Jim shuffled off to bed after receiving my assurances of support. I had
been extremely careful to keep from him the knowledge that I was in the
game at both ends. In five minutes he was asleep.
Now for a good think on love, murder, political economy and fish. No
sleep for me--just a good, long think, with breakfast at 6 A. M., with
the correct solution as snugly stored in my mind as ten cents in a dime.
First, I knew nothing about the Brownings and cared less. They didn't
figure in my plans at all. My purpose was to startle Pa Tescheron into a
full knowledge of his lunacy, and command his appreciation of his future
son-in-law.
As I was about to plunge deeper into my cogitations, I picked up a card
from the table and read it. It chilled me some, but only for a minute.
It ran like this:
PATRICK K. COLLINS,
UNDERTAKER AND EMBALMER,
9 West Tenth Street, New York.
_Cremations a Specialty._
I had heard of that fellow Collins, a notorious man in his line. His
specialty, cremations, removed all possibility of pathological or
toxicological investigation weeks afterward, when public suspicion
became aroused. The political coroners were supposed to be partners of
his in crime, and the police had tracked many a case through his
establishment to the retorts at the Fresh Pond crematory, where nothing
but a few handfuls of ashes remained. Was there to be a cremation in the
Browning case? Of course, I asked myself that question, and I also
wondered why the sleuths of Smith's had not reported the fact, if it
were a fact, to the hotel headquarters. If they knew it, then my
telegram to Mr. Tescheron about Coroner Flanagan telephoning to all the
cemeteries and his further purposes need not cause alarm. Perhaps he
would laugh when he received it. The card had been placed there during
my absence. Jim would tell me about it in the morning, so I gave the
matter no further consideration.
By that time, 12 o'clock, the detectives must have had Tescheron talked
tired, I guessed, and he was probably at home trying to figure how he
might escape the coroner's ordeal of publicity on the morrow, unless, of
course, they knew this man cremated his victims right after the service.
It so happened that the detectives had him fairly crazy. When he read my
message he was completely daft. Instead of working out my plans
carefully, so as to achieve a complete fourth-act reconciliation by 6
o'clock, I spent the night answering and sending messages like a general
looking through a telescope on a hill-top.
The first lad in blue uniform came just about midnight and scared me a
little, but as Jim was not disturbed, all was well. It seems that
instead of going to bed, Pa Tescheron took a new start as soon as he
read my message about notifying the coroner. Smith was called again to
meet him at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, about fifteen minutes by messenger
boy from my headquarters. Here is the first message from General
Tescheron:
"You have done your worst. If you attempt to expose my family, I will
have you prosecuted for blackmail and punished to the full extent of
the law. Please call here at once.
"TESCHERON."
General Hopkins sent this back by return boy:
"Only evidence of attempted blackmail in this case so far is your
message just received. I will keep it. Is Smith also your lawyer?
He's a bird. Thanks, but I never go calling after midnight. Please
accept my regrets.
"HOPKINS."
I kept copies of the answers also, for I didn't know how far Smith and
his bureau might carry this fanatic, for they seemed to have touched him
where he was as tender as a wet spot on a paper napkin.
This came back in half an hour:
"Your course is incomprehensible to me. You seem to take this matter
as a joke. It may be necessary for me to let the law take its course
to achieve my purpose. I do not fear your threats. Please call and
talk it over. TESCHERON."
Of course, he didn't fear the exposure, for he knew what a smart lot of
detectives he had. But he knew, according to my analysis of the workings
of his superheated brain, that the few times he had been real mad in his
life and had trusted to his impulses, he had gone deep into the mire of
expense or ridicule. Some of the skeletons of these experiences were
beginning to rattle in opposition to the oft-repeated easy solution of
Smith, who had been stoking that inflamed head since 2 P. M. with the
kind of gore which kept it ablaze. Tescheron was certainly getting a
fine run for his money, and he had seemed to lose sight of the fact that
Smith was filling the part of bookmaker and taking his pile.
I replied:
"This is no joke. Wait until you get Smith's bill. Hope you have a
good picture of yourself for the papers?--it saves the disgrace of a
sketch from life. They are bound to make your wife and daughter look
well. I have just laid aside a half dozen of our portraits for
publication. Seems as if we would have pleasant weather for the
coroner's party to-morrow. Don't miss it--or they'll drag you there
in the hurry-up wagon.
"HOPKINS."
I guessed he could see I wasn't rattled and was sticking close to my
method of play. He could see that a thirty-year-old was no ordinary lad
of the fish-market, to get excited when the boss turned red from
boiling. This renewed activity on his part, however, threw me clear off
the track that was to fetch me up at 6 A. M. with the whole business
settled.
The murderer, who had comfortably thrown his burdens on me, in the
meantime, snored again with a regularity and smoothness which proved he
had banished all thought of his first wife and was preparing his
trousseau for a comfortable wedding, with Pa Tescheron controlled and
delivered by me at the altar, ready to speak his little piece.
It was a shame for Tescheron to keep those boys running all night, but
he did. This came next:
"I'll have my men at the autopsy, but I shall not be there, so you
see our pictures will not be printed, as you seem to fear. I do not
understand you. Don't you realize what your position is if this crime
is revealed? Do not delay further, but come at once. TESCHERON."
In my next I assured him that all our pictures would be printed, for he
would be served by subpoena from the coroner, unless he and his family
left the State before 8 o'clock.
And so it went, till finally I sent him a line saying that I would guard
the murderer all night and meet him at the Fifth Avenue Hotel at 9 A. M.
on my way to the coroner's.
Then I turned in and forgot all Jim's troubles. It must have been about
4 A. M.
Now, if early that evening I had learned my lesson, I might have minded
my own business, gone to bed early, and, like a wise man, awakened early
and left the house before it all happened.
It was just as I had predicted a hundred times, so I was not surprised
afterward when I learned how it was. A short time after I went to sleep,
Jim was overcome by the fidgets again and took one of those Turkish
baths invented by his home folks. This style of bath was pure turkey. It
was a regular turkey gobbler system of bathing and I had never heard the
like of it before I began to live with Jim. The way to know a man is to
live with him when he's in love. It was different in a number of ways
from any country custom I had ever heard of up North, but all Jim's
folks did it regularly, so he had told me, because they thought it was
the greatest thing in the world for a person who felt out of sorts. I
had been over to his house many and many a time, but it so happened that
I never saw his dad or his ma, or in fact any of them, sitting on their
kitchen stove.
Jim rigged up the bath in our flat kitchen with a lot of care. First he
would take our set of three sad-irons--the kind that are run with the
same handle, especially designed to press trousers under a wet rag--and
he would put them on top of the range, one under each leg of a chair as
far as they would go, and an old tin cup bottom-side-up under the fourth
leg. He was always particular to have a cane seat in the chair and a
piping hot fire in the range.
Then he would simplify his toilet till he got it about as we used to
have it before diving into the old swimming-hole. When he had reached
that point, he brought out a dark-colored quilt with a white ruffle all
around the edge. (We liked dark quilts and had quite a number that never
seemed to need washing.) In the middle of this quilt he had cut a hole,
just large enough to poke his head through and be snug about the neck.
When he got that on he pulled on a pair of old slippers that he had
tacked tin soles onto. The next and last piece to the harness was his
red and blue worsted toboggan cap with a long peak minus the tassel--it
was very necessary for the head to get the full benefit or you'd catch
cold. This cap he pulled down well over his head and ears, and then he
stood on a box and mounted the fiery throne, sitting down mighty easy
while spreading the quilt over the back of the chair, and holding it out
well so that the pointed ends were as close to the lids as possible to
keep the cold air of the room off his shin bones.
It sort of reminded me of an old turkey gobbler; I don't know why, for
it was such a serious business with Jim, and he looked so glum. But with
the pointed ends dragging, he seemed to be strutting, and when he got
heated up nicely and began to drip on the hot lids, the "hist" noise it
made was just the same as an old gobbler's.
I've known him to swelter there in his turkey bath till he fairly
sizzled, "hissing" like the proudest gobbler on the farm, and then step
off easy onto the box, jump into bed, pull a heap of blankets over him
and enjoy a good wilt.
It is the most natural thing in the world that the quilt caught fire
without Jim noticing it. And thus ended our housekeeping.
I woke up six weeks later in a hospital.