The old joke that a woman can't keep a secret still appears in many
variations to illuminate the mind of the waiting man, driven to
lithographed hilarity in the barber-shop comics. In real life, when not
under the spell of this brilliant six-colored wit, we find ourselves at
a disadvantage frequently, because women keep their secrets too well.
Hygeia was loyal to Gabrielle, and together they shielded Jim Hosley
from his pursuers, and among the latter I was reckoned as one of the
most dangerous.
Mr. Tescheron was soon convinced that Hoboken was the place he should
tarry. It might appear that a day or two of rest in that place would
have satisfied him that he might return to New York, but there was a
good reason why he should not take the risk of living in his own home.
And this reason strengthened Gabrielle in the belief that I had notified
the coroner of the Browning case and really entertained the same view
of Hosley as her father. On the third day after their arrival at the
Stuffer House, Mr. Tescheron received this letter from the manager of
his company, Mr. King, who wrote from the market:
"A man came to this office this morning with a coroner's subpoena
for you to testify in the Browning case. I read it carefully and
noted that it was signed by Coroner Flanagan. The man told me he had
been up to your house in Ninety-sixth Street. He seemed very anxious
to find you, and waited around for some time after I had positively
assured him you had gone West on business. Hope what I did was O. K.
He also wanted to know if you had spoken to me regarding a fire and
the disappearance of a Mr. Hosley. I had no knowledge of the matter
and so informed him. Shipments are running heavy to-day on Western
orders. As you have gone that way, there may be a reason for this.
"Yours truly,
"J. M. KING."
This letter stiffened Mr. Tescheron considerably in his purpose to
remain in Hoboken. The following from Bridget to Mrs. Tescheron added
corroboration, which tended to brace that purpose still more, and it
was quite sufficient to keep the family under Mr. Staffer's roof for six
weeks:
"A man from the corner was here wid a bit of paper, an' sed he shud
see yer. I ast him which corner, and he sed it was Flanigans the
sayloon is Finnegans do yer no any Flanigan on our corner the Parrit
is lookin well the cakes is dun.
"Respectably yours,
"BRIDGET."
I am not surprised, realizing Mr. Tescheron's mental condition, that
these letters convinced him the place of safety was beyond the borders
of New York State.
"It is a very cosy spot here, Marie," said Mr. Tescheron, after he had
read the letters to his wife and Gabrielle, who made it a point to be
with her mother early every evening. During the day she spent most of
her time at the hospital ministering to Jim.
Mr. Tescheron's admiration of the Stuffer House intensified as time wore
on and he found he was safe there. His sagacity in the matter encouraged
him, and he soon took risks by venturing into the heart of New York
dressed in a suit which made him appear like a City Hall Park hobo,
with slouch hat and long ulster, such as market men wear loosely belted
like great aprons. Under these coverings he dared to go as far as Fulton
Market about three times a week, taking the most circuitous route around
the lower edge of New York, via the slow but sure Belt Line horse car
along West and South streets. To be sure, he put in most of his time
traveling, but the coroner did not catch him, and this fact demonstrated
the cleverness of the tactics.
The shabby disguise might have saved him, it seems to me, even if the
entire police force of the city had been after him, for normally Mr.
Tescheron was one of the tidiest little men. He usually shined like a
new hat out of a bandbox. He was patent-leathered, smooth-jowled, rosy,
crisp, pretty-nailed, creased, stick-pinned and embossed on the vest.
Nothing that a steam laundry and the latest machinery for
man-embellishing, from custom tailoring to Staten Island and hair
dyeing, could do to obliterate the fish business from his personality
had been omitted in compiling this _de luxe_, numbered and signed copy
of a man. But my investigations lead me to believe that Mr. Tescheron
was not exceptional in this respect at the market. Like Napoleon, the
wholesale fish dealers all fit circumstances to obstacles. A man who
slips and skids around all day in a wholesale fish market is usually
rich and, I find, makes up his average on pulchritude after business
hours.
Mr. Tescheron maintained a high record. When he was not in his shop togs
you would not recognize him any more than the made-over old family
umbrella that has ten times recovered its ribs and boldly fronted the
hilarious wind, ever ready to blow it off. It was always surprising to
me how he could produce such marvelous synthetic effects from the
elemental forms found on the Monday morning's clothes-line.
I don't know how true it is, but a chap down in the market once told me
that all the members of the Market Men's Association found it annoying
to remove the flies that had been blinded by the glint of their bosoms
and had slipped and broken necks on the starchy glaciers of those Alpine
precipices of dazzling shirting displayed at the annual dinners of the
society. It is only natural that the market flies should want to attend,
for they stick closer than a brother to the members of this brotherhood.
Mr. Tescheron's sartorial perfection was only an exigency of his
business, and if his armor was more striking than that of the ordinary
man, I, for one, was ready to forgive him. The fact must remain that
the best dressed men of New York are the wholesale fish dealers of
Fulton Market--after business hours--when they transform to escape the
torments of a perennial fly-time.
Gabrielle did confide in her mother, but her father was none the wiser.
He listened to Smith, and concluded that Hosley had skipped, having
learned in some way that the authorities were after him. If he should be
found and brought back to New York, the coroner might begin his
investigations at once and proceed with other witnesses. In that event
the name of Tescheron would undoubtedly be dragged into the case, but if
the family kept out of the State they could not be made to testify. In
Mr. Tescheron's judgment, therefore, it was wise to spend a few weeks
well out of the way until they were certain the affair had been
forgotten.
"Mother, I think the change may do us good, if we don't take father too
seriously," said Gabrielle, "and if you can find enough to occupy
yourself until some favorable suggestion changes father's course, and he
is seized by a desire to return home, I shall be happy. Aren't you
getting tired of the company of these stuffed birds, though? I shall
send your parrot over to-morrow and have Bridget come to talk over the
housekeeping affairs with you, shall I?"
"No, dear; we shall be happy enough with these silent birds for a while
yet. Alas! if it is true that the officials want us--and it must be
true, as Bridget and Mr. King have both written--"
"Don't worry about that, mother; you will be just as proud of Mr. Hosley
some day as I am. Oh, he is so brave! Think how he rescued his
companion, Ben Hopkins, and then fell blinded by the flames. What a
terrible fall that was, mother! just twice the height of this
building--you really cannot imagine it. Do rogues show such heroism? I
tell you, mother, you'll find, one of these brighter days, that James
Hosley is a great, big-hearted hero, as far above these petty attacks on
his character, so readily believed by father, as the mountains are above
the sea. He has nothing to fear. Remember, a cruel fate struck him down
at the very moment he might have explained away every circumstance to
which father attaches weight, merely by stating the truth. Mother, I
have never doubted my hero!"
"Yes, my dear child, you are right. I feel that you are. Forgive me for
expressing that shadow of doubt; it is now gone. I am thankful that God
led your footsteps to his bedside, where you might help to rescue him
and his companion. I am indeed proud of you, Gabrielle. How greatly I am
blessed by you every minute!" And the dear old soul cried, her heart
welling with love for her daughter, her confidante and support.
Then Gabrielle knelt at her mother's side and buried her face in her
mother's lap, her tears flowing in sympathetic response to this
declaration of maternal faith.
It is a good thing I was not there at that time, for at the sight of
tears in the faces of those dear women I would have been driven to sheer
madness. I believe I would have taken a club to the hard-hearted or
stupid Tescheron and murdered him with mince-meat minuteness in the
presence of the gossipers lolling around the fireplace in the
living-room. At the time of the tearful scene between mother and
daughter, a dramatic passage that has its counterpart in many homes
invaded by a son-in-law, the cruel Tescheron, the obstacle in the path
of true love, was listening to mine host, August Stuffer, three hundred
and fifty-two pounds of Hoboken manhood seated in a Windsor chair built
of wood and steel to resemble the Williamsburg Bridge about the legs, so
stoutly was it trussed, braced and riveted to carry its enormous load.
This wheezy spinner of yarns, in a tone of apoplectic huskiness, was
telling his guests about the peculiar stuffed cat, which advertised the
hotel far and wide from its glass case near the main entrance.
It was my joke that introduced Mr. Tescheron to this cat. Mr. Stuffer's
eloquence and the fire's hypnotic rays must have worked the consequent
charm at which I have often marveled.
"Jersey Jerry was the name of that cat," said Stuffer, a gentle wheeze
playing about his upper rigging, as he spread out into the open sea of
truth. "And he was a most unfortunate cat, because he was born blind and
had to learn the town by feeling his way. He went everywhere and had
more friends than most cats with eyes--strange but true--and principally
among cats. He was sociable because he had to work his friends. He knew
us around here by our sounds" (it was an easy matter for him to sound
the tale-teller), "and he used to rub his whiskers against a stranger's
legs till he got to know the man. You'd 'a' thought he'd rub 'em all
off, but not so; it seemed to make 'em grow twice as long--biggest
whiskers for a cat of his size I ever see. Well, sir, I came down here
to the back door one night to lock up, heard him scratching and let him
in. He gave me an awful scare, for as he looked up two big blazing eyes
shone brighter than the lantern I was carrying. From his squeal I knew
it was Jerry, so I picked him up and brought him over here to get a good
look at him. I could see at once that it was the work of those Stevens
students. They had taken an ordinary pair of glass eyes such as are made
for stuffed cats, and in the back of each eye had fitted a tiny electric
light, such as you've probably seen attached to a button-hole bouquet,
only they were smaller, of course. I noticed when his tail went up the
lights were turned on and they blazed like he had gone mad, but when his
tail went down it cut off the lights like you've seen 'em shut off in a
trolley car when the pole falls--same principle, I guess, somehow. It
all kind of puzzled me for a time, till I got to thinking about it."
"Nonsense! Where did the electricity come from?" asked a man who
doubted.
"Electricity? A cat's full of electricity. Everybody knows that, and
those Stevens students simply connected it up to run two lights with a
cut-out at the back. Of course, when the cat died the natural
electricity gave out, and so I had him connected with the company's
wires and the tail fixed to run by works run by the current, to make 'em
blaze and shut off and seem just as old Jerry used to. He was a great
comfort to me with those eyes, and I think they helped him to see as
well as feel, for he didn't rub any more, but flashed his eyes when he
was inquisitive and wanted to save steps.
"But it killed him. Modern improvements on a cat brought up to going it
blind in Hoboken were too much. A man got the delirium tremblings
looking at Jerry one night and kicked him nine mortal blows before he
could get his tail up."
"Well," said Mr. Tescheron, "those Stevens students must be wonders. I
never supposed there was any good thing came out of Hoboken."
"The town suits me all right," replied Mr. Stuffer. "There's many a good
thing passes through here." He winked at Emil.
"There ain't nothing a Stevens student can't do--nothing calling for
brains," said Mr. Stuffer. "They get chock full of mathematics up there,
so's they can engineer anything from a turbine plant to a pin where it's
most needed, or a marriage factory. Anything that calls for brains is
right in their line. If I ever get into any kind of trouble at all I'll
get a Stevens engineer to rig me up some kind of a derrick to pull me
out of it."
At his leisure, Mr. Tescheron now marvels at the great ability of
Stevens men. He feels that he is a competent judge.
It was evident that the Stevens students who crowded the Stuffer House
had duly impressed the present proprietor with their ability to overcome
every obstacle in life's path with special machinery to fit each case.
"Why, one of those students told me some years ago," continued Mr.
Stuffer, "that he once provided plans and specifications to supply a
girl with beaus."
None of the company now seemed to doubt, so Mr. Stuffer proceeded to
prove his proposition that a technical education at Stevens comprehends
the repairing of difficult cases of side-stepped heart.
"Yes, I remember, now, it was the case of little Mary Schwarz," he
continued. "And she never knew, doesn't to this day probably, how it all
came about that suddenly she had more beaus than she could attend to.
They fairly froze her in ice cream--"
Mrs. Tescheron had recovered and was ringing three times for hot water
as per the card of instructions tacked near the push-button in her room.
"They are not remarkably prompt here," she murmured. "I wonder what can
be the matter every evening."
Mr. Stuffer, who was supposed to be on duty at the annunciator, in his
dual capacity of hall boy and host, heard not its alarm, for he was well
under way with a yarn.
He continued:
"She got so she didn't care for Hoboken, Mary didn't. The beaus then
took her to every theatre in New York. And they were a fine lot of
chaps--Stevens students, bachelor professors, leading merchants'
sons--all the best people in town. Before that Stevens student started
up the necessary machinery to repair this case, she had no beaus at all;
but he fixed things so's she had a regular monopoly because she
controlled the raw material. They teach just enough of political economy
on the side up there at the institute to bring that in; that you can't
have a monopoly unless you control the raw material; so he figured to
have her control it. But when she lost it the thing was off."
"What became of it?" asked Mr. Tescheron, who, I am informed, was
fearful that the narrator might be interrupted by the ringing of the
bell.
"She ate it up. You see, Brown, that smart Stevens man, who laid out
this job, went around to where Mary kept her little lamb and sheared it
every once so often. He gave the wool to our swellest tailor and had him
make it up into an extra fancy line of trousering. The best people
bought those trousers, and of course everywhere that Mary went the lamb
was sure to go. You can see why she had so much good company. The
fellows simply couldn't stop going to Mary's till they shed 'em. It took
a mechanical engineer to do it. But when the lamb got old her pa, who
had not been told about this thing, thought he'd have to eat the pet to
save its mutton."
"But she got married, of course, didn't she?" asked a stranger, who was
en route to Europe on his wedding tour and was full of romance.
"Why, no. You see, she was having such fun fishing, she never stopped
till they stopped biting--that is, the snappy bass that she liked to
ketch. She landed a lot, but just kept throwing back, probably waiting
for some whale in the shape of a Duke to land on one of the steamers,
but those Dukes that pass through Hoboken are terribly long on trousers,
and generally bring 'em over by the trunk-load. They all passed right
through, at any rate. Instead of a whale coming along, the next to bite
were a lot of old skates--a regular lot of tramps. They had come into
the trousers second hand, usually got for the asking, when preparing to
start into New York for the slumming season; but, of course, they had to
make for Mary's house just as soon as they put 'em on and the charm got
to working. So she has been spending the balance of her life shooing
away tramps. The chances are the pet lamb will never quite wear
out--excuse me, gentlemen, I think I hear the bell ringing."