The picture on the wall

Front matter

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COPWUGHT DEPOSPT.

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Contents

Chapter

I. The Plotters 9

II. The Plot 15

Chapter I The Plotters

Blearstead^s Eating House in Smiling Lane — one of the poorest and obscurest corners of the hilly city — had a reputation as malodorous as the neighborhood. It choked up the entrance to an alley, squat and swollen in size, with projecting props like an immense beetle that had tried to crawl down the narrow passage of mouldy bricks and greasy boarding to the open space but had got caught and couldn’t stretch a leg. By midnight the habitues of the restaurant, men of rather extensive notoriety and women of slender character, had for the most part gambled, smoked and drunk their last cent and were ready to flit to goodness knows what foul nests till daybreak; and by one in the morning Blearstead had turned the last fuddled wretch out of doors and bade his servitor close up for the night.

One night in early March, just as the clock struck one, a stockily-built man with the face of a bulldog — small eyes, heavy jaws, square nose — came by appointment to hear the proprietor’s latest scheme of a quick cut to fortune. He was Harve Cleek, a pugilist of local renown. Of these two, Blearstead was the leader and as young John passed to and fro at his duties of clearing the various small tables it was Blearstead who, with an air of authority, opened up the new project. Drawing from his pocket a newspaper he opened it wide marking with a crooked finger the place where a ^^Sunday feature story’^ was built around a heavily-smeared photograph like a sea of print surrounding a desert island.

^^Read that!’’ Blearstead commanded with suppressed excitement, his tall, powerfully built frame bent over the shiny table-top, his shock of white hair quivering as in a breeze, his sunken, over-colored face writhing its nose and lips in nervous spasms that sleep alone could subdue.

With one of his most emphatic oaths, Cleek repudiated the idea of his reading the illustrated article. “I ain’t come to pursoo liter- ’toor. If you got any inside dope on cracking a house or lifting a fat leather, my name’s Cleek; but if you ain’t, it’s Fade Away.”

These expressions did not appear singular to Blearstead, but he was irritated by opposition and his voice became a growl : “Just look at the picture, will you? I ain’t asking you to use no brains. Just look at it good, then I’ll tell you what to say.”

All the lights had been turned out except the gasjet in the corner of their retreat, and one other across the room above the partition door through which John was bearing, with graceful ease, stacks of dishes preposterously high. Cleek held the paper under the wavering flame of the comer light, stared hard at the likeness of a man of about thirty-three, then wrinkled his snub-nose inquiringly. “I have saw it; now tell me what to say.”

Blearstead slyly pointed toward his assistant just then coming in from the other room empty-handed, followed by a grotesquely exaggerated shadow. The young man was softly whistling; his eyes looked far away.

Cleek slowly nodded Ms bullet-head.

‘^Do you get me?’^ the other insisted.

“It^s easy/’ Cleek affirmed, “though the guy in the picture must have been caught and took considerable older in life.”

“Of course,” Blearstead showed triumph, “seeing as John ain’t but about twenty-one and this here was took before he was born. Now, this piece is all wrote about what happened twenty year ago,” he added, keeping the sidewise movements of his nose, and the workings of his mouth steadily going, “and deals with a couple — the picture is the male of it — in the millionaire class. They lived in California same as me only they wasn’t so well knowd for Fd been in the pen a time or two and my pictures everwheres, without me having to pay to get ’em on the front page.”

“Well, go ahead. Old Vanity,” Cleek said with surly good-nature.

“I got acquainted with their nursemaid and her and I fixed it up to kidnap the year-old baby; they was just the one kid, a boy. So we done; and things was as smooth as the sleeve-lining of a gent’s overcoat, I wrote several letters to the father, and he wrote to me, we was the regular little letter-writers, back and forth we come till all was set for him to leave me my pile at a certain spot. But right there is where the cops butted in — you know how they are always messing up a fellow’s plans, if they get a chance. There was nothing to do but skip for our lives. What become of the nursemaid I never knowd, but here’s me, talking to you.”

“Having named no names — ” Cleek hinted.

“I’ll name them names when you’re safe in with me on this.”

“What become of the kid?”

^When I see we was never to get a cent out of the kid on account of the cops making it so hot for us, I^d have left him on his pa’s doorstep only I’d have got nabbed. I’m as kind hearted a man as ever lived, but I proves my kindness on myself first. We fed the baby and kept him under cover till that nursemaid got the panic in her blood. She drowned him in the river, then told me afterwards. She knowd I’d never a-stood for it.”

Cleek grinned hideously. ‘^Good thing you lost that soft heart of yourn. You wouldn’t be no-count in our business if you was like you use to be.”

“She told me it was soon over — a toss from the cliff, a splash, and a weight to keep the body from washing up on the beach.”

“That must have been a devil of a woman.” Cleek still smiled.

“Well — ^what would you have done in her place?”

Cleek started up, shoving the table to one side and his smile changed to a heavy-browed scowl. “What did you tell me for?” he rasped.

During the three years of their intimacy, Blearstead had found him far from scrupulous. That he should at this critical juncture show disgust for crime roused intense indignation.

“Hold on there !” Blearstead’s was the sternness of the master. “You and me are a little too thick to fall out. Sit down; I’ve told the worst there is. Get yourself ready and I’ll soon show you where you come in.”

“I ain’t a-riding.”

“You think you ain’t, but that’s just because you’re going so fast. This piece tells all about the abduction — hashing it up, you know, for readers of the present generation. It seems that my man has left California — is living in this state in a one-horse village on the river off main travel. He is still hoping his son^ll turn up some day, or at least that’s what the reporter says. His wife’s dead but his other child, a daughter, is living with him, and he still has that million or something like. He’s not much past fifty, but he’s lost his health complete, and looks like an old man.”

^^That picture of him looks like he wouldn’t break early.”

^Wes, but losing the kid done the trick. Cleek, if I’m any judge of life and art, this here picture looks enough like my nevvy to be him if he was older. See?”

Cleek’s beetling scowl had gradually relaxed into a still more hideous grimace. It brought his features oddly up to the focus of his short square nose as if he were suddenly all pug. Shooting a stealthy glance out of the corner of his eye toward John Walters, he nodded. “I get you.”

Blearstead gave his nose a mighty tweak and by the aid of his upper lip caused it to describe a complete circle. He whispered hoarsely: "Pve got an old grip with all the identification things in it needed to prove the case: the baby-clothes with the initials, the shoes, the baby-spoon what the maid snaked away with him, but best of all the old man’s letters to me all about my terms. Of course my name was different then, but them letters tell the whole story. He’s bound to recognize his own handwriting. I don’t need nothing but the kid hisself. See?”

ain’t wall-eyed, am I?” retorted Cleek. ^^Call John and have it out with him right now.”

Blearstead cast a brooding look toward the erect, busy young man whose face showed no care, and whose whistling, soft but merry, indicated a joyous nature. Though his clothes were heavy and coarse there was an indefinable difference between him and the two conspirators which both felt and resented. That he should always keep himself scrupulously neat was a matter to them of no concern. He liked to be clean — ^well, that was all right. But the intangible someliing of the spirit that they could not name and realized that they lacked, brought the look of somber brooding to the uncle’s gaunt eyes. He muttered, ^Wou’ve got to be kinder cautious the way you handle him. But we got to handle him, in course.” Then he called the young fellow from his tasks. ^^Here, John, we’ve got something up our sleeves. Listen at us.”

Chapter II The Plot

John Walters promptly responded to Blearstead’s summons, traversing the long smokebrowned chamber, skillfully slipping between the little tables from which the long-used cloths had not been removed. As he drew near the corner gasjet, he noted the effect of its merdless glare on the two men projected sharply against the mellow obscurity ; the huge head of his uncle with its unkempt thatch of white hair, and the brick-red face of the pugilist had never appeared more sinister. But they were factors too intimate in his daily life to call for more than an appraising glance — a recent misadventure of his own was sufficient to engage all his faculties, now that work no longer claimed his hands.

Over his delicately featured face passed an expression of swift resolution. He was a slender youth and not tall, of nervous organism, quick in all his ways, sharp and instantaneous in tones and forms of speech as if body and mind were kept wound up to highest tension. His uncle, a muscular giant nearly seven feet in height, could have overpowered him without question and he knew himself to be no match for the bully Cleek, yet he faced them with a countenance void of fear.

‘‘Look here.” he began with his customary abruptness, “I’ve made up my mind never to go out with you fellows again — ” he met his uncle’s glare determinedly — “and I won’t have you telling me your schemes of robbing houses and all that. I let myself in once for your kind of work and it’s going to last me a lifetime. See? My mother raised me to be always on the square and after this I intend to stay on the square. Yes, sir, if you throw me out on the street. I’m ready to go on my own, anyhow. You might as well — ”

“Oh, come off,” Oleek interposed, tolerantly. “Shut off your works, boy, and take a recess with us. It’s a mighty safe bet that we don’t want you to go with us again on breaking a house. Lord! what did you do, last night? You gets into a bedroom where a lady is taking her repose. She looks at you modest and reproachful, and, ^Excuse me, mum,’ says you, ffet me beg of you to make no noise, as you are perfectly safe,’ says you. Then you asks her to let you take away from the table a book of pomes as a souvenir, which you done. And as soon as you left that bedroom, the lady lets out a yell like a Camanche. Your uncle and me nearly broke our necks getting away. Maybe you call that square, nearly putting us both in the pen. Nothing ain’t any squarer to a man, than the mind he has. If you’ve got a square mind, you see things square, that’s all.”

In describing John’s recent adventure as a house-breaker, Cleek kept close to the newspaper accounts as based on the statement of the lady in the bedroom which, in the main, was accurate enough. Dreadfully overwrought by her experience, the young lady had no doubt colored her story. At any rate John Walters had struck the reporters as a rich mine of romantic possibilities. No one, of course, knew his name, but no name was desired. “The Polite Burglar” was better for a headline than any name.

“We’re wasting time,” Blearstead growled.

“One good thing, John,” Cleek persisted, “You got all the limelight. The whole city’s on the search for ‘The Polite Burglar’ with a volyume of pomes in his pocket.”

“Of course,” Blearstead interposed, “we don’t need argue that my nevvy’s a fool. It goes without saying. But this kidnapping scheme sure ought to suit him down to the ground. And he owes it to me — since he’s so proud of talking about being ‘square’ — to make some return for all the money I’ve spent on him, yes, and on his ma before she died, though she was my own sister. Sister Ann never raised him right. She coddled his body and filled his brain with such thin-shelled ideas that they’re all-time breaking and getting messed up in his basket. She even give him the microbe of wanting to be educated. If she hadn’t died, I guess he’d be swimming over his head in books by now.”

John Walters, waiting patiently for what was coming, listened with birdlike glancings of his eyes, unruffled and unafraid.

“But his ma — the only sister I ever had — died, and about that time — Cleek, you remember it — John falls off the roof and breaks his leg in two or three places. And what did I do?”

“You sure took care of me,” John declared emphatically.

His patron-uncle growled, “That’s what I done. And a long time before he could walk about, me feeding and clothing him, pouring out my money like water.”

He addressed himself solely to Cleek, as if his nephew were a lay-figure. “Was that all? Not on your life. What does he do but break that leg over just when he was some account.

me with the doctor^s bills. But iPs O. K. now. Yet can I point my finger to any special act of his and show it to you and say, ‘ThaPs his gratitude’ ?”

John protested: ‘^I’ve worked steady in your restaurant.” He had always loathed the duties of Blearstead’s Eating House, and looked upon himself as a model of gratitude.

‘Wes, and was paid to do it,” the other snapped.

“I went with you on that house-breaking job.”

“You had to go. We’d a-skinned you if you’d held back.”

“No money could have paid me to go, nor threats either just by themselves. I was fool enough to think I owed it to you to do as you asked.”

“And a mess you made of it!”

Cleek interposed. “Everything he’s picked up in the way of schooling will come in awful handy in this new deal we’re passing him. Oh, boy!”

Blearstead nodded and slapped the open newspaper. “Here’s the point: you’re to go to this man and pass yourself off as his son that was stole from his house when he lived in California twenty year ago. You’d have did this sooner but I never knowd what had become of the man till I see this newspaper. There was some time I lay under cover and when I begun to look about, the earth seemed to have swallowed up my man. I’ll give you more identification tags than half a dozen kidnapped babies would need in the parcel post. You’re to live with him and be his son; see? And as he’s a millionaire, you’ll be kind to me and Cleek. Doctors say he ain’t long for this world, and when he passes in his checks you and his daughter will come into the grazing. There’s me and Cleek once more. It’s an easy job and suited to your ideas of taking things smooth. As the real son was drowned as a baby, nobody’s going to bob up to get in your way. You’ll be doing the old man a real kindness, and if the girl is single I reckon she’ll be glad to have. a good-looking brother to go about with ’er. Talk about being square. That’s the squarest thing on earth to get rich off of a bundle of old letters. All you need for success is a nerve and a smile.”

^^If I was the right age,” Cleek sighed, “the next train would see me carrying the old grip with my baby-clothes. I mightn’t look as much like the millionaire did back yonder, but how does he know what his kid looks like by now? Here’s me hieing out to that little town on the river. This is me talking: ‘Daddy^ I’m your long-lost heir-apparent, come to share your last crust. Here’s my proofs in this suitcase.” Cleek flung open his arms as if to embrace a dream-figure. ^Daddy, don’t you remember that mole on my left bosom?’ — Say, Blearstead, was the kid marked? That might make trouble.”

“Nothing was said about no birthmarks,” impatiently. “Well, nevvy, there’s your deal, laid out on the table for you. Go and live in your palace. You’re a rich man’s son and your name is John Lyle Warring.”

With no word escaping his grimly-set lips, the young man looked from one to the other with his piercing gray eyes.

Cleek said, “As you’ve been ‘John’ all your life, all you have to get used to is to come when ‘Lyle Warring’ is called.”

Though amazed at what he had heard, John was not surprised at his uncle’s audacity, for he and Cleek would hold back from no wild scheme. But the proposition was so different from the one he had dreaded, it sounded so impossibly romantic, that he did not know what answer to make. He had not the slightest intention of yielding to the plot, but how to refuse and escape the violence of their wrath called for intense thought. For a time an uneasy silence prevailed while a black storm gathered on Blearstead’s brow and Cleek’s clenched fists brought out the great muscles on his bared arms. Then John braced himself for the unequal contest.

But there came a diversion. Resounding blows made the front door jump in its sockets while stern demands were heard that it be opened in the name of the law. Instantly Blearstead’s face lost its look of ferocity inspired by his nephew’s opposition.

^^They’re after you, John,” he whispered, rising to his towering height. ‘‘You do as Oleek says.” Then he raised his voice in a roar, “All right, I’m coming.”

From the alley a voice responded: “No use to try any of your tricks, Blearstead, we’ve got the joint surrounded on all sides.”

“All right, I’m coming,” he cried as before, his heavy tread jarring the dishes in the racks, as he traversed the length of the apartment.

In the meantime, remarkably agile of movement, Cleek had stripped from half-a-dozen tables their dingy covers to cast them with artistic carelessness into the darkest corner of the room. Under the heap which looked like drifted snow stained by the dust of windy days, John fiattened himself upon the floor as limp and motionless as if he were but another linen rag.

Chapter III Concealment

When Blearstead opened the door there was a pause, then a rush from the alley and three policemen with their officer burst into the room as if anticipating opposition. They stopped short at sight of the peaceful interior. While his men busily searched under tables and behind stacked-up chairs, the lieutenant observed genially, “Blearstead, I’m not after you and Cleek this time though there’s not a doubt you’re both back of the young scamp we’ve come to arrest. Where’s John Walters?”

Blearstead spread his arms wide. “Search me, if you think I’ve got ’im in my pockets.”

“We ain’t saw him,” OJeek observed, “since closing-up time. Then we told him to hide out as Blearstead and me had business to talk over. What’s the little devil been up to this time?”

The officer knew the house-breakers too well to pay the slightest heed to their words, and the house-breakers spared themselves the effort of seeming indignant over the invasion. Two patrolmen darted into the next room on a tour of inspection — only one room opened into the dining-room, since the rear was used as a kitchen — while the other opened the back door to waiting comrades. Almost at once footsteps were trampling about overhead ; the bedrooms were being inspected.

In the meantime the lieutenant seated comfortably at a table with Blearstead and Cleek explained himself cheerfully: “I’m just keeping an eye on you fellows till they bring down the boy. There were certain marks about that burglary on Troost Avenue last night that made us as morally certain it was your work as if you’d autographed it — but of course nothing moral can ever lay hold of you. No proofs ; that’s our weakness. But one of my men remembered your waiter and that made me remember too. The boy has always seemed straight, but of course he can’t go on living with you and keep straight. We fancy he is the Tolite Burglar.’ John is very polite, and politeness is awful rare among Americans these days, particularly American burglars. It seems a pretty warm trail, though I hate to think it of John; he had a good mother. If he’s innocent, nobody will be gladder. All we want is to show him to the lady he frightened half to death, and if she can’t identify him we’ll take up some other clue.”

^^I wish I could help you, I do, indeed,” Oleek declared.

^^All we want is to borrow John Walters for a little while. Now, look here, fellows, that’s not an unreasonable request. You know you’ve got off easy half a dozen times and I think you ought to show you appreciation. You’ve broken into a dozen houses that I’m morally certain of, only, as I said, nothing moral can get you. By rights you ought to do time the rest of your lives. Yet here you are as free as air and all we ask is John.”

^‘I ain’t saying but you’re a decent officer,” Cleek agreed, finding that Blearstead maintained a sullen silence. course you get

paid to be legal while me and Blearstead has to find our own board and clothes. You know we’d give up Johnny to you if we had him,” he grinned, ‘‘as innocent a babe as was ever weaned. But what you could do with him gets my goat unless you’re thinking of starting a nursery.’’

^We won’t do a thing to disturb him, Cleek. We’ll feed him on a bottle and keep him tender till we can show him to Miss Alice Klade.”

‘^Miss Who?” growled Blearstead whose sense of humor was rudimentary.

The officer smiled. ‘^Haven’t you read about the Polite Burglar?”

Oleek turned to Blearstead. “When John went away didn’t he say he wouldn’t blow in till morning?”

“I never set up for him,” Blearstead affirmed. “When he goes out after closing time, he knows he can’t get back into the house till I’m up in the morning.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” the officer murmured. ^ We’ll stay with you till he does blow in if it’s this time next week. We’ll take our hot meals with you, the best you’ve got, and you can charge ’em up to past favors. Of course it would make it easier for you and more comfortable all around if the boy’d give himself up at once. We’re bound to get him, and the longer he holds out the more guilty he’s proving himself. He lived in town years before you fellows came and we never had a mark against him. As a newsboy and messenger boy and driver of an express wagon he made more friends that you’ve made enemies. He and his mother were known all around here and he couldn’t any more hide from the law than an elephant could hide among the grassblades on a front lawn. He’s circulated everywhere. He’s big with notoriety ; and before you took him in hand, he was all right; full of pranks, yes; but no meanness. And if he’s as nice a chap as when his mother died, he’ll not object to meet Miss Klade face to face.”

don’t know,” Gleek observed. ^^He’s awful bashful with ladies.”

The officer shrugged his shoulders and a dull silence settled upon them to be broken presently by the return of the police — the house had been searched in vain.

Cleek then rose. ‘^Officer, if you’ve no objection, I’ll go home to my pole to roost.”

^^Certainly. Good-night, Cleek. You’ll not mind if I detail one of my men to see that you reach the coop in safety?”

Cleek grinned. “It will be an honor.” When he was gone, Blearstead got up to go to bed, responding to the officer’s banter only by surly glances. He strode into the adjoining room whence soon came the sound of wheels on the bare floor, explained when he reappeared, pushing an immense laundry basket on a truck.

No particular attention was paid him as he trundled the basket to the obscure corner where the soiled linen lay heaped. Bending low he gathered up John Walters’ slight and supple form in its white swathings and with no perceptible effort deposited him in the bottom of the basket coiled in a limp semicircle. The truck was then pushed back into the next room and filled to the brim with cloths and napkins so loosely arranged that they permitted the fugitive plenty of air.

As this was John’s first adventure of the sort, he trembled with apprehension every time the heavy tread of a policeman drew near his place of concealment. Hearing his uncle ascend to his room, he knew himself to be indeed alone with the enemy, and felt poignant regret that these men, formerly his friends, must now be classed as such. As he crouched in the basket, afraid to sleep lest heavy breathing lead to. his capture, he reviewed his life to discover the point at which it had changed for the worse.

At school he had been thrown with people of stations sufficiently diverse to learn pretty accurately to measure his mother^s limitations. She had been a kind and ambitious woman, bent upon raising him to the heights she was unfitted to tread, and only their grim poverty and her failing health had checked his advancement. When his uncle came evilly into their lives his mother’s strength had weakened swiftly to the end. She seemed to fear her giant brother who, however, showed them nothing but kindness. After her death, John thought it providential to have a relative of means ready to give him a home. Only gradually did the knowledge come that most of Blearstead’s income was independent of his restaurant. Perhaps he was not so shocked by the discovery as he should have been. Down in the slums, though one be ‘‘square,” he rubs elbows so constantly with crooked lives, that their nearness blunts his sensitiveness to right and wrong.

John had at last been driven into a corner, but the expedition with Blearstead and Cleek to break into the Troost Avenue house had seemed to him an adventure unrelated to morality. Had he held back at the cost of a beating, the robbery would still have taken place, and in going he added nothing to the wrongdoing. All he had taken, and that after asking permission, was a book of poems with Alice Klade’s name on the flyleaf. Yet the whole city — thus he thought of his Nemesis — was hunting him down ! It would be madness ever to show himself again on the streets — the name of John Walters must be cast aside forever.

Toward morning the air grew cold, and John shivered under his coverings. The policemen in the next room were keeping up the fire but had closed the partition-door. He could move in the basket without fear of detection but with no other outlet than the dining-room and the stairway leading to the upper corridor, the small room offered no means of escape. He wondered how long he must remain in his cramped position and what bold scheme his uncle had formed. How could Blearstead and Oleek have communicated details of a plot looking toward his freedom while the lieutenant sat with them at table? Tones of their voices, stealthy looks, hidden twitches of the hands and feet must have carried on a curious conversation while the officer was intent on other matters.

He knew when the early gray dawn began to show its cheerless presence at the skylight — this inner room had no windows. He heard his uncle’s feet treading heavily overhead, then coming down the stairs. He crossed the room as if knowing nothing of the basket, and jerked open the dining-room door. John heard him asking the watchmen if his nephew had turned up. Now he was opening the street-shutters, and pushing the tables creakingly here and there. His harsh voice was talking over the telephone. John knew he was talking to Cleek. What could he say to Cleek in the presence of the police? The partition-door was slammed shut and only subdued murmurs were to be heard from the end of the dining-room where the rusty coal-stove glowed in its litter of ashes.