THE KIDNAPPERS
During the last two weeks of the "whirlwind" campaign, automobiles had carried the rival candidates to every election district in Greater New York.
During these two weeks, at the disposal of Ernest Peabody--on the Reform Ticket, "the people's choice for Lieutenant-Governor--" Winthrop had placed his Scarlet Car, and, as its chauffeur, himself.
Not that Winthrop greatly cared for Reform, or Ernest Peabody.
The "whirlwind" part of the campaign was what attracted him;the crowds, the bands, the fireworks, the rush by night from hall to hall, from Fordham to Tompkinsville.And, while inside the different Lyceums, Peabody lashed the Tammany Tiger, outside in his car, Winthrop was making friends with Tammany policemen, and his natural enemies, the bicycle cops.
To Winthrop, the day in which he did not increase his acquaintance with the traffic squad, was a day lost.
But the real reason for his efforts in the cause of Reform, was one he could not declare.And it was a reason that was guessed perhaps by only one person.On some nights Beatrice Forbes and her brother Sam accompanied Peabody.And while Peabody sat in the rear of the car, mumbling the speech he would next deliver, Winthrop was given the chance to talk with her.These chances were growing cruelly few.In one month after election day Miss Forbes and Peabody would be man and wife.Once before the day of their marriage had been fixed, but, when the Reform Party offered Peabody a high place on its ticket, he asked, in order that he might bear his part in the cause of reform, that the wedding be postponed.To the postponement Miss Forbes made no objection.To one less self-centred than Peabody, it might have appeared that she almost too readily consented.
"I knew I could count upon your seeing my duty as I saw it,"said Peabody much pleased, "it always will be a satisfaction to both of us to remember you never stood between me and my work for reform.""What do you think my brother-in-law-to-be has done now?"demanded Sam of Winthrop, as the Scarlet Car swept into Jerome Avenue."He's postponed his marriage with Trix just because he has a chance to be Lieutenant-Governor.What is a Lieutenant-Governor anyway, do you know? I don't like to ask Peabody.""It Is not his own election he's working for," said Winthrop.
He was conscious of an effort to assume a point of view both noble and magnanimous.
"He probably feels the `cause' calls him.But, good Heavens!""Look out!" shrieked Sam, "where you going?"Winthrop swung the car back into the avenue.
"To think," he cried, "that a man who could marry--a girl, and then would ask her to wait two months.Or, two days! Two months lost out of his life, and she might die; he might lose her, she might change her mind.Any number of men can be Lieutenant-Governors; only one man can be----"He broke off suddenly, coughed and fixed his eyes miserably on the road.After a brief pause, Brother Sam covertly looked at him.Could it be that "Billie" Winthrop, the man liked of all men, should love his sister, and--that she should prefer Ernest Peabody? He was deeply, loyally indignant.He determined to demand of his sister an immediate and abject apology.
At eight o'clock on the morning of election day, Peabody, in the Scarlet Car, was on his way to vote.He lived at Riverside Drive, and the polling-booth was only a few blocks distant.During the rest of the day he intended to use the car to visit other election districts, and to keep him in touch with the Reformers at the Gilsey House.Winthrop was acting as his chauffeur, and in the rear seat was Miss Forbes.
Peabody had asked her to accompany him to the polling-booth, because he thought women who believed in reform should show their interest in it in public, before all men.Miss Forbes disagreed with him, chiefly because whenever she sat in a box at any of the public meetings the artists from the newspapers, instead of immortalizing the candidate, made pictures of her and her hat.After she had seen her future lord and master cast his vote for reform and himself, she was to depart by train to Tarrytown.The Forbes's country place was there, and for election day her brother Sam had invited out some of his friends to play tennis.
As the car darted and dodged up Eighth Avenue, a man who had been hidden by the stairs to the Elevated, stepped in front of it.It caught him, and hurled him, like a mail-bag tossed from a train, against one of the pillars that support the overhead tracks.Winthrop gave a cry and fell upon the brakes.The cry was as full of pain as though he himself had been mangled.Miss Forbes saw only the man appear, and then disappear, but, Winthrop's shout of warning, and the wrench as the brakes locked, told her what had happened.She shut her eyes, and for an instant covered them with her hands.On the front seat Peabody clutched helplessly at the cushions.In horror his eyes were fastened on the motionless mass jammed against the pillar.Winthrop scrambled over him, and ran to where the man lay.So, apparently, did every other inhabitant of Eighth Avenue; but Winthrop was the first to reach him and kneeling in the car tracks, he tried to place the head and shoulders of the body against the iron pillar.He had seen very few dead men; and to him, this weight in his arms, this bundle of limp flesh and muddy clothes, and the purple-bloated face with blood trickling down it, looked like a dead man.
Once or twice when in his car, Death had reached for Winthrop, and only by the scantiest grace had he escaped.Then the nearness of it had only sobered him.Now that he believed he had brought it to a fellow man, even though he knew he was in no degree to blame, the thought sickened and shocked him.His brain trembled with remorse and horror.
