And even as Blizzard thought, so he played. He was no longer conscious of himself or his guests, not even of Barbara. As for Rose, she was merely a set of pedals in perfect mechanical adjustment. He was not even conscious of his thoughts. They came and went without deliberation, and were expressed as they came and dismissed as they went in the terms of his extraordinary improvisation.

But it came to this at last, that he thought only of beautiful things, so that even his face was stripped of wickedness, and his fingers loosed one by one the voices of angels, until it seemed as if the whole room was full of them—all singing. And the singing died away to silence.

The legless man looked straight ahead of him into the dim room. Then, smiling, his head a little on one side, he caressed his piano so that it gave out Chopin's 7th Prelude, which, as all the world knows, is a little girl who smiles because she is happy; and she is happy because so many of the flowers in the garden are blue. It is not known why this makes her happy, only that it does.

And forthwith he played Chopin and only Chopin: brooks and pools of sound to which you did not listen, but in which you bathed. And in his soul the legless man was playing only for Barbara, and only to Barbara. And so powerful was this obsession that it stole out of him like some hypnotic influence, affected the others, and gave him away. First Blythe looked toward Barbara, not realizing why, then Haddon looked, then Mrs. Bruce.

Barbara felt the warm blood in her cheeks. She was troubled, unhappy, touched. A man, his face full of unhappy yearning, his soul quick with genius, was making love to her; asking her to forget his shortcomings, to forgive his sins, to give him a hand upward out of the dark places into the light. He followed her, always pleading, by brooks, into valleys, through flowery meadows in the early morning, into solemn churches, into groves of cypress flooded with moonlight.



Blythe could have sworn that a woman sobbed, but his eyes, used by now to the obscurity, told him that it was neither Mrs. Bruce nor Barbara. The piano burst into a storm of sound, under cover of which Rose, still at her post, torn with jealousy, continued to pedal at the direction of her lord and master, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Devils filled the room, whirling in mad dances; they screamed and yelled; the souls of the damned screeched in torment; and the face of him who invoked the inferno, swollen, streaming with sweat, the eyes glazed, protruding, was the face of a madman.

Rose, for whom her master's playing had the eloquence and precision of speech, forgot her jealousy in fear of those consequences which her ill-timed sobbing must bring upon her. Her tears dried as in a desert wind; her sobs ceased, and in a moment or two the madness was going out of Blizzard's music and out of his face. He rested, preluded, and then began to play Beethoven, quietly, with a pure singing tone, music of a heavenly sanity.

The jarred feelings of his audience were soothed. Into his own face there stole a high-priest look. And when he had finished playing, this look remained for a few moments. Then he laughed quietly and, speaking for the first time, expressed the hope that he had not made them listen too long.

He reached for the wall behind him, and turned a switch so that the room became brightly lighted. Then, reluctantly, he came out from behind the piano, swinging between his crutches, and leaving Rose to escape at the first favorable opportunity. His descent from colossus to cripple had an unpleasant effect. And the question, "How the deuce do you work the pedals?" was jerked from Blythe, usually a most tactful person.

"Why," said Blizzard simply, "I have an assistant." He caught Barbara's eye and reddened a little. "A young man who is musical and intelligent. We have a system of signals, and—but I think there is a sort of thought communication that comes of much rehearsing together. And in our best moments we do pretty well. But sometimes when our minds are not tuned together we make a dreadful hash of things."

He might have added: "At such times I drag her about by the hair and beat her." But he didn't. He looked instead the picture of a very patient man who makes the best of things.

"Whatever you do at times," said Barbara gently, "you have done wonders to-night. But you know better than we do how good your playing is. So what is the use of praising it—to you?"

She felt that he was her own private discovery—almost her property. And knowing that her friends were still profoundly affected by his playing, she was filled with honest pride. Her eyes flashed, her cheeks glowed.

"What did I tell you?" she exclaimed. "Was I right? Didn't I promise that he would make good? Did he?"

She was delighted with Blizzard, delighted with herself, delighted with the whole party. She had forgotten the madman face that he had showed. She forgot that he was a cripple, a thing soured and wicked. She thought of him only as a great genius, which she herself had discovered.

The childlike pleasure which she felt communicated itself to the others, and Blizzard, escaping an ovation of honest praise, led them into the next room, where, among palms and roses, such a supper was spread as gamblers, the big men of the profession, spread for their victims.

The mere sight of the champagne-glasses loosened the men's tongues. Talk flowed. Mrs. Bruce and Barbara, seated right and left of their host, made much of his music and his hospitality. For once in his life he was genuinely happy. He looked very handsome, very high-minded, very modest, a man's man. Sitting, he was much taller than the others. You forgot that, standing, he was but a dwarf. He towered at the head of his table, his mind working in swift, good-natured, hospitable flashes. It was obvious that he had been born a gentleman, and that he had never "forgotten how." It was obvious, too, that he was a man of power and position, who when he wished could spend money like a great lord, and who was accustomed to give orders.

In his manner to Barbara there was (perhaps noticeable only to herself) an air of long-proved friendship and a kind of guardianly tenderness, and he managed somehow to convey to her that she had an immense influence over him; that he looked to her for help—for inspiration.

The desire to make a great man of him invaded her mind. Her heart warmed toward him.

"I wonder," said Bruce suddenly, "where our wandering Wilmot is to-night?"

"I drink to him," said the beggar quickly, "wherever he is, and wish him luck."

But the poison had been spilled on Barbara's evening. For three hours she had not once thought of the man whom twelve hours ago she had really wanted to marry. And her heart meanwhile had warmed and expanded toward one who at best was a prodigiously successful crook and rascal, and she was ashamed. But for all that neither the warmth nor the triumphant sense of influence and conquest went out of her heart. And later, when Mrs. Bruce said: "I really think we ought to go," Barbara, outwardly all sweetness and agreement, was inwardly annoyed. She wanted very much to stay, for she knew that the moment she was alone her conscience would give her no peace, and that she would make resolutions which she would not, judging from past experiences, be able to keep. She would resolve to abandon her bust of Blizzard, resolve never to see the creature again, since it seemed that he had in him power upon her emotions—dangerous power.

"Do we work to-morrow, Miss Ferris?"

The words, "No, I'm afraid not to-morrow," rose to her lips. The words, "Please, at the usual time," came out.

And she felt as if his will, not her own, had caused her to say those words. Her heart gave a sudden leap of fear.



XXVI

Barbara knew very well that she was doing wrong. Summer had descended, blazing, upon the city. Without exception her friends had gone to the country. Her father had gone to Colorado upon an errand of which for the present he chose to make a mystery. She made a habit of lunching at the Colony Club, and occasionally saw some friend or other who had run into town for a face massage, a hair wave, a gown, or a hat. But the afternoons and evenings hung very heavily upon her hands. So that she got to living in and for her mornings at the studio. With the appearance of Blizzard, clean, thoughtful, and forceful, her feelings of loneliness and depression vanished. If her vitality was at low ebb, his was not. The heat appeared to brace him, and he had the faculty of communicating something of his own energy, so that it was not until she had finished working and dismissed him that she was sensible of fatigue and discouragement.

The man was on his best behavior. He could not but realize that he had established an influence over her; that she was beginning to take him at his own estimate of himself, and to believe in his pretended aspirations. And while he credited her with no affection for himself, he had the presumption to imagine that his maimed condition and his low station in life no longer made the slightest difference to her, and that finally her friendliness would turn into a warmer feeling. But if not, he had but to wait until the maturity of his plans should throw the city into chaos, when she would be at his mercy.

The hand which he had dealt himself was so full of high cards that the occasional losing of a trick did not disturb him in the slightest. He had through her father's hideous mistake a hold on Barbara's conscience. As a personage whose power over certain sections of the city was stronger than the law, he had a hold upon her imagination. As the inspirer of her best work, he had a hold upon her gratitude. He had, or thought he had, a chance to win her affection in open and equal competition. And, highest card of all—ace of trumps—he had persuaded her that her influence upon him was such that with all the strength of remorse he was shaping his life toward high ideals.

In his heart she was usually, but not always, the first consideration. Sometimes the passion of ambition overlapped the passion of love. And sometimes he felt that he would forego the fruition of all his plans if only by some miracle his legs could be restored to him.

But on the whole, he had reached a high-water mark of self-satisfaction. He had found it easy to carry corruption into high places. A list of those who were in his power—willing or unwilling—would have horrified the whole nation. From O'Hagan in the West came reports that all went well with the organization, and that Wilmot Allen was displaying genius in teaching inexperienced Polacks to shoot.

On his walks through the city the legless man carried a high head, and looked about him with the eye of a landlord. His imagination was so strong that he had already the feelings of a genuine conqueror, and not of a man confronted by the awful possibilities of failure. And by some subtlety of mental communication Barbara was coming more and more into this same opinion of him. And in realizing this, and in allowing their relations to continue, she knew that she was doing wrong.

She compared her model with all the men she had known, always to conclude that there was in him a sort of greatness utterly wanting in the others. If he had revealed his plans to her, she would have believed him not only capable of carrying them out, but sure to do so—if he wished. He might be Satan fallen, but he was still a god. In the early days of their association she had felt herself the important person of the two, and her bust of him the most important thing in the world. He and she would surely die, but the bust had a chance to live. But now she had the feeling that the work was of less importance than the man; and that she herself was an insignificant spoiled person of no importance whatever. When Blizzard entered the studio she had the feeling that a great and busy man was, out of pure good nature, wasting his time upon an unknown artist. But she knew very well that such was not the case. She knew that he came to the studio because she attracted him, and for no other reason. And at times she felt keenly curious to know just how much she attracted him, and the morbid wish, for which she hated herself, of leading him into some sort of a declaration.



XXVII

However unnecessary the hot waves of the New York summer may appear to some people, they were never wasted on Bubbles. He had a passion for the water, and to his love of swimming was added a passion for the underworld gossip with which the piers of the East River reek in bathing weather. For just as mice are more intimate with the details of houses than landlords are, so the small boys of a city have the best opportunities for being acquainted with its workings, and with the intimate lives of its inhabitants. The street-boy's mind matures while his body is still that of a child. Births and deaths are familiar spectacles to him. He knows and holds of high import hundreds of things which men have forgotten. He can see in the dark. He can hide in a handful of shadow. And when he isn't overhearing on his own hook, he is listening to what somebody else has overheard. Second-story men fear him, lovers loathe him, and nature, who has been thwarted in her intention that he should run in sweet meadows, sleep in fresh air, and bathe in clean water, sighs over him.

It was so hot that the policeman whose duty and privilege it was to see that no small boy cooled himself from Pier 31A, disappeared tactfully into the family entrance of a water-front saloon. The city had many laws which to this particular officer appeared unreasonable and which he enforced only when he couldn't help himself. In men there is the need of gambling and some other things. As for small boys, they must play baseball and they must swim.

Bubbles went overboard at about three o'clock. There were twenty or thirty boys of all sizes already in the water, and the addition of one to the struggling group of wet heads was not to be noticed. Nor was the disappearance of that head noticed, nor the fact that it appeared to remain under water for nearly three-quarters of an hour, nor that when it finally did emerge it looked on the whole as if it had seen a ghost.

Bubbles, it seems, was less interested in the waters around Pier 31A than in the waters underneath. And for this reason: on the previous night, while stripping for a swim, he had heard a muffled sound of voices coming from directly under the pier, followed by a long subdued roaring as of a load of earth being emptied into the water. Now, under Harry West's tuition Bubbles had formed the habit of investigating whatever he did not understand. And he wished very much to find out why people should talk under piers at night, how they could get under Pier 31A except by swimming, and if they were throwing earth overboard why they were doing so, and where they got the earth.

His head filled with vague and highly colored notions of a smugglers' cave, his narrow lungs filled with air, Bubbles dove, swam between two slimy barnacled piles, and came up presently in a dark, dank, stale, gurgling region, wonderfully cool after the blazing sunlight which he had just left.

Toward the shore the light that filtered between the supporting piles of Pier 31A became less and less, until completely shut off by walls of solid masonry. Into this darkness Bubbles swam with great caution, accustoming his eyes to the obscurity and holding himself ready to dive in retreat at the first alarm.

The shore end of Pier 31A had originally been a clean wall of solid masonry. The removal of half a dozen great blocks of stone had made a jagged opening in the midst of this, and into this opening, pulling himself a little out of the water, Bubbles strained and strained his eyes and saw nothing but the beginning of a passageway and then pitch darkness.

His heart beat very hard and fast like the heart of a caught bird. Here, leading into the city from the shore of the East River, was a mysterious passageway. Who had made it and why? There were two ways of finding out. One was to wait patiently until some one entered the passage or emerged from it. The other way, and the better, was to forget how very much the idea of so doing frightened you, climb into the opening, and follow the passage to its other end. Bubbles compromised. He waited patiently for half an hour. Nothing happened. Then he pulled himself into the opening and crawled through the darkness for perhaps the length of a city block.

"What," he then said to himself, "is the use of me going any further? I can't see in the dark. I've got no matches, and if anything happens to me, there'll be nobody to tell Harry about this place. Better make a get-away now, find Harry, and bring him here to-night. Then if we find anybody there'll be something doing."

He had turned and was crawling rather rapidly toward the entrance of the passage.



XXVIII

Bubble's problem was to locate Harry West. And he wrestled with it, if trying to cover the whole of a scorching hot city on a pair of insufficient legs and a very limited amount of carfare may be called wrestling. His search took him into many odd places where you could not have expected to cross the trail of an honest man. He even made inquiries of a master-plumber, of a Fourth Avenue vender of antiques, of a hairy woman with one eye who ran a news-stand, of a bar-tender, of saloon-keepers and bootblacks. He drifted through a department store, and whispered to a pretty girl who sold "art pictures." She shook her head. He spoke a word to the negro sentinel of a house in the West Forties, and was admitted to quiet, padded rooms, containing everything which is necessary to separate hopeful persons from their money. In one room a number of book-makers were whiling away the hot afternoon with poker for small stakes. In another room, played upon by an electric fan, sat Mr. Lichtenstein, the proprietor. He was bent over a table on which he had assembled fifteen or twenty of the component parts of a very large picture-puzzle. He was small, plump and earnest. He may have been a Jew, but he had bright red hair and a pug nose. His eyes, bright, quick, small, brown, and kind, were very busy hunting among the brightly colored pieces of the puzzle.

"'Dafternoon, Mr. Liechtenstein," said Bubbles.

"'Dafternoon, Bubbles," said Mr. Lichtenstein, without looking up.

"How d'je know it was me?"

"I saw you in the looking-glass. What's the news?"

"It's for Harry."

"And Harry is—where?"

"Don't you know where Harry is?"

"I do. But you can't get to him." Mr. Lichtenstein lowered his voice. "He's gone West, Bub, on the trail of O'Hagan. The plant the old one is growing hasn't put its head above ground yet, and the roots are in the West. Out in Utah they're teaching all kinds of Polacks to shoot rifles. Why? O'Hagan is travelling from one mine to another as a common laborer. Why? While here in little New York, the old one is sitting for his portrait and getting a perfectly innocent young girl talked about. No use to watch the old one till later."

"But," said Bubbles, "suppose some one was to find a secret passage leading from the East River to—to—"

"To where?"

"He doesn't know where. He wanted to get Harry to go with him to find out."

"Where does the passage begin, Bubbles?"

"Under Pier 31 A."



"Come over here, Bub," said Mr. Lichtenstein and led the way to a mahogany table covered with green baize. Upon this he spread a folding-map of New York City that he took from his inside pocket. With the rapidity of thought his stubby forefinger found Pier 31A and passed from it to the crook in Marrow Lane. And he said:

"Hum! The bee-line of it leads straight to Blizzard's place. There are two things to find out, Bub. Is the passage straight? And how long is it? A light in the entrance to sight by will answer question No. 1, and a ball of twine to be unwound at leisure will answer No. 2."

"You'd ought to have a compass," Bubbles suggested, "to know just how she runs."

"True," said Mr. Lichtenstein. "Happy thought. And you could borrow one mounted in tiger's eye from a friend."

He laughed, took the little compass in question from its watch chain, and gave it to Bubbles. Then, his voice losing its bantering tone and taking on a kind of faltering sincerity, he asked:

"Do you want to play this hand, Bubbles, or do you want me to delegate some one else?"

"It's my graft," said Bubbles, "I'd like to see it through."

Mr. Lichtenstein looked upon the boy with a certain pride and tenderness. "I'd like to go with you," he said, "but I can't run any risks. There's the strings of too many things in my head. In every battle there has to be a general who sits on a hill out of danger and orders other people to do brave things. Remember that you've worked for us ever since Harry came in and said, laughing, 'Governor, I've made friends with a bright baby that knows how to keep his mouth shut,' You've only to step up to Blizzard and say, 'Abe Lichtenstein is the head,' to bring the gun-men down on me. But you'd die first."

The boy's breast swelled with pride and martial ardor. "Betcher life," he said, and then: "If I get the news will I bring it here?"

Mr. Lichtenstein considered for a minute. Then shook his head. "I'll be in Blicker's drug-store between 'leven and midnight," he said.

"If I don't show up it'll be because I can't."

Mr. Lichtenstein smiled encouragingly. "Don't look on the dark side of the future," he said, "but don't take any chances, and don't show a light till you have to."



XXIX

The night was hot, but the rising tide had brought in cold water from the ocean, and what with his excitement and trepidation it was a very shivery small boy that began to investigate the passage under Pier 31A. Mindful of Mr. Lichtenstein's advice not to show a light till he had to, Bubbles felt his way forward very slowly in the inky darkness, unrolling, as he went, a huge ball of twine. It would be time to take the bearings of the place by compass when he had ascertained its general extent and whether it was free from human occupants. On this score he felt comparatively safe, since it seemed likely that the passage had been constructed with a view to emergency rather than daily use.

Having advanced a distance of about three short city blocks, it seemed to Bubbles as if the passage had opened suddenly into a room. If so, he had to thank instinct for the knowledge, since he could see but an inch in the blackness. He had the feeling that walls were no longer passing near him, and, groping cautiously this way and that, he found it to be fact and not fancy. During these gropings he lost his sense of direction, and, after considering the matter at some length, he concluded that the time had come to flash his torch. But first he listened for a long time. At last, satisfied that he was alone, his thumb began to press against the switch of his torch. A shaft of light bored into the darkness, and he saw two wildly bearded men, who sat with their backs against a wall of living rock and looked straight at him.

It was as if he had been suddenly frozen solid, so dreadful was his surprise and horror, but the men with the wild heads showed no emotion. They had a pale, tired, hopeless look; and though one was dark and one blond, this expression, common to both, gave them an appearance of being twin brothers. They had gentle soft eyes in which was no sign of surprise or agitation. It seemed as if they were perfectly accustomed to having light suddenly flashed into them. One of the men leaned forward and began to run his hand this way and that over the hard dirt floor.

"Lost something?" said the other suddenly.

"Dropped my plug," said the first in a dull weary voice, and he continued to feel for and repeatedly just miss a half-cake of chewing-tobacco. Bubbles could see it distinctly, and another thing was clear to him: the men were both blind.

With this knowledge certain frayed and tattered fragments of courage returned to him, and, what was of much greater importance, his presence of mind.

The excavation in which he stood was nearly forty feet square. His torch showed him the passage by which he had entered, and opposite this a flight of steps leading sharply upward. Here and there, leaning against the walls, were picks and shovels and other tools used in excavating. Near the centre of the passage was a tall pile of dirt and loose stones, together with two small wheelbarrows of sheet-iron.

Just as Bubbles had ascertained these facts and got himself into a much calmer state of mind, he had a fresh thrill of horror. The two blind men sighed, and as if moved by a common impulse got up, and the little boy saw that, like Blizzard, the beggar, they had no legs. With perfect accuracy of direction they turned to the great pile of dirt, and taking up two shovels which leaned against it began to fill the two little wheelbarrows.

They labored slowly as if time was of no moment, as if the work in hand was a form of punishment instead of something that it was intended to complete.

Bubbles had begun to wonder what they were going to do with the dirt, when one of them, having filled his barrow, trundled off with it into the passageway leading to the river. And to Bubbles, feverishly listening, there came after what seemed a very long interval a sound as of earth being dumped into water.

The second excavator, having filled his barrow, waited the return of his companion, since the passage was too narrow to admit of the two barrows meeting and passing each other.

And that simple fact was very alarming to Bubbles, since virtually it made a prisoner of him. One man with his barrow full or empty was always in the passage.

Nor was there any possibility of escape by the flight of stairs which he had noticed, for a hurried examination revealed a door of sheet-iron which did not give to his most determined efforts. There was nothing for it but to wait until the blind men should rest from their labors.

He got used to them gradually; lost his fear of them. Once in a while they spoke to each other, always with a kind of lugubrious gentleness in their voices. He began to feel sorry for them. He wished to be of service to them in some way or other. Their wild beards and shaggy, matted hair no longer terrified him. They were two lambs made up to represent wolves, but the merest child must have seen through the disguisement.

Upon the ball of twine which Bubbles still held in his hand there was a sudden tug. It fell to the ground with a thump and rolled toward the blind laborer who had just filled his barrow. He was much startled and turned his blind eyes this way and that; then called to his mate, at that moment coming from the passageway.

"I heard something drop," he said; "somebody dropped something. I thought I heard steps on the stairs, and now I know I did."

But the other had found the twine lying the length of the passage. "Some one's come in from the river," he said, "and dropped all this string,"

He began to gather it in, hand over hand, paused suddenly, and then, with a kind of bravado of terrified politeness, and with a bob of his wild, dark head, exclaimed:

"Good evening, Mr. Blizzard!"

Then the pair cowered as if they expected to be struck, and after a long while the blond one said:

"It ain't him."

Then the dark one:

"Don't be scared of us. We couldn't hurt a fly if we wanted to. Who is it?"

Now it seemed to Bubbles all of a sudden (though the mention of Blizzard's name had once more given him the horrors) that any risk run in revealing his presence to the blind men was more than compensated by the consequent possibility of "finding out things" from them. So he said:

"It's only me—just a boy. I found this hole swimmin' and come in to see what it was for."

"It's only a boy," said the blond man.

"He wouldn't hurt us," said the dark one.

"Maybe you'll tell me what all this cellar work is for," said Bubbles.

The dark man scratched his matted head. "We don't know," he said; "we was just put in here to dig. At first there was ten of us; but we was kep' on to give the finishin' touches."

"What became of the others?"

"Oh, Mr. Blizzard, he's got other work for them."

"Is this place under his house?"

"No, sir, it ain't. But the cellar at the head of them steps is."

"Maybe he's hollered this out to hide things in?"

The blind men turned toward each other and nodded their heads.

"That's just presactly what we think," said the blond one.

"What do you do when you aren't working?"

"Oh, we sleeps and eats in Blizzard's cellar."

"How long you been on the job?"

"We don't know. We lost track."

"See much of Blizzard?"

"Oh, he's in and out, just to keep things going."

"Is the passage to the river just to get rid of the dirt?"

The dark man laughed sheepishly. "We don't think so," he said—"we gets lots of time to think. And it ain't always dirt that goes into the river. Twicet it's been men, and once it were a woman. There was lead pipe wrapped round the bodies to make 'em sink. And oncet Blizzard he tumbled a girl down the stairs to us. But she weren't dead, and me and Bill took the lead off her before we throwed her in."

His comrade interrupted. "She said she could swim. She said if we'd take the lead off and untie her and give her a chanst, we could have a kiss apiece. But we let her go fer nothin'."

"Did she get away?" Bubbles was tremendously interested.

"No, sir. It was dark night, and she couldn't find a way out from under the wharf. She just swam round and round, slower and slower, like a mouse in a wash-tub. Then she calls out she'll come back and we can hide her till daylight. But she don't make it We has to stand there and listen to her drown."

"When she's dead she gets out into the open river, and when Blizzard hears she's been found without any lead on her he raises hell."

"When he gets through with us we was most skinned alive."

"He wouldn't dig that hole to the river," said Bubbles, "just to get rid of people. What do you think it's for?"

"You ain't goin' to tell Blizzard you been here, nor get us in trouble?"

"I'll get you out of this some day, but you can't get in no trouble through me."

"Then," said the blond man, "this is what we thinks out and concludes: Blizzard he's calculatin' to receive stolen goods wholesale. First he stores 'em in here until this cellar is full, and then he takes 'em down to the river and puts 'em aboard a ship bound fur furrin' ports, and we thinks and concludes that he'll make his get-away about the same time."

"Well," said Bubbles, "I'm obliged. I won't forget your kindness. But it's time I was off."

"Come close first," said the blond man.

Bubbles was instantly alarmed. "Why?"

"Only so's we can feel your face, so's to know what you look like."

He stood impatient and embarrassed while they pawed his face with hard, grimy hands.

At last they let him go, he whose barrow was full accompanying him to the end of the passageway, and speeding him on his way with this comfortable remark:

"If you was to dive deep and feel around, you might find those as is leaded to the bottom."

It took every ounce of nerve that Bubbles had at command to let his legs and body slip down into the cold and tragic current. It seemed certain that dead hands were reaching for him. But he screwed his courage up to the sticking point, and called to his acquaintance in the passage-mouth a whispered but nonchalant, "S'long!"



XXX

When Bubbles entered Blicker's drug-store, the city clocks were striking a quarter to twelve, but the place was still brightly lighted, and at the soda-counter a young man was treating his flame to a glass of chocolate vanilla ice-cream.

Bubbles marched to the prescription counter, and began to unwrap a bloody handkerchief from his left hand. Then he began to clear his throat. This brought Mr. Blicker from a region of mortar pestles, empty pill-boxes, and glass retorts.

"What you want?" he asked aggressively.

"I want me thumb bandaged."

"You cut him—eh?"

Bubbles lowered his voice. "On a barnacle."

"Come in back here," said Mr. Blicker roughly. "I fix him." But once out of sight in the depths of the store, his manner changed, and he patted Bubbles enthusiastically on the back. "You have found out some things?"

"Sure—lots."

The chemist, without commenting, began to treat the cut thumb, washing, disinfecting, and bandaging. Then, very loud, for the benefit perhaps of the lovers at the soda-counter, "So," he said, "I let you out the back door."

And he actually opened a door, slammed it shut, and turned a key in the lock. But it was a closet door. Then with a finger on his lips he pointed to a narrow staircase and, his own feet making a great tramping, led the way up it. Upon the top steps they found Mr. Lichtenstein, nervously puffing clouds of tobacco smoke,

"'Bout given you up," he said. "Good boy!"

"Better talk by the parlor," said Blicker; "here is too exposed."

When the door of the stuffy little parlor had closed behind them, the proprietor began to smile and beam. But Mr. Lichtenstein looked grave and troubled. It was not for pleasure that he sometimes found occasion to put dangerous work in the hands of children.

"Hurt your thumb bad?" he asked.

Bubbles shook his head and plunged into his story. Now and then the German laughed, but the red-haired, pug-nosed Jew appeared to sink deeper and deeper into his own thoughts, only showing by an occasional question that he was following the boy's narrative. Bubbles wished to dwell at length and with comment upon the use of the passage for disposing of dead bodies, but to Mr. Lichtenstein this appeared to be merely a natural by-product of its construction.

"It wasn't dug for that," he said. "How big is the main excavation?"



"'Bout as big as a small East Side dance-hall."

Mr. Liechtenstein turned to the German. "Hold a lot of loot—what?"

"I bet me," said the German, and washed his hands with air.

"Lot o' what?" asked Bubbles.

"Loot—gold, silver, jewels, bullion."

"Your ideas," said the German, "is all idiot. No mans is such a darn fool as to think he can get away by such a business—no mans, that is, but is crazy."

"Blizzard is crazy," said Mr. Lichtenstein simply. "It wasn't until we hit on that hypothesis that we made any progress. Bubbles, did you ever hear of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew?"

"Sure," said Bubbles, "they shot him full of arrows."

"That was Saint Sebastian," corrected the Jew. "Now listen, this is history. On the night of August 24, 1572, two thousand men, distinguished from other men by white cockades in their hats, on the order of a crazy man, at the tolling of a bell, drew their swords, murdered everybody in a great city who opposed their leaders, and made themselves absolute masters of the place. What two thousand men did in Paris during the Middle Ages, ten thousand men acting in concert could do in New York to-day. If a man rose up with the power to command such a following, with the ability to keep his plans absolutely secret, with the genius to make plans in which there were no flaws, he could loot Maiden Lane, the Sub-Treasury, Tiffany's, the Metropolitan Museum—and get away with it."

Mr. Lichtenstein's small eyes glittered. He was visibly excited. And so was Mr. Blicker.

"He will loot the Metropolitan Museum," said this one, "but what will he do with the metropolitan police?"

"Well," said Mr. Lichtenstein, "I am only supposing. But suppose some fine night a building somewhere central was blown up with dynamite. Suppose the sound was so big that it could be heard in every part of greater New York. Suppose at the sound every policeman in greater New York was shot dead in his tracks—"

Bubbles's hair began to bristle. "Say," he cried in his excitement, "the straw hats—the soft straw hats that Blizzard makes and don't sell—they're the white cockades!"

Mr. Blicker guffawed. Mr. Lichtenstein rose and paced the room.

"And that proves," he exclaimed, "that nothing is to happen when you and I are wearing straw hats—but in winter. Bubbles, you're a bright boy!"

"You are both so bright," said Mr. Blicker, "you keep me all the time laughing."

"Well," said Mr. Lichtenstein, "that may be, but suppose you tell me why Blizzard makes straw hats and don't sell 'em. Tell me why he's dug such a great hole under his house with a passage leading to the river, and ships. Tell me why O'Hagan is drilling men in the West. Tell me why Blizzard has gone out of the white-slave business. It fetched him in a pretty penny."

"I think I can answer the last question," said Bubbles.

"Do then."

"I think," said the small boy, "that he's got some good in him somewhere, and I know he's dead gone on my Miss Ferris. I think he's ashamed o' some o' the things he's done."

Mr. Lichtenstein considered this at some length. Then he said: "Well, that's possible. But it's an absolutely new idea to me. Blizzard ashamed? Hum!"



XXXI

"True that policemen take money in exchange for protection? True that they practise blackmail and extortion? Of course it's true. Whenever a big temptation appears loose in a city half the people who get a look at it trip and fall. Oh, I'd like to reform this city, Miss Barbara—and this country. I'd like to be dictator for six months."

"Who wouldn't?" said Barbara. "But what would you do? Where would you begin?"

"I should be drastic at first," said the legless man, "and kind later. I'd begin," he went on, his eyes smiling, "with a general massacre of incompetents—old men with too little money, young men with too much—old maids, aliens, incurables, the races that are too clever to work, the races that are too stupid, habitual drunkards, spreaders of disease, the women who abolished the canteen, the women who wear aigrettes. After that I should destroy all possibilities of graft."

"How?" asked Barbara.

"Why," said he, "the simplest way in the world—legalize the business that now pays for protection. There would be no more of them than there are now, and they could be regulated and kept to confined limits of cities. Don't blame the police for graft: blame all who believe that human nature can be abolished by law. But," and this time his whole face smiled, "I shall never be dictator. The thing to do is to start a new country, and make no mistakes."

And he proceeded, sometimes seriously but for the most part whimsically, to outline his model republic, while Barbara worked and listened, sometimes with amusement, sometimes with a sense of being uplifted and thrilled by the man's plausible originality. Since she had but the vaguest recollection of history, and none whatever of economics, it was easy for the man to play the constructive statesman. Nor were his schemes always foolish and illogical, since the book of human nature had been always in his library, and of all its volumes had been most often read.

"Ah!" said the legless man at last, "if I were younger, and whole!"

Whenever he referred to his maimed condition Barbara, to whom it was no longer physically shocking, was uncomfortable and distressed, changing the subject as swiftly as might be. But now, stopping her work short off, her hands hanging at her sides, she began to speak of the matter.

"I suppose," she said, "it's almost life and death to you—sometimes, that you'd give almost anything, take any chance to be—the way you were meant to be. My father believes that some day people can have anything that they've lost restored—a hand or an arm. He's made experiments along those lines ever since he made his mistake with you, and it all works out beautifully with monkeys and dogs and guinea-pigs and rabbits. Just now he is in Colorado to try it on a man. There's a man out there in jail for life, who has a brother that lost his right hand in some machinery. The well brother has offered to let father cut off his hand, and graft it on the maimed brother's wrist. I've just had a letter—it's been done. He thinks it's all right, but he can't be sure yet. Please don't say anything about it because—well, because people are still queer about these things. In the old days people burned the best doctors, and now they want to lynch vivisectors and almost anybody who's really trying to make health more or less contagious."

"Do you believe I could be made whole?" exclaimed Blizzard, his eyes glittering as with a sudden hope. "My God! Even if they weren't much use to me, I'd give my soul to look like a real man—my soul! Do you know what I'd rather do than anything in this whole world—just once? I'd rather draw myself to my full height—just once—than be Napoleon Bonaparte. If all the treasure in this city were mine to give, I'd give it to walk the length of a city block on my own feet, looking down at the people instead of always up—always up—until the leverage of your eyes twists the back of your brain in everlasting torment."

"When my father comes back," said Barbara quietly, "talk to him. And if only it can be done—why, you'll forgive us, won't you, for all the suffering you've had and everything?"



"Yes, yes," he said quickly. "But it isn't true—it isn't possible. It won't work. It's against experience."

"It is possible," said Barbara gently. "That's all I know. And even if—even if it can't be done yet awhile, I thought it would comfort you to think that some day—almost surely—"

"You are always thinking of my comfort," he cried. "In this pit that we call life, you are an angel serene, blessed and blessing. Oh," he cried, "what would you say if I stood before you on my own feet, and told you—told you—" He broke off short and hung his head.

Barbara bit her lips and lifted her hands with a weary gesture to resume work. But the bust of Blizzard was a live thing, and seeing anew the strength and hellish beauty of it, suddenly and as if with the eyes of a stranger, her heart seemed to leap into her throat, her whole body relaxed once more, and she said in a small, surprised voice:

"Why, it's finished!"



XXXII

Upon Blizzard, who had been looking forward to many mornings during which he should unobtrusively advance his cause, this quiet statement fell with disturbing force. It meant that his opportunities for intimate talks had come to a sudden and most unprepared-for end. He knew that Barbara was tired out with the steady grind of creation, and that she had been going through an equally steady grind of discouragement and uncertainty. He believed that she would make no delay in carrying her triumph and her trouble out of the heat-ridden city, to cool places, to her own people. He believed, not that she would forget him, but that, free from his influence, she would see with equal vision how wide the gulf between them really was.

He had made a slip in his calculation. He had been spreading his arts thinly, you may say, to cover what he supposed was to have been a much longer period of time. And he should have come sooner and with all his strength to the point. There had been moments of supreme discouragement, when, if there was to be a miracle in his life, he should have spoken. There were to be no more of those golden moments. She would close the studio, go away, and return by way of exercise and fresh air to a sane and normal state of mind—a state of mind in which such a physical and moral cripple as himself could have no place except among the curiosities.

She stood looking steadily at the head which had come to life under her hands. Her eyelids drooped heavily. She looked almost as if she was falling asleep.

Blizzard watched her as a cat watches a mouse, not knowing what was best for him to dare. Now he was for pleading his cause with all the passion that inspired it; now for boldly claiming her as the expiation for her father's fault; and now he was for passing over all preliminaries and felling her with a blow of his fist.

And then she suddenly turned to him, and smiled like a very happy and very tired child. "You've been very good to me," she said, "and so patient! I don't know quite how to thank you. I owe you such a lot."

"Do you?" he said, his hard eyes softening and seeking hers.

She nodded slowly. "Such a lot. And there's no way of paying, or making things up to you, is there?"

"Only one," he said.

There was quite a long silence; his eyes, flames in them, held hers, which were troubled and childlike, and imbued the two words that he had spoken with an unmistakable intelligence.

"Don't let me go utterly," he said, "and slip back into the pit. You have finished the bust. If you wished you could finish the man: put him back among the good angels.... If your father died owing money, you couldn't rest until you had paid his debts.... I could be anything you wished. And I could give you anything that you wanted in this world. There is nothing I couldn't put over—with you at my side, wishing the good deed done, the great deed—or—"

He began to tremble with the passion that was in his voice, slipped from his chair, and began to move slowly toward her with outstretched arms, upon his stumps of legs.

It was no mirth or any sense of the ridiculous that moved Barbara, but fear, disgust, and horror. She backed away from him, laughing hysterically. But he, whose self-consciousness in her sight bordered upon mania, mistook the cause of her laughter, so that a kind of hell-born fury shook him, and he rushed at her, his mouth giving out horrible and inarticulate sounds. And in those lightning moments she could move neither hand nor foot; nor could she cry for help. And yet she realized, as in some nightmare, that if once those horrible hairy hands closed upon her she was lost utterly. And in that same clear flash of reason she realized that for whatever might befall she had herself alone to blame. She had touched pitch, and played with fire—and all that men might some day call her great.



The speed for which the fury of the legless man called was more than the stumps of his legs could furnish. He was like a man, thigh-deep in water, who attempts to run at top speed. Yet his hands were within inches of her dress, when daring and nerve at last thrilled through Barbara, and returned her muscles into the keeping of her mind. She darted backward and to one side. In that instant the legless man overreached himself and fell heavily. Here seemed an inestimable advantage for Barbara, and yet the great body, shaken with curses and already rising to its stumps, was between her and the door.



XXXIII

For once the legless man had been deserted by the power of cool reasoning. And his fury was of a kind that could not wait for satisfaction. He was more like a mad dog than a man. And this, although it added to the horror of Barbara's situation, proved her salvation.

Occupying a point from which he could head off her escape by either of the studio doors, he abandoned this, and attempted to match the stumps of his legs against her swift young feet. And must have overcome the disparity, but that in the lightning instinct of self-preservation she overturned a table between them, and during the moments thus gained dashed into her dressing-room and locked the door behind her.

Blizzard vented his rage upon the locked door, splintering its panels with bleeding fists; but in the meanwhile his quarry had escaped him, and was already in the street walking swiftly toward Washington Square. He leaned at last from a window, and saw her going. And in his heart shame gradually took the place of fury. Why, when she laughed at him, had he not been able to dissemble his emotions for a few seconds? to mask his dreadfulness? For then, surely, he must have got her in his power. He should have hung his head when she laughed, begged her to forgive him for daring to lift his thoughts to her; and begged her as a token of forgiveness to shake hands with him. Her hand once clasped in his—



Well, he had made a fool of himself. Perhaps he had frightened her utterly beyond the reach even of his long arm. Fear would carry her out of the city, out of the State, out of the country, perhaps. To prevent the least of these contingencies he must act swiftly and with daring wisdom.

He passed into the studio, glanced upward at the bust of himself, stopped, and looked about for something heavy with which to destroy it. Later he would tell her that he had done so, and let that knowledge be the beginning of her torment.

But the thing that he planned to destroy looked him in the eye, smiling. The thing smiled in the full knowledge of good and evil, the fact that it had chosen evil, the fact that it was lost forever. It was no contagious smile, but a smile aloof and dreadful. So a man, impaled, may smile, when agony has passed beyond the usual human passions—and even so the legless man smiled upward at the smiling bust of himself. And he found that he could not destroy the bust: for the act would have about it too ominous a flavor of self-destruction.

He caught up his crutches, his little hand-organ, and hurried from the studio. By now Barbara must be well on her way uptown. He entered a public telephone station and gave the number of her house. He asked to speak with Miss Marion O'Brien, and when after an interval he heard the voice of Barbara's maid in his ear, he said: "She's been frightened. Let me know what she's going to do as soon as you know. Don't use the house 'phone. Slip out to a pay station. I must know when she's going and where, and if she says for how long." He hung up the receiver, and hurried off.

An hour later Barbara's maid telephoned him the required news, but all of it that mattered was that Barbara was not going out of town until the next day. There was a whole afternoon and night in which to act.

The legless man sank at once into deep and swift thought. And ten minutes later he had abandoned all idea of kidnapping Barbara for the present. Certain dangers of so doing seemed insurmountable. He must possess his soul in patience, and in the meanwhile discount, if possible, the fright that he had given her. To this end he wrote the following letter:

"It wasn't your fault that I lifted my eyes to you, and hoped that you would lower yours to me. But now I know what a fool I have been. I forgive you for laughing at me, though at the time it made me mad like a dog, and I only wanted to hurt the woman I love. I won't trouble you any more, ever. Indeed I am too ashamed and humbled ever to wish to see you again. Only please don't hate me. If I had any good sides, please remember them. Some time you will hear of me again; but never again from me. I have work to do, but I have given my time to dreaming.

"When your father comes back will you ask him to let me know if he will see me? You thought he could do something for me—or hold out some hope. I would risk my life itself to be whole, even if I could never be very active. And science is so wonderful; and I know your father would like to help me if he could.

"If you don't think I am being punished for threatening you, and going crazy, you don't know anything about the unhappiest beast in this world. But it is terrible for a cripple when the one person he looks up to laughs at him. I have a thick skin; but that burnt through it like acid."

The messenger who carried the letter to Barbara brought him her answer:

"I will give your message to my father. You are quite wrong about the laughing. I didn't laugh at you or anything about you. I laughed because I was nervous and frightened. But it can't matter much one way or the other. I am sorry that you have been hurt twice by my family. But the second hurt is not our fault. And I do not see that there is anything to be done about it. As for the first, my father would end his days in peace if he could make you whole. I shall hope to hear nothing but good of you in the future."

The shame and remorse to which Blizzard pretended, Barbara actually felt. All her friendships with men had been pursued by disasters of some sort or other. But her most disastrous experiment in friendship had been with Blizzard. She had been bluntly told by truth-speaking persons that he was not a fit acquaintance for her. His own face had warned her. But she had persisted in meeting him without precautions, in treating him like an equal, in overcoming her natural and just repugnance to him, and in calling him her friend. It was humiliating for her to realize and acknowledge that she had made a fool of herself. It was worse to remember the look in his face, during those last awful moments in the studio. Even if the bust she had made of him was a great work of art, she had paid too high for the privilege of making it.



XXXIV

Dr. Ferris was delighted to learn that Barbara had left town. Her meetings with Blizzard had been horribly on his mind and conscience. He had dreaded some vague calamity—some intangible darkening of his darling's soul.

A few days in the country had worked wonders for her. Her skin had browned a little, and her cheeks were crimson. But dearer to the paternal heart than these evidences of good health was the fact that she seemed unusually glad to see him. She seemed to him to have lost a world of independence and self-reliance, to be inclined to accept his judgments without dispute. She seemed more womanly and more daughterly, more normal and more beautiful.

For a man with a heavy weight always upon his conscience, the excellent surgeon found himself wonderfully at peace with the world and its institutions. There was no doubt that the hand which he had come from grafting was going to live and be of some use to its new owner. His mail was heavy with approbation. And it seemed to him that the path which he had discovered had no ending.

"In a hundred years, Barbara," he said, "it will be possible to replace anything that the body has lost, or that has become diseased and useless or a menace—not the heart, perhaps, nor the brain—but anything else. What I have done clumsily others will do to perfection."

"What are the chances for Blizzard?"

"Even," said the surgeon. "They would be more favorable if he had not lost his legs so long ago. At the worst the experiment wouldn't kill him. He would merely have undergone a useless operation. At the best he would be able to walk, run perhaps, and look like a whole man. If anything is to be done for him, the time has come. He has only to tell me to go ahead."

"I think he'll do that," said Barbara. "But there's one thing I don't understand," and she smiled; "who is to supply the spare legs?"

"That's the least of all the difficulties," said her father, "now that ways of keeping tissues alive have been discovered and proved. In time there will be storages from which any part of the human body may be obtained on short notice and in perfect condition for grafting. Just now the idea is horrible to ignorant people, but the faith will spread. Only wait till we have made a few old people young—for that will come, too, with the new surgery."

"You will be glad," said Barbara, "to hear that I have severed friendly relations with Mr. Blizzard. He behaved in the end pretty much as you all feared he would."

And she told her father, briefly, and somewhat shamefacedly, all that had happened in the studio.

"He thought I was laughing at him," she said. "Of course I wasn't. And he came at me. Do you remember when poor old Rose went mad, and tried to get at us through the bars of the kennel? Blizzard looked like that—like a mad dog." She shuddered.

The surgeon's high spirits were dashed as with cold water.

"He ought not to be helped," said Barbara; "he ought to be shot, as Rose was."

But Dr. Ferris shook his head gravely. "If he is that sort of a man," he said, "who made him so? Who took the joy of life from him? Barbara, my dear, there is nothing that man could do that I couldn't forgive."

"And I think that your conscience is sick," said Barbara. "I used to think as you think. But if you had seen his face that day!... The one great mistake you have made has ruined not his life, but yours. If he had had the right stuff in him, calamity would not have broken him! It would have made him. Give him a new pair of legs, if you can; and forget about him, as I shall. When you first told me about him, I thought we owed him anything he chose to ask. At one time I thought that if he wished it, it would be right for me to marry him."

"Barbara!"

"Yes, I did—I thought it strongly. Shows what a fool a girl who's naturally foolish can make of herself! Why, father, what if he has suffered through your mistake? That mistake turned your thoughts to the new surgery—and for the one miserable man that you have hurt you will have given the wonder of hope to the whole of mankind."

She slid her hand under her father's arm.

"Let's potter 'round the gardens," she said, "and forget our troubles. It's bully to have you back. There's not much doing in the floral line. The summer sun in Westchester doesn't vary from year to year. But there are lots of green things that smell good, and the asters and dahlias are making the most extraordinary promises of what they are going to do by and by."

They passed out of the house and by marble steps into the first and most formal of their many gardens, and so down through the other gardens, terrace below terrace, to the lake.

The water was so still as to suggest a solid rather than a liquid; to the west shadowy mountains of cloud charged with thunder swelled toward the zenith. The long midsummer drought was coming to an end, and all birds and insects were silent, as if tired of complaining. Across the lake one maple, turned prematurely scarlet, brought out the soft greens of the woods with an astounding accent. Directly in front of this flaming tree, a snow-white heron stood motionless upon a gray rock.



To Barbara it seemed on that day that "Clovelly" was the loveliest place in all the world, and her father, who had fashioned it out of rough farm lands, one of the world's most charming artists. "Why paint with oils, when you can draw with trees and flowers and grass and water?" she asked herself.

"In the time it took me to do Blizzard's bust," she said, "I could have planted millions of flowers and seen them bloom."

"At least," said her father, "you can finish a bust, but a garden that is finished isn't a garden. What are you going to do with it?"

"The bust? Why, sometimes I think I'll just leave it in the studio, and let it survive or perish. Sometimes I want to take a hammer and smash it to pieces."

"It didn't come out as well as you hoped?"

"Of course not. Does anything ever? But it's the best that I can do. And I shall never do anything better."

"Nonsense."

"I shall never even try. I want to recover all the things I've thrown away, and put them back in my head and heart where they belong, and just live."

"Well," said her father, smiling, "if you feel that way, why that's a good way to feel. But I'm afraid art is stronger in you than you think. Just now you're tired and disillusionized. In a month you'll be making sketches for some monumental opus."

"If I do," said Barbara, "it will be executed here at Clovelly. I never want to leave Clovelly. I feel safe here, safe from myself and other people. I think," and she smiled whimsically, "that I should almost like to settle down and make you a good daughter."

"A good daughter," said the surgeon, "marries; and her father builds a beautiful house for her, just over the hill from his own—remember the little valley where we found all the fringed gentian one year?—and the shortest cut between the two houses is worn bare and packed hard by the feet of grandchildren. Good Lord, my dear, what's the good of art, what's the good of science? I would rather have watched you grow up than have made the Winged Victory, or discovered the circulation of the blood. Come now? Barbs, tell me, who's the young man?"

For the first time in her life she told him of the wild impulsiveness and the shocking brevity of her affections for various members of his sex; naming no names she explained to him with much self-abasement (and a little amusement) that she was no good, "A nice wife I'd make!" she concluded.

But her father only laughed. "The only abnormal thing about you," he said, "is that you tell the truth. The average girl shows men more attentions than men show her. I don't mean that she demonstrates her attentions; but that she feels them in her heart. To be absolutely the first in a woman's heart a man must catch her when she's about three months old."

"But a girl," said Barbara, "who thinks she's sure and then finds she isn't, hurts the people she's fondest of. In extreme eases she breaks hearts and spoils lives."



"Hearts," said her father, "that can be broken are very weak. Lives that can be spoiled by disappointment and injured pride aren't worth preserving. If you have nothing more serious on your conscience than having, in all good faith, encouraged a few young men, found that you were wrong, and sent them away with bees in their bonnets, I'm sure I envy you."

Barbara simply shook her head.

"When you do find the right man, Barbara, you'll make up to him with showers of blessings for whatever cold rains you've shed on others.... What is Wilmot doing with himself these days?"

"He went away," said Barbara, and she sat looking steadily across the lake, her chin on her hand, her eyes troubled.



XXXV

In many ways the life which Barbara led at Clovelly was calculated to rest her mind. She developed a passion for exercise, and when night came was too full of tired good health to read or talk. Since the estate was to be hers one day, she found the wish to know her way intimately about it, and since there were three thousand acres, for the most part thick forests spread over rocky hills, she could contemplate weeks of delightful explorations. To discover ponds, brooks, and caves that belong to other people has its delights, but to go daily up and down a lovely country discovering lovely things that belong to yourself is perhaps the most delightful way of passing time that has been vouchsafed to any one.

On these explorations Barbara's chosen companion was Bubbles. He was no longer a mere Buttons: her interest and belief in the child had passed beyond the wish to see him develop into a good servant. She wished to make something better of him—or if there is nothing better than a good servant, something more showy and ornamental.

He was sharp as a needle; and he was honest. He was not too old to be moulded by good influences, schools, and associations into a man with proper manners, and an upper-class command of the English language. He should go to one of the New England church schools, later to college, then he should choose a career for himself and be helped into harness. So she planned his future. In the meanwhile she wished to see the thin, spindly body catch up with the big, intelligent head. Although his muscles were tough and wiry he had a delicate look which troubled her, and a cough which to her inexperienced and anxious ears suggested a consumptive tendency.

Dr. Ferris laughed at this, but to satisfy her he gave the boy a thorough questioning and a thorough looking over. "Any of your family consumptives, Bubbles?"

"Don't think so, sir."

"Well, you're not. Heart and lungs are sound."

"Miss Barbara says she doesn't like my cough."

"Yes," said the surgeon, "it worries her quite a good deal. And I advise you to stop it."

"But my throat gets tickling, and—"

"Your throat gets tickling because you are an inveterate cigarette smoker. And that's the reason why you are undersized and under-nourished. How long have you smoked?"

"I don't remember when I didn't."

"Can't you stop?"

"I stopped once for two days, and then I took a pack of smokers that wasn't mine. That was about the only thing I ever stole."

"But if you gave me your word not to smoke any more till you're twenty-one, couldn't you keep that promise?"

"I could try," said Bubbles, evincing very little confidence,

"Will you try?" said the surgeon. "Hello, what's this?"

The boy in lifting his left arm had disclosed a dark-brown birthmark shaped like the new moon. All amusement had gone out of Dr. Ferris's eyes; and he had that look of tragic memories that so often put an end to his smiling and optimistic moods.

"Do you remember your father?"

"No, sir."

"Mother living?"

Bubbles hesitated. "She's in an asylum. She's crazy."

"What was your father's name?"

Bubbles shook his head.

The surgeon considered for a moment. "Well," he said, at length, and once more smiling, "put your clothes on, and then go to Miss Ferris and promise her that you won't smoke any more. What asylum did you say your mother was in?"

"Ottawan."

"Do you ever see her?"

"No, sir. She don't like to see me."

"What is her name, Bubbles?"

"Jenny Ward."

Dr. Ferris ordered a car, and in less than two hours he was talking with the superintendent of Ottawan about the patient, Jenny Ward.

"The boy," he was saying, "is a protege of my daughter's. She means to educate him, and we are naturally interested in his antecedents. I wonder if she has any lucid recollection of the father?"

"When she first came she seemed to have lucid moments. Even now she never makes trouble for any one, except that sometimes she wakes in the night screaming. She has been very pretty."

"H'm!" said Dr. Ferris. "You think she couldn't tell me anything about the boy's father?"

"I know she couldn't. When she was examined after being committed, it was found that her tongue had been cut out."

The woman, upon being visited, proved a meek, gentle, pathetic creature, eager to please. As the superintendent reported, she had been very pretty. She would have been pretty still, but for her utterly vacant look.

The doctor questioned her, but she made no effort, it seemed, even to understand the questions. Given a pencil and paper she seemed to take pleasure in making dots, dashes, and scrawls; but she made no mark that in any way represented a letter of the alphabet. Confronted with a printed page, she thrust it aside.

"Very likely she never could read or write," said the superintendent; "usually when you give 'em a pencil they make letters by an act of muscular memory."

In the corridor outside the woman's room, they encountered one of those nurses who are used in managing the violent insane. He was a huge fellow, with a dark, strong, and somewhat forbidding face. He nodded to the superintendent and passed. Dr. Ferris looked after him down the corridor, had a sudden thought, and communicated it to his host in a quick undertone.

"I say, Gyles! Look here a moment"

The huge nurse turned on his heel, and came towering back to them.

"Have you ever assisted in looking after the woman Jenny Ward?" and he pointed toward the door of her room.

"No, sir."

"Dr. Ferris wishes to try an experiment."

"Yes, sir."

"He wishes you to throw open the door of her room, and to enter quickly—upon your knees."

"On my knees?"

"Yes."

"All right, sir." The man shrugged his big shoulders, and, his face sullen and annoyed, knelt at the door of Jenny Ward's room, unlocked it, flung it open, and entered quickly.

Over his head the doctors saw an expression of fear, almost unearthly, come over the woman's face. And she filled her room and the corridor without with a hoarse and horrible screaming.

Instantly the big nurse rose to his feet, and came out of the room. His face was passionately angry. And he said:

"It's a shame to frighten her like that."

The superintendent's eyes fell before the glare in those of the employee, and he murmured something about "necessary experiment—had to be done."



XXXVI

"There's no room for doubt in my mind," said Dr. Ferris. "The coincidence of the birthmarks, most unusual in shape and texture, the poor woman's behavior at sight of a man who at first glance appeared to be without legs—"

"Yes," said Barbara, "but I go more on a certain expression that Bubbles sometimes has and that makes him look like his father. You see, I've done both their heads, and studied them closer than anybody else."

"Do you suppose the boy knows?"

She shook her head. "I think not. He's too—too decent. If he thought that Blizzard was his father, he wouldn't say the things that I have heard him say about him. He's the most loyal child."

"Do you suppose Blizzard knows?"

"Why, of course. A man could hardly have a son without knowing him—especially a man who lives with his ears to the ground and his mind in touch with everything in the city."

Dr. Ferris smiled a little. "Well," he said, "shall we tell Bubbles?"

"Why should we? I shouldn't like to be told out of a clear sky that I had such and such a father. It doesn't seem in the least necessary."

But before the day was out Barbara thought best to tell Bubbles. He came to her, with a slightly important air, which he did his best to conceal, and said that he wished to go to the city for a few days, on business.

"Sure the business isn't free untrammelled smoking?"

Bubbles was offended. "If I hadn't given you my word," he said, "you might think that. I told you when we came that I might have to go back any time on business. I got to go. Honest, Miss Barbara."

"Well, that settles it, Bubbles. But don't you think as long as I'm trying to give you some of the things you've missed, that you might take me a little more into your confidence?"

She maintained a discreet and serious countenance, although she wished very much to laugh.

The boy studied her face gravely with grave eyes. "The ABC of my business," he said presently, "is knowing who to trust. I know you won't blab, Miss Barbara, 'r else I wouldn't tell you. There's a society in New York City for putting down grafts and crimes. There's a rich man back of it. And there's more kinds o' people working for it than you'd guess in a year. There's even policemen workin' for it—"

"But it's their business to put down crime."

Bubbles shook his head sadly. "The chief business of the society is to put down police graft in crime," he said. "But there's heaps o' side businesses. Harry West, he's one of us. He's way high up. I'm way low down. But when I'm called to do what I can, I got to do it. There's one member younger'n me. And there's Fifth Avenue swells belongs, and waiters, and druggists, and bootblacks, and men in hardware stores, and barkeepers—"

"What sort of work do you have to do?"

"To go places and find out things."

"Why, then you're a detective, Bubbles."

A look of contempt swept into the child's face. "Detectives is in business," he said, "for what they can get out of it. We're in it because the house we live in is dirty and full of rats, and we want to make it clean."

The boy had raised his voice a little, and Barbara found herself thrilling to it.

"But, Bubbles," she objected, "you can't go to school and college and keep up this work at the same time."

"If I get education," said Bubbles, "it's so's to be fitter for the work when I come out. But I can't give the work up till the job I'm on is finished. It wouldn't be square."

"Can you tell me the job?"

"I'm one o' them that's helpin' to get the old un where he's wanted."

"What old one?"

"Blizzard."

Barbara was very much taken aback. "The man I made the bust of?"

"We can send him to the chair any time. But what's the use? He knows things that we got to know before we pass him up."

"But, Bubbles, how can you help?"

"Oh, I'm little. I can get into little places. They wouldn't want me if I weren't of use."

"But I don't like the idea of your running down Blizzard, Bubbles."

"Why not, Miss Barbara? There's no one in the city that's needed as much as him."

"Aside from that, Bubbles—I'm willing to grant that—there's a reason why I think you should have nothing to do with running him down."

"It's got to be an awful good one, Miss Barbara—not just good to you, and maybe to me, but to men higher up."

"I think it would be good enough for the very highest up, Bubbles. Will you take my word for it?"

"Yes, Miss Barbara. But they won't take my word for your word."

"No," she said, "of course not."

She considered for a few moments. Then she said: "Bubbles, I'm going to tell you my reason. I hope I'm not doing wrong. It's a serious thing for me to tell you and for you to know. There is very little doubt but that Blizzard is your father."

"Say that again, please," said Bubbles.

"Blizzard is probably your father."

Bubbles took the news very coolly. His eyes sparkled; but he made no exclamations of surprise or chagrin. Instead he said: "That accounts for it."

"Accounts for what?"

"Oncet he caught me in his house. He said the next time he'd skin me alive. If I hadn't been his son he'd a skun me that time. Do you get me, Miss Barbara? He's my father, sure. But—" Now chagrin, wonder, and perplexity were written in Bubbles's face. "Why," he said, "it makes everything different. He never done anything for me; but if he's my father—"

"You can't very well spy on him, can you, Bubbles? You've got to stand aside and leave all that to others."

"I got to see the Head, Miss Barbara. I got to ask him."

"Who is the head, Bubbles?"

"I'd tell you in a minute, Miss Barbara, only we're all swore to tell no one. But what he says goes with me. It's got to be that way, else we'd never get nowhere."



XXXVII

Mr. Abe Lichtenstein looked up from a mass of writing. "So," he smiled, "you got your few days off?"

"Mr. Lichtenstein," said Bubbles, his eyes big, his voice trembling, "an awful thing has happened."

"You can tell me nothing bad but I can tell you something worse. What has happened?"

"The old un is my father!"

"Yes," said Lichtenstein, "I have thought of that. You are sure?"

"I'm sure enough not to want to have anything more to do with huntin' him. But that's for you to say. I do what you say."

"I won't ask you to go on," said Lichtenstein; "but you're still with us, Bubbles? You're still for cleaning up the dirty house and making it fit for human beings to live in?"

"Yes, sir."

"As far as your father's concerned you'll be neutral."

"Meaning I won't do nothing against him, nor for him?"

The red-headed Jew nodded. "You won't do like Rose?"

"Rose?"

Lichtenstein's face became very cold and grim. "She's gone over to him body and soul. Bubbles, and heart and mind. For weeks she's fooled us with nonsense—stuff they've made up together. Worse, she's broken every oath she ever swore. Our strength was secrecy. Well, your father knows the name of every agent in our society. Oh, he's got it all out of her! Everything!"

"Does he know that you are—"

"Yes, confound him, he does. And my life is about as safe in this city as that of the average cat in the Italian quarter. My life isn't the important thing. It's what I've got in my head—cold facts. See all this stuff? That's what's in my head going down on paper for the first time. It's to guide the man that takes my place—to help him over some of the hard places—three hundred sheets of it already, and only a week since I began."

"Rose!" exclaimed Bubbles.

"There was none better—none smarter—till she fell in love—fell in love!"

"Does he know I'm one of us, Mr. Lichtenstein?"

"Why, yes. I suppose she'll have given even the children away." Mr. Lichtenstein's eye roamed over the suite of rich rooms with their elaborate gambling-paraphernalia. "Not much doing," he smiled, "since Rose went over. The tip's out that I'm wanted. Nobody drops in for a quiet game. Bubbles, you tell people when you're a man and I'm gone, that I wasn't only a gambler. Tell 'em I took money from people who had plenty but wouldn't take the trouble to do right with it, and tell 'em I used that money to do right—to help make dirty things clean."

He turned and regarded the face of the black marble clock on the mantel-piece. As he looked the face of the clock was violently shattered, and so, but on a lower level, was a pane of glass in the window immediately opposite.

Abe Lichtenstein fell face down upon his unfinished manuscript.



XXXVIII

Then he began to speak in a quiet voice. "Never touched me. Bubbles. Pull that cord at the right of the window. That will close the curtains. Careful not to show yourself. The man that fired that shot thinks he got me. I fell over to make him think so and to keep him from shooting again. Now then"—the curtain had been drawn over the window with the broken pane—"let's see what sort of a gun our friend uses, and then perhaps we can spot our friend. Did you hear the shot?"

"No, sir. There was a noise just when the clock broke like when a steel girder falls on the sidewalk."

"That noise was just before the clock broke, Bubbles. And it was loud enough to drown the noise of our friend's gun. Clever work, though, to have to pull the trigger at a given moment, and to make such a close shot. Probably had his gun screwed in a vise."

Meanwhile Lichtenstein had extracted from the ruined clock a .45-calibre bullet of nickel steel. A glance at the grooves made by the rifling of the barrel from which it had been expelled caused him to raise his colorless eyebrows and smile cynically.

"New government automatic, Bubbles," he said, "and the funny part of it is they've only been issued to officers so far, and the factory hasn't put 'em on sale yet."

"Must have been stole from an officer, then," said Bubbles.

"You steal her jewels from an actress," said Lichtenstein, "her mite from the widow, its romances from the people, but you don't steal his side arms from an American army officer. No. Somebody in the factory has let the weapon that fired this slip out. It doesn't matter—it's just a little link in the long chain."

He seated himself calmly at the table and set down in black and white the fact that he had been very nearly murdered by a bullet fired from the new army pistol. Then he began to gather up the sheets of his manuscript.

"Now I wonder," he said, "where I can go to finish this document? I don't want them to 'get' me until I've paved the way for the man that comes after me. Now then—the secret passage isn't only for the wicked."

Kneeling on the clean hearth, Mr. Lichtenstein caused the ornamental cast-iron back of the fireplace to swing outward upon a hinge. Reaching a long arm into the disclosed opening, he unfastened and pushed ajar the iron back of a fireplace in the next house.

Bubbles, crawling through first, found himself in a somewhat overdressed pink and blue bedroom. The lace curtains were too elaborate. The room was luxurious and vulgar. Among the photographs on the centre-table reposed a champagne-bottle, three parts empty, and two glasses, in which a number of flies were heavily crawling.

Lichtenstein, having carefully replaced the fire-backs, rose smiling, and clapped a hand upon Bubbles's shoulder.

"Now then, Bubbles," he said, "push that bell-button by the door four times, and we'll see what Mrs. Popple can do to get us out of this. Never met Mrs. Popple? She's one of us, and at heart a good one."

The lady in question came swiftly in answer to the four rings. At first sight she passed for a woman of hard and forbidding aspect; filmy laces and a clinging kimona of rose-pink silk neither softened nor made feminine the alabaster-colored face with its thin, straight mouth, heavy hairy eyebrows, and clean-cut Greek nose. Only her costume and her hair, indescribably fine, and indescribably yellow, betrayed that there were follies in her nature. But the moment she spoke you liked her. She had a slow, deep, beautiful voice, and the slowness of her speech was offset by the fewness of her words.

"What's wrong, Abe?"

Lichtenstein explained briefly, and added: "Now how are we to get out of this without being spotted and followed?"

"Easy," said Mrs. Popple. She went to a vast wardrobe painted white, and pulled the creaking doors wide open. "Wedge the man into one dress," she said, "pad the boy into another. Send 'em off in a taxi. Now, boy. Is this Bubbles? Pleased to meet you. I'm old enough to be your grandmother."

The words were a command, and the boy, much embarrassed, began to take off his coat.

"Get busy, Abe. Can take your own things along in a suit-case. I don't look, see? I'm looking out duds for you. What's that? Razor? Find everything in medicine-closet over wash-basin in bath-room."

Lichtenstein disappeared, and gave forth presently the rasping sounds of a man shaving in a hurry. And in the meanwhile, always swift and sure, Mrs. Popple initiated Bubbles into the ABC's of female attire.

"No trouble about a straight front for you," she chuckled, and gave a sudden strong tug at the laces of Bubbles's corsets. He gasped, and the tears came to his eyes.

"Mind to take little steps," she said, "and don't swing your arms." She clasped a blond wig upon his head, and drew back to see the effect.

"Abe," she called, "she's a pippin!"

A moment later she frowned, almost savagely, laid her finger on her lips, knelt at the fireplace, thrust her head far in and listened intently.

Lichtenstein, one side of his face in lather, appeared at the bath-room door. His eyes on the crouching figure of Mrs. Popple, he continued calmly and methodically to shave himself.

After an interval the woman rose, and shook her head.

"Can't make out who's in there," she whispered. "Have Lizzie watch front window see who goes out."

Lichtenstein nodded, washed the tag ends of lather from his face, and proceeded in dead silence to dress himself as a lady of somewhat doubtful age, looks, and position. But Bubbles would have made a very pretty girl, if Mrs. Popple had not insisted on powdering his face till it was as white as that of a clown.

"Won't do to be conspicuous," she explained.

Lichtenstein packed the things which he and Bubbles had taken off into a suit-case marked "A.P." (Amelia Popple), and led the way downstairs. A little later a taxicab drew up at the curb, and the two disguised secret-service agents sauntered down the high steps of Mrs. Popple's brownstone house, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and got in.

"Where to?" said the driver, with rather a bold leer. The average lady who descended or ascended Mrs. Popple's steps; was not considered respectable even by taxi-drivers.

It had been agreed that Bubbles, having of the two the more feminine adaptabilities of voice, should do the talking.

"Grand Central," he said.



XXXIX

Barbara was reading "Smoke" and did not wish to be interrupted by a "young person" (in the footman's words) who refused to give her name. Nevertheless she was weakly good-natured in such matters, and closing her book said: "Very well—in here, John."

A moment later the young person was shown into the living-room. Barbara was still more annoyed, for young faces covered with powder were odious to her. But suddenly the young person's mouth curled into a captivating grin, and the young person trotted forward in a very un-young-personish way, and cried triumphantly:

"It's me—Bubbles."

And Bubbles followed Barbara's gratifying exclamations of surprise and inquiry with a syncopated outburst of explanation, finishing with: "And Mr. Lichtenstein said I was to throw us on your mercy, and ask if he could stay to finish his writing, and he's stepped into some bushes off the driveway to put on his own clothes. And please, Miss Barbara, he's just the finest and bravest ever, and don't care what happens to him, only he says they're bound to get him now everything's found out, and he's just got to finish writing down what he carries in his head."

"Of course," said Barbara, "we'll have to tell my father; but all will be well. Mr. Lichtenstein shall stay. Bring him to me when he's finished changing, and then you'd best change, and if you don't want to have a sore face wash all that nasty stuff off it."

Lichtenstein had already changed, and was coming up the driveway carrying a suit-case. Bubbles brought him at once, and with great pride, to Barbara. Mr. Lichtenstein had never seen her before. In his bow there was a trace of Oriental elaboration. And his curiously meagreish, pug-nosed sandy face beamed with pleasure and admiration.

"I thought I knew my New York, Miss Ferris," he said, "but it seems I was mistaken."

Since the compliment was obviously sincere, Barbara took pleasure in it, and the pleasure showed in her charming face. "And Bubbles says," said she, "that you are the 'finest ever.' I'm glad if staying here is going to help the cause. You can be as private as you like—" But a sudden change had come over Lichtenstein's face, the smile had vanished, the eyes grown sharp, even stern. "What is your maid's name?" he asked abruptly.

"My maid? Why, what about her?"

"She passed just now—by that door. I saw her in the mirror at the end of the room. What's her name?"

"Marion—" Barbara hesitated.

"O'Brien?"

"Yes, O'Brien."



"I thought so. She's in Blizzard's pay. If she has recognized me—Shut the door into the hall, Bubbles."

The door being shut, Lichtenstein crossed the room and stood near it, his hand on the knob. For nearly a minute he neither moved nor changed expression. Then a smile flickered about his mouth, and, sure of his effect, with a sharp gesture he flung the door wide open, and discovered Miss Marion O'Brien kneeling in the opening. He caught her by the wrist, drew her to her feet, and into the room.

"Marion!" exclaimed Miss Ferris.



XL

There was a long silence during which Miss O'Brien tried to look defiant, and succeeded only in shedding a few tears. Barbara had always liked the girl, and now felt profoundly sorry for her. Liechtenstein, too, seemed sorry and at a loss for words. The position was difficult. The O'Brien's eavesdropping warranted her discharge, and nothing more. She would go straight to Blizzard and disclose Lichtenstein's whereabouts. But this in itself was merely an annoyance, as in the meanwhile the secret service head could go elsewhere. There was nothing for it but to discharge her and let her go. So Lichtenstein said presently, and then wrote with a pencil on a card. This card he handed to the maid.

"Give that to your employer," he said. On the card was written: "If anything happens to me you will be indicted for the Kaparoff business, and there is enough evidence in a safe place to make you pay the penalty. Lichtenstein."

"And now, Miss Ferris," he said, "it will be as well to let this girl first telephone to her master to say that I am here, and second to pack her trunks and go."

Barbara smiled, but not unkindly, at Marion, and nodded her brightly colored head. "I think that will be best, Marion."

The maid turned without a word and started for the hall-door, but was brought to a trembling stop by sudden words from Bubbles.

"Miss Barbara," said he, "ask her where your diamond bow-knot went!"

"Oh," exclaimed Lichtenstein, "an excuse for keeping an eye on her, perhaps. That was what we needed. How about this bow-knot, Marion?"

The guilt in the girl's face must have been obvious to the dullest eye.

"Oh," said Barbara, "is it good enough? She'd communicate with him somehow. This isn't the Middle Ages. Marion, if by any chance any of my things have gotten mixed with yours, please leave them on my dressing-table."

Marion, very red in the face, lurched out of the room.

"I can't very well give her a character," said Barbara.

Lichtenstein laughed. "Plenty of worse girls," he said, "receive excellent characters daily. And now I suppose I ought to put distance between this house and myself."