THE ROBBERY
About three months previous to the events related in the preceding
chapter, on a dark and stormy night, two men might have been seen
prowling around a stately mansion in an aristocratic portion of the city
of New York. After carefully reconnoitering the premises, to see that no
one was stirring within, one of them cautiously proceeded to cut out a
pane of glass in one of the basement windows, while the other kept watch
upon the sidewalk.
The glass was removed without the slightest noise, whereupon the burglar
unfastened the window and lifted the sash. Then making a little noise
like the twittering of a sparrow, he was immediately joined by his
companion, and both disappeared within the house.
A few minutes later a third man coming along the street, saw the sudden
glimmer of a light in one of the lower rooms of the mansion.
Something about it instantly attracted his attention.
It was a quick, sharp flare, and then seemed to go suddenly out.
He waited a minute or two, and the same thing was repeated.
“Aha! a burglar!” he muttered to himself. “I think I’ll have to look
into this thing.”
He stopped, and his first impulse was to turn and go in search of a
policeman.
Ah! if he had done so how much of future misery would have been saved
him.
But upon second thought he concluded not to do so, and quietly slipped
within the shadow of the great porch over the front entrance.
It seemed a long time that he stood waiting there, and he regretted that
he had not gone for an officer.
He did not know how long the burglars had been there, and he had feared
they would escape before he could return. But finally he heard cautious
steps approaching from the rear toward the corner where he was
stationed, and now he caught the sound of exultant whispers, that they
had been so successful as to get out undiscovered with their rich booty.
The next instant two men emerged into view, bearing their plunder in a
bag between them.
With a bound the new-comer darted forward and felled one man to the
ground with a blow that sounded like the descent of a sledge-hammer, and
then grappled with the other.
The burglar who had been felled had been only momentarily stunned, and,
almost instantly recovering himself, he had quietly picked up the bag,
which had also fallen to the ground in the melee, and made off with it,
leaving his companion to shift for himself as best he could.
The combatants fought bravely and well, but the assailant being lighter
than the burglar, and less experienced in pugilistic practice, gradually
lost ground, and finally a well-directed blow from his antagonist laid
him flat at his feet, when he, also, beat a hasty retreat, having first
dropped something on the ground beside his victim.
Steps were now heard approaching upon the pavement; the noise of the
scuffle had reached the ears of one of the protectors of the peace, and
he was hastening to the rescue.
A light at the same time appeared at a window in one of the lower rooms
of the mansion so lately robbed, while above a sash was thrown hastily
up, and a slight, white-robed figure leaned forth into the night.
The light in the window below streamed directly out upon the fallen
hero—alas! a hero no longer—who now began to gather himself and his
scattered senses together once more. As he arose to his feet a cry from
above rang out on the stillness of the night.
“Oh, Earle! Earle! how came you here, and what is the matter?”
The voice was that of Editha Dalton, and, springing forward under the
window, the young man replied, reassuringly:
“Do not be alarmed, Miss Editha. I have had a fall, but am all right
now. I’ll come and tell you to-morrow how I happened to be here
to-night.”
“So, so, my fine young gentleman, you’ll come and tell the lady
to-morrow, will you? I’m thinking mayhaps you will have a chance to tell
some one else by that time, you disturber of the peace;” and, before
Earle Wayne could scarcely realize what had happened, a pair of steel
bracelets were slipped about his wrists, and he was a prisoner.
“You have made a mistake, sir,” he said civilly, to his captor, yet
beginning to feel very uncomfortable in the position wherein he found
himself. “I was trying to stop a couple of thieves who had just robbed
this house, when one of them knocked me down and cleared.”
“Yes, yes; I find I always get hold of the wrong rogue—some one else
does the deed and the one I catch is always so ‘innocent,’” laughed the
policeman, with good-natured sarcasm. “Aha! what have we here?” he cried
again, as his foot came in contact with some glittering object and sent
it spinning on before him.
He stooped to pick it up, and, as the light fell upon it, he saw it was
a costly bracelet, set with a solitare diamond surrounded with emeralds.
“That looks ‘innocent,’ don’t it now?” he said, holding it up to the
light with a chuckle.
“That is Miss Dalton’s bracelet; I’ve seen her wear it,” the young man
thoughtlessly and injudiciously admitted.
“Oh, yes, no doubt; and you thought mayhaps that them glittering stones
might bring a pretty little sum. I came just in time to stop this little
game. Come, I think I can accommodate you with lodgings to-night, my
hearty.”
At this moment a man came out of the house upon the balcony in great
excitement.
“Help! help!” he cried. “I’ve been robbed! Stop thief! stop——”
“Ay, I _have_ stopped him, and just in the nick of time, sir,” responded
the policeman, leading Earle into view.
“_Earle Wayne!_” exclaimed Mr. Dalton, in greatest astonishment, as his
glance fell upon him.
“Yes, sir, it is I; but I am no thief, as you very well know.”
“No, this does not look like it!” interrupted the policeman, flourishing
the bracelet conspicuously.
“I have committed no robbery,” asserted Earle, with quiet dignity; “and
I did not see that bracelet until you picked it up and showed it to me.
It must have been dropped by one of the robber, who fled after I was
knocked down;” and he went on to explain how he happened to be there,
and what he had seen and heard.
“It’s a likely story now, isn’t it, sir,” sneered his captor, who was
all too eager for the _eclat_ of having captured the perpetrator of so
daring a theft, “when I’ve found him with his booty right here on the
spot?”
“Mr. Dalton,” Earle appealed, fearing he had got himself into a bad
predicament, “you know well enough that I would do no such a thing,
particularly in this house of all others;” and he glanced in a troubled
way up at that white-robed figure in the window.
“No, certainly not. Papa, we know _Earle_ would not be guilty of any
thing of the kind, and I believe every word he has said about the
encounter with those men,” Miss Dalton asserted, confidently.
“Did you see or hear any one else, Editha?” asked her father.
“No; I heard a heavy fall, and after listening a minute I came to the
window, where I saw Earle just getting up from the ground; and see! as
the light shines upon him he looks as if he had been having an encounter
with some one;” and she pointed at the young man’s disarranged and
soiled clothing.
But Mr. Dalton shook his head, while the policeman sneered. It looked
bad, and the presence of the bracelet seemed to them indisputable proof
that he was in some way criminally connected with the affair.
Further investigation proved that a quantity of silver, and all of Mrs.
Dalton’s diamonds, together with quite a large sum of money, had been
stolen.
Young Wayne was closely questioned as to who his accomplices were, for
the policeman insisted that he must have had one or more.
“Make a clean breast of it, young one, and being your first attempt,
perhaps they will let you off easy,” he said.
But Earle indignantly refused to answer any more questions, and was at
last led away to the station-house and locked up until his case could be
officially investigated.
The morning papers were full of the robbery, and the young man’s name
figured largely in their columns, while much was said about the
“culpable hardihood and stubbornness of one so young in years, but
apparently so old in crime.”
A day or two after the case was investigated, and, no further light
being gained upon the affair, he was committed for trial.
Richard Forrester, a lawyer of note and a brother of Mrs. Dalton, in
whose employ the young man had been for the past three years,
immediately gave bonds for him to the amount of ten thousand dollars,
and for the next three months devoted himself assiduously to working up
the complicated case.
The day for Earle Wayne’s trial came, and only the following facts came
to light:
His character, up to the night in question, as far as any one knew, was
unimpeachable.
He had been in Mr. Forrester’s employ for three years, and during that
time had gained that gentleman’s entire confidence and kind regard, and
he had even contemplated making him a partner in his business as soon as
he had completed his course of study and been admitted to the bar.
He spoke at some length, and in glowing terms, of his honesty and
industry, and said he had deemed him, if anything, _too_ rigid and
morbidly conscientious upon what seemed to him points of minor
importance.
All this spoke well for the prisoner, but it did not touch upon the
matter under consideration, and could not therefore be accepted as
evidence.
It seems that on the afternoon before the robbery Earle had asked
permission to go out of town on business for himself. He had not stated
what that business was, neither had Mr. Forrester inquired.
Now, however, the question came up, but Earle refused to state it, and
this of itself turned the tide strong against him.
He had obtained leave to leave the city on a train that left at two in
the afternoon, and had gone to the village of ——, only eighteen miles
out.
He transacted his business, which concerned only his private interests,
he said, and this much he could also say, “was connected with the events
of his early life,” and returned to the city by the late train, which
arrived about midnight.
On his way from the station to his lodgings he was obliged to pass Mr.
Dalton’s house, where he saw, as already described, the light within one
of the lower rooms.
He stated that his first impulse was to go for a police officer, but
fearing the man—he had not thought there would be more than one—would be
off with his booty before he could return, he resolved to remain,
encounter the villain single-handed, and bring him to justice.
He then went on to describe his tussle with the two ruffians.
But he had only his own word with which to battle all the evidence
against him. His story did not sound reasonable, the jury thought,
particularly as he so persistently refused to state the nature of his
business to the village of ——; and besides, the fact of the bracelet
having been found in his possession, or what amounted to the same thing,
was almost sufficient of itself to convict him.
“Earle, if you could only tell this business of yours, perhaps we might
be able to do something for you; otherwise I see no chance,” Mr.
Forrester had urged, when the opposing counsel had made such a point of
his refusal to do so.
“I cannot, sir. It is connected with a great wrong committed years ago,
and involves the name of my mother. I _cannot_ unveil the past before
the curious rabble gathered here—no, not even if I have to serve out a
ten-years’ sentence for keeping silent,” Earle said, firmly, but with
deep emotion.
Editha’s evidence—since she was the first to see and recognize him on
the night of the robbery—went further than almost anything else toward
condemning him, even though it was given with such reluctance, together
with her oft-asserted belief that he was innocent.
The tender-hearted, loyal girl would rather have had her tongue
paralyzed than to have been obliged to speak the words which so told
against him.
Earle was cross-examined and recross-questioned, but he told the same
story every time, never swerving in a single particular from his first
statements.
Every possible way was tried to make him confess who his accomplices
were, the opposing counsel maintaining that he must have had one or
more. But he always replied:
“I had no accomplice, for I have neither planned nor executed any
robbery.”
“But you assert that two men came out of the house.”
“I encountered two men at the corner of Mr. Dalton’s house; one I
surprised and felled to the ground, and then grappled with the other.
During the scuffle the first one got up and ran off with the bag which
contained their booty. I then received a blow which stunned and felled
me, and when I came to myself again both were gone. I know nothing of
either them or their plunder, and I am innocent of any complicity in the
matter.”
But all was of no avail against the positive evidence which opposed him,
and the fatal verdict was spoken, the fearful sentence pronounced.
Popular sympathy inclined strongly toward the unfortunate young man,
whom many knew and respected for his hitherto stainless character, while
his appearance, so noble and manly, prepossessed almost every one in his
favor.
As before stated, he had come to Richard Forrester when a youth of
seventeen, asking for work, and the great lawyer had employed him as an
office boy, and it was not long before he came to feel a deep interest
in the intelligent lad. He saw that he had what lawyers term “a long
head,” and could grasp all the details of a case almost as readily as he
himself could, and he resolved that he would educate him for the
profession.
Mr. Forrester was a bachelor of great wealth, and exceedingly fond of
his beautiful and vivacious niece, Editha Dalton, who, report said, was
to be his heiress.
She was a slight, sprightly girl of fourteen when Earle Wayne came into
her uncle’s employ, and a mutual admiration sprang up between them at
once, and steadily increased, until, on the part of the young man, it
grew into a deep and abiding love, although he had never presumed to
betray it by so much as a look or tone.
Editha, at seventeen, had not as yet analyzed her own feelings toward
her uncle’s _protege_; and thus we find her at the time of the trial
pouring out her impulsive regrets and grief in the most unreserved
manner, while her tender heart was filled with keenest anguish at the
fate of her _beau ideal_ of all manly excellence.
As for Mr. Dalton, he did not share the faith of either his daughter or
his brother-in-law; and, notwithstanding he was vastly astonished upon
discovering Earle Wayne in the hands of a policeman at his own door on
the night of the robbery, yet he was a man who could easily believe
almost anything of one whom he disliked.
He did dislike Earle, simply because Editha showed him so much favor;
and he was rather glad than otherwise now, if the truth were known, that
this very fascinating young hero was to be removed from his path, even
though he was to become a prisoner. He began to fear that she had
already grown to admire him more than was either wise or proper,
considering the vast difference in their relative social positions; and
it would never do for the aristocratic Miss Dalton, heiress-expectant,
to fall in love with an _office boy_.
And so Earle Wayne went to prison.
But he went with a stout heart and a manly courage that very few possess
who are doomed to drag out a weary term of years behind bolts, and bars,
and solid walls.