CHAPTER XXVII
THE STRAITS OF CHANCE
How his flight ended Durkin never clearly remembered. He had a dim anduneasy memory of the lapse of time, either great or little, theconfused recollection of waking to his senses and fighting his way freefrom a smothering weight of wet and clinging clothes. As he struggledto his feet a stab of pain shot through his left hand, and up throughhis forearm. It was so keen and penetrating that he surmised, in hisblank and unreasoning haste, that he must have torn a chord or broken abone in his wrist. But on a matter like that, he felt, he could nowwaste no time.
If he had, indeed, been unconscious, he concluded, it had been butmomentary. For as he groped about in search of his hat, dazed andbruised, he found himself still alone and unmolested. Creeping throughthe apartment-house cellar, and out past the door of the snoring andstill undisturbed janitor, he crouched for a waiting moment or twobehind an overloaded garbage-can, in the area.
Hearing nothing, he staggered up the narrow stairs to the level of thesidewalk, wet and ragged and disheveled, blackened and soiled andbegrimed. The street seemed deserted.
He felt sick and faint and shaken, but he would not give up. Hehalf-stumbled, half-staggered along, splashing through little pools ofrain held in depressions of the stone sidewalk, supporting himself onanything that offered, hoping, if this were indeed the end, that hemight crawl away into some dark and secluded corner of the city, tohide the humiliating ignominy of it all.
In front of a Chinese laundry window he saw that he could go nofurther. His first impulse was to creep inside, and make an effort tobribe his way to secrecy, although he knew that within another quarterof an hour the tightening cordon of the police would entirely surroundthe block.
As he swayed there, hesitating, he heard the thunder of hoofs and therumble of wheel-tires on the soggy asphalt. His first apprehensivethought was that it would prove to be a patrol-wagon, with policereserves from some neighboring precinct. But as he blinked through thedarkness he made out a high-platformed Metropolitan Milk Company'sdelivery-wagon swinging down toward him.
He staggered, with a slow and heavy wading motion, out to the centre ofthe street, a strange and spectral figure, with outstretched arms,uttering a sharp and halting cry or two.
The driver pulled up, thirty long and dreary feet past him.
"What in hell d'you want?" he demanded irately, raising his whip tostart his team once more, as he caught a clearer view of the seeminglydrunken figure.
"I'll give you a fiver," said Durkin thickly, "if you'll gi' me a lift!"
He held the money in his hand, as he stumbled and panted to thewagon-step. That put an end to all argument.
"Climb in, then--quick!" cried the big driver, as he caught hispassenger by a tattered coat sleeve and helped him up into thehigh-perched seat.
"But for the love o' God, who's been doin' things to you?" he went on,in amazement, as he saw the bruised and bleeding and ash-colored face.
"They threw me out o' their damned dope shop!" cried Durkin, with anonly half-simulated thickness of utterance, as he jerked a shakingthumb toward the lights of the Chinese laundry. "And I guess--I'm--I'ma bit knocked out!"
For he felt very weak and faint and weary, though the cold rain and theopen night air beat on his upturned face with a sting that wasgratefully refreshing.
"They certainly did make a mess o' you!" chortled the unmoved driver,as they rumbled westward and took the corner with a skid of the greatwheels that struck fire from even the wet car-tracks. He tucked thebill down in his oil-coat pocket.
"Feelin' sick, ain't you?"
"Yes!"
"Where d'you want to go?" he asked more feelingly.
"Where d'you go?" parried Durkin.
"Hoboken Ferry, for th' Lackawanna Number Eight!"
"Then that'll do me," answered the other weakly.
He leaned back in his high and rocking seat, grasping the back railwith his right hand. He felt as if the waves of a troubled andtumultuous sea were throwing him up, broken and torn, on some island ofpossible safety. He felt dizzy, as though he were being tossed andplunged forward to some narrow bar of impending release and rest. Hedid not ask of himself just what seas boomed and thundered on theopposing side of that narrow stretch of promised security. He knewthat they were there, and he knew that the time would soon come when hemust face and feel them about him. He had once demanded rest; but heknew that there now could be no rest for him, until the end. He mighthide for a day or two, like a hunted animal with its hurt, but thehounds of destiny would soon be at his heels again. All he asked, hetold himself, was his man's due right of momentary relapse, hisbreathing spell of quietness. He was already too stained and scarredwith life to look for the staidly upholstered sanctuaries, the paddedseclusions of simple and honest wayfarers. He was broken and undone,but his day would come again.
He looked at his limp and trailing left hand. To his consternation, hesaw that it dripped blood. He tried to push back his coat sleeve, butthe pain was more than he could endure. So with his right hand helifted the helpless arm up before his eyes, as though it were somethingnot his own flesh and blood, and for the first time saw the splinter ofbone that protruded from the torn flesh, just below the wrist-joint.
He felt for his handkerchief, dizzily, and tried to bandage the wound.This he never accomplished, for with a sudden little gasp he faintedaway, and fell prone across the oil-skinned lap of the big driver.
That astounded person drew up in alarm at the side entrance of astreet-corner saloon. He was on the point of repeating his sturdy callfor help, when a four-wheeler swung in beside his wagon-step, anddelivered itself of a square-shouldered, heavy-jawed figure, muffled tothe ears in a rain-coat. The newcomer took in the situation with arapid and comprehensive glance of relief.
"So there he is, at last!" he said, as he came forward and caught upthe relaxed and still unconscious figure.
"Where'd you get a license for buttin' in on this?" expostulated thesurprised driver.
"Buttin' in?" cried the man in the raincoat, as he lifted the limpfigure in his great, gorilla-like arms. "This isn't buttin' in--thisis takin' care o' my own friends!"
"Friend o' yours, then, is he?" queried the weakening driver.
"A friend o' mine!" cried the other angrily, for his man was alreadysafely in the cab. "You damned can-slinger, d'you suppose I'm wastin'cab-fare doin' church rescue work? Of course he's a friend o' mine.
"And not only that," he added, under his breath, as he swung up intothe cab and gave the driver the number of Penfield's uptown house, "andnot only that--he's a friend o' mine who's worth just a little over aquarter of a million to me!"
Phantom Wires: A Novel Page 27