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THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM.--_Frontispiece_(_Page 18._)]
THE ESCAPEOF MR. TRIMM
_HIS PLIGHT AND OTHER PLIGHTS_
BY
IRVIN S. COBB
AUTHOR OFOLD JUDGE PRIEST,BACK HOME, ETC.
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1910, 1911, 1912 AND 1913
BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1913
BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1913
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
[Transcriber's Note: A List of Illustrations has been added.]
TO MY WIFE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM 3
II. THE BELLED BUZZARD 54
III. AN OCCURRENCE UP A SIDE STREET 79
IV. ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES 96
V. SMOKE OF BATTLE 142
VI. THE EXIT OF ANNE DUGMORE 179
VII. TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN 202
VIII. FISHHEAD 244
IX. GUILTY AS CHARGED 260
ILLUSTRATIONS
NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM. Frontispiece
"TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN." Facing page 70
"I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE." Facing Page 164
HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT MADE A CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW. Facing Page 193
THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
I
THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
Mr. Trimm, recently president of the late Thirteenth National Bank, wastaking a trip which was different in a number of ways from any he hadever taken. To begin with, he was used to parlor cars and Pullmans andeven luxurious private cars when he went anywhere; whereas now he rodewith a most mixed company in a dusty, smelly day coach. In the secondplace, his traveling companion was not such a one as Mr. Trimm wouldhave chosen had the choice been left to him, being a stupid-lookingGerman-American with a drooping, yellow mustache. And in the thirdplace, Mr. Trimm's plump white hands were folded in his lap, held in aclose and enforced companionship by a new and shiny pair of Bean'sLatest Model Little Giant handcuffs. Mr. Trimm was on his way to theFederal penitentiary to serve twelve years at hard labor for breaking,one way or another, about all the laws that are presumed to governnational banks.
* * * * *
All the time Mr. Trimm was in the Tombs, fighting for a new trial, acertain question had lain in his mind unasked and unanswered. Throughthe seven months of his stay in the jail that question had been alwaysat the back part of his head, ticking away there like a little watchthat never needed winding. A dozen times a day it would pop into histhoughts and then go away, only to come back again.
When Copley was taken to the penitentiary--Copley being the cashier whogot off with a lighter sentence because the judge and jury held him tobe no more than a blind accomplice in the wrecking of the ThirteenthNational--Mr. Trimm read closely every line that the papers carriedabout Copley's departure. But none of them had seen fit to give theyoung cashier more than a short and colorless paragraph. For Copley wasonly a small figure in the big intrigue that had startled the country;Copley didn't have the money to hire big lawyers to carry his appeal tothe higher courts for him; Copley's wife was keeping boarders; and asfor Copley himself, he had been wearing stripes several months now.
With Mr. Trimm it had been vastly different. From the very beginning hehad held the public eye. His bearing in court when the jury came in withtheir judgment; his cold defiance when the judge, in pronouncingsentence, mercilessly arraigned him and the system of finance for whichhe stood; the manner of his life in the Tombs; his spectacular fight tobeat the verdict, had all been worth columns of newspaper space. If Mr.Trimm had been a popular poisoner, or a society woman named asco-respondent in a sensational divorce suit, the papers could not havebeen more generous in their space allotments. And Mr. Trimm in his cellhad read all of it with smiling contempt, even to the semi-hystericaloutpourings of the lady special writers who called him The Iron Man ofWall Street and undertook to analyze his emotions--and missed the markby a thousand miles or two.
Things had been smoothed as much as possible for him in the Tombs, formoney and the power of it will go far toward ironing out even thecorrugated routine of that big jail. He had a large cell to himself inthe airiest, brightest corridor. His meals were served by a caterer fromoutside. Although he ate them without knife or fork, he soon learnedthat a spoon and the fingers can accomplish a good deal when backed by agood appetite, and Mr. Trimm's appetite was uniformly good. The wardenand his underlings had been models of official kindliness; thenewspapers had sent their brightest young men to interview him wheneverhe felt like talking, which wasn't often; and surely his lawyers haddone all in his behalf that money--a great deal of money--could do.Perhaps it was because of these things that Mr. Trimm had never beenable to bring himself to realize that he was the Hobart W. Trimm who hadbeen sentenced to the Federal prison; it seemed to him, somehow, thathe, personally, was merely a spectator standing to one side watching thefight of another man to dodge the penitentiary.
However, he didn't fail to give the other man the advantage of everychance that money would buy. This sense of aloofness to the whole thinghad persisted even when his personal lawyer came to him one night in theearly fall and told him that the court of last possible resort haddenied the last possible motion. Mr. Trimm cut the lawyer short with ashake of his head as the other began saying something about the chancesof a pardon from the President. Mr. Trimm wasn't in the habit of lettingmen deceive him with idle words. No President would pardon him, and heknew it.
"Never mind that, Walling," he said steadily, when the lawyer offered tocome to see him again before he started for prison the next day. "Ifyou'll see that a drawing-room on the train is reserved for me--for us,I mean--and all that sort of thing, I'll not detain you any further. Ihave a good many things to do tonight. Good night."
"Such a man, such a man," said Walling to himself as he climbed intohis car; "all chilled steel and brains. And they are going to lock thatbrain up for twelve years. It's a crime," said Walling, and shook hishead. Walling always said it was a crime when they sent a client of histo prison. To his credit be it said, though, they sent very few of themthere. Walling made as high as fifty thousand a year at criminal law.Some of it was very criminal law indeed. His specialty was picking holesin the statutes faster than the legislature could make them and providethem and putty them up with amendments. This was the first case he hadlost in a good long time.
* * * * *
When Jerry, the turnkey, came for him in the morning Mr. Trimm had madeas careful a toilet as the limited means at his command permitted, andhe had eaten a hearty breakfast and was ready to go, all but putting onhis hat. Looking the picture of well-groomed, close-buttoned, iron-graymiddle age, Mr. Trimm followed the turnkey through the long corridor anddown the winding iron stairs to the warden's office. He gave no heed tothe curious eyes that followed him through the barred doors of manycells; his feet rang briskly on the flags.
>
The warden, Hallam, was there in the private office with another man, atall, raw-boned man with a drooping, straw-colored mustache and theunmistakable look about him of the police officer. Mr. Trimm knewwithout being told that this was the man who would take him to prison.The stranger was standing at a desk, signing some papers.
"Sit down, please, Mr. Trimm," said the warden with a nervouscordiality. "Be through here in just one minute. This is Deputy MarshalMeyers," he added.
Mr. Trimm started to tell this Mr. Meyers he was glad to meet him, butcaught himself and merely nodded. The man stared at him with neitherinterest nor curiosity in his dull blue eyes. The warden moved overtoward the door.
"Mr. Trimm," he said, clearing his throat, "I took the liberty ofcalling a cab to take you gents up to the Grand Central. It's out frontnow. But there's a big crowd of reporters and photographers and a lot ofother people waiting, and if I was you I'd slip out the back way--one ofmy men will open the yard gate for you--and jump aboard the subway downat Worth Street. Then you'll miss those fellows."
"Thank you, Warden--very kind of you," said Mr. Trimm in that crisp,businesslike way of his. He had been crisp and businesslike all hislife. He heard a door opening softly behind him, and when he turned tolook he saw the warden slipping out, furtively, in almost an embarrassedfashion.
"Well," said Meyers, "all ready?"
"Yes," said Mr. Trimm, and he made as if to rise.
"Wait one minute," said Meyers.
He half turned his back on Mr. Trimm and fumbled at the side pocket ofhis ill-hanging coat. Something inside of Mr. Trimm gave the leastlittle jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all thosemonths began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchiefthe man was getting out. Doubtless he was going to mop his face.
He didn't mop his face, though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, asif it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then,thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying inhis hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had littlenotches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that hadticked in Mr. Trimm's head was answered at last--in the sight of thesesteel things with their notched jaws.
Mr. Trimm stood up and, with a movement as near to hesitation as he hadever been guilty of in his life, held out his hands, backs upward.
"I guess you're new at this kind of thing," said Meyers, grinning. "Thishere way--one at a time."
He took hold of Mr. Trimm's right hand, turned it sideways and settledone of the steel cuffs over the top of the wrist, flipping the notchedjaw up from beneath and pressing it in so that it locked automaticallywith a brisk little click. Slipping the locked cuff back and forth onMr. Trimm's lower arm like a man adjusting a part of machinery, and thenbringing the left hand up to meet the right, he treated it the same way.Then he stepped back.
Mr. Trimm hadn't meant to protest. The word came unbidden.
"This--this isn't necessary, is it?" he asked in a voice that was huskyand didn't seem to belong to him.
"Yep," said Meyers. "Standin' orders is play no favorites and take nochances. But you won't find them things uncomfortable. Lightest pairthere was in the office, and I fixed 'em plenty loose."
For half a minute Mr. Trimm stood like a rooster hypnotized by achalkmark, his arms extended, his eyes set on his bonds. His hands hadfallen perhaps four inches apart, and in the space between his wrists alittle chain was stretched taut. In the mounting tumult that filled hisbrain there sprang before Mr. Trimm's consciousness a phrase he hadheard or read somewhere, the title of a story or, perhaps, it was aheadline--The Grips of the Law. The Grips of the Law were upon Mr.Trimm--he felt them now for the first time in these shiny wristlets andthis bit of chain that bound his wrists and filled his whole body with astrange, sinking feeling that made him physically sick. A sudden sweatbeaded out on Mr. Trimm's face, turning it slick and wet.
He had a handkerchief, a fine linen handkerchief with a hemstitchedborder and a monogram on it, in the upper breast pocket of his buttonedcoat. He tried to reach it. His hands went up, twisting awkwardly likecrab claws. The fingers of both plucked out the handkerchief. Holding itso, Mr. Trimm mopped the sweat away. The links of the handcuffs fell inupon one another and lengthened out again at each movement, filling theroom with a smart little sound.
He got the handkerchief stowed away with the same clumsiness. He raisedthe manacled hands to his hat brim, gave it a downward pull that broughtit over his face and then, letting his short arms slide down upon hisplump stomach, he faced the man who had put the fetters upon him,squaring his shoulders back. But it was hard, somehow, for him to squarehis shoulders--perhaps because of his hands being drawn so closelytogether. And his eyes would waver and fall upon his wrists. Mr. Trimmhad a feeling that the skin must be stretched very tight on his jawbonesand his forehead.
"Isn't there some way to hide these--these things?"
He began by blurting and ended by faltering it. His hands shuffledtogether, one over, then under the other.
"Here's a way," said Meyers. "This'll help."
He bestirred himself, folding one of the chained hands upon the other,tugging at the white linen cuffs and drawing the coat sleeves of hisprisoner down over the bonds as far as the chain would let them come.
"There's the notion," he said. "Just do that-a-way and them braceletswon't hardly show a-tall. Ready? Let's be movin', then."
But handcuffs were never meant to be hidden. Merely a pair of steelrings clamped to one's wrists and coupled together with a scrap ofchain, but they'll twist your arms and hamper the movements of your bodyin a way to constantly catch the eye of the passer-by. When a man iscoming toward you, you can tell that he is handcuffed before you see thecuffs.
Mr. Trimm was never able to recall afterward exactly how he got out ofthe Tombs. He had a confused memory of a gate that was swung open bysome one whom Mr. Trimm saw only from the feet to the waist; then he andhis companion were out on Lafayette Street, speeding south toward thesubway entrance at Worth Street, two blocks below, with the marshal'shand cupped under Mr. Trimm's right elbow and Mr. Trimm's plump legsalmost trotting in their haste. For a moment it looked as if thewarden's well-meant artifice would serve them.
But New York reporters are up to the tricks of people who want to evadethem. At the sight of them a sentry reporter on the corner shouted awarning which was instantly caught up and passed on by another picketstationed half-way down the block; and around the wall of the Tombs camepelting a flying mob of newspaper photographers and reporters, with achoice rabble behind them. Foot passengers took up the chase, notknowing what it was about, but sensing a free show. Truckmen haltedtheir teams, jumped down from their wagon seats and joined in. Aman-chase is one of the pleasantest outdoor sports that a big city likeNew York can offer its people.
Fairly running now, the manacled banker and the deputy marshal shot downthe winding steps into the subway a good ten yards ahead of the foremostpursuers. But there was one delay, while Meyers skirmished with his freehand in his trousers' pocket for a dime for the tickets, and anotherbefore a northbound local rolled into the station. Shouted at, jeeredat, shoved this way and that, panting in gulping breaths, for he wasstout by nature and staled by lack of exercise, Mr. Trimm, with Meyersclutching him by the arm, was fairly shot aboard one of the cars, at theapex of a human wedge. The astonished guard sensed the situation as thescrooging, shoving, noisy wave rolled across the platform toward thedoors which he had opened and, thrusting the officer and his prisonerinto the narrow platform space behind him, he tried to form with hisbody a barrier against those who came jamming in.
It didn't do any good. He was brushed away, protesting and blustering.The excitement spread through the train, and men, and even women, lefttheir seats, overflowing the aisles.
There is no crueler thing than a city crowd, all eyes and morbidcuriosity. But Mr. Trimm didn't see the staring eyes on that ride to theGrand Central. What he saw was many shifting feet a
nd a hedge of legsshutting him in closely--those and the things on his wrists. What theeyes of the crowd saw was a small, stout man who, for all his bulk,seemed to have dried up inside his clothes so that they bagged on himsome places and bulged others, with his head tucked on his chest, hishat over his face and his fingers straining to hold his coat sleevesdown over a pair of steel bracelets.
Mr. Trimm gave mental thanks to a Deity whose existence he thought hehad forgotten when the gate of the train-shed clanged behind him,shutting out the mob that had come with them all the way. Cameras hadbeen shoved in his face like gun muzzles, reporters had scuttledalongside him, dodging under Meyers' fending arm to shout questions inhis ears. He had neither spoken nor looked at them. The sweat still randown his face, so that when finally he raised his head in thecomparative quiet of the train-shed his skin was a curious gray underthe jail paleness like the color of wet wood ashes.
"My lawyer promised to arrange for a compartment--for some private placeon the train," he said to Meyers. "The conductor ought to know."
They were the first words he had uttered since he left the Tombs. Meyersspoke to a jaunty Pullman conductor who stood alongside the car wherethey had halted.
"No such reservation," said the conductor, running through his sheaf ofslips, with his eyes shifting from Mr. Trimm's face to Mr. Trimm's handsand back again, as though he couldn't decide which was the moreinteresting part of him; "must be some mistake. Or else it was for someother train. Too late to change now--we pull out in three minutes."
"I reckon we better git on the smoker," said Meyers, "if there's roomthere."
Mr. Trimm was steered back again the length of the train through adouble row of pop-eyed porters and staring trainmen. At the steps wherethey stopped the instinct to stretch out one hand and swing himself upby the rail operated automatically and his wrists got a nasty twist.Meyers and a brakeman practically lifted him up the steps and Meyersheaded him into a car that was hazy with blue tobacco smoke. He wasconfused in his gait, almost as if his lower limbs had been fettered,too.
The car was full of shirt-sleeved men who stood up, craning their necksand stumbling over each other in their desire to see him. These men cameout into the aisle, so that Meyers had to shove through them.
"This here'll do as well as any, I guess," said Meyers. He drew Mr.Trimm past him into the seat nearer the window and sat down alongsidehim on the side next the aisle, settling himself on the stuffy plushseat and breathing deeply, like a man who had got through the hardestpart of a not easy job.
"Smoke?" he asked.
Mr. Trimm shook his head without raising it.
"Them cuffs feel plenty easy?" was the deputy's next question. He liftedMr. Trimm's hands as casually as if they had been his hands and not Mr.Trimm's, and looked at them.
"Seem to be all right," he said as he let them fall back. "Don't pinchnone, I reckon?" There was no answer.
The deputy tugged a minute at his mustache, searching his arid mind. Anidea came to him. He drew a newspaper from his pocket, opened it outflat and spread it over Mr. Trimm's lap so that it covered the chainedwrists. Almost instantly the train was in motion, moving through theyards.
* * * * *
"Be there in two hours more," volunteered Meyers. It was late afternoon.They were sliding through woodlands with occasional openings whichshowed meadows melting into wide, flat lands.
"Want a drink?" said the deputy, next. "No? Well, I guess I'll have adrop myself. Travelin' fills a feller's throat full of dust." He got up,lurching to the motion of the flying train, and started forward to thewater cooler behind the car door. He had gone perhaps two-thirds of theway when Mr. Trimm felt a queer, grinding sensation beneath his feet; itwas exactly as though the train were trying to go forward and back atthe same time. Almost slowly, it seemed to him, the forward end of thecar slued out of its straight course, at the same time tilting up. Therewas a grinding, roaring, grating sound, and before Mr. Trimm's eyesMeyers vanished, tumbling forward out of sight as the car floor buckledunder his feet. Then, as everything--the train, the earth, the sky--allfused together in a great spatter of white and black, Mr. Trimm, pluckedfrom his seat as though a giant hand had him by the collar, shot forwardthrough the air over the seatbacks, his chained hands aloft, clutchingwildly. He rolled out of a ragged opening where the smoker had broken intwo, flopped gently on the sloping side of the right-of-way and slideasily to the bottom, where he lay quiet and still on his back in a bedof weeds and wild grass, staring straight up.
How many minutes he lay there Mr. Trimm didn't know. It may have beenthe shrieks of the victims or the glare from the fire that brought himout of the daze. He wriggled his body to a sitting posture, got on hisfeet, holding his head between his coupled hands, and gazed full-faceinto the crowning railroad horror of the year.
There were numbers of the passengers who had escaped serious hurt, butfor the most part these persons seemed to have gone daft from terror andshock. Some were running aimlessly up and down and some, a few, werepecking feebly with improvised tools at the wreck, an indescribablejumble of ruin, from which there issued cries of mortal agony, and fromwhich, at a point where two locomotives were lying on their sides,jammed together like fighting bucks that had died with locked horns, atall flame already rippled and spread, sending up a pillar of blacksmoke that rose straight, poisoning the clear blue of the sky. Nobodypaid any attention to Mr. Trimm as he stood swaying upon his feet. Therewasn't a scratch on him. His clothes were hardly rumpled, his hat wasstill on his head. He stood a minute and then, moved by a suddenimpulse, he turned round and went running straight away from therailroad at the best speed his pudgy legs could accomplish, with hisarms pumping up and down in front of him and his fingers interlaced. Itwas a grotesque gait, almost like a rabbit hopping on its hindlegs.
Instantly, almost, the friendly woods growing down to the edge of thefill swallowed him up. He dodged and doubled back and forth among thetree trunks, his small, patent-leathered feet skipping nimbly over theirregular turf, until he stopped for lack of wind in his lungs to carryhim another rod. When he had got his breath back Mr. Trimm leanedagainst a tree and bent his head this way and that, listening. No soundcame to his ears except the sleepy calls of birds. As well as Mr. Trimmmight judge he had come far into the depths of a considerable woodland.Already the shadows under the low limbs were growing thick and confusedas the hurried twilight of early September came on.
Mr. Trimm sat down on a natural cushion of thick green moss between tworoots of an oak. The place was clean and soft and sweet-scented. Forsome little time he sat there motionless, in a sort of mental haze. Thenhis round body slowly slid down flat upon the moss, his head lolled toone side and, the reaction having come, Mr. Trimm's limbs all relaxedand he went to sleep straightway.
After a while, when the woods were black and still, the half-grown mooncame up and, sifting through a chink in the canopy of leaves above,shone down full on Mr. Trimm as he lay snoring gently with his mouthopen, and his hands rising and falling on his breast. The moonlightstruck upon the Little Giant handcuffs, making them look likequicksilver.
Toward daylight it turned off sharp and cool. The dogwoods which hadbeen a solid color at nightfall now showed pink in one light and greenin another, like changeable silk, as the first level rays of the suncame up over the rim of the earth and made long, golden lanes betweenthe tree trunks. Mr. Trimm opened his eyes slowly, hardly sensing forthe first moment or two how he came to be lying under a canopy ofleaves, and gaped, seeking to stretch his arms. At that he rememberedeverything; he haunched his shoulders against the tree roots andwriggled himself up to a sitting position where he stayed for a while,letting his mind run over the sequence of events that had brought himwhere he was and taking inventory of the situation.
Of escape he had no thought. The hue and cry must be out for him beforenow; doubtless men were already searching for him. It would be betterfor him to walk in and surrender than to be taken in the woods like an
animal escaped from a traveling menagerie. But the mere thought ofenduring again what he had already gone through--the thought of beingtagged by crowds and stared at, with his fetters on--filled him with anausea. Nothing that the Federal penitentiary might hold in store forhim could equal the black, blind shamefulness of yesterday; he knewthat. The thought of the new ignominy that faced him made Mr. Trimmdesperate. He had a desire to burrow into the thicket yonder and hidehis face and his chained hands.
But perhaps he could get the handcuffs off and so go to meet his captorsin some manner of dignity. Strange that the idea hadn't occurred to himbefore! It seemed to Mr. Trimm that he desired to get his two handsapart more than he had ever desired anything in his whole life before.
The hands had begun naturally to adjust themselves to their enforcedcompanionship, and it wasn't such a very hard matter, though it cost himsome painful wrenches and much twisting of the fingers, for Mr. Trimm toget his coat unbuttoned and his eyeglasses in their small leather caseout of his upper waistcoat pocket. With the glasses on his nose hesubjected his bonds to a critical examination. Each rounded steel bandran unbroken except for the smooth, almost jointless hinge and the smalllock which sat perched on the back of the wrist in a little roundedexcrescence like a steel wart. In the flat center of each lock was asmall keyhole and alongside of it a notched nub, the nub being sunk in aminute depression. On the inner side, underneath, the cuffs slid intothemselves--two notches on each showing where the jaws might betightened to fit a smaller hand than his--and right over the large blueveins in the middle of the wrists were swivel links, shackle-bolted tothe cuffs and connected by a flat, slightly larger middle link, givingthe hands a palm-to-palm play of not more than four or five inches. Thecuffs did not hurt--even after so many hours there was no actualdiscomfort from them and the flesh beneath them was hardly reddened.
But it didn't take Mr. Trimm long to find out that they were not to begot off. He tugged and pulled, trying with his fingers for a purchase.All he did was to chafe his skin and make his wrists throb with pain.The cuffs would go forward just so far, then the little humps of boneabove the hands would catch and hold them.
Mr. Trimm was not a man to waste time in the pursuit of the obviouslyhopeless. Presently he stood up, shook himself and started off at a fairgait through the woods. The sun was up now and the turf was all dappledwith lights and shadows, and about him much small, furtive wild life wasstirring. He stepped along briskly, a strange figure for that greensolitude, with his correct city garb and the glint of the steel at hissleeve ends.
Presently he heard the long-drawn, quavering, banshee wail of alocomotive. The sound came from almost behind him, in an oppositedirection from where he supposed the track to be. So he turned aroundand went back the other way. He crossed a half-dried-up runlet andclimbed a small hill, neither of which he remembered having met in hisnight from the wreck, and in a little while he came out upon therailroad. To the north a little distance the rails ran round a curve. Tothe south, where the diminishing rails running through the unbrokenwoodland met in a long, shiny V, he could see a big smoke smudge againstthe horizon. This smoke Mr. Trimm knew must come from the wreck--whichwas still burning, evidently. As nearly as he could judge he had comeout of cover at least two miles above it. After a moment's considerationhe decided to go south toward the wreck. Soon he could distinguish smalldots like ants moving in and out about the black spot, and he knew thesedots must be men.
A whining, whirring sound came along the rails to him from behind. Hefaced about just as a handcar shot out around the curve from the north,moving with amazing rapidity under the strokes of four men at the pumps.Other men, laborers to judge by their blue overalls, were sitting on theedges of the car with their feet dangling. For the second time withintwelve hours impulse ruled Mr. Trimm, who wasn't given to impulsesnormally. He made a jump off the right-of-way, and as the handcarflashed by he watched its flight from the covert of a weed tangle.
But even as the handcar was passing him Mr. Trimm regretted hishastiness. He must surrender himself sooner or later; why not to theseoveralled laborers, since it was a thing that had to be done? He slidout of hiding and came trotting back to the tracks. Already the handcarwas a hundred yards away, flitting into distance like some big,wonderfully fast bug, the figures of the men at the pumps rising andfalling with a walking-beam regularity. As he stood watching them fadeaway and minded to try hailing them, yet still hesitating against hisjudgment, Mr. Trimm saw something white drop from the hands of one ofthe blue-clad figures on the handcar, unfold into a newspaper and comefluttering back along the tracks toward him. Just as he, startingdoggedly ahead, met it, the little ground breeze that had carried italong died out and the paper dropped and flattened right in front ofhim. The front page was uppermost and he knew it must be of thatmorning's issue, for across the column tops ran the flaring headline:"Twenty Dead in Frightful Collision."
Squatting on the cindered track, Mr. Trimm patted the crumpled sheetflat with his hands. His eyes dropped from the first of the glaringcaptions to the second, to the next--and then his heart gave a greatbound inside of him and, clutching up the newspaper to his breast, hebounded off the tracks back into another thicket and huddled there withthe paper spread on the earth in front of him, reading by gulps whilethe chain that linked wrist to wrist tinkled to the tremors runningthrough him. What he had seen first, in staring black-face type, was hisown name leading the list of known dead, and what he saw now, broken upinto choppy paragraphs and done in the nervous English of a trainedreporter throwing a great news story together to catch an edition, buttelling a clear enough story nevertheless, was a narrative in which hisname recurred again and again. The body of the United States deputymarshal, Meyers, frightfully crushed, had been taken from the wreckageof the smoker--so the double-leaded story ran--and near to Meyersanother body, with features burned beyond recognition, yet stillretaining certain distinguishing marks of measurement and contour, hadbeen found and identified as that of Hobart W. Trimm, the convictedbanker. The bodies of these two, with eighteen other mangled dead, hadbeen removed to a town called Westfield, from which town of Westfieldthe account of the disaster had been telegraphed to the New York paper.In another column farther along was more about Banker Trimm; facts abouthis soiled, selfish, greedy, successful life, his great fortune, histrial, and a statement that, lacking any close kin to claim his body,his lawyers had been notified.
Mr. Trimm read the account through to the end, and as he read the senseof dominant, masterful self-control came back to him in waves. He gotup, taking the paper with him, and went back into the deeper woods,moving warily and watchfully. As he went his mind, trained to take holdof problems and wring the essence out of them, was busy. Of the charred,grisly thing in the improvised morgue at Westfield, wherever that mightbe, Mr. Trimm took no heed nor wasted any pity. All his life he had usedlive men to work his will, with no thought of what might come to themafterward. The living had served him, why not the dead?
He had other things to think of than this dead proxy of his. He was asgood as free! There would be no hunt for him now; no alarm out, noposses combing every scrap of cover for a famous criminal turnedfugitive. He had only to lie quiet a few days, somewhere, then get insecret touch with Walling. Walling would do anything for money. And hehad the money--four millions and more, cannily saved from the crash thathad ruined so many others.
He would alter his personal appearance, change his name--he thought ofDuvall, which was his mother's name--and with Walling's aid he would getout of the country and into some other country where a man might livelike a prince on four millions or the fractional part of it. He thoughtof South America, of South Africa, of a private yacht swinging throughthe little frequented islands of the South Seas. All that the law hadtried to take from him would be given back. Walling would work out thedetails of the escape--and make it safe and sure--trust Walling forthose things. On one side was the prison, with its promise of twelvegrinding years sliced out of the very heart of his
life; on the other,freedom, ease, security, even power. Through Mr. Trimm's mind tumbledthoughts of concessions, enterprises, privileges--the back corners ofthe globe were full of possibilities for the right man. And between thisprospect and Mr. Trimm there stood nothing in the way, nothing but----
Mr. Trimm's eyes fell upon his bound hands. Snug-fitting, shiny steelbands irked his wrists. The Grips of the Law were still upon him.
But only in a way of speaking. It was preposterous, unbelievable,altogether out of the question that a man with four millions salted downand stored away, a man who all his life had been used to grappling withthe big things and wrestling them down into submission, a man whose luckhad come to be a byword--and had not it held good even in this lastemergency?--would be balked by puny scraps of forged steel and atrumpery lock or two. Why, these cuffs were no thicker than the goldbands that Mr. Trimm had seen on the arms of overdressed women at theopera. The chain that joined them was no larger and, probably, nostronger than the chains which Mr. Trimm's chauffeur wrapped around thetires of the touring car in winter to keep the wheels from skidding onthe slush. There would be a way, surely, for Mr. Trimm to free himselffrom these things. There must be--that was all there was to it.
Mr. Trimm looked himself over. His clothes were not badly rumpled; hispatent-leather boots were scarcely scratched. Without the handcuffs hecould pass unnoticed anywhere. By night then he must be free of them andon his way to some small inland city, to stay quiet there until theguarded telegram that he would send in cipher had reached Walling. Therein the woods by himself Mr. Trimm no longer felt the ignominy of hisbonds; he felt only the temporary embarrassment of them and the need ofadded precaution until he should have mastered them.
He was once more the unemotional man of affairs who had stood WallStreet on its esteemed head and caught the golden streams that trickledfrom its pockets. First making sure that he was in a well-screenedcovert of the woods he set about exploring all his pockets. The coatpockets were comparatively easy, now that he had got used to using twohands where one had always served, but it cost him a lot of twisting ofhis body and some pain to his mistreated wrist bones to bring forth thecontents of his trousers' pockets. The chain kinked time and again as hegroped with the undermost hand for the openings; his dumpy, pudgy formwrithed grotesquely. But finally he finished. The search produced fourcigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, asilver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chickenfeed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple of quill toothpicks,a gold watch with a dangling fob, a notebook and some papers. Mr. Trimmranged these things in a neat row upon a log, like a watchmaker settingout his kit, and took swift inventory of them. Some he eliminated fromhis design, stowing them back in the pockets easiest to reach. He keptfor present employment the match safe, the cigar cutter and the watch.
This place where he had halted would suit his present purpose well, hedecided. It was where an uprooted tree, fallen across an incurving bank,made a snug little recess that was closed in on three sides. Spreadingthe newspaper on the turf to save his knees from soiling, he knelt andset to his task. For the time he felt neither hunger nor thirst. He hadfound out during his earlier experiments that the nails of his littlefingers, which were trimmed to a point, could invade the keyholes in thelittle steel warts on the backs of his wrists and touch the locks. Themechanism had even twitched a little bit under the tickle of the nailends. So, having already smashed the gun-metal match safe under hisheel, Mr. Trimm selected a slender-pointed bit from among its fragmentsand got to work, the left hand drawn up under the right, the fingers ofthe right busy with the lock of the left, the chain tightening andslackening with subdued clinking sounds at each movement.
Mr. Trimm didn't know much about picking a lock. He had got his money bya higher form of burglary that did not require a knowledge of lockpicking. Nor as a boy had he been one to play at mechanics. He had letother boys make the toy fluttermills and the wooden traps and the like,and then he had traded for them. He was sorry now that he hadn't givenmore heed to the mechanical side of things when he was growing up.
He worked with a deliberate slowness, steadily. Nevertheless, it was hotwork. The sun rose over the bank and shone on him through the limbs ofthe uprooted tree. His hat was on the ground alongside of him. The sweatran down his face, streaking it and wilting his collar flat. The scrapof gun metal kept slipping out of his wet fingers. Down would go thechained hands to scrabble in the grass for it, and then the pickingwould go on again. This happened a good many times. Birds, nervous withthe spirit that presages the fall migration, flew back and forth alongthe creek, almost grazing Mr. Trimm sometimes. A rain crow wove a brownthread in the green warp of the bushes above his head. A chattering redsquirrel sat up on a tree limb to scold him. At intervals, distantly,came the cough of laboring trains, showing that the track must have beencleared. There were times when Mr. Trimm thought he felt the lockgiving. These times he would work harder.
* * * * *
Late in the afternoon Mr. Trimm lay back against the bank, panting. Hisface was splotched with red, and the little hollows at the sides of hisforehead pulsed rapidly up and down like the bellies of scared treefrogs. The bent outer case of the watch littered a bare patch on thelog; its mainspring had gone the way of the fragments of the gun-metalmatch safe which were lying all about, each a worn-down, twisted wisp ofmetal. The spring of the eyeglasses had been confiscated long ago andthe broken crystals powdered the earth where Mr. Trimm's toes hadscraped a smooth patch. The nails of the two little fingers were worn tothe quick and splintered down into the raw flesh. There were countlesstiny scratches and mars on the locks of the handcuffs, and the steelwristbands were dulled with blood smears and pale-red tarnishes of newrust; but otherwise they were as stanch and strong a pair of Bean'sLatest Model Little Giant handcuffs as you'd find in any hardware storeanywhere.
The devilish, stupid malignity of the damned things! With an acid oathMr. Trimm raised his hands and brought them down on the log violently.There was a double click and the bonds tightened painfully, pressing thechafed red skin white. Mr. Trimm snatched up his hands close to hisnear-sighted eyes and looked. One of the little notches on the underside of each cuff had disappeared. It was as if they were living thingsthat had turned and bitten him for the blow he gave them.
* * * * *
From the time the sun went down there was a tingle of frost in the air.Mr. Trimm didn't sleep much. Under the squeeze of the tightened fettershis wrists throbbed steadily and racking cramps ran through his arms.His stomach felt as though it were tied into knots. The water that hedrank from the branch only made his hunger sickness worse. Hisundergarments, that had been wet with perspiration, clung to himclammily. His middle-aged, tenderly-cared-for body called through everypore for clean linen and soap and water and rest, as his empty insidescalled for food.
After a while he became so chilled that the demand for warmth conqueredhis instinct for caution. He felt about him in the darkness, gatheringscraps of dead wood, and, after breaking several of the matches that hadbeen in the gun-metal match safe, he managed to strike one and with itstiny flame started a fire. He huddled almost over the fire, coughingwhen the smoke blew into his face and twisting and pulling at his armsin an effort to get relief from the everlasting cramps. It seemed to himthat if he could only get an inch or two more of play for his hands hewould be ever so much more comfortable. But he couldn't, of course.
He dozed, finally, sitting crosslegged with his head sunk between hishunched shoulders. A pain in a new place woke him. The fire had burnedalmost through the thin sole of his right shoe, and as he scrambled tohis feet and stamped, the clap of the hot leather flat against hisblistered foot almost made him cry out.
* * * * *
Soon after sunrise a boy came riding a horse down a faintly tracedfootpath along the creek, driving a cow with a bell on her neck ahead ofhim. Mr
. Trimm's ears caught the sound of the clanking bell beforeeither the cow or her herder was in sight, and he limped away, running,skulking through the thick cover. A pendent loop of a wild grapevine,swinging low, caught his hat and flipped it off his head; but Mr. Trimm,imagining pursuit, did not stop to pick it up and went on bareheadeduntil he had to stop from exhaustion. He saw some dark-red berries on ashrub upon which he had trod, and, stooping, he plucked some of themwith his two hands and put three or four in his mouth experimentally.Warned instantly by the acrid, burning taste, he spat the crushedberries out and went on doggedly, following, according to his bestjudgment, a course parallel to the railroad. It was characteristic ofhim, a city-raised man, that he took no heed of distances nor of thedistinguishing marks of the timber.
Behind a log at the edge of a small clearing in the woods he halted somelittle time, watching and listening. The clearing had grown up in sumacsand weeds and small saplings and it seemed deserted; certainly it wasstill. Near the center of it rose the sagging roof of what had been ashack or a shed of some sort. Stooping cautiously, to keep his bare headbelow the tops of the sumacs, Mr. Trimm made for the ruined shanty andgained it safely. In the midst of the rotted, punky logs that had onceformed the walls he began scraping with his feet. Presently he uncoveredsomething. It was a broken-off harrow tooth, scaled like a long, redfish with the crusted rust of years.
Mr. Trimm rested the lower rims of his handcuffs on the edge of an old,broken watering trough, worked the pointed end of the rust-crustedharrow tooth into the flat middle link of the chain as far as it wouldgo, and then with one hand on top of the other he pressed downward withall his might. The pain in his wrists made him stop this at once. Thelink had not sprung or given in the least, but the twisting pressurehad almost broken his wrist bones. He let the harrow tooth fall, knowingthat it would never serve as a lever to free him--which, indeed, he hadknown all along--and sat on the side of the trough, rubbing his wristsand thinking.
He had another idea. It came into his mind as a vague suggestion thatfire had certain effects upon certain metals. He kindled a fire of bitsof the rotted wood, and when the flames ran together and rose slenderand straight in a single red thread he thrust the chain into it, holdinghis hands as far apart as possible in the attitude of a player about tocatch a bounced ball. But immediately the pain of that grew unendurabletoo, and he leaped back, jerking his hands away. He had succeeded onlyin blackening the steel and putting a big water blister on one of hiswrists right where the shackle bolt would press upon it.
Where he huddled down in the shelter of one of the fallen walls henoticed, presently, a strand of rusted fence wire still held tohalf-tottering posts by a pair of blackened staples; it was part of apen that had been used once for chickens or swine. Mr. Trimm tried thewire with his fingers. It was firm and springy. Rocking and groaningwith the pain of it, he nevertheless began sliding the chain back andforth, back and forth along the strand of wire.
Eventually the wire, weakened by age, snapped in two. A tiny shinedspot, hardly deep enough to be called a nick, in its tarnished, smudgedsurface was all the mark that the chain showed.
Staggering a little and putting his feet down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm leftthe clearing, heading as well as he could tell eastward, away from therailroad. After a mile or two he came to a dusty wood road windingdownhill.
To the north of the clearing where Mr. Trimm had halted were a farm anda group of farm buildings. To the southward a mile or so was a clusterof dwellings set in the midst of more farm lands, with a shop or two anda small white church with a green spire in the center. Along a road thatran northward from the hamlet to the solitary farm a ten-year-old boycame, carrying a covered tin pail. A young gray squirrel flirted acrossthe wagon ruts ahead of him and darted up a chestnut sapling. The boyput the pail down at the side of the road and began looking for a stoneto throw at the squirrel.
Mr. Trimm slid out from behind a tree. A hemstitched handkerchief,grimed and stained, was loosely twisted around his wrists, partly hidingthe handcuffs. He moved along with a queer, sliding gait, keeping asmuch of his body as he could turned from the youngster. The ears of thelittle chap caught the faint scuffle of feet and he spun around on hisbare heel.
"My boy, would you----" Mr. Trimm began.
The boy's round eyes widened at the apparition that was sidling towardhim in so strange a fashion, and then, taking fright, he dodged past Mr.Trimm and ran back the way he had come, as fast as his slim brown legscould take him. In half a minute he was out of sight round a bend.
Had the boy looked back he would have seen a still more curiousspectacle than the one that had frightened him. He would have seen a manworth four million dollars down on his knees in the yellow dust, pawingwith chained hands at the tight-fitting lid of the tin pail, and then,when he had got the lid off, drinking the fresh, warm milk which thepail held with great, choking gulps, uttering little mewing, animalsounds as he drank, while the white, creamy milk ran over his chin andsplashed down his breast in little, spurting streams.
But the boy didn't look back. He ran all the way home and told hismother he had seen a wild man on the road to the village; and later,when his father came in from the fields, he was soundly thrashed forletting the sight of a tramp make him lose a good tin bucket and half agallon of milk worth six cents a quart.
* * * * *
The rich, fresh milk put life into Mr. Trimm. He rested the better forit during the early part of that night in a haw thicket. Only thesharp, darting pains in his wrists kept rousing him to temporarywakefulness. In one of those intervals of waking the plan that had beensketchily forming in his mind from the time he had quit the clearing inthe woods took on a definite, fixed shape. But how was he with safety toget the sort of aid he needed, and where?
Canvassing tentative plans in his head, he dozed off again.
* * * * *
On a smooth patch of turf behind the blacksmith shop three yokels werelanguidly pitching horseshoes--"quaits" they called them--at a stakedriven in the earth. Just beyond, the woods shredded out into a long,yellow and green peninsula which stretched up almost to the back door ofthe smithy, so that late of afternoons the slanting shadows of thenear-most trees fell on its roof of warped shingles. At the extreme endof this point of woods Mr. Trimm was squatted behind a big boulder,squinting warily through a thick-fringed curtain of ripened goldenrodtops and sumacs, heavy-headed with their dark-red tapers. He had beenthere more than an hour, cautiously waiting his chance to hail theblacksmith, whose figure he could make out in the smoky interior of hisshop, passing back and forth in front of a smudgy forge fire andrattling metal against metal in intermittent fits of professionalactivity.
From where Mr. Trimm watched to where the horseshoe-pitching game wenton was not more than sixty feet. He could hear what the players said andeven see the little puffs of dust rise when one of them clapped hishands together after a pitch. He judged by the signs of slackeninginterest that they would be stopping soon and, he hoped, going clearaway.
But the smith loafed out of his shop and, after an exchange of bucolicbanter with the three of them, he took a hand in their game himself. Hewore no coat or waistcoat and, as he poised a horseshoe for his firstcast at the stake, Mr. Trimm saw, pinned flat against the broad strap ofhis suspenders, a shiny, silvery-looking disk. Having pitched the shoe,the smith moved over into the shade, so that he almost touched the clumpof undergrowth that half buried Mr. Trimm's protecting boulder. Thenear-sighted eyes of the fugitive banker could make out then what theflat, silvery disk was, and Mr. Trimm cowered low in his covert behindthe rock, holding his hands down between his knees, fearful that a gleamfrom his burnished wristlets might strike through the screen of weedgrowth and catch the inquiring eye of the smith. So he stayed, notdaring to move, until a dinner horn sounded somewhere in the cluster ofcottages beyond, and the smith, closing the doors of his shop, went awaywith the three yokels.
Then Mr. Trimm, s
tooping low, stole back into the deep woods again. Inhis extremity he was ready to risk making a bid for the hire of ablacksmith's aid to rid himself of his bonds, but not a blacksmith whowore a deputy sheriff's badge pinned to his suspenders.
* * * * *
He caught himself scraping his wrists up and down again against therough, scrofulous trunk of a shellbark hickory. The irritation wascomforting to the swollen skin. The cuffs, which kept catching on thebark and snagging small fragments of it loose, seemed to Mr. Trimm tohave been a part and parcel of him for a long time--almost as long atime as he could remember. But the hands which they clasped so closeseemed like the hands of somebody else. There was a numbness about themthat made them feel as though they were a stranger's hands which neverhad belonged to him. As he looked at them with a sort of vague curiositythey seemed to swell and grow, these two strange, fettered hands, untilthey measured yards across, while the steel bands shrunk to the thinnessof piano wire, cutting deeper and deeper into the flesh. Then the handsin turn began to shrink down and the cuffs to grow up into great, thickthings as cumbersome as the couplings of a freight car. A voice that Mr.Trimm dimly recognized as his own was saying something about fourmillion dollars over and over again.
Mr. Trimm roused up and shook his head angrily to clear it. He rubbedhis eyes free of the clouding delusion. It wouldn't do for him to begetting light-headed.
* * * * *
On a flat, shelving bluff, forty feet above a cut through which therailroad ran at a point about five miles north of where the collisionhad occurred, a tramp was busy, just before sundown, cooking somethingin an old washboiler that perched precariously on a fire of wood coals.This tramp was tall and spindle-legged, with reddish hair and a pale,beardless, freckled face with no chin to it and not much forehead, sothat it ran out to a peak like the profile of some featherless,unpleasant sort of fowl. The skirts of an old, ragged overcoat dangledgrotesquely about his spare shanks.
Desperate as his plight had become, Mr. Trimm felt the old sick shame atthe prospect of exposing himself to this knavish-looking vagabond whosehelp he meant to buy with a bribe. It was the sight of a dainty wisp ofsmoke from the wood fire curling upward through the cloudy, damp airthat had brought him limping cautiously across the right-of-way, toclimb the rocky shelf along the cut; but now he hesitated, shielded inthe shadows twenty yards away. It was a whiff of something savory in thewashboiler, borne to him on the still air and almost making him cry outwith eagerness, that drew him forth finally. At the sound of thehalting footsteps the tramp stopped stirring the mess in the washboilerand glanced up apprehensively. As he took in the figure of the newcomerhis eyes narrowed and his pasty, nasty face spread in a grin ofcomprehension.
"Well, well, well," he said, leering offensively, "welcome to our city,little stranger."
Mr. Trimm came nearer, dragging his feet, for they were almost out ofthe wrecks of his patent-leather shoes. His gaze shifted from thetramp's face to the stuff on the fire, his nostrils wrinkling. Thenslowly: "I'm in trouble," he said, and held out his hands.
"Wot I'd call a mild way o' puttin' it," said the tramp coolly. "Thatpurticular kind o' joolry ain't gen'lly wore for pleasure."
His eyes took on a nervous squint and roved past Mr. Trimm's stoopedfigure down the slope of the hillock.
"Say, pal, how fur ahead are you of yore keeper?" he demanded, hismanner changing.
"There is no one after me--no one that I know of," explained Mr. Trimm."I am quite alone--I am certain of it."
"Sure there ain't nobody lookin' fur you?" the other persistedsuspiciously.
"I tell you I am all alone," protested Mr. Trimm. "I want your help ingetting these--these things off and sending a message to a friend.You'll be well paid, very well paid. I can pay you more money than youever had in your life, probably, for your help. I can promise----"
He broke off, for the tramp, as if reassured by his words, had stoopedagain to his cooking and was stirring the bubbling contents of thewashboiler with a peeled stick. The smell of the stew, rising strongly,filled Mr. Trimm with such a sharp and an aching hunger that he couldnot speak for a moment. He mastered himself, but the effort left himshaking and gulping.
"Go on, then, an' tell us somethin' about yourself," said the freckledman. "Wot brings you roamin' round this here railroad cut with thembracelets on?"
"I was in the wreck," obeyed Mr. Trimm. "The man with me--theofficer--was killed. I wasn't hurt and I got away into these woods. Butthey think I'm dead too--my name was among the list of dead."
The other's peaky face lengthened in astonishment.
"Why, say," he began, "I read all about that there wreck--seen the listmyself--say, you can't be Trimm, the New York banker? Yes, you are! Wota streak of luck! Lemme look at you! Trimm, the swell financeer,sportin' 'round with the darbies on him all nice an' snug an' reg'lar!Mister Trimm--well, if this ain't rich!"
"My name is Trimm," said the starving banker miserably. "I've beenwandering about here a great many hours--several days, I think it mustbe--and I need rest and food very much indeed. I don't--don't feel verywell," he added, his voice trailing off.
At this his self-control gave way again and he began to quake violentlyas if with an ague. The smell of the cooking overcame him.
"You don't look so well an' that's a fact, Trimm," sneered the tramp,resuming his malicious, mocking air. "But set down an' make yourself athome, an' after a while, when this is done, we'll have a bitetogether--you an' me. It'll be a reg'lar tea party fur jest us two."
He broke off to chuckle. His mirth made him appear even more repulsivethan before.
"But looky here, you wus sayin' somethin' about money," he saidsuddenly. "Le's take a look at all this here money."
He came over to him and went through Mr. Trimm's pockets. Mr. Trimm saidnothing and stood quietly, making no resistance. The tramp finished aworkmanlike search of the banker's pockets. He looked at the result asit lay in his grimy palm--a moist little wad of bills and somechicken-feed change--and spat disgustedly with a nasty oath.
"Well, Trimm," he said, "fur a Wall Street guy seems to me you travelpurty light. About how much did you think you'd get done fur all thispile of wealth?"
"You will be well paid," said Mr. Trimm, arguing hard; "my friend willsee to that. What I want you to do is to take the money you have therein your hand and buy a cold chisel or a file--any tools that will cutthese things off me. And then you will send a telegram to a certaingentleman in New York. And let me stay with you until we get ananswer--until he comes here. He will pay you well; I promise it."
He halted, his eyes and his mind again on the bubbling stuff in therusted washboiler. The freckled vagrant studied him through hisred-lidded eyes, kicking some loose embers back into the fire with histoe.
"I've heard a lot about you one way an' another, Trimm," he said."'Tain't as if you wuz some pore down-an'-out devil tryin' to beat thecops out of doin' his bit in stir. You're the way-up, high-an'-mightykind of crook. An' from wot I've read an' heard about you, you nevertoted fair with nobody yet. There wuz that young feller, wot's hisname?--the cashier--him that wuz tried with you. He went along with youin yore games an' done yore work fur you an' you let him go over theroad to the same place you're tryin' to dodge now. Besides," he addedcunningly, "you come here talkin' mighty big about money, yet I noticeyou ain't carryin' much of it in yore clothes. All I've had to go by isyore word. An' yore word ain't worth much, by all accounts."
"I tell you, man, that you'll profit richly," burst out Mr. Trimm, thewords falling over each other in his new panic. "You must help me; I'veendured too much--I've gone through too much to give up now." He pleadedfast, his hands shaking in a quiver of fear and eagerness as hestretched them out in entreaty and his linked chain shaking with them.Promises, pledges, commands, orders, arguments poured from him. Histormentor checked him with a gesture.
"You're wot I'd call a bird in the hand," he chuckled, hugging his
slackframe, "an' it ain't fur you to be givin' orders--it's fur me. An',anyway, I guess we ain't a-goin' to be able to make a trade--leastwisenot on yore terms. But we'll do business all right, all right--anyhow, Iwill."
"What do you mean?" panted Mr. Trimm, full of terror. "You'll help me?"
"I mean this," said the tramp slowly. He put his hands under hisloose-hanging overcoat and began to fumble at a leather strap about hiswaist. "If I turn you over to the Government I know wot you'll be worth,purty near, by guessin' at the reward; an' besides, it'll maybe help tosquare me up fur one or two little matters. If I turn you loose I ain'tgot nothin' only your word--an' I've got an idea how much faith I kinput in that."
Mr. Trimm glanced about him wildly. There was no escape. He was fast ina trap which he himself had sprung. The thought of being led to jail,all foul of body and fettered as he was, by this filthy, smirking wretchmade him crazy. He stumbled backward with some insane idea of runningaway.
"No hurry, no hurry a-tall," gloated the tramp, enjoying the torture ofthis helpless captive who had walked into his hands. "I ain't goin' tohurt you none--only make sure that you don't wander off an' hurtyourself while I'm gone. Won't do to let you be damagin' yoreself;you're valuable property. Trimm, now, I'll tell you wot we'll do! We'lljust back you up agin one of these trees an' then we'll jest slip thishere belt through yore elbows an' buckle it around behind at the back;an' I kinder guess you'll stay right there till I go down yonder to thatstation that I passed comin' up here an' see wot kind of a bargain I kinstrike up with the marshal. Come on, now," he threatened with a show ofbluster, reading the resolution that was mounting in Mr. Trimm's face."Come on peaceable, if you don't want to git hurt."
Of a sudden Mr. Trimm became the primitive man. He was filled with thoseelemental emotions that make a man see in spatters of crimson. Gatheringstrength from passion out of an exhausted frame, he sprang forward atthe tramp. He struck at him with his head, his shoulders, his knees, hismanacled wrists, all at once. Not really hurt by the puny assault, butcaught by surprise, the freckled man staggered back, clawing at the air,tripped on the washboiler in the fire, and with a yell vanished belowthe smooth edge of the cut.
Mr. Trimm stole forward and looked over the bluff. Half-way down thecliff on an outcropping shelf of rock the man lay, face downward,motionless. He seemed to have grown smaller and to have shrunk into hisclothes. One long, thin leg was bent up under the skirts of the overcoatin a queer, twisted way, and the cloth of the trouser leg lookedflattened and empty. As Mr. Trimm peered down at him he saw a red stainspreading on the rock under the still, silent figure's head.
Mr. Trimm turned to the washboiler. It lay on its side, empty, the lastof its recent contents sputtering out into the half-drowned fire. Hestared at this ruin a minute. Then without another look over the cliffedge he stumbled slowly down the hill, muttering to himself as he went.Just as he struck the level it began to rain, gently at first, thenhard, and despite the shelter of the full-leaved forest trees, he wassoon wet through to his skin and dripped water as he lurched alongwithout sense of direction or, indeed, without any active realization ofwhat he was doing.
* * * * *
Late that night it was still raining--a cold, steady, autumnal downpour.A huddled figure slowly climbed upon a low fence running about thehouse-yard of the little farm where the boy lived who got thrashed forlosing a milkpail. On the wet top rail, precariously perching, thefigure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up,painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. Hemoved slowly toward the house, tottering with weakness and because ofthe slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way and thatthrough the murk; starting at every sound and stopping often to listen.
The outlines of a lean-to kitchen at the back of the house were loomingdead ahead of him when from the corner of the cottage sprang a smallterrier. It made for Mr. Trimm, barking shrilly. He retreated backward,kicking at the little dog and, to hold his balance, striking out withshort, dabby jerks of his fettered hands--they were such motions as theterrier itself might make trying to walk on its hindlegs. Still backingaway, expecting every instant to feel the terrier's teeth in his flesh,Mr. Trimm put one foot into a hotbed with a great clatter of thebreaking glass. He felt the sharp ends of shattered glass tearing andcutting his shin as he jerked free. Recovering himself, he dealt theterrier a lucky kick under the throat that sent it back, yowling, towhere it had come from, and then, as a door jerked open and ahalf-dressed man jumped out into the darkness, Mr. Trimm half hobbled,half fell out of sight behind the woodpile.
Back and forth along the lower edge of his yard the farmer hunted, withthe whimpering, cowed terrier to guide him, poking in dark corners withthe muzzle of his shotgun for the unseen intruder whose coming hadaroused the household. In a brushpile just over the fence to the eastMr. Trimm lay on his face upon the wet earth, with the rain beating downon him, sobbing with choking gulps that wrenched him cruelly, biting atthe bonds on his wrists until the sound of breaking teeth gritted in theair. Finally, in the hopeless, helpless frenzy of his agony he beat hisarms up and down until the bracelets struck squarely on a flat stone andthe force of the blow sent the cuffs home to the last notch so that theypressed harder and faster than ever upon the tortured wrist bones.
When he had wasted ten or fifteen minutes in a vain search the farmerwent shivering back indoors to dry out his wet shirt. But the grovelingfigure in the brushpile lay for a long time where it was, only stirringa little while the rain dripped steadily down on everything.
* * * * *
The wreck was on a Tuesday evening. Early on the Saturday morningfollowing the chief of police, who was likewise the whole of the daypolice force in the town of Westfield, nine miles from the place wherethe collision occurred, heard a peculiar, strangely weak knocking atthe front door of his cottage, where he also had his office. The doorwas a Dutch door, sawed through the middle, so that the top half mightbe opened independently, leaving the lower panel fast. He swung this tophalf back.
A face was framed in the opening--an indescribably dirty, unutterablyweary face, with matted white hair and a rime of whitish beard stubbleon the jaws. It was fallen in and sunken and it drooped on the chest ofits owner. The mouth, swollen and pulpy, as if from repeated hard blows,hung agape, and between the purplish parted lips showed the stumps ofbroken teeth. The eyes blinked weakly at the chief from under lids ascolorless as the eyelids of a corpse. The bare white head was filthywith plastered mud and twigs, and dripping wet.
"Hello, there!" said the chief, startled at this apparition. "What doyou want?"
With a movement that told of straining effort the lolled head came upoff the chest. The thin, corded neck stiffened back, rising from adirty, collarless neckband. The Adam's apple bulged out prominently, asbig as a pigeon's egg.
"I have come," said the specter in a wheezing rasp of a voice which thechief could hardly hear--"I have come to surrender myself. I am HobartW. Trimm."
"I guess you got another thing comin'," said the chief, who was by wayof being a neighborhood wag. "When last seen Hobart W. Trimm was onlyfifty-two years old. Besides which, he's dead and buried. I guess maybeyou'd better think agin, grandpap, and see if you ain't Methus'lah orthe Wanderin' Jew."
"I am Hobart W. Trimm, the banker," whispered the stranger with a sortof wan stubbornness.
"Go on and prove it," suggested the chief, more than willing to prolongthe enjoyment of the sensation. It wasn't often in Westfield thatwandering lunatics came a-calling.
"Got any way to prove it?" he repeated as the visitor stared at him.
"Yes," came the creaking, rusted hinge of a voice, "I have."
Slowly, with struggling attempts, he raised his hands into the chief'ssight. They were horribly swollen hands, red with the dried blood wherethey were not black with the dried dirt; the fingers puffed up out ofshape; the nails broken; they were like the skinned paws of a bear. Andat t
he wrists, almost buried in the bloated folds of flesh, blackened,rusted, battered, yet still strong and whole, was a tightly-locked pairof Bean's Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs.
"Great God!" cried the chief, transfixed at the sight. He drew the boltand jerked open the lower half of the door.
"Come in," he said, "and lemme get them irons off of you--they must hurtsomething terrible."
"They can wait," said Mr. Trimm very feebly, very slowly and veryhumbly. "I have worn them a long, long while--I am used to them.Wouldn't you please get me some food first?"
The Escape of Mr. Trimm Page 1