"I don't know for a certainty. But I put it up that the fellow took Mac
into his confidence--a little--and told him he wanted to make a run for
it as soon as we hit the levee at St. Louis. He hadn't got his pay; we
always hold the 'rousties'' money back till we're unloaded, if we can;
so Mac advanced it, or claimed that he did."
It was Broffin's business to put two and two together, and at this
conjuncture the process was sufficiently simple. With a hundred thousand
dollars in his possession, the make-believe deck-hand would not be
foolish enough to run even a hypothetical risk for the sake of saving
the bit of wage-money. Broffin's next query seemed wholly irrelevant.
"Do you carry any nippers or handcuffs on the _Belle Julie_, Maurice?"
he asked.
"Yes; I believe Mac has an odd pair or so in his dunnage; in fact, I
know he has. I've seen him use 'em on an obstreperous nigger."
From the handcuffs Broffin went off at another tangent.
"Of course, so far as you know, nobody on the boat suspected that the
fellow who called himself Gavitt was anything but the 'roustie' he was
passing himself off for? You didn't know of his having any talk with any
of the upper-deck people?"
"Only once," said the day-clerk, promptly.
"When was that?"
"It was one day just after the 'man-overboard' incident, a little while
after dusk in the evening. I was up here in the texas, getting ready to
go to supper. Gavitt--we may as well keep on calling him that till
you've found another name for him--Gavitt had been cubbing for the
pilot. I saw him go across the hurricane-deck and down the companion to
the saloon-deck guards; and a minute later I heard him talking to
somebody--a woman--on the guards below."
"You didn't hear what was said?"
"I didn't pay any attention. Passengers, women passengers especially,
often do that--pull up a 'roustie' and pry into him to see what sort of
wheels he has. But I noticed that they talked for quite a little while;
because, when I finished dressing and went below, he was just leaving
her."
Broffin rose up from the bunk on which he had been sitting and laid a
heavy hand on Maurice's shoulder. "You ain't going to tell me that you
didn't find out who the woman was, Clarence--what?" he said anxiously.
"That's just what I've got to tell you, Matt," returned the clerk
reluctantly. "I was due at the second table, and I didn't go as far
forward as the stanchion she was holding on to. All I can tell you is
that she was one of the half-dozen or so younger women we had on board;
I could guess at that much."
Broffin's oath was not of anger; it was a mere upbubbling of
disappointment.
"Maurice, I've got to find that young woman if I have to chase her
half-way round the globe, and it's tough luck to figure out that if you
hadn't been in such a blazing hell of a hurry to get your supper that
night, I might be able to catch up with her in the next forty-eight
hours or so. But what's done is done, and can't be helped. Chase out and
get your passenger list for that trip. We'll take the women as they
come, and when you've helped me cull out the names of the ones you're
sure it wasn't, I'll screw my nut and quit buzzing at you."
The clerk went below and returned almost immediately with the list.
Together they went over it carefully, and by dint of much
memory-wringing Maurice was able to give the detective leave to cancel
ten of the seventeen names in the women's list, the remaining seven
including all the might-have-beens who could possibly be fitted into
the clerk's recollection of the woman he had seen clinging to the
saloon-deck stanchion after her interview with the deck-hand.
To these seven names were appended the addresses given in the steamer's
registry record, though as to these Maurice admitted that the patrons of
the boats were not always careful to comply with the regulation which
required the giving of the home address.
"About as often as not they write down the name of the last place they
stopped at," he asserted; and Broffin swore again.
"Which means that I may have to pound my ear eight or ten thousand miles
on the varnished cars for nothing," he growled. "Well, there ain't any
rest for the wicked, I reckon. Now tell me where I can find this man
Buck M'Grath, and I'll fade away."
M'Grath was on duty, superintending the loading and unloading of the
Vicksburg freight quotas; but when Broffin tapped him on the shoulder
and showed his badge, the second mate was called in and M'Grath stood
aside with his unwelcome interrupter.
There were difficulties from the outset. A man-driver himself, the chief
mate shared with the sheerest outcast in his crew a hearty hatred for
the man-catchers all and singular; and in the present instance his
sympathies were with the fugitive from justice, on general principles
first, and for good and sufficient personal reasons afterward. Then,
too, Broffin was hardly at his best. At the thought of what this man
M'Grath could tell him, and was gruffly refusing to tell him, he lost
his temper.
"You're edgin' up pretty close to the law, yourself, by what you're
keeping back," he told the mate finally. "Sooner or later, I'm going to
run this gentleman-roustie of yours down, anyhow, and it'll be healthier
for you to help than to hinder. Do you know what he's wanted for?"
M'Grath did not know, and his enlargement upon the simple negative was
explosively profane.
"Then I'll tell you. He was the 'strong-arm' man that held up the
president of the Bayou State Security and made his get-away with a
hundred thousand. Now will you come across?"
"No!" rasped the Irishman--and again there were embellishments.
"All right. When I catch up with him, you'll fall in for your share in
the proceeds as an accessory after the fact. My men nabbed him on the
levee at St. Louis, and when he euchred them he carried away a pair of
handcuffs that somebody had to help him get shut of. He came back to the
boat, and you are the man who took the handcuffs off!"
"'Tis a scrimshankin' lie, and ye can't prove ut!" said M'Grath.
"Maybe not; but there's one thing I can prove. This side-partner of
yours didn't get his pay before he went ashore with the spring-line;
_but you drew it for him afterwards!_"
M'Grath was cruelly cornered, but he still had the courage of his
gratitude.
"Well, then, I did be taking the bracelets off av 'm. Now make the most
av ut, and be damned to you! Did I know what he'd been doing? I did not.
Do I know where he wint? I do not. Have I seen the naygur that skipped
with him, from that day to this? I have not; nor would I be knowing 'm
if I did see 'm. Anything else yez'd like to know? If there is, ye'll be
taking ut on the tip av my fisht!" And he went back to his work, oozing
profanity at every pore.
Thrown back upon the one remaining expedient, Broffin went ashore and
became a student of railroad time-tables. Passing the incidents of the
stubborn chase in review after many days, he wondered that it had not
occurred to him to question Captain Mayfield. But that the captain would
know anything at all about any particular bit of human driftwood in the
ever-changing deck crew seemed easily incredible; and there was no good
angel of clairvoyance to tell him that the captain had once been made
the half-confidant of a distressed young woman who was anxious to be
both just and merciful.
It was while he was waiting for the departure of the first northbound
train that he planned the search for the young woman, arranging the
names of the seven might-have-beens in the order of accessibility as
indicated by the addresses given in the _Belle Julie's_ register. In
this arrangement Miss Charlotte Farnham's name stood as Number Three;
the two names outranking hers being assigned respectively to Terre
Haute, Indiana, and Baldwin, Kansas.
In his after-rememberings, Broffin swore softly under the drooping
mustaches when he recalled how, in that morning waiting at Vicksburg, he
had hesitated and changed his mind many times before deciding upon the
first three zigzags of the search. Terre Haute, Baldwin, and Wahaska lay
roughly at the three extremities of a great triangle whose sides,
measured in hours of railroad travel, were nearly equal. Failing at
Terre Haute, the nearest point, he could reach either of the two
remaining vertices of the triangle with fairly equal facility; and it
was surely an ironical fate that led him to decide finally upon the
Kansas town as the second choice.
Some twenty-odd hours after leaving Vicksburg, Broffin the tireless
found himself in Terre Haute. Here failure had at least the comfort of
finality. The Miss Heffelfinger of his list, whom he found and
interviewed within an hour of his arrival, was a teacher of German whose
difficulties with the English language immediately eliminated her from
the diminishing equation. Broffin got away from the voluble little
Berliner as expeditiously as possible and hastened back to the railway
station. Kansas came next in his itinerary, and a westbound train was
due to leave in a few minutes.
It was here again that fate mocked him. Arriving at the station, he
found that the westbound train was an hour late; also, that within the
hour there would be a fast train to the north, with good connections for
Wahaska. Once more he stumbled and fell into the valley of indecision. A
dozen times during the forty-five minutes of grace he was on the point
of changing his route; nay, more; at the last minute, when the caller
had announced the northern train, he took a gambler's chance and spun a
coin--heads for the north and tails for the west. The twirling
half-dollar slipped from his fingers and rolled under one of the
stationary seats in the waiting-room. Broffin got down on his hands and
knees to grope for it, and while he was groping the chance to take the
northbound "Limited" was lost. Moreover, when he finally found the coin
it was standing upright in a crack in the floor.
Having now no alternative to distract him, he held to his original plan
and was soon speeding westward toward the Kansan experiment-station. For
two full days of twenty-four hours each he fought as only a determined
man and a good traveller could fight to cover a distance which should
have been traversed in something less than half of the time. Washouts,
blocked tracks, missed connections, all these got in the way; and it was
not until late in the afternoon of the third day out from Terre Haute
that he was set down at the small station which serves the needs of the
Kansas university town.
Having had himself conveyed quickly to the university, which was given
as the address of the Miss Sanborn whose name stood second in his list,
he learned how shrewd a blow his implacable ill-luck had dealt him in
making him the victim of so many delays. Miss Sanborn, it appeared, had
been fitting herself at the denominational school to go out as a
missionary. And some twelve hours before his arrival she had started on
her long journey to the antipodes, going by way of San Francisco and the
Pacific Mail.
Another man might have taken the more easily reached addresses in the
list, leaving the appalling world-tour for the last. But the doggedness
which had hitherto been Broffin's best bid for genius in his profession
asserted itself as a ruling passion. Twenty minutes after having been
given his body-blow by the dean of the theological school he had
examined some specimens of Miss Sanborn's handwriting, had compared them
with the unsigned letter, and was back at the little railroad station
burning the wires to Kansas City in an attempt to find out the exact
sailing date of the missionary's steamer from San Francisco.
When the answer came he found that his margin of time was something of
the narrowest, but it was still a margin. By taking the first overland
train which could be reached and boarded, he might, barring more of the
ill-luck, arrive at San Francisco in time to overtake the young woman
whose handwriting was so like, and yet in some respects quite strikingly
unlike, that of the writer of the letter to Mr. Galbraith.
Under such conditions the long journey to the Pacific Coast was begun,
continued, and, in due course of time, ended. As if it had exhausted
itself in the middle passage, ill-luck held aloof, and Broffin's
overland train was promptly on time when it rolled into its terminal at
Oakland. An hour later he had crossed the bay and was in communication
with the steamship people. Though it was within a few hours of the China
steamer's sailing date, Miss Sanborn had not yet made her appearance,
and once more, though the subject this time was wholly innocent, Broffin
swore fluently.
Notwithstanding, after all these intermediate buffetings, it was only
the ultimate disappointment which was reserved for the man who had come
two thousand miles out of his way for a five-minute talk with a young
woman. Almost at the last moment he found her, and in the same moment
was made to realize that the similarity in handwriting was only a
similarity. Miss Sanborn had been a passenger on the _Belle Julie_,
boarding the steamboat at New Orleans and debarking at St. Louis. But
she had known nothing of the Bayou State Security robbery until she had
read of it in the newspapers; and one glance into the steadfast blue
eyes that met his without flinching convinced Broffin that once more he
had fired and missed.
Number Two in the list of seven being thus laboriously eliminated,
Broffin, to be utterly consistent, should have boarded the first train
for Minnesota. But inasmuch as three of the remaining five addresses
were west of the Missouri River, he sacrificed consistency to
common-sense, halting at a little town in the Colorado mountains, again
at Pueblo, and a third time at Hastings, Nebraska only to find at each
stopping-place that the ultimate disappointment had preceded and was
waiting for him.
With his list cancelled down to two names, he resumed the eastward
flight from the Nebraska town and was again beset by the devil of
indecision. The two place-names remaining were Wahaska and a small
coal-mining town in southern Iowa. Measuring again by railroad hours, he
found that the Iowa town was the nearer; but, on the other hand, there
were good connections from Omaha to Wahaska, and a rather poor one to
the coal mines. Once more Broffin took the gambler's chance, spinning
the coin in his hat, heads for Iowa and tails for Minnesota. It came
heads; and the following day recorded the sixth in the string of
failures.
Leaving What Cheer in the caboose of a coal train, with only the train's
crew for company, and a hard bench for a bed, the man-hunter was already
thrilling to the exultant view-halloo in the chase. By the light of the
flickering caboose lamp he drew his pencil through the Iowa failure. The
one uncancelled name was now something more than a chance; it was a
certainty.
"I've got you for fair, girlie, this time!" he triumphed, and since he
did it audibly, the coal-train conductor laughed and wanted to be told
the color of her eyes and hair.
"Got 'em pretty bad, ain't you, pardner?" he commented, when Broffin,
loose-tongued in his elation, confessed that he was chasing a woman whom
he had never seen. "I know how it goes: seen a picture of one once on a
bill-board, and I'd 'a' gone plum to Californy after her if I hadn't
been too danged busy to take a lay-off."
Landing in Wahaska the next evening, Broffin's first request at the
hotel counter was for the directory. Running an eager finger down the
"F's" he came to the name. It was the only Farnham in the list, and
after it he read: "Dr. Herbert C., office 8 to 10, 2 to 4, 201 Main St.,
res. 16 Lake Boulevard."
Broffin had a traveller's appetite, and the café doors were invitingly
open. Yet he denied himself until the clerk, busy at the moment with
other guests, should be at liberty.
"I see there's a Doctor Farnham here," he said, when his time came. "I
was wondering if he was the man I met up with down in New Orleans last
winter."
The clerk shook his head.
"I guess not. Doctor Bertie hasn't taken a vacation since the oldest
inhabitant can remember."
"H'm; that's funny," mused the detective, as one nonplussed. "The name's
just as familiar as an old song. Is your Doctor Farnham a sort of oldish
man?"
"He's elderly, yes; old enough to have a grown daughter." Then the clerk
laughed. "Perhaps you've got things tangled. Perhaps you 'met up' with
Miss Charlotte. She was down on the Gulf Coast last winter."
"Not me," said Broffin, matching the ice-breaking laugh. And then he
registered for a room and passed on into the café, deferring to the
appetite which, for the first time in nearly four tedious weeks, he felt
justified in indulging to the untroubled limit.
Having, by the slow but sure process of elimination, finally reduced his
equation to its lowest terms, Broffin put the past four weeks and their
failures behind him, and prepared to draw the net which he hoped would
entangle the lost identity of the bank robber. After a good night's
sleep in a real bed, he awoke refreshed and alert, breakfasted with an
open mind, and presently went about the net-drawing methodically and
with every contingency carefully provided for.
The first step was to assure himself beyond question that Miss Farnham
was the writer of the unsigned letter. This step he was able, by a piece
of great good fortune, to take almost immediately. A bit of morning
gossip with the obliging clerk of the Winnebago House developed the fact
that Dr. Farnham's daughter had once taught in the free kindergarten
which was one of the charitable out-reachings of the Wahaska Public
Library. Two blocks east and one south: Broffin walked them promptly,
made himself known to the librarian as a visitor interested in
kindergarten work, and was cheerfully shown the records. When he turned
to the pages signed "Charlotte Farnham" the last doubt vanished and
assurance was made sure. The anonymous letter writer was found.
It was just here that Matthew Broffin fell under the limitations of his
trade. Though the detective in real life is as little as may be like the
Inspector Buckets and the Javerts of fiction, certain characteristics
persist. Broffin thought he knew the worth of boldness; where it was a
mere matter of snapping the handcuffs upon some desperate criminal, the
boldness was not wanting. But now, when he found himself face to face
with the straightforward expedient, the craft limitations bound him.
Instantly he thought of a dozen good reasons why he should make haste
slowly; and he recognized in none of them the craftsman's slant toward
indirection--the tradition of the trade which discounts the
straightforward attack and puts a premium upon the methods of the
deer-stalker.
Sooner or later, of course, the attack must be made. But only an
apprentice, he told himself, would be foolish enough to make it without
mapping out all the hazards of the ground over which it must be made. In
a word, he must "place" Miss Farnham precisely; make a careful study of
the young woman and her environment, to the end that every thread of
advantage should be in his hands when he should finally force her to a
confession. For by now the assumption that she knew the mysterious bank
robber was no longer hypothetical in Broffin's mind: it had grown to
the dimensions of a conviction.
Wahaska was not difficult of approach on its gossiping side. Though it
owned a charter and called itself a city, it was still in the
country-town stage which favors a wide distribution of news with the
personal note emphasized. Broffin, conveying the impression that he was
a Louisiana lumberman on a vacation, approved himself as a good
listener, and little more was needed. In a week he had traced the social
outlines of the town as one finds the accent of a painting; in a
fortnight he had grouped the Griersons, the Raymers, the Oswalds, the
Barrs, and the Farnhams in their various interrelations, business and
otherwise.
With the patient curiosity of his tribe he suffered no detail, however
trivial, to escape its jotting down. To familiarize himself with the
goings and comings of one young woman, he made the acquaintance of an
entire town. He knew Jasper Grierson's ambition, and its fruitage in the
practical ownership of Wahaska. He knew that Edward Raymer had borrowed
money from Grierson's bank--and was likely to be unable to pay it when
his notes fell due. He had heard it whispered that there had once been a
love affair between young Raymer and Miss Farnham, and that it had been
broken off by Raymer's infatuation for Margery Grierson. Also, last and
least important of all the gossiping details, as it seemed at the time,
he learned that the bewitching Miss Grierson was a creature of fads;
that within the past month or two she had returned from a Florida trip,
bringing with her a sick man, a total stranger, who had been picked up
on the train, taken to the great house on the lake shore and nursed back
to life as Miss Grierson's latest defiance of the conventions.
It should have been a memorable day for Matthew Broffin when he had this
sick man pointed out to him as Miss Grierson's companion in the high
trap--which was also one of Miss Margery's bids for criticism in a town
where the family carryall was still a feature. But Broffin was
sufficiently human to see only a very beautiful young woman sitting
correctly erect on the slanting driving-seat and holding the reins over
a high-stepping horse which, he was told, had cost Jasper Grierson every
cent of a thousand dollars. To be sure, he saw the man, as one sees a
vanishing figure in a kaleidoscope. But there was nothing in the
clean-shaven face of the gaunt, and as yet rather haggard, convalescent
to evoke the faintest thrill of interest--or of memory.
XXII
IN THE BURGLAR-PROOF
A week and a day after the opening of new vistas at Miss Grierson's
"evening," Griswold--Raymer's intercession with the Widow Holcomb having
paved the way--took a favorable opportunity of announcing his intention
of leaving Mereside. It figured as a grateful disappointment to him--one
of the many she was constantly giving him--that Margery placed no
obstacles in the way of the intention. On the contrary, she approved the
plan.
"I know how you feel," she said, nodding complete comprehension. "You
want to have a place that you can call your own; a place where you can
go and come as you please and settle down to work. You _are_ going to
work, aren't you?--on the book, I mean?"
Griswold replaced in its proper niche the volume he had been reading. It
was Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, and he had been wondering by what
ironical chance it had found a place in the banker's library.
"Yes; that is what I mean to do," he returned. "But it will have to be
done in such scraps and parings of time as I can save from some
bread-and-butter occupation. One must eat to live, you know."
She was sitting on the arm of one of the big library lounging-chairs and
looking up at him with a smile that was suspiciously innocent and
childlike.
"You mean that you will have to work for your living?" she asked.
"Exactly."
"What were you thinking of doing?"
"I don't know," he confessed. "I have been hoping that Raymer might help
me to find a place; possibly in the machine works as an under
bookkeeper, or something of that sort. Not that I know very much about
any really useful occupation, when it comes to that; but I suppose I can
learn."
Again he surprised the lurking smile in the velvety eyes, but this time
it was half-mischievous.
"We have a college here in Wahaska, and you might get a place on the
faculty," she suggested; adding: "As an instructor in philosophy, for
example."
"Philosophy? that is the one thing in the world that I know least
about."
"In theory, perhaps," she conceded, laughing openly at him now. "But in
practice you are perfect, Mr. Griswold. Hasn't anybody ever told you
that before?"
"No; and you don't mean it. You are merely taking a base advantage of a
sick man and making fun of me. I don't mind: I'm in a heavenly temper
this afternoon."
"Oh, but I do mean it, honestly," she averred. "You are a philosopher,
really and truly, and I can prove it. Do you feel equal to another
little drive down-town?"