A STERN CHASE.
"At any cost!" The last words of his master tingled in Saul Aronson's
ears when he left the court-room with the summons in his hand. Ever
since the disclosures of Serena Lamb he had been more than usually
abashed in his demeanor. For in some measure he felt that it was he who
had brought this threatened catastrophe upon their cause. Here was the
opportunity to retrieve his misstep. He would prove his fidelity and
serve the writ "at any cost."
Mrs. Arnold had secured a few minutes' start, but Aronson did not doubt
his ability to overtake her. She would probably call a cab, since she
was an all-day attendant at the sittings and it was unlikely her family
carriage would be waiting for her. Impatiently he rang the elevator up,
and then, deciding just as it arrived that it was quicker to walk down,
balked the boy by tacking off toward the staircase and descending it two
steps at a time. When he reached the exit, the square was deserted. But
just around the corner, like the whisk of a vanishing tail, he caught a
glimpse of a rapidly driven cab. After this he sped, down the crowded
main thoroughfare, dodging the pedestrians as well as he could, with his
eyes on the distant vehicle, and yawing wildly at last into the arms of
a man who stood waiting on the curbstone.
"Where in the----" but the man was a herdic driver and his language may
as well be left to the imagination. Aronson saw the badge on his hat;
that was enough.
"Catch that carriage," he said, "and I'll give you $2."
"Jump in," cried the driver. The door was locked in a jiffy and
presently they were bumping over the cobblestones.
"Stop there!" shouted the burly policeman who used to escort Emily so
gallantly over the street crossing.
"It's a runaway!" cried the herdic driver, giving himself the lie by a
savage snap of his whip. The officer was in no trim for a spurt, so he
fell behind puffing. Still they bumped on, till Aronson's anxiety
mastered him and he rapped at the window for attention. The driver
stupidly reined up.
"Go on!" cried the passenger, and the whip-lash circled once more with a
crack. They were out on the long bridge to Oxford now, and the fugitive
could not be far ahead.
"Hello!" shouted the driver. The jehu in front turned his head.
"Haul up!" he hailed.
The driver in front obeyed and the two herdics were soon abreast,
Aronson getting a dusty toss in his impatience to get out. As he picked
himself up, a great fat man put his head out of the other herdic window
and began to ask the cause of the detention.
"Is Mrs. Arnold in there?" inquired Aronson, putting his head into the
herdic, just by the fat passenger's.
"Mrs. Arnold? What Mrs. Arnold? Take your head out, you impudent,--drive
away, you----" cried the fat passenger, settling back on the cushions
which he almost filled with the breadth of his back. Aronson was left
standing alone on the road, puzzling his wits what to do.
"You lost the right carriage," he said.
"I followed the one you pointed out," answered the driver, surlily.
"Well, take me back."
"Where's my $2?" asked No. 99, and Aronson had to pay him this sum, as
well as an advance fare for the ride back, before he would turn his
horse's head. Going in town, the animal made up for time gained by a
heartbreaking leisureliness of pace. No one could blame the poor hack
horse. There had been some attempt to make him look respectable by
docking his tail, but it was no more successful than a silk hat on a
prize-fighter, designed to foster the same illusion.
It was just 5:40 when Aronson reached the Northern depot and the train
for Hillsborough had left at 5:38. He had the misery of knowing that
Mrs. Arnold was probably well on her way to her summer residence by this
time, and that there was no train earlier than 7 o'clock. In the interim
he bought a ticket, supped, reflected, counted his money and studied the
subpoena.
A village bell was tolling 8 when Aronson stepped from the passenger car
out on the platform of the Hillsborough station. They had left the
sunset behind them in their eastward ride and the country village was
dark.
"I want a carriage to Mrs. Arnold's house," he said to the
station-master.
"Hacks are all in now," answered the official behind the grating,
turning to his books. But he underrated the persistency of his customer.
"I'll give you $1.50 for a team," said Aronson. The suggestion worked
magically and in less than an hour he was let down before the veranda of
the Arnold mansion. A ruby porch-light flooded him with a kind of
delighted confusion. How mild and solemn the country is at night! How
suggestive of grassy comforts the humming of the crickets! All the
shepherd that lay deep down in Aronson's nature, as in that of every one
of us, even the plainest, had time to show itself in the interval
between his ring and the servant's answer.
"Mrs. Arnold is in Woodlawn," answered the housemaid. "Can you leave
your business?"
"No, I want to see her personally."
Woodlawn! She had escaped him then. The teamster was waiting and the
servant diminishing the aperture of the door to a suspicious crack,
while he collected his thoughts.
"How long has she been in Woodlawn?" he asked.
"She just moved in yesterday morning," replied the servant, closing the
door with a slam.
"Take me back in time for the next train," said Aronson to the driver.
"Too late for the next train," came the drawling answer. "Next train is
at 9:15 and it's most 9 now."
"When is the last train?" asked Aronson, figuring on a midnight visit to
Woodlawn.
"That's the last train to-night."
Here was a wild-goose chase indeed, but Aronson had a keen suspicion
that it was the goose who was the chaser.
"What is the first train in the morning?"
"At 6:15 a. m.," answered the rustic, who usually knows his local
time-table better than his prayers.
"Can I lodge here for the night?"
"Dunno. Sam Cook might put you up. He used to keep an inn. Maybe he can
find a spare bed for you under the roof somewheres."
"Drive me to Sam Cook's," said Aronson. All the nocturnal interest of
the countryside had vanished from him now, and it was with no kindly
feeling toward Hillsborough that he stretched his limbs in the old
boniface's spare bed, laying the subpoena under his pillow and muttering
a petition to Jehovah that he might not oversleep himself and lose the
6:15 a. m. But the real danger proved to be that he would get no sleep
at all. For at midnight he was still tossing.
A cow-bell, furiously jingled, awoke him at sunrise, and he was in the
city at 7:15, on schedule time.
"To Woodlawn," a sign on one of the tracks read. But the hands of the
mock clock pointed to 7:45 and there was another half-hour of waiting.
All the world was out of bed, for the steeple bell had just tolled 8
when he arrived in Woodlawn and inquired his way to the Arnolds'.
"Just moved back!" thought Aronson. "I should say so."
Mats were hanging out of windows, servants were mopping panes, a hostler
was hosing a muddy carriage in the stable; everything showed that a
general scrubbing process had begun. To his surprise and pleasure, he
recognized the housemaid who answered his ring as Bertha Lund. She was
dressed in her smartest pink, for this was the day of her testimony.
"I want to see Mrs. Arnold," said Aronson, blurting out his message like
a schoolboy.
"Mrs. Arnold? Well, you've come too late," answered Bertha.
"Isn't she here?"
"Here! She's on her way to Europe by this time."
"To Europe!"
Saul Aronson's jaw dropped and the subpoena began to burn a hole in his
pocket. Was this a subterfuge? He would be on the alert.
"When did she start?"
"Why, this morning. You must have passed her coming out."
Passed her coming out! It was like chasing his own shadow, this constant
missing of the game he hunted.
"But wha--wha--what made her go to Europe?" stammered Aronson. He
remembered hearing Shagarach say one day that flight was confession. Was
Mrs. Arnold involved in her son's guilt? Then all the more reason for
waylaying her before she gave them the slip.
"Can't a lady go abroad if she chooses? Mrs. Arnold goes abroad every
summer."
"But Harry----"
"Yes, we're cleaning things up for Harry. They'll live here after
they're married, you know, Harry and Miss March."
"But he was arrested!"
"Arrested!"
Bertha had left the court early on the previous day and did not read the
papers.
"Didn't his mother know Harry was arrested?"
"Arrested! Harry? What for?"
"For setting his uncle's house on fire," answered Aronson, who as a
loyal partisan was one shade more thorough in his conviction of Harry's
guilt than Shagarach himself.
"Setting his uncle's house on fire! Nonsense!"
"What boat did she take?" asked Aronson, breaking in upon Bertha's
astonishment with a gesture of impatience.
"The Venetia, of the Red Star line."
"And it starts so early in the morning?"
"Yes; somewhere between 8 and 9."
Aronson looked at his watch. It was just 8:15. If he could catch a train
back, he might be in town at a little after half-past. And then--a
delay! These great steamers are often delayed!
"Toot! Toot! Toot!" came the warning whistle of an engine, and Aronson
was dashing down the path, never stopping to pick up his hat that was
lifted off by the wind, bent only on beating his steam-propelled rival
to the station. It took him the whole journey townward to recover the
wind he had lost in that unwonted quarter-mile run. People laughed at
his hatless head, but he did not heed them. Besides, if he had been a
philosopher, he might have retorted that hats on a dog-day are simply
one of the nuisances of civilized conventionality. So he took a wharf
car and in less than half an hour was running out to the edge of the
great Red Star quay, there to behold the Venetia proudly backing into
the channel on the flood of the tide and turning her head oceanward. I
regret to say this spectacle filled Aronson with violent wrath, and the
wharf loungers must have taken him for a wild man as he smote his fists
together and danced about.
"Missed your boat?" inquired casually a sea-beaten man, but Aronson was
too irate to appreciate his well-meant sympathy. He only ran to the edge
of the wharf and looked off, shading his eyes from the glare of the
water.
Presently he found the man at his elbow again.
"I can catch her for you if it's anything important," said the tar.
"I'll give you--I'll give you--" and then he checked himself, appalled
at his own rashness. "How much will you charge?" he asked.
"Well, the Venetians steaming for a record this trip."
"How much?"
"She's got a start of a mile, and going twenty knots."
"How much?"
"There were some picnic folks I expected down here to charter my tug.
Don't see them, but they may drop in. I suppose you'll allow something
for the disappointment if they come."
"How much?" persisted Aronson, but the Venetia had just disappeared
behind an island and the thought of returning empty-handed to Shagarach
acted like a rowel in his flank. "I'll give you $50," he cried,
suddenly.
"Done," said the Yankee, wringing his hand, and then Aronson knew that
he ought to have offered $25. But it was no time for haggling. "At any
cost," he repeated to himself. The mariner hurried him in and out among
the wharves, till they came upon a battered but resolute-looking
tugboat, on which two or three deck-hands were lounging.
"Get steam up, Si," cried the skipper, and after a delay which seemed an
hour to Aronson the water began to be churned to foam before her bow and
the little craft had started on its long chase.
Past the islands of the harbor, past the slow merchant schooners, past
the white-sailed careening pleasure sloops, past the harbor police boat,
past the revenue cutter, past the excursion steamers to local beaches,
past the crowded Yarmouth, they flew, cheered on by the passengers--for
everybody soon saw it was a race.
Aronson was studying the wide beam of the Venetia in front. How slowly
they were gaining! They were out beyond the farthest island in the
harbor, the lighthouse shoal that is covered at high tide, and still the
Red Star liner bore away from them with half a mile of clear water
between.
"Cheer up, shipmate," cried Perkins; "she's gettin' bigger and bigger.
Heap the coals on down there, Si."
The Venetia must have sighted her pursuer long ago, and indeed the faces
of her passengers on the bow were becoming more and more visible every
moment. But this was a record trip, and it would be beneath her dignity
to slow up for every petty rowboat that hailed her. So her engines
continued to pump and she clove the glorious waters swiftly.
"Ahoy!" shouted Capt. Perkins.
"Ahoy yourself!" came the answer. Aronson thought he saw a woman's face
that he knew on the deck.
"Heave to! A boarder!"
"Tell him to get out of bed in time," came the ungracious reply.
Evidently the Venetia's third mate was under orders not to stop for any
belated passenger.
"What's your errand?" asked the skipper, a little puzzled, of Aronson.
"I have a subpoena from the court," cried Aronson, all agog.
"Oh, you're a court officer."
Then he rounded his hands and holloaed up:
"A court officer aboard!"
Court officer! This made an impression. The third mate withdrew from the
gunwale and presently reappeared with the captain.
"Lash her to!" cried the captain. The tug-boat hugged her great sister
and a ladder was let down, upon which Aronson mounted. With the white
paper in his hand he looked decidedly formidable.
"I have a subpoena for Mrs. Alice Arnold, one of your passengers. She is
wanted as a witness in a murder trial. There she is," he added, for Mrs.
Arnold stood in front of the crowd that had rolled like a barrel of
ballast toward the center of interest. The captain was nonplused. He was
not familiar enough with law terms to know the limits of a subpoena's
authority. But he felt that he was to some extent the protector of his
passengers.
"I don't understand this," he said, turning to Mrs. Arnold.
"It is a great annoyance to me if I must go on so trifling a matter,"
she said. She was pale and her manner was haughty. To Aronson it was
something more. It bore every indication of conscious guilt. He had not
foreseen resistance. The document, with Shagarach's name appended, he
had thought would open caverns and cause walls to fall.
"There is the lady. She prefers not to go. I presume you will have to
compel her. But I don't see that I can permit violence on board my
ship."
The passengers seemed to gloat on Saul Aronson's discomfiture, and
Shagarach's faithful courier was almost beside himself. In the distance
lay the city, crowned with its gold dome, dwindling from sight. The
lonely ocean roared around him. Capt. Perkins' tiny tug still hugged the
larboard of her giant sister.
"It appears to me that paper's no good," said the second mate suddenly.
He happened to be a little of a lawyer. "Let's have a look."
Aronson reluctantly saw the summons leave his hand.
"Suffolk county. This ain't Suffolk county," cried the mate, while the
ring of passengers laughed.
"Shinny on your own side, youngster," he added, returning the paper.
"But it's America," cried Aronson.
"Just passed the three-mile limit," said the captain. He was an
Englishman, the mate was an Englishman. They had no particular love for
anything American, except the output of our national mints.
"I'm afraid the captain's right, young man," said a kind, elderly
gentleman, who might be a lawyer recruiting his health by an ocean trip
before the fall term opened. "You've got beyond your jurisdiction."
Mrs. Arnold had gone below and the hatless invader reluctantly abandoned
his prize. On the homeward voyage he gave way to exhaustion and fell
into several naps of forty winks' duration, during the last of which a
grotesque dream troubled his peace. He found himself chasing Serena Lamb
around an enormous bass drum, as big as the Heidelberg tun, on the
stretched skin of which the oaf, the manikin and the pantaloon were
dancing a fandango. Still he chased Serena and still she escaped him,
the toes of the dancers pounding a heavy tattoo. Faster and faster
pursuer and pursued whirled around the side of the drum, till Aronson's
head swam like a kitten's in hot pursuit of his own tail. At last in his
despair he hurled the subpoena at Serena's head.
The three dancers disappeared with a bursting sound into the hollow of
the drum, and he awoke to find the tugboat just bumping its side against
the dock. The sea had smoothed down to a lack-luster glaze, but it was
less dreary than the heart of the baffled pursuer.
"We may as well cancel that little debit item now," said Skipper
Perkins, flinging a coil of rope ashore.
"At any cost," repeated Aronson sorely to himself. He had done his best,
but Mrs. Arnold was out of sight of land--a fugitive from justice.