AFTER ALL.
Trent, of course, was not strong enough to be moved, and that and the
late, or rather the early, hour, it being now almost two o'clock a.m.,
decided us to camp down in the house until morning. So the men outside
with Smug in charge were called in, and with our prisoners securely
guarded, we passed the few hours before daylight in conversation,
Dave, Jeffrys, Lossing, and myself, in Trent's room.
I was doctor enough to see that the poor fellow had been sufficiently
startled by our appearance and the events of the night, and so, eager
as we were to hear and he to tell his story, we imposed silence upon
him until he could be seen by a physician--at least comparative
silence; and as he declared himself 'all right' except for his
weakness, and finding that he was, very naturally, unable to sleep, or
even to rest quietly, we told him briefly the story of our search for
him, and in telling it led him slowly to the knowledge of his father's
presence in the city and the nearness of his betrothed.
More than once his fine eyes filled with tears and his lips trembled
as we told of his sweetheart's telegrams and his father's anxiety; and
when he had heard it all, he lay a long time silent but wakeful, and
evidently thinking, and at last, just as the first faint streak of
gray became tinged with a beam of red in the east, he fell asleep,
with a smile upon his pale lips.
When the negress had been removed from the room, she had begged to be
taken to her 'dear Missis Susie,' who, she declared, was 'sick enough
to die'; and I led her upstairs to the room where the pale, worn
woman still lay, in the room from which her husband had been removed.
As the negress entered the room the woman lifted her head, and with an
inarticulate cry threw herself into her servant's arms; there was a
moment of wild sobbing, and then, as I was about to set a guard at the
door and withdraw, the negress uttered a shrill cry, caught the
slender form in her stout arms and laid her upon the bed, and I saw a
thin stream of blood trickle from between the white lips.
Restoratives were at hand, for this was not the first attack, the
negress said; and when the woman had been cared for, and at last lay
sleeping from exhaustion and, I fancied, the help of an opiate, I
questioned the servant.
Her mistress, she said, was a southern woman, and she had been her
servant since 'befo' the war,' when that mistress was a child of six.
An orphan with a small fortune, 'Mistress Susie' had married Greenback
Bob, 'Master Robert,' she called him, and had followed him and clung
to him through all his downward career of crime, as the big,
heavy-featured coloured woman had clung to 'Missis Susie.' When
prosperous, Bob was kind; when unlucky or drunk, he was cruel and
coarse. 'Missis Susie' had inherited consumption, and that and trouble
and danger had 'wo'n her life away,' as the woman said, with big tears
dropping upon her dark cheeks.
'This las',' she concluded, 'hit's been the wo'st of all. An' that
sick boy! Missis Susie prayed 'em to let him go away to the hospital,
when he was hurt and couldn't give anyone away. But they nuver heard
to Missis Susie--nuver! They wouldn't have been trapped like this if
they had.'
It was by my proposal to bring the physician--whom at an early morning
hour I had summoned to see Trent--to pass judgment upon 'Missis
Susie' also, that I won the negress to tell me something about Trent;
how at early evening he was brought in by Bob and Delbras, whom she
called Hector, and whom she evidently both feared and hated; how a
physician was called, as the young man was insensible, and how,
fortunately for them, he continued delirious for three weeks and more
while the two wounds on his head, both serious ones, were healing; how
the 'gang' had deliberately taken the risk of keeping him until he had
so far recovered as to be beyond the danger-line, knowing that they
could not safely negotiate the return to his family of a prisoner who
might die perhaps while the negotiations were pending.
She told how some one of the gang proper was always on guard in the
sick-room by day, and often by night, and that it was only since the
going away of one of the gang, Harry by name, that they had entrusted
the prisoner to her care alone.
It did not take me long to find out that the person she called Harry
was the brunette, now lying dead at the Morgue, and I saw, too, that
she did not dream of the fate that had overtaken him, although I felt
sure that the woman Susie did.
At early dawn the three men, Delbras, Bob, and Smug, or Harris, as his
companions called him, were taken away under charge of Dave Brainerd
and Jeffrys, to be locked up and safely kept until Jeffrys should take
Delbras to New York, and thence to France. The others would await our
appearance against them.
When the physician came, I took him from young Trent's bedside to that
of 'Missis Susie.'
Of Trent he had spoken only words of cheer. His wounds were healing,
had healed in fact healthily, and with no danger of after-trouble,
mental or other; and now he needed only good nursing, good food,
tonics, stimulants, and for a little longer quiet and not too much
company. He might be moved, he told us, upon a cot, and for a short
distance, that afternoon; and he commended us for our wisdom in not
following up the excitement of the previous hours with an instant
meeting between the invalid and his father and sweetheart. Now, 'after
a light breakfast and good nerve tonic,' he might see his friends,
when they had been prepared and warned against unduly taxing the
patient's nerves and strength.
Of the sick woman above stairs there was a different tale to tell. She
might linger for weeks, but for her there was no recovery.
When the negress--Hat, her mistress called her--heard this she was
inconsolable, and when I had promised her that, if possible, she
should remain with her mistress to the end, she was ready to be my
slave; and knowing that nothing could help or hurt her mistress more,
she was willing to tell me what she could about the gang and their
methods.
She had no love for her mistress's husband, and she seemed to have
remembered against him every unkind deed or word spoken or done to her
'Missis Susie.' Delbras she had ever feared and hated, and Smug she
despised as the coward decoy of the gang. For Harry she expressed a
liking. 'He was bad, that's true,' she declared; 'sharp as you please
and tricky; but he was good to my mistress when the others forgot her.
He was good to her always, and he bought her books and fruit. When he
dressed in woman's clothes she would help him, and he never forgot to
thank her. But they quarrelled, Harry and Bob and the Frenchman, and
he left night before last.'
I told her of Harry's fate, and she cursed his slayers with oaths like
a man's; and after that her testimony was ready, and it helped us
much. As for Susan Kendricks, for this was the name by which the poor
soul had wedded Greenback Bob, there came a time when she told me her
story, and a sad, sad page it was, with little light anywhere upon it.
She had taken little part in their dangerous enterprises, only now and
then appearing somewhere with Harry when he was masquerading as a
girl, in order to mislead the officers or the neighbours in their
estimate of the number and sex of the gang; or to play a part, as on
the night when she personated June Jenrys in order to entrap Lossing.
* * * * *
But when the ship's in port who cares to wait for the furling of the
sails? The journey ended, we go ashore.
Little need to describe the meeting between Gerald Trent and his
friends, which occurred shortly after the going away of the 'gang' and
the visit of the doctor.
He told them the story of his 'disappearance,' and the manner of it
was briefly thus:
At one of the small tables in the Public Comfort Café he had dined
opposite Smug, whose confiding and kindly obliging manner and general
air of being a good but rather slow young man made him an invaluable
decoy for the gang. Here Trent's rather careless display of a
well-filled purse, together with the fine watch he carried and his
valuable diamonds, quietly but mistakenly worn, had no doubt attracted
Smug, who had made himself agreeable, but not obtrusively so, and had
contrived to meet him again and yet again. The last meeting was at
evening, when, while chatting easily, he had expressed a desire to
visit Buffalo Bill, and Smug, claiming to be a near resident, very
modestly offered his escort, and was so unobtrusive and so eminently
proper while confessing to a weakness for 'horse shows,' that Trent
had been quite disarmed.
At the close of the entertainment, the Elevated trains being
overcrowded, Smug had carelessly recommended the Central, alleging
that one of its suburban stations was little more than two blocks
away, and proffered himself as guide, as an afterthought, and because
he could show him a short cut.
'He showed me several,' concluded Trent, with a grimace; 'for, having
lured me away from the crowd and into an almost deserted and
ill-lighted street, we were suddenly attacked, and my "short cuts"
were administered upon my crown.'
Some hazy remembrance caused him to believe that they had taken him to
their lair, half-carrying and half-dragging him, and representing him
to an inquiring policeman as being a victim of too much brandy and
beer.
Then came his illness, a dream of fever, pain, and delirium, and a
slow return to reason, to find himself a prisoner, too weak to lift
head or tend, and yet fully determined not to help his rapacious
captors to a fortune at his father's cost.
Since his return to reason he had, as much as possible, rejected what
he believed to be opiates, and had feigned sleep to avoid their
threats and importunities, and to meet cunning with cunning.
While thus sleeping (?) he had heard some of their whispered plotting,
and he was able to explain how it was that Mrs. Camp had succeeded in
carrying out her wild but successful adventure.
Among Smug's acquaintances was a certain widow, or a woman who passed
for such, who called herself a nurse, and whose services 'came high.'
However, she was 'one of the right sort,' who 'asked no questions,'
and 'always obeyed orders.' Upon the night of Harry's disappearance
there had been an unusual commotion in the house, and a recklessness
of speech quite uncommon; and before morning it was decided that Smug
should secure the services of this valuable nurse at an early hour, as
they must have 'another hand.'
Before noon Smug had reported the arrival of the nurse at an early
hour, and the fact that she was 'hard of hearing' was counted in her
favour. Smug had further said, to the satisfaction of Delbras--who
by-the-bye had never entered Trent's room without first assuming the
disguise of an elderly foreigner--that the woman was especially
willing to come because of a little difficulty with 'the cops,' who
were 'too attentive for comfort.'
Thanks to the successful attention of these same 'cops,' the woman had
left in Mrs. Camp's hands the means whereby she might penetrate this
stronghold of iniquity, and so be enabled to do what we had schemed
and planned to accomplish, and but for her might have made only a
partial success.
Mrs. Camp was the heroine of the hour, and we bent to her our
diminished heads, and willingly declared her a detective indeed; for,
while we had fathomed the disguises of the gang and tracked them home,
it was her masterly coup that had made of our raid the assured success
which it was.
To say that Mrs. Camp was made much of by Hilda O'Neil, June Jenrys,
and Miss Ross is to put it mildly, and the good woman cared far more
for the petting and praise of the two pretty girls than for the
gratitude and congratulations of all the rest of us; and the friends
she has found through her singular raid upon Smug and company will be
her friends for all the years to come.
How I first established a connection between the crook Delbras and the
fine gentleman who had taken New York society by storm as Monsieur
Maurice Voisin was a wonder to many, until I had laid before them the
process of reasoning by which it was done.
I had entered the classic Fair-grounds intent upon searching among the
many faces for two, one a blond young Englishman, the other a dark and
handsome Frenchman, and a letter picked up in the crowd had given me
a mental photograph of these two, though I knew it not.
Before I had ever seen Voisin I had said of him, mentally, 'I believe
he has tricked Miss June Jenrys and young Lossing.' Then I saw him in
company with Miss Jenrys that day before our meeting, and I could not
help seeing how perfectly he answered the description of Delbras. Next
we met, and I could not believe in him; and the glimpses of Greenback
Bob's disguised companion in Midway, as agent and fakir, all were
wonderfully like Monsieur Voisin, man of fashion; and so from day to
day I had watched him as he sought to dazzle the eyes of sweet June
Jenrys, hoping for the time when I might unmask him before her.
Then came the attack upon Lossing at the bridge, in which we both saw
the hand of Voisin. Mrs. Camp, too, added her quota to the solution of
this riddle when she recognised in Voisin the swindler of the Turkish
Bazaar, and identified the hand of Voisin as the hand which had held
out the Spurious bank-notes to Camp; and, finally, there came his
second attempt to destroy Lossing in the Cold Storage fire, ending as
it did in his own disaster and in revealing to me the scar upon the
temple so minutely described in the chiefs letter as belonging to
Delbras.
The man had maintained a stolid indifference and a stubborn silence
after his arrest, even when he learned how complete was his exposure
both as Voisin and Delbras.
Before his departure for New York a complete record of his misdeeds,
so far as we knew them, was made and put into the hands of Jeffrys.
The man Smug, or Harris, as might have been expected, was willing to
betray his companions in crime, now that he knew himself safe from
such vengeance as had been meted out to Harry, the brunette, and in
the hope of such measure of immunity as is sometimes bestowed upon the
rascal who 'confesses' the evil deeds of his associates. It was by
his testimony that we fixed the theft of Monsieur Lausch's diamonds
upon the gang, and the attack upon Lossing, or Sir Carroll Rae, upon
Delbras and Bob; and it was through Hat, the negress, first, and then
from Smug, when sharply questioned, that we learned of their last and
vilest plot, which was to obtain the ransom for Trent, if possible, or
to 'put him out of the way' if this failed, and then, with their hands
free, to purchase a small yacht and to kidnap Miss Jenrys, keeping her
out in the lake until she should buy her release by marrying Delbras.
The only time when Delbras was seen to blench or to appear other than
the stolid, sullen, and silent criminal was when Miss Jenrys,
accompanied by her aunt, was obliged to appear and identify him as the
man who had masqueraded as Monsieur Voisin.
Then, indeed, his dark face paled, his eyes fell before hers, and he
turned away with bowed head.
Clearly such love as such a man can feel had been laid at the feet of
queenly June Jenrys, who had learned the truth concerning him with
amazement, horror, and loathing.
While the body of 'the brunette,' Harry, lay at the Morgue, a tramp,
strange to the police and to the city, viewed it with the many others
who gloat over the horrors of life, and who, having looked long, and
with a startled face, pronounced the body to be that of a professional
thief long wanted by the authorities 'out West.'
'He wuz a born bad un,' the man declared, 'an' a born thief. He
couldn't stay anywhere long on that ercount. I'll bet he's picked more
pockets than any lag at the Fair. He was a slick one. Liked the women,
and most generally had a lot of friends 'mong 'em wherever he was; but
he most generally left 'em the poorer when he got ready to quit.
"Little Kid," that's what they used ter call him, 'cause he was little
an' good-lookin'; but there wasn't a decent hair in his head.' And
the tramp turned away with a malevolent look at the dead man.
And that was all we could learn about 'Harry,' for Smug, ready to talk
on all other subjects, would utter no word as to the manner of Harry's
death. 'He had left them,' that was all he would say; and by this we
knew that Smug was doubtless the decoy who had lulled the suspicions
of the victim and made it possible for the bolder spirits to do the
deed of death.
Delbras was taken to France, and before the closing of the great Fair
had met his fate at the hands of the French executioner.
Greenback Bob and Smug might have spent all their days in prison if
they had possessed three lives apiece, so many were the counts against
them. Their trials were separate, and came about after weeks of delay.
There were no friends with long purses to 'influence' the jury, and
unless that elastic pardoning power is stretched for their benefit, as
has sometimes happened in similar cases, Greenback Bob and Smug will
employ their future time honestly and for the good of the race.
Sir Carroll Rae had a very fair reason for remaining in America for a
time; and so, placing the business of his newly acquired estates in
the hands of the London solicitor who had been Sir Hugo's legal
adviser, he remained in the World's Fair City, where, with minds
unburdened, the entire party, with at first the exception of Gerald
Trent, who was rapidly recovering in spite of the overwhelming
attentions of his friends, took up the much-interrupted and pleasant
employment of seeing the World's Fair, with eyes that saw no flaws,
even in the Government Building.
The Trents did not linger when the invalid was well enough to travel,
but hastened to the home where Mrs. Trent, an invalid still, but a
happy one, awaited her son's return impatiently, after the long weeks
of suspense.
There are no weddings in this tale of strange happenings, which,
nevertheless, are not more strange than many of the unwritten annals
of the Fair. But when the early autumn came, two pairs of lovers,
chaperoned by a discreet little Quakeress, renewed their acquaintance
with the Court of Honour, loitered in the shadows of the Peristyle,
drifted upon the Lagoon, and, pacing its length, recalled anew the
strange adventures and experiences of that wonderful, impossible,
kaleidoscopic, yet utterly and charmingly real Midway Plaisance.
THE END.
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
1. Shadowed by Three.
2. The Rival Detectives.
3. The Diamond Coterie.
4. The Detective's Daughter.
5. Out of a Labyrinth.
6. A Mountain Mystery.
7. Moina.
8. A Slender Clue.
9. A Dead Man's Step.
10. The Lost Witness.
* * * * *
WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, LTD.
* * * * *