MURDER IN HELL’S KITCHEN.
To understand the preliminaries of the case on which Chick Carter and
Patsy had been working for their chief, we must go back to a time
before Simeon Rich was tried and executed, before Darwin was sent back
to England, where he afterward died in prison.
To begin with, Old Mother Flintstone, well known in the neighborhood of
Hell’s Kitchen, was dead.
All people have to die, and the old woman had to follow the written law
of all mankind; but, what was queer, her death was a subject for police
investigation.
She had not lived the best of lives, this old hag, toothless and
decrepit in her hovel, where her couch was rags and the walls grimy and
almost black; she had been a fence and what not, and there were stories
about her that made people even in that delectable quarter of Gotham
shake their heads over them.
She had died in the night.
Death had come to the hovel in the wee sma’ hours of the darkness, when
the great city was supposed to sleep the sleep of the innocent and
righteous; but somehow or other there was a suspicion that a human hand
had helped Mother Flintstone out of the world.
She lived alone, but now and then she was visited by a boy--a waif of
the streets, little, but shrewd and wiry.
Mulberry Billy, as the boy was called, had a story to tell, and it was
his narrative which had set the police agog.
The boy had gone to Mother Flintstone’s just before day, crawling into
the old place, where he knew there was always a bed for him, and had
found the old lady lying on her face on the floor.
Billy tried to lift the body and bear it to the couch near by, but the
lot of bones slid from his hands.
Then he saw the distorted face, the wide, staring eyes and the clenched
hands.
Then he saw that his old benefactress was past all human aid, and he
stood stock-still and thought how kind she had been to him.
But this was not all Billy saw. He was attracted to the right by a
noise in the direction of the only window in the room, and there he saw
the outlines of a face.
It was not a rough face, as one would expect to see in that locality;
it was not the face of a hardened ruffian, seamed with sin and
desperate. It was a finely cut face, handsome, aristocratic, like those
Billy sometimes saw on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. It had good eyes,
white skin, a broad forehead, and well-chiseled lips. The mustache did
not entirely hide the latter, but it did not let the boy get a good
look at them.
If the face at the window had been wicked-looking or desperate the boy
would not have been astonished, for he would have thought that the
desperate murderer had come back to see if the victim had yet been
discovered.
Mother Flintstone was reputed rich; she was said to have accumulated by
her calling a good deal of wealth, which she had concealed somewhere,
but where even Billy, her one little confidant, did not know.
The boy looked at the face till it seemed to be photographed on his
mind. He would know it among a thousand faces, he thought.
It should not escape him, and he would give a certain person a full
description of it.
In a moment, as it were, the face vanished.
Billy turned again to the dead woman, but looked now and then toward
the window. He saw that the old woman had been killed, for the rent in
her throat told where the dagger had found her life and put an end to
her varied career.
As yet the murder was his secret and the murderer’s.
Mulberry Billy remained in the little room some time, or until he had
composed his nerves.
One does not discover a terrible crime every day, not even in New York.
He wanted to think the matter over a little; he wanted to decide just
what to do.
“I’ll see Patsy again, that’s best,” he said aloud, though addressing
himself. “Patsy Garvan once befriended me, and he’ll tell Mr. Carter
about this, and I know Mr. Carter’s the man to take charge of this
matter and avenge Mother Flintstone.”
With this the street Arab slipped from the house and went out upon the
street again.
In a few minutes he ran up a flight of steps leading to Nick’s downtown
den, where he had captured Brockey, and knocked at a door.
Footsteps crossed the room beyond and the door was opened.
“You, boy! Come in.”
Billy entered, looking at the person who had opened the door, and who
now stood in the middle of the room looking at him with a smile on his
face. He had expected to find Chick Carter or Patsy there, and he was
surprised to meet the great detective himself already on the trail once
more.
“What’s happened, boy?” asked Nick.
“They’ve got Mother Flintstone at last, sir.”
“Who have?”
“That’s for you to find out, Mr. Carter.”
“You don’t mean that the old lady’s dead, Billy?”
“Don’t I?”
“Where?”
“In the crib.”
“Do you know who saw her last?”
“Yes, sir; the man who did it.”
Carter smiled at the answer and took a seat at the table.
“Give me the story,” he said.
Billy did so. He omitted nothing, but he dwelt a long time on the face
at the window.
The famous detective seemed to think that face an important matter, and
he made the boy describe it half a dozen times.
Presently he arose and put on an overcoat, for the night was cold, and
perhaps he wanted to protect his face with the ample collar.
The pair left the room together, and Billy piloted the detective to the
scene of the crime.
“You can go now,” said Carter, when he had taken a survey of the
apartment. “I will need you to-morrow, Billy. Don’t go far. You can
take my lounge if you want a snooze till then.”
The urchin went away, leaving Carter in the hovel where Mother
Flintstone lay.
Nick went over the old place with his keen eyes and eager hands.
If he found anything that let some light upon the mystery he did not
divulge the secret, and just as day was breaking over the spires of
Gotham he came out of the place and walked away.
A few minutes later the police knew of the crime, and a sergeant took
possession of the old woman’s abode.
Hell’s Kitchen had a new sensation, and its inhabitants stood about in
groups and discussed it.
The sensation was too late for the morning papers, but it would do for
the afternoon journals; and as Mother Flintstone was a noted character,
half a dozen reporters came to the scene with ready pencils and
reportorial noses.
The papers in the afternoon told all there was to tell.
They dished up the past life of the old woman and colored it to suit
themselves.
Some had her a woman once respected and wealthy, the wayward daughter
of a money king; others said she was related to royalty; none put her
down as plain Mother Flintstone--that, you know, being the unvarnished
truth, would never do!
The wasted body was removed to the morgue and the surgeons brought
their skill to bear upon the case. All agreed that the old creature had
been foully killed by a dagger, and the coroner’s jury added “by some
person unknown,” and then turned the matter over to the police.
The following night Carter, alone in his room, heard a rap on his door,
and he opened it to look into the face of a young woman. He held the
door open and the girl--she was no more than this in years--glided
into the room.
“Lock the door, please,” she said, with an appealing look at the
detective.
Carter did so and turned to her.
His visitor had taken a chair, and in the light he saw how frightened
she was and how she trembled.
“You haven’t any clew yet?” was her first question.
“Clew to what?”
“Why, to the murderer of Mother Flintstone.”
“Oh, you’re interested in that, are you?”
“I am.”
“What is your name?”
“Yes, I thought you’d want to know that and it’s no more than right
that I should tell you. You may call me Margie Marne.”
“But that’s not your name.”
The girl smiled.
“Perhaps not; don’t, for Heaven’s sake, rob me of the only secret I
have--my true identity.”
“I will not. You shall keep your name. That secret can belong to you as
long as you want it, or until you see best to disclose it.”
“The time may come when I can speak,” was the reply. “But you haven’t
answered my question yet.”
“About the clew? It’s a queer case.”
“And a dark one?”
“Yes.”
“No reward has been offered?”
“Not a dollar.”
“But you want to find out who killed Mother Flintstone, and why.”
“I do, and I will find out.”
“Thank God!” cried Margie Marne, rising from her chair and seizing
Carter’s hands. “That’s the best thing I ever heard a man say.”
“What was the old lady to you?”
“Don’t ask me. Only find the hand that slew her.”
“That’s my mission, as I’ve already told you.”
“I’ll reward you,” and she seemed to smile again. “I don’t look like a
person of wealth, but I can reward the man who solves this mystery of
the tenements. I’m not as poor as I look, not a female Lazarus by any
means.”
“You don’t look it, either.”
The girl would have replied if footsteps had not approached the
detective’s door, and he crossed the room.
Billy, the street Arab, bounded in the moment the door was opened.
“I’ve located him!” he cried the moment he caught sight of Carter. “I
can show you the face I saw at the window last night. Come! Let the gal
stay. We don’t want her. No gals in the case for Mulberry Billy is my
motto,” and the boy darted toward the door again.