“Ten cents!” Admeh Drake muttered to himself, as he felt the first shock of the cool breeze on Kearney Street, “what in Jericho can a man do with a dime, anyway? It won’t even buy a decent bed; it won’t pay the price of a drink at the Hoffman Bar. Coffee John is full of prunes!”

He walked up the cheap side of the street, looking aimlessly at the shop windows. “I figure it out about this way,” he thought, “I ain’t going to earn a million with two nickels; if I make a raise, it’ll be just by durn luck. So it don’t matter how I begin, nor what I do at all. I just got to go it blind, and trust to striking a trail that’ll lead to water. I’ll take up with the first idea I get, and ride for it as far as it goes.”

With this decision, he gave up the unnecessary strain of thought and floated with the human current, letting it carry him where it would. Now the main Gulf Stream of San Francisco life sets down Kearney and up Market Street; this is the Rialto, the promenade of cheap actors, rounders and men about town. It is the route of the amatory ogler and the grand tour of the demi-monde. Of a Saturday afternoon the course is given over to human peacocks and popinjays, fresh from the matinees, airing “the latest” in garb and finery; but there is a late guard abroad after the theatres close in the evening, when the relieving prospect of an idle morrow gives a merry license for late hours and convivial comradeship. Among these raglans and opera-cloaks, Admeh’s rusty brown jacket was carried along like an empty bottle floating down stream.

He turned into Market Street at Lotta’s Fountain, and had drifted a block northerly, when the brilliant letters of an electric sign across the way caught his eye: “Biograph Theatre. Admittance, ten cents.” The hint was patent and alluring; there seemed to be no gainsaying such a tip from Fate. Over he went with never a thought as to where he would spend the night without money, and in two minutes Coffee John’s dime slid under the window of the little ticket office in front. “Hurry up!” said the man in the box, “the performance is just about to begin.”

Admeh made his way upstairs, passed through a corridor lined with a cheap and unnecessary display of dried fishes in a long glass case, and came to the entrance of a dingy hall, dimly illuminated. At the far end of the sloping floor was a Lilliputian stage. A scant score of spectators were huddled together on the front seats and here Admeh took his place, between two soldiers in khaki uniform and a fat negress.

As he sat down, the curtain rose and two comedians entered, to go through a dreary specialty turn of the coarsest “knockabout” description. Admeh yawned. Even the negress was bored, and the two infantry corporals sneered openly. Next came a plump lady of uncertain age who carolled a popular song and did a frisky side-step to the chorus.

Admeh was gloomily disappointed. He turned his head to inspect the audience more closely, hoping for some livelier prompting of his destiny, when with a trill and a one—two—three accompaniment upon the wheezy piano at the side of the stage, a little soubrette ran down to the footlights, and with a mighty fetching seriousness, rolling her eyes to the ceiling, proclaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen, with your kind permission, I will now endeavor to entertain you with a few tricks of sleight-of-hand.”

She was a wee thing with wistful brown eyes under a curly blond wig, and seemingly a mere child. Her costume was a painful combination of blue and violet, home-made beyond a doubt. No one could help looking a guy in such a dress, but Maxie Morrow, as the placard on the proscenium announced her, had a childish ingenuousness that forfended criticism.

As she went through her foolish little performance, audibly coached by some one in the wings, Admeh’s eyes followed her with eager interest. He wondered how much older she was than she looked, and what she would be like off the stage. She had a piquant rather than a pretty face, in form that feline triangle depicted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. In her movements she was as graceful and as swiftly accurate as a kitten, and she had all a kitten’s endearing and alluring charm.

Admeh made a sudden resolve. If he were to meet with an adventure that night, what could possibly be more entertaining than to have for his heroine this little puss of a magician? He made a rapid study of the situation to discover its possibilities. It took but a few minutes for his wishes to work out a plan of action, and he was soon at the door urbanely addressing the ticket-taker.

“See here,” said Admeh, “I’m a reporter on the Wave—you know the paper, weekly illustrated—and I want an interview with Miss Morrow. I’ll give her a good write-up if you’ll let me go behind and talk to her.”

The Biograph Theatre did not often figure in the dramatic columns of the city papers, and such a free advertisement was not to be refused. The doorkeeper became on the instant effusively polite and, bustling with importance, took the young man down a side aisle to a door and up three stairs through a passage leading behind the wings. Admeh was shown into a tiny dressing-room whose scrawled plaster walls were half covered with skirts, waists, and properties of all kinds. The little magician was in front of her make-up table, dabbing at the rouge pot. The doorkeeper introduced the visitor, then discreetly withdrew, closing the door after him.

At her discovery by this audacious representative of the press, Maxie was all smiles and blushes. She was still but little more than a girl, although not quite so young as she had appeared in front of the footlights, and more naÏve and embarrassed than one would have expected of such a determined little actress. She offered Admeh her own chair, the only one in the room, but he seated himself upon a trunk and began the conversation.

All his tact was necessary to put her at her ease and induce her to talk. The Hero of Pago Bridge was by no means too ready with his tongue, usually, in the presence of women, but there was something in the touching admiration she betrayed for him as a newspaper man that prevented him from being bashful. He thought the brotherly attitude to be the proper pose, under the circumstances, and he led her on, talking of the theatre, the weather, her costume and himself, while she sat awkwardly conscious of her violet tights, which she slapped nervously with a little whip. His careless, friendly way at last gave her confidence, for he asked her few questions and did not seem to expect clever replies. Before long she had thrown off all reserve and chatted freely to him.

The Biograph Theatre kept open, as a rule, as long as it could secure patronage. This night stragglers kept coming in, so that the four “artists” and the picture machine in the room below still went through their weary routine. As the conversation proceeded, Maxie left at times, went through her act and returned, finding Admeh always ready to put her upon the thread of her story.

So, by bits and snatches, by repetitions and parentheses, in an incident here and a confession there, this is about the way Admeh Drake heard, that night, in Maxie Morrow’s dressing-room

I can’t really remember when I wasn’t acting, and I have no idea who my parents were, or where I was born, or when, or anything. I think, though, I must be about nineteen years old, though I don’t look it, and I have decided on the first of July for my birthday, because that’s just the middle of the year and it can’t possibly be more than six months wrong. I used to go on in child’s parts in London when I couldn’t have been more than four.

Then, the next thing I remember, I was with a company of Swiss bell-ringers, and we travelled all through the English provinces. I used to sing and dance in between their turns, and I tell you it was hard work, practising all day and dancing all night, almost. We were all fearfully poor, for we weren’t very much of an attraction. I had only one frock beside my stage costume, and that one was so patched I was ashamed to go to the pork shop, even, with it on. I was a regular little slave to old Max, who ran the company, and had to help cook and wash the dishes in the lodgings we took in the little towns. Bah! I hate the smell of brown Windsor soap to this day. I was just a little wild animal, for I never went to school a day in my life, and I was never allowed to go out on errands alone, unless they kept account of the exact time it would take to go and come, and they held me to account for every minute. I hardly think I ever talked to a child till I was grown up.

Well, the business fell off in England, so we took passage in a sailing ship for California, around the Horn. That voyage was the happiest time of my life, for I had nothing to do but practise my steps one or two hours a day, when the sea was calm enough. There was a very nice old lady aboard who taught me how to sew, and gave me some flannel to make myself some underwear, for I had never worn anything but what showed before, and I didn’t even know that anyone else ever did. She taught me to read, too, and tried to help me with arithmetic, but mercy! I never could get figures into my head.

Well, we got to San Francisco finally—that was about ten years ago. Bell-ringing didn’t seem to take very well; it was out of date, or other people did it better, because you know specialty people have to keep improving their act, and play on their heads, or while they’re tumbling through the air, or some novelty, nowadays, or it doesn’t go and it’s hard to get booked. But my act drew well, and it always saved our turn. I made up new steps all the time and invented pretty costumes, and so, of course, old Max watched me like grim death to see that I didn’t get away from him. We travelled all over the West, and all the time I was a drudge, did most of the work and got none of the money. They used to lock me into the house when they went out, and old Max’s wife would give me so much work to do that she’d know whether I’d been idle a moment. You wouldn’t think a girl in a fix like that had much chance to get married, would you?

Well, I am married, or rather I was. I don’t know just how I stand now. Let me tell you about it.

There was a man used to hang about the Star Variety Theatre in Los Angeles, who did small parts sometimes, when they wanted a policeman in a sketch, or things like that, but he mostly helped with the scene-shifters. I never had more than a few words with him, but he kind of took a fancy to me, and he used to bring me candy and leave it behind the flats where the others wouldn’t see it. I don’t believe, now, he ever cared so very much for me, but I was silly and had never had any attention, and I thought he was in love with me, and I imagined I was with him. He tried to make up to Max, but the old man wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

One day, when all my people were out and had locked me in the house, with a lot of dishes to wash, Harry—his name was Harry Maidslow—came down the street and saw me at the kitchen window. I raised the sash when he came into the yard, and without waiting for much talk first, for we were both afraid the old man would be coming back and would catch us, Harry asked me if I didn’t want to leave the show, and if I wouldn’t run away with him.

I believe I told him I’d run away with an orangoutang if I got the chance. Remember, I was only seventeen, and I had never been alone with a man in my life before. In my life—if you call such slavery as that, living! So he told me not to appear to notice him, but to be all ready for him and to watch out, and when I heard a certain whistle he taught me, wherever I was, to jump and run for him, and he’d do the rest.

You can imagine if I wasn’t excited for the next few days! I would have jumped off the roof to get to him, if necessary, and I just waited from hour to hour, expecting to hear his call every minute. I didn’t hardly dare to go to sleep at night for fear I’d miss him, and I was listening everywhere I went, meals and all. I think I trembled for three days. It seemed impossible that he’d be able to get me away; it was too good to come true. But I had nothing else in the world to look forward to, and I hoped and prayed for that whistle with all my might.

One night at the theatre, after my company had done the first part of their bell-ringing, I went on for my song. I remember it was that purple silk frock I wore, the one with the gold fringe, and red stockings with bows at the knees. Well, the orchestra had just struck up my air—

and I was just ready to catch the first note when I heard that whistle so loud and clear I couldn’t mistake it. Heavens! I can almost hear it now. I was half frightened to death, but I just shut my eyes and jumped clean over the footlights and landed in the flageolet’s lap and then pelted right up the middle aisle. Harry had a lot of his friends ready by the main entrance, and they rushed down to meet me and while half of them held the ushers and the crowd back, for everyone was getting up to see what was the matter, like a panic, the rest of the boys took me by the elbows and ran me out the front door. The house was simply packed that night, and when they all saw me jump they set up a yell like the place was afire. But I didn’t hear it at all till I got out in the corridor with my skirt half torn off and my dancing clogs gone—and then the noise sounded like a lion roaring in a menagerie.

Harry was all ready waiting for me, and he took me right up in his arms, as if I was a doll, ran down the stairs, put me in a carriage waiting at the door, and we drove off, lickety-split.

I’ve often thought since then that I took a big risk in trusting a man I didn’t really know at all, but Harry was square, and took me right down to a justice of the peace. We were married just as I stood, with no slippers and the holes in the heels of my stockings showing. What old Max did, I don’t know, but he must have been a picture for the audience when he saw me fly away like a bird out of a cage. By the time he found out what had happened it was too late to do anything about it, for I was Mrs. Maidslow.

Well, I lived with Harry for a few months, and then he began to drink and wanted me to go on the stage again to support him. The first time he struck me I ran away and came up to San Francisco, and went into specialty work for myself. Harry was kind enough when he was sober; in fact, he was too good-natured to refuse even a drink; that was just what was the matter. He had no backbone, and although he had a sort of romantic way with him that women like he didn’t have the nerve to stay with anything very long.

Now the funny part of the whole thing is this. You’d think that old Max would have been furious, and so he was at first, but afterward he had a terrible falling out with the others in his company—his wife had died—and I guess he wanted to spite them more than he did me. At any rate, just before he died, a year ago, he inherited some money from an uncle in Germany, and what did he do but leave a kind of a legacy to Harry. That is, the old man had a funny idea that wills didn’t hold very well in this country, and he had a great respect for the honor of the army officers. So he left $15,000 in cash with a Colonel Knowlton in trust for Harry Maidslow when he could be found. Harry had a way of changing his name when he felt like it, and old Max didn’t know him very well, anyway, so the only way he could be sure of Colonel Knowlton identifying him was by—well, by a certain mark he had on his body that Max happened to know about. The colonel has been invalided home from the Philippines, and every time he sees me he asks me if I’ve found Harry.

So, that’s all. I don’t really know whether I’m a wife or a widow, but I do know that I ought to have a share of that money coming to me, and perhaps if you put the story into the paper, some of his friends will see it and give me news of him.

Admeh Drake put his pencil into his pocket feeling a sense of shame at his duplicity with this little waif. He would have been glad to help her, but it seemed useless to disappoint her credulity by confessing that his relations with the press were entirely fictitious. “Well, I hope you get the money,” he said, “and if there’s anything I can do to help you, I will. But don’t you want me to see you home, Maxie?”

“Sure!” said the girl, frankly, and after pulling on a rather soiled automobile coat and adjusting a top-heavy plumed black hat, she descended the stairs of the theatre with Admeh and they found themselves on Market Street.

“It’s a little late to get anything to eat,” Admeh suggested, tentatively, trusting to his luck. He was not disappointed.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” replied the girl. “I always have supper after I get home, anyway.”

Half the worry was off his mind, but without a cent in his pocket, the question of transportation troubled him. If worst came to worst, Admeh decided that he would take Maxie home in a carriage, see her safely indoors, and then return and have it out with the driver. But first he ventured another insinuation. “It’s a beautiful night!” he remarked. At that moment the fog enveloped the upper half of the Spreckels Building, and the tall and narrow column was visible only as an irregular pattern of soft, blurred yellow lights.

“Fine!” said Maxie. “Let’s walk.”

She took his arm blithely, happy at her release from work, and they crossed over, went up Grant Avenue to Post Street and there turned toward Union Square. A short distance ahead of them a tall man in a gray mackintosh was walking with somewhat painful carefulness up the street. His deviations seemed to testify to a rather jovial evening’s indulgence. The two rapidly approached him, and Admeh had scarcely time to notice his yellow beard and hair when the stranger turned into a doorway. The house he entered was gaudily painted in red and yellow with stars and crescents, and so fiercely lighted with electric lamps that no wayfarer, however dazed, could fail to notice the sign: “Hammam Baths—Gentlemen’s Entrance.” When Admeh turned to Maxie she was as pale as if she had seen a ghost. She looked up at him with a glitter in her eyes.

“Here!” she exclaimed, opening her purse and thrusting a dollar into his hand. “Go in there and see if that man who just went in has the word ’Dotty’ tattooed on his right arm! Find out who he is, and come to the theatre and tell me.”

With that she pushed him into the doorway and was gone.

With the enthusiasm of an amateur detective, Admeh Drake paid his dollar for admission, and passed through two anterooms into an artificially tropical atmosphere. Turkish baths were a luxury outside the scheme of things; he knew nothing of the arrangements. He paused, uncertain how to proceed; uncertain, too, as to the best plan for catching the yellow-bearded man stripped. While he hesitated, an attendant showed him into a dressing-room. He saw naked men passing with towels twisted about their loins.

For the first time in many days, he took off his wrinkled, creased clothes. Pausing on the balcony without the door, he surveyed the carpeted, gaudily decorated apartment below. It was midnight, the busiest hour of the twenty-four in the baths. Heavier than the atmosphere of steam and steamed humanity rose the fumes of liquor. Few there are sober in a Hammam at that elbow of the night. Not knowing that the sweating heat takes the edge and fervor from the wildest intoxication, Admeh wondered, as he watched, at the subdued murmur of their babblings. His eye ranged over a group sitting up in towel robes, chatting drowsily, over a drunken satyr thrusting his heavy limbs from under the covers and singing a sleepy tune, over two others sunk in stupor. Beyond them was a group of jockeys, who had come to reduce weight; all were young, small, keen-eyed, each was puffing a huge cigar. In that bower of transformation, where all men stood equal as at the judgment, their worldly goods shrunk to a single bath towel, he found it hard to pick his man, yet no one could he see with the clay-yellow hair and beard that marked the mysterious person for whom he was searching.

Following others who slipped down the stairs in the single, levelling garment, Admeh went across the main salon, through a double glass door, and into an ante-chamber considerably hotter, where men were lolling back, wet and shiny, in canvas chairs. He saw the rubbers working in the room beyond, saw that the men under their hands were black and brown of hair and beard.

To the right, another glass door caught his eye. He passed in and gasped at the heavy, overpowering temperature. His glasses, to which he had clung with the instinct of a near-sighted man, burned on his nose. Men, glistening and dripping, sat all along the wall, their feet in little tubs of water.

In the corner sat the mysterious stranger of the yellow hair and beard. He was singing sentimentally. Admeh, practised in the lore of intoxication, watched him. “The jag’s growing,” he said to himself. In fact, the fumes of liquor, heat driven, were mounting steadily. Crossing the room, so as to command the stranger’s right side, he saw round his upper arm a black rubber bandage, like those used to confine varicose veins. The problem resolved itself into a question of tearing off that bandage.

“Hotter’n the hazes of the Philippines!” babbled the man with the yellow beard. Piecing together the description of her husband given by Maxie in the story of her adventures, Admeh was more than ever persuaded that this was the object of his search, that under the elastic bandage was the mark of identification by which he was to know the legatee of the fortune left by the old bell-ringer.

The man of the yellow beard sang maudlin Orpheum songs and prattled of many things. He cursed San Francisco. He told of his amours. He offered to fight or wrestle with anyone in the room. “A chance,” thought Admeh, as he took the challenge. But in a moment more, the drunken man was running again on a love-tack, with the winds of imagination blowing free. Nevertheless, this challenge gave Admeh an idea. What he could not encompass by diplomacy he might seize by force. In that method, all must depend upon the issue of a moment. If he could tear away the bandage in the first dash he would win. But let the struggle last more than a moment and others would intervene; then he would be thrown out and the chance would be gone. Mentally he measured bodies against the stranger; man for man he saw that, both being sober, he himself was badly over-matched. Broader and taller by many inches, the stranger was of thick, knotty limbs, and deep chest; Admeh himself was all cowboy nerve and wire, but slight and out of condition. It was bull against coyote.

“The question is,” thought Admeh, “can I and his jag lick him and his muscle?”

The stranger, singing again, lurched along the hot tiling to another room. Admeh gasped like a hooked trout as he followed through the door. It was the extra-hot room, where the mercury registered one hundred and sixty degrees. The stranger’s bristles began to subside and his lips crept together. The amateur detective drew nearer and, languid as he was with the terrific heat, gathered his force for the attempt. At that moment an attendant with trays of ice water slouched in on his felt shoes. Admeh slipped back into his chair.

This entrance had a most surprising effect on him of the yellow beard. Some emotion, which Admeh took to be either fear or anxiety, struggled to break through the veil of his debauch; he stared with bleary but intent eyes. In a moment he was lurching for the door. Glad of the relief from that overwhelming heat, Admeh followed. The trail led through the anteroom, past the rubbers and their benches, through another double glass door. A rush of steam fogged his spectacles; when it cleared a little, he saw dimly, through the hot vapor, that he was in a long, narrow closet, banked on one side by benches and by pipes which were vomiting clouds of steam. Groping from one side to the other, he found that they were quite alone.

With no further hesitation, Admeh rushed on his man and grasped for the right arm.

By the fraction of an inch he missed his hold. The stranger, with a quickness amazing for one in his condition—and what was more surprising, without a word—lashed out and caught Admeh a blow under the chest which whirled him back on the hot benches and fairly jerked his spectacles from his nose. The issue was on, and it was first honors for the stranger. Unsteady on his legs, but still determined, Admeh closed again, ducked under a ponderous blow and grappled round the waist. He managed to get one hand on the bandage, but in no wise could he tear it away, for the stranger held him in a bear-grip, tight about the neck. So they struggled and grunted and swayed through the misty clouds from the hot benches to the slippery floor and back to the benches again. Their bodies, what with the exertion and the steam, ran rivulets; their throats were gasping. Once, twice, they staggered the room’s length. Admeh was beginning to feel his breath and his senses going together, when the grasp about his neck slackened in tension.

“I and the jag win,” he thought, with what sense was left in him. He gathered his strength into its last cartridge, and gave a heave and a fling; they went down to the floor with a wet slap, Admeh above. He felt his opponent collapse under him. For a moment he, too, saw the universe swing round him, but with a great effort he tore away the bandage and pressed his near-sighted eyes close to the right arm.

There, in faded colours, was a tattooed design on the white skin. Admeh made out the word “Dotty,” framed in a border of twisted snakes. His quest was done. Faint, weary, languid, he prepared to get away before his assault was discovered. The door opened; some one caught Admeh by the arm. With no more fight in him, he raised himself to one knee and recognised the attendant, the sight of whom had before so nearly sobered his drunken opponent.

“What the devil——” said the new-comer, and stopped as his eye caught that mark on the arm. Then he bent down, passed his finger over the design, studied it, and peered into the white, senseless face behind the yellow beard.

“My work—it is the very man!” he exclaimed, in tones of the greatest interest. Turning to Admeh he asked:

“Now why did you want to know about that mark, and what were you scrapping for?”

“What do you know about him?” retorted Admeh.

“Story for story,” said the attendant.

“Story for story, swapped sight unseen,” agreed Admeh. “But let’s get him out of here first, because he’s in a pretty bad fix between his fight and his jag.” Together they carried him to a dressing-room, laid him on a bench, and closed the curtain. Here Admeh’s last spark of strength left him; he collapsed in a heap on the floor. With practised hands the attendant set about reviving them both. In ten minutes the man of mystery slept heavily, stupidly, on the bench, and Admeh was sitting against the wall breathing cool relief from the outer air. Briefly, he told of his singular errand, omitting, from some hazy idea of policy, the item about the legacy.

“Well,” said the rubber, after Admeh Drake had finished his tale, “your yarn certainly is curious, but I can beat it. What d’you think of this?—I tattooed that name and mark on this fellow’s arm, and I know the history of it, but he has no idea to this day how it ever come there, nor who ’Dotty’ is, nor why I did it, nor anything at all about it. He was the hero of as queer a yarn as I ever heard, and he knew no more about it all the time than a babe unborn!”

He rang an electric bell; a boy answered.

“Tell the boss to send for the extra man,” he said. “I’m done up for to-night, and I’m going to lay off for a while.”

So saying, he took Drake into an adjoining room, shared by the employees of the baths, and, after making himself comfortable on a lounge with a blanket wrapper, he told the following joyous romance:

THE STORY OF THE DERMOGRAPH ARTIST

You see, this ain’t my regular job. I’m working here because my profession is played out in San Francisco. I’m a dermograph artist. What’s that? Oh, it’s what most people call a tattooer. But don’t you think we’ve got as much right to be called artists as the fellows that slap paint on cloth with a brush? I think so. Is anything nicer than the human skin? Don’t you fix up your walls and your ceilings, and your floors that you wipe your feet on? Then what’s the matter with decorating yourself? That’s the line of talk I always gave people when they asked me why I called myself a dermograph artist.

It was the electric needle and the Jap tattooer that ran me out of business. With the electric needle, a man could put on a design in about a quarter of the time that it takes to do a real artistic job by hand. The blamed little Jap would pretty near pay to get a customer, he worked that cheap. I quit, and I never get out my needles now except for a design on some one in the baths.

My parlours were on the water-front, because most of my customers were sailors. Of course, once in a while some swells from Nob Hill would come in for a design or two. I used to do my best work for them, because, I thought, you never can tell when these society people will get next to the fact that a picture on the skin has it a mile on a painting. Why, the other day I read in the papers that a Frenchman got a hundred thousand dollars for a little, dinky canvas painting. The highest pay I ever knew a dermograph artist to get was five hundred for doing the Wells Brothers’ tattooed woman. Do you call that square?

After the Jap and the electric needle chump came to town, business fell off, as I was telling you. They’d have made me close up my shop and get out if it hadn’t been for Spotty Crigg. Ever hear of him? Well, you sure haven’t been in San Francisco long. In those days he kept a sailor boarding-house and saloon round the corner from my parlours, and he was sort of boss of the water-front—good any time to deliver five hundred votes. I ain’t saying that Spotty was a Sunday-school kind of man, but he stuck to his friends. I was one of the gang, so he sent me enough jobs to keep me going. Besides, I helped him once or twice on a shanghaing deal. You see, like most sailor boarding-house keepers in those days, he was a crimp—used to deliver a sailor or two when foremast hands were scarce and the pay was good. Spotty Crigg is dead now, or I wouldn’t be telling you about his last and biggest shanghaing scrape. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I learned about it afterward, part from Crigg and part from people on the other side of the little deal.

One of my society customers was young Tom Letterblair. Maybe you don’t know about him, either. He belonged to about the richest tribe of swells on Nob Hill. That fellow was as wild as a fish-hawk, a thoroughbred dead game sport. His being wild didn’t bother his people so much as the way he went about it—always doing something crazy. His people were strong on getting into the society columns of the papers, but he was eternally getting the family name on the news pages of the yellow journals, if not in the police reports. He wasn’t really what you would call bad, either; only wild and careless and brought up wrong, and stubborn about it when anyone tried to call him down. He’d never seem sorry if he got the family into trouble, but just laugh at his sisters when they roasted him. And instead of treating him quiet and easy, and gentling him into being good, they’d jaw him. That’s a bad scheme with a gilded youth like Tom Letterblair.

They were a bunch of orphans. That was half the trouble.

Finally, Tom Letterblair took up with a chorus girl and refused to drop her. The family tried to buy her off. Now she wasn’t a nice sort of girl, but she was true to Tom. She told him about it. For once, although he was such a careless fellow, he got mad and what does he do but come to me to have her name, “Dotty,” tattooed on his arm with the double snake border. Says he to me confidentially, “That’s the girl I’m going to marry when I come of age, which is only two months, and don’t you forget it.” Seems that he told other people the same thing, so that it came back to his family.

Now his sisters and the Eastern society swells that they were married to didn’t hanker any to have Dotty for a sister-in-law. But they knew by experience that if Tom Letterblair said he’d do it, all blazes wouldn’t hold him. J. Thrasher Sunderland, one of Tom’s brothers-in-law, had what he thought was a bright idea. It was to get the kid shanghaied on a sailing vessel off for a six months’ voyage.

That wasn’t such a bad scheme either. They could keep him away from Dotty and drink for six months, have him work hard, and make a man out of him. It’s been done before right in this port. That wild streak is a kind of disease that strikes young fellows with too much blood in their necks and money in their pockets. I know. I’ve had it myself, bar the money. By six months, what doctors call the crisis would have been over. The risky thing was the chance of raising a howl when he got back, but they were willing to take chances that the sense knocked into him with a belaying pin would make him see it their way. They were going to give it out to the papers and their friends that he was off for his health.

J. Thrasher Sunderland made his first break when he went to Captain Wynch of the bark Treasure Trove, instead of going straight to a crimp, as he ought to have done. Wynch promised to treat the kid well and try to brace him up. Never having seen Tom Letterblair he got a description of him, including the tattoo mark. Then the skipper went to Spotty Crigg and promised him a hundred dollars for doing the rough work of getting Tom on board the vessel.

Letterblair was such a big, careless fellow, he never suspected anything, and a lure note fetched him to Crigg’s saloon the night before the bark cleared. Tom had been drinking hard that day—showed up badly slewed. ’Twas a jolly drunk, and he was ready for a glass with anyone.

Now, Crigg hadn’t given much thought to this little transaction, for he was doing that sort of work almost every day in the week. But when that young swell, all dressed up to the nines, came into the “Bowsprit” saloon, the looks of him put a brand-new idea into Spotty’s noddle. It struck him that a hundred dollars was pretty small pay for catching a fish of that size and colour; there was evidently a big deal on somewhere. Like everyone else that read the papers, he knew considerable about Tom Letterblair, knew him for a young sport, free as water with his money. Putting two and two together, he saw that if he could save the kid instead of stealing him, there might be a good many times a hundred in the affair. Besides, there was a chance of finding out who was trying to get the shanghaing done, and then collecting blackmail. So he decided to play both ends. He would steal the wrong man, and hold on to the right one.

He ran his eye around the place and saw Harry Maidslow, a scene-shifter in the old Baldwin Theatre, who used to drop in, now and then, on his nights off. Man for man, Maidslow and Letterblair were modelled on the same lines—Maidslow wore a moustache, but that would come off easy enough—yellow hair, blue eyes, big and strong build. Maidslow hadn’t a relative this side of the Rockies; no one would miss him. Crigg knew that.

Spotty Crigg went so far in his mind before he thought of the tattoo mark. Captain Wynch had mentioned it as the proof that there was no mistake. And then, Crigg thought of me. I suppose lots of people would have stopped there, but Spotty Crigg had nerve, I’ll say that for him—nerve of a thousand.

He worked Letterblair to drink himself to sleep, and then had him packed upstairs and put to bed, dead to the world. The next move was easy. Crigg took Harry Maidslow into his office, fed him knockout drops, and carried him up into the same room with Letterblair. Side by side he laid them both, and stripped them to undershirts.

That was the way I found them when a hurry call brought me to the boarding-house. I thought at first they were both dead. It gave me the horrors to hear Crigg tell me that I was to copy that tattoo mark. ’Twas like working on a dead man. One drunk, the other drugged, lying on a little, cheap old bed and Spotty, who wasn’t a nice, clean-looking sort of person anyway, leaning over them with a candle.

When he told what he wanted, I kicked until he put on the screws. He could drive me off the water-front if he cared. I knew that, and he reminded me of it, besides offering me fifty dollars. So at last I went at it, he telling me all the time to hurry. I never worked so fast in my life. By two hours you couldn’t tell one mark from the other, except that Maidslow’s was new and Letterblair’s old. Next we shaved Maidslow’s mustache off, for Tom always wore a smooth face. Then we changed their clothes, putting the swell rig on Maidslow and the old clothes on Letterblair.

Next, Spotty Crigg took Maidslow, got him into a hack, drove him to a dory he had waiting, and rowed out to the Treasure Trove, which was in the stream waiting to sail next morning. Captain Wynch was cussing purple because Spotty had been so long. He went over the description, though, and looked at the right arm to make sure, just as Crigg expected him to do. It looked all right, because a tattoo mark don’t begin to swell until the day after; besides, Wynch was seeing it under a fo’castle lamp.

It was all right so far. But Crigg, who wasn’t so keen by a jugful as he thought he was, hadn’t figured on one thing. The Letterblairs had an aunt, Mrs. Burden, a widow without chick or child of her own. She was an old, religious lady, with oodles of money and a whopping temper—a regular holy terror. She didn’t cotton to the sisters at all; in fact, hated them, but she was soft over Tom Letterblair. Whenever she wasn’t turning loose her money, stringing hospitals and churches all the way to Sacramento, she was handing it over to the kid, who had only an allowance until he got to be twenty-one. He and the parsons were the only ones who got her to loosen up. She had no son and I rather guess that on the quiet she had a sneaking liking for the way he was carrying on. Sort of thrilled her. You know how some of those pious old girls like a man that’s real bad. She coddled him to death and fought the sisters for being hard on the boy.

Spotty’s luck turned so that she picked the very next morning for a show-down with the sisters over the way they were treating the kid. There must have been a regular hair-pulling. Anyway, before they got through, Mrs. Sunderland was so mad that she poured out the whole scheme in one mouthful. She said:

“You won’t have a chance to coddle him any more! He’s on the Treasure Trove, bound for China to get the foolishness taken out of him. He’s passed the Farralones by this time.”

The old lady was foxy. She would have made a pretty good sport herself. She shut up like a clam, went home, rushed for the telephone and called up the wharfinger. She found that the Treasure Trove was in the stream being towed for the heads, and belonged to Burke & Coleman, this port. She knew Burke. She got her carriage, made his office in two jumps, and wouldn’t leave until she had an order on Captain Wynch to deliver a sailor answering Letterblair’s description, tattooing and all. In a half-hour more she had a tug started, chasing the Treasure Trove with that order. She offered the crew two hundred dollars over regular pay if they got their man back safe and sound. She herself was afraid of the water, and stayed in the tug office to wait.

While this was going on, Tom Letterblair woke up. The man watching him tried to get him drunk again, and the jag turned out loud and nasty. Crigg saw he’d have to be doing something right off the bat.

He knew a little how the land lay between Tom and his people, but not enough. He was sure that some one of Tom’s relatives had done it. As far as that he was right. He struck the wrong lead when he picked Mrs. Burden as the one—she being a church member—that was most likely to be ashamed of the kid. He looked up her number in the directory, and made for the house hot-foot. She wasn’t in, so he held up a lamp-post, waiting.

The tug got back. They packed Harry Maidslow into the dock-house. He was still sound asleep from the knockout drops.

“My precious boy!” said the old lady, and fell on his neck. Then she screamed so you could hear her all over the water-front and began to jump on the captain. She said:

“You’re a pack of thieves! You’ve murdered my Tom and dressed another man in his clothes. Where is my boy? Give me back my boy!” she said, and a lot of other things.

Said the tug-boat captain: “You’re trying to get out of paying the two hundred. He’s on specifications, and a nice time we had making them pass him over. Look here.” He got the coat off Harry Maidslow. There was the tattoo mark, just beginning to swell up.

“It’s a new mark. You and those hussies have fooled me,” said the old lady. “I’ll have you all in jail for this,” she said. “I wish I could find him, I’d show them up. I’d take him right up to the big dance they’re going to have to-night. I’d shame them!” she said. And she drove home, laughing and crying out loud. At the doorstep Spotty Crigg braced her.

He began quiet and easy, working up her curiosity so that she would let him know how the land lay. That’s just where he went wrong again. In about a minute she put two and two together and saw pretty clearly through the whole scheme. She was just one point smarter than Spotty, and she wormed it out of him finally. He thought she wanted Tom put out of the way, sure. She played her hand by letting him think so. It was move and your turn, like a game of checkers, with the old lady one jump ahead. Said Spotty:

“Two thousand dollars, or I bring him back and give the story to the Observer.”

Which of course was exactly what she wanted. She pretended to be scared but mad.

“Not a cent. Do your worst,” she said.

“Then I’ll go that one better,” said Spotty. “I see by the papers there’s a dance at the Sunderland house to-night. Three thousand down or I dump him in the front door, drunk as a lord and dressed like a stevedore. I’ve got him where you can’t find him——” which was a bluff. “If you tell the police he’ll get worse than a drunk——” which was another.

“Not a red cent,” she said.

“Settles it!” said Crigg. He went away red-hot, mad enough to back up his bluff, just as the old lady thought he would.

When he got home he found that Tom couldn’t be kept much longer. There had been a deuce of a rough house. That clinched the matter with Spotty Crigg. About half-past eight he woke Tom, gave him some dinner with a cold bottle to get him started again, and spun him a yarn about finding him drunk and robbed. The deal went through on schedule. At half-past nine, Spotty drove up to the Letterblair house with the kid, rang the door-bell and pushed Tom right into the hall, nursing a loud, talkative drunk. They say it put that function on the bum. I heard afterward from Tom Letterblair that it was about the only time he ever really enjoyed himself at one of his sister’s parties.

Nobody ever told the police or the papers. Every man-jack in the deal was afraid to peach on the others, because he couldn’t afford to tell on himself. All except the old lady and Tom, of course, and they were too tickled with the way the things turned out to care about giving it away. Another funny thing: everybody quit a winner. You can see how Captain Wynch won. Tom paid Spotty Crigg a thousand for keeping him off the Treasure Trove, and I got fifty dollars for my job. And even the snob sisters won out. How? Well, sir, Tom Letterblair braced up from that time on. I suppose he took it that if he was far enough gone to the devil for his family to have to shanghai him, he must be a pretty bad egg. So he swore off, got on the water-wagon, and turned out pretty well, alongside of what they’d expected of him. His chorus girl, Dotty, ran away with another man, and that helped him some, too.

Finally, Tom got a case on a swell New York heiress, a dizzy blonde, who was just simply It in the Four Hundred. He married her, to the great and grand delight of Mr. and Mrs. J. Thrasher Sunderland.

And right there was where Tom had too much luck for any one man. I’ll be darned if that girl’s name wasn’t Dotty, and she always believed Tom had it pricked on his arm just on her account! What d’you think of that?

But perhaps you’re wondering how Maidslow got square. I’ll tell you.

He came to in the tug office, where the crew had passed him a few swift kicks and left him. Pretty stupid and dopy yet, he crawled home to his own room and slept some more of it off.

Then, when his head did finally clear out, he began to look himself over; to discover and explore, as you might say. When he looked in the glass he must have nearly fell dead. His yellow moustache was gone. Then, he’d gone to sleep in old clothes and he woke up in a swell high-class rig, silk-lined, and without a spot, patch, or sign of wear. He had on silk gauze underwear, patent leather shoes, diamonds in his shirt-front, cuff-links, and a pair of pretty hot socks. Feeling in his pockets, as a man will, he found a gold watch and chain, a gold cigarette case, a corkscrew mounted in rubies and three hundred and forty-two dollars in bills and coin. Every one in the deal had been too busy to touch him while he was drugged.

Long before he got his senses his arm began to feel funny. After he’d investigated the costume, he took off the Willy-boy coat and stripped up his shirt sleeve. There was a tattoo mark, smarting like sin, with the name “DOTTY” in beautiful capital letters! Well, when he saw that he went right up into the air. He was just like that old woman in the nursery rhyme—“Lawk-a-massy on us, this is none of I!”

The tattoo mark was his only clue. I was the only one he knew in the business, so he came down to me and wanted to know how, and when, and where, and why, and what-the-devil.

“Look here, my son,” says I, “what are you kicking about, anyway? You go to sleep with eight dollars on your back and two bits in your jeans. You wake up with about a seven hundred and fifty dollar rig on, and a wad in your pocket, more than you ever had in your life. The thing for you to do,” I says, “is to lose yourself before you’re called for, and to stay lost, good and hard! Next time you fade away on the water-front, you may wake up in a jumper and overalls, shovelling garbage! You can’t expect to draw a straight flush in diamonds every deal: next shuffle you may catch deuces. You take my advice and drop a part of that roll of yours for a ticket in the ’Owl’ train to-night, before you’re enchanted back again.”

“All right,” he says, “I’ll do it. But for heaven’s sake, tell me just one thing, and I’ll ask no more questions. Who in blazes is Dotty?”

“Aw,” I says, “she’s the fairy godmother of this pipe dream. She’s changed into a sea-gull by this time!”

“Well,” concluded the rubber, “he skipped, and I have never seen him since, from that day till to-night, when I found you scrapping with him, for this man is Harry Maidslow for sure. If you want to talk to him now, he’ll probably be all right. He’s had time to have a plunge, and you’ll find him sleeping upstairs. I’ve got to go home, so good-by. Come round again some time and tell me about him!”

Admeh Drake, after a swim in the tank himself, passed through the main salon and upstairs, acting upon the hint of the Dermograph Artist. The place was lined with cots, now filled with snoring occupants, and it was not until he had explored a second story that Admeh found him of the clay-yellow beard. He was alone in a secluded ward, sleeping peacefully. Admeh touched him, and Maidslow sat up suddenly with a terrified stare.

“What d’you want? What d’you want of me?” he cried.

Admeh was astonished at his fright, but hastened to relieve the man’s suspense. “Oh, nothing bad, I hope. Is your name—” here he hesitated, and the man’s face showed abject fear—“Maidslow?”—and the mouth relaxed its tensity.

“Yes,” said the man. “What d’you want?”

“I want to tell you that there’s fifteen thousand dollars coming to you!” said Drake.

The man stared now in bewilderment.

“Ever know old Max Miller, Swiss bell-ringer?” “A little,” said Maidslow. “Why?”

“He’s your rich uncle. He’s left you his fortune. You caught him when you stole Maxie from him!”

“See here,” said Maidslow, “what kind of a jolly are you giving me anyway? I haven’t seen Maxie—I suppose you mean my wife—for two years. If you know anything about her, tell me the whole thing, and tell it slow.”

For the second time that night Admeh Drake narrated his adventures, beginning at Coffee John’s, and ending with the news of Maxie and the legacy left to Harry Maidslow. But, when he mentioned Colonel Knowlton’s name as the trustee, Maidslow, who had listened so far in delight, gave an exclamation of despair.

“Oh, heavens!” he cried, “I can never get that money! Why couldn’t it have been given in charge of some one else? Colonel Knowlton, of all men in the world!”

“Why can’t you get it from him?” Drake asked.

“You listen to my story, and you’ll know,” replied Maidslow.

THE STORY OF THE DESERTER OF THE PHILIPPINES

I don’t exactly know why I married Maxie Morrow, except that I’ve always been a fool about women. The thing came so sudden, I just jumped and caught her on the fly. When she left me, I went pretty much to the bad. Then Harry Maidslow disappeared, because of debts and one thing or another, and I turned up as Harry Roberts in St. Louis. That was just about when the Spanish war broke out. It was too good a chance to lose, and I decided to begin all over again. So I enlisted in the regulars, joining the One Hundred and Fourteenth Infantry. I was hardly more than through the goose step when we were sent to the Philippines.

I was no slouch nor shirk, either, but I knew more about eating than anything else, and I naturally gravitated to the cook’s tent and put him on to a lot of things the boys liked. I got to be rather popular with the company in this way, and when the Commissary Sergeant was appointed in Manila, I managed to get the place, though I was only a rookie. Perhaps the Captain’s wife helped me out some. She, being an officer’s lady, wasn’t supposed to know I was on earth, but somehow she noticed me and fixed it up easy.

Commissary work was a snap—little drill, no guard mount, leave of absence occasionally, and the run of the town in a little pony cart. You see each company had its quota of rations. We could draw them, or leave them and get credit. There was maple syrup and candy, canned fruit, and chocolate, and all sorts of good stuff in the storehouse that we could get at wholesale rates. By cutting down on fresh meat and pinching on bacon, I managed the company’s accounts so that we could have hot griddle-cakes and maple syrup every day. That’s the way I held my job. If I ever become famous it will be for having introduced Pie in the Philippines.

Every morning I drove around Manila, visiting the markets with a man to help me, exchanging sacks of flour for fresh baker’s bread and cakes, getting chickens, and so on, besides making friends right and left. About two nights every week I was dancing or flirting with the half-breed women; Mestizas they called them. That’s how I got into trouble.

Her name was Senorita Maria del Pilar Assompcion Aguilar, and nothing that ever I saw could touch her for looks. She was the kind of woman that makes you forget everything else that ever happened before. She and her brother owned about the whole of a province in the middle of the island of Luzon. When she came into the room it was all over with me. There was more of the Spanish than the Filipino in her, enough to give her the style and air of a lady, but she got her beauty from the tropics. Her hair was like one of those hot black nights they have down there—silky and soft, drifting around her face—but it was her eyes that made you lose sleep. They were blue-black, not melting, but wide-awake and piercing. They were just a bit crossed, hardly a hairbreadth out, but that little cast seemed to make her even prettier than if they were straight. A Kansas sergeant told me that the family was in from their country place, and that the Secret Service people were watching her. She and her brother were suspected of knowing a good deal about Aguinaldo’s plans.

You remember that after the battle of Manila the American troops lay in town for months, just drilling and waiting to see what the insurgents were going to do. There were all sorts of rumours afloat, and nobody knew which way the cat would jump. The Filipinos were camped in a semi-circle outside the city and growing uglier every day. Our sentries were watching them close enough to see every nigger that stuck his finger to his nose at us.

I saw more and more of Maria, danced with her, or went to her house every night I could get off. It wasn’t long before I saw that I had her going. Her brother looked as if he’d like to bolo me in the back, and never left us alone for a moment. I didn’t care. I was too far gone myself to be afraid of him. I’ve seen one or two women in my time, but she could put it over them all.

Love goes pretty fast in hot countries. One night I happened to find her alone. Her brother was away on some Katipunan conspiracy business, most likely, or perhaps dodging our spies. She was dressed like a queen, all ready for me. I had no more than come in when she threw herself into my arms and lay there crying. I had gone too far, and I was in for it.

I let her stay there a little while, kissing her and trying to get her quiet, and then I looked away, and told her what I should have told her long before—that I had a wife and couldn’t marry. She took it pretty hard at first.

After she had cried she laughed, and there was a load off my mind. I said to myself that women must be different down here, and thought I was lucky to get out of it so easy. I thought perhaps she hadn’t been so badly hurt, after all. She said we’d forget it, and be friends, just the same. I was a fool and believed her. She asked me to come back to-morrow, and I said I would.

The next day I met SeÑor Aguilar, her brother, and he seemed to be as friendly as if we were bunkies. He insisted upon my having a drink with him. He seemed to be glad to know that Maria and I weren’t so much lovers as he had thought. We sat most of the afternoon drinking cognac, and I got more and more pleased at having squared myself with them both. Then some one must have hit me over the head.

When I came to, my head was bursting. My hands were bound and I was covered with a sheet of canvas, being jolted in a little bobbing cart. I yelled for help, and my only answer was the barrel of a Mauser rifle stuck in my face. Then I went off into a stupor, and for the rest of that trip I only remember heat, thirst, hunger, stiff joints and a murderous headache. The journey seemed to go on for years and years, but I didn’t have energy enough even to wonder what had happened or where I was going.

Finally I found myself stretched upon a cot in a white-walled room, looking through a great arched window into a green patio waving with palms. SeÑor Aguilar was standing beside me, smiling wickedly. Bromo-seltzer wouldn’t have cleared my head the way the sight of him did.

“SeÑor Roberts,” he said, as soon as he saw that I was fully conscious, “possibly you may have suspected that I have not always been charmed at the attentions you have paid SeÑorita Maria. However, you will be glad to learn that I have at last decided to accept you as my brother-in-law. I have given directions that the marriage ceremony shall take place to-morrow evening. I shall be honoured by the alliance, I am sure, for within a week you will be the only Americano alive on the Island of Luzon. I have just come from a conference with General Aguinaldo, and the council of war has set upon February 4th as the date when we shall have the pleasure of capturing Manila and exterminating your army. You are at Carrino, a hundred miles from the city, helpless and unarmed. I think you will see the advisability of accepting gracefully the privilege of becoming a member of our distinguished family.

“It is barely possible,” he went on, “that you may feel like declining to become the husband of SeÑorita Maria. Americanos are not renowned for their courtesy. So I give you a day to think it over. We Aguilars do not often force ourselves upon strangers, but under the circumstances I consent to forget our family pride. You may give me your answer to-morrow.”

I knew what he meant. This was a sample of Spanish revenge with a Filipino barb to it. If I stayed, I was a branded deserter. I knew that, and Aguilar knew it too. And he was sure enough that I’d never marry his sister under those circumstances, or he’d never have made the offer. The only possible way out of it—although that seemed hopeless—was to escape, carry the news to General Otis, and save the army. It would mean a pardon, and maybe shoulder-straps for me.

Could I get away? That was the question. I had no time to lose. To travel a hundred miles through an unknown hostile country in a week, without arms, food or money, was no child’s play. But I watched my chance.

About sundown a Tagalo woman, homely as a hedge-fence, came in with my dinner. She hung round as though she were willing to talk, and I set to work to see how I could use her. I’d had some experience with women, and had found them mostly alike, black and white, and I used every trick I knew on her. Of all the cyclone love-making I ever did, that got over the ground the quickest. I worked so hard I almost meant it, and she rose to the hook.

That night she got the guard off, filled him up with bino, and showed me the way out of the plantation through the banana grove. Outside, she had a little scrub pony waiting. She pointed to it, and gave me a general idea of the direction, then put her arms on my shoulders and held up her great thick lips to be kissed. That was about the hardest work I had on the whole trip. Then I jumped into the saddle and pelted down the road like Sheridan thirty miles away. I thought I was a hero, all right, and I saw my picture in the papers with shoulder-straps and the girls kissing me, like Hobson. It was a grand-stand play to save the army. As near as I could calculate, that was the night of January 31st, and I had six days to get to Manila. It looked easy.

I kept as nearly south as I could guess, and rode that pony almost to death. At daylight I hid and hobbled him and crawled into the brush to sleep. When I woke up the nag was lying in a puddle of blood, hamstrung. That was the first blow.

There was not a soul in sight, but I imagined there was a boloman behind every tree. I listened, and every waving bush scared me worse. I was actually afraid of the light. If this were the beginning of the trip, what would the end be? But I had to go on, and do my best.

I got under cover and crawled like a snake till I came to a patch of banana trees, where I stopped long enough to eat and to fill my pockets. For two days I kept it up, making about thirty miles south, I suppose, dodging villages, skirting the roads and sleeping most of the daytime. It was hot and dusty; food was scarce and water scarcer.

So I fought my way through the tropical night, tortured by mosquitos, insects, and ants. Luckily it was near the full of the moon, and I was able to drag myself along all night. The way gradually became more moist and swampy. I toiled through slippery mud, and had often to make detours to avoid sinking in great morasses. Then, just at dawn of the third morning I came upon the banks of the Pasig. Now I had four days more in which to save the army, and a quiet river to drift down at night, hiding by daylight, if I could only find something to float on.

Towards noon, as I lay in the bushes, I saw an empty boat bobbing down stream. I swam out to it, hauled it ashore, and hid it in the bushes. That night I began to paddle down the river, calling myself “Lieutenant” Roberts.

Twice, before morning, I thought I heard the sound of oars or paddles behind me, and got inshore to listen, but nothing appeared. At dawn I drew in to the bank, hid the boat, and crawled to a safe place and slept like a horse. After I had foraged for bananas and got back to the river, the boat was gone! I began to lose hope.

I was certain that I had tied the boat securely, so I knew now that someone was on my trail. I had not only to make my way on foot through the wilderness, but I was to be dogged at every step. What with the heat, starvation, and growing fear, I was pretty nearly out of my head, but the knowledge that upon me alone depended the safety of the army kept me on, straining every nerve. If it hadn’t been for that, I would have given it up right there.

After I had followed the bank of the river for some distance, some logs came drifting down the current. I took the chances of being seen, and swam out and captured two of them. Tied together with long, tough creepers, they made a passable raft, and all that night I floated down stream, paddling as well as I could with my hands. I passed a lot of houses and villages on the banks, and so I knew that I was approaching the city. Sometimes I heard the sound of drums and bugles, for the insurgents were all over the country raising recruits. I must have been wandering in my mind by that time, for I wasn’t a bit scared any more—only watching for wild bananas and bread-fruit, and wondering how long I’d last. I succeeded in killing some of the many tame ducks I saw, and ate them raw, not daring to build a fire.

Next night the river broadened out into a good-sized lake. By the look of it, I took it to be Laguna de Bay, about twenty-five miles from Manila. I had only that night and the next day to reach our troops. If the first shot were fired before I got to the outposts, I might just as well drop into the Pasig and go to the bottom.

When the sun rose I slid into the water and struck out for the shore, intending to take my chances along the bank by daylight. This was the morning of the 4th of February. Somehow, some way, I had to get through the circle of the Filipino lines drawn about the city. I hoped that I was too close to the town for them to dare to interfere with an American soldier in the daytime. So I climbed up a slippery bank and broke into the brush, about as tired and discouraged as a man could be and still live.

Then—all of a sudden—I was nailed from behind! The game was up. Somebody gripped me by the throat. I was so weak, there was no fight left in me. In half a minute I was bound by a dozen niggers, who came jumping out of the bushes and fell on top of me from all sides at once. I didn’t much care what they were going to do with me: I had quit. Five days of fear and suspense and suffering had taken every bit of nerve out of me.

As soon as I was tied up they began to rush me along the road, kicking me up every time I faltered, and jabbing me with bolos when I fell. I don’t know why I didn’t die right then. I don’t know why my hair isn’t white.

At last we came to a little nipa hut, guarded by Filipino soldiers in dirty white uniforms and bare feet. I was thrown inside, unbound, and given a gourd of rice. I ate it, hoping it was poisoned. From all I saw, I was sure the tip about the outbreak was straight, for the place was bustling with soldiers coming and going, and I noticed they all had ammunition.

At about four o’clock I was bound again and gagged. I thought it was the end, sure, this time, and I was ready to die game. But it was only a new kind of torture. They prodded me with their bayonets, marching me to a place where I could look through the bushes right across a little river. There, on the other side, was one of our sentries pacing up and down, and way off I saw the Stars and Stripes floating in the sun. I could hear a band playing “There’ll be a hot time,” too. If I could have yelled across just once and given our boys warning, I wouldn’t have minded anything they did to me. But I was gagged. I believe I cried.

Then they took me back to the hut, and night came on. Every minute that passed made the torture worse and worse. I didn’t care for myself any more; I was only thinking about the boys across the river, all unconscious of what was going to happen. I knew so well how careless they had got to be, and what fun they made of the idea that the niggers could possibly have the nerve to attack us. They would all be fooling around the streets of Manila, probably half of them at the theatre or dancing or in the cafÉs, leaving only the guard to take the first rush. It didn’t seem possible that we could be saved. Our entrenchments would be carried at the first charge, I was sure. The Tagalos in town would rise, and it would mean a wholesale massacre.

Of course you know now all about the battle, for the night of February 4, 1899, is school-book history by this time. I doubt if there was any actual date set by Aguinaldo for rushing Manila, though he had considerable trouble keeping his cocky little niggers in order. If there was a time set, it wasn’t that night, anyway. The Filipinos were getting more insulting every day, and I suppose it was only a question of a week or so at latest. But I didn’t know it then. Everybody has heard by this time how the row opened, with a Nebraska private shooting at four Tagalos who tried to pass Block House No. 6. But all I knew was what Aguilar had told me, and from what I saw, it looked nasty enough to be true. I could see that the niggers were prepared to go into action at a minute’s notice.

So I waited and waited in the hut, dying by inches. I hoped I had been fooled, and feared that I wasn’t. I imagined by what I had seen that I was at San Felipe, on the bank of the San Juan River, where it joins the Pasig. If so, the Nebraska boys ought to be nearest me. My regiment was with Ovenshine, to the south of the city, camped near Malate.

I felt about the way you feel when a tempest is coming up, and I was just waiting for the first clap of thunder. Along about half-past eight, I should say, I heard a single shot ring out, and right off, as if it had been a signal, the Mausers began to crack over by the river. The fire increased steadily till they were shooting all over to the north in the Tondo District. Company after company of Filipinos ran past the hut, the officers yelling like mad. Still, there was nothing but Mausers going, popping like fire-crackers, and it seemed hours before the fire was returned. I was sure they had carried the town. At last I heard a volley of Springfields—I knew them by the heavy boom, and I knew then that the Nebraska boys had formed and had gone into action. I had been with the regulars long enough to look down on the volunteers; but when I heard that firing, I just stood up and yelled! It didn’t die down, but kept up steadily, and I was sure the boys were holding the Filipinos back, when the Utah light artillery got into action. Then, just like a thunderstorm, the noise slowly swept round to the south, and the Springfields took up the chorus down through Anderson’s Division; first the California boys and the Idahos of the 1st Brigade, till about three in the morning the regulars were engaged. Of course I had to guess it out from what I knew of the way our troops were camped, but I imagined I could tell the minute my regiment began to fight. The Astor Mountain Battery and the 6th Artillery began to answer the Filipino’s Krupp guns, and then till daybreak the battle was going on all round the town.

I waited for the Springfield fire to weaken, dreading that we would be driven in, but when it kept up as if it never would stop, I was sure that we had whipped them. The Filipinos began to retreat past the hut in disorder, the officers as badly scared as the privates. I was watching them, laughing, when four niggers broke into the hut, tied my arms, packed me on a mule, and rushed me off.

For four or five days I was carried back and forth behind the Filipino army, dodging out of every skirmish, as the Americans pushed Aguinaldo back all along the circle. One night we spent in Mariquina, and left early in the morning, while white flags were flying to lure our troops into the town. Then we travelled southwest towards Pasai. I wondered what they were keeping me for, and why they didn’t either kill me or let me go. Then I remembered what I’d heard of Spanish prisons, and I stopped wondering and began to pray.

We ended, finally, in a church the insurgents were trying to hold while our boys were getting ready to charge. I was driven up into a bell-tower half battered to pieces from our shells and filled with smoke. A squad of natives were firing from the windows.

There in a corner was SeÑor Aguilar, in the uniform of a Filipino colonel, and I knew that my case was to be settled at last. He looked black. I didn’t have long to wait this time. The niggers threw me down, and put a Filipino uniform blouse on me, taking it from a dead soldier on the floor. I didn’t try to resist. What was the use?

Then Aguilar said to me: “I hope you have enjoyed your journey, SeÑor Roberts. My men took care to make it as interesting as possible. A man who has the courage to refuse the hand of an Aguilar deserves distinguished treatment.” He got as far as that with his Spanish sarcasm, and then his native Filipino savagery got the better of him.

“You d—— fool, did you think for a moment that I’d let an American hound like you marry my sister? Do you think I would let a man live who had played with her? No, by heaven, nor die, either, except like a dog. I have let you live long enough to be hanged by your own countrymen. You’re a deserter, and I’ve given some interesting information to your spies. And you’ll be caught fighting in our ranks!” Then he drew his revolver and pointed to the dead Filipino on the floor. “Take that gun, and go to the window, and shoot down your brother dogs!” he cried.

I don’t know why I didn’t shoot him, instead, right there, but I had lost my nerve. I went to the window and fired at a bare space. And then, if you’ll believe it, I saw my own regimental flag coming up with Old Glory, as my own bunkies formed for the rush. It was Colonel Knowlton’s command that was to take the church. I don’t know what ever became of Aguilar, for I just stood up in the window and cheered as the boys came on. They charged with a yell that did my heart good to hear, for I lost myself and my danger watching the way they did the work.

But I remembered soon enough. The Filipino fire died away, and the insurgents scurried out of the building like rats. I was pulled back with them as they retreated, but as we crossed a dry creek bed I stumbled and fell. Just then a detachment of my own company came up, skirmishing, and saw me. I threw up my hands, and a corporal covered me. I knew him well; he used to drive in the little donkey-cart with me in Manila when I marketed.

He dropped his rifle and said, “Good God! It’s Roberts.”

I tried to explain how I’d been knocked out and captured, but they wouldn’t believe me. I had been posted for a deserter, and Aguilar had fixed me. All I could do was to ask them to shoot me right there, as if I had been killed in the battle. But they had cooled down some while I talked, and they couldn’t do it in cold blood. Finally, the corporal said:

“See here, boys, I enlisted to fight, and not to be a hangman. Roberts has messed with me, and I can’t do it. Perhaps what he says is true; I don’t know. If you want to arrest him, go ahead. But I’ll be darned if I want it said that the old 114th had to shoot a deserter. Come on, and let him take his chances!”

He turned his back on me, and they followed him. I ripped off my canvas coat and ran down the creek and hid till night.

There wasn’t a man on the whole island, nigger or white, who wasn’t my enemy, and I didn’t expect I’d ever escape. But there was a woman. She wasn’t exactly the kind you’d ever suspect of having a heart, but she saved my life. She hid me in a shed outside of the town, and fed me and nursed me till I was able to get away on a blockade runner and come to San Francisco. I owe that woman something, and if I’m ever flush again, she’ll get it back.

So it was a woman who sent me to the Philippines, it was a woman who got my promotion, a woman who tortured me like a fiend, and a woman who saved me. And the queer part of it is that the last one was what most people would call the worst of the lot!

Admeh Drake was seeing his own phantoms of the Philippines on his cot; the man with the yellow beard, Maidslow, alias Roberts, was looking with eyes that saw beyond the walls of the Hammam, when the Hero of Pago Bridge brought himself back with a jerk.

“You’ve told me all except how you got here,” he said.

“Plain drunk,” said Maidslow, “the first I dared get after I left the Islands. But it isn’t safe for me to stay in San Francisco, now Colonel Knowlton is back here. If Maxie saw through the beard, he will, and the place is full of Secret Service men.”

Admeh Drake suddenly jumped from the couch.

“What will you give me if I get that legacy for you?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“Done!” cried the Hero. “See here, it’s too easy! Colonel Knowlton don’t know your real name’s Maidslow, does he?”

“No, I enlisted as Roberts.”

“Dead to rights. He’ll take Maxie’s word when she identifies her husband to him. All right again. Well, let me play Harry Maidslow, and go with Maxie to the Colonel. I take my thousand, and you take the rest and—Maxie. How’s that?”

“If Maxie will stand for it, I’m ready,” said the deserter.

During the rest of the night, the man who went for a soldier and wished he hadn’t, and the man who didn’t go and wished that he had, lay in an upper corridor of the Hammam discussing the details of their conspiracy.