Held to Answer/Chapter 27
Doctor Hampstead was more successful than he had dared to hope in his quest for the woman of the underworld to whom the Red Lizard, from his position in the county jail, acknowledged a tardy obligation. By five o'clock the sufferer was located, her condition inquired into, and the services of a nurse from the Social Settlement near by arranged for, with instructions that the minister be notified of any serious change in the patient's condition.
His breast warmed comfortably with the sense of duty done, the clergyman made his way toward the water front, congratulating himself that he would get the six o'clock boat and be at home in time for dinner; but as he walked through the ferry building, his eye was caught by a headline in one of the evening papers. "MINISTER TO BE ARRESTED" it proclaimed in tall characters of glaring black; and he reflected cynically at the eagerness with which the headline makers seize upon that word "minister" or any of its synonyms. It made the black letters blacker when they spelled minister, priest, or clergyman.
Wondering what preacher could have got himself in trouble, and feeling a slight sense of resentment at the creature, whoever he might be, to have thus brought notoriety and possible dishonor upon the calling, Doctor Hampstead bought a copy of the paper from fat Hermann of the crutch and red face, who has stood so many years at the ferry gate; but reading no farther than the headline, he doubled the paper in his hand and elbowed his way through the crowd to a seat on the exposed upper deck of the ferryboat. Wearied from the exertions of his day, the minister found temporary diversion in watching the fountains of humanity gushing up the stairways. Many of the people he knew, and those who saw him nodded as they passed. Once or twice it struck him that there was something peculiar in these glances of recognition, a startled look of surprise or wonder that he could not quite understand. Occasionally the bold look of a man he did not know but who apparently recognized him had in it a quality of cynicism or of gloating.
With a disagreeable feeling of embarrassment which he did not undertake to explain, the minister turned away from the crowd and fell to watching the sweep of bay and the plowing craft upon it. The fresh salt breeze was very grateful to his face and lungs after the noisome alleys through which his mission had taken him. The water this evening was amethyst blue, and under the prows of the passing boats broke into foam of marble whiteness. The sky above was a pure turquoise, except towards the west, where the descending sun kindled a conflagration of glory in the low-lying clouds. All this wealth of refreshing color and the tonic in the stiffening breeze made the world not only seem fresh and pure, but full of power; as if to give assurance that the ocean and the coming night were big enough and strong enough to swallow all the unpleasantness and all the weakness and wickedness of men, and send the sun up to-morrow morning upon a new day that was fresh and pristine, like the day of creation itself.
Hampstead remembered his prayer of the morning that this particular day might be a great one, and felt a trifle disappointed. In a kind of a way it had been big. Rollie Burbeck had come to him, broken and cowering. He had helped him; he believed he had saved him. Surely, for the time being, he had saved that gifted mother of his from the awful shock of knowing that her son was a defaulter and a thief. True, he had plunged heavily in rescuing that boy; yet the money came from people who believed in Hampstead sufficiently to give him of their surplus wealth for just such ventures. If the effort failed, they would regret the loss of the man more than the loss of the money.
Yet the minister really believed that Rollie was going to take the "way up", and assuring himself once more of this, fell to wondering how Miss Dounay received the penitent when he brought back the diamonds, and whether she had acted generously or spitefully. Speculating next whether the story of the return of the diamonds had been given to the newspapers yet, and anxious to know how they had handled it, if it had, Hampstead bethought him of the paper in his hand and unfolded it for inspection.
But the make-up of the front page forced his attention back upon the matter of the minister who was to be arrested. The sub-head startled him, for it contained his own name, while the opening sentence revealed that it was himself who was to be arrested, and that the occasion of the arrest was the charge that he had stolen the Dounay diamonds.
At the first impact of this astounding piece of news, an exclamation of amazement broke from the minister's lips; but immediately his teeth were set hard as his eye dived down the column, lapping up the words of the story by sentences and almost by paragraphs.
Miss Dounay, it appeared, had gone to the office of District Attorney Miller at three o'clock that afternoon by appointment, and had there sworn to a complaint, charging him, the Reverend John Hampstead, with the theft of her diamond necklace, valued at twenty-two thousand dollars. There were a few lines of an interview with District Attorney Miller, in which that official stated that at first he had not regarded Miss Dounay's charges seriously, but that the actress was so emphatic in her demand for the warrant of arrest that he had not felt himself justified in refusing it. At the same time, the District Attorney expressed his personal belief in the innocence of the minister.
An attempt to serve the warrant immediately, the story said, had been frustrated by the temporary absence of the Reverend Hampstead in San Francisco upon one of his accustomed missions of mercy.
The article concluded with the statement that while it was generally known that Doctor Hampstead was one of Miss Dounay's guests on the night before, the report that he had been charged with the theft of the diamonds was everywhere received with a smile, and there was some harsh criticism of the District Attorney for issuing a complaint, the only effect of which must be to gratify the enemies of the clergyman, and to lessen his influence, thus hampering him in the good work he was doing in the community. This would be all to no purpose, since even a preliminary hearing must be sufficient to show that there was no evidence against him, and that the complaint itself was due to the extravagant suspicion of a highly nervous woman, laboring under great emotional strain.
That the actress herself, a woman of moods and caprices, had no adequate appreciation of the seriousness of her act in thus attacking the character of Doctor Hampstead was made evident to the reporters, when a telephone call to her apartments revealed that in the very hour when an endeavor to serve the warrant of arrest was being made, the actress was leaving her hotel in the company of a well-known young business man for a pleasure cruise upon the Bay.
The minister saw with satisfaction how completely the facts as developed had been edited into a story, the assumptions of which were entirely favorable to him. That was good. It was also right. That in itself would show this reckless woman that the people would refuse to believe ill of him upon the word of any mere stranger.
Nevertheless, reflection on the sheer impudence of the woman's attack made Hampstead angry, and with a quick, nervous movement he crushed the paper into a ball and hurled it over the side.
Was there ever a story of blacker ingratitude? Was there ever a weaker, more craven specimen of a man? Was there ever a more clever, more devilish woman?
So this was the way she made good her threat. She had set this trap, had persuaded Rollie to pretend to steal the diamonds and to make a false confession to him, during which the minister had actually sealed the diamonds in one of his own envelopes. John wished he could be sure whether the young rascal actually took the diamonds away with him, as he appeared to do, or whether he didn't drop them in a drawer of the desk or about the study, where a search would reveal them.
With facial expression quite unministerial Hampstead's mind raced on to the question whether the story of the defalcation was also trumped up? But at this point his excited mental processes halted, puzzled for a moment; and then abruptly his face cleared, as he saw the untenableness of his suddenly conceived theory. No; it would not do. Rollie had undoubtedly been perfectly sincere, and this scheming Jezebel of a woman had merely taken advantage of him in the moment of confession, and made him either consciously or unconsciously, and perhaps helplessly, a tool of her desperate vengeance.
And vengeance for what? Hampstead kept asking himself that, and never got farther with an answer than the rage of a self-centered, heartless woman at his failure to pay the supreme tribute to vanity by making love to her as once he had done, and giving her the gloating satisfaction of spurning him as she had spurned him before. This was the extent of his crime against her, and this bold, bald attempt to destroy him was the punishment she had devised. Heavens! Had the woman no sense of responsibility at all? No consciousness of all the terrible harm she would be doing to so many others besides himself if she succeeded in ruining him? Think of the men and women who trusted him, the young boys and girls to whom he was pointed out as a shining example, the struggling people who found inspiration and courage in the spectacle of his own dauntless battlings for the right.
John felt that it was not egotism to think of himself in this way. He knew it as a fact because he had to know it, because men told him so continually, and because it was a supremely steadying influence upon his own life. He dared not swerve. Rollie Burbeck was not the only man in the community who owed him for escape from a fall, or who was toiling laboriously upward, with an eye on the minister climbing far above and turning cheerfully to beckon or lower an Alpine rope for part of the weakened climber's load.
And the Dounay woman knew all of this. Some of it he had shown to her in the hope that it would be an inspiration. Some of it she had seen for herself. But now, in her malice and hatred, she took no account of all that. Unable to make him swerve, she was wickedly determined to hurl him down. And having used Rollo Burbeck this far, John had no doubt at all that her genius would be entirely equal to using him still further, by binding him to absolute secrecy as to his knowledge of the minister's innocence.
But this thought brought home another with shocking force,—the realization that Rollie, the one man who could vindicate him of this charge must not vindicate him! For Rollie to speak and ruin himself seemed only fair, rather than for the minister to be ruined; yet for the young man to confess would be a terrible blow to the mother,—would in fact most likely kill her. That was unthinkable. That blow must be prevented at all hazards.
But even eliminating the mother, and supposing the young man too craven to speak out for himself, Hampstead knew, thinking back a few hours, that on his honor as a minister he had sealed his own lips concerning the young man's confession; he had hinged his appeal to the moral consciousness of that misguided youth upon his own fealty as a priest of God to the sacred trust of confession. How presumptuous this afternoon sounded that speech which he had made to the wretched penitent this morning with such easy assurance.
Yet, presumptuous or not, Hampstead's reasonings had led him quickly to the one outstanding fact: His knowledge of who did steal the diamonds could never be used in his defense. His vindication must depend solely on the inability of Miss Dounay to prove her case. This in itself put him in a negative and an unnatural position, an all but helpless position. His nature was aggressive. He was a fighter, not a "stander." Instead of vindication, he could never get more than a Scotch verdict of "not proven." He would have to face the community with that. Well, thank God, he was strong enough for that; strong enough to simply stand and endure! Yes, testing his moral fiber by the best judgment he could form of what the strain would be like, he felt equal to the load. In the consciousness of this strength, his shoulders stiffened with pride and a sort of eagerness to take up their burden. A sense of triumph even came to him. This self-deluding woman should see how strong he was, and how unshakable was the faith of the community in the integrity of his character.
But when the minister, rather calmed by having hardened himself thus against what appeared to be coming upon him, lifted his eyes suddenly from the deck, he was disconcerted to observe a group of people eyeing him curiously at a distance of some dozen or twenty feet. These were people whom he did not recognize, but some one of them evidently knew him and had pointed him out to the rest. He reflected that they must have been watching him for some time. No doubt they had observed his demeanor as he read the paper, and afterwards when he tossed it away in anger. He must have made quite an exhibition of himself, and it gave him a creepy sensation to catch these curious, unfeeling eyes upon him as if they viewed the struggles of a fly in a spider's web. It made him feel that he was entangled, and he began to realize what a diversion his entanglement would afford this whole metropolitan community, and that to-night, through the headlines in the papers, everybody was watching him just as these people were. He reflected, too, that there is a fascination about watching the fall of a tall tree, of a tall flagpole, or of a tall human being. At the moment Hampstead did not feel so very tall; yet he knew that deservedly or undeservedly, he was upon a position of eminence, and his fall would afford an interesting spectacle.
However, he did not intend to fall. Rising vigorously from his seat, the minister confronted with a smile the group who had been gazing at him. "Good evening, gentlemen," he said pleasantly, and walked toward the front of the boat.
"Some nerve, what!" was a comment that broke out of the group as he passed it. Whether the words were meant for his ears or not, they reached them and caused another smile.
"I'll show them nerve!" he mused, with foolish but very human pride.
Mingling in the crowd which trampled and elbowed its way off the boat, the minister was careful to bear himself with open-eyed good cheer. He kept his chin up, a self-confident smile upon his face, and his eyes roving for a sight of familiar faces. Whenever he caught the eye of an acquaintance, the greeting he bestowed was hearty and betokened a man without the slightest cause for anxiety of any sort.
Nevertheless, it was disturbing to perceive that people rather avoided his eye. Generally quite the reverse was true, and it was rare upon the boat that some one did not approach him and fall into conversation. Yet so subtle is that mysterious psychology of the social impulse that now a mere publication of the fact that he was to be arrested, even accompanied, as it was, by the statement that nobody believed him guilty, had yet sufficient influence to make him shunned. What a silly world it was, after all!
But in making the transfer from the ferry to the suburban train, there was a walk of two hundred feet, with a news stand on the way, and then fresh disillusionment lay in wait for Doctor Hampstead, in the form of a later edition of another Oakland paper.
"CLERIC FLIES ARREST," bawled this headline stridently.
The minister's lip curled sarcastically at sight of this, but he bought the paper, reading as he walked to the car steps. But the sub-head was more disturbing. "Hampstead's Premises Searched," it declared, the types seeming to scream the words exultantly.
Searched—and in his absence! This was outrageous! More; it was alarming, for there were papers in his study which he had good reason for keeping from the eyes of the police. Fortunately, however, the most important of these were in the safe deposit box. He felt deeply grateful now for this box, the key to which was in his pocket; and after a sympathetic thought for Rose, Dick, and Tayna, and the excited, bewildered state in which they must have received the officers, the clergyman turned his mind to a contemplation of this new account in detail, and thereby got his first real taste of what an unfriendly attitude on the part of a newspaper can make of the most innocent circumstances.
Up to now, the minister, his utterances, his denunciations, even his moral crusades, had been popular. The papers had put the most favorable construction upon all his acts. Their columns and their headlines had done him respect and honor. But now this paper had put every circumstance in the worst possible light. It cleverly touched up those scenes in the picture which looked incriminating and left the others unillumined, until one would never gather from the story that there was any reason to doubt the guilt or the guilty flight of the minister.
Hampstead attributed this to mere unfriendliness, never suspecting that in one hour between editions an editor could have subtly sensed a popular readiness to accept the worst view of his case, and deliberately pandered to it as a mere matter of commercial newsmongering; nor that this unfavorable account was to be accepted as the first straw blown up in a hurricane of adverse criticism which would rise and sweep over the city and blow its very hardest in the aisles of All People's Church itself.
The effect of this narrative upon Hampstead's mind was unspeakably oppressive, and he looked up from its perusal with relief and pleasure at finding a well-known physician in the seat beside him. The doctor was prominent in the work of one of the Encina churches, and had been particularly sympathetic with Hampstead in campaigns against petty crime. The minister had a right, therefore, to feel that this man was one of his friends; yet the physician greeted him with a self-conscious air and immediately relapsed into silence. Hampstead endured this until the humor of the situation forced itself upon him.
"Oh, cheer up," he laughed, poking the physician with an elbow. "You probably know worse people than diamond thieves."
The doctor also laughed and disclaimed any sense of gloom, but his was an embarrassed merriment, and he refrained from meeting the eye of the minister. However, after another interval of silence, as if feeling that he should at any rate say something, he reached over and laid a patronizing hand upon the minister's knee.
"Of course, Doctor Hampstead," he suggested, "every one is confident you will be able to prove your innocence."
The minister made an ejaculation that was short and sharp.
The doctor looked at him with surprise, as if questioning whether he heard aright.
"Under the law, I thought a man was presumed to be innocent, and that his accusers had to prove his guilt," went on Hampstead.
The doctor flushed slightly, and while his eyes roved through the car window, declared:
"Well, I am afraid, Doctor Hampstead, you will find that a public man against whom a charge like this is hurled is presumed to be guilty until he proves himself innocent."
"That is your attitude?" inquired Hampstead coldly.
"Oh, by no means," protested the physician.
"It is his attitude all the same," commented the minister to himself, somewhat bitterly, as he descended from the train at the station nearest his home.
"How does he take it?" asked one sage citizen, crowding into the vacant seat beside the physician, while a second leaned over from behind to hear the answer.
"Very much worried," replied the doctor, as gravely and as oracularly as he would have pronounced upon another man's patient. "Very much worried!"
"Would you believe," the physician inquired presently of the first citizen, with a hesitating and extremely confidential air, "would you believe that Doctor Hampstead would say 'hell'—outside of a sermon, I mean?"
"No," answered the man addressed, "I would not," and his eyebrows were lifted, while his whole face expressed surprise, shock, and a desire for confirmation.
"Well," concluded the doctor enigmatically, "neither would I." And that was all Doctor Mann did say upon the subject, yet citizen number one, while casting the dice with citizen number two at the Tobacco Emporium on the corner next the railroad station to see which should pay for their after-dinner smoke, communicated in confidence that the Reverend Hampstead had, in the stress of his emotion, uttered an oath; in fact, and to be specific, had said that his persecutors, all and singular, and this actress woman in particular, could go to hell!
This conference between citizen one and two may have been overheard. An inference that it was so overheard might have been drawn from the columns of The Sentinel, which next morning concluded its story of the remarkable developments of the night with the observation that the character of the minister was evidently cracking under the strain, since last night upon the suburban train, when a friend addressed him with a solicitous inquiry, the accused clergyman had broken into a stream of profane objurgations loud enough to be heard above the roar of the train in several seats around. It was added that the reverend gentleman quickly regained control of his feelings and apologized for his form of expression by saying that he had been overworked for a long time and the developments of the day had seriously upset him.
John Hampstead read this particular paragraph in The Sentinel with a sense of utter amazement at the wicked mendacity of public rumor, since what he had said to Doctor Mann was merely "Humph!" uttered with sharp and scornful emphasis.
But there was a far bigger story than that in the morning Sentinel. It had to do with those things which happened between the hour when John Hampstead dropped from his train, a little irritated with Doctor Mann, and the hour when he went to bed, but not to sleep.