"What does all this mean?" panted a policeman touching his cap respectfully to Michael. "Some one been shooting?"
He stooped and peered into the white face of the still unconscious woman, and then looked suspiciously toward Sam who was standing sullenly behind Michael.
"He"s all right," smiled Michael throwing an arm across Sam"s shoulder, "He only came in to help me when he saw I was having a hard time of it. The fellow made off in that direction." Michael pointed after Carter whose form had disappeared in the darkness.
"Any of the gang?" asked the officer as he hurried away.
"No!" said Michael. "He doesn"t belong here!"
One officer hurried away accompanied by a crowd, the other stayed to look after the woman. He touched the woman with his foot as he might have tapped a dying dog to see if there was still life there. A low growl like a fierce animal came from Sam"s closed lips.
Michael put a warning hand upon, his arm.
"Steady, Sam, steady!" he murmured, and went himself and lifted the poor pretty head of the girl from its stony pillow.
"I think you"d better send for the ambulance," he said to the officer.
"She"s had a heavy blow on her head. I arrived just in time to see the beginning of the trouble--"
"Ain"t she dead?" said the officer indifferently. "Best get her into her house. Don"t reckon they want to mess up the hospital with such cattle as this."
Michael caught the fierce gleam in Sam"s eyes. A second more would have seen the officer lying beside the girl in the road and a double tragedy to the record of that night; for Sam was crouched and moving stealthily like a cat toward the officer"s back, a look of almost insane fury upon his small thin face. It was Michael"s steady voice that recalled him to sanity once more, just as many a time in the midst of a game he had put self-control and courage into the hearts of his team.
"Sam, could you come here and hold her head a minute, while I try to get some water? Yes, officer, I think she is living, and she should be got to the hospital as soon as possible. Please give the call at once."
The officer sauntered off to do his bidding. Michael and Sam began working over the unconscious girl, and the crowd stood idly round waiting until the ambulance rattled up. They watched with awe as the form of the woman was lifted in and Michael and Sam climbed up on the front seat with the driver and rode away; then they drifted away to their several beds and the street settled into its brief night respite.
The two young men waited at the hospital for an hour until a white-capped nurse came to tell them that Lizzie had recovered consciousness, and there was hope of her life. Then they went out into the late night together.
"Sam, you"re coming home with me to-night!" Michael put his arm affectionately around Sam"s shoulders, "You never would come before, but you must come to-night."
And Sam, looking into the other"s face for an instant, saw that in Michael"s suffering eyes that made him yield.
"I ain"t fit!" Sam murmured as they walked along silently together. It was the first hint that Sam had ever given that he was not every whit as good as Michael; and Michael with rare tact had never by a glance let Sam know how much he wished to have him cleaner, and more suitably garbed.
"Oh, we"ll make that all right!" said Michael fervently thankful that at last the time had come for the presentation of the neat and fitting garments which he had purchased some weeks before for a present for Sam, and which had been waiting for a suitable opportunity of presentation.
The dawn was hovering in the East when Michael led Sam up to his own room, and throwing wide the door of his own little private bath-room told Sam to take a hot bath, it would make him feel better.
While Sam was thus engaged Michael made a compact bundle of Sam"s old garments, and stealing softly to the back hall window, landed them by a neat throw on the top of the ash barrel in the court below. Sam"s clothes might see the alley again by way of the ash man, but never on Sam"s back.
Quite late that very same morning, when Sam, clothed and in a new and righter mind than ever before in his life, walked down with Michael to breakfast, and was introduced as "my friend Mr. Casey" to the landlady, who was hovering about the now deserted breakfast table; he looked every inch of him a respectable citizen. Not handsome and distinguished like Michael, of course, but quite unnoticeable, and altogether proper as a guest at the respectable breakfast table of Mrs. Semple.
Michael explained that they had been detained out late the night before by an accident, and Mrs. Semple gave special orders for a nice breakfast to be served to Mr. Endicott and his friend, and said it wasn"t any trouble at all.
People always thought it was no trouble to do things for Michael.
While they ate, Michael arranged with Sam to take a trip out to see Buck.
"I was expecting to go this morning," he said. "I had my plans all made.
They write me that Buck is getting uneasy and they wish I"d come, but now"--he looked meaningly at Sam--"I think I ought to stay here for a little. Could you go in my place? There are things here I must attend to."
Sam looked, and his face grew dark with sympathy. He understood.
"I"ll keep you informed about Lizzie," went on Michael with delicate intuition, "and anyway you couldn"t see her for sometime, I think if you try you could help Buck as much as I. He needs to understand that breaking laws is all wrong. That it doesn"t pay in the end, and that there has got to be a penalty--you know. You can make him see things in a new way if you try. Are you willing to go, Sam?"
"I"ll go," said Sam briefly, and Michael knew he would do his best. It might be that Sam"s change of viewpoint would have more effect upon Buck than anything Michael could say. For it was an open secret between Sam and Michael now that Sam stood for a new order of things and that the old life, so far as he was concerned, he had put away.
And so Sam was got safely away from the danger spot, and Michael stayed to face his sorrow, and the problem of how to save Starr.
CHAPTER XXI
The papers the next morning announced that Mr. Stuyvesant Carter while taking a short cut through the lower quarter of the city, had been cruelly attacked, beaten and robbed, and had barely escaped with his life.
He was lying in his rooms under the care of a trained nurse, and was recovering as rapidly as could be expected from the shock.
Michael reading it next morning after seeing Sam off to Kansas, lifted his head with that quiet show of indignation. He knew that the message must have been telephoned to the paper by Carter himself shortly after he had escaped from the police. He saw just how easy it was for him to give out any report he chose. Money and influence would buy even the public press.
It would be little use to try to refute anything he chose to tell about himself.
The days that followed were to Michael one long blur of trouble. He haunted Mr. Endicott"s office in hopes of getting some news of his return but they told him the last letters had been very uncertain. He might come quickly, and he might be delayed a month yet, or even longer; and a cablegram might not reach him much sooner than a letter, as he was travelling from place to place.
After three days of this agony, knowing that the enemy would soon be recovering from his bruises and be about again, he reluctantly wrote a note to Starr:
"My dear Miss Endicott:
"At the risk of offending you I feel that I must make one more attempt to save you from what I feel cannot but be great misery. The young man of whom we were speaking has twice to my knowledge visited a young woman of the slums within the last month, and has even since your engagement been maintaining an intimacy with her which can be nothing but an insult to you.
Though you may not believe me, it gives me greater pain to tell you this than anything I ever had to do before, I have tried in every way I know to communicate with your father, but have thus far failed. I am writing you thus plainly and painfully, hoping that though you will not take my word for it, you will at least be willing to find some trustworthy intimate friend of your family in whom you can confide, who will investigate this matter for you, and give you his candid opinion of the young man. I can furnish such a man with information as to where to go to get the facts.
I know that what I have said is true. I beg for the sake of your future happiness that you will take means to discover for yourself.
"Faithfully yours,
"Michael"
To this note, within two days, he received a condescending, patronizing reply:
"Michael:
"I am exceedingly sorry that you have lent yourself to means so low to accomplish your end, whatever that may be. It is beyond me to imagine what possible motive you can have for all this ridiculous calumny that you are trying to cast on one who has shown a most n.o.ble spirit toward you.
"Mr. Carter has fully explained to me his presence at the home of that girl, and because you seem to really believe what you have written me, and because I do not like to have _anyone_ think evil of the man whom I am soon to marry, I am taking the trouble to explain to you. The young woman is a former maid of Mr. Carter"s mother, and she is deeply attached to her.
She does up Mrs. Carter"s fine laces exquisitely, and Mr. Carter has twice been the bearer of laces to be laundered, because his mother was afraid to trust such valuable pieces to a servant. I hope you will now understand that the terrible things you have tried to say against Mr. Carter are utterly false. Such things are called blackmail and bring terrible consequences in court I am told if they become known, so I must warn you never to do anything of this sort again. It is dangerous. If my father were at home he would explain it to you. Of course, having been in that out-of-the-way Florida place for so long you don"t understand these things, but for papa"s sake I would not like you to get into trouble in any way.
"There is one more thing I must say. Mr. Carter tells me that he saw you down in that questionable neighborhood, and that you are yourself interested in this girl. It seems strange when this is the case, that you should have thought so ill of him.
"Trusting that you will cause me no further annoyance in this matter,