Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man. Marie Conway Oemler
it had to be and we couldn't do anything else! Now, why? I can't help but wonder!"
We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on the pillow. And I wondered also, with even greater cause than the doctor; for I had opened the oilskin package the Poles found, and it had given me occasion for fear, reflection, and prayer. I was startled and alarmed beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious and unusual type—not such tools as workmen carry abroad in the light of day.
There was no one to whom I might confide that unpleasant discovery. I simply could not terrify my mother, nor could I in common decency burden the already overburdened doctor. Nor is our sheriff one to turn to readily; he is not a man whose intelligence or heart one may admire, respect, or depend upon. My guest had come to me with empty pockets and a burglar's kit; a hint of that, and the sheriff had camped on the Parish House front porch with a Winchester across his knees and handcuffs jingling in his pockets. No, I couldn't consult the law.
I had yet a deeper and a better reason for waiting, which I find it rather hard to set down in cold words. It is this: that as I grow older I have grown more and more convinced that not fortuitously, not by chance, never without real and inner purposes, are we allowed to come vitally into each other's lives. I have walked up the steep sides of Calvary to find out that when another wayfarer pauses for a space beside us, it is because one has something to give, the other something to receive.
So, upon reflection, I took that oilskin package weighted down with the seven deadly sins over to the church, and hid it under the statue of St. Stanislaus, whom my Poles love, and before whom they come to kneel and pray for particular favors. I tilted the saint back upon his wooden stand, and thrust that package up to where his hands fold over the sheaf of lilies he carries. St. Stanislaus is a beautiful and most holy youth. No one would ever suspect him of hiding under his brown habit a burglar's kit!
When I had done this, and stopped to say three Hail Marys for guidance, I went back to the little room called my study, where my books and papers and my butterfly cabinets and collecting outfits were kept, and set myself seriously to studying my files of newspapers, beginning at a date a week preceding my man's appearance. Then:
Slippy McGee
Makes Good His Name Once More.
Slips One Over On The Police.
Noted Burglar Escapes.
said the glaring headlines in the New York papers. The dispatches were dated from Atlanta, and when I turned to the Atlanta papers I found them, too, headlining the escape of "Slippy McGee."
I learned that "the slickest crook in America" finding himself somewhat hampered in his native haunts, the seething underworld of New York, because the police suspected him of certain daring and mysterious burglaries although they had no positive proof against him, had chosen to shift his base of operations South for awhile. But the Southern authorities had been urgently warned to look out for him; in consequence they had been so close upon his heels that he had been surrounded while "on a job." Half an hour later, and he would have gotten away with his plunder; but, although they were actually upon him, by what seemed a miracle of daring and of luck he slipped through their fingers, escaped under their very noses, leaving no clue to his whereabouts. He was supposed to be still in hiding in Atlanta, though as he had no known confederates and always worked alone and unaided, the police were at a loss for information. The man had simply vanished, after his wont, as if the earth had opened and swallowed him. The papers gave rather full accounts of some of his past exploits, from which one gathered that Slippy McGee was a very noted personage in his chosen field. I sat for a long time staring at those papers, and my thoughts were uneasy ones. What should I do?
I presently decided that I could and must question my guest. So far he had volunteered no information beyond the curt statement that his name was John Flint and he was a hobo because he liked the trade. He had been stealing a ride and he had slipped—and when he woke up we had him and he hadn't his leg. And if some people knew how to be obliging they'd make a noise like a hoop and roll away, so's other people could pound their ear in peace, like that big stiff of a doctor ordered them to do.
As I stood by the bed and studied his sullen, suspicious, unfriendly face, I came to the conclusion that if this were not McGee himself it could very well be some one quite as dangerous.
"Friend," said I, "we do not as a rule seek information about the guests in these rooms. We do not have to; they explain themselves. I should never question your assertion that your name is Flint, and I sincerely hope it is Flint; but—there are reasons why I must and do ask you for certain definite information about yourself."
The hand lying upon the coverlet balled into a fist.
"If John Flint's not fancy enough for you," he suggested truculently, "suppose you call me Percy? Some peach of a moniker, Percy, ain't it?"
"Percy?"
"Sure, Percy," he grinned impudently. "But if you got a grouch against Percy, can it, and make me Algy. I don't mind. It's not me beefing about monikers; it's you."
"I am also," said I, regarding him steadily and ignoring his flippancy, "I am also obliged to ask you what is your occupation—when you are not stealing rides?"
"Looks like it might be answering questions just now, don't it? What you want to know for? Whatever it is, I'm not able to do it now, am I? But as you're so naturally bellyaching to know, why, I've been in the ring."
"So I presumed. Thank you," said I, politely. "And your name is John Flint, or Percy, or Algy, just as I choose. Percy and Algy are rather unusual names for a gentleman who has been in the ring, don't you think?"
"I think," he snarled, turned suddenly ferocious, "that I'm named what I dam' please to be named, and no squeals from skypilots about it, neither. Say! what you driving at, anyhow? If what I tell you ain't satisfying, suppose you slip over a moniker to suit yourself—and go away!"
"Oh! Suppose then," said I, without taking my eyes from his, "suppose, then, that I chose to call you—Slippy McGee?"
I am sure that only his bodily weakness kept him from flying at my throat. As it was, his long arms with the hands upon them outstretched like a beast's claws, shot out ferociously. His face contracted horribly, and of a sudden the sweat burst out upon it so blindingly that he had to put up an arm and wipe it away. For a moment he lay still, glaring, panting, helpless; while I stood and watched him unmoved.
"Ain't you the real little Sherlock Holmes, though?" he jeered presently. "Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair and Nick Carter eating out of your hand! You damned skypilot!" His voice cracked. "You're all alike! Get a man on his back and then put the screws on him!"
I made no reply; only a great compassion for this mistaken and miserable creature surged like a wave over my heart.
"For God's sake don't stand there staring like a bughouse owl!" he gritted. "Well, what you going to do? Bawl for the bulls? What put you wise?"
"Help you to get well. No. I opened your bag—and looked up the newspapers," I answered succinctly.
"Huh! A fat lot of good it'll do me to get well now, won't it? You think I ought to thank you for butting in and keeping me from dying without knowing anything about it, don't you? Well, you got another think coming. I don't. Ever hear of a pegleg in the ring? Ever hear of a one-hoofed dip! A long time I'd be Slippy McGee playing cat-and-mouse with the bulls, if I had to leave some of my legs home when I needed them right there on the job, wouldn't I? Oh, sure!"
"And was it," I wondered, "such a fine thing to be Slippy McGee, flying from the police, that one should lament his—er—disappearance?"
His eyes widened. He regarded me with pity as well as astonishment.
"Didn't you read the papers?" he wondered in his turn. "There don't many travel in my class, skypilot! Why, I haven't got any equals—the best of them trail a mile behind. Ask the bulls, if you want to know about Slippy McGee! And I let the happy dust alone. Most dips are dopes, but I was too slick; I cut it out. I knew if the dope once