Money to Burn/Chapter 1



Y night, the most silent spots in all the five boroughs of Greater New York are those places which are most crowded by day. When evening has fallen, the money market's gold-crammed cañons, lately echoing to the hoarse cries of the greedy, are deserted by all except watchmen in ambush, sedulously concealed. The warehouse district that, since morning, has resounded with the clamor of drays and the shouts of drivers, is changed to paths of druids' graveyards whose tombs are towers. The outstretched water front, from Audubon Park on the Hudson, around the Battery, and up through the East River and the Harlem to McComb's Dam Bridge—those suntime scenes of an immense activity broadcast to the world's remotest corners—become, with darkness, leagues of desert—just so much solemn stillness and so many mute miles; nor is there any rod throughout that lonely course more lonely than the streets that bound Atlantic Basin on the Brooklyn side and look across Buttermilk Channel—now a channel of ink—to Fort Columbus and Castle William beyond it on what was once the Governor's Isle.

Few lights there, yet plenty of shadows. Scarce anybody visible, yet the sense of many lives skulking near by, which would add to civilization's security by remaining invisible and torpid forever.

When young Stone turned out of Conover Street, he seemed on the edge of a city killed by the explosion of some gigantic gas shell. After he had walked a hundred yards, he began to feel that stealthy beasts were creeping in to feed upon the dead.

“Where you goin'?”

He came up short before a deep doorway from the comparative security of which two policemen peered out at him. He could distinguish their caps and nothing more; he understood that the law's officers are safer in pairs when they keep their nocturnal vigils in such quarters.

“I'm out for a walk,” said Dan.

It was a natural excursion for him. He worked hard all day over his books at the medical school, or over such public-ward patients as he was permitted to attend in the hospital; by evening he wanted fresh air, and this night he had sought it at the waterside. He had to study so intently that there was small opportunity for the cultivation of friendship, and so he walked alone. He liked the smell of tar and the neighborhood of ships as only an inlander can, and so—though this particular spot was new to him—he often explored the wharves. Nevertheless, as he gave those policemen his entirely veracious explanation, he realized that it could not sound entirely convincing to its auditors.

It wasn't.

“Let's have a look at you.”

A flash lamp shot its rays from the policeman's fist to the wanderer's face.

The face of an enthusiast. Blue eyes that smiled, but that, even when smiling, could hint of zealous faiths and determined defense of them. A mouth that smiled also and smiled like the eyes. Fresh complexion—frank expression—light hair that fought its way toward freedom under a soft hat. Impossible to suspect such a chap of evil intent here, yet equally impossible to consider such a chap safe in such a district.

“Well, this here's no place for a quiet stroll,” said the policeman.

“The quiet's desavin', me boy,” his companion added.

“I can take care of myself,” said Stone.

The second policeman grunted. “The East River's full o' lads that thought the same. Run along uptown wid yez, or somebody'll be goin' fishin' for yez in the mornin'.”

Dan made some pretense at obedience, but he soon turned back again and resumed his walk by the water. It was full of motionless ships, their masts and funnels dimly visible—ships that had come in yesterday with cargoes of furs and laces, of sugar and coffee, spices and cocoa from distant ports, ships that would sail to distant ports to-morrow with American chemicals and copper, medicines and machinery, coal and oil and hardware.

For the next fifteen minutes he met nobody. Then, up a narrow street to his left, a door opened and closed again. There had been a faint glow and a howl. A whining dog limped toward Stone and, with that canine instinct which recognizes dog lovers at the first encounter, nestled against his already pausing feet.

Dan bent to stroke the cur. It whimpered.

“Hurt?” asked Stone.

He felt the animal. One of its forelegs was broken.

There was a corner lamp some distance forward. He lifted the dog and bore it thither. A brutal kick had probably done the damage. Dan read that in the meek eyes turned up to his. He found a bit of wood, relic of some box dropped and broken by a van, and whittling the stick and ripping his handkerchief, he improvised a splint.

The dog held quiet with understanding patience. When the operation was complete, Stone felt a damp muzzle kissing his hand.

“If that was your home,” said Dan, “I think I'll take you back there. Perhaps the sight of what they've done will make it safer for you than outside.”

Carefully carrying his bundle, he made his way hack to the point whence, he thought, the glow had issued. It was an apparently vacant warehouse, but Stone knocked at the smaller of its doors.

No answer.

He couldn't well take his charge home with him. His third-rate boarding house opened to much that he disapproved of, but the angular landlady set her face sternly—and it was a flint face—against dogs. She owned a cat, which was her sole comfort, and one of the hundred hardships of her lodgers. Nothing to be done in that respect. Moreover, Stone was the sort of person who, the more impulsively he has embarked upon an enterprise, the more deliberately and determinedly he persists in it.

He knocked again.

Still no answer.

Well, he was going through with this thing. If the dog had chosen to decamp, that would be another matter. There was a good deal to be said against returning him to the scene of his injury; but there was more to be said against turning an injured cur loose to the mercies of street urchins such as must, by day, infest a neighborhood like this. Dan wished the animal would run away; the animal lay quiet in his arms, so he knocked a third time.

Now louder. And now a response.

The echoes of his knuckle blows rolled up the dark and empty street. They caromed from the black walls of one side to the black walls farther along on the other, and, as they lessened with distance, there came a shuffling step from behind that portal before which the medical student was standing—a shuffling step first; and then a whispered and hesitant, but entirely audible, voice demanded:

“Who's there?”