Chapter XXVIII With the Pick-Handle Brigade
If I had stopped to consider how fully the safety of Wharton Kendrick—to say nothing of his niece—depended upon me, I should perhaps have found courage to decline the dangerous mission. But William T. Coleman’s commanding eye was upon me; and after a gulp to moisten my dry throat, I replied with an attempt to put a cheerful spirit into my voice:
“Very well; but I’d like to take a man or two along—merely as a guaranty to the Council that I’m not joking.”
Coleman smiled.
“Oh, I didn’t expect you to go alone. Take as many men as you like. Will twenty be enough?”
I thought so.
“Well, then, here are a dozen John Doe warrants. They will be your authority for whatever you may find it necessary to do in arresting these men. Now come out here and pick your company.”
He led the way to the main hall, glanced over the throng that still pervaded it, and cried in a resonant voice:
“Volunteers wanted for dangerous service.”
His discouraging form of statement did not dismay all of the company before him. At least fifty men stepped forward at the call.
“Take your pick,” said Coleman with a wave of his hand. “If they haven’t revolvers, I will supply them. You’d better take the clubs for ordinary service.”
I selected a score of men whose faces showed vigor and determination, looked to their arms, directed them to the pile of pick-handles, and when each man had satisfied himself of the virtue of his weapon by knocking down an imaginary enemy, I led the way to the street.
“Where are we going?” asked one of the men with the easy familiarity of the volunteer.
“Secret service,” I replied. “Don’t make any more noise than you have to.” If we were to arrest the conspirators without bloodshed it was necessary to take them by surprise, and we approached their meeting-place with as much caution as I could contrive.
The House of Blazes blinked more furtively than ever on the darkness. The outer door was but half opened, and the lights within burned but dimly. Yet a faint murmur that thrilled the air gave warning of many voices in converse, and stray gleams of light from the shuttered windows above bore ample witness to the fact that there was hidden activity in the den of the revolutionists.
I posted a number of men in position to prevent escape through the windows, and instructed the remainder to await my signal outside the main entrance. Then pushing open the swinging door, I entered the saloon.
The long room was almost deserted. A man in an apparent stupor sat with his head on a table in the dim light at the farther end of the place. Another lay on a bench snoring in drowsy intoxication. A short, round-faced young fellow with a dirty white apron stood behind the bar, and looked up with cheerful expectancy as I entered.
“Take me to the Council,” I said peremptorily. “I am just from Mr. Parks.”
“The Council!” stammered the man. “I don’t—I don’t know what you mean.”
At the sound of my voice, the fat pasty face of H. Blasius appeared through the doorway at the right of the bar.
“Ah, Meestaire—Meestaire—friend of Park,” he said, recognizing me and coming forward. “I salute a brozaire in arms.” And he would have embraced me but for my nimbleness in avoiding his odious clutch.
“I have come for orders,” I said. “I must see the Council.”
“Ah,” he cried, “you have come to give your ar-rms to ze inauguration of ze gr-rand r-revolution.” And he rolled out his “r’s” in a way to make the revolution very grand indeed.
“I have brought more than my arms,” I said. “I have the first company of our troops outside.”
“Mon Dieu!” he cried, his pasty face growing paler, and his blinking eyes opening wider in alarm. “Mon Dieu! You have come mooch too soon. Ze police will cast ze blow of an eye upon zem, ze alar-rm will sound, and Zip! away goes ze chance of winning by surprise.”
“That’s so,” I exclaimed, with the accent of one overwhelmed at conviction of a lack of judgment. “I will bring my men in and march them up to the Council-room where they can lie hid till the hour comes.”
“Non! non!” cried H. Blasius in alarm. “No one can go to ze Council-room. Zere is no Council-room.” His old distrust had overcome the alcoholic enthusiasm with which he had received me, and his eyes blinked cunningly upon me. Then he gave an apprehensive glance at the door by which he had entered, and I was confirmed in the suspicion that it led to the rooms of the conspirators.
“Well, if you won’t take me up, I must go by myself. My business must be laid before the Council at once.” And I moved with determination toward the suspected door.
H. Blasius placed himself in the way with arms outstretched.
“Non—non!” he cried. “You can not entrez wizout ze mot d’ordre—ze password.”
“Give it to me, then,” I demanded. “You are delaying the Council’s business.”
He was overawed a little by my authoritative tone, but before he could bring his tongue to answer me, the barkeeper accidentally dropped a glass on the floor, and the men whom I had stationed at the door, mistaking the crash for the sounds of conflict, rushed in to my rescue.
“The Vigilantes!” cried the barkeeper in dismay, at the sight of the badges and the pick-handles.
“Mon Dieu! we are betrayed!” cried H. Blasius, whirling around with a step toward the door that led to the Council-room.
I divined his purpose. He was bent on warning the conspirators. With one bound I had him by the collar, and with a fierce wrench dragged him back and flung him against the bar, spluttering inarticulate protests.
The barkeeper had seized a revolver, but before he could raise it, he was in the hands of my men. He submitted without resistance and with the cheerful spirit of one to whom the outcome is a matter of small importance.
“Keep that man quiet,” I said, with the hope that the noise of struggle had not reached the Council-room. Then I gripped H. Blasius by his fat throat.
“Give me the countersign!” I demanded.
He gave a scream of terror and dropped to his knees.
“Have pity—do not keel me. Mon Dieu! I am one good citizen. I make no plots wiz ze r-revolutionists.”
“The countersign,” I repeated grimly, tightening my grip on his throat, while two of my assistants reinforced my argument by prodding him in the sides with their sticks.
“Leeberty—leeberty or deat’,”—Mr. H. Blasius pronounced it “debt”—“zat is ze countersign,” he gasped through his constricted windpipe. And assured by his eyes that he was telling the truth, I flung him into the arms of my men.
“Shut off his wind if he tries to give a warning,” I said, and with a word I picked a squad from my company and gave them brief instructions:
“Follow me up the stairs. Don’t make a noise. And when I give the signal push me through the door.”
A dim illumination filtered through a ground-glass transom at the top of the stairway, and the murmur of voices that floated down gave evidence that a busy meeting was in progress.
I walked up the stairs with bold step, and my men crept cautiously after me. At the top was a landing, large enough to hold my squad, and I signed to them to collect behind me. Then I gave three resounding blows on the door—a compelling summons that I had learned as a lawyer’s clerk in serving papers on unwilling defendants. There is some mystic virtue in the slow triple knock that brings the most wary from their holes. At my rap there was a sudden hush of voices. Then some one by the door cried:
“Who is there?”
“A friend you are expecting.”
“If you are a friend, give the countersign.”
“Liberty or Death.”
At this reply the door opened cautiously for a few inches, and a man peeped through the crack.
“Now!” I cried. And with the force of six men behind me I shot forward, flung the door wide open, and sent its guardian sprawling backward, as I was projected a dozen feet into the Council-room. The room was large, and around a large table in front of a pulpit-like platform sat twelve or fifteen men. The Council and its advisers were in session.
At my unceremonious entrance the conspirators gave a prompt exhibition of their qualities. Waldorf, Reddick and Seabert sprang to their feet, and their hands went to their pockets with the evident purpose of drawing their revolvers. Others ran from side to side of the room, wildly seeking some way of escape. Two crawled under the table. The rest remained motionless in their chairs, looking with dull apprehension at our sudden irruption.
There were more of the conspirators than I had reckoned on meeting. But we had the advantage of surprise, and signing to two of my men to hold the door, I walked calmly forward with the others.
“Gentlemen,” I said to the startled group, “you are under arrest.”
“The devil we are!” cried Waldorf, snatching a revolver out of his pocket and snapping it at me.
There was a deafening report, and a bullet clipped my ear, but before Waldorf could raise the hammer a second time a rap from a pick-handle laid him sprawling limply across the table. Reddick’s weapon was knocked from his hand with a blow that broke his wrist. Seabert was seized and thrown before he could get his revolver out of his pocket, and a fiery little German in spectacles, who shot a hole in his coat in an excited attempt to draw his weapon, fell limply to the floor and squirmed like a shot rabbit at a skull-cracking stroke from a Vigilante’s club.
It was after all but a tame affair. For men who were planning to seize a city and overturn a nation, there was an absurdly small supply of fighting blood among them. The sprawling figure of Waldorf, lying face upward on the table with the blood trickling over his forehead, the fiery German in a limp heap on the floor, and the sight of Reddick and Seabert disabled, took all the fight out of the rest of the company. They submitted without resistance to be searched, disarmed and bound.
“Where are the rifles?” I demanded, when these preliminaries had been completed.
“Don’t know of any rifles,” said Seabert sullenly. “Never had any.”
The arrested company at once became unanimous on this point. There were never any rifles in their possession. They became so insistent in the denial that I jumped to the conclusion that the arms could not be far away, and looked about for their hiding-place. The ornamental work behind the platform and about the hall gave opportunity for concealed doorways and false partitions, but when they were sounded none could be uncovered.
“There’s room for them under that platform,” I said at last; and by the falling countenances of the conspirators I saw that I had hit upon the hiding-place.
The flooring was ripped off the platform, and we uncovered something more than four hundred rifles with a well-filled cartridge-belt strapped to each. Encouraged by this success we ransacked the place to discover the rest of the Council’s armament, but had at last to give it up with the conclusion that the remainder of the thousand guns had already been distributed to the clubs.
A messenger sent in haste to the headquarters of the Committee of Safety brought a train of express-wagons with orders to hurry the arms and ammunition to Horticultural Hall, and send the prisoners to the City Prison and Receiving Hospital. And stationing a guard to receive any of the revolutionary spirits who might come seeking the Council’s instructions, I set off for the headquarters of the Committee of Safety. The House of Blazes, as I took my last look at it, seemed smothered in an atmosphere of angry discomfiture, as it scowled at us from its blinking windows, fit tomb of the evil purposes it had harbored.