The Detectives

SITTING at his small, rough, unpainted table in the lower end of the little public garden, the young man surveyed the scene with slow, indifferent eyes.

Twoscore such tables were disposed in a scanty grove of young trees, and twenty persons sat about gossiping and sipping the beer fetched by two mussed waiters. A harp, a flute, and a fiddle tinkled popular airs intermittently in a corner. Much trampling had worn the coarse grass so thin that the sandy soil appeared to be coming up through it. The leaves stirred very softly in the hot, still sunshine. In the intervals of the tinkling it was so quiet that when one of the two policemen, off duty, in the upper end of the garden, gave a big, vigorous laugh, everybody looked around.

Coming in, the young man had noticed the policemen. He looked at them now with an apathy which was like the dying down of his last sense of contact with the world. Even policemen were only passive and idle figments in a scheme of things all idle and indescribably remote. All of those beings at their little tables, — it seemed to him that he had only to wink his eyes and they would vanish ; the broad, hot, still sunshine would pour over a garden empty of all but him. He thought that he did not care, particularly. Caring was too active a state of mind. He felt the perception of a sorrow so big and immutable that any merely human activity was quite grotesque. For some moments, indeed, he occupied himself with staring at the untouched mug of beer before him, watching the swift dissolution of the froth bubbles. He fancied they were lives foolishly winking out in dozens, while he watched, idly changeless. He did not taste the drink. Once there had been too much of that, — so recently that the malty smell now touched his nerves with a subtle repugnance, and he pushed the mug aside. It was a thing that he had been through like all the rest. Perhaps it was well enough to stand in the very bottom of the trough and calmly take account of one’s self there ; to be at the farther side of everything, sad, indifferent, waiting for nothing.

But he was to have some company, after all.

A chubby man carrying a baby, and accompanied by a little girl, was coming up to the next table. They too were very poor, and the young man tacitly admitted them to a place beside his solitude.

The chubby father let the baby slide into one of the heavy wooden chairs, and the little girl instantly busied herself, motherwise, smoothing out the child’s rumpled frock of clean faded calico, placing his fat legs to give a better balance in the big seat, straightening the cheap wide straw hat, ludicrously too old, that was fastened with a string under his double chin. The girl herself looked not more than ten, — a slim little thing, with a round, homely, freckled face, a clean faded calico frock, and a straw hat just like the baby’s. The chubby father had a rosy, good-humored face, and bright dark eyes almost as infantile as the child’s.

When the waiter came up, there was a colloquy in a foreign tongue between the father and daughter, in which he seemed to be urging her on. Finally, very shyly, looking into her lap, the maid said in so low a tone that the waiter stooped to hear, “ One glass of lemonade.”

The waiter hurried away. The little girl bent her head still lower and folded her hands, as though she felt conspicuous before the world ; but the young man could see her smiling in a childish, self-conscious way to herself, and he understood the proportions, the rareness, of this tremendous treat.

Presently the waiter returned, bearing on his battered tray a tall glass of lemonade. The disks of yellow lemon lay amid the cracked ice. There was a red cherry at the bottom. Two long golden straws protruded from the glass. The little girl looked at it with a kind of solemnity, not offering to touch it at first. The father, his hand in his pocket, but forgetful of the waiter for a moment, twinkled and beamed at her and at the whole lower end of the garden. His shining face turned to the solitary young man as though asking him to appreciate this precious joke.

The maid drew the glass slowly to the edge of the table, while even the smiling, indulgent, mussed waiter forgot his trade. She put her mouth to the straws and took a long drink. She ceased, and looked at her father, drawing the corner of her lip between her teeth, laughing a little, and slowly shaking her head in a confusion of gratitude, self-consciousness, and satisfaction that was too much for words.

The father gave a chuckling, gratulatory laugh ; drew a nickel from his pocket and laid it on the table.

“ It’s fifteen cents,” said the mussed waiter.

The little girl gave a startled glance, and pushed the glass quickly from her in a frightened way. " I drank only a little,” she murmured involuntarily.

The chubby father stared at the waiter, and slowly comprehended. His bright eyes fell. One could see his shame, as though his nakedness had suddenly been exposed. He searched his pocket, and finally drew out a dime, which he laid on the table. The mussed waiter swept it into his hand, under the startled, helpless glance of the little girl.

The father, still very grave, murmured a word consolingly. But the maid sat back from the table, far withdrawn from the ruinous glass. Again she looked into her lap. Her meek freckled face showed the tragedy of the lost dime.

The young man stared over at them. He was nervously fingering the few coins in his pocket; but he had a curiously abeyant sense, as though he were looking, waiting for the climax.

The baby began clamoring. The maid leaned over, drew his fat little body up against her and kissed him loudly. She looked hardly the bigger of the two.

Suddenly, as though that loud kiss were the cue, the young man’s heart began beating fast. Far within him he felt the deep human sap moving aright with precious pains and longing. A mistiness came into Ids eyes. He wished to say : “ Dear people, come over to me. We have been wounded with the same arrow. — you with your dime, and I— The same dog has bitten us both.”

The chubby baby slid, turtle-like, from his chair, and began making some excursions over the trying ground. The young man pulled his hat over his brows, so that he could just see the stumbling little feet, the uncertain little legs, the bobbing skirt of the poor clean calico frock. By and by the adventurer came that way ; stooped in a funny, awkward posture, and peered up at the face that was shadowed by the hat brim. In a moment the young man got out his watch. Holding it under the edge of the table, where only the child would see, he made the case fly open and snapped it shut. The baby came over. The bait was delivered into his eager, brown little hands. The young man, very gently and circumspectly, as one lands a big fish, lifted him to his knee, softly, slyly hugging him. He surreptitiously felt the sturdy little legs. His fingers closed over the fat little hands, under pretense of showing how to operate the watch spring.

The young man was careful not to look over at the other table. They might not understand. They might take the child away. But when the baby tugged hard at the watch chain the little girl spoke reprovingly, and came over to keep him to his good behavior. Then the young man perceived that she too had her curiosity respecting the watch. He opened the case for her, made the hands move forward and back, showed how the watch unsnapped from the chain. She was leaning against his knee, quite absorbed. Presently the father came over, nodding in brisk amiability, his chubby, ruddy face shining with goodfellowship. When the young man pushed out a chair he sat down. In a moment the conversation was going like this : —

“ Yes, the watch is ten years old, — as old as you. I have had it that long.”

The girl interpreted to her father. The father nodded vigorously, beaming. With gestures and nods he spoke twenty unintelligible, disjointed words with increasing emphasis.

The little girl explained : " He says his father had a watch forty years.”

“ Do you go to the public school ? The English school ? You speak English well.”

“ Oh yes, sir,” said the girl. " I can read and write English.”

The father caught the word, and wagged his head briskly. " Write! Write ! Fine ! Good ! ” He lifted his hand and made flourishy motions of writing in the air.

The girl smiled with shy pride. The young man thought she would like to give an exhibition of her skill. She looked at the lead pencil which the baby had fished from the young man’s pocket. But there was no paper.

Presently the girl asked, " Are there works in your watch ? ” She was holding it very gingerly.

“ Oh yes ; you can see them. Press the spring, — no, this way. Now open the other lid with your thumb nail, or have your father do it.”

The maid and her father were admiring the nest of little wheels. He was explaining to her, benignantly ; she was pointing, her finger carefully held off from the costly mechanism. But the baby was interested, stooping and reaching with eager, clumsy hands. A determined lunge brought the chubby fingers too near. The girl snapped the inner case shut in time. The young man shook his head at the baby, smiling softly.

The maid looked at the shining closed inner case. By and by she suggested, “ There ’s a nice picture in your watch.”

“ Yes, — a picture.” He took the watch in his hand. On the inner side of the lid was a photograph of a young woman holding a baby. The baby’s face was laid against hers. She was smiling a little, proudly, fondly.

The young man stared down at it. He scarcely heard the girl saying, “ Do you know the lady ? ” and he answered mechanically, " Yes, I know the lady.”

The photograph was faded, but to him it seemed to be coming to life. The fixed lineaments seemed ready to move, the lips to speak, the eyes to lighten, the absurd, belligerent baby fist to open and reach out.

The maid was asking, far away, " Is it her baby ? ” He was answering, somewhere, " Yes, it is her baby.”

He raised his eyes and looked slowly over the garden. His glance rested a moment on two conspicuous figures at the upper end.

He closed the watch and put it in his pocket, and turned to the little girl with a faint smile.

“ So you can write English ? ”

“ Yes, sir.”

“ Let’s see you write something for me.”

He gave her the pencil. In his coat pocket he found a crumpled laundry bill, which he spread on the table, the blank side up. The maid, pencil in hand, squared herself before the paper, looking very important.

“ At the top of the paper here write 'Walter.' Can you spell ' Walter’? Now capital ' F ’. Then capital ' L ’ and ' o-v-e-r-i-n-g ’. ' Walter F. Lovering.’ That’s good. Then under it, ' S-y-r-ac-u-s-e. New York,’Now under that ‘Wanted.' You can spell ' wanted,’ can’t you ? The next is a hard one. Begin with capital ' E’, then 'm-b-e-z’, now another ' z ’ and 'I-e-m-e-n-t ’. There! ”

He surveyed the result in the girl’s large upright childish characters.

“ Now take that, just that way, and run over there and show it to those two policemen, and tell them I sent you. Oh, it will be all right. You ’ll see. One of the policemen is a friend of mine, and I’m going with him. Just say I sent you.”

He spoke with some authority, but he nodded encouragingly. The girl obediently trotted away. The father, who had followed the nods and gestures, looked at the young man, then after the girl; not understanding, but beaming at the odd game, whatever it might be.

But the young man did not look after her. His eyes were averted. His nervous hands fumbled at the baby a moment. Then he lifted the child to his breast and laid its arms around his neck. He felt the jerky motions of its little limbs against him. Its hands brushed about his neck and hair.

He heard a heavy footfall near the table, and looked up at the big blue-coated officer who stood by, evidently puzzled, but ready. He kissed the baby, handed it over to the father, and stood up.

“ I ’m the man,” he said quietly.

The policeman looked down at his piece of paper, folded it methodically with his big fingers, and put it in his vest pocket.

“ I remember something about it,” he said, as though he felt under a kind of politely social impulse from the circumstances of the affair. “ It was a bank, was n’t it ? ”

“ Yes, a bank.”

“' Bout six months ago?” the officer suggested.

The young man gave a long sigh.

“Four months,” he answered. He drew his hand across his eyes. Then, quietly, as one making a reasonable explanation of an odd action, he added, “ My God, I want to go home.”

Will Payne.