"No, no!" called Douglas. "Out of order. Question!"
Voices from the seats below supported him. But there were other calls for a hearing for the newcomer. Curiosity was his ally. The meeting antic.i.p.ated a sensation. The chairman, lacking a gavel, hammered on the stand with a tumbler, and presently produced a modified silence, through which the voice of the Reverend Norman Hale could be heard saying that he wished but three minutes.
He stepped to the edge of the platform, and the men below noticed for the first time that he carried in his right hand a wreath of metal-mounted, withered flowers. There was no mistaking the nature of the wreath. It was such as is left lying above the dead for wind and rain to dissipate. Hale raised it slowly above his head. The silence in the hall became absolute.
"I brought these flowers from a girl"s grave," said the Reverend Norman Hale. "The girl had sinned. Death was the wage of her sin. She died by her own hand. So her offense is punished. That account is closed."
"What has all this to do--" began the chairman; but he stopped, checked by a wave of sibilant remonstrance from the audience.
The speaker went on, with relentless simplicity, still holding the mortuary symbol aloft:--
"But there is another account not yet closed. The girl was deceived. Not by the father of her unborn child. That is a different guilt, to be reckoned with in G.o.d"s own time. The deception for which she has paid with her life was not the deception of hot pa.s.sion, but of cold greed.
A man betrayed her, as he has betrayed thousands of other unfortunates, to put money into his own pockets. He promised her immunity. He said to her and to all women, in print, that she need not fear motherhood if she would buy his medicine. She believed the promise. She paid her dollar.
And she found, too late, that it was a lie.
"So she went to the man. She knew him. And she determined either that he should help her or that she would be revenged on him. All this she told me in a note, to be opened in case of her death. He must have refused to help. He had not the criminal courage to produce the abortion which he falsely promised in his advertis.e.m.e.nts. What pa.s.sed between them I do not know. But I believe that she attempted to kill him and failed. She attempted to kill herself and succeeded. The blood of Camilla Neal is on every cent of Dr. Surtaine"s ten-thousand-dollar subscription."
He tossed the wreath aside. It rolled, clattering and clinking, and settled down at the feet of the Midas of Medicine who stared at it with a contorted face.
The meeting sat stricken into immovability. It seemed incredible that the tensity of the silence should not snap. Yet it held.
"I shall vote "No" on the motion," said the Reverend Norman Hale, still with that quiet and appalling simplicity. "I came here from a hand-to-hand struggle with death to vote "No." I have strength for only a word more. The city is stricken with typhus. It is no time for concealment or evasion. We are at death-grips with a very dreadful plague. It has broken out of the Rookeries district. There are half a dozen new foci of infection. In the face of this, silence is deadly. If you elect Dr. Surtaine and adopt his plan, you commit yourself to an alliance with fraud and death. You deceive and betray the people who look to you for leadership. And there will be a terrible price to pay in human lives. I thank you for hearing me patiently."
No man spoke for long seconds after the young minister sat down, wavering a little as he walked to a chair at the rear. But through the representative citizenship of Worthington, in that place gathered, pa.s.sed a quiver of sound, indeterminate, obscure, yet having all the pa.s.sion of a quelled sob. Eyes furtively sought the face of Dr.
Surtaine. But the master-quack remained frozen by the same bewilderment as his fellows. Perhaps alone in that crowd, Elias M. Pierce remained untouched emotionally. He rose, and his square granite face was cold as abstract reason. There was not even feeling enough in his voice to give the semblance of a sneer to his words as he said:
"All this is very well in its place, and doubtless does credit to the sentimental qualities of the speaker. But it is not evidence. It is an unsupported statement, part of which is admittedly conjecture. Allowing the alleged facts to be true, are we to hold a citizen of Dr. Surtaine"s standing and repute responsible for the death of a woman caused by her own immorality? The woman whose death Mr. Hale has turned to such oratorical account was, I take it, a prost.i.tute--"
"That is a d.a.m.ned lie!"
Hal Surtaine came down the aisle in long strides, speaking as he came.
"Milly Neal was my employee and my father"s employee. If she went astray once, who are you to judge her? Who are any of us to judge her? I took part of that blood-money. The advertis.e.m.e.nt was in my paper, paid for with Surtaine money. What Mr. Hale says is the living truth. No man shall foul her memory in my hearing."
"And what was she to you? You haven"t told us that yet?" There was a rancid sneer in Pierce"s insinuation.
Hal turned from the aisle and went straight for him. A little man rose in his way. It was Mintz, who had given him the heartening word after the committee meeting. In his blind fury Hal struck him a staggering blow. But the little Jew was plucky. He closed with the younger man, and clinging to him panted out his good advice.
"Don"d fighd "im, nod here. It"s no good. Go to the pladform an" say your say. We"ll hear you."
But it was impossible to hear any one now. Uproar broke loose. Men shouted, stormed, cursed; the meeting was become a rabble. Above the din could be distinguished at intervals the voice of the Honorable Brett Harkins, who, in frantic but not illogical reversion to the idea of a political convention, squalled for the services of the sergeant-at-arms.
There was no sergeant-at-arms.
Mintz"s pudgy but clogging arms could restrain an athlete of Hal"s power only a brief moment; but in that moment sanity returned to the fury-heated brain.
"I beg your pardon, Mintz," he said; "you"re quite right. I thank you for stopping me."
He returned to the aisle, pressing forward, with what purpose he could hardly have said, when he felt the sinewy grasp of McGuire Ellis on his shoulder.
"Tell "em the whole thing," fiercely urged Ellis. "Be a man. Own up to the whole business, between you and the girl."
"I don"t know what you mean!" cried Hal.
"Don"t be young," groaned Ellis; "you"ve gone halfway. Clean it up. Then we can face the situation with the "Clarion." Tell "em you were her lover."
"Milly"s? I wasn"t. It was Veltman."
"Good G.o.d of Mercy!"
"Did you think--"
"Yes;--Lord forgive me! Why didn"t you tell me?"
"How could I tell you suspected--"
"All right! I know. We"ll talk it out later. The big thing now is, what"s the paper going to do about this meeting?"
"Print it."
Into Ellis"s face flashed the fervor of the warrior who sees victory loom through the clouds of hopeless defeat.
"You mean that?"
"Every word of it. And run the epidemic spread--"
Before he could finish, Ellis was fighting his way to a telephone.
Hal met his father"s eyes, and turned away with a heartsick sense that, in the one glance, had pa.s.sed indictment, conviction, a hopeless acquiescence, and the dumb reproach of the trapped criminal against avenging justice. He turned and made for the nearest exit, conscious of only two emotions, a burning desire to be away from that place and a profound gladness that, without definite expression of the change, the bitter alienation of McGuire Ellis was past.
As Hal left, there arose, out of the turmoil, one clear voice of reason: the thundering baritone of Festus Willard moving an adjournment. It pa.s.sed, and the gathering slowly dispersed. Avoiding the offered companionship of Congressman Harkins and Douglas, Dr. Surtaine took himself off by a side pa.s.sage. At the end of it, alone, stood the Reverend Norman Hale, leaning against the sill of an open window. The old quack rushed upon him.
"Keep off!" warned the young minister, throwing himself into an att.i.tude of defense.
"No, no," protested Dr. Surtaine: "don"t think I meant _that_. I--I want to thank you."
"Thank _me_?" The minister put his hand to his head. "I don"t understand."
"For leaving my boy out of it."
"Oh! That. I didn"t see the necessity of dragging him in."
"That was kind. You handled me pretty rough. Well, I"m used to rough work. But the boy--look here, you knew all about this Milly Neal business, didn"t you?"
"Yes."
"Maybe you could tell me," went on the old quack miserably. "I can understand Hal"s getting into a--an affair with the girl--being kinda carried away and losing his head. What I can"t get is his--his quittin"
her when she was in trouble."
"I still don"t understand," protested the minister. "My head isn"t very good. I"ve been ill, you know."