THE CLOUDS THICKEN.
"Shagarach is the man to defend him, Miss Barlow," said old John
Davidson. She was lying back against the cushions of the cab, with
cheeks as white as the handkerchief she held to her lips. For the
marshal had kindly offered to accompany her home and she had told him
part of her story.
She was, as McCausland had said to the district attorney, a photographic
retoucher. You must know that a negative when it leaves the camera is no
more fit for display than milk fresh from the cow is drinkable. All the
minor blemishes which you and I, not being made in the stamp of bluff
old Oliver, dislike to see perpetuated in our counterfeit presentments,
must be carefully stippled out. The work is not without its irksomeness,
requiring long hours of labor as well as firmness of touch. The strain
upon the young lady's eyes was evident, and her face, for all its
beauty, was as delicate as thinnest porcelain. One felt that her
fingers, if she held them toward the sun, would show the red suffusion
of a child's. But her earnings supported a family of five, and her
character had won the love of Robert Floyd.
"Who is Shagarach?" she asked, as if struck by the name.
"Shagarach! Why, Shagarach's the coming man, the greatest criminal
lawyer in the state and the greatest cross-examiner in the world--a mind
reader, black art in it. Never lost a case."
"This is my number, Mr. Davidson."
"Ho, there! John! Cabby!" The marshal rapped at the window.
"What was the number, miss?"
"Four hundred and twelve."
"Stop at 412."
"You have been very kind to interest yourself in one who is not known to
you, Mr. Davidson. I should have been badly off without your
assistance."
"Didn't do half enough," answered the marshal. "Glad to be of service.
Call on me again. Here's Shagarach's address. Take my advice and look
him up."
He had been writing on the back of a card while the cab-driver was
slowing his team around in front of Miss Barlow's door. It read in a
scrawl, rendered half-illegible by the jolting: "Meyer Shagarach, 31
Putnam Street."
Emily looked twice at the singular name. McCausland never failed to
convict his prisoners. Shagarach's clients invariably escaped. What
would happen if the two were pitted against each other? This was her
thought when she mounted the dear steps of home and fell weeping into
the arms of her mother.
The following morning a remarkable discovery was made on the site of
Prof. Arnold's house. The burned district had been roped off and was
guarded by policemen, owing to the danger from the standing walls and
still smoking debris. But tip-carts had begun to remove what was
removable of the wreck, and the work of clearing away the ground was
already well under way. Sight-seers in great numbers went out of their
course to pass the ruins, for the Harmon building was of recent erection
and had been styled a model of business architecture.
But "Toot" Watts, "Turkey" Fenton and "The Whistler" were not indulging
in reminiscences of departed architectural glories that morning. They
averaged 14 years and 110 pounds, a combination hostile to sentiment in
any but its most robust forms. "That nutty duffer gives me a pain," was
their unanimous criticism from the gallery of the "Grand Dime," upon the
garden rhapsodies of their co-mate and brother in adolescence, Romeo.
But in the evenings, if that long fence, which is the gamin's delight,
happened to be under surveillance from the "cop," they would march up
street and down, Turkey mouthing his harmonica, Toot opening and
shutting a wheezy accordion, the Whistler fifing away with that
thrush-like note to which he owed his nickname, and all three beating
time by their own quick footsteps to the melody of some sweet, familiar
song. Amid such surroundings even the ditties sung by our mothers many
seasons ago can bring up wholesome sentiments in which the boyish
musicians who evoke them are surely sharers.
On the day before Toot had surreptitiously conveyed a fresh egg to
school and rolled it playfully down the aisle, whereupon Turkey, as he
was walking out at 4, had set the stamp of approval on his friend's
property. All three had decided to take a day off until the affair
should blow over, and no better pastime suggested itself than a visit to
the fire, in which they took a sort of proprietary interest, since they
had been the first after the bake-shop girl, to arrive on the spot. The
passageway beside the house was still left open and unguarded. So our
urchins, approaching from the Broad street side, coolly entered the
forbidden precincts thereby, thus eluding the blue-coated watchers by a
flank movement as simple as it was effective.
"I'm goin' to pick up junk and sell it to Bagley," said Turkey, filling
his pocket with bolts, nuts and other fragments which he deemed of
value. The others followed his example and began rummaging about with
insecure footing among the heaps.
"Whew!" the Whistler emitted a long-drawn note no flute could possibly
rival. He had been brushing away the ashes from a heavy object, when his
eye was attracted by a fragment of cloth, which clung about it. His
whistle drew the attention of his companions, but it also invited a less
welcome arrival, no other than one of the patrolmen doing guard duty,
who swooped down and seized Turkey and the Whistler by their collars,
while Toot scrambled off with unseemly haste and escaped down the
alleyway.
"What are you doing here?" said the officer, shaking the boys till their
teeth chattered, and several pieces of iron, dropping out of Turkey's
pockets, disclosed the object of their visit. "Stealing junk, eh?"
"Say, look," said the Whistler, who was cool and inventive; "it's a
woman." He was pointing to the object he had laid bare. The officer
slackened his grip.
"My God!" he cried; then stooped and by a full exertion of his strength
lifted the thing out of the ashes and half-burned timbers which overlay
it. It was, indeed, the body of a woman, short and stout. The boys did
not run. They looked on, spellbound, in open-mouthed wonder.
"Run and call the sergeant," said the policeman to his quondam captives.
The news spread like wildfire. Hundreds swarmed to the scene, but none
among them who had the key to the woman's identity. Her charred face and
burned body rendered identification difficult. It was Inspector
McCausland who, after consulting his notebook, recognized the garment
and the form which it clad as Ellen Greeley's. An ambulance was called
and the corpse of the poor woman carried away to the morgue, to await
her sister's instructions.
Senda Wesner, the bake-shop girl, had described this discovery for the
eleventh time to her customers, and was standing on the steps of her
store alone--a condition to which she was by nature averse--when the
golden-haired lady "flashed in upon her," as she afterward said, "like a
Baltimore oriole." It was Emily Barlow, who had run down during her
lunch hour to the scene of the tragedy. At the first mention of her
name, Miss Wesner knew her.
"Oh, you're the young lady he kept company with," she said. "Isn't it
too bad? I don't believe he ever did it. No man in his senses would set
his own house afire and then walk out in broad daylight, as I saw Mr.
Floyd do."
"You saw Mr. Floyd coming out, then? Pardon my curiosity, but I am so
deeply interested----"
"I shouldn't think much of you if you were not," said Senda Wesner. "I'm
glad to tell all I know about it, and I can't see for the life of me why
they didn't call me to the stand."
Emily saw that no apology was needed for questioning the bake-shop girl.
She was easy to make free with and fond of running on. Being a little
reticent herself, Emily was glad to be relieved of the necessity of
putting inquiries. So she simply guided the little gossip's talk.
"You did see Mr. Floyd leave the house? Was it long before the fire
broke out?"
"Four or five minutes. I'd noticed Bertha raising the curtains--two
Washington pies? yes'm--I'd seen Bertha up in the study, I say, but then
Joe Tyke, Joey, we call him, the cripple newsboy, though he is quite a
man now, but he never grew, deformed, you know--Joey was trundling
himself along on his little cart, and I couldn't take my eyes off of
him--20 cents, yes'm." The bake-shop girl continued to spread jam, ladle
milk and wrap warm loaves in fresh brown paper, all the while, but her
interruptions only formed tiny ripples on her flowing stream of prattle.
"Then Mr. Robert came out and walked down to the corner slowly. But do
you know what puzzled me? What was he stooping over the hearth for and
picking up those pieces of paper?"
"People often do that. Perhaps he had torn up a letter and some of it
had scattered outside the fireplace."
"Well, I didn't see another thing, not one thing, against him," said
Miss Wesner, decidedly. Her ideas on the value of evidence were
certainly of the most feminine order. "I'm sure he's a young man of the
highest reputation. Never smoked or drank or----"
"You didn't see any other person coming out of the house?"
"No, I didn't. Yes, Gertrude, and how's your mamma? That's a sweet
thing, only 10 years old, but does all the errands and half the
housework for her mother, that's sick, and never slaps the baby."
"Or any stranger about?" edged in Emily again, when the spigot was
finally turned off and the waters of gossip had ceased to run.
"Do you know----" The bake-shop girl dimpled her cheek with her
forefinger. It was a healthy cheek, but not beautiful. "Do you know,
there has been the oddest peddler around here for the last three weeks?"
"Do tell me about him. What did he look like? A stranger?"
"Never passed this street before as long as I know and that's a good
many years. He was a sunburnt sort of man, like all the peddlers (only
I'd say homelier, if I wasn't a fright myself), and with crazy blue
eyes. Always came in a green cart and sold vegetables, no, once potted
plants. But how he would yodel. Why, he'd make you deaf. Ellen used to
buy of him sometimes. Nobody else ever did, and it's my opinion when he
left the Arnolds he used to whip up his horse and hurry right round the
corner."
"Was this peddler here lately?"
"Not since Friday, the day before the fire; I'm positive."
"He wasn't here Saturday?"
"No, he wasn't. But I must say, peddler or no peddler, I don't believe
Robert Floyd ever set that fire."
There was more that Senda Wesner believed and disbelieved--so much,
indeed, that when Emily left her she had asked herself twice what a room
full of Senda Wesners would be like. But she checked this uncharitable
thought. The girl was good-hearted and her information about the peddler
might prove a clew. After making a half-circuit of the house which was
so familiar to her, for she had visited it often, she returned to her
stippling pencil in the photograph gallery, pondering now upon the
identity of the strange peddler, now upon the sad fate of Ellen Greeley,
and oftenest of all on the lover who was spending his first day in the
solitude of a felon's cell.