The City of Comrades

[Illustration: “’Sh!” was the first sound that came from her. “Don’t make a noise or you’ll frighten my friend. She’s nervous already.”

(See p. 32)]

The CITY OF COMRADES

BY BASIL KING

Author of “THE INNER SHRINE” “THE WILD OLIVE” “THE WAY HOME” “THE HIGH HEART” ETC.

I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dream’d that was the new City of Friends; Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest; It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words.

—WALT WHITMAN.

[Illustration]

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON

Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America

ILLUSTRATIONS

“’Sh!” was the first sound that came from her. “Don’t make a noise or you’ll frighten my friend. She’s nervous already.” Frontispiece

“Didn’t you ever see any one put these pearls into his pocket before?” Facing p. 204

“You’re going home to marry me.” “How can I be going home to marry you, when—when I never knew till within half an hour that you—that you cared anything about me?” ” 290

“That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’ the war ’ad done ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the best man ever lived before the war—” ” 344

THE CITY OF COMRADES

CHAPTER I

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

In the slow swirl of Columbus Circle, at the southwest corner of Central Park, two seedy, sinister individuals could hold an exceedingly private conversation without drawing attention to themselves. There were others like us on the scene, in that month of June, 1913, cast up from the obscurest depths of New York. We could revolve there for five or ten minutes, in company with other elements of the city’s life, to be eliminated by degrees, sucked into other currents, forming new combinations or reacting to the old ones.

In silence we shuffled along a few paces, though not exactly side by side. Lovey was just sufficiently behind me to be able to talk confidentially into my ear. My own manner was probably that of a man anxious to throw off a dogging inferior. Even among us there are social degrees.

“Yer’ll be sorry,” Lovey warned me, reproachfully.

“Very well, then,” I jerked back at him over my shoulder; “I shall be sorry.”

“If I didn’t know it was a good thing I wouldn’t ’a’ wanted to take ye in on it—not you, I wouldn’t; and dead easy.”

“I don’t care for it.”

“Ye’re only a beginner—”

“I’m not even that.”

“No, ye’re not even that; and this’d larn ye. Just two old ladies—lots of money always in the ’ouse—no resistance—no weepons nor nothink o’ that kind; and me knowin’ every hinch of the ground through workin’ for ’em two years ago—”

“And suppose they recognized you?”

“That’s it. That’s why I must have a pal. If they’d git a look at any one it’d have to be at you. But you don’t need to be afraid, never pinched before nor nothink. Once yer picter’s in the rogues’ they’ll run ye in if ye so much as blow yer nose. You’d just get by as an unknown man.”

“And if I didn’t get by?”

“Oh, but you would, sonny. Ye’re the kind. Just look at ye! Slim and easy-movin’ as a snake, y’are. Ye’d go through a man’s clothes while he’s got ’em on, and he wouldn’t notice ye no more’n a puff of wind. Look at yer ’and.”

I held it up and looked at it. A year ago, a month ago, I should have studied it with remorse. Now I did it stupidly, without emotions or regrets.