Bucking the Tiger/Chapter 5

TROIKE me pink fer an 'anky-panky Heytalian organ-grinder if I goes and meddles with this 'ere ruddy swine of a jackanapes wot's got more pants than 'orse-sense!' briefly and casually remarked Lord Graham in the general direction of his wife and the sizzling coffee-urn.

Lady Graham, sweet-faced, corpulent, and white-haired looked up with a smile.

"What is it, dear?"

Her husband did not appear to have heard her.

"Aw! fer a bloomin' dustbin!" he said with a veritable shriek of agony.

This time even Stubbins, the immaculate, funereal butler, who stood behind his lordship's chair, came out of his professional calm.

"I beg your pardon, m'ludd, did you ask for a—a—eh—a dustbin?'

"Right-oh," came the uncompromising answer.

"Thank you, m'ludd," said the butler, and added, after a discreet pause, in a very still voice, "Pardon me, m'ludd, but may I ask what for?"

Lord Graham turned in his chair and threw a withering glance at the faithful Stubbins.

"To bury my 'ead in, yer plurry fool!" Then, with another shriek of rage: "Tike that ugly mug of yours out of this ere room. Go on. Sling yer 'ooks!"

"Thank you, mludd." Stubbins bowed and withdrew.

Lady Graham had been quietly buttering the goldenest, fattest muffin that ever came out of an English kitchen.

"What's the matter, dear?" she asked again smilingly.

Her husband slammed a pudgy, dimpled, babyish hand on an open cablegram which was resting agaiit the sugar basin.

"Did you arsk wot's the matter, Syrah? Why, this 'ere bloomin' tuppenc-'ypenny, muddlin, rotten—" Words failed him for a moment. Then he added, fervently, incontinently: "Aw Lord, stop the bus!"

Lord Graham jumped up from his chair and walked up and down the length of the cheerful, well-furnished breakfast room, which overlooked the Sussex Downs.

His wife watched him, a frozen little smile on her face. But she did not ask him again. He would tell her in his own good time, she knew.

For nearly fifty years she had been his wife and his only sweetheart, his friend and faithful ally. She had been his wife in the old days when he kept a fried-fish shop on the barbarous confines of Pimlico; later on, when he expanded his fried-fish enterprise from shop to shop until it covered all of Pimlico and half of Soho; when he became the fried-fish monopolist of the Metropolis, with branches all over England and Wales; when he turned his business into Graham & Co., Limited, he himself being both the "Co." and the "Limited"; and, finally, when a judicious contribution of half a million pounds sterling to the Conservative party fund precipitated him, fried-fish and cockney accent and all, into the House of Lords as Lord Graham of Penville.

She had been the sharer of his deep joy when, late in life, she had given birth to a son and heir; and of his horrible, inarticulate sorrow when the same son and heir had been, cashiered from the army and the company of decent men for conduct "unbecoming an officer and a gentleman."

Together with her husband, helpless, hopeless, she had seen their son go down the ladder, rung by rung.

And now the boy was over there in America, in Spokane, as far as she knew. For they only heard from him when he got into a specially disgraceful scrape and had to have money.

Six months back Lord Graham had sworn that he would not send his son another shilling as long as he lived. She knew that her husband stuck to his decision once he had made up his obstinate old mind. And now she was horribly afraid of what the cable might contain. For it was doubtless from Ralph.

So she watched her husband with a smile on her face. But it was a make-believe smile, and her old hands were trembling.

Finally she could no longer stand the suspense.

"Is it?" she asked brokenly.

"No, Syrah, old dear. This time it ain't that Johnnie boy of ours. It's that friend of 'is, that 'ere young Willyum 'Illyer."

"Sir Charles's son?"

"Right-oh."

And he began to explain.

"You see, Syrah, Sir Charles 'as done just the same as me. 'E stopped sendin' 'im remittances. The old codger told me so 'imself. And now that son of 'is 'as gone and married a bloomin' Indian, one of them 'ere red femyles, all pynt and feathers and—and—" he wet rapidly over his literary recollections, "and scalp locks, and bleedin' tommyhawks and—and all that," he finished lamely.

"But what did he cable you for?" his wife demanded.

"'E didn't. Ralph did."

"Ralph? Our son?"

"Yuss. 'E cybles me that Willyum's comin' 'ome to England. Gawd knows 'ow 'e's raised the money for the trip, but comin' 'ome 'e is—Indian wife and pynt and tommyhawk all complete—and 'e's goin' to disgrayce and shyme 'is father. Sir Charles, just out of rotten cussedness—aw Lord!"

"But what does Ralph want you to do about it? Break the news to Sir Charles?"

"Not at all! On the contrary! Ralph sez 'e 'ad a talk with this 'ere Indian wife of Willyum's, and for a thousand dollars she's willin' to sling 'er bloomin' 'ooks; to run away from 'er 'usband. Ralph sez to cyble the money to 'im at once."

Lady Graham smiled.

"You must do it, dear. At once."

"But I 'ave sworn as I wouldn't send any more money to that precious son of ours."

"This is different, dear. This isn't for Ralph. It's really for Sir Charles. He is a good friend of yours. He has been so nice to us, introducing us to the country gentry and all that."

"Right-oh, old gel. Right as rain." He kissed his wife. "I'm off to London in 'arf a jiff and cyble this 'ere money."

Twenty minutes later he was on the station platform, waiting for the Brighton and South Coast Express. And the last man to enter his compartment, red, hurried, perspiring was Sir Charles Hillyer, William's father.

Sir Charles was a proud and wealthy man of a family which had been identified with Sussex for over a thousand years.

"My dear sir," he used to say, "the Hillyers ate Sussex mutton and drank Sussex ale long before the Conqueror stuck his ugly Norman nose across the Channel."

His motto was "High Church, High Toryism and Old Port forever"; and he hated Radicals, Dissenters, the London County Council, and self-made men. But his most venomous hatred was directed against the House of Lords, which he called "that infernal breeding-place of bloated, mediocre parvenus, that dumping-ground of ennobled wholesale butchers, brewers, carterers, and licensed victuallers." But, since he made a point of not living up to his ferocious Tory principles, he had somehow taken a great liking to the cockney peer, Lord Graham of Penville, who had bought the estate next to his.

"Hullo, Graham!"

"Hullo, Charles!"

The greetings were friendly and informal enough. Yet Lord Graham was embarrassed as he looked at his vis-à-vis and thought of his Wild-West daughter-in-law; and a shrewd observer would have noticed that Sir Charles was just as embarrassed. But, between cursing the Liberals and deciding that Free Trade was ruining England, the two gentlemen managed to keep up a friendly flow of conversation which lasted them until the express drew into the Waterloo Station.

There were a few hurried words of farewell. Then Lord Graham took a taxicab and so did Sir Charles; and both machines whirred off in the direction of the city.

Half an hour later, Lord Graham was at the Smith and Union Bank arranging a cable transfer of one thousand dollars to his son in Spokane, while Sir Charles was at the Lloyd and Globe, where he drew his check for eleven hundred dollars to be wired to his son. For he, too, had received a cablegram this morning from his son, practically identical with the one over which Lord Graham had fumed so at breakfast.

Only in Sir Charles's message it appeared that it was the Honorable Ralph who had taken a squaw wife to his bosom; and William, being a little more far-sighted than his friend, had cabled that it would cost eleven hundred dollars, and not a thousand, to buy off the squaw.

Thus, twenty-four hours later, Hillyer, Junior, and Graham, Junior, were silently shaking hands outside of the Spokane branch of the Bank of Montreal, where Fred Cummins, the manager, had just paid eleven hundred dollars to the former and a thousand dollars to the latter.

They stepped around at once to the Old National Bank and paid seven hundred dollars each into the account which had been opened for the contributions of the members of the syndicate. Hillyer was for a speedy and eminently festive investment of the remaining seven hundred dollars.

"I say, old top," he said, "let's buy clothes and things … let's have a gin-and-bitters and a few cocktails; then a bit of food, what? Then—"

But Graham, true though dissolute son of the fried-fish monopolist, pronounced a stern veto.

"No, by Jupiter. We've seven hundred dollars left, and we're going to save it. One of the other chaps might fall down on his payment, you know and then we can buy him out"

"No danger of Mac welshing, what?"

Graham laughed.

"Not he, the blooming fool! Come on, let's go for a car ride. The fresh air will do us good."

So they boarded the next car and were off toward Cœur d'Alene Lake.

Early that morning, Count Jean de Salle La Terriere could have been seen leaning over the railing of the bridge which spans the Spokane Falls. He was letting his thoughts take possession of him, and the rhythmic gurgle of the falls seemed like a modulator of the visions of his life that floated through his mind.

They were black thoughts, blacker visions, and deep in his heart he envied Macdonald who had drawn the ace two nights ago at Eslick's. He envied him, nom d'un chien, he, a gentleman of the Faubourg St. Grermain, the descendant of men who had been Peers of France, and Chevaliers of the Saint Esprit.

The count felt dejected. His soul was both lumpy and leaky; and as he looked down at the white, puffy froth of the falls, as he listened to the slow, lapping sound of the waves farther down in the whirlpool, as he saw the red wrack of the rocks and heard the sucking of the green, turbulent water, he felt like jumping down from the bridge and ending it all. His heart was like a weary sea-bird, far out on the ocean, when the night is down and no ship near on which to flap down and rest.

He had started bright and early on the day before to earn the seven hundred dollars.

He had begun by taking the last one of his heirlooms to Ostrowski, the pawnbroker. It was an exquisite, gold-framed miniature on ivory of a saucy belle of the First Empire, of his own great-grandmother.

But Ostrowski had shaken his head.

"Oy yoi, yoi! Vot vill I do mit der bicture of a dead Frenchvoman? It ain't saleable and it ain't moral, Frenchvomen ain't. Nehbich! Was für'ne Meschuggass" he had exclaimed. "I tell you vot I vill do. I gif you dree dollars shbot cash for der frame, and I svear to you by der Gott of Abraham and Jacob dat even den I am cheating my children's children!" And he had wiped an imaginary tear from his face at the distressing thought.

The count had taken the three dollars. He had collected another three from the kindly French couple who managed the wine cellar of the Hotel Spokane.

Of course, there were the French priests of Gronzaga College, the Jesuit High-School on the other side of the railway tracks. They would give him ten, perhaps twenty dollars, out of pity, and because of his great name. But he decided he would not go there. No!

And he had only five more days to earn the seven hundred dollars in. So he thought; and suddenly an idea came to him. He knew where to go for information. For, like all free-thinkers, he was a great believer in the written word.

He crossed the bridge, turned up First Avenue, and walked up the steps of the Carnegie Library. He stepped to the information desk.

"Madame—" he said timidly, politely.

Miss Hattie Reeves, capable, kind-hearted, used to the strange riff-raff from all the world which drifts to the Northwest, to the broken gentlemen who dream away the greyness of an occasional hour by poring over books oddly in contrast with their ragged clothing, asked if she could be of service to him.

The count explained his wishes, in his soft, exquisite English, and a few minutes later he was tucked away in a corner of the capacious library, with half a dozen books in front of him. There was a complete history of Jesse James and one of Moseley's Guerillas. There was a volume which spoke about the grisly deeds of Travers, the bad man par excellence of the Inland Empire, and similar tomes dealing with the blood-curdling specialties of Soapy-Smith, Swiftwater Bill, Three-Fingered Deffenbaugh, and other such heroes of the highway.

The count read, making copious notes, returning the books to the librarian, and bowed himself out of the library. Then he walked down the street, purchased a revolver and a black neckerchief at Ben Breslauer's Second-Hand Emporium, and invested the rest of his six dollars in a substantial meal at the Club Café, carefully studying between bites the notes which he had made at the library.

He left the town, walking in an easterly direction. He swung along steadily. It was late when he reached the place on which he had decided. The sun had gone down, and the clouds were like films of fire; and, as he gazed at them he felt that he was moved by a spirit greater than mere sordid love of treasure. For even thus had his ruffianly ancestors descended from their rocky fastnesses to levy toll from merchant and monk.

He fastened the black neckerchief across his face and got his gun in readiness. A minute later he heard the faint whirring of the electric car. A few breathless seconds … and he saw the huge, white-glaring head-lights which brought the lonely landscape into sharp relief.

He hailed the car with loud voice, and it stopped. The count was quick and strong despite his years; and it took him but a few seconds to swing himself aboard the platform, to frighten the motorman and the conductor into obedience, and to march them into the car, ahead of him at the point of the gun.

He ordered the motorman to take off his cap as a sort of collection box for the passengers.

"Put 'em up, and keep 'em up, gents," he said in as close an imitation of the approved highway diction as he could master. "Shell out, and be darned quick about it!"

Three passengers were in the car. The first was a fat banker whom he knew by sight as the president of the Farmers and Mechanics' National and whom he had often watched through the windows of Davenport's restaurant, eating his fill and being otherwise objectionable.

"Frisk the gent," the count ordered the conductor.

The latter obeyed, and took a well-filled, hearty pocketbook from the banker's inside pocket, which he dropped into the cap.

But when the count got a good look at the other two passengers, his iron will failed him and his revolver wavered the least little hit.

For they were Graham and Hillyer, his fellow down-and-outers, his fellow members of the suicide syndicate.

They had their hands up. Both looked goggle-eyed, unhappy. Scared to death, the count decided; and he was about to pass them over. Heavens, he thought, they were as broke as he himself. But on second consideration he said to himself that, so as to avoid all suspicion and to leave behind him as few clews as possible, he had better carry his bluff through.

But he nearly fainted, when, acting on his orders, the conductor tapped their pockets and relieved Graham of a fat roll of yellow-backs.

He swept the contents of the cap into his pocket, backed out of the car, dropped from the back platform, and ordered the motorman to go on.

"Travel, pard, and keep on a travellin'," he said, again quoting from the history of Jesse James.

The motorman obeyed the order implicitly, while the count plunged into the woods. He reached the river, threw gun and neckerchief into the turbulent waters, and returned to town in a round-about way.

He sat down on a bench in Manitou Park, and, striking match after match, he counted his ill-gotten gains.

He found that the roll taken from Graham contained seven hundred dollars even, while the banker's added up to the tune of over two thousand.

A happy, childlike smile spread over the face of the count.

"Saint Denis and fifteen million pale-blue rabbits!" he exclaimed. "But this is the Wealth of Ophir! The Purse of Fortunatus! The Treasure of the Queen of Sheba! Ah, by the fifty-five little curly-tailed guineapigs!"

He put the seven hundred dollars in his hip pocket … just the sum he needed as his contribution for Macdonald, he said to himself with a chuckle. The other roll he buried in his inside pocket. He would see by-and-by what to do with it. The first thing, of course, would be to redeem the little miniature which he had sold, and then—oh, well, he would see.

And, happy and whistling a gay and decidedly mundane French song, he left the park and turned into Pacific Avenue.

He was about to turn into Sprague Street, on his way to Eslick's when a crowd on the corner attracted his attention. Many men had gathered there, mostly miners and lumberjacks from the near-by country come into town for a spree, and they were surrounding somebody who was evidently haranguing them. He could hear a stray word now and then, tried to push his way through the crowd to take a look at the preacher, but could not break through.

Some Salvation Army man, he decided with a shrug of the shoulders and a pitying smile for all such uniformed Anglo-Saxon sentimentalities. He was about to turn away when a word from the unseen preacher riveted his attention.

He listened.

"I don't believe in dishonesty, gents," came the voice from the thick of the crowd. "Yer can call me a damned sheep-herdin' son of a coyote if I don't believe in wot the Good Book calls the Golden Rule … since I've reformed, leastways."

"Say, pard, when did yer reform?" came a ribald, alcoholic query.

But the orator paid no attention. He continued in a tremendous basso.

"No, gents, there ain't a wickeder sin than stealin'—unless it be sheep-herdin'. Say, back home in Wyoming I oncet saw a Chink lynched for stealing a pair o' pants, and darned rotten pants they were, too, not worth two bits; and oncet I saw 'em string up a couple of greaser cattle-rustlers wot had swiped some of old man Gibbons' yearlings; damned hard punishment, sez you! And damned square justice, sez I! It ain't the pants, nor it ain't the little calves! It's the all-fired principle of the thing, gents! For there ain't no greater crime than stealin'—always exceptin' sheep-herdin'—and there ain't no excuse for it at all."

The count blushed furiously. Perspirations [sic] studded his brow. Good Lord, he had stolen money an hour ago. He had held up an electric car. He had—

But he had to have money. He had to! What did that snivelling, sentimental Salvation Army man understand of the tribulations of a man like himself? Again he turned to go. But more people had gathered in back of him, and he found it impossible to break out of the circle of listeners. He listened in spite of himself.

"And who's responsible for stealin'?" the voice continued. "Let me tell yer! It's them saloons, gents, it's them whiskey-sellin' dens of—of—iniquerty and shame, believe me. It's them gin-sinks wot's rottin' the guts out of our manhood and the bread out of our children's innercent mouths! I'm for perhibition, gents, first, last, and all the time!"

There was derisive laughter. But the unseen orator continued unruffled.

"Come on up, gents, and do a good deed! I'm collectin' for this here anti-booze campaign, for I sez that lips wot have touched licker—be it whiskey, gin, or even plain, ordinary beer—shall never touch mine!"

"Say, who the hell wants ter touch yer lips anyways?" came a challenging roar.

But the preacher paid no attention to it. The count, somehow or other, felt a strange, softening sympathy with this rough-voiced enthusiast creep over him. He edged up closer, to see, but could not. Directly in front of him a huge French-Canadian timber-cruiser was standing, barring the view.

"Step up, gents," continued the orator. "Contribute yer little mite toward this here fund! I ain't asking yer to ante up yer hard-earned money. But if yer have a few simoleons kickin' round sorter loose wot hasn't been earned exactly honest; if yer have a few ducats wot you've won at poker or slush or pitch or one of them games of iniquerty, then I asks yer to dig 'em up from yer pants and to put 'em into this here hat. Remember that stealin' is a stinkin', rotten sin, and there ain't no blessings of no sort wotsoever on money wot's tainted. So, if yer have any of this here tainted money about yer, drop it in the hat!"

There was a roar of laughter. Then once more the orator's voice boomed out.

"Come on and pay up! Don't rob the widows and orphans!"

A deep, raucous sob came from the throat of the count. But this rough man was right, he said. It was not a good deed to rob the widows and orphans. And perhaps the two-thousand-and-odd dollars he had taken from this fat pig of a banker belonged to some poor woman!

But he couldn't touch such money; neither could he go to the banker and confess.

Yet, he must make some sort of restitution!

He groped in his inside pocket, encountered the banker's roll and threw it over the heads of the crowd in the direction of the orator.

"Here, monsieur," he shouted. "A small contribution. Use it for the widows and the little orphans!" And he broke away from the crowd, penitent tears coursing down his cheeks.

A few minutes later, the orator—it was Andy Walsh—gazed at the roll which the unseen stranger had thrown him from the crowd.

"Two thousand one hundred dollars!" he said with a beatific smile. "Seven hundred bones for Mac's jack-pot, and still fourteen hundred perfectly good bones left for little Andy. Gee whizz!"