Gladiator

by Wylie, Philip;

  No one had given Hugo any attention. He stood quietly in the background. The expert worked and all eyes were on him. Occasionally he muttered to himself. The hands of an electric clock moved along in audible jerks. Nearly an hour passed and the room had become hazy with tobacco smoke. The man working on the safe was moist with perspiration. His blue shirt was a darker blue around the armpits. He lit a cigarette, set it down, whirled the dials again, lit another cigarette while the first one burned a chair arm, and threw a crumpled, empty package on the floor.

  At last he went to the phone again. He waited for some time before it was answered, and he was compelled to make the man inside repeat frequently. The new series of stratagems was without result. Before he went again to his labors, he addressed the group. “Air getting pretty bad, I guess.”

  “Is it dark?” one of them asked tremulously. “No.”

  Fifteen minutes more. The expert glanced at the bank’s president, hesitated, struggled frenziedly for a while, and then sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t get him out, sir. The combination is jammed and the time-clock is all off.”

  The president considered. “Do you know of any one else who could do this?”

  The man shook his head. “No. I’m supposed to be the best. I’ve been called out for this—maybe six times. I never missed before. You see, we make this safe—or we used to make it. And I’m a specialist. It looks serious.”

  The president took his cigar from his mouth. “Well, go ahead anyway—until it’s too late.”

  Hugo stepped away from the wall. “I think I can get him out.”

  They turned toward him. The president looked at him coldly. “And who are you?”

  Mrs. Robinson answered. “He’s the new man Mr. Shayne recommended so highly.”

  “Ah. And how do you propose to get him out, young man?” Hugo stood pensively for a moment. “By methods known only to me. I am certain I can do it—but I will undertake it only if you will all leave the room.”

  “Ridiculous!” Mrs. Robinson said.

  The president’s mouth worked. He looked more sharply at Hugo. Then he rose. “Come on, everybody.” He spoke quietly to Hugo. “You have a nerve. How much time do you want?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Only five minutes,” the president murmured as he walked from the chamber.

  Hugo did not move until they had all gone. Then he locked the door behind them. He walked to the safe and rapped on it tentatively with his knuckles. He removed his coat and vest. He planted his feet against the steel sill under the door. He caught hold of the two handles, fidgeted with his elbows, drew a deep breath, and pulled. There was a resonant, metallic sound. Something gave. The edge of the seven-foot door moved outward and a miasma steamed through the aperture. Hugo changed his stance and took the door itself in his hands. His back bent. He pulled again. With a reverberating clang and a falling of broken steel it swung out. Hugo dragged the man who lay on the floor to a window that gave on a grated pit. He broke the glass with his fist. The clerk’s chest heaved violently; he panted, opened his eyes, and closed them tremblingly.

  Hugo put on his coat and vest and unlocked the door. The people outside all moved toward him.

  “It’s all right,” Hugo said. “He’s out.”

  Mrs. Robinson glanced at the clerk and walked to the safe. “He’s ruined it!” she said in a shrill voice.

  The president was behind her. He looked at the handles of the vault, which had been bent like hairpins, and he stooped to examine the shattered bolts. Then his eyes traveled to Hugo. There was a profoundly startled expression in them.

  The clerk was sobbing. Presently he stopped. “Who got me out?”

  They indicated Hugo and he crossed the floor on tottering feet.

  “Thanks, mister,” he said piteously. “Oh, my God, what a wonderful thing to do! I—I just passed out when I saw your fingers reaching around—”

  “Never mind,” Hugo interrupted. “It’s all right, buddy.” The president touched his shoulder. “Come up to my office.”

  A doctor arrived. Several people left. Others stood around the demolished door.

  The president was alone when Hugo entered and sat down.

  He was cold and he eyed Hugo coldly. “How did you do that?”

  Hugo shrugged. “That’s my secret, Mr. Mills.”

  “Pretty clever, I’d say.”

  “Not when you know how.” Hugo was puzzled. His ancient reticence about himself was acting together with a natural modesty.

  “Some new explosive?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Electricity? Magnetism? Thought-waves?”

  Hugo chuckled. “No. All wrong.”

  “Could you do it on a modern safe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  President Mills rubbed his fingers on the mahogany desk. “I presume you were planning that for other purposes?”

  “What!” Hugo said.

  “Very well done. Very well acted. I will play up to you, Mr.—”

  “Danner.”

  “Danner. I’ll play up to this assumption of innocence. You have saved a man’s life. You are, of course, blushingly modest. But you have shown your hand rather clearly. Hmmm.” He smiled sardonically. “I read a book about a safe-cracker who opened a safe to get a child out—at the expense of his liberty and position—or at the hazard of them, anyhow. Maybe you have read the same book.”

  “Maybe,” Hugo answered icily.

  “Safe-crackers-blasters, light fingers educated to the dials, and ears attuned to the tumblers-we can cope with those things, Mr.—”

  “Danner.”

  “But this new stunt of yours. Well, until we find out what it is, we can’t let you go. This is business, Mr. Danner. It involves money, millions, the security of American finance, of the very nation. You will understand. Society cannot afford to permit a man like you to go at large until it has a thoroughly effective defense against you. Society must disregard your momentary sacrifice, momentary nobleness. Your process, unknown by us, constitutes a great social danger. I do not dare overlook it. I cannot disregard it even after the service you have done-even if I thought you never intended to put it to malicious use.”

  Hugo’s thoughts were far away-to the fort he had built when he was a child in Colorado, to the wagon he had lifted up, to the long, discouraging gauntlet of hard hearts and frightened eyes that his miracles had met with. His voice was wistful when, at last, he addressed the banker. “What do you propose to do?”

  “I shan’t bandy words, Danner. I propose to hang on to you until I get that secret. And I shall be absolutely without mercy. That is frank, is it not?”

  “Quite.”

  “You comprehend the significance of the third degree?”

  “Not clearly.”

  “You will learn about it—unless you are reasonable.” Hugo bowed sadly. The president pressed a button. Two policemen came into the room. “McClaren has my instructions,” he said.

  “Come on.” Hugo rose and stood between them. He realized that the whole pantomime of his arrest was in earnest. For one brief instant the president was given a glimpse of a smile, a smile that worried him for a long time. He was so worried that he called McClaren on the telephone and added to his already abundant instructions.

  A handful of bystanders collected to watch Hugo cross from the bank to the steel patrol wagon. It moved forward and its bell sounded. The policemen had searched Hugo and now they sat dumbly beside him. He was handcuffed to both of them. Once he looked down at the nickel bonds and up at the dull faces. His eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch.

  Captain McClaren received Hugo in a bare room shadowed by bars. He was a thick-shouldered, red-haired man with a flabby mouth from which protruded a moist and chewed toothpick. His eyes were blue and bland. He made Hugo strip nude and gave him a suit of soiled clothes. Hugo remained alone in that room for thirty hours without food or water. The strain of that ordeal was greater than his jailers could hav
e conceived, but he bore it with absolute stoicism.

  Early in the evening of the second day the lights in the room were put out, a glaring automobile lamp was set up on a table, he was seated in front of it, and men behind the table began to question him in voices that strove to be terrible. They asked several questions and ultimately boiled them down to one: “How did you get that safe open?” which was bawled at him and whispered hoarsely at him from the darkness behind the light until his mind rang with the words, until he was waiting frantically for each new issue of the words, until sweat glistened on his brow and he grew weak and nauseated. His head ached splittingly and his heart pounded. They desisted at dawn, gave him a glass of water, which he gulped, and a dose of castor oil, which he allowed them to force into his mouth. A few hours later they began again. It was night before they gave up.

  The remnant of Hugo’s clenched sanity was dumbfounded at what followed after that. They beat his face with fists that shot from the blackness. They threw him to the floor and kicked him. When his skin did not burst and he did not bleed, they beat and kicked more viciously. They lashed him with rubber hoses. They twisted his arms as far as they could—until the bones of an ordinary man would have become dislocated.

  Except for thirst and hunger and the discomfort caused by the castor oil, Hugo did not suffer. They refined their torture slowly. They tried to drive a splinter under his nails; they turned on the lights and drank water copiously in his presence; they finally brought a blowtorch and prepared to brand him. Hugo perceived that his invulnerability was to stand him in stead no longer. His tongue was swollen, but he could still talk. Sitting placidly in his bonds, he watched the soldering iron grow white in the softly roaring flame. When, in the full light that shone on the bare and hideous room, they took up the iron and approached him, Hugo spoke. “Wait. I’ll tell you.”

  McClaren put the iron back. “You will, eh?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, you won’t.”

  “I shan’t tell you, McClaren; I’ll show you. And may God have mercy on your filthy soul.”

  There were six men in the room. Hugo looked from one to another. He could tolerate nothing more; he had followed the course of President Mills’s social theory far enough to be surfeited with it. There was decision in his attitude, and not one of the six men who had worked his torment in relays could have failed to feel the chill of that decision. They stood still. McClaren’s voice rang out: “Cover him, boys.”

  Hugo stretched. His bonds burst; the chair on which he sat splintered to kindling. Six revolvers spat simultaneously. Hugo felt the sting of the bullets. Six chambers were emptied. The room eddied smoke. There was a harsh silence.

  “Now,” Hugo said gently. “I will demonstrate how I opened that safe.’

  “Christ save us,” one of the men whispered, crossing himself.

  McClaren was frozen still. Hugo walked to the wall of the jail and stabbed his fist through it. Brick and mortar burst out on the other side and fell into the cinder yard. Hugo kicked and lashed with his fists. A large hole opened. Then he turned to the men. They broke toward the door, but he caught them one by one—and one by one he knocked them unconscious. That much was for his own soul. Only McClaren was left. He carried McClaren to the hole and dropped him into the yard. He wrenched open the iron gate and walked out on the street, holding the policeman by the arm. McClaren fainted twice and Hugo had to keep him upright by clinging to his collar. It was dark. He hailed a cab and lifted the man in.

  “Just drive out of town,” Hugo said.

  McClaren came to. They bumped along for miles and he did not dare to speak. The apartment buildings thinned. Street lights disappeared. They traversed a stretch of woodland and then rumbled through a small town.

  “Who are you?” McClaren said.

  “I’m just a man, McClaren—a man who is going to teach you a lesson.”

  The taxi was on a smooth turnpike. It made swift time. Twice Hugo satisfied the driver that the direction was all right. At last, on a deserted stretch, Hugo called to the driver to stop. McClaren thought that he was going to die. He did not plead. Hugo still held him by the arm and helped him from the cab.

  “Got any money on you?” Hugo asked. “About twenty dollars.”

  “Give me five.”

  With trembling fingers McClaren produced the bill. He put the remainder of his money back in his pocket automatically. The taxi-driver was watching but Hugo ignored him.

  “McClaren,” he said soberly, “here’s your lesson. I just happen to be the strongest man in the world. Never tell anybody that. And don’t tell any one where I took you to-night—wherever it is. I shan’t be here anyway. If you tell either of those two things, I’ll eat you. Actually. There was a poor devil smothering in that safe and I yanked it open and dragged him out. As a reward you and your dirty scavengers were put to work on me. If I weren’t as merciful as God Himself, you’d all be dead. Now, that’s your lesson. Keep your mouth shut. Here is the final parable.”

  Still holding the policeman’s arm, he walked to the taxi and, to the astonishment of the driver, gripped the axle in one hand, lifted up the front end like a derrick, and turned the entire car around. He put McClaren in the back seat.

  “Don’t forget, McClaren.” To the driver: “Back to where you picked us up. The bird in the back seat will be glad to pay.”

  The red lamp of the cab vanished. Hugo turned in the other direction and began to run in great leaps. He slowed when he came to a town. A light was burning in an all-night restaurant. Hugo produced the five-dollar bill.

  “Give me a bucket of water—and put on about five steaks. Five.”

  Chapter XIX

  IT WAS bright morning when Hugo awoke. Through the window-pane in the room where he had slept, he could see a straggling back yard; damp clothes moved in the breeze, and beyond was a depression green with young shoots. He descended to the restaurant and ate his breakfast. Automobiles were swishing along the road outside and he could hear a clatter of dishes in the kitchen. Afterwards he went out doors and walked through the busy center of the village and on into the country.

  He followed the road into the hills. Long stretches of woodland were interrupted by fields. He passed farmhouses and the paved drive of an estate. More than a mile from the deserted farm, more than two miles from the main road, half hidden in a skirt of venerable trees, he saw an old, green house behind which was a row of barns. It was a big house; tile medallions had been set in its foundations by an architect whose tombstone must now be aslant and illegible. It was built on a variety of planes and angles; gables cropped at random from its mossy roof. Grass grew in the broad yard under the trees, and in the grass were crocuses, yellow and red and blue, like wind-strewn confetti.

  Hugo paused to contemplate this peaceful edifice. A man walked briskly from one of the barn doors. He perceived Hugo and stopped, holding a spade in his hand. Then, after starting across to the house, he changed his mind and, dropping the spade, approached Hugo.

  “Looking for work, my man?”

  Hugo smiled. “Why—yes.”

  “Know anything about cattle?”

  “I was reared in a farming country.”

  “Good.” He scrutinized Hugo minutely. “I’ll try you at eight dollars a week, room and board.” He opened the gate. Hugo paused. The notion of finding employment somewhere in the country had been fixed in his mind and he wondered why he waited, even as he did, when the charm of the old manor had offered itself to him as if by a miracle. The man swung open the gate; he was lithe, sober, direct.

  “My name is Cane—Ralph Cane. We raise blooded Guernsey stock here. At the moment we haven’t a man.”

  “I see,” Hugo said.

  “I could make the eight ten—in a week—if you were satisfactory.”

  “I wasn’t considering the money—”

  “How?”

  “I wasn’t considering the money.”

  “Oh! Come in. Try it.” An eagerness was ap
parent in his tone. While Hugo still halted on a knoll of indecision, a woman opened the French windows which lined one facade of the house and stepped down from the porch. She was very tall and very slender. Her eyes were slaty blue and there was a delicate suggestion—almost an apparition—of gray in her hair.

  “What is it, Ralph?” Her voice was cool and pitched low.

  “This is my wife,” Cane said.

  “My name is Danner.”

  Cane explained. “I saw this man standing by the gate, and now I’m hiring him.”

  “I see,” she said. She looked at Hugo. The crystalline substance of her eyes glinted transiently with some inwardness—surprise, a vanishing gladness, it might have been. “You are looking for work?”

  “Yes,” Hugo answered.

  Cane spoke hastily. “I offered him eight a week and board, Roseanne.”

  She glanced at her husband and returned her attention inquisitively to Hugo. “Are you interested?”

  “I’ll try it.”

  Cane frowned nervously, walked to his wife, and nodded with averted face. Then he addressed Hugo: “You can sleep in the barn. We have quarters there. I don’t think we’ll be in for any more cold weather. If you’ll come with me now, I’ll start you right in.”

  Until noon Hugo cleaned stables. There were two dozen cows—animals that would have seemed beautiful to a rustic connoisseur—and one lordly bull with malignant horns and bloodshot eyes. He shoveled the pungent and not offensive debris into a wheelbarrow and transferred it to a dung-heap that sweated with internal humidity. At noon Cane came into the barn.

  “Pretty good,” he said, viewing floors fairly shaved by Hugo’s diligence. “Lunch is ready. You’ll eat in the kitchen.” Hugo saw the woman again. She was toiling over a stove, her hair in disarray, a spotted apron covering her long body. He realized that they had no servants, that the three of them constituted the human inhabitants of the estate—but there were shades, innumerable shades, of a long past, and some of those ghosts had crept into Roseanne’s slaty eyes. She carried lunch for herself and her husband into a front room and left him to eat in the soft silence.