CHAPTER XXXIII.
McCAUSLAND'S AMMUNITION.
It is no wonder at all that Emily Barlow should have come to regardInspector McCausland as the villain of the drama in which she was takinga part. Although whenever she tried to formulate his theory of the caseit seemed to her too frail to hang a kitten by, yet she had moments ofdoubt in which his great reputation and clean record of victoriesoppressed and appalled her. And these moments were rendered frequent bya quality which McCausland seemed to possess in common with othersatanic characters, his ubiquity, in which he was only surpassed by Mr.Arthur Kennedy Foxhall. In justice to McCausland, however, it should bestated that he did not make a practice, as the manikin did, of writingbi-weekly billet-doux.
The first time the detective's shadow fell across Emily's path--afterher discovery of his identity--was on one of her visits to Senda Wesner.Who should be coming out of the bakeshop but chubby Richard in person?His bow was gallant and his smile serene.
"My weekly call," he said, stopping to chat for a moment. "A sociablelittle magpie, that one," jerking his thumb toward the bakeshop girl.Emily thought this uncomplimentary. From Miss Wesner she gathered enoughto lead her to suspect that he was trying to connect the peddler in thegreen cart, who was certainly no peddler and who had eluded all pursuitthus far, with the slamming of the rear door, which must have been doneby some one else than Floyd.
A few days later she had called at the office of the Beacon, thenewspaper for which Robert wrote special articles, to obtain some papersfrom his desk. The desk was indeed there, but all its drawers had beenremoved and the managing editor explained that they might be found atthe office of Inspector McCausland.
Twice she had met the inspector climbing Shagarach's stairs, but passingby the lawyer's door and mounting to the top story. The second time shehad heard his voice in conference with a throaty falsetto she thoughtshe knew, and the black mask of Pineapple Jupiter, appearing at the headof the stairs, confirmed her suspicions. Without scruple she entered themission herself one day and expended all her arts to pump the old negro.The moment McCausland's name was introduced, however, his loquacity waschecked of a sudden, then took dizzy flights of irrelevance.
"Oh, dese chillun, chillun," cried Jupiter, puttering away at a brokenpane, "dey done gone break my winders."
"The stout, ruddy gentleman, I mean," persisted Emily, but Jupiter wasso absorbed in his hymn tune that he did not hear her.
Sharper heads than Emily's had failed to force McCausland's hand when hechose to shut it tight. The newspaper reporters, whom no ordinary wallscan bar, had bestirred themselves to secure for an inquisitive publicthe "new evidence" that the government had presented before the grandjury in the Floyd case, but absolutely without avail. Where suchexperienced allies owned themselves beaten, the gentle maiden mightsurely do so without dishonor.
As Shagarach foretold, Bertha had been spirited away. Mrs. Christenson,the intelligence offices, the Swedish consul, the Lutheran pastor, wereall visited and revisited by Emily, especially since the new inspirationseized her, but none of them knew the address of the housemaid since sheleft Hillsborough that morning on an outward-bound train. The only rumorof her whereabouts was that vague report, coming from the bakeshop girl,which Dr. Silsby had set out to investigate.
With regard to the Arnolds' coachman, who had driven their carriage onthe day of the fire, Emily considered Shagarach to be curiouslyindifferent. He had promised to subpoena the man for the trial, but thatwas all. Yet his testimony was crucial, since he must know whether Harrywas with his mother in the vehicle.
This was a peculiarity of Shagarach's, in which he differed again fromMcCausland. Though he prepared his defense with consummate painstaking,when it came his turn to prosecute an unwilling witness, he seemedsatisfied to know the truth in his own mind, relying upon his genius toextort a confession during the cross-examination. With a perjurer beforehim he wielded the lash like a slave-driver, and perhaps he wasjustified in this case in omitting a rehearsal which would only put theArnolds on their guard.
But Emily's greatest disappointment came in what seemed to her the oneweak point of Robert's defense, the axis around which the entireprosecution revolved. Time and again she had conferred with Shagarach onthe subject of her lover's reverie after the deed. To think that hecould not remember a face he had seen, an incident, a word spoken,during those four hours--nothing but a vague itinerary of the afternoon,which came out with difficulty each time, and the course of his ownmeditations, which, to tell the truth, was clear and copious enough, butworthless for the purpose.
At her last visit to the lawyer's home he had entered into this moredeeply. Apparently the method of attacking the enigma, which he hadhinted at possessing from the very first, was now ripened. For he loanedEmily a ponderous volume on "Diseases of the Memory," and asked her tobring in all the evidence possible showing the mutual affection ofnephew and uncle, not failing to wear the water lily from time to time,as he had suggested before. But she was not satisfied with this, and,knowing Robert had visited the park, spent one whole Sunday making atour of that district, questioning each of the gray-coated policemen.
At last she had found an officer who recollected "something of such ayoung man as she described." He "couldn't swear to it," but "had anidea he noticed him." In fact, his recollection grew vaguer and vaguerthe more they tried to make it specific, and to Emily's chagrin, whenthey brought him to the jail, he asserted positively that Robert was notthe man. This disappointment was sharpened tenfold by her meetingInspector McCausland, passing out of the corridor, arm in arm with a carconductor.
"I am certain that was my passenger," the conductor was saying. To haveher own failure and McCausland's success thus brought into contactaccentuated both and gave Emily a miserable day.
The case of the old chemist was not so bad, and besides, was none ofEmily's doing. John Davidson, the marshal, had taken up Shagarach'stheory of Harry Arnold's guilt with remarkable zeal and had borrowed oneof the photographs, so as to see if he could be of use. One day he camein, greatly excited, and asked for the lawyer.
"Got some evidence that'll surprise you, brother," said the marshal.
"Then it must be extraordinary," answered Shagarach.
"What do you think that young rascal did?"
"Who?"
"Arnold. Went to a chemist, a friend of mine, fellow-townsman, too,Phineas Fowler, and bought a big heap of combustible powder, a day ortwo before the fire. Sprinkled it over the whole room, probably."
"He wasn't so foolish as to leave his name, however?"
"Oh, Phineas knew the photograph. Spotted him right away when I fetchedher out. Lucky I took it now, wan't it? 'That's the man,' says Phineas."
"I believe I have your friend's address already," said Shagarach, and intwo or three days he was paying a long-delayed visit to Phineas Fowler.
Amid the compound odor of chemicals sat a shriveled pantaloon, with along, thin beard whose two forks he kept pulling and stroking. Shagarachwas about to state his business, when a stranger at the window cameforward and interrupted him.
"The young man who bought the combustion powder was identified in jailyesterday," said Inspector McCausland, smiling. "It was only Floyd, onthat matter of the bomb."
That matter of the bomb! Perhaps it would be harder to explain thanEmily thought.
But McCausland was not always out beating the bush for evidence.Occasionally the mountain went to Mahomet. The reward of $5,000, whichHarry Arnold had advertised, drew a dribbling stream of callers to theinspector's office. There was the veiled lady, who had seen the crimewith the eyes of her soul, and would accept a small fee for aclairvoyant seance, and the lady with green glasses, whose cardannounced her as "Phoebe Isinglass, metaphysician." The moderation ofher terms could only be accounted for by her scientific interest in thematter. She asked only $1,000 if she proved Floyd insane, $500 if sheproved him sane, and $100 (merely as a compensation for her time) if thecase baffled her skill.
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sp; Prof. I. Noah Little, the conchologist, paid McCausland the honor of acall and even brought his whelk-shell with him. With this occultinstrument at his ear he had been known to make the most remarkableprophecies, declaring to gullible girls the names of their futurespouses, and even portending the great snowfall of May 21 in the year1880.
As for suggestions by mail, the office porter's spine grew bent withemptying the waste-basket which received them. Hypnotism was thefavorite explanation with a large majority of the correspondents,followed by a somnambulism and various ingenious theories of accident.The pope and the czar were named as authors, and the freemasons wereaccused in one epistle of a plot to burn up the ocean with somediabolical explosive, to procure which they had all sold their souls tothe devil, though what this had to do with the Floyd case was a greatermystery than the fire itself.
Out of all this chaff the inspector sifted a solitary grain. One morninghe was joking in the office with Hardy, Johnson and Smith, three of hisbrothers-in-buttons. Hardy handled sneak-thieves and shoplifters,Johnson swindlers of a higher order, such as confidence men, and Smiththe gangs of forgers and counterfeiters. They were all, like McCausland,common-looking men. This enabled them to slouch through life quietly,taking observations by the way.
"Well, Dick," said Johnson, "I hear you've been appointedconfessor-general to Col. Mainwaring's sinners."
This was received with a hearty laugh, for they were a jolly four, thesemen of iron.
"That arson case is a puzzler," put in Smith. "Why didn't you send abottle of the smoke to Sherlock Holmes?"
"With a blank label," added Johnson, "for the incendiary's name."
"Would he notice such an A B C riddle?" laughed Hardy.
"A lady for Mr. McCausland," announced the mulatto policeman, and thebrothers-in-buttons quickly found other business.
The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery Page 33