Dangerous Days: (38 page)

Once outside the yard she started to run. They would let her telephone from the drug-store, even without money. She had no money. But the drug-store was closed and dark, and the threat of Rudolph’s return terrified her. She must get off the hill, somehow.

There were still paths down the steep hill-side, dangerous things that hugged the edge of small, rocky precipices, or sloped steeply to sudden turns. But she had played over the hill all her young life. She plunged down, slipping and falling a dozen times, and muttering, some times an oath, some times a prayer,

“Oh, God, let me be in time. Oh, God, hold him up a while until I - ” then a slip. “If I fall now - “

Only when she was down in the mill district did she try to make any plan. It was almost eleven then, and her ears were tense with listening for the sound she dreaded. She faced her situation, then. She could not telephone from a private house, either to the mill or to the Spencer house, what she feared, and the pay-booths of the telephone company demanded cash in advance. She was incapable of clear thought, or she would have found some way out, undoubtedly. What she did, in the end, was to board an up-town car and throw herself on the mercy of the conductor.

“I’ve got to get up-town,” she panted. “I’ll not go in. See? I’ll stand here and you take me as far as you can. Look at me! I don’t look as though I’m just bumming a ride, do I?”

The conductor hesitated. He had very little faith in human nature, but Anna’s eyes were both truthful and desperate. He gave the signal to go on.

“What’s up?” he said. “Police after you?”

“Yes,” Anna replied briefly.

There is, in certain ranks, a tacit conspiracy against the police. The conductor hated them. They rode free on his car, and sometimes kept an eye on him in the rush hours. They had a way, too, of letting him settle his own disputes with inebriated gentlemen who refused to pay their fares.

“Looks as though they’d come pretty close to grabbing you,” he opened, by way of conversation. “But ten of ‘em aren’t a match for one smart girl. They can’t run. All got flat feet.”

Anna nodded. She was faint and dizzy, and the car seemed to creep along. It was twenty minutes after eleven when she got out. The conductor leaned down after her, hanging to the handrail.

“Good luck to you!” he said. “And you’d better get a better face on you than that. It’s enough to send you up, on suspicion!”

She hardly heard him. She began to run, and again she said over and over her little inarticulate prayer. She knew the Spencer house. More than once she had walked past it, on Sunday afternoons, for the sheer pleasure of seeing Graham’s home. Well, all that was over now. Everything was over, unless -

The Spencer house was dark, save for a low light in the hall. A new terror seized her. Suppose Graham saw her. He might not believe her story. He might think it a ruse to see his father. But, as it happened, Clayton had sent the butler to bed, and himself answered the bell from the library.

He recognized her at once, and because he saw the distress on her face he brought her in at once. In the brief moment that it required to turn on the lights he had jumped to a sickening conviction that Graham was at the bottom of her visit, and her appearance in full light confirmed this.

“Come into the library,” he said. “We can talk in there.” He led the way and drew up a chair for her. But she did not sit down. She steadied herself by its back, instead.

“You think it’s about Graham,” she began. “It isn’t, not directly, that is. And my coming is terrible, because it’s my own father. They’re going to blow up the munition plant, Mr. Spencer!”

“When?”

“To-night, I think. I came as fast as I could. I was locked in.

“Locked in?” He was studying her face.

“Yes. Don’t bother about that now. I’m not crazy or hysterical. I tell you I heard them. I’ve been a prisoner or I’d have come sooner. To-day they brought something - dynamite or a bomb - in a suitcase - and it’s gone to-night. He took it - my father.”

He was already at the telephone as she spoke. He called the mill first, and got the night superintendent. Then he called a number Anna supposed was the police station, and at the same time he was ringing the garage-signal steadily for his car. By the time he had explained the situation to the police, his car was rolling under the porte-cochere beside the house. He was starting out, forgetful of the girl, when she caught him by the arm.

“You mustn’t go!” she cried. “You’ll be killed, too. It will all go, all of it. You can’t be spared, Mr. Spencer. You can build another mill, but - “

He shook her off, gently.

“Of course I’m going,” he said. “We’ll get it in time. Don’t you worry. You sit down here and rest, and when it’s all straightened out I’ll come back. I suppose you can’t go home, after this?”

“No,” she said, dully.

He ran out, hatless, and a moment later she heard the car rush out into the night.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Anna Klein stood, staring ahead of her. When nothing happened she moved around and sat down in the chair. She was frightfully tired. She leaned her head back and tried to think of something to calm her shaking nerves, - that this was Graham’s home, that he sometimes sat in that very chair. But she found that Graham meant nothing to her. Nothing mattered, except that her warning had been in time.

So intent was she on the thing that she was listening for that smaller, near-by sounds escaped her. So she did not hear a door open upstairs and the soft rustle of a woman’s negligee as it swept from stair to stair. But as the footsteps outside the door she stood up quickly and looked back over her shoulder.

Natalie stood framed in the doorway, staring at her.

“Well?” she said. And on receiving no answer from the frightened girl, “What are you doing here?”

The ugly suspicion in her voice left Anna speechless for a moment.

“Don’t move, please,” said Natalie’s cold voice. “Stay just where you are.” She reached behind the curtain at the doorway, and Anna heard the far-away ringing of a bell, insistent and prolonged. The girl roused herself with an effort.

“I came to see Mr. Spencer.”

“That is a likely story! Who let you in?”

“Mr. Spencer.”

“Mr. Spencer is not in.”

“But he did. I’m telling you the truth. Indeed I am. I rang the bell, and he came to the door. I had something to tell him.”

“What could you possibly have to tell my husband at this hour.”

But Anna Klein did not answer. From far away there came a dull report followed almost immediately by a second one. The windows rattled, and the house seemed to rock rather gently on its foundation. Then silence.

Anna Klein picked up her empty pocket-book from the table and looked at it.

“I was too late,” she said dully, and the next moment she was lying at Natalie’s feet.

It was not until dawn that the full extent of the disaster was revealed. All night, by the flames from the sheds in the yard, which were of wood and still burning, rescue parties had worked frantically. Two of the long buildings, nearest to the fuse department, had collapsed entirely. Above the piles of fallen masonry might be seen, here and there, the black mass of some machine or lathe, and it was there the search parties were laboring. Luckily the fuse department had not gone double turn, and the night shift in the machine-shop was not a full one.

The fuse department was a roaring furnace, and repeated calls had brought in most of the fire companies of the city. Running back and forth in the light of the flames were the firemen and such volunteer rescuers as had been allowed through the police cordon. Outside that line of ropes and men were gathered a tragic crowd, begging, imploring to be allowed through to search for some beloved body. Now and then a fresh explosion made the mob recoil, only to press close again, importuning, tragic, hopeless.

The casualty list ran high. All night long ambulances stood in a row along the street, backed up to the curb and waiting, and ever so often a silent group, in broken step, carried out some quiet covered thing that would never move again.

With the dawn Graham found his father. He had thrown off his coat and in his shirt-sleeves was, with other rescuers, digging in the ruins. Graham himself had been working. He was nauseated, weary, and unutterably wretched, for he had seen the night superintendent and had heard of his father’s message.

“Klein!” he said. “You don’t mean Herman Klein?”

“That was what he said. I was to find him and hold him until he got here. But I couldn’t find him. He may have got out. There’s no way of telling now.”

Waves of fresh nausea swept over Graham. He sat down on a pile of bricks and wiped his forehead, clammy with sweat.

“I hope to God he was burned alive,” muttered the other man, surveying the scene. His eyes were reddened with smoke from the fire, his clothing torn.

“I was knocked down myself,” he said. “I was out in the yard looking for Klein, and I guess I lay there quite a while. If I hadn’t gone out?” He shrugged his shoulders.

“How many women were on the night shift?”

“Not a lot. Twenty, perhaps. If I had my way I’d take every German in the country and boil ‘em in oil. I didn’t want Klein back, but he was a good workman. Well, he’s done a good job now.”

It was after that that Graham saw his father, a strange, wild-eyed Clayton who drove his pick with a sort of mad strength, and at the same time gave orders in an unfamiliar voice. Graham, himself a disordered figure, watched him for a moment. He was divided between fear and resolution. Some place in that debacle there lay his own responsibility. He was still bewildered, but the fact that Anna’s father had done the thing was ominous.

The urge to confession was stronger than his fears. Somehow, during the night, he had become a man. But now he only felt, that somehow, during the night, he had become a murderer.

Clayton looked up, and he moved toward him.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve had some coffee made at a house down the street. Won’t you come and have it?”

Clayton straightened. He was very tired, and the yard was full of volunteers now, each provided at the gate with a pick or shovel. A look at the boy’s face decided him.

“I’ll come,” he said, and turned his pick over to a man beside him. He joined Graham, and for a moment he looked into the boy’s eyes. Then he put a hand on his shoulder, and together they walked out, past the line of ambulances, into a street where the scattered houses showed not a single unshattered window, and the pavements were littered with glass.

His father’s touch comforted the boy, but it made even harder the thing he had to do. For he could not go through life with this thing on his soul. There had been a moment, after he learned of Herman’s implication, when he felt the best thing would be to kill himself, but he had put that aside. It was too easy. If Herman Klein had done this thing because of Anna and himself, then he was a murderer. If he had done it because he was a German, then he - Graham - had no right to die. He would live to make as many Germans as possible pay for this night’s work.

“I’ve got something to tell you, father,” he said, as they paused before the house where the coffee was ready. Clayton nodded, and together they went inside. Even this house was partially destroyed. A piece of masonry had gone through the kitchen, and standing on fallen bricks and plaster, a cheerful old woman was cooking over a stove which had somehow escaped destruction.

“It’s bad,” she said to Graham, as she poured the coffee into cups, “but it might have been worse, Mr. Spencer. We’re all alive. And I guess I’ll understand what my boy’s writing home about now. They’ve sure brought the war here this night.”

Graham carried the coffee into the little parlor, where Clayton sat dropped on a low chair, his hands between his knees. He was a strange, disheveled figure, gray of face and weary, and the hand he held out for the cup was blistered and blackened. Graham did not touch his coffee. He put it on the mantel, and stood waiting while Clayton finished his.

“Shall I tell you now, sir?”

Clayton drew a long breath.

“It was Herman Klein who did it?”

“Probably. I had a warning last night, but it was too late. I should have known, of course, but somehow I didn’t. He’d been with us a long time. I’d have sworn he was loyal.”

For the first time in his life Graham saw his father weaken, the pitiful, ashamed weakness of a strong man. His voice broke, his face twitched. The boy drew himself up; they couldn’t both go to pieces. He could not know that Clayton had worked all that night in that hell with the conviction that in some way his own son was responsible; that he knew already what Graham was about to tell him.

“If Herman Klein did it, father, it was because he was the tool of a gang. And the reason he was a tool was because he thought I was - living with Anna. I wasn’t. I don’t know why I wasn’t. There was every chance. I suppose I meant to some time. Anyhow, he thought I was.”

If he had expected any outbreak from Clayton, he met none. Clayton sat looking ahead, and listening. Inside of the broken windows the curtains were stirring in the fresh breeze of early morning, and in the kitchen the old woman was piling the fallen bricks noisily.

“I had been flirting with her a little - it wasn’t much more than that, and I gave her a watch at Christmas. He found it out, and he beat her. Awfully. She ran away and sent for me, and I met her. She had to hide for days. Her face was all bruised. Then she got sick from it. She was sick for weeks.”

“Did he know where she was?”

“I think not, or he’d have gone to get her. But Rudolph Klein knew something. I took her out to dinner, to a roadhouse, a few days ago, and she said she saw him there. I didn’t. All that time, weeks, I’d never - I’d never gone to her room. That night I did. I don’t know why. I - “

“Go on.”

“Well, I went, but I didn’t stay. I couldn’t. I guess she thought I was crazy. I went away, that’s all. And the next day I felt that she might be feeling as though I’d turned her down or something. And I felt responsible. Maybe you won’t understand. I don’t quite myself. Anyhow, I went back, to let her know I wasn’t quite a brute, even if - But she was gone. I’m not trying to excuse myself. It’s a rotten story, for I was engaged to Marion then.”