station during the day.
“That? Oh, that’s nothing particular. It happened a couple of hours ago, and your head-quarters man has got all there is of it long before this.”
Van Cleef asked no further questions, but, making a few notes of the case, he bade the sergeant good-night, and he and Myles left the station.
As they gained the street Van Cleef said:
“Head-quarters may or may not have got hold of that case, and it may not amount to any thing anyway, but I think it’s worth looking up. So if you don’t mind going a bit out of our way, we will see what we can find out about it.”
“What do you mean by head-quarters?” asked Myles.
“Why, all the large papers keep a man at the Police Head-quarters on Mulberry Street day and night, and he telegraphs all important police news from there to them,” answered Van Cleef.
Away over to Tenth Avenue they went. There they hunted some time before they found the right number. Then through a narrow, intensely dark and vile-smelling alley, across a dirty court, and into a tall back tenement swarming with human beings, up flight after flight of filthy stairways they climbed to the very top of the house before they reached the room of which they were in search. Van Cleef knocked at the closed door, but, receiving no answer, he pushed it open and they entered.
A single flaring candle dimly lighted the scene. The room was so bare that a rude bedstead, a ruder table, two chairs, and a rusty stove constituted all its furniture. On the bed, still in its wet clothing, lay the body of the drowned man. It was little more than a skeleton, and the cheeks were white and hollow. Beside the bed, with her face buried in her hands, knelt a woman moaning, while from a corner two wretched children, huddled together on a pile of rags, stared at the visitors with big, frightened eyes.
As Van Cleef touched the kneeling woman on the shoulder and spoke to her, she ceased her moaning and lifted the most pitiful, haggard, and altogether hopeless face Myles Manning thought he had ever seen.
“Go away!” she cried, “and leave me alone to die with him! O Jim, my Jim! why couldn’t you take me with you? Why did you leave me, Jim – Jim – my Jim, the best husband that ever a woman had?” Then she again buried her face, and again began her heart-rending moaning.
It was a long time before Van Cleef, using infinite patience, tact, and soothing words could learn her story. It was an old one of a husband and father broken down in health, thrown out of employment, too proud to seek public charity, and finally plunging into the river to escape the piteous cries of his starving little ones. He had gone out that evening to seek food, saying that he would either bring it or never come back alive. He knew that if he were dead his family would stand a better chance of being cared for than while he was living.
As Myles and Van Cleef left this place of sorrow and suffering, the latter slipped a dollar into the woman’s hand and promised further aid on the morrow. Myles, poor fellow, was so affected by what he saw that he would have given her his sole bit of wealth – a five-dollar bill, – but his companion restrained him.
They had to hurry through with the half-dozen police-stations and two hospitals remaining on their route to make up for lost time.
Trinity bells were chiming a quarter to one o’clock as they reached the Phonograph office. The editorial rooms were ablaze with electric lights. Reporters and messenger-boys were dashing in and out. Men in their shirt-sleeves were writing or editing copy at the long desks. The whole scene was the one of breathless haste and well ordered confusion that always immediately precedes the going to press of a great daily.
Van Cleef made his report to the night city editor, and was ordered to write out his story in full. While he was doing this, Myles sat and watched him, wondering if he could possibly compose a readable description of what they had just seen amid such surroundings. At last Van Cleef finished, handed in his copy, and at half-past two o’clock the two weary fellows turned into bed, Myles sharing his companion’s humble lodgings for the night.
CHAPTER IV.
BEGINNING A NEW LIFE
VAN CLEEF seemed to fall asleep at once, but the novel train of thought whirling through Myles’ brain rendered it impossible for him to follow this example immediately. As he lay, with wide-open eyes, recalling the incidents of the day it seemed incredible that he had seen, and learned, and gone through with what he had, all within the space of a few hours. Could it be that he had left home prepared to give up his college life only that morning? He must send them a long letter, for they would be so anxious to hear every thing that had happened to him. As he said this to himself his thoughts merged into dreams so gradually that he had no knowledge of where the one ended and the other began.
“Wake up, old man, wake up! Here it is nine o’clock Tuesday morning and the week’s work yet to be done.”
It was Van Cleef’s voice, and as Myles sprang to a sitting posture and rubbed his eyes he saw his friend standing beside the bed fully dressed and looking as bright as if sleep were something for which he had no need.
“Yes,” he said, in answer to Myles’ inquiring glance, “I have been up and out for an hour, and I’m sorry to say that I have bad news for you.”
Myles’ expression at once became anxious. Had the city editor sent word that he had changed his mind and did not want him after all?
“You see,” continued Van Cleef, “I was worried about that dress-suit business. So I just slipped out without waking you, and went up to old Johnnie’s to get it; but I was too late. He sold it last evening; and so – there we are!”
“Then I suppose there is no use of my going down to the Phonograph office again,” said Myles, trying to speak with a cheerfulness that he did not feel.
“No use!” exclaimed the other. “Why, of course there is. You are under orders, you know, and must at least report for duty, whether you are wanted or not. The only thing is that you will have to tell Mr. Haxall.”
“Yes, I suppose I must,” answered Myles, soberly, as he began to dress, “and then he will probably tell me that a dress-suit, and not Myles Manning, was what he engaged, and that without it he has no use for its late owner. I suppose I can stand it, though, as well as another, but it will be a disappointment.”
“Of course it will if it comes,” replied Van Cleef, cheerfully; “but I do not believe it will. At any rate there is no use making matters worse by worrying in advance; so let’s brace up and go out for breakfast. I’m as hungry as a boot-black. By the way, I spoke to my landlady this morning and find that she has a vacant hall-bedroom that you can have for three dollars a week if you want it. It’s small, but it’s clean and airy, and this is a most respectable neighborhood. Above all, it is cheap, which is the main thing with me, and also, I take it, with you just at present.”
“Of course it is,” answered Myles, “and I shall be only too glad to be in the same house with you. You are almost the only friend I own now; at any rate, you are the most valuable one.”
As he spoke Myles found himself wondering if this valued friend could be the same class “dig” with whom he had been barely on speaking terms only the morning before.
At a small but tidy restaurant near by, they obtained an excellent breakfast of coffee, rolls, and boiled eggs, for twenty-five cents apiece. Van Cleef apologized for this unusual extravagance, saying that he generally breakfasted on coffee and rolls alone for fifteen cents, but that this was an occasion.
In
