Saratoga Trunk (36 page)

For an instant the three men stared, each seeing in the other’s eyes confirmation of his own worst dread. “Open her up!” yelled Clint. “Wide! We’ve got to get out of here.” For they had slowed down going through the tunnel. From his window Clint could now see the blue sky through the tunnel mouth a hundred yards ahead.

“They can’t jump if I speed her up.”

“They’ve jumped off wild bucking horses, they can clear a greasy train, you got to get us the hell out of here. We’ll be caught like rats in a—” His head was far out of the window, he was peering through the curtain of smoke and soot and cinders that belched from the smokestack. The heat in the tunnel was insufferable, the blazing temperature in the engine cab was indescribable, Maroon’s face was ludicrously streaked now with sweat and grime, his white hat was polka-dotted with black, his diamond scarfpin sparkled bravely in the sullied nest of the satin necktie. He leaned perilously out, he turned his head now to peer back at the laden cars and he could dimly discern the heads and shoulders of the men thrust far out of the train windows and hanging from the car steps. Theirs had been perilous paths; instinctively they sensed danger; they were ready to jump. Now by straddling the car window Clint could see ahead. There it was, down the track, down their own track and headed straight for them. He could see the locomotive, it was sending out a column of smoke like a fiery monster breathing defiance.

“Give ‘em the whistle!” yelled Maroon. “They’re on the track!”

Three shrill blasts seemed to rend the roof of the tunnel. Three more. The figures in the cars behind now leaped, tumbled from the train, shouting, cursing, running.

“Jump!” howled Les above the turmoil. “Jump, you crazy sons-of-bitches, I’m letting her out.”

Poised for the leap, with Tracy behind him, Maroon clung by one hand. “Come on! God damn it, come on, Les.”

They had cleared the tunnel. “Coming. Jump! I’m letting her out. They didn’t get us in the tunnel, the stinkin’ yellow-bellies.”

Neatly and without fluster, as though he were sliding out of a saddle onto the ground, Clint Maroon stepped to the ground, swung round like a dancer, caught his balance magically and started to run as Tracy landed just behind him. He had had, as he leaped, a last glimpse of Les’s face as he bent forward to give the powerful engine its last notch of speed before he, too, leaped for his life.

Bells were ringing, whistles tooting, sparks pouring from the two engines, men were leaping from doors and windows, they ran wide of the track, they yelled like Comanches as the two engines, like something out of a crazy dream, met in the terrible impact of a head-on collision. The heavy engine crumpled the lighter, pushed it aside like a toy. Above the crash and the splintering of wood and the smashing of glass sounded the wild shouts of the men in the blood-curdling yells of the Western plains. Yip-eeee! Eeeeeee-yow! Clubs in their hands, axes, guns, shovels. Swarming along the tracks they came toward each other, the two bands of men. It was plain that Maroon’s crew outnumbered the Binghamton crowd, but on these you saw the flash of deputies’ badges glindng in the sun. But the faces above these were the flabby drink-sodden faces of such Bowery toughs and slum riffraff as the opposition had been hastily able to press into service when news of the Albany foray reached their ears.

“Heel them! Catch them! Brand them! Go get ‘em! Go get ‘em! Hot iron! Hot iron!”

At the head of the throng ran Clint Maroon. He was smiling, happily. His men were at his heels, and in another moment the two sides had met with an impact of blows, oaths, shouts. It was a glorious free-for-all, a primitive batde of fists and clubs and feet. The thud of knuckles on flesh; grunts; the scuffle of leather on cinders; the screams of men in pain; howls of rage.

“No guns!” Clint shouted. “Ear ‘em down, slug ‘em, kick them in the guts! Hammer ‘em! No guns.”

Here was a strange new rule of the game to these men accustomed to fair gun play in a fight, but they cheerfully made the best of it. Fists, boots, axes, clubs. The early training of their cowboy days stood them in good stead now. Five hundred men writhed and pushed, stamped and cursed, punched and hammered and wrestled in a gargantuan bloody welter.

Suddenly, out of a corner of his eye, Clint Maroon glimpsed a familiar figure, diminutive, implike, in a wine-red coat and a shiny top hat, a grin of dreadful joy on his face. Busily, methodically, he was running between men’s legs, he was butting them behind, tipping them over neatly and jumping on them, a look of immense happiness and satisfaction irradiating him as he did so.

Beset though he was, Clint stopped to stare, open-mouthed, then he burst into laughter, and even as he roared with mirth he waved the dwarf back and shouted at him above the din. “Get out of here, you son-of-a-gun! . . . Get out of here, run away from here! Drag it, or I’ll bust every—”

The little man came running toward him, dodging this way and that. He was making frantic motions, he pointed with one tiny hand at something behind Maroon and mouthed as he ran. Instinctively Maroon whirled to look behind him. There stood a stubble-bearded ruffian, arms upraised to bring down a shovel on his head. He had only time to duck, an instinctive gesture, and to raise one arm to shield his head. The flat of the shovel crashed down on his elbow and came to a rest against his ribs. Maroon stumbled, sank to one knee, and saw with horror that the fellow again held the shovel high, poised for a finishing blow. Into Clint’s mind flashed the thought, here’s a Maroon being killed with a shovel and disgracing the family. Then Cupide leaped, not like a human being but like a monkey; he used his head as a projectile and landed squarely in the man’s stomach as he stood arms upraised. There was a grunt, the shovel flew from his hands, and, falling, nicked Maroon smartly just above the eye. Then shovel-wielder, Cupide, Maroon, and the shovel itself mingled in a welter of legs, arms, curses, pain. But Maroon’s shattered arm was doubled under his shattered rib and both felt the weight of his own body and that of the fantastic combatants. He was conscious of a wave of unbearable nausea before the kindly curtain of unconsciousness blacked out the daylight.

XVII

In a society which dined in the middle of the day and had supper at halfest
six, the hour set for the grand ball of the United States Hotel season did not seem at all unsophisticated. But then, Saratoga, which considered itself very worldly and delightfully wicked, still had a Cinderella attitude toward the midnight hour. Eight-thirty to midnight the announcement had said.

Supper had been rushed through in the dining room or ignored completely by the belles of the evening. From behind bedroom doors and up and down the hotel corridors could be heard the sounds of gala preparation—excited squeals, the splashing of water, the tinkle of supper trays, the ringing of bells, the hurried steps of waiters and bellboys and chambermaids, the tuning of fiddle and horn. Every gas jet in the great brass chandeliers was flaring; even the crystal chandelier in the parlor, which was lighted only on special occasions. In the garden the daytime geraniums and petunias and alyssum and pansies had vanished in the dusk. In their place bloomed the gaudy orange and scarlet and rose color of the paper lanterns glowing between the trees.

Grudgingly, yet with a certain elation, the United States Hotel had permitted a very few choice guests of their rival, the Grand Union Hotel, to attend this crowning event of the hotel’s summer season: the Jefferson De Forests, the Deckers of Rittenhouse Square, Mrs. Blood of Boston, the Rhinelanders, the Willoughby Kilps, General Roscoe E. Flower.

At the head of the ballroom, directly opposite the musicians’ platform, enthroned among the dowagers, sat Madam Van Steed. About her clustered her ladies-in-waiting—the insecure, the jealous, the malicious, the grudging, the envious. They made elegant conversation and they watched the door; they commented on the success or the dismal failure of the costumes which had been devised under the generous rules of fancy dress; and they watched the door.

“How sweet!” they had cooed at sight of the rose-trellised Mrs. Porcelain. “How dashing and romantic!” on the entrance of the Spanish gypsy. They made stilted talk, generously larded with hints concerning their own lofty place in society.

“I had a letter today from my cousin, Mrs. Fortesque, of London. She says the Queen is suffering from low spirits. She will take no exercise. Letitia—that’s Mrs. Fortesque—says the dear Queen will go to Italy in the autumn.”

“I see that Mrs. De Chanfret isn’t here yet. Do you think she’s not coming! Dear me, I hope . . .”

“Letitia says that the Prince of Wales—they call him Jumbo, isn’t that shocking!—no longer wears a buttonhole flower. . . .”

“A draft, Clarissa! Dear me, it’s really very warm in here. I don’t believe they’ll want to shut the garden doors, so early . . .”

“They say it is a diet for corpulency devised by a Mr. Banting. I don’t think it can be good for one’s health, starving oneself. The Banting Regimen For Corpulency it is called. My dear, for breakfast you’re allowed white-fish and bacon, or cold beef or broiled kidney, toast, and tea with milk and no cream, the way the English take it. For dinner some fish and a bit of poultry or game, a green vegetable, fruit. For supper only meat or fish, a vegetable ... for tea . . .”

“My maid who has a friend who is a friend of a maid who knows Sophie Bellop’s maid happened to mention to me—I didn’t ask her— she just spoke of it the way they do—she happened to mention that she had heard that the De Chanfret woman, or whatever she calls herself, is coming as a French marquise in a powdered wig. Well, really! Couldn’t you die! After all we know ...”

“I always thought Creoles were colored people. . . .”

“. . . New Orleans aristocracy—French and Spanish blood . . .”

“But where is she? Your son seems worried, Clarissa dear. . . .”

“I see your son isn’t dancing, dear Mrs. Van Steed.”

“He is worried. It’s about business. I almost had to use force to keep him from going to Binghamton tonight. Something about a railroad. Some railroad trouble. Nothing to speak of. Bart is so clever. He’ll make it come right.”

Eight-thirty. Nine. Half-past nine. Ten. At half-past nine Mrs. Bellop had sent a bellboy with a message to Clio’s rooms. He had returned with the news that the cottage apartment was in darkness, the door locked, the windows closed. No sound from within.

“But I felt,” he said, solemnly, “like eyes was watching me.”

Decidedly the ball was not going well. There was about it a thin quality, as though a prime ingredient were lacking. People danced, but listlessly. Mrs. Porcelain, the ciel tulle somewhat wilted, the rose trellis headdress askew, smiled and cooed unconvincingly, her eyes on the doorway. The rolling-eyed Forosini found that a velvet gypsy jacket for dancing in August was a mistake. The dowagers grouped against the wall were tigresses robbed of their prey.

“It doesn’t seem to be going, Mrs. Bellop,” complained Tompkins, the hotel manager. “It’s too early for supper. They’ve just stuffed themselves with dinner. What’s wrong?”

“It’s that Mrs. De Chanfret.”

“Why, what’s the matter with her? I don’t see her. Has she done something?”

“No. That’s the trouble. She isn’t here. And they’ve got so used to seeing her and expecting her to do something dramatic that when she isn’t around everything goes stale, like flat champagne.”

“Well, fetch her then. Fetch her.”

“I can’t find her.”

“Nonsense! She must be somewhere. I can’t have the Grand Union saying this ball was a failure. If they do, it’s your fault, Mrs. Bellop.”

“Oh, run along, Tompkins. Who do you think you’re talking to! A chambermaid! I could make the United States Hotel look like a haunted house in two weeks if I chose. So mind your manners. Where’s Van Steed? Now he’s disappeared, too. Drat the man!”

She left the listless ballroom, her eyes searching the corridors, the lobby; she sent bellboys scurrying into the garden, the men’s washroom, up to Van Steed’s apartment, out to the piazza; she even tried Clio’s apartment again, in vain. “The bar. He wouldn’t be there. He doesn’t drink anything. Can’t. Well, try it, anyway.” She herself followed the boy; she poked her head in at the swinging door to survey the territory forbidden to females. There sat Van Steed at a far corner table. “Fetch him! Fetch him at once. Tell him it’s important.”

As the boy bent over him he raised his head, his eyes followed the boy’s pointing finger to where Mrs. Bellop stood in the doorway. Knowing her, perhaps he feared that she was not above coming in and buttonholing him in the bar itself. He rose and came toward her, and she saw that his cheeks had lost their wonted pink and were a curious clay-gray. He had had a drink too potent for the hot night, for litde beads of moisture stood out on his forehead, yet his hand, when she grasped it, was cold. A grin that was a grimace sat awry on his lips. My, he’s taking it hard, she thought.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick? Has something happened to her?”

He opened his clenched left hand. In it was a moist wad of yellow paper. Mrs. Bellop had met enough bad news in her day to recognize it at sight. Yet the staring grin baffled her.

“Not bad news I hope, Bart. No, of course—you’re smiling— that is—not bad news I hope.”

He looked up from the slip of paper. He stared at her. He wet his lips with his tongue.

“Where is she?” he said, without preliminaries.

“I don’t know. I sent over. The place is dark.”

“Maybe she’s heard.”

“Heard what?”

“It’s stifling in here. Come out on the piazza a minute, will you? I’m—

She followed him. The piazza was almost deserted. A few solid couples sat there taking the evening air before their bedtime. A little low-voiced knot of sporting men talking of the day’s races and tomorrow’s possibilities. Van Steed glanced around quickly, seeking a secluded spot. Far off, in a dim corner at the end of the long piazza, there glowed the red eye of a cigar. They could not discern the lonely, meager, hollow-chested figure behind it, but they knew. And the grin came again, fleetingly, into Van Steed’s drawn face.