Speedy (Holman)/Chapter 3
A big white sight-seeing 'bus lurched around the corner into De Lacey Street, downtown New York. The 'bus was of the juggernaut type which, for some unknown reason, is in its idle hours allowed to monopolize the parking space along the traffic-jammed curbs of the Times Square section of the metropolis. With two or three fat ladies armed with tabloid newspapers—professional "'bus sitters"—planted in them for decoys, these elephantine joy wagons wait patiently until the leather-lunged barkers and mammoth sidewalk signs succeed in filling their leathern depths with gaping out-of-town visitors. Then they set forth on drab, jolty tours of Chinatown and rumble through the wilds of Brooklyn out to Coney Island, a jehu with a megaphone rasping out the points of interest.
The big white 'bus had been touring Chinatown and the moiling ant-like activity of the Bowery—dirty streets teeming with people of many nations, push carts, trucks, yelling children. Turning the corner into De Lacey Street was like passing into another world. For here, miraculously, was left a bit of the old New York. A clean, comparatively quiet street lined with the small meat shops, grocery stores, candy emporiums and notion salesrooms of solid Irish and German citizens. A single car track traced its way through the cobble stones.
The 'bus always invaded De Lacey Street on its tour. A quaint "point of interest" was to be found there. Today the 'bus was in luck. For, coincident with its arrival, the "point of interest" appeared.
Down De Lacey Street waddled leisurely a huge gray horse pulling a yellow horse car of the vintage of the nineties. The horse was well groomed, the car was newly washed, painted and repaired, but both horse and car were unmistakably old. So, for that matter, was the driver. An ancient of sixty or more, white of hair and weather-beaten of face, he stood solidly on the platform of the car and clucked his "giddy-yeps" to his steed the while he puffed upon a well-worn corncob pipe.
The 'bus roared slowly past this relic of thirty years ago.
"This, ladies and gentlemen," sang out the raucous voice of the man with the megaphone, "is the last horse car in the whole city of New York. It constitoots the Crosstown Railway, which is only half a mile long and is owned and operated by 'Pop' Dillon, the man you see driving the car. Howdy, Pop!"
The driver of the car nodded his head slightly, acknowledging the rather disparaging salute with considerable dignity. Then he yelled "Whoa!" authoritatively, as the bell tinkled above his head.
The horse obligingly and without regret halted. Pop draped the lines around the brake handle and walked rheumatically back into the car. A fat woman with a large variety of bundles and two small children craved to alight. Pop picked up three of the larger of the bundles and, ambling to the rear platform, stepped off upon the cobbles. He stood to one side awaiting the arrival of his passengers. Pop gallantly helped the woman down, then lifted off the children.
"Nice morning, Mrs. Johnson," he offered.
"Yes, 'tis," she said. "Thank you, Pop. It's a relief to ride with you after the stuffiness and rowdies in the subway."
"Thank you, Mrs. Johnson," Pop replied. "It's a pleasure to transport you."
He got back on the car again, walked to his position on the front platform and said, "Gid ap." The horse and the horse car plodded on again. Mrs. Johnson and her brood had been his only passengers and the car was now empty.
A block further along, the line came to an abrupt end. The track curved in toward the sidewalk, crossed it and entered a small wooden one-story building, the car barn. Pop drove the old mare into the shadow of the high roof and stopped. As he did so a pretty girl of eighteen or nineteen, with black hair, rosy cheeks and dancing eyes, stepped forward, a lunch basket under her arm. Pop leaned over from the platform to kiss her uplifted lips. The effort caused him to make an involuntary grimace and clutch his old back.
"Your rheumatism bothering you again, granddad?" asked the girl anxiously.
"Yes, it is, Jane," Pop Dillon replied. "I think
_2.png)
Speedy and Jane in the big push to Coney Island.
I'll make only one more run with the car today. Business is bad anyway."
"Why don't you hire somebody to run the car—or give it up entirely?" Jane asked, worry written on her young face. She spoke as if she were repeating and old request, with little chance of having it granted.
"Oh, I couldn't do that," Pop said gently, patting her on the shoulder.
"We could get along somehow," Jane went on impetuously. "I could go to work."
"No—no," Pop replied. "I'd be lost without the car. And, besides, these trolley lines are going to need this little patch of roadbed some time, and then maybe they'll be willing to pay us something for it. Just as Mr. Rockwell said. And we can sell out and go to the country."
"You're always saying that. I don't believe you'd even sell. You'll just never leave it."
"There, there, Janie," Pop clumsily strove to comfort the protesting girl. "And what have we got to eat today?" he asked brightly, trying to change the subject. "Just open it up there in the car and I'll be right back after I put the feed-bag on Nellie and wash my hands."
The old man hobbled over to an ancient oats bin and filled his horse's nose bag with a succulent mixture. He approached the blinking animal, removed the frayed straw hat that still absurdly fitted over Nellie's ears and fastened the bag on her. The horse started munching at once. Pop walked to a tap in the corner, washed his hands and dried them on a roller towel, then went back to the car. Jane in the meantime had spread a neat repast of sandwiches and cake, made by her own hand, on the seat beside her. Pop sat down with a sigh on the other side and dipped his gnarled hand into the sandwiches. Old man and young girl ate their modest lunch together in silence for a few minutes.
While pouring out the coffee from a thermos bottle, Jane observed, "I saw Speedy this morning before he went to work. He's getting along fine, he said."
"He always says that with a new job, and then the first thing you know he up and loses it."
"Oh, he's always all right," Jane said, "as long as he keeps his mind off baseball and doesn't let it interfere with his work."
"That's the trouble with Harold—he's got baseball on the brain."
"I guess he must inherit it—from his father. Haven't you ever heard from Mr. Swift, granddad, since that letter before he left for South America?"
"No—not for the last eight years."
They were both silent for several minutes, thinking of the strange circumstances that had made Speedy Swift practically an orphan at the age of twelve in the great city of New York.
Jane had often heard the story from her grandfather of how he and Tom Swift, Harold's father, had first met and of their subsequent career together. For Pop Dillon was none other than the Pop Dillon who, those among my readers who are on the shady side of thirty and real baseball fans will recall, performed up until some twenty years ago as third baseman on the New York professional team. And Tom Swift was that same Speedy Swift who came out of the Middle West as a rookie to take his place at Dillon's side as shortstop. A great combination—Swift and Dillon—cause of the frustration of many a bold base runner and slugger in their day.
Dillon was already a veteran when the eager and fiery Swift joined the team. Swift was at the start a rather cocky youngster whose supreme confidence in himself offended some of the more sensitive members of the squad. The tolerant Dillon, however, saw the streak of pure gold that lay beneath the newcomer's assertiveness and liked him at once. They became cronies, roommates. Dillon taught Swift many of the subtler tricks of the big league game. Swift made good from the start and was a fixture on the New York club for two years. After the first year Dillon, already too old for the game and slowing up fast, was released and replaced by a younger man. But the two kept up their friendship, Pop being almost a daily visitor at the New York ball park when Speedy Swift and the team were playing at home.
For Pop Dillon, nearly forty at the time of his release from the New York team, old age for a professional ball player, was unsuccessful in selling his services to another major league club and a certain pride prevented him from descending to a berth in the minors. So, ill fitted for any other form of employment, he had much leisure at his disposal, the while his small store of savings were rapidly becoming depleted.
Pop well recalled the early autumn afternoon when Speedy Swift, the younger, was born. It was the year after Pop left the New York team and the second season of Swift's appearance with them.
Swift had not been going well the last month of that summer, after his meteoric career of the previous season. The papers and Manager McGinnis were remarking freely about it. Pop Dillon knew the reason. Tom Swift was worrying. Tom's wife, back in the small Iowa town whence he had come, was not well. Tom had tried to make a flying visit to her on the occasion when the New York team played in St. Louis or Chicago, but he was unsuccessful in getting away. Ball team officials in those days were very strict about granting leaves of absence.
In spite of the rather erratic work of their shortstop in the last weeks of the league race, New York that year landed in the World's Series. Though it meant extra money to him, Tom Swift in his heart was not glad. His wife was worse and he had counted on getting back to her immediately after the close of the team's schedule of games. Now he must remain away for another week or so.
The New York nine and its World's Series opponent that year were very evenly matched. The Series see-sawed for the first six games, each team winning three, with Tom Swift fretting more and more as each day went by. On the afternoon of the seventh and final game, just as the teams were taking the field, Swift received a telegram. It read:
Wife's condition serious. Come home if possible.
The wire was signed by the name of the family doctor back in Iowa.
Swift turned pale and hesitated. For a moment he had an impulse to throw down his glove, dash for the clubhouse, change his clothes and board a train for the West at once. But to do so would cripple his team in the game. His substitute was a raw rookie. The game would be lost and Tom Swift, on top of a month of indifferent performance, would be blamed for it. He had had telegrams from his wife's bedside before, bespeaking a serious condition. And always she had recovered. Two hours more now would make no difference. He would board a train that night for home and collect his World's Series money later.
So, arguing in spite of himself, he played in the game. What happened is history. His mind in Iowa, Swift was an abject failure at the bat. His fatal fumble of a hot liner in the ninth inning cost New York the world's championship. To cap the climax, he did not wait to listen to Manager McGinnis as the latter roared censure, but instead tore for his locker to change into street clothes.
A fatal telegram awaited him there. It said that his wife was dead and that he was the father of a son. Broad shouldered Tom Swift sat in his underwear in front of his locker and sobbed as if his heart would break. His teammates stood helplessly by for a while. Then two or three of them ventured up, patted him on the back and told him not to worry, that it would be all right, that it would be a different story next year.
They thought he was crying because he had lost the ball game.
Tom Swift was notified of his release from the New York baseball club that winter.
Pop Dillon heard from him two or three times the year following. Swift was playing ball with a minor league outfit in the Middle West and a maiden sister had charge of the baby, who was named Harold. Then the letters, which had hinted that all was not going well with the Swifts, suddenly stopped.
Pop Dillon meantime had worries of his own those days. The aftermath of the business panic of 1907 was still affecting New York and an ex-ball player of forty-two years with no previous industrial experience was finding it very difficult to secure steady employment. For weeks that winter Pop walked the streets looking for employment.
One cold January morning, with snow on the ground and a gray, somber sky overhead, he was sitting on a bench near the Battery, the southernmost tip of Manhattan, staring into the fog that hovered over the river and hid Governor's Island. Pop was turning things over in his discouraged brain.
A mournful noise of fog horns penetrated the gray curtain over the river ever and again. The toots of the ferry boats, the shrill pipings of tugs and, once in a great while, the mammoth blast of an outward bound liner.
Pop dimly made out the dark hulk of a ferry boat to Brooklyn starting out from its pier just to the left of him. The boat was sounding its fog horn steadily. Suddenly the monotonous tooting changed to staccato blasts of alarm. The warning wails of a second vessel shrieked just off the starboard bow of the outgoing ferry. Too late! Pop sprang up in alarm out of his apathy as he saw through the fog screen the two black masses closing in on each other. Fog and current had conspired to bring disaster.
There was a splintering crash mingled with the shouting and cries of human beings.
Pop ran and joined the mob that was rushing through the ferry house out to the dock whence the ill-fated boat had just departed. A few more adventurous ones mounted to the pilings jutting out into the river and ran out on them as far as they could go. Pop was among these. The two colliding vessels, locked in a firm grip, were drifting. Boats, sounding gongs, whistles and horns, were rushing toward them. There seemed no immediate danger. Apparently nobody was overboard. Shore was only a hundred yards off in the direction the wounded boats were floating. Even if they were sinking, they could be beached before that fatality happened.
The little knot of men, huddling on the pilings and shivering in the damp January cold, stood watching while rescuing tugs hovered around the accident. Seemingly Pop alone detected the faint cry for help from the dark waters beneath them! The cry sounded about twenty yards off in the direction of the hub-bub in the river.
Always of an impetuous nature, Pop, without hesitation, threw off his tattered overcoat and hat and leaped into the cold waters. The shock of them made him gasp for an instant. Then he forged out with a lusty stroke in the direction whence the cry had come. For two or three minutes that seemed an eternity he groped around. Then to his right he heard sounds of a human being floundering in the water. He shot over toward the sound and had the satisfaction of clutching and seizing in a firm grip the body of a man of considerable bulk and quite alive, though nearly exhausted.
"Grab hold of me!" Pop panted. "Can you understand?"
The man evidently did for he put his hands on Pop's shoulders. The ex-ball player struck out for the piling, reaching it finally with considerable effort and when all in. Somebody had had sense enough to run for a life preserver. This was now hurled in the direction of Pop. With its aid Pop scrambled with his burden up onto the piling. There a policeman took them in charge and hurried both through the crowd that had now gathered and into the waiting room of the ferry house. The officer chased the curiosity seekers and closed the doors.
"Now, what are youse fellows' names?" asked the cop, producing a notebook and a stub of a pencil.
The rescued man had by this time recovered his breath and some of his dignity, though he was pale of face behind his flowing gray whiskers, and soaking wet. As indeed was the tired Pop, who had not been eating too regularly of late and was feeling a little weak in the stomach.
"Can't you wait for that stuff?" asked the man snatched from the watery grave. "You see we're both half dead and wet to the skins."
"I gotta have the names," insisted the policeman.
"All right. I'm William Rockwell, president of the Crosstown Railway Company. "I was on the bow of the Brooklyn ferry and was knocked overboard. And this man here is a hero if there ever was one." He put a kindly if heavy hand on Pop's shoulder.
Though he did not realize it at the time, with those appreciative words and that clasp on the back Pop Dillon was fixed for life.
Pop blinked. He had heard of William Rockwell. Rockwell was sole owner of a horse car line operating downtown New York. The man was tich, though not as rich as he had been before the electric railways, the elevated system and the subways put horse cars out of date and largely out of business. Rockwell's cars now ran on only three or four streets and there were rumors that even these horse-drawn vehicles remaining were soon to give way to electricity.
By this time the mob outside had dispersed. The policeman, having secured his data and making certain rescued and rescuer were all right, had left. Rockwell led the way to a taxi cab and insisted that Pop enter with him. A ride uptown brought them to Rockwell's brownstone mansion just off Fifth Avenue. Pop was given the most wonderful hot repast he had ever eaten and a new suit of clothes. Also a job. He became motorman of a Crosstown Railways horse car operating over De Lacey Street.
Ten years later, when William Rockwell died, the half mile or more of trackage set in the cobbles of De Lacey Street and the ancient horse car and animal operated by Pop Dillon were the only properties still owned by the Crosstown Railways Company. All the rest had succumbed to the power lines. Rockwell's fortune, due to unwise investments, had dwindled to nothing. The brownstone mansion went to his creditors. The Crosstown Railways Company went to Pop Dillon.
"Hold onto it," Rockwell warned Pop a few hours before the magnate died. "That franchise will be valuable some day. The Inter-City people will need that half mile of track so they can hitch up their system properly. They'll come after you to sell and you can get some real money for it. Meantime, remember that the franchise calls for at least: one round trip a day to be made over the line. Make that trip if you have to do it for years with an empty car. Make the trip and keep the franchise."
For ten more years now Pop Dillon had been making the trip. And the car, as Rockwell had predicted, was on many occasions empty. Pop Dillon had become a familiar figure in the De Lacey Street neighborhood, a region still retaining some of the quaintness and friendly feeling of Old New York, though the tenement districts were encroaching upon it block by block. The neighborhood knew and liked Pop. They went out of their way to ride in his car and hand him the nickels he needed so badly.
At night when Nellie, Pop's ancient mare, was testing in her stall and the anachronistic vehicle she pulled stood in the shadows of the car barn's leaky roof, the men of De Lacey Street often assembled in the car to play pinochle, talk and smoke their pipes with Pop. It was a sort of club house on wheels.
In the twelfth year of Pop's career as driver of the horse car, his granddaughter, Jane, had come to live with him. Jane was then a bright-eyed, darkhaired girl of ten. Her folks had a small farm upstate in Pennsylvania and it was partly to relieve her hard-working father of a mouth to feed and partly to keep house for Pop, who was growing steadily older and unable to take care of himself, that she had come. She was the apple of his eye. He had now for five years resisted her importunities that she go to work and help earn money for their support. He had protested that he was well able to take care of both of them financially, though he had within the last few days been forced to yield to her at least to the extent of allowing her to rent out the spare room in the tiny flat they occupied on De Lacey Street. Jane was even now looking for a boarder.
Jane was not Pop's only ward. Within a month after she had come to live in New York, Tom Swift broke the long years of silence and wrote to Pop. Things were still not breaking right for him, Tom said. For years he had been living a hand-to-mouth existence in various parts of the country, earning just enough to support himself and his son, Harold, now a boy of twelve years. His baseball ability seemingly left him when he was released from the New York team. He gave up the game after two years in the minor leagues and tried to learn several trades, to little avail.
Now he had an opportunity to join a company that operated nitrate mines in Chile and wanted to send him there. The pay was high, because it was difficult to find men willing to go down there and endure the hardships involved. But, Swift felt, it was his last chance and he was eager to accept it. The one thing causing him to hesitate was Harold. He did not want to take the boy with him. First, there was the expense involved and then, he knew, Chile and the life he would be forced to lead there would not be good for a boy of twelve. He wondered if Pop would be willing to allow the boy to come to New York and live with him until Harold was old enough to get out and make his own way. The older Swift would, he promised, make periodical remittances of money for the boy's keep as soon as he got settled in Chile.
"He's a good, bright boy," Swift wrote. "Mischievous and maybe a little rattle-brained, but what healthy youngster isn't? He claims he's going to be a ball player, like me, some day. He's crazy about baseball. Keeps asking me questions all the time about the game and knows the scores and averages backwards. I've tried to get his mind off it. You and I know professional baseball for the players as a tragedy. The clubs take the best that's in you, then cast you out into the world helpless just when you ought to be in your prime. I guess you can knock baseball out of his head just as you knocked it into mine when I joined the Highlanders a green recruit."
So, one bright May morning, Harold and his frayed suitcase came to join the menage of Pop and Jane. He had twenty-five dollars with him, which he turned over to Pop, and that was the last money Tom Swift ever gave the old man for the boy's support. A deep silence closed around the elder Swift. Letters sent to the address in Chile came back unopened. And Harold Swift, nicknamed Speedy at once by Pop after the boy's father, took up the life of a boy of the New York streets.
He played hop scotch and kick the stick on the cobbles of De Lacey Street. He invaded the Bowery with his boy friends and fought the tough gangs there. He was kept in school for a few years by Pop's brute force. He waxed strong and healthy and wise in the ways of New York boyhood. At the age of fourteen he was selling papers at the corner of De Lacey and Candler Streets. At fifteen he was errand boy for several firms in quick succession. Speedy was willing to work, but his high spirits were continually bringing the wrath of his superiors down upon him. A natural born practical joker, his jokes nearly always ended in his being fired again. And at all times his real interest was in America's national game of baseball.
In winter Speedy devoured the news of the baseball deals and the league meetings. In the spring his mind was with the players in the training camps. In summer he followed the major league races keenly day by day and attended the games by hook or crook whenever he possibly could. In the fall he was all agog over the World's Series. He played ball himself in De Lacey Street and his only regret in not going on with his schooling was that he was thus denied a possible chance to pursue his love for the game on a regular diamond with real grass and everything.
Pop and Jane were both very fond of the boy. They were also worried about him. At the time of our story he was twenty-two. Jane was eighteen but felt much older than that, exercising as she did a maternal care over two men. It was time, Jane and her grandfather agreed, that Harold should settle down. Speedy had many times agreed with them. His good looks and good nature won him jobs easily, many of them quite good jobs. But his obsession for baseball, his practical jokes and his restlessness lost them for him.
Lately he had given up occupying the spare room with the Dillons, reluctantly but firmly, because he had argued that they could rent it out to somebody for a much larger sum than he could pay. He knew they needed the money. He did not want to burden them. He had taken a smaller and cheaper room down the street in a boarding house kept by a widow named Feeley. But he continued to visit the Dillons practically every day. He was still almost one of the family.
Harold loved Pop Dillon as if the latter were his own grandfather as well as Jane's. As for Jane, though he had long regarded her as a sister, he had for a year or two back realized that his attitude toward her had changed to something warmer. In his candid moments he now acknowledged to himself that he was in love with her, would ask her to marry him if he could ever settle down into a good job so that he could support her. As for Jane, she was somewhat uncertain of her true feelings toward Harold. Her attitude was half that of a mother and half of—well, she didn't quite know. She liked being with him. He was so lively and good-natured and eager to help her. But he was also such a harum-scarum, such a kid. She did so wish he would land a good job and stick to it, grow up.
Pop Dillon, looking on from his majestic eminence of sixty-four years, was vaguely uneasy about the two young people of his heart. He supposed some day they would fall in love with each other, if they weren't in that beatific state already. He half hoped for it and half feared it. He would certainly not consent to Speedy thinking seriously of marrying Jane in the boy's present precarious financial and business position. Darn him, why didn't he go to work in earnest like other young fellows! There was young Tow Feeley, the widow's son, earning his twelve dollars a day as a plumber week in and week out. There were dozens of other youths around the block, boys Harold had romped with, settled down into good paying situations.
It was no wonder that Harold was the chief source of conversation when Pop and Jane sat down together to these daily lunches in the old street car. And they were quite justified in the note of impatience with him that tinctured their talk.
For his future actions concerned them both deeply—even more deeply than they suspected—as oncoming events were to prove.