CHAPTER XI

I RETURN HOME

I left my lodgings the following morning, unobtrusively, to say the least. As my landlady had had the forethought to secure the week's rent of my room in advance, there was no occasion to interview her, nor was I hampered by excess baggage. Early to bed and early to rise is a splendid maxim, and I was up and out before the sun--for the first time in many years. Perhaps the best thing to get a fellow out of bed bright and early is the fear of being murdered in it. At least it worked very successfully with me.

You may have gathered by this time that I am no hero, so I may as well admit it. Somehow, the idea of being potted from dark corners by somebody you don't even know, never appealed to me particularly. I was born with the failing. I don't mind a decent row now and then, but this clutching-hand game--no, thank you, it is not for me.

As I sneaked downstairs in the dark and left the house, via the back yard and a couple of fences, I could say with that hero in Dickens' yarn, "It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done; I go to a far, far better rest than I have ever known." After all, perhaps I should be safest in jail.

Yes, there isn't a lazy bone in my body when it comes to keeping ahead of the emaciated old boy on the white horse, and that little affair in the alley was a hint I meant to take. Those three worthy fellows had been laying for me, and their purpose wasn't robbery. I wasn't worth robbing, nor do footpads use knives right off the reel. By all odds I should have gone west right then and there, with nobody knowing what had happened to me. I was supposed to be dead in any case; old Varney and Miss Gelette knew I wasn't, so did Frean and Joyce, but the former wouldn't worry if I never claimed resurrection, while it might suit the purpose of the latter for the general public to think me under the clover and violets.

Fantastic or not, I had to admit the possibility that the Black Company not only existed outside Corby's buttermilk brain, but that it was a far more ruthless criminal combine than I had imagined. Yes, and able, too; rather much so I assure you that alone in my room in that house with the door barricaded--for it wasn't a cheerful neighborhood--the possibility seemed considerably less fantastic than it had in Market Street when I was talking to Tim Scallon. I was quite ready to believe they had suspected me from the first and that I had been followed from Sea Bright; or word had been sent on with a detailed description. They knew of my visit to the hospital, of my investigations, and, even while talking to Scallon, those fellows had been waiting to cook my goose.

I had been a fool, underrated the enemy and given myself away; and in coming here alone under an assumed name, and with strictly limited funds, I had played right into their hands. Thus situated, what could I hope to accomplish against a combine with such a spy system, who struck in the dark and without scruple? Nothing, and less than nothing. They knew where I lived. I would be dogged by people I didn't even know, and sooner or later put out of the way.

Adventure is all very well--I love it, especially when lying in bed armed with a good pipe--and perhaps there are some superhuman souls capable of grappling single-handed with such a situation as I faced, but assuredly I wasn't one of them, nor had I any longing to be. My inflated conception of my own ability and cleverness had received a bad puncture, and it behooved me to get out of this mess as quickly as I'd got into it.

If they thought me bottled up in that house, and were keeping watch on it, my early and unorthodox manner of departure fooled them, for I got safely aboard the New York train. Try though I might, I failed utterly to detect anything that would lead me to think I was being followed.

I bought a paper, expecting to find some announcement of my resurrection; surely it was time the yellow press got after me with such captions as "Lawton alive and hiding from justice. Hires tramp to assume his identity." Perhaps they would even hint that I had conspired to have my victim pulped by that train; that I had drugged, or murdered him offhand, and then placed him and the car on the tracks where they would do the most good. I expected to read something like that; but, no, there wasn't a word about me of any description. Why had Frean said nothing? It seemed to support the idea that he had reason to keep my resurrection secret. I wasn't exactly a national figure, but certainly, in view of that manslaughter charge, if nothing else, the papers would have something to say--even the most conservative--did they know I still lived. And now they treated me as though indeed I were a month-old corpse.

My trip was completed without incident, and when I got into the Pennsylvania Station I ran plump against Howard Roupell, the friend of all others whom I cared least to meet at that moment. He was a bore and gossip. I shouldn't have minded, indeed would have welcomed, Bob Hewitt or Tommy Ashton; but no, it had to be Roupell. He considered it his mission in life to tell alleged funny stories, and though I admit he's a first-class mimic, that sort of thing gets rather wearing at times, especially when the perpetrator mistakes pure dirt for humor, as Roupell so frequently did. I am no puritan, but--well, there's a limit.

I hoped to dodge him, or that he wouldn't recognize me without my mustache, but that hope was vain indeed. Although fat and sleepy-looking, he can be very observant. He started back, gulped, threw wide his short arms and bellowed, "Mug! By all the saints, it's Mug!"

Now that's a pet name; it's only a few particular friends who call me that on occasion, fellows like Ashton and Hewitt who knew me at Princeton. They have a right to admire and remark on my beauty. Roupell wasn't in that category at all.

"It must be Mug!" he added. "Mustache or no mustache, there's no mistaking that face."

I dare say there isn't; all the same I didn't like to hear about it publicly from him, any more than I liked the flamboyant greeting that followed. He thumped me on the back, spluttered questions, pawed me all over, created quite a scene. I knew the old Falstaff meant well, and his joy at seeing me was flattering, joy at the return of the dead prodigal, but I didn't care to partake of the fatted calf right there on the public platform. People were stretching their necks and asking questions.

"Let's get out of this," I said. "I'm not on exhibition, Roupell. Yes, of course I'm alive. Do you think I'm a walking corpse? Didn't Frean tell you and the bunch I wasn't dead, that it was all a mistake?"

"I haven't seen Frean for weeks; don't know where he is. And how should he know? Where have you been?"

"I haven't time to explain it all now. I'll see you later----"

"No! You must tell me now. Why, it's the most astounding thing that ever happened and you act as if it were nothing! Why, man, you're supposed to be dead and buried! Why, I even sent a wreath--a beautiful one--and went to the service and all that. I did indeed."

"And now it's all wasted. Too bad. But I'll do as much for you some day. No, I can't lunch with you; I'm sorry but I've an appointment----"

"No, you haven't--except with me. You've got to lunch with me. If you don't want publicity, we can go to my rooms. I must hear all about everything; I'm entitled to it. And I've got a new story, Lawton--the funniest thing you ever heard. You must----"

I managed to break loose, after promising to dine with him on the first opportunity. It went to his heart to see his prey escape; not only was I a new audience on which he could lavish his latest story, but I had a story of my own--I must have--which he wished to be the first to hear and publish. However, he had to be content with the mere fact that I was alive, a startling enough news item, which I knew he would proceed forthwith to broadcast. I shuffled him off in the crowd and then hopped a taxi, giving the driver an address on lower Broadway. It was the address of old Hannay, my lawyer; I must see him first before surrendering myself to the law.

Mr. Hannay had known my family for twenty years and more, knew facts about them that even I didn't. He had had sole charge of my uncle's affairs and had always shown a fatherly sort of interest in me, perhaps because he was an old bachelor; indeed it was through him that I had been able to secure my first job with Cable & Co. He had helped me--unknown, I am sure, to my uncle--in many little ways like that. He was a lawyer of the old school, of the best type, and I knew that my conduct, since coming into the Lawton money, had wounded him terribly. I had proved a sore trial and disappointment.

Of course I now gave him a bad fright when I walked in on him, for, like Frean and Roupell, he had no difficulty in recognizing me; and yet, as he afterward was good enough to say, it was the happiest experience of his life. When he got his second wind he pumped my hand up and down, clapped me on the back, and all but wept over me. I had never suspected him of having such really great affection for me, and I was deeply touched.

"Resurrection!" he exclaimed, wiping his eyes. "And not only of the flesh, but of the spirit! Yes, it is; I can see it, anybody could. You are your old self, Peter. You are the young man who entered this office six months ago, full of ideals and high ambition----"

"And left it last full of idleness and rum? Exactly."

"No, I wouldn't say that, but----"

"It's the truth, and you know it. I've been taking a new kind of cure."

"Well, it's the best I ever heard of; whatever you've done, it's been a howling success. I never saw such a change in my life. For a dead man you're wonderfully, beautifully alive, your old self. Come now, tell me all about it. If I wasn't so happy, I'd be incensed with you--not to tell me before this that you were safe and sound."

"Yes, I owed you that, you of all people. But I thought it best to cut the whole crowd, let me be supposed to be dead. Well, I'll start at the beginning."

Now I had no intention of telling him a word about the Black Company, not that I didn't trust him above anybody; but shrewd and able though I knew him to be, he was really about the last person who would have credited the melodramatic and totally inadequate evidence I was prepared to supply. He was not a criminal lawyer, had little imagination, and I knew would pooh-pooh the whole matter. In all probability he would think, though not say--and on this point I was acutely sensitive--that I was laboring under a hallucination conjured up initially by John Barleycorn. I didn't mean to say a word about it even to Hewitt or Ashton, intimate friends though they were. There was one person in New York to whom I meant to speak freely, one and one only; I had thought it all out and decided.

But, of course, I had to tell about Mr. Varney, just where I had been and how employed; that was bound to come out in any case. So I proceeded to give a slightly revised version of what had happened since I left the Princeton Inn that memorable night.

"It all came from a drunken bet--at least _I_ was drunk," I explained. "But it turned out to be the best thing for me. I've discovered there's nothing better for my sort than getting up at six in the morning, looking after three cars, and doing odd jobs around a big house. I've been sampling the sort of stuff I was reared on--plain grub, lots of work, and no drink. I've found it's the only kind that suits me if I want to stay above ground, and I've come back to put in a few good licks at the plans of that engineering school and other stuff you and I mapped out. No more thick days or nights for me; I've had my lesson and I'm through, eternally through."

"I see that a miracle has happened," he exclaimed, shaking hands with me all over again. "I believe that, of all the Lawtons, you are going to break the terrible family curse. I thought it from the first day I saw you, and now I know it."

"I only hope you're right, Mr. Hannay. Anyway, I'm going to do my level best. If prohibition ever comes to this country I guess it will be mainly because of people like me; I mean other fellows who can take a drink decently, and perhaps be all the better for it, will have to suffer through my failing."

"It's more than that, my boy."

"Yes, I know it. I believe some doctors say that you can't inherit such a craving, any more than you can inherit T. B., but I know better. Certainly I didn't have to learn to like the stuff; it's a gift. I've caught this thing just in time and, seeing you can't make a fellow drink by main force, the Lawton curse will have to peter out right here."

"I'm sure it will, my boy. You've had your lesson."

"Yes, but I've yet to pay for it. I wanted to see you first, get the plans about that free engineering school settled, and some other stuff, too; so let us go to it while I'm still free."

"Free? Are you thinking of getting married?"

"Yes, but the lady isn't--at least to me. What I meant, of course, was that Roupell knows I've turned up, and that means the whole town, sooner or later--generally sooner. I prefer to surrender myself."

"To whom? And for what?"

"Why, to the police, of course. You know, for that double charge of manslaughter. I hope you believe, Mr. Hannay, I didn't know anything about killing that poor woman and child. Honestly, I hadn't the faintest idea----"

"But, my dear boy, you didn't kill them!"

"What!" I cried, springing to my feet. "Do--do you really mean that?"

"Of course I do," said Mr. Hannay, beaming on me. "You've been blaming yourself quite unnecessarily; you aren't guilty and never were."