Lo Michael! (11 page)

“Dear Sam:

“You can't have forgotten Mikky who slept with you in the boiler room, and with whom you shared your crusts. You remember I promised when I went away to college I would come back and try to make things better for you all? And now I have come and I am anxious to find the fellows and see what we can do together to make life better in the old alley and make up for some of the hard times when we were children. I have been down to the alley but can get no trace of you. I spent the best part of one night hunting you and then a slight accident put me in the hospital for a few days, but I am well now and am anxious to find you all. I want to talk over old times, and find out where Buck and Jim are; and hear all about Janie and little Bobs.

“I am going to leave this letter with Aunt Sally, hoping she will give it to you. I have given my address below and should be glad to have you come and see me at my room, or if you would prefer I will meet you wherever you say, and we will go together and have something to eat to celebrate.

“Hoping to hear from you very soon, I am as always,

“Your brother and friend,

“MIKKY.

“Address, Michael Endicott, No——West 23
^rd
St.”

A few days later a begrimed envelope addressed in pencil was brought to the door by the postman. Michael with sinking heart opened it. It read:

“MiKY ef yo be reely hym cum to KelLys karner at 10 tumoroW nite. Ef you are mIK youz thee old whissel an doante bring no une wit yer Ef yO du I wunt be thar.

“SAM.”

Michael seated on his lumpy bed puzzled this out, word by word, until he made fairly good sense of it. He was to go to Kelly's corner. How memory stirred at the words. Kelly's corner was beyond the first turn of the alley, it was at the extreme end of an alley within an alley, and had no outlet except through Kelly's saloon. Only the “gang” knew the name, “Kelly's Corner,” for it was not really a corner at all only a sort of pocket or hiding place so entitled by Buck for his own and “de kids” private purpose. If Michael had been at all inclined to be a coward since his recent hard usage in the vicinity of the alley he would have kept away from Kelly's corner, for once in there with enemies, and alone, no policeman's club, nor hospital ambulance would ever come to help. The things that happened at Kelly's corner never got into the newspapers.

Memory and instinct combined to make this perfectly clear to Michael's mind, and if he needed no other warning those words of the letter, “Don't bring no one with you. If you do, I won't be there,” were sufficient to make him wise.

Yet Michael never so much as thought of not keeping the appointment. His business was to find Sam, and it mattered as little to him now that danger stood in the way as it had the day when he flung his neglected little body in front of Starr Endicott and saved her from the assassin's bullet. He would go, of course, and go alone. Neither did it occur to him to take the ordinary precaution of leaving his name and whereabouts at the police station to be searched for in case he did not turn up in reasonable time. It was all in the day's work and Michael thought no more about the possible peril he was facing than he had thought of broken limbs and bloody noses the last hour before a football scrimmage.

There was something else in the letter that interested Michael and stirred the old memories. That old whistle! Of course he had not forgotten that, although he had not used it much among his college companions. It was a strange, weird, penetrating sound, between a call and whistle. He and Buck had made it up between them. It was their old signal. When Michael went to college he had held it sacred as belonging strictly to his old friends, and never, unless by himself in the woods where none but the birds and the trees could hear, had he let its echoes ring. Sometimes he had flung it forth and startled the mockingbirds, and once he had let it ring into the midst of his astonished comrades in Florida when he was hidden from their view and they knew not who had made the sound. He tried it now softly, and then louder and louder, until with sudden fear he stopped lest his landlady should happen to come up that way and think him insane. But undoubtedly he could give the old signal.

The next night at precisely ten o'clock Michael's ringing step sounded down the alley; firm, decisive, secure. Such assurance must Daniel have worn as he faced the den of lions; and so went the three Hebrew children into the fiery furnace.

“It's him! It's the angel!” whispered old Sal who was watching. “Oi tould yez he'd come fer shure!”

“He's got his nerve with him!” murmured a girl with bold eyes and a coarse kind of beauty, as she drew further back into the shadow of the doorway. “He ain't comin' out again so pretty I guess. Not if Sam don't like. Mebbe he ain't comin' out 'tall!”

“Angels has ways, me darlint!” chuckled Sal. “He'll come back al roight, ye'll see!”

On walked Michael, down the alley to the narrow opening that to the uninitiated was not an opening between the buildings at all, and slipped in the old way. He had thought it all out in the night. He was sure he knew just how far beyond Sal's house it was; on into the fetid air of the close dark place, the air that struck him in the face like a hot, wet blanket as he kept on.

It was very still all about when he reached the point known as Kelly's corner. It had not been so as he remembered it. It had been the place of plots, the hatching of murders and robberies. Had it so changed that it was still to-night? He stood for an instant hesitating. Should he wait a while, or knock on some door? Would it be any use to call?

But the instinct of the slums was upon him again, his birthright. It seemed to drop upon him from the atmosphere, a sort of stealthy patience. He would wait. Something would come. He must do as he had done with the birds of the forest when he wished to watch their habits. He must stand still unafraid and show that he was harmless.

So he stood three, perhaps five minutes, then softly at first and gradually growing clearer, he gave the call that he had given years before, a little barefoot, hungry child in that very spot many times.

The echo died away. There was nothing to make him know that a group of curious alley-dwellers huddled at the mouth of the trap in which he stood, watching with eyes accustomed to the darkness, to see what would happen; to block his escape if escape should be attempted.

Then out of the silence a sigh seemed to come, and out of the shadows one shadow unfolded itself and came forward till it stood beside him. Still Michael did not stir; but softly, through, half-open lips, breathed the signal once more.

Sibilant, rougher, with a hint of menace as it issued forth the signal was answered this time, and with a thrill of wonder the mantle of the old life fell upon Michael once more. He was Mikky—only grown more wise. Almost the old vernacular came to his tongue.

“Hi! Sam! That you?”

The figure in the darkness seemed to stiffen with sudden attention. The voice was like, and yet not like the Mikky of old.

“Wot yous want?” questioned a voice gruffly.

“I want you, Sam. I want to see if you look as you used to, and I want to know about the boys. Can't we go where there's light and talk a little? I've been days hunting you. I've come back because I promised, you know. You expected me to come back some day, didn't you, Sam?”

Michael was surprised to find how eager he was for the answer to this question.

“Aw, what ye givin' us?” responded the suspicious Sam. “D'yous s'pose I b'lieve all that gag about yer comin' here to he'p we'uns? Wot would a guy like yous wid all dem togs an' all dem fine looks want wid us? Yous has got above us. Yous ain't no good to us no more.”

Sam scratched a match on his trousers and lit an old pipe that he held between his teeth, but as the match flared up and showed his own face a lowering brow, shifty eyes, a swarthy, unkempt visage, sullen and sly, the shifty eyes were not looking at the pipe but up at the face above him which shone out white and fine with its gold halo in the little gleam in the dark court. The watchers crowding at the opening of the passage saw his face, and almost fancied there were soft shadowy wings behind him. It was thus with old Sal's help that Michael got his name again, “The Angel.” It was thus he became the “angel of the alley.”

“Sam!” he said, and his voice was very gentle, although he was perfectly conscious that behind him there were two more shadows of men and more might be lurking in the dark corners. “Sam, if you remember me you will know I couldn't forget; and I do care. I came back to find you. I've always meant to come, all the time I was in college. I've had it in mind to come back here and make some of the hard things easier for”—he hesitated, and—“for
us
all.”

“How did yous figger yous was goin' to do that?” Sam asked, his little shifty eyes narrowing on Michael, as he purposely struck another match to watch the effect of his words.

Then Michael's wonderful smile lit up his face, and Sam, however much he may have pretended to doubt, knew in his deepest heart that this was the same Mikky of old. There was no mistaking that smile.

“I shall need you to help me in figuring that out, Sam. That's why I was so anxious to find you.”

A curious grunt from behind Michael warned him that the audience was being amused at the expense of Sam. Sam's brows were lowering.

“Humph!” he said, ungraciously striking a third match just in time to watch Michael's face. “Where's yer pile?”

“What?”

“Got the dough?”

“Oh,” said Michael comprehendingly, “no, I haven't got money, Sam. I've only my education.”

“An' wot good's it, I'd like to know. Tell me those?”

“So much good that I can't tell it all in one short talk,” answered Michael steadily. “We'll have to get better acquainted and then I hope I can make you understand how it has helped. Now tell me about the others. Where is Buck?”

There was a dead silence.

“It's hard to say!” at last muttered Sam irresponsibly.

“Don't you know? Haven't you any kind of an idea, Sam? I'd so like to hunt him up.”

The question seemed to have produced a tensity in the very atmosphere, Michael felt it.

“I might, an' then agin' I might not,” answered Sam in that tone of his that barred the way for further questions.

“Couldn't you and I find him and—and—help him, Sam? Aunt Sally said he was in trouble.”

Another match was scratched and held close to his face while the narrow eyes of Sam seemed to pierce his very soul before Sam answered with an ugly laugh.

“Oh, he don't need none o' your help, you bet. He's lit out. You don't need to worry 'bout Buck, he kin take car' o' hisse'f every time.”

“But won't he come back sometime?”

“Can't say. It's hard to tell,” non-committally.

“And Jim?” Michael's voice was sad.

“Jim, he's doin' time,” sullenly.

“I'm sorry!” said Michael sadly, and a strange hush came about the dark group. Now why should this queer chap be sorry? No one else cared, unless it might be Jim, and Jim had got caught. It was nothing to them.

“Now tell me about Janie—and little Bobs—” The questioner paused. His voice was very low.

“Aw, cut it out!” snarled Sam irritably. “Don't come any high strikes on their account. They're dead an' you can't dig 'em up an' weep over 'em. Hustle up an' tell us wot yer wantin' to do.”

“Well, Sam,” said Michael trying to ignore the natural repulsion he felt at the last words of his one-time friend, “suppose you take lunch with me to-morrow at twelve. Then we can talk over things and get back old times. I will tell you all about my college life and you must tell me all you are doing.”

Sam was silent from sheer astonishment. Take lunch! Never in his life had he been invited out to luncheon. Nor had he any desire for an invitation now.

“Where?” he asked after a silence so long that Michael began to fear he was not going to answer at all.

Michael named a place not far away. He had selected it that morning. It was clean, somewhat, yet not too clean. The fare was far from princely, but it would do, and the locality was none too respectable. Michael was enough of a slum child still to know that his guest would never go with him to a really respectable restaurant, moreover he would not have the wardrobe nor the manners. He waited Sam's answer breathlessly.

Sam gave a queer little laugh as if taken off his guard. The place named was so entirely harmless, to his mind, and the whole matter of the invitation took on the form of a great joke.

“Well, I might,” he drawled indifferently. “I won't make no promises, but I might, an' then again I might not. It's jes' as it happens. Ef I ain't there by twelve sharp you needn't wait. Jes' go ahead an' eat. I wouldn't want to spoil yer digestion fer my movements.”

“I shall wait!” said Michael decidedly with his pleasant voice ringing clear with satisfaction. “You will come, Sam, I know you will. Good night!”

And then he did a most extraordinary thing. He put out his hand, his clean, strong hand, warm and healthy and groping with the keenness of low, found the hardened grimy hand of his one-time companion, and gripped it in a hearty grasp.

Sam started back with the instant suspicion of attack, and then stood shamedly still for an instant. The grip of that firm, strong hand, the touch of brotherhood, a touch such as had never come to his life before since he was a little child, completed the work that the smile had begun, and Sam knew that Mikky, the real Mikky was before him.

Then Michael walked swiftly down that narrow passage,—at the opening of which the human shadows scattered silently and fled, to watch from other furtive doorways,—down through the alley unmolested, and out into the street once more.

“The saints presarve us! Wot did I tell yez?” whispered Sal. “It's the angel all right fer shure.”

“I wonder wot he done to Sam,” murmured the girl. “He's got his nerve all right, he sure has. Ain't he beautiful!”

CHAPTER X

Michael went early to his lunch party. He was divided between wondering if his strange guest would put in an appearance at all; if he did, what he should talk about; and how he would pilot him through the embarrassing experience of the meal. One thing he was determined upon. He meant to find out if possible whether Sam knew anything about his, Michael's, origin. It was scarcely likely; and yet Sam might have heard some talk by older people in the neighborhood. His one great longing was to find out and clear his name of shame if possible.

There was another thing that troubled Michael. He was not sure that he would know Sam even supposing that he came. The glimpse he had caught the night before when the matches were struck was not particularly illuminating. He had a dim idea that Sam was below the medium height; with thin, sallow face; small, narrow eyes; a slouching gait; and a head that was not wide enough from front to back. He had a feeling that Sam had not room enough in his brain for seeing all that ought to be seen. Sam did not understand about education. Would he ever be able to make him understand?

Sam came shuffling along ten minutes after twelve. His sense of dignity would not have allowed him to be on time. Besides, he wanted to see if Michael would wait as he had said. It was a part of the testing of Michael; not to prove if he were really Mikky, but to see what stuff he was made of, and how much he really had meant of what he said.

Michael was there, standing anxiously outside the eating house. He did not enjoy the surroundings nor the attention he was attracting. He was too well dressed for that locality, but these were the oldest clothes he had. He would have considered them quite shabby at college. He was getting worried lest after all his plan had failed. Then Sam slouched along, his hat drawn down, his hands in his pockets, and wearing an air of indifference that almost amounted to effrontery. He greeted Michael as if there had been no previous arrangement and this were a chance meeting. There was nothing about his manner to show that he had purposely come late to put him to the test, but Michael knew intuitively it was so.

“Shall we go in now?” said Michael smiling happily. He found he was really glad that Sam had come, repulsive in appearance though he was, hard of countenance and unfriendly in manner. He felt that he was getting on just a little in his great object of finding out and helping his old friends, and perhaps learning something more of his own history.

“Aw, I donno's I care 'bout it!” drawled Sam, just as if he had not intended going in all the time, nor had been thinking of the “feed” all the morning in anticipation.

“Yes, you better,” said Michael putting a friendly hand on the other's shoulder. If he felt a repugnance to touching the tattered, greasy coat of his one-time friend, he controlled it, remembering how he had once worn garments far more tattered and filthy. The greatness of his desire to uplift made him forget everything else. It was the absorption of a supreme task that had come upon the boy to the exclusion of his own personal tastes.

It was not that Michael was so filled with love for this miserable creature who used to be his friend, nor so desired to renew old associations after these long years of separation; it was the terrible need, the conditions of which had been called vividly to his experience, that appealed to his spirit like a call of authority to which he answered proudly because of what had once been done for him. It had come upon him without his knowledge, suddenly, with the revival of old scenes and memories, but as with all workers for humanity it had gone so deeply into his soul as to make him forget even that there was such a thing as sacrifice.

They passed into the restaurant. Michael in his well-made clothing and with his strikingly handsome face and gold hair attracting at once every eye in the place: Sam with an insolent air of assurance to cover a sudden embarrassment of pride at the company he was in.

Michael gave a generous order, and talked pleasantly as they waited. Sam sat in low-browed silence watching him furtively, almost disconcertingly.

It was when they had reached the course of three kinds of pie and a dab of dirty-looking, pink ice cream professing to be fresh strawberry, that Michael suddenly looked keenly at his guest and asked:

“What are you doing now, Sam? In business for yourself?”

Sam's eyes narrowed until they were almost eclipsed, though a keen steel glitter could be seen beneath the colorless lashes. A kind of mask, impenetrable as lead, seemed to have settled over his face, which had been gradually relaxing during the meal into a half indulgent grin of interest in his queer host.

“Yas, I'm in business fer myself,” he drawled at last after carefully scrutinizing the other's face to be sure there was no underlying motive for the question.

“News-stand?” asked Michael.

“Not eggs-act-ly!”

“What line?”

Sam finished his mince pie and began on the pumpkin before he answered.

“Wal, ther's sev'ral!”

“Is that so? Got more than one string to your bow? That's a good thing. You're better off than I am. I haven't looked around for a job yet. I thought I'd get at it to-morrow. You see I wanted to look you fellows up first before I got tied down to anything where I couldn't get off when I wanted to. Perhaps you can put me onto something. How about it?”

It was characteristic of Michael that he had not once thought of going to Endicott for the position and help offered him, since the setting down he had received from Mrs. Endicott. The time appointed for his going to Endicott's office was long since passed. He had not even turned the matter over in his mind once since that awful night of agony and renunciation. Mrs. Endicott had told him that her husband “had done enough for him” and he realized that this was true. He would trouble him no more. Sometime perhaps the world would turn around so that he would have opportunity to repay Endicott's kindness that he might not repay in money, but until then Michael would keep out of his way. It was the one poor little rag of pride he allowed himself from the shattering of all his hopes.

Sam narrowed his eyes and looked Michael through, then slowly widened them again, an expression of real interest coming into them.

“Say! Do you mean it?” he asked doubtfully. “Be you straight goods? Would you come back into de gang an not snitch on us ner nothin'?”

“I'm straight goods, Sam, and I won't snitch!” said Michael quickly. He knew that he could hope for no fellow's confidence if he “snitched.”

“Wal, say, I've a notion to tell yeh!”

Sam attacked his ice cream contemplatively.

“How would a bluff game strike you?” he asked suddenly as the last delectable mouthful of cream disappeared and he pulled the fresh cup of coffee toward him that the waiter had just set down.

“What sort?” said Michael wondering what he was coming on in the way of revelation, but resolving not to be horrified at anything. Sam must not suspect until he could understand what a difference education had made in the way of looking at things.

“Wal, there's diffrunt ways. Cripple's purty good. Foot all tied up in bloody rags, arm an' hand tied up, a couple o' old crutches. I could lend the clo'es. They'd be short fer yeh, but that'd be all the better gag. We cud swap an' I'd do the gen'lman act a while.” He looked covetously at Michael's handsome brown tweeds—“Den you goes fom house to house, er you stands on de corner—”

“Begging!” said Michael aghast. His eyes were on his plate and he was trying to control his voice, but something of his horror crept into his tones. Sam felt it and hastened on apologetically—

“Er ef you want to go it one better, keep on yer good cloes an' have the asthma bad. I know a feller what'll teach you how, an' sell you the whistles to put in yer mouth. You've no notion how it works. You just go around in the subbubs tellin' thet you've only been out of the 'orspittal two days an' you walked all this way to get work an' couldn't get it, an' you want five cents to get back—see? Why, I know a feller—course he's been at it fer years an' he has his regular beats—folks don't seem to remember—and he can work the ground over 'bout once in six months er so, and he's made's high's thirty-eight dollars in a day at asthma work.”

Sam paused triumphant to see what effect the statement had on his friend, but Michael's face was toward his coffee cup.

“Seems sort of small business for a man!” he said at last, his voice steady with control. “Don't believe I'd be good at that? Haven't you got something that's real
work
?
”

Sam's eyes narrowed.

“Ef I thought you was up to it,” he murmured. “You'd be great with that angel face o' yourn. Nobody'd ever suspect you. You could wear them clo'es too. But it's work all right, an' mighty resky. Ef I thought you was up to it—” He continued to look keenly at Michael, and Michael, with innate instinct felt his heart beat in discouraged thumps. What new deviltry was Sam about to propose?

“You used to be game all right!” murmured Sam interrogatively. “You never used to scare easy—”

“Wal, I'll tell you,” in answer to Michael's questioning eyes which searched his little sharp wizened face—Michael was wondering if there was anything in that face to redeem it from utter repulsiveness.

“You see it's a reg'ler business, an' you hev to learn, but I'd give you pinters, all you'd need to know, I'm pretty slick myself. There's tools to open things, an' you hev to be ready to 'xplain how you come thur an' jolly up a parlor maid per'aps. It's easy to hev made a mistake in the house, er be a gas man er a plumber wot the boss sent up to look at the pipes. But night work's best pay after you get onto things. Thur's houses where you ken lay your han's on things goin' into the thousands an' lots ov um easy to get rid of without anybody findin' out. There's Buck he used to be great at it. He taught all the gang. The day he lit out he bagged a bit o' glass wuth tree tousand dollars, 'sides a whole handful of fivers an' tens wot he found lyin' on a dressin' table pretty as you please. Buck he were a slick one at it. He'd be pleased to know you'd took up the work—”

Sam paused and eyed Michael with the first friendly gleam he had shown in his eyes, and Michael, with his heart in a tumult of varied emotions, and the quick color flooding brow and cheek, tried to hold himself in check. He must not speak too hastily. Perhaps he had not understood Sam's meaning.

“Where is Buck?” Michael looked Sam straight in the eye. The small pupils seemed to contract and shut out even his gaze.

“They ain't never got a trace of Buck,” he said evasively.

“But don't you know?” There was something in Michael's look that demanded an answer.

“I might an' I might not,” responded Sam sullenly.

Michael was still for several seconds watching Sam; each trying to understand the other.

“Do you think he will come back where I can see him?” he asked at length.

“He might, an' he might not. 't depends. Ef you was in th' bizness he might. It's hard to say. 't depends.”

Michael watched Sam again thoughtfully.

“Tell me more about the business,” he said at last, his lips compressed, his brows drawn down into a frown of intensity.

“Thur ain't much, more t'tell,” said Sam, still sullen. “I ain't sure you're up to it?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Ain't sure you got de sand. You might turn faint and snitch.” Sam leaned forward and spoke in low rapid sentences. “Wen we'd got a big haul, 'sposen you'd got into de house an' done de pinchin', and we got the stuff safe hid, an' you got tuk up? Would you snitch? Er would you take your pill like a man? That's what I'd want to be sure. Mikky would a' stood by the gang, but you—you've had a edicashun! They might go soft at college. I ain't much use fer edicated persons myself. But I'll give you a show ef you promise stiff not to snitch. We've got a big game on to-night up on Madison Avenue, an' we're a man short. Dere's dough in it if we make it go all right. Rich man. Girl goin' out to a party to-night. She's goin' to wear some dimons wurth a penny. Hed it in de paper. Brung 'em home from de bank this mornin'. One o' de gang watched de feller come out o' de bank. It's all straight so fur. It's a pretty big haul to let you in de first try, an' you'll hev to run all de risks; but ef you show you're game we'll make it a bargain.”

Michael held himself tensely and fought the desire to choke the fellow before him; tried to remember that he was the same Sam who had once divided a crust with him, and whom he had come to help; reflected that he might have been as bad himself if he had never been taken from the terrible environment of the slums and shown a better way; knew that if he for one fraction of a second showed his horror at the evil plot, or made any attempt to stop it all hope of reaching Sam, or Buck, or any of the others was at an end; and with it all hope of finding any stray links of his own past history. Besides, though honor was strong in him and he would never “snitch” on his companions, it would certainly be better to find out as much as possible about the scheme. There might be other ways besides “snitching” of stopping such things. Then suddenly his heart almost stopped beating, Madison Avenue! Sam had said Madison Avenue, and a girl! What if it were Starr's jewels they were planning to take. He knew very little about such matters save what he had read. It did not occur to him that Starr was not yet “out” in society; that she would be too young to wear costly jewels and have her costume put in the paper. He only knew that his heart was throbbing again painfully, and that the fellow before him seemed too vile to live longer on the same earth with Starr, little, beautiful, exquisite Starr.

He was quite still when Sam had finished; his face was white with emotion and his eyes were blazing blue flames when he raised them to look at Sam. Then he became aware that his answer was awaited.

“Sam, do you mean
burglary
?
” He tried to keep his voice low and steady as he spoke but he felt as if he had shouted the last word. The restaurant was almost empty now, and the waiters had retired behind the scenes amid a clatter of dishes.

“That's about as pretty a word as you can call it, I guess,” said Sam, drawing back with a snarl as he saw the light in Michael's eyes.