Her face while she read these lines, was a study, but I dared not soften toward it. Dropping the paper from her hand, she gave me one inquiring look. But I pointed determinedly to the words lying upward on the floor, and would listen to no appeal. My resolve had its effect. Bowing her head with a sorrowful gesture, she laid her hand on her heart, looked up and glided from the room. I took up that paper and tore it into bits.
And now for the first time since I had been in the house, I closed the door of my room. I had a part to perform that rendered the dropping of my disguise indispensable. The old French artist had finished his work, and henceforth must merge into Q. the detective. Shortly before two o’clock my assistants began to arrive. First, Mr. Gryce appeared on the scene and was stowed away in a large room on the other side of mine. Next, two of the most agile, as well as muscular men in the force who, thanks to having taken off their shoes in the lower hall, gained the same refuge without awakening the suspicions of those we were anxious to surprise. Lastly, the landlady who went into the closet to which I had bidden Mrs. Blake retire after leaving in my room the articles I had mentioned.
All was now ready and waiting for the departure of the youngest Schoenmaker. Would he disappoint us and remain at home that day? Had any suspicions been awakened in the stolid breasts of these men, that would serve to make them more watchful than usual against running unnecessary risks? No; at or near the time for the clock to strike two, their door opened and the tread of a lumbering foot was heard in the hall. On it came, passing my room with a rude stamping that gradually grew less distinct as the hardy rough went down the corridor, brushing the wall behind which Mr. Gryce and his men lay concealed with his thick cane, and even stopping to light his pipe in front of the small apartment where cowered our good landlady with her eternal basket of mending in her lap.
At length all was quiet, and throwing open my door, I withdrew into a small closet connected with my room, to wait with indescribable impatience, the appearance of Mrs. Blake. She came in a very few minutes, remained for an instant, and departed, leaving behind her as I had requested, the skirt and shawl in which she had left her father’s presence. I at once endued myself in these articles of apparel—taking care to draw the shawl well over my head—and with a pocket handkerchief to my face, (a proceeding made natural enough by the sneeze which at that very moment I took care should assail me) walked boldly back to the room from which she had just come.
The door was of course ajar, and as I swung it open with as near a simulation of her manner as possible, the vision of her powerful father lolling on a bench directly before me, offered anything but an encouraging spectacle to my eyes. But doubling myself almost together with as ladylike an atch-ee as my masculine nostrils would allow, I succeeded in closing the door and reaching a low stool by the window without calling from him anything worse than a fretful “I hope you are not going to bark too.”
I did not reply to this of course, but sat with my face turned towards the street in an attitude which I hoped would awaken his attention sufficiently to cause him to get up and come over to my side. For as he sat face to the door it would be impossible to take him by surprise, and that, now that I saw what a huge and muscular creature he was, seemed to me to be the only safe method before us. But, whether from the sullenness of his disposition or the very evident laziness of the moment, he manifested no disposition to move, and hearing or thinking I did, the stealthy advance of Mr. Gryce and his companions down the hall, I allowed myself to give way to a suppressed exclamation, and leaning forward, pressed my forehead against the pane of glass before me as if something of absorbing interest had just taken place in the street beneath.
His fears at once took alarm. Bounding up with a curse, he strode towards me, muttering,
“What’s up now? What’s that you are looking at?” reaching my side just as Mr. Gryce and his two men softly opened the door and with a quick leap threw their arms about him, closing upon him with a force he could not resist, desperate as he was and mighty in the huge strength of an unusually developed muscular organization.
“You, you girl there, are to blame for this!” came mingled with curses from his lips, as with one huge pant he submitted to his captors. “Only let me get my hand well upon you once—Damn it!” he suddenly exclaimed, dragging the whole three men forward in his effort to get his mouth down to my ear, “go and rub that sign out on the door or I’ll—you know what I’ll do well enough. Do you hear?”
Rising, still with face averted, I proceeded to do what he asked. But in another moment seeing that he had been effectually bound and gagged, I took out the piece of red chalk I had kept in my pocket, and deliberately chalked it on again, after which operation I came back and took my seat as before on the low stool by the window.
The object now was to secure the second rascal in the same way we had the first; and for this purpose Mr. Gryce ordered the now helpless giant to be dragged into the adjoining small room formerly occupied by Mrs. Blake, where he and his men likewise took up their station leaving me to confront as best I might, the surprise and consternation of the one whose return we now awaited.
I did not shrink. With that brave woman’s garments drawn about me, something of her dauntless spirit seemed to invade my soul, and though I expected—But let that come in its place, I am not here to interest you in myself or my selfish thoughts.
A half hour passed; he had never lingered away so long before, or so it seemed, and I was beginning to wonder if we should have to keep up this strain of nerve for hours, when the heavy tread was again heard in the hall, and with a blow of the fist that argued anger or a brutal impatience, he flung open the door and came in, I did not turn my head.
“Where’s father?” he growled, stopping where he was a foot or so from the door.
I shook my head with a slight gesture and remained looking out.
He brought his cane down on the floor with a thump. “What do you mean by sitting there staring out of the window like mad and not answering when I ask you a decent question?”
Still I made no reply.
Provoked beyond endurance, yet held in check by that vague sense of danger in the air—which while not amounting to apprehension is often sufficient to hold back from advance the most daring foot—he stood glaring at me in what I felt to be a very ferocious attitude, but made no offer to move. Instantly I rose and still looking out of the window, made with my hand what appeared to be a signal to someone on the opposite side of the way. The ruse was effective. With an oath that rings in my ears yet, he lifted his heavy cane and advanced upon me with a bound, only to meet the same fate as his father at the hands of the watchful detectives. Not, however, before that heavy cane came down upon my head in a way to lay me in a heap at his feet and to sow the seeds of that blinding head-ache, which has afflicted me by spells ever since. But this termination of the affair was no more than I had feared from the beginning; and indeed it was as much to protect Mrs. Blake from the wrath of these men, as from any requirements of the situation I had assumed the disguise I then wore. I therefore did not allow this mishap to greatly trouble me, unpleasant as it was at the time, but, as soon as ever I could do so, rose from the floor and throwing off my strange habiliments, proceeded to finish up to my satisfaction, the work already so successfully begun.
CHAPTER XVIII
LOVE AND DUTY
Dismissing the men who had assisted us in the capture of these two hardy villains, we ranged our prisoners before us.
“Now,” said Mr. Gryce, “no fuss and no swearing; you are in for it, and you might as well take it quietly as any other way.”
“Give me a clutch on that girl, that’s all,” said her father, “Where is she? Let me see her; every father has a right to see his own daughter,”
“You shall see her,” returned my superior, “but not till her husband is here to protect her.”
“Her husband? ah, you know about that do you?” growled the heavy voice of the son. “A rich man they say
he is and a proud one. Let him come and look at us lying here like dogs and say how he will enjoy having his wife’s father and brother grinding away their lives in prison.”
“Mr. Blake is coming,” quoth Mr. Gryce, who by some preconcerted signal from the window had drawn that gentleman across the street. “He will tell you himself that he considers prison the best place for you. Blast you! but he—”
“But he, what?” inquired I, as the door opened and Mr. Blake with a pale face and agitated mien entered the room.
The wretch did not answer. Rousing from the cowering position in which they had both lain since their capture, the father and son struggled up in some sort of measure to their feet, and with hot, anxious eyes surveyed the countenance of the gentleman before them, as if they felt their fate hung upon the expression of his pallid face. The son was the first to speak.
“How do you do, brother-in-law,” were his sullen and insulting words.
Mr. Blake shuddered and cast a look around.
“My wife?” murmured he.
“She is well,” was the assurance given by Mr. Gryce, “and in a room not far from this. I will send for her if you say so.”
“No, not yet,” came in a sort of gasp; “let me look at these wretches first, and understand if I can what my wife has to suffer from her connection with them.”
“Your wife,” broke in the father, “what’s that to do with it; the question is how do you like it and what will you do to get us clear of this thing.”
“I will do nothing,” returned Mr. Blake. “You amply merit your doom and you shall suffer it to the end for all time.”
“It will read well in the papers,” exclaimed the son.
“The papers are to know nothing about it,” I broke in. “All knowledge of your connection with Mr. or Mrs. Blake is to be buried in this spot before we or you leave it. Not a word of her or him is to cross the lips of either of you from this hour. I have set that down as a condition and it has got to be kept.”
“You have, have you,” thundered in chorus from father and son. “And who are you to make conditions, and what do you think we are that you expect us to keep them? Can you do anymore than put us back from where we came from?”
For reply I took from my pocket the ring I had fished out of the ashes of their kitchen stove on that memorable visit to their house, and holding it up before their faces, looked them steadily in the eye.
A sudden wild glare followed by a bluish palor that robbed their countenances of their usual semblance of daring ferocity, answered me beyond my fondest hopes.
“I got that out of the stove where you had burned your prison clothing,” said I. “It is a cheap affair, but it will send you to the gallows if I choose to use it against you. The pedlar—”
“Hush,” exclaimed the father in a low choked tone greatly in contrast to any he had yet used in all our dealings with him. “Throw that ring out of the window and I promise to hold my tongue about any matter you don’t want spoke of. I’m not a fool—”
“Nor I,” was my quick reply, as I restored the ring to my pocket. “While that remains in my possession together with certain facts concerning your habits in that old house of yours which have lately been made known to me, your life hangs by a thread I can any minute snip in two. Mr. Blake here, has spent some portion of a night in your house and knows how near it lies to a certain precipice, at foot of which—”
“Mein Gott, father, why don’t you say something!” leaped in cowed accents from the son’s white lips. “If they want us to keep quiet, let them say so and not go talking about things that—”
“Now look here,” interposed Mr. Gryce stepping before them with a look that closed their mouths at once. “I will just tell you what we propose to do. You are to go back to prison and serve your time out, there is no help for that, but as long as you behave yourselves and continue absolutely silent regarding your relationship to the wife of this gentleman, you shall have paid into a certain bank that he will name, a monthly sum that upon your dismissal from jail shall be paid you with whatever interest it may have accumulated. You are ready to promise that, are you not?” he inquired turning to Mr. Blake.
That gentleman bowed and named the sum, which was liberal enough, and the bank.
“But,” continued the detective, ignoring the sudden flash of eye that passed between the father and son, “let me or any of us hear of a word having been uttered by you, which in the remotest way shall suggest that you have in the world such a connection as Mrs. Blake, and the money not only stops going into the bank, but old scores shall be raked up against you with a zeal which if it does not stop your mouth in one way, will in another, and that with a suddenness you will not altogether relish.”
The men with a dogged air from which the bravado had however fled, turned and looked from one to the other of us in a fearful, inquiring way that duly confessed to the force of the impression made by these words upon their slow but not unimaginative minds.
“Do you three promise to keep our secret if we keep yours?” muttered the father with an uneasy glance at my pocket.
“We certainly do,” was our solemn return.
“Very well; call in the girl and let me just look at her, then, before we go. We won’t say nothing,” continued he, seeing Mr. Blake shrink, “only she is my daughter and if I cannot bid her good-bye—”
“Let him see his child,” cried Mr. Blake turning with a shudder to the window. “I—I wish it,” added he.
Straightway with hasty foot I left the room. Going to the little closet where I had ordered his wife to remain concealed, I knocked and entered. She was crouched in an attitude of prayer on the floor, her face buried in her hands, and her whole person breathing that agony of suspense that is a torture to the sensitive soul.
“Mrs. Blake,” said I, dismissing the landlady who stood in helpless distress beside her, “the arrest has been satisfactorily made and your father calls for you to say good-bye before going away with us. Will you come?”
“But my—my—Mr. Blake?” exclaimed she leaping to her feet. “I am sure I heard his footstep in the hall?”
“He is with your father and brother. It was at his command I came for you.”
A gleam hard to interpret flashed for an instant over her face. With her eye on the door she towered in her womanly dignity, while thoughts innumerable seemed to rush in wild succession through her mind.
“Will you not come?” I urged.
“I—,” she paused. “I will go see my father,” she murmured, “but—”
Suddenly she trembled and drew back; a step was in the hall, on the threshold, at her side; Mr. Blake had come to reclaim his bride.
“Mr. Blake!”
The word came from her in a low tone shaken with the concentrated anguish of many a month of longing and despair, but there was no invitation in its sound, and he who had held out his arms, stopped and surveying her with a certain deprecatory glance in his proud eye, said,
“You are right; I have first my acknowledgments to make and your forgiveness to ask before I can hope—”
“No, no,” she broke in, “your coming here is enough, I request no more. If you felt unkindly toward me—”
“Unkindly?” A world of love thrilled in that word. “Luttra, I am your husband and rejoice that I am so; it is to lay the devotion of my heart and life at your feet that I seek your presence this hour. The year has taught me—ah, what has not the year taught me of the worth of her I so recklessly threw from me on my wedding day. Luttra,”—he held out his hand—“will you crown all your other acts of devotion with a pardon that will restore me to my manhood and that place in your esteem which I covet above every other earthly good?”
Her face which had been raised to his with that earnest look we knew so well, softened with an ineffable smile, but still she did not lay her hand in his.
“And you say this to me in the very hour of my father’s and brother’s arrest! With the remembrance in your mind of their
bound and abject forms lying before you guarded by police; knowing too, that they deserve their ignominy and the long imprisonment that awaits them?”
“No, I say it on the day of the discovery and the restoration of that wife for whom I have long searched, and to whom when found I have no word to give but welcome, welcome, welcome.”
With the same deep smile she bowed her head, “Now let come what will, I can never again be unhappy,” were the words I caught, uttered in the lowest of undertones. But in another moment her head had regained its steady poise and a great change had passed over her manner.
“Mr. Blake,” said she, “you are good; how good, I alone can know and duly appreciate who have lived in your house this last year and seen with eyes that missed nothing, just what your surroundings are and have been from the earliest years of your proud life. But goodness must not lead you into the committal of an act you must and will repent to your dying day; or if it does, I who have learned my duty in the school of adversity, must show the courage of two and forbid what every secret instinct of my soul declares to be only provocative of shame and sorrow. You would take me to your heart as your wife; do you realize what that means?”
“I think I do,” was his earnest reply. “Relief from heart-ache, Luttra.”
Her smooth brow wrinkled with a sudden spasm of pain but her firm lips did not quiver.
“It means,” said she, drawing nearer but not with that approach which indicates yielding, “it means, shame to the proudest family that lives in the land. It means silence as regards a past blotted by suggestions of crime; and apprehension concerning a future across which the shadow of prison walls must for so many years lie. It means, the hushing of certain words upon beloved lips; the turning of cherished eyes from visions where fathers and daughters ay, brothers and sisters are seen joined together in tender companionship or loving embrace. It means—God help me to speak out—a home without the sanctity of memories; a husband without the honors he has been accustomed to enjoy; a wife with a fear gnawing like a serpent into her breast; and children, yes, perhaps children from whose innocent lips the sacred word of grandfather can never fall without wakening a blush on the cheeks of their parents, which all their lovesome prattle will be helpless to chase away.”
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 288