There was a pause in the little court-room when the formal proclamations of the crier and clerk were ended.
"Are you guilty or not guilty, Robert Floyd?"
He bore the scrutiny of many hundred eyes calmly. Earnestness must have been the usual expression of his face, but today its flashing eyes and curled upper lip controlled the aquiline features and made their dominant aspect one of defiance.
He was olive-skinned, as his uncle may have been in his youth. His hair was dark. Spots of dark red were burning in his cheek, and his voice, when he spoke, of a rich contralto quality, had some subtle affiliation with darkness, too. Altogether a Roman soul, the unprejudiced observer would have said, but somewhat lacking in the blitheness which is proper to youth.
"Not guilty," the answer was recorded.
The spectators listened in a strained and oppressive silence. Within the bar sat old John Davidson, looking very sympathetic and not a little perplexed as he reared his chair back against the railing. Through the open door of an ante-room peeped the chubby form of Inspector McCausland, cordially shaking hands with acquaintances and answering to the sobriquet of "Dick." For professional reasons the inspector avoided making his person known to the multitude, but once or twice he sent in messages to the district attorney, and finally stepping to the door, caught his eye and beckoned him outside. Noah Bigelow had been sitting silently at the prosecutor's desk, his prodigious black beard sweeping his breast and his tufted eyebrows leveled steadily at the prisoner, as if to read his soul. When he rose at McCausland's signal the entire court-room followed his broad back receding through the door of the chamber.
"The prisoner," said the judge, "declines the advice of counsel and offers himself for examination unaided. He is hereby warned of his right under the law to challenge any question which may incriminate or tend to incriminate him. The court will see that this right is protected. We are ready for the evidence."
"Miss Bertha Lund," called Badger. She arose, the same tidy, buxom maiden as ever, but pale and with traces of tears. An oath was administered and the young woman motioned to the witness-box.
"How long have you been a servant in the Arnold house, Miss Lund?" asked Badger, who was conducting the case for the government.
"Going on six years."
"And you have known the prisoner all this time?"
"Of course."
"You were in at the time of the fire, on Saturday?"
"I was."
"And gave the alarm, did you not?"
"I did."
Bertha's rising inflection had hardly varied in the last three answers, and her blue eyes were riveted on the lawyer's.
"Won't you tell the court how you were occupied prior to your discovery of the fire?"
Thus directed, Bertha half-inclined her person toward the judge.
"Part of the time I was dusting the study and part of the time I was upstairs."
"What were you doing upstairs?"
"Nothing, except looking out of the window into the street."
"What window?"
"Mr. Robert's."
"And what street?"
"Cazenove street."
"Was any one else in the house at that time?"
"Not after Ellen went out."
"You are sure Ellen had gone out?"
"Well, what do you mean by sure?"
"What made you think she had gone out?"
"She told me she was going out. She was dressed in her street dress and I heard the door slam. That's three reasons."
"You heard the door slam? The front door, I suppose? There is only one door?"
"No, there's the back door, leading into the passageway."
"And where does the passageway lead?"
"Why, it runs alongside the house from Cazenove street to Broad."
The district attorney diverted attention for a moment by making his way to his seat through the crowd. He was the opposite of Badger in everything; the one burly and slack, but with the stamp of moral energy in his bearing; the other immaculate from cravat to cuff borders and athletic if slight in build.
"Was it the back door or the front door you heard slam, Miss Lund?" resumed Badger, continuing to confer in an undertone with the district attorney.
"It was the back door, sir, I suppose."
"Aren't you sure?"
"Pretty sure."
"Wasn't it probably the front door?"
"No, it was the back door, I'm positive."
"Then Ellen went out of the back door and left you and Floyd alone in the house?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Robert and I were the only ones in."
"Just when was this slamming of the door, at what time? With reference, I mean, to your own movements and the movements of others in the house?"
"Well, I was up stairs and down, in and out, and Mr. Robert was in the study. I couldn't tell you just when."
"Very well——"
"And, if it's not improper, I wish to say that I am not here of my own choosing, for as sure as my name is Bertha Lund, Robert Floyd never set that fire."
This sally was received in silence by the spectators. They looked expectantly toward the judge and the attorneys. Floyd's look was as spirited and firm as ever, as he scanned the faces packed around him, nodding to a lady in the front bench, but letting his eyes dwell oftenest, with a kind of interrogative look, followed by an expression of soft satisfaction, on a younger face. It was golden-haired Emily Barlow, transfixed with interest in the proceedings. Not even the dark visage of the negro in the corner stood out so cameo-like from the multitude as hers, partly by its sweetness of beauty, but more by the parted lips and eager gaze.
"The witness is not to volunteer opinions, but simply to give the facts she is requested to give, clearly and truthfully, as her oath requires." This reproof was not harshly spoken by the judge. "You may continue, Mr. Badger."
"Mr. Floyd was in the study, then?"
"Yes, sir, he was."
"Where the fire started?"
"It started in the study."
"Will you describe to the court, without any omissions, everything you did and everything you saw Mr. Floyd do from the time he opened the study door until you descended the stairway and discovered the room afire?"
"Well, sir, when Mr. Robert unlocked the door——"
"Which door?"
"The study."
"It had been locked, then?"
"Yes, sir; Mr. Robert had locked it after the professor died."
"Which was on Tuesday?"
"Yes, sir."
"Go on with your story."
"After Mr. Robert opened the study door he was acting lonesome. I went in and said, 'Shall I dust the room, Mr. Robert? It needs it.' 'Yes, do, Bertha,' said he. 'I'm expecting a lawyer. Is Ellen in?' 'She was going out,' I answered, 'but I think I heard her run upstairs to her room.' Well, I went for the duster, and when I came back Mr. Robert was standing over the hearth. 'Is that you, Ellen?' he said, dazed-like and absent-minded. But when he saw it was me he only laughed."
"What was Mr. Floyd doing when you startled him?" interposed the deep bass of the district attorney, cutting short the progress of the girl's high treble.
"Why, sir, he was stooping over."
"Over the hearth, you said?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you see anything in his hands at the time?"
"Why, he was picking up little bits of paper, as though he had just torn a letter to pieces."
"Go on," said Badger, making a note of this fact.
"While I was dusting the furniture Mr. Robert went out into the professor's chamber and brought in the canary. The poor thing hadn't sung since the professor died. It was he who used to feed it and talk to it. But when Mr. Robert brought it into its old room and I pulled up the curtains to let in the sunshine it set up such a trilling and chirping I could hardly help crying."
"On which floor is this study?"
"The front room, one flight up."
"How high above the street? You couldn't reach it from the sidewalk?"
"Not without a ladder."
"And you didn't keep a ladder resting against the front of your house, usually?"
"No more usually than other folks do."
"There was no tree," asked the district attorney, "whose branches hung near the window?"
"No, sir; there was none," answered Bertha, respectfully.
"Now, the rest of your story, Miss Lund," said Badger; "the canary bird had been brought in. Did it perch on Floyd's finger?"
"Canary birds will use their wings like other folks if they are let. No, it was brought in in the cage and the cage hung on the hook, just as it used to be."
"Why had it been removed?"
"So as to feed it," answered Bertha, triumphantly.
"Was there any other living thing in the room at this time?"
"Is a dog a living thing?" Being human, Bertha resented catechising. The temptation to answer one question by another is strong, even when one isn't a New-Englander by birth.
"Previous to its death, it may be considered alive," answered Badger, dryly.
"Well, Sire was there."
"A dog, I presume, from your last response. Continue from the point when the cage was brought in."
"I went upstairs, as I told you before, when I had finished my dusting. Then I sat down in Mr. Robert's room."
"Was that all you did?—to sit down?"
"Yes."
Bertha's replies had gradually come down to monosyllabic length and it looked as if the next step might be silence. But the district attorney interposed with a nod and a smile, which worked like magic in loosening her tongue.
"Well," she continued, "I was sitting at Mr. Robert's window when I noticed Sire's barking. I thought it was odd if he was playing with Mr. Robert, they both took on so at the professor's death. But it kept up and kept up, so I slipped down to see and the first thing I smelled was smoke. It was leaking out through the study keyhole and I could hear Sire barking and pawing at the knob inside. Of course I opened the door and rushed in to save the canary, but the fire stung me so I thought I was suffocated. Sire began running around and I called for Mr. Robert, thinking he was in the room, for the smoke was hiding everything. Oh, I tell you my heart stopped when my voice came back to me all hollow in that empty house. It was then I ran down to the street."
"One moment, Miss Lund. Did you or did you not observe anything new or unusual in the room when you were engaged in dusting the chairs?"
"No, sir; I don't remember anything unusual."
"How long were you upstairs?"
"I couldn't say. I'm not good at guessing time. There are some folks, like Senda Wesner, seem to have a clock going in their heads, but I'm not one of them. Perhaps it was ten minutes."
"Miss Lund," the district attorney stroked his great beard, as he was apt to do in driving home a crucial question. "Can you now fix more precisely the moment of the door slam, which you say convinced you of Ellen's departure?"
"No, sir; the door slam," Bertha touched her forehead, trying to remember, "the door slam is all mixed up with the barking and fire, so I can't untangle it at all."
"It seems to be a part of this chain of events you have just narrated so clearly for us? You think, you thought at the time, it was Ellen leaving the house?"
"Yes, sir. It was the back door. Who else could it be? Besides, Mr. Robert was quiet. He never slammed the door."
"I simply wanted the girl's best evidence to the fact that they were alone in the house at this time," said the district attorney.
"But the girl, Ellen, seems to have been about until the fire was set," answered the judge.
After the noon recess Bertha was called to finish her testimony, with the promise that she would not be detained long.
"A description of the study, Miss Lund, when you were dusting."
"Everything was left just as it was when the professor fell dead on the threshold Tuesday evening."
"Did you notice any foreign substance—any accumulation of what might afford fuel for a fire?"
"No, sir."
"Any odor?"
"Only that the room was close from being shut up."
"Describe the contents of the room."
"Well, it was full of books, on shelves that ran all around."
"Yes?"
"Two windows; a cage before one, the nearest to the door, and a writing desk before the one in the farthest corner."
"Well?"
"A safe partly built in the wall beside the door."
"How high from the ground?"
"About up to my waist."
"Did you notice anything underneath it?"
"Yes, there was the gunpowder box Mr. Robert put there."
"A box full of gunpowder placed there by Floyd?"
"Yes, sir."
This statement made a profound impression, but Badger did not push the subject further. The prisoner almost smiled.
"Well?" Badger said.
"Oh, everything else was just as the professor left it. His slippers under his chair, his dressing-gown over the back of it, his spectacles on the desk, his bible laid down open. He was going to meet a caller, you know, when he was taken with the stitch."
"Very well. Perhaps we have had enough of the professor," said Badger. But the accused did not find these minutiae trivial. For the first time his proud face broke and he hid the tears with his hand. The mention of the bible, slippers and the other personal mementos had called up the dearest picture he ever knew.
All the grand life, equally compounded of whims and principles, passed before him at Bertha's mention of the empty chair.
But the sympathy of the spectators was short-lived. While Robert wept a strain of sad music stole into the court-room. Faint at first, it rose in volume as the players approached, but still with a muted sound, as if their instruments were muffled. The drum-beats were rare and unobtrusive, and the burden of the melody, if melody it were, was borne by proud bugles and quivering oboes. Its cadences were old and mysterious, like some Gregorian chant intoned in cloisters before organ and orchestra had trained our ears to the chords of harmony. No wonder the court-room was hushed until it died away in the distance.
It was the Masonic dead march, for on this day the funerals of the dead whom Robert Floyd was accused of murdering were being held. Oscar Schubert, as a member of the mystic order, was buried with all the pomp of its ceremonies, and it was his cortege, proceeding to the sepulcher, whose passage occasioned this pause in the trial.
The revulsion of sympathy was instant. Every man in the court-room saw the wife and two children, sitting behind drawn curtains in the carriage of the chief mourners, and beyond this picture the bodies of six victims, four of them young girls, done to death at the prompting of avarice. The prisoner himself seemed to understand, for he shut his teeth, though his bold eyes still dared the multitude. But they rested more and more upon the lovely face which was his one point of consolation in that unfriendly assemblage. Badger's indifferent voice showed no quiver when he asked Miss Lund to step down and called for Robert Floyd. It was a brusque opening.
"What was contained in the safe in your uncle's study?"
"I never opened it."
"You knew, however?"
"What he had told me."
"Was his will there?"
"I have reason to believe so."
"Did you believe so on Saturday, while you were in the room with Miss Lund?"
"I did not give the matter any thought at that time." Floyd spoke as though the spirit burned hot within him. "And I will add——"
"Nothing," said Badger. But the judge looked up.
"This is a court, not a court-martial," he said, quietly, a pale, studious man. "The witness has a right to modify his answers."
"I have only this to say," continued Floyd, "to hasten as much as possible this preposterous trial, that I indorse every word of Miss Lund's testimony, and accept it and proffer it as my own upon the points which it covers."
"We prefer——" But the district attorney interrupted his assistant. "Are you aware, Mr. Floyd, of the gravity of the position in which Miss Lund's testimony involves you? Sole opportunity is almost the major head among those which the government is required to prove."
"I accept it in toto, subject to the privilege of volunteering a statement if my examination is incomplete or misleading."
"We shall endeavor to make it both adequate and fair," said the district attorney.
"Leaving the safe for a moment," resumed the examiner, "will you kindly relate your movements, Mr. Floyd, subsequent to the time when Bertha left you to go upstairs?"
The young man hesitated. The pause was so long as to be embarrassing. Old John Davidson coughed loudly to relieve his agitation. When the witness spoke at last he seemed to be remembering with difficulty.
"I remember leaving the house and walking about among the fields, in the park, I think. Yes, I took a car for the park. In the evening I called upon Miss Barlow."
He looked up at the aureoled face and faintly smiled. The sight appeared to revive him. "From that point my recollections become as distinct as usual. But——" He hesitated once more and Badger left him unaided in his distress. "The truth is, this was my first visit since his death to my uncle's study. The executor had telegraphed and afterward written me to close and lock it. This I did. But that afternoon I was expecting a visit from him——"
"Who is this executor?"
"Mr. Hodgkins Hodgkins."
"Of the firm of Hodgkins, Hodgkins & Hodgkins?"
"I believe so. My aunt, Mrs. Arnold, had called at 3 o'clock to say that he had arrived from New York and would take possession of the papers that afternoon. So I unlocked the room and let the servant dust it. The whole meaning of my loss seemed to come over me then, when I saw the empty chair. Before that I had been calm enough. But the sight dazed and staggered me. I went out, fled, taking no note of time or place. I believe, I know, I was in the park, but until I arrived at Miss Barlow's, outward occurrences made little memorable impression upon me."
"I presume you saw or were seen by persons on the way?"
"I do not remember any one in particular."
"Are we to understand," said the district attorney, listening intently, "that you passed this long period in a species of reverie or trance?"
"An intense fit of abstraction," answered Robert; but the district attorney looked puzzled, as if an utterly new and virgin problem had been put before him to solve.
"Without food until you returned at 11 o'clock to the fire?" asked Badger.
"Excepting a light lunch at Miss Barlow's. Her mother noticed some fatigue in me and pressed me to take refreshment."
"Was there no mention of the fire there—a fire which was destroying your home?"
"We spoke of it casually, but I did not know until later that it was destroying my home."
"Was it not described in the evening papers?"
"Not in the early editions, Badger," put in the district attorney. "Only in the later specials."
"Very well. Now let us get back to the safe. Your uncle had made a will, I believe?"
"He made a will several weeks ago."
"What were the terms of that document?"
"I do not know them in full."
"As to your share?"
"My legacy was $20,000."
"Out of an estate valued at?"
"I have heard $10,000,000."
"You are an anarchist, Mr. Floyd?"
"No, sir."
"But a radical of some sort?"
"I am a socialist; a developer, not a destroyer."
"Ah!" said Badger. His exclamation was icy cold. "And you differed from your uncle on other points, did you not?"
"We took the liberty of honest men to differ."
"In religion?"
"Yes. He was a high churchman. I am—simply a Christian."
This avowal of a creed brought titters among the spectators, who apparently were accustomed to definitions narrower if more precise.
"And as a result of these quarrels your uncle disinherited you?"
"Sir?"
For a moment the prisoner's outburst of indignation checked the current of opinion which had been flowing swiftly against him.
"In one sentence you have managed to outrage the dead as well as the living—and to convey two impressions distinctly false. My uncle and I never quarreled, never! He was a father and more than a father to me. Neither did he disinherit me. It was his wish to assign me the whole property. I begged him to omit me without more than a memento or keepsake, that I might enter life as he had done, as every man should, untrammeled—but with the advantage, I feel sure, of an example and an inspiration given to few to enjoy. The sum left me was far in excess of my desires."
There was another long silence after this statement, but it expressed only incredulity.
"When was this very extraordinary will drawn up?"
"Three weeks ago."
"The witnesses are living, then? It is to be presumed that they, too, were not carried off by the holocaust which so reduced our population last Saturday." Badger's sarcasm was brutal, but it told.
"The witnesses were three neighbors, called in. The servants could not act, as they were remembered in the document."
"No lawyer was present?"
"My uncle seldom employed a lawyer."
Such a statement, relating to a man of Prof. Arnold's wealth, might have excited doubt if his eccentricity on this point had not been noised about beforehand.
"He drew up the will himself, then? Has any one seen it except you?"
"Not so far as I know. I myself never saw it."
"But you knew it was in the safe?"
"I supposed so."
"One moment," said the district attorney, interrupting. "Once more, why did you reopen the study on this particular day?"
"Because I had been informed that Mr. Hodgkins was coming to remove the will."
"By whom were you so informed?"
"Mrs. Arnold drove up about 3 o'clock and mentioned the fact. Indeed, she had expected to find him at the house. He was an old acquaintance of hers, as well as of my uncle—her legal adviser, in fact."
A stylish woman, still fair in spite of her 50 years, was sitting in front of Robert as he testified. She was the widow of Benjamin Arnold's brother, Henry, and her son, Henry, or Harry, had just offered a reward of $5,000 for the incendiary—a sum which McCausland might well have hopes of securing. The inspector was still hovering about the threshold of his ante-room, and now that Floyd's examination was concluded he called the district attorney to one side, apparently urging him to reserve the remainder of his evidence, which would naturally consist of rebuttal of Floyd and corroboration of Bertha. At any rate, Mr. Badger arose, and, announcing that the case was closed, offered a summary of the evidence, rapid, methodical, but unimpressive, like himself. Then the prisoner was asked if he desired to speak in his own behalf.
"Your honor," he said, "this monstrous charge of having set on foot a fire in the most populous section of our noble city overwhelms me so that I am impotent to express the indignation I feel. I leave it to your own sense of justice, your own discrimination, whether I am to be dishonored with the suspicion of an infamous crime, on evidence so flimsy that the bare denial of a veracious man should be sufficient to upset it. I read in many faces around me the hunger for blood; the unthinking call for a victim. Heed that, and my good name is taken from me. I am irreparably wronged. Resist it, and you will prove yourself worthy of the honorable title which you bear."
Not a few were swayed toward the youth by his manifest emotion. But the judge waited fully a minute before he arose and his eyeglasses were trembling in his hand.
"You have elected, against good counsel," he began, "to be your own advocate. I cannot and do not adjudge you unsuccessful, in the sense of having demonstrated your guilt rather than your innocence. But that you have failed to break the government's chain of evidence in its most damaging links—sole opportunity, motive and suspicious conduct, especially after the act—is plain to me, and would be plain to any mind accustomed to weighing such evidence calmly.
"It is true the evidence is wholly circumstantial. No eye but God's saw this foul deed done. But since William Rufus was found dead in the New Forest, with Walter Tyrrell's arrow in his breast, men have been convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence, and will continue to be so convicted as long as probability remains the guide of life.
"I am obliged, therefore, to remand you for trial, not only on the charge of arson, but upon the graver charge of homicide involved in it under the peculiar circumstances of the case. This is not a final verdict. Far be it from me, one erring man, to say that the government has fastened this crime upon you beyond reasonable doubt. But in the face of the evidence which has been brought forward I could not order your release. It becomes my unhappy duty, as the examining magistrate, to commit you to custody, to await the approaching session of the grand jury."
When Emily Barlow awoke from her swoon she found herself in the arms of old John Davidson. Perhaps it was as well she did not hear the jeer of execration which greeted the prisoner outside when he passed over the sidewalk, ironed between two stalwart officers, into the jail van. McCausland's identification with the case had affected public opinion profoundly, for he was said never to have failed to convict a criminal whom he had once brought into court. But possibly the outburst was due to the circumstance that this was the neighborhood in which the Lacy girls lived and that their funeral had taken place that very morning.
"Shagarach is the man to defend him, Miss Barlow," said old John Davidson. She was lying back against the cushions of the cab, with cheeks as white as the handkerchief she held to her lips. For the marshal had kindly offered to accompany her home and she had told him part of her story.
She was, as McCausland had said to the district attorney, a photographic retoucher. You must know that a negative when it leaves the camera is no more fit for display than milk fresh from the cow is drinkable. All the minor blemishes which you and I, not being made in the stamp of bluff old Oliver, dislike to see perpetuated in our counterfeit presentments, must be carefully stippled out. The work is not without its irksomeness, requiring long hours of labor as well as firmness of touch. The strain upon the young lady's eyes was evident, and her face, for all its beauty, was as delicate as thinnest porcelain. One felt that her fingers, if she held them toward the sun, would show the red suffusion of a child's. But her earnings supported a family of five, and her character had won the love of Robert Floyd.
"Who is Shagarach?" she asked, as if struck by the name.
"Shagarach! Why, Shagarach's the coming man, the greatest criminal lawyer in the state and the greatest cross-examiner in the world—a mind reader, black art in it. Never lost a case."
"This is my number, Mr. Davidson."
"Ho, there! John! Cabby!" The marshal rapped at the window.
"What was the number, miss?"
"Four hundred and twelve."
"Stop at 412."
"You have been very kind to interest yourself in one who is not known to you, Mr. Davidson. I should have been badly off without your assistance."
"Didn't do half enough," answered the marshal. "Glad to be of service. Call on me again. Here's Shagarach's address. Take my advice and look him up."
He had been writing on the back of a card while the cab-driver was slowing his team around in front of Miss Barlow's door. It read in a scrawl, rendered half-illegible by the jolting: "Meyer Shagarach, 31 Putnam Street."
Emily looked twice at the singular name. McCausland never failed to convict his prisoners. Shagarach's clients invariably escaped. What would happen if the two were pitted against each other? This was her thought when she mounted the dear steps of home and fell weeping into the arms of her mother.
The following morning a remarkable discovery was made on the site of Prof. Arnold's house. The burned district had been roped off and was guarded by policemen, owing to the danger from the standing walls and still smoking debris. But tip-carts had begun to remove what was removable of the wreck, and the work of clearing away the ground was already well under way. Sight-seers in great numbers went out of their course to pass the ruins, for the Harmon building was of recent erection and had been styled a model of business architecture.
But "Toot" Watts, "Turkey" Fenton and "The Whistler" were not indulging in reminiscences of departed architectural glories that morning. They averaged 14 years and 110 pounds, a combination hostile to sentiment in any but its most robust forms. "That nutty duffer gives me a pain," was their unanimous criticism from the gallery of the "Grand Dime," upon the garden rhapsodies of their co-mate and brother in adolescence, Romeo. But in the evenings, if that long fence, which is the gamin's delight, happened to be under surveillance from the "cop," they would march up street and down, Turkey mouthing his harmonica, Toot opening and shutting a wheezy accordion, the Whistler fifing away with that thrush-like note to which he owed his nickname, and all three beating time by their own quick footsteps to the melody of some sweet, familiar song. Amid such surroundings even the ditties sung by our mothers many seasons ago can bring up wholesome sentiments in which the boyish musicians who evoke them are surely sharers.
On the day before Toot had surreptitiously conveyed a fresh egg to school and rolled it playfully down the aisle, whereupon Turkey, as he was walking out at 4, had set the stamp of approval on his friend's property. All three had decided to take a day off until the affair should blow over, and no better pastime suggested itself than a visit to the fire, in which they took a sort of proprietary interest, since they had been the first after the bake-shop girl, to arrive on the spot. The passageway beside the house was still left open and unguarded. So our urchins, approaching from the Broad street side, coolly entered the forbidden precincts thereby, thus eluding the blue-coated watchers by a flank movement as simple as it was effective.
"I'm goin' to pick up junk and sell it to Bagley," said Turkey, filling his pocket with bolts, nuts and other fragments which he deemed of value. The others followed his example and began rummaging about with insecure footing among the heaps.
"Whew!" the Whistler emitted a long-drawn note no flute could possibly rival. He had been brushing away the ashes from a heavy object, when his eye was attracted by a fragment of cloth, which clung about it. His whistle drew the attention of his companions, but it also invited a less welcome arrival, no other than one of the patrolmen doing guard duty, who swooped down and seized Turkey and the Whistler by their collars, while Toot scrambled off with unseemly haste and escaped down the alleyway.
"What are you doing here?" said the officer, shaking the boys till their teeth chattered, and several pieces of iron, dropping out of Turkey's pockets, disclosed the object of their visit. "Stealing junk, eh?"
"Say, look," said the Whistler, who was cool and inventive; "it's a woman." He was pointing to the object he had laid bare. The officer slackened his grip.
"My God!" he cried; then stooped and by a full exertion of his strength lifted the thing out of the ashes and half-burned timbers which overlay it. It was, indeed, the body of a woman, short and stout. The boys did not run. They looked on, spellbound, in open-mouthed wonder.
"Run and call the sergeant," said the policeman to his quondam captives.
The news spread like wildfire. Hundreds swarmed to the scene, but none among them who had the key to the woman's identity. Her charred face and burned body rendered identification difficult. It was Inspector McCausland who, after consulting his notebook, recognized the garment and the form which it clad as Ellen Greeley's. An ambulance was called and the corpse of the poor woman carried away to the morgue, to await her sister's instructions.
Senda Wesner, the bake-shop girl, had described this discovery for the eleventh time to her customers, and was standing on the steps of her store alone—a condition to which she was by nature averse—when the golden-haired lady "flashed in upon her," as she afterward said, "like a Baltimore oriole." It was Emily Barlow, who had run down during her lunch hour to the scene of the tragedy. At the first mention of her name, Miss Wesner knew her.
"Oh, you're the young lady he kept company with," she said. "Isn't it too bad? I don't believe he ever did it. No man in his senses would set his own house afire and then walk out in broad daylight, as I saw Mr. Floyd do."
"You saw Mr. Floyd coming out, then? Pardon my curiosity, but I am so deeply interested——"
"I shouldn't think much of you if you were not," said Senda Wesner. "I'm glad to tell all I know about it, and I can't see for the life of me why they didn't call me to the stand."
Emily saw that no apology was needed for questioning the bake-shop girl. She was easy to make free with and fond of running on. Being a little reticent herself, Emily was glad to be relieved of the necessity of putting inquiries. So she simply guided the little gossip's talk.
"You did see Mr. Floyd leave the house? Was it long before the fire broke out?"
"Four or five minutes. I'd noticed Bertha raising the curtains—two Washington pies? yes'm—I'd seen Bertha up in the study, I say, but then Joe Tyke, Joey, we call him, the cripple newsboy, though he is quite a man now, but he never grew, deformed, you know—Joey was trundling himself along on his little cart, and I couldn't take my eyes off of him—20 cents, yes'm." The bake-shop girl continued to spread jam, ladle milk and wrap warm loaves in fresh brown paper, all the while, but her interruptions only formed tiny ripples on her flowing stream of prattle. "Then Mr. Robert came out and walked down to the corner slowly. But do you know what puzzled me? What was he stooping over the hearth for and picking up those pieces of paper?"
"People often do that. Perhaps he had torn up a letter and some of it had scattered outside the fireplace."
"Well, I didn't see another thing, not one thing, against him," said Miss Wesner, decidedly. Her ideas on the value of evidence were certainly of the most feminine order. "I'm sure he's a young man of the highest reputation. Never smoked or drank or——"
"You didn't see any other person coming out of the house?"
"No, I didn't. Yes, Gertrude, and how's your mamma? That's a sweet thing, only 10 years old, but does all the errands and half the housework for her mother, that's sick, and never slaps the baby."
"Or any stranger about?" edged in Emily again, when the spigot was finally turned off and the waters of gossip had ceased to run.
"Do you know——" The bake-shop girl dimpled her cheek with her forefinger. It was a healthy cheek, but not beautiful. "Do you know, there has been the oddest peddler around here for the last three weeks?"
"Do tell me about him. What did he look like? A stranger?"
"Never passed this street before as long as I know and that's a good many years. He was a sunburnt sort of man, like all the peddlers (only I'd say homelier, if I wasn't a fright myself), and with crazy blue eyes. Always came in a green cart and sold vegetables, no, once potted plants. But how he would yodel. Why, he'd make you deaf. Ellen used to buy of him sometimes. Nobody else ever did, and it's my opinion when he left the Arnolds he used to whip up his horse and hurry right round the corner."
"Was this peddler here lately?"
"Not since Friday, the day before the fire; I'm positive."
"He wasn't here Saturday?"
"No, he wasn't. But I must say, peddler or no peddler, I don't believe Robert Floyd ever set that fire."
There was more that Senda Wesner believed and disbelieved—so much, indeed, that when Emily left her she had asked herself twice what a room full of Senda Wesners would be like. But she checked this uncharitable thought. The girl was good-hearted and her information about the peddler might prove a clew. After making a half-circuit of the house which was so familiar to her, for she had visited it often, she returned to her stippling pencil in the photograph gallery, pondering now upon the identity of the strange peddler, now upon the sad fate of Ellen Greeley, and oftenest of all on the lover who was spending his first day in the solitude of a felon's cell.
"Meyer Shagarach, Attorney-at-Law."
The shingle could not have been more commonplace, the office stairs more dingy. A Jewish boy opened the door at Emily's knock and a young man of the same persuasion arose from his desk and bustled forward to inquire her business.
"Meester Shagarach is in. Did you wish to see him?"
After a moment a second door was opened and Emily was motioned into the inner office.
"This way, madam."
The man writing at the table barely glanced up at first, but, seeing who his visitor was, he rose and placed a seat for her. There was courtesy but no geniality in the gesture. Shagarach did not smile. It was said that he never smiled.
From the beginning Emily felt that she was in the presence of a man of destiny. Before sitting down her intuitions had determined her to enlist this force on Robert's side at any cost. Shagarach's body was small, his clothing mean and crinkled all over, as if its owner spent many hours daily crouched in a chair. But the face drew one's gaze and absorbed it. With care it might have been handsome, though the dead-black beard grew wild and the hair, tossed carelessly to one side, fell back at intervals, requiring to be brushed in place by the owner's hand. Under the smooth, bony brow that marks the Hebrew shone two eyes of extraordinary splendor, the largest, Emily thought, she had ever seen, and set the widest apart—brown and melting as a dog's, but glowing, as no dog's ever did, with profundities of human intelligence. Wide open at all times, they cast penetrating glances, never sidelong, always full—the eyes of a soul-searcher, a student of those characters, legible but elusive; which the spirit writes upon its outer garment. Their physical dimensions lent a large power to the face, as if more of the visible world could be comprehended within those magnificent organs than the glances of ordinary men compass. But the mouth below seemed rigid as granite, even during the play of speech.
"My name is Miss Barlow," said Emily.
"Come to engage my services for Floyd?" he inquired. It was his habit to cut into the heart of a problem at the first stroke and Emily felt grateful on the whole that the preliminaries were shortened.
"Mr. Floyd is innocent and I want you to save him."
"Why did he not employ an advocate?"
"The judge——"
"Pursued the only course open to him. The evidence was damaging. What have you learned since yesterday?"
"Ellen Greeley——"
"Is dead. The dog's instincts were right then. There was some one inside. Aronson."
The young man answered this peremptory call.
"My Evening Beacon."
It was brought at once.
"The newspapers are correct in their surmise. Ellen Greeley went upstairs, as Bertha testified. The day was hot. She lay upon the bed in her own room, and fell asleep. The barking of Sire did not wake her. Her room was in the rear, two flights up. The shouting of the crowd did not wake her. The fire may have waked her too late and her shrieks escaped notice in the uproar; or she may have been suffocated during her nap."
Shagarach spoke in a clear, loud voice that expressed and carried conviction. Emily wondered at his familiarity, far surpassing her own, with the details of the case.
"You see the improvement in our cause at once?"
Emily tried hard to think.
"Of course it proved Ellen could not have been a confederate," she suggested, modestly.
"Ellen Greeley sleeping in the attic chamber, who slammed the door?"
Shagarach's eyes shone like carbuncles. "It was not Floyd. He was not in the habit of slamming doors. And no man seeking to escape does that which will attract attention—unless"—he dwelt on the word significantly—"unless he is fleeing in haste."
"Then you believe, Mr. Shagarach——"
"It was the back door which slammed. They failed to confuse Bertha on that. It slammed after Floyd had gone out. Did Floyd go out the back door?"
"Miss Wesner, the young lady who lives opposite, saw him coming down the front steps."
"When?"
"Four or five minutes before the fire."
"Ellen did not go out the back door. Floyd did not go out the back door. Some one else did."
"And you will take the case, Mr. Shagarach?" Emily awaited his answer as breathlessly as if Robert's life or death hung in a trembling balance which Shagarach's finger could tip to one side or the other.
"It interests me. Have you a photograph of the accused with you?"
"No," answered Emily, thinking the request somewhat strange.
Shagarach began gazing at her with extraordinary intensity. The great will inclosed in his little body seemed to bear down hard upon her so as really to hurt. But she felt no resentment, only a kind of satisfied acquiescence, as if all were for the best. Yet, among ordinary people Emily was an individuality rare and fragrant, asserting herself forcefully, without being in the least self-assertive.
"Have you anything else?" asked the lawyer. Emily did not know how long the interim was.
"There is the strange peddler," she ventured to say. This time his answer was an interrogative look.
"Miss Wesner spoke of him today—a vegetable vender, who has been coming to the Arnold's for the last few weeks——"
"How many?"
"Three or four, I think."
"Since the will was made, then?"
"And dealing with Ellen. About the will——"
"Let us finish with the peddler."
"He had blue eyes and drove a cart painted green. Nobody had ever seen him in the neighborhood before, till he came selling vegetables and potted plants. His last visit was made on Friday."
"Not Saturday, the day of the fire?"
"Miss Wesner, who is very observing, has not seen him since Friday."
"Not as a peddler," said Shagarach, sotto voce. "Now as to the will. You wish to say that Floyd has told you of his uncle's desire to make him sole heir and his own aversion to the responsibilities of so large a property."
"Does he practice clairvoyance?" asked Emily of herself.
"Robert is no lover of money," she said. "To allege avarice against him as a motive is monstrous."
"Avarice, Miss Barlow? To love money is not avarice. Men grow to their opportunities. Without opportunities they wither and without money today there is no opportunity."
"The artist—does his genius gain or lose when it is gilded?" replied Emily, who felt a match even for Shagarach in the defense of her lover.
"The artist—ah, he is not of the world! Gold might well be to him an incumbrance. But to the worker among men it is the key to a thousand coffers."
There was deep feeling in these words of the criminal lawyer. Emily wondered if there might not have been a past of poverty, perhaps of spiritual aspiration and disappointment in his life, all subdued to the present indomitable aim at fortune and reputation.
"The refusal was a folly, a stripling's fatal blunder—yet a blunder of which not three men in our city are capable. Let us leave the will. It may reappear in its proper sequence. No suspicious character was seen loitering about or leaving the house on Saturday?"
"My inquiries have been limited to Miss Wesner."
"Aronson!"
The young man reappeared as before.
"Make thorough inquiry this evening in the neighborhood of the Arnold house, rear and front, for a stranger seen loitering about the premises or issuing from them on Saturday afternoon."
"Yes, Miss Barlow, I have a theory," resumed Shagarach, turning to Emily again. He folded his arms and looked at her steadfastly, yet as though his gaze were fixed on something beyond.
"I see your lover's photograph in your eyes—mild blue eyes, but touchstones of integrity, hard to deceive. He impresses me well. His story, moreover, bears a somewhat uncommon voucher. It is true because of its improbability. How improbable that any man would refuse a gift of $10,000,000! How improbable that any man, not a sleep-walker, would wander through the streets of a city without any record of his sensuous impressions!"
"But——"
"The improbability of the story demonstrates its truth. Men lie, women lie, children lie. Have you watched a band of girls playing at the imitation of school? How cunningly the teacher feigns anger, the pupils naughtiness and sad repentance. Have you observed the plausibility in the inventions of toddling babes to escape imminent chastisement? Falsehood is a normal faculty and equipped with its protective armor, plausibility. Your friend's story is too preposterous to be untrue."
Emily was bewildered by these rapid paradoxes.
"I congratulate you upon your friendship with so unusual a specimen of our kind, the man who cannot or will not lie. But I should not like to present his defense on such grounds to twelve of his fellow-creatures, normal in that respect. Fortunately we are not driven to that extreme refuge.
"The material for a theory is meager; the chain shows many gaps. But I find no evidence that Floyd attempted to get rid of the servant, Bertha. A child, meditating this crime, would not have neglected so obvious a precaution. Her continued absence was only an opportune accident. Her re-entrance would have resulted in his discovery. The point is pivotal.
"I find that a favorite house dog was left in the room to be sacrificed—a needless cruelty if the incendiary were his master, a necessary precaution if he were a stranger whose actions the animal would have understood and whom he would have followed to the street."
"But would Sire have allowed a stranger even to enter the study?"
"True; but between strangers and friends there is a middle category consisting of persons whom we may call acquaintances. Into these three degrees we are divided by dogkind. It was not a stranger or he would have been attacked. He had no friends left but Bertha, Ellen and Floyd. The dog was drowsing on the mat. The man who entered was an acquaintance.
"Who was this man? We have a few items of his description. Some one known to the dog, familiar with the premises and interested in the destruction of the document of which that house, that room and that safe were the triple-barred shrine. An expert criminal could have destroyed the safe without detection, but the incendiary was an amateur, and such an act would require time. There was no time, not an instant. The executor was to arrive that afternoon. McCausland started right. The Harmon building was destroyed and seven lives sacrificed in order that Benjamin Arnold's will might be irrevocably canceled. Who benefited by its destruction?
"The professor had desired to make Robert Floyd his sole heir, in other words, to disinherit Harry Arnold!"
Shagarach's monologue had reached its climax. The name of the other cousin came out like the ring of a hammer. He waited, as if yielding Emily an opportunity to object, but as she sat passive and expectant, he went on, his arms still folded, and his glowing eyes evincing deep absorption in the problem he was elucidating.
"Harry Arnold was in disfavor, then. The drafting of the will must have been communicated to him, but probably not its items. The mere fact, however, was ominous. It might mean the loss of a fortune. One of the servants was dressing 'uncommonly rich' of late. The wherewithal came to her as payment for conveying to Harry Arnold all she could pick up about the will. It may not have been pleasant news.
"It was from Mrs. Arnold McCausland first learned of the will. It was Harry Arnold who hastened to advertise a reward of $5,000—McCausland's fee if——"
"As to the fee," said Emily.
"I understand; the legacy of $20,000 amply protects me."
Emily was uncertain whether or not Shagarach meant to demand the whole $20,000 for his services.
"I find that the flies were about the honey pot. Mrs. Arnold's carriage drove up about 3 o'clock. The executor was to call that afternoon. Revelation could not be long delayed. The plot was desperately formed, favored by circumstance and executed by Harry Arnold and his accomplices."
"But Harry Arnold has been ill, Mr. Shagarach."
"The name of his physician?"
"I believe, Dr. Whipple, the pathologist. You suspect Harry, then, of the crime?"
"I have not studied him yet. This is only an alternative theory. You see how easily it could have been constructed in your friend's behalf.
"Mungovan, the discharged coachman, has not yet been found. The strange peddler may prove a confederate. You will send Bertha to me. She is the central witness. Is Floyd in jail?"
"Yes," said Emily, sadly; "but a permit——"
"I shall not need one. I am his counsel."
Emily descended the creaking stairway and rode home with a certain new elation, such as we sometimes feel after contact with some electric character, some grand reservoir of human vitality. Meyer Shagarach meanwhile began pacing up and down, occasionally speaking to himself sotto voce.
A criminal lawyer, but with the head of an imperial chancellor.
What was known of this rare man's history? About thirty years before he was born in a small town on the upper Nile, a descendant of those mighty Jewish families whose expulsion impoverished Spain, while spreading her tongue throughout the orient, even beyond the Turcoman deserts to the unvisited cities of Khiva and Merv. Languages were his birthright, as naturally and almost as numerously as the digits on his hands. In his youth his father had wandered to America—refuge of all wild, strange spirits of the earth—and died, leaving a widow and a son. The boy had been visionary, unpractical—a white blackbird among his tribe. For years he had struggled to support his mother, first as an attorney's drudge, then as a scribbler. There was no market for his wares. Then by a sudden wrench, showing the vise-like strength of his will, he had burst the bubble of his early hopes and chosen for his profession that of all professions which requires the most thorough subjection of the sentiments. It was six years since he had first rented the obscure quarters he now occupied, the same where, as a lad, he had sighed away many hours of distasteful toil.
For the first two years Shagarach's face showed the desperation of his fortunes. His own people shunned him as a seceder from the synagogue. To the public he was still unknown. But one day a trivial case had matched him against a certain eminent pleader, a Goliath in stature and in skill. The end of the day's tourney witnessed his bulk prostrated before the undersized scion of the house of David. From that hour the dimensions of his fame had grown apace. Critics noticed an occasional simplicity in everyday matters, just as a gifted foreigner who has become eloquent in our tongue may have to ask some commonplace native for a word now and then. Rivals questioned his technical learning, who had little else to boast. Yet Shagarach's knowledge, practical or legal, was always found adequate to his cause. Whether he was pedantically profound in the law or not might be an open question. But all who knew him at all knew him for a Titan.
The man appeared to be lonely by nature. Excepting the young assistant, Aronson, he associated no colleague with him, carrying all the details of his growing volume of business in his own capacious mind. Other men made memoranda. Shagarach remembered. What he might be in himself none knew; yet "all things to all men" was a motto he spurned. Shagarach was Shagarach to judge or scullion, everywhere masterful, unruffled, mysterious. Were it not for the luminous eyes he might be taken for an abstract thinker. These orbs supplied the magnetism to rivet crowds and suggested a seer of deep soul-secrets (unknown even to their possessor), dormant, perhaps subdued, but not annihilated, under the exterior equipment of the criminal lawyer.
Shagarach often colloqued with himself as he was doing now. In his trials, though he neither badgered witnesses nor wrangled with opponents, he was noted for sotto-voce comments, sometimes ironical, that seemed scarcely conscious. These mannerisms might be relics of a solitary pre-existence, in which the habit of thinking aloud had been formed.
"Was it Arnold or Mungovan who touched the match?" He continued his pacing in silence. "Both knew the premises, Mungovan the better of the two."
The electric street lamp shone into his room and the footfalls of the last tenant, receding on the stairs, had long since died to silence.
"I will study Arnold," he said, finally, buttoning his coat, as if the problem were as good as solved.
"Get the mail, Indigo."
The letters made a goodly heap on the salver, but Harry Arnold sifted them over with an air of dissatisfaction. One cream-colored envelope, superscribed in a dainty hand, he laid apart. The rest he tore open and tossed into Indigo's lap, as if they were duns, invitations and other such formal matters.
"Drop a line apiece to these bores," he said to his valet, with a yawn. Like the whole tribe of the unoccupied, he was too busy to answer letters.
"Where's Aladdin?"
"Grazing in the paddock."
"Did you get the roses for Miss March?"
"Two dozen Marechal Neils."
"I want some paper for a note to go with them. Mother's prompt," he added, opening the letter he had reserved, while Indigo went on his errand. It was headed "Hillsborough," and ran as follows:
"Dear Harry: It is a pleasure to be in our old summer home again, especially after the trying day I spent in that courtroom. The orchards are no longer in bloom, and the pear tree in the angle (your favorite), which was just a great pyramid of snowy blossoms when we arrived last year, is now budding with fruit. These things remind me how late the season has begun this year. Do not prolong it too far, Harry, dear. I am sure, after your illness, the mere sight of the open fields would do you good. Woodlawn is suburban, but it is not real country. Besides, we are only twenty miles out and you could ride in town in an hour whenever you liked."Be assured you shall have the money for your club expenses as soon as I can collect it. But property has its embarrassments, you know; and we may be rich in bonds and indentures, yet lack ready pennies at times, strange as it may seem to your inexperience. Do not worry, dear. In your present delicate state of health it may injure you more than I care to think. The very next time I come to town you shall have what you desire. But I make my own terms. You must be a good boy and come to Hillsborough for it. Forgive my writing so soon. I have been thinking of you, and it surely cannot displease you to hear once more how dearly you are remembered, wherever she goes, by your loving mother,"ALICE BREWSTER ARNOLD."
"Dear Harry: It is a pleasure to be in our old summer home again, especially after the trying day I spent in that courtroom. The orchards are no longer in bloom, and the pear tree in the angle (your favorite), which was just a great pyramid of snowy blossoms when we arrived last year, is now budding with fruit. These things remind me how late the season has begun this year. Do not prolong it too far, Harry, dear. I am sure, after your illness, the mere sight of the open fields would do you good. Woodlawn is suburban, but it is not real country. Besides, we are only twenty miles out and you could ride in town in an hour whenever you liked.
"Be assured you shall have the money for your club expenses as soon as I can collect it. But property has its embarrassments, you know; and we may be rich in bonds and indentures, yet lack ready pennies at times, strange as it may seem to your inexperience. Do not worry, dear. In your present delicate state of health it may injure you more than I care to think. The very next time I come to town you shall have what you desire. But I make my own terms. You must be a good boy and come to Hillsborough for it. Forgive my writing so soon. I have been thinking of you, and it surely cannot displease you to hear once more how dearly you are remembered, wherever she goes, by your loving mother,
"ALICE BREWSTER ARNOLD."
"Once more! No, nor a thousand times more!" cried Harry. "But I wish she'd come down sooner with the cash," he added. "What's this? Postscript?"
"Your friends, the Marches, have taken their cottage in Lenox. Possibly this may hasten your coming more than my entreaties."
"Jealous of Rosalie, already," laughed Harry. "Poor mother! What, another?"
"P. S. (Private)—It would be wise, Harry, if you should call upon your cousin. A visit from you would look well at this time."
"P. S. (Private)—It would be wise, Harry, if you should call upon your cousin. A visit from you would look well at this time."
"A call on Rob? Gad, I never thought of that. Give me the stationery, Indigo."
For five minutes Harry Arnold was alone, writing his prettiest note of compliment to accompany the gift of flowers to Miss Rosalie March. He had just moistened the mucilage when there came a ring at the bell.
"See if that's the fellows, Indigo. Look through the shutters."
"It's Kennedy," said Indigo, twisting his neck and eyes so as to get a slanting view of the callers.
"Who else?"
"Idler and Sunburst."
"Let them up."
"Well, Harry," cried the first of the three bloods, extending a hand, "what's the tempo of your song this morning?"
"Allegro, vivace, vivacissimo, Idler. Convalescing; doctor says I may go out; mother agreeable; medicine chest thrown to the dogs. Have a pill; only a few more left."
"Hello!" cried the fragile youth who had entered last. "Miss Rosalie March!" He picked up the envelope which Harry had laid down. "Sits the wind in that quarter still, Horatio?"
"The actress, Harry?" cried a second of the trio.
"What actress, you booby? Miss March isn't an actress."
"Nevertheless, she occasionally acts," retorted Sunburst. His yellow beard entitled him to this alias.
"Just the opposite, then, of her brother, Tristram," said the tall, sallow youth addressed as Idler. "He is a sculptor, but he never sculps. Did you see his alto-relievo of a Druid's head in the Art club? Capital study. Why in the deuce doesn't he work?"
"If he did he might get his goods on the market," said Kennedy.
"Out on you for a Philistine, a dunderhead!" cried Harry. "Do you confound genius with salability? Idler could correct you on that point. You remember his satire on 'The Religious Significance of Umbrellas in China?' Was anything ever more daringly conceived, more wittily executed, more—but I spare the shades of Addison and Lamb. And how much did it fetch him? A paltry $15."
Idler was the only one of these well-born good-for-naughts who ever turned his gifts to use. Sketches over the sobriquet by which he was known to his friends occasionally appeared in the lighter magazines.
"But my 'New Broom' made a clean sweep, Harry," he protested.
"Murder," groaned Harry. "He had that in for us. A prepared joke is detestable. It's like bottled spring water."
"Hang spring water!" said Idler. "Hang water anyway!"
"Indigo," cried Harry, jumping at the hint, "fetch us some very weak whey from the spa. Let's have a real old high jinks of a slambang bust to celebrate my convalescence. Hello! What's that?"
The wild wail of a bagpipe smote the air and the four boon companions rushed to the window.
"Have him in!"
"Yoho!"
"Here, Sawnie!"
"He's coming."
Indigo and the piper entered from opposite doors at about the same time, the former fetching the "whey," which had a suspiciously reddish hue and was served in narrow bottles, the latter arrayed in all the bravery of his plaids, with a little boy by his side in similar costume.
"Hit her up, Sawnie," cried Kennedy.
"Let him wet his whistle first," said the Sunburst.
"And here's a handsel to cross his palm," added Harry, passing the piper something invisible. The minstrel pocketed it with an awkward bow and drank down the proffered "whey" at one gulp.
"I'll be reminding you, gentlemen," he said in "braid Scots," "lest ye labor under a misapprehension of my cognomen, that my name is not Sawnie, but Duncan McKenzie Logan, and this is my wee bairn, Archibald Campbell of that ilk. We're half-lowland, as ye doubtless know, the Logans being a border clan."
"Why don't you make the youngster blow the bellows?" cried Idler. "The organ-player never does the pumping."
"I'm no organ-player, if you please. 'Tis the hieland pipes I play, and there's no blowing the bellows except with my ain mouth. But the laddie dances prettily. Show your steps, Archie. Show the gentlemen a fling. Ainblins they've never seen the like of it before."
Archie was as highland as his father in rig, from his jaunty feathered bonnet to the kilt just reaching below his bare, brown knees. His firm boyish face had a Scotch prettiness in it, nothing effeminate, yet sweet to look at, and he went through the steps of the highland fling gracefully, one hand on hip, the other over his head, reversing them now and then, and occasionally spinning around, while the piper struck up "Roy's Wife." The conclusion was greeted with a burst of applause.
"Can't we dance to that tune, boys?" shouted Harry, seizing Kennedy around the waist. "Choose your partners. Give us a Tarantella."
"There's nae such tune in the hielands," said the piper, gravely.
"Well, the skirt dance will do. Hit her up and I'll make you a present big enough to buy all your aunts and cousins porridge for a fortnight."
"There's nae skeert dance known to my pipes," said the highlander, shaking his head. "Dinna ye mean the sword dance?"
"Try 'Highland Laddie'," suggested Idler, hitting up a lively jig on the piano. The piper fell in and soon was pacing up and down the room, red in the face from his exertions, while the four merrymakers capered, kicked and skipped, with all sorts of offhand juvenilities. Harry, though the tallest present, was graceful as a girl.
"Hold up, fellows," cried the Sunburst, at last, puffing audibly. But the piper continued pacing up and down, forgetting everything in the furore of his enthusiasm except the moaning and shrieking of his instrument.
"Hold up, I say. Shut off your infernal drone. We can't hear ourselves think."
"'Tis the wind wailing on Craig-Ellachie I hear," said he of the Caledonian names.
"I think it's delirium tremens. Take a nip of the whey. That'll cure you. Here, Indigo, tap the geyser again for Sawnie."
Logan was not the man to set up frivolous punctilios against such an order as Idler's.
"There's medicine for the inner mon," he said, smacking his lips with gusto.
"Medicinal, eh? If you happen to take an overdose it's a medicinal spree, I suppose."
"I say, isn't tomorrow the Fourth?" cried Sunburst. "Play something patriotic, Sawnie, 'Hull's Victory,' or 'Lady Washington's Reel.'"
"There's nane o' them known to me or my instrument," said the minstrel. "It's a Scotch pipe and will play nane but the auld tunes of Scotland."
"Scotland! What's Scotland?" asked Idler.
"Wha—can it be ye never heard tell o' bonnie Scotland?" gasped the highlander, who was nearing the condition which Idler had described as a "medicinal spree."
"What is it, a man or a place? Did you ever meet the name before, fellows?"
All three solemnly shook their heads, whereat the Caledonian's jaw dropped in amazement.
"Wull, wull, I knew 'twas a most barbarous country I entered, but I'd thought the least enlightened peoples of the airth had heard of the glory and the celebrity of bonnie Scotland."
"Bonnie Scotland? Is Bonnie his first name?"
"Why, 'tis the country o' Scotland, I mean."
"Oh, I know," interposed Harry; "that little, barren, outlying province somewhere to the north of England."
"Oh, that!" cried the others, in contemptuous chorus.
"Where the coast line gets ragged, like an old beggar's coat," said Idler.
"And the people live on haggis and finnan haddie," added Kennedy.
"They are mostly exiles of Erin that have drifted back into barbarism," cried the Sunburst.
"Yes, that's the place," said Harry. "I've heard travelers tell of it. I believe it's put down in the latest gazetteer."
Poor Logan looked like a stifling man, but before he could launch his reply the long-drawn tones of a rival troubadour invaded the apartment. Once more the four roysterers rushed to the window.