The evening world. Newspaper, April 15, 1922, Page 13

Organ's cure failed: to reach. ir heart without reserve. jeopardized. HE CHIEF, who didn’t believe cases that came there. ONALD PATRICK DORGAN ) had served forty-four years on the police force of North- ernapolis, and during all but years of that time he had patrol- the Forest Park section. Don Dorgan might have been a eant, or even a captain, but it had ly been seen at headquarters that was a crank about Forest Park. hither he had brought his bonny of a wife, and here he had built ir shack; here his wife had died, here she was buried. It was 80 ta relief in the whirl of depart- pt politics to have a man who was mted with his job, that the Big lows were glad of Dorgan, and kept there where he wanted to be, after year, patrolling Forest ‘ik. ‘or Don Pat Dorgan had the im- nse gift of loving people, all peo- In a day before any one in prthernapolis had heard of scientific nology Dorgan believed that the ity of a policeman with clean gloves d a clean heart was to keep people pm noeding to be arrested. He ued with drunken men and per- del them to hide out tn an alley d siverp off the drunk, When he did a; thems it, was because they were latoly staggering home intent on ing up the wives of their bosoms. ny homeless man could get a kel from Dorgan, and a road map the doss houses. To big bruisers spoke slowly, and he beat them ith his nightstick where it would the most but injure the least. jong his beat small boys might play ball, provided they did not break ndows or get themselves in front of The pocket in his coat il was a mine; here were secreted t only his midnight sandwiches, revolver and handcuffs and a ic supplement, but dlso a bag of btor cars. {ped candy and a red rubber ball When the bi to the booze it was Don Dorsan 0 made him enlist in the navy. ch things were Don's work—his art. fy of his art he had when Kitty va repented and became clean liv- ; when Micky Connors, whom rgan had known ever since Micky a squawking orphan, became a petor, with a large glass sign lettered J. Connor, M. D., D. S., and a jurse, to let a poor man in to see e great Doctor Connors! Dorgan did have for one boy and irl a sneaking fondness that tran- nded the Kindliness he felt toward he others. They were Polo Magenta, of the Ialian-English-Danish pkey Who had died of the coke, and 6 Kugler, daughter of that Jewish elicatessen man who knew more of ne Talmud than any man in the Bhetto—Kifle, the pr \d plump, ck-haired and a per- tf armful for any one. Polo Magenta had the stuff of a in him, The boy worshipped otors as his father had worshipped rses, At fourtecn, when his father 4, he was washer at McManus's ; at eighteen he was one of smoothest taxi drivers in the city. nineteen, dropping inte Knol eatessen for sausages and crack- for his midnight lunch, he was ited upon by Effie. ereafter he bung about the little nightly, till old Kugler frowned them—upon Polo, the gallantest in Little Hell, supple in his chaut- 8 whlform, straight-backed as the sh sergeant who had been his father, pale-haired like a Dane, Raltepether a soldierly figure, whisper- 3 iy across the couster to blushing Widow Maclester’s son UGLER lurked at the door and Prevente@ Polo from driving past and picking her up. Go EsMe became pale with long- te see her boy; Polo ht Bourbon, which good taxi-driver racing to catch He had an accident, once; he took to is not ie smashed the fenders of an- r; but one more of the ike, taxi company would let him Patrolman Don Dorgan sat in How A Gray Old C A Complete Novelette CHARACTERS IN THE STORY. DONALD PATRICK DORGAN, only a policeman, but with an infinite pacity for loving the whole human family. POLO MAGENTA, a protege of Dorgan, the son of a father whose case FFIE KUGLER, differing in race and religion from Pola, but giving him OLD MAN KUGLER, who followed the law no matter whose happiness in old men growing old in too much tivity. "DR DAVIS BRISTOW, who ran a sanitarium but didn’t understand all McMANUS, whose wickedness afforded an opportunity for another man's on the game, He decided that Polo Magenta should marry Efe. He told Polo that he would bear a message from him to the girl, and while he was meticulously selecting, a cut of sausage for sandwich, he whispered to her that Polo was waiting, with his car, in the alley off Minnis Place. Aloud he bawled: ‘Come walk the block with me, Efile, you little divvie, if your father will let you. Mr. Kug- ler, it isn't often that Don Dorgan invites the ladies to go a-walking with him, but it's spring, and you know how it is with us wicked cops. The girl looks as if she needed a breath of fresh air."* “That's r-r-r-ight,"" said Kugler. “You go valk a block with Mr. Dor- gan, Effie, and mind you come r-r-r-right back.'? Dorgan stood like a lion at the mouth of the alley where, beside his taxi, Polo Magenta was waiting. As he caught the cry with which Efe came to her lover, he remembered the evenings long gone when he and his own sweetheart had met in the maple lane that was now the scrofu- lous Minnis Place. “Oh, Polo, the days have been like dead things, never seeing you nowhere."* “Gee, it hurts, kid, to get up in the morning and have everything empty, knowing I won't see you any time. I could run the machine off the Boule- vard and end everything, my heart's 80 cold without you."* “Oh, 1s 1G#Polo, is it really?" only got a couple minutes. I've got a look in on a part- nership: in a repair-shop in Thorn- wood Addition. If I can swing It, we can beat it and get hitched, and when your old man sees I'm prospering—" While Dorgan heard Polo's grow crisp with practical hopes, he bristied and felt sick. For Kugler was coming along Minnis Place, peering ahead, hunched with suspicion voice Dor- gan dared not turn to warn the lovers, or even to shout. Dorgan smiled. ‘Evening again,’ he said, ‘It was a fine walk I had with Effie. Is she got back yet?" He was standing between Kugler and the alley-mouth, his arms .akim- bo. Kugler ducked ynder his arm, and saw EMfe cuddled beside her lover, the two of them sitting on the run- ningboard of Polo's machine. “Effie, you will come home now," said the old man. There was terrible wrath in the quietness of his gray- beard voic The lovers frightened. Dorgan swaggered up toward the group. ‘‘Look here, Mr. Kugler: Polo's @ fine upstanding lad, He ain’t got no bad habits—to speak of. He's promised me he'll lay off the booze. He'll make a fine man for Effie—'"* “Mr. Dorgan, years I have respected you but—Effe, you come home now,’ said Kugler. “Oh, what will I do, Mr. Dorgan?’* walled EMe, ‘Should 1 do like Papa wants I should, or should I go off with Polo’ Dorgan respected the divine rights of love, but also he had un old-fash- joned respect for the rights of parents with their offspring. “I guess maybe you better go with your papa, Effie. I'll talk to him—"* “Yes, you'll talk, and everybody will talk, and I'll be dead,"’ cried young Polo. ‘Get out of my way, all of you Already he was in the driver's seat and backing his machine out. It went rocking round the corner, looked shamed and ORGAN heard that Polo had been discharged by the taxi company for speeding through traffic and sma € tailligacs then that he had got @ position as private chauffeur in the suburbs, been discharged for im- pudence, got another position and been of another machin arrested for joy-riding with a bunch of young toughs from Little Hell, He was to be tied on the charge of steal- ing his employer's machine Dorgan brushed his citizen's clothes, got an expensive aireut and sham- poo, and went to call on the employer, who refused to listen to maundering defenses of the boy, declaring he would press the charge. Dorgan called on Polo in his cell “It's all right,"’ Polo said. ‘I'm glad I was pinched. I needed some- thing to stop me, hard. I was going nutty, and if somebody hadn't summed on the emergency, | don’t know what I would have done. Now I've sat here reading and thinking, and I'm right again. 1 always gotta do things hard, booze or be good. And now I’in going to think har, and J ain’t sorry to have the chancet to be quiet.” Indeed, Polo looked like a young zealot, with his widened eyes and up- lifted face; and as Dorgan left him the officer murmured awkward prayer of thankfulness an Dorgan They tipteed into the drawing room, where, tied to a davenport, was that celebrated character, Butte Benny. brought away a smal! note in which, with much misspelling and tender- ness, Polo sent to Effie his oath of deathless love. To the delivery of this note Dorgan devoted much skill and loyalty, though it involved one brib- toll Kugler ery, to get a youth to away, and one shocking burglarious entrance, to reach the room where Effle was locked up, a prisoner of bit- ter paternal love. Dorgan appeared witness at the trial tenced to three charge of grand larceny That evening Dorgan panting, to the cathedral, and for an hour he knelt with his lips moving, his spine cold, as he pictured young Polo shamed and crushed in prison, and as he discovered himself hating the law that he served as a character- but Polo was sen- ona years in prison, climbed, One month later Dorgan reached the age limit, and was automatically retired from the force, on pension He protested, but the retirement rule was inviolable. Dorgan went to petition the Com- missioner himself, It was the first time in five years except on the occa- sions of the annual police parades, that he had gone near headquarters, and he was given a triumphal recep tion, Inspectors and captains, report ers and Aldermen, and the Commis- siontr himself, shook his hand, com- ’ gratulated him on his forty-five years of clean service. did not listen. find a place f told him to earned it. Dorgan nagged them. ers again and again, till he me a bore, and the commissioner refused to see a fool. He wi to. his shack, For two year and slowly bec gray-faced, gr of himself. ROM tir But to his plea they It was impossible to ‘or him, They heartily rest, because he had He came to him, Dorgan was not ent shame-facedly back and there he remained. 8 he huddled by the fire came melancholy mad— ay-haired, a gray ghost his ne to time, during two years of hermitage, Dor- gan came out to visit his old neighb Ors. They welcomed him, gave him drinks and news, but they did not had become a ask his advice, So he ving ghost, before two years had gone by, and he talked to himself, aloud. During these two years the police force were a smart smart new ins uniform—a bly flat cap shaped coats. After form, at went his the home ar hind the graph of ten of that day, granite steps was metropolitanized and first sheet-iron ‘There new commissioner pectors and a smart new ue military uniform with cunyas puttees view of that uni police parade, Dore nd took down from stove a 5 years before—the For proudly posed of the City Hall on t had seemed efficient and impré then, but—his honest soul confessed \t—they were like rural constables beside the crack corps of to-day Presently he took out from the red wood chest his own uniform, but could not get himself to put or Shapeless gray coat and trou its gray hein gloves. Yet its proved ta though it se man had once of the Force With big, ¢ darned pee Lrouwors, met and spotless presence comforted him that, im meal, the been an active me seclul lumsy, tender hands d Spot at the bottom pt @nd carefully folded the THE EVENING WORLD, SATURDAY, APRIL 15, uniform away. He took out his night- stick and revolver, and the sapphire- Studded star the department had given him for saving two lives in the collapse of the Anthony building. He fingered them and longed to be permitted to carry them. all night, in a dream and half-dream and tossing wakefulness, he pictured him- self patrolling again, the father of his people. ext morning he again took his uniform, his nightstick and gun and shield out of the redwood chest and he hung them in the wardrobe, where they had hung when he was off duty, in his days of active service, He whistled cheerfully and muttered: “IN be seeing to them Terfth Street devils, the rotten gang of them.” Rumors began to come into the newspaper offices of a “ghost scare” out in the Forest Park section, An old man had looked out of his window at midnight and seen a dead man, in the uniform of years before, standing on nothing at all. A stranger to the art- city having come home to his 4 ment-hotel, the Forest Arms, ten blocks above Little Hell, at about 2 in the morning, stopped to talk with 4 strange-looking patrolman, whose face he described as a drift of about burning, unearthly eyes patr had courteously told him the butlding up of Forest Var {at parting had saluted, an erect, somewhat touching figure Later the stranger was surprised to lourn that the regulation un bive, not gray. After this there we w the “Ghost Pat Chronicle dubbed the ap. to him, and importantly re ported him to be fat, thin, ts Iman grave, m was dozens who 1 as the arition short Id, young, and ci owe) of optical inary human flesh Then @ society elopement war broke, and Ghost latrol foreign tories were forgotten NE the agitated voice of a woman telephoned to ‘} from the best residence tion of Forest Park that she posed of m shac iMusions and of evening of early sum wdquarters sec- had seen THE GHOST PATROL bsin Op Played Cupid IN His Own Effective COPYRIGHT 1922, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 1922, a burglar entering the window of the house next door, which was cloted for the seqson. The chief himself took six huskies in his machine, and they roared out to Forest Park and sur- rounded the house, The owner of the agitated voice stalked out to inform the chief that just after she had tole- phoned, she had seen another figure wling into the window after the burglar, She had thought that the second figure had a revolver and a Policeman's club, ¢ 80 the chief and Heutenaht crawled nonchalantly through an unquestion- ably open window giving 6n the pan- try, at the side of the house. Their electric torches showed the dining room to be a wreck—glass scattered and broken, drawers of the buffet on the floor, curtains torn down. They remarked ‘Some scrap!" and shouted: “Come out here, whoever's in thi house, We got it-surrounded. Ken- dall, are you there? Have you pinched the guy?" way. tiptoed into the drawing room, where, didn't handcuff Benny, They could'nt have lost him! Next morning when a captain came to look over the damages in the bur- glarized houre, he found the dining- room crudely straightened up, and the pantry-window locked. When the baby daughter of Sim- mons, the plumber of Little Hell, was lost, two men distinctly saw a gray- faced figure in an old-time police hel- met leading the lost girl through un- frequented back alleys. They tried to follow, but the mysterious figure knew the egresses better than they did; and they went to report at the station- house. Meantime there was a ring at the Simmons door, and Simmons found his child on the doormat, ery- ing but safe, In her hand, tight clutched, was the white-cotton glove of a policeman. Simmons gratefully took the glove to the precinct station, It was a reg- ulation service glove; it had been darned with white cotton thread till the original fabric was almost overlaid with short, inexpert stitches; it had been whitened with pipe clay, and trom one slight brown spot, it must have been pressed out with a hot fren Jnside it was stamped, in faded rub stamping: Dargan, Patrol, 9th ecinet The ehief took the glove to sioner, ‘and between these harsh, abrupt men there was a silence surcharged with re- two pitying spect There was an uncarthly silence, as We'll have to t of the of some one breathing in terror, @ ‘ Hive Ricspege ne eho old silent more thick and anxious than at ane No SHGE AN Jaat, any m baenca of sounds) Ney A detective was assigned to the trail tied to davenport, was that cele- of the Ghost Patrol, The detective binted’ charactor. ft Bantiy w Don Dorgan come out of his “My Gawd, C1 walled, ‘xe kat three in the morning, stand me outta this De place ix haunted, Stetehing out hia long arms, sniff the A bleeding ghost cones and grabs me late-night dampness, smile as a man and tes me up— honest, Chief, Will when he starts in on the routing he was a dead man he was dressed Of work that he loves. He was erect; like a@ has-been cop, and he didn’t bis old uniform was cléan-brushed, his say nawthin’ at all, I tried to wrastle linen collar spotles in his hand he him, and he got me down; and oh, carried one lone gle Chief, he beat me crool, he did, but He looked to right and left, slipped he was dead as me great-crindad, and jnto an alley, prowled through the you could see de light trough him. darkness, so fleet and soft-stepping Let's get outa this--frame me up And that the shadow almost lost him. He 1 Il sign de confession. Me for a ni top! ate Shatter lett: oben aod safe cell for keeps prodded it shut with his old-time long “Some amateur cop done this, to nightstick, Th he stole back to his keep his hand in. Ghost me eye!’ shack and went in sald the chief But his own flesh felt ley, and he couldn't help looking HE next day the chief, the com about for the unknown sioner and a if-appointed “Let's get out of th committee of inspectors anil Ideut. Saxon, the bravest’ man in captains came calling on Don the strong-arm i 1 and with t Jorge. his shack he old man tutte Benny between them, they flea Dorsan at his sha ’ 4 through the front leaving the Was @ slovenly figure, in open-neckod pantry-window ! 1 h annel shirt and broken-bucked slit | ] — : Two Great I fuman Forces Clash in Every Chapter of NOBODY’S MAN By 1). Phillip s Oppenheim WHICH BEGINS IN The Evening World —MONDA clairlewj ILLUSTRATED BY Will B. Johnstone. pers. Yet Dorgan straightened gp when they came, and faced them Hike an old soldier called to duty. The dignitaries sat about awkward- ly, while the commissioner tried to explain that the Big Fellows had heard Dorgan was lonely here, and that the department fund was, th officially, going to send him to Dr, Bristow’s Private Asylum for the Aged and Mentally Infrm—which hi euphemistically called “Doe Bristow’ Home."* . “No,"" sald Dorgan, “that’s a pit- vate booby-hatch. I don’t want to go there. Maybe they got swell rooms, but I don't want to be stowed away, with a bunch of nuts,"* They had to tell him, at last, that he was frightening the neighborhood with his ghostly patrol and warn him that if he did not give it up they, would have to put him away some place. “But I got to patrol,” he eald. “My boys and girls here, they need me to look after them, I sit here and I hear voices—volces, I tell you, and they order me out on the bent. , Stick mo in the bughouse, I guess maybe It's better, Say, tell Doc Bristow to not try any shenani- gans wit’ me, but let me alone, or I'l! hand him something; T got a willop like a probationer yet—T have 80, Chief."* Tha embarrassed committees léft Captain Luccetti with him, to close up the old man's shack and take him - to the asylum ina taxi. The Captain suggested that the old uniform be left behind. R. DAVIS BRISTOW was’ a conscientious but * crotehéty man who needed mental ease- ment more than did any of his patients. The chief had put the fear of God into him, and he treated Dorgan with respect, at first The chief had kind-heartedly ar- ‘ranged that. Dorgan was to havera “rest,’’ that he should be given no Work about the farm; and all day long Dorgan had nothifig to do but pretend to read, and worry about his ehil- dren. Two men had been assigned to the beat, in succession, since his time; and the second man, though he was @ good officer, came from among the respectable and did not understand the surly wistfulness of Little Hell. Dorgan was sure that the man wasn't watching to lure Matty Carlson tram her periodical desire to run away, trom her decent, patient husband. So one night, distraught, Dorgan lowered himself from his window and ran, skulking, stumbling, muttering, across the outskirts and around Little Hell. He did not have his old instinct for concealing his secret patrolling. A policeman saw him, jn citizen's clothes, swaying down his old beat, trying doors, humming to himself. And when they put him {n the ambulance and drove him back to the asylum he wept and begged to be allowed to return to duty. Dr. Bristow telephoned to the chief of police demanding permission to put Dorgan to work, and set him at gar- dening ‘This was very well indeed. For through the, rest of that summer, in the widespread gardens, and half>«hbe winter, In the greenhouses, Dorgan dug and sweated and learned the names of flowers. But early in Janu- ary he began to worry once more. He told the super that he had figured ont that, with good behavior, Polo Magenta would be out of the pen now and need looking after, ‘*Yea, yee-~ well, 'm busy; sometime you tell me all about it,” Dr. Bristow jabbered; “but just this minute I'm very busy." NE day in mid-January Dor- gan prowled uneasily all day, long—the more uneasy as a blizzard blew up and the world was shut off by a curtain of weaving snow went up to room early in the evening. A nufse came to take away his shoes amd overcoat, and cheerily bid him go to bed tut once he was along, he deliber- ately tore a cotton blanket to strips and wound the strips about his thin slippers, He wadded newspapers anid a sheet between his vest and his shirt, He found his thickest gardening cap. He quietly ralsed the window, He knocked out the Ught wooden bars with his big fist. He put his feet over the windowsill and dropped ito the storm, and set out across the lawn, With his gaunt form huddled, his bands rammed into his coat pockets, his large feet moving slowly, certainly, in their moccasiniike ¢ov- ering of cloth and thin slippers, he ploughed through to the street, and down toward Little Hell Don Dorgan knew that the blizzard would keep him from being traced by the asylum authorities for a day or two, but he also knew that he could he overpowered by it. He turned into A series of alleys, and found a stable with a snow-bound delivery-wagon beside it brought hay from the He t covered 1 with it in the wagon, and promptly went to sleep. When he awoke the next afternoon the blizzard had ceased, and he went He came to Hell the outskirts of Larue Sneaking through alleys, he en- MeManus's red-light M mac! storm still tied boss, was getting his nes out into th t gasps of the the r service was were at & premium, He saw Dorgan and. yelled: “Hello there, Don, Where did you blow tn from? Ain't aeen you these s. Tor you was living or other,” @ gravity “rm a—l'm for street-c otors six mon tut kst home "No, Dorgan with which forbade trifling kind of a watchman (Contiaued on Ne. @ i