He too was about to leave the place. Ned could not have said why, but he determined that he would not ride back to town in the same car. He loitered. There were two of the cable double-cars waiting on the track. The foremost was nearly full of passengers,—the other altogether empty.

"I'll take the car that he leaves," Ned said to himself. Impressed with the idea that he was watched, he had half expected that the man would hesitate and wait for him.

To his surprise the stranger strode past without so much as a glance toward him and stepped upon the platform of the foremost car.

"I'm the biggest fool in town!" thought Ned in scorn for his terrors, turning nevertheless toward the other car.

"Go on!" said the grip-man of the empty cable car. "This car is going to turn in."

Ned went on, dismayed by the possibility that the man had noticed and understood this effort to avoid him, but when he too stepped upon the rear platform of the foremost car and the cumbrous vehicle started off, he saw that the man had bought the evening paper and was already deeply absorbed in its contents.

"He ain't even thinking about me," Ned reflected, much reassured. "He ain't even looked ter see if I took the kyar or no."

The boy who had sold the paper still stood in the doorway. He was a squabby little fellow of eight or ten, with carrot-tinted hair, a broad, dirty, freckled face, a wide mouth with several front teeth missing, a beguiling blue eye, and a persuasive lisp, although his voice was keyed to a blatant whine. He scanned the faces of the men in the car with a precocious attention and business tact at once ludicrous and pathetic as he recited the headlines of the news columns. There was something very appealing in his innocent and earnest eyes and long list of enormities.

"All about the bloody murder at the wharf!" he sang out suddenly.

There was no response. The car whizzed on. Nobody talked. There was not even smoking here, although from the "grip" visible ahead, the wind brought back the fragrance of cigars.

"Executhion at the Jail-yard! Two murdererth on the thame gallowth! Dying thpeech an' confethion!—Their neckth were broke!" he added suddenly, the last clause of his own motion and by way of explanation.

His air demanded, who could resist such fascinating reading as that! Still there was no response. That belled cat, the conductor, was taking the fares, and ever and anon the sharp tones of his bell-punch jangled on the air.

The disappointed little boy fetched a heavy sigh. He could remain on the car fare-free as long as he was selling or seeking to sell his papers, but if merely in transit he must pay like other people. It was a long way back to the business portion of the town for those fat, short legs, which had already been abundantly exercised to-day, and the little boy racked his brains for more scareheads. Then with eternally springing hope he blurted out:

"All about the grave robbery! Goulth still at large."

He cocked his beguiling eye up at a gray-bearded gentleman distinguished by a mild, refined aspect and a clerical coat.

The old clergyman looked disgusted.

The boy had sold but one paper on this trip, and the car was already approaching the outskirts of the town. There was a tremulo in his voice which in any other person of his years, less hardy and self-reliant than a newsboy, would have preceded a burst of tears. With him it only preceded a shrill squawk:

"Gorham's theaytre burned,—latest detailth, total dethructhion!"

Ned winced. He thought of the fiery, impulsive owner. How would he endure the loss, the humbled pride, the day of small things! With the weight of the recollection of his own wrong-doing Ned felt as if he were responsible for the moral ordeal as well as the material disaster—although he had no concern with either—which the manager seemed destined to encounter.

"Heavy Inthurance. New York Companies," the boy sang out unexpectedly.

Ned started as suddenly as if he had been shot.

"'Ere, boy," he said, fishing out of his pocket the change of the silver quarter which the "funny man" had bestowed upon him. "Gimme that paper."

The little fat boy in the door stared, his mouth open in astonishment and exhibiting the vacant spaces where his teeth ought to be. He had never known a small working boy such as Edward to buy a daily paper. He thought Ned was guying him until he took another look at the outstretched hand with the proffered nickel. Then he gravely handed over the folded journal. The elderly gentleman of clerical aspect looked down at Ned with a smile; he saw in the occurrence only an amusing affectation of mannish tastes and habits. It had a far graver meaning to another person in the car, who was openly staring at Ned, with a new light kindling in his eyes and an expression of triumph in the curl of his lip.

Ned was cowering back, making a feint of opening the paper, and yet all a-quiver with the realization that he had betrayed himself. How could a poor boy, such as he was, be supposed to take an interest in Gorham's insurance? He feared his eagerness upon the mention of the subject might intimate to the man—if this were really a detective who had watched and followed him—that he possessed some knowledge of the fire, connected with the question of insurance. It might even imply the truth,—arson! Only he would be numbered with the incendiaries. He had given the detective the clue,—Insurance!

Ned presently made an effort to seem to read the paper,—he could not pin his mind to a single syllable. It was scant comfort to him now—since he had given himself away—to know that the First Player and he must have overheard only a part of Gorham's conversation with his friend, and that in refusing to renew his policy in the Rising Phœnix Insurance Company because of a quarrel with the agent he had at once placed the risk elsewhere. Thus the burned theatre was amply insured in other companies, and Gorham's loss would be slight, comparatively speaking, by reason of the disaster.

The lamp had been lighted in the car, although it was not yet quite dark. Ned could see still as they whizzed along on some considerable elevation the wide spread of the city stretching in dusky undulations against the sky, which had now grown gray, portending rain. Beyond some dip, full of roofs, massive blocks of business houses rose, frowning and gloomy, while between surged smoke and dust in fantastic, haggard clouds that suggested witches and demons and undreamed-of powers of the air. The mazes of the telegraph and telephone wires now and then became visible, meshed and webbed about the town as if it were caught and held fast in the toils of some big scientific spider. Oh, it was a dreary evening,—long did Ned remember it! Even the most commonplace things had strange and sinister effects. The air was pulsing with rhythmic vibrations; the earth throbbed tumultuously; from a square railed inclosure in the middle of the street a column of black smoke gushed suddenly forth as if spewed from the pits of hell, and a locomotive was shrieking like a demon as it rushed out from the long tunnel beneath the avenue where the cable car rolled heavily on and on, its gong clamoring at every intersecting street, and now and again in a tumult of jarring warning lest some enterprising vehicle usurp the track.

Once more Ned looked at the detective. The detective was looking at Ned. For that moment they understood each other.

But the sharp boy of a town is no match for the sharp man of a town. The quiet personage in plain black clothes folded up his newspaper, put it in his breast pocket, then turning slightly in his seat, looked out of the window at the rows of decorous, even handsome residences which they were now passing. The gilded numbers were distinct upon the illuminated transoms, for within the gas was already lighted. He seemed to scan each with interest, as if he sought some particular number. Presently he rose, passed to the platform, quietly swung himself off, and walked slowly and meditatively to the sidewalk.

Ned sat amazed as the progress of the car soon left him behind. He began to think that he had been mistaken from the first,—that he had neither been watched nor followed. The man had looked attentively at him to be sure,—but what of that? The white-haired gentleman of clerical aspect had also looked at him with interest. Ned felt quite certain now that influenced by his own secret anxiety he had magnified the danger, and fancied suspicion in every casual careless stranger. He was sure that he had encountered no detective.

Ned could not see through the buildings on either hand. He could not know that the few passers along a side street were staring in mild surprise at a grave, genteel-looking man, dressed in black, who was running at full speed as if for his life. When this man reached a broad avenue parallel to the one which he had quitted he did not slacken his pace, but plunged down another side street, then through an alley, and out once more upon a thoroughfare. There he hailed a passing car and sprang upon it. He had calculated time and distance very narrowly, for as the car made a broad curve, turning down a street at right angles with the avenue it had just traversed, it came upon the track close behind a car with a blue light, the one which he had left not five minutes earlier, which was still rolling down the street in a straight line.

As he looked through the window at the vehicle in advance his sharp eyes were quick to detect the slim little figure of the printer's devil still sitting close to the door, and he felt that whether it were instinct which had warned the boy or inadvertence on his own part in bringing his surveillance too close, it had been cleverly counteracted.

CHAPTER VI

The detective pondered seriously upon all these things as he sat there. He wondered that as yet the boy should have done nothing to indicate his partners in a crime so far beyond his own scope. More than all, he wondered how the little printer's devil should know or care anything about the insurance of the theatre, and what the question of the insurance had to do with his surreptitious entrance and the theft of the diamonds and other portable valuables.

The fire had been at first supposed to be the result of accident or of carelessness on the part of the theatre's employees, until Peter Bateman's story had suggested to the police the possibility that theft had necessitated that sequence of pillage, which is incendiarism. Thus the detective had believed that the theatre had been robbed by some gang of thieves, of whom Ned was but the humble tool, and then fired to conceal the traces of the more profitable crime. Now this conclusion was shaken,—and again and again he asked himself in perplexity and doubt what the question of the insurance could have had to do with the crime.

The more he thought of it the more he was convinced that this was to be a singular and difficult case. Properly worked up it would reflect much credit on the officer who should finally bring it to a successful issue. Once in the course of his varied speculations on the subject he came very close indeed to the truth; he canvassed the possibility that the theatre was burned from motives of malice or revenge, for Gorham was a man who made and kept bitter enemies. But the fact that any fool must know that so large and valuable a property was always amply insured would, he thought, prevent antagonism or reprisal from taking that form, since the loss would fall most heavily upon the various companies who had assumed the risk,—vague, unimagined corporations, beyond the scope of malice or antagonism, foreign to the thought of an incendiary.

Still meditating aimlessly about the question of insurance, he began to wonder if Gorham were not actually a gainer rather than a loser by the fire. The theatre's furnishings were getting shabby and out of style; much of the scenery was old; the site had become, by reason of one of those swift expansions of the commercial section of the town, so common in our growing southwestern cities, more valuable by far than the building itself; the season had not been very prosperous,—too much legitimate drama to cope successfully with spectacular opposition. The smaller theatres drew the crowds, and light opera was the vogue. More than all, there was of record a rather heavy mortgage on the structure itself, which showed that the owner had needed money in considerable emergencies. Taken all in all, Gorham was doubtless in better financial case now, a richer man to-day than yesterday.

All at once the detective began to put two and two methodically together. Gorham, by reason of the heavy insurance, had profited by the burning of the theatre. The boy, who was known to have secretly entered the house, presumably for the purpose of theft, had unwittingly manifested a tumult of excited interest upon the sheer mention of the insurance of the building,—a matter usually absolutely alien to one of his age, his class, and his ignorance; when in a state of obviously alert suspicion he became aware that this incongruity had been observed, he grew so restive under surveillance, evidently recognizing its menace, that the officer, not wishing to make an arrest prematurely, was obliged to withdraw, and only shadow him from afar.

Insurance! Had the boy indeed done nothing to indicate the perpetrator of the crime!

The car was now passing the ruins of the theatre. The smoke, still curling slowly into the air, had a certain luminous quality, reflected from the dying embers. Red lanterns here and there marked the lines of the débris, where the brick walls had fallen across the sidewalks and street, blocking the way, and served as a warning to the benighted passer-by. One of these lanterns cast a dull flush upon the gilded mask of Folly high on the frescoed wall, still grotesquely leering down upon the melancholy scene. As the lurid glare gradually faded in the distance, the detective, his conclusion reached at last, silently nodded his head, decisively, aggressively.

For this astute person had come to believe that Gorham had himself fired his own theatre!

He believed the boy, entering for the purpose of theft and concealed among the scenery, had accidentally gained a knowledge of the manager's crime,—else why should a lad of his years, a mere child, feel an interest in so remote a subject as the details of the insurance of the building? He doubtless went or was sent there with the object of stealing, nefarious enough! but burning the building could work an advantage to no one but the owner, who would get the big insurance money! Thus the detective deduced that Gorham himself had committed the crime which in double-dealing, joining with the "star," the manager of the theatrical company, and the insurance companies, he now pretended to cause to be investigated by the police.

The detective's anxiety to discover the printer's devil in seeking to communicate with some criminal, some noted "crook," on the subject of the theatre, changed to an alert expectation. He believed the boy would seek to communicate with Gorham,—he would make use of his knowledge of the crime in an effort to extort money.

When Ned at last left the car the detective had become so cautious as to follow only at a very considerable distance, so extra-hazardous had his surveillance become, so alertly suspicious seemed the boy. Down and down Ned took his way, through streets that grew more dirty and dingily lighted as he went. The tall, gloomy tenement houses on either hand, for miles, it seemed, apparently leaned toward each other across the way, to limit the sky and exclude the air from the sad purlieus below. Some women were quarreling in shrill, shrewish accents on a corner; one reeled as she walked, and hard by there was a saloon that exuded a dim glow of untrimmed kerosene lamps, a pervasive odor of beer and whiskey, and a series of dirty, frowzy customers of both sexes at all hours of the day and night. It had a more remote trade, too; now and then a child, tangle-haired, begrimed, unnaturally sharp of eye and tongue, yet still suggestive of that universal promise of youth,—dim, dim, not a possibility, hardly a dream, only intimating a higher purpose in its creation,—scuttled out with a pitcher of beer, bearing it carefully away to some drink-sodden wretch in a forlorn attic. The clouds had thickened; they seemed to Ned to-night, though never before, to resemble the clouds of sin and sorrow and suffering that hang over the homes of the wicked and weak, and to prefigure the bursting of the vials of wrath. And search the sky as he would, he could discern no star.

When he had toiled up four flights of a dark, rickety staircase, and opened a door in the rear of the mansard roof, the sudden contrast of the scene within smote upon his quivering nerves, his quickened perceptions, as if he had never before beheld it. The floor was scoured white, and throughout the atmosphere was the pungent aroma of coarse yellow soap. The clean patchwork quilts on the two beds were as gay with many colors as Joseph's coat. The monkey-stove sought to atone for its many misdeeds emblazoned on the smoke-blackened walls, and glowed to a scarlet hue, and upon it simmered the savory dish of onion stew that he loved. His sickly, puny little sister, seated on a home-woven rug in the centre of the floor, found plenteous entertainment in banging a tin cup with an iron spoon, while her mother was busied in the task of wrapping hundreds of bonbons in gayly fringed papers, for this work for the candy factory could be done at home, and the care of the child prevented her from going out to secure better paid work elsewhere.

"That child is the bane of yer life," her neighbors sometimes said, with a species of antagonism toward the hindrance, born, it seemed, only to be a clog and a dead-weight. "Ye had better sen' it to the 'sylum, or somewher's, an' git some use of yerself."

Ned's mother returned no comment, no reply, to these suggestions; sometimes it seemed as if she had some impediment in her speech, so silent she had become, so taciturn with her neighbors. The fact that she was country-bred was shown abundantly in her stolid uncommunicativeness, her vague terror of all the ways of the great city outside of these four walls, her old-fashioned code of manners and morals, and the painfully wrought and maintained cleanliness of her surroundings. No slight task it was, to be sure, to "pack" the water which plentifully drenched floors, tables, pots, kettles, windows, up four flights of steep stairs from the hydrant in the yard! Small wonder that poverty and dirt are so often concomitant. It had been an evil day for her and her simple, untutored husband when some vague, distorted ambition had moved him to despise the small havings of a country-side blacksmith and seek to become a "horse-shoer" among the often mythical advantages of a large town. He had little of the canny thrift characteristic of his Scotch nationality. He was an open-handed, jovial, florid, red-haired, fiery-tempered man,—over sanguine and credulous. The many deceptions practiced upon greenhorns, the greater expense of living, the fierce competition of an already crowded trade, baffled and bewildered the sturdy fellow. He worked as long as he had work, but when he was idle he began to drink more and more, and perhaps at last it was no great misfortune to his family when one of the pestilences which decimate the tenement region laid this once fair stalk of wheat low with the "cheat." He left his wife, Ned, and the puny, sickly little girl as remote, as alien from their old, country home, as if that haven of humble, hearty comfort were in a foreign planet. They lived as best they might on the boy's wages and the few jobs of coarse washing that she could get to do at home. It was the pride of both mother and son that they had maintained this precarious existence on these slender means now for more than a year, and in this fact they saw a glad augury for the future.

Her face always wore, however, an apprehensive, appealing expression, although Ned remembered when it had been otherwise. As she turned it toward him now all her perseverance, her self-sacrifice, her deprivations, her honest, persistent uprightness, her mingled fears and faith in some fair future for him touched his heart with a potent force. He cast but one glance at her and burst instantly into tears.

"What ails ye, sonny?" she asked soothingly, and with an intonation that promised partisanship, earnest and loving; for sometimes he came home with great griefs of editorial tyranny, or fault-finding and injustice in the composing-rooms, or the guying of some facetiously disposed junior reporter, or in a revolt of indignation against the pressure of new and severe regulations—when his partisan mother would straightway vilify his enemies (for the nonce), till he would be sorry for them and rouse himself to protest and remonstrate in their defense.

But now Ned shook his head and would say nothing.

His silence evidently alarmed her. She perceived that his trouble was far more serious than the usual misadventures in the day's work. Once or twice she urged him to speak, but in vain. She looked at him apprehensively for a moment longer, and not without anger. Then as if appreciating the futility of remonstrance, she turned away to the table, took up a flaunting red and gilded paper, and with mechanical swiftness and dexterity twisted the fringed ends.

"Boys are hard to know how to deal with," she remarked. "They can't l'arn no sense, and they ain't got no instinct. A boy ought ter know by nature that he hev got two friends what can't wish him nothing but well. One is his God in Heaven, and the t'other is his mother on earth,—and them is the ones he trusts the least an' trusts the last."

"The harm is done now," sobbed Ned.

"Undo it, then," said his mother sternly.

Ned walked to the window, and heavily leaning against the sill, looked out at the gloomy night. When he had first lost the fear that he had been "spotted" by the detective he had felt almost glad of the discovery that the insurance companies only would sustain the loss by the fire, for these, being corporations vague to his mind, impersonal, of presumably illimitable wealth, did not appeal very strongly to his limited experience for sympathy. He was glad that the manager whom he had defrauded would not suffer from the villainy he had witnessed. This feeling had served in some sort to blunt his conscience and numb his sense of his own wrong-doing. Now, however, among the familiar surroundings of home,—sacred as an altar, a temple, even though only an attic in the tenement district,—he regained his normal poise; he realized how his mother would regard it. He winced from the sheer recollection of the old-fashioned phrase with which she was wont to characterize such shifty dealings. "Stealin', an' nothin' shorter!" It was indeed theft. She would think that he had stolen the price of admission to the theatre as absolutely as if he had picked Manager Gorham's pocket. What did it matter to him whose was the loss in the burning of the beautiful theatre! The fact remained. He was a thief.

The aspect of dishonesty had never been so odious to him as now. Hitherto he had carried his mother's teaching in one hand and his trusty conscience in the other, and with a fair accord between them he had gone triumphantly through the multiform temptations which assail a small boy struggling for a living amidst the turmoils of a great town. Now it was all over. He could never again feel aught but contempt for himself. In his poignant pang of despair he had a strong impulse to confess to his mother. He glanced over his shoulder at her, but she had gone back wearily but unfalteringly to her work, and he relapsed once more to staring dismally out over the roofs about him, mostly on a lower level than the windows of this "sky parlor."

Scores of chimney-pots loomed up close at hand. Despite their smoky, gloomy, unsocial aspect, this insensate crew served in some sort as company for the boy. They were always there,—they saw him depart in the morning, they waited for him to come home at night. They had stories to tell him. He loved a vague, fanciful sense of community interests with the unknown firesides below them. He pictured to himself the families clustered about these invisible hearths. Every fantastic wreath of soot-bespangled smoke curling out from these grimy tubes indited for him an idyl on the fair page of the sky. What tragic, or poetic, or romantic episodes were kindled with the homely fires cooking the supper—and ended in smoke!

When winds were abroad and went rioting about the chimney-pots, whistling and singing, the smoke affected too a jovial mien, and came rushing and rollicking up to join its boisterous playfellows, who now would sweep vast clouds of it aside in tenuous dispersal in the air, and now would roll up great curling lengths of it like so many yards of dusky ribbon, tucking it back into the chimney-pots whence it had sought to issue forth. What roaring farces in the house-top regions these wild days! What sense of hilarity, of joyous motion, of jocund voice! "Ha! ha! ha!" said the winds. "What a high old time!"

Whenever the moon was up, weird, dark shadows would haunt the chimney-pots, and go skulking slyly over the roofs, and Ned's imagination would conjure into the air beings far more strange than his simple mythical friends whom he had placed in order about their unknown hearths below. If it were in the glad summer-time these gruesome shapes would so far abandon their port of terror as to dance with the misty images of the smoke to the music of a brass band, which played in a city square, distant indeed, but not altogether out of earshot. In the winter the snow-covered roofs reflected the silvery lunar sheen and shimmered. The chimney-pots were often begirt with zones of icicles. Grotesque gargoyles of frozen slush and sleet blocked the water-spouts and hung far over the eaves. A star with a chill crystalline palpitation would look down. Far, far away the deep, mellow tones of the cathedral bells would ring out the Angelus. And winter or summer he loved it all, for his heart was light, his conscience clear, and this was Home!

But now the atmosphere was murky; the clouds were low; the swift gleams of lightning were beginning to quiver among the chimney-pots, that seemed in the uncertain fluctuations to move, to wince, to start aside, to draw back as in fright. Suddenly resonant torrents were beating upon the roof; the tin gutters clamored; the mutterings of thunder swelled to sonorous emphasis.

Ned felt all at once refreshed, elated,—a sense often induced by a rain-fall long delayed. Perhaps the interval of rest had calmed his nerves; and had restored his jaded faculties. A new idea suddenly sprang into his mind.

He did not hesitate; he turned briskly, got down from a shelf an ink-bottle,—nearly empty from evaporation rather than exhausted by service,—tore a blank page from an old copy-book which he had used in his short attendance at the public school, and proceeded at once to indite some straggling characters. He had addressed an envelope before he looked up at his mother, who was silently watching him.

"I want some money out o' my wages," he said stoutly, assuming an air as of a moneyed man who demands what is his own by rights. Then, "Tain't fur no harm," he added reassuringly.

He had feared her questions, which he was resolved he would not answer. Without a word, however, she pointed at the drawer of the table. If he would not voluntarily give her his confidence she would not attempt to coerce it. She did not even ask nor look to see what sum he took.

The envelope was sealed, and presently Ned was flying along through street after street with the rain pelting in his face and the wind bantering him for the loan of his hat. He did not care! His heart was so much lighter! He saw from afar the great red and blue bottles in the illuminated windows of a drug-store, and here he paused and went within and with much circumspection bought a postage-stamp; then he plunged out in the rain again, making straight for a certain box under a gleaming lamp in the distance that sent its quivering shafts of light far through the gloom.

He brought up under the lamp-post, agitated, anxious, but still unswerving. He looked about him expectantly, watchfully,—it might have seemed even fearfully to one noting his attitude from a distance. But he had no longer any fear. The moment was fraught with peculiar importance to him. He had posted many letters for employers, but never one for himself, and never before nor after one like this. A man beyond the furthest limits of the lamp's aureola of misty light had paused too, breathing hard. He was not used to running so far nor running so fast. He thought the boy's look and attitude very suspicious, as Ned, realizing the supreme significance of the moment and the value of this letter to him, slowly and solemnly dropped it into the box, and then swiftly scudded off down the street.

When the letter-carrier next came to this box the detective was lurking in its vicinity. He whispered a request and mentioned a name, but the postman shook his head with all the dignity of one invested with a little brief authority, and it seemed that "the regulations" were the only words his tongue would deign to frame. "Why, what harm can it do to let me see the outside of the letters?" insisted the detective plausibly. The postman's head wagged to and fro more slowly under the well applied force of argument.

"The handwriting on the outside of the envelope alone will tell me all that I want to know; it is a very important crime which I am investigating."

The postman's head ceased to vibrate. Yet he was slow and thoughtful as he laid his hand on the box. As the detective waited eagerly for it to be opened he looked rather like a fox,—so keen, and so crafty, and so alertly expectant. The letters, as they were slowly shuffled before his eyes, he perceived belonged unmistakably to commercial correspondence,—neat, compact, evidently the work of practiced scribes,—except only one; this was blurred and smirched, with a crumpled envelope and a wildly diagonal address, which moreover was grievously misspelled. He stared with breathless interest and curiosity at the scrawling characters:—

Manger A. J. Gorm Manger Gorm's Theter.

In less than half an hour the detective was in close conference with his chief. "That is all," he said, concluding his account of these incidents. "I think I have caught the boy communicating with the criminal. The criminal is the owner himself,—and that letter in my opinion is the boy's attempt to extort money from Gorham by threatening to blab all he knows."

CHAPTER VII

There was a strange procession in the streets early in the morning. Its line of march lay through the principal business quarters of the city, and everywhere its advent was greeted with wild hurrahs. In fact it did much of its own cheering. The enthusiasm for itself which pervaded its ranks was of a gratifying fervor. It was kindly esteemed, too, by others. Very seldom do the solid business men of a city look upon a procession of strikers—for these were strikers—with the benign indulgence accorded this noisy crew. And very seldom do respectable citizens of any town appear in such dingy boots as those which covered the feet of some genteel people.

For this was a procession of striking boot-blacks and newsboys, and for a time the sun had a corner on "shining."

Banners fluttered to the breeze; quaint standards were held aloft. One bore this strange device, "BLOOD OR PIE," and elicited a peal of laughter whenever it came around a corner.

As far as the interests of their trades were concerned the strikers might have forgotten their grand display within a week, for they were soon underbidding each other, and the price of a "shine" had fallen to the old familiar nickel before the sun was fairly through his job that day.

But they long remembered, perhaps for years, the electric thrill that quivered through the ranks of the procession when a well-known police officer signaled to the vanguard to halt. The boys brought up suddenly, surprised and perhaps a little frightened.

The officer strode up and tapped Ned on the shoulder. Though neither bootblack nor newsboy, Ned was a friend of the strikers. He was a public character among his fellows, and the ruling spirit of this demonstration, which had been long in preparation. He had stood at the head of the column without a qualm, for he had felt in clearing his conscience last night as if he had cleared off all old scores.

Nobody so astonished now as Ned!

"What fur?" he gasped. The officer lifted the warrant slightly out of his breast pocket, and pointing his big thumb toward it replied succinctly,—

"Housebreaking, larceny, and arson."

"My eye!" exclaimed a little newsboy, concentrating an amazed stare upon the diminutive alleged housebreaker, thief, and incendiary.

Ned's heart sank,—all his forebodings realized,—all his scheming in vain! He had much ado to keep from bursting into tears. Yet he was helplessly wondering how they had come to suspect him of knowing aught of the burning of the theatre or the theft of the money and diamonds, when he had so persistently kept his own counsel.

The officer would tell nothing as he hurried the boy along. The gaping procession followed, still mechanically bearing aloft the banners which Ned's own ingenuity had devised and constructed.

"Ye'll find out soon enough," was all his laconic captor would say.

Ned found out only when the warrant was read and Peter Bateman was testifying before the magistrate.

The fat boy's cheeks were flabby and white. A cold perspiration glistened in his hair, which stood up straight and stubbly above his forehead. His eyes seemed very close together indeed. He was greatly frightened and agitated, and the magistrate, who had a keener discrimination of the merits of a good dinner than of the various phases of human nature, encouraged him, and spoke kindly to him whenever he faltered. He seemed very reluctant to give his testimony, and the justice accounted this aversion to accuse his friend a fine trait of character, and regarded Pete yet more favorably.

Pete cast but one glance at Ned. He withdrew his eyes hastily and kept them fixed appealingly on the justice's face. He told his story glibly enough when once fairly at it, for he had spent the interval since he was last before the magistrate in reciting it again and again to himself, that he might not let it vary with the sworn statement which he had previously made.

"I ain't goin' ter git busted now fur perjury—sure pop," he said to himself.

Even in its midst he was wondering how he could tell it at all with the consciousness of Ned's fiery eyes fixed upon him. It would be too much to say that he had no remorse. He did wish that Ned could know that he had not intended to bring affairs to this pass,—that he had only lied, as boys often lie, for petty spite, and had never imagined the far-reaching consequences that had ensued. If Pete had been a receptive subject for a moral lesson he might now have learned what a terrible engine for evil even a diminutive lie can be. But he was only asking himself how could he be expected to foresee such a coincidence as the probable pillage of the theatre, supplemented by the burning of the building.

Still, the realization of all the evil he had wrought came upon him with such crushing force at the end of his story that he burst into tears and convulsive sobs and presented quite an edifying spectacle of sympathizing and grieving friendship.

"Well,—well," said the acute magistrate soothingly, "you have done the best you could,—you are a good boy."

"He's a liar!" Ned flamed out suddenly. "A liar! A liar!"

The next moment Ned saw that this outburst of wrath had done him harm. It seemed that only a turbulent and vicious character would thus meet reluctant accusation with vociferous abuse. The justice coldly and sternly ordered him to be silent. The spectators looked askance at him. Earlier they had not been without sympathy and a hopeful expectation that the boy could show his innocence. At the outset, when informed by the magistrate of his right to counsel at every stage of the proceedings, Ned's prompt refusal to send for a lawyer won him favor, as it indicated an evident belief that his innocence could be easily established without aid. His vehement negative raised a laugh, however, at the expense of the profession, for it was Ned's conviction that lawyers are a pragmatical, exacting tribe, and far more likely to complicate matters than to simplify them.

There was a stir of uncertainty and curiosity when the magistrate asked the little defendant if he wished to make any statement concerning the circumstances in the case and in contradiction of the testimony given against him, informing him at the same time that he could waive making such a statement at present, and that such waiver could not be used against him either now or afterward at his trial. It seemed in evident expectation of an immediate discharge that Ned declined to avail himself of this opportunity to postpone the issue and prepare for it.

In fact he believed he could dissipate the unfortunate impressions which he had created by telling a plain, straightforward story about the scheme to see the play, and what was said by Pete in his fantastic threats while at the window.

"I can tell you all about it in three minutes 'thout no lawyer," he declared, and forthwith plunged tumultuously into the narration.

At this moment a little judicious kindness might have elicited all that the boy had seen and heard. The justice, however, did not encourage him as he had encouraged Pete. He seemed inimical and severe, and when Ned hesitated in small matters glanced at him sharply. He evidently regarded Ned as a case of precocious hoodlum. Once more the frightened boy thought his safety lay in silence. He was only suspected as yet, he argued within himself. Nothing could be proved against him except that he got into the building at the window. He knew that in several of the States boys no older than he was had been convicted of felonies and sentenced to the penitentiary. Therefore he feared that his own extreme youth would be regarded as a very slight palliation of the crime of which he stood accused, and that he might be locking the doors of the State prison upon himself for a long term if he should tell all and his story be disbelieved or misinterpreted.

Instead of the firm, coherent detail of the facts exactly as they had happened, with which he had been proceeding, he began, as these thoughts surged through his mind, to stumble,—to repeat his words, to fall on long, reflective pauses; and finally he ceased abruptly in the middle of a sentence.

The magistrate had occasionally looked up impatiently; he elevated his eyebrows, pursed his lips inquiringly, and now laid down his pen outright.

"Is that all?" he said.

"Naw, sir," Ned admitted, in grievous agitation.

Perhaps his youth and his hard straits and the terrible future which seemed impending over him touched the justice. He gave a little line. He felt that he hardly exceeded the intention of the restrictions of his office in prompting the defendant, helping him out, in view of his youth, inexperience, and friendlessness,—giving him a chance to tell his story and establish, if it might, his innocence.

"Do you want to tell how you saw the play?"

"Yes, sir," said Ned, plucking up heart of grace.

"And how you got out?"

"Got out of the window wher' I got in."

"Do you want to tell why you did not go out at the back door?"

"Didn't know wher' 't wuz," replied Ned.

All these facts were being incorporated in the written statement of Ned's own account of himself, which when finished would be read to him, and which he might sign or not, as he would, but the magistrate would annex the reason for no signature in case he should refuse. It was beginning to take a definite value, and the two returned to this unique method of getting at the facts with renewing spirit. Alas for the next question!

"Do you want to tell why you did not follow the employees to the back door?"

Ned did not answer. His face fell.

The justice looked surprised and disappointed. He returned to the effort.

"You were afraid of being seen by some of them? Was that the reason you did not follow them?"

Ned still was silent.

The justice was obviously ill at ease. He had ventured upon an innovation in a very important matter, which he felt was unjustifiable unless some valuable result were to accrue. There was something singular in the case, and he had his qualms in committing the boy to jail without a fair opportunity to show his innocence. For this he had already gone far. The fact would not be mended nor marred by going further.

"Did you leave any one in the theatre?" he queried.

"Yes, sir," faltered Ned.

"How many did you leave there?" demanded the magistrate briskly, seeing the possibility of shifting the crime from such narrow shoulders.

"Three men." (General sensation.)

"Give their names," said the magistrate, fingering his pen and feeling his hand upon the heart of the mystery.

"Dunno their names."

"But you could identify them?"

To his great displeasure Ned would not answer. The magistrate persisted. "Did you want to describe them? Was that your intention?"

Still Ned refused to speak.

The justice looked at him, baffled. There were few persons present, and most of them the miniature strikers. But he discerned in the countenances of the officers and a lawyer or two, besides those representing the prosecutors, an alert appreciation of his departure from the methods of his office and the letter of the law.

"Come, come, now,—what were they doing?"

Ned looked down at his convulsively working hands and said nothing,—knowing not what to say and what to leave unsaid.

"What o'clock was it when you left?" The magistrate essayed as he supposed an easy inquiry. He wished not to have it said that with an unprecedented course of questioning he had reduced the prisoner to silence when the law expressly provides what shall be asked of him, and that with his consent, by the examining magistrate. He could not conceive that the interrogation as to the hour when one quitted a theatre could prove an embarrassment. It failed, however, to reopen verbal communication. Ned heard again far away that tolling bell of the night strike the mystic note of one o'clock, the single weighty tone, impressive, awe-inspiring, with the recollection of the darkness and the strangeness of his awakening.

Once more he said nothing.

The justice at last desisted in irritation. He had not acquitted himself to his satisfaction, and he began to be more acutely ill at ease as he noted two or three newspaper reporters in the room, who had been attracted by the rumor of unusual circumstances in the examination which had already gotten wind. One of the reporters suddenly addressed the magistrate, and to Ned's surprise and his deep mortification he recognized a representative of the paper which he also served in his humble capacity.

"May it please your honor," said the reporter courteously, "I know the defendant very well, and can testify to his general good character."

The justice, thoroughly out of temper, replied testily, "To please me you would have to testify to a good deal more than that."

"I thought from your manner that you would be glad to be able to avoid committing so young a lad." The reporter sought to justify himself.

Now this comment upon the course which the justice had seen fit to take, since he himself did not altogether approve it, was the most unfortunate that could have been made in Ned's interest. That it was disapproved by the detective, the officers, and the lawyers of the parties who were grievous sufferers by the crime in which Ned had contrived to become entangled and who naturally, from the magnitude of the losses, were not disposed to leniency, was most obvious from their general facial expression, although no overt indication of dissatisfaction had been adventured.

"Fortunately you are not here to think!" retorted the justice. His large head, with its fat jowl, was canted slightly backward as he spoke, his hands were lightly clasped across his capacious stomach, and he looked at the reporter from under the half-closed lids of small, narrow, unfriendly eyes.

The reporter was of a type of man calculated to be particularly unacceptable to the burly demagogue of a justice. The blond, handsome youngster was something of a fop. Indeed, he went by the sobriquet of "dude reporter" in the composing-room. He was nevertheless a very efficient newspaper man, he came of good people, he was essentially a gentleman, and he was of a specially kind and amiable disposition. He could no more have refrained from seeking to help Ned at this pinch than if the boy were drowning before his eyes. He had been silent at first, although he stared as if he thought he had the nightmare when the spectacle of the forlorn little printer's devil in custody broke upon his astonished gaze. He had, however, waited to interfere till the moment when the justice's decision seemed imminent, hoping that Ned had some ground of defense, some testimony to offer that would serve to extricate him. Now he could wait no longer, and he braved the wrath of the justice, and, what was much more formidable to him, the gleeful relish of two reporters from other papers, who were even now writing him up before his eyes as fast as their waggish pencils could travel.

"Ned!" he cried indignantly, "why don't you answer his honor? You know that you can't be guilty of all those crimes. Tell him about the affair!"

The justice was for a moment as one petrified. Then he rallied his faculties. "Young man," he said menacingly, "do you know where you are?"

One of the gayly facetious reporters added "at" to the sentence, and thus it stood in the printed columns in the morning.

"I beg your honor's pardon," said the dude reporter humbly, "but noting your honor's kind efforts to make the child divulge the names of the wicked men who may be utilizing his youth and ignorance to conceal their crimes of larceny and arson, I ventured to speak to him. He knows me very well, and I thought I might aid your honor by reason of my long acquaintance with him. He is a very good boy—"

"Must be," interrupted the justice sarcastically,—"not at all obstinate."

—"and greatly valued by his employers. I felt that you would like that any one who could should testify in his behalf."

"If you have anything specific to say on that head you may speak,—that is, if he will permit you,—you see that he has no counsel; otherwise it is not worth while to administer the oath."

The dude reporter reflected doubtfully, all unmindful of the flying pencils of the other reporters "scooping" him on the spot. But when he came to consider his knowledge of Ned he was compelled to perceive that it was in the nature of things negative and trivial, and would do more harm adduced than neglected. Of what avail to detail the puerile little incidents of which such a boy's life was made up? When Ned fell into disgrace because the office cat was reduced to misery and despair by reason of a tin can tied to its tail, it required no great knowledge of character to discover that this was the joyous work of a certain roguish office-boy, and to relieve Ned of suspicion, which only fell upon him because he was the younger of the two. Ned dined with this cat daily, dividing with it the meagre contents of the little tin pail which he brought from home. He went about much of the time with the cat in his arms, although scornfully admonished to "Hush-a-bye your baby!" by this office-boy, who could be mocking as well as roguish. The too dainty staff, as Ned considered them, were often scandalized by the cat's appearance in triumph, bearing a big, live rat through the editorial rooms, and not to be diverted from a tour of the place till the devil could be found, and the notable capture exhibited to its human friend. Ned seemed to delight in little services of utility, offered gratuitously and evidently with no expectation of reward; but this only proved the kindness of heart of this gentle little devil, and as the reporter racked his brains he realized that many of the facts possible to cite in his favor were only of this nature. Ned would see to it that a great array of pencils well sharpened were laid ready for use on each desk before the editorial work commenced daily, although this was none of his duty, more properly falling within the functions of the negligent office-boys. The night editor, the proud possessor of a spherical pincushion fashioned by an ingenious female relative, on frugal holiday gifts intent, was helplessly wont to see it roll its rotundities out of reach whenever needed, followed by reluctant feet and hearty maledictions, till he found it one day secured against the wall by a wire ingeniously wrought basket-wise, effectually restraining its activities thereafter. Another editorial pincushion was of a dark hue, on a dusky desk, in a dim corner, often secluded altogether from discovery till it was rendered easily visible to the naked eye in any weather by a neatly adjusted frill of white tissue paper fashioned by the deft fingers of the devil, and daily renewed. The boy never forgot anything that might serve the comfort of others, slight though were his powers to promote this. The door of the editorial room had creaked from time immemorial till Ned and a drop of oil came. If a budget of papers was forgotten and left at home, if a personal errand was to be swiftly done, and the leaden-footed office-boys recoiled and protested against it as impracticable and contended that they were hired for no such miracles of speed, "Lemme go fur 'em," Ned would beg; "I'll git 'em as soon as the printers let me off!" To be sure Ned had his trifling rewards, his favors being duly reciprocated in the way of small change, but these tokens were obviously unexpected, the simple little boy regarding them rather as free-will gratuities, mere gifts from sheer kindness, than as payment for services. No wonder the dude reporter was willing to exert himself. But how could he urge these trifling indicia of temperament and character, albeit Ned's opportunities were commensurately small? The reporter hesitated, and the sarcastic justice remarked at last, "May I remind your wisdom that the court awaits your pleasure?"

The blond young man—the very wave of his dainty cow-lick on his handsome forehead was an offense to the bluff justice—flushed, but replied with good temper,—

"Your honor knows that in the nature of things but little can be said for a mere child, whose opportunities for wrong-doing are limited as well as—"

"Perhaps not so limited as one might well think!" the magistrate interposed significantly.

"He has no position of trust, of course, but he has been faithful over the few things in his care. I know the boy to be greatly esteemed by his employers,—hard-working, punctual, careful, honest so far as I have ever heard or observed, eager to please, industrious, cheerful, willing, the most kindly disposed little fellow I ever saw in my life."

The justice rapped impatiently on his desk. "This is not to the purpose," he said. "Will you give bail for him?"

"In ignorance of the circumstances of the crime?—no, your honor, I will not."

"Will the paper go on his bail-bond?"

"I cannot speak for the management, naturally."

The justice, with the air of a man whose time has been unwarrantably wasted, turned back to the defendant. He inquired of Ned in curt accents if he could find bail, evidently expecting the negative answer which he received. In view of the testimony against him and the prisoner's own statement the justice declared that it was impossible to consider his release. There was anger in the magistrate's eye and impatience in the bang of his blotting-pad as he signed the "mittimus" commanding the officer who had made the arrest to deliver the prisoner to the jailer of the county.

There the printer's devil was to await his trial at the next term of the criminal court; and Peter Bateman, when duly arraigned among the "drunk-and-disorderlies" in the police court, escaped with a reprimand because of his youth and the fact of a first offense, and was discharged and at liberty once more.

When the door of Ned's cell fairly closed upon him he could do nothing but throw himself on the floor in a frenzy of weeping. For a time he could think only of the disgrace,—the shame to himself and to his mother. Presently ideas more practical, more immediate in their effects, usurped this sentiment. He remembered her desolation,—her destitution. His wages would be lost to the little family while he was locked up here,—for how long,—oh, for how long! If they would only let him work,—on his wages had he and his mother lived,—if they only would let him work for his mother, he would care for nothing besides. He broke once more into loud cries and sobs. How could the little household live without him and his weekly wage! They would starve—they would die! He beat as frantically as futilely on the door. He tried the strong bars at the window till every muscle in his arms ached.

When exhaustion brought calmness at last, he sat down and tried to think quietly of what could be done. He entertained now no intention of appealing to his father's old patrons to whom he had contemplated applying for counsel, for guidance, in a difficult emergency. Now, as he was tarnished by an actual criminal charge, he knew they would look askance upon him. He was aware that his mother had never, in her most stringent financial needs, considered seeking for help or charity from them, and hence he judged the tie was not of a kind that might justify money aid. His father's name, for old sake's sake, Ned had fancied might warrant an appeal for advice, but he knew it would be futile as an urgency to them to risk money or to go upon his bond, and naturally so! If those who were acquainted with him personally could not venture thus, how could he expect it from strangers in effect, who had known his father indeed, but in humble guise and long ago, and whose attention could be brought now to Ned himself, only as a most precocious suspect of crime? He did not blame even the dude reporter for declining, but was grateful to him for the good word he had taken the trouble to say.

Ned's mind soon left the details of the future. Try as he might, it would not go forward. It would only travel over and over again the familiar ground of the singular events at the theatre and the detective's story in the magistrate's court to-day. Ned gave, however, no special heed to the episode, as recounted, of mailing the letter; that only proved to him that he was watched then, and now he knew that he had been watched all day. He had no idea that the letter was of any particular importance to the police. The detective had included its mention in his testimony for purposes of his own. He did not disclose the fact that he had ascertained to whom it was addressed. He only wished to discover by the expression of the boy's face whether Ned attached any significance to a possible disclosure of this correspondence; but there was no added shade of fear or anxiety upon it, and the wily detective was for the nonce baffled.

CHAPTER VIII

The letter continued to be an interesting subject of speculation to the detective. His theory that Gorham had burned his own theatre, and that the boy, being a party to the crime or having knowledge of it, was seeking to extort money, had taken a strong hold upon him. He was determined to discover the contents of that letter.

Of course no one as yet except the chief of police knew that suspicions of Mr. Gorham were entertained. As the manager was a man of wealth and, in that sense, of influence and position, it was necessary to observe great caution in proceeding. The merest whisper of such suspicion would offer deadly offense to Gorham if he were innocent, and doubtless would entail consequences yet more serious to any speculator on the subject. If on the contrary he were guilty, it would be wise not to give him the alarm prematurely. Therefore very quietly and furtively did the detective address himself to the duty of investigating Gorham.

In common with most people connected with the theatre, Mr. Gorham was a late riser. These important events of the morning had happened before he was up. They had served to wake him earlier than usual. He had been informed of the suspicions against Ned, and being notified of his subsequent arrest, at once telephoned a lawyer and was thus present by his counsel at the examination.

The detective had become acquainted with some of his habits, and had learned that his letters, which before the fire were sent to his office at the theatre, were now left by his orders at the hotel where he lived. His business of late years had not been altogether satisfactory or successful, and he probably did not yearn for the contents of his letters as appetizers; he was wont to lay them aside unopened until breakfast was concluded.

The obliging waiter who served him at table had to this extent given him away, for and in consideration of a quarter of a dollar to him in hand paid by the detective. The attendant, however, mistook the officer for a creditor or a subscription agent merely, who wished to seize the manager at an auspicious moment when he might be made to pay up or subscribe or do something equally desperate.

The detective, the wily fox, had determined to be with Gorham at the instant when he should open Ned's letter.

"I'll ask to be allowed to read the letter, and I'll see how he takes that," thought the detective.

He contrived to meet Gorham in the corridor of the hotel just when he had finished his breakfast, and at once addressed him on the pretext of reporting the details of the investigation of the burning of the theatre, which the manager had joined the other sufferers by the fire in instituting, and the "shadowing" of the boy whom Pete had accused of entering the building with the avowed purpose of theft.

They walked while talking to the door of the hotel; and standing on the broad stone steps outside, Gorham paused to light his cigar. He listened to the particulars of the capture of the boy and the scenes in the committing magistrate's court without a show of feeling of any sort while he puffed his cigar into a glow. Then he threw the blazing match aside, thrust both hands into his pockets, and stared fixedly at the big, velvety red leaves of a hanging basket in a window hard by. His whole aspect was calculated to intimate to the detective that the recital was wearisome to the last degree and it would be well to have done with it.

How the wily fox watched him!

"He wrote a letter last night,—the boy did," the detective said slowly.

Gorham still stared absently at the great red, velvety leaves. He was satisfied with the amount for which the property was insured; he was busy with his plans for the future; he was already tired of the subject of the fire; he believed it the result of an accident or the carelessness of the night watchman. This official had testified at the trial that morning that an acquaintance, a minor employee of the theatre, a scene-shifter, passing on the street late in the night, had paused on the corner for a casual friendly word; he had been seized with the conviction that he smelled fire, and then opining that it issued from the basement of the theatre, he had accompanied the night watchman thither, and they were turning over the varied assortments in the property-room and hunting among the tangles of ropes and lifts and stage machinery, and examining the furnace-room and pervading the place while the house was actually in flames above their heads. The scene-shifter, too, had given testimony to the same effect. In this connection Gorham was recollecting the difficulty which he had experienced, in common with every householder perhaps, in forcing employees of whatever sort to observe even a minimum of caution in dealing with fire and lights. He thought the police were on a false scent and were magnifying the clue of the chance entrance of the boy—a child's device to steal a sight at a "show"—into a complicity with house-breakers and thieves and incendiaries.

The street was unusually quiet at this moment. Then a great transfer rattled by, its jarring turbulence filling the sunshine that blazed beyond the scalloped shadow of the awning, and calling up a hollow, tremulous echo from a cave which it was said lay under the town. What strange, high-colored dreams of the outside world must these prosaic vibrations take quivering into the darkened existence of the troglodytes—if any such mystic cave-dwellers could be here! What shadowy, picturesque fancies the echo led coyly out in the sunshine! The manager took his cigar from his lips and gazed pensively into the air. He had been thinking of trying the "spectacular" in a certain sort and on a grand scale when he should rebuild. Here was an idea,—some fantastic play, an opera perhaps, light but romantic, which should call for caverns, gnomes, grotesque conceits, subterranean splendors—all wrought with the newest mechanical contrivances and electric effects. He was trying to recall some story, some old romance, some half-forgotten heroic poem which would lend itself to these modern facilities of representation.

He would not have believed then that he was never to rebuild his theatre,—that in less than an hour the thought would be odious to him.

He was paying scant heed to the detective's words. The officer could but see that fact. The boy might burden the postal service with his missives for aught that Gorham cared. "Or else," thought the man of suspicion, "he is very cleverly pretending indifference."

"The letter was addressed to you," said the detective suddenly.

There was an abrupt change of manner.

"To me!" exclaimed Gorham sharply.

He thrust his cigar between his teeth and with a hasty gesture drew from his breast pocket the budget of letters which he had placed there unopened.

He instantly distinguished the aspect of Ned's letter from the others. He stared hard at the eccentric handwriting; then he ripped open the crumpled envelope. It contained half a dollar wrapped within a page evidently torn from an old copy-book, on which, without date or signature, two words were scrawled.

"Conscience Money," he read, amazed.

He looked from the bit of paper to the money. He looked from the money to the bit of paper. Then he handed both to the detective.

The detective silently gazed at the letter. With his head set inquiringly askew he looked more like a fox than ever,—very sly, very wise, so very wise as to appreciate that there are a few things—exceedingly few—which even he could not explain.

For this could not be construed as an attempt to extort money!

The manager broke the silence with a laugh.

"I understand," he said. "This is the boy who says that he got into the theatre without paying—and it seems that his conscience nabbed him!"

And he laughed again.

His face changed as once more he fixed his eyes on the simple scrawl.

"And afterward he was arrested! Poor little chap!" he ejaculated gravely. And again, "Poor little chap!"

With a sudden look of determination, or rather of impulse, for Gorham rarely acted from deliberate intention, he set his hat firmly on his head, threw the half-smoked cigar into the gutter, and without another word strode off abruptly down the street, leaving the detective staring blankly after him.

With the same swift, resolute step Gorham presently took his way to a great, many-storied building, and paused at the office of a broker whose name was emblazoned on the glass door.

Here he pushed through the outer room, where several clerks, office-boys, and typewriters, a telephone, and a stock indicator seemed to be the presiding genii of the place. It was a very quiet day; there was an interval of stagnation in the market; and without ceremony he approached the inner door.

"Admission free?" he threw over his shoulder to a clerk, with an agreeable smile.

He hardly waited for the formal reply that Mr. Vanbigh was disengaged and would be pleased to see him. Gorham evidently had no doubts as to his welcome, for he opened the door of the inner room without so much as a tap on the panel.

Here he found at a desk a man still young, albeit his hair was whitened here and there and showed only a suggestion of its pristine auburn hue; his eyes were grave and had that steady, concentrated look characteristic of those who deal much with money in the abstract, as it were, as if they appreciated its elusive quality and fugitive tendency and kept a sharp lookout for unexpected vagaries. Nevertheless there was something in his aspect, even in the lines of his firm mouth, with its slightly compressed lips, that betokened geniality, and the tones of his voice were kind.

"Jim, I want you to do me a favor," said the manager without preamble.

He disregarded the chair close at hand and perched himself on the edge of the desk.

"You couldn't do me a greater favor than to ask one," said the broker, whose first thought was of course of the market, of bulls and bears, and he was prepared to do his utmost in the financial arena, for this was a friend whom he valued indeed. His well-controlled face changed as Gorham plunged into Ned's story; this was far from the sort of thing which he had expected, and taken by surprise he could not all at once adjust his mind to the point of view. He listened vaguely, perceiving no way in which this could concern any service that he could render Gorham, until at last the manager concluded with the blunt request,—

"Now Jim, I want you to go down and bail the little fellow."

The broker recoiled aghast. "I? Why, the boy would jump the ranch! I should lose the money!"

The manager explained. "I'll stand in behind you. If the boy runs away and you have to pay the money I'll make it good. I can't go on the bail-bond, you see, because it wouldn't do for me to appear as one of the prosecutors in the case and surety on the bond as well! Even if I could get out of the case now against him, the other prosecutors would hold on to him."

Vanbigh said nothing. He looked at once surprised, distrustful, troubled.

Gorham talked on impulsively. "This is the first genuine case of conscience I have seen for many a year! Believe a boy who couldn't endure to chouse me out of half a dollar burned my theatre! No, sir! I tell you I have lived so long by sham heroics and sham sentiment—and I am so sick of shams, and the world is generally such a big, shameless sham—that I'm mighty apt to know a genuine thing when I see it by the sheer force of contrast. That boy won't jump the town! A boy with all that conscience to carry couldn't run away! He is innocent. And this is a terrible charge. He is helpless and he ought to be befriended. I want you to give bail for him!"

The broker was not only dubious—he was becoming greatly embarrassed as well.

"Suppose," he suggested in a constrained voice, "it should be discovered somehow that I am not acting for myself in bailing him, but for you."

Gorham snapped his fingers. "I don't care! I don't intend to leave that little boy to languish in jail for months, for a year perhaps, till his trial comes off. I tell you the idea of doing this little good turn freshens me all over. I feel as if I had been on a big drunk and somehow got a gourd of cold water from a little spring under a hillside, where I used to stop to drink when I was a boy driving the cows from the pasture. I have been drunk,—on artificiality, and worldliness, and selfishness."

"But," remonstrated the broker. Then he paused.

"But what, man?" exclaimed Gorham impatiently.

The broker went red and was silent. Indeed, how could he find words to suggest seriously to a man of unblemished integrity that by this act of charity, as for mitigating circumstances men from sheer motives of humanity sometimes refuse to prosecute, he might compromise himself. He might be suspected of having connived at the burning of the theatre for the sake of the insurance money and then having secretly furnished bail for the captured accomplice for fear that the boy, if left in prison, would reveal and incriminate his principal.

"Oh, surely, surely,—no one could ever imagine such an absurdity!" thought Vanbigh, deeming this but a bit of over alert and captious caution.

Gorham was beginning to show unmistakable signs of anger, even offense. Yet he was only the more determined.

"Jim," he said in a different tone, "you and all your family have always protested yourselves under great obligations to me."

He paused as if for a reply.

"You know what we feel for you!" Vanbigh replied warmly. He lifted earnest eyes as he spoke.

For Gorham had been a schoolfellow of Vanbigh's elder brother, and although later in life they had drifted apart in point of association, there had always been that affectionate tie of old reminiscence between them. Only some two or three years earlier than the present they had chanced to meet in New Orleans, where they were lingering still at the time of the outbreak of one of the terrible pestilences of yellow fever. Gorham, when his friend succumbed, one of the first cases, nursed him like a brother, would not leave him, although he could then have escaped in the general panic-stricken exodus, never left him, indeed, for an instant, and after his death, being detained by the quarantine, contracted the infection and came very near death himself, alone and among strangers. People said that it was a mere impulse of Gorham's,—but the relatives of his friend felt and expressed great gratitude. He himself had never before mentioned it.

"I know what you all said," he remarked significantly. "I never doubted it before." He would have paid "good money" to an actor who could command a tone of so subtle an inflection as to make such a hit as that!

The broker rose and put on his hat.

"I shall not let you doubt it again!" he protested.

"You are a good fellow, Jim!" cried Gorham, with great satisfaction in carrying his point.

"But it must be understood that I cannot undertake to act for you, under the circumstances; if the boy takes flight I lose the money myself," Vanbigh resumed.

He was thinking himself justified in this after all. He could have the boy kept under surveillance without his knowledge, and at the first suspicious intimation of flight his bondsmen could surrender him. Vanbigh felt that he could hardly refuse Gorham aught in reason, and believing the boy innocent of the crime Gorham had evidently set his heart on bail for him. "But where am I to find another bondsman?" the broker exclaimed, realizing that these considerations would scarcely have weight with any other person. "The law, as you know, requires two sureties on the bond."

"Get Frank," suggested Gorham easily; for Frank was the broker's younger brother.

"Frank will kick like a mule!" Vanbigh said reflectively, rather wincing from the prospective fraternal conflict.

"Frank always kicks like a whole team!" commented Gorham. "But you can manage him."

The broker shook his head doubtfully. He appreciated, for indeed he had learned from experience, that a conflict with those of one's own household presents special and difficult belligerent elements. He was expectant of a controversy rather than disappointed by his brother Frank's attitude when, repairing to his residence for lunch, he broached the matter and requested the fraternal coöperation; for Frank promptly refused. Any disinterested spectator would have thought Frank the more formidable figure in any encounter, domestic or otherwise. Frank was an amateur athlete, and as he sat in the comfortable library lighting his cigar after luncheon, the contour of his strong, shapely limbs under his light fawn-tinted spring suit, the pose of his blond head on his broad shoulders, the strength of his grip suggested in the mere manner of using his fingers, in casting away the match, all intimated a muscular reserve power none the less formidably apparent for being relaxed.

"I am beholden to you, Jim," he replied satirically. "Seem to think I am insane!"

The windows of the room looked out upon the wide woodland vistas of the driving-park just across the street. The heavy velvet carpet, the antique tall bookcases of time-darkened mahogany that lined the walls, even the spacious mirror above the marble mantelpiece,—all were obviously relics of the past. The contour of the old-fashioned square brick house, faced with gray stone, bespoke its condition as overtaken by the march of municipal progress, rather than any choice of the fashionable site in the vicinity of the park. In fact it was the habit of the household to bewail the approach of the town, that in its swift strides and wealthy expansion had overhauled their quiet suburban home. But the approach of town had really worked them no harm, either material or sentimental. They were none the worse for the letter-box and lamp-post on the corner, and the splendid residences of the newcomers that made up the solid blocks of the vicinity had served to enormously enhance the value of the property. From the windows of the library and the drawing-rooms one might never know that the driving-park across the street was not still the "old woods" of years ago, save for the broad, smooth, well-kept roads winding deep among the vistas of the forest trees; and the sylvan tangles were no less picturesque now, because highly appreciated and carefully conserved by the taste of the park commissioners, than heretofore, when not considered at all. Even the sound of the town was but a dull murmur as it came in at the open windows; one could not discriminate the bang of the cable car which had set Jim down at the corner. They were to all intents and purposes as far away from city life and city thoughts as if the woodland opposite, that cast so welcome and soft a green shadow through the lace curtains and gave so verdant and vernal a sylvan view, were really a wilderness instead of its graceful simulacrum.