UNEASY APPREHENSIONS
Plattsburg was not the name of the capital, but it will do for this
story. The state doesn't matter either. You may take your choice, like
the story Mark Twain wrote, with all kinds of weather at the beginning,
so the reader could take his pick.
We will say that my home city is Manchester. I live with my married
brother, his wife and two boys. Fred is older than I am, and he is an
exceptional brother. On the day he came home from his wedding trip, I
went down with my traps on a hansom, in accordance with a prearranged
schedule. Fred and Edith met me inside the door.
"Here's your latch-key, Jack," Fred said, as he shook hands. "Only one
stipulation--remember we are strangers in the vicinity and try to get
home before the neighbors are up. We have our reputations to think of."
"There is no hour for breakfast," Edith said, as she kissed me. "You
have a bath of your own, and don't smoke in the drawing-room."
Fred was always a lucky devil.
I had been there now for six years. I had helped to raise two young
Knoxes--bully youngsters, too: the oldest one could use boxing-gloves
when he was four--and the finest collie pup in our end of the state. I
wanted to raise other things--the boys liked pets--but Edith was like
all women, she didn't care for animals.
I had a rabbit-hutch built and stocked in the laundry, and a dove-cote
on the roof. I used the general bath, and gave up my tub to a young
alligator I got in Florida, and every Sunday the youngsters and I had a
great time trying to teach it to do tricks. I have always taken it a
little hard that Edith took advantage of my getting the measles from
Billy, to clear out every animal in the house. She broke the news to me
gently, the day the rash began to fade, maintaining that, having lost
one cook through the alligator escaping from his tub and being mistaken,
in the gloom of the back-stairs, for a rubber boot, and picked up under
the same misapprehension, she could not risk another cook.
On the day that Margery Fleming came to me about her father, I went home
in a state of mixed emotion. Dinner was not a quiet meal: Fred and I
talked politics, generally, and as Fred was on one side and I on the
other there was always an argument on.
"What about Fleming?" I asked at last, when Fred had declared that in
these days of corruption, no matter what the government was, he was
"forninst" it. "Hasn't he been frightened into reform?"
"Bad egg," he said, jabbing his potato as if it had been a politician,
"and there's no way to improve a bad egg except to hold your nose.
That's what the public is doing; holding its nose."
"Hasn't he a daughter?" I asked casually.
"Yes--a lovely girl, too," Edith assented. "It is his only redeeming
quality."
"Fleming is a rascal, daughter or no daughter," Fred persisted. "Ever
since he and his gang got poor Butler into trouble and then left him to
kill himself as the only way out, I have felt that there was something
coming to all of them--Hansen, Schwartz and the rest. I saw Fleming on
the street to-day."
"What!" I exclaimed, almost jumping out of my chair.
Fred surveyed me quizzically over his coffee cup.
"'Hasn't he a daughter!'" he quoted. "Yes, I saw him, Jack, this very
day, in an unromantic four-wheeler, and he was swearing at a policeman."
"Where was it?"
"Chestnut and Union. His cab had been struck by a car, and badly
damaged, but the gentleman refused to get out. No doubt you could get
the details from the corner-man."
"Look here, Fred," I said earnestly. "Keep that to yourself, will you?
And you too, Edith? It's a queer story, and I'll tell you sometime."
As we left the dining-room Edith put her hand on my shoulder.
"Don't get mixed up with those people, Jack," she advised. "Margery's a
dear girl, but her father practically killed Henry Butler, and Henry
Butler married my cousin."
"You needn't make it a family affair," I protested. "I have only seen
the girl once."
But Edith smiled. "I know what I know," she said. "How extravagant of
you to send Bobby that enormous hobby-horse!"
"The boy has to learn to ride sometime. In four years he can have a
pony, and I'm going to see that he has it. He'll be eight by that time."
Edith laughed.
"In four years!" she said, "Why, in four years you'll--" then she
stopped.
"I'll what?" I demanded, blocking the door to the library.
"You'll be forty, Jack, and it's a mighty unattractive man who gets past
forty without being sought and won by some woman. You'll be buying--"
"I will be thirty-nine," I said with dignity, "and as far as being
sought and won goes, I am so overwhelmed by Fred's misery that I don't
intend to marry at all. If I do--_if I do_--it will be to some girl who
turns and runs the other way every time she sees me."
"The oldest trick in the box," Edith scoffed. "What's that thing Fred's
always quoting: 'A woman is like a shadow; follow her, she flies; fly
from her, she follows.'"
"Upon my word!" I said indignantly. "And you are a woman!"
"I'm different," she retorted. "I'm only a wife and mother."
In the library Fred got up from his desk and gathered up his papers. "I
can't think with you two whispering there," he said, "I'm going to the
den."
As he slammed the door into his workroom Edith picked up her skirts and
scuttled after him.
"How dare you run away like that?" she called. "You promised me--" The
door closed behind her.
I went over and spoke through the panels.
"'Follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows'--oh, wife and
mother!" I called.
"For Heaven's sake, Edith," Fred's voice rose irritably. "If you and
Jack are going to talk all evening, go and sit on _his_ knee and let me
alone. The way you two flirt under my nose is a scandal. Do you hear
that, Jack?"
"Good night, Edith," I called, "I have left you a kiss on the upper left
hand panel of the door. And I want to ask you one more question: what if
I fly from the woman and she doesn't follow?"
"Thank your lucky stars," Fred called in a muffled voice, and I left
them to themselves.
I had some work to do at the office, work that the interview with Hunter
had interrupted, and half past eight that night found me at my desk. But
my mind strayed from the papers before me. After a useless effort to
concentrate, I gave it up as useless, and by ten o'clock I was on the
street again, my evening wasted, the papers in the libel case of the
_Star_ against the _Eagle_ untouched on my desk, and I the victim of an
uneasy apprehension that took me, almost without volition, to the
neighborhood of the Fleming house on Monmouth Avenue. For it had
occurred to me that Miss Fleming might not have left the house that day
as she had promised, might still be there, liable to another intrusion
by the mysterious individual who had a key to the house.
It was a relief, consequently, when I reached its corner, to find no
lights in the building. The girl had kept her word. Assured of that, I
looked at the house curiously. It was one of the largest in the city,
not wide, but running far back along the side street; a small yard with
a low iron fence and a garage, completed the property. The street lights
left the back of the house in shadow, and as I stopped in the shelter of
the garage, I was positive that I heard some one working with a rear
window of the empty house. A moment later the sounds ceased and muffled
footsteps came down the cement walk. The intruder made no attempt to
open the iron gate; against the light I saw him put a leg over the low
fence, follow it up with the other, and start up the street, still with
peculiar noiselessness of stride. He was a short, heavy-shouldered
fellow in a cap, and his silhouette showed a prodigious length of arm.
I followed, I don't mind saying in some excitement. I had a vision of
grabbing him from behind and leading him--or pushing him, under the
circumstances, in triumph to the police station, and another mental
picture, not so pleasant, of being found on the pavement by some
passer-by, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life. But
I was not apprehensive. I even remember wondering humorously if I should
overtake him and press the cold end of my silver mounted fountain pen
into the nape of his neck, if he would throw up his hands and surrender.
I had read somewhere of a burglar held up in a similar way with a
shoe-horn.
Our pace was easy. Once the man just ahead stopped and lighted a
cigarette, and the odor of a very fair Turkish tobacco came back to me.
He glanced back over his shoulder at me and went on without quickening
his pace. We met no policemen, and after perhaps five minutes walking,
when the strain was growing tense, my gentleman of the rubber-soled
shoes swung abruptly to the left, and--entered the police station!
I had occasion to see Davidson many times after that, during the strange
development of the Fleming case; I had the peculiar experience later of
having him follow me as I had trailed him that night, and I had occasion
once to test the strength of his long arms when he helped to thrust me
through the transom at the White Cat, but I never met him without a
recurrence of the sheepish feeling with which I watched him swagger up
to the night sergeant and fall into easy conversation with the man
behind the desk. Standing in the glare from the open window, I had much
the lost pride and self contempt of a wet cat sitting in the sun.
Two or three roundsmen were sitting against the wall, lazily, helmets
off and coats open against the warmth of the early spring night. In a
back room others were playing checkers and disputing noisily. Davidson's
voice came distinctly through the open windows.
"The house is closed," he reported. "But one of the basement windows
isn't shuttered and the lock is bad. I couldn't find Shields. He'd
better keep an eye on it." He stopped and fished in his pockets with a
grin. "This was tied to the knob of the kitchen door," he said, raising
his voice for the benefit of the room, and holding aloft a piece of
paper. "For Shields!" he explained, "and signed 'Delia.'"
The men gathered around him, even the sergeant got up and leaned
forward, his elbows on his desk.
"Read it," he said lazily. "Shields has got a wife; and her name ain't
Delia."
"Dear Tom," Davidson read, in a mincing falsetto, "We are closing up
unexpected, so I won't be here to-night. I am going to Mamie Brennan's
and if you want to talk to me you can get me by calling up Anderson's
drug-store. The clerk is a gentleman friend of mine. Mr. Carter, the
butler, told me before he left he would get me a place as parlor maid,
so I'll have another situation soon. Delia."
The sergeant scowled. "I'm goin' to talk to Tom," he said, reaching out
for the note. "He's got a nice family, and things like that're bad for
the force."
I lighted the cigar, which had been my excuse for loitering on the
pavement, and went on. It sounded involved for a novice, but if I could
find Anderson's drug-store I could find Mamie Brennan; through Mamie
Brennan I would get Delia; and through Delia I might find Carter. I was
vague from that point, but what Miss Fleming had said of Carter had made
me suspicious of him. Under an arc light I made the first note in my
new business of man-hunter and it was something like this:
Anderson's drug-store.
Ask for Mamie Brennan.
Find Delia.
Advise Delia that a policeman with a family is a bad bet.
Locate Carter.
It was late when I reached the corner of Chestnut and Union Streets,
where Fred had said Allan Fleming had come to grief in a cab. But the
corner-man had gone, and the night man on the beat knew nothing, of
course, of any particular collision.
"There's plinty of 'em every day at this corner," he said cheerfully.
"The department sinds a wagon here every night to gather up the pieces,
autymobiles mainly. That trolley pole over there has been sliced off
clean three times in the last month. They say a fellow ain't a graduate
of the autymobile school till he can go around it on the sidewalk
without hittin' it!"
I left him looking reminiscently at the pole, and went home to bed. I
had made no headway, I had lost conceit with myself and a day and
evening at the office, and I had gained the certainty that Margery
Fleming was safe in Bellwood and the uncertain address of a servant who
_might_ know something about Mr. Fleming.
I was still awake at one o'clock and I got up impatiently and consulted
the telephone directory. There were twelve Andersons in the city who
conducted drug-stores.
When I finally went to sleep, I dreamed that I was driving Margery
Fleming along a street in a broken taxicab, and that all the buildings
were pharmacies and numbered eleven twenty-two.