Promptly next morning at the designated hour, came the little note
promised me by Mr. Gryce. It was put in my hand with many sly winks by
the landlady herself, who developed at this crisis quite an adaptation
for, if not absolute love of intrigue and mystery. Glancing over it--it
was unsealed--and finding it entirely unintelligible, I took it for
granted it was all right and put it by till chance, or if that failed,
strategy, should give me an opportunity to communicate with Mrs. Blake.
An hour passed; the doors of their rooms remained unclosed. A half hour
more dragged its slow minutes away, and no sound had come from their
precincts save now and then a mumbled word of parley between the father
and son, a short command to the daughter, or a not-to-be-restrained oath
of annoyance from one or both of the heavy-limbed brutes as something
was said or done to disturb them in their indolent repose. At last
my impatience was to be no longer restrained. Rising, I took a bold
resolution. If the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet would go
to the mountain. Taking my letter in the hand, I deliberately proceeded
to the door marked with the ominous red cross and knocked.
A surprised snarl from within, followed by a sudden shuffling of feet
as the two men leaped upright from what I presume had been a recumbent
position, warned me to be ready to face defiance if not the fury of
despair; and curbing with a determined effort the slight sinking of
heart natural to a man of my make on the threshold of a very doubtful
adventure, I awaited with as much apparent unconcern as possible, the
quick advance of that light foot which seemed to be ready to perform
all the biddings of these hardened wretches, much as it shrunk from
following in the ways of their infamy.
“Ah miss,” said I, as the door opened revealing in the gap her white
face clouded with some new and sudden apprehension, “I beg your pardon
but I am an old man, and I got a letter to-day and my eyes are so weak
with the work I’ve been doing that I cannot read it. It is from some one
I love, and would you be so kind as to read off the words for me and so
relieve an old man from his anxiety.”
The murmur of suspicion behind her, warned her to throw wide open the
door. “Certainly,” said she, “if I can,” taking the paper in her hand.
“Just let me get a squint at that first,” said a sullen voice behind
her; and the youngest of the two Schoenmakers stepped forward and tore
the paper out of her grasp.
“You are too suspicious,” murmured she, looking after him with the first
assumption of that air of power and determination which I had heard
so eloquently described by the man who loved her. “There is nothing in
those lines which concerns us; let me have them back.”
“You hold your tongue,” was the brutal reply as the rough man opened the
folded paper and read or tried to read what was written within. “Blast
it! it’s French,” was his slow exclamation after a moment spent in
this way. “See,” and he thrust it towards his father who stood frowning
heavily a few feet off.
“Of course, it’s French,” cried the girl. “Would you write a note in
English to father there? The man’s friends are French like himself, and
must write in their own language.”
“Here take it and read it out,” commanded her father; “and mind you
tell us what it means. I’ll have nothing going on here that I don’t
understand.”
“Read me the French words first, miss,” said I. “It is my letter and I
want to know what my friend has to say to me.”
Nodding at me with a gentle look, she cast her eyes on the paper and
began to read:
“Calmez vous, mon amie, il vous aime et il vous cherche. Dans
quatre heures vous serez heureuse. Allons du courage, et surtout
soyez maitre de vous meme.”
“Thanks!” I exclaimed in a calm matter-of-fact way as I perceived the
sudden tremor that seized her as she recognized the handwriting and
realized that the words were for her. “My friend says he will pay my
week’s rent and bids me be at home to receive him,” said I, turning upon
the two ferocious faces peering over her shoulder, with a look of meek
unsuspiciousness in my eye, that in a theatre would have brought down
the house.
“Is that what those words say, you?” asked the father, pointing over her
shoulder to the paper she held.
“I will translate for you word by word what it says,” replied she,
nerving herself for the crisis till her face was like marble, though
I could see she could not prevent the gleam of secret rapture that had
visited her, from flashing fitfully across it. “Calmez vous, mon amie.
Do not be afraid, my friend. Il vous aime et il vous cherche. He loves
you and is hunting for you. Dans quatre heures vous serez heureuse. In
four hours you will be happy. Allons du courage, et surtout soyez
maitre de vous meme. Then take courage and above all preserve your
self-possession. It is the French way of expressing one’s self,”
observed she. “I am glad your friend is disposed to help you,” she
continued, giving me back the letter with a smile. “I am afraid you
needed it.”
In a sort of maze I folded up the letter, bowed my very humble thanks to
her and shuffled slowly back. The fact is I had no words; I was utterly
dumbfounded. Half way through that letter, with whose contents you
must remember I was unacquainted, I would have given my whole chance of
expected reward to have stopped her. Read out such words as those before
these men! Was she crazy? But how naturally at the conclusion did she
with a word make its language seem consistent with the meaning I had
given it. With a fresh sense of my obligation to her, I hurried to my
room, there to count out the minutes of another long hour in anxious
expectation of her making that endeavor to communicate with me, which
her new hopes and fears must force her to feel almost necessary to her
existence. At length, my confidence in her was rewarded. Coming out into
the hall, she hurried past my door, her finger on her lip. I immediately
rose and stood on the threshold with another paper in my hand, which I
had prepared against this opportunity. As she glided back, I put it in
her hand, and warning her with a look not to speak, resumed my usual
occupation. The words I had written were as follows:
At or as near the time as possible of your brother’s going out,
you are to come to this room wrapped in an extra skirt and with
your shawl over your head. Leave the skirt and shawl behind you,
and withdraw at once to the room at the head of the stairs. You
are not to speak, and you are not to vary from the plan thus laid
down. Your brother and father are to be arrested, whether or no;
but if you will do as this commands, they will be arrested without
bloodshed and without shame to one you know.
Her face while she read these lines, was a study, but I dared not soften
toward it. Dropping the paper from her hand, she gave me one inquiring
look. But I pointed determinedly to the words lying upward on the floor,
and would listen to no appeal. My resolve had its effect. Bowing her
head with a sorrowful gesture, she laid her hand on her heart, looked up
and glided from the room. I took up that paper and tore it into bits.
And now for the first time since I had been in the house, I closed the
door of my room. I had a part to perform that rendered the dropping of
my disguise indispensable. The old French artist had finished his work,
and henceforth must merge into Q. the detective. Shortly before two
o’clock my assistants began to arrive. First, Mr. Gryce appeared on the
scene and was stowed away in a large room on the other side of mine.
Next, two of the most agile, as well as muscular men in the force who,
thanks to having taken off their shoes in the lower hall, gained the
same refuge without awakening the suspicions of those we were anxious to
surprise. Lastly, the landlady who went into the closet to which I had
bidden Mrs. Blake retire after leaving in my room the articles I had
mentioned.
All was now ready and waiting for the departure of the youngest
Schoenmaker. Would he disappoint us and remain at home that day? Had any
suspicions been awakened in the stolid breasts of these men, that would
serve to make them more watchful than usual against running unnecessary
risks? No; at or near the time for the clock to strike two, their door
opened and the tread of a lumbering foot was heard in the hall. On it
came, passing my room with a rude stamping that gradually grew less
distinct as the hardy rough went down the corridor, brushing the wall
behind which Mr. Gryce and his men lay concealed with his thick cane,
and even stopping to light his pipe in front of the small apartment
where cowered our good landlady with her eternal basket of mending in
her lap.
At length all was quiet, and throwing open my door, I withdrew into
a small closet connected with my room, to wait with indescribable
impatience, the appearance of Mrs. Blake. She came in a very few
minutes, remained for an instant, and departed, leaving behind her as
I had requested, the skirt and shawl in which she had left her father’s
presence. I at once endued myself in these articles of apparel--taking
care to draw the shawl well over my head--and with a pocket handkerchief
to my face, (a proceeding made natural enough by the sneeze which at
that very moment I took care should assail me) walked boldly back to the
room from which she had just come.
The door was of course ajar, and as I swung it open with as near a
simulation of her manner as possible, the vision of her powerful
father lolling on a bench directly before me, offered anything but an
encouraging spectacle to my eyes. But doubling myself almost together
with as ladylike an atch-ee as my masculine nostrils would allow, I
succeeded in closing the door and reaching a low stool by the window
without calling from him anything worse than a fretful “I hope you are
not going to bark too.”
I did not reply to this of course, but sat with my face turned towards
the street in an attitude which I hoped would awaken his attention
sufficiently to cause him to get up and come over to my side. For as he
sat face to the door it would be impossible to take him by surprise, and
that, now that I saw what a huge and muscular creature he was, seemed
to me to be the only safe method before us. But, whether from the
sullenness of his disposition or the very evident laziness of the
moment, he manifested no disposition to move, and hearing or thinking I
did, the stealthy advance of Mr. Gryce and his companions down the hall,
I allowed myself to give way to a suppressed exclamation, and leaning
forward, pressed my forehead against the pane of glass before me as
if something of absorbing interest had just taken place in the street
beneath.
His fears at once took alarm. Bounding up with a curse, he strode
towards me, muttering,
“What’s up now? What’s that you are looking at?” reaching my side just
as Mr. Gryce and his two men softly opened the door and with a quick
leap threw their arms about him, closing upon him with a force he could
not resist, desperate as he was and mighty in the huge strength of an
unusually developed muscular organization.
“You, you girl there, are to blame for this!” came mingled with curses
from his lips, as with one huge pant he submitted to his captors. “Only
let me get my hand well upon you once--Damn it!” he suddenly exclaimed,
dragging the whole three men forward in his effort to get his mouth down
to my ear, “go and rub that sign out on the door or I’ll--you know what
I’ll do well enough. Do you hear?”
Rising, still with face averted, I proceeded to do what he asked. But in
another moment seeing that he had been effectually bound and gagged,
I took out the piece of red chalk I had kept in my pocket, and
deliberately chalked it on again, after which operation I came back and
took my seat as before on the low stool by the window.
The object now was to secure the second rascal in the same way we had
the first; and for this purpose Mr. Gryce ordered the now helpless giant
to be dragged into the adjoining small room formerly occupied by Mrs.
Blake, where he and his men likewise took up their station leaving me
to confront as best I might, the surprise and consternation of the one
whose return we now awaited.
I did not shrink. With that brave woman’s garments drawn about me,
something of her dauntless spirit seemed to invade my soul, and though I
expected--But let that come in its place, I am not here to interest you
in myself or my selfish thoughts.
A half hour passed; he had never lingered away so long before, or so it
seemed, and I was beginning to wonder if we should have to keep up this
strain of nerve for hours, when the heavy tread was again heard in
the hall, and with a blow of the fist that argued anger or a brutal
impatience, he flung open the door and came in, I did not turn my head.
“Where’s father?” he growled, stopping where he was a foot or so from
the door.
I shook my head with a slight gesture and remained looking out.
He brought his cane down on the floor with a thump. “What do you mean by
sitting there staring out of the window like mad and not answering when
I ask you a decent question?”
Still I made no reply.
Provoked beyond endurance, yet held in check by that vague sense of
danger in the air,--which while not amounting to apprehension is often
sufficient to hold back from advance the most daring foot,--he stood
glaring at me in what I felt to be a very ferocious attitude, but made
no offer to move. Instantly I rose and still looking out of the window,
made with my hand what appeared to be a signal to some one on the
opposite side of the way. The ruse was effective. With an oath that
rings in my ears yet, he lifted his heavy cane and advanced upon me with
a bound, only to meet the same fate as his father at the hands of the
watchful detectives. Not, however, before that heavy cane came down upon
my head in a way to lay me in a heap at his feet and to sow the seeds
of that blinding head-ache, which has afflicted me by spells ever since.
But this termination of the affair was no more than I had feared from
the beginning; and indeed it was as much to protect Mrs. Blake from
the wrath of these men, as from any requirements of the situation I had
assumed the disguise I then wore. I therefore did not allow this mishap
to greatly trouble me, unpleasant as it was at the time, but, as soon
as ever I could do so, rose from the floor and throwing off my strange
habiliments, proceeded to finish up to my satisfaction, the work already
so successfully begun.