Destry Rides Again (8 page)

Mrs. Clyde Orrin agreed with her husband perfectly in the major issue. That is to say, she felt that a “diplomatic” attitude
was all the world deserved to see, but whereas Clyde Orrin brought home his official manner to the supper table, Mrs. Orrin
felt that there was a time when one should be oneself.

“What great big thought has my boy tonight?” asked Mrs. Orrin at the table, noting a slight vacancy in the eye of her husband.

“Nothing—nothing at all,” said Clyde Orrin. “Nothing of any importance.”

“Don’t come that stuff,” said Mrs. Orrin, who had risen from the chorus to be the bride of this rising young politician; she
enjoyed letting a little of the old times appear on her tongue when they were alone. “What’s eating you, Clyde?”

“Children,” said he.

“Children? Oh, rot! There’s tons of time for them.”

“I don’t know. One has to form a habit pretty young.”

“I see what you mean,” she said. “You think I can run this house, and put up a front with your vote-getting friends, and go
gadding to teas and such, picking up alliances for darling Clyde, and then I’m to tear home and stay up all night rocking
the cradle of Clyde junior. Is that the idea? It ain’t as catching as mumps, honey, if that’s what you mean!”

He drummed his pink, soft fingers against the top of the table, and did not answer.

“Look here, sweetheart,” said Mrs. Orrin. “Don’t be such a great big strong silent man when you come
home here to me. Let the office be your Rock of Gibraltar, darling; but when you get in here climb down off yourself.”

“Why, dear,” he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“I don’t mean baby-talk, either,” declared Mrs. Orrin. “But if it’s a young Clyde that you want squalling around the house,
just say so. I’m perfectly willing. There’s nothing I’d like so well as to chuck all of this political rot and start a real
home. You know it, too! But you have to pasture this girl on the long green, honey, if you expect her to start raising a family.
I’m not cook, sweeper, window-washer, bell-ringer, duster, marketer, tea-pourer, handshaker all at the same time even for
Darling. D’you follow me, or do I just seem to be saying one of those things?”

Her husband looked down at his plate, and knew that his face was softly, gently thoughtful, though there was almost murder
in his heart. Still, he was rather fond of his wife; he knew that she was endlessly useful; twice she had saved his scalp
from the tomahawk of a furious political boss, and numberless times she had saved him from time and trouble by being gracious
on the street and off it. Moreover, the sharp definition of her character was a relief to him. After the haze of political
diplomacy, small and great, in which he lived and breathed all the day, it was a great rest to see the naked truth inside
the doors of his house. However, he was convinced that he had married beneath him, and this conviction he knew that his wife
secretly shared. Because of that, he guessed shrewdly that his domestic happiness was founded upon sand.

“Suppose that we drop the talk about children,
then? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Only someday——”

“Sure,” said she. “Someday is the time, in the Sweet Sometime on Someplace street. It’s not children, though, that’s occupying
your mind tonight. What is it that’s eating you, my great big brave, noble boy?”

“Don’t you think,” he suggested, “that we could at least try to be polite to one another, even when there’s no one listening?”

“I
am
polite,” said she. “I’m telling you how big and strong and wonderful you are. Pass me the celery, Clyde, and put the official
manner in your inside coat pocket, will you?”

Her husband considered her with the gravity of the fabled basilisk, but his wife answered his gaze with the most ironical
of sweet smiles. They understood each other so extremely well that it was doubtful if they could ever remain friends very
long. Suddenly he put the thought in words.

“No matter what I may be outside; at home, I’m only a fool and a worm!”

“No matter how I may get by away from here,” she retorted, “the minute you come home I’m back on the stage and showing my
knees. If I lived with you a thousand years, you’d never stop being afraid that I’ll some day make a bad break.”

“Come, come,” said he, “you know that’s not true! I know what I owe you!”

“Not love, though?” said she.

He got up from his chair hastily and went around the table to her, but she held out her hand and warded him away.

“I don’t want any perfunctory pecks, and I hate reconciliation scenes because they’re so sticky,” she said. “Being reconciled
always makes a girl cry; I
suppose because it’s better to cry over a husband than to laugh at him. Go back and sit down, Clyde, and I’ll try to take
you seriously.”

He returned to his chair, very pink and haughty, but Mrs. Orrin, who felt that she had gone far enough and who really thought
that she might be able to drive even this somewhat flabby carriage to some political height, now softened her eyes and her
smile.

He regarded her dubiously.

“You know how to pull in your claws and give the velvet touch,” he told her. “Now get ready to put the claws out again. Listen
to this! It’s a letter from William R. Rock about the T. & O. business.”

“Go on,” she said. “I knew there was something for mama to hear.”

He took the letter from his pocket, unfolded it, looked darkly at his wife, and read slowly, aloud:

Dear Orrin,

I’ve just read a copy of your last speech, the one of the seventh. It made me smile, but not on the side of the face you think.
You want to get this in your head, young fellow. You’re not in there to make the legislature laugh at us but to make it laugh
with us. We’ve retained you for something more than an after-dinner speech. Ten thousand a year is higher than we’ve gone
in this state for some time, and we want returns on our money. You know what we expect. We want a tax reduction and a fat
one. You’ve been fiddling around for a long time and drawing pretty pictures, but now we want to hear from you in headlines.
We want you to chuck the funny business and work up a little public sympathy for the T. & O. We want you to make the
people feel that we’re done for and will have to get out of business unless we’re given a helping hand. The state needs us
more than we need the state. That’s your line, as I laid it down for you months ago.

Now, then, Orrin, come to life and wake up that legislature. We’ve made enough alliances for you; all you need to do is to
start pulling a few of the strings that we’ve placed in your hands, and the thing will go through. Besides, if you father
a really big piece of legislation like that, it’ll bring you before your public and double your strength with the voters.

Don’t make any mistake. Keep in our saddle and we’ll ride you a long way. A governorship, perhaps, or the U.S. Senate. But
only if you play our game. The Old Man was down here yesterday and he’s not satisfied with you. This is a friendly tip. Get
back into harness and help us pull our load and we’ll not forget when we get to the top of the hill. You’ve been paid what
you’re worth in advance, but if the tax cut goes through, there’ll be a bonus, anyway. I don’t know just what. Ten thousand
more, at least. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and I think you’ll enjoy the flavor of the weed.

Now, boy, this is straight from the shoulder. Personally, I believe in you! I’m with you and behind you every minute that
you play our game with us. But when you chuck us and start going for yourself, we’re going to plow the ground from under your
feet as sure as God made little apples.

Yours truly,

W. R. R
OCK
.

He read it out to the signature, slowly, dwelling a little on every offensive phrase, and as he finished her first remark
was: “You poor simpleton, couldn’t you remember the gist of that without bringing it home? Burn it in the fireplace this minute!
That’s a bomb that would blow you to pieces if the newspaper got hold of it! The
News-Democrat
would love to have that! Can’t you see a photographic reprint on the first page?”

“How long would I last with you,” he asked curiously, “if things went bust?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m in here working with a wise man, not with a sap. Burn-that letter, will you?”

“It has to go in the safe,” said her husband.

“Suppose that the safe is cracked?”

“What yegg would waste his time on a safe like that?” he asked her. “I’m not rich. There’s not a hundred dollars in cash in
it, and as for my papers, who am I? No, I need this letter to refer to. It may be that they’ll try to double cross me. Here’s
their definite promise of a ten thousand bonus.”

“Would they pay any attention to it?”

“There are certain quarters—not newspapers!— where I could show this and do them a lot of harm if they were to try to hold
out on me. They’d know that. One reason Rock made this so strong and open was to scare me into burning it. But I’m made of
tougher stuff than that.”

She hesitated, glancing at a corner. Then she snapped her fingers.

“I think you’re right!” said she. “You
have
a head, Clyde darling, and I can see it, once in a while. Better go down and put it away now!”

Here the front door bell rang, and they looked at
each other with big, frightened eyes; then Orrin himself went to answer the call.

He let in the yellow eyes and the smoked skin of Jose Vedres, who stood before him, sourly smiling, a letter in his hand.
Orrin, without a word, tore it open and read.

“Wait here!” he said to the messenger, and hurried back into the dining room.

He flung the letter down on the table, before his wife, merely muttering:

“Read this, Sylvia!”

Sylvia read, and then, refolding it without a word, she puckered her smooth brow.

“It’s like something in a play,” she said at last. “I ought to say: ‘Has it come to this, Clyde Orrin?’ ”

“It’s come to this,” said he.

“You look pretty sick,” said she. “But what could this man-eater get by clawing you?”

“What did he get by clawing poor Jerry Wendell?”

“True,” she answered. “You’d better call in the police.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For the safe! It has your soul locked up in it. And after all, it’s a pretty good idea to keep a soul inside of a steel skin.”

“You’re not worried, Sylvia?” he asked her grimly.

“Darling,” said she, “my heart’s in my throat!”

But he knew, as he listened and watched her, that already the woman was preparing herself to see the ruin of her husband.

One of the strings which lay in the hand of Clyde Orrin connected with the detective branch of the police department and it
was for that reason that Detective Hugh McDonald was installed in the little basement room which contained the Orrins’ safe.
It was a small, bare room, without an electric light, and even after a chair had been installed, and a lamp furnished, the
place was not much more inviting. However, Mr. McDonald had sat through longer nights in worse places.

He first looked to the small window and assured himself that the bars which defended it were solidly sunk in the concrete
of the sill and window jambs. He shook them with all his might, and still they held. Then he drew down the whitened glass
pane, which shut out all sight of the interior to one passing outside. Next, he regarded the door, locked it, shoved home
the bolt, and told himself that no agency other than spiritual could effect an entrance to this chamber. After that, he opened
his magazine and resumed the narrative which had been interrupted by this call to duty.

To make surety a little more sure, he laid his Colt across his lap; it was a special guaranty against sleepiness, because
it would be dangerous to allow that gun to fall to the floor.

Dimly, overhead, he heard the last sound of people going to bed, the creak of a stairs being climbed, and the screech of a
chair pushed back from a table. Then silence gathered the house softly in its arms.

It was two o’clock when there came the tap on his
window. He looked at his watch, made sure of the hour, and then approached the window carefully, standing to one side, where
the lamp could not throw his shadow upon the whitened glass. He was in no humor to throw away chances, for he had not forgotten
the strained face of Clyde Orrin when the latter told him that in spite of one or twenty detectives, that room would be entered
and the safe opened, if so be that the feared criminal decided to do this thing. Hugh McDonald had smiled a little at this
fear; he was used to the tremors of the man of the street.

Now he said: “Who’s there?”

“Jack Campbell,” said a voice, dim beyond the window. “Open up and let’s have a chin, will you? I’m froze out here and wanta
thaw out my tongue!”

Mr. McDonald, hesitating, remembered the strength of the bars beyond the window, and his doubts departed.

But first he returned to the lamp and turned down its flame until there was only the faintest glow through the room. After
that, he raised the window and peered cautiously out into the darkness. At once a face was pressed close to the bars, a face
that wore bristling moustaches which quivered and stood on end as the fellow grinned.

“Who are you?” asked McDonald.

“I’m Campbell. I heard there was another Campbell down here on the job.”

“I ain’t a Campbell,” said the McDonald with reasoned bitterness, “and what’s more, I wouldn’t be one. I ain’t a Campbell
and there ain’t a drop of blood in me that ever seen Argyleshire, or ever wants to see it. I ain’t a Campbell, and I never
had a Campbell friend, and what’s more, I don’t never expect
to have one. If that ain’t enough for you, I’ll try to find another way of sayin’ it!”

“Campbell or McDonald,” said the stranger at the bars, “there’s only one country between us.”

“You don’t talk like it,” said McDonald.

“Don’t I? What chance of I gotto talk Scotch when I never was there, but a Scotchman’s a Scotchman from London to Yuma, and
don’t you mistake.”

“You talk like a man with a bit of reason in him,” admitted the McDonald. “But what are you doin’ out there?”

“I’m the outside gent of this job,” said the other.

“I didn’t know there was goin’ to be an outside man,” said McDonald.

“There wasn’t,” replied the Campbell, “but along comes Orrin back to the office and makes another howl, and gets me put on
the job to be outside watchdog! What’s in there, anyways?”

“Nothin’ to eat,” said McDonald.

“And me with my stomach cleavin’ to my backbone.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“Up from Phoenix.”

“I never seen you before.”

“Because you never been in Phoenix.”

“Have they put you on regular?”

“They’ve put me on for a try, but if they don’t give me no better chance than this, what good will a try do me, I ask you?”

“Search me,” said McDonald. “What can you do?”

“Ride a hoss and daub a rope.”

“Humph!” said the McDonald. “Well, I wish you luck. I’m gunna go back to my chair. You can set on the outside of the window
sill, if that’s a comfort for you!”

“Thanks,” said the other. “But put these moustaches straight, will you?”

“What?”

“Look at ’em,” said the other. “I dunno whether they’re tryin’ to make a fool out of me, or not, but they stuck these on me
like a detective in a dime novel. Look at the twist in ’em, already, but I got no mirror to put ’em straight.”

“What difference does it make? It’s dark. Nobody’s worryin’ about your style of moustaches.”

“It makes me nervous. It don’t cost you nothin’ to put these right for me, and it keeps me from feelin’ like a clown. Look
at the way they got me fixed. A wig, too, and the damn wig don’t match the moustaches. They’re makin’ a fool out of me, McDonald.”

“Some don’t take much makin’,” said the McDonald sourly. “Wait a minute, and I’ll give those whiskers a yank for you.”

He stepped close to the bars as he said this, and when he was near, the hand and arm of the other shot through a gap. In the
extended fingers of the Campbell appeared a small rubber-housed bag of shot which flicked across the side of the McDonald’s
head.

The detective fell in a noiseless heap to the floor!

After this the “outside” man fell to work with a short jimmy which easily ripped the bars from their sockets. He was presently
able to pull the whole framework back, and, entering the room through the window, he closed it carefully behind him.

Next, he secured the fallen gun of the man of the law, “fanned” him dexterously but failed to find anything more of interest
on his person, and then gave his attention to the safe.

He turned up the flame in the throat of the lamp’s chimney, so that he would have ample light, and
then fell to work with wonderful rapidity running a mold of yellow laundry soap around the crack of the safe door.

Then, into an aperture at the top of the mold, he let in a trickle of pale, viscous fluid from a small bottle which he carried.

He was engaged in this occupation when the form on the floor stirred and groaned faintly. The other calmly went to him, selected
a spot at the base of the skull, and struck with the bag of shot again. The McDonald slumped into a deeper sleep.

A moment later the fuse was connected, lighted, and the intruder stepped back into a corner of the little room and lay down
on his face. The next instant the explosion took place, not a loud roar or a great report, but a thick, half stifled sigh
that shook the house to its foundations.

The lamp had been put out by the robber before; now he lighted it again and by that flame he viewed the contents inside the
open door of steel. In the very first drawer he found what apparently contented him—a letter which began:

“Dear Orrin,

I’ve just read a copy of your last speech—the one of the seventh——”

He glanced swiftly through its contents and placed the envelope in his pocket. Then he canted his head to listen to the rumble
of footfalls coming down the stairs.

He was in no hurry. He even delayed to lean over the unconscious detective and slip a hand under the coat and over the heart
of the McDonald. The reassuring though faint pulsation made him nod with satisfaction, and, raising the window, he was gone
in a moment more into the outer night.

Still he was not ended for that evening, but hurried to the street, across it to a narrow alley, and down this to a hitching
rack where a tall bay mare was tethered. He mounted, and cantered her out of the little suburb village into the adjoining
capital city, itself hardly more than a village, conscious of its three paved streets and its gleaming street lamps!

He gained the center of the town, where he tethered the mare again in an alley and shortly afterward was climbing the dingy
stairs that led to the rooms of the
News-Democrat
.

The reporters were gone. It was far too late for them, but the editor remained, punching wearily at his typewriter while he
held the press for a late item. He was an old man. He had sunk to a country level from a city reputation. His head was gray,
his eyes were bleared with the constant perusal of wet print, the glamour and the joy of the press almost had departed from
his tired soul, but still a ghost of his old self looked through his glasses at Destry as that robber stood smiling before
him, rubbing the crooked moustaches with sensitive finger tips.

“What’re you made up to be?” asked the editor, grinning.

“I’m made up to be scandal,” said Destry. “You take a look at this and tell me what
you
think?”

The editor glanced at the first few lines, half rose from his chair, and then settled back to finish. At the conclusion, he
glanced fixedly at Destry for a few seconds, then ran to a tall filing cabinet from which he produced a handful of specimens
of handwriting. With a selection from among these, he compared the signature at the bottom of the page.

After that, he allowed everything except the letter
to fall fluttering and skidding through the air to the ink-painted floor while he rushed to a telephone.

Destry started for the door, and heard the editor screaming wildly:

“Stop the press! Stop the press!”

Then, as Destry was about to disappear, the editor’s voice shouted after him: “I want your story! Where’d you pick this up?”

“Out of his safe,” said Destry.

“Hey? Wait a minute! You mean that you robbed his safe?”

“Out of a feelin’ for the public good,” said Destry. “So long. Make it big!”

“Make it big! It makes itself! It’s the whole front page! It’s the T. & O. going up in smoke——”

But Destry waited to hear no more. He hurried down the stairs to the street, only pausing at the first dimly lit landing to
take from his pocket a card containing a list of twelve names. Three of these already had been canceled. He now drew a line
through the fourth.