Broken to the Plow Part 30

Fred looked down at the coin in his hand.

"Fifty cents."

"Fifty cents ... for carrying two grips a hundred yards... Well, she must have money... And she's taking a little trip south--for her health, I suppose!... I wonder when friend Hilmer will follow?"

Fred tried to draw away, but Storch's insinuating clutch was too firm.

"Let me go!" he half begged and half commanded. "What business is all this of yours?... Who has told you all this about me?"

Storch continued to hang upon Fred's arm. "You told me yourself."

"I told you? When?"

"You were delirious for a good week... Don't you suppose you babbled then?"

"How much do you know?"

"Nearly everything, _Fred Starratt_! Nearly everything."

"Even my name!"

"Yes, even that."

Fred stood still for a moment and he closed both his eyes.

"Let's go home!" he said, hopelessly.

He heard Storch's malevolent chuckle answering him.

When they arrived at Storch's shack Fred was exhausted. He threw himself at once upon the couch, drawing the tattered quilts over his head, and thus he lay all night in a semistupor. He heard the nightly gathering drift in, and there were times when its babble reached him in vague faraway echoes. He sensed its departure, too, and the fact that Storch was flinging himself upon the pile of rags which served as his bed. His sleep was broken by a harried idea that he was attempting to catch a steamer which forever eluded him, trotting aimlessly up and down a gangplank which led nowhere, picking up a litter that spilled continually from a suitcase in his hand. It was not a dreaming state, but the projection of the main events of the preceding day distorted by fancy.

Toward morning he fell into a heavy sleep. He did not hear Storch leave. He woke at intervals during the day and relapsed into delicious dozes. It was evening when he finally roused himself. He rose. He felt extraordinarily refreshed, stronger, in fact, than he had been for weeks. Storch came in shortly after. He had his inevitable loaf of crisp French bread and a slice of cheese and in his hip pocket he had smuggled a pint bottle of thin red wine.

Fred laid the table with the simple utensils that such a meal required and the two sat down. Storch poured out two gla.s.ses of wine.

"I have had great fun to-day!" Storch said, gulping his claret with a flourish. "They're on my track again. You should have seen how easily I gave them the slip! As a matter of fact there is nothing duller than a detective. He usually has learned every formula laid down for the conduct of criminals and if you don't run true to form he gets sore."

"You mean you're being watched--shadowed?"

"Just that."

"What do you intend to do?"

Storch shrugged. "Being arrested and jailed is losing its novelty.

I'll stick around awhile longer until a pet job or two is accomplished... I'm particularly anxious to see Hilmer winged...

What's your plan?"

"Plan?... I have no plan. I can't imagine what you're talking about. I know one thing, though ... I'm going to leave this place at once."

Storch smiled evilly. "Going to start plunging on that capital your wife threw your way yesterday?... Well, well, you've got more initiative than I thought... But, one piece of advice, my friend--the easiest way to walk into a trap is to suddenly try to change your habits ... to rush headlong in an opposite direction. You'd better stay here awhile and bluff it out. They'd gobble you in one mouthful."

Fred made no reply. Indeed, the meal was finished in silence.

Presently Storch's disciples began to drift in. The meeting lasted almost until midnight. They were all at fever heat, strung tensely by Storch's unerring pressure. At the last moment the man who had previously put the question concerning Hilmer prodded Storch again.

Storch fixed Fred suddenly with a gaze that pierced him through. A silence fell upon the room. Fred could feel every eye turned his way.

He rose with a curious fluttering movement of escape.

"There's one man in this room who has earned the honor of getting Hilmer, if any man has," Storch said, finally, in an extraordinarily cool and biting voice. "Losing a wife isn't of any great moment ...

but to be laughed at--that's another matter."

The silence continued. Fred Starratt sat down again... Shortly after this the gathering broke up. Storch went to sleep immediately. Fred blew out the light. But he did not throw himself upon his couch this time. Instead he opened the door softly and crept out.

A bright moon was riding high in the sky. He went swiftly down the lane and stood for a moment upon the edge of the cliff which plunged down toward the docks. The city seemed like a frozen bit of loveliness, waiting to be melted to fluid beauty by the fires of morning. He must leave Storch at once, forever! He turned for a backward glimpse of the house that had sheltered and almost entrapped him. A figure darted in front of the lone street lamp and retreated instantly. _Shadowed!_ Storch was right!

Suddenly Fred began to whistle--gayly, loudly, with unquestionable defiance. Then slowly, very slowly, he went back into the house and closed the door... Storch was snoring contentedly.

CHAPTER XIX

The next afternoon Fred Starratt took the fifty-cent piece that he had earned as flunky to his wife and spent every penny of it in a cheap barber shop on the Embarcadero. He emerged with an indifferently trimmed beard and his hair clipped into a semblance of neatness. He felt better, in spite of his tattered suit and gaping footgear.

Hilmer's card was still in his pocket.

His plans were hazy, nebulous, in fact. He was not quite sure as to his next move. It seemed useless to attempt to flee from Storch's shelter. He had no money and scarcely strength enough to tackle any job that would be open to him. Even if he elected to become a strike breaker he would have to qualify at least with brawn. The prospect of snaring a berth from Hilmer had a certain fascination. It would be interesting to stare defiantly at his enemy at close range, to speak with him again man to man, to lure him into further bravados. And then, if Storch's plans for Hilmer had any merits... He stopped short, a bit frightened at the realization that the idea had presented itself to him with such directness... He had a sudden yearning to talk to some human being who would understand. If he could only see Ginger!

He had a feeling that somehow she must have experienced every exaltation and every degradation in the calendar. Tenderness and pa.s.sion and the gift of murder itself were ever the mixed language of the street. He remembered the gesture he first had made to her almost timid advances toward helping him. He had been outwardly polite, but inwardly how scornful of her suggestions! And once he even had hesitated to let her carry a message to his wife! Now he was ready to stand or fall upon the bitter fruits of her experience. He felt, curiously, on common ground with her. And yet there were certain intangibilities he had never attempted to make positive. Somehow the mere fact of her existence had enveloped him like warm currents of air which he could feel, but not visualize. But at this moment he felt the need of a contact more personal. Suddenly, out of a clear sky, it came to him that Mrs. Hilmer could tell him something of Ginger's whereabouts. Mrs. Hilmer? Well, why not? The more he thought the idea over the more it appealed to him. He ended by turning his steps in the direction of the Hilmer home.

The maid who opened the door eyed him with more curiosity than caution, and her protests that Mrs. Hilmer could see no one seemed rather tentative and perfunctory. Fred had a curious feeling that she was demanding a more or less conventional excuse for admitting him, and in the end he flung out as a chance:

"Tell Mrs. Hilmer I have a message from Sylvia Molineaux."

The girl's pale-blue eyes sparkled with a curious glint of humor, and without further protest she went away, and came back as swiftly with an invitation for him to step inside. There was something inexplainable about this maid who veiled her eagerness to admit him with such transparencies. Even a fool would scarcely have left so forbidding a character to dawdle about the living room while she went to fetch her mistress.

He had expected to find this room changed, and yet he was not prepared for quite the quality of familiarity which it possessed. Most of the old Hilmer knickknacks had been swept aside, their places taken by bits that had once enlivened the Starratt household. Here was a silver vase that he had bought Helen for an anniversary present, and there a Whistler etching that had been their wedding portion. His easy-chair was in a corner, and Helen's music rack filled with all the things she used to play for his delight. And on the mantel, in a silver frame, his picture, with a little bowl of fading flowers before it... He went over and picked it up. Instinctively he glanced in the mirror just in front of him... _Dead ... quite dead!_ No wonder his wife put flowers before this photographic shrine... For a moment he had a swooning hope that he had misjudged her ... that he had misread everybody ... that they had done everything for him that they thought was best. But he emerged from this brief deception with a shuddering laugh... He would not have cared so much if his wife had swept him from her life completely ... but to trample on him and still use his shadow as a screen--this was too much! What really pallid creatures these women of convention were! How little they were prepared to risk anything! He could almost hear the comments that Helen inspired:

"Poor Helen Starratt! She has had an awful time!... I don't know what she would have done without the Hilmers... She's so devoted to Mrs.

Hilmer... I do think it's lovely that they can be together."

He felt that he could have admired a Helen Starratt with the courage of her primitive instincts. As it was, he was ashamed to own that he experienced even rancor at her pretenses.

He heard the sound of a wheeled chair coming toward the living room and he made a pretense of staring aimlessly into the street. Presently a sepulchral voice broke the silence. He turned--Mrs. Hilmer was leaning forward in her chair, regarding him attentively, while the maid stood a little to one side. He had expected to come upon a huddle of blond plumpness, an inanimate ma.s.s of forceless flesh robbed of its bovine suavity by inactivity. What he saw was a body thin to emaciation and a face drawn into a tight-lipped discontent. The old curves of flesh had melted, displaying the heaviness of the framework which had supported them. The eyes were restless and glittering, the once-plump hands shrunken into claws.

"You ... you have a message from Sylvia Molineaux?"

She tossed the question toward him with biting directness. Could it be possible that this was the same woman who had purred so contentedly over a receipt for corn pudding somewhat over a year ago?