The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  CHAPTER 28

  Franz Stoessel, who knew himself completely, always freely admitted that he had little imagination beyond the expedient and the practical. Yet even he knew that in that mean and drafty hall, lighted by smoking gas jets, and filled with the odors of sweat, acid, tobacco and beer and unwashed bodies and dirty clothing, he had seen something of tremendous drama and power. He had seen the manifestation of a force that could be terrible and majestic, sublime and affrighting. He had seen the bottomless well from which all glory and terror could be dredged, invincible and resistless.

  He had seen the immense grandeur of which even the lowest man could be capable. He had seen the immortality contained even in the most formless lumps of flesh. This did not seem heroic nor beautiful to him. It had seemed grotesque, and contained a threat to himself. The morality of the strong man is his own power, he believed. When the weak seized upon some dark and mysterious power which was not tangible or material, then the strong were menaced. For the strong built their houses of stone. The lightnings which the weak could invoke by invoking their inherent immortality could devastate the houses of stone, and reduce them to heaps of gravel. Franz, with a flash of insight which was deeper than any imagination he might have possessed, suddenly realized one colossal fact: When the people behold a vision, let tyrants beware.

  He saw that Tom’s crude phrase: “Us or Them,” was only too vividly true. In himself, he believed he belonged to “Them.” Tom’s challenge was directed at him. He dared not let that challenge go unheeded. As he slipped as unobtrusively as possible with John Brent out of the hall, his uneasy anger increased. He was glad of this. Now he could proceed without that vague dark pain which had assailed him in the hall. He was whole again. At the doorway, the two men were joined by Collins, a larger and more competent and ruthless man than Brent. The three consulted briefly, then Brent and Collins hurried quickly down a dark street.

  Jan Kozak, whose slow mind was now a slowly boiling mass of hatred and vengeance, tried to struggle through the crowd to Tom Harrow. But in spite of his brutal thrustings and surgings, he could not reach him. Tom was exhausted. He had made a previous appointment to meet Franz at a certain place. They were to walk home together, and discuss the strike called for tomorrow. By the time Jan Kozak reached the platform by literally beating a pathway through the crowds of excited, shouting and exalted men, Tom Harrow had disappeared.

  The big Hungarian was filled with despair and terror. When friends plucked at his arm to stop him on his way to the door, in order to discuss Tom’s speech with him, he brutally and wildly struck off the friendly hands, shouting incoherently. They could not understand him. Dully angered, they stared after him, muttering, wondering at his large black face and glittering eyes. He reached the doorway, and peered into the street. It was dark and deserted. The flickering gas lamps were haloed in fog and drizzle, the shabby warehouses on each side of the street were blank and faceless. Over the city flickered a dim scarlet mist, like a conflagration. Jan Kozak ran up the street, groaning in despair, sobbing in his deep chest. Tom Harrow and Franz Stoessel were nowhere in sight. He raced down another street. Now he was shouting. A patrolman, thinking he was drunk, tried to stop him. Jan’s fist shot out and the officer rolled impotently into the gutter. Jan stood for an instant under a gaslight, and his face was mad, like that of a jungle beast’s. For over half an hour he raced up one street and down another, and met no one. He had run like this when a boy in his native Hungarian forests, and the same heavy nightmare sensation now overcame him, and put lead into his feet. He sobbed aloud, his large lips blubbering, wet with foam.

  A horse-car passed, rattling and swaying. Jan leapt upon the step, peered distractedly into the kerosene-lighted interior. A few nodding laborers sprawled on the wooden seats. There was no one else. Jan jumped down into the wet gutter, slipped, cracked his head against the curb, and lay unconscious for several moments, the rain dripping down upon him.

  In the meantime, Tom had met Franz at the appointed place. At the sight of his friend, his long haggard face brightened with satisfaction and a touch of happy egotism. He locked his arm in Franz’s, and exclaimed: “A jolly good speech, eh? Wot d’ye think of it, ’Andsome?”

  “Excellent,” replied Franz, with his bland smile that revealed nothing.

  Tom chuckled, turned up the collar of his shabby greatcoat, pulled down his cap. The mood of exultation was strong and intoxicating in him. He hugged Franz’s arm affectionately.

  “I could do with a good cup of tea,” he said. “Dolly’ll be waitin’ for us.” He laughed shortly and excitedly. “Well, lad, it’s the strike tomorrow! I’d like to see their faces!” he added, and now there was a growl in his voice.

  Franz halted briefly. He pretended to be absorbed in sheltering a light for his pipe against the wet chill wind. “Tom,” he said, “I see your point very well. But what will the strike accomplish, after all? Can you trust these men? What if they refuse to strike tomorrow?”

  Tom’s eyes narrowed as he studied that calm, expressionless profile in the uncertain light of a street-lamp. “They’ll strike,” he said, ominously. He asked, with a sudden hardness: “And you, Fritzie? You go with us?”

  Franz puffed with concentration on his pipe. “Yes. I told you I would do what the others do.”

  Now he looked directly at Tom Harrow, his enemy. “You could go far,” he said, reflectively. “If you were not such a fool.”

  Then the old uneasy darkness filled him again. “Tom,” he said, suddenly. “Will you talk this over with me tonight? At your house? Perhaps—”

  “No,” said Tom, in such a quiet voice that Franz stepped back apprehensively, “there’ll be no more gabbin’. And, Fritzie,” he added, looking into Franz’s face, “I’m holdin’ you to your word.”

  They went on together, in silence. Wisps of mist floated along the broken wooden walks. They heard the dismal hooting of a river vessel. The thunder of a passing train shook the heavy wet air. The warehouses loomed above them, the blank windows dripping with moisture. The sky palpitated with dim scarlet.

  Franz glanced behind him furtively. Two distant figures crept swiftly along in their rear, keeping close to the bolted doors of the warehouses. Franz’s heart beat quickly. He seized Tom’s arm and hurried him along more rapidly. The night was cold, but his forehead was damp with sudden sickening sweat.

  “Tom,” he said, in a muffled voice, “we’ll go to your house. We’ve got to talk this over, I tell you!”

  Tom stopped. He wrenched his arm from the grip of his friend. His eyes bored into that hard pale face, which he could barely see in the uncertain light of a distant streetlamp. And then, as he looked, his own heart skipped a beat, began to pound painfully. A sense of imminent terror and danger attacked him. His knees shook. But his voice was low and quiet when he said: “Fritzie, wot’re you up to?”

  The two men stood eye to eye in a thick damp silence.

  Then Franz, in a last desperation, exclaimed: “Tom, you can’t do this! I tell you, it’s hopeless. I know. Let us talk it over, quietly, somewhere.”

  Tom was silent. The skin along his spine quickened, thrilled. The wet and drizzling night, the distant howl of train and vessel, the flickering lights, the empty warehouses, suddenly impinged on his senses with an unbearable sharpness. And as part of all this, he saw the open and revealed face of his deadly enemy, hard and inexorable, the blue eyes like bits of polished stone, the flat planes of cheek and chin as set as stone, the big mouth implacable and grim.

  “So,” said Tom, very softly, “so that’s wot you are, you bloody blighter!”

  He drew a deep breath, as a sick man might breathe. His whole face sickened. The sense of danger quickened in him, but he was aware of it only as a pang of illness. His whole attention was concentrated on that relentless countenance before him, and on a curious dividing pang in his chest like that of a shaft of sorrow and despondency.

  “I might’ve known,” said Tom, almost abstractedly.
“Your sort—you can’t be trusted. It’s not just because you’re a German. There’s Germans back there, in the hall, as knows what I mean. They’re goin’ out with us. It’s not Germans, or Americans, or Englishmen, or Frenchies. It’s your sort against my sort. It’s always been.”

  A faint derisive flicker passed over Franz’s immobile features. Tom saw it, in spite of the dim chill light. The flicker did not anger him. It merely increased the unnamable pang in his chest, and he could not bear it.

  He shivered. He pulled down his cap closer over his eyes. He still felt no anger. A complete hopelessness, a mortal sensation of loss and desolation, almost overpowered him. He had never been one to make friends readily. He had made a friend of Franz Stoessel. He had never really trusted him, but in a reserved way, he had loved him. “He’s a chap as one can talk to,” he had said to his wife, Dolly.

  Now, it was the treachery of his friend which so assaulted him, and his grief had no place in it for anger or hatred. His little black eyes reddened, became opaque with a bitter mist. Because of this mist, he did not see the sudden averting of Franz’s own eyes, the sudden twitching of his lips. He never knew that Franz had seen everything, and that for one terrible moment he could not endure himself.

  The two lurking shadows approached more swiftly, behind Tom’s back. Franz was no more aware of their approach than was Tom. But at the instant they reached Tom, he glanced up and saw them.

  He cried: “Tom! Look out! Look out!”

  But it was too late. As in a dreadful dream, Franz saw the flash of an uplifted arm, the hand holding something blunt and thick. He heard a dull and sickening thud. He heard another and another, and the sound of animal grunts. He stepped back, thrusting himself against the wet brick wall. His legs turned to jelly.

  Tom did not fall immediately. He swayed, drunkenly, under the blows of the detectives. From under his cap streams of blood flowed, and between the trickles his eyes looked only at Franz, leaning helplessly against the wall, his head sunken on his chest. Then, still without a groan, he collapsed silently into the gutter, his head, bleeding profusely, half submerged in the black and racing water.

  A roaring fog, lit with red stars, enveloped Franz. And with it came such a nausea that he retched. He pressed his hands against the wall to keep himself upright. His body was seized by his retching, and suddenly, he vomited helplessly. His whole being now was sternly concentrated on the effort to retain consciousness. He thought that his legs were slowly sinking into icy water, and he felt it rising to his thighs, to his groin, and finally to his heart. He did not know that his legs shot out from under him, and that he sank heavily to the sidewalk, his back supported by the wall, his head thrust forward and downward on his chest.

  CHAPTER 29

  Franz came swirling up through the black fog, spiralling in wide and dizzy circles. He felt himself floating impotently, and he thought: I must be out in a boat on the sea. His mind was confused. He was certain that he was rocking in his thirdclass bunk on the way from England, and he thought that he heard his mother’s voice, close at hand, and clear and inflexible. He heard her say to his father: “We are within sight of land. At six o’clock, we shall be in New York.” It was strange, he mused, that he knew New York very well, though he had surely never been there before. He remembered the low crowded sky-line, and the movement of insect tugs in curdled brown water. He remembered a morning of opaline skies, drizzling softly, and a din of hooting and churning, and many shouts. It was ridiculous to believe he had never seen New York before. His parents were absurd. He heard his mother’s excited voice, urging him to rise and go up on deck, where he would get his first glimpse of the new world. “I have been in New York before,” he said, clearly. His mother apparently did not hear him. She was scolding him. “A fourteen-year-old boy, and he lies in bed like a Lumpenhund!” she exclaimed.

  Fourteen years old! Ridiculous. Franz laughed aloud, then stopped abruptly. He felt very ill. He was spiralling more rapidly, and he longed for nothing but sleep. “Get up! Get up!” his mother cried. “It is late! You sleep, and there is New York!” “Sleep, sleep,” he murmured.

  No, he must not sleep. He must wake up and help Tom Harrow. “Tom,” he called, in the swirling darkness. He called to his mother: “You must help Tom.” She replied: “Are you never going to get out of bed, Dummkopf?”

  He opened his eyes. The darkness still swirled in great swooping circles about him. Bemused, he could feel surprise that no morning sky-line faced him. He saw an opposite wall, running with livid cataracts of water, lighted by a yellow gas lamp. Thin red spirals danced between him and that wall, and bursting sparks. He heard the chuckling of a gutter, and again, far dismal hoots. The wall against which he leaned shook faintly in the vibrations of a passing train nearby. A hot sickness bubbled in his stomach, enhanced by the red spirals. He closed his eyes convulsively. He became conscious that his hands were slimy, cold and wet, and that he was shivering violently.

  Then, like a blow on the skull, remembrance came back to him. His heart seemed to stop. Blackness threatened to overwhelm him again. He fought it off with vicious desperation. He stared blindly and savagely through the night, forcing himself to see. He saw the street clearly, now. He was all alone, soaked to the flesh, the coldness creeping along his bones. He forced himself to his knees, sobbing in his throat. He leaned against the wall, trying to quell the agony in his chest. There was no one in sight. What had they done with Tom? Ah, he had it! They were to take Tom to the nearest police station, declaring that he had attacked them in a drunken rage. It was all over. There would be no strike. Tom would be freed in a day or two, after the danger of a strike was past, and he had come to his senses.

  Franz thrust himself weakly from the wall, then collapsed back against it once more. What had happened to him? Someone, two men, had struck at Tom. Franz could hear the dull murderous thuds again, and he sickened. Had they hurt him badly? No! That was impossible. All arrangements had been made that he was not to be badly hurt. But that blood! Surely, though, it had come from small surface wounds. He had to find out! He had to be sure that they had not injured Tom severely.

  He shook his aching and clouded head, forced his legs to hold him up. His cap was gone. He must find it. When he bent his head, his senses swam again, weakly. Then he saw Tom Harrow in the gutter, his head half submerged in the racing black water.

  A great cry of anguish burst from him. That cry echoed back to him on the cold and watery air, reeking with night and desolation. He staggered a few steps; he fell on his knees beside his friend. With arms both numb and failing, he tugged at the flaccid shoulders, lifted Tom’s head from the gutter, laid it on the sidewalk. The flaring gaslight fell on a ghastly face, on blood-and-water matted hair, on closed eyes and slack purple lips.

  He caught Tom in his arms. He rested the lolling head on his chest. He was not conscious of sobbing and screaming aloud. “Tom! Mein Gott! Mein Gott!” He shook his streaming shoulders. He slapped the bruised face. He called over and over, his voice echoing dolorously in the rain and the night. The pain in his chest was a burning fire. A band of flaming steel encircled his forehead, and his throat. His cries became more clamorous, more frantic.

  “Tom! Wake up! Tom, it is I, Franz! Look at me!”

  But Tom did not hear him. Others did. Franz did not hear the sound of running footsteps, was not conscious of the presence of others until he felt himself roughly shaken, and heard harsh voices. He lifted his dazed and throbbing eyes. Two policemen stood over him, shouting. He blinked. He tried to speak. But he could do nothing but sob, over and over, his friend in his arms and lying across his knees.

  “What happened?” demanded a policeman, his round tall helmet dripping with water. “What did you do to him?”

  The other policeman was kneeling beside Tom, running his hands rapidly over him. He looked up, and said curtly: “Pretty far gone.” He put his whistle to his lips and sent out a shrill and penetrating blast. The other policeman tugged at the
distraught man kneeling on the sidewalk. “Better lay him down, son. Got his blood all over you. And stop yellin’, for Christ’s sake!”

  Franz looked at his hands. They were wet with blood, Tom’s blood.

  “Who did it?” asked one of the men.

  “I don’t know,” whispered Franz, staring at his hands.

  They had laid Tom gently on the sidewalk. Other feet were running towards them now. Franz knelt stupidly, looking at his hands. He was conscious of nothing else. He felt, rather than saw, a dozen new faces, policemen and workmen. He felt the rain in his face, and his own convulsive shivering.

  “He’s comin’ to,” said a voice.

  Franz turned his drooping eyes towards Tom. Some one was supporting the Englishman’s head. Slowly, inch by inch, Franz crept on his knees towards his friend. Tom was slowly opening his eyes. He looked about him. Some one wiped the blood that trickled from his forehead.

  “That’s all right,” said a policeman, in a gruff voice. “Take it slow. Don’t move. That’s right. Who hit you?”

  Tom tried to speak. A bloody foam bubbled to his lips. He tried to turn his head, and then he saw Franz’s face bent over him.

  The policemen, the excitedly shouting and shabby men, knew nothing of what had happened. But even they were suddenly silenced by the strangeness of the look which passed between these two, a look so intense, so held, so understanding, so dreadful, that even the most obtuse felt its frightful import. They saw a light like the glittering edge of a knifeblade appear between Tom’s half-closed lids. They saw the curious convulsion of his swollen and bleeding lips. They saw the widening of his nostrils, from which thin scarlet threads were dripping. And they saw Franz’s impassive face and the blueness of his mouth.

  Tom gazed steadfastly at his enemy and his murderer, and Franz gazed back. Not a word passed between them that anyone could hear, but they heard their own exchanges. Their own inner voices, inaudible to others’ ears, cried across a bottomless chasm to each other, echoed back from infinity, ran crying through space and darkness. And when they had done, they looked at each other in a blinding and throbbing silence, nothing else needed to be spoken, everything finished and over.