The Escape of Mr. Trimm His Plight and other Plights

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THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM




[Illustration: NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM.--_Frontispiece_
(_Page 18._)]




THE ESCAPE
OF MR. TRIMM

_HIS PLIGHT AND OTHER PLIGHTS_

BY

IRVIN S. COBB

AUTHOR OF
OLD JUDGE PRIEST,
BACK HOME, ETC.

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK




COPYRIGHT, 1910, 1911, 1912 AND 1913

BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1913

BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1913

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


[Transcriber's Note: A List of Illustrations has been added.]




TO MY WIFE




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                          PAGE

     I.  THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM                      3

    II.  THE BELLED BUZZARD                          54

   III.  AN OCCURRENCE UP A SIDE STREET              79

    IV.  ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES       96

     V.  SMOKE OF BATTLE                            142

    VI.  THE EXIT OF ANNE DUGMORE                   179

   VII.  TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN                   202

  VIII.  FISHHEAD                                   244

    IX.  GUILTY AS CHARGED                          260




ILLUSTRATIONS


  NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM.                   Frontispiece

  "TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN."             Facing page 70

  "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE."      Facing Page 164

  HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT
    MADE A CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW.                      Facing Page 193




THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM




I

THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM


Mr. Trimm, recently president of the late Thirteenth National Bank, was
taking a trip which was different in a number of ways from any he had
ever taken. To begin with, he was used to parlor cars and Pullmans and
even luxurious private cars when he went anywhere; whereas now he rode
with a most mixed company in a dusty, smelly day coach. In the second
place, his traveling companion was not such a one as Mr. Trimm would
have chosen had the choice been left to him, being a stupid-looking
German-American with a drooping, yellow mustache. And in the third
place, Mr. Trimm's plump white hands were folded in his lap, held in a
close and enforced companionship by a new and shiny pair of Bean's
Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs. Mr. Trimm was on his way to the
Federal penitentiary to serve twelve years at hard labor for breaking,
one way or another, about all the laws that are presumed to govern
national banks.

       *       *       *       *       *

All the time Mr. Trimm was in the Tombs, fighting for a new trial, a
certain question had lain in his mind unasked and unanswered. Through
the seven months of his stay in the jail that question had been always
at the back part of his head, ticking away there like a little watch
that never needed winding. A dozen times a day it would pop into his
thoughts and then go away, only to come back again.

When Copley was taken to the penitentiary--Copley being the cashier who
got off with a lighter sentence because the judge and jury held him to
be no more than a blind accomplice in the wrecking of the Thirteenth
National--Mr. Trimm read closely every line that the papers carried
about Copley's departure. But none of them had seen fit to give the
young cashier more than a short and colorless paragraph. For Copley was
only a small figure in the big intrigue that had startled the country;
Copley didn't have the money to hire big lawyers to carry his appeal to
the higher courts for him; Copley's wife was keeping boarders; and as
for Copley himself, he had been wearing stripes several months now.

With Mr. Trimm it had been vastly different. From the very beginning he
had held the public eye. His bearing in court when the jury came in with
their judgment; his cold defiance when the judge, in pronouncing
sentence, mercilessly arraigned him and the system of finance for which
he stood; the manner of his life in the Tombs; his spectacular fight to
beat the verdict, had all been worth columns of newspaper space. If Mr.
Trimm had been a popular poisoner, or a society woman named as
co-respondent in a sensational divorce suit, the papers could not have
been more generous in their space allotments. And Mr. Trimm in his cell
had read all of it with smiling contempt, even to the semi-hysterical
outpourings of the lady special writers who called him The Iron Man of
Wall Street and undertook to analyze his emotions--and missed the mark
by a thousand miles or two.

Things had been smoothed as much as possible for him in the Tombs, for
money and the power of it will go far toward ironing out even the
corrugated routine of that big jail.