MISS GASTONGUAY INTERVIEWS HER PRISONER.
Miss Gastonguay found Prosperity sitting in the shadow of the
wash-tubs, holding one end of a long rope that he had knotted firmly
around his prisoner's waist.
The young burglar, seeing that nothing could be done, had fallen
asleep. Prosperity was presiding over his slumbers in fascinated awe,
and nearly jumped out of his skin when Miss Gastonguay touched him on
the shoulder.
"Go join your brother," and she pointed to Tribulation, who was
patrolling the kitchen passage, holding over his shoulder a
Revolutionary musket that he had brought from the attic.
"You'll hold the prisoner?" said Prosperity, surrendering the rope to
her.
"Yes, I'll hold him. Go away now, and shut the door, and don't listen."
Prosperity tiptoed out, and seating herself on an upturned firkin, she
seized a stick used for agitating clothes in boiling water, and gently
stirred the sleeper with it.
He opened his eyes and calmly stared at her.
"You're a nice young man," she said, ironically, and turning a lamp
bracket nearer his face and farther away from her own.
He made no reply to this remark, beyond cautiously moving his foot.
"Is it any better?" she asked.
"Yes, that old coon rubbed it. I'm much obliged, ma'am."
His manner was slightly conciliatory, yet she broke into denunciation.
"You need not try to soften me. You ought to be hanged. If a few young
rascals like you were strung up, you'd save a million others following
in your steps. Now what have I ever done that you should break into my
house, and try to rob me of hard-earned money,--money earned by the
sweat of the brow of my ancestors. Who are you, I say, that you should
deprive me of it?"
"The world owes me a living," he said, sullenly.
"A living--an honest living. Now what do you make out of your line of
life,--just tell me?"
"Lots of fun, when I have any luck."
"You are lazy," she said, angrily, "too lazy to put up with quiet toil
and small results."
"Quiet toil," he replied, with a sneer. "Some capitalist gets hold of
you. He sucks all the life out of you. Hard work, small pay, no play.
When you're old, you're kicked in the gutter to die. I was once in a
factory--"
"What is the merit of your present occupation?" she asked, grimly.
"You work when you like, you're your own boss; you have travel, and
a kind of feeling of free drinks in you all the time,--sprees and a
chance for rest when you make a good haul, and the country to take care
of you when you're old. The worse you do, the better you're looked
after. I'm going to help some likely person off the boards when I'm
sixty. Some one like yourself, ma'am. Then I'll have good lawyers, and
new trials, and soft food, and flowers, and ladies to visit me, and
maybe go bang free."
Miss Gastonguay had fallen into a kind of waking trance. Her eye
pierced the young man's face,--looked through it to some scene unknown.
He saw that she was not thinking of him, and he favoured her with a
curiously appreciative and intelligent glance.
Presently she roused herself and said, solemnly, "Young man, I am going
to trust you. Here, take this rope off your waist," and she tossed him
the end. "Sit up on that bench and look me squarely in the face. Here I
sit, your best friend at the present minute. Talk freely to me. We are
two erring mortals; get out of your mind that I am any better off than
you. If you open your mind to me you will not regret it. I ask you now
in the sight of God, do you like your present life?"
The young man sat down in the place indicated, and scrutinised her
sharply and narrowly.
"Time is precious," she said, warningly, "I mean what I say. Tear off
your disguise. We all wear one,--I do. Here I show you my naked heart.
I am going to let you escape. If you linger, you may be caught. The
townspeople will not be so merciful. If you're a bad fellow, tell me
so, and go. If you want help, I'll give it to you."
The young criminal smiled slightly, then his cynical expression faded
away, and he took on an air of sincerity. "I believe you, ma'am. I've
reason to. I'll talk straight. Yes, I like my life good enough."
"Where were you brought up?"
"In New York,--in what you call the slums."
"What made you a criminal?"
"I didn't want to work."
"Oh,--you wanted luxuries?"
"Yes, ma'am. I was ambitious. I hadn't anything. I might get
everything."
"Who was that man with you?"
"A pal; you wouldn't know him if I told you."
"A curious pal to run away from you!"
The burglar smiled again. "What good could he do by staying? He's only
skedaddled to lay plans to get me out of your gingerbread jail here if
I choose to go into it."
"Then you criminals stand by each other?"
Her morbid curiosity did not surprise him.
"I guess we stand by each other as well as the capitalists."
"Did you ever hear this sentence, young man,--'Whatsoever a man soweth,
that also shall he reap?'"
"Often, ma'am, in the training-school."
"The what?"
"The school for crime, where I learned my trade, a steamboat that used
to hang round New York in the dark, and pick up pupils at different
wharves. Some of the big crooks used to come on board, and give us
talks. We had gambling games, and all kinds of instruction given. We
kept the windows covered on account of the harbour police, then toward
morning we went ashore."
Miss Gastonguay, trying to subdue the loathing that overpowered her,
was silent for a few seconds; then, urged on by the inexorable flight
of time, she lifted her eyelids, and burst out with a fascinated
question, "Did you ever kill any one?"
"No, ma'am; I'm a business criminal."
"What drew you to Rossignol?"
He laughed stealthily. "Curiosity, ma'am. I heard the place had some
sheep worth shearing, and then our biggest swell made your town
famous."
"What do you mean?"
She spoke with haughty severity, but he was not impressed.
"Gentleman George's caper, ma'am,--the smartest bank burglar in this
country or any other. This was the end of his famous New York glide,
when he had all the police after him. I guess you know him, ma'am.
You've got some souvenirs of him up-stairs in that drawer of yours."
A cold, agonised perspiration broke out on the unfortunate lady's
forehead, but she bravely maintained her composure, and, as if he had
noticed nothing amiss, her prisoner went on, flippantly. "He came here
slap after the big Leslie bank haul in New York. The cops suspected him
and broke into his house, and sure enough, they found his workshop for
making burglars' tools. They were red-hot on his track, when Gentleman
George went plump down a hole in the earth, and they lost him."
Miss Gastonguay could not speak, but made a feverish gesture for him to
continue, which he did, nursing his injured foot, and staring coolly
sometimes at her, sometimes at the increasing light stealing through
the windows.
"The hole in the earth was here," and the young burglar chuckled at the
remembrance. "Gentleman George boarded a train for Maine, dropped into
this place, grabbed at a fat mill-owner's purse in broad daylight, and
got locked up here for a fool hobo, while the police were scouring the
earth for him."
Miss Gastonguay leaned forward, propped her trembling chin on her hand,
and ejaculated, "What does this man look like?"
"I guess you know as well as I do," he said with quiet impudence, "but
in case you haven't seen him for a spell, I'll say he's more of a
high-roller than ever. You'd think him the latest duke from Europe."
Miss Gastonguay subdued her almost mortal agony. "Go on," she said,
with a ghastly smile. "Tell me some more about this criminal life, I'm
interested in it."
"Well, ma'am, I'll talk some more about Gentleman George, for he's the
boy for my money. No one knows where he started from, unless I could
make a guess now, but he's a gentleman born, and welcome in every
hang-out in the Union. And he's smart," and the young man swore a
delighted oath. "To find out how safes were made, he got work with the
Densmore Safe Company till there wasn't a lock he couldn't duplicate.
And he's got an ear as fine hung as thistledown. By the turning of the
dial he can tell at what numbers the tumblers drop into place."
"Young man, what do I know about tumblers?"
"Nothing, ma'am, I'm forgetting you're not with us. If you want to
know about Gentleman George, he's rolled up two or three fortunes by
bank-breaking, but he's such a confounded gambler that he out-points
himself."
"Where is he now?" articulated Miss Gastonguay, with difficulty.
"Now that's one thing, ma'am, I can't tell you. I'm sorry to disoblige
a lady, but it can't be helped."
"Has he repented? Is he leading an honest life?"
"Yes, ma'am, just now he has to. The police are after him again. He
breaks out in spots, then he lies low. For the last few years you might
have heard of him in California, in Mexico, in Europe, always in big
hauls, always looting something worth looting. There was the California
Star Bank Vault robbery where he got a clean half million, the Belgium
Bank affair--"
"Do they never catch him? Is he never shot at,--hurt?"
"Catch him, yes, but no prison holds him. He's got good friends. After
the California swoop they shut him up in jail, but he had a partner
outside who had a masked hole made in the gate of the jail. Next day
Gentleman George broke loose from a marching line of convicts in the
jail yard, made a dash for the hole, jumped into a wagon his partner
had waiting, and got out of the way in double quick time."
Miss Gastonguay had had about all she could endure. "Daybreak is
coming," she said, abruptly. "You must get away; is there anything I
can do for you?"
"You could give me ten thousand a year," he said, composedly; "you are
a rich woman, you would never miss it."
"I will give you enough to get to some philanthropists, who will teach
you to live an honest life."
"Thank you, ma'am,--we've got enough of them in New York. They go to
the low-down streets and preach, 'Lead an honest life, and you will
star it through the world,' but no fellow those praying folks ever took
has got as high up in the sky as Gentleman George."
"He is your model?"
"He's the biggest man in America," said her companion, with quiet
enthusiasm.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
Her convulsed face showed that she pitied him, and with his small and
ferret-like eyes gleaming approvingly on her he continued, "You're a
lady, ma'am, and I'll tell you what I'm aiming at. I don't want to give
up this life. If I did, I could earn ten thousand dollars to-morrow by
going to the detectives in New York and splitting on Gentleman George.
But I'm not anxious to play spy. I'd be found out, and I've just been
watching a young crook, that turned State's evidence in a Boston jail,
come out and go crazy on account of the whole gang turning against him.
He slunk round the streets like a sick cat, and he squealed in his
sleep. No one spoke to him, and he died in the horrors."
"Can't you run away from them?" said Miss Gastonguay, with a burst
of impassioned appeal. "Leave the atmosphere of crime. I'll send you
anywhere."
"Anywhere; I don't want to go. Would you be happy in my hang-out? No,
ma'am. Would I be happy in yours? No, ma'am, again. You rich people
don't know what liberty is."
"Liberty--liberty," she repeated, warningly. "A liberty that ends in a
prison."
"You straight people make queer mistakes. I'm a better lot than my
family. They don't live by rule as I do. They'll lie and pick at small
truck. They haven't any ambition. I've got my life chalked out. I'm not
going to get a prison face, I sha'n't go beyond the limit."
"The limit?"
"The fifteen or twenty year limit. If you keep out of jail, well and
good. If you get too long sentences your health breaks down, and you
get the shivers."
"What are they?"
"Nerves; you think, 'S'pose the cops catch me.' You may be in the midst
of a fancy job. Everything in you trembles, even your eyeballs, and
you'd best quit and run, for if the shivers get fastened on you, you're
no good, and might as well take to the tomato can tramps. I'm going to
knock off before I get 'em. I've been lucky about jails so far, and if
you'll help me out of this now--"
He spoke suggestively, and Miss Gastonguay tried to bring back her
strained and wandering attention to him. "When you go away, will you
see this man,--this Gentleman George?"
"I'm sure to pretty soon."
"Will you give him a message from me?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Tell him that though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they are
always going. Retribution will come--"
Her severe voice faltered, and while she was recovering breath the
young criminal observed, curiously, "Gentleman George is a pretty close
connection of yours."
She saw that he did not know what the connection was, and would not
enlighten him.
"I wish you'd let me carry back to him that little shoe mascot."
"Never."
"Most all gamblers have something they hang on to," he said, with a
disappointed air. "Gentleman George's shoe is known by all his pals. It
used to bring him luck, and when he'd be caught and searched he used to
beg to have it back. I carry a rabbit's foot."
Miss Gastonguay was conscious of a feeble passing surprise at his
superstition, but she was not able to discuss it, and pointing to his
foot asked, "Can you walk on it?"
"No, ma'am, I guess you'll have to provide the means of locomotion."
"Come out to the stable, then."
"First let me return some of your property," and he gallantly extended
her handsome gold watch and chain.
She slapped her side, "I had it here just now."
"Yes, ma'am, I wanted you to see how easy I could get it from you."
"Have you any more of my property?" she asked, harshly.
"Not a stiver. We tumbled things back pretty quick, when we found
Gentleman George's picture by your bed. He'd get after us if we meddled
with you. You're not his sister, are you?"
"Come with me to the stable," she responded. "I will lend you a horse.
Ride him to any of the near stations. Dismount when you get there, and
turn him loose. Have you money enough for a ticket?"
"Yes, ma'am."
His spirits were rising, now that there was a sure prospect of his
escape, and he even grinned facetiously at Prosperity and Tribulation,
who shrank in dismay from him, and hid the musket between them.
Miss Gastonguay went swiftly to the stable, followed closely by the
limping burglar, and at a little distance by her two servants. A few
minutes later her departing prisoner threw her a civil farewell as he
clambered on the back of the tall black horse. "I'm obliged for your
interest, ma'am. I've talked pretty freely to you. If you ever see
Gentleman George again, I wish you'd speak a good word for me. I'd like
to join in some of his big propositions."
She fell back in disgust, and as the gray morning swallowed his
figure, she passionately muttered, "Moral obliquity,--just like the
other,--youthful, enthusiastic,--a face set to do evil. God pity him."
With hanging head she went slowly to the house until startled into a
peevish exclamation by the sudden appearance of her niece.
"Chelda, what are you doing here?"
"I was going to see if our prisoner is safe," replied the young lady,
smoothly. "I have just been telephoning to the police station."
"And pray, who told you to do that? This is my house. Go telephone
back that the policemen are not to come until I send for them."
"Very well, aunt," she replied, submissively, "but can you stop them?"
"You are a meddlesome girl," said Miss Gastonguay, and she gave relief
to her overwrought feelings by stamping her foot at her.
Chelda said nothing, but her expression was not a pleasant one as
she gazed after the retreating figure. "You let that burglar go,"
she murmured, revengefully, "why did you do it? It is really quite
puzzling,--and who is to be pitied? One should really look into so
interesting a matter. There is such a lack of pity in the world."