But on the instant a devastating thought surged through his brain:
“One day’s work—only a hundred and eighty-five bucks. And—and how about my kid?”
A little dazed, groping more perhaps in mind than in body, he started toward the other man’s son. Against smothering resistance at that great depth, he walked with circumspect caution, lest he lose his footing. Once that should happen, quick as a flash he might turn topsy-turvy, hang upside down, helpless and imperiled. His own life—no, he mustn’t lose that, now!
Almost weightless, he moved. His heart was pounding thickly as an overtaxed pump.
“Our Bill! What about our Bill, I’d like to know?”
Yes, furiously, Tim Spurling, diver, was thinking about his only son. A sick and quivering sensation gripped and shook him. Only one day’s work.
“What the blazes good is one day’s work to us, now?”
After all that Blanche and he had hoped and planned on, from this job, just one day’s work. What the blazes, indeed?
He thought of Blanche, mother of the boy now doomed to death. Then his mind nickered round to this drowned boy’s mother and father.
“They’ll suffer, if this kid don’t come up. Sure they’ll suffer like the flames o’ hell, if I don’t bring him up. Yeah, but what about us?”
Over him surged the words of the loose-lipped truckman:
“If you make a good job of it, why, mebbe that five grand might be stretched a bit, too.”
Five grand, and then some! Five thousand dollars and more, plus his wages for a few days’ work—all of six thousand or better! And for what? Why, for just doing nothing at all. For just seeing nothing, down there where nobody could check up on him. For just finding nothing, bringing up nothing.
Had ever a man in all this world been left so starkly alone with his own conscience? In all of life, could any possibility exist, for Tim Spurling, of so much money being won by so little effort? Money, money that now meant life itself to his boy, life to little family!
*****
Tim felt strangely dizzy and sick. Heart pounding and air pump throbbing hammered his brain with maddening tempo, as he stood there in that green gloom and peered down at the corpse, and tried to think.
Just a dead body, the body of a very rich man’s son. That was all—cold flesh and bones. And what on earth good, in bringing that up? Oh, yes, of course, it would give back to a father and a mother the thing they longed for; a lifeless thing, but still passionately desired. Without it, of course they’d agonize.
“But how ’bout us, if our kid dies? How ’bout us, watchin’ our Bill die? How many dead boys is one live boy worth?”
Tim Spurling seemed to hear words, echoes of his own speech hardly an hour ago:
“Nix on that stunt. I couldn’t do it. Thanks, a heck of a lot, but nothin’ doin’!”
And then the truckman:
“The hell you say! Why not?”
“Well, it ain’t the way us divers does business, that’s all. What we’re hired to risk our lives for, we allus does the best we can. It ain’t a gyp game, for any diver as is a diver. So thanks, mister, but forget it!”
Already he was stooping to pick up the body. It would weigh almost nothing. A signal on the cord, and with the millionaire’s son in his arms, Tim Spurling could in less than no time be back up there at the diving float. Already he was reaching for the body.
But there before him, suddenly he beheld—plain as if reality—the pinched, hollow, and suffering face of his own boy. The terror-stricken and hopeless eyes of his wife. Eyes now all too often red with secret weeping.
“What a fool I am!” growled the diver, his brain clearing. “This here kid don’t go up, now nor never! I don’t locate him, and no other diver don’t, neither. And that is that!”
Still stooping, what he picked up was not the body, but a weed-grown rock. Then another, and still another, and many more. Presently the body had vanished under layers of stones which so perfectly masked it that never could any diver locate it, no matter what his skill might be.
“Six thousand bucks!” thought Tim Spurling, as he straightened up from this macabre task. “I’ll put in at least three days, and collect both ways. Make a good job of it, while I’m at it. And any man as wouldn’t do the same, to save his own boy’s life, he’d be a quitter an’ a coward, on top o’ bein’ a poor damn fool!”
All of a sudden very weak and trembling, he wanted to regain the upper air. Then after a while he could go down again, could continue the fictitious search. But for now, he must quit a spell.
Tim twitched the signal rope, felt an upward pull, saw the lake bottom slide down and away. Down, away, with that pile of stones under which lay a secret that only he knew. Only he, in all this world! Light strengthened, pressure steadily diminished. And then quite suddenly he saw the weighted bottom of the ladder. He grappled it, climbed up, emerged monstrous and dripping, his helmet goggling over the edge of the float.
McTaggart and a couple of others gripped and hoisted him. Up and out he came, while cameras were busy and eager eyes watched from boats and from the float. Sitting down on the edge of the float, he motioned for McTaggart to unscrew his helmet and take it off.
“Whew!” he breathed, deep-lunged and glad of air not pumped through a rubber hose. “Gimme a drag!”
“Find anythin’?” Mac eagerly queried.
“Not yet.”
Another voice cut in—a trembling voice, a woman’s:
“But you will? You will?”
Astonished, Spurling turned his head. He blinked in the sunshine that cut his eyes after the vague obscurity of the depths. Beside the float he saw a motor launch, all brass and varnish, with a uniformed mechanician at its gleaming engine. In wicker chairs, aft, a man and a woman were sitting—Eccles and his wife.
“Look a here, mister!” Spurling reproved the millionaire. He felt aggrieved, to have these two hanging round while he was at work. “See here, now. You hadn’t oughta be here. This here ain’t no place for you two!” His clumsy, rubber-gloved hand sketched a crude gesture. “No place, ’tall!”
“I know it,” the magnate assented, while listeners stretched their ears. Eccles, for all the heat of that July day, was shivering. His body shook as with a palsy. “I know it, but—”
“I had to come. I had to!” put in his wife. “I couldn’t stay away and wait—”
Spurling’s lip tightened with acid disapproval. An extraordinary and grotesque figure—with his head, seemingly far too small, projecting up out of that vast suit—he looked at the dead boy’s mother. And what he saw was human agony, raw and bleeding.
The diver understood. The woman’s sunken eyes and pale lips, her deep-lined face, told the whole story. This story was underscored by her quivering fingers that tightly clutched the arms of the wicker chair.
“If you only knew,” the mother half-whispered. “If you could only understand what it means to lose an only son!”
“Reckon I do ma’am,” answered the diver. “Or reckon I will, pretty soon.”
“Why—how—”
“Well, I got a kid o’ my own, see? ’Bout the same age as yours was, and he’s dyin’. Arizona’s all that’ll save him. But Arizona ain’t for us. Huh! Fat chance we got o’ that!”
“Oh!” breathed Mrs. Eccles comprehendingly, while the reporters pounced on a wonderful human-interest story. “You mean you’ve got a—”
“Tell me,” the millionaire brusquely cut in. “You haven’t found anything, yet? No sign, no indication?”
“Nothin’, so fur. Not yet.”
“But you will? You’re going down again, right away?”
“Yeah, pretty soon. Quick as I rest up, a little, and get this cold out o’ my bones.”
“And you’ll find my son?” asked the mother. “You will, won’t you?”
“Well, gee, I’ll try.”
“No, no! Promise you’ll find him. Oh, don’t you see, you’ve got to?”
; Tim Spurling began to feel very queer and sick again. Something seemed to have hold of his guts and to be twisting them. He blinked as he looked that woman fair in the eyes. Between the float and the motor launch extended a distance of not more than four feet. Between Tim Spurling, workman, and those two millionaires, stretched infinity. But something strove to bridge that infinity.
Under the compulsion of this something, under the fever of that stricken woman’s look—that appealing, agonized, crucified look—Spurling felt his plans all riven, cast awry and wrecked.
“Hell!” he tried to rally himself. “Don’t be a quitter and a fool!”
But it was no good. For the woman was speaking again.
“Your own boy—you say he’s very ill?”
“Yes. T.B.”
“What’s his name?”
“William. But o’ course we call him just Bill.”
“And how old?”
“Sixteen, ma’am. Your boy—same age?”
She nodded. He saw tears gleaming in her faded eyes.
“Please get away from here,” he begged. “I’m goin’ down again right away, and when I come up mebbe you better not be here.” He appealed to the millionaire. “See here, Mr. Eccles. Get her out o’ here. Won’t you take her away, please?”
“He’s right, Valerie,” the magnate assented. “We really ought to go.” He gave a word of command to the mechanic at the engine. Then, to Spurling: “You’re going down again, right now?”
“Yeah. Just as quick’s I have a smoke and a bit of a rest. And you can count on me. I’ll do the best I can!”
As the powerful engine started, and the motorboat purred away with those two lonely, sorrowful, rich, death-stricken figures, Tim Spurling gazed after them with tragic eyes.
“The best I can, for you,” he thought. “That means the worst for us!” Aloud: “You there, Mac—light me a tack, can’t you? Gee, that water’s awful cold, down there. I sure need a smoke. I sure need it worse’n I ever needed one in all my life!”
*****
Tim Spurling, that same evening, stood on the platform of the Crystal Lake station with McTaggart, his helper. Their diving gear, all boxed up again, was waiting to be lifted aboard the baggage car of the 7:17, that had already whistled far up Swiftwater Valley.
“Damn short job, Tim,” Mac was complaining. “Seems like we ain’t got no luck at all.”
“Mebbe yes, mebbe no. What’s good for one, is bad for another. Everybody can’t have all they want.”
“Sure, I know. But—”
Down the road swept a long gray car. It slowed, stopped at the station. A chauffeur opened its door. Out stepped Eccles.
The last fading of sunset over the mountains showed his face, which though still grief-ravaged was more at peace. He even managed a wan bit of a smile as he came toward the diver.
“I wanted to thank you again, before you left,” he said, quite simply. “We’ll never forget it, my wife and I. Never forget what you’ve done for us.”
“Oh, that? Well, it’s just my job, I reckon.”
“Perhaps. But at any rate, we want to send your boy something. You’ll take it to him, won’t you?”
“Send my boy somethin’?” And Spurling’s eyes widened. McTaggart was all curiosity. “Why—what could—”
“It’s a memorial. Something in memory of our own lad.”
The envelope from Eccles’s pocket passed to Tim Spurling’s hand. Amazed, the diver stared at it.
“This here; it’s—”
“Call it life, if you will,” smiled Eccles. “It’s a check made out to William Spurling. I’ve signed it. Your boy can fill in the amount. Be sure he makes it enough to get him well and strong. To keep his hold on life—life that, once gone, can never be brought back by all the millions in this world!”
More loudly echoed the train whistle. A glimmering headlight sparkled into view.
“Why, my gosh, I—I been paid, already,” stammered the diver. “I can’t take this and—”
“You’re not taking it. It’s your boy’s. Goodbye, Spurling, good luck to you and yours!”
A handclasp. A silent look that passed, not now between workman and millionaire, but from man to man, father to father. Then Eccles, turning, was gone.
The headlight glare strengthened. Brakes began to grind. The train slowed at the station.
“Gee whiz, Tim!” cried McTaggart, as his chief’s face was for a moment brilliantly illuminated. “What the devil? Why, you’re cryin’!”
“The hell I am!” Spurling indignantly retorted. “It’s just a cinder in my eye. This damn soft coal, and all! If you don’t know when a feller’s got a cinder in his eye— Say, gimme a drag, can’t you? I sure need it!”
THE LONGEST SIDE
Originally published in People’s Favorite Magazine November 10, 1921.
I.
“Now see here, Bogan,” said Cozzens, when his touring car had struck into the long, smooth, beach boulevard. “You’re my confidential right-hand man, and I can talk plainer, perhaps, than I ever have before.”
“You can,” answered Bogan—“Best-policy” Bogan, by nickname. “Must be somethin’ mighty important, or you wouldn’t be drivin’ yourself, an’ you wouldn’t of took me out, this way.”
“It is important,” admitted the politician. “And in an important deal, there’s no place like an auto. No keyholes for people to listen at in an auto. No chance for dictaphones. Give me an auto for absolute privacy, every time.”
“Correct. What’s on your mind?”
“You’ve got to find me a ‘fall guy’ for that Wheat Exchange Bank forgery and the Hinman murder that grew out of it. A good, high-class fall guy. No roughnecks.”
“What’s the idea?”
“I might as well speak right out in meeting. I’ve got to have my daughter Nadine marry Coolidge Brant.”
“Assistant district attorney, you mean?”
“Yes,” assented Cozzens. “The way things are shaping now, I’ve just got to have a string on that young man. He’s directly in line for the district attorney-ship, inside of two or three years, and I want—”
“I see,” smiled Bogan. “Honesty’s the best policy, all right. It’s a case of rip things wide open, after that, an’ get away with it clean, eh?”
“You put it rather crudely.”
“Facts is facts. I get you, the first time. An’ the daughter’s balkin’?”
“I’m afraid she is, a little. She and Brant have been going round together for over a year, but he hasn’t made good. That is, not enough to suit her. She’s got ideas about efficiency, like lots of girls these days. She won’t have him till he’s shown some real pep. The press is slamming him, some. So—”
“I’m wise. If he can land somebody right, for those stunts—”
“What I like about you, Bogan,” said the politician, “is the way you grab an idea. Well, now, can you work the law of supply and demand for me again? You’ve done it before. Can you do it once more, and do it strong?”
“Sure! How much is it worth to a man that’ll stand for the pinch an’ go through?”
“That depends,” judged Cozzens, opening the throttle a notch. His big blue car hit a livelier pace down the summer-sunlit boulevard. “Naturally I’m not looking to throw money away. I want you to put this through as cheap as you can.”
“Bargain rates won’t get a guy to stand a roar for scratch work, knockin’ a bank cashier cold, an’ bumpin’ off a business man. Them’s tall, man-size charges to go against.”
“I know it, Bogan. But, of course, he won’t be running any real risk of anything but a few years in the pen.”
“You mean the frame will be fixed so he’ll be acquitted on the murder charge, an’ will only do time for the forgery an’ assault?”
“Yes, and not much time, at that. Four or five years, and then a quiet little pardon, you know. That’s at the outside. Maybe he won’t draw more than four or five in all. Get me?”
Bogan remained silent, his thin jaws firmly set. He looked out over the bench, the surf, the careless holiday crowd, past which the car was flicking with a burrrrr of knobby tires.
“Well?” demanded the politician, “Can you fix it right?”
“Sure. If you’ll guarantee the acquittal.”
“Oh, that’ll be O. K.”
“Yes, but they never stick a guy with a small charge when there’s a big one on him. F’rinstance, if a man’s robbin’ a hen house, an’ croaks a farmer while he’s doin’ it, you never hear nothin’ o’ the petty larceny.”
“I can fix that, all right. Got to, to square the bank. They’re sorer than boiled pups, and ready to knife Brant. I’ll have him docket it as two separate cases. After the fall guy’s cleared of the murder charge, he’ll be rearrested on the others and put through.”
“I don’t see what good that’ll do,” objected Bogan. “That wouldn’t be such a devil of a big feather in Brant’s Panama.”
“It’ll be enough. I’ll see that the papers play it up right. Nadine will fall for it strong. She likes Brant, all O.K. It’s only that he hasn’t done anything much yet. You get the fall guy, Bogan, and I’ll attend to my end of it. Well, what say?”
“When do you want him?”
“Right now. And when it comes to cash—”
“I’m on!” smiled Bogan. “I know just the fella.”
“Where is he? In town, here?”
“No. New York. An’ he’s some smooth worker, too, I tell you. Show him the coin, an’ he’ll go the limit.”
“That’s good enough for me,” said Cozzens decisively. “Now well get back to the office and fix you up with expense money to take the night boat down.” And Cozzens stepped on the accelerator. “Let’s get to it.”
“Right!” agreed Bogan. “We’ll do this honest an’ square. That’s always the best policy. Let’s go!”
II.
Albert Vestine, Scandinavian by birth, and by profession racetrack follower, gambler, and man of various activities—all of them dubious—was wary as a partridge when Bogan called upon him by appointment. Vestine had traveled in too many cities, States, and lands, spoke too many languages, was too clever with his pen and brain, to mistake the type that Bogan represented. Besides, he knew the man personally, which made him all the more cautious.
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