The City of Fire

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Billy read no further. He clapped down a nickel and stuffed the paper
indifferently into his pocket, almost forgetting in his disgust to
purchase the county news. "Aw Gee!" he said to himself. "More o' that
Judas stuff. I gotta get rid o' them thirty pieces!"

He stepped back and bought a County paper, stood idly looking over its
pages a moment with the letters swimming before his eyes, at last
discovering the column where the Economy "murder" was discussed, and
without reading it stuffed it in the pocket on the other side and rode
away into the sunlight. Murder! It was called murder! Then Dolph must
be dead! The plot thickened! Dead! Murder! Who killed him? Surely he
wasn't responsible for that at least! He was out on the road with Mark
when it happened. He hadn't done anything which in the remotest way had
to do with the killing, he thanked his lucky stars for that. And Mark.
But who did it? Cherry? She might be a reason for what Mark did last
night.

At a turn in the road where a little grove began he got off his wheel
and seeking a sheltered spot dropped down under a tree to read his
papers. His quick eye searched through the County paper first for the
sensational account of the murder, and a gray look settled over his pug
countenance as he read. So might a mother have regarded her child in
deep trouble, or a lover his beloved. Billy's spirit was bowed to the
depths. When he had devoured every word he flung the paper aside
wrathfully, and sat up with a kind of hopeless gesture of his hard
young hands. "Aw Gee!" he said aloud, and suddenly he felt a great wet
blob rolling down his freckled cheek. He smashed it across into his
hair with a quick slash of his dirty hand as if it had been a mosquito
annoying him, and lest the other eye might be meditating a like trick
he gave that a vicious dab and hauled out the other paper, more as a
matter of form than because he had a deep interest in it. All through
the description of those wonderful Shafton jewels, and the mystery that
surrounded the disappearance of the popular young man, Billy could see
the word "murder" dancing like little black devils in and out among the
letters. The paragraph about Mrs. Shafton's collapse held him briefly:

"Aw, gee!" he could see pink tears everywhere. He supposed he ought to
do something about that. For all the world like Aunt Saxon! He seemed
to sense her youth through the printed words as he had once sensed Mrs.
Carter's. He saw her back in school, pretty and little. Rich women were
always pretty and little to his mind, pretty and little and helpless
and always crying. It was then that the thought was born that made him
look off to the hills and ponder with drawn brows and anxious mien. He
took it back to his home with him and sat moodily staring at the lilac
bushes, and gave Aunt Saxon another bad day wondering what had come to
Willie. She would actually have been glad to hear him say: "I gotta
beat it! I gotta date with tha fellas!"

That evening the rumor crept back to Sabbath Valley from who knows
where that Dolph was dead and Mark Carter had run away!

XXI

Tuesday morning Lynn slipped down to Carters with a little cake she had
made all white frosting and sprinkles of nuts. Her face was white but
brave with a smile, and she said her mother wanted to know how Mrs.
Carter's neuralgia was getting on.

But Mrs. Carter was the only one in the village perhaps who had not
heard the rumor, and she was gracious and pleased and said she wished
Mark was home, he loved nut cake so much.

"You know he was called back to New York suddenly last night didn't
you?" she said. "He felt real sorry to leave so soon, but his partner
wired him there was something he must see to himself, and he just took
his car and went right away as soon as he got back from taking that
girl home. He hoped he'd get back again soon though. Say, who was that
girl? Wasn't she kind of queer to ask Mark to take her home? Seems
somehow girls are getting a little forward these days. I know you'd
never do a thing like that with a perfect stranger, Marilyn."

The girl only stayed a few minutes, and went home with a braver heart.
At least Mark was protecting his mother. He had not changed entirely.
He wouldn't let her suffer! But what was he doing? Oughtn't he to be
told what rumors were going around about him? But how could it be done?
Her father? Perhaps. She shrank from that, Mark had so withdrawn from
them, he might take it as an interference. Billy? Ah, yes, Billy!

But Billy did not appear anywhere, and when she got back she found that
Shafton's car had been finished and was ready to drive, and he wanted
her to take a little spin with him to try it, he said. He warily
invited her mother to go along, for he saw by her face that she was
going to decline, and the mother watching her daughter's white face
said: "Yes, Marilyn we will go. It will do you good. You have been
housed up here ever since you came home." And there was nothing for the
girl to do but succumb or seem exceedingly rude. She was not by nature
rude, so she went.

As they drove by the Saxon cottage Billy was just coming out, and he
stared glumly at the three and hardly acknowledged Marilyn's greeting.
He stared after them scowling.

"Hell!" said Billy aloud, regardless of Aunt Saxon at the front window,
"Yes _Hell_!" and he realized the meaning of his epithet far
better than the young man he was staring after had the first night he
had used it in Sabbath Valley.

"What was that you said Willie?" called Aunt Saxon's anxious voice.

"Aw, nothing!" said Billy, and slammed out the gate, his wheel by his
side. _Now_! Something had to be done. He couldn't have
_that_ going on. He was hurt at Mrs. Severn. She ought to take
better care of her daughter! In sullen despair he mounted and rode away
to work out his problem. It was certain he couldn't do anything with
Saxy snivelling round. And _something had to be done!_

Billy managed to get around the country quite a little that morning. He
rode up to Economy and learned that Mr. Fenner, the tailor, was sick,
had been taken two nights ago, was delirious and had to have two men to
hold him down. He thought everybody was an enemy and tried to choke
them all. He rode past the jail but saw nothing though he circled the
block three times. The Chief stood out in front talking with three
strange men. Billy sized them up for detectives. When there was nothing
further to be gained in Economy he turned his steed toward Pleasant
Valley and took in a little underground telephone communication between
a very badly scared Pat and a very angry Sam at some unknown point at
the end of the wire. It was then, lying hidden in the thick
undergrowth, that a possible solution of his difficulties occurred to
him, a form of noble self sacrifice that might in part do penance for
his guilt. Folded safely in his inner pocket was the thirty pieces of
silver, the blood money, the price of Mark Carter's freedom and good
name. If he had not taken that he might have fixd this Pat so he would
be a witness to Mark's alibi. But according to the code he had been
taught it would not be honorable to squeal on somebody whose money he
had taken. It wasn't square. It wasn't honorable. It was yella, and
yella, he would not be if the sky fell. It was all the religion he had
as yet, not to be "yella." It stood for all the fineness of his soul.
But he had reasoned within himself that if in some way he could get
that money back to Pat, then he would be free from obligation. Then he
could somehow manage to put Pat where he would have to tell the right
thing to save Mark. Just how it could be done he wasn't sure, but that
was another question.

When Pat had trundled away to the train he rolled himself out from
ambush and went on his way across Lone Valley by a little tree-shaded
path he knew that cut straight over to Stark mountain.

Not a ripple of a leaf showed above him as he passed straight up the
mountain to the old house, for the watchful eye looking out to see.
Billy was a great deal like an Indian in his goings and comings, and
Billy was wary. Had he not seen the winking light? Billy was taking no
chances. Smoothly folded in his hip pocket he carried a leaf of the New
York paper wherein was offered a large reward for information
concerning jewels and bonds and other property taken from the Shafton
country home on pretense of setting free the son. Also there was a
stupendous reward offered for information concerning the son, and
Billy's big thought as he crept along under the trees with all the
stealth of a wild thing, was that here was another thirty pieces of
silver multiplied many times, and _he wasn't going to take it!_ He
_could, but he wouldn't!_ He was going to give these folks the
information they wanted, but he wasn't going to get the benefit of it.
That was going to be his punishment. He had been in hell long enough,
and he was going to try to pull himself out of it by his good works.
And he would do it in such a way that there wouldn't be any chance of
the reward being pressed upon him. He would just fix it so that nobody
would particularly know he had anything to do with the clews. That was
Billy all over. He never did a thing half way. But first he must find
out if there was anybody about the old house. He couldn't get away from
those three winks he had seen.

So, feeling almost relieved for a moment Billy left his wheel on guard
and crept around to his usual approach at the back before he came out
in the open. And then he crept cautiously to the cellar window where he
had first entered the house. He gripped Pat's old gun with one hand in
his pocket, and slid along like a young snake, taking precaution not to
appear before the cellar window lest his shadow should fall inside. He
flattened himself at last upon the grass a noticeless heap of gray
khaki trousers and brown flannel shirt close against the house. One
would have to lean far out of a window to see him, and there he lay and
listened awhile. And presently from the depths beyond that grated
window he heard a little scratch, scratch, scratch, tap, tap, tap,
scratch, tap, scratch, tap, steadily, on for sometime like his heart
beats, till he wasn't sure he was hearing it at all, and thought it
might be the blood pounding through his ears, so strange and uncanny it
seemed. Then, all at once there came a puff, as if a long breath had
been drawn, like one lifting a heavy weight, and then a dull thud. A
brief silence and more scratching in soft earth now.

He listened for perhaps an hour, and once a footstep grated on the
cement floor, and coals rattled down as if they were disturbed. Once
too a soft chirrup from up above like the call of a wood bird, only
strangely human and the sounds in the cellar ceased altogether, till
another weird note sounded and they began again.

When he was satisfied with his investigations he began slowly to back
away from his position, lifting each atom of muscle slowly one at a
time till his going must have been something like the motion picture of
a bud unfolding, and yet as silent as the flower grows he faded away
from that cellar window back into the green and no one was the wiser.
An hour later the watchful eye at the little half moon opening in the
shutter might have seen a little black speck like a spider whizzing
along on the Highroad and turning down toward Sabbath Valley, but it
never would have looked as if it came from Stark mountain, for it was
headed straight from Lone Valley. Billy was going home to get cleaned
up and make a visit to the parsonage. If that guy was still there he'd
see how quick he would leave! If there wasn't one way to make him go
there was another, and Billy felt that he held the trick.

But as fate would have it Billy did not have to get cleaned up, for
Miss Severn stood on the front porch looking off toward the mountains
with that wistful expression of hers that made him want to laugh and
cry and run errands for her anywhere just to serve her and make her
smile, and she waved her hand at Billy, and ran down to the gate to
speak to him.

"Billy, I want to ask you,--If you were to see Mark Carter--of course
you mightn't, but then you might--you'll let him know that we are of
course his friends, and that anything he wants done, if he'll just let
us know--"

"Sure!" said Billy lighting off his wheel with a downward glance at his
dirty self, all leaves and dust and grime, "Sure, he'd know that
anyhow."

"Well, Billy, I know he would, but I mean, I thought perhaps you might
find something we _could do_,--something maybe without letting him
know. He's very proud about asking any help you, know, and he wouldn't
want to bother us. You may discover something he--needs--or wants
done--while--he is away--and maybe we could help him out, Father or
Mother or I. You'll remember, won't you Billy?"

"Sure!" said Billy again feeling the warm glow of her friendliness and
loyalty to Mark, and digging his toes into the turf embarrassedly. Then
he looked up casually as he was about to leave:

"Say is there a guy here named Shafton? Man from n'Yark?"

"Why, yes," said Lynn looking at him curiously, "Did you want to see
him?"

"Well, if he's round I might. I got a message for him."

She looked at him keenly:

"You haven't _seen_ Mark to-day, have you, Billy?"

"Aw, naw,'taint from him," he grinned reassuringly, "He's away just
now. But I might see him soon ya know, ur hear from him."

Lynn's face cleared. "Yes, of course. His mother told me he was
suddenly called back to New York."

"Yep. That's right!" said Billy as if he knew all about it, and pulled
off his old cap with a glorious wave as she turned to call the
stranger.

Billy dropped his wheel at the curb and approached the steps as he saw
Shafton coming slowly out leaning on a cane. He rustled the folded
newspaper out from his pocket with one hand and shook it open as only a
boy's sleight of hand can do, wafting it in front of the astonished
Laurie, and saying with an impudent swag,

"Say, z'your name Shafton? Well, _see that?_ Why don't you beat it
home? Your ma is about t'croke, an' yer dad has put up about all his
dough, an' you better rustle back to where you come from an' tell 'em
not to b'leeve all the bunk that's handed out to 'em! Good night! They
must need a nurse!"

Laurie paused in the act of lighting one of his interminable cigarettes
with which he supplied the lack of a stronger stimulant, and stared at
the boy curiously, then stared at the paper he held in his hand with
the flaring headlines, and reaching out his hand for it began to laugh:

"Well, upon my word, Kid, where'd you get this? If that isn't a joke! I
wonder if Opal's seen it. Miss Severn, come here! See what a joke! I'm
kidnapped! Did you ever hear the like? Look at the flowery sentences.
It's almost like reading one's own obituary, isn't it?"

Marilyn, glancing over his shoulder at the headlines, took in the
import of it instantly. "I should think you'd want to telephone your
mother at once. How she must have suffered!" she said.

Laurie somewhat sobered agreed that it would be a good idea:

"The mater's a good old scout," he said lightly, "She's always helping
me out of scrapes, but this is one too many to give up her emeralds,
the Shafton Emeralds! Gosh but dad will be mad about them! And Oh, say,
call that boy back will you? I want to give him a dollar!"

But Billy had faded down the road with mortal indignation in his
breast. To think of giving up a ten thousand dollar reward and having a
dollar flung at you! It seemed to measure the very depth of the shame
to which he had descended.

The Severns came a few paces out of their indifference to this
self-imposed guest and gathered around the sheet of newspaper
while Laurie held an intensive conversation with his family beginning
with several servants who were too excited at first to identify his
voice.

But at last he hung up the receiver and turned toward them:

"Well, I guess there's nothing for it but for me to pull out. The mater
doesn't think she'll be satisfied till she has her hands on me. Besides
I've got to get things started about those jewels. Dad and mother are
too excited to know what they're about. I declare, it's like being dead
and seeing how they feel about it."

There was a boyish eager look about the young man's face that made him
for the first time seem rather loveable, Mrs. Severn thought. The
mother in her rose to appreciation. Lynn was so glad that he was going
away that she was almost friendly during lunch. And when the young man
was about to depart he went to Mr. Severn's study and wrote a check for
five hundred dollars:

"Just in appreciation of your kindness," he said as he held it out to
the minister.

The minister looked amused but did not offer to take it:

"That's all right," he said pleasantly, "We don't keep boarders you
know. You were welcome to what we could give you."

"But, my dear sir, I couldn't think of not remunerating you," declared
Laurie.

"And I couldn't think of taking it," smiled the minister.

"Well, then take it for your poor people," he insisted.

"From what Lynn tells me you have more of those than we have," answered
the minister.

The young man looked annoyed:

"Well, then take it for something for your church, another bell or
something, anything you're interested in."

"I can give you an address of a young missionary out West who is having
a hard time of it, and has a very needy parish," said the minister
taking out his fountain pen and writing the address on a card, "but I
should prefer that you would send it to him yourself. He wouldn't take
it from me, but if you'd send it he'll write and tell you what he does
with it, and he'll tell me too, so it will give pleasure all around.
He's a game young chap, and he's given his life. You couldn't help but
like him."

Laurie had to be content with this, though he felt annoyed at having to
write a letter to a missionary. He felt he shouldn't know how to
address him.

"I'll send it to-night when I get home," he declared, "or no, I'll send
it now," and he sat down at the minister's desk, and scribbled a note.
It read: "Your friend Severn won't take anything himself for kindness
to me, so he's letting me send you this for your work. Here's wishing
you good luck." This he signed and handed to the minister with a
relieved air as if to say: "There! That's that!"

"You see," said Laurie getting up and taking his hat again, "I want to
come back here again and see your daughter. I may as well tell you I'm
crazy about your daughter."

"I see," said the minister gravely, albeit with a twinkle in his eye,
"The fact is I'm somewhat crazy about her myself. But in all kindness I
may as well tell you that you'll be wasting your time. She isn't your
kind you know."

"Oh, well," said Laurie with an assured shrug, "That's all right if I
don't mind, isn't it?"

"Well, no," said the minister smiling broadly now, "You forget that she
might mind, you know."

"I don't get you," said Laurie looking puzzled as he fitted on his
immaculate driving glove, "She might mind, what do you mean?"

"I mean that my daughter minds very much indeed whether her men friends
ask in a certain tone of voice for something to _drink_ at
midnight, and use language such as you used when you first arrived
here, smoke continual cigarettes, and have friends like the young woman
who visited you last Sunday."

"Oh! I see!" laughed Laurie thoroughly amused, "Well, after all, one
doesn't have to keep on doing all those things you know--if it were
worth one's while to change them."

"I'm afraid," said the minister still amused, "that it would have to be
worth your while to change before she would even consider you as a
possibility. She happens to have a few ideas about what it takes to
make a man, her ideal man, you know."

Laurie smiled gaily:

"Perhaps I can change those ideas."

"Help yourself young man. You'll find it a task, I assure you."

"Well, I'm coming back, anyway."

"We shall welcome you," said the minister politely, but not at all
gladly, and Laurie departed without his usual complacency, assuring the
minister that he had found Sabbath Valley the garden spot of the world
and meant to return soon and often.

Billy watched him from the graveyard enclosure whither he had retired
to write a letter, and he made a face and wasted a gesture of defiance
after his departing car. So much Billy felt he had accomplished toward
reparation. He was now attempting a third act.

On the smooth end of the old stone he had a newspaper spread, and upon
that a sheet of letter paper which he had extracted from Aunt Saxon's
ancient box in the old secretary in the corner of the kitchen. Kneeling
beside the stone he carefully inscribed the following words:

"Yoors to cummand,
B. Gaston."

He folded the paper with his smudgy fingers, and stuffed it into a
soiled envelope on which he wrote Mark's name, and as he had seen Lynn
write down in the corner of a note that he had taken to Monopoly for
her, "Kindness of Billy," so he wrote "Kindnus of Cheef." Then he
mounted his wheel and rode to Economy. After some apparently aimless
riding he brought up at the back of the Chief's garage where he applied
a canny eye to a crack and ascertained just how many and what cars were
inside. He then rode straight to the bank where he was pretty sure the
Chief would be standing near the steps at this hour. Waiting a time of
leisure he handed him the envelope:

"Say, Chief, c'n I trouble you to d'liver that?"

The Chief looked at the envelope and then at Billy and opened his lips
to speak, but Billy forestalled him:

"I know you don't know where he is at all now, Chief, o' course, but I
just thought you might happen to meet up with him sometime soon. That's
all right, Chief. Thank ya." Billy ended with a knowing wink.

The Chief turned the envelope over, noted that it was unsealed, grinned
back and put it in his pocket. They had been good friends, these two,
for several years, ever since Billy had been caught bearing the penalty
for another boy's misdemeanor.

"That's all right Billy," said the Chief affably, "I won't forget it--
if I see him! Seen anything more of those automobile thieves?"

"Nope," said Billy sadly, "but I gotta line on 'em. 'f'I find anythin'
more I'll callyaup!"

"Do!" said the Chief cordially, and the interview was closed.

Billy bought some cakes at the bakery with ten cents he had earned
running an errand from the grocery that morning, and departed on
important business. He had definitely decided to give up his thirty
pieces of silver. No more blood money for him. His world was upside
down and all he loved were suffering, and all because he had been
mercenary. The only way to put things right was to get rid of any gain
that might accrue to himself. Then he would be in a position to do
something. And Pat was his first object now. He meant to give back the
money to Pat! He had thought it all out, and he meant to waste no time
in getting things straight.

He went to the Economy post office and on the back of a circular that
he found in the waste basket he wrote another note:

"Pat. This is blood money an' I can't kep it. I didunt no when I
undertuk the job wot kind of a job it was. Thers only one way fur yoo
to kep yur hid saf, an that is to tel the trooth abot wot hapuned. If
yoo ar wiling to tel the trooth put a leter heer sayin so. If yoo don't
I am havin' you watshed an you will los yoor job an likely be hanged.
We are arumd so be keerful. This aint yella. This is rite.

THE KID."

It was a long job and he was tired when it was finished, for his days
at school had been full of so many other things besides lessons that
literary efforts were always strenuous for him. When he had finished he
went out and carried three parcels for the meat market, receiving in
return thirty cents, which exactly made up the sum he had spent from
his tainted money. With this wrapped bunglingly in his note he
proceeded to ambush near Pleasant Valley. He had other fish to fry, but
not till dark. Meantime, if that underground telephone was being used
at other times in the day he wanted to know it.

He placed the note and money obviously before the little hidden
telephone from which he had cleared the leaves and rubbish that hid it,
and then retired to cover where he settled himself comfortably. He knew
Pat would be busy till the two evening trains had arrived, after that
if he did not come there would likely be no calls before morning again,
and he could go on his way. With a pleasant snack of sugar cookies and
cream puffs he lay back and closed his eyes, glad of this brief respite
from his life of care and perplexity. Of course he couldn't get away
from his thoughts, but what a pleasant place this was, with the scent
of sassafras and winter green all around him, and the meadow lark high
in the air somewhere. There were bees in the wild honeysuckle not far
away. He could hear their lazy drone. It would be nice to be a bee and
fly, fly away from everything. Did bees care about things? Did they
have troubles, and love folks and lose 'em? When a bee died did the
other bees care? Aw Gee! Mark in--j--_No_! He wouldn't say it!
Mark was in New York! Yes, of course he was. It would all come right
some day. He would catch those crooks and put 'em in jail--no, first
he'd use 'em to clear Mark. When he got done here he was going up to
watch the old house and find out about that noise, and he'd see whether
Link and Shorty would put anything more over! Link and Shorty and Pat,
and that sissy Shafton and Sam, whoever Sam was! They were all his
enemies! If Mark were only here how they would go to that old haunted
house together and work this thing out. He ought to have told Mark
everything. Fool! Just to save his own hide! Just to keep Mark from
blaming him! Well, he was done saving himself or getting ill gotten
gains. Him for honesty for the rest of his life.

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