From Place to Place

truth of this just as the fictionist recognises and is governed by the opposite of it, each according to his lights. In recording the actual, the authe

abilities and the possibilities, else the critics will say he has let his imagination run away with

crew drivers and things, thereby accomplishing verities far surpassing the limit where common sense threw up a barrier across the pathway of Verne's genius. H. G. Wells never dreamed a dream of a

always, beyond peradventur

chide him for violating Rule 1 of the book of dramatic plausibilities, and quite right they will be too. But when the identical event comes to pass in real life-as before now it has-we merely say that, after all, it's a

ase that is a case in point of what I have just been saying upon this subject. If Old Man Coincidence had not butted into the picture when he did and whe

explicit about it, he made the Ginsburg boy's somewhat prominent nose to bleed extensively and swelled up Hyman's ear until for days thereafter Hyman's head, viewed fore or aft, had rather a lop-sided appearance, what with one ear being so much thicker than its mate

fight, his father being one who held by the theory that diplomacy ever should find the way out to peace when blows threatened to follow on disputation. With view, therefore, to proving his profound distast

g and Pasquale Gallino and carried them along differing channels toward differing destinies. While Hyman was in the grammar grades, a brag pupil, Pasquale was in the Protectory, a branded incorrigible. While Hyman was attending high school, Pasquale wa

st for some months, had been taken out of uniform and put into civilian garb as a plain-clothes man on the Headquarters staff. Here he was making good. Having intelligence and ener

and the Gophers, the Skinned Rabbits and the Pearl Button Kid's. Taking title from the current name of its chieftain, it was popularly known as the Stretchy Gorman gang. Its headquarters was a boozing den of exceeding ill repute on the lower West Side. Its chief specialties were loft robberies and dock robberies. Its favourite side lines were election frauds and so-called

iendly relations theretofore existing between one of the down-town district leaders and one of the powers-name deleted-higher up. Perhaps the newspapers had scolded too shrilly, demanding the house-cleaning of a neighbo

ho stood up in single-handed defence of his employer's premises and goods against odds of at least four to one. Swinging a cold chisel, someone chipped a bit of bone out of the watchman's skull as expe

embers of the Central Office staff and told them to go get Stretchy Gorman. Stretchy was to be gone after and got on the blanket charge-

s suspicious of nearly everybody on earth and that nearly everybody on earth had reasons to be suspicious of him. So, balancing one word again

ed Casane. These two frequently worked together. Pulling in double harness they made a dependable team. Both had wit and

king as follows, according to the mode of th

ut. My information is that he's usually there regular this time of the day. I've just h

all to know that this here alleged drag of his that the newspapers've been beefin' so loud about is all bogus. And then you fetch him here to me and I'll do the rest. Don't make no gun play nor nothin' of that nature without you

a chimpanzee's arm reach. Look at those arms of his and one knew why he was called Stretchy. How he had acquired his last name of Gorman was only to be guessed at. It was fair to assume, though, he had got it by processes of self-adoption-no unusual thing in a c

n ever had a skin of that peculiar brownish pallor, like clear water in a cypres

e short flight of steps leading from the sidewalk, went directly across the barroom to where the

t insurance company. The very sawdust on the floor stank of villainy; the brass bar rail might have been a rigid length of poison snake; the spittoons were small sinks of corrupt

rters men. Being what he was, he instantly would have appraised them for what they were had the meeting taken place in the dead vast and middle of Sahara

ers of his right hand had gripped the left lapel of his unbuttoned waistcoat. Thereat there had been a general raising of heads all over the place. Since the days of Jonathan

wn-tilted visor of his cap as they approached him. His arms we

y, pausing alongside him. "Ca

k in the curious flat tone that is affected by some of hi

a talk with you up at the front

put his open hands against the edge of t

But Ginsburg had edged round past Casane, ready at the next warning move to take the gang leader on the

alk with us two and then have a chat with somebody else. Unless you or some of your friends here feel like s

y got anything on me. And nobody's

ck the skirts of his coat, holding them aloft s

So don't you bulls try framin' me under the Sullivan Law for havin' a gat on me. There's half a d

e latter moved a step nearer their man and his practiced fingers ran swiftly over the unresisting form, feeling beneath the arms, down the flanks, about

Casane stated. "Just the three of us'll take a little stroll, like

d round to where his two underlings still sat at the table, both silent as the rest of the company were, but both plainly prepared fo

have me mouthpiece at Headquarters by the time I kin get there with these two dicks. Tell him

ll. All the same, the prisoner chose of a sudden to turn nasty. It was at once manifest that he aimed to give offence without giving provocation or real excuse for reprisals on the part of the invaders. He spat sidewise across Casane's front and as he took the first s

prisoner. "Don't you even know enough to excuse yo

he issue of a clash. "And it'll be all right your calling me a Jew. I am a Je

that

y thugs are singularly barren of power to d

"Oh, be chee! We ain't strangers-you and me ain't! We've met before-when we was kids. Down in Henr

tten memories in the young detective's brain and now-for

st Gorman wasn't his right name. I've forgotten what his right name is, but it's nothing that sounds li

licked the Jew," broke in the prison

and wiped clean a face that with passion had turned a mottle of red-and-whi

u good. The day'll come when I'll walk you in broad daylig

ight creditably. "You got nothin' on me now, Jew, and you never will have. Well, come on, you bulls, let's be goin' along.

im. Since they had nothing on him, he was let go after forty-eight hours of detention; but that is not

a campaign to harry the gangster to desperation by means of methods that are common enough inside the department, he might have invoked competent and willing assistance, for the word had filtered down from

n would. When he considered this prospect his mind ran back along old grooves to the humiliating beating he had suffered in front of the Henry Street school so long before and of a most

re had walked a detective whom Ginsburg in his mind knew by the name of Jawbert. Now he recalled how this Jawbert spent his life tracking

lacked of information-as an urchin, so many years spent in the protectory; as a youth, so many years in the reformatory; as a man, a year on Blackwell's Island for a misdemeanour and a three-year term at Sing Sing for a felony; also he dug up the

he worked on the famous Gonzales child-stealing mystery. He made two trips out to the Pacific Coast in connection with the Chappy Morgan wire-tapping cases.

sh descent. But in the second biggest police force in the world, wherein twenty per cent of the personnel w

ver to gather up a loose end of the evidence accumulating against Chappy Morgan, king of the wireless wire-tappers. It was nearly midnight

fire escape that bore strange fruit. The front line of a stretch of tallish buildings stood out in relief against the background of a wet moon

receiving from some unseen sources flat burdens that came down over the roof coping and passing them along to the accomplice below. The latter in turn stacked them upon the grilled floor o

, planning for the pair so intently engaged overhead a surprise when they should descend with t

enant. Your well-organised loft-robbing mob carries along a lookout who in case of discovery gives warning; in case of attack, repels the attack, and in case of pursuit acts as rear guard. In Stretchy Gorman's operations

ng no mistake either. At the end of the arm was a fist and in the fist a length of gas pipe wrapped in rags. This gas pipe descended upon the back of Ginsburg's skull, crushing through th

ounger brothers and sisters to be shepherded through school and into sustaining employment. So he waited for the draft, and when the draft took him and his number came out in the drawing, as it very soon did, he waived his

food finished the job of unlarding his frame. Shortly he was Corporal Ginsburg-a trim upstanding corporal. Then he became Sergeant Ginsburg and soon after this was Second Sergeant Ginsburg of B Company of a regim

en's sons with jaw-breaking names from the tenements. At the beginning the acting major general in command had been fond of boasting that he had representa

with new types and strange accents. Southern mountaineers, Western ranch hands and farm boys from the Middle States came along to find mates among Syrians, Jews, Italians, Armenians and Greeks. Cotton Belt, Corn Belt, Wheat Belt and Timber Belt contributed. Born feudists became snipers

lace. During its enactment we as a nation accepted it with calmness, almost with indifference. I expect

e case might be, a-swearing and a-praying as they went in more tongues than were babbled at Babel Tower; in other words, on the day when the never-to-be-broken Hindenburg line

chirp themselves awake found the men of this particular battalion in shallow front-line trenches on the farther edge of a birch thicket. There they

with a very few exceptions none of this outfit had been beyond the wires before. They had been under fire, some of them-fire of gas shells and of shrapnel and of high explosives in dugouts or in rear positions or as they passed along roads lying under

e might face a peril greater than that which now confronts him. Conceivably he might flop into a swollen river to save a drowning puppy; might dive into a burning building after some stranger's pet tabby cat. But this prospect which lies before him of ambling across a field with

sion that they go into battle unmoved, unshaken, unthinking. This leaves nine hundred and ninety who are afraid-sorely and terribly afraid. They are afraid

terribly afraid they are. It is this greater fear, overriding all those lesser terrors, that makes over ordinary men into leaders of forlorn hopes, into holders of last ditches, into b

themselves after curious but common fashions. To a psychologist twenty men chosen at random from the members of the battalion, wait

ful sounds and kept his free hand gripped into his cramping belly. That dread of being hi

ike and laughed at his own jokes. But there was a quiver of barely checked hysteria in his laughing and h

apt and picturesque oaths; but myself, I have never seen such a man. I should have seen him, too, if he really existed anywhere except in books, seeing

ectives, one double-jointed adjective-and these invariably are employed over and over again. The which was undeniably true in this particular instance. This man who swore so steadily merely rep

ed behind shelter. He spoke then, and his voice was plainly to be heard under the whistle and whoop of the shells passing over his head from the supporting batteries behind with intent

ool hasn't gummed things up the creeping barrage should be sta

g; the man who had sworn was mechanically continuing to repeat that naughty pet name of his for the Fritzies. Nobody, though, called on anybody else to defend the glory of the flag; nobody invited

he next as directly as might be-stepped along through a pale, sad, slightly misty light at rather a deliberate pace, to traverse a barb-wired meadowland which rose before them at a gentle incline. There was no firing of guns, no waving of swords. There were

ndful-were to be sacrificed under the haunches of the Hindenburg line while all those thousands of others who should have been their companions upon this adventure bided safely behind, held back by the countermand which through some hideous blunder had failed to reach them in tim

here and there was there a man who spun about to fall face upward. Those who were wounded, but not overthrown, would generally sit down quite gently and quite deliberately, with puzzled looks in their eyes. Since

ral barrier like a wall; and likewise for the first time he now heard the tat-tat-tat of machine guns, sounding like the hammers of pneumatic riveters rapidly operated. To him it seemed a proper course that his squad should take such cover as the lay of the

e enveloped in a reverse movement. It seemed too bad that the battalion should be driven in after suffering these casualties and without having dealt a blow in return for the punishmen

arlier, as he had imagined, was a considerable distance away from them, now that they had set their faces toward it. It did not seem possible that they could have left it so far behind them. Yet returning to it the men did not perceptibly hurry their s

self down into the trench. He faced about, peering over its rim, and saw that his captain-Captain

age. In that same moment Ginsburg saw how many invisible darting objects, which must of course be machine-gun bullets, were mowing the weed stems about th

trench and climbed out again into plain view. So far as he knew he was going as a solitary volunteer up

and half off his head. Ginsburg stooped, putting his hands under the pits of the captain's arms, and gave a heave. The burden of

his ribs. Thereafter for a space events-in so far as Ginsburg's mind recorded them-were hazy, with gaps between of complete forgetfulness. He felt no pain to speak of, but busybodies kept bothering him. It drowsily annoyed him to be dragged about, to be lifted up and to be put down again,

though he didn't know about that of course until subsequent inquiry enabled him to piece together a number of fragmentary recollections. For the present he was content to realise that he lay on a comfortable cot under a tight roof and tha

right was a member of his own company, one Paul Dempsey, now rather elaborately bandaged

Dempsey,

back Dempsey. "How you

ained or something and my

of shell casin' come and beaned me. It don't amount to much, though; just enough to get me a woun

ption which many before him had known and which many were to know

as lief not. You kin take it from me, I've had plenty of this gettin'

gether in the same tin Lizzie-you and me do-and now here we are side by each again. Well, there's a lot of the fellows we won't neither of

on like you was. Well, we busted old Mister Hindenburg's line in about nine places

ion walked into a whole cote of unsuspected machine-gun nests, but how the second battalion going up and round the shore of the hill to the left had taken the boche on the flank

aptain G

r you fell and fetched you back in first. I seen the whole thing myself-it was right after that that I got beaned

e one. "Say, was it this Goodman that kicked me in

rost over the top here come another lot of machine-gun bullets, and one of 'em drilled you through the ankle and another one of them bored Goodman clean through the shoulder; but that didn't keep him

et," protested Ginsburg. "It was more l

early everybody that gets hit comes out of his trance ready to swear a mule muster kicked him or somethin'. I guess that sha

to chamber many impressions at once. "I don'

placements that come up for D Company only the day before yistiddy. We

as the grizzled veteran of man

snatched you out of a da

" said Ginsburg. "And my old mot

iggest piece of news for the last. "If you've got anything to ask him just ask him. He's layin' there-right

nised it. That dark skin, clear though, with a transparent pallor to it like brown stump water in a swamp, and those black eyes between the slitted lids could belong to but one pe

ng already had told him that here revealed wa

ly. He drew a fold of the blanket up across his fac

y. "Not what I'd ca

while, though, a reaction of weariness began to blunt Dempsey's sprightly vivacit

ible eavesdropper, Ginsburg nevertheless spoke cautiously as again he turne

ing?" h

" gru

egin calling yo

my bus

now. Forget that I used to be on the cops. I'm asking you now as o

-when I first got

d you g

lis

? New

Cleve

ade you

this-thoid-d

en a man saves your life it puts him under an obligation to y

because I wanted to go straight a while. Maybe because I wanted to show that a bad guy could do somet

oes anybody know-anybody in the

ght call it an accident, th

. How's your record

as anyb

g on going straight after the war

ke it; only I've got my own priv

ch at it. Maybe when I get back I'd try workin' at it steady if you flatties would only keep off me back. Anythi

to you again about some thin

away from you for a while-not wit

eat of trouble and at once he was shifted south to one of the big base hospi

the district attorney and a few days later went to Albany and called upon the governor. A returned soldier whose name has been often in the paper and who wears on his uniform tunic two bits of ribbon and on his sleeves service and wound stripes is not kept waiting in anterooms these times. He saw the governor just as he had seen the distr

ther. I'm afraid, though, that you young gentlemen will have to wait a while for the rest of the details. They'll come out in time no doubt. But ju

pondents, divers city editors with the aid of their bright young staff men did put two and two together and they got a story. It was a peach of a bird of a gem of

of the district attorney went down the bay on the same tug to meet the same returning soldier-and he a private soldier at that. Each of these gentlemen had p

d privileges of citizenship; and thirdly, that in accordance with a prior and privy design, now fully carried out, the recipient of these documents had official guaranty, stamped, sealed and delivered, that when he set foot on the soil of these United States he would do so without cloud upon his title as a sovereign voter, without blemish on his name and

in print. Our duty here, though, is not to undertake a description of that parade, for such was competently done on that fine day when the crowd that turned out was the

h irresistible as a flood, broke the police dams and made of roadway and sidewalks one great, roaring, human sluiceway; and how the khaki-clad ranks marched upon a carpet of the flowers and the fruit and the candy and the cigarettes and the cigars and the

soms bits of metal testifying to valorous deeds-First Sergeant Hyman Ginsburg, keeping eyes front upon the broad back of the colonel who would ride just in advance of th

n the paper this morning that the police commissioner-the new one, the one tha

but wot of it?" answere

ght down at the Stuffed Owl when we met for the first time si

t say

Well, to-day, kid, I make good on that promise. The big chief's waiting for us up yonder in the reviewing stand along with the gover

n the crowd, took out his fountain pen and on his