text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/208

 the prow of each boat. Your naval man raises his flag amidships, but these were landsmen. They were inordinately proud and satisfied with their small armada as it strung out in the inlet, headed for Hurricane Island. The hour was about four o'clock in the afternoon of a day in late July. A vivid beauty lay upon land and water. Life seemed playful and happy.

They shouted to each other from boat to boat; they protested loudly their contempt for Bolsheviks, homeborn or foreign-born. They threatened this lone and obstinate insurgent Siwash with many bullets; nervously they worked the mechanism of their shotguns, or rifles or revolvers; yet sneeringly they assured themselves and each other, that an Indian would never think of resisting when he saw himself borne down upon by such numbers. Therefore, it was the strategy of Admiral Hogan to keep his armada massed, a demonstration in force. As the string of boats emerged from the channel and approached the island, by dint of much motioning and shouting, their commander got them into an abreast formation and at reduced speed they drew in toward the little landing.

There was no sign of life on the island. It was as still as if its defender had fled. And yet Sheriff Hogan, mindful of that ricocheting bullet, was awed and cautious. Intuitively, his posse fell into the same mood; voices were lowered, oaths muffled. The silence, the unmoving silence of that green-bushed island seemed somehow ominous. A hundred sharpshooters might lie concealed in any one of its leafy headlands. A realization that from a military point of view their position was highly exposed—they could be seen, but they could not see—made for subdued enthusiasm.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/208


text:
Page:Formal Complaints about the Conduct of The Right Honourable Dominic Raab MP, Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Justice.pdf/24

 101. There has been a series of inaccurate and misleading media reports about the investigation. I do not propose to set out a list. The level and frequency of such media reports, and the perceived risk that some individuals were prepared to use others' confidential information for their own purposes, had significant potential to deter people from coming forward as witnesses. I cannot assess whether or to what extent this in fact happened.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/209

 But there had been too much hot blood in their veins, too much stirring of elemental passions for the men to be long held in check by a mere state of mind. Somebody wantonly shouted a taunt at the silent greenery, and another hurled an obscene epithet. Sheriff Hogan, hesitant and uncertain, overcome by caution and wary of this taciturnity of leafy barricades took out of his pocket the process of the court.

"I'll read this to him, boys," he said, "and then we'll close in on him." He stood up, braced himself and began to read in hoarse, bellowing tones:

"In the Superior Court of the County of Socatullo and State of" He had got that far, his huge voice echoing into the cove, and undoubtedly penetrating a considerable distance into the green lanes of Adam John's homestead, when Nate Hampton, nervously fingering his pump gun, twitched the trigger. The weapon roared.

"What in the devil!" everybody seemed to exclaim at once, and glared at Nate, who sat looking shamed and silly, when abruptly from the green barriers in front of them issued a vicious spat and s-s-splug went something on the broad front of Sheriff Hogan. He placed his hand upon his stomach and looked around him with an expression of fierce wonderment as demanding what joker had struck him thus, and as determining to visit resentment on the irreverent one. But an instant later he was swaying, a sick look on his face.

"Lord, boys! I'm shot," he cried in mystified surprise, and sat over backward in the bottom of the boat. The process of the court had fluttered from the sheriff's astonished hand and floated now upon the blue bosom of the channel, quite unregarded.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/209


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/210

 "Hell! He's shot Jim!"

Somebody remarked this curiously; then all at onee everybody was firing—at whatever spot in the green seemed to the firer's fancy the one from which the bullet had sped. The shotguns roared; the rifles and the automatics cracked and spat and spat and cracked. But there came no answer from the island. Yet instead of advancing upon the cove the armada was retiring. Without orders, each engineer, perforce a noncombatant, had instinctively reversed his engine. Eventually the futility of further firing under these conditions made itself apparent.

"Perhaps we got him!" suggested one excited voice.

"Perhaps we didn't too," scorned another. "An Indian would know enough to duck behind a tree. He's probably laying there ready to pick off the next one of us he wants, if we shove in close again."

"Look, I can see a sort of a cabin. By Jinks! It's got a flag on it. What do you know about that! Defying the law with a flag!" Men stared at each other blankly.

"Probably this Indian is in the shack by now. It's log-built—a regular fort."

Everybody took a shot at the shack on the chance. There being no responding shot, by a sort of common consent, the armada gradually put about and followed the boat containing the wounded sheriff which was already heading back down the channel. The attack upon Hurricane Island had been repulsed.

As they were lifting him to the ambulance at the dock, Sheriff Hogan murmured: "Get that damned Siwash for this, boys." Then he gulped and died.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/210


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/211

HE news of the tragedy ran like a flame through the streets of the town. Within five minutes the Blade had it bulletined; men were telephoning it home to their wives, and Sergeant Thorpe, a man of discernment and sympathy, was communicating it to his chief in his committee room at the State Capitol.

"Terrible!" groaned Henry. "Hogan had a wife and a whole raft of kids, didn't he?"

"Six," said Thorpe, "and the town is wild. They're raising a regular army; they'll get Adam John at daylight, but the worst of it is, he's sure to get some more of them first."

"Of course he is, the obstinate fool!" But Henry was suddenly conscience-stricken. "The poor devil!" he ejaculated, beginning to remember. Self-reproaches stabbed him. He was thinking: "I ought to have given Adam John more time, made sure that he understood about the law. I'm to blame for this, in a way. Really, I am."

The voice of Sergeant Thorpe broke in: "If they take him alive, they're going to lynch him in front of the courthouse for an example to the whole radical element, Salzberg and his crowd, Soderman and his Bolsheviks, and these stubborn Indians too that are always ducking the white man's law."

"But they mustn't do that, Thorpe," insisted Henry, autocratically, exactly as if he had the power to com-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/211


text:
Final statement of extraordinary joint Arab Islamic summit

The Final Statement of the extraordinary joint Arab-Islamic summit which concluded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia today, condemns the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip and the war crimes and massacres committed by the colonial occupation government against the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The Statement demands an immediate stop to aggression.

The Statement rejects describing this retaliatory war as self-defence or justifying it under any pretext. It calls for breaking the siege on Gaza and imposing the immediate entry of Arab, Islamic, and international humanitarian aid convoys into the Gaza Strip carrying food, medicine and fuel. It calls for the participation of international organisations in this process and protection for aid crews to enable them fully to carry out their role. It also calls for support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

The Final Statement supports all steps taken by the Arab Republic of Egypt to confront the consequences of the brutal Israeli aggression on Gaza and to support its efforts to bring aid into the Strip in an immediate, sustainable and adequate manner.

The Statement calls on the UN Security Council to take a decisive and binding decision that imposes a halt to the aggression and curbs the colonial occupation authority in its violation of international laws and legitimate resolutions.

The Statement also calls on all countries to stop exporting weapons and ammunition to the occupation authorities, which are used by their army and terrorist settlers to kill Palestinian people and destroy their homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches and infrastructure.

The Final Statement calls on the Security Council to take an immediate decision condemning the barbaric Israeli occupation forces’ destruction of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, their prevention of the delivery of medicine, food and fuel to them and their cutting off electricity, water and basic services, including communication and Internet services.

The Statement says this constitutes collective punishment that represents a war crime according to international law. It adds that the resolution should require Israel – as the occupying power – to abide by international laws and resolutions and immediately abolish these brutal and inhumane measures (the latest relevant resolution being UN General Assembly Resolution No. 25 of October 26th).

The Statement says that the UN Security Council's failure to act represents complicity that allows Israel to continue its brutal aggression that kills innocent children, the elderly and women and that leaves Gaza devastated.

The Statement also stresses the need to lift the siege that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip for years. The final statement also calls on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to complete the investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in all the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem.

The Statement also stresses the importance of supporting the legal and political initiatives of the State of Palestine to hold officials of the Israeli occupation authorities responsible for their crimes against the Palestinian people. These initiatives should include the advisory opinion process of the International Court of Justice. The Statement says the committee established by the Human Rights Council resolution to investigate these crimes must not be obstructed.

The Statement calls for assigning the Secretariats of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to establish two media monitoring units to document the crimes of the occupation authorities against the Palestinian people, and to create digital media platforms to publish them and expose these illegal and inhumane practices.

The Statement instructs the Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (in its capacity as Chair of the Islamic and Arab Summit) along with the Foreign Ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria and Palestine, as well as any other interested countries, and the Secretary-Generals of the two organisations, to initiate immediate international action on behalf of all member states of the OIC and the League to stop the war on Gaza and exert pressure to launch a serious and real political process to achieve lasting and comprehensive peace in accordance with approved international references.

The Statement calls on the member states of the OIC and the League to exercise diplomatic, political and legal pressure and take any deterrent measures to stop the crimes of the colonial occupation authorities against humanity.

The Statement denounces the double standards in the application of international law, warning that this seriously undermines the credibility of the states that protect Israel from international law and the credibility of multilateral action. It says this exposes selectivity in applying the system of human values and emphasises that the positions of Arab and Islamic countries will be affected by double standards, leading to a rift between civilisations and cultures.

The Final Statement also condemns the displacement of about 1.5 million Palestinians from the North of the Gaza Strip to its South as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and its annex of 1977. It further condemns the killing of journalists, children and women, the targeting of paramedics, and the use of internationally prohibited white phosphorus in the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

It condemns repeated Israeli statements and threats to return Lebanon to the “stone age,” and calls on the states party to the agreement to take a collective decision to condemn and reject such actions and statements.

The Statement calls on all United Nations organisations to confront the attempt of the colonial occupation authorities to perpetuate this miserable inhuman reality. It emphasises the necessity for the immediate return of the displaced to their homes and areas and the necessity of preventing the expansion of the conflict.

The Final Statement calls for reaffirming adherence to peace as a strategic option, to end the Israeli occupation and resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict in accordance with international law and relevant international resolutions, including Security Council resolutions.

The Statement emphasises adherence to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative with all its elements and priorities and the holding an international peace conference.

The Statement says that as soon as possible, a credible peace process should be launched on the basis of international law, legitimate international resolutions and the principle of land for peace. It says this should be within a specific time frame and based on the implementation of the two-state solution with international guarantees, leading to an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, the occupied Syrian Golan, the Shebaa Farms, the Kafr Hills, Shoba and the outskirts of the Lebanese town of Al-Mari.

The Statement urges the activation of the Arab and Islamic financial safety net in accordance with the resolution of the fourteenth session of the Islamic Summit Conference and the resolutions of the Arab Summit, to provide financial contributions to pay for financial, economic and humanitarian support to the government of the State of Palestine and UNRWA. It stresses the need to mobilise international partners to reconstruct Gaza and mitigate the effects of the comprehensive destruction caused by the Israeli aggression.

The Statement instructs the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States and the Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to follow up on the implementation of these resolutions and present a report to the next session of their councils.


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/212

 mand. And he very nearly did, such was his standing in the community by this time. "See Scanlon at once; tell him I'm driving down, and, for God's sake, to hold things until I come."

"I'll tell him," said Thorpe, then volunteered: "But he and Edmunds are egging 'em on—if you ask me. You'll have to hurry, chief."

"Hurry? . . . I'll fly!" promised Harrington; and roaring up the hills and dipping into the valleys, swinging round perilous curves, and dashing madly over straightaways, he drove the seventy miles that lay between the State Capitol and Edgewater.

Harrington found the courthouse corridors packed with excited men, breathing vengeance, loud in denunciation, loud in demand to be led instantly to Hurricane Island—demanding, on his appearance, that he, Henry Harrington, become their leader; but he put them off and made his way to the inner office of the late sheriff. Under-Sheriff Jordan was there, ostensibly in command; but the real commanders were about him, Tom Scanlon, Dan Edmunds, Steve Quackenbaugh and Jim Gaylord, stout upholders of the law, all four of them. In a moment like this greetings were dispensed with.

"Ain't this the devil, Henry?" demanded Scanlon.

"It's awful," confessed Harrington, with a shake of his head. "I'm sure sorry for poor old Jim."

S what comes of coddling these lazy Indians anyway," declared Quackenbaugh, with venom; and, it was true that Adam John, take it all the way through, had caused Quackenbaugh a good deal of trouble.

S what comes of coddling law-breakers of any kind, white or Indian," amended Gaylord. "You take that

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/212


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/213

 Socialist, Salzberg; he's still fighting the title case, and Soderman, Bolshevik to the core—no more respect for our institutions than anything. We've tried every way to pacify him about that power site, everything short of giving the property back to him."

Scanlon looked impatient. This was no time for academic discussion. "The point is this one Indian and what he did this afternoon," the Chief Counsel affirmed. "The whole county's up. I've been sort of holding them until you got here, Henry; but the boys are wild about Jim and rarin' to go."

"I'll make that unnecessary," said Harrington with quiet decision. "I'll go out and get the Indian myself. I saved his life once, he'll mind me like a dog. Pledge me your word that if I bring this man in, you will defend his life as you would your own." Henry thrust out his hand. Each man took it, reluctantly, perhaps, but each took it.

"We've got to keep our word to Henry," recognized Gaylord, first to speak after Harrington left.

"How the dickens can we?" inquired the under-sheriff. "The boys are all het up. They'll hang that Indian as soon as they get an eye on him."

"We've got to get the crowd dispersed somehow," perceived Edmunds.

"Strategy," suggested Tom Scanlon, skilled in subtleties. "Let 'em go after the Indian, but not yet. Pass the word along, Jordan, that you start in an hour. Edmunds has got a dozen boats waiting. You've got thirty cars volunteered. Start 'em in two coveys. They'll go out and thrash around all night; and by the time they find out that we tricked 'em a little, they'll be cooled off enough to be glad we did it."

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/213


text:
Talk:Final statement of extraordinary joint Arab Islamic summit

Report or statement
This is a report on what the statement said.

It seems to me that the actual statement is shown here - https://www.spa.gov.sa/en/N1996072 -- Beardo (talk) 12:35, 14 November 2023 (UTC)


text:
Page:Peterson's Magazine 1842, Volume I.pdf/8

Rh

It was a golden sunset, and the fair waters of the Brenta, flowed on sparkling with unwonted effulgence, while the western sky glowed, like a city on fire, along the summits of the distant hills, when a young man of noble exterior, but simply attired in the guise of a student, might have been seen wending his way through the rich grounds attached to the summer palace on the Brenta of the Vivaldo family of Venice. From the caution with which the student moved—now concealing himself in the shrubbery if a footstep was heard approaching, and now venturing out, when the footstep had passed, but yet moving only through the most secluded pathways—it was evident that he was there on some secret mission. That his object was not mean or unworthy, however, might have been seen by the most casual glance at his face and mien. His brow, scarcely concealed by his low student's cap, was high and ample; his dark eyes shone with a brilliancy and genius that betokened him of no common order of mind; and the whole character of his face was that of a high-minded, resolute, and intellectual man. Nor was his bearing less marked. His figure was singularly beautiful; graceful, well-knit, and athletic—and the proud step with which he strode on his way might well have become an emperor's son. His progress, however, was soon brought to a close, by his arrival before a small ruined Gothic chapel. Here he stopped, but instead of entering the ruins, he noiselessly secreted himself in the neighboring shrubbery, and watched cautiously to see if the chapel was tenanted.

A slight rustling, as of a female dress, soon convinced him that the person he sought was already in the ruin, and withdrawing from his concealment he advanced toward the chapel; but before he had gone many steps he stopped, as if involuntarily, to gaze on her he sought. Often had he looked on that fair girl before; but now she seemed to him even lovelier than ever. And rare and wonderful indeed was her surpassing beauty! At the moment when her figure met the vision of the young student she was leaning on an old ivy grown tomb of some crusading knight; and chance, as if to heighten her extraordinary loveliness, had placed her in a position where every thing around seemed to be arranged after the most picturesque effect. Far away in the background could be seen the landscape, dotted with woods, villas, gentle hills, and here and there the glittering waters of the Brenta; while over all the declining sun had flung a mantle of glory such as Guido, with almost divine inspiration, has transferred to the canvass, to be at once a reproach and wonder to the world. In the rear, and on the right of the maiden, rose up the shattered shaft of a window, with a portion of the rich tracery work above, all covered with ivy, still hanging from the top. On the other side of the fair girl was a massy cross, rude and grey, yet unshaken by time—a fitting emblem of that religion of which it is a type, and which, in the words of Holy Writ, "endureth forever." But the maiden herself!—she was the all in all of the picture.

The age of the maiden could not have been more than nineteen. Her tresses were of that pale gold so rare under an Italian sky, and her dark soft eye was of the deepest azure tint. She was attired in a simple white dress, with no ornament but a rose placed in her bosom. Her hands, on which she leaned, were folded on a book; but her eyes were cast pensively down, betraying that her thoughts were far away from the storied page.

Her features were exquisitely moulded, and yet her face was full of expression. The snowy forehead; the classic eye-brow; the dark, soul-lit eye; the small, rosy, pouting mouth; and the cheek, that one would have thought chiselled out of marble, but for the delicate rosy tint which pervaded its thousand veins,—these alone would have made their possessor remarkable every where for her beauty; but when to them was superadded her expression of countenance—that looking forth of the inner soul through the features—so holy, sweet, and pensive, so womanly, and yet so angelic, earthly melancholy softened by a heavenly endurance-when all these were superadded, we say, the whole produced on the spectator's mind, an impression of exceeding loveliness—a loveliness such as no sculptor has rivalled, and which even Raphael, that most glorious of painters, has but feebly shadowed forth. The student's eye brightened as he gazed, and he murmured to himself half audibly.

"Sweet girl—she is not all forgetful of me then, as they would have me believe. She even now, perhaps, is thinking of me, and of our mutual difficulties—else why so sad?"

The last words were spoken unconsciously in a louder tone, so loud indeed that they attracted the maiden's attention. She started, looked up, and while the crimson blood dyed her cheek, brow, and even bosom, advanced joyously to meet the student.

"Beatrice—my own sweet one," murmured the lover—for such the student was—"do I again see you after so long an absence, in despite of your unnatural stepfather, I may almost say in despite of Fate itself?"

"Yes, Adanta," said the lady at length, raising her head from his bosom where for a moment it had reposed, and looking smilingly, yet with all a woman's devotion, upon her lover's face, "we meet once more-and oh! how unexpectedly. But when,—how, whence did you


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/214

 Fiften minutes after Under-Sheriff Jordan had notified his impatient cohorts of an hour's postponement in the advance upon Hurricane Island, Henry Harrington, in the pitchy black of a moonless and starless night, was standing at the mouth of Cub Creek. A brooding silence lay upon the channel and the shadowy bulk of the Edgewater & Eastern's island. This silence Henry wakened with a shout. No answer came; but when he had twice repeated the call: "Adam! Adam John-n-n!" an owl hooted on the island. At least he had attracted the attention of an owl, and the owl was of an inquiring mood.

"Who? . . . who? . . ." demanded the bird of the night.

"Harrington! Henry Harrington!" sharp and clear, slightly irritated, went the answer to the owl.

The bird hooted once more, but on a descending cadence, as if its thirst for information had been satisfied. A minute or so later, Harrington heard another sound—a bass drumlike note, echoing from low upon the water; it was the casual beat of a paddle upon the side of a dug-out canoe. But it was not Adam John who stepped lightly out when a keel grated upon the gravel at the mouth of the creek. It was Lahleet. This was their first encounter since that angry parting of two weeks ago in Henry's office. But there was no stiffness in her manner.

For one thing she was too overcome by anxiety, too grateful for his coming. Besides, in very truth, she had never lost faith in Harrington. Within an hour after her impetuous, wrathful little soul had emptied itself in vitriolic denunciation on his head, she had been ready to trust him fully once more, believing that she read

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/214


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/215

 him more truly than he read himself. She thought, too, that by her maneuver of leaving the fate of the Shell Point Indians in his hands entirely, she saved him as well as them, by raising an issue so acute that it was bound to make clear to his conscience the wickedness of John Boland.

His appearance here and now she took as confirmation of her faith; she construed it at once as friendly, and after her naive fashion met him entirely without restraint or any sense of the necessity of apology or explanation.

"Is the sheriff dead?" she asked anxiously, laying hold upon Henry's arm.

"Yes," Harrington answered sorrowfully. "Take me to Adam John, will you?"

When Harrington found Adam John, he was in the lodge, standing beside the table on which lamplight struggled through a smoking chimney. A rifle lay where once the golden twentics had glittered. The Indian was at attention; but the expression of that absurdly twisted and pasty yellow face with its features only half emerged, was stolid, obstinate and a little defiant. "Adam—Adam John!" reproached Harrington, with a lump in his throat. "You have killed Sheriff Hogan."

The Indian swallowed, after which a sigh escaped him, as of relief at a suspense that had been ended. Then he sulked: "Sheriff shoot first."

"But that was an accident—a shot in the air. You made an awful mistake, Adam John. They're calling you a Bolshevik, an anarchist. They say you are a coward to shoot a man from ambush. I know that you are not a coward. I want you to prove it. The court-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/215


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/216

 house in Edgewater is surrounded by a mob clamoring for your blood. I want you, unarmed, to go back with me tonight, to walk right through that mob and surrender to Under-Sheriff Jordan. I have seen you dare death before and I want you to dare it tonight. Will you?"

The Indian's ferret eyes brightened at the challenge; but he hesitated, features working. "Me go," he announced presently.

"You must realize fully what you are doing, Adam," warned Harrington. "They call you a murderer. They say you were sore at the law and took your grudge out heartlessly on poor Jim Hogan—Jim, with a wife and six kids.

"If you come in, I want you to say to the officers that you are not a lawless person and that to prove it, you are willing to submit your cause to a jury—all the facts—just the way they appear to you. It is a very solemn thing that I ask of you, Adam, because if they decide that you are guilty, you will be sentenced to hang." Hang! How terribly the word echoed in in this little lodge where an adolescent citizen had dreamed his crude but happy dreams. "Are you up to that, old fellow—what I have proposed? Or is it too much?" Harrington's tone was affectionate and considerate.

Adam John was thoughtful; he took time to review his first acceptance. "If you say that right thing, me do it," he decided, drawing himself up proudly. Then his features began to work as if he struggled to bring to birth some inchoate, half-formed idea that motivated his actions. "Me fight once for that," he labored, pointing upward toward the peak of his lodge where

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/216


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/217

 both men knew a fog-faded emblem floated in the night. "Mebbe so that flag fight for me now. . . . You think so, mebbe?"

Harrington was touched by this notion of the flag as a symbol of the guarantees of this nation to its citizens. That was not a bad idea at all; the badness only entered when Adam undertook to assist the flag by pumping a bullet into the stomach of the sheriff.

"Those man come with flag. They fakers, robbers. Flag no rob . . . you think so, Lieutenant?"

"You bet your life not, Adam," averred Henry, feeling more and more sorrow, more and more affection for stupid, mistrusting yet trustful Adam John. "The flag will give you a square deal—never doubt it."

As Adam John and Henry were driving into Edgewater, a most unusual succession of blinding lights of motorcars streamed by them; but the streets of the town were deserted and the courthouse was silent.

About eight o'clock next morning, however, the streets of the town began to be filled with some scores of wearied, disgusted and sheepish men who clamored and questioned and swore and tried to explain themselves in various ways. Two of their leaders, George Miller and Danny Simpson, thought to compare notes with Harrington himself.

"And so," concluded Miller, "we shot up the shack at daylight and then burned it."

"Burned it?" Harrington's tone was incisive. His brows were lifted and frowning.

"To the ground. Nothing left but ashes. Just burned it, to—to kind of relieve their feelings, the boys did."

This residence that Adam John had built by his own

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/217


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/218

 hands and dreamed his dreams in, burned to ashes by sworn deputies. That was another operation of the law that a mere Siwash would find difficult to understand.

"But that was an act of lawlessness," frowned Henry. "What right had you to burn Adam John's house?"

"What right! The damned killer. Why didn't we have the right? It'll throw the fear of God into others of 'em too."

Harrington looked into the indignant faces thoughtfully and was silent, smothering something.

"Henry, you know, is a kind of a nut about this law-and-order stuff," elucidated Miller to Simpson as they went down the steps.

As soon as the banks were open, Henry sent Thorpe out for some currency. It was lying on his desk when Lahleet came in. He greeted her with a cordial smile but hers was a trifle wan. She was worn and anxious.

"You know what they did?" asked Henry.

"I saw the smoke—the savages!"

"Anyway, it helped them to vent their rage cheaply. There is no more talk of lynching; and our only consideration now is Adam John's defense. Here!" Henry shifted the paper-weight and took up and laid down before the girl's astonished eyes five one-hundred-dollar bills. "Take this down to Stacey Thompson and give it to him as a retainer. Don't tell him where it came from. I think it best for both of us that I should not appear in the matter, but I am going to see that Adam John has a fair trial. Promise him any fee he may demand. It will be forthcoming."

The girl's soul was in her eyes. She held her hand off from the money and then accepted it, timidly at

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/218


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/219

 first, then fondling the bills. "Henry!" Her tone was tremulous with gratitude. "I will pay you back."

"You've done that already, Lahleect," answered Henry; "with your friendship—with your trust. Run along now and get Stacey Thompson hooked up. There isn't a jury in the world will convict Adam John of raurder with Stacey defending."

In the course of the same morning, two leaders of the marine division of the sheriff's army drifted upstairs to talk with Harrington, perhaps to make sure he had been entirely innocent in turning their expedition into a wild-goose chase. Henry had satisfied them as easily as the others and listened to them casually.

"What do you know, Henry!" blurted Bingo Ellis. "Some of the gang found a grave on the island. Not exactly fresh, but not so old, neither."

Twas me saw it first," explained Ivan Olson. Somebody's been digging here, sometime; wonder what for,' I says, and begun scratching just with one of those entrenchment spades that some guy brought along out of his army kit. Well, we went down and there was a blue flannel shirt, and a fellow inside of it."

"Fellow with a lot of yellow whiskers."

Harrington was considerably excited by this information but concealed any unnatural interest admirably. "Yellow whiskers?" he observed as in wonderment, remembering the blond goatee of Count Eckstrom and his mysterious double.

"Nothing left but bones and whiskers, flannel and corduroys, just like a lumber jack, but silk underclothes. What do you know about that?"

"Did you examine the body for identifications of any kind?" asked Henry, yet managed to ask it casually.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/219


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/220

 "Nothing identifying, no," answered Ivan. "Marks had been cut off the clothes, pockets empty, only thing was a broken rib and busted backbone, like a bullet had crashed through him from front to back."

"Been dirt done on that island, all right—not so long ago either," opined Bingo. "It must have been the Siwash. I expect there's more graves there, if we'd take a look. Oh, that Indian's a bad one. Probably he's been killing people and burying them out there right along."

"Not probably—no," objected Henry. "Remember, I know Adam John. He's not that kind of an Indian."

It was late when Lahleet got back to Harrington's office—four in the afternoon.

"Did you retain Thompson?" asked Henry, eagerly.

"Just. He has been at home asleep all day."

"Well, I be darned! Thompson was in that bunch. Well, that won't hurt," decided Henry on reflection. "Makes him solid with the town, and when he fights for Adam John it will have all the more force. But, say, did you hear they found a grave out there on the island?"

"Yes," said Lahleet—so quickly, so quietly, so resignedly, that Harrington felt himself instantly warned off the subject by every instinct of chivalry.

Consequently he did not tell her that already he had rushed out to the island to examine the grave and every shred of its contents for clues to the mystery of the stolen twenty thousand and had found none.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/220


text:
Page:Formal Complaints about the Conduct of The Right Honourable Dominic Raab MP, Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Justice.pdf/25

 C.

(1) Introduction

102. I have in this section set out as many generally applicable findings of fact as possible, without thereby disclosing, or risking the disclosure, of confidential information. I acknowledge the difficulty for participants, many of whom went to considerable effort to assist the investigation and some of whom were taking a risk in respect of their careers.

103. I have concluded that it is necessary to include details of evidence provided by two individuals (Sir Philip Barton and Antonia Romeo) because the findings were sufficiently important and there was no practicable means of making those findings public without disclosure of their identities. Those individuals have been given the opportunity to comment on the content of the report only in so far as it referred to them and only for the purpose of ensuring that the release of confidential information went no further than necessary.

(2) The timing of the Complaints

104. The MoJ Group Complaint had in substance been communicated within the MoJ in early March 2022. It was not treated as having been made pursuant to any particular procedure. Steps were taken internally within the MoJ to address the content of the MoJ Group Complaint. The MoJ Group Complaint was not put to the DPM in March 2022 and there is no evidence to suggest that he was shown a copy of it. It was released to the media and many of the allegations were made public in November 2022.

105. The MoJ Group Complaint, once treated as a formal complaint in November 2022 and this investigation had been commissioned, led directly to the making of the MoJ Additional Complaints. The MoJ Additional Complaints could have been made earlier, although that timing did not make a material difference to their cogency or the DPM's ability to address them.

106. The FCDO Complaint was also made in view of the media reporting about the MoJ Group Complaint. The specific nature of the circumstances of the FCDO Complaint meant that the passage of time did not materially diminish the DPM's ability to respond. However, other matters which arose in the course of the investigation into the FCDO


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/221

OPULAR imagination connected Adam John irrevocably with that bullet-crushed rib and vertebra, and Harrington saw that in this state of the public mind a fair trial for the Indian was impossible. He was brooding at his desk, slightly embittered at the uni versa] hardness of heart, when Lahleet rushed in, laboring under great excitement.

"Now, will you believe me?" she cried, eyes snapping; and, as once before, from the red silken hand-bag she plucked out a crumpled paper and flung it on his desk.

But Henry held off his hands this time. "What's this? Another stolen document? Lahleet!" His voice was thick with reproach.

Business strategy! sneered the girl. "I came by it at least as legitimately as Boland is coming by Hurricane Island."

"Hurricane Island?" inquired Henry, and curiosity overcoming scruples, he took up the paper.

For a moment there was silence, as with some pretense of deliberation, he flattened out two typewritten pages—silence save for the crackling of the linen bond—and then sudden explosive utterance: "A lease of Hurricane Island from the Edgewater & Eastern Railway Company to the Boland Cedar Company! By heavens!" he cried in outraged tones. With leaping glances Harrington gutted the pages of their meaning and his eyes lighted with understanding. "The Edge-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/221


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/222

 water & Eastern is a fiction," he divined excitedly. "It was created to get the island away from Adam John. The minute this paper railroad got a legal title it leased it to Boland."

He noted the date. "They could hardly wait to execute the document; and then, when, that same afternoon, Adam John shot Hogan, they were afraid to put it on record. It would look too bald—too—oh, Lord! Lahleet, this is rotten, rotten! Wherever you got it, it's rotten. But—it saves the life of Adam John," he assured solemnly, shaking the document till it rattled. "If Tom Scanlon thinks he can put over a thing like this on me, on this community—upon Mr. Boland, I'll fool him!"

Anxiety took wing from the worried face of Lahleet Marceau. "Now, Henry," she beamed admiringly, "now you are your real self again."

Harrington frowned confidently. "My real self? Don't you doubt it. I've been my real self all the time. This is just a rotten scheme of Scanlon's and Quackenbaugh's, maybe. I'll bust it even if I have to drag them both before Mr. Boland and expose them. Lahleet, you're a wonder! All you have to do now is to go back to your school and wait; and you won't have to wait very long either. I'm going to walk sixteen steps around the corner right now and make somebody sick."

Sixteen steps around the corner was the office of Thomas Scanlon, Chief Counsel. "Read that!" exclaimed Henry, bursting in upon him.

Scanlon's sparse brows were elevated in surprise and his astonished features mirrored some very quick thinking. "I have read it," he exclaimed grumpily.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/222


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/223

 "In fact, I wrote it myself. Where the devil did you get it?"

"No matter!" Harrington's tone was stern and his gray eyes got a steely glint in them, as he accused. "Scanlon! You, not Adam John, murdered Sheriff Hogan!"

Scanlon twisted uneasily. "Not me," he scowled with a deep flush. "The old man hatched that scheme."

"You mean to tell me," cried the outraged young man, "that Mr. Boland not only knew about this crooked scheme to trick a poor Indian out of his land, but that he actually devised it himself?"

"That's the God's truth, Harrington," asserted the Chief Counsel solemnly.

Eyes blazing indignant disbelief, but without another word to Scanlon, Harrington turned on his heel and went across the hall, face white and determined. When he was finally permitted to enter the private office, Mr. Boland was just hanging up the telephone. He extended his hand and it was velvet-soft: he offered a cigar and his manner was graciously hospitable—deliberate, unhurried and unrestrained.

But Henry was not this time to be put off his course by mere purring placidities. He gave back a pressure less responsive than he had ever given back to the clinging fingers of John Boland; he declined his perfecto with something less of urbanity than it had been offered; and he flung down the once more crumpled pages of the lease upon the glass-topped table and demanded firmly: "Mr. Boland, do you approve of this?"

That gentleman, betraying not the slightest perception that Harrington's manner was unusual, took up the document with curiosity as if he had never

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/223


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/224

 seen it before—which was perhaps the truth. He read it carefully from the first line to the last and then from under his beetling brows looked at Henry. "Seems sound," he observed meditatively.

"Sound?" gasped that young man.

"It'll hold, I judge," declared Mr. Boland, as with satisfaction at a good piece of legal carpentry.

"Hold!" cried Henry, feelings unbottled. "Do you mean that you are satisfied with that document, Mr. Boland? Do you mean that it seems commendable to you? That you do not see the iniquity of it? Do not see that it is a mere trick—a subterfuge? That it may conform to the letter of the law, but that it is a gross perversion of the spirit of it? That it makes the law a mockery, a pretense, a sham? That it makes of Jim Hogan not an officer of the law but a highway robber? And that he wasn't any more sacred because he was your highway robber?"

Mr. Boland sat suddenly rigid, his features hard as some glacier-chiseled face upon the Devonian rock. "My highway-robber?" he rebuked cuttingly. "You are not so happy in your choice of words today."

"I'm not happy—I'm not happy about anything this morning, Mr. Boland," Henry confessed, letting down a little. "I'm very much distressed. I'm all shot to Pieces and that's the truth. Why, Mr. Boland, you amaze me! You strike me silly when you stand for a thing like this. It looks to me wrong, all wrong, every bit of it wrong. Or—am I?" Harrington wiped his brow and sank into a chair to sit gazing with a bewildered air at Mr. Boland.

"You are!" assured Mr. Boland with emphasis, as he returned Harrington's scrutiny calmly.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/224


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/225

 "But think, Mr. Boland," Henry pleaded desperately. "What an opportunity to emphasize respect for law in the abstract! What a dramatic contrast! John Boland against Adam John—a white empire builder with all his millions and his mighty dreams against one little half-breed Indian, with his little dreams and his beautiful faith in that piece of parchment which Uncle Sam had given him. And suppose you had bowed to the parchment—all your enterprise halted by that—scrap of paper? It would have been wonderful! It was your chance to be sublime!"

Mr. Boland condescended to smile at such naive enthusiasm. "You are a sentimentalist, Henry," he allowed; then proceeded to differ. "It couldn't have been sublime because it wouldn't be morall to permit a great program like ours to be held up by the obstinacy of one ignorant little Indian. It is due to the crude inadequacy of the law that we have to resort to this, as you say, subterfuge."

"It was a murderous subterfuge," groaned Henry, sinking low in his chair, utterly depressed by the opacity of Mr. Boland's mind upon the subject.

"Most unfortunate, that affair," agreed Mr. Boland with fine regret. "But we have to be men of stout heart, Henry—stout heart, if we would accomplish big things."

The expression upon the Boland countenance was once more entirely benign. There remained but to dramatize the conviction that he had won another victory. He did that by taking up the lease from his glass-topped table. Methodically he smoothed its rumplings, asking no questions as to how they came there; deliberately, affectionately almost, he folded the

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/225


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/226

 document and creased the folds; then casually handed it back to Henry—this indisputable evidence of a transaction that was fraud and a killing that was murder. This was his advertisement that he felt his project secure and believed that Henry Harrington had no menace in him. Henry accepted the document silently and lifted his eyes, marveling.

But there could be still another dramatic emphasis. Mr. Boland imparted it by rising and reaching for his hat, with Henry still sitting confounded. "You don't mind my leaving you?" suggested Old Two Blades. "Stay here as long as you like. It's as good a place to think it out as any."

"Not in the least," said Henry politely, and was left staring as, after an affectionate pressure upon his shoulder, Mr. Boland, still wearing his benignest smile, carrying his gloves and gold-headed cane, looking dapper as his slender, elegantly tailored figure looked always dapper, crossed the room and went out by his private exit to a private stairway that led downward to a covered court from which there was inconspicuous egress to the street.

Just why the architect should have been instructed to provide this private getaway for J. B. from his office, Harrington did not speculate; but slowly rose and addressed the door as if it were the man who had just gone through it.

"Mr. Boland," he began in a low firm voice, "I know that you are wrong, utterly and everlastingly wrong. Unjustly, cruelly and murderously wrong . . . underneath all your blandness. Why is it that I cannot tell you so as forcefully as I feel it?" The door did not answer. "But do not mistake my dumbness. As sol-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/226


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/227

 emnly as I can assure you of anything, I tell you now that this project shall never go through." If Henry had ever meant anything in his life, he meant this. "Why is it," he mused, "that I can't talk to him? It must be because he is Billie's—Billie!" He interrupted himself. "Billie, I'll get Billie to help me. She'll make him see it!" But he interrupted himself again. "By the Almighty!" he breathed. "I can't go to Billie and point out with a diagram and an x-marks-the-spot that her father has connived at a low fraud and is accessory to a murder."

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/227


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/228

ENRY turned back to Scanlon. "Say! Help me to get Mr. Boland to see the wrong of this thing, won't you?" he appealed earnestly.

"You haven't got me to see it yet, Henry, "reminded Scanlon bluntly; "and you're not going to."

Quackenbaugh proved equally stubborn. "You couldn't expect us to sit quietly by and see our mill program held up by one stubborn little Siwash, could you?" he sniffed.

"Blind—blind as the rest of them," mourned Henry, as he went back sickly to his office. The next morning there was an important item in the Blade. It began:

Henry smiled grimly. "Smoked 'em out, anyway," he chuckled; but the chuckle died. The item was confession of fact, but it was also defiance—notice that the project was to be carried forward whether or no. Besides, it was clever strategy; it kept any contrary person from making a sensation out of this disclosure.

It is understood [expounded the item] that the Cedar Company will take advantage of the facilities offered by the railroad by immediate erection of the largest shingle

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/228


text:
Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 6).pdf/73

 (and could you or I have got into the cabinet, or stood behind the curtain, we should have found it was so) been weighed, poized, and perpended—argued upon—canvassed through—entered into, and examined on all sides with so much coolness, that the of  herself (I do not take upon me to prove her existence) could neither have wished it, or done it better.

Of the number of these was my father's resolution of putting me into breeches; which, though determined at once,—in a kind of huff, and a defiance of all mankind, had, nevertheless, been pro'd and conn'd, and judicially talked over betwixt him and my mother about a month before, in two several beds of justice, which my father had held for that purpose. I shall explain the


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/229

 mill in the world. This mill will give employment to hundreds of persons and is but the first of many benefits which will accrue to Socatullo County through the new railroad.

"So that's the game!" perceived Henry. "Bribing the whole community—blinding it with self-interest, as Scanlon and Quackenbaugh are blinded."

Now to blind a community eye seemed to Henry to be planting dynamite under every interest of a man like John Boland, all of whose enterprises were ultimately so dependent upon the good will of the people. Conscientiously, therefore, he determined to see Mr. Boland again, and for once was satisfied with the force of his argument; but it was evident that Old Two Blades listened with more self-control than patience.

"Nonsense!" he answered. "Snap out of it! Wake up! I am beginning to be annoyed with you, Henry!" There was a glitter in the recessed eyes and the thin lips clamped with just the faintest suggestion of a twenty-three-ton vault door closing noiselessly, yet closing—till the tick of time should open it again.

Henry gained a feeling that an immense and relentless personal force had manifested itself to him. Yet he, Henry, did not feel bitter against Mr. Boland. "It's Scanlon and Quackenbaugh," he accused. "They've got him fooled completely. He told me once he was entirely surrounded by liars. I told him I'd tell him the truth—always. I'm trying to now, and . . . he won't let me."

Henry had become a very much harried young man. He was not sleeping well. He was not working well. Even his love for Billie that had been everything to him—well, it was inevitable that she should notice.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/229


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/230

 "You are troubled about something?" she divined one night when they sat indoors before an open fire, for an unseasonable rain was falling in a country where rain is supposed to be always seasonable. It was chill outside and raw, and it was a bit chill in Henry's heart, notwithstanding the cozy comfort of the library fire.

"Troubled? I should say I am troubled," he confessed huskily, and all at once it seemed possible to outline to her the inside story of Hurricane Island—shielding her father carefully, putting the burden of the iniquity entirely on Scanlon and Quackenbaugh.

But when he had finished, Billie viewed him with a clear and sifting gaze. "Aren't you presuming a good deal, Henry?" she asked. "Aren't you . . . reflecting on father's intelligence a little? He's smarter than Scanlon and Quackenbaugh. They couldn't fool him. And he wouldn't do anything that is wrong. Not anything. Father is a very conscientious man. Really, Henry!" Her brows were beautifully arched; her eyes were soft but wondering and accusative, almost as speculating whether all this success which had come to her lover so swiftly might not have turned his head. And there he was, stopped again.

"It's not that she's blind like the rest of them," he reasoned when at length he was out in the misting rain, and crossing to where his car was parked. "It's because I couldn't tell it to her exactly as it is—in all its hideousness—without hurting her." And Henry, standing with the rain in his uplifted face, then and there highly resolved that he would not hurt her. No! For he loved her. No act of his should ever paint the blush of shame upon that proud cheek nor shatter such beautiful faith in her father's rectitude.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/230


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/231

 But staring between the headlights as he drove down the hill there appeared to him the twisted, half-emerged face of the Indian, Adam John, with the sloe-black eyes set upon him in humblest, sublimest faith. And the noose, he knew, was hourly tightening about the neck of Adam John. Henry found himself struggling for breath as if it were his own neck. "I've got to stop them," he declared desperately, between clenched teeth. "I've got to stop them."

Next morning two things happened. Henry saw Billie off on the day boat for a week of visiting, shopping and theater-going in Portland; and John Boland refused him an audience. This was the first time that had ever happened. Henry received the announcement almost incredulously; and got hastily back to his own room. "If I can't talk to him, how can I make him see it?" he murmured huskily. "And if I can't make him see it, what do I do then?"

He was still pondering the last question when Lahleet entered, looking pale and anxious, and flapped five hundred dollars down upon his desk. "Thompson's retainer!" she exclaimed excitedly.

"Public opinion, eh?" scorned Henry, thinking withering thoughts of Stacey Thompson.

"No! He was very frank about it," explained Lahleet; "said he'd had intimations from somewhere in the Boland cabinet that if he made more than a perfunctory defense of Adam John it would be the worse for him."

"What!" Harrington was on his feet with a roar. "They won't even let the poor devil have his case fairly presented?" His sense of justice had never been quite so outraged. "Well, that settles it," he declared in vibrant tones. "I will defend Adam John myself!"

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/231


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/232

 "Henry!" The word, a cry rather, was abrupt and ringing, full of vibrant joy, the sudden relief after long and painful suspense. With it the girl came over quickly and bent her face into his arm, weeping.

Harrington smiled wonderingly and, looking down, touched caressingly the glossy braids of her hair. As he felt pleasurably the weight of her little body upon his arm, he was inspired with a new, quick compassion for the girl, realizing that she who had always been so strong and self-sufficient, teasing him, challenging him at times, was after all mere frail femininity.

"But—are you strong enough, do you think?" Lahleet asked, suddenly lifting her tearful face. "Strong enough for what they will do to you?"

"Do to me?" laughed Henry. "What can they do to me? Besides, I shall not attack Mr. Boland—not at all. I shall merely show that Boland General resorted to a mistaken piece of strategy on the ground of which Adam John is entitled to acquittal."

But the little school-teacher's face was full of apprehension. "He will fight you; it will cost you . . . everything!" she persisted.

Henry did not try to argue. Lahleet, with all that white blood and white education could do for her, was still simple, elemental; she scorned to fathom the complexities of highly organized natures like, for instance, his and Mr. Boland's.

"At least I ought to tell Billie," he saw quite clearly, when Lahleet had gone, after kissing his hand impulsively, as she had done once before; "for I—I'm going to have to hurt her a little—a very little at least," he perceived, a sickish feeling in his breast.

But he told Scanlon first, because Scanlon was

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/232


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/233

 nearer to him—told him firmly: "I'm going to defend Adam John. I'm going to read the Hurricane Island lease to the jury, explain what it means." Scanlon seemed greatly astonished and greatly distressed.

"Why, you wouldn't do that, would you, Henry?" he remonstrated feelingly. "We're all your friends," he urged. "You can't turn on us, you know." His reproach was so gentle that it made Harrington feel very mean.

"But I shall not be turning on you," the young man urged earnestly. "It's just this one matter that we differ on."

"Besides, you can't go back on the Old Man," reminded Scanlon as if horrified at the thought. "Why, he loves you, Henry. You wouldn't want to break old J. B.'s heart, would you?" he urged with astonishing tenderness, for so gross a man.

"Certainly not," averred Henry wretchedly, "but I guess I will have to hurt him a little to make him understand."

Scanlon must have seen that Harrington was absolutely determined. "Oh, Lord!" he groaned. "This is going to be awful." Tough old Scanlon! Why, it looked as if he were about to cry. "Wait here, Henry," he suddenly appealed, "wait. Promise me to wait." Harrington nodded and the Chief Fixer hurried out of the room.

"Got him going!" Henry smiled to himself. "He's gone to see Mr. Boland. Gone after him, perhaps."

But it was Quackenbaugh who came back with Scanlon, wild-eyed this time, hoarse with excitement. "Henry!" he cried, rushing upon him. "Henry!" and the reproach in his tone was greater than Scanlon had

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/233


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/234

 been able to manage and harder to resist, for Quackenbaugh's was a perceptibly finer soul. "You're not going to turn on me, Henry, are you? Hurricane Island is my scheme, you know. You're not going to make it hard for me, are you, with J. B.?" There was almost a quaver in the voice; and there was that about the way in which Quackenbaugh's misty eyes bored into his that made Harrington feel small and ornery.

"Of course I'm not, Quack. It's just"

"But you are, Henry," persisted the president of Boland Cedar, in teary tones; "you are turning against me if you attack that lease."

"I'm going to attack it," announced Harrington resolutely.

Quackenbaugh calmed himself, accepting the inevitable. "I'm hurt, Henry—that's all," he said solemnly, and exchanged a glance with Scanlon.

Harrington felt a knife turning in his own heart, appreciating freshly what a fine manly fellowship it was to which he had been admitted in this Cabinet of Boland General, and realizing how much he wanted to retain that fellowship.

"Promise you won't say anything about it, Henry; this nutty notion of yours—not yet—till I can get some of the other boys to talk to you, won't you?" Scanlon pleaded wistfully.

"Why, sure, old man; let 'em come," Harrington's heart made answer. It was no use, of course, but—it was fair. He wrung the hands of the two more sympathetically at parting than he had ever wrung them before.

"They're making more of it than I expected," he

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/234


text: Page:Sea and Sardinia (IA seasardinia00lawrrich).pdf/12


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/235

 ruminated, strolling toward his office. "Suppose I must seem like a regular Judas to them. Isn't it the devil that they can't see it? Good fellows, they are—darned good fellows. Lord, but they've been nice to me. It's going to be hard—harder than I thought." He braced himself in his swivel chair and waited for the appeals of the "other boys."

Edmunds, president of the transportation interest, was first of the cabinet to come, entering full of solicitude, as for a friend. He warned, coaxed, cajoled. He made it clear that Henry owed him several debts of gratitude and wanted to know if his idea of reciprocation was to betray them all over a worthless Siwash?

Then came others. Each pleader succeeded in making Henry feel that somehow he was under obligation to him; and not one of them was able to see that the attorney's proposal to defend Adam John was anything but a rash, reckless, inconsiderate sort of sabotage upon a sacred fabric of friendships.

"This is going to be fierce," the young man muttered to himself, "fierce." Every favor he had ever given or received, every nod or smile he had ever exchanged, seemed to be remembered against him now, made the ground of an appeal to bend him from a moral purpose. He saw himself bound with ropes of velyet, but none the less ropes; shackled with the chains of a golden association, but none the less chains. "It's a regular third degree," he groaned, sweating distress at every pore. "If they would only get mad!" he stewed. "But this damned buttonholing, teary-eyed stuff! It's fierce—that's what it is, fierce!"

Two days this sort of thing kept up; two nights reproachful faces were round him in his sleep and voices

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/235


text: Page:Sea and Sardinia (IA seasardinia00lawrrich).pdf/14


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/236

 muttered at him in his dreams; but by the third day rumor of what Henry intended seemed to have spread, and a procession of the townspeople began to visit his office—men like Gaylord and Schuler and Foster.

"I'm interested in seeing that nobody pitches a monkey wrench into the Boland machinery," the Mayor explained. "Henry, you don't want to do anything to injure the community," mourned Schuler.

But this outside pressure made Henry angry. "Community, rot!" he blazed. "It's mere selfishness that brings you fellows here. I'm getting fed up anyway—tired of having everybody try to make a goat out of me. Community, eh? Why, the community's very existence depends on justice from the courts for small as for great. Community? By George, that's the big point. It isn't the scrawny little Indian; it's the community I'm going to stand up for and defend."

Thus did the issue widen in Harrington's mind.

"I can't make out Henry at all," Mayor Foster told Gaylord and Schuler, going down the stairs, and the banker and the merchant confessed themselves mystified by this sudden clouding of one of the city's brightest minds.

But it was not alone self-appointed meddlers who were discussing Henry now.

His rumored intention had traveled widely this third day. He was being talked about every where, in the lodges, in the women's clubs; before the county medical association, by the ministerial association, on the corners of the streets, in the front rooms of soft drink parlors and in the back rooms of bootleg joints; and always with disfavor—because of a mere rumored intent of his, the first ever to invoke a criticism of any sort.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/236


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/237

ILLIE, because she was in Portland, knew nothing of all this pother; and Henry was beginning to need her. He felt drained and weakened by the steadily dripping reproaches of three long days. He was a young man who had thrived upon the general good will and suddenly the general good will was taken from him. The girl was his great untapped reservoir of moral strength.

"I must see you, Billie," he confided over the long-distance wire, "I hate to have you breaking off your visit for me but I need you something awful."

"I'd break off anything for you," purred Billie's voice vibrant with the instinctive perceptions of love. "I'll take the morning boat and be in at three o'clock."

"Oh, you—you darling!" murmured Henry gratefully.

When the conversation was over he boasted to himself: "A brick house doesn't have to fall on that girl. It's going to hurt her when I tell her though. I—I must be very, very careful. But shell be game. She'll wink the tears away and help."

Henry slept that night, and in the morning rose up strong, prepared to resist like adamant that wearing stream which would again be turned upon his resolution. But, to his surprise, there was no wearing stream. Callers came and went, but during the entire morning there was not one reference to the defense of Adam

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/237


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/238

 John. Perhaps this was more clever psychology on Scanlon's part; for with the pressure lifted, Henry's resolution relaxed a bit. He was in one of his regretting moods when Charlie Clayton came in about the McKenzie's Tongue project.

Now McKenzie's Tongue was a strip of land some seventeen hundred acres in extent from which Boland General had stripped the timber, and there was a bill before the state legislature to acquire this land for sixty-two thousand dollars and locate the new state prison upon it. "The bill will be up for final passage in the house sometime next week," reminded Clayton. "It will go through all right of course; but since it's of special benefit to our end of the state, it will look better to have a full delegation voting from Socatullo County. Better arrange to be there, Henry."

"Count on me," smiled Harrington; "but be sure and let me know when it's coming up. I've got a good deal on my mind right now."

Clayton looked as if he understood. "All right; so long."

It did Henry good to have Clayton come in like this and consult him quite in the old way. It showed that there was to be no permanent or wide-front break in his relations with the official family of Boland General. Yet he was not long permitted to enjoy entirely comfortable reflections. Senator Murphy was announced.

"What can she want?" speculated Henry.

There were several women in the state legislature this term, earnest, intelligent and, some of them, astonishingly astute. None took their duties any more seriously than Sarah Murphy. She was self-assertive to a degree. She was almost offensively honest, exceed-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/238


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/239

 ingly outspoken and a little of a nuisance; but Harrington had rather admired her aggressiveness and did not resent her activities as a good many legislators did. He was fingering her card with pleasurable anticipations when she entered, large and masterful but withal an attractive woman, a youthful forty in appearance, with dark eyes and a firm but dimpled chin.

"Henry, how do you stand upon that McKenzie's Tongue project?" she demanded promptly.

"Naturally, I'm for it," answered Henry.

Senator Murphy's handsome eyes narrowed and her tone became as grim as her expression. "You know it's a job, don't you? A low-down dirty steal! Hatched by George Madden to pay old Boland sixty-two thousand dollars for a lot of land that isn't worth a German mark or a Russian ruble."

"I guess it isn't any job," bridled Henry. "Mr. Boland makes mistakes but he doesn't deal in jobs. The old prison site is unhealthy; new buildings have to be erected anyway; the Tongue is breeze-swept and the soil is rich; the prisoners will clear the ground and make those 1700 acres produce food enough for themselves and half the other state institutions."

"Besides which," Senator Murphy chimed in sarcastically, "it will give John Boland something for nothing, not to mention nice fat pickings in supply bills for the merchants of Socatullo County. No, Henry; this argument of yours is the bunk Senator Madden and Boland's kept-press have been feeding out to the whole state. The old prison site is as healthy as your McKenzie's Tongue. It's the old building, inadequate and insanitary, that makes the hospital list so long. It will cost less to erect new buildings there with prison

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/239


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/240

 labor than to erect them on McKenzie's Tongue; and you know it would take five years to get that Socatullo wilderness in shape to grow one mess of green corn. Henry, it's a job, a plain John Boland job. They railroaded it through the Senate before I was awake; but I'm going to beat that bill in the Assembly or my name's not Sarah Murphy. Henry, I want you to vote against it. I want you to speak against it."

Harrington was too polite to smile. "You'll have to show me!" he answered seriously.

Senator Murphy proceeded to show him. Opening up a Boston bag she produced documents, affidavits and reports, and volubly indicated their significance; then turned his attention to a roll of the House, opposite each name of which she had penciled an N or a Y.

Harrington's eye ran down the column. "Jerry Cunningham, there," he challenged. "If the deal's wrong, he'd nose it out and be against it."

"He would if he hadn't been reached," replied the lady, with a sarcastic wrinkling of her large nose. "Jerry had a mortgage due on his prune ranch the year that prunes went down with a crash; but the mortgage wasn't foreclosed. Some influence from Socatullo County came up and saved his neck with the money-lenders. Somebody scratched his back and now he's got to scratch theirs."

"Is that the way you interpret it?" smiled Henry.

"Same way with old man Hemmingford—only different," affirmed the lady with an emphatic nod. "He's been carrying a patch of fir timber down in his corner of the state till he couldn't carry it any longer. About the time Clayton was scurrying around for votes on this project, somebody bought a piece of Hemming-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/240


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/241

 ford's timber for so much that he can afford to carry the rest of it till the increase in values makes him rich. More back-scratching!"

Henry was amused, but Senator Murphy was only the more aroused. "That is the modern method of bribery, you know—back-scratching," she frowned savagely. "Men are not bought with gold in this legislature; and yet they're bought just the same. Usually they don't know they're bought. They think they're only playing square, showing appreciation for kindness—that sort of thing. 'We've scratched your back; now you scratch ours.' That's the system. It isn't alone in our legislature; it's in our courts and in our administrative offices, tax-assessors, prosecuting attorneys and all that."

"Naturally, I've heard of the practice," remarked Henry dryly, and wondered if the senator suspected how in the last four days his back had been curried till it was raw and he was getting mad.

"And it isn't only money," observed Senator Murphy acutely. "Here's George Lamont. Now nobody could give George a dishonest dollar, but his wife has social aspirations. Get her an invitation to a week-end at Boland's, and you could deliver old George Lamont on almost anything. Why, the Boland corporations are among the most skilful back-scratchers in the state."

"I've been finding that out," admitted Henry, grimly. "Only you're wrong to accuse Mr. Boland of it personally. He may have done all those favors you speak of. Probably did. He's a kindly man yet not above knowing that individual gratitudes might make it easier for legislatures to do their duty; but—the general good is attached to every project of his."

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/241


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/242

 "You'll look pretty close, Henry, to find it attached to this," charged Senator Murphy, tapping significantly the little pile of papers.

"Leave them with me for a day or two," proposed Henry.

The senator left him thinking deeply, as so many of his callers had of late. He was still thinking when the realization came that Billie's boat was almost due, and he reached the apron just as it was docking.

"Henry!" Billie cried and sprang into his arms, kissed him and gave him one quick, ecstatic little hug, right before the small throng upon the dock. Henry guessed that demonstration would rather settle any wild rumors, wouldn't it? How proud he was of her! And of her frank loyalty!

"Oh, Henry!" she cried, and kissed him again.

Half an hour later they were in his car and headed for a nook beneath a giant cedar on the western slope of Pigeon Point, a nook that was only three miles away and yet so sequestered and beautiful—wildly beautiful—that it was a favorite trysting place of theirs.

She nestled close as he drove, giving his arm from time to time, more of those quick, ecstatic little hugs. Her talk was swift, ejaculatory phrases, but of nothing in particular. There seemed nothing to occupy her mind but love—and Henry. He too ejaculated, but nothing consequential. For each there was nothing in the world but the other. Every sight Billie saw upon the road seemed pleasing. Everything called for smiles. Every remark of his, every little gesture of his free hand; every squeeze and pinch of his toying, playful fingers seemed to her uproariously funny, breathlessly amusing.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/242


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/243

 "Oh, it's so—so good just to be with you—you!" she was crying spontaneously, as they turned in beneath the jagged arms of the storm-beaten old cedar, with the sun letting himself down into the western haze—the peering, knowing sun. Here, with the windows of the car wide, the drone of wind in boughs above, a murmur in that wide lip of sea-foam before them, with the invigorating bite of salt air and the freshening breeze in their nostrils, they saw and heard and inhaled and forgot. Love was having its hour.

Never had kisses been so tender, so clinging, so electrifying. Passion mounted to its peak and passed, but love flowed on in still deep water. Soft looks, languorous caresses, sighs, heart-throbs, little bursts of silly lovers' laughter; and then more striving to compass all sweet ecstasy in a single caress, a single long-drawn, slow-mounting embrace. Raptures! Transports!

Little nothings Billie whispered in Henry's ear. She played with his hair, she dwelt with velvet lips upon his gray, love-filled eyes. "Oh, how—how wonderful you are!" she sighed. Her hat had fallen off, her hair was disarranged, she hung upon his shoulder, re-observing fondly every detail of his lean, chiseled face.

Henry lay back upon the cushioned seat, eyes half-closed, dimly conscious of the world outside, but keenly conscious of the universe within the circle of his arms. He had yielded to a lassitude, but it was a delicious lassitude until there stole in upon it, like an assassin in the night, a thought.

And with the thought obtruded a sense of cruel separation, as of some strong jealous hand thrust into the car and prying their warm, attracted bodies apart.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/243


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/244

 Harrington knew what it was—what he must do. It was rude—the rudest possible awakening. It was the most poignant and shattering intrusion of a chaos upon a paradise. He must tell her. It was her right. Besides, he needed those reënforcements which slumbered in reserve in that palpitant beauty by his side. He must tell her and he did, not without flinching, but quite without mincing—that he would defend Adam John!

He had been holding her hand. It grew cold and limp in his. All at once it had fallen out of his grasp. He felt her body grow tense, and as if breaking from the spell of some nightmare whose horror had been slowly congealing her veins, she whispered in a hoarse chill of fear: "Henry . . . Henry! What have you been saying?"

She sat up and stared at him utterly incredulous, with an awed note in her voice. "Fight . . . fight my father?" Her face had grown very white, her lips were puckered until they showed no red at all. Her sweet mouth had become a wound that quivered as with an awful hurt. Henry's heart was melted entirely. It was so much more suffering than he felt it would be necessary to bring to her. He wanted to take her again into his arms and to console and reassure.

"Not fight him—no!" he argued wretchedly. "Merely defend"

But Billie's own keen intelligence perceived both a falsity in this distinction and that he did not perceive it—which made her suddenly wild at his obtuseness for supposing that he could attack Boland General without attacking John Boland; or that he could reflect upon him without laying the lash upon the quivering flesh of his daughter! The tears of an uncontrollable

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/244


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/245

 rage leaped into her eyes. She seized him by the lapels and shook him. "Stupid!" she cried, and was more deeply angered by the futility of the word. "Stupid!"

Henry was astounded at her frenzy, but still tender. "Billie!" he expostulated, grasping her hands. "Billie! Won't you understand?" His appeal was desperate. "I have to do it. It's a matter of conscience."

"Conscience!" she scorned. "It's for that stubborn little Indian!"

"No, no; not for any individual," he insisted. "For something infinitely bigger. Won't you see, dear?" he implored humbly. "Oh, why won't you let me make it clear to you so that you can make it clear to your father? And then all this will be un"

"To my father!" the girl raged, and flung his hands from hers, contemptuous at his presuming still to reflect upon either her father's intelligence or his moral judgments. "You fool!" Her glance scorched. "You . . . you traitor!" She breathed that last denunciation slowly, with the utmost of feeling, and the slightest of vocalization, looked at him for an instant longer to burn the brand in, then stepped out of the car as from contamination.

Harrington was stunned rather than hurt—sick with dismay at the discovery that Billie was as blind as the others. Where, he marveled, was all that wonderful sympathy for the poor and downtrodden of earth which she had manifested in his earlier talks with her—words of hers that had quickened and inspired him into the very position in which he found himself today? Where was it? Nowhere, he perceived, when reflections on her father were involved. He, to her, was a god who would not err.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/245


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/246

 Henry sat completely baffled, with a choking sensation in his throat. Yet—yet it must be that the girl could be got to see a moral chasm wide as the Grand Canyon. He must make another effort; he left the car and confronted her.

Billie faced him defiantly. Offended majesty, injured pride, hurt love, unbelievable disappointment, thwarted self-will, childish petulance—she got them all into her air. "When men fight my father he breaks them like this!" she warned haughtily, and her quick hands made the gesture of snapping a twig and casting it disdainfully aside.

"But, Billie!" Henry protested feebly. "I—I thought you loved me."

Her scorn was quick. "I—I thought I loved you too," she astonished him by retorting; "but . . . can a woman love a fool?" Dramatically her glance circled upward to the sky as in mute protest that God could have played her such a trick as make her love a fool. It was the artifice that did it. Henry became angry.

"If I—if I am that," he had begun hotly, when the sudden change in his manner made her see him with different eyes, take re-account of him—who he was. Her impatient rage had been more like an explosion than a conflagration anyway. Revulsion was swift but—amusingly, femininely uncompromising.

"Oh, why did I let myself love you?" she cried in a voice teary with utter exasperation, and the next moment had flung herself into his arms and was weeping on his shoulder.

"Henry!" she cried and hugged him to her. "Henry!" Her sobs beat against the drums of his ears; her kisses were warm and moist upon his neck. "I don't want

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/246


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/247

 you broken," she cried piteously, hugging him close, "Oh, I don't want you broken!"

"Broken?" Harrington smiled expansively at his unexpectedly quick victory. "Why, how little you understand your father!"

"Little you do!" she retorted in a voice muffled against his side, and he felt her body shuddering against his. "Besides, I promised them you wouldn't. Oh, you humiliate me so!"

Harrington started and held her off from him fiercely. "W-what!" he gasped, horrified. "You promised them? Who? Promised what?"

"Scanlon and father," wailed the muffled voice. "Promised that I wouldn't let you make a fool of yourself like this."

"Then you . . . you knew all about it before I told you?" breathed Henry, aghast. The girl lifted her head to face the accusation in his tone, and saw slow horror mounting in her lover's eyes. "You were only acting then—when you gave yourself up to me" he charged, and his voice trembled as his mind reviewed the sacred emotions of the last hour.

"No, no," she protested frenziedly. "Don't look at me, Henry, like that. I meant—oh, your kisses meant everything to me. I—I was trying to forget that we had to—disagree so, so horribly!"

Something of the revulsion in him lessened. He could understand that. He too had tried to forget, but—she had promised them not to let him make a fool of himself. She, too, was a back-scratcher! Her glance fell before the indictment in his eyes, and, sobbing as if discovered in shame and overcome with humiliation, she turned to sit apart from him upon a fallen tree.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/247


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/248

 And this was his reservoir of moral strength that he had counted on so confidently! Harrington gazed down at the girl in a kind of sad wonder, properly sorry for her, but sorry also for himself. It seemed as if all the fates of the universe had conspired against him; had woven this net of circumstances about him with only one way out—rough-shod over her heart.

"I had been depending on you to help me, Billie," he managed to stammer in a ragged voice. "I—I needed your proud strength."

Her strength was proud. She showed it by her manner, an utter unresponsiveness to the pathos in this last trembling appeal of his. Her sobbings had ceased. She was investing herself with a kind of lofty reserve. She turned dry eyes to where the sun buried his brazen head in gorgeous clouds and glorified waters. The sense of a fundamental difference in moral perception drove itself between the two of them with the chill and the power of a glacial wedge.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/248


text:
Page:Sea and Sardinia (IA seasardinia00lawrrich).pdf/15

 SEA AND SARDINIA


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/249

HEN next morning Henry viewed his stubbled, haggard face in the glass he reviled himself at his own weakness. Hellfire' Harrington!" he scoffed. "You look like it now, don't you? Crying like a baby, crumpling like a man of straw just because a girl goes back on you—quitting as if there was a streak of yellow in you wider than the inlet out there. Oh, yes, you're a hell of a Hellfire, you are!"

But after a little bit he had decided desperately: "I must see her again! I must see her immediately." He dressed for the occasion with that precise attention to detail of the gallant who expects this day to die with his boots on and is proudly concerned to make an immaculate corpse. Passing up between the statues of Lewis and Clark he came face to face with Mr. Boland—their first encounter in some days—the first since Mr. Boland had refused to see him.

"Good morning, Mr. Boland," said Henry, politely.

"Well, young man!" hailed the magnate sternly, harshly, as addressing a culprit, and Henry felt for the first time the bare impact of the man's displeasure. It was as if a blow, instead of a glance, had struck him. It conveyed an ominous, creeping feeling that he couldn't shake off when Mr. Boland had passed; for Old Two Blades did pass, stiff and uncompromising, without another word. This manner of his struck Henry as somehow sinister; and there was a sinister

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/249


text: Page:Sea and Sardinia (IA seasardinia00lawrrich).pdf/16


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/250

 coldness in the eye of the sun this morning; a sinister sharpness in the bite of the air, nothing of which was so very strange since it was to be a sinister day. Mr. Boland was even now on his way to meet Scanlon and issue staff orders—orders with a sinister significance so far as Henry Harrington was concerned.

Down at the state capital, too, things were moving. Senator Madden and Charlie Clayton were getting the McKenzie's Tongue bill jumped forward for action tonight. And away off at the capital of the nation things were happening also, which had a significance for Henry.

For one thing, the great seal of the United States was about to go down upon a document of vast importance that had been moving through the routine of the bureau for weeks, slipping from desk to desk, from hand to hand, from eye to eye.

For another, an associate justice of the Supreme Court was busy correcting the typewritten pages of a decision which he had just been dictating, meticulously concerned that his meanings should be clear and his references exact. To be sure of this latter, he occasionally turned to bound volumes of typewritten testimony and to the lines of two maps, one old and faded, the other new and distinct.

There had been conference and debate already between the justices, goings over of briefs and studyings of the record. Gradually the briefs had been discarded and those eminent, shrewd, tenacious, legal minds contemplated only the record. Now Justice Bradshaw had written their opinion—their unanimous opinion. Within a few days the Court in bank would hand it down.

But a third arm of the government at Washington

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/250


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/251

 was also busy upon concerns that had to do with this far-off corner of the country. The Secret Service Bureau, tracing the movements and contemplating the mystery of the appearance and disappearance of a dangerous criminal, had focused its eye upon this great Northwest, because of certain facts which had this day come to its knowledge.

But Henry, unaware of some of these convergences and unmindful of others, took his way wretchedly up the wide walk to Humboldt House with the chill of John Boland's bitter glance in his marrow and the slight consolation of a very sickly hope within his breast.

As for Billie, that haughty reserve with which she had parted from her lover had presently given place to anguished misgivings and she had spent a restless night. In her morning room, with wide windows looking to the inlet and the sea, but with the bright sun letting no cheer into her heart, Henry found her. She was wearing a weeping-willow air and a frock in some shade so neutral that it declined entirely to announce itself, merely blending with the pathos of a disconsolate yet beautiful figure which drooped in a grass-woven chair, banked round with cretonne cushions. But at sight of her lover Billie sprang up with a cry of eagerness and suddenly inspired hope.

"Henry! Oh, Henry!" she rejoiced; then observing the lined gravity of his expression and the mournful, pleading light of his great gray eyes, hope died, and her own eyes filled with tears. She flung out her hands to him hoarsely and pleaded: "Henry . . . Henry . . . You must not do this mad thing. You must not!"

The lover, touched even as he had not been before,

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/251


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/252

 and with all that sense of the sinister chilling him, could only shake his head more gravely still and plead in turn, voice freighted with all the tenderness of which he was capable: "Billie, you must not take it as you do—must not. You must see that I am right. You must."

He felt her mood change, her figure harden in his grasp. "But you're—you're not right," she stormed indignantly. "You're not right!" Her manner was instantly imperious; she could never be suppliant for long.

Meeting the blaze of those eyes, Harrington read in them the worst that he had feared; but he was firm this morning—he had to be as thoughts of the nearness of the noose to trustful Adam John came to him—but with all his firmness he had to be very, very gentle too. "Then you'll—you'll just have to wait, dear," he told her softly, whisperingly almost; "wait a little bit till you can sce the thing more clearly."

"But you—you're ruining everything," she flung out at him petulantly.

"On the contrary, I'm saving everything," he told her quite calmly.

"Fool!" she cried angrily, and flung him from her. "Obstinate fool! Go away. You make me so—so ashamed!" And she pitched herself into the cushions again, face hidden, weeping inconsolably.

Harrington stood biting his lip, knees trembling, for it weakened him immeasurably to have finally and definitely lost her moral support. Moreover it dismayed him to realize that she was not and never had been quite what he had thought—to perceive that she whom he had idealized, the goddess whom he had worshiped,

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/252


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/253

 who had inspired him to a deepening adherence to that very principle which dictated to him today, could not comprehend that principle herself, and for his holding to it she called him "fool" and "obstinate" and bade him go away.

Yet he knew in his heart that he still worshiped her, idealized her; that she still inspired him. Confessing this to himself, he regarded her wistfully, very greatly perplexed, a pained expression on his face, not knowing whether to approach or to hold himself off.

"Go!" she burst out at him with an impetuous headto-foot gesture of her quivering body. "Go!" She was utterly and irrecoverably out of patience with him.

Yet Henry still gazed at her now unregarding figure, his face full of a growing compassion. He thought that he began to understand. Billie, so regal and so beautiful, so imperious and so appealingly broken just now, so unaccustomed to be thwarted, so utterly outraged with him, was not the hard-hearted, morally obtuse little despot that she seemed. She was merely spoiled, self-willed, self-deluded, blinded by a veil of materialism, dominated by the personality of her really great but somewhat misguided father, repeating his grandiloquent phrases after him with less understanding of their meaning than he had, which perhaps was little enough.

She thought that she was an independent thinker, self-sufficient, schooled, seasoned by her travel and observation, when in fact she had been screened and sheltered; she was soft and tenderly nurtured, a mere Persian kitten of a woman, who had yet to learn what it is to be actually and not theoretically sympathetic, who would have to acquire softness of heart and tough-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/253


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/254

 ness of fiber as other women acquired it, in the school of suffering. Well, so be it.

And today she was matriculating in that school, while he appeared to be in for some sort of post-graduate course himself. They would be separated and yet in a way they would be together—in suffering. There was a kind of sad satisfaction in that. Instead of despair, hope grew in his breast. Even her angry sobbings proved how much she loved him. But she had told him to go.

"Good-by, Billie," he said huskily, hoping she would favor him with the glint of a tear-filled eye, summon him to her perhaps, for one last embrace—a touch of her hand at least. But she did not. Her face was still from him and she flirted a shoulder irritably. "Just . . . good-by," he faltered, disappointed; then ventured to add with solemn hopefulness: "You and your father will see this thing right pretty soon, and then you'll see me right. Until then—I can wait."

"Fool!" she flung at him again, out of her tears. "Fool!" And he had to go without a touch, a look even, with that word ringing in his ears. Still he went in hope, unable to believe that he had lost her. He thought that he had made sure of her rather. Love—love like theirs might even be stabbed through the heart and yet it would pulse on and on, he told himself.

And it was true that the minute his presence had cleared the room, Billie was sitting bolt upright and frowning intently through her tears. "What's got into him?" she asked herself. "Some influence . . . somebody . . . I wonder if it could be that. . . . But, no! He loves me," she exulted;" he loves me! Love must save him. I must be firm with him—firm. O

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/254


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/255

 God," she prayed, clasping her hands tightly and lifting tear-stained eyes, "help me to be firm."

When, considerably agitated, the young man got back to his desk, it was twenty minutes past ten by the ivory clock on the blotter—twenty-one minutes past, to be exact, and a few seconds. He sat taking stock of his position. Scanlon and all the other back-scratchers were against him. Billie was against him. Mr. Boland was aloof and accusatory. Certain handpicked individuals in the community were reproaching him—but the people! The people generally trusted and believed in him. His great popularity in the community was secure, and this was the sole necessary asset in his battle for justice for Adam John.

That was exactly what he was thinking, when just then the people—that is, just then a long-distance call came in from the state capitol. It was Charlie Clayton, one of the people's representatives, speaking: "That McKenzie's Tongue matter has been set forward to tonight, Henry," said Charlie, and his voice sounded anxious, a bit overwrought. "We're going to need every vote we can dig up; and it's a good three hours run up here, you know."

"I'll be there," assured Henry; and it was a kind of relief to have his attention diverted to a duty that was easy to perform; but—"McKenzie's Tongue!" he suddenly remembered. "Why, Sarah Murphy was in here telling me that deal was crooked."

There before him was the pile of papers she had left to prove her assertion. For half an hour he was hunched over them; and that night in the Assembly Room he denounced the McKenzie's Tongue project as a job and voted against it, but was careful to deny

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/255


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/256

 that any responsibility for it was Boland's. He proclaimed John Boland as a high-minded citizen of the best intent—mistaken sometimes, of course, as men will be—but a high-minded citizen who put always, as far as he could see, the welfare of all the people above the profit of his personal ventures.

But any such gratuitous apologetic for their master was lost upon the proponents of the bill. The point with them was that it failed of passage by just one vote—Henry's of course—and in the lobby Madden, deeply chagrined, breathed threatenings.

"You've been the golden-haired boy of Boland General for quite a spell now, Harrington," he sneered, "but the old man'll have your locks trimmed for this trick and trimmed short."

"And I suppose you think you're going to be one of the barbers, eh, Madden?" retorted Henry.

"Oh, the folks back in Edgewater will attend to you, all right," sneered Madden. "Oh, what they will do to you!"

"My constituents are not grafters," boasted Henry, "and if there is any question about it, I'll hire the Opera House in Edgewater tomorrow night and tell them just what a cheap steal the project is."

With a good conscience and rumbling defiance, Henry drove back through the night to his home. Occasionally his smoldering mind lit up with a brilliant flash. That was when he visioned his ultimate triumph—when illumination should come to Billie and he would feel her arms again ecstatically about his neck.

Next morning the Blade in a three-ply headline screamed out that Assemblyman Henry Harrington had betrayed Socatullo County. It carried also an edi-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/256


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/257

 torial written earlier, commenting on the "rumored defection of one of our most popular and influential attorneys from the sacred cause of law and order, as also from that equally sacred program of progress and prosperity which for years has been the ideal of the best people in the Three Towns."

"Titmarsh—the dirty dog!" exploded Henry. "I may have to hire the opera house after all." But he was entirely unsuspicious that the people of Edgewater and Wahpeectah and Socatullo had been for some days being skilfully prepared to believe much evil of him; and when there came from Oskison, private secretary to Old Two Blades, a suave summons to the imperial presence, Harrington actually scented victory.

"Now's my chance," he said to his deluded self, "and the McKenzie's Tongue project will be as good an opening as any to show that Scanlon simply can't be trusted." But the very first sight of that bland, unbending autocrat behind the unmarked door was shattering to any sanguine state of mind on Henry's part.

To begin with, Mr. Boland appeared as one who had quite lost his blandness and lost it permanently. Tightlipped, he sat with recessed eyes a-glitter and tense hands that gripped like talons the claw-carved arms of his chair. He gazed upon Henry not as upon a being but a thing, and a thing which displeased him utterly. He dispensed with grecting and bit out acridly: "Well, young man, are you going to defend that Siwash?"

And Henry, although his hopes were instantly dashed and although he felt the force of his patron's displeasure, was yet in no mood to cower. Besides, he didn't think self-willed autocracy should be encouraged. "I am," he said quietly.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/257