PART VI

When Stephen W. Harker of Harker & Pentecost returned from Pittsburgh, where he’d been “planting” for a nice little Gasoline Substitute Swindle (stock selling, of course—that was his department) and had sat in for an hour with Pentecost, getting the details of the extraordinary Haworth device and the elaborate scheme his partner had evolved for its exploitation, he vehemently refused to have anything to do with it. Not for by George and all hell was he going to put his head in a noose like that when he had a nice safe little business that was raking it in as fast as he wanted it.

“You got me going once when you had the firm into that damned Folsam affair—you know the one—came out his wife had hit him with something in his tea. You’d got a grip some way so you could hold it back an’ play it. I dipped in with you an’ no complaint at the time. But now I’ll tell you _that_ was too close for me and this time you’re going to jump plumb into the middle of the shake-off! You must be dippy! They’ll get you sure! Anyways, you can count me good an’ out.”

Pentecost sat toadlike, silent, regarding Harker with bulging, half-closed eyes.

“Now hook to this,” Harker went on; “if the turn is against you and they’re fixing you for the clamps, I back your play to ooze out of anything. But I get loose teeth if I mix in with those little sports that look like raspberry tarts to you. Now this Haworth layout—it looks to me like a frolic with the undertaker; but if you like it for yourself, go to it!”

“I’ve gone to it,” Pentecost murmured in a careless sort of way; “and I play it under the firm name.”

“But my God—wait! That gets _me_ in!”

“Why, so it does!”

“What are you doing, dragging me into a play whether I want it or not?”

“Can that!” Pentecost flashed sudden fire for an instant. “Do you think I planned this damned firm to keep you under glass?”

There was a short pause and Pentecost’s blaze-out subsided.

After a while Harker spoke in another tone, now petulant and pleading. “You going to jam me up against that layout an’ nothing to say?”

“You can make your getaway now.”

“Jump the firm?”

“Why not? In that case, jump while the jumping’s good.”

Harker, on that, said no more. He’d go a long way before dropping the partnership. It wasn’t alone losing the tidy and “classy” business as it was now run through Pentecost’s putting it on a straight-play basis, but even more than that he appreciated the association with this marvelous operator. It gave him the feeling of trailing along with a giant, a super-sharp, a past master of crookedness. He gave the matter of the Haworth enterprise deep thought, and by noon of the following day had decided to play in on it, saying to himself that he’d bar worrying by putting his trust in Pentecost.

On the afternoon of the same day that Mr. Harker declared himself in on the West Roxbury undertaking, both members of the firm embarked on a steamer of the Metropolitan Line for Boston. The boat was the _North Land_ and this line was the “all-the-way-by-water” route, the steamers after traversing Long Island and Block Island Sounds and Buzzards Bay, passing through the Cape Cod Canal into Barnstable Bay, and thence through Cape Cod and Massachusetts Bay into Boston Harbor.

It was the fourth day after Pentecost’s visit to the Cripps mansion and the firm was proceeding to Boston as agreed, in order to discuss with Haworth various points of the contract—the amount to be paid down, the delivery of the machine, and other matters connected with the sale—so that the papers could be drawn up ready for signature on the day the option expired.

Mr. Pentecost had already accomplished a great deal, having got in reports from his men (if it was ordinary business you’d call them correspondents) in all the large cities, and also having come to the determination to carry on the thing himself in such of those towns as he finally selected, instead of selling to the central agency or bureau handling this class of material,—a bureau which he found to be run by “pikers,” mortally afraid to pay big money for big chances. In addition to this, it was safer not to trust them in so ticklish a business. So he had it all laid out, and his own men were already where he wanted them or on the way. He’d sent a couple of his choicest “trusties” over to Boston the day before. Of course the main work was going to be there.

The taking of a steamer instead of going by rail, and also the selection of this particular line, were both essential to Mr. Pentecost’s scheme; and the same thing made it imperative that, following their interview with Haworth, they return to New York by the same boat on which they went over. So important was this latter, indeed, that had they been unable to secure return accommodations on the _North Land_, Pentecost would have postponed the trip until both the going and returning could have been accomplished on the same steamer—he did not care which of the two running on this route it was.

Awhile after the _North Land_ left—they must have been about running out into the Sound at Hell Gate—Mr. Pentecost went to the purser’s window to make inquiries about the tickets for the return trip (he had left the matter to be adjusted when he came on board, merely having been informed by telephone that the reservations had been made), and after finishing with the business remarked jovially to Mr. Lawson (the purser) that that was a damn good picture of a locomotive he had on the wall there behind him. It represented, lithographed in color, a giant locomotive hauling a night express on the New York Central, and so realistically coming toward you that your first impulse was to make one grand hurdle for your life. The purser, pleased at the appreciation, for he had a fad on locomotives (a fact which Pentecost had obtained from the comprehensive report on the steamer and its officers turned in by one of his men), said it was a pretty good one, but he thought the one they got out the year before beat it.

The conversation resulted in Mr. Pentecost’s being invited into the office, and when business at the window permitted the purser showed him other views of locomotives.

Pentecost didn’t stay long. He knew enough not to drive an entering wedge too far.

By evening they had a slight acquaintance with several of the officers, and Pentecost had made a most favorable impression on the head waiter as well—this latter through the poignant influence of an extraordinary tip; and along toward nine-thirty or ten o’clock the purser, with whom he was chatting over cigars, introduced him to Captain Snow, who happened along just then, and the three talked about the canal.

Pentecost made many intelligent inquiries on the subject and Harker came along and listened in with great interest. So that the total result of the voyage was most satisfactory from Pentecost’s point of view. With no hint of pushing or forcing themselves they had a fairly good traveler’s acquaintance with the captain, the purser, and several minor officers of the _North Land_, as well as the head waiter and one or two of the deck hands of whom they’d asked questions. Also the chief engineer, to whom they’d been turned over on expressing a wish to have a look at the “power plant,” as they called it. Pentecost had made this engine room move in order to bring it in casually that they were especially interested in machinery—almost their business, you might say. Indeed, that they were even then on their way to Boston to negotiate for the purchase of the rights in a most ingenious mechanical contrivance, though they weren’t positive of being able to get it. Held at so high a figure. But an extraordinary thing in its way.

* * * * *

The _North Land_ backed into her berth at India Wharf, Boston, shortly after 8 o’clock the next morning, and Messrs. Harker & Pentecost were driven to the hotel they were in the habit of patronizing when there (except at such times as they preferred to have their presence in that town unobserved), and went to the room which had been reserved by wire. Alfred Harker, son of the senior partner, who’d come over on the train that left New York at midnight (there’s an “Owl” in each direction you know), had been waiting for them there since about half-past six in the morning.

After breakfasting together and going over a few matters, the three came down into the hotel office and sat there smoking and chatting. One of the house managers came along. An assistant manager, I believe he was. His name was Tate.

He greeted Pentecost and Harker by name, and Alfred (who hadn’t been there before) was introduced.

“Boston on business?” Mr. Tate inquired, pleasantly.

“That’s it,” said Pentecost; “rather an odd business, too.”

“Not so much the _business_ that’s odd,” put in Harker, “but what it brings us up against. Maybe you can give us a pointer or two. We’re trying to buy a mechanical device—invention, you know—from the queerest duck you ever saw, out Roxbury way.”

“Queer, eh?”

“Just bordering on the lunatic fringe,” Pentecost took it up, “but a crackerjack on mechanics. Got a lot of strange devices in his shop out there; most of ’em no earthly use but marvels of ingenuity, nearly every one. Went out there to see ’em a few days ago—Sunday it was. In fact, it was a Sunday paper put me on to it. Full-page write-up about the chap—pictures of him and all that.”

“Oh yes,” Tate put in. “I saw it—I mean the heading—that’s all I read. Something about a hermit, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“Has some ingenious things, you say?”

“Remarkable! No idea I’d find anything we wanted when I saw the tumble-down place; but, if you’ll believe it, he had one of the most novel inventions I ever laid eyes on; in fact, just the kind of thing we’re after. Exploiting’s our business, you know. I got an option on it and we’re over here to get the thing if we can.”

“What’s the man’s name—I forget?”

“Haworth—Charles Michael Haworth, if you want it all. I suppose you can’t tell us anything about him?”

But aside from having caught a glimpse of that heading Mr. Tate had never heard of the man. He assured them, though, that he was going to make inquiries, and if he got hold of anything he’d certainly let them know. They thanked him, and not long after that the three went out and took a carefully selected taxi for West Roxbury.

I don’t want you to get the idea that there were any loose ends about what these super-sharps were doing—not for one half of one per cent. They figured the play to a hair. In this case they had Tate cribbed for a witness.

* * * * *

Although the day set for the visit of Harker, Pentecost, and Alfred to the mansion on Torrington Road was not one of Mrs. Temple’s days _in_ according to custom, but was branded by the calendar as a Friday (which was one of her days _out_) the old woman was there just the same. Since the appearance of Mr. Pentecost at the house nearly a week before she had been obsessed by the feeling that he was working up some treacherous plot against the trusting young fellow in her charge, and she was determined to be on hand to keep a watch on the vicious brute if he came to the house again—as she had no doubt whatever that he would.

But Haworth had taken note of this tendency of Mrs. Temple’s to be present irrespective of her days in and finding her there on this particular morning he had sent the old woman on an errand which would keep her away for some time. So when the party arrived at the house it was he who opened the door.

Mr. Pentecost greeted him and introduced his partner, Mr. Harker, and Mr. Alfred Harker, after which Haworth ushered them into the room on the left. It was all peculiarly quiet and subdued. Few words were spoken, and those that were, in lowered voices. Pentecost took notice of Haworth’s improved appearance—his quiet, steady voice and the absence of the tortured look and the “drowning-man” stare.

After the four were seated there was a brief pause. They seemed weighed down by some sort of oppressive restraint that could almost be described as funereal.

It was Harker senior who finally began the conversation, endeavoring, with an allusion to Boston’s climate, to establish a commonplace atmosphere—though one hardly more cheerful; and Harker junior hastened to his assistance with a reference to his surprise at so rural a section being in the heart of the town. He supposed Roxbury—or was it Jamaica Plain?—might be so considered.

Pentecost turned them to business, remarking that there wasn’t any time to throw away, and that the first thing was to go down and inspect the machine under consideration, so that the Harkers could get a clear understanding of it. Before they did this, however, he would appreciate information as to the whereabouts of the talented old lady he had seen there on his previous visit. Haworth explained that Mrs. Temple had been dispatched on an errand to East Boston and would have to wait there about three hours before the foundry people could get her the article he’d ordered. Pentecost inquired how much time the journey to East Boston and return would normally require. Haworth thought, with the walk necessary when she got there, it might roughly be put at two hours.

“How long ago did she leave?” Pentecost inquired.

“About twenty minutes.”

“An hour and forty minutes left,” and he glanced at his watch.

“Four hours and forty minutes, if she waits there three,” corrected Alfred.

“As you say—if she waits there three,” was Pentecost’s muttered rejoinder.

The four men spent over an hour in the planked-up room, various sounds of clanking machinery and low-toned conversation issuing therefrom. When they finally completed their investigations and were coming out, Mr. Pentecost expressed the wish to see others of Mr. Haworth’s inventions; so the young man, after lighting Mr. Harker and Alfred to the stairway, took him to the large room where he kept his working models. In this way Pentecost got the opportunity of speaking with Haworth alone.

There were a number of matters relative to the exploitation of the invention in the planked-up room that he wished to arrange with the young man personally. Nothing in all this was a secret from Harker, who understood that it would be better for Pentecost to arrange matters with Haworth personally, afterward turning over the results, as you might say, to his partner.

In the course of this interview in the model room Pentecost spoke earnestly for some time. Haworth’s rejoinders were short and quiet, but it was perfectly evident that what he said, he meant.

After several matters had been gone over, Pentecost turned his attention to the inventions he had come in there to see, for his wish to look them over wasn’t altogether a blind. Eventually he came upon one that suited the purpose he had in view. It showed great ingenuity, and it was not patented—two most desirable points.

When the two men came upstairs they found Mr. Harker and Alfred seated at the table in the room on the left, working on the rough draft of the proposed agreement. A sound and businesslike contract with Haworth was of the utmost importance to the firm.

They’d been discussing the matter for some time when Pentecost stopped them with a quick motion of his hand and sat listening. After a moment he glanced at his watch. The time was nineteen minutes after twelve.

“Gave us four minutes longer than I figured,” he muttered in an undertone.

“Mrs. Temple?” from Alfred in a whisper.

Haworth, amazed, incredulous, started up to investigate, but Pentecost indicated that he’d like to attend to it himself. Tiptoeing to the swing door of the butler’s pantry at the farther end of the room, he stood close to it, listening for a second, then suddenly pushed it open and went out, the door closing itself after him. Sounds like the moving of furniture came from the kitchen, and Pentecost soon reëntered as though nothing unusual had taken place. Instead, though, of sitting where he’d been before, he pushed a chair close to the door into the big entrance hall, which door he opened a few inches, and sat in such a position that he could command a view of the main stairway at the farther end of the hall.

“Shall I go on?” Alfred inquired after a moment.

“Why not?” said Pentecost.

Alfred read the draft of the contract, and when he came to the blank left for the amount that Haworth was to get when the agreement was signed, he stopped and looked at Pentecost. The latter said that Mr. Haworth had consented to allow the matter to stand over till the day of signing—nine days from then. However, he would say before witnesses that it would be a figure satisfactory to Mr. Haworth after considering certain facts which he, Pentecost, would then be in a position to give him. “He’s willing,” and Pentecost said it appreciatively, “to allow us that much more time to feel out the market.”

He then went on to tell them that, as a result of a discussion they’d just had in the basement, Mr. Haworth had agreed to another matter to be included in the contract. It was to the effect that, in case the negotiations for the purchase of the invention were successful, Mr. Haworth would sign for a term of five years, to work exclusively for the firm of Harker & Pentecost, on such inventive undertakings as they should designate, receiving as compensation a salary of six thousand a year.

Harker was struck with astonishment at this, but in an instant realized the importance of the stipulation to the firm. Alfred, too, was surprised—though he showed no sign of it. Neither need have troubled to hide his feelings, as Haworth cared nothing about them one way or another.

Alfred was beginning to put away the papers in his document case, when Pentecost spoke of wishing to suggest a method for safeguarding the secrecy of this unpatented mechanism when they had occasion to refer to it in any way, orally or in writing. His idea was that they allude to it as “The Machine,” and in case some allusion to the mechanism was necessary, they should use for that purpose, _as a blind_, some other of Mr. Haworth’s inventions, preferably an apparatus on which a patent _had_ been allowed. “Letters may fall into the hands of outsiders,” Mr. Pentecost explained. “Telegrams and telephonic communications are of necessity known to various persons, and personal conversations are quite liable to be overheard. By using the name and description of some other device these dangers may be eliminated and we will understand what is meant.” He happened to come upon one of Mr. Haworth’s earlier inventions that would very well answer the purpose—a combination gas and compressed-air engine, really a most ingenious thing. They could speak of this as “The Machine” or as “The Gas and Air Engine,” and allude to its construction when necessary. He was very desirous of having this blind used in the contract—for contracts frequently have to be made public and this would make everything safe.

This ended the discussion of the contract. But Pentecost, turning to Haworth, said there was an important matter that he rather hated to speak of, but with an extra-hazardous operation like this it was vital.

“What is it?” Haworth asked, slightly apprehensive.

“I’m going to ask you to give that admirable old lady of yours a vacation.”

Pentecost was taking care to turn away from the slightly open door to the hall while speaking. “You must see, Mr. Haworth,” he went on in a lowered voice, “that it won’t do to have her about for the next ten days. The machine,—by that I mean the one we’re taking—is going to be exposed at the time of its ‘delivery’—perhaps before. She knows it’s in that room down there; you can’t touch _her_ with any decoy. She may not understand machinery, but she’d give it away to others who did.”

Haworth was silent for a moment. A great ache gripped his throat, and he finally spoke in a voice that he couldn’t quite control: “You don’t know how—how true she’s been—how kind! Why she—she’d do anything for me!”

“Yes, my friend, and there’s where she’d play particular hell with us! That old dame’s no fool. And the trouble is, she’s got the idea there’s something going on here and she’s all set to protect you from it.”

“Yes, yes—she’d do that!” Haworth murmured, huskily.

“Not _would_—is now!”

The young man looked at him suddenly.

Pentecost nodded. “In the butler’s pantry there a few minutes ago,” he went on; “slid back into the kitchen as I was going to the door. When I got out there she was hustling up the back stairway. I shut the door at the bottom of the stairs and balanced a table against it. You’ll hear it fall if she tries to push the door open. Only way she can get down is by the main stairway out here. Don’t think she’d care to try a window.”

Haworth was so amazed he couldn’t speak.

“You must see what this means to our end of it,” Pentecost went on. “We’ve got to put up big money in advance and incur enormous expenses before there’s any return, and here’s this old lady in a position to wreck the whole damned layout if she can get her nose into it—and that’s what she’s working for.”

“What—what do you want me to do?”

“Keep her out of the house until the machine’s delivered.”

The young man was silent, staring uneasily before him. In a moment or two Pentecost resumed: “I admire that old lady and I’ve got things laid out for her later where she’ll come in delightfully. But for eleven days she’ll have to disappear—or we must. It’s one or the other, Mr. Haworth. We can’t risk money on a chance like that.”

Haworth nodded. “I’ll attend to it!” he said, hoarsely.

“Right. And there’s only one thing more to speak of—the butler.”

“Butler——” Haworth repeated, surprised.

“The old lady’s going. You ought to have some one here to attend to you. Also, we’d like a man in the house to look out for our interests. Why not combine the two? A butler—a general servant—who’ll take care of you, and on our side see that no one tampers with the lock of that small room in the basement, and a few little things like that.”

“Will you send some one?”

“Not quite that, Mr. Haworth. I know just the man for the job, but I’d like you to get him yourself and leave us out of it.”

“But I—I don’t know. I never had any experience in——”

“Perfectly easy to manage. This young butler I speak of is booked with a first-class employment agency on Forty-fifth Street.”

“New York?”

“Yes, West Forty-fifth. You can write them to send him over. Fellow’s name is Dreek—James Dreek—and if he isn’t out on a job they’ll put him on the next train.” (Pentecost very well knew “James Dreek” wasn’t out on any job, though not from the employment agency, with which concern he’d been more than careful never to have any dealings whatever.) “Dreek can manage the whole place for you—see that our side of it is protected at the same time.” He got out a pocketbook and took a card from it. “Here we are; this is the agency.”

“But I——What shall to say to this—this agency?”

“Here, I’ll do it for you and you can sign it. Got a machine here? Typewriter?”

Haworth shook his head.

“Oh well, wait. Sign your name at the bottom of a blank sheet and I’ll type a letter in above it when I get back to the hotel.”

For some reason Haworth trusted this man implicitly, and after writing his name at the bottom of a blank sheet, held it out to him. But Pentecost didn’t take it.

“Haven’t you got a large envelope or something I can put it in?” he asked. “Just to keep it clean till I get to the hotel?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Haworth, looking about on the table.

“Couldn’t you slip it into that large flat book there?”

“Why no! that’s my——Oh!” He seemed to recollect something and opened the book, which was an illustrated catalogue of machinists’ tools, and placed the sheet of paper on which he’d written, between the leaves.

“Shove an envelope with it, there’s a good fellow. The kind you use for letters.”

Haworth did this and passed the book to Pentecost, who thus got the stationery he wanted without touching it himself or having anyone else touch it after it left Haworth’s hands.

Pentecost said, as he and the two Harkers were preparing to go: “Keep it from the old lady that Dreek comes here on our recommendation.”

“I will,” said Haworth.

“We’re coming back in ten days—expiration of option you know—and can take delivery at that time if the machine’s ready by then.”

“It’s ready now.”

Pentecost looked at him with a peculiar glint in his droop-lidded eyes.

“Then you plan to make delivery on that date?” he asked.

“My God, yes! if I’ve got to wait that long!”

Pentecost regarded the young man absently for an instant, then, with the Harkers, turned away, and the three went down the steps to the waiting taxi.

* * * * *

The firm, with Alfred, had a late luncheon at the hotel, and then Pentecost left the others and walked a few blocks—or what would have been a few blocks in a rectangular city—to one of the largest dealers in “rebuilt” typewriting machines. He asked to see some of the less expensive models, and the salesman brought several, placing them on a table along the side of the wall of the showroom. As it was a busy hour, he left Pentecost to try the lot at his leisure, and went to the customers who were waiting to be served.

Pentecost sat down and began trying the machines in a manner indicating to anyone who noticed that he was somewhat of a novice. But though he was awkward and slow, it didn’t take him long to discover which of the three instruments displayed the most irregularities in its output; and thereupon he quietly gave it a few extra characteristics, slightly bending a couple of the type bars and filing away a part of two or three of the printing faces with the nail blade of his pocket knife. After a sharp glance about the place to assure himself that he wasn’t under observation, he took the signed sheet of paper and envelope from the large thin book in which Haworth had placed them, handling these things with small pieces of blotting-paper folded once and slipped over the edges, so that for the second time that day he avoided contact with them.

The sheet of paper was thus inserted in the machine he had selected (and doctored), and he proceeded to type a letter on it in the space above Haworth’s signature. His inexperience with the typewriting business was still in evidence, for he was constantly stopping to erase or print over, or forgetting to shift for the next line.

There’s only time to give you an example, here and there, of this man’s extraordinary methods of constructing his defenses. He worked far deeper than along the line of the obvious, for his highest satisfaction was to put up barriers against what had never been thought of by police departments, but which he conceived as possible.

After finishing the letter, addressing the envelope, sealing it and affixing a postage stamp by the same blotting-paper method of handling (the moistening of stamp and envelope being his only “touchdowns”—but no system of tongue-prints has as yet been devised), he bought the machine he had been using for nineteen dollars, and took it with him. The sealed letter he had slipped into a larger envelope, again making use of the blotting-paper hold.

Walking to the corner of Court and Sudbury Streets, which wasn’t far, he stopped and, taking out his handkerchief, mopped at his left eye, as if he’d got a cinder in it. At once a man who had been following came and stood at the corner near, but without giving any sign of recognition. It was a busy corner, so that a man more or less stopping there wouldn’t attract attention. Even at that early stage a “trusty” was on the job in case anyone was putting a shadow on him.

The signal was “all clear,” and Pentecost turned west and strolled up beyond the State House to Bullfinch Place. His man, following, joined him in this quiet neighborhood.

Pentecost put the large envelope in his hands.

“Letter inside, stamped and addressed. Get it into the nearest letter box to the house and before eight to-night,” he said, speaking rapidly. “And _keep your hands off it_. Rip open the outside envelope, and let the one inside slide into the box. Here’s a typewriter in this package; take it out and polish it up. Clean all the marks off it. Wrap it up again without touching it. Do you get that? If you put one finger on it after you polish it off it’s you for the chair. The machine’s for Haworth. Take it to him yourself. Tell him I thought he might like to learn to use it. You stand by and get him to try it—tell him you’ve got to change it if not satisfactory. I want his hands on it.”

“I get you!”

And the two sauntered carelessly away in different directions.

* * * * *

When the firm of Harker & Pentecost, together with the son of the senior partner, boarded the _North Land_ late that afternoon for the return trip to New York, they greeted their steamer acquaintances of the previous night pleasantly, though in a manner indicating that they’d had a rather strenuous day of it. Mr. Pentecost alluded to his intention of turning in early. Alfred was introduced to the purser and one or two others as occasion arose, and the three were about for a while, chatting with one and another of the officers.

Beside the Messrs. Harker & Pentecost and Alfred, there were two men on board the _North Land_ who were closely associated with the firm, although giving no evidence thereof. Their business on this trip was to make close observation of certain points and circumstances connected with the steamer and its crew, particularly in the passage through the canal and the docking of the boat on reaching New York the following morning; which business was faithfully attended to, as was also the matter of their making the reservation of the two cabins they were occupying on this voyage for the trip out of Boston ten days later, so that the firm should have no appearance whatever in that transaction, these rooms being 202 and 204 on the hurricane deck—the name of which tends to foster the idea that it was high up among the clouds, whereas there were two decks above it, the promenade and the boat.

The firm members made not the slightest effort to push themselves; they were seen here and there; and after an early dinner together, Pentecost, passing the pilot house, greeted Captain Snow, and the two exchanged a few words through the open window. He very soon left, saying he was going to bed, but hoped to be on board a week later, as he had further business in Boston about then.

Instead, however, of turning in, he slipped down to the fantail, a small deck at the stern just below the promenade. Passengers seldom went there—and, indeed, weren’t allowed on that deck while the steamer was docking or leaving, for the crew worked from there, and it was cumbered with hawsers and chains, capstans, bitts, and other machinery for handling the ship. When she was under way, however, the chains across the passage were taken down. One of his men was on the fantail when Pentecost got there, but no sign of recognition passed between them. The other man was in the forward part of the boat, moving unobtrusively about to see where officers and crew were stationed as the steamer negotiated the canal, which she was about to do. Both men on the fantail made the closest observations possible as she slid quietly through, the passage occupying something like thirty-five minutes, for they had her down to less than half speed. It was dusky twilight when the _North Land_ entered the canal, and quite dark as she emerged at the other end. And when she _did_ emerge and swung out into the shimmering and light-dotted open of Buzzards Bay, Pentecost went at once to his cabin, slipping forward by the outside starboard passage, to the door of the saloon lobby, and from there up the stairway to the promenade deck, thus keeping it nicely in the shade as to what part of the ship he’d come from.

The week that followed was one of hard work for Mr. Pentecost, arranging for the execution of his extraordinary plan of campaign—assembling the parts, as you might say, arranging for “the market” in most of the large cities, instructing his men, and all the while perfecting his defensive system to cover any possible contingency.

For Haworth, after he had finished with the very painful task of asking old Mrs. Temple to remain away from the house until the machine he’d sold was crated and taken away, the waiting wasn’t so hard as it had been, for now he was uplifted by the realization that at last he’d be able to come to the rescue of the one who was dearer to him than his life.

* * * * *

Early one evening, soon after the Harker & Pentecost visit I’ve just been telling you about, he went to see her. He’d been keeping away for weeks—months, it seemed to him—in order to spare her the trying ordeal with Augustus—his drunken and bestial abuse, his threats of violence, that were sure to follow his visits. But now he wanted her to have the comfort of knowing that help was coming—that it would be here in a few days. And it was something he wanted to say to her in person—say with his mouth and lips and eyes and heart and entire being—not convey in the form of a letter, a cold series of words which in themselves meant next to nothing. Making as sure as possible of a time when Findlay wasn’t there or likely to be, he went to the little cottage.

It was a precious visit for them both, though her cough and emaciation and strange pallor with the feverish scarlet flush made his heart stop beating when he first saw her. But it was from that—from the terrible thing it meant—that he could now be the one to save her. And he told her about the invention he was going to sell for a great deal of money, and how after that everything would be done for her—everything—the most wonderful medical care and the most beneficial place in the world. He was magnificently happy in telling her this, and she was quietly elated with him, rejoicing to the utmost of her small strength. But before her happiness could be completed she had to ask if he would be with her, and be made confident that he would. He assured her that it was so, that though he might not be able to go with her when she went, because of the business he would have to finish up, he would come as soon as he could possibly do it—the very minute he could get away.

* * * * *

The steamer _North Land_ upon which the Messrs. Harker & Pentecost had already made two trips—one over and one back—made fast to the India wharf in Boston on the tenth morning after their former visit to Haworth, which brought it to the 30th day of August—the expiration date of the option. The voyage had been quiet and uneventful, the partners not pushing themselves in the least, though enjoying brief chats with some of the officers and having cigars with Captain Snow and one or two others in his cabin after dinner.

When they were asked how it was coming out about the invention they were trying to get hold of—the one they’d referred to on the last trip over—Mr. Pentecost gave them some further particulars about young Haworth and his extraordinary genius; and as there seemed to be quite a little interest in the matter, he briefly described what it was they were trying to get hold of—a combination gas and compressed-air engine. He spoke, too, of an idea they had of trying to get the young inventor on a contract to work under their direction for five years.

Alfred was waiting for them at the hotel (the one at which they stopped before), having, as he had on the former visit, come over by a night train. A heavy mail awaited the firm at the office, with several telegrams from various places and two or three large envelopes registered, all of which had been attended to by Miss Dugas, their office stenographer, who had notified the “correspondents” (as you might call them) in various cities to send letters and telegrams to Boston as per instructions; and because you know the letters and telegrams so sent were bogus, the trick being one among many items in Pentecost’s establishment of their “open work” presence in town, it needn’t lead you to imagine that a single envelope of the lot contained only blank paper. Each one had in it an apparently important business communication relating to one of the three or four legitimate promotions that the firm operated as decoys; and if traced to its source a man or woman would be found who was trying to buy stock in one of their straight companies, or wanting an agency, or with an invention to sell, or that sort of thing. Pentecost left two or three of the best of these letters lying about the room for the chambermaid to turn in at the hotel office when he left. Also, he went to the hotel telegraph desk and asked for a repeat on one of his wires.

After breakfast in the restaurant the three men retired to their room and went into a low-voiced conference for perhaps half an hour.

Then Pentecost went down to the hotel desk, there making inquiry as to a reliable trucking concern that could handle a heavy piece of machinery he wanted hauled from West Roxbury to one of the freight stations for Jersey City. Proceeding by taxi to one that the information clerk looked up for him, he arranged for one of their heavy trucks and a moving apparatus and plenty of men to call for the machine on the following day, giving them an order on Haworth and full shipping instructions. Having done this, he rejoined the Harkers.

And about twenty minutes before eleven the three came out of the hotel and, entering a large car which had been waiting for them, were driven away. No slipping out on the quiet. All open and aboveboard.

Harker rang the bell at the mansion, and James Dreek opened the door. He was an ideal servant in both appearance and behavior. When Harker inquired if Mr. Haworth was at home, Dreek asked what names he should give, and upon being told—with the further information that they’d come by appointment—he begged pardon and showed them in at once, saying Mr. Haworth was expecting them.

The great entrance hall showed a marked change since their visit of ten days before. Several worn chairs stood about and a long table was pushed up against the north wall—doubtless stuff that wouldn’t sell and had been stored in other rooms or the attic. But the most noticeable thing in the place was a huge edifice in the form of a crate, measuring something like five feet in height. Between the slats and timbers of this enormous cage could be seen machinery of heavy build, and such parts as were discernible plainly indicated to a person of sufficient mechanical enlightenment that it was an engine of some kind.

Pentecost walked over to the great slatted box and glanced at what was visible within, then followed the two others of his party, who had gone into the room on the left,—the door of which James Dreek was holding open for him.

Haworth was shaking hands with Harker and Alfred as he entered, and he did the same with Pentecost as he approached; and as the latter asked him how he was feeling, the faint smile that meant so much lighted his face for an instant as he answered in a low voice, “Rather worn-out waiting, Mr. Pentecost.”

“We had to take all the time the option allowed us, Mr. Haworth, but we’re here within the limit and can go on whenever you say the word.”

“Consider the word said,” was Haworth’s quiet answer.

Upon which Mr. Harker took the papers from a document case and tossed them on the table.

The contract, though not long, took some little time to go through, for Harker was at pains to explain each point; and you could see that Haworth was growing restless and was eager to come to the clause dealing with the amount of money which the firm was to pay him.

When Harker—it was toward the end—read out that the amount to be paid to the party of the first part upon the signing of this contract was the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, and was going on with slight acceleration of speed to the next clause, Haworth said, very quietly: “Wait a minute, please. That’s a mistake.”

“Mistake? How so?” from Harker—simulating surprise.

“You said fifteen thousand. It should be forty-five.”

What might be called a telling pause followed, the idea being that the partners were struck dumb with astonishment.

“Forty-five what?” Harker finally managed to inquire.

“Thousand,” Haworth answered in his gentle voice.

“Where in God’s name did you get the notion that we are going to give you such a figure as that? Why you’re crazy! We never agreed to any such ridiculous price—never in this world!”

“Excuse me. Your partner”—indicating Pentecost—“said the amount would be one that was satisfactory to me. That’s the one that is. I’ve found I need it.”

“Mr. Haworth”—Harker spoke with quiet and pleading earnestness—“let’s be reasonable about this. The amount you name is far beyond what we’re able to pay. We couldn’t touch it. If that’s the figure you’re going to insist on, it’s only a dirty waste of time for us to go on talking. We’re through—and the whole thing stops right here!”

“No—it doesn’t stop! I know the idea’s good—you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t—and if you can’t give me as much as that, I can find someone who will!”

The two super-sharps of the firm, born gamblers both, were entirely aware that Haworth meant precisely what he said, no thought of bluffing having a place in his system. They argued about it for some little time—which is to say, Harker did, for Haworth said nothing, merely shaking his head a little now and then in refusal of some offer or suggestion; and when Harker, driven to his last play, stated that all the money they’d brought with them was twenty-five thousand, the young man merely asked him how long it would take to get the rest.

“Then you won’t accept this twenty-five?” Harker’s tone had now a definite finality in it, carrying the idea that he was giving Haworth his last chance. But the young man shook his head again.

It was here that Pentecost, who hadn’t joined in the discussion, came forward. He said he had one proposal to make. It was quite true the firm had brought only twenty-five thousand, but he himself had in his possession the sum of ten thousand, which he’d intended using in the liquidation of a stock transaction. But he was so anxious to have the deal go through that he would add this ten thousand to the firm’s twenty-five, and they would then be able to offer Mr. Haworth thirty-five thousand in cash, and in addition to that would agree to pay him or whomsoever he might designate as his agent, an amount equal to one-fifth of whatever profit they were able to make on the handling of the enterprise.

I’m giving you this little episode in some detail because it was certainly odd to see such a simple, almost childlike person as Charles Michael Haworth putting it all over a brace of about the most consummate swindlers that ever adorned the criminal contingent, and doing it without an idea that he was making any play at all.

As to this new proposition of accepting one-fifth share of the profits in place of ten thousand of the cash price which he had fixed upon, he considered it a few moments and then turned to Pentecost.

“Will you attend to this yourself?” he asked.

“Yes—I will.”

The young man sat looking steadily at Mr. Pentecost for some little time, his calm penetrating gaze seeming to search for something. Then he turned away and indicated that he would agree to the arrangement proposed.

Harker had been fuming to himself over his partner’s enormous offer, but Pentecost, with a peculiar twist of his hand as he looked at his wrist watch, put it across to him that the game was so fixed they couldn’t lose. Harker’s experience with this same signal in former operations led him to infer that it didn’t matter what they paid, as they’d get it back. He took out his fountain pen and wrote into the contract the thirty-five thousand and the one-fifth share of profits.

After both parties to the agreement had duly written their names, James Dreek was called in to sign as one witness, with Alfred Harker as the other, thus making the thing complete and duly executed. It was in duplicate—one copy for Haworth, the other for the firm.

After the signing, with only a wait until Dreek had left the room, Mr. Harker, with some difficulty, got out the bunch of money from the document case and passed it over to Alfred. At the same time Pentecost approached the table, and saying, “There’s mine,” tossed a roll of bills on it. This payment in cash had been insisted on by Haworth from the very beginning.

Alfred counted out the thirty-five thousand, which was in century notes, on the table. The separate piles of a thousand each were deftly stacked in one, and this was pushed nonchalantly across the table to Haworth. He fussed with it rather helplessly a moment.

“Like to have ’em riffled again with the brakes on?” Alfred was an expert bill shifter and had snapped ’em off like the flutter of a humming bird’s wings.

“Yes, please.” Haworth watched intently while the lightfingered youth dealt each bill off the pack so slowly and carefully that it could be seen and noted as it fell on the pile before him.

When the recount was finished, Haworth muttered a “thank you,” and signed the receipt which Harker, mumbling something about its being “a cash transaction, you know,” pushed over to him.

At that moment, Pentecost, turning from the money count, caught sight of James Dreek going through the swing door into the butler’s pantry at the farther end of the room.

“How the hell did _he_ get here?” Pentecost demanded in a sharp, rasping whisper the instant the door swung to.

“Who?” Haworth asked with a glance about.

“That young butler of yours. He had his lamps on that stack of yellows on the table.”

“You got him in yourself,” Haworth answered, “to sign as a witness.”

“He went out again!” (Still in the guttural whisper.) “We waited for that before we slid the boodle out on the table.”

“You said he was all right, didn’t you?”

“All the same, you want to be a little careful with that bunch of money!” And he moved noiselessly to the door which had closed after Dreek’s exit, and listened with his ear close against it.

Appearing to be no more than half satisfied, he returned to the others and for an hour they discussed various points such as Haworth’s wishes regarding future payments, the taking of the machine the next day by the trucking firm, and the actual time of what was referred to by them as “delivery of the goods.” These things settled, Pentecost expressed the wish to take a look around the basement. Haworth went with him to the place where the planked-up room had been. Not only was it no longer there, but no evidence existed of its having been there. The timbers and flooring above the place where it had been built in showed no nail marks or abrasions of any kind and were grimy and darkened by age.

Having examined the place and its vicinity with the utmost care, using for this the small electric torch he always carried, Pentecost led the way into what had been the machine shop, and closed the door. There he went over several important matters which he preferred to discuss with Haworth alone. They conversed earnestly for a while, and then left the basement together by the door opening to stone steps leading up to the grounds at the rear of the house.

Mr. Pentecost made a surreptitious examination of this door and the route by which they reached it, while Haworth was setting the lamp on the cellar stairs, after extinguishing it. The two then went out to the old barn not far in the rear, and looked about there for a while. After that they went toward the house again.

Haworth had been carrying the big bunch of money in his clothes all this while, part in one pocket and part in another, and Pentecost, appearing to notice this for the first time, begged him to go in and put it somewhere where it would be safe. He said he’d walk about a bit for the air and would be with him in a few minutes. So Haworth left him and went in.

Pentecost now gave the house (outside) and its surroundings his full attention, especially as to the windows of the room on the left with their vine-covered shutters, and the character of the ground and shrubbery beneath them. It took him but a few moments to get all the information he needed as to the walls and foundation and roof overhang, together with other details that might come in, and lastly he took a look at the great elm trees in front and the “lay” of the ground in the rear.

He reëntered the house by the basement door through which he and Haworth had come out, and James Dreek was waiting for him in a corner of the cellar.

“Old woman?” Pentecost asked in a whisper.

“Outside,” was the answer. “Watches all day from a distance. Nights in the bushes close under the side windows.”

“We can use her!” And he gave Dreek whispered directions, after which he rejoined the others in the room on the left.

Harker and Alfred were ready to go—indeed eager to, for it hadn’t been an easy quarter of an hour for them. They rose rather suddenly when Pentecost came in, and the three moved toward the door murmuring the ordinary phrases of leave-taking.

Haworth had taken the bulky bunches of money out of his pockets and put them together on the table, and as Pentecost and the two Harkers saw him last he was standing there with one hand resting on them. He made no move to go with them to the door.

* * * * *

Besides the Messrs. Harker & Pentecost and Alfred, there were on board the steamer _North Land_ when she left the India wharf that same afternoon, a number of persons who were more or less concerned in the business of the firm, yet, as you need hardly be told, giving no indication that such was the case. Not only were cabins 202 and 204 on the hurricane deck occupied by Pentecost’s men as before, but 200, 201, 203, and 205 were also held, though only two of these were occupied. Thus, if you should happen to examine a chart of the boat, you would see that the firm commanded both port and starboard approaches to the fantail.

And also as on the return voyage eight days before, the partners appeared to be pretty well fagged out, although it didn’t prevent their being about for a while and chatting pleasantly with their steamer acquaintances, letting it be known (but not until inquiry was made) that they’d succeeded in purchasing the rights to the extraordinary device of which they’d spoken, and what was more, had got a contract with the young inventor himself giving them his services for five years.

Again they had an early dinner together in the restaurant and sat on the boat deck for a while, smoking cigars. Along toward half-past seven or a quarter to eight they sauntered forward, pausing at the large windows of the pilot house and greeting the captain. He asked them to come in and have a look at the canal—which the steamer was even then slowing down to enter. They accepted the invitation, and sat watching the shores on each side until it grew so dark—for the night was overcast—that only faint and blurred outlines could be distinguished.

Some ten or twelve minutes before they reached the western end of the canal, Pentecost rose lazily, made an effort to conceal a yawn, and bade the captain good night. He was rather done up with the day in Boston, he said, and really couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. Having thus excused himself, he went below, leaving Harker there to see the ship come out into the Bay, which he claimed to be desirous of doing.

Shortly after this the steamer slid silently by the village of Buzzards Bay, its many lights twinkling about a mile to the north, for it wasn’t situated directly on the canal; and a little later passed out into the open waters of the Bay itself; and on that, in obedience to the “full speed ahead” ring from the wheel-house, broke into her normal stride again, heading out toward Block Island Sound.

About this time, when the _North Land_ had been clear of the canal for something like eight or ten minutes, Mr. Harker’s attention appeared to be suddenly arrested by something below on the forward deck.

“Well, doesn’t that beat the——” He broke off and stood staring down.

“Anything wrong?”

“Not exactly wrong—only he was telling us just now he was so completely done up he’d got to go to bed!”

“Your partner, you mean?”

“Yes, Pentecost! And now he’s gone into conference with a young lady! Over there on the left. See?”

Harker was pointing to a man near the port rail, whose back was turned to them and who was in animated conversation with a person who, in the dim light, appeared to be an attractive young lady.

Captain Snow laughed a little.

“So he has,” he said. “Well, it’s never too late for that!”

“There’s truth in what you say,” Harker admitted, and thereupon changed the subject. “New Bedford light we see over there?” he asked.

“No. That’s Bird Island. Five points starboard.”

“What’s that one you’re aiming for?”

“Dead ahead you mean?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a fairway buoy—Buzzards Bay Buoy they call it. We change the course there for Nigger Ledge.”

Most likely you picked it up when I mentioned that it was only the back of the gentleman on the forward deck that could be seen from the pilot house, and naturally it was the said back that resembled Mr. Harker’s partner; and that was all that did. The man wasn’t Pentecost at all, for the good and sufficient reason that that gentleman had jumped off the steamer fifteen minutes before. It was one of his gang of “trusties,” brought along for the purpose, with about the same build as himself, entirely similar hat and clothing, and well matched hair and back of head, so far as could be seen. The young woman with him was Miss Mary Finch Dugas, their office stenographer, who was occasionally sent out on an operation where the utmost precaution was necessary.

* * * * *

A short time before the _North Land_, gliding noiselessly at about fifty-five turns (less than half speed) through the still waters of the canal, reached the vicinity of Buzzards Bay village, (which is at the farther end of it as you go from Boston) Mr. Pentecost had left the pilot house in the manner described to you a moment ago, gone below to the hurricane deck, and hurried aft on the starboard outside passageway until he reached the fantail deck at the stern. Alfred was waiting for him there in the dark. He had fixed a knotted rope so that it hung over the stern rail nearly to the water, the upper end made fast to a stanchion.

The two waited silently in the gloom until they could hear the raucous clanging of the warning bell on the drawbridge, which commenced its clatter when the great draw swung up into the air, and kept it going until it was down in place again. This was the Bourne highway bridge and in a couple of minutes the steamer was passing through. A moment after that, while the bell was still ringing and the passengers on the decks above watching the draw slowly descend, Pentecost, who had hold of the rope, clambered over the rail and lowered himself to the level of the main deck, which was the next one below. This deck was closed in at the stern, but he got a foothold on the ribbon piece and from there let himself down into the water without the least noise. It was so quiet, with the steamer slipping along at scarcely more than steerage way, that a splash might have attracted attention if the bell on the draw should stop ringing. The overhang of the counter made him safe from the propellers, and the water kicked up by them amounted to very little. He was whirled around two or three times, but it didn’t even duck him. A few strokes brought him to shore. But he didn’t come up on the banks till the _North Land_ was going through the draw of the railroad bridge, a little further on, for there were lights along the shore of the canal, and he wasn’t taking any chances.

Coming up on the low flat that bordered the waterway at this place, he quickly found the marks of an old road through it, and followed this with the aid of his flashlight which he quickly undid from its waterproof wrappings. He hardly needed it though, as of course he’d been over every inch of the ground. Coming to the embankment of the bridge approach, he still kept to the cart tracks which turned along the side of the embankment and then climbed it, bringing him out on the Bourne Road at a point nearly opposite the Soldier’s Monument.

Pentecost stood there a moment, dripping with water, and looking sharply down the road. It was hardly thirty seconds before a large closed car hove in sight, coming rapidly up the slope toward the bridge. A white handkerchief fluttered for an instant from the right-hand rear window (behind the driver), and instantly Pentecost ran out in the road and, waving his own handkerchief, signaled the car to stop. As soon as the car came to a standstill Pentecost called out to the driver, begging pardon for delaying him, etc., but stating that he was in a desperate hurry to get to Boston and asking if he could tell him where there was a garage. The chauffeur told him there was one on the right as he went toward the village—some distance up the road.

At this point the man in the car, who’d been listening to the talk and also regarding Pentecost with what appeared to be astonishment (the road was well lighted here), opened the door and asked if there’d been an accident.

“Not at all,” said Pentecost; “that is, I did take a tumble into the water. But that’s of no consequence. My trouble is to get to Boston in the shortest possible time—life and death matter—I’ll try the garage up the road—and thank you very much.”

“Why see here!” called out the stranger as he climbed out of the car. “You take this machine—just came down in it from Boston—my place in Bourne—across the bridge—walk it in six minutes!... You’ll take him back won’t you?” addressing the man at the wheel. And then to Pentecost as he passed close to him and put something in his hand while he continued speaking, “It’s a hired car you know—he’s got to go back anyway!”

The matter was quickly arranged, and the driver stimulated toward doing his best in the way of speed by the promise of a quite enormous bonus if he made it inside of eighty minutes.

You may as well know (perhaps you’ve already guessed it) that this was one of Pentecost’s men who hired the car in Boston and came down in it to Buzzards Bay, waiting in the village on some pretext until the _North Land_ reached the railroad bridge over the canal, and then starting for the highway bridge where Pentecost was to stop him. It was a crumpled wad of paper he’d put into Pentecost’s hand, with the number 2026 written on it—the same being the number of the chauffeur’s operating license.

The chauffeur, on the other hand, was a stranger. This for reasons that’ll come in later. I can say this now,—that he earned the bonus offered for speed; they were negotiating the streets of Jamaica Plain in a trifle under the seventy-five minutes. Pentecost stopped him at the corner of Centre and Greenough Streets, and after settling the bill and the bonus, turned east and walked rapidly up Greenough. As soon, however, as the sound of the car assured him that it was at a safe distance, he retraced his steps and kept on to the west or southwest, eventually coming to a little-used lane well beyond Torrington Road, from which, by crossing a long-abandoned vegetable garden, he could approach the Cripps mansion from the rear.

* * * * *

And now, just so you can keep the run of things as they come along, I’m going back a few days in order to show you how it happened that old Mrs. Temple was concealed in the bushes under one of the windows of the room on the left, at the very moment that Hugo Pentecost, after his plunge from the steamer into the Cape Cod Canal and the rapid drive in an automobile to the Roxbury district of Boston, was cautiously making his way toward the rear of the mansion.

The old woman had been greatly relieved to notice a striking improvement in Mr. Haworth’s condition almost immediately after the first visit of Mr. Pentecost to the house, although she feared it was due to trickery by which the scoundrel (which she was sure he was) would in some way do him injury. The doctor she’d left word for at the drug store called the same evening and said there was nothing seriously wrong with him, and did no more than prescribe a tonic, nourishing food, and a complete rest.

As the days passed and nothing transpired, Mrs. Temple felt less and less uneasiness, and it was nearly a week before things began to happen that revived her anxiety. They began on the morning of the fifth day after the Pentecost visit, and the first of them was the sending of her by Mr. Haworth on a most unusual errand—one that took her to some sort of foundry place in East Boston. And he told her if they didn’t have the kind of pulley wheel described in his letter, she must wait until they could get it for her.

Her smoldering suspicions instantly burst into flame, yet she couldn’t refuse to go.

It was a long journey and her imaginings of what might befall Mr. Haworth while she was away came near to making her turn back without doing the errand at all. She finally reached the office of the foundry and delivered the letter, but when they told her that they hadn’t the pulley wheel there but would send to the warehouse for it, she answered without an instant’s hesitation that she couldn’t wait, but would come another time. The men in the office called her attention to the fact that Mr. Haworth had said in the letter that she would wait for the pulley.

“Well, I ain’t a-goin’ to!” she muttered hurriedly as she disappeared through the door.

Arriving home something like an hour later, Mrs. Temple approached the mansion from the rear. She had worked herself into a frenzy of fear that Mr. Haworth was in danger, and she wanted to investigate without being seen. Finding herself at last in one of the rear passages of the house, she stood listening. Low voices could be heard from somewhere in the front.

With the utmost caution she made her way across the kitchen and through the butler’s pantry to the swing door opening into the room on the left. But the conversation within suddenly ceased and she began a hasty retreat. Hearing the door she’d just left swing open again (it had a very decided creak) she made for the servants’ stairway—which opened off the kitchen.

There was a door at the bottom of these stairs which Mrs. Temple hastily closed after her as she fled, and when she paused at the top she heard the thud of heavy objects being shoved against it and realized that she was trapped; for the only other way down was the main stairway to the entrance hall, which was in plain sight if anyone took the trouble to look. And she very well knew that some one would take that trouble. She’d heard his voice in the room on the left in the brief second she was at the swing door.

So she’d have to stay there until the gang of criminals and thugs, as she classified the men in the front room with Haworth, was gone. She brought a chair to the top of the main stairway and sat there, ready at the first alarming sound to rush down and fight like a wildcat, or run for the police, or do anything to rescue and protect the one to whom she was so desperately devoted. But no cry of distress reached her—only the low murmur of subdued voices.

It was early afternoon (she’d been waiting somewhere near two hours) when she saw the men come out into the entrance hall below her. There were three of them—the Pentecost creature with two confederates. Of course they were confederates. What else could they be?

Haworth came out with them. She heard the taxi the men had waiting for them drive away, and she saw Mr. Haworth return to the room on the left. At this she crept noiselessly down the main stairway and back through the rear hall. But she’d hardly more than reached the kitchen when Haworth came in through the butler’s pantry and stopped at the door.

“Oh, you came back?” he said.

“I hope ye ain’t a-goin’ ter take it hard, Mr. Haworth,” the old woman begged, “but I couldn’t no more wait there an’ you left here alone with them thugs or card sharps or whatever they be, than I could fly! I knew they’d be comin’ the minute ye sent me away like that an’ told me to wait—an’ how could I, Mr. Haworth—how could I stay settin’ there in that factory place, not knowin’ what might be happenin’ to ye?”

“No matter, Mrs. Temple.”

“Yes, Mr. Haworth, that was all; an’ I was worryin’ the life clean out o’ me. Terrible warn’t no name fur it! I couldn’t tell ye!”

“You did it for me, Mrs. Temple, and you’ve always been doing things for me. Please don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

The old woman’s trembling hand made two or three fumbles for her apron before she realized that she wasn’t wearing one, and a tear or two ran unmolested down her withered cheek.

“And—I—I’ve got to ask you,” he went on, hesitatingly (and then came another of the frightful things that were to alarm her on this fearsome day)—“I’ve got to ask you to do something more for me, Mrs. Temple.”

She looked up, staring at him with apprehension in her tear-wet eyes. And he went on to tell her how it seemed best that she should stay away from the house for a few days—just until one of his inventions was crated and out of the way—something very important that had to be kept secret, as there was no patent—so just a few days——

“Mr. Haworth,” she interrupted, “do please listen to me! Ye mustn’t have no more to do with them creatures. They ain’t right, Mr. Haworth; they’re crooked an’ treach’rous, every one o’ ’em—awful men! That Pentecost, he wouldn’t stop at nothin’—nothin’ in the world! Don’t let ’em in here again—don’t do it, Mr. Haworth! I beg ye won’t do it!”

“But I must, Mrs. Temple. They’ve bought one of my machines.”

The old woman was struck silent for an instant.

“Be they goin’ to pay ye money for it?”

“Yes.”

“You mean money right down?”

“Yes,—it’s got to be that way.”

A pause. Then: “Mr. Haworth, there’s some trick! Ef them jailbirds pay you money down they’ll rob it away from ye! They’re a-goin’ to git you some way—they wouldn’t be here if they wasn’t. I’ve seen spellbinders like them be—yes, an’ had to do with ’em too! Don’t turn me away now. Wait till after I’ve got ’em out an’ then I’ll go! Not now—not now, Mr. Haworth. You ain’t no person to cope with such as them.”

The young man stood looking at Mrs. Temple’s face, unable to speak. Suddenly he turned away and uttering a broken “I can’t—I can’t——You must go!” he turned and fled from the room.

* * * * *

For the following few days Mrs. Temple’s anxiety concerning the unknown danger she considered Haworth to be in overshadowed the lacerated feelings that naturally followed the poor soul’s expulsion from the house. No particle of blame could attach to him, for was he not under the malign influence of a gang of criminals and in no way responsible for what he did? This she felt, and her heart harbored no bitterness—though it had been cruelly hurt. She must find out in some way what villainy these human sharks were planning, though for the present nothing was possible but to keep close watch on the house.

The very next night after her dismissal by Mr. Haworth she saw a young man who hadn’t been there before, emerge from the darkness into the faint light that fell from a front window across the portico (she was watching from behind bushes quite near), and after ringing the bell, pass in at the front door. The roller shades—cheap affairs that the second hand dealer had agreed to put in in place of the old velvet curtains he was taking away—hadn’t been pulled down since she left, so she could see in. The stranger was being shown about by Mr. Haworth, who had evidently expected him, and seemed to be given charge of things as though he was a servant. That was it! The scoundrels had got Mr. Haworth to send her away and take a man in her place. So now they had a confederate right there in the house with him!

The old woman, desperate in her helplessness, made up her mind to get assistance. She’d go to the police in the morning and they’d arrest this man. Wasn’t it their business to protect people? If not, what _was_ their business, she’d like to know!

Early the next morning she hurried to the Jamaica Plain district, and as soon as she saw a patrolman, plunged into an excited account of the situation. But the old woman’s story seemed to border on the grotesque. From what he could gather the officer figured that she’d lost her job and they’d got a butler to take her place, with the result that the poor creature had gone dotty about it, thinking the man was some sort of a crook. He couldn’t find that she had any grounds for such a suspicion, but to quiet her he took down the address and said he’d keep an eye on the place. Mrs. Temple became almost hysterical, begging him not to stop with just keepin’ an eye on it, but to come over an’ arrest the man,—to please do _somethin’_ for mercy’s sake—if he didn’t there’d be some terrible thing happenin’ to some one. But the patrolman told her he couldn’t make an arrest until some crime or misdemeanor had been committed. She finally realized that it was useless to waste further time with him and hurried back to keep watch again from the outside, and do what she could alone. That’s what she did from then on.

During the day she hung about at some distance, keeping herself well out of sight, but always at places where she could see who entered the mansion and who left it. When darkness set in she stole to some overgrown shrubbery close to the house on the south side, and was able to see what was happening within, if the lights were on.

For a week the old woman remained on watch until late at night and returned to her vigil early in the morning, bringing with her in a paper bag what little food she needed. During this time she saw Mr. Haworth leave the place a number of times, which was a little unusual, but he doubtless had business in town or elsewhere; also men having the appearance of being mechanics drove up in a car one day and were in the house until nearly five o’clock; and she discovered, on reaching her nearer station in the evening, that a heavy piece of machinery was standing crated in the great entrance hall, presumably having been brought up from the basement. The butler fellow appeared to be taking care of Mr. Haworth in a surprisingly competent manner. What a relief, she thought, if the machine in the hall should be taken away and the crooked gang that bought it never show up again!

* * * * *

But this growing hopefulness on the part of Mrs. Temple served only to make the shock more violent when, on the morning of the tenth day after their former visit, the very bunch of swindlers she dreaded drove up to the mansion and were admitted to the house. She had known it would happen!

During the whole day, from the time they came, the old woman hardly took her eyes off the mansion, not even for long enough to open the little package of bread and cheese she’d brought. After they entered, nothing more could be seen of them until early in the afternoon, when Mr. Haworth appeared with Mr. Pentecost, walking around from the back and going across to the old barn in the rear. After that she saw Mr. Pentecost alone, making an examination of the windows, the grounds, even the old elm trees near the house. He finally disappeared into the mansion at one of the rear doors, and a short time after that the three came out at the front portico and drove away in the big car which had been waiting since their arrival in the morning.

The moment it was dark enough for her to approach the house she made haste to her place among the tangled shrubbery close under the side windows. The room on the left was absolutely dark, but by listening intently she could hear voices in a further room, and it was an unspeakable relief when she recognized Mr. Haworth’s among them. He seemed to be giving directions to the young accomplice (there wasn’t a doubt in her mind as to his being one) that the gang of scoundrels had got into the house as a butler.

She’d been there but a short time, close under one of the side windows of the room on the left, when the sound of carefully lightened footsteps reached her ears. Soon the forms of two men could be made out in the darkness coming along the flagged path from the rear and passing quite near her as they went toward the front of the house. They appeared to be carrying some heavy object and went around the corner with it to the front.

Mrs. Temple crawled cautiously through the high weeds and bushes to a place where she could see them again and more distinctly, for the light was on in the big entrance hall, and struck through the two narrow windows—one at each side of the door—across the front portico. This with its columns reflected enough light to enable her to make out what they were doing.

They had put a ladder (which must have been what they were carrying) against the vine-covered wall at one side of the front window of the room on the left, up which one of them had climbed, and were working at something which seemed to be under the thick growth of creeper, carefully disentangling the vines, unwinding, drawing out, and securing them at one side, never cutting or breaking. The leaves in particular they appeared to be handling with the utmost care, and it wasn’t until they had slowly and with all possible precaution pulled one of the window shutters out of the tangled mass that had covered it as it stood opened back against the wall, that she suddenly realized what it all meant.

They were closing the blinds! Closing them! Such a thing hadn’t been done in all the years she’d been there! It could mean but one thing—something was going to happen in the house that no one must see! She was horrified, aghast, unable to move.

It took the men a long time to free both shutters and tie the vines back so they’d be supported. But finally she saw they were coming down and gathering up some cords and tools from the ground. It would be the side windows next—the blinds there were open and overgrown in the same way as the front one—and she’d be directly in their path as they came around the corner. So she crawled out from among the bushes and hobbled away a little distance in the darkness. Her rheumatism was bad from her being out on the damp ground so much.

But the men didn’t stop at the side windows. Instead they went back to the rear of the house, passing along the flagged path by which they came, carrying the ladder and what tools they’d brought with them.

Shivering with dread, Mrs. Temple stood trying to think how she could get word to Mr. Haworth—how warn him—put him on his guard? Though after his telling her that she must not, she didn’t dare to go in, yet she _would_ dare if there was no other way.

Before the poor old soul could decide what to do she heard the front door of the house close heavily and saw someone coming down the steps. As he turned at the bottom, the illumination from the hall windows fell upon him, and she saw it was Haworth.

At once she determined to speak to him—to warn him of his danger—to beg him to let her come into the house again so she could see that no harm came to him. She said to herself that if he’d do that, she’d sleep in front of his door at night—indeed, never let him out of her sight if she could help it.

All this came to her while she was hurrying with all her strength to overtake the young man as he went toward the gate; but he was walking fast, and, crippled by rheumatism as she was, she couldn’t come up with him. She called as loud as she dared—which was in a very subdued voice indeed, as it wouldn’t do for that butler scoundrel to know that she was warning him.

But Haworth either didn’t hear or wouldn’t stop; and finally, about halfway down the drive, the old woman gave it up.

Then she decided to wait in the drive until his return; she could speak to him there without disobeying his orders.

* * * * *

A little time after Charles Haworth disappeared in the darkness, leaving poor old Mrs. Temple standing in the driveway not far from the gate, he and Edith were together in the small living room of the Findlay cottage on Cherry Street. That afternoon about half-past four, a stranger had called on Mrs. Findlay—a mild-looking middle-aged man—and had told her that Mr. Haworth would be there that evening between seven and eight.

Edith had hesitated, whereupon the stranger muttered in a low voice, “Mr. Findlay won’t be home till quite late.”

“How—how do you know?” she asked.

“Some one’ll be taking him to supper, an’ they’re liable to be engaged in conversation for some little time.”

Before she could make any reply the man was gone.

And now Haworth was there—with her.

For a long time they scarcely spoke. A few endearing words whispered as they clung together—that was all.

Finally he lowered her hands from his lips, though still holding them. “Darling one—you know it already—that I’ve come with good news—don’t you?”

He could feel her head making little nods against his breast and heard a muffled “Yes” from down there.

“It happened—what I told you I was trying to do. Those people took the machine—bought it you know—and to-day they paid the money—and there’ll be other payments coming in later. So now all the trouble is over—there won’t be any more at all!”

She suddenly looked up in his face, but he gently drew her head down again, so then she couldn’t see his face any more but lay there resting, and hearing his voice saying how marvelous it was that this sale had come just in time—for it _was_ in time. The doctors said it would be all right and a certain cure if she could get away at once. And now she could! They hadn’t definitely decided where she was to go, but would in a day or two. It would be the most beneficial place in the world for her—they’d make sure of that. And they’d send the best nurse they could find to take care of her on the journey and when she got there. And very soon—_very_ soon—she’d be entirely cured and strong and well again.

When he stopped speaking she twisted around a little so that she could see his face.

“What is it?” she whispered. Her heart was suddenly beating with a vague alarm that she couldn’t understand.

He looked down and met her anxious gaze.

“But don’t you see, dear—it’s going to be so wonderful! We’ll have enough for everything—more than enough. Plenty to take care of you and plenty for me to go on with anything I want to do. I brought a little over for you to get along on just for now—see, that package on the chair there—where my hat is. Don’t mind what’s in it; remember there’s a lot more—thousands. They paid all that down, you see, and I’m to have so much a year to work for them—that is, after we’ve got _you_ all right. That’s the first thing. I couldn’t do anything,—any work at all, if I—if I was afraid about you. And you know what you have to do for _your_ part, don’t you, dear one? Wherever the doctors say, you must go, and whatever they tell you to do you’ll do, won’t you?”

Edith didn’t answer. She was lying quite motionless against him. He looked down at her.

“But—but you——” she began in a faint voice, and stopped, hesitating.

“Yes?” he encouraged her tenderly.

“I mean you——” (Quite a pause.) “Aren’t you coming too—if I—if I have to go a long way off?”

“Yes dear—as soon as I can! But to make this sale I had to agree to oversee the setting up of the machine—and the regulating and all that. It’s bound to take a little time—it’s bound to, dear—and it won’t do for you to wait—oh no!”

“But—don’t you think you can come soon?”

“Oh——I do!”

“You see, I”—she clung against him—“I wouldn’t care much about getting well if you weren’t there.”

“My dear!”

She seemed satisfied and nestled down. After a time she spoke again, a little mournfully. “I hoped we could do what we always thought we would as soon as you sold something. You know what we—what we planned.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Will there—will there be enough for that, too?”

“More than enough.”

“But I suppose this other”—with a little sighing breath—“I suppose it must come first.”

“It must, my precious one.”

“Yes, I know.”

She had referred to their plan of having her get a divorce as soon as there was money enough to do it.

After this they sat together, silent mostly.

Suddenly Haworth realized he ought to go. He knew some arrangement had been made for detaining Findlay, but had kept no track of the time. Now a strong feeling that the hour was late took possession of him. For Edith’s peace of mind the fellow mustn’t find him there. But he couldn’t leave without going upstairs to little Mildred, asleep in her crib.

As they approached the door of the bedroom he stopped and caught Edith to him, holding her close in his arms.

“My dear,” he whispered, and her lips, as she looked up in his face, moved in a soundless “Yes.”

After a moment they went on; but in that moment her heart began throbbing again with the same vague alarm she had felt before.

Haworth had stopped when just within the door of the room and stood there for a little, looking across at the sleeping child; then he suddenly turned away and hurried down the stairs into the room below. Edith, following, felt her hands caught, with a sort of desperation, in his, and heard his whispered, “Good night ... good night, my dear!”

He released her hands and was turning to leave her, when the front door, opening and closing again with a violent bang, shook the flimsy little house, and instantly thereafter Augustus Findlay plunged into the room. He was out of breath from running, and frenzied with precisely the right mixture of vindictive jealousy and vicious alcohol to produce perfect ignition.

“I thought so!” he shouted between his gasps for wind. “By God! I just got on to it they were trying to hold me back!” He glared across at Haworth. “What the hell you doing here in the house with my wife?” He was pulling something like a glove on his right hand as he spoke.

“I’m calling on Mrs. Findlay,” Haworth answered, quietly, and turned toward Edith as if to say a final word.

“Calling, were you?” Augustus was striding toward him. “Well if you’re _calling_ I’ve got to show my hand—an’ here it is you —— —— ——!” Saying which he struck Haworth a savage blow in the face with the brass knuckles he’d been putting on his hand.

Edith, uttering a subdued cry, tried to run in between the two, but Haworth put out his hand and held her back. He was standing quite unconcerned, though the blood was running down the left side of his face from an ugly cut just under the eye.

Turning to Edith as though nothing out of the way had occurred, Haworth raised her hand to his lips, looked deeply into her eyes, and huskily murmuring “Good-bye,” walked out of the room and out of the house without so much as a glance at Findlay.

For an instant the two left there stood silent; then Augustus recovering himself made for the stairs, up which he rushed with stumbling feet. When he came pounding down again a moment later he found Edith blocking the way. “You shan’t go!” she called out, breathlessly. “You shan’t go with that!”

“What?” he demanded, stopping before her.

“You’ve got it there under your coat!”

“What if I have?” (Trying to pass her.)

“You shan’t take it with you! No—no—no!” She was holding to his arm and trying to reach the gun.

He shoved her violently aside and strode toward the door. “You think I’m going to stop for _you_, you —— ——! No, by God! an’ you’ll damned well get it yourself when I come back!” And he was gone before she had time to recover herself.

* * * * *

Augustus knew the streets Haworth would be likely to take to get home, and started after him on a run—an unsteady one, owing to the load of booze he was carrying, but he got over the ground. He had the gun gripped in his hand and was muttering threats and foul names as he plunged along.

But Haworth, realizing that his appearance would attract attention—for, though he continually wiped his face, it went on bleeding—turned off the most direct route through the well-lighted business district of Egleston Square and Jamaica Plain, into some of the quiet streets to the south. Even at that he had to pass through one of the lesser business neighborhoods where there were shops with lighted windows and people about on the sidewalks.

It was just along here that Findlay, not finding Haworth on the route he’d expected him to take and turning off into side streets running parallel thereto, came up with him. Shouting threats and menacing him with his revolver, he strode along unsteadily by his side, attracting the attention of everybody within hearing. Quite a few who happened to be close at hand ran into shops or behind trees. Haworth’s bleeding face added to the general alarm.

The young man suddenly turned on Findlay with a low-voiced warning.

“Keep away from me or you’ll get into trouble!” he said, and instantly turned and walked as before.

“Trouble!” Augustus screamed. “You talk to me about trouble do you, you —— —— ——! What in hell d’ye suppose _you’re_ going to get? I’ve been waiting for this chance for a year, by God! for more’n a year, by God! an’ now we’ll see where you get off, you —— —— ——!” And on he went, letting out the foulest language he could lay his tongue to, with Haworth paying no further attention to him; and the two disappeared down a poorly lighted road which took them in the direction of Franklin Park.

After this extraordinary and rather terrifying scene had shifted itself well past the little area of shops and light, several of those who had witnessed it came out from their places of refuge and a hurried consultation was held, the result of which was a telephonic report of the affair to police station 13 in Jamaica Plain, and assurance from that quarter that a couple of men would be sent over.

One man who’d been a spectator, had sufficient curiosity to follow Haworth and Augustus at a safe distance, and was joined later by another who saw them pass a couple of blocks further on.

Haworth, dogged by the foul-mouthed nephew of old Michael Cripps, turned in at the mansion gate and went up the dark and weed-grown drive to the house. They mounted the steps of the front portico together, but when Augustus made as if to follow him in, Haworth suddenly turned on him. “You can’t come in here,” he said.

“We’ll see whether I can or not!” Findlay shouted, and began to fight his way past.

“Very well, we will.” Saying which in his quiet way Haworth gripped Augustus by the collar and gave him a shove that sent him back across the portico nearly to the steps, and then turned and entered the house. Findlay rushed back toward the door, which, as he reached it, was slammed violently in his face and bolted inside. With an outburst of the most malignant profanity he sprang against it like a maniac, making frantic efforts to get it open, pounding and shouting and screaming threats until exhausted and out of breath. After panting and fuming there for a while the crazy idea took hold of him that he might get in at a window—or at least get a look in, which was all he wanted. _One look—that was all!_ And he stumbled and felt his way along the east wall until he found himself under the large front window of the room on the left. The shutters were closed, but at the bottom of one of them, which was about on the level of his eyes as he stood on the ground, there were two or three broken slats, and with the frenzied fit of rage still shaking him like an ague he peered avidly in.

* * * * *

Although Mrs. Temple had waited nearly two hours in the darkness about halfway down the drive, hoping to intercept Mr. Haworth on his return, she wasn’t there—as you’ve already gathered—when he finally did come. She’d been sitting for a long time in the grass at the side of the drive, her poor old heart beating the very life out of her with anxiety, when she suddenly became aware that a peculiar mechanical sound was coming from the direction of the mansion. She’d heard it before while Mr. Haworth had been working in the basement. He must have got home by some other way than the drive, and she’d missed him.

Limping back to the house, she got into the shrubbery near the side windows and tried to see into the room on the left, but it was still in darkness. She tried the other windows on that side with the same result. The entrance hall seemed to be the only place in the house where there was a light. The sounds in the house had now ceased. All was quiet.

Then she heard a strident voice down the Torrington Road. Faint it was at first, but gradually growing louder as the man doing the shouting approached. Quarreling with some one he seemed to be. Oaths were screamed out, and a great quantity of blackguardly language along with them.

As the abusive and threatening clamor became more distinct Mrs. Temple realized that the parties concerned were turning in at the gate and coming up the drive.

Intensely alarmed, she moved through the shrubbery to the front corner of the house, where she could get a view of the dimly lighted portico.

It was only a moment before Haworth, closely hounded by Augustus, appeared out of the darkness of the drive, and the old woman caught the metallic glint of something that Findlay had in his hand. Without an instant’s hesitation she hobbled toward him; if she could have got there she’d have torn the gun away from him or been shot in the attempt. But before she’d gone halfway the two had mounted the steps, and a second later Augustus was staggering back, with the door slammed in his face.

Owing to Findlay’s outcries and his fierce beating against the door, Mrs. Temple could at first hear nothing else, but when his hammering and shouting subsided a little she began to notice again those strange noises from within. Upon this she hurried back along the side of the house, still avoiding the footpath and keeping in the bushes. Determined now to get in, even though against Mr. Haworth’s wishes, she made for the kitchen door, but couldn’t open it, and another rear door giving into the back hall was also locked. Then she remembered the basement entrance at the bottom of the stone steps. She found the door there fastened, as she’d expected, but there was a secret way to slide the bolt back by reaching in through an aperture in the side and finding a cord to pull.

The cord was there, but she couldn’t make it work. It was tied in some way, and after desperate attempts she had to give it up.

She was utterly terrified, for that drunken beast might get into the house with his knife or pistol and do Mr. Haworth some fearful injury. In addition to this danger something alarming was going on inside. She could hear hurried footsteps and what seemed to her strange menacing sounds.

She started back toward the front of the house, hobbling and stumbling through the shrubbery, thinking she might find somebody down in Torrington Road who’d come to her assistance.

But as she came toward the side windows of the room on the left, she was amazed to see that, instead of the darkness that had prevailed, an unusually brilliant light was shining out in narrow beams below the roller shades. At both windows these shades had now been pulled down, but as is quite commonly the case, they weren’t quite long enough to reach the bottom of the windows. She hurried to the one nearest to the front of the house and looked in through the narrow slit.

At once she saw Mr. Haworth seated by the large table, reading a book. She watched him intently as he sat there occasionally turning the pages. He seemed entirely at ease and untroubled. There was nothing about him that gave the idea of anything being wrong or out of the way. It amazed her that he could recover entire equanimity so soon after the frightful time he’d been having with Augustus Findlay.

As she watched him he began to feel in his pockets in the absent-minded way she knew so well, bringing out his pipe and tobacco pouch; then he stopped reading and began to fill the pipe. It looked so safe and commonplace after her frightful imaginings and premonitions, that she hesitated about calling out to him, as she’d fully intended to do.

Now he rose and got a box of matches from the mantel, returning with it to the table. She had a momentary impulse to speak to him through the glass, but his singularly calm and reassuring behavior made her hesitate. Could it be that she was mistaken after all?

Quite suddenly something peculiar startled her—a moving shadow on the floor it seemed to be, and she realized that the whole room couldn’t be seen from where she was: the back part, where the doors to the breakfast room and the butler’s pantry were, was out of sight. This was behind Haworth as he stood at the table lighting his pipe, and a wave of horror swept over her as she started for the window farther back which would give her a view of it.

The aperture below the shade at this window was very narrow, but she twisted round, and looking sideways was able to see through into the room.

At last! The frightful thing had come! Standing there behind Mr. Haworth and aiming a terrible black thing straight at his head, a man, his face hidden by a cloth or bandage, his clothes clinging to him as though soaking wet.... She didn’t stop to see any more, but screamed out a frantic warning, at the same time starting back for the other window where she could see Haworth.

As she turned she saw dimly by the light sifting out under the shades, that a man carrying a stepladder was hurrying down the walk toward the front of the house, and she called to him as she ran, but didn’t stop to see whether he heard or not. In an instant she was back at the other window and looking in. Haworth was standing close to the table, half leaning on it and holding a lighted match to his pipe, emitting quick puffs of smoke as he drew on it. She shrieked out his name and beat on the glass with her hands. But she’d no more than begun this when two shots rang out—one close after the other and with reports so deafening that they seemed to shake the house.

The old woman was unable to move, frozen, paralyzed, seeing Haworth spin round as he was hit, and after a weak attempt to hold to the table for support, sink to the floor. Almost at the same time her own trembling legs gave way and she sank down, lying half on the ground and half against the low-growing bushes beneath the window. But only for the briefest moment was she there, for she’d hardly more than gone down when she was struggling to her feet again. And as she did so she saw by the light still shining through under the roller shade, that the man who’d been running along the path must have stopped and dropped the ladder, for he was picking it up; and as she stumbled blindly through the bushes toward the rear of the house he started running toward the front, dragging the ladder after him along the walk.

The doors of the kitchen and back hall were still locked, but she found that some one had opened the basement entrance and she got in there.

Two policemen arriving shortly after—smashing a side window to get in, as there wasn’t time to fumble with the doors—found the old woman on the floor holding Haworth’s limp body in her arms, his head fallen back against her breast.

The patrolmen who smashed their way into the house some twenty-six minutes after the firing of the shots, were sent from Station 13. The desk sergeant got the phone call from citizens in Jamaica Plain, describing the terrifying progress through that district of the two quarreling men with revolvers—blood streaming down the face of one of them. He sent a man from the station, and also the patrolman on the nearest beat as soon as his call came in. These two had no difficulty in picking up the trail of consternation left along the route that Haworth and Findlay had taken. But when they’d followed it a short distance beyond Jamaica Plain the two citizens whose curiosity had led them into trailing the quarreling men in order to see what happened, came sprinting down the road in a frantic effort to get away, for they’d been close to the mansion when the shooting took place and knew that if someone was shot suspicion might light on them.

The patrolmen took these men for the ones they were after and grabbed them. But in a minute they saw there was something else to it; and after a bit of time wasted in sharp questioning they got at the truth and made a run for the Cripps mansion, bringing the two citizens along with them. Material witnesses at least, and a good chance they’d had a hand in it—whatever it was. After smashing one of the kitchen windows these two citizen chaps were shoved in first and stood back against the wall with orders not to move. Then the officers, working with their electric torches (for all the lights were now off) ran through the butler’s pantry, guided by the pungent smell of gunpowder, and an instant later found what they were looking for.

A quick glance at Haworth was all they needed. One took charge; the other ran for the nearest patrol box and reported to his station. The station notified headquarters, and down came a department automobile with the chief inspector and three plain-clothes men and after that the medical examiner (called coroner in most places) and two more uniformed men. (They need a few uniforms in a case like this so people won’t think it’s a hold-up.)

The medical examiner came in his own car, bringing his stenographer and a surveyor with him, as was his custom. I don’t think it’s the usual thing to run a surveyor in, outside of Boston. Of course there were photographers and all that, and it wasn’t any time at all before newspapermen were swarming about.

Mrs. Temple hardly noticed anything—excepting that the lights went suddenly on—until she found herself being urged back by one of the policemen—he was gentle enough with the old woman—toward the swing door of the butler’s pantry. James Dreek was standing just within the door, looking pale and frightened, with a sort of wild-eyed blankness on his face. The officer told them they’d have to go back into the kitchen, and Dreek disappeared in that direction, but Mrs. Temple tried to resist, looking back to where men were bending over Haworth—the surveyor making measurements of positions and distances, working by compass; the medical examiner cutting away parts of his clothing. She made an effort to push past the policeman and get back to the body, but he prevented her, speaking with rough kindness: “Now, now, ma’am, you won’t be allowed over there!” But as he looked at the old woman he saw it wasn’t an ordinary case.

“One o’ the family, ma’am?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yes. Let me by!”

“You can’t do anything, lady—he’s past help.”

“I can be there with ’im, can’t I?”

“Not now, ma’am—but if you’re one o’ the family they’ll let you in afterwards.”

She said no more, but went where he directed. There were a number of persons waiting in the kitchen—all exits from which were guarded—but she didn’t notice them, nor had she any idea of what was going on—that the detectives were searching every part of the house and going over the grounds outside with electric torches; that a couple of plain-clothes men were out after the man who’d followed Haworth through the streets, threatening him with a revolver; that the people waiting there in the room with her were being taken into another room one by one, to be questioned.

* * * * *

Some time later she found herself in the great entrance hall, standing before a man at an improvised desk of rough boarding. There were police about and a plain-clothes man was writing things on sheets of paper. Two or three others not in uniform were standing near, apparently uninterested, but in reality watching her like cats. The old woman glanced at the various people in the room, hardly aware that they were real. It might just as well have been a dream. After a time she thought she heard some one speaking to her.

“What?” she asked, looking about vaguely.

An officer came to her and explained that she must answer the questions.

“What questions?” she inquired.

It appeared there was curiosity as to her name, age, and occupation. She gave the information in a low mumbling voice, speaking absently.

That out of the way, the inspector, noticing that she was inattentive, began with sharp emphasis:

“Mrs. Temple, you knew the deceased, did you not?”

The old woman turned to him, startled, and stood looking at him a moment. Then she looked away, glancing rather vaguely about the room. She was beginning to realize where she was and what was going on.

“Well, are we going to hear anything from you this evening?”

“Are you the perlice?” she asked with a sharpness of her own.

“You’re here to answer questions—not to ask them.”

“I’d like to know if you’re the perlice, that’s all!”

“This is a police investigation, if that’s what you mean. We’re taking testimony throwing light on the crime just committed here. You may be able to help us.”

“No——” Mrs. Temple shook her old gray head. “I won’t be able to help ye none.”

“You mean you don’t know anything about it?”

“I mean what I told ye—that I won’t be able to help ye none.”

“You don’t seem to realize your position, madam. We can compel you to answer questions here. But you ought to be willing to give us any information you can without that, so we can find the guilty man and bring him to the punishment he deserves.”

“What good’ll punishment do, I’d like to know? What’s the good o’ that to—to the poor dear man lyin’ there—shot down like a dog he was—doin’ no harm to no one—juss standin’ there lightin’ his pipe—and shot down like a dog!” She was unable to go on for a moment; but having caught what she said about Haworth lighting his pipe, the inspector waited for her. He would give her plenty of time and nurse her along, for it looked very much as though she’d been a witness to the actual shooting.

“A nice lot of folks _you_ be,” the old woman finally went on in a broken voice but with deep indignation back of it. “What was ye doin’ before, I’d like to know, asettin’ around offices an’ paradin’ up and down the streets! When I went an’ warned ye more’n a week ago that we was in danger over here, I was told there warn’t nothin’ you could do—not till somebody done somethin’. Well, now some one’s done somethin’ an’ ye come hurryin’ around askin’ us all about it! But ye needn’t take no trouble askin’ me. I’ve told ye all I’ve got to tell. I told it to one of yer perlice a-strollin’ up an’ down Centre Street in a nice uniform with brass buttons on it!”

The inspector made no attempt to interrupt or cut short Mrs. Temple’s somewhat fervent remarks, and when she’d quite finished he spoke to her in a carefully softened tone.

“You’re certainly right, Mrs. Temple,” he said, “as to its being too late to do anything now for the—the unfortunate victim in this case. His murder was, as you indicate, a most cold-blooded crime. Every additional particular that is brought out adds to its cruelty and brutality. And was it really a fact, as I think you intimated, that the poor fellow was lighting his pipe as the shots were fired?” He looked sympathetically and inquiringly at the old woman.

But Mrs. Temple’s mouth was shut and there were no signs visible that she had any intention of opening it.

“Rot in jail before she’d talk if she didn’t want to,” was the inspector’s unspoken comment. Well, they’d have to make her want to, that was all. So she was excused, almost with apologies, and allowed to go where she pleased. But wherever that was a detective would be on the job and not lose track of her for an instant.

* * * * *

All available information was in, but the plain-clothes men were still working through the house and grounds. No weapon of any kind had yet been found, and no bullet marks discovered in the room. The theory regarding the latter was that the bullets (it was taken for granted they’d been fired through the front window) struck against the masonry of the fireplace or chimney and left no noticeable mark. In that case, however, they should have been found where they dropped—and the search for them was still going on.

Notwithstanding there were any number of witnesses to the following of Haworth home by an infuriated man using the most abusive language and threatening him with a revolver, no one could be found who had any idea who this person was. Nor had anyone seen him make an attack on Haworth that would result in the cut and bruise which had been found on his face. The two Jamaica Plains citizens who’d followed the quarreling couple to the house gave as good a description of him as could be expected. But their statement that the instant before the shots were fired he was peering in through the large window at the left of the entrance portico and had his revolver gripped in his hand, was positive and unshaken. Also that he stayed there a few seconds after the firing,—though they could not make out what he was doing,—and then turned suddenly and dashed madly down the drive into Torrington Road. Everything pointed to this person as the man they wanted, and the inspector had detectives out after him when the taking of testimony had hardly begun.

The report of the medical inspector with the “survey” attached, showing all distances, positions, heights, measurements of everything in the room, as well as all particulars relating to the body of the murdered man, had been turned in. Out of this technical mass of information a few facts adapted to the limited intelligence of the layman could be extracted. Charles Haworth’s tragic death resulted from whichever of the two gunshot wounds found upon him was inflicted first. Either would have caused it instantly. The shots were discharged from a distance of from fifteen to twenty feet. No chance therefore existed of the wounds being self-inflicted. The distance of the weapon or weapons at the instant of discharge, the locality of the wounds and the course of the projectiles through the body, made such a feat impossible. Both missiles had come from behind the victim, one entering at the back of the head and drilling the brain, the other striking near the middle of the spine and passing through the heart. There were no burns or powder marks on the clothing nor on the head or body, where the projectiles went in.

The upward course of the bullets demonstrated two things—and you can see from both of them how nicely the services of a surveyor came in: first, Haworth must have been standing when he was shot, for otherwise the assailant couldn’t have got low enough down to fire at the angle shown; second, even with Haworth standing, the weapon must have been held well down to give the bullets their upward course; but as accurate aim (which had evidently been taken) would have been difficult if not impossible while holding the gun down within two or three inches of the floor, the probability was that the assailant had been standing outside of one of the windows and had fired into the room from near the bottom of it.

The detectives had a fresh filled pipe—the tobacco on top hardly more than singed; a book fallen open on its face, crumpling the leaves; a box of matches; one partly burned match—all from the floor close to the body. The exact position of each article was given in the survey.

Haworth had evidently been reading and had stopped to fill and light his pipe as the first of the two bullets made an end of him. No evidence of a struggle with anyone—none that he had an idea of what was about to happen.

* * * * *

Two persons concerned in this tragic affair got away from the mansion and its vicinity before the arrival of the police—Hugo Pentecost from within, slipping out quietly through the basement entrance, proceeding through the rear of the property and coming into town by way of Brookline,—thus avoiding Torrington Road and Roxbury altogether; and Augustus Findlay from the front, rushing blindly down the drive like a wild man pursued by seven devils.

After one fearful moment when he’d stood, stunned and paralyzed, looking through the broken slats near the bottom of the shutters of the front window—the booze suddenly swept from his system—the crashing reports of the shots ringing in his ears and Haworth lying there in a crumpled heap on the floor, Findlay was suddenly recalled to himself by feeling the weight of something dragging down his right arm; and raising it into a bar of light coming through the chinks in the shutter, he saw his revolver gripped in his hand, his forefinger still hooked to the trigger. He knew—hazily, but he knew it—that he’d been following Haworth and threatening him with the gun.... And so at last he’d done it! In a drunken frenzy he’d killed a man! Murder—murder—that was it! The crime they hang people for or sizzle the life out of them, strapped in an electric chair! They’d have _him_ for that if he stayed there. Flight was his only chance, yet he couldn’t move. He saw the lights suddenly go off in the house—somebody already there! A moment later he heard a loud voice within calling out something, yet still his feet were weighted with lead. Then came the sound of quick footsteps from around the southeast corner. Some one was coming down the path at the side of the house and dragging some heavy wooden thing—he heard it grating along the stone flagging. Wheeling about with a desperate jerk, he fled madly down the drive.

Findlay had been running only a few minutes (he was out on the Torrington Road by this time) when he suddenly thought of his gun. It mustn’t be found on him! Looking frantically about, he saw a thick clump of shrubbery on one of the front lawns and quite near the road. No one would look for it there! But as he stopped to pitch the weapon over the fence he discovered that he was being followed! He mustn’t be seen throwing the thing away—that alone would convict him! There was nothing to do but run with the gun in his hand. Perhaps he could see a hole or drain where he could drop it without a noticeable motion as he ran.

* * * * *

Somewhere about the time the homicide squad arrived at the Cripps mansion an individual whose clothing set him down as a laboring man and who was evidently carrying a load of something with more than one-half of one percent alcoholic content, walked a trifle unsteadily into the South Station by the Atlantic Avenue entrance, looked blankly about, and then stopped a man who was hurrying past and asked where there was a telephone. On having the booths pointed out to him, he mumbled a thick “much obliged” and made his way to them, getting into No. 19 and occupying it for some little time. Then he reappeared in the concourse, and after further inquiries of various persons, found the gate for the 11:35 P.M. train for New York (“Advanced” time). With much fumbling in his pockets and boozy mutterings as a running accompaniment thereto, he produced a ticket, and after passing in at the gate tried to give it up to the Pullman and train conductors seated at a table just inside; they, however, refusing to take it—as only Pullman passengers gave their tickets there—he went on toward the train, and eventually climbed aboard one of the day coaches.

Walking bravely down the aisle, finding not a little assistance from the friendly arms and backs of the seats on each side, he half fell into an unoccupied seat—the next to the last at the extreme forward end. It might have been observed (but it wasn’t) that this seat gave a person the advantage of having all the lights of the car at his back, leaving his face in comparative obscurity.

Not long after the train passed the Back Bay station this man was half asleep, his head bobbing about; and the conductor took his ticket from the band of his cap where he had stuck it, and passed on without getting a view of his face.

On arrival at the Grand Central a few minutes before six in the morning (a few minutes before five, standard) he was left snoozing in his seat after the rest of the passengers had filed out. A moment or two later the head end trainman, running through the coaches to see that all was clear, stopped and shook him, not altogether gently, into consciousness, yelling as he did so, “All out—all out—Grand Central!... You get out here!”

The drowsy chap, coming to himself and doubtless being considerably hazy, conceived that he was being attacked, and hit out in all directions. The result was a scuffle of wrestling and pulling, all the more eagerly entered into by the trainman because of having had a lot of trouble during the night trying to keep the fellow’s muddy boots off the seat in front of him, throwing them off by main force a number of times. The present struggle ended in the enraged passenger falling in the aisle and being dragged out by his feet to the station platform.

* * * * *

On this same morning the steamer _North Land_, from the stern of which Mr. Pentecost had rather skillfully disembarked a few hours after she left Boston, came down the Sound and through Hell Gate, emerging into the East River at about eight o’clock, daylight-saving time. Half an hour later she was rounding the Battery into the North River, and not long after that was backing into her berth alongside Pier 18.

By this time most of the passengers were massed in the saloon lobby of the hurricane deck, their small luggage in their hands, ready to go ashore through the starboard door of that lobby as soon as the steamer was made fast and the gangplank run out from the wharf. Nearly every officer and steward and deckhand was on duty on the starboard side, which was the landing side in this instance, as the steamer slowly backed in alongside her wharf.

A small rowboat had been lying close up under the stringpieces at the shore end of the pier. There were three men in it, apparently of the deckhand order, and they had mops and pails in the bottom of the boat and across the seats. They had rowed in there some time before the arrival of the steamer, coming along the south side of the slip among the barges and scows of the New York Central Railroad Company which, at this time, occupied the pier on that side as a freight terminal.

As the _North Land_ came slowly gliding in stern first, the men in the rowboat pulled out into the middle of the slip and waited there. A moment after she was made fast and the crew on the fantail had gone forward, a man in the uniform of a ship’s officer stepped out of the passageway near the stern on the port side (the passengers were to disembark on the starboard) and motioned to the men in the rowboat, upon which they pulled up close under the guard and began to make an examination of the hull near the water line. Soon after this they had mops out and appeared to be swabbing off something on the ship’s side, the officer overlooking the job from the rail above them. A moment later there were two others watching them, not in the ship’s uniform, one from some distance forward on the port outside passageway, and the other from near the stern end of it where it opens into the fantail. These men each had a movie camera focused on the party in the rowboat, and when one of the swabbers was trying to get at a place that was too high to reach and the officer dropped him a rope ladder, the two men kept their cameras trained on him as he clambered up and stepped over the rail into the passage, and still followed him as he was reaching down the ship’s side with his mop in one hand while clinging to the rail with the other.

This man—the deckhand or swabber who had come aboard by the rope ladder—got somehow mixed with one or two others of his kind who came out into the passage, but eventually he could be seen climbing down the ladder again and into the boat; and very soon after that the three rowed lazily away with their buckets and mops. The officer hauled the rope ladder aboard and disappeared through the “emergency exit” into the ship’s cabin, and the men with the cameras were already gone, one walking forward along the port passageway, and the one who had been near the stern passing round to the starboard side by way of the fantail. Everything was smoothly and rapidly done, the whole thing occupying scarcely four minutes from the time the rowboat came up to the ship’s side.

It’s hardly necessary to tell you that after this little performance was over, the man who climbed the rope ladder with his mop was still on board the steamer, and that the man with the same mop who went down the ladder into the rowboat was another person altogether. Nor is it of the least importance to mention names, for you gentlemen can hardly fail to be aware that it was Mr. Pentecost who thus came aboard and that it was one of his “trusties”—made up and dressed to appear in every way like him—who slid down into the rowboat; so that it might be seen, if anyone kept account of such things, that the number of men in it when it was rowed away from the steamer was not less than when it came up under the stern. And, as you can readily imagine—if you have not already done so—the entire scene was played, as one might say, for outside consumption only—that is, for whoever might be about in boats or barges or on the railway pier opposite. No one connected with the steamer could have any knowledge of it; a passenger approaching from either direction on one of the passages would have been begged, by whichever camera man blocked the way, to wait just a moment until the picture was taken; an officer or seaman would receive quite the same request, but with the added explanation that their film concern had obtained permission from the Eastern Steamship Lines, Inc., to photograph a bunch of seamen (which is to say, actors posing as such) swabbing blood off the steamer’s side.

No one would have recognized Pentecost in the confusion, even had he been seen; and it was perfectly true that such permission had been asked and granted. Indeed, the company had loaned an officer’s uniform to help it along. There seemed to have been a little misunderstanding as to dates, but that was a small matter. Back of it all, if it ever got to it, they’d have found a company and a scenario, and a couple of thousand feet of film already taken.

* * * * *

The passengers, herded in the saloon lobby of the hurricane deck, which was the one they were to disembark from, were growing impatient. Those nearest the open door on the starboard side had noticed a couple of men on the dock in conversation with a policeman, and the moment the gangplank was run out the latter had given a signal of some kind and the ship’s officers held everybody back. The two men came aboard at once and went with the Purser into his office, where they scanned the passenger list. A little later the Captain came to the door and the Purser asked him to step in a moment. Shortly after that the Steward and head waiter were sent for. Then (the whole affair had hardly taken five minutes) the two men went ashore with the Purser, and at once the ship’s officers who were blocking the way stood aside, the two ticket takers from the New York office took their places, and the passengers began to leave the steamer.

Near the foot of the gangplank in the vast dock building was a corner partition where the passengers coming ashore made a turn to the right. Back in this corner, which commanded a view of the people filing past the two ticket takers and down the gangplank, stood the Purser with the two men who had been looking over the passenger list in his office.

It was toward the end of the stream of disembarking passengers that Mr. Pentecost and the two Harkers, father and son, came into view at the top of the gangway, with one of the stewards carrying their luggage. As they came ashore and were approaching the right-hand turn, the Purser stepped out and shook hands with them, trusting they’d had a restful night after their strenuous day in Boston, and wishing them good luck with their new invention. All was in the most jovial manner, and the three passed on toward the street. But before they’d got there one of the stewards came running after them and said that if they had time the Purser would like to see them for just a minute. “Why, certainly,” Pentecost said. “Tell him we’ll be right along!”

Harker was alarmed and started to say something under his breath, but Pentecost growled in a half whisper, without looking at him, “Can’t you see everything they do stamps it!”

Alfred went on toward the street to get a taxi, and the two partners turned back.

The Purser was still on the dock near the gangplank, but the two men who’d been with him were gone—at least, not in sight. But don’t imagine that fooled Pentecost any.

“Didn’t mean to trouble you,” Mr. Lawson called out as the two came near.

“No trouble,” said Pentecost.

“Not at all,” added Harker. “What’s going?”

“Why, I’ve just heard something that might concern you gentlemen in a business way. Man came aboard a minute ago and was telling about a hell of a murder last night over in Boston.”

“Murder, eh?” said Harker, with the interest such news might naturally inspire—but no more.

“What makes you think we’d be concerned?” Pentecost inquired.

“Hardly a chance you are—only he said it was out in West Roxbury, and I remembered you told us _your_ man——”

“What was the name—did he say?” Pentecost asked quickly and with awakening anxiety—just the right amount you know—not the merest trifle overdone.

“Why no, I don’t think he did.”

Pentecost glanced at Harker and Harker at him.

“A lot of things might happen in West Roxbury,” he said, turning back to the Purser.

“Sure they might,” assented that official; “but he said it was an inventor chap living out there alone.”

“Inventor!” exclaimed Pentecost. “Living out——By George! And all that money we——” He broke off, and suddenly turning to go was heard to say, “I’ve got to make a run for a train!”

Harker emitted a “My God!” and followed his partner up the dock. But Pentecost stopped suddenly a few yards away, where he could still be seen and heard by the Purser (or anyone concealed in the vicinity), and pulling out a N. Y., N. H. & H. Railroad folder, began looking for express trains to Boston.

“That’s right,” Harker said, coming up to him. “We’ll get the first train out!”

The Purser was approaching them.

“You stay here,” said Pentecost. “There’s a lot of business at the office. I can wire if I want you. Here”—looking at the folder—“‘New York to Boston’—I ought to get the nine o’clock.”

“No—” (from Harker) “half-past nine now!”

“That’s Daylight—railroad’s on Standard.”

“So it is—train’s ten our time—just make it!”

Pentecost seized the Purser’s hand. “Thank you very much, Mr. Lawson. You’ve done us a great favor.” And as he was turning to go: “We paid that man something like thirty thousand yesterday. A yegg’s run up on him—that’s what it is!” He hurried out to the street and jumped into the taxi that Alfred was holding, pushed a five-dollar bill into the driver’s hand with “Grand Central—make time!” and shouting out a few parting directions to Harker as the taxi started with a great jerk (the driver was earning his money) he was whirled away into the traffic.

* * * * *

The man who was following Augustus Findlay as he fled wildly away from the Cripps mansion a few seconds after the sound of the two revolver shots split the air, wasn’t by any means putting a shadow on him, but was running him close, never less than thirty yards behind, and a flash on him from his pocket torch whenever it was safe to throw a light. His name was Graham and he knew his business. He kept so near that Findlay didn’t get a chance to pitch his gun anywhere, and what’s more, I doubt if he could have done it if he’d got the chance, for the minute he realized he was being followed and the light flashed on him every few seconds, he was virtually on the scrap heap—which is to say, out of his head with terror.

It was in a quiet block of Collamore Street over near the railroad tracks that Graham ran up on him and bumped him against the iron post or column of a street light. This nearly knocked Findlay over, but Graham got him by the throat and shut off his wind before he had a chance to fall, and in his wild struggles to loosen Graham’s grip so he could get air, and Graham doing some extra thrashing about trying to hold him, it gave the idea there was the liveliest kind of a fight on; and a man in his shirt sleeves, who’d been sitting smoking a pipe at a second-story window nearly above, commenced to yell at them to quit.

From that minute you could see that Graham was trying to get Findlay’s revolver away from him, twisting his arm, trying to bite his fingers loose, and all the while shouting out, “You damn dirty sneak, gimme that gun! Gimme the gun, I say! It’s the gun I want!” and things like that. And Augustus, who was terrified, thinking they were after the thing to prove murder on him, clung to it with the tenacity of an octopus.

The man at the second-story window, whose name it later appeared was Rathbun, finding yelling to the two scrappers was no good, came downstairs and out at the street door of the tenement building; but seeing—or, to be more accurate, hearing what it was they were fighting for, hesitated in the doorway, as he had an aversion to being shot up. In this instant of Rathbun’s hesitation Graham gave Augustus a smash in the face that made him loosen his hold, and then snatching the revolver out of his hands turned and raced up Collamore Street, carrying it by the muzzle; and Rathbun noticed, as the man swung into a street light, that the hand he was holding it with had a glove on it.

After Graham got safely away, Rathbun went out to Findlay, who was lying in the road, and tried to find out what it was all about and whether he was hurt. But he couldn’t get anything out of the fellow.

After a few moments Findlay got to his feet unsteadily, stared blankly at Rathbun for a second or two, then wheeled around and went limping down the street toward the railroad. A sorry-looking object he was, battered and torn and plastered with mud. But his mental condition was sorrier. Maudlin and devastating fright possessed him. He’d done a murder—murder—murder! Shot a man, killed a man, and they were hunting for him—they’d get him! Drunkenness no defense. He’d looked that up before, when he really thought of doing it! This time he didn’t think. And he’d done it!

He stopped. If he went home they’d get him there. But if he tried to get away it would be the same as a confession of guilt. If he went home he could deny everything—insist that he didn’t know what they were talking about—that he hadn’t left the house all that evening. Edith must back him up. That is, if anyone came for him. But after all, why should they? No one could possibly have seen him at the Haworth place. It was dark as pitch. And the shutters were closed, so no light shone on him. Yet who could the man have been who got his revolver? Just a plain hold-up, that’s what it was. Yet he thought he’d heard him following from way back near Torrington Road. But if he was a detective he’d have arrested him. And, anyway, a detective couldn’t have got on the job thirty seconds after Haworth was k——. Great God! He couldn’t say it even to himself.

With his mind seething, he stumbled up the two steps to his front door and stopped there with his hand on the knob and a quick glance up the street, thinking he heard some one following. He turned with a sudden terror and tried to open the door, but it was locked. He shook it and pounded on it, and the instant he heard Edith turn the key in the lock he burst in, closed the door frantically after him, and stood pushing against it as if trying to keep some one out.

Edith stood quiet, watching his feverish terror. When he finally ceased his violent pushing against the door she spoke.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Tell you what? Whad’ ye mean? I ain’t got anything to tell!”

“You have.”

“I have not! I been in a fight, that’s all. A hell of a dirty footpad jumped on me—just over the other side of the railroad—but he didn’t get any money—he only took my gun!”

“Your revolver?”

“Can’t you hear what I say?”

“What had you been doing with it?”

“What had——I just had it along. How could I be doing anything when he took it away from me!” The man was almost sobbing. “You ain’t got any right to talk to me like that! You’d ought to help me—that’s what you’d ought to do! I’m going to bed and you tell ’em I was here all this evening! You can do that much for me, I should think. I was here reading a book, that book over there on the stand—that’s all you got to say. What’s the harm o’that? Just tell ’em I was here reading that book?”

Edith shook her head.

Then followed begging and crying and protesting on his part, but with no response on hers. She didn’t speak again.

After Augustus had gone whining upstairs and locked himself in his bedroom, Edith opened the front door and looked out into the dismal night. She was hesitating. If it hadn’t been for leaving little Mildred alone in the house with the crazed brute (who had often threatened to kill the child) she’d have hurried through the dark streets to Torrington Road. She knew from her husband’s behavior that something fearful had happened, yet without an idea of how terrible it was.

Finally she sat on a chair in the small living room and waited. There was nothing else to do.

* * * * *

It was early morning when they came—still dark. Edith heard their feet on the wooden steps and then the heavy knock on the front door.

Two men stood there, dressed in ordinary clothes. And she could see a uniformed policeman moving back at the side of the house. It was the patrolman on the beat who’d been phoned from headquarters to keep an eye on the place till the Inspectors got there. Now they’d come and were sending him to cover the rear.

The men at the door were roughly polite. They were sorry to disturb her, but was Mr. Findlay at home?

“Yes.”

“We’d like to see him.”

“He’s in his room upstairs. I’ll tell him you’re here.”

But as she turned to go the man who’d been speaking called after her:

“If it’s all the same to you we’ll go——Which room is it?”

“The back one—farthest from the stairs.”

“Thank you ma’am.”

The men ran up, and she heard their loud knocking on the door and gruff orders to Findlay to open it.

Then came the crash of splintering wood (the door was a flimsy affair) and their heavy tread as they rushed into the room. A moment later there were more distant voices, and the men came hurrying down again.

“They got him outside, ma’am,” one of them said. “Sorry to make you all this trouble.” And the two passed out at the front door. Edith called:

“Oh, wait! I want to——”

One of the men turned in the doorway.

“I want you to—I want you to tell me if—if——Oh, what is it?”

“Some trouble in West Roxbury, ma’am. You can find out from headquarters.”

As the man passed into the street she could hear Augustus’s voice through the open door. He was whining and crying that he didn’t know anything about it—he was here at home all the evening reading a book—that was what he was doing—he never once left the house—ask his wife if they didn’t believe it—she was right there—just ask her; in the midst of which came a rough caution from one of the inspectors that he’d better keep his mouth shut—he could tell all that to the chief. A moment later came the clatter of a car driven up from somewhere, the slamming of its door, and the sound of its rapid departure up the street.

* * * * *

A number of things were happening along here that I’m not going to try to describe to you. My supposition is that I’m able to get away with plain facts so they’ll be understood, which is all I aim at. But when it comes to telling you about Edith Findlay through all this affair—her going over to the mansion as soon as she could get a neighbor to take care of little Mildred, and staying there with all that was left of poor Haworth as long as they’d let her; and later her being at the funeral; and after that sitting stunned and dry-eyed in her little parlor at home while she slowly came to the realization of what it meant—that the one person who was all there was in the world for her had gone forever, and that somehow it was through her that the terrible thing had come about—I’m out of it altogether. I can only briefly refer to it as I’ve just been doing.

Yet with all these fearful things coming down on her, the poor child—frail and delicate and already in the grip of the demon of disease—had it in her to stand up to it, quiet and brave. I made a mistake, though, when I said all these fearful things coming down on her, for she knew only one. Others had no place in her mind. They didn’t even occur to her.

And with old Mrs. Temple it was much the same, though in a different way. Back of all the police investigations, and questionings of witnesses, and photographing, and ransacking the mansion and grounds surrounding it, and the sensational newspaper write-ups, and arrests, and talk, and confusion, was this cruel blow for each of them—the loss of the one who was dear to them.

* * * * *

Mr. Pentecost left the train at Back Bay Station on arrival in Boston, thus saving about five minutes. And he saved some three minutes more by not having to explain to the taxi man where Torrington Road could be found, the morning and early afternoon papers having thoroughly attended to that.

It was a few minutes after four o’clock (Advanced time) when his machine came tearing up the drive—that is, tearing up the lower part of it, for it was stopped by a patrolman some distance from the house. Two policemen and a plainclothesman were on watch there. Pentecost hurriedly explained who he was, and that his firm had paid a large amount of money the day before for one of the murdered man’s inventions—which was still in the house, he supposed. They’d left it crated in the front hall.

The detective made no reply to that, but instead informed Mr. Pentecost that the Chief would like to see him at headquarters.

“Yes, but wait a minute!” remonstrated Pentecost. “I want to find out if that machine——”

“You can talk it over with the Inspector when you get there.”

“Talk it over! But my God, man—it’s our property!”

“The Inspector’ll attend to that. You don’t need to worry.”

“Was there a truck out here after it?”

“There sure was, but the truck didn’t get it. How do we know but it might have something to do with the case?”

“Have you got the idea that anybody’s going to shoot up a man for a three-ton machine he couldn’t get out of the house?”

“Ask the Inspector that.”

Pentecost was allowed to go in and satisfy himself that his property was still in the house and had not been tampered with. After a moment of breathing easier (not overdone you know) upon finding that this was the case, he apparently began to call to mind that a terrible crime had been committed and finally asked if he could see the poor chap who’d been shot. But the body’d been taken to the morgue some hours before.

Half an hour later the detective and Mr. Pentecost arrived at Pemberton Square and the Inspector didn’t keep them waiting long. Besides the latter there were two plain-clothes men in the room—one at a table ready to make notes, the other standing back near the window. The Inspector, seated at his desk, greeted Pentecost pleasantly; and after an informal question or two regarding his business and the methods of running it, came down to the matter in hand.

“Understand your firm’s been having some dealings with the man they shot out in Roxbury—or rather Jamaica Plain—last night.”

“Why yes, we just bought an invention of his—that is, rights to exploit and so forth—and paid the money down for it. It was only yesterday, and the machine’s still out there in the house. One of your men in charge advised me to speak to you about it, and I certainly hope you’ll be so good as to arrange it so we can——”

“All in good time Mr. Pentecost. First I’d like to have you tell me what you know about the affair or the people concerned in it.”

“Yes, certainly, certainly—er——” Pentecost appeared to be slightly flurried by having the subject shifted so suddenly away from what was apparently uppermost in his mind. (It might be just as well to remember I said “appeared to be” and “apparently.”)

“Your firm specializes in novelties of a mechanical nature, you say—organizes companies and that sort of thing?”

“Yes—yes, we—that’s our business.”

“What are some of the inventions you’ve handled?”

“Well, there’s quite a number. The latest thing we took over was the Crudex Oil Burning Device. We’re also behind the Polaris Refrigerating Machine, the Acme Vacuum Cleaner and other successful things. Of course we hit on a loser now and then, but our average stands up well.” (Pentecost had naturally given out the straight deals that the firm had undertaken—sometimes at considerable expense—for precisely this sort of emergency.)

“That being your business, I take it you were attracted to Haworth’s inventions.”

“Yes—I was.—That is, to one of them.”

“How did you happen to hear of them?”

“From reading a Sunday supplement write-up when I was over here a couple of weeks ago—or thereabout.” And Pentecost went on to give an account of how he went out there to see what sort of mechanical novelties the inventor had, and to describe his visit to the ancient mansion—the young man alone there with an old charwoman—the finding of a device that greatly interested him—the bringing of his partner over from New York to see it—and their ultimate purchase of the rights in the machine and the payment of quite a large sum of money down.

“Did you see much of the old woman you speak of,—the one who came in to cook for him and so on?”

“Not a great deal, but I had to admire her.”

“Why? What did you admire?”

“The game way she kept at it trying to protect Mr. Haworth from us,—for she got the idea we were trying to rob him or something like that. She bothered us some listening around, but it was no great matter, so I let it go.—Though now I think of it I did drive her away once.”

“What was the reason for that?”

“The machine we were negotiating for depended on a secret process, as you might say. That is, he managed his combustion to compress air direct without the use of intervening machinery. Something they’d hardly allow a patent on. That’s why I’m so nervous about it. I hope nobody takes it out of that crate.”

“Was the old woman trying to see it?”

“Trying to see anything she could. We’d find her everywhere. I don’t suppose she’d have understood the thing even if she’d got a good look at it, but I always like to play safe when there’s no patent. So we finally asked Haworth to keep her out of the house till we got the machine away.”

After questioning Pentecost on other points, the business transaction between Haworth and the firm was taken up,—the fourteen-day option, the payment of the thirty-five thousand dollars, the arrangement made with him for coming on to New York and setting up and adjusting the machine, and his agreement to work under their direction for five years.

“It was a cash transaction I understand—this payment of thirty-five thousand?”

“Yes—he insisted on having it that way.”

“Do you know his reasons for that?”

“No.”

“You actually paid him that amount—in bills?”

“Yes. That is to say, he received it from the firm. Alfred Harker, our secretary, was the one who handed it to him.”

“But you saw—yourself—that that amount was paid over to him?”

“Yes, I did. I watched Harker counting it out for him.”

“Into his hands?”

“Well, no, it was rather too bulky for that. He counted it out on the table.”

“And Haworth took it?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do with it—put it in his pocket?”

“I’m not sure, but I should say not. It was rather too large for an ordinary pocket.”

“Mr. Pentecost, where, exactly, was that bunch of bills when you last saw it?”

“My recollection isn’t clear enough to admit of a positive statement. I have the impression that Haworth held it in his hands a short time and then put it down on the table and stood there with one hand resting on it.”

“What happened then?”

“Soon after the money was paid we left the house.”

“Did he bring it to the door with him when he went to see you out?”

“He didn’t come to the door—we left him standing at the table.”

“He said good night to you there?”

“Yes. And it was then that he was standing—as I remember it—with one hand resting on the stack of bills.”

“You referred to an agreement you made with him for working under your direction. Was he entirely willing to agree to this or did you have to urge it to some extent?”

“We had some discussion, but he finally saw it was to his advantage, and signed the contract willingly.”

“Have you that contract with you?”

“My partner took charge of it. I can wire him and he’ll get it in the mail to-night.”

“Kindly do that.”

The next inquiries were as to the machine the firm had bought, and Pentecost described it as well as he could and offered to have the blueprints sent over from New York—an offer which was accepted. He was unable, when asked, to give any information concerning Augustus Findlay as he’d never seen him nor even heard his name mentioned, nor could he tell the Inspector anything about the butler, Dreek, as he’d only seen him once or twice in the performance of his duties and once when he was called in to sign as a witness.... Yes, he should say it was quite possible this butler, Dreek, had seen the bunch of money.... No, he had no idea how it happened that Mr. Haworth had sent to a New York agency for a butler.

Shortly after that he was excused, the Inspector intimating that he’d like to have another chat with him in the near future.

Pentecost said of course—anything he could do, and added that if the Inspector wanted to see Mr. Harker and his son Alfred—the two who were with him at the Haworth place—he could get them over that night; but he was told that such a thing was hardly necessary, as their testimony could be taken in New York if it came to that.

“You got over here in quick time, Mr. Pentecost,” the Inspector was moved to say as the interview was coming to a close. “We have to thank you for that.”

“It was my business that was worrying me—not yours,” Pentecost returned. “And now that you speak of it,” he went on, beginning to show eagerness again, “I was advised to consult you as to how I could get that machine out of the house. We’ve got a good-sized stack of money invested in it and I’d like to get it into a safe place.”

“It’s perfectly safe where it is, Mr. Pentecost. We’ve got to hold it till we can see what bearing—if any—it has on the case. Good afternoon.”

A plain-clothes man opened the door for him and Mr. Pentecost passed out. When the man turned back into the room the Inspector spoke quickly in an undertone: “Run out after him, Charlie, and keep him in sight till I get someone on the job. Keep your distance—don’t let him get wise to it.”

The detective addressed as Charlie disappeared through the door.

* * * * *

The Inspector sat thinking a moment and then got to his feet and began pacing the room—a habit of his when hunting for the answer to something. He suddenly stopped and spoke to the plain-clothes man at the table who’d been taking down the conversation with Pentecost.

“What did you think of that, Alec?”

“Sounded nice an’ slick to me.”

“Ever see him before?”

“Not as I remember.”

“Got an idea I have. Can’t place it. Going to put Loderer and Trench on him.”

“Cinch on Findlay, ain’t it?”

“What you might call that, but there’s one or two curious things about it—money gone—thirty-five thousand in bills—we can’t get that on Findlay.”

“Nor on this man, either, that I can see. You can’t crack an alibi like that, with the Purser an’ all talking to ’im on the voyage. And on top of it he comes ashore from the steamer in New York this morning.”

The inspector muttered, “Yes, I know,” absently, and was silent a moment, thinking. Finally he said with a slightly explosive effect:

“God! I hope Bellinger gets the man that phoned in here last night!”

“You mean about this Pentecost not being on board?”

“Yes—and advising us to have the boat watched in New York.”

“Nothing on it yet?”

“Nothing to the good. We got the booth he phoned from and we picked up a man who saw a chap go into that booth about that time, but he couldn’t give a description except that he looked like a day laborer of some kind—so we don’t land anywhere.”

“What booth was it?”

“Nineteen——South Station.”