The Red Book Magazine/Volume 42/Number 5/Alias Dolan

by Harold MacGrath

Illustration: “No, no!” cried Synde. “Don't yank it. I'll show you how to get the line down.”

 

Harold MacGrath was one of the first “colyum conductors” in America; and that job makes a man put a lot of himself into his work. Though he long since relinquished his column on a Syracuse paper, Mr. MacGrath still sometimes follows the old-time method. For instance, he's constantly buying fishing rods he'll never use, though he's an expert fisherman—as does Synde in the present story. Moreover Belfort, the catalogue sportsman, is a cherished friend, with whom he's often gone on long, adventurous hunting trips in his own library.

 

Alias Dolan

By

Harold MacGrath

Illustrated by H. Weston Taylor

UPON the door was a small card which announced that Professor Henry Belfort taught music from nine until four. You were requested to ring.

It was eight o'clock of a June morning. The Professor at this moment was frying his single breakfast egg in his bedroom. For variety he fried, boiled or poached his egg; with this went toast and coffee. Sometimes, when there was a wave of prosperity, there was added a bit of bacon. Luncheon consisted of bread and milk, filling and sustaining. His dinner-check at the Biltmore Lunch, where he rubbed elbows with the world, ranged from thirty to forty cents.

Belfort was not his name. A man whose patronymic was Dolan would never get anywhere in the musical world. To draw business, it had to be Russian, Polish or French. So years ago he had selected Belfort, lopping off the “t” when he pronounced it. By now he was Belfort.

He was a dapper little man, with white hair, a thin, smoothly shaven face, dreamy blue eyes and a pleasant voice. His hands were slender, well-kept and surprisingly powerful, as the hands of pianists generally are. He played well, with feeling, but not well enough for the concert stage. The thousands and thousands of good musicians who cannot get anywhere! He could have eked out a fair living by playing in a moving-picture theater, but at his age—fifty-six—the hours were too long; he would never have had any time to himself or for his dreams.

He was not conscious of it, but walls suffocated him. When he was not giving lessons, he was always wandering about the streets. He loved the free sunshine, the trees, such gardens as he could see beyond the palings of the rich. Sometimes fortune bewildered him; he needed so little, and often that was denied him. Still, fortune was kind to him in one degree; he was alone, without dependents.

He taught children. Mothers sent their little boys and girls to him. Some had music in them; but most of them had nothing but sullen rebellion. He understood this rebellion, however. Youth craved sunshine just as he did. As soon as they could play their first piece, they were taken away to some fashionable teacher, at five dollars an hour instead of one.

He was glad that he had not taken up the violin like Sobolski across the hall. Even when his pupils struck a wrong note, the note was true. But over in Sobolski's! Nothing is more horrible to the sensitive ear than a false note on a fiddle-string.

A man is known by the rooms he lives in, as well as by the company he keeps. In these two rooms—bedroom and studio— there were no cobwebs, no dust, no disorder. The windows which overlooked the dingy court were perfectly transparent, so that between eleven and one the sun had no difficulty in flooding the rooms. More than this, the air in these two rooms was always fresh.

In the studio the eye was always first attracted by the grand piano, highly polished so as to look like new; but the ivory keys were yellow with age. There was nothing astonishing about the piano; in fact, it belonged to this room. But when your glance roved about the walls, there was real cause for astonishment. Not a photogravure of Mozart on his deathbed, none of Beethoven playing “The Moonlight Sonata,” no portraits of the celebrated composers and performers; nothing of this character was visible to the eye. Instead there were colored lithographs of hunting scenes. Here was a man netting a fat trout; another was aiming at a bull moose in the lily pads—and so on, forest and water scenes in profusion, got from the outing magazines, cartridge and gun manufacturers' calendars, all neatly but cheaply framed. Thus it will be understood that though the owner had used the name of Belfort for thirty years, he was still a Dolan. The roving Irish instinct was still strongly entrenched. But in this studio Opportunity was something to be read about, skeptically. In one corner of the room was a fat pile of well-thumbed sporting magazines.

The location of the studio was central. In fact, it was in the heart of the business district. The ground floors were given over to shops, the second floor to beauty parlors, milliners and a barber-shop, the third floor to more beauty regenerators, manicurists and tailors, the fourth to dry-cleaners and the studios of Professors Henry Belfort and Ignace Sobolski. Fortunately for Belfort, there was an elevator which ran from six in the morning until eight at night.

The Professor finished his breakfast, brushed his threadbare coat, trimmed his collar and cuffs, dressed and entered the studio. No prescience warned him that this was going to be the day of days, that Opportunity was about to throw her arms ecstatically around his neck. No. He never went beyond the present minute, never felt that something was going to happen in the next. Who does? The sun was shining, and it required no sibyl's penetrating sight to inform the Professor that it was going to be a—day in June.

He sat down at the piano and touched the keys lovingly. Thirty years old, and sweeter now than when he bought it. Why shouldn't it be, with all the care he had given it? He loved it; it was a mistress who answered all his moods; it fed and housed him, and once in two or three years gave him a new suit of clothes. Suddenly he got up and began to paw the sheaves of music, finally bringing forth a tuner's key. He tightened up several wires, then began to play, improvising.

The bell rang.

“Come in!” he called.

Little Annie Fuller entered, timidly and fearfully. Always this day of the week her soul became steeped in terror. If she did not hold her hands just so, the Professor's baton would crack her knuckles; if she returned home without a good report, her father's rattan would crack her elsewhere. Poor little Annies, with no more music in their souls than there is in pig-iron, harried and harassed toward an objective in which they have no concern and never will have: and later in life, forgetting their own miseries, they will send their offspring through the same tinkling treadmill. Education, they call it.

Let us draw the curtain over this particular hour, the misery of the man (who needed the dollar) and the misery of the child (who needed only a set of mud-pie tins) and again come upon the man as Annie tripped happily to the elevator-shaft.

The Professor had two more lessons to give this day, but as these came into the time between two and four, he would be free for several hours. With a light heart he put on his fedora (four years old, but given a new ribbon each spring), locked the studio door and went down into the glorious June sunshine, for all the world like a man who was about to keep an appointment with a pretty woman. True, he noted them today in their light summery dresses, as he noted the flashing sedans, the shop-windows, the bold white clouds and the patches of blue sky beyond. Nothing was a picture in itself; he saw only the ensemble.

He walked briskly. He was a sound man; his back was flat, for all his fifty-six years. Always planning to take a vacation in the wilderness some day, he had kept himself physically fit. His only dissipation was a pipeful of tobacco after his dinner at the Biltmore Lunch. He read as he smoked. Upon finishing the pipe, he threw up the windows and freshened the room.

Briskly, then, he walked down the main street of the town, turned into a side-street and finally came to a halt before the double windows of a sporting-goods house. One window was given over to fishing-tackle, the other to camp stuff. He nodded approvingly at the patent flap-closer of a tent. That would keep out the bugs if you wanted to read. He smiled cheerfully and entered the shop, passing along to the rod department.

“Hello, Mr. Wills! Got those new rods you told me you were getting?”

“We sure have. Got two new catalogues for you, too.”

“Fine!” The Professor rubbed his hands pleasurably. “But first, let me see those rods.”

The clerk smiled and laid out on the counter ten cases, some in aluminum, some in canvas. Belfort opened them one by one, fitted the rods and worked them gently, commenting as he did so.

“Not bad, this one..... But too whippy. Too much backbone for trout..... Too long for three ounces.” And so on, until he came to the eighth rod. “Ha! Here's a rod: just the right backbone; four ounces to ten feet. My, my! I never held a better.”

“Professor, you're a wonder. That's the best rod we ever had in the store; and we couldn't think of selling it under seventy-five.”

“That lets me out,” said Professor Belfort ruefully. There were men in this world, then, who could afford to pay seventy-five dollars for a fish-rod?

“When do you expect to run wild?” asked Wills, as he helped to replace the rods in their cases.

The question was a part of the game he played with the Professor. He had played it for several years. He knew that the Professor was never going to take this vacation he planned so regularly; and the Professor knew that he knew.

“Maybe in August. Have you got any of those barbless flies?”

“Yes; but no call for them.”

“It seems to me mighty poor sport to torture fish when you don't intend to eat them. Now, a barbless fly gives you the thrill of a break and a tug, and then Mr. Trout gets off, none the worse for the adventure.”

“Lots of fish-hogs come in here. And duck-hogs, too! Kill 'em, kill 'em; you don't hear anything else. Our job, though, is to sell 'em the murder stuff. We take our hats off to a sportsman like you. No joshing, Professor; I mean it.”

The Professor beamed, but he felt a bit of color in his cheeks. Wills was not making fun of him; the irony was unconscious.

“Am I taking up your time?”

“No. Our game is to show stock to those who know, whether they buy or not. We are advertised by our friends. But take a peek at that canoe.”

The canoe-rack was already under inspection. Another clerk was explaining the varied merits of the several canoes to a stocky man with a handsome sunburnt face, a blue eye of agate hardness, and a grim mouth and chin. The stranger radiated force, physical and mental.

“I'm used to birch,” he said.

“But this canvas is far lighter and more durable,” the clerk declared.

The Professor crossed the aisle.

“Will it carry weight? I'm close to two hundred,” said the stranger.

“With that beam,” interposed the Professor, “it will carry three times that weight.”

“But supposing I wanted to paddle off with a bull moose?”

“Moose? Well, I don't know about that,” the Professor admitted, with sudden embarrassment. He wished he hadn't spoken; but what he said was true. Moose—the North Country, the pines and cedars, the great beasts in the lily pads, the midges dancing up and down in the sunshine, the diving loons! “Still,that's as good a canoe for fast water as you'll find.” He reached for the double-blade paddle. “I'd chuck this, though. The single blade's the thing. You can't put the same force into the double-blade.”

The agate-blue eyes showed some interest. “Much obliged,” said the owner of the eyes. He turned to the clerk. “I'll take the canoe. Now I'll look at some small arms.”

Elated, the Professor turned to go, when Wills hailed him. “Here's your catalogues, Professor, and some new magazines.”

The Professor tucked them under his arm and departed.

“Let me see that rod he was praising,” said the stranger. Wills took the rod from the case and joined the parts. The big man handled the rod expertly. “The old boy is right. This is a real rod. I don't need it, but I'll take it. What's the use of a little extra coin if you can't fool with it?” He smiled, and his face became winning and boyish. “Who is he?”

“Professor Belfort, a music teacher,” answered Wills. “There's a good yarn there. He knows more about tackle and guns than nine-tenths of the chaps who call themselves sportsmen. And yet if he ever wet a line it's been in the town creek, a few miles outside the limits. Shiners and bullheads.”

“You mean to say he's never done any fishing or canoeing? How come?” demanded the big man, now thoroughly alive with interest.

“Sporting magazines and catalogues. He devours them from cover to cover. You see, when he began coming in, we got sore laying aside things for him and listening to his apologies; but the boss got the facts of the thing and ordered us to humor him. And by jings, his judgment is always correct. Sounds fishy, but it's true. Just gave him a few rods to look over, and he picked the winner.”

“Stop that!” At the north of the clearing stood a little man, at his hip an automatic.

“Well, that gets me. Never heard of anything like that before.” The big man began to laugh. “I guess I had him up a tree when I asked how I could pack moose in that canoe.”

“I guess you did. He's been planning a vacation for years, but he'll never get enough money to make it. Seems a darn shame, too. When he's in here, he's as happy as a child; and I don't know of any child more guileless.”

“Hasn't he any friends?”

“None that I know of.”

“Humph.” The stranger stroked his blue chin.

“And a tough life he leads, too, teaching kids to murder the piano as painlessly as possible.”

“Let me look at the small arms. I wasn't going to buy anything when I came in; but you know how it is. You've just got to buy something each year, or the fun is spoiled.”

Half an hour later the stranger extracted from his trouser pocket a huge roll of twenty-dollar notes, paid out two hundred and eighty dollars, scribbled his name and address, and was about to fare forth into the street, when a thought caused him to pause and turn.

“What did you say the old codger's name was?”

“Henry Belfort.”

“All out of magazines and catalogues, eh? That'll be some yarn to carry North.” The stranger laughed. It was a deep rumble, but contagious, for Wills laughed, too. “By the way, ship the stuff via Montreal.”

“Yes sir.”

After this unusual customer was gone, Wills thoughtfully studied the list of purchases. The canoe, rod and reels were all right. But six army automatics and two hundred rounds of ammunition? Well, it was no business of his. The house had made a nice profit.

Meantime the object of this curiosity went on down the street. From time to time the laughter rumbled in his throat. Got his stuff out of catalogues, eh? Funniest thing he had ever heard of. A Simon-pure bluff; and yet he could pick out a rod like that without practical knowledge, without that experience very hard to acquire, merely by some instinct not translatable into words. He wondered if the old boy could lay a fly. Get the old geezer with a lot of elderberries behind him—that would be a scene worthy of a moving-picture camera. No man living could lay a fly by reading about it; the thing had to be done a thousand times, and even then some dubs never got the hang of it. What a notion! What a damn'-fool notion! He began to laugh again. Just the kind of an adventure he needed, a break in the damnable monotony that was more and more engulfing him. Something to laugh at!

He entered the first drugstore he came to and asked for the city directory. He wrote down Professor Henry Belfort's address, bought a cigar, and returned to the street. If the old geezer could cook—it would all depend upon that. It would be as good as a vaudeville show. Of course, he wouldn't be able to cook like Pierre—the snooping fool! Well, Pierre had got his. If the old fellow could cook bacon and eggs and flapjacks and good coffee—

AT five minutes after eight that evening, the last trip of the elevator, the Professor entered his studio, turned on the reading lamp, got his new catalogues and sporting magazines and his pipe, and sat down for an orgy; for a man can get drunk by the way of reading quite as easily as by the way of the lips. But tonight the orgy was not destined to run any length of time. At half after eight, the bell tinkled. The Professor was somewhat astonished. Not half a dozen times the year did anyone ring his bell at night.

Reluctantly he laid aside his pleasure and went to the door.

“What is it?”

“This is Professor Henry Belfort?”

“Yes. Wont you come in?”

As the light struck the visitor's face, Belfort's astonishment became audible in the form of a sharp gasp. The man of the canoes!

“A lot of steps to climb, but I decided I wanted to have a chat with you,” said the burly stranger. “My name is Synde, Joseph Synde—pronounced like Sinned. More sinned against than sinning. Ha!”

“Have a chair, sir.” The Professor shut the door, his bewilderment stupefying him. What in the world could this man want?

Synde dropped into a chair and adroitly sailed his cap to the piano-top.

“I see you smoke, so you wont mind if I take a whack at my pipe. I was interested in your knowledge of rods this morning. Couple of years ago I leased a camp in Canada. Good trout-fishing, and plenty of moose in the fall. Eighteen miles from the nearest railway station, but I've blazed a fairish auto trail, if you don't mind a few bumps.”

“If I don't mind a few bumps!” echoed the Professor.

“I want a man familiar with the big open spaces.”

“Of which I know absolutely nothing.”

“Good. I like honest men. I'm honest myself—occasionally.” Synde's laughter rocked the walls. “The clerk told me all about you. Hang it all, I get lonesome once in a while, and there's no intellectual fodder in my guide's talk. I want a companion, a man not too proud to cook simple food and wash up after, who'll smoke with me at night and talk about books and things. There's a piano, but nobody knows how to play it. Maybe it's in tune; I don't know. A hundred dollars a month and your fare back. Can you cook?”

“Why—” Belfort stupidly rubbed his forehead.

“No fancy stuff. Bread, bacon and eggs, coffee and the like. You're wanting a vacation, and I'm wanting the society of a mental equal. That's the milk in the coconut.” Synde laid a bronzed, powerful hand upon Belfort's knee. “What do you say? I'm an impulsive beggar. It kind of hit me, your digging away in those magazines and never going anywhere. I want a companion, but I want three meals a day when I'm around. What say?”

“I can cook.” Belfort was certain that he had fallen asleep in the chair; this conversation was of the stuff of nightmares.

“Bully! You'll have lots of time on your hands, and you can whip the trout-stream to your heart's content.”

“But how would I get to your camp?” There was more continuity to this than was usual in nightmares.

“With me. I take the whole trip in my car. I had to have the magneto fixed, or I should have gone through this town. Life's funny; huh? I went into that store this morning because I had nothing to do. I didn't need a darn thing, but I bought a lot of truck just the same. Man's a fool about some things.” Synde made an imaginary cast, struck and began to reel in. “Nothing like it. Once there, it never gets out of the blood. Like war!”

“You were over there?”

“Yes, I was in that war.” Synde chuckled; and little as he knew of human notes, Belfort sensed a wild and bitter defiance in the chuckle. It gave more life to the nightmare notion.

SYNDE looked to be about forty-five, for his hair was graying, and frosty wrinkles spread from the corners of his eyes. “How old are you?” asked Belfort, without considering the impertinence of the question. Besides, impertinence in nightmares didn't count.

“Thirty-five. I know, I look ten years older. War—piled ten years on top of me.” Synde bared his left arm to the elbow. From the elbow almost to the wrist ran a broad red scar. “Heine's bayonet. My back is a sight, too. I don't know what it is about war. Meat-chopper! You go in a man and come out God knows what.” He laughed again. “Well, how about it?”

“I'm confused. I'll want a day or two to think it over.”

“Tonight,” declared Synde. “I'm leaving after lunch tomorrow. Perhaps it's the cash. I'll give you two hundred now to clinch the deal.”

“I'll go,” said the Professor recklessly; and having passed the Rubicon, he wanted to dance, sing and indulge in he knew not what other nonsense. Of course he would' wake up shortly, with his knees covered with pipe-ash. He often did that.

“Fine! We'll get along. You'll cook, but you'll eat with me. Here's the dough. You'll know what you need. Dont bother about tackle. I've got rafts of the stuff. Can you shoot?”

“No.”

“I'll put you through the mill when we get there. You'll be left alone some. There's a lot of tough customers wandering about. If they knew you couldn't handle a gun, they might loot the camp. You're not afraid, are you?”

“I might be.”

“You're all right, Professor. The yellow-streaker never admits that he might be afraid.”

Synde produced his roll. Never had Belfort seen so much money save behind a teller's cage. He took the ten twenties mechanically, but could not take his gaze off this queer Hercules who was hiring Henry Belfort to satisfy some deep-moving whim.

“Call at the hotel at noon. G'night.”

Synde snatched his cap off the piano and departed in a kind of furious mirth, for the befuddled Professor could hear his laughter all the way down to the next landing.

Belfort closed the studio door, and stared at the crisp bills in his hand. Next, he struck a chord on the piano, paced the room, stared through the window at the bright stars, and finally plopped into a chair and gazed at the walls. In an hour or so he would wake up, worse luck!

Below, Synde climbed into his powerful roadster, unlocked the engine and addressed the world at large.

“Joe, you're probably a damn' fool!”

He swooped in a quick half-circle and rolled rapidly away. His laughter broke forth afresh. Was there ever a joke like this before? He wouldn't hurt the old boy, not a hair of his head; but he would use him in lieu of the comic supplements. What would Stony Mike say, Jean, Lefty Luke and the rest of the gang, when they saw Professor Henry Belfort washing dishes at Camp Sinister? A whale of a joke!

“NO, no!” cried Synde, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Don't yank it. Let it be, and I'll show you how to get the line down.”

He took the rod from the Professor's hand and gave it several sharp pats. The line looped off the branch, but the fly stuck.

“I'm sorry,” said the Professor. His nose was red and peeling. The general aspect of his face was that of a man who had just escaped violent strangulation. So works the sun and wind upon the tender city epidermis. “I thought I knew something, but I don't.”

“Forget it. Everybody has to learn. Besides, this kind of casting is vaudeville stuff. You gave me a good laugh, though.”

“You're welcome.”

The Professor had not so long ago found out that when human problems confronted him, he was helpless, his powers of analysis negligible; yet this camp and this man affected him oddly, gave him the sense of an impending storm. Frequently morose and given to long spells of silence, there were times when Synde fascinated him with his brilliant talk of books, art, peoples. But it was when he played the piano that he got a glimpse of the man's soul—a thing in torment; for once he had turned suddenly and discovered tears in those agate-blue eyes. The bitter mockery, the bursts of sardonic laughter were but a mask.

“We'll lose the fly,” Synde remarked.

The leader broke. But Synde turned the broken end into a scientific loop and attached a new fly. He stripped a few feet of line from the reel and let the fly rest upon the water. A fillip of the wrist, and the line rose in a beautiful loop. Up, up, until it almost touched the pine; another fillip, and the line darted magically toward the center of the pool, paused in midair; the fly touched the water with the airy lightness of a feather.

“I'll never learn to do that,” said the Professor.

“In time. You're working like an old-timer in the open. It's no cinch to land three pounds of native trout from a still pool as deep as this one. You've got the gift. Well, I guess this will be all for today. It's eleven. Never anything doing in the middle of the day.”

This was the Professor's second week in the wilderness. Fourteen days of unimaginable spectacles! He had seen wild deer, a cow-moose and her calf, partridge, loon, duck, porcupine. He had got three duckings trying to manage the canoe, and Synde had laughed himself sick. His first exploit with a rod had cost him flies, leader and line; for he had not thought to knot the line to the reel. But he hadn't broken a rod yet: and Synde had told him that breaking rods was always a beginner's trick.

“You'll do.” Synde had said. “You've got the knack. All you've got to do is to forget everything you've read. A man who can make the coffee you can isn't going to be slow in learning how to lay a fly.”

And oh, the nights! The opal mists, low-lying, the pine tops in the clear, the brilliant moon above!

And there were the ruddy dawns, too, with all the wood and water life breaking out. One morning he had come upon a deer eating the potato-parings not five feet from the kitchen door. His astonishment had been quite equal to that of the deer.

The beauty of the wilderness overpowered him, and often came the impulse to kneel and kiss the sod. Had he ever taught music at a dollar the hour? It did not seem possible.

But over it all lay the intangible puzzle. There was Jean the guide, always sullen and of growling speech. It seemed to the Professor that the usual conduct between guide and employer did not obtain there. Jean wasn't respectful; he was only obedient, by force of necessity, for Synde was an extraordinarily powerful man, and performed Herculean tasks about the camp for the mere sport of it.

Once the Professor had heard voices in the night, the tramping of feet somewhere about the house; but his curiosity had been inactive.

Occasionally a man dropped into camp. It was not always the same man, but always one who was burly and sullen. Jean would fill the man's arms with packages of tobacco, and the visitor would vanish into the forest out of which he had come.

Mystery; but the Professor promised himself that he would attend to his own affairs. Once Synde had said: “When I'm off on one of my jaunts, stick around the house.” It was a friendly warning.

“Why is it necessary for some one to make you laugh?” the Professor asked upon this day of the caught line. “Don't you ever do it spontaneously? You get your fun out of people's mishaps.”

“What's your notion of humor?” shot back Synde, grinning sardonically.

“Why—why—” the Professor stammered.

“You don't know. Well, I'll tell you. All humor is based upon mishap and misery. Supposing you went gallantly to war and came back to find your job gone and your promised bride married to some one else? Isn't that the funniest thing God ever laid down for a man to laugh at?”

Synde flung down the rod and made off toward camp. Greatly shocked by what he knew to be a revelation, the Professor picked up the rod and disjointed it, mechanically. A woman! But the loss of a job shouldn't have mattered, for there was every indication that Synde was wealthy..... Some woman who hadn't been worthy..... To keep on making this man laugh, then, by premeditated awkwardness, to pay for this vacation in full!

The camp had been a revelation. He had always associated camps with tents, canvas cots and reeking kerosene lanterns. This camp was a rambling log cabin, with many rooms, containing all the average comforts of civilization. To lease 1t must have cost Synde a pretty penny.

That night thirst awoke the Professor, and as he opened his bedroom door (next to the kitchen) he heard voices in the living-room. He did not mean to listen; he was not conscious of acting the part of eavesdropper; he was still bemused with sleep.

“I'll send him away when I get good and ready!” Synde's voice.

“Well, the boys are leery. They don't want to bury another stiff. If this old chap begins to snoop—”

“He isn't that kind, Lefty.”

“The boys don't like it.”

“I don't give a damn what the boys like or don't. I'm boss here. The Professor stays because he has the ability to make me laugh. Come across. Are they starting a row, and using their dislike of the Professor as a blind?”

“They're a an lot.”

“And you are the little peacemaker? Bah! I'm treating them square, living up to the contract. Who's starting this ruckus?”

“Stony Mike.”

“All right. One of these days I'll pile on top of Mike. Because I make the trick look easy, you chaps think you could do it alone. Try it.”

“Look here, boss. I'm on your side. Don't try to handle Mike with your fists. Oh, you can lick him; but he'll get nasty over the Pierre business. There weren't any witnesses, he says, but he says he's willing to take your word for it, if you'll take his.”

“Tell him to go to the devil!” was Synde's response. “I'm running this game; tell him so.”

“All right, boss.”

A door closed. Silence. The Professor crept back to his bed, his thirst forgotten.

THE days slipped into weeks. The Professor became Indian dark. He never went beyond the clearing into the forest proper, from which he had seen men emerge from time to time and into which they had disappeared—sullen, silent men. He was no fool: something was going on in there—but it was none of his business. He awoke each day filled with unquenchable curiosity; but this curiosity was directed toward the wild life and the secrets of the pools.

Sometimes Synde would be gone three or four days. He would depart in a surly mood, but his return was invariably boisterous. More and more he demanded the society of his cook. He would take the Professor by the arm, after the supper-dishes were out of the way, and propel him into the living-room.

“Play something.”

And for an hour the Professor would play. One night, after the musicale, they fell to talking.

“I know nothing of the world,” said the Professor. “If I did ask you a question—”

“Go on.”

“You spoke of losing your job when you came back from the war.”

“Ah, I see. I've grown wealthy since that time.” Synde chuckled as he eyed the little old man through the smoke of his pipe. “Yes sir; I've made my pile. But when I landed in New York, I was flat. Don't you waste any sympathy on Joe Synde; he neither asks nor needs it. He's sitting on top of the world.”

A sound and vigorous little old fellow, Synde told himself, but would he be any good in a pinch? Things were going from bad to worse out there in the heart of the forest. Perfectly logical, though. Crooked business and crooked minds went together.

Perhaps he'd better send the Professor home. Game little old codger; in all these weeks of blisters and backaches, not a whimper. Fifty-six years old, and still going strong because he had lived clean. Well, Joe Synde had lived clean too, in the physical sense; he was a crook and a blackguard in his thoughts. Queer, the association with the Professor had turned the light inward many times of late. Clean of body and soiled in soul; and not a grain of regret!

“Professor, I believe I'll send you home.”

“Why?”

“Looks to me like rough weather.”

“Meaning the men in the woods?”

“Yes. What do you guess?”

“I'd like to stay a little longer. You see, you've made a dream of mine come true. Why don't you go?”

“I'm not the kind that runs away.”

“Haven't you run away from the best in life?”—boldly.

Synde stiffened in his chair. “Any animal runs away from the thing that hurts it. Men go to hell because of worthless women, never because of good ones. Toddle along to bed; I want to be alone.”

IN the great North Country, the amateur woodsman should stick to the clearings, particularly on gray days, and more particularly still, if he carries no pocket compass. There are no trails to the untrained eye; and yet the dried pine-needles suggest trails without number. Attempt to follow one of these imaginary trails, and see what happens to you.

It began this way: The Professor had decided to take the west trail for a couple of miles, where he would be out of hearing, and begin his initial practice with the automatic Synde had given him. If he practiced about camp, Jean might show up and become witness to the fact that Henry Belfort, alias Dolan, shut his eyes when he pulled the trigger and never had the least notion where the bullet went.

He put the loaded automatic in a side pocket of his coat and proceeded to the rear veranda for a drink. The kitchen veranda was on the east side. Suddenly his eye was snared by one of the loveliest pictures nature has to offer—a young fawn at the edge of the forest. Without recollecting that he had marked this part of the world taboo, the Professor proceeded to stalk the fawn, and managed to get within twenty feet of it. Whisk—and it was gone! The Professor plunged after. From time to time the fawn would pause and turn. Its fear was halved by curiosity. It had never heard the report of firearms.

The game of hide-and-seek between the Professor and the fawn lasted for some time; then magically the twilight swallowed up the fawn.

He was astonished to find upon looking back that the camp was invisible. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly five o'clock, and he had left the house at a quarter after four. He would have to be getting back. So he turned about, or he thought he did, and became utterly lost, but without coming upon the truth until an hour had passed.

He sat down with his back to a great pine. The notion was to think calmly. Yelling wouldn't do any good, nor would hurrying thither and yon frantically. He was lost. He could not understand how it had happened, but the fact remained. Then came a flutter somewhere in the region of his stomach. This was a virgin forest; bear and wildcat still abounded. A fire was out of the question; it would be like putting a match to a gasoline tank. What was it he had once read about finding the north in the heart of a forest? He couldn't remember.

There was still some light filtering down. The best thing he could do would be to walk so long as there was light. Perhaps later the moon would break through, and the August moon would be to the southeast. There would be no trouble in finding the west, happen the moon came out.

The wind was up. He could hear it in the tree-tops, though there was no feel of it down where he was. If it rained, he would probably fall to the grip of pneumonia. He was getting along in years.

All at once the emotion he had striven to batter down burst through. He was afraid, afraid of the oncoming night and the living, prowling things of the night. He had never encountered fear until this hour. It wasn't a pleasant sensation, but he determined not to let panic get hold of him. He rose and began his tramp, any-whither, so long as he kept moving.

A chuckle rose up through the fear and smothered it for a time. Belfort had got him into this; Dolan would have to get him out of it.

The thought had come to him several times to fire the automatic. That was usually done by men lost in the woods. But supposing he emptied the clip, and no one heard, and later he encountered a bear or a cat? So he decided not to waste his ammunition. Not that he expected to hit the possible bear or cat! But the bark of the gun might scare them off.

On, on he went, stumbling frequently over bare roots, picking invisible cobwebs off his face, which was, by this time, streaked with sweat. Darker and darker grew the tree-lanes. He lost his cap and pawed futilely among the fallen leaves and needles. He had no notion of time, for he no longer could see his watch-dial.

He halted. Far away, a pin-point of light became visible. To be sure, he shut his eyes, then opened them. The point of light was still visible. A sob broke from his lips.

THE clearing was of comfortable dimensions. The ground had been scraped free to the clayey soil. At one side were several shacks. From the largest arose a chimney which smoked thinly. Strewn about were casks. A sour spirituous odor was perceptible, steadfast and unfluctuating. In the center of the clearing burned an open fire, touching everything near by with rosy light; and—Synde on one side and six burly, unkempt, truculent men on the other. Synde, his agate-blue eyes blazing, his chin jutting, smiled sardonically.

“This looks like a showdown,” he said.

“That's what it's gonna be,” replied the spokesman for the group.

“What do you want, Mike?”

Stony Mike, so called because his eyes never expressed any emotion, shrugged his broad shoulders. “We want the same cut all around. We make the stuff and carry it.”

“While I find the customers and the safe route south! In fact, the brains! You poor moron! You earn more in two months now than you earned in as many years. Nothing doing.”

““Mebbe we can make yuh,” said one of Stony Mike's companions.

“Don't make me laugh; I have a crack in me lip,” Synde jeered. “I told you what the game would be, and you all agreed. I'll make you poor boobs a proposition. Pick out your champion, and if he whips me, fifty-fifty all around. But if I down him, my way goes.”

Stony Mike laughed. “I'll take that bet, Synde.”

His companions began to argue with him, but he thrust them aside roughly. He drew off his sweater; but Synde made no motion to take off his coat. His gun was in one cf the pockets, and if worse came to worst, he wanted it handy.

“Fair play?” he said.

“You guys get back to the shacks,” said Stony Mike. “No buttin' in; he's my meat. 'Nother thing, Synde: if you lick me, I'll testify that you killed Pierre in self-defense. We've only your word for it, y'know.”

The men sullenly retired to the doorsteps of the shacks.

“All set!” cried Synde. His blood was shouting for battle.

HE rushed upon his man furiously; and before Stony Mike could set himself, his cheek was cut open. Synde knew that in a plain rough-and-tumble, Stony Mike would half kill him; so he fought like a prize-fighter. His blows would equal any his antagonist could offer; but if Mike's arms got their grip!.... It had to be done quickly. He mustn't spend himself utterly; for he did not trust that bunch on the doorsteps.

Synde recognized an astonishing fact. For weeks he had been wanting something of this sort: to tear, rend, pulverize something that lived; to empty the brimming cup of venom; to lance the gnawing cancer, in physical combat with a strong man.

He jabbed and jabbed until Stony Mike began to reel, because he no longer could see clearly. But his stamina was as yet unimpaired. He bored in constantly, always with the hope of getting a grip on Synde. But Synde was elusive; he was a combination of cat and catapult. He was sensitive to two things: that he was enjoying himself, and that in the end he would knock out Mike. Brute force and skill always overcomes brute force minus skill.

Before three minutes were gone, Stony Mike's face was unrecognizable. His courage, however, was undiminished. In he came, again and again; but Synde was never there. So busy was Synde, so filled with the zest of battle, that he did not notice that the men had left the steps and were standing about, forming a ragged ring. They were quiet, sinisterly so. They did not shout when their champion got home occasionally.

Suddenly Stony Mike caught Synde's wrist.

“Ha!” he roared.

But Synde's right was free; and as Stony Mike drew him in, Synde sent his fist to the jaw, accurately, with all the force he could muster. The blow traveled but eight inches. Stony Mike bent double, loosely, wheeled drunkenly, and fell upon his face. He turned over and tried to get up, but could not. He relaxed.

“Well, that's that,” said Synde.

Instantly the ring closed in upon him. Synde tried to reach his gun and failed. Twice he went down; twice he billowed up. He was going down for the third and perhaps the last time, when—

“STOP THAT!”

His astonished assailants fell away from Synde, who got up, badly mauled, but able to navigate. At the north of the clearing stood a little white-haired man, hatless, his lips straight, his eyes squinting. At the side of his hip was an automatic—at the side of his hip because he knew that it wouldn't wabble in that position. Suddenly the gun spat fire. The felt hat on the head of Jean the guide jumped oddly. Instantly five pairs of hands went up. The true psychology of this gesture will never be known; but it is probable that they accredited the Professor with deadly marksmanship. In other words, the mystery of his presence in this locality was solved: Synde had brought back a gunman!

“Thanks, Professor,” said Synde, wiping the blood from his mouth. “Now, gentlemen, I'll relieve you of your popguns.” Which he did, emptying the clip of each and hurling the weapons into the woods. “Come on,” he called to the Professor, whose hand still stung from the recoil of his weapon. “And you chaps stay where you are. If I shoot, it will be to kill. Watch your step.”

He knew that as soon as he and the Professor were out of sight, they would be digging out their rifles. But a leeway of ten minutes would be enough for Joe Synde. How about the Professor—could he follow swiftly enough? One fact was indubitable; he must reach the car before those chaps got to the camp clearing, or rest his bones hereabouts.

“Take hold of my coattails, and for God's sake don't stumble! It's life or death, old scout. Now!”

To follow at the pace Synde laid down required a superhuman effort on the Professor's part. He was done in as it was, what with all the miles he had walked since four o'clock, and the buffeting he had received from root, sapling and fallen tree.

“Better leave me,” he said quietly.

“Like hell I will! What did you tell me you couldn't shoot for?”

“I—I can't. I didn't mean to pull the trigger.”

“Lord, Lord, if I could only sit down and laugh! A fluke, and they didn't tumble! Come on, and no more talk.”

So they plunged along the invisible trail, the Professor hanging grimly to Synde's coattails, frequently treading on his guide's heels. Synde knew exactly where he was going; it was made evident by the length of his stride; but how he knew in this Gehenna darkness was beyond the Professor's grasp. The vitality of the man, after what he had gone through! And the pity of it, too, when the sorry world needed such men!

WHAT he was never to know was the supreme fact that Synde was going on nerve and will. No harm should come upon this lovable little old man. He had saved Joe Synde's life. But that wasn't it. For the first time in five years a human being had broken down the iron wall between Joe Synde and humanity. He had brought the old codger up here to laugh at, to make fun of—just as he had gone into this other business to show his contempt for society. He knew his fellow-rogues: they would stamp the life out of the Professor if they caught him. And they weren't going to, damn 'em!

Stony Mike had got to the heart twice, and the pain was intense; Synde couldn't breathe deeply. There were other places that ached, where hunting boots had kicked him. To get to the car, then, before the rifles came within range! Alone, he would have lain in ambush and potted as many as he could before they got him, so hot was the venom in him against life.

The Professor's lungs began to burn. His brain seemed no longer capable of compelling his legs to act. He wanted to lie down, go to sleep—die. All at once he remembered. He was Dolan—Dolan—Dolan. He was Irish. If he lagged, he would imperil the life of this indomitable man who had gone to the devil because of a woman's unfaith. What if he had laughed, poked fun at Belfort alias Dolan? He had made a lonely old man's dream come true.

Hours and hours passed, so it seemed. The Professor wondered if he could ever loosen his grip on Synde's coat. Unexpectedly they came upon the lights of the house. Evidently Synde had lighted the lamps before going into the forest.

“We'll make it,” said Synde. “Only a few steps to the car. Plenty of gas!”

“My name isn't Belfort,” said the Professor dazedly.

“What's that?”

“It's Dolan—Dolan!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I took the name Belfort thirty years ago because it looked better for a music teacher.”

“Dolan, eh? You old son-of-a-gun! Who but a dam'-fool Irisher would have tried to hold up that gang with a gun he didn't know how to shoot? You're a white man, and I hate like the devil to leave you. But I'm dropping you at the village. The train will take you to Montreal. Get in!”—as they reached the car. “I'm riding far tonight. This way to hell seems closed, so I've got to hunt up another.”

“Sir—”

“No lectures, old scout. I'm that kind of a man, and all the lectures in the world wont change me.”

“No woman is worth damnation.”

“I agree. But I've gone too far. Four months gone, I killed a man. It was in self-defense, but I can't prove it. Those boys know, but they'll lie to do me in. Sit tight!”

The car lurched forward. The brilliant headlights revealed a wavering line of corrugated hillocks. Suddenly there came a report as of two palms smacked soundly together. Upon the windshield appeared a many-pointed star.

The car leaped, careening from side to side. dropping suddenly, heaving upward, like a ship in a choppy sea. Came a repetition of the hand-smack. No second star appeared upon the windshield; but the Professor leaned gently against Synde's shoulder.

“HOW long will he have to stay here?” asked Synde.

“Two weeks. The ball was spent and stopped in the shoulder-blade,” said the village doctor. “You'd be up in a day or two; but he's old, and the rebound isn't there any more.”

“How much will it cost?”

“Fifty will cover all expenses.”

“Here's five hundred. Give him the balance when he goes. And give him this, too.”

“This,” elicited a gasp of astonishment from the doctor. “The French Military Cross?”

“Mine; but is of no use to me—out of fashion!”—ironically.

“Seems to me you might see him through.”

“I'm in a hurry. When he comes to, he'll understand. I have a way of finding out what I want to know, so give him the best. He's a white man.”

Synde marveled over this inexplicable impulse, that of giving the medal to the old boy and wanting him to believe that once upon a time Joe Synde had been an honest man. He laid his hand upon the Professor's uninjured shoulder. It was good-by. He turned abruptly and left the room.

When, later, the Professor came around, and the affair of the money and the medal was explained, he said: “I understand.” A tear rolled down his cheek.

ON a day late in September, Professor Henry Belfort ate his egg and toast and drank his coffee. He then dressed and carefully brushed his clothes. He entered the studio briskly, opened the piano and began to play.

The bell rang.

“Come in!” he called.

Little Anne Fuller entered, timidly and fearfully, to renew her erstwhile miseries.