WHAT HAPPENED AT THE CATHERINE MARKET.
Of all the quaint old landmarks still standing in the city of New York
that serve to remind the more ancient of its inhabitants of the days
when they were young, surely none so quaint and curious as the old
Catherine Market and its surroundings can be said anywhere to exist.
It stood there at the foot of the street whose name it bears when the
writer was a boy--and many long years before--and will, no doubt,
stand there long after he is dead and gone, a low, narrow shed of
rotten wood, in color a dingy brown, with three half-round windows on
the ferry side--we mean the ones over the oyster booth, where they
used to give a round dozen saddle-rocks to every stew, and over the
coffee and cake saloon, where the butter-cakes were always fresh on the
pan--looking like the eyes of some great monster standing majestically
alone in the center of the little square, calmly watching the crowds
that pour out of the ferry-gates as the sun rises up, and pour in again
as it goes down.
Now there is nothing stylish about the Catherine Market, nothing in any
way smacking of "tone."
It is not one-third the size of the Washington Market, nor does it
profess to have that far-famed celebrity for succulent meats, fat
turtle, fish, oysters and clams to which Fulton Market lays claim.
But it does a driving, thriving business of its own, just the same,
does the Catherine Market--make no mistake about that!
For here come to purchase their daily supplies the denizens of Water,
Cherry and Oliver streets, of Madison, Monroe and Hamilton streets, to
say nothing of East Broadway, equal in number, when taken all in all,
to the population of a good-sized city in themselves.
If one wants to see the Catherine Market in the full tide of its
bustling trade, Sunday morning is the time to come--when the fish
peddlers cluster outside its walls, between the hours of four and five.
They spread themselves up South street; they stand beside their pails,
tubs and baskets on the sidewalk facing the old tumble-down rookeries
on the side of Catherine street to the right of the market itself, and
before the second hand clothing stores on the left.
Blue-fish, white-fish, weak-fish, porgies, twisting eels, and soft
clams strung on strings, lobsters alive and lobsters boiled, soft-shell
crabs, packed in moss-lined boxes, hard-shell crabs, not packed at
all--all are spread about outside of this singular building on the
sidewalk in the gutter--yes, even in the very street itself, while the
bawling of the fishermen as they cry the merits of their wares, the
cackle of housewives, moving about here and there with giant market
baskets on their arms, are all mingled in one unearthly clatter and din.
Nor is this all.
Other branches of trade must needs elbow their way into this busy spot
as well, all carried on from baskets in the open streets, be it plainly
understood, whose owners sit or stand beside them on the pavement as
best they can.
But waste no time in seeking what is new.
This is most emphatically the bartering-place of the worn and old.
Second-hand coats, trousers, hats and shoes. Damaged crockery, rusty
cutlery, half-worn articles of ladies' apparel, whose uses we would, of
course, not even dare to name. Lace curtains, kitchen pots and pans,
cheap chromos, candlesticks and beads, all are represented here, while
small peddlers, whose stock in trade is carried in their hands, move
here and there in the crowd, adding, with their various cries, to the
strangeness of the scene.
We left Detective Hook by the church-yard wall at the moment of his
encounter with the woman who with strange mutterings hurried past.
We find him at the early hour of half-past four moving down Catherine
street in the direction of the singular scene we have just described.
And just before him is the woman, still treading wearily along the
snow-covered sidewalk, her wild eyes ever roving here and there, now
to the right and now to the left, never resting for even one moment of
time.
The storm has ceased at last. The clouds have rolled away to the
eastward; the stars shine brightly in the cold, wintry sky.
And the busy market is teeming with activity and life while the
remainder of the great city is still locked in slumber and repose.
Who is this strange creature with her singular mutterings concerning
"bats in the wall?"
It is just this that the detective sought to learn; and in the endeavor
to learn it had not suffered the woman to pass from his observation
from the moment of their first encounter until now.
At the instant of their meeting he had stopped her and questioned her
sharply.
That she was beyond all question insane was perfectly clear.
Her remarks were most incoherent, and yet they bore direct reference to
the subject weighing most heavily upon the mind of Detective Hook: the
robbery of the Webster Bank.
"He robbed the bank! He robbed the bank! I warned him, but he would not
heed."
This was her sole answer to the questions the detective had pressed
upon her, mingled with muttered words of thankfulness to the "bats in
the wall."
Now nine men out of ten, under similar circumstances, would have
arrested this woman at once.
Detective Hook was of a different sort.
Let him arrest this woman mad beyond a doubt--and, save for such vague
information as could be drawn from her muttered ravings, her usefulness
would at once be destroyed.
Follow her, and there was no telling where she might lead him--possibly
to the abode of the bank-robbers themselves.
That she had seen those who blew open the vault, either enter or
leave the bank, from her rambling words the detective became firmly
convinced; so he let her go, and, dropping all else, followed her
through the streets on that Sabbath morning. If nothing came of it he
could at least arrest her whenever he pleased.
And a long road she had led him, until at the Catherine Market we find
them now, with Caleb Hook seriously debating in his mind whether it
would not be best to take her in charge at once and end this so far
useless chase.
Crossing Cherry street, the woman pushed her way among the old clothes
dealers and second-hand venders whose baskets were crowded together in
the snow-covered street upon this side, and passing along the wall of
the market itself, paused among the fish-mongers who cluster opposite
the ferry gate.
"Fresh fish this morning, ma'am?" cried a runty vender, well wrapped up
in a coat that looked as though it might have done service in the days
of Noah's flood. "Blue-fish, weak-fish, flounders, sea-bass, eels. Any
kind you want you'll find right here!"
But the woman did not heed him.
Moving slowly on among the baskets, she passed the front of the market
and crossed the street to the other side.
There she turned, and proceeding perhaps half way up the block,
stopped before the window of a low rum-shop, and, raising her hand
to her forehead, stood peering in behind the corner of the battered
curtain which shielded its lighted interior from the gaze of an
over-inquisitive outer world.
"At last she stops," muttered the detective to himself, as he took his
station by the side of the old hotel on the corner of Catherine street
and South, watching to see what her next move would be. "Now, whose
place is that, I wonder, and what does she expect to see?"
He glanced at the sign above the door of the groggery.
"The Donegal Shades, by P. Slattery," was the way it read.
It was evidently a saloon for the accommodation of the marketmen, open
at this early hour on Sunday morning in defiance of the law.
As he did so his attention was attracted by two figures advancing
toward the saloon from the street above.
One was a youth of twenty or twenty-one, the other a boy, his junior,
perhaps, by a year or two.
Both were roughly dressed in cheap, worn clothes, the younger of the
pair carrying a bundle of newspapers under his arm.
At the same instant the woman, having seemingly satisfied her
curiosity, opened the door and entered the saloon.
"Now, then," muttered the detective, "this has gone as far as it must.
Unless I greatly mistake, there's business inside there for me."
He moved rapidly forward as he spoke toward the door of P. Slattery's
Shades.
At the same moment the two boys came to a halt beneath a street lamp
before the saloon, toward which the younger of the pair pointed with
his raised right hand, addressing his companion in hurried words,
spoken in too low a tone for the detective to hear.
As he did so, in the light of the lamp above their heads Detective
Hook, glancing carelessly at them, obtained a good view of the features
of both.
With a smothered exclamation of surprise he came to a sudden
halt--stood staring for an instant only at the features of the elder
boy.
It was Frank Mansfield who stood before him--the youthful clerk of the
Webster Bank, who had so strangely vanished from beside the Trinity
church-yard wall.
Fatal pause!
In that instant of hesitation the eyes of the boy met his own.
Seizing his companion by the arm, he turned and sped along the icy walk
like a deer.
"Stop there!" cried Hook, springing forward with a bound. "Halt! you
young rascal!" and he reached forth his hand to catch the flying boy by
the tails of his coat, now almost within his grasp.
But a sudden obstacle intervened.
At this identical moment a roughly dressed individual emerged hastily
from the Donegal Shades, carrying upon his arm a large open basket
loaded with fish, thrusting himself inadvertently directly in the
detective's path.
It all happened in an instant, and indeed, it is difficult to explain
how it happened at all.
But the foot of the detective slipping beneath him, he came in sudden
and violent contact with the basket of fish, throwing the owner
backward in the snow, falling himself at full length by his side, while
Frank Mansfield and his newsboy companion sped up the street with the
speed of the wind.
In an instant they had turned the corner of Cherry street and were lost
to view.
The owner of the basket leaped to his feet, and sprang away up the
street with a bound.
He paid not the slightest heed to the fish scattered around
him--stopped for nothing at all.
"Confound the luck," muttered Detective Hook, scrambling up as best he
could. "If I ain't a clumsy ass, there never was one! Where's the----"
He paused suddenly, and stood staring down at the wreck of the
fish-basket beneath his feet.
There, mingled with the fish upon the surface of the snow, lay a heap
of bright silver dollars--not one, but ten, twenty--a hundred or more,
with three or four bags beside the pile, evidently filled with the same
sort of coin.