Kitabı oku: «Dangerous Ground: or, The Rival Detectives», sayfa 7
“Don’t resist – keep silence – we are gaining time for her!”
“Charlie,” says Vernet, “that’s a good bit of work, and I’m proud of you. Now, let’s make our prisoner more comfortable.”
Together they lift Alan, and place him in a chair near the centre of the room. Then, finding it impossible to make him open his lips, Van Vernet begins a survey of the premises.
“We must get one or two of my men here,” he says, after a few moments of silent investigation. “Charlie, can I trust you to go back to the place where we left them?”
Charlie nods confidently, and makes a prompt movement toward the door. Then suddenly he stops and points upward with a half terrified air.
“Some one’s up there,” he whispers.
“What’s that, Charlie?”
“Somebody’s there. Charlie heard ’em.”
Van Vernet hesitates a moment, looks first at the prisoner, then at Charlie, and slowly draws forth his dark lantern.
“I’ll go up and see,” he says half reluctantly, and making his pistol ready for use. “Watch the prisoner, Charlie.”
But Silly Charlie follows Vernet’s movements with his eyes until he has passed through the low door leading to the stairway. Then, gliding stealthily to the door, he assures himself that Vernet is already half-way up the stairs. The next moment he is standing beside the prisoner.
“Hist, Mr. Warburton!”
“Ah! who – ,” Alan Warburton checks himself suddenly.
“Hush!” says this strangest of all simpletons, in a low whisper, at the same moment beginning to work rapidly at the rope which binds Alan’s feet. “Be silent and act as I bid you; I intend to help you out of this. There,” rising and searching about his person, “the ropes are loosened, you can shake them off in a moment. Now, the darbies.”
He produces a key which unlocks the handcuffs.
“Now, you are free, but remain as you are till I give you the signal, – ah!”
The tiny key has slipped through his fingers and fallen to the floor. It is just upon the edge of the scrap of dirty carpet; as he stoops to take it up, it catches in a fringe, and in extricating it the carpet becomes a trifle displaced.
Something underneath it strikes the eye of the seeming idiot. He bends closer, and then drags the carpet quite away, seizes the candle, and springs the trap which he has just discovered. Holding the candle above the opening, he looks down, and then, with a low chuckle, spreads the carpet smoothly over it, rises to his feet, and listens.
He hears footsteps crossing the rickety floor above. Van Vernet, having failed to find what he sought for aloft, is about to descend.
Stepping quickly to Alan’s side, Silly Charlie whispers:
“Fortune favors us. We have got Vernet trapped.”
“Vernet!” Alan Warburton starts and the perspiration comes out on his forehead.
Is this man who is his captor, Van Vernet? Heavens! what a complication, what a misfortune! And this other, – this wisest of all idiots, who calls him by name; who knows the reason for his presence, then, perhaps, knows Leslie herself; who, without any motive apparent, is acting so strange a part, who is he?
Mentally thanking the inspiration which led him to retain his incognito while negotiating with Van Vernet, Alan’s eyes still follow the movements of Silly Charlie.
As he gazes, Vernet enters the room, a look of disappointment and disgust upon his face.
“Charlie, you were scared at the rats,” he says; “there’s nothing else there.”
The trap is directly between him and the prisoner, and as he walks toward it, Silly Charlie fairly laughs with delight.
“What are you – ”
The sentence is never finished. Vernet’s foot has pressed the yielding carpet; he clutches the air wildly, and disappears like a clown in a pantomine.
“Now,” whispers Silly Charlie, “off with your fetters, Warburton, and I will guide you out of this place. You are not entirely safe yet.”
Up from the trap comes a yell loud enough to waken the seven sleepers, and suddenly, from without, comes an answering cry.
“It’s Vernet’s men,” says Silly Charlie. “Now, Warburton, your safety depends upon your wind and speed. Come!”
CHAPTER XVII.
A PROMISE TO THE DEAD
Guided by Silly Charlie, Alan Warburton finds himself hurrying through crooked streets and dismal alleys, for what seems to him an interminable distance. Now they run forward swiftly; now halt suddenly, while Charlie creeps ahead to reconnoiter the ground over which they must go. At last they have passed the Rubicon, and halting at the corner of a wider street than any they have as yet traversed, Alan’s strange guide says,
“You are tolerably safe now, Mr. Warburton; at least you are not likely to be overtaken by Vernet or his men. You are still a long distance from home, however, and possibly the way is unfamiliar. I would pilot you further, but must hurry back to see how Vernet is coming out.”
For the first time Alan Warburton, the self-possessed, polished man of society, is at a loss for words. Society has given him no training, taught him no lessons applicable to such emergencies as this.
“Of one thing you must be warned,” continues the guide. “Van Vernet is a sleuth-hound on a criminal secret, and he considers you a criminal. He has seen you standing above that dead man with a bar of iron in your hand – did you know that bar of iron was smeared with blood, and that wisps of human hair clung to its surface? Never mind; I do not accuse you. I do not ask you to explain your presence there. You have escaped from Van Vernet, and he will never forgive you for it. He will hunt you down, if possible. You know the man?”
“I never saw his face until to-night.”
“What! and yet, two hours ago, he was at your brother’s house, a guest!”
“True. My dear sir, I am deeply indebted to you, but just now my gratitude is swallowed up in amazement. In Heaven’s name, who are you, that you know so much?”
“‘Silly Charlie’ is what they call me in these alleys, and I pass for an idiot.”
“But you are anything but what you ‘pass for.’ You have puzzled me, and outwitted Van Vernet. Tell me who you are. Tell me how I can reward your services.”
“In serving you to-night, Mr. Warburton, I have also served myself. As to who I am, it cannot matter to you.”
“That must be as you will,” – Alan is beginning to recover his conventional courtesy – “but at least tell me how I may discharge my obligations to you. That does concern me.”
Alan’s companion ponders a moment, and then says:
“Perhaps we had better be frank, Mr. Warburton. You are a gentleman, and, I trust, so am I. If you owe me anything, you can discharge your debt by answering a single question.”
“Ask it.”
“Van Vernet was a guest at your masquerade – why was he there?”
The question startles Alan Warburton, but he answers after a moment’s reflection:
“He came at my invitation, and on a matter of business.”
“And yet you say that you never saw his face before?”
“True; our business was arranged through third parties, and by correspondence. He came into my presence, for the first time, masked. Until I saw his face in that hovel yonder, I had never seen it.”
“And you?”
“A kind fortune has favored me. This dress I wore as a masquerade costume; over it I threw a black and scarlet domino. Van Vernet saw me in that domino, and with a mask before my face.”
“You may thank your stars for that, and for your silence at the hovel. If you had opened your lips then, your voice might have betrayed you.”
“It would have betrayed the fact that I was no seaman, at the least, and that is why I had resolved upon silence as the safest course.”
“You have come out of this night’s business most fortunately. But you still have reason to fear Vernet. Your very silence may cause him to suspect you of playing a part. Your features are photographed upon his memory; alter the cut of your whiskers or, better still, give your face a clean shave; crop your hair, and above all leave the city until this affair blows over.”
“Thank you,” Alan replies; “I feel that your advice is good.” Then, after a struggle with his pride, he adds:
“I could easily clear myself of so monstrous a charge as that which Vernet would prefer against me, but, for certain reasons, I would prefer not to make a statement of the case.”
“I comprehend.”
Again Alan is startled out of his dignity. “You were the first to arrive in response to that cry for help to-night?” he begins.
“The first, after you.”
“You saw those who fled?”
“I saw only one fugitive. Mr. Warburton, I know what you would ask. I saw and recognized your brother’s wife. I understood your actions; you were guarding her retreat at the risk of your own life or honor. You are a brave man!”
Alan’s tone is a trifle haughty as he answers:
“In knowing Mrs. Warburton and myself, you have us at a disadvantage. In having seen us as you saw us to-night, we are absolutely in your power, should you choose to be unscrupulous. Under these circumstances, I have a right to demand the name of a man who knows me so intimately. I have a right to know why you followed us, or me, to that house to-night?”
His companion laughs good-naturedly.
“In spite of your airs, Mr. Warburton,” he says candidly, “you would be a fine fellow if you were not – such a prig. So you demand an explanation. Well, here it is, at least as much as you will need to enlighten you. Who am I? I am a friend to all honest men. Why did I follow you? Neither Vernet nor myself followed you or the lady. Vernet was there as the leader of an organized Raid. I was there – ahem! as a pilot for Vernet. You were there as a spy upon the lady. Mrs. Warburton’s presence remains to be accounted for. And now, Mr. Warburton, adieu. You are out of present danger; if I find that Mrs. Warburton has not fared so well, you will hear from me again. If otherwise, you look your last upon Silly Charlie.”
With a mocking laugh he turns, and pausing at the corner to wave his hand in farewell, he darts away in the direction whence he came.
Puzzled, chagrined, his brain teeming with strange thoughts, Alan Warburton turns homeward.
What is it that has come upon him this night? Less than two hours ago, an aristocrat, proud to a fault, with an unblemished name, and with nothing to fear or to conceal. Now, stealing through the dark streets like an outcast, his pride humbled to the dust, his breast burdened with a double secret, accused of murder, creeping from the police, a hunted man! To-morrow the town will be flooded with descriptions of this escaped sailor. To-morrow he must change his appearance, must flee the city.
And all because of his zeal for the family honor; all because of his brother’s wife, and her horrible secret! To-night charity hath no place in Alan Warburton’s heart.
Meanwhile, Van Vernet, covered with rags and dust, sickened by the foul smell of the vault into which he has been precipitated, and boiling over with wrath, is being rescued from his absurd and uncomfortable position by three policemen, who, being sent forward to ascertain if possible the cause of their leader’s prolonged absence, have stumbled upon him in the very nick of time.
As he emerges from the trap, by the aid of the same rope with which not long before he had secured Alan Warburton’s feet, he presents a most ludicrous appearance. His hat has been lost in the darkness of the cellar, and his head is plentifully decorated with rags and feathers, which have adhered tenaciously to his disarranged locks. He is smeared with dirt, pallid from the stench, nauseated, chagrined, wrathful.
Instinctively he comprehends the situation. The simpleton has played him false, the prisoner has escaped.
On the floor lie the handcuffs which Alan Warburton has shaken off as he fled. He picks them up and examines them eagerly. Then an imprecation breaks from his lips. They have been unlocked! And by whom? Not by the man who wore them; that was impossible.
Suddenly, flinging down the handcuffs, he turns to the policemen.
“Two men have escaped from this house, after throwing me into that cellar,” he says rapidly. “They must be overtaken – a sailor and a pretended simpleton tricked out in rags and tinsel. After them, boys; out by that door. They can’t be far away. Capture them alive or dead!”
The door by which Alan and his rescuer made their exit stands invitingly open, and the three officers, promptly obeying their leader, set off in pursuit of the sailor and the simpleton.
Left alone, Van Vernet plucks the extempore adornments from his head and person, and meditates ruefully, almost forgetting the original Raid in the chagrin of his present failure.
He goes to the side of the murdered man, who still lies as he had fallen, and looks down upon him.
“Ah, my fine fellow,” he mutters, “you give me a chance to redeem myself. If I have been outwitted to-night by a sailor and a fool, you and I will have fine revenge. A sailor! Ah, it was no common sailor, if I may trust my eyes and my senses. The hands were too white and soft; the feet too small and daintily clad; the face, in spite of the low-drawn cap and the tattooing, was too aristocratic and too clean. And the fool! Ah, it is no common fool who carries keys that unlock our new patent handcuffs, and who managed this rescue so cleverly. For once, Van Vernet has found his match! But the scales shall turn. The man who killed you, my lad, and the man who outwitted me, shall be found and punished, or Van Vernet will have lost his skill!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
VERNET DISCOMFITED
While the discomfited Vernet kept watch alone with the dead, his men were running up and down the alleys, listening, peering, searching in by-places, in the hope of finding the hiding-place, or to overtake the flight, of the fugitive sailor and his idiot guide.
More than an hour they consumed in this search, and then they returned to their superior officer to report their utter failure.
“It is what I expected,” said Vernet, with severe philosophy. “Those fellows are no common rascals. They have spoiled our Raid; before this, every rogue in the vicinity has been warned. I would not give a copper for all we can capture now.”
And Vernet was right, the Raid was a failure. Mustering his men, he made the tour of the streets and alleys, but everywhere an unnatural silence reigned. The Thieves’ Tavern was fast shut and quite silent; the drinking dens, the streets and cellars, where riot and infamy reigned, were under the influence of a silent spell.
It was only the yelp of a dog, heard here and there as Silly Charlie and Alan Warburton sped through the streets and lanes, but its effect was magical. It told the rioters, the crooks and outlaws in hiding, that there was danger abroad, – that the police were among them. And their orgies were hushed, their haunts became silent and tenantless; while every man who had anything to fear from the hands of justice – and what man among them had not? – slunk away to his secret hiding-place, and laid a fierce clutch upon revolver or knife.
The Raid was an utter failure; and Van Vernet, as he led his men ruefully homeward, little dreamed of the cause of the failure.
This night’s work, which had been pre-supposed a sure success, had been spoiled by a fool. A most unusual fool, – of that Vernet was fully aware; only a fool as he played his part. But he had played it successfully.
Vernet had been duped by this seeming idiot, and foiled by the sailor-assassin. Of this he savagely assured himself, in the depths of his chagrin.
But, shrewd man as he was, he never once imagined that under the rags and tinsel, the dirt and disfigurement of the fool, the strong will and active brain of Richard Stanhope were arrayed against him; nor dreamed that “Warburton, the aristocrat,” the man who had wounded his pride and looked down upon him as an inferior, had escaped from his clutches in the garb of a common sailor.
Arrived at head-quarters, Vernet laid before his Chief a full report of the night’s misadventures, and concluded his narrative thus:
“It has never before been my misfortune to report so complete a failure. But the affair shall not end here. I have my theory; I intend to run down these two men, and I believe they will be worth the trouble I shall take on their account. They were both shams, I am sure. The sailor never saw a masthead; he could not even act his part. The other – well, he played the fool to perfection, and – he outwitted me.”
One thing troubled Vernet not a little. Richard Stanhope did not make a late appearance at the Agency. He did not come at all that night, or rather that morning. And Vernet speculated much as to the possible cause of this long delay.
It was late in the day when Stanhope finally presented himself, and then he entered the outer office alert, careless, debonnaire as usual; looking like a man with an untroubled conscience, who has passed the long night in peaceful repose.
Vernet, who had arrived at the office but a moment before, lifted his face from the newspaper he held and cast upon his confrere an inquiring glance.
But Dick Stanhope was blind to its meaning. With his usual easy morning salutation to all in the room, he passed them, and applied for admittance at the door of his Chief’s private office. It was promptly opened to him, and he walked into the presence of his superior as jauntily as if he had not, by his unaccountable absence, spoiled the most important Raid of the season.
It was a long interview, and as toward its close the sounds of uproarious laughter penetrated to the ears of the loungers in the outer room, Van Vernet bit his lip with vexation. Evidently the Chief was not visiting his displeasure too severely upon his dilatory favorite.
Vernet’s cheeks burned as he realized how utterly he had failed. Not only had he heaped confusion upon himself, but he had not succeeded in lessening Stanhope’s claim to favoritism by bringing upon him the displeasure of the Agency.
While he sat, still tormented by this bitter thought, Stanhope re-entered the room, and walking straight up to Vernet brought his hand down upon the shoulder of that gentleman with emphatic heartiness, while he said, his eyes fairly dancing with mischief, and every other feature preternaturally solemn:
“I say, Van, old fellow, how do you like conducting a Raid?”
It was a moment of humiliation for Van Vernet. But he, like Stanhope, was a skilled actor, and he lifted his eyes to the face of his inquisitor and answered with a careless jest, while he realized that in this game against Richard Stanhope he had played his first hand, and had lost.
“It shall not remain thus,” he assured himself fiercely; “I’ll play as many trumps as Dick Stanhope, before our little game ends!”
When Walter Parks returned from his two days’ absence, and called at the office to receive the decisions of the two detectives, the Chief said:
“You may consider yourself sure of both men, after a little. Dick Stanhope, whose case promised to be a very short one, has asked for more time. And Van Vernet is in hot chase after two sly fellows, and won’t give up until they are trapped. You may be sure of them both, however. And in order that they may start fair, after their present work is done, I have arranged that you meet them here to-night, and let them listen together to your statement.”
“I like the idea,” said Walter Parks earnestly, “and I will be here at the appointed time.”
That evening, Vernet and Stanhope, – the former grave, courteous, and attentive; the latter cool, careless, and inconsequent as usual, – sat listening to the story of Arthur Pearson’s mysterious death, told with all its details.
As the tale progressed, Van Vernet became more attentive, more eager, his eyes, flashing with excitement, following every gesture, noting every look that crossed the face of the narrator. But Dick Stanhope sat in the most careless of lounging attitudes; his eyes half closed or wandering idly about the room; his whole manner that of an individual rather more bored than interested.
“It’s a difficult case,” said Van Vernet, when the story was done. “It will be long and tedious. But as soon as I have found the man or men I am looking for, I will undertake it. And if the murderer is above ground, I do not anticipate failure.”
But Stanhope only said:
“I don’t know when I shall be at your disposal. The affair I have in hand is not progressing. Your case looks to me like a dubious one, – the chances are ninety to one against you. But when I am at liberty, if Van here has not already solved the mystery, I’ll do my level best for you.”
