"Half a plug is better than no smoke, boys," said John Bryant, who had killed his wife, humorously. But he had served fourteen years already and lived in hopes of a pardon some Thanksgiving day for his good behavior.
After exhibiting so clearly their position "against the government," Robert"s fellow-lodgers began to put inquiries to himself.
"Say, freshy, what"s your name?"
Robert was too exasperated, too disgusted, to answer.
"He"s tongue-tied."
"Wants his supper."
"Look out for a spy, fellers. That ain"t true blue."
"Mum"s the word."
It was evident that Floyd"s refusal to make free had branded him at once with the stamp of unpopularity. But the young man had other thoughts to occupy his mind. He was pondering upon his own terrible plight and upon s.h.a.garach"s visit. Fully an hour must have pa.s.sed in these reflections, for it was very dark, when they were disturbed by a low remark from his left-hand neighbor.
"Say, chummy, I hain"t one of these "ere bloomin" mutineers."
It was a wheezy voice and Floyd remembered to have heard at intervals from that quarter one of those racking coughs which distress the listener almost as much as the sufferer. The man seemed to be in the rear of his cell and to have his mouth to the wall. Robert said nothing, but his interest was languidly aroused.
"Say, get into the hospital, Dobbs," remarked a voice that was beginning to be familiar to Robert.
"I "ave been in the "ospital, you unfeelin", bloomin" coves," replied the asthmatic prisoner.
"Ho, ee"s Henglish, ee his," said some one, whereupon there was a faint storm of laughter. Robert"s sympathy was enlisted on the side of the man called Dobbs. His uncle had been an Englishman and the national feeling was strong in the nephew. Speaking as low as possible, so that the others might not hear, he said to Dobbs: "You are an Englishman? This is bad company you"ve got into."
"Lord, me boy, Hi know that--a scurvy job lot o" bloomin" ordinary coves as I"d cut dead if Hi was a gentleman of fortune. But you see Hi hain"t. Being only Bill Dobbs, Hi can"t afford to preach hinnocence, and choose me hown "ouse-mates, like a juke."
The cough choked his utterance for awhile and evoked further remonstrance from the yawning crew around him.
"What is your sentence?" asked Robert.
"Height years for burglary--if they can "old me," and Bill Dobbs chuckled knowingly, like one who had tested the fragility of prison walls before. "W"ich, bein" a slippery fish, is a question Hi "ave been considerin" seriously."
"Why did you leave England?" asked Robert.
"The climate is gettin" so warm," answered the c.o.c.kney. "W"y, the gulf stream is comin" so near us there it would almost boil a turkey. Hawfully bloomin" "ot, you know, chummy. I"m a-winkin" at you."
"Especially about Scotland Yard, I suppose. You"re a professional burglar?"
"Not always, young man. Hi "ad a Henglish mother once, w"ich I shall never forget "ow she "eard my prayers. And hevery day Hi dressed myself up in my blue blouse and breeches, and my dinner pail (w"ich wasn"t hempty) under my harm, and hevery bloomin" bobby I met says Hi to him, says Hi: "Hi"m Martin Thimblethorpe, from the west country, and can you tell me w"ere"s Regent row?" Blarst me if they wouldn"t point their fingers this way and that way and follow my departing footsteps with a look of pride, as much as to say: "There goes a honest Hinglish workingman; see "is hindependent hair."
"But you never worked very hard, I fancy, with your blouse and your dinner-pail?"
""Ard? Hi fancy Hi did."
"What did you do?"
"Jeweler"s "elp."
"That is, you sold your plunder to a fence?"
"Fence? Wot fence? Hi "ad an accommodatin" friend in the business, who asked no impertinent questions and paid me "alf price for my contributions--w"ich was bloomin" low figures, considering Hi never accepted hanything cheap. If there"s one cla.s.s Hi "ate, positively "ate, young man, it"s them bloomin" shoddy gaffers wot sport a genteel reputation on plated spoons and paste."
"You always discriminated against such people?"
"Halways! Ho, it used to do my "eart good," continued Dobbs, chuckling at the reminiscence, "w"en they wrote up one of my nocturnal visits (Hi halways make my collections in the quiet hours of the hevenin") as "ow the leavin" of the plated ware and the abandonin" of a temptin" case of hartificial diamonds shows the "and of the solitary cracksman. There"s appreciation, Hi used to say! There"s fame! You "it it "appily, young man. Hi always discriminated."
"Martin Thimblethorpe, then, was the solitary cracksman, and your real name is Dobbs?"
"Bill Dobbs. Wot"s your line, chummy? Fashionable embezzlement? Hi admire that line. It"s genteel and the perquisites is liberal accordingly."
Floyd was getting interested in spite of himself. These first-hand experiences of a professional burglar were life, and in spite of the fellow"s utter villainy and vulgarity (he could almost see his cunning leer through the walls) they had a spice of romance that held him. But their colloquy was interrupted just here by a sound of footsteps and the approach of a light, which set the whole ward raving again.
"Shut up your screeching," came a voice of command, at which the mutinous crew subsided, and Robert heard apologetic remarks.
"It"s Gradger."
"It isn"t Longlegs."
"We thought it was Longlegs."
Gradger, for some reason, was a favorite with the men. He went straight to Floyd"s cell and pointed him out to Emily Barlow.
"Emily!"
"Robert!"
That was all they could say for awhile.
"My darling," cried Robert, who was the first to recover command of himself. He was indignant to think that she, too, should be forced into these surroundings. "Why have you come here?"
"Only to be with you for a few moments, Robert. I thought of you all friendless and lonesome."
"G.o.d bless you, dear. But you must not remain. Go away quickly and do not come here again."
It was the old, natural instinct to screen the purer half of our race from degrading contact with things we ourselves must meet.
"But why should I not visit you, Robert?"
"Because this is h.e.l.l and you are an angel."
He drew her to him and kissed her through the bars. Instantly the sound was re-echoed a hundred times, distorted and vulgarized, throughout the ward. In the silence which followed Emily"s first words, the sweethearts had forgotten their audience of thieves and cutthroats, to whom every syllable was audible. Hierarchs of sin, virtuosos in infamy, all the demon in their souls seemed roused by this innocent pledge of mutual faith between youth and maiden, and even the stern threats of Gradger could not silence their outbreak of hideous derision.
Emily started back as red as fire.
"Go, darling," cried Robert, between his set teeth, while shouts of "Ta, ta, Robert," "Kiss me, Emily," intermingled with the foul ribaldry generated in minds shut away from all purifying touch of womanhood, taunted the fleeing girl and roused her imprisoned lover"s pa.s.sion to frenzy. He could have strangled three of them single-handed.
"Better call daytimes, miss, when the men are working in the shops," said Gradger. He had not taken Emily for a girl who herself had to work daytimes in a shop.
Meanwhile the storm raged louder and louder, and several turnkeys were called to quell the disturbance and carry the ringleaders away to the "block." But the more it volleyed around him the cooler grew young Floyd. His resentment gradually hardened to a kind of pitying scorn, and when the last oath died away it was with sweeter thoughts that he had indulged for three bitter nights that he laid his head on the pallet and drowsed into oblivion. His pillow lay close to the point of the wall where Dobbs liked to do his talking, and while the midnight bell was ringing he thought he heard the cracksman whisper: "The young lady stretched it, chummy. You "ave one friend "ere. Let "em screech their bloomin" lungs off."
But this may have been a dream.
CHAPTER XII.
SIMPLE SIMON.
"The appointment you heard them make. I missed the rendezvous."
"Harry Arnold said Wednesday was his locky day----"
"Lucky day," corrected s.h.a.garach.
"His lucky day," said Aronson, "and if the old lady put up he would break the bank."
"That I understand. A gambling tryst. The old lady is his mother. Put up means to pay his money. But the place--what was the name of the place?"
"When they left each other Arnold said: "Wednesday at the Tough-Coat," and Kennedy said: "All right, Harry.""
"Repeat that word."
"Tough-Coat."
"Repeat it again."
"Tough-Coat."
Still s.h.a.garach looked nonplused. The syllables conveyed no meaning whatever. Yet Aronson felt sure of the substantial accuracy of his version.
"Very well." The lawyer dismissed the subject, sent Aronson off on irrelevant business and gave a few hours of attention to his other clients. The law"s delay had not infected s.h.a.garach. Whatever the matter he undertook, he was punctual as the clock in its performances, though not, in the ordinary sense of the word, a methodical man.
Early in the afternoon an unlooked-for visitor took his place among those waiting in the outer room. Jacob hastened to give him the chair of precedence, and announced his name to s.h.a.garach, then in closet conference with an honest-appearing bookkeeper, whose acquittal on a charge of forgery he had just procured.
"I will see Mr. Rabofsky next," said the lawyer to Jacob.
The man so called was a short, bulky Hebrew, of 60-odd winters (one would prefer reckoning his years by the more rigorous season). His nose was like an owl"s beak and his beard spread itself luxuriantly over his face, plainly undefiled of the scissors. The hair was indeterminately reddish and gray and his eyes were the color of steel. s.h.a.garach bowed him into his private room, the caller strutting like one accustomed to homage.
Although the door was closed behind him as usual, Rabofsky glanced suspiciously around and spoke in the Hebrew jargon--that grafting of foreign idioms on a German patois which his tribe has carried all over eastern Europe, and latterly, via Hamburg, into the cities of America.
"It is a long time since we have met, kinsman s.h.a.garach," he said.
"A long time since I have had that honor," replied the lawyer, bowing with the Hebrew"s respect for age.
"Not since your respected father"s funeral, I believe. He was one of my friends, whose memory always remains to uplift me--a glory to our race and religion."
"My respected father"s friends are my friends to the end of my days."
s.h.a.garach"s father had been a rabbin or expounder of the sacred books. Great was the scandal when Rabbi Moses" son abandoned daily attendance at the synagogue and gave himself over to the ways, though not to the society, of the gentiles. His mother, with whom he lived, still kept up the observances of the law, baking the unleavened bread at the paschal season and purchasing the flesh only of the lawfully butchered ox. Her son neither praised nor blamed, but she knew he was no longer of Israel"s sects; not even of the mystical Essenes, among whom his father might be counted, and whose study is the unp.r.o.nounceable name of G.o.d. Others of his people who lacked a mother"s indulgence knew this, and it was rarely that one of the orthodox children of Israel brought his worldly troubles to s.h.a.garach.
"Your health is strong under Jehovah, I trust," continued Simon Rabofsky.
"Have you come to inquire about my health?" asked s.h.a.garach. The old man"s prelude, beginning so fitfully and far away, threatened to prolong itself interminably.
"Nay, a small affair of consultation which it shall be richly worth your while to advise upon," answered the other, craftily.
"State the facts with brevity and clearness."
"Speedily, kinsman s.h.a.garach, speedily." Again he looked cautiously around. "You are aware that out of the savings of my days of hard labor I occasionally permit the use of small sums to my friends."
"You are a money-lender? That I know. One of my clients desires a loan of you. Which is it?"
"Not one of your clients, kinsman s.h.a.garach."
"Who?"
"Mrs. Arnold."
Not a muscle of s.h.a.garach"s well-schooled countenance quivered, though the old Jew"s eyes almost pierced him as he uttered the name. Opposite as the two men were in every trait, a substratum of affinity came out in this deadlock of their glances. On both sides the same set lip, the same immobile forehead, trained by centuries of traffic to conceal the fermentation of the powerful brain within.
"I am not acquainted with the lady," said s.h.a.garach.
"But you are acquainted with her estate under the will of her brother-in-law."
Thoroughly aroused now to his subject, Rabofsky had abandoned his roundabout manner and pushed his words rapidly forth in an indistinct growl.
"Slightly so. State the facts."
"I will. Yesterday there came to my office a lady, all veiled, and asked me for $10,000. "That is a large sum," said I. "You have it," said she, "and I want it. I will pay for it." "Yes, indeed, you shall pay for it," I said to myself, but aloud I only asked her: "What security could you give me if I should go about among my friends and trouble them and trouble myself for your service?" "The security of my name," she answered, proudly, like a queen commanding her scullion. "I am Mrs. Arnold, widow of the banker, Henry Arnold, and a daughter of Ezra Brewster of Lynn." "Oh, madam," said I, "I am Simon Rabofsky, husband of Rebecca Rabofsky, and a son of the high priest Levi, who is twice mentioned in the talmud; but I could not borrow $10,000 without pledging something more substantial than my great ancestor"s name." Then she sneered a little under her veil, the proud unbeliever, and took out her rubies and diamonds and watch--a glittering heap. "Keep these until I return you the money," she said. "This is not enough," said I, examining the stones. "Have you nothing more?" "My son"s interest in the estate of the late Prof. Arnold will cover your paltry loan 500 times over." "I will reflect upon the subject," said I. "Call again in two days." So I came to consult kinsman s.h.a.garach."
"Well?"
"Has her son any interest in Prof. Arnold"s estate?"
The question had come point-blank at last and s.h.a.garach found himself less prepared to answer it than he could have wished.
The Arnolds were financially embarra.s.sed, possibly ruined, by Harry"s infatuation for the gaming-table. This was to be inferred from the conversation with Kennedy over-heard by Aronson. Their real estate must be mortgaged to the limit, perhaps beyond its shrunken value, or Mrs. Arnold would not be begging a loan at a money-lender"s shop. Family jewels were invariably the last resort of declining fortunes unwilling to abandon cherished appearances. Should he advise the loan and let Harry cast it away, as he seemed likely to do, in his ambition to "break the bank?" Such a step might place the young man in his power.
For the standing of the will was still uncertain. Evidence might be in existence sufficient to uphold the destroyed doc.u.ment. In that event Mrs. Arnold"s promissory note to Rabofsky would be worth no more than the value of the securities he held. Robert"s statement was positive that Harry was disinherited. This opened up a new view to s.h.a.garach.