CHAPTER II.—“A VOICE, A MYSTERY.”
CHAPTER III.—STATISTICAL.
CHAPTER IV.—“THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE.”
CHAPTER V.—“A NOTHING STARTS THE SPRING.”
CHAPTER VI.—“THE WOMAN WHO HESITATES.”
CHAPTER VII.—ENTER MRS. PEIXADA.
CHAPTER VIII.—“WHAT REST TO-NIGHT?”
CHAPTER IX.—AN ORDEAL.
CHAPTER X.—“SICK OF A FEVER.”
CHAPTER XI.—“HOW SHE ENDEAVORED TO EXPLAIN HER LIFE.”
CHAPTER XII.—“THE FINAL STATE O’ THE STORY.”
MRS. PEIXADA.
CHAPTER I—A CASE IS STATED.
ON more than one account the 25th of April will always be a notable
anniversary in the calendar of Mr. Arthur Ripley. To begin with, on that
day he pocketed his first serious retainer as a lawyer.
He got down-town a little late that morning. The weather was
superb—blue sky and summer temperature. Central Park was within easy
walking distance. His own engagements, alas, were not pressing. So he
had treated himself to an afterbreakfast ramble across the common.
On entering his office, toward eleven o’clock, he was surprised to
find the usually empty chairs already tenanted. Mr. Mendel, the brewer,
was established there, in company with two other gentlemen whom Arthur
did not recognize. The sight of these visitors caused the young man a
palpitation. Could it be—? He dared not complete the thought. That a
client had at last sought him out, was too agreeable an hypothesis to be
entertained.
Mr. Mendel greeted him with the effusiveness for which he is
distinguished, and introduced his companions respectively as Mr. Peixada
and Mr. Rimo. Of old time, when Arthur’s father was still alive,
and when Arthur himself had trotted about in knee-breeches and short
jackets, Mr. Mendel had been their next door neighbor. Now he made
the lawyer feel undignified by asking a string of personal questions:
“Vail, how iss mamma?” and “Not married yet, eh?” and “Lieber
Gott! You must be five-and-twenty—so tall, and with dot long
mustache—yes?” And so forth; smiling the while with such benevolence
that Arthur could not help answering politely, though he did hope that
a desire for family statistics was not the sole motive of the brewer’s
visit.
But by and by Mendel cleared his throat, and assumed a look of
importance. His voice modulated into a graver key, as he announced,
“The fact is that we—or rather, my friends, Mr. Peixada and Mr.
Rimo—want to consult you about a little matter of business.” He
leaned back in his chair, drawing a deep breath, as though the speech
had exhausted him; mopped his brow with his handkerchief, and flourished
his thumb toward Peixada.
“Ah,” replied Arthur, bowing to the latter, “I am happy to be at
your service, sir.”
“Yes,” said Peixada, in a voice several sizes larger than the
situation required, “Mr. Mendel recommends you to us as a young man
who is smart, and who, at the same time, is not so busy but that he can
bestow upon our affairs the attention we wish them to have.”
Notwithstanding Arthur’s delight at the prospect of something to
do, Peixada’s tone, a mixture as it was of condescension and
imperiousness, jarred a little. Arthur did not like the gratuitous
assumption that he was “not so busy,” etc., true though it might
be; nor did he like the critical way in which Peixada eyed him.
“Indeed,” he said, speaking of it afterward, “it gave me very much
such a sensation as a fellow must experience when put up for sale in the
Turkish slave market—a feeling that my ’points’ were being noted,
and my money value computed. I half expected him to continue, ’Open
your mouth, show your teeth!’.rdquo; Peixada was a tall, portly
individual of fifty-odd, with a swarthy skin, brown, beady eyes, a black
coat upon his back, and a fat gold ring around his middle finger. The
top of his head was as bald as a Capuchin’s, and shone like a disk of
varnished box-wood. It was surrounded by a circlet of crisp, dark,
curly hair. He had a solemn manner that proclaimed him to be a person
of consequence. It turned out that he was president of a one-horse
insurance company. Mr. Rimo appeared to be but slightly in advance
of Arthur’s own age—a tiny strip of a body, wearing a resplendent
cravat, a dotted waistcoat, pointed patent-leather gaiters, and
finger-nails trimmed talon-shape—a thoroughbred New York dandy, of the
least effeminate type.
“I suppose the name, Peixada,” the elder of the pair went on, “is
not wholly unfamiliar to you.”
“Oh, no—by no means,” Arthur assented, wondering whether he had
ever heard it before.
“I suppose the circumstances of my brother’s death are still fresh
in your mind.”
Arthur put on an intelligent expression, and inwardly deplored his
ignorance. Yet—Peixada?
Peixada? the name did have a familiar ring, of a truth. But where and in
what connection had he heard it?
“Let me see,” he ventured, “that was in—?”
“In July, ’seventy-nine—recollect?”
Ah, yes; to be sure; he recollected. So this man was a brother of the
Peixada who, rather less than half a dozen years ago, had been murdered,
and whose murder had set New York agog. In a general way Arthur recalled
the glaring accounts of the matter that had appeared in the newspapers
at the time. “Yes,” he said, feeling that it behooved him to say
something, “it was very sad.”
“Fearful!” put in Mr. Mendel.
“Of course,” Peixada resumed, in his pompous style, “of course you
followed the trial as it was reported in the public prints; but perhaps
you have forgotten the particulars. Had I better refresh your memory?”
“That would be a good idea,” said Arthur.—To what was the way
being paved?
With the air of performing a ceremony, Peixada rose, unbuttoned his
coat, extracted a bulky envelope from the inner pocket, re-seated
himself, and handed the envelope to Arthur. It proved to contain
newspaper clippings. “Please glance them through,” said Peixada.
The Peixada murder had been a sensational and peculiarly revolting
affair. One July night, 1879, Mr. Bernard Peixada, “a retired Jewish
merchant,” had died at the hands of his wife. Edward Bolen, coachman,
in the attempt to protect his employer, had sustained a death-wound for
himself. Mrs. Peixada, “the perpetrator of these atrocities,” as
Arthur gathered from the records now beneath his eye, “was a young
and handsome woman, of a respectable Hebrew family, who must have been
actuated by a depraved desire to possess herself of her husband’s
wealth.” They had “surprised her all but red-handed in the
commission of the crime,” though “too late to avert its dire
results.” Eventually she was tried in the Court of General Sessions,
and acquitted on the plea of insanity. Arthur remembered—as, perhaps,
the reader does—that her acquittal had been the subject of much
popular indignation. “She is no more insane than you or I,” every
body had said; “she is simply lacking in the moral sense. Another
evidence that you can’t get a jury to be impartial when a pretty woman
is concerned.”
“She was bad,” continued Peixada, as Arthur returned the papers,
“bad through and through. I warned my brother against her before his
marriage.
“‘What,’ said I, ’what do you suppose she would marry an old man
like you for, except your money?’ He said, ’Never mind.’ She was
young and showy, and Bernard lost his head.”
“She was doocedly handsome, a sooperb creature to look at, you
know,” cried Mr. Rimo, with the accent of a connoisseur.
“Hainsome is as hainsome does,” quoth Mr. Mendel, sententiously.
“She was as cold as ice, as hard as alabaster,” said Peixada,
perhaps meaning adamant. “The point is that after her release from
prison she took out letters of administration upon my brother’s
estate.”
“Why, I thought she was insane,” said Arthur. “A mad woman would
not be a competent administratrix.”
“Exactly. I interposed objections on that ground. But she answered
that she had recovered; that although insane a few months before—at
the time of the murder—she was all right again now. The surrogate
decided in her favor. A convenient form of insanity, eh?”
“Were there children?” Arthur inquired.
“No—none. My nephew, Mr. Rimo, son of my sister who is dead, and I
myself, were the only next of kin. She paid us our shares right away.”
Then what could he be driving at now? Arthur waited for enlightenment.
“But now,” Peixada presently went on, “now I have discovered that
my brother left a will.”
“Ah, I understand. You wish to have it admitted to probate?”
“Precisely. But first I wish to find Mrs. Peixada. The will isn’t
worth the paper it’s written on, unless we can get hold of her. You
see, she has about half the property in her possession.”
“There was no real estate?”
“Not an acre; but the personalty amounted to a good many thousands of
dollars.”
“And you don’t know where she is?”
“I haven’t an idea.”
“Have you made any efforts to find out?”
“Well, I should say I had—made every effort in my power. That’s
what brings me here. I want you to carry on the search.”
“I shouldn’t imagine it would be hard work. A woman—a widow—of
wealth is always a conspicuous object—trebly so, when she is handsome
too, and has been tried for murder. But tell me, what, have you done?”
“You’ll be surprised when you hear. I myself supposed it would
be plain sailing. But listen.” Peixada donned a pair of gold-rimmed
spectacles, opened a red leather memorandum-book, and read aloud from
its pages. The substance of what he read was this. He had begun by
visiting Mrs. Peixada’s attorneys, Messrs. Short and Sondheim, the
firm that had defended her at her trial. With them he got his labor
for his pains. They had held no communication with the lady in question
since early in January, 1881, at which date they had settled her
accounts before the surrogate. She was then traveling from place to
place in Europe. Her last letter, postmarked Vienna, had said that for
the next two months her address would be poste restante at the same
city. From the office of Short and Sondheim Mr. Peixada went to the
office of his sister-in-law’s surety, the Eagle and Phoenix Trust
Company, No.—Broadway. There he was referred to the secretary, Mr.
Oxford. Mr. Oxford told him that the Company had never had any personal
dealings with the administratrix, she having acted throughout by her
attorneys. The Company had required the entire assets of the estate to
be deposited in its vaults, and had honored drafts only on the advice
of counsel. Thus protected, the Company had had no object in keeping
the administratrix in view. Our inquirer next bethought him of Mrs.
Peixada’s personal friends—people who would be likely still to
maintain relations with her—and saw such of these as he could get at.
One and all professed ignorance of her whereabouts—had not heard of
her or from her since the winter of ’80—’81. Finally it occurred
to him that as his brother’s estate had consisted solely of stocks and
bonds, he could by properly directed investigations learn to what corner
of the world Mrs. Peixada’s dividends were sent. But this last
resort also proved a failure. The stocks and bonds, specified in the
surrogate’s inventory, had been sold out. He could find no clew to the
reinvestments made of the money realized.
Peixada closed his note-book with a snap.
“You see,” he said, “I’ve been pretty thorough and pretty
unsuccessful. Can you think of any stone that I have left unturned?”
“How about relatives? Have you questioned her relatives?” asked
Arthur.
“Of relatives—in America, at least—Mrs. P. has none. Her father
died shortly after her marriage. Her mother died during the trial.”
“But uncles, aunts, sister, brothers?”
“None to my knowledge. She was an only child.”
“Her maiden-name was—?”
“Karon—Judith Karon. Her father, Michael Karon, used to keep a
jewelry store on Second Avenue.”
“About what is her age?”
“She was twenty-one at the time of the murder. That would make her
twenty-five or six now.”
“So young, indeed? Have you a photograph of her?”
“A photograph? No. I don’t know that she ever sat for one. But I
have these.”
Peixada produced a couple of rough wood-engravings, apparently cuttings
from illustrated papers, and submitted them for examination.
“They don’t look any thing like each other,” said Arthur. “Does
either of them look like her?”
“Not much,” Peixada answered. “In fact, the resemblance is so
slight that they wouldn’t assist at all in identifying her. On the
contrary, I think they’d lead you quite astray.”
Said Mr. Rimo, “Bah! They give you no more idea of her than they do of
Queen Victoria. They’d answer for any other woman just as well.”
Arthur said, “That’s too bad. But I suppose you have brought a copy
of the will?”
“Oh, yes, here’s the original. It is in my brother’s handwriting,
dated a month before his death, and witnessed by two gentlemen of
high standing. I have spoken to each of them. They acknowledge their
signatures, and remember the circumstances. I made a search for a will
right after Bernard died, but could find none. This I unearthed most
unexpectedly. I was turning over the leaves of my poor brother’s
prayer-book, when, there it was, lying between the pages.”
The will was brief and vigorous. In the name of God, amen, (on a
half-sheet of legal-cap), it devised and bequeathed all the property,
real or personal, of which testator should die seized or possessed, to
his dearly beloved brother, Benjamin Peixada, and his dearly beloved
nephew, Maurice Rimo, for them to hold and enjoy the same, in fee
simple, share and share alike, absolutely and forever, provided that
they should pay annually to testator’s widow, (until such time as she
should re-marry, or depart this life), the sum of three hundred dollars.
It was attested by a well-known Jewish physician and by a well-known
Jewish banker.
“It would seem from this,” said Arthur, “that your brother got
bravely over his illusions concerning his wife. It’s lucky he had no
real estate. She would be entitled to her dower, you know, as a matter
of course.”
“Yes, I know; and I guess that was the reason why my brother converted
all his real estate into personalty shortly after his marriage—so that
he could dispose of it as he chose. The reference to real estate here in
the will is doubtless an inadvertence. He was probably following a form.
He couldn’t trust his wife. She made his life wretched.”
“Well,” Arthur began—but Peixada interrupted.
“I want you,” he said in his dictatorial way, “to name a sum for
which you will undertake to continue this investigation and bring it
to a successful issue; that is, find Mrs. P., have the will proved,
and compel her to refund the property—upwards of one hundred thousand
dollars, unless she has squandered it—that remains subject to her
control.”
“Oh, I can’t name a lump sum off-hand,” replied Arthur, “neither
can I guarantee success. I would of course do my utmost to succeed, but
there is always the chance of failure. The amount of my compensation
would be determined by the time I should have to spend, and the
difficulties I should have to encounter.”
“That sounds reasonable. Then suppose I should agree to defray all
expenses by the way, pay a fee, as you suggest, proportionate to your
service at the end, and now at the outset give you a retainer of—say
two hundred and fifty dollars; would you be satisfied?”
Arthur’s heart leaped. But to exhibit his true emotions would be
unprofessional. He constrained himself to answer quietly, “Yes,
I should be satisfied.” It was, however, with a glow of genuine
enthusiasm for his client that he folded up a check for the tidy sum of
two hundred and fifty dollars, and tucked it into his pocket.
Said Peixada, “I shall trust the entire management of this business
to your discretion. Only one thing I shall suggest. I think an adroitly
worded advertisement in the principal newspapers of this country and
Europe—an advertisement that would lead the reader to suppose that we
felt friendly toward Mrs. P.—would be a wise measure. For instance, a
notice to the effect that she could learn something to her advantage by
communicating with you.”
“Oh, that would be scarcely honorable, would it?”
“Honorable? In dealing with a murderess—with a woman, moreover, who
is enjoying wealth not rightly hers—talk about honorable! All means
are fair by which to catch a thief.”
“But even so, she would be too shrewd to take the bait. An
advertisement would merely put her on her guard. Mustn’t bell the cat,
you know.”
“That’s one way of considering it. On the other hand—However, I
simply offer the suggestion; you’re the pilot and can take whatever
course you please.”
“Well, then, we’ll reserve our advertisement till other expedients
have failed. The first thing to do is—” But Arthur stopped himself.
He did not clearly know what the first thing to do was. “I’ll think
about it,” he added.
“Good,” said Peixada, rising; “there’s nothing further for me to
detain you with to-day.”
“Give my regards to mamma, when you write, Arthur,” said Mr. Mendel.
“I leave you my memoranda,” said Peixada, laying his note-book upon
Arthur’s desk.
“Take care of yourself,” enjoined Mr. Rimo, smiling and waving his
hand.
The three gentlemen filed out. Arthur remained seated in his arm-chair
a long while after their departure, his eyes fixed upon the wall,
his fingers busily twirling his mustache. For three years he had been
enrolled among the members of the bar. This was the first case he had
received that seemed really worthy of his talents.