Saul Aronson was not a musical young man. If he yawned down the major chord twice or thrice at bedtime this was the nearest he ever got to singing. But when the Whistler raised his flexible pipe, at first softly, then loudly, with wonderful trills, breaking into still more wonderful tremolos, with staccato volleys, and ascending arpeggios that would have put a mocking-bird to shame, it is no wonder that he gave up the attempt to insert the metes and bounds correctly in a quit-claim deed and contented himself with furtively watching the o-shaped orifice from which this flood of melody issued. This was his occupation when Shagarach's form, crossing the threshold, sent him back to his copying and checked the Whistler in the full ecstasy of an improvised cadenza.
"You have saved my life," said Shagarach to the boys when they had followed him into the inner room. He used the plural number, but his gaze seemed to be attracted to the Whistler, whose neatly brushed hair told of a mother's hand, and whose restless blue eyes, fringed with heavy dark lashes, centered a face oval, high-born and sweet, which gave out in every contour the glad emanation of a youth which was natural and pure. There was less in the others to make them distinctive. Turkey seemed to be a hulking clod and Toot was wizened and shrill-voiced and sharp.
"You have saved my life. How can I repay you?"
"I don't want any pay," spoke up Whistler. "I on'y came here to tell you about the fire."
"What fire?"
"Turkey said you was defending the bloke that set fire to the house on Cazenove street."
"Do you know something about that?"
"We seen a blo—a man coming out of the house," answered the Whistler.
"Then you come to make me still more obliged to you. But you must let me discharge a part of my other debt first I have just come from the bank. Here are fifteen double eagles. You will each give me your mother's name and address and I will send her five."
Turkey and Toot showed no reluctance in doing this, but the Whistler still held back.
"My mother doesn't want any reward," he said. All three of the boys had just graduated from the Phillips grammar school, and could place their negatives correctly when they chose.
"This is not a reward. I only ask you to allow me to be your friend. At your age I had never seen this amount of money."
But still the Whistler blushed and shook his head till Shagarach perceived the boy's principle could not be shaken.
"You will give me your mother's address? Perhaps I may be able to get you work. Wouldn't you like to go to work?"
"Oh, yes, sir." The Whistler's face, which obstinate refusal, even for so honorable a scruple, had clouded with a trace of sullenness, brightened at once and his blue eyes smiled. Shagarach copied the address carefully and determined not to lose sight of the boy who knew how to say no so decidedly.
"And now——" he pushed the memorandum book aside. "I am defending Floyd. What did you wish to tell me?"
"We was the first at the fire," said Toot, eagerly.
"And we found the body of the servant," added Turkey.
But Shagarach's eyes never left the Whistler.
"Just when the fire broke out," said the Whistler, "we were coming through the alleyway side of the house."
"Yes."
"A big bloke—I mean a tall man—was running down the alleyway into Broad street. I noticed him, because the alley was narrow and he knocked me down."
"Where?"
"In the alleyway."
"Near Broad street?"
"Yes, sir."
"Ran against you and knocked you down?"
"Yes, sir, and said: 'Darn it, get out of the way.'"
"Was he running?"
"Well, half-running."
"We was running," added Toot; "'cause we heard them yelling 'Fire!'"
"What kind of a looking man was it?"
"A big, brown man, with a black mustache."
"He looked like a dood," added Toot.
"You didn't know him?"
"No, sir."
"Would you know him again?"
"Oh, yes," answered the Whistler. "I seen—I saw him last week pulling a single scull up the river."
Shagarach remembered having seen a portrait of Harry Arnold displayed in a fashionable photographer's showcase—shaggy cape-coat and fur cap setting off his splendid beauty. Immediately he wrote the address on a card, and, summoning Aronson, bade him obtain a half-dozen copies of the photograph.
"He was a handsome young man, then? About how old?"
The three guesses varied from 21 to 27. Either of these ages seems fabulously advanced from the standpoint of 14.
"Did you notice anything about his hands? Were they bare or did he wear gloves?"
"His right hand was bare," answered the Whistler, "'cause his fingernail scratched me when he thrun me—when he threw me down."
Shagarach drew forth the glove which Chandler had brought him and was studying it profoundly. Apparently he forgot the presence of the boys, so deep was his meditation. Then at last he started out of the reverie, thanked them again and with kind assurances of friendship shook their hands in parting at the door.
"Ain't he a dandy bloke?" whispered Turkey on the stairs.
"Why didn't yer take it, Whistler?" said Toot.
But the Whistler held his peace.
When Emily Barlow ran down to Shagarach's office at noon this Saturday she was accompanied by her friend, Beulah Ware. Beulah Ware was as dark as Emily was fair. In temperament, as in complexion, the two girls offered a contrast, Beulah's carriage having the recollected dignity of a nun's, while Emily's sensibilities were all as fine as those Japanese swords which are whetted so keenly they divide the light leaves that fall across their edges.
"We should like to leave a note with the flowers, Mr. Aronson. Could you furnish us paper?"
Aronson was only too eager to furnish not only paper, but envelope, ink-well and a ready-filled pen. When the young ladies went out he thought a cloud passed over the arid chapters of his Pickering XII. This was the note, pinned to a graceful bouquet, that Shagarach read on his return:
"My Dear Mr. Shagarach: You must have read of the riot yesterday in which Robert behaved so nobly. But he is even more pleased with a discovery which he made during the affair. It seems that one of the wounded convicts, who has been passing under the name of Quirk, is no other than the coachman, Mungovan, whom none of us could find. Could you manage to call at the prison to-day? The poor fellow is seriously injured and may have important evidence in his possession. Yours truly,"EMILY BARLOW."
"My Dear Mr. Shagarach: You must have read of the riot yesterday in which Robert behaved so nobly. But he is even more pleased with a discovery which he made during the affair. It seems that one of the wounded convicts, who has been passing under the name of Quirk, is no other than the coachman, Mungovan, whom none of us could find. Could you manage to call at the prison to-day? The poor fellow is seriously injured and may have important evidence in his possession. Yours truly,
"EMILY BARLOW."
The violets seemed to move Shagarach far more than the note, momentous as its revelation might be. His hand trembled when he reached to clasp the stems. Then he withdrew it and stood irresolute. A procession was passing through the street below. From the window he could see the tilted necks of a line of fifers. Was it a horror of music that made him shut out these sounds so often? A dread of perfume and loveliness that made him leave the room at once with brief directions to Aronson? The casual observer would have said that he merely hurried to obey the suggestion of Emily's note, for he took his way at once to the state prison across the river.
When Col. Mainwaring took hold of the prison that morning it was expected that two out of every five of the convicts would have to be bastinadoed before peace could be restored. Against the advice of all the deputies, including Hawkins, he had summoned his wards to the rotunda and outlined his course of action in a cool speech. The burden of it was that he intended to begin with a clean sheet and to look out for their interests rather than their sensibilities, or, as he expressed it, "to give them hard words but soft mattresses."
The matter and manner of the address had a tranquillizing effect and some of the shops that day wore as quiet and decent an aspect as any factory-room in the state. Moreover, as soon as it became known that the colonel had resolved to adopt several of the reforms demanded in Dickon Harvey's petition, even the moodiest of the ring-leaders felt that they could submit without any hurt to pride.
Stretched on a hospital cot, whispering with contrite eyes to a black-robed clergyman, lay Dennis Mungovan. The look on his face was peaceful and exalted. His hands were clasped. The groans of patients and the odor of drugs which filled the chamber did not reach his senses. He had just finished his deathbed confession and stood upon a secure footing on the terra firma of faith, awaiting the summons from above.
"A lawyer to speak with Quirk," announced the attendant.
"Not Quirk, but Mungovan," said the clergyman, making way.
"And must you lave me, father dear?" besought the patient, stretching out his hands as a cold man in winter reaches toward the fire.
"I have a wedding to perform, my son. Remember, your hours in this valley of tears are few, and you have left everything worldly behind you. Thank God, who in His infinite mercy has given you the grace of a happy death."
"I do, father, I do," cried the pallid sufferer.
"And an opportunity to repent of your sins. God bless you. Good-by."
The clergyman bowed to Shagarach and departed—from the deathbed to the wedding service, from the grave to the cradle of life, so wide was the compass of his ministrations.
"You are dying, then?" asked Shagarach.
"Wid a bullet in me breast, misthur, that the doctors can't rache. Och, they murdhered me wid their probin'. And all for what? All for nawthin'. What was I to be mixin' in their riots for? Wirrasthrue! Wirrasthrue!"
"You know Robert Floyd is in the prison here?"
"Robert Floyd! For the love o' heaven, misthur, don't tell him it's me. Tell him I'm Quirk. Och, that lie is a sin on me sowl."
"The truth will be best when you are so near death," said Shagarach, quietly. "Perhaps it would be better at all times. Besides, Mr. Floyd knows you are here."
"Misther," the dying man drew Shagarach toward him. "Misther! Do me a favor for the love o' doin' good."
"What is it?"
"Will you do it—an' I'll pray for your sowl before the throne, so help me——"
"I will if I can. What is it?"
"Keep it from Ellen."
"Keep what?"
"My name, my disgrace. Never let the poor girl know. She was my wife."
"Your wife?" Shagarach was puzzled a moment. "You mean Ellen Greeley?"
"Ellen Mungovan, before God."
"Ellen Greeley is dead. She perished in the fire."
The man started up in his bed so violently as to burst the bandage of his wound. His blood began to stain the linen and Shagarach was obliged to call an attendant, who adjusted it and tucked the patient snugly in. Still his glassy eyes were fixed on Shagarach and his muttering lips seemed to say over the word: "Dead! Dead! Dead!"
"She was burned to death in the Arnold fire. Robert Floyd is accused of setting it and causing her death."
"Burned to death!" The man's brain seemed bewildered.
"Didn't you know these things?"
"Shure, how would I know them, misther, all cooped in here like a bat in a cave?"
"How did you come here?"
"Och, the foolishness came over me, wid my head tangled in dhrink. What does a man know in dhrink? He can't tell his friend from his inimy. And me that had a dacent mother in the ould counthry and a dacent wife in the new, look at this, where it druv me."
"What crime are you charged with?"
"Wid breakin' and enterin', misther; and, sure, it was the stableman put me up to it that night I was full, and they got away and I was caught wid the watches on me and I was so shamed of Ellen and me mother at home, says I, I'll niver disgrace them, says I, and so I gev in me name Quirk, and none of them could tell the differ."
"When was it you were arrested?" asked Shagarach.
"It's three weeks and three days yesterday, misther; that I know by the scratches I made in me cell."
"Can't you read?"
"Only the big, black letthers, misther."
This explained Mungovan's ignorance of Floyd's arrest. It seemed to be an accident that the two had never met in prison. Though they occupied cells in the same ward, their daily work carried them to opposite parts of the yard, Mungovan's to the harness-shop under "Slim" Butler; Robert's to the greenhouses near the team gate.
"Misther!" The poor wretch clasped Shagarach's wrist and drew the lawyer's ear to his lips again.
"Misther, will you bury me where Ellen is buried?"
"I'll see if that can be done."
"Misther!" The man's eyes were glazing. "Look!" He fumbled with aspen fingers in his breast, finally drawing forth an envelope. From this he removed a ringlet of black hair, probably a love-lock of Ellen's. Then he showed the inclosed writing to Shagarach. It was not addressed.
"Read it," he whispered. "Ellen gev it me to carry."
Shagarach opened the envelope and read in a servant-girl's painstaking hand the following words:
"The peddler has not come for two days, so I send you this by a trustworthy messanger. As I rote you in my last, the professor said in the study, 'Harry gets his deserts.' That was all I could hear only he and Mr. Robert talked for a long time afterwards. The will is in the safe in the study. If I hear ennything more I will let you know, and please send me the money you promised me soon."
"The peddler has not come for two days, so I send you this by a trustworthy messanger. As I rote you in my last, the professor said in the study, 'Harry gets his deserts.' That was all I could hear only he and Mr. Robert talked for a long time afterwards. The will is in the safe in the study. If I hear ennything more I will let you know, and please send me the money you promised me soon."
There was neither address nor signature to this document.
"To carry where?" asked Shagarach, but the man's brain was all clotted with a single idea.
"Will you bury me by Ellen's side, misther, in the green churchyard under the soft turf that the wind combs smooth like in my own dear counthry? Will you bury me beside Ellen I disgraced so, misther? She'll know I'm wid her there. Will you bury me, misther?"
"I will. I will. Where did Ellen bid you carry the letter?"
"The letther? Och, I carried the letther in me mouth. Sure, I wouldn't be afther givin' up Ellen's letther to the warden."
"I mean——" But the man was passing through the delirium that precedes the last fainting calm. Several times his lips moved, murmuring "Ellen." His fingers clutched the love-lock to his breast. Once he turned his head and asked for "Father Flynn." But Father Flynn was ministering now at another ceremony as opposite to this as laughter is to tears.
Toward the end a smile of singular sweetness irradiated his rough face, made delicate by the waxy color of death. Were his thoughts playing back again among the memories of childhood, in the beloved island, perhaps at the knee of that honest mother whom he feared to disgrace? Or were they leaping forward to the joy of the cool bed under the churchyard daisies at Ellen's side? Shagarach, holding the shred of paper in his hand, brooding over the answer to his unanswered question, could only watch the flickering spark in reverential awe.
But he did not default his side of the pact they had made, he and Dennis Mungovan, with clasped hands in the hospital alcove. At a great sacrifice of time he sought out Ellen Greeley's sister, explained the secret of Ellen's marriage and Mungovan's repentance for his follies, and, with the help of Father Flynn, persuaded her to consent to an interment of the couple together. He even went to the pains of communicating the death to Mungovan's worthy mother, having obtained her address from Ellen Greeley's sister and heir. But the circumstances and place of the "accident" which killed him were humanely concealed.
In return for all this solicitude the lawyer had an unaddressed and ambiguous scrawl in his possession. Three facts were established in relation to the person for whom it was intended. In the first place whoever it was he knew that Harry Arnold had "got his deserts" under his uncle's will. Secondly, he had employed Ellen Greeley as a spy upon the doings in the professor's household. Thirdly, he was in league with the missing peddler, who seemed to act as a go-between for Ellen and her correspondent.
"St! Bobbs!"
The sound was at Robert's left ear. He had been dreaming of Emily arrayed in bridal white and kneeling at his side before the altar of joy. Uncle Benjamin in a clergyman's surplice was pronouncing a benediction upon them. The good old custom of a nuptial kiss was about to be observed, when the warning whisper and his prison nickname rudely awakened him to his surroundings. The sweet vision melted into a black reality, the wide arches of the cathedral contracting to narrow cell walls and the loved faces of Emily and his uncle cruelly vanishing.
"Bobbs! Do you 'ear?"
"Yes!" Robert rubbed his eyes as if to restore the illusion and his answer was slumbrously indistinct.
"Count that bell."
A distant clock was giving out two strokes faintly but with vibrations prolonged in the silence.
"'Ear the hother coves snoozing."
The deep breathing of the convicts grew more and more audible as Robert's senses became sharper and he sat up on his couch.
"Hi 'ear you, Bobbs. Hare you making your toilet?" inquired the facetious cracksman.
"Yes."
"Leave your bloomin' boots be'ind as a keepsake. We haren't pussy-footed, me hangel."
"All right, I'm ready."
"Now, take out the blocks, me boy, and 'andle with care. If they falls on your toes they might 'urt, besides disturbin' the bloomin' deputy, which we must be werry careful to havoid, Bobbs, out of consideration for 'is feelings. Sh!"
A footstep was heard coming along the corridor, and the re-enforcement of light told the prisoners that the turnkey had a lantern in his hand, the dim gas jet at one end only sufficing to deepen the shadows in the cells. Robert lay back on his pallet and closed his eyes till the steps retreated. In a half-minute the turnkey would be back. He was a new man, both Gradger and Hawkins being still on the sick list from the blows they had received in the riot of the day before.
"St, Bobbs, hare you ready?"
"All ready."
Robert had removed six bricks and carefully muffled them in his bedquilt, leaving an aperture not much larger than the door of a kennel. The light came nearer and nearer and suddenly he heard the cracksman groaning piteously. The turnkey raised his lantern, approached the cell from which these sounds issued and peered in.
"Somebody bludgeoned yesterday," thought he. But "somebody" was standing at the front of his cell, with his hands firmly grasping two bars. As the turnkey stooped and brought his eyes nearer, the two bars were wrenched out and clasped around his neck. Being a sturdy fellow, his instinct was to struggle rather than to cry. But his struggle availed him nothing in the surprise of the moment, with the odds of position against him. His head was drawn down through the bars and he nuzzled a soft substance on the cracksman's breast. Then a strange odor got possession of his senses. He gasped, fought, gasped again, and finally fainted away. When his writhings had ceased the cracksman removed his lantern and laid it lightly on the floor outside.
"Climb through, Bobbs—not that way."
Robert had stood on the bed and thrust one leg through the aperture.
"Head foremost, as the little feller dives."
Robert reversed his position, and with a terrible wrenching of his shoulders worked the upper part of his body through the opening, Dobbs giving him loyal assistance and encouragement meanwhile. The turnkey hanging helpless into the cracksman's cell, his body outlined against the lantern, caused him to start back.
"Ee's hall right. Hi nursed 'im asleep on my breast-pin. Hain't it daintily perfumed?"
Attached to the cracksman's breast was a large sponge saturated with chloroform. The turnkey had inhaled this and was soundly asleep.
"Now for running the gantlet, Bobbs."
Dobbs' motions were lightning-like. First he laid the turnkey softly outside, then climbed through the cell-bars, this time feet foremost, for the cuts had been made nearly two feet apart vertically and the bars were not set close together. Once outside, he motioned to Robert to follow him, while he detached the prostrate man's keys from his girdle, dabbing his nose now and then with the sponge. Squeezing them tightly so as to avoid clanking, he coolly selected one of the largest.
"That comes of watching Longlegs w'en the others were 'ollering," he whispered to Robert, holding up his prize. It was the key to the door at the blind end of the corridor, which a turnkey passing through with the intention of going out into the yard would naturally select from his bunch and carry separate. Hawkins' habit of swinging his keys nonchalantly had not escaped Dobbs' observant eyes.
"Now," whispered Dobbs, making for the blind end of the corridor. There was no time to remove the lantern and the chloroformed turnkey from sight. Most of the convicts were still asleep, but two or three, awakened by the noises, started up in their night clothes and stood behind the bars, making gestures but uttering no sound.
Thus far Dobbs' plan had proved successful. There was no other outlet than the one he had chosen, since the cells were backed against the middle of the bastile and were impregnable at the rear. There remained two strong doors in the opposite wall to force. One turn of the key in its wards slipped the lock of the first. Before the second Dobbs waited and listened. A rhythm of receding footsteps was heard outside. Suddenly they seemed to cease.
"He's turned the corner," whispered the cracksman, immediately opening the outer door.
"Pull the inside one to, me boy."
Robert did as he commanded.
"Out with you now."
Robert preceded his confederate into the deserted yard, while Dobbs closed the great outer gate softly and sprung its iron bolt. Pursuit from within was thus cut off.
"Now run, me boy."
Robert followed, easily keeping up with his leader. As they approached the end of the bastile, Dobbs slowed his pace.
"Tiptoes, now," he cried stealthily working his way up to the corner of the building, where he stood crouching as if in ambush. Their shadows were thrown forward beyond the corner, so that the cracksman could not get within a yard of the edge.
"The hother cove Hi greased, but this one we'll 'ave to sponge, Bobbs," he said, taking the sponge from his breast and sprinkling it anew from a tiny vial.
"'Ere ee comes a-waggin' of 'is 'ead, but this at 'is beak will set 'im snoozin', Hi fawncy."
The footsteps came nearer and nearer, as monotonously regular as the ticking of a clock, but slow and heavy, as if the sentinel were a man of size. Dobbs stood ready to spring, the sponge in his right hand, his left free to disarm the deputy if he should present his gun. The form of a man turned the angle. It was Koerber, the giant, whom Col. Mainwaring had transferred from the caneshop to this less responsible duty.
Luckily Dobbs caught him in the midst of a capacious gape, and the great sponge stuffed into his open mouth served at once as gag and smothering instrument.
"'Old 'is harm," cried Dobbs to Robert, who leaped to his side and held down the powerful right arm of the German Titan. Koerber kicked and fought with desperation, bruising each of his assailants, but the sponge muffled his outcries and gradually he sunk in a stupor, Dobbs, with a strength no one would have suspected, breaking the fall of his body and laying him gently on the ground.
Another long application of the sponge and again he sped away. Koerber's beat stopped at the middle of the end-section of the yard, where he and the other sentinel must have met and saluted. But no one had come to his aid, and when the two fugitives crossed the "left yard," as it was called, making directly for the wall, no one impeded their progress. Eighty yards away, near the greenhouses, the back of a deputy could be seen marching in the opposite direction. Was this the man whom Dobbs had "greased?"
The cracksman had made a bee-line for the twenty-foot wall. How did he hope to surmount such a barrier? It was as smooth as a planed board, with hardly crevice enough at the cemented seams to give a cat's claw footing.
"Ere's a hinstrument of my hown inventing which I call the 'andy 'inge," said Dobbs, removing from his bosom an iron thing coiled around with rope. Unreeling the rope with lightning twists, he displayed for a second a plain, strong hinge, very broadplated and sharp at the inner angle. With a cast that no professional angler could excel, he flung this far over the top of the wall, and drew it taut, by means of the rope. The edges of the wall being drilled off perfectly square, the hinge must have caught on the other side, and the security of the apparatus as a means of ascent was only limited by the strength of the rope. The device was as simple, yet as ingenious, as the clock-face.
"Climb, me boy," said Dobbs.
Robert was up in a few seconds, the rope being thick enough to give his hands good purchase, and the cool night air and exhilaration buoying his strength. Dobbs climbed with more difficulty and was puffing heavily when, with Robert's help, he reached the broad top of the wall.
"Hi'll 'ave you gazetted hensign in the royal navy, Bobbs, next time Hi confab with 'er royal 'ighness," he smiled, his humor never appearing to desert him. "Such climbing would do credit to a powder monkey."
Just then, with the two figures standing on the top of the wall, a loud clang smote the silent air. It was followed by another and another till the world seemed awake once more.
"The alarm bell!" cried Dobbs. "They're after us! Drop!"
Both men were on the ground in a second, Dobbs coiling his "handy hinge" as he led the way running. Fear lent him wings and though he panted and his voice grew husky, he managed to keep abreast of his fleeter companion. The prison wall skirted a long, ill-lighted alley, which debouched in an unfrequented street. Here the houses were scattered, barren lots intervening, and a glimpse of the river breaking into the background now and then. It was broad moonlight, and the trees and fences afforded little shelter to the runaways.
Any policeman who met them would have been justified in shooting down two men, one in convict garb, fleeing from the direction of the prison. Doubtless Dobbs had prepared himself for this emergency, but luck favored him here and his reserve resources were not called into play. To left and right and left again he turned, finally climbing a low fence and crossing a stableyard that bordered on the river. A second fence to climb and Robert found himself on the rocky embankment of the stream.
How dark and beautiful it was in the moonlight! "Free, and I know not another as infinite word"—the line of the poet came back to him, and for an instant he felt in his veins all the glory of that treasure for which nations have thought rivers of their purest blood no extravagant price. But there was little leisure now for meditation. The alarm bell could still be heard sounding distinctly at the distance of a quarter of a mile and Dobbs was peering down the embankment, which cast an inky pall over the water in its shadow.
Presently he whistled. An answer came, some fifty yards to the right. Clutching his comrade's arm, the Englishman ran along the bank to the spot from which the response proceeded. A light keel-boat with a single occupant was moored in the gloom below, but so far below that to jump would surely capsize her, for the tide was at its ebb and the stream had sunk like an emptying canal lock.
"Shall we plunge in?" asked Robert, not averse to the bracing midnight bath.
"'Ardly, with a four-mile row in wet clothes before us, me hangel," answered the cracksman, "and the 'andy 'inge still lovingly clasped to my bosom."
Scooping out some earth at the rim of the flags which crowned the embankment wall, he made a hollow for the hinge and threw the rope down into the boat. The corner to which it clung had not been chiseled off clean like the edge of the prison wall and there was some chance of its slipping, but the risk had to be run.
This time Dobbs descended first. Robert followed him nimbly. All through the adventure he had reflected and even echoed the cracksman's humorous mood, and had displayed as little nervousness as if it were a student's lark upon which he was engaged instead of the grave crime of prison breach. So when the hinge slipped, just as he was dangling midway, and he fell plump into Dobbs' arm, with a coil of rope and an iron implement behind him, he only laughed as delightedly as a high-perched tomboy after climbing a forbidden fence.
"Well, that gives us back the hinge," he said. "We might have had to leave it."
Evidently the serious-talking young radical had a vein of drollery under his thoughtful exterior.
"You didn't 'urt yourself?" asked Dobbs, gathering his own dispersed members together.
"Not a bit. You're as good as a feather bed. I'd just enjoy tumbling on you four or five times a day."
But Dobbs, ruefully rubbing his barked shins, only ordered the boatman to "give way," which is nautical for "pull straight ahead," and in three or four strokes they were clear of the embankment and out in the full current of the flowing tide.
Have you never lain back at midnight in the bow of a Whitehall, with your hands clasped behind your head and your legs lazily outstretched—no comrades but the oarsman amidships, and the fellow-passenger facing you from the stern, no sound but the gurgle of your own gliding, no sensation but the onward impulse of the boat, as gentle as the swaying of a garden swing, and the scarcely perceptible breeze aerating the surface of the river? Then the moon has never tinted the atmosphere for you with such voluptuous purity as it did for Robert Floyd that night, and the sparse, dim stars have never announced themselves so articulately as the lights of a grander city than that whose gloomy masses and scattered lamps they overhung. Even Dobbs' lighting of a cigar—no cosmic event, surely—did not jar upon the grand totality. The tiny flame, drawn in and then flaring up, gave flash-light glimpses of a face unmatched in the shrewdness and humor of its lines.
For fully ten minutes not a word was spoken. Suddenly Dobbs' voice snapped out:
"The hother duds, quick, chummy. There's a bobby on the draw."
A pair of black trousers was thrown toward him by the oarsman and Dobbs drew them on over his prison garb.
"Now the coat."
He was turning his striped blouse inside out.
"Now, let's 'ear you in the chorus," said Dobbs, who immediately set up a sailor's song about Nancy Lee. Robert and the boatman swelled the chorus as desired, with rollicking "Heave ho's."
"Quit your caterwauling there!" cried the policeman above. The pseudo-sailors at once hushed as if much frightened and rowed swiftly under the bridge, while the policeman, satisfied with this display of obedience, stalked along on his lonely beat. Above the bridge the river narrowed and the banks were no longer of granite, but of arable loam scalloped into a thousand little inlets. An hour must have elapsed and three more bridges had been passed, when the boatman turned into one of these coves and drove his keel against a grating sand bank. The passengers jumped out and shook the cramp from their limbs.
"Is that all, Mr. M——"
A finger on Dobbs' lips checked the boatman's sentence half-way and a nod gave the answer to his uncompleted question. Robert was not paying attention, but when Dobbs touched his arm and led the way up to the road, he promptly followed. By this time the milkmen and marketmen were about. A rattle of distant wheels broke the silence now and then. The dawn-birds trebled their matin greeting and a pearly flush located the eastern quarter of the sky. After a few turns, Dobbs approached the side entrance of a large house, not unlike an inn. The waiter who answered his tap appeared to have been expecting him.
"'Ere we are, Bobbs, me boy. 'Ere we'll shift our duds and 'ave a talk over the breakfast victuals. Whew! Hi'm tired! Fetch a lamp, Johnnie, into the guest chamber. We haren't clemmin' on you, we've got rocks. Hey, Johnnie?"
The white-aproned waiter grinned and led them into a private room with a table in the middle.
"The porker, Johnnie, and plenty of good hold hale with the fixins."
Dobbs had drawn his chair up to the table, set Floyd opposite him, and made one hand wash the other with the true gourmand's expectancy while he gave this savory order.
"Well, you bloomin' old milksop! Hi suppose you'll put me in your prayers now, hey? Hey? Hey?"
Dobbs poked Robert under the ribs in a fashion which the young man might have resented in any but a familiar and a benefactor. Apparently his acknowledgment of his obligation was not warm enough for the cracksman, who began grumbling in an injured tone.
"Thankful? Wot's thankful? A word. Hi don't want words. Words is for magistrates and ministers and such like 'ipocrites. Hi want a mark of confidence. 'Asn't Dobbs trusted Bobbs?"
"Yes, he has."
"Well, w'y won't Bobbs trust Dobbs? Are we mis-mated? Do we work at cross-purposes? Hi need a pal, Bobbs—upon which you may remark w'ere is the shillin' comin' from wot's payin' this piper? But there's pals and pals! And if Hi offer my friendship to a honorable associate Hi made the acquaintance of while we was both serving in Col. Mainwaring's regiment, wot's Jim Budge got to say? Cut and run, Jim, says I, and much obliged for your 'elp. 'Ave a glass, Bobbs?"
The waiter had brought in several bottles of ale. Robert filled out a glass of the brown, foaming liquor and poured it down with a gusto that seemed to cheer Dobbs immensely.
"The uniform, Johnnie, and don't overtoast the porker."
Johnnie seemed afflicted once more with his grinning fit, for he stuffed his apron in his mouth when he got to the door.
"What are your plans ahead, Dobbs?" asked Floyd, nibbling a pretzel, while the cracksman helped himself liberally to the ale.
"My plans is Chicago. Hi'm going into business as a reformer."
"Ha, ha; what will you reform—yourself first, I suppose?"
"Hi'll begin on the police force. You haren't a-drinkin', Bobbs. Your 'ealth, me boy, a-standin' toast to the 'ealth of Dobbs' pal. Hip, hip, hip-oh, 'ere's Johnnie, with the porker."
Johnnie seemed to have caught a sharp glance from Dobbs on the threshold, for his grin subsided and he was obsequious in his attentions to the breakfasting pair. Dobbs accepted them as a lord would the bows of a lackey, but Robert felt constrained to brush off the importunate caresses which he had no means of repaying in coin.
"If there's one meat in creation wot's sweet and savory," said Dobbs ecstatically, digging a fork in the dish just brought, "it's a juicy little 3-months-old baby porker, swimmin' in greens and gravy."
Robert could hardly help smiling while Dobbs carved the young pig, smacking his lips prodigiously meanwhile.
"A hearty breakfast, me boy; we've a long ride before us."
"Where to?"
"Pitch in and don't spare the gravy—w'ere to? W'ot say to the Hargentine Republic, w'ere you can sue for your uncle's money by proxy, hey?"
"My uncle's money?"
"It's your'n, now the will's busted."
"I don't want the money and never wanted it."
"Then wot are you 'ere for?"
"Only the fresh air and the trip. I thought they might do me good."
"See 'ere, Bobbs, if you think Hi'm a-fishin' for a slice o' your bloomin' pile, Hi'll show you Hi'm straight as a flag-pole. Them's not the harticles of partnership Hi propose."
"I never said they were, Dobbs."
"But your heye says you suspect me, and it don't pay to be too suspicious, me boy. Hi'm opposed to suspicion, bein' of a hinnocent nature myself. 'Aven't you learned that, Bobbs, halready? 'Aven't Hi trusted a hutter stranger with my rat's tooth and gone 'alvesies with 'im, doublin' the risk and not doublin' the enjoyment?"
"You've placed me under a great obligation, certainly. I wouldn't have missed this night for the world."
"'Ere's a 'ealth to it, Bobbs—a standin' toast—and may we never bunk in the bastile again. Hip, hip, hip—"
"Here are the clothes, Mr. Mc—"
The crashing of a beer bottle on the floor cut the name off at the initial letter, and for some reason Johnnie did not finish it after he had picked up the fragments.
"Lay the duds on the chair, Johnnie; we haren't done discussin' the porker." A black business outfit, including headgear and footgear, bore witness to the cracksman's foresight. "Bring us some more hale. 'Ave a pretzel, Bobbs (hic)."
Bobbs was undeniably succumbing to the influence of his potations, but Robert knew the thirst-creating properties of salted cracker, so he declined the proffered morsel.
"Won't break bread with me! Hi say, Bobbs, this is a houtrage—a houtrage. W'ere'd you be this minute if it wasn't for me? Afore a tender little juicy porker, asprawlin' of your legs under the table and a-facin' a hail jolly Johnnie, w'ich is me? Or snoozin' in a ten-foot kennel, with sweet dreams o' the swingin' gallows?"
"I wouldn't be here, certainly, Dobbs."
"You wouldn't be 'ere! That's so. A glass on the 'ead of it. Your 'and, Bobbs, and your 'ealth. Bobbs says (hic), and Bobbs is a gemman (hic), Bobbs says he wouldn't be 'ere. But afore we part," here the cracksman sat down again, "Hi 'ope ee'll show ee's a gemman and not mistrust 'is pal. Hi ain't no psalm-singer, Bobbs, me boy. Wot's more natural, with a blank check before 'im, than for the confidential clark to facsimilate 'is marster's hautograph? Wot's the hodds? Hi'll drink with 'im hall the same—and a glass on the 'ead of it, Bobbs."
Dobbs was rapidly becoming incoherent and his incoherence took a boastful turn.
"Ho, Hi cawn't 'elp a-grinnin, w'en Hi think of old Koerber a-wakin' up and a-roarin' for 'elp. Didn't Hi do 'im brown, Bobbs (hic)?"
"He was no match for you, certainly."
"Ee? Koerber? Lemme tell you there's few in the fawncy stand as 'igh as Bill Dobbs. Wot's Jim Budge? A hordinary bloomin' safe-cracker as must 'ave a pal. Ee cawn't stand alone, no more'n one leg of a scissors, which is the Hirish for bachelor. Barney Pease (hic) is truly great, Hi own. For sleight-of-'and work ee 'as no superior in the three kingdoms."
"Not even the solitary cracksman?"
"Not even the solitary cracksman, w'ich is me. But sleight-of-'and hisn't hall, Bobbs. It's sleight-of-'ead! Do you fawncy Barney Pease could 'ave got you over that sky-scrapin' wall? It was Bill Dobbs' 'andy 'inge done that. Lor' bless us! We'll be famous for this 'ere night's outin'."
"I've a notion you'd be a bad man to cross, Dobbs, eh?"
"Do you fawncy Hi'd 'urt you, Bobbs, me hangel? Hi wouldn't 'arm you no more'n a wadge-dog would bark at a baby. Hi'll (hic) Hi'll protect you, Bobbs."
Floyd smiled at the cracksman's offer of patronage. But this time he thought it better not to seal the compact with a bumper.
"Not drink?" Dobbs' temper had changed again. "Won't drink and won't give me no mark of 'is confidence—"
"What is it you want, Dobbs? A confession?"
"Confession? Hi? Ho!" the cracksman laughed as if the joke were a rich one. He was far gone, as indeed any man might be after taking so many quarts of ale.
"Confession, ho, ho—wot do Hi want of a confession? Hi 'ad a natural curiosity to know 'ow you set it, and"—his voice assumed reproachful quavers—"a natural mortification to find that my pal (hic) wouldn't trust me."
"Well, the truth is, Dobbs—"
"Wot is the truth?"
"Is this house safe? Walls have ears, they say."
"Safeazherown (hic)."
"I'm afraid—couldn't I write it down—that waiter, you know—" Robert walked uneasily to the door, but the waiter was not eavesdropping.
"Waiter," Dobbs rung the bell and Johnnie appeared.
"Bring me pen and paper." They were brought with expedition.
"Zhall I 'old the lamp, Bobbs?"
"It's almost lightsome enough to see, if you draw up the curtains."
"Hi'll 'old the light, Bobbs."
"Steady, now, you'll drop it."
Dobbs staggered over behind Robert, with the lamp in his trembling hand and stood over the young man's shoulder while he wrote the following confession:
"When you pick a lady's pocket on a railway train next time, do it with your left hand, Mr. McCausl—"
Before he realized what was happening the lamp had been shattered against the opposite wall and he found himself forced to the floor, with a cold circle of steel at his temple.
"My mother has your flowers," said Shagarach. "She would be delighted if you would come to see her."
It was in response to this invitation that Emily had selected an appropriate dress from her modest wardrobe and kissed her mother good-by for the evening. She was at first not a little alarmed when a young man sidled up to her from behind and began uttering incoherent avowals of devotion, which not even her chilling glance and hastened step could check. Kennedy had disappeared for some time,—probably busy extricating himself from his Dove-Cote scrape,—and she had congratulated herself on good riddance of the lovesick manikin. But here he was, bolder and more nauseously enamored than before.
She felt like summoning a bystander to her aid, but as she was walking close to the edge of the sidewalk, with Kennedy on the very curbstone, this appeal for help was rendered unnecessary. A quick, firm shove with her brave little hands sent the shadow of a man topsy-turvy into the gutter, while Emily, with burning cheeks and quickened pulse, made on to the car corner.
An old Hebrew housemaid answered her ring and ushered her into the tiny parlor of the tiny house, none too large for even the three persons who occupied it—and three is the smallest number that can be called a family. It need not be said that Emily was all a-flutter with the privilege of admission to the great lawyer's private acquaintance and that she cast a curious glance upon the surroundings. There was something oriental about them, even to the barely perceptible odor of musk in the air.
The carpet was clocked in a Turkish pattern, though the bough birds woven in the corners suggested that it came from one of the countries further east, where the shah, not the sultan, rules under Allah, and the admonitions of the prophet are less literally observed. The lamp was a silver fantasy, brazed with arabesques in gold, and the furniture in its scroll-work and the embroideries, like gossamer, all whispered of a taste exotic and luxurious.
Yet the articles were few and severely disposed in their places. A bust of Swedenborg over a massively carved bookcase, filled with volumes of royal exterior, attracted Emily's eye. On the opposite wall were several shelves, crowded with plainer books, as tattered and dingy as a schoolboy's algebra. A portrait of Spinoza reclined on an easel, and a well-thumbed Marcus Aurelius, of pocket size, with flexible covers, lay face down and open on the table. It was a far cry from the Swedish mystic to the imperial stoic of Rome.
"You are welcome, Miss Barlow, to my home," exclaimed Shagarach, extending his hand and sunning her with his great warm eyes.
"Pardon my curiosity. I am a woman and a book-lover," said Emily, who had been standing before Shagarach's gorgeous volumes when he crossed the threshold.
"They are not secreted from those who can handle them without danger," answered the lawyer, opening the bookcase.
"I call them my meeting of the masters."
Emily marveled at the range and judgment of the selection. Here were Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe in the original tongues, which her own studies just enabled her to distinguish one from the other; the Koran, the Talmud, the Zend-Avesta; Camoens, Luis de Leon and a dozen others from the hidalgo land; Maimonides and all the great mediaeval Hebrews; Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge—whatever richest remnants remain from the cultured nations of Europe and western Asia. What rare powers of acquisition, what hermit-like seclusion from the busy world, were implied in the ability to read and enjoy these treasures!
"And which are your especial favorites?" asked Emily.
"The Persian poets," answered Shagarach, pointing to the uppermost shelf, where the titles were in characters she could not read, resembling odd curves of beauty and flourishes of a draughtsman's pen. "Firdusi, the weaver of the magic carpet, who spurned back the treasure-laden caravan of the shah; Sadi, the nightingale of a thousand songs, planter of the rose garden and the garden of trees; Hafiz, the sugar-lipped dervish of Shiraz, whose couplets are appealed to as oracles by the simple, and whose legion of commentators surround him like the stars clustering around the orb of the moon."
Was this the criminal lawyer, the granite-lipped reasoner of the immobile forehead, forever pacing to and fro, folding his arms in solution of problems?
The memory of the barren law office was vivid upon her, and of the austere occupant, the last being in the world from whom dithyrambics would be expected. She found it hard to reconcile the task-ridden Shagarach with this praiser of Firdusi, the half-fabulous minstrel who had loved to recline on silken divans, smothered with roses and waited upon by his hundred slaves.
"Inspect them," said Shagarach. Emily reached for the Persian shelf. The books stuck a little, and when they came away she was surprised to find that they were attached together in sets of five; still more surprised when she turned them over and saw a fine chain of steel running from edge to edge through the covers, just where the clasp of an album fits, and meeting again in an exquisite padlock at the middle volume. All this splendor of beauty and thought was sealed as effectively as if the pages had been bathed in glue.
"The keys to the padlock?" she looked interrogatively. "There is only one," said Shagarach, a divine smile for the first time breaking the set curve of his lips. "It fits them all, but the dragon is jealous of its possession. My mother, Miss Barlow."
The lady who had entered approached Emily and greeted her warmly.
"My son said you were beautiful," she said.
Emily blushed. She was usually disconcerted by praise, but somehow the entrance of the mother put her more at her ease. Standing beside her son, the lady appeared to be taller than he, though this may have been more in looks than in inches, since the standard of stature for women is lower. The resemblance between them was marked. It was from her that the son inherited his beauty, for she must have been queenly in her maiden-hood. Even now her coloring was autumnally perfect, the rich dark skin, oxidizing like an old painting, having gained in mellowness a part of what it had lost in brilliancy.
"We live plainly, you see," she said, speaking with a strong accent, as if she had learned our stubborn language too late in life ever to master it.
"I admire your furnishings," answered Emily, "but your library amazes me most of all."
The son and mother exchanged a sparkling glance, while Shagarach replaced the Persian set on its shelf. But he did not explain the mystery of his padlocked treasures.
"Miss Barlow has been wondering at my taste in the poets," he said, diverting the conversation a little. "She forgets, perhaps, that we are orientals, a long way back. And still in my dreams at times I feel the rocking rhythm of the camel ride and the winged bulls of the Assyrians seem to haunt me like familiar sights."
All at once Emily remembered that she had often divined a more emotional and mystical side to the criminal lawyer.
And then in a flash many things became clear to her—Shagarach's constant repression of emotion, his frugality and tireless toil, his shutting out of the gypsy violinist's strain that day when she brought him the news of Bertha—all these told of some great resignation, the ruthless division of a dual nature and the discarding of one part, perhaps the better beloved, and the abandonment with that resignation of almost all that was personal to him in life—leaving only the restlessly energizing intellect, the ethical strenuousness as of a modern Isaiah, the filial love and these sealed mementos of a more congenial but probably less successful past.
"And this is Spinoza—the greatest of our race," added Shagarach. "Not the least refined of human faces."
"My ancestors were his kinsmen," added the mother, not without pride. "We were Spanish once and my son can claim the title of count in Spain if he chose—"
"And many a castle in that country besides," added the son, smiling the rare, sweet smile which he reserved for this privacy of his home.
"But my mother speaks the truth, Miss Barlow. She is an accurate historian, as you see. An ancestor of mine rose to power in the court of Ferdinand and left his wealth to two sons. The elder, bearer of the title, chose exile when our people were harried from Spain. The younger, by apostatizing, succeeded to his name and property, and the heirs of that brother still survive in Valencia. That makes us feel for Spinoza, who was also an exile—and a heretic," he concluded, in a lower tone.
"This way, Miss Barlow," the mother led Emily through portieres into a rear room, not unlike the parlor in its furnishings. "Here are the flowers which you were so good, so thoughtful, to send. I have changed the water twice every day, and last night put them out to drink in the rain, for they love the rain from heaven, it is manna to them." The mother fondled them as if they were living things, and gave them to Emily to smell. They were indeed wonderfully fresh, considering the number of days they had been kept.
Shagarach stepped to the cleft in the portieres and excused himself to answer a ring at the doorbell. Emily was left chatting alone in the dim light with his mother. From flowers to other subjects of feminine interest the transition was easy, and the old lady's vivacity, strong sense and above all her warmth of heart made the minutes pass delightfully for the sensitive young girl. She had not been conscious of any unusual merit in offering Shagarach a simple bouquet, yet it had deeply touched the lonely son and his devoted mother, both of whom seemed to regard her now with that intensity of friendship which the Arab lavishes upon the stranger whom he admits to his hospitality.
It was while they were alone in the rear chamber, and Shagarach was conversing in low tones with the visitor behind the drawn portieres—probably a client calling in the evening—that Emily's attention was called to a tapping noise which seemed to come from the window. She thought it best not to speak of it, though it continued for almost a minute. Besides, she remembered having often arisen in the night to investigate the origin of just such a tapping, and lifted the sash to find nothing and hear nothing, not even a departing sparrow, who, perched on the sill, might have been feeling his way along the transparent glass. Shagarach's mother was talking herself at the time and probably the sound of her voice obscured the interruption.
"Is it not pleasanter in here, mother?" Shagarach had thrown the portieres aside and stood again in the cleft, widening it for the ladies to pass. His visitor had been dismissed, but it was a few moments before he recovered his earlier manner. By a graduated ascent, however, his conversation rose to its former glow of enthusiasm, and Emily could not help contrasting its richness and elasticity with the sententiousness, the compressed statement, bare of all accessories, which characterized him when at his desk in the office. Probably this was the style he had used in addressing his caller, and the transition to and fro was not easy.
"'Try how the life of a good man suits thee,'" Shagarach began reading from his Marcus Aurelius; "'the life of him who is satisfied with his portion out of the whole and satisfied with his own just acts and benevolent disposition.' That is the advice I gave to my visitor and charged him nothing for it."
"It was Simon Rabofsky's voice?" asked the mother keenly.
"Yes," answered Shagarach.
"Then you did wrong. You should have charged him double. He is a rogue."
"For the emperor's wisdom?" smiled Shagarach.
"What mischief is he about?"
"He wishes to sell Mrs. Arnold's jewels. It is his legal right, since she has defaulted in the payment, but I have counseled a postponement of its exercise."
"And will he postpone it?" asked Emily, sympathetically.
"He? My dear, you do not know him," said the mother. "He is of the tribe of Aaron, who worshiped the golden calf."
Emily wondered if some of the proud Spanish blood had not become mingled with the Hebrew in her veins. Scorn of petty avarice was betrayed in every line of her noble face. Yet Emily felt sure that it was she who had called Shagarach away from the companionship of the Persian poets and impelled him to write his signet on the living world in letters of self-assertion and honorable achievement.
"What tainted people you have to deal with!" she exclaimed, unconsciously continuing her vein of silent thought. "I should crave another environment, I think."
"Your Christ lived with sinners and publicans. And they are not all tainted, my dear," added the mother, smiling so that Emily might know whom she meant to except. "There is so much in common between my son and Mr. Floyd. Both proud, serious, too serious, I tell him, and both true Castilians in honor. But the one looked about wisely and found him a—lady; and the other—"
"The other will grow gray by his good mother's side, I fear," said Shagarach, gently kissing the laughing and delighted old lady. Emily smiled herself to see John Davidson's sphinx, whose reticence outside was indeed a mask of stone, unbending thus to the frankness and simplicity of a child. The mother's ways were more demonstrative, but with deep reserves of dignity.
"But you are right, Miss Barlow. The lawyer's profession is one shade more distasteful than the surgeon's, for he handles the moral sores of humanity."
"Handles them to cure them," cried Emily, shifting about, like a true woman.
"Possibly. Though for my own part I agree with those who hold that the law perpetrates no less wickedness than it punishes—were it not that it prevents more than it perpetrates," he added, smiling, "we should live in a very troublesome world. It is a profession which uses the conscience as a whetstone upon which to sharpen the intellect. I attribute the venality of our congress and legislatures partly to the disproportion among them of lawyers."
"But surely there are exceptions?"
"In the criminal courts," answered Shagarach. Emily asked herself if this was Shagarach's destiny, to continue as a criminal lawyer. As if in answer to her question, he added:
"There alone one can feel at all times that he is either protecting the innocent or punishing the guilty. This is my working library," he pointed to the thumbed volumes on the shelves. Emily noticed that most of them were treatises on psychology, the old and the new.
"I do not carry the keys for those," said his mother, gayly.
"Light to illuminate our case," Shagarach took down one of the books. "By the way, my correspondent, Mr. Skull-and-Crossbones, has honored me again."
The two ladies started and the mother seized her son by the arm.
"A black-edged letter, apprising me that I am marked and doomed." Just then Emily heard the strange tapping that had startled her before. It came from the window of the front parlor this time. She shuddered in a sudden terror and drew closer to Mrs. Shagarach. The old lady had heard the sound and blanched a little, but her voice was firm when she spoke:
"Is that a mouse in the wainscoting, my son?"
"I thought it was a tapping at the window, mother."
"Go and look. There may be a stranger in the yard."
Shagarach raised the curtain and looked out, then opened the window. The cool night air flowed in and heightened Emily's tremors so that the elder lady took pity on her.
"There is no one in sight, mother, but I will put on my hat and go out the back door."
In a few minutes Shagarach returned by the street entrance.
"I thought I heard footsteps in the passageway and followed them around, but there is no one. The yard is empty."
"I will inform the policeman to-morrow," said his mother. "There are many loiterers about in these bad times. And you should acquaint them with the letter you received."
"I have done so, mother. I have considered it strange," he added, turning toward Emily, "that the parties opposed to us in the Floyd case should resort to murder. It is a confession of guilt."
"If they are caught."
"Murder will out. Moreover, I do not work alone. I have engaged the assistance of—whom do you think?"
"Of Mr. McCausland," said the mother, breaking in. "It was my suggestion."
"McCausland investigating Harry Arnold!" exclaimed Emily.
"Is it not amusing? But he will not allow that Arnold is at all open to suspicion, and of course I have not laid all my evidence before him."
"But surely the letters are connected with our case, and who else could it be?"
Since the finding of the glove and the testimony of the three gamins Emily was coming around to Shagarach's view of Harry Arnold's possible guilt and the attack on Robert's lawyer had aroused her sympathies so as almost if not quite to convince her.
"Mr. McCausland is very keen—a wonderful man—of deceptive exterior, but like the rest of us, he sometimes makes mistakes," said Shagarach. "His defect is that he uses the logical method only and ignores the psychological. It is necessary first to find out if the accused is capable of the crime. I first became sure of Robert Floyd's innocence when I saw him through the cell-bars of the jail. He is incapable of the crime."
"My son so admires your lover," added Mrs. Shagarach.
"These other friends of mine," continued her son, taking down the thumbed volume which he had put back when the tapping startled them, "commit the opposite error. They are strictly physiological. They predict too much from a man's physical peculiarities."
The book he opened for Emily was a treatment on criminology, illustrated with villainous heads in profile and full face. It was in Italian, so Shagarach exchanged it for another.
"Behold the brands of the true criminal—'enormous zygomae,' 'ear lobes attached to the cheek,' 'spatulate fingernails——'"
"That takes in Mr. McCausland," said Emily, roguishly. She had got over her fright by this time and the allusion to spatulate fingernails recalled the whole train of events which had ended in the inspector's discomfiture.
"The refutation of such theorists," said Shagarach, "is simple. We need only point to the fact that the greatest crimes are committed by men who are not professional criminals at all and who do not belong to the criminal type."
"Like this man," said the mother, going to a closet at one side and drawing forth a bundle of photographs. One of them she showed to Emily. It was Harry Arnold, bold and handsome, with the shaggy cape coat thrown carelessly over his shoulders.
"Has he enormous zygomae, ear-lobes attached to his cheek?" she asked.
"I wish I could see his fingernails," laughed Emily.
"Arnold's face in repose does not show much capacity for evil. But it lights up badly. I have seen him crossed and in passion."
"I think he looks as if he were veined of evil and good," said Emily frankly, studying the portrait long, as she loved to do. She had seen Harry once when he was at his best. Besides, her service in the photograph studio had made her something of a physiognomist, too, though not, of course, such a soul-reader as Shagarach.
"His crimes are of the preventable order and therefore the more culpable. There are men born to crime, as the theorists argue; others driven to crime. For both of these classes it is hardly more than a misplaced emphasis, a wrong direction of energies."
"Here is another volume—I am showing you all my workshop. Does it fatigue you?"
"Nothing which helps to clear up the mystery is dull to me," answered Emily.
"This treatise deals with 'Incidental Homicide.' Rather legal than clinical. The cases are all parallel to ours. The indictment, by the way, has just been given out. The weakest count charges Robert Floyd with arson and murder in the second degree. The punishment for that is only imprisonment for life."
"Only! Robert says he would rather be hanged."
"Let him have no fear of either," said Mrs. Shagarach, cheerily.
"The newspapers tell us that the government offered much new evidence," said Shagarach.
"I should like to know what it was," cried Emily, eagerly.
"So should I. Ordinarily, the grand-jury room is leaky enough, but Mr. McCausland, who is the government in this case, appears to have found a way to seal it hermetically."
"Perhaps he padlocked the jurors' lips," suggested Emily, whereat all three were merry.
From time to time during the conversation relapses of the old shudder had come back to Emily, though the tapping had utterly ceased since Shagarach investigated the yard. He had left the curtain half-raised, so that any one approaching the window would be visible from within. It was just at this moment that she happened to change her seat, bringing her face around to the darkened window. Before the others could catch her, she had risen, pointed to the window and fallen to the floor with a terrified shriek.
Shagarach started to raise her, but the terrible detonation of a pistol rung out, sacrilegiously invading their quietude. Then all was darkness, a noise of crashing glass telling that the lamp had been shattered and extinguished. Another report followed and another. Mrs. Shagarach, trembling, heard her son quickly crossing to the window. The panes seemed to be broken, and there were sounds of a scuffle, mingled with a gnashing of teeth and growls more animal than human. Suddenly, with a ripping sound, the scuffle ceased, and rapid footsteps were heard pattering away. Then her son spoke to her in the loud, firm voice which he used in all practical affairs.
"Light the little lamp, mother. It is safe now. There are matches on the mantel."
"Are you hurt, Meyer?" she asked, anxiously, while lighting the lamp.
"A little," he answered.
"You were shot, my son?" she cried, embracing him.
"No. Let us revive Miss Barlow. Some water, Rachel," he said to the old servant who had come to the door.
When Emily came to she found Mrs. Shagarach sponging her forehead, while her son was washing his hands in a basin of bloody water.
"Wrap the cotton around them quickly, Rachel," he was saying. "I must notify the police."
"Meyer, it is not safe."
Emily heard the mother protesting, then swooned again. When full consciousness returned the lawyer was gone and the three women were alone in the room. Rachel began picking up the fragments of the lamp. Only its chimney and globe had been broken, the metal being still intact. The windowpanes showed great ragged holes, which explained the laceration of Shagarach's hands.
"Poor lady," cried the mother. "This is ill treatment we give you. But we are not to blame. It is the wicked enemies who are pursuing us all—your lover and my son." With terms of endearment she petted the weak girl back into a coherent understanding of her position. But every now and then the remembrance of something would cause her to shudder again visibly; whereat the elder lady would renew her caresses.
"I have notified the policeman. That was the best I could do," said Shagarach, re-entering. He looked extremely grave. It was a narrow escape for one or more of the three. "This is all I have to identify him by. It was detached in the struggle."
He laid a common coat button down on the table, with a piece of cloth adhering.
"That face! Who could ever forget it?" cried Emily.
"You saw him, then?" asked son and the mother in one breath.
"Shall I call it 'him'? Was it a man?" answered Emily. "Rather a monster, no more than half-human."
"It had the form of a man," said Shagarach, "as I felt it through the glass."
Rachel was busy bandaging his cuts with plaster during this conversation, but they bled through, calling for the surgeon's thread.
"But it snarled like a tiger," said the mother.
"Oh the wild, blue eyes! They were staring at me through the cleft of the draperies. And the demon leer, and the forehead, retreating like a frog's——"
"It is the oaf I passed on the pier," cried Shagarach, interrupting Emily. "We have found Mr. Skull-and-Crossbones."
"Oaf? What is oaf?" asked the mother.
"An idiot, a monster."
She shuddered.
"A man of that description cannot long elude search," said the son in a more hopeful tone.
"They are often very cunning," replied the mother.
"Can it be Harry Arnold would employ such an agent?" asked Emily, still trembling.
"Twice," said Shagarach, as if speaking to himself. "A cap and a button. Men have been captured on slighter clews."
"You will give the button to Mr. McCausland," said the mother.