Detective Keene and the attorney caught their train by a narrow margin only, and secured a seat somewhat aloof from the few other passengers in the smoking car. This partial seclusion evidently suited the lawyer, who appeared seriously disturbed by the news of his client’s tragic death, and anxious to give Keene what information he could that would aid him in locating the criminal.
But the young detective checked him almost at the beginning.
“It is only a short run down there,” said the lawyer. “I will give you all the points I can in the time allowed, that on your arrival you will be better equipped to look the evidence over. I think——”
“First, allow me just a word, Mr. French, if you will pardon the interruption,” said Keene, turning his clear, grave eyes on the face of the attorney. “Whatever you may think, there is one thing I do not wish you to tell me.”
“What is that, Mr. Keene?”
“You already suspect some person of this crime, and I prefer not to know whom.”
“Well, well! You detectives are discerning fellows!” Mr. French exclaimed, smiling faintly. “Chief Watts drew the same inference, though from what I cannot imagine.”
“That you engage the help of a special officer before you have verified your telegram, even, is to me a sufficient indication of your suspicion,” Keene explained.
“Quite logical, too.”
“You also fear that some innocent person may be to some extent complicated.{39}”
“That is true, also.”
“The person,” continued Keene, with a curious twinkle in his eyes, “is a young lady—one of whom you are very fond, and who regards you as a very dear friend. She is young, and, I should say, was quite recently married; but her husband is not a clever man, nor one of much ability, and is most likely——”
“Hold, hold! You will next be telling me what sort of a woman my grandmother was!” cried the attorney, who, in truth, was amazed at the acumen of the young detective. “How on earth did you guess these facts?”
“They are facts, then?”
“Precisely.”
“I do not guess them,” Keene laughed lightly. “They are apparent through a very simple process of deduction.”
“Will you tell me how?”
“Certainly! That the person you suspect may be guilty, is not the same person you fear may be implicated, is at once suggested by your haste in procuring the aid of a special detective. If the guilty one were likely to be involved, you would have at first examined the case more calmly.”
“That is true enough,” laughed the attorney. “But why do you infer my interest to be in a lady?”
“If it were a man, you would be less anxious to relieve him of what you fear may be a distressing situation. Men can face such things more easily than women,” added Keene significantly. “Moreover, that you take this very active interest indicates both that you are fond of her and that you know that she will expect you to do it, which indicates, in turn, that she relies upon you. This suggests inexperience, hence she probably is young. So serious a crime as murder very rarely involves a young single girl, however; hence she very likely has been recently married. But her husband is not a clever man, capable of handling so serious a situation, or you would have left this matter to him rather than plunging into it so hurriedly.”
“Dear me! You should have been a lawyer. I cannot but admire——”
“Ah, but we waste time, Mr. French,” said Keene, quietly checking the lawyer’s expressions of approval. “What I wish to avoid, sir, are the very suspicions by which you are actuated, and under which you are laboring. I do not want to know whom you suspect, nor why. These things only tend to draw a detective from the straight line of true detective work. I want only the bare facts, from which, and from my own observations of the evidence in the case, I may make unbiased deductions. This is the only reliable method of detective work. With a half dozen visionary motives suggested to him, a detective becomes a weather vane. Who is this man Moore, sir?”
“He has been a client of mine for many years—more than twenty, I should say. He is a man of some considerable means, with an old country house out here a dozen miles or so.”
“A married man?”
“He is a widower. He buried his wife a dozen or fifteen years ago. At one time he was some interested in farming, having no other business; but he gave that up also after his wife’s death, and, by degrees, the last dozen years has grown into a rather sour and crabbed old man.”
“A man of years, then?{40}”
“Yes; Jacob Moore is about seventy years old.”
“Any children?”
“Only one of his own—a girl named Mabel, now in the twenties, and who was married about a year ago to a man named Jeffrey. Besides this girl, Moore also has reared the son of a deceased sister. He is now a man of twenty-five and the Richard Thorpe who wired me the news of his uncle’s death.”
“Does Thorpe live with his uncle?”
“A portion of the time, though for the most part in Boston, where he is in the brokerage business.”
“Does the daughter live at home?”
“No, not for a year or more,” replied the lawyer. “And I now come to those painful circumstances which lead me to——”
“Never mind by what you are led,” interposed Keene, smiling faintly. “Give me the bare facts.”
“They are these,” nodded the lawyer gravely. “Two years ago, Jacob Moore took it into his head that it would be well if his daughter were married to Thorpe, and the couple settled in the old home. Now, bear in mind that Jacob Moore was not a man to be easily turned from a project which he seriously favored. His proposition proved acceptable to his nephew, but not to his daughter. She flatly declared that she’d not even think of it.”
“Whatever it may have been like,” replied the lawyer, “the girl proved inflexible. The family broil, however, brought out the fact that she was in love with another, a man named Jeffrey, who is a carpenter by trade, and is said to be an honest and reliable fellow. I have seen him but once. If he is as good a man as he looks, I don’t blame the girl for her choice.”
“Did Mr. Moore give his consent to the girl’s marriage to Jeffrey?” asked Keene carelessly.
“Quite the contrary,” said the lawyer, with significance. “He threatened to disown the girl if she married him, which, with a will quite as strong as that of the old man himself, she speedily did. As a result, there has been a total estrangement of the two ever since.”
“Has the girl always been so headstrong?”
“She has always been dutiful, as I have observed her, and, to my way of thinking, was so in this matter. Her final determination resulted not only from a genuine love for Jeffrey, but also from the fact that he had recently buried his mother, by whose death he was left alone in the world. He had, however, a comfortable house, with several acres of arable land. To make a long story short, Mabel Moore, despite her father’s bitter opposition, married Jeffrey and went to live with him.”
“This was about a year ago?”
“Just about,” nodded the lawyer. “Since then Moore has been more morose and crabbed than ever. He has refused to recognize either his daughter or her husband, and even young Thorpe has scarce been able to endure him. As his solicitor, I have occasionally been out to see him, and was always glad to return. A more surly and perverse old codger could not be imagined.”
“Has he made a will?” inquired Keene.
“Yes.”
“Disinheriting his daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Who is his residuary legatee?”
“His nephew.”
“Does Thorpe know of this will?”
“I think not,” replied Mr. French. “In fact, I am{41}quite sure of it, for the will is in my possession, and Moore was not a man to have disclosed his intentions.”
“Who witnessed the document?”
“Two of my clerks, and it was drafted and executed in my office. I am very sure that the existence of this will is not known to Thorpe nor to Mabel Jeffrey.”
“What’s the value of the estate?”
“Something like fifty thousand dollars.”
“Who has been living with Moore?”
“His housekeeper is a middle-aged English woman named Haynie, who has been in his employ since his wife died. He keeps one man, also, who works about the farm and stable. These, with Thorpe, are the only members of his household.”
“Thorpe has not been there much, you say?”
“Only at intervals. I think he has not found the old man congenial, and his persistent absence, which has rather offended Moore, further convinces me that Thorpe knows nothing about the will in his favor.”
“That is a very reasonable inference,” admitted the detective, “and, possibly, does away with a motive. Is Thorpe a man of good character?”
“Yes, and is very generally liked. At the time of Mabel’s marriage he made great efforts to induce her father’s forgiveness; but, Heaven preserve him! One might as well have pleaded to a stone wall. Jacob Moore was as harsh and inflexible as—ah! here is the station! Thorpe will probably send the carriage for us.”
The train was slowing down. The lawyer arose while speaking and began to put on his overcoat. Sheridan Keene restrained him in the aisle for a moment, and said inquiringly:
“So far as you know, then, these are the bare facts?”
“Yes,” said the lawyer quickly. “Do you make anything of them?”
“Nothing at all, sir. It is too early in the game. One word more!”
“Well?”
“Introduce me here as a clerk from your office, not as a detective!”
“I understand.”
“And take no notice of what I may say and do.”
“Rely on my discretion!” nodded Mr. French approvingly, as they approached the door of the car.
It had turned ten o’clock. Though the sun was now well up and the sky cloudless, the air continued biting cold and the ground was frozen hard.
It was a branch station at which the two men alighted, and only a single carriage stood at the narrow platform.
More than a mile away, across a dismal sweep of moorland and marshes, could be seen the blue waters of the broad Atlantic, broken by the grim, dark rocks of the peninsula of Nahant. Somewhat nearer was the desolate, gray turnpike making east to the cities of Lynn and Salem. It was the highway of old colonial days, and still was nearly as dreary and void of dwellings as of yore.
In the immediate neighborhood, even, the houses were few and far between, and the surrounding country was rough and hilly, interspersed with farms and wide stretches of woodland.{42}
As the lawyer alighted from the train a short, thickset man approached him. His grim face was not prepossessing, and he was clad in a rough, gray suit, with his pants tucked in at the top of a pair of heavy cowhide boots, which were soiled with mud.
“Be you Mr. French?” he asked bluntly, peering sharply at the lawyer from under his bushy brows.
“Yes,” was the reply. “Who are you?”
“I’m Darbage, sir—Joe Darbage;” and now the fellow touched his woolen cap. “I’m the stablehand up to the house, yonder, and Mr. Thorpe sent me down here to get you. He said you might come by this train. Bad business, this, sir!”
“I see,” nodded the lawyer, who had not recognized the fellow as Moore’s groom and gardener. “Will there be room for my clerk, also?”
“Aye, sir, I reckon so. Tumble in, and I’ll squat in the middle.”
With no observable interest in the bumpkin, who did not quite impress him as a thoroughbred countryman, Sheridan Keene followed the lawyer into the wagon and suffered Mr. Darbage to squeeze his broad hips between them.
“I’d ’a’ come with the carryall if I’d knowed there were two o’ you,” he explained, with a side glance at the face of the detective. “Get up! G’lang!”
“I brought a clerk, thinking I might need him,” said Mr. French, as the vehicle rattled over the rough road.
“I reckon there’ll be room enough, now the old man’s gone,” returned Darbage irreverently. “There wa’n’t room for no extras, though, when he was alive.”
“Then old Jacob is really dead, is he?”
“Aye, sir, as dead as he’ll ever be in this world. Can’t say what he’ll come to in the next.”
“Well, this world is the one we have most to do with while in it,” said the lawyer, with some austerity. “What are the particulars? I have only Mr. Thorpe’s telegram saying Jacob had been murdered.”
Darbage looked up without a change of countenance.
“Aye, sir, he was murdered, right enough,” said he, in his grim fashion. “Ma’am Haynie found him dead in bed this morning, with two knife slits atween his ribs, and most of his blood run out of his body, which wasn’t much, at that.”
“Is it known when the crime was committed?”
“I reckon not, sir, though I’m not sartin. Jim Bragg, the constable, is up there nosing round and looking as wise as an owl; but I can’t say what he’s l’arned. They don’t tell me much.”
“Is Mr. Thorpe at the house?”
“Aye, sir; he’s been down here nigh a week.”
“Isn’t that quite a long visit for him?”
“The ole man ain’t been over well, so Mr. Thorpe stayed on his account.”
“And Mabel?”
“Mr. Thorpe sent her word this morning, and she came right up. Fust time she’d been in the house since the ole man kicked her out. I reckon there’s the coroner driving in, sir. I heerd ’em say they’d sent for him.”
The ride from the station had been of brief duration, and they now came in view of a large country house, situated somewhat off the road. A glance at the place indicated the character of its late owner. The dwelling, once a mansion, was now out of repair; and the surrounding acres of woodland and meadows had run rank as they pleased.{43}
A large stable was at the rear and at one side of the house, and the faded old gray mare, behind which Jacob Moore had been wont to ride, ambled up the driveway between the elms as if eager to reach her stall.
But grim Mr. Darbage drew her down at the side door of the house, which was immediately opened by a young woman in dark attire, whose pale, pretty face and red eyes at once suggested to Keene her identity.
“Oh, Mr. French!” she exclaimed, approaching with much emotion to greet him; “I am so glad you have come! My poor father has met with——”
But the kind old lawyer took her in his arms, and silenced her with a more loving kiss than the father mentioned had ever given her in all her worthy and gentle girlhood. He led her in, and took her alone to the library; while Sheridan Keene, already at work on the case in his quiet way, followed them as far as the broad hall.
Though things wore the aspect of years of service, the large house was comfortably furnished, and the general cleanliness and order suggested the care of a capable housekeeper.
The sound of voices from a room off one side of the hall now reached the detective’s ears, and in an affair of this kind Sheridan Keene did not stand upon ceremony. He at once approached the room, the door of which stood partly open.
It was a large, square bedroom, with two windows. A broad fireplace was at one end, but the half-burned logs were cold and dead, and the air was very chilly. A bed occupied the opposite end of the room, and there, upon its bloodstained linen, stiff and cold in death, lay the figure of a thin-faced, gray-haired old man, whose face in death, even, still carried an expression of that severity and hardness which had marked all the latter years of his life.
Three men were standing near the bed, and one, evidently a physician, was examining the body.
“The man has been dead many hours, not less than twelve, I should say,” he observed, as Sheridan Keene stepped softly into the room. “It is a shocking crime!”
“Can anything be done?” asked a tall, broad-shouldered young man at his elbow.
The physician shook his head.
“Not for him,” he replied. “You had better do nothing here, Mr. Thorpe, until after the arrival of the coroner.”
Sheridan Keene looked the latter over. He was a well-built man of twenty-five, this nephew of the deceased. He had a frank and rather attractive face, with dark eyes and hair, and was the style of a man most women would have fancied, despite Mabel Moore’s evident aversion to marrying him. His features were pale now, and his manner gravely composed.
“I have already sent for the coroner, doctor,” he replied.
“Let everything remain as it is, then, until he comes.”
“He should be here now.”
“It is a case, I think,” added the physician, “which will require capable investigation. Would it not be well to send into Boston for a competent detective?”
“I have sent for Lawyer French, my uncle’s solicitor,” replied Thorpe, “and I shall place matters entirely in his hands on his arrival. I think that would be my uncle’s own wish if he were alive, instead of lying there, the victim of perfidious cowardice and foul play; and I shall{44}be governed accordingly. I think I had better—— Beg pardon, sir! Who are you?”
He had turned slightly, and now observed Sheridan Keene standing just within the threshold.
The detective approached with a grave bow, and without a glance at the gruesome figure on the bed.
“My name is Keene, and I am Mr. French’s clerk,” he explained politely. “I have just arrived with the attorney.”
“Oh, yes. Excuse me!” cried Thorpe, quickly offering his hand. “Where is Mr. French?”
“He is in the library with Mrs. Jeffrey!”
“I must see him at once!”
“Oh, by the way,” and Thorpe quickly turned back, “this is Doctor Carr, our local physician, Mr. Keene, and this is Mr. Bragg, the constable. They will give you any information you may desire, and I shall now request Mr. French to take entire charge of this dreadful affair. He will know all about the law bearing upon it, of which I know nothing. You will excuse me, won’t you?”
The detective bowed and gravely acknowledged the introduction to the two men remaining, while Richard Thorpe hurried from the room to seek the attorney.
Sheridan Keene sized up at a glance the two men left in his company.
The physician was an ordinary old gentleman, and presented nothing of interest. Not so, however, the other.
Jim Bragg was a burly man, with coal-black eyes and a bushy beard. He was a capital fellow for battering down a door and entering a dive of lawless ruffians, where indomitable courage was an absolute requisite; for such an occasion, you would have to go far to find Jim Bragg’s better. But the ferreting out of a cunning, well-wrought piece of knavery was utterly beyond Mr. Bragg’s ability.
But Mr. Bragg did not think so. All he wanted, or had ever wanted, as he said, was an opportunity. And it now had happened, like a long-awaited dream, when the news of Jacob Moore’s murder was published that morning; and, as he left his own home and hastened across the meadows toward the immediate scene of the tragedy, his mind, stimulated by the occasion, was filled with vague visions of startling stories in the city dailies, with the name of Detective Bragg in scare-head letters and thrilling depiction of the marvelous deeds of this new Vidocq, to say nothing of renown handed down to posterity, and the probable demand for his immediate services in Pemberton Square.
This was the man to whom Sheridan Keene now turned, with a glance that at once took in the constable’s chief characteristics.
Richard Thorpe’s immediate cordiality toward Keene, when informed of his relations with the attorney, did not escape the notice of the burly constable, whose conduct presently indicated that he not only regarded Thorpe very favorably, but was also inclined to extend this sentiment even to the latter’s friends. He winked affably to Keene, as Thorpe hastened from the room, then turned to growl in the face of the innocent physician:
“Send to town for a detective, eh? Carr, you infernal sawbones, don’t you think I’m equal to getting at the bottom o’ this affair?{45}”
“Why, yes, Mr. Bragg,” stammered the startled physician; “but I made the suggestion only——”
“It was a cursed innuendo, no matter what ’twas made for!” protested the doughty constable. “Looking arter crime and criminals is my bread and butter, Doctor Carr, the which I’ll not let you nor any other bonesetter whip from ’tween my teeth. Now, you look arter your end o’ this case, and don’t trouble mine, or the trouble’ll not end there. Send to town for a detective! The blamed old meddler!”
“Some folks don’t know a clever man when they see one,” said Keene, in tones disparaging the perturbed little physician, who had beaten a hasty retreat from the room, and from the ire of the bustling, black-bearded constable.
“Too true for a joke, Mr. Keene!” cried Bragg, with an emphatic headshake. “Some men are blind, and some are jealous; but I never saw a sawbones who wa’n’t a blamed fool.”
“It’s owing to their business,” assented Keene, with an object.
“So ’tis, sir! For cleverness, give me a lawyer, or a detective, or a politician, or even a gospel sharp! But a sawbones——” and the disgruntled Bragg spat his disgust into the fireplace; “a sawbones ain’t nothing! Nothing at all!”
“Not even worthy of contempt, eh?” smiled Keene. “You are the constable, I believe Mr. Thorpe said.”
“Aye, sir, I am!” Mr. Bragg readily allowed. “Mr. Thorpe put it dead right, as he always does.”
“He appears to be a nice, gentlemanly fellow,” observed Keene, in a friendly way.
“More’n that, sir, he is!” declared the garrulous constable, with emphasis. “A cleaner, nicer man than Dick Thorpe never stood in leather. He hasn’t a foe in these ’ere parts. Even that old man, stiff and stark there, was his friend—and whoever could win old Jacob Moore’s favor, sir, could win any man’s! I know, ’cause I know ’em all, root and branch. You’re a lawyer, ain’t you?”
“Yes, Constable Bragg,” affably nodded Keene, careful to give this pretentious officer all the distinction possible. “Our Mr. French has always been Moore’s legal adviser, and we shall now execute his estate—and possibly his assassins.”
“Cleverly put—very!” chuckled Mr. Bragg, clapping the detective on the shoulder. “And, seeing’s your interest runs with mine, I’ll not mind helping you, when I can.”
“Then you’ll not object to my looking over the evidence with you, merely as an assistant?”
“Sure not!”
“I’ll keep mum, understand! Of course, I don’t expect to see all you’ll see, for detective work is not in my line; but what little I get may help Mr. French in conducting the case. And, say!”
“Well, sir?”
Keene slipped his hand through the constable’s brawny arm and drew him closer, to add confidentially:
“If you can make a hit in ferreting out the truth here, there’d be a big opening elsewhere for a man of your measure.”
“D’ye think so?” was the eager inquiry.
“I know so! Furthermore, since you’re inclined to do me a turn, I’d like to reciprocate some day. Our law firm, you know, stands ace high with Chief Watts, of the{46}Boston inspectors; and if it comes right, we can make a strong pull for you at headquarters.”
“And you’ll do it?”
“With pleasure!”
“Put it there!” said Mr. Bragg, thrusting out his huge hand. “As for this case, what I get, you get. But that’s between us, mind you!”
“My word upon it, I’ll do nothing to get in your way.”
“That’s good enough for me, sir!”
Thus Sheridan made an impression, and paved the way to securing information from the one man who, his own detective instinct told him, would know more of the superficial features of this tragedy than all the rest of the community combined.
“Was this Moore’s desk?” he now carelessly asked, turning to a piece of furniture near one of the windows.
“Yes, sir, ’twas.”
“It is much disturbed. Was he in the habit of keeping money in it?”
“I reckon not. But some one went through it last night, that’s plain. Most likely a search for papers.”
“Possibly a will.”
“My idea exactly. Say, you’re tolerably clever yourself! Well, I’ll gamble I can name who did it.”
“I hope so. If you can, it will be one feather in your cap.”
“I’ll have many in it afore this case is ended. Come down this way, and I’ll show you something more. But this is between us, mind you!”
“If you doubt me, keep it to yourself.”
“Oh, no; I’ll trust you! I can read a man’s face, and don’t you forget it.”
At the heels of the burly constable, who was that common type of man whose eagerness to serve himself makes him the cat’s-paw of his superiors, Sheridan Keene followed through the dim hall and down a back stairway, and entered a basement laundry. From the single window a part of one pane was missing, making the room easy of access from without; and upon the plank floor, extending from the window toward the entry door, were several marks of muddy boots.
“D’ye see that, and them?” triumphantly demanded Mr. Bragg, pointing first to the window and then the floor. “It came cold late last night, and the ground was soft in the early evening. The sawbones says Moore was killed before midnight. The party who entered that window, and stole out here and upstairs, was the party who searched the desk and most likely did the rest of the job. It was done in the evening.”
“By Jove! I believe you’ve struck the trail, constable!” said Keene admiringly.
“I know I’ve struck it!” declared Mr. Bragg, with a twitch of his bushy beard. “Now come outside here!”
He led the way through the entry and out of a narrow back door, and thence around to one side of the house. The soil of a flower bed under the windows of Moore’s chamber was then frozen hard. But in several places among the dead plants and vines were the clearly defined footprints of a man’s heavy boots; deeper here and there, as if he had at times stood on tiptoe to reach the height of the window and peer into the room.
“What d’ye say to that?” demanded Mr. Bragg.
“I’ll say nothing till you see fit to do so!” said Keene significantly.
“Good for you!” nodded the constable approvingly. “Now, let’s return by the front door.{47}”
“Wait a moment, constable,” said Sheridan Keene. “I’d like a little more light on this affair, if you don’t mind. Who discovered the crime?”
Mr. Bragg demurred for a moment, but visions of an appointment under Chief Watts led him to respond to the request. He had lost sight of the provisions under which the promise of influence had been made.
“The housekeeper, Mrs. Haynie,” he replied.
“At what hour; do you know?”
“Nigh half past eight.”
“Did she give the alarm?”
“She ran to one of the neighbors, a piece up the road, here, scared half out of her wits. One of ’em came down here at once, and one went to tell Thorpe at the turnpike tavern, half a mile away. Dick mounted his horse and struck around to my house to notify me, in which he showed his good sense; and we came up here together. Then he sent the telegram to Mr. French, and word to Mabel Jeffrey.”
“Then Mr. Thorpe was not at home here last night?”
“No, he wasn’t,” said Mr. Bragg glibly. “He was at the road house all night. Leastwise, he was with Mabel part of the evening, waiting to see her husband. He’s been trying, you see, to fix up things between them and the old man. But Bob Jeffrey didn’t show up till midnight. Dick had dropped into the road house for a drink, and joined in a game of cards.”
“Has this been a habit of Thorpe?”
“Playing cards there? Oh, yes, regular thing. Genial fellow, Dick—and everybody likes him. It came cold soon after midnight, and his mare, being under cover, he didn’t like to expose her. She’d been sick for a week back, and that was her first time out. So he stayed at the tavern until morning.”
“I see,” nodded Keene. “Then Mrs. Haynie and the stableman were here alone all night?”
“That’s about the size of it. Darbage was at the tavern, and he stayed there until daybreak, when he came up here and slept in the stable, for fear the old man would hear him enter the house. He was some slued, I reckon; but, Lord save us! Moore was past hearing long afore that. Joe Darbage might just as well have tumbled into his own bed.”
“Do you know who last saw Mr. Moore alive, constable?” inquired Keene, who had received, with a series of little nods, the information thus far imparted.
“Mrs. Haynie was the last who saw him.”
“Do you know at what time?”
“About nine o’clock last night.”
“Was he up?”
“No, he was in bed. She went in to look to his fire, and to see if he was all right.”
“That was after Thorpe and the stableman went to the road house, was it?”
“Long after! Thorpe left here about seven o’clock, and Joe went a little later. Lord, sir, nobody will ever think of suspecting either of them! But there’s a sartin man who don’t stand so well here, and some things p’ints strong agin’ him,” Mr. Bragg added, in lower tones. “Now, this is all atween us, mind you.”
“You can depend upon me, constable,” said Keene assuringly. “This information will not go farther than to Mr. French. It will be of great help to him in the case, and we’ll not forget it. What man do you mean?”
“Young Bob Jeffrey,” whispered Mr. Bragg, with mysterious significance.{48}
“You mean Mabel’s husband?”
“Sure thing! Since their marriage he has been dead nuts agin’ the old man, and talks pretty rough agin’ him. More’n that, sir, he’s been drinking more’n is good for him, and using his tongue too freely. I reckon he’ll have a hard time telling where he was till midnight last night.”
“What sort of a man is this Jeffrey?”
“Well, sir, he’s a hot-headed—— Say, there’s the coroner, now! I’ll have to quit you right here, sir, for I’ve a word for him alone.”
“Many thanks for this, however, Constable Bragg,” said Keene, extending his hand.
“That’s all right, lawyer!” exclaimed Mr. Bragg, with a growl of friendly appreciation. “But all this is atween us, mind you.”
“I will not forget it.”
“And I reckon I can let you into something more a little later. Leave it to me.”
And the burly constable wiped the frozen moisture from his bushy black mustache and beard, and hustled around the corner of the house.
TO BE CONTINUED.
Passengers on the train of the Ohio River division of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad are always interested in the towns of Hartford, New Haven, and Mason City, on the West Virginia side, and Syracuse and Pomeroy on the Ohio side of the river because of the unusual industry that is carried on.
A strange odor comes through the open windows of the coach during the warm summer days as the train passes along through the yards on the outskirts of the town. For more than one hundred and fifty years this bend on the Ohio River, known to steamboat men as “Salt Bend,” or “Great Salt Bend,” has been the center of a large salt industry.
The river bench, or highland, along the river, is dotted with numerous queer-looking buildings surmounted with what looks like a huge wooden chimney. At the bottom of each chimney, or tower, says theManufacturers Record, there is a salt well. The wells in a number of instances are pumped with gas engines, and gas engines are also used in some cases to pump water out of the mines.
The several salt works are near the wells and generally at the mouth of a coal mine which runs into the hills just back of the towns on both sides of the river.
The ability to secure a cheap fuel from coal mines so near has preserved the industry against foreign and domestic competition.
The tall piles of fagots or hoop poles used in making hoops for barrels are everywhere in evidence, and one wonders why they do not use iron hoops on the barrels, until they notice the havoc the salt water plays with metal of any kind. The pipes used to convey the liquid are in some cases made of hollow logs of poplar and other woods.
The art of barrel making, or coopering, as it is called, is practiced here in all the old-time splendor, and if the scene were transplanted to any European country and located along some of the tourist lanes of travel it would be a mecca for the sight-seers. The queer old processes,{49}the old-fashioned tools and methods, the smoke rising from the smudge fire in the barrels would attract scores of travelers to the scene of the Old World.
The strata containing the salt solution lies about twelve hundred feet under the surface, and the water rises to within six hundred feet of the surface, after the well is drilled in. The well as generally drilled is termed a six-inch well, and is cased with iron casing to about eight hundred feet below the surface, where the surface water is packed off with a packer such as is used in oil wells.
The salt water is pumped from the well into a cistern, which is generally elevated on the side of a hill near the plant, and is carried in copper and wooden pipes by gravity to the salt surface. Where wood log pipes are used the sight is a very unusual one, as they are laid on top of the ground, and run in every direction from plant to wells.
The salt furnace is one of the most interesting sights around the works, and consists of a series of iron pans, about forty in number, each pan being about three feet wide and ten feet long. These pans rest on a stone wall over a fire pit, and are covered over with a wooden-box chamber about one hundred and twenty feet long and three and a half feet high. This covering is called a steam chest, and, like the lid on a kettle, helps raise the temperature of a solution to a higher point than could be obtained in an open vessel.
After the proper boiling has been given to a quantity of the salt solution, it is drawn off into a wood vat, called a mud settler, and, although the solution seemed perfectly clear while entering the heating pans over the furnace, a considerable residue is found at the bottom of the mud settler. This residue contains a large proportion of oxide of iron.
From the mud settler the hot solution passes to two vats called drawn settlers, where the solution is still further clarified and treated. The solution then passes to the first graining vat, which is a long wooden box lined with tile, where the salt begins to form in flakes on the surface, and falls to the bottom of the vat, where it is picked up by power scrapers or shovels.
The best salt is formed in this first grainer, although different grades of salt are extracted from the solution in five other grainers, and they are used for the feeding of cattle and the making of brine solutions.
There is undoubted evidence that hay and cotton, when damp, will occasionally take fire without any external source of ignition. Cotton impregnated with oil, when collected in large quantities, is especially liable to take fire spontaneously. Numerous cases are recorded where an accumulation of cotton waste, used in wiping oily machinery, lamps, et cetera, has more than once caused fires and led to unfounded charges of incendiarism. Whether or not such organic substances as damp grain or seeds ever undergo spontaneous combustion is a question that has never been satisfactorily proven, although three French scientists—Chevallier, Ollivier, and Devergie—are authority for the supposition that the burning of a barn investigated by them was caused by the spontaneous combustion of damp oats stored in it. There have been many instances of the spontaneous ignition of coal containing iron pyrites when moistened with water. This is particularly noticeable in coal mined in Yorkshire{50}and some varieties found in South Wales. Phosphorus in a dry state is probably the most quickly ignited substance known. It has been seen to take fire, when touched, in a room in which the temperature was under seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Doctor Taylor, a writer on the principles and practice of medical jurisprudence, is authority for the statement that ordinary phosphorus (blue head) matches have taken fire spontaneously, as a result of exposure to the sun’s rays for the purpose of drying.
Big animals kill and eat smaller ones, and they in their turn feed on others smaller still, down to the very lowest and tiniest creatures known. This every one knows. What is not so easily realized is that a similar savage struggle for existence is always going on in the vegetable as well as the animal world. Certain plants feed on others, robbing them of their sap and juices, and eventually killing their prey as surely as does the lion when he buries his sharp teeth in an antelope’s neck.
This organized robbery is most plain to the eye in a tropical forest; but even here in our islands no one can go for a country walk without seeing plenty of instances. The mistletoe, for instance. A great dull-green bunch grows flourishing profusely on the bare limb of some half-starved apple tree. If you cut them off the apple bough, you will find the roots of the parasite have sunk deep into its substance, and are drinking up the juices which the roots of the apple tree have secreted far down in the earth below.
It is curious to note how the mistletoe has fitted itself for this thieving existence. Its berries are full of a gluey sap. This, when they fall, makes them stick in the crannies of the bark of such rough-coated trees as the apple, the poplar, and, more rarely, the oak, and there each grows and begins anew to starve and strangle its host. In the ground a mistletoe seed cannot live, and soon rots away.
The “dodders,” “greater” and “common,” may be easily identified by any one with a little botanical knowledge. The former lives on thistles; the latter sucks the juices of heath and thyme.
Broom rape is another tiny burglar, fixing itself on the roots of broom and furze, and so gaining a living. The family of broom rape comprises no less than five different varieties, all of which are incorrigible sneak thieves, and have now descended so low they can exist in no other way. One lives and grows upon the roots of clover, another fastens on ivy roots and fattens on food intended for the tendrils far above.
Ivy itself is classed by many as a burglarious plant. Indeed, its loving embraces, if not checked, are apt to strangle the tree it grows on. But, on the other hand, it is not fair to put it in the same category with the plants already mentioned, for ivy only asks from a tree support, not food, and the harm it does is due to its tight embraces depriving its upholder of air and light.
But it is to hot countries you must go to see plant crime flourishing unchecked, particularly the forests of Central America. An especially cruel sinner is one well known to us by name, the India-rubber tree. Its favorite plan seems to be to start growing on the very crown of some forest giant, such as a wild fig or a Guianese ceiba{51}tree. There it pushes out its great, evergreen, leathery leaves, and digs its roots down into the fast-rotting substance of its host’s trunk. Soon its long, creeping rootlets descend along the outside bark of the supporting tree, and finally reach the ground. Soon nothing is left between them but a rotting shell. The murder is accomplished, and the garroter has usurped the place of its victim.
That queer air plant known as Spanish moss kills many a fine forest tree with its solemn, gray tendrils. Like ivy, it robs its host of light and air and ends by slowly smothering its victim.
Occasionally plants not burglars by nature are forced to assume that rôle. A young mountain ash may not infrequently be seen springing from the crown of an ancient oak or other tree. The seed has been dropped there by a bird and taken root.
Ferns, too, often grow in great profusion on the long, horizontal boughs of oaks over rivers and ponds. Their weight, and the moss they encourage among their roots, end by rotting their support.
More rarely a tree may actually be watched stealing its own juices. Willows, when old, are apt to become hollow, and they rot till nothing but a shell of bark is left. If this is cut, delicate rootlets will descend from the upper portion of the cut and suck nourishment from the decaying remains of the tree itself.
Astronomers tell us that the day must come when this earth will, like the moon, wheel through the heavens a dead and barren ball of matter—airless, waterless, lifeless. But long, long before that time man will be extinct, will have disappeared so utterly that not so much as the bleached skeleton of a human being will be visible on all the millions of square miles of the surface of this planet.
Unless by some huge and universal cataclysm the whole race is swept at once into eternity, it is but reasonable to suppose that man, like any other race of animals, will disappear slowly, and that eventually there will be but a single human being left—some old, old man, grayheaded and bearded, and left to wander alone in a solitude that may be imagined, but not described.
How will he die, this last relic of the teeming millions that once transformed the face of the globe and ruled undisputed masters of every other living thing? There are many fates that may befall him. He may go mad with the horror of loneliness, and himself end his own miserable existence. He may be eaten by the vast reptiles or giant insects which will then probably infest the solitudes.
But his fate may be far weirder and more dreadful. Scientists say that as we burn the coal and timber we are still so richly supplied with, we let loose into the atmosphere an ever-increasing volume of carbonic acid gas. Much of this is taken up by plants, but not all. It must increase and eventually poison the breathable air, filling the valleys and mounting slowly to the hilltops, where the last remnants of animal life are striving for existence. The last man will climb higher and higher, but eventually the suffocating invisible flood will reach and drown him.
Again, it is said that the earth, as it gets older, is cracking like dry mud. These cracks will increase until{52}at last they will let the waters of the oceans and rivers sink into the fiery center of the globe. Then will occur an explosion so terrible as may startle the inhabitants of neighboring worlds. The last man in this case will probably be some arctic explorer or Eskimo, whom the vast plains of ice around him will save from instant death and leave to grill a few moments till the ice continents are swallowed by red-hot gases and steam.
Supposing these earth cracks develop more slowly, they may suck away the water without devastating explosions. Then the last man’s fate will be the worst describable. He will die of thirst. The scene of his death will probably be the great valley in the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, off the Brazilian coast, halfway between Rio Janeiro and the Cape, where now six miles of green water lie between the steamer’s keel and the abysmal slime beneath. There, hopelessly digging in the everdrying mud, he must perish, and leave his bones to parch on a waterless planet.
The antarctic polar ice cap has been growing thicker and heavier for uncounted ages. The distance from the south pole to the edge of this ice cap is 1,400 miles. The ice rises steadily from the edge to the center. At that center it cannot be less than twelve miles in thickness—twice as thick as Mount Everest is high. Southern latitudes are growing warmer, and this ice cap is known to be cracking. Suppose it splits. Imagine the gigantic mass of water and ice that will come sweeping up north over the oceans and continents of the earth! Where, then, will the last man breathe his final gasp? High up in the snows of some great range he will perish miserably of cold and starvation, looking down on a huge shallow sea, beneath whose tossing waters will lie the whole of the races of the world.
Or, last, and perhaps dreariest fate of all, the human race may outlive other mammals and last until the sun, as some day it must, grows dull and cold, and vegetation dies from the chilled earth. The miserable remnant of earth’s people must then slowly die out after ages of an existence to which that of the Eskimo of to-day is a paradise.
A cantilever bridge consists of two inverted trussed beams, each balanced on a pier, one part extending over the river and the other to the shore, where it is firmly anchored in solid, heavy masonry. The ends extending over the river toward each other from the opposite piers are joined by a short truss in such a manner as to permit expansion and contraction consequent on changes of temperature, and yet be proof against vertical or lateral pressure. Such a bridge, it is said, sustains scarcely any strain in the center of the span. Each half of the entire bridge is self-balanced on its pier; and when a long, heavy train is on it, the part of the train on one side of the pier is balanced as on a “teeter” by the part on the other side of the pier—in front or behind. The bridge across the Niagara River was the first of the cantilever kind ever constructed, and the one over the Hudson River was erected upon substantially the same principle, the cantilever being utilized as nearly as possible. In building the bridge it was important to obstruct the Hudson as little as possible, much opposition having been raised against it by those interested in the navigation of the river. Therefore a combination of anchorage trusses{53}and cantilever spans was adopted. The river is crossed in five spans, with four piers in the channel. On each of the two piers nearest the shore, four sets of steel rollers carry the ends of the anchorage trusses and of the cantilevers of the east and west spans. The bridge is made of steel. The cantilever principle is again introduced in the famous Forth Bridge. At a distance of six hundred and eighty feet from the ends of either approach viaduct are the north and south cantilever piers, with their great arms stretching out to and joining with the girder approaches. In the opposite direction the cantilever arms extend for six hundred and eighty feet toward Inchgarvie, and come within three hundred and fifty feet each of meeting the arms of the cantilever built on that island. This cantilever pier is founded in the bottom of the shallow water close to the west of the islet. The gaps of three hundred and fifty feet between the extremities of the cantilever arms and of the ends of their neighbors to the north and south are filled in by connecting or central girders of the hogback lattice pattern. The total length of each of the north and south cantilevers is one thousand five hundred and five feet, while that of the central one, owing to its having a longer foundation base, is one thousand six hundred and twenty feet. The two main spans measure each one thousand seven hundred and ten feet, with a clear headway above high water, for five hundred feet in the center of the span, of one hundred and fifty feet, while the half cantilever spans to the approach viaducts north and south are each of six hundred and eighty feet. The measurement from the extremity of one approach viaduct to the extremity of the other gives the distance taken up by the three double cantilevers and their connecting girders as five thousand three hundred and twenty feet, or just over a mile.
It takes about a billion and a half of eggs every year to supply the demand in Great Britain and Ireland, besides all the eggs that are produced there. Forty per cent of the eggs consumed in the United Kingdom are brought from twenty different foreign lands, including several of the British colonies.
Germany comes next to Great Britain as the largest consumer of eggs in Europe. Her imports are a little over a billion and a half a year, and she is obliged to pay £3,000,000 a year for the eggs she buys from other countries.
Japan is now using a great many eggs, though few are produced in the country. As they are very much cheaper in China, the eggs Japan uses are almost all imported from that country.
Russia is the largest exporter of eggs. The number sent from that country in 1896 was 1,475,000,000, of which 289,000,000 were shipped to the United Kingdom.
The manufacture of matches in Germany has become so important an industry that the factories are now using every year about 5,500,000 cubic feet of aspen wood, of which about three-fifths is imported from Russia.
Bavaria alone has twenty-six lead-pencil factories, which employ from 9,000 to 10,000 workmen, and produce on an average 4,320,000 lead pencils and crayons every week. It is a curious fact that the use of German lead pencils in all the public offices and schools of France is forbidden by law.{54}
{55}
Statistics issued from Manchester, England, by the International Cotton Federation, show that during the year ended August 31, 13,957,000 bales of American cotton were used, compared with 11,559,000 bales in the previous year.
The spinners spun more cotton than in any year since the great boom of 1907.
Of Egyptian cotton 701,985 bales were used, considerably more than in either of the two preceding years.
Frank C. Bostock, the well-known animal trainer and menagerie proprietor, died recently in London. Bostock was perhaps the best-known keeper and trainer of wild animals and exhibitor in Europe and America. As proprietor of an animal show at Dreamland he furnished New York with many a thrill. Mr. Bostock was born in England fifty years ago, and was for many years a circus man on a small scale. He brought his animals to this country many years ago and here began his successful career. It was he who first introduced to the public the boxing kangaroo.
The old Huber Museum in Fourteenth Street was the scene of his first success, and it was here that he exhibited Rama Sami, the wild man, who, besides being a wild man, was an English cobbler. It was really the adventures of Wallace, the “man-eating lion,” that heralded the name of Bostock from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Wallace, a lion of reputed gentle disposition, was turned loose in a stable in a side street in company with a broken-down horse.
By skillful handling the old lion’s roars were sounded at frequent intervals and so grew the story that “the untamed” Wallace was loose raising Cain and defying capture. The public soon knew that the horse had been killed. It is a matter of dispute to this day whether Wallace or a keeper killed the animal. The story of the affair appeared in the newspapers, and for several days accounts of the latest doings of Wallace were in as much demand as the news of the world. Then Wallace was “captured,” and became a drawing card at the museum. So grew, too, the fame of Bostock.
Bostock was an animal trainer of courage. He had more than one narrow escape from death. On April 12, 1901, while exhibiting in Indianapolis, he was attacked by Rajah, a Bengal tiger, and was so badly injured that it was feared he would not recover. In 1905 he was attacked by a lion while exhibiting in Paris and had another close call. Bostock was best known of late years because of his show at Coney Island.
The German navy’s first Zeppelin airship made a trial flight recently over Lake Constance at Friedrichshafen.
The airship, with its 510 horse-power engines, is said to be capable of keeping in the air for two days and a half without a landing. Her equipment, in addition to wireless telegraphy, a searchlight, and machine guns, includes a kitchen, sleeping{56}bunks for the officers, and hammocks for the crew.
After her trials the airship will take up her permanent station near Hamburg.
Two hundred heroic figures, the sophomores of Columbia, swept into the One Hundred and Sixteenth Street station of the Broadway subway, in New York, recently, so full of college spirit that they didn’t stop to pay their fares. They took possession of the first two cars of the first uptown express and removed all the lights from the ceiling. It was lots of fun after that to throw bulbs out at each passing station and see the various patrons of the road skip nervously to one side with the resultant crashes.
All this was a spiritual preparation for the annual sophomore smoker at Columbia Oval, on Gun Hill Road. They reached the appointed place by shifting at One Hundred and Eighty-first Street to Jerome Avenue. Some took a surface car on the avenue and did as much damage to it as they conveniently could on the way uptown. Others walked and contented themselves by stealing all the red lanterns marking paving danger points on the thoroughfares. These an unappreciative and insolent policeman, who probably wouldn’t known an Alma Mater from a blackjack, forced the amazed and indignant collegians to return.
The sophomores had brought with them for the smoker some twenty docile freshmen, whom they shampooed with molasses and old eggs and subjected to other convulsingly amusing indignities. But, after all, the evening was spoiled. Tradition says that about 9:30 the freshman class should rush the smoker and do its best to rescue the captive classmates. This is tremendously fine sport, but the sophisticated members of 1916 just yawned and stayed down at the university.
Federal ornithologists and biologists have expressed great satisfaction over the announcement that Mrs. Russell Sage had bought Marsh Island, in Louisiana, for a bird refuge.
The island is the winter refuge of the blue goose, one of the rarest water fowl in the world. The setting apart of Marsh Island under conditions that will prevent the killing of this bird while it is wintering in the South, is considered by Doctor T. S. Palmer, of the bureau of biological survey of the department of agriculture, who is intimately identified with the management of the existing Federal reservations for the protection of wild fowl, as being of great value to natural science.
Doctor Palmer has not been informed as to the plans of Mrs. Sage respecting control of the Marsh Island reservation. She may turn it over to the Federal government or to the State of Louisiana, or place it under the control of the National Audubon Society for the protection of robins and other migratory birds. If the island is a monument of scientific interest, it may be accepted by the Federal government under{57}the terms of the national monuments act, passed during the term of Colonel Roosevelt as president, and, on his recommendation. Otherwise it would require a special act of Congress to accept the island from Mrs. Sage.
There is now pending on the calendar of the United States Senate a bill introduced by Senator Perkins, of California, providing for the establishment of Federal bird reserves. The enactments of this bill would vest the secretary of agriculture with authority to accept Marsh Island from Mrs. Sage, should she elect to turn it over to the Federal government.
A gift of $10,000 as a memorial to Mr. and Mrs. Isador Straus, who were lost in theTitanicdisaster, is announced at Harvard University. The income of the fund is to be used for lectures on commercial practice in the graduate school of business administration.
Notified that he was suffering from rabies in an advanced stage and that his death was a matter of hours, John Muter, of Haledon, N. J., spent the time until his death calmly in settling his worldly affairs and preparing for the end.
When he returned to his home after having been told that science could do nothing for him, he summoned his wife and four children, together with the Reverend Warren P. Coon, pastor of the Methodist Church, in Haledon, which Mr. Muter, a wealthy man, had founded years ago.
“My journey here is ended,” he said calmly. “I can live but a few hours. I have no fear of death and I am ready.”
At his request the entire family knelt while Mr. Coon prayed. It was almost daylight before the minister left the stricken group.
Mr. Muter then dictated his will dividing his large estate among the members of his family and went to his bed. That night he became violent and later sank into a stupor, from which he never rallied.
Mr. Muter, who was almost 69 years of age, was bitten by a stray dog while sitting on the porch at his home last June. He had the wound cauterized and thought no more of it.
The two sisters of the late John Arbuckle have announced their intention to build a social institute for young men and women in connection with the Plymouth Church as a memorial to Henry Ward Beecher and as a gift to the church and the people of Brooklyn. The women are Mrs. Catherine A. Jamison and Miss Christine Arbuckle, equal heirs to the coffee merchant’s estate of $30,000,000. The gift is in furtherance of wishes expressed by Mr. Arbuckle before his death, but not mentioned in his will. The memorial will cost about $100,000.
Mr. Arbuckle is said to have conceived the idea after hearing a sermon by Reverend Doctor Newell Dwight Hillis, pastor of Plymouth Church, on the social needs{58}of the hundreds of young men and women who live in boarding houses. Mr. Arbuckle, in declining a short time before his death to give the Young Women’s Christian Association $400,000, said he did not believe in keeping young men and women apart.
Lawyers representing the Pottowatomie, Chippewa, and Ottawa Indian tribes have filed suit in the United States district court for recovery of the Chicago lake front from the Chicago River to Forty-seventh Street on the South Side, or cash damages of $50,000,000.
The Illinois Central Railroad Company, the Michigan Central Railroad Company, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co., and the board of South Park commissioners were named as defendants.
The names of 2,785 Indians residing in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin are given in the petition of the plaintiffs, who base their claims to the land on old treaties with the Federal government.
Andrew J. Onderdonk, junior, a third-year student in the Harvard law school, a giant in stature, and the possessor of a voice that puts to shame a tugboat’s siren, arrived in New York recently from Europe with a trunk filled with lace handkerchiefs, which he had made himself.
Instead of playing shuffleboard, deck quoits, and other boisterous shipboard games, “Fancywork Andy,” as the girl passengers called him, kept busy with his needle from the time the steamer left Antwerp until it reached Quarantine.
So expert has Fancywork Andy become with the needle and thread that the girls on board said he made a stitch for every revolution of the liner’s propellers. Nothing could persuade him to leave his needlework, and the only way his fellow passengers could get him to knock off work for a few minutes was to steal his thread.
“I have hundreds of handkerchiefs I made while abroad,” said Fancywork Andy. “They make such pretty presents for girl friends. I do all kinds of fancywork, although I prefer filet work best. I don’t see why any man should be ashamed of embroidering. It is just as artistic as painting a water color.”
Drastic steps to stamp out hazing at the University of North Carolina were taken as the result of the faculty investigation of the death of William Rand, the Smithfield freshman who recently was killed while being hazed by sophomores.
Four students accused of forcing Rand to dance on a barrel, when he fell and cut his throat on a broken bottle, were expelled. Two other students who witnessed the hazing also were expelled for aiding and abetting the principals.
Ten members of the student body who were known to have engaged in hazing either during the present year or last year, were suspended from the institution for one year.
When the city tax books were opened in New York to the public it was shown that real and personal property assessable for 1913 totals in value slightly more than $7,640,000,000, a net increase of nearly{59}$200,000,000 over figures for the present year.
Andrew Carnegie, with an assessment of $10,000,000, leads the personal list. The estate of John D. Rockefeller, John Jacob Astor, and Joseph Pulitzer are assessed at $5,000,000 each, Cornelius Vanderbilt $8,000,000, Mrs. Russell Sage $2,510,000, and Isidor Straus $2,000,000.
Real estate owned by J. P. Morgan is assessed at $1,875,000, Charles M. Schwab $1,700,000, Mary Payne Whitney $1,225,000. The Grand Central Station is assessed at $15,000,000, the Equitable Life Building at $11,000,000; the Metropolitan Life Building at $12,415,000, and the Mutual Life at $10,000,000.