CHAPTER XV

A WEEK'S EVENTS

A week had passed since the tragic death of Ashton, a week that dragged interminably, and which to me was one of the bitterest and most miserable I had ever known. The relief experienced at finding myself innocent of the Red Bank fatality--I had been fully exonerated in the press, thanks to the man Taylor and Mr. Varney--was short-lived, for I had merely exchanged one burden for another. I accounted myself indirectly responsible for the foul murder of one of my best friends, a friend for whom I would have laid down my own life, if need be. I remembered now Blunt's queer expression when I said Ashton would be home in a few days. Little did I think at the time of the tragic manner of that homecoming.

Poor Tommy Ashton and his boast that he was a match for such cowardly enemies! How strange and awful to think that but a few weeks ago he was attending the burial service over what was thought to be my mangled remains, and that now I should be the mourner and he, in truth, the corpse! It was one of the incomprehensible and ironic tragedies of life. How I wished now, when too late, that I had stuck to my intention of telling him nothing about the Black Company; and yet, looking back on it all, I hardly see how I could have done it. As Blunt said, it seemed to be one of those things that are just bound to happen. I had not wanted to offend Ashton, and even if I had kept silent at the risk of our friendship, in all likelihood the result would have been the same.

"I expected something like this," said Blunt. "I believed him to be in as great peril as you yourself, but I didn't wish to alarm you. I could do very little, for you didn't know his address. I wired Philadelphia headquarters to look him up at all the hotels and keep an eye on him, but it was too late. Of course, there isn't a shred of evidence to show that the Black Company is responsible, but I think we are safe in assuming that. They meant to bag him as well as you. Now, you mustn't take this too hard, or start brooding over it. As I say, it isn't what you told him, but what they took for granted you told him. You were seen with him----"

"Yes, by Frean. And, by Heaven, if he's responsible----"

"Steady now; we don't know that he is, so don't do anything rash if you happen to meet him. You won't for the present, unless you go out of your way, for he has returned to Sea Bright."

Blunt then told me that he had verified what I had learned about Mr. Fremstad and Joyce. "Another foregone conclusion," he said. "They work through innocent and respectable people. That accident which made Mr. Fremstad give up motoring could have been engineered by Joyce if need be. Anyway, he leaves with the best credentials. Taken with the downfall of Jules, it looks undoubtedly, as you said, as if there had been a carefully thought-out and long-matured plot to plant Joyce with Varney. Jules has disappeared, but we're looking him up to find who helped him off the water-wagon in Philadelphia. It was Corby, for all his buttermilk diet, who continued the good work in Sea Bright. That's the report of the operative covering him. Another of my men has taken the place of Williams, the gardener."

"If they had nothing to fear from Mr. Fremstad and Joyce being investigated, the one being innocent and the other having been actually a patient in the Charity Hospital, why was poor Ashton killed?"

"But we don't know what line he was following," replied Blunt. "I think it's fairly obvious that he must have hit on evidence of some kind not connected with Fremstad, or, necessarily, Joyce, which made his removal compulsory. What took him to that low quarter of the town? If we knew all that happened from the time he left his hotel to the finding of his remains in that back alley in Chinatown, we'd know a lot. I believe that Rabbi Goldmann was put out of the way for the same reason--stumbling on incriminating evidence. But in your friend's case it was no accident; he got what he went after--some of it, anyway--but he wasn't allowed to get away with it."

Mr. Blunt then urged me again to have patience. "Don't think I'm trying to hog this thing; I'm working hand in hand with the police of half a dozen cities. I know you're ready to spend your whole fortune to avenge your friend, but all the money in the world couldn't hurry matters. Criminal investigation isn't what you read about in some books; against an organization like this it isn't a one-man job, but the slow forging of a chain, link by link, by many hands. All that it is possible to do is being done, and you may rest assured of that. Remember that a gun that goes off at half cock seldom hits anything. Finally, the sort of detective that has marvelous bursts of inspiration and can tell from the way your hair is parted what you had for breakfast, has no counterpart in real life. Whatever stories have been told about me, and which may have given you an exaggerated idea of my ability, success never came to me except through hard work and the application of some intelligence. There's no royal road nor short cut in my business, Mr. Lawton, any more than there is in your own or others."

This common-sense talk did me a lot of good, for I was getting captious, and in the mood for demanding miracles. So I apologized for the impatience I had shown, and asked if there wasn't something I could do to help, aside from spending money hiring other fellows to do the work.

"Yes," said Lisping Jimmie promptly, "it would help a lot if you took a vacation in Timbuktu until this thing's cut and dried. No, I don't mean you're a nuisance; far from it. I mean it would relieve me to know you were out of harm's way. I know you won't go, but I assure you it would be the best and wisest thing to do. You can't take an active hand in the game because you're known."

"I'm in no more danger than, say, you yourself. No, I can't run away. It's not that I'm a hero, but if I'm not able to take an active part I simply have to stick around and see what's doing. I can't help it."

I don't pretend that I found any keen enjoyment in the idea that some one was gunning for me, and that I had only escaped so far by the exercise of vigilance and precaution. When I walked abroad I carried an automatic pistol slung, according to Blunt's advice, in a holster under my left arm beneath my coat.

Drawing it was a matter of a second, but it was quite a different matter whether I could hit anything short of the Woolworth Building, for I hadn't been brought up with firearms. I had misgivings about the weapon, especially when sticking the clip of cartridges in the handle--queer place to load a gun--and I always made dead sure that the safety catches were on the job. My idea would have been a thick blackthorn, something I could take a good swipe with, and be sure of getting home, but I must admit the pistol gave me quite a martial feeling and desperadolike air.

I was shepherded, too, like any ewe lamb, a novel experience for one who has had a long tussle single-handed with the world. One of the agency's men was on hall service in the Belvedere, while another picked me up and kept me in sight wherever I went.

This last was a little, ferret-eyed person called Nast, who looked like a broken-down old-clothes man; he was a painstaking and conscientious disciple, and as hard to get rid of as a bad name. More than once I tried to shake him, for mere diversion's sake, but he always turned up like a bad penny. I believe he must have been an ex-bill collector or process server.

Of course, my movements were restricted, too; I wasn't to stay out late at night, or go wandering off the beaten track. All this proved very irksome, and I wished another try would be made for my life, if only to justify these measures and help break the monotony.

As the end of the week approached, and nothing happened, I began to think the enemy had cold feet, and was scared off. This was supported by the news that Frean was back in town. He had taken his old quarters at the Marlborough, while Corby had disappeared. Blunt wasn't telling me everything, however, and I had an idea Corby wasn't so securely hidden as he may have imagined.

I was no nearer solving the key move of the problem--why Joyce had been "planted" with Mr. Varney. The latter's past had been thoroughly raked over, and not a solitary fact was unearthed that would go to show him connected in any way with the Black Company. Nor, according to medical authority, could the symptoms of Addison's disease be approximated by the administration of any known poison. Thus another of my theories went by the board.

Meanwhile I had sent Mr. Varney a check, amounting to the three weeks' wages paid me, and a formal note thanking him for helping to establish my alibi regarding the Red Bank affair. He had not appeared in New York, under the plea of ill health, but had made a deposition as to the hour he had met and talked with me at the crossroads. The check which I sent was returned promptly with the indorsement, in his neat, crabbed handwriting: "The laborer is worthy of his hire." This at least showed less venom toward me, and I began to hope I might eventually reach a better understanding with him, but I knew it would be fatal to try to rush matters. Only by the future could I wipe out the past unworthy six months and show I had ambition to be something more than a dissolute moneyed loafer.

I was working hard with the plans of the engineering school, and the other projects Mr. Hannay and I had mapped out, while I was considering an offer made by my old employers, Cable & Co., to come back as a working partner. So I was kept busy.

If I have said nothing further about the Demon, it must not be supposed that he did not trouble me any longer, that my victory was sweeping and lightly achieved, or that I considered it absolutely final.

By that I mean I could only consider it final when, through the process of time and nature, the morbid craving left me. An inheritance such as mine is not killed instantly by all the poignant lessons, all the vows and good resolutions in the world. It is a matter of daily, hourly battling, of fierce, grueling conflict, of slow but inexorable wearing down. Often, when the long day was done, I breathed a silent prayer that it found me unashamed.

If I saw little progress in other directions, the end of the week at least cleared up the mystery about the man who had stolen my car. It was proved beyond all possible doubt that he was the "Charlie" Banks whose picture had caught my attention in the rogues' gallery. It was shown by the Bertillon record that his left hand bore the deformity I had mentioned to Blunt. He was the man the nurse at the hospital had told me about; he had been serving a long sentence in Moyamensing and had escaped the night of Joyce's assault.

"It simply shows how a case may be complicated by the entrance of outside factors," said Blunt. "This fellow had nothing to do with the organization we're after. He robbed Joyce and you simply to help his get-away, for he had no money, and needed a change of clothes. That mustache was a fake, as you suggested, and if he hadn't been smashed to pulp that fact would have been discovered."