CHAPTER VI
THE ISLE OF ARCADY
“Then the moon shone out so broad and good
That the barn-fowl crowed:
And the brown owl called to his mate in the wood
That a dead man lay in the road!”
– Will Wallace Harney.
Arcadia’s assets were the railroad, two large modern sawmills, the climate and printer’s ink. The railroad found it a patch of bare ground, six miles from water; put in successively a whistling-post, a signboard, a depot, townsite papers and a water-main from the Alamo; and, when the townsite papers were confirmed, established machine shops and made the new town the division headquarters and base for northward building.
The railroad then set up the sawmills, primarily to get out ties and timbers for its own lanky growth, and built a spur to bring the forest down from Rainbow to the mills. The word “down” is used advisedly. Arcadia nestled on the plain under the very eavespouts of Rainbow Range. The branch, following with slavish fidelity the lines of a twisted corkscrew, took twenty-seven miles, mostly tunnel and trestlework, to clamber to the logging camps, with a minimum grade that was purely prohibitive and a maximum that I dare not state; but there was a rise of six thousand feet in those twenty-seven miles. You can figure the average for yourself. And if the engine should run off the track at the end of her climb she would light on the very roundhouse where she took breakfast, and spoil the shingles.
Yes, that was some railroad. There was a summer hotel – Cloudland – on the summit, largely occupied by slackwire performers. Others walked up or rode a horse. They used stem-winding engines, with eight vertical cylinders on the right side and a shaft like a steamboat, with beveled cogwheel transmission on the axles. And they haven’t had a wreck on that branch to date. No matter how late a train is, when an engine sees the tail-lights of her caboose ahead of her she stops and sends out flagmen.
The railroad, under the pseudonym of the Arcadia Development Company, also laid out streets and laid in a network of pipe-lines, and staked out lots until the sawmill protested for lack of tie-lumber. It put down miles of cement walks, fringed them with cottonwood saplings, telephone poles and electric lights. It built a hotel and a few streets of party-colored cottages – directoire, with lingerie tile roofs, organdy façades and peplum, intersecting panels and outside chimneys at the gable ends. It decreed a park, with nooks, lanes, mazes, lake, swans, ballground, grandstand, bandstand and the band appertaining thereunto – all of which apparently came into being over night. Then it employed a competent staff of word-artists and capitalized the climate.
The result was astonishing. The cottonwoods grew apace and a swift town grew with them – swift in every sense of the word. It took good money to buy good lots in Arcadia. People with money must be fed, served and amused by people wanting money. In three years the trees cast a pleasant shade and the company cast a balance, with gratifying results. They discounted the unearned increment for a generation to come.
It was a beneficent scheme, selling ozone and novelty, sunshine and delight. The buyers got far more than the worth of their money, the company got their money – and every one was happy. Health and good spirits are a bargain at any price. There were sandstorms and hot days; but sand promotes digestion and digestion promotes cheerfulness. Heat merely enhanced the luxury of shaded hammocks. As an adventurer thawed out, he sent for seven others worse than himself. Arcadia became the metropolis of the county and, by special election, the county-seat. Courthouse, college and jail followed in quick succession.
For the company, Arcadia life was one grand, sweet song, with, thus far, but a single discord. As has been said, Arcadia was laid out on the plain. There was higher ground on three sides – Rainbow Mountain to the east, the deltas of La Luz Creek and the Alamo to the north and south. New Mexico was dry, as a rule. After the second exception, when enthusiastic citizens went about on stilts to forward a project for changing the town’s name to Venice, the company acknowledged its error handsomely. When dry land prevailed once more above the face of the waters, it built a mighty moat by way of the amende honorable– a moat with its one embankment on the inner side of the five-mile horseshoe about the town. This, with its attendant bridges, gave to Arcadia an aspect singularly medieval. It also furnished a convenient line of social demarcation. Chauffeurs, college professors, lawyers, gamblers, county officers, together with a few tradesmen and railroad officials, abode within “the Isle of Arcady,” on more or less even terms with the Arcadians proper; millmen, railroaders, lumberjacks, and the underworld generally, dwelt without the pale.
The company rubbed its lamp again – and behold! an armory, a hospital and a library! It contributed liberally to churches and campaign funds; it exercised a general supervision over morals and manners. For example, in the deed to every lot sold was an ironclad, fire-tested, automatic and highly constitutional forfeiture clause, to the effect that sale or storage on the premises of any malt, vinous or spirituous liquors should immediately cause the title to revert to the company. The company’s own vicarious saloon, on Lot Number One, was a sumptuous and magnificent affair. It was known as The Mint.
All this while we have been trying to reach the night watchman.
In the early youth of Arcadia there came to her borders a warlock Finn, of ruddy countenance and solid build. He had a Finnish name, and they called him Lars Porsena.
Lars P. had been a seafaring man. While spending a year’s wage in San Francisco, he had wandered into Arcadia by accident. There, being unable to find the sea, he became a lumberjack – with a custom, when in spirits, of beating the watchman of that date into an omelet.
The indulgence of this penchant gave occasion for much adverse criticism. Fine and imprisonment failed to deter him from this playful habit. One watchman tried to dissuade Lars from his foible with a club, and his successor even went so far as to shoot him – to shoot Lars P., of course, not his predecessor – the successor’s predecessor, not Lars Porsena’s – if he ever had one, which he hadn’t. (What we need is more pronouns.) He – the successor of the predecessor – resigned when Lars became convalescent; but Lars was no whit dismayed by this contretemps – in his first light-hearted moment he resumed his old amusement with unabated gayety.
Thus was one of our greatest railroad systems subjected to embarrassment and annoyance by the idiosyncrasies of an ignorant but cheerful sailor-man. The railroad resolved to submit no longer to such caprice. A middleweight of renown was imported, who – when he was able to be about again – bitterly reproached the president and demanded a bonus on the ground that he had knocked Lars down several times before he – Lars – got angry; and also because of a disquisition in the Finnish tongue which Lars Porsena had emitted during the procedure – which address, the prizefighter stated, had unnerved him and so led to his undoing. It was obviously, he said, of a nature inconceivably insulting; the memory of it rankled yet, though he had heard only the beginning and did not get the – But let that pass.
The thing became a scandal. Watchman succeeded watchman on the company payroll and the hospital list, until some one hit upon a happy and ingenious way to avoid this indignity. Lars Porsena was appointed watchman.
This statesmanlike policy bore gratifying results. Lars Porsena straightway abandoned his absurd and indefensible custom, and no imitator arose. Also, Arcadia within the moat – the island – which was the limit of his jurisdiction, became the most orderly spot in New Mexico.
In the first gray of dawn, Uncle Sam, whistling down Main Street on his way home from the masquerade, found Lars Porsena lying on his face in a pool of blood.
The belated reveler knelt beside him. The watchman was shot, but still breathed. “Ho! Murder! Help! Murder!” shouted Uncle Sam. The alarm rolled crashing along the quiet street. Heads were thrust from windows; startled voices took up the outcry; other home-goers ran from every corner; hastily arrayed householders poured themselves from street doors.
Lars Porsena was in disastrous plight. He breathed, but that was about all. He was shot through the body. A trail of blood led back a few doors to Lake’s Bank. A window was cut out; the blood began at the sill.
Messengers ran to telephone the doctor, the sheriff, Lake. The knot of men grew to a crowd. A rumor spread that there had been an unusual amount of currency in the bank over night – a rumor presently confirmed by Bassett, the bareheaded and white-faced cashier. It was near payday; in addition to the customary amount to cash checks for railroaders and millhands – itself no mean sum – and the money for regular business, there had been provision for contemplated loans to promoters of new local industries.
The doctor came running, made a hasty examination, took emergency measures to stanch the freshly started blood, and swore whole-heartedly at the ambulance and the crowding Arcadians. He administered a stimulant. Lars Porsena fluttered his eyes weakly.
“Stand back, you idiots! Bash these fools’ faces in for ’em, some one!” said the medical man. He bent over the watchman. “Who did it, Lars?”
Lars made a vain effort to speak. The doctor gave him another sip of restorative and took a pull himself.
“Try again, old man. You’re badly hurt and you may not get another chance. Did you know him?”
Lars gathered all his strength to a broken speech:
“No… Bank … Found window … Midnight … nearly… Shot me… Didn’t see him.” He fell back on Uncle Sam’s starry vest.
“Ambulance coming,” said Uncle Sam. “Will he live, doc?”
Doc shook his head doubtfully.
“Poor chance. Lost too much blood. If he had been found in time he might have pulled through. Wonderful vitality. Ought to be dead now, by the books. Still, there’s a chance.”
“I never thought,” said Uncle Sam to Cyrano de Bergerac, as the ambulance bore away its unconscious burden, “that I would ever be so sorry at anything that could happen to Lars Porsena – after the way he made me stop singing on my own birthday. He was one grand old fighting machine!”
CHAPTER VII
STATES-GENERAL
“And they hae killed Sir Charlie Hay
And laid the wyte on Geordie.”
– Old Ballad.
That the master’s eye is worth two servants had ever been Lake’s favorite maxim. He had not yet gone to bed when the message reached him, where he kept his masterly eye on the proper closing up of the ballroom. He came through the crowd now, shouldering his way roughly, still in his police costume – helmet, tunic and belt. In his wake came the sheriff, who had just arrived, scorching to the scene on his trusty wheel.
On the bank steps, Lake turned to face the crowd. His strong canine jaw was set to stubborn fighting lines; the helmet did not wholly hide the black frown or the swollen veins at his temple.
“Come in, Thompson, and help the sheriff size the thing up – and you, Alec” – he stabbed the air at his choice with a strong blunt finger – “and Turnbull – you, Clarke – and you… Bassett, you keep the door. Admit no one!”
Lake was the local great man. Never had he appeared to such advantage to his admirers; never had his ascendency seemed so unquestioned and so justified. As he stood beside the sheriff in the growing light, the man was the incarnation of power – the power of wealth, position, prestige, success. In this moment of yet unplumbed disaster, taken by surprise, summoned from a night of crowded pleasure, he held his mastery, chose his men and measures with unhesitant decision – planned, ordered, kept to that blunt direct speech of his that wasted no word. A buzz went up from the unadmitted as the door swung shut behind him.
Lake had chosen well. Arcadia in epitome was within those pillaged walls. Thompson was president of the rival bank. Alec was division superintendent. Turnbull was the mill-master. Clarke was editor of the Arcadian Day. Clarke had been early to the storm-center; yet, of all the investigators, Clarke alone was not more or less disheveled. He was faultlessly appareled – even to the long Prince Albert and black string tie – in which, indeed, report said, he slept.
So much for capital, industry and the fourth estate. The last of the probers, whom Lake had drafted merely by the slighting personal pronoun “you,” was nevertheless identifiable in private life by the name of Billy White – being, indeed, none other than our old friend the devil. His indigenous mustache still retained a Mephistophelian twist; he was becomingly arrayed in slippers, pajamas and a pink bathrobe, girdled at the waist with a most unhermitlike cord, having gone early and surly to bed. In this improvised committee he fitly represented Society: while the sheriff represented society at large and, ex officio, that incautious portion under duress. Yet one element was unrepresented; for Lake made a mistake which other great men have made – of failing to reckon with the masterless men, who dwell without the wall.
Lake led the way.
“Will the watchman die, Alec, d’you think?” whispered Billy, as they filed through the grilled door to the counting room.
“Don’t know. Hope not. Game old rooster. Good watchman, too,” said Turnbull, the mill-superintendent.
Lake turned on the lights. The wall-safe was blown open; fragments of the door were scattered among the overturned chairs.
In an open recess in the vault there was a dull yellow mass; the explosion had spilled the front rows of coin to a golden heap. Behind, some golden rouleaus were intact: others tottered precariously, as you have perhaps seen beautiful tall stacks of colored counters do. Gold pieces were strewn along the floor.
“Thank God, they didn’t get all the gold anyhow!” said Lake, with a sigh of relief. “Then, of course, they didn’t touch the silver; but there was a lot of greenbacks – over twenty-five thousand, I think. Bassett will know. And I don’t know how much gold is gone. Look round and see if they left anything incriminating, sheriff, anything that we can trace them by.”
“He heard poor old Lars coming,” said the sheriff. “Then, after he shot him, he hadn’t the nerve to come back for the gold. This strikes me as being a bungler’s job. Must have used an awful lot of dynamite to tear that door up like that! Funny no one heard the explosion. Can’t be much of your gold gone, Lake. That compartment is pretty nearly as full as it will hold.”
“Or heard him shoot our watchman,” suggested Thompson. “Still, I don’t know. There’s blasting going on in the hills all the time and almost every one was at the masquerade or else asleep. How many times did they shoot old Lars – does anybody know? Is there any idea what time it was done?”
“He was shot once – right here,” said Alec, indicating the spot on the flowered silk that had been part of his mandarin’s dress. “Gun was held so close it burnt his shirt. Awful hole. Don’t believe the old chap’ll make it. He crawled along toward the telephone station till he dropped. Say! Central must have heard that shot! It’s only two blocks away. She ought to be able to tell what time it was.”
“Lars said it was just before midnight,” said Clarke.
“Oh! – did he speak?” asked Lake. “How many robbers were there? Did he know any of them?”
“He didn’t see anybody – shot just as he reached the window. Hope some one hangs for this!” said Clarke. “Lake, I wish you’d have this money picked up – I’m not used to walking on gold – or else have me watched.”
Lake shook his head, angry at the untimely pleasantry. It was a pleasantry in effect only, put forward to hide uneditorial agitation and distress for Lars Porsena. Lake’s undershot jaw thrust forward; he fingered the blot of whisker at his ear. It was a time for action, not for talk. He began his campaign.
“Look here, sheriff! You ought to wire up and down the line to keep a lookout. Hold all suspicious characters. Then get a posse to ride for some sign round the town. If we only had something to go on – some clue! Later we’ll look through this town with a finetooth comb. Most likely they – or he, if there was only one – won’t risk staying here. First of all, I’ve got to telegraph to El Paso for money to stave off a run on the bank. You’ll help me, Thompson? Of course my burglar insurance will make good my loss – or most of it; but that’ll take time. We mustn’t risk a run. People lose their heads so. I’ll give you a statement for the Day, Clarke, as soon as I find out where Mr. Thompson stands.”
“I will back you up, sir. With the bulk of depositors’ money loaned out, no bank, however solvent, can withstand a continued run without backing. I shall be glad to tide you over if only for my own protection. A panic is contagious – ”
“Thanks,” said Lake shortly, interrupting this stately financial discourse. “Then we shall do nicely… Let’s see – to-morrow’s payday. You fellows” – he turned briskly to the two superintendents – “can’t you hold up your payday, say, until Saturday? Stand your men off. The company stands good for their money. They can wait a while.”
“No need to do that,” said Alec. “I’ll have the railroad checks drawn on St. Louis. The storekeepers’ll cash ’em. If necessary I’ll wire for authority to let Turnbull pay off the millhands with railroad checks. It’s just taking money from one pocket to put it in the other, anyhow.”
“Then that’s all right! Now for the robbers!” The banker’s face betrayed impatience. “My first duty was to protect my clients; but now we’ll waste no more time. You gentlemen make a close search for any possible scrap of evidence while the sheriff and I write our telegrams. I must wire the burglar insurance company, too.” He plunged a pen into an inkwell and fell to work.
Acting upon this hint, the sheriff took a desk. “Wish Phillips was here – my deputy,” he sighed. “I’ve sent for him. He’s got a better head than I have for noticing clues and things.” This was eminently correct as well as modest. The sheriff was a Simon-pure Arcadian, the company’s nominee; his deputy was a concession to the disgruntled Hinterland, where the unobservant rarely reach maturity.
“Oh, Alec!” said Lake over his shoulder, “you sit down, too, and wire all your conductors about their passengers last night. Yes, and the freight crews, too. We’ll rush those through first. And can’t you scare up another operator?” His pen scratched steadily over the paper. “More apt to be some of our local outlaws, though. In that case it will be easier to find their trail. They’ll probably be on horseback.”
“You were an – old-timer yourself, were you not?” asked Billy amiably. “If the robbers are frontiersmen they may be easier to get track of, as you suggest; but won’t they be harder to get?” Billy spoke languidly. The others were searching assiduously for “clues” in the most approved manner, but Billy sprawled easily in a chair.
“We’ll get ’em if we can find out who they were,” snapped Lake, setting his strong jaw. He did not particularly like Billy – especially since their late trip to Rainbow. “There never was a man yet so good but there was one just a little better.”
“By a good man, in this connection, you mean a bad man, I presume?” said Billy in a meditative drawl. “Were you a good man before you became a banker?”
“Look here! What’s this?” The interruption came from Clarke. He pounced down between two fragments of the safe door and brought up an object which he held to the light.
At the startled tones, Lake spun round in his swivel-chair. He held out his hand.
“Really, I don’t think I ever saw anything like this thing before,” he said. “Any of you know what it is?”
“It’s a noseguard,” said Billy. Billy was a college man and had worn a nosepiece himself. He frowned unconsciously, remembering his successful rival of the masquerade.
“A noseguard? What for?”
“You wear it to protect your nose and teeth when playing football,” explained Billy. “Keeps you from swearing, too. You hold this piece between your teeth; the other part goes over your nose, up between your eyes and fastens with this band around your forehead.”
“Why! Why!” gasped Clarke, “there was a man at the masquerade togged out as a football player!”
“I saw him,” said Alec. “And he wore one of these things. I saw him talking to Topsy.”
“One of my guests?” demanded Lake scoffingly. “Oh, nonsense! Some young fellow has been in here yesterday, talking to the clerks, and dropped it. Who went as a football player, White? You know all these college boys. Know anything about this one?”
“Not a thing.” There Billy lied – a prompt and loyal gentleman – reasoning that Buttinski, as he mentally styled the interloper who had misappropriated the Quaker lady, would have cared nothing at that time for a paltry thirty thousand. Thus was he guilty of a practice against which we are all vainly warned – of judging others by ourselves. Billy remembered very distinctly that Miss Ellinor had not reappeared until the midnight unmasking, and he therefore acquitted her companion of this particular crime, entirely without prejudice to Buttinski’s felonious instincts in general. For the watchman had been shot before midnight. Billy made a tentative mental decision that this famous noseguard had been brought to the bank later and left there purposely; and resolved to keep his eye open.
“Oh, well, it’s no great difference anyhow,” said Lake. “Whoever it was dropped it here yesterday, I guess, and got another one for the masquerade.”
“Hold on there!” said Clarke, holding the spotlight tenaciously. “That don’t go! This thing was on top of one of those pieces of the safe!”
For the first time Lake was startled from his iron composure.
“Are you sure?” he demanded, jumping up.
“Sure! It was right here against the sloping side of this piece – so.”
“That puts a different light on the case, gentlemen,” said Lake. “Luck is with us; and – ”
“And, while I think of it,” said Clarke, making the most of his unexpected opportunity, “I made notes of all the costumes and their wearers after the masks were off – for the paper, you know – and I saw no football player there. I remember that distinctly.”
“I only saw him the one time,” confirmed Alec, “and I stayed almost to the break-up. Whoever it was, he left early.”
“But what possible motive could the robber have for going to the dance at all?” queried Lake in perplexity.
“Maybe he made his appearance there in a football suit purposely, so as to leave us some one to hunt for, and then committed the robbery and went back in another costume,” suggested Clarke, pleased and not a little surprised at his own ingenuity. “In that case, he would have left this rubber thing here of design.”
“H’m!” Lake was plainly struck with this theory. “And that’s not such a bad idea, either! We’ll look into this football matter after breakfast. You’ll go to the hotel with me, gentlemen? Our womankind are all asleep after the ball. The sheriff will send some one to guard the bank. Meantime I’ll call the cashier in and find out exactly how much money we’re short. Send Bassett in, will you, Billy? You stay at the door and keep that mob out.”