Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its Cure. Ball Eustace Hale

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СКАЧАТЬ these doctors, really, I feel as well now as I ever did, except that my head is just a little wobbly and I don't believe I could beat Longboat in a Marathon. But, you see, I'll be back on duty before any three weeks go by."

      Burke was wheeled out into the big free ward of the hospital by one of the attendants. He had never realized how much human misery could be concentrated into one room until that perambulatory trip.

      It was not a visiting day, and many of the sufferers tossed about restless and unhappy.

      About some of the beds there were screens – to keep the sight of their unhappiness and anguish from their neighbors.

      Here was a man whose leg had been amputated. His entire life was blighted because he had stuck to his job, coupling freight cars, when the engineer lost his head.

      There, on that bed, was an old man who had saved a dozen youngsters from a burning Christmas tree, and was now paying the penalty with months of torture.

      Yonder poor fellow, braving the odds of the city, had left his country town, sought labor vainly, until he was found starving rather than beg.

      As a policeman, Burke had seen many miseries in his short experience on the force; as an invalid he had been initiated into the second degree in this hospital ward. He wondered if there could be anything more bitter. There was – his third and final degree in the ritual of life: but that comes later on in our story.

      After chatting here and there with a sufferer, passing a friendly word of encouragement, or spinning some droll old yarn to cheer up another, Bobbie had enough.

      "Say, it's warm looking outside. Could I get some fresh air on one of the sun-porches?" he asked his steersman.

      "Sure thing, cap. I'll blanket you up a bit, and put you through your paces on the south porch."

      Bobbie was rolled out on the glass protected porch into the blessed rays of the sun. He found another traveler using the same mode of conveyance, an elderly man, whose pallid face, seamed with lines of suffering, still showed the jolly, unconquerable spirit which keeps some men young no matter how old they grow.

      "Well, it's about the finest sunlight I've seen for many a day. How do you like it, young man?"

      "It's the first I've had for so many weeks that I didn't believe there was any left in the world," responded Burke. "If we could only get out for a walk instead of this Atlantic City boardwalk business it would be better, wouldn't it?"

      His companion nodded, but his genial smile vanished.

      "Yes, but that's something I'll never get again."

      "What, never again? Why, surely you're getting along to have them bring you out here?"

      "No, my boy. I've a broken hip, and a broken thigh. Crushed in an elevator accident, back in the factory, and I'm too old a dog to learn to do such tricks as flying. I'll have to content myself with one of these chairs for the rest of my worthless old years."

      The old man sighed, and such a sigh!

      Bobbie's heart went out to him, and he tried to cheer him up.

      "Well, sir, there could be worse things in life – you are not blind, nor deaf – you have your hands and they look like hands that can do a lot."

      His neighbor looked down at his nervous, delicate hands and smiled, for his was a valiant spirit.

      "Yes, they've done a lot. They'll do a lot more, for I've been lying on my back with nothing to do for a month but think up things for them to do. I'm a mechanic, you know, and fortunately I have my hands and my memory, and years of training. I've been superintendent of a factory; electrical work, phonographs, and all kinds of instruments like that were my specialty. But, they don't want an old man back there, now. Too many young bloods with college training and book knowledge. I couldn't superintend much work now – this wheel chair of mine is built for comfort rather than exceeding the speed limit."

      Burke drew him out, and learned another pitiful side of life.

      Burke's new acquaintance was an artisan of the old school, albeit with the skill and modernity of a man who keeps himself constantly in the forefront by youthful thinking and scientific work. He had devoted the best years of his life to the interests of his employer. When a splendid factory had been completed, largely through the results of his executive as well as his technical skill, and an enormous fortune accumulated from the growing business of the famous plant, the president of the company had died. His son, fresh from college, assumed the management of the organization, and the services of old Barton were little appreciated by the younger man or his board of directors. It was a familiar story of modern business life.

      "So, there you have it, young man. Why I should bother you with my troubles I don't quite understand myself. In a hospital it's like shipboard; we know a man a short while, and isolated from the rest of the world, we are drawn closer than with the acquaintances of years. In my case it's just the tragedy of age. There is no man so important but that a business goes on very well without him. I realized it with young Gresham, even before I was hurt in the factory. They had taken practically all I had to give, and it was time to cast me aside. As a sort of charity, Gresham has sent me four weeks' salary, with a letter saying that he can do no more, and has appointed a young electrical engineer, from his own class in Yale, to take my place. They need an active man, not an invalid. My salary has been used up for expenses, and for the living of my two daughters, Mary and Lorna. What I'll do when I get back home, I don't know."

      He shook his head, striving to conceal the despondency which was tugging at his heart.

      Burke was cheery as he responded.

      "Well, Mr. Barton, you're not out of date yet. The world of electricity is getting bigger every day. You say that you have made many patents which were given to the Gresham company because you were their employee. Now, you can turn out a few more with your own name on them, and get the profits yourself. That's not so bad. I'll be out of here myself, before long, and I'll stir myself, to see that you get a chance. I can perhaps help in some way, even if I'm only a policeman."

      The older man looked at him with a comical surprise.

      "A policeman? A cop? Well, well, well! I wouldn't have known it!"

      Bobbie Burke laughed, and he had a merry laugh that did one's soul good to hear.

      "We're just human beings, you know – even if the ministers and the muckrakers do accuse us of being blood brothers to the devil and Ali Baba."

      "I never saw a policeman out of uniform before – that's why it seems funny, I suppose. But I wouldn't judge you to be the type which I usually see in the police. How long have you been in the service?"

      Here was Bobby's cue for autobiography, and he realized that, as a matter of neighborliness, he must go as far as his friend.

      "Well, I'm what they call a rookie. It's my second job as a rookie, however, for I ran away from home several years ago, and joined the army. I believed all the pretty pictures they hang up in barber shops and country post-offices, and thought I was going to be a globe trotter. Do you remember that masterpiece which shows the gallant bugler tooting the 'Blue Bells of Scotland,' and wearing a straight front jacket that would make a Paris dressmaker green with envy? Well, sir, I believed that poster, and the result was that I went to the Philippines and helped chase Malays, Filipinos, mosquitoes, and germs; curried the major's horse, swept his front porch, polished his shoes, built fences and chicken houses, and all the rest of the things a soldier СКАЧАТЬ