Against Odds: A Detective Story

CHAPTER XXXV.

AFTER ALL

Trent, of course, was not strong enough to be moved, and that and the late, or rather the early, hour, it being now almost two o'clock a.m., decided us to camp down in the house until morning. So the men outside with Smug in charge were called in, and with our prisoners securely guarded, we passed the few hours before daylight in conversation, Dave, Jeffrys, Lossing, and myself, in Trent's room.

I was doctor enough to see that the poor fellow had been sufficiently startled by our appearance and the events of the night, and so, eager as we were to hear and he to tell his story, we imposed silence upon him until he could be seen by a physician – at least comparative silence; and as he declared himself 'all right' except for his weakness, and finding that he was, very naturally, unable to sleep, or even to rest quietly, we told him briefly the story of our search for him, and in telling it led him slowly to the knowledge of his father's presence in the city and the nearness of his betrothed.

More than once his fine eyes filled with tears and his lips trembled as we told of his sweetheart's telegrams and his father's anxiety; and when he had heard it all, he lay a long time silent but wakeful, and evidently thinking, and at last, just as the first faint streak of gray became tinged with a beam of red in the east, he fell asleep, with a smile upon his pale lips.

When the negress had been removed from the room, she had begged to be taken to her 'dear Missis Susie,' who, she declared, was 'sick enough to die'; and I led her upstairs to the room where the pale, worn woman still lay, in the room from which her husband had been removed.

As the negress entered the room the woman lifted her head, and with an inarticulate cry threw herself into her servant's arms; there was a moment of wild sobbing, and then, as I was about to set a guard at the door and withdraw, the negress uttered a shrill cry, caught the slender form in her stout arms and laid her upon the bed, and I saw a thin stream of blood trickle from between the white lips.

Restoratives were at hand, for this was not the first attack, the negress said; and when the woman had been cared for, and at last lay sleeping from exhaustion and, I fancied, the help of an opiate, I questioned the servant.

Her mistress, she said, was a southern woman, and she had been her servant since 'befo' the war,' when that mistress was a child of six.

An orphan with a small fortune, 'Mistress Susie' had married Greenback Bob, 'Master Robert,' she called him, and had followed him and clung to him through all his downward career of crime, as the big, heavy-featured coloured woman had clung to 'Missis Susie.' When prosperous, Bob was kind; when unlucky or drunk, he was cruel and coarse. 'Missis Susie' had inherited consumption, and that and trouble and danger had 'wo'n her life away,' as the woman said, with big tears dropping upon her dark cheeks.

'This las',' she concluded, 'hit's been the wo'st of all. An' that sick boy! Missis Susie prayed 'em to let him go away to the hospital, when he was hurt and couldn't give anyone away. But they nuver heard to Missis Susie – nuver! They wouldn't have been trapped like this if they had.'

It was by my proposal to bring the physician – whom at an early morning hour I had summoned to see Trent – to pass judgment upon 'Missis Susie' also, that I won the negress to tell me something about Trent; how at early evening he was brought in by Bob and Delbras, whom she called Hector, and whom she evidently both feared and hated; how a physician was called, as the young man was insensible, and how, fortunately for them, he continued delirious for three weeks and more while the two wounds on his head, both serious ones, were healing; how the 'gang' had deliberately taken the risk of keeping him until he had so far recovered as to be beyond the danger-line, knowing that they could not safely negotiate the return to his family of a prisoner who might die perhaps while the negotiations were pending.

She told how some one of the gang proper was always on guard in the sick-room by day, and often by night, and that it was only since the going away of one of the gang, Harry by name, that they had entrusted the prisoner to her care alone.

It did not take me long to find out that the person she called Harry was the brunette, now lying dead at the Morgue, and I saw, too, that she did not dream of the fate that had overtaken him, although I felt sure that the woman Susie did.

At early dawn the three men, Delbras, Bob, and Smug, or Harris, as his companions called him, were taken away under charge of Dave Brainerd and Jeffrys, to be locked up and safely kept until Jeffrys should take Delbras to New York, and thence to France. The others would await our appearance against them.

When the physician came, I took him from young Trent's bedside to that of 'Missis Susie.'

Of Trent he had spoken only words of cheer. His wounds were healing, had healed in fact healthily, and with no danger of after-trouble, mental or other; and now he needed only good nursing, good food, tonics, stimulants, and for a little longer quiet and not too much company. He might be moved, he told us, upon a cot, and for a short distance, that afternoon; and he commended us for our wisdom in not following up the excitement of the previous hours with an instant meeting between the invalid and his father and sweetheart. Now, 'after a light breakfast and good nerve tonic,' he might see his friends, when they had been prepared and warned against unduly taxing the patient's nerves and strength.

Of the sick woman above stairs there was a different tale to tell. She might linger for weeks, but for her there was no recovery.

When the negress – Hat, her mistress called her – heard this she was inconsolable, and when I had promised her that, if possible, she should remain with her mistress to the end, she was ready to be my slave; and knowing that nothing could help or hurt her mistress more, she was willing to tell me what she could about the gang and their methods.

She had no love for her mistress's husband, and she seemed to have remembered against him every unkind deed or word spoken or done to her 'Missis Susie.' Delbras she had ever feared and hated, and Smug she despised as the coward decoy of the gang. For Harry she expressed a liking. 'He was bad, that's true,' she declared; 'sharp as you please and tricky; but he was good to my mistress when the others forgot her. He was good to her always, and he bought her books and fruit. When he dressed in woman's clothes she would help him, and he never forgot to thank her. But they quarrelled, Harry and Bob and the Frenchman, and he left night before last.'

I told her of Harry's fate, and she cursed his slayers with oaths like a man's; and after that her testimony was ready, and it helped us much. As for Susan Kendricks, for this was the name by which the poor soul had wedded Greenback Bob, there came a time when she told me her story, and a sad, sad page it was, with little light anywhere upon it. She had taken little part in their dangerous enterprises, only now and then appearing somewhere with Harry when he was masquerading as a girl, in order to mislead the officers or the neighbours in their estimate of the number and sex of the gang; or to play a part, as on the night when she personated June Jenrys in order to entrap Lossing.

But when the ship's in port who cares to wait for the furling of the sails? The journey ended, we go ashore.

Little need to describe the meeting between Gerald Trent and his friends, which occurred shortly after the going away of the 'gang' and the visit of the doctor.

He told them the story of his 'disappearance,' and the manner of it was briefly thus:

At one of the small tables in the Public Comfort Café he had dined opposite Smug, whose confiding and kindly obliging manner and general air of being a good but rather slow young man made him an invaluable decoy for the gang. Here Trent's rather careless display of a well-filled purse, together with the fine watch he carried and his valuable diamonds, quietly but mistakenly worn, had no doubt attracted Smug, who had made himself agreeable, but not obtrusively so, and had contrived to meet him again and yet again. The last meeting was at evening, when, while chatting easily, he had expressed a desire to visit Buffalo Bill, and Smug, claiming to be a near resident, very modestly offered his escort, and was so unobtrusive and so eminently proper while confessing to a weakness for 'horse shows,' that Trent had been quite disarmed.

At the close of the entertainment, the Elevated trains being overcrowded, Smug had carelessly recommended the Central, alleging that one of its suburban stations was little more than two blocks away, and proffered himself as guide, as an afterthought, and because he could show him a short cut.

'He showed me several,' concluded Trent, with a grimace; 'for, having lured me away from the crowd and into an almost deserted and ill-lighted street, we were suddenly attacked, and my "short cuts" were administered upon my crown.'

Some hazy remembrance caused him to believe that they had taken him to their lair, half-carrying and half-dragging him, and representing him to an inquiring policeman as being a victim of too much brandy and beer.

Then came his illness, a dream of fever, pain, and delirium, and a slow return to reason, to find himself a prisoner, too weak to lift head or tend, and yet fully determined not to help his rapacious captors to a fortune at his father's cost.

Since his return to reason he had, as much as possible, rejected what he believed to be opiates, and had feigned sleep to avoid their threats and importunities, and to meet cunning with cunning.

While thus sleeping (?) he had heard some of their whispered plotting, and he was able to explain how it was that Mrs. Camp had succeeded in carrying out her wild but successful adventure.

Among Smug's acquaintances was a certain widow, or a woman who passed for such, who called herself a nurse, and whose services 'came high.' However, she was 'one of the right sort,' who 'asked no questions,' and 'always obeyed orders.' Upon the night of Harry's disappearance there had been an unusual commotion in the house, and a recklessness of speech quite uncommon; and before morning it was decided that Smug should secure the services of this valuable nurse at an early hour, as they must have 'another hand.'

Before noon Smug had reported the arrival of the nurse at an early hour, and the fact that she was 'hard of hearing' was counted in her favour. Smug had further said, to the satisfaction of Delbras – who by-the-bye had never entered Trent's room without first assuming the disguise of an elderly foreigner – that the woman was especially willing to come because of a little difficulty with 'the cops,' who were 'too attentive for comfort.'

Thanks to the successful attention of these same 'cops,' the woman had left in Mrs. Camp's hands the means whereby she might penetrate this stronghold of iniquity, and so be enabled to do what we had schemed and planned to accomplish, and but for her might have made only a partial success.

Mrs. Camp was the heroine of the hour, and we bent to her our diminished heads, and willingly declared her a detective indeed; for, while we had fathomed the disguises of the gang and tracked them home, it was her masterly coup that had made of our raid the assured success which it was.

To say that Mrs. Camp was made much of by Hilda O'Neil, June Jenrys, and Miss Ross is to put it mildly, and the good woman cared far more for the petting and praise of the two pretty girls than for the gratitude and congratulations of all the rest of us; and the friends she has found through her singular raid upon Smug and company will be her friends for all the years to come.

How I first established a connection between the crook Delbras and the fine gentleman who had taken New York society by storm as Monsieur Maurice Voisin was a wonder to many, until I had laid before them the process of reasoning by which it was done.

I had entered the classic Fair-grounds intent upon searching among the many faces for two, one a blond young Englishman, the other a dark and handsome Frenchman, and a letter picked up in the crowd had given me a mental photograph of these two, though I knew it not.

Before I had ever seen Voisin I had said of him, mentally, 'I believe he has tricked Miss June Jenrys and young Lossing.' Then I saw him in company with Miss Jenrys that day before our meeting, and I could not help seeing how perfectly he answered the description of Delbras. Next we met, and I could not believe in him; and the glimpses of Greenback Bob's disguised companion in Midway, as agent and fakir, all were wonderfully like Monsieur Voisin, man of fashion; and so from day to day I had watched him as he sought to dazzle the eyes of sweet June Jenrys, hoping for the time when I might unmask him before her.

Then came the attack upon Lossing at the bridge, in which we both saw the hand of Voisin. Mrs. Camp, too, added her quota to the solution of this riddle when she recognised in Voisin the swindler of the Turkish Bazaar, and identified the hand of Voisin as the hand which had held out the Spurious bank-notes to Camp; and, finally, there came his second attempt to destroy Lossing in the Cold Storage fire, ending as it did in his own disaster and in revealing to me the scar upon the temple so minutely described in the chiefs letter as belonging to Delbras.

The man had maintained a stolid indifference and a stubborn silence after his arrest, even when he learned how complete was his exposure both as Voisin and Delbras.

Before his departure for New York a complete record of his misdeeds, so far as we knew them, was made and put into the hands of Jeffrys. The man Smug, or Harris, as might have been expected, was willing to betray his companions in crime, now that he knew himself safe from such vengeance as had been meted out to Harry, the brunette, and in the hope of such measure of immunity as is sometimes bestowed upon the rascal who 'confesses' the evil deeds of his associates. It was by his testimony that we fixed the theft of Monsieur Lausch's diamonds upon the gang, and the attack upon Lossing, or Sir Carroll Rae, upon Delbras and Bob; and it was through Hat, the negress, first, and then from Smug, when sharply questioned, that we learned of their last and vilest plot, which was to obtain the ransom for Trent, if possible, or to 'put him out of the way' if this failed, and then, with their hands free, to purchase a small yacht and to kidnap Miss Jenrys, keeping her out in the lake until she should buy her release by marrying Delbras.

The only time when Delbras was seen to blench or to appear other than the stolid, sullen, and silent criminal was when Miss Jenrys, accompanied by her aunt, was obliged to appear and identify him as the man who had masqueraded as Monsieur Voisin.

Then, indeed, his dark face paled, his eyes fell before hers, and he turned away with bowed head.

Clearly such love as such a man can feel had been laid at the feet of queenly June Jenrys, who had learned the truth concerning him with amazement, horror, and loathing.

While the body of 'the brunette,' Harry, lay at the Morgue, a tramp, strange to the police and to the city, viewed it with the many others who gloat over the horrors of life, and who, having looked long, and with a startled face, pronounced the body to be that of a professional thief long wanted by the authorities 'out West.'

'He wuz a born bad un,' the man declared, 'an' a born thief. He couldn't stay anywhere long on that ercount. I'll bet he's picked more pockets than any lag at the Fair. He was a slick one. Liked the women, and most generally had a lot of friends 'mong 'em wherever he was; but he most generally left 'em the poorer when he got ready to quit. "Little Kid," that's what they used ter call him, 'cause he was little an' good-lookin'; but there wasn't a decent hair in his head.' And the tramp turned away with a malevolent look at the dead man.

And that was all we could learn about 'Harry,' for Smug, ready to talk on all other subjects, would utter no word as to the manner of Harry's death. 'He had left them,' that was all he would say; and by this we knew that Smug was doubtless the decoy who had lulled the suspicions of the victim and made it possible for the bolder spirits to do the deed of death.

Delbras was taken to France, and before the closing of the great Fair had met his fate at the hands of the French executioner.

Greenback Bob and Smug might have spent all their days in prison if they had possessed three lives apiece, so many were the counts against them. Their trials were separate, and came about after weeks of delay. There were no friends with long purses to 'influence' the jury, and unless that elastic pardoning power is stretched for their benefit, as has sometimes happened in similar cases, Greenback Bob and Smug will employ their future time honestly and for the good of the race.

Sir Carroll Rae had a very fair reason for remaining in America for a time; and so, placing the business of his newly acquired estates in the hands of the London solicitor who had been Sir Hugo's legal adviser, he remained in the World's Fair City, where, with minds unburdened, the entire party, with at first the exception of Gerald Trent, who was rapidly recovering in spite of the overwhelming attentions of his friends, took up the much-interrupted and pleasant employment of seeing the World's Fair, with eyes that saw no flaws, even in the Government Building.

The Trents did not linger when the invalid was well enough to travel, but hastened to the home where Mrs. Trent, an invalid still, but a happy one, awaited her son's return impatiently, after the long weeks of suspense.

There are no weddings in this tale of strange happenings, which, nevertheless, are not more strange than many of the unwritten annals of the Fair. But when the early autumn came, two pairs of lovers, chaperoned by a discreet little Quakeress, renewed their acquaintance with the Court of Honour, loitered in the shadows of the Peristyle, drifted upon the Lagoon, and, pacing its length, recalled anew the strange adventures and experiences of that wonderful, impossible, kaleidoscopic, yet utterly and charmingly real Midway Plaisance.