Butler Ellis Parker
In Pawn

CHAPTER VII

What on earth is the matter?” Henrietta asked Officer Schulig. “What have you got those handcuffs on Mr. Redding for?”

“Why this dod-basted lunatic went an’ arrested me,” sputtered Harvey. “I whanged him on the head an’ you’d ‘a’ whanged him on the head, too, if he’d come arrestin’ you when you was n’t doin’ nothin’ but sittin’ in your rockin’-chair meditatin’ – ”

“Meditate!” exclaimed the red-faced Officer Schulig. “What it is ‘meditate’ I don’t know. Iss it chumping up und schlogging an officer on der head mitout notice? Yes? In der yard I come und klop! goes his fist on my head, und no notice beforehand. Is it to meditate, such a business? Yes?”

“Sittin’ there. An’ meditatin’,” said Harvey. “Like a saint should. Doin’ no harm to nobody. Out in the fresh sunshine with a gentle heart, just startin’ in to be a saint, an’ up he comes – ”

“Starting in to be what?” asked Henrietta.

“A saint, dod-baste it,” said Harvey angrily. “Livin’ a life of purity an’ gentleness, bein’ kind to stray dogs an’ one sort of thing an’ another. Mortifyin’ my flesh on bread an’ water, and here he comes. Dod-baste it, a man can’t set up in the saint business without a dod-basted dog police comin’ an’ – Why! dod-baste it, I got to begin all over again. I got to start new, an’ begin all over, an’ all because he come fetchin’ his red face an’ pokin’ it at me – ”

“I neffer!” cried Schulig indignantly. “Neffer do I poke my face. Fetch it along mit me; yes! But poke it? Neffer! I tell you who poked my face: you poked it! Mit your fist. Und you blame me!”

He frowned ferociously.

“I got a right to fetch my face vere I go, aind’t I?” he demanded.

“No, you ain’t,” said Harvey angrily. “What right you got to poke a face at a man that’s just set out to be a saint, temptin’ him, an’ angerin’ him all up, an’ settin’ him to swearin’ an’ cussin’ like a pirate, an’ gettin’ him so mad he starts beatin’ up a fellow human? What right you got to bust into a saint’s first day, spoilin’ the whole dod-basted business, an’ arrestin’ him an’ pokin’ faces at him an’ – ”

“What did he arrest you for, Mr. Redding?” Gay asked.

“Receiving stolen goods. Und grooldy to animals. Und assaulting a Chew, und also schloggin’ me by my head afterwards,” said Schulig promptly.

“An’ me tryin’ to be a saint,” complained Harvey. “Me settin’ there an’ tryin’ to be a saint. It ain’t no wonder I got mad at him. Who ever heard of a saint gettin’ arrested for all them things, I’d like to know? It ain’t right. It ain’t normal.”

“But receiving stolen goods!” exclaimed Gay. “That’s serious.”

“Und mebby for conspiracies together to have such stealings go ahead,” said Schulig. “I bet you he gets yet into a blace I don’t poke my face into! Chail. Goundy chail!”

“Don’t laugh, Gay,” Henrietta urged. “This is serious. What is it you want here, Mr. Schulig? I suppose you want Miss Redding to furnish bail.”

“Bail is none of my business,” said Schulig.

“No; better I like it should he rot by der chail. I come for der boy.”

“The boy? Not Lem!” Henrietta exclaimed. “What did Lem do?”

“Beddy larceny,” said Officer Schulig. “A schunk of lead so big as my head he stole. From off of Moses Schuder, out from his chunkyard. Und sold it to his papa here. Yes!”

“Oh! just junk!” said Henrietta, greatly relieved. After all boys will be boys, and she had been a teacher too long to have a violent belief in the innate depravity of boys who steal junk. She inclined to the belief that no one could expect old iron, copper bottoms of wash-boilers, and other cashable metals to be entirely safe unless nailed down and bolted fast, when boys were around. The thoughts of a small-town boy turn to junk as the sparks fly upward. “Is that all!” she said.

When the group reached the house Susan Redding was at the door, for Lorna had seen the four approaching and had called her.

“Well,” Susan exclaimed bitterly to her brother, “you’re making a nice sort of saint, ain’t you? What’s all this ruckus about, I want to know? What you been doing this time?”

Lem, peering wide-eyed from behind his aunt, felt his conscience at that moment as he had never felt it before. It felt as big as a house. He turned to slip quietly away, but Officer Schulig saw him.

“Shtop him! Shtop dot boy!” he cried, and sprang for Lem, but not loosening his hold on Harvey’s arm. The handcuffs clinked on Harvey’s wrists, but Harvey was too heavy to be jerked about casually. His hat fell to the porch floor.

“Dod-baste you!” he exclaimed, and jabbed Schulig with his elbow.

Miss Susan put her hand on Lem’s arm pro-tectingly.

“Now, don’t you be afraid, Lemuel,” she said. “Nobody’s going to harm you whilst I’m here, I tell them that! What you want, Rudolf Schulig? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, scaring the wits out of a poor child, I won’t be a mite surprised if Harvey has got into some shape of devilment, for I will say to his face I’ve been expecting it this long time, but this boy never did a mean thing, I ‘ll warrant.”

“Does he or don’dt he, is none of my business,” said Schulig. “Der chutch makes dot oudt. Chutch says it, und I go und do it.”

“Judge who?”

“Chutch Bruce,” said Schulig. “Says to me der chutch, ‘Schulig, go und get me Harfey Redding und such a boy is called Lempuel Redding.’ Und I get them. Else is not my business. I go und get them.”

“But you can’t. You have to have a warrant,” said Henrietta. “Is n’t that what you have to have – a warrant? Have you got a warrant?”

“Sure I got von,” said Schulig, and he produced it. “I don’d know you vant it. Here iss.”

“What’s it say?” Susan asked, and Gay, leaning against Henrietta’s arm, read it.

“It says Lem and one boy known as Swatty Swartz, together with one boy known as Bony, did steal, and so forth, a chunk of lead metal, of a value of three or more dollars, from the junkyard of one Moses Schuder,” said Gay.

“There!” said Miss Susan triumphantly, “I knew it! You’ve got the boys mixed up, somehow. Lemuel don’t steal. He ain’t that kind of boy. You don’t know anything about it, do you, Lem?”

Lem looked up into his aunt’s face. “Yes, mam,” he said.

“Well, maybe you do,” said Miss Susan. “I dare say that Swatty boy and Bony boy fetched the lead to your pa’s junkyard. It’s like enough they did. But you never knew it was stole, did you, Lem?”

“Yes, mam, I did know,” Lem said. “I knew it.”

“But you did not help them steal it,” said Miss Susan sharply.

“Yes, mam,” said Lem again. “Or, anyway, I did n’t help them. They were the ones that helped me.”

There was no bravado in the boy’s voice. He was frightened. His face was so white with fear that the freckles stood out as if they floated above the skin and were not on it. Miss Susan was almost as white, but with shame, indignation, and anger, and her eyes were hard now.

“Well!” she exclaimed. “Well, indeed! A nice sort of boy I have had boosted onto me. A nice sort of boy you put into pawn, Harvey Redding! A thief, and he admits it, and brags about it! A nice sort of boy – going off with a lot of hoodlums and leading them to steal and rob! And I suppose,” she said, turning on Lemuel, “you went right to your saintly father and sold that lead to him!”

“Yes, mam,” said Lem, swallowing a lump in his throat. “I – I sold it to him for three dollars.”

“And you and the other young rascals divided the money amongst you!”

“No, mam. Or – yes, mam. Or – we did n’t divide it. I got one half an’ Swatty an’ Bony got one half. I got a dollar an’ a half an’ they only got a dollar an’ a half for both of them. Because I was the one that thought of gettin’ it back from Moses, an’ I was the one that sold it to pop. So I got half.”

“And you went and planned that all out beforehand, in cold blood – like – like criminals?”

“No, mam,” said Lem faintly. “The’ was n’t nothin’ planned out about dividin’; not beforehand. I had to fight ‘em for it, afterward. I licked ‘em, an’ they let me have half.”

Henrietta Bates, had it not been for the way in which Miss Susan was taking all this, might have laughed, although her own situation and her morning talk with Freeman Todder had left her little inclination to laughter. Miss Susan, however, was taking the affair with deadly seriousness, and it was not an occasion when a laugh could lessen the tension. Miss Susan stood motionless, looking toward the street, her fingers wrinkling the hem of her apron. When she spoke her voice was hard.

“Take him along,” she said, not looking at Lem. “I’m through with him. I don’t want to have aught to do with a thief.”

“Oh! Miss Susan!” Lorna exclaimed. “He’s only a boy!”

“He’s a thief; I’m through with him,” Miss Susan repeated, and turned to enter the house. Schulig stepped forward.

Lem looked then, not at Gay, not at Lorna, not at his father, not even at his aunt or at Schulig, but at Henrietta Bates, and in his eyes was an appeal.

“I don’t want to go to jail,” he said pitifully. “Don’t be afraid; you’ll not be there long, Lem,” Henrietta said, and as her heart bled for him she stooped to wrap her arms around him.

The boy’s eyes fastened on her face eagerly as if they could not leave it. He swayed slightly and closed his eyes.

“Look out! He’s falling!” Lorna cried, and Henrietta caught him in her arms as he fell, and lowered him to the porch floor.

“He’s fainted!” Gay exclaimed, and bent to help Henrietta.

The boy’s face was white as death, and his eyes were closed, but his head did not droop and he seemed to breathe. Gay, taking his hand to chafe it, looked up in alarm.

“Why – why – he’s all stiff!” she exclaimed. “He’s dead!”

Lorna, too, was on her knees at Lem’s feet now, and Miss Susan, her face now white with fright, was grasping the boy’s other hand and crying, “Lem! Lem!”

Henrietta, calm, as one might have known she would be, bent forward and raised one of Lem’s eyelids. It remained open and the uncovered eye stared glassily. She gently closed the eyelid and arose.

“He is not dead and he has not fainted,” she said. “I have seen such cases before. It is a cataleptic fit, I think. Has he ever had them before?” she asked Harvey.

“He ain’t, but his ma used to,” said Harvey.

“You see!” Henrietta said. “I think you had better put him to bed, Miss Susan, and you had better send for a doctor. His heart is strong and I am sure there is no danger. He may be thus for an hour or a week.”

She turned to Gay and Lorna.

“We must go,” she said. “We will be late for school as it is. Miss Susan can carry him to his room.”

“I can and will,” said Miss Susan grimly.

“And we will stop and tell Dr. Grace to come at once,” said Henrietta.

Miss Susan raised the boy in her strong arms. Gay touched his face with her soft fingers.

“Poor kid!” she said. “Poor little Lem!”

From Saint Harvey of Riverbank came a sound like a mighty sob. He raised his linked hands high above his head and there was a jangle of steel chain. When he had raised his hands to their utmost reach, Saint Harvey brought his united fists down upon the top of Officer Schulig’s unprotected head with a blow that made the porch floor palpitate and the dog policeman’s knees to bend.

“Dod-double-baste you!” cried Saint Harvey of Riverbank. “You get away from me, an’ get away quick!”

Officer Schulig was willing. He tried to. He made a leap for the porch steps, but Saint Harvey’s linked hands had encircled the officer’s neck and the two men tottered to the edge of the steps.

“Chail!” yelled Schulig, pushing at Harvey’s chest. “More chail for this, I bet you!”

Then they reached the edge of the porch and fell and rolled down the steps together, locked in a close but most unaffectionate embrace.

CHAPTER VIII

What Henrietta said to Dr. Grace, who was young and had a twinkle in his eye, does not matter, but when she returned to Miss Susan’s for dinner, at noon, Lem was still seemingly unconscious and as rigid as before. Miss Susan said the doctor had agreed with Henrietta’s diagnosis in general, and had added that the shock of the fear of jail had probably reacted on the supersensitiveness of the boy. The doctor had said, Miss Susan told Henrietta, that the boy’s pulse and temperature were normal and that there was nothing to fear. There might, he had said, be recurrences of this cataleptic state from time to time. The only treatment, he said, was to leave the boy alone while in these trance states and to see that as soon as he came out of them he was fed plenteously.

Henrietta smiled secretly as she turned away from Miss Susan, so well had Dr. Grace played the game.

Lorna was later arriving for dinner. She had, with Gay, purposely avoided Henrietta in order to call on Dr. Grace, for she had a question to ask him.

“Doctor,” she said, when she and Gay stood in his office and had spoken of Lem, “we wanted to ask you something. About Lem. He’s in no danger?”

“Not a bit.”

“And – you’ll know we would not ask this without a good reason – he is not hypnotized. Miss Bates did not, you think, hypnotize him?” The doctor threw back his head and laughed. “Hypnotized?” he cried. “You don’t have to hypnotize that boy. No; Miss Bates did not hypnotize him. He was not hypnotized, unless it was by the devil himself. That’s all the hypnotizing any boy is entitled to. Do you want to know the bitter truth? He’s playing ‘possum.”

“Lem is – ”

“To keep out of jail,” the young doctor laughed; and then Gay and Lorna laughed too.

After dinner Henrietta went up to see Lem, Lorna going with her. They stood beside the bed and looked at him. His color was quite normal now and his freckles had gone back where they belonged.

“Can he hear us?” Lorna asked.

Henrietta glanced at her quickly, as if suspecting something, but Lorna’s face was innocent enough.

“Not directly, I think,” Henrietta said, “but it is better not to say anything we don’t want him to remember. It might be heard by his subconscious mind and held there. Is that what you mean?”

“I suppose so,” said Lorna. “I was just thinking that he must be so tender-hearted! He did not seem to feel the blow until Miss Susan said she would have no more to do with him. It was then he fainted.”

Henrietta looked at Lem. Not an eyelash moved, but she knew he heard all they were saying.

“Yes, you are right,” she said. “He is a dear boy. And Miss Sue loves him; I know she loves him very dearly. Of course it was a great shock to her, having a policeman come to the house, and she said things she did not mean. You saw how worried she was, just now. She does love him.”

The words were meant for Lem’s ears. So were Lorna’s words when she answered.

“And you don’t think he will be sent to jail, do you?” she asked.

“Indeed not!” said Henrietta. “Miss Sue will never allow that. She loves Lem too well. Look! He looks as if he was about to come out of his trance, Lorna! Can’t you see a better color in his face? Listen, Lorna; run down and get some flowers. It will be brighter here if he sees flowers when he wakens.”

Henrietta wanted to get rid of Lorna. She knew how the healthy boy’s appetite must be raging as the pleasant odors of food came up from the floor below. When Lorna was gone, Henrietta closed the door and shot the bolt. She went back to the bed and bent over Lem. “Lem!” she called. “Lem, wake up!”

The boy did not stir. He lay as rigid as before. She took one of his warm, tanned hands and rubbed it.

“Lem!” she called again. “Wake up, Lem!” The boy opened his eyes. For a moment he stared at the ceiling and then sat upright with the brisk liveliness of a healthy boy.

“Hello!” he said. “I been asleep, I guess.”

“Yes, you had a good nap,” Henrietta said.

“Do you remember what happened just before you went to sleep?”

He pretended to be puzzled for a moment. Then memory seemed to return gradually. “That old Schulig came for me,” he said. “Yes, but he’s not going to bother you. We ‘re not going to let him. You did n’t mean anything wicked and you shan’t be pestered. Lorna was here a minute ago. She has gone down to get you some flowers. She likes you. So does Gay.”

“They’re bully, ain’t they?” said Lem.

“I think your Aunt Sue likes you too, Lem,” Henrietta said, but the boy’s eyes grew sulky at once.

“No, she don’t,” he declared. “She hates me.”

“I think she likes you. Perhaps she does not know it herself yet, Lem, but I think she does like you, in her heart.”

“No, she hates me. An’ I hate her. I’d rather be in jail than in her house. She’s a – ” Henrietta leaned a little forward.

“No, she likes you. And you like her. I know you do, Lem. You are very fond of her. She has a good heart and would love to be kind to you. And she will be if she thinks you like her.”

Lorna came back with an armful of flowers and a vase to hold them. She smiled at Lem.

“That is lovely!” Henrietta said. “Put them where Lem can see them. Come now, we must go down. We will bring you some dinner, Lem.” Miss Susan, when she learned the boy was himself again, assumed once more her attitude of dislike.

“Well, how is he?” she asked, as if even asking that was more than she wanted to do.

“Quite himself again, I think,” said Henrietta. “Lorna took up some flowers.”

“What for?”

“I’ve heard it said that everything should be as bright and cheerful and pleasant as possible when any one comes out of one of these fits,” said Henrietta. “A child, especially. It is as if one was dead, you know, and coming back into the world again. It ought to be, just at first at least, a nice world. It ought to seem to be a world worth coming back into. If not – ”

“What?” asked Susan.

Henrietta shrugged her shoulders “You could n’t blame them much for going right back into dead-land again, could you? And staying there? I suppose they do, sometimes.”

“Humph!” exclaimed Susan, but she mentally resolved that, whatever she felt about Lem, no one should ever say she had been the cause of his death. “I don’t say I would n’t be glad to have him around,” she said grudgingly. “Time and again I’ve told his father I would admire to have Lem here. But a liar and a thief and a young rowdy I can’t abide and I won’t have.”

“Lem is not a liar,” said Henrietta quietly. “He tells the truth. Wasn’t that the trouble, Susan? You questioned him and he told the truth and it made you angry. Now I never make that mistake,” she continued gayly. “I ‘m quite a reprobate. I only tell the truth when it pleases everybody, and if something else pleases better I tell something else.”

Lorna gasped mentally at this surprising frankness. Later in the day she tried to explain to Gay the strange feeling that took possession of her at that moment. Of all places in the world the town of Riverbank was the least romantic, and of all houses in Riverbank Miss Susan’s house was – or had been – the least likely to harbor mystery. It was a large, broad, simple house, with large windows and large, sunny rooms. There was nothing dank or dark or dismal about it. It was as open and unromantic as a new tent in the middle of a sunny field, with the flaps tied back, and suddenly this matter-of-fact, wide-open, every-day boarding-house began to affect Lorna with a sense of mystery and hidden secrets and things shielded from view. She told Gay it gave her a creepy feeling, like finding one’s self suddenly and unexpectedly on the edge of a deep, dark pit.

Mystery is usually linked with strange creatures who come out of dark rooms, garbed in strange gowns, to steal out at night, and who say mysterious things. Lorna had not thought of mystery in connection with a person so visible as Henrietta, who wore shirt-waists that cost two dollars at Graydon’s and who darned her stockings on the front porch in full daylight. There was so much Henrietta, and all of it so healthy and seemingly wholesome, that mystery seemed the very thing that would avoid her, as moss avoids a sun-drenched wall.

There was nothing apparently mysterious about Henrietta when, after school that afternoon, she walked to Main Street in company with two other teachers, talking of the nearing end of the school year. She left them at the corner and went to Johnnie Alberson’s.

A bevy of high-school girls, their books under their arms or deposited at the feet of their high stools, were glorying in ice-cream sodas at the fountain just inside the door.

“Hello, Freeman,” Henrietta greeted the white-jacketed youth. “Is Mr. Alberson in?”

“Ho! Johnnie!” Freeman called, and Alberson came from behind the prescription case. “Miss Bates wants to see you,” Freeman said.

Alberson came forward, turning down his cuffs. He was behind the counter, thinking only that she wished to be waited on. Freeman turned his back, loading a glass with the ingredients of the celebrated “Papsy Shake” that was the fountain’s leading concoction that season.

“‘T can I do for you, Miss Bates?” Alberson asked.

Johnnie Alberson was a bachelor, plump, cheerful, and as worldly-wise as any man in Riverbank. Henrietta knew about him. It was in the back of Johnnie’s store that the poker games were played. It was said, too, that it was by no means necessary for young fellows to be seen in a common saloon while Johnnie ran a drug store, and more than one “girl scandal” was said to have had its growth through meetings at Johnnie’s.

“I want to see you about Freeman,” Henrietta said in a low tone. “He’s taken some of your money, has n’t he?”

Alberson’s professional smile departed.

“I would n’t say any one had taken any of my money,” he answered. “What do you think you know about it?”

“He told me.”

Alberson glanced at Freeman Todder as if he meant to call him, but changed his mind.

“Come in the back room,” he said, and led the way.

There were two ways into Alberson’s back room, one at either end of the prescription case. One was the doorway by which Johnnie bustled back and forth when he came out to wait on a customer or hurried back to compound a prescription. The other was less frank. It was at the other end of the prescription case. Here was placed the long showcase containing toilet articles – the face powders, combs, brushes, perfumes – but standing on the floor, close to the case, was a large easel bearing a six-foot advertisement in gay colors. To see the articles beyond this it was necessary to go behind it. The most innocent of customers might do that, wishing to see the articles in the case, or a silly or foolhardy girl might seem to be looking in the case and disappear behind the easel, and thence slip through the opening into the region behind Johnnie’s prescription case and into the famous back room. That was one reason you might think you saw some young woman enter Alberson’s drug store and yet not find her there if you entered. It was said that Johnnie’s back room was about the only place in Riverbank where a girl could smoke a cigarette in safety, or – rumor said – find a glass of sherry wine. Alberson led Henrietta to the back room by the open path.

“You said Freeman told you something,” he said when they were there. “What do you think he told you?”

They were standing. Henrietta placed her purse on the stained table.

“May I sit down?” she asked. “I wish you would sit down too. I want to tell you something I have never breathed before.”

Alberson took a seat opposite her and she looked him steadily in the face.

“Freeman told me he had stolen two hundred dollars from you and that he could not pay it, and that if he did not you would make trouble for him. Is that so?”

“It might be.”

“No, I must know! He told me, but I cannot always trust him. Did he take it?”

“Just what would happen if I said he did?” Alberson asked.

“I know him rather well,” Henrietta said. “We both board at Miss Redding’s. I have helped him before.”

“You mean you would pay what he stole, if he stole it?” Johnnie asked.

“Yes. That is what I mean.”

“He stole it,” said Alberson. “He took it out of the till. Two hundred and eight dollars. He confessed when I put it up to him hard. And I’ll get it back or he’ll go to Anamosa, that’s absolute.”

“Then I ‘ll repay you,” Henrietta said quietly. “I thought perhaps he was lying to me. I’ll pay you a little this month and the rest regularly when school begins again in the fall.”

The pleasant look that had come back to Johnnie’s face at the mention of repayment fled again. In money matters he was notoriously close; his carefulness in the matter of pennies was a joke that he accepted good-naturedly, since it permitted him the more easily to protect himself. No one could borrow money from Johnnie Albersori, and no one asked him to lend, although “Lend me a couple of cart-wheels” was the phrase most often spoken by the young fellows who made the Alberson store a loafing place.

“That won’t do,” he said. “How do I know? Maybe you’ll pay and maybe you’ll get tired of paying. And before fall he may be in China. No, I’m going to have the money or put him through.”

“I thought perhaps you would say that,” said Henrietta. “You would naturally. You think I am merely one of Freeman’s friends. I am his mother, Mr. Alberson. I’m Freeman’s mother.” And thus another lie was uttered by Henrietta Bates.