The Price | Page 9

know what had happened, but he would go
and find out, if M'sieu' so desired. "M'sieu'" said breakfast first, by all
means, and information afterward. Both came in due season; and the
hungry one ate while he listened.
Transmuted into the broken English of the Gascon serving man, the
story of the robbery lost nothing in its sensational features.
"Ah! w'at you t'ink, M'sieu'? De bank on de nex' do' is been rob'!" And
upon this theme excited volubility descanted at large. The bank had
been surrounded by a gang of desperate men, with every exit guarded,
while the leader, a masked giant armed to the teeth, had compelled the
president at the 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