The Forged Note. Micheaux Oscar

      Demon's jaw fell. Sidney looked discouraged.

      It was a self-evident fact now that Judge Loyal's stomach was out of order. …

      Demon's excuse was a variation that failed to impress the judge as being the truth. Wyeth languidly resigned himself to the inevitable.

      "What is your occupation, Wyeth?" he now turned his gaze upon Sidney.

      He was told.

      "What's your excuse for being upon the streets at two A.M.?"

      "Nothing!" calmly.

      The judge regarded him in silence, while the pair waited for the sentence. Still the judge paused. As he did so, Wyeth heard him belch slightly, as if decided. A moment later came the words:

      "Fine you fellows $5 and costs. You must keep off the street loafing about all night. Next!"

      They were turned about automatically, and then Wyeth found himself looking down on a low, deformed creature. He had been told about him also, and why he was deformed.

      It had come about during a terrific race riot of a few years before, and the incident will ever live in the history of Attalia. It was then this creature became crippled. He was, at the time, one of the strongest and most capable officers on the force. But, upon being sent to make an arrest, he happened onto a "bad" Negro, run amuck. He was, to say the least, however, far more fortunate than a dozen others, for they had been sent to their happy hunting ground before the riot was quelled. Since then, he had acted as a sort of bailiff.

      Peeping up at Wyeth he said: "You have up collateral, do you not?"

      "Pay me out, pay me out!" cried Demon, at this point.

      Wyeth nodded.

      "Then you step aside, and follow the officer downstairs to the clerk's office," he instructed.

      "Pay me out, pay me out!" from Demon again.

      Wyeth frowned and pinched him good. "I wish to confer in regard to this fellow," said he to hunchy, as they were being waited for.

      In the detention room, Demon secured a loan of fifty cents from another miscreant, and a moment later, they stood before the clerk.

      When the fines had been paid, the officer said: "Now Demon, you can go, but I am ordered to hold Wyeth as a suspicious character."

      "Well I'll be damned!" was all Wyeth said.

      "Take me at once before him," he cried, when they were again in the court room, at the same time flashing his check book which he had placed in his pocket for precautionary measures. Demon had followed them gratefully back up the stairs, and now stood about muttering in a low tone: "Ain' that Hell, ain' that Hell!" Wyeth motioned him aside, resolutely.

      Once more he stood before his Honor. Upon recognizing him, the recorder looked at the officer with a question. His face had cleared of the frown it wore some time before, and Wyeth concluded his stomach was better.

      The officer preferred the charge, whereupon he looked at Wyeth keenly. Wyeth made a motion. It was granted.

      "I dislike, very much, your Honor, to be kept in this court room so unceremoniously. I am no criminal, and my time is worth something. Now if I may be permitted to put up more money, I have just paid a fine for being out late for myself, as well as for another, and go my way until this thing is done with, I'll appreciate it."

      "Very well. Twenty-five dollars."

      Wyeth paid it, and never returned to take it down.

      When he got back to his room after it was all over, thirty-six dollars to the bad, he opened the book of resolutions and recorded therein:

      "Resolved! That to give heed to the 'Call of the Wild' in Attalia, is a very expensive diversion, albeit a lesson; therefore, henceforth, twelve o'clock will find me in the land of nod."

CHAPTER TWELVE

       Table of Contents

      A Jew; a Gentile; a Murder—and Some More

      "Look here, kid, they tell me they had you," jollied Spoon, when he saw Wyeth that evening at Hatfield's ice cream parlor.

      "You're breaking into print," laughed "Bubber" Hatfield, unfolding a green sheet, The Searchlight, a sensational four-page afternoon affair, which made a specialty of court news, and which most colored people read. They are fond of such news.

      Frowning, while all those standing about laughed, he took the sheet and read:

      NEGRO FROM THE NORTH WAS SURPRISED

      In a few colored paragraphs, it described his appearance before the recorder. And in conclusion, it had these trite words, purported to have been said by him: "Dey don' have dem kind of laws up norf."

      The following Saturday, he dropped into Tompkins' and was introduced to a man who impressed him considerably. At the first glance, he could see he was not a southerner. Before he made his acquaintance, he overheard him discussing books with Tompkins, and when he heard him speaking of the latest works of fiction, he opened his ears. To hear a Negro in Attalia discussing novels, the late ones, was something new to him; in fact, he had heard the most of those he met discuss but one, a salacious one from the pen of a noted English author and playwright, and which cannot be had at the libraries, but is, nevertheless, a masterpiece.

      He grasped his hand cordially, and they at once entered into conversation. His name was Edwards. "This gentleman," explained Tompkins, "is the author of the book you and your friend were looking at this afternoon." Edwards' eyebrows went up with considerable pleasure, as he cried in a voice that was, to say the least, cordial:

      "Indeed! I am honored to meet a real author." Sidney, however, was much embarrassed. He disliked to be pointed out as an author among his people. The most of those he met had impressed him with the feeling that an author must be something extraordinary, and were usually disappointed to find them only human beings like themselves. Edwards, however, was not only an individual of good breeding, but one with perspective, and quite capable of appreciating an effort, regardless of what the attainment might be.

      Sidney had met few of his race, but who seemed to feel that to write was to be graduated from a school, with a name that was a fetish, and to be likewise a professor in some college. In order to get material and color for a work, they had not yet come to realize that it was best, and much more original as well, to come in contact with the people and observe their manner of living.

      This may account, in a large degree, for the fact that so many whom he met were impractical, even badly informed.

      Edwards and he became agreeable acquaintances at once. "Come take dinner with me this evening," Edwards invited, grasping Wyeth's arm, and leading him into the restaurant next door, where he had already ordered dinner. And such a meal! Wyeth had not realized that it was in the range of possibilities for the little place to prepare such a one. Moreover, to say that Edwards knew how to order would be putting it mildly. He spared no cost obviously, since the meal came to $3.75. Wyeth felt guilty, when he recalled that he ate three times a day at the same place, the kind termed "half meals," and which came to fifteen cents per.

      Before they had sat long, Edwards' friend came to the table. And of all the Negroes Sidney had met, this one was the most extraordinary. The son of a Japanese mother and a Negro father, he had been educated abroad. He spent his youth in Asia, lived a portion of his life in Japan, the remainder in America and was a Buddhist. One Negro at least who didn't spell "ligon."

      History and science, from the beginning of time—before Adam whom he scorned, astronomy, astrology, meteorology, the zodiac and the constellations, in fact, he seemed to know everything. Sidney, anxious always to learn what he did not know, could only sit with mouth wide open, while the other declared Jesus of Nazareth, Noah, the flood,