The lyrics he had written to her sang through his aching head. He was wrung to anguish between the lover and the poet he had meant to be, and the spurned and hated cur he had become. He stumbled along the street at Connery's side, whispering to himself, while his earliest verses to Kedzie ran in and out through his thoughts like a catchy tune:

Pretty maid, pretty maid, may I call you Anita?

Your last name is sweet, but your first name is sweeter.

He recalled the sonnets he had begun which were to make them both immortal. He regretted the spitefulness that had led him to write in another name than hers because she had refused to support him. He had been a viler beast than the cutpurse poet of old France, without the lilies of verse that bloom pure white above the dunghill of Villon's life.

Gilfoyle's soul went down into a h.e.l.l of regret and wriggled in the flames of self-condemnation. He grew maudlin with repentance and clung to his friend Connery with odious garrulity. Connery was disgusted with him, but he was afraid to leave him because he kept sighing:

"I guess the river's the only place for me now."

At length Connery steered him into a saloon for medicine and bought him a stiff bracer of whisky and vermouth. But it only threw Gilfoyle into deeper befuddlement. He was like Charles Lamb, in that a thimbleful of alcohol affected him as much as a tumbler another. He wanted to tell his troubles to the barkeeper, and Connery had to drag him away.

In the hope that a walk in the air might help to steady him, Connery set out toward his own boarding-house. They started across Columbus Avenue under the pillars of the Elevated tracks.

Habituated to the traffic customs, the New-Yorker crossing a street looks to the left for traffic till he gets half-way across, then looks to the right for traffic bound in the opposite direction. Connery led Gilfoyle to the middle of the avenue, paused for a south-bound street-car to go banging by them, darted back of it and looked to the right for a north-bound car or motor. But a taxicab trying to pa.s.s the south-bound car was shooting south along the north-bound tracks.

Connery saw it barely in time to jump back. He yanked Gilfoyle's arm, but Gilfoyle had plunged forward. He might have escaped if Connery had let him go. But the cab struck him, hurled him in air against an iron pillar, caught him on the rebound and ran him down. Kedzie Thropp was a widow.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

Deaths from the wheeled torpedoes that shoot along the city streets are too monotonously numerous to make a stir in the newspapers unless the victims have some other claim on the public attention.

Gilfoyle had been writing advertis.e.m.e.nts of other people's wares, but n.o.body was going to pay for the advertis.e.m.e.nt of him. The things that he might have become were even more obscure than the things he was. The pity of his taking-off would have had no more record than a few lines of small type, but for one further accident.

The taxicab-driver whose reckless haste had sent him down the wrong side of the street had been spurred on by the reckless haste of his pa.s.senger. The pretty Mrs. Twyford had been for years encouraging the reporters to emphasize her social alt.i.tude, and had seen that they obtained her photographs at frequent intervals. But on this night she had gone up-town upon one of the few affairs for which she did not wish publicity. She had learned by telephone that her husband had returned to New York unexpectedly, and she was intensely impatient to be at home when he got there.

When her scudding taxicab solved all of Gilfoyle's earthly problems in one fierce erasure she made such efforts to escape from the instantly gathered crowd that she attracted the attention of the policeman who happened to be at the next corner. He proceeded to take the name and addresses of witnesses and princ.i.p.als, and he detained her as an important accessory.

Connery was one of the news-men who had been indebted to Mrs. Twyford for many a half-column of gossip, and he recognized her at once. He was a reporter, first, last, and all the time, and he was very much in need of something to sell.

He was greatly shattered by the annihilation of his friend, but his instinctive journalism led him to control himself long enough to call Mrs. Twyford by name and a.s.sure the policeman that she was a lady of high degree who should not be bothered.

Neither the policeman nor Mrs. Twyford thanked him. They were equally rude to him and to each other, Connery thought the incident might interest the night city editor of his paper, and so he telephoned a good story in to the office as soon as he had released himself from the inquisition and had seen an ambulance carry poor Gilfoyle away.

Mrs. Twyford reached home too late, and in such a state of nerves that she made the most unconvincing replies to the cross-examination that ensued. When she saw her name in the paper the next morning her friends also began to make inquiries--and eventually to deny that they were her friends or had ever been.

It was her name in the heavy type that caught the heavy eyes of Jim Dyckman at breakfast the next morning. It was thus that he came upon the fate of Thomas Gilfoyle, whose death had been the cause of all this pother.

Before he could telephone Anita--or Kedzie, as he mentally corrected himself--he was informed that a Mr. Connery was at the door, asking for him. He nodded and went into the library, carrying the newspaper with him.

Connery grinned sadly and mumbled: "I see you've seen it. I thought you'd like to know about it."

"I should," said Dyckman. "Sit down."

Connery sat down and told of the accident and what led up to it. He spoke in a lowered voice and kept his eye on the door. When he had finished his story he said, "Now, of course this all comes out very convenient for you, but I suppose you see how easy it would be for me to tell what I know, and that mightn't be so convenient for you."

"Are you beginning your blackmail again so early in the morning?"

"Cut out that kind of talk or there's nothing doing," said Connery. "I can make a lot of trouble for you, and I can hush up a lot. Unless I speak I don't suppose anybody else is going to peep about Miss Adair being Mrs. Gilfoyle, and about Mr. Dyckman being interested in his wife.

If I do speak it would take a lot of explaining."

"I am not afraid of explaining to the whole world that Miss Adair is a friend of mine and that her father and mother were present when I called."

Connery met this with a smile. "But how often were they present when you called?"

Dyckman grew belligerent again: "Do you want me to finish what I began on you last night?"

"I'm in no hurry, thank you. You can outcla.s.s me in the ring, but it wouldn't help you much to beat me up, would it?--or Miss Adair, either.

She's got some rights, hasn't she?"

"Has she any that you are capable of respecting?"

"Sure she has. I don't want to cause the little lady any inconvenience.

She and Tommie Gilfoyle didn't belong together, anyway. She was through with him long ago, and the only thing that saved his face was the fact that he's dead--poor fellow!

"But you see I've got to appear as a witness in the trial of the taxicab-driver, who'll be held for manslaughter or something. If I say that Gilfoyle and I had just come from a battle with you and that he got the wits knocked out of him because he accused you of making a mistress out of his wife--"

"Be careful!"

"The same to you, Mr. Dyckman."

Dyckman felt himself nettled. Kedzie's silence about the existence of a husband had enmeshed him. He would not attempt to justify himself. It would do no good to thresh about. The big gladiator sat still waiting for the _retiarius_ to finish him. But Connery's voice grew merciful. It was a luxury beyond price to extend an alms to this plutocrat.

"What I'm getting at, Mr. Dyckman," he resumed, "is this: Tommie owed some money to his landlady. He owed me some money that I could use. He's got a mother and father up-State. He told me he'd never told them about his marriage. They'll want him back, I suppose. From what he's told me, it would be a real hardship for them to pay the funeral expenses. You could pay all that, and you could even say that he had a little money in the bank and send that along with him, and never know the difference.

But they would."

"I see," said Dyckman, very solemnly.

"You called me some rough names, Mr. Dyckman, and I guess I earned 'em.

Looking things over the morning after, I'm not so stuck on myself as I was, but you stack up pretty well. I like a man who can use his hands in an argument. My name is Connery, you know. What you did to me was a plenty, but it looks better to me now than it felt last night.

"You know a reporter just gets naturally hungry to see a man face a scandal in a manly way. If you had shown a yellow streak and tried to buy your way out I would have taken your money and thought I was doing a public service in getting it away from a quitter. But when you cracked my bean against poor Gilfoyle's you made me see a lot of things besides stars.

"There's nothing to be gained by keeping up this war. I want to put it all out of sight for your sake and for Gilfoyle's mother's sake, and for the sake of that pretty little Adair lady. I don't know what she's been or done, but she's pretty and she's got a nice, s.p.u.n.ky mother.

"I'm a good newspaper man, Mr. Dyckman, and that means I've kept quiet about even better stories than I've sprung. If I had a lot of money now I'd add this story to the list and treat Gilfoyle's folks right without giving you a look-in. But being dead-broke, I thought maybe you'd like to see things done in a decent manner. It's going to be hard enough for that old couple up-State to get Tommie back, as they've got to, without taking any excess heartbreak up in the baggage-car. Do you follow me?"

"I do," said Dyckman; and now he asked the "How much?" that he had refused to speak the night before.

Connery did a little figuring with a pencil, and Dyckman thought that some life-insurance in the mother's name would be a pleasant thing to add. Then he doubled the total, wrote a check for it, and said:

"There'll probably be something left over. I wish you'd keep it as your--attorney-fee, Mr. Connery."

They shook hands as they parted.