He settled himself into a soft chair in the lone coach that left Chicago at this hour, and was soon speeding out past the city. The sun came up and morning dawned. It was exactly an hour and a half after he had left Chicago that the single coach stopped at Kenburyport. He got off and surveyed the small town curiously. And as he stood there uncertainly, an old rickety wagon drawn by a bony horse creaked up to the station and an old man with pipe in mouth got out and went into the baggage room. Fortescue accosted him in the doorway. “Who is Pop Flanders?” he asked.
“Heh? That’s me.”
“Oh, you’re Flanders, are you? Well, do you remember delivering a trunk to a Mrs. Winters somewhere in this town about a week or less back?”
“Well — yes — I t’uk sich a trunk. H’it’s the on’y trunk I delivered here in th’ hull last week. Business is shorely pore. I done t’uk it to Mrs. Rothappel’s boardin’ house up thar on that hill — see — ” He pointed with one skinny wavering forefinger.
Fortescue thanked the old man, and milling the name Rothappel about in his head, made his way along the street with its new frame cottages, and up the hill. He rang the bell at the very new two-storey boarding house with its equally new veranda and its new square pine pillars whose green paint had never yet weathered a season, hot or cold. And a woman, a very stout woman, came out.
“You take roomers and boarders, do you?”
“Yessir,” The landlady looked him over. “But it’s mostly workin’ men what lives here, sir.”
“Yes, I know that. But I’m a working man myself. I’m investigating steel mill and ironworks conditions,” Fortescue explained. “I’m an organiser.”
“Well, jus’ come in, sir.” She led him in. “What sort of a room might you be wantin’? I have ‘em for one dollar a day and one and a half. That’s without board, o’ course.”
“Well, I’ll just see what you have,” Fortescue said gracefully. They ascended the stairs together, the fat woman puffing in manifest distress at his heels. Halfway up he had to wait for her. “By the way,” he remarked easily, “I have a sister living along this east shore somewhere. She wrote me a half-month ago saying she was coming here. I think she said Kenburyport, too. We’ve been out of touch for several years, during which she’s been married. I’d like to inquire after my sister. Are there any other boarding houses in town? She had brown eyes; a very pretty girl.”
The landlady caught up with him, still puffing. “There’s — there’s a Mrs. Winters recently come here,” she said. “She’s got brown eyes, an’ never was a purtier little girl. She’s — -she’s a-expectin’ of her husband.”
“Have a little girl of about two years of age, did she?” asked Fortescue, half concealing the smile that trembled on his lips.
“Oh, no, sir. This lady — this lady didn’t have no little girl. No children at all, sir.”
“Well,” he remarked sadly, “that’s not my sister then. My sister has a little girl.” They had now reached the second floor of the newly constructed two-storey building, and he looked about him with more than casual interest. It was plain that the landlady did not intend to ascend those stairs in the capacity of guide any more than was necessary. She started to take him down the hall. He touched her on the arm. “I’m terribly afraid of fire,” he said. “Have you anything near the top of the stairway here?”
“Yessir,” she answered. She threw open the door of a room about fifteen feet from the bright oblong of light that marked the skylight. “Here’s a dollar room at the head of the stairs — nearly so, anyway.”
He glanced over it but superficially. Then he turned to her. “I’ll take it,” he said. “My baggage will come along later.” He handed her a ten-dollar bill. “For my first week’s room rent,” he said. “And my name is Barker — George J. Barker.”
“Thank you, sir. Would you mind calling downstairs for your change when you go out? Them stairs is a-killing of me.”
“Not at all,” he assured her warmly. “And for the present I’ll just lie down. I’ve been travelling in from New York all night and all day yesterday.” He turned to her. “Oh, by the way, have you a telephone?”
“Yessir. Local 228, sir.”
“And that would be called Kenburyport 228 on long distance, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’d like to use it. Then I’ll lie down later.”
He followed her back downstairs. There he found a neat new sound-proof booth which he realised would enable him to talk more freely than if the ‘phone were an open instrument. He closed himself inside of its double-glassed door, and asked not only for Chicago, but for the number of his apartment in the Eastwood Arms. As soon as he had deposited the requisite number of quarters and dimes in the automatic money box, he heard the voice of his valet at the other end of the wire. He spoke.
“That you, Biggs? Yes? Well, this is Fortescue — yes, Mr. Fortescue. Take down this number. And if anything of importance develops — most particularly, if you get a call from the Chicago detective bureau asking for me — take the message. Find out, whatever you do, if that crazy man that I told you about this morning was recaptured, for that’s what they would be calling me up about. If you learn such information, ‘phone me immediately and be sure to ask for Mr. George Barker. Now here’s the number: Kenburyport 228 — and the exchange stands for Kenburyport, Indiana — not Illinois or any other State. Get me?”
“Yes, sir. I have it, sir. Kenburyport two-two-eight. And it’s Kenburyport, Indiana? And I shall ask for Mr. Barker?”
“That’s right. And that’s all. Good-bye.”
He went back upstairs to his room. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. It was now half-past seven in the morning. He turned the key in the door which he had closed, and then tapped gently at one of its panels. By the very feel of the wood he could tell that the panels were thin and of soft, cheap lumber. Looking carefully out to see that nobody was in sight along the long corridor, he took out his pocket-knife and with a sharp jab drove it through one of the panels, and then as quickly withdrew it. He now picked away with the point of his knife at the aperture he had made, and very soon had produced a slit just large enough so that, seated on a chair inside, he could see everything out in the hallway. A few further slivers, deftly removed from one side only, turned the angle of the slit so that it covered beautifully the head of the stairs, with its wealth of illumination from the skylight above. He now made the further experiment of drawing down the shade of the one window in the room. This improved things wonderfully, for he now had the advantage of being in a dark space, where he could not possibly be seen, looking out on a space that was lighted up. This done, he drew up a chair to his cunning peephole and sat down on it.
It was at around nine o’clock when the fat Mrs. Rothappel puffed laboriously upstairs and went down the hall quite beyond his room, and tapped on a door. He could hear voices.
“Mrs. Winters, you’re wanted on the telephone downstairs. It’s — it’s a out-o’-town call.”
“Oh — thank you, Mrs. Rothappel. Thank you for coming up. I’ll be down right away.”
Fortescue stiffened in his seat. The fat woman departed the way she had come, and he pinned his eye close to the slit as he waited. At length he saw a girl pass.
“The Holliston girl all right,” he said tensely, as her footsteps went down the flight of stairs. “The Holliston girl. It’s her! And she’s waiting for him to join her here. By gad, I wonder — I wonder if that’s a ‘phone call telling her he’s on his way here now.”
It was but a few seconds before she returned to her room, and not very long afterward she went out.
“She must have supplied him with cash,” he decided, “and he’s already made his way across the Indiana-Illinois line. Maybe he’s right in the next town, and afraid to come on. And she’s gone out to reassure him — to tell him just how to find the place — what to say when he gets here and how to say it. She’ll be back inside of an hour, I’ll wage
r a cold hundred, and he’ll be marching boldly up shortly after she returns — like a long absent husband.” He laughed grimly, evilly — a horrible sinister note in his jubilation. And from his hip pocket he transferred to the right hand pocket of his coat the blue steel revolver which he had brought with him.
CHAPTER XXVII
TWO MEN IN A CAR
His brain in a whirl, his orbs covered with the ponderous leaden spectacles of the long-gone Cagliostro, his eyes peering forth through the purplish coloured oblong lenses, Jerry Middleton continued to stare helplessly across the fields at the huge sign that confronted him — a giant sign written in blue pencil on a jet black background.
Now, like a flash, it came back to him: that mysterious bequest of his father’s by which had been left for his later selection those twenty-two residence lots in Chicago, none of which were to be sold; and now he began to see a glimmering of light in the strange stipulations with respect to that endowment.
And thus he stood pondering, staring, reflecting, trying to piece together all these surprising facts, oblivious to where he was, to even the passage of time, when suddenly the sound of chugging almost at his elbow awoke him sharply out of his daze, and, staff in hand, he turned just in time to confront a black runabout with two men seated in it.
“Lookin’ f’r anybody, stranger?” said the little old man in the car.
“No. Just looking over the fields, that’s all. This is Rivervale, isn’t it?”
“ ‘Teez, but ye’re headin’ away from it,” pursued the little bent old man. “Where might ye be from, stranger?”
“Just came up from — well, from a distance up the road.” Middleton said.
“Know somebody around here, mebbe?” The little old man with the badge spat.
Middleton shook his head. “No, I’m a stranger about these parts.” He turned. “Well, I think I’ll be going along.” He stepped to the left to pass by the side of the machine, but the voice of the younger man halted him.
“Wait a minute, stranger. Hold on there. Who are you, anyway? Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen you along these parts, have I?”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Well, just stay where you are a minute.” He hopped out with the agility of a man who has reached middle age only in his birthdays. “Let’s have a look at your socks, young feller. No harm done. We’re just keepin’ an eye out for somebody.”
“My socks?” ejaculated Middleton. And he knew the explanation almost as soon as he had spoken. They were looking for those peculiar mottled socks that the State of Illinois provided its guests — those socks of grey and yellow and black and white threads. He essayed an embarrassed laugh.
“Well, to tell you people the truth, I — I haven’t got any socks. I’m a bit run down at heel, don’t you know.”
He pulled up each of his trouser legs in turn, exposing his bare ankles above the worn, tattered shoes.
“H’m,” said the little old man, gazing down. He turned to the other. “Willie” — the dominating tone of his voice, and his use of that diminutive, were the sure indications of a father speaking to his son — ” might be, o’ course, that he took ‘em off.”
“What other points were in the description that was ‘phoned in to you during the night, dad?” asked the man in the black flannel shirt. Jerry Middleton turned uneasily to go — to flee — but he felt a sudden firm, steel-like grasp on his arm. “Hold your horses, my man. Just a minute — and we’ll probably let you be on your way.”
“Well,” the older man was saying, “sez f’r one thing he had brown eyes.”
“Stranger,” commanded the younger, “take off them old sun glasses of your’n, and let’s just have a look at your eyes. No harm, my friend; reckon you’re only a ‘bo, but I’m assistant town marshal here, and right there in that car is the marshal himself.”
Middleton stepped back a foot or so. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but it’s impossible for me to expose my eyes in this glare of sunlight.”
“Ho! ‘Tis, it it?” The old man had hopped out with amazing alacrity, and with one foot on the running board and one on the ground he leaned forward and jerked the leaden spectacles from Middleton’s face. The latter stood blinking, winking in the sunlight. The black flannel shirt on the younger of the two men suddenly tinned to bright red, and the black runabout had again become a scarlet flivver. The two men peered at him, at his blinking brown eyes. The younger turned to the older.
“What do you say, dad?”
“I say we’d better hold him. Ain’t got no socks on — an’ — an’ his eyes is brown. He can’t explain where he’s from or where he’s going, an’ — ”
But Middleton never heard the completion of that sentence, and no doubt there never was a completion of it; for, realising at last that he was at the end of his rope, he tore loose with a powerful jerk from the restraining tanned hand of the younger man, flung aside his encumbering staff, and with one leap was running down the road at the back of the machine. In his rear was only amazed silence, and then suddenly he heard a shout:
“After him, Willie! Jump in. He’s some crook or mebbe that limy tic.”
As for Middleton he heard the unmuffled exhaust of the flivver behind him, the unmistakable sounds of a light car being backed violently up and turned, and then suddenly a tremendous chugging roar that showed him it was in full, untrammelled pursuit behind him.
There was nothing to be done now, he saw desperately, but to put them all on a more equal footing; in other words, for him to get back to the railroad right of way. Indeed, the tracks now at this point departed abruptly from the roadway, veering off at a wide angle, evidently to cross with perfect exactitude a steel bridge whose framework loomed up a few hundred feet in advance of him. And this manœuvre he performed in short order, almost tripping as he clambered and clawed his way up the cinder embankment that marked the right of way.
Once up at the top, he found himself covered with ashes up to his waist, and he was panting furiously from the exertion of raising his body upward that ten vertical feet. But he sped steadily onward, and had the satisfaction of looking back over his shoulder to see that the red flivver had stopped, that its occupants had clambered out, and that they, too, were scrambling and clawing up the embankment, which feat he had already successfully executed. He continued at top speed, never slacking, knowing that the delay he had thrown in their path was going to give him a tremendous lead, but as he averted his gaze once more to the track ahead of him, he found himself almost in the shadow of the rusty framework that comprised the railroad bridge that a while back had been far in front of him. He had to slacken down very much now, but, panting, he picked his way briskly out on its ties, stepping with care from one to the next, for far below him, a hundred feet or more, tumbled and surged a muddy, whirling stream in a deep gorge, a stream several hundred feet wide. And so intent was he on this delicate performance which he was conducting, that it was a full minute before he awoke to the realisation that there had been sounding in his ears for the last sixty seconds the ominous whistle of an approaching train, and he stopped — stopped dead — stopped almost halfway to the middle of the span he was on, wondering whether the train were near or far, whether it was back of him or whether it was in front of him.
And then suddenly, as he stood in hopeless indecision, there rolled with incredible speed around the curve a thousand feet ahead of him the gleaming front of a locomotive, bearing down on the bridge at top speed. There was no time to turn back — nor was there time to cross the bridge. A look down between the two ties on which he stood showed only the ugly stream, breaking at one shallow point into a bubbling spray, and then expanding gracefully into a broad majestic river which swung out of sight around a curve a quarter of a mile further down. Beyond that one ugly cascade of spray, there were no signs of rocks. But such a drop: a hundred feet if a foot! He never knew how he accomplished it so suddenly, but almost before he was really aware of what he was about to do, he had slid �
�� almost dropped — down between two of the widely spaced ties, and was hanging by his finger-tips from its rough upper edge, the blue sky creased by the black girders of the bridge was above him, and then suddenly that bit of sky was blotted out by a mad roar of flying metal that screamed past him just a few feet above his head, spraying dust and oil and hot steaming drops down upon his face and shoulders. The tie, on which he clung by finger-tips alone, shook and rattled and drummed violently in its holding spikes, the entire structure surged and swayed drunkenly as though some inebriated giant was giving it a series of playful pushes with a huge foot, and then he gently released his rapidly slipping finger-tips, closed his eyes — and — dropped!
It was chill, icy cold water, and it seemed æons before he came up, choking, gasping, strangling, arms flailing madly, face pointed upward to see a bridge above him. But there was no bridge. Far behind him was the bridge, now shrunk amazingly in size, a bit of smoke curled into the distant atmosphere to one side of it, and two tiny figures silhouetted against the light made strange moving bumps in the lace-like framework.
He turned now and swam desperately. A moment later, and bridge and all were swept away over his shoulder, for he was around a bend in the river bed. He began without any further delay to swim toward the nearest bank — the right one — and the nearer he got to it the more exhausted he became. But slowly he forged in, stroke by stroke, groaning aloud from the intensity of his exertions, and at last stumbled forth, dragging with weeds and with mud on him up to his knees. His hat was gone. He ran water in a dozen rivulets. He stood on the bank for only a moment, however, plucking off the weeds and debris that had attached itself to him, pushed his way through a dense cluster of bushes that fringed the topmost part of the river bank, and found himself squarely on a roadway. A farmer with wide straw hat and driving a cheap, tinny car, bowling along at a vigorous speed, came to a sudden banging stop at sight of him.
The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro Page 28