A WEEK'S EVENTS
A week had passed since the tragic death of Ashton, a week that dragged
interminably, and which to me was one of the bitterest and most
miserable I had ever known. The relief experienced at finding myself
innocent of the Red Bank fatality--I had been fully exonerated in the
press, thanks to the man Taylor and Mr. Varney--was short-lived, for
I had merely exchanged one burden for another. I accounted myself
indirectly responsible for the foul murder of one of my best friends,
a friend for whom I would have laid down my own life, if need be. I
remembered now Blunt's queer expression when I said Ashton would be
home in a few days. Little did I think at the time of the tragic manner
of that homecoming.
Poor Tommy Ashton and his boast that he was a match for such cowardly
enemies! How strange and awful to think that but a few weeks ago
he was attending the burial service over what was thought to be my
mangled remains, and that now I should be the mourner and he, in truth,
the corpse! It was one of the incomprehensible and ironic tragedies
of life. How I wished now, when too late, that I had stuck to my
intention of telling him nothing about the Black Company; and yet,
looking back on it all, I hardly see how I could have done it. As
Blunt said, it seemed to be one of those things that are just bound
to happen. I had not wanted to offend Ashton, and even if I had kept
silent at the risk of our friendship, in all likelihood the result
would have been the same.
"I expected something like this," said Blunt. "I believed him to be in
as great peril as you yourself, but I didn't wish to alarm you. I could
do very little, for you didn't know his address. I wired Philadelphia
headquarters to look him up at all the hotels and keep an eye on him,
but it was too late. Of course, there isn't a shred of evidence to
show that the Black Company is responsible, but I think we are safe in
assuming that. They meant to bag him as well as you. Now, you mustn't
take this too hard, or start brooding over it. As I say, it isn't what
you told him, but what they took for granted you told him. You were
seen with him----"
"Yes, by Frean. And, by Heaven, if he's responsible----"
"Steady now; we don't know that he is, so don't do anything rash if you
happen to meet him. You won't for the present, unless you go out of
your way, for he has returned to Sea Bright."
Blunt then told me that he had verified what I had learned about Mr.
Fremstad and Joyce. "Another foregone conclusion," he said. "They work
through innocent and respectable people. That accident which made
Mr. Fremstad give up motoring could have been engineered by Joyce if
need be. Anyway, he leaves with the best credentials. Taken with the
downfall of Jules, it looks undoubtedly, as you said, as if there had
been a carefully thought-out and long-matured plot to plant Joyce with
Varney. Jules has disappeared, but we're looking him up to find who
helped him off the water-wagon in Philadelphia. It was Corby, for all
his buttermilk diet, who continued the good work in Sea Bright. That's
the report of the operative covering him. Another of my men has taken
the place of Williams, the gardener."
"If they had nothing to fear from Mr. Fremstad and Joyce being
investigated, the one being innocent and the other having been actually
a patient in the Charity Hospital, why was poor Ashton killed?"
"But we don't know what line he was following," replied Blunt. "I
think it's fairly obvious that he must have hit on evidence of some
kind not connected with Fremstad, or, necessarily, Joyce, which made
his removal compulsory. What took him to that low quarter of the town?
If we knew all that happened from the time he left his hotel to the
finding of his remains in that back alley in Chinatown, we'd know a
lot. I believe that Rabbi Goldmann was put out of the way for the same
reason--stumbling on incriminating evidence. But in your friend's case
it was no accident; he got what he went after--some of it, anyway--but
he wasn't allowed to get away with it."
Mr. Blunt then urged me again to have patience. "Don't think I'm trying
to hog this thing; I'm working hand in hand with the police of half a
dozen cities. I know you're ready to spend your whole fortune to avenge
your friend, but all the money in the world couldn't hurry matters.
Criminal investigation isn't what you read about in some books; against
an organization like this it isn't a one-man job, but the slow forging
of a chain, link by link, by many hands. All that it is possible to
do is being done, and you may rest assured of that. Remember that a
gun that goes off at half cock seldom hits anything. Finally, the sort
of detective that has marvelous bursts of inspiration and can tell
from the way your hair is parted what you had for breakfast, has no
counterpart in real life. Whatever stories have been told about me, and
which may have given you an exaggerated idea of my ability, success
never came to me except through hard work and the application of some
intelligence. There's no royal road nor short cut in my business, Mr.
Lawton, any more than there is in your own or others."
This common-sense talk did me a lot of good, for I was getting
captious, and in the mood for demanding miracles. So I apologized for
the impatience I had shown, and asked if there wasn't something I could
do to help, aside from spending money hiring other fellows to do the
work.
"Yes," said Lisping Jimmie promptly, "it would help a lot if you took a
vacation in Timbuktu until this thing's cut and dried. No, I don't mean
you're a nuisance; far from it. I mean it would relieve me to know you
were out of harm's way. I know you won't go, but I assure you it would
be the best and wisest thing to do. You can't take an active hand in
the game because you're known."
"I'm in no more danger than, say, you yourself. No, I can't run away.
It's not that I'm a hero, but if I'm not able to take an active part I
simply have to stick around and see what's doing. I can't help it."
I don't pretend that I found any keen enjoyment in the idea that some
one was gunning for me, and that I had only escaped so far by the
exercise of vigilance and precaution. When I walked abroad I carried an
automatic pistol slung, according to Blunt's advice, in a holster under
my left arm beneath my coat.
Drawing it was a matter of a second, but it was quite a different
matter whether I could hit anything short of the Woolworth Building,
for I hadn't been brought up with firearms. I had misgivings about
the weapon, especially when sticking the clip of cartridges in the
handle--queer place to load a gun--and I always made dead sure that
the safety catches were on the job. My idea would have been a thick
blackthorn, something I could take a good swipe with, and be sure of
getting home, but I must admit the pistol gave me quite a martial
feeling and desperadolike air.
I was shepherded, too, like any ewe lamb, a novel experience for one
who has had a long tussle single-handed with the world. One of the
agency's men was on hall service in the Belvedere, while another picked
me up and kept me in sight wherever I went.
This last was a little, ferret-eyed person called Nast, who looked like
a broken-down old-clothes man; he was a painstaking and conscientious
disciple, and as hard to get rid of as a bad name. More than once I
tried to shake him, for mere diversion's sake, but he always turned up
like a bad penny. I believe he must have been an ex-bill collector or
process server.
Of course, my movements were restricted, too; I wasn't to stay out late
at night, or go wandering off the beaten track. All this proved very
irksome, and I wished another try would be made for my life, if only to
justify these measures and help break the monotony.
As the end of the week approached, and nothing happened, I began to
think the enemy had cold feet, and was scared off. This was supported
by the news that Frean was back in town. He had taken his old quarters
at the Marlborough, while Corby had disappeared. Blunt wasn't telling
me everything, however, and I had an idea Corby wasn't so securely
hidden as he may have imagined.
I was no nearer solving the key move of the problem--why Joyce had been
"planted" with Mr. Varney. The latter's past had been thoroughly raked
over, and not a solitary fact was unearthed that would go to show him
connected in any way with the Black Company. Nor, according to medical
authority, could the symptoms of Addison's disease be approximated by
the administration of any known poison. Thus another of my theories
went by the board.
Meanwhile I had sent Mr. Varney a check, amounting to the three weeks'
wages paid me, and a formal note thanking him for helping to establish
my alibi regarding the Red Bank affair. He had not appeared in New
York, under the plea of ill health, but had made a deposition as to the
hour he had met and talked with me at the crossroads. The check which I
sent was returned promptly with the indorsement, in his neat, crabbed
handwriting: "The laborer is worthy of his hire." This at least showed
less venom toward me, and I began to hope I might eventually reach a
better understanding with him, but I knew it would be fatal to try to
rush matters. Only by the future could I wipe out the past unworthy six
months and show I had ambition to be something more than a dissolute
moneyed loafer.
I was working hard with the plans of the engineering school, and the
other projects Mr. Hannay and I had mapped out, while I was considering
an offer made by my old employers, Cable & Co., to come back as a
working partner. So I was kept busy.
If I have said nothing further about the Demon, it must not be supposed
that he did not trouble me any longer, that my victory was sweeping and
lightly achieved, or that I considered it absolutely final.
By that I mean I could only consider it final when, through the process
of time and nature, the morbid craving left me. An inheritance such
as mine is not killed instantly by all the poignant lessons, all the
vows and good resolutions in the world. It is a matter of daily, hourly
battling, of fierce, grueling conflict, of slow but inexorable wearing
down. Often, when the long day was done, I breathed a silent prayer
that it found me unashamed.
If I saw little progress in other directions, the end of the week at
least cleared up the mystery about the man who had stolen my car. It
was proved beyond all possible doubt that he was the "Charlie" Banks
whose picture had caught my attention in the rogues' gallery. It was
shown by the Bertillon record that his left hand bore the deformity I
had mentioned to Blunt. He was the man the nurse at the hospital had
told me about; he had been serving a long sentence in Moyamensing and
had escaped the night of Joyce's assault.
"It simply shows how a case may be complicated by the entrance of
outside factors," said Blunt. "This fellow had nothing to do with the
organization we're after. He robbed Joyce and you simply to help his
get-away, for he had no money, and needed a change of clothes. That
mustache was a fake, as you suggested, and if he hadn't been smashed to
pulp that fact would have been discovered."