The Incendiary Part 23

"You believe so?"

"The evidence convinces me. They have an itch to imitate, as you are aware. This man is a victim of homicidal mania, of which you have unfortunately become the object (puff)."

"Why s.h.a.garach and not another?"

"Newspaper notoriety. You should see my crop of cranks. This particular crack-brain has aimed his illusion at you. We must strait-jacket him before it goes further."

"You expect, then, to have him soon?"

"Sooner or later (puff). Let us know if you hear anything. I see you were hurrying off as I came in. Good-day."

McCausland had been deputed to investigate the attacks on s.h.a.garach, because they connected themselves so manifestly, through the threatening letters, with the Floyd case, which he was handling. Neither he nor s.h.a.garach had objected to this opportunity to meet and possibly force each other's hands a little.

"I shall be in the Criminal Court, second session, Jacob. Remain here till Mr. Aronson comes." s.h.a.garach was gone and Jacob left alone to his meditations.

To judge from his expression, they were never very pleasant. Perhaps, like Job of old, he daringly questioned the power behind human destiny, why he showers cleverness and attraction on one boy of 14, while another is afflicted with a manner of nose preposterous, conspicuous and undistinguishable, to carry which is a burden. That G.o.dlike young man in the photograph, how he would like to be as handsome as he! Was there no way to attain it? He took the bundle of photographs out of his drawer and laid them on his desk to study and admire.

While thus engaged the jingle of harness outside attracted him. He knew by the sound that the carriage had stopped before his door. It wasn't often that equipages, sprinkling sleigh-bell music in their course, paused at the door of the dingy old business building. So Jacob became interested enough to approach the window of the inner office languidly and peep down into the street.

There stood a covered black carriage, as polished as a mirror, with a buff-liveried coachman holding the reins. His seat was perched so high that his legs made one straight, unbending line to the footrest, and his back was as vertical as a carpenter's plummet. Mrs. Arnold was not careless of these niceties. It would have shocked her sense of the fitness of things almost as much to publish the fact that her coachman had knees, as if her own lorgnette should stray from the proscenium box higher than the first balcony--an impropriety which had happened only once to her knowledge, and that by inadvertence, on an opera night.

"This is Mr. s.h.a.garach's office, I believe," said the grand lady to Jacob.

"Yes'm," he mumbled, abashed.

"He is out, I perceive. Does he return soon?"

"No'm."

"About when could I see him if I should wait?"

"He is trying a case'm, over in the second court'm, criminal session," answered Jacob, mixing things badly in his confusion.

"Couldn't you send for him?"

"Mr. Aronson will be here soon. Perhaps he would know."

"I will wait a few minutes," said the lady, sitting down with hauteur in the cus.h.i.+oned chair which Jacob pushed toward her. After a spell of silence she addressed him again in a gentler tone: "What is your name, little boy?" she asked.

"Jacob," he answered. Servants and office boys grow to think of themselves as having only one name.

"Jacob. That is a very old and dignified name. Are you Mr. s.h.a.garach's clerk?"

"No'm."

"His errand boy, then?"

"Yes'm."

"It's too bad you had to leave school so young. I suppose you give all you earn to your mother?"

"Yes'm."

"Haven't you any father?"

"No'm."

Jacob thought he had never met such a kind lady. How sympathetic she seemed and was it not gracious of her to inquire about his father and mother? How much more agreeable it was to deal with real ladies and real gentlemen who never, never would call vulgar names. He would have given almost half his week's spending money to oblige this sweet-tongued lady then, and his only regret was that he could think of no better answer to her questions than "Yes'm" and "No'm."

"If you are an errand boy perhaps you could do a little errand for me," said the lady sweetly after a pause.

"Yes'm," answered Jacob, putting a world of eagerness into the word.

"You are sure you can do errands and not make a mistake?"

"No'm--yes'm," he replied, a little puzzled as to which of the two words which seemed to const.i.tute his whole vocabulary fitted into his meaning here.

"Then, perhaps, I will let you take this for me."

She drew out the tiniest, daintiest purse Jacob's eyes had ever beheld, and, opening its clasp, gingerly fingered forth a bill.

"I want very much to have this changed. Mr. s.h.a.garach will not be back immediately, you say?"

"No'm."

"Then perhaps you can spare a moment to run down to the corner and get some silver for this."

"They'll change it upstairs," said Jacob, at last finding his voice.

"Upstairs? Very well, you may take it upstairs and bring me back small silver, Jacob."

With a skip of elation Jacob mounted the stairs. There was a little delay in the mission, to which he had repaired. When he came downstairs, the silver clutched in his hand, his heart rose to his mouth at discovering that the office was empty. To think that he had kept the kind lady waiting so long! Probably she had become disgusted with him. He stood a moment in perplexity. Then glancing at his own desk, he opened his mouth in horror.

"My pictures!" cried Jacob. The photographs were gone.

If there was one being that Jacob reverenced and feared it was his master. To feel now that he had betrayed him at the prompting of a grand lady, who deceived him with honeyed words and was undoubtedly one of his master's enemies--how could he ever face s.h.a.garach again?

"My pictures!" he cried a second time, running into the entry. But here at the head of the stairs a dubitation seized him. Shrill and re-echoing through the narrow pa.s.sage came the flute-like warble which Jacob knew only too well. It was the precursor of torment for him. True, the Whistler himself had almost ceased to pick on the office boy and even taken him under his wing of late, but Turkey Fenton and Toot Watts were as implacable as inquisitors turning a heretic on a lukewarm gridiron.

Turkey's tyranny was of the grosser order, as became an urchin who in Jacob's presence had swallowed a whole banana, skin and all. Toot's nature was subtle and spiderlike. He possessed the enviable distinction of being able to wag his ears, and his devices of torture were correspondingly refined and ingenious. During the last visit of the boys he had played a small mirror into Jacob's eyes all the while behind s.h.a.garach's back, and it wasn't until they were going out that Jacob discovered why he had been dazzled almost to blindness.

If he took the stair route down he would be stopped and teased and the wicked lady would get away. Perhaps she was already gone--gone with the photographs which should have been securely locked in his drawer. Why had he ever taken them out?

The emergency was desperate and Jacob met it heroically. Rus.h.i.+ng to s.h.a.garach's window, he saw the grand lady just crossing the sidewalk and waving her parasol to the coachman. In a moment she would be ensconced on the cus.h.i.+ons within and the disaster would be beyond remedy. The window was open, and there was a little piazza outside. Jacob stepped out and shouted. The lady looked up and hastened her pace. Leading down to the first story from the piazza was a flight of steps, and from the first story down to within twelve feet of the ground, another--an old-fas.h.i.+oned fire-escape.

Down these steps Jacob scrambled, scratching his hands and nearly losing his balance, to the first piazza and thence to the lowermost round, where the awful fall of twelve feet checked him. But the sight of the coachman mounting his box nerved his courage and he released his hands. For a moment he felt dizzy. But the horses were already started. With a flying leap he caught the tailboard in his hand, and after being dragged along with great giraffe-like bounds for nearly a block managed to draw himself up to something like a sitting position.

There, through an eye-shaped dead-light in the back of the carriage he obtained a dim view of its occupant. His master's stolen pictures were in her hand. What was she kissing them for--and crying? But Jacob was determined to have no pity upon her. He had just resolved to call out and demand her attention, when the crack of a lash made him turn and his lip began to tingle. The coachman had discovered his unlawful presence on the tailboard and had reached him with just the tip end of his whip.

Probably he had meant only to frighten the lad. If so, he had thoroughly succeeded. Again the whip curled backward over the coachman's shoulder and snapped like a pistol shot close to Jacob's ear. To add to his discomfort a great St. Bernard, which had been running under the carriage, had become aware of his intrusion, and began rearing at him in a manner more alarming than dangerous, to be sure, but sufficient to make a peaceable lad tremble. Between the whip and the dog's teeth his ride had begun to be worse torture than the gantlet of the stairway, flanked by the three gamins, would have been, when the ordeal was brought to a sudden end by the stopping of the carriage at a great brick railroad station.

Jacob's time had come. Disregarding the St. Bernard, he jumped down and stood on the sidewalk. The dog growled and the coachman spoke to him roughly as he opened the door with practiced alacrity for his mistress. But Jacob was now within his legal rights.

"I want my pictures," he said, catching the grand lady by the arm. Mrs. Arnold looked down at him with amazement not unmingled with fear. It was the same stupid little boy she had bribed to go upstairs in the office where Harry's photographs had been lying--for no good purpose, her instincts told her.

"What does this little ragam.u.f.fin say?" she asked.

"I want my photographs," said Jacob, doggedly, as the coachman shoved him aside. He ran after Mrs. Arnold, the tears in his eyes, and clung to her dress. A scene was imminent. The policeman approached, doubtless to render a.s.sistance to the lady in distress. But Mrs. Arnold did not desire his a.s.sistance just then. With a quick motion she removed a parcel from her pocket and placed it in Jacob's hands.

"Take back your things, then, and don't bother me," she said, with a flushed face.

Jacob gloated on his recovered treasures. Then his hands likewise sought his trousers pocket, and he jingled a handful of silver into Mrs. Arnold's hand.

"Take the money, Joseph," she said to the coachman. "These small storekeepers are so ill-mannered."

The policeman gave Jacob a hard look as he pa.s.sed him, but the office boy was obliviously counting his pictures.

When he returned to the office the gamins were gone and Aronson was there alone. To Aronson's question where he had been, Jacob, not being an imaginative boy, gave an answer which was strictly truthful, whereupon Aronson, not being a humorous young man (for such are always grave), laughed immoderately, and proposed that the fire escape henceforth be known as Jacob's ladder.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

CUPID TAKES AIM.

"Mother, my friend, Miss March."

Mrs. Arnold came forward on the rose-embroidered veranda. An old look crept into her face. Her brow darkened. Her heart froze. But love conquered jealousy, and for Harry's sake she took both hands of the young woman whom she knew he loved, and smiled.

"And Mr. Tristram March."

"Welcome to Hillsborough. Will you not come inside?"

"Let's sit on the veranda," said Harry, throwing himself on a seat. "It's cooler here."

The others became seated and submitted their foreheads to the cool caresses of the breeze.

"I enjoy your road from the station so much, Mrs. Arnold. It winds like a river all the way," said Tristram March.

"A narrow river, I fear, and rough in parts," answered the lady.

"Do you know I like a soft country road. It seems padded for the horse's hoofs," said Miss March.

"Rosalie is a philanthropist, you know. She is vice-president--one of the vice-presidents--I believe there are nineteen--of the ladies' league for the abolition of race dissension in the south by the universal whitewas.h.i.+ng of negroes."

"Mrs. Arnold knows better than to believe that."

"A chimerical plan, I should call it," said Mrs. Arnold.

"Not at all," added Tristram. "Most scientific. The whitewash is indelible. All charity fads must be scientific nowadays."

"Brother Tristram plays the cynic, Mrs. Arnold," said Rosalie. "But he has an excellent heart of his own."

"It is a burned-out crater," said Tristram, solemnly, at which Harry burst into a laugh and the sister smiled.

Watching her furtively, Mrs. Arnold saw that she was as exquisite a masterpiece as nature had ever put forth. Her figure was virginal and full; her manner, auroral; her age, Hebe's, the imperceptible poise of the ascending ball before it begins to descend, which in woman is earlier by a decade than in man; her coloring, a mixture of the wild rose and gold. Art seconded nature; she was faultlessly dressed. In that instant of inspection the mother knew that her son's heart had been weaned from her forever. She had always felt that it would be a blonde woman. Are they charged with opposite magnetisms from northern and southern poles, that they attract each other so, the dark type and the fair?

"Will you never be serious, Tristram?" cried Rosalie.

"Well, dear, the crater has humming-birds' nests built along its inner sides, like the old volcano of Chocorua, and the little winged jewels flash out sometimes and land in Sister Rosalie's lap."

"What is this?"

"You prefer rubies. I picked those up at a sale in the city. Did you ever meet such stones--perfect bulbs?"

"How can I ever rebuke you again?"

"Then I needn't try to be serious?"

"Oh, if it's a bribe----"

"Look at the name on the plate behind--'Alice.'"

"That will have to be changed," said Harry, coming nearer to glance at the brooch. "Why!" he s.n.a.t.c.hed at the jewels, but caught himself in time. His mother looked at him in an eloquent appeal for silence.

"Where did you get them?" he asked.

"Rabofsky. An old bric-a-brac man. Why, do you fancy they're stolen?"

"Oh, no. I congratulate your sister. The name made me start. It is my mother's, you know."

"I was Alice Brewster," said Mrs. Arnold.

"Speaking of philanthropists, Rosalie," said Tristram, to change the subject, "how did you like the n.o.ble Earl of Marmouth?"

"The most overbearing person."

"With the courtesy of a snapping-turtle," said Tristram.

"And the humor of a comic valentine," added Harry.

"Still there is something grand about the t.i.tle of earl," said Mrs. Arnold, who chose to forget that the original Brewster of Lynn was a yeoman.