The Lash Part 21

"Ah! there you are," exclaimed Glenwood, striding over to Micky and pulling him to his feet. "There's been a rough-house. But where's Shaughnessy?" His eyes swept the apartment vengefully.

"Must have gone out," returned Slade. Neither he nor d.i.c.k noticed the partially open door of the den. "Better be gettin' out. He may be back, with more like him, and we ain't got no time to lose."

Between them they guided the stupefied O'Byrn outside and to the waiting carriage. Inside the den, crumpled horridly in his chair, with gaunt, ghastly jaw agape and with a look of terror frozen in his staring eyes, rested Shaughnessy; as he would sit through the night, as he would be sitting when they should seek him on the morrow.

CHAPTER XXII

THE STORY

A half-hour later a telephone bell pealed in the office of the Courier.

"You're wanted, Mr. Harkins," called an a.s.sistant. The city editor hurried to the instrument. "h.e.l.lo!" he called.

"h.e.l.lo! That you, Harkins? All right, this is Glenwood. Well, we've got him. Working on him now. Be there by twelve, sooner if possible. Have everything ready. Good-by."

The office of Dr. Erastus Wentworth was a scene of animation. By rare good luck, Slade had found the medical gentleman in an adjacent restaurant immediately after the cab drew up at the building which contained his office. d.i.c.k and Slade had a.s.sisted the dazed O'Byrn upstairs, when Slade, fuming with impatience, set out on a search for the physician, which was fortunately soon rewarded.

They placed O'Byrn on a sofa and he immediately lapsed into dreamland.

"Doctor," said d.i.c.k, "this man has a job to turn out tonight that would feaze many a fellow in his sober senses. He's simply got to do it tonight. It will take an hour, perhaps a half or so more. It must be started at midnight. I know it looks hopeless, but you don't know the man. If you only start his brain half-working it's worth a couple of normal ones under full head. What do you think?" He was pacing the floor in keen excitement. Slade stood near, silent, with burning eyes.

"Bad!" commented the doctor, dryly. "How much has he had?"

"Not so much," returned Slade. "He got a nasty b.u.mp; it helped."

"Well, we'll try," said the doctor, and was soon busy. Micky was sufficiently oblivious not to wince at the sting of the hypodermic needle, piercing his bared arm, forcing into his system the powerful solution of strychnine, the influence of which must be invoked to reinforce the mechanism of the numbed brain. d.i.c.k looked at the Irishman, sprawled supine upon the office sofa, still with closed eyes. It looked hopeless enough and d.i.c.k despaired.

A little later the physician was preparing with infinite care a mixture which he finally seemed to have ready to his satisfaction. He approached the prostrate man.

"Rank poison," he said grimly to Glenwood, "but desperate cases require desperate remedies. I fancy this will complete the job of galvanizing your friend for the time you require. Probably he won't exactly scintillate, but I think he will do." He administered the stuff to O'Byrn, who, half-conscious already despite his relaxed att.i.tude, swallowed it obediently.

"Now in a few minutes," said the doctor, "you can start with him. But remember one thing," he cautioned Glenwood, "this brace is wholly artificial. It won't last. A little later and I couldn't have done much for you anyway. He'll run along like a machine for a while, that's all.

Get all you can from him while you can, for there'll be a reaction."

"That's what we've got to do anyway," replied d.i.c.k grimly. "It's a case of racing the clock with us from now on."

A little later they descended the stairs, O'Byrn stumbling heedlessly down, a.s.sisted by Glenwood. The cabman had waited under instructions.

"The Courier office in a hurry," d.i.c.k ordered, and a.s.sisted Micky inside. Slade followed. He had resolved to be in at the death.

As the cab rolled rapidly south, d.i.c.k spoke to the man opposite him, now rousing to a dull consciousness of his surroundings.

"Micky," he demanded, "have you got that story, all of it?" There was an a.s.senting nod.

"Now listen to me, Micky," continued d.i.c.k, leaning forward in the dimness, fixing the other's stolid eyes with his own dominant ones, "you're going to turn out that story and it's going to be the story of your life. You won't feel like it, but you're going to do it and it's going to be a dandy. Now get your brain working. Think of that story, every stage of it, from the time you first started out for it till you finished. Fix it in your head, and when the time comes, just spout it.

_Don't-think-of-anything-but-that-story!_ Do you understand?"

There was but a single word of response, a little thick, but inspiring of confidence. "Sure."

d.i.c.k sat back with a long sigh. His hands were trembling with excitement. A moment later the cab drew up in front of the Courier office.

The elevator sprang upward. As its door was flung back for the trio to emerge, the big editorial clock chimed the hour of midnight. Harkins met them with white face and eyes that revealed the strain of the long hours of suspense. Behind him stared many other eyes, in which shone an overwrought glitter that came of the infectious tension of the situation.

"Well, O'Byrn!" Harkins' voice crackled with acrid authority. "Where's your story?"

The tone had the effect of a whip lash, awakening the habit of swift obedience born of long training. Micky had stood dumb with blank eyes, to which the scene and the actors seemed strangely remote, like a vague dream. But his chief's question pierced his numbed brain like sharp steel. There was an instinctive attempt to gather his deadened forces.

His hand swiftly sought an outer pocket and produced a few penciled fragments which he threw upon a table. "There," he said.

"These!" exclaimed Harkins, hastily scanning them. "Well, where are the rest? Did you lose them?"

d.i.c.k interposed. "You forget, Mr. Harkins," he suggested. "He doesn't have to carry a notebook. Micky, where's the rest of it?"

"Why," he answered confusedly, "I remembered it."

"Well, do you remember it now?" persisted Harkins.

"No," wearily, "not just now." Then, again with that strange gathering of struggling forces, though the words came as if he talked in his sleep, "I'll remember it--after I get started." And he walked straight to his desk, eyes dead ahead like a somnambulist's, unheedful of the men who watched him silently with drawn, anxious faces. It is doubtful if he saw them. Dropping limply into his chair he reached mechanically for his copy paper.

"Not that way, Micky," said d.i.c.k softly, interposing his hand. "There isn't time. You must dictate it. Here's a man waiting for you."

Micky turned dull eyes toward the stenographer who sat nearby in readiness, pencil in hand. An expression of helplessness replaced the apathy in O'Byrn's face, as his gaze s.h.i.+fted to d.i.c.k. In his trance-like state he could not comprehend. They wanted the story, yet would not let him write it. There was a pathetic questioning in his look.

"Listen, Micky," said d.i.c.k very distinctly, bending over him. "It's not far from press-time. We've got to hurry. There's a relay of stenographers waiting for you. Now you go ahead and dictate your story just as if you were writing it yourself. Get your mind right on it. Talk your introduction, covering the main points, then start at the beginning and go through to the finish. Get everything in and talk it as it comes to you, but have it right. Don't be afraid of going too fast. They'll get it all. Talk it just as you'd talk it to me and get it all. You understand? Now, boy, _get into it_!" He placed the packet of Shaughnessy's papers, which O'Byrn had entrusted to him, in his hand.

d.i.c.k stepped back, raising his hand to quiet them all as they crowded around, staring at the motionless man in the chair. "Get back!" d.i.c.k whispered fiercely. "Get him rattled now and it's all up. Can't you see?" They softly moved aside and intense quiet fell, in which the measured ticking of the big clock sounded unbelievably loud. They watched the meagre figure in the chair with an odd fascination. O'Byrn, as if fairly hypnotized by Glenwood's words, was bending forward, hands pressed tightly against his temples, eyes closed and brow contracted in the supreme effort to marshal the dormant resources of his brain. So he sat, without word or motion, while the moments crawled by and the suspense grew into actual pain for every watcher in that great room.

Once Harkins, with an expression of keen torture, slowly lifted a clenched hand and let it fall silently, an impetuous word restrained by a warning gesture from Glenwood, who had not once taken his piercing eyes from O'Byrn's face. Even as he gazed, the face of the other seemed curiously to change, as if a dead thing were stirring into life. It was as if Glenwood's iron will reinforced O'Byrn's weaker one, infusing into it the power of concentration, helping it to rise superior to deadening influences, to a.s.sert itself in a hard-won triumph of mind over matter.

At last Micky raised his head, looking straight into d.i.c.k's eyes, which shone with satisfaction, for they read coherence in O'Byrn's own. The day was saved and there was a universal sigh of relief. O'Byrn extended his hand. Reading the gesture aright, d.i.c.k placed in it the notes which shortly before had been produced for Harkins' inspection. Micky looked them over briefly, scanned the d.a.m.ning packet a moment, and turned to the waiting stenographer.

Then came the story which swept the town that morning in a mighty wind that drove a monstrous tidal wave of public indignation thundering over an illicit crew and blotted out a corrupt munic.i.p.al history. Yes and more, for the waters encroached even to foul halls in the capitol and washed them clean. It was a story involving so scathing an arraignment of those in high places that hardened veterans in the great room, listening to its steady flow from the lips of the drowsy man in the chair, gasped and looked at each other in momentary incredulity; momentary, because every astounding disclosure was fortified by the most incontrovertible of proofs. Micky had been a veritable sleuth hound on the track of that story. His scent had been unerring and in the marshaling of his verified facts he had shown positive genius. There was nothing a.s.serted that collected statements and figures did not prove; no man arraigned, from Judge Boynton down, who was not pilloried in the proof. Noisome legislative deals, heretofore blanketed by respectability, were laid bare in exposed horror. The city government was savagely a.s.sailed. The vesture of fair seeming in the present campaign was torn away and there was revealed rottenness. The growth of graft, in repulsive forms, under the sinister genius of Shaughnessy, was claimed and proved and the telling ruined some flouris.h.i.+ng careers. So on to the end, the arraignment transcending the expectation of all in its ugly features, as indeed it had Micky's own. It left no doubt of the swift dynamic effect upon the election, now close at hand. Truly it was the story of a lifetime.

He told it from beginning to end always in that strange, monotonous voice, as if he were muttering in his sleep, his eyes at times fixed absently on the stenographer, at others half-closed or turning blankly toward the ceiling. He seemed wholly unconscious of his surroundings after his task was begun, being absorbed in dreamy contemplation of his theme. As the physician had said, his brain was working like an insensate machine, driven for a while by the force of powerful stimulants. Yet always his wonderful memory, an instinctive force with him, was a potent line that led his groping mind unerringly through the gloomy labyrinth of the brain. At times he would falter for a moment, but once more grasping the thread was off again. So, unmindful of anything save the task he was mechanically pursuing, he swept on toward the end. Stenographers quietly relieved one another, typewriters rattled madly at the other end of the room, Harkins and an a.s.sistant fairly flew in the preparation of the copy; boys hurried by with it, take by take, everywhere was the sharp hum of the belated machinery, at last in motion. O'Byrn never noticed, but went serenely, logically, sleepily on, dictating as he would have written it. One might imagine he saw himself, as one detached, writing as he proceeded.

But now the fuel had spent its force. He was growing horribly drowsy, yet struggled on, impelled by a latent sense of duty. At last he faltered in the middle of a sentence and stopped short. His chin sank on his breast.

Someone was shaking him, he numbly felt a dash of something cold and wet in his face and opened his eyes. He tried to wipe away the water that trickled down his cheeks, when somebody's handkerchief was pa.s.sed over them and he heard a voice, familiar yet far away.

"Wake up, Micky!" it appealed. "You can't give up now, you're almost through!"

"All right, d.i.c.k," he sighed wearily. "Where was I?"

d.i.c.k prompted him and he resumed at the break, still in the same even, expressionless monotone, and continued until the dark shadows again gathered before his eyes and he swayed in his chair. d.i.c.k's voice again rang its sharp rally in his ears and he braced desperately, dictating the closing paragraphs. "That's all," he murmured. The receding footfalls of the stenographer sounded. Then came d.i.c.k's voice, a ghost of a voice from the other side of the world.

"Now you can sleep," it said.

Then returned again the shadows and silence.