Felix O'Day

Chapter XXI

The news of Mike's arrest had been received by kitty's neighbors with varying degrees of indifference. Everybody realized that, as the run-over boy had lost nothing but his breath—and but little of that, judging from his vigorous howl when Mike picked him up—nothing would come of the affair so long as the present captain ruled the precinct. Kitty and John and all who belonged to them were too popular around the station; too many of the boys had slipped in and slipped out of a cold night, warmed up by the contents of her coffee-pot.

Indeed, between the captain and the denizens of “The Avenue,” only the most friendly, amicable, and delightful personal relations prevailed. To the habitual criminal, the sneak-thief, and the hold-up, he might be a mailed despot swinging a mailed fist, but to the occasional “Monday drunk,” or the man who had had the best or the worst of it in a fight, or to one like Mike who was the victim of an unavoidable accident, he was only a heathen idol of justice behind which sat a big-waisted, tightly belted man whose wife and daughters everybody knew as he himself knew everybody in return; who belonged to the same lodge, played poker in the same up-stairs room when off duty, and was as tender-hearted in time of trouble as any one of their other acquaintances. Not to have allowed Mike, a man he knew, a man who had been Kitty and John's driver for years, to hunt up his own bond, would have been as unwise and impossible as his releasing a burglar on straw bail, or a murderer because the dead man could not make a complaint.

When, therefore, Mike burst into the kitchen with the additional information that “the cap” had let him go to bring back the wagon and somebody with “cash” enough to go bail, a general movement, headed by Tim Kelsey, who happened to be passing at the time, was immediately organized—Tim to proceed at once to the station-house, take the captain on one side, and so end the matter. Locking up Mike, even threatening him, was, as the captain knew, an invasion of the rights of “The Avenue.” Nobody within its confines had ever been entangled in the meshes of the law—simply because nobody had wanted to break it. It was the howling boy who should have been locked up for getting under Mike's wheels, or his father who ought to have kept his son off the street.

Mike listened impatiently to the discussion and, watching his chance, beckoned to Kitty, shut the door upon the two, and poured into her ear a full account of what he had seen and heard at the station-house.

“Well, what's that got to do with it?” Kitty demanded. “What did she have to do with the boy?”

“Nothing, don't I tell ye—she's been swipin' a department store, and they got her dead to rights.”

“Who's been swipin'? What are ye talkin' about, Mike? Stop it now—I've got a lot to do, and—”

“The woman ye put to bed that night. The one ye picked up near St. Barnabas, and brought in here and dried her off. She skipped in the mornin' without sayin' 'thank ye'—why, ye must remember her! She was—”

Kitty clapped her two palms to her face, framing her bulging eyes—a favorite gesture when she was taken completely by surprise.

“That woman!” she cried, staring at Mike. “Where is she now? Tell me—”

“I don't know—but she—”

“Ye don't know, and ye come down here with this yarn? Don't ye try and fool me, Mike, or I'll break every bone in yer skin. Go on, now! How do ye know it's the same woman?”

“I'm tellin' ye no lies. Come back with me and see for yerself. The cap will let ye go down and talk to her. I heard Father Cruse tell ye to keep an eye out for her if she ever came around here agin. Ye got to hurry or they'll have her in the Black Maria on the way to the Tombs. Bunky told me so.”

Kitty stood in deep meditation. She remembered that Mike had been in the kitchen when the woman sat by the stove. She remembered, too, that Father Cruse had cautioned her to send word to the rectory if the poor creature came again and, if there were not time to reach him, then to tell Mr. O'Day. That the priest had not run across the woman at the station-house was evident, or he would have sent word by Mike. She would herself find out and then act.

“But ye must have seen Father Cruse. Did he send any word?”

“Yes, he come in just as I was leavin'. It was him who told me to be sure to hurry back. See the horse gits some water, will ye? I got to go back.”

“Hold on—what did the Father say about the woman?”

“Nothin', don't I tell ye?—he didn't see her. They'd locked her up before he came.”

“Why didn't ye tell him who it was?”

“How was I a-goin' to tell him when the cap told me to git?”

“Go on, then, wid ye! If the Father's still there, tell him I'm a-comin' up, and will bring Mr. O'Day wid me, and to hold on till I get there.”

She took her wraps from a peg behind the door, threw it wide, and joined her neighbors in the office, composing her face as best she could.

“I've got to go over to Otto Kling's,” she announced bluntly, without any attempt at apologies. “Some one of ye must go up and bail Mike out—any one of ye will do. Mr. Kelsey spoke first, so maybe he'd better go. I'd go myself and sign the bond only I'm no good, for I don't own a blessed thing in the world, except the shoes I stand in—and they're half-soled and not paid for; John's got the rest. I'll be there later on, ye can tell the captain. Mr. Codman, please send over one of your boys to mind my place. John ain't turned up and won't for an hour. That trunk went to Astoria instead of the Astor House, bad 'cess to it, and that's about as far apart as it could git. And, Mike, don't stand there with yer tongue out! And don't let Toodles go with ye. Get back as quick as ye can—and tell the captain to make it easy for me, that if the boy's badly hurt I'll go and nurse him if he ain't got anybody to take care of him. Git out, ye varmint—thank ye, Tim Kelsey, I'll do as much for you next time ye have to go to jail. Good-by”—and she kept on to Kling's.

Otto's store was full of customers when Kitty strode in. Even little Masie had been pressed into service to help on with the sales, as well as one of the “Dutchies” whom Kling had brought up from the cellar. The few remaining hours of the old year were fast disappearing and the crowd of buyers, intent on securing some small remembrance for those they loved, or more important gifts with which to welcome the New Year, thronged the store and upper floor.

Kitty made straight for Felix, who was leaning over the low counter, absorbed in the sale of some old silver. His disappointment over Kling's rebuff regarding Masie's future had been greatly lightened, relieved by his talk with Father Cruse an hour before, and he had again thrown himself into his work with a determination to make the last days of the year a success for his employer,—all the more necessary when he remembered his plans for the child. The customer, an important one, was trying to make up her mind as to the choice between two pieces, and Felix was evidently intent on not hurrying her.

He had seen Kitty when she opened the door and approached the counter, had noticed her excitement when she stopped in front of him, and knew that something out of the ordinary had sent her to him at this, the busiest part of his own and her day. But his only sign of recognition was the lift of an eyelid and a slight movement of his hand, the palm turned toward her, a gesture which told as plainly as could be that, while he was glad to see her—something she was never in doubt of—the present moment was ill adapted to protracted conversation.

Kitty, however, was not built on diplomatic lines. What she wanted she wanted at once. When she had something vital to accomplish she went straight at it, and certainly nothing more vital than her present mission had come her way for weeks.

That the news she carried had something to do with O'Day's happiness, she was convinced, or Father Cruse would not have been so insistent. That the woman herself was, in some way, connected with his misfortunes, she also suspected—and had done so, in reality, ever since the night on which she gave him the sleeve-links. She had not said so to John; she had not hinted as much to Father Cruse; but she had never dismissed the possibility from her mind.

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” she said, ignoring Felix and going straight to the cause of the embargo, “but couldn't ye let me have Mr. O'Day for a few minutes? I've somethin' very partic'lar to say to him.”

“Why, Mistress Kitty—” began Felix, smiling at her audacity, the customer also regarding her with amused curiosity.

“Yes, Mr. O'Day, I wouldn't butt in if I could help it. Excuse me, ma'am, but there's Otto just got loose, and—Otto, come over here and take care of this lady who is goin' to let me have Mr. O'Day for half an hour. Thank ye, ma'am, you don't know me, but I'm Kitty Cleary, the expressman's wife, from across the street, and I'm always mixin' in where I don't belong and I know ye'll forgive me. Otto'll charge ye twice the price Mr. O'Day would, but he can't help it because he's Dutch. Oh, Otto, I know ye!”

Felix laughed outright. “Thank you, Mr. Kling,” he said, yielding his place to his employer, “and if you will excuse me, madam,” and he bowed to his customer, “I will see what it is all about—and now, Mistress Kitty, what can I do for you?”

Kitty backed away toward the door, so that a huge wardrobe shielded her from Otto and his customer.

“Come near, Mr. O'Day,” she whispered, all her forced humor gone. “I've got the woman who dropped the sleeve-buttons.”

Felix swayed unsteadily, and gripped a chair-back for support.

“You've got—the woman—What do you mean?” he said at last.

“Mike saw her at the police-station. They've put her in a cell.”

“Arrested?”

“Yes, for stealin'.”

Involuntarily his fingers brushed his throat as if he were choking, but no words came. He had been all his life accustomed to surprises, some of them appalling, but against this, for the instant, he had no power to stand.

Kitty stood watching the quivering of his lips and the drawn, strained muscles about his jaw and neck as his will power whipped them back to their normal shape. She was convinced now of the truth of her suspicions—the woman was not only interwoven with his past, but was closely identified with his present anguish.

She drew closer, her voice rising. “Ye'll go with me, won't ye, Mr. Felix?” she went on, hiding under an assumed indifference all recognition of his struggle. “Father Cruse told me if I ever come across her again, and there wasn't time to get hold of him, to let ye know.”

“I will go anywhere, where Father Cruse thinks I should, Mrs. Cleary—especially in cases of this kind, where I may be of use.” The words had come from between partly closed lips; his hands were still tightly clinched. “And you say she was arrested—for stealing?”

“Yes, shopliftin', they call it. Poor creatures, they get that miserable and trodden on they don't know right from wrong!”

Then, as if to give him time in which to recover himself fully, she went on, speaking rapidly: “And, after all, it may only be a put-up job or a mistake. Half the women they pinch in them big stores ain't reg'lar thieves. They get tempted, or they can't find anybody to tell 'em the price o' things, especially these holiday times, and they carry 'em round from counter to counter, and along comes a store detective and nabs 'em with the goods on 'em. They did that to me once, over at Cryder's, and I told him I'd knock him down if he put his hand on me, and somebody come along who knew me, and they was that scared when they found out who I was that they bowed and scraped like dancin' masters and wanted me to take the skirt along if I'd say nothin' about it. That might have happened to this poor child—”

“Has Father Cruse seen her?” asked Felix. No word of the recital had reached his ears.

“No—that's why I come to ye.”

“And where did you say she was?” He had himself under perfect control again, and might have been a man bent only on aiding Father Cruse in some charitable work.

“Locked up in the station-house not far from here. It won't take ye ten minutes to get there.”

Felix glanced at the big-faced clock, facing the side window of the store.

“Yes, of course I will go, since Father Cruse wishes it. Thank you for bringing his message. You need not wait.”

“Needn't wait! Ye're not goin' one step without me. They'd chuck ye out if ye did, and that's what they won't do to me if the captain's in his office. Besides, Mike run over a boy, and Tim Kelsey is up there now standin' bail for him. There's no use goin' unless ye see her. That's what the Father wanted ye to do, and that ain't easy unless ye've got the run of the station. So, ye see, I got to go with ye whether ye want me or not, or ye won't get nowheres. I'll wait till ye get yer hat and coat.”

All the way to the station-house, Kitty beside him, Felix was putting into silent words the thoughts that raced through his mind.

“Barbara arrested as a vulgar thief!” he kept saying over and over. “A woman brought up a lady—with the best blood of England in her veins—her father a man of distinction! The woman I married!”

Then, as a jagged thread of light breaks away from a centre bolt, illuminating a distant cloud, a faint ray cheered him. Perhaps the woman was not Barbara. No one had any proof. Father Cruse had never believed it, and he had only argued himself into thinking that the woman who had dropped the sleeve-link must be his wife. Until he knew definitely, saw her with his own eyes, neither would HE believe it, and a certain shame of his own suspicion swept through him like a flame.

The captain was out when the two reached the station. Nor was there any one who knew Kitty except a departing patrolman, who nodded to her pleasantly as she passed in, adding in a whisper the information that Mike and Kelsey had gone up to Magistrate Cassidy, who held court in the next block, and that she was “not to worry,” as it was “all right.”

A new appointee—a lieutenant she had never seen before—was temporarily in charge of the station.

“I'm Mrs. Cleary,” she began, in her free, outspoken way, “and this is Mr. Felix O'Day.”

The new appointee stared and said nothing.

“Ye never saw me before, but that wouldn't make any difference if the captain was around. But ye can find out about me from any one of yer men who knows me. I'm here with Mr. O'Day lookin' up a woman who was brought here this morning for stealin' some finery or whatever it was from one of these big stores—and we want to see her, if ye plaze.”

The lieutenant shook his head. “Can't see no prisoner without the captain's orders.”

Kitty bridled, but she kept her temper. “When will he be back?”

“Six o'clock. He's gone to headquarters.”

“He'd let me see her if he was here,” she retorted, with some asperity.

“No doubt—but I can't.” All this time he had not changed his position—his arms on the desk, his fingers drumming idly.

Felix rested his hands on the rail fronting the desk. “May I ask if you saw the woman?”

“No. I only came on half an hour ago.”

“Is there any one here who did see her?”

Something in O'Day's manner and in the incisive tones of his voice, those of command not supplication, made the lieutenant change his position. The speaker might have a “pull” somewhere. He turned to the sergeant. “You were on duty. What did she look like?”

The sergeant yawned from behind his hand. He had been up most of the previous night and was some hours behind his sleep schedule. Kitty's presence had not roused him but the self-possessed man could not be ignored.

“You mean the girl who got Rosenthal's lace?” he answered.

“You're dead right,” returned the lieutenant obligingly. He had, of course, always been ready to do what he could for people in trouble, and was so now.

“Oh, about as they all look.” This time the sergeant directed his remarks to Felix. “We get two or three of 'em every day, specially about Christmas and New Year's. Rather run down at the heel, this one, and—no, come to think of it, I'm wrong—she looked different. Been a corker in her time—not bad now—about thirty, I guess—maybe younger—you can't always tell. Rather slim—had on a black-straw hat and some kind of a cloak.”

Kitty was about to freshen his memory with some remembrance of her own, and had got as far as, “Well, my man Mike was here and he told me that—” when Felix lifted a restraining hand, supplementing her outburst by the direct question: “Did she say nothing about herself?”

“She did not. All we could get out of her was that she was English.”

Felix bent nearer. “Will you please describe her a little closer? I have a reason for knowing.”

The sergeant caught the look of determination, dallied with a tin paper-cutter, bent his head on one side, and pursed a pair of thick lips. It was a strain on his memory, this recalling the features of one of a dozen prisoners, but somehow he dared not refuse.

“Well, she was one of the pocket kind of women, small and well put up but light built, you know. She had blue eyes—big ones—I noticed 'em partic'lar—and about the smallest pair of feet I ever seen on a girl. She stumbled down-stairs and caught her dress, and I remember they was about as big as a kid's. That was another thing set me to wondering how she got into a scrape like this. She could have done a lot better if she had a-wanted to,” this last came with a leer.

Felix clenched his teeth, and drove his nails into the palms of his hands. He would have throttled the man had he dared.

“Did she make any defense?” he asked, when he had himself under control again.

“No—there warn't no use—she owned up to having pinched it. Not here at the desk, but to Rosenthal's man who made the charge—that is, she didn't deny it. The stuff was worth $250. That's a felony, you know.”

Kitty saw Felix sway for an instant, and was about to put out a protecting hand when he turned again to the lieutenant.

“Officer, I do not ask you to break your rules, but I would consider it an especial favor if you would let me see this woman for a moment—even if you do not permit me to speak to her.”

“Well, you can't see her.” The reply came with some positiveness and a slight touch of irony. He had made up his mind now that if the speaker had a pull, he would meet it by keeping strictly to the regulations.

“Why not?”

“Because she ain't here. She's in the Tombs by this time, unless somebody went her bail up at court. They had her in the patrol-wagon as I come on duty.”

“The Tombs? That is the city prison, is it not?” Felix asked, hardly conscious of his own question, absorbed only in one thought—Lady Barbara's degradation.

“That's what it is,” answered the lieutenant with a contemptuous glance at Felix, followed by a curl of the lip. No man had a pull who asked a question like that.

“If I went there, could I see her?”

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

“Nothin' doin'—too late. You might work it to-morrow. Step down to headquarters, they'll tell you. If she's up for felony it means five years and them kind ain't easy to see. Can I do anything more for you?”

“No,” said Felix firmly.

“Well, then, move on, both of you—you can't block up the desk.”

Felix turned and left the station-house, Kitty following in silence, her heart torn for the man beside her. Never had he seemed finer to her than at this moment; never had her own heart stirred with greater loyalty. But never since she had known him had she seen him so shaken.

“There is nothing more we can do to-day,” he said, speaking evenly, almost coldly, when they reached the corner of the street. “I will see Father Cruse to-night and tell him of your kindness, and he can decide as to what is to be done. And if you do not mind, I will leave you.”

She stood and watched him as he disappeared in the throng. She understood her dismissal and was not offended. It was not her secret and she had no right to interfere or even to advise. When he was ready he would tell her. Until that time she would wait with her hands held out.

Felix crossed the street, halted for an instant as if uncertain as to his course, and turned toward the river. He wanted to be alone, and the crowd gave him a greater sense of isolation. It was the first time in months that he had tramped the thoroughfares without some definite object in view. All that was now a thing of the past, never to be revived. His quest was finished. The interview with the sergeant had ended it all. Every item in his detailed account of the woman now in the Tombs tallied with Kitty's description of the woman with the sleeve-buttons and so on, in turn, with the woman who was once his wife.

With this knowledge there flamed up in his heart an uncontrollable anger, fanned to white heat by hatred of the man who had caused it all. His fingers tightened and his teeth ground together. That reckoning, he said to himself, would come later, once he got his hands on him. If she were a thief, Dalton had made her so. If she were an outcast and a menace to society, Dalton had done it. By what hellish process, he could not divine, knowing Lady Barbara as he did, but the fact was undeniable.

What then was he to do? Go back to London and leave her, or stay here and fight on in the effort to save her? SAVE HER! Who could save her? She had stolen the goods; been arrested with them in her possession; was in the Tombs; and, in a few weeks, would be lost to the world for a term of years.

He could even now see the vulgar, leering crowd; watch the jury, picked from the streets, file in and take their seats; hear the few, curt, routine words, cold as bullets, drop from the lips of the callous judge, the frail, desolate woman deserted by every soul, paying the price without murmur or protest—glad that the end had come.

And then, with one of those tricks that memory sometimes plays, he saw the altar-rail, where he had stood beside her—she in her bridal robes, her soft blue eyes turned toward his; he heard again the responses, “for better or for worse”—“until death do us part,” caught the scent of flowers and the peal of the organ as they turned and walked down the aisle, past the throng of richly dressed guests.

“Great God!” he choked, worming his way through the crowd, unconscious of his course, unmindful of his steps, oblivious to passers-by—alone with an agony that scorched his very soul.