Moreover, he was quite certain that Hal Dozier was right. Hal was a shrewd judge of men and events. If he said that the girl could tame wild Lanning and keep him a law-abiding man, then he was right. But he must also be right when he said that Lanning was balancing on a precarious edge, ready to fall into violent action and outrage society again.
Was it not possible, then, to knock the ground from beneath the tottering figure? Could not the necessary impetus be supplied that would throw Lanning off his balance and plunge him once more into a career of crime? There must surely be a way. And he, Charles Merchant, had money, could buy who he willed to buy. The cause was worth it! It was a crusade, this saving of such a girl as Anne Withero from the low entanglements of an ex-criminal.
He packed his things that night. In the morning he said good-bye to her.
“I’m going West, Anne,” he told her. “I see that the past is still too close to you, and that you haven’t been able to forgive me entirely. I’m going West and wait, for I haven’t given up. I’m going to come back and try again. In the meantime, if it should happen that you need a helper, let me know. Will you do that?”
Even then he hoped that she might confide enough in him to admit that she was soon going West herself, but he was disappointed. She gave him a chilly farewell and no hint of her plans. In the morning he returned to New York and purchased a ticket for the West. Then he bought an early edition of an evening paper and went into the smoking room of the station to wait for his train. His eyes took in the headlines dimly. How could print catch his attention when a story of far more vital interest was running through his mind?
He turned the page, and a bulldog face caught his eye. He liked it for the ugliness that fitted in with his own mood of the moment. There was a consummate viciousness and cunning about the little eyes, protected under massive, beetling brows; there was power and endurance in the blocky chin, and the habitual scowl fascinated Merchant, for it was his own expression of the moment. He raised his hand and smoothed his forehead with grinding knuckles, and still the face held his eyes.
LEFTY GRUGER, he read beneath the picture, PARDONED!
It was placed in large letters—an event of importance, it seemed, was the pardoning of this Gruger. With awakened interest he followed the rather long article.
It developed that Lefty Gruger had been serving a life term on many counts. If he had lived to the age of two hundred, his term of punishment would still be unspent. But Lefty Gruger had been for eight years an ideal prisoner. Never once did the prison authorities have the slightest trouble with this formidable murderer, for such it seemed Lefty Gruger had been. The man had apparently reformed. The reporter quoted one of Lefty’s quaint sayings: “I dunno what’s in this heaven stuff, but maybe it ain’t too late for me to take a fling at it.”
In reality, during the eight years his life had been exemplary, he had never become a trusty on account of the appalling nature of the crimes attributed to him, but he was on the verge of this elevation when the outbreak came. It was one of those mad, unreasoning outbreaks that will come now and then in prisons. An unpopular guard was suddenly hemmed against the wall, and his weapons were torn from him by a dozen furious prisoners. He was already down and nearly dead when a small, but well-directed, tornado struck the murderers in the person of Lefty Gruger. He had come out of the blacksmith shop with the iron part of a pick in his hand, and he went through the little host of assailants, smashing skulls like eggs as he went.
In the sequel the guard’s life was saved, and seven prisoners died from the terrible effects of Lefty Gruger’s blows. But this heroism could not go unnoticed or unrewarded. The governor examined the case, determined to give Lefty a chance, and forthwith signed a pardon that was pressed upon him. The result was that the governor’s benign face appeared in a photograph beside the contorted scowl of Lefty Gruger. That was worth at least fifty thousand votes in certain parts of the state, although it was pointed out, with grim smiles in the police department, that Gruger was freed from a life sentence because he had killed more men at one sitting than he had been condemned for in the first instance.
The major portion of the article had to do with the desperate heroism of Lefty Gruger to save the guard, then with a detail of his exemplary conduct while in prison, and finally there was a very brief résumé of Lefty’s criminal career, now happily buried under the record of his more-recent virtues. It seemed that Lefty had been a celebrated gunman for many years, that he had escaped detection so long because he always did his jobs without confederates, and that, although it had been long suspected that he was guilty of killings, it was not until he had spent ten years in criminal life that he was finally taken and convicted.
Once he was in the hands of the law, it turned out that there were various people willing to inform against the professional murderer, men who had been held back by fear of him until he was safely lodged in the hands of the law. Now they were ready and eager to talk. Into the hands of the police came more or less convincing proof that Lefty Gruger had certainly been responsible for five murders, and perhaps many more. But even this testimony was not of the first order. The result was that, instead of hanging, Lefty received a life sentence.
Now he was returning to his old haunts off the Bowery. The street address drifted into Charles Merchant’s mind hazily. He was thinking with dreamy eyes, building a fairy story in the future. That dream lasted so long that the train departed with no Charles Merchant on it. Then he rose and sauntered into the street and took a taxi to the Bowery. At the stand where he had his shoes polished, in the hope of hearing chance news, the word was dropped: “Lefty’s back. He’s at Connor’s.”
Merchant, leaving his chair as the shine was completed, sauntered into a lunch counter across the street. Sitting at the end of the counter nearest the window, he kept a steady eye on the pavement and houses opposite. Still retaining that survey, he covertly counted out $100 in crisp bills and shoved them into a blank envelope.
Lefty Gruger was not long out of sight. Having become a hero overnight, he had to harvest the admiration of his fellows, and presently he was observed to stroll down the steps of his rooming house, preceded and surrounded by half a dozen as hard-faced fellows as Merchant had ever seen. But, among them all, the broad, scowling face of Lefty stood forth. Every brutal passion found adequate expression in some line or corner of his face. Suddenly it seemed to Merchant that he had known the recesses of that dark mind for years and years, and he felt himself contaminated by the very thought. He scribbled a few words on the envelope and left the lunch counter hurriedly. Crossing the street, he managed to intercept the course of Lefty’s crew at the far corner. He sidled apologetically through the midst of them, and, passing Lefty, he shoved the envelope containing the money into the latter’s coat pocket and went on.
Although he did not pause, it seemed to him that the stubby hand of Lefty had closed over that envelope, and the square-tipped fingers had sunk into the missive, and that he sensed the contents by their softness. But Merchant hurried on, took a taxi at the nearest corner, and went straight to a hotel. He had written on the envelope:
Inside two hours, at the corner of Forty-Seventh and Broadway, east side of the street.