When Otto came to see Hilda that evening she was guiltily effusive in her greeting and made up her mind that, as soon as they were alone, she must tell him what she had all but done. But first there was the game of pinochle which Otto must lose to her father. As they sat at their game she was at the zither-table, dreamily playing May Breezes as she watched Otto and thought how much more comfortable she was in his strong, loyal love than in the unnatural strain of Mr. Feuerstein's ecstasies. "'Work and love and home,'" she murmured, in time to her music. "Yes, father is right. They ARE the best."
August came in and said: "Hilda, here are two men who want to see you."
As he spoke, he was pushed aside and she, her father and Otto sat staring at the two callers. They were obviously detectives—"plain clothes men" from the Fifth-Street Station House. There could be no chance of mistake about those police mustaches and jaws, those wide, square-toed, police shoes.
"My name is Casey and this is my side-partner, Mr. O'Rourke," said the shorter and fatter of the two as they seated themselves without waiting to be asked. Casey took off his hat; O'Rourke's hand hesitated at the brim, then drew his hat more firmly down upon his forehead. "Sorry to break in on your little party," Casey went on, "but the Cap'n sent us to ask the young lady a few questions."
Hilda grew pale and her father and Otto looked frightened.
"Do you know an actor named Feuerstein?" asked Casey.
Hilda trembled. She could not speak. She nodded assent.
"Did you see him to-day?"
"Yes," almost whispered Hilda.
Casey looked triumphantly at O'Rourke. Otto half rose, then sank back again. "Where did you see him?" asked Casey.
"Here."
"Where else?"
Hilda nervously laced and unlaced her fingers. "Only here," she answered after a pause.
"Ah, yes you did. Come now, lady. Speak the truth. You saw him at Meinert's."
Hilda started violently. The detectives exchanged significant glances. "No," she protested. "I saw him only here."
"Were you out of the store this afternoon?"
A long pause, then a faint "Yes."
"Where did you go?" Casey added.
The blood flew to Hilda's face, then left it. "To Meinert's," she answered. "But only as far as the door."
"Oh!" said Casey sarcastically, and O'Rourke laughed. "It's no use to hold back, lady," continued Casey. "We know all about your movements. You went in Meinert's—in at the family entrance."
"Yes," replied Hilda. She was shaking as if she were having a chill. "But just to the door, then home again."
"Now, that won't do," said Casey roughly. "You'd better tell the whole story."
"Tell them all about it, Hilda," interposed her father in an agonized tone.
"Don't hold back anything."
"Oh—father—Otto—it was nothing. I didn't go in. He—Mr. Feuerstein—came here, and he looked so sick, and he begged me to come over to Meinert's for a minute. He said he had something to say to me. And then I went. But at the door I got to thinking about all he'd done, and I wouldn't go in. I just came back home."
"What was it that he had done, lady?" asked O'Rourke.
"I won't tell," Hilda flashed out, and she started up. "It's nobody's business. Why do you ask me all these questions? I won't answer any more."
"Now, now, lady," said Casey. "Just keep cool. When you went, what did you take a knife from the counter for?"
"A knife!" Hilda gasped, and she would have fallen to the floor had not Otto caught her.
"That settles it!" said Casey, in an undertone to O'Rourke. "She's it, all right. I guess she's told us enough?"
O'Rourke nodded. "The Cap'n'll get the rest out of her when he puts her through the third degree."
They rose and Casey said, with the roughness of one who is afraid of his inward impulses to gentleness: "Come, lady, get on your things. You're going along with us."
"No! No!" she cried in terror, flinging herself into her father's arms.
Brauner blazed up. "What do you mean?" he demanded, facing the detectives.
"You'll find out soon enough," said Casey in a blustering tone. "The less fuss you make, the better it'll be for you. She's got to go, and that's all there is to it."
"This is an outrage," interrupted Otto, rushing between Hilda and the detectives.
"You daren't take her without telling her why. You can't treat us like dogs."
"Drop it!" said Casey contemptuously. "Drop it, Dutchy. I guess we know what we're about."
"Yes—and I know whatI'm about," exclaimed Otto. "Do you know Riordan, the district leader here? Well, he's a friend of mine. If we haven't got any rights you police are bound to respect, thank God, we've got a 'pull'."
"That's a bluff," said Casey, but his tone was less insolent. "Well, if you must know, she's wanted for the murder of Carl Feuerstein."
Hilda flung her arms high above her head and sank into a chair and buried her face. "It's a dream!" she moaned. "Wake me—wake me!"
Otto and Brauner looked each at the other in horror. "Murder!" whispered Brauner hoarsely. "My Hilda—murder!"
Otto went to Hilda and put his arms about her tightly and kissed her.
"She's got to come," said Casey angrily. "Now, will she go quietly or shall I call the wagon?"
This threat threw them into a panic. "You'd better go," said Otto in an undertone to Hilda. "Don't be frightened, dear. You're innocent and they can't prove you guilty. You're not poor and friendless."
At the pressure of his arms Hilda lifted her face, her eyes shining at him through her tears. And her heart went out to him as never before. From that moment it was his, all his. "My love, my dear love," she said. She went to the closet and took out her hat. She put it on before the mirror over the mantelpiece. "I'm ready," she said quietly.
In the street, she walked beside Casey; her father and Otto were close behind with O'Rourke. They turned into Sixth Street. Half a block down, in front of Meinert's, a crowd was surging, was filling sidewalk and street. When they came to the edge of it, Casey suddenly said "In here" and took her by the arm. All went down a long and winding passage, across an open court to a back door where a policeman in uniform was on guard.
"Did you get her, Mike?" said the policeman to Casey.
"Here she is," replied Casey. "She didn't give no trouble."
The policeman opened the door. He let Casey, Hilda and O'Rourke pass. He thrust back Brauner and Otto. "No, you don't," he said.
"Let us in!" commanded Otto, beside himself with rage.
"Not much! Get back!" He had closed the door and was standing between it and them, one hand meaningly upon the handle of his sheathed club.
"I am her father," half-pleaded, half-protested Brauner.
"Cap'n's orders," said the policeman in a gentler voice. "The best thing you can do is to go to the station house and wait there. You won't get to see her here."
Meanwhile Casey, still holding Hilda by the arm, was guiding her along a dark hall. When they touched a door he threw it open. He pushed her roughly into the room. For a few seconds the sudden blaze of light blinded her. Then—
Before her, stretched upon a table, was—Mr. Feuerstein. She shrank back and gazed at him with wide, fascinated eyes. His face was turned toward her, his eyes half-open; he seemed to be regarding her with a glassy, hateful stare—the "curse in a dead man's eye." His chin was fallen back and down, and his lips exposed his teeth in a hideous grin. And then she saw— Sticking upright from his throat was a knife, the knife from their counter. It seemed to her to be trembling as if still agitated from the hand that had fiercely struck out his life.
"My God!" moaned Hilda, sinking down to the floor and hiding her face.
As she crouched there, Casey said cheerfully to Captain Hanlon, "You see she's guilty all right, Cap'n."
Hanlon took his cigar from between his teeth and nodded. At this a man sitting near him burst out laughing. Hanlon scowled at him.
The man—Doctor Wharton, a deputy coroner—laughed again. "I suppose you think she acts guilty," he said to Hanlon.
"Any fool could see that," retorted Hanlon.
"Any fool would see it, you'd better say," said Doctor Wharton. "No matter how she took it, you fellows would wag your heads and say 'Guilty.'"
Hanlon looked uneasily at Hilda, fearing she would draw encouragement from Wharton's words. But Hilda was still moaning. "Lift her up and set her in a chair," he said to Casey.
Hilda recovered herself somewhat and sat before the captain, her eyes down, her fluttering hands loose in her lap. "What was the trouble between you and him?" Hanlon asked her presently in a not unkindly tone.
"Must I tell?" pleaded Hilda, looking piteously at the captain. "I don't know anything about this except that he came into our store and told me he was going to—to—"
She looked at Feuerstein's dead face and shivered. And as she looked, memories flooded her, drowning resentment and fear. She rose, went slowly up to him; she laid her hand softly upon his brow, pushed back his long, yellow hair. The touch of her fingers seemed to smooth the wild, horrible look from his features. As she gazed down at him the tears welled into her eyes. "I won't talk against him," she said simply. "He's dead—it's all over and past."
"She ought to go on the stage," growled Casey.
But Wharton said in an unsteady voice, "That's right, Miss. They can't force you to talk. Don't say a word until you get a lawyer."
Hanlon gave him a furious look. "Don't you meddle in this," he said threateningly.
Wharton laughed. "The man killed himself," he replied. "I can tell by the slant of the wound. And I don't propose to stand by and see you giving your third degree to this little girl."
"We've got the proof, I tell you," said Hanlon. "We've got a witness who saw her do it—or at least saw her here when she says she wasn't here."
Wharton shrugged his shoulders.
"Don't say a word," he said to Hilda. "Get a lawyer."
"I don't want a lawyer," she answered.
"I'm not guilty. Why should I get a lawyer?"
"Well, at any rate, do all your talking in court. These fellows will twist everything you say."
"Take her to the station house," interrupted Hanlon.
"But I'm innocent," said Hilda, clasping her hands on her heart and looking appealingly at the captain.
"Take her along, Casey."
Casey laid hold of her arm, but she shook him off. They went through the sitting-room of the saloon and out at the side door. When Hilda saw the great crowd she covered her face with her hands and shrank back. "There she is! There she is! They're taking her to the station house!" shouted the crowd.
Casey closed the door. "We'll have to get the wagon," he said.
They sat waiting until the patrol wagon came. Then Hilda, half-carried by Casey, crossed the sidewalk through a double line of blue coats who fought back the frantically curious, pushed on by those behind. In the wagon she revived and by the time they reached the station house, seemed calm. Another great crowd was pressing in; she heard cries of "There's the girl that killed him!" She drew herself up haughtily, looked round with defiance, with indignation.
Her father and Otto rushed forward as soon as she entered the doors. She broke down again. "Take me home! Take me home!" she sobbed. "I've not done anything." The men forgot that they had promised each the other to be calm, and cursed and cried alternately. The matron came, spoke to her gently.
"You'll have to go now, child," she said.
Hilda kissed her father, then she and Otto clasped each the other closely. "It'll turn out all right, dear," he said. "We're having a streak of bad luck. But our good luck'll be all the better when it comes."
Strength and hope seemed to pass from him into her. She walked away firmly and the last glimpse they had of her sad sweet young face was a glimpse of a brave little smile trying to break through its gray gloom. But alone in her cell, seated upon the board that was her bed, her disgrace and loneliness and danger took possession of her. She was a child of the people, brought up to courage and self-reliance. She could be brave and calm before false accusers, before staring crowds. But here, with a dim gas-jet revealing the horror of grated bars and iron ceiling, walls and floor—
She sat there, hour after hour, sleepless, tearless, her brain burning, the cries of drunken prisoners in adjoining cells sounding in her ears like the shrieks of the damned. Seconds seemed moments, moments hours. "I'm dreaming," she said aloud at last. She started up and hurled herself against the bars, beating them with her hands. "I must wake or I'll die. Oh, the disgrace! Oh! the shame!"
And she flung herself into a corner of the bench, to dread the time when the darkness and the loneliness would cease to hide her.
The matron brought her up into the front room of the station house at eight in the morning. Casey looked at her haggard face with an expression of satisfaction. "Her nerve's going," he said to the sergeant. "I guess she'll break down and confess to-day."
They drove her to court in a Black Maria, packed among thieves, drunkards and disorderly characters. Upon her right side pressed a slant-faced youth with a huge nose and wafer-thin, flapping ears, who had snatched a purse in Houston Street. On her left, lolling against her, was an old woman in dirty calico, with a faded black bonnet ludicrously awry upon scant white hair—a drunkard released from the Island three days before and certain to be back there by noon.
"So you killed him," the old woman said to her with a leer of sympathy and admiration.
At this the other prisoners regarded her with curiosity and deference. Hilda made no answer, seemed not to have heard. Her eyes were closed and her face was rigid and gray as stone.
"She needn't be afraid at all," declared a young woman in black satin, addressing the company at large. "No jury'd ever convict as good-looking a girl as her."
"Good business!" continued the old woman. "I'd 'a' killed mine if I could 'a' got at him—forty years ago." She nodded vigorously and cackled. Her cackle rose into a laugh, the laugh into a maudlin howl, the howl changing into a kind of song—
"My love, my love, my love and I—we hadto part, to part!And it broke, it broke, it broke my heart—it broke my heart!"
"Cork up in there!" shouted the policeman from the seat beside the driver.
The old woman became abruptly silent. Hilda moaned and quivered. Her lips moved. She was murmuring, "I can't stand it much longer—I can't. I'll wake soon and see Aunt Greta's picture looking down at me from the wall and hear mother in the kitchen—"
"Step lively now!" They were at the Essex Market police court; they were filing into the waiting-pen. A lawyer, engaged by her father, came there, and Hilda was sent with him into a little consultation room. He argued with her in vain. "I'll speak for myself," she said. "If I had a lawyer they'd think I was guilty."
After an hour the petty offenders had been heard and judged. A court officer came to the door and called: "Hilda Brauner!"
Hilda rose. She seemed unconcerned, so calm was she. Her nerves had reached the point at which nerves refuse to writhe, or even to record sensations of pain. As she came into the dingy, stuffy little courtroom she didn't note the throng which filled it to the last crowded inch of standing-room; did not note the scores of sympathetic faces of her anxious, loyal friends and neighbors; did not even see her father and Otto standing inside the railing, faith and courage in their eyes as they saw her advancing.
The magistrate studied her over the tops of his glasses, and his look became more and more gentle and kindly. "Come up here on the platform in front of me," he said.
Hilda took her stand with only the high desk between him and her. The magistrate's tone and his kind, honest, old face reassured her. And just then she felt a pressure at her elbow and heard in Otto's voice: "We're all here. Don't be afraid."
"Have you counsel—a lawyer?" asked the magistrate.
"No," replied Hilda. "I haven't done anything wrong. I don't need a lawyer."
The magistrate's eyes twinkled, but he sobered instantly to say, "I warn you that the case against you looks grave. You had better have legal help."
Hilda looked at him bravely. "I've only the truth to tell," she insisted. "I don't want a lawyer."
"We'll see," said the magistrate, giving her an encouraging smile. "If it is as you say, you certainly won't need counsel. Your rights are secure here." He looked at Captain Hanlon, who was also on the platform. "Captain," said he, "your first witness—the man who found the body."
"Meinert," said the captain in a low tone to a court officer, who called loudly, "Meinert! Meinert!"
A man stood up in the crowd. "You don't want me!" he shouted, as if he were trying to make himself heard through a great distance instead of a few feet.
"You want—"
"Come forward!" commanded the magistrate sharply, and when Meinert stood before him and beside Hilda and had been sworn, he said, "Now, tell your story."
"The man—Feuerstein," began Meinert, "came into my place about half-past one yesterday. He looked a little wild—as if he'd been drinking or was in trouble. He went back into the sitting-room and I sent in to him and—"
"Did you go in?"
"No, your Honor."
"When did you see him again?"
"Not till the police came."
"Stand down. I want evidence, not gossip. Captain Hanlon, who found the body? Do you know?"
"Your Honor, I understood that Mr. Meinert found it."
The magistrate frowned at him. Then he said, raising his voice, "Does ANY ONE know who found the body?"
"My man Wielert did," spoke up Meinert.
A bleached German boy with a cowlick in the center of his head just above his forehead came up beside Hilda and was sworn.
"You found the body?"
"Yes," said Wielert. He was blinking stupidly and his throat was expanding and contracting with fright.
"Tell us all you saw and heard and did."
"I take him the brandy in. And he sit and talk to himself. And he ask for paper and ink. And then he write and look round like crazy. And he make luny talk I don't understand. And he speak what he write—"
Captain Hanlon was red and was looking at Wielert in blank amazement.
"What did he write?" asked the magistrate.
"A letter," answered Wielert. "He put it in a envelope with a stamp on it and he write on the back and make it all ready. And then I watch him, and he take out a knife and feel it and speak with it. And I go in and ask him for money."
"Your Honor, this witness told us nothing of that before," interrupted Hanlon. "I understood that the knife—"
"Did you question him?" asked the magistrate.
"No," replied the captain humbly. And Casey and O'Rourke shook their big, hard-looking heads to indicate that they had not questioned him.
"I am curious to know what you HAVE done in this case," said the magistrate sternly. "It is a serious matter to take a young girl like this into custody. You police seem unable to learn that you are not the rulers, but the servants of the people."
"Your Honor—" began Hanlon.
"Silence!" interrupted the magistrate, rapping on the desk with his gavel. "Proceed, Wielert. What kind of knife was it?"
"The knife in his throat afterward," answered Wielert. "And I hear a sound like steam out a pipe—and I go in and see a lady at the street door. She peep through the crack and her face all yellow and her eye big. And she go away."
Hilda was looking at him calmly. She was the only person in the room who was not intensely agitated. All eyes were upon her. There was absolute silence.
"Is that lady here?" asked the magistrate. His voice seemed loud and strained.
"Yes," said Wielert. "I see her."
Otto instinctively put his arm about Hilda. Her father was like a leaf in the wind.
Wielert looked at Hilda earnestly, then let his glance wander over the still courtroom. He was most deliberate. At last he said, "I see her again."
"Point her out," said the magistrate—it was evidently with an effort that he broke that straining silence.
"That lady there." Wielert pointed at a woman sitting just outside the inclosure, with her face half-hid by her hand.
A sigh of relief swelled from the crowd. Paul Brauner sobbed.
"Why, she's our witness!" exclaimed Hanlon, forgetting himself.
The magistrate rapped sharply, and, looking toward the woman, said, "Stand up, Madam. Officer, assist her!"
The court officer lifted her to her feet. Her hand dropped and revealed the drawn, twitching face of Sophie Liebers.
"Your Honor," said Hanlon hurriedly, "that is the woman upon whose statement we made our case. She told us she saw Hilda Brauner coming from the family entrance just before the alarm was given."
"Are you sure she's the woman you saw?" said the magistrate to Wielert. "Be careful what you say."
"That's her," answered Wielert. "I see her often. She live across the street from Meinert's."
"Officer, bring the woman forward," commanded the magistrate.
Sophie, blue with terror, was almost dragged to the platform beside Hilda. Hilda looked stunned, dazed.
"Speak out!" ordered the magistrate.
"You have heard what this witness testified."
Sophie was weeping violently. "It's all a mistake," she cried in a low, choked voice. "I was scared. I didn't mean to tell the police Hilda was there. I was afraid they'd think I did it if I didn't say something."
"Tell us what you saw." The magistrate's voice was severe. "We want the whole truth."
"I was at our window. And I saw Hilda come along and go in at the family entrance over at Meinert's. And I'd seen Mr. Feuerstein go in the front door about an hour before. Hilda came out and went away. She looked so queer that I wanted to see. I ran across the street and looked in. Mr. Feuerstein was sitting there with a knife in his hand. And all at once he stood up and stabbed himself in the neck—and there was blood—and he fell—and—I ran away."
"And did the police come to you and threaten you?" asked the magistrate.
"Your Honor," protested Captain Hanlon with an injured air, "SHE came to US."
"Is that true?" asked the magistrate of Sophie.
Sophie wept loudly. "Your Honor," Hanlon went on, "she came to me and said it was her duty to tell me, though it involved her friend. She said positively that this girl went in, stayed several minutes, then came out looking very strange, and that immediately afterward there was the excitement. Of course, we believed her."
"Of course," echoed the magistrate ironically. "It gave you an opportunity for an act of oppression."
"I didn't mean to get Hilda into trouble. I swear I didn't," Sophie exclaimed. "I was scared. I didn't know what I was doing. I swear I didn't!"
Hilda's look was pity, not anger. "Oh, Sophie," she said brokenly.
"What did your men do with the letter Feuerstein wrote?" asked the magistrate of Hanlon suspiciously.
"Your Honor, we—" Hanlon looked round nervously.
Wielert, who had been gradually rising in his own estimation, as he realized the importance of his part in the proceedings, now pushed forward, his face flushed with triumph. "I know where it is," he said eagerly. "When I ran for the police I mail it."
There was a tumult of hysterical laughter, everybody seeking relief from the strain of what had gone before. The magistrate rapped down the noise and called for Doctor Wharton. While he was giving his technical explanation a note was handed up to the bench. The magistrate read:
GERMAN THEATER, 3 September.YOUR HONOR—I hasten to send you the inclosed letter which I found in my mail this morning. It seems to have an important bearing on the hearing in the Feuerstein case, which I see by the papers comes up before you to-day.Very truly yours,WILLIAM KONIGSMARCK,Manager.
The magistrate handed the inclosure to a clerk, who was a German. "Read it aloud," he said. And the clerk, after a few moments' preparation, slowly read in English:
To the Public:Before oblivion swallows me—one second, I beg!I have sinned, but I have expiated. I have lived bravely, fighting adversity and the malice which my superior gifts from nature provoked. I can live no longer with dignity. So, proud and fearless to the last, I accept defeat and pass out.I forgive my friends. I forget my enemies.Exit Carl Feuerstein, soldier of fortune, man of the world. A sensitive heart that was crushed by the cruelty of men and the kindness of women has ceased to beat.CARL FEUERSTEIN.P. S. DEAR. MR. KONIGSMARCK—Please send a copy of the above to the newspapers, English as well as German.C. F.
The magistrate beamed his kindliest upon Hilda. "The charge against you is absurd. Your arrest was a crime. You are free."
Hilda put her hand on Otto's arm. "Let us go," she murmured wearily.
As they went up the aisle hand in hand the crowd stood and cheered again and again; the magistrate did not touch his gavel—he was nodding vigorous approval. Hilda held Otto's hand more closely and looked all round. And her face was bright indeed.
Thus the shadow of Mr. Feuerstein—of vanity and false emotion, of pose and pretense, passed from her life. Straight and serene before her lay the pathway of "work and love and home."