CHAPTER IV.
“I don’t see how I can help you any,” ventured the pawnbroker, looking furtively at his companion.
“Well, you can; the first thing I need is money, and I must have it.”
“Go on with your scheme,” said the other, “and don’t always be talking about money. I know that promises don’t amount to much. Now then, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to keep that girl from her father, and then I am one of the trustees of the money, and if he does not change that part I shall be all right for ready cash as soon as he shuffles off, but I spoke my mind the night he made the new will, and there is no telling what he will do, only that his hands now are useless.”
“Then you care for the funds?” began the broker.
“Yes, until this girl puts in an appearance.”
“Don’t let her appear,” said the other.
“That’s just what I say,” went on Benson laughingly. “I know that I can put her somewhere that she won’t bother me. Now, old man, will you help me, and I’ll see that you are well paid?”
Just at this moment a young fellow with the air of a sailor came in.
“Are you the chump what runs this place?” asked he, going up to the pawnbroker, “for if you are I want to pawn this suit of clothes. They are bran’ new, and ought to give me a little ready cash.”
“I’ll look at them when I get through with this gentleman,” and the broker turned disdainfully away.
Then the two, Tom Cooper and Benson, recognized each other.
“Well, well, Tom, you do look like a typicalJack in earnest. So you’ve come back to try your luck, have you, again upon land?”
“Yes, siree, to get even with you, Mr. Benson,” replied the sailor. “You lied about me; that I know. Now I am going to see just what you are doing, Mr. George Benson.”
“Well, don’t you monkey in my affairs,” shouted George, “or I will deal with you as I did before. You went from New York because I made it too hot to hold you. Now, be careful.”
“Oh, I suppose you’d like to hurt me all right. I went to see Mr. Benson last night, and they said he was too sick to see anyone.”
“So he is, to see a ragmuffin,” sneered Benson.
“It’s a wonder he harbors you, if he is so very particular,” retorted Tom.
“So you tried to get into the house, did you?”
“Yes, why not? It was my home, the same as yours.”
“Not quite. You always were an interloper, so beware.”
Tom leaned far over and looked keenly at Benson.
“What have you done with Annie Benson?”
“What have I done with her?” replied Benson threateningly. “I don’t know anything about her. She is nothing to me.”
How George Benson would have liked to have told the young fellow that he was the beneficiary to his uncle’s will, but he knew that the boy would find out differently, so he remained silent.
“What happened?” asked Nathans. “Did the old man give you the grand bounce, too?”
“Yes, but not for anything that I did, but because of that villain standing there. I suppose he thought that I would help find Miss Annie and bring her back to her home. Well, that’s what I came back for, Mr. Benson.”
Tom Cooper saw that he was putting the thorns into the other’s flesh, and kept on: “I am going to spend the rest of my days finding that girl.”
Benson walked close to him and looked into his face.
“I want to tell you something, Tom Cooper, you had better go back to sea, for if you don’t Ican tell you that there won’t be much show for you if I once get my hands on you.”
“I’m not afraid of you, mister,” shouted Tom, snapping his fingers into George’s face.
“And, what’s more,” he added, “I have made up my mind that you are not playing fair with our little playmate of long ago, any more than you used to play fair when you stole money from her father’s pocket. But I am going to find her if it takes me all the rest of my life.”
“What’s that girl to you?” slowly asked George.
“Nothing, but I cannot forget the times when we were children that she was with us, and now I am sure that she is having a hard time of it, and I am going to find out anyhow.”
Just at this moment a woman came in with a clock in her hand.
“What will you give for this, Abe?” asked she. “Now, don’t be tight about it, for the girl I’m a-selling it for is almost starved to death, and I am going to pay her rent.”
“Oh, you’re like all the rest, Higgins,” blurted the broker, “always got some reason why youshould have money, more money than any one else. You would have me in the poorhouse if you had your way.”
“But I must have two dollars for this,” insisted the woman. “Please, Abe, it will save a woman from being turned out.”
“What do I care whether she is turned out or not as long as I don’t have to take care of her?” sulkily asked the broker.
The pawnbroker left the woman for a moment to attend to a boy, who came in with a watch.
“I want to get money on this,” said he.
The broker looked suspiciously at him.
“You stole this?” asked he softly.
“No, sir, I found it.”
“Now, look a-here, Jim Farren, I ain’t got no confidence in what you say. You stole the last thing you brought to me, and I had to give it up to the detective.”
“I didn’t steal that nuther,” sulkily replied the boy.
“Nevertheless, I was out five dollars, and unless you can prove that you got this all right, thenyou will have to take it elsewhere, and give me back that five dollars.”
“Like fun I will,” replied the boy, and he slouched out.
In the meantime the woman was listening to the spirited conversation between the two other men. She could hear Tom stand up firmly for the girl called “Annie.”
When she saw the pawnbroker go back to Benson and resume his conversation with him, she went up to Tom:
“I heard you a-speaking to the young gentleman about finding a girl by the name of Annie. I know one a-living near me in the next room, and her father is rich. He sent her from home because she married against his will, and she has one little girl named Helen.”
“Helen,” muttered Tom thoughtfully, looking at the woman as if he were trying to bring something into his mind; “Helen, that was the name of her mother. Will you take me to this girl, that I may see her?”
“Sure I will. Let me get this old stick to giveme the money I want, and then I’ll go with you.” With this she took the two dollars which the man gave to her begrudgingly, and out of the shop they went, and Mrs. Higgins led the way to her apartment.
But she did not notice that a poor woman walked along the street with her child by the hand. This was one of those cases when it would have been well for the woman to tell of the charity which she was going to bestow, for then the tired sick mother would not have left her home.
She hurried on until she, too, reached the pawnshop and stepped inside, dragging the frail child with her.
She walked to the counter with slow steps and said in a weak voice:
“I should like to pawn this jewel for as much money as you can give me.”
“I cannot give you much,” said the broker, “for it is plated.”
The woman raised her eyes pleadingly.
“You are mistaken,” said she. “My father gave it to me as a pure gem.”
“Then your father was fooled,” said the broker, “for it is nothing but the meanest kind of a plate.”
The woman looked about hastily.
“What will you give for it?” said she weakly.
“Two dollars.”
“Two dollars! Why it cost thousands. I know that you are cheating me. I shall not leave it.”
“Then take it somewhere else, and don’t bother me with it. I’ll be with you in a moment, Benson.”
The woman again looked about.
“What, Benson,” whispered she, and then she caught sight of the cousin who had been the cause of all of her trouble.
“Oh, so you are here, George Benson? Oh, I am so glad to see you. I want to see my father, for I saw in the paper that he was very sick.”
“So he is,” surlily replied Benson, “and he does not want to be bothered with you. Now, keep away from the house, for the servants have had instructions to keep you out.”
“Where is Tom Cooper?” asked the girl.
“Gone to the devil, for all I know,” said Benson, looking at the little bundle upon the floor, which by some great stroke of fate Tom Cooper had left there.
“Oh, I am sure not so bad as that,” said she wistfully. “It is a shame to talk that way of him. Why, George, as a boy he was better than you.”
“Where is your husband?” asked Benson, knowing well enough that he was dead, for he had opened all the letters that had come in her handwriting.
“Dead.”
“Oh, then, it was not all honey after you married him, was it?”
“He was good to me, and I believe that you made my father turn from me, and I will go straight to him and tell him that you have kept us apart.”
The pawnbroker came up at this moment.
“Miss, if you have any crying to do, please go out, for I don’t want you in here,” and, saying this, he gave poor Annie Standish a shove and sent her into the street.
“Such people set me crazy,” stormed the old man, “as if my shop was to be a fountain. I hate them all, that’s what I do.”
“That woman makes me feel as if I had nothing to live for,” gasped Benson. “Just you let Tom Cooper see her, and I’ll bet you that my cake will be dough in five minutes, but give me the money.”
“Are you sure that your uncle told you that you could have these diamonds when he was no more? Now, if they should make a search for them and claim that they were stolen, then I would have no chance but to give them up. Now then, out with the truth.”
“Of course he told me that I could have them. Don’t be a fool.”
As the question was being argued the door opened and a detective appeared.
“Nathans,” said he brusquely, “there has been a set of diamonds stolen from Benson’s mansion, and they will probably be brought here, and if so you keep them, for they will be wanted.”
The blood flew into George’s face, and he stepped upon the toe of the pawnbroker.
Nathans feared that the box on the desk would be spied by the detective.
“I’ll watch,” said he after a while, “and if the jewels come in I’ll tell you.”
“All right, and another thing, Benson is dying, and he wants his daughter, and if you should see a poor woman come here to pawn anything don’t let her go away without asking her name, for it might be worth your while.”
“I don’t trouble myself about such people,” said the broker, “but as long as you want me to I’ll keep on the watch.”
He had only turned his back for a moment before the pawnbroker was upon the young man.
“So you think that I was going to pay you a thousand for stolen goods. You are as bad as that Farren. I can’t watch you fellows enough.”
“You’d better give me some money, Nathans. How am I going to do work with nothing? Now then, keep the jewels.”
“No, I don’t want them.”
Suddenly there came into the eyes of the othera light which made Nathans ask Benson what he was thinking about.
“Put that box in that bundle of Tom Cooper, and by that way we will get rid of him.”
“And make it appear that he stole the jewels?”
“And why not?” asked George. “Would it not get him out of the way for at least five years, and if the girl is not found by that time I would not give much for the fortune she would find in the meantime.”
“But how are you going to let the police know that he stole that box?” asked Nathans.
“I’ll skip out and send the police, and then when he comes back you pick a quarrel with him, and when that happens cry out and the police will nab him, and then the searching of his bundle will make it look as if he stole the jewels when he was at the mansion last night.”
“Bravo, old fellow; you’re all right. Here goes,” and into the sailor’s bundle the jewels were slipped, but neither of the men knew that under the counter was a shaggy little head, and that when they were not looking a red hand wasslipped to get the bundle and to relieve it of the gems, but the incoming of Tom just at that moment gave him no opportunity and the sailor ejaculated: “Well, old cove, what are you going to give me for these clothes? I went all the way to that old Irish lady’s house, and sure enough the woman wasn’t there. I suppose that she had lit out to raise the dough for grub for herself and babe.”
As he spoke he took up the bundle and shook it lightly.
“Those clothes don’t look like much, for they’ve been wrapped upon the ship, but they’re new, old sport.”
“You needn’t call me such names as that, young man,” said the pawnbroker.
“That’s nothing,” laughed the sailor jovially, “for when a man gets as old and shriveled as you are it shows that he’s been something of a sport in his life.”
The pawnbroker looked furtively about.
“What you want on the clothes?”
“What’ll you give?”
“I’m afraid you stole them.”
The sailor drew up his big form slowly and sent his sleeve up to his elbows.
“Oh, you do, do you? Well, I’ll smash your face if you talk that way to me, you dirty old Jew.”
The pawnbroker had the chance he wanted, for he shouted out loud and his clerk came running in.
“Call an officer, call an officer, for pity’s sake. This man is going to fight me.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt the old swab,” cried Tom as the policeman laid his fingers on his strong arm, “but the fool said I stole that bundle, and it’s my clothes.”
“Well, you come along with me, my young man, for I think I’ve seen you before.”
“Where?” asked Tom.
“In front of Mr. Benson’s home, on Fifth avenue, last night, and there was a great robbery committed there a little later.”