Part 3 (1/2)

The old schoolmaster took his last trip alone; no mourners rode behind the hea.r.s.e to the Palisade Cemetery, where charitable countrymen bought him a grave. Erneste did not go to the funeral. That afternoon I met him on Broadway, plodding alone over the old route. His eyes were red and swollen. The ”protest” hung from his shoulders; in his hand he carried, done up roughly in a pack, the signs the old man had borne. A look of such utter loneliness as I had never seen on a human face came into his when I asked him where his father was. He made a gesture of dejection and s.h.i.+fted his feet uneasily, as if impatient at being detained. Something distracted my attention for the moment, and when I looked again he was gone.

Once in the following summer I heard from Erneste through the newspapers, just when I had begun to miss him from his old haunts. It seems that he had somehow found the papers that proved his claim, or thought he had. He had put them into the hands of the French consul the day before, said the item, appearing before him clothed and in his right mind, without the signs. But the account merely added to the mystery by hinting that the old man had unconsciously h.o.a.rded the papers all the years he sought them with such toil in the streets of New York. Here was my story at last; but before I could lay hold of it, it evaded me once more in the hurry and worry of the police office.

Autumn had come and nearly gone, when New York was one day startled by the report that a madman had run through Fourteenth street at an hour in the afternoon when it was most crowded with shoppers, and, with a pair of carpenter's compa.s.ses, had cut right and left, stabbing as many as came in his way. A scene of the wildest panic ensued. Women flung themselves down bas.e.m.e.nt-steps and fell fainting in doorways. Fully half a score were cut down, among them the wife of Policeman Hanley, who was on duty in the block, and who arrested the maniac without knowing that his wife lay mortally wounded among his victims. She had come out to meet him, with the children. It was only after he had attended to the rest and sent the prisoner away securely bound that he was told there was still a wounded woman in the next store, and found her there with her little ones.

The madman was Erneste Dubourque. I found him in the police station, surrounded by a crowd of excited officials, to whose inquiries he turned a mien of dull and stolid indifference. He knew me when I called him by name, and looked up with a movement of quick intelligence, as one who suddenly remembers something he had forgotten and vainly tried to recall.

He started for the door. When they seized him and brought him back, he fought like a demon. His shrieks of ”Thieves! robbers!” filled the building as they bore him struggling to a cell.

He was tried by a jury and acquitted of murder. The defense was insanity.

The court ordered his incarceration in a safe asylum. The police had received a severe lesson, and during the next month, while it was yet fresh in the public mind, they bestirred themselves, and sent a number of ”harmless” lunatics, who had gone about unmolested, after him. I never heard of Erneste Dubourque again; but even now, after fifteen years, I find myself sometimes asking the old question: What was the story of wrong that bore such a crop of sorrow and darkness and murder?

ABE'S GAME OF JACKS

Time hung heavily on Abe Seelig's hands, alone, or as good as alone, in the flat on the ”stoop” of the Allen-street tenement. His mother had gone to the butcher's. Chajim, the father,--”Chajim” is the Yiddish of ”Herman,”--was long at the shop. To Abe was committed the care of his two young brothers, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham was nine, and past time for fooling. Play is ”fooling” in the sweaters' tenements, and the muddling of ideas makes trouble, later on, to which the police returns have the index.

”Don't let 'em on the stairs,” the mother had said, on going, with a warning nod toward the bed where Jake and Ikey slept. He didn't intend to.

Besides, they were fast asleep. Abe cast about him for fun of some kind, and bethought himself of a game of jacks. That he had no jackstones was of small moment to him. East-Side tenements, where pennies are infrequent, have resources. One penny was Abe's h.o.a.rd. With that, and an accidental match, he began the game.

It went on well enough, albeit slightly lopsided by reason of the penny being so much the weightier, until the match, in one unlucky throw, fell close to a chair by the bed, and, in falling, caught fire.

Something hung down from the chair, and while Abe gazed, open-mouthed, at the match, at the chair, and at the bed right alongside, with his sleeping brothers on it, the little blaze caught it. The flame climbed up, up, up, and a great smoke curled under the ceiling. The children still slept, locked in each other's arms, and Abe--Abe ran.

He ran, frightened half out of his senses, out of the room, out of the house, into the street, to the nearest friendly place he knew, a grocery-store five doors away, where his mother traded; but she was not there. Abe merely saw that she was not there, then he hid himself trembling.

In all the block, where three thousand tenants live, no one knew what cruel thing was happening on the stoop of No. 19.

A train pa.s.sed on the elevated road, slowing up for the station near by.

The engineer saw one wild whirl of fire within the room, and opening the throttle of his whistle wide, let out a screech so long and so loud that in ten seconds the street was black with men and women rus.h.i.+ng out to see what dreadful thing had happened.

No need of asking. From the door of the Seelig flat, burned through, fierce flames reached across the hall, barring the way. The tenement was shut in.

Promptly it poured itself forth upon fire-escape ladders, front and rear, with shrieks and wailing. In the street the crowd became a deadly crush.

Police and firemen battered their way through, ran down and over men, women, and children, with a desperate effort.

The firemen from Hook and Ladder Six, around the corner, had heard the shrieks, and, knowing what they portended, ran with haste. But they were too late with their extinguishers; could not even approach the burning flat. They could only throw up their ladders to those above. For the rest they must needs wait until the engines came.

One tore up the street, coupled on a hose, and ran it into the house. Then died out the fire in the flat as speedily as it had come. The burning room was pumped full of water, and the firemen entered.

Just within the room they came upon little Jacob, still alive, but half roasted. He had struggled from the bed nearly to the door. On the bed lay the body of Isaac, the youngest, burned to a crisp.

They carried Jacob to the police station. As they brought him out, a frantic woman burst through the throng and threw herself upon him. It was the children's mother come back. When they took her to the blackened corpse of little Ike, she went stark mad. A dozen neighbors held her down, shrieking, while others went in search of the father.

In the street the excitement grew until it became almost uncontrollable when the dead boy was carried out.