"Very good," said I. "I have, nevertheless, one more question to ask
which relates to those very clues. You can not refuse to answer it if
you are really desirous of aiding me in my efforts. Where did you first
come upon the wagon which you followed so many hours in the belief that
it held Gwendolen Ocumpaugh?"
He mused a moment with downcast head, his nervous frame trembling with
the force with which he threw his whole weight on the hand he held
outspread on the table before him. Then he calmly replied:
"I will tell you that. At the gate of Mrs. Carew's grounds. You know
them? They adjoin the Ocumpaughs' on the left."
My surprise made me lower my head but not so quickly that I did not
catch the oblique glint of his eye as he mentioned the name which I was
so little prepared to hear in this connection.
"I was in my buggy on the highroad," he continued. "There was a constant
passing by of all kinds of vehicles on their way to and from the
Ocumpaugh entertainment, but none that attracted my attention till I
caught sight of the covered wagon I have endeavored to describe, being
driven out of the adjoining grounds. Then I pricked up my ears, for a
child was crying inside in the smothered way that tells of a hand laid
heavily over the mouth. I thought I knew what child this was, but you
have been a witness to my disappointment after forty-eight hours of
travel behind that wretched wagon."
"It came out of Mrs. Carew's grounds?" I repeated, ignoring everything
but the one important fact. "And during the time, you say, when Mrs.
Ocumpaugh's guests were assembling? Did you see any other vehicle leave
by the same gate at or before that time?"
"Yes, a carriage. It appeared to have no one in it. Indeed, I know that
it was empty, for I peered into it as it rolled by me down the street.
Of course I do not know what might have been under the seats."
"Nothing," was my sharp retort. "That was the carriage in which Mrs.
Carew had come up from the train. Did it pass out before the wagon?"
"Yes, by some minutes."
"There is nothing, then, to be gained by that."
"There does not seem to be."
Was his accent in uttering this simple phrase peculiar? I looked up to
make sure. But his face, which had been eloquent with one feeling or
another during every minute of this long interview till the present
instant, looked strangely impassive, and I did not know how to press the
question hovering on my lips.
"You have given me a heavy task," I finally remarked, "and you offer
very little assistance in the way of conjecture. Yet you must have
formed some."
He toyed with his beard, combing it with his nervous, muscular fingers,
and as I watched how he lingered over the tips, caressing them before he
dropped them, I felt that he was toying with my perplexities in much the
same fashion and with an equal satisfaction. Angry and out of all
patience with him, I blurted out:
"I will do without your aid. I will solve this mystery and earn your
money if not that of Mr. Ocumpaugh, with no assistance save that
afforded by my own wits."
"I expect you will," he retorted; and for the first time since I burst
in upon him like one dropping from the clouds through the unapproachable
doorway on the upper floor, he lost that look of extreme tension which
had nerved his aged figure into something of the aspect of youth. With
it vanished his impressiveness. It was simply a tired old man I now
followed upstairs to the side door. As I paused to give him a final nod
and an assurance of intended good faith toward him, he made a kindly
enough gesture in the direction of my old room below and said:
"Don't worry about the little fellow down there. He'll come out all
right. I shan't visit on him the extravagance of my own folly. I am a
Christian now." And with this encouraging remark he closed the door and
I found myself alone in the dark alley.
My first sense of relief came from the coolness of the night air on my
flushed forehead and cheeks. After the stifling atmosphere of this
underground room, reeking with the fumes of the lamp and the heat of a
struggle which his dogged confidence in himself had made so unequal, it
was pleasurable just to sense the quiet and the cool of the night and
feel myself released from the bondage of a presence from which I had
frequently recoiled but had never thoroughly felt the force of till
to-night; my next, from the touch and voice of my partner who at that
moment rose from before the basement windows where he had evidently been
lying for a long time outstretched.
"What have you two been doing down there?" was his very natural
complaint. "I tried to listen, I tried to see; but beyond a few
scattered words when your voices rose to an excited pitch, I have
learned nothing but that you were in no danger save from the overthrow
of your scheme. That has failed, has it not? You would have interrupted
me long ago if you had found the child."
"Yes," I acknowledged; drawing him down the alley, "I have failed for
to-night, but I start afresh to-morrow. Though how I can rest idle for
nine hours, not knowing under what roof, if under any, that doomed
innocent may be lying, I do not know."
"You must rest; you are staggering with fatigue now."
"Not a bit of it, only with uncertainty. I don't see my way. Let us go
down street and see if any news has come over the wires since I left
Homewood."
"But first, what a spooky old house that is! And what did the old
gentleman have to say of your tumbling in on him from space without a
'By your leave' or even an 'Excuse me'? Tell me about it."
I told him enough to allay his curiosity. That was all I thought
necessary,--and he seemed satisfied. Jupp is a good fellow, quite
willing to confine himself to his particular end of the business which
does not include the thinking end. Why should it?
There was no news--this we soon learned--only some hints of a
contemplated move on the part of the police in a district where some low
characters had been seen dragging along a resisting child of an
unexpectedly refined appearance. As no one could describe this child
and as I had refused from the first to look upon this case as one of
ordinary abduction, I laid little stress on the report, destined though
it was to appear under startling head-lines on the morrow, and startled
my more credulous partner quite out of his usual equanimity, by ordering
him on our arrival at the station to buy me a ticket for ----, as I was
going back to Homewood.
"To Homewood, so late!"
"Exactly. It will not be late there--or if it is, anxious hearts make
light sleepers."
His shoulders rose a trifle, but he bought the ticket.