JERRY BUCK PLAYS THE PART OF A DETECTIVE AGAIN.
It was after eight o'clock when Mr. Elijah Callister left the ----
Building, Broad street, by the side door opening upon Exchange Place,
and the night had turned off cold.
Detective Cutts was still with him, and buttoning their overcoats about
them, both hurried off in the direction of William Street, with the air
of men having business on hand.
As for Frank Mansfield, he had left the office of the stock-broker a
good three hours before, with his mind full of doubts and fears.
"My daughter is quite capable of taking care of herself, Mr. Maxwell,"
the broker had said in his usual oily tones, as Frank returned to the
office after the little scene enacted at the elevator door. "In future
I beg you will be less attentive to any ladies who may chance to favor
my office with a visit."
With this rebuke he had shut himself up in the private office with
Mr. Billy Cutts again, and was seen no more up to the usual hour
for closing the office, when Frank, without attempting to even say
good-night, simply put on his hat and walked out, wholly undetermined
as to whether his hasty communication with Miss Edna Callister had been
overheard.
As the stock broker and the detective hurried along the southerly
side of Exchange place--we mean the side where the street dealers in
government bonds spend their entire time during business hours in
leaning against the iron railings of the basement offices awaiting
customers for their wares--there crept out from a doorway a ragged,
shivering newsboy, hugging a great bundle of the evening papers tightly
under his arm.
Shooting a hasty glance at the men before him, he bounded ahead over
the icy sidewalk, shouting at the top of his voice:
"Fo'rt Commercial, Nooiz or Telegram! Evenin' papers, gents?"
Evidently the "gents" were disinclined for the evening paper, for
Callister, rudely pushing the boy aside, crossed William street and
paused opposite the great stone building occupied by the Lispenard
Bank, one of the wealthiest of the wealthy financial institutions in
New York.
For an instant only the pause was made; but during that instant the
stock broker, with a hurried glance up and down the street--there was
no one but the newsboy in sight, and he was half a block away--unrolled
a stiff paper plan which he took from under his coat, and giving one
end of it to Cutts to hold, pointed first at the plan and then at the
building of the Lispenard Bank again.
"Fo'rt Commercial! Nooiz! Telegram or German! Evenin' paper, gents?"
Again the newsboy stood by their side, looking almost over their
shoulder at the plan they held between them, as he thrust his bunch of
papers in the broker's face.
"No, you young imp!" exclaimed Callister. "These newsboys are thicker
than flies about here. I tell you, Billy, there's no trouble about
it--no trouble at all. An entrance can be effected as easy as rolling
off a log. And as to money, why, good Lord, it's the clearing house,
you know, and there's always money there. Come, let's get down and show
these to your father, and see what he thinks of the idea."
He rolled up the plans hastily, and putting them under his overcoat,
moved off up William street toward Wall, the detective keeping pace by
his side.
At that moment the newsboy crept out from under the shadows of the
Custom House fence and followed them, dodging from one side of the
street to the other, calling his papers, and occasionally stopping to
sell one, but always keeping the forms of Messrs. Cutts and Callister
plainly in view.
"I've got yer now, yer sly old rat!" he muttered, as he crossed Wall
street close at their heels. "An', by gracious, I orter after all the
time I spent a-watchin'. I seen them papers wat's got the picter of the
Lispenard bank onter them. If she an' me don't spoil yer little game
this time 'twon't be no faalt of Jerry Buck's, an' don't yer forget it!"
Who "she was" did not appear as yet.
Certainly, in his present position, Master Jerry Buck was playing the
part of a detective quite alone.
Down William street to Liberty, down Liberty to its junction with
Malden Lane, down Malden Lane to Pearl street the men advanced, all
unconscious of the ragged youth who followed close at their heels.
Turning to the left, they kept along Pearl street, beneath the shadows
of the great structure of the elevated railroad, nor did they make
another turn until Franklin Square was reached.
And when they passed beneath the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge and
entered Cherry street, smelling of a thousand and one ill odors,
suggestive of anything save the luscious fruit from which its name is
derived, Jerry Buck was still behind them.
He had ceased to call his papers now, but stood silently watching them
from between two empty trucks drawn up by the side of the curbstone, as
they entered the very house on the easterly side of Cherry street, just
beyond Catherine, which he had pointed out to Frank Mansfield upon the
occasion of their Sunday morning visit to the Catherine Market as the
one into which the burglars of the Webster Bank had disappeared.
No sooner had the two men passed through the doorway than the newsboy,
pulling his tattered felt hat low down over his eyes, quietly crossed
the street, entered the house himself, and crept silently after them
up the rickety stairs, just in time to see Detective Cutts, the man
paid by the City for the detection of crime, and Mr. Elijah Callister,
the pious brother of the Tenth Baptist Church, disappear within the
rear room on the second landing of the tenement, the door of which was
immediately closed.
Then Jerry Buck, giving utterance to a peculiar chuckle, slipped past
the door, mounted still another pair of stairs and tapped lightly upon
the panels of the door of the room immediately above.
It was presently opened, and a woman's head and shoulders thrust out
into the hall.
"Is that you, Jerry?"
"Yes, missus, it's me."
The door was softly opened wide and closed again, the boy slipping into
the room.
"Them fellers meets down-stairs again to-night, missus. They means
business this time, and no mistake."
"Is he there?" asked the woman.
"You bet! Didn't I jest see him go in! I've been a-layin' for him,
a-followin' of him since five o'clock. Cutts the detective is with him,
too."
"You are a good boy, Jerry," said the woman, tears springing to her
eyes. "God will reward you for what you've done for me."
"Do you think so, missus? 'Twan't much, after all. When I seed you
a-tryin' to jump inter the river I stopped you. When you told me yer
troubles, an' how that old mean snide, Callister, had robbed your
husband and killed him, an' how he had treated you an' was a-tryin' to
treat yer boy, why I jest took a-holt an' helped yer, an' the rest has
come about of itself."
For reply, the woman stroked the boy's tumbled hair, and then, as if
moved by some sudden impulse, stooped and kissed him.
"Looka here!" exclaimed Jerry, half pleased, half ashamed. "I never had
no one do that to me before, but then you seem somehow jest as though
you were my own mother, so I suppose it's all right."
"And you never knew your mother?" asked the woman, regarding the boy
with a wistful air.
She was a person who had evidently seen much sorrow.
Tall and thin, with gray hair tied tightly in a knot behind her head,
poorly but respectably dressed, there was about her an unmistakable air
of refinement, indicative of quite a different position in life from
the one in which we now find her.
For surely the carpetless room, cheap table and chairs, the little
stove and scanty display of common dishes through the half open closet
door were indicative of anything but plenty and comfort, to say the
least.
But they were miles and miles ahead of anything Jerry Buck was
accustomed to, and he regarded them with an almost respectful air, as
he replied:
"No, missus, I never had no father nor mother as I remember. I've
always lived about the streets."
"But you must have some early remembrances," continued the woman.
"Can't you tell me what they are?"
"Yes, some other time. Them fellers have been in the room below for
full five minutes. If we are a-goin' to ketch onto their racket, we'd
better be about it, I should say."
And as he spoke Jerry Buck, creeping behind the stove, threw himself
flat on his stomach upon the uncarpeted floor, close by the mouth of a
small round hole, through which in some former time, when the house had
been occupied by the old Quaker families once resident in this part of
New York, a stove-pipe had passed, conveying heat to this upper chamber
from the room beneath.
A thin sheet of paper covered the opening upon the ceiling in the room
below them, through which a light could be seen shining dimly and the
sounds of men's voices distinctly heard.
The woman now seated herself likewise upon the floor, and, in common
with the boy, bent over the hole.
Had they been in the chamber beneath them, they could not have heard
the words of its occupants more plainly.
Sound rises, as is well known to every one. Through the round opening
every syllable uttered fell with startling distinctness upon their ears.
"I tell you the job's an immense one, Rube, whether Sam Cutts can see
it or not."
"That's old Callister," murmured Jerry in a low whisper.
"Hush!" replied the woman, speaking in tones equally low, at the same
time holding up her hand. "I know his wicked voice only too well, I'm
not likely to forget the voice of one who has brought the ruin he has
done upon me and mine."
"Well, I'm not kicking," came a man's voice up the tube.
"The plan looks all right, and Lije talks all right. It's a big scheme
on paper, but the question is, won't it prove another Webster bank
affair? Providin' it works, will there be enough shug in the vault to
pay us for our trouble? That's what I want to know in advance."
"Why, it's the Clearing House for all the other banks, man," replied
Callister's voice, impatiently. "There's always money, thousands upon
thousands, in the vaults of the Lispenard bank, I'm a director in it
myself, and I guess I ought to know."
"And these plans----"
"Are drawn from personal knowledge of the interior of the bank and its
vault. Let me tell you, Sam Cutts, this is the biggest thing of the
kind I ever put you on to. Billy here knows that I'm giving it to you
straight."
"Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!" Both Jerry Buck and the woman were upon
their feet in an instant.
The rapping was upon the door of the room in which the listeners were.
"Who can it be!" whispered the woman, turning pale.
"Give it up. Better throw suthin over the hole while I open the door
an' see. It's some of the neighbors have come to borry suthin', most
like, or a peddler mebbe."
"Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!"
The boy hastily crossed the room, and turning the key, cautiously
opened the door upon the crack.
Instantly a man sprang into the room, and seizing Jerry by the
shoulders with a vise-like grip, clapped one hand over his mouth.