Mrs. Winslow becomes confidential.-- Some of her Exploits.--
Her Plans.-- A Sample of Legal Pleading.-- A fishy
Story.-- The Adventuress as a Somnambulist.-- Detective
Bristol virtuously indignant.-- Failing to win the
"Retired Banker," Mrs. Winslow assails Detective Fox with
her Charms.
After a time Bristol and Fox became Mrs. Winslow's only confidants.
Their business was to become so, and they successfully accomplished
their object. As Bristol said in one of his reports: "Only set her
tongue wagging, and she spouts away as irresistibly as an artesian
well."
Had she been possessed of womanly instinct in the slightest degree, this
would have been impossible. But being a male in everything save her
physical structure, it was quite natural that she should hobnob with
those most congenial; and as she had antagonized all her lodgers save my
operatives, and they made a particular effort to keep up a good-natured
familiarity, the three were certainly on as easy terms as possible, and
passed the autumn evenings, which were growing long now, in conversation
of an exceedingly varied nature, with an occasional sitting or seance,
and not infrequently a visitation of spirits of more material character;
and the following are a few of the many facts in this way brought out,
and by Bristol and Fox transmitted to me at New York in their daily mail
reports.
In one of Mrs. Winslow's peregrinations, probably for blackmail
purposes, she secured the indictment in Crawford County, Pennsylvania,
of one George Hodges, for swindling. He was not at that time arrested,
but a year or so after, finding that he was in Cincinnati, and claiming
that he was a non-resident, had him arrested as a fugitive from justice.
When the case was called before an obscure justice, no prosecuting
witness appeared, whereupon Hodges was discharged and at once secured a
warrant against her for perjury, but afterwards withdrew it. Meantime
the woman shook the dust of Cincinnati from her feet and repaired to St.
Louis, where she began several suits against parties there, notably one
against a leading daily newspaper of that city, from which she
afterwards secured one thousand dollars damages for libel. She
afterwards swung around the circle to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where
she obtained from the Governor of that State a requisition on the
Governor of Ohio, at Columbus, upon whom she waited and requested him to
designate her as the person to whom should be delegated the power under
the law to convey the fugitive, Hodges, to the Keystone State; but the
private secretary of the Governor of Ohio suspecting that the person who
had presented the papers, and for whose benefit they had been issued,
would make improper use of them, they were returned to the Governor of
Pennsylvania, whereupon she had made Columbus ring with denunciations
of gubernatorial corruption, and threatened to cause the impeachment of
Pennsylvania's Executive, although those two commonwealths were never
completely shattered by her.
Again in conversation regarding her case, which now seemed never out of
her mind or off her tongue, she informed Bristol confidentially that she
intended keeping Lyon in the dark altogether, giving him and his counsel
no inkling as to what course she intended to pursue, which would so
worry him that he would be glad to settle for at least twenty-five
thousand dollars, rather than have the case come to trial and be exposed
as she would expose him; and if he did not settle at the last moment,
she would have subpoenas issued for Lyon's mother-in-law, all his
children, several other women who, the spirits had revealed, had been
similarly betrayed, and even Lyon himself, and then she _would_ make a
sensation.
At this stage she was positive he would settle, as she knew he was half
worried to death about the matter; and besides this, he knew that she
knew he had told a certain lawyer of the city that he had once loved her
better than any other woman on earth, and the only reason he had
discarded her was that he was sure her love had taken hold on his pocket
and forsaken himself.
She had signed a release of all claims, but she would stoutly maintain
that it was fraudulently secured, which would only further establish the
fact that she had had a valid claim upon him. Nor did she fear the
opposing counsel. She was lawyer enough to attend to her own case, she
said. Her legal knowledge helped her through many a difficulty, and as
she had been lawyer enough to file a declaration, she could get a
rejoinder in shape whenever the answer should appear upon the court
records. Oh, she knew how to handle a jury; she had done it before! In
_this_ case she would say: "Gentlemen of the jury:--There are many who
believe that I merely seek for money. This is not true. I ask for a
verdict that I may gain a husband. For all of the injury that I have
received--lost time, lost money, lost reputation, years of suspense and
hope deferred--I only ask for a verdict in consonance with what a man in
Lyon's position should be compelled to give to one so grossly wronged.
Gentlemen, if you give me a heavy verdict, you give me Mr. Lyon. I say
this in all sincerity--yes, as a proof of my sincerity. I want the man,
not his money; and a heavy verdict gives me the man, for Mr. Lyon is so
penurious that he will marry me rather than pay the amount I claim. With
him, he has so won my whole being, even in poverty I would feel richer
than to live without him the possessor of millions!"
In delivering this eloquent peroration, Mrs. Winslow in reality rose
upon a chair, and, figuratively, upon the giddy altitude of her dignity,
and tossing back her head, elevating her eyebrows, looking peculiarly
fierce with her great gray eyes, and flinging the back of her right hand
into the palm of her left with quick, ringing strokes, delighted her
audience of operatives, and male and female Spiritualists, who on this
occasion crowded the reception-room and cheered their hostess as she
descended from her improvised rostrum to order something to refill the
glasses which had been enthusiastically emptied to her overwhelming
success.
When business was dull with the woman, she would be certain to retain
the company of the detectives, as it seemed that she was beginning to
avoid being left alone as much as possible, and would, under no
circumstances, allow them both to be absent at the same time. Though
ordinarily careful of, and close with, her money, to keep my men at home
on these, to her, dreary evenings, she would send for cigars, liquor,
and choice fruits, and after considerable urging they would remain, when
the conversation would invariably turn upon the Winslow-Lyon case, or
some incident in the fair plaintiff's eventful life, which the gentlemen
as invariably listened to with the closest interest and attention.
On one occasion Spiritualism was being discussed, when Mrs. Winslow
touched on her early history, and the revelation then made to her which
in after-life convinced her of the possession of supernatural powers.
Her father had had several boxes of honey stolen from his bee-hives,
when she was but a little girl. Search was made for them in every
possible direction, but no trace of them could be found, whereupon she
conveniently went into a trance, the first she had ever experienced,
continuing in that state several hours, and finally awakening from it
terribly exhausted. But the trance brought the honey, for a wonderful
vision came upon her, wherein spirit-forms appeared clothed in
overwhelming radiance, and, after caressing her spiritual form for some
time, and making her realize that she was an accepted child of Light,
pointed their dazzling celestial fingers towards an old hollow stump
standing at the side of the road leading towards town. So powerful and
penetrating was the light which radiated from these spirits that it
seemed to permeate the stump, leaving its form perfect as ever, but
making it wholly translucent, so that she could see the boxes of honey
piled up within the stump as clearly as though she had been standing
beside it and it had been made of glass. She gave this information to
her father, who ridiculed the revelation, but was both curious and
desirous of getting the honey, and went to the old stump, where he found
the boxes uninjured and piled in precisely the same manner as described
by his precocious child; all of which was related as if thoroughly
believed--as it doubtless was--in a voice as hollow and mysterious as
the stump itself, while the operatives preserved the utmost gravity and
decorum, and impressed her in every way with their belief in her varied
and wonderful power.
Her affection for Bristol continued for a few weeks unabated, and her
most powerful arts were used in endeavoring to compel him to reciprocate
it. These attempts went as far as a naturally lewd and naturally shrewd
woman dare go--so far, in fact, that in one and the last instance they
became absurdly ridiculous. There was no bolt upon the door of either of
their sleeping-rooms, and, besides, it was necessary for Bristol to
either retire first or step into Fox's room for a little chat, or a
sociable smoke, as Mrs. Winslow had an unpleasant and persistent habit
of disrobing for the night in the reception-room.
One evening, after Mrs. Winslow had given a select seance to a few
admiring friends, including my detectives, Bristol had hurried off to
bed, being tired of the mummery, and after being obliged to listen for
some time to her tumblings and tappings about the room, had finally
fallen into a peaceful doze of a few minutes' duration, when he was
awakened by that undefinable yet irresistibly increasing sense of some
sort of a presence, which often takes from one the power of expression,
or action, but intensifies the mind's faculties. The gas in the
reception-room had been turned low, and his door had been softly opened.
The rooms were quite dark, but the light from the street-lamps were
sufficient to show him the plump outlines of a form which he felt sure
that if it had had an orthodox amount of clothing upon it he could
recognize. It certainly seemed to be the form of a woman, and her long,
dishevelled black hair fell all about her shoulders and below her waist,
while her _robe de nuit_ trailed behind her with fear-inspiring,
tremulous rustlings. On came the robust ghost, and in the weird gloaming
which filled the apartment, he saw the mysterious thing moving towards
him, and in a sort of frenzy of excitement yelled:
"Who's that?"
No answer; but the slow, firm pace of the apparition came nearer to
Bristol's bedside, and he partially rose upon his knees as if to defend
himself.
"Say!--you!" shouted Bristol, "get--get out of here!"
But the ghostly figure came on as resistless as fate until it reached
his bedside. By this time he had risen to his feet and was edging along
the wall to escape, when to his horror he saw the spectre bound into the
bed he had so expeditiously vacated and reach for him with a very
business-like grasp which he nimbly eluded, and with a series of bounds
and scrambles reached the floor. He stood where he had struck for a
moment, addressing some very decided and italicized remarks to the
lively ghost in his bed, and then, in one grand burst of virtuous
indignation, made an impetuous dive at the figure, caught it by one of
its very plump arms, brought the ghost from the bed with a mighty
effort, and securing its left ear with his right hand, trotted the
animated shadow out of his room and into the reception-room right up to
the pier-glass, and then turning on one of the jets at its side, said to
the magnificent ghost, in a voice husky from excitement and rage:
"Woman! if you ever do that thing again, I'll--I'll--aren't you ashamed
of yourself, Mrs. Winslow?"
At the sound of her name, and after a few moments' apparently bewildered
reflection, Mrs. Winslow opened her eyes, which had previously remained
closed, and in an affectedly startled way gasped:
"Oh! where am I? what _have_ you been trying to do with me, Mr.
Bristol?"
To have seen the couple thus in the full gaslight before the
pier-glass, which both reflected and intensified the odd situation--the
woman, held to the mirror so that she might more startlingly view the
result of her gauzy pretence at somnambulism, and the man, in his
night-shirt, his limp night-cap dangling from his neck upon his
shoulder, the ring of stubby gray hair around his head raised by
excitement until it almost hid the glistening baldness above, his legs
bare below the knees, but with a face so full of virtuous resentment at
the scandalous and shallow scheme of the woman to implicate him in
something disgraceful, that his uprightness clothed him as with fine
raiment--would have been to have witnessed the apotheosis of sublimely
triumphant virtue and the defeat of shame.
"What have _I_ been trying to do with _you_?" shouted the now enraged
Bristol; "that's all very fine; but what have _you_ been trying to do
with _me_, madam?"
"Why, didn't I ever tell you that I often walk in my sleep?" she asked
with apparent innocence; and then, as if noticing for the first time how
meagrely both herself and her companion were clad, gave vent to a
half-smothered "Oh!--shame on you, Mr. Bristol!" and broke away from
him, running into her own room, while Bristol, after walking back and
forth in a state of high nervous excitement for some time, muttering,
and shaking his fist towards her room, finally smoothed his rebellious
locks so as to admit of the readjustment of his night-cap, and trotted
fiercely to bed, never more to be disturbed by sleep-walking female
Spiritualists.
There was nothing in all this save a quite common and silly attempt on
the part of the adventuress to get some of the hard-earned money of
which she thought he was possessed, and it disgusted her that he was no
more appreciative than to look upon her charms, that had set the heads
of so many other men all awhirl, with such a cool and impressionless
regard for them.
This latter fact bothered her probably fully as much as in not being
able to get at his bank account, and she finally settled into a sort of
suspicious dislike of him, and turned her attention to Fox, who, being a
quiet sort of a fellow, with less brusqueness than Bristol, was not so
well fitted to keep her at arm's length, and was consequently
immediately the recipient of her torrent-like attentions, caresses, and
confidence.
A book-keeper was the next thing to a retired banker--sometimes even
better off, Mrs. Winslow thought; and, believing that Fox was the
book-keeper he represented himself to be, she conceived the idea of
travelling during the pendency of the suit, and gave Fox glowing
accounts of the vast sums of money they could make if she only had so
presentable a man as he for a sort of agent, manager, and protector.
One afternoon Fox came in early, and said that as he was suffering
severely from headache he had been excused from his duties, and had come
home for rest. He passed into his own room and laid down upon his bed,
where he was immediately followed by the woman, who threw herself
passionately into his arms, declaring that he was the only man whom she
had ever really and truly loved, and terminated her expressions of ardor
by a proposition that he should "get hold of a big pile down there to
the store," as she expressed it, and fly to some quiet spot where they
might revel in love and all that the term implies.
Had he been a book-keeper instead of what he was, and able to secure any
large sum of money, she would have probably so bedevilled him that he
would have become a criminal for life for the sake of gratifying his
passion and her demands, and in a week after she would have had
nine-tenths of the money, and Fox would have been a penniless fugitive
from justice.
He had more trouble than Bristol in dispossessing the mind of the
adventuress of the idea that he was not the man to allow her to become
his Delilah; but when this was done, and she disgustedly realized that
not all men were ready to sell themselves body and soul for her
embraces, while she was indignant and suspicious, yet a sort of easy
confidence was established between the mysterious three, which brought
out a good many strong points in her character, and at the same time led
to the securing of a large amount of evidence against her. In fact, it
seemed that so soon as she thoroughly understood the, to her, novel
situation of being in constant contact with two men who, though probably
no better than average men, were still from the nature of their business
compelled to be above reproach in all their association with her, her
self-assertion and consciousness of power, which she had been able to
assert over nearly every man with whom she came in contact, in a measure
left her, and she became, at least to my operatives, an ordinary woman,
whose inherent vileness, low cunning, and splendid physical perfection,
were her only distinguishing characteristics. This was all natural
enough, for I had compelled these men to be her almost constant
companions, and as they had been with her long enough to drive away any
superfluous constraint, and she had found both of them unassailable,
though sociable and agreeable, her conversation, which chiefly concerned
herself, became as utterly devoid of decency as her life had been, so
that no incident of rehearsed romance of herself lost any of its
piquancy by unnecessary assumption of modesty in its narration.