: ' 
 
 ' 1 ' 
 
 RUPERT 
 HUGHES
 
 EMPTY POCKETS
 
 [See p. 236 
 
 It was glorious to be felt sorry for by such a being as this.
 
 Empty Pockets 
 
 By RUPERT HUGHES 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 'Excuse Me, Etc. 
 
 A. L. BURT COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 
 
 PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH HARPER & BROTHERS
 
 . 1914. ieis, BY HARPER BROTHEW* 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 PUBLISHED MAY. IBIS
 
 URL 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 IT WAS GLORIOUS TO BE FELT SORRY FOR BY SUCH 
 
 A BEING AS THIS . . .- Frontispiece 
 
 MURIEL FORGOT HER ANGER AND HER DANGER IN A 
 
 SWIFT REMORSE FOR WHAT SHE HAD NOT CAUSED Page 56 
 
 SHE TALKED TO THE OLD MAN AS TO A CHILD, PLEAD- 
 ING, PROMISING NEVER TO BOTHER HIM AGAIN, 
 IF HE WOULD YIELD ONLY THIS ONCE ... " 120 
 
 RED IDA KNEW MURIEL INSTANTLY FROM HER NUM- 
 BER LESS PICTURES IN THE NEWSPAPERS. SHE 
 WHISPERED: "THAT'S MURIEL SCHUYLER. HER 
 OLD MAN'S WOITH A BILLION DOLLARS" ... " 248 
 
 WORTHING HAD ONLY ONE THOUGHT MURIEL'S 
 
 SAFETY " 312 
 
 SHE MADE No RESISTANCE. SHANG SIMPLY KEPT 
 
 SAYING, "REMEMBER, LADY, REMEMBER" ... " 325 
 
 MURIEL HAD No KNOWLEDGE OF THE INTRIGUES GO- 
 ING ON ABOUT HER " 440 
 
 A SUDDEN Vicious INSPIRATION LED PET TO FLICK 
 
 THE ASHES INTO PERRY'S EYE " 472 
 
 PET HAD FORGOTTEN TO SAY "THANK You!" BUT IT 
 is NOT EXPECTED OF UNTAMED ANIMALS GIVEN 
 THEIR LIBERTY " 568 
 
 HER KNEES WEAKENED AND SHE SAT DOWN ON THE 
 
 STEP AND PUT OUT HER ARMS " 592
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE exquisite Mr. Merithew, the amused and amusing 
 millionaire, the ingenious contriver of quaint diver- 
 sions, the walking fashion-plate, the jester who moved 
 familiarly among the eminent, tweaked the ladies' ears, 
 and plucked the ermine of the railroad presidents; whose 
 doings were read about with adoration by the enormous 
 snobbery that devours the news of the rich and out- 
 snobs the snobs this Mr. Merithew had seen nearly all 
 of the best and worst of the world except the slums of 
 New York. The slums of foreign cities he found pic- 
 turesque, servile, full of beggars. He was not responsible 
 for their slums. With his almost womanly intuition he 
 felt that he would feel disturbed if he inspected the 
 pauperdom of New York. He always said when he was 
 invited to visit the lower East Side: 
 
 "No, thanks! It's the last place on earth where you'll 
 ever find me." 
 
 And it was. He was found there, dead. 
 
 The smile that had won him the name of "Merry 
 Perry " was fixed as plaster of Paris after it has set. The 
 foppery that had been a national proverb was stained 
 with the rust of tin; it was disheveled and crimson from 
 his wounds. 
 
 There were people who pretended to be surprised that
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Merry Perry did not bleed blue. They would not take 
 him seriously even then. He had been the joke of New 
 York; and New York had been his. 
 
 "To him that hath!" While millions of honorable and 
 industrious people were fighting for enough to eat and a 
 corner to sleep in, three fortunes had been his inheritance. 
 When he squandered one, another was provided. They 
 had not sufficed him for his own whims. How could he 
 have had any alms left for the poor? Especially as he did 
 not like the poor. He had done nothing for them except 
 to give them a little laughter at his magnificent flip- 
 pancies, and to confirm them in one of the few luxurious 
 vices of the poor, which is their open contempt for the 
 wealthy, their belief that the rich have no right to their 
 riches, and that all rich people are bad. The poor have 
 almost always had more contempt for the rich than from 
 them, for pity does not mollify their disdain. 
 
 Merry Perry had not approved of the poor any more 
 than they of him. He had fled from them because he 
 believed them to be dirty, disorderly, ugly, and dismal, 
 and he hated dirt, he loathed disorder and ungrace; he 
 abominated sorrow. 
 
 And now, as if Fate had grinned and spat upon him at 
 last, his death-bed was the sun-blistered roof of a repulsive 
 tenement in the most crowded square mile on the face of 
 the earth. 
 
 A woman found him. A woman whose frowsy, grace- 
 less, unkempt, unclean appearance would have made 
 him recoil from her, recoiled from him. Her ancestors, 
 compelled by their German persecutors to select a new 
 family name, had gracefully chosen "spray of roses"; 
 but Mrs. Rosenzweig did not live down to her patronym. 
 She looked more like a collection of balloons. It was 
 amazing how fat she got on so little to eat. It was 
 regrettable that she could not afford to buy what she 
 could so ill afford to do without corsets. 
 
 Her home was two crowded rooms high up in a dismal 
 
 2
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 tenement facing on Orchard Street near its crossing with 
 Stanton. 
 
 It was a tall tenement, and the rickety stairs hardly 
 supported her as she squeezed, panting, to their top and 
 emerged, pushing a wash-basket far ahead of her. Her 
 mouth was full of clothes-pins and her gaze was upward to 
 avoid collision with the web of wash-lines. She saw that 
 her own rope had been cut by some marauder. She 
 started forward with a muffled grunt of anger. 
 
 It was then that she discovered Perry Merithew, fell 
 over his legs, and sprawled on all-fours across the creaking 
 basket. She must have looked like some uncouth animal 
 as she turned to stare, then shuddered back on all-fours, 
 emitting shrieks and clothes-pins. 
 
 Perry Merithew, Esquire, lay between her and the pent- 
 house door. She howled for somebody to come and take 
 him away; but it was the busiest hour of the market war 
 in the street below, and most of the men were out selling 
 what most of the women were out buying. Even up here, 
 the racket occasioned by the gradual transfer of the 
 contents of the push-carts into the black leather market- 
 bags had the sound of a surf where sea-gulls scream and 
 quarrel. 
 
 The roof, too, was inclosed by walls and no one heard or 
 heeded Mrs. Rosenzweig and her burly terror. She had 
 to work her way unaided around the gruesome Mr. 
 Merithew. She kept her eyes on him as if he might jump 
 at her. The grip of lifelong penury was evident in the 
 automatic groping of her miserly hands for every last one 
 of her clothes-pins before she dragged herself and her 
 basket backward through the penthouse door. 
 
 Thence she stumbled down the stairs to her own room 
 where two of her children were. The other children and 
 the husband and the boarder who shared the two-room 
 suite were absent. First, Mrs. Rosenzweig called for a 
 "glass wasser" and mumbled it and choked before she 
 could explain that she had seen the work of the Angel of 
 
 3
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Death. She told her boy Hermann to "bring once a po- 
 licer right away quick." 
 
 Hermann, who was born in America, and had imbibed 
 liberty and impudence with his milk, told his mother, 
 "Ah, go on!" But he ran up to the roof and gazed a 
 long while at the interesting stranger. Then he ran down- 
 stairs and told his sister Lillie that there was "a swell 
 stiff up-stairs." 
 
 Lillie called him a liar and ran up as he ran down. 
 
 When Officer Madigan plowed his way through the 
 market riot and attained the roof he found a crowd 
 already gathered in a staring circle like a pack of coyotes 
 round a man sleeping by a fire. Nobody knew who 
 he' was. His fame had not extended into this realm. 
 Madigan would have called the man a "plain drunk" 
 but for the red and the white and the breathlessness. 
 
 Other policemen arrived, fighting their way up the 
 jammed staircase. They were not long in deciding that 
 it was a case of robbery ornamented with assassination. 
 There were no identifying cards or letters, but a pocket- 
 book was found empty; a watch-chain dangled watchless, 
 and there were indications that a scarf-pin had been 
 hastily removed from the scarf. There were no coins in 
 the pockets. While the police were debating whether or 
 not to touch the body before the coroner was summoned, 
 two reporters appeared. The flies were there first, and 
 now the reporters. 
 
 Mr. Merithew was in the hands of the public. His 
 first epitaph would be head-lines. 
 
 Two reporters had chanced to be passing through the 
 jumbled masses of Rivington Street in search of another 
 "story" when they saw the crowds thickening like ants 
 around the door of the Orchard Street passageway. 
 Orchard Street ordinarily resembles a panic in a crowded 
 theater, but the reporters bucked the meek throng and 
 wedged through. 
 
 The taller of them was a handsome young fellow named 
 
 4
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Raeburn not long escaped from Harvard. The other 
 was brindle in color, with half of one eyebrow missing; 
 his college had been the streets of New York. His name 
 was Hallard. At present he was drawing money from the 
 Gazette and giving it the ruthless loyalty of a mercenary 
 soldier. Raeburn was still young enough to suffer from 
 horror and pity and things like that. Hallard was as 
 sophisticated as an ambulance surgeon. 
 
 Hallard called the policeman by name. He knew 
 nearly everybody by name. As soon as he had bent for- 
 ward over the unknown and unknowing center of attrac- 
 tion he called him, too, by name : 
 
 "Merry Perry Merithew. Well, I'll be" 
 He did not finish his prophecy, for he noted that 
 Merithew's hands were clenched; from between all his 
 knuckles protruded wisps of hair, a woman's hair, hair of 
 the color they call burnt sienna.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MALLARD'S first emotion was the joy of a prospector 
 hoping for a nugget and finding a bonanza. He 
 realized instantly that he had stumbled on a story of front- 
 page, right-hand-column dignity, with eight-column scare- 
 heads. Perry Merithew had always been pay-dirt, but 
 now at space rates he would weigh in every day for 
 weeks, perhaps for months. With a stubborn murderer 
 well-lawyered, a good long trial, and several appeals and 
 reversals he might hold out for years. Hallard's only 
 regret was that a man from another paper had stumbled 
 on the same lode. But Raeburn was young and not quite 
 news-broken, and was already feeling regret instead of 
 rejoicing. 
 
 Raeburn was shaking his head. "Poor fellow! Think 
 of his family. His mother's alive, maybe. And his 
 wife Has he a wife?" 
 
 "He has one official wife," Hallard answered, "but 
 he was the busy little humming-bird of the village. 
 There'll be some flutter in the rose-garden when this gets 
 out some flutter, believe Me!" 
 
 Raeburn was still elegiac. "But to think of his being 
 killed!" 
 
 Hallard's amazement was: Ah, that's been comin' to 
 him a long while. The funny thing is his being found in 
 a place like this, dead or alive." The word "funny" had 
 come to have a technical meaning in Hallard's lexicon. 
 It was almost incredible to him that Perry Merithew 
 should be here. 
 
 Abruptly he recalled the fact that he was first and fore- 
 
 6
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 most a newspaper man and it was his prime duty to give 
 this news its de"but in the Gazette. He said to Raeburn: 
 
 "Funny that nobody saw this thing done. While I'm 
 rummaging round here you might look over that ledge 
 and see if any windows command the roof. He might 
 have been shot from some other house." 
 
 " That's so," said Raeburn, and wormed his way through 
 the crowd, while Hallard, glancing about among the stolid 
 faces, selected the alert-eyed little Hermann Rosenzweig 
 as the only available messenger. He scribbled on the 
 margin of one of the newspapers he always carried the 
 telephone number of the Gazette and the street number of 
 the tenement. Then he printed in large letters: 
 
 CITY EDITOR, Gazette. 
 
 Merry Perry Merithew found here on roof murdered 
 by unknown beauty with copper-colored tresses. Send 
 every man you can spare, also artists. Big beat if you 
 rush extra. 
 
 HALLARD. 
 
 He gave Hermann a quarter to take the note to the 
 nearest drug-store on Forsythe Street and have Mr. 
 Pytlik telephone the message. He promised Hermann 
 another quarter if he returned with the answer. 
 
 Hermann flashed away like a carrier-pigeon released, 
 and Hallard resumed his search. 
 
 He had called the unknown woman beautiful for three 
 reasons: in the first place all women who get into the 
 newspapers are beautiful; in the second place, Perry 
 Merithew was addicted to beautiful women; in the third 
 place, Hallard felt somehow the artistic necessity for 
 having her beautiful. He felt rather proud of that word 
 "copper-colored," too. He had chosen it hastily, for its 
 sinister note. The color was safe, for copper abounds in 
 colors of all sorts. But Hallard intended to make use 
 of allusions to the copperhead, that silent, slimy horror 
 that strikes without the alleged warning of the rattle~ 
 
 7
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 snake, lurks under flowers and among autumn leaves and 
 laurels, murders the innocent, and vanishes without noise 
 or trace. Hallard felt almost grateful to the fair assassin 
 for leaving him such inspiring documents. 
 
 He could visualize the struggle of the revengeful woman 
 or the defensive girl stabbing or shooting the man. Hal- 
 lard would shortly write the very words she had said, and 
 describe them as overheard by neighbors. But first he 
 must have at least a theory to work on. The police would 
 not let him examine the body to see the nature of the 
 wounds so abundantly advertised in red. He resolved 
 to obtain a bit of that hair. He stooped quickly, laid hold 
 of one of the strands, and gave it a little tug. 
 
 "He won't let go!" he said. 
 
 Officer Madigan grasped Hallard's collar and dragged 
 him back, commanding him to "come along out of that." 
 But Hallard brought away unbeknownst a few threads. 
 They curled about his fingers till he could transfer them to 
 his pocketbook unobserved. 
 
 "Whoever she was, she had red hair and Once 
 more he eluded Madigan long enough to bend forward 
 for another look. "And it wasn't pulled out. It was 
 cut off!" 
 
 Hallard's action had attracted all eyes to the eight 
 little auburn skeins protruding from the cold clench of 
 those hands. Hallard glanced about among the crowd. 
 Others imitated him. The women were all bareheaded 
 or only partly coiffed with knitted shawls. They were 
 all black-haired or brown, save one a young woman of 
 almost Turkish mien. Her hair was red. Every gaze 
 fastened on her. She understood, gasped, flushed, 
 started to escape. The press was too close. 
 
 Hallard put his hand on one of her arms. Madigan 
 seized the other. She flinched away. Then with a sud- 
 den desperation she broke out into exclamations of some 
 gibberish that nobody understood. But her deed was
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 eloquent: she whipped from her heavy locks a gaudy 
 comb and a few pins and shook her hair out like a flame. 
 Then she bent her head for the inspection of whoso 
 wished. She ran her fingers about her blazing scalp and 
 it was evident that no knife or scissors had ever worked 
 mischief there. 
 
 Hallard with the franchise of his calling dared to make 
 sure. He put his hand upon her head and she leaped 
 back in scarlet shame, with a little cry of distress. He had 
 snapped off three or four hairs ! 
 
 The outraged woman appealed to the others volubly, 
 but they seemed not to understand her any more than 
 Hallard did. And, not understanding her, they laughed 
 at her. Hallard had picked up a little of the Yiddish 
 dialect in the course of his wanderings about the many 
 worlds of New York. He addressed the girl, but she 
 made no answer. 
 
 Mrs. Rosenzweig, who had returned now and assumed 
 a sort of proprietorship over the mystery, explained to 
 Hallard: 
 
 "Her? She dun't speak Yiddish. She's a Oriental 
 yoost come ofer from Toorkey. Spaniolisch she speaks, 
 could you talk it, nu." 
 
 Hallard had a little knowledge of many languages, and 
 he made humble apologies in cigar-maker's Cuban. But 
 the girl retreated from him still, though her wild eyes 
 showed that she understood. 
 
 "Dem Oriental vomens is sehr shy," said Mrs. Rosen- 
 zweig. "She belongs by femmily name Abravaya." 
 
 A young man came eel-like through the crowd now. 
 He was of fair hair and skin, rather Hibernian than 
 Hebraic; at least he resembled those Irish who resemble 
 the Spanish. To him the young girl ran for refuge. What 
 she told him angered him and he glared at Hallard. 
 
 Hallard was used to being glared at. He began again 
 in laborious Spanish. The young man answered in 
 English. 
 
 i 9
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "For why you pool my wife by the hair, huh? You 
 theenk she is know thees man? No! She knows naw- 
 body. She is my wife." 
 
 Hallard tried to explain. But he did not confess that 
 he had purloined a lock of hair, and for no sentimental 
 reasons. He was of the school of newspaperdom that 
 has usurped the functions of the police and the detective 
 bureaus and has solved some of the mysteries that have 
 baffled the regular departments. 
 
 The police and the public are afraid of these reporters, 
 for they go armed with the terrible weapons of publicity. 
 They can make a patrolman famous or an inspector 
 ridiculous. They advance a guess and call it a clue. 
 In place of hiding what they know they advertise their 
 theories as facts, and thus question all their readers. In 
 a day they can reveal portraits and possibilities to mill- 
 ions of spectators, among whom sometimes some one is 
 reminded of an incident that furnishes a bit of further 
 information. And so they set upon the trail of the guilty 
 a pack of countless sleuths. 
 
 Hallard, staring down at the reliques of Perry Merithew, 
 wondered what extraordinary reason had brought this 
 fashionable gentleman to this most impolite place. A 
 woman had plainly been with him at the last moment. 
 Apparently there had been a struggle. He had clutched 
 her by the hair. She had killed him, cut herself free, and 
 fled. 
 
 It was most probable that she belonged in this neighbor- 
 hood. Otherwise why should he have come here ? Surely, 
 if she belonged up-town, she would never have selected 
 this hideous trysting-place. Such a tragedy involving 
 two paupers would be worth hardly a stickful of type; 
 involving a man like Merithew, it meant columns upon 
 columns, whether the missing woman were rich or poor. 
 Hallard could hardly decide which he wanted her to be. 
 
 He had found nearly everything possible to human 
 crime, and infinite variety in human folly. He had also 
 
 10
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 learned that wickedness usually does what charity is 
 advised to do it begins at home. 
 
 The most natural thing to suppose was that Merithew 
 had come here on some insane excursion of his jaded 
 fancy to meet the woman whose hair he held. The heat 
 of the night must have driven them to the roof as it had 
 driven hundreds of thousands of people from the ovens 
 indoors. 
 
 Some quarrel had arisen; the woman had knifed Meri- 
 thew, or shot him, or somehow executed him. In these 
 times when tires are incessantly exploding, a sound like a 
 pistol-shot attracts no attention at all. In this region 
 even the cry of "Police!" usually fails to bring any one 
 in haste, least of all a policeman. So the woman killed 
 Merithew, and nobody, except possibly some accomplice, 
 paid any heed. Hallard could imagine what supreme 
 horror must have thrilled that woman as she sawed her 
 hair free from the clutch of that indomitable tenacity, 
 leaving these clues behind for those grim hands to proffer 
 posthumously. Who was she? Whence come? Whither 
 a fugitive ? 
 
 If the hair had been black it would have been of small 
 help in this region where brunettes moved about in 
 throngs. But hair of a reddish persuasion was con- 
 spicuously rare here. 
 
 Hallard cast about for further data. He saw a few 
 hair-pins and picked them up, but the policemen took 
 them away from him, all but one, which he palmed. 
 
 It was his desire to beat the police to the solution for 
 the glory of his paper. His own ingenuity would remain 
 anonymous. His work would be so impersonal that the 
 highest flight of egotism would be an occasional allusion 
 to himself as "a reporter of the Gazette." 
 
 Meanwhile Raeburn had returned without discoveries; 
 he began to eavesdrop on the police and the detectives, 
 who were coming up with speed and making examinations, 
 casting about for finger-prints and foot-prints, taking 
 
 ii
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 measurements and snapshots, and hunting with micro 
 scopes. Hallard was resolving to leave the scene to the 
 other reporters and the press photographers. The 
 Gazette squad was already on the way, according to 
 Hermann, who returned with commercial promptitude. 
 
 Hallard decided to search the neighborhood. Failing 
 there, he would ransack Merithew's own past. 
 
 The clamor of the gong of an ambulance came up from 
 the street below faintly, like a passing bell. The surgeon, 
 when he arrived, would tell how Merithew died, and how 
 long ago. Meanwhile Hallard made a last hasty survey 
 of the roof. It was so broken up with tanks and chimneys 
 and the skylights that there was little free room. A wall 
 built up around the ledge cut off the view of the surround- 
 ing roofs. Hallard found an old box lying against the 
 wall near a chimney. He set it up and stood on it while 
 he peered over. 
 
 The view was too familiar to excite his wonder. It 
 was the enormous multiplication of poverty, a festival of 
 squalor. Everywhere there were clothes-lines with their 
 drooping pennants of defeat they filled the fire-escapes. 
 On the window-sills the bedclothes hung or pillows were 
 heaped, or mattresses; or the denizens leaned out, gazing 
 into the busy streets. 
 
 The very effort toward cleanliness was the emphasis 
 of its absence. Poor people's underclothes! washed 
 without pride by unpaid wives disgusted at their fabrics 
 and hating their tasks where could one find a less 
 pleasant sight? 
 
 The buildings were new from the Old World ideal for 
 slums, but they were forlorn enough for New York. 
 Many of them had ornamental cornices, but they ac- 
 centuated the pauperdom like second-hand finery. Here 
 and there, as if a marble stele had been set up in a junk- 
 heap, rose some great, beautiful school building or hospital. 
 
 From this eyrie one could see many roofs, but could be 
 seen from few. There had probably been no witnesses to 
 
 12
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 the deed. But how had a man dressed as well as Meritheu* 
 always was entered such a place without incurring notice? 
 How had the guilty woman slipped away unheeded? 
 
 As Hallard slid his fingers along the top of the wall, they 
 fell on something. Without looking at it or starting he 
 closed his palm upon it. He did not intend to share his 
 discoveries with the detectives. His hand studied its 
 trove. Then, as if he were looking down into the street, 
 he bent his head and examined what he had found. 
 It was a hat-pin of unusual design, a gold claw gripping 
 a large amethyst. Hallard pressed it into the lining of his 
 coat and dropped down from the box, shaking his head with 
 ostentatious disappointment. 
 
 A young surgeon appeared now and busied himself with 
 the cadaver. He announced first that the death must 
 have occurred many hours before. There was a cut on 
 one palm. There was a wound in the top of the head 
 that might have been made with a blunt-edged instru- 
 ment, as a brick, the butt of a revolver, a blackjack, or 
 the common gas-pipe of footpad commerce. There was 
 no bullet or knife or needle wound upon the body. It 
 was impossible to tell without more thorough examina- 
 tion. That must wait till permission was received to re- 
 move the body. 
 
 The identity of the vanished woman remained to be 
 solved. The detectives hoped to gain some ground in her 
 pursuit by the chemical and microscopical study of the 
 structure of her hair. They were already in dispute as 
 to its color. One said "red," one said "auburn," one 
 said "golden." Hallard mentioned his own opinion and 
 pointed out the value of " copper-haired." It was a good 
 word, and thereafter the police and everybody else used 
 it. The unknown was invariably referred to as "the 
 copper-haired woman." 
 
 Meanwhile the police had herded the crowd from the 
 roof. The flat-. f ooted, thick-headed guardians of the 
 peace were trying to look superhumanly intelligent as 
 
 13
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 they peered and pried. Hallard sneered at them and 
 left them to their perplexities. 
 
 Hallard resolved to interview Mr. Abravaya. Perhaps 
 his red-headed -wife had a red-headed sister or some rela- 
 tive. He left the other reporters to watch the police. 
 
 What they might find or pretend to find would be 
 turned into the general fund of newspaper information. 
 Every newspaper had long held ready in type a brief 
 "obituary" of Merithew and an envelope of clippings con- 
 cerning his frivolities. 
 
 Taking care of the dead was for undertakers and news- 
 paper cubs or journeymen. The things that Hallard 
 wanted to know were the things that some living woman 
 was terribly eager to keep secret.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 S Hallard went down the steps, already writing his 
 story on the tablets of his memory, he pushed his 
 way through an almost solid agglutination of people. 
 He did not see the red-headed woman. She had dis- 
 appeared with her husband. 
 
 He had forgotten her name. But he remembered her 
 confusion, and her flight was worth looking into. She 
 might have guilty knowledge, if not guilt itself. He 
 encountered among the sheep-staring faces the shiny 
 black eyes of little Hermann Rosenzweig, and Hermann 
 escorted him to the door of the Abravayas and evinced a 
 perfect willingness to accept another fee for his services. 
 
 Hallard paid him, and knocked at the door. The 
 young man with the Hiberno-Hebraic features appeared. 
 Hallard was not used to being invited in or kept out. 
 He sauntered forward, and Mr. Abravaya had either to 
 close the door in his face or be walked over. The former 
 did not suit his courtesy nor the latter his pride. He 
 stepped back and Hallard marched into a room that was 
 cleaner than he had expected. There were a few little 
 flowers growing bravely in tin cans. 
 
 The red-headed girl, who was nursing a tiny baby, fled 
 to the kitchen. Mr. Abravaya drew forward a chair and 
 bowed Hallard into it with gracious ceremony. Then he 
 called through the door and sat down on the bed, waiting 
 for his visitor to state his errand. Hallard knew better 
 than to begin at once on the purpose of his quest. 
 
 "You speak English, Mr. Mr. " 
 
 "Abravaya, Behor Josef Abravaya, sir. Yes, I spik
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Enngleesh pretty good. I am only seex mawnth in thees 
 kantry, but I spik Enngleesh pretty good. I spik seven 
 language. In Constantinople, where I am come from, a 
 man must spik much language." 
 
 " You come from Constantinople?" said Hallard. "But 
 they told me you were Spanish." 
 
 "Four five hondred years ago my pipple are in 
 Spain, but they are so pairsecute they go by Toorkey. 
 They spik the Spanish a kind of Spanish Ladino we 
 call him or Spaniolisch. My pipple are happy in 
 Toorkey. The Toork he is nicer to our pipple as the 
 Chreestians, but not very nice, too. Then comes thees 
 war with Greece and Boolgaria. All the men must be 
 soldiers. I do not weesh to be soldier for the Sooltan 
 who geeves us no leeberty. To fight for leeberty is all 
 right if I get myself killed, my brawther he get what I 
 fight for. But to fight and get killed for nawthing is no 
 good, huh? Let the Sooltan get killed by himself. In 
 America is different. Here everything is free nearly free. 
 I should fight for America with the greatest of pleesure. 
 So I come by New York, and many of our Ladino pipple. 
 Ten fourteen t'ousand of us is come in las' two years." 
 
 "That's very interesting," said Hallard without in- 
 terest. "And does your wife speak English, too?" 
 
 "No my wife spik only the Ladino. She onderstands 
 not even the Yiddish. She knows hardly anybody here. 
 We Oriental Jews are a separated pipple among our own 
 pipple." 
 
 The red-headed woman entered now from the kitchen. 
 She had quieted the baby somehow and she carried in its 
 stead a little tray with two small cups of almost solid 
 black coffee and a dish of pasties. 
 
 " My wife," was Mr. Abravaya's introduction. "Sarah, 
 thees is Mr. Mr. " 
 
 "Hallard," said Hallard, rising and bowing. 
 
 Sarah hardly nodded 'and did not raise her eyes. She 
 thrust the tray forward meekly. 
 
 16
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Abravaya waved the coffee and baklava toward Hallard 
 with a gesture of Arabian hospitality. He urged the 
 sweets upon him. This room was his tent, even though it 
 was pitched four flights in air. Hallard was his guest, 
 though he had forced his way in. Hallard had a contempt 
 for formalities, but he imitated them now as graciously as 
 he could. He sipped the syrupy wet dust of the coffee and 
 made a pretense of munching the baklava. He would 
 have preferred a pretzel and a glass of beer. 
 
 He wanted to question the woman, but his Spanish was 
 cumbersome, and after he had emptied his cup and de- 
 clined another she retreated to a corner and sat with her 
 heels caught up under her, in harem fashion. 
 
 So Hallard questioned Abravaya adroitly, commenting 
 on the unfortunate discovery on the roof. It seemed 
 wiser to him to pretend that he thought it an accident. 
 He concealed the fact that he was a reporter. He apolo- 
 gized for the liberty he took with Mrs. Abravaya's hair 
 and soon had her husband laughing at her extraordinary 
 display of it on the roof. Sarah did not laugh. She had 
 inherited something of the Turkish belief that while it is 
 almost unpardonable for a woman to expose her face to a 
 stranger, it is quite unpardonable to let her hair be seen. 
 Only a suspicion of murder with intrigue had led her to 
 violate that sanctity. It was not a matter of jest. 
 
 Hallard was soon convinced that she had no part in the 
 affair. He asked if they had not heard some noise on the 
 roof during the night. Had they not visited the roof them- 
 selves to escape from the heat? 
 
 Abravaya explained that the roof was too cut up to 
 serve as a dormitory. It was doubly inclosed by its own 
 walls and by the walls of the surrounding tenements. 
 No one slept there of nights. He himself and his wife 
 had spent the night on the fish-block of a small shop on 
 Orchard Street. 
 
 Then, Hallard suggested, they ought to have noticed 
 the arrival of Merithew. He was a man whose costume
 
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 excited attention on Fifth Avenue; how not on Orchard 
 Street? Abravaya described the crowded state of the 
 street at night. So many people came and went, there 
 was such a stir of restless wretches shifting their places 
 or their positions, that heavy eyes paid little heed to 
 what shadowy figures slunk about. 
 
 An automobile would have attracted instant notice. 
 No car or carriage had visited the street. 
 
 It occurred to Hallard that Merithew himself would 
 probably have done what he could to avoid attention in 
 this place. But how could he have found his way thither 
 without asking questions? Perhaps, after all, the woman 
 had brought him had guided him, perhaps, on some 
 made-up errand in order that she might rob him. But 
 robbery might not have been the sole motive. Black- 
 mail might have been the object or revenge, a woman's 
 revenge with a pretense of robbery to disguise the crime. 
 This theory appealed to Hallard; it made good news- 
 paper material. He was going to "sling himself" in a 
 description of the emotions the woman of mystery felt 
 when she felt the hideous closing of those fingers on her 
 hair. 
 
 Always he came back to that hair. And now he felt 
 enough at home to ask if his host knew any neighbor whose 
 tresses were of that hue. Abravaya was sure that his 
 wife was the only possessor of such a treasure. He spoke 
 to her. He translated her answer: 
 
 "Sarah, my wife, says she did seen no hair like those 
 since Maryla Sokalska is move away." 
 
 "Maryla Sokalska?" Hallard answered, inscribing the 
 name on his memory. "When did she move? Where? 
 Why?" 
 
 Abravaya translated his English into Ladino, and 
 Sarah's answer into English: 
 
 " Sarah, my wife, says it is not of her business. She saw 
 her go. She cried. Mees Sokalska her father is Meesteh 
 Sokalski he live in thees buildink." 
 
 18
 
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 Hallard talked of other things, then made his exit 
 with an effort at ceremonial. 
 
 The narrow, dark and dingy halls were still packed. 
 Little Hermann was not far away. He took pride and 
 profit from leading Hallard down a flight of stairs to the 
 door of the Sokalskis. 
 
 Hallard knocked, and a venerable man with the beard 
 of a prophet and the eyes of a Lear opened the door. He 
 bowed when Hallard named him. Inside the room there 
 were sewing-machines whirring. Hallard asked: 
 
 "Does Miss Maryla Sokalska live here?" 
 
 The old man's questioning eyes filled with a tragic fire 
 like Ezekiel's. His lean hand went into his beard. He 
 shook his head. The sewing-machines stopped as if they, 
 too, were listening. 
 
 "Can you tell me where she lives?" Hallard went on. 
 
 The ancient closed his eyes and answered, huskily: 
 
 "Ve know her not. To us she is dett. Ve have 
 made a mournink for seven days in our ho'se. See, I have 
 rendet my garmends." He pointed to the lapels of his 
 coat. They were slashed. "She is livink no longair." 
 
 Hallard had heard that some of the orthodox Jews, in 
 the rare instances where their daughters brought disgrace 
 upon the home, turned them forth into the wilderness 
 like scapegoats, and counted them as buried. 
 
 Another man might have lifted his hat and turned 
 away in respect of such misery, but Hallard's business 
 was the publication of the things that break the hearts and 
 the prides of families. He spoke with much deference: 
 
 "Do you happen to know if if your daughter knew a 
 Mr. Merithew?" 
 
 The name seemed to have the effect of a poison in the 
 old man's ears. His grief turned to Mosaic hatred. He 
 gnashed his teeth. His beard wagged with fury. He 
 made haste to close the door. 
 
 Hallard tapped; it was not opened. He tried th3 
 
 19
 
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 knob; it was locked. He called through; there was no 
 answer. 
 
 Hallard used to say, "The only thing that gives me the 
 nerve to ask people some of the questions I do is the fact 
 that they haven't got self-respect enough to kick me out." 
 
 Hallard did not blush at the rebuff he had had. He 
 rather respected the old man for his insult. But he did 
 not relinquish his interest in the affair. His eyes were 
 kindled with encouragement. In the tenement where 
 Perry Merithew was found he had discovered a family to 
 whom the name of Perry Merithew was an abomination. 
 That was both news and clues in good measure. 
 
 His next step must be the finding of Maryla Sokalska. 
 He was sure that he was a lap or two ahead of the detec- 
 tives or the other reporters. So many roads to take, so 
 many things to do, occurred to his brain, that he wished 
 he were a hundred men instead of hardly more than one. 
 
 Before he took up his new path he hurried over to the 
 Bowery. At a corner news-stand the dealer was just 
 opening the bundles of the latest extras. Hallard bought 
 them all. None of them had a word of Merithew. Up 
 the wide avenue came a low, rakish motor-truck at 
 furious speed. It was a Gazette delivery-car. The men, 
 knee-deep in bundles, threw one off to the dealer. 
 
 Hallard cut the string himself, and slapped the paper 
 open. Across the top of the front page in letters two 
 inches tall and as red as gore was the legend: 
 
 MERITHEW MURDERED 
 
 In black: letters only an inch tall and dwindling line by line, 
 he read: 
 
 COPPER-HAIRED BEAUTY 
 
 SLAYS SOCIETY'S PET 
 
 BODY OF "MERRY PERRY" MERITHEW 
 
 MULTIMILLIONAIRE FOUND 
 
 ON SLUM ROOF
 
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 The Gazette's resourceful city editor, Mr. Ulery, had 
 turned up the matrix of a large portrait of Merry Perry 
 in a costume he had worn at a famous fete. Perry had 
 appeared as a Sultan, to the delight and assistance of the 
 wits. Mr. Ulery had ordered the material of the obituary 
 department into linotype while the block letters of the 
 head-lines were being set up. To make room for the 
 sensation he had thrown out bodily three or four items of 
 world-wide importance. Altogether the Gazette's special 
 extra treated Merithew handsomely. 
 
 Hallard looked at the extras of the other papers. Not 
 one of them mentioned Merithew. They were full of the 
 same old European war rumors. Hallard had scored a 
 great beat. It was pleasant to work for a city editor like 
 Ulery who could respond to the spur like that. It was a 
 great joke on the other papers. They would have to 
 steal their news from the Gazette this time. To-morrow the 
 Gazette would crow over them and reproduce photographs 
 of their Merithewless head-lines. 
 
 Hallard hurried to a drug-store to dictate from the 
 telephone-booth a masterpiece of information. Since 
 Ulery had done so well and so promptly by the first scant 
 message, what would he not do when he learned of the hair 
 and the Sokalska who had sinned to banishment and been 
 mourned as dead? Hallard suggested to Ulery a number 
 of more prominent names that might be linked with 
 Merithew's and advised the release of further news- 
 beagles in all directions. 
 
 He and the city editor exchanged exclamations of 
 rapture over the nice bluggy nature of the event. They 
 were artists in their way and they were beginning a great 
 fresco. 
 
 If a citizen of the Dark Ages could be wakened from his 
 centuries of sleep he would marvel somewhat at our tall 
 buildings though they had pretty tall buildings then 
 but he would wonder more at our enormous improvement 
 in the machinery of gossip. 
 
 21
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 If he had seen the brindled Hallard steal into a little 
 closet like a confessional, and by whispering into a small 
 rubber cup summon the tormenting imps of publicity to 
 their tasks and set free the roaring dragons of the presses, 
 the revenant would have marveled indeed. But he would 
 have sworn that he saw horns on Hallard's forehead; he 
 would have sniffed brimstone, and he would have crossed 
 himself.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 TO find Maryla Sokalska was Hallard's next chore. 
 He was about to plunge back into the region where 
 she had lived, but it occurred to him that since her 
 father's home had been closed against her she would 
 hardly have lingered in that neighborhood. 
 
 Hallard could not imagine why she should have brought 
 Merithew down there, even to rob him. But motives were 
 not his affair : they were important to God and the juries, 
 not to the reporter. His traffic was in deeds. 
 
 Hallard reasoned that the best place to begin back- 
 tracking Miss Sokalska was from the latest trail of 
 Mr. Merithew. 
 
 Perhaps the news of his death had not yet broken like 
 a thunderbolt across his home. The Gazette wagons, with 
 their freight of sensation, would hardly yet have reached 
 so far north as the granite residence on Central Park East, 
 where the "Seeing New York" lecturers always mega- 
 phoned their pop-eyed flocks: 
 
 "On your right the handsome residence of Mr. 
 Parry Marithoo, the famous bone vivong." 
 
 Some one down-town buying the Gazette and learning 
 the truth might have telephoned to Mrs. Merithew 
 but perhaps not yet. Some one certainly would at any 
 moment. Hallaid looked for the name in the telephone- 
 book. It was not given there. He remembered that it 
 was a private wire and not listed. Once before he had 
 noted it in his memorandum-book. He found it there 
 and dropped another nickel in the slot. When the con- 
 
 23
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 nection was made he asked for Mr. Merithew. A man's 
 voice answered: 
 
 "He's not a tome, sir." 
 
 There was a butleresque intonation in the answer and 
 no indication of tragedy. 
 
 Hallard asked for Mrs. Merithew, and managed to elicit 
 a hint that she was probably at a committee meeting in 
 the Charities Building. 
 
 Hallard said: "Well, can't you tell me where I'll find 
 Perry er, Mr. Merithew? It's awfully important." 
 
 The apparent slip into the first name was as effective 
 with the butler as a letter of introduction. He answered : 
 "Sorry, sir, I can't say. But if you please to keep the 
 line a moment I'll put you through to his man." 
 
 The clutter of the telephone evoked another voice, to 
 which the butler's voice said: "A friend of the master's 
 is inquiring where he could be found. It's important." 
 
 Then the valet's voice, full of hand-rubbing obsequious- 
 ness: 
 
 "I've had no word from him since yesterday, seh. He 
 is not supposed to be in town during the hot weather, you 
 know. I ran in myself only by accident. He may have 
 stopped aboard some friend's yacht last night, or at the 
 Piping Rock Club, perhaps. He's not likely to dine a tome, 
 either, I believe. Any message, seh?" 
 
 Hallard did not tell the valet that Mr. Merithew would 
 not dine at home, and probably would not sup in paradise. 
 He lowered his voice confidentially: 
 
 "Well, I'll tell you. I'm Mr. Brown, the jeweler. 
 Mr. Merithew ordered me to make a bracelet for for 
 Miss Maryla Sokalska, you know. I was to deliver it to 
 her. It's ready, but I've lost the address he gave me. 
 Where can I find her?" 
 
 The valet's gasp was audible: "Miss Sokalska, seh? 
 I didn't know as we had seen 'ide nor 'air of her almost 
 a year past. I haven't an idea of her whereabouts, seh, if 
 she has any." 
 
 24
 
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 This was discouraging. Hallard hung up the receiver 
 and hurried from the booth to the Subway station at 
 Bleecker Street. Nearly everybody on the up-town train 
 was reading the Gazette's exclusive story. Persons who 
 had bought other papers were more or less openly filching 
 the news from those who held Gazettes in their hands. 
 Some of the owners of Gazettes were jealously endeavoring 
 to fold up their treasure from the public eye. Kindlier 
 owners were actually waiting till those over-shoulder had 
 finished before they turned the page. 
 
 Thus character makes itself known incessantly in- 
 fmitesimally. People's souls fairly perspire from them. 
 The miser picks up the discarded newspaper and hugs it 
 with automatic stinginess, while the spendthrift scatters 
 his extra to the winds. The snooper neglects his own 
 comic page to read his neighbor's editorial; the snob 
 closes his eyes against the head-lines the strap-hanger rubs 
 against his very nose. 
 
 Hallard gloated upon the success of his story with the 
 pride of an author who sees his book in many hands. He 
 promised the public an exciting serial in daily instalments. 
 
 He left the train at Twenty-third Street and hastened 
 round the corner to the United Charities Building. Here 
 he saw that a handsome limousine was waiting at the 
 curb. A footman stood by the door with a linen lap-robe 
 folded over his arm. He was democratic enough to be 
 exchanging badinage out of the side of his mouth with the 
 shabby driver of a shabbier taxicab drawn up aft of the 
 limousine. 
 
 Suddenly the footman motioned the taxi-man to silence 
 and came to attention. Two women appeared. Hallard 
 at once recognized the elder of them as Mrs. Merithew. 
 He observed at once that her hair was devoid of auburn. 
 She was laughing delightedly over something. Plainly 
 she knew nothing of her husband's fate. Then he noted 
 that the young woman with Mrs. Merithew had copper- 
 colored hair. Could she have been the Hallard 
 
 25
 
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 checked his suspicion instantly, for he recognized her as 
 Muriel Schuyler, the daughter of one of the wealthiest 
 men in town. 
 
 Muriel Schuyler stood high among Hallard's few ad- 
 mirations, especially among the rich. She was young and 
 handsome and full of vivacity, a daring horsewoman, a 
 tireless dancer, opera-goer, and frequenter of the theaters, 
 yet she was to be found often among the poor. Hallard 
 had seen her once or twice moving through the slums like 
 a saint of all help. 
 
 This renewed his suspicion. Since she knew the East 
 Side so well she might have been there with Merithew. 
 Again he banished the thought, and with disgust. He 
 must not let himself get so low as to practise his cynicism 
 on so good a girl as Muriel Schuyler. Had she not just 
 come from a charity meeting? Was she not in the com- 
 pany of the dead man's wife? 
 
 Yet she was evidently agitated. But the committee 
 meeting may have gone wrong. Her excitement might be 
 merely due to her struggle with Mrs. Merithew, who was 
 urging her to ride home in the smart Merithew limousine 
 instead of the dingy taxicab that Miss Schuyler had picked 
 up somewhere. Miss Schuyler was used to going about 
 afoot or in taxies, since she went often in places where her 
 father's motors would be too conspicuous. 
 
 Hallard watched the brief duel of the sort women in- 
 dulge in when it comes to paying for the car-fare or the 
 tea or the matinee tickets. Mrs. Merithew won at last. 
 Miss Schuyler sighed, "Oh, all right!" and went to dis- 
 miss the taxi-driver. She paid him liberally enough to 
 get his hat off his head and profuse thanks from his cynical 
 lips, but there was a look of fond regret in his eyes at 
 losing her, and the smile he gave her was more than 
 commercial. 
 
 Before the footman could close the door of the limousine 
 upon Miss Schuyler and her triumphant hostess Hallard 
 pressed forward, lifting his hat: 
 
 26
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Merithew!" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I beg your pardon, but can you" he hardly hesitated 
 before he asked the ghoulish question "can you tell me 
 where I could find your husband? It's very important." 
 
 ' ' My husband ? ' ' She smiled without mirth ; then turned 
 and murmured to Miss Schuyler, "A funny question to 
 ask me!" She saw that Hallard had overheard, and 
 she bit her hasty lips in regret. She tried to save the day 
 by asking, "Have you tried his office?" 
 
 Perry's office had been a joke. It was the one place he 
 could never be found. It was merely a bureau where a 
 few clerks attended to the details of the estates he had 
 inherited, kept his coupons shorn, and provided him with 
 spending-money. 
 
 Hallard said that Merithew was not at his office. Mrs. 
 Merithew next suggested: 
 
 "Did you try the Yacht Club or the Brook or the 
 Racquet or " 
 
 Hallard nodded to each. 
 
 She confessed her ignorance: "He's not often in town 
 at this time of the year." 
 
 "He was in town last night," Hallard persisted. 
 
 "Then you know more than I do," said Mrs. Merithew, 
 a trifle harshly, and nodded to the footman, who closed the 
 door in spite of Hallard, and trotted round to his place 
 by the chauffeur. The car moved forward, and Hallard 
 followed to Fourth Avenue, staring after it with a relapse to 
 pity. He almost spoke his thought aloud: 
 
 "Poor woman, a pretty home she's got to go to !" 
 
 He was glad that Muriel Schuyler would be with her at 
 the crash of the news. 
 
 Merithew had not been a good husband, as everybody 
 knew. These merry fellows abroad are apt to be dis- 
 tressing enough at home. Mrs. Merithew had worn a 
 mask of complacency over a mien of despair. She did not 
 
 27
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 believe in any other divorce than the sort that death had 
 already given her without warning or mercy. She had 
 shunned the thought of releasing herself, for fear of the 
 scandal. And now the greater scandal was to be her 
 endless alimony. 
 
 Hallard remembered that occasional rumors had blown 
 through newspaper offices, whispering that she was going 
 to break with Perry after all. Most recently the core- 
 spondent-elect had been a Miss or was it Mrs. ? Aphra 
 Shaler. 
 
 Aphra Shaler had been the latest to waste Merithew's 
 time and himself. Hallard wondered why he had not 
 thought of her at once. He wondered if she did not have 
 copper-colored hair. He wondered where to find her. 
 He could learn by telephoning from the corner drug-store. 
 
 By the time he reached Twenty-third Street he had 
 caught up with the Merithew limousine, which had been 
 halted by a cross-town street-car. He felt an impulse to 
 run and ask Mrs. Merithew if she knew where her rival 
 lived and what the color of her hair might be. It would 
 have bsen a brutal question to put to her, but Hallard 
 was willing to ask anybody about anything. 
 
 At that moment, however, the street was invaded by 
 one of those bellowing herds of news-bulls that run amuck 
 now and then, usually without the excuse of important 
 news. One of them charged on the Merithew limousine, 
 waving an inarticulate "Huxtry! wuxtry! All about 
 hor'ble murrurr!" 
 
 Hallard stood fast to see how Mrs. Merithew would 
 take the shock. But she had been fooled too often by 
 ..hese swindlers to pay them any heed. She did not even 
 glance at th3 man who waved the sheet of press-damp 
 paper on which her name was printed in red. The police- 
 man whistled. Her car moved on. She was spared at 
 least the catastrophe of learning publicly what ruin had 
 befallen her romance. 
 
 For her marriage had been a romance, begun in her 
 
 28
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 youth, when her girlhood dream came true and she cap- 
 tured "Merry Perry," the young, the handsome, the rich, 
 the witty, the fascinating gallant. 
 
 She had been the envy of other women who coveted 
 her treasure. And a treasure he had been for a full 
 honeymoon. He had revealed the passionate devotion 
 and the irresponsible flickerings of a bright bird. Then 
 he had wavered and flown farther and farther. There 
 were heartaches and rapturous flights back home, flights 
 abroad together, hunting-parties, yacht solitudes, and 
 yacht festivals. He was for ever in search of entertain- 
 ment, but he found it more and more away from her. Her 
 heart did not so much break as it filled with infinite little 
 breaks like Satsuma ware. 
 
 She got used to heartbreaks, as people do, and sought 
 for diversion where she could find it. Like a queen whose 
 royal consort neglects her for a Du. Barry or many of them, 
 she established a little court of her own and conducted a 
 home where respectability and brilliance weie pretty well 
 combined. In that home their son, Perry Merithew II., 
 was reared, knowing little of his father, for Perry I. 
 came and went like any other guest who was asked no 
 questions as to his engagements. 
 
 Eventually the Merithews settled down to that sort 
 of unofficial divorce which is known as an "under- 
 standing." She suffered less and less from his derelic- 
 tions. She would have said that nothing he could do 
 would grieve her any more she had been able to 
 laugh at the thought of being asked where he was. 
 When she bit her lip it was not over her tragedy, but 
 over her tactlessness. 
 
 Now she was to learn how horribly Perry Merithew could 
 still hurt her. All the rest of her life the mention of her 
 very name would recall the disaster of his end. 
 
 Henceforth the very home she was hurrying to now 
 would be one of the sights of the town. The grotesque 
 "Seeing New York" wagons would move past her chateau 
 
 29
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 in Fifth Avenue slowly, that the tourists might gape, not 
 at its architecture, but at its tradition. 
 
 The twanging barkers would chant their sardonic 
 serenades under her windows, crying, one after another, 
 day after day: 
 
 "On the right, I draw your atten-shan tew the pala-shel 
 resi-dince of the famis vic-timm of the greatist marder 
 myst'ree of the day Parry Marithoo, whewse bodee 
 was found on the rewf of a tenemint in the dregs of the 
 slums. This tenemint will be visited on this and every 
 evening by our speshil touring-car on our famis tour of the 
 harribill slums, inclooding the warld-famis Bow-ree; the 
 haunts of Chinytown with its harribill opium-dens; Mul- 
 b'ry Bend, the home of the Black Hand, and all the other 
 tarribill sights of the night life of this great and wickid 
 city. Car leaves our offis at twelve o'clock midnight: 
 all inclooded for the modist sum of one dollar; reducshun 
 for parties. The home of Parry Marithoo, ladies and 
 gentlemin, now inhabited by his widow."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE thing that Hallard was most ashamed of was his 
 failure to think of Aphra Shaler the moment he 
 thought of Perry Merithew. 
 
 Aphra was one of the unfailing supply of wrong wom- 
 en that every small town produces as every small town 
 produces poets, soldiers, financiers, and statesmen who 
 smother there or migrate to more crowded opportunities. 
 
 When Mr. Gray was writing his Elegy in his country 
 churchyard he devoted his noble regrets solely to "the 
 destiny obscure" of the good, the beautiful, and the 
 great who had suffered oblivion: the gem in the un- 
 fathomed cave, the flower in the desert, the mute inglorious 
 Milton, the village Hampden, the blood-guiltless Cromwell. 
 
 He might have gone farther and found in other of those 
 "narrow cells" the frustrated fames of base metals, 
 poisonous plants, mute, non-notorious Messalinas, village 
 Pompadours, and Lady Emma Hamiltons of limited 
 guilt. 
 
 The great cities produce enough depravity for home 
 consumption, Heaven knows; but they attract also the 
 ambitious village Delilahs who are discontented with their 
 local Samsons, who scorn the farmer's homely vices, the 
 hamlet's austere duplicities, and the shoddy profligacies 
 of the smaller cities. They dream of larger opportunities, 
 where talent of one sort or another can prosper to mag- 
 nificence. 
 
 Aphra Shaler was one of these. The daughter of an 
 almost too virtuous father and mother in a four-corners 
 of Arcadian innocence of appearance she had turned
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 her father's hair white and got herself turned out of the 
 house before she was sixteen. 
 
 Then she obtained a place in a small-town factory 
 where her smiles manufactured domestic earthquakes 
 successively for laborers, foremen, the superintendent, 
 and one of the partners. She found this place too cold 
 for her. 
 
 The advancing Napoleonne moved next to a middle- 
 sized city, where she flourished exceedingly till a selfish 
 and inconsiderate young married cashier committed, as 
 it were, hara-kiri on her door-step. His suicide was de- 
 plored, but when it was found that he had been also an 
 embezzler and had almost emptied a small savings-bank 
 at Aphra's feet, the heartless public made the place too 
 hot for her, and she was offered a choice between a cozy- 
 corner in jail and a seat in the next train out of town. 
 
 Dazed at the extent of human heartlessness, she drifted 
 to the wicked metropolis as the tiny prattling brooklet 
 lapses to the cruel sea. In New York she found the com- 
 petition fierce and the industry overcrowded, but her gifts 
 and her inalienable look of innocence helped her to pros- 
 per intermittently. Her extravagance was indeed the 
 only check on her commercial importance. She took the 
 cash and let the credit go also the creditors. This 
 brought her in occasional conflict with a class of collectors 
 who rejected her tears and promises and even her smiles 
 as non-negotiable. Otherwise her success in her chosen 
 career was almost perfect. 
 
 We are always capable of being amazed to incredulity 
 by the oldest things in the world, such as the fact that 
 sunsets are frequently crimson, that violets come out 
 of the black ground along about springtime, that lilies 
 aspire from manure, that the lightning does not strike the 
 unjust, and that women can be very, very wicked without 
 losing their dimples, their ingenuous stares, their infantile 
 peaches-and-cream, their childish laughter, or their April 
 tears. 
 
 32
 
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 Aphra Shaler was of the type whose fresh young beauty 
 lawyers point out to jurors as proof of innocence. She 
 had thus far escaped appearing before the courts, except 
 in one or two battles with dressmakers whom she did not 
 believe in paying. But she was constantly on trial before 
 the men whom she canvassed while making them think 
 they were paying suit to her. 
 
 She had a positive genius for weeping at just the right 
 time to just the right extent for bedewing her cheeks 
 without inflaming her nose. She could ensconce herself 
 in the best corner of a man's heart even of a good man's 
 heart like a little worm in an apple blossom. And 
 gradually by feeding on his noblest motives she would 
 eat her way out and leave a rotten hole in his life. 
 
 Warm-hearted gentlemen who had not been brutes 
 enough to despise a distraught girl in an anguish of per- 
 plexity found themselves preyed upon from within and 
 then disgraced to the outer eye. Perhaps it hurts even 
 an apple to be gnawed by a worm, and to feel itself de- 
 stroyed upon the bough, and to drop at last from eminence 
 to the slums under the trees. 
 
 The world is full of Aphra Shalers and always has been. 
 They are the loudest bewailers of their own lost virtues, if 
 one can be said to lose what one has never found. They 
 denounce their victims as their conquerors no doubt the 
 harpies scolded the very bones of the men who invaded 
 the sanctity of their islands just because the harpies 
 were singing a few little innocent songs and meaning no 
 harm. 
 
 Aphra Shaler always used to tell her next victim how 
 her last victim (who in the telling was always her first 
 victor) had won his way to her very soul with fiendish 
 skill, and then deserted her with inconceivable treachery. 
 She used to beat her sofa-pillow with a fist full of tear- 
 soaked handkerchief, and groan: 
 
 "Oh, it's a man's world, I tell you! Nobody cares 
 what a man does ! But the woman one step and she is 
 
 33
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 never forgiven! never! The man escapes, but the 
 woman pays and pays and PAYS!" 
 
 Thus Aphra would declaim, simply clad in the demurest 
 costume obtainable in the Rue de la Paix, in a simply 
 gorgeous little apartment in a simply unmentionable 
 hotel. She was not exactly insincere, for it is almost 
 impossible to be truly insincere people keep mixing 
 consistency with sincerity. Aphra was honestly for- 
 getting the little private hell she had populated with young 
 men and old who had given her their innocence, their 
 trust, their ardor, their homes, their reputations, their 
 characters, their bank accounts, and already in one case, 
 life itself. 
 
 None of these men dared to blame Aphra. Even in 
 their own hearts they hardly dared to blame Aphra. 
 They would have laughed themselves to scorn before the 
 world had a chance to laugh. For a man must be at least a 
 good sport, whatever else he is of knave or fool. But the 
 wives of some of Aphra's victims blamed Aphra, and took 
 their husbands back with a forgiveness that was not 
 entirely complimentary the forgiveness one extends to a 
 blundering imbecile. 
 
 Thus finally Aphra had landed Perry Merithew, or, 
 rather, as she explained it, persistently unfortunate child 
 that she was, she was so cruelly misjudged by a heartless 
 world that she fell at last into the powers of the arch- 
 roue' himself, as Satan finally captures the wretch whom 
 the minor implets have lured astray. 
 
 The fact was that Perry had heard a deal about Aphra, 
 and had despised her till he met her at a dance-palace one 
 night. It had needed just one look into those limpid 
 eyes to show him what a ewe lamb she was. Truth fairly 
 glowed in that piteous mien, a face like Joan's of Arc in 
 the flames where the perfidious English put her in spite 
 of her saintliness. Merithew had only to hear that un- 
 sullied, unsuspecting voice, and clasp that timorous, hot 
 hand, to know that Aphra Shaler was the victim of one of 
 
 34
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 the most loathsome conspiracies of slander ever con- 
 federated. 
 
 Like all men who know the world too well, Perry had 
 long ago lost all his original illusions and had manu- 
 factured still more and bigger illusions to take their places 
 as we grow hard molar and canine and bicuspid gum- 
 bones when our pretty little milk-teeth fall out. 
 
 Men of Merithew's experience come to know so much 
 wickedness in innocent guise, and so much innocence 
 under wicked appearances, that they get quite turned 
 about. 
 
 For two years now Merry Perry had been attracting the 
 attention of all New York by his lavish efforts to console 
 the disconsolate Aphra. Occasionally they had quarreled 
 and parted, but their reunions were inevitable. Perry 
 kept up costly attempts to make her forget the cruelty 
 of other men in the generosity of one, to cheat her of a 
 tear or charm her to a smile by way of a diamond sun- 
 burst or a six-cy Under runabout. 
 
 She could weep a new ring out of him in twenty minutes 
 by the clock, and when she pounded the sofa-cushion and 
 began her moan, "The woman pays and pays and " he 
 usually beat her to the third "pays." 
 
 Aphra was nearly as convinced as Perry was that she 
 had led a tragic existence and was mere flotsam hurled by 
 the relentless waves of life against the rocky cliffs of a 
 world which would never let a fallen woman prosper. 
 And so in all sincerity she kept Perry Merithew captive 
 by his Samaritanism. He was devoted to indecency by his 
 best motives of decency and chivalry and by his illusions. 
 
 And the two of them became almost a national byword 
 as an atrocious instance of such shamelessness as only a 
 sink of iniquity like New York would tolerate. 
 
 "O justice of the world!" 
 
 Perry's intrigue with Aphra was well known to Hal- 
 lard. He had written Aphra up once or twice before. 
 
 35
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Whatever his personal opinions, he had never sullied his 
 reportorial pen by calling her any names. Aphra, indeed, 
 had always the best treatment the press could afford hei . 
 Her beauty was advertised in reading-matter to an extent 
 that made actresses writhe ; her portraits were published 
 with a conspicuousness that spoiled the day for press- 
 agents. 
 
 But at this moment Hallard, who could remember so 
 much about Aphra, could not for the life of him remember 
 the color of her hair. Men ordinarily forget, if they note 
 at all, the pigmentation of their most intimate acquaint- 
 ances and relations. 
 
 Hallard had a queer feeling that Aphra's hair had been 
 yellow once and black another time. "I'm getting old," 
 he groaned to himself. "I've got to cut out the booze." 
 
 He called up a few people who would be likely to know 
 where Aphra lived. He finally learned her latest address, 
 and asked about her hair. The voice came back: 
 
 "When I saw her yesterday it was lovely auburn, 
 fairest village of the plain. Why?" 
 
 "Much obliged!" said Hallard, and darted away. 
 Outside her apartment hotel in the late forties he found 
 a handsome motor loaded with baggage. Inside, the 
 ebony telephone-operator informed him that .Mrs. Shaler 
 was just leaving town and positively could not see nobody. 
 Hallard went up to her door, nevertheless, and her ebony 
 maid told him the same thing. He walked right in and 
 found Aphra kneeling and using holy words she was 
 trying to persuade a suit-case to be a steamer-trunk. 
 
 While the maid was staring at him like a mask of 
 onyx and ivory Hallard knelt on Aphra's suit-case and 
 snapped the catches for her. She stared at him as if he 
 were a genie just bubbled out of a bottle. He stared at 
 her to make sure of that hair. He swore internally. 
 She had on a hat and a motor-veil that completely swathed 
 her locks. 
 
 She demanded with immediate wrath: 
 
 36
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "How did you get in here? Who are you, anyway? 
 Whatcha want? I'm in a hurry." 
 
 " Why, don't you remember me?" Hallard asked, with in- 
 fantile surprise. " I wrote a lovely story about you once." 
 
 "Oh, did you! Well, I got no time for stories. I'm in 
 a hurry." 
 
 He only grinned and wheedled: 
 
 "Sit down and make yourself at home. Take off your 
 hat and have a cup of tea." 
 
 He took off his hat, tossed it on a table, and dropped 
 into a chair, after removing a newspaper from it. It 
 almost burnt his fingers, for it was the Merithew extra 
 of the Gazette, He said nothing, but he felt that he knew 
 the reason for Aphra's flight. 
 
 Aphra was not in one of her helpless moods. She rose 
 and handed him his hat with a curt, "Good-by!" 
 
 Hallard set out his net. "Just half a mo', Mrs. 
 Shaler. I'm getting up a Sunday special on the various 
 types of beauty. It's to be a swell thing. I've got 
 several of the best-lookers in town. A couple of members 
 of the Four Hundred among 'em. I want your picture to 
 represent the auburn-haired type. Will you give me a 
 photograph before you go?" 
 
 He thought he saw a start in her eyes. 
 
 "I haven't got auburn hair. I'm an ash-blonde." 
 
 "Good Lord!" said Hallard. "Since when?" 
 
 "For some time." 
 
 "But you had auburn hair this morning." 
 
 Aphra threw him a quick glance, then answered, re- 
 luctantly: 
 
 "You're another! It was yesterday I changed." 
 
 Hallard pleaded: "Are you sure you're not auburn? 
 I was wanting to call you the true Titian Venus." 
 
 "Titian nothin' !" said Aphra, glancing anxiously at her 
 bracelet-watch . 
 
 "I'm from Missouri," said Hallard. "You gotta show 
 me." 
 
 37
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 She snatched out a hat-pin, whipped away her hat and 
 veil, and disclosed a massive coiffure of a dull-ivory tint, 
 in the shadows almost a pallid mauve. 
 
 "Am I auburn or am I ash?" she demanded. 
 
 "Ashes of roses!" Hallard sighed. 
 
 Then she jammed her hat on again and drove the pin 
 home. 
 
 The thrust of that pin gave Hallard an idea. The 
 hat-pin as a weapon had been very popular of late in 
 melodrama and magazine. Perhaps that very pin or its 
 twin had done for Perry Merithew. He wished he had it. 
 He tried to see if the head of it were an amethyst in a claw, 
 but her hand covered it now and the veil hid it when it 
 was in place. 
 
 "You had auburn hair yesterday?" Hallard persisted. 
 
 "In the morning, yes," snapped Aphra. "In the 
 afternoon, no." 
 
 " Who dyed it for you?" 
 
 "That's my affair." 
 
 "How long would it take a bottle of peroxide to work 
 if you emptied it on your head?" 
 
 "Well, of all the nerve!" she cried. 
 
 The maid appeared: "Miss Aphry, yo' cheffoor says if 
 you goin' git to Noo Juzzy befo' sundown you got to take 
 yo' feet in yo' han'." 
 
 Aphra seized the suit-case, the maid caught up two 
 others, and they moved to the door. Hallard let the maid 
 go, then intercepted Aphra. He closed the hall door 
 behind him and said: 
 
 "Oh, by the way, have you heard that Perry Merithew 
 was murdered last night?" 
 
 "No yes." 
 
 "It doesn't seem to shock you much." 
 
 "Why should it? We had a big quarrel the other day." 
 
 ' ' A quarrel, eh ? Then you mustn't leave town. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Oh, mustn't I ? Who's to stop me ?" 
 
 "I'm going to." 
 
 38
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Her lip crinkled with angry contempt as she sneered: 
 
 "Say! You reporters are doing all the policemen's 
 work, ain't you aren't you?" 
 
 " Not quite. But I want you to stay here." 
 
 "Got a warrant?" 
 
 "No, but" 
 
 "Then you get out of my way or I'll pin you to that 
 door with this." She put her hand to her hat. 
 
 Hallard wanted to get that pin, but not in the flesh. 
 He had no desire to be found there as victim number 
 two. He opened the door and entered the elevator with 
 Aphra. He murmured over her shoulder: 
 
 "If you will let the Gazette take care of you, I can put 
 you where nobody will find you and we'll pay you anything 
 you want." 
 
 Aphra laughed. Hallard offered to carry her suit- 
 case for her. 
 
 "Not on your life," said Aphra. 
 
 She climbed into the car. Hallard was desperate 
 enough to have appealed to a policeman, but none was in 
 view. He put his hand on her arm as she settled along- 
 side her chauffeur. 
 
 "One last question," he said. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Where were you last night?" 
 
 "None of your damned business." 
 
 "Where are you going now?" 
 
 "The same to you and many of them. Go on." 
 
 As the car moved away she called back to him: "Take 
 a tip from me. Look up Muriel Schuyler. He liked her 
 and she had copper-colored wool. Her own, too!" 
 
 The car shot away as if a gun propelled it. Hallard 
 sniffed at her suggestion and set it down to jealousy or a 
 desperate ruse to shift suspicion. He went back to her 
 apartment to interview the maid. She gave him one 
 glance and slammed the door in his face. Then he heard 
 a bolt shot, and a mellow voice came through the panels: 
 
 39
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Man, they ain't no use pesterin' me. I don't know 
 nothin' a tall abote nothin' a tall. I'm the know-noth- 
 in'est nigro they is. Good day!" 
 
 And that was the last word that could be drawn from the 
 wood. 
 
 Still Hallard felt that there was excuse enough from his 
 standards to justify him in telephoning City Editor Ulery 
 about what he had turned up. He gave Ulery some 
 general notions of the proper treatment of Aphra Shaler 
 and reminded him that there were several large pictures 
 of her already in stock. Aphra Shaler's face consequently 
 appeared on the front page of a "postscript extra" with 
 adroit reference to her affair with Merithew and to her 
 reasons for flight. If the police wanted to make use of 
 Hallard's discoveries they could take them from his 
 bulletins. 
 
 He told Ulery that he hoped it would not be necessary 
 for him to go to New Jersey. He hated New Jersey. He 
 begged Ulery to call up the New Jersey correspondents 
 and set them on her track. Perhaps they could pick her 
 up at one of the ferry-houses as soon as she arrived on the 
 foreign soil of Hoboken, Weehawken, or Jersey City. 
 
 Ulery promised to take care of that end of the matter. 
 Then he told Hallard that there was a new development. 
 One of the Central Office men had let fall a hint that the 
 job looked like the work of "Red Ida." The word had 
 gone out to bring her in. 
 
 Hallard laughed so hard that he hurt Ulery 's ear: 
 
 " Poor Ida Ganley ! She's been very useful to the cops. 
 She told me once that whenever they were at a standstill 
 they always picked on her. She says she's been sent in 
 for everybody's crimes but her own. It's a frame-up, I 
 tell you. They haven't got anything on that poor little 
 pickpocket." 
 
 "Nothing but her copper-colored hair." 
 
 "Cleopatra had it, too, and I'll bet she's no farther 
 
 40
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 away. And what would Merithew be doing in the society 
 of a crook like Ida?" 
 
 "She's a swell looker when she's ragged out, and they 
 say she was seen dancing with him at a tango-palace. 
 She's done a little blackmail and some badger-work with 
 that gunman husband of hers. What's his name? he 
 ran the stuss-house right near there in Allen Street. 
 And the Central Office tells our man that both Ida and 
 her man have lammistered since this morning." 
 
 Hallard sighed: "Well, I'll nose round. But I don't 
 believe Perry Merithew ever fell for any East Side gun- 
 girl." 
 
 "He was robbed, wasn't he? His money was all gone; 
 his watch had been taken from the chain; his famous 
 diamond was missing from his finger; and his inevitable 
 black pearl was ripped out of his necktie good word 
 inevitable black pearl! I'll make a note of it. Go to it!" 
 
 This Ida theory might convince Ulery and the police, 
 but Hallard's reportorial instinct rejected it. 
 
 In any case the dilemma had two sharp horns: how 
 could a delicate plutocrat like Perry Merithew become 
 interested enough in any slum queen to follow her to such 
 a grimy district? Why should any of the women of his 
 own circle have taken him there? 
 
 Perhaps he had been murdered in some other place 
 and his body transported thither. This seemed more 
 improbable than any other theory, seeing that there were 
 at least two rivers far more accessible for the disposition of 
 the remains. And yet it was hardly less likely that Perry 
 Merithew should have been taken there dead than that 
 he should have gone there alive. 
 
 Of course the aristocrats did visit the slums occasionally, 
 those of them who had gentle hearts and who knew that 
 they were in no more danger among the tenements than 
 among the palaces. Muriel Schuyler, for instance, had 
 gone about in the slums with little less constraint than 
 she had felt in being alone on Fifth Avenue. 
 2 41
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Perhaps she had taken Perry Merithew there. She 
 could have persuaded him to go, if any one could. But 
 what could have persuaded her to trust herself alone with 
 him ? Why should so wealthy a girl have robbed him and 
 left him? If some one else killed him in her presence, why 
 had she not given the alarm? After such a scene, how 
 could she have had the face to ride with Mrs. Merithew 
 in pretended ignorance? 
 
 Yet why had Aphra Shaler tossed her name to him?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 T T ALLARD was as dissatisfied as a lean wolf on a cold 
 11 night, finding plenty of spoor to whet his hunger, 
 but reaching a barred fold at the end of every trail. 
 
 The matter of Aphra Shaler tantalized him. There 
 was so much that was suspicious about her that he began 
 to be less certain of her guilt. He had learned one great 
 lesson of life to suspect suspicion; to keep it alert and 
 elastic, but never to trust it, never to mistake it for 
 evidence. 
 
 And yet he must never dismiss suspicion with contempt. 
 The idlest suspicion was usually based on a complex of 
 experiences. It served with men for what women call 
 intuition. It was contemptibly untrustworthy, and yet 
 it won occasional amazing triumphs. 
 
 Why did a woman like Aphra Shaler mention a woman 
 like Muriel Schuyler ? Was it the natural jealousy of the 
 foul for the fair? Or had it some specific cause? 
 
 It was worth looking into in any case. At least Miss 
 Schuyler might help with some further information. He 
 knew that if he applied at the door of the Schuyler home 
 he would be turned away like a book-agent. If he tele- 
 phoned he would be similarly fended off by some secretary 
 or servant. Homes like the Schuylers' were so infested 
 with impertinent strangers that they had to put up screens 
 of all sorts. Their reporter-screen was particularly fine 
 of mesh and strong of wire. 
 
 Still, a try must always be had. He would buzz around 
 the Schuyler house. It would pique the public appetite 
 to attach another great name to the great name of Men- 
 
 43
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 thew. And it was easy enough to lug it in. The courts 
 count a citizen innocent till he or she is proved guilty, 
 but they lock him or her up till they make sure. The 
 newspapers imply guilt till the innocence is proved. An 
 "It is said" or "There is a rumor" or "An informant 
 stated " is excuse enough to admit anything to the columns. 
 
 Hallard took a Fifth Avenue stage up-town. There were 
 two copper-haired women aboard. People were staring 
 at them curiously. Along the street Hallard saw dozens 
 of copper heads. He noted that passers-by were nudging 
 one another and turning to stare after them. There would 
 be a great industry in alibi among all these auburn-tressed 
 folk for the next few days. 
 
 He descended from the 'bus a block below the noble 
 mansion of the Schuylers. He had not yet selected a 
 promising device for getting into the presence. Still, he 
 climbed the steps, trusting to his attendant divinity to 
 provide him with a sop for the Cerberus. 
 
 The door swung open as he reached for the button. 
 A young man was just being let out. Hallard fell back 
 unnoticed, wondering if the man might be some reporter 
 who had preceded him. The small black hand-bag was 
 reassuring. He was either a piano-tuner or a physician. 
 The butler solved the uncertainty. He was saying: 
 
 "I hope it's nothing serious, doctor." 
 
 "Oh no, a little too much excitement, that's all. But 
 it's better to have the nurse." 
 
 "Yes, sir; I always say 'an ounce of prevention' 
 Yes, sir; yes, doctor." 
 
 "When the nurse comes tell her not to wake Miss 
 Muriel if she's asleep." 
 
 "Oh no, sir. No, indeed, doctor." 
 
 "Tell her I left instructions with Miss Muriel's maid." 
 
 "Yes, doctor. You'll be looking in again soon, won't 
 you?" 
 
 " In an hour or two. Good-by." 
 
 "Good-by, doctor." 
 
 44
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Hallard let him close the door without making himself 
 known. He caught a glimpse of the servant's face 
 as he bowed. It was the face of a veteran soldier, quick 
 with deference to a superior, quick with hostility to an 
 intruder. His face was softened with anxiety now. So 
 was the face of the doctor, who turned and plodded down 
 the steps to the little car of which he was his own chauffeur. 
 
 Hallard caught up with him as he was about to get in. 
 "One moment, doctor, please. I was about to call on 
 Miss Schuyler, but I overheard you say that she was ill. 
 It's nothing serious, is it?" 
 
 "Oh no; but she's prostrated with shock. She was 
 with poor Mrs. Merithew when she learned of her hus- 
 band's death. Yo knew of that, didn't you?" 
 
 "I. saw something in one of the papers." 
 
 "Muriel er, Miss Schuyler was with her when the 
 news came, and Mrs. Merithew clung to her and poured 
 out her grief to her. She took it very hard, and the poor 
 girl has such a big heart that it nearly killed her. She 
 sent for me to help quiet Mrs. Merithew, and when I'd 
 done that I brought Miss Schuyler home. She'll be all 
 right, but it was a terrible drain on her strength." 
 
 "I don't suppose I'd better call, then?" 
 
 "I should say not. I've left orders that nobody is to 
 see her, not even her father and mother, till she's better." 
 
 " Did she know Mr. Merithew very well?" 
 
 "No, no; only casually. He wasn't her type and she 
 wasn't his." 
 
 Hallard was achingly eager to ask the doctor his name, 
 but before he could phrase the query to his liking the car 
 was moving off. He made note of its number, however, 
 and by telephoning to a friend at police headquarters soon 
 learned that the number belonged to the car of Dr. Clinton 
 Worthing. 
 
 Hallard remembered him dimly as a young hospital 
 interne he had met at an accident a year or so before. 
 It was a strange leap upward from the tail of an ambu- 
 
 45
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 lance to the post of physician in ordinary to the Schuyler 
 heiress. Mallard's memory of Worthing uncovered other 
 memories. He believed that he had seen the young doctor 
 in Muriel's company somewhere. 
 
 Where? When? 
 
 And then fatigue overtook his memory. His brain, like 
 an over-driven horse, calmly lay down in its shafts and 
 would not be kicked or yanked or coaxed to its feet. He 
 climbed aboard a down-town stage. He was too weary 
 to mount the shaking stairway ; he squeezed in among the 
 matrons and damozels. In the low voices he caught the 
 name of Merithew. It irritated him. He felt like a man 
 fallen among brambles. There was no repose in inaction, 
 and whichever way he turned was a new thorn. He had 
 scratched his eyes out among them and he must thresh 
 about among the brambles till he scratched them in 
 again. 
 
 He decided that he was hungry and thirsty. It was 
 not safe for him to drink at such a time. Taking his 
 first glass was like stepping aboard an unknown steamer 
 bound for an unknown port. 
 
 He sentenced himself to coffee and those innocent white 
 biscuit-like things that harsh experience has named 
 "sinkers." 
 
 As he entered a dairy lunch-room he fell back to make 
 way for a young shop-girl who was wearing a tooth- 
 pick coquettishly in her teeth. Her head was bundled 
 in swaddles of copper-colored hair. Hallard's heart 
 stumbled in its beat. He stared after her, tempted to 
 pursue her. She vanished in a chaos of traffic. He said, 
 "Perhaps she is the one." 
 
 But he was too fagged to run after her. He entered 
 the lunch-room. The cashier perched in her cage like a 
 wax automaton on exhibition had copper-colored hair. 
 It was heaped up high enough to conceal a dozen clippings. 
 
 There was red in the hair of the waitress at the next 
 table who chewed gum with one side of her mouth while she 
 
 46
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 demanded with the other, "Whatcha gona have?" Hal- 
 iard began to feel himself bewitched. 
 
 Nearly every one in the restaurant was reading about 
 Perry Merithew. Every newspaper gave his name as 
 much prominence as its customs permitted it to give to 
 any one or anything. ' 
 
 A man at Hallard's table showed his paper to the 
 waitress and said, with a clever smile: "Say, kiddo, was 
 you the dame that done it ? You got them copper-colored 
 coils all right, all right." 
 
 The waitress laughed good-naturedly as she set down 
 his coffee and syrup-pitcher and skirled the buckwheat- 
 cakes his way: 
 
 "You're the eight' guy's ast me that 's afternoon. If 
 you'd 'a' went to the Lady Piano Movers' ball las' night 
 and sor me dancin' every dance till breakfast-time you'd 
 know I been too busy to commit any moiders." 
 
 When Hallard went to the cashier with his check he had 
 to wait while a dapper jester from a haberdashery slipped 
 a little persiflage through the bars : 
 
 "Better get your excuses ready, girlie. The flatties 
 are lookin' for you in that little Merithew matter." 
 
 The cashier laughed loftily : 
 
 "I should worry and get a wrinkle! If little Me ever 
 got close enough to one of those kind of millionaires for 
 him to get his hands in me wool I'd never cut myself loose. 
 I'd stay right with him." 
 
 Hallard shot his money under the wicket and hurried 
 away, gleaning as he went a handful of toothpicks from an 
 enormous sheaf of them erected on a table. 
 
 In the street he almost ran into a copper-colored lady 
 climbing into a taxicab. He saw copper hair everywhere. 
 
 He telephoned Ulery, "I'm after Red Ida, but I think 
 I'm batty." 
 
 It is a serious business being a reporter-detective. 
 When a plain detective knows nothing he can keep quiet 
 
 47
 
 and look wise and let his salary work. A reporter- 
 detective on space rates must go right on reporting. 
 
 Hallard resolved once more that Vis best hope of trac- 
 ing Perry Merithew's companion was to keep as close to the 
 dead man's own history as possible and work outward 
 from that. 
 
 It would be a pleasanter task than pursuing Aphra 
 Shaler into New Jersey, or Maryla Sokalska from her 
 obscure beginnings, or Red Ida in her sordid career. And 
 it would make better copy, too, since the public has an 
 unslakable thirst for the petty chronicles of the rich, 
 while the poor can interest it only by some desperate 
 deed. 
 
 Appealing from Perry Merithew dead to Perry Meri- 
 thew alive, the first question was not so much how did 
 he happen to be on the roof as how did he happen to be 
 in New York at all during that bitterly trying week? 
 
 Thousands of sight-seers from other cities sweated along 
 the streets to see the tall buildings and imagine one 
 another New-Yorkers. But all the true New-Yorkers 
 who could afford to be absent kept aloof from the city. 
 And Perry Merithew could afford it. 
 
 Nobody of means came in except on business or charity, 
 and Perry Merithew had little business and less charity. 
 Mrs. Merithew and Muriel Schuyler had been lured in, 
 doubtless, by some Samaritan appeal, but Perry was 
 only a self-Samaritan. A strong motive, indeed, must 
 have driven him from his seaside resorts or his country 
 club to the frying city. 
 
 What was the motive? Who inspired it? But the 
 Hallards are depressing company at best. They do not 
 make themselves or anybody else happy. Whether they 
 do the world any good or not it is hard to say. It is 
 evident that the world does them very little good, and 
 gives them very little pleasure. 
 
 Hallard used to say that he "knew New York back- 
 ward." He spoke truer than he thought. He was for 
 
 48
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 ever working from crimes to criminals. He met his 
 people after they had done their worst. It was then too 
 late to realize how well or ill they had meant, or how 
 gradually they had arrived at a crisis that must have dis- 
 mayed them as much as the rest of the world. For the 
 man who finds another standing with a smoking revolver 
 over a victim is no more surprised than the man who finds 
 himself in such an attitude. But thereafter it is im- 
 possible for anybody, even for 'the*- man himself, to study 
 his past without seeing it darkly, as through the red 
 glass of its climax. 
 
 Hallard back-trailed Merithew's life till he could have 
 written a biography as full as BoswelTs. He followed 
 numberless clues and they led him into numerous laby- 
 rinths, up countless blind alleys. He finally narrowed his 
 list of copper-haired possibilities down to a few young 
 women of such variety in origin, quality, and motive that 
 they had hardly anything in common except the com- 
 munity of traits and interests that make humans human 
 and women women: hunger, desire, ambition, fear, van- 
 ity, and such impulses. 
 
 These women came to New York with more or less of 
 innocence and more or less of curiosity. 
 
 There was Aphra Shaler, the little pig who brought 
 herself to market: she came down from "up-state" and 
 crossed the river on a Forty-second Street ferry. There 
 was Mary la Sokalska, who was born at sea shortly before 
 her parents passed the Statue of Liberty in their flight 
 from the poverty and oppression of Russian Poland. 
 There was Red Ida, who came over the Brooklyn Bridge 
 from Sheepshead Bay, where she was born. There was 
 "Pet" Bettany, who was born in New England, but was 
 the least Puritanical of young women; she was born rich 
 and lived rich and always bewailed her poverty, and 
 came first from her native Newport to her adopted New 
 York in a Pullman drawing-room. And there was Muriel 
 Schuyler, who came to New York in the way that humorists 
 
 49
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 declare no one ever comes by way of being born in New 
 York. 
 
 These women learned the city forward through wide 
 young eyes; it thrilled their red young hearts. Perry 
 Merithew, too, thrilled them all with his love of beauty, 
 his flair for happiness, his tender-hearted heartlessness, 
 his cautious recklessness. 
 
 Rather than trace the story backward as Hallard did, 
 rather than travel the city under the guidance of a news- 
 paper jade who knew his New York too well, and whose 
 few moments of elation were due to the finding-out of 
 depressing things, it were more congenial, surely, to tell 
 the story as time unrolled it forward, without knowl- 
 edge of the goal. It is an old device, and a creaky, to 
 turn the calendar back for a year, but it saves the reader 
 from acquiring history upside down and from viewing the 
 gorgeous city through the yellow spectacles of a jaundiced 
 cynic. 
 
 Therefore, if it please the court, it ceases to be the 
 month of July, 1914; it becomes the month of August, 
 1913-
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 FOR it was just about a year before Perry Merithew's 
 death that Muriel Schuyler took note of him for the 
 first time. She had heard as much of him as a young 
 girl only recently come out was likely to hear of the beau 
 of the generation immediately preceding. She began to 
 go to big dances shortly after he quit going to them. 
 
 Like him she rose from the original New York stock. 
 The first of her name had landed on Manhattan Island 
 before there was a New York, when there was only a 
 Dutch trading-post called Nieuw Amsterdam. The 
 Dutch Schuylers grew English and wealthy with the town, 
 and, so far as age makes aristocracy, they were aristo- 
 cratic. So far as aristocracy consists in belonging to a 
 family that has for some time been wearing good clothes, 
 eating choice food, being well cared for and waited on, 
 traveling for pleasure, not being too much worried about 
 money, and associating with people of the same sort, they 
 were aristocratic. Like all aristocrats they had their 
 fields of ignorance, their limitations in things they could 
 afford, their moods of bad manners and wickedness. 
 
 Up to this time Muriel had spent only a little of her 
 life in New York. The town was to her what it was to 
 the masters of the sailing-vessels that called it their home 
 port it was their place of departure. The family had 
 been driven out of her birthplace on lower Fifth Avenue 
 by the ever-rising tide of trade soon after she had been 
 born there. She trundled her hoop in Washington Square 
 a summer or two, and then she was trundled out to the 
 country home; thence she was carried abroad and she
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 forgot her American for English, and English for Italian, 
 and Italian for French, according to her mother's resi- 
 dence. When her mother returned to America, Muriel 
 had to learn her native language all over again. 
 
 Her new home faced Central Park, and she rode her 
 pony or drove her little side-cart there or fed the animals 
 peanuts. Except for the hours when she was the victim 
 of her governess's determination to fill her curl-curtained 
 head with learning, most of her girlhood was spent out of 
 doors at the country home or in schools abroad. 
 
 Always her health and her happiness were the first 
 demands of her parents, who were almost as simple and 
 homely as their names, Jacob and Susan. They them- 
 selves had found life sweet and kept it clean and beautiful. 
 They had known little trouble, they had thought kindly 
 thoughts, been well amused, had eaten good food, tasted 
 always the best wines, worn the best clothes, dwelt 
 gracefully among luxuries. They had kept up their life- 
 long acquaintance with good horses and brought Muriel 
 up to the saddle. 
 
 Like her mother and her father, Muriel could ride al- 
 most any horse almost anywhere, through bog and brier, 
 over fence and water-jump, in Rotten Row, the Bois, or 
 Central Park. She could run her own car, and her ex- 
 ploits with a motor-boat were terrifying to behold. She 
 knew a lot about dogs and their breeding. She managed 
 her father's palatial kennels, where the famous Schuyler 
 collies were reared. She knew something about cattle, 
 and saw to it that her father's noble Holsteins had their 
 teeth brushed every day and were groomed till they looked 
 like drawings in black-and-white. She was a good fellow 
 among the young men, and entirely too busy to fall in love. 
 Such flirtations as she had indulged in were hardly more 
 than experiments in comradeship. She had known as little 
 of sorrow or poverty, of toil or love, or vice or crime, as a 
 girl could know who has eyes and ears and can read or listen. 
 She had never encountered death or despair or passion. 
 
 52
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 The longer such knowledge is delayed the more likely 
 it is to come in avalanches when it starts to come. Muriel 
 knew far less of the dark side of the world at twenty than 
 Red Ida had known at ten. She poised on the threshold 
 of life as one peering into a dark and haunted house. 
 
 And now in August of the year 1913 she was just 
 ''running into" New York on her father's yacht be- 
 cause the old boy was childishly eager to have her 
 with him when he inspected the latest addition to 
 his princely collection, the complete library accumulated 
 in Northmarch Castle by the Dukes of Bray. As soon 
 as Jacob Schuyler had heard that the collection was 
 to be sold he had cabled the men who kept him in- 
 formed of the big doings in the international book- 
 market: "Buy me it." The dealers sent back a price 
 that crackled on the cables. Jacob retorted by wire: 
 "Buy me it." They bought him it. 
 
 The loot had arrived at the port of New York a week 
 before. Schuyler's private librarian had eased the books 
 through the customs, unpacked and arranged them in 
 colonies by subjects, and then telegraphed old Jacob 
 that his treasure was ready for his inspection. 
 
 As usual in August the eastern seaboard was cowering 
 under a hot wave, and New York was in the throes of it, 
 but Jacob would not wait for cooler weather. He must 
 see his new books, "the old boy's new toys," as Muriel 
 called them. 
 
 She came in with him on his yacht. As they were 
 skirting the Long Island coast they made out dead ahead 
 a mighty pother in the flashing waters of the Sound. 
 
 "It's a motor-boat," Muriel cried, from the shade-deck, 
 where they sat. 
 
 It rose from the water like a dragon-fly and stormed past 
 them overhead. 
 
 "It's an airship," she amended. 
 
 It was both. The sailing-master informed them that 
 it was Mr. Merithew's new hydro-aeroplane. 
 
 53
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Schuyler stared at it and smiled: "It's the first time 
 anybody ever looked up to Perry Merithew." 
 
 "Is he so bad?" Muriel queried. 
 
 " He's a scandal to his name, a thorn in his family pride, 
 and a beast to his wife." 
 
 "He's not afraid, anyway," Muriel interposed. "He 
 risks his life lightly." 
 
 "He's not risking an article of any particular value," 
 Jacob growled. 
 
 "I like to see a man that's not afraid of anything," 
 Muriel pondered aloud, her eyes still on the swooping 
 dragon-fly. 
 
 "The less you see of Perry Merithew the better for 
 you," her father muttered. 
 
 This was enough to make the man fascinating even to a 
 girl like Muriel especially to a girl like Muriel, with a 
 mind of her own and a curiosity for people and things. 
 She did not forget Merithew when he vanished into the 
 sunlight. 
 
 Schuyler beckoned to his secretary and said: 
 
 "Oh, Chivot, would you mind calling the office and 
 seeing if there's any reason for me to come down to-day? 
 It's pretty hot." 
 
 The precise Mr. Chivot went to the wireless operator 
 and the air at the masthead began to sputter and snap. 
 Later Mr. Chivot returned to say: "The office telephones 
 the wireless station that the president of the board of the 
 T. M. and K. Railway is in town and would like to see 
 you, sir." 
 
 Schuyler sighed: " Oh, all right. Tell him I'll run down 
 soon as we land." 
 
 The snapping sparks at the masthead told the office 
 that. The yacht, like a duchess out shopping, picked its 
 way down the crowded water street through Hell Gate, 
 and past the doleful islands of Randall, Ward, and Black- 
 well, under the Queensborough Bridge, and over the 
 
 54
 
 Muriel forgot her anger and her danger in a
 
 : HQttrc<sm 
 
 wift remorse for what she had not caused.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 under-river tunnels, till eventually it reached the New 
 York Yacht Club's landing-float at the eastern foot of 
 Twenty-third Street. The yacht club's station was the 
 most modest of the structures clustered thereabouts: the 
 old moored ship called the "Deep Sea Hotel," a training- 
 ship or two, a free public bath, a shelter of the Society for 
 the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and a recreation 
 pier where mothers sat all day in the cool moist breezes, 
 lifting their eyes from their sewing to watch their infants 
 at play and see the endless promenade of the river traffic. 
 There, also, a city-paid band pours out a not too classical 
 program now and then, and in the evenings there are 
 nooks where the vitally important industry of flirtation 
 furnishes the raw material for the dangerous laboratory 
 of matrimony. 
 
 Muriel liked to see these places and the majestic hos- 
 pitals that dignify the water-front. They certified to her 
 that the poor of New York were abundantly cared for and 
 very happy and contented or ought to be. 
 
 One of her father's touring-cars was waiting at the 
 landing-slip. She expected to ride down to his office 
 with him, but he said that the sun was too hot and the 
 journey too long for her. He insisted on making the trip 
 in a taxicab and sending her home in the car. 
 
 Like an eager child on Christmas morning he made her 
 promise not to look at the new books till he could enter 
 the library with her. 
 
 Muriel flung him a kiss of farewell and hopped into the 
 seat by the chauffeur, with whom she chatted in a care- 
 free forenoon mood. Jacques Parny adored her, for she 
 spoke his French like a Parisienne and she knew nearly 
 as much as he did about machinery. 
 
 For all the beauty of her face, for all the opulence of 
 her copper-colored hair, her heart as yet belonged rather 
 to a wholesome boy than to a young woman of romantic 
 capabilities. 
 
 On all the streets of the middle East Side the school-free 
 
 59
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 children were bouncing about like popcorn on a hot skillet. 
 Particularly lively they were in the "Gas-house District" 
 which Muriel was now traversing. On First Avenue it 
 was almost impossible to steer the car. The chauffeur 
 turned off into a less-cluttered side-street. There were 
 children here, too, but he quickened his speed to pass a 
 lumbering express-truck. From behind it leaped a little 
 boy. 
 
 He was poor and scrawny and a cripple. He was play- 
 ing the favorite game of the New York streets. Mysteri- 
 ously the boys call it "cat." You lay a short stick on the 
 pavement, tap it sharply with a longer stick; it flies into 
 the air, then you hit at it with your bat, and if you are 
 swift and lucky you can score a run to the lamp-post and 
 back before the "cat" is fielded in. But you must act 
 quickly and keep one eye in the back of your head, for the 
 streets are full of danger. 
 
 The cripple, after waiting for the express-wagon to 
 pass, knocked a beautiful fly through the hostile lines. 
 The fielders let out the terrific screech of New York boy- 
 hood at play. The cripple dashed for the lamp-post. 
 
 Muriel's car caught him in the air as if it were the club 
 of a giant batsman. It sent him sprawling into space 
 and then slithering shapelessly till the curbstone checked 
 him. 
 
 The car came to a stop as Muriel's scream brought the 
 women to the windows and doors all along the block. Her 
 voice was a different noise in the familiar clamor of their 
 street. Immediately people began to run and jabber and 
 gesticulate with menace. 
 
 The chauffeur turned to Muriel: "There is no police- 
 man in sight, Miss. Shall I make a run for it?" 
 
 Muriel was tempted almost beyond resistance, but she 
 shook her head. A glimpse at that pitiful heap on the 
 ground denied her the right to escape. 
 
 She was about to get down and pick him up when a 
 cobblestone struck the car, splintering the glass of the 
 
 60
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 wind-shield. ,A moment later another stone was flung. 
 This one hit Muriel in the forehead. A mob was gather- 
 ing to demand revenge. 
 
 Muriel had run into life. She was going to know 
 New York. She was going to learn the importance of 
 empty pockets that seem full, but prove empty when 
 too great need arises; of pockets that are empty be- 
 cause they leak gold faster than the most amiable fairies 
 can replenish them; and of pockets that are empty be- 
 cause the coppers that drip into them must be clutched 
 out instantly to bribe a little longer delay from the bailiffs 
 of ill-fortune. 
 
 In the most roundabout way she was going to make the 
 acquaintance of Perry Merithew. An hour or two ago he 
 had passed through her sky like an angel mounted on an 
 iron steed. But it was this encounter with the crippled 
 street brat that brought her into the sphere of Perry 
 Merithew and involved her in his disaster. If, indeed, 
 she had been a little less brave and a little less tender she 
 might have escaped knowing Perry Merithew for years. 
 If she had told her chauffeur to put on full speed and run 
 away from the scene of this accident she would have 
 unwittingly run away from almost all that makes up this 
 book. And all the lives of all the people in it would have 
 run otherwise. On such little threads of decision hang 
 the destinies of the world.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 NEVER again in her existence, perhaps, would young 
 Muriel Schuyler be quite so amazed as she was then. 
 
 Without an enemy in the world, without knowledge of a 
 soul that had ever hated her or tried to harm her, sur- 
 rounded always with luxury and protection, just landed 
 from her father's yacht, and motoring quietly to his town 
 home, she found herself in one astounding moment sur- 
 rounded by a fierce mob of men and women accusing her of 
 the murder of a crippled boy. 
 
 The boy had leaped straight out of nothing into the 
 wheels. The mob had sprung up through the asphalt 
 by an evil incantation. The anger, the bloodthirst, the 
 roaring frenzy had come from nowhere. And from no- 
 where had come the rock that suddenly cut into her 
 temple. 
 
 The blow dazed her hardly so much as the abrupt 
 transformation of a street full of oblivious strangers into 
 a riot of enemies. 
 
 Her lips were parted in stupefaction; her eyes wide 
 with cloudy wonder. A listless hand went automatically 
 to her forehead, and came down again with an impression 
 of blood on her hair and now on her gloves. 
 
 Muriel did not know how the hearts of these people had 
 been wrung with the unending toll of children's lives 
 levied by the traffic of the streets. The ancient Athenians 
 mourned because they had to send each year to Crete 
 seven lads and seven virgins to be devoured by the 
 Minotaur. Among the poor of New York the motor- 
 Minotaurs go bellowing, hunting down and goring their 
 
 62
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 own prey. More than a hundred children a year are 
 killed in the streets. The horse-drawn vehicles destroy 
 many of these, but the automobiles, being newer and 
 swifter, receive the greater hatred. When they can, the 
 people take their own revenge of the ruthless or luckless 
 drivers, and sometimes it needs quick work and hard for 
 the police to save them from death. 
 
 Muriel's chauffeur, Jacques Parny (whom her father 
 had brought over from France with the car he had bought 
 there) , had the unsurpassed fearlessness of the Frenchman 
 of our day. And, being French, he was used to the sudden 
 formation of mobs. But he was handicapped now. 
 
 The moment's delay while he waited for Muriel's con- 
 sent to escape had filled the street with people. Ahead 
 and behind wagons of all sorts had paused, cutting off 
 advance or retreat. The flying splinters of glass from the 
 shattered wind-shield slashed him about the face and 
 hands. But he stood up in front of his young mistress to 
 protect her as best he could. And he howled at the 
 howling crowd. His eloquence was limited. His English 
 was small, and his enemies could not understand his 
 French. But Muriel could ; and he was afraid to use the 
 expressions that came first to mind. 
 
 Still he sheltered her and jabbered and gesticulated 
 till a large boy named Tomsy O'Kim climbed on the foot- 
 board back of him and broke a cat-bat over his head. 
 Then Parny collapsed across his steering-wheel. 
 
 A loyal servant deserves a loyal master, and Muriel, 
 finding her chauffeur struck down, felt her regret change 
 to wrath. She stood up in her turn to shelter Jacques 
 Parny and she was like a young hawk for ferocity, glaring 
 defiance while the red drops trickled down her cheek. 
 Then she saw across the heads and the waving sedge of 
 arms and fists a little group centered round the victim of 
 the collision. 
 
 Those in whom mercy is more instant than wrath had 
 gathered there. Muriel saw the face of the child, all the 
 
 63
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 whiter for the streaks of dirt. She forgot her anger and 
 her danger in a swift remorse for what she had not caused. 
 She fell to wringing her hands and ineptly maundering: 
 
 "Oh, isn't it pitiful! Oh, I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! 
 Oh, isn't it pitiful!" 
 
 There is nothing harder than to attack one who does 
 not resist or protest or run. And Muriel was young and 
 pretty, and fortunately no policeman appeared, for in the 
 heart of the Gas-house District a policeman to fight adds 
 the further zest of an old feud. 
 
 The boy with the splintered bat could not strike her. 
 The ferocious women crowding against the wheels ceased 
 shouting of murrains and murder-mobiles. They began 
 to mumble one to another: 
 
 "It's not her fahlt, annyhow." "She never done it of 
 her own." "It's hurted she is, too." "Only a gerl and 
 meant no harm." "It's the cheffure's doin's, not hers." 
 "Thim boys is ahl the toime joompin' under the wheels. 1 ' 
 "There's no keepin' them ahf the streets whatever." 
 "They do be leppin' into throuble the day through." 
 
 Muriel had not noted that the storm had died out of the 
 surf. But she saw that her victim was beginning to move, 
 to roll his head in pain. She felt that she must go to him. 
 
 She opened the door of the car and dropped to the 
 ground. She might have been in the lobby at the opera 
 from the way she repeated her polite "Pardon me" and 
 "May I pass, please?" 
 
 The crowd melted aside like water whist with wonder, 
 then poured after in her wake. She made to the boy's 
 side and gently persuaded his body from the awkward 
 hands about him. 
 
 She set one knee on the foul pavement and leaned him 
 against her other knee, and, producing a ridiculously fine 
 and tiny handkerchief, moistened it at her lips and tried 
 to cleanse that ancient little face of its immemorial dirt. 
 
 She kept saying: 
 
 64
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "It's too bad, it's just too bad," and then, "Couldn't 
 some one get me some water, please?" 
 
 There was a panic of obedience. Tomsy O'Kim ran 
 and snatched a tin pail of beer from a little girl who was 
 taking it home to her despondent parents. He was well 
 scratched and kicked in the shins, but he gave the young 
 Amazon a back-handed swipe against a hydrant and she 
 pursued him no farther. Tomsy darted into a small 
 deserted "French laundry," whose Irish laundresses were 
 out with the mob. He emptied the pail into himself, 
 filled it with water at a faucet, and ran off, leaving the 
 faucet gushing. 
 
 He was the first to arrive. A moment later Muriel 
 was surrounded by all manner of water-carriers with all 
 manner of vessels, mugs, pitchers, pails, hats, schooners. 
 There was even one basket of water. 
 
 She soused her handkerchief in Tomsy's pail and mopped 
 the little face well. It seemed to come out of a shadow 
 into the sun. It was right white under the protecting 
 layer of earth. 
 
 Muriel had learned what to do in many an accident, 
 for the rich adventure much peril and encounter much 
 injury. She had been thrown from horses, and her 
 friends had been tossed into unconsciousness times un- 
 numbered from saddles and traps and runabouts. And 
 there had been mishaps on her father's country place. 
 She had helped Italian road-builders when they were 
 knocked over by fragments of rock from dynamite blasts. 
 She had helped the sailors on her father's yacht when they 
 fell down a hatchway or were hurt in the engine-room. 
 
 She had acquired a knack for first aid and the stomach 
 of self-control. But she was a little sick now because 
 she felt to blame, and because her victim was so grotesque. 
 Nature had been harsh with him before she came along 
 to batter him to sleep. 
 
 As she huddled the body in her arm, and swabbed the 
 soiled wounds, she asked: 
 
 65
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Who is he? Where's his poor mother?" 
 
 Tomsy O'Kim answered her: 
 
 "Hanigan his name is, lady Happy Hanigan we call 
 um. He don't belong round here. He's a newsy from 
 down-town." 
 
 The victim immediately lost prestige and sympathy from 
 the crowd. What right had he for to be getting hurted 
 in their street? And making the nice girleen get her 
 pretty clothes that dirted up? 
 
 Finally Happy Hanigan opened his little eyes and 
 screwed them about in angry wonder. He could not see 
 Muriel's downcast face, for the sun was in his eyes. He 
 blinked and wriggled and then he opened his enormous 
 mouth to say: 
 
 "Whatahell's a matter, huh?" 
 
 His language was abominably offensive to the ladies in 
 the circle. Strangely enough, Muriel hugged him and 
 smiled and laughed a little. She was glad to have him back 
 on any terms. Happy winced at the pressure and growled : 
 
 "Lea* me loose, dammit." 
 
 One of the spectators not long on this side of the Irish 
 pond protested: "Take shame to you for such worruds 
 to her honor." 
 
 "Don't scold him," said Muriel, and bent over to pro- 
 tect him from blame. Her face made a shadow now, and 
 he could see her. The sunlight crinkled through her hair 
 in a halo. He saw that she was beautiful, and now at last 
 his big mouth wound into the famous grin that had won 
 him his title of nobility. 
 
 "Cheese!" he sighed. "Who's de swell dame dat's 
 noissin' me now? I guess I must 'a' croaked and it's 
 a angel a red-headed angel." 
 
 Muriel stamped a hasty kiss on a clean spot she had 
 achieved and lifted him to his feet. He groaned anew 
 now and his legs dangled so crookedly that she set him 
 down again. She turned giddy with the dread that she 
 had broken his poor bones. 
 
 66
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "I must get you to the hospital," she said. "Where's 
 the nearest one?" 
 
 Happy fought her arms loose and roared: 
 
 "Nah, yuh dahn't! Yuh dahn't git me to no horse- 
 spital." 
 
 Muriel stared at him. She had not realized that the 
 poor are a little less fond of the surgeon's knives than the 
 rich. It is only natural that they should receive less 
 courtesy, since they are less courteous and more afraid 
 and resistant; they come in crowds; time is money; 
 anesthetics are too expensive to be lavished, and the 
 most eminent physicians are giving their services for 
 nothing but love of humanity and their own craft. Like 
 most other donations, theirs are greeted with susoicion 
 and resentment. 
 
 Muriel tried to convince the boy that it was for his 
 own good, but she was not old enough to realize that the 
 poorest of all recommendations is to say that a thing is 
 for one's own good. 
 
 Meanwhile at last a policeman was darting that way. 
 Sauntering along Second Avenue, he had observed the 
 swarm in the side-street and had made for it forthwith. 
 
 He had no knowledge of what he should find there. 
 But his place was in the thick of it. He treated the 
 crowd with absolute impartiality of violence toward 
 all ages and both sexes. He swept them aside with both 
 hands and came rather swimming than running. He was 
 cruelly disappointed to find nothing more exciting than a 
 newsboy bumped by an automobile. He knew Happy 
 at a glance. He had chased him dozens of times, called 
 him names, and been called names by him from a distance. 
 On occasions he had arrested Happy for playing in the 
 streets, a necessary diversion necessarily made a crime 
 for the children's own sake. 
 
 Now Officer McGlashan found Happy leaning on a 
 young woman suspiciously well dressed. It was sus- 
 picious for a young woman to be too well dressed along 
 
 67
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 here. Besides, by this time Muriel's frock was so flecked 
 and her hair so disordered and her face so unlike itself 
 that McGlashan's first thought of her was based on 
 experience and observation. He assumed that she was 
 a wrong one who had wandered in her cups and fallen 
 into a battle. It was not his fault if such things happened 
 so often that he grew to expect them. He began with 
 his usual formula: 
 
 "Well, well, well! What's the matter now? What's 
 the matter heer?" He laid his hand on Muriel's shoulder 
 not altogether without pity, not altogether without con- 
 tempt. Muriel looked down at his hand with such sur- 
 prise that he took it away quickly. Her voice and her 
 language surprised him further. 
 
 "My car ran into this poor child, officer, and I'm 
 ever so sorry. I can never forgive myself. I was about 
 to take him to the nearest hospital. Perhaps you could 
 direct me." 
 
 Her dialect was four avenues higher than he expected. 
 He could only sputter with a last flare of 'dying superiority: 
 
 "And who's you, that's goin' to do so much?" 
 
 "I'm Miss Schuyler." 
 
 " Miss Schuyler is it? And where might you live?" 
 
 He whipped out his note-book to record the incident 
 in his log of the street. When Muriel gave him the 
 number, his pencil and his jaw both dropped. 
 
 "That would be Jacob Schuyler's house. You're no 
 dahter of Jacob Schuyler?" 
 
 If he had asked her was she the daughter of King 
 Jarge of England he could not have been more amazed 
 when she nodded yes. From the equally astounded circle 
 came a sigh of awe, and one reverent : 
 
 "My Gawd!" 
 
 Some of the women immediately began to take note of 
 the cut of her suit. It was so simple that the design could 
 easily be imitated, if not the fabric. Even Happy felt the 
 eminence of the situation. He made to withdraw from 
 
 68
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 the arm that nestled him under false pretenses, but Muriel 
 clutched him tighter, and said: 
 
 "What are we to do with this poor child?" 
 
 Officer McGlashan glanced at her and accepted the 
 flattering "we." 
 
 "Well, I suppo-ose we might at leasht we'd betther " 
 He looked at Happy. He was more used to talking to the 
 likes of him. He stormed: "And for you, you limb! 
 What were you up to that you're blunderin' into people's 
 cairs?" 
 
 Happy was about to explain that he was merely playing 
 cat, but he remembered in the nick of time that playing 
 cat was a misdemeanor, and he answered : 
 
 "'Ain't I got a right to cross the street?" 
 
 "Nah, you 'ain't got a right to cross the street!" thun- 
 dered McGlashan. " This ain't even your street. You'd 
 best be lightin' out o' this. And don't let me see you 
 round heer army more or I'll fan you hairder than the 
 cair did." 
 
 Happy made a meek effort to scramble to his feet and 
 do his usual vanishing trick, but his legs wavered, and 
 Muriel gathered him in again. 
 
 " Dont' be cross with him; he's terribly hurt!" 
 
 From the safe niche of her embrace Happy leered at 
 the policeman, and said, "Yah!" 
 
 Then the murmurous crowd heard the familiar hurried 
 knell of the ambulance. An alley opened magically and 
 a Bellevue Hospital motor rolled up. Some one had 
 taken pride in summoning it. From its end gate dropped 
 a young interne in a white suit. 
 
 Muriel noted first his immaculateness, and envied it and 
 admired it. It is the quality, some say, that women like 
 first in a man.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE surgeon noted first the abrasion on Muriel's 
 forehead. He put his hand out toward it. She 
 winced away and moved Happy toward him, smiling. 
 
 "This is the patient, doctor." 
 
 Clinton Worthing, M.D., had commenced doctor so re- 
 cently that he still thrilled to the title and what nobler 
 title is there? He was young enough and old enough 
 to be more interested in pretty girls than in crippled boys. 
 But he obeyed Muriel's behest, and his fingers went like 
 ten scouts over the bruises on Happy's head. Happy's 
 pride hurt almost more than his contusions. 
 
 The surgeon opened his hand-bag, a compact little 
 dispensary in itself, and whisked forth cotton swabs, 
 sterile bandages, and adhesive plasters. His hands shut- 
 tled back and forth with the deft speed of a woman 
 crocheting. 
 
 Officer McGlashan did the honors: "Docther, this is 
 Miss Schuyler old Jake Schuyler's dahter, you knaw." 
 
 The doctor threw her a hasty glance as his fingers went 
 on weaving the bandage. He grinned, assuming that the 
 policeman was joking. Next to a reporter, an ambulance 
 doctor has fewer illusions than any one else in the world. 
 
 Muriel bent over him anxiously as he bandaged a scraped 
 wrist. She murmured, "I I'm afraid one of his legs is 
 broken." 
 
 The doctor shook his head : " If it had been he'd have let 
 me know soon enough." 
 
 "But it's all all It's not straight," Muriel per- 
 sisted, as tactfully as she could. 
 
 70
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 The doctor lifted Happy to his feet and a glance led her 
 to believe that what she had thought to be a fracture was 
 a congenital malformation. She said: 
 
 "I knew a little girl who had that, and they brought 
 over a great European specialist for her and cured her. 
 Why didn't this boy's parents " 
 
 "This boy's parents are not importing specialists, I'm 
 afraid. They come rather high, you know." 
 
 "But I should think they could save up enough or 
 borrow enough for as important a thing as that." 
 
 The doctor smiled again with a pleasant sort of pity. 
 "The very poor can neither save nor borrow." 
 
 " Isn't there any place where it could be done?" 
 
 "There's the Orthopaedic Hospital, where they'd do it for 
 nothing." 
 
 "Then why in Heaven's name haven't they taken him 
 there?" 
 
 "You don't know much about the poor, do you? They 
 get so tired and so dejected they don't want to do any- 
 thing but rest." He spoke to Happy, whose grided skin 
 he was sterilizing and bandaging: "Did your people ever 
 take you to a hospital?" 
 
 Happy smiled: " Me mudder done it once and a big guy 
 dere wanted to harness me up like I was a horse and 
 wagon; but I says, ' Nix on de rough stuff, doc. Me bones 
 is me own and I'll keep what I got. I git round, don't I? 
 And I sell as many papes as most of dese guys. Me 
 mudder needs de coin I toin in.' " 
 
 Muriel said, "Wouldn't you be willing to take a little 
 vacation now and get yourself all straightened out and " 
 
 Happy pushed the suggestion aside with the flat of his 
 palm and a phrase of simple dignity: 
 
 "Nuttin' doin', lady." 
 
 Muriel shook her head and the doctor smiled at her. 
 He knew the people. 
 
 When he had finished a cursory treatment of Happy 
 he said:
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Now, young man, hop into the 'bus and we'll give you 
 a lift to Bellevue." 
 
 "Not on your life!" said Happy. "You'll not take me 
 to no Bellavoo." 
 
 "But you'll need a little rest. You've had more of a 
 shock than you realize yet." 
 
 "Shock your grandmudder. I'll take me rest at home." 
 
 "Then we'll send you home." 
 
 "Not in one of dem amblanshes wit' a bell on it. It 
 would t'row me mudder into a fit did she hear it." 
 
 "Then I can take you home in my car," Muriel sug- 
 gested, and Happy graciously consented. 
 
 "Oh, all right." 
 
 The doctor rose to his feet and put his hand out again 
 toward Muriel: 
 
 "I'll have a look at that forehead now," he said. 
 
 Again she retreated: "Would you mind seeing to my 
 chauffeur first? I'm afraid he's in trouble." 
 
 She led the way through the yielding crowd. Jacques 
 Parny was sitting up now, but clinging to the wheel as if 
 the pavement were reeling under him. The blood was 
 chugging like another engine in his head, where a welt 
 was growing faster than a mushroom. 
 
 When he saw Muriel returning he hastened to descend 
 and open the door for her. But he had to cling to it 
 dizzily. 
 
 Officer McGlashan exclaimed, "Who done that to you?" 
 
 "I do not know," said Jacques. 
 
 The crowd knew, but did not tell. Young Tomsy 
 O'Kim, however, seemed to lose interest in the affair; 
 at least he turned and sauntered to the corner of the street, 
 then broke into a run. 
 
 The surgeon made sure that Parny's skull was not 
 fractured, and preceded to examine the scalp. His 
 strong hands were defter than a French dressmaker's as 
 his peculiar scissors snipped off the clotted curls, to 
 Parny's bitter regret. With delicate taps of cotton 
 
 72
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 pledgets he cleared away the blood and disclosed the 
 clean furrow in the welt. Muriel was fascinated instead 
 of sickened by the exquisite speed, and she murmured: 
 
 "What a glorious thing to be able to help people in 
 pain!" 
 
 " Think so?" he mumbled. 
 
 "There's no other knowledge worth as much as that." 
 
 "Think not?" he said, with a little less brusqueness as 
 he fixed a bandage on the broken scalp. 
 
 "And now it's your turn." 
 
 "Oh, I'm all right," she murmured. 
 
 "Sit down," he said, pointing to the running-board. 
 
 She sat down. She had not realized how weak her 
 knees were till she relieved them of their responsibilities. 
 She felt pretty miserable and forlorn. And she was 
 glad to have the expert hands of a doctor grooming her 
 temple. 
 
 It was strange to think of herself there in the middle 
 of the street, that street, surrounded by such a crowd, 
 with an ambulance surgeon mending her wound. The 
 crowd was roaring as gentle as a sucking-dove now. 
 The fierce housewives were conferring about her: "It's 
 the sweet t 'thing she is." "And goin' for to bring Happy 
 home in the grand ottymobyl." "A proud day for Mrs. 
 Hanigan that her son's brought back in the like of that." 
 
 While the surgeon was at work he had not failed to 
 observe that the door of the car was marked with the 
 initials J. S. They were small letters, but they carried a 
 big message. 
 
 Dr. Worthing could not have been human and failed to 
 experience a certain added interest in so expensive a 
 patient met in so cheap a street. 
 
 He was not exactly surprised to find that her skin 
 was not of gold-leaf, yet he could hardly convince himself 
 that a girl could live in the sun of such luxury and be so 
 modestly clad, so simple of manner, so pathetically pretty. 
 
 Muriel was even more thrilled than the surgeon was. 
 
 3 73
 
 He had come from the mob like a young hero out of a cloud. 
 He had amazed her with his technic and his business-like 
 philanthropy. He bossed her about a bit, too; gave her 
 things to hold, and told her to sit down. 
 
 Muriel was just arriving at her hour for liking to be 
 bossed. She was surprised to find herself almost delighting 
 in her submissiveness ; it was a novelty indeed for one who 
 had bossed everybody else servants, parents, chums, and 
 attendant squires. 
 
 Her buoyant health had rarely placed her in a doctor's 
 power. And never had the doctor been anything but old 
 and plain. This young knight ambulant, with his lancet 
 at rest, came to her in a suit of white armor. She trembled 
 with delicious dread at his proximity. His ministrations 
 were not unlike caresses, and when he put aside her hair 
 and bathed the little wound on her brow she blushed with 
 pretty shame. She was amazed to feel so poignantly the 
 tactile fire of his finger-tips, and cast down her eyes in a 
 curious distress. 
 
 And he caught fire from her. He was awkward, though 
 he wished to be supremely dextrous. He was not so swift, 
 either, at his task, though this was not entirely uninten- 
 tional. When he was about to touch her forehead with the 
 tincture she drew away, protesting : 
 
 "It will stain." 
 
 "It's the best sterilizer there is," he answered, "and 
 your hair will cover it. They're nearly the same color," 
 he laughed, brokenly, holding the phial under her eyes. 
 
 "Iodine! Thanks!" she gasped, indignantly. 
 
 "It's a beautiful color in the light," he explained, but 
 she would not look. She wanted to be more indignant 
 than she was, at his premature informality. He realized 
 his own impetuosity at the same moment, gulped, "I beg 
 your pardon!" and glared at the understanding mob 
 ferociously. 
 
 When he had cleansed and sealed the unimportant 
 laceration of her important forehead his assurance that 
 
 74
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 she must be made of delicate fiber was revealed in his 
 anxiety. 
 
 "You'd better be getting to your home, hadn't you?" 
 
 "Not till the poor boy is safe in his." 
 
 "Where does he live?" 
 
 "I don't know. Where do you live Mr. Hanigan?" 
 
 Happy had swelled up like a heated balloon at the 
 prospect of the ride home; the "Mr." almost exploded 
 him. He had to be asked twice where he lived before he 
 could answer: 
 
 "Batavia Street." 
 
 "Is it far?" 
 
 "Not in one o' dem t'ings." 
 
 "Then we'd better be starting. Do I look fit to be 
 seen?" 
 
 Dr. Worthing was tempted to cry, "Fit to be seen in 
 heaven!" but he thought better of it. Muriel set to dust- 
 ing her skirts, and she drew a lock of hair over her battle- 
 scar. 
 
 "How's that?" she laughed, and regretted again her 
 surprising friendliness with this stranger. 
 
 He dared not tell her how it was. 
 
 "Come on, Mr. Hanigan," Muriel cried, and with the 
 aid of the surgeon helped the boy to a seat in the tonneau. 
 His shapeless awkwardness wrenched her heart again. It 
 was intolerable that he should hobble so helplessly all his 
 days. She knitted her brows as she put out her hand 
 to the surgeon: 
 
 "Thank you ever so much, Dr. Dr. " 
 
 "Worthing Clinton Worthing." 
 
 "Dr. Worthing," she finished, and reclaimed her hand. 
 She bowed to the beaming McGlashan. 
 
 "Thank you, officer. Good-by." She bowed to the 
 glowing crowd. "Thank you, everybody." 
 
 As she was about to get in and join Happy (who was 
 trying to look as if he owned the car and already warning 
 his late fellows to gittahell offen dat step and where did 
 
 75
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 dey link dey was) Muriel beckoned the doctor and spoke 
 to him in a low voice: 
 
 "It seems inhuman to let the poor boy go on through 
 life such a cripple. There ought to be some way to get 
 him cured." 
 
 "The city would do what it could for him, but it's 
 long and painful and costly." 
 
 " I'd be so glad to pay anything it might cost." 
 
 "That. would help, of course." 
 
 She enraptured him by saying: " Could you fix him up 
 at your hospital ? It would be nice to have him in charge 
 of one who who " 
 
 She didn't know just what should follow that "who." 
 
 He relieved her: "We couldn't treat him at Bellevue, 
 but there are other hospitals." 
 
 "How could I find out the best place and get him 
 there? I'm so ignorant." 
 
 "I could arrange it for you." 
 
 "Oh, if you only would I'd be so grateful!" 
 
 "It would be a pleasure, I'm sure." 
 
 "How soon could you look it up and let me know?" 
 
 He could have told her offhand, but he could not resist 
 the temptation of another meeting. So he said: 
 
 "Some time to-day. I'll be off duty in the late after- 
 noon." 
 
 "Oh, will you? You could telephone me or it might 
 be better to talk it over. You couldn't come up to the 
 house, could you?" 
 
 "Why, yes, I could. Yes, certainly " 
 
 "That would be splendid. You could have tea with 
 me, perhaps." 
 
 He could only nod and try to keep from swallowing the 
 lump of sugar in his throat. 
 
 "Fine!" she cried. "At about half past four or five?" 
 
 He bowed. The asphalt was oscillating under him. 
 He could hardly remember his dignity. 
 
 To Muriel he should have been merely a very kind and 
 
 76
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 very nice young man who would be useful in getting 
 something done that she wanted done. She had always 
 been surrounded by servants, and she was always gracious 
 and grateful to them. She had acquired a habit of setting 
 other people to work, not because she was lazy, but 
 because she was busy. The rich have a hundred hands 
 to reach for things and a hundred feet to run errands. 
 
 Muriel tried to tell herself that she had no more idea of 
 kindling a flame in the young surgeon's heart than of en- 
 couraging every young fellow she asked to run and get her 
 tennis-racquet. She wanted to straighten out Happy 
 Hanigan, and she would use the time, money, and skill of 
 anybody that could help her. 
 
 Miss Schuyler said, haughtily: "Thank you a thousand 
 times. At half past four then ! Good-by." But the girl 
 Muriel beamed on him through soft eyes like a Southern 
 beauty rewarding a serenader beneath her lattices. 
 
 Miss Schuyler hopped into the car and slammed the 
 door after her. She lavished on Happy the kindliest 
 smile in her repertoire. But Muriel flung back one swift 
 sweet glance that deranged its victim and accomplished 
 a compound fracture of his peace of mind. 
 
 The young surgeon gazed after her and felt as lonely 
 in the crowd as if he were Robinson Crusoe cast ashore. 
 He sighed to himself: "If only she were a trained nurse 1 
 Or, better yet, if only I were a millionaire!"
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 JACQUES PARNY perked an inquiring ear for direc- 
 tions. Muriel passed the query to Happy. 
 
 "Where was it you said you lived, my dear?" 
 
 "Data via Street, darlin'," said Happy, impudent with 
 glory. 
 
 Muriel asked Jacques if he knew Batavia Street. He 
 did not. Happy was contemptuous of such ignorance. 
 
 "Dem dagos don't know nuttin'. Does he know 
 where Cherry Street is, den?" 
 
 "Che"rie Strit," said Jacques. "I do not know her 
 also." 
 
 Happy turned away in despair. "Would he know 
 Brooklyn Bridge if he run into it?" 
 
 Jacques answered, "Ah yes, those Brookleen Breedge, 
 I know him." 
 
 "Den move on wit' your baby-carrage. It's right 
 near him," said Happy, winking at Muriel. 
 
 When the baby-carriage moved on, the boys and girls 
 began to shriek at Happy, as if a fiery chariot were trans- 
 lating him. They ran alongside, dancing and shouting, 
 and several of them seemed' determined to earn them- 
 selves rides by the same disaster that had proved so 
 fortunate for him. 
 
 Muriel's life had hitherto revolved in a glittering circle. 
 Now it was flying off at a tangent. That journey was 
 like a condensed trip to foreign lands, beginning with a 
 more or less Irish region, passing through Hungary, Bo' 
 hernia, Poland, Russia, Roumania, Greece, and Japan. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 They left behind the mysterious region where the 
 enormous gas-tanks loomed like floating turrets of some 
 grotesque architecture, and glided into a region where the 
 people were foreign, the names on the sign-boards and the 
 wares they offered foreign, and the advertisements in the 
 Hebrew character. 
 
 The streets narrowed. On the steps old patriarchs, 
 bearded and skull-capped, yet with very modern sleeve- 
 supporters, sat in venerable reveries. On the sidewalks 
 the women and children were disposed as informally as if 
 in their own rooms. And in the streets, too, the children 
 waddled about at ease. 
 
 Now and then Parny must check the car sharply while a 
 large-eyed babe sucked its thumb in the face of peril, till 
 its mother ran out from among the shouting neighbors and 
 lugged it ashore, glaring resentfully at the invaders, but 
 yanking the child no less resentfully. 
 
 There were evidences enough of the lack of riches in the 
 overcrowding, the costumes, the things they were buying 
 and selling, and the bedding bulging from the windows. 
 Yet cheek by jowl with the sardine-can tenements sat 
 every here and there some splendid building devoted to 
 happiness or other form of welfare a normal training- 
 institute, a hospital, a children's aid society, a bank, a 
 school. 
 
 Parks were frequent here, and in the open spaces chil- 
 dren were playing games they had had to be taught. 
 Muriel had heard something of these breathing-spaces, 
 and remembered reading that many of them replaced 
 plague-sores of corruption. When Mulberry Bend and 
 Corlears Hook had resisted the best the police, the 
 preachers, and the health officers could do in palliation, 
 some genius had proposed their complete elision. Poul- 
 tices, caustics, and antiseptics having failed, an operation 
 was suggested. The buildings were bought, razed, and 
 their spaces united into parks. 
 
 Muriel thought that this was about the decentest and 
 
 79
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 happiest thing in human history. Good people had passed 
 through here. Big hearts had taken thought for the poor, 
 busied themselves as their brothers' keepers. These 
 buildings, these parks were like feathers fallen from angels' 
 wings anonymous angels, and rather bound toward 
 heaven than come from there. Yet angelic somehow. 
 
 Muriel felt again that the weak and the luckless were 
 in careful hands. She knew that her father and mother 
 were always giving, giving, giving. First she felt re- 
 lieved of responsibility. Then she felt an awakening to 
 it. Why should she leave these tasks to others? If 
 everybody waited for somebody else, nobody would get 
 anything done for anybody. She must at least take 
 from her parents their charitable labors. 
 
 Her heart seemed to cry out to this opportunity: 
 
 "Let me in. I want to be useful as that nice Dr. 
 Worthing is useful. I have a right to be useful. I am 
 young and husky and I have lots of money or my father 
 has and he always gives me what I want. Let me in!" 
 
 She resolved to plunge at once into the crusade. Youth- 
 like she was sure that she could accomplish marvels. She 
 only hoped that she had not reached the scene too late, 
 like a volunteer fireman who arrives after the fire is out. 
 She was almost afraid that there would be no misery left 
 to her to relieve ! 
 
 She need not have worried had she known that the 
 ferocious summer of 1913 was to be followed by a fiercer 
 winter of almost unequaled length and bitterness, and 
 that the hard times would throw upon the one town some 
 three hundred and fifty thousand men who could get no 
 work to do; and that after that there was yet far worse 
 to come another year. 
 
 As she sat panting thirstily and beaming with enthu- 
 siasm for a career of glorious charity, Happy Hanigan was 
 sitting as high as he could, frowning majestically, and try- 
 ing to assume an automobile face. The nearest he could 
 come to it was the look the judges wore in the Children's 
 
 80
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Court when they tried to glare more fiercely than they 
 felt. 
 
 Suddenly along the entire length of his mouth there 
 were signs of a skirmish between laughter and severity. 
 Muriel smiled and asked him what was troubling him. 
 That detonated his laughter and he snickered: 
 
 "Cheese, but I'm hopin' me mudder '11 be at de windy 
 so 's 't she'll see me roll up in de band-wagon." 
 
 It was rather tactless of Muriel to ask, "Is this your 
 first ride in a band-wagon?" 
 
 "Oh no," sighed Happy, grandiosely, "I ride up-town 
 in a newspaper-truck now an' den, and I got a friend 
 drives a brewery-truck, an' o' course I sneak on behind of 
 a taxicab now and den. Dis is me foist spin in a open- 
 faced truck, dough. Oh, I've rode in artemobiles a lot 
 not countin' our own horse an' wagon, o' course." 
 
 Muriel exposed again a strange indelicacy of surprise. 
 She was snob enough to feel Mr. Hanigan's rise in the so- 
 cial scale. One cannot possess a horse and wagon and be 
 entirely negligible. She asked with more respect, "Oh, 
 you own a horse, do you?" 
 
 "Sure we own a horse. Ain't me fadder a truckman?" 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 "Sure he is. He's got a license and all." 
 
 "And what does he er truck?" 
 
 "Oh, junk, and rags, and ice-cream, and people's 
 foiniture when dey git t'run out for de rent. Me fadder 
 trucks lots o' t'ings." 
 
 Muriel had learned at receptions and teas to work any 
 topic of conversation for all it was worth; she went on, 
 briskly: 
 
 "And is your horse a strong horse?" 
 
 "Well, he's not what you'd call a draft-horse. You 
 couldn't do no heavy dray w r ork wit' him. He's cut 
 kind o' clost to de bone, and he wears his ribs on de out- 
 side. But he does what he kin, Whiskers does." 
 
 "Whiskers?" 
 
 81
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Dat's his name." 
 
 "Rather odd name, isn't it?" 
 
 "Wait till you see his feet. All four of 'em could use a 
 haircut. And he's got a lower lip like a billy-goat." 
 
 When they had run down the ladder of numeral-named 
 streets they came into the region of named streets. But 
 the names conveyed nothing more to Muriel. 
 
 There are those who object to the American custom of 
 numbering streets: they find it offensive to esthetics, 
 however convenient. They say that numbers are mean- 
 ingless and cannot acquire tradition, as if to those who 
 know Fifth Avenue it is not as different from Sixth as 
 Piccadilly f rom_ Whitechapel Road. Those names mean 
 nothing, either, till you know what they mean. But to 
 New-Yorkers, East Thirteenth Street or West Twenty- 
 eighth has as much connotation as Wall or Delancey. To 
 the stranger, Forty-second Street and Fifty-ninth Street 
 may suggest nothing, but neither does East Broadway, 
 which Happy pointed to as "de Fi'th Avenyeh of de East 
 Side." 
 
 He kept calling to the bewildered Parny: "To de 
 right, " " Toin to de lef ' , " " Say, where you goin' !" " Now 
 to de right." "Whyn't you keep on straight till I tell 
 you?" 
 
 Parny's dignity was ruffled and he was crimson behind 
 the ears, but Muriel was amused. If Happy went to 
 heaven he would call St. Peter "de old janitor wit' de 
 white fringe." 
 
 Muriel began to suspect that Happy was taking them 
 out of the way for the sake of the ride. And he was. 
 But eventually they came to the region where an arc of 
 the first of the big city bridges soars above the roofs and 
 where the white height of the Municipal Building thrusts 
 icy pinnacles up and up into the sky. 
 
 Muriel found Batavia Street a narrow alley a few hun- 
 dred feet long. It reminded her of London in its air of 
 being mislaid, its brevity, and its gloomy antiquity. Yet 
 
 82
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 it was hard to believe that the first home of the first 
 President of the United States was within a stone's-throw 
 of this place. 
 
 There was barely room for Parny to squeeze his big car 
 between the sidewalks, and he was unable to pass the 
 first obstruction, a ramshackle wagon on splay wheels. 
 Attached to it was a horse that stood bias to the street 
 and leaned upon its rope-mended harness in shameless 
 decrepitude. The wagon belonged in the kindling-pile 
 and the horse was ready for the boneyard. 
 
 Parny squawked his horn to warn the animal aside, but 
 he did not budge. 
 
 "He's deef," said Happy, who was in no hurry to get 
 down from his leathern throne. 
 
 Muriel asked, "Is that that horse yours?" 
 
 "That's Whiskers," said Happy. "Can't you see?" 
 
 The reasons for the title were abundantly evident on 
 fetlock and chin. 
 
 On the side of the wagon a legend had been painted 
 by home talent in unconscious cryptogram: 
 
 pAtRickhANig 
 AN tRuckM 
 ANAnd BAggAgda 
 Liv3Rd-LiC3ns No. 
 8372 
 
 Muriel was puzzling over the rebus when Happy seized 
 her arm and murmured: 
 
 "Look, dere's me mudder. See? In de top windy! 
 She hoid de honker, but she 'ain't sor me yet." He called 
 aloud: "Hay, ma, here I am! It's me!" Again he 
 gripped Muriel's wincing arm. "She sees me! Yep, it's 
 me, ma ! She's pipin' you off now. She t'inks you're me 
 new wife. Cheese, she's been cryin'. I better git to her." 
 
 Muriel looked up the dark wall to a top window where 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 a head hung over a sill as if it had been cut off. She 
 could make out little except the air of age and sorrow 
 before she had to turn, to Happy. 
 
 He was making haste to get down, but his zeal aroused 
 slumbering bruises and he yowled and collapsed into the 
 arms of Muriel. She let him down into the hands of Parny, 
 who did not relish the ungainly burden. He started to 
 carry Happy to his door, only to be rewarded with pum- 
 melings and kicks: 
 
 " Drop me, dammit, me mudder '11 t'ink I'm dead." 
 Parny lowered him at once and he waved and smiled up 
 to his mudder. But there was melancholy reassurance at 
 best in his shambling gait, and Muriel felt tears in her soul. 
 
 In Batavia Street the tenements are not very high and 
 they have little wooden stoops set sidewise. It wrung 
 Muriel's heart to see Happy negotiate the problem. 
 She followed to help him. And inside the building the 
 stairs were narrow and dark. She thought she would 
 shriek at his boggling deliberateness, but he would not 
 accept her aid. 
 
 His mother came running down to meet him and her 
 aid he accepted, also her caresses and kisses and her pet 
 names and her anxiety. He was telling her all about 
 everything while he panted up the stairs, and she was 
 interspersing his narrative with exclamations of pious 
 terror, as if the danger were to come instead of past. 
 
 Like the good fervent soul she was she appealed to holy 
 names with every breath. It was, "Ah, the Lord love ye, 
 darlin'!" "Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and how was 
 it you weren't killed?" and, "Oh, merciful hour! Thank 
 God for all things!" 
 
 Muriel was forgotten for the moment and was tempted 
 to retreat, but Happy called down to her to come up and 
 meet his mother. Muriel climbed the rickety boards as 
 meekly and breathlessly as many an aspirant for recog- 
 nition had climbed the famous marble stairway in her 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 father's home the stairway whose ascension was con- 
 sidered so definitely a route to the social seventh heaven 
 that it was known as "Jacob's Ladder." 
 
 Muriel's mother had stood for years at the top of 
 Jacob's Ladder and she was regarded as a fierce old gorgon 
 by those curious people who try to make friends with the 
 great not for the sake of the human friendship, but for the 
 sake of the diploma it gives. To Muriel, however, her 
 mother had been only and altogether what a mother is and 
 should be. Born on the peak, Muriel could not under- 
 stand the fierce anxiety of the climbers. But now she 
 understood it by a sort of inverted reflection; she was 
 climbing toward the antipodal height of poverty. She 
 was the intruder, the aspirant, hoping that Mrs. Hanigan 
 would accept her service and afraid that she might resent 
 it as an impudence. 
 
 And Happy, who made the presentation, left no doubt 
 by his manner that it was Muriel who was receiving rather 
 than giving the honor of the occasion. 
 
 His formula of introduction was simple: 
 
 "Ma, shake hands wit' Miss Schuyler. She's so stuck 
 on me shape she follered me home." 
 
 Mrs. Hanigan was in a difficult position. As a mother 
 it was her duty to revile Muriel for the damage done to 
 her son; also it was her duty to thank her for her sub- 
 sequent courtesy. Hospitality urged her to ignore the 
 former duty and do the latter. She put into Muriel's 
 stout young fingers her toil-weary, time-worn little old 
 hand and said: 
 
 "Good marnin', and God save you. It's kind you were 
 to the boy." 
 
 "I wasn't very kind to him," said Muriel, "but I want 
 to be." 
 
 But Mrs. Hanigan felt called upon to apologize for the 
 neighborhood before she took up any new business: 
 
 "You mustn't be mindin' the looks of things. This 
 street is gone that bad it 'd take the heart out of you. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 But when first we came over this was as grand a neighbor- 
 hood as you'd be lookin' for. Grand people here, too. 
 Now and again there'd be a bit of throuble on Cherry 
 Street, but the police was ahlways interferin', and smahl 
 wondher they got paid up. At last thim Eyetalians 
 begin to pour in, and us Irish hates garlic as the devil 
 hates holy wather. We was always m'aning to move, but 
 the one thing and another previnted. We done our best 
 to show the Eyetalians they wasn't wahnted. Me own 
 man and others would push chimneys off the roofs onto 
 them, but then they'd move in at night. There was no 
 stoppin' 'em, so at last we had to get used to 'em. 
 
 "Thin the Yiddishers come along and squeeged out the 
 Eyetalians, and we was worse off nor befoor; and now it's 
 the Greeks have drove out the Yiddishers. And it's past 
 apologizin' for. There's nobody here now but new 
 Albanians and a few of us old families, Irish, Jewish, and 
 Dago, that couldn't somehow get away. But for why am 
 I holdin' you out in the hahl? Come in, dear." 
 
 She opened the door, motioned Muriel within, wiped 
 off a chair with her sleeve, invited Muriel to sit down, and 
 stood meekly before her, with her head tilted wistfully 
 to one side and one hand at her throat holding her waist 
 together. 
 
 Muriel prepared to deliver her petition and coughed 
 once or twice. Then she noted that Happy had toddled 
 to his cot in the kitchen and fallen asleep as soon as he 
 spread his poor bones across it. The shock had begun to 
 show the drain on his strength. 
 
 Muriel beckoned Mrs. Hanigan into the hall for a secret 
 conference on the matter of rectifying Happy's frame. 
 They tiptoed out, and Muriel, leaning against the banister, 
 stated her case with apologies for her interference. 
 
 Mrs. Hanigan stared at her with the hungry gratitude 
 of a famine-sufferer to a distributer of bread. The tears 
 ran to her eyes and scattered down her infinitely wrinkled 
 skin like spilled shot. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 It was a divine boon Muriel offered her. In the mystic- 
 lottery of birth she had drawn a crippled child, whose 
 deformities had grown with him, a lifelong reproach and 
 protest to his parents. 
 
 And now from the heavens a saint had arrived 1 
 promising a divine miracle by way of the science and 
 surgery of to-day which are the clay and spittle on the 
 eyes of the blind, the "Arise, take up thy bed and 
 walk" of the halt. 
 
 Mrs. Hanigan accepted with gratitude and a promise 
 of countless prayers for Muriel's welfare. She promised 
 to break the news to Happy and to compel him to undergo 
 the ordeal. 
 
 Then Muriel put out her hand in farewell and turned 
 to descend the stairs. Mrs! Hanigan would have been 
 less surprised if she had unfolded wings and soared away 
 through the skylight. 
 
 As Muriel was listening to the endless reiteration of 
 Mrs. Hanigan's gratitude and trying to get her hand back 
 without brusquerie, she began to take cognizance of a 
 moaning. She had heard it all the while, but it had 
 not quite forced its way into her main current of 
 thought. 
 
 Now she realized that it was not a freak of the wind, 
 but the wailing of women in great sorrow. She asked 
 Mrs. Hanigan what it might be. 
 
 "It's them poor Wops on the flure beneat'th," said 
 Mrs. Hanigan. "Their name is Angelilly, and I take 
 shame to meself for complainin' when I think of what's 
 put on thim. My boy Michael is twishted, but I have him 
 home. Their boy has been stolen on thim by the Black 
 Hand. They have money where we have none, but 
 they haven't enough for to pay what '11 bring back their 
 boy. They're near destroyed with trouble. God sinds 
 the childher to the poor for a blessin', but the Black Boy 
 turns them into a sorrow." 
 
 Muriel's first thought was an appeal to the law. 
 
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 "Their child stolen!" she gasped. "Why don't they 
 appeal to the police?" 
 
 Mrs. Hanigan smiled dismally: "The police is it? And 
 get their boy killed for them. Sure they're afraid to be 
 heard cryin' out loud. The poor mother me heart 
 bleeds for her she's not so bad for a Dago kind and 
 quite but only for when she's wailin'." 
 
 Muriel pondered. "I wonder if I could be of help?" 
 
 Mrs. Hanigan was instantly alarmed: "You'd best be 
 keepin' out of that, honey. Thim Black Hand Ginneys 
 is the terrible ones. They're like snakes in the dark. 
 They'd kill a Christian as soon as an Eyetalian if you 
 crossed their path." 
 
 Muriel was learning something of the modern demon- 
 ology of the present-day poor: the automobiles, the Mafia, 
 the hospitals. Danger and bad luck assailed the poor 
 most on the side of their children. The rich man's young 
 are perishable freight enough, but the little poor must 
 run endless gantlets of danger. 
 
 Muriel promised Mrs. Hanigan to keep away, and 
 got her hand back at last, after Mrs. Hanigan had 
 held it and patted it and laid it against her tear-enriched 
 cheek. 
 
 Then Muriel hurried down the stairs. She was so 
 afraid of the very mention of the Black Hand that she 
 went along the next hall beneath on tiptoe. As she was 
 passing the fateful door the voice of the woman within 
 broke out in an anguish of impatience at fate: 
 
 "0 figlio mio! figliuolo mio!" 
 
 Muriel had spent a winter or two in Italy and learned 
 to like the people. She liked everybody she knew. She 
 felt the human urge impelling her feet to the door. But 
 fear carried her on, though the reiterated wail went 
 through her heart like a thin stiletto. 
 
 She moved doggedly down the first few steps of the 
 next stairway, but that mother's call for her son seized 
 her as with a mother's hands, and she paused.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 There was the sound of a younger voice comforting the 
 older. Somehow that courage touched her deeplier than 
 the agony, that old glorious watchword of mankind, 
 "'Let us be strong." She heard it here in this tenement, 
 "Siamo Jorti, madre mio." She wavered, then turned 
 about, mounted the steps, went to the door and tapped 
 softly.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 '"THERE was a silence. She tapped again, then a 
 1 feeble call: 
 
 " Un "arnica" she answered. 
 "Entri!" 
 
 Muriel pushed the door open timidly and paused, once 
 more a social aspirant in another caste. She had a 
 sense of Italian large eyes further enlarged with wonder. 
 
 On a backless chair the woman whose wails had troubled 
 the building sat crouched, tearing her hair and clawing her 
 cheeks. She was only thirty, but she was already a 
 grandmother. She looked up through her claws now and 
 stared through streaming eyes at Muriel. Across her 
 lap lay her latest child, an infant exhausted with its un- 
 heeded shrieks. 
 
 At her side stood her eldest daughter, herself a wife 
 and not yet fifteen. In her left arm she held a naked, 
 chubby bambella that stood on her narrow hip and fed 
 noisily at her young breast, as unmindful of grief as the 
 tiny kitten that lay supine on the floor and sparred with 
 the fringe of the red table-cloth. 
 
 The wall was spotted with a few Biblical scenes, a comic 
 supplement or two from a Sunday newspaper, and gaudy 
 prints of the Italian king and queen wearing a startled 
 and uncomfortable expression. On an easel was propped 
 a large crayon portrait of a boy. It was one of the hor- 
 rors that cheap photographers inflict on their more liberal 
 customers. The artist had done his worst, but had not 
 
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 quite effaced all human semblance, and there was a rem- 
 nant of childish beauty. 
 
 As Muriel faced the gaze of the puzzled women she felt 
 like apologizing for an unpardonable infringement on the 
 privacy of their grief. But she had crossed the Rubicon 
 and she could not retreat. She paused at the door-sill to 
 compose her offer of services in lugubrious Italian. 
 
 "I o ho to ho udi udito vostro " She could not 
 remember the word for "crying." 
 
 The elder woman stared dumbly, the younger answered, 
 "You did hear my mawther cry?" 
 
 "Yes," Muriel gasped, grateful for the rescue. " I was 
 passing. I heard the sound of weeping. I thought I 
 might help." 
 
 The elder mother frowned and tried to grasp Muriel's 
 meaning without understanding her words. She tugged 
 at her daughter's apron and muttered: 
 
 11 Che dice?" 
 
 The younger mother translated in an undertone the 
 nature of Muriel's visit. The elder woman answered 
 resentfully. Muriel caught the words "casa di settle- 
 ment" They took her for a settlement-worker. This, 
 strangely, did not make her welcome. She could not 
 understand why. But she explained with a timid con- 
 fusion that won their hearts how she had been calling 
 upon Mrs. Hanigan and had learned of their grief and 
 could not go past the door without at least telling them 
 how sorry she was. 
 
 Once more the women conferred. Then the girl brought" 
 forward a chair and said, "Favorite di seder e" 
 
 The social struggler had captured another stronghold. 
 
 Even the kitten came over to pretend that Muriel's 
 little shoe was a very big mouse, and she encouraged its 
 scamperings, back-archings, tail-swelling onsets, and panics. 
 The women smiled a little at the kitten's mock heroics. 
 It was about the only thing in the world that could have 
 brought them a smile.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Fortunately for Muriel the sticky baby refused her 
 advances. 
 
 Muriel extracted the story of the theft of the child 
 after some difficulty. The mother, Teresa, was incoherent 
 with grief, but the daughter, Gemma, was fluent in English, 
 for all her accent. She said that her father, Angelo 
 Angelillo, was an ambitious man who kept a bakeshop 
 and tried to advance himself with side lines, such as 
 ice and wood and fruit and a few boot-blacking stands. 
 He thought he had no enemies. He had kept clear of the 
 feuds brought over from Italy or compounded here. He 
 made some money, and was glad to give the impression of 
 making more it was the typical American game of bluff 
 and it helped business. 
 
 But it had attracted the attention of the criminals, too. 
 Several times the shop had been robbed, with poor results. 
 Now the boy had been stolen to be held for ransom. 
 Teresa broke in that it was a punishment from Heaven 
 for her husband's wild ambitions punizione d' ambizio- 
 sagine. 
 
 Gemma told how the boy Filippo was prized. He was 
 all the sons of his father's house, and more precious than 
 all the daughters together. There had been no thought 
 of danger Filippo had played in the streets or pretended 
 to be a salesman in his father's bakeshop. Sometimes he 
 was allowed to deliver packages long sticks of bread or 
 cakes. He could be trusted with the bread; sometimes 
 the cakes were nibbled, but nobody minded the marks of 
 his little teeth. 
 
 Three days ago he had gone on such an errand. He 
 had not come back not to dinner, not in the evening. 
 They had all hunted for him, run through the streets, 
 through all the streets, even through the whole long 
 curve of Mulberry Bend and through the park named 
 after the Italian who invented America. They had 
 
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 searched even through the "Little Italy" of far-away 
 Harlem. 
 
 Muriel could picture them running awkwardly, bare- 
 headed, gesticulating, with their hair flying, their eyes 
 wild, breathlessly demanding, demanding. 
 
 Gemma brought out a photograph of the boy the 
 photograph from which the crayon portrait had been 
 made. It showed the usual unusual beauty of Italian 
 children. Filippo might have been one of Donatello's 
 little choristers. 
 
 All night he had not come home. All night the father 
 neglected the bakery and ransacked the town, calling, 
 peering, questioning as if in a huge forest. 
 
 No bread was made that night; the other bakers were 
 turned loose to hunt. The next day the shop was closed 
 while the search went on. The father had even dared 
 to visit the Morgue; he had telephoned the hospitals. He 
 had been desperate enough to notify the police that the 
 boy was lost. A general alarm was sent out with a 
 description of his white waist, his black little breeches, 
 his brown stockings and shoes, his straw hat, his seventy 
 pounds of weight, his big black eyes, black curls, and red 
 lips. This helped the indifferent police not at all, for 
 New York is the largest Italian city in the world save 
 Naples larger than Rome or Milan; half a million Italians 
 are scattered through the city. The description of 
 Filippo fitted thousands of little Italian boys. But the 
 Angelilli could not imagine another like their Filippo. 
 
 The next day came a terrible letter; it proved that the 
 child had not run away; he had not hated his family or 
 wearied of his home; he had been stolen. Somewhere 
 he was crying for his mother unless he was gagged; he 
 was afraid and hungry; perhaps he was beaten, thrust 
 into some dark cellar and he was always so afraid of the 
 dark! Gemma brought out the letter, a plain envelope 
 with the address printed on it in pencil. The post- 
 mark was Brooklyn. The message was printed in Italian, 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 which even Muriel could see was misspelled and ungram- 
 matical. She Englished it thus 
 
 ANGELO ANGELILLO, Your boy is in our hands. If you love 
 him you will be glad to pay us five thousand dollars, which we 
 need. If you love the money more than you love your son 
 keep your money and we will send the boy back to you in a box. 
 If you want to see him alive publish in the Araldo this line, 
 "Lost: $5,000 reward for Filippo Angelillo" and we will let 
 you know where to put the money. If you tell the police, 
 you will not see the boy again even in a box. 
 
 The letter was not signed, except by a rude picture of an 
 open hand in black ink. 
 
 Muriel read the letter slowly and put it down as if it were 
 an infernal machine. It chilled her blood with the pecu- 
 liar cruelty of a crime against a child. 
 
 "Did you publish the line in the paper?" she asked. 
 
 Gemma shook her head dolefully: "Where shall my 
 fadder find fi' zousan dollari? He has not. He cannot 
 get." 
 
 "Did you notify the police?" Muriel asked, miserably. 
 
 "No, no! Giammai! To tell the police is to keel 
 Filippo. The letter says it. Eccblo! So soon the police 
 hunt for the boy, so soon he die." 
 
 "What can you do then?" Muriel faltered, sick at her 
 futility. 
 
 "To pray and to cry is all," said Gemma. "II mio 
 padre hunts in Brooklyn to-day. But Brooklyn is beega 
 city. He cannot find Filippo ; soch a leetla boy in a so 
 beega city." 
 
 The women subsided into a wide-eyed stupor. 
 
 Gemma told of other boys who had been stolen, rela- 
 tions of theirs. And men had been killed who were 
 relations of theirs. The famous barrel murder was still 
 unsolved, though eleven lives had been lost. The one 
 thing unfailing was the failure of the police, and the 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 ruination of everything when they blundered into the 
 mystery. 
 
 Muriel felt the terror of the subterrene war. It was 
 like a conflict among moles somewhere in the earth. 
 
 There was a tap at the door. Hallard walked in. 
 He assumed that Muriel was from one of the settlement 
 houses, engaged in benefiting these reluctant people 
 with useful but unwelcome advice as to ventilation, the 
 making of beds, the care of children, and true economy. 
 Hallard explained that he had heard of the kidnapping and 
 was assigned by the Bulletin to find out the truth. At 
 that time he had not yet moved over to the Gazette. 
 
 There are various words for devil, but the terrible wcrd 
 "reporter" is the same in all languages. The English 
 invented it, the Americans perfected its powers, and the 
 rest of the world has adopted it. 
 
 Gemma did not have to translate the title when she 
 understood, she simply gasped: 
 
 " Uno reporter!" 
 
 Teresa understood, and moaned, "Tutto e perduto!" 
 
 The very mention of Hallard's errand threw the women 
 into a panic. Their one hope had been to work in secret, 
 to keep even the police from throwing their flash-lamps 
 into the cave. The newspapers would be like sudden 
 search-lights. The kidnappers would scurry for shelter, 
 leaving a dead child in some closet or vacant lot. 
 
 Gemma put her baby in her mother's lap and strode 
 toward Hallard with a frenzy of hatred. 
 
 "You get outa thees room!" she cried. "If you poob- 
 leesh about our Filippo they keel our leetla boy. See, 
 they say it. And I keel you me!" 
 
 She held the letter out and beat it with the back of her 
 hand. Hallard snatched it and glanced over it before he 
 allowed Gemma to recover it. She would have torn him 
 with her nails, but he caught her hands and tried to calm 
 her: 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Now, now," he said. "Easy does it! Piano, piano! 
 The Bulletin is your friend io amico comprendete? 
 You give me a picture of the boy. We publish it. Every- 
 body sees it. Somebody recognizes the boy. We find 
 him right away, and there you are. It's the only thing." 
 
 Gemma knew more of the Black Hand than she did of 
 Hallard's theory of government by newspaper and police 
 by publicity. She continued to order him out, flinging 
 back the door and shouting like a fury. 
 
 Hallard saw the photograph and picked it up. "Is this 
 the kid?" 
 
 Gemma snatched it from his hands. 
 
 He smiled. "Oh, all right." He turned to Muriel. 
 "They all look alike. Our artist can fake up a good 
 picture, and we have the police description." 
 
 Muriel added her prayers to Gemma's: 
 
 " Oh, I beg you not to print anything. They know best. 
 It's their child. It's their right to say whether they shall 
 have the story published." 
 
 Hallard grinned. "Well, it's a matter of opinion. We 
 think that sunlight never hurt anything that was worth 
 saving. Anyway, I'm sent to get the story and I've got 
 to obey orders. Did you know the boy?" 
 
 "No," said Muriel. "Isn't there any inducement I 
 can offer to persuade you to keep quiet?" 
 
 He smiled and shook his head. 
 
 Her fingers went to the lock of her hand-bag. 
 
 He frowned with his eyebrow and a half, and one-half 
 of his lip sagged; then he began to laugh contemptuously. 
 Her hand fell away from her purse. He stared at her and 
 her pretty helplessness. Then he started, and gasped: 
 
 "Say, you're the young Miss Schuyler, aren't you?" 
 
 "That has nothing whatever to do with it," she an- 
 swered with great firmness. "What I want you to do is 
 to keep this out of the papers." 
 
 "I'm afraid that's impossible, Miss Schuyler," he said, 
 amused at her dictatorial tone. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 She gave up bribery and command and turned to 
 appeal. "Then won't you please tell your editor that 
 you couldn't find out anything? Couldn't you?" 
 
 "Would you have a newspaper man tell a fib?" Hallard 
 groaned with a burlesque horror. The armor of his 
 cynicism was impenetrable. 
 
 She could not fight past his grin to his heart, if he had 
 any. She sank back into her chair, and muttered, 
 "You beast!" There was something pleasantly naive in 
 her very insolence. Unselfish anger is always becoming. 
 
 Hallard sighed. ' ' If we only printed what we were asked 
 to print, Miss Schuyler, and left out everything we were 
 asked to leave out, there 'd be nothing but advertisements 
 and stories about actresses and society folks. You 
 won't mind if I write a little about finding you here work- 
 ing for these poor people, will you?" 
 
 "What!" Muriel exclaimed, sitting up very straight. 
 
 "The story about this poor boy is worth only a couple 
 of sticks, but if I can get you into it they'll give me a 
 column or two. We've got a photograph of you, but 
 perhaps you have a later picture you'd rather have us 
 run." 
 
 "Why, you unmitigated scoundrel!" Muriel gasped. 
 
 Hallard did not wince. He pleaded: "What better 
 publicity could you want than a story of how you came 
 down here into the slums and held out a helping hand to 
 the downtrodden in their distress? I could get a flash- 
 light of you in this room and call it the Angel of the 
 Tenements." 
 
 If she had even nibbled at the bait he would have 
 despised her as the dealers in publicity despise the beg- 
 gars in rags and tags "and some in velvet gowns" who 
 whine and wheedle at the back doors of the newspapers. 
 But Muriel was aghast at the very suggestion. 
 
 "You dare to mention my name in your miserable old 
 paper and I'll I'll " It was hard to think what she 
 could do, but her wrath was manifest. 
 
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 "What harm could it do you?" Hallard urged. 
 
 "You can't harm me!" she blazed with the haughty 
 presumption of a young empress. "But you can harm 
 these poor souls. I came in here to help them and you 
 want to use me to harm them. They don't want any- 
 thing printed. And they know best. And they have 
 some rights, even if I haven't. But if you make use of 
 my father's prominence to print a big article about me 
 and injure these poor souls well, I don't know what I 
 can do, but some day you'll get paid for it._ You see!" 
 
 Hallard's comment on her fierce tirade was to lift his 
 eyes gratefully and sigh, "Thank God, for once!" 
 
 Muriel did not know from what a long experience of 
 the miasms in the marshes of self-seeking and self- 
 concealment this gratitude arose. She supposed that she 
 had failed, since he went to the door. But he paused and 
 said, with much deference in his tone: 
 
 " I've got to turn in the story of the boy, Miss Schuyler, 
 because I was sent for it; but I'll keep it down as much as 
 I can. And I'll leave you out of it. It's kind of disloyal 
 to my paper, but it's a luxury to me to be asked to keep a 
 decent action secret." 
 
 "My father does hundreds of charitable deeds every 
 year and keeps them secret," Muriel retorted. 
 
 "Then they get head-lines in the New Jerusalem 
 Journal," said Hallard, pointing up, "and I've no doubt 
 your picture will be there this afternoon. But it won't 
 appear in the New York Bulletin. Good-by, Miss 
 Schuyler, and my congratulations to you on your 
 soul." 
 
 He puzzled her unsophisticated young mind almost as 
 much as he puzzled the two Italian women who under- 
 stood his language even less than she did. 
 
 But they all took comfort from his smile; and no smile 
 is quite so sweet as that which surprises a cynical face 
 with a flood of benignity. 
 
 Teresa began again to babble prayers to the Madre 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 di Dio to spare her boy from torments such as Her boy had 
 endured. 
 
 Then came a thumping of feet on the stairway, and 
 the door was flung open by a young Italian man whose 
 clothes and arms and face were white with flour. He 
 carried a letter in his hand, and he was sure that it was 
 from the boy himself. It had come into the shop pinned 
 to a bag of flour brought by a flour merchant who said that 
 he had not seen it before. 
 
 All three were so excited that their hands could neither 
 take nor hold the letter. It fell to the floor and was clutched 
 at and dropped again. It fluttered like a butterfly trying 
 to escape. At last Gemma secured it and ripped it open. 
 She cried that it was from Filippo. He had printed it 
 himself. 
 
 Into her hand fell a little black curl of hair. She held 
 it out in her palm. The mother seized it, pressed it to her 
 lips and to her breast and talked to it. 
 
 Then Gemma read the letter with greedy joy that 
 curdled at once. Her laughter ended in a gnarr of 
 nausea. She dug her fingers into her breast and the paper 
 fell again to the floor while she knelt and, clinging to the 
 mother, chattered insanely. 
 
 Muriel hesitatingly picked up the letter and read: 
 
 Car a mamma cara babbo io fame e paura* 
 
 She could make out the beginning, the child's first cry. 
 "I am hungry and afraid," but what followed in childish 
 dialect and spelling escaped her. Especially the words 
 "par sell posto." 
 
 She knelt by the kneeling Gemma and put her arms 
 about both women and their smothered, wailing babes, 
 but they seemed not to know of her existence. 
 
 The young baker took the letter from her fingers with 
 a gentle, "Domando perdona." He read and fell to beat- 
 
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 ing his eyes with his palms. Muriel turned to him for 
 explanation, and he cried: 
 
 "Leetla boy says, 'Pleass send money queeck or man 
 says he gona cut me into into pieces and senda wan 
 piece avery day by by dio miol by post by parcel 
 post'!" 
 
 Muriel felt herself swooning. She kept herself alive 
 only by the necessity of helping these frantic wretches. 
 
 Just one hope of rescue occurred to Muriel to pay the 
 ransom. Somewhere the five thousand dollars must be 
 found. 
 
 When she thought of money she thought of her father. 
 She would go to him at once, and make him give it to her. 
 Of course he would. He'd be only too glad to. 
 
 Radiant with inspiration, she knelt by the women again 
 and took their swaying bodies in her arms and kissed their 
 cheeks and called through the mist of fear that enveloped 
 them, repeating again and again in English mingled with 
 such Italian as she could improvise: 
 
 "Don't cry non piangete; place! io andare a mio 
 padre. He will il dare mi le cinque mille dollars ; yes, he 
 will si, si mio padre very rich reech ricco uomo, 
 padre mio il e milionario, si si! Filippo will come back. 
 I'll get him io io presto possibile. Please don't cry! 
 I come back. A rivederci. Good-by!" 
 
 Her effort to find the words was almost more tormenting 
 than her sorrow. Finally she beat into Gemma's mind 
 the new hope, and Gemma told her mother. Teresa 
 stared at Muriel incredulously, then caught her about the 
 knees, imploring her by her hope of paradise, by the body 
 of God, by the blood of San Gennaro by all things imagin- 
 able, to save the piccolo figliuolo. 
 
 Muriel backed away promising, promising, and Teresa 
 dragged after her on her knees, kissing Muriel's arms 
 and the hem of her skirt till Gemma unfastened her hands 
 and held her while Muriel escaped. 
 
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 Just one bright fact glinted in the black smoke about 
 her, and that was the glory and beauty and salvation of the 
 wealth her father had been good enough to build up. 
 Many newspapers published heinous attacks on her father, 
 because of his wealth and the way he got it and kept it. 
 Orators under red flags said that he should be pauperized 
 or assassinated; but she felt that wealth was justified, 
 was sanctified by such opportunities as this.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 MURIEL hurried down the stairway and met the 
 fretful Parny, who was about to mount in pursuit 
 of her. She silenced his indignant rebukes, and was just 
 stepping into the car when the silence of the shut-in street 
 was broken by a hubbub of voices, a man's shrill protests, 
 gruff shouts, and women's clamor. 
 
 Muriel was fatigued with grief. She had seen two 
 tragedies, and they were enough for one day. But it was 
 not for her to select the number or the nature of her 
 experiences. They were not prepared for her. Thousands 
 of other and equally cruel torments were trying human 
 hearts all over the town, all over the nation, all over the 
 world, perhaps all over the universe. 
 
 Everywhere on that day as on this sorrow was chas- 
 ing joy from one place and joy was putting grief to flight 
 from another. Whoever walks the city streets or the 
 country lanes or enters any of the houses must keep ears 
 and eyes and heart hermetically sealed and must brood 
 exclusively on his own moods, or he will find that life is 
 hardly more than the everlasting frustration of ever- 
 renewed desires. 
 
 Let him who would hoard his money or his sympathy 
 stick close at home, for everywhere he moves abroad he 
 will find empty pockets and souls in need. Muriel had 
 entered life. The scales were falling from her eyes and 
 the nursery music was dying from her ears. She was en- 
 countering realities. This was more truly her debut than 
 that recent occasion when her parents gave a coming-out 
 party for her and presented her to a select portion of her 
 
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 own world in her best bib and tucker or. rather, without 
 bib or tucker. 
 
 The day after that dancing entre"e she was the same girl 
 as before. After this day she would never be a girl again. 
 She would have girlish impulses and laughters and mis- 
 chiefs till her copper hair was silver, but she had won to 
 the title of woman. She was even going to learn some- 
 thing about the law a very vague ghost to those who do 
 not come in conflict with it, but a terrible wrestler to those 
 who do. 
 
 She had asked the Hanigans and the Angelilli why they 
 had not turned to the law for refuge from human oppres- 
 sion. She was about to witness innocence appealing to 
 humanity for rescue from the law. 
 
 As she rose into the tonneau of the car there was a sort 
 of explosion of people from a doorway on the other side of 
 the street. A few children came first, then a woman or 
 two, gesticulating men, and then two big policemen 
 supporting between them a young woman of uncanny 
 pallor and an unearthly smile. After the policemen fol- 
 lowed a residue of men and women who kept seizing the 
 officers by the coats. When the police hurled them away 
 with flail-like back-sweeps of their big elbows they 
 clutched again. 
 
 The knot came straggling and swaying along the street 
 till it reached the side of the car where Muriel stood like 
 one looking down into a pool. 
 
 The chief disturber was a lean and wan young Jew 
 with great eyes and a curly chestnut-colored beard that 
 gave him the look of the pictured Christ. This even in 
 spite of his violence. He kept hurling himself upon one 
 of the policemen, not striking him, but appealing and 
 clutching past him at the prisoner, who smiled and 
 whispered. 
 
 On the other side of the officers a hollow-eyed woman 
 trudged, wringing her hands and muttering in an in- 
 
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 audible voice. Her face was a very emblem of poverty 
 in despair. 
 
 As the little mob reached Muriel's feet the officer 
 whom the man assailed let go his hold on the girl 
 and seized his tormentor by the lapels of his coat 
 and held him fast while he spoke to him in one of 
 those high wiry sopranos that certain big brave Irish- 
 men have received by mistake and employ without a 
 hint of effeminacy: 
 
 "Look here now, Balinsky, I've been patient, but I'm 
 wore out. I'm sorry for you, but orders is orders and 
 the lah is the lah. I hate what I'm doin' worse than 
 annyt'thing I've ever done, but I've got to do it. I'm 
 after tellin' ye till I'm tired that it's not for me to 1'ave her 
 go. It's not for nobody to 1'ave her go, unless it's President 
 Wilson himself. I've stood for all the pullin' and hahlin' 
 I'm goin' ta, and if you lay hand on me again I'll slam you 
 into a cell for interferin' and assahlt and bat'thry and 
 contimpt and and you'll not even be down to the boat 
 to see the gerl off." 
 
 This threat silenced the man for a moment. He put 
 back his head and sent his gaze up into the blistering 
 glare of the sun, and his throat worked in either prayer or 
 blasphemy, Muriel could not tell which. But it moved 
 her to intervene timidly: 
 
 "Officer, pardon me but what is the matter? What 
 has the poor thing done that you're arresting her?" 
 
 The mob all turned to the voice from overhead. The 
 policeman, who felt the need of a little sympathy for his 
 own unpitied estate, looked gratefully up at Muriel's 
 beauty. The sight of her and her comfortable equipage 
 and her gentle voice made an oasis. He took off his hat, 
 wiped the dripping sweat-band, and, leaning on the car 
 door with the familiarity of authority, explained, while 
 the knot gathered about, watching Muriel as if she were a 
 judge in a high place. 
 
 He made a long story of it, but he had an ulterior 
 
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 motive, and he felt that he was gaining time by spending 
 it in winning over a nice lady with an automobile. 
 
 "You see, it's like this, Miss. I never made a hahl 
 I was so ashamed of, but it's me duty. This poor felly 
 Balinsky has been gettin' the worst of it over there in 
 Rooshian Poland and now he's gettin' still worser over 
 here. Over there he heard that America was the land of 
 the free, and all that old guff. The agents of the steam- 
 ship companies goes about lyin' to those people to get 
 them to buy tickets and come over here. They promise 
 all sorts of things to the poor boobs. They buncoed this 
 man Balinsky that way. His wife has a brother that's 
 livin' here these twenty years. That's him there the 
 old one Sokalski his name is. The Lord knows he's had 
 rough goin' enough to have tipped off Balinsky more betther 
 than to come over, but he did. And at that maybe it's 
 worse yet in Rooshia. Annyhow, Balinsky hides his wife 
 and his pretty dahter away from the persecutioners and 
 over he comes to here. And he likes it, and by workin' like 
 a dog and eatin' nothin' he saves enough to send over the 
 money for to bring them across. 
 
 "Well, across the pond they come and they get through 
 Ellis Island without a bit of throuble no tracomy, or 
 annyt 'thing to turn them back. 
 
 "They're as happy here as only the likes of them could 
 be who can thank God for not bein' massacred ivery 
 marnin' because the Rooshians want a bit of rifle practice. 
 Thin comes these hard times and all their savin's is gone 
 and they're hard put to it to keep souls in their bodies. 
 
 " On'y for Mr. Sokalski here, who has a family of his own 
 at that, they'd have gone on the charities. Then last week 
 only poor Balinsky gets a job and comes runnin' home 
 with the good news, and what does he find but his daughter 
 has gone to maunderin'. 
 
 "Had ye noticed how when ye hurry home with good 
 news there's ahlways bad news there ahead of ye? 
 
 "Well, annyhow, this poor gerl Rachel her name is is 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 turned to what you can see. She's babblin', and wouldn't 
 the smile of her cut your heart in two, now? Balinsky 
 runs for the docther and the docther sends her to the 
 horspital. And then the throuble begins, for the lah 
 requires the horspital to report it to the Immigration 
 Board, and the lah requires the Board to deport the pore 
 thing." 
 
 "Deport her?" Muriel gasped. "Send her back to 
 Russia?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am, that's the lah. If you come over to this 
 country they '11 turn you back if you have eye throubles or 
 poverty or brain throubles. If you've none of them they 
 give you a year of grace. But if you develop them within 
 the year, back you go, were you the Imperor himself. 
 There's no 'If,' 'And,' or 'But' about it. The lah says, 
 ' Back to where you come from.'" 
 
 " It's a horrible law," Muriel cried. 
 
 "Maybe, but it's for the protection of us that's here." 
 
 "But you can't send a poor girl like that back alone. 
 Has she any relatives there?" 
 
 " No, they're all over here. Her mother will have to go 
 with her. That's the bad of it. They're not wanted 
 there, and they'll suffer the more for runnin' away. But 
 they can't stay here whatever. I didn't want to bring the 
 patrol-wagon up and disgrace them, and I hate to take the 
 women through the streets like they was crooks. But 
 lah's lah and I'm only a cop. I was wonderin' could you 
 you see, there's no cabs to be had down here for love 
 nor money. And the sun is b'atin' down on the bare 
 heads of them and " 
 
 "Why, yes," said Muriel, reluctantly enough, but more 
 ashamed to refuse than to consent. When Jacques 
 Parny understood he was infuriated, but Muriel quieted 
 him with a glare. "And does the poor husband go back, 
 too?" she asked. 
 
 The officer shook his head. "That s the worst of it all. 
 He daren't go back. He would starve or be killed." 
 
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 Balinsky, who had listened desperately, hung his pitifui 
 face over the edge of the car. He had gained the impres- 
 sion from the policeman's deference that Muriel must be 
 a personage of authority. He put his hands out to her, 
 palms hungrily open and twitching, and he prayed to her: 
 
 "Lady, please fine lady, dun't let dem sended my 
 femmily beck by Rossia. You dun't know vat dey do 
 to us, dose Cossacks to keel is not all. I cannot go beck 
 minesulf. My vife should die and nobody makes care 
 by mein Rachel. Lady lady nice lady! I esk you. 
 Pleass!" 
 
 The mother crept forward, too, and stretched out lean 
 hands whose fingers struggled together in an anguish of 
 appeal. She had wept her voice almost away, and her 
 plea was in a raucous whisper; her wept-out eyes were 
 dry and dull. Muriel could neither hear nor understand 
 the language she used, but her eyes and her frantic hands 
 were unendurably eloquent. 
 
 The old man Sokalski added his low prayer. Then a 
 girl appeared on the other side of the car a very beauti- 
 ful girl, with no hat or veil to hide the slumberous glow of 
 her hair. Muriel noted how like in color it was to her own 
 hair. 
 
 The girl motioned Muriel closer and spoke softly, with 
 hardly more of dialect than a f oreignness of intonation : 
 
 "Lady you should do something if you could by 
 Mr. Balinsky. He is the brother of my mother. I am 
 Maryla Sokalska. Mr. Balinsky did live by us in Orchard 
 Street. He work so hard for the money to bring his wife 
 and that poor girl, their daughter. If they go back he 
 says he will make himself dead, for he knows they will 
 die, too. Here they are happy; the poor girl gets well 
 some day. But if you let them go, all will die." 
 
 " If I let them go !" Muriel cried. "What can I do ?" 
 
 "Somebody can do something. It must _ be so. In 
 this good country it is not meant that the law should kill 
 three good people who work hard and do no wrong. In 
 
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 Russia, yes. There they butcher the Jews, they rob them 
 and beat them and drive them like sheep to the shears. 
 But not in America. It is not meant to be so in America." 
 
 "No, no, it must not be so." Muriel groaned. "Some- 
 body must stop it." 
 
 "Who will, if not you?" said Maryla. 
 
 Muriel never forgot those quiet words. They were 
 like a motto for a life: "Who will, if not you?" 
 
 The officer attempted now to move into the car he had 
 commandeered. But at the first effort to lift the Balinsky 
 girl into the tonneau her mother and father broke forth 
 into such shrieks that Muriel waved them away. 
 
 "You can't use my car for any such outrage," she 
 stormed at the policeman. "If you're a man you'll quit 
 tormenting these poor souls." 
 
 The officer glanced along the hot street and sighed to his 
 companion : 
 
 "Come on, Ludwig. We've got to foot it." 
 
 "Wait, wait!" Muriel protested. "It's impossible that 
 such a wicked thing should be done." 
 
 "It's done ahl the time, Miss," said Morahan. 
 
 Muriel spoke up with the positiveness of a spoiled 
 child. "Well, it's not going to be done this time! I'll 
 go to the Immigration Board myself!" 
 
 The policeman smiled at her warlike tone. "You'll 
 have to go higher than that." 
 
 "Then I'll go to Washington. I'll make my father 
 make the President stop it." 
 
 She believed that her father could do almost anything 
 he wanted to; and she could make him do almost any- 
 thing she wanted him to. 
 
 She would go to him at once. He was probably at 
 home, wondering where she was. But he might have been 
 delayed at his office. Since she was so far down-town she 
 would make the try. 
 
 "Jacques," she said, "au bureau de mon pere." 
 
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 Jacques muttered that it was high time, and, warning 
 the crowd away with voice and horn, sent the car hum- 
 ming. Muriel called back to the despondent suppliants: 
 "Don't worry. My father will save them." 
 As Muriel was whisked round the corner into James 
 Street she saw the two policemen pressing forward and the 
 mournful flock trudging after.
 
 CHAPTER XTIT 
 
 THE car hurried with impatience along the twisted 
 path of Water Street, under Brooklyn Bridge, and 
 on to Wall Street, and up Wall Street to the new sky- 
 scraper that housed the bank of which the present Jacob 
 Schuyler was the third president of the name. 
 
 His private office was on the seventeenth floor. Muriel 
 had seen it only once or twice in her life. She approached 
 it without the awe of the usual visitor. She called to the 
 office-boy, "Is my father in?" and rushed past him 
 without formality. The oration she planned was equally 
 informal. But when she bolted into the throne-room she 
 found another man with her father. 
 
 Old Schuyler nearly went over backward in his swivel- 
 chair at Muriel's irruption. When she paused at the 
 sight of the stranger he said : 
 
 " Come in come in. It's only Mr. Merithew. You've 
 met, haven't you?" 
 
 "We have now, to my great delight," said Perry, rising 
 and putting out his hand without waiting for hers. 
 
 She gave her hand into his, and her smile was more 
 cordial than her father's as he watched the meeting. He 
 meant to cut it short when he said: 
 
 "Well, young lady, I'm not home yet, as you see. 
 Been detained here by a dozen things that have turned 
 up." 
 
 "Of which I am one," said Perry. 
 
 Jacob ignored him: "Have you seen the new books, 
 Muriel?"* 
 
 "No, I haven't. Fact is, I broke in on you because " 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 "Five thousand dollars in cash." 
 
 "Stop joking! I'm feeling poor to-day? That library 
 cost me a hundred thousand and I'm What do you 
 want with all that money, anyway? Did you run over 
 somebody?" 
 
 "Yes, but that isn't it. And maybe you'll have to 
 take a trip to Washington for me." 
 
 "Good Lord! There's nobody in Washington in this 
 weather except the poor President." 
 
 "He's the man I want you to see. You may not have 
 to go, though, but Well, anyway, you've got to keep 
 the Immigration Board from deporting a poor girl who is 
 feeble-minded. ' ' 
 
 "They can't deport you for a motor accident," was 
 Jacob's pathetic quip. 
 
 She smiled politely as she ran on: "And I want the five 
 thousand dollars to ransom a poor little Italian boy 
 with. He has been kidnapped." 
 
 "Great Scott! What you really want, Muriel, is a 
 doctor. Your mother said it was wrong to bring you to 
 town in all this heat." 
 
 Muriel grew impatient and fiercely earnest. 
 
 "Now, you've got to give this to me, Daddy. It's 
 terribly important. And you've got to use your influence 
 to But I'll wait till you've finished your business with 
 Mr. Merithew." 
 
 "Don't go on my account," said Perry. "I'm here on 
 the same errand. I ran over your yacht in my plane this 
 morning, and it reminded me that your father would have 
 a lot of money loafing around that I could use. So I took 
 the train into town and caught him on the wing. Please 
 don't give her my five thousand dollars, Mr. Schuyler." 
 
 Jacob sniffed, " Don't worry; I haven't any money that 
 belongs to either of you." 
 
 Muriel protested, "But this is to save a little kidnapped 
 boy from being killed by the Black Hand." 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "And mine," said Merithew, "is to save an old Knicker- 
 bocker from being kidnapped by a little blackmailer." 
 
 Jacob frowned, but Muriel did not understand. She 
 poured forth the story of the Italian mother. Her father, 
 who was the eternal target for narratives of woe, was 
 touched more by her distress than by what she described, 
 while Perry Merithew, who knew little of such things, was 
 moved to copious tears. He was an ardent and sincere 
 sentimentalist. Otherwise he could not have been such a 
 success or was he a failure? with women. 
 
 When, at the end of the recital, Muriel asked again for 
 money, her father slowly shook his head. Perry Merithew 
 was almost as horrified as Muriel was. She stormed and 
 wheedled, but Jacob shook his head coldly. 
 
 Being an American father, he was used to the rebukes 
 of his children and rather felt pride in their earnestness 
 than anger at their lack of piety. He condescended to 
 explain : 
 
 "My dear little girl, I was reading only the other 
 morning about another such boy. The paper said that a 
 hundred and fifty Italian children have been kidnapped 
 in the last few years. All their mothers must have suf- 
 fered agonies. Suppose I had tried to buy all those 
 children back at five thousand dollars apiece. That 
 would cost me seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 
 It wouldn't leave much money for the other poor people, 
 would it ? But it would cause the kidnapping of hundreds 
 of other children, wouldn't it?" 
 
 Muriel could not endure generalizations. She could 
 not visualize the miseries of the world by wholesale. 
 She could see only those Angelillo women clinging to each 
 other and crying to the world to save their child from 
 torment. 
 
 She planted herself on her father's desk and thrust to 
 the floor the unimportant papers of mere banking value. 
 She talked to the old man as to a child, pleading, promising 
 
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 never to bother him again if he would yield only this once, 
 appealing to his generosity, and picturing again the scene 
 she had witnessed. He watched her with soft eyes, but his 
 mouth was firm and his head swung back and forth with 
 never a dip of consent. 
 
 At length Perry Merithew cried out in a burst of emotion 
 as he swallowed hard and batted his wet eyelids : 
 
 "I'll tell you, Miss Muriel, you persuade your father 
 to lend me ten thousand, and I'll give you half of it." 
 
 Muriel stared at him in amazement. She saw the 
 tenderness in his eyes, and she felt that her father, her 
 cruel father, must have slandered him. She accepted 
 his proffer with enthusiasm. 
 
 "Splendid!" said Muriel. "And you can come to the 
 slums and see how they take it." 
 
 "No, thank you," said Perry. "The New York slums 
 are the last place you'll ever find me." 
 
 "Then I'll tell them it was your money. You'll lend 
 Mr. Merithew the ten thousand, Daddy, won't you? 
 please ! for my sake . ' ' 
 
 "It is hardly a bankable proposition," said Jacob, 
 turning and gazing out of the window at the panorama 
 of the city, the river and the bay, all spread out before 
 him like a possession. Perhaps he was thinking how 
 much of it he owned. Perhaps he was thinking how 
 many people under that multitude of roofs would be 
 saved from despair, perhaps to triumph, by that five 
 thousand dollars which Muriel wanted to turn over to a 
 gang of criminals (pour encourager les autres) or which 
 Perry Merithew wanted to pay out as a belated instalment 
 on one of his love-affairs. 
 
 No ! Money was not meant to be profaned by such reck- 
 less abuse of either good or bad motives. 
 
 Schuyler got rid of Merithew by a rigid economy of 
 courtesy, and Perry bowed himself out with well-masked 
 chagrin. Muriel pressed his hand, and thanked him in 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 superlatives, and felt that she had lost a noble champion 
 when he had gone. 
 
 Jacob turned to Muriel for an account of her "escapade " 
 as he called it and it had been an escape for her, from 
 the ignorance and indolence of her sheltered life. 
 
 Jacob was touched by the miseries of Muriel's clients, 
 but then he knew so many others in even worse distress. 
 His office hours as a banker had been largely devoted to 
 hearing the hard-luck stories and the wild necessities of 
 men no less desperate for playing with big stakes, or 
 facing long pay-rolls with short cash. 
 
 Furthermore, as a rich man, Jacob Schuyler was as- 
 sailed everywhere he went with appeals for alms. He 
 could have spent his entire fortune every day without 
 satisfying the greed of charity, which is one of the horse- 
 leech's recently adopted daughters and, like the grave, 
 never says "enough." 
 
 Like an old doctor, he was hardened to the cries of 
 distress. The only new thing in the situation was the 
 fact that his daughter had broken away from all the safe- 
 guards he had built about her, and run amuck among the 
 tenements rife with disease and countless perils to a young 
 girl. 
 
 This alarmed him more than any story of kidnapping 
 or deportation. He told Muriel so, and alarmed her with 
 his unsuspected coldness. She told him so. 
 
 He pressed a button in his desk and his secretary, 
 Mr. Chivot, was there as by apparition, bowing to Muriel 
 and waiting. Jacob said : 
 
 "Miss Muriel has run across an Italian atrocity and a 
 harrowing case of deportation. She will give you the 
 names and data. Get a detective and our charity man 
 at work on them at once. Tell 'em to do what's necessary, 
 and if I can help let me know. Give Mr. Chivot the 
 facts, Muriel, and everything will be done the best way." 
 
 "But I" 
 
 Jacob was gone. He walked out to the anteroom and 
 
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 instructed a clerk to telephone his yacht to be ready; also 
 to telephone the town house that dinner need not be 
 served, and the country house that it need. 
 
 When he returned, Muriel was smothering the impas- 
 sive Chivot with passionate appeals, and he was assuring 
 her that nothing would be left undone. 
 
 "It better hadn't," she said with childish threat. 
 "I'll be down the first thing in the morning." 
 
 "We'll go home to dinner now," said Jacob. 
 
 They went down in the elevator to the car and Jacob 
 spoke to Parny in an undertone. The car made good 
 speed northward, and at Twenty-third Street veered east. 
 
 "But this isn't the way home," said Muriel. 
 
 "Oh yes, it is," said Jacob. "The yacht's ready." 
 
 "But I'm not going out there. I'm stopping in town 
 to-night." 
 
 "Oh no, you're not." 
 
 "I am so! If you don't let me out, I'll jump." 
 
 "Oh no, you won't." 
 
 "Then I'll scream and draw a crowd." 
 
 "Oh no, you won't." 
 
 And of course she didn't. Soldiers do not disobey 
 their officers on parade, and thoroughly bred girls do not 
 scream in the street on any account. 
 
 At the landing-station Muriel permitted her father to 
 take her arm and coerce her gently into the launch and 
 thence aboard the yacht. 
 
 She watched New York taken away from her and she 
 chewed the bitter cud of oppression. Her lips twitched 
 with her humiliation and with resolutions of rebellion. 
 Then her heart would race with terror and pity at the fate 
 of the little Angelillo boy, and she would blench to think 
 how that mother and the Balinsky mother would be 
 denouncing her as a deserter who promised salvation and 
 took the gratitude and never came back. 
 
 At dinner her father described her actions to her mother,
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 and Muriel flashed in a nursery phrase, but in all serious- 
 ness: 
 
 ' I never thought you'd tell mother on me. I'll never 
 trust you again." 
 
 Jacob was bitterly hurt at this. He was more of an 
 old woman about his children than their mother was. 
 
 Mrs. Susan Schuyler delivered Muriel a proper lecture 
 on her duties to herself and to others. She had just reached 
 the De Quinceyan height of saying: 
 
 "There's no crime like being inconsiderate, my child. 
 People who are nice about their persons do not wander 
 in the slums. And even if you are careless yourself you 
 have no right to risk bringing Heaven knows what germs 
 into your home. Try to think of others a little, my 
 dear." 
 
 Muriel was trying not to think that her darling mother 
 was a heartless fiend when suddenly she forgot her and 
 interrupted her with a choking sound as if she had caught 
 a fish bone in her throat. 
 
 "What in Heaven's name!" cried her mother. 
 
 "Look up!" cried Jacob, but Muriel groaned. 
 
 "My doctor, my nice young ambulance doctor! I had 
 an engagement to tea with him in town. What will he 
 think!" 
 
 The rest of the dinner was funeral-baked meats to the 
 parents. They shook their heads over their daughter as 
 if she had got her name into a scandal-sheet. In one 
 busy day she had kicked over all the structure they had 
 made of her life and her ideals. 
 
 But she was worrying about the proper form of apology 
 to the young doctor. She felt more than ashamed for her 
 discourtesy. She felt that she had wounded a dear 
 friend. She saw him turned away from her door in New 
 York, angered, humiliated, bewildered. 
 
 She went into the telephone-closet and worked over the 
 book, running her finger up and down the wrong page and 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 getting her alphabet horribly twisted, as women do when 
 they approach an index. When she had pursued Bellevue 
 Hospital to its lair, and while she was repeating the number 
 to herself and smiling already with cordiality over the 
 apologies she would make to the charming, brilliant, 
 heroic Dr. Worthing, the telephone rang at her ear. She 
 answered it, coldly: 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Is this Mr. Schuyler's house?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Is Miss Muriel Schuyler at home?" 
 
 "I'll see. Who wants her?" 
 
 "This is the Yacht Club. Mr. Merithew would like 
 to speak to her." 
 
 "All right." 
 
 Another voice, peremptorily: "Hello, hello!" 
 
 Muriel in her own voice: "Hello." 
 
 "Miss Schuyler, please." 
 
 "This is Miss Schuyler." 
 
 The same voice with maple syrup poured over it: "Oh, 
 how do you do?" 
 
 "How do you do!" 
 
 "I say, Miss Schuyler ' 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Merithew." 
 
 "I've got it." 
 
 "Got what, Mr. Merithew?" 
 
 "Your five thousand dollars." 
 
 A squeal of incredulous joy: "No!" 
 
 "Umm-humm! Met a friend who's been selling the 
 market short and touched him for ten. So I'm going to 
 ransom your little Dago for you." 
 
 "You're an angel!" 
 
 "Thanks." 
 
 "Will you send the money over or perhaps you'd 
 rather bring it?" 
 
 "Neither. You've got to earn it." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 117
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "They're dancing here to-night, and you've got to come 
 over and give me one maxixe." 
 
 "H'm. I don't see how I can, very well." 
 
 "Not for five thousand dollars for one dance? That's 
 more than the Castles get for a whole week." 
 
 "Well, I er " 
 
 She had seen that Perry Merithew was not afraid of 
 anything. He was not afraid even of proposing such an 
 adventure to her. But she was just a little afraid of him. 
 Still, his voice was indescribably gentle, as he pleaded: 
 
 "Not for the little Italian boy's sake? Salome danced 
 a man's head off; you can dance a boy's head on." 
 
 "Well, of course, when you put it that way." 
 
 "The orchestra's fine to-night, too. Just as we finish 
 that hand-twirling business in the maxixe you'll find five 
 thousand dollars in your palm, and nobody else needs to 
 know but you and me." 
 
 "We-ell, all ri-ight." 
 
 Her voice was slow, but her heart was drumming like a 
 startled partridge.
 
 She talked to the old man as to a child, pleading, promising
 
 irer to bother him again, if he would yield only ihis, once.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 MURIEL sat back from the telephone and stared at 
 it with awe. It was like the mouth of a gargoyle, 
 and a kind of curse hung about its black lips. With 
 syllables of light enchantment it had offered her an ad- 
 venture. But sweet words swiftly lose their savor in the 
 ear, as candies grow sour upon the tongue. 
 
 To steal away from home to a yacht club and dance 
 with a married man of whom her father disapproved and 
 whose name she dared not mention to her mother that 
 did not sound well in the remembrance. 
 
 But to refuse to go and by refusing end the hopes of the 
 pitiful Italian mother whose stolen child she had prom- 
 ised to ransom that was not pretty, either. 
 
 Why did she fret? Everybody danced. The place 
 was respectable. The crowd about her would be the select 
 coterie usual at the Yacht Club husbands and fathers, 
 wives and daughters, and reputable bachelors and spinsters. 
 
 She wondered that she was making so much of a prob- 
 lem of it. If one of the fellows she played with had dared 
 her to sneak through a window and go out in a motor-boat 
 to skim the creamy moonlight off the Sound she would 
 have thought it a lark; and if the young man got foolish 
 she would smack his face for him and accept his apology, 
 finish the cruise, and sneak home in the delicious fatigue 
 of a harmless mischief. 
 
 But there was something about Mr. Merithew that was 
 uncanny to her. She could not know yet what it was. 
 He invited her to dance with him in a brilliantly lighted 
 room in a large crowd. At the end of the dance he was 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 to give her five thousand dollars for a charity. It was 
 a deal of money and it meant a great deal to him. Why 
 should she hesitate? The dance was just a little graceful 
 tribute to her; something less trite than inclosing the 
 money with a sheaf of roses. That was all, and yet, 
 why did she feel uneasy ? It was the high stake, perhaps. 
 Yes, it must be the high stake. 
 
 She had a brother who was always betting on every- 
 thing ; sometimes when he was motoring he would play a 
 kind of mental poker based upon the license numbers of 
 approaching automobiles. 
 
 She had noticed that the stupidest thing became thrill- 
 ing when it involved money. To dance once for five 
 thousand dollars! To dance to save a child from being 
 cut up into parcels for the post how could that fail to 
 excite her? 
 
 She herself lacked the true gambling instinct. She 
 would play bridge or euchre or, on the sly, poker; she 
 would play for nothing or for burnt matches or pebbles 
 and love the game. But she had friends who always 
 wanted to play for every cent they had or she had. 
 
 That spirit was what she surmised in Perry Merithew's 
 amiable manner. Perry Merithew was a high-stake 
 gambler. He never wanted to quit till he or his opponent 
 was bankrupt. The game he liked best of all and gambled 
 upon most desperately was the flirtation game with a 
 woman for adversary and the last favors for stakes. 
 
 Other people flirted, ogled, philandered, spooned per- 
 haps a little, and parted. When Perry Merithew took 
 interest enough in a woman to cross glances with her it 
 was no fencing-bout for points, it was a duel a Voutrance. 
 
 It brought him to a shameful death eventually. Muriel 
 could not foresee this, of course, but she felt a certain 
 desperateness about the man. There is an instinct that 
 young things are born wild with. Canaries, mice, chil- 
 dren, all have to be tamed, no matter how domesticated 
 their parents are. Instinct is independent of experience: 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 it is the racial memory that warns the young from dan- 
 gers their ancestors suffered from. The activities of the 
 Perry Merithews are not for the welfare or the preserva- 
 tion of the race. They have to steal upon the Muriels. 
 
 It was such an instinct that rendered Muriel peculiarly 
 uneasy about Perry Merithew. Suddenly her muscles 
 sent her hand out to the telephone to call him up and 
 cancel the engagement. But when Central murmured 
 "Nummmba, please!" she said "Never mind!" and set 
 the receiver back on the hook. She thought again of the 
 duty she owed the parents of the kidnapped child. She 
 reproached herself for being a coward. What difference 
 did it make what Mr. Merithew was? She could take 
 care of herself anywhere. 
 
 This sort of Ophelia soliloquy must be a frequent ex- 
 perience in the souls of young women. Great battles are 
 thought out under their fantastic coiffures. 
 
 Muriel's thoughts were caught from Perry by the 
 memory of Dr. Worthing. She looked up the number of 
 the hospital once more and, calling it, brought to the very 
 porch of her ear the voice of the distant young man. 
 
 "Is this Dr. Worthing?" she said, and had back an 
 indifferent : 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "This is Miss Schuyler." 
 
 "Oh." It was just a syllable, yet it conveyed, "So you 
 are the young woman who invites strange gentlemen 
 to tea in a closed-up house and neither appears nor sends 
 word to the servants; you leave your guest to be treated 
 like a burglar scouting for information. And now, after 
 abandoning me on your door-step for half an hour, you 
 have the front to call me up several hours later." 
 
 All this Muriel read in his monosyllable. Much ca- 
 pacity in an "Oh!" 
 
 She cried: "I'm just too terribly sorry for words, Dr. 
 Worthing. I wouldn't have had it happen for worlds, not 
 
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 for worlds ! But, you see, my father carried me off. Simply 
 dragged me home by the hair of the head. He wouldn't 
 let me stop to telephone or anything. I absolutely 
 could not get away from him a single minute." 
 
 "Oh," was again the sole comment. But now it said 
 to her: "So that's it! I understand. I feel better. I 
 thought I wasn't mistaken in trusting you. Please don't 
 worry about it another minute. I thought you had for- 
 gotten me, and now I find that you were remembering 
 me all the time." 
 
 At least this much she extracted from that versatile 
 "Oh!" Then she shrilled along the wire: 
 
 "Can you ever forgive me? Of course you can't, but 
 will you?" 
 
 "I'll try," he said with a comfortable chuckle. 
 
 "And will you also try to keep one more engagement? 
 It's awfully important, you know." 
 
 "Is it another tea-party?" he asked, anxiously. 
 
 "Oh no. This time I Well, are you going to be up 
 early in the morning?" 
 
 "Doctors don't have early or late. All hours look alike 
 to the poor doctor. What time you going to be up?" 
 
 "I hope to reach New York before ten." 
 
 "And you want me to call at your house? again?" 
 
 "You'd never trust me again. Let me come to you." 
 
 "You to me!" 
 
 "Would it be very improper? there at the hospital?" 
 
 " Dozens of women come here every day. They are sad 
 sights, most of them, not at all like you." 
 
 She clipped this short: "Then I'll call for you at about 
 ten o'clock?" 
 
 "I'll be here." 
 
 "And you've found out about the boy? There is hope 
 for him?" 
 
 "Yes; it requires an operation, but it's a beautiful 
 one." 
 
 " Ugh ! How can you call an operation beautiful?" 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Anything is beautiful that straightens a cripple or 
 makes a sick body well." 
 
 "Oh, I see!" 
 
 "Well, good-by till to-morrow morning." 
 
 "And you've really forgiven me?" 
 
 "Oh yes, indeed." 
 
 "Good-by." 
 
 She felt that he was wonderful to think of such things, 
 to be at work at the trade of righting with science the 
 wrongs of fortune. She sat back and smiled at the 
 telephone. It was a good gargoyle now. 
 
 How different Dr. Worthing was from Mr. Merithew! 
 Perry's only industry, so far as she could find out, was the 
 squandering of money on himself. Still, he had been 
 capable of such a height of sacrifice as to double his debt 
 so that he could give half of it away. That was dividing 
 his cloak with a beggar in saintly style. And yet there 
 was something not quite wholesome about him, something 
 not quite convincing about his generosity and deference. 
 
 Young Dr. Worthing was utterly unlike him. He was 
 youthful, earnest, bossy, and aseptic. He was worth a 
 dozen Merithews. 
 
 And yet sometimes the wholesome is less engaging than 
 the morbid, the safe than the dangerous. To a normal 
 woman a serpen,t is an object of horror mitigated by 
 fascination; the deadlier it is the more fascinating it is. 
 
 Having resolved to dare all and go to the club, Muriel's 
 next problem was how to get there. If she asked for one 
 of the cars her father and mother would know of it, and 
 she could not stop to argue the matter out with them. 
 They would forbid the excursion, and she would have to 
 make it anyway. It would be kinder to leave them in 
 peace of ignorance. Children are often considerate of 
 their parents in this way; preferring a benevolent decep- 
 tion to an open disobedience that may be humiliating 
 to the parents. Muriel did not fancy going alone in the 
 dark or arriving alone in the light. She did not fancy 
 
 127
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 taking her maid for companion or even the old house- 
 keeper. She could telephone a girl friend, but she did 
 not want a confidante. 
 
 She sat in the telephone-closet meditating and suffocat- 
 ing till she had to go out for air. She met her mother in 
 the hall and her mother said: 
 
 "Oh, Muriel, I forgot to tell you that Winnie Nicolls 
 was here to see you half a dozen times to-day. He's got 
 a new car and he wanted you to christen it. He wants 
 to name it Muriel." 
 
 A whimsical fashion of naming motors had begun a 
 brief life. 
 
 At the mention of Nicolls's name Muriel shook her 
 head wearily. 
 
 Her mother cautioned her: "Be nice to him, my dear. 
 He adores you. Better call him up and ask him to run 
 over in the morning." 
 
 "All right, Mumsey dear," Muriel answered, with an 
 angelic brightness which her mother credited to a re- 
 freshing obedience. It was due instead to the sudden 
 realization that she could use Winnie and the new car for 
 transportation to the tryst with Perry Merithew. 
 
 The nicknames of the great are rarely to their advan- 
 tage. Many of the loftiest and bravest have been called 
 by diminutives that would not have honored a pet lamb 
 or a kitten. 
 
 Winthrop Nicolls was, or soon would be, so rich and 
 with so solid and wide a wealth that he would make even 
 such brilliant capitalists as Jacob Schuyler look shoddy. 
 Yet his majestic first name was doomed to be belittled 
 to "Winnie" and its wearer had somehow seemed doomed 
 to fit it. Not that he was effeminate. He was simply a 
 frail, scared, humble sapling that chanced to grow on a 
 mountain of gold. Beneath stood one of the most power- 
 ful families in American history. He descended from 
 that Colonel Richard Nicolls whom the Duke of York 
 
 128
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 sent over to seize New Amsterdam from old wooden- 
 legged Peter Stuyvesant. After his death the Dutch 
 took it back again and named it New Orange for a while, 
 but it became New York at length for keeps. Another 
 Nicolls was attorney-general at the time of Leisler's re- 
 bellion as far back as 1689. The Nicollses had been more 
 or less recognized governors of New York ever since. 
 
 And now the family destinies were about to be clamped 
 on the sloping shoulders of Winnie Nicolls, whose father 
 was not expected to outlive his vanishing kidneys. Mean- 
 while Winnie was the Prince of Wales, the dauphin, the 
 heir apparent. Other princelings had at his age piled up 
 as big a debt as Julius Caesar's and as bad a record. But 
 Winnie was harmless and timid. 
 
 It was difficult to look at his yellow-white hair, like 
 unripe corn, his pale eyes of indigo water, his skim-milk 
 skin, and his nursery smile, and think of him as the lord 
 of a hundred million dollars. It was hard for Winnie 
 to think of himself so. 
 
 He faced his past and his future with the paralyzed ter-. 
 ror of an infant that has toddled into the thick of Broad- 
 way and stands crying in all directions while traffic is 
 hauled up short until a policeman or a bystander can run 
 out and take him by the hand. Only nobody could lead 
 Winnie out of his wealth. 
 
 He wanted Muriel to take him by the hand and save 
 him from its menace. He loved her, had loved her from 
 the time when as a fellow-infant at Newport or Biarritz 
 she used to take his pail of sand away and spank him with 
 his own little shovel. She was then a trussed-up, spindle- 
 legged little snipe that had not learned mercy. 
 
 As her head grew up and her skirts grew down she con- 
 tinued to bully him more and more delicately. Some- 
 times when he broke a roller-skate in Central Park she 
 would lend him one of hers and they would scud with 
 clasped arms along the steep walks among the scudding 
 pauper brats in the fine democracy of childhood while 
 
 129
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 their nurses stormed in vain. Winnie was always afraid, 
 and Muriel dragged him all the faster till he howled for 
 mercy. 
 
 With the ruthlessness of the helpless, who cannot help 
 themselves to anything except some victim's time and 
 strength, Winnie settled himself as a pensioner on Muriel's 
 heart. Eventually Muriel grew tired of supporting him. 
 For years now she had been running away from him. 
 
 To-night, for once, she suddenly found his company 
 desirable; he could pay an instalment on his debt by 
 being useful. She went back to the closet, called up his 
 home, got him to the telephone, and sang out: 
 
 "Hello, Win, it's me Muriel." 
 
 "Oh, hel-low-oo!" he chortled with a baby's gurgle. 
 "Say, Mury, I got a new car ninety horse-power." 
 
 "So I hear. Bring it over and let's try it out." 
 
 He coughed in her ear, and mumbled: "I'm afraid it's 
 a little late. I was just getting ready for dodo." 
 
 Muriel gnashed her teeth at his puerility: "Ask your 
 nurse to let you sit up a little while, and come on 
 over." 
 
 This shamed him. " Oh, aw ri'," he said, " I'll be there 
 in a jiffy. I'll serenade you with the honker." 
 
 "Don't come in; just stop outside. I'll run down and 
 meet you. I'm all ready." 
 
 "Awri'I" 
 
 She had taken off her street suit when she reached home 
 and thrown on a light evening gown for dinner. It would 
 serve to dance in now. 
 
 Muriel could have marched out at the door with every- 
 body's approval to meet Winthrop Nicolls, but she had 
 committed herself to an escapade, and she wanted to 
 complete it. 
 
 She took up a novel, kissed her father and mother, 
 yawned ostentatiously, and left them in the living-room 
 playing a game of be"zique that had lasted for thirty 
 years and was going yet. 
 
 130
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 When Muriel had left, Mrs. Schuyler whispered to her 
 husband : 
 
 "She's going out with Win Nicolls in his new car to- 
 morrow." 
 
 Jacob smiled craftily. If they had known that she 
 was stealing into the moonlight to meet him it would 
 have done them a power of good. The old love to see 
 their young adding their own romance to the wisdom of 
 parental selection. 
 
 Muriel went up the front stairway with dignity, stole 
 down the back stairway without meeting a servant, and 
 hastened out on the service-porch. She ran along the 
 muffling grass through the mysterious formal gardens 
 with their plumy fountains, out past the lodge-keeper's 
 vine-smothered home, to the road. No one saw her. 
 She hid behind a shrub while automobile flashed by after 
 automobile in a nebulous swirl till at length a motor came 
 sputtering up behind a search-light of an almost biting 
 glare. 
 
 It was Winthrop Nicolls, bareheaded and eager. He 
 stepped out and helped her in, and began to back round 
 for a return along the road he had come by. But Muriel 
 said: 
 
 "What do you say to dropping in at the Yacht Club 
 for a while?" 
 
 "No, thanks. I want to show you the speed of the 
 new car Muriel her name is, if you don't mind." 
 
 "I don't mind, but I'd really like to stop at the club 
 for a few minutes. Just for a dance or two." 
 
 "Ah no! Let's spin. I want to spin." He whimpered 
 like the baby everybody kept him. But Muriel was 
 obstinate. He had to yield. 
 
 The very car seemed to sulk along. Muriel was in a 
 tangle of remorses at her multiplex deceptions. She felt 
 a reproach in the innocence of the very moonlit bay where 
 the yachts were nodding at anchor like a great flock of 
 wild geese asleep.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 There was a drowsy animation about the club-house 
 veranda. In all the deeper shadows couples were 
 ensconced. At dimly lighted tables groups of people 
 seemed to have fallen asleep over their mint juleps and 
 rickeys. But inside the house a small band was whack- 
 ing and tootling, and dancers were earnestly at work. 
 
 At that time the fever of the dancing-sickness was at 
 its very crest. The people at this club were inviting pneu- 
 monia (which never accepts invitations) by tangoing 
 themselves to a glow and then plunging into the cold 
 outer air to shoot icy drinks into their horrified insides. 
 The shock seemed not to shatter but to temper their fine 
 steel. 
 
 Muriel looked for Mr. Merithew. She saw him on the 
 floor, gyrating in a hesitation waltz about the stately 
 form of Mrs. Tom Johns Bettany. Everybody called her 
 by all three names or, for short, Mrs. T. J. B. 
 
 Muriel did not approve of Mrs. Tom Johns Bettany, 
 and she regretted to see Perry Merithew in such com- 
 pany. It would be a duty to get him out of her clutches. 
 
 Mrs. T. J. B. was old enough to have a daughter who 
 looked to be nearly as old as her mother; for Mrs. T. J. B.'s 
 white hair had the effect of a powdered wig. In fact she 
 had not honestly earned white hair. Her swift high life 
 had brought a few patches of gray into her tresses long 
 before their time. She had thereupon bleached the whole 
 mass and given out that it turned white in a single night 
 from grief over T. J. B., who had run his motor off a 
 bridge into a river and had died a double death as he had 
 lived a double life. 
 
 Nobody believed his widow in this or any other story; 
 but the white hair was undeniably becoming to her. It 
 gave her the air of a shepherdess at a bal poudre. Her 
 manners and morals were appropriately Watteau. 
 
 She had several sons whom she loved devotedly at con- 
 venient hours, and disgraced discreetly. She had a gift of 
 
 132
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 love and deceit for nearly everybody except other 
 women. Them she neither loved nor deceived not 
 even her daughter Nadine, who despised, adored, and 
 imitated her mother. 
 
 The daughter, generally known as "Pet," had no reputa- 
 tion left by the time she was sixteen. The general verdict 
 concerning Pet was "she's as bad as they make 'em," 
 but also that she was "an amusin' little cuss." Every- 
 body was afraid of her, afraid to cut her lest she cut back, 
 afraid to omit her from invitation-lists lest she start a 
 war of reprisal. Besides, the Bettanys were related to 
 nearly everybody, and to brand them was to be involved 
 in the scorchy smell. 
 
 Recently Pet had shown an alarming interest in Winnie 
 Nicolls. Muriel felt that Pet would get him if somebody 
 didn't watch out. Winnie felt it, too, and clung to 
 Muriel. Muriel was afraid that she would have to marry 
 Winnie to save him from Pet. 
 
 But first she must save poor Mr. Merithew from Pet's 
 mother. After trying to catch his eye, she dragged 
 Winnie out on the floor and set him to the hesitation 
 waltz, whose rhythm he had not yet learned. Muriel, as 
 usual, had to do the leading. She steered Winnie in Mr. 
 Merithew's wake till she overtook him and spoke him: 
 
 "Good eve-ning, Mr. Meri-thew!" 
 
 Perry did not know her voice well enough to recognize 
 it. He wheeled Mrs. Tom Johns Bettany around till he 
 could see who had named him. He almost fell out of her 
 arms as he recognized Muriel. He called out : 
 
 "The next is mine!" 
 
 "All right, if it's a maxixe." 
 
 "It will be." 
 
 "All right." 
 
 Then Winnie spun her away, leaving Perry to pacify 
 Mrs. T. J. B. 
 
 "I thought you had the next with Pet," said Mrs. 
 T. J. B. 
 
 133
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "The next after the next," lied Perry. 
 
 She knew he lied, but she did not care to fight her 
 daughter's battles. She contented herself with de- 
 manding : 
 
 "How did you come to know the Schuyler girl?" 
 
 "Her father introduced me," said Perry. 
 
 "Liar!" sniffed Mrs. T. J. B. 
 
 At the same time Winnie was saying to Muriel: 
 
 "I won't let you dance with that fella." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "He's a bounder!" 
 
 "As a dancer?" 
 
 "As a man!" 
 
 "Why didn't you tell me so before?" 
 
 " I didn't know you knew him." 
 
 "I didn't till to-day." 
 
 This was terrifying. 
 
 "Wh-where did you meet him?" 
 
 "At my father's office." 
 
 "Fibber!" said Winnie. 
 
 Muriel only laughed at his peevishness. She explained: 
 
 "I'm dancing with him strictly on business." 
 
 "Dancing on business!" 
 
 "Uh-huh." 
 
 Winnie was not used to understanding people or he 
 would not have been content to leave this new riddle 
 unsolved. 
 
 When the music died out Perry Merithew delivered 
 Mrs. T. J. B. at a crowded table, ordered her a long, cool 
 drink, and set forth across the floor. Pet leaned forward 
 expectantly. When he passed her by, she gasped. She 
 saw him go up to Muriel Schuyler, of all people. Saw 
 her rise with a smile! 
 
 Pet had not thought it of Muriel. She disapproved 
 severely. She was shocked. 
 
 There is nobody whom the indiscretion of good people 
 shocks so much as it shocks bad people. Pet left her 
 
 134
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 place and sat down by her mother. They exchanged 
 glances of anger and suspicion. 
 
 In August, 1913, the maxixe was just beginning its 
 sway as the supplanter of the tango. It was still chiefly 
 left to the professionals who performed elaborate duets 
 about the floors in alternation with the general dances. 
 But a few progressives had taken lessons, and Muriel 
 was one of these. Perry Merithew another. He had not 
 studied anything in his life as he studied the new dances. 
 He was proud of his maxixe. 
 
 Muriel was afraid of Mr. Merithew. He was even 
 more afraid of her; he was as afraid of her innocence as 
 the devil is of holy water. He had resolved not to flirt 
 with Muriel, even if she made the first advances, as most 
 of the women and young girls did. Whatever ulterior 
 interest he took in her, he had gauged her as a girl of 
 quick temper and innate honesty. She might take 
 permanent umbrage at a premature liberty. 
 
 He did not know that Mrs. T. J. B. and Pet and young 
 Nicolls were watching that dance with vital interest. 
 The two women were puzzled by Perry's icy aloofness 
 as he danced. He kept as far from Muriel as he could 
 without letting her go entirely. This was suspicious 
 in him. 
 
 He and Muriel took their positions side by side, with 
 his right arm back of her, and as the languorous contralto 
 melody of the Brazilian courtship dance began to hum 
 they set forth on the voyage, four steps on the left heel, 
 four on the right, and so through the various figures, 
 les a cote, la corta jaca, the back two-step, the skating, 
 and all the turns and dips. 
 
 Merithew kept the maximum distance from Muriel, 
 held her hand daintily as with pincers, and accomplished 
 the ritual with the lofty solemnity of a sacred dance. 
 During that part of the maxixe where he must raise his 
 elbows above her shoulders and clasp all four hands
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 under her chin, Muriel glanced up coquettishly at him, 
 new on this side, now on that, according to the formula. 
 
 Though the pantomime was purely mechanical, she was 
 studying his eyes. She found a polite cordiality in the 
 lenses. That was all. But back of them she thought 
 another emotion lurked. It was that which one suspects 
 behind the soft irises of a purring leopard, but she could 
 not quite be sure. It needed all of Merithew's control 
 to keep the fur over his claws. He could hardly prevent 
 his relaxed arms from tightening about that fresh, rich 
 body. His heart beat madly under his boutonniere. But 
 he controlled his muscles and his expression and paid 
 her the homage of indifference. He even spared her any 
 compliment except one: 
 
 "You dance wonderfully." 
 
 "So do you," she said. 
 
 And then the music stopped. And with it Muriel's 
 heart sank. 
 
 "My money!" she gasped. "You promised it, and 
 now " 
 
 He bowed and commenced to applaud. It had become 
 the regular habit for the dancers to applaud and beg for a 
 few added measures. It was a kind of tribute to the 
 women they had danced with. It implied insatiability. 
 
 The maxixe tune began anew and Perry put out his 
 arms, Muriel stepped into them in skater poise, and they 
 began heeling forward. Perry Merithew was a trifle less 
 remote. He pleaded: 
 
 "I wish you'd give me just one more dance, Miss 
 Schuyler." 
 
 " Impossible, Mr. Merithew. My mother doesn't know 
 I'm out." 
 
 He relished this confession of duplicity. It gave him 
 hope for the future, but he pretended to sigh. 
 
 "Then I suppose I'll have to pay you what I promised." 
 
 "Terms strictly C. O. D.," she said. 
 
 "Your company comes high, but I must have it," he 
 
 136
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 sighed. As he shuttled to and fro back of her he released 
 one of his hands, slipped it into the pocket inside his 
 waistcoat, drew forth and palmed a little roll of five 
 one-thousand-dollar bills, with a rubber band about them. 
 
 In the figure where the man holds the woman's hands 
 aloft and she pivots in a slow circle, as if suspended from 
 his fingers puppet-wise, Merithew transferred the tiny 
 parcel to her hand. Her fingers closed on it just as the 
 last strain of music ended. 
 
 She thrust the costly wafer into the bosom of her gown, 
 the only pocket she had. She could not restrain a 
 triumphant little toss of the head. She was very beauti- 
 ful, Merithew's soul declared. 
 
 Neither of them realized that they had been closely 
 watched. Winnie Nicolls's idolatrous eyes," suspecting 
 nothing, saw nothing. Mrs. Tom Johns Bettany and her 
 daughter Pet, suspecting everything, saw more than 
 everything. 
 
 Mrs. T. J. B. whispered to her daughter, "Did you see 
 that?" 
 
 Pet nodded sullenly: " He gave her something. What 
 do you suppose it was? It looked like cigarettes." 
 
 "It looked like money!" said Mrs. Bettany, grimly.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 WITH five thousand dollars in her breast pocket 
 Muriel felt highly important. She was afraid of 
 herself at last. She bade Perry Merithew a careless good- 
 night for the public and for himself: 
 
 "A million thanks! You are a very good man." 
 
 This almost floored him. He had just presence of mind 
 enough to say: 
 
 "If I'm such a good man, when do you see me again?" 
 
 She stared at him in surprise. 
 
 He explained, hastily, "To tell me about our Italian 
 child, you know." 
 
 "Oh, of course. I'll telephone you to-morrow." 
 
 "Better let me call." 
 
 She stared at him with misgivings. 
 
 He ventured another tack: "Come over here and 
 dance with me again." 
 
 "I don't think I'd better." 
 
 "Where's the harm?" he urged. "Haven't I a right 
 to a little interest on my money, and a right to know what 
 happens to it?" 
 
 "All right, I'll be here." She laughed, but uneasily. 
 She did not like the complication, but she could see no 
 way out of it without insulting her benefactor or returning 
 him the money. That she must not do. She repeated 
 her "Good night," but she did not feel that he was quite 
 such a good man, after all. 
 
 She turned and, picking up Winnie Nicolls with a long, 
 prehensile glance, made her way out, dawdling and 
 
 138
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 nodding here and there. She had braked down her feet, 
 but her heart was going at full speed. 
 
 When Winnie hoisted her into the car she breathed a 
 deep breath and felt important enough to reach up and 
 pluck a pair of stars for her ear-rings. She breathed deep 
 of the luxury of being important to somebody in distress. 
 
 She felt that she ought to speed at once to New York 
 to those poor Italians for whom she had braved so much. 
 She had always wanted to save somebody's life in the 
 surf or in a burning building or somewhere. Now she 
 was about to accomplish her prayer. She must let 
 nothing make her late, let nothing prevent her arrival 
 in Batavia Street. She wanted to tell Winnie about it, 
 but she was afraid he would read her a lecture like her 
 mother's. He would warn her to save the money. He 
 was notoriously stingy. 
 
 Like many of the rich, he was capable of astounding 
 generosities and incredible parsimonies. In later years 
 he would give the new cathedral a hundred-thousand- 
 dollar check and haggle with a golf caddie over a rebate 
 for a lost ball on the same afternoon. 
 
 Muriel decided not to tell Winnie. She realized that 
 the car was now going at a dazzling speed. Winnie was 
 afraid of people, but not of engines. The racing car 
 was hung so low that they seemed to be riding on their 
 spines, dragged forward by their heels. Winnie was 
 watching the road with one eye and the speedometer 
 with the other. 
 
 He was chortling like a baby. He was smashing the 
 law to flinders, but what was a small fine to him? He 
 was risking his life every moment; but his own life was 
 rather stupid, anyway. If he saw anybody else in danger 
 a car, or a buggy, or a child he would run into a stone 
 wall and take what came. Better any risk than a life of 
 low speed. 
 
 Muriel understood this motor psychology and felt it 
 herself when she ran her own car. But to-night, after a
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 sickening swerve or two, as death or murder was escaped 
 by a tire's breadth and a tire's grip, it came over her that 
 she was risking more than her own life. The search- 
 light peopled the road ahead with imagined horrors, 
 balky horses backing across the road, children wandering 
 along in a chain of hands, a flung shoe, a snap in the 
 steering-gear, a flaw in an axle. As in a waking nightmare 
 she passed through hideous experiences. 
 
 A cold fear overspread her. What if she were killed 
 or crippled? What if her five thousand dollars were con- 
 sumed in a blaze of gasolene? Who would save the 
 Angelillo boy? 
 
 She shivered so violently that Winnie asked: 
 
 "Got a chill?" 
 
 "Yes. T-take me home." 
 
 "Why in the Lord's name don't you women ever carry 
 a wrap? The car was just warming up." 
 
 He jammed the brakes on, backed and filled, and turned 
 about with angry snarls of the clutch, and took her home. 
 She felt kindlier to him as she descended outside the 
 lodge. He had been amiably deceivable, a minute-man 
 escort, and obedient, if surly. So she promised him a 
 real try-out on the Motor Parkway at her first leisure 
 moment. 
 
 Then she stole back to the house and entered it with an 
 ease that promised well for the first burglar. The watch- 
 dogs barked, but nobody ever heeded them. 
 
 Meanwhile, Muriel had left Perry Merithew alone with 
 ths memory of her and the presence of the Bettany women. 
 
 Merithew was too much of a connoisseur not to have 
 thrilled at the charm of Muriel, so delectable, so nearly 
 ready, like a peach that the sun has ripened on one side. 
 But Merithew was also too expert as a conquistador of 
 women to attempt to pluck the peach too soon. He had 
 offered Muriel ho hint of gallantry in fact, he found 
 that she had left in his heart a most unusual emotion for 
 
 140
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 him, a kind of reverence, and what is more reverend than 
 a young girl of whom nature is just making a woman ? 
 
 When Muriel was gone from his arms and from his 
 sight he felt an unbearable loneliness. He wanted to 
 follow her, to be with her always; he wanted to possess 
 her in all holiness. He wished he could marry her. 
 
 He happened to have a wife, but it should not be hard to 
 be rid of her. She would have divorced him long ago if he 
 had but threatened a fight. He had kept his wife not for 
 her own sake, but for a protection against other women, 
 those tiresome women who tried to turn every fleeting 
 romance into a sentence for life. 
 
 But Muriel Schuyler to be sentenced to life with her 
 would be equivalent to an exile into paradise. He 
 marveled at her extraordinary influence over him. He 
 had just paid five thousand dollars to win her praise. 
 He called himself a sublime jackass. Yet he felt that the 
 investment was the best he had ever made. The other 
 five thousand he had borrowed was to quiet another 
 woman who was blackmailing him. That hurt. It 
 always hurt Perry to pay a debt: to exchange a present 
 treasure for a forgotten pleasure. But he loved to toss 
 money away for a bribe or a tip or a trinket or a smile. 
 He had paid Muriel Schuyler a large sum in advance. 
 What was he going to get back for it? What debt did 
 it fasten on her ? 
 
 Suddenly he realized that it put her under no obligation 
 at all. She was just the transfer-agent who would collect 
 from him and pay it to some Italian scum. 
 
 But he would not accept this version. Yesterday he 
 had not known Muriel Schuyler. To-day she was his 
 admirer, his partner in an escapade. She had danced 
 with him and praised his dancing and his good heart. 
 This was progress. What might not the future bring? 
 
 He imagined numberless results of this charity of his, 
 but they were all pleasant. Who could have dreamed 
 that the train of events his generosity set in motion would 
 
 141
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 end in the crushing wreck that ended his life in disgrace 
 and horror, with none so poor to do him reverence? 
 
 He thought to escape the next dance by keeping out of 
 sight. But Pet Bettany cornered him on the veranda, 
 went into his pockets for his cigarette-case, and took his 
 cigarette from his lips to light her own. Then she seated 
 herself on the railing in a graceful awkwardness, held 
 him en brochette with a long, steely stare, and said : 
 
 "I say, Perry boy, what's the little doings between you 
 and Muriel Schuyler? Some new intrigue?" 
 
 "What intrigue could I have with her?" he gasped. 
 
 "It's me that's asking you, Perry." 
 
 "Don't be a fool." 
 
 "I'd be a foolisher fool if I believed you, old dear. 
 What did you put in her hand?" 
 
 "In whose hand?" 
 
 "Oh, I saw you!" she sneered. "Come along what 
 was it? It looked like money." 
 
 He laughed violently, but with such effort that she 
 said: 
 
 
 
 "Quit it; you're a punk actor." 
 
 He eyed her angrily. "Are you insane enough to 
 accuse me of giving Muriel Schuyler money? Why, her 
 father could buy and sell me and never know it." 
 
 "Her father, yes; but he's very close with her. Do 
 you deny that you gave her money?" 
 
 "Of course I do." 
 
 "Then that proves it," she laughed. "I find that if I 
 just copper everything you say, Perry darling, I come out 
 ahead." 
 
 He was scarlet with angry confusion: "Why in God's 
 name should I give Muriel Schuyler money secretly?" 
 
 "That's what I'm asking you, dove." 
 
 "You ought to be ashamed of yourself and your dirty 
 tongue." 
 
 "Thanks, duck. But you've lent money to me. You 
 
 142
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 know you'll never get it back. I thought you might be 
 lending Muriel a little on the same terms." 
 
 "You oh, you you He could not speak the 
 words he thought even to her, to whom his speech was so 
 free. He left her without ceremony and walked away. 
 The insult was so convincing that her triumphant laughter 
 followed him. He turned and walked back, his eyes 
 blazing: "Even you ought to have sense enough to know 
 that Muriel Schuyler has too much money to take money 
 from me." 
 
 "No woman can ever have enough money or clothes or 
 jewels, sweetheart. We're all grafters. Muriel is just 
 learning the game, I suppose." 
 
 "Besides, I'm broke." 
 
 "That's when you're most generous, Perry. Like 
 everybody else, you get stingy when you're in funds. If 
 I'd known you were stony, I'd have beaten little Muriel to 
 it. My dressmaker, Dutilh, is awfully nasty. He won't 
 give me any new fall clothes till I pay for last winter's. 
 He'll let last spring's go over, but he says he has to raise 
 some cash to pay the customs on his new importations. 
 You couldn't slip me a little till I get my next allowance, 
 could you? Come along; they're playing a one-step. You 
 can pass it over then. Or must it always be a maxixe?" 
 
 "I'm bust, I tell you." 
 
 "I was thinking that if you could, I should be able to 
 keep your confidence about Muriel. Fact is, I might 
 help you out. You could meet her at my house. She 
 doesn't like us a damn bit, but she might be willing to use 
 us. What about it, eh?" 
 
 Perry was choking with rage. He was tempted to tell 
 Pet that he had given Muriel the money to ransom an 
 Italian ragazzo with. But even his tardy imagination 
 could foresee how such a fairy story would be received. 
 
 Pet was one of those shrill-voiced, loud-laughing crea- 
 tures that occur in all circles, in royal courts no less than 
 in farmsteads. No breeding seems ever to soften them.
 
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 If he told Pet the truth her whoop would rouse all the 
 dead in the club-house. He could think of no plausible 
 lie. All he could think of was an impatient, idiomatic 
 protest. He spoke it in the free language that obtains 
 among intimate acquaintances who know better but do 
 worse. He said: 
 
 " Look here, Pet, you mind your own business and keep 
 your big mouth shut about a girl that's too decent for 
 you to understand or you'll wish you'd never been born." 
 
 Pet stared at him with a hateful shrewdness and took 
 the threat with a shrug of amusement: 
 
 "It's like that, eh? Just like that?" 
 
 Then her laughter came, a big, peasant cackle that 
 made everybody in the club uneasy, made everybody 
 groan, "I wish she wouldn't!" 
 
 Even Mrs. T. J. B. rushed up and said for the millionth 
 time since Pet was born: 
 
 "In Heaven's name, less noise!" Then she asked, eag- 
 erly: " Has Perry been telling you a funny story?" 
 
 "Yes," Pet shouted, "one of his very funniest." 
 
 She howled again, and Perry would have fled, but Pet 
 caught him by the arm with her big and painful hand, 
 and held him while she dismissed her mother, curtly: 
 "You go on about your business, mamma." 
 
 When Mrs. T. J. B. had doddered away, shaking her 
 head over the plebeian changeling she had had to rear, 
 Pet said: "Look here, Perry, you'd better be nice to me, 
 for I can be no end nasty to you, and I've been looking 
 for something on your little Muriel. Winnie Nicolls likes 
 her too well to suit me, and this is just what I need. 
 But I need the clothes worse. Think it over, old thing! 
 You may go now." 
 
 That night Perry said his prayers backward; at least 
 he vowed that he would never again attempt a humane 
 deed with a worthy motive. It resulted in far too much 
 wickedness.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE next morning Muriel's problem was how to get 
 to town. She finally accepted her father's invita- 
 tion to visit his new library. He was an early riser, and 
 they went down the East River in the cool of the morning. 
 The new accessions to the library were wonderful treas- 
 ures to be gloated over with a miser's clutch, and at any 
 other time she would have reveled in the unique copies, 
 the famous bindings, the time-browned pages that genera- 
 tions had thumbed and men centuries dead had annotated, 
 or the old maids of books whose curious value was that 
 their leaves had never been cut. 
 
 But Muriel was thinking only of her appointment with 
 Dr. Worthing, trying to imagine a convincing excuse to 
 escape. 
 
 The librarian almost wept over a Caxton of which there 
 were only two in the world; and this one had a title-page 
 which the other one lacked. Jacob could hardly wait to 
 get it out of his hands and brag about it to Muriel. 
 
 But Muriel was thinking of the living. She could not 
 get her mind on the toys her father was pulling out of his 
 Christmas stocking. She stared at a prayer-book given 
 by an old king to his daughter with a dedication asking 
 her to "pray for your louving fader that gave you this booke 
 and goddes blessyng therwith." She could not read the 
 old script, or even the little pasted-in translation of it. 
 Her thoughts were in Batavia Street, and she said: 
 
 "Hadn't I better call up Mr. Chivot and see what he 
 has done about the Italian boy and that poor girl?" 
 
 "Later, later! that can wait," said Jacob. "Would 
 
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 you look at this Morte d' Arthur! Old Nicolls paid a mill- 
 ion dollars for his last accessions, but he hasn't got a 
 duplicate of this." 
 
 Muriel thought that King Arthur could wait better 
 than the Angelilli or the Balinskys. There was a tele- 
 phone extension in the library and she got Mr. Chivot on 
 the wire. He said that he had met unexpected obstacles. 
 That was what she expected him to meet. The Angelillo 
 family, he said, when he called with a detective, had 
 received him rudely and ordered him and the police to get 
 out of their sight and to keep out of it. He had also 
 called upon an important member of the Immigration 
 Board at his club the night before, but the gentleman 
 had said that these things were regulated by laws, and 
 that while the laws occasionally inflicted hardships, it 
 was for the general good that they should be obeyed, 
 and that it was a great mistake to make exceptions at the 
 request of important people; especially at their request, 
 indeed, since it confirmed the general opinion that people 
 with a pull could do what they wanted with the laws. 
 
 The end of the story of failure was Mr. Chivot's state- 
 ment that he would keep both matters in mind, but that, 
 if he might presume to advise, it would be far better for 
 Miss Muriel to take her father's advice and drop out of it. 
 
 Muriel could have screamed at the deferential, contemp- 
 tuous tone he took. She choked as she said: 
 
 "Thank you ever so much, Mr. Chivot. Good-by!" 
 
 She had to be polite to her father's secretary, but she 
 could talk to her father as she wished. She turned on 
 Jacob with ferocity that made him forget the Recuyell oj 
 the Hystoryes of Troye that he held in his hand. She 
 quoted Mr. Chivot's message in a burlesque of his wire- 
 drawn tones, and she cried: 
 
 "That's what I get for appealing to you men! You 
 dragged me home last night like a poodle on a chain, and 
 your Mr. Chivot lectures me like a tutor. And between 
 you a little boy gets cut to pieces and a poor family gets 
 
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 torn apart. And what do you care? I ask you for a 
 puny little five thousand dollars and you tell me I'm 
 affected by the heat. But you've spent nearly a million 
 dollars on this library. Mr. Merithew had the goodness 
 to offer to borrow the money and give it to me, and what 
 did you say? You said, ' It's not a bankable proposition.' 
 Nothing human and kind and considerate and warm- 
 hearted and pitiful is a bankable proposition. Well, you 
 can keep your bankable propositions. I'm going to save 
 those people if I have to break into the White House 
 by a window like a suffragette. Besides, I've got the 
 five thousand dollars, too, and no thanks to you. And I 
 know somebody who will help me save those poor wretches, 
 too!" 
 
 Old Jacob had heard her tirade out in far more admi- 
 ration than indignation. He loved her energy and her 
 determination and her fervor ; her disrespect was a minor 
 matter. But when she announced that she had found the 
 money he was startled, and wanted to know where and 
 how. 
 
 She laughed bitterly and would not tell him. When a 
 clock tinkled once she started like Cinderella at midnight. 
 And when she saw that it was already half past ten she 
 fled down the great stairway like another Cinderella re- 
 turning to rags and ashes. But she made the descent 
 without losing a slipper. 
 
 Her father called to her down Jacob's Ladder, but she 
 did not stay to answer. She opened the big door herself 
 while the old footman gasped, "Why, Miss Muriel!" 
 She hurried along the street, and when no taxi was to be 
 found hopped aboard a down-bound 'bus and so reached 
 Thirty-fourth Street, where she took a taxi from the 
 Waldorf-Astoria cab-stand and told the driver to fly to 
 Bellevue Hospital. 
 
 Her appointment with Dr. Worthing was for ten 
 o'clock. At eleven o'clock she was still fuming among
 
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 the various entrances of the linked structures that are 
 Bellevue. 
 
 At last she found a desk where a young, woman sat 
 back of a legend, "Information." Muriel asked for Dr. 
 Worthing, please; and for her name she gave the phrase, 
 "He's expecting me." 
 
 Muriel was led into a small room and invited to sit 
 down. In a moment Dr. Worthing was at the door. 
 She did not recognize him at first, for he was not in his 
 white uniform. He was in a blue serge suit, wore yellow 
 shoes, and carried a straw hat in his hand. He greeted 
 her with a despairing smile that was rebuke enough. 
 She rose and stood before him like a school-girl who is 
 tardy. 
 
 "I'm so ashamed!" she said. "But you can't imagine 
 how hard it was to get away. I had to run for it." 
 
 "So long as you're here," said Dr. Worthing, "that's 
 enough. Let me look at the wounded forehead." 
 
 "Oh no, thanks; it's quite all right." 
 
 "Sit down," he said. 
 
 She sat down with a gasp of delighted disgust at her 
 submissiveness. When his hand brushed back her hair 
 she quivered again and her face was suddenly all rosy. 
 Yet where his fingers went they left white streaks. 
 
 It startled Dr. Worthing to see what influence he had 
 over her. He was of the sort who grow meek with power. 
 He took off the adhesive strip with the aid of benzine. 
 It hurt her a little, but him more. 
 
 "It's practically healed already!" he cried. "What 
 splendid health you have ! You must have a good father 
 and mother." That was in his eyes a final diploma. 
 Every day he saw poor souls condemned to carry inher- 
 ited burdens with inherited weaknesses and to endure 
 pain and blame they had not earned. Perfect health 
 was to him as high a commendation as perfect beauty 
 was to Perry Merithew. 
 
 Muriel exclaimed, "That's a funny thing to say!" 
 
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 "Is it?" he said, and, instead of explaining, asked, 
 ironically, "Aren't they good people?" 
 
 "Of course they are; though my father can be terribly 
 stubborn. Yesterday he dragged me home and this 
 morning I had to run away." 
 
 She felt a surprising necessity for telling this strange 
 young man all that had happened after she left him. 
 And she felt an irresistible impulse to demand his aid. 
 She showed him the five thousand dollars and, against her 
 overridden judgment, told him that she had danced it 
 out of Perry Merithew. 
 
 He listened with fascination to her story and his eyes 
 softened as she revealed her pity and her eagerness to 
 help. But when the name of Merithew came to ear the 
 coda spoiled the whole symphony for him. The knowl- 
 edge that she knew the notorious rake and was rash 
 enough to dance in his embrace and to accept money 
 from him filled Worthing with a terror for her in which 
 jealousy was a potent chemical. He could not believe 
 that Muriel was as bad as rumor made all the rich. Even 
 if she were, he was a doctor, not a minister, and it was not 
 his business to convert her. But he was gravely dis- 
 quieted. 
 
 She asked him if he could go with her to see Happy 
 Hanigan, and he said that he could he "happened" to be 
 off duty. He did not explain that he had happened it by 
 bullying and bribing another young and very sleepy 
 surgeon to stay on duty a couple of hours longer. 
 
 Muriel had kept the taxi and they got into it. As 
 they left the hospital Muriel caught sight of the clock. 
 
 "We must go first to the poor Italians and leave this 
 money. Poor Happy Hanigan can wait awhile." 
 
 "He's waited several years," said Dr. Worthing. "And 
 he's willing to wait many more. But those Italians 
 don't you think that five thousand dollars is a good deal 
 to give them?" 
 
 "But that's what the Black Hand demands." 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Never pay the asking-price for anything. Bargain 
 with 'em." 
 
 "But they'll hurt the boy." 
 
 "Not while there's money in sight. If you give 
 them the five thousand right away they'll hold back 
 the child and ask a thousand more. Or they'll steal 
 him again. No, the kidnappers mustn't learn of the 
 rich woman back of this or they'll never give up. 
 They'll steal you! Start with five hundred and keep 
 them anxious." 
 
 Muriel yielded to him, though her father's use of the 
 same arguments had horrified her. 
 
 The Angelilli had given Muriel up for lost. They 
 greeted her now with cries of redemption. They recoiled 
 from the doctor, till Muriel assured them that he was not 
 a detective, and he proved it by expert advice on the 
 harnessing, feeding, and ventilating of the two infants 
 who were uncle and nephew. 
 
 It struck Muriel as droll that this young man should be 
 teaching a grandmother how to raise babes, but he knew 
 more than they did. He knew, for instance, that boiled 
 cabbage and fried pork were not good for infants. Settle- 
 ment-house women had told them the same thing and 
 been disliked for it. But a handsome young doctor was 
 different. 
 
 Dr. Worthing told the awe-smitten women that he was 
 there to get them their boy, that he could raise eight hun- 
 dred dollars, if necessary, but they had better start at 
 five hundred. 
 
 They accepted him as oracle, and Muriel made ready 
 to take that inflammable money from her pocketbook. 
 Dr. Worthing gave her a look and a slight shake of the 
 head. He handed Gemma his own card and telephone 
 number, and told her to let him know when the kid- 
 nappers were ready to exchange the boy for the 
 money. 
 
 His cold manner quieted the hysteria of the women 
 
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 where Muriel's warm sympathy had aggravated it, and 
 farewells were said in good order. 
 
 Out in the tenement hall Dr. Worthing said: 
 
 "I must apologize for taking the wheel out of your 
 hand, but I don't want you mixed up in this. It might 
 entangle you in no end of trouble." 
 
 "You're wonderfully kind," said Muriel, "and I'm 
 awfully grateful. Will you take the money?" 
 
 She offered him the five thousand dollars. He shook 
 his head. 
 
 "I'd probably abscond." 
 
 "Please take it." 
 
 But he would not. She posed him a new problem. 
 
 "If we get the boy at a bargain do we give back the 
 rest to Mr. Merithew?" 
 
 Worthing had hated the idea of her taking money 
 from such a man, yet he could not quite like the 
 idea of returning any of it to him. He had an 
 idea: 
 
 "Better put it into a general fund for the relief of human 
 misery. Call it the Merithew endowment, and see how 
 far it will go." 
 
 "What a perfectly corking scheme!" Muriel cried. 
 "We'll just do it. And now for poor little Happy." 
 
 They climbed the stairs and knocked at the Hanigan 
 portal a long while before they brought to the opposite 
 door a Greek lady who did not at all resemble the classic 
 canons in any of her proportions. She informed them 
 that Mrs. Hanigan was out scrubbing; Mr. Hanigan was 
 with the horse, and the poor boy had gone to work selling 
 his papers. 
 
 "With all his bruises!" Muriel sighed. 
 
 "There's no rest for the poor," said Worthing. 
 
 "And now for the poor Balinsky family," said Muriel. 
 "What if we should be too late and they should have 
 been sent away? It would kill them all; I'm sure of it. 
 Hurry, hurry!"
 
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 "I'm afraid I haven't time to go to Ellis Island. I'm 
 expected back at the hospital." 
 
 "You wouldn't desert me now, would you?" Muriel 
 pleaded. 
 
 After one look into her eyes Worthing exclaimed, "I'd 
 rather desert my job," and they clattered down the stairs 
 together.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 AT the new Barge Office, for all its Italian palace 
 architecture, the crowd was made up chiefly of 
 yesterday's American citizens gathered to welcome 
 to-morrow's. 
 
 Always they keep coming out of the ocean as through 
 the walled waters of the Red Sea, these fugitives to 
 Canaan from Pharaohs of the old Egypts where they have 
 wearied of making bricks without straw. We cannot 
 see what milk and honey they find flowing here, yet they 
 send back tidings that bring others through. So they 
 must be escaping from something to something. 
 
 It was not easy for Muriel to feel sympathy for these 
 uncouth, half-baked Americans. The snobbery of her 
 class and the snobbery of one race for all others impelled 
 her to dislike their faces, their clothes, their gestures, their 
 dialects. Yet the poor souls were here for the best of 
 reasons, and emotions of love and filial piety and marital 
 devotion and comradeship were their inspiration. They 
 had made heroic sacrifices and were revealing heroic 
 loyalties. 
 
 A: length the free municipal ferry came into its slip, 
 loaded like a barge with the latest dredge from the ooze 
 of Europe, and spilled the bucket-load on the dump-heap 
 of New York. Strange creatures (almost grotesquer fish 
 than those in the Aquarium) came out with the rest. 
 Bewildered men like bearded children, bulging women 
 shawled and hooded and ticketed and laden with luggage, 
 including the children of last year and next. 
 
 They were so cattle-stupid one almost expected them 
 
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 to moo or baa. But vacuous sheep faces suddenly leaped 
 to radiance at a cry of welcome from some unforgotten 
 voice. Madonnas of patience turned to maenads of joy 
 at the sight of a husband or a son. Americanized fathers 
 stared down at foreign lads whom they had left at home 
 as babes at breast. Foreign lads stared up and retreated 
 into their mothers' skirts before the onslaught of strangers 
 who seized their mothers and were seized by them in 
 frantic embrace. 
 
 The chaos of reunions was beautiful as few things are 
 beautiful in this world, and Muriel's snobbery fled before 
 the human cry. 
 
 But there were not reunions enough to go round. To 
 some of those who had waited on shore the ferry brought 
 no kinfolk. Some of those from the boat found no one 
 to welcome them, and they stared in awe at the vast 
 crags of Mount Babel piled up ahead of them. 
 
 Muriel saw two or three of the youngest of the women 
 to whom a cab-driver was proffering his .cab. He caught 
 their cards from their hands and deciphered the ad- 
 dresses. Muriel wondered if they would go with him. 
 She felt vaguely afraid for them. Then a woman wearing 
 a badge marked "Travelers' Aid Society" joined the 
 group, took the tickets from the cab-driver, and said 
 something to him that led him to clamber to the box 
 and drive away. Then she took charge of the strangers 
 as if she were the very goddess of hospitality. Here 
 Muriel seemed to see another angel feather. Even the 
 sheep were protected. 
 
 The boat was about to return to Ellis Island and Worth- 
 ing led Muriel aboard. There was such a stampede that 
 he had to take her arm to help her. They made to the 
 upper deck and stared down at the crowd. These were 
 the anxious wretches whose relatives had not come 
 ashore. 
 
 These were prodigal sons who had run away, prospered 
 on husks, and sent for their parents to come out and take
 
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 their fatted calf in the prodigal's home. These were hus- 
 bands who had built a nest in foreign woods and signaled 
 their mates to migrate. 
 
 As Muriel's eyes wandered about the shabby personages 
 of romance she found the sight more epical than all the 
 grandeurs of the harbor, except the vast woman that up- 
 holds the torch of liberty, and keeps the ideal visible by 
 day and at night alight. Soon she caught sight of a little 
 man clinging to the ferry gate and straining straight 
 ahead. 
 
 "That's Mr. Balinsky," she told Worthing. 
 
 ".Poor dog!" said Worthing. "You can see that he's 
 the kind that gets all the kicks and tin cans and never 
 bites anybody." 
 
 Balinsky was pressed against the forward end of the 
 railing and leaning forward with the wooden eagerness 
 of a figurehead. Now and then his throat worked and he 
 flung his gaze upward. At length he saw Muriel, stared, 
 recognized her. He tried to smile and pulled his hat 
 from his head and stood nodding. He was too shy to 
 call to her, but in his eyes were prayers, and folded hands 
 and genuflection. 
 
 "Poor fellow ! Poor fellow !" Muriel sighed. "I've got 
 to help him. I've just got to." 
 
 Ahead of them now was the little island with the big 
 buildings, the sieve where nearly a million immigrants a 
 year were sifted and the discarded thousands sent back 
 branded as unfit for the high privileges and hard struggles 
 of life in these United States. 
 
 As the ferry swam into its berth a tug was just about 
 to depart. A clamor of shrieks and appeals broke from 
 it and there were signs of a riot on board. Men in 
 uniform were struggling with men and women. 
 
 As one of the ferry hands passed her, Muriel checked 
 him to ask what the trouble might be. He answered, 
 drearily: 
 
 "That's only the tug taking the deported ones back to 
 
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 the steamships they came over on, Miss. It happens all 
 the time. They get sore when they find out this is as 
 near as they'll get to New York after traveling three 
 thousand miles or so. They hate to go back, but there 
 
 - ain't no use tryin' to buck the whole United States 
 gov'ment. 
 
 "The other day one of the women went that wild she 
 thrun her own baby at the inspector's head. Only 
 yesterday a young girl jumped overboard. She'd come 
 from Servia to meet her sweetheart, and he never met 
 her. They sent him telegrams, but he never come. 
 He may have died or something. But she wanted to 
 
 stay and look for him. She'd lost her trunk, though, and 
 hadn't a penny, and she'd nothing on earth but the 
 clothes was on her, so they wouldn't let her through. 
 So she tried to drowned herself. But they boat-hooked 
 her out, and back she had to go. Yes, ma'am, it's 
 tough luck, but so many of them gets it we grow used 
 to it." 
 
 The tug puffed by with its miserable freight like an old 
 slave-ship, and Muriel stared after it in helpless awe. 
 Then she was shaken almost off her feet as the ferry 
 jolted into its slip. Dr. Worthing supported her, and 
 they followed the crowd scurrying to the waiting-room. 
 
 Balinsky had hung back to greet Muriel. He held his 
 hat in both hands and bowed and bowed with the appeas- 
 ing smile of one whom the great had always treated with 
 contempt or violence. She stared at him in wonderment 
 a moment, then that impulsive hand of hers shot out 
 to him. 
 
 He dropped his hat to the ground and seized her hand 
 in both of his. He was not quite sure what to do with it. 
 Muriel laughed a little nervously and extracted it. He 
 bent and fumbled for his hat, stepped on it, seized it, 
 rubbed it on his elbow, and clapped it on his head, all 
 in a panic. 
 
 Muriel said, "Mr. Balinsky, this is Dr. Worthing." 
 
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 Balinsky snatched down his hat again and began to 
 duck, mumbling: 
 
 "Much obliged to meet you, Dr. Voiteen." 
 
 He was so whipped out, so craven before the merciless- 
 ness of the world, that there was nothing noble about 
 him except his agony. Dr. Worthing lifted his hat to 
 that. Agony was the doctor's most respected foe. 
 
 Balinsky turned at once to Muriel: "You come get me 
 mine vife beck? Yes? And mine Rachel, too? Yes?" 
 
 "Yes," Muriel faltered, her confidence shaken by the 
 sight of that tug full of doomed. 
 
 They wandered through the great depot of human 
 freight. Barge-loads of new-comers from a vessel at 
 anchor outside were being run through a long alley. At 
 either end of it stood a doctor in uniform rolling up eye- 
 lids, ordering tongues thrust out, and examining scalps 
 and hands, then marking the subject with a bit of blue 
 chalk. Some they passed along, others they turned aside 
 for further scrutiny, scratching an "X" upon their 
 sleeves if their sanity were questioned, a "P" if their 
 physical equipment were suspicious. 
 
 The sheep came bounding through into the rich pas- 
 tures to be registered and ticketed, their friends found or 
 telegraphed for, their safety assured by the government 
 or by charitable societies. 
 
 The unlucky, the goats, were sent bleating into pens 
 where they would be stripped and studied, peered over 
 and cross-examined with relentless care for the good of 
 the nation. 
 
 It is a little daily Judgment Day on earth, admitting 
 some to paradise, rebuffing others back to purgatory. 
 It terrified Muriel. She began to be afraid that the 
 world was too big for her. 
 
 Balinsky stared at the ordeal. He had gone through it 
 once. Also he had brought his wife and daughter through 
 it, and known twice the fearsome suspense and the after 
 exultation. Now he was as one who had brought his
 
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 family into heaven, only to be told that his beloved were 
 there by mistake and must be thrust out and down into 
 hell. 
 
 From the line came loud shouts of greeting, and a man 
 with all his family assailed Balinsky. Evidently they 
 were friends of his. They had escaped the Russian knout 
 and saber and now they had slipped past the American 
 portcullis. They were in a picnic mood and the father 
 cuffed Balinsky with ursine hilarity. Then he must have 
 asked after the welfare of the wife and daughter, for 
 abruptly Balinsky's bravery collapsed and he began to 
 sob and shake his head. In a moment happiness had fled 
 and they all stood about in dismay. Then as if he feared 
 that bad luck was contagious, the father of the new flock 
 herded them anxiously away from Balinsky toward the 
 boat for shore. 
 
 To the deserted Balinsky came a woman wearing a 
 badge, and Balinsky turned to her with frantic volubility. 
 She tried to quiet him, but she was plainly troubled. 
 Balinsky dragged her to Muriel and Dr. Worthing and 
 introduced her by a Russian name that Muriel did not 
 catch. 
 
 She spoke with the briskness a business woman adopts, 
 even if her business is charity. Her English was good 
 and only her intonation and the sounding of certain letters 
 betrayed her foreign origin. 
 
 "I am the representative of the Council of Jewish 
 Women," she explained. "They keep me here to do 
 what can be done for these poor souls. I can't do every- 
 thing they want, but I know what they suffer. I was at 
 Kishinev when the great pogrom took place. My 
 father and mother were butchered by the Chernaya Sotnia, 
 the Black Hundreds. I was a young girl. I just escaped 
 the massacre or worse. The persecution goes on still 
 in a thousand ways. Ach, these poor Balinskys! I knew 
 Rachel when she was a little girl. She was pretty, and 
 still is; and very good, and still is. She has suffered 
 
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 enough to have driven anybody mad. Who knows what 
 will happen to her when she gets back penniless, out of 
 her mind, with a sick mother? Her father must not go 
 back. They would jail him or kill him. It is too bad, 
 but what can we do?" 
 
 "She must not go!" cried Muriel. "I won't let her 
 go." 
 
 Balinsky stared at her as at a rescuing angel, but the 
 other woman smiled sadly: 
 
 "The law is very strict. The officers are nearly as 
 strict." 
 
 "What do I care about the law?" Muriel stormed. 
 "All the other laws are broken for graft or to protect 
 criminals. Why not break a law once in a while to save 
 some poor child?" 
 
 "Have you seen the Commissioner?" 
 
 Muriel shook her head. 
 
 " You'd better talk to him." She turned to Worthing. 
 "You are a doctor?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "You might say that you are Balinsky 's doctor. That 
 gives you the right to see the girl. You might get her 
 before a board of special inquiry. You might succeed 
 in an appeal; but the law is very plain, and there are so 
 many just like her. Last year nearly a hundred girls just 
 like her were sent back; they were insane or feeble- 
 minded. 
 
 "The worst crime of the Balinskys is their poverty. 
 Our society is very poor, too the hard times, you know. 
 And charity is the first luxury people can afford to do 
 without." 
 
 After a certain amount of trouble Muriel's card, on 
 which she ventured to write "daughter of Jacob Schuyler, 
 Esq.," got her into the sanctum of the Assistant Com- 
 missioner. It was not hard for him to be gracious to so 
 pretty a member of so powerful a family. But he checked
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 her impetuous raid on his heart by telling her that her 
 father's secretary, "Mr. Chivot, and he had talked the 
 whole matter over, and that he was afraid the law must 
 take its course. Good laws were bound to seem cruel 
 at times, but they were for the general welfare. 
 
 Muriel had a woman's distaste for such frozen phrases 
 as "the general welfare" and "the public weal." They 
 were to her but screens for countless little cruelties. She 
 could see the tremendous city across the bay, and she 
 could not believe that it could be imperiled by one poor 
 demented girl. 
 
 She remembered what Maryla had said: "It is not 
 meant that the law should kill three good people who 
 work hard," and also she recalled that watchword of 
 action, "If you don't, who will?" 
 
 Muriel turned all her eloquence on the Commissioner, 
 but he could only repeat that he was powerless, and that 
 officers are paid to administer the laws, not to criticize 
 them. 
 
 "Do you remember Max Jukes?" he asked. 
 
 "I don't think I ever met him," said Muriel. 
 
 "Probably not. He died in 1802. He was just a poor, 
 old, demented wretch, but he had a lot of children. 
 Scientists have traced his descendants and found over a 
 thousand of them defectives, degenerates, or criminals 
 whom the State of New York has had to take care of. 
 He has cost the state a good deal more than a million 
 dollars up to now and there's no end in sight. The 
 defectives we already have are costing this country a 
 hundred million dollars every year. We can't afford to 
 let any more in, can we?" 
 
 He thought that this would convince her, but she 
 answered with feminine logic: 
 
 "Well, since you're spending so much, a little more 
 won't be noticed." 
 
 "Oh, Lord!" groaned the Assistant Commissioner. 
 
 Dr. Worthing saved the day by asking if he might not: 
 
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 examine the girl as a physician retained by ner friends. 
 The Assistant Commissioner consented. 
 
 Rachel Balinsky and her mother were already in the 
 custody of the deporting division. The wretches who 
 are detained in this limbo of wanhope have less than no 
 political influence, and their claims upon the money of the 
 government or the interest of the statesmen are so slight 
 that disgraceful conditions were permitted to continue. 
 
 Nearly two thousand of these ambiguous citizens of 
 nowhere were held at this time for various reasons. The 
 lucky few slept upon iron beds without mattresses and 
 often without springs and covering. The majority slept 
 upon the bare stone floors. 
 
 In one room they passed Muriel saw three hundred men 
 and boys, old and young, good and bad, criminals and 
 insane. The women's quarters were of the same quality, 
 only the prisoners were more pitiful. Some of them 
 were brazen and offered to flirt Dr. Worthing out of 
 Muriel's possession. The reasons for their deportation 
 were plain. Muriel was not educated to the post- 
 graduate height of being sorry for them. 
 
 The feeble-bodied mother Balinsky and her feeble- 
 minded daughter were brought forward, and the mother 
 came hastening with a new fever of hope. The daughter 
 was not anxious, not troubled at all. She had her own 
 merry thoughts and snickered to herself over her secret 
 amusements. 
 
 Her weird humor sent Muriel's blood to ice. She was 
 afraid of her, with all the shuddering dread of the young 
 for those whom a younger world believed to be filled with 
 devils. 
 
 But Dr. Worthing was not afraid, and Muriel was ex- 
 travagantly impressed by his gentle forcefulness, the 
 searching scholarship of his eyes. 
 
 He led the mother aside and talked to her. She 
 flushed and stammered and what she told seemed to stir 
 
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 Worthing out of his calm. On his set jaws little muscles 
 worked and white flashes alternated with red. At length 
 he came back to Muriel and murmured: 
 
 "We'd better go now." 
 
 "Is there no hope?" Muriel sighed. 
 
 He shook his head. "Better tell them good-by." 
 
 Balinsky had caught the question "no hope?" and the 
 answer. 
 
 He began tearing at his beard and at his hair, gnawing 
 his wrists and the backs of his hands, and snarling as if 
 he would destroy himself. He was trying to keep from 
 shrieking aloud. His wife ran to him to quiet him. 
 Even Rachel ceased giggling and tried to soothe her father 
 as if he were a doll. 
 
 Muriel was overwhelmed by her failure; her lips 
 whitened, her eyes glazed. She would have broken down 
 and wept madly, but Dr. Worthing led her out into the 
 sea-air and tried to comfort her. She leaned against him 
 for strength. 
 
 "You must get away from here at once," he insisted. 
 "It's no place for you. You aren't meant for such 
 scenes." 
 
 "If they can stand them, I can," she answered, clench- 
 ing all her muscles. "I'm as strong as anybody. I'm 
 not going to give up. The poor souls ! There's no hope, 
 then?" 
 
 ' ' I don't know, ' ' he said. ' ' There might be. ' ' 
 
 "Then why in Heaven's name did you tell them there 
 wasn't any?" she demanded. 
 
 "They've been fooled often enough. If we can save 
 them, that will be time enough to tell them. But to 
 raise their hopes again no." 
 
 "What do you plan to do?" 
 
 "See the Commissioner. I don't believe the girl's 
 really insane. It's just a collapse of nerves. She had a 
 horrible experience in Russia I can't tell you what 
 it was, but well, there's one Russian officer I'd like to 
 
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 vivisect. The girl tried to kill him. I wish she had. 
 But she had to be kept in hiding in a dark cellar for 
 months, with almost no food. And she and her old 
 mother walked a hundred miles by night, hiding by day, 
 and got across the frontier in disguise, and made the 
 journey to the sea, and crossed in the steerage in stormy 
 weather; they were battened in for eight days. They 
 got to New York at last. When Rachel met her father 
 in the sunlight and liberty, she almost died of joy. 
 But the city was so big it overwhelmed her with its 
 crowds and its richness. She tried to learn the new 
 language, keep up the pace. And then the hard times 
 came; her father lost his job. She worked day and 
 night in a smothering little room and had nothing much 
 to eat. So finally she went into nervous bankruptcy. 
 Who wouldn't ? The wonder is that she is alive. If she 
 had rest and good food and some relief from terror she'd 
 come out all right, I'm sure. If they ship her back to 
 Russia she'll die." 
 
 "I can give her food and rest," Muriel cried. "I'll 
 get her out to the country. She shall have everything, 
 everything. If only we can get her away from this hideous 
 place!" 
 
 "That's the problem." 
 
 They went back to the Commissioner. Dr. Worthing 
 told what he had learned from the girl's mother; what 
 he believed about her condition. The law permits an 
 alien with a mental defect to be deported without recourse, 
 but since Muriel Schuyler stood sponsor for her, the 
 Commissioner consented to forward an appeal. He could 
 do nothing more than that, except to delay her deporta- 
 tion till the appeal was heard. 
 
 "And they won't go on that ship to-day?" Muriel 
 asked. 
 
 "No; it will be some weeks, perhaps, before the appeal 
 can be reached." 
 
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 Suddenly the Commissioner, who had looked as fiend- 
 ishly heartless as a Rhadamanthus, was transformed to a 
 saint in Muriel's eyes. She had an impulse to hug him, 
 but resisted it. She dragged Dr. Worthing back to the 
 detention-room to tell Balinsky the good news. He was 
 not there. On the floor in a huddle of abject surrender 
 was his wife; at her side was Rachel, holding her ringers 
 before her face and laughing at them. 
 
 Muriel ran to Mrs. Balinsky, knelt by her, and told her 
 that she would not be taken that day, not for weeks, and 
 if there were any justice on earth, not for ever. 
 
 The woman had no strength to be glad with. She 
 mumbled a few words of the Jargon and feebly patted 
 Muriel's hand. 
 
 "Where is your husband? I must tell him." 
 
 "Gone," she whispered. 
 
 Muriel ran to the slip. The ferry had just shoved out. 
 She waved and called, but no one heard or saw her, least 
 of all Balinsky, whom she could see bent upon the rail, 
 his face in his crossed arms. 
 
 There was no way to overtake him or to reach shore 
 save by the same boat on its next trip. 
 
 There was much time to kill, and Worthing and Muriel 
 spent it in wandering about the island. Its buildings 
 seemed like temples now, and the devoted workers in the 
 hospitals and administration buildings seemed to be 
 priests of a lofty creed. There was leisure for much talk 
 with her companion. They were like two recruits hap- 
 pening to march at elbow through a great battle. Hence- 
 forth they were comrades. 
 
 It was the same world, the same things were happening 
 in the same sky, buildings, streets, islands, and waterways ; 
 but the light had changed and the eyes that looked upon it 
 all had changed. Therefore it was another world. So hell 
 and heaven might be the same place, and serve both for 
 damnation and paradise. 
 
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 At last the ferry came and took them back to the city. 
 On the boat were a few immigrants who had come through 
 the ordeal and were expecting friends to meet them at the 
 dock. 
 
 When they landed there was an anxious crowd waiting. 
 It seemed the same crowd. There were the same Madon- 
 nas turned to maenads, the same fathers and children 
 meeting as strangers, the same bewildered peasant girls 
 drifting to the same polyglot cab-drivers and rescued by 
 the same vigilance. 
 
 This country was but a shore, and the people waves, 
 strangely alike for all their differences.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 FOUR sewing-machines were simmering in a row with 
 a murmur of many kettles drumming under dancing 
 lids. In a corner an ancient white-bearded sempster was 
 making long stitches by hand, the needle dipping to the 
 cloth, then stretching far away, like a swan drinking. 
 
 Dogged fatigue bent the necks of all the workers but 
 one; and her a keener distress than fatigue tormented 
 into tossing her head and tossing her eyes upward till 
 they were but white lines of despair. 
 
 A geranium in the window chimed one little velvet tone. 
 And the girl's face was lifted on the stem of its throat with 
 the same wistful beauty. Her beauty was as poignant 
 and as alien and as trite as the Miserere from "II Trova- 
 tore" which a street -piano was shattering forth on the 
 pavement below for children to dance to. 
 
 Like a marquise in rags dumped in a tumbrel for the 
 guillotine, fate seemed to have this girl in a cart jouncing 
 down the road to an ugly end. Her feet that plied the 
 iron treadle were exquisitely out of place and her hands 
 exquisitely inappropriate to the wheel. 
 
 Her feet plied the treadle incessantly, and incessantly 
 under her silken hands flowed rough fabrics like a little 
 brook that passed under the stabbing needle and fell to 
 the floor in a cataract. 
 
 Her fingers, lifted now and then to thrust back from 
 her hot forehead an encroaching tendril of her umber hair, 
 paused at times to pluck at her throat and push aside the 
 light waist, laying bare a beauty that was pitiful; for it 
 would have honored Orient pearls to lie there. 
 
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 Here was the beggar maid ready to grace a throne. 
 But where was her Cophetua? She seemed to dream 
 him and await him; for the eyes she cast about the dingy 
 tenement ached with revulsion and closed again upon 
 their own visions. 
 
 Young, beautiful, clean, lovable, she glowed among the 
 debris of squalor, a flame in ashes. It was midsummer in 
 the year, but just spring in her soul. Yet she sat and 
 sewed from early morning till late at night. 
 
 She was not sewing upon delicate fabrics for herself or 
 for other beautiful women. She sewed upon rough, 
 cheap wear for rough, cheap men. She sewed in the 
 stifling-hot room, and the sweat of toil and of heat beaded 
 on her forehead and on her neck and dropped on her hands. 
 
 All the rest of the Sokalski family worked likewise 
 the decrepit grandfather in the corner, the father at the 
 sewing-machine, the mother when she was not at the 
 stove, the plump little sister Dosia, and the boarder 
 Pasinsky who shared their two rooms and their two meals 
 with them. 
 
 The new labor laws had rendered the old sweatshops 
 untenable; the factory regulations and inspections were 
 so strict now that the shoddier manufacturers preferred 
 to give out piece-work to be done at home. Now it was 
 not necessary to pay foremen to drive these people. It 
 was not necessary to pay for overtime or night-work. 
 These wretches in the eternal contest with rent and food 
 drove themselves and wrought on till they dropped. 
 
 The Sokalskis were what is known as "pants-finishers." 
 The father, Adam Sokalski, made trips to the shop, 
 staggering under a load of "completed garments," and 
 came away staggering under a load of "cut-outs." His 
 wife, Rosa Sokalska, cooked and sewed, alternately re- 
 gretting that she could not do both at once. 
 
 They worked usually without talk. To-day when they 
 spoke at all they spoke of poor Balinsky, whose lot was 
 worse than theirs. Adam, who was very religious, used 
 
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 Balinsky for a moral, and said how glad they should all 
 be that they were together, while Balinsky's home was 
 wrecked. He said that God was good to them and they 
 should be grateful. 
 
 Maryla said nothing, but she swept the room with 
 bitter eyes and smiled bitterly at the long seam she 
 was making. 
 
 They spoke of the fine lady who had promised her help 
 and ridden away in the beautiful car. But she had not 
 come back. No doubt by now poor Rachel and her 
 mother were on the steamer that was to take them to the 
 Russian Gehenna. 
 
 Rosa, Adam's wife and Maryla's mother, thought that 
 Balinsky should be invited to live with them. There 
 was room for one more cot. He could pay something, 
 which would help them, and he could save something, 
 which would help him. 
 
 Maryla's nostrils stiffened with resentment, but still 
 she said nothing. It was not pleasant to work and eat 
 and sleep and dress and live in these two rooms with 
 a father, a grandfather, and the boarder, Pasinsky, who 
 loved her. After all, the addition of one more would 
 make little difference. 
 
 And then a lean hand clacked like a skeleton's at the 
 door and Michal Balinsky came in. Mrs. Sokalska was 
 at the stove, and he sank on her chair. He answered the 
 questioning eyes with a flopping motion of his arms, and 
 they knew from his attitude that he had been unable to 
 rescue his family from the government. 
 
 "I couldn't vait to see dem tooked by das schiff. I 
 could not do it. Ach, du lieber Gott!" 
 
 His head rolled with sickly dizziness on his gaunt 
 shoulders and he would have slid from his chair, but 
 Rosa ran to him and gathered him up, saying: 
 
 "You should lay down once, Michal." 
 
 She lifted him and supported him into the next room 
 and lowered him to a cot that was there by a window 
 
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 opening on a court. She offered to make him "ein 
 Tasschen Thee,' 1 but he shook his head and closed his eyes, 
 and she left him. She did not notice that a pair of long, 
 sharp shears lay on the window-sill at his hand. 
 
 She went back to work and the sewing-machines sim- 
 mered again. The oldster's hand rose and dipped like 
 a black swan's neck. Adam hunched over his machine 
 and pedaled like a spent bicycle - racer on the sixth 
 day. Rosa's fat legs waddled at her treadles and she 
 puffed hard, rising now and then to go to the stove and 
 make a clatter that fretted the weary laborers. Plump 
 little Dosia sewed and listened to the racket from the 
 street, and Henryk Pasinsky, the boarder, glanced at the 
 beauty of Maryla, who sewed and sighed inaudibly, 
 pausing now and then to beat her breast as if to pound 
 down the rebellion smoldering there. 
 
 There were no other sounds, just the whir, whir, whir 
 of the machines, the squeal of rusty treadles, and the 
 discouraged squeaks of a shabby canary hopping from 
 perch to perch in its little cage. 
 
 Later there was an unusual noise in the streets as two 
 push-cart peddlers disputed a strip of curb, and in that 
 extra din nobody heard the short grunt and the low moan 
 of Balinsky as he pressed the shears against his side and 
 rolled over upon them, burying his mouth in the blanket 
 to smother his anguish. 
 
 By and by there was an unfamiliar knock at the door, 
 the machines stopped whirring, and the toilers looked at 
 one another a moment before Rosa called, "Herein!" 
 
 The door opened and Muriel stood at the sill; behind 
 her was young Worthing. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Muriel. 
 
 Maryla rose to her feet and Pasinsky stood up respect- 
 fully. Muriel recognized Maryla and smiled. 
 
 "Isn't this Miss Sokalska? I'm Miss Schuyler. I met 
 you yesterday. I'm sorry to break in on you without 
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 warning, but we went to Mr. Balinsky's home in Batavia 
 Street and he had gone. They told us he might be here. 
 I was so anxious to get word to him that they aren't 
 going to send his wife and daughter away." 
 
 This good news was too stunning for speech. The 
 starers only stared a little harder. Rosa sat down and 
 Adam rose quickly. 
 
 "Dey dun't sendet Rachel and Miriam avay now?" 
 Rosa fluttered. 
 
 "No," said Muriel. "They've granted us an appeal. 
 She won't go for weeks, and she won't go at all if we can 
 help it. Dr. Worthing and I this is Dr. Worthing; you 
 have him to thank for it. And he thinks the girl will 
 get well. Don't you, Dr. Worthing?" 
 
 Dr. Worthing nodded. 
 
 Rosa lifted herself to her feet, beating her palms 
 together, and stumbled into the other room, crying: 
 
 "Michal! Michal! Dey dun't gone yet; dey dun't 
 gone never, maybe." 
 
 And then she screamed and fled backward, gaping. 
 
 She could not speak. She could only stammer and 
 point with a shivering hand. 
 
 After the first hubbub of terror Dr. Worthing took 
 charge of the panic-filled home. He rolled the bleeding 
 wretch to his other side, drew the shears from the wound, 
 cut away the clothes and, catching the flesh in his strong 
 fingers, checked the hemorrhage. 
 
 He cast his eyes on the palsied little mob crowding 
 about him, ordered them away with a rough "Get out 
 and stay out." Then he hesitated a moment before he 
 called : 
 
 "Oh, Miss Schuyler!" 
 
 "Yes," she answered from the other room. 
 
 "Would you mind Do you think you could help 
 me a moment?" 
 
 "Certainly," she said, as she came to the door. 
 
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 "Are you are you plucky enough to hold this like 
 this?" 
 
 'Til I'll try," she said, weakly. 
 
 "It's to save a life or I wouldn't ask you." 
 
 "Of course," she panted. 
 
 He showed her how to squeeze the severed arteries. 
 She peeled off her gloves, set her jaws, and obeyed him. 
 He whipped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, wrote a few 
 words on a piece of paper, and sent Dosia flying to the 
 nearest drug-store; then he sent Rosa scurrying for hot 
 water and salt, and Maryla for bandages, while he scoured 
 his own hands with relentless violence. 
 
 Muriel watched him as he went about his task, and his 
 concise methods fascinated her so that she forgot to faint. 
 How amazing it was that she should be here in this place 
 ministering to this poor Jew whose side was pierced as 
 with a spear! 
 
 Eventually Dosia returned with the druggist himself, 
 Mr. Pytlik, who was also a trained nurse and occasional 
 physician. He brought sterilized gauze and adhesive 
 plasters, stimulants and antiseptics and a case of instru- 
 ments. He offered to take Muriel's place, and Dr. 
 Worthing dismissed her with a word of praise : 
 
 "Thank you, and my congratulations." 
 
 Muriel bowed and turned for the door. The prop of 
 necessity was gone and she made a toper's effort to walk 
 a chalk-line. She got to the other room, whispering al- 
 most inaudibly, "I never fainted in my life and I'm not 
 going to now." 
 
 But. Maryla, seeing by her face that she was about to 
 wilt, ran and caught her, thrust a chair against her knees, 
 and hastened for the vinegar-cruet. Muriel bent her 
 head forward almost to her knees and the blood came 
 back to her. She bullied herself into resistance and put 
 off Maryla's ministrations with a grateful smile. 
 
 "Thank you, I'm all right now. I mustn't be a silly 
 coward," she said. "What's a little blood?" 
 
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 "You are tairrible brave," said Maryla. "I would 
 have run away, me." 
 
 "Thank you," said Muriel, surprised at the tribute and 
 the amount of comfort it gave her. 
 
 From force of habit Maryla sat down at her sewing- 
 machine. She was almost always there. There was 
 always work to do. Automatically her feet began to 
 plod the old treadmill, her hands to slide the fabric for- 
 ward. She looked back to Muriel and apologized: 
 "Excuse it, please." Adam had settled back to his task 
 as soon as the doctor took charge of Balinsky. He had 
 dragged Dosia back to her machine and Pasinsky had 
 returned to his. With sly glances he seemed to be 
 comparing Muriel and Maryla to Maryla's advantage. 
 The old man, short-sighted, deaf, and senile, had known 
 nothing of the turmoil. He continued to stitch as if he 
 were hastening to finish his own shroud. Muriel won- 
 dered how he kept from sewing his own beard to it. 
 
 Muriel, to drown the noises from the other room, 
 cast about for a topic of conversation; she could do no 
 better than: 
 
 "Pretty hot day, isn't it?" 
 
 "Tairrible," said Maryla. 
 
 "Too hot for you to be working here." 
 
 This almost brought a smile to Maryla. As if the 
 weather had anything to do with it! Muriel tried to be 
 gracious. 
 
 "I suppose you'd rather finish your work now so that 
 you can have the cool of the evenings free." 
 
 Maryla smiled patiently. "My rather is what I do 
 not get. By night, too, we work." 
 
 "Really?" said Muriel. "It must be all the better 
 when Sunday comes. Central Park is beautiful now, 
 isn't it? Do you go there often?" 
 
 "Ah! Tsentral Park. Oh yes, I go by Tsentral Park 
 in my own texikeb." She laughed till she saw that 
 Muriel was puzzled at her irony. Irony is impolite. She 
 
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 dropped it. "Never did I see that Park yet. It is too 
 much for a walking. It takes helf a day, and ten cents 
 it costs to go by street-cars." 
 
 "What's ten cents?" Muriel exclaimed before she 
 realized how it might sound here. 
 
 "Ten cents means much sewing, much aching; ten 
 cents is dinner for us all." 
 
 "You've never seen Central Park? You've never been 
 up-town?" Muriel cried. 
 
 Maryla shook her head as if answering the foolish ques- 
 tions of a child. Muriel could not endure the dogged 
 drudgery and the silence broken only by the sounds 
 from the next room, the groans of Balinsky and the 
 business of the doctor. 
 
 "And what are you sewing?" Muriel asked. 
 
 "Pents." 
 
 Maryla had to repeat it before the wondering Muriel 
 recognized it as a word she hated. The more hateful it 
 seemed to her that so fine a woman as Maryla should de- 
 vote her days and nights and her eyes and her soul to- 
 such manufacture. 
 
 Dr. Worthing came in now with Mr. Pytlik. He had 
 finished repairing the rent in Balinsky's side so far as he 
 could do it. The rest of the work was Balinsky's. Mr. 
 Pytlik was loud in praise of the young surgeon: 
 
 "He done fine! Never a finer voik I seen it, no, not 
 by clinics." 
 
 Mr. Pytlik hurried away to fill some prescriptions. 
 Dr. Worthing called for more water, and Rosa filled a 
 basin at the faucet and held it for him. While he scoured 
 his blood-stained arms and hands he told her how to care 
 for Balinsky. He had given him the tonic of hope, and 
 she must convince him that his Miriam and his Rachel 
 would be restored to him. Muriel added her vow that 
 it should be accomplished. 
 
 Muriel continued to study Maryla furtively. The
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Polish girl was so remote, so utterly unlike herself, that 
 there could be no sense of rivalry, no excuse for that 
 instant jealousy of one woman for another. 
 
 To Muriel Maryla's presence here seemed a crime. 
 The very fact of being a flower gave her a right to a spot 
 in a garden. It is the right and the business of flowers 
 to decorate the light. 
 
 Muriel felt one of those impulses of hers coming on. 
 She rose and went to the machine and stopped Maryla's 
 hand at the wheel. 
 
 "Do you know what I'm going to do with you?" said 
 Muriel. 
 
 "No, ma'am," said Maryla. 
 
 "I'm going to bundle you into that taxicab down- 
 stairs and take you for a good long ride." 
 
 Maryla laughed. Angels do not happen nowadays. 
 
 "I mean it," Muriel insisted. 
 
 Even there and even then that woman s first protest 
 was, "But I got nothing to wear." 
 
 Muriel wanted to cuff her ears, but she said, "It's a 
 closed taxicab and nobody can see you. But you can 
 see everybody." 
 
 Maryla shook her head. Her mother and Dosia as- 
 sailed her with protests. They would doubtless have 
 been glad to go along, but Muriel did not feel quite up 
 to that Samaritan sublimity. Even Adam nodded his 
 consent. 
 
 Pasinsky rose and lifted Maryla from the chair and 
 put his hands on his heart. 
 
 " Pleass to pleass me. I esk you, I esk you." 
 
 Dr. Worthing, seeing that Muriel was in earnest, pre- 
 scribed the outing for Maryla, and she consented. She 
 brought forth a hat that was in good taste and of a 
 simplicity that would have cost a lot of money in Paris. 
 Also she slipped behind a calico hanging that served 
 as a wardrobe and a boudoir and emerged in her other 
 dress. She had made it herself and it became her. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Muriel went to tell Balinsky good-by. He looked luce 
 a wax effigy. As she promised him the salvation of his 
 household a thin little worm of blood crawled through his 
 cheek. He was down indeed, utterly dependent on help, 
 a curious object to be causing the amount of trouble he 
 was giving everybody; clogging the wheels of the govern- 
 ment; taking the time of the busy; robbing the poor of 
 their space and food and pence; and wringing the heart 
 of the rich. 
 
 But it is well that the big ships should stop and turn 
 about at the cry, "Man overboard!" no matter who or 
 what the man, lest the habit of mercy be lost and love 
 should cease to make the world go round.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 'T'HERE was no little excitement in Orchard Street 
 1 when Maryla Sokalska stepped into the taxicab. 
 The neighbors thought she must be arrested by detectives 
 or, more fascinating still, was being carried away by a 
 pair of those white-slave dealers who were so fashionable 
 a sensation in all the newspapers for a year or two. 
 
 Maryla was something of a sensation to herself; but 
 after the first few spine-snapping plunges of her first 
 taxicab she settled back upon the cushions with a fair 
 imitation of one who had been born in a taxicab. Most 
 women are luxurious by nature and take to it at the first 
 chance as incubator or hen-bred ducks take to the first 
 water they can reach. 
 
 Dr. Worthing had to get out at Thirty-first Street. 
 When Muriel asked him to finish the ride he answered: 
 
 " Do you want to lose me my job? It's probably gone 
 already." 
 
 "You'd easily get another one," said Muriel, with adu- 
 lation. "I'll call you up. We haven't seen Happy 
 Hanigan yet." 
 
 "All telephone orders promptly filled," he said, and 
 dropped to the ground. 
 
 How well acquainted they had become and how busy 
 they had been together without working at all upon the 
 original cause of their acquaintance! Happy was like a 
 dissonant little chord by which a tune modulates into an 
 entirely new key. 
 
 Maryla smiled to herself as Muriel stared after the form 
 of Dr. Worthing striding through the crowd. If he 
 
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 had been a young god vanishing into a thick mist she 
 could hardly have admired him more. She did not 
 realize how fervently she sighed. 
 
 "Isn't he wonderful?" 
 
 " Wanderfool !" said Maryla, and felt more at ease, see- 
 ing that even the great Miss Schuyler was ordinary clay. 
 
 The taxicab moved across to Fifth Avenue and on 
 north. Maryla's pride kept her from expressing her 
 excitement over the new country she was visiting. The 
 gleaming Avenue with its wealth-choked sidewalks and 
 windows filled her with a symphonic music. The shops, 
 with the gowns, the hats, the jewels pleading to be bought 
 and worn, sickened her with desire. When at length 
 they reached the suave roads and green velvet of the Park 
 it suffered by comparison with the windows. The Park 
 was very beautiful, of course, and she would have reveled 
 in it if she had not seen the shop windows first. They 
 followed her in memory. 
 
 Woman-like, she had been able to see and to remember 
 details extraordinarily. One glance at a complex gown 
 left its every detail in her mind. 
 
 Riverside Drive, the heroic river, the lofty tomb of 
 General Grant all these things were fine, of course, but 
 she saw them as through shop windows, darkly. 
 
 Muriel watched her and understood how much was 
 mutely expressed in that passionate ardor of womankind 
 for gorgeous things to put on and wear about. 
 
 Then it suddenly occurred to her that she had a fussy 
 old father who was probably setting the police on her trail. 
 
 Muriel might have stopped at a drug-store and tele- 
 phoned, but it would be quicker to run home in a taxicab. 
 She could hardly dispossess Maryla so far north. She 
 decided to take Maryla home with her. 
 
 The footman who had said, "Why, Miss Muriel!" when 
 she ran out, now that she came back, said: "Oh, Miss 
 Muriel! Your father's looking for you, Miss, and he's 
 
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 scoured the town over for you. You're not hurt, are 
 you?" 
 
 "No, but I want tea tea for two. Then telephone 
 Mr. Chivot that I'm home and ask him to find father and 
 set his mind at rest." 
 
 Maryla was confounded almost to tears by the majesty 
 of the Schuyler home, outside and inside. She sat meekly 
 on the edge of a haughty chair, and when tea was brought 
 by two servants in a little city of silver structures on a 
 prairie of silver, she was so tremulous before the splendor 
 that she could hardly hold her cup. Her cup and saucer 
 fairly chattered like the teeth of fright. 
 
 But she did her best. Muriel was telling her about the 
 excursion to Ellis Island and the priceless wisdom of Dr. 
 Worthing. Maryla asked, mischievously: 
 
 "Isheyourfaller?" 
 
 "The idea!" Muriel stammered. "I only met him yes- 
 terday." 
 
 "Yesterday is enough," Maryla taunted, gaining new 
 self-confidence at seeing the confusion of Muriel. Muriel 
 denied the implication, but she did not resent it. 
 
 When the tea things were solemnly deported she won- 
 dered how she might further entertain her exotic visitor. 
 An inspiration came to her: 
 
 "You have such taste in dress, Miss Sokalska. I won- 
 der if you'd like to see my new frocks?" 
 
 She said this as Jacob would have asked another 
 millionaire bibliophile if he would like to see his tall copy 
 of the first folio of Shakespeare and his unique Doctor 
 Faustus. 
 
 Maryla answered by rising instantly. Muriel led her 
 up-stairs led Maryla Sokalska up Jacob's Ladder! 
 Muriel's maid was at the country place, and Muriel 
 had the privilege of taking the gowns from the hangers 
 herself. It was like showing off a fairy wardrobe, 
 lifting out yards of rainbow, heaps of huge petals, 
 and skeins of mist. As the old librarian reveled in 
 
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 the pride of owning first editions and works with uncut 
 leaves, so Mary la exulted in these unworn prophecies 
 of fashion. 
 
 Maryla gave up her effort at an air of satisfied indiffer- 
 ence. She was ravished at the beauty of the gowns, and 
 said so. When Muriel went to a dress -closet to bring 
 out her best, she glanced back and saw that Maryla 
 was hugging one of the frocks to her breast, and nuzzling 
 it with her cheek. 
 
 Muriel came back and said: "I'm glad you like that 
 gown. I want to give it to you." 
 
 Maryla shook her head with doleful pride. Muriel 
 pleaded with her. Maryla's final answer was, "Where 
 could I wear it, now?" 
 
 She simply would not be bullied into accepting the 
 charity even of such raiment. Muriel said, "You could 
 wear it anywhere you would." 
 
 "I'm a woiking-goil," said Maryla in the cockney of 
 New York. 
 
 "Even so," Muriel insisted, "you ought to work in 
 nice things. You ought to be a dressmaker. If I got 
 you a position as a sewing-woman up-town, would you 
 accept it? You could earn ever so much more than you 
 do by sewing on those those horrid pants!" 
 
 The idea appealed so strongly to Muriel that she picked 
 up the telephone and called the number of one of her 
 dressmakers. 
 
 "Is that you, Mr. Dutilh?" she said. "This is Miss 
 Schuyler." 
 
 The answer came back : ' ' Miss Schuyler ! It's high time 
 you were reporting. Why haven't you been in? The new 
 importations are just arriving. There are several marvel- 
 ous gowns you'll be sure to want." 
 
 "Hush, you robber! There's just one thing I want 
 to-day. I want you to give a friend of mine a job a job 
 as sewing- woman." 
 
 When Miss Schuyler expressed a wish, it was to Mr. 
 
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 Dutilh's profit to grant it at any cost. He could always 
 slip the expense into the next bill. 
 
 "Anybody Miss Schuyler sends I'll employ, of course," 
 said Mr. Dutilh. 
 
 "We'll be right down," said Miss Schuyler. 
 
 As they descended Jacob's Ladder, Jacob himself 
 appeared at the foot of it and cut off their escape. He 
 had just come in and just learned of Muriel's presence 
 in the house. 
 
 As usual the torments of anxiety and aching love that 
 had filled him while he thought her lost were instantly 
 changed to rage when he found her safe. When we go 
 on a wild-goose chase and return exhausted to find our 
 pet at home our first desire is to wring the wild goose's 
 neck. Jacob was so furious that Maryla's presence acted 
 as no restraint. 
 
 "What in the name of all that's holy do you mean, 
 Muriel, by scaring me to death like this? What's got 
 into you that you go stampeding all over the place? I 
 made Parny take me down to that awful hole you went to 
 yesterday. I told him I'd fire him if he ever did again. 
 I climbed the infernal stairs to that old Irish crone's 
 kennel, and she said that 'never a know she knew of 
 where you was, only that you'd been there while she was 
 not within in the house.' Ugh! Then I went down 
 to that Dago hole, and they didn't know your name, only 
 that a beautiful angel had been there with a beautiful 
 doctor. 
 
 "At the office Chivot told me that he'd had a telephone 
 from the Assistant Commissioner at Ellis Island saying 
 that you had turned the whole place upside down, defied 
 the United States government, and started an appeal 
 to Washington. He said you had a young doctor with 
 you there, too named Wordsworth or something. 
 
 "Who is this fellow? Where'd he come from? Where 
 did you meet him? What's the matter with you, anyway? 
 Have you gone insane?" 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Maryla wanted to run, but she dared not pass the irate 
 dragon. When her father stormed she cowered and 
 obeyed. What would Muriel do? 
 
 Muriel sat down on the stairs and grinned from between 
 the hands she rested her face in. 
 
 "You old darling, did you really miss me? You ought 
 to have been a politician. You make a wonderful speech." 
 
 "How dare you! Your impudence is as shameless as 
 your conduct!" 
 
 "Oh, Daddy dear, come on out of the Ark. In the first 
 place, I'm of age, and, in the second, I've been on my 
 best behavior. And not in half as much danger as if I'd 
 been riding to the hounds. And I haven't spent a penny 
 of your money only Merry Perry's." 
 
 " Muriel!" he thundered, but she cooed with the insolent 
 allure of a benevolent Circe. 
 
 "Now, Jacob, you know you never could scare me or 
 bluff me. We'll be awfully good pals if you'll just be a 
 nice man. You're giving Miss Sokalska an entirely 
 wrong impression of you." 
 
 He was purpling with ire and his throat was swelling 
 like an alligator's. She quelled him as she rose. 
 
 "I'm sounding my horn, Daddy honk! honk! You 
 won't get hurt if you stick to the sidewalk." 
 
 Then she marched down the stairs and swept past 
 him. What can a father do nowadays? He may not 
 spank or beat or imprison his daughters; his threats are 
 idle. Jacob pivoted on his heels in a state of helpless 
 rage and helpless recognition that she was a splendid 
 girl and he was proud of her. He took refuge in sarcasm : 
 
 "Are you going to honor your mother and me with any 
 more of your society or are you going to move to China- 
 town?" 
 
 "Oh no, I'll go home with you in the yacht. I've got 
 an engagement with Merry Perry." 
 
 "What!" 
 
 " I have got to report about his money." 
 
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 * 4 Oh, you have, have you?" 
 
 " Yes. I'll meet you at the yacht in half an hour. Come 
 along, Miss Sokalska." 
 
 Maryla, left marooned on the stairway, stole down the 
 steps and sidled round Jacob's bulk, like a cat getting past 
 a bulldog. She followed Muriel out. Her head was full 
 of new American ideas. In her home, her father, though 
 he was only a slave chained to a sewing-machine, treated 
 his women with patriarchal authority. But the great 
 Jacob Schuyler was a mere child to his own child. 
 
 Muriel, little realizing what seeds of revolt she had put 
 into the head of Maryla, led her on to yet greater danger 
 all with the most noble motives. 
 
 When Muriel walked into the Dutilh building with 
 Maryla, they were just preceded by no less eminent a 
 lady than Winnie Nicolls's mother under a hat of still 
 greater eminence. For all her power, Mr. Dutilh greeted 
 her with his usual extravagance of flattery and insult: 
 
 "My God! take off that lid. You're a sight. You 
 never got that in my shop." He turned to Muriel. 
 "She's a pretty woman, too, when she lets me pick out 
 her things. But did you ever see such a bunch of tripe 
 on a human head?" 
 
 Muriel was afraid to make any answer. Maryla was 
 aghast at his impertinence, yet he was to be her rescuer 
 from the treadmill. 
 
 He sold Muriel a gown before she could prevent him, 
 and she had to close her eyes against the others he dangled 
 before her. 
 
 Meanwhile he was taking note of Maryla, appraising 
 her face, her figure. He called her to look at a hat, 
 that he might see her walk. At length he said : 
 
 "My dear, you're far too pretty to be stuffed away in 
 my sewing-room. You're worth a lot more to me out 
 here than in there. How'd you like to be a model?" 
 
 "A model?" Maryla echoed, feebly. 
 
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 "Yes; a manikin if you prefer. You just sit around 
 here like those other lazy hussies. ' ' He indicated a number 
 of languorous countesses dawdling about. "When a 
 customer comes in you put on the gown I tell you to, and 
 simply walk up and down and show it off. Then some fat 
 old cow thinks she'll look as well in it as you do. And 
 we make a sale. How does that strike you? What?" 
 
 It struck Maryla as a gift from Heaven. To spend her 
 days putting on costumes like the woven dreams she saw 
 about her, and to go sauntering back and forth in them 
 for a few hours a day, and to earn far more so than by 
 pedaling the sewing-machine up an eternal hillside this 
 was heaven already. 
 
 She accepted and promised to report for duty the next 
 morning. 
 
 Mr. Dutilh had done a double stroke of policy. He 
 had secured for himself a needed employee and he had 
 secured the rapturous gratitude of Muriel Schuyler. 
 
 Muriel sent Maryla home in a taxicab, paying the 
 driver in advance what he liberally estimated as the 
 clock-distance. 
 
 Then she went to the yacht to pacify her father, serene 
 in the consciousness that she had done a good day's 
 work. She could not have dreamed into what a whirl- 
 pool she had led the feet of Maryla. 
 
 While Muriel was transplanting Maryla to Dutilh's 
 garden her father was busy on his own account, and 
 he executed a master-stroke with the aid of the telephone. 
 
 Muriel reached the yacht as she promised, and apolo- 
 gized for her unfilial behavior, blaming it on a higher duty. 
 Jacob accepted the overtures, and peace was concluded. 
 After the hot and eager day, the wind on the water was 
 a benediction, and the sight of the bay at home with its 
 flock of yachts gliding or at rest was blessed. 
 
 But when the anchor splashed there was no preparation 
 for going ashore. Instead, a launch put off from the dock 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 and conveyed aboard Muriel's mother and her maid, and 
 Muriel's maid, and Jacob's man, and a deal of baggage. 
 
 "What's the meaning of all this?" said Muriel. 
 
 "We're going on a little cruise, my child," said Jacob, 
 "with an odious joviality. 
 
 "But I have an engagement ashore I have stacks of 
 engagements." 
 
 "They 11 wait." 
 
 "How long?" 
 
 <( Oh, we'll be back in a few weeks." 
 
 Her wild protests evoked only the hilarious laughter 
 of her father and mother, who clung together like two fat 
 pirates, shaken and shaking each other with unmannerly 
 glee. 
 
 Muriel used all her weapons on her father: threats, 
 prayers, tears, cajolings, but all in vain.- If he had been 
 vulnerable, her mother was not. She used all those 
 yeapons herself too much to yield to them. 
 
 Beaten at every point, Muriel meekly pleaded, "May 
 T send a wireless or two at least?" 
 
 "You will send no wireless." 
 
 Muriel ordinarily could revel in a joke on herself, but 
 the humor of being kidnapped by her own parents did 
 not amuse her. It left too many serious interests too 
 horribly involved. But she could not swim so far as the 
 already receding shore. 
 
 Perry Merithew waited all evening at the Yacht Club 
 for his dance with Muriel. His zealous anticipations 
 sickened with delay. He did not dance with Pet Bettany 
 or her mother, though they hovered in the offing like a 
 couple of sinister submarines. He was afraid of them 
 and wanted to take counsel with Muriel against them. 
 
 But Muriel did not come. At length he ventured to 
 telephone her house, only to receive the baffling word that 
 she had gone on a long cruise and had left no message 
 for Mr. Merithew.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 PRETTY things! Pretty things to wear, to hear, to 
 1 see, to read fashion, melody, art, drama, literature. 
 And fashion by far the most thrilling of them all to 
 womankind. 
 
 What prayer have they, these womanly women, more 
 fervent than this : to be in style ! to have the body which 
 robes the soul itself enrobed in the most delicate fabrics 
 of the most immediate caprice! to give the body a new 
 language, a second vocabulary and a music outside its 
 own, and to change the phrasing as often and as much as 
 can be. If the prayer is not granted they are sometimes 
 plucky and sometimes philosophic, but they are never 
 content. 
 
 For the savage a fresh sea-shell or a bright leaf, blue 
 paint, a necklace of the teeth of dead foreigners, the fur 
 of a saber-toothed tiger these made a new Easter. 
 For the civilized woman a necklace composed of the 
 incysted worms of a bed of oysters, a gown of numberless 
 silkworm cocoons unraveled and spun together again, a 
 hat stuck full of the feathers of a shot bird, in winter a 
 robe made of the quilted fleece of a flock of unborn lambs 
 trimmed with the patched fells of a dozen better unborn 
 skunks those constitute a satisfactory adornment. 
 
 When women decided that the highest art is the con- 
 cealment of nature it was as long a step from animaldom 
 as when men learned to make weapons. It meant that 
 the human hide should no longer be a pelt, that it should 
 not be blistered by the sun, scratched by briers, calloused 
 and waited from cave floors. It should become itself 
 
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 the finest fabric of all the looms. It should be revealed 
 only in spots and glimpses. Gradually costume, which 
 began as an advertisement of sex, developed like poster art 
 to such a point that it concealed what it was supposed to 
 recommend. Gradually costume ceased to be a device 
 to attract the men's eyes away from other women, and 
 grew to be a campaign to attract the eyes of other women 
 away from other women, and to poison them with envy, 
 though it bankrupted the men. The enormity of this 
 traffic brought such men as Dutilh into big commercial 
 importance, and brought such girls as Maryla oppor- 
 tunities to act as living show-counters. 
 
 Maryla Sokalska had spent her life in such drudgery, 
 in such squalor, at such close quarters with starvation, that 
 she had been hardly more than a sleek and dim-eyed mole 
 burrowing in the ground incessantly for food enough to go 
 on burrowing. Then she was haled up into the full noon 
 sun and given eyes and understanding. 
 
 And now she must scutter back to the old mole-hole and 
 tell the blind ones what the rainbow is like. The worst 
 of it was that the Sokalskis were not even good moles. 
 
 Her people were not born sempsters. The grandfather 
 was short-sighted and asthmatic, and his sewing accom- 
 plished little more than to keep him out of an old man's 
 mischief. 
 
 Adam, the father, was tireless, or, rather, he was always 
 tired, yet unresting. He had meant to be a rabbi, but 
 a pogrom drove him in poverty to America and he had 
 never got back to his books. He was born to be a scholar 
 and he read nothing but seams. 
 
 Rosa, the mother, was all thumbs, and for ever undoing 
 what she had done, for ever breaking needles. 
 
 Dosia, the big little fat sister, was lazy and incompetent; 
 she had two passions, food and play, and she got little of 
 either. 
 
 Maryla would have been skilful enough as a lacemaker 
 or broiderer, but she abominated the manufacture of 
 
 186
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 overalls for workmen. Pasinsky, the boarder, was a 
 dreamer, and so deeply in love with Maryla that his eyes 
 were usually on her instead of the seams, and his feet 
 paused on the treadle for long periods of reverie. 
 
 That was why the Sokalskis were poor; they were doing 
 cheap work without affection for it, and the world has 
 never paid well for that and never will. 
 
 To Maryla the whole adventure would have been a mere 
 fantastic dream if it were not for the reality of the taxicab 
 carrying her home. The jolts and jounces of that magic 
 carpet would have knocked any dreamer out of bed. 
 
 As Maryla returned, sliding backward from paradise, 
 after a peek in at the doors, she hated her old environment 
 the more furiously the nearer she approached it. 
 
 She was coming back with something of the mood of a 
 traveler who has heard contemptuous references to foreign 
 lands and has skimmed through them, finding them so 
 beautiful, generous, and lovable as to make contempt 
 contemptible. 
 
 The taxicab passed' windows where second-hand ball- 
 gowns were displayed. Maryla had once longed for those 
 blatancies. Now she saw that they were crude parodies 
 of styles long out of style. When the cab moved slowly 
 and with incessant squawking through Houston Street 
 she began to recognize friends of hers whom yesterday 
 she had accounted well-dressed; now they seemed to be 
 beggars. 
 
 Her debarkation from the taxicab was almost more of a 
 sensation than the departure in it. Those who had be- 
 lieved then that she had been carried away by white- 
 slavers now assumed that she had fought her way free and 
 brought off the taxicab. 
 
 Maryla had little to say to the queries. She hurried 
 up the steps of her own tenement so fast that when she 
 threw open the door she had to fall back against it, pant- 
 ing and holding her heart in her left hand. 
 
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 The vision of her caused dismay among the sewing- 
 machinists. They checked their treadles and stared 
 over their shoulders like a platoon of bicyclists. 
 
 Pasinsky rose with such alarm that he knocked over his 
 chair. 
 
 "Maryla, what you got now?" he cried. "A heart- 
 disease? Yes?" 
 
 "A job!" she panted. "I got a grand job by rich 
 dressmakers. I am a model." 
 
 There was a beatitude upon her face that illumined all 
 the others by reflection. Her father smiled to see her 
 smile; then he asked, cautiously: 
 
 "Mottels? Vat for a bitsness it is, dose mottels?" 
 
 Maryla explained the magic profession: 
 
 "Miss Schuyler takes me by Mr. Dutilh. He woiks 
 by dresses and hets. She says, 'Give my friend a job 
 sewing.' He says, 'You are too pretty, my dear, to make 
 dresses. You should wear them.' Yes, he said that. 
 So I'm goin' to put on dresses and show them off to 
 fi-ine ladies, and if they like, they buy them off me; if 
 they don't like, I take off and put on another dress yet. 
 All day I am putting on and taking off fine garments." 
 
 Adam scented danger in the enterprise. His daughter 
 was to be hired for her beauty, not for her craft or in- 
 dustry. It looked perilous. He said: 
 
 "How viel Geld you get by soch a fectory?" 
 
 "Twelve dollars a week, papa!" 
 
 " Zwolf dollars in one veek !" gasped Adam. She nodded 
 her head vigorously, and he protested: "Dot is not a 
 bitsness; it is a schwindlie. All of us here dun't got 
 zwolf dollars a veek. How should you got it?" 
 
 Then he eyed her with sudden suspicion; a crafty look 
 went slowly across his face; his lips parted, baring a big 
 rectangular smile and he reached out to tweak her cheek. 
 
 "Ach, du Kleine! She's choking!" 
 
 But finally she convinced him that manna and quails 
 still fell from heaven, even through ceilings. With some 
 
 iSS
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 misgivings he consented that she should be permitted 
 to take the position, provided she came straight home 
 evenings and brought home all of her money." To this 
 she answered: 
 
 "Of course. What you think I am?" 
 
 She was so happy that she kissed her father and re- 
 sumed her work at the sewing-machine. 
 
 Her feet plied the treadles with enthusiasm. She was 
 like a young girl that runs across a meadow whispering 
 a song into the breeze. Pasinsky, watching her, shook his 
 head. She was running away too fleetly for his pursuit. 
 
 By and by Dosia murmured, "Say, Maryla." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What's a swell house like? What's Miss Schuyler's 
 house like?" 
 
 "Like the new school-house, only with foiniture and 
 silk rugs. And an elevator it's got." 
 
 "Elevators is a factory," sniffed Dosia, who was far 
 too wise to be duped. 
 
 Maryla insisted: "They have a elevator in their house, 
 and stairs, too marble really marble. And tea I had, 
 too." 
 
 " Humph ! We have tea here !" 
 
 "Not such a tea like this Miss Schuyler has." 
 
 "Did the lady cook it herself and is the stove all over 
 with solid gold?" 
 
 "No! She cooks nothing. Ladies don't cook. She has 
 two gentlemen that make the tea and bring it in two 
 big fallers like policemen, only one is in a full-dress suit. 
 And everything is silver but only the cups. My cup was 
 like silk, like silk with starch into it. I could see my 
 fingers through it." 
 
 "Sillik and silliver!" sighed Pasinsky, studying the en- 
 raptured reverie of Maryla. "You got more better right 
 as those Schuyler girl to have sillik and silliver." 
 
 Maryla rewarded him with a smile of gratitude for 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 his discernment. But Adam glared at him and motioned 
 him to keep silence. He did not want such ideas put into 
 Maryla V head. As if they were not already there! 
 
 The next morning there was nearly as much flutter 
 about getting the daughter of the house ready for the 
 new job as if she were a regiment marching off to war. 
 When the mobilizing of Maryla was accomplished they 
 all wept over her, her father most bitterly. 
 
 She was so beautiful to him that he was afraid 
 of her beauty and for it. He held her in his arms 
 and kissed her forehead. His beard was bedabbled with 
 his tears. Maryla found it thrilling to make her 
 father cry. Pasinsky's tears did not get beyond his 
 eyelashes. He wanted her and could not buy her, and 
 now she was to be put in the show-window. Dosia 
 and her mother wept with pride. Maryla kissed them 
 .all good-by except Pasinsky, who would have relished 
 it most of all. 
 
 It was lonely at home that day. All the eyes had a 
 way of reverting to the sewing-machine. It looked for- 
 lorn without Maryla there in the attitude that was almost 
 as permanent as the outline of the window or the fire- 
 escape. Several times she was spoken to and it seemed 
 strange that she did not answer. It was almost easier 
 to believe that she was merely invisible than that she 
 was actually absent. 
 
 Now the simmering quartette of machines was only a 
 trio, and made a diminished music. The canary-bird 
 chirped repeatedly and cocked his head, waiting for Maryla 
 to chirp back at him. Dosia tried to take her place, but 
 the imitation did not satisfy that exacting little yellow 
 critic. The very geranium regretted Maryla. Dosia for- 
 got to water it, and it drooped with the rest of the family. 
 
 At half past six Maryla came home, and was greeted like 
 an arctic explorer escaped after a year in the ice-floes. 
 
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 First she must lift her hat and show off her hair. It 
 had been elaborately coiffed. Rosa and Dosia shrieked 
 with admiration. Pasinsky felt but did not say that it had 
 brought out an unsuspected sensuousness in all her mien. 
 Adam was disgusted and frightened. It was not respect- 
 able. He turned his eyes away. 
 
 Strange! that the arrangement this way or that of 
 the excrescent skeins on the head could assume such 
 spiritual importance that one's judgment of another's 
 soul should be influenced by the point at which he draws 
 the comb to part his hair, or the spots at which she places 
 her hair-pins and establishes loops. 
 
 Maryla saw her father averting his gaze as from her 
 shame. She blushed and explained: 
 
 " Mr. Dutilh made me have it so. It makes the dresses 
 look better." 
 
 But Adam groaned, "It iss not decent!" 
 
 Rosa tried to suppress him, but he had resumed his 
 work again, hopelessly. Relieved of his woeful eyes, 
 Maryla brightened again and lifted her skirts to show 
 that her stockings were of silk. She revealed to the 
 women that she had linen wear of extraordinary aris- 
 tocracy, and she made them feel along her sleek sides 
 where the new corset, the astonishing envelope the women 
 wrapped themselves in in the fall of 1913, did its best to 
 conform her anatomy to the shape of a cigar bust, 
 waist, hips all merged as far as possible in one smooth 
 cylinder. 
 
 "Shoes, too, I got, with heels so high! I leave those 
 by Meesteh Dutilh's." 
 
 The appalling cost of all these things implied a mort- 
 gage on her earnings for life, but she explained that Mr. 
 Dutilh had furnished them as part of her equipment, 
 for the sake of Miss Schuyler. 
 
 She described the gowns she had worn during the day, 
 in details that were gibberish to the men, but set the 
 women squealing with vivid envy. Adam had turned 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 to listen. He was interested in the fabulous prices till 
 she told him that she had worn and had seen sold one gown 
 that brought seven hundred and fifty dollars and con- 
 sisted of next to nothing. 
 
 Adam was aghast at the price; it was more than he 
 earned in a year with his family's help. He was worse 
 shocked at the paucity of fabric. He hated to think cf 
 Maryla in it or out of it. She laughed at him and told 
 him that one of the city's noblest ladies had bought it 
 to wear at the opera. The old man blushed deep into 
 his beard, and mumbled: 
 
 "I dun't like you should be in soch a place. I am gled 
 you come home eveninks by your femily." 
 
 "That's one trouble, papa. I can't live at home." 
 
 He looked as if he could not have heard her aright. 
 
 She explained: "This morning Mr. Dutilh talks to me 
 and he says, T should have your name and address, 
 my dear' he calls everybody 'my dear.' And I says, 
 'Orchard Street,' and he says, 'Where is that at? Brook- 
 lyn?' And I tell him where it is and he says, 'My God!' 
 always he says that 'You live down there in those 
 sloms ?' he says. ' If my customers know you live there 
 and wear their clothes they never buy anything off me. 
 They come never near again,' and he says, 'It's too bad!' 
 So I says, 'All right, I go. I'm sorry. What should I 
 tell Miss Schuyler?' Then he jumps and says, 'My God* 
 I can't throw you out like that. All you got to do is 
 to move up-town once. You get a room up here, my 
 dear.' So that's what I got to do. I will come home 
 Sundays and often evenings." 
 
 There it was! There was the bombshell that wrecks 
 the home. The daughter was already lured from the 
 shelter; she would fare the crowded ways alone. She 
 would become like these modernized unbelieving Jewesses, 
 the taytschke, who eat anything, whether it is kosher or 
 not, who do not observe the rites, believe the belief, or 
 follow the path of esteem. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 With graver majesty than one would have expected and 
 with deep conviction of duty, Adam made the decision; 
 renounced that wealth of twelve dollars a week and com- 
 manded Maryla to give up the Dutilh post and stay home 
 at her own machine. She stared at him in alarm: "Papa, 
 you don't mean it." 
 
 "I mean it!" he said; "I have decidet." 
 
 Obediently Maryla dropped to her place. Her feet like 
 hack-horses under the lash began to climb the same old 
 hill. She sewed, but now with a smoldering sullenness 
 that showed itself in her anger at the needle and her 
 brutality toward the helpless cloth. 
 
 The morning was heartbreaking to Maryla. She fell 
 out of a paradise of dreams upon the rough granite of 
 reality. In her dreams she had been promenading with 
 satin and ermine and silver brocade about her. But 
 the dream was done. A girl had to obey her father. 
 
 Suddenly she remembered Muriel. Miss Schuyler had 
 treated her great wealthy well-dressed father like a 
 querulous child. Maryla could not laugh at her solemn 
 father, but perhaps she could defy him. There was 
 still time to reach Dutilh's for the day. She made up her 
 mind. She stopped the machine, snapped the thread, 
 folded the completed trousers leg, carried it to the stack 
 then confronted her father: 
 
 "Papa, I'm goin' woik by Meesteh Dutilh's. I'm not 
 goin' woik here any more. I come see you, but never 
 will I sew any more pents all the time." 
 
 Adam was thunderstruck. This was mutiny. This 
 was America. This was Yankee corruption invading his 
 patriarchate. This was worth stopping the machine for. 
 
 Adam rose from his place. He did not rise very high. 
 He was short, and his knees were bent from his everlasting 
 crouch; but he seemed as tall as Joshua bidding the sun 
 stand still upon Gibeon. All the majesty he had was his 
 authority and the ancient tradition back of it. 
 
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 "Maryla!" he thundered, raising his awful forefinger, 
 "you dun't leave dis ho'se! You hear? You dun't go!" 
 
 But Maryla was born in a country where the sun does 
 not stand still, where the tradition is that tradition shall 
 not rule. 
 
 She answered in a mild, meek, frightened tone; but 
 her heart was adamant. "Yes, papa, I do go; and I ask 
 you, please, don't make an excitement." 
 
 "An excitement, she says!" he roared. "She says, 
 'Dun't make an excitement!' And she spits in my beard; 
 she goes to voik by dose Goyiml I am no more her fadder. 
 My home iss not goot genug for such a fine lady like her!" 
 
 From the next room the sick and wounded Balinsky 
 called aloud in fright: " Was ist's was isfs? Bitte!" 
 
 For his sake they lowered their voices. Americanism 
 was infecting Adam, too. He was defied and he could 
 not strike. He hated his weakness, but he could only make 
 idle threats in whispers : 
 
 "Maryla, if you go, you never come beck!" 
 
 "All right, papa. Just as you say. But I got to go. I 
 got to get some life. I got to see something besides this 
 sewing-machine. And you got a right to help me, you 
 have." 
 
 "I got a right to keep you a goot gerl, dat is all." 
 
 "I can be good there. I will be good." 
 
 "You begin to be goot by to mock your fadder! You 
 are bat already. For pretty dresses and sillik stockinks 
 gerls like you are go on de street yet." 
 
 "Papa!" Rosa protested, frantic at seeing her husband 
 at war with their child, "You should not make such a 
 woids. Dosia is here." 
 
 But Adam was sustained by a sense of duty to his 
 family and his creed. 
 
 Maryla dreaded only to be late to Dutilh's. She 
 opened the door and, with a fluent sinuousness, moved 
 round it and was gone. 
 
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 Adam dropped to his sewing-machine, and motioned 
 the others to theirs. He seemed, to himself at least, to 
 be sewing his own grave-clothes, his tachrichim; and they 
 were stained with the sin of the child intrusted to him, 
 for the sins of the children are visited also on the parents.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 OUNG runaways do not suffer like old left-at-homes. 
 Maryla's gloom rose from her in a black fog as 
 she hurried down the steps. The noisy, smelly street 
 made a racket that was pleasant as a thing to escape. 
 The street-car on the Bowery came up like a chariot. She 
 was smiling with such anticipation that the conductor 
 grinned and called her "kiddo." She administered a 
 stinging rebuke, "Don't you get so fresh!" 
 
 Northward the car groaned, swerved into Fourth Ave- 
 nue, and emerged from the tunnel at the door-step of the 
 great Grand Central Station, that doorway to unimagin- 
 able Tspahans and Thules. Then the car wore round into 
 Madison Avenue, a canon of marvelous hotels and shops. 
 
 Maryla took on dignity and aristocracy with distance. 
 She pressed the button to stop the car as if she were 
 summoning a butler. She brushed the conductor with 
 a glance like the flick of a contemptuous fan, and he 
 said, respectfully: 
 
 "Mind the step, lady." 
 
 She marched across to Fifth Avenue and into Dutilh's 
 as if she were going there to buy instead of to sell. But 
 once within, her soul plummeted to the depths of meek- 
 ness. 
 
 She was afraid of her ignorances, so many ignorances of 
 so many things. She was afraid even to talk. Yesterday 
 she had overheard one of the models mimicking her 
 speech. It is a strange experience to see oneself imitated, 
 and Maryla did not relish it. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 She determined to reform her dialect at once. Her 
 quick ear told her that she had been putting the umlaut 
 over the English "a" and changing it to a short "e," as 
 in "understend." She could not change the habit of 
 years at once, and she blushed at her relapses with the 
 shame of a cockney hearing another "h" let slip. 
 
 She tried to solve the unfathomed mystery of dis- 
 tinction between ladies and gentlemen and those who 
 are not. She thought she had it once, when she said 
 to herself that it was the difference between those who 
 were haughty because they came to buy and those who 
 were humble because they were there to sell. But other 
 customers came in who were not ladies, for all their 
 wealth and insolence. And Dutilh was not humble, 
 though he tried to sell, and he was not insolent, for all his 
 impudence. She decided that he was a gentleman or a 
 quaint mixture of gentleman and lady. 
 
 The study of morals engaged her next. Why did she 
 instantly resolve that certain of the girls and certain of the 
 customers were bad women? It was not a matter of 
 beauty or language. One or two were brazen and smoked 
 Dutilh's cigarettes and swore and wanted the lowest cut 
 in gowns; yet she felt them to be reliable and staunch in 
 honor. Others were shy and sweet and prudish, yet 
 Maryla felt that they were as sly as shy; treacherous, 
 lovers of the dark. And some were brazen and seemed 
 vicious, and some were shy and seemed virtuous. She 
 could make no rules. This up-town world was frightfully 
 complicated. 
 
 She had a more immediate problem. Where was she to 
 live? She consulted the other models. She was a for- 
 eigner among them. They were as various as womankind 
 and she was afraid of them all. She picked out the most 
 innocent and unassuming of them, a girl called Fay Quincy. 
 
 Fay's innocence departed when she spoke. Her 
 mouth was cruel and cunning. She sneered at cheap 
 boarding-houses, and that afternoon when the shop 
 
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 closed Maryla saw her step into an automobile. She 
 thought she saw a man in it. 
 
 The only girl Maryla dared not ask was a great animal 
 of slithy attitudes and gaudy lips. Her name was Elise 
 Addison. Elise volunteered her own address. 
 
 Maryla accepted her advice with trepidation, wonder- 
 ing what she should find. She found a poor old landlady 
 with a fanatic kindliness, who gave her boarders more 
 than she could afford and was sustained in her poverty 
 by an illusion that she had once known luxury. Also, 
 Elise had a sick mother who kept her straight by the 
 despotism of the feeble. 
 
 Maryla's room was only three flights up. It was what 
 is known as a hall bedroom the end of a narrow hall cut 
 off by a door. The bed, the bureau, a chair, and a ward- 
 robe left little room for Maryla. But it was all hers! 
 There were no eyes to dodge, no casual glances to fear. 
 She did not have to undress as she did at home, using 
 part of her costume as a screen while she removed another 
 part; slipping her nightgown over her head to hide the 
 departure of her skirts. 
 
 Mr. Pasinsky had been considerateness itself, but his 
 very back had seemed to be armed with eyes, and there 
 had been immodesty in the dread that he might look 
 round, although he never did. 
 
 Now Maryla had a cell of her own, a door with a lock 
 on it, and the key for herself. She had acquired solitude. 
 That is an epoch-making achievement in any life. 
 
 More marvelous still, there was a bath-room next 
 to Maryla's room. It was not necessary to send the 
 men out to the street when she wanted to climb into the 
 wash-tub and launder herself. There was a special tub 
 devoted exclusively to bathing! It was so long that 
 one could actually extend oneself in the water! And 
 the water was lavishly copious and thrillingly hot, unless 
 some of the other boarders beat Maryla to the tub. 
 
 Once she was there and locked in, she was safer than 
 
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 Susanna, and she could lie at length in a circumambience 
 of water like a sultana in a marble pool. She could bathe 
 her very soul in Narcissal luxury. She was proud to be 
 alive now. It was glorious to be rich, to work no more 
 than ten hours a day, to live in a magnificent up-town 
 boarding-house's hall bedroom. 
 
 And yet even here discontent could thrive. Alas for 
 human insatiability! This lotos-eater's existence did not 
 bring a permanent satisfaction. It was rapturous to 
 spend one's days in putting on the finest costumes of the 
 supreme fashion-contrivers. But she could not wear them 
 home. She had to see them sold to other women or put 
 away for to-morrow's sale. 
 
 And loneliness took an increasing share in her discon- 
 tent. Everybody else seemed to have some place to go, 
 somebody to call on, or somebody coming to call. Maryla 
 was either afraid or disdainful of the boarding-house 
 inhabitants. She had no money to spend. She grew 
 fearfully homesick, but she could not go home. She had 
 nothing to do but wait till to-morrow brought its own 
 discontents. 
 
 She hastened through all the strata of a girl's transfor- 
 mation into womanhood in a few days. In a few hours she 
 had leaped to the consciousness of beauty and of her own 
 equipment. She realized the importance of having a self 
 and of exploiting it with skill and poise. 
 
 Her beauty was of the tropic sort, fierce but sad, like 
 the luscious melancholy of a summer afternoon. There 
 was an almost morose rebellion about it. She had the 
 making of one who would never know contentment for 
 more than a little while. She was doomed to passionate 
 longings, frenzies of joy in possession, then speedy weari- 
 ness, and a sudden infatuation for something else for 
 something that seemed better because it was beyond. 
 
 She had been enraptured at the thought of rest and 
 solitude of evenings. Already she was tired of her 
 solitude, weary of her boarding-house. 
 
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 The trade of changing her clothes still held her; it 
 had grown, indeed, upon her. But now her grief was that 
 she could not keep one of the endless series for herself. 
 
 Dutilh would lay over her arm a gown that she would 
 have sold her soul for if she could have found a soul- 
 buyer. She would step into it, or lower it over her head, 
 and walk out into the showroom, taking aristocracy from 
 the gown. Shortly afterward she must retreat to the 
 dressing-room and take off the splendor, and stand in her 
 shift till another tissue was brought or until she was 
 ordered to get back into her own shoddy togs. 
 
 Eve had exhausted Eden, all except the forbidden tree. 
 And then Perry Merithew drifted into Dutilh's shop.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 T TNDER the spell of the remembered dance with 
 LJ Muriel, and the fantastic emotions of decency she 
 had inspired him with, Perry had neglected his expensive 
 playmate, Aphra Shaler. He had neglected her shame- 
 fully, she said. 
 
 Finally she had summoned him and wept before him 
 till he was convinced that he was a heartless monster. 
 To atone for his neglect he invited her to visit Atlantic 
 City. She wailed that she had nothing to wear. 
 
 Me invited her to come with him to Dutilh's and see 
 if they could find anything fit for her loveliness. Aphra's 
 tears dried with almost audible immediateness. 
 
 Dutilh greeted her with the homage due her genius for 
 extracting whole trousseaux from foolish men's pocket- 
 books. Perry had planned to buy her one gown and let 
 Dutilh wait for his money. 
 
 Aphra reveled in the new styles as if they were made of 
 catnip. Her hair was at that time in its auburn phase, and 
 while Aphra was in a dressing-room trying on a Cubist 
 insanity from Paris, Dutilh picked out another for her in- 
 spection. He selected Maryla to march forward in it, 
 since she was nearer the general hue of Aphra than any of 
 his other walking-ladies. 
 
 And so Maryla arrived within the ken of Perry Meri- 
 thew. 
 
 With her arms extended and her fingers posed according 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 to the formula, the tip of the thumb touching the tip of 
 the second finger affectedly, she went undulantly up and 
 down. 
 
 Perry had begun to realize that he was being taken in. 
 He had volunteered Aphra one new gown as a peace- 
 offering. He had already been "run up the pole" for 
 three; Aphra was putting on another, and here was still 
 one more walking past him. Aphra seemed to change her 
 personality with each change of gown, but Perry was 
 intolerant of all the Aphras. 
 
 His enthusiasm suffered an abrupt chill. He looked 
 upon Maryla with resentful eyes that suddenly wakened 
 to her dreamy beauty. She and her gown seemed to have 
 been created together. To his spoiled soul there was 
 something quaint and foreign, something poignantly 
 beautiful about her. 
 
 Seeing that Dutilh was at a distance hunting for further 
 wares to tempt Aphra, he beckoned Maryla closer, and 
 murmured in his most amiable tone: 
 
 "Do you know, my dear young lady, that you are as 
 pretty as can be? Yes, sir, you're the prettiest thing I've 
 seen in ages." 
 
 "Why, thenk you!" said Maryla with the deference 
 proper to an important customer and with a ferocious 
 heart-fluttering on her own account. 
 
 "What do you think of that gown you have on?" 
 
 "I love it," said Maryla, as a loyal saleswoman must, 
 and with a deep personal conviction. 
 
 "I'll buy it for you, if you'll wear it." 
 
 "I I don't understend," Maryla whispered, feeling 
 swoony. 
 
 "I'll explain myself later," he said. 
 
 Neither of them had noticed that Aphra had emerged 
 from concealment, blatant in a new evening gown which 
 Dutilh was pinning up here and letting down there. 
 
 "How do you like this, dearie?" Aphra had said. She 
 
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 said it twice before either Perry or Maryla realized that 
 she had spoken. 
 
 If Aphra had been less excited over her own beauty she 
 might have noted the confusion she caused and observed 
 the birth of rivalry. 
 
 Maryla was dazed, but not too dazed to realize that a 
 pleasant conspiracy was afoot and that Aphra was not 
 "in on it." 
 
 She had no idea of Perry Merithew's previous existence. 
 If she had ever heard his name, it had made no impression 
 on her. She did not know it now. Maryla knew only 
 that Perry Merithew was attractive to see and that he 
 offered her the way to own a handsome gown. Those were 
 enough to earn him her courtesy. And a kind of pleading 
 command in his voice and smile was enough to earn him 
 her obedience. 
 
 What she may have thought of Aphra is uncertain. 
 When Aphra, after trying in vain to wheedle any more 
 costumes out of Perry, retired to take off the latest dress 
 she had tried on, Perry beckoned Maryla near again. 
 
 The other models were making parades before their 
 customers. They were not aware of Merry Perry's 
 surreptitious dealings. In an undertone he said: 
 
 "What time do you finish here, my dear?" 
 
 "At five o'clock, sir," Maryla answered, wonderingly. 
 
 "At five o'clock, eh? Well, look here, my pretty child, 
 at five o'clock I'll be at the corner above in my automo- 
 bile; it's a limousine of a hunter-green color; you can't 
 miss it. I'll wait for you. When you come along, you 
 just step in and we'll have a little spin and a little talk. 
 What do you say? Will you?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Maryla.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 MARYLA told none of the other models what had 
 happened. She went to the dressing-room and took 
 off the beautiful gown. She caressed it and brooded over 
 it. It was to be hers! She, too, was to possess festival 
 attire ! 
 
 What did it matter how much it cost? She had the 
 price to pay! Those women out there should not be the 
 only ones to wear such things. She should not slink on 
 for ever shabbily through the world. A man's business is 
 to get money; a woman's business is to get finery. She 
 was no longer to be a bankrupt. Success was hers. 
 
 She had endured such torment as the bank- teller en- 
 dures who juggles wealth in bundles and cannot pay his 
 rent. Now she would embezzle. All the fierce, defiant 
 arguments and philosophies that sustain the thief and the 
 outlaw surged up in her soul. 
 
 She had a vague notion of the price she would be ex- 
 pected to pay. But that neither alarmed her nor charmed 
 her; it remained vague in the back room of her brain. 
 The thing that fired her soul was the fact that luxury 
 had come within her reach at last ; adventure and romance 
 were established in her history. 
 
 There were several hours to be passed over before she 
 was free. She dressed and posted up and down in other 
 clothes for other customers, but with less humility than 
 before; for now she too had a Dutilh gown of the latest 
 model. She had also a cavalier. 
 
 When closing-time came she was ready to go while 
 
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 Elise was still crouched over her street shoes with a but- 
 ton-hook. 
 
 "Ain't you waitin' for me, Mareel?" said Elise. 
 
 "Not to-night. I gotta got to to do some shop'n' 
 shopping. G'by." 
 
 She hurried out, followed by eyes. She walked to 
 the corner. She was not sure just what a limousine was, 
 but she saw a very large shiny taxicab at the curb, and 
 it was dark green. Her heart shot into a gallop. She 
 walked by and could not look in. A voice came from 
 the depths: 
 
 "Oh, there you are, my child." 
 
 A hand opened the door, but no foot appeared. She 
 turned like a puppet and saw Merithew beckoning her. 
 He did not get out, but .she was not used enough to chivalry 
 to notice the difference. She got in. The car rolled away 
 without command, in Arabian obedience. 
 
 So this was a limousine! And now, at last, she was in 
 one. It was twice as nice as the car that Fay Quincy got 
 into of evenings. 
 
 A few days ago she would have thought that a limou- 
 sine was either a kind of fruit or a new cut of dress. Now 
 she knew. Limousines, it seems, are hall rooms on wheels, 
 only they are all over with upholstery, and they have 
 bouquets of flowers in vases hung on the walls. 
 
 Perry looked at Maryla in a way that put all flattery 
 and hospitality into a glance like a hand-clasp. And he 
 said, brilliantly, "Well, my dear, you kept your promise, 
 didn't you?" 
 
 Her reply was equally brilliant: "Yes sir." 
 
 He took the flowers from the vase. Their stems were 
 wrapped in tin-foil, and a pin was stuck on them. 
 
 "May I ask you to accept these?" he said. She seized 
 them avidly. Her joy was her thanks. He watched her 
 pinning them over her heart. At length he said, "Would 
 it be asking too much if I asked your name?" 
 
 205
 
 "Maryla," she said. 
 
 She was going to tell her other name, but suddenly 
 she realized that this might not enhance her in his eyes. 
 
 "Maryla what?" he said. 
 
 "Just only Maryla," she said. 
 
 "Aren't we cautious!" he laughed. "What aije we 
 Russian?" 
 
 "American by Polish." 
 
 "Oh," said Perry. Polish was picturesque. "Do you 
 know my name?" he said. 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "I am Mr. Brown. Mr. Just Only Brown." 
 
 "Thank you, Meesteh Brown," she said, delighted by 
 the irresistible compliment of quotation. 
 
 Perry tried desperately to find something more to say, 
 and accomplished only, "Been a model long?" 
 
 Maryla checked this truth also on the lintel of her lips. 
 She remembered that Dutilh had almost discharged her 
 because she came from where she came from. If she 
 confessed to being a debutante in the model class, she 
 would have to explain how Miss Schuyler had found her 
 in those slums. 
 
 She answered his "How long?" with a careless, "Oh, 
 quite some time." 
 
 This satisfied him, and she did not mention Muriel's 
 name. Nor did he. He never dreamed that Muriel had 
 brought Maryla into his sphere of influence, nor did Maryla 
 dream that Muriel knew him. 
 
 The car slid along the Avenue as if it were a royal 
 sleigh. When they turned into Central Park Maryla 
 found it beautiful beyond remembrance. She saw it with 
 different eyes. 
 
 When she saw it first with Muriel she had been unable 
 to recover from her first view of Fifth Avenue's one long 
 shop-window. Now she was used to the window. She 
 had been one of its displays. 
 
 Now she was with a gentleman. The sunset senti- 
 
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 mentalism was upon her. She was in a mood for trees 
 and their foliage, for the graceful attitudes of roadways, 
 the bliss of twilit air. 
 
 Her heart gave back an aeolian music to the breath 
 of the world. She quivered now with the satisfaction of 
 fine cushions, of glossy enamel, the pulse of the car's 
 speed, the pride of outrunning another car. There was 
 a rapture in the mere swerve around another motor or a 
 corner; an ecstasy in a sudden arrest to avoid a collision 
 or a murder. 
 
 It was miraculous to be seated with this fine gentle- 
 man in this little magic room that ran about among trees 
 and lakes and a series of paradises. There were so many 
 rich people in the world, too; such countless motors of 
 all shapes and sizes. But none so fine as hers. Along 
 the sky-line of the reservoir men and women rode by in 
 jiggly silhouette; it was funny to see the daylight between 
 the saddles and the riders. 
 
 Maryla exclaimed: "Look at those ladies riding those 
 horses! They got no skoits on over their pents! And 
 the policeman on horseback looking right at them! And 
 not arresting them. Isn't it awful!" 
 
 Perry, who did not approve of riding-breeches, agreed 
 that it was. There were carriages, too, some of them very 
 stately; the varnished horses seemed insufferably con- 
 ceited. On the high front seat of one victoria sat two 
 lords in uniform, and back of them sat two old ladies. 
 
 "Are those ladies the wives of those gentlemen?" said 
 Maryla. 
 
 "Not officially," said Perry. 
 
 He was fascinated by her ceaseless raptures over this 
 tiresome old park drive that he had taken incessantly since 
 he had first taken it in his mother's lap. He was refreshed 
 by Maryla's fresh vision of ancient things. 
 
 She was like a child born full-grown. She was not 
 afraid to like what she saw, nor to say so. She was not 
 afraid to be grateful. 
 
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 Aphra Shaler and Pet Bettany and most of the women 
 he knew seemed to feel that if they expressed too much 
 satisfaction with his gifts he would think he had done 
 enough. 
 
 He resolved to take Maryla to many parks. After 
 Central Park they soared up to Morningside Park, and 
 through a dozen others. 
 
 And so they reached the destination he had planned, 
 with Maryla in a state of complete enchantment. They 
 had traversed miles on miles of winding roads and ave- 
 nues strung with parks like blocks of malachite. Maryla 
 could not believe that all the world held so much grace 
 and splendor. Perry had not complicated the hypnotism 
 with any attempt at flirtation or courtship. He had 
 studied her, and encouraged her delight. He neither 
 corrected her mistakes nor patronized her. 
 
 She felt amazingly at ease with him, old friends in an 
 hour. At length when a swerve of the car flung her 
 against him she ceased to edge away; and when he took 
 her hand and held it, it never occurred to her that she 
 should resist or resent. 
 
 They passed many inns of more or less attractive de- 
 meanor. If Aphra had been with him she would have 
 selected the Abbey or Claremont, alleging the view as her 
 excuse and rather considering the price. 
 
 Perry was afraid of Maryla's table technic. He had 
 no scruples against being seen in evil company; but he 
 had a horror of gauchery. He had feared that if he took 
 her to a restaurant of degree she might make some slip 
 that would amuse a waiter. 
 
 He had thought it all out. He had provided the 
 properties for his little drama. He knew his New 
 York well enough to know of a secluded spot where 
 there was an abundance of scenery and a paucity of 
 observation. 
 
 His chauffeur stopped, according to earlier instructions, 
 outside Fort Washington Park, the dilapidated, neglected 
 
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 spot where in the early days of the Revolution Lords 
 Howe, Cornwallis, and Percy, and Knuyphausen's con- 
 script Hessians had stormed Fort Washington and cap- 
 tured Magaw and two thousand patriots while George 
 Washington, on the Palisades across the river, watched 
 the slaughter of his men and wept. 
 
 Perry Merithew knew little of Washington, and Mary la 
 knew less, and there was no reminder of a battle-field in 
 the woods. Groden, the chauffeur, took from the trunk- 
 rack of the car a large hamper and carried it down the 
 path and into the park. 
 
 It was a shabby park, discouraged with dust and be- 
 grimed with smoke from the occasional trains that shoot 
 unseen through a narrow gorge. But to Maryla it was 
 wonderland. To Perry it was seclusion. 
 
 Companies of towering whitewood-trees stood slenderly 
 about. Paths wound through the ragged, unkempt 
 grasses, littered in spots with old orange-peels and paper 
 bags, the disjected relics of former picnics. Rocks 
 sprawled among the weeds. Across the gorge were other 
 trees. Through foliage frames were vignettes of the 
 mighty river and the solemn cliffside opposite. 
 
 Perry asked Maryla to choose her own table, and she 
 ran from nook to nook like a child let out of school. At 
 last she chose a little plateau in the lee of a slanting 
 boulder, and there the impatient Groden set down his 
 hamper. 
 
 There were flowers a few very proper ones that 
 kept early hours. They were already closing for the 
 night. 
 
 Maryla ran about picking them, bending like a flower 
 stem in the wind and laughing in little fluty tones that 
 amused the drowsy birds gathering in the hope of crumbs 
 and singing for their supper. 
 
 "How many, many flowers there are!" Maryla said. 
 "Millions there are. And me so proud of my one little 
 geranium. It's a pity these should be wasted. They 
 
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 should grow in town. What country is this we are in 
 now?" 
 
 "This is New York City still," said Perry, indulgently. 
 
 "Always New York!" she gasped. "What a wonder- 
 ful city. And it has birds in it! I have a bird at home. 
 Listen to those little fellers!" She looked up into the 
 branches. "Hallo! hallo! little feller! go on, sing some 
 more yet. See the fat one! He's goin' to bust if he don't 
 watch out, from singing so hard. My poor little bird is 
 into a cage. When I go home I'll let him free. There 
 they go. Good-by, little birds! Good luck! good luck! 
 
 "What river is that? The Hudson? Oh, such a big 
 river! Pasinsky says it goes to the sea. Did you ever 
 see the sea?" 
 
 Perry modestly admitted this distinction. She shook 
 her head in awe of him. 
 
 "I didn't know the world was such a beautiful city. 
 It must have been some place like this where Moses was 
 when Yahveh lifted him up to a high place. I tell you 
 a person had ought to be terrible good in as beautiful a 
 world, don't you think?" 
 
 Merithew parried this unexpected and unwelcome con- 
 clusion with one from his own creed. "A person had 
 ought to be happy in such a beautiful world." 
 
 "But they couldn't be happy if they didn't be good, 
 could they?" 
 
 "Well, I've never been good, but I've usually been 
 happy." 
 
 "Oh, you! You are the best man that ever was. So 
 kind to me. I can't understend understand it." 
 
 "That's selfishness ; it makes me happy to be with you." 
 
 "Does it! truly?" 
 
 Perry could have said more,' but Groden was every- 
 where; and Groden's look was annoying. He had taken 
 from the hamper a linen cloth and spread it on the grass, 
 and set out plates and dishes and silver. There were 
 split chickens and salad and sweets, hot coffee in a vacuum 
 
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 container and cold water in another, and two little bottles 
 with gilded necks in a small bucket of ice. 
 
 Maryla loved nature, but art was nature plus humanity, 
 and she was recalled from the landscape by the wizardry 
 of that basketed feast. Groden moved about in ironic 
 silence. There was no noise except the pleasant clink of 
 plates and silver. 
 
 When he had set the board, Merithew told him to take 
 the car to the Abbey and get his own dinner; then to 
 come back and wait outside the park. 
 
 Groden vanished in the wilderness and seemed to take 
 a load off Merithew's mind. Perry regained youth from 
 Maryla's youthfulness and motioned her to a place, then 
 dropped to the ground, Turk fashion, at her side. 
 
 He tossed her a napkin, whose sheerness gave her a 
 thrill of delight. She tucked it under her chin, and when 
 he offered her a plate of roasted chicken she took a drum- 
 stick in her fingers and made ready to gnaw. 
 
 Then to her horror she saw that Perry had not tucked 
 his napkin under his chin, but had set it on his knee. As 
 secretly as she could she drew hers from her throat and 
 folded it back and put it on her lap. 
 
 He parted his chicken with a knife and fork and she 
 corrected her own attack to conform. She began to 
 crisscross-cut her lettuce with her knife and fork till she 
 saw that he dispensed with the knife. Then she tried 
 to mimic him, but the lettuce was elusive and she had 
 to hunt it all across her plate and over the edge and back 
 again. 
 
 The sky grew darker and warmer in color. The west 
 was leagues of roses. 
 
 Perry twisted the wire from one of the little bottles and 
 unscrewed the cork. An eager froth came cluttering forth 
 into the glass he held. He passed it to Maryla, and 
 filled himself a glass, raised it, and said: 
 
 "Here's to your big eyes, Miss Just Only Maryla." 
 
 "Oh, thank you," she giggled. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "But you're not drinking." 
 
 She put the glass to her lips and started back before the 
 tiny bombardment. 
 
 "What is it?" she said. 
 
 "Champagne." 
 
 "I don't think I'd better take any tshempen. Papa 
 might not like it." 
 
 "Papa isn't here. This is my party." 
 
 "Thenk you, but better I didn't." 
 
 "To please me." 
 
 "Well, to please you." She closed her eyes and 
 braved a sip, only to recoil from the brim with a grimace. 
 "Ugh! it tastes like a paper of needles." 
 
 "It improves with acquaintance. Try again." 
 
 "Yes, sir if you say so. You should tell me when to 
 stop." She took another sip. Already it was better, and 
 a look of regret came into his eyes. 
 
 "Shall I take more?" she asked, expecting assent. 
 
 "No," he said, and took the glass from her and poured 
 it on the ground. He was amazed at himself and said, 
 "I'll empty mine here." He quaffed it off. 
 
 They talked as they scoured their plates in extravagant 
 felicity. 
 
 When they had made a great feast of the slender fare 
 she folded up the things and packed them in the hamper. 
 He smoked and watched her and found her singularly 
 graceful, singularly interesting. 
 
 Through the final crimson a sailboat almost becalmed 
 was drifting like a huge white moth at rest under closed 
 wings. 
 
 "Look!" Maryla whispered. "See the ship!" 
 
 "It's a sloop," said Perry. "It's about the build of 
 mine." 
 
 "You have a whole ship of your own?" she marveled. 
 "Are you a steamboat captain?" 
 
 He shook his head, and then she asked: 
 
 "Where do you work?" 
 
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 He laughed. "I don't." 
 
 She could not seem to understand this. 
 
 He explained: "I just have my boat to loaf round in. 
 Would you like to go sailing in it some day?" 
 
 "Oh, I'd love it some Sunday when I'm not working." 
 
 "What if you didn't work any more?" 
 
 "I've got to." 
 
 "Not if you not if you I don't want you to work 
 any more, Maryla. I need you myself." 
 
 She wrinkled her brows and smiled in a look of quaint 
 perplexity: 
 
 "I don't understand." 
 
 "Maryla, I want you to to live with me." 
 
 She had thought that nothing could be more wonderful 
 than the wonders she had seen this day. But she had 
 grown so used to miracles that it seemed quite credible 
 that a great man like him should stoop to conquer her 
 and make her his bride. 
 
 "You mean you you mean we should get married?" 
 she whispered in wide-eyed rapture. 
 
 "Naturally," he answered, baffled a little by the deify- 
 ing look she fastened on him. In later days his conscience 
 sought refuge in that word "naturally" as a kind of 
 ghastly pun. 
 
 Maryla dallied with the splendor of his proffer. 
 
 "But for why for why should you like me when so 
 many fi-ine ladies are in the world?" 
 
 "Because I I'm simply crazy about you, child. You 
 fascinate me. You make the world all new and young 
 again. I never met anybody like you. You don't know 
 anything, do you ? But you're you're different. I I'm 
 crazy about you, that's all. I'm just crazy about you." 
 
 Maryla shuddered into his arm with a laughing ecstasy : 
 
 "And me I am crezzy about you." 
 
 By now the moon was pouring from the east her silver 
 into the red west. The two lights filled everything with 
 a kind of witchery of altruism, a melting tender-hearted- 
 
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 ness, an aversion from harsh words, protests, denials. It 
 was the hour of rose and azure when the people draw close 
 together against the night, when the eyes are blindfolded 
 by the universal dusk and hands grope out in loneliness 
 and voices sink to whispers. The breeze itself was a 
 whisper and it had an irresistible persuasiveness. 
 
 Merithew found Maryla's hands. They were cold. 
 She shivered a little, and when he drew her closer she 
 did not oppose him. When he whispered, "Kiss me, 
 Maryla," though she whimpered, "Oh no, no, please!" 
 she did not fight away from him. He kissed her cold 
 cheek and it seemed to grow suddenly warm beneath his 
 lips. 
 
 He murmured, "I love you." He had said the word 
 so often, so recklessly, that he knew all the uses of it. 
 But it was almost new to her, entirely new from such a 
 wooer as this. She believed him. 
 
 When he whispered, "Love me, Maryla," she loved him. 
 When he demanded, "Kiss me, Maryla," she took pride 
 in her meekness, and obeyed him. 
 
 The sky belonged to the moon; the world was the 
 moon's world. Between the pleached boughs of the 
 lofty tulip-trees the moon was like a distant lamp behind 
 a lattice. There was no hint of humankind about except 
 on the distant river, where a few boats moved dreamily, 
 their lights pouring rubies and emeralds into the river 
 with Cleopatran wantonness. 
 
 By and by a long excursion-boat steamed north like a 
 dragon in gleaming scales. People were dancing on the 
 deck and the music came across the water as with dew 
 upon it. But at the head of the boat was a big search- 
 light that swept the hills and clouds and all the scene for 
 the amusement or instruction of the passengers. 
 
 The inconceivable swiftness and scope of its revelation 
 terrified Maryla, who had never heard of it. To her it 
 was like a dark lantern carried by a giant watchman. 
 Her soul seemed to hear the voice of the Lord God walking 
 
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 in the garden in the cool of the evening and calling to 
 Eve hidden among the trees of the garden. 
 
 She did not take to herself the solace of blaming the 
 serpent, but she felt that her brief term in paradise was 
 over. 
 
 The boat forged on up the river and gave back the 
 darkness, but the moon was not the same. 
 
 Then suddenly the quietude and the solitude were 
 ruined again, cloven asunder as with a sword. A railroad 
 train ripped through the gorge at their feet. It went by 
 unseen, but it sent out a shower of sparks and a shrill 
 escape of steam like the great hiss of an indignant world.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 r "PHAT same night that same moon poured its influence 
 1 upon a distant nickel-plated yacht steaming hand- 
 somely through an appropriately nickel-plated sea. 
 
 Jacob Schuyler had thought himself immensely clever 
 when he devised the scheme of checkmating his head- 
 strong daughter by kidnapping her. A small joke of his 
 own usually lasted him a good while; and it had pleased 
 him to shanghai his own child in his own yacht. But the 
 humor had lost something of its edge in the course of a 
 week at sea, especially since Muriel would not laugh. 
 Also, Jacob had begun to think hard about his business, 
 and to distrust his office subordinates. 
 
 His wife, too, was remembering a number of necessities 
 that she had neglected in the haste of their departure, and 
 neither her maid not Muriel's had a sea-going stomach. 
 And of all tasks on earth old Mrs. Schuyler enjoyed least 
 waiting on her own maid. 
 
 But Jacob had vowed not to go back until Muriel prom- 
 ised to give up her slum avocations. She had set that 
 little square jaw of hers a misses' size model of his own 
 and vowed that she would never make such a promise. 
 It was a case of vow against vow, and whose was the 
 frailer? 
 
 Meanwhile nobody on that pleasure-yacht was having 
 any pleasure. Nobody could convince anybody of any- 
 thing. Jacob and his wife could not persuade their child 
 that they were acting for her best interests, and she could 
 not persuade them to mind their own. 
 
 To-night the moon and the soft gale pleaded for recon- 
 
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 ciliation, but Muriel would not surrender. The old peo- 
 ple, grown somewhat to a dumpling shape, sat bunched 
 in their big arm-chairs and watched that slim figure in 
 the blown skirts leaning on the rail, her eyes clinging to 
 the horizon like hands reluctant to let go. 
 
 Her parents watched her so fondly that they saw even 
 the dim little tears that came forth and glistened on her 
 eyelashes. Jacob called to her with the kindliness the 
 moon inspired: 
 
 "What's the matter, honey?" 
 
 "Nothing, nothing, thank you." 
 
 "But you're crying, aren't you?" 
 
 "Not necessarily." 
 
 " I thought I saw tears in your eyes." 
 
 "It's the wind, I suppose; or the spray." 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler tried her luck: 
 
 "What are you thinking of, dearest?" 
 
 "Of nothing that interests you." 
 
 "Perhaps it would." 
 
 Muriel left the rail and flung herself into her own chair. 
 "No! You have no hearts, either of you. My suffer- 
 ing doesn't interest you!" 
 
 That dealt them a stab indeed, the sharper than a ser- 
 pent's stab of a thankless child. They left off asking her 
 what she was thinking about. So she told them: 
 
 "I was thinking of what that poor Italian mother 
 must feel in that awful tenement, wondering where her 
 child is. And I was thinking of the child crying with 
 fear and loneliness. And you won't let me go and 
 find it!" 
 
 Susan pleaded: "We love you too well to let you mix 
 yourself in this thing." 
 
 "Love me! And you break my heart? You make a 
 brute of me, and a fool and a liar. You force me to 
 abandon all those wretched people that trusted me." 
 
 "We're sorry for the poor souls, of course, my dear," 
 Jacob urged. "How often have I told you that the 
 
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 last thing I did was to telephone Chivot to do what he 
 could?" 
 
 "Chivot!" she sniffed, and there was his epitaph in the 
 sniff. 
 
 "Can't you understand, honey," Jacob pleaded, "that 
 we're only guided by our love of you? We can't endure 
 the thought of your going down into those hideous 
 regions." 
 
 "They're not hideous. They're crowded, but so is a 
 summer hotel. People are people there as well as any- 
 where." 
 
 "But it's not safe for you." 
 
 "Safe! Where is it safe, in this world or the next? 
 If I'm never to go anywhere or do anything that isn't 
 safe, I might as well jump overboard and get out of 
 danger." 
 
 "But suppose, while you were trying to find that kid- 
 napped boy, somebody kidnapped you?" 
 
 "O Lord! papa, don't, don't! You're not old enough 
 for your second childhood. You talk of the East Side as 
 if it were the Wild West in dime-novel days." 
 
 "Of course I do," said Jacob. "It's worse than 
 Cripple Creek ever was." 
 
 "Those gunmen down there," Susan added, "would 
 shoot the spurs off a cowboy bad man before he could 
 draw his cayuse, or whatever it is they shoot with out 
 there." 
 
 Muriel shook her head over the nursery ogre story. 
 "Oh, Daddy, Mammy, naughty, naughty!" 
 
 "It's true!" said Jacob, angrily. "The papers are full 
 of gunplay every day; yet they don't tell a tenth of it. 
 The police don't want it on their records, and the papers 
 won't print every bit of pop-gun practice at one of those 
 obscure dances or gin-mills. The people they kill or 
 maim are nobody much, anyway. But the hospitals can 
 tell you a story. I'm on the board of two or three of 'em 
 and I get the reports. Do you realize that hardly a night 
 
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 passes without eight or ten people being brought in 
 stabbed or shot or beaten up? Those Pike County and 
 Black Hills fellows were nothing compared to New 
 York. They didn't have people enough to shoot. New 
 York is simply full of gunmen and knifemen and bomb- 
 throwers." 
 
 "That makes it all the more attractive," said Muriel, 
 with the gaiety of youth at the hint of adventure. 
 
 Jacob opened his mouth with a gasp, then clamped it 
 on his cigar and spoke through his clenched teeth like a 
 proper pirate. 
 
 "Well, mother, if that's the way she feels about it, 
 we might as well head for Europe. I'll go arrange it 
 with Bjorlin." 
 
 He slapped his hands on the arms of his chair and 
 heaved himself erect with difficulty. He marched out, 
 as he had done when a board of directors would not vote 
 as he wished, and he left them dazed and disorganized 
 to surrender and recall him. 
 
 Muriel was a bit dazed and disorganized herself. Or- 
 dinarily she had won her way in her conflicts with her 
 father. Was she losing her grip? 
 
 Then her mother began on her: "Now I implore you 
 not to oppose your father. He doesn't want to go to 
 Europe now, and Heaven knows I can't bear the idea. 
 But you're both so stubborn, you are killing me between 
 you." 
 
 Muriel's resolution was unshaken. "I'm sorry, mother. 
 There's no place I want to go less than to Europe. But 
 I'd rather go to Africa than be bullied like this. I'm of 
 age, and I won't be treated as a little girl." 
 
 In her desperateness Mrs. Schuyler had an inspiration: 
 "I don't for a moment believe they have lost any boy 
 at all. I'm perfectly sure they never had a boy to lose." 
 
 "Really, mother, you mustn't go crazy right before my 
 eyes." 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler did not mind the sarcasm. She retorted: 
 
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 " Oh, everybody's crazy but the young. But you'd better 
 acquire a little of the common insanity of the rest of the 
 grown-ups. Don't become eccentric, my child, whatever 
 else you do. I'd almost rather have you fast than a 
 crank. Fast people do reform sometimes, but cranks 
 get worse and worse." 
 
 Muriel stared at her mother with all the disappointment 
 children feel when their parents fall short of their ideals. 
 Muriel thought, "Poor child!" 
 
 Her mother said: "Poor child!" and groaned, "I'm go- 
 ing to bed. Good night." 
 
 They kissed each other formally like women at war, 
 and Mrs. Schuyler went to her cabin. The boat was 
 rolling so that she progressed with a rather bibulous 
 dignity. The moonlight seemed to be relieved when she 
 took her cynical counsels away from its tenderness. 
 
 Muriel went back to the railing and resumed her 
 study of the horizon. It seemed a pity that she should 
 be alone and all that moonlight going to waste. But she 
 was thinking of a young man, a young physician. She 
 was thinking, "What is he thinking of me?" She felt 
 sure that if he were thinking of her it was with bitter 
 resentment.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 HE was thinking of her and musing, "Is she thinking 
 of me?" He was afraid that she had forgotten him 
 as utterly as she had neglected him. He was looking at 
 the same moon and wondering where she was. 
 
 Young Dr. Worthing had more than amorous reasons 
 for asking information as to Muriel Schuyler's whereabouts. 
 She had promised to telephone him the following day. 
 The next morning there was no call. 
 
 "It's just a way she has," he pleaded to himself in her 
 behalf. And she had such becoming ways that even this 
 fault took on a charm because it was hers. 
 
 The second morning he was both hurt and alarmed. 
 About noon he was sent for. The messenger could not 
 pronounce the name of the visitor, but he called him a 
 "wop." Worthing went down to the reception-room and 
 was greeted with touching devotion by a man he had 
 never seen. 
 
 Worthing knew him for an Italian by his trousers, which 
 were too tight, too low in the waist, and too high at the 
 ankles. He was fat and huge and his skin was like cur- 
 rant-jelly. There were traces of flour in his hair, and his 
 finger-nails were snowed up with flour. 
 
 It was Angelillo senior and he wanted the ransom 
 money. He had advertised in the paper as Worthing 
 directed. 
 
 "To-day my telephone rings. Man says Italian man 
 says: 'For four t'ousan' dollar, you getta de boy back; 
 notta de wan dam' cent smaller.' I says, 'Please, I can- 
 not get so moch mawney!' He says, 'You cannot getta 
 
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 de boy.' I says, 'Wait a minuto.' Click! telephone is 
 stop, man gone. I say to telephone-girl, ' Queeck, where 
 is dat las' number?' She says she doan' knaw." 
 
 "The police could make them hunt it up." 
 
 Mr. Angelillo's opinion of the police was expressed in 
 a grimace of contempt. 
 
 Angelillo outlined his plan: " Police is no good. Plaina 
 clothes is no good. Italiano to catch Italiano. First is 
 de boy; to get my boy back to his mawther, I pay all 
 what is ask of mawney. After, I find out who is keedanap 
 my boy. I keel him so!" 
 
 He drove an imaginary stiletto into an imaginary 
 body with the greatest enthusiasm. 
 
 "When he is keel I take back my mawney and yours, 
 and I pay you again what you geeve. See?" 
 
 Worthing smiled at the ingenious device. But he urged 
 Angelillo to make one more effort to lower the demand, 
 and Angelillo left him with some waning of enthusiasm, 
 saying that he would return the next day. 
 
 Dr. Worthing felt that Muriel would want to learn the 
 news. It was an excellent excuse for an interview. He 
 telephoned the town house, and was told that she was on 
 a yacht cruise. She had put to sea for an indefinite 
 period without sending him a word ! She had gone back 
 to the upper air. Probably some super-rich lover or 
 some visiting nobleman was engaging her thoughts with 
 glittering courtship. Perhaps she was making a funny 
 story of her little slumming excursion and mimicking the 
 hospital interne she had dazzled for a few days just to 
 see how foolish he would be. 
 
 Doctors must learn to deaden their feelings or they 
 will perish. Worthing had learned to be calm under 
 bitter ordeals. .But Muriel had stabbed him in a chamber 
 of his heart that had never been anesthetized, and he 
 could not put his wincing soul into the twilight sleep. 
 
 Two days later Angelillo sought him out again. He 
 had published another bid in the Araldo and in the dismal 
 
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 auction with unseen bidders had brought the price of the 
 boy down to twenty-five hundred dollars. 
 
 He called for the money. Worthing stared at him in 
 open-jawed confusion. All the man wanted was twenty- 
 five hundred dollars in cash. Worthing's total war fund 
 amounted to about twenty-five dollars. 
 
 Angelillo mistook the reason of Worthing's embarrass- 
 ment. He opened out his palm and rubbed his thumb 
 across his finger-tips in the money-gesture and smiled: 
 
 "You lenda me twenta-fi' hondred. I pay. I grabba 
 de boy, I stabba de man. See like-a so! Ugh! Den 
 I nabba de mon'." 
 
 There was all of sunny Italy in his smile. Worthing 
 had a feeling that if he did not furnish the money, Mr. 
 Angelillo would just as amiably push the stiletto into him. 
 
 As sometimes happens to people in desperate embar* 
 rassment, Worthing had resort to the last resort of too 
 clever people, the truth. And as sometimes happens, 
 the truth cleared the air somewhat and found credence 
 and sympathy. 
 
 He told the poor father how he had been brought into 
 the affair and how he had been deceived by the same 
 pretty-faced glib promiser. He told all but her name. 
 When Angelillo pleaded for that he said: 
 
 "I can't tell you. It wouldn't do any good. She's 
 out of town." And then the fantastic notion came to 
 him. "I don't believe she told me her real name." 
 
 After all, what evidence had he that the girl was Muriel 
 Schuyler? He had found her in a car marked J. S., 
 but that proved nothing. She might have been a maid, 
 or a picked-up sweetheart of the chauffeur's. In his anger 
 he twisted all the arguments awry and everything proved 
 what he feared to have it prove. 
 
 His meekness and frankness and shame were so com- 
 plete that Angelillo had mercy on him, forgave him, and 
 resolved to go back to fight his battle in his own way. 
 
 He took from his pocket a dirty envelope, and from 
 
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 that a sheet of cheap note-paper on which was printed 
 some message. In it was a little curl of black hair. 
 
 "Dey senda me dees," he explained. "Eet is from 
 Filippo's hairs. Dey say, eef no mawney come to-night, 
 to-morrow dey senda me" he paused and breathed hard 
 "dey senda me de leetla finger from his left hand by 
 parcel posto. And de nex' day ancora uno digitto!" 
 The anguish on his face changed to unimaginable ire. 
 "Eef dey do, by de body of Cristo, wan day I find deir 
 boy and I do de same." 
 
 The fierce liquor of revenge sustained him as he turned 
 away. 
 
 The next morning Worthing had a teiepnone message 
 from the Assistant Commissioner on Ellis Island, asking 
 him if Miss Schuyler had done anything about the appeal 
 against the deportation of the Balinsky girl. Nothing 
 had been turned in, and the time was short. 
 
 Worthing answered with a griding laugh: "Hah! She 
 fooled you, too, did she?" 
 
 "I don't understand." 
 
 "Neither do I. Good-by!" 
 
 Misery loves company, and the Assistant Commissioner 
 was welcome.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 TEN days after Muriel's disappearance, Dr. Worth- 
 ing was called out to bring in the shredded victims of 
 a dynamite accident in the Broadway Subway construc- 
 tion. He came back with a wagon-load of horrors and 
 turned them over to a squad of surgeons and nurses. 
 
 When he had washed up and changed to his street 
 clothes he was told that a young lady was waiting to see 
 him: It was Muriel. 
 
 She rose and hurried to him with a little cry of delight 
 that broke off short before the fierce anger of his glare. 
 
 "Didn't you get my telegram?" she asked. 
 
 "What telegram?" he groaned; she was so pretty it was 
 a pity she must be so false. 
 
 "The one I gave the porter. He swore he'd send it. 
 I hadn't time to send it myself and catch the train. I'll 
 murder that black hound if I ever see him again." 
 
 Worthing tossed his head impatiently. Another of her 
 stories was coming. It came. She told him of the 
 tyranny of her atrocious father. She told him of her 
 efforts to get word to him, to bribe a sailor, the wireless 
 operator, anybody, to send him word. 
 
 They anchored now and then in various harbors while 
 sailors were sent ashore for mail and newspapers and sup- 
 plies. She tried to escape at every one, but the guard 
 was too strict. 
 
 "They never went in close enough for me to swim, 
 though, or I'd have tried it. The other day it was my 
 last chance, too we were off Newport News, and the 
 next stop was Europe. I caught a glimpse of a war-ship 
 
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 there, and the Lord sent me a stroke of genius. Father 
 and mother were playing be*zique, the launch was ashore, 
 and most of the sailors were asleep. I went into the 
 navigating-room and found where it tells you about 
 signal codes and things, and I got out the necessary pen- 
 nants and made up a signal for 'Mutiny on Board. Send 
 Help.' 
 
 "Nobody paid any particular attention to me so long 
 as I was in plain view. I used to putter about the deck 
 a good deal and learn the ropes. I generally ran up the 
 colors and lowered them. So I made up a hoist and raised 
 it and nobody on the yacht noticed it. Nobody on the war- 
 ship noticed it, either, for the longest time. 
 
 "Then there was a sign of life on board and a lot of 
 pointing. Finally I saw a cutter leaving her side. So I 
 strolled up to my darling old dad and told him what I 
 had done. 
 
 "He almost exploded. I told him that I was going to 
 report that the yacht was engaged in the slave-carrying 
 trade, and that I was the slave, white, of age, unmarried, 
 and American, and I was being dragged away by force. 
 So I had a right to call a policeman or a war-ship or the 
 whole United States army. 
 
 "Well, father was ready to die. He loathes publicity, 
 anyvay, and he could see tons of it coming his way. I 
 told him I would save him from every last smitch of trouble 
 if he'd solemnly swear to quit trying to bully me and let 
 me go ashore. 
 
 "He had nothing else to do, so he swore. Then when 
 the cutter came alongside I met the officer and treated 
 him as if I were very much surprised. He asked what 
 the trouble was and I told him that everybody was well 
 and happy; why? He explained about the signals and I 
 pretended to be ready to drop. I told him it was all my 
 fault. I had been getting up a little birthday dinner and 
 I wanted to dress the ship. I had a lot of other flags I 
 wanted to fly, and those were the first I found. We had 
 
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 to muster the crew to convince him that everything was 
 all right. Then I begged him to have tea and he did. 
 He was terribly disappointed at not being able to save 
 anybody, but he was awfully nice and very good- 
 looking. I say, he was very good-looking." 
 
 She eyed Worthing closely to see if there were no 
 jealousy in him. He was grimly trying to disbelieve the 
 evidently concocted romance. He did not want to be 
 jealous of an imaginary male beauty. He was icily 
 insolent before her smile. 
 
 She was canny enough to see that his head was having a 
 battle with his heart. She said: 
 
 "Could I bribe you to smile once for five thousand 
 dollars?" 
 
 She produced the cash and spread it out before him. 
 It was not stage money. If that were real, perhaps the 
 rest of her story was. He stared into her eyes and saw 
 nothing there but truth though she had just finished 
 telling him a story of her ingenious lies. But such lies 
 did not, of course, count against her, since they were told 
 in order to get back to him. 
 
 When she saw that he had relented she went on with the 
 story of her hasty escape from the yacht. She would not 
 wait to come back by sea, but rushed ashore. She described 
 the telegram she had written, and reiterated her desire 
 to murder the porter who pocketed the money, tip and all. 
 
 She talked at a lightning-express speed, and ended with 
 a final rush like pulling into a station: 
 
 "And now tell me everything that's happened. I was 
 so afraid about the poor Angelillo boy. Did Mr. Chivot 
 accomplish anything? Of course not, but oh, do tell 
 me! You haven't said a word." 
 
 He told her what he knew of the kidnapped boy's 
 affairs and he told her what he dreaded. 
 
 She was afire with terror and insisted on leaving at once 
 for the Angelillo home. Worthing was not in a position 
 to act upon his impulses as she on hers, but he managed 
 
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 to compound an excuse that satisfied his chief. They 
 set out together for Batavia Street, wondering what they 
 might find there. 
 
 As they whirled into Batavia Street, where automo- 
 biles are not frequent, they came within an ace of smiting 
 Happy Hanigan again. 
 
 He leaped to the curb in time and began to howl 
 profanity. 
 
 "Where t'e hell yous goin'? Say! is dat you, Miss 
 Schuyler? Well, I'll be 'Scuse me." 
 
 His goblin wrath had changed instantly to a smile that 
 would have been almost too sweet for a cherub ; but his 
 language preserved its habits. 
 
 Muriel hastened to get down from the taxicab and 
 embrace her long-lost protege. Happy winked across her 
 shoulder at Worthing and said: 
 
 "Hey, Doc, toin your head de udder way. Don't you 
 know how to act when a feller meets his goil?" 
 
 Worthing tried to smile, but Happy read his look aright. 
 
 "Looky at him, darlin', he's green with chealousness." 
 
 Muriel surprised the blush that ran across Worthing's 
 face. Then one ran across her own. Then she became 
 intensely interested in Happy's condition. 
 
 "We're coming up to see you just as soon as we've 
 had a little talk with Mrs. Angelillo about her boy." 
 
 Muriel flashed up the dingy stairway, an angel fresh 
 from heaven in robes fresh from Paris. 
 
 When Muriel entered the Angelillo cavern she was 
 stared at first with superstitious unbelief and then glared 
 at with superstitious recognition. They laid upon her 
 shoulders the blame for the ills that preceded her first 
 arrival in their life as well as those that followed. They 
 accused her of the Evil Eye, the cruelest folly that has 
 survived from the old demonic lore. 
 
 They made the sign of protection against the Jettatura 
 
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 and motioned her away. Worthing had prepared her for 
 such a reception and she had composed in the back of her 
 head a little apologia in her best Italian. 
 
 She reeled it off now and won past their wrath. The 
 most convincing sign of all was the brandishing of the 
 actual money. She allowed them to touch those almost 
 omnipotent green wafers and they recognized their un- 
 canny power. 
 
 The thousand-dollar bills excited an almost overwhelm- 
 ing emotion in the young man whom Muriel had met be- 
 fore. Gemma introduced him as her husband. He was 
 an Italian of the type that has no Italian feature. At 
 home his name was Nunzio Mangianello; abroad he 
 called himself "Mike Kelley" for short. He was of a 
 basking nature, and before he married Gemma had been 
 content to borrow a street-piano and play the trouba- 
 dour for a day or two, earning enough to keep him alive 
 the rest of the week. He had slept upon green bananas, 
 aiding them to ripen with his own warm nature. 
 
 He had easily won the green-banana soul of Gemma, 
 and then had settled down as a basker in the Angelillo 
 home. What little he earned he spent in gambling, 
 preferably at the noble game of stuss a game which some 
 anonymous genius improved with a wonderful feature: 
 the house pays back to the man who has lost his entire 
 fortune a large enough percentage to pay his car-fare 
 home. This encourages the timid gambler to risk every- 
 thing, in the calm assurance that he can never be entirely 
 wiped out. 
 
 The stuss-house which Nunzio chiefly honored with his 
 patronage was more or less concealed in Allen Street, and 
 presided over with more or less police permission by 
 "Shang" Ganley, one of the most eminent gunmen of the 
 lower East Side. And this gunman's more or less official 
 wife was the versatile little brick-topped imp generally 
 known as "Red Ida." 
 
 Nunzio had poured into the sympathetic ears of the 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Ganleys his first grief at the kidnapping of his tiny brother- 
 in-law Filippo. He had been sincerely grieved by the 
 loss of the little fellow and had moved the gunman and 
 Red Ida to facile tears. 
 
 When Muriel disappeared her treachery was mourned 
 in the stuss-house and voted a dirty trick. And now that 
 she had come back Nunzio could hardly possess his soul 
 in patience till the chance came to take the splendid news 
 to his sympathetic friends in Allen Street. 
 
 Gemma could give no news of Filippo save that he was 
 alive. He had printed them a few little notes pleading 
 for rescue. The father was ransacking the town for him, 
 and was even now in the Little Italy far up-town, prowl- 
 ing through areaways and back yards. 
 
 Learning that he would not be back for two hours or 
 more, Muriel and Worthing determined to take Happy 
 Hanigan to the great surgeon whose new operation 
 promised to straighten his twisted spine.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 MURIEL was like a young girl running along a bleak 
 mountainside hunting out the sparse flowers and 
 never dreaming of the lurking rattlesnakes, cynical, un- 
 grateful, unapproachable with kindliness. She was mak- 
 ing a lark out of charity, glowing warmly through the 
 winter of pain like another April. This surely was the 
 way that charity should be ministered with eagerness 
 and laughter and quick tears. Thus taken, it became 
 the best of all sports, a gambling game with stakes well 
 won or well lost as the die might turn. 
 
 She found Mrs. Hanigan at home, brushing Happy's 
 hair and washing the back of his neck for company. He 
 had just emerged from the wash-boiler still steaming on 
 the wet floor, and had not yet arrived inside a clean shirt. 
 He modestly sought concealment behind a cupboard door, 
 but Muriel caught a glimpse of him stripped to the 
 waist. She closed her eyes, not with shame, but with 
 pity for those clay-pipe arms and that pitiful twisted 
 back and that big neckless head. He looked like a 
 waxen torso half collapsed. 
 
 She turned away as he fought into his shirt, but she 
 heard his groans of distress and his muffled oaths of 
 impatience. When the shirt was tucked in and but- 
 toned up he came forward with his hair askew, but his big 
 smile in full working order. His mother belabored his 
 head with the hair-brush and added the finishing touches 
 while he tried to shake hands round her. 
 
 "You're going with us to the doctor, aren't you?" 
 Muriel asked, and he grinned. 
 
 231
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "I'd go almost any place wit' you, darlin'." 
 
 "Mickeen!" his mother gasped; "such talk you have!" 
 She turned to Muriel. "You mustn't mind his lip, ma'am 
 dear; he has the good heart within." 
 
 "I love his lip," said Muriel. "He's the bravest man 
 I know." 
 
 "Ah, the Lord love you," cooed Mrs. Hanigan. "I'm 
 after tellin' him he'll be the straightest lad in the Four 
 Baronies whin the docther is through with him. He 
 wasn't so strahng for the idea at first, but the pain grows 
 on him that bad, sure every breath is the pullin' of a tooth." 
 
 They went down the steps slowly, Happy hobbling 
 with senile awkwardness. The pride of riding in an 
 automobile was the best of tonics. 
 
 They arrived up -town finally at their destination. 
 Dr. Eccleston's office was wherever there was super- 
 surgery to perform, but he made his headquarters in a 
 twelve-story structure devoted entirely to physicians. 
 It was a kind of mixture of hospital, apartment-house, and 
 office-building. Everything was white and cornerless, 
 aseptic and microscopically clean. The elevator-boy was 
 in white and looked as if he had just been sterilized. As 
 they went up they saw a trained nurse on every floor. 
 There was a kind of sacredness about it to Muriel, a 
 temple of science with a priestcraft of suspicion instead 
 of faith, of warfare against the invisible fiends, with the 
 knife instead of prayer. 
 
 They found Dr. Eccleston just leaving for one of the 
 hospitals where he worked gratis for the love of his art. 
 
 Miss Schuyler's name and her plea made him turn 
 back. He left her in the reception-room and went into 
 his own office with Happy and Dr. Worthing and a 
 trained nurse. 
 
 Muriel remained alone with the doleful reading-matter 
 one finds on the table in a doctor's waiting-room 
 chosen, perhaps, with a view to making one more willing 
 to see him. 
 
 232
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 When at last Eccleston came in with Dr. Worthing 
 Happy was not with them. 
 
 "Tell me, doctor," Muriel gasped, eager to know the 
 worst. " Is there any hope for him?" 
 
 "Every hope." He did not voice his mental reserva- 
 tion, "And no certainty." 
 
 "Oh, that's glorious," Muriel faltered in a broken 
 voice, ambiguous between giggling and sobbing. Her 
 lips were curved up, but the tears were dripping down. 
 "Just what is the m-matter with the poor child ?" 
 
 "Just what Dr. Worthing here suspected," the older 
 man said with professional chivalry. "The boy is suf- 
 fering from the disease named after old Percival Potts, 
 and his relief is the new Albee operation." 
 
 Muriel made a face of repugnance: "What an awful 
 fate to have a disease or an operation named after you !" 
 
 Worthing sighed: "I wish to the Lord I could have a 
 little of that fate. I'd rather discover the boundaries of a 
 disease than find the north pole, and I'd rather invent a 
 cure for it than all the airships in the world." 
 
 On Worthing's face a holy fervor supplanted his usual 
 severity. Muriel had not thought of him as a crusader. 
 
 "Well, if it's all so beautiful," she said, "tell me about 
 it. Is it terrible and will it hurt?" 
 
 Dr. Eccleston thought of his appointments, but he 
 pushed a chair at Worthing and sat on another. 
 
 "The boy is suffering from a tubercular condition of the 
 spine. It will get worse and worse; he will grow more and 
 more bent; his gait will be more awkward; his breath- 
 ing more painful; his lungs will be eventually affected." 
 
 "But the operation is it very dreadful?" 
 
 "Not at all," said Eccleston, with the cheerfulness of 
 a surgeon the least contagious cheerfulness in the world. 
 "It's what an architect would call an amusing piece of 
 work. Would you like me to tell you about it?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, with rash curiosity. 
 
 He produced a pencil and made rapid sketches on his 
 
 8 233
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 prescription pad. The vertebrae looked like battalions 
 on a military map. "You see, here's a normal spine. 
 Here's where the trouble begins. These vertebrae began 
 to break down. This is the way Happy's spine looks 
 now." He sketched a battle-line driven in at its center. 
 "You see it's bending under the weight, it's slipping, it's 
 hurting his lungs. Now it has been discovered that if 
 these bones can be held fast they will get well. But it 
 is difficult to rig up a scaffolding inside your back here, 
 or to fasten girders and beams to your spine." 
 
 "I should think so," Muriel said, feebly, trying not to 
 faint and wondering why all this should be so peculiarly 
 dreadful. Eccleston did not realize the strain she was 
 under, and went gaily on with a scientist's impersonal 
 interest. 
 
 "Now Dr. Albee, who has a kind of a gift for carpentry, 
 worked up a neat little scheme for strengthening that 
 spine with a bone graft, a piece of the shin about eight 
 inches long." 
 
 "Whose shin?" Muriel whispered. 
 
 "The patient's, of course," said Eccleston. "Albee in- 
 vented beautiful little electric motor saws and drills, and he 
 makes the bone pliable with several slight incisions on the 
 under side, the way a carpenter bends a board like this. 
 
 "First, of course, he has laid bare the spinal column as 
 far as necessary to include one good vertebra at either end 
 of the bad ones. Then with a special chisel and mallet 
 he splits each of these spinous processes down about half 
 an inch, forming a kind of a furrow along here. He gets 
 out his shin-bone cleat and sets it in here, straightens it 
 all as much as he can, fastens it together with kangaroo 
 tendons, and closes it up. And that's all there is to it. 
 Exquisite, isn't it?" 
 
 He turned to Muriel for approval, but she was wavering 
 and ashen. Eccleston sighed. 
 
 "I always forget." He called to the nurse to fetch 
 some aromatic spirits of ammonia, and Muriel was soon 
 
 234
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 in better command of herself. But her imagination was 
 the more alive. 
 
 "It's frightful, it's pitiful; it will hurt," she wailed. 
 
 "It hurts him now, my dear," said Worthing, seizing 
 her hand and crushing it with a helpful pressure. The 
 words and the act were but a physician's habit, yet they 
 had a sudden personal significance to these two. 
 
 Still she hunted for arguments against the hateful 
 deed. "But he would be a long, long while getting well 
 if he got well wouldn't he?" 
 
 "Five or six months or so." 
 
 She groaned at the vision; but Worthing urged: "It's 
 shorter than a lifetime, isn't it? The pain of breathing 
 would be ended almost at once. He would be kept on a 
 special fracture bed for six or eight weeks. Then he would 
 begin to walk about a little." 
 
 "How could he walk with his shin gone?" 
 
 "That would be all grown up again by then." 
 
 "It would?" 
 
 "Yes, Nature has invented the only self-repairing en- 
 gines on the market. She only wants a chance. This is 
 Happy's chance to live long, to grow to manhood and 
 perhaps to some great career." 
 
 She stared at him in amazement. ' ' You advise it, then ?" 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 She fired her last shot: "But you couldn't tell Happy 
 about it and you wouldn't dare attempt it without his 
 consent." 
 
 "I've told Happy," said Worthing. 
 
 "Oh!" She shuddered through all her being. "Did 
 he faint, as I want to?" 
 
 "He was tickled to death. I think he's a little con- 
 ceited about it." 
 
 The two physicians chuckled. But Muriel began to 
 cry softly, almost silently, like a summer rain. She was 
 ashamed and hid her face in her handkerchief. She 
 heard that impudent voice at the door: 
 
 235
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Say, who t'e hell's been hoitin' me lady frien'?" 
 
 She looked up and saw Happy, not in the costume he had 
 worn, but in a nightgown. He had been stripped for the 
 examination and he had decided to stay here to be made 
 ready for the inquisition. 
 
 Muriel ran to him, dropped on one knee, and clasped 
 him in her arms as if he were a crippled child of her 
 very own. He caressed her awkwardly and smiled with 
 pride as she mumbled, "Oh, Happy! Happy!" 
 
 " Dat's me name, darlin'. Say, I've just found out I'm 
 built like a motor-car. Cheese! I never knowed dey 
 was so much machinery inside o' me. But I gotta 
 back into de garadge and be coupled up better. Dis 
 big old stoigeon here is goin' at me wit' a ax and a monkey- 
 wrench and take me all apart and put me togedder again. 
 It's grand. When I come out I'll be able to lick anybody 
 dat can make me weight." 
 
 "You poor, brave, blessed child, to think what you 
 must go through!" 
 
 "It ain't what a guy goes t'rough so much as where he 
 comes out at," said the gutter philosopher. "What I'm 
 goin' t'rough every day ain't no cinch, and it ain't gettin' 
 me nowheres." 
 
 But Muriel could not smile. Happy stared at her with 
 a new pride. It was encouraging to be felt sorry for by 
 such a being as this. It was he that tried to comfort her. 
 
 "Dey's one t'ing I'd like to ast you, darlin'," he said. 
 " Before dey begin woik on me insides dey put me out wit' 
 some kind of gas. If you was to be wit' me and kind o' 
 hold on to me hand and let me down easy I I'd not be so 
 scared. I don't want to git scared. I'd like me mudder 
 dere, but she's had trouble enough, and she'd be scareder 
 dan what I was. Maybe you wouldn't like it yourself." 
 
 "I'll be there," said Muriel. 
 
 "Fine for you! I knew I could depend on you. De 
 game begins to-morra mornin' oily." 
 
 "I'll be there," said Muriel. ' 
 
 236
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "And say whisper!" He glared at the bystanders 
 till they turned away, then he lowered his voice and set 
 his big mouth against her little ear and murmured: 
 "When I git straight I'm not gona be no shofure. Ump- 
 umm. I'm gona be a stoigeon. I'll have a office like dis 
 and I'll straighten out everybody I can git me hands 
 on. I'll make a lot o' money, too, and if if nobody 
 ain't ast you to marry him by dat time, why I'll I'll 
 I'll take care of you meself." 
 
 "Splendid!" said Muriel. 
 
 Then the nurse took him by the hand and he was led 
 away. 
 
 When he had gone Muriel, in a swirl of confused emo- 
 tions, assailed the surgeon: 
 
 " Promise me you'll be gentle with him. Don't hurt him 
 any more than you have to. And if there's anything 
 anything that will help him or make him comfortable or 
 happy let him have it no matter what it costs. Under- 
 stand, no matter what it costs. I have the money." 
 
 "I understand. I promise." 
 
 Then she left him, feeling that she had lent the boy to 
 the little death of science and wondering how he should be 
 returned, if at all. She leaned rather heavily on Worth- 
 ing's arm, and she said: 
 
 "Won't Mr. Merithew be happy when he learns that 
 his money has saved the Italian boy, and paid for Happy 
 besides!" 
 
 Worthing made a choking sound that she mistook for 
 assent. 
 
 "I must telephone poor Mr. Merithew the minute I 
 leave the Angelilli. I had an engagement with him and 
 broke it, just as I did yours, without sending him word. 
 I seem to be always doing the most dreadful things." 
 
 On the way back to Batavia Street to the Angelillo 
 home, Dr. Worthing was his gruffest self again. Muriel 
 made up her mind that he was a person of the most un- 
 accountable moods.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 CLOTHES need clothes. The fig-leaf demanded the 
 flax-plant, and the flax-plant called for the mulberry- 
 tree and its denizens. 
 
 Maryla had thought that if she could only possess one 
 beautiful gown she would be content. She paid herself 
 as the price and found that she had only paid an instal- 
 ment on an indefinite obligation. For that handsome 
 gown cried out for shoes and stockings, gloves, and a hat 
 and a cloak and a coach. And that gown would not work 
 all of the time; and it would not alternate with shabby 
 clothes. 
 
 People in town cannot be like the Mexican vaquero who 
 spends a hundred dollars on a lifelong hat and goes bare- 
 foot in ragged breeches. So Maryla was already perishing 
 for more dresses. 
 
 But she did not tell Perry Merithew so. When she 
 could not wear her finery she made excuses for staying 
 indoors rather than sober the Merry Perry with prayers 
 for further outlay. 
 
 This was to her credit with Perry, for he had found the 
 cry for money increasingly intolerable. It is the least 
 attractive song that Love can sing. Cupid is no cash-boy 
 to come at the word. He hates it. 
 
 Having got one gown, the lowly Maryla thought she 
 would be happy with just one more. "Pet" Bettany, 
 who was drifting downward from the highest cloud as 
 Maryla was pushing up from the loam, could have told 
 her that there was no such thing as gowns enough. Pet 
 Bettany had dozens of gowns, she owed for a score, she had 
 
 238
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 even paid cash for some of them, and still she voiced 
 the wail far older than Flora McFlimsey's of Madison 
 Square. 
 
 Pet had told Perry that night at the Yacht Club, " All 
 women are grafters." She had grafted her father almost 
 into his grave, her mother into gilded insolvency, and 
 every dressmaker and milliner she could wheedle into as 
 large an account as he would credit her with. 
 
 And still she had nothing to wear. She had ' ' borrowed ' ' 
 money from women and from men ; she had pawned family 
 jewels to throw a little sop to her creditors. Now the 
 impertinent hounds were whining for money and were re- 
 fusing to drag her dog-cart farther. 
 
 When she saw Perry Merithew slip bills into the hand of 
 Muriel Schuyler she rejoiced. She saw a chance to collect 
 a little hush-money. She never dreamed that the cash 
 was meant for charity. That did not resemble the 
 Perry Merithew she knew at all. When she spoke to him 
 he called her a little blackmailer and refused to lend her a 
 penny. She laughed ominously and prepared to bide her 
 time. 
 
 And then she was thrown into a state of desperation. 
 She was invited to spend a fortnight as one of the sixty 
 guests at one of the Newport palaces during tennis week 
 and horse-show week. Also there would be luncheons, 
 teas, and tea dances, and there would be big dinners and 
 Sardanapalian nights. These things needed many cos- 
 tumes, and they must all be new. 
 
 More harrowing still, the great Mrs. Nicolls, whose son, 
 "Winnie," Pet was conspiring to make a bridegroom 
 malgre lui the great Mrs. Nicolls announced that she 
 would give a wonderful costume fete to christen the new 
 ball-room she had added to her chateau. 
 
 Mysteriously the newspapers learned the details and 
 published them ten days before. The ball-room was to 
 be presented as the depths of the sea, with a blue-green 
 satin ceiling for the top of the water and a ship's hull 
 
 239
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 floating in it. Grottoes and cliffs would furnish the walls, 
 and the guests were requested to appear as some form of 
 sea life mermen, mermaids, mer-old-maids, nymphs, 
 fishes, lobsters, eels, flowers, shells, froth. 
 
 The proclamation set fancy afire. 
 
 Mrs. Nicolls included the Bettanys, mere et fille, in the 
 bead-roll of invitation, an intensely exclusive list of only 
 five hundred names. 
 
 Mrs. T. J. B. sighed over the cardboard and said: "I 
 don't know whether the old cat meant this as a compliment 
 or as a challenge. Pet darling, we can't dream of going, 
 of course. She knows we can't afford clothes to wear on 
 the street, to say nothing of submarine flummery. You 
 won't mind missing it, will you?" 
 
 And Pet had answered: "Not the least dambit, dear. 
 I don't care any more for that than I do for my right eye. 
 I'll go if I have to sell my left leg." 
 
 "But how, dear child ? How ? ' ' 
 
 "Watch my work," said Pet. "If I can't beg, borrow, 
 or steal some duds I'll go as Venus rising from the sea." 
 
 Miss Bettany set out like a gorgeous panhandler to beg 
 a dole from some of her tailors. She swallowed her pride 
 and truckled to people whom under ordinary circum- 
 stances, to use her own phrase, she "wouldn't wipe her 
 boots on." 
 
 But the Bettanys were notoriously in hot water. Their 
 commercial rating was of the lowest, their liabilities of the 
 highest. Even tailors reach a point where credit cannot 
 be extended. Pet had a bad half-day of it. She felt a 
 sincere contempt for tradesmen who insisted upon col- 
 lecting. 
 
 She tried to make up with Dutilh, with whom she had 
 quarreled a year before because he threatened to sue her. 
 With a heart full of bile and of guile she sauntered in and 
 told the icy wretch that she had decided to forgive him 
 and give him another chance. 
 
 240
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Dutilh, with an ominous sweetness, answered: "I am 
 so glad! I am desperately in need of cash. Did you 
 bring the check with you?" 
 
 She haughtily damned his impudence and walked out. 
 Her heart was black with rage and shame and baffled 
 desire. 
 
 Then her heart leaped. There was a Providence, after 
 all. In a clump of vehicles held up by a traffic policeman 
 she saw a limousine of a hunter's-green color. Lolling 
 inside, reading a book as if in his own library, was Perry 
 Merithew. 
 
 Pet opened the door, got in, sat down beside him, and 
 gurgled like a sweet little girl: 
 
 "Hello!" 
 
 Perry was startled, then amused, then embarrassed. 
 He was on his way to Maryla. 
 
 "Take me for a little ride, there's a darling," said Pet. 
 "Better yet, take me home and I'll give you a drink." 
 
 "Thanks," said Perry. "I'm late to another date." 
 
 "With Muriel Schuyler?" said Pet. "Take me along 
 for chaperon." 
 
 "Oh, for Heaven's sake, stop it!" said Perry. " I'll drop 
 you at your house." 
 
 "You can't shake me so easily," said Pet, putting her 
 feet up on the little flap-seat. 
 
 He sighed and shook his head in helpless fury. 
 
 "Perry, boy," she said, "I'm frantic. I've got to make 
 a raise somewhere." 
 
 " So have I. I've just been trying to touch a few friends 
 myself. Everybody is poorer than I am, and I'm a 
 pauper." 
 
 "You have money enough for Muriel Schuyler." 
 
 Perry gnashed his teeth, then spoke earnestly: 
 
 "Pet, I'll tell you the truth; I gave her some money 
 for a charity." 
 
 "You being the charity," Pet grinned. "Well, I'm 
 a charity, too." 
 
 241
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 41 1 borrowed the money to give her." 
 
 "Borrow me some." 
 
 "I promised to pay it back to-day and well, my ship 
 didn't come in." 
 
 "You'll have to do better than that, old top." 
 
 "I've told you the truth, and if you don't believe it 
 you can " 
 
 "No, I'll go ask Muriel," said Pet, grimly. "Maybe 
 she'll scare easier than you do. She's got a reputation to 
 lose. You haven't." He did not speak. She pressed 
 the threat. "I mean it. I'm going to Muriel Schuyler." 
 
 Perry laughed. "You're a good swimmer, but I doubt 
 if you can make it. She's on her father's yacht." 
 
 "When does she get back?" 
 
 "I don't know. I had an engagement with her. She 
 chucked it. Didn't even send me a word. That shows 
 how I stand with her. You're welcome to anything you 
 can get out of her." 
 
 "I'll just call that little bluff," said Pet. "Let me 
 out." 
 
 "Sha'n't I take you home?" 
 
 " This is her street. Let me out." 
 
 Perry signaled his chauffeur to draw up to the curb, 
 and handed Pet to the pavement with a low sweep of his 
 hat. He laughed ironically as she walked away fuming. 
 
 She rang the Schuyler bell, and received a confirmation 
 of Perry's words. She stalked home in a daze of cold ire. 
 She had her heart set on the fortnight at Newport, but 
 she told her mother that she would give all the other nights 
 and ten years off her life for a chance to glitter at Mrs. 
 Nicolls's memorable ball Au Fond de la Mer. Pet called 
 it, "aufond de I'enfer." 
 
 She sat in her exquisite boudoir in her expensive 
 inner sheaths and flung her expensive hair-brush at her 
 costly Pekingese, and bewailed the horrors of poverty. 
 She called her mother and father names. She dared 
 Muriel Schuyler to show her face in New York. 
 
 242
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 When Muriel stole back to town and made haste not 
 to the under-sea festival, but to the underworld tragedy, 
 Pet did not know of her return. 
 
 Besides, there were other persons interested in getting 
 money from Muriel. And they saw her first.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 T ITTLE Mrs. Ida Ganley, the wife of the stuss-dealer 
 i rf who got most of Nunzio's money, was one of those 
 strange submarine curiosities that the cabaret craze 
 dredged up from the depths of an otherwise hopeless ob- 
 scurity. 
 
 The public whim for enduring singing and dancing with 
 its meals and turning every restaurant into a vaudeville 
 house, had given employment and publicity to thousands 
 of singers and dancers whom, else, the dark unfathomed 
 caves of oblivion would have had to bear. Personalities 
 too frail to have stood the calcium of the stage passed 
 muster among the tables or on the platforms while the 
 dishes clattered. 
 
 And so Mrs. Ganley, wife of a cheap gambler, and 
 hitherto known only among the police as a pickpocket, 
 was now "an artist," and was actually receiving pay for 
 diverting attention from the cuisine to her own charms. 
 
 She had not as yet worked up to a down-town restau- 
 rant ; she sang among the higher numerals in an establish- 
 ment purveying chop-suey chiefly, and other Chinese 
 fodder. It happened to be near the apartment-house 
 where Perry Merithew had established Maryla a region 
 too far north for his friends to penetrate. Perry was 
 gradually educating Maryla up to the better restaurants. 
 He had not yet educated her up to the maxixe or to a 
 sense of the joy of life. Her somber beauty still enthralled 
 him, and her childlike wonder at the tritest things. Also 
 she was glowing with the bliss of wearing that wonderful 
 gown from Paris via Dutilh's. 
 
 244
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Maryla watched Red Ida with amazement as the little 
 demon leaned against the piano in the middle of the 
 crowded tables and sang a highly moral song with this 
 refrain of unusually keen philosophy : 
 
 Daon't blay-mit tall on Broar-dway; 
 
 Yew have yewrself to blame. 
 Daon't shame the name of dear aold Broar-dway, 
 
 For in any other town it's [gulp] just the same. 
 Yewr life is whawt yew ma-kit, 
 
 When yew try to toin nigh tin tew day, 
 And if yew should be dineeng with a lit-tU stran-jar, 
 Red lights seem tew warn yew of a dan-jar, 
 
 Doan't blay-mit tall on Broar-dway! 
 
 Perry Merithew was bored by this didactic lyric, in 
 which Maryla found deep solemnities. He found more 
 pleasure in the encore, a more Ida-esque satire of a young 
 man who took his girl out for a bright evening and bought 
 her an ice-cream soda, winning from her this withering 
 comment : 
 
 If that's your idea of a wonderful time, 
 
 Take me home! 
 
 You came out with a one-dollar bill; 
 You've got eighty cents left of it still. 
 If that's your idea of a wonderful time, 
 Take me home! 
 
 That was not Perry Merithew 's idea of a wonderful 
 time, but even Red Ida could see that he was having diffi- 
 culty in spending much money on Maryla. 
 
 The next day Red Ida was telling her gunman consort 
 of Perry Merithew's waste of cash and courtesy. The 
 gunman was a very liberal-minded man and made no 
 petty objections to his wife's extra-mural adventures. 
 
 And then Nunzio Mangianello appeared with the sen- 
 sational news of the reapparition of the millionairess and 
 her amazing display of thousand-dollar bills and diamonds. 
 
 Red Ida was at home when he arrived and she was as 
 delighted as if the stolen child were her own. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 She was consumed with anxiety as to the name of the 
 rich "dame." Nunzio could not enlighten her. But Ida 
 was willing to bet that if she laid eyes on her she would 
 know who she was. She was not only a close- student of 
 the society columns and the picture supplements in which 
 women of wealth rival actresses and politicians in the 
 frequence of their appearance, but also Ida was a singer 
 in the cabarets where at times the strolling aristocracy 
 condescended to dine and even to dance. 
 
 Trade was dull in the stuss line that afternoon, and 
 when Nunzio spoke of Muriel's promise to return at 
 three o'clock Red Ida and her man decided to stroll down 
 to Batavia Street and give her a look-over. 
 
 Ida's husband had been growling about the perfection 
 of the Italian Black Hand syndicates and their ability 
 to wring thousands of dollars from apparent paupers 
 by the arts of bomb-placing, child-stealing, and horse- 
 poisoning. 
 
 It seemed a shameful lack of American enterprise to 
 leave this rich field to the "wops." 
 
 As he and his Ida sauntered down the crowded lanes 
 that led to Batavia Street his brain was shuffling schemes 
 so dazzling that he dared not mention them even to a 
 sprite so audacious as Ida. 
 
 They found their way to Batavia Street and eventually 
 a hackney motor rolled up and emitted a young man who 
 helped out a young woman. 
 
 Red Ida knew Muriel instantly from her numberless 
 pictures in the newspapers. She seized her man by his 
 needle-scarred forearm and whispered: 
 
 "My Gawd, that's Muriel Schuyler! Her old man's 
 woith a billion dollars." 
 
 In the stormy brain-cell of the gunman there rose a 
 challenging question: 
 
 "Why not?"
 
 R 
 
 ED IDA knew Muriel instantly from her numberlea 
 Schuyler. Her old man's woith a billion dollars."
 
 Dta(TBB>mey 
 
 tures in the newspapers. She whispered: "That's Muriel
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 HERE was Jacob Schuyler's daughter in the humble 
 lane called Batavia; she was stepping out of a 
 shabby public motor in front of a shabbier tenement. 
 When she disappeared inside it, Ida's first comment 
 was on the modesty of her dress and her behavior: 
 
 "If you didn't know her you'd never know her, would 
 ya? She's dressed like she was nobody at tall. My 
 Gawd! if my old man was woith what hers is I'd be so 
 plastered with di'mond sunboists you'd think I was a 
 three-alarm fire. I'd have a poil in every pore." 
 
 But Shang was not listening. An idea had come to him 
 in a dazzling blaze like a wave of lightning. He felt that 
 it was too big a thought to think unaided; he must have 
 help, and he sent his trembling hands searching through his 
 pockets. 
 
 There was something reptilian in Shang. He slid 
 through the underbrush of life, keeping close to the 
 ground, carrying a hint of clamminess and venom. 
 
 Ida was a bird, a flitting, squeaking, chirping, malapert^ 
 song-sparrow. She had always held herself cheap, sold 
 herself cheap, or given herself away. Her ambition was 
 to attract attention, to be known in successive seasons as 
 "the limit," "a hot tamale," "the candy kid," "some 
 baby." 
 
 She was as common as chewing-gum and as restless as 
 her own jaws. She chewed her chewing-gum with a swag- 
 ger, open-mouthed, cud-rolling. She was "out for a good 
 time." Her motto was, "I'll try anything once." 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 She had always been what is called "wicked," and 
 there was no more profit in becoming excited over her 
 than in regretting the incorrigible frivolity of every dirty 
 little English sparrow. There are thousands of her in 
 New York, and in every other town in proportion. They 
 flock along the streets, picking up a precarious living, 
 little, noisy, flippantly flirting their skirts like tails, cocking 
 their heads, taunting the other birds. 
 
 When Ida walked abroad she was followed by a cloud of 
 perfume and a trail of chatter of "I seen" and "I done" 
 and "I says to him" and "he says to me." When Ida 
 was putting on style she said, " 'N' I says to him you gotta 
 choose between she and I." She had discovered that the 
 objective case is improper. So she said "between she 
 and I," which was twice as elegant as the diction of those 
 of her acquaintance who said "between her and I." 
 
 Poor little thing I She tried so hard to be somebody 
 and she realized that some mysterious quality was lack- 
 ing. Despite her passion for elegance, the very word 
 "elegant" became plebeian in her voice. She and her 
 sort, struggling to be ladylike, have driven the very word 
 "lady" almost into disrepute. 
 
 Ida was petite without grace. She was so slim that she 
 was almost impossible. Yet she did not suggest hunger 
 or emaciation. She was carved like a Chippendale 
 spindle; all the curves were there, but to the last degree 
 attenuate. 
 
 She was as lithe as a skein of spaghetti, yet her sinuous 
 carriage was not graceful; it was rather disgraceful, 
 bantering, hinting, accosting. 
 
 Ida would have been a perfect example of the in- 
 fluence of home life on character if it had not been for 
 her virtuous sister Edna. As Ida once weepingly explained 
 to her first police matron: "Pa was a bum, and ma was 
 a mutt, and we was brang up in Flatbush* Who wouldn't 
 'a' went wrong?" 
 
 Shang Ganley was about the only person on earth that 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Ida was afraid of. Perhaps that was why she loved him 
 if that elastic word can be stretched to include the 
 loose and intermittent interest she took in her husband. 
 
 Shang differed from Ida in coming from a respectable 
 and comfortable home. Like her, he was of the pure 
 American stock, which, contrary to a flattering legend, 
 furnishes most of our criminals. Shang's mother had 
 lavished devotion upon him; his father had spared 
 neither the rod nor good counsel. An education had been 
 forced upon him by the generous community. Truant 
 officers had seen to it that he reached school occasionally. 
 But somehow in the mystery of character Shang was born 
 wrong. 
 
 He came early into conflict with the state. The re- 
 cording angel at the police bureau showed a surprising 
 knowledge of his deeds. 
 
 Shang's crimes had been humble sticking up a bar- 
 room 'and emptying a cash-register; smashing a small 
 jeweler's window, or rifling the pockets of a drunken 
 dreamer. One desperate thing he had done he had 
 killed young Dopey Jahelka. It was in a quarrel over 
 Ida, aggravated by a quarrel over the rebate, or "vig- 
 gresh, " that Dopey claimed after a game of stuss at 
 Shang's joint. Dopey had called Shang various names that 
 were probably deserved, but all the more unbearable. 
 He had also held Shang by the neck and jabbed his 
 fingers in his eyes, and then carried off all the money he 
 could find. 
 
 Shang got him a week later, after a dance, shot him in 
 the back and ground his heel in his face. Jahelka thought 
 he would recover and be able to make his own reprisals; 
 he refused to mention his assailant by name. He died 
 suddenly, to his great surprise and Shang's great relief. 
 Shang married Ida so that she could not be forced to 
 testify against him. 
 
 The police were so glad to be rid of Jahelka that they 
 wasted little time trying to fasten the operation on 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Shang. They annoyed him, however, and hampered his 
 prosperity. 
 
 But now Muriel Schuyler suggested a way to crown his 
 career. She was Opportunity knocking at his door. She 
 must be seized with speed and yet with caution. He 
 must think hard and fast, then jump. 
 
 He looked up and down the street; there was no one 
 in sight except the driver of the motor that had brought 
 Miss Schuyler, and that man was faced the other way. 
 
 Shang stepped behind a wooden stoop. He was still 
 ransacking his pockets with shivering hands. Failing 
 to find what he sought, he turned his attention to a large 
 signet ring he wore. He slipped it from his finger and was 
 about to lift the top of it when Ida understood his purpose. 
 
 "Ah, cut that out!" she snapped and tried to knock the 
 ring from his hand. 
 
 He turned on her with a flash of ferocity so like the snarl 
 of a hyena that she fell back. He raised a hinged' lid in 
 the ring and disclosed a tiny compartment filled with 
 white powder. He shook some of it out on the back of 
 one wrist and giggled. 
 
 "Have a little snow?" 
 
 "Nagh!" she sneered, with disgust. 
 
 "You don't know what's good for you," he urged with 
 the proselytizing fervor of the true victim. 
 
 She turned away and he raised his wrist to his nose 
 and snuffed up the drug with nostrils quivering greedily 
 as a terrier's. 
 
 Immediately he was renewed. His face, tortured with 
 craving, grew human again. He put back his ring and 
 tapped it gratefully. "The cold medicine's the only 
 t'ing when you got a job of t'inkin' on." 
 
 "It's got you cold all right, all right," Ida grumbled. 
 "You used to sell it and make a lot o' money; now you 
 sniff it all yourself." 
 
 He smiled with angelic superiority. 
 
 ''Don't you worry about money, honey. I'm workin' 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 out a little scheme dat 11 make more money dan all de 
 coke-shovers and heroin-rollers ever dreamed of. If it 
 don't make us a million dollars apiece I'll pay you a a 
 hundred t'ousan' dollars forfeit." 
 
 "If you'll forfeit me me car-fare home I'll be satisfied," 
 said Ida. 
 
 "You come along wit' me and I'll ride you home in a 
 areaplane." 
 
 She went with him in a kind of dogged devotion, not to 
 share his glory, but to support him when the rosy clouds 
 should change, as always, to iron clamps about his head.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 IDA'S legs were so brief and her skirts so tight, and 
 Shang's flight so rapid, that she had almost to hop 
 sparrow-like to keep pace with him. 
 
 He led her to James Street and turned southeast. He 
 paused at a "Sporting Barber Shop" in a sharp-nosed 
 building shaped like an ax-head, and nodded to a handsome 
 youth just arisen from the barber's chair. It was " Pepsin 
 Chu," a strange compound of races. His father had been 
 a Chinese importer with a shop in Mott Street, a quiet 
 and dignified person with a weakness for playing pie gow. 
 When the Italians began to crowd into the Chinese dis- 
 trict he had found a neighboring Calabrian girl attrac- 
 tive and she found him fascinating in a terrifying sort of 
 way. The opposition to such alliances had died out with 
 their increasing frequence, and the condescension was 
 probably as great on one side as the other. In any 
 case, the young wife was well housed and she wept when 
 her husband was hatcheted to death in the war of the 
 Four Brothers with the On Leon Tong. Mrs. Chu Jett, 
 n$e Margherita Turiello, was left with a curious child of 
 almond eyes and olive skin. She abandoned him to the 
 Four Brothers to take care of and vanished with a Nea- 
 politan youth who sang stale fish for sale in a luscious 
 tenor. 
 
 " Pepsin" grew up, anyhow. He acquired his nickname 
 
 from being arrested at the age of seven in full flight with 
 
 * a jar of pepsin gum that he had stolen from a fruit-stand. 
 
 Shang nodded to Pepsin to follow him, and Pepsin 
 dropped alongside, casting his glances like fish-lines 
 
 256
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 toward Ida, who flirted perilously back at him around the 
 profile of her spouse. Finally Pepsin nudged Shang. 
 
 "Why 'n't you tip me off to the new baby?" 
 
 "New nothin'; it's me wife!" 
 
 "I ain't particular," said Pep. 
 
 "I don't care who I meet, neither," laughed Ida, and 
 this served for an introduction. 
 
 Shang strode along with his head in the clouds, seeing 
 nothing, hearing nothing. 
 
 Shang was looking for "Kill Papa," a Greek friend of 
 his. He marched up and down Cherry Street from "The 
 Jolly Albanians" to the " Xenodocheion of Gortyna." 
 He glanced into various shops with signs in letters that 
 would have made Socrates feel at home till he tried to rec- 
 ognize the words. He would have understood that a 
 lodging-house was still fiENOAOXEION; but, never 
 having heard of coffee, what would he have made of a 
 KAO4>ENEION? Never having dreamed of cigars, what 
 would he have expected to buy in a "smoke shop" 
 (KAnNODQAEION)? 
 
 Shang quested among the Greeks till he stumbled across 
 his man, a brutally beautiful demigod-satyr whose real 
 name was Achilles Papademetrakopoulos, a leisurely 
 Brooklyn Bridge of a name, shortened by his friends to 
 the startling title of "Kill Papa." 
 
 Achilles was a bad Greek. He had been started wrong. 
 His father was a florist, like so many American Greeks, 
 and the boy had acquired in that ruthless trade the habit 
 of destruction. 
 
 Now Achilles had a "fleet" of his own. It was not in 
 any sense a rival of the older, more-established gangs like 
 the Hudson Dusters, the Gophers of Hell's Kitchen, or 
 the grim White Roses. But it was young yet. It was 
 known as an Association, and it gave occasional public 
 excursions and dances, at which some one was pretty apt 
 to be shot up or down. 
 
 He found Achilles buying his groceries at a Zacharo- 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 plasteion and persuaded him to go to the back room of a 
 dingy Kaffeneion. 
 
 Achilles did not drink or smoke or snuff, nor did he 
 gamble. He had no small vices except picking his teeth 
 in public. 
 
 However, he was a gracious host, and asked, magnifi- 
 cently: "What '11 it be? A little Chian wine for the 
 lady?" 
 
 "A lot o' beer for the lady," said Ida. 
 
 "The same for mine," said Pep; "wit" a low collar." 
 
 Shang declined to mix his stimulants, and as soon as 
 the doleful attendant had moved out to the sidewalk he 
 outlined his great dream. 
 
 Shang described Muriel's wealth and her importance 
 to her parents. It made him furious that she should ex- 
 pect to come down here with five thousand dollars to 
 spend on a Dago brat. Shang said that he could buy a 
 million of them for ten cents. 
 
 Achilles's toothpick reflected his intense meditation. 
 It drooped from his upper lip when he felt helpless before 
 this opportunity and realized the hazards; it was like a 
 tiny mast when he thrust his lower lip out with resolution. 
 He said and spoke the same speech as Pep Chu and Shang 
 Ganley, since he had learned the same language in the 
 same streets: 
 
 "You're dead right, Ganley. We got a right to take 
 dat money away from dat baby before she spends it fool- 
 ish. And we gotta learn her to stay up-town in her own 
 ward. Besides, de dope I read in de papers says her old 
 man stole his money off de common people, and we got a 
 right to take it back." 
 
 Pepsin was skeptical. "Fine and dandy, but how we 
 gona collect it?" 
 
 Achilles carelessly tossed off a plan of campaign. "A 
 daylight hold-up and a taxicab get-away looks good to 
 me." 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Shang seconded him: "Dat's what I was just gona tell 
 you." Like a true author, he was afraid to lose the 
 credit of his invention. 
 
 But it was not to the liking or the prestige of the 
 tooth-picking Achilles to accept a scheme from one of his 
 retainers without bettering it. 
 
 His thick black eyebrows met and jostled together like 
 two big caterpillars disputing a leaf. 
 
 Eureka! The Schuyler girl had come into this region 
 to save a kidnapped child. Why not kidnap the girl 
 as well as her ransom ; take her away in the taxi and call 
 for more ransom ? 
 
 Danger abounded in the enterprise, but hard times 
 compel hard tasks, and with these reform administrations 
 and unceasing shake-ups in the departments it was in- 
 creasingly difficult to earn a dishonest living peacefully 
 without interruption. 
 
 To natures like that of Achilles, Pepsin, and Shang two 
 things can gild even refined gold danger in getting it and 
 folly in spending it. 
 
 Achilles with a nod drew all the heads close over the 
 table. He outlined his scheme and an awe fell upon the 
 little conference. It would be too risky to keep Muriel 
 down-town till the ransom was paid. A hiding-place in 
 the suburbs was necessary. The Italians were masters of 
 kidnapping technic. He knew a former employee of a 
 Greek- Italian olive-oil importing company who owned a 
 snug little hut in the farthest Bronx borough. He knew 
 also a venturesome taxicab-driver known as "Little Big 
 Blip" who would manage the transportation. 
 
 Shang had one captious comment on Achilles's strata- 
 gem. 
 
 "It looks easy, Kill, once we gotter; but how we gona 
 gitter?" 
 
 Achilles said: "Dat's easy. You on'y have to invite 
 her to your place and hold her till midnight." 
 
 Ida let out a snicker of ridicule. The men snapped 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 glances of impatient rebuke at her and turned back to 
 Shang, who spoke with becoming modesty: "T'anks for 
 de comp'ment, Kill. But if I was to ast a dame like dat 
 to folly me home I ain't sure she'd go. What do you 
 t'ink, babe?" 
 
 Ida whooped with joy. "Follow you home, honey? 
 Why, at your foist woid she'd yip out a holler could be 
 hoid a mile. What do yous cheap skates think that 
 goil is, anyway a shoitwaist hand? She's a lady, she 
 is, and she don't hardly speak to nothin' less 'n a dook 
 or a noil, unless 'n he's a waiter or a butler. None of 
 yous guys looks like nothin' but what you are." 
 
 Pep would have handed her the back of his hand if her 
 husband had not been present and alive to his privilege. 
 Achilles turned to her and said, graciously: 
 
 "Den, little lady, it looks like it was up to you." 
 
 "Up to me?" said Ida. "What's up to me?" 
 
 "To get dis Schuyler dame to Allen Street." 
 
 Insolent as a cat to a king, Ida leered at him and 
 waved him aside with a slight push of the hand as if he 
 were a glass of milk, adding the classic repartee: 
 
 "Don't make me laugh me lip's chapped." 
 
 Achilles scowled black, gathered his big hand into a fist 
 like a mallet, and turned pale, but the spasm passed and 
 he nodded to Shang. 
 
 "Convince her, Shang." 
 
 Shang rounded on Ida. "Say, say, say! You do what 
 Kill tells you to do." 
 
 "Since when do I take orders from liim?" said Ida. 
 
 "Well, den, take 'em from me." 
 
 "I don't take orders from nobody. I ain't a waiter." 
 
 Shang was frantic at this public humiliation. "You 
 take orders from me or or " 
 
 "Or what?" she demanded, her chewing-gum poised 
 in suspense. 
 
 Shang rose and pounced on Ida with a groan of rage, 
 seized her slim ropy throat in his cold, lean hands, and 
 
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 flung her this way and that till her tongue lolled out and 
 her eyes bulged red and white. 
 
 At length Achilles put forth his hand and laughed. 
 "She's had plenty, I guess. Leave a little for de coroner, 
 can't you?" 
 
 Shang slammed her back into her chair, but she would 
 have slid off into the sawdust if Achilles had not caught 
 her and propped her up like a thing of straw. 
 
 Just to breathe again was of vital importance first, and 
 Ida swayed, gasping till the room stopped swirling. She 
 was afraid and horribly ashamed to be disciplined in pub- 
 lic with such pain. Pluck came back with life, and she 
 was just reaching out for a stein to smash over his head. 
 Achilles pushed it away, and she was ready to burst into 
 tears, but Shang broke down first and began to cry like 
 a disgusting slobbering booby, pouring out his disappoint- 
 ment at the cruelty of fate that always robbed him of his 
 chance. Nobody wouldn't never do nothing for him, 
 not even his wife. 
 
 Ida wavered, irresolute, a minute, then she sighed, put 
 her hand on her master's shoulder, and mumbled: "Nix 
 on the weeps, baby; mother will buy it what it wants." 
 
 She collected Shang into her arms and he came speedily 
 out of his grief into that divine smile of his that was al- 
 ways her highest, and usually her only, reward. 
 
 He shook from his long lashes the belated tears and 
 told Ida she was his honey-babe for fair, and as soon as 
 they got the Schuyler money collected he would string 
 her with diamonds till she looked like Luna Park at night.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 WHEN Muriel and Worthing returned to the home 
 of the Angelilli, the elder Angelillo had not come 
 back. They waited a fretful hour for him. Then he 
 came in with his usual load of woe. He seemed to take 
 it from his shoulders like a sack, and he sank down on 
 a chair shaking his head and breathing hard. 
 
 His wife and his daughter ran to him, babbling to- 
 gether the golden news of the return of the rich lady 
 with the ransom money for the child. 
 
 When Angelillo understood, he must weep awhile over 
 the new joy, and then again over the old grief. He had 
 whittled the demand down from five thousand to twenty- 
 five hundred. He had five hundred of his own to put in. 
 If they had not already destroyed the boy he might 
 reach them in time. To advertise would be too slow. 
 He remembered the egg merchant who had hinted to him 
 once before that he might be of help. 
 
 He rose and moved to the door. 
 
 Muriel said: "You'd better take the money with you. 
 You might need it in a hurry." 
 
 "Grazie! Grazie!" he said. 
 
 She took from her handbag the five bills and held them 
 out to him. With much apology he lifted two of them 
 from the heap. 
 
 "But you said it was twenty-five hundred." 
 
 "I have the five. I like better to pay a leetla bit 
 myself for my own leetla boy." 
 
 She understood his pride and took back her three bills. 
 He bowed himself out with two of them and she stuffed 
 the others in her handbag. 
 
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 "For the Lord's sake," Worthing complained, "you 
 oughtn't to carry as much money as that as loosely as 
 that even if it is Merithew's; even if you can get more 
 by by dancing." 
 
 She stared at him in wonderment as she meekly took 
 the money, folded it up, and pushed it into the bosom of 
 her gown. 
 
 The pleasantest explanation was that he was jealous 
 of Merithew. She tested it by making a few allusions to 
 Merry Perry's goodness of heart. He writhed under the 
 test and abruptly got to his feet to say: 
 
 "I think I'd better trail along with Mr. Angelillo. He 
 might need help and I might pick up a line on the kid- 
 nappers. I'll be back shortly," 
 
 "Good-by-y," she murmured, with a kind of taunting 
 sweetness. 
 
 She played with the Angelillo babies awhile, chatted 
 with the two mothers, yawned, grew impatient. Sud- 
 denly she asked the women: 
 
 "You haven't a voi non avete uno er, telefono, have 
 you?" 
 
 They had not. Doubtless there was a pay-station near. 
 She would run out and run back at once. Since they had 
 her money now they felt no alarm at her departure. 
 
 She wandered for several blocks before she found a small 
 drug-store with a booth so constructed as to magnify all 
 sounds from within and without. 
 
 She spent a long time in the telephone-pursuit of Mr. 
 Merithew without getting him. It was in the first days of 
 his honeymoon with Maryla. He was afraid that 
 Aphra Shaler would pursue him, and had told his man 
 to tell any inquiring lady's voice that he had left town for 
 two weeks. 
 
 As Muriel left the booth she remembered Maryla, 
 and called up the dressmaking establishment to ask how 
 she was. The telephone-girl at Dutilh's answered with an 
 ironic tang: 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "She is no longer with us." 
 
 "Really! Then may I speak to Mr. Dutilh?" 
 
 Dutilh broke forth into cries : "In Heaven's name where 
 have you been? You made a date for a fitting ten days 
 ago." 
 
 "Too bad. I was I was called out of town. I'll be 
 in later. I just wanted to ask you ' 
 
 "And by the way, I just got in a gown that we've 
 named ' Muriel. ' It was created in heaven for you. I 
 could have sold it six times, but I hid it." 
 
 "Thanks, but well, I wanted to ask you about Miss 
 Sokalska." 
 
 "Miss So-what-ska?" 
 
 "Mary la Sokalska. The girl I recommended to you. 
 You gave her a position. How is she getting along?" 
 
 "Splendidly, I imagine. She left us between two days, 
 and didn't ask for her back pay, but sent a boy with the 
 cash for a very expensive gown she took a fancy to. She 
 must have come into a lot of money." 
 
 Muriel did not catch the cynicism of this. She exclaimed 
 with joy: "Isn't that splendid? She was so poor. I 
 found her in the slums, you know." 
 
 "Yes, I know you did. If you find any more slumsters, 
 please leave 'em there." 
 
 "Really! I don't understand." 
 
 "So much the better." 
 
 "I'm sorry if I've caused you any trouble/' 
 
 "Oh, for the Lord's sake, don't feel that way about it. 
 It's all in the day's work. It gets some of them " He 
 sighed. 
 
 "What gets some of whom?" 
 
 "Never you mind. You come up and see 'Muriel* 
 and get your duds fitted." 
 
 "I might go see her people and congratulate them if 
 you really think they have got suddenly rich." 
 
 "I wouldn't, if I were you." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Lord! what a child it is for asking questions! I'm 
 busy. Good-by!" 
 
 Muriel was not offended by his mock brusquerie, but 
 she was puzzled by his mysterious allusions. All the way 
 back to the Angelillo home she was trying to figure it out. 
 She lost her way in the streets laid about like jumbled 
 jackstraws, but at length she recognized Batavia Street, 
 and was quickening her pace when she heard her name 
 called. 
 
 "Say, Miss Schuyler?" 
 
 "Yes?" she said, turning in surprise and staring at the 
 little panting stranger hastening after her. 
 
 "Say, listen," said Red Ida; "you're lookin' for the 
 little feller was kidnapped, ain't you?" 
 
 "Yes. His father is hunting for him now." 
 
 "Well, he won't find him, but I know where he's at." 
 
 -"You do?" 
 
 "Uh-huh!" 
 
 "For Heaven's sake tell me!" 
 
 "You gotta come with me this minute." 
 
 "Just one moment till I call Mr. Doctor " 
 
 " If you do you lose um. Say, listen, they're movin' the 
 boy. The kidnappers got scared of that place they kep' 
 him at and they're gona beat it for somewheres else." 
 
 "How did you find out?" 
 
 "I overhoid a soitain party Well, say I'll tell you 
 about it on the way. I come flyin' down to tell Mr. 
 Angeliller. I know Nunzio, you know he's a pa'ticular 
 frien' o' my husban's. But as soon as I seen you I says 
 you're the best party. We ain't got a minute to lose 
 maybe we'll lose him now if we don't take it on the run." 
 
 She took Muriel by the arm and dragged her along. 
 
 Muriel began to resist the peremptoriness of this sum- 
 mons. 
 
 "But what could we two women do against the kid- 
 nappers?" 
 
 9 265
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "They won't be there if we hustle. Besides, me hus- 
 ban' is waitin' and he ain't afraid of nothin'." 
 
 "Then why doesn't he take the boy himself?" 
 
 "Well, say, if you're goin' to argue about it, all right, 
 all right. I thought you'd simpully be shriekin' with 
 joy at the news. I know I done so." 
 
 The news was indeed glorious, yet there seemed to be 
 something the matter with it. Muriel thought she ought 
 to be sending up skyrockets, but the powder was damp, 
 somehow. 
 
 Still, since they were scouring the town for news of 
 Filippo, it would be a crime to neglect this chance. It 
 would be a delicious thing to bring the boy home in her 
 own arms. 
 
 She asked, breathlessly, "Is it far?" 
 
 "About a mile." 
 
 "A mile! Couldn't we get a taxi?" 
 
 "Don't often see one down here. Well, I'll be er 
 There's one now. Ain't that luck? If he don't start up 
 just 's we get there." 
 
 But he waited. He was apparently asleep, but his en- 
 gine was humming. In fact, he had refused two or three 
 other foot-sore wanderers lost in the cabless mazes of this 
 part of town. Ida bundled Muriel in and winked with her 
 farther eye at the excited driver as she said: 
 
 "Say, listen; shove this old push-cart up to Allen 
 Street fast 's you can. I don't remember the number. 
 I'll pound on the window when you get there." 
 
 The cab jumped forward so quickly that Ida was almost 
 left on the curb. She scrambled in, banged the door, and 
 dropped on the seat. The taxi bucked and kicked and 
 swerved and took such chances between trucks and chil- 
 dren that Muriel had no curiosity for anything but the 
 next crisis. They plunged through Roosevelt Street to 
 the clamorous New Bowery, into the packed Division 
 Street, and thence to Allen, a very tunnel of a street, 
 covered completely by the Elevated Road and lined with 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 its thick-set iron posts planted in its narrow sidewalks. 
 This iron grove was closely bordered on one side with 
 high steep stoops crammed with merchants and mer- 
 chandise, and on the other side with dingy shops. 
 
 Through the trestle overhead a little sunlight pushed 
 through in slim shafts, making a sort of prolonged infernal 
 pergola of the street. 
 
 The lane was too strait to admit surface-car tracks and 
 it was favored by a slow and ugly truck traffic. Now 
 and then as the taxicab stopped short to escape a collision 
 or waited for some knot to untangle itself to the tune of 
 much profanity and much torment of gigantic horses, 
 Muriel got an impression of picturesque squalor, a flare of 
 great red quilts hung out like banners, a cavernous junk- 
 shop, a public bath-house. She had time to read the 
 legend on the "Congregation Tefereth Israel, Established 
 5630," and she thought that it must be very old indeed, 
 not knowing that this meant A.D. 1868. There had been 
 no Elevated Road here, and none of the tenements, then. 
 
 Muriel's ears were so abused by the thunder of the 
 trains overhead and the pandemonium of the traffic that 
 she forgot to ask Ida any further details. 
 
 Suddenly the girl began to rap on the glass. She 
 motioned the driver to stop. She got down and helped 
 Muriel to emerge. Muriel hastened to say: 
 
 "You must let me pay the man or, no, we'd better 
 keep him to take the boy back. Just wait, won't you 
 please?" 
 
 The driver flushed at the graciousness of her pleading 
 tone and watched her run across the street between 
 two wagons. It was not a prepossessing place, this street, 
 and Muriel followed the impatient Ida with hesitant gait. 
 She wanted to refuse to go on. She wanted to take a 
 policeman with her. But the impetus of her folly car- 
 ried her along. 
 
 She glanced back anxiously. The taxicab she had told' 
 to wait was moving ahead. 
 
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 "Look the taxi!" she gasped. "He's not waiting! 
 and I hadn't paid him!" 
 
 "He's goin' to the corner to toin round, I guess," said 
 Ida. 
 
 "Oh," said Muriel. 
 
 "Here's the place," said Ida, and, dropping back, took 
 Muriel's arm and urged her into a hallway, dark, dirty, 
 and ominous. Muriel huddled herself together to keep 
 from touching the grimy walls. The pounding of a train 
 thudding by on the Elevated rivaled the beat of her un- 
 easy heart in her ears. 
 
 "Do we go up these awful stairs?" she asked. 
 
 "No'm," said Ida, "right on through." 
 
 Ahead was a cavelike opening, giving on a foul court, 
 with a view of many tiers of fire-escapes, hundreds of 
 clothes-lines. Set in the court was a small building, an 
 old pauper of a building, a dilapidated, besotted building, 
 apparently deserted. 
 
 Muriel hung back and looked at Ida with questioning 
 anxiety. Ida whispered: 
 
 "That's the place." 
 
 "I don't think we'd better go alone?" 
 
 "It's all right, dearie. The Dagoes is away and me 
 husban's waitin' for us." 
 
 Shang Ganley, indeed, appeared at the doorway and, 
 lifting his hat, smiled. Muriel was terrified by the smile 
 his smile and Ida's "dearie." She wanted to turn and 
 run. But she was ashamed to be afraid, and she went on 
 to where Shang awaited her. 
 
 "He's here, lady," said Shang. 
 
 "Bring him out, then," said Muriel, hanging back. 
 
 "I ain't sure it's the right boy," said Shang, with 
 desperate inspiration. "You've saw his pitcher, 'ain't 
 you? Come and take a peek at him. If it's him, I'll 
 bust in de door." 
 Muriel paused a moment, then she said, "No." 
 
 "All right," said Shang. "I t'ought sure I had him. 
 
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 Maybe it ain't him at all. On'y I hoid him cryin' for his 
 mamma, and me wife hoid a coupla Dagoes sayin' it was 
 him." 
 
 By yielding Shang won. Muriel flushed at the abject- 
 ness of her cowardice. She was reassured by his failure 
 to insist. She was tormented by the oldest word in the 
 world, "mamma." 
 
 "I'll go," she said, and plunged forward. When 
 Shang paused to let her pass, she commanded, "Lead the 
 way, please." 
 
 "Sure, lady," he said, and moved in. 
 
 The building had been emptied by the Board of Health, 
 and its demolition ordered, but not begun. Shang went 
 ahead, vanishing quickly in the gloom. Muriel followed 
 him, and Ida followed her. 
 
 "Mind your step, and don't make no noise," said Ida. 
 
 Suddenly Muriel was enveloped in a cloudy embrace. 
 A clammy palm was slipped across her mouth, an arm 
 encircled her, clenched her tight against the body of a 
 man. The odium of this contact was her first horror. 
 She fought with disgust instead of fear. She was strong. 
 She writhed loose. She struck out, and Shang fell like the 
 weakling he was. She whirled and ran back toward the 
 light. But Ida threw herself in the way. Before she 
 could tear herself loose Shang was up and groping for 
 her. Muriel was never one of those women who scream 
 at the first surprise. 
 
 The cold hand of Shang came across her shoulder. 
 She tried to scream now, but her mouth was smothered in 
 the crook of an elbow. Her teeth bit fiercely into the 
 sleeve. There was a little yelp, an oath, a cry. "Pep, 
 where are you?" Then another big shadow blotted the 
 light.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 PEP CHU had no patience with the theory that 
 women are not men's equals. While Shang held 
 Muriel, Pep attacked her as he would have attacked a 
 man. He cursed her and beat her with his fists. Her 
 hands went out pitifully to shield her, but they were 
 smashed aside. He struck at her heart twice; then there 
 came an earthquake upper-cut under her chin where it 
 gleamed below Shang's sleeve. Muriel sank, relaxed, 
 in Shang's arm with such sudden listlessness that he fell 
 to his knees. 
 
 Ida witnessed the sacrilege. It was Ida that screamed. 
 She attacked Pep, kicking, biting, scratching. He bor- 
 rowed Shang's prerogative and, swinging his arm back, 
 flapped her against the wall. Then he whirled and stood 
 threatening the pit of her stomach with a low short-arm 
 jab. She writhed like a wounded snake before its menace. 
 
 'Til be good," she whispered. "But don't hoit her, 
 don't hoit Muriel. She ain't used to it. She's a swell. 
 For Gawd's sake, Shang, be careful, or it's the Chair for 
 yours for sure." 
 
 "Ah, shut up and gimme somethin' to gag her wit'." 
 
 She was about to obey him, but she shook herself and 
 groaned: 
 
 "No, no; I'm through." 
 
 "You do what I tell you." 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "Soak her one for me, Pep." 
 
 She faced the sledge of his fist in a lockjaw of fright 
 and courage: 
 
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 " You can croak me. but I'm through with this 
 job." 
 
 Shang roared, "You gona run call a cop, I suppose." 
 
 He carried his right hand to the holster under his arm. 
 
 "Shang!" she gasped. That he should accuse her of 
 such treachery was worse than a bullet. She began to cry 
 at the very cruelty of the suspicion. 
 
 Pep lighted a match and bent to stare at Muriel lying 
 with drooped head across Shang's knee. The men gazed 
 with admiration. 
 
 "Some looker, huh?" Shang murmured. 
 
 Ida advanced on him with fury: "You be careful, you 
 you" 
 
 Shang snarled at her: "Ah, git ta hell out o' here. 
 You're no good now." 
 
 She turned to go, sobbing, one shoulder sliding along 
 the wall. Shang called after her: 
 
 "Just one t'ing, kid. If you got any idea of splittin' 
 on dis job, you know I'll git you, if I go to de Chair twice 
 you know dat, don't you? I'll come for you if I have to 
 bust out of de straps on de Chair. You know dat, don't 
 you?" 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 Pep stopped her. "Promise?" 
 
 Shang laughed: "Don't promise me nuttin', kid. 
 Promise yourself sumpin'. Leave her go, Pep, and 
 gimme a help wit' dis beaut. When she comes to she'll 
 holler bloody moider if she ain't gagged." 
 
 Pep Chu thought it a foolish thing to let Ida go, and 
 he said: 
 
 "If dat frail gets talkin', dey's no tellin what she 
 won't say." 
 
 "Ah,- don't worry about her," said Shang. "She's bug- 
 house about me." 
 
 "Sometimes dem loons gets cured. Anyway, she's 
 loose now," said Pep, as he reluctantly produced a new 
 
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 handkerchief that he never used, but kept neatly folded 
 i'l his upper coat pocket. 
 
 He made a gag of it, pressed it between Muriel's lips, 
 and tied it behind her head. Then they picked her up, 
 heels and neck, and carried her down into the cellar. 
 
 Up to a few years ago there were hundreds of such 
 underground horrors in New York. Some of them were 
 lodging-houses where people slept like swine, with their 
 heads pillowed on each other's feet or knees. The 
 despotic Board of Health and the prying Fire Commis- 
 sioners cleaned out most of them, but this one had re- 
 lapsed since its condemnation. 
 
 Pep carried a pocket-flashlight that he used when he 
 went calling professionally. It was not easy to transport 
 Muriel's unresisting and unassisting body down the steps, 
 and there were stumbles and lurches that terrified her 
 as she came back to consciousness. But she could neither 
 speak nor scream nor even gasp, because of the gag. 
 They seated her on an old beer-keg set against a 
 stanchion. They carried her hands back of that and 
 tied them. Then they assumed her that she would suffer 
 no harm. But there was no comfort in their words or 
 their manner, and every discomfort in her plight. 
 
 Pep left now to notify Achilles that the trap was sprung. 
 
 Muriel leaned against the stanchion in pain and dismay 
 and blind wonderment. Her descent into this pit was 
 as if she had fallen into an old well under a sidewalk. 
 Suddenly she was there, bruised, helpless, bewildered. 
 
 Shang sat and pondered her offensively as she pondered 
 him with disgust and dread. She seemed to be all eyes. 
 He had hardly any. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, 
 sticking the stub of each upright on a box alongside. 
 Once she saw him take a small parcel from his pocket, 
 empty a powder on his wrist, and inhale it. She supposed 
 that he had a bad cold. She did not wonder, if he lived 
 in such a place as this. 
 
 Shang mused over her through the screening smoke of a 
 
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 dozen cigarettes. He tried to speak to her, but could 
 find nothing to say. Suddenly he started; he was re- 
 membering Nunzio's report that she had five thousand 
 dollars with her. He looked about. He ran up the 
 steps, searched the hall, and found the handbag she had 
 dropped in the scuffle. There was no money in it except 
 a few small bills and some change. She must have the 
 five thousand somewhere about her. 
 
 He returned to his place on the box and tossed the hand- 
 bag into her lap. He was thinking vigorously. He was 
 thinking of what he could do with five thousand dollars. 
 If he had that he could leave the city, the state, the 
 country; he could know luxury and perfect idleness. If 
 he stayed, he must take part in a perilous scheme and 
 wait indefinitely for a ransom to be paid over, perhaps, 
 to Achilles. He would probably bolt with it all. Who 
 wouldn't? There was nobody he could trust. 
 
 Why should he count upon the gang? They were 
 only a bunch of crooks! Honor among thieves was a 
 thing he had heard of but never met with. Why should 
 he wait and brave all the dangers of police pursuit for a 
 doubtful reward when all he had to do was to reach 
 forward and clutch the certain money before him? Five 
 thousand got was better than a hundred thousand to get. 
 He could make an escape to New Jersey and to Canada 
 and across to Europe and give the rest of the "fleet" and 
 all of the bulls the laugh. 
 
 He rose and moved forward. Muriel felt that he was 
 about to attack her again. She cowered, but she had no 
 escape and no defense. And yet she had one defense: 
 her integrity, the aureole of innocence, "a hidden 
 strength," said Milton: 
 
 'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity: 
 She that has that is clad in complete steel; 
 And, like a quiver'd nymph with arrows keen, 
 May trace huge forests and unharbour'd heaths, 
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 Infamous hills and sandy perilous wilds. 
 Yea, there where very Desolation dwells 
 By grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid shades 
 She may pass on with unblench'd majesty. 
 
 When Shang Ganley tried but to lay his hand upon 
 Muriel it was such an impious profanation that an 
 invisible fist seemed to thrust him back, though the 
 invisible palms of greed thrust him forward. 
 
 He was ashamed of his scruples, but he could not 
 throttle them. He compromised. He said: 
 
 "You got a wad o' money on you, lady. It belongs to 
 me. If I untie your hands will you get it for me and 
 promise on your oat' dat you won't put up a fight or 
 would you radder I soiched for it meself ?" 
 
 He glared at her, but she could not speak. He dic- 
 tated an oath, and she nodded assent. 
 
 "I'll leave you loose one minute," he said. "If you 
 try to double-cross me I'll put you out wit' a tap o' dis 
 gun." 
 
 He gave her a glance at a flat automatic revolver. 
 Then he untied her hands and stood on guard as if she 
 were a crouched leopardess. First she stretched her 
 cramped fingers and her aching arms. She would have 
 eased the maddeningly tormenting gag, but he warned 
 her with a growl. She slipped her fingers into the bosom 
 of her gown, took out the little roll of bills, and offered 
 it to him. He seized it, stuffed it in his pocket, and 
 hastily tied her hands again. 
 
 Then he moved to the cellar stairs. He paused to count 
 the money. He found only three thousand dollars. He 
 roared in wrath. Even she was crooked! Everybody 
 was trying to cheat him. He turned again and advanced 
 against her, slapping the bills with the back of his fingers, 
 and growling : . 
 
 "You can't short-change me. Come across, come 
 across wit' de rest of it or I'll get it meself." 
 
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 Just then Pep Chu stole back. He found Shang with 
 the money in his hand. Instinct told him what Shang's 
 scheme was. He snatched at the bills. There was a 
 struggle. Muriel prayed that they would disable each 
 other. Pep won the fight easily and pocketed the spoils. 
 He took them out again and counted them. He also 
 shouted that robbery was being done. He searched 
 Shang's pockets and was forced to believe Shang's 
 explanation. Pep was vicious enough to be more than 
 willing to search Muriel, but Shang happened to think: 
 
 " Maybe she staked old Angelillo to some of our money ?" 
 
 Muriel nodded frantically. 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 She could not answer. He held up two fingers. 
 
 "Two t'ousand?" 
 
 She nodded zealously. Her explanation was accepted 
 dolefully. 
 
 "He beat us to it." 
 
 There was a debate between Shang and Pep as to the 
 disposal of the balance in hand. Pep was willing to 
 divide even. But they could not profitably tear the third 
 thousand-dollar bill in two. In this quandary they re- 
 membered Achilles, and they feared his wrath. He knew 
 that Muriel had had five thousand dollars with her. He 
 would suspect any explanation. He would not accept 
 their word. It was pitiful how distrustful people were. 
 
 They were afraid of the very money. They resolved 
 not to be found with it in their possession. Shang slipped 
 it into Muriel's handbag and put it at her feet. They 
 wanted her to guard it for them ! 
 
 As the dinner-hour drew near and went past, hunger 
 assailed them. Pep went first and fed, then spelled 
 Shang, who brought back a sandwich and a bottle of 
 ginger-ale for Muriel. 
 
 They extracted oaths from Muriel and released her 
 hands and her mouth from the galling restraint. She 
 had been drained of her strength by exhaustion and fear, 
 
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 and she ate greedily, salting her bread with tears. She 
 was tied up again, and Shang, having produced two 
 candles, lighted them and stuck them on the box. Then 
 they sat down to wait till midnight. 
 
 To make conversation, Shang explained to his perfect 
 audience what they were there for. He apologized for 
 the discomforts of the cellar, but promised her greater 
 comfort where they were going. She could return to her 
 own home, indeed, in a day or two if her father proved 
 reasonable. 
 
 There was a kind of relief to Muriel in knowing at last 
 why this outrage had been inflicted on her. The worst 
 was not so bad as she had vaguely feared. 
 
 Muriel had had time to think of many things. She had 
 regained a little calm. The bitter irony of it all was her 
 chief thought. She felt that she had made herself ridicu- 
 lous rather than tragic. She was going to perform miracles 
 for the poor, and this was their gratitude to her. She 
 was going to set the world right^and here she was in this 
 loathsome cave, unable even to brush her own hair from 
 her eyes. In all her woes that was perhaps the most 
 maddening, that she could not keep her hair from tickling 
 her forehead and her eyes. 
 
 And where was her Dr. Worthing? If she had stayed 
 with him she would have had protection. What was he 
 thinking of her now? Once more once more! she had 
 broken an engagement with him. He would not even 
 trouble to look for her this time. 
 
 And now she felt a little sorry for herself. To be mis- 
 judged by him was too cruel. She gave herself a morsel 
 of the sympathy she had for everybody else; she spared 
 herself a little of her own pity. By and by her fatigue 
 and her helplessness were so great that she slipped by 
 degrees into the gulf of sleep. 
 
 The two young men sat and studied her according to 
 their lights.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 WHEN Dr. Worthing left Muriel he was sick with 
 jealousy of Perry Merithew. He followed Ange- 
 lillo to the shop of the egg merchant. 
 
 Angelillo showed him the twenty-five hundred dollars, 
 and he said he would see if he could find somebody who 
 might find somebody who knew somebody. 
 
 He left his shop and forbade them to follow him. He 
 probably telephoned, for shortly he returned and told 
 Angelillo a long story, which Angelillo explained to 
 Worthing : 
 
 "He tella me to go standa where Catterina meet Henry. 
 Bineby come somebody who say, 'Goot evaning; time is 
 mawney.' I geeve him package wit' alia de mawney, 
 and somebody goes, and bineby, somewhere, my leetla 
 Filippo he is turn loose and comes queeck home." 
 
 Then he ran to the corner of Catherine and Henry 
 streets. He motioned to Worthing to keep his dis- 
 tance. He took his stand at the corner and waited, 
 waited, waited. 
 
 People of all sorts and conditions passed. A policeman 
 loitered about. At last he strolled away. 
 
 A little girl drifted along the street. Angelillo wasted 
 only a glance on her. She wandered close to him and 
 piped: 
 
 "Buona sera, signore; il tempo e denaro." 
 
 Angelillo started, gasped, slipped the money into her 
 hand, kissed her hair, and cried : 
 
 "Presto possibile. Presto! presto!" 
 
 The little girl ran away, clutching the package. As she 
 
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 shot across Catherine Street a brewery-truck almost 
 caught her. Angelillo staggered against the wall. He 
 watched her vanish, stood staring after her, his huge 
 bulk aquiver with terror. 
 
 Worthing took him by the arm and led him home. 
 He was eager to tell Muriel. She was not there. He had 
 to wait awhile. Angelillo poured forth the story of what 
 had happened, to the shrieking Gemma and her mother and 
 to Nunzio. Nunzio was as happy as the rest; he wept, 
 and caressed his wife, and embraced Worthing, as they all 
 did. Nunzio had no dream of the consequences of his 
 gossip. 
 
 Worthing was sorry for Muriel's absence from this car- 
 nival that she had financed. 
 
 It was a long while before he could command enough 
 attention to ask what had become of her. Then he 
 was told that she had gone to telephone, promising to 
 return at once. 
 
 Worthing hurried out and ransacked the neighborhood 
 before he found a druggist who said that such a lady had 
 made use of his telephone and gone. She turned back 
 toward Batavia Street. The druggist knew that, because 
 he had gone to the door and watched her. She was worth 
 watching, he said. 
 
 Worthing telephoned to Muriel's home. The servants 
 had not even heard of her return to New York. 
 
 Worthing went back to the Angelilli. She had not re- 
 turned. 
 
 He smoked. Finally he made a journey to the Sokal- 
 ski home. He went up Allen Street in a taxicab. He 
 went past the very door that Muriel had entered. He 
 glanced in casually. It was an excellent chance for tele- 
 pathy, as both were thinking of both. But no telepam 
 reached either from other. 
 
 The Sokalskis had not seen or heard of Muriel. They 
 were mysteriously uncommunicative about Maryla. 
 Worthing talked with the self-wounded Balinsky. He 
 
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 was improving rapidly, but he was growing uneasy con- 
 cerning the fate of his wife and child. 
 
 Worthing made him many promises and left. He tried 
 to throw off his oppression. He tried to substitute jeal- 
 ousy for it. He suspected that she had telephoned Meri- 
 thew, and had gone to dinner with him. They were danc- 
 ing between courses, no doubt. They would dance all 
 evening. She would tell Merithew how wonderful he 
 was with his munificent charity. 
 
 The suspicion was bitter, but it did not satisfy him. 
 A tenderness for the girl kept sweetening his thoughts. 
 He ate his own dinner at an Hungarian restaurant where 
 imitation Bohemians drove him frantic with their mock 
 revels. 
 
 He went back to the Angelillo home. It was noisy 
 with festival spirit and gabbling neighbors. The reluctant 
 little prodigal had come home. He was hysterical with 
 his safety and his importance. He kept telling his story. 
 His keeper had taken him out for a walk, and had said, 
 "Wait here a few minutes till I come back." Filippo had 
 not waited; he had started to run. He had run till he 
 ran into a policeman's leg. He held on to it as if it were 
 a lamp-post. He tried to climb it. He demanded his 
 "babbo! mamma! Angelillo!" The name Angelillo was 
 introduction enough. He came home in triumph on the 
 policeman's shoulder. Papa Angelillo kissed the police- 
 man and nearly got himself arrested. 
 
 Worthing rejoiced with that rebuilded home, that re- 
 constructed family. He saw that the child was feverish, 
 and forbade him any more excitement. Filippo was put 
 to bed in his own bed, with his mother tucking him in and 
 bedewing his face with the holy water of her tears. 
 
 There was but one regret Muriel's absence. She 
 should have been there ! Worthing questioned the family 
 again. He had never told them Muriel's name, but had 
 they spoken of her to any one ? They told whom they had 
 told. 
 
 279
 
 He asked Nunzio if he had told anybody. Nunzio said 
 that he had told nobody. He paused, started, shook his 
 head, repeated, "Nobody." 
 
 Worthing caught that little pause. He called Nunzio 
 to the outer hall, seized him roughly, and demanded what 
 he was concealing. Nunzio denied that he had anything 
 to conceal. He had merely remembered his conversation 
 with his friends, Signore and Signora Ganley, at the stusso- 
 house. 
 
 This was the only thing left to Worthing to try. He 
 made Nunzio lead him to the place. It was a long walk, 
 and he cross-examined the young fellow ruthlessly. The 
 Ganleys did not live in the building where Muriel was a 
 prisoner. When Worthing and Nunzio reached the Gan- 
 ley flat there was no one at home. The neighbors said 
 that nobody had been at home all evening. Late in the 
 afternoon Mrs. Ganley had come in and dressed and gone 
 to her work up-town somewhere. Mr. Ganley had not 
 been seen. Stuss-players had called and been turned 
 away by the locked door. 
 
 Worthing gave up and let the drowsy Nunzio go back 
 to his home. He began to pace the East Side aimlessly, 
 goaded by anxieties, lured from place to place by whims 
 of fantastic theory. 
 
 When he grew too dog-tired to walk, he would drop in 
 at a saloon or a moving-picture show. But he could not 
 rest. One moment he thought that he ought to take the 
 police into his confidence ; the next he derided himself for 
 a fool. He had no right to give her name to the police. 
 She was dining with friends on one of the roof gardens, 
 perhaps, or had gone to one of the theaters. 
 
 Yet what if harm should befall her? He laughed again. 
 What harm could befall a wide-awake girl in the Twentieth 
 Century in New York City? And yet harm did befall 
 people. Numbers of people disappeared every month. 
 Numbers of daring crimes remained mysteries for ever. 
 
 He resolved to have one last try at that stuss-house. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Perhaps it would open late at night. Ganley might at 
 least help with a hint. Worthing plodded achingly back 
 to Allen Street. It was almost abandoned. A rough 
 and dusty wind had driven the populace indoors to bed. 
 
 He went to Shang Ganley 's flat. The hall was dark 
 save for a little gas-jet that seemed to be put there to 
 show how dark it was. Worthing knocked and knocked, 
 and had no answer. 
 
 He went back to the street. He was worn out, and 
 fatigue was giving bromides to anxiety. He would have 
 to go home to bed. He saw a taxicab standing a few doors 
 below. It was an odd sight at this hour in this street 
 as welcome as it was odd. He resolved to make his feet 
 a gift of a ride home. 
 
 There were two men on the box of the taxicab. That 
 was suspicious. They were talking in low tones against 
 the hum of the engine. He would make one of them get 
 down. It was not wise to ride in a taxicab with two men 
 on the box. He walked to the cab and opened the door. 
 Before he could name his destination the driver said: 
 
 "Nuttin' doin', boss. I'm engaged." 
 
 Worthing moved on with a sigh. Then it struck him 
 as odd that a taxicab should be waiting in front of this 
 peculiarly squalid tenement. A thousand simple reasons 
 might explain it. Yet it struck him as odd. A thousand 
 odd reasons might explain it, too. He paused a hundred 
 yards away and looked back. He leaned on a pillar of 
 the Elevated Road and looked back. He was too tired 
 to move on. 
 
 He stood there a long while till a taxicab that had 
 taken some late newspaper man to his office came hustling 
 along. Worthing stepped out and stopped it with a 
 signal. He was about to get in. But he was still fretting 
 over the mystery of that other taxicab. He closed the 
 door softly and said, "Wait." 
 
 He advanced on the other taxicab, keeping in the lee of 
 the Elevated pillars. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 A man issued from the door of the tenement and hissed. 
 The extra man on the box got off and looked up and down 
 the street anxiously, then opened the door. Worthing 
 felt that now the riddle was to be answered. He moved 
 close quickly. 
 
 Two men came out, supporting a woman between them. 
 She seemed to be resisting. They pressed her forward. 
 She struggled. Worthing hurried up. 
 
 "What's the matter with the girl?" 
 
 The answer was in Pep Chu's ugliest tones. "Ah, 
 she's been drinkin' a little too much." 
 
 Worthing had seen an enormous number of such cases. 
 This was unconvincing. "I'm a doctor. Maybe I can 
 help you." 
 
 "You wait till you're sent for." 
 
 The girl struggled and made a choking sound. She 
 shook off the veil, and Worthing caught a glimpse of eyes. 
 The lower part of the face was hidden with a white cloth. 
 But those eyes seemed to cry to him. He was sure that 
 there were no other eyes on earth like those. 
 
 Worthing seized Shang Ganley by the arm. 
 
 Pep made an unexpected lunge at him, and struck him 
 in the face. He reeled against a pillar and clutched it to 
 keep from falling. Before the street ceased to wheel 
 under him, the girl was thrust into the cab and two men 
 squeezed in with her. The taxicab was moving off. 
 
 Worthing leaped on the running-board and caught hold 
 of the door, the window being down. He was struck at, 
 and he fought back with his right hand, clinging with his 
 left hand. Suddenly the knuckles were smashed with the 
 butt end of a revolver. He let go, but caught the long 
 hinge at the side of the cab. 
 
 Pep leaned far out and struck at him again with the 
 revolver. He mTssed and the weapon fell from his hand. 
 The extra man on the box looked back and, seeing Worth- 
 ing, turned to the driver and yelled: 
 
 "Scrape him off!" 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 The taxi swerved and ran close to the curb, where the 
 Elevated pillars were aligned. The first one they passed 
 struck Worthing a staggering blow. The second one 
 swept him from the side of the car and flung him to the 
 street. He called wildly to the other taxi to come up. 
 While he waited he ran back for the revolver Pep had 
 dropped. It was in good shape and loaded. 
 
 His taxicab came up, and he leapt aboard by the driver, 
 pointed to the disappearing taxi, and cried: 
 
 "Get 'em!" 
 
 He explained why, as the driver tried to whip his old 
 engine to its best endeavor. 
 
 Worthing fired his revolver, and his cry of "Police!" 
 reverberated along the canon of Allen Street with terrify- 
 ing effect. It was to be another of those motor pursuits 
 that have added a new shiver to the midnights of New 
 York.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 A STREET could hardly be a street and be darker than 
 /~\ Allen Street. That thoroughfare never has even the 
 nightly advantage of the moon and stars. It is hardly 
 more than a long shed, since the Elevated Road roofs it 
 over and runs nearly flush with the opposite windows. 
 The street-lamps are lost or masked among its pillars. 
 The shops are sparsely illuminated at best, and window- 
 cleaning is the industry least practised. 
 
 It was an ugly night, besides a raw March night fallen 
 into the late summer by mistake. The wind was mean, 
 and flung dirt in the eyes, drove loiterers withindoors, 
 and spent its peevishness in kicking up the endless litter 
 left by the push-carts that had filled the street all day. 
 
 Even the fruit-stands and saloons that flare at this 
 hour on so many other corners were missing here. Almost 
 the only place alive was a little hole in the wall where a 
 Roumanian sold soft drinks to Roumanians. 
 
 By the time its drowsy gossips had rushed into the 
 street at the sound of Dr. Worthing's pistol-shot and his 
 shout, even his taxicab had rushed past. The clamor did 
 not reach the ear of the gangsters who were carrying off 
 Muriel Schuyler in Little Big Blip's taxicab, since an 
 Elevated train roared along the trestle over their heads 
 at that moment, leaving them ignorant that they were 
 pursued. 
 
 The driver of the taxicab that Worthing had comman- 
 deered John Sbarra was his name was astounded at the 
 passenger who stopped him in the street, told him with 
 mystery to wait, and then fired a shot, yelled, ran and 
 leaped on the box with him, crying: 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Get 'em! Get that taxi ahead there! There's a 
 girl in it kidnapped! For God's sake, full speed!" 
 
 This was more inspiring, and the engine answered the 
 lever with rasping growls and plunges. But it took up 
 its gait so slowly that Sbarra apologized: 
 
 "This ain't no racing-machine, you know, boss; but 
 I'll do me damnedest." He jockeyed the car as if it 
 were a horse, with fervent speech: "Come on, come on, 
 
 you ! Are you a taxicab or are you a coffee-grinder ? 
 
 If you ever went, go now!" 
 
 The two men bent forward and worked their feet as 
 if they were driving treadles. They breathed fast with 
 eagerness, like runners. The hackney engine groaned 
 and spat and protested. By the time it had gathered 
 headway at last the other cab was three hundred yards 
 away. 
 
 At East Houston Street Allen Street becomes First 
 Avenue and doubles its width, but the Elevated tracks 
 still cloud the roadway. Worthing did not know that 
 there was a police station at Fourth Street till he passed 
 the green lamp-posts. Then it was too late to call for 
 help from there. Besides he felt that he was gaining. 
 
 But at Fifth Street a sleepy peddler loafing along with 
 his unsold wares shoved his push-cart directly across 
 the path. At the sound of Sbarra's horn he underwent 
 paralysis and lockjaw and stood fast. Sbarra switched his 
 car so sharply to the right that he skidded against an Ele- 
 vated pillar. But he got by with only a mud-guard bent. 
 
 Then Worthing saw that the other cab had turned also 
 to the right and was scooting down St. Mark's Place. 
 He made Sbarra continue parallel. 
 
 At Avenue A, as he suspected, the other cab turned 
 north again, and he followed suit. 
 
 Worthing did not fire his revolver nor shout. He 
 might need his cartridges for closer work, and his shouts 
 would only quicken the speed of his quarry, without bring- 
 ing help where help was none. He settled down to a si- 
 
 285
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 lent stern-chase, his eyes and his teeth set, every nerve 
 excruciatingly tense. He was almost intolerably im- 
 patient the more impatient because the progress was 
 smooth and silent and uneventful. 
 
 There was no Elevated Road to deny them light now. 
 The avenue was wide and the buildings low. And they 
 had got back the sky a vast, unusual sky, filled with 
 herds of wind-sped clouds that gave the small high moon 
 the aspect of an anxious fugitive. 
 
 On either side of this street was a line of electric globes 
 with the crimson chimneys of fire-alarm street-lamps at in- 
 tervals. But it was lighted up for nobody except a few 
 slumbering merchants of fruit, who stared at the two cabs 
 hurrying past their corners and returned to their dreams. 
 
 It was a dumb and lonesome street, and the doubly 
 belated horse-car rolling down the squealing tracks with 
 a jingle of bells and clop-clop of hoofs seemed but a ghostly 
 equipage from the past. 
 
 Sbarra's cab kept shortening the flying interval to the 
 outlaw cab, and Worthing kept straining his eyes in the 
 hope of making out the numbers jiggling on the plate 
 under the little red tail-lamp. But he could not quite be 
 sure of them or their order. He was always just about to 
 read them aright, and his heart was beginning to exult a 
 little, when he saw an electric cross-town car rush across 
 Fourteenth Street directly in the path of the cab rushing 
 forward with Muriel. Worthing's heart sickened and he 
 shut his eyes against the inevitable collision. 
 
 Muriel had shut her eyes, too. Her field of vision was 
 only the slivers of view that came through the edges of 
 the blown curtains which were drawn, though the glass 
 in front was down. But she saw the gleaming headlight 
 and the gleaming length of the street-car sweep suddenly 
 across the dark. 
 
 She heard the groan of Shang Ganley: "Gawd, we're 
 gone!" and the sharp voice of the man on the box howling 
 
 286
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 to the chauffeur: "Stop! Toin to de left! Watch 
 out!" 
 
 The chauffeur and the motorman made no sounds. 
 They gave their souls to their brakes. The cab struck, 
 rocked, stopped. 
 
 The drivers, relieved of the fear of death and murder, 
 spent their exhaust in mutual oaths and hard names and 
 the inane demands: "Agh, watcha think you're doin'?" 
 "Agh, whyn't you look where you're goin'?" 
 
 The curtains in the front of the taxicab kept the motor- 
 man and the passengers from catching a glimpse of Muriel. 
 She made a frantic effort to break loose, but Shang and 
 Pep twisted her arms up without mercy, and the gag 
 choked back her screams. 
 
 She wept mutely at the vanity of so much help so near; 
 and when the motorman backed his big car to let the 
 taxicab pass, there was not even a policeman to inves- 
 tigate the accident. 
 
 Then she heard a shot fired somewhere back. She 
 heard a voice that she knew, crying: "Stop that cab! 
 Stop that cab!" 
 
 Her heart rejoiced and felt already free. But nobody 
 stopped the cab. She saw Pep lean out of the window and 
 gaze back. 
 
 "Who is it? A cop?" said Shang. 
 
 "No, it's de guy we scraped off in Allen Street. He's 
 got anudder taxi." 
 
 She heard Achilles on the front seat: "Beat it, Blip! 
 Dey're after us!" 
 
 She was flung roughly about as the cab shot forward. 
 The voice of Worthing died out in a hubbub of voices. 
 And she wept again, less at the defeat of hope, than at the 
 thought that he was trying to save her. 
 
 With the imbecility of startled humanity, when the 
 motorman, the conductor, and the passengers on the 
 street-car heard Worthing's call to "Stop that cab!" they 
 
 287
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 turned their eyes from that cab to his, and swarmed in 
 his path with lubbering wonder to ask questions. 
 
 He knew the oxlike habit of the street crowd, and he 
 wasted no time on explanations. He leaned out and 
 brandished his pistol, shouting: 
 
 "Get out of the way, you damned fools!" 
 
 They blundered aside and gaped at him as if he were 
 the criminal. He sank back in his seat, muttering dis- 
 gusted oaths at the delay. 
 
 But one crumb of luck had fallen to him. He had won 
 close enough to read the number of the taxicab 646416 
 N. Y. 1913. He took out his prescription pad and jotted 
 the numerals down lest they be jolted from his memory. 
 
 The fugitive was flying faster now and drawing away. 
 The street was lonely again, a sordid abandoned road of 
 closed shops, locked factories, sleeping tenements. There 
 was little need of police here. Not even a cat lurked 
 among the penurious garbage-cans. 
 
 They resumed their business of rolling up space as on 
 a spool, and there was a lilt of hope in the steady purr of 
 Sbarra's engine. 
 
 And then a little family straggling home appeared, 
 cautiously watched Achilles' cab go by, and started across 
 at its ease; the young father pushing a baby-carriage with 
 one hand, clutching up an infant with the other; his be- 
 draggled wife carrying bundles and directing two pedes- 
 trian children. 
 
 At the sound of Sbarra's horn and Worthing's voice 
 the family dispersed in all directions, the children darting 
 here and there, and the mother here and there after this 
 one and that. 
 
 Worthing's heart sickened again as he felt in imagina- 
 tion the thud of impact and the horror of passing across 
 a child's body. But Sbarra by a miracle of good fortune 
 and good dodging prevented any of the family from devot- 
 ing their frames to his wheels. He could not refrain from 
 shouting back the utterly unimportant butunf ailing rebuke: 
 
 288
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Whyn't you look where you're goin'?" 
 
 The father and mother and the children shouted some- 
 thing back that was lost on the wind. Worthing rejoiced 
 at the escape, but the loss of impetus dejected him. His 
 eyes fairly pleaded with the solitude for help, and he 
 groaned : 
 
 "Are all the policemen dead? Where in God's world 
 are all the police?" 
 
 Sbarra, who was not original, laughed bitterly: "You 
 never find 'em, when you want "em." 
 
 Then as if in mystic answer to the prayer a shadowy 
 figure under a visored cap was suddenly visible in the 
 middle of the street ahead, a very allegory of the police idly 
 tossing his night-stick out of his hand and jerking it back 
 by the cord. He stared at Shang Ganley's swift taxicab 
 and called to it a lazy, "Hay !" But his answer was a curt, 
 "Watch out!" He jumped from its path, but he took re- 
 venge on Worthing, confronted him with uplifted palm 
 and would not budge for his life. 
 
 Sbarra had to brake down and turn aside. The patrol- 
 man laid hold of the car and demanded: 
 
 "Hay, where you goin' so fast, young feller?" 
 
 Worthing, whose hospital experience had taught him 
 things, called to him: "Hop on here a minute, officer. I 
 need you." 
 
 The officer was truculent and suspicious, but he swung 
 aboard and stood up as the car went on. Worthing talked 
 rapidly, as he forced the memorandum into the officer's 
 hand. 
 
 "I'm Dr. Worthing, ambulance surgeon at Bellevue. 
 One of my patients is being carried off by a gang of gun- 
 men. She's in that taxi. It's Muriel Schuyler the 
 daughter of Jacob Schuyler. This is the number of the 
 taxi." He gave him the prescription. " You take it and 
 run to the signal-box and make headquarters send out a 
 general alarm before that taxi can get to one of the 
 bridges. Hurry; it's a matter of life and death!" 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 The officer pondered with maddening deliberation as 
 he stared up the avenue. " Is that so? Well, I guess I'll 
 just go along with yous." 
 
 "Not on your life!" Worthing stormed. "Do as I tell 
 you. They're making for Queensborough Bridge. They'll 
 get away." 
 
 "I guess I'll have a shot at their tires." 
 
 He drew his revolver with majesty. But Worthing 
 knocked it up. 
 
 " Do you want to kill the girl? Do as I tell you, or I'll 
 get you broke." 
 
 He was mad enough to thrust even the policeman from 
 the running-board. The officer was furious at the in- 
 dignity, but the taxicab had jumped ahead. He was 
 for taking a shot at its tires, but in a muddle of indecision 
 he obeyed Worthing's suggestion and dashed for the sig- 
 nal-box, whanging his resounding locust on the pavement 
 as he ran. 
 
 That familiar alarm caught the ear of Achilles* on the 
 box of the fleeing taxicab. He leaned out and stared 
 back, and Muriel heard, without understanding much: 
 
 "Cheese! dat cop's makin' for a signal-box! Dey'll 
 send out a general and have all de bulls in de woil' spillin' 
 out on de streets. Dis ain't gona be no pipe for us guys. 
 Keep your engine in hand, Blip, for quick toins. What 
 we can't dodge we gotta run over." 
 
 The patrolman, following Worthing's instructions, 
 reached the signal-box, unlocked it, threw open the door, 
 lifted the telephone receiver from the hook, and pantingly 
 informed the sergeant on the desk at the station-house of 
 the Twenty-first Precinct: 
 
 "Say say, sergeant, this is 0' O'Dono-hoo noom- 
 ber sivinty-t'irty-tree. Say, they's a taxicab's gotta be 
 stopped! Got a gerl aboard! Kidnappin' it is! Miss 
 Schuyler Muriel Schuyler rich you know Jacob 
 Schuyler Yes, his gerl a gang's got her! I hollered 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 'em for to stop they gave me the laugh tried for to roon 
 me down. The noomber of the cair is take it down 
 646416. Got it? No!" He repeated it several times. 
 "That's it. Sind out the gineral alairm. It's headin' 
 narth on Avenyeh Ah, and goin' like hell makin' for 
 Queensbury Bridge, maybe a dirty brown taxi it is 
 noomber 646416. Ahl right!" 
 
 Sergeant Jaskol on the desk called to Sergeant Tahl 
 in reserve to get out on the job, though it was doubtless 
 too late. Meanwhile he was leaning against the tele- 
 phone and muttering: 
 
 "Gimme headquarters." 
 
 Headquarters took the news with the unruffled calm of 
 people whose all-day, all-night traffic was in danger and 
 crime. There was no emotion, but much efficiency, in the 
 officer's command to the switchboard operators: 
 
 "General alarm: Stop dirty-brown taxicab No. 646416. 
 Muriel Schuyler is on board kidnapped by gunmen. 
 Making north from Avenyeh A. Notify bridges and upper 
 precincts first. On the job now!" 
 
 The operators began to jab plugs into various dimples 
 on the big switchboard, and to murmur the same words 
 into the mouthpieces. Then the plugs were yanked out, 
 and lifted to other spots. 
 
 The brain of the police was sending its news and its 
 will to the ganglia. From there is would be flashed out 
 to the muscles. 
 
 In each precinct a man in a cap took up the receiver, 
 murmured "Hello," listened, then called, "Sergeant!" A 
 sergeant jumped forward and saluted. 
 
 There was a stir among the policemen, prisoners at the 
 desk, and reporters. An officer; or several officers, rushed 
 out and down the steps into the street with the simple 
 task of checking a ton of taxicab going at thirty miles or 
 more an hour, with a gunman at the wheel. 
 
 Over two thousand policemen were out on post already 
 in Manhattan Borough. In each precinct the word was 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 given to notify them as they rang in from their signal- 
 boxes. 
 
 But the flashlight signal that sets an eye to blinking 
 over the signal-box and calls the patrolman on the run was 
 not then installed. Some of the patrolmen had just re- 
 ported and would not ring up again for an hour. These 
 might calmly watch the taxicab go by and never heed it 
 among the droves of taxicabs, all of them hurrying on 
 mysterious errands. 
 
 But Manhattan is still an island, and at each of the 
 four huge East River bridges, and at the dozen little 
 bridges across the Harlem River and the Ship Canal, and 
 at each of the ferry-houses on the East River, the Hudson, 
 and the Battery, the word was instantly present and the 
 arrival of taxicab No. 646416 was eagerly awaited by 
 dozens of uniformed Horatii. 
 
 Worthing knew this mechanism, and he hoped that it 
 would be invoked to his aid. But he had r:o assurance 
 that Shang Ganley's destination was out of town. There 
 were hiding-places enough in the twenty-one square miles 
 of Manhattan Borough. There were dangers enough in 
 its hundreds of miles of streets. 
 
 A fugitive automobile had all the advantage of a fox 
 in a thick covert. It surprised every street. No one 
 could know whither it was bound, which corner it would 
 turn next, or which after that. Each street was a separate 
 ravine shut off from sight or sound of its parallel. Count- 
 less taxicabs were scuttering about the checker-board on 
 more or less honorable errands. They were all over- 
 speeding at this hour, and little heed was paid to them. 
 A car was past before its number was read. If it was 
 commanded to stop, what if it would not stop? 
 
 Nearly every night some motor ran amuck with a 
 drunken roadster or a criminal at the wheel. Again and 
 again the outlaws eluded all the cordons and were lost 
 in the complex of the city. If they were overlooked at 
 one of the bridges or dashed past the officer, they had 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Greater New York's five thousand miles of streets for 
 their wilderness, and beyond that no limit to their liberty. 
 
 Worthing had guessed that Muriel had been carried 
 off for purposes of ransom. His mind had been full of 
 the Angelillo kidnapping case, and this was his first and 
 only theory. 
 
 The Queensborough Bridge at Fifty-ninth Street was the 
 first on the route that the taxicab was following. Across 
 its mile-and-a-half span lay all of Long Island. 
 
 The directness of the taxicab encouraged the belief 
 that it was making for that bridge. It kept straight on 
 till Avenue A ended bluntly in a brick wall at Twenty- 
 fourth Street. Then it whisked west and disappeared. 
 
 When Sbarra's car whisked west in turn the red tail- 
 light of the other taxi was not to be seen in the dark lane 
 where the Metropolitan tower hoisted its bulky shaft 
 seven hundred feet into the sky and held aloft its huge 
 torch among the stars. Above the adjoining roofs its 
 vast clock dial leered like a Cyclops' one stupid eye. 
 
 But it saw only one taxicab in that street. According- 
 ly, when Sbarra reached First Avenue, he swerved to the 
 right without question, and made out the other cab scud- 
 ding north again. 
 
 The Elevated tracks had left First Avenue a block 
 below, and the street ran on unvexed for five miles to the 
 Harlem River. It was a broad, doleful thoroughfare with 
 a low sky-line of ancient tenements save where enormous 
 breweries or warehouses for dressed beef blotted the stars, 
 or gas-towers sat about like stupendous cheese-boxes. 
 
 From Twenty-sixth to Twenty-eighth they were pass- 
 ing the Morgue and Belle vue Hospital, whence an ambu- 
 lance was issuing just in time to compel another wide 
 excursion. 
 
 Worthing realized that he should have been going out 
 with that ambulance. It was his watch, and he had sent 
 no word of his absence. 
 
 For all his excitement, he had time for a whimsical 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 wonder if the interne on the tailboard of that ambulance 
 might be going to some such romance as he had run into 
 himself when he went out to mend Happy Hanigan two 
 weeks ago and found Muriel Schuyler. 
 
 From the first she had caused him hardly anything 
 except ridiculous hopes, quick and frequent humiliations, 
 long anxieties, suspicions, resentments, derelictions from 
 duty, losses of time and patience and progress. 
 
 Now he was risking his bones, his liberty, his position, 
 his very life because of her insane recklessness. Beside 
 his fierce eagerness to rescue her from the scoundrels who 
 held her, he had two other ambitions to tell her how 
 well she deserved just what had befallen her, and to tell 
 her that she had neither wisdom nor reliability to make 
 her worth ever seeing again. He tried to tell himself 
 that he hated her. 
 
 And yet in the quaint algebra of the human equation, 
 when all these plus and minus disappointments, disap- 
 provals, dislikes, disdains, and distrusts were added up, 
 the total was not disregard at all, but love to distraction. 
 
 He dared not think how beautiful and dear and more- 
 than-all-telling precious to him was the helpless passenger 
 in the ugly car that sped in front of him, maddeningly 
 unattainable. He dared not remember that it was her 
 good big heart that had brought her into this trap. He 
 thought of the beasts that had charge of her, and took 
 energy from his wrath at them. 
 
 The avenue ran now through a space of disreputable 
 lots and rickety fences covered with frivolous posters. 
 Then it dipped under the tracks of the Elevated spur to 
 the Thirty-fourth Street ferry. 
 
 Here there was apt to be life, and Worthing broke 
 the quietude with a pistol-shot and a loud yell for 
 "Police!" 
 
 The general alarm had already reached the ferry, and 
 the patrolman there had gone running up to the crossing, 
 and a roundsman had joined him. Worthing blessed their 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 very uniforms as he saw them far ahead, standing under 
 the Elevated tracks with their hands up. 
 
 But Achilles was desperate now, and so was Little Big 
 Blip, his creature. Achilles yelled to the officers. Blip 
 made to pass between them, but they closed in front of him. 
 
 Blip did not set his brake. He drove straight on like 
 a torpedo. The officers had to jump aside. One of them 
 struck at Achilles with his club; he ducked the blow; it 
 smote the cab and sent the locust whirring to the pave- 
 ment. 
 
 The other officer sprang away too late, and was knocked 
 down. As he sprawled with a wrenched ankle and a broken 
 wrist, he struggled for his revolver and, whirling in the 
 dirt, lifted himself to one elbow and sent a bullet after 
 the taxicab. It was a left-handed shot, and smashed a 
 shop-window a block away. 
 
 In the shadow of the tracks he was not seen by Sbarra 
 till the candle-flame at the muzzle of his revolver revealed 
 him. Sbarra twirled his wheel like mad and jammed 
 down his emergency brake just in time to escape killing 
 him. And in avoiding him he missed killing the other 
 officer by a lesser margin. 
 
 This man, with his club gone, shoved his revolver in 
 Worthing's face as he clutched at the seat rail and floun- 
 dered onto the running-board. He held an ancient grudge 
 against all taxi-men, and he was trembling with lust to 
 revenge his fallen comrade. 
 
 Worthing threw up his hands, crying: "Don't shoot! 
 Climb on and help us. That's the cab we've got to get ! 
 Go on, Sbarra!" 
 
 "Nagh you don't!" Roundsman Grebe snarled, and 
 thrust his gun into Sbarra's ear. But Worthing convinced 
 him, as he had convinced the other policeman, and he 
 turned his attention to the car of Achilles. 
 
 Grebe took aim and fired. It was a poor shot, and 
 came near puncturing a gaping bystander on the curb. 
 Worthing seized the man's arm as he took closer aim. 
 
 295
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Leave go me arm!" snarled Grebe. "I'm pluggin' at 
 their tires." 
 
 "But there's a girl in there," Worthing pleaded. 
 "For God's sake, don't kill her." 
 
 Grebe drew down his gun reluctantly and fastened his 
 eyes on the car. He kept breathing oaths and questions, 
 while the taxicab fought space and time, and the lamp- 
 posts drifted by with odiously deliberate indifference. 
 On the left the little playground of St. Gabriel's Park. 
 On the right a brewery with funnels like a war-ship. Gas- 
 turrets emitting an acrid stench. Pork-packers' ware- 
 houses. And always the lamp-posts drifting by, with their 
 labels E. 38 St., E. 39 St., E. 40 St., E. 41 St., E. 42 St., 
 E. 43 St. 
 
 Grebe was fuming with the helpless sullenness of a fare 
 who is going to miss his train, but rides on. 
 
 At Forty-ninth Street the avenue rises over a low ridge 
 and Sbarra's taxicab groaned and slackened. Grebe 
 cursed it with official fluency as if it were purposely shirk- 
 ing. He rounded on the meek Sbarra : 
 
 "Why the hell don't you get a velocipede? This 
 damned turtle can't crawl." 
 
 Poor Sbarra had berated the engine himself, but he 
 could not permit outside abuse. "If you see a faster car 
 along here, whyn't you grab it?" he said. 
 
 "None of your lip," was the best Grebe could an- 
 swer. 
 
 Sbarra's retort was too pat. To the west there were a 
 thousand motor-cars. This long, long lane was devoid of 
 every vehicle, though during the day it was boiling with 
 traffic. 
 
 Its silence was gone, however, for the noise of the shots 
 had brought forth what populace there was. Windows 
 were slapped up everywhere, heads were out, people were 
 running from side streets, saloon doors were flipping open 
 and flopping shut. 
 
 But these were only spectators, not helpers. To them 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 the chase was only the old short, short story of the auto- 
 mobile: "Here it comes; there it goes!" 
 
 They heard the swish of tires, the chutter of the motor. 
 They saw headlights, then a streak like a great cockroach 
 scurrying, then a red tail-light and a diminuendo. Then 
 another swish and chutter, another cockroach, a tail- 
 light, and silence, and nothing to do but ask one another: 
 "What was that? What's the matter?" 
 
 Sbarra and his passengers fairly lifted their taxicab over 
 the slope to the down-grade. When they reached the top 
 the other cab was gone from view. The avenue was 
 empty for nearly a mile ahead. Then there was a rain- 
 bow of planets and a rainbow of stone across the street. 
 
 "The Queensborough Bridge," said Grebe, "that's what 
 they're makin' for." 
 
 - Sbarra started to turn left at Fifty-first Street, but 
 Grebe saw with envy the down slope. 
 
 "Coast down that!" he commanded. "We'll turn left 
 at the bottom of it." 
 
 "But we'll lose sight of them," Worthing protested. 
 "Turn left!" 
 
 "Do as I tell you," Grebe thundered. "They'll not 
 get past the bridge entrance. The general alarm must 
 have reached there long ago." 
 
 This same thought had come to Achilles as his car 
 turned north on Second Avenue under the noisy Elevated. 
 He glanced back and shrieked: 
 
 "We've shook 'em, t'ank Gawd! Dey'll be follerin' 
 along, dough. Now toin back to Foist Avenyeh and we'll 
 get a clean break." 
 
 Blip whirled east again at Fifty-third Street, and asked: 
 " Do we toin nort' or sout' next?" 
 
 "Nort', o' course, you mutt. Do you t'ink we want to 
 run over dat copper twicet?" 
 
 The combination of Grebe's indifference with Achilles' 
 ingenuity resulted in a meeting of the two taxicabs at 
 10 297
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Fifty-third Street and First Avenue, to the tremendous 
 amazement of both parties. 
 
 They stared at one another vacantly. Worthing's first 
 thought was expressed in a loud cry of good cheer: 
 "Muriel! don't be afraid!" 
 
 Grebe thrust out his revolver and yelled, "Halt!" 
 
 Worthing reached in his pocket for his pistol to join 
 battle. Blip wasted little time in wonder. He whirled to 
 the left, throwing his whole cab forward for a shield. As 
 it slewed round Achilles leaned out and fired across him. 
 The slug of lead twanged past the policeman's elbow and 
 Worthing's wrist and glanced from the wheel. Sbarra 
 groaned unnoticed: 
 
 "Well, they got me, all right." 
 
 His right hand slid from the wheel, his left hand caught 
 at his biceps where the sting was. The car wabbled and 
 ran hither and yon, while Grebe fired at the front tire 
 and sent a bullet through the back of the other taxicab. 
 
 Worthing had only one thought Muriel's safety. He 
 was insane enough to stick his pistol under the police- 
 man's chin and yell: 
 
 "If you shoot again, I will!" 
 
 Grebe did not hear him. He turned to snarl at Sbarra : 
 "WTiere the hell you drivin'?" 
 
 The unguided car was making for a lamp-post when 
 Sbarra forced his hands back to the wheel and held the 
 course true while he shut off the power. He yelped back 
 at Grebe: 
 
 "They got me, I tell you. I'm through!"
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 REBE'S disgust left no room for sympathy. He 
 groaned at his enforced idleness and writhed with 
 chagrin as he heard Achilles' heroic laughter float back 
 triumphantly. 
 
 Worthing was nardened,too,by too much experience with 
 wounds. He turned on the stoic Sbarra with contempt 
 for his cowardice. 
 
 "Go on!" he shouted. "Goon! You can't stop here!" 
 
 "Me arm's gone," Sbarra shouted back into his face. 
 "I can't run me car, I tell you." 
 
 Worthing glared at him a moment, then he said: 
 "Well, I can. Here officer, help me lift this man off." 
 
 Grebe lent him a hand, and the loudly protesting 
 Sbarra was evicted from his throne. A knot of people 
 had gathered now, and a policeman, drawn by the sound 
 of riot, came running up, so confused that he was trying 
 to wipe the beer froth from his mustache with his revolver, 
 thinking it was his handkerchief, and threatening the 
 crowd with his handkerchief, thinking it was his revolver. 
 
 Worthing gave him a glance and a command as he 
 leaned Sbarra against the lamp-post. ' ' Call an ambulance 
 and give this man first aid." 
 
 Then he ran to the taxicab, cranked it up, slid to the 
 wheel, and set off so quickly that the amazed Grebe had 
 hardly time to join him. Sbarra sat up and wailed for 
 his cab and his fare, but both were gone. 
 
 "Where did you learn so much?" said Grebe, eyes ahead 
 on the very, very small taxicab. "Do you own a car?" 
 
 "No," said Worthing, his eyes on the future. The car 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 seemed to go faster because he had something to do be- 
 sides watch and wait. 
 
 There were people enough on the street now, and a few 
 vehicles; no motors, however, except a burly brewery- 
 truck that went by like a building on skids. 
 
 Achilles' taxicab vanished under the broad vault or 
 the Queensborough Bridge. When Worthing reached the 
 other side of it the taxicab was not to be seen. 
 
 Grebe yelled to a tipsy laborer homeward bound: 
 " Hay, have you seen a taxicab go by here just now?" 
 
 The fellow with great majesty pointed up Sixtieth 
 Street and tottered on. 
 
 "They're makin' for the bridge after all," said Grebe. 
 
 The hill ran up as the bridge ran down to their meet- 
 ing at Second Avenue. The taxicab grunted and smoked 
 at its task, and Grebe was tempted to drop off and run 
 afoot, but he stuck by the car. It had only two passengers 
 now, and Blip's carried five. 
 
 As they gained the summit there was no sign of excite- 
 ment visible. Several police were facing south, waiting 
 for the cab to dare the entrance. Another loitered at 
 Sixtieth Street. Grebe yelled to him: 
 
 " Did you see a taxicab pass this way?" 
 
 The patrolman pointed down Sixtieth Street. 
 
 "What number was it?" 
 
 "I didn't notice." 
 
 "Oh, you didn't! and why didn't you, you big blind 
 boob?" ' 
 
 The patrolman's rejoinder was not heard if he made 
 one. 
 
 "They're makin' for the Fifty-ninth Street entrance of 
 the Park," said Grebe. "If they get in there they're 
 gone for good. They can leave the taxi in the woods and 
 hold up a limousine or something." 
 
 Worthing's heart ached with terror for Muriel, and with 
 fatigue as if it had been pumping its own life-blood into 
 the engine. 
 
 300
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 East Sixtieth Street was a different world again from 
 the others they had traversed, a relic of those old-fashioned 
 brownstone corridors that so many New York streets 
 were, with stoops all alike leaned up like step-ladders 
 against houses all alike. 
 
 At Third Avenue they shot past a street-car just in the 
 nick of time to escape being hurled against a pillar of 
 the Elevated and doubly destroyed. 
 
 At Lexington Avenue they jounced across the obstruc- 
 tions of the unfinished Subway. 
 
 Already the lights and the houses indicated that the 
 regions of poverty and toil were past. The realm of 
 luxurious tenements was here. There was no dearth of 
 motors now. At Park Avenue they were almost cut down 
 by a touring-car that went by with a whurroo. 
 
 "I've a mind to take a shot at that," said Grebe. 
 
 They rushed across Madison Avenue and advanced 
 with haste toward the dusk labyrinth of Central Park. 
 They came into the nebulous glamour of the Plaza, misty 
 with globes of fire and with the cliffs of light where the 
 big hotels were clustered. 
 
 There were many ways here for the quarry to choose, 
 and there were many cars and many taxicabs scuttling 
 up and down Fifth Avenue. The problem here was to 
 find a needle moving through a moving haystack. 
 
 Grebe fired three shots into the air to warn the Avenue 
 and bring out the police. 
 
 And now Muriel was back in her own parish. She 
 knew it from the frightened and ferocious chatter of the 
 two companions with whom and with whose destinies 
 her arms were locked. 
 
 The danger from collisions and from bullets caused her 
 hardly so much distress as the repellant propinquity of 
 Shang Ganley, who was like a toad, heavy, stolid, repul- 
 sive; and of Pep Chu, who was like a rat, alert, restless, 
 sleek, abominable. Yet both treated her with as much 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 respect as they were capable of, because she was a prize 
 in ransom, and the danger of their own capture was 
 so great that they wished to give her no extra grievance. 
 They kept muttering reassurances to her. 
 
 "Don't git skeered, lady. You won't git hoited." 
 And, "Soon's we get where we're goin'. we'll take off dat 
 
 gag." 
 
 This last had become the most desirable boon imagin- 
 able just to be freed from the chafing, choking, aching, 
 disgusting wad of cloth that filled her mouth and cramped 
 her tongue. The physical annoyance she felt to be un- 
 bearable, but she had to bear it. The inability to speak, 
 to protest, to promise that she would make no outcry was 
 maddening. She could not even say, "I surrender." 
 She understood what a curb-bitted horse with a tender 
 mouth and high spirit must undergo, and she vowed 
 to deal more gently with her own horses if she ever got 
 back to them. 
 
 If she could only make these beasts understand ! If they 
 would only let her speak to them, write them a word, she 
 would make them any promise, give her parole of honor 
 not to scream, not to make a sound. She wanted to say 
 that if any one stopped the cab she would tell the police 
 themselves that she was there of her own free will. If 
 Worthing came to her rescue she would send him away 
 and endure again that discouraged look of his. If she 
 were taken from them by force she would collect the ran- 
 som herself and carry it to them or return as a hostage. 
 
 All these promises she thought of and longed to ex- 
 change for the mere removal of that bridle on her speech, 
 that gag upon her very soul. 
 
 And she would have kept whatever promise she gave 
 at whatever cost. But the fools could not imagine her 
 thoughts; they would not have risked the wise gamble of 
 that trust. 
 
 And so Muriel made the tempestuous voyage like a cul- 
 prit in irons on a storm-tossed ship, thrown about in mute 
 
 302
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 awkwardness whenever the car skidded or careened, when- 
 ever it was checked short or thrown forward. 
 
 Worthing's cry of "Stop that cab!" had been a wonder- 
 ful encouragement to her. Then she had begun to be 
 afraid for him. He was venturing his own safety for her 
 sake, and she could not know what he was undergoing. 
 She wanted to call out to him : "Be careful of your bones, 
 my dear. Don't risk too much for only me." 
 
 Her heart had astonished her with that phrase, "My 
 dear," as Worthing was later astounded to hear his own 
 voice crying out to her "Muriel!" Their conversation 
 had always been formal, but their souls had run on ahead 
 unnoticed, and their souls kept flinging out messages to 
 each other, messages that could not be transmitted or 
 received since the appliances have not been invented 
 yet. 
 
 When Muriel heard the shot that Achilles fired, and the 
 groan of Sbarra, and the jeering laugh of Achilles, she felt 
 sure that Worthing had been wounded, killed, perhaps. 
 She heard nothing more of pursuit. Shang and Pep had 
 been frightened to a palsy by the bullet that ripped 
 through the leather top of the cab, but the gangsters on 
 the front seat exchanged messages of congratulation. 
 They had "croaked" somebody and put the cab "out of 
 business." 
 
 Muriel fell back and gave up to despair. She cared 
 nothing for her own fate now since she could not go back 
 to Worthing's aid. 
 
 The breeze whipped the curtain aside once, and she 
 caught sight of a sign "E. 60 St.," and again she read 
 "Madison Avenue." A moment later a glimpse was 
 vouchsafed her of the tall lamps and the drawn curtains 
 of the Metropolitan Club. 
 
 "Pipe dat block, Shang," said Pep. "Dat's de million- 
 aires' hangout swell place for a little second-story woik." 
 
 Muriel smiled sardonically. Her father was one of the 
 founders, and a member of the house committee of that 
 
 303
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 club. She had often taken lunch or dinner in the women's 
 wing of it. There were friends enough of her father's and 
 hers in there to rescue her if they only knew. But they 
 were playing billiards or solemnly perusing their royal 
 sequences in the card-room. All their wealth was of less 
 help to her now than a punctured tire would be. 
 
 The car slowed down a trifle as Achilles debated with 
 Blip: 
 
 "Say, we dassent break for de Park. Dey got a line- 
 up o' bulls over dere. Flash up de Avenyeh. It's dark. 
 Maybe we can break t'rough up higher somewheres. Go 
 slow so's nobody won't suspicion nuttin'." 
 
 They moved up the Avenue at a gait suspiciously re- 
 spectable for a taxicab. Then they heard the shots be- 
 hind them that Grebe had fired. 
 
 Achilles stared back and groaned : ' ' Cheese ! it's de same 
 taxi just roundin' Sixtiet' Street. Open her up again, 
 Blip." 
 
 Muriel's dull heart went to the high speed with a new 
 zest for life. 
 
 A note of grave alarm . shook Achilles' voice now as 
 Muriel heard it through the front curtain. 
 
 "Holy Cheese! Blip, slow up! I forgot de station- 
 house in de Park at de old Arsenal. See, dey got a 
 string of coppers clean acrost de road. Don't stop to 
 toin round. Back up and beat it t'rough Sixty-fourt' 
 Street to Madison Avenyeh." 
 
 The Thirty-third Precinct was indeed waiting with clubs 
 at the present for taxicab number 646416. The cordon 
 had already held up a number of taxicabs, to the anger of 
 several innocent persons and to the intense confusion of 
 a few who were not supposed to be in town. Their guilt 
 of other misdemeanors increased their indignation at 
 being accused out of their name. 
 
 The police were so busy with these altercations that 
 they overlooked the approach and retreat of the very 
 object of their search. 
 
 304
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 As Worthing's car turned into Fifth Avenue, his fiercely 
 seeking eyes caught sight of a taxicab backing down for 
 a turn. He thought its outline was familiar. It backed 
 into the strong light at the corner, and he made out the 
 long-sought number 646416. 
 
 "There they go!" he cried to Grebe. He had the profit 
 of his headway, and he took the corner at high speed soon 
 after Blip turned it at low. 
 
 At Madison Avenue Blip was forced north by an up- 
 bound street-car he dared not try to pass. Worthing 
 put after him, cutting in behind the street-car. There 
 was a seesaw of good luck and bad for both hare and 
 hound. Old men, fat women, a U. S. Mail truck, obsolete 
 hansoms, street-car passengers dashing to or from cars, 
 impeded the progress of either or both. 
 
 The Thirty-first Precinct station in East Sixty-seventh 
 Street had guardians out and a motor-cycle in readiness. 
 Blip got past them under the lee of a street-car, but 
 Grebe's shout brought the motor-cycle put-put-puttering 
 after. 
 
 The cycle policeman caught up with Achilles at Seventy- 
 second Street. As he rode up to command a halt, Achil- 
 les put his hand out to the wheel and the car whipped to 
 the left so suddenly that it sent the cycle and motorman 
 toppling and sprawling with immense racket almost 
 under the wheels of Worthing's car. Worthing had to 
 run east on Seventy-second Street to avoid the pyrotech- 
 nic ruin. But the adroit Blip managed to graze past the 
 curb and turn west again, leaving Worthing to circle 
 ridiculously in the lurch. 
 
 Achilles dared not try to force his way into Central 
 Park by the Seventy-second Street entrance, for he saw 
 brass buttons glowing there in wait for him. He swung 
 into Fifth Avenue again, and Worthing followed his 
 traces. 
 
 And now the highway ran between huddled palaces on 
 one side and the forested Park on the other. In the Park 
 
 305
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 the lamps twinkling through the trees seemed to move 
 in countermarching lines like torch-bearers on parade. 
 
 Again Worthing's heart chugged with his engine; again 
 the street-lamps edged by in monotonous numbers: E. 75 
 St., E. 76 St., E. 77 St. E. 80 St. E. 86 St. 
 
 At Ninetieth there was another entrance to the Park 
 and no one sentineled its obscurity. Worthing followed 
 Blip's red light into the dense shadow and lost it. But 
 he still held his course northerly along the meandering 
 roads. He pressed along silently, and there was nothing 
 in this part of the hunt to disturb the pensive calm of the 
 midnight grove or the billing and cooing of the few lovers 
 still in close communion on the benches. 
 
 The road was drawn in great curves of indolent circum- 
 locution among trees so thick that the lamps seemed to 
 be a kind of luminous fruit among the branches. Down 
 the gorge the cab dropped and ran along the banks of the 
 lake where the lights of One Hundred and Tenth Street 
 trailed their reflections in long and drooping racemes. 
 
 And then the road expelled them upon the city streets 
 again, with clifflike buildings and abundant light. And 
 they saw Achilles' taxicab driven westward. 
 
 They followed, but at speed rapidly dwindling. Grebe 
 noted the slackening, and roared: 
 
 "Come on! Come on, man! What you hangin' back 
 for?" 
 
 "God help us, the infernal engine is running out of 
 gas!" Worthing groaned. And the cab wavered slowly 
 to a stop. It was dead.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 A30UT this time Red Ida was "working," as she 
 called it, in her cabaret far up-town. 
 
 Now she sang, now she danced, now she sat at table 
 with whoever beckoned; she exchanged persiflage, never 
 quite forgetting that she was there as "an artist and a 
 lady." 
 
 To-night her little brain-pan was simmering over with 
 turmoil. She had had a busy day. She had been throt- 
 tled publicly by her spouse and, worse yet, sworn at. She 
 had seen him violently assail Muriel Schuyler and, worse 
 yet, violently admire her. 
 
 Ida was used to fighting with her husband, and she did 
 not enjoy his blows. But a peculiar regret chilled her as 
 she remembered the blows that fell on Muriel. She had 
 a kind of reverence for women of that sphere. They were 
 of a finer essence, and rudeness was profanation. 
 
 She had onsets of ague when she realized how guilty 
 a part she had borne. It was she who had decoyed the 
 poor girl to the trap. She had revolted later, but that 
 was too late to acquit her of her accompliceship. She 
 would be arrested if anything went wrong. So many 
 things might have gone wrong. 
 
 When Shang Ganley had implied that she was capable 
 of betraying him, and had threatened her with death if 
 she did, he had horrified her more than she had ever been 
 horrified. He had previously called her nearly every 
 other name of abuse, but he had never called her a "snitch" 
 before. She had deserved nearly every other unworthy 
 
 307
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 name, but never this. Her innocence of the few remain- 
 ing guilts was all the more precious. She had so little 
 good repute that she prized the remnant doubly. 
 
 But terror and the instinct of save-yourself-first were 
 her chief emotions. 
 
 She scanned every new-comer in the dread that he 
 might be a policeman. She studied the various people 
 to see if any of them were plain-clothes men. Pep and 
 Shang and Achilles might have killed the girl by now. 
 Her hair grew wet on her forehead. Her heart balked 
 and bucked. Yet she must sing on. 
 
 Despite the panic in her soul, she kept her smile at work, 
 and her new song had great success a syncopated tune 
 with drawling tones alternating with rushes: 
 
 Treat her like a ba by, 
 
 Forshe'son ly a ba by. 
 
 When you take her withyou, lad, 
 
 Youare ta kingallwehadlknow ow. 
 
 She'll beacomfort to you like she's al ways been 
 
 to me. 
 Sodobe kind 
 
 And keepunhappinessaway, 
 And whenyoufind 
 Her goldenhairisturning gray 
 Con tin ue to treat her like a ba by. 
 
 Ida noted that Perry Merithew was there again with 
 the same solemn, tawny beauty. It was Maryla, though 
 Ida did not know her name. To-night Maryla tried to 
 dance. She got through several steps. But she gave up. 
 The insatiable and democratic Perry asked Ida to finish 
 the dance. 
 
 If anything could have solaced her humbled little heart, 
 it would have been this astonishing rebound from the dusli 
 under Shang Ganley's feet to the arms of Perry Merithew. 
 
 She knew that Perry was not good, yet she could tell 
 that he was fine; of that same finer essence with Muriel. 
 
 308
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Perhaps he knew Miss Schuyler. He ought to be told 
 of her danger. He might be able to save the girl from 
 perhaps from death. 
 
 The need for telling somebody was overwhelming Ida. 
 She began timidly while they did the fox-trot: 
 
 "Say, listen! I got a secret there's sumpun I want 
 to get off me chest. You're a swell, ain't you?" 
 
 Perry laughed awkwardly. "Well, I don't know. 
 That depends. Why?" 
 
 "If I was to tell you sumpun about another swell a 
 swell dame, would you keep my name out of it?" 
 
 "Yes," Perry laughed. "You may fire when ready, 
 Gridley." 
 
 "Ganley," corrected Ida. "Say, listen do you know 
 Muriel Schuyler?" 
 
 She felt a sudden tension in his arm. He grew haugh- 
 tier. He felt a revulsion against the very use of that name 
 in this place by this creature ! He could dance with Ida 
 himself, but Ida must not even allude to Muriel. She had 
 to repeat her question. He nodded icily. Whereupon she 
 said: 
 
 "Say, listen! Siddown and buy me a drink and I'll 
 tell you all about it." 
 
 She drew her chair close to him and leaned against him 
 as she told what she knew and what she suspected about 
 Muriel. 
 
 Maryla, abandoned at her table, felt like another 
 Ariadne, seeing her Dionysus interested in another woman. 
 She assumed that Perry found Ida very fascinating. She 
 could not understand why. She did not understand men, 
 especially men like him. 
 
 She made no complaint; she did not go to him and 
 scratch out his eyes and the eyes of his vis-a-vis. She did 
 not send a waiter to recall him. She rose meekly and 
 slipped out of the cabaret to the nest where he had estab- 
 lished her. 
 
 Perry did not miss her. He forgot her entirely. He 
 39
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 listened spellbound to Ida's confession. She told him 
 where Muriel was held captive in the cellar, and, as well as 
 she could remember, the neighborhood of the place where 
 Muriel was to be taken at midnight. Achilles had not 
 divulged the exact address to her. He did not believe in 
 overtaxing the fidelity of women. She could recall only 
 that it was up near Spuyten Duyvil Creek, "beyond a 
 place where cabbages grow on a wall." 
 
 This last sounded a trifle remarkable to Perry, but he 
 was not sure where cabbages grew; he had never cared 
 whether they grew or not. 
 
 Perry was fearless where his own safety was concerned. 
 Life was such a joke to him that he could be as brave as 
 a lion on the least important occasion. Now the occasion 
 was most important. His courage was ready, he needed 
 only the wits to know what to do and where to go. 
 
 He hurried to his table, paid his bill, noted the absence 
 of Maryla with relief, and left the restaurant unsensa- 
 tionally. He found his chauffeur dozing outside and told 
 him to make for Allen Street. 
 
 "You don't mean Allen Street, sir?" said Groden. 
 
 "I do! And hurry!" 
 
 "But Allen Street is on the lower East Side, sir." 
 
 "That's the one I mean. Get there as fast as you can 
 without being arrested." 
 
 The moment Red Ida saw Perry leave the cabaret, she 
 repented her caprice, longed to gulp back the words. 
 She dashed through the startled table-aisles to the side- 
 walk outside, and found Groden just closing Perry into 
 his limousine. She thrust her clasped hands in at the 
 open window and pleaded: 
 
 "Say, listen! What I just been tellin' you forget it, 
 will you?" 
 
 "Never, my dear young lady," Perry had answered, 
 gallantly. "I'll never forget it. And if it proves true, 
 I'll remember it handsomely." 
 
 "But I had a right not to 'a' told you!" she urged. 
 
 310
 
 Worthing had only one
 
 tought Muriel's safety.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Groden, not seeing her, had gone to his place and 
 started the car in motion. 
 
 "Watch out, my dear, you'll be hurt," Perry said, and 
 thrust her hands away. 
 
 She called after him: "It ain't true. I was on'y josh- 
 in' you." 
 
 But he had not heard. He had been too bent on 
 Muriel's rescue to pay further heed to Ida. She stood a 
 moment on the sidewalk, wringing her hands, till she saw 
 that the passers-by were taking notice of her. She gave 
 them a bit of lip and ran back into the cabaret. 
 
 Manners were informal there and explanations cynical. 
 Her exit had provoked a laugh. Her return was greeted 
 with ironic applause. The simian pianist had been 
 "vamping till ready," and she broke into the song from 
 the door. 
 
 But she was beset by the thought of her treachery to 
 her husband not much of a husband, but the only one 
 she ever had. She could not finish her song. She mum- 
 bled excuses to leave, dashed for her hat and her cloak, 
 and ran to the Subway, looking like an escaped mas- 
 querader. Perhaps she could get home in time to warn 
 Shang. He would kill her, but she might save him. 
 
 Meanwhile Perry's car ran with the velvet speed of a 
 panther, slowing up only where a policeman was visible, 
 or probable. 
 
 The impetuous Merithew had set out to the rescue at full 
 tilt. Gradually it came over him that he had no weapon 
 to tilt with. He was going to raid a dive in the slums, 
 not merely single-handed, but empty-handed. By the 
 time his car was finishing its passage through Central Park 
 he was convinced that he must have help. But whom 
 could he get, and where? The police were the last people 
 he wanted to call in, since the police implied the reporters, 
 and he had a profound abhorrence of publicity. 
 
 The offices of private detectives were not open at mid- 
 night, and, besides, he did not know any private detectives.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 But Perry was not destined to visit the slums this 
 night. As the car came out of the black forest of Central 
 Park into the glistening Plaza, he heard a shot. He 
 thought it only the usual blow-out. He heard other shots 
 a sound of voices. He had heard the shots and shouts 
 of Grebe as the taxicab that Worthing was driving had 
 approached Fifth Avenue in its pursuit of the gunmen. 
 
 Perry rapped on the glass. His car stopped. He put 
 his head out and saw that there was excitement on the 
 moonlit reaches of upper Fifth Avenue. 
 
 The gleaming facades of the Plaza Hotel confronted him. 
 Merithew had a large hotel acquaintance. He owed so 
 much money at so many hotels that he was welcome every- 
 where. He was slow at paying bills, but ever ready with 
 tips. 
 
 He thought he knew one of the house detectives a 
 man named Lumm at the Plaza; he signaled Groden 
 to pull up at the hotel. 
 
 He found Lumm on the outer steps, whither he had 
 been drawn by the sound of the warning shots from 
 Grebe's pistol. The detective was more or less disguised 
 as a guest in a dinner jacket. 
 
 "Oh, hello!" said Perry. "What's the racket up the 
 street?" 
 
 "I don't know, sir. I was just going to telephone 
 headquarters and see if they know." 
 
 "Good idea," said Perry. "And I'd like a word with 
 you when you come back." 
 
 Perry went to the tobacco-stand, replenished his case, 
 lighted a cigar, and was telling the chatelaine in charge 
 how unusually stunning she was this evening, when he 
 felt a hand on his arm. 
 
 "Pet" Bettany was murmuring to him with saccharin- 
 ity: "Buy me a box of cigarettes, dear. I'm with Winnie 
 Nicolls, and he doesn't believe in -women smoking, and 
 I'm famishing. Be quick." 
 
 The experienced tobacconette slid a box surreptitiously
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 to Perry, who slipped it to Pet, who smuggled it into her 
 handkerchief just as "Winnie" Nicolls escaped from the 
 hook of some other fisherwoman and came back to Pet's 
 bait. 
 
 Winnie was in love with Muriel, and afraid of Pet ; but 
 Muriel had treated him shabbily, and he had fallen easy 
 prey to Pet. 
 
 "Hello!" said Perry. "I'm just getting some cigars. 
 Have one?" 
 
 "No, thanks," said Winnie, who did not like Merithew 
 even well enough to smoke his tobacco. He took out his 
 own cigar-case and helped himself. 
 
 Perry recognized the faint insult with a smile. "Your 
 mother doesn't like me, either," he said. "She invited 
 my wife to her big splurge and left me out." 
 
 Winnie's only comment was a puff of smoke that veiled 
 his smile. Perry said: 
 
 "Didn't she invite you, either, Pet?" 
 
 "Oh yes, but I can't go," Pet smiled. "Poor mother 
 is not well enough to be left. I just ran out for a little 
 air in Winnie's new racer." 
 
 "I see you're in your trained-nurse uniform," said 
 Perry, with a glance at her iridescent gown with much 
 skin revealed and much more indicated. "That gown 
 is the sort that F. P. A. called 'Low and Behold in the 
 front, and the V de Boheime in the back.' " 
 
 Then Mr. Lumm, the house detective, came back and 
 said to him : " I called up headquarters, Mr. Merithew, and 
 they say that Miss Muriel Schuyler has been kidnapped." 
 
 Winnie Nicolls's cigar dropped from his lips. Pet's 
 box of cigarettes fell from her handkerchief. 
 
 " I knew that," said Perry. 
 
 The detective went on: "The gang's got her in a taxi- 
 cab. Those shots was the police -after her. They're 
 headed north for the Bronx. Prob'ly they're in Central 
 Park by now, I guess." 
 
 Winnie Nicolls did not pause for good-nights. He
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 dashed across the lobby, bowling over two pages. Pet 
 did not notice his flight. She was listening to Merry Perry, 
 who was saying to the detective: 
 
 " That's what I want to see you about." He led Lumm 
 aside. "I think I know where they're taking Miss 
 Schuyler. I need a man and a gun. You come along." 
 
 " I can't very well get off," said Lumm. "The manager 
 wouldn't like it." 
 
 "Where's the manager?" said Perry. 
 
 He seized the detective by the elbow and haled him to 
 the office. Now Pet found herself alone in the pitiful 
 fate of a young girl alone in the Plaza at midnight. 
 
 She was swearing-mad. It was the starter who helped 
 her into a taxicab. When she got home she told the 
 driver to "charge it to the hotel." She had no account, 
 at the hotel. 
 
 Winnie Nicolls was a timid young son of Croesus, 
 except in the saddle or under the wheel of an automobile. 
 There he became a demon of recklessness. 
 
 He leaped into his ninety-horse-power racer, and swung 
 into the Park with the swathe of a huge scythe. Through 
 the deep thickets he drove his car, groaning at the sinuous 
 indirectness of the roads. He went hooting through and 
 paid no heed to the vain challenges of policemen. But 
 when he shot from the top gate of the Park at One Hun- 
 dred and Tenth Street he did not know which way to turn. 
 
 He saw a stranded taxicab at whose side Worthing 
 stood with the dejected Roundsman Grebe. He rushed 
 to them and called out: 
 
 "I say, did you see a taxicab go this way?" 
 ' "We're follerin' one now," said Officer Grebe. "We 
 can use you." 
 
 "Get in!" said Winnie, swinging his door open with 
 one hand. Worthing and Grebe ran alongside and 
 stumbled in. 
 
 "Up Seventh Avenue it went, most likely," said Grebe.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 But when they reached this broad highway to the north 
 an officer was there who saw that Grebe was a policeman 
 and ran out, calling to him: 
 
 "They went up the Cat'edral Parkway. I whistled 
 'em to stop, but " 
 
 His voice trailed off into silence, for Winnie threw, as 
 it were, his bridle on the neck of the steed. 
 
 "This is something like," said Grebe, as the racer 
 plunged forward with the zeal of a running-horse break- 
 ing from the starting-wire. The car throbbed indeed 
 with the tremendous energy of a runaway stallion. It 
 snorted and bolted, and galloped ventre-a-terre without 
 shock of hoofs. 
 
 On the great letter "S" of the loop of the Elevated a 
 train crawled like a caterpillar with gleaming scales. 
 Then the heights called Morningside because they are 
 on the Eveningside rose to uphold the "Acropolis of 
 New York"; but the car did not halt at the steep climb. 
 It ran up the Heights with a swoop of joy like a wave 
 boiling up a cliff. 
 
 The keen-eyed huntsmen paid no heed to the Cathedral 
 of St. John the Divine twelve years building and still 
 hardly more shapely than a beached whale, with derricks 
 and cranes still part of the sky-line and a few angels stand- 
 ing about as stiffly as prematurely arrived guests. 
 
 Winnie Nicolls and his company were wondering which 
 of the two roads to take through Morningside Park. 
 There was no time for debate. Winnie, like a good boy, 
 turned to the right. In the taxicab that carried Muriel 
 Achilles had chosen the left. 
 
 The glory of that great bastioned mesa-land over- 
 looking the city, as a cliff a dark sea twinkling with stars, 
 was only irritation for the pursuers. They needed only a 
 vile brown taxicab to make any prospect beautiful. 
 
 As they whizzed along Winnie began to ask questions 
 which answered the unspoken questions Worthing was 
 tinwilling to begin.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Is it true that Miss Muriel Schuyler is kidnapped? 
 I was at the Plaza Hotel talcing supper with Miss Well, 
 I'm Mr. Winthrop Nicolls, by the way. We heard shots. 
 The house detective called up the police, and they told 
 him it was Miss Schuyler. Are you sure that it is?" 
 
 Worthing, with a doleful recognition of the man's 
 wealth and his evident interest, assured him that it was. 
 
 Winnie chuckled: "I hope we can catch the rascals. 
 I'd like to take her home in this car. She rode in it the 
 first day I got it christened it sort of." 
 
 They sped through the park and turned out on Am- 
 sterdam Avenue at One Hundred and Twenty-third 
 Street. It was free of taxicabs as far beyond as they 
 could see. 
 
 "We must have overrun them," said Winnie, and 
 whirled to the left. Somewhere below a taxicab dashed 
 across the avenue, bound west. Winnie threw all his power 
 on, and burned the pavement to One Hundred and Six- 
 teenth Street, then turned west on the inside wheels, 
 Grebe hanging out like a mechanician in a motor-race. 
 
 They could just see a red tail-light glimmering into 
 the trees of Riverside Drive. They went through Colum- 
 bia University with no interest in its scholastic halls, 
 doubly silent with night and vacation-time. Even the 
 Seth Low Library the noblest monument a man ever 
 built his father did not win a glance. 
 
 " It took me five years to go through Columbia before," 
 Winnie said. "This is better." He always said that 
 when he motored through. He used to motor through 
 so that he might say it. He had to say it even now when 
 his heart was full of such post-graduate excitement. 
 
 Down into the borderland they plunged, then up along 
 the darkling Hudson unshackled with bridges. Where 
 Grant's peak-capped tomb divided the road, Winnie chose 
 this time the left since the right had proved unlucky be- 
 fore. He had lost the red will-o'-the wisp altogether now. 
 
 He reined in his steed, a little bewildered. "They 
 320
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 couldn't have stopped at Claremont for a drink, could 
 they?" 
 
 Grebe and Worthing felt sure that they had not. So 
 he ran down the hill and out on the long, long viaduct 
 that carries the Drive across the deep gorge of Manhattan 
 Valley. 
 
 Across its whole quarter of a mile of length there was 
 not a soul visible, not a policeman or a vehicle of any 
 kind. 
 
 Winnie let the car run on while they discussed the pos- 
 sibilities. They had overlooked the road at the side of 
 the viaduct which dips steeply down into the valley. 
 Achilles, with Grecian wile, had assumed that this was 
 the safer to take since it was the more unreasonable. 
 
 Worthing, who had lost half his zeal in the presence of 
 his overwhelming rival, had a half-hearted idea: 
 
 "They'll be going north somewhere, most likely. We'd 
 better go on; we might head them off yet." 
 
 They maintained a listless gait to the end of the viaduct 
 and beyond a little. The Drive was again one sleepy 
 solitude. Worthing turned to look back, and caught sight 
 of a taxicab with two men on the front seat just pulling 
 up the hill from under the viaduct. 
 
 He called out: "There they are' Back there!"
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 IN the still air Achilles, who had seen the car ahead, 
 heard Worthing's voice. Muriel in the dark heard 
 only a faint cry, but she heard Achilles' startled com- 
 mand: 
 
 " To de right! To de right! Dat ain't no taxicab. I 
 wonner who dose guys are. Police, I bet. Dey want us, 
 all right." 
 
 The overworked taxicab groaned up the hill of One 
 Hundred and Thirty-sixth Street drearily. Now it was 
 Achilles' turn to complain of the fagged-out motor. 
 
 They had worried to the top of the rise before they 
 saw the headlights of Nicolls's car swing round the corner 
 below. They resisted the temptations of Broadway and 
 Amsterdam Avenue because they were wide and brightly 
 lighted and dotted with policemen. 
 
 They chugged on to Convent Avenue, and Muriel could 
 hear again that quaver of anxiety in Achilles' voice as 
 he leaned far out and spoke through a twisted neck in a 
 strangled voice. 
 
 "Here dey come, and goin' like a house afire. Toin 
 nort' here. We gotta do some dodgin'. Where are we, 
 anyway?" 
 
 "Convent Avenyeh," said Blip. "De Convent of de 
 Sacred Heart is just below. Me sister used to go to it." 
 
 "To hell wit' your sister and your taxicab," said 
 Achilles. "If dose guys gits too clost, I gotta take a shot 
 at deir tires; dey's nuttin' to it." 
 
 They ran under the arched gateways into the quad- 
 rangle of a slumbering group of buildings. There was 
 
 322
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 something about the white-bordered architecture that 
 gave Achilles discomfort. 
 
 "Say, what is dis place," he whined, "a jail or a bug- 
 house?" 
 
 "It's de City Colludge," said Blip. 
 
 "Well, git out of it; it makes me oneasy." He strained 
 to look back again. "Dere's deir search-light waverin'. 
 We got 'em guessin'. No, dey're comin' dis way. If we 
 on'y had anudder car. Gawd! to be froze to a dump- 
 cart like dis. I'll fix you when I git out ! We gotta shift 
 to somebody's else's machine if we have to shoot de 
 cheffure. Gawd! look at 'em come! Ain't dey got no 
 respect for de speed laws ? Toin off o' here to de right ! 
 To de right!" 
 
 "Dere ain't no street to de right," growled Blip. 
 
 "To de left den, you loafer!" 
 
 The rattle-brained Blip turned to the left, up One Hun- 
 dred and Forty-third Street. 
 
 "Toin to de nort' on de foist street you cometa," Achil- 
 les snarled. But at Amsterdam Avenue there were two 
 policemen. They were waiting. They read the long- 
 desired number 646416 on the radiator and they ran 
 forward, shouting: 
 
 "Say, we want you! Stop or I'll fire!" 
 
 Achilles took aim at the nearer of them, but Blip swerved 
 back to the southwest into Hamilton Place, which ran on 
 the bias with the other streets. Achilles did not fire. But 
 both policemen did, and one of them sent a bullet into an 
 overheated rear shoe, and it blew up with a terrifying 
 sound. But the cab ran on unchecked, though roughlier. 
 
 Shang and Pep thought that a cannon had planted a 
 shell under the car, and they crowded down into the small 
 foot-space, dragging Muriel with them. And just in 
 time, for another bullet glancing from the pavement made 
 a ricochet and tore a ragged hole through the leather. An- 
 other smashed the little mica window in the back curtain. 
 
 The very taxicab seemed to take fright and to speed 
 323
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 with final energy. In their chattering terror Shang and 
 Pep let go of Muriel's wrists. Now she tore at the gag, 
 released herself from it, and, gulping in a joyous breath of 
 air, flung herself toward the window and sent one wild, 
 white shriek into the blue stillness. 
 
 Shang clamped his hand over her mouth and dragged 
 her back. There was a brief wrestle in the huddle, then 
 Pep Chu's grim little voice in Muriel's ear: 
 
 "Shut up, damn you, or I'll croak you in a minute. 
 Dat's a gun I got against you, and I'll blow a hole in you 
 if you make a whisper. I'd just as soon as not a little 
 sooner!" 
 
 There was a maniac twang in his voice that frightened 
 her to silence. There were no more shots, no noise. They 
 had outrun the police again. 
 
 Muriel's angry soul longed to fight free, but she did not 
 want the freedom of death. She wanted to get back to 
 life and her mother and her father. 
 
 She let the men lift her back to the seat. She began 
 to sob. 
 
 Again that insane command of Pep's, the pressure of 
 that muzzle under her arm. She felt what a bullet would 
 do, and she was too cowed even to weep. 
 
 She heard Achilles muttering softly to Blip in terror 
 equal to her own. Then she heard a note of joy in his 
 voice. 
 
 "Toin up here. Toin up here." 
 
 "Dat's a hill. We can't make it." 
 
 "Go as fur as you kin. Dere's what I been prayin' for. 
 Go on past him!" 
 
 Blip turned into the steep of One Hundred and Thirty- 
 eighth Street, where the great red building of the Jewish 
 Orphan Asylum in a big walled yard stood up against the 
 sky. On his left a row of apartment-houses was aligned 
 with a zigzag of stoops down the slanting street. 
 
 In front of one of the lowest houses stood a limousine 
 with a chauffeur asleep on the box. His employer had 
 
 324
 
 1HE made no resistance. Shang simply kept saying 
 "Remember, lady, remember."
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 perhaps brought home his fiancee or somebody from a late 
 dance, and was lingering over the farewells inside. 
 
 The taxicab did not wake the chauffeur as it rattled by 
 and stopped at the opposite curb. Achilles did not wake 
 him as he pussy-footed across the street, stepped lightly 
 on the running-board, bent over, throttled the chauffeur 
 with his left hand, and gave his popping eyes a sight of 
 a hideous little automatic pistol. 
 
 Achilles explained in a hasty whisper: " Say, young feller, 
 if you wanta keep your healt', you run dis car where I 
 tell you. I'll be inside wit' some frien's. I'll have dis 
 gun under de back of your conk, and if you don't say 
 what I tell you to, and nuttin' else, I'll shoot it off. Do 
 you get me?" 
 
 The chauffeur got him. Achilles motioned. Blip 
 opened the door and beckoned. Shang and Pep sup- 
 ported Muriel to the pavement and helped her across the 
 street. She made no resistance and no sign. 
 
 Pep simply kept saying, "Remember, lady, remember." 
 
 In the light of the lamp-post she glanced down and saw 
 the weapon. It was an ugly thing. 
 
 Achilles rushed his passengers aboard with the rough 
 speed of a Brooklyn Bridge street-car conductor. He 
 crowded in after them. He lowered the front glass and 
 made them all crouch down. Then he set his pistol be- 
 tween the shoulder-blades of the chauffeur and said: 
 
 "Beat it now. Toin up dis foist street. If anybody 
 asts you did you see a taxicab, tell de trut'. Say you seen 
 it goin' up where you seen it. But don't say no more or 
 or you know!" 
 
 The limousine moved off down the hill and whirled 
 round the corner. The chauffeur had not spoken yet. 
 Nor did he speak till he met a racing-car carrying three 
 wildly excited men, one of them a policeman, who yelled: 
 
 "Did you see a taxi go this way?" 
 
 Then the chauffeur motioned back and answered : "Yes, 
 they they turned up up down there." 
 
 3 2 7
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 It was a weak and choking voice, but he said it. He 
 said it again to the two policemen who followed on foot 
 in lumbering breathlessness. 
 
 Then he tooled the luxurious car on and on and on 
 through Amsterdam Avenue to St. Nicholas, to Broadway 
 an everlasting Broadway. Muriel gave up all hope now, 
 and asked Heaven only for an end to the journey. She 
 could tell, by the rollicking reports Achilles made to Blip, 
 that there was no sign of pursuit no car at all following 
 them. 
 
 At the Ship Canal Bridge a group of policemen waiting 
 for a taxicab paid no attention whatever to the limousine. 
 
 They had paid no more attention to Perry Merithew's 
 limousine, which had gone by a little earlier, carrying 
 Mr. Merithew and a heavily armed house detective smok- 
 ing an excellent cigar. 
 
 The lowlands at the edge of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, 
 where it leaves the Harlem River just long enough to 
 circle Marble Hill and return, are unhandsome in the 
 daylight. After midnight they take on a kind of spooky 
 quality due rather to the deserted warehouses, train-sheds, 
 and rookery cottages than to the tradition of the devil who 
 took the shape of a great herring and dragged old Peter 
 Stuyvesant's defiant trumpeter down in the hungry waters. 
 
 "Ghastly sort of place, eh?" Perry was saying to Mr. 
 Lumm, as the car bumped and poked this way and that 
 around Two Hundred and Thirtieth Street into the rutty 
 Spuyten Duyvil road. 
 
 " "The girl said the house was not far from a place where 
 cabbages grow on a wall," he went on. "Sounds sort of 
 vague; but that was as much as her dear husband told 
 her." 
 
 "It listens like a dope-dream to me," said the detec- 
 tive. "I ain't no farmer, but I've et cabbages, and I 
 never heard of 'em growin' on walls. Maybe she's 
 thinkin' of turnips." 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 " Look !" said Perry. "There they are !" 
 
 Groden had stopped the car so that its headlights il- 
 luminated a steep hillside of shalelike formation with lit- 
 tle shreds of earth like mortar between stones. In this 
 poor soil a fond and ingenious householder had wrung 
 from miserly nature sustenance enough for rows on rows 
 of cabbages. On this almost vertical field they grew in 
 generous profusion like massive green roses on a wall. 
 
 "Well, I'll be damned," said the detective. 
 
 "I'm with you," said Perry. He signaled his chauffeur 
 to move on. They came soon to a dark and narrow angle 
 of the road and stopped. 
 
 With difficulty Groden turned his car and faced back 
 along the road, covering it with his headlights. In the 
 shadow Perry, all atremble with joy of the adventure, 
 took his stand with a revolver in his hand. The detective 
 moved down a little farther with two in his hands. 
 
 After a long, long wait two other eyes gleamed down 
 the road like a great wild beast's. They came forward 
 with almost questioning deliberation. Groden honked 
 his horn. Blip was now at the wheel of the stolen limou- 
 sine; the chauffeur had been dropped in the dark some 
 distance back. Blip honked his horn. Achilles yelled: 
 
 "Git out de way!" 
 
 The invisible Groden honked his horn for answer. 
 Blip stopped his car. Achilles jumped off and ran for- 
 ward to protest. He ran into the dark and found Groden's 
 gun staring at him. 
 
 "Put 'em up," said Groden. 
 
 They went up. 
 
 Then the detective's voice came from the shadow near 
 Blip. 
 
 "All out, boys. This is your last stop." 
 
 Shang and Pep, imagining that they had reached their 
 destination, clambered out on either side, shaking their 
 legs. Pep clambered into the detective's revolver. Shang 
 heard Pep gasp: 
 
 ii 329
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Beat it, de bulls." 
 
 Pep surrendered. 
 
 Shang slid off in the dark and vanished. 
 
 Muriel, wondering, saw a hand outstretched, and heard 
 a purring voice: 
 
 "Miss Schuyler, permit me." 
 
 "Mr. Merithew!" She gasped as she got out. "But 
 wh-where's Dr. Worthing?" 
 
 "Doctor who? There's no doctor for miles! Are you 
 hurt? Are you ill?" 
 
 "Yes, I I believe I am." 
 
 And then at last she learned what it was to faint.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 TVTOTHING surprises or upsets a man so much, or finds 
 1 i him so unready as a full answer to a prayer or the 
 complete success of a scheme. Those who have petitioned 
 for rain and got it, never yet have had their umbrellas 
 with them nor their galoshes on. 
 
 When little Mrs. "Red Ida" Ganley, in an emulsion 
 of remorse and revenge, told Perry Merithew that her 
 husband and his pack had kidnapped Muriel Schuyler, 
 Merry Perry made a knightly sortie in his unwarlike 
 limousine. All the way he had been praying and planning, 
 but praying apparently without faith, since his triumph 
 astounded him utterly. Evidently prayers are granted 
 also to skepticism. 
 
 At any case, there stood Perry with Muriel Schuyler 
 comfortably aswoon and draped safely across his arm; 
 and there stood three of the four gangsters with their 
 hands aloft in front of his pistol and the pistols of his 
 chauffeur and the house detective. 
 
 What Dr. Worthing and his taxi-driver, and Winthrop 
 Nicolls and his ninety-horse-power racer, and all the police 
 force of New York had failed to accomplish after a fero- 
 cious man-hunt through the city, Perry Merithew had 
 jauntily achieved without half trying. 
 
 Now that his problem was solved, it opened up a new 
 problem. As always happens. 
 
 To turn the criminals over to the authorities was plain- 
 ly his civic duty. But that meant to turn Muriel over 
 to the higher authorities of the newspapers. She had suf- 
 fered enough from the gunmen, he thought, without being 
 thrown into the power of the penmen.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Perry was so befuddled with the problem that the 
 neglected Muriel, despairing of being resuscitated by the 
 proper attentions, came back to consciousness unaided. 
 In the gloom of the lonely road she felt at first that she 
 was sitting up . in her own bed after a nightmare. The 
 searing glare of the headlights confused her further. 
 Then she descried the gunmen with their palms uplifted 
 in priestly attitude. She remembered the long Brocken- 
 ride she had made through midnight New York. She 
 felt the raw pain of her abraded lips, the ache of her jaws 
 from the gag. She winced again at the bitter fact that 
 it was Perry Merithew and not Dr. Worthing who had 
 saved her. She could not understand it at all. 
 
 Perry thought that Muriel, having been the innocent 
 victim of criminals, should not be subjected to worse 
 punishment at the hands of justice. He had very decent 
 traits, had Perry, and he was in one of his most admirable 
 moods. 
 
 He asked the house detective to guard the prisoners 
 while he conferred with Miss Schuyler. He led Muriel 
 a few paces aloof from the immobilized gang. She began 
 at once a belated speech of gratitude. 
 
 "It's perfectly glorious of you to have saved me. I 
 don't know how I can find words to tell you how grateful 
 I am." 
 
 "Don't try," said Perry. "It isn't worth the trouble. 
 It is reward enough to have been of any service to you, 
 Miss Schuyler. But I'm in great distress. I don't know 
 what to do next." 
 
 She had got her thanks off her chest, and she felt better. 
 She said, curtly: "The next thing is to get me home 
 somehow, isn't it? I'm pretty tired, you know." 
 
 "You must be, you poor child; but what am I to do 
 with these three little gunmen?" 
 
 " You'd better keep them out of my reach or there won't 
 be enough left of them to turn over to the police." 
 
 "That would be the best way out of it, if you could 
 332
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 destroy them entirely, because the police include the re- 
 porters, and the head-lines, interviews, portraits on the 
 front page." 
 
 Muriel had been brought up in an honest, press-fearing 
 family. She had seen what the newspapers had done to 
 certain of her acquaintances who had stumbled into the 
 calcium-light. 
 
 " O Lord !" she groaned. "That '11 be worse than being 
 gagged in the dark. I don't see what I've done to deserve 
 all this except to disobey my father. It pays me up for 
 going slumming against his orders. I'm glad he and 
 mother are on the yacht and won't know about it." She 
 fumed a moment, then lifted her head bravely. "All 
 right. If I've got to be in the head-lines I've got to be." 
 
 "It's not only that," said Perry, in miserable confusion 
 before such a nice young girl in such a woeful tangle, " but, 
 you see I hardly know how to explain it but, you see, 
 I'm a married man." 
 
 "As if I didn't know it! Don't I know your wife? 
 She's charming," said Muriel. 
 
 Perry cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Yes, thanks. 
 But it seems that it seems that er married men must 
 not rescue nice young girls. That privilege belongs to 
 nice young bachelors." 
 
 Muriel could have limited this further to nice young 
 doctors, and her heart was full of wild sighs of, "Oh, why 
 couldn't it have been Dr. Worthing!" Still she must not 
 begrudge Mr. Merithew his glory. 
 
 "I don't see why anybody should object to your rescu- 
 ing me?" she said. "I met you in my father's office. 
 You were most kind about giving me that money. Your 
 motives have all been as noble as can be." 
 
 "I'm afraid that the reporters and the gossips are not 
 in the habit of imputing noble motives to me," Perry 
 sighed, and felt in his flippant heart something of the vast 
 regret of a fallen woman for lost innocence, and the yet 
 keener regret for lost reputation. While he smiled bit- 
 
 333
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 terly at catching himself in an ingenuous mood, Muriel 
 was asking: 
 
 "But how on earth did you happen to be here? How 
 did you know they would be taking me along this awful 
 road?" 
 
 "That's another complication," said Perry, thinking of 
 the cabaret, the betrayed and neglected Maryla, and of 
 the dance with the gunman's wife. These things were 
 hard to explain agreeably. 
 
 "Anyway, it's wonderful of you!" said Muriel. "I 
 should think you would want everybody in the world to 
 know of your heroism. I'm sure if I saved anybody I'd 
 advertise it myself if I couldn't get it published any other 
 way." 
 
 "Thanks. That's very nice of you. But, you see, my 
 being a married man and all and the young woman who 
 told me being married to one of the gunmen and I sup- 
 pose I ought not to have been at the cabaret it would 
 make it very awkward for everybody. People would 
 wonder about you how it should be me, of all men, who 
 should know you were kidnapped and where you were and 
 all that. You see, it's really pretty well mussed up." 
 
 "I see," Muriel murmured. 
 
 Perry went on: "It wouldn't be very nice for you, or 
 Mrs. Merithew, or for me. Of course, I don't matter. I 
 haven't any reputation to lose. But that's what makes 
 me the very worst person to be mixed up in it. I ought 
 to have sent somebody else, but the time was so short 
 and I was rattled and You understand, don't you?" 
 
 Muriel understood darkly. She was as good as a girl 
 could be; but she was neither blind nor deaf, and young 
 girls know more than they are politely supposed to know, 
 and they overhear more gossip than they are expected to 
 understand. She knew well what a menace gossip is and 
 how like a creeping acid it discolors and gnaws at whatever 
 it reaches. 
 
 She remembered her father's dislike for Perry Merithew, 
 
 334
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 and the general tone people took when they spoke of him. 
 She understood that there must be guilt back of his con- 
 fusion, and she tried to imagine the sort of guilt it was. 
 She imagined it wrong, of course. 
 
 In fact, she assumed that the gunman's wife was 
 Perry's sweetheart. She remembered "Red Ida's" part 
 in her own capture, and she asked suddenly, with startling 
 irrelevance in Perry's mind: 
 
 "Was the the woman who told you about me a little 
 skinny, tough Bowery mucker with red hair and awful 
 clothes?" 
 
 To Muriel's world the much-reformed and highly re- 
 spectable Bowery was still a name for everything slum- 
 mish. 
 
 Perry gasped: "Yes, she was. Why?" 
 
 "Ugh!" said Muriel, with a shudder of disgust for her 
 rescuer. So that was the sort of woman this Mr. Merithew 
 went to cabarets with ! That was the sort of man he was ! 
 
 She retreated from him in a nausea of repugnance. 
 She had danced with him, and he had danced with Red 
 Ida ! She did not understand the immemorial democracy 
 of vice that has made the Sultans bow to the female slaves 
 from the market-place or from the kitchen ; sent many a 
 King Cophetua to the dusty feet of many a beggar-maid, 
 and brought countless coronets and top-hats to grass or 
 carpet before little bare feet, little brogans, and little 
 dancing-slippers. Snobbery ends at the boundaries of sex. 
 
 But Muriel had this to learn and grow used to. It is 
 one of the bitterest lessons that women meet in life. 
 Perry Merithew was the first example that confronted 
 her, and she loathed him temporarily. She blamed him 
 for daring to know her ; she blamed him for daring to lend 
 her money to do charity with. All he was good for now 
 was to complete her rescue and vanish. What an abomi- 
 nable fate it was that she had to be rescued by him! She 
 was instantly as determined to thwart the reporters as 
 Perry was. Suddenly the resolution came to her: 
 
 335
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 " There's just one thing to do," she said, grimly. " Turn 
 the gunmen loose." 
 
 "Let them go?" Perry gasped. 
 
 "Certainly. They're not of the slightest use to me. 
 And Heaven knows I've had enough of their society. I'm 
 sick of the sight of them. And I'm really horribly sleepy." 
 
 Perry glanced at the tableau in the brilliant glow of the 
 four headlights. 
 
 The chauffeur, Groden, in deep silhouette rimmed with 
 light, covered the three gangsters with two revolvers. 
 They stood with arms up like jumping- jacks. The de- 
 tective, Lumm, was "frisking" them scientifically, with 
 deft prods, probes, and slaps. He had already built up 
 in the road a little pyramid of weapons; five revolvers, 
 two knuckle-dusters, two sandbags, three ugly clasp-knives, 
 a slungshot, and some boxes of cartridges. 
 
 The look on the gunmen's faces was the more desperate 
 for being baffled. Hatred made fiends of them. Perry 
 mumbled: 
 
 " It seems hardly right to turn them loose again; they're 
 like mad dogs. Besides, I'm afraid that if I let them go 
 I might be committing some crime or other. It might 
 let me in for a sentence to jail or the penitentiary, or some- 
 thing." 
 
 "That would hardly do, either," Muriel yawned. 
 
 Perry shook his head in amused adoration. He did not 
 believe in logic, arithmetic, consistency, gratitude, or 
 breeches for women. He was used to being used. It 
 rather endeared Muriel to him to find her the spoiled child. 
 But he sighed one of his most effective sighs. 
 
 "We might ask Lumm," he said. "He's a detective." 
 He raised his voice and called him "Oh, Mr. Lumm, 
 would you mind coming here a moment?" 
 
 "Sure!" said Lumm. He cautioned Groden: "Keep 
 'em covered, and if any one of 'em so much as wiggles 
 his little finger shoot 'em all down." 
 
 This pretty thought seemed to terrify Groden more 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 than the three musketeers. Groden's native weapon was 
 an automobile, not artillery. While he stood imagining 
 himself piling up the dead in front of him, Lumm joined 
 Merithew in the twilight by the limousine. 
 
 Perry explained the situation to him and the desired 
 escape from the newspapers. Lumm was puzzled. He 
 dealt largely in the suppression of notoriety, and he sympa- 
 thized. Still, he was not inspired, and he rubbed his large 
 chin hard without result. In the midst of his perplexity 
 Achilles, who had taken Groden's measure, whispered his 
 fellows : 
 
 "I'm gona take a chanst wit' dat guy." 
 
 He made a sudden leap forward at Groden. Groden 
 was afraid to shoot. He fell back in disorder, tripped on 
 his own feet, and sat down hard. Achilles bent to snatch 
 a weapon from the heap on the ground. Lumm, who had 
 been watching with one eye, sent a shot between his very 
 hands. 
 
 Achilles turned a sort of cart-wheel backward and was in- 
 stantly lost in the dark, for the two automobiles confront- 
 ing each other with blazing headlights formed a crater of 
 blinding radiance that made the enveloping gloom im- 
 penetrable to the eye. The moon was struggling behind 
 a mob of clouds. 
 
 Pep Chu and Blip followed Achilles' example and 
 whisked out of sight with uncanny abruptness. 
 
 Lumm started forward in pursuit ; but Perry seized his 
 arm. "Let 'em go." 
 
 "What!" Lumm snarled in a rage of disgust. "Leave 
 'em put a thing like that over on me?" 
 
 But Perry clung to his sleeve. "You do what I tell 
 you to do. They've solved the problem for us." 
 
 Lumm remembered that he was not a policeman. He 
 did not love the police, nor they him. He understood. 
 He grinned. "I'm next," he said. "I get you." 
 
 Perry and Lumm were laughing at Groden's efforts to 
 explain how he would 'a' let 'em have it on'y for slippin', 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 when there came from the dark shore-land of Spuyten 
 Duyvil Creek a sound of splashing, floundering, and cries 
 for help. Achilles had run into the water. 
 
 "Go save him!" Muriel cried. "He'll drown." 
 
 "No such luck, Miss," said Lumm. 
 
 There was a silence that might mean anything. 
 
 Muriel felt a new dread, a kind of guilt, a great fear, 
 an instinct of flight. 
 
 "Let's get away quick!" 
 
 "That's best," said Perry. "Climb into my car." 
 
 Lumm and Groden started to gather up the arsenal in 
 the road. 
 
 " Throw those things into the water," said Perry. They 
 flung them into the dark, and some splashed and soma 
 thudded. 
 
 Perry helped Muriel into his limousine. Lumm 
 climbed to the front seat with Groden. The car moved 
 forward slowly past the other limousine with its staring 
 headlights. 
 
 Groden paused to ask, "What becomes of that car, 
 sir?" 
 
 "It's none of ours," said Perry. "Somebody will find 
 it. Go on." 
 
 "Wait, wait!" Muriel cried. "The money! It may 
 be in there." 
 
 Groden ran back, fumbled about in the deserted limou- 
 sine, found the handbag on the floor, and returned with it. 
 
 Shang and Pep had remembered to transfer it from the 
 taxicab to the limousine, but had forgotten it in the terror 
 of their abrupt arrest. Shang Ganley, the first to escape, 
 was the first to remember it as he fled penniless in the 
 dark. Among all his regrets this would hurt him the 
 longest. 
 
 Muriel opened the handbag. There lay the three 
 thousand-dollar bills. She clutched them out with joy 
 and thrust them into Merithew's palm. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Take them," she said. 
 
 "Me? Why? What is it?" 
 
 "It's the, money you gave me to rescue the Italian boy 
 with. He cost only two thousand. There's your change." 
 
 "But er is he rescued?" 
 
 "I don't know. I hope so. But I've done all I can." 
 
 "This money, though really it embarrasses me." 
 
 "Not half as much as it does me." 
 
 He offered it back, but she pushed it aside. She felt 
 that somehow she was absolving herself from her obliga- 
 tions to this awful person. 
 
 Perry felt the lack of cordiality, the vague displacency 
 of her manner, and it hurt him sharply. He wanted her 
 good favor increasingly as it proved elusive. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he said. "Any time you want it again 
 
 "I'll never want it again! I've finished with slum 
 work and She could hardly say "and you." She 
 hardly dared to think it, it was so hideously ungrateful. 
 Gratitude is one of the most difficult of emotions. 
 
 Perry sighed again, and put the money in his waistcoat 
 pocket as if it were dross. Yet, after all, three thousand 
 dollars was three thousand dollars. It rendered him in- 
 dulgent. He would save the insolent little wretch in 
 spite of herself, finish his rescue, and have done with 
 her. 
 
 "Groden," he called, "don't go back the way we came. 
 We may be asked questions. Isn't there some other way 
 round about?" 
 
 Groden nodded. He knew his Greater New York, and 
 held north to Van Cortlandt Park South, and then ran 
 southerly along the broad ribbon of Mosholu Parkway, 
 along the rim of Bronx Park into the Southern Boulevard, 
 into the Boston Road and the upper twists of Third 
 Avenue and across its Harlem River bridgeway; re- 
 entering Manhattan five miles from the point of exit. 
 Muriel hardly spoke during the long journey. She was 
 heartily ashamed of herself, but she could not forgive fate 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 for landing her at Perry Merithew's mercy, when Dr. 
 Worthing would have been, and tried to be, and ought 
 to have been, her rescuer. 
 
 Perry was surprised that he did not, could not, feel 
 more indignant at Muriel's parsimony of appreciation. 
 He tried to call her a worthless, ungrateful monster, but he 
 could not feel angry at her. He felt angry at himself. 
 He strove to find felicitous expressions, but he was as 
 witless as a yokel. 
 
 And suddenly he recalled what different company this 
 limousine, this little rolling cabinet particulier had housed. 
 Aphra Shaler was not the first to loll there in his arm. 
 Maryla had found it a spider's parlor. Pet Bettany had 
 invaded it and demanded blackmail. Red Ida had 
 leaned in at the window. And now Muriel Schuyler was 
 there ! 
 
 She was so different from the others; she did not be- 
 long at all. The other women crowded mistily into the 
 narrow room like the ghosts of old sweethearts in the trite 
 illustrations. They ridiculed Perry Merithew in the role 
 of squire to a really nice girl like Muriel. 
 
 Here was astounding opportunity beyond the manage- 
 ment of his dreams. He had desired her, and had not 
 known how to get near her; and now he had saved her 
 and she was in his stateroom ! And he could not find a 
 single wile to employ ! 
 
 He felt untimely rather than unworthy. He regretted 
 those sneering pretty ghosts that rode with him, but it 
 was not the remorse of repentance. It was the more 
 usual anger that we feel when our past turns out a bad 
 investment. 
 
 What antipathy is more annoying than that between 
 people who cannot be enthusiastic for the simple reason 
 that they ought to be? Muriel and Perry rode for miles 
 in silence, wasting the night and the solitude that would 
 have been precious to how many separated lovers. 
 
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 They spun through the sleeping streets of the upper 
 town till they approached the corner where the big Schuy- 
 ler mansion lifted its imperial facade to the obsequious 
 moon. Then the detective, Lumm, leaned back and mo- 
 tioned to Perry, who opened the door a little and leaned 
 forward at the crevice to hear Lumm's murmur: 
 
 "There's a bunch of min standin' around the enterance 
 to Miss Schuyler's home, sir." 
 
 "Reporters!" Perry groaned. "Go on by!" He 
 turned to Muriel. "The death-watch is waiting for you." 
 
 She was tired and peevish, and she snapped, "Oh, 
 dear!" with more disgust than the phrase implied. But 
 she did not object. 
 
 "Where to now, sir?" Lumm asked, later. 
 
 "God knows," said Perry. He turned to Muriel. 
 "You could hardly go to my house, could you?" 
 
 Even Muriel was sophisticated enough now to answer, 
 "Hardly!" 
 
 "Or to a hotel?" 
 
 "At this hour?" 
 
 She was always childishly resentful when she was sleepy. 
 And now she was alone in New York homeless. Perry 
 had her on his hands indeed. He had fought to gain her, 
 and now he could not be rid of her. His thoughts were 
 blasphemous till Muriel exclaimed: 
 
 "There's my Aunt Cornelia Mrs. Neff if the house 
 isn't closed up." 
 
 Perry knew Mrs. Neff. He seized the speaking-tube 
 eagerly and directed Groden where to go. 
 
 The house was dark, ugly, forbidding. But Perry got 
 down and rang the bell insistently, till at length a light 
 was made up-stairs. 
 
 "Thank Heaven, Aunt Cornelia is home," Muriel 
 sighed, and hurried from the limousine to the door. 
 
 But the caretaker appeared in a singularly matter-of- 
 fact nightgown and protrusive bare feet. Behind him his 
 fat wife looked like a startled bolster. They had supposed 
 
 34i
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 that the police had rung the bell to notify them that the 
 house was on fire or full of burglars. 
 
 They were hardly relieved to find Perry Merithew and 
 Muriel Schuyler interceding for hospitality like wanderers 
 in a one-house wilderness. 
 
 Muriel explained her plight with her most powdered- 
 sugar graciousness, and they dared not turn her away, 
 especially as they were in a chagrin of guilt: they were 
 supposed to be sleeping in the basement, but, secure in 
 the knowledge of Mrs. Neff's absence in Europe, they 
 occupied her room and slept in her canopied four-poster 
 as snugly as Christopher Sly, the tinker in the Induction. 
 
 Muriel remembered the light in the room she knew t<j 
 be her aunt's. She was not quite too sleepy to be in 
 spired. She smiled, tauntingly: 
 
 "I'll trade secrets with you, Mrs. Mrs. " 
 
 "Mrs. Rauch." 
 
 "Oh yes, Mrs. Rauch. Now, Mrs. Rauch, if you will 
 promise not to tell Mrs. Neff I spent the night here, I'll 
 promise not to tell her that you and your husband use 
 her room." 
 
 " Um Gotteswillen!" gasped Mrs. Rauch. 
 
 Muriel went on. "And I won't mention the bottles 
 of beer there on the console in the hall, if you promise." 
 
 Mrs. Rauch promised hastily, fervently. 
 
 Perry Merithew, lagging superfluous on the door-step, 
 turned away, smirking at the galling irony of his situa- 
 tion. Muriel whistled him back with soft "Sst!" as if 
 she were afraid to waken the street. She whispered: 
 
 "Hadn't somebody better be told not to look for me 
 any further?" 
 
 "Good idea! I'll see to it." 
 
 "And Doctor Doctor the people who were pursuing 
 us ought to be told." 
 
 "The police will send out word." 
 
 "Oh, that's nice! Well, good night! And thank you 
 ever so much again oh, ever so much!" 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 A competent reward, that! For that he had gone 
 jousting through the city, risking his life gunning for 
 gunmen. He thought of Pet Bettany's suspicions and 
 accusations, and her cynical belief that his relations with 
 Muriel Schuyler were intimate. 
 
 He realized again that cynics guess wrong as often as 
 illusionists; he had known of so much evil enjoyed under 
 the shield of innocence, and so much sturdy innocence 
 flourishing in the face of evil appearance and opportunity. 
 
 Perry mused on life and yawned in its face, then he 
 was startled awake by a remembrance of the latest errand 
 Miss Schuyler had given him she was making a positive 
 chore-boy of him, and in the words of the bell-boy's song, 
 "All I get is, Much obliged to you." 
 
 His car was passing a drug-store whose prescription 
 clerk was just putting out his lights for the night, as 
 drowsily as if he had taken his own drugs. Merithew 
 signaled Groden to stop, ran into the store, found a pay- 
 as-you-enter telephone in a booth, dropped a nickel in 
 the slot, and called for "3100 Spring." 
 
 A policemanly voice growled: "Headquarters. What 
 is it?" 
 
 Merithew asked, "Have you found Miss Schuyler yet?" 
 
 "Miss who? Oh yes er not exactly not quite 
 but we're We'll have her any minute now." 
 
 "Well, she's been found. The gang got scared left 
 her in a stolen limousine up Spuyten Duyvil way and ran 
 off. She managed to get to the nearest house and and 
 now she's safe." 
 
 "The hellyousay! Where is she now?" 
 
 "That's my affair." 
 
 "Say, who are you, anyway?" 
 
 "Little Nemo. Good night. Better luck next time." 
 
 He hung up the receiver and left the booth, chuckling. 
 The yawning druggist locked the door after him, and 
 walked away. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 By the time the police traced the number there was 
 no one to answer the inspector's fierce call. 
 
 Perry went to his home, a little consoled by the ex- 
 quisite privilege of teasing the police. Also his conscience 
 rejoiced. He had done a virtuous act, seized an oppor- 
 tunity that vice had placed in his way. It was a paradox 
 for his conscience. If he had not taken Maryla from her 
 shop, if he had not danced with Red Ida, he could not 
 have rescued Muriel. And nobody knew except those 
 of whose silence he was secure. 
 
 He forgot Pet Bettany.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 IF Muriel complained that life was inartistic and badly 
 constructed since it did not permit Dr. Worthing to 
 rescue her, what were Dr. Worthing's thoughts? He 
 had begun the hunt for her, battled for her, risked his 
 life for her, only to have his taxi-charger expire under 
 him. He was taken up as a mere passenger in Winnie 
 Nicolls's racer, and learned that he had a plutocrat for 
 a rival. At last, they could only overtake the gangsters' 
 taxi when it was burned out and abandoned. 
 
 While they stood nonplussed by the apparent evapo- 
 ration of its passengers, the owner of the limousine came 
 forth and began to emit yelps of rage at the loss of his 
 car and his chauffeur. Being only the owner, he could 
 not, of course, remember the license number. 
 
 Nicolls whirled his big racer about and took up the 
 vain pursuit; for a pursuit can hardly succeed when one 
 does not know \vhat he is pursuing nor which way it 
 has gone. He darted frantically up this street, and down 
 that, like a greyhound that has lost the scent. Eventually 
 Roundsman Grebe telephoned to headquarters and learned 
 what Merithew had telephoned that Muriel had been 
 left in the empty limousine. They ran up to Spuyten 
 Duyvil and verified the limousine. There was the least 
 possible satisfaction in that. The only comfort was that 
 they made mutual company in their misery, the police- 
 man, the millionaire, and the surgeon. 
 
 Red Ida had known her man well enough to know that 
 he would suspect her first of all. Her fear of the police 
 and her sorrow for Muriel, perhaps her jealousy of her, 
 
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 had swept her to the terrific deed of telling Perry Merithew 
 what she knew. 
 
 She had known nothing of the situation at home, and 
 wondered what she might find there. In Allen Street she 
 learned from excited crowds that a sensational taxicab 
 battle had begun outside her tenement and rolled north. 
 The sensation lost nothing in repetition. 
 
 Whether Shang came off victor or victim she could 
 not know. But she knew that she was done for as his 
 wife. She ran into her flat and began to hurl into the 
 suit-case all her properties, pitifully few and tawdry. 
 
 She dreaded every moment to hear Shang come in. 
 Her last glance about the room reminded her of his stock 
 of drugs. Those were his ammunition. Without them 
 his pursuit and his brain would be hampered. She 
 emptied all the powders into the sink and washed them 
 away. And what an exorcism of what countless demons 
 that was! Then she hobbled along the streets, lugging 
 her baggage till she reached a station of the Tube. A 
 train carried her under the river into New Jersey. 
 
 Now she had leisure to ponder on her estate. 
 
 She had not paused to collect her wages of song at the 
 cabaret. She had little in her purse and little to pawn. 
 She remembered with sorrow her husband's promise that 
 as soon as he had collected the ransom for Muriel Schuyler 
 he would string her with diamonds till she looked like 
 Luna Park at night. 
 
 She had cut herself out of that. She had broken up 
 her home, thwarted her husband's loftiest ambition and 
 put him in jeopardy and for what? In order to save a 
 multi-billionaire from having to spend a hundred thousand 
 dollars, which he would miss about as much as his finger- 
 nail parings! 
 
 Ida began to reproach herself for cowardice, infidelity, 
 treachery, and imbecility. She called her soul before her 
 soul and condemned it with the most scathing terms in 
 her vocabulary. 
 
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 "You big boob, you! You poor simp! you mutt! you 
 snitch! you damn piker! O Gawd, what a boob I been!" 
 
 About this time the swift-footed Achilles, plastered with 
 mud from his tumble into Spuyten Duyvil Creek, was still 
 running as fast as his legs could carry him. Little Big Blip 
 and Pep Chu were speeding north of Yonkers on a War- 
 burton Avenue street-car. 
 
 But Shang Ganley had changed his course and turned 
 back to town. He was lost in the wilderness where he 
 was. His drug supply needed replenishing. And he 
 wanted a word or two with his wife. 
 
 His instinct and his suspicion told him that Ida had 
 betrayed him. After cautious reconnaissance he ran 
 down into a lonely Subway station and was carried along 
 that huge rat-hole under the city walls, down to his own 
 nest. 
 
 He had hardly the car-fare to take him home to his gory 
 settlement with her. He entered the flat with a heart on 
 fire, and his opening words all ready. 
 
 The disarray of the room was evidence not only of 
 flight, but of guilt. Shang fell into a spasm of rage. He 
 cursed her with black venom. He threatened her with 
 every form of destruction. He hated her with all his 
 might. He could not hate her enough to suit him. He 
 was too weak. His ring was empty. 
 
 He kicked aside a rug and lifted a plank in the floor, 
 disclosing the little warehouse where he had kept the 
 stock of drugs he had begun to sell, and ended by con- 
 suming. Never had he needed his stimulant so much as 
 now. He must think of many things and outwit the witty 
 officers of the witless law. 
 
 He thrust his shivering hand into the space between 
 the joists. His eyes started. He bent down and stared 
 into the dark. He lighted a match and held it till it 
 burnt itself out at his heedless finger-tip. Then he fell 
 flat and screeched. He sniveled, puled, bellowed, chew- 
 ing his tears and jolting out curses and prayers for revenge. 
 
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 She had confiscated all of his powder, every last "deck" 
 of it ! It was late, and it was farther to the nearest illicit 
 drug-store than he had strength to go. 
 
 If there were lower depths of degradation to plumb, 
 he could not imagine them : frustrated in his crime ; robbed, 
 betrayed, and abandoned by his wife; bereft of his vice; 
 sick, penniless, despised ; wanted by nobody on earth but 
 the police. 
 
 After he had wept himself limp he climbed to his feet 
 with the aid of a chair and staggered down the steps into 
 the stupid, dirty daybreak of Allen Street. 
 
 He met a policeman who had just come for him. A 
 general round-up had been ordered by the Deputy Com- 
 missioner. Achilles had been recognized by the police- 
 man whose wrist he broke. The ownership of the taxicab 
 had been instantly traced by its number. All acquaint- 
 ances of Achilles and Blip were in demand at head- 
 quarters. 
 
 Shang was so dejected that it seemed good to have 
 even a policeman to lean on. He was so frantic that he 
 actually begged the officer for a little "happy dust," and 
 got instead a push in the face that flung him against one 
 of the latticed pillars of the Elevated Road. He clung 
 there whimpering till he was peeled loose and half lugged, 
 half carried to the station. By that time he was in such 
 desperate plight of craving, and shrieking so fearfully, 
 that the police surgeon had to provide for him before he 
 could make the necessary answers for the record on the 
 blotter. He was charged with nearly everything, from 
 overspeeding plus resistance to arrest, to mayhem, abduc- 
 tion, and assault with intent to kill When he was asked 
 where his wife was, he said he did not know, and expressed 
 such a violent craving to get her by the throat that they 
 believed him. 
 
 Then he was escorted through the door and down a cor- 
 ridor in a human zoo, to a tiny room with a railing in 
 front of it. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 The city was a dormitory now, sound asleep save for 
 a few corridors where night industries thrived. It was 
 the pre-natal darkest hour, the silentest hour before the 
 alarm-clocks of the humble begin their odious cock-a- 
 doodle-doo. 
 
 Sleep and idleness were almost everywhere. In the 
 newspaper-offices the huge spools of white paper had been 
 swept through the presses and had emerged in folded 
 journals carrying in the largest type the news that Muriel 
 Schuyler was missing and in the power of a desperate 
 gang. The telegraph-wires had spread the same story 
 across the continent and beneath the seas while Muriel 
 slept under an alien roof, slept like a boy that had played 
 too hard and too long. Pet Bettany had cried and sworn 
 herself to sleep and was dreaming herself a Nereid. Perry 
 Merithew snoozed in his own bed. Red Ida tossed on a 
 cot on foreign soil. 
 
 The only way to make a satisfactory code of practical 
 morals is to draw up an ideal set of rules, of "shalls" and 
 "shall nots," then to ignore their interferences, contra- 
 dictions, and dilemmas, to deny all facts that disprove and 
 exaggerate all facts that confirm, and to imagine rewards 
 and remorses that do not arrive; in short, to refuse to 
 permit reason to temper with faith. 
 
 For those who can content themselves with such ready- 
 made mental clothes and feed on such tabloid spiritual 
 food there may be contentment. But to those who recog- 
 nize the swirl of impulse, the infinitely intricate involutions 
 of duty and responsibility, of privilege and power, morals 
 become, like the sciences, an endless source of fascinating 
 mysteries that increase in number and wonder the further 
 they are studied. Only the ignorant, the incurious, or the 
 bigoted can feel positive and secure. 
 
 Here was a drastic instance of it : two highly immoral 
 people, a man of luxury and a woman of squalor, had 
 collaborated in the rescue of an innocent girl. They 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 should have been greeted with angelic music, flowers, and 
 strange exultation. Already they were ashamed of their 
 good deeds, rewarded with disapproval, and tangled in 
 problems that were to grow steadily knottier, until Perry 
 Merithew should be found dead in the slums and Red 
 Ida pursued and arrested for his murder. 
 
 Worthing was so exhausted by the bad night he had 
 made of it, that he had to smoke a lone cigar before he 
 dared attempt sleep. A dull fury of resentment at his 
 luck and jealousy against the anonymous rescuer of his 
 idol tortured him with remorse as for a crime, the crime 
 of missing a climax. 
 
 He had lost Muriel, and probably his job at Bellevue 
 as well. His poor consolation was that it was not much 
 of a job. As he was sinking into a sleep of exhaustion 
 he remembered that he had arranged to be present at 
 the operation on Happy Hanigan. Dr. Eccleston had 
 granted him the privilege. He remembered also that 
 Muriel had promised to be present, too, and hold the 
 boy's hand when he went under the anesthetic. Of 
 course she would not be there, after such an adventure, 
 especially as she never kept engagements. 
 
 He turned his light out and himself in just as the 
 dawn began unrolling its crimson ribbons beyond the 
 eastern roofs.
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 '"T'HE morning papers had already gone to press when 
 1 Perry Merithew informed the police that Muriel 
 Schuyler was safe. Every paper advertised her on the 
 front page as a vanished heiress, kidnapped by street- 
 bucaneers plying under the piratical little flag on the 
 clock of a taxicab. 
 
 The early, or "bulldog," editions for distant points sim- 
 ply described with infinite inaccuracy and contradiction 
 the flight through the streets. The final editions described 
 the discovery of the burnt-out derelict taxicab and the 
 further disappearance of Muriel. 
 
 At eight o'clock that morning Jacob Schuyler's yacht 
 reached New York. On the way to the up-town landing- 
 place it paused long enough in the Bay to send ashore 
 for the newspapers. 
 
 When they came aboard Jacob Schuyler and his wife 
 were eating a poor folks' breakfast of oatmeal and eggs 
 in the sumptuous dining-saloon of their sea-going chateau. 
 Jacob glanced at the front page, as usual, before turning 
 to the financial columns inside. He was about to move 
 his eyes on when he paused, studied the head-lines again, 
 and gasped with such pain and dread that his wife ran 
 round the table to him, thinking he had a stroke of apo- 
 plexy. The stewards set down their trays with a thump 
 and closed in. But it was only Jacob's tongue that was 
 paralyzed. His hand was palsied. He held up an aspen 
 newspaper and pointed with a stuttering forefinger to 
 the dancing lines: 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 MURIEL SCHUYLER KIDNAPPED! 
 
 Young Daughter of Jacob Schuyler Car- 
 ried Off by Desperate Gangsters in 
 Bullet-Riddled Taxicab 
 
 POLICE OUTWITTED 
 AND OUTFOUGHT 
 
 Several Bystanders Shot Down Officer 
 
 Lowber and Chauffeur Sbarra 
 
 Not Expected to Live 
 
 HEIRESS'S WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN 
 
 GRAVE FEARS FOR HER SAFETY 
 
 HER SCREAMS IN VAIN 
 
 The art of the head-line builder consists in breaking 
 news as ungently as possible. His work is not meant for 
 the eyes of the victim's parents. But it was from head- 
 lines that the Schuylers learned of Muriel's adventure, 
 and had no inkling of her comfortable security. Every 
 paper seemed to add some new anguish to their eyes. 
 
 Horrors rained on Jacob Schuyler and his wife in volleys 
 from the ambush of the unexpected. They had no warn- 
 ing and no shelter. 
 
 They were thoroughbreds trained to absorb shocks, 
 but this struck them through the love of their child. 
 They clung together in common and mutual terror like 
 two children lost in the wood. Their hearts were both 
 crying: "My poor child! My poor child!" and his was 
 also crying, "My poor wife!" and hers, "My poor hus- 
 band!" 
 
 There is an ancient idiocy permeating fiction and pub- 
 lic pretense: that the rich do not love or care for their 
 children as the poor do; that the rich prefer lap-dogs and 
 leave their unwelcome offspring to liveried servants, while 
 the poor unanimously devote their entire lives to their 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 young. As if generalized slanders or flatteries were ever 
 worth the ink or the wind it takes to express them. 
 
 The Schuylers and the Angelilli were alike in family 
 passion. They both adored their young, and could hardly 
 endure the mere thought of their suffering. 
 
 Muriel's mother had borne her as other children are 
 borne she had given her blood, her milk, her tears, and 
 her love to her daughter. Of course she was stricken at 
 the picture of her danger. She went up and down, beat- 
 ing her palms together in frantic bewilderment, then 
 flung herself on the lounge, frightened beyond weeping. 
 Her weakness was the strength of Jacob. He had to be 
 strong for her sake and in behalf of his lost ewe-lamb. 
 He had to pretend a confidence he did not feel. 
 
 Money now stepped up in all its glorious panoply, its 
 ever -readiness to help with the whole versatility of its 
 enablements. 
 
 The distraught mother was too heavy for the bulky 
 Jacob to lift, but his heart was the same for her as when, 
 tall and slim and athletic, he had picked up the delicate 
 wisp she was and carried her like a child. Now he was 
 cumbrous and rusty in caresses, but he motioned the 
 stewards and maids out, and lifted her till he could sit 
 by her and hold her in his fat arms and pat her Bible- 
 back and mumble: 
 
 "Don't you worry, honey. I'll bring her home to you 
 in a jiffy. I'll spend a million ten million to run down 
 that pack of wolves. Or if they want a ransom, I'll pay 
 'em all I've got." 
 
 His wife knew as well as he did that money was not 
 omnipotent. She voiced the fears that had been sickening 
 him. 
 
 "But suppose she has been killed! One of the police 
 might have shot her. Or the gunmen might have stabbed 
 her or beaten her to death to keep her from screaming. 
 They may have thrown her out by the roadside somewhere, 
 or down the Palisades. She may be lying wounded now 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 in some horrible ditch. They may have flung her into 
 the river. Her body, her pretty little body, may be Oh, 
 Jacob, Jacob, Jacob! Oh, my baby, my little girl, my 
 little baby girl!" 
 
 He tried to comfort her, but her panic was catching 
 him by the throat. He rose in his might and set his 
 teeth and his fists, and said, "I'll have her here in an 
 hour!" She wanted to follow him, but her knees could not 
 uphold her. 
 
 Jacob ran out on the deck, down the ladder to the 
 launch, and ordered full speed ahead. The only vehicle 
 he found ashore was an anachronistic hansom. He 
 plunged in and ordered the man to gallop to his office. 
 Arrived there, he hurried down the corridor of the build- 
 ing and ordered the elevator-man not to stop at any floor 
 but his. 
 
 In the corridor above he flushed a covey of reporters. 
 They clamored about him, chattering: "May I ask 
 "Can you tell " "Did the" "Is it true that 
 But he pressed right through, storming "Nothing say," 
 "Absolutely nothing say!" 
 
 He was calling out orders as he entered his suite of 
 offices. 
 
 "Send for Pinkerton! And Burns! Get the Com- 
 missioner of Police on the wire! Get District Attorney 
 on another wire! Get my lawyer! Get me a motor-car! 
 A fast one! Where's Chivot? Where in God's name is 
 Chivot?" 
 
 In his own office Mr. Chivot heard him coming. Be- 
 fore Jacob could begin on him Mr. Chivot had said: 
 
 "She's safe, sir. Good morning." 
 
 "Wha at?" 
 
 "Miss Muriel just telephoned in, sir. She said for you 
 not to worry." 
 
 Jacob dropped into his chair and swiveled to and fro 
 idiotically. His anxieties had collapsed under him. 
 
 "Where is she?" he asked. "At home?" 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "No, sir. Miss Schuyler is at She didn't say, sir, 
 just where, but she gave me the number. I'll get it, sir." 
 
 "Did she ask for ransom or anything? Where's my 
 check-book? How much cash have we got?" 
 
 "Oh no, sir pardon me Ah, hello! . . . Yes. ... Is 
 this. . . . One moment, please." 
 
 He set the magic instrument before old Jacob and 
 Jacob groaned into the transmitter one husky, "Hello?" 
 He got back a lilt of youth and love : 
 
 "Hello-o, Daddy! Bless your darling old heart. And 
 mother how's mother? Hello hello hello! oh, dear! 
 I'm cut off. Hello!" 
 
 Jacob had dropped the telephone and was blubbering 
 into his elbow like the overgrown cub he always was 
 where his child was concerned. 
 
 Even Mr. Chivot's eyes looked like marbles with dew 
 on them, and his important Adam's apple went up and 
 down between the ropes. 
 
 But he had the omnipresence of mind to take up the 
 telephone and speak to the distracted Muriel. Before he 
 could make her understand who he was, she stormed at 
 him: 
 
 "Get off the wire! I'm talking! . . . Please go away! 
 . . . Oh, it's you! What's the matter with my father? 
 Where is he? WTiy doesn't he speak to me?" 
 
 "He he is crying," said Mr. Chivot. It was one of 
 the few bftint and undiplomatic statements he had ever 
 made. He was punished instantly; for Muriel set up a 
 howl. Between the two of them, poor Chivot! 
 
 Jacob speedily shamed himself into self-control, nodded 
 Chivot out of the room, and began with fine recovery to 
 berate Muriel for giving him and her mother such a scare. 
 
 "Well, I like that!" she answered, with the gift of anger 
 she had inherited. "I suppose you're disappointed be- 
 cause I got away from those awful men." 
 
 This brought Jacob to terms at once. He poured out 
 love-speeches like a suppliant till he had her pacified. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Then he asked her to go home, and promised that he 
 would join her there as soon as he could collect her mother. 
 Muriel refused to go home, and indicated that she was a 
 fugitive from publicity: "wanted" by the reporters. 
 Jacob knew that no wealth could bribe that army. He 
 told her to put on a veil and take a taxicab to one of the 
 up-river piers, whence he would take her off to the yacht. 
 
 Then he waved aside a dozen important problems, 
 wedged through the tackling reporters, motored back to 
 his launch, and went out to his yacht, flaunting a gleeful 
 handkerchief to the forlorn woman at the rail, and shout- 
 ing across the high-shouldered waves at the slashing prow 
 
 "It's all right, mother. It's all right. The baby is 
 safe. It's all right."
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 
 WORTHING woke with a start. He had forgotten to 
 set his alarm-clock, but a kind of mental alarm-clock 
 shocked him awake. He "felt two natures struggling 
 within him." One whispered, "Stay in bed!" the other 
 thundered, "Get up and get to work." 
 
 He soused his weary frame in a cold tub, then pushed it 
 into his clothes and trundled it to Eccleston's private 
 hospital. Muriel was not there, of course, and Worthing 
 proceeded to prepare himself to assist in the rites of 
 operation in the priestly robes of the surgeon. 
 
 Eccleston was all agog over the morning papers, but 
 he had not told Happy of Muriel's adventure. The boy 
 had excitement enough to occupy him. 
 
 Worthing explained to Happy that Muriel was too busy 
 to come. The boy tried to smother back his overpowering 
 disappointment, but he failed. He sighed: 
 
 "And I fought she was one dame what a guy could 
 bank on her woid. But I guess all skoits is alike. Lem- 
 me hold your hand, Doc. Us men has gotta stick to- 
 gedder." 
 
 He gripped Worthing's triply sterilized fingers and the 
 anesthetist was about to put the candle-snuffer over his 
 face, when there was a tap on the door and Dr. Worthing 
 was called out to the waiting-room, where a densely veiled 
 woman stood. 
 
 Before she lifted the veil Worthing gasped: "Muriel! 
 Miss Schuyler!" 
 
 A hand shot out to his, and a muffled whisper came 
 
 357
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 from the clouds: "Hush! I'm in disguise." She ex- 
 plained her fear of the police and the press, and her plan 
 of flight to her father's yacht. 
 
 "Then why did you risk coming here?" 
 
 "Because I promised to hold Happy's hand, and I I 
 had to see you and tell you how wonderful you were, and 
 how grateful I am." 
 
 "Grateful for what?" 
 
 "If it hadn't been for you I should never have been 
 saved. If you hadn't followed those beasts so closely 
 and turned them off their track and delayed them, they 
 would have got away with me entirely." 
 
 "Do you think that?" he sighed, ecstatically. 
 
 "I know it. I could hear the wretches talk, couldn't 
 I? They didn't gag my ears. And I heard you call to 
 me. That saved me from dying of despair!" 
 
 "Muriel!" he cried, catching her hand again. 
 
 She chuckled. "I've forgotten your first name, I'm 
 afraid. I only heard it once. It's Clinton, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "It's a rather cold name, isn't it? It's one of those 
 first names made over out of a last name." 
 
 "Call me anything you like." 
 
 "I'll have to think up something." 
 
 A stern-faced nurse appeared like a gorgon to ruin the 
 te'te-a-te'te with the grim message, "The surgeons are 
 waiting." 
 
 "Good heavens! and I haven't seen Happy." 
 
 "Better not tell him about your adventure." 
 
 He led her into Happy's room, where the boy lay waxen 
 white, all swaddled and bound for the altar knives. He 
 rolled to his side and shouted: 
 
 "Dere she is! Dere's me best goil! Dese guys was 
 sayin' you was too busy to come, but I never mistrusted 
 you." 
 
 It was a gallant and chivalrous lie. 
 
 Muriel had been preparing an elaborate speech of bon 
 
 358
 
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 voyage to Happy on his cruise, but the anesthetist inter- 
 posed: 
 
 "I'm sorry, but Dr. Eccleston is very busy this morning." 
 
 "All right, all right!" said Happy, severely, then turned 
 his wistful face to Muriel: "Don't you care, sweetheart. 
 Dese stoigeons is just achin' to git deir hands on me. Doc 
 Woithin's tellin' me dey's goin' to toin me into such a 
 woik of art dat dey'll be usin' me in de movies. We'll 
 have time enough to talk after I come t'rough de sausage- 
 machine. Good-by and much ubbliged." 
 
 Muriel bent down and kissed him and left a hasty tear 
 of hers upon his face. He clenched his rough little talons 
 about her soft fingers and nodded to the anesthetist: 
 
 "Get busy, Doc, and douse me glim." 
 
 Muriel tried not to shiver as the cone was pressed over 
 his face. Happy wriggled out from under it at once for 
 a last comment: 
 
 "Say, dis perfumery remines me of de Gas-house Dis- 
 trick where I foist met you. Rememmer? Goo'by!" 
 
 Then he accepted the cone and obeyed the murmurous 
 command to "breathe in deeply." The little bellows of 
 his scrawny chest rose and fell in an impatient eagerness 
 as he gulped down the mystic vapor of annihilation. 
 
 Muriel breathed with him and kept sending messages 
 of courage through her fingers into his. He answered 
 clasp for clasp with a slow diminuendo of power, till at 
 length his hand lay inert in hers and he was at peace. 
 
 It was she that was filled with dread of the sharp in- 
 struments, and terrified with wondering where his soul 
 was hovering while its tenement was invaded and re- 
 paired. They wheeled his body out in the little white 
 tumbril, followed by the priests in their robes. Dr. 
 Worthing dared not shake hands even with her, but he 
 lingered to beg her not to wait. 
 
 "It may be a long time, and it will seem much longer." 
 
 "But I must know what happens," she pleaded. "I 
 must be here when he comes back if he does." 
 
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 "But he will suffer a good deal, you know, and he will 
 think he suffers more than he does." 
 
 "If he can stand it, I ought to be able to," she an- 
 swered. 
 
 He yielded to her lovable stubbornness and left her. 
 
 She spent the interval upon a rack of torture. She 
 paced the floor of the waiting-room, reading books and 
 magazines and watching the hands of the clock; she felt 
 in her own flesh the steels that were searching Happy's 
 body. 
 
 She had not seen the morning papers, and had not 
 dreamed that she would be starred in them as the head- 
 liner of the day. She came across a copy of one of them, 
 and the sight of her name in big type shocked Happy 
 from her thoughts for a time. She had no relish for the 
 notoriety. She took alarm anew at the thought of find- 
 ing herself co-starred in to-morrow's papers with Perry 
 Merithew. She imagined an army of reporters hunting 
 for her; she imagined herself the captive of the police. 
 A girlish desire to hide threw her into a panic. 
 
 The return of the somber procession with the recon- 
 structed shell of Happy Hanigan drove herself out of her 
 thoughts, and she took the boy's limp hand again and 
 held it while the soul resumed the body and strength 
 flowed back into the fingers. Only now he was returning 
 into pain and nausea and cruelly enforced repose. 
 
 Worthing tried to assure her that the distressful out- 
 cries were the mere babblings of delirium, but she could 
 not make any comforting distinction between a soul that 
 only thought it was hurt and a soul that knew it was 
 hurt. 
 
 She blamed herself now for bringing these anguishes 
 upon the boy, and she doubted the assurances that the 
 operation was a brilliant success. She was more afraid 
 now of the reality of recovered life than of the occult 
 terrors of anesthesia. She had no bravery to lend the 
 boy, and wept till he recovered wisdom enough to under- 
 
 360
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 stand and courage enough to pretend that he was not 
 suffering at all. 
 
 He brought his old-time grin into play and laughed 
 hollowly: " It was de gas was hollerin', not me. I'm feel- 
 in' so fine I t'ink I'll take a ride if you got your otter- 
 mobile handy." 
 
 Everybody collaborated with Happy to deceive the 
 nerve-shattered girl, and she was evicted from the room 
 with enough illusions to sustain her. 
 
 Dr. Worthing insisted on riding with her to the dock 
 where the launch from the yacht was waiting. She in- 
 vited him to take dinner there with her, and he needed 
 no urging. 
 
 He turned away, once more the victim of hope. 
 
 When Muriel ran up the ladder to the deck of the yacht, 
 she hugged and kissed her mother, her father, and the 
 maids and shook hands with the servants and the crew. 
 
 Then she settled down to rhapsodize the long epic of 
 her adventure before an audience that copied the luxuri- 
 ous terror of children hearing a beautiful ogre story. 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler wept splendidly, and Jacob stormed and 
 shuddered and swore that she should never be out of 
 their sight again. Muriel said she never wanted to be. 
 One says such things at such times. 
 
 As Muriel described her cruise through midnight New 
 York, they listened as it were with a lilt, and a vivid sense 
 of speed and danger. When she reached the point of her 
 rescue, and told how she stepped out of the stolen limou- 
 sine, they were jigging with excitement. But when she 
 finished with a flourish: "And who do you suppose it 
 was that rescued me? You'll never guess! Mr. Perry 
 Merithew!" their eagerness stopped like a car whose 
 front axle breaks. It was sickening. Perry Merithew's 
 instinct had been true. The very mention of his name 
 sobered the Schuylers. 
 
 "Oh no!" Mrs. Schuyler groaned. 
 12 361
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Agh!" Jacob snarled, and walked out on deck to emit 
 a few necessary curses too strong for the family circle. 
 He came back speechless, but full of wrath. 
 
 With the cantankerousness of human nature, Muriel, 
 who had not yet forgiven Perry Merithew for rescuing 
 her, felt the injustice of her parents' ingratitude, and 
 rushed to his defense. 
 
 "Oh, he was perfectly charming about it. He told me 
 that we must keep out of sight of the reporters. He pro- 
 tected me in every way." 
 
 "It was the least he could have done!" Jacob sneered. 
 
 When people we like do the right thing it is glorious; 
 when people we dislike do their best it is disgusting, for 
 they are spiking our guns. 
 
 Muriel did not waste her time heroizing Perry Merithew 
 before that hostile audience, but its injustice set her heart 
 toward mercy for him. To appease her father and mother, 
 she minimized the r61e he played and maximized the share 
 of Dr. Worthing. 
 
 This seemed to please them no better. If she could 
 have known what Winnie Nicolls tried to do, his name 
 would have pleased her mother. But Dr. Worthing meant 
 nothing to Mrs. Schuyler. To Jacob he meant the young 
 man who aided and abetted Muriel's slumming insanity. 
 Also he meant the uneasiness a father feels at finding the 
 male and romantic element cropping up increasingly in 
 his daughter's chronicles. 
 
 He was sinking into a state of hopeless gloom when 
 Muriel lifted him to the clouds with an explosion of un- 
 dreamed intelligence: 
 
 " Daddy, I can't face the music. I want to go to Europe 
 for a long while. I'm afraid of the police, and I can't 
 stand this sort of thing." 
 
 She caught up the sheaf of morning papers and spread 
 them out. On all of them her name in huge type out- 
 flaunted the day's murderers, embezzlers, politicians, and 
 victims of accident. 
 
 362
 
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 In other times and places the unmarried girl was guarded 
 zealously from the public eye and the public gossip. In 
 these days her name may suddenly be found on a million 
 newspapers. She may find herself the helpless object of 
 international blazonry. 
 
 Muriel had done no wrong. She had suffered wrong. 
 Yet she must be punished like a criminal. She must be 
 besieged and questioned by the police, interpreted and 
 misrepresented by the reporters, offered up as a subject 
 for cynical guesswork, stood on a high pillory with the 
 fierce yellow light of journalism beating on her. 
 
 A modest, well-bred maiden on an errand of mercy, 
 Muriel had fallen among a pack of wolves. Escaped 
 from them, she was to be forced to play Lady Godiva 
 with a brass band ahead and nobody staying within- 
 doors. 
 
 The publicity was outrageous enough in any case, but 
 Jacob revolted at the thought of seeing his daughter's name 
 bracketed in the newspapers with Perry Merithew's. 
 Perry Merithew was the main trouble, and the only ray 
 of light in the whole miserable business was Muriel's will- 
 ingness to escape. Nowadays parents with inconvenient 
 daughters do not slam them into convents for refuge; 
 they send them to Europe. 
 
 Jacob was rejoiced. He ventured a compliment a 
 kind of back-handed compliment: "Muriel, my child, it's 
 the first sensible idea I've heard from you for weeks. I 
 congratulate you." 
 
 Muriel winked at her mother. They always shared the 
 amusement or the anxiety or the anger Jacob occasioned. 
 
 Jacob bustled on: "If you go abroad on one of the 
 steamers, you would be at the mercy of everybody. 
 Those liners are about as private as Broadway. We'll 
 take the yacht. I've a few things to attend to, and I'll 
 be ready." 
 
 "I've a few things to attend to myself," said Muriel. 
 
 "Clothes, of course," Jacob growled, with the ancient 
 363
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 masculine despair at woman's inability to undertake any 
 entei prise without refitting. 
 
 "No, I've got clothes enough." 
 
 Jacob pretended to swoon. "I've lived to hear a 
 woman say that! Or am I having hallucinations?" 
 
 Muriel and her mother exchanged wireless signals again. 
 
 Muriel went on. "You can telephone home to have 
 the trunks packed and smuggled aboard. But I've got 
 to have a heart-to-heart talk with that darling of a 
 Dr. Worthing; I've got to see that the poor Balinsky girl 
 doesn't get deported, and I've got to pay a proper respect 
 to poor Mr. Merithew." 
 
 "Let Chivot attend to it all." 
 
 "Yes, I will! He'll do as well as he did in getting back 
 the Angelillo boy. Is there any word from him, I won- 
 der?" 
 
 They had all been too much absorbed in the narrative 
 of Muriel's disappearance to consider any other news. 
 She scanned the columns eagerly, and there on an inner 
 page was a picture of little Filippo with a story of his re- 
 turn to his family, a picture of him as he came home, a 
 long account of his adventures, the cruelties he had en- 
 dured, and the aid he had given the police in tracing the 
 wretches who had stolen him. 
 
 Muriel, remembering the long anguishes of the boy's 
 people, could imagine the festival they held over his re- 
 covery. She rejoiced to tears and bent her head on the 
 newspaper, and wept. Her parents sorrowed comfortably 
 over her comfortable tears, and they were not angry 
 when she raised her head to say: 
 
 "Aren't you glad I disobeyed you? You see, it's the 
 duty of children to disobey their parents now and then, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 They did not attempt to answer that riddle, nor the 
 next one she posed. 
 
 "Another thing: if it hadn't been for Perry Merithew 
 the boy might never have come home. If it hadn't been 
 
 364
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 for Perry Merithew I might never have come home. 
 How can he be bad when he does so much good that good 
 people might have done and didn't?" 
 
 Jacob was so bewildered by this that he took refuge 
 in a desk-clearing evasion: "I don't have to decide who's 
 good and who's bad. I'm not God, thank God!" 
 
 Muriel and her mother gasped at the sacrilege and 
 looked up to see if a thunderbolt were not crashing 
 through the awning. But none came. 
 
 "Anyway," said Muriel, "we've all got to be polite 
 to Mr. Merithew." 
 
 "No," said Jacob, "I don't have to judge him, but 
 neither do I have to entertain him." 
 
 "You get him mad and he'll tell on me," Muriel threat- 
 ened. This argument went home. 
 
 Jacob surrendered. "All right. Give him a meal and 
 get rid of him." 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler suggested: "You might have him and 
 your doctor for dinner to-night, and finish them both off 
 at once." 
 
 Muriel looked canny. "Have both my beaux here at 
 the same time? Not much!" 
 
 Jacob snorted: "Don't don't talk about those men 
 sentimentally, or I'll throw them both overboard." 
 
 Muriel laughed like a child at a circus over her power 
 to excite such floundering wrath with such a gentle 
 prod. "All righty, Jacob," she said. "Keep your flan- 
 nels on!" 
 
 "The impudence of children nowadays is appalling," 
 Jacob groaned. "Disobedience isn't enough they've 
 got to add insult to indifference." 
 
 Muriel's answer was to lift his arm, place it around her 
 waist, seat herself on the arm of his chair, and twist his 
 resisting neck till she could make a face directly in his. 
 face, then kiss him on the tip of his nose. 
 
 It was the supreme impertinence with which she always, 
 crowned her presumptions, and it always made him sc 
 
 365
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 ferociously ridiculous that he always surrendered with the 
 angry laughter of a boy whose ribs are tickled. 
 
 So long as a family is not devoid of such mischievous 
 tenderness, it is held together by an elastic band that 
 will yield enough to keep from breaking. With Jacob 
 restored to the ranks, Muriel and her mother arranged to 
 invite Merithew to tea in the afternoon, and Worthing 
 to dinner in the evening. The notes were written and 
 sent ashore to be delivered with all stealth. At midnight 
 the yacht was to put out to sea.
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 JDERRY MERITHEW had not had many secrets 
 A whose publication would have been to his credit. 
 Life took him no more seriously than he took life. A kind 
 of joke was played on him now in the fact that the most 
 creditable thing about the most creditable feat he ever 
 achieved was the fact that he recognized the importance 
 of keeping it a secret. That same kind of sarcasm 
 hounded him to his death. 
 
 Perry was chucklingly congratulating himself on the 
 double victory over police and press when his telephone 
 rang. He rashly answered it himself a thing he could 
 rarely afford to do. His non-committal "Well?" evoked 
 a strident: 
 
 "That you, Perry boy?" 
 
 "Oh er ah yes. How are you, Pet?" 
 
 "Punk, thanks. Just able to sit up and eat a bite. I 
 say, old dear, run down to lunch with me at the Vander- 
 bilt. I'm buying." 
 
 "Thanks, but I've " 
 
 "Another engagement? Break it!" 
 
 "Can't." 
 
 "Better come." This was in a darker tone with a trace 
 of threat. 
 
 "Sorry, but" 
 
 Her loud voice went lower. "It's about the mysterious 
 rescuer of Muriel Sch " 
 
 "I'll come!" he hastened to say. The voice grew loud 
 again. 
 
 ' ' Bully ! The Delia Robbia room, at one. " 
 367
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "I'll be there, thank you, damn you!" 
 
 He heard the odious racket of her laughter. He 
 slammed the receiver on the hook and cursed her fer- 
 vently.- 
 
 He longed the more to hear from Muriel. 
 
 He delayed his departure till the last moment, and 
 still no word from her. Fearing that she would telephone 
 in his absence, he did what he almost never did left 
 word with his man where he was to be. 
 
 He found Pet waiting, and they descended the steps 
 to the cellar de luxe, where Pet had reserved a table in 
 the deepest nook. When the head waiter offered Perry 
 the card, Pet took it from him. 
 
 "It's my lunch, Umberto. Two of my cocktails. You 
 remember? And don't put in that sweet gin again, or 
 you'll hear from me." 
 
 Without consulting Perry she ran through the order. 
 When the head waiter had sent the waiters flying, and 
 taken himself off, Perry groaned: 
 
 "I can't eat all that stuff. I just had breakfast." 
 
 "But they say the way to a man's heart is via his turn. 
 And I'm on my way." 
 
 "How much and what for?" 
 
 "Perry darling, when you're so very nice I know you 
 mean to refuse. You're one of those who put sugar on 
 the quinine and quinine on the sugar. But this is busi- 
 ness. I've got something to sell that you want to buy." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Silence." 
 
 "That seems to be your principal stock in trade lately. 
 What do you think you know now?" 
 
 "I know who saved Muriel Schuyler." 
 
 "Really? Tell me! It seems to be quite a mystery. 
 Why don't you notify the police or the papers?" 
 
 "I thought I'd better ask your permission first. Of 
 course I recognized your fine Italian hand. You knew 
 where she was to be taken. You started out to find her." 
 
 368
 
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 "So did Winnie Nicolls, and perhaps he ' 
 
 "Oh no, he didn't! I asked him, and he nearly wept 
 when he said it wasn't his luck." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Anybody but you would have swaggered all over the 
 place." 
 
 "Why not me?" 
 
 "Because you have your own secrets with little Muriel 
 Money passes between you at dances; you know where 
 she is kidnapped ; you go get her, but you don't dare let 
 anybody know it." 
 
 "And why not?" 
 
 "Because, sweet child of my soul because you are 
 one of those darling devils who compromise whatever 
 you touch. Anybody who shakes hands with you smells 
 of brimstone for a week." 
 
 "And yet you lunch with me?" 
 
 "Me? Ha! People couldn't say anything about me 
 half as bad as they've already said. I've had a severe 
 attack of gossipitis, and recovered, and now I'm immune. 
 I can even be seen alone in public with you, Perry darling, 
 and not suffer." 
 
 "But how about me?" he smiled. "Won't I suffer 
 from being seen with you? There are degrees of deviltry 
 among us devils." 
 
 "Don't be humorous, Perry. As I was saying, every- 
 body that is ever going to stop speaking to me has stopped 
 long ago. The rest of them know that I'm on the square, 
 and" 
 
 "I beg your pardon. I missed that last." 
 
 "Even Mrs. Nicolls has asked me up to her blow-out 
 at Newport, and I'm going." 
 
 "Don't let me detain you." 
 
 "I'm traveling on your money." 
 
 "Whew! What's the fare?" 
 
 "Five hundred dollars." 
 
 "Make it New Zealand, and I'll pay it one way." 
 369
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Are you as afraid of me as all that?" 
 
 "I'm not in the least afraid of you." 
 
 "You don't mind my telling the papers, then, that 
 you rescued Muriel Schuyler from the gunmen?" 
 
 "Not at all. Only be sure to address it to the comic 
 supplements. The news editor might ask you where you 
 got such a crazy idea and what evidence you based it on." 
 
 Pet was not shaken at all in her belief, but she was a 
 trifle shaken in her confidence. She assumed a pleading 
 tone; a crucial mistake in her business: 
 
 "Now, Perry, don't try to bluff your grandmother. 
 You got Muriel out of the scrape, and you're trying not 
 to get her into another. It's mighty white of you. All I 
 want is for you to be sweet enough to lend me the money 
 to buy me a costume for Mrs. Nicolls' Au Fond de la 
 Mer. You ought to help me, because if I can get Winnie 
 it takes out of your way a dangerous rival for Muriel's 
 attention." 
 
 This last was a tactical error. It touched Perry's chival- 
 ry to the core, because it put an evil significance upon his 
 interest in Muriel. 
 
 "Look here, Pet. Muriel Schuyler is the decentest 
 young woman I've ever met. And I've only met her 
 once or twice. It's simply unspeakable for you to waste 
 your ghastly imagination on her character." 
 
 " She stands for you, Perry. One rotten apple in a bar- 
 rel, you know. You're mighty anxious to protect her from 
 me, but, by the Lord! you've got to pay for protection." 
 
 "Plain blackmail, eh?" 
 
 "Perry, if you use that word again I'll horsewhip you. 
 I swear I will." 
 
 He smiled, unterrified. "What .word do you prefer, 
 Angel-face?" 
 
 "I'm hard up and I want to borrow some money. I 
 offer to do you a favor and ask you to do me one that's 
 all." 
 
 "Borrow, eh? But borrowing implies returning.' 1 
 
 370
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "I'll return it when I marry Winnie Nicolls." 
 
 "That '11 be the day after Never. When old Mrs. 
 Nicolls invites you to her party that doesn't mean for 
 life. She isn't giving her Winnie away as a souvenir, 
 you know. If you're offering me this as an investment, 
 Pet ump-umm ! ' ' 
 
 She was in such a disarray of anger, anxiety, helpless- 
 ness, desperation, that he was tempted to slip her one of 
 his thousand-dollar bills as a charity. He had such im- 
 pulses, and the more foolish they were the more they 
 fascinated him. 
 
 He was saved from the extravagance by a page who 
 came to his table with the word that he was "wanted 
 on the 'phone by a lady." 
 
 Perry was sure that it was Muriel, and left in such 
 haste that he carried his napkin half-way through the 
 dining-room before he realized it and flung it on the tray 
 of an omnibus. He closed the door of the telephone-booth 
 as gingerly as if it were a boudoir, and, gathering his fea- 
 tures into a gorgeous smile, cooed into the receiver his 
 most honeyfied "Hello." 
 
 It was not Muriel that answered him, but a voice that 
 asked, "Is that choo, Mist' Murryt'ew?" 
 
 "A new maid or somebody speaking for her," he 
 thought, and answered "Yes." 
 
 "Say, listen! I'm talkin' from Noo Joisey." 
 
 "New Jersey! How on earth did you get there?" 
 
 "I got here under the oith. And it was some trip, 
 take it from me. Well say, listen!" 
 
 "Who are you, anyway?" 
 
 "Aw, you know me." 
 
 "No doubt, but I don't place you at the moment." 
 
 "Say, listen! I don't dast give me name. Them tele- 
 phone molls has ears could hear a mile. I'm the little lady 
 you're dancin' with last night and tips you off to how you 
 was to save a soitain pawty was bein' kidnapped. Get 
 me?" 
 
 37i
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Oh yes, of course. How do you do?" 
 
 " I'm grand, I don't think. I'm yours for life for namin' 
 no names in the papers. I been readin' 'em. You can get 
 the N' York paper 'way over here in Joisey City. But they 
 tell me me man is collared." 
 
 "Say that in English, please." 
 
 "Say, listen! Remember me tellin' you me husband 
 was leadin' the gang was doin' the job?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, the flatties nailed urn." 
 
 "Once more, if you don't mind." 
 
 "Aw! he was urrested." 
 
 "Oh, that's too bad! I am sorry." 
 
 "I'm not. If he hadn' 'a' went to jail, I'd V went to 
 the morgue. Honest. I beat it just in time. It was a 
 case of the quick or the dead with me, all right, all right." 
 
 "Oh, I'm so sorry," said Perry, impatiently patient. 
 "But I'm glad to hear that you're safe." 
 
 "Oh yes, I'm safe from me husband; but that don't 
 get me nothin' to eat, you know. If I gotta croak from 
 starvin' I'd rather it was him got me. It would be less 
 trouble for me, and more fun for him. Well, 'z I 's sayin', 
 seems to me like it was kind of up to you and that soitain 
 pawty we spoke of to look after me and see I don't do a 
 fade-away from gettin' out the habit of eatin'. Do you 
 see what I mean?" 
 
 "Well yes, I rather fancy I do." 
 
 "And what you fancy you're goin' to do about it?" 
 
 "I'll have to think it over." 
 
 "While I eat me finger-nails and drink the public air? 
 Not on your sweet life. I done you a good toin and you 
 got a right to slip me some coin and slip it quick." 
 
 "How much of a slip would you need?" 
 
 Ida hoped to get fifty dollars, so she said, "A hundred 
 dollars '11 hold me." 
 
 "All right," said Perry. 
 
 "For a while," Ida hastily amended. 
 
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 Perry shook his head. The sliding scale of the black- 
 mailer's art was being pushed along. But he took down 
 Ida's assumed name and her temporary address, and 
 vowed that he would remit that afternoon. 
 
 He felt that Ida had at least deserved as much as she 
 got. But what had Pet Bettany done to collect wages 
 on? He went back to her with anger and stubbornness 
 in his heart. When Pet reiterated her demand, he did 
 not spare her feelings. Most bluntly he refused her. 
 
 When she threatened to appeal to Muriel again he 
 laughed. "If you learn where she is let me know, will 
 you? I can't find a trace of her." 
 
 Pet snapped: "All right for you, Perry mine. I'll get 
 you yet." 
 
 Then they dismissed the subject, and finished the lunch 
 in bartering small talk and scandal with such amiability 
 that the waiter never suspected that they had quarreled. 
 
 Pet insisted on paying the bill, and they parted at the 
 taxi cab in apparently the friendliest spirit. He went 
 home to find Muriel's invitation to tea on the yacht, and 
 his heart rejoiced. 
 
 But in Pet's heart was rage. She spent much time and 
 some money in calling up Muriel, only to find out that 
 she had vanished. 
 
 Pet did not go to Newport. She did not gleam at Mrs. 
 Nicolls' submarine f6te. She wept like a little fiend 
 deprived of a famous wish. She hated her mother for 
 being what she called poor. She hated Muriel Schuyler 
 for being inaccessible. She hated Perry Merithew for 
 resisting her attack. She hated Perry almost as much as 
 she hated Muriel. 
 
 But she did not inform the newspapers of Perry's rescue, 
 because once more her bolt would be shot. Instead, she 
 promised herself a sufficient squaring of accounts the 
 moment the chance arose.
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 MURIEL dared not go ashore. Her father warned her 
 that the police would be seeking her, and that if she 
 were found she would be held as a witness under heavy 
 bond. He was afraid to go ashore himself; he sent a 
 man to telephone Mr. Chivot to come aboard. And he 
 dropped down the Bay with the yacht and kept steam up. 
 
 Chivot came, and was loaded with errands of the 
 greatest complexity, which he would be sure to remember 
 marvelously and accomplish without the least mistake. 
 
 Muriel commissioned him to collect from the police the 
 money recovered from the kidnappers of the little Angelillo 
 boy, and to devote it to paying the expenses of Happy 
 Hanigan's operation and recovery. Also she insisted that 
 Mr. Chivot should take up the rescue of the Balinsky 
 family from deportation, and carry it to the President of 
 the United States if necessary. 
 
 Mr. Chivot protested that the President was not easy 
 to reach, and that letters of this sort would be simply 
 referred back to the department concerned. 
 
 "If he could only be made to understand, he would 
 interfere, I know," Muriel insisted. 
 
 Mr. Chivot attempted a sarcasm. "You'd better write 
 him all about it yourself." 
 
 To his dismay, Muriel leaped at the idea. "I will!" 
 she cried, like the allegory of Chicago. "How do I ad- 
 dress him: Your Royal Highness? or Your Serene High 
 Mightiness, or Your Gracious Majesty, or how?" 
 
 Mr. Chivot groaned: "You can say 'Your Excellency,' 
 
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 if j'ou want to; but since your father voted against him 
 you might begin, 'Dear Mr. President.'" 
 
 "Is that all?" she gasped. "Why, that's the way you'd 
 address anybody!" 
 
 Mr. Chivot, who knew everything, including his own 
 equality with anybody on earth, explained: "We're like 
 France, where every man is monsieur and every woman 
 madame or mademoiselle." 
 
 After a moment of disappointment at the tameness of 
 it, Muriel felt suddenly a little pang of pride. She 
 laughed. "It's rather nice to live in a country where 
 we're all so equal, isn't it?" 
 
 She had previously regretted the absence of the pomp 
 and circumstance of foreign peerage. Now she felt that 
 it was even more gorgeous to have the glory distributed 
 than to have it restricted to a few coronets and garters 
 and a few yards of black-tailed white ermine. The sun- 
 light has gilt enough for every, one. 
 
 She worked a long while on her letter, tearing up an 
 unconscionable amount of stationery with groans of dis- 
 gust, violently punishing the paper as if it were to blame. 
 At last she threw revision to the winds and wrote it all 
 in one dash, and achieved at least the first essence of a 
 good letter spontaneity. This is what she showed her 
 father: 
 
 DEAR MR. PRESIDENT, I beg a thousand pardons for intrud- 
 ing on so busy a person as Your Excellency must be, especially 
 as you don't like my father's principles and he didn't vote for 
 you. But I'll make him next time, if you can see your way 
 clear to doing me a terribly important favor. And this isn't 
 bribery, either. 
 
 Everybody knows that you are a very just man. I am sure 
 that you will take pleasure in seeing justice done to an awfully 
 pitiful case. I'll tell it as briefly as I can. 
 
 You see, sir, a poor Russian Jew named Michal Balinsky 
 came over here to escape from the Black Hundreds. He worked 
 and starved till he saved money to bring over his wife and 
 
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 daughter. They arrived and passed safely through Ellis 
 Island. But nearly a year later the daughter broke down with 
 nervous prostration. The doctors all except a very brilliant 
 young physician named Clinton Worthing said that she was 
 insane and ordered her deported. This meant that the mother 
 would have to go back with her for ever. And it was danger- 
 ous for them in Russia. And the poor father would be all alone 
 here. He could not go with them, because it would have meant 
 death to him, as it means starvation to the only two he has 
 on earth. It is simply too cruel for words, and I hope I think 
 I know that you will do everything in your power to prevent 
 this cruel, awful, inhuman, un-American crime against a poor lit- 
 tle, harmless, pathetic family. They have suffered enough with- 
 out this Government picking on them. They fled from Russia 
 because it was too cruel for them. You don't want it said that 
 thir country is crueler than Russia, do you? 
 
 The newspapers are cruel enough, as you know all too well. 
 Through no fault of mine I've got to go to Europe on account 
 of them. A poor President can't get away, can you? I want 
 to leave the case of the Balinsky family at your feet. 
 
 This letter is not in proper form for an appeal, but please 
 accept it as a petition thrown into your carriage. And please, 
 oh, please, send word to your Secretary of Labor that he must 
 tinder no circumstances refuse the appeal when it comes before 
 him if it is not there already. 
 
 Dr. Clinton Worthing, an eminent young surgeon of the 
 Bellevue staff, will testify that the girl is not permanently in- 
 sane, and he guarantees to cure her if he is allowed to. And my 
 father and I will guarantee that she does not become a burden 
 on the Government. So I hope and pray that you will stretch 
 out your powerful hand and shelter these poor little innocent 
 sheep from slaughter. 
 
 With no end of thanks in advance, I beg you to believe me, 
 dear Mr. President, 
 
 Most gratefully and respectfully yours, 
 
 MURIEL SCHUYLER. 
 
 Jacob read the letter through and laughed tenderly 
 over it. 
 
 ''What do you think of it?" Muriel asked, anxiously. 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "It's not exactly what Chivot would have written," 
 Jacob smiled. 
 
 "But will the President be offended?" 
 
 "He has daughters," said Jacob, and reached up and 
 caught her cheeks in his palms and dragged her head down 
 within kissing reach. 
 
 She seated herself on the arm of his chair with her dense 
 copper hair shadowing the sparse platinum of his, and be- 
 gan to wheedle. "Daddy, I want you to give me a lot 
 of money to spend on poor people. Won't you?" 
 
 "What do you call a lot?" 
 
 " I don't know. Sometimes a very little will save some 
 awfully nice person from a terrible, terrible tragedy. 
 Sometimes it takes more." 
 
 "I give a lot to the organized charities, and so does 
 your mother." 
 
 " I know, and it does no end of good; but I'd like some 
 that I can call my very own. And I want you to let me 
 engage Dr. Worthing on a salary to go round as a kind 
 of Good Samaritan looking for people that need help." 
 
 "For the Lord's sake!" 
 
 "He's a wonderful physician, and he knows heaps 
 about frauds and swindles, and he wouldn't waste the 
 money." 
 
 "Nonsense, my child!" 
 
 "Then I don't go to Europe. I'll stay here and face 
 the music and drag you all into the papers." 
 
 This pistol at his head brought his hands up again, 
 and he agreed to talk it over with Dr. Worthing at dinner. 
 
 And now the launch came beetling over the water, bear- 
 ing the chivalrous Mr. Merithew to tea. 
 
 Like others of their group, the Schuylers could be either 
 miserly or spendthrift of either money or hospitality. 
 They resolved that Perry Merithew had earned the best 
 the house could afford. 
 
 As he came up the side of the yacht his hand was 
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 seized in both the full, fat hands of Jacob, who exclaimed: 
 "My boy, I can never tell you how grateful I am to you 
 for taking my poor little girl from those hounds. Frankly, 
 I hadn't expected such heroism from you. The tact you 
 displayed did not surprise me, but the heroism God 
 bless you for that." 
 
 Perry stammered, and was as awkward as a baseball 
 hero acknowledging the plaudits of the bleachers. Next 
 he passed into the almost hysterical gratitude of Mrs. 
 Schuyler. And from her into the boyishly awkward 
 acknowledgments of Muriel. 
 
 Tea was served on deck with the best service, but Perry 
 did not take tea. Jacob joined him in a substitute. 
 Something just as bad. 
 
 Muriel made no stint of her praise. She was neither 
 tired nor sleepy now, and she was very, very beautiful 
 in her yachting white, with all New York and Brooklyn 
 and the Bay in a cyclorama round about. 
 
 Perry lost his head completely. She seemed so admi- 
 rable and so nobly desirable that he began to think her 
 not unattainable. He was somewhat older, of course, but 
 he felt as young as he ever had felt, and he permitted his 
 fancy to play upon her, though her mother kept alluding 
 to his wife, his charming wife. Still, wives are not the 
 obstacles nowadays they once were. 
 
 Perry would have been willing to linger there for the 
 rest of his existence. Indeed, Jacob had to get rid of 
 him at last by saying that the launch was going ashore to 
 bring out a dinner guest. He took the hint and made his 
 adieux, covered with phrases of praise and thanks that 
 fairly hung his neck with Hawaiian flower ropes. Then 
 Muriel and her family made haste to change to the dinner 
 uniform. 
 
 When Perry stepped ashore he found a young man wait- 
 ing whom he did not know. Nor did the young man know 
 him. They looked at each other so jealously that their 
 very eyes sparred. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Dr. Worthing came aboard in a state of acute embar- 
 rassment. He was angry at his ignorance. It was his 
 first yacht. But he walked as large as if he owned it. 
 
 Muriel met him at the top of the steps, and he clung 
 to her hand as if she were pulling him out of drowning 
 waters. He frightened her pleasantly by the greediness 
 of his clutch, and she hastened to pass him on to her 
 parents. 
 
 When they had given him warm hand-clasps and re- 
 garded him with the fascinated horror parents feel for 
 young men interested in their young daughters, Muriel 
 said: 
 
 "Speak your piece now, Susan." 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler, who was Susan, glared at Muriel, then 
 began an oration of gratitude for Worthing 's efforts to 
 rescue Muriel. This robbed the taciturn youth of what- 
 ever words he might have had in his possession. He 
 made a few gestures of deprecation, swallowed hard, 
 smiled miserably, felt an idiot. 
 
 When dinner was fairly in progress, Muriel signaled 
 Jacob to attack the job she had imposed on him. 
 
 "My daughter is called abroad rather unexpectedly, 
 Dr. Worthing, and she has to leave a number of things 
 undone. She insisted that I ought to that is, I'm very 
 glad to er I was wondering if you cared to accept a 
 er a kind of a sort of a roving commission." 
 
 Dr. Worthing was bewildered. "I don't believe I 
 quite understand." 
 
 "That's strange," Muriel exclaimed, with a withering 
 glance at her father, "when he explained it so clearly and 
 fully." 
 
 Then she outlined her plan to him as she had outlined 
 it to her father, only with every imaginable difference of 
 manner. Now she was not a spoiled child wheedling 
 further exactions from a father who protested everything 
 on general principles, but she was a coquette practising 
 her wiles on a man. 
 
 379
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 They can't help it, at that age perhaps not at any 
 age; but a spectator at too great a distance to be an 
 auditor would never have imagined that the young 
 woman was asking the young man to accept a salary for 
 acting as her benevolent agent in the slums. 
 
 That was one trouble. She fascinated Worthing so 
 much that all he could think of was how lovable she was, 
 how intolerable her absence would be, and how impossible 
 it was that he should think of taking her wages when he 
 wanted her heart. His mind kept telling him, "If you 
 take a job as her father's employee, you cut yourself off 
 from her hand for ever." There are occasions when love 
 works severance more than hostility. 
 
 He refused with much firmness and as much expression 
 of polite regret as he could manage. 
 
 Muriel sank back disheartened and discouraged. She 
 was not keen enough to realize the compliment he paid 
 her. She felt herself rebuffed. 
 
 Her mother took up the neglected business of talk, 
 and talked about health. 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler and Jacob had reached the age when 
 their souls were fighting for their bodies against increas- 
 ing dispossess proceedings, that must eventually oust 
 them from their tenements. Their interest in their own 
 engines was tremendous. They kept Dr. Worthing talk- 
 ing about the newest theories and practices. 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler was for ever changing physicians; the 
 next doctor was always ^Esculapius himself; the preceding 
 doctor was always a mountebank or a pantaloon. She 
 was soon convinced that Dr. Worthing could prescribe 
 for her the very elixir of life. She overwhelmed him 
 when the roast came in with a quiet remark : 
 
 "Jacob dear, it strikes me that it would be a splendid 
 idea to ask Dr. Worthing to come along with us as our 
 family physician." 
 
 "But Kenneman is already engaged," said Jacob. "He 
 comes aboard to-night." 
 
 380
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 ' ' Ah, Kenneman !' ' groaned Mrs. Schuyler. ' ' He doesn't 
 know anything. He's an old fool!" 
 
 "Well," said Jacob, "it might be arranged. If Dr. 
 Worthing is free." 
 
 Dr. Worthing could not speak. Suddenly the steward 
 had set down upon the table not a huge roast on a silver 
 charger, but a wonderland a cloudy vision of towers 
 and palaces of Alps and Fontainebleaux, with Thames 
 and Rhine like ribbons winding from Killarney to Como. 
 He saw himself with Muriel in oceanic moon-nights and 
 Norwegian midnight sunrises. He saw her at his elbow 
 in motor-cars and gondolas. He visited with her Chamou- 
 nix and Montmarte, the Lido and the Lichtentaler Allee 
 all the places he had read about and had traveled when 
 he studied medicine abroad. 
 
 The steward had placed upon the board a vast platter 
 of romance, and Jacob was carving him a slice of the 
 rare. 
 
 Muriel, too, must have seen such a vision, for she turned 
 pale, then red, then pale again. Her nostrils were tense 
 and her hands uneasy of control. 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler, glancing at Dr. Worthing, saw the tidal 
 wave of blood that overswept his face and his very hands. 
 She saw his gaze leap Murielwards. She turned her 
 eyes on Muriel and saw that she was breathing hard. 
 
 The old lady's training as a duenna had taught her to 
 recognize such crises in the young. She had been young 
 herself once. Her shrewd soul cried: "Oho!" and, 
 "This will never do!" 
 
 Without delaying she sighed: "Still, I suppose it's im- 
 possible. We'll have to get along with Kenneman ftiis 
 voyage. Perhaps Dr. Worthing would come with us 
 next time." 
 
 Dr. Worthing knew that Next Time is the alias of Not 
 at All. His courage wrung from his torture a dismal 
 smile, and he bowed his head. When he looked up the 
 cloudy world had vanished and only a haunch of beef
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 was on the table, and Jacob was carving it with a knife 
 of steel, and carving it thin. 
 
 The rest of the dinner was a funeral feast to him and 
 Muriel. The very hint of the voyage they might have 
 had somehow sufficed to carry their hearts almost as far 
 forward together as if they had actually taken it. There 
 was little speech between them except the conversation of 
 eyes, yet they felt already in a sense betrothed after a 
 long wooing. 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler understood, and was sorry for them both, 
 but she had no intention of allowing the impulsive Muriel 
 to stray any farther into these slumming expeditions. A 
 love-affair with a penniless young physician would be a 
 ludicrous calamity, and the sooner it was prevented the 
 better. 
 
 She hardly allowed Worthing to finish his cigar before 
 she arranged with the sailing-master to appear and say 
 that it was time to send off the launch for Dr. Kenneman, 
 and was anybody going ashore? 
 
 Worthing accepted the conge", and rose with an ill- 
 suppressed sigh, said his good-nights to the elder Schuy- 
 lers, and put out his hand to Muriel. 
 
 "I'll go to the ladder with you," she said; and Mrs. 
 Schuyler made no objection, feeling that frustration would 
 only enhance their emotion. 
 
 "Put a scarf about you, dear," she said. "There's a 
 heavy fog outside." 
 
 And so there was, the deck and stanchions dripping, 
 the lights all haloed, and the air a palpable shimmer in 
 whose fleece everything was speedily smothered. 
 
 "It's a bit thick, isn't it?" said Muriel to the sailor 
 who guided them to the gangway. 
 
 "It is that, Miss. We look like a triplet of 'ysters in 
 a milk stoo." 
 
 The distance to the side of the boat where the launch 
 clung in a mystery of sheen and shadow vas hatefully 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 short. The sailor held his glimmering lantern close to 
 the platform of the little stairway set sidewise like the 
 stoops in Batavia Street. Perhaps it reminded Muriel 
 of that little avenue of her entrance into the realm of 
 empty pockets, for she said: 
 
 "Watch my poor for me till I come back, won't you?" 
 
 "Yes," said Worthing, and put unimaginable fervor 
 into the syllable. 
 
 "And write me often and long always in care of the 
 Credit Lyonnais. Will you remember?" 
 
 Another loaded "Yes." 
 
 "And I'll write you once in a while if I may." 
 
 "If you may!" he groaned. He was afraid of the emo- 
 tion struggling at his throat. He caught her hand and 
 wrung it, afraid .to trust his voice so strangely eager to 
 sob, instead of to say "Good-by." 
 
 He groped into the launch, steadied by the sailor's 
 hand. When he looked up he could not see her, though 
 the air was iridescent. But he heard her soft "Good-by," 
 and answered it. Then the motor of the launch began its 
 cynical "tut tut! tut tut!" and there was a sense of 
 fishlike swerve and dash. She was gone. 
 
 All about was a sound of squawling fog-horns, of splash- 
 ing ferry-boats, thumping tugs, and raucous voices as of 
 contemptuous cloud-gods mocking the folly of the poor 
 young man who let himself love the daughter of the ogre 
 and the ogress in the castle above the clouds. 
 
 Muriel herself was lost in a fog, and little she knew 
 how much bewilderment she was causing. Dr. Worthing's 
 heart was not the only one she was leaving in disorder. 
 Perry Merithew was dreaming of her, too. It was not 
 poverty that stood in his way, for he had wealth, if he 
 would only manage it. 
 
 But while Dr. Worthing was uncertain of his future 
 and rashly planning to attach himself to impossible 
 balloons of hope, Perry Merithew was troubled by the 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 very definite certainty of his past, and was resolving to cut 
 it loose and let it sink. 
 
 He was even now on his way to cast Maryla Sokalska 
 adrift. 
 
 Muriel, from the best part of her heart, had been moved 
 to rescue Maryla from the slums into the realm of beauty 
 at Dutilh's dressmaking shop. She had transplanted an 
 orchid from a jungle to a conservatory, only to have it 
 plucked and worn by its first ruthless admirer. 
 
 There are restless natures that, exhausting every vice 
 in turn, come round at last to being good as a wild novelty 
 worth trying. They degenerate, as it were, into virtue. 
 
 Perry Merithew was aweary of selfish and indecorous 
 women. He would go at once to Maryla Sokalska and 
 set her free or at least return her to the shop where he 
 got her and ask that she be credited to his account. 
 
 It pleased his humor to say to himself that he was 
 doing an honorable thing. And, of course, he was, 
 from one viewpoint. But how would poor Maryla view 
 it? She was of a dark and Oriental blood that placed 
 revenge high among its passions. She was of a warm 
 and luxurious blood that loved slowly, but with deep, 
 burning love, and hated in the same fashion. She had 
 just grown used to her sin, and was comfortably ensconced 
 in it as among silken cushions. Her answer to exile would 
 be the opposite of Rosalind's. She would cry, "What's 
 set free, but banished?" 
 
 Muriel did not know that Maryla owed to her the gain- 
 ing of Merithew's interest, and Maryla would not know 
 that she owed to Muriel the loss of it. 
 
 Like a kitten that has romped through a work-basket, 
 Muriel had gone, dragging at her feet various skeins and 
 intertangling them until by and by the thread of Perry 
 Merithew's life was so knotted in with the others that it 
 had to be snipped off short by the shears of fate.
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 
 '"T'HE latest commodity in Perry Merithew's serial 
 1 seraglio was basking, like a sultana, on a moonlit 
 window-seat the ninth window-seat, counting vertically 
 in an apartment on the upper extreme of Central Park 
 West. 
 
 Maryla was coiled and extended, and contented as a 
 cobra full of warm milk. On the knuckle-dimples of her 
 soft clasped hands her softer chin reposed. Her hair 
 poured down along her cheeks and about her shoulders 
 like a thick syrup, giving the back of her head an ophidian 
 flatness. 
 
 Perry used to say of women: "When you see how flat 
 their heads are in the back, you can't blame them for 
 anything. In fact, you ought never to blame them or 
 try to tame them. Just enjoy them as they grow, or run 
 away from them." That was Perry's opinion. He knew 
 women only in a few phases, and knew those phases too 
 well. 
 
 By thrusting her chin forward a little Maryla could 
 look straight down the windowed precipice to the street. 
 But she preferred to stare drowsily into the polite wilder- 
 ness of Central Park, for when she looked down she was 
 filled with terror lest she yield to those mysterious hands 
 that press the shoulder-blades of people in high places 
 with satanic temptation to step off. 
 
 Maryla's soul had yielded to such an urge, but her 
 body was afraid of it. Her soul had stepped off the 
 lofty if bleak promontory of the poor but honest, and 
 ceased to be both at the same time. But she had felt no 
 
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 crash of ruin as she had been warned she would if ever 
 she "fell." The wings the tempter promised had indeed 
 borne her up. She was afloat in the buoyant mid-air of 
 the demi-monde. 
 
 Part of Maryla's mind was telling her how wicked she 
 was to leave that noble crag of innocence for ever. Part 
 of her mind was telling her how foolish she would have 
 been not to. 
 
 She had lost the high privilege of being the virtuous 
 daughter of the half-starved Sokalskis. Her poor father 
 had helplessly rewarded and honored her obedience with 
 unending toil at a sewing-machine, with harsh words, 
 poor food, coarse clothes, and no diversions and no pa- 
 tience for the love of beauty and fine raiment and amor- 
 ous exploration that youth finds necessary. 
 
 Perry Merithew had insulted her with luxuries, with 
 flowers, jewels, plumes, fashionable gowns, courtship, ex- 
 cursions, and a servant. 
 
 He had left -her to dine alone to-night, but she dined 
 well upon chicken roasted by a black Virginienne, and 
 upon sweet-potatoes grilled, and upon ice-cream imported 
 from the corner. There is a sufficing companionship in 
 good food pleasantly served. And now there was luxury 
 in reclining at ease and watching the huge gilt moon 
 dwindle and silver as it climbed. There was a kind of 
 conversation in the amiable breeze lifting her hair as 
 with a lover's fingers, and fluttering the silken tissue of 
 her peignoir and the ruffles of her expensive linenwear. 
 
 She was so completely cozy that she blessed the name 
 of her destroyer, and mused that if this it was to be 
 ruined, how false were the pretenses of sanctity. 
 
 The late sewing-machinist could hardly believe that she 
 was not dreaming. To make sure that she was awake 
 she struck her palms on the rough stone of the window- 
 sill and clutched in her fingers the string of imitation 
 pearls Perry had given her. She ran the pearls through 
 her fingers like a kind of infernal rosary. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 The only flaw in her contentment was Perry's absence. 
 He was away from her most of the time. At first she had 
 been so glad of idleness after her youth-long labor, that 
 she had never complained to him of his neglect. She had 
 made an industry of telling over to herself the things she 
 had escaped, and of appreciating the things she had 
 gained, including the furniture, the rugs, the pictures. 
 She did not know enough to know how tawdry they were. 
 
 But she had soon begun to miss Perry when he was 
 away. She had learned his name by accident when it 
 slipped from him, but it meant to her nothing of what 
 it meant to other New-Yorkers. She had not dreamed 
 that he was married. She supposed him rich, and he told 
 her nothing of his financial worries or his other entangle- 
 ments. She had not annoyed him with exactions as 
 Aphra Shaler had done. She knew nothing of the brevity 
 of such alliances, as Aphra Shaler did. 
 
 Last night Perry had taken her to the gaudy restaurant 
 where the funny little red-headed woman sang. He had. 
 left Maryla and danced with that girl, and had sat at her 
 table so absorbed in what he was being told, that Maryla 
 felt herself in the way. 
 
 She had resolved never to be an encumbrance on the 
 kind gentleman. So she flipped away and walked back 
 to the nest he had established her in. If he wanted to 
 see her he knew where he had put her. He had not 
 sought her. 
 
 The day had gone by with its flock of hours, one after 
 one. Perry had sent no word, no flowers, no box of 
 candy. Maryla was rebuking herself for a hint of re- 
 sentment. This was heinous ingratitude. Yet she was 
 amazed at the new strength of loneliness that gnawed 
 at her like a hunger. 
 
 She heard a motor-horn in the street, and put her head 
 forward so eagerly that she felt herself slipping over the 
 brink. She caught herself back in a panic of fright, and 
 rolled away from the perilous sill. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 It was not Perry's car. Recovering her composure, 
 Maryla tried to take comfort from the landscape and 
 the cushions and the woven cream of the curtains. She 
 uncoiled and stretched and yawned with all her might 
 and with thoroughness. She walked about the apart- 
 ment, luxuriating in it. It was all Eden in four rooms 
 and a bath. She rubbed a velvety portiere against her 
 cheek. She stroked the glossy upholstery of the best 
 chair. She snapped the electric light on and off; it was 
 a new toy. She patted the little piano as if it were a 
 pony. She tried to poke out a tune with one finger the 
 tune that Red Ida had sung, the one called, "Treat her 
 like a baby." She fell into ludicrous blunders that made 
 her laugh. Then she stumbled into an ancient Jewish 
 melody that made her sad. She tried to sing it, but the 
 index-finger accompaniment jarred her voice off the notes. 
 She quit the piano and paced the floor with shut eyes, 
 chanting like another Miriam. 
 
 By and by she was aware that some one was near. 
 She stopped short and, turning, saw the black face and 
 shining eyes of the cook Perry had installed for her. 
 
 "Oh, it's you, Martha; I did not hear you." 
 
 "But ah hud you, honey. Ah was listenin' at you wif 
 bofe years. Keep right awn singin'; it's a beautiful 
 sawng." 
 
 "It should be if I had the voice to sing." 
 
 "You sing better 'n any mawkin'-bud. But, say, what 
 dat language you sing? Ahrish?" 
 
 "No, no; it is old Hebrew song 'Sholem Aleichem.'" 
 
 "Sholem a-who-Kem?" 
 
 "It means 'Peace be with you.' At home we did sing 
 it Sabbaths, in the eveninks when we have been by the 
 temple. My father did sing and all the whole femmily." 
 She sighed. "I shall not be by- my home on New- Year's 
 day." 
 
 "How can you tell, chile? New-Year's ain't doo fo' fo' 
 months." 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Our New -Year's comes very soon our Roshha- 
 shonah. I did buy post-carts already to send my people. 
 Look." 
 
 She ran to fetch a batch of pasteboard atrocities. It 
 was wonderful that anything could be made so ugly for 
 so little money. 
 
 One of the cards framed a bit of white silk on which 
 a cluster of dismal flowers was embroidered in uncon- 
 genial colors, over a Hebrew motto worked in lavender 
 floss. On another was a gold wheelbarrow loaded with 
 pansies as big as the wheel, and with huge forget-me-nots 
 in blue-green and purple, not to mention two highly em- 
 bossed white birds sprinkled with gilt tinsel. 
 
 The cards delighted Martha's Ethiopian ideals of art 
 and Maryla's Oriental sense of grandeur. 
 
 The simplest of the cards contained a spray of violets 
 and a greeting in Hebrew, with these graceful verses in 
 English: 
 
 Sorry I'm not with you to-day 
 
 To utter my New- Year's Greetings; 
 
 But hope ere twelve months pass away 
 You and I will be meeting. 
 
 Maryla read this very dubious compliment as if it were 
 a classic ode, and tears scurried from her eyes unex- 
 pectedly and spattered the cards. She made haste to 
 dry them with her handkerchief lest they stain and spoil 
 the design. 
 
 Maryla smiled to think how ecstatically her mother and 
 her little fat sister, Dosia, would shriek over these beauti- 
 ful things. Maryla had not gone home since she left off 
 working at Dutilh's. She had not dared to go home and 
 confront her father's eyes. She knew that in his eyes the 
 beauty of her life would be hideous. He was very strict. 
 
 But she had sent many presents home things to wear, 
 to eat, to adorn oneself with; and not only to her mother 
 and sister, but to her father, and even a trinket to Pasin- 
 
 389
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 sky, the boarder, her first admirer. These gifts were 
 atonements, peace-offerings against the day she should 
 venture back. 
 
 When her conscience revolted against her contentment, 
 the best anesthetic she could find for it was the fact 
 that her wickedness enabled her to send into that doleful 
 home of hers things of beauty that otherwise would be 
 unknown there. She used the word "wickedness" in 
 imaginary quotation-marks, for she could not see any- 
 thing harsh or hateful in the gentle graces of her new life. 
 
 The door-bell rang. It startled her. It would not be 
 Perry for he had his own key. A wild thought thrilled 
 her that it might be her father come to punish her, to 
 destroy her for her offense against him. She had sent 
 her address with her last budget of gifts, hoping to get 
 back a letter of thanks at least. What if she had brought 
 his wrath about her head? She was afraid of him with 
 the loving terror of a dog. 
 
 Martha answered the bell and shuffled back to say: 
 "It's a a ge'man; well, not 'zackly a ge'man, neither. 
 He allowed his name was er er somefin' endin' in 
 'insky.'" 
 
 "Not Balinsky, or Pasinsky?" 
 
 "I d'know, honey. All dem 'inskies' soun' alike to 
 me." 
 
 "Well, ask him he should come in." 
 
 Maryla stole behind one of the curtains and watched 
 with amusement the entrance of the family's lone star 
 boarder. 
 
 Pasinsky edged in timidly and stared about the little 
 flat as if it were a great hotel. Finding himself alone, 
 he took a portiere in his hands, folded it, and expertly 
 snapped it to test its fabric. He carried on one arm one 
 of the black leather market-bags they use in Allen Street. 
 It was bulging full. 
 
 Maryla was so flattered by the awe on Pasinsky's face 
 that she giggled and betrayed her hiding-place. Pasinsky's 
 
 390
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 low, broad derby hat rested on his ears. He scraped it 
 off with humility. She ran out and caught both of his 
 hands in hers, babbling: 
 
 "Oh, but I am gled to see you, Henryk. How are you ? 
 You have been well, yes ? And how is mother? And little 
 Dosia, is she happy? And papa, still .well? And grand- 
 father, does he cough yet ? Oh, it is so good to see some- 
 body! You are the only one I see since since I did go 
 away. The canary-beerd sings good, yes ? Did they get 
 the money I sent? What did they buy? Dosia, did she 
 like the pretty dress and the hair-ribbons?" 
 
 She stopped laughing when she saw how pitiful was his 
 smile and how big the tears were in his eyes. 
 
 "You don't speak, Henryk?" 
 
 " Ach, Maryla, you esk so many kvestions. I have only 
 one to esk. Are you was you yet heppy?" 
 
 "Happy? I am in heaven. Sit down once." She 
 motioned him to a chair and flung herself on the window- 
 seat with such carelessness that one of her slippers fell 
 off. Pasinsky bent to pick it up, but she checked him 
 with a gesture. Then she pressed a button in the wall, 
 and in a moment Martha was at the door. 
 
 "Did you ring, missy?" 
 
 "Yes," said Maryla, with a majestic yawn. "Peeck 
 up my sleeper, pleasse." 
 
 " Yassum!" said Martha, wondering at the improvement 
 in Maryla's mind. She was chuckling like a brook as she 
 fitted the slipper on Maryla's foot. Then Maryla mo- 
 tioned her out imperiously, and Martha backed away like 
 a slave of Cleopatra's, except for her chuckles. She 
 understood that Maryla was trying to impress her visitor, 
 and she was in perfect sympathy. Through the closed 
 door came her loud yah-hahs. 
 
 "You see," Maryla said, with the manner of a boastful 
 child. "And you ask am I happy!" 
 
 "It is not the same like your own home," Pasinsky 
 mumbled.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "I should say not. But isn't it fi-ine? And yet, 
 Henryk, believe me, sometimes I get such a homesick- 
 ness I want to go back. Honest! Would you believe 
 me?" 
 
 "If only you did never vent away!" he sighed. 
 
 She caught his meaning, and the red flashed up her 
 throat and over her cheeks so hotly that it seemed to 
 blind her. She changed the subject at once. "What is 
 it you got in that beg presents for me?" 
 
 This threw him into a panic, and he said: "Presents 
 I got. Yes, I got presents for you." 
 
 She ran and, seizing the bag, opened it and poured on 
 the floor the gifts she had sent home, all of them, even 
 the money. She sank down by them, and now a snow- 
 white blush overran her face even to the lips. 
 
 "My presents! My presents!" she moaned. "But 
 for why?" 
 
 "I don't vant to told you." 
 
 "Yes, yes, you got to!" 
 
 "Veil, he says your fadder not me! I dun't said it 
 your fadder says you did buyed dese t'inks vit de 
 vages of of " 
 
 "Sin?" She groaned that hateful word that other 
 people's word. 
 
 Pasinsky nodded and turned his eyes away as from a 
 nakedness. And indeed she felt stripped of her fine rai- 
 ment and fallen in heap. The floor where she huddled 
 was the foot of the cliff. The upholding wings of .Lucifer 
 had closed beneath her at last and let her crash. She 
 was so despicable that her gifts were insults, her atone- 
 ments were swept from the altar with disdain. 
 
 Pasinsky made haste to finish his dismal business. He 
 spoke as if he were the guilty one making the confession, 
 instead of the herald of the condemning judge. 
 
 "I dun't like sayink it, Maryla you know I dun't 
 like but your fadder makes me promise to told you, how 
 de Sokalskis dey are poor and voik hart, and are grindet
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 into de dost, but not yet not yet vill dey take moneysh 
 from de de shame of a daughter of Israel." 
 
 Maryla took the judgment upon her bent neck. There 
 was nothing to answer that her father or his messenger 
 could understand. Men did not need pretty things and 
 caresses, and tenderness, especially not such men as her 
 father, who found his luxury in economy, made a revel 
 over a penny saved and a funeral over anything it bought. 
 
 She could not understand the glory of the malekind 
 that tries to make and keep a home, not only for to-day's 
 comfort, but against to-morrow's menace; the spirit 
 that takes pride in thrift, and finds more beauty in rags 
 receipted for than in mortgaged silks that belong to some 
 cheated creditor. 
 
 Maryla stared at the rejected heap of graces, for which 
 she had exchanged the little ugly handful of bills and 
 coins that Perry Merithew had tossed on the table for 
 her to squander. 
 
 Her idle hand lifted a gorgeous waist she had bought 
 for her mother; a coquettish hat for Dosia with a joyous 
 feather on it ; a wheel of scarlet ribbons for Dosia's hair. 
 Her only answer to Pasinsky's death-warrant was at last 
 a sorrowful question: 
 
 " Papa had a right to leave poor Mutterchen her waist 
 and Dosia what did Dosia say?" 
 
 "It was soch a cryink, dey say not moch." 
 
 Maryla stared at the spoils of her dalliance and sighed : 
 "It is so ogly to be poor! It is so shameful ogly to be 
 poor!" After a time she asked, without looking up, 
 "Henryk, do you do you think of me what my f adder 
 thinks?" 
 
 Pasinsky spun his hideous derby round and round as 
 he answered: "Maryla, I am all a time dreamink. Your 
 fadder says I am a loafer, but me, I vant it all people 
 should be heppy and have deir vish, and make alvays 
 laughink. Sometimes I t'ink I dun't care how somebody 
 gets a heppiness choost so dey get it. And more as avery- 
 13 393
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 body in de voilt it iss you, Maryla, I vant it should 
 get a heppiness." 
 
 She raised brimming eyes of gratitude. He was a 
 Perry Merithew in shoddy, the woman-idolator that goes 
 proudly bankrupt to prettify pretty creatures, and takes 
 his pay in their increased prestige and their selfish en- 
 hancement. 
 
 "You are heppy, yes?" he pleaded. 
 
 "I was," she sighed. 
 
 "He loafs you?" 
 
 Blushes were set in her cheeks like sudden roses and 
 the shame that cast her eyes down was a delicious shame. 
 She nodded. Pasinsky asked the question that changed 
 the roses to another red and weighted the eyelids heavier. 
 
 "For why dun't you marry yoursellufs?" 
 
 It was a question Maryla had often asked her own 
 heart, but never her lover. There was a sacredness about 
 her happiness that made it honest to her, and she longed 
 for Perry to make it honest to the world. He had told 
 her that they would live as Mr. and Mrs. Brown; this 
 spurious title was all he had granted her, and it was for 
 the janitor's sake. But her bliss was too terribly great 
 to imperil by any demands. She had cherished a foolish 
 trust that if she were devoted enough, and patient and 
 cheerful enough, she might make herself indispensable to 
 Perry. 
 
 Pasinsky's question was inopportune, premature, in- 
 convenient, and therefore impertinent. She resented it 
 with the swift anger of guilt, and rose against him. 
 
 "For why do you think we are not married?" 
 
 Pasinsky felt sorry that she should have to try to lie 
 out of it; he shook his head mercifully. "Ach, Maryla, 
 Maryla, you should come home once!" 
 
 He took her hands in his, and his tolerance broke her. 
 She went into his arms and wept. He was all the family 
 she had. 
 
 There Perry Merithew found her when he let himself in 
 
 394
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 with his latch-key. They did not hear him. He stared 
 at them in anger, then in a more insulting amusement. 
 Seeing what manner of man Pasinsky was, the exquisite 
 Perry realized the quality of Maryla's origin. He sneered 
 less at her than at himself. He was ashamed not of his 
 sin, but of his partner in it.
 
 CHAPTER XLVI 
 
 PERRY laughed softly, and Maryla, hearing him, 
 1 started from Pasinsky's embrace and stared at him. 
 Her terror lest he misunderstand and be jealous gave 
 way to a greater terror, for she understood instantly the 
 scornful amusement on his face. All she could say was 
 a stammering: 
 
 "How how do you do? You should meet Mr. 
 Pasinsky Mr. Brown." 
 
 Pasinsky's first glance gave him Perry's measure. He 
 shuddered for Maryla, and faltered, "I am pleased to 
 meet your ackvaintunce." 
 
 Neither man offered the other his hand. Their prides 
 were equal, unless Pasinsky were the more contemptuous. 
 
 Maryla explained: " Mr. Pasinsky is an old friend. He 
 lives by our house." 
 
 Perry nodded and stepped away from the door, as much 
 as to say, "Get out quietly!" 
 
 Pasinsky realized his meaning and could have killed him 
 if Maryla's eyes had not been so full of worship. So he 
 obeyed, mumbling: "I gotta go now. Goot-by, Maryla. 
 Goot-by, Meesteh Meesteh Brown?" 
 
 "Good night," said Perry. 
 
 Maryla went to the door with Pasinsky. When she 
 came back Perry was seated in a chair with his cane 
 athwart his crossed knees, and his hat on the back of his 
 head. It was as if he had put up a barrier against the 
 usual rapture of her greeting. She closed the door and 
 fell back against it, waiting for him to say something. 
 
 He said, "And who's all that?" 
 
 "He is a friend of my people like I told you." 
 396
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Perry nodded toward the heap on the floor. "And 
 what's all that?" 
 
 Maryla told the truth. "I did send home some pres- 
 ents to my people. My f adder would not keep them." 
 
 "And why not?" 
 
 It was not easy for her, but she confessed, "He thinks 
 I should not ought to be here." 
 
 To her dismay, Perry's comment was brusque: "I 
 agree with him." 
 
 It was like a fist against her breast. She recoiled in 
 pain. Perry hated his task, but he had found that the 
 best way to be rid of mistresses was to ignore their senti- 
 mental torments and finish the business in a business-like 
 way, short and sharp: 
 
 "Maryla, I've got bad news." 
 
 She hurried to a chair and sank into it as if to sit down 
 before the blow could knock her down. 
 
 He said: "Maryla, I'm going to I've got to go abroad 
 to Europe." She was so distressed that he softened the 
 blow with a compassionate lie. "I've got to go on 
 business. I I'm sorry, but I've got to go. It's on busi- 
 ness important business. I'm sorry." 
 
 "You come soon beck?" she parleyed, knowing that the 
 end had come. 
 
 "Er no not for a long time. I really don't know 
 when but not for some time." 
 
 She gave him every opportunity to help her. "I will 
 wait." 
 
 "You'd better not," he went on, hating her meekness. 
 "You can stay here till you make your plans. I had to 
 take a lease for four months. You might as well live 
 here. I'll leave you some money not as much as I'd 
 like, for I'm hard up but some money." 
 
 "I thenk you, no," she said, shaking her head. 
 
 He thought of what an indemnity Aphra Shaler would 
 have demanded, and he urged: "Oh, I insist. It's only 
 fair to you." 
 
 397
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Only fair to me!" she echoed with a sick smile. She 
 wanted to scream. She wanted to attack him with a 
 frenzy of hate or of love; she could not tell which. 
 
 But she was slow in everything; serene in sin, and de- 
 mure in her first wrath. She had only her pride to govern 
 her swirl of thoughts, and her pride commanded her to 
 take no charity from this man, to quit on equal terms. 
 She set her chin high on a tortured throat, and said: 
 
 " Don't worry about me. I go. I go." 
 
 From her ringer she twisted the ring he had bought 
 her a gorgeous Montana diamond. From her throat 
 she unclasped the necklace of reconstructed pearls. It 
 was hard to unlock. That little annoyance almost wrecked 
 her self-control. She came near tearing it to pieces in 
 her impatience. 
 
 She laid all his jewelry on the table. Perry glared at 
 it, blushing at its cheapness and at its return. He groped 
 futilely for words. 
 
 She went into the bedroom and got out the little black 
 gown she had worn from Dutilh's shop, the frock she 
 had on in Fort Washington Park. She unshipped the 
 top hook of the waist she had bought with Perry's money ; 
 then remembering, she drew the heavy portieres that 
 were the only door. 
 
 The lonely closing of those funereal hangings shamed 
 Perry and inclined him to remorse. He felt that he must 
 deal more gently with Maryla. He must plead with her 
 not to be hurt, not to refuse to keep his money. 
 
 He parted the curtains and went in where she was, 
 surprising her between the two costumes. She was very, 
 very pretty in a short, white, blue-ribboned affair. He 
 thought that there was no need to hasten her eviction 
 from his life. 
 
 He set his hands on her shoulders and drew her close, 
 and murmured, "Now, little Just Only Maryla, you 
 mustn't." 
 
 But she felt herself already divorced from him. He 
 
 398
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 had lost the right to see her. His caress was a familiarity. 
 With a spasm of revulsion and a sound like a mad dog's 
 cry she writhed away and struck him backward in the 
 face. Her taloned fingers gouged his cheek and brought 
 blood to his torn lips. He felt the loathing in her wrath 
 and he knew that he would have scars to explain, and he 
 snarled: 
 
 "You damned little beast!" 
 
 But she glared at him murderously and laughed uglily: 
 "Huh-huh! huh-huh!" 
 
 He put his handkerchief to his mouth and leaned for- 
 ward in unwonted gawkiness lest the blood drip on his 
 gray plaid coat. Then he went into the bath-room and 
 slapped cold water on his wounds, while Maryla hastily 
 stepped into her old skirt and drew the frock up over 
 her shoulders and fastened it, and put her hat on. 
 
 Maryla was so bewildered with dismay that she put 
 into her hat the hat-pin he had bought for her one day 
 an amethyst-headed hat-pin, with the amethyst held in a 
 gilded claw. She forgot that it was his purchase. It 
 was the only jewelry he had bought her that she carried 
 with her when she hurried through the curtains and out 
 of. the door. She was afraid to meet the eye of the 
 sophisticated elevator-boy, and she trotted down the nine 
 flights of stairs winding about the shaft. 
 
 It seemed that the descent would lead her on down 
 into sheol, but at last she reached the ground floor and 
 walked out of the ornate portal of her gingerbread palace 
 to the pavement. She would have collided with the 
 passers-by if they had not taken pains to avoid her. She 
 moved straight across the wide street. A loping horse 
 drawing a delivery-wagon reared and swerved, or he would 
 have trampled her. The driver of a scudding taxicab 
 turned smartly aside and almost collided with another, 
 or he would have struck her down. The motormen of a 
 north-bound street-car and a south-bound street-car flung 
 
 399
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 themselves furiously on their brakes or the one would have 
 smitten her dead and hurled her body into the guard of 
 the other. She heard neither their yells of warning nor 
 their jeers of revilement. 
 
 She marched in an aisle of safety as the Israelites fled 
 between the reverted waves of the Red Sea. She blun- 
 dered against the low Park wall, then turned south and 
 kept one hand on it till she found a gate.
 
 CHAPTER XLVII 
 
 SHE marched through the thicker night of the wind- 
 ing roads. She paused to rest on the benches now 
 and then, but her mood was onward, and she trudged the 
 miles to the Plaza. All about her were vague couples 
 making love. Their embraces disgusted her. The fog 
 that was so dense on the Bay, where Dr. Worthing was 
 bidding good-by to Muriel Schuyler, was here no more 
 than a thin white smoke softening the lights into half- 
 tone and blurring the shadows. 
 
 She plodded down Fifth Avenue, past the boarded-up 
 palaces, the locked-up churches, the dark-windowed shops, 
 through all the architectural strata down to the lower 
 depths below Washington Square. She turned east. She 
 dragged herself along like a Belgian refugee fleeing from 
 the destruction of her little Louvain to the miserable 
 charity of overcrowded slums. 
 
 She was so lonely and so weary that the thought of 
 home had grown as sweet to her as paradise. She climbed 
 the stairs like a pilgrim toiling the last few steps to heaven. 
 She foresaw a rapturous welcome. Her own people be- 
 came the very symbols of love and of welcome. 
 
 She paused at the door to hear the familiar music of 
 the sewing-machines, the huge crickets of her hearthless 
 home. She did not think of knocking, for it was her home. 
 She opened the door and stepped in. No one heard her 
 over the low rumor of the machines. Her grandfather, 
 still seeming to stitch his white beard into the cloth, saw 
 her and tried to speak, but his coughing choked him 
 and nobody heeded his eternal racket. 
 
 In the stifling air, in the stinted light, they were all 
 401
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 sewing; treadling away at their same old everlasting, 
 ever-hateful bicycle race. Fond as she was of them all, 
 hungry as she was to be at home, she was hit in the face 
 by the hard reality. She could not imagine beauty or 
 comfort here where both had starved. The dream-walk 
 was over, and the truth was worse than the nightmare. 
 Yet this was her one haven, and the fat old slave at the 
 farthest machine was all the mother she had ever had. 
 And the need of sheltering arms wrung from her the cry, 
 "Mamma!" 
 
 All the machines stopped. Three of the weary riders 
 turned to stare with superstitious dread. Big little Dosia 
 was the first to understand. She whirled and ran to 
 Maryla with her arms outstretched. After her waddled 
 her mother, shrieking with joy. Pasinsky rose and stood 
 by his machine. 
 
 Adam alone did not rise. He had not even turned his 
 head. He knew that voice. He had heard it when this 
 Jezebel of a daughter was a tiny child grasping at her 
 mother's young breast. She used to thrust her littlo 
 hand into his beard and cling to a fistful of it till the tear^ 
 came to his eyes. He could imagine back those old 
 scenes, but also, and all too vividly, he could imagine his 
 child in the arms of the man that had desecrated her. 
 
 Adam Sokalski was of those who have such horror of 
 defilement that when they see a chalice soiled they will 
 not cleanse it nor reclaim it; they blame it for its own 
 misfortune and hurl it out of sight or destroy it. 
 
 Adam had loved Maryla well, and hoped that she would 
 be a good daughter till she became a good wife and a good 
 mother and a good grandmother, and so on to a good 
 funeral. She had thrown his hopes into the muck of the 
 world. He longed to be rid of her. 
 
 When Dosia and Rosa had crushed and smothered 
 Maryla with their welcome, they turned to see Adam 
 bowed across his machine, .his fierce hands clenched in 
 
 402
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 his beard. His back was arched like Atlas's under the 
 load of the heavy world. 
 
 Rosa led Maryla forward timidly, murmuring, "Papa 
 papa Maryla iss come beck!" 
 
 "I dun't know no Maryla." 
 
 "Ach, papa!" Rosa pleaded. "Pleass! Pleass!" 
 
 "Once I had a Maryla, but she is voisser as dett al- 
 retty. A cholera on the Goy vat made her so." 
 
 "/a, fa, on him, but not on Maryla." 
 
 "An Maryla auch! Und more yet. He vas only a 
 Chreestian, but she knowed. Comes she here, I toin her 
 owit. I make the door shut in her face." 
 
 Maryla, with a grimace of despair, tried to put away 
 the clutching hands of her mother and go. But Rosa 
 held her fast, imploring: 
 
 "Nu, nu! Papa! papa! Toin around once. Look!" 
 
 Adam rose ominously, turned slowly, stared through 
 fanatic eyes. "Who iss it? I dun't know who iss it. 
 Ach, fa, now I know. It iss dot fine Chreestian lady. 
 Vat makes she here? She iss in de wrong ho'se." 
 
 Pasinsky put out his hand. "Meester Sokalski, I esk 
 you I esk you." Adam knocked his hand away. Pasin- 
 sky appealed to his penury in crafty words. "You 
 should not sendet her avay. She sews good. She makes 
 moch money. Vinter comes soon now." 
 
 Adam retorted, with nausea: "She makes more money 
 by by " Then he broke. "Ach weh! weh! weh! mine 
 baby is dett!" 
 
 He wept loudly, winding his arms about his head like 
 sackcloth. 
 
 Rosa and Dosia ran to him, plied him with prayers to 
 keep her home, to forgive her. Maryla did not speak. 
 She stared at her father, and through him at life and its 
 cruelty. The clay in Adam's heart ached to take her back, 
 but the patriarchal spirit of Mosaic bookkeeping ab- 
 horred such easy cancellation of debt. Yet at length he 
 submitted. 
 
 403
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "All right. Ve keep her. But dun't forgot, Maryla, 
 everybody knows vot you ditt. Your name is a hissink 
 in Ollen Street. You vill be call ' dot Chreestian vomans.' 
 It is de most ponishment to let you stay." 
 
 Maryla was malcontent with life. Suddenly she re- 
 belled: "For why should I live any more? For why? 
 Everybody hates me everybody is glad if I am dead." 
 
 Her hand slid along the leaf of the nearest machine 
 to a pair of great shears the very shears that Balinsky 
 had pressed to his side. She set the double points against 
 her left breast, and would have hammered them in if 
 Pasinsky had not darted forward and knocked them clat- 
 tering to the floor. He caught her hands in his, shout- 
 ing: 
 
 "You should not hoit yourselluf. I dun't care vat you 
 ditt. I loaf you. You can't loaf me, but you gotta live. 
 I gotta have you livink here vere I can see you." 
 
 He fell to his knees, clinging to her hands and praying 
 to her as to a queen, and she turned away as if he were 
 presumptuous. She dragged her fingers from his grip, 
 but he clung about her waist, maundering so frantically 
 that Adam was revolted. His contempt was like spittle 
 in Pasinsky's face. 
 
 "Vat for a dog are you to loaf soch a soch a " 
 
 Before he could venture the word Pasinsky's hand 
 darted out and snatched the shears from the floor, and 
 he sprang to his feet, crying: 
 
 "Adam Sokalski, you say it und I kill you. Make 
 choost once anudder mean void, und I cut de heart out 
 from you." 
 
 Adam was less terrorized than dazed. He flung out 
 his hands in a wide shrug and went back to his sewing- 
 machine. He could understand that so many steps on 
 the treadle meant so many stitches and so many gar- 
 ments finished. That was about all that was left to him 
 to understand. 
 
 Pasinsky's outburst was exhausted by its triumph, and 
 
 404
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 he dropped into a chair, sobbing. Maryla envied him his 
 sobs and the woe they released. She stood by him, pat- 
 ting his shoulders and comforting him. 
 
 "I stay, Henryk. I stay, if you won't cry any more." 
 
 Instantly Pasinsky's childish grief was altered to sobs 
 of laughter. He hugged her hands like miser's gold, and 
 mumbled them. "Ve shall be heppy, too. You see! 
 Tairrible heppy. You goink have nice t'ings vitout help 
 of Goyim. I got viel Geld. For two years I am savink, 
 und now it iss for you. See!" 
 
 He thrust his hand inside his shirt and unpinned a 
 worn old wallet, and spilled on the sewing-machine a tiny 
 wealth of bills and coins. He spread it with his ringers, 
 counting, "Bin funf zwanzig sieben und dreissig" 
 He told it greedily past the hundred. Then he pushed 
 it together and proffered it to her with a flourish. 
 
 Maryla understood how mighty the sum was in his 
 eyes, and she smiled. But she shook her head. 
 
 "Thenk you, Henryk, but I don't want it your 
 money. I want it to woik, and to help my mamma and 
 my Dosia and and my papa what hates me." 
 
 Adam's sewing-machine ran slower, as if relenting, 
 then pushed grimly on again. Maryla took off her hat, 
 laying down the hat -pin which Dosia caught up with 
 cries of admiration. Maryla blushed. She had thought 
 she had brought nothing of Merithew's away. She was 
 tempted to thrust the hat-pin into the stove, but she re- 
 membered how gracious Perry had been when she saw 
 it and exclaimed upon it in the little up-town jewelry- 
 shop, and how he had dragged her inside to purchase 
 it and had bought her a little ring besides. 
 
 So she restored the hat-pin to the hat and hung the hat 
 on its old hook in the wardrobe. Then she came briskly 
 back to the sewing-machine that had been hers. 
 
 "It is good to be home," she said, bravely. "And: to 
 woik is good." She looked at the devout Pasinsky. 
 "But for why is it people cannot love the people they had 
 
 405
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 ought to love? For why must somebody always love 
 somebody far off or wrong?" 
 
 Maryla set her way-worn feet on the treadles, and the 
 thread paid out into the fabric, the coarse, sharp "pants" 
 for poor workmen. Soon she grew wonderfully drowsy. 
 The wheel ran slower and slower, and she fell asleep with 
 her brow on the back of her hand. 
 
 Her father woke her with a not unkindly roughness 
 and ordered her to bed. She tottered to her boudoir 
 under the shelf among the clothes behind the curtain, 
 and undressed while she wavered with sleep. She put on 
 again the coarse nightgown of her wont. She stretched 
 herself out on the hard bed that she shared with Dosia, 
 and on the instant she slept. Her mother bent over her 
 with the down-gazing worship of mothers. Her father 
 did not look at her, but he felt glad to have her safe. 
 
 It was still dark when Maryla woke. Dosia sprawled 
 and usurped more than her share. For all her fat, her 
 knees were sharp. Adam's snore rattled and squawked 
 and ended like a policeman's whistle. Rosa snored in 
 snorts of peculiar swinishness. 
 
 Slowly the daybreak opened a window in the wall of 
 darkness. Slowly it built anew the furniture of the 
 room the idle little sewing-engines, the backs of chairs. 
 Maryla made out her father's profile, his head far back, 
 his mouth a cleft of agony between his mustache and his 
 upward-pointed beard. 
 
 Her mother's body extended in great billows, her fat 
 head rolled down upon her up-rolling bosom. In the cor- 
 ner on a cot the tousled head of Pasinsky looked decapi- 
 tated on its pillow. The morning light burned in white 
 spots on the edges of pots and pans. 
 
 Outside the dirty window she could see across the 
 street other dirty windows and rusty fire-escapes, littered. 
 
 She remembered the fine linen of her yester home, the 
 silk coverlet, the morning light gilding the satiny brass 
 
 406
 
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 rail of her bedstead and flickering like water on the white 
 tile of the bath-room. From that bed she could see across 
 the gilt furniture, past the lacy curtains at the window- 
 seat, out to where the tops of green trees were fluttering 
 plumily. She had but to press a button and the maid 
 came at her call and brought in her ebon hands on an 
 ivorish tray a banquet of fruit and coffee and toast, with 
 a little squat jug of cream. Better than the food was the 
 china and the napery. 
 
 Then she remembered the countless mornings of her 
 life at home, the death of unappeased sleep whence her 
 father used to drag her to her work. She remembered the 
 many mornings when she had wakened early because she 
 was too sleepy to sleep; and how often she had seen her 
 father's snores choked off, had seen his heavy eyes start 
 open in alarm at the light; how she had watched him 
 fight the old battle between need and fatigue, and strug- 
 gle to his elbow and nudge her mother, groaning: 
 
 "Rosa, 's ist heller Tag!" 
 
 How often she had seen her mother roll out to the 
 floor, trying to shake the dear slumber from her famished 
 eyes! And then the clatter of starting the fire. 
 
 The miserable every-morning resurrection for the dooms- 
 day of toil. 
 
 Here loving was loafing, kisses and caresses were a 
 foolishness, silks and jewels and gracious attitudes and 
 plaiting of the hair were a wickedness. Everything that 
 was desirable was abomination everything abominable 
 was duty. 
 
 She had escaped it once, and she had come back to 
 take up the old burden of shame. These denizens of the 
 slime would despise her. Suddenly she felt that it was 
 only her return that was despicable. 
 
 In the window the dingy canary was flopping from 
 perch to perch and back again, pecking at the bars, try- 
 ing to find a way out into the deepening sunlight. Maryla 
 remembered the free birds she had seen in Fort Washing- 
 
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 ton Park with huge tulip-trees for their perches and the 
 world for their cage. She remembered that she had 
 promised her own his liberty. She rose and ran bare- 
 footed to the window and opened the little wire door. 
 
 The bird was afraid of freedom as she had been, and 
 flung itself here and there in the corners with frantic 
 wings. At last she turned the cage on the side, tilted it 
 till the bird fell through, saved itself with unaccustomed 
 struggles, found itself outside, and fluttered to the railing 
 of the fire-escape, wondering at its enfranchisement and 
 afraid of the universe. 
 
 She whispered to it: "Fly away leetla beerd fly 
 away don't be scared." 
 
 But it hopped along the rusty iron rail, chirping un- 
 grateful protests. She thrust out her bare arm and shook 
 her fingers at it. And then it made off on uncertain pin- 
 ions. It drew a little golden wire of flight to the foreign 
 cornice on the other side of the canon and rested from 
 the great voyage. Maryla rejoiced at her deed till a little 
 gang of cockney sparrows saw it and, jealous of its yellow 
 finery, mobbed it and drove it into the wilderness. 
 
 Maryla pondered the dubious benefit of its liberty a 
 moment and took an omen from it. She surrendered to 
 her lot, and was creeping, chilled, back into her bed, when 
 one more glance about the tenement sickened her of pov- 
 erty so violently that she ran behind the curtain of the 
 wardrobe. 
 
 When she emerged she was dressed. She sat on a chair 
 and buttoned her boots stealthily. She found her hat and 
 fastened it to her hair with the amethyst-headed pin. 
 
 She was faint with hunger, and was tempted to make 
 coffee, but she feared to linger. Her father's soul was be- 
 ginning to do battle with sleep, and she knew that if 
 she caught his eye he would redominate her. 
 
 She passed the heap of money Pasinsky had left where 
 he poured it out for her. She hesitated, then she felt that 
 it would please him if she took a little of it. She drew 
 
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 away a ten-dollar bill and a few pieces of silver, and went 
 atiptoe to the door, unlocked it slowly, and opened it so 
 cautiously that it could not squeal in alarm. She paused 
 to whisper to the wretched prisoners she left behind: 
 
 ' ' Good-by good-by !' ' 
 
 Then she stepped into tlie hall and closed the door 
 delicately without sound.
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII 
 
 MARYLA hurried along the streets where everybody 
 abroad thus betimes seemed to be still haggard with 
 unrequited drowsiness. 
 
 She took a street-car to her former boarding-place, and 
 was welcomed to a hall bedroom exactly like her old one, 
 and exactly like ten thousand others in town. 
 
 Then she went to Dutilh's shop, and with a desperately 
 casual smile prepared to broach the elaborate lie she had 
 woven. 
 
 Before she could say that she had been called out of 
 town by the sudden illness of a dear relative, Dutilh 
 stormed at her: 
 
 "Oh, there you are, are you? My God, but you're 
 late! Go hang up your hat, and tell Mrs. Shenstone to 
 slam you into that new Callot." 
 
 He flounced away, and Maryla gazed after him with 
 mingled shame and adoration. She knew that he under- 
 stood. 
 
 Dutilh was experienced in this sort of thing. His ex- 
 perience had educated him beyond sneers or sermons or 
 amusement. He felt sorry that one more pretty adven- 
 turess had tried the primrose path and then been chucked 
 out of it. Since the rush for fall and winter clothes was 
 on, and he could find employment for her again, he was 
 willing to save her the trouble of explanatory fables. He 
 did not resemble a philanthropist, but the person who 
 gives a "fallen" girl the pick-up of a job is the truest 
 charity-worker of all. 
 
 And so Maryla resumed her life as a traveler through 
 numberless beautiful robes. She suffered less desire now 
 
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 to own what she wore. She was glad to tire herself out 
 at her task, since fatigue was the perfect opiate for the 
 long nights and the loneliness and hurt pride. She tired 
 more easily than before, and she was the prey of an in- 
 cessant terror until a mystic negative signal changed 
 suspense to despair and she knew that she was in the 
 employ of nature. Nature had decoyed her into the great 
 trap, and she was the white slave of posterity. 
 
 She began to save her meager earnings with a fierce 
 economy feathering' her nest she was. She added to her 
 income by spending her evenings at embroidery, and she 
 grew deft, since what she made had to be good enough 
 to sell. She showed Dutilh some of her work, and he 
 bought it from her with a kind of pitying gentleness that 
 terrified her, since it implied that his womanly intuition 
 was still at work. 
 
 It happened that the whim of fashion had suddenly 
 altered from clinging integuments to loose-waisted, wide- 
 frilled fantasies of eccentric design; and that was to 
 Maryla's advantage while autumn drifted into winter 
 and December lapsed into January. 
 
 Shortly after the Christian New- Year had been cele- 
 brated with pagan festival, Maryla found that the dis- 
 tance between her boarding-house and the shop had 
 grown immensely longer, and it was up-hill both ways. 
 Now-a-mornings she was exhausted when she reached the 
 clothes conservatory, and it was such a task exchanging 
 her street shoes for her slippers that she almost fell for- 
 ward on her face. 
 
 One afternoon Mrs. Shenstone brought her a gown of 
 more sedate maturity than Maryla usually exhibited. 
 When she walked out in it, she found that Dutilh was 
 paying great deference to a beautiful matron whose white 
 hair was like a graceful sarcasm. At her side was a very 
 young man dressed with the swagger of a collegian. The 
 woman seemed to like the gown Maryla marched in, but 
 the young man growled: 
 
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 "Ah, cut it out, mater. That '11 do for your coming-in 
 party at the Old Ladies' Home; but I'm taking you to a 
 dance, and you're going to be the kid sister of all the 
 girls." 
 
 The woman frowned amiably: "Now, Perry, don't 
 flatter your old mother." And she smiled up to Dutilh. 
 "My son is home on his first college vacation, and he in- 
 sists on dragging me to a dance. He wouldn't let me 
 buy anything at my usual shop. He said he'd stake me 
 to something giddy." 
 
 "Your son is quite right," said Dutilh. "It makes 
 me sick to see a young and beautiful debutante let her- 
 sslf be pushed into the chaperon class. Your son has his 
 father's good taste. Is he still abroad, your husband- 
 Mrs. Merithew?" 
 
 Maryla felt the floor see-sawing beneath her. She 
 turned and made blindly for the dressing-room. She 
 heard Dutilh calling something to her, but she dared not 
 pause to find out what it was. She ran to Mrs. Shenstone, 
 maundering: "Get me out of this! Get me out of this!" 
 
 She began to flap her hands and beat her breast as if 
 she were suffocating. Mrs. Shenstone whipped the cos- 
 tume over her head and pushed her into a chair. 
 
 Dutilh followed close, and was about to berate Maryla 
 when he saw her state of mind. The hysterical typhoon 
 that swept his models without warning was a hazard of 
 the trade. But they held one field where men could not 
 be substituted for them. 
 
 Dutilh expended on Mrs. Shenstone the vitriol he had 
 prepared for Maryla: "Put that Cubist gown on one of 
 the other girls and hustle her out. And let Maryla alone. 
 Can't you see she's sick?" 
 
 The substitute was wrapped in a fantastic costume and 
 hurried to the firing-line. Mrs. Shenstone followed, and 
 Maryla, abandoned to solitude, regained control of her- 
 
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 self. But she sat still, brooding over many things. The 
 final horror of her plight was the discovery that Merithew 
 had a wife and a grown son. 
 
 A little later Dutilh poked his head in at the door. 
 He was almost shy in his manner when he spoke: " You're 
 on your feet too much, my child. You run along home 
 and stay there till you get stronger." 
 
 "But money I've got to make money!" 
 
 " I'll keep you busy at embroidery jobs, and you'll make 
 just as much there as here. Run along now and take care 
 of yourself. If you need anything, or any friends, let 
 me know. And for God's sake don't blubber. Get out 
 now. I'm busy." 
 
 Maryla could not find words to express her gratitude 
 and her contrition, but her eyes were flooded with thanks. 
 
 She went slowly back to her boarding-house. She 
 managed by working almost from morning to morning 
 to earn something more than her living expenses. Her 
 savings she put away in a safe place against the great 
 debut. 
 
 She had ample time to ponder the solemn consequences 
 of her frivolous romance. She was honest enough to 
 blame herself for her misfortune more than the man. 
 She felt that she was undergoing a righteous penance. 
 She had done heinous wrong and had known it at the 
 time. Half of the wild sweetness of her sin had been the 
 sin of it. Jehovah was a just God. He was a shrewd 
 collector, but He did not cheat. 
 
 But the man where was he? What penalty was he 
 paying? What penalty would ever be exacted from him? 
 
 She felt that Perry Merithew was a very miserable 
 scoundrel. He had a beautiful wife and a fine son, yet 
 he did not keep good. She began to see why such light, 
 handsome, amusing merrymen as he were regarded with 
 contempt and hostility by solemner men like her father. 
 She began to feel that her father, hard-toiling, home- 
 keeping sloven that he was, was a more beautiful soul
 
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 than the exquisite Perry. She began to understand what 
 ugly things result from the longing for pretty things. 
 
 She began to despise Merry Perry, and from that to 
 hate him yet deliberately as always. Her love ebbed 
 out tardily, and her hatred replaced it tardily, but it was 
 filling her soul. Her mood was no longer one of hurt 
 pride, of cowering shame, and meek repentance. It was 
 an Israelitic mood of wrath against the snarer of her feet, 
 of wrath against the coward who gave women sons and 
 abandoned them. 
 
 She began to hate him with the wild-beast hatred a 
 young female animal feels for the father of its young. 
 
 Dire schemes of punishment began to occupy her 
 thoughts. She sat alone in a little cold room, embroidering 
 flowers of thread upon meshes of thread, and crocheting 
 snares for Merry Perry's feet to revenge the snare* he 
 had spread for hers.
 
 CHAPTER XLIX 
 
 MURIEL had not meant to stay away so long, but 
 fear of the New York newspapers and of the police 
 kept her abroad till the spell of Europe regained control 
 over her. 
 
 Friends and relatives of hers were sown broadcast about 
 Europe by international marriages. She was beckoned 
 from chateau to castle, and from Schloss to palazzo, with 
 various hotels between. She received more or less unwel- 
 come tuition in the courtship customs of various nations, 
 and she heard the words "beautiful," "cruel," "adora- 
 tion," "mercy," and "marriage" in several languages. 
 She laughed at them all more or less sincerely, and liked 
 men more or less polyandrously, never dreaming that 
 within a year most of them would be crouching in battle- 
 trenches, or fighting in the clouds or under the sea, or 
 writhing in military hospitals or buried in lonely ditches. 
 And that Perry Merithew would be dead in New York. 
 
 She traversed the Europe that will never be again. 
 She dallied in Rheims and in Louvain and Liege. Officers 
 of every uniform attempted flirtations with her. They 
 had little to excite them then except their studies for a 
 war that was ridiculously improbable. 
 
 Muriel had qualms of conscience for the neglected chil- 
 dren of her own country, and she vowed that she would 
 take every next steamer that was sailing westward. But 
 she was young, and the selection of a mate was inevitably 
 her chief industry. And she could always find some ex- 
 cuse before her own accusatory self by blaming her father 
 and mother.
 
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 The long crossing on -the yacht had given her time to 
 write to Worthing almost every day, and from the first 
 port they touched she had sent him a mass of pages 
 that was a trifle small for a volume, but ponderous for a 
 letter. 
 
 The letter had glowed with a distinct feeling that all 
 of the poor of New York were her immediate children, 
 and that Dr. Worthing was their spiritual father and actual 
 guardian till she returned. But the rich and poor of 
 Europe eclipsed the distant pauperdom, and by the time 
 Dr. Worthing had received her letter and his answer had 
 reached her, she had pretty well forgotten exactly what 
 she had said. Also, she seemed to feel that his answer 
 lacked the ebullience of her letter. 
 
 And that was true. In Muriel's presence Worthing 
 was another man. She had come at him out of the dark 
 like an automobile at night; the look in her eyes blinded 
 him like a pair of headlights. He did not know how to 
 steer his own heart except straight into the light. 
 
 But when she had gone on down the road he found 
 himself in the dark again in the gutter with his little tin 
 car, ashamed of the contrast with the imported limousine 
 that glided by, glistening and sumptuous. 
 
 A rich young man in love with a poor young woman 
 has always been a romantic and noble person in any 
 literature; but in America, at least, the other way about 
 leaves the young man ridiculous and ignoble. Suppose 
 Worthing made conquest of Muriel and became her hus- 
 band, what would he be on that yacht but a poor rela- 
 tion by marriage? His salary for a year would not pay 
 to keep the yacht in commission for a week. 
 
 Dr. Worthing did not believe in vermiform appendices. 
 He cut them off when he had the slightest excuse. He 
 would not care to be the vermiform appendix of a rich 
 family. 
 
 When he received Muriel's first letter it threw him into 
 a fever of longing, but he refrained from answering it till 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 cold reason had assuaged his temperature. Then he 
 wrote amiably, with an unintentional effect of condescen- 
 sion. Muriel, finding her first rhapsody answered long 
 after she had written other rhapsodies, felt the aloofness 
 of his manner and resented it. Her next letter showed 
 that feeling. It reached him in time to allay the fever 
 her previous letters had wrought him to again. His an- 
 swer to that was one of iciclic phrasing. 
 
 Correspondence across the ocean is one long anachro- 
 nism at best, since the letter that arrives is never in an- 
 swer to the last one sent, and never finds one in the same 
 mood. 
 
 Muriel learned that the Balinskys had been rescued 
 from deportation at the President's direct order. In 
 fact, the President had answered Muriel's letter to him 
 in much the same spirit, and had won from her the final 
 praise that he was "an awfully nice man." 
 
 Worthing wrote that he had put the girl Rachel into an 
 institution, where she was having the best of care. He 
 wrote her that Happy Hanigan's operation had not been 
 the success expected, and his recuperation had not been 
 ideal. A further operation was required, since the pov- 
 erty of the boy's parents, his poor food, and his hard- 
 ships and the delay in submitting to surgery had all 
 worked against him; but that he was now enjoying all 
 the resources of science. 
 
 Worthing, indeed, had left his place as interne at 
 Bellevue for a post on the staff of Dr. Eccleston, who had 
 made him his assistant and opened up to him a suddenly 
 enlarged career. He bought himself a little automobilette 
 on borrowed money in order to visit the patients he 
 expected to acquire. 
 
 His earnings had doubled now; and yet, in the presence 
 of a thousand, twice two is not much more than once two 
 was in the first place. He realized this in time to keep 
 from cabling Muriel a proposal of marriage. 
 
 Muriel wrote a tear-stained letter over Happy Hani-
 
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 gan's delayed miracle, and she wrote a letter full of super* 
 latives over Worthing's success; but he was busy at his 
 solemn tasks, and she at her trade of pastimes. 
 
 Muriel read in the Paris Herald and in the belated 
 American papers of the bitter winter New York was 
 experiencing, and how the unemployed and the unshel- 
 tered myriads suffered ; how even the Municipal Lodging- 
 House could not provide for the doleful flocks harried in 
 by the wolfish night winds. 
 
 She begged to go home to their aid, but her mother re- 
 fused to cross the ocean in midwinter, and forbade Muriel 
 to go over alone. They sent subscriptions and instruc- 
 tions to Mr. Chivot to relax the purse-strings, but that 
 was not the same. 
 
 Perry Merithew bobbed up shortly after her arrival 
 in Europe, and expressed a somewhat overdone surprise 
 and a somewhat overstrained delight at happening upon 
 the Schuylers in the lobby of the Opera. 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler spoiled his evening by saying: "And how 
 is your darling wife? And is she with j^ou? And your 
 dear boy? How is he liking Harvard?" 
 
 Perry said that his boy was playing hard at college, 
 and his wife would join him shortly. This reassured Mrs. 
 Schuyler, and she permitted Perry to be handy man about 
 the town. He paid violent court to Mrs. Schuyler, and 
 seemed to leave Muriel so much in the lurch that she 
 gave him a good deal of attention when she could. She 
 made one or two excursions with Perry to places where a 
 careful young girl does not take her innocent old mother. 
 But she was in small danger from the dangerous Perry, 
 because he reverenced her with a solemnity he had not 
 dreamed himself capable of. He was rather proud of 
 himself. 
 
 The fantastic mushroom notion of making Muriel his 
 wife flourished in the subcellar of his soul. He deter- 
 mined that as soon as the present wearer of his "Mrs." 
 arrived abroad he would broach the subject of a divorce. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Mrs. Perry came; he broached it; and she declined it. 
 She asked him who his new fancy was, and she suspected 
 everybody but Muriel. He vowed that he would force 
 her to free him, but she laughed back the discouraging 
 statement that if she had stood as much as she had stood 
 all these years, she would manage to stand still worse if he 
 could manage to achieve it. 
 
 Mrs. Merithew was determined to keep up the home 
 for their boy's sake. A cynical mind might have won- 
 dered what the word "home" could represent, with the 
 father always away and always unfaithful, and the mother 
 indifferent. 
 
 When Perry sought to escape from his wife back to 
 Muriel's environment, he found that both Muriel and her 
 mother insisted on including Mrs. Merithew in all their 
 invitations, and she persisted in accepting them. 
 
 The difficulties of courting the future Mrs. Merithew 
 under the lorgnon of the present Mrs. Merithew were 
 too severe even for Perry's advanced technic, and he gave 
 up trying. 
 
 Just in time the neglected Aphra Shaler arrived abroad 
 with an enormously wealthy and ignorant copper-crat, 
 who blatantly criticized the frog-eating Frenchies and 
 generally disgraced America by the things he found fault 
 with in France. He was so tiresome and crass that even 
 Aphra was ashamed to be seen and heard with him. 
 Perry found a melancholy amusement in borrowing her 
 from his bewildered compatriot. 
 
 Mrs. Merithew, disgusted, went back to America to 
 spend the Christmas vacation with her son. By that time 
 Perry had lost track of Muriel and lost patience with 
 Aphra. He sought distraction in Monte Carlo and in 
 Tangiers, but a longing to settle down was driving him 
 to a frenzy. 
 
 In the spring he went back to Paris, bent on desperate 
 courtship; but he found that Muriel had gone to Carls- 
 bad. Perry hated Carlsbad, but he followed her thither, 
 
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 and stomached the waters in order to quaff the nectar 
 of Muriel's presence; spent hours of promenade with 
 Jacob and with Susan for the sake of being near Muriel. 
 She made no bones of leaving him stranded with her 
 parents when younger suitors proffered more congenial 
 entertainment. 
 
 All in all, Perry's cup of life tasted just like the Sprudel 
 water he imbibed insipid, lukewarm, acrid. 
 
 The improvement the water he drank worked on his 
 liver was lost in the aggravated distress of his spleen, 
 ,-uid at length he pronounced himself cured and fled.
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 MARYLA'S landlady had had her suspicions for some 
 time; but she needed the rental money, and mind- 
 your-own-business was her policy. This protected Maryla 
 till two older and more profitable tenants threatened to 
 leave, whereupon she rose in her wrath and expelled 
 Maryla. 
 
 The landlady's language and manner were not gracious, 
 but her moral springboard was fastened on the very bul- 
 warks of society. Lodging-houses cannot succeed in at- 
 tracting substantial customers if they encourage young 
 unmarried ladies to excesses of domesticity. And, if 
 anybody is ever going to rebuke anything at all, it would 
 surely be such disregard of the purity and security of the 
 race as Maryla had shown. 
 
 In the black wrath of her shame, as she lugged her be- 
 longings down the street, Maryla made one weary, half- 
 insane resolve to find Perry and force him to provide for 
 her or skewer his miserable heart with the amethystine 
 pin. But Perry had not yet come back from Europe, and 
 she accepted her doom as something arranged. 
 
 When she found other lodgings she gave out that she 
 was the widow of an imaginary man recently run over by 
 a street-car. There are so many such widows that the 
 story was accepted without inquiry. Maryla was per- 
 suaded by her new landlady to save danger and expense 
 by intrusting herself to a maternity hospital, where the 
 benevolent city acted as Lucina with as much skill and 
 precaution as a millionaire could have procured. 
 
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 Maryla was aghast to find that she did not feel an in- 
 stant passion of love for the child. She had hated its 
 father and herself so much that there was no love for 
 the baby's heritage. It was a girl, and naturally not 
 pretty at first, and naturally very noisy and nasty and 
 exacting and selfish; and it kept very irregular hours. 
 
 In due time Maryla crept back to her boarding-house 
 with her new luggage. The baby proclaimed its arrival 
 with a fanfare of uproar. It was its own brass band. It 
 made itself a nuisance to the boarders, who needed sleep 
 occasionally. A baby makes a large crowd in a small bed- 
 room, and it interfered with Maryla's ability to earn the 
 very money itself required in such abundance. 
 
 Maryla had moods of pride and idolatry and frenzies 
 of love, but even these told her that it was for the baby's 
 own good that it should have better care than she could 
 give it. When people begin to say that something is for 
 some one's else own good, a divorce is imminent. 
 
 The landlady endured the noisy baby till her boarders 
 threatened to leave; then she handed Maryla her passports. 
 Maryla gathered her belongings together once more and 
 moved on; a new wicker suit-case hanging from one arm; 
 the new baby seated on the other and making so much 
 commotion that a sour-voiced crier of "sweet oranges" 
 and a raucous bidder for "recks und olt i-rin" forbore 
 competition till the baby had passed on with its procla- 
 mation of woe. 
 
 Maryla's present plight seemed to foreshadow her 
 whole future; she would flounder lower and lower in the 
 world, with one arm full of freight and the other full of 
 this baby that hated its life as much as she hated hers. 
 She decided that the East River was a good place for both 
 of them. A better place was one of those pretty lakes 
 she had seen in Central Park. She started that way, but 
 paused again. She was remembering that she had heard 
 a neighbor at the maternity hospital speak of the basket 
 of Sister Irene. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 There was the solution of all her riddles ! She stopped 
 at a little lunch-room and persuaded the owner to keep 
 her suit-case till she returned for it. Then she turned 
 north on Lexington Avenue to find that magic Irenean 
 receptacle of intolerable burdens. 
 
 The omens were good. The moment she entered the 
 new road, the baby began to chortle and wave its hands 
 in delight. Maryla's own feet grew light. Her eyes 
 brightened with relief. 
 
 She sped so well that she did not heed who passed by. 
 But at length she made out ahead, waving and smiling at 
 her, a pale, frail little woman whom she had not seen 
 for almost a year. It was Balinsky's wife, Miriam. 
 Maryla's last view of her face had impressed it upon her 
 as the very mask of despair. 
 
 As the two so contrasted mothers approached, Maryla 
 was musing upon what strange officers fate chooses for 
 its businesses. If she had not interceded for Rachel Bal- 
 insky she would not now be the ruthless victim of a ruth- 
 less sin. 
 
 Miriam explained in Yiddish that she had just been to 
 see her daughter, who was getting well in the hospital 
 where the wonderful Dr. "Voiteen" had placed her after 
 the order came from the "Praysidunt" commanding the 
 thieves and child-stealers and murderers on Ellis Island 
 not to send Rachel back by Rossia, but to set her free 
 in New York. And now Michal Balinsky was working 
 by chickens in a grand store on Grand Street, and Rachel 
 was in a hospital finer as a temple of Solomon. 
 
 Miriam was so rhapsodic with her own history that she 
 had hardly seen the child asleep on Maryla's arm. At 
 last she asked whose baby it was that Maryla was carry- 
 ing, and was she a nurse by millionaires yet. Maryla 
 could not control her color or her eyes, and Miriam knew 
 that the baby was hers. 
 
 Miriam cried out that she had not heard of Maryla's 
 
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 marriage, and demanded to know who was the lucky 
 gentlemans. Maryla could not disguise the fact that she 
 was not married. Such a horror was so rare in Miriam's 
 ken that she almost fainted. She stood wringing her 
 hands and whispering many a "Weh, weh! vidu! oi oil 
 oh weh!" 
 
 It angered Maryla to stand there and attract the 
 attention of loiterers and be wept over. Some rankling 
 desperateness led her to deal a finishing blow: 
 
 "I go by Fountlink Hospidal and give thees bebby to 
 the Chreestians. It is Chreestian bebby." 
 
 Miriam clawed her and belabored her with prayers 
 against such atrocity, but Maryla wrenched her arm 
 loose and hastened on. She glanced back and saw the 
 ugly little ramshackle wretch staggering down the street. 
 
 Maryla had heard that Miriam had been pretty once; 
 she had given her life and her looks to her daughter, 
 and her daughter had become imbecile, and brought 
 nothing but terror and poverty and despair to her mother. 
 
 She was a nice one to advise a young girl to cling to 
 her child through thick and thin! Who had profited by 
 her martyrdom? The father had tried to kill himself, 
 the mother was a wraith, the daughter a pitiful ruin. If 
 that was God's way of rewarding devotion, Maryla de- 
 cided that she would be doing her child a kindness by 
 putting it out of her own reach. 
 
 There was no beauty in this thought, but there was 
 strength, and Maryla finished her journey in a grim calm. 
 At Sixty-eighth Street she found the home of Sister Irene's 
 basket. An architect would have shuddered at the build- 
 ing, but to Maryla it was a beautiful city of refuge on a 
 high hill of safety. 
 
 The immense institution that fills a whole square now 
 had indeed grown out of the basket Sister Irene set out- 
 side her door in West Twelfth Street nearly fifty years 
 before. At that time good folk still clung to the horrible 
 
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 fallacy that the way to keep people from crime was to 
 treat them cruelly after they committed it. Sister Irene 
 believed that she might save a few unwilling mothers 
 from thrusting their unwelcome intruders back into the 
 Everywhere out of the Here via the rivers or the ash- 
 barrels, if she provided a more fitting place for the ten- 
 der bodies and a beginning instead of an ending to their 
 lives. 
 
 The basket became so harrowingly popular an institu- 
 tion that a special building was erected and enlarged again 
 and again. At length the city of New York came to the 
 aid of the Sisters of Charity. 
 
 Mother Manhattan, which callow novelists and fireless 
 poets love to rubber-stamp "the modern Nineveh," the 
 " New Babylon," gave more and more of her funds to the 
 Sisters till the usual annual dole had reached three hundred 
 and sixty-eight thousand dollars. The baby that Maryla 
 brought to the vine-fronded door was the sixty-one 
 thousand two hundred and nineteenth child it had re- 
 ceived on the mother's own terms. 
 
 But by the time Maryla arrived a change had taken 
 place. The mystic fame of the basket had spread afar, 
 and from all parts of the virtuous provinces and from over- 
 seas as well, a horde of veiled mothers hastened to pre- 
 sent the vicious metropolis with their children. 
 
 At last the basket was removed from the outer arch 
 to the vestibule inside, not because the city and the Sisters 
 wished to rob any desperate woman of the privilege of 
 leaving her impossible baby there and departing uni- 
 dentified; but because the first of industries, the manu- 
 facture of human milk, could not keep pace with the need. 
 Even the big city could not provide breasts enough to 
 feed the wards that would not prosper on the bottle. 
 The multi-mammate Ephesian Diana herself would have 
 faltered before the onsets of such a Lilliputian host. 
 
 When Maryla arrived she hesitated outside a while, 
 1 hen peered within and saw the little white wicker bassinet, 
 H 425
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 ribboned and canopied in white, waiting in the hall. She 
 stole in timorously and bent over, and was just unloading 
 her arms of the sacrifice when she was approached by a 
 gentle woman in a quaintly frilled glazed bonnet and a 
 voluminous black robe. Maryla whirled on her like a 
 caught thief, but she was kindly bespoken and invited 
 to a conference. 
 
 Surges of shame incarnadined the girl's shivering flesh, 
 and she was fain to break free. But gentleness builds 
 firmer barriers than steel, and she listened perforce, not 
 to commands or rebukes, but a plea that she help the 
 city to care for her baby and herself. 
 
 The pale-faced, white-haired virgin who had never 
 borne a child, and yet mothered three thousand children 
 every year, knew more of motherhood than any mere 
 mother could know, because she had known all the sorts 
 of mothers, and multitudes of each sort. Herself anony- 
 mous for the sake of charity, she aided these other 
 anonymous ones. 
 
 She had seen from her high white lighthouse what 
 storms of love and fear and hate sweep the human heart 
 and what wrecks they strew. She did not condemn from 
 where she was, but kept the lamp alight and announced 
 the reefs. 
 
 She beamed upon the baleful eyes of Maryla, and said: 
 " My child, if you can't afford to take care of your baby 
 and such a pretty one it is, isn't it? won't you stay here 
 with it? Make this your home so that the little thing 
 can have its mother's milk and its mother's love till it is 
 strong enough to be left, or taken with you? Perhaps you 
 could even help us by feeding some other little hungry 
 child whose mother is dead or or lacking in sustenance 
 for her own." 
 
 Maryla was almost persuaded, but a gust of wildness 
 flung her heart out of its course. She rebelled against 
 immuring herself here as the nurse of Perry Merithew's 
 child. Why should he go free among luxuries while she 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 consigned herself to this Christian prison? She shook 
 her head in sullen refusal. 
 
 The Sister murmured a warning appeal: "If you won't 
 take care of your own, my dear, do you realize that you 
 will have to give it up entirely to be nursed by some 
 other woman? And by and by somebody will come along 
 and adopt it for her own and give it another name? 
 Some other woman whom God has not blessed with a 
 baby as He has you? You wouldn't want that, would 
 you?" 
 
 It is dangerous to ask a question that can be answered 
 by a Yes or a No, for then the mind has but to toss a 
 penny and speak the word that falls first on the lips. 
 So now Maryla in a sudden ferocity of defiance, and with 
 a reversion to earlier dialect, cried out: 
 
 "Yes! It is jost what I want it! Thees bebby is not 
 my bebby! I did not esk it! I did not choosse thees 
 bebby! It does not want me. All the time it cries 
 cries cries! God did not sent me thees bebby. I was 
 bad and a mans was bad, and he goes away and bebby 
 comes. If some other woman wants it to have thees 
 bebby, she should have it, but not me. By me, she is 
 sick all the time. She is not heppy. She dies soon or 
 she grows up bad like me." 
 
 The Sister had met hundreds of women in just such a 
 mood. Every day there was some Maryla here, in a 
 strange tangle of selfishness, altruism, revolt, collapse, 
 hysteria, and cold logic. Often the frenzied creatures 
 wrenched themselves free from their young as if they tore 
 apart the invisible umbilical cord of tradition, only to 
 find, when they were free, that their own hearts were 
 bleeding themselves out through the wound. The next 
 day, or the next week or month, they crept back and 
 begged to be re-employed at the mother-job in the vast 
 dairy of life. She had such a hope of Maryla. 
 
 And so, without further debate, the Sister sent for one 
 of the blank forms in which the great surrender of the in- 
 
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 dividual to the community was so coldly and dreadfully 
 legalized : 
 
 I, mother of a infant child 
 
 aged, named, , born at 
 
 do hereby surrender and entrust to The New York Foundling 
 Hospital, for the period of life, the entire management and 
 control of such child, and do hereby assign to and invest 
 said Corporation with the same powers and control over 
 said child, as those of which I am possessed. 
 
 Dated, New York, , 191 
 
 Witness 
 
 Maryla read it with vague understanding and shivered 
 before its chill. Yet she was so distraught with her many 
 shames that she welcomed this one more. No one else 
 could despise her as she despised herself, and she saw a 
 kind of penance in pulling this final ignominy upon her 
 head. 
 
 And, also, there was a secret relief in escaping the 
 solemn endless duties of her motherhood. Like the wan- 
 ton Christina of Sweden, she signed away the glory of 
 the crown in order to be free of its weight. 
 
 There was some confusion about Maryla's name. 
 When the Sister asked for that, Maryla answered, "Mary- 
 la Maryla " and hesitated. 
 
 What was her name as a mother Sokalska or Meri- 
 thew? To give the former would be to smirch her father's 
 honor; to give the latter would be to betray Merithew. 
 And she could not make up her mind to dignify or to dis- 
 grace him so far. 
 
 The Sister, mishearing the unusual name and thinking 
 that the girl was of French extraction or wished to pre- 
 428
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 tend to be, repeated and wrote, " Marie La " and waited. 
 At length she said: 
 
 "Marie La what? La Forge? La Place? LaCroix?" 
 
 Maryla chose the last. "Marie La Kvah," she said. 
 The Sister smiled sadly. The choice of names grew diffi- 
 cult when it recurred by the thousandfold. She accepted 
 Maryla's nom de m&re, and wrote in the spaces that the 
 child was ' ' female ' ' ; aged ' ' two weeks ' ' ; named ' ' Marie, ' ' 
 and "born at New York." And she dated it June 9, 
 1914. 
 
 Then she invited Maryla to sign, and exchanged the 
 pen for the baby. She pretended not to notice the sur- 
 prise Maryla showed at the spelling of her own name, or 
 the slow, palsied scrawl with which she copied it. 
 
 After all, what is life but the signing of an assumed 
 name to a form in which we may fill only a few blanks? 
 
 When the supreme abdication was signed, the Sister 
 took the pen to witness the signature. Maryla offered 
 to relieve her of the child while she wrote, but the Sister 
 shook her head and smiled, and said, "No, no; the baby 
 belongs to me now." 
 
 This crucial test almost broke Maryla's resolution, as 
 the sly saint hoped it would. It had melted other fierce 
 souls. Maryla's eyes blazed with jealousy and with 
 alarm at the response the fickle child made to the stran- 
 ger's caress, and with scorn of the Sister's unfruitful spin- 
 sterhood. Maryla's bosom and her loins were wrung with 
 longing to recall their own. 
 
 But she struck her hand across her eyes to shut out the 
 angelic temptation and, turning, ran away.
 
 CHAPTER LI 
 
 Sister's guess was true. Having given up her 
 1 child, Maryla became the prey of unceasing remorse. 
 She wept, put out her arms, resolved to go back and res- 
 cue the child or shut herself in with it. But she thought, 
 also, of the folly of forcing her head into the heavy yoke 
 she had escaped. She thought of the hardships the 
 child must undergo. 
 
 She fought the decision out alone, as people fight out 
 everything. Her soul digested this problem as her body 
 digested its food, resisting and overcoming the poisons 
 it contained, gaining strength from the battle. Maryla 
 did not kill herself, nor die of grief or shame. She did not 
 sink into a life of evil on the streets. 
 
 But the need of money drove her to action. She re- 
 turned to Dutilh's, and said: "I am well now. I should 
 be glad to woik once more by your shop." 
 
 There was a ferocity now in her beauty in place of the 
 old meekness, and Dutilh made no difficulty about taking 
 her into the fold again. In fact, he took her in, although 
 he had discharged other girls. The dull season was be- 
 ginning for him, and he was about to go abroad to ran- 
 sack the foreign fashions. 
 
 He fled again from Maryla's efforts to explain. He 
 was afraid to hear either her truth or her lies. His busi- 
 ness was designing and selling beautiful clothes to make 
 women more beautiful or less homely. He avoided as 
 best he could the ugly thoughts and the facts that do not 
 drape life gracefully. He told Maryla to "shut up and 
 get busy." 
 
 430
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 The days were filled with grace and color and the light 
 chatter of people who did not know Maryla's tragedy. 
 But the evenings and the nights were crucifixions. She 
 beat her aching breast and cried for her baby and for a 
 home to keep it in. She understood what her mother had 
 endured, and she longed to go back to her. 
 
 She imagined that Miriam Balinsky had carried home 
 the news of her wickedness, and she was appalled to think 
 how her deed would look through her father's eyes. But 
 she never dreamed that he had been so moved as to de- 
 clare her dead and to perform the rites of the ancient 
 ceremonial. 
 
 He slashed the lapels of his coat to indicate the rending 
 of garments, and strewed ashes upon his head, and cut 
 his beard, and fasted, and devoted seven days of mourn- 
 ing to her memory. 
 
 When at last Maryla came back from the grave she 
 came at one of the rare times when her mother and sister 
 were away. 
 
 Dosia had been making eyes at a young sidewalk vender 
 of perfumed tapes, which burned with a helpful odor. 
 He wanted her to go to a movie show. Her father had 
 proclaimed that the cinematographic palaces were ante- 
 rooms to perdition, but Dosia had cried till he let her 
 go for the sake of peace. Rosa was called out by the 
 illness of a cousin in Forsythe Street. Pasinsky escorted 
 her. Adam was left alone, save for the old, old man, 
 who did not count. 
 
 Poor Sokalski could not understand wherein he had 
 sinned and earned his unusual shame. He had toiled 
 without rest; he had drunk no liquors; had never gam- 
 bled nor swerved from fidelity; he had kept his food 
 kosher; he had taken his children to the temple; he had 
 held the ceremonies at home afterward ; he had guarded 
 his flock from evil sights and companions; and he had 
 taught them to labor and not to squander. Yet his 
 beloved Maryla had risen from her place and hastened to 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 evil. Her feet had run to take hold on hell. Perhaps he 
 was punished because of his pride in her and his too 
 great love of her. And now she was dead, and he had 
 mourned for her, would for ever mourn for her. 
 
 Then Maryla came home. She knocked at the door. 
 Adam opened it. He did not move. He stared at her 
 as if she were a ghost, and he did not believe in ghosts. 
 
 Maryla stammered: "Can I see mamma a minute 
 once? And Dosia, please, papa?" 
 
 He did not answer, but he opened the door wide to let 
 her see that they were not there. 
 
 "I'll wait, please," she said, and started forward. 
 
 He set his arm across the door like a bar. She noted 
 then the slashing of his lapels, and that his disordered 
 beard was shorter, and his hair. She seemed to under- 
 stand. 
 
 She fell back in horror. She was dead, then? She 
 almost believed it herself. She cowered as if the Angel 
 of Death were in the hall with her. Her father closed the 
 door; she heard him lock it. She was afraid to be out 
 there in the hall with the Angel of Death. She knocked 
 frantically on the door like a child in mad terror of the 
 dark. She pleaded to be taken in. She might have 
 been beating on the lid of her own coffin. 
 
 She heard some one coming up the stairs, laughing. It 
 was none of her people. She did not wish to be found in 
 such a state. She ran on up the steps to the roof. She 
 would make herself dead as he wanted her to be. She 
 would kill herself, throw herself from the roof. 
 
 The night was bewitching with June. The stars were 
 like white tulips set out in lines on a vast lawn. They 
 formed great letters of an unknown alphabet with an un- 
 deciphered message. The Milky Way was a bed of lilies- 
 of-the-valley. The rusted tin of the roof was plated with 
 silver. 
 
 Maryla was afraid of the too persuasive beauty of the 
 winsome sky. She hurried to the edge of the roof. But 
 
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 it was walled on three sides. She could have dropped off 
 into the rear court, but she did not want to die in that 
 horrible place. 
 
 She whipped out her hat-pin. It was a fitting stiletto, 
 since he had given it to her. She put the point over her 
 heart, but she could not nail it home. 
 
 The breeze across her shoulder seemed to plead teas- 
 ingly, ridiculing her melodrama with a tender mocking 
 "Ooh! Ooh!" It had the merry eloquence of Perry 
 Merithew. Everything was unimportant except to re- 
 joice in life. 
 
 The hat-pin fell from her hands. If Perry had been 
 there she would have flung her arms about him. She 
 longed to be 'surrounded by the arms of love. She flung 
 up her hands to the sky for help. The moon regarded 
 her with indifference, its face tilted a little to the side. 
 The breeze blew kisses on the nape of her neck and 
 twitched at her hair amorously and ran away. She 
 panted with loneliness. But no help came, nor any 
 promise of companionship. 
 
 She pushed the hat-pin slowly back through her hat and 
 went down the stairs and passed the door of her home 
 without pausing. She threaded the crowds in the streets, 
 climbed a north-bound car, and went back to the hall bed- 
 room of her new boarding-house, where no one knew who 
 she was or what her life had been. 
 
 The next morning she went to Dutilh's again, and every 
 morning. And there Muriel Schuyler found her when 
 she came back at last from Europe.
 
 CHAPTER LII 
 
 MURIEL'S mother had planned to spend the season 
 of June and July in London, but Muriel issued a 
 declaration of independence and secession. She had had 
 enough of Europe for the time being, and she declared 
 that she would not miss the international polo games 
 at Meadowbrook for all the world. 
 
 She loved polo and had played the game herself on 
 Long Island with impetuous horsemanship, though her 
 malletry was irregular and she had raised welts on several 
 skulls, masculine and feminine. Winnie Nicolls would 
 carry to his grave the scar of a clip she gave him over the 
 eye, but he insisted that his heart was more deeply 
 bruised by her careless beauty. 
 
 Winnie Nicolls was a candidate for the position of 
 Number Three on the American team. He wrote Muriel 
 that he had no chance of making it unless everybody 
 else was knocked senseless, but she did not read that part 
 of his letter to her mother. The mere hint of a desire on 
 Muriel's part for a glimpse of Winnie Nicolls was enough 
 to send her mother scurrying back to America. She felt 
 that if she could see Muriel wed to so nice a boy with a 
 fortune so supreme she could fold her hands and grow old 
 comfortably. 
 
 But Winnie Nicolls's skill as a polo-player and his gifts 
 with a whippy stick were the least of the attractions 
 America held forth to Muriel. Her emotions were a 
 ragodt of homesickness, patriotism, recrudescent con- 
 science, European ennui, and curiosity as to the true 
 sentimental condition of Dr. Clinton Worthing. 
 
 They still exchanged occasional letters, but the inter- 
 
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 vals between had lengthened and the tone had grown 
 more and more formal. Their first correspondence had 
 been lengthy, and fire had been played with perilously. 
 The fire had seemed to die from lack of fuel, and Worthing 
 had told himself that he had lived down his folly. 
 
 But so the tree said as the winter came on and it shook 
 off its foolish leaves and faced the wintry blasts under 
 bare poles. And yet when spring came again it found 
 the old foolishness returning in the guise of all wisdom 
 and it put on new leaves and blazed with green bravery. 
 
 It was thus with Worthing when he received a letter 
 from Muriel. It was posted in New York, and it said: 
 
 DEAR CLINTON WORTHING, I've just got home, and I'm 
 dying to see you and talk over old times. Do come up and have 
 tea, won't you? Thank you so much! At five to-morrow, then. 
 Yours hastily, MURIEL S. 
 
 She had written "Schuyler" in full, then crossed all 
 of it out but the initial. She had drawn her pen through 
 that once. 
 
 The young man felt the letter as warm in his hands as 
 if it were the first robin with a live coal in the rusty tongs 
 of its wings. 
 
 The next day he dressed him in his best and approached 
 the Schuyler home with all trepidation. He was afraid 
 of the street, he was afraid of the entrance, he was afraid 
 of the steps and of the door-bell. He had called there once 
 before, nearly a year ago, for one of her tea-parties. The 
 hostess had stayed away and the guest had not got in. 
 
 But he was not turned away this time. Muriel had 
 been watching for him from a window whose famous 
 carvings were starred in the Baedeker of the United 
 States. She did not wait to have his card brought to her; 
 he had hardly surrendered his hat when he heard the 
 patter of her feet on the vast marble stairway. 
 
 435
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 She paused a moment, poised as if for flight, then came 
 running down with both hands outstretched. It was to 
 him as if the Winged Victory of Samothrace had come to 
 life and was hurrying down the steps of the Louvre. 
 Muriel lacked the wings, but the head and arms were a 
 more than fair exchange. 
 
 The eagerness of her welcome and the gust of her 
 approach unsteadied him, and when they sat taking tea 
 in the library he did not know what he was drinking, 
 unless it were ambrosia. 
 
 She helped his folly by resuming that meek sit-at-your- 
 feet attitude of hers, a curious mixture of impudence and 
 homage. 
 
 The upshot of her chatter was that they were to re- 
 sume at once their combined attack on the misery of New 
 York; and before the summer was over they were to 
 heal all the sick, straighten all the crooked, reunite all 
 parted, and enrich all the poor. 
 
 They were just beginning on the details when Winnie 
 Nicolls arrived and turned Worthing's nectar to gall. 
 The men recognized each other as partners in the wild 
 and vain pursuit of Muriel and her kidnappers. It 
 looked as if they had begun another pursuit. 
 
 Nicolls had his car outside, and he had come to take 
 Muriel out to Piping Rock for dinner. He offered to drop 
 Worthing wherever he wished to be dropped. Worthing 
 did not wish to be dropped anywhere ; so he retired, mur- 
 muring something about other engagements. 
 
 Muriel went to the door with him, and for an au revoir 
 asked him to go in the Schuyler car to the first polo game 
 and sit in the family box. He accepted with rapture, 
 till he learned that he might have the privilege of watch- 
 ing Nicolls play. And then he was discomfited again. He 
 knew that the best place to woo a woman is not in the 
 grand stand at her side, but on the field in action before 
 her.
 
 CHAPTER LIII 
 
 THE polo game drew together some thirty thousand or 
 more spectators, and such a number includes of neces- 
 sity all sorts and conditions of people. Everybody was 
 there that was anybody, or nobody, or betwixt and be- 
 tween. Even Red Ida Ganley was there. 
 
 Ida had soon lived up the money she had wheedled 
 from Perry Merithew. His exit to Europe had cut 
 off that supply, and she had spent a lean winter among 
 the penurious cabarets of Jersey City, Newark, and 
 Passaic. 
 
 Through the underground channels of her world she 
 had learned that Shang Ganley had been discharged from 
 prison for lack of evidence against him in the affair of 
 the attempted kidnapping of Muriel Schuyler. Ida had 
 heard that he had come forth breathing threats to get 
 her and put her away if he croaked for it. She led a 
 hunted life, watching every new-comer at every table, 
 wondering if he might prove to be her fond assassin. The 
 strain had been severe because she did not want to die. 
 
 At length she was inspired to a great plan. She man- 
 aged to get in touch with Achilles Papademetrakopoulos, 
 against whom also the ban had been raised by a politician 
 who needed him and his gang. Ida told "Kill Papa" 
 that she had a grand hunch. She had dreamed it, so it 
 must be true. If Shang would let bygones remain so, 
 she would put him in the way of a soft thing, and he 
 could pull down a coupla thousand bucks without half 
 trying. She implied that she was an intimate friend of 
 a dead swell guy with a wad of cush. If Shang would 
 
 437
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 listen to reason, she would lead this guy into a little trap 
 where Shang could get all he had. 
 
 Achilles found Shang in such a state of poverty, and 
 hence of loneliness, that even his wife's company was de- 
 sirable. The very mention of money was an atonement 
 and reconciliation. He had missed Ida sadly, particularly 
 of Saturday nights, when she had been wont to bring in 
 her wages. He consented to forgive her. 
 
 So Ida resumed her place as his helpmeet. When 
 she looked for Perry, however, to play the star part in 
 her little drama, she found him still missing, still skulking 
 in Europe. 
 
 Shang was furious at Ida's failure to make good, and 
 he took her for the grand tour around the room. 
 
 As Melisande's husband disciplined her, so Shang dug 
 his hands in Ida's copper hair and gave the floor a much- 
 needed mopping. But, unlike Melisande, Ida did not 
 wail, "He loves me no more, I am not happy." Ida said: 
 "Fer Gawd's sake leave me wool enough to do me w r oik 
 in! How'm I goin' to oin any dough in a cabaret if I'm 
 bald-headed?" 
 
 This appealed to Shang's intelligence; he flung back 
 in her face such tufts of copper wire as he found in his 
 hands, and told her to get busy and bring home the bacon 
 or he'd slice up her heart and give it to the cat. 
 
 Ida rearranged what he had left of her hair, visited a 
 corrector of black eyes, and returned to her art, working 
 industriously at song and dance and the side-lines of her 
 trade. And she kept her husband in the luxury he was 
 accustomed to, against the great day of Perry Merithew's 
 home-coming. 
 
 The polo game offered an opportunity that no pick- 
 pocket of proper regard for business openings could let 
 slip, unless the police issued him a personal invitation 
 to stay away. Shang escaped this distinction, and he 
 was among those present. 
 
 438
 
 Muriel had no knowledge of the
 
 itrigues going on about her.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 He took Ida along for various reasons. In the first 
 place, she paid for the tickets; in the second, she was 
 an adept dip; in the third, she would be useful as a re- 
 cipient of what he might snatch. And in the fourth, he 
 believed that an indulgent husband should occasionally 
 give his wife a bit of recreation not enough to spoil her, 
 but enough to give him something to refer to in quarrel- 
 time as a proof of his generosity and her ingratitude. 
 
 Shang and Ida reached Westbury by the Long Island 
 Railroad under the river. The trains were sardined with 
 people. The roads were almost choked with automo- 
 biles, as numberless as microbes in the veins of a typhoid 
 patient. 
 
 But there was an enforced democracy about the multi- 
 tude. The most expensive cars had to be parked at a 
 distance from the inclosure, and great folk as well as small 
 must trudge through the dusty grass to the turnstiles. 
 
 Shang and Ida were among the box-holders. They 
 bought theirs of a noisy person who sold according to 
 height and reliability: soap-boxes of solid structure 
 naturally brought more than collapsible biscuit-tins. 
 Shang was x in a hang-the-expense-it's-my-wife's-money 
 mood; he purchased a handsome ex-tomato-box which 
 was the envy of all the neighbors. 
 
 From this vantage-point they watched the throng flow 
 past rich man, poor man, merchant, chief; all the world 
 and its women. Suddenly Ida's nails nipped Shang's 
 arm: 
 
 "Look! There's Muriel Schuyler comin'. Who's the 
 guy with her?" 
 
 "It's de guy we scraped off against de El pillar. Don't 
 leave 'em lamp us." 
 
 Shang and Ida turned and pressed their faces against 
 the wire barrier till Muriel and her family had passed. 
 If Muriel had recognized them she would have been more 
 frightened than they. 
 
 Close on the heels of Muriel and Worthing came Perry 
 
 443
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Merithew, hastening to get a word with Muriel, but con- 
 stantly impeded by the crowd. Him also Ida saw. She 
 nudged Shang: 
 
 "Dat's me man. Dat's Puny Murrit'ew." 
 
 "De guy you was goin' to collect off?" 
 
 "Uh-huh." 
 
 "Well, go to it!" 
 
 "Not here." 
 
 "Here an' now! Never put off to tuh-morra de guy 
 you kin do tuh-day." He emphasized the proverb by 
 bunting her off the box, almost upon Perry's toes. Ida 
 drawled, "I beg your pah-donnn!" 
 
 When Perry ignored her she said in her most refined 
 manner, "Sa-ay, it's a wonner you wouldn' speak to a 
 fella." 
 
 Perry was just wincing before the realization that Pet 
 Bettany was ahead of him and waiting for him with her 
 mother. He paused to be rid of Ida, whom he recognized 
 at the second stare. 
 
 "Oh, how are you! I haven't seen you for ever so long. 
 Fine day, isn't it? Glad to have seen you." 
 
 He was moving on when she checked him: 
 
 "Sa-ay, where'd you get the idea I can live on lovely 
 weather? I gotta have a little talk with you." 
 
 Seeing him resent the threatening tone, she shifted 
 to a whine: "It's not a hold-up; it's sumpun you got a 
 right to be tipped off to. I done you a good toin oncet, 
 and one good toin desoives another." 
 
 "Again?" he sighed, "Well, telephone me at No, 
 drop me a line at my club and I'll be delighted to call. 
 Good-by." 
 
 He escaped without naming the club, but she knew 
 that she could find him. 
 
 Ida returned to her spouse with the good news that she 
 had Perry on the hook, and Shang was so overjoyed, so 
 full of dreams of wealth, that he spared the pocketbooks of 
 his fellow-spectators. 
 
 444
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 But he did not spare the American team, a great-hearted 
 quartet of famous achievement but suffering an off day 
 and an off year which is for the good of the sport, but 
 not for the approval of the sports. 
 
 Shang Ganley, however, like thousands of other good 
 Americans who had never seen a polo game before, felt 
 personally affronted by every bit of bad luck, by every bad 
 guess, and he yelled through the wire criticisms that made 
 up in virulence for what they lacked in information. 
 
 It was baseball on horseback to Shang, and he was as 
 typically bloodthirsty as any fan at the old Polo Grounds 
 where polo was-never played. 
 
 The people in the more exclusive inclosures were no 
 less excited. Muriel was frantic. She had Worthing's 
 arm black-and-blue from clutching him in tense moments 
 following a throw-in or some neck-and-neck race down 
 the fields with mallets like anxious antennas. 
 
 When an American hooked out a ball from a mele'e and 
 fed it to a compatriot, and he to another, and he swinged it 
 in a white rainbow of hope to the goal-posts, she pounded 
 her father's shoulders raw and hugged and kissed her 
 mother. 
 
 When one of the diabolically ubiquitous Englishmen 
 turned up in the wrong place and with a back-handed 
 scoop sent the ball back through the shuttling legs of the 
 joyous ponies, then she mourned as for some ineffable loss. 
 If the liberty of the nation had been involved she could 
 hardly have felt the struggle more crucial. 
 
 Between chukkers there was some visiting. The 
 Schuyler box was in the front row and Winnie Nicolls, 
 who was in uniform as a substitute, kept leaning on the 
 rail to deplore the rotten luck. 
 
 Perry haunted the Schuyler vicinage. He loved 
 Muriel in her open-air mood and she offered complete 
 contrast with the others of his fancy. But those others 
 seemed to haunt him. 
 
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 He saw Maryla in one of the slow -moving columns. 
 Her eyes burned upon him fierceness ; he could not trans- 
 late whether it were love or loathing. Then he decided 
 that it could not be she. Her copper hair was hidden un- 
 der a splendid and expensive hat, and her costume was 
 prematurely fashionable. He did not know that she had 
 gone back to Dutilh's or that Dutilh sent out his models 
 to such events in his best wares, exquisite sandwich-women 
 without placards. 
 
 While he was loitering about the Schuyler box Aphra 
 Shaler sauntered past with an elderly innocent in tow. 
 She glared at him with unmitigated hatred, and her girlish 
 lips spat at him a whispered curse that amused him 
 immensely. 
 
 Pet Bettany waylaid him, too. She had seen him talk- 
 ing with Red Ida and she was full of cynical questions, 
 which he evaded by a quick comment: 
 
 "What, in God's name, have you done to your hair? 
 You've painted it, haven't you?" 
 
 "Yes," she said. 
 
 "Why? You belong a^nong the brunettes. I don't 
 like you in copper." 
 
 "You don't like me, anyway. But you like your little 
 Muriel in copper, and so does Winnie Nicolls." 
 
 " Oh, that's the way the wind sets ! Well, good hunting, 
 sister!" 
 
 Pet was desperate. She even visited the Schuyler box, 
 where she was not welcome, because she could not other- 
 wise get near to Winnie Nicolls. She saw the idolatry in 
 Perry Merithew's eyes as he kept them on Muriel. Every- 
 body saw it but Muriel. Even Aphra Shaler, sauntering 
 past unobserved, saw it, and ground her teeth in jealousy. 
 
 Muriel had no knowledge of the intrigues going on 
 about her. All that was important to her was that her 
 beloved nation was losing a great historic battle. She 
 did not dream, nor did any one there, that all of these 
 foreign cavaliers so fiercely pursuing this rolling white 
 
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 pellet would shortly be facing the screaming black shells 
 in a polo game of nations. 
 
 Toward the last of the game, when it was evident that 
 the brave rally of the American team was likely to be in 
 vain, Muriel groaned: 
 
 "It's a bad year for our poor old country. They've 
 taken our polo cup, and our tennis cup, and the golf cup. 
 We've only got the America's cup, and the fourth Sham- 
 rock is after that." 
 
 "And I'll bet she carries it back," said Perry. 
 
 Winnie Nicolls had been one of a syndicate to build a 
 defender of the venerable old beaker. He said: "I'll take 
 that bet for any sum you want to lay." 
 
 "You're on," Perry sighed. "I'll go you a thousand. 
 It's the only thing I can do for my country, because I 
 always lose." 
 
 He neither lost nor won that bet, for the undreamed-of 
 Servian - Austrian - German - Russian - Belgian - French- 
 English-Turkish war sent the yacht-race agley along with 
 countless other human schemes. Perry Merithew would 
 not have been there, anyway, because, before there was 
 any world war, a private war of his own had left him dead 
 on the inglorious battle-field of a slum roof, with eight 
 little tufts of copper-colored hair in his clutch. 
 
 That hair at present was under the hat of one of the 
 women at the game, her only excitement now in the 
 two rival riders galloping like Siamese twins on Siamese 
 ponies, both yearning forward in frenzied emulation for 
 the tiny dusty willow planet that scudded eagerly across 
 the green in perfect obedience to whichever mallet smote 
 it last. It might have been the white soul of a woman 
 who meant well, but went where the whacks of destiny 
 shot her among the hoofs of the ponies of the gods playing 
 polo.
 
 CHAPTER LIV 
 
 WHEN a bad man like Perry Merithew makes up his 
 soul to become a good man, he is apt to find that 
 he must first do a number of deeds that he would have 
 thought far beneath him before. For there are many 
 things that wicked people hold very dear, but good people 
 must cast aside. 
 
 So, going on up higher, good people feel themselves far 
 above the doing of many things which they call cruel and 
 inhuman among themselves, but which they freely accept 
 as permissible and even adorable in the gods. 
 
 Perry Merithew was fascinated less by Muriel's beauty 
 than by her wholesomeness. He wanted to keep her 
 good. Her goodness was of the only sort that could 
 interest him. She was athletic, foolhardy, flippant, fash- 
 ionable, laughterful, quick-tempered, and domineering. 
 Perry felt no desire to flirt with Muriel. So far as he 
 could tell, she had never tried to flirt with him. He re- 
 garded her as sacredly as he could regard anything or 
 anybody, and the love of her made him solemn. The 
 worst of this was that the moment he grew solemn he 
 bored her and she dropped him. He felt that he could 
 only keep her by marrying her. But he could only marry 
 her by freeing himself from his old ties, vicious and 
 virtuous. 
 
 His wife was a decided obstacle of the latter sort. He 
 had failed to shake her off by his years of disloyalty. 
 How could he hope to frighten her by turning good? 
 
 This Mercutio was developing into a very grave man 
 with all these profound thoughts. One thing was sure: 
 
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 he was weary of his old ways. A cynic might have said 
 that the whole change in his heart was mere fatigue with 
 worn-out amusements, and that he was less in love with 
 virtue than fed up on vice. 
 
 Monogamy, indeed, however otten called monotony, 
 has never proved more tiresome than life on an eternal 
 merry-go-round. It was King Solomon who had the 
 most women who found life the vainest. For all mis- 
 tresses are the same mistress in new dresses and new 
 moods, as all wines are the same alcohol, all banquets the 
 same bill of fare twisted. 
 
 When a man is seen ordering ice-water and guzzling 
 milk with relish, it may be no proof at all of a reformation 
 or a wholesome appetite; it may be evidence solely that 
 he is so unused to them that they have a wicked tang or 
 that they are a mere remedy to his fever. 
 
 In any case, here was Perry Merithew obsessed by a 
 longing for Muriel Schuyler. He wanted to make her his 
 less than he wanted to make himself hers. He was con- 
 vinced that he wanted to be good. He yearned to win 
 Muriel Schuyler, not by dragging her down to his level, 
 but by dragging himself up to hers. 
 
 If the scramble aloft involved kicking several old 
 friends in the face, the best he could do for them 
 was to call out, "Look sharp, below there!" and, "So 
 sorry!" 
 
 The first victim of his upward effort had been Maryla 
 Sokalska, who had been the last victim of his old psychol- 
 ogy. He was not proud of his treatment of Maryla, but 
 he was glad to be free of her. He assumed that Maryla 
 was a closed chapter in his memories, and he trusted 
 that he could delete certain others of his dramatis per- 
 sona as readily. 
 
 First, there was his once-beloved and all-too-faithful 
 wife. She had long ago given up storming at Perry. She 
 had almost recovered from caring, though the dreary ache 
 of her pride awoke in the depths when she heard of some 
 
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 latest escapade of his, when she realized that everybody 
 realized that she was ill-treated. 
 
 That is the ugliest, meanest part of the business of in- 
 fidelity, the loneliness and the contempt or pity it bestows 
 on the neglected partner. 
 
 Mrs. Merithew could not bring herself to the consolation 
 of playing the same game and matching intrigue with 
 intrigue. She had a son growing up, and he was growing 
 away from the home, too. He had reached the age when 
 he would fall heir to the same temptations that had gov- 
 erned his father's life. She saw in the young man the 
 graces that had made Perry so fascinating, made his 
 delicate brutalities forgivable. She was afraid for the 
 boy and she could not find a way to protect him from life. 
 
 An early marriage for love would not guarantee him. 
 Perry had married her for love, and it was not long before 
 he had found "Home, Sweet Home" the tritest and 
 stupidest of tunes. 
 
 Mrs. Merithew felt aged and terrified and no less forlorn 
 because the desert reef where she was marooned was one 
 of the most comfortable summer homes on Long Island. 
 She could not keep Perry Second even there ; he preferred 
 New York in spite of its heat, and she feared that he was 
 pursuing some of the pretty tradespeople who use musical 
 comedy as a place of advertisement. So Mrs. Merithew 
 made an excuse to stay in town except over the week-ends. 
 
 She was in a panic concerning her son, and longing for 
 help, when her butler rejoiced her heart by saying that her 
 husband had telephoned that he would be dining at home. 
 She decided that Heaven had answered her prayers and 
 sent her prodigal back to her aid. She hurried off to a 
 coiffeur and had her hair remodeled in the latest school 
 of architecture. She ordered everything that Perry best 
 liked to eat and drink, and she took from the lavender of 
 memory the little smiles and expressions that had once 
 delighted him. 
 
 Perry was very gracious at the table and she thought 
 
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 that the three of them made rather a fine family group. 
 But the young man treated his father with a comradeship 
 in cynicism that made her blood run cold. Her one con- 
 solation was that Perry rebuked him, and read him a 
 moral lecture of a sobriety that astounded Mrs. Perry. 
 But it left the junior Perry smiling broadlier than ever, and 
 when Perry finished his Polonial sermon the young Laertes 
 winked at him and said: 
 
 "That's good old home stuff, Pop, and you read it 
 better than you could if you meant it." He rose and 
 went to his mother's chair. "Good night, little girl. I 
 must leave you, but beware of this interesting stranger." 
 
 He kissed his mother, winked again at his father, and 
 escaped to some mysterious engagement. 
 
 Perry and Mrs. Perry looked at each other in despair. 
 Perry was the more shocked of the two. They adjourned 
 to the drawing-room, where they sat at the open window 
 in the dark, listening to the lazy hoof -beats of a dawd- 
 ling hansom horse or the occasional groan of a motor- 
 horn on the sparsely frequented Avenue. 
 
 Perry sent many yards of pale-blue ribbon from his 
 cigar out on the warm air before he found courage to say: 
 
 "I want to have a little serious talk with you, my 
 dear." 
 
 "I'm listening." 
 
 "I've been a rotter to you and I'm well aware of it. 
 I'm going to turn over a new leaf and settle down." 
 
 The candle that he lighted in her heart he snuffed out 
 at once. 
 
 "You've been a brick. You've stood more than you 
 have any reason to stand and you've taken punishment 
 like a soldier. I'm not going to punish you any longer. 
 You're too sick of the sight of me to want me round the 
 place again. I've piled up more grudges than you could 
 ever forget. So I'm going to give you the only gift in my 
 power your freedom." 
 
 He thought he heard a little gasp of protest, and he
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 hurried on: "You're young and beautiful, and you've a 
 right to your place in the sun. You take a divorce and 
 go your way, and I'll go mine. You're richer than I am, 
 but I'll make a settlement on you that will put you up 
 among the pictures. And I'll set aside a fund for the 
 boy. It won't leave me much, but I'll manage with it 
 or go to work and earn something to take its place. 
 What do you say?" 
 
 She said nothing at all, but he heard her crying softly 
 in the dark. He was touched, and he reached out to 
 seize her hand. If only that touch could have thrilled 
 him as once it had! He drew his chair close to her, and 
 she wept on his shoulder, sobbing: 
 
 "I don't want a divorce. I want you. I want my 
 home." 
 
 He patted her farther shoulder as one would pat a faith- 
 ful old sick hound, and he said: "But I can't give you 
 myself, my dear. A man can't do what he ought to do. 
 At least I can't. When I find out that there's something 
 I ought to do, it becomes impossible. I'm sorry. I'm 
 ashamed. But how can I help it ? Life's a nuisance, and 
 I wish I were dead." 
 
 "Don't say that!" she pleaded with superstitious 
 panic. "You mustn't say that. Something might hap- 
 pen." 
 
 She clung to him and kept his arm about her, but he 
 sat glowering. He felt angry at himself, yet angrier at 
 her, and angriest at life. A passer-by seeing their blended 
 shadows would have thought them lovers. 
 
 It would have simplified everything divinely if they 
 could have returned to that blessed estate. But their em- 
 brace was a burlesque, for their souls could not reach 
 each other. He was a man that lived and loved on thrills; 
 and she could not thrill him. Almost any other woman 
 in his arms would have stirred some warmth in his heart, 
 even an ugly one; for if all cats are gray in the dark, all 
 women were pink to Perry Merithew. Even his wife 
 
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 would have been if he had not known her name. But be- 
 cause she had a right to his fire and the only right, she 
 was the only one who froze his soul. 
 
 He hated himself for this more than she did, but even 
 his wrath did not kindle him. It made him sick. 
 
 It was Perry's nature to grow frantic with restlessness 
 when he was not happy. He endured his wife's devotion 
 for a few minutes, then he felt a womanish desire to tear 
 his hair, a mannish desire to run away from gloom. 
 
 He broke his wife's clasp and paced the floor, saying: 
 " It's no use. Blame me all you will, but I can't be happy 
 here, and I can't make you happy. There's a chance for 
 us both if you'll let me go. I want to do the right thing 
 by you, but if we stay married I'll go on as I have, only 
 worse. If you let me go I'll be as sober as a judge." 
 
 Her answer was a dismal little chuckle: "No, Perry, 
 no ! I know you better than you know yourself. Better 
 than that other woman does, too. If she's your kind you'll 
 tire of her quicker than you tired of me. If she's honest 
 and I don't see how she can be and accept your atten- 
 tions you'd break her heart as you did mine. I ought 
 to let you marry her just out of revenge, I suppose, and 
 I might if it weren't for the boy. But he's going to have 
 a home, and at least a nominal father as long as you 
 live. So if you're going to settle down, settle down to 
 that. Now go tell her so. Good night 1"
 
 CHAPTER LV 
 
 "PERRY went glumly from the house, cursing, as bad 
 1 people do, the inconceivable wickedness of the good. 
 He walked rapidly down the Avenue, swinging his light 
 stick with fury. The Avenue was lonely and dark as a 
 small town street. He felt the need of lights and life. 
 He remembered that he had promised "Red Ida" Ganley 
 that he would meet her at Madison Square Garden. 
 
 She had run him down by telephone that day, and he 
 had consented to see her because it was easier to make 
 and break a promise than to refuse her insistence. He 
 had not the faintest intention of keeping the engagement, 
 or of ever seeing her or her sort again. 
 
 But he was in a fume of discontent. He had planned 
 to run straight. He had tried to do the right thing by 
 his wife, and she had refused him the little favor of a 
 divorce. How could he run straight if she clung to him? 
 
 He was sick of good women already. They had no 
 sense. They did not understand the world. He would 
 have nothing more to do with them. 
 
 He whistled to a taxicab and stepped in, telling the 
 driver to take him to Madison Square Garden. At that 
 time the huge arena was given over to dancing under the 
 auspices of the amazing Castles, whose Castle House had 
 not sufficed to provide space for the maxixe mania. 
 
 He found Ida waiting. He did not notice that she left 
 the side of a young thug to run to him. He checked 
 his hat and stick and took her into his arms for the dance 
 that was pouring from the band. 
 
 Ida was dressed in a quaint burlesque of the latest 
 
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 fashion, and her hair was piled up on her head like a 
 battered copper kettle turned upside down. She was so 
 small that Perry saw mostly her hair. He decided that 
 it had been born plain red, but had been tampered with. 
 She danced well in a common cabaretish way, and her 
 vulgarities of speech amused him more than better diction 
 could have done at the time, for he was in a rebel mood. 
 
 Perry was not addicted to alcoholic refuges. Where 
 other wastrels would go out and get drunk, he would seek 
 a flirtation. He laughed at Ida for a while, and recognized 
 with smiling contempt that she was trying to coquet with 
 him. He said: 
 
 "What would that ferocious husband of yours think of 
 your flirting with me?" 
 
 "Me floit?" said Ida. "It 'd soive him right if I was 
 to take up with you poimanent." 
 
 Perry winced at the thought, but he answered, with the 
 grace of the complete courtier, "That would be too much 
 to hope." 
 
 "Say, are you stringin' me?" said Ida. "I ain't quite 
 got your number yet." 
 
 "I doubt if I have one," said Perry. 
 
 "Everybody's got a number and a goat," said Ida, to 
 whom yesterday's slang was to-day's classic. "Your 
 number is thoiteen if I don't wise you up." 
 
 "Then for Heaven's sake wise me quick," said Perry, 
 who was tiring of her paucity of charm. "You said 
 something about an important secret or something. I 
 don't want to hurry you but I have another engage- 
 ment." 
 
 "You got a date to take a ride in a hoise if you don't 
 listen tuh me," said Ida. 
 
 4 ' A hearse ! Ugh !" Perry mocked. ' ' Save me ! Save 
 me!" 
 
 But Ida, with a sudden shudder that startled him, 
 muttered: "Keep on dancin', but woik your way round 
 to the door. We gotta beat it. He's here lookin' for me. 
 
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 I don't think he's sor me yet, but he's lookin' the bunch 
 over." 
 
 "And who is he?" said Perry. 
 
 "Where can we go where we can have a talk without 
 nobody distoibin' us ?'' said Ida, evasively. 
 
 "That is a problem," said Perry, warily. "I could 
 hardly take you to my club." 
 
 "You couldn't come to my flat, could you? or could 
 you?" 
 
 "I'm afraid not," said Perry, with great positiveness. 
 Then he remembered that a taxicab was a convenient 
 place for uninterrupted conferences. He suggested this, 
 and Ida agreed heartily. He collected his hat and stick 
 and they entered a taxicab. He told the chauffeur, 
 "Just drive around," trusting him to know where that 
 was. 
 
 A policeman in plain clothes, recognizing them both, 
 took a step in their direction, but decided not to interfere. 
 He made a mental note that if Perry Merithew sent in an 
 alarm that he had been robbed, he would hunt at once 
 for Red Ida, the well-known "dip." And he set the 
 gossip going in select police circles that Perry Merithew 
 must have lost his mind or, worse yet, his money, to be 
 taking up with a cheap crook like Ida Ganley. 
 
 But here he was in taxi-communion with her. Ida was 
 eager to know how a swell guy like he was made love to a 
 dame. The situation pleased her not only as an ambitious 
 woman eager to learn, but also as a budding dramatist. 
 
 Ida had constructed a scenario with Perry Merithew as 
 the star. It was not her plan to put Perry Merithew into 
 the hearse she spoke of; that would end his value. It 
 was her scheme to use the obsolete, but never quite 
 forgotten, badger game. Ida would entice Perry to some 
 trysting-place, and there Shang Ganley would surprise 
 them, play the injured husband, produce a brace of re- 
 volvers, and threaten to avenge his ruined home with a 
 murder or two. Ida would dramatically plead for her 
 
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 paramour, and Shang would slowly relent on condition 
 that Perry paid dearly for the husband's broken heart. 
 
 The beauty of this venerable device is that the victim 
 is the last one on earth to desire police participation, 
 and, once caught, he can be levied on again and again. 
 He is as good as a bond with coupons to cut off every 
 six months. 
 
 Ida was in love with the plan. The only difficulty had 
 been to lure her prey to her lair. That, as she had told 
 Shang when they discussed the production, would not be 
 easy. 
 
 "That's some job, believe me !" she had said. "That '11 
 take a bit of loorin'. A swell bear-cat like him ain't 
 goin' to fall for no cheap bunk. Well, 's I 's sayin', I 
 woim me way into Purry's confidunce by warnin' him of 
 a tumble plot. He'll be tumble grateful. Maybe he'll 
 offer me money, and if he does I'll spoin it." 
 
 "O Gawd!" 
 
 " I know how it hoits," she said, "but, in the foist place, 
 it would simpully roon everything if he suspicioned any- 
 thing. In the second place, are we playin' for big stakes, 
 or are we pikin'?" 
 
 "They can't come too big for me," Shang murmured, 
 with glittering eyes. "If he was to spill a million in me 
 mit it wouldn't meet me expenses." 
 
 "Ah, cut out the powder-woiks," Ida growled. "If 
 ever you was to see a hunderd dollars all at once you'd 
 go blind. You leave Purry Murrit'ew tuh me, and try to 
 be on time when I send for you and speak your piece 
 like I loined it to you and throw a good scare into him." 
 
 And now the first step in her campaign was achieved. 
 Ida had lassoed her prey and she was ready to throw the 
 scare into him. Perry did not take advantage of the 
 opportunity to make love to Ida. His first remark was: 
 
 "And now the secret, please." 
 
 "Well, listen," Ida began, with a sigh. "You know I 
 15 457
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 put you hep to the kidnappin' of Miss Schuyler." He 
 nodded. "And all I got out of it was a few plunks. 
 Well, what me husband gave me was the pirtiest little 
 beatin' up a lady ever took off anybody. O' course I 
 swore I never split about the kidnappin', but he lays it 
 up against me, and still more he lays it up against you." 
 
 "How did he find out I was concerned in it?" Perry 
 asked. "You must have told him." 
 
 "Told me eye!" said Ida. "I'm liable to do that, 
 ain't I, and get a knife in me? Some them other gunmen 
 must 'a' reco'nized you when you held 'em up and took 
 Muriel away from 'em. Anyway, they're on to you and 
 they're after you." 
 
 This was not so pleasant. Perry ceased to patronize. 
 New York has its vendetta cult as well as Sicily, and peo- 
 ple are found dead about town with disconcerting fre- 
 quency. Also, the dynamite bomb was an almost weekly 
 punctuator of the city's calm, and it was not always con- 
 fined to small shopkeepers. 
 
 Perry was no coward, but it is uncomfortable never 
 to know where one is to be struck, by whom or when. 
 
 He said, as jauntily as he could: "And what do these 
 gentlemen intend to do to me kill me?" 
 
 "Oh, L don,'t think they'd go quite as far as that," 
 said Ida. 
 
 "Then I needn't worry," said Perry, "so long as they 
 don't kill me entirely. Just tell the gentlemen that I 
 carry a revolver and I shoot quick and straight." 
 
 "Then they'd get you arrested under the Sullivan law." 
 
 "Then tell me their names and I'll have the police 
 gather them in in advance." 
 
 "Police nothin'. There's too many in the gang. The 
 cops can't get 'em all. Besides, what evidunce you got 
 outside o' my woid? And I wouldn't dast go to the 
 court. They'd get me sure, and you, too." 
 
 "Then what do you advise?" said Perry. 
 
 "You leave it to mamma. The plot ain't quite settled 
 
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 yet. One of their best men ain't out o' jail till a day 
 or two. As soon as they decide I'll know and I'll tele- 
 phone you, and you meet me and I'll tell you how you can 
 toin the whole bunch over to the cops without your name 
 appearin'. Do you get me?" 
 
 "I'm not sure," said Perry; "but I'm sure I'm ever so 
 much obliged to you, and if a little money would be of 
 any use to you -" 
 
 Money is one of the hardest things on earth to say No 
 to. But Ida was resolute. She spurned the proffer. 
 
 "But why do you do me this great favor gratis?" said 
 Perry. 
 
 "Because because " Ida took refuge in popular 
 song, "'Because I got a feelin' in my heart for you.' " 
 
 She leaned against him and lifted her face so that if 
 he should be inclined to kiss her he would be caused the 
 minimum of toil. Perry's generous heart could hardly 
 ever resist such an appeal for alms. He knew that Ida 
 was languishing for a caress, but he felt stingy. Still, he 
 could hardly deny her some token of gratitude. He bent 
 and printed a light glancing blow on her nearer cheek- 
 bone, and said, with forced gratitude: 
 
 "How can I ever thank you?" 
 
 Ida sighed with deep disillusionment. "And he's the 
 guy who made love-makin' famous!" 
 
 Perry did not understand; he spoke impatiently. "I'm 
 really infinitely obliged. I won't forget it." 
 
 "And I'll keep me eye and me ears peeled," said Ida. 
 "And I'll let you know the minute there's anything doin'. 
 I'll telephone you. And as soon as you've hoid from me 
 you jump like I tell you to. If you don't, good night!" 
 
 "Good night?" said Perry "Are you getting out 
 here?" 
 
 "No; you might take me to the Poisian Garden. I 
 just rave over Joan Sawyer." 
 
 Perry could not refuse her so modest a request, and he 
 told the driver to take them to the Persian Garden. He 
 
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 bade Ida good night on the sidewalk. But she said that 
 a lady could hardly go up alone. He took her up with 
 the calm martyrdom of a gentleman. He danced with 
 her once or twice. He saw several important people that 
 he knew, and he abandoned Ida and fled. But here, also, 
 a detective had seen him with Ida and was tempted to 
 warn him against her, but decided instead to confirm the 
 gossip already flying about the various precinct stations.
 
 CHAPTER LVI 
 
 MURIEL was spending an unusual amount of her time 
 in town this summer. She had been abroad so long 
 that New York attracted her as a sort of foreign city. 
 
 The relief of one misfortunate soul always brought for- 
 ward two others to relieve, and Muriel's hopes began to 
 flag. 
 
 She was attacking the ocean with a spoon, and she was 
 exhausting herself faster than the supply of salt water. 
 Also she found that her accounts of her work exhausted 
 her listeners rapidly. 
 
 One person alone never wearied of Muriel's adventures, 
 and that was Dr. Clinton Worthing. He had only one 
 fault to find with Muriel, and that was her father's wealth. 
 She was as simple and sound as any middle-class girl; 
 her costumes were not elaborate, and her jewelry, if she 
 had any, shone chiefly in the dark, unfathomed caves of 
 the safe-deposit vault. 
 
 But she was herself in a safe-deposit vault. She was 
 like a princess peering through a grille and flirting with 
 an apprentice outside. They could talk, their eyes could 
 make love, their hands could meet, and there was the 
 maddening possibility of kissing; the fierce danger that 
 he might not be able always to keep his hands from em- 
 bracing her through the bars and playing Pyramus to 
 her Thisbe. But he could not drag her through the 
 chinks of her wealth, and he could not climb through. 
 
 He used to find himself praying that some great finan- 
 cial earthquake might destroy the Schuyler wealth and 
 fling the walls to the ground. But while the cruelly pro- 
 
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 longed hard times were shattering other fortunes, they 
 seemed not even to shake down a capstone from the high 
 castle of Jacob Schuyler. They managed, however, to 
 injure Worthing's practice and to make it hard to collect 
 what little he could earn. People could not even afford 
 to be ill, except on credit. So Worthing had leisure enough 
 to cultivate Muriel. 
 
 One day he and she were coming away together from 
 the hospital where Happy Hanigan was swearing at his 
 apparatus and refusing to believe their latest promises 
 that he should soon be unfettered. Hot as the day was, 
 Muriel and Worthing walked. It absorbed so much 
 more time. Their errancy led them into Fifth Avenue. 
 
 As Pet Bettany had said, a woman can never have 
 clothes enough, and, though Muriel's wardrobes bulged 
 with unworn frocks, she could not keep from pausing at 
 nearly every window to cry out in longing for some hat 
 or gown dangled there as bait. 
 
 Poor Worthing felt his poverty. He could not provide 
 her with things like these, and her appetite was evidently 
 insatiable. Before one hat perched like a cockatoo be- 
 hind a shining plate-glass window she paused and wailed : 
 
 "Oh, I ought to have that hat." 
 
 "Wait till I get a rock," said Worthing. 
 
 She loved the implied sentiment more than the hat; 
 but they passed on. Eventually in their dawdling prog- 
 ress they reached a window which she could not pass. It 
 cast a net out on the sidewalk and entangled her feet. A 
 gown hung there on a headless, armless, footless dummy. 
 To Worthing it was simply that and nothing more. 
 Muriel could see herself in it, alive and striding or gliding 
 among its caressing folds. 
 
 "I'd sell my soul for that," she said. "I just must 
 have that. It's Dutilh's shop. I have an account here, 
 so it won't cost me anything. Come in and let's look 
 at it." 
 
 But this was more than Worthing could undergo. He 
 
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 looked at his watch and pretended a patient waiting for 
 him. Muriel offered to postpone her visit to Dutilh, but 
 Worthing could hardly assume to give his imaginary client 
 absent treatment, and he regretfully stuck to his excuse. 
 
 "But I hadn't half finished my story," said Muriel. 
 "I'll tell you. My father had to be in town this afternoon 
 for a board meeting. He invited me to dinner with 
 him and a dance somewhere. He's just falling in line, 
 and it's awfully good for him. Every now and then we 
 go over to Long Beach, have a swim and dinner, and dance 
 all evening. He's lost tons of weight. Then we motor 
 to our country place. You've never been there, have 
 you? You must come out for the next week-end. Will 
 you?" 
 
 Worthing said he would. He was almost glad that he 
 had no patients to neglect. 
 
 "And to-night?" Muriel pleaded, as if she were asking 
 a charity. "Will you dine with us to-night?" 
 
 He graciously consented. 
 
 "At eight to-night, then? At the Ritz. We'll dine on 
 the roof if you like?" 
 
 He liked. They parted with a mutual gaze as elastic 
 and as sweet as taffy long drawn out. 
 
 When Muriel walked into the clothes shop Dutilh 
 assailed her with his usual My-Godding: 
 
 "My God! I thought you'd gone abroad again. But 
 evidently not, for who held you while they forced you 
 into that gown? It has a tight skirt! You ought to 
 be ashamed to be seen in it." 
 
 "I got it in Paris." 
 
 "Yes, I saw it there, and I wouldn't let them lift it off 
 the hanger." 
 
 Muriel was huffed a little. "I didn't buy it for you." 
 
 Dutilh laughed and rubbed his nose as if she had hit 
 him there. 
 
 "That gown in the window," she said. 
 
 463
 
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 "Oh yes, the purple Premet!" Dutilh exclaimed. "I 
 saved that for you for months, but you didn't come in." 
 
 "Oh, then it's months old." 
 
 "Trapped!" 
 
 "But I was speaking of the green one." 
 
 "Of course! The Callot! Fine! That came in yes- 
 terday evening. Just out of the customs, just unpacked. 
 The Callot girls must have had you in mind when they 
 invented it." 
 
 "Why didn't you save that for me?" 
 
 "I'd given you up as hopeless." 
 
 "May I see it?" 
 
 "Mrs. Shenstone!" he shrieked. "Get that Callot out 
 of the window. Miss Schuyler wants to try it on." 
 
 "No; it's too hot for me to do all the work. Let me 
 see it on a model." 
 
 Mrs. Shenstone hurried away with the frock and it 
 returned on the form of Maryla, who came in as billowily 
 as a footless mermaid. 
 
 Muriel greeted her with a flattering affection and a 
 shattering query: "Miss Sokalska! I'm so glad to see 
 you. And you're prettier than ever. But I heard you 
 had left here, had come into a lot of money. Did you? 
 I hope you didn't lose it! Did you?" 
 
 Maryla flushed. Dutilh tried to intervene. He turned 
 to Maryla. " I told Miss Schuyler about the money when 
 you first left." He turned to Muriel. "But you know 
 how those things are. The amount was greatly exagger- 
 ated. So she came back. But how do you like the 
 gown?" 
 
 "I like it enormously on Miss Sokalska," said Muriel. 
 "The green goes with her hair wonderfully. It's like 
 patina on an old bronze." 
 
 "Then it would suit you to perfection," said Dutilh. 
 *' Your coloring is much the same." 
 
 "Oh, Meesteh Dutilh!" Maryla protested, shocked at 
 Ms venturing to equal a model with a customer. 
 
 464
 
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 "The honor is all mine," said Muriel. 
 
 "Will you have the gown?" said Dutilh. "Walk away, 
 my dear, and let her see the back. A dream, eh?' 
 
 "It belongs on Miss Sokalska," said Muriel. "I'd 
 never dare to wear it now." 
 
 This was terrible. This would never do. A model 
 who scared off purchasers! 
 
 But Muriel said: "Will you let me buy it for you, Miss 
 Sokalska ? I meant to bring you something from abroad, 
 but I I forgot." 
 
 Maryla was in a panic. She had had too much of 
 beautiful gowns. She had tried to live down to the 
 others, but she said: "Thenk you, please, I could not 
 live up to such a dress. I am a woiking-girl, not a fine 
 lady." 
 
 "All the same, you ought to have it," Muriel grumbled. 
 She disliked being thwarted in her impulses. It was her 
 idea of charity that a woman needs pretty things now 
 and then more than bread or shelter. She realized the 
 difficulty, however, of forcing the gift in the presence 
 of Dutilh. If she had Maryla alone she might succeed. 
 She might get her a better situation than the one she had. 
 So she said, "Well, I'll take the gown, though it's too good 
 for me if you'll send it home this afternoon." 
 
 " It will be there in an hour," said Dutilh, waving Mary- 
 la away. 
 
 Muriel called her back. ' ' I want to talk with you about 
 everything, Miss Sokalska. Won't you come up and have 
 a cup of tea with me when you leave here?" 
 
 Maryla hesitated, but Dutilh clinched the affair. 
 "She can take the gown to your house herself, and we'll 
 call it a day's work. When do you want her?" 
 
 "At five?" 
 
 "At five." 
 
 Maryla arrived at the Schuyler front door with the big 
 box iinder her arm. Kane, the second man, ordered her 
 
 465
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 round to the trade entrance in the area. She knew enough 
 by now to remind him that she was a caller on Miss 
 Schuyler. 
 
 Muriel came down, and to Kane's befuddlement treated 
 her with distinction and ordered in tea. Maryla sat in 
 the same majestic chair drinking tea from the same ser- 
 vice with the same ritual as at first. But she had lived 
 through aeons of experience since then. She was not the 
 same Maryla. Muriel had dismissed the servants with a 
 toss of the head, and now she exclaimed: 
 
 "Now tell me all about yourself." 
 
 Maryla smiled wretchedly. That was a large order, 
 an impossible order, too, even if one had the time and the 
 memory and the endurance. Muriel had to fill the silence 
 herself: 
 
 ' ' You are looking so much better ! Have you been well ? 
 Do you like the work?" 
 
 Maryla had come to the Schuyler home in a mood em- 
 bittered with realization of the hateful fact that Muriel 
 was, in a sense, to blame for all that had befallen her. 
 She wanted to pour out, with the wrath of an ancient 
 prophet, her horror of the ways of these rich Moabites 
 in whose tribe a Perry Merithew could prosper. She had 
 heard that Muriel knew the sleek monster, was friends 
 with him. She wanted to accuse Muriel of being as bad 
 as herself, as bad as Merithew. 
 
 But somehow hospitality has always exerted a mystic 
 power of disarmament. Maryla had broken Muriel's tea- 
 biscuits and tasted her sugar. And her response to 
 Muriel's eager concern was not wrath, but love. She had 
 longed for one thing more than revenge, and that was ex- 
 pression. She had famished for one listener. And now 
 she had found one, and she felt that there would be deep 
 wells of sympathy to her need. 
 
 She told her story in her own way, rather giving her- 
 self the worst of it, seeing her innocent motives through 
 the ugly murk of their consequences. And she called 
 
 466
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Perry Merithew "Meesteh Brown," as she had called him 
 to the janitor and her maid. 
 
 Muriel listened with breathlessness. She knew that 
 these things were frequent. She had heard and read of 
 them in novels and stories and sermons and newspapers, 
 in villages, countrysides, cities, American and foreign. 
 But she had never heard a history of the sort from the 
 lips of experience. 
 
 It was another day of debut to Muriel like that one 
 when she first invaded the realm of the very poor. Now 
 she knew the tragic meaning of the contemptuous plati- 
 tude, "Why girls go wrong." 
 
 Strangely, she did not feel disdain or repugnance. She 
 did not feel soiled by the testimony. The dirt of life is 
 fertile, and it washes off, and whoso is afraid to dig in it 
 is not likely to understand the soil he springs from or the 
 field where he grows. 
 
 Muriel ached with the burden of the long months 
 Maryla had trudged; she flamed with her wrath at the 
 man, this universal Mr. Brown who tarried awhile, and 
 rode away. She was not judicial enough to absolve Mr. 
 Brown from treachery or conspiracy or to see that he was 
 almost as much the helpless victim of his evil impulses 
 as the woman was. She felt a truth in the old formula 
 that makes the man the deep-dyed villain, the spreader 
 of snares for innocent feet. 
 
 When Maryla told how she had longed to stab her 
 betrayer with the hat-pin he gave her, and drew it from her 
 hat, Muriel took it from her and studied it. Its claw- 
 gripped amethyst and its keen steel length were as dread- 
 ful as if it had done the deed it was meant for. 
 
 She put it down on the tea-table; it was still danger- 
 ous; it was romantic with menace. 
 
 As Maryla went on with her chronicle, and told how she 
 had gone back to her home, but had been unable to breathe 
 in its fetid atmosphere, she found in Muriel's eyes 
 and in her little gasps of comment all imaginable sym- 
 
 467
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 pathy, until she told how she had given her baby to the 
 city. 
 
 Then Muriel, who had never borne a child, felt all the 
 primal antipathy for such a deed and could not mask 
 her aversion. 
 
 Maryla cowered before the unwitting condemnation. 
 She did not defend herself; but in a dull fury heaped re- 
 proaches on her own wickedness. 
 
 Her self-revilement forced Muriel to be her advocate. 
 
 " Oh, I'm not blaming you for what you did. You are 
 not bad. It was not bad of you to do what you did. 
 It was love that made you, and it was something to be 
 proud of because you could love so well and endure so 
 much so patiently." 
 
 It takes the innocent young to say such things. Muriel 
 caught up Maryla's hand and tried to include herself in 
 the sisterhood of motherdom. 
 
 Nothing could have convinced Maryla of Muriel's in- 
 nocence like her pretense at knowledge and her reckless 
 sympathy. She decided that Muriel could not be of 
 Perry Merithew's sort, and she was glad that she had 
 kept the man's name secret. 
 
 Meanwhile Muriel was squandering more of her en- 
 thusiasm for everything human. "But the past is over 
 and done. It's the future that counts. And you mustn't 
 you simply mustn't leave your baby to an institution. 
 You'd never forgive yourself. You'd never know where 
 it was. Even if it were dead you wouldn't know, but its 
 ghost would seem to haunt you. And if it were alive you 
 would think that you heard it calling to you for help. 
 You can't deny your child the most precious thing in life 
 a mother to go to." 
 
 These were not new ideas to Maryla. She had dwelt 
 with them ever since she consigned her child to oblivion. 
 Muriel opened the old wounds and broke the sluices of 
 tears anew. Maryla as she wept could only plead: 
 
 "But how should I support my baby? Where can 
 468
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 I woik and keep my baby? Can I pay for somebody 
 would take care the baby when I am away woiking by 
 dressmakers or anywhere?" 
 
 Muriel was ready for this. "The father must pay for 
 you and the baby, too this Mr. Brown." 
 
 "No, no, he shall not have." 
 
 "It's his duty if not his right. If you won't speak to 
 him, I will. And I'll make him marry you." 
 
 "He married somebody else foist." 
 
 Muriel was staggered by the ugliness of this fact. " The 
 dog! The beast! Well, then, you and I will take care 
 of the baby without him. He has no right to it. The 
 first thing is for you to make sure that the baby hasn't 
 been given away to anybody else. You go claim the 
 baby and " 
 
 Muriel's father came into the room. He had had the 
 stormy day of an old-school capitalist fighting the im- 
 pertinent claims of the new-school publicists, who were 
 trying to make him personally and criminally responsible 
 for a train wreck on one of his railroads. 
 
 He was in a rage and hungry for his dinner. He was 
 curt to Maryla when Muriel reminded him that he had 
 met her. He was curt to Muriel. Even she could not 
 overawe him when he was hungry. She promised to be 
 dressed in a jiffy, and she reluctantly bundled Maryla 
 out of the house, saying: 
 
 "Come see me, soon. And go get your baby, and 
 I'll be responsible for it. And I'll see your father and 
 mother again, and make everything as right as I can." 
 
 Muriel was a member of the new school, and believed 
 in everybody's being responsible for everybody else. 
 Maryla tried to stammer her thanks, but Muriel took 
 her in her arms and kissed her and did what she did not 
 do for richer callers went to the door with her. Then 
 she ran up the stairs to dress for the dinner and the dance. 
 She had certainly earned them both. 
 
 Maryla, out on the sidewalk, nearly lost her hat in a 
 469
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 gust of evening breeze. She remembered that she had 
 left her hat-pin on the tea-table. She was afraid to go 
 back for it. She was glad to be rid of it. She turned 
 toward the Foundling Hospital with a more peaceful 
 soul. 
 
 The servants, finding the hat-pin when they took away 
 the tea-service, supposed it to be Muriel's, and sent it 
 up to her room, where the housemaid put it in her pin- 
 cushion without remark. 
 
 Muriel was too busy to be spoken to. Her own maid 
 was in the country, and everything was at sixes and sevens. 
 She did not wear a hat when she met her father in the 
 hall. She was trying not to breathe fast from her whirl- 
 wind change of costumes, and trying to make him think 
 that he had kept her waiting. 
 
 They dined at the hotel because their own kitchen crew 
 was in the country. All the way down in the car Jacob 
 was spluttering about his business troubles. 
 
 "You'll forget 'em when they strike up the lame duck," 
 said Muriel. "And you mustn't spoil your dinner with 
 talking shop, for your nice young doctor is to dine with 
 us." 
 
 "My nice young doctor?" said Jacob.. "Who's my 
 young doctor?" 
 
 "Clinton Worthing," Muriel simpered, with the ultra 
 demurity of an old actress. 
 
 "My nice young doctor!" sniffed Jacob. "You little 
 scoundrel! Well, I'm glad Winnie Nicolls is to be with 
 us to-night to act as an antidote to our nice young doctor." 
 
 "Winnie Nicolls?" Muriel gasped. 
 
 "Yes; he's come on the Board now, and I asked him 
 to join us. He's got an aunt or something in tow for me 
 to dance with. You can tell your mother about her 
 mysteriously, and maybe we can make her so jealous that 
 she'll take up dancing, too. She needs it. We'll get 
 your my nice young doctor to prescribe it."
 
 A sudden vicious inspiration led Pet
 
 flick the ashes into Perry's eye.
 
 CHAPTER LVII 
 
 IT was the season when over New York there seems to 
 stand a demon of heat beating the town with a flail. 
 During the day the only stir in the air comes from the 
 softened pavements where he pounds up the dust. Usual- 
 ly, though not always, he rests at sundown and breezes 
 come in like brooks of salvation. 
 
 This was such a night. On the roofs of the multi- 
 tudinous towers that climb and climb, the lucky folk were 
 gathered, eating or dancing, listening to music or watch- 
 ing the dancers. Hordes of them were visitors, but there 
 were armies of husbands whose wives were in more season- 
 able places. And there were a few of the wealthy who 
 had been kept in town or called back on some of the in- 
 terests that made up their wealth. 
 
 Pet Bettany and her mother were spending the summer 
 in town. They had no husband and father to leave at a 
 desk, nobody to send them funds. The hard times had 
 almost ended their revenue. They resolved to rent their 
 summer home and hide in their town house. They could 
 pretend that they had been to Europe or anywhere 
 where their friends had not been. 
 
 Even summer homes were not easy to rent in the black 
 year of 1914. The sum the Bettanys finally had to ac- 
 cept barely kept them in food and forbade excursions. 
 
 If good people undergoing hardships deserve sympathy, 
 there ought to be even more for bad people in distress, 
 since they have not even patience or the strong support 
 of deserving better. The Bettany women took their 
 humiliations without humility. When Pet had seen 
 
 475
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Merithew at the polo game she had coerced him into a 
 luncheon rendezvous. Perry kept the engagement because 
 he feared that Pet was planning something new against 
 Muriel. Pet astounded him by turning up in a pathetic 
 humor. She hurt his appetite with the sorrowful story 
 of her privations, and she moved him almost to tears by the 
 ravenous way she ate the unsubstantial decorative things 
 she ordered. 
 
 "I'm so sick of bread and milk and round steaks and 
 tinned things from impudent tradespeople, slung at us 
 by anarchist servants who only stay with us, damn 'em, 
 because they can't get jobs anywhere else. The only 
 solution of the servant problem is hard times, and then 
 it's the master problem. I want to eat a ton of hors- 
 d'oeuvres and a barrel of caviar and some truffles and 
 Nesselrode pudding, and all the things I don't get at 
 home." 
 
 Perry felt like a philanthropist at a newsboys' banquet. 
 He resolved that he would lend her some money, after all. 
 The up-town slums appealed to his generosity. He said, 
 amiably, "Dancing much, Pet?" 
 
 "Dancing?" said Pet, with her mouth full, in her grand 
 old plebeian Russian - empress way. "Who's going to 
 take me to a dance? I've been tempted to go out and 
 hire one of these one-stepping haberdashers to dance 
 with me; but I haven't had the nerve or the price." 
 
 "What would you say if I asked you to take dinner 
 to-night with me and dance the evening out?" 
 
 "I'd call for some aromatic ammonia before I fainted." 
 
 "Would your mother have to come along?" said Perry, 
 anxiously. "Of course I Icve Mrs. T. J. B., but" 
 
 "Say no more, Perry. Let mother darling row her 
 own hoe, or whatever they say." 
 
 When Perry called for Pet that evening he was sur- 
 prised to see how fine she looked. She would have 
 dubbed her evening gown old-fashioned, but she had 
 
 476
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 bought with such far-sighted providence that it was still 
 a little ahead of the season. 
 
 Perry lavished compliments on her, and it is not cer- 
 tain that in the dusk of the cab he did not live up to his 
 reputation better than with Red Ida. 
 
 Pet was so gorgeous that he decided to take her to the 
 Ritz-Carlton for dinner. They could dance in a rowdier 
 place if the spirit moved them, or in any of the expensive 
 hotels, for the dance industry had forced them all into line. 
 Perry and Pet went up to the dining-room on the roof, 
 and rejoiced in its cool richnesses. Under the striped canopy 
 great baskets of flowers hung in profusion. And the night 
 air streamed in across a parapet of plants in bloom. It 
 played about with the hilarity of a jester in a throne-room. 
 It bent the flowers double and tousled the hair of the men. 
 It twitched the plumes in the head-dresses of the wom- 
 en, and it whisked impishly at their light skirts as they 
 entered. 
 
 And at one empty table it fluttered the table-cloth so 
 joyously that at last a thin goblet rolled to the floor and 
 broke with a little tinkle. 
 
 Pet's spirits rose higher and higher, and Perry ordered 
 with less than his usual delicacy, for Pet was hungry. 
 Also thirsty. She flung his cocktail as well as her own 
 between her riant lips. And she said: 
 
 "Make it~ champagne, old thing, won't you? That's 
 the love-child! And give me a cigarette." 
 
 Perry made it champagne. A best one. It came so dry 
 that Pet pretended to blow the dust off it. Perry, though 
 he drank hardly a drop, began to feel the conviviality of 
 the occasion, and people at other tables were glancing 
 with amusement or displeasure at him and at Pet, whose 
 strong voice was not muffled with gaiety. 
 
 And then Winnie Nicolls had to come in, with some 
 elderly woman in convoy. Pet waved to him with an 
 eagerness that miffed Perry. She beckoned him to come 
 over from the large table where he had been seated. 
 
 477
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 But he bowed low and indicated his companion as an 
 excuse for staying put. 
 
 Pet grew sullen. "Who's the old hen he's with, and 
 why is he afraid to let her see him with me? Is it be- 
 cause I'm smoking?" 
 
 "I don't know three times," said Perry. 
 
 "Am I flushed? Am I talking too loud?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, what do I care?" she said, louder still. Then 
 she saw that his face had brightened suddenly. She faced 
 about. Muriel Schuyler was coming in with her father 
 and some young man. 
 
 Perry was disgusted at being caught out with Pet on 
 one of her bad days, but he decided to put on a bold front. 
 He started to rise and go to Muriel. But Pet put her 
 hand on his arm and set him down ridiculously. 
 
 It was Winnie Nicolls that rose and motioned to Muriel, 
 and she turned in his direction. 
 
 Pet saw this, too, and it inflamed her further. Perry 
 tried to lift her hand from his arm, and pleaded: 
 
 "Let me go, please. I must speak to Miss Schuyler 
 just a moment." 
 
 She would not release him. She mumbled: "Muriel 
 Schuyler can't have all the men. If Winnie can't leave 
 his hen, you can't leave me." 
 
 "I'll only be a moment, please," Perry urged. 
 
 But Pet had already passed the danger-point. Her 
 cigarette caught her notice; the ashes were about to top- 
 ple. A sudden vicious inspiration led her to flick them 
 into Perry's eye. 
 
 Staring at Muriel, he did not see them coming. They 
 filled his eyes with pain and tears, and his heart with rage. 
 
 "Oh, so sorry!" Pet laughed. "Go on to your Muriel 
 now. I don't mind." 
 
 He could not go. He spent some awkward moments 
 bathing his eye with his handkerchief wetted in his glass 
 of water. His temper was gone beyond control. He 
 
 478
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 was kept winking, and he dared not look at Muriel. He 
 lectured Pet in a low tone, and she answered him with 
 such blatance that the waiters were in distress. 
 
 Perry saw through his inflamed eyes that Muriel was 
 wondering, and her father annoyed. Winnie Nicolls was 
 disgusted, and his aunt from out of town half amazed 
 and half delighted at this confirmation of her opinion of 
 New York manners and morals. 
 
 As soon as the miserable dinner could be served and 
 disposed of, Perry got Pet away on the pretext of an im- 
 patience to dance. When he had helped her into a taxi- 
 cab, he whispered her address to the driver. 
 
 When Pet realized that he had brought her home she 
 made a magnificent scene, and Perry was not sure that she 
 would not strike him in the face. 
 
 To the delight of the chauffeur, she stood at her front 
 door and threatened Perry Merithew with vengeance dire 
 and memorable. Perry went back to the Ritz-Carlton 
 to make his apologies, but Muriel and her company had 
 gone somewhere else to dance. He went to half the roofs 
 in town before he reached the one where they had been. 
 And by that time they had been and gone. 
 
 Worthing had been hardly more comfortable through 
 the dinner than Merithew. He had not been yoked to a 
 woman whose good breeding had shown poor results; 
 but he had been encircled with money. 
 
 Jacob Schuyler was rich. Winnie Nicolls was richer, 
 and his aunt, Mrs. Adams of Boston, was one of the pluto- 
 crats of New England. Winnie remembered Worthing, 
 and told again the story of the vain pursuit they had en- 
 gaged in when Muriel was kidnapped. But Winnie did 
 not disguise his jealousy of him. 
 
 After the dinner they adjourned to the Biltmore to 
 dance. Jacob and Mrs. Adams made sorry progress. 
 Both had been learning new steps, but they had not 
 learned the same ones, and the result was more debate 
 
 479
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 than dance. When Jacob sidled, Abigail dipped; and 
 when Abigail pirouetted, Jacob castle-walked. 
 
 Muriel gave Worthing the first dance, and he rejoiced 
 till he wondered if she had not done it to tantalize Nicolls. 
 Furthermore, Jacob stopped them in mid-ecstasy and cut 
 in, offering to trade partners. He wrested his daughter 
 from Worthing's arms and bounded away like a galloping 
 buffalo, for Muriel knew his rhythm. Worthing had noth- 
 ing to do but offer Abigail the hollow of his arms, and to 
 his horror she found him so congenial a dancer that she 
 required an encore. Then it was Nicolls that laughed. 
 
 Jacob was like a boy. He had got back the dancing 
 fever, and besides the joy of the speed and the music and 
 the lilt there was the added promise of well-won sleep and 
 the welcome testimony of the bath-room scales every few 
 mornings that he had made one pound of flesh grow 
 where two had grown before. 
 
 And so, being a monopolist by nature, he was perfectly 
 willing to keep Muriel from the two young men, and leave 
 them to alternate as wallflower or as first aid to Abigail. 
 
 When Jacob grew tired it was always time to go home. 
 He tired early, since he rose early, and he was soon telling 
 Muriel to bid her guests good night. 
 
 Winnie Nicolls tried to make an engagement with 
 Muriel for the next day, but she said that she would be 
 in the country. He suggested the following afternoon, 
 but she said that her father would be motoring over to 
 Long Beach for a swim and more dancing. Winnie sug- 
 gested the still following day, but Muriel had an engage- 
 ment in town at a most important charity meeting with 
 a committee of which Mrs. Perry Merithew was chair- 
 man. Winnie gave up in despair. 
 
 Worthing made a note of that Long Beach hint, and 
 resolved to happen to be there. The ocean still belonged 
 to the public, and a rich man in a bathing-suit was no 
 better than a poor man unless he were the better swimmer. 
 And Worthing rather prided himself on his natation.
 
 CHAPTER LVIII 
 
 PEOPLE who go down to the sea in bathing-suits 
 1 alter all civilization. Everything suffers a sea 
 change. They doff the habits that have been drilled into 
 them from infancy, the very principles of morality. They 
 are so used to their clothes that when they take them off 
 they are really putting' on a domino. Their own skins 
 and limbs are a masquerade. 
 
 They check at the office their valuables, write their 
 names on them, and reclaim them later, saying: 
 
 "Give me back my modesty, my dignity, my pride. I 
 left with you a lively sense of the importance of conceal- 
 ing my ankles and knees, and a complete set of demure 
 ideals and discreet behaviors." 
 
 Imagine the horror of a lady who found that she had 
 lost her check or by mistake held that of some light per- 
 son, or learned that her valuables had been mislaid or 
 given away to somebody else. Imagine Mrs. Grundy 
 coming back wet and animal, and finding that she would 
 have to return to town as she had just come up the beach ! 
 Ponder the astounding fact that if she were to saunter 
 along the board-walk in the garb she wore on the sand a 
 foot away, she would ruin her reputation for life. In 
 most of the seaside colonies she would be arrested by the 
 blushing police if she went to her cottage, a hundred 
 yards distant, without an enveloping mantle about her. 
 
 But on the strip of free country along the water's edge 
 she will not be criticized, though she stroll or sprawl or 
 run or stand in the suds and cling to a rope and bounce 
 up and down in a jostle of total strangers. She may shriek
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 and cavort and splash, and no one will protest. That is 
 what she is there for. She may bark and wallow and 
 wiggle like a glistening seal, and nobody will say her nay. 
 Astounding and bewildering truth that one may not do 
 in one crowded place what one may do in another! O 
 times! O places! O morals! 
 
 The partially and insecurely costumed faun next to Mrs. 
 Grundy may be her parson. Only yesterday he may have 
 (and probably had) delivered a scorching jeremiad against 
 the indecencies of the modern fashions, the sensualities 
 of the ball-room, or the Babylonian horrors of musical 
 comedy where the most brazen show-girl or acrobat is 
 hardly more exposed than wet Mrs. Grundy or himself. 
 
 But now his reverence is dressed very nearly as God 
 dressed him and he is lauding God, who made the sea, for 
 making it. 
 
 The parson s wife may be out yonder on the float with 
 a bevy of dancing mergirls and kicking her manifest legs 
 in pagan childishness. On the beach the little daughter 
 of the minister may be screaming in the wash and trussed 
 up as high as anatomy allows a little human clothes- 
 pin. The minister's elder daughter may be lolling in knee- 
 skirts on the sand and combing her hair while she flirts 
 with a young fellow two-thirds of whose person is covered 
 only by a coat of sunburn. 
 
 It is hard for us to understand the Roman Saturnalia 
 of three days, yet we have three months of it. Inconsist- 
 ency has never had anything to do with virtue, and never 
 will have; and the saint may perform to-day what the 
 courtesan dared not do yesterday and will not dare to- 
 morrow. For whatever everybody does is right so long 
 as everybody does it. 
 
 These things ought to make us less ruthless in our 
 condemnations, but they don't and won't. The scandal- 
 ous are as easily scandalized as the prudes. 
 
 Mrs. Grundy, whose skirt comes an inch below her knees 
 (when she stands still), is disgusted at the sight of Miss 
 
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 Phryne, whose skirt ends an inch above the fatal patella. 
 Rev. Dr. Dogma, whose sleeves fall an inch below his 
 shoulders, is revolted at the young men who have no 
 sleeves at all. 
 
 And this hilariously depraved multitude, a glimpse of 
 whose unashamed persons would have set Cotton Mather 
 or even Roger Williams to calling on Heaven for a shower 
 of brimstone, was itself aghast at the newest depravity 
 because it was new. 
 
 In the summer of 1914 the dancing mania took an am- 
 phibious form. A number of half-clad bathers, not con- 
 tent with walking or running or sitting or lying supine 
 or prone along the beach, actually took to dancing 
 together. This was the post-ultimate adventure. This 
 was, as the Irish say, "beyond the beyonds." 
 
 But the strongest language that could have been de- 
 vised was already exhausted in denouncing the tango, and 
 before that the turkey trot, the waltz, the polka, the 
 minuet, the very idea of dancing. 
 
 Yet the dances had waxed and waned in popularity 
 with no regard whatsoever to the names they were called; 
 they waxed and waned like other public whims, solely 
 according to the great social law of novelty and fatigue. 
 And the only moral seems to be that one should save a 
 superlative or two for a rainy day. 
 
 Spendthrift moralists, who had worn out all the in- 
 decent nouns and adjectives in rebuking people who 
 danced indoors on floors, had nothing left but the same 
 objurgations for people who danced outdoors on beaches. 
 It might be hard to explain why it was less reprehensible 
 for two people to gyrate mutually in flimsy evening clothes 
 in stuffy rooms than to perform the same motions in the 
 broad daylight before thousands in only slightly less 
 costume. But there it was. And many of the tango 
 maniacs were as loud as the preachers in reviling the 
 outburst. 
 
 Perhaps the next summer would see it forbidden by 
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 law, or perhaps the very matrons would be at it in the 
 moonlight. But in 1914 few but the extreme progressives 
 were so superior or inferior to public opinion as to indulge 
 in beach dancing. 
 
 Even Perry Merithew gasped at the first sight of the 
 spectacle. He had motored over to Long Beach, accord- 
 ing to a popular program, for a swim, followed by a 
 dancing-tea, followed by a dancing-dinner, an evening of 
 dancing at the Trouville, and a motor-ride back to town 
 or to some Long Island home. 
 
 The day was stinging hot, and the motor-mobbed roads 
 were foggy with dust. The sight of the vast placid sea 
 was a boon. 
 
 Perry left his mufti in the bath-house, emerged in the 
 legal minimum of bathing-suit, and ran into the small 
 surf, dived through the first waves and played dolphin 
 awhile, then went ashore, and promenaded his powerful 
 frame, letting the sun dry him so that the sea might wet 
 him again. A band in a pavilion was booming dance 
 tunes to whose key and meter the waves paid no heed. 
 
 Perry walked into a little galaxy of couples dancing on 
 the well-sanded floor of the beach. They were not very 
 nice people, of course. But then the first people who take 
 up fashions, sciences, and religions never are. 
 
 Perry enjoyed the rare luxury of being shocked. He 
 denounced the exhibition to the nearest bystander. 
 Then, on the opposite side of the wall of spectators, he 
 saw Aphra Shaler. She had come to Long Beach under 
 other auspices evidently those of a man so helpless with 
 fat that he resembled a Japanese day balloon, one of 
 those strange bloats that have hands and legs affixed. 
 His very appearance in a bathing-suit was an affront. 
 
 Aphra was very becomingly costumed in such garb as 
 an overgrown doll might have worn in swimming. 
 
 Perry did not recognize her at first because she had 
 redecorated her hair. The heap of copper wire was a pile 
 of ashen threads. She was something new again and had 
 
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 turned so pretty that he forgave her the moneys she had 
 wheedled out of him with her ingenious, ingenuous eyes 
 so prompt to tears. 
 
 Aphra found him so pretty that she also forgave him 
 and forgot; forgave Perry the moneys he had lately re- 
 fused her, and forgot her escort entirely. She caracoled 
 to Perry's side, squeezed his arm, and murmured: 
 
 "Hello, Per!" Aphra was one of those who must have 
 always a nickname for the nickname. 
 
 "Hello!" said Perry. 
 
 "Dance?" said she. 
 
 "No, thanks," said he. 
 
 "Please." 
 
 "No, thanks!" 
 
 "Where's the harm?" 
 
 "Where's the fun?" 
 
 "Try it just once for old sake's sake." 
 
 He shook his head. She persisted. 
 
 "I dare you to." 
 
 Perry accepted the challenge. Aphra stepped into his 
 arms, and they stepped out. The band was playing a 
 hesitation waltz. Aphra managed to keep from treading 
 on Perry's bare feet, and there was a peculiar exhilaration 
 in the open air, the quaint daredeviltry of the dance. 
 
 "What's happened to your hair?" he said. 
 
 "It needed a new coat of paint, so I tried this shade 
 for a change. Like it?" 
 
 "Immensely." 
 
 Aphra was overjoyed. She gave no further thought to 
 her original sponsor. 
 
 The next music was a maxixe. They danced that to- 
 gether. Then they ran into the ocean for a swim; then 
 came out and danced again. There was something 
 primeval about it something Polynesian. 
 
 Clinton Worthing had come early to the beach in the 
 hope of surprising Muriel. He had swum and basked and 
 
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 swum again, but she had not come. He joined the mob of 
 spectators around the dancing few. The dancing shocked 
 him him whom such appalling things did not shock. 
 
 He watched the infatuated dervishes awhile, then 
 turned away. He almost fell over an umbrella and sent 
 it skirling aside. 
 
 When he hastened to recover it he found before him 
 and beneath him the great Mrs. Schuyler squat on the 
 sand like a sultana. She was not in bathing togs, and 
 Worthing felt as if he had wandered out of his bath- 
 room into a drawing-room. 
 
 But Susan Schuyler was not shocked. She smiled and 
 said, "Sit down, won't you?" 
 
 He dropped like an invited Turk. 
 
 Susan explained: "I'm too lazy to go in to-day. My 
 husband and my daughter are getting ready now. Do 
 you enjoy the surf, Dr. Worthing?" 
 
 Worthing said that he did. 
 
 "I used to," said Susan. "I used to swim far out and 
 dive from high places and all that, but now not now." 
 
 It was hard to imagine that she had once been slim 
 and lithe as any of these nymphs. It was hard to imagine 
 that Muriel would one day be seated buxomly, perhaps 
 on the same divan of sand, and speaking so of her own 
 daughter. Worthing wondered who would be the father 
 of that far-away daughter. 
 
 "Hello!" 
 
 Worthing looked up. Muriel and her father were 
 standing over them, smiling down. Muriel was swaddled 
 up in a loose cloak. Jacob, the Titan of business, was 
 bare-legged, bare-armed, bare-footed, bare-headed. He 
 made a fine figure of a man of age. 
 
 Muriel expressed great surprise at seeing Worthing. 
 He was glad to feel that it was mingled with delight. 
 He rose to his feet and blushed ; and she blushed, too. 
 
 In other times and other climes, when parents selected 
 their children's spouses for them, a girl was thought en- 
 
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 lightened indeed if she had her future husband pointed out 
 to her when he passed her window in his long robe. And 
 if she gave him a glimpse of her eyes through a lattice or 
 a wave of the hand, she was dangerously near an ad- 
 venturess. 
 
 Yet wickedness was not unknown then, and the favorite 
 romances of those times are so licentious that they are not 
 considered fit reading for the youth of our day who are 
 clad scantily and hardly watched at all. Yet there are 
 good girls and boys to-day, honest loves and decent 
 marriages. 
 
 In any case, those who believe in eugenic unions should 
 welcome the inspections that take place at the beaches. 
 In any case, it is not altogether undesirable that two peo- 
 ple who might form a lifelong alliance should be given 
 opportunity to know each other's frames without the lies 
 and hypocrisies of costume. 
 
 If lovers could only know each other's souls beforehand 
 in equal undress, the business of mating might not be 
 so fertile in disappointments. But mating souls take 
 refuge in the glamour of moonshine and in the deceptions 
 of party manners and falsely exalted moods, and the 
 gyves are already snapped at the altar before he can see 
 how she behaves when the cook marches out or she how 
 he behaves when the bills march in. 
 
 Worthing and Muriel found each other beautiful of 
 body. But their bodies were only half of their life. Their 
 souls they found beautiful, too; but these were still 
 dressed up in the gorgeous habiliments of romance, of 
 diversion unhampered by the demands of every -day 
 life. 
 
 They had not seen each other's souls in bathing-suits. 
 That test was yet to come. 
 
 Meanwhile there was the ocean, and Worthing was eager 
 to be in it. The best part of it was that Winnie Nicolls 
 was not there, nor any other rival that he knew of. 
 
 "Come on," he said; "I'll race you to the float." 
 
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 Muriel put up her hands to throw off her cloak, when 
 Perry Merithew, dancing with Aphra, whirled her way. 
 
 Perry recognized Muriel before she did him. She had 
 never seen him in just his skin and a few yards of jersey 
 
 As soon as he saw her Perry flung Aphra off with the 
 curtest of "pardons." Aphra saw him greeting Muriel. 
 His homage was evident in the back of his neck. Aphra 
 was as angry as Worthing was. 
 
 "We're just going into the water," said Muriel. 
 
 "So am I," said Perry. 
 
 "We're going to race to the float," said Muriel. 
 
 "I'll bet you can beat me," said Perry. 
 
 "Come on, Clinton," Muriel cried, and they ran, splash- 
 ing through the low froth, sidling through the mid-waves, 
 and diving through the breakers. 
 
 Worthing put all his mettle into his Australian crawl, 
 and was happy to find that he was first to the float by 
 half the distance till he realized that the canny Perry 
 was hanging back and companioning Muriel. This race 
 was not to the swift. 
 
 Merithew was an excellent swimmer and a neat and 
 graceful diver. But he took care not to exploit his gifts 
 so much that he lost sight of Muriel. 
 
 Worthing could not shake him off, and he did not enjoy 
 competing for Muriel's attention. When Jacob came 
 out puffing and turned the crowd of three into a conven- 
 tion, Worthing gave up. Besides, he really had a patient 
 whom he had secured through the absence of another 
 doctor and did not wish to lose by his own. 
 
 So he told Muriel good-by. She warmed his blue soul 
 with an invitation to lunch with her somewhere on the 
 morrow. She had to be in town, she said. He loved 
 her enough to warn her that she would better stay away 
 till the hot wave had passed its crisis, but she said that 
 she could stand it if all the other millions could. 
 
 They clasped wet hands and he dived his best. She 
 called him back. He stood treading water while she said: 
 
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 "I just remembered. I may go to town this evening 
 after dinner and spend the night at home so that I can be 
 up bright and early in the morning. Are you busy this 
 evening?" 
 
 Worthing's heart grew heavy enough to sink him. 
 Dr. Eccleston, whose assistant he was, had mapped out 
 that evening for a round of visits with him, including an 
 examination of Happy Hanigan's condition. 
 
 "I'm terribly sorry," said Muriel. 
 
 "Not half so sorry as I am," said Worthing, and swam 
 away like a disconsolate shark. 
 
 Perry Merithew was not saddened at all. He dared not 
 invite Muriel to intrust her evening to him, because her 
 father was within earshot and would not go away. But 
 Perry made his own resolves. 
 
 When Muriel went ashore at last, and bade him good- 
 by, he found Aphra Shaler waiting for him. She was 
 virulent with rage. 
 
 " How dared you throw me over like that?" she stormed. 
 "One minute you're dancing with me, the next you 
 chuck me and never come back. If I could have swam 
 that far I'd have come out there and scratched your eyes 
 out and hers, too. Whyn't you introduce me to that 
 Schuyler brat?" 
 
 "She's particular whom she meets," said Perry. 
 
 " Not very when she sits out there on the float, showin' 
 off her shape and swimmin' round with you. I guess she's 
 like those other fast millionaires, all right." ' 
 
 Perry's eyes blazed. His voice was low, but his wrath 
 was evident. "Leave Miss Schuyler out of it, do you 
 hear? I won't allow a a I won't allow a woman like 
 you to mention her name to me. Do you understand?" 
 
 "Oh, I see!" Aphra sneered. "You're as far gone as 
 that. Well, you can have her, for all I care. But you've 
 got to get me my dinner first and get me back to town. I 
 was fool enough to listen to your con. voice again, and my 
 gentleman friend got sore and went home. I'm stranded." 
 16 489
 
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 Somehow this amused Perry. He said, "I haven't a 
 cent on me." 
 
 And he walked back to the bath-house. When he was 
 dressed he took care to escape without providing for 
 Aphra's return. He felt that she could take care of her- 
 self. He was going back into the company of the good.
 
 CHAPTER LIX 
 
 WHEN Muriel reached her home she rang the bell 
 several times without response. She began to 
 search in her befuddled handbag for the latch-key she 
 had been allotted at the time when she began coming 
 home at all hours from dances; for the Schuylers, being 
 merciful people, had mercy on their servants. Muriel 
 had just found the key when the door was opened by the 
 second man. 
 
 In place of the usual hospitality of Kane's smile at the 
 sight of her his face dropped. But as we sometimes fail to 
 hear what has been said till we have repeated it in our 
 minds, so Muriel did not really see his expression till she 
 was not looking at it. Then she paused on the stairway 
 to say: 
 
 "Oh, Kane!" 
 
 "Yes, Miss." 
 
 "You looked sad when you saw me." 
 
 "Oh no, Miss!" 
 
 "Oh yes, Kane! Have I broken up anything?" 
 
 "Oh no, indeed!" 
 
 "Were you going to have a little party here?" 
 
 "Not here oh no! no, indeed!" 
 
 "Where, then?" 
 
 "It really doesn't matter, Miss." 
 
 "But I don't want to spoil any fun you planned. You 
 don't get much, staying in town this horrible weather." 
 
 "Why, thank you, we were going to take a little ride 
 to Coney Island and back, owing to the heat but it isn't 
 necessary." 
 
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 "Oh yes, it is! I insist." 
 
 "We couldn't very well leave you alone in this big 
 house, Miss though, of course, Mrs. Lunney would be 
 here; and the night watchman patrols the block; but 
 Oh no, thank you." 
 
 "Run right along. I'm going to bed early, anyway. 
 Just see that I'm called at eight, and send my breakfast 
 up at half past, for I've got an important meeting at 
 ten." 
 
 "Yes, Miss, but really, I hardly like " 
 
 "Not another word, Kane. I wouldn't stay in myself 
 if I didn't have to. The town is like a furnace. It would 
 break my heart to think that I kept you here." 
 
 "It's very good of you, Miss, but really " 
 
 "Good-by." 
 
 Muriel's own maid was at the country house, and a 
 chambermaid came up to supply her place, but Muriel 
 ordered her to go about her pleasure. It is thus that one 
 becomes a heroine to one's chambermaid, and that io 
 being a heroine indeed. 
 
 Muriel watched from her window, and soon a chauffeur 
 drove up in a touring-car. Muriel could not make out 
 who he was, or whose car he drove, but she knew that 
 when the owners are away the chauffeurs will play. She 
 watched the truant servants pile in, and she prayed that 
 the motor-picnic might not end with the disaster of so 
 many such excursions from below-stairs. 
 
 Mrs. Lunney stopped in on her heavy pilgrimage to 
 the attic to see if she could be of service ; but Muriel sent 
 her on her way. She tried to read, but the light drew 
 wire- voiced mosquitoes, suicidal moths, and beetles that 
 blundered about like random bullets. She let down her 
 hair, but it was too hot about her shoulders, and she 
 fastened it up again in two coils. She sat in the dark 
 by the window, gazing into the shadowy demesne of 
 Central Park, and watching the passage of the motor- 
 'buses, their upper decks filled like window-boxes with a 
 
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 swaying foliage of humanity prisoners in town hunting 
 an artificial breeze in the speed of the 'bus and enjoying 
 automobiling at the wholesale rate of ten cents for each 
 five miles or more. 
 
 No amount of wealth could persuade a zephyr to blow 
 through even the Schuyler windows. The air was singu- 
 larly lifeless, and Muriel envied the lucky ones who could 
 go 'bus-riding. If she had not known that Dr. Worthing 
 was otherwise engaged she would have dared to ask him 
 to take her out. She felt peculiarly forlorn, greatly 
 tempted to use the franchise of the American girl, and go 
 by herself. 
 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich once described a plot he had 
 for a story he had never written: A man found himself 
 the only living being in a great city; everybody else was 
 dead through some mysterious visitation. He wandered 
 the empty streets in desperate loneliness, and returned 
 at last to his dismal home. He sat there in utter solitude 
 and despair, and then suddenly he heard the door-bell 
 ring. 
 
 Muriel was in such a plight. So far as she was con- 
 cerned, New York was an abandoned farm, the passers-by 
 were wraiths merely. And then the telephone rang. 
 
 "There's something in telepathy, after all," she thought, 
 as she hastened to it, feeling a kind of gratitude to the 
 rubber oracle. "Clinton got my spirit messages at last." 
 
 She greeted space with a cordial "Hello!" and space 
 greeted her with another. 
 
 ' ' Hello ! Is Miss Schuyler there ?" 
 
 Her voice grew somber with disappointment. "This is 
 Miss Schuyler." 
 
 "How are you? This is 
 
 "Oh, hello, Mr. Merithew! And how are you?" 
 
 "Crazy with the heat. What are you doing this 
 evening?" 
 
 "Very much nothing." 
 
 "Will you take a little motor rids with me?" 
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 "Indeed not." 
 
 "I'm horribly lonesome." 
 
 "You're not the only one." 
 
 "Then why not come along and save two lives?" 
 
 "It wouldn't be quite respectable." 
 
 "There's nobody in town to know. That makes it re- 
 spectable." 
 
 "Crowds are going by on stages." 
 
 "Then let's get on a stage and ride. It's unutterably 
 proper; twenty chaperons on every 'bus." 
 
 "Some other time." 
 
 "The only people in town except us are strangers from 
 the far West. We might as well be masked." 
 
 She resented this, but it reassured her, and after a little 
 further parley she answered, "All right." 
 
 "Shall I call for you?" 
 
 "No; I'll slip out and meet you at the corner. You go 
 there and wait. I'll watch for you from here, and when 
 you're there I'll come." 
 
 "Fine for you! I'll not be a minute. I'm only a few 
 blocks away at a drug-store." 
 
 vShe felt that she ought not to go, and that made it 
 more interesting. She tiptoed about with delicious stealth 
 and found her hat in the dark. She took two hat-pins 
 from the cushion on her dressing-table. One of them was 
 Maryla's claw-gripped amethyst. 
 
 She found Perry Merithew waiting, and they giggled 
 like runaway children. They hailed the first north-bound 
 'bus and climbed to the upper deck. They found two seats 
 together, and the motion of the stage swept their faces 
 with a benison of fresh air. They talked of nothing much 
 but the tyranny of the weather, all the way up, and they 
 kept their places when the stage turned back. When 
 Muriel suggested getting out at her home, Perry begged 
 her to complete the voyage to Washington Square. She 
 consented. 
 
 494
 
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 By and by the comfort of the high, cool voyage affected 
 her as happiness usually did it made her eager to share 
 it. She began to talk of her poor who could not know 
 such luxury: 
 
 "I'd like to charter a hundred of these 'buses and give 
 them all a ride." 
 
 "An excellent idea," said Perry. "For a thousand 
 dollars a night you could take quite a few of them up and 
 down the Avenue and show them what they're missing." 
 
 "It seems a crime for us to have so much and they so 
 little. All these palaces and churches locked up and this 
 street empty, and those poor souls crowded into such 
 stifling hovels!" 
 
 "Are you going to become one of those ghastly socialists 
 who don't believe in letting anybody have anything 
 because everybody can't have everything ? And, after all, 
 we haven't so much. A man can only wear one suit of 
 clothes at a time and eat one meal at a time; and the less 
 he eats the happier he is, no matter how rich he is." 
 
 "But to toil and slave the way they do!" 
 
 "There's no unhappiness like being idle," he answered, 
 glibly. But even she caught that fallacy: 
 
 "They have the idleness, too thousands and thousands 
 are out of work. And idleness means to them that they 
 can't even get their one meal at a time." 
 
 "Oh, I fancy there's just as much real unhappiness in 
 the mansions as in the tenements." 
 
 "Have you ever seen the tenements?" 
 
 "No, and I'm proud of it." 
 
 "Well, I've seen a little of them and I'm not proud of 
 them." 
 
 "I hate slums," said Perry. 
 
 "So do I," said Muriel. "So do the people that live 
 in them. You really ought to see how they live. It 
 Would break your heart." 
 
 "Thanks. That's a good enough reason for staying 
 away." 
 
 495
 
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 "No, it isn't. It's our duty to know how our poor 
 relations are getting along. You dared me to take this 
 ride. I dare you to go over there. Perhaps I can get you 
 interested in the sufferings of the poor poor." 
 
 "What good could I do for them?" 
 
 "The little Italian boy is safe at home because of you, 
 and Happy Hanigan is getting uncrooked. You might 
 find somebody else to help." 
 
 "Heaven forbid! Your first little trip cost me two 
 thousand dollars already. That will have to stand for 
 my contribution this year. And it got you kidnapped and 
 you escaped with a lot of head-line fame. You'd better 
 keep away, or the bandits will get you again if you don't 
 watch out." 
 
 The stage was entering Washington Square through 
 its isolated arch of triumph, which has led to nothing 
 triumphant since the old pleasance - ground of the aris- 
 tocracy was captured by the tenement populace. On 
 every bench they were draped, -Italians mainly, with num- 
 berless children fast asleep on their mothers' laps or in 
 the baby- wagons or on the stint of grass. 
 
 There was infinite pathos in their unconscious postures, 
 and Muriel was determined not to go home till she had 
 emptied her hands of some mercy. 
 
 "Come along," she said, and started down the hazard- 
 ous steps. 
 
 Merithew followed perforce. 
 
 They found South Fifth Avenue dingy, jand turned east 
 in Bleccker Street. The big warehouses were deserted, 
 but wherever there were residences or boarding-houses 
 their high stoops were filled with men and women and 
 children either relaxed in sleep or awake and watching as 
 if for help to come from somewhere, if only a bit of motion 
 in the suffocating atmosphere. 
 
 The Bowery did not look miserable enough to be inter- 
 esting, and Muriel went on to First Avenue, where the 
 Elevated tracks added noise and gloom. Then she 
 
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 turned south with Perry, who protested that his ears and 
 his nostrils were being persecuted. But Muriel would 
 not relent. 
 
 In Allen Street there was suffering in plenty for the 
 most avid heart. The dark alley was evened in by the 
 tracks of the Elevated Road, its thick-set iron pillars 
 forming a gigantic gridiron where the people squirmed or 
 rested inert like lobsters broiled alive; for some had been 
 cooked to inanition and some still wriggled. 
 
 The street was filled from curb to curb, and the walks 
 and stoops from curb to wall on either side. Throngs 
 moved slowly or stood exchanging comments on the tor- 
 ture of the day and the night. It had been a famous 
 battle with the heat, and people told of their struggles for 
 breath as of incidents in a combat. There had been 
 several deaths and numberless prostrations. The hos- 
 pitals had been busy, and the ambulances had gone 
 clanging in all directions. And bigger ambulances had 
 lumbered through the town, carrying off the horses that 
 had fallen in dozens. 
 
 The humidity had added its lash to the rack of heat, 
 the children had been too listless to play, and the night 
 found them fretful and distraught. 
 
 Most of the men in Allen Street went about with their 
 coats on their arms, but even here there were some descend- 
 ants of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who walked 
 this fiery furnace without wilting their starch. The art of 
 ready-made clothing enabled them to dress a little more 
 foppishly than Merithew dared. There were women, too, 
 who kept themselves neat in spite of all, so that there was 
 nothing especially foreign in the appearance of Muriel 
 and Perry, and no attention was paid to them by wretches 
 too full of the problem of endurance to note or remember 
 who went by staring. Besides, the slumsters are always 
 being inspected and their interest blurs like that of freaks 
 in a dime museum. 
 
 These myriads had stewed all day at their tasks, and 
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 their eyes smarted with the sweat that had run into them. 
 The one thing that could have excited them would have 
 been a little shaking of the blanket of hot air. 
 
 Push-carts were aligned for miles. The stock beneath 
 was protected with oilcloth covers, and on these bunchy 
 couches hundreds of youngsters sprawled in all stages 
 of dress and undress. At the side of the push-carts the 
 fathers and mothers slept seated on chairs or boxes, their 
 heads bent forward on the carts, as if they had fallen 
 asleep over vain old prayers. 
 
 Chairs and benches were planted in the street and on 
 the walks so thickly that it was hard for Perry and Muriel 
 to move about without waking some fagged wretch whom 
 sleep had blessed at last. They picked their way like 
 Dante and Vergil slumming in hell. 
 
 Everywhere there were children burdening laps or arms, 
 and always they had the preference in the choice of 
 lesser evils. 
 
 Cellar doors were at a premium, and on one of them 
 an ancient grandmother in Israel, with her brown wig 
 fallen from her white hair, lay on her back, with only 
 a shopping-bag for pillow. In one fat arm a fat little 
 girl was coiled. 
 
 Seated on a chair alongside was a mother, lean and 
 scrawn and ugly as one of the Madonnas they carved in 
 wood in medieval Germany, and across her lank knees lay 
 a child gaunt and starved and rigid as wood. Both 
 seemed ready and labeled to die. 
 
 The mother looked from her too large eyes at some- 
 thing far away or near and vague, and stared so fixedly 
 that when Perry and Muriel passed in front of her her 
 vision did not waver. They seemed not to interrupt it. 
 
 On the steps next to her a man, her husband, perhaps, 
 bare-footed and clad only in trousers and undershirt, 
 drooped like a broken puppet, his arm thrust through the 
 railing and hanging palm up, begging. His face had no 
 softer pillow than the rusty iron rail. 
 
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 Muriel paused beyond this family to brood over it. 
 "If this is better than their own home inside, what must 
 their home be ?" she whispered. ' ' I ought to do something 
 for them, but it seems a shame to wake them up." 
 
 "Once you begin, where will you stop?" said Perry. 
 "Look up there!" 
 
 Muriel's eyes followed his gesture, and she saw the 
 dreadful freight of distress piled up in layers. 
 
 On the fire-escapes mounting in tier on tier people were 
 scattered as if there had been a battle in the sky and it 
 had rained human bodies, and they had caught there as 
 they fell. A few of the more modest had hung up clothes 
 and sheets to give them privacy. Others were too deso- 
 late to care whether they were seen or whether they 
 dropped down from their racks of torture. 
 
 "If I were God, I'd send a little breeze along this 
 street," said Perry Merithew. 
 
 There was peculiar anguish in the feeling that the one 
 solace these hordes of woe required was unpurchasable 
 by human wealth or science or merit. The whole region 
 was a cathedral of prayer to the god of the barometer. 
 Though no one kneeled or upheld hands or gabled finger- 
 tips together, every attitude was humbler than any 
 genuflection. 
 
 A sweep of wind would have been greeted as the pass- 
 ing of a troop of angels. And any rain would be holy 
 water. But these mercies did not come, though cyclones 
 and cloudbursts were harrying unpeopled wildernesses else- 
 where in the world. And there was no promise of relief 
 in the sterile sky with a moon as dry as old ivory. As 
 to-day was bitterer than yesterday, to-morrow threatened 
 to be worse than to-day, when the cold moon should give 
 place to the red-hot brasier of the sun. 
 
 Suddenly Muriel paused and pointed to a cavelike door- 
 way beyond whose dark recesses there was a blue curtain 
 of moonlight shining in a rear court. 
 
 "This is the place where I was kidnapped, I think if 
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 this is Allen Street? Yes, it is! Let's get away from 
 here. They might put me in the cellar again." 
 
 "Not while you have your body-guard with you," said 
 Perry, arching his little wicker cane as if it were a Toledo 
 blade. "We'll come down and explore it together to- 
 morrow." 
 
 "No, thank you," said Muriel. "One visit was 
 enough." 
 
 She turned and retraced her way through the endless 
 spectacle of the same misery in manifold forms. Perry 
 had been startled by the realization that he had stumbled 
 into the very parish of Red Ida and her gunmen. He was 
 glad enough to hurry away. 
 
 Muriel, already lost, led him, lost, over to Orchard 
 Street. Here she paused again and pointed across the 
 crowded lane. "I've been here, too. That's where we 
 found the poor Balinsky man who tried to kill himself; 
 but Dr. Worthing saved his life. That's where Maryla 
 lives Maryla Sokalska, a beautiful girl with the piti- 
 fulest story. I'll tell you about her some day." 
 
 The name stabbed Perry like an assassin's knife. He 
 felt guilty at first, and then his ready self-forgiveness told 
 him that if he had rescued the girl from such a realm as 
 this even for a few weeks, he had not done altogether ill 
 by her. 
 
 But when Muriel said: " I promised her I'd talk to her 
 father and mother and make them forgive her. I wonder 
 if they are at home now. Let's go up and see." 
 
 "Let's not," said Perry, sharply. 
 
 "But I want to tell them about Maryla." 
 
 "They're not at home, I'm sure. Nobody is. Every- 
 body has moved out into the street." 
 
 "No; they're not over there on the walk. . I'd know 
 them; the father has a big beard, and the mother is fat; 
 and that's a young couple sleeping on the fish-block. 
 Come on. I'm going up." 
 
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 "But they'll be asleep." 
 
 "Maryla says they always work till midnight, and it's 
 not that yet." 
 
 She was having another of her impulses, and Perry could 
 not dissuade her or detain her. And he had not the heart 
 to desert her.
 
 CHAPTER LX 
 
 A/T ERITHEW felt as if he were being haled before 
 1 V 1 a judgment seat. Of course the girl's parents 
 would not know him by sight. Yet Muriel might use 
 his name. In any case, he dreaded meeting the eyes of 
 Maryla's parents. If they did not know him it would 
 be almost more humiliating than if they did. 
 
 He resolved not to go. Muriel was already in the door- 
 way, beckoning to him. She shook her head in pity for 
 a young couple sleeping on a broad fish-block with a naked 
 little infant between them. She warned him to step 
 over the two tiny curly-haired cherubim sleeping on an 
 old shawl on the very door-sill. 
 
 Perry traversed the infants, unheeded by them or their 
 parents, but when he put out a hand to check Muriel she 
 was gone. She had vanished in the black of the hallway 
 and was hissing at him to come to the stairway. 
 
 She kept ahead of him as they climbed. He followed her 
 with increasing anger. But how could he leave her 
 there? She went up flight after flight and he ran in her 
 pursuit. Suddenly he collided with her in the dark. 
 He trod on her toe. She gave a little gasp of pain, and 
 now it was he that was the offender. 
 
 "I'm so sorry," he whispered, caressing her shoulder, 
 "but you oughtn't." 
 
 "I'm all right, but I've lost my way. I don't know 
 which door is theirs. I'm afraid to knock at the wrong 
 one." 
 
 "Better come back in the daytime," he urged, clinging 
 to her arm. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 " But now that I'm so near, it seems a pity not to go on." 
 
 There was nothing to help her choice. Behind most 
 of the doors there was a silence. Behind others there 
 were quarrels or wailing babies. There was no encourage- 
 ment to try any of the doors. 
 
 And it was asphyxiation to remain in the hall. The 
 climb had set them both to panting hard and the air 
 seemed to give no help to the lungs. There was a mystery 
 of gloom and peril about them and an uncanny communion 
 in standing so close together that they could hear each 
 other's breath and could not see an outline. Her arm 
 where he held it was firm and warm under the soft sleeve, 
 amazingly alive. 
 
 Perry loved the dark, and a dark mood grew in him 
 a familiar mood with him in the company of women, but 
 new in the presence of Muriel. His new thought of her 
 seemed to make another girl of her. She did not shake 
 his hand from her arm. Was she encouraging him or 
 was she unaware of his clasp? His heart, never too 
 regular, began to race like a propeller out of water. It 
 hurt and scared him. 
 
 Muriel's very arm seemed to be thinking. Suddenly it 
 moved with resolution, and she whispered: 
 
 "I'll try one more flight. Then I'll knock at the first 
 door." 
 
 "I beg you!" he said. "Please come away from this 
 odious place." 
 
 She pressed forward, but he clung to her, and his resist- 
 ance brought her back suddenly against him with a delicate 
 shock. His free arm quickened to seize her, but she shook 
 it off with a sharp: 
 
 "Don't!" 
 
 She said it with girlish impatience and with preoccu- 
 pation. 
 
 He let her go, mumbling, "I'm sorry." He heard her 
 steps on the stairs, and with the banister for guiding-clue 
 he followed her, struggling after her, groping toward her, 
 
 503
 
 EMPT^ POCKETS 
 
 and carrying a load of remorse like a heavy trunk on his 
 back. 
 
 He had disgraced himself before his own heart, and he 
 wondered if he were really incapable of meeting a woman's 
 trust with honor. He resolved to protect Muriel from his 
 old self. 
 
 Suddenly Muriel encountered a door at the head of the 
 stairs; it flew open before her hand and the moonlight 
 broke in upon them. Muriel stepped out on the roof, 
 and Perry after her. 
 
 It was emerging from all prose to all poetry, for now he 
 could see her, yet dimly, with a mystic edging of light 
 along her whole contour. She was staring into the 
 moonlight, yet drowned in it as if she were a sea-creature 
 in the depths. And there was a wonder about her as 
 about painted figures whose eyes are not shown. 
 
 The air up here was deep and pure and oceanic, though 
 warm and still and tropical. All about them their horizon 
 was a saw-tooth of cornices and chimneys. In the humid 
 distance were lights : some of them were the tower lamps 
 of high buildings, some of them were planets. It was not 
 easy to tell them apart. 
 
 To the east was the river with the bridges outlined in 
 luminous dots. There was hardly a sound except their 
 own feet scuffling across the tin of the roof still hot from 
 the sun and uncooled by the moon. They could see 
 nothing but the walls surrounding the roof they were on, 
 and as they grew used to the light it proved to be dirty and 
 littered. They understood why the tenants preferred 
 even the sidewalks to this well. 
 
 Perry grew sick of the place and disgruntled at Muriel's 
 unbridled curiosity. But she laughed as she commented: 
 
 "It's different from the Ritz-Carlton roof, eh?" Her 
 voice sounded loud to her and she lowered it in defer- 
 ence to the general hush. "I wonder what is beyond the 
 wall," she murmured. 
 
 504
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 She prowled across to it and Perry prowled after her. 
 One of the numerous clothes-lines caught him in the face, 
 and he vented his wrath on that. He took from his waist- 
 coat pocket a little silver knife and slashed the rope down. 
 
 "Ts! ts! ts !" Muriel clicked, reprovingly. "Some poor 
 woman will suffer for that. Rope is expensive." 
 
 "So is skin," Perry snapped, and shut the knife so 
 angrily that the blade closed on his left palm and cut it. 
 It bled. He whipped out a handkerchief and bound it 
 up. Muriel knotted it for him. She was acutely sym- 
 pathetic till she saw that his wound was not serious. 
 
 Then her curiosity ruled her again, and she said, "I'm 
 dying to see what's on the other side of the wall." 
 
 "That's the woman of it," Perry growled. "That's 
 what bounced Eve out of Paradise. She found out, and 
 stayed out." 
 
 With a sour gallantry he pushed a rickety old packing- 
 case to the wall and set it on end. Then he helped her 
 to mount it, and she gave him a hand up. 
 
 Now they could see across the battlement, and the 
 sight was grievous enough. They could look down from 
 here on several roofs, more flat and less shut in than the 
 one they were on. 
 
 But even those other roofs were not made for dormi- 
 tories, and they offered no graces or conveniences. Only 
 the worse conditions in the rooms below could have made 
 them tolerable. 
 
 Over the nearest tenement it seemed as if a plague had 
 passed, leaving its victims where they fell. Some of them 
 had provided themselves with bedding. Others slept on 
 the tin. One middle-aged woman lay alone on a double 
 mattress with a sheet over her and her head on a pillow. 
 She was an aristocrat among paupers. 
 
 With their feet perilously close to her head lay a man 
 and wife on the bare boards of an old box. Just beyond 
 them a young man, half clad, snored into the arm across 
 his eyes. Near him and lying on her face, with one hand 
 
 505
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 trailing on the roof, was a young woman in chemise and 
 petticoat and stockings. 
 
 In the middle of this roof was a family of six, their heads 
 rolled to the center like a colony of melons, their bodies 
 stretched in all directions outward. In the least comfort- 
 able place the father was extended, one clumsy foot on 
 top of the other, his coarse features doubly askew with 
 sleep and fatigue. His homely wife was hung along the 
 other rim of the mattress. Between them their five chil- 
 dren slept: a gawky young girl on her back, with her 
 hands flopped across her stomach and her head in the 
 neck of a somewhat older girl without youth or grace. 
 That one's side was weighted with the head of a child of 
 ten or so in a nightgown, her arms and calves uncovered 
 to the moon. The mother's hip was pillow to the head 
 of the oldest girl, reclining with a kind of royal majesty. 
 She belonged to beauty, and even in her disarray re- 
 vealed a wasted symmetry and a pity of lovableness. 
 
 "The poor dear things!" sighed Muriel, with a dew of 
 tears in her voice. 
 
 "They're like earthworms in a can!" said Perry Meri- 
 thew, repugnance sickening his pity. 
 
 Muriel sighed again: "I don't see what right I have 
 to all I have. My own room at home is bigger than that 
 whole roof, and there are five six ten fifteen people 
 sleeping there. And I never do any work, and they are 
 tired to death. I feel like selling my pretty canopied bed 
 and all my silver things. And I will ! And to-morrow I'll 
 come down and fit out these roofs with comfortable places 
 to sleep. They work so hard they have a right to a decent 
 place to sleep, haven't they? Haven't they?" 
 
 Partly because his emotional heart was not immune 
 to the mute appeal of these sufferers, but more be- 
 cause he knew that she wanted him to feel charitable, 
 he said: 
 
 "You're entirely right, as usual. Yes, and you must let 
 me help. It's a bad time of year for me, and I'm terribly 
 
 506
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 poor, but you can have anything I've got always for 
 anything you want to spend it on. Here, take what I 
 have now! I only ask you to save out enough for cab- 
 fare home. And while you are selling your silver things, 
 pawn these things of mine." 
 
 To his own amazement and hers he found himself 
 thrusting into her hand what bills he had in his wallet 
 and the coins in his pockets. She laughed softly in de- 
 light at his prodigality, and, opening her handbag, stuffed 
 the bills in and poured in the coins. And while it was 
 open he slipped his ring from his finger and lifted from his 
 scarf the black pearl that was generally there, and took 
 his watch from the chain. 
 
 "Oh, you're wonderful!" she exclaimed, dancing on the 
 narrow platform and almost falling to the ground. When 
 he seized her arms and rescued her, she thanked him for 
 that also. "You are such a good man," she said, "when 
 you give yourself a chance." 
 
 "It's you, not I," he mumbled, wondering why his 
 voice broke. 
 
 "We make a great team, then," she said, never imag- 
 ining how he had longed to put his head in the same yoke 
 with her. "We ought to accomplish something for the 
 poor." 
 
 It astounded him to see what happiness she was find- 
 ing in this little farce of charity. It made her beatifically 
 beautiful. If she had been at a greater distance he could 
 have admired her merely. On an altar she would have 
 won him to his knees. 
 
 But she was so close to him, so completely in his power, 
 alone with him in this jungle of animals, that oppor- 
 tunity kept whispering to him, "Here we are again, You 
 and I and She." 
 
 He abhorred himself and tried to wrench his mind away 
 from such forbidden meditations. He made a tremendous 
 effort to shake off the old habit of soul. But it was a 
 craving that he had never fought before, and it fought 
 
 So?
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 back at him till his heart was riven with torment. He kept 
 his hands from her shoulders with mighty effort. He 
 gripped the ledge and turned his mind to the paupers. 
 
 He tried to freeze romance out of his mind, and to curl 
 his lip to sneers. He tried to cheapen Muriel to himself 
 that he might restore the balance of his faculties. 
 
 "And now, young woman," he laughed, with a dry throat, 
 "now you've got all my money, and if you tossed it over 
 there it wouldn't keep that whole roof -load for a day. It 
 wouldn't buy them a breath of cool air or an ounce of 
 brains." 
 
 "But I'm going to add more money to this," she said, 
 with a simplicity that was maddening, for her heart was 
 not distressed about him or his self-wrestle. He tried to 
 be harsher and bitterer. 
 
 "Suppose you did. Suppose you took all the money 
 you have, and all your father has, and your mother and 
 your uncle and all I have, and all our friends have sup- 
 pose you made up a purse of fifty million dollars, and scat- 
 tered it on all these roofs, how long would it last how 
 much good would it do? Wouldn't it be like throwing it 
 into the ocean? If you came back in two weeks wouldn't 
 you find poverty still here? Some of the paupers would 
 have stolen it from the others, some would have wasted 
 their share in extravagance. But there would still be 
 poverty; for there is always stupidity.'' 
 
 "Don't you think we ought to try to help the poor?" 
 she queried, like a child rebuked. "Doesn't your heart 
 ache for the poor souls?" 
 
 "My heart aches for everybody if I let it," he sighed. 
 "It would break if I let it think of such things, and so 
 will yours. And, after all, what good would it do? If 
 you and I put on sackcloth and went barefoot through 
 the slums of this one town all our lives, would the slums 
 know the difference? If you gave all these people riches, 
 would they be happy? Are rich people happy? If these 
 people want to get rich, why don't they? They're no 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 poorer than many millionaires were once. If they knew 
 how to use money they'd know how to make it." 
 
 Muriel had no arguments ready for his attack. She 
 had acted on an instinct of benevolence, and he frightened 
 that. 
 
 "What do you think we ought to do, then?" she stam- 
 mered, feeling petty and ridiculous. 
 
 "Take the goods the gods provide!" said Perry, with 
 quickening conviction, for now at last he was talking 
 about his one religion. "If people have the brains or 
 luck to earn or inherit big fortunes, let 'em spend 'em 
 gracefully. Put the beautiful women in beautiful clothes, 
 in beautiful homes. If all the spare cash goes to the beg- 
 gars, how are we ever going to have any fine buildings, any 
 art-galleries, opera-houses, or theaters? Must everything 
 go for bread and no cake for anybody? 
 
 "Why should you turn yourself into a shabby sister 
 of charity? It would only destroy your beauty. That's 
 the most precious thing beauty. It melts away if you 
 cry too much or feel too sorry for yourself or other 
 people. Keep beautiful. Beauty is your duty." 
 
 Somehow he had robbed her of her crusade without 
 angering her. He had left her so idle-hearted that his 
 praise of herself came as a help, and she felt meekly grate- 
 ful for it. And, after all, charity is impersonal and 
 general, while flattery is personal. Benevolence is a 
 manufacture of civilization, but courtship is primeval, as 
 old as the moon that ogled these two. 
 
 As there are geniuses in music and color and form and 
 eloquence and statecraft and war, so there are geniuses 
 in wooing. That was Perry Merithew's genius. There 
 is no type or punctuation that would convey his intona- 
 tions or the spell of his personality. He said nothing of 
 any moment, but his voice had a call in it; it evoked the 
 imagination and subdued the reason. 
 
 The young Muriel listened to him as to a famous 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 singer in a foreign tongue, not knowing the meaning 
 of the words, yet thrilling to the rise and fall of the 
 melody. 
 
 The heart of the night made the ugly roof an Egypt, 
 and filled his blood with a sultry sullen rage of discontent 
 that was like a desire. Muriel was gazing at the sleeping 
 misery before her, but Perry's voice crooned across her 
 shoulder and his breath touched her cheek. 
 
 The amorous Mephisto tried to weave a spell about her 
 in spite of himself, for his skill was his own damnation; 
 and though he was striving against himself with an 
 angelic longing not to poison this sweet soul, he feared 
 that both of them were doomed. 
 
 He smiled with torture, but she was so drowsed with 
 reverie that when he murmured, "Your hat is too big; 
 it hides your eyes from me," she suffered him to take the 
 pins from it and lay them on the ledge of the wall, and to 
 take her hat away and toss it to the roof. 
 
 Now he felt that she was too beautiful to be spared 
 and too beautiful to be destroyed. The fierce magnetic 
 forces of life circled about them in a coil and drew them 
 together. Some remnant of honesty in his heart con- 
 tended for her, but the tyranny of his past conquered. 
 The insulation of distance was gone and he was struck as 
 with a lightning. 
 
 Muriel had not noted that he was quivering in a sudden 
 ague. She did not know of the self-duel that was killing 
 him, the spasms of self-reproach that were throttling his 
 heart. 
 
 She was good and she was young and she trusted him, 
 and he could not protect her against himself. She had 
 brought him here in the name of mercy, and he could find 
 no mercy in himself for her. He had tried to be honorable, 
 and he could not. 
 
 With a mad heartbreaking snarl he clenched his arms 
 around her as if he would crush her, his hands fluttered 
 about her hair in a satanic benediction, and he groaned
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Muriel! Muriel!" as his lips found hers and he clung 
 to her, dying. 
 
 The kiss on her lips and the frenzy of his embrace 
 alarmed her at last, and woke her from reverie. She 
 attacked him like a wildcat. And she was strong and 
 fierce with wrath at his desecration. But she could not 
 shake off those elbows vised about her shoulders. She 
 felt his fingers tightening slowly in her hair till the tears 
 started from her wild eyes. She struck at him with all 
 her power and loathing. 
 
 He never knew that she hated him. His heart had 
 wrecked itself with its own war. 
 
 As Muriel struggled, the box they stood on tilted and 
 fell. Perry went backward, dragging Muriel after him. 
 The top of his head crashed against the sharp upper edge 
 of a molding on the chimney. The impetus and the 
 double weight cracked his skull as a boy smashes a doll's 
 head. His body rolled across the face of the chimney and 
 slid to the roof. It cushioned Muriel's fall, but she was 
 dazed for a moment. 
 
 If any of the people on the other roofs heard the clatter, 
 and wakened, they must have gone back to sleep again, 
 for there was nothing to be seen and nothing further to 
 be heard. 
 
 After the first shock Muriel found herself crouched on 
 hands and knees above Perry's motionless form. She 
 thought that he was stunned, and she was hardly less 
 ferociously angry. She would never speak to him again. 
 He was a blackguard. 
 
 But she could not free her hair from those talons. She 
 tried to bend his fingers back, and they grew cold as she 
 tugged at them.
 
 CHAPTER LXI 
 
 ONLY slowly she understood, and if her heart had 
 been as weak and vice -ridden as Merithew's she 
 might have died of fear. Her instinct to shriek was 
 choked by the ghoulish horror of her plight. She was 
 chained to a corpse by her own hair. 
 
 She moved this way and that, hauling after her the 
 grisly encumbrance. She sobbed and prayed. She 
 would have been glad to die if it were not for the shame 
 of being found so. Shaking her head like a trapped 
 animal, she backed nearly to the penthouse door before 
 she gave up the hope of running away from her captor. 
 She rested again, thinking, scheming. She snatched the 
 hair-pins from her hair and uncoiled it as best she could 
 and tried to tear herself free. But she could not, for all 
 the excruciation of the pain; he held too many strands. 
 He seemed to lie there grinning at her efforts, making fun 
 of her terror as he had made fun of her charity. 
 
 But his fingers had closed upon the outer folds of her 
 locks, now she was a little farther away from his moon- 
 blue face. She could twist her head up through her hair 
 a little to ease the anguish of her neck. Yet she was no 
 nearer freedom, and every moment brought her nearer to 
 discovery. 
 
 Suddenly she remembered that Perry had cut down a 
 clothes-line with his penknife. Reluctantly she put her 
 trembling hands in his waistcoat pocket, and found the 
 knife and opened it, and sawed a strand in two close to 
 his knuckles. She had to hold his hand while she wielded 
 the knife, and the horror made the pain nothing. It was 
 
 5"
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 from the horror that she had to rest again before she could 
 sever another lock. 
 
 She kept listening for some one to come up the stairs. 
 She seemed to hear footsteps and stealthy sounds. She 
 was afraid to look now, for she felt that people had gath- 
 ered, and were watching her, whispering to one another, 
 mocking her, waiting for her to free herself that they 
 might seize her for the murder. 
 
 And she felt sure that all the wretched sleepers on the 
 other roofs were sitting up and shivering and listening, 
 and gibbering to one another in all their dialects: "What 
 was that?" "Who is the dead man?" "Who is the 
 woman that killed him?" 
 
 She worked with desperation, and at last she was free. 
 She could lift her head, and sit up and throw her head 
 back and expand her breast. The solace of release was 
 so great that she could only be glad at first. 
 
 Then the instinct of escape took hold of her and woke 
 her intelligence. She closed the knife with care and 
 dropped it into her handbag. She 'dusted her frock and 
 spatted her hands together. She gathered up the hair- 
 pins, and, sitting on her haunches, she put up her dis- 
 ordered hair like a Lorelei weirdly triumphant over her 
 prey. But there was no Lorelism in her heart. She was 
 a girl alone in the ruins of her life, with only her scattered 
 wits to help her to bring off what wreckage she might. 
 
 She felt about for her hat. There were no pins in it. 
 Perry Merithew had left them on the ledge. One of them 
 had rolled off and fallen into a side court. She could see 
 the amethyst head of the other pin, but it was above her 
 reach. She stood on tiptoe and leaped up to clutch at it, 
 but it was too high. She dared not wait and set the top- 
 pled box on end again. She must be gone. 
 
 She went cautiously to the penthouse door. She was 
 afraid to look back. She entered into the dark and stole 
 down the stairway. She heard quarreling behind one of 
 the doors, a baby meowling behind another. She hurried
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 past. She stopped short, for she heard two men coming 
 up the stairs. She gave herself up for lost. One was 
 saying: 
 
 "Such a hot I never seen it. That Gehenna would be 
 a cooler place as this Neu York. Gut' nacht!" 
 
 The other answered with a laugh: "Gut' nacht? 
 Erschreckliche nacht! Woiss as gestejn it was and 
 morgen com.es woisser yet." 
 
 They parted and went into opposite flats below. She 
 heard the doors close, and she flitted down and down till 
 she reached the main hall. The two babes still slept on 
 the sill. She lifted her skirt and stepped over them. 
 The young parents and the infant slept on the fish-block, 
 and had not budged through all the ages of time since she 
 had left them there. 
 
 In the street the crowd was thinner, but still numerous. 
 More people were asleep on the chairs. 
 
 She saw the gaunt wooden mother with the scrawny 
 child still stretched across her lank knees. The woman's 
 eyes were still watching the approach of the one who had 
 not come to her in her poverty and despair, but had flown 
 to the roof and seized upon Perry Merithew in his pride. 
 
 The lights in Allen Street were dim. An Elevated train 
 roared overhead in a swoop as of pursuing furies. But 
 nobody noticed Muriel with more than a dreary glance. 
 
 She walked along, frantically dusting her frock, lift- 
 ing her knees to brush the rust from them. She walked 
 till she found a Second Avenue car. It was so crowded 
 with home-comers from Coney Island and the other 
 beaches that she had to stand. The men were yawning 
 and the women bedraggled and bleary with the heat. 
 
 She rode to Forty-second Street and walked across to 
 the Grand Central Station. There she took a taxicab to 
 her home. She gave the man a handful of silver Perry 
 Merithew's silver. 
 
 The patrolman was coming down the block when she 
 let herself in at the door with her key. She made a casual
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 smile ready for any servant she might meet. But no one 
 saw her. The marble stairway had a mausoleum look. 
 The banister was cold as a tombstone under her flinching 
 hand. She gained her room unwitnessed. 
 
 She bathed and slipped into her nightgown, and wept 
 over her mangled hair and trimmed it as best she could. 
 
 She heard the servants come home and bid muffled good- 
 nights outside to the chauffeur and exchange soft laughter 
 over the memories of their tawdry carnival. 
 
 Without any thought of irony, she drooped to her knees 
 and thanked God for His bountiful mercies in helping her 
 to escape to the security of her father's home, and she 
 begged forgiveness, though she was not sure what she 
 asked forgiveness for. 
 
 When she rose she heard the patrolman's slow footsteps 
 as he sauntered by. He was there to protect her. But 
 when he learned what she had done he would force his 
 way into the house and drag her to jail. 
 
 All her father's wealth could not shield her from the 
 law. Could God Himself shield her from the fact that 
 she had killed ajman? Poor Perry Merithew! Lucky 
 Perry Merithew! He had escaped from a world where 
 such things could be. She felt ineffable remorse, but she 
 could not know just what to repent or where her mysteri- 
 ous guilt began. 
 
 She crept into her bed. The sheets were cold as snow. 
 She drew the blankets over her and hid her face under 
 them and huddled together in icy throes of utter dismay.
 
 CHAPTER LXII 
 
 ON that hot night in July among the hundreds of 
 wretches whom the relaxed laws permitted to sleep 
 in Central Park one poor jade of the shops had made her 
 bed on a knoll across the street from the Schuyler home. 
 She had worked hard at her counter, swaying on her feet 
 all day, and gone trudging to her boarding-house at night, 
 only to find her hall bedroom insufferably stifling. She 
 had walked across the eastern avenues to the Park and 
 had found a nook there among the shrubs and had toppled 
 over on the dewless grass. 
 
 Sleepless with the very famine of sleep, she had gazed 
 at the dark windows of the Schuyler mansion and had 
 thought of its lucky tenants with bitter envy. She was 
 an average girl, who had been averagely honest and dis- 
 honest. She had told her quota of lies, had cheated her 
 employer modestly, had strayed a little into many of the 
 by-paths from perfect virtue. But she had not been 
 caught nor punished with anything except continued 
 poverty. 
 
 She saw the brief light in Muriel's room, and when it was 
 quenched the dark window had seemed the very emblem 
 of cool security and peace and luxurious content. 
 
 She had rolled on the grass in an agony of covetousness 
 and had moaned, "O Gawd, whyn't you throw some 
 them things my way?" 
 
 Muriel, if she had known, would have been glad to 
 exchange lots with her. For Muriel in her palace, in her 
 room copied from the Petit Trianon, in her bed fit for a 
 princess, in her nightgown of silk and lace, between her
 
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 sheets of sheerest linen Muriel was stretched on the iron 
 bed of remorse; her thoughts were the thoughts of a 
 murderess escaped by a miracle whose continuance she 
 could not hope for. 
 
 She was almost more bewildered than she was regretful 
 or afraid. She could not explain the hideous effect by any 
 causes that she could trace. They were so innocent and 
 it so packed with guilt. 
 
 She could say, "I ought not to have gone out riding on 
 the 'bus with Perry Merithew," but the worst of that was 
 indiscretion, and its heaviest appropriate penalty a little 
 gossip. Once embarked on the escapade, she had tried to 
 redeem it by taking her escort to the slums in the hope of 
 engaging him and herself in some profitable charity. 
 
 She could say, "I ought not to have gone into that 
 tenement on Orchard Street," but her object had been to 
 reconcile an estranged family and bring home a lonely girl. 
 
 She could say, "I ought to have turned back from that 
 roof at once," but her curiosity had been for education in 
 the miseries of the poor. 
 
 She could say, "I ought not to have let him touch me. 
 It was odious of me to listen to his amorous voice. It was 
 vile to linger in his arms for even a moment." For that 
 she felt ashamed enough, and groveled before her saner 
 self. But the penalty for that at most should have been 
 belittlement in his eyes and her own. And she had 
 speedily recovered from that spell of his enchantment. 
 She had immediately hated herself and fought him off. 
 
 And there the chaos began. 
 
 She had brought upon herself the guilt of murder by 
 saving herself from the guilt of dalliance. Her decency 
 had been his destruction and hers. And that was the 
 puzzle that maddened her. 
 
 What else ought she to have done? She must either 
 have let him have his infamous way with her, or she must 
 have resisted him. God could not have wanted her to 
 yield; it was her better soul that fought.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Then why did God make him die? She could find no 
 clue, and there was no comfort in saying that the human 
 cannot understand the divine. 
 
 Justify her act as she would, its consequence was the 
 death of a man. 
 
 Once she had killed Perry, what ought she to have done? 
 There was the choice of calling in witnesses, or of trying 
 to escape. It was unthinkable that she should have re- 
 mained there on her hands and knees with her hair in his 
 cold hands, and screamed till people came. They would 
 have asked her questions that she could not answer ex- 
 cept with odious implications that would have blasted 
 her good name for life, and would have given her and her 
 father and her mother to intolerable disgrace. 
 
 She had escaped for her parents' sake as much as her 
 own. She owed them more duty than she owed the public 
 or her companion. She was completely assured that she 
 did the right, the only, thing to do, when she cut herself 
 free from Perry Merithew's fingers. 
 
 Besides, God must have wanted her to get away, or He 
 would have had her caught. And if He wanted her to 
 get away, then He must mean for her to get away for ever. 
 For it was inconceivable that she should go forth in the 
 morning and say to the people, the wondering people: 
 " I killed him! I, Jacob Schuyler's daughter, the daughter 
 of the great Jacob Schuyler and his good wife, killed the 
 notorious Perry Merithew when he was making love to 
 me at midnight on a lonely roof. And when I found that 
 he held me by the hair, I took his penknife from his pocket 
 and sawed my hair free. See, here are the traces of his 
 penknife in my hair. Match my hair with the strands he 
 holds and see! Now make me a scandal to the world, 
 and cover my father's and my mother's white heads with 
 ugly shame." 
 
 No, God could not ask that ! Then He must mean that 
 she should go on hiding from the public and the news- 
 papers and the police. For if she told the people, they
 
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 might not believe that she had meant no harm to Perry 
 Merithew. They might not believe that she meant only 
 to save him and herself from a miserable wicked deed. 
 They might send her to the Chair! Strap her to that 
 throne of dishonor and shatter her with the lightning. She 
 did not deserve to be branded and punished as a murderess. 
 Yet Perry Merithew did not deserve to be killed. He was 
 a bad man, but not a murderer. And they only killed mur- 
 derers. Yet he was dead, and she was in danger of death. 
 
 Why? Why? Why? 
 
 The word burned in her brain like a live coal that will 
 not be quenched even by the blood that seethes wherever 
 it rests. 
 
 She said the word over to herself until it became gib- 
 berish; she shook her head and whispered, No, no, no! 
 till that word became the uncouth chattering of an ape. 
 Everything she said to herself, in that long dark commu- 
 nion in the cloister of her arms locked over her head, be- 
 came jabber, till she felt that she was going mad, was 
 gone mad. 
 
 And the worst fear of all her fears was that in her mad- 
 ness she might begin to babble and might blab the truth. 
 
 For the old spirit that whispers: "Tell it! Tell it to 
 somebody! Tell it!" was whispering it to her. She 
 squeezed her hands across her ears, but the whisper 
 seemed to steal in between. 
 
 It was too much agony for one young girl to bear, and 
 all that saved her was that she was not strong enough to 
 bear it. By and by her nerves, like wires that have car- 
 ried too heavy a charge, burned out. She could feel no 
 more, regret no more, think no more. Exhaustion came 
 to her in the pardon of sleep. 
 
 When the rays of the risen sun like a cat-o'-nine-tails 
 lashed awake the dreary slumberers on the grass in the 
 Park, and on the benches, and the chairs, and on the tene- 
 ment roofs, it found her what the desolate shop-girl, drag- 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 ging herself from her couch to her counter, imagined her 
 to be a beautiful figure blissfully asleep under a canopy 
 of silk. 
 
 Long after the shop-girl had finished her coffee and oat- 
 meal in the quick-lunch room, and had taken her place in 
 the narrow aisle along the shelves, Muriel was awakened 
 by the sound of water set running in the marble tub, and 
 by the timid voice of the housemaid: 
 
 "You left word to be called at eight, Miss. It's half 
 past now, please." 
 
 Muriel sat up, blinked drowsily at the familiar sur- 
 roundings, and wondered why she felt so heavy-headed; 
 why every muscle ached; why she felt so afraid. 
 
 And then she remembered and flung herself back among 
 her pillows, and hid her face, and was again the criminal, 
 the fugitive, the sneak who had no place in a reputable 
 home. 
 
 She whispered to the maid: "Go away! Leave me 
 alone! Go away!" 
 
 But the maid supposed that this was merely the usual 
 protest of a pretty lag-abed against the morning outrage. 
 She was full of sympathy, but she urged: "Beg pardon, 
 Miss, but you said it was important. And your breakfast 
 is coming up, please." 
 
 Muriel nodded obedience and beckoned for her bath- 
 robe, thrust her heavy arms into it, and her bare feet 
 into the little mules, and slunk to her bath-room. She 
 felt as if she dragged clanking leg-irons at her feet. 
 
 She longed to drown herself in the hot pool, to steep 
 herself in oblivion, and let her soul escape like steam, 
 palely visible one moment and then nothing. But when 
 she was again in her bed, with the tray of breakfast upon 
 her knees, she was hungry. The iced grape-fruit was 
 sharply sweet, the egg in the cup was full of savor, and 
 the coffee was worth living for. 
 
 On the tray was a folded morning paper. She was 
 afraid to open it, but at last she did, as gingerly as if the 
 
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 ink were venomous. She saw that there were big head- 
 lines and she was afraid to look. 
 
 But it was only more excitement about the assassina- 
 tion of the Archduke of Austria and his wife. The deed 
 had been done a month ago, and as far away as Bosnia 
 in a curious unheard-of place called Sarajevo. A young 
 Servian had pistoled them both to death, and the minor 
 head-line declared that the result of the act might reopen 
 the old Balkan trouble. 
 
 It was all as remote to Muriel as Bosnia itself. She 
 could not imagine that it would ever affect her or any one 
 she knew. She searched the paper, and there was not a 
 line about her own assassination of Perry Merithew. She 
 felt a tremendous relief for a moment. Then the burden 
 of suspense fell back crushingly upon her aching head. 
 
 Still a little dazed, she fumbled in her mind, wondering 
 why she had left word to be called. Last night was so far 
 away. She recollected it at last. There was a meeting 
 in the United Charities Building, and she had promised to 
 be there. What was the object of the meeting? 
 
 Something about children playing in the streets. Oh 
 yes. One day she had invented a foolishly pretty scheme. 
 So many, many children got run over in the streets. Yet 
 the children had no other place to play. People had won- 
 dered what to do, since they could not keep the children 
 indoors all the time. And then Muriel had had the sub- 
 limely foolish idea that since the children could not be 
 kept off the streets, the wagons and motors must be. 
 The scheme had taken the shape of closing certain streets 
 to traffic at certain hours. 
 
 It had appealed to Muriel, and the allegedly heartless 
 town was to be urged to accept it. 
 
 It was as amusingly apt as an Irish bull. 
 
 Muriel smiled at the thought of it. She would go to 
 the meeting. She must go. Her absence would create 
 comment. Her presence would be an argument for in- 
 nocence. 
 
 17 521
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 And then she remembered that Mrs. Merithew was the 
 chairman of that committee. 
 
 Muriel thrust the tray away and fell back on her pillows. 
 She could not, would not, dared not, face the wife of the 
 man she had she could not think the word. 
 
 But sleep would not take her back into its nihilim. 
 Lying awake, she felt helpless before the world, exposed, 
 exhibited to the eyes of mankind. If she were up and 
 moving about she could at least run. 
 
 She raised herself once more and flung into her 
 clothes. The bungling ministrations of the maid who 
 was not used to taking care of her or her things tempted 
 her to frenzies of rebuke. She could have screamed 
 and struck at her. 
 
 But she held in her temper, and was desperately patient. 
 And at last she was dressed and her hat was on and she 
 left the house. She would not wait for one of her father's 
 cars to be summoned from the garage. She walked till 
 a taxicab came along, and when she got in, and the shoddy 
 old driver leaned out to hear where he should go, she 
 wanted to tell him, "Canada!" But she told him, "The 
 Charities at Twenty-second Street and Fourth Avenue." 
 And she rode through the blithe morning streets wonder- 
 ing what the people would do if they knew what she 
 had done. 
 
 She reached the meeting-place and told the taxi-man 
 to wait. She went up in the elevator and found a room 
 full of women, mostly natrons or matronly spinsters with 
 a sense of general motherhood. Their motives were those 
 of Sisters of Charity, but their costumes were the most 
 fashionable. 
 
 Mrs. Merithew greeted Muriel with voluble affection. 
 She did not even know that she was a widow, that her 
 husband had died on a roof in Orchard Street ! It seemed 
 impossible that Mrs. Merithew should be here laughing 
 and brightly dressed if her husband were actually dead. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Muriel felt for a moment that the whole thing was a mere 
 delirium. 
 
 Mrs. Merithew called the meeting to order, explained 
 triumphantly that she had seen the necessary city officials, 
 and had won from them an order closing the selected 
 streets during the afternoon hours. It was a glorious vic- 
 tory, one of the tenderest acts of the great-hearted city. 
 A vote of thanks to Miss Schuyler for suggesting the 
 idea was moved and carried. Several women called 
 "Speech! speech!" but Muriel shook her head and smiled 
 in a bewildered way. 
 
 Muriel recalled that day, a year or so ago, when she 
 had come to town and motored through a street crowded 
 with children who had no other place to play, and her 
 father's car had struck one of them down the crippled 
 Happy Hanigan. The chauffeur had looked at her, and 
 had asked if he should run away; but she had forbidden 
 the escape, had faced the mob and been wounded by it, had 
 quelled it and taken the victim of the accident under her 
 own protection. 
 
 If she had never carried him home, she would never 
 have met the Angelillo people or known of their kidnapped 
 boy. Then she would never have gone to her father's 
 office to beg for his ransom money; she would not have 
 met Perry Merithew then, or perhaps ever. She would 
 not have begun that chain of meetings that ended in his 
 death. 
 
 If she had done the cowardly thing, or the indifferent 
 thing, she would now be innocent, at peace and un- 
 afraid. 
 
 What was the moral of it all ? She had done good, and . 
 evil had come of it! If she had done evil, good would 
 have come of it! 
 
 The women were talking, many of them at once. The 
 success of their endeavor made them garrulous. Muriel 
 wanted to get away. She could hardly walk out in the 
 midst of some one's speech. Some one was always talk- 
 
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 ing. There were no interstices. The next speaker was 
 always under way before the last one had finished. 
 
 Muriel began to fear again that she was going to go 
 mad and shout the truth. She determined to slip out. 
 But Mrs. Merithew motioned to her, and whispered: 
 
 "I want to see you after." 
 
 When at last the meeting adjourned Mrs. Merithew 
 took Muriel by the arm, clung to her in the elevator, 
 would not let her go home in the taxicab she had held. 
 They had a silly combat on the walk till Muriel, for peace' 
 sake, paid her driver and dismissed him and got into the 
 Merithew car. 
 
 And then a queer man with only one eyebrow and 
 a half pushed forward and asked Mrs. Merithew if she 
 knew where her husband was to be found? And Mrs. 
 Merithew turned to Muriel and made a joke of it, mur- 
 muring: 
 
 "A funny question to ask me!" 
 
 Muriel could have told the man where Perry Merithew 
 was, and the struggle to keep from telling him was like 
 a death-wrestle. The car moved away just in time to 
 keep her from shrieking at him what she knew. 
 
 And then a horde of newsboys charged on the car, 
 brandishing extras. Mrs. Merithew would not look at 
 them. She was chattering about the forthcoming Ameri- 
 ca's Cup races, and supposing that Muriel would see them, 
 of course, from Winnie Nicolls's yacht. 
 
 Muriel caught a glimpse of red head-lines: 
 
 MERITHEW MURDERED 
 
 Already her deed was history. How long would it re- 
 >ain anonymous ? But at least the truth was out ! That 
 was good! She could breathe. The suffocation of the 
 secret was gone from her lungs. She plucked Mrs. Meri- 
 thew's sleeve to call her attention to the bulletin. But 
 Mrs. Merithew paid no heed, and Muriel was glad.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 They rode on. Muriel wanted to get home at once 
 and hide, for the whole town was alive to the news. She 
 saw the extras everywhere. 
 
 But Mrs. Merithew laughingly compelled her to go 
 along with her. She had some new hats to show her. 
 She would not be denied. She would not direct the chauf- 
 feur to the Schuyler house. She haled Muriel along, 
 prisoner. 
 
 They reached the Merithew place, and Mrs. Merithew 
 paused, laughing, on the steps, for the door to be opened. 
 An old woman, the housekeeper, astounded Mrs. Meri- 
 thew by rushing out and taking her in her fat arms and 
 sobbing: 
 
 "Oh, my poor child! my poor child!" 
 
 Mrs. Merithew turned to Muriel and laughed. Would 
 she never stop laughing! 
 
 "What's all this?" she chuckled. "Who's been bother- 
 ing you now, Mrs. Keating?" 
 
 The housekeeper led her into the drawing-room and 
 seated her on a divan and sat down by her, to Mrs. 
 Merithew's surprise and indignation. 
 
 "There's terrible news for you, dearie," Mrs. Keating 
 said. "Be as brave as you can, won't you, dearie? You 
 will be brave, won't you? These things come to all of 
 us. It's a bitter world." 
 
 Mrs. Merithew leaped to her feet and screamed: "My 
 boy ! He's hurt ! He's wha What's happened to my 
 boy?" 
 
 "No, it's not the boy, dearie; it's it's Mr. Mr. 
 Merithew." 
 
 Mrs. Merithew sank down again, almost reassured. 
 And then she learned the news as Mrs. Keating sobbed it : 
 
 "Your husband, dearie he's not well he's had an 
 accident he's kind of sick he's " 
 
 "He's dead!" Mrs. Merithew whispered, and toppled 
 over on the old woman's shoulder. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 It would have been unmerciful to bring her back to 
 consciousness. They let her alone till her weary soul 
 struggled back into her body. And then the hell began. 
 In spite of Muriel's effort to quiet her, she demanded the 
 truth. She took it as hard as could be. Instantly Perry 
 Merithew the heartless neglecter of her alone among 
 women, the squanderer whose life had been another rake's 
 progress became the young, devoted bridegroom, the 
 pure lover, the faithful husband. 
 
 One of the maids came running in with an extra that 
 had just reached thus far north. Mrs. Merithew read 
 Hallard's story of the mysterious copper-haired woman. 
 She broke from the hands of Mrs. Keating and flung off 
 even Muriel's strong arms. She ran amuck in her grief. 
 Muriel called out to the gaping servants: 
 
 "Get the doctor at once!" 
 
 The servants were too panic-stricken with the news 
 and with its effect on Mrs. Merithew to have any wits. 
 They stood about like a mob of frightened, staring chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Muriel could think of no doctor's name but one. She 
 ran to the telephone and called for Clinton Worthing, 
 begged him in Heaven's name to come quick. He came 
 in the little car he had bought when he thought he should 
 have a lot of patients. 
 
 Worthing had been reading the Gazette's Merithew 
 extra when Muriel called him. He guessed what his task 
 would be. 
 
 He tried to calm Mrs. Merithew with words, but she 
 pummeled him with her hands and gabbled: 
 
 "My husband is dead. He has been murdered. He 
 was the best man that ever lived. Some woman killed 
 him. And I'll kill her. I will! I'll kill her! As soon 
 as I find her, I'll kill her!" 
 
 Young Worthing told her that she was quite right to 
 plan such a thing, but she must get her strength first. 
 He could not drug her with words. He made ready a 
 
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 solution, and while she pounded him with one hand, he 
 held the other arm and thrust a needle into her flesh and 
 pressed a little piston-rod and drove nepenthe into her 
 soul. And by and by she grew placid because a chemical 
 was in her veins. The consolations and submissions that 
 self-control and advice and philosophy could not give her 
 now she got in liquid essence. 
 
 When Mrs. Merithew was subdued, Worthing turned 
 to Muriel and said, "You look pretty bad yourself." 
 
 "I'm all right," she answered in a husky tone. There 
 was a grimace on her drawn face. It was meant for a 
 smile. 
 
 Worthing answered it with a scowl. "You're positive- 
 ly green. I'm going to take you home before you keel 
 over. My car's outside." 
 
 There was a kind of glory in ordering her about and 
 in taking her in his car a poor thing, but his own. He 
 drove to the Schuyler house, rang the bell with authority, 
 and, entering, took command of the palace. 
 
 He said to the maid, "Undress her and get her to bed." 
 
 He did not leave the room. He was a doctor on duty. 
 He busied himself with preparations and instructions. 
 
 "Take off her shoes first," he commanded, "and loosen 
 her corsets. Get her to bed. Fill the ice-cap now and 
 the hot-water bottle." 
 
 Muriel accepted all the maid's services till the girl put 
 her hands on Muriel's head, saying: 
 
 "I'd better take down your hair." 
 
 Muriel let out a cry, struck her hand away, and re- 
 coiled out of her reach. The maid stared in wonderment, 
 and Worthing reeled before a terrific thought that smote 
 him like a random bullet. 
 
 But it glanced from the hard surface of his reason, and 
 left him rather ashamed than suspicious.
 
 CHAPTER LXIII 
 
 MURIEL was trying to excuse herself. She was laugh- 
 ing uncannily, and apologizing to the maid: "I'm 
 sorry, my dear. I didn't mean to strike you. But I 
 can't bear to have my head jarred this morning. It aches 
 so!" 
 
 She ran out to her dressing-room. When she came 
 back she wore a quaintly fetching new-old-fashioned 
 boudoir cap. She was smiling with vigor. 
 
 She marched toward the bed, but collapsed before she 
 got there. She found herself in Worthing's arms. It was 
 wonderful to have him save her from a tumble. He 
 thought she was very beautiful. And he thanked God 
 that he knew what was known about taking care of peo- 
 ple in distress. 
 
 She apologized for her behavior and whispered: "That 
 poor maid gets on my nerves. I can't stand her touch." 
 
 "I'll get rid of her," said Worthing, "and send you a 
 trained nurse." 
 
 "But I don't want a trained nurse!" 
 
 "That makes no difference; you get one, all the same." 
 
 It seemed to give Muriel as much comfort to be coerced 
 as it did him to coerce. He left her and went back to his 
 car. He telephoned to a club of trained nurses and ar- 
 ranged for one of them to report at Muriel's home. Pie 
 reported there himself within an hour. The nurse had 
 come and gone already. 
 
 Muriel's only excuse was, "I didn't like her." 
 
 "What type of nurse do you like?" said Worthing. 
 
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 " I don't want anybody. I won't have anybody. I'm 
 not ill." 
 
 He would have been glad to have her very ill, and to 
 save her from exquisite complications by unheard-of skill 
 and devotion. He was a doctor before he became a 
 lover. Besides, the lover of him told the doctor of him 
 that if the latter could save her from death the former 
 might have a chance at her life. 
 
 He was disappointed a little when Muriel refused to 
 surrender. He could not imagine how tempted, how 
 ferociously tempted she was to make him indeed the 
 physician of her soul. But she let him go, though she 
 urged him to come back soon. 
 
 Then her loneliness was overpowering. Her father 
 and her mother would fight for her, but they must not 
 know. 
 
 She wanted to leave town, but she dared not. She sat 
 in her window and watched the Avenue. The people who 
 went by staring seemed to be looking for her. Those who 
 did not look or who glanced idly were disguising their 
 interest. The patrolman sauntering past was a jail 
 guard. The loafer on the Park wall was a detective. 
 The servants were spies on the pay-roll of the secret 
 police. 
 
 She was sure that she saw in the servants' eyes a 
 wolfish glint of pursuit. She kept them away as much 
 as possible. She pretended to want to sleep, and locked 
 them out, but she lay awake, planning and conspiring with 
 all her might to defraud justice or at least the police part 
 of justice; for in her mind nothing could be more unjust 
 than her present plight or the penalties that might be 
 inflicted on her. 
 
 She could not easily dispose of her hair. She took 
 it down again and again and studied it. If Merithew's 
 fingers had closed upon it higher on her head, she could 
 never have concealed the eight marks of severance. But 
 she had worn it in two coils and he had seized it there. 
 
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 The fashion in coiffures that autumn was the high 
 " French twist " with all the ends tucked in under. 
 
 Muriel had been planning to have her hair dressed so, 
 but she had not got round to it. She thanked Heaven 
 for that deferment, else all of Perry Merithew's fingers 
 would have clasped her hair almost at the roots, and the 
 slashes would have announced her guilt hideously. 
 
 She thanked Heaven again for the style that was now 
 at her disposal. Now she could fold the ragged ends 
 beneath a swirl of hair, and she would be like nearly 
 everybody else. So she joined the great majority and 
 did up her hair in the French twist. Yet if her maid 
 should try to brush and comb it as usual she would notice 
 the butchery at once. If a detective should insist on 
 examining her hair and matching it with the locks in 
 Perry's hands there would be no escape for her. 
 
 She began to feel that there was no escape for her, 
 anyway. She was afraid to leave town, afraid to leave 
 the house, afraid to stay in it, afraid of everything, 
 everybody. 
 
 The need of some one to confide in grew imperious, 
 and she felt a loneliness for her father and mother. 
 
 They had always protected her from every evil, and 
 reasoned away every bogie. She was tempted to go out 
 to the country place at once, but she was afraid to start 
 to run, lest her wits should be stampeded and lest people 
 might wonder why she had vanished. 
 
 Late in the afternoon her father telephoned that he 
 was in town with her mother, who had some shopping to 
 do. They were going back on the yacht at six. She must 
 meet them at the landing-slip. Muriel demurred a little, 
 but her father stormed, and it was good to be commanded. 
 
 In the cool of the afternoon she rode down Fifth Avenue 
 through the home-going flood tide of people. Everybody 
 was reading an evening paper. The crowded tops of the 
 stages fluttered with journals. Even the occupants of 
 stately motors who did not think it looked correct to read 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 as they rode could not postpone their greedy interest in 
 the Merithew affair. 
 
 Muriel was tormented with curiosity to read what was 
 said. For all she knew, her name was in the head-lines. 
 When the car was checked for a time by the cross-current 
 of traffic at Forty-second Street she had the chauffeur 
 buy her several papers from a newsboy. 
 
 On one of them Merithew's name was in red; she feared 
 that the dreadful ink would incarnadine her fingers, and 
 she put it aside for a more sober paper. 
 
 It was a strange experience to be the only one who 
 knew what all these millions were trying to learn; what 
 all these reporters were guessing at. The minor head- 
 lines told her that the police were baffled, and this gave 
 her some comfort. 
 
 But when she read that a certain Aphra Shaler was sus- 
 pected and had taken flight, and that "Red Ida" Ganley, 
 who had been seen dancing with Perry Merithew, was 
 being sought by the police, she found a new problem before 
 her. The question was no longer one of saving merely 
 herself; she must save other women, innocent women, 
 whom her act had dragged from obscurity into a grue- 
 some notoriety, perhaps into a hazard of life. 
 
 She had not meant to harm Perry Merithew, and she 
 had a right to evade the awful results of the accident. 
 But had she the right to let them fall on somebody else? 
 If only she could quit thinking long enough to rest, so 
 that she might think right! 
 
 The crowded Avenue was a gantlet of terrors for her, 
 and again that mutiny grew within herself, that rebel 
 faction demanding that she rise and cry out to the multi- 
 tude, as she had seen suffragettes stand up in their motor- 
 cars and harangue the throngs. Only Muriel's oration 
 would be: 
 
 "Here I am! Look no farther! Quit accusing inno- 
 cent women.. I am the guilty one. I killed Perry Meri- 
 thew!"
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 But of course she did no such thing. She sat and 
 read her paper, and the people she passed, if they noticed 
 her at all, thought how pretty and peaceable she was. 
 And many a woman wished that she might change places 
 with her. 
 
 When some of the traffic policemen who knew Muriel 
 saluted her and smiled, she smiled back, though she 
 called herself a loathsome hypocrite. She could hardly 
 crush down the impulse to thrust out her wrists and cry: 
 
 "Put your handcuffs on me! I have no right in this 
 landaulet. I belong in the patrol-wagon." 
 
 But another faction in her soul, the conservative Tory 
 faction, murmured that nothing would be gained by her 
 degradation. Those women who had been accused had 
 already been accused, and they would suffer no further 
 harm, since they could easily prove their innocence. If 
 she spoke, however, there would be no escape for her 
 innocent father and mother from lifelong misery. Of 
 course, if worst came to worst, and some woman were 
 actually convicted, Muriel could and of course would 
 save her from punishment by a confession. But until 
 that time she resolved to keep her secret. 
 
 And so she went safely and calmly through the streets. 
 Everybody was looking for her and at her, and nobody 
 saw her. Her guilt wore the invisible cloak. 
 
 She found her father and mother on the shade-deck 
 of the yacht, trying to read the breeze- whipped papers. 
 When Jacob rose to welcome her, a number of extras 
 that he had been sitting on went whirling out on the wind 
 among the wide-winged sea-gulls teetering and coasting 
 everywhere. 
 
 Jacob kept an extra in his hand while he embraced his 
 daughter, and Susan enveloped her hardly more in her 
 arms than in her newspaper. And the first words they 
 said were in unison: 
 
 "Did you hear about poor Perry Merithew?" 
 
 Muriel nodded distressfully, and Susan exclaimed: 
 
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 "But poor Mrs. Merithew! How horrible for her!" 
 
 "I was with her when she got the news," said 
 Muriel. 
 
 "Oh, my dear! You poor child! How terrible! How 
 did she take it? Did she know any more about it than 
 the papers do?" 
 
 Muriel shook her head and spoke with a trifle of im- 
 patience. "If you please, I'd rather not talk about it. 
 I've had about all I can stand." 
 
 Jacob and Susan were gushing with sympathy, and 
 motioned to each other to drop the subject; but it kept 
 coming up. They could not keep their eyes off their 
 papers, and at length they buried themselves in the news. 
 The yacht backed out and pushed up the river, and 
 by and by Muriel took a paper to read. 
 
 On the other yachts departing from the slip, and on 
 the tugboats chugging by; on the ferries waddling to 
 Brooklyn and back, and on the big passenger-boats bound 
 for the coast towns of New England, everybody was read- 
 ing the columns on columns the newspapers devoted to 
 stating that they did not know who killed Perry Merithew. 
 No one read their ignorant prolixities with so much eager- 
 ness as the one young woman who knew. 
 
 It was comfortable to be going home with her own kin, 
 and it was encouraging to see the vast and perilous city 
 shrinking back into the distance. Muriel was tempted 
 anew to tell her father and mother. But she felt that she 
 owed them a great duty. They had sheltered her as best 
 they could from the cruelties of life; she must shelter 
 them now. She had no right to blast their years. The 
 public had no right to demand them as sheep slaugh- 
 tered on the altar of curiosity. 
 
 But she could not let them know what she was doing 
 for them. They never dreamed how she was repaying 
 her debts now, how they tried her self-control with their 
 fatuous comments. 
 
 "Something like this has been coming to Perry for 
 
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 a long while," said Jacob. " He was a wrong un from the 
 start." 
 
 And Susan, looking over her spectacles and her paper, 
 moralized: "It all comes from being promiscuous. I al- 
 ways said that the slums were dangerous. Perhaps you'll 
 believe me now, Muriel. I hope this will be a lesson to 
 you." 
 
 "Yes, mother," said Muriel.
 
 CHAPTER LXIV 
 
 WHILE the Schuylers were studying the extras on 
 their yacht the rest of the populace was doing like- 
 wise. Swaying strap-hangers on the street-cars, subways, 
 and elevated roads hid with their papers the papers of 
 those who had seats. Commuters on the suburban trains 
 neglected their card games in the smoking-cars; bundle- 
 burdened women in the day-coaches were interested for 
 once in the front page. In almost every pair of hands 
 was an evening paper. You could make a fair guess at a 
 man's character from the choice of his paper, except that 
 some carried several which may have been a further test 
 of character. Those who read several papers knew less 
 than those who read one, for by the late afternoon each 
 of the journals had covered the story with its own blanket, 
 and no two agreed. 
 
 In one paper certain statements were given as facts, 
 and in another their very opposite. Alleged interviews 
 with police chiefs announced in one paper exactly what 
 another alleged interview contradicted with flatness. 
 One paper gave the exact words of Mrs. Merithew, another 
 printed exact words of amazingly different nature; a third 
 told the truth, that she had refused to see anybody at all. 
 
 One paper quoted just what a certain well-known 
 surgeon had said; a second quoted him in complete con- 
 tradiction ; a third quoted him as refusing to say anything ; 
 and the fact was that he was not in town. 
 
 All over the United States the evening papers were 
 full of Perry Merithew. He had become an international 
 figure. 
 
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 And yet next to nothing was known of his death except 
 that he had been found dead and that he clenched in his 
 hands a few tufts of hair, which were assumed to be a 
 woman's; the very color of the hair was variously pro- 
 claimed as red, yellow, golden, auburn, Titian, bronze, 
 copper. 
 
 There would have been interest enough at any time 
 in the solemn passing of such a comedian. There could 
 not have been more if some of the men whose homes he had 
 marred had murdered him with revolver, or knife, or a 
 water-bottle, or with a poison, or a bomb sent through the 
 mail. 
 
 People found it almost unbearable to be teased with 
 such a cluster of riddles. Who was the woman with him? 
 What took them to so strange a place? Did she kill him? 
 How came her hair in his dead hands? How did she 
 escape from his horrible clutch? And again who was 
 she? 
 
 Instantly every woman whose hair could by any 
 means be said to have a copper hue had become suspect. 
 On the street-cars and in the shops such women found 
 themselves the target of glances; they heard whispers 
 hissing about them; they thanked Heaven for alibis, or, 
 in some cases, wished their alibis were more pleasant to 
 explain. 
 
 As at the trump of Gabriel, so now graves opened 
 and dead scandals rose up, closet doors swung ajar and 
 hidden skeletons fell out, rattling. Things muttered 
 behind the hand hitherto were printed in head-lines now 
 without fear of prosecution under the contemptible libel 
 laws of New York. 
 
 Perry Merithew had known many women of copper- 
 colored hair, and he had known many women whom no 
 one knew he knew, for he loved the whole sex, and his 
 tastes were eclectic. 
 
 Many quarrels were started in homes of all degrees 
 because daughters or wives of auburn hair had smiled 
 
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 on Merry Perry. Many people were forced to explain 
 their whereabouts who had never been questioned before. 
 Letters and souvenirs of his were burned and not a few 
 bright eyes were wet to think how well he had earned his 
 sobriquet of "Merry Perry," how unfalteringly he had 
 smiled on life and codes, not with malice, but with mis- 
 chief. 
 
 Now his name and fame stank like the skull of poor 
 Yorick. There was contagion in his acquaintance. Friends 
 of his who had vied with him in his hilarities and had 
 boasted of knowing him well denied that they had known 
 him at all. Men of wild life reformed temporarily, shud- 
 dering at the risks they had run. One or two profligate 
 beaux left town in a hurry to escape the merciless in- 
 quisition and speculation of press and police. 
 
 A complex series of results followed upon Merithew's 
 demise like ripples thrown out by a pebble tossed into 
 a pond. Festivities were abandoned. A solemnity in- 
 vaded circles of revelry. Lives were ransacked and hints 
 were cast about with all the uncurbed recklessness of the 
 various papers rivaling one another like chefs in a contest 
 of spices. 
 
 His death affected numberless people in unexpected 
 ways. The tenement, which even the building-inspectors 
 and the Board of Health had neglected, now became a 
 famous landmark. Crowds gathered to stare at it and 
 to recognize how sinister it was. The detectives ran- 
 sacking the building for clues turned up several mouse- 
 nests, including a counterfeiter's establishment, the hid- 
 ing-place of two far-hunted and much-advertised yeggmen 
 and their girls, a pair of starving and highly sophisticated 
 children whose parents had been sent up for drunkenness 
 and other picturesque people. 
 
 But among all the curious matters brought to light 
 the one thing not brought to light was the name of the 
 woman whose hair Merithew retained in his clutch. 
 
 Muriel herself was tormented with flashes of impulse 
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 to stand forth and settle the mystery. But there were 
 others to consider besides herself. She had no right to 
 blacken the family escutcheon just because Perry Meri- 
 thew was a scoundrel. She grew very bitter against him. 
 
 Once she had occasion to look in her handbag, which 
 had been lying about unheeded. 
 
 She poured the contents on the bed. Out rolled 
 Perry Merithew's ring, and his pearl, his watch, and 
 his money. 
 
 Muriel fell back from them with a little cry, as if she 
 had emptied a nest of little rattlesnakes. And indeed 
 these relics were almost as dangerous. Yet somehow 
 they seemed to plead for him. The poor fellow had given 
 them to her with a lavish generosity. He had not been 
 altogether bad. Yet everybody was talking of his vices, 
 and nobody was defending him. The papers were full of 
 his extravagances and escapades, his love-affairs and fop- 
 peries, his cynical repartees, his brilliant representation 
 of the worst activities of the idle rich. Not a word was 
 printed in his behalf, not a w6rd of excuse or forgiveness 
 or understanding. 
 
 Muriel felt that she ought at least to tell what she 
 knew of his good deeds. If a man's transgressions were 
 so important as to require all the space he was receiving, 
 his good deeds surely deserved mention at least. 
 
 This thought, even more than the fierce centrifugal 
 force of a secret, began to fight against her instinct of self- 
 protection. A certain faction in the congress of her soul 
 demanded that she should not deny the man his nil nisi 
 bonum, the one great luxury of the newly dead. Poor 
 Perry ! Everybody was saying nothing but ill of him. Yet 
 there was one person who could say: "He went to the 
 roof because of his generosity and his gallantry. He was 
 not robbed of his jewels and his money. He gave them 
 to the poor." 
 
 It was hideously unfair that these things should not 
 
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 be published. The ring and the pearl and the coins seemed 
 to demand it. 
 
 But the moment Muriel resolved to speak, she imag- 
 ined the result of such a declaration. People would im- 
 mediately exclaim: "So Muriel Schuyler defends him. 
 She is the only one who does. Why? She must have 
 been very intimate with him. She'd better be investi- 
 gated, too. Since she knows so much, she must know 
 more." 
 
 This drove Muriel away from the plan. And so she 
 rearrived by another circumlocution at her old resting- 
 place, that she must not speak. Also she realized the 
 danger of these trinkets. The papers said that the police 
 were searching the pawnshops for them. What if they 
 searched her house? What would be said if they were 
 found in her possession? They would be documents for 
 her conviction. 
 
 But where could she hide them? She looked here and 
 there in this drawer, in that closet, inside the fireplace, 
 under the rugs. No place was safe. Every nook and 
 cranny was sure to be ransacked by the enemies of dust, 
 the house-cleaning brigade. 
 
 She stood transferring the things from one palm to the 
 other, as if her hands refused them. She felt sorry for 
 other poor murderers who did not know what to do. 
 
 Suppose she destroyed the things. It would be strange- 
 ly difficult to get rid of a watch and a diamond and a 
 pearl. And then, some day, she might be vitally eager 
 to produce them in support of her story. If they were 
 done away with, that hateful nagging Why ? would come 
 up again. 
 
 She wished that she might send them to Mrs. Meri- 
 thew anonymously. But it is very hard to be anonymous. 
 Handwriting is hard to disguise. It is hard to drop a 
 letter in a mail-box without leaving some clue. Mes- 
 senger-boys are perilous. She could not leave the parcel 
 at Mrs. Merithew's door and get away without risk. 
 
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 It was maddeningly difficult to lose things on purpose. 
 The vast invisible spy-system of circumstances regarded 
 her with ironic amusement. 
 
 She opened a sachet-bag and stuffed them there, and 
 sewed them in. But the bag seemed suspiciously heavy. 
 The first maid that lifted it would heft more than per- 
 fumed fluff. Muriel opened the seam and took them 
 out and sewed it up again. She opened a pincushion and 
 cached them there, and the first pin she jabbed in for a 
 test struck the face of the watch. She took them out 
 again. She studied the mattress, but she did not believe 
 that she could repair a rip with perfect imitation. 
 
 She was afraid to have the things on her person, and 
 afraid to have them out of her reach. She paced the 
 room faster and faster. The stupid objects were driving 
 her out of her mind. They stared at her with the evil 
 eye. 
 
 She went to the series of wardrobes in which the great 
 store of her equipment was kept. She dared not hide the 
 things in any of the crannies or attach them to any of 
 the properties. 
 
 At length, in a drawer rilled with an exquisite rubbish 
 of ribbons and velvet patches, broken ornaments and 
 souvenirs, she found two or three old dolls that she had 
 kept by her since she had outgrown them. 
 
 One was a tall and haughty snob of wax; another an 
 exquisite porcelain fairy, and a third a burly cloth puppet 
 of distinctly plebeian appearance a kind of servant doll. 
 There was a gash in its integument whence the stuffing 
 exuded. This had once been her faithful, unfailing friend,, 
 the confidante of her most important secrets. "Suki," 
 she called it. 
 
 She thrust the watch and the pearl and the ring in 
 among the rags, sewed up the wound, and felt enormously 
 reassured. 
 
 In a rapture of relief she hugged the doll hard and 
 whispered to it, childishly: "Suki, you never told on 
 
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 me before. Remember I'm trusting you now with my 
 life." 
 
 She put Suki back among the memories and marveled 
 at what time had wrought in her since she first began to 
 lug that doll about the world. Then she shoved the 
 drawer shut and resumed the business of thwarting her 
 destiny.
 
 CHAPTER LXV 
 
 WHEN the total number of persons convicted of 
 murder every year is subtracted from the total 
 number of persons murdered every year the remainder 
 is appalling. The Merithew affair was drifting into the 
 remainder. 
 
 The police themselves were not more determined to 
 solve the problem than the Gazette reporter, Hallard. 
 He felt that this was his own private crime. He had 
 written the first extra and in a sense copyrighted Meri- 
 thew's taking off. He was determined to write the last 
 extra. 
 
 The Merithew case became his obsession. He never 
 went anywhere that he did not keep one eye open for a 
 possible agent. 
 
 His first effort was to trace the owner of the hat-pin he 
 had found on the roof. He took it to a number of jewelers 
 and to various dealers in notions. None of them could 
 help him except negatively. He could not learn who had 
 manufactured it, though he made himself a nuisance 
 among the goldsmiths that keep a guild in Maiden Lane. 
 
 He was afraid to withhold the pin for more than a day 
 or two. He had neither fear nor respect for the police, 
 but his city editor, Ulery, grew uneasy. He questioned if 
 even the freedom of the press, which overrides the freedom 
 of everybody else, implied the right to steal an important 
 clue and keep it as private property. 
 
 Besides, the publication of it might bring it to the notice 
 01 the merchant who sold it. And he might remember 
 
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 who bought it. Many crimes had been run to earth in 
 just this way, and the Gazette could claim the entire credit. 
 
 Before Hallard relinquished it to the police, he gave it to 
 the "art department" of the Gazette, and a huge portrait 
 of the pin was published on the front page with enlarged 
 views of the amethyst head and the claw that gripped it. 
 
 Other papers followed suit at once, and the pin at last 
 reached the eyes of the little up-town shopkeeper who 
 had made it himself from an amethyst out of a bracelet 
 and a claw on an old watch-fob. 
 
 The portrait of Merithew that accompanied the por- 
 trait of the pin in the newspapers reminded him of the 
 stranger who had bought it. He began also to recall the 
 features of the pretty girl who had often paused to gaze 
 in at his window. 
 
 Greatly excited, he made haste to thumb over the 
 pages of his day-books. He had to go back almost a 
 year before he found the entry of the sale. 
 
 About this time also the slow-witted janitor of the 
 apartment-house where Perry had nested Maryla for a 
 while, woke up to the resemblance of the dead man's 
 pictures to the face of the "Mr. Brown" who had leased 
 an apartment and paid for it longer than he kept it. His 
 wife remembered that Mrs. Brown had disappeared 
 abruptly, leaving all her clothes, and that Mr. Brown had 
 paid the colored maid a month's wages in lieu of notice. 
 The maid had reveled in her leisure for a time, and later 
 taken service with another tenant. 
 
 Mrs. Janitor found a portrait of Mrs. Merithew in one 
 of the papers, and her unlikeness to "Mrs. Brown" was 
 complete. The janitor decided that they had better 
 suppress the incident for the good name of the house, 
 but the janitrix would talk, and one of the tenants sold 
 his gossip to the Gazette. 
 
 Before long Hallard was there on the ground. Before 
 long he was talking with the colored maid, Martha. He 
 learned that Mrs. Brown's first name was "Maryla," and 
 
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 that a strange Jew had called upon her the last day of 
 her presence there, and had left a bag full of ribbons and 
 pretty clothes. Martha had found them on the floor the 
 next morning. 
 
 Hallard had already heard Maryla's name mentioned 
 in Orchard Street. On the day of the discovery of Meri- 
 thew's body he had spoken to her father, who lived in 
 the very tenement. The old man had said that Maryla 
 was dead, but at the name of Merithew his grief had 
 changed to wrath, and he had closed the door in Hal- 
 lard's face. 
 
 But Hallard chuckled now. New doors were opening 
 for him everywhere. He had but to find this Maryla 
 and he could make the police look foolish, for they were 
 still in search of the fugitive Red Ida and the well-con- 
 cealed Aphra Shaler. 
 
 It took a vast amount of questioning and false-clue 
 following, but Hallard was indefatigable. He did not 
 pause for food or sleep or even for a shave. He ran 
 among the multitudinous trails of New York like a 
 fanatic beagle, red-eyed and bristling; but he was not 
 giving tongue. 
 
 Before long he burst into Dutilh's shop and caused a 
 panic among the birds-of-paradise. He asked for the girl 
 named Maryla and said he had important news for her. 
 
 She had not been seen in the shop for three days. 
 Hallard' s half -eyebrow drew down over one sly eye as he 
 realized that the picture of the hat-pin had been published 
 three days before. 
 
 Dutilh was in Europe buying clothes, and Mrs. Shen- 
 stone was difficult; but at length Hallard browbeat her 
 into giving him Maryla's latest address, as well as her 
 earlier ones. 
 
 When he arrived, panting, at the boarding-house where 
 Maryla had last resided according to the Dutilh address- 
 book, he learned that she had paid her bill and left there, 
 carrying all her property in a suit-case and a bundle, on 
 
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 the very day before Perry Merithew was found on the 
 roof. 
 
 And there the trail ended. Hallard stood sniffing the 
 air and whining like a beagle that has followed a warm 
 trail to the border of a stream in a swamp. 
 
 All the clue he had now was a mental portrait of Maryla 
 gathered from the more or less contradictory descriptions 
 he had wheedled out of the Dutilhettes. So far as he 
 could find, no photograph of her existed. 
 
 He made a trip to Orchard Street and invaded the home 
 of the Sokalskis with further pretenses of news to Maryla's 
 advantage. But all he learned was that, so far as they 
 knew, the girl had never given her image to a camera. 
 
 That was a matter of small difficulty to a newspaper. 
 Hallard told the art editor about Maryla and her Polish 
 blood, and the editor dug out the familiar alleged por- 
 trait of the Countess Potocka and had it somewhat doc- 
 tored with more recent clothes and coiffure. It did not 
 represent Maryla at all. But neither does it represent 
 the Countess Potocka. 
 
 Hallard felt toward the police of New York as the 
 detective of literature feels toward Scotland Yard. He 
 loved to show them up and expose their befuddled fatuities 
 trying to rescue the commonwealth from the penalty of 
 their blunders. Easily he showed them up, but when it 
 came to an offer of substitutes in the Merithew case the 
 rub began. 
 
 By a series of calculations he satisfied himself at least 
 that there were about one hundred thousand red-headed 
 women in the city. His task was the mere elimination 
 of ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, 
 leaving the guilty solitaire. It looked easier than it was. 
 It was another of the cases where the role of critic on a 
 rock is pleasanter than that of diver in the wreck. 
 
 Hallard plunged with great enthusiasm into the sub- 
 ject of hair and its importance in identification. He 
 
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 read what he could find out about it in dictionaries and 
 cyclopaedias. But it left him with new puzzles, as learning 
 always does. 
 
 He visited the Public Library, the marble storage ware- 
 house of infinite human lore. He smiled with anticipation 
 at the countless pigeonholes full of drawers full of title- 
 cards. 
 
 He took out the drawer containing the names of the 
 books on hair. There were many, mary on the structure 
 of hair in animal and man, a disgusting number on the 
 methods of preserving the hair from the evils of emigra- 
 tion and hostile attack; the manipulation, architectonics, 
 and landscape-gardening of it; histories of the art of 
 coiffure; the chemistry of changing and restoring its 
 natural tints. 
 
 He learned that there are various great races of hairs, 
 according to its cross-section: the cylindrical hair, which 
 is straight and flat and grows upon Mongols, Malays, and 
 Redskins ; the elliptical, which is curly and flourishes on 
 the Indo-German races, the Australians, and Polynesians ; 
 and the flattened, bean-shaped hair, which kinks upon the 
 negro skulls. 
 
 But he could find nothing that showed how to tell a 
 hair from one person's head from a hair from another 
 person's head. 
 
 He found many titles in other languages, but Hallard 
 knew only English if that. At length he called in the 
 aid of an interpreter, a seedy scholar, who knew every- 
 thing except how to make as much as ten dollars a week. 
 With this help he found among the Archives des Sciences 
 Biologiques published in St. Petersburg (so Petrograd was 
 called in 1900) an Etude wiedico-lgeale sur les Foils, by 
 M. G. S. London. 
 
 This treatise explained how to make sure first that a hair 
 was a hair, then how to distinguish animal hair from human, 
 how to guess, more or less accurately, from what part of 
 the body it had come, how to tell whether a hair had 
 
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 fallen out or been combed out or pulled out, and whether 
 it was natural or gray, and the methods of artificially 
 changing its color with the water of Javelle. 
 
 But there the demonstration stopped. 
 
 Hallard had no doubt whatever that the hair in Perry 
 Merithew's fingers came from the head of a woman. 
 There was enough of it to know that she was not of a black, 
 a yellow, or a red race. 
 
 He cut one of the precious hairs through and studied it 
 with a microscope. It was elliptical and was therefore 
 Polynesian, Australian, or Indo-German. Hallard won- 
 dered who the Indo-Germans were, till he learned that he 
 was one himself. 
 
 His shabby assistant dragged from the shelves another 
 recondite treatise published in Leipzig in 1911. It wore 
 the long-haired title, " Concerning hair-injuries and the 
 post-mortem alterations of hair in their legal bearing" 
 ("Ueber Hoar - verletsungen und uber die postmortalen 
 Veranderungen der Hoar en in forensischen Beziehung). 
 This promised well in the translation, but Dr. Walter 
 Rottger was interested chiefly in the resistance of hair to 
 time, and he triumphantly announced that hair could last 
 a thousand years under favorable circumstances. Hallard 
 was of to-day; yesterday was almost as uninteresting 
 as its own newspapers. And he left the library with 
 small respect for its moldy tomes. 
 
 Some day when he had time he would expose it. 
 
 As he ran down the uselessly numerous front steps he 
 realized that he had come round by a long journey from 
 the place he had started from. 
 
 What he had learned the detective bureau had already 
 known and used. The police were relying still on the 
 magnificent old method of arresting everybody that 
 could be suspected, and subjecting the prisoner to what- 
 ever inquisition they could devise.
 
 CHAPTER LXVI 
 
 A ? TER Worthing left Muriel he suddenly remembered 
 her little gesture of repulsion when the maid offered 
 to take down her hair. It would have meant nothing 
 under other circumstances, and he would not let it mean 
 anything now. He would not disgrace his brain by 
 thinking of such rubbish. 
 
 But a little later he was thinking of it again. The 
 papers were clamorous with the puzzle of the copper- 
 haired woman. Muriel's hair might be called copper- 
 colored. She knew Merithew. She knew that building 
 in Orchard Street. Worthing himself had gone there with 
 her. Why might not Merithew have gone there? It was 
 disloyal to admit the possibility, yet he could not unthink 
 his thoughts. 
 
 Why had she hidden her hair under that lace cap? 
 Wasn't that a new way she had of doing up her hair ? 
 
 The questions nagged him like gnats returning as fast 
 as they were struck away. But his love of her kept pace 
 with his suspicions. Suppose it had been Muriel? Sup- 
 pose she had gone to the Sokalski tenement? Surely it 
 was on some good errand, as she had gone before. She 
 could not have intended to murder Merithew. There 
 could have been no possible premeditation or malice. 
 
 His hands had clenched in the hair of the woman, who- 
 ever she was. If the woman killed him then it must have 
 been in self-defense. That might have been the case 
 with the proud, impulsive, clean-souled Muriel he knew. 
 If Merithew had attempted to play the usual Merithew 
 
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 with her she would probably have killed him. And a 
 good job, too ! 
 
 But how could Muriel have gone from even the legiti- 
 mate execution of Merithew to the consolation of his wife ? 
 That seemed more nearly impossible than anything else. 
 This convinced him that his suspicions were insane. Yet 
 they came buzzing back. 
 
 Why did she recoil when her hair was threatened with 
 a touch? This query ran through his head like a stub- 
 born popular tune. In self-defense he busied himself with 
 a theory that perhaps Merithew had not been killed at 
 all. The papers said so. But who believed the papers? 
 The papers said the surgeons said so. But it takes a 
 surgeon to know what mistakes surgeons make. 
 
 Worthing felt a curiosity to make sure for himself. 
 Having been an ambulance rider at Bellevue, he had 
 made the acquaintance of many hospital authorities, of 
 police surgeons, and of the coroner. It would not be 
 hard for him to get access to the body itself. He resolved 
 to talk at once with the man who had made the first 
 examination on the tenement roof. He would call on him 
 casually and question him. If he could not find out some- 
 thing to acquit Muriel of his suspicions, he might at least 
 gain some knowledge to protect her with if she were guilty. 
 
 The word "guilty" shocked him like a sacrilege. 
 Whatever she had done, it was no fit word for her. 
 
 Worthing was of the all-merciful school of science, and 
 he felt rather sorry than angry toward all criminals. By 
 how much more should he be pitiful toward the girl he 
 loved. He simply could not believe that Muriel killed 
 Merithew. And he simply could not banish the thought 
 that she was somehow involved in his death. 
 
 Her face came back to him. Those eyes of hers had 
 tne sorrowfulest, loneliest gaze he had ever seen; her lips 
 striving to smile had twitched and paled with fright, and 
 her chin had quivered like the chin of a little girl trying 
 not to cry. 
 
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 She needed help, and by the Lord he would help her. 
 His skill as a physician might prove a more potent wea- 
 pon than all the swords of all the heroes or all the gold 
 of Winnie Nicolls. 
 
 By a little adroit telephoning he found out the name 
 of the hospital that sent the ambulance to Orchard Street, 
 and the name of the interne in charge of it. He had 
 known young Dr. Arnold at Johns Hopkins. He dropped 
 in on him and asked him for the address of an old crony 
 of theirs. After a little idle gossip he made to leave, then 
 turned back to say, carelessly : 
 
 "Did you read about this Merithew case?" 
 
 "Did I?" Arnold laughed. "I wrote it. I was the 
 first surgeon on the roof." 
 
 "Is that so?" said Worthing. " I didn't see your name 
 in the papers. Did they get the story right?" 
 
 "Do they ever? No!" 
 
 "Where were they wrong?" 
 
 "Everywhere. In the description of the position of 
 the body, the condition, the wounds. Every paper gave 
 a different story and every one was false. For instance, 
 they all spoke of the pools of blood. There was really 
 very little, surprisingly little." 
 
 "Is that so? Could I have a look at the victim, do 
 you suppose?" 
 
 "Sure. He's in an undertaker's shop waiting for the 
 family to claim him after the coroner gets through." 
 
 It was a cold-blooded business with these men, but 
 Worthing's heart was hot enough when he entered the 
 dingy shop in whose back room Perry Merithew was 
 ironically installed. The fat and amiable undertaker 
 motioned Worthing in and left him alone. 
 
 Worthing had seen Perry last in the sunlit ocean. He 
 had regarded him with angry jealousy. Now his rival 
 seemed helpless enough, as far as possible from being 
 handsome, or rich, or merry. But was he clinging still 
 to Muriel ? Was there no way to extract the secrets from
 
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 those lips congealed together? Merry Perry would 
 answer no questions vocally, but Worthing cross-examined 
 him in his own way. 
 
 When he came out of the room, the physician deputized 
 by the coroner had just returned from his luncheon. He 
 demanded by what authority Worthing was there. 
 Worthing explained that he had been called in to attend 
 Mrs. Merithew, and had wished to be able to tell her 
 definitely the cause of her husband's demise. 
 
 The man was so curt that Worthing went direct to the 
 coroner, and asked his opinion with more deference than 
 he felt for the office. 
 
 "It's pretty clear," said the coroner, "that he died 
 of a fracture of the skull from a blow with a blunt instru- 
 ment." 
 
 "I don't think so," said Worthing. 
 
 "You don't, don't you? And why not?" 
 
 "The fractures I find in the skull are serious, but not 
 enough to cause death. If he had been killed with a blow 
 there would have been a very great effusion of blood. As 
 a matter of fact, there was very little. Wouldn't that in- 
 dicate that his heart had stopped before he was struck? 
 I opened his eyelids; the pupils were dilated unequally. 
 Wouldn't that suggest an internal hemorrhage of the 
 brain?" 
 
 "Don't ask me. Tell me." 
 
 "I'm telling you." 
 
 "What in thunder do you think did kill him?" 
 
 "Apoplexy. I believe that an examination will show 
 little clots in the basal ganglia in the region of the floor 
 of the fourth ventricle." 
 
 "What could have brought it on?" 
 
 "Some big shock. Some overwhelming emotion. I 
 believe it was a stroke of the type called foudroyant" 
 
 "What was he doing on that roof?" 
 
 "That's more than I know. It must have taken some 
 terrific crisis to get him there."
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Apoplexy, eh? Do you know that Merithew had any 
 apoplectic history?" 
 
 "No; but you know what his life has been. He looked 
 pretty seedy when I saw him yesterday." 
 
 "You saw him yesterday where?" 
 
 "At Long Beach. He was dancing with a girl in a 
 bathing-suit." 
 
 "He would be. Who was she?" 
 
 "I don't know her name. Her face was familiar, 
 though." 
 
 "The late extras mention his affair with Aphra Shaler." 
 
 "That's who it was. I remember her now perfectly." 
 
 "She's skipped the bailiwick, scooted to New Jersey. 
 The police are after her." 
 
 "She never killed him." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "She had light blond hair. I noticed it on the beach." 
 
 "Did you see him with any other girl any copper- 
 haired beauty?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Worthing said it calmly. Physicians have to learn 
 to lie with deftness. But he began to shudder with a 
 new dread. He just remembered that Perry Merithew 
 had been on the float when Muriel asked Worthing to call 
 for her that evening. Merithew had overheard the in- 
 vitation. After Worthing had said how sorry he was 
 that he had another engagement and had swum away, 
 perhaps she had invited Merithew to call. 
 
 The plausibility of this hurt Worthing excruciatingly. 
 It helped to confirm the infernal suspicion. Perhaps 
 some one else on the crowded float had heard them make 
 an engagement, and would come forward to testify. 
 
 The one service he could render her was to attack the 
 theory of murder. He said to the coroner: 
 
 "Look here, old man. A lot of people are in favor of 
 abolishing your office altogether. They say it's a useless 
 waste of time and money. You've got a chance to make 
 
 552
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 a ten-strike. Before you send Merithew back to his 
 family, you have his brain and heart removed, and send 
 them to an expert. Nobody needs to know if the autopsy 
 proves what the papers say. But if it proves that Meri- 
 thew died of a stroke instead of a weapon, you can turn 
 a neat trick on the detectives and the reporters." 
 
 The idea interested the much-maligned official, and he 
 agreed to act upon it. Worthing lingered till he heard 
 the instructions telephoned to an eminent specialist. 
 Then he went back up-town to the Schuyler house to 
 see his patient and to question her. He learned that she 
 had gone to the country. He called at the Merithew 
 home to inquire of the widow's condition. He learned 
 that the regular family physician had arrived and taken 
 control. 
 
 Worthing dawdled away, listless and useless. Nobody 
 seemed to need him. He had nearly had two patients and 
 now he had none. 
 i*
 
 CHAPTER LXVII 
 
 '"THE Schuyler country place contained in itself nearly 
 1 every resource for diversion; it was a palace in the 
 midst of a farm on the edge of the water. There were 
 wildernesses and shorn lawns, solitude and the telephone. 
 There were swimming, .yachting, canoeing, tennis, polo, 
 horses, cattle, gardening, books, dances, cards, motoring, 
 motor-boating not far away there was even an aviation 
 field. 
 
 When the yacht brought Muriel to her home some man 
 was flying his new hydro-aeroplane. He rose from the 
 water and soared till he was above the upper rim of the 
 sun, whose lower rim was just cutting the horizon. 
 
 It was like the apotheosis of a man leaving earth for 
 heaven. Muriel remembered that Perry Merithew had 
 ridden a hydro-aeroplane that day when he had sailed 
 over the yacht and she had first paid any heed to him, 
 and she had paid heed to him then chiefly because her father 
 had warned her against him. He had escaped alive from 
 all the perils of the air and she had killed him. Now she 
 was returning from town with guilt on her soul, and an- 
 other man was flying above the yacht. Or was it Perry's 
 ghost? 
 
 She wondered what had become of his soul. It was 
 frightful that he should have been plunged into eternity 
 without a moment's warning. Did one go to hell the way 
 a broken airship falls? Where was hell? Since he died 
 in sin, he must have gone straight there. Or did one go up 
 to heaven first for judgment? or wait in the grave till the 
 one great day? 
 
 554
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 She wondered what hell was really like. Different 
 preachers differed so hopelessly. Most of them ignored 
 it altogether. Some said it was actual fire and burning, 
 and some said it was just a state of mind. Whatever it 
 was, she wished she could call poor Mr. Merithew out 
 of it. 
 
 She wondered if he knew that she had not meant to 
 kill him only to break free from his arms, which he had 
 no right to put around her; and to escape the kiss he had 
 no right to force upon her he with so sweet a wife. 
 
 Muriel wished that she might get word to poor Mr. 
 Merithew about his wife's grief for him and about her 
 own regret. But theology was so far beyond her that it 
 was the least of her troubles, as it is the least of the 
 troubles of her generation. 
 
 Every other emotion of the girl's seemed to be at its 
 maximum: remorse, terror, love, tenderness, the horror 
 of death, the beauty of the world, the dread of disgrace, 
 the devotion to her home and her parents. 
 
 She tried all the diversions, but they only wearied her. 
 She could get no Hit into her athleticism, no sincerity into 
 her conversation, no opportunity for her charity or her 
 hilarity. Those fleet impulses of hers were few now, and 
 desperate, and they must be repressed. 
 
 Life was a hopeless alternation of abysmal glooms and 
 of heart-throttling panics. Life was a waste of pains. 
 She would be glad to be dead. Only her love of her peo- 
 ple, her anguished longing not to cause anybody else any 
 more sorrow, kept her from self-destruction. 
 
 She was afraid to be so far from the city. She wanted 
 to go back to the roof and see if she had not left some clue 
 there that she might snatch up before the police found it. 
 She wanted to be where she could buy every extra edition 
 while it was still damp from the press, so that she could 
 keep watch on the detectives. 
 
 Yet when she was recalled to the city she was afraid 
 to be near. 
 
 555
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 The recall came in the most uncanny way. She was 
 alone on a dark piazza. The moon shining through a 
 haze made everything weird. She was trying to persuade 
 herself that Perry Merithew was alive and she was inno- 
 cent. On the pool little mists were floating like the trail- 
 ing garments of wraiths in a whispering conspiracy. She 
 was afraid to stay where she was, and afraid to cross the 
 piazza to the door. Then a servant's voice spoke sud- 
 denly out of the dark: 
 
 "You are wanted on the telephone, please." 
 
 "Who is it?" 
 
 "Mr. Perry Merithew." 
 
 It was like a ghostly summons, and she was assailed 
 with an ague of fright. She answered: 
 
 "I thought Mr. Merithew was d-dead?" 
 
 "Oh yes, Miss. This is the young Mr. Merithew." 
 
 "She smiled ironically, remembering: the king is dead, 
 long live the king. She dragged herself to the telephone 
 and heard the youthful mimicry of the father's voice: 
 
 "Is that you, Miss Muriel? Hope I haven't torn you 
 away from cards or something pleasant. Fact is, to- 
 morrow is the funeral of my poor old dad. The little 
 mother's awfully cut up, of course. She's taken no end of 
 a shine to you. She wondered if you would be angel enough 
 to come and help her through. It's a lot to ask. But 
 you've been so good to the other poor people, maybe you 
 would take pity on her. Do you think you could?" 
 
 "Of course! Of course!" 
 
 "That's wonderful of you. God b-bless you, Miss 
 Muriel." 
 
 He was crying. That set her to crying. He was the 
 boy trying to walk like a man, and his load was too big 
 and too sudden. And Muriel was a girl too abruptly 
 flung into womanhood. 
 
 The funeral celebration was a mingling of profound 
 grief and outrageous sensationalism. Crowds fought 
 
 556
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 their way into the church and mobbed the police outside,, 
 till it was hard for them to open a lane wide enough to 
 let the family through, and the coffin. 
 
 Perry Merithew went down the aisle under a great 
 mantle of violets, to music that throbbed enormously in 
 the air. His widow and his son and the nearest relatives 
 followed in densest black like paupers. They did not 
 know that Perry's heart and brain were not in the casket 
 with the rest of him. Perry's heart and brain had not 
 usually been with his family. 
 
 Muriel walked with the household, and wore black 
 with them. The almost unendurable solemnity and 
 mystery of the ritual and the music overwhelmed her, 
 but she seemed to be like some new and well-built ship 
 that weathers every storm the sea and sky and wind and 
 lightning can wreak upon it, plunges to every trough, but 
 somehow climbs out to every crest; makes the worst of 
 every blast, but emerges, always. 
 
 That was what Mrs. Merithew tried to tell Muriel in 
 the black hours after Perry had been submitted to the 
 earth : 
 
 "You have youth and hope and beauty and the future. 
 Nothing matters for you. But it's all over for me. I'm. 
 an old woman with a fatherless boy to watch, and a scan- 
 dal that I'll never live down. I have no ambition left and 
 only one prayer to find the woman that killed Perry 
 and send her. after him in worse disgrace. If God will 
 grant me that, I won't ask anything else except forgive- 
 ness for poor Perry." 
 
 Something impelled Muriel to say: "Do you think you 
 ought to mix prayers for revenge with prayers for for- 
 giveness? Don't you think revenge is out of date?^ 
 Don't you think you ought to leave the woman to the 
 law?" 
 
 "I'll leave her to the law, never fear!" Mrs. Merithew 
 muttered. "If I can find her! And I think I have her 
 name already!" 
 
 557
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Muriel was too startled to gasp. She simply looked 
 the question that Mrs. Merithew answered: 
 
 "Pet Bettany." 
 
 Muriel almost laughed at the surprising folly of this. 
 "How on earth did you come to think of her?" 
 
 "In going over some old check-books of my husband's 
 the detectives found two or three he had made to her." 
 
 "Oh, Pet was always borrowing from everybody right 
 and left, and she never paid. Didn't her mother get a 
 few checks, too?" 
 
 "Two or three." 
 
 "Then you can't accuse Pet." 
 
 "No? What about this letter? She sent it to him at 
 his club; he never got it ; it was turned over to us." She 
 thrust into Muriel's hand this note: 
 
 PERRY DARLING, I was a beast to treat you so outrageously. 
 But you know that wolf -temper of mine. I'm not really to 
 blame. I inherited it with my other faults. When I'm jealous 
 I simply go blind with rage and don't know what I'm saying. 
 
 You were an old dear to me, and I'll promise to behave if 
 you'll take me out again. Please telephone. I'll wait at home 
 till I hear from you. p ET- 
 
 "What have you to say to that?" Mrs. Merithew de- 
 manded. 
 
 "Only what you said, that he never got it," Muriel 
 ventured. 
 
 "But she could have reached him by telephone, no 
 doubt, at another club." 
 
 "Anyway, she hasn't copper-colored hair," Muriel 
 urged in a panic, wondering how she could save Pet with- 
 out imperiling herself. 
 
 "She dyed her hair auburn not long ago," Mrs. Meri- 
 thew persisted. 
 
 "But she would never have gone into the slums with 
 him. Why should she? She had no motive. Besides, 
 she wouldn't have taken his money, his watch, his pearl." 
 
 558
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "That may have only been a blind to throw suspicion 
 off the track." 
 
 "Oh, in Heaven's name, don't accuse her till you are 
 sure!" Muriel pleaded. "It would be a frightful thing. 
 You'd never forgive yourself. Don't give your heart up 
 to revenge. Turn your thoughts to mercy, for your poor 
 husband's sake, and your own. If Pet had done this 
 thing her hair would show it. Make sure that it does 
 before you give her over to the police and the news- 
 papers. She and her mother have all the trouble they 
 can stand. You must be careful." 
 
 Muriel was so overwrought that Mrs. Merithew yielded, 
 more to appease her than for any other reason. She 
 promised to take no action until she had corroboration 
 for her theory. But she kept the letter. 
 
 Seeing how exhausted Muriel was, she forbade her to 
 stay longer and sent her to her own home. There she 
 found Pet Bettany. 
 
 Pet had repented her quarrel with Merithew in a 
 morning-after misery. She had wakened that day with 
 more than a headache. She had looked about the house 
 where she and her mother were beleaguered. 
 
 Poverty was round them like a moat, and the city was 
 in the hands of the enemy, the army of creditors. There 
 was merrymaking in the town and beyond its walls. 
 Perry had given her safe-conduct and escort through the 
 lines. He was her only friend, and she had insulted him 
 with imbecile lack of tact. It was bad business. 
 
 She tried to reach him by telephone without success. 
 Then she sent a note to his club and waited at home for 
 him. 
 
 Perry had not called for her that night. She had spent 
 the long, lone evening in the dark, hot house, fuming 
 against him. 
 
 Her mother had gone out that evening with an old 
 beau she had tried to refurbish. The old beau had taken 
 
 559
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Mrs. T. J. B. to dinner and to a theater, and a roof -dance 
 afterward. The prodigal mother had come home at a late 
 hour. 
 
 Pet bitterly resented Perry's absence till she read his 
 perfect excuse in the next afternoon's head-lines. 
 
 She had thought, "If he had called on me as I asked 
 him to, he would be alive now." 
 
 She told her mother about it. Her mother was im- 
 ir. iiately alarmed. 
 
 "Good Lord! dear, suppose they accused you? How 
 would you prove you weren't with him? The servants 
 had gone to bed, and I was out. What proof have you? 
 Why, even I don't know that you were here! Were you 
 here?" 
 
 Pet saw in her mother's eyes a look that appalled her. 
 *'My God!" she cried, "you don't suspect me?" 
 
 "Of course not, my child; and yet it is queer, isn't it? 
 Suppose they asked me where you were? I couldn't 
 swear you were home, could I? They could prove that 
 I was away myself, couldn't they?" 
 
 There was a kind of perfunctory loyalty in her mother's 
 tone that terrified Pet. If her own mother could think 
 her capable of such a crime, what would other people think? 
 
 She knew that her reputation was not beyond cavil. 
 She knew that she had enemies; she had been proud of 
 them, their number and importance. They had given 
 zest to life. Now she realized that enemies are liabilities 
 and friends are assets. 
 
 Pet delivered a tirade against her mother that con- 
 vinced Mrs. T. J. B. of one thing particularly that her 
 daughter had an ungovernable temper. Mrs. T. J. B. 
 made the most astonishing comment: 
 
 "Pet, my dear, you've really got to learn to control 
 yourself. You look as if you could kill me, too." 
 
 "Too?" Pet gasped. "Too? Then you do believe 
 
 "I believe nothing," screamed Mrs. T. J. B., "except 
 that we've got to raise some money somewhere." 
 
 560
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 ''You'd better telephone your new old beau." 
 
 "They discontinued the telephone this morning." 
 
 This was serious. The enemy had cut the cables. 
 Pet thought and thought. If only Perry were alive! 
 She had been nursing him along. The thought of Perry 
 brought the thought of Muriel Schuyler. 
 
 The name flashed up in her gloom with the sudden 
 brilliance of a lettered electric sign. Pet had not fright- 
 ened Perry into paying over any money recently, but 
 perhaps Muriel would be easier. She had had mysterious 
 dealings with Perry, and people who had had mysterious 
 dealings with Perry were doing their best to keep them 
 dark just now. 
 
 Also Muriel had copper-colored hair. What a pistol 
 that was to hold at her head ! Pet would pretend to be- 
 lieve her guilty, and threaten to tell the police of her 
 transactions with Perry. Muriel would naturally come 
 down handsomely to suppress even a whisper. 
 
 And then Pet quivered under the shock of an appall- 
 ing notion perhaps Muriel was the guilty woman. Why 
 not? The mere thought was so impossible that there 
 might be something in it. Pet's cynical soul reached the 
 truth as geniuses sometimes reach it by arguing with 
 false logic from false premises. 
 
 Pet we.nt out and telephoned to Muriel at the town 
 house, but learned that she was in the country; Pet 
 could not afford the trip. Later she went to the funeral. 
 That was free. She saw Muriel there. The fact that she 
 was with Mrs. Merithew quickened the suspicions of Pet. 
 
 She went to the Schuyler home and waited. She waited 
 for hours before Muriel came in and greeted her with 
 amazement. 
 
 The two had never been friends, though they had been 
 acquaintances almost from cradle days. It puzzled 
 Muriel to think that she had just been defending Pet, and 
 now found her at her own home.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Hello, Pet!" she said, with difficult cordiality. "Sorry 
 to have kept you waiting." 
 
 "Hello, Muriel! It doesn't matter." 
 
 "Sit down, do." 
 
 "Thanks. I'll keep you only a moment." There was 
 a silence. Pet was looking at Muriel's hair. Muriel 
 caught the glance. It put her instantly on her guard. 
 Her heart began to hammer with alarm. At length Pet 
 began to speak. 
 
 "Terrible thing about poor Perry, wasn't it?" 
 
 "Terrible." 
 
 "Especially sad for you. You knew him so well." 
 
 "Did I?" said Muriel. 
 
 "Didn't you? I used to see you dancing with him." 
 
 "Only once, I think at the Yacht Club." 
 
 "I saw him give you money then." 
 
 "You did?" Muriel laughed. Here was a chance to 
 say a word in Perry's favor. "Oh, that! Did you see 
 that? It was funny. I had asked my father for some 
 money for a little Italian boy who was kidnapped." 
 
 "Did he live in Orchard Street?" 
 
 Pet leaped at the question so eagerly that Muriel under- 
 stood her a little more. She answered, calmly: 
 
 "No, he lived in Batavia Street, way down near the 
 Brooklyn Bridge. My father wouldn't give me the money 
 to ransom him. Mr. Merithew was at the 6ffice. He 
 said he'd give it to me if he could borrow it. He tele- 
 phoned over that he'd give it to me if I paid for it with a 
 dance. So I did. It was foolish of me, but his money 
 saved the boy and it's saving other people still. Father 
 was furious when I told him." 
 
 Pet stuck to the point. "Once you got him interested 
 in charity, you persuaded him to go to the slums with 
 you, I suppose, or didn't you?" 
 
 "Never," Muriel answered. It is easy to lie when a 
 direct question is put. Pet returned to the attack from 
 another direction. 
 
 562
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "When you were kidnapped Perry saved you, didn't 
 he?" 
 
 "Yes," said Muriel. It was pleasant to tell the truth. 
 
 "You kept it out of the papers." 
 
 "Naturally. Who likes to be in the papers?" 
 
 "How did it happen that Perry happened to be the 
 man?" 
 
 "You know that as well as I do. You were with him 
 when the word came. Winnie Nicolls was with you. 
 He told me you knew all about it. Winnie tried to rescue 
 me, too, and so did Dr. Worthing. Mr. Merithew hap- 
 pened to succeed." 
 
 "But why were you so anxious to keep out of sight? 
 Why did you leave for Europe right away? Why did 
 Perry follow you over? Why was he always so eloquent 
 in your praise?" 
 
 "Why are you asking me all these questions about the 
 poor fellow?" 
 
 The pity in Muriel's eyes at the mention of his name 
 did more to persuade Pet of Muriel's innocence than any 
 open plea could have done. It was another of the in- 
 stances where womanly intuition leaps to the wrong con- 
 clusion. Muriel repeated her question, coldly: 
 
 "Why are you asking me all these questions?" 
 
 "Oh, I was just curious," Pet mumbled, disconcerted. 
 
 Muriel's heart hardened. "Are you trying to solve 
 the mystery?" 
 
 "In away." 
 
 "And you came here to convince yourself that I was 
 guilty of such a hideous crime?" 
 
 The sincerity of Muriel's horror again undermined 
 Pet's assurance. Her evident confusion emboldened 
 Muriel. She laughed harshly. 
 
 "Do you think that I killed the poor man?" 
 
 "Oh no! no! Of course not." 
 
 "Oh yes, of course so," Muriel mocked her. Then she 
 spoke without mercy. "Miss Bettany, you might be 
 
 563
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 in better business than this. If you start to throwing 
 suspicion around some of it might fall on yourself." 
 
 "On me!" Pet cried, but weakly, remembering her 
 mother's curious manner. 
 
 Muriel pushed the charge. "Mr. Merithew was killed 
 in the heart of the slums. The police say he was robbed. 
 They are looking for the thief among the thieves. If you 
 begin to hint that some one in his own set took him down 
 there and killed him, you may set the police on your own 
 track." 
 
 "How dare you!" Pet stormed. "As if I couldn't 
 prove that I wasn't with him!" 
 
 "But can you?" Muriel ventured. She took a wild 
 chance, and she saw that it scored. She went after Pet 
 like a boxer who has landed a lucky blow. "You may 
 not know that the letter you wrote Mr. Merithew fell into 
 his wife's hands. It speaks of your blind temper. Mrs. 
 Merithew showed me that note this afternoon. The poor 
 woman wanted to have you arrested. I used my influence 
 to quiet her. I told her that whatever else you were ca- 
 pable of, you couldn't commit murder. She referred to 
 the fact that you had recently painted your hair a rich 
 copper color." 
 
 Pet could not endure the sublime injustice of this. "My 
 hair?" she shrieked. " My hair is my alibi! Do you want 
 to see it?" She was taking off her hat. 
 
 Muriel checked her. " Don't insult me by thinking I'm 
 as suspicious as you are. I don't believe for one minute 
 that you are guilty. I only say that you'd better not 
 begin to juggle heavy weights for fear you might drop 
 one on your own toe. You mustn't forget that only a 
 night or two before Mr. Merithew's death you were seen 
 with him in a restaurant. You quarreled with him out- 
 rageously. It was very uncomfortable for the rest of us. 
 The waiters were in ecstasies and the head waiter was in 
 despair. Mr. Nicolls and his aunt and my father and 
 Doctor Worthing were there with me." 
 
 564
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Pet's desperation rekindled her anger. "I offered to 
 show you my hair to prove that none of it was cut off. 
 Will you show me yours?" 
 
 Muriel stared at her with disdain. "Certainly not. 
 Of all the astounding impertinences I ever heard of! 
 If you'll bring a policeman I'll show him. But at the 
 same time I'll have to mention your note to poor Mr. 
 Merithew and your ferocious quarrel with him, and your 
 little effort to throw suspicion on me. Perhaps the hair 
 wasn't your own. What if it was a transformation? 
 Many women do wear transformations. Perhaps the 
 woman that killed him had one on. Perhaps the hair 
 they found in his hands was false." 
 
 If Pet had never before had the feeling of murder in 
 her heart she felt it now. She could have flown at Muriel 
 and torn her face to shreds. But Muriel was an athlete 
 of well-known prowess and Muriel was calm and ready 
 for her. Muriel at bay was developing the cunning of 
 despair. 
 
 The most disgusting thing about Pet's cyclones of rage 
 was that they usually ended in rain. She was so helpless 
 now that she broke down and wept. Her tears softened 
 Muriel as nothing else could have done. But she com- 
 pleted her conquest before she yielded to mercy. 
 
 "You were speaking about the money you saw Mr. 
 Merithew give me. What about the money he gave 
 you? Mrs. Merithew has the checks." 
 
 Pet wanted to roll off the chair to the floor under this 
 final shame. But Muriel was saying: 
 
 "Everybody knows that you and your mother have 
 been awfully hard pressed, and people have said you have 
 been living by your wits. It just occurs to me that your 
 real reason for coming to see me was to scare me into pay- 
 ing you something, now that poor Mr. Merithew is out 
 of your reach? Is that true?" 
 
 Pet wailed like a banshee at this, but it convinced 
 Muriel. She felt a deep sorrow for her. She had heard 
 
 565
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 much of the poverty of the once-rich. She put her hand 
 on Pet's shoulder. Pet shook it off with a snarl, but 
 Muriel was not to be thwarted. 
 
 " Listen, my dear," she said in a soft voice, " you couldn't 
 have had any other reason. You must have been ter- 
 ribly hard pressed to think of it. You must need money 
 awfully. I'm going to give you some. Will you take it ?" 
 
 "No, no, no, no!" Pet howled. 
 
 "I'm going to give it to you, anyway," Muriel said. 
 "My father gave me a hundred dollars to get some flowers 
 for poor Mr. Merithew's funeral. I telephoned for them 
 and had them charged. I've got the cash here. You'll 
 take it, won't you? Please! He would have liked you 
 to take it." 
 
 Pet shook her head frantically, but Muriel took money 
 from her own handbag and transferred it to Pet's. Pet 
 hardly knew it. 
 
 "I can give you more when you need it," Muriel said, 
 feeling a strange rapture in the ultimate luxury of return- 
 ing good for evil. And the triumphant canniness of brib- 
 ing a dangerous pursuer was strangely admixed with her 
 charity. 
 
 Pet was thinking bitter thoughts in the hiding of her 
 shut eyes, but the talisman of that hundred dollars was 
 irresistible. Her pride had died long ago. She had taken 
 money on far less honorable terms. Muriel was rich. 
 And Muriel made it easy by pretending to let her pretend 
 that she did not know it was there. So she refused again 
 to accept it, but did not eject it from her handbag. 
 
 When she opened her bloodshot, tear-stained eyes, 
 she was like a wildcat that has fought in vain against the 
 gentleness of a trapper who feeds it and lets it go. 
 
 Her escape was conveniently facilitated by the arrival 
 Df a purblind servant who announced, "Miss Sokalska." 
 
 Muriel nodded. Pet mopped her eyds angrily with a 
 dripping handkerchief. Muriel handed her a dry one, 
 and said: 
 
 566
 
 Pet had forgotten to say "Thank you!" but it is
 
 >t expected of untamed animals given their liberty.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Won't you stay and meet her?" 
 
 Which was equivalent to saying, " Of course you won't." 
 Pet shook her head and hurried out as Maryla came in. 
 
 Pet had forgotten to say "Thank you," but it is not 
 expected of untamed animals, given their liberty.
 
 CHAPTER LXVIII 
 
 MURIEL'S victory over Pet Bettany was so vital 
 to her, and she had won it at such expense of con- 
 science, that she hardly noticed Maryla till Pet was gone. 
 She was ready to sink down with battle-fag, but the 
 sight of Maryla revived her. 
 
 For Maryla carried her aby in her arms. There was 
 a beatitude in Maryla's eyes now, and pride in place of 
 shame in her carriage. And the baby at her breast was 
 chortling "Home, Sweet Home" in the original version. 
 
 A gurgle of laughter caught Muriel's ear first with 
 instant contagion. Nothing could have made her laugh 
 so well or so thoroughly as that irresistible origin of all 
 laughter, the inarticulate contentment of a well-fed 
 infant. 
 
 She rushed to Maryla with a cry of delight and robbed 
 her of the child. Maryla was a rank novice as a matron, 
 but she tried to look as wise as the mother of a dozen. 
 
 With the fine discrimination of infants, this baby, who 
 owed the recovery of its mother to Muriel, decided that 
 Muriel was something dangerous. It was frantically afraid 
 of her and tried to wriggle from her grasp, emitting yelps 
 of fear and flinging its hands out for rescue. Muriel had 
 a superstitious feeling that the baby was mystically aware 
 of her crime. 
 
 Maryla took back her own. She tried to comfort 
 Muriel. 
 
 "Babies are always such. She cried so when foist I 
 took her off the noisse she had by Foundlings." 
 
 "When did you go there for her?" Muriel asked. 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 " That same night you gave me such of a talking. And 
 it was a good business for me." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because I am there that night Meesteh Merithew is 
 died." 
 
 Muriel was startled. "What difference did that make 
 to you?" 
 
 The infant had fallen asleep on its mother's bosom. 
 Maryla, asking permission with a look, laid it down on 
 a big divan and turned back to Muriel. 
 
 "Meesteh Merithew is the f adder of this bebby." 
 
 Muriel could not understand her till she had re- 
 peated it. 
 
 "Yes. I did not told you because you are friends by 
 him like you are by me and everybody. But it is so. 
 He is the f adder. He was the f adder." 
 
 Muriel gripped the arms of her chair lest the swirl of 
 it cast her to the floor. Maryla talked on: 
 
 "If the policers should find me, I can make a proving 
 that I am not on the roof that night." 
 
 "Why should the police look for you?" 
 
 "Oh, they will; they do now. Didn't you see the 
 picture they print it in papers of the het-pin?" 
 
 "I saw that," Muriel said. "But I never knew whose 
 it was it wasn't yours?" 
 
 "Sure! It was the het-pin I showed you that time I 
 am here for tea. I was telling you I wanted to stick it 
 in the heart of that f adder." 
 
 "But you you didn't kill him!" 
 
 "No," Maryla laughed. "I wanted it, but I could not 
 found him. It is why I come to see you now. That phi 
 in the papers is the pin I leaved here that day." 
 
 "You left it here!" 
 
 "Sure. I hand it to you. You put on table. I go 
 away in a horry. Outside, I find I have no x het-pin. I 
 am afraid of that big man you have for your doorkeeper. 
 I go on by Foundlings." 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "You left the pin here?" Muriel pondered. "But I 
 left it on the table. I never saw it again." 
 
 "No, not you." Maryla lowered her voice. "It is 
 why I am here. Somebody in this house did take that 
 pin, maybe. That Merithew is bad man by young goils. 
 I am thinking some soivant-goil there is in your house 
 and he makes love by her like by me. And she kills him, 
 maybe. So I come to tell you to tell her to look out. 
 
 "If policers arrest me, I must tell it is not me. For 
 I cannot die now for somebody else. I have my bebby. 
 But I don't want nobody else to die for that bad man. 
 It is enough that he dies like he should ought to have died 
 before he makes so many young goils bad without mak- 
 ing more yet." 
 
 Muriel began to understand. She remembered that 
 when Perry Merithew invited her to take the 'bus-ride 
 with him she had put her hat on in the dark. She had 
 caught up two hat-pins from her dressing-table. On the 
 roof there he had taken them out when he lifted her hat 
 from her hair. Afterward she had tried to reach one of 
 them in vain. When she saw the hat-pin pictured in the 
 newspapers it had meant nothing to her but a blind clue. 
 Now she was convinced that it was Maryla's hat-pin that 
 she had worn. And Maryla had come to tell her. And 
 Maryla was Muriel had killed the father of Maryla's 
 child! 
 
 She could not carry everything. She collapsed in her 
 chair with a groan of surrender, and began to weep in 
 craven helplessness. 
 
 Maryla, overjoyed at being able to help her from 
 whom she had had so much help, gathered her into her 
 arms to comfort her. But Muriel pushed her away. 
 
 "You mustn't touch me. Not you. But I didn't 
 mean to harm you when I when I I didn't 
 know that he was the man. I didn't know. You 
 didn't tell me." 
 
 She could not say it. She did not need to. Maryla 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 understood. The blow felled her to her knees. She 
 clung to the arm of Muriel's chair and whispered questions 
 that Muriel answered. Now it was not Maryla who 
 groveled and Muriel who comforted, but vice versa. 
 
 Muriel told her the whole story. For all the shame, 
 it was glorious to tell it, even to this girl; especially to 
 this victim of her act. At last the secret was expressed, 
 the cinder was out of her eye, the splinter out of her palm, 
 the fish-bone out of her throat. There is no greater hap- 
 piness granted mankind than this first free moment of 
 relief. 
 
 The problems of the future were unchanged increased, 
 perhaps, because she had exposed her guilt. But she could 
 draw a few deep breaths at least. 
 
 Muriel belonged to the class that used the police and 
 the law for its protection and convenience. Maryla be- 
 longed to the class that they abused and cowed. To 
 Maryla the police were dangerous tyrants who drove 
 push-cart owners from profitable stands, prevented chil- 
 dren from playing, treated the poor with contempt and 
 violence. It was legitimate and necessary to match one's 
 wits against policers. 
 
 It was natural for her to sympathize with Muriel, to 
 believe that she meant no harm, and that her first busi- 
 ness was to escape from the consequences of what she 
 could not help. Her reverence for Muriel made her be- 
 lieve that Muriel had not yielded to Perry Merithew's 
 magnetic spell. 
 
 Maryla knew that roof, knew that ledge they had 
 looked across, knew even the old box they had stood on. 
 The fact that Muriel had entered the house in Maryla's 
 behalf, in the hope of pleading with her father to take her 
 back, was the final proof of Muriel's angelhood. 
 
 Maryla promised to save her at any cost. She resolved 
 to save her if she had to sacrifice herself for her. 
 
 She told Muriel so, and begged her to feel safe from 
 all danger. 
 
 575
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "They will not catch me," she said; "but should they 
 catch me, I got my proof. I was by Foundlings that 
 night. And my bebby sleepink in my arm. And such 
 a sleepink it was for me! the foist in how long I don't 
 know. But only for you I should not have my bebby 
 now. And besides, I am noisse to another little bebby 
 whose mother was like me. She ran away, too, and did 
 not come back yet. I am doing much good. I am very 
 heppy. 
 
 "Should those policers catch me, don't you say nothink. 
 I won't say nothink till it comes by court-house. Then 
 I laugh and I say, 'Go esk Sister Superiors where I am 
 that night.' Then those old judges look like a fool and 
 they gotta let me go. If they don't let me go, then you 
 shall take care of my bebby, yes ! It should be right, too, 
 that I softer, for I wanted to kill that man and I did not. 
 You did not want, but you did. If somebody's got a right 
 to get a ponishment it is not you." 
 
 Muriel protested that the scheme was impossible, in- 
 tolerable. But Maryla only laughed. She gathered her 
 baby in her arms and went out, smiling. 
 
 Again Muriel went to the door with her. Maryla's 
 last words were: 
 
 "Don't you be afraid of nobody. All comes right. 
 You trost me. All comes right." 
 
 Muriel dined alone that evening in the big dining-room. 
 She ravened after her food, for her strength had been 
 drained in a dozen labors, and she had told somebody her 
 secret. 
 
 She had no intention of letting Maryla bear her penalty. 
 But she had gained a confidante and a promiser of help. 
 That was much. 
 
 When she went to her room, however, and the long 
 evening stretched before her and lost itself in an endless 
 road of long evenings, sorrow resumed its possession of 
 her. She could see nothing in her past that was pleasant, 
 
 576'
 
 EiMPTY POCKETS 
 
 and nothing in her future but guilt and solitude. And 
 she could not get used to sorrow. 
 
 She heard the door-bell ring faintly. The police had 
 arrived at last. Maryla had gone, and her father was in 
 the country. They would take her away. She wondered 
 where she could hide. She ran and locked the door as 
 silently as she could. She waited a long, long while for 
 the tap of a servant's knuckles, but it did not come. She 
 wondered what dreadful conference was being held below. 
 She imagined the protest the people of the household 
 would make against the incursion of the police. She 
 could see them thrust aside. She waited now for the door 
 to be forced. 
 
 Still there was no sound. She could not bear the wait- 
 ing. She must hear what was going on below. She tip- 
 toed across the room, turned the key back stealthily, and 
 the bolt, and opened the door with all gentleness. She 
 peered through the crevice. There was no one in the 
 upper hall. But the stairway was all alight. 
 
 She stepped out and stared at the glistening marble 
 of the balustrade. There was a curious sound as of some 
 animal creeping slowly up the stairway. There was a 
 sound of heavy breathing. 
 
 Fascinated with terror, she drew near the well of the 
 stairway. Just before she reached it she heard another 
 sound, an incredible sound, as of some one snickering. 
 Then came an explosion of boyish laughter, a loud tin- 
 tinnabultaion like a bell rolling down-stairs. 
 
 She ran to the rail, marveling, and peered over. A 
 young lad whose face she could not quite remember, yet 
 almost remembered, was climbing slowly with some effort 
 up Jacob's Ladder. 
 
 She stared, unbelieving. Then she ran to the head of 
 the stairs. Her knees weakened and she sat down on 
 the top step and put out her arms, crying: 
 
 "Happy! Happy Hanigan, is it you?" 
 
 The boy paused, and a look of disgust erased his huge 
 
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 smile. He growled: "Aw, hell! I was hopin' to supprise 
 you." 
 
 "It's you!" she laughed. "And how you did surprise 
 me! And, oh, how straight you are! And all dressed 
 up! Why, Happy, Happy!" 
 
 She ran down farther and caught him in her arms with 
 hungry satisfaction. She was too blind with tears to see 
 Clinton Worthing watching upward from the hall. 
 
 The situation was over-subtle for Happy. He had 
 counted on being welcomed with a jubilee, not with such 
 noisy sorrow. 
 
 "I tried to keep from laughin'," he apologized, "but de 
 damn giggles bubbled out o' me like sody-worter." 
 
 Still she wept. 
 
 "If I'm bodderin' you, by bein' here, I guess I better 
 beat it!" he said. "I told Dr. Woithin' he had a right 
 to warn you I was comin'." 
 
 But Muriel clung to him all the harder, hampering him 
 with the uncomfortable awkwardnesses of a woman's em- 
 brace. And she rumpled his sleek hair with her caresses. 
 And she had not even commented on the details of his 
 magnificent costume. And her tears soaked his cheeks 
 with unbecoming salt. 
 
 The best she could find to say was: "You're my boy, 
 aren't you, Happy? I've got you, anyway, haven't I? 
 You're my boy. Say it!" 
 
 He grumbled: "Well, o' course I got a mudder already. 
 But I 'ain't got no wife yet. Did you wait like I told 
 you to?" 
 
 "Yes, I've waited," she sighed. 
 
 "I hope you won't mine waitin' awhile longer," Happy 
 said. "I guess you gotta. Me newspaper business is 
 swiped by now, I guess, and it takes time to build it up 
 again. But I'm not crooked any longer. Watch me." 
 He strutted along the wide steps of the stairs. "And I 
 can take a deep breat' wit'out it hoitin' me." He puffed 
 out his little partridge chest. "Huh! I should worry!" 
 
 578
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Muriel's eyes, following his unshackled motions, saw 
 Clinton Worthing at last. 
 
 "Clinton!" she exclaimed, and she ran down as he ran 
 up. They met on the first great sweep of the stairway, 
 and their hands gripped hard. 
 
 Happy watched them, then turned his back and said: 
 "Go on and kiss him; I ain't lookin'." 
 
 The command came so pat upon her impulse that she 
 almost obeyed it. Worthing was too confused to know 
 what to say or do. So he said and did nothing. 
 
 Muriel led him into the living-room and asked him 
 questions about Happy. She gave Happy a book of 
 polar exploration, and he curled up on the big divan 
 under the lamp and looked at pictures till he fell asleep. 
 
 He lay in the relaxed grace of all sleeping animals, 
 and he was in such contrast with his former cruel mis- 
 assembly that Muriel felt him to be almost a work of 
 art. And he was, indeed, a masterpiece of the new living 
 sculpture, surgery. 
 
 "Has his mother seen him?" she asked. "What did 
 she say?" 
 
 "You ought to have heard her. She credited it all to 
 you and me and her other patron saints. She would have 
 had a pair of wings wished onto my shoulder-blades if I 
 had not run away. And she puts you right up in the 
 stars." 
 
 Muriel was mightily pleased and comforted. She had 
 given one child a new life and an enlarged hope. If only 
 she had not robbed one man of his life and all his hope! 
 Even while her mouth was smiling her brows were knit 
 with the old agony and the tears began to burn her eyes 
 once more. She stared at Worthing with the most 
 poignant regret of all. 
 
 She could see that he loved her, and she could have 
 loved him if only that ghastly barrier of her deed had 
 not walled them apart. 
 
 Then she realized that she had left off her lace cap 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 when she ran out to the stairs. In embracing Happy her 
 hair had been disheveled. While she cried over him a 
 thick strand of it slipped down along her shoulders. 
 
 As she began to put it up she saw that Worthing was 
 staring at her. He turned pale. He must have seen the 
 traces of the penknife in the two or three short strands 
 that she had kept hidden hitherto. 
 
 Of all the men in the world, she would have chosen him 
 last as the discoverer. And he had seen her ragged hair. 
 
 She could think of nothing to say. She had no strength 
 to run. Her teeth chattered and she was shaken and 
 jolted with queer spasmic shudders. 
 
 She waited, wavering and cowering, for him to speak. 
 He was silent a long time; then his first words were: 
 
 "May I smoke?" 
 
 She nodded, her head dod-doddering ludicrously. 
 Evi-evidently he had something very, very important to 
 say to say. When her" father had s-something im- 
 important to say, he al-alway-always li-lighted a cigar 
 first.
 
 CHAPTER LXIX 
 
 WORTHING'S deliberation was terrifying. He took 
 a cigar from one pocket, a match-box from another, 
 selected a match with care, lighted it, let it burn almost 
 out, then put it to his cigar and brought the cigar to a 
 glow, then rose and moved about, looking for a place to 
 drop the match. Then he walked to the divan where 
 Happy slept, and sauntered to the two doors and looked 
 into the hall and into the drawing-room. Then he walked 
 to Muriel and said in a low voice: 
 
 "Are you interested in Perry Merithew, ot has all the 
 newspaper sensation tired you out?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" she whispered. 
 
 He gazed at her with eyes of all tenderness and said: 
 "While the police and the reporters are looking for the 
 woman who killed him, I have just learned that he was 
 not killed at all. He died of apoplexy." 
 
 Muriel sprang to her feet with a little moan like a gush 
 of blood. "Oh, thank God! Thank God!" Then she 
 fell forward. His arms saved her and upheld her. 
 
 When she was somewhat restored she began to tremble 
 again, and to babble: "Why do you say that? How 
 could you know? Who told you? How could they 
 tell?" 
 
 He told her of his investigation, his reasons, his talk with 
 the coroner. He had visited the laboratory of the expert 
 that afternoon. To-morrow the expert would report the, 
 result of his findings to the coroner in confidence. 
 
 "What he will do, or the police, I don't know."
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "What does it matter what they do?" Muriel said. 
 "The one wonderful thing is that he was not killed." 
 
 Worthing did not ask her why this meant so much to 
 her. He smoked while she sat pondering the miracle of 
 release from sin, breathing the pure air of blood-guilt- 
 lessness. That was enough for a while. 
 
 At length he said, less from curiosity than from a de- 
 sire to be of use to her: "Of course the police will still 
 be interested in knowing who was with him, who robbed 
 him of his valuables." 
 
 "He wasn't robbed," Muriel whispered. "He gave 
 them of his own free will for charity." 
 
 He did not ask her how she knew this. He was too 
 busy with the jealous pangs of hearing her attribute 
 benevolence to the man. It was not easy to browbeat 
 himself out of a bitter resentment ; but he was determined 
 to help her, all he could. He went on, his voice colder 
 than his heart was: 
 
 "The police will want to know what brought on the 
 stroke of apoplexy, and why the man was beaten over 
 the head, and what the weapon was, and how and why 
 the woman got away, and who she was?" 
 
 Both of them sat staring at the floor for a long while, 
 before she turned her eyes to him and he turned his to 
 her. Then her eyes fell and she murmured: 
 
 "You know who the woman was." 
 
 "Yes," he sighed. 
 
 "May I tell you in my own way all that happened?" 
 
 "For God's sake, do!" 
 
 Then she told him in a woman's way, beginning far 
 back, breaking the course of the story with countless di- 
 gressions and corrections and repetitions. He was tor- 
 mented by these tests of his patience, but he was soothed 
 by his inability to find a trace of love for Merithew in 
 anything she said. She defended him from the slanders 
 she had heard; she praised his generosity more than 
 
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 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 Worthing enjoyed; she showed a friendship for him and 
 an admiration that Worthing disapproved; but she re- 
 vealed no hint of amorous interest in him. 
 
 She carried the history on to the last afternoon, when 
 she had urged Worthing to call on her that evening. She 
 did not need to tell him that if he had obeyed the behest 
 of his love instead of the demand of his profession, she 
 would not now be in the web of this bloody snare. 
 
 She described her careless acceptance of Merithew's 
 invitation to ride in the moonlight. She described the 
 visit to the slums, and her reasons for entering the Orchard 
 Street tenement; how she found herself on the roof and 
 what followed there. 
 
 She gave Merithew full credit for the gift of his watch 
 and ring and pearl and money. Then she grew bewildered 
 and entangled in the effort to remember in sequence the 
 gradual modulations from everything gentle and tender 
 to everything frightful and irrevocable. 
 
 "I can't understand him or myself," she went on. 
 "All I know is that when he said that my hat hid my 
 eyes from him and wanted to lift it off, I wasn't angry as 
 I ought to have been. I was a little flattered, I suppose, 
 and I I didn't want to be suspicious or harsh, or Oh, 
 I don't know. He was terribly gentle, and I didn't resist 
 him. And then I was well, dazed. I couldn't quite be- 
 lieve that he was making love to me, and yet it seemed so. 
 
 "I nearly stepped off the box, and he caught me, and 
 I thanked him, and he didn't let me go at once, and I was 
 going to step down, because his arms were still around me. 
 
 "And then then he closed his arms so tight I couldn't 
 breathe, and caressed my hair, and I couldn't believe what 
 was happening till I felt his lips on mine. Then at last 
 I was mad fighting mad. I tried to protest, but his lips 
 smothered me and his fingers were tearing at my hair. I 
 grew fearfully angry and I began to beat him with my 
 fists. His head fell back, but he clung to my hair and I 
 struck and pushed and fell, and he struck the chimney 
 
 583
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 and dragged me after him, and there was an awful clatter, 
 and the next thing I knew I was on my hands and knees 
 and trying to tear myself free. He didn't move or speak 
 or groan even. And his hands grew cold while I tried 
 to open his fingers. And I couldn't get free till I cut my 
 hair with his knife. If only I had died instead of him!" 
 
 She was crying again. Her poor eyes seemed still to 
 find tears. But Worthing was magically elated with the 
 fierce infernal joy that is exalted upon horror. 
 
 The wretch who had tried to despoil this girl's inno- 
 cence was struck down. She had fought and hated him, 
 but she had not killed him. He had died of his own sac- 
 rilege, sent reeling to earth as one who had touched the 
 Ark of the Covenant. 
 
 Worthing did not credit him with any of the self- 
 resistance that had broken his brain as with two twisting 
 hands. Worthing saw only the infamous desire that 
 burned itself out in the excess of its own flame. That 
 was enough for him. He was not Merithew's judge; he 
 was an attorney fighting justice for mercy's sake. If he 
 felt any regret it was that Muriel had not dealt Merithew 
 the fatal blow, instead of accidentally throwing him 
 against a chimney. But he could see that the news he 
 brought her had filled her with divine comfort. 
 
 He caught her in his arms ruthlessly. She belonged to 
 him now. He had rescued her. He was very proud of 
 himself. 
 
 She stared at him. "You don't despise me? You 
 don't abhor me?" she whimpered. 
 
 ' ' I adore you !" he groaned. ' ' You poor little blind, lost, 
 lonesome, poverty-stricken waif of the world!" 
 
 It was just the sort of thing she longed for more than 
 anything else on earth. 
 
 As is usual with lovers, they thought that all the prob- 
 lems of life had been solved. 
 
 They sat there thinking so, so blindly that they did 
 
 584
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 not heed Kane, who appeared at the door, stared, gaped, 
 and vanished. They did not see that Happy Hanigan 
 had wakened, wondered where he was, slowly remembered, 
 peered over the ledge of the divan, stared at the incredible 
 couple, decided he was dreaming, and fallen asleep again 
 with a little moan of luxury. 
 
 It was that that changed the turtle-doves back to hu- 
 man beings in a troubleful world. 
 
 Muriel broke from Worthing's clasp and ran to Happy, 
 saw how he snuggled in the velvet and silken cushions, 
 heard a clock tinkle midnight, and said: 
 
 "It's too late to take him home. He shall sleep here. 
 Unless his mother will worry." 
 
 " She doesn't expect him. I told her I'd keep him under 
 my care for a few days. I don't want him to go back to 
 Batavia Street." 
 
 "He sha'n't go back! He shall never go back there to 
 live and sell papers. He shall be like my little brother, for 
 if it hadn't been for him I should never have met you." 
 
 At last her good deed had shown some good result. 
 
 She pressed a button in the wall, and when sleepy-eyed 
 Kane appeared, she said: 
 
 " Master Hanigan is spending the night here. Put him 
 in the red room. He likes red, I imagine." 
 
 Kane bowed, picked up the drowsily protesting boy, 
 and toted him up-stairs, took off his shoes, valeted him 
 out of his clothes and into a pair of pajamas big enough 
 for three of him. And Happy slept in a bed where an 
 earl, two princesses, and any number of aristocrats had 
 slept successively. 
 
 When they were alone again, Worthing and Muriel sat 
 in the wordless communion of two long- wedded souls. 
 They had enough to meditate upon. By and by Muriel 
 began to talk again, to muse aloud over the paradox that 
 she had fallen into the pit of evil while on a mission of 
 good. And this reminded her of bow Merithew had 
 J9 585
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 ridiculed her ambitions to relieve human misery. She 
 told Worthing what he had said, and she asked him timid- 
 ly if he, too, believed in the vanity of charity. 
 
 "No, no!" Worthing answered, with unusual fervor for 
 him. "That's the old lie: because you can't save all, 
 save none ; because you can't succeed perfectly, don't try. 
 But half a loaf is mighty good bread. Look at us doctors. 
 In spite of all we can do, people get sick and die. But we 
 go on groping, and we do get somewhere. We don't have 
 the plagues we once had. We don't have the pain we once 
 had. More people live and live longer and live better. 
 
 "It's the same way with human welfare. We don't have 
 the slavery we once had. We don't have the poverty and 
 the starvation that used to be expected to carry off droves 
 every winter. We don't have the cruel punishment of the 
 debtors and the insane and the criminals. Nearly every- 
 body can read and write. The children are protected, and 
 the women are not treated like children. The world has 
 grown better and better. It will never be altogether well 
 with the world, but we can make it better, and we must. 
 
 "Life seems to me to be a kind of stairway a Jacob's 
 Ladder lost in the clouds. We're all cripples more or 
 less, but we've got to climb as far as we can. If we slip 
 back, we must start up again. And we ought to keep at 
 it, laughing, like Happy Hanigan. Look what you've 
 done ' for him ! and for the Angelillo family, and the 
 Balinskys. Think how many more there are in need of 
 you. They're waiting for you now, everywhere, crowds 
 Of them, with their hands out to you. They need your 
 sweetness and your beauty and your quick, foolish tears. 
 
 "Oh, there's work enough for you, Muriel. And you 
 mustn't let anything prevent you from doing it the best 
 you can. You're tired and afraid and bewildered now. 
 You're like a hard-working laboring-woman who has come 
 home at night bruised and fagged and discouraged. But 
 there's always to-morrow, and your job will be waiting for 
 you in the morning; and you'll find your strength waiting 
 
 586
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 for you, too. You've had a hard day of it, but you've 
 done no wrong. The only crime you could commit would 
 be to let your own misfortunes blind you to other people's." 
 
 He rilled her heart with new blood, her soul with the 
 redeeming religion of human service. She felt a strange 
 new need of him and a gratitude that was like an idolatry. 
 She felt that he would protect her from all the perils of 
 the world. And so great was her contentment that she 
 grew profoundly drowsed with that perfect slumber which 
 steals upon a soul at prayer. 
 
 Muriel yawned in Worthing's face. But it was a gor- 
 geous yawn. 
 
 Worthing took it for the high compliment that it was, 
 and smiled and said: " You are sound asleep already. Go 
 to bed and forget everything till to-morrow. May I come 
 back to see you to-morrow afternoon?" 
 
 "To-morrow morning, please!" she pleaded. She took 
 him in her arms and said, "I love you," and kissed him. 
 He did not fail to repay her in kind with usury. His 
 strong arms were like a landlocked harbor where at last 
 her storm -worn soul could drop anchor and lower sail. 
 He loved her well enough to bid her good night and go. 
 She watched him to the door and wafted him another kiss, 
 and then climbed sleepily the long white stairway. 
 
 She sent the drowsy maid away and went to her window 
 and leaned out to wave good night again to the young 
 man on the lonely Avenue. 
 
 He had not stepped into any limousine or ridden off 
 on a charger. He was staring back at the palace in amaze- 
 ment, wondering by what bewitching miracle he had cap- 
 tured the heart of the princess there. He waved to her 
 till a policeman came by and restored the ballade to prose. 
 
 Then he walked rapidly toward the boarding-house 
 where he occupied one very modest single room. His 
 income was hardly greater than Happy Hanigan's, and 
 he was betrothed to a princess. And she was yet to be 
 saved from the mobs of publicity and police.
 
 CHAPTER LXX 
 
 THE next morning brought back the old ugly facts 
 and new ugly facts. Perry Merithew's serial epitaph 
 was still writ large in the head-lines. 
 
 The police had captured two fugitives, both of them 
 suspect. Aphra Shaler had been apprehended in the 
 mid- West, and Mrs. "Red Ida" Ganley in darkest New 
 Jersey. 
 
 When Worthing reached Muriel's home he found her 
 in a distressful mood. He could not comfort her. 
 
 The bliss of being saved from believing herself guilty 
 of Merithew's death was all but forgotten in these new 
 situations that put her conscience on the rack. 
 
 "What am I to do now?" she wailed. "Those two poor 
 women are disgraced and arrested. Suppose the coroner 
 refuses to accept your expert's theory of apoplexy or 
 holds them both under charges of robbery?" 
 
 "They both belong in jail, anyway," Worthing growled. 
 
 "But not for this thing. It seems more brutal to 
 punish criminals unjustly than anybody else. What am 
 I to do?" 
 
 " Don't worry about them. They'll have alibis galore." 
 
 "But they may not be believed. I ought to do some- 
 thing. But what?" 
 
 Worthing knit his brows awhile before he spoke. "Of 
 course the one right thing to do is the thing nobody does : 
 tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and trust 
 the people. The people mean well; they are merciful 
 when they are not fooled with. That's why a jury trial 
 gives the defendant the most hope. People understand 
 
 588
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 people, and the majority has a big, tender heart, when 
 it is given the chance to show it. 
 
 "If you came out and told just what happened, what 
 could they do? What would they do? They'd say, 
 'The poor girl has suffered enough already.' You would 
 be freed by any jury." 
 
 The sermon did not convert Muriel in any respect. 
 She said: "I might be freed by a jury after a horrible, 
 unspeakable trial, but I shouldn't be freed by the news- 
 papers. My name would be printed in big letters all over 
 the world. And everybody would sneer at me. I'd be 
 branded for life. Mrs. Merithew would hound me out 
 of the country. If I had children ever, my name would 
 shame them. Nobody would marry me, anyway." 
 
 "I'd marry you, anyway." 
 
 "Oh, you! You're merely taking pity on me. But 
 I've got to take pity on my poor father and mother. All 
 their money wouldn't buy off one head-line. All their 
 money wouldn't save my name. It's the newspapers, 
 the newspapers that make life a curse to-day. You may 
 advise me to trust the people. But you can't advise me 
 to trust the papers, can you can you?" 
 
 "No, I can't," he sighed. The problem was beyond 
 him. Even his moonflower of romance had withered 
 before the morning sun. The thought of marrying this 
 daughter of plutocracy had grown ridiculous under the 
 full light. He could hardly support himself. How could 
 he support a creature of such royal necessities as she? 
 
 He tried to plan some discreet way for intervening in 
 behalf of Aphra Shaler and Red Ida, but every scheme 
 imperiled the concealment of Muriel's name. When his 
 own wits proved unequal to the task, he suggested that 
 Muriel might tell her father and enlist his masterful in- 
 tellect and his army of lawyers, diplomats, and financiers. 
 
 But she revolted at the thought. She had told her 
 story to Maryla and to Worthing. The secret had been 
 relieved. There was no comfort in repetition. The 
 
 589
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 thought of telling her father was nausea. She frantically 
 refused. She and Worthing spent the day and the eve- 
 ning in discussing and discarding other plans. 
 
 Their pathway was through a plague of locusts. Every 
 step stirred up a cloud of them. 
 
 Even Happy Hanigan was something of a grasshopper 
 in his restless curiosity. Muriel sent him out at last for 
 a motor-ride a long one. She told the chauffeur, Parny, 
 to take him down to Batavia Street and get his mother 
 and spin them both to Coney Island. She told Happy 
 to break the news to his mother as gently as he could 
 that he was not to go back to selling newspapers in the 
 street, but he was to be sent to a private school in the 
 country, and his father and mother were to have work 
 and a home on the Schuyler country place. 
 
 When Happy was gone Muriel and Worthing attempted 
 to resume their own mutual courtship, but they were too 
 harrowed and too mutually harrowing to recapture that 
 first careless rapture. 
 
 The next afternoon's Gazette announced another scoop. 
 Perry Merithew's quondam friend, the girl to whom he 
 gave the amethyst-headed hat-pin, Maryla Sokalska, had 
 been run down by the Gazette reporter, and was now behind 
 the bars. 
 
 In a parallel column, with lesser head-lines, was the first 
 statement of the new theory that Perry Merithew had 
 died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The Gazette railed at the 
 far-fetched ruse, and reviled the police, quoting an imag- 
 inary man of prominence (who was really Hallard inter- 
 viewing himself): 
 
 "Expert testimony has become a byword of contra- 
 dictory merchandise; it is now the desperate resort of the 
 incompetent boneheads disguised as detectives and going 
 to a costume party in the fancy dress of policemen. 
 What if Merithew did die of apoplexy before he was killed 
 with a blow? That doesn't make the mystery any less. 
 
 590
 
 Her knees weakened and she sat dov
 
 JAMES 0iu-30iite*y 
 
 the step and put out her arms.
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 It makes it greater. What brought on the apoplexy? 
 Who was the woman? Why don't the police produce her 
 and ask her why she cracked his skull when he was already 
 dead? And how did she do it when he had her by the 
 hair? How long did he live after she hit him? Why 
 didn't she send some one to his aid? Did he have hold 
 of her hair before she struck him? Or did she think he 
 was dead and bend over to rob him? And then did he 
 grab her by the hair and hold on to her? How did she 
 cut herself loose and where did she go? Why was it 
 nobody saw her? Did she spend the night in the tene- 
 ment ? Or did she make a get-away through the crowded 
 streets? The story of apoplexy only makes it more of a 
 mystery. The police are hired to solve mysteries, not to 
 pile them up. If it were not for the newspapers the pub- 
 lic would have no protection at all. The Gazette's activity 
 has been the one bright spot in this dark chapter. It has 
 not only made its rivals look cheap, but has made a 
 shake-up in the police department inevitable." 
 
 Muriel read this tirade with a new dismay. "That's 
 what is waiting for me," she said to the distracted 
 Worthing. "That's the mercy I would get from the 
 newspapers. You ask me to trust the people. Well, 
 they are the people. Listen to the wolves barking and 
 howling and tearing one another to pieces! The news- 
 papers and the police are fighting each other, but once 
 they found me, how they would thirst for my blood!" 
 
 Then her anger rose. "Where's the justice or the 
 mercy of it? I meant no harm. I went into that place 
 to bring a girl back into her home, and now the girl her- 
 self is arrested for murder of a man. She's a widow be- 
 fore she is a wife, and she has an orphan child, and she's 
 in jail. And the papers aren't satisfied with that. They 
 won't let poor Mr. Merithew rest in his grave. They 
 won't let him die. They've got to have him killed, so 
 that they can kill some woman. It's human sacrifice 
 they're after still. 
 
 595
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "I'm not going to let them get me there. I'll kill 
 myself first. I'll leave a note confessing what I have to 
 confess, so that poor Maryla won't have to suffer any 
 more. Then I'll get rid of myself. And if you love me 
 you'll make it easy for me. You must know some pain- 
 less way that won't disfigure me. If you love me you'll 
 help me to escape from tliis hateful world." 
 
 It was not easy for Worthing to bear the sight of her 
 in such tortures ; it was not easy for him to coax her back 
 to bravery and wisdom. 
 
 The most he could do was to persuade her to defer her 
 self-immolation until he had seen Maryla. 
 
 He went to the Tombs and got himself admitted to 
 Maryla's cell on the pretext of being her physician. He 
 had to wait his turn, for she was holding a reception. Her 
 father and mother and her sister and the boarder Pasinsky 
 and her friends the Balinskys were there; also a little 
 East Side lawyer looking for advertisement and a chance 
 to air his eloquence and his wiles. 
 
 When Worthing reached Maryla at last he whispered 
 to her to calm her that he came from Muriel, who was 
 determined to save her from danger at any cost, even 
 at the cost of proclaiming herself. 
 
 This threw Maryla into a panic, and she implored 
 Worthing to compel Muriel to silence. She explained 
 her own plan, her little rabbit device for fooling the 
 hounds. She took great pride in it. 
 
 She took great pride also in announcing that her father 
 had recalled her from the death he had assigned her to, 
 and had taken her into his arms, and had wept till her 
 baby grabbed him by the beard like what Maryla done 
 when she was a baby. And then he laughed so loud like 
 she had never hoid him, and he kissed that baby and said 
 she was his grandbaby already. 
 
 And Pasinsky had begged her to marry him, and may- 
 be she might yet when she got out once. Anyway, she 
 
 596
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 gave him a promise on it so he should stop all the time 
 crying. 
 
 And all these honors she had received without confess- 
 ing that she was innocent cf Merithew's death. 
 
 Before Worthing left her she had another caller, a 
 lawyer who showed her a cablegram from Paris; it was 
 from Dutilh, who was trying to rescue from the stampede 
 of war's alarms the best models of the fashion-creators 
 before the hasty mobilizations threw them into the uniform 
 of soldiers and marched them off to the frontiers of em- 
 battled France. 
 
 The cable letter read: 
 
 Paris herald says my model maryla arrested merithew case 
 for god's sake get her out give her my love. DUTILH. 
 
 Worthing breathed freelier and put the whole case in 
 the hands of this lawyer. To him he could mention the 
 name of Miss Schuyler in confidence as a friend of Maryla's 
 who felt responsible for her safety, since she had brought 
 her to Dutilh's notice and unwittingly to Merithew's. 
 
 Maryla told Dutilh's lawyer to go away and stay away 
 until he was sent for. She intended to keep the police 
 engaged till the last moment. But her true picture was 
 published in the papers, and the venerable Sister Superior 
 saw it and hastened to her in her cell, and identified her 
 and her child, and proved that she had spent that fatal 
 night, and the other nights till her arrest, in the ward 
 among the other mothers with their babies at breast. 
 
 Nobody questioned such testimony, and Maryla was 
 driven out of jail. In due time she married Henryk 
 Pasinsky, and they started life on a mysterious dowry of 
 remarkable magnificence. 
 
 When little "Red Ida" Ganley was starved out and 
 nabbed by a detective, she faced the police as game 
 little cat faces a pack of bulldogs. They have her at 
 their mercy, but they are sure to get their noses scratched
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Well, boys, go to it," she said. "You're goin' to 
 gimme the thoid degree, I suppose. Gimme a cig'ret 
 foist, will you? 'At's the boy. Now begin to commence. 
 What am I wanted for?" 
 
 "The murder of Perry Merithew." 
 
 "Oh, rully? Great! You never railroaded me for 
 no swell crime before. Sorry, boys, but I never sor that 
 gempmun." 
 
 "Ah, none of that, Ida," one of the plain-clothes men 
 broke in. "I seen you myself dancin' with him." 
 
 " Oh, hello, Cutie! Did you? Is that so? Well, a lady 
 like me who's a dancer by perfession has gotta dance 
 with all kinds of guys. It's gettin' to be too promiscu- 
 rous for me." 
 
 They laughed at her lovingly, but they shook their heads. 
 
 "I guess you and that coke-consumin' partner of yours 
 have gotta stand trile," the chief inquisitor said. "It 
 happened right in your little districk, too." 
 
 Ida gave her alibi blushingly: on the night of Meri- 
 thew's death she had been arrested for picking a pocket 
 in Yonkers during the evening crush in Getty Square. 
 She had gone there to dance, and lost her way. She had 
 inquired it of a kind old gent with a watch-chain big 
 enough for a watch-dog. She just had to take a swipe at 
 it. He had caught her in the act and called a policeman. 
 She had been locked up for the night, and released the 
 next day because the nice old gent had believed her 
 promises of reform and refused to appear against her. 
 She admitted with deep humiliation that she had not been 
 reco'nized by the copper or by the beak on the bench. 
 
 "I tell you nobody's famous far from home." 
 
 "But why did you beat it and hide in New Jersey?" 
 
 "I was ashamed to be caught in Yonkers. The papers 
 said you was after me for this job. And I didn't want 
 to hav to use no bum alibi like Yonkers for fear you'd 
 gimme the laugh. I guess I'd rather you sprung me now 
 than put it in the paper like I told you." 
 
 598
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 They telephoned the Yonkers headquarters and learned 
 that an innocent-looking frail little red-headed girl had 
 indeed been arrested for lifting a watch, and had been 
 released, since it was her first offense. 
 
 So they laughed Red Ida out of jeopardy. 
 
 Aphra Shaler had hidden herself in a smallish city in 
 the Middle West, but her air of helplessness had attracted 
 the benevolence of two or three kind old gentlemen, and 
 they had fallen by the ears like jealous Samaritans. . The 
 local police force had cast its eye on Aphra and recognized 
 her likeness to the face on the placards sent out by the 
 New York police with the words "Wanted" and "Re- 
 ward" in large black type. They notified the New York 
 police. A detective was sent out to bring her in. 
 
 He nearly lost Aphra en route, for in the drawing-room 
 of the sleeper she fascinated him with that superhuman 
 naivete" which had fooled even Perry Merithew. 
 
 She told how the handsome devil had lured her from 
 her home in the most innocent and sweetest of villages; 
 how he had promised her marriage, and she had learned 
 too late that he was wed to Another; of how he had 
 blinded her with promises to marry her as soon as he could 
 unmarry himself from the cold and indiffer'nt sussiety 
 woman he was bound to. 
 
 "And so he kept me a prisoner. And then he threw 
 me overboard for somebody else when I was no longer of 
 use to him. And as if he hadn't done enough to ruin my 
 life, he goes and gets himself killed in the slums where, 
 Heaven knows, anybody who knew me could have told 
 the police I would never have went gone! 
 
 "And all I have to show for my ruined life is a few 
 old-fashioned clothes and a jewel or two. I wonder did 
 he leave me anything in his will? Oh, I tell you, John" 
 by this time she was calling the detective by his in- 
 dividual as well as generic name of John "oh, I tell you, 
 John, it's a cruel world, and it's always the woman gets 
 it. The woman pays and pays," etc. 
 
 599
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 If the journey had been an hour longer the detective 
 would probably have offered to marry her himself and 
 take flight with her to some country where innocence 
 was respected. But New York was reached in time. 
 
 Aphra submitted a perfect alibi, although a somewhat 
 painful one to the fat gentleman whom she had aban- 
 doned on the beach for Merry Perry. She had regained 
 him that evening in time to provide her with the dinner 
 the handsome devil of a Merithew had refused her. 
 
 Her affidavit and his released her, but they .afterward 
 served his wife as perfect evidence in a divorce suit. And 
 now Aphra had matriculated in the co-respondent's school 
 and her future was full of assurance. 
 
 Almost her first visitor after her release was the re- 
 porter Hallard. Almost her first question was, "Did 
 you look up that Schuyler girl, like I told you to?" 
 
 Hallard rewarded her with a harsh rebuke, but when 
 he left her he began to wonder how he could get near 
 that closely guarded, unapproachable, irreproachable 
 princess. He hated himself for giving a thought to such 
 suspicion, but who else was left to suspect ? And what an 
 epochal sensation it would be if the Gazette could capture 
 such a prize ! 
 
 He resolved to set out on the secret hunt the next 
 morning.
 
 CHAPTER LXXI 
 
 THE next morning the war broke forth in Europe 
 and all the world quaked with conflict. 
 
 The cataclysm that threw civilization into chaos di- 
 verted attention from one anxious girl, and drove the name 
 of Perry Merithew from the front page, or any page. 
 Even the police had other problems tumbled upon them 
 in such masses that they put aside the case. 
 
 When millions were marching against millions to be 
 shot, mangled, starved, what did it matter that a certain 
 man had been found on a roof with the hair of an uncer- 
 tain woman in his hands? The red hands of war had 
 civilization by the hair. 
 
 America, just emerging from prolonged hard times,, 
 found itself thrown back into financial confusion, yet with 
 all the world turning toward it as the altar of peace and 
 plenty. Thousands of Americans abroad were crying, 
 "Send us ships and money and food and get us home!" 
 Myriads of foreigners gathering in New York were clam- 
 oring to get back to their fatherlands, reservists of the 
 various nations threatening to start little wars of their 
 own, but in still graver danger of starving. 
 
 From Belgium, Poland, and all the nations the cries 
 came jangling, " Send us food; send us clothes, medicines, 
 money, guns, powder, motors, horses, nurses, doctors." 
 
 Everything merely national, local, individual, lost im- 
 portance. The children in the streets were talking cosmic 
 gossip. The papers, lacking space for ordinary news, dis- 
 missed their mere reporters by the score. Hallard wenf 
 20 601
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 overboard with the rest and joined the tremendous army 
 of the unemployed. 
 
 As always happens when the basest qualities of man 
 flourished, the purest and the noblest qualities also arose 
 to keep the old-time balance of good and bad. 
 
 If there never was so futile, so destructive, so mad a 
 war, neither was there ever so beautiful, so heroic, so 
 enormous a charity. The oceans that saw the dread- 
 noughts, and the airships, and the submarines, saw also 
 the fleets of pity, the swan-ships carrying the grails of 
 rescue. 
 
 And now Muriel Schuyler saw her opportunity. She 
 could not rest content with subscribing money and work- 
 ing up festivals, and knitting mufflers, and feeding hungry 
 reservists stranded in town. She would take a ship across 
 to the aid of the women of Europe. 
 
 When she told Worthing he worshiped her for the 
 inspiration and for the power. He ventured to protest: 
 
 "You can't go as a nurse unless I go as a surgeon." 
 
 " That was my idea," she said. "You shall be the chief 
 surgeon of my crew of surgeons, and you shall be paid 
 at last as you deserve." 
 
 "Who's going to pay me?" he asked, a bit dubiously. 
 
 "My father," she said, without a doubt. 
 
 "Glorious! When did you tell him?" 
 
 "To-morrow morning." 
 
 What Muriel might have done if she had been free of 
 mind and heart, she was the more impelled to do now 
 that her prayer was for an escape from the peril of de- 
 tection and the torment of inaction. 
 
 She went to her father and said, "Buy me a ship and fit 
 it out so that I can fill it with nurses and doctors and 
 hurry over to Europe and help those poor soldiers!" 
 
 Jacob stared at her as if she were demented. "Why on 
 earth should you risk your health and your life on such 
 a mad crusade? Stay home where you are safe." 
 
 602
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 " But I am not safe at home. I am afraid, and in great 
 danger." 
 
 "Nonsense!" 
 
 And then she told him. It was black news to him and 
 it almost crushed him. But after the long torture of 
 learning the truth he had the solace of believing his girl- 
 child innocent of guile; he had the comfort of saying that 
 he had warned her against Merithew; he had the monop- 
 olist's privilege of making her promise not to tell her 
 mother. 
 
 Partly from eagerness to have her out of the reach of 
 any accidental stroke of detective luck, and more because 
 of the precious opportunity that gladdened her, he granted 
 her her ship. 
 
 It was the most expensive toy he had ever bought her. 
 He told her it would have to be her Christmas present 
 and her birthday present both. He made himself re- 
 sponsible for the salaries of the physicians and the nurses 
 and the crew, and for the coal and provisions, and the 
 bandages and instruments and all. 
 
 He had assumed the burden of teiling her mother of the 
 scheme, and of bearing the brunt of Susan's indignation. 
 Susan poured out the phials and the magnums of her 
 wrath on Jacob, and when Muriel appeared, demurely, 
 Susan had nothing left to say except a feeble: 
 
 "You couldn't possibly go without a chaperon." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "You're not married." 
 
 "If I were married, it would be all right?" 
 
 "It would be at least correct." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 She sauntered away and telephoned to Dr. Worthing 
 and explained her mother's old-fashioned scruples. She 
 had called him from a complication of tasks and his mind 
 was not clear. He did not take the hint at all. Muriel 
 repeated the message: 
 
 ' ' My mother says if I were married it would be all right." 
 
 603
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Yes, so you said. That makes it rather awkward, 
 doesn't it?" 
 
 "Does it? I thought it made it rather simple." 
 
 "How do you mean?" 
 
 "You've been helping yourself to my young affections 
 so freely recently that I had an idea you were planning 
 to marry me yourself. But, of course, if you were merely 
 philandering, good-by!" 
 
 "Oh, good Lord, wait: Muriel, honey, darling, name 
 the day, the hour, the minute!" 
 
 "Is this afternoon at three too soon?" 
 
 "How can I wait so long?" 
 
 "Can I trust you to get the license and the ring? If 
 I provide a parson?" 
 
 "Yes, yes!" 
 
 "Then the wedding will be at our home at three. Re- 
 member. Better write down the name and the address." 
 
 " I'll be there, God bless you!" 
 
 "Thanks ever so much. Good-by." 
 
 He borrowed some money of Dr. Eccleston to pay for 
 the license, the ring, and the necessary taxicabs. He 
 promised to remit the loan out of his first pay as chief 
 surgeon of the expedition. He reached the house with 
 the document and the implement and a heart all ready for 
 the sacrament. 
 
 He had forgotten to robe himself as a bridgroom and 
 to provide a better man, so Muriel drafted Winnie Nicolls, 
 who happened to be calling. He found it a most dis- 
 tasteful service, but he bore it like a true sportsman. 
 
 The bride was all in white. It pleased her to wear her 
 new uniform. The only color was the red cross on the 
 sleeve.
 
 CHAPTER LXXII 
 
 WHEN the ship was ready to go it was visited by a 
 platoon of reporters and photographers and moving- 
 picture men. Among them was Hallard, who had been 
 granted the assignment as a special commission to help 
 out his poverty. 
 
 Muriel underwent the ordeal of the syndicated inter- 
 view with unaffected meekness and pride, and to the great 
 satisfaction of Hallard. 
 
 She was one of the few women of the wealthy (or of 
 any) group that Hallard did not despise. He had already 
 decided upon two or three fervent epithets in her praise 
 as his little farewell garland. He was afraid that he might 
 forget them, but he did not want to be caught taking 
 notes. He found a deserted passageway between two 
 deck cabins and began to make a few memoranda sur- 
 reptitiously. 
 
 Muriel and Worthing, released from the interview, were 
 pacing up and down the deck of their private ship like 
 Columbus and Isabella. A gust of wind snatched off 
 Muriel's official cap, and she fell back against the cabin 
 and waited, laughing, while Worthing ran for it and chased 
 it down the scuppers. 
 
 The brisk air tugged and clutched at her curls till it 
 loosened a long coil of hair unknown to her, and fluttered 
 it against the wall of the cabin. 
 
 Hallard stared. He could see no marks of any cutting, 
 but the color of it terrified him. It would be easy to take 
 out his knife and draw the blade across a bit of it for 
 further study. It would be safer still to place alongside 
 
 605
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 it the little strand he carried in his pocketbook, the little 
 strand he had stolen from Perry Merithew's fingers. 
 
 He caught out his pocketbook and lifted the copper 
 threads from the envelope. 
 
 And then he paused. What if it should prove true 
 that she was the one? What good could it do him, or 
 Merithew, or the world to be assured of this? What 
 endless wretchedness it would involve! What beautiful 
 deeds it would frustrate! 
 
 He was afraid. 
 
 He stared at the fatal silken fibers a long moment. 
 Then he opened his hand and let the wind take them. 
 
 Dr. Worthing came back, laughing, with the nurse's 
 cap, and Muriel, laughing, gathered her hair together and 
 fastened it under the little white helmet of mercy. 
 
 Hallard slunk away in a mood of craven shame; he 
 had been guilty of treachery to his paper; he had been 
 false to the sacred priestcraft of publishing the secrets of 
 the few for the entertainment of the many. Dejected 
 and miserable, he trudged across the gang-plank, won- 
 dering. 
 
 And the ship went down the river and across the bay 
 and out into the sea, with the band playing. 
 
 On an evening when the voyage was about half over, 
 the moon being under a cloud, Muriel came out of her 
 cabin alone. She carried under her cloak an old doll. 
 She opened a seam in the skirt of it with the scissors hang- 
 ing at her belt, and she took from the rags inside a watch, 
 and a pearl pin, and a diamond ring. These she dropped 
 into the ocean and thought a little prayer over them, and 
 sighed, "Poor Perry Merithew!" 
 
 She took the doll back to the cabin, and had just 
 finished sewing up the seam again when her husband came 
 in and said, as he kissed her not having seen her for 
 almost half an hour: 
 
 "What's all that?" 
 
 606
 
 EMPTY POCKETS 
 
 "Just an old doll of mine, honey." She had meant to 
 spare him this final knowledge. But it was more comfort- 
 able to keep secrets with him than from him, and she 
 told him everything. 
 
 "Why didn't you drop the old doll overboard, too?" 
 he asked; and fearing that it would be only a harrowing 
 reminder of experiences better forgot, he put out his 
 hand and said, "Let me." 
 
 But she shrank away, fondling the doll with a mystic 
 child-mother look he had never seen in her eyes. 
 
 "Old Suki's been too faithful to be cast away. Be- 
 sides, I was thinking what a treasure she would be to 
 some poor little doll-less Belgian kid," she said. 
 
 And he said, "You're always thinking of children." 
 
 THE END
 
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 Sin That Was His, The. By Frank L. Packard. 
 
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 Speckled Bird, A. By Augusta Evans Wilson. 
 
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 Steele of the Royal Mounted. By James Oliver Curwood. 
 
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 Story of Foss River Ranch, The. By Ridgwell Cullum. 
 
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