OUT ON BAIL

When Martin Druce heard the news that bail had been raised for his release and that all arrangements were being made for his flight and concealment, it was exactly half an hour before the bail bond was signed and the order sent to the prison that he should be set at liberty.

Broken by his incarceration, terrified by his murderous experience of the last night at the cafe, red-eyed and restless, the dive-keeper was pacing up and down his cell. A pickpocket whom he knew and who, through his own political pull was serving a term as a trusty, brought the information to him scrawled on a bit of cigarette paper which, with a little warning whistle, he dropped through the bars of the steel cage.

Druce picked up the note and read it furtively. He waited for the trusty to pa.s.s him again, then beckoning him, he whispered, "See if my gal isn't outside somewhere. She just left here. Tell her to wait. She can get into the automobile which they will be sure to send for me."

It was not affection, but cowardice, that led Druce to think of Elsie first. Since he had been locked up he had crumbled under his trouble. He was so much shaken in mind and body by the killing of Anson and by his arrest that he was actually afraid to go out of the jail alone.

After what seemed an eternity of waiting he heard footsteps in the corridor. A guard appeared and unlocked the iron door, beckoned to Druce, and he pa.s.sed out.

In a little waiting-room an iron-faced jail attendant handed him his watch and knife and some money taken from him when he was locked up. A lawyer whom he knew signaled him to follow.

Another steel door stood open and Druce found himself outside the prison, breathing the free air of night. An automobile stood there. Druce saw that Elsie was already within.

"The driver has instructions," said the lawyer. "Later you will hear further from me."

"What to h.e.l.l are they going to do for me?" growled Druce.

"No time to argue," said the lawyer. "Here!" He pressed something in his hand. "Your game is to get away while the getting is good." He slammed the door as Druce got in. The car turned the corner and went north.

"Where are we going?" Elsie asked.

Druce mumbled an unintelligible answer.

"Where?"

"Shut up your ranting at me!" He shook off her hand. "I guess you'll get your three squares a day."

Nothing more was said for several moments. Elsie lay back with her eyes closed. By the light from occasional street lamps Druce was counting a roll of bills.

"Here, kid, look at this." He spoke with just a touch of softness and bravado. "That young guy slipped it to me. My backers got to give me a nice trip to foreign lands. There'll be plenty of kale. I'm going to take you along, see." He did not add that her too great knowledge of his methods made others desirous that she, too, should be far away when the trial of the dive's employes came to pa.s.s. Elsie opened her eyes.

"I should think you would show that you feel a little bit glad that I'm out," he whined. "Think of those days in that jail."

Elsie would not have dared fail to express sympathy for him, but he was in need of a match for the cigarette he held. Hailing the chauffeur, he had the next instant forgotten his demand.

They drove in silence until they reached the house that had been prepared for their hiding-place. "Furnished rooms--Light Housekeeping" was inscribed on a card, tacked conspicuously in the doorway.

A woman near middle age, inclined to be fleshy, with large features that reflected the dim hall light, met them, her arms akimbo.

"Everything's all right for you folks. Upstairs front. There's a gas stove in the closet if you all--

"We ain't pikers--we'll get our eats sent in. Here, take this." Druce put a slip of paper and a greenback into Elsie's hand.

"Go to the drug-store there at the corner and get this prescription filled," he ordered. "It's morphine. I've got to sleep tonight."

Elsie obeyed pa.s.sively. When she returned Druce was pacing the room wild with impatience. His greenbacks and a bottle of absinthe lay on the table.

He lost no time in resorting to the morphine. "Absinthe is the stuff to put life in your body; but it's the good old dope to make you forget all your troubles," he soliloquized, Very shortly he was on the bed, sound asleep.

Elsie paced softly back and forth in the room for a long time. Then she went out into the dark hallway. She opened the window and stood looking into the street. It was quiet there. The stars looked down on a deserted way.

That big bright star over there! Was it not the one she and her sister used to choose when wishing from their bedroom window at Millville! How long ago that seemed; how wide and dreadful life's abyss between!

"If I had known, if I had known!" Elsie shuddered and glanced towards the closed door. "I was bound to have my own way. My--own--way. That's it.

There was something in me--" She faced her actions, she probed into her thoughts from the hour she first met Martin Druce. She marshalled her scathing shames before the judgment bar of her womanhood. In the flaming fires of tortured conscience she stood and suffered.

Then she began to wonder about the future. Where was she bound? Where would he be sent? What strange lands might she see?

How could she go with him? How could she stay behind? The street--the dreadful streets of night!

Elsie shuddered, remembering those nights in the Levee, the fear and horror, and at last the shameful, gnawing hunger that drove her to him again.

Back in the room where the dive-keeper lay in stupor Elsie spread a quilt on the floor and went wearily to her broken rest.

When she awoke Druce was trying nervously to roll a cigarette. The paper broke.

"Here, you, it's morning. It's time you woke up. Take this money. Get me some cigarettes. I can't roll them."

He was a being frightening to see by this time. The morphine and the French poison had torn his nerves to fragments. His eyes glared like coals in his pasty white face.

Elsie did not try to talk to him. She saw that he was beyond that. She took some money from the table and went out again to buy the cigarettes and food. When she returned Druce refused to eat. He took up the bottle of absinthe and drank from it, swallowing the burning liquid with animal-like gulps that made Elsie shudder.

"You'll kill yourself," said Elsie. "Take some of this milk."

"Mind your own d.a.m.n business," returned Druce, hoa.r.s.ely. "You stick to milk. I'll stick to absinthe."

Again he lay down and again he slept. The long day pa.s.sed. Night came and with a wild wind and a beating rain.

Druce woke in a half delirium.

"More absinthe, more absinthe," he muttered. The bottle on the table was empty. "Why didn't you have another bottle here? What have you been doing, eh?"

"Do you think you better take any more?" asked Elsie.

Druce stood glaring at her. His eyes flamed as he rushed across the room like a madman. Before she could get out of his way he struck her a brutal blow that felled her to the floor, and kicked her as she struggled. He reached for the empty bottle and brandished it over her.

"d.a.m.n you, get out of here quick and get me that dope!"

Elsie got to her feet.

"I'll go," she said, faintly.