"Yes; since it fits with the cap."
"Maybe he will help you to bring Harry Arnold to justice."
"And so to acquit Robert Floyd," said Shagarach, smiling to cheer his guest.
The mention of her lover restored the wilted girl, who was brave enough when there was anything definite to be done. Shagarach showed her the book on "Arson" which he had been holding when the first shot was fired. The bullet had pierced it on its career toward the lamp.
"The bullets will be evidence also," he said, "and I will measure the footprints before the rain comes down and washes them away."
"You will wish to go home, poor child," said Mrs. Shagarach to Emily. "Not yet, but soon, when you are stronger. Rachel!"
The soothing words of the mother warmed Emily quite as much as the wine which Rachel brought. Meanwhile two policemen entered and began to examine the premises. Shagarach visited the yard in their company and soon returned with a tape measure and a paper block, on which he had recorded the lengths of the footprints.
He was assiduous in his regrets and inquiries toward Emily and insisted on accompanying her home in a carriage, which the mother, however, would not allow them to enter until she had exacted from her visitor a promise that she would come again on an appointed evening, and pressed upon her in true oriental fashion a certain rose-embroidered gossamer scarf for which Emily had expressed admiration.
At her own door the sweet girl heard Shagarach order the hackman to drive to Dr. Lund's, and she guessed that his cuts would be somewhat worse for the delay in stitching them. That night she saw gorgon faces leering in at her window, and her dreams were of new-moon scimiters and the rocking of the camel ride.
"Put your wrists together!"
The voice was totally different from Dobbs' whine; a strong, deep register, like a ledge of the basal rock peeping out from a smiling meadow. For the first time Robert felt the veiled strength which resided in the detective's character. There was no option but to obey.
"Pull up the curtains, Johnnie."
The servant had been attracted by the crash of the lamp. A faint stream of daylight entered the chamber, and the noises of the city could be heard in the distance. McCausland's face seemed to have altered in every line.
"Get a hack! Jump into those shoes!" He tossed a curt order right and left, one for Johnnie, the other for Robert.
"To the county jail," was his direction to the hack driver. Robert wondered at this, but he sat back smiling and said nothing during all the ride.
"Here's your prisoner," said McCausland when they arrived. It was not yet 6 o'clock, but the sheriff was up and showed no great surprise. Robert wondered at this again and his amazement was not abated when they assigned him to his original cell in murderers' row. However, the change was to his liking, for the surroundings were less presageful of permanency.
"You missed your vocation as a character actor," was his parting shot at McCausland.
It is easy to imagine the dismay in the prison that morning when the escape was discovered. Col. Mainwaring was a very different man from Warden Tapp, and for a time it looked as though McCausland might lose his badge. But when he showed an order from the sheriff empowering him to bring the body of Robert Floyd from the state prison back to the county jail, which had now been put in repair, Col. Mainwaring saw a light; and when McCausland pointed out that he had laid his finger precisely on certain weaknesses of the bastile, frequently suggested without avail to Tapp, the new warden thanked him pleasantly.
The story at first was given to the public that Inspector McCausland had captured the fugitive, Robert Floyd, and for a time not only did the detective's cap wear a bright new feather but all the credit of Robert's conduct during the riot was canceled by this outbreak, which was construed as a confession of guilt. But of course the truth leaked out, and the failure of his "nest-egg game," with its brilliant but desperate climax, was made the occasion of much chaffing to the contriver.
"Has Bill Dobbs been taken yet?" a brother-in-buttons would ask him; and the two lovers had many a good laugh over the game which they had played and won. For the first time since the great shadow fell across them they were as happy and hopeful as lovers should be, and for several days little smiles of reminiscence would creep into the corners of Emily's lips while she was touching out the blemishes in some negative destined to pass from young Amaryllis to her Strephon or old Darby to his Joan.
Meanwhile Shagarach, too, was interesting himself in the study of photographs.
"Have they all been returned?" he asked Aronson one morning.
"All but Meester Davidson's."
"And none of the neighbors saw Arnold coming out?"
"They all shake their heads and say no, they don't know that face."
"Very well. Jacob may put them in his desk. We shall hardly need them again. Go over to the second session and answer for me in the Morrow case. I am expecting Mr. McCausland."
"Speak of angels," said the inspector, entering cordially. "You know the rest of the saying."
"Good-morning. Be seated."
It did not escape even modest Saul Aronson what a contrast the antagonists made, sitting with the table between them. McCausland had, apparently, not glanced around with more than casual interest, yet, if blindfolded then and there and put to the test, he could have surprised those who did not know him with the minute and copious inventory of the office, not excluding its occupants, which this glance had furnished him. It was this, with his almost infallible memory, which made him so formidable an opponent at whist. Shagarach was hardly his equal in mere perception, perhaps not his superior in analysis, when the subject was within McCausland's range. His advantage lay, if anywhere, as he had said himself, in his deeper insight into the human soul, in his psychological reach.
"Sorry I was out when you called the other day," said McCausland. "I've been looking up your matter."
"With what result?"
"These clippings may interest you."
Shagarach glanced rapidly over the newspaper scraps.
"The Broadbane murder—I remember that well."
"It occurred about a week before your first attack. You remember Broadbane lured the young woman to a lonely bridge in his carriage and threw her into the river."
"The circumstances were similar to my adventure. The second item is strange to me."
"It's from a New York paper, dated July 28—the very day before your second attack. The circumstances are closely similar this time again. A jealous husband shot his wife through the window of her room."
"Our monster reads, then."
"He is a lunatic (puff)," said McCausland, who had lighted his invariable cigar.
"You believe so?"
"The evidence convinces me. They have an itch to imitate, as you are aware. This man is a victim of homicidal mania, of which you have unfortunately become the object (puff)."
"Why Shagarach and not another?"
"Newspaper notoriety. You should see my crop of cranks. This particular crack-brain has aimed his illusion at you. We must strait-jacket him before it goes further."
"You expect, then, to have him soon?"
"Sooner or later (puff). Let us know if you hear anything. I see you were hurrying off as I came in. Good-day."
McCausland had been deputed to investigate the attacks on Shagarach, because they connected themselves so manifestly, through the threatening letters, with the Floyd case, which he was handling. Neither he nor Shagarach had objected to this opportunity to meet and possibly force each other's hands a little.
"I shall be in the Criminal Court, second session, Jacob. Remain here till Mr. Aronson comes." Shagarach was gone and Jacob left alone to his meditations.
To judge from his expression, they were never very pleasant. Perhaps, like Job of old, he daringly questioned the power behind human destiny, why he showers cleverness and attraction on one boy of 14, while another is afflicted with a manner of nose preposterous, conspicuous and undistinguishable, to carry which is a burden. That godlike young man in the photograph, how he would like to be as handsome as he! Was there no way to attain it? He took the bundle of photographs out of his drawer and laid them on his desk to study and admire.
While thus engaged the jingle of harness outside attracted him. He knew by the sound that the carriage had stopped before his door. It wasn't often that equipages, sprinkling sleigh-bell music in their course, paused at the door of the dingy old business building. So Jacob became interested enough to approach the window of the inner office languidly and peep down into the street.
There stood a covered black carriage, as polished as a mirror, with a buff-liveried coachman holding the reins. His seat was perched so high that his legs made one straight, unbending line to the footrest, and his back was as vertical as a carpenter's plummet. Mrs. Arnold was not careless of these niceties. It would have shocked her sense of the fitness of things almost as much to publish the fact that her coachman had knees, as if her own lorgnette should stray from the proscenium box higher than the first balcony—an impropriety which had happened only once to her knowledge, and that by inadvertence, on an opera night.
"This is Mr. Shagarach's office, I believe," said the grand lady to Jacob.
"Yes'm," he mumbled, abashed.
"He is out, I perceive. Does he return soon?"
"No'm."
"About when could I see him if I should wait?"
"He is trying a case'm, over in the second court'm, criminal session," answered Jacob, mixing things badly in his confusion.
"Couldn't you send for him?"
"Mr. Aronson will be here soon. Perhaps he would know."
"I will wait a few minutes," said the lady, sitting down with hauteur in the cushioned chair which Jacob pushed toward her. After a spell of silence she addressed him again in a gentler tone:
"What is your name, little boy?" she asked.
"Jacob," he answered. Servants and office boys grow to think of themselves as having only one name.
"Jacob. That is a very old and dignified name. Are you Mr. Shagarach's clerk?"
"No'm."
"His errand boy, then?"
"Yes'm."
"It's too bad you had to leave school so young. I suppose you give all you earn to your mother?"
"Yes'm."
"Haven't you any father?"
"No'm."
Jacob thought he had never met such a kind lady. How sympathetic she seemed and was it not gracious of her to inquire about his father and mother? How much more agreeable it was to deal with real ladies and real gentlemen who never, never would call vulgar names. He would have given almost half his week's spending money to oblige this sweet-tongued lady then, and his only regret was that he could think of no better answer to her questions than "Yes'm" and "No'm."
"If you are an errand boy perhaps you could do a little errand for me," said the lady sweetly after a pause.
"Yes'm," answered Jacob, putting a world of eagerness into the word.
"You are sure you can do errands and not make a mistake?"
"No'm—yes'm," he replied, a little puzzled as to which of the two words which seemed to constitute his whole vocabulary fitted into his meaning here.
"Then, perhaps, I will let you take this for me."
She drew out the tiniest, daintiest purse Jacob's eyes had ever beheld, and, opening its clasp, gingerly fingered forth a bill.
"I want very much to have this changed. Mr. Shagarach will not be back immediately, you say?"
"No'm."
"Then perhaps you can spare a moment to run down to the corner and get some silver for this."
"They'll change it upstairs," said Jacob, at last finding his voice.
"Upstairs? Very well, you may take it upstairs and bring me back small silver, Jacob."
With a skip of elation Jacob mounted the stairs. There was a little delay in the mission, to which he had repaired. When he came downstairs, the silver clutched in his hand, his heart rose to his mouth at discovering that the office was empty. To think that he had kept the kind lady waiting so long! Probably she had become disgusted with him. He stood a moment in perplexity. Then glancing at his own desk, he opened his mouth in horror.
"My pictures!" cried Jacob. The photographs were gone.
If there was one being that Jacob reverenced and feared it was his master. To feel now that he had betrayed him at the prompting of a grand lady, who deceived him with honeyed words and was undoubtedly one of his master's enemies—how could he ever face Shagarach again?
"My pictures!" he cried a second time, running into the entry. But here at the head of the stairs a dubitation seized him. Shrill and re-echoing through the narrow passage came the flute-like warble which Jacob knew only too well. It was the precursor of torment for him. True, the Whistler himself had almost ceased to pick on the office boy and even taken him under his wing of late, but Turkey Fenton and Toot Watts were as implacable as inquisitors turning a heretic on a lukewarm gridiron.
Turkey's tyranny was of the grosser order, as became an urchin who in Jacob's presence had swallowed a whole banana, skin and all. Toot's nature was subtle and spiderlike. He possessed the enviable distinction of being able to wag his ears, and his devices of torture were correspondingly refined and ingenious. During the last visit of the boys he had played a small mirror into Jacob's eyes all the while behind Shagarach's back, and it wasn't until they were going out that Jacob discovered why he had been dazzled almost to blindness.
If he took the stair route down he would be stopped and teased and the wicked lady would get away. Perhaps she was already gone—gone with the photographs which should have been securely locked in his drawer. Why had he ever taken them out?
The emergency was desperate and Jacob met it heroically. Rushing to Shagarach's window, he saw the grand lady just crossing the sidewalk and waving her parasol to the coachman. In a moment she would be ensconced on the cushions within and the disaster would be beyond remedy. The window was open, and there was a little piazza outside. Jacob stepped out and shouted. The lady looked up and hastened her pace. Leading down to the first story from the piazza was a flight of steps, and from the first story down to within twelve feet of the ground, another—an old-fashioned fire-escape.
Down these steps Jacob scrambled, scratching his hands and nearly losing his balance, to the first piazza and thence to the lowermost round, where the awful fall of twelve feet checked him. But the sight of the coachman mounting his box nerved his courage and he released his hands. For a moment he felt dizzy. But the horses were already started. With a flying leap he caught the tailboard in his hand, and after being dragged along with great giraffe-like bounds for nearly a block managed to draw himself up to something like a sitting position.
There, through an eye-shaped dead-light in the back of the carriage he obtained a dim view of its occupant. His master's stolen pictures were in her hand. What was she kissing them for—and crying? But Jacob was determined to have no pity upon her. He had just resolved to call out and demand her attention, when the crack of a lash made him turn and his lip began to tingle. The coachman had discovered his unlawful presence on the tailboard and had reached him with just the tip end of his whip.
Probably he had meant only to frighten the lad. If so, he had thoroughly succeeded. Again the whip curled backward over the coachman's shoulder and snapped like a pistol shot close to Jacob's ear. To add to his discomfort a great St. Bernard, which had been running under the carriage, had become aware of his intrusion, and began rearing at him in a manner more alarming than dangerous, to be sure, but sufficient to make a peaceable lad tremble. Between the whip and the dog's teeth his ride had begun to be worse torture than the gantlet of the stairway, flanked by the three gamins, would have been, when the ordeal was brought to a sudden end by the stopping of the carriage at a great brick railroad station.
Jacob's time had come. Disregarding the St. Bernard, he jumped down and stood on the sidewalk. The dog growled and the coachman spoke to him roughly as he opened the door with practiced alacrity for his mistress. But Jacob was now within his legal rights.
"I want my pictures," he said, catching the grand lady by the arm. Mrs. Arnold looked down at him with amazement not unmingled with fear. It was the same stupid little boy she had bribed to go upstairs in the office where Harry's photographs had been lying—for no good purpose, her instincts told her.
"What does this little ragamuffin say?" she asked.
"I want my photographs," said Jacob, doggedly, as the coachman shoved him aside. He ran after Mrs. Arnold, the tears in his eyes, and clung to her dress. A scene was imminent. The policeman approached, doubtless to render assistance to the lady in distress. But Mrs. Arnold did not desire his assistance just then. With a quick motion she removed a parcel from her pocket and placed it in Jacob's hands.
"Take back your things, then, and don't bother me," she said, with a flushed face.
Jacob gloated on his recovered treasures. Then his hands likewise sought his trousers pocket, and he jingled a handful of silver into Mrs. Arnold's hand.
"Take the money, Joseph," she said to the coachman. "These small storekeepers are so ill-mannered."
The policeman gave Jacob a hard look as he passed him, but the office boy was obliviously counting his pictures.
When he returned to the office the gamins were gone and Aronson was there alone. To Aronson's question where he had been, Jacob, not being an imaginative boy, gave an answer which was strictly truthful, whereupon Aronson, not being a humorous young man (for such are always grave), laughed immoderately, and proposed that the fire escape henceforth be known as Jacob's ladder.
"Mother, my friend, Miss March."
Mrs. Arnold came forward on the rose-embroidered veranda. An old look crept into her face. Her brow darkened. Her heart froze. But love conquered jealousy, and for Harry's sake she took both hands of the young woman whom she knew he loved, and smiled.
"And Mr. Tristram March."
"Welcome to Hillsborough. Will you not come inside?"
"Let's sit on the veranda," said Harry, throwing himself on a seat. "It's cooler here."
The others became seated and submitted their foreheads to the cool caresses of the breeze.
"I enjoy your road from the station so much, Mrs. Arnold. It winds like a river all the way," said Tristram March.
"A narrow river, I fear, and rough in parts," answered the lady.
"Do you know I like a soft country road. It seems padded for the horse's hoofs," said Miss March.
"Rosalie is a philanthropist, you know. She is vice-president—one of the vice-presidents—I believe there are nineteen—of the ladies' league for the abolition of race dissension in the south by the universal whitewashing of negroes."
"Mrs. Arnold knows better than to believe that."
"A chimerical plan, I should call it," said Mrs. Arnold.
"Not at all," added Tristram. "Most scientific. The whitewash is indelible. All charity fads must be scientific nowadays."
"Brother Tristram plays the cynic, Mrs. Arnold," said Rosalie. "But he has an excellent heart of his own."
"It is a burned-out crater," said Tristram, solemnly, at which Harry burst into a laugh and the sister smiled.
Watching her furtively, Mrs. Arnold saw that she was as exquisite a masterpiece as nature had ever put forth. Her figure was virginal and full; her manner, auroral; her age, Hebe's, the imperceptible poise of the ascending ball before it begins to descend, which in woman is earlier by a decade than in man; her coloring, a mixture of the wild rose and gold. Art seconded nature; she was faultlessly dressed. In that instant of inspection the mother knew that her son's heart had been weaned from her forever. She had always felt that it would be a blonde woman. Are they charged with opposite magnetisms from northern and southern poles, that they attract each other so, the dark type and the fair?
"Will you never be serious, Tristram?" cried Rosalie.
"Well, dear, the crater has humming-birds' nests built along its inner sides, like the old volcano of Chocorua, and the little winged jewels flash out sometimes and land in Sister Rosalie's lap."
"What is this?"
"You prefer rubies. I picked those up at a sale in the city. Did you ever meet such stones—perfect bulbs?"
"How can I ever rebuke you again?"
"Then I needn't try to be serious?"
"Oh, if it's a bribe——"
"Look at the name on the plate behind—'Alice.'"
"That will have to be changed," said Harry, coming nearer to glance at the brooch. "Why!" he snatched at the jewels, but caught himself in time. His mother looked at him in an eloquent appeal for silence.
"Where did you get them?" he asked.
"Rabofsky. An old bric-a-brac man. Why, do you fancy they're stolen?"
"Oh, no. I congratulate your sister. The name made me start. It is my mother's, you know."
"I was Alice Brewster," said Mrs. Arnold.
"Speaking of philanthropists, Rosalie," said Tristram, to change the subject, "how did you like the noble Earl of Marmouth?"
"The most overbearing person."
"With the courtesy of a snapping-turtle," said Tristram.
"And the humor of a comic valentine," added Harry.
"Still there is something grand about the title of earl," said Mrs. Arnold, who chose to forget that the original Brewster of Lynn was a yeoman.
"Mme. Violet interested me more," said Rosalie. "Rumor is linking their names, you know. I feel that she and I might become friends."
"She has just the saving spark of deviltry that you lack, Rosalie."
"It isn't every brother who can call his sister an angel so happily," said Mrs. Arnold.
"Nothing was farther from his thoughts than to compliment me, Mrs. Arnold. You should hear him abuse me in private. I am a philistine, a prude. But I grow accustomed to his taunts."
"Dear Rosalie, you are only not esthetic because you are so divinely moral. Just think, she objects to my marble cupids, that they are not ashamed of their innocence."
"Surely that is going far," interposed Harry, who had long been silent. "The modeling was capital. Most little cupids are just doughy duplicates of each other. But yours have character—baby-face wisdom—Puck and Ariel linking arms."
"Say two Pucks, Harry, or Rosalie will moralize. Ariel was a wicked little sprite. He used to go on bats."
Rosalie lifted a finger of reproof.
"But from my standpoint a dash of wickedness is just the sine qua non in art. How fascinating the Inferno is! And how tame the Paradiso! In art, do I say? In religion itself? What the horizon line is to the landscape—a rare pageant you have before you, Mrs. Arnold—such is the fall in the garden to the faith of our fathers."
"Do you mean that it separates earth from heaven?" laughed Harry.
"You would think, to hear this grumbler, it was his strait-laced sister and not his own laziness that prevented him from—" Rosalie hesitated.
"From amounting to something. Say it out. Ah, Rosalie, you have indeed achieved. Your Rosalind is divine, Carp says—and surely Carp knows."
"And Portia," added Harry.
"While my medallions——"
"Would be glorious if they were ever finished. But come," continued Harry, "I must dress for my wager. Where's Indigo?"
"He is about the house, Harry."
"What a name! Your valet, I suppose?" asked Tristram.
"And secretary. That is, he answers my duns."
"And so spares you the blues?"
"Punning again, Tristram," said Rosalie. "And you profess not to consider word-plays respectable."
"Right, always right, Rosalie."
The party passed inside, and the Marches were escorted to their rooms, while Harry went in quest of Indigo. When he returned he found his mother alone in the front room. She seemed to be awaiting him.
"The rubies, mother?"
"They were mine. Sit down, Harry. I must speak with you."
Her manner was sad, and Harry thought in the strong light her face looked careworn.
"We are very much pressed for money—temporarily, of course. As soon as your uncle's estate is settled our income will be larger than ever; and even without that, Mr. Hodgkins has hopes——"
"But mother, you did not sell the rubies?"
"I have sold all my jewels, Harry."
Harry stood up. His mother gave him a long look. She had made this sacrifice for him. He understood and colored when he remembered the fate of the money his mother's rubies had brought. It was luck alone which had saved their name from a blot on the evening when McCausland raided the Dove-Cote.
"I must curtail my expenses," he said, rising to go.
"There is another matter, Harry," said his mother, still sadly but gently. "I saw Mr. McCausland in town today. He desires you to testify at your cousin's trial."
"Testify against Bob!"
"It is in relation to the will—the disinheriting of your cousin."
"Why, he admits that himself."
"He may deny it if his conviction hangs upon that point Mr. McCausland wishes to leave no weak link in the chain."
"Hang it, mother, I don't want to be mixed up in it. Think of the looks."
"All he wants is a word. You heard your cousin say he was disinherited under the will."
"Yes, that is—why, of course, I knew it. He told me at the jail that day."
"Then I will write to Mr. McCausland that your testimony covers that point——"
"No, but mother——"
Rosalie March re-entered at this moment. Her first glance was toward Harry and his toward her. Their thoughts had been traveling the same route and meeting half-way all during the talk on the veranda, when Harry was so unwontedly silent. Alas, he knew well that he was unfit even to look at her.
In their outward demeanor to each other he was embarrassed and she reserved. The religious difference seemed likely to be permanent. For Rosalie was a Catholic, the daughter of an eminent Maryland family, as historic and proud as the Brewsters and more wealthy than even the Arnolds. But this barrier between them only acted with the charm of a material fence over which or through which a rustic couple are plighting forbidden troth.
"All ready to win my wager," cried Tristram, following his sister in. He, also, had changed his attire, and looked very handsome in his curling Vandyke beard of the cut which artists affect.
"What wager is that?" asked Mrs. Arnold.
"We passed the river coming down, and I offered to canoe the rapids."
"And the river so low, Harry. It is rash."
"Would you have them set me down a boaster?" Harry was eager now. His mother knew "them" meant "her," and her heart yearned more and more to the son who was drifting away.
"Indigo!" he cried out the window to his valet.
"But the danger—was it not there the canoeist was drowned last year?" said his mother, anxiously.
"Hang the danger! It's the prospect of scraping the bottom off my new canoe that troubles me."
"Old age is privileged to prate, I suppose," said Mrs. Arnold, feebly attempting to smile.
"Cut the fingers off that lemon-colored mitten, Indigo, and get me some salve double quick. My oar blister's worse than ever."
Indigo sped up stairs for the scissors, and the party was soon on its way.
At the bridge Harry left them, proceeding alone to the boat-house, up-stream, while Indigo led the others to a rock below the rapids, where they were to witness the feat. To look at the long slope, nowhere steep, but white from end to end with foam, it did seem incredible that any craft could live through such a surge. The murmur was audible far away in the still countryside, and the air, even where the three onlookers stood, was moist with impalpable spray.
"Looks as though that wager was mine," said Tristram. "He might as well try to swim Niagara."
"Ought we not to have a rope in case of accident?" said Mrs. Arnold.
"By all means," cried Rosalie, and for an instant the two women were one in sympathy.
"Indigo," said Mrs. Arnold, "go over to Farmer Hedge's and procure a stout rope. If anything should happen——"
"Nothing will happen," said Indigo. But he obeyed her command, and departed in the direction of the nearest farmhouse. The moments were long drawn out with anxiety before he returned, until at last even Tristram's sallies could not draw a smile from the two ladies. So he coolly took out a pad of white paper, sharpened his pencil and sketched off the rapids.
"There he comes," cried Rosalie, peering up-stream.
"Harry!" murmured Mrs. Arnold, as her son rounded a bend of the river into view. Already he was coasting down without using his paddle. His brown arms rested on the handle before him and his muscles, seemingly relaxed, were tense for exertion.
A great log which had preceded him down had been whirled around like a chip and finally submerged, reappearing only in the clear water forty yards beyond. A similar fate surely awaited the light cockleshell which bore the beloved life.
As his canoe half-turned, Harry pushed his paddle into the water. Evidently it met a rock, for the prow righted at once and swept down a narrow channel where the rush was swiftest, but the foam seemed parted in two. Here again it caught, poised and spun around. It was fast on a ledge, and the young athlete was straining every sinew to push it off. While he was struggling in this peril, Indigo came down, staggering under a coil of thick rope.
"Indigo," said Mrs. Arnold, excitedly, "throw him the rope."
Indigo stood on the bank, but instead of obeying, ran farther down to a rock that jutted over the clear water where the rapids ended. On his way he heard the ladies shrieking.
"His oar is broken."
"But he has worked himself free," said Tristram, nonchalantly sketching. "He will win, confound it! Yet it's worth losing once to see that play of his right deltoid."
Harry's paddle had indeed broken in the last successful shove, but it was a double blade, and the half in his hand was used to good advantage. As he came sweeping down, his eyes intent on the prow before him, Tristram raised his hat and the ladies leaned forward, waving their kerchiefs. Harry answered their salute by standing up in the boat. It was a superb piece of bravado.
"He doesn't always wear a glove canoeing?" asked Mrs. Arnold of Indigo. Harry had just put ashore an eighth of a mile down stream.
"No, the mate to that one's lost," replied the valet, "and Mr. Harry told me to cut it up for his hand."
"When lost and where?" said Rosalie.
"I don't know that."
"Let me tell you."
"What a sibyl!" exclaimed brother Tristram.
"It was on Broad street, the afternoon of the fire. Don't you remember, when we saw him crossing the street so hurriedly and I remarked he had only one glove on."
"You must be mistaken," said Mrs. Arnold. "Harry was ill at home all that day."
Honora Riley, who washed for Mrs. Barlow, lived in a ramshackle, desolate district of the city which was appropriately known as "the Barrens." Colliers, sooty to the eyerims, trudging home; ashy dump-pickers; women cowled in drab shawls from beneath whose folds peeped pitchers brimmed with foam like the whipped surface of the milk pail, but the liquor was not milk; such were the sights Emily noticed when she called at Mrs. Riley's to inquire whether it was a spell of illness that had prevented her from coming to wash that Monday.
"Come in," a feeble voice answered her knock. "Oh, is it you, Miss Barlow?"
Emily saw that the supper on the table, laid for two, was untasted, and that the eyes of the woman who sat on the chair clasping her knees before her, were red.
"We thought you might be ill, Mrs. Riley," she said.
"It is heartsick I am, and too broken-hearted to work, dear. Land knows I have good reason or I wouldn't fail your mother."
"It isn't the pneumonia again, I hope."
"Shame and loneliness have come upon me in my old age," said Mrs. Riley, wiping her tears with the corner of her tidy apron. "They've taken Walter away."
"Who took him away?"
"The officer came with a warrant this morning—and he my only child, and the kindest boy to his mother, with no harm or wickedness in him at all, at all."
Walter was Mrs. Riley's only child, the last of seven. All the others had preceded their father to the grave, narrowing the resources of the little family with continual illnesses and funerals. Finally her husband himself, an honest roofer, had been fatally injured in a fall and had passed away, kissing the six-months' infant who would never know a father. This was long ago. For this child the good mother had provided by her willing labor, and he had grown to be her pride and hope, a promising boy of 14.
"'It was a bicycle he stole,' said the officer, 'away out in the country.' 'But I never meant to steal it, mother,' says Walter, and the boy was that truthful he never lied to a soul that breathes. 'I never meant to steal it, mother,' he says," repeated Mrs. Riley softly, her grief overmastering her.
"Did you say Walter stole a bicycle?" asked Emily, a vague reminiscence coming back to her.
"It was the bad company I warned him against, especially that Fenton boy and Mrs. Watts' little imp that has more tricks in him than a monkey. 'Keep away from them, Walter,' says I, but no, he would choose them for companions. And 'tis old Bagley, the junkman, I blame most of all. Upon my word, I believe he put them up to the trick. What would three little boys travel out to the country like that for, and ride away on three bicycles and then sell them to Bagley?"
"Walter sold it, then?" said Emily, thoughtfully.
"Indeed, Walter did not. 'Mine is safe and sound in the club-room,' says he; that's Lanty Lonergan's back kitchen he lets them use for a meeting place. 'It's in the club-room,' says Walter, 'and I wouldn't sell it, mother, but I was afraid to give it back; only I never meant to steal it.'"
"That I believe, Mrs. Riley, for I saw him take that bicycle."
Mrs. Riley's tears stopped flowing for a moment in her surprise. Then Emily related the story of her trip to Hillsboro and the conversation of the boys which she had overheard, not forgetting to explain her own share in frightening them away.
"So perhaps by my officiousness I converted an innocent prank into something more serious," she concluded.
"If it was the price of it only, I'd give double that, and land knows I've no stockingful, like some that go to the city for help, for I'd rather rub my knuckles off than beg," said the good woman.
There was a piece of old carpet stuffed in one window-pane, adequate in summer, no doubt, but hardly impregnable to the winter winds—and Emily judged from the table before her that more than once the mother and son had sat down to a Barmecide feast, in which the imagination had to be called on to help appease the palate. So it was by inheritance that the Whistler came by his aversion to Shagarach's charity.
"I think it strange Walter and I have never become acquainted."
"Indeed he knows all your goodness to me."
"Is he still at school?"
"Graduated this year, and his masters recommend him for the best-tempered boy and as innocent—but full of the old Harry, like his father, that would always be dancing, even with seven children between him and his youth."
"What a pity if he should turn out bad now after you've made so many sacrifices for him."
"Oh, for the sacrifices, Walter's willing to take his share. With his paper route he would bring me in sometimes $2 a week, and there was nothing he wouldn't do, distribute handbills, deliver baskets in the meat-market on Saturday nights. Look, here's the shoeblack's kit he just bought. Come in, Miss Barlow."
Emily entered the small side room which completed Mrs. Riley's suite.
"There's the blacking-box. Bought it himself with his own savings."
"But he was too changeable. I should think he would have done better to stick to one thing."
"That's what I told him. But you know how a boy is fickle-minded. 'Get me something good, mother,' says he. There's the little cradle I rocked him in that I kept all these years—" Emily herself could hardly check her tears at thought of the mother rocking this empty memento.
"His Aunt Mary gave it to me—not that we couldn't afford it—plenty and to spare I had when my husband was alive, but it wasn't lucky to buy a cradle for your first baby, she said, and so I rocked them all in hers, and now six of them are in heaven with their father, God ha' mercy, and Walter, all that was left me, is in the lockup this night with the bad people."
Walter's little room was bare but not squalid. A knockabout suit hung on pegs at one side, and a washbowl stood on a cheap commode, like a prophecy of cleanliness in the occupant.
"Don't worry, Mrs. Riley. Since I helped Walter into this scrape, I am bound to help him out of it."
"Heaven bless you, if you can save my Walter—and I know you would try if you knew him. The lovingest boy, full of mischief like his father, but he'd give the blood out of his heart to a soul in trouble. Oh, well I knew he had something on his mind all these weeks. For he wouldn't run up stairs two steps at a time, as he used to, and whistle so that it was sweeter and louder than a cage full of canaries. When I heard him whistle low I knew it was something troubling his mind. 'Yes, mother, it is,' says he, but that was all I could get out of him."
"Suppose I bring a very great lawyer to be his counsel," said Emily, deeply moved by the lonely mother's sorrow, and haunted, too, by a dim remembrance of the central face among the three gamins—a frank boy-face, with red lips and cheeks. "Wouldn't he stand a better chance of getting off?"
"Just as you say, Miss Barlow," answered the sad woman, brightening a little.
"He is very busy, but I feel sure that he will attend to this if I ask him. I'll see him to-night. Don't brood over it too much and never mind about the washing. I will have Mr. Shagarach call at the station and talk with Walter, and then let you know. Good-night."
"Good-night and bless you," said Mrs. Riley, holding the little candlestick high at the landing. Emily picked her way down two crazy flights of stairs and a doorway barred with sprawling children on to the sidewalk. "While we wink, the lightning may have flashed," was a motto she had copied out of an old book of maxims and embroidered into her life; so, without taking time even for a wink, she hailed a passing car that would carry her near Shagarach's house.
Not all that Mrs. Riley had said of her boy, the Whistler, should be set down to a mother's partiality. Mischievous Walter was, if the unquenchable avidity for excitement which reigns at fourteen entitles a boy to such an aspersion. The five hours' rigid confinement at a school desk especially provoked him to perpetual fidget, and no teacher had yet been found who could make him buckle to his books so long. Yet he was a favorite with one and all, less because of his deft hand at the drawing lesson than because of the real salubrity of his nature, which made him exceptional among the slum children who were his fellow-pupils.
To these very schoolmates Walter figured as a hero, an Admirable Crichton, invincible at all games and master of most things worth knowing for boys. There was no swimmer of his age could equal him in grace or speed, and his dive from the top of the railroad dock was famous in local annals. So was his successful set-to in the brewery yard with Lefty Dinan, the Tenth street cock-of-the walk.
Yet for all his proficiency in the art of give, take and avoid, Walter was the least combative of boys, being, as his mother said, "loving" in disposition. The great gray Percherons with shaggy fetlocks, that drew the fire-engines, knew this, and admitted him to a brotherly comradeship, bowing with delight when he patted and stroked them. Mechanics found him handy beyond his years, and often employed him at odd jobs. For he had a carpenter's eye for short distances and a surveyor's for long, and there was no tool that did not fit his fingers. If he had run away to join the circus last summer, that was not the unpardonable sin.
Shagarach heard Emily gravely.
"An important witness for our cause," he answered, when she had finished. "We surely cannot suffer him to be thrust into prison." Emily knew that it was unnecessary for her to press the matter further, so she spent a brief evening in conversation with the quaint, affectionate mother, rarely alluding to the Floyd case or the mysterious oaf who had so alarmed her in that oriental room.
The following noon she ran down to the jail to see Robert, half-expecting to hear him playing the violin which she had sent him the day before. Robert's own Stradivarius, with all his other personal effects, had been destroyed at the fire, so Emily, having begged the sheriff's permission, had pinched herself to buy him a new one as richly toned as her slender means could purchase. Her own instrument was the piano, whose keys turned to silver beneath her touch, and it had been in the ensemble classes of the conservatory that she and Robert (through Beulah Ware) first met. When Dr. Silsby, the botanist, who had just come home from the west, called yesterday, she had insisted on his taking the violin to Robert, without betraying the giver's name. However, Robert's corridor (murderers' row, the name made her indignant) was silent when she approached it, and she searched his cell vainly for a violin box.
"Dr. Silsby has been to see you, Robert?" she asked, after the greetings due from sweetheart to sweetheart.
"He came in yesterday to cheer me."
"His usual method of cheering, I suppose."
"Oh, yes, said he had never expected me to outlive uncle; I always acted so much older than he did," laughed Robert.
"He is such a droll tease," said Emily, who never could be brought to admit that Robert was overserious for his years.
"But I made myself even with him before he went. He promised to read an article I had written while in prison, and took the manuscript under his arm, little suspecting what was in store for him. You know how he abhors my social heresies."
"And the article was——"
"My 'Modest Proposal for a Consumers' Trust,' socialistic from kappa to kappa. How Jonas will writhe! The last words he spoke were a thrust at my 'fad.' Yet every letter-carrier and uniformed employe I meet," added Robert, returning to his natural gravity, "contented and useful, convinces me more and more that the world is moving toward co-operation."
"But the reading will be torture to Dr. Silsby."
"It ought to do him good. How hard that lumper works!" Several negroes were staggering down the corridor, shouldering huge sides of beef for the jail cuisine. "And in fifty offices within a radius of a mile men are receiving large salaries for dawdling at elegant desks two or three hours a day."
"There are no sinecures at $10 a week," sighed Emily, drawing upon experience for this generalization. "But did Dr. Silsby have nothing with him when he called?"
"I believe he had—a violin box."
"Just so," said a cheerful voice behind them; "a violin-box, and forgot to leave it. You see I had the jacketing of that birch tree so much on my mind," it was Dr. Silsby himself, "everything else slipped out. You remember my speaking of the birch tree, Rob?"
"At least seven times," answered Robert.
"Cruelty, Miss Barlow, positive cruelty. That fine silver-birch in the jailyard—you saw it, I suppose, coming in—all peeled and naked from the ground as high as my reach. Wanton cruelty. Think of the winter nights. It will die. It will die."
One of Jonas Silsby's eccentricities was his keen sympathy for arboreal life, to which his rugged nature yearned even more than to the delicate products of the flower garden.
"I complained to the sheriff. There ought to be an ordinance severely punishing the barking of trees."
"Don't they fine the boys who mutilate foliage in the parks?" asked Emily.
"Fine! Horsewhip them! Rattan their knuckles! I'd teach them a lesson or two! The young barbarians! Well, cut it short, thinking of the trees, I forgot your violin. So last night I ordered a jacket made, good canvas cloth, that'll interest you, Rob, if you haven't forgotten all your botany in your wild——"
"How did you like my essay, Jonas?" asked Robert, mischievously.
"Quackery! A poultice to cure incurable diseases. Bah!"
"But you brought the violin to-day?" asked Emily, smiling.
"Yes, with the canvas jacket. You see it's Miss Barlow's present——"
"What!" cried Robert.
"There! Thunder! I've let it out. She was going to blindfold you and let you guess the giver."
"And the violin is in your vest pocket, I suppose?" asked Emily, innocently, on the brink of a peal of laughter.
"The violin! Jupiter!" exclaimed Dr. Silsby, thunderstruck. "It's a box of bulbs. I thought they were rather heavy."
Emily and Robert had a merry time over the botanist's absentmindedness, but he insisted that the original fault lay with the young barbarians who had upset him by unbarking the birch tree.
There was little news to exchange except the arrest of their "important witness," and the lunch hour at best was only sixty minutes long, so Emily was soon forced to make her adieus and leave Robert with his second best friend.
Beulah Ware called that evening to talk over their plans for a trip to the provinces, which Dr. Eustis, the Barlows' family physician, had imperatively ordered for the wasting girl. Could he have looked into her brain while she was preparing to retire in her chamber, and seen the velocity of the thoughts which were coursing through it then, he would surely have lengthened the weeks to months.
"Would the will be upheld?" she asked herself. Dr. Silsby's oral evidence was strong in its favor and Shagarach had spoken hopefully of late. The least that he could expect was a postponement until the trial was concluded. Since the evening she spent at his house, the lawyer had applied himself, if possible, more sternly than ever to the case, and his manner was more than ever that of a man repressing all lightness of spirit to make room for weighty thoughts.
What a mesh they were all entangled in. Shagarach as well as Robert, with the monster reaching again and again at his life! And McCausland—she hated his eternal smile. As if this business of life or death were a comedy for his amusement or the display of his superfine powers. She had begun to doubt whether their triumph over the false Bill Dobbs had been as genuine as they first supposed.
"A lie will travel a league while truth is putting on his boots," old John Davidson had said, shaking his head, when she described the adventure to him. And the result had proved him right. Although the truth leaked out, the original impression that Robert had really broken out of prison was never quite corrected, and of course it did him no good with the public.
In spite of herself, Emily could not help feeling that both these powerful minds were overreaching themselves by their very fertility and keenness, like the colossus of old, which tumbled by its own huge height. For the hundredth time she set their theories before her, trying to imagine how a jury would look at them.
Her rambling drowse naturally brought back the whole trip to Hillsborough and her conversation with Bertha. She tried to recall every word that the housemaid had uttered, rendered doubly precious, as it seemed to Emily, by the impossibility of consulting her again until the trial. What she had said of the previous fire especially struck Emily now. She tried to form a vivid picture on the curtain of darkness which surrounded her of that fatal study. The books all upright on their shelves, the canary bird singing, the waste-basket, the slippers under the arm-chair, and the dressing-gown thrown over it, the dog—suddenly Emily's heart stood still. She started up in bed and sat on its edge.
A minute later she was feeling for the match-box. As she stood before the mirror, her image came out slowly, slowly, emerging by the sulphurous blue flame. Lighting the gas, she drew the curtains. The bark of a watchdog broke the silence, or the footsteps of tardy home-comers, and now and then the shrill, faint whistle of a distant steamer, ocean-bound. But her ears were closed to outer impressions. She snatched at a volume of the great encyclopedia which she kept in her room, and, sitting on the bed, laid one knee across its fellow for a book-rest. In this posture she read eagerly, then exchanged the volume for another, and that for another, until she had ranged through the entire set and peeped at every letter from Archimedes to Zero, with long and very attentive stops at many curious headings. It was after 1 o'clock when she turned out the light and nearly 3 when her brain stopped buzzing. Next morning she limped in her left knee where the heavy encyclopedia had rested and her eyes were dull at their work.
The idea was so bold, so novel, that she waited a day before submitting it to Shagarach. Beulah Ware was her first confidant. Beulah took it up enthusiastically, and was for developing it farther before giving it out at all. But Emily judged this secrecy unjust to her lawyer, and, besides, was eager to know his opinion. He listened with interest to her "maybes" and "might bes" and commented in his usual tone of conviction.
"There are a great many 'ifs.' You depend entirely upon Bertha, and she is not at hand. When she does appear it will be so late that you will have little time to work up your idea. This is not said to discourage you; only to point out the obstacles you must surmount. By all means follow out the thought."
This was not the worst that Emily had feared, although she understood that it meant "There are at present only two theories, McCausland's and mine. Those are the horns of the dilemma between which the jury must choose." Seeing that she did not reply, Shagarach turned the subject toward Walter Riley's case, which was more serious than his mother knew.
The robbery of the bicycles was only one of a series of thefts which had been traced to this youthful "gang." In the club-room at Lonergan's, not only the Whistler's bicycle, which he had refused to sell, but a store of cigars, whisky, cheap jewelry and ladies' pocketbooks had been found, and the junkman, Bagley, was under arrest for acting as a "fence" to the thieves.
Walter asserted his innocence of other thefts, and also his ignorance of all the articles excepting the bicycle, which they had urged him to sell. His refusal to do so was corroborated by Turkey and Toot. On this very head he had had a falling out with the crowd and had ceased to visit the club-room, but, although it was frequented by as many as twenty youngsters, some of them half-grown men, no one had dared to heed Bagley's suggestion and dispose of Walter's abandoned property.
"Riley's act at its worst was no more serious than breaking a window or plucking pears from the tree. With your help he may get clear and be put on probation."
"Oh, must I testify?" asked Emily.
"Next Monday the case will be heard. You can be of service to the boy. I shall recommend short terms for Fenton and Watts."
Emily promised to be present. While she was returning to her studio old John Davidson overtook her in his carriage. She was glad to meet his kindly glance again and accept his proffered seat, especially as she espied the manikin, Kennedy, crossing the street in her direction. It was only a few blocks to her destination, but before they arrived she had poured out her new theory to the marshal, as if he were her father.
"Don't you think it's possible, Mr. Davidson?" she appealed to him, craving a morsel of sympathy.
"Possible? Of course it's possible," he answered cheerily; "I've met things a hundred times stranger myself."
But Emily's heart sunk a little, for she saw that he only spoke so out of kindness and that he did not really believe in her idea. And from that day she followed Beulah Ware's advice and hardly mentioned it, except to Beulah.
It is no wonder at all that Emily Barlow should have come to regard Inspector McCausland as the villain of the drama in which she was taking a part. Although whenever she tried to formulate his theory of the case it seemed to her too frail to hang a kitten by, yet she had moments of doubt in which his great reputation and clean record of victories oppressed and appalled her. And these moments were rendered frequent by a quality which McCausland seemed to possess in common with other satanic characters, his ubiquity, in which he was only surpassed by Mr. Arthur Kennedy Foxhall. In justice to McCausland, however, it should be stated that he did not make a practice, as the manikin did, of writing bi-weekly billet-doux.
The first time the detective's shadow fell across Emily's path—after her discovery of his identity—was on one of her visits to Senda Wesner. Who should be coming out of the bakeshop but chubby Richard in person? His bow was gallant and his smile serene.
"My weekly call," he said, stopping to chat for a moment. "A sociable little magpie, that one," jerking his thumb toward the bakeshop girl. Emily thought this uncomplimentary. From Miss Wesner she gathered enough to lead her to suspect that he was trying to connect the peddler in the green cart, who was certainly no peddler and who had eluded all pursuit thus far, with the slamming of the rear door, which must have been done by some one else than Floyd.
A few days later she had called at the office of the Beacon, the newspaper for which Robert wrote special articles, to obtain some papers from his desk. The desk was indeed there, but all its drawers had been removed and the managing editor explained that they might be found at the office of Inspector McCausland.
Twice she had met the inspector climbing Shagarach's stairs, but passing by the lawyer's door and mounting to the top story. The second time she had heard his voice in conference with a throaty falsetto she thought she knew, and the black mask of Pineapple Jupiter, appearing at the head of the stairs, confirmed her suspicions. Without scruple she entered the mission herself one day and expended all her arts to pump the old negro. The moment McCausland's name was introduced, however, his loquacity was checked of a sudden, then took dizzy flights of irrelevance.
"Oh, dese chillun, chillun," cried Jupiter, puttering away at a broken pane, "dey done gone break my winders."
"The stout, ruddy gentleman, I mean," persisted Emily, but Jupiter was so absorbed in his hymn tune that he did not hear her.
Sharper heads than Emily's had failed to force McCausland's hand when he chose to shut it tight. The newspaper reporters, whom no ordinary walls can bar, had bestirred themselves to secure for an inquisitive public the "new evidence" that the government had presented before the grand jury in the Floyd case, but absolutely without avail. Where such experienced allies owned themselves beaten, the gentle maiden might surely do so without dishonor.
As Shagarach foretold, Bertha had been spirited away. Mrs. Christenson, the intelligence offices, the Swedish consul, the Lutheran pastor, were all visited and revisited by Emily, especially since the new inspiration seized her, but none of them knew the address of the housemaid since she left Hillsborough that morning on an outward-bound train. The only rumor of her whereabouts was that vague report, coming from the bakeshop girl, which Dr. Silsby had set out to investigate.
With regard to the Arnolds' coachman, who had driven their carriage on the day of the fire, Emily considered Shagarach to be curiously indifferent. He had promised to subpoena the man for the trial, but that was all. Yet his testimony was crucial, since he must know whether Harry was with his mother in the vehicle.
This was a peculiarity of Shagarach's, in which he differed again from McCausland. Though he prepared his defense with consummate painstaking, when it came his turn to prosecute an unwilling witness, he seemed satisfied to know the truth in his own mind, relying upon his genius to extort a confession during the cross-examination. With a perjurer before him he wielded the lash like a slave-driver, and perhaps he was justified in this case in omitting a rehearsal which would only put the Arnolds on their guard.
But Emily's greatest disappointment came in what seemed to her the one weak point of Robert's defense, the axis around which the entire prosecution revolved. Time and again she had conferred with Shagarach on the subject of her lover's reverie after the deed. To think that he could not remember a face he had seen, an incident, a word spoken, during those four hours—nothing but a vague itinerary of the afternoon, which came out with difficulty each time, and the course of his own meditations, which, to tell the truth, was clear and copious enough, but worthless for the purpose.
At her last visit to the lawyer's home he had entered into this more deeply. Apparently the method of attacking the enigma, which he had hinted at possessing from the very first, was now ripened. For he loaned Emily a ponderous volume on "Diseases of the Memory," and asked her to bring in all the evidence possible showing the mutual affection of nephew and uncle, not failing to wear the water lily from time to time, as he had suggested before. But she was not satisfied with this, and, knowing Robert had visited the park, spent one whole Sunday making a tour of that district, questioning each of the gray-coated policemen.
At last she had found an officer who recollected "something of such a young man as she described." He "couldn't swear to it," but "had an idea he noticed him." In fact, his recollection grew vaguer and vaguer the more they tried to make it specific, and to Emily's chagrin, when they brought him to the jail, he asserted positively that Robert was not the man. This disappointment was sharpened tenfold by her meeting Inspector McCausland, passing out of the corridor, arm in arm with a car conductor.
"I am certain that was my passenger," the conductor was saying. To have her own failure and McCausland's success thus brought into contact accentuated both and gave Emily a miserable day.
The case of the old chemist was not so bad, and besides, was none of Emily's doing. John Davidson, the marshal, had taken up Shagarach's theory of Harry Arnold's guilt with remarkable zeal and had borrowed one of the photographs, so as to see if he could be of use. One day he came in, greatly excited, and asked for the lawyer.
"Got some evidence that'll surprise you, brother," said the marshal.
"Then it must be extraordinary," answered Shagarach.
"What do you think that young rascal did?"
"Who?"
"Arnold. Went to a chemist, a friend of mine, fellow-townsman, too, Phineas Fowler, and bought a big heap of combustible powder, a day or two before the fire. Sprinkled it over the whole room, probably."
"He wasn't so foolish as to leave his name, however?"
"Oh, Phineas knew the photograph. Spotted him right away when I fetched her out. Lucky I took it now, wan't it? 'That's the man,' says Phineas."
"I believe I have your friend's address already," said Shagarach, and in two or three days he was paying a long-delayed visit to Phineas Fowler.
Amid the compound odor of chemicals sat a shriveled pantaloon, with a long, thin beard whose two forks he kept pulling and stroking. Shagarach was about to state his business, when a stranger at the window came forward and interrupted him.
"The young man who bought the combustion powder was identified in jail yesterday," said Inspector McCausland, smiling. "It was only Floyd, on that matter of the bomb."
That matter of the bomb! Perhaps it would be harder to explain than Emily thought.
But McCausland was not always out beating the bush for evidence. Occasionally the mountain went to Mahomet. The reward of $5,000, which Harry Arnold had advertised, drew a dribbling stream of callers to the inspector's office. There was the veiled lady, who had seen the crime with the eyes of her soul, and would accept a small fee for a clairvoyant seance, and the lady with green glasses, whose card announced her as "Phoebe Isinglass, metaphysician." The moderation of her terms could only be accounted for by her scientific interest in the matter. She asked only $1,000 if she proved Floyd insane, $500 if she proved him sane, and $100 (merely as a compensation for her time) if the case baffled her skill.
Prof. I. Noah Little, the conchologist, paid McCausland the honor of a call and even brought his whelk-shell with him. With this occult instrument at his ear he had been known to make the most remarkable prophecies, declaring to gullible girls the names of their future spouses, and even portending the great snowfall of May 21 in the year 1880.
As for suggestions by mail, the office porter's spine grew bent with emptying the waste-basket which received them. Hypnotism was the favorite explanation with a large majority of the correspondents, followed by a somnambulism and various ingenious theories of accident. The pope and the czar were named as authors, and the freemasons were accused in one epistle of a plot to burn up the ocean with some diabolical explosive, to procure which they had all sold their souls to the devil, though what this had to do with the Floyd case was a greater mystery than the fire itself.
Out of all this chaff the inspector sifted a solitary grain. One morning he was joking in the office with Hardy, Johnson and Smith, three of his brothers-in-buttons. Hardy handled sneak-thieves and shoplifters, Johnson swindlers of a higher order, such as confidence men, and Smith the gangs of forgers and counterfeiters. They were all, like McCausland, common-looking men. This enabled them to slouch through life quietly, taking observations by the way.
"Well, Dick," said Johnson, "I hear you've been appointed confessor-general to Col. Mainwaring's sinners."
This was received with a hearty laugh, for they were a jolly four, these men of iron.
"That arson case is a puzzler," put in Smith. "Why didn't you send a bottle of the smoke to Sherlock Holmes?"
"With a blank label," added Johnson, "for the incendiary's name."
"Would he notice such an A B C riddle?" laughed Hardy.
"A lady for Mr. McCausland," announced the mulatto policeman, and the brothers-in-buttons quickly found other business.