Collected Short Stories II. The Death Voyage

COLLECTED SHORT STORIES • II

“‘Let them go in with the others. All right, Genaro, we won’t talk about it. We’ve got you down for near fifty murders. You didn’t do them with your own hands. You had your choppers and your gunmen. But they were yours all the same. Have you the gang?’

“‘Sixty of them.’

“‘That’s enough to go on with. Off with them to the Odeum.’ “All night they were being led in, gangsters of every kind,

thugs, gunmen, booze-hustlers, hi-jackers, racketeers, conmen, scratchers, common yeggmen, and hold-uppers – crooks of every size and shape. Fanshawe had them all tabbed, ran his finger down the list, had the man’s record in a moment, and dealt with him in a word or two. Often he had a consultation with his friends, and once or twice he looked across for a nod from me or some other who was in the inside of things. Here or there a man was set free with a few stern words of warning. Far the greater part were sent on to the Odeum. At last, just as dawn was breaking, Fanshawe rose, stretched himself, threw down his half-smoked cigar – he had smoked a chain of them through the whole night – and came down from the dais. The other followed, and so did I.

“There were crowds in the street, but the cops and the G.T.S. men had made an avenue, and Fanshawe, with his committee, drove down to the Odeum, which was only three or four blocks away. For my own part, I made my way on foot through the crowd, and reached the place after they had entered. There was a guard at the door, but MacDonovan, who was a pal of mine up at police head-quarters, caught me by the shoulder as I tried to squeeze in.

171

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

“‘Not in your life, kid,’ said he. ‘These guys know you for what you are, and if you get among them I guess there wouldn’t be enough of you left to be worth a funeral.’

“‘Can’t I get a look in anywhere, Mac?’

“There was a little metal-faced door just inside, and he opened it.

“ ‘Get up this stair,’ said he. ‘You are taking a chance from the President’s guards, but if you get up there you will see all there is.’

“So up I went, only to find a gat flushed into my face from a sentry at the top. I got friendly, however, and he let me stop where I could get a view.

“The Odeum is a big square dancing hall with no furniture. It just has a gallery at one end where the band would play – and that is where I was. There was the one stair leading to the gallery, with the guarded and locked door at the bottom. There were two or three other guarded doors faced with metal down below, and the windows, which were high, were all boarded up. Down in the body of the hall were about twelve hundred people, some in dress, most in any sort of rough clothes, but all of them just dancing with rage. They were shaking their fists up at the gallery and yelling out every kind of abuse and threat of what they were going to do with the G.T.S. folk when they got loose.

“Dancing mad – that was how they were – and as you looked down under the bright top lights you could just see open yelling mouths, and twisted faces, and fists held up shaking at the President. I’ll hand it to him for being cool. There he sat with a few of his committee looking down in silence

172

COLLECTED SHORT STORIES • II

on the mob, as quiet as a fish in ice. On each side of him was a big brass tripod, and a velvet cloth over each such as photographers use. Half-a-dozen G.T.S. were at the back, and if ever I saw hard-bitten soldiers it was there.

“Presently Fanshawe rose and held up his hand for silence. There were some yells of hatred, but as the man stood and looked down at them with a face like death and eyes like icicles, these died away, and there was such utter stillness that there might have been no one in the room. Then he began to speak with a voice that crackled like electricity.

“ ‘There are a few Amurrcans in this room, more shame to them,’ said he. ‘They have been corrupted and led away, and yet they were the very ones chosen by the people and trusted to look after their affaires. I am sorry for them, but they have only themselves to thank. As to the rest of you, you are nearly all from foreign lands, whence you were driven by want or tyranny. You came here and Amurrca welcomed you. She could not have been more generous. Within a year she put you on an equality with the oldest citizen. She gave you all her broad lands that you might find a place for yourselves and use every gift that was in you. That is what Amurrca has done for you. And what have you done for Amurrca? You have broken her laws, made the name of her cities a scandal, corrupted her citizens with your ill-got money, broken down her legal system, killed her guardians of the peace when you could not corrupt them. In a word, you have done such things that at long last we, who are the real people, have had to come forth and show you that there is a live Amurrca which has been good and liberal and generous, but which has in it also the power which

173

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

can punish those who abuse what has been given. You have forced it on us. You have left us no other way but this. Enough said! Cut loose!’

“As he spoke a man on either side pulled the cloth off the machine-guns. The hard-bitten citizens behind sprang to their positions, and in an instant the massacre began.

“I only had a glance at it. I saw them rushing for the doors. I saw them climbing to the sealed windows. I saw them piling up in the corners as rats do when a terrier is loose. I saw them running and screaming, and tripping and falling, and some hiding behind the others, and the dead piling up, and the judges all going down in one heap, and the mayor running forward with his hands up. All this I seemed to see, and then – and then –

“Well, what then?”

“Well, as I said at the beginning, the rattle of that skirt’s slop-pail carried on the tapping of the guns, and then she was bobbing and scarping, and saying that she thought I had been up and out.”

We sat in disgruntled silence.

“Do you mean to say,” I cried, at last, “that this has all been a dream?”

“Well, you can call it that if you like,” he answered, taking the sodden cigar from his mouth. “A vision, maybe, is a better word. It hasn’t happened just like that yet. But wait a bit, folk, wait a bit.”

Poor old Kid! We felt that the end of his story had been a bit of a flop. But his own end was dramatic enough. Only a few days later we saw the curt paragraph in a morning paper: –

174