Part 6

“We are in no hurry,” Helen said. “Let’s take a horse-hansom for old sake’s sake.”

In it we were like boy and girl together until the jeweler’s was reached.

There gloom, in spite of us, settled down over our hopes and feelings. Helen walked to the hansom like a gray ghost. Like the whisper of some far-off stranger I heard myself order the driver to take us home.

In the hansom we sat silent, looking straight in front of us at nothing. I stole a glance at Helen and saw a tear in the corner of her eye. I sat choking.

All at once she seized my hand.

“Look!” she exclaimed, “Look!”

I looked where she pointed, but discerned nothing to account for her excitement.

“What is it?” I queried.

“The old man!” she exclaimed.

“What old man?” I asked bewildered.

“The old man on the puzzle,” she told me. “The old man who was leading Amy.”

Then I was sure she was demented. To humor her I asked:

“The old man with the brown coat?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly. “The old man with the long gray hair over his collar.”

“With the walking stick?” I inquired.

“Yes,” she answered. “With the crooked walking stick.”

I saw him too! This was no figment of Helen’s imagination.

It was absurd of course, but my eagerness caught fire from hers. I credited the absurdity. In what sort of vision it mattered not she had seen an old man like this leading our lost Amy.

I spoke to the driver, pointed out to him the old man, told him to follow him without attracting his attention and offered him anything he asked to keep him in sight.

Helen became possessed with the idea that we should lose sight of the old man in the crowds. Nothing would do but we must get out and follow him on foot. I remonstrated that we were much more likely to lose sight of him that way, and still more likely to attract his notice, which would be worse than losing him. She insisted and I told the man to keep us in view.

A weary walk we had, though most of it was mere strolling after a tottering figure or loitering about shops he entered.

It was near dusk and full time for us to be at home when he began to walk fast. So fast he drew away from us in spite of us. He turned a corner a half a square ahead of us. When we turned into that street he was nowhere to be seen.

Helen was ready to faint with disappointment. With no hope of helping her, but some instinctive idea of postponing the evil moment I urged her to walk on, saying that perhaps we might see him. About the middle of the square I suddenly stood still.

“What is the matter?” Helen asked.

“The house!” I said.

“What house?” she queried.

“The house in the puzzle picture,” I explained. “The house where I saw Amy at the window.”

Of course she had not seen any house on the puzzle, but she caught at the last straw of hope.

It was a poor neighborhood of crowded tenements, not quite a slum, yet dirty and unkempt and full of poor folks.

The house door was shut, I could find no sign of any bell. I knocked. No one answered. I tried the door. It was not fastened and we entered a dirty hallway, cold and damp and smelling repulsively. A fat woman stuck her head out of a door and jabbered at us in an unknown tongue. A man with a fez on his greasy black hair came from the back of the hallway and was equally unintelligible.

“Does nobody here speak English?” I asked.

The answer was as incomprehensible as before.

I made to go up the stairs.

The man, and the woman, who was now standing before her door, both chattered at once, but neither made any attempt to stop me. They waved vaguely explanatory, deprecating hands towards the blackness of the stairway. We went up.

On the second floor landing we saw just the old man we had been following.

He stared at us when I spoke to him.

“Son-in-law,” he said, “son-in-law.”

He called and a door opened. An oldish woman answered him in apparently the same jargon. Behind was a young woman holding a baby.

“What is it?” she asked with a great deal of accent but intelligibly.

Three or four children held on by her skirts.

Behind her I saw a little girl in a blue-check dress.

Helen screamed.

IV

The people turned out to be refugees from the settlement about the sacked German Mission at Dehkhargan near Tabriz, Christianized Persians, such stupid villagers that they had never thought or had been incapable of reporting their find to the police, so ignorant that they knew nothing of rewards or advertisements, such simple-hearted folk that they had shared their narrow quarters and scanty fare with the unknown waif their grandfather had found wandering alone, after dark, months before.

Amy, when we had leisure to ask questions and hear her experiences, declared they had treated her as they treated their own children. She could give no description of her kidnappers except that the woman had on a hat with roses in it and the man had a little yellow mustache. She could not tell how long they had kept her nor why they had left her to wander in the streets at night.

It needed no common language, far less any legal proof, to convince Amy’s hosts that she belonged to us. I had a pocket full of Christmas money, new five and ten dollar gold pieces and bright silver quarters for the servants and children. I filled the old grandfather’s hands and plainly overwhelmed him. They all jabbered at us, blessings, if I judged the tone right. I tried to tell the young woman we should see them again in a day or two and I gave her a card to make sure.

I told the cabman to stop the first taxicab he should see empty. In the hansom we hugged Amy alternately and hugged each other.

Once in the taxicab we were home in half an hour; more, much more than half an hour late. Helen whisked Amy in by the servants’ door and flew upstairs with her by the back way. I faced a perturbed and anxious parlorful of interrogative relatives and in-laws.

“You’ll know before many minutes,” I said, “why we were both out and are in late. Helen will want to surprise you and I’ll say nothing to spoil the effect.”

Nothing I could have said would have spoiled the effect because they would not have believed me. As it was Helen came in sooner than I could have thought possible, looking her best and accurately playing the formal hostess with a feeble attempt at a surprise in store.

The dinner was a great success, with much laughter and high spirits, everybody carried away by Helen’s sallies and everybody amazed that she could be so gay.

“I cannot understand,” Paul’s wife whispered to me, “how she can ever get through the party. It would kill me in her place.”

“It won’t kill her,” I said confidently. “You may be sure of that.”

The children had arrived to the number of more than thirty and only the inevitably late Amstelhuysens had not come. Helen announced that she would not wait for them.

“The tree is lighted,” she said. “We’ll have the doors thrown open and go in.”

We were all gathered in the front parlor. The twins panted in at the last instant. The grown-ups were pulling motto-crackers and the children were throwing confetti. The doors opened, the tree filled all the back of the room. The candles blazed and twinkled. And in front of it, in a simple little white dress, with a fairy’s wand in her hand, tipped with a silver star, clean, healthy-looking and full of spirits was Amy, the fairy of the hour.

1909

THE SNOUT

THE SNOUT

I

I WAS not so much conning the specimens in the Zoölogical Garden as idly basking in the agreeable morning sunshine and relishing at leisure the perfect weather. So I saw him the instant he turned the corner of the building. At first, I thought I recognized him, then I hesitated. At first he seemed to know me and to be just about to greet me; then he saw past me into the cage. His eyes bulged; his mouth opened into a long egg-shaped oval, till you might almost have said that his jaw dropped; he made an inarticulate sound, partly a grunt, partly the ghost of a howl, and collapsed in a limp heap on the gravel. I had not seen a human being since I passed the gate, some distance away. No one came when I called. So I dragged him to the grass by a bench, untied his faded, shiny cravat, took off his frayed collar and unbuttoned his soiled neckband. Then I peeled his coat off him, rolled it up, and put it under his knees as he lay on his back. I tried to find some water, but could see none. So I sat down on the bench near him. There he lay, his legs and body on the grass, his head in the dry gutter, his arms on the pebbles of the path. I was sure I knew him, but I could not recall when or where we had encountered each other before. Presently he answered to my rough and ready treatment and opened his eyes, blinking at me heavily. He drew up his arms to his shoulders and sighed.

“Queer,” he muttered, “I come here because of you and I meet you.”

Still I could not remember him and he had revived enough to read my face. He sat up.

“Don’t try to stand up!” I warned him.

He did not need the admonition, but clung to the end of the bench, his head bowed wagglingly over his arms.

“Don’t you remember,” he asked thickly. “You said I had a pretty good smattering of an education on everything except Natural History and Ancient History. I’m hoping for a job in a few days, and I thought I’d put in the time and keep out of mischief brushing up. So I started on Natural History first and----”

He broke off and glared up at me. I remembered him now. I should have recognized him the moment I saw him, for he was daily in my mind. But his luxuriant hair, his tanned skin and above all his changed expression, a sort of look of acquired cosmopolitanism, had baffled me.

“Natural History!” he repeated, in a hoarse whisper. His fingers digging in the slats of the bench he wrenched himself round to face the cage.

“Hell!” he screamed. “There it is yet!”

He held on by the end iron-arm of the bench, shaking, almost sobbing.

“What’s wrong with you?” I queried. “What do think you see in that cage?”

“Do you see anything in that cage?” he demanded in reply.

“Certainly,” I told him.

“Then for God’s sake,” he pleaded. “What do you see?”

I told him briefly.

“Good Lord,” he ejaculated. “Are we both crazy?”

“Nothing crazy about either of us,” I assured him. “What we see in the cage is what is in the cage.”

“Is there such a critter as that, honest?” he pressed me.

I gave him a pretty full account of the animal, its habits and relationships.

“Well,” he said, weakly, “I suppose you’re telling the truth. If there is such a critter let’s get where I can’t see it.”

I helped him to his feet and assisted him to a bench altogether out of sight of that building. He put on his collar and knotted his cravat. While I had held it I had noticed that, through its greasy condition, it showed plainly having been a very expensive cravat. His clothes I remarked were seedy, but had been of the very best when new.

“Let’s find a drinking fountain,” he suggested, “I can walk now.”

We found one not far away and at no great distance from it a shaded bench facing an agreeable view. I offered him a cigarette and we smoked. I meant to let him do most of the talking.

“Do you know,” he began presently. “Things you said to me run in my head more than anything anybody ever said to me. I suppose it’s because you’re a sort of philosopher and student of human nature and what you say is true. For instance, you said that criminals would get off clear three times out of four, if they just kept their mouths shut, but they have to confide in some one, even against all reason. That’s just the way with me now.”

“You aren’t a criminal,” I interrupted him. “You lost your temper and made a fool of yourself just once. If you’d been a criminal and had done what you did, you’d have likely enough got off, because you’d have calculated how to do it. As it was you put yourself in a position where everything was against you and you had no chance. We were all sorry for you.”

“You most of all,” he amplified. “You treated me bully.”

“But we were all sorry for you,” I repeated, “and all the jury too, and the judge. You’re no criminal.”

“How do you know,” he demanded defiantly, “what I have done since I got out?”

“You’ve grown a pretty good head of hair,” I commented.

“I’ve had time,” he said. “I’ve been all over the world and blown in ten thousand dollars.”

“And never seen----” I began.

He interrupted me at the third word.

“Don’t say it,” he shuddered. “I never had, nor heard of one. But I wasn’t after caged animals while I had any money left. I didn’t remember your advice and your other talk till I was broke. Now, it’s just as you said, I’ve just got to tell you. That’s the criminal in me, I suppose.”

“You’re no criminal,” I repeated soothingly.

“Hell,” he snarled, “a year in the pen makes a man a criminal, if he never was before.”

“Not necessarily,” I encouraged him.

“It’s pretty sure to,” he sighed. “They treated me mighty well and put me to bookkeeping, and I got my full good-conduct allowance. But I met professionals, and they never forget a man.”

“Now it don’t make any difference what I did when I got out, nor what I tried to do nor how I met Rivvin, nor how he put Thwaite after me. No, nor how Thwaite got hold of me, nor what he said to me, nor anything, right up to the very night, till after we had started.”

He looked me in the eye. His attitude became alert. I could see him warming to his narrative. In fact, when after very little rumination he began it, his early self dropped from him with his boyhood dialect and the jargon of his late associates. He was all the easy cosmopolitan telling his tale with conscious zest.

II

As if it had been broad day Thwaite drove the car at a terrific pace for nearly an hour. Then he stopped it while Rivvin put out every lamp. We had not met or overtaken anything, but when we started again through the moist, starless blackness it was too much for my nerves. Thwaite was as cool as if he could see. I could not so much as guess at him in front of me, but I could feel his self-confidence in every quiver of the car. It was one of those super-expensive makes which are, on any gear, at any speed, on any grade, as noiseless as a puma. Thwaite never hesitated in the gloom; he kept straight or swerved, crept or darted, whizzed or crawled for nearly an hour more. Then he turned sharp to the left and uphill. I could feel and smell the soaked, hanging boughs close above and about me, the wet foliage on them, and the deep sodden earth mold that squelched under the tires. We climbed steeply, came to a level and then backed and went forward a length or so a half dozen times, turning. Then we stopped dead. Thwaite moved things that clicked or thumped and presently said:

“Now I’ll demonstrate how a man can fill his gasoline tank in the pitch dark if he knows the touch system.”

After some more time he said:

“Rivvin, go bury this.”

Rivvin swore, but went. Thwaite climbed in beside me. When Rivvin returned he climbed in on the other side of me. He lit his pipe, Thwaite lit a cigar and looked at his watch. After I had lit too, Thwaite said:

“We’ve plenty of time to talk here and all you have to do is to listen. I’ll begin at the beginning. When old Hiram Eversleigh died----”

“You don’t mean----” I interrupted him.

“Shut up!” he snapped, “and keep your mouth shut. You’ll have your say when I’ve done.”

I shut up.

“When old man Eversleigh died,” he resumed, “the income of the fortune was divided equally among his sons. You know what the others did with their shares: palaces in New York and London and Paris, chateaux on the Breton Coast, deer and grouse moors in Scotland, steam yachts and all the rest of it, the same as they have kept it up ever since. At first Vortigern Eversleigh went in for all that sort of thing harder than any one of his brothers. But when his wife died, more than forty years ago, he stopped all that at once. He sold everything else, bought this place, put the wall round it and built that infinity of structures inside. You’ve seen the pinnacles and roofs of them, and that’s all anybody I ever talked to has ever seen of them since they were finished about five years after his wife’s death. You’ve seen the two gate-houses and you know each is big even for a millionaire’s mansion. You can judge of the size and extent of the complication of buildings that make up the castle or mansion-house or whatever you choose to call it. There Vortigern Eversleigh lived. Not once did he ever leave it that I can learn of. There he died. Since his death, full twenty years ago, his share of the Eversleigh income has been paid to his heir. No one has ever seen that heir. From what I’ll tell you presently you’ll see as I have that the heir is probably not a woman. But nobody knows anything about him, he has never been outside these miles of wall. Yet not one of the greedy, selfish Eversleigh grandsons and grand-daughters, and sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, has ever objected to the payment to that heir of the full entire portion of Vortigern Eversleigh, and that portion has been two hundred thousand dollars a month, paid in gold on the first banking day of each month. I found that out for sure, for there have been disputes about the division of Wulfstan Eversleigh’s share and of Cedric Eversleigh’s share and I made certain from the papers in the suits. All that money, or the value of it, has been either reinvested or spent inside that park wall. Not much has been reinvested. I got on the track of the heir’s purchases. He buys musical instruments any quantity and at any price. Those were the first things I made sure of. And artists’ materials, paints, brushes, canvas, tools, woods, clay, marble, tons of clay and great blocks of superfine-grained marble. He’s no magpie collecting expensive trash for a whim; he knows what he wants and why; he has taste. He buys horses and saddlery and carriages, furniture and carpets and tapestries, pictures, all landscapes, never any figure pictures, he buys photographs of pictures by the ten thousand, and he buys fine porcelains, rare vases, table silver, ornaments of Venetian glass, silver and gold filigree, jewelry, watches, chains, gems, pearls, rubies, emeralds and--diamonds; diamonds!”

Thwaite’s voice shook with excitement, though he kept it soft and even.

“Oh, I did two years investigating,” he went on, “I know. People blabbed. But not any of the servants or grooms or gardeners. Not a word could I get, at first or second or third hand, from them or any of their relatives or friends. They keep dumb. They know which side their bread is buttered on. But some of the discharged tradesmen’s assistants told all I wanted to know and I got it straight, though not direct. No one from outside ever gets into that place beyond the big paved courtyards of the gate-houses. Every bit of supplies for all that regiment of servants goes into the brownstone gate-house. The outer gates open and the wagon or whatever it is drives under the archway. There it halts. The outer gates shut and the inner gates open. It drives into the courtyard. Then the Major-domo (I suppose that wouldn’t be too big a name for him) makes his selections. The inner gates of the other gateway open and the wagon drives under the archway and halts. The inner gates close fast and the outer gates open. That’s the way with every wagon and only one enters at a time. Everything is carried through the gate-house to the smaller inner courtyard and loaded on the wagons of the estate to be driven up to the mansion.

“Everything like furniture, for instance, comes into the courtyard of the green-stone gate-house. There a sort of auditor verifies the inventory and receipts for the goods before two witnesses from the dealers and two for the estate. The consignment may be kept a day or a month; it may be returned intact or kept entire; any difference is settled for at once upon return of what is rejected. So with jewelry. I had luck. I found out for certain that more than a million dollars worth of diamonds alone have gone into this place in the last ten years and stayed there.”

Thwaite paused dramatically. I never said a word and we sat there in the rear seat of that stationary auto, the leather creaking as we breathed, Rivvin sucking at his pipe, and the leaves dripping above us; not another sound.

“It’s all in there,” Thwaite began again. “The biggest stack of loot in North America. And this is going to be the biggest and most successful burglary ever perpetrated on this continent. And no one will ever be convicted for it or so much as suspected of it. Mark my words.”

“I do,” I broke in, “and I don’t feel a bit better than when we started. You promised to explain and you said I’d be as eager and confident as you and Rivvin. I acknowledge the bait, admitting all you say is true, and it doesn’t seem likely. But do you suppose any recluse millionaire eccentric is going to live unguarded? If he is careless himself his household are the reverse. By what you tell of the gate-houses there are precautions enough. Diamonds are tempting if you like, but so is the bullion in the mint. By your account all this accumulation of treasure you imagine is as safe where it is as the gold reserve in the United States Treasury. You scare me, you don’t reassure me.”