WHEN Justice Supreme commanded that the former candidates for Superlativism be “all locked up together,” the police evidently construed the command as including Bertram. It was into the bare, steel-walled room where that rotund gentleman awaited his fate that Trenmore, his sister, and Robert Drayton were presently escorted. They were little surprised at this. What did amaze them was to find their fellow victim not alone. Seated on the floor with his back to the wall, he was engaged in earnest conversation with a small female person, enthroned upon the only chair in the room. Moreover, the latter was wagging an admonitory finger at Bertram as if delivering a “curtain lecture” of the most approved domestic type.
The chair comprised the entire furnishing of the cell. There was not even the moldy straw, without which no medieval dungeon was complete. It might be merely a detention cell; or perhaps prisoners of the Temple passed to their doom too swiftly to require sleeping accommodations.
In costume Bertram’s companion emulated the rainbow for color. Her large hat was bright green, lined with pink. She wore an old rose silk sweater over a soiled lace blouse, and crumpled blue linen skirt; her hosiery was golden yellow, and her down-at-heel pumps had once been very elegant green buckskins. As the door clanged shut behind the newcomers, she turned upon them large inquiring eyes, whose size was accentuated by the thinness of her face. Her complexion, however, was as fine as Viola’s own. The yellow button displayed upon her old-rose lapel bore the number 23000.
Bertram’s first expression of surprise changed to one of genuine concern.
“Say, boss,” he questioned Trenmore. “What’s up? Did they frame you, too? Or have you come to kiss your old college chump good-by?”
“We’ll be saying good-by this day the way we’ll be troubled with no more farewells at all,” retorted Trenmore grimly.
“Are you really in bad, all of you?”
“We are that. And who’s the lady, Bertram?”
“A pal of mine,” replied the burglar. Taking the small person’s hand, he forthwith presented her. “Skidoo, these here are the three friends of mine I was telling you about. Miss Trenmore and Mr. Trenmore and Mr. Drayton. Gents and lady, let me make you acquainted with the brightest, best-hearted, prettiest kid in this bughouse burg. Her Number is 23000, but that ain’t no handle for a lady. I call her Miss Skidoo.”
His round face shone with such whole-hearted pride in the human rainbow; he was so clearly assured of her cordial reception by any one possessing brains and eyes that Viola, who had at first hung back a trifle, extended her hand.
“We are very glad to meet you, Miss Skidoo,” she said gravely, “but sorry it has to be in such a place.”
Terry’s eyes were twinkling. He followed his sister’s lead, however, as did Drayton. “Any friend of Mr. Bertram’s,” Terry contributed, “is bound to be most interesting. ’Tis charmed we all are, Miss Skidoo!”
“Same here,” responded No. 23000, eying them with a sort of childlike solemnity. “Bert’s been talking about you folks ever since I met him. But, gee! The lookout’s bad for this bunch, ain’t it?”
“I fear it is about as bad as possible,” sighed Viola. “At least for four of us here.”
“Count me in,” announced the girl. “They drug me in, just for comin’ to the Temple with Bert. I ain’t done nothin’.”
“I couldn’t help it,” Bertram defended himself. “I wasn’t going to fall for the game, but Mr. Trenmore here, he says I must. Say, won’t you tell the kid that I didn’t want to go in the game? She won’t believe anything I say.”
The Irishman, somewhat conscience-stricken, hastened to assure No. 23000 that the blame for Bertram’s downfall lay entirely on his shoulders. “He appeared to have no desire at all for it, but I did not and do not yet understand what happened.”
“Aw, I didn’t do anything to get sent up for,” said the burglar disgustedly. “I did cop a medal thing one of them guys was wearing on his watch chain, but I was going to give it right back to him. That weighing machine of theirs was a crazy way to test speed. I wanted to show ’em what quick really meant. So I copped this medal thing off the one they call Mr. Virtue. Then I flashed it, and was going to explain. They didn’t give me no chance. They just jumped on me and said I’d been and done sacri-sacri-something or other, and that was all.”
“They was just waitin’ for a chance to land you,” commented Miss Skidoo wisely. “They didn’t mean you should have that job really. Sooner or later they’d have framed you. Say, folks, let’s set on the floor and fight this thing out right.”
Acquiescing willingly enough, Terence and Viola between them related the various events occurring between Drayton’s departure from the Green Room and his return in the custody of Mercy. The story of cold-blooded cruelty, the hints of internecine warfare among the Servants and Superlatives—united only against their common enemy, the Numbers—was interesting and startling enough to call forth many exclamations from Drayton and Bertram. Miss Skidoo, however, listened with the bored look of one who hears an oft-told and wearisome tale.
“Say,” she commented at the end, “a ordinary person like you or us”—indicating herself and Bertram—“got no business mixing in with that gang of highbinders. They’re always layin’ for each other an’ scrapping among themselves; but say, a snowball’s got a better chance in a bucket of hot water than a straight guy or a plain Number around this joint. As I’ve been telling Bert here—”
“Pardon me,” interrupted Drayton curiously, “but where did you happen to meet Mr. Bertram?”
She flushed so red that Drayton wished he had not asked the question. Catching the look in the lawyer’s eye, Bertram bristled instantly.
“Say,” he blurted, “I want you to know that Miss Skidoo here is a straight, nice kid. I was in a movie last night, and she was there with her dad. I got talking to the old man. He says, come along and get some home cooking; them hotels ain’t no good. I stayed so late—talkin’ and playin’ seven-up—that they let me bunk out in the spare room. That’s all. Straight, decent folks, just like there used to be, even if they are tagged with numbers instead of proper monikers. Get me?”
They got him. Drayton apologized silently with his eyes for the equally unvoiced suspicion.
It seemed that Bertram had bragged to these chance acquaintances of his pull with the Superlative, Cleverest. Miss Skidoo had warned him earnestly against any attempt to supersede the chief of police, no matter what his pull might be. The present Quickest, it seemed, like the musical director and most of the other Superlatives, was a distant connection of “Penn Service.” She revealed to him many facts regarding that “democratic institution,” Superlativism—how every man of the Superlatives, save Cleverest, held his job by pure favor, aided by the pull he could exercise through family connections.
“Cleverest, he’s a Servant by birth,” the girl explained. “He only took on that Superlative job because the next Justice Supreme can’t be chose from the Servants in office. He’s the old man’s nephew. When the old man dies Cleverest will chuck the law and run this city. He was aimin’ to marry Loveliest because he wants to be high man anywhere he is, and the Loveliest’s husband, when she has one, is supposed to run this town, outside of the Service. But I guess he meant to chuck her as soon as the old man passes over.
“Them Servants, they keep the Service itself right in their own families, father to son like. Only Mr. J. S. as is, he ain’t got no son. Say, me sister’s a scrublady an’ she’s got a swell job scrubbin’ floors right here in the temple. Course, she don’t get paid nothing, but she’s fed good, and as for clothes, the ladies round here gives her a lot. That’s how I get these glad rags I’m wearin’—from sis. But I tell you a job like hers is great for gettin’ wiser. Folks don’t take much more notice of a scrublady than if she was a chair or sump’n. She’s told me a lot o’ things.
“Servants of Penn! Say, I reckon if that big image o’ Penn could get a peep at what goes on under his feet he’d jump right down on top of the dome and smash the bell and everything else!”
The flow of her eloquence was interrupted by Drayton, who had been listening with even greater interest than the others. “Tell me, Miss Skidoo, have you or any of your friends an idea of who William Penn really is, or rather was?”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that Will-thing. Penn is the All-Father. He runs heaven and hell just like the Servants run us. I don’t believe in him no more. I think there ain’t nothing but Philadelphia, and when you die you stay dead?”
“Well, religion aside,” said Drayton, “I myself have learned a great deal since this morning. The Penn Service library was really most informing. If its doors could be thrown open to the Numbers, I believe they are men enough yet to overthrow this government of false priests and their sycophants and come into their own. It would be worth living, just to see it done.” He sighed. “However, that is not to be. We can help the sorrow of this age no more than we could cure the grief of our own.”
“Get on with it, Bobby,” said Trenmore. “Sure, I’ve a load of curiosity I’d hate to die burdened with!”
“I’ll tell it as briefly as I can. T............