A Son of the City Part 38

"Once I went hunting, last summer"--he began. John glanced at his watch.

Ten minutes before the performance would begin; ten long, dragging minutes of Sid's talk about a place of which he knew nothing. Why had he brought his voluble rival along?--"hunting for bear," continued the narrator. "Lots of fun, Louise. One of the cowboys took me with him 'way up a mountain. We went into a big, dark forest with palms--"

"Palms don't grow out West," John interrupted savagely.

"Yes, they do."

"Geogerfy says they don't."

"This was a part the geogerfies don't know anything about," serenely.

"Ever been out there?"

"No," reluctantly.

"Then keep quiet. _I have._ Well, there were the palms and--"

Was there to be no respite from the steady flow? John suddenly remembered the candy, and reached for his overcoat.

"Oh," exclaimed Louise, as the white, pink-stringed box was brought forth. Sid stopped, obviously disconcerted. John unwrapped the dainties and threw the paper on the floor.

"Have some?" he asked as he lifted the cover.

The lady's lips closed over a chocolate-covered caramel. Sid's did likewise. John helped himself to a third and leaned back happily. At last a way of silencing his adversary had been found.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Silencing his adversary._]

Conversation was temporarily impossible, so the trio gazed eagerly around them. Just ahead, sat a shop girl in a shabby best dress, with a head of blonde, mismatched hair, and beside her, her escort, an Irish mechanic, who s.h.i.+fted his head from time to time as the unaccustomed collar sc.r.a.ped his neck. Across the aisle was a family of towheaded Swedes, the father self-conscious in his carefully pressed black suit; the mother, watchful of her two mischievous, blue-eyed urchins. Young gallants of the neighborhood filled the boxes at either side of the auditorium, taking this, the most expensive, means of proving their devotion to their lady loves. In the rear of the theater were the first and second balconies, occupied by voluble men and women of all ages and nationalities. Ahead, hung the stage curtain, decorated with staring advertis.e.m.e.nts, "Lamson, the neighborhood undertaker," "Trade at the corner grocery. Vegetables always at the lowest market prices,"

"Snider's drug store, prescriptions, choice candies, and camera supplies," and the like. From somewhere in the heights came a sharp "rap-rap-rap," which echoed even to the more forward rows on the main floor.

"Gallery," explained John. "Fellow knocks on the back of one of the benches to make the boys behave." His jaws resumed the burden of reducing that persistent caramel to a swallowable state.

The orchestra of five filed solemnly in through the little door beneath the stage and took their accustomed places. A dart, propelled by an urchin of the upper regions who evidently had no fear of the monitor's stick, sailed serenely downward and found a resting place in a blonde lock of the salesgirl's hair. The footlights flashed on, and the musicians struck up a lilting, popular air, as Sid cleared his throat.

"Then the cowboy--" he began.

"Have another?" interrupted John, extending the box of tenacious goodies.

"Sh-h," whispered Louise. "There goes the curtain."

Why Martha had selected the hapless vocation of milliner's apprentice, John could not understand. For it was in Madame's little millinery shop in New York that Mordaunt Merrilac, gentleman by appearance, and leader of a desperate band of counterfeiters, met and became infatuated with the heroine. This he revealed in a soliloquy punctuated by frequent tugging at his black mustache, and strode majestically to the rear of the long, gloomy bas.e.m.e.nt in which the first act was laid. There he joined three overalled mechanics in s.h.i.+rtsleeves, who puttered gingerly about a table on which were mysterious vats and a brightly glowing electric crucible.

"Is all in readiness?" growled Mordaunt.

"Aye, master."

"Into the acid vat with the plate, then." He drew out a jewelled watch and studied the dial with knitted brows. "Ten long minutes before we know of our success."

A m.u.f.fled scream, long-drawn and filled with terror, broke in upon the silence which followed. Louise, Sid, and John leaned anxiously forward on the very edges of their seats.

"What's that?" gasped the tallest of the workmen.

"'Tis nothing," sneered the villain. "Come, Ralph, draw out the die."

The group gathered anxiously around the bit of metal. Mordaunt scrutinized it carefully, and strode swiftly over to an opposite corner of the stage where an ancient letterpress stood. Running an inked roller over the surface of the etching, he placed it on the bed of the press, revolved the wheel rapidly in one direction, reversed, and drew forth a slip of white paper.

"The face of a twenty-dollar bill to perfection," he exclaimed as he examined the dark oblong at one end. "Men, you may go."

Thus was the intricate process of counterfeiting depicted, and the audience, as audiences did in Shakespeare's time when a sign represented a forest or a tree or a mountain, allowed its imagination to make the thing seem plausible.

Mordaunt raised his voice. "Dolores!" he called, once, twice, thrice.

A tall, lithe creature in dark, clinging robes, with the black hair of all villains and villainesses, responded.

"Yes, brother?" she whined from the head of the bas.e.m.e.nt stairway.

"Bring me Martha."

The ogre had commanded, therefore the maiden was flung down the steps before him--slight, dainty, with a wealth of blonde hair, and a pitiful sob in her voice which drew a lump into John's throat, w.i.l.l.y-nilly.

"Let me go, oh, please let me go!" she wailed. Louise's lower lip trembled sympathetically. Such a tender slip of a heroine to be at the mercy of such an unscrupulous monster!

"Still stubborn, Martha?" Mordaunt snarled.

The girl drew herself up proudly. Only her heaving bosom told of the physical struggle which had forced her into the bas.e.m.e.nt den. John could not help marvelling at her recuperative powers.

"Still," she murmured with flas.h.i.+ng eye.

"Think it over well," the black mustachioed one persisted. "Am I so odious? Marriage with me means riches, girl, riches. And I would be kind to you."

She shook her head vehemently. "Never, never, never would I marry a man who lives as you. Though you beat me, though you torture me [Louise's eyes welled in spite of herself], never can you force me into such wedlock."

Hasty footsteps sounded at the head of the stairway. Ralph, the etcher, dashed down into the room.

"The police!" he shrieked. "They are about to raid us!"

Merrilac muttered a curse. "Take her away," he growled to his sister of the clinging robes. "Take her to your home by the secret pa.s.sage." He pressed a b.u.t.ton and a panel in the wall swung back. "Ralph and I must remain to destroy the die! Quick, on your life, be quick!"

Would the police come in time? Nay, John and Sid and Louise, not yet.

That would have ended the play in the first act. Dolores dragged the heroine away with her. Mordaunt swung the panel back into place and ran over to the table where the counterfeiting apparatus lay.

"Look you to your automatics!" he shouted. "And up with the trapdoor, Ralph. The acid vats must be hidden."

But the police were upon them as he spoke. Revolvers cracked. Jack Harkness, blonde, curly haired, and of magnificent physique, let his firearm drop as he clapped his hand to a suddenly nerveless right arm.

"I'm wounded," he bellowed, "but after them! Let not that arch villain escape!"

A bluecoat sprang forward, halted, and fell flat on his face. Ralph, a heroic sacrifice in spite of his guilt, intercepted a bullet meant for Mordaunt. Then the master counterfeiter, realizing that his cause was hopeless, raised a hand as a token of surrender, and advanced slowly to receive the waiting handcuffs. As the policeman raised his hands to slip them on, he dashed suddenly past to the stairway, and slammed the door behind him. A key squeaked in its little-used lock, and the representatives of the law stared at each other for one dazed, dragging moment.

Suddenly Harkness flung his muscular form against the door again and again until it broke from its hinges. As his subordinates dashed up the stairway in futile pursuit, he dallied in the bullet-marked room that he might walk to the center of the stage and wave his unwounded arm melodramatically.