CHAPTER VIII.
ENTER SHAGARACH.
"Meyer Shagarach, Attorney-at-Law."
The shingle could not have been more commonplace, the office stairs moredingy. A Jewish boy opened the door at Emily's knock and a young man ofthe same persuasion arose from his desk and bustled forward to inquireher business.
"Meester Shagarach is in. Did you wish to see him?"
After a moment a second door was opened and Emily was motioned into theinner office.
"This way, madam."
The man writing at the table barely glanced up at first, but, seeing whohis visitor was, he rose and placed a seat for her. There was courtesybut no geniality in the gesture. Shagarach did not smile. It was saidthat he never smiled.
From the beginning Emily felt that she was in the presence of a man ofdestiny. Before sitting down her intuitions had determined her to enlistthis force on Robert's side at any cost. Shagarach's body was small, hisclothing mean and crinkled all over, as if its owner spent many hoursdaily crouched in a chair. But the face drew one's gaze and absorbed it.With care it might have been handsome, though the dead-black beard grewwild and the hair, tossed carelessly to one side, fell back atintervals, requiring to be brushed in place by the owner's hand. Underthe smooth, bony brow that marks the Hebrew shone two eyes ofextraordinary splendor, the largest, Emily thought, she had ever seen,and set the widest apart--brown and melting as a dog's, but glowing, asno dog's ever did, with profundities of human intelligence. Wide open atall times, they cast penetrating glances, never sidelong, alwaysfull--the eyes of a soul-searcher, a student of those characters,legible but elusive; which the spirit writes upon its outer garment.Their physical dimensions lent a large power to the face, as if more ofthe visible world could be comprehended within those magnificent organsthan the glances of ordinary men compass. But the mouth below seemedrigid as granite, even during the play of speech.
"My name is Miss Barlow," said Emily.
"Come to engage my services for Floyd?" he inquired. It was his habit tocut into the heart of a problem at the first stroke and Emily feltgrateful on the whole that the preliminaries were shortened.
"Mr. Floyd is innocent and I want you to save him."
"Why did he not employ an advocate?"
"The judge----"
"Pursued the only course open to him. The evidence was damaging. Whathave you learned since yesterday?"
"Ellen Greeley----"
"Is dead. The dog's instincts were right then. There was some oneinside. Aronson."
The young man answered this peremptory call.
"My Evening Beacon."
It was brought at once.
"The newspapers are correct in their surmise. Ellen Greeley wentupstairs, as Bertha testified. The day was hot. She lay upon the bed inher own room, and fell asleep. The barking of Sire did not wake her.Her room was in the rear, two flights up. The shouting of the crowd didnot wake her. The fire may have waked her too late and her shrieksescaped notice in the uproar; or she may have been suffocated during hernap."
Shagarach spoke in a clear, loud voice that expressed and carriedconviction. Emily wondered at his familiarity, far surpassing her own,with the details of the case.
"You see the improvement in our cause at once?"
Emily tried hard to think.
"Of course it proved Ellen could not have been a confederate," shesuggested, modestly.
"Ellen Greeley sleeping in the attic chamber, who slammed the door?"
Shagarach's eyes shone like carbuncles. "It was not Floyd. He was not inthe habit of slamming doors. And no man seeking to escape does thatwhich will attract attention--unless"--he dwelt on the wordsignificantly--"unless he is fleeing in haste."
"Then you believe, Mr. Shagarach----"
"It was the back door which slammed. They failed to confuse Bertha onthat. It slammed after Floyd had gone out. Did Floyd go out the backdoor?"
"Miss Wesner, the young lady who lives opposite, saw him coming down thefront steps."
"When?"
"Four or five minutes before the fire."
"Ellen did not go out the back door. Floyd did not go out the back door.Some one else did."
"And you will take the case, Mr. Shagarach?" Emily awaited his answer asbreathlessly as if Robert's life or death hung in a trembling balancewhich Shagarach's finger could tip to one side or the other.
"It interests me. Have you a photograph of the accused with you?"
"No," answered Emily, thinking the request somewhat strange.
Shagarach began gazing at her with extraordinary intensity. The greatwill inclosed in his little body seemed to bear down hard upon her so asreally to hurt. But she felt no resentment, only a kind of satisfiedacquiescence, as if all were for the best. Yet, among ordinary peopleEmily was an individuality rare and fragrant, asserting herselfforcefully, without being in the least self-assertive.
"Have you anything else?" asked the lawyer. Emily did not know how longthe interim was.
"There is the strange peddler," she ventured to say. This time hisanswer was an interrogative look.
"Miss Wesner spoke of him today--a vegetable vender, who has been comingto the Arnold's for the last few weeks----"
"How many?"
"Three or four, I think."
"Since the will was made, then?"
"And dealing with Ellen. About the will----"
"Let us finish with the peddler."
"He had blue eyes and drove a cart painted green. Nobody had ever seenhim in the neighborhood before, till he came selling vegetables andpotted plants. His last visit was made on Friday."
"Not Saturday, the day of the fire?"
"Miss Wesner, who is very observing, has not seen him since Friday."
"Not as a peddler," said Shagarach, sotto voce. "Now as to the will. Youwish to say that Floyd has told you of his uncle's desire to make himsole heir and his own aversion to the responsibilities of so large aproperty."
"Does he practice clairvoyance?" asked Emily of herself.
"Robert is no lover of money," she said. "To allege avarice against himas a motive is monstrous."
"Avarice, Miss Barlow? To love money is not avarice. Men grow to theiropportunities. Without opportunities they wither and without money todaythere is no opportunity."
"The artist--does his genius gain or lose when it is gilded?" repliedEmily, who felt a match even for Shagarach in the defense of her lover.
"The artist--ah, he is not of the world! Gold might well be to him anincumbrance. But to the worker among men it is the key to a thousandcoffers."
There was deep feeling in these words of the criminal lawyer. Emilywondered if there might not have been a past of poverty, perhaps ofspiritual aspiration and disappointment in his life, all subdued to thepresent indomitable aim at fortune and reputation.
"The refusal was a folly, a stripling's fatal blunder--yet a blunder ofwhich not three men in our city are capable. Let us leave the will. Itmay reappear in its proper sequence. No suspicious character was seenloitering about or leaving the house on Saturday?"
"My inquiries have been limited to Miss Wesner."
"Aronson!"
The young man reappeared as before.
"Make thorough inquiry this evening in the neighborhood of the Arnoldhouse, rear and front, for a stranger seen loitering about the premisesor issuing from them on Saturday afternoon."
"Yes, Miss Barlow, I have a theory," resumed Shagarach, turning to Emilyagain. He folded his arms and looked at her steadfastly, yet as thoughhis gaze were fixed on something beyond.
"I see your lover's photograph in your eyes--mild blue eyes, buttouchstones of integrity, hard to deceive. He impresses me well. Hisstory, moreover, bears a somewhat uncommon voucher. It is true becauseof its improbability. How improbable that any man would refuse a gift of$10,000,000! How improbable that any man, not a sleep-walker, wouldwander through the streets of a city without any record of his sensuousimpressions!"
"But----"
"The improbability of the story demonstrates its truth. Men lie, womenlie, children lie. Have you watched a band of girls playing at theimitation of school? How cunningly the teacher feigns anger, the pupilsnaughtiness and sad repentance. Have you observed the plausibility inthe inventions of toddling babes to escape imminent chastisement?Falsehood is a normal faculty and equipped with its protective armor,plausibility. Your friend's story is too preposterous to be untrue."
Emily was bewildered by these rapid paradoxes.
"I congratulate you upon your friendship with so unusual a specimen ofour kind, the man who cannot or will not lie. But I should not like topresent his defense on such grounds to twelve of his fellow-creatures,normal in that respect. Fortunately we are not driven to that extremerefuge.
"The material for a theory is meager; the chain shows many gaps. But Ifind no evidence that Floyd attempted to get rid of the servant, Bertha.A child, meditating this crime, would not have neglected so obvious aprecaution. Her continued absence was only an opportune accident. Herre-entrance would have resulted in his discovery. The point is pivotal.
"I find that a favorite house dog was left in the room to besacrificed--a needless cruelty if the incendiary were his master, anecessary precaution if he were a stranger whose actions the animalwould have understood and whom he would have followed to the street."
"But would Sire have allowed a stranger even to enter the study?"
"True; but between strangers and friends there is a middle categoryconsisting of persons whom we may call acquaintances. Into these threedegrees we are divided by dogkind. It was not a stranger or he wouldhave been attacked. He had no friends left but Bertha, Ellen and Floyd.The dog was drowsing on the mat. The man who entered was anacquaintance.
"Who was this man? We have a few items of his description. Some oneknown to the dog, familiar with the premises and interested in thedestruction of the document of which that house, that room and that safewere the triple-barred shrine. An expert criminal could have destroyedthe safe without detection, but the incendiary was an amateur, and suchan act would require time. There was no time, not an instant. Theexecutor was to arrive that afternoon. McCausland started right. TheHarmon building was destroyed and seven lives sacrificed in order thatBenjamin Arnold's will might be irrevocably canceled. Who benefited byits destruction?
"The professor had desired to make Robert Floyd his sole heir, in otherwords, to disinherit Harry Arnold!"
Shagarach's monologue had reached its climax. The name of the othercousin came out like the ring of a hammer. He waited, as if yieldingEmily an opportunity to object, but as she sat passive and expectant, hewent on, his arms still folded, and his glowing eyes evincing deepabsorption in the problem he was elucidating.
"Harry Arnold was in disfavor, then. The drafting of the will must havebeen communicated to him, but probably not its items. The mere fact,however, was ominous. It might mean the loss of a fortune. One of theservants was dressing 'uncommonly rich' of late. The wherewithal came toher as payment for conveying to Harry Arnold all she could pick up aboutthe will. It may not have been pleasant news.
"It was from Mrs. Arnold McCausland first learned of the will. It wasHarry Arnold who hastened to advertise a reward of $5,000--McCausland'sfee if----"
"As to the fee," said Emily.
"I understand; the legacy of $20,000 amply protects me."
Emily was uncertain whether or not Shagarach meant to demand the whole$20,000 for his services.
"I find that the flies were about the honey pot. Mrs. Arnold's carriagedrove up about 3 o'clock. The executor was to call that afternoon.Revelation could not be long delayed. The plot was desperately formed,favored by circumstance and executed by Harry Arnold and hisaccomplices."
"But Harry Arnold has been ill, Mr. Shagarach."
"The name of his physician?"
"I believe, Dr. Whipple, the pathologist. You suspect Harry, then, ofthe crime?"
"I have not studied him yet. This is only an alternative theory. You seehow easily it could have been constructed in your friend's behalf.
"Mungovan, the discharged coachman, has not yet been found. The strangepeddler may prove a confederate. You will send Bertha to me. She is thecentral witness. Is Floyd in jail?"
"Yes," said Emily, sadly; "but a permit----"
"I shall not need one. I am his counsel."
Emily descended the creaking stairway and rode home with a certain newelation, such as we sometimes feel after contact with some electriccharacter, some grand reservoir of human vitality. Meyer Shagarachmeanwhile began pacing up and down, occasionally speaking to himselfsotto voce.
A criminal lawyer, but with the head of an imperial chancellor.
What was known of this rare man's history? About thirty years before hewas born in a small town on the upper Nile, a descendant of those mightyJewish families whose expulsion impoverished Spain, while spreading hertongue throughout the orient, even beyond the Turcoman deserts to theunvisited cities of Khiva and Merv. Languages were his birthright, asnaturally and almost as numerously as the digits on his hands. In hisyouth his father had wandered to America--refuge of all wild, strangespirits of the earth--and died, leaving a widow and a son. The boy hadbeen visionary, unpractical--a white blackbird among his tribe. Foryears he had struggled to support his mother, first as an attorney'sdrudge, then as a scribbler. There was no market for his wares. Then bya sudden wrench, showing the vise-like strength of his will, he hadburst the bubble of his early hopes and chosen for his profession thatof all professions which requires the most thorough subjection of thesentiments. It was six years since he had first rented the obscurequarters he now occupied, the same where, as a lad, he had sighed awaymany hours of distasteful toil.
For the first two years Shagarach's face showed the desperation of hisfortunes. His own people shunned him as a seceder from the synagogue. Tothe public he was still unknown. But one day a trivial case had matchedhim against a certain eminent pleader, a Goliath in stature and inskill. The end of the day's tourney witnessed his bulk prostratedbefore the undersized scion of the house of David. From that hour thedimensions of his fame had grown apace. Critics noticed an occasionalsimplicity in everyday matters, just as a gifted foreigner who hasbecome eloquent in our tongue may have to ask some commonplace nativefor a word now and then. Rivals questioned his technical learning, whohad little else to boast. Yet Shagarach's knowledge, practical or legal,was always found adequate to his cause. Whether he was pedanticallyprofound in the law or not might be an open question. But all who knewhim at all knew him for a Titan.
The man appeared to be lonely by nature. Excepting the young assistant,Aronson, he associated no colleague with him, carrying all the detailsof his growing volume of business in his own capacious mind. Other menmade memoranda. Shagarach remembered. What he might be in himself noneknew; yet "all things to all men" was a motto he spurned. Shagarach wasShagarach to judge or scullion, everywhere masterful, unruffled,mysterious. Were it not for the luminous eyes he might be taken for anabstract thinker. These orbs supplied the magnetism to rivet crowds andsuggested a seer of deep soul-secrets (unknown even to their possessor),dormant, perhaps subdued, but not annihilated, under the exteriorequipment of the criminal lawyer.
Shagarach often colloqued with himself as he was doing now. In histrials, though he neither badgered witnesses nor wrangled withopponents, he was noted for sotto-voce comments, sometimes ironical,that seemed scarcely conscious. These mannerisms might be relics of asolitary pre-existence, in which the habit of thinking aloud had beenformed.
"Was it Arnold or Mungovan who touched the match?" He continued hispacing in silence. "Both knew the premises, Mungovan the better of thetwo."
The electric street lamp shone into his room and the footfalls of thelast tenant, receding on the stairs, had long since died to silence.
"I will study Arnold," he said, finally, buttoning his coat, as if theproblem were as good as solved.
The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery Page 8