The next morning, after Stacey had bathed, he stood for a moment, reflecting, then again put on his uniform. In the midst of dressing he paused to look in the telephone directory for the name of the lieutenant whom he had especially liked in his first company and who, he remembered, lived in Omaha. He called up the number. “Curtis Traile’s house? . . . Oh, this Traile? Good! Stacey Carroll talking.”
He heard a joyful exclamation. “It is! What are you doing here? Where are you?”
Stacey told him.
“Then you—you saw all that mess last night?”
“Yes,” said Stacey drily. “Listen, Traile! Can I see you this morning? If you’ll tell me how to get to where you live I’ll—”
“You will not! I’ll be around at the hotel for you inside of twenty minutes.”
“All right. Thanks. You’ll find me in the dining-room. ’Bye!”
Stacey went down into the dining-room and ordered breakfast. Then he unfolded a newspaper. Outwardly he appeared as unmoved as ever. It was only when he came upon the one piece of news he cared about—“Mayor’s Condition Serious! Still Unconscious at Three This Morning! Doctors Hopeful!”—that a ripple of emotion passed over his face. He ate his breakfast calmly.
But on page four he happened upon a small item cursorily recorded which he read with interest.
“At twelve-thirty this morning after the termination of the riot Sergeant of Police Bassett, who was patrolling Seventeenth Street, heard groans issuing from the covered alley leading in behind the Boyd Theatre. On investigating he discovered that they came from a man lying in the alley in a semi-unconscious condition and apparently suffering from attempted strangulation. When able to speak he at first gave his name as John Smith and claimed to have been assaulted, at what time he could not say, by a man wearing U. S. Army uniform. Later he admitted he was Adolph Kraft of 1102 Chicago Street and withdrew his first story, declaring that he was attacked by an unknown man while endeavoring to restrain the rioters from further violence. He was taken to Ford Hospital, where his condition was said to be serious but not critical. The police attach little credence to either story told by Kraft, believing his injury to be the result of some personal vengeance carried out during the confusion of the riot. Kraft was formerly a bar-tender and so far as known has no present occupation. He has been twice convicted of petty offences.”
“So I didn’t kill him, after all,” thought Stacey. “Doesn’t appear that he’d have been much of a loss.” But he reflected dispassionately, merely as noting a fact, that in his assault he had shown the same overwhelming desire to kill that had possessed the mob. That the cause was different on his part did not matter a straw. His intense will to murder had been the same as theirs. Too bad! Not detached enough! Not detached enough! He should have slain the man coldly.
A cordial voice interrupted his meditations. “Well, Captain!—I say! You’re in uniform! You of all people! How come?”
“Hello, Traile,” said Stacey, looking up and shaking hands.
The lieutenant was young and had a fresh pleasant expression when, as now, he was smiling. When, as a moment later, his face grew sober again there was a certain gravity in it, as though a curtain had been dropped,—a hint of the same shadow that hung about Stacey. And this odd contrast in the young man’s face between buoyant youthfulness and weary knowledge impressed Stacey, since he had not seen Traile for many months, and was therefore now seeing him freshly.
“This is fine!” Traile continued swiftly. “But it was pretty rotten of you to be here so long and never let me know. Oh, I know all about it now, you see! Dropped around at Burnham’s on the way here.”
“How is he?”
“Fine! He told me about your coming and staying with him. Confound it! he might have let me know he was sick! But no! his wife had to go and wire you!” Traile concluded ruefully, pausing for breath. He sat down.
“Have some breakfast?”
“Thanks, no. I’ve eaten. Then you—you saw all that last night?”
Stacey nodded. “Have you read the estimable comment in the morning paper?” he asked. “Listen!—‘Whatever the provocation it does not warrant any band of men taking the law into their own hands unless they are prepared to face the judgment of their fellow citizens for such an act.’ Seems sufficiently moderate, don’t you think?”
Traile flushed. “Isn’t that damnable!” he blurted out boyishly. “You must think I live in a rotten town!”
“No,” said Stacey somberly, “I wish I did think so. If that were all there was to it we could band together cheerfully to blow up Omaha.”
“I tell you what, Captain!” Traile cried, his face stern. “We’re going after the leaders if we can get them—going after them hard! There are scores of names listed already; there’ll be twice as many by to-night. General Wood’s been ordered here. Arriving to-morrow morning. And meanwhile we’re organizing the Legion men.”
Stacey nodded. “I thought you would be. That’s what I particularly wanted to see you about. I’m not from here, of course, but I want you to let me in on it.”
Traile’s face radiated a sudden joyful surprise. “You, Captain?” he exclaimed.
“Why not?” asked Stacey coolly, lighting a cigarette.
“Well,” stammered the other, “I—of course we’ll take you in with a rush. You’re in uniform, too. How come?”
Stacey looked at him thoughtfully. “You needn’t be embarrassed, Traile,” he said. “You’re quite right. I don’t like army stuff and I don’t care a fig about helping maintain law and order in this pleasant world. But if,” he said, his eyes and voice hard, “I can do any fighting against a thousand beasts that tortured one lone individual, and especially that mauled and half killed the one man who stood up to them”—his teeth snapped together—“why, then, I’d like to; that’s all,” he concluded in his normal voice.
Traile stared at him for a moment in silence. “Come home with me,” he said, and rose.
“Sure!” remarked Stacey calmly. “Just give me time to sign my check.”
Traile’s car was outside. They entered it and drove swiftly off.
“Just to show you the way some of us feel about this,” the lieutenant remarked presently, “I’ll tell you that I’ve been ’phoning steadily ever since six-thirty this morning. That’s why you got me so promptly when you called up.”
“To our boys?”
Traile nodded.
“What results?”
The lieutenant frowned, gave the car a sudden exasperated burst of speed, then slowed down somewhat. “Unsatisfactory. Hang it, they won’t come! Only two of ’em, Mills and Jackson, who’re at my house now.”
“Did you really think they’d volunteer?”
“No,” said Traile shortly, “I didn’t. The ones who’ll jump at the job will be the sweet lads who drilled in safe camps and never so much as saw a transport.”
“Oh, well,” Stacey replied coolly, “that wasn’t their fault, and no more’s their point of view. You’re a funny cuss, Traile! Here you are, wanting men to show up, yet I’m blessed if you aren’t railing at the ones who do and praising your men because they don’t!”
“That’s right,” admitted the other, laughing sheepishly. “But then, aren’t we all that—funny cusses, I mean—we chaps who saw the real show?” he added meditatively. “Anyhow, will you try them, Captain? Maybe,” he concluded diffidently, “they’ll come for you.”
Stacey nodded. “I’ll try,” he assented. “How many enlisted men of C Company, your company, live here?”
“Twelve,” said Traile promptly.
“And how many of D Company—do you happen to know?”
“Ten. Here we are.”
They turned into a curved driveway leading up to a handsome residence. Traile hurried Stacey out of the car and down the hall of the house to the library.
“Here’s who I made you wait for, boys!” he cried. “You didn’t know—eh?”
The two men in the room sprang to salute, surprise and unmistakable pleasure in their faces.
Stacey felt a sudden touch of gratitude, that was like the warm trickle of a brook into an ice-bound lake. Yet he said little enough to the men in the way of greeting—only a word or two, and shook their hands. Then he plunged at once into business.
“Mills,” he said, “can you and Jackson corral all the men of your company and of D Company too, and get them around here to see me, without obligation to anything—say at noon sharp—that all right, Lieutenant?” Traile nodded.
“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.
“All right. Let’s make out a list, Lieutenant.”
“Now what’s to do?” Traile remarked impatiently when the men had departed. He was walking nervously about the room.
“Do?” said Stacey. “Nothing,—unless you can give me a drink.”
“You bet I can!” the other cried boyishly, and pushed a bell in the wall. “Leagues and leagues of wine-cellar. Family away in Maine. Whole house to myself. Great! Come in, Blake. Scotch, please,—V.O.P.—and glasses and ice and all that sort of thing.” He flung himself down in a chair. “Funny! Ever since I got back I feel as though I had to be doing something all the time, and yet there isn’t a damned thing I really want to do. You feel that way at all, Captain?”
“Yes,” said Stacey, smoking moodily. “Now let’s see,” he added in a different tone. “Where do we stand? What’s the state of affairs in town?”
Traile sat up, alert again. “Two companies of troops from Fort Crook patrolling the city—couldn’t get here last night in time to do any good,” he added bitterly, “because permission had to be granted from Washington first.”
“I recognize the well-loved system.”
“Uh-huh. General Wood arriving to-morrow morning. No definite plan of action to be adopted till he gets here. Listing of names of suspects going on rapidly, however.”
Stacey nodded. “Do you think,” he asked meditatively, “that we’ll have a chance to be in on the arresting part of the game? That’s what I want. Patrolling streets is no use.”
“Sure I do! The colonel from the fort said as much. ’T’s just what they will use us of the Legion for, because we know the town. Here are our drinks. Now when we’ve drunk them what in hell shall we do? I know!” he cried triumphantly. “We’ll drive around to the hotel and bring your things over here, where they ought to have been all the time.”
Stacey smiled. “All right,” he assented. “I don’t care much for the night clerk at that hotel.”
At five minutes to twelve the library all at once overflowed with men. There was pride in Stacey’s look as he greeted them.
“How many, Mills?” he demanded, after a moment.
“Twenty out of twenty-two, sir. Burnham’s sick—as you know better’n any one else, Captain. Monahan, he—he couldn’t come.”
“He couldn’t?” Stacey’s voice was regretful. “That’s too bad.” He paused for a moment, reflecting. Then he drew himself up very straight and gazed at the men, looking keenly from one to another.
“Now look here, men,” he said. “You’re fed up on army stuff and so am I. You know as well as I do that I haven’t got a bit of authority over you. I can’t tell you to go and do anything you don’t want to do. But last night some things were done in this town that I happened to see. And one of them was that a brave man stood out in front of a mob of beasts and said ‘no’ to them. And what happened to him because he said ‘no,’ as any one of you would have said, was—oh, God damn it! you know what it was!”
Stacey’s face was white now, and his voice shook with anger.
“He was your mayor,” he continued after a moment, “but it isn’t that I care about. What I care about is that he was a man. You fought the Germans and no one knows better than I how you fought them. Well, there were men among the Germans, decent men, wh............