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THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM




[Illustration: NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM.--_Frontispiece_
(_Page 18._)]




THE ESCAPE
OF MR. TRIMM

_HIS PLIGHT AND OTHER PLIGHTS_

BY

IRVIN S. COBB

AUTHOR OF
OLD JUDGE PRIEST,
BACK HOME, ETC.

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK




COPYRIGHT, 1910, 1911, 1912 AND 1913

BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1913

BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1913

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


[Transcriber's Note: A List of Illustrations has been added.]




TO MY WIFE




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                          PAGE

     I.  THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM                      3

    II.  THE BELLED BUZZARD                          54

   III.  AN OCCURRENCE UP A SIDE STREET              79

    IV.  ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES       96

     V.  SMOKE OF BATTLE                            142

    VI.  THE EXIT OF ANNE DUGMORE                   179

   VII.  TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN                   202

  VIII.  FISHHEAD                                   244

    IX.  GUILTY AS CHARGED                          260




ILLUSTRATIONS


  NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM.                   Frontispiece

  "TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN."             Facing page 70

  "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE."      Facing Page 164

  HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT
    MADE A CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW.                      Facing Page 193




THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM




I

THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM


Mr. Trimm, recently president of the late Thirteenth National Bank, was
taking a trip which was different in a number of ways from any he had
ever taken. To begin with, he was used to parlor cars and Pullmans and
even luxurious private cars when he went anywhere; whereas now he rode
with a most mixed company in a dusty, smelly day coach. In the second
place, his traveling companion was not such a one as Mr. Trimm would
have chosen had the choice been left to him, being a stupid-looking
German-American with a drooping, yellow mustache. And in the third
place, Mr. Trimm's plump white hands were folded in his lap, held in a
close and enforced companionship by a new and shiny pair of Bean's
Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs. Mr. Trimm was on his way to the
Federal penitentiary to serve twelve years at hard labor for breaking,
one way or another, about all the laws that are presumed to govern
national banks.

       *       *       *       *       *

All the time Mr. Trimm was in the Tombs, fighting for a new trial, a
certain question had lain in his mind unasked and unanswered. Through
the seven months of his stay in the jail that question had been always
at the back part of his head, ticking away there like a little watch
that never needed winding. A dozen times a day it would pop into his
thoughts and then go away, only to come back again.

When Copley was taken to the penitentiary--Copley being the cashier who
got off with a lighter sentence because the judge and jury held him to
be no more than a blind accomplice in the wrecking of the Thirteenth
National--Mr. Trimm read closely every line that the papers carried
about Copley's departure. But none of them had seen fit to give the
young cashier more than a short and colorless paragraph. For Copley was
only a small figure in the big intrigue that had startled the country;
Copley didn't have the money to hire big lawyers to carry his appeal to
the higher courts for him; Copley's wife was keeping boarders; and as
for Copley himself, he had been wearing stripes several months now.

With Mr. Trimm it had been vastly different. From the very beginning he
had held the public eye. His bearing in court when the jury came in with
their judgment; his cold defiance when the judge, in pronouncing
sentence, mercilessly arraigned him and the system of finance for which
he stood; the manner of his life in the Tombs; his spectacular fight to
beat the verdict, had all been worth columns of newspaper space. If Mr.
Trimm had been a popular poisoner, or a society woman named as
co-respondent in a sensational divorce suit, the papers could not have
been more generous in their space allotments. And Mr. Trimm in his cell
had read all of it with smiling contempt, even to the semi-hysterical
outpourings of the lady special writers who called him The Iron Man of
Wall Street and undertook to analyze his emotions--and missed the mark
by a thousand miles or two.

Things had been smoothed as much as possible for him in the Tombs, for
money and the power of it will go far toward ironing out even the
corrugated routine of that big jail. He had a large cell to himself in
the airiest, brightest corridor. His meals were served by a caterer from
outside. Although he ate them without knife or fork, he soon learned
that a spoon and the fingers can accomplish a good deal when backed by a
good appetite, and Mr. Trimm's appetite was uniformly good. The warden
and his underlings had been models of official kindliness; the
newspapers had sent their brightest young men to interview him whenever
he felt like talking, which wasn't often; and surely his lawyers had
done all in his behalf that money--a great deal of money--could do.
Perhaps it was because of these things that Mr. Trimm had never been
able to bring himself to realize that he was the Hobart W. Trimm who had
been sentenced to the Federal prison; it seemed to him, somehow, that
he, personally, was merely a spectator standing to one side watching the
fight of another man to dodge the penitentiary.

However, he didn't fail to give the other man the advantage of every
chance that money would buy. This sense of aloofness to the whole thing
had persisted even when his personal lawyer came to him one night in the
early fall and told him that the court of last possible resort had
denied the last possible motion. Mr. Trimm cut the lawyer short with a
shake of his head as the other began saying something about the chances
of a pardon from the President. Mr. Trimm wasn't in the habit of letting
men deceive him with idle words. No President would pardon him, and he
knew it.

"Never mind that, Walling," he said steadily, when the lawyer offered to
come to see him again before he started for prison the next day. "If
you'll see that a drawing-room on the train is reserved for me--for us,
I mean--and all that sort of thing, I'll not detain you any further. I
have a good many things to do tonight. Good night."

"Such a man, such a man," said Walling to himself as he climbed into
his car; "all chilled steel and brains. And they are going to lock that
brain up for twelve years. It's a crime," said Walling, and shook his
head. Walling always said it was a crime when they sent a client of his
to prison. To his credit be it said, though, they sent very few of them
there. Walling made as high as fifty thousand a year at criminal law.
Some of it was very criminal law indeed. His specialty was picking holes
in the statutes faster than the legislature could make them and provide
them and putty them up with amendments. This was the first case he had
lost in a good long time.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Jerry, the turnkey, came for him in the morning Mr. Trimm had made
as careful a toilet as the limited means at his command permitted, and
he had eaten a hearty breakfast and was ready to go, all but putting on
his hat. Looking the picture of well-groomed, close-buttoned, iron-gray
middle age, Mr. Trimm followed the turnkey through the long corridor and
down the winding iron stairs to the warden's office. He gave no heed to
the curious eyes that followed him through the barred doors of many
cells; his feet rang briskly on the flags.

The warden, Hallam, was there in the private office with another man, a
tall, raw-boned man with a drooping, straw- mustache and the
unmistakable look about him of the police officer. Mr. Trimm knew
without being told that this was the man who would take him to prison.
The stranger was standing at a desk, signing some papers.

"Sit down, please, Mr. Trimm," said the warden with a nervous
cordiality. "Be through here in just one minute. This is Deputy Marshal
Meyers," he added.

Mr. Trimm started to tell this Mr. Meyers he was glad to meet him, but
caught himself and merely nodded. The man stared at him with neither
interest nor curiosity in his dull blue eyes. The warden moved over
toward the door.

"Mr. Trimm," he said, clearing his throat, "I took the liberty of
calling a cab to take you gents up to the Grand Central. It's out front
now. But there's a big crowd of reporters and photographers and a lot of
other people waiting, and if I was you I'd slip out the back way--one of
my men will open the yard gate for you--and jump aboard the subway down
at Worth Street. Then you'll miss those fellows."

"Thank you, Warden--very kind of you," said Mr. Trimm in that crisp,
businesslike way of his. He had been crisp and businesslike all his
life. He heard a door opening softly behind him, and when he turned to
look he saw the warden slipping out, furtively, in almost an embarrassed
fashion.

"Well," said Meyers, "all ready?"

"Yes," said Mr. Trimm, and he made as if to rise.

"Wait one minute," said Meyers.

He half turned his back on Mr. Trimm and fumbled at the side pocket of
his ill-hanging coat. Something inside of Mr. Trimm gave the least
little jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all those
months began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchief
the man was getting out. Doubtless he was going to mop his face.

He didn't mop his face, though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, as
if it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then,
thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying in
his hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had little
notches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that had
ticked in Mr. Trimm's head was answered at last--in the sight of these
steel things with their notched jaws.

Mr. Trimm stood up and, with a movement as near to hesitation as he had
ever been guilty of in his life, held out his hands, backs upward.

"I guess you're new at this kind of thing," said Meyers, grinning. "This
here way--one at a time."

He took hold of Mr. Trimm's right hand, turned it sideways and settled
one of the steel cuffs over the top of the wrist, flipping the notched
jaw up from beneath and pressing it in so that it locked automatically
with a brisk little click. Slipping the locked cuff back and forth on
Mr. Trimm's lower arm like a man adjusting a part of machinery, and then
bringing the left hand up to meet the right, he treated it the same way.
Then he stepped back.

Mr. Trimm hadn't meant to protest. The word came unbidden.

"This--this isn't necessary, is it?" he asked in a voice that was husky
and didn't seem to belong to him.

"Yep," said Meyers. "Standin' orders is play no favorites and take no
chances. But you won't find them things uncomfortable. Lightest pair
there was in the office, and I fixed 'em plenty loose."

For half a minute Mr. Trimm stood like a rooster hypnotized by a
chalkmark, his arms extended, his eyes set on his bonds. His hands had
fallen perhaps four inches apart, and in the space between his wrists a
little chain was stretched taut. In the mounting tumult that filled his
brain there sprang before Mr. Trimm's consciousness a phrase he had
heard or read somewhere, the title of a story or, perhaps, it was a
headline--The Grips of the Law. The Grips of the Law were upon Mr.
Trimm--he felt them now for the first time in these shiny wristlets and
this bit of chain that bound his wrists and filled his whole body with a
strange, sinking feeling that made him physically sick. A sudden sweat
beaded out on Mr. Trimm's face, turning it slick and wet.

He had a handkerchief, a fine linen handkerchief with a hemstitched
border and a monogram on it, in the upper breast pocket of his buttoned
coat. He tried to reach it. His hands went up, twisting awkwardly like
crab claws. The fingers of both plucked out the handkerchief. Holding it
so, Mr. Trimm mopped the sweat away. The links of the handcuffs fell in
upon one another and lengthened out again at each movement, filling the
room with a smart little sound.

He got the handkerchief stowed away with the same clumsiness. He raised
the manacled hands to his hat brim, gave it a downward pull that brought
it over his face and then, letting his short arms slide down upon his
plump stomach, he faced the man who had put the fetters upon him,
squaring his shoulders back. But it was hard, somehow, for him to square
his shoulders--perhaps because of his hands being drawn so closely
together. And his eyes would waver and fall upon his wrists. Mr. Trimm
had a feeling that the skin must be stretched very tight on his jawbones
and his forehead.

"Isn't there some way to hide these--these things?"

He began by blurting and ended by faltering it. His hands shuffled
together, one over, then under the other.

"Here's a way," said Meyers. "This'll help."

He bestirred himself, folding one of the chained hands upon the other,
tugging at the white linen cuffs and drawing the coat sleeves of his
prisoner down over the bonds as far as the chain would let them come.

"There's the notion," he said. "Just do that-a-way and them bracelets
won't hardly show a-tall. Ready? Let's be movin', then."

But handcuffs were never meant to be hidden. Merely a pair of steel
rings clamped to one's wrists and coupled together with a scrap of
chain, but they'll twist your arms and hamper the movements of your body
in a way to constantly catch the eye of the passer-by. When a man is
coming toward you, you can tell that he is handcuffed before you see the
cuffs.

Mr. Trimm was never able to recall afterward exactly how he got out of
the Tombs. He had a confused memory of a gate that was swung open by
some one whom Mr. Trimm saw only from the feet to the waist; then he and
his companion were out on Lafayette Street, speeding south toward the
subway entrance at Worth Street, two blocks below, with the marshal's
hand cupped under Mr. Trimm's right elbow and Mr. Trimm's plump legs
almost trotting in their haste. For a moment it looked as if the
warden's well-meant artifice would serve them.

But New York reporters are up to the tricks of people who want to evade
them. At the sight of them a sentry reporter on the corner shouted a
warning which was instantly caught up and passed on by another picket
stationed half-way down the block; and around the wall of the Tombs came
pelting a flying mob of newspaper photographers and reporters, with a
choice rabble behind them. Foot passengers took up the chase, not
knowing what it was about, but sensing a free show. Truckmen halted
their teams, jumped down from their wagon seats and joined in. A
man-chase is one of the pleasantest outdoor sports that a big city like
New York can offer its people.

Fairly running now, the manacled banker and the deputy marshal shot down
the winding steps into the subway a good ten yards ahead of the foremost
pursuers. But there was one delay, while Meyers skirmished with his free
hand in his trousers' pocket for a dime for the tickets, and another
before a northbound local rolled into the station. Shouted at, jeered
at, shoved this way and that, panting in gulping breaths, for he was
stout by nature and staled by lack of exercise, Mr. Trimm, with Meyers
clutching him by the arm, was fairly shot aboard one of the cars, at the
apex of a human wedge. The astonished guard sensed the situation as the
scrooging, shoving, noisy wave rolled across the platform toward the
doors which he had opened and, thrusting the officer and his prisoner
into the narrow platform space behind him, he tried to form with his
body a barrier against those who came jamming in.

It didn't do any good. He was brushed away, protesting and blustering.
The excitement spread through the train, and men, and even women, left
their seats, overflowing the aisles.

There is no crueler thing than a city crowd, all eyes and morbid
curiosity. But Mr. Trimm didn't see the staring eyes on that ride to the
Grand Central. What he saw was many shifting feet and a hedge of legs
shutting him in closely--those and the things on his wrists. What the
eyes of the crowd saw was a small, stout man who, for all his bulk,
seemed to have dried up inside his clothes so that they bagged on him
some places and bulged others, with his head tucked on his chest, his
hat over his face and his fingers straining to hold his coat sleeves
down over a pair of steel bracelets.

Mr. Trimm gave mental thanks to a Deity whose existence he thought he
had forgotten when the gate of the train-shed clanged behind him,
shutting out the mob that had come with them all the way. Cameras had
been shoved in his face like gun muzzles, reporters had scuttled
alongside him, dodging under Meyers' fending arm to shout questions in
his ears. He had neither spoken nor looked at them. The sweat still ran
down his face, so that when finally he raised his head in the
comparative quiet of the train-shed his skin was a curious gray under
the jail paleness like the color of wet wood ashes.

"My lawyer promised to arrange for a compartment--for some private place
on the train," he said to Meyers. "The conductor ought to know."

They were the first words he had uttered since he left the Tombs. Meyers
spoke to a jaunty Pullman conductor who stood alongside the car where
they had halted.

"No such reservation," said the conductor, running through his sheaf of
slips, with his eyes shifting from Mr. Trimm's face to Mr. Trimm's hands
and back again, as though he couldn't decide which was the more
interesting part of him; "must be some mistake. Or else it was for some
other train. Too late to change now--we pull out in three minutes."

"I reckon we better git on the smoker," said Meyers, "if there's room
there."

Mr. Trimm was steered back again the length of the train through a
double row of pop-eyed porters and staring trainmen. At the steps where
they stopped the instinct to stretch out one hand and swing himself up
by the rail operated automatically and his wrists got a nasty twist.
Meyers and a brakeman practically lifted him up the steps and Meyers
headed him into a car that was hazy with blue tobacco smoke. He was
confused in his gait, almost as if his lower limbs had been fettered,
too.

The car was full of shirt-sleeved men who stood up, craning their necks
and stumbling over each other in their desire to see him. These men came
out into the aisle, so that Meyers had to shove through them.

"This here'll do as well as any, I guess," said Meyers. He drew Mr.
Trimm past him into the seat nearer the window and sat down alongside
him on the side next the aisle, settling himself on the stuffy plush
seat and breathing deeply, like a man who had got through the hardest
part of a not easy job.

"Smoke?" he asked.

Mr. Tr