That unfortunate never returned to the park.
II
It was approaching midnight.
Suicide Park lay a blotch of shadow. The lighted boulevard terminated in a sweeping circle. The street lights caught the tower of City Hall, showed the hands of the big clock. Then the shade trees and grass patches of the park contrasted their blackness with the white illumination.
Beyond lay the lapping waters of the bay, black, mysterious broken occasionally by the drifting lights of some cruising craft.
Sidney Zoom walked the graveled walks with the mechanical step of one who knows his way through the constant repetition of thousands of similar steps. The police dog darted ahead, paused, slipped beneath a bit of shrubbery, and stood motionless as a statue.
The man on the bench held his right hand beneath his coat. He was listening, not to the lap of the water along the shore of the bay, not to the gentle whisper of faint wind in the trees, but listening for some sound which was not, yet which would be.
The clock on City Hall tower gave a preliminary dick. Then the first stroke of midnight boomed forth upon the air.
The man upon the bench sighed.
Behind him, the trained police dog crouched, tense, eyes two glittering points of phosphorescent scrutiny.
— nine — ten — eleven — twel—
The man whipped his right hand out from beneath his coat. The trained police dog became a streak of blurred motion.
The light, reflected from the white tower of City Hall, glittered upon some metallic object. The right hand was elevated. The right arm became rigid.
A streak of hurtling motion terminated at the arm.
White fangs caught in the sleeve of the coat. A body that was as firmly muscled as the body of a timber wolf flung itself to one side and down.
The revolver clattered as it slid along the gravel.
The man uttered a single sharp exclamation.
The dog barked, a swift, yapping, purposeful bark, then was quiet, haunched on the gravel the coat sleeve still in his teeth, gleaming eyes fastened upon the white face above them, in motionless appraisal.
Sidney Zoom came at once.
“That’s good, Rip. Down and quiet”
The dog released his grip upon the sleeve of the coat, flattened his body upon the gravel.
Sidney Zoom kicked the revolver out of sight, sat down upon the bench, and turned to the astonished man at his side.
“Good evening,” he said.
The man sought to mutter something, but his voice refused to function. The white blur that was his face continued to point toward the form of the dog.
“You have nothing to fear from the dog,” said Sidney Zoom, “as long as you offer no resistance and come quietly.”
Emotional reaction had gripped the man on the bench.
His hands jerked and quivered. The comers of his mouth twitched. When he spoke his voice was husky.
“I... I’m under arrest?”
“No. Let us not use that term. You are being restrained for the present. You will come quietly?”
“Yes. I’ll come — I don’t know what possessed me — yet it’s the only way — Good God! Let me end it all! What’s the use of just prolonging the agony!”
Sidney Zoom linked his arm through the quivering elbow of the unfortunate.
“Walk quietly,” he said.
Together they strode from the park. The dog brought up the rear, alert and watchful.
It took them ten minutes to board the palatial yacht which Sidney Zoom kept in the sheltered anchorage. Another five minutes sufficed to find glasses, whisky, bring a tinge of color to the face of the shivering man.
Then they confronted each other in appraisal.
The man who had trembled upon the brink of eternity saw a tall man, lean, muscular, head thrust slightly forward. There was a suggestion of taut springs, steel wired muscles, panther energy. And the eyes dominated that face as though the other features had been nonexistent.
Hawk eyes they were, fierce, keen, but, more than that, they were untamed.
And Sidney Zoom saw a quivering huddle of humanity that was hardly more than a boy. The eyes were dazed. The flesh still quivered as though shrinking from the caress of the icy hands of death.
“Tell me about it,” said Zoom.
The young man opened his pale lips, closed them again, lowered his eyes, shook his head.
Sidney Zoom fell to pacing the carpeted floor of the cabin.
“Come on. Don’t hesitate. No need for fear. No matter what it is I’m your friend. I hate civilization and all it stands for. Civilization is a vast machine. Men are mere cogs in the machine they have created. They spin frantically, are worn out and cast aside. There’s no longer room for an individual. Society wants cogs, parts that are uniform, interchangeable!”
He spat out the words with an intensity of feeling that tinged his tone, made his tongue whip out the words with the rattle of machine gun fire.
The dazed eyes of the young man followed him. The lips were half parted.
Swiftly, almost fiercely, Sidney Zoom turned to him.
“You won’t confide in me. I frighten you. Bah! Cowards, all of you! You would plunge headlong into death, yet you fear me! But wait, I have my secretary coming. You’ll talk to her. They all do.”
As though the words had been an announcement, there sounded light steps on the half ladder that ran from the deck. The door swung noiselessly open. The dog wagged his tail in a series of violent thumpings.
Upon the threshold stood a young woman, a radiant vision of youthful beauty, sparkling with the sheer joy of life, yet maternally tender with it all. She had been dancing if one could judge by the filmy beauty of her evening clothes. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, red lips half parted, eyes starry.
“I saw your emergency light and came as quickly as I could,” she said, starry eyes fastened upon the hawk-like orbs of Sidney Zoom.
“My secretary, Vera Thurmond,” snapped Sidney Zoom. “You’ll talk to her. They all do.”
And, with that, he strode to a connecting door, jerked it open, motioned to the dog. For a moment they stood motionless, then man and dog blended into rippling motion. Noiselessly they slipped through the door into the adjoining cabin, wolf-dog and hawkman, savages both, beneath the veneer of civilization.
III
The girl crossed the room, sank to the floor by the side of the pallid, dazed mortal who had so recently gazed into the black mystery of death.
Her hands slid along an arm, possessed five cold fingers in a warm clasp, then she raised her eyes and spoke.
“You mustn’t fear him, ever. He lives for good. Less than two months ago I was like you. The world seemed hopeless. I jumped from a wharf. He saved me. And I told him my story.
“He started to right the wrongs that had been done me. I can’t tell you all about it, but you’ll find out for yourself. You must tell me your story.”
The young man nodded. It had needed but that touch of feminine tenderness to restore him to the psychology of living. The last touch of death’s fingers slipped from him, and he encircled the girl’s shoulders with an arm that was clinging, yet impersonal.
There were tears in his eyes as he talked. His voice choked at times, but he talked freely. His words did not seem words alone, but his speech was more the outpouring of a soul, a lonely, terrified soul that had found life too stern for it, yet had recoiled from the black abyss of mystery which comes after life.
“There’s no way out. It will kill the folks. The officers, are looking for me now. But I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it — oh, why won’t they listen?
“It’s so foolish. Why should I go to all that trouble to steal a diamond necklace? I’d have simply skipped out, not returned with that miserable imitation.”