FullReads

As the car darted and dodged up Eighth Avenue, a man who had been hidden by the stairs to the Elevated, stepped in front of it. It caught him, and hurled him, like a mail-bag tossed from a train, against one of the pillars that support the overhead tracks. Winthrop gave a cry and fell upon the brakes. The cry was as full of pain as though he himself had been mangled. Miss Forbes saw only the man appear, and then disappear, but, Winthrop’s shout of warning, and the wrench as the brakes locked, told her what had happened. She shut her eyes, and for an instant covered them with her hands. On the front seat Peabody clutched helplessly at the cushions. In horror his eyes were fastened on the motionless mass jammed against the pillar. Winthrop scrambled over him, and ran to where the man lay. So, apparently, did every other inhabitant of Eighth Avenue; but Winthrop was the first to reach him and kneeling in the car tracks, he tried to place the head and shoulders of the body against the iron pillar. He had seen very few dead men; and to him, this weight in his arms, this bundle of limp flesh and muddy clothes, and the purple-bloated face with blood trickling down it, looked like a dead man.

Once or twice when in his car, Death had reached for Winthrop, and only by the scantiest grace had he escaped. Then the nearness of it had only sobered him. Now that he believed he had brought it to a fellow man, even though he knew he was in no degree to blame, the thought sickened and shocked him. His brain trembled with remorse and horror.

But voices assailing him on every side brought him to the necessity of the moment. Men were pressing close upon him, jostling, abusing him, shaking fists in his face. Another crowd of men, as though fearing the car would escape of its own volition, were clinging to the steps and running boards.

Winthrop saw Miss Forbes standing above them, talking eagerly to Peabody, and pointing at him. He heard children’s shrill voices calling to new arrivals that an automobile had killed a man; that it had killed him on purpose. On the outer edge of the crowd men shouted: “Ah, soak him,” “Kill him,” “Lynch him.”

A soiled giant without a collar stooped over the purple, blood-stained face, and then leaped upright, and shouted: “It’s Jerry Gaylor, he’s killed old man Gaylor.”

The response was instant. Every one seemed to know Jerry Gaylor.

Winthrop took the soiled person by the arm.

“You help me lift him into my car,” he ordered. “Take him by the shoulders. We must get him to a hospital.”

“To a hospital? To the Morgue!” roared the man. “And the police station for yours. You don’t do no get-away.”

Winthrop answered him by turning to the crowd. “If this man has any friends here, they’ll please help me put him in my car, and we’ll take him to Roosevelt Hospital.”

The soiled person shoved a fist and a bad cigar under Winthrop’s nose.

“Has he got any friends?” he mocked. “Sure, he’s got friends, and they’ll fix you, all right.”

“Sure!” echoed the crowd.

The man was encouraged.

“Don’t you go away thinking you can come up here with your buzz wagon and murder better men nor you’ll ever be and—-“

“Oh, shut up!” said Winthrop.

He turned his back on the soiled man, and again appealed to the crowd.

“Don’t stand there doing nothing,” he commanded. “Do you want this man to die? Some of you ring for an ambulance and get a policeman, or tell me where is the nearest drug store.”

No one moved, but every one shouted to every one else to do as Winthrop suggested.