A TRAMP AND THE TOOTHACHE
The bitterness toward the dead president of the Traders’ Bank seemed to
grow with time. Never popular, his memory was execrated by people who
had lost nothing, but who were filled with disgust by constantly
hearing new stories of the man’s grasping avarice. The Traders’ had
been a favorite bank for small tradespeople, and in its savings
department it had solicited the smallest deposits. People who had
thought to be self-supporting to the last found themselves confronting
the poorhouse, their two or three hundred dollar savings wiped away.
All bank failures have this element, however, and the directors were
trying to promise twenty per cent. on deposits.
But, like everything else those days, the bank failure was almost
forgotten by Gertrude and myself. We did not mention Jack Bailey: I had
found nothing to change my impression of his guilt, and Gertrude knew
how I felt. As for the murder of the bank president’s son, I was of two
minds. One day I thought Gertrude knew or at least suspected that Jack
had done it; the next I feared that it had been Gertrude herself, that
night alone on the circular staircase. And then the mother of Lucien
Wallace would obtrude herself, and an almost equally good case might be
made against her. There were times, of course, when I was disposed to
throw all those suspicions aside, and fix definitely on the unknown,
whoever that might be.
I had my greatest disappointment when it came to tracing Nina
Carrington. The woman had gone without leaving a trace. Marked as she
was, it should have been easy to follow her, but she was not to be
found. A description to one of the detectives, on my arrival at home,
had started the ball rolling. But by night she had not been found. I
told Gertrude, then, about the telegram to Louise when she had been ill
before; about my visit to Doctor Walker, and my suspicions that Mattie
Bliss and Nina Carrington were the same. She thought, as I did, that
there was little doubt of it.
I said nothing to her, however, of the detective’s suspicions about
Alex. Little things that I had not noticed at the time now came back to
me. I had an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps Alex was a spy, and
that by taking him into the house I had played into the enemy’s hand.
But at eight o’clock that night Alex himself appeared, and with him a
strange and repulsive individual. They made a queer pair, for Alex was
almost as disreputable as the tramp, and he had a badly swollen eye.
Gertrude had been sitting listlessly waiting for the evening message
from Mr. Jamieson, but when the singular pair came in, as they did,
without ceremony, she jumped up and stood staring. Winters, the
detective who watched the house at night, followed them, and kept his
eyes sharply on Alex’s prisoner. For that was the situation as it
developed.
He was a tall lanky individual, ragged and dirty, and just now he
looked both terrified and embarrassed. Alex was too much engrossed to
be either, and to this day I don’t think I ever asked him why he went
off without permission the day before.
“Miss Innes,” Alex began abruptly, “this man can tell us something very
important about the disappearance of Mr. Innes. I found him trying to
sell this watch.”
He took a watch from his pocket and put it on the table. It was
Halsey’s watch. I had given it to him on his twenty-first birthday: I
was dumb with apprehension.
“He says he had a pair of cuff-links also, but he sold them—”
“Fer a dollar’n half,” put in the disreputable individual hoarsely,
with an eye on the detective.
“He is not—dead?” I implored. The tramp cleared his throat.
“No’m,” he said huskily. “He was used up pretty bad, but he weren’t
dead. He was comin’ to hisself when I”—he stopped and looked at the
detective. “I didn’t steal it, Mr. Winters,” he whined. “I found it in
the road, honest to God, I did.”
Mr. Winters paid no attention to him. He was watching Alex.
“I’d better tell what he told me,” Alex broke in. “It will be quicker.
When Jamieson—when Mr. Jamieson calls up we can start him right. Mr.
Winters, I found this man trying to sell that watch on Fifth Street. He
offered it to me for three dollars.”
“How did you know the watch?” Winters snapped at him.
“I had seen it before, many times. I used it at night when I was
watching at the foot of the staircase.” The detective was satisfied.
“When he offered the watch to me, I knew it, and I pretended I was
going to buy it. We went into an alley and I got the watch.” The tramp
shivered. It was plain how Alex had secured the watch. “Then—I got the
story from this fellow. He claims to have seen the whole affair. He
says he was in an empty car—in the car the automobile struck.”
The tramp broke in here, and told his story, with frequent
interpretations by Alex and Mr. Winters. He used a strange medley, in
which familiar words took unfamiliar meanings, but it was gradually
made clear to us.
On the night in question the tramp had been “pounding his ear”—this
stuck to me as being graphic—in an empty box-car along the siding at
Casanova. The train was going west, and due to leave at dawn. The tramp
and the “brakey” were friendly, and things going well. About ten
o’clock, perhaps earlier, a terrific crash against the side of the car
roused him. He tried to open the door, but could not move it. He got
out of the other side, and just as he did so, he heard some one groan.
The habits of a lifetime made him cautious. He slipped on to the bumper
of a car and peered through. An automobile had struck the car, and
stood there on two wheels. The tail lights were burning, but the
headlights were out. Two men were stooping over some one who lay on the
ground. Then the taller of the two started on a dog-trot along the
train looking for an empty. He found one four cars away and ran back
again. The two lifted the unconscious man into the empty box-car, and,
getting in themselves, stayed for three or four minutes. When they came
out, after closing the sliding door, they cut up over the railroad
embankment toward the town. One, the short one, seemed to limp.
The tramp was wary. He waited for ten minutes or so. Some women came
down a path to the road and inspected the automobile. When they had
gone, he crawled into the box-car and closed the door again. Then he
lighted a match. The figure of a man, unconscious, gagged, and with his
hands tied, lay far at the end.
The tramp lost no time; he went through his pockets, found a little
money and the cuff-links, and took them. Then he loosened the gag—it
had been cruelly tight—and went his way, again closing the door of the
box-car. Outside on the road he found the watch. He got on the fast
freight east, some time after, and rode into the city. He had sold the
cuff-links, but on offering the watch to Alex he had been “copped.”
The story, with its cold recital of villainy, was done. I hardly knew
if I were more anxious, or less. That it was Halsey, there could be no
doubt. How badly he was hurt, how far he had been carried, were the
questions that demanded immediate answer. But it was the first real
information we had had; my boy had not been murdered outright. But
instead of vague terrors there was now the real fear that he might be
lying in some strange hospital receiving the casual attention commonly
given to the charity cases. Even this, had we known it, would have been
paradise to the terrible truth. I wake yet and feel myself cold and
trembling with the horror of Halsey’s situation for three days after
his disappearance.
Mr. Winters and Alex disposed of the tramp with a warning. It was
evident he had told us all he knew. We had occasion, within a day or
two, to be doubly thankful that we had given him his freedom. When Mr.
Jamieson telephoned that night we had news for him; he told me what I
had not realized before—that it would not be possible to find Halsey at
once, even with this clue. The cars by this time, three days, might be
scattered over the Union.
But he said to keep on hoping, that it was the best news we had had.
And in the meantime, consumed with anxiety as we were, things were
happening at the house in rapid succession.
We had one peaceful day—then Liddy took sick in the night. I went in
when I heard her groaning, and found her with a hot-water bottle to her
face, and her right cheek swollen until it was glassy.
“Toothache?” I asked, not too gently. “You deserve it. A woman of your
age, who would rather go around with an exposed nerve in her head than
have the tooth pulled! It would be over in a moment.”
“So would hanging,” Liddy protested, from behind the hot-water bottle.
I was hunting around for cotton and laudanum.
“You have a tooth just like it yourself, Miss Rachel,” she whimpered.
“And I’m sure Doctor Boyle’s been trying to take it out for years.”
There was no laudanum, and Liddy made a terrible fuss when I proposed
carbolic acid, just because I had put too much on the cotton once and
burned her mouth. I’m sure it never did her any permanent harm; indeed,
the doctor said afterward that living on liquid diet had been a
splendid rest for her stomach. But she would have none of the acid, and
she kept me awake groaning, so at last I got up and went to Gertrude’s
door. To my surprise, it was locked.
I went around by the hall and into her bedroom that way. The bed was
turned down, and her dressing-gown and night-dress lay ready in the
little room next, but Gertrude was not there. She had not undressed.
I don’t know what terrible thoughts came to me in the minute I stood
there. Through the door I could hear Liddy grumbling, with a squeal now
and then when the pain stabbed harder. Then, automatically, I got the
laudanum and went back to her.
It was fully a half-hour before Liddy’s groans subsided. At intervals I
went to the door into the hall and looked out, but I saw and heard
nothing suspicious. Finally, when Liddy had dropped into a doze, I even
ventured as far as the head of the circular staircase, but there
floated up to me only the even breathing of Winters, the night
detective, sleeping just inside the entry. And then, far off, I heard
the rapping noise that had lured Louise down the staircase that other
night, two weeks before. It was over my head, and very faint—three or
four short muffled taps, a pause, and then again, stealthily repeated.
The sound of Mr. Winters’ breathing was comforting; with the thought
that there was help within call, something kept me from waking him. I
did not move for a moment; ridiculous things Liddy had said about a
ghost—I am not at all superstitious, except, perhaps, in the middle of
the night, with everything dark—things like that came back to me.
Almost beside me was the clothes chute. I could feel it, but I could
see nothing. As I stood, listening intently, I heard a sound near me.
It was vague, indefinite. Then it ceased; there was an uneasy movement
and a grunt from the foot of the circular staircase, and silence again.
I stood perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe.
Then I knew I had been right. Some one was stealthily passing the head
of the staircase and coming toward me in the dark. I leaned against the
wall for support—my knees were giving way. The steps were close now,
and suddenly I thought of Gertrude. Of course it was Gertrude. I put
out one hand in front of me, but I touched nothing. My voice almost
refused me, but I managed to gasp out, “Gertrude!”
“Good Lord!” a man’s voice exclaimed, just beside me. And then I
collapsed. I felt myself going, felt some one catch me, a horrible
nausea—that was all I remembered.
When I came to it was dawn. I was lying on the bed in Louise’s room,
with the cherub on the ceiling staring down at me, and there was a
blanket from my own bed thrown over me. I felt weak and dizzy, but I
managed to get up and totter to the door. At the foot of the circular
staircase Mr. Winters was still asleep. Hardly able to stand, I crept
back to my room. The door into Gertrude’s room was no longer locked:
she was sleeping like a tired child. And in my dressing-room Liddy
hugged a cold hot-water bottle, and mumbled in her sleep.
“There’s some things you can’t hold with hand cuffs,” she was muttering
thickly.