The Miracle Man by Frank L. Packard

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THE
MIRACLE MAN

BY
FRANK L. PACKARD

AUTHOR OF
GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN, ETC.

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

1914

TO
NEARLY
EVERYBODY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE "ROOST"

II A NEW CULT

III NEEDLEY

IV THE PATRIARCH

V A STRANGE CONVERSATION

VI OFFICIALLY ENDORSED

VII THE PATRIARCH'S GRAND NIECE

VIII IN WHICH THE BAIT IS NIBBLED

IX THE PILGRIMAGE

X THE MIRACLE

XI THE AFTERMATH

XII "SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY"

XIII REAL MONEY

XIV KNOTTING THE STRINGS

XV THE MIRACLE OVERDONE

XVI A FLY IN THE OINTMENT

XVII IN WHICH HELENA TAKES A RIDE

XVIII THE BOOMERANG

XIX THE SANCTUARY OF DARKNESS

XX TO THE VICTOR ARE THE SPOILS

XXI FACE VALUE

XXII THE SHRINE

XXIII THE WAY OUT

XXIV VALE!

THE MIRACLE MAN

--I--

THE "ROOST"

He was a misshapen thing, bulking a black blotch in the night at the
entrance of the dark alleyway--like some lurking creature in its lair.
He neither stood, nor kneeled, nor sat--no single word would describe
his posture--he combined all three in a sort of repulsive, formless
heap.

The Flopper moved. He came out from the alleyway onto the pavement, into
the lurid lights of the Bowery, flopping along knee to toe on one leg,
dragging the other leg behind him--and the leg he dragged was limp and
wobbled from the knee. One hand sought the pavement to balance himself
and aid in locomotion; the other arm, the right, was twisted out from
his body in the shape of an inverted V, the palm of his hand, with half
curled, contorted fingers, almost touching his chin, as his head sagged
at a stiff, set angle into his right shoulder. Hair straggled from the
brim of a nondescript felt hat into his eyes, and curled, dirty and
unshorn, around his ears and the nape of his neck. His face was covered
with a stubble of four days' growth, his body with rags--a coat; a
shirt, the button long since gone at the neck; and trousers gaping in
wide rents at the knees, and torn at the ankles where they flapped
around miss-mated socks and shoes.

A hundred, two hundred people passed him in a block, the populace of the
Bowery awakening into fullest life at midnight, men, women and
children--the dregs of the city's scum--the aristocracy of upper Fifth
Avenue, of Riverside Drive, aping Bohemianism, seeking the lure of the
Turkey Trot, transported from the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Rich
and poor, squalor and affluence, vice and near-vice surged by him,
voicing their different interests with laughter and sobs and soft words
and blasphemy, and, in a sort of mocking chorus, the composite effect
rose and fell in pitiful, jangling discords.

Few gave him heed--and these few but a cursory, callous glance. The
Flopper, on the inside of the sidewalk, in the shadow of the buildings,
gave as little as he got, though his eyes were fastened sharply, now
ahead, now, screwing around his body to look behind him, on the faces of
the pedestrians as they passed; or, rather, he appeared to look through
and beyond those in his immediate vicinity to the ones that followed in
his rear from further down the street, or approached him from the next
corner.

Suddenly the Flopper shrank into a doorway. From amidst the crowd
behind, the yellow flare of a gasoline lamp, outhanging from a
secondhand shop, glinted on brass buttons. An officer, leisurely
accommodating his pace to his own monarchial pleasure, causing his
hurrying fellow occupants of the pavement to break and circle around
him, sauntered casually by. The Flopper's black eyes contracted with
hate and a scowl settled on his face, as he watched the policeman pass;
then, as the other was lost again in the crowd ahead, he once more
resumed his progress down the block.

The Flopper crossed the intersecting street, his leg trailing a
helpless, sinuous path on its not over-clean surface, and started along
the next block. Halfway down was a garishly lighted establishment. When
near this the Flopper began to hurry desperately, as from further along
the street again his ear caught the peculiar raucous note of an
automobile horn accompanied by the rumbling approach of a heavy motor
vehicle. He edged his way now, wriggling, squirming and dodging between
the pedestrians, to the outer edge of the sidewalk, and stopped in front
of the music hall.

A sight-seeing car, crammed to capacity, reaching its momentary Mecca,
drew up at the curb; and the guide's voice rose over the screech of the
brakes:

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, we will get out here for a little while.
This is Black Ike's famous Auditorium, the scene of last week's
sensational triple murder! Please remember that there is no charge for
admission to patrons of the company. Just show your coupons, ladies and
gentlemen, and walk right ahead."

The passengers began to pour from the long seats to the ground. The
Flopper's hat was in his hand.

"Fer God's sake, gents an' ladies, don't pass me by," he cried
piteously. "I could work once, but look at me now--I was run over by a
fire truck. God bring pity to yer hearts--youse have money fer pleasure,
spare something fer me."

The first man down from the seat halted and stared at the twisted,
unsightly thing before him, and, with a little gasp, reached into his
pocket and dropped a bill into the Flopper's hat.

"God bless you!" stammered the Flopper--and the tears sprang swimming to
his eyes.

The first man passed on with a gruff, "Oh, all right," but he had left
an example behind him that few of his fellow passengers ignored.

"T'ank you, mum," mumbled the Flopper, as the money dropped into his
hat. "God reward you, sir.... Ah, miss, may you never know a tear....
'Twas heaven brought you 'ere to-night, lady."

They passed, following the guide. The Flopper scooped the money into a
pile in his hat, began to tuck it away in some recess of his shirt--when
a hand was thrust suddenly under his nose.

"Come on, now, divvy!" snapped a voice in his ear.

It was the driver of the car, who had dropped from his seat to the
ground. A gleam of hate replaced the tears in the Flopper's eyes.

"Go to hell!" he snarled through thin lips--and his hand closed
automatically over the cap.

"Come on, now, I ain't got no time to fool!" prompted the man, with a
leer. "I'm dead onto your lay, and there's a bull comin' along now--half
or him, which?"

The Flopper's eyes caught the brass buttons of the officer returning on
his beat, and his face was white with an inhuman passion, as, clutching
a portion of what was left in the hat, he lifted his hand from the rest.

"Thanks!" grinned the chauffeur, snatching at the remainder. "'Tain't
half, but it'll do"--and he hurried across the sidewalk, and disappeared
inside a saloon.

Oaths, voicing a passion that rocked the Flopper to his soul, purled in
a torrid stream from his lips, and for a moment made him forget the
proximity of the brass buttons. He raised his fist, that still clenched
some of the money, and shook it after the other--and his fist, uplifted
in midair, was caught in a vicious grip--the harness bull was standing
over him.

"Beat it!" rasped the officer roughly, "or I'll--hullo, what you got
here? Open your hand!"--he gave a sharp twist as he spoke, the
Flopper's fingers uncurled, and the money dropped into the policeman's
other hand--held conveniently below the Flopper's.

"It's mine--gimme it back," whined the Flopper.

"Yours! Yours, is it!" growled the officer. "Where'd you get it? Stole
it, eh? Go on, now, beat it--or I'll run you in! Beat it!"

With twitching fingers, the Flopper picked up his cap, placed it on his
head and sidled away. Ten yards along, in the shadow of the buildings
again, he looked back--the officer was still standing there, twirling
his stick, one hand just emerging from his pocket. The Flopper's finger
nails scratched along the stone pavement and curved into the palm of his
hand until the skin under the knuckles was bloodless white, and his lips
moved in ugly, whispered words--then, still whispering, he went on
again.

Down the Bowery he went like a human toad, keeping in the shadows,
keeping his eyes on the ground before him, a glint like a shudder in
their depths--on he went with hopping, lurching jerks, with whispering
lips. Street after street he passed, and then at a corner he turned and
went East--not far, only to the side entrance of the saloon on the
corner known, to those who _knew_, as the "Roost."

The door before which he stopped, on a level with the street, might
readily have passed for the entrance to one of the adjoining tenements,
for it was innocent to all appearances of any connection with the
unlovely resort of which it was a part--and it was closed.

The Flopper rang no bell. After a quick glance around him to assure
himself that he was not observed, he reached up for the doorknob, turned
it, and with surprising agility hopped oven the threshold and closed the
door behind him.

A staircase, making one side of a narrow and dimly lighted hall, from
down whose length came muffled sounds from the barroom, was before him;
and this, without hesitation, the Flopper began to mount, his knee
thumping from step to step, his dangling leg echoing the sound in a
peculiar; quick double thump. He reached the first landing, went along
it, and started up the second flight--but now the thumping sound he made
seemed accentuated intentionally, and upon his face there spread a grin
of malicious humor.

He halted before the door opposite the head of the second flight of
stairs, opened it, wriggled inside and shut it behind him.

"Hullo, Helena!" he snickered. "Pipe me comin'?"

The room was a fairly large one, gaudily appointed with cheap
furnishings, one of the Roost's private parlors--a girl on a couch in
the corner had raised herself on her elbow, and her dark eyes were fixed
uncompromisingly upon the Flopper, but she made no answer.

The Flopper laughed--then a spasm seemed to run through him, a horrible
boneless contortion of limbs and body, a slippery, twitching movement,
a repulsive though almost inaudible clicking of rehabilitated
joints--and the Flopper stood erect.

The girl was on her feet, her eyes flashing.

"Can that stunt!" she cried angrily. "You give me the shivers! Next time
you throw your fit, you throw it before you come around me, or I'll make
you wish you had--see?"

The Flopper was swinging legs and arms to restore a normal channel of
circulation.

"Y'oughter get used to it," said he, with a grin. "Ain't Pale Face Harry
come yet, an' where's the Doc?"

"Behind the axe under the table," said the girl tartly--and flung
herself back on the couch.

"T'anks," said the Flopper. "Say, Helena, wot's de new lay de Doc has
got up his sleeve?"

Helena made no answer.

"Is yer grouch painin' you so's yer tongue's hurt?" inquired the Flopper
solicitously.

Still no answer.

"Well, go to the devil!" said the Flopper politely.

He resumed the swinging of his arms and legs, but stopped suddenly a
moment later as a step, sounded outside in the hall and he turned
expectantly.

A young man, thin, emaciated, with gaunt, hollow face, abnormally bright
eyes and sallow skin, entered. He was well, but modestly, dressed; and
he coughed a little now, as though the two flights' climb had overtaxed
him--it was the man who had headed the subscription list to the Flopper
half an hour before in front of Black Ike's Auditorium.

"Hello, Helena!" he greeted, nodding toward the couch. "I shook the
rubber-neck bunch at Ike's, Flopper. That was a peach of a haul, eh, old
pal--the boobs came to it as though they couldn't get enough."

A sudden and reminiscent scowl clouded the Flopper's face. He stepped to
the table, reached his hand into his shirt, and flung down a single
one-dollar bill and a few coins.

"Dere's de haul, Harry--help yerself"--his invitation was a snarl.

Pale Face Harry had followed to the table. He looked first at the money,
then at the Flopper--and a tinge of red dyed his cheek. He coughed
before he spoke.

"Y'ain't going to stall on _me_, Flopper, are you?" he demanded, in an
ominous monotone.

"Stall!"--the word came away in a roar too genuine to leave any doubt of
the Flopper's sincerity, or the turbulent state of the Flopper's soul.
"Stall nothin'! De driver held me up fer some of it, an' de cop pinched
de rest."

"And you the king of Floppers!" breathed Pale Face Harry sadly. "D'ye
hear that, Helena? Come over here and listen. Go ahead, Flopper, tell us
about it."

Helena rose from the couch and came over to the table.

"Poor Flopper!" said she sweetly.

"Shut up!" snapped the Flopper savagely.

"Go on," prompted Pale Face Harry. "Go on, Flopper--tell us about it."

"I told you, ain't I?" growled the Flopper. "De driver called a divvy
wid de cop comin', an I had ter shell--an' wot he left de cop pinched.
Dat's all"--the Flopper's mouth was working again with the rage that
burned within him.

Pale Face Harry, with pointed forefinger, gingerly and facetiously laid
the coins out in a row on the table.

"And you the king of Floppers!" he murmured softly. "It's a wonder you
didn't let the Salvation Army get the rest away from you on the way
along!"

Helena laughed--but the Flopper didn't. He stepped close to Pale Face
Harry, and shoved his face within an inch of the other's.

"You close yer jaw," he snarled, "or I'll make yer map look like wot's
goin' ter happen ter dat cross-eyed snitch of a guy dat did me--him an'
de harness bull, when I--" The Flopper stopped abruptly, and edged away
from Pale Face Harry. "Hullo, Doc," he said meekly. "I didn't hear youse
comin' in."

A man, fair-haired, broad-shouldered, immaculate in well-tailored
tweeds, reliant in poise, leaned nonchalantly against the door--inside
the room. He was young, not more than twenty-eight, with clean-shaven,
pleasant, open face--a handsome face, marred only to the close observer
by the wrinkles beginning to pucker around his eyes, and a slight,
scarcely discernible puffiness in his skin--"Doc" Madison, gentleman
crook and high-class, polished con-man, who had lifted his profession to
an art, was still too young to be indelibly stamped with the hall-marks
of dissipation.

His gray eyes travelled from one to another, lingered an instant on
Helena, and came back to the Flopper.

"What's the trouble?" he demanded quietly.

It was Pale Face Harry who answered him.

"The Flopper's got it in for a couple of ginks that handed him one--a
bull and a chauffeur on a gape-wagon," he grinned, punctuating his words
with a cough. "The Flopper's got an idea the corpse-preserver's business
is dull, and he's going to help 'em out with two orders and pay for the
flowers himself."

Doc Madison shook his head and smiled a little grimly.

"Forget it, Flopper!" he said crisply. "I've something better for you to
do. You fade away, disappear and lay low from this minute. I don't care
what you do when you're resurrected, but from now on the three of you
are dead and buried, and the police go into mourning for at least six
months."

"What you got for us, Doc?--something nice?"--Helena pushed Pale Face
Harry and the Flopper unceremoniously out of her line of vision as she
spoke.

"Yes--the drinks. Cleggy's bringing them," Madison laughed--and opened
the door, as the tinkle of glass and a shuffling footstep sounded
without.

A man, big, hulking, thick-set and slouching, with shifty, cunning
little black eyes and the face of a bruiser, his nose bent over and
almost flattened down on one cheek, entered the room, carrying four
glasses on a tin tray. He set down the tray, and, as he lifted the
glasses from it and placed them on the table, he leered around at the
little group.

"Gee!" he said, sucking in his breath. "De Doc, an' Helena, an' Pale
Face, an' de Flopper! Gee, dis looks like de real t'ing--dis looks like
biz."

"It does--fifty-cents' worth--ten for yourself," said Doc Madison
suavely, flipping the coin into the tray. "Now, clear out!"

"Say"--Cleggy put his forefinger significantly to the side of his
nose--"say, can't youse let a sport in on--"

"Clear out!" Doc Madison broke in quite as suavely as before--but there
was a sudden glint of steel in the gray eyes as they held the bruiser's,
and Cleggy, hastily picking up the tray, scuffled from the room.

Madison watched the door close, then he began to pace slowly up and down
the room.

"Pull the chairs up to the table so we can take things comfortably," he
directed.

"There ain't but two," grinned Pale Face Harry.

"Oh, well, never mind," said Madison.

"Slew the couch around and pull that up--Helena and I will sit on the
head of it."

Still pacing up and down the length of the room, his hands in his
pockets, Doc Madison watched the others as they carried out his
directions; and then, suddenly, as he neared the door, his hand shot
out, wrenched the door open, and, quick as a panther in its spring, he
was in the hall without.

There was a yell, a scuffle, the rip and crash of rending bannisters, an
instant's silence, then a heavy thud--and then Cleggy's voice from
somewhere below in a choice and fervent flow of profanity.

Doc Madison re-entered the room, closed the door, dispassionately
arranged a disordered cuff, brushed a few particles of dust from his
sleeves and shoulder, and, this done, started toward the table--and
stopped.

Helena had swung herself to the table edge, and, glass in hand, dangling
her neatly shod little feet, was smoking a cigarette, her brown hair
with a glint of amber in it, her dark eyes veiled now by their heavy
lashes; on the other side of the table Pale Face Harry coughed, as, with
sleeve rolled back, he was intent on the hypodermic needle he was
pushing into his arm; while the Flopper, his eyes with a dog-like
admiration in them fixed on Madison, stood facing the door, a grotesque,
unpleasant figure, unkempt, unshaven, furtive-faced, his rags hanging
disreputably about him, his trousers with their frayed edges, now that
he stood upright, reaching far above his boot tops and flagrantly
exposing his wretched substitutes for socks.

Doc Madison reached thoughtfully into his pocket, brought out a silver
cigarette case, and carefully selected a cigarette from amongst its
fellows.

"Yes; Cleggy was right," he said softly, tapping the end of the
cigarette on his thumb nail. "You're the real thing--the real, real
thing."

--II--

A NEW CULT

Doc Madison swung Helena lightly down from the table to the head of the
couch, sat down beside her, one arm circling her waist, and motioned the
Flopper to a chair--then he leaned forward and watched Pale Face Harry
critically, as the latter carefully replaced the shining little
hypodermic in its case.

"Harry," said he abruptly, jerking his free hand toward the hypodermic,
"could you give up that dope-needle?"

"Sure, I could--if I wanted to!" asserted Pale Face Harry defiantly.

"That's good," said Madison cheerfully. "Because you'll have to."

"Eh?"--Pale Face Harry stared at Doc Madison in amazement.

"Because you'll have to--by and by," said Madison coolly. "And how about
that cough--can you quit coughing?"

"When I'm dead--which won't be long," sniffed Pale Face Harry. "D'ye
think I cough because I like it? How'm I going to quit coughing?"

"I don't know," admitted Doc Madison, frowning seriously. "I only know
you'll have to."

Pale Face Harry, with jaw dropped, accentuating the gaunt leanness of
his hollow-cheeked, emaciated face, gazed at Doc Madison with a curious
mingling of incredulity and affront--and coughed.

"Say," he inquired grimly, "what's the answer?"

Doc Madison took his arm from Helena's waist, pulled a newspaper from
his pocket, spread it out on the table--and his manner changed
suddenly--enthusiasm was in his eyes, his voice, his face.

"I've steered you three through a few deals," said he impressively,
"that have sized up big enough to keep you out of the raw vaudeville
turn you, Harry, and you, Flopper, are so fond of, and that would have
put Helena here on easy street, if you hadn't blown in all you got about
ten minutes after you got your hands on it--but I've got one here that
sizes up so big you wouldn't be able to spend the money fast enough to
close out your bank account if you did your damnedest! Get that? It's
the greatest cinch that ever came down from the gateway of heaven--and
that's where it came from--heaven. It couldn't have come from anywhere
else--it's too good. And it's new, bran new--it's never had the string
cut or the wrapper taken off. It's got anything that was ever run beaten
by more laps than there are in the track, and it's got a purse tied on
to the end of it that's the biggest ever offered since Adam. But you've
got to work for it, and that's what I brought you here for to-night--to
learn your little pieces so's you can say 'em nice and cute when you get
up on the platform before the audience."

The Flopper's tongue made a greedy circuit of his upper and under lips,
and he hitched his chair closer to the table.

A flush spread over Pale Face Harry's cheeks, and his eyes, abnormally
bright, grew brighter.

"You're all right, Doc," he assured Doc Madison anxiously. "You're all
right."

"U-uu-mm!" cooed Helena excitedly. "Go on, Doc--go on!"

"Listen," said Doc Madison, his voice lowered a little. "I found this
tucked away as a filler in a corner of the newspaper this evening. It's
headed, 'A New Cult,' with an interrogation mark after it. Now listen,
while I read it:"

A NEW CULT?

Needley, Maine, offers no attraction for aspiring young medical
men. One who tried it recently, and who pulled down his shingle in
disgust after a week, says competition is too strong, as the
village is obsessed with the belief that they have a sort of
faith-healer in their midst to whom is attributed cures of all
descriptions stretching back for a generation or more. The healer,
he adds, who rejoices in the name of the Patriarch and lives in
solitude a mile or so from the village, is something of an anomaly
in himself, being both deaf and dumb. We--

"But that's all that interests us," said Doc Madison, as he stopped
reading abruptly and lifted his head to scrutinize his companions
quizzically.

Pale Face Harry's eyes had lost their gleam and dulled--he gaped
reproachfully at Doc Madison. Helena's small mouth drooped downward in a
disappointed _moue_. Only the Flopper evidenced enthusiastic response.

"Sure!" he chortled. "Sure t'ing! I see. De old geezer'll have a pile of
shekels hid away, an' he lives by his lonesome a mile from de town. We
sneaks down dere, croaks de guy wid de queer monaker, an' beats it wid
de shekels--sure!"

Doc Madison turned a sad gray eye on the Flopper.

"Flopper," said he pathetically, "your soul, like your bones, runs to
rank realism. No; we don't 'croak de guy'--we cherish him, we nurse him,
we fondle him. He's our one best bet, and we fold him to our breasts
tenderly, and we protect him from all harm and danger and sudden death."

The Flopper blinked a little helplessly.

"Mabbe," said the Flopper, "I got de wrong dope. Some of dem words you
read I ain't hip to. Wot's anymaly mean?"

"Anomaly?"--Doc Madison reached for his glass, tossed off the contents
and set it down. "It means, Flopper, in this particular instance," he
said gravely, "that there shouldn't be any interrogation point after the
heading."

Again the Flopper blinked helplessly--and his fingers picked uncertainly
at the stubble on his chin. The other two gazed disconsolately--and
Helena a little pityingly as well--at Doc Madison.

Doc Madison flung out his arms suddenly.

"What's the matter with you all?" he demanded sarcastically. "You look
as though your faces pained you! What's the matter with you? You're
bright enough ordinarily, Helena, and, Harry, you're no dub--what's the
matter with you? Can't you see it--can't you see it! Why, it's sticking
out a mile--it's _waiting_ for us! The whole plant's there and all we've
got to do is get steam under the boilers. We'll have 'em coming for the
cure from every State in the Union, and begging us to let them throw
their diamond tiaras at us for a look-in at the shrine. Don't you see
it--can't you get it--can't you _get_ it!"

Helena bent suddenly over Doc Madison's shoulder, her eyes opening wide
with dawning comprehension.

"The cure?" she breathed.

"Sure--the cure," said Doc Madison earnestly. "The new cult--that's us.
Get the people talking, show 'em something, and you'll have to put up
fences and 'keep off the grass' signs to stop the lame and the halt and
the blind and the neurasthenics from crowding and suffocating to death
for want of air. We'll start a shrine down there that'll be a winner,
and the railroads will be running excursion-rate pilgrimages inside of
two months."

Pale Face Harry's chair creaked, as, like the Flopper, he now crowded it
in toward the table.

"I get you!" said he feverishly. "I get you! I've read about them
shrines--only you gotter have churches, and a carload of crutches, and
that sort of thing laying around."

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