class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 28]"/> muzzle of a pistol to pay a ransom of fifty—one hundred—five hundred thousand dollars! With the money in hand the gang had vanished, the masked giant firing the pistol at M'sieu' the president as he went. Cross-examined, the waiter could not affirm positively as to the shot. But as for the remaining details there could be no doubt.

Griswold ordered a second cup of coffee, and while the waiter was bringing it, conscience—not the newly acquired conscience, but the conventional—bent its bow and sped its final arrow. It was suddenly brought home to the enthusiast with sharp emphasis that to all civilized mankind, save and excepting those few chosen ones who shared his peculiar convictions, he was a common thief, a bandit, an outlaw. Public opinion, potential or expressed, is at best but an intangible thing. But for a few tumultuous seconds Griswold writhed under the ban of it as if it had been a whip of scorpions. Then he smiled to think how strong the bonds of custom had grown; and at the smile conscience flung away its empty quiver.

Now it was over, however, the enthusiast was rather grateful for the chastening. It served to remind him afresh of his mission. This money which he had just wrested from the claws of the plutocratic dragon must be held as a sacred trust; it must be devoted scrupulously to the cause of the down-trodden and the oppressed. Precisely how it was to be applied he had not yet determined; but that could be decided later.

Meanwhile, it was very evident that the dragon did not intend to accept defeat without a struggle, and Griswold set his wits at work upon the problem of escape.

"It's a little queer that I hadn't thought of that part of it before," he mused, sipping his coffee as one who need not hasten until the race is actually begun. "I suppose the other fellow, the real robber, would have figured himself safely out of it—or would have thought he had—before he made the break. Since I did not, I've got it to do now, and there isn't much time to throw away. Let me see—" he shut his eyes and went into the inventive trance of the literary craftsman—"the keynote must be originality; I must do that which the other fellow would never think of doing."

On the strength of that decision he ventured to order a third cup of coffee, and before it had cooled he had outlined a plan, basing it upon a further cross-questioning of the Gascon waiter. The man had been to the street door again, and by this time the sidewalk excitement had subsided sufficiently to make room for an approach to the truth. The story of an armed band surrounding the bank had been a canard. There had been but one man concerned in the robbery, and the sidewalk gossip was beginning to describe him with discomforting accuracy.

Griswold paid his score and went out boldly and with studied nonchalance. He reasoned that, notwithstanding the growing accuracy of the street report, he was still in no immediate danger so long as he remained in such close proximity to the bank. It was safe to assume that this was one of the things the professional "strong-arm man" would not do. But it was also evident that he must speedily lose his identity if he hoped to escape; and the lost identity must leave no clew to itself.

Griswold smiled when he remembered how, in fiction of the felon-catching sort, and in real life, for that matter, the law-breaker always did leave a clew for the pursuers. Thereupon arose a determination to demonstrate practically that it was quite as possible to create an inerrant fugitive as to conceive an infallible detective. Joining the passers-by on the sidewalk, he made his way leisurely to Canal Street, and thence diagonally through the old French quarter toward the French Market. In a narrow alley giving upon the levee he finally found what he was looking for; a dingy sailors' barber's shop. The barber was a negro, fat, unctuous and sleepy-looking; and he was alone.

"Yes, sah; shave, boss?" asked the negro, bowing and scraping a foot when Griswold entered.

"No; a hair-cut." The customer produced a silver half-dollar. "Go somewhere and get me a cigar to smoke while you are doing it. Get a good one, if you have to go to Canal Street," he added, climbing into the rickety chair.

The fat negro shuffled out, scenting tips. The moment he was out of sight, Griswold took up the scissors and began to hack awkwardly at his beard and mustache; awkwardly, but swiftly and with well-considered purpose. The result was a fairly complete metamorphosis easily wrought. In place of the trim beard and curling mustache there was a rough stubble, stiff and uneven, like that on the face of a man who had neglected to shave for a week or two.

"There, I think that will answer," he told himself, standing back before the cracked looking-glass to get the general effect. "And it is decently original. The professional cracksman would probably have shaved, whereupon the first amateur detective he met would reconstruct the beard on the sunburned lines. Now for a pawnbroker; and the more avaricious he happens to be, the better he will serve the purpose."

He went to the door and looked up and down the alley. The negro was not yet in sight, and Griswold walked rapidly away in the direction opposite to that taken by the obliging barber.

A pawnbroker's shop of the kind required was not far to seek in that locality, and when it was found, Griswold drove a hard bargain with the Portuguese Jew behind the counter. The pledge he offered was the suit he was wearing, and the bargaining concluded in an exchange of the still serviceable business suit for a pair of butternut trousers, a second-hand coat too short in the sleeves, a flannel shirt, a cap, and a red handkerchief; these and a sum of ready money, the smallness of which he deplored piteously before he would consent to accept it.

The effect of the haggling was exactly what Griswold had prefigured. The Portuguese, most suspicious of his tribe, suspecting everything but the truth, flatly accused his customer of having stolen the pledge. And when Griswold departed without denying the charge, suspicion became conviction, and the pledged clothing, which might otherwise have given the police the needed clew, was carefully hidden away against a time when the Jew's apprehensions should be quieted.

Having thus disguised himself, Griswold made the transformation artistically complete by walking a few squares in the dust of a loaded cotton float on the levee. Then he made a tramp's bundle of the manuscript of the moribund book, the pistol, and the money in the red handkerchief; and having surveyed himself with some satisfaction in the bar mirror of a riverside pot-house, a daring impulse to test his disguise by going back to the restaurant where he had breakfasted seized and bore him up-town.

The experiment was an unqualified success. The proprietor of the bank-neighboring café not only failed to recognize him; he was driven forth with revilings in idiomatic French and broken English.

"Bête! Go back on da levee w'ere you belong to go. I'll been kipping dis café for zhentlemen! Scélérat! Go!"

Griswold went out, smiling between his teeth.

"That settles the question of identification and present safety," he assured himself exultantly. Then: "I believe I could walk into the Bayou State Security and not be recognized."

As before, the daring impulse was irresistible, and he gave place to it on the spur of the moment. Fouling a five-dollar bill in the mud of the gutter, he went boldly into the bank and asked the paying teller to give him silver for it. The teller sniffed at the money, scowled at the man, and turned back to his cash-book without