Against Odds: A Detective Story

CHAPTER XIX.

'STRANGE! MISTAKEN! HEARTLESS!'

I was not disappointed in my interview with the up-town jeweller, who, being as real as the World's Fair itself, must not be named.

In order to identify the jewel offered by the strange woman, I took Monsieur Lausch with me, and he at once declared the description of the emerald to correspond precisely with the one stolen from him, and when I had listened to the description of the woman who had offered the gem, I was quite as confident that this person was the brunette and no other.

True, she had assumed a foreign accent and had laid aside her rather jaunty dress for a more sober and foreign-looking attire; she had made herself up, in fact, as a German woman, well dressed after the fashion of the German bourgeois; but she had added nothing to her face save a pair of gold-framed spectacles; and while I kept my knowledge to myself, I felt none the less sure that I had another link ready for the chain I was trying to forge for this troublesome brunette, who was so busy casting her shadows across my path and disarranging my plans.

The writer of the anonymous letter, for such it was, turned out to be a practical jeweller in the employ of a certain jewel merchant, and I never knew whether he had made his employer's purchase known to us for the sake of the reward, or to gratify some personal spite or sense of injury. Whichever it may have been, it concerned us little. We gave him our word not to use his name in approaching his employer, and our promise of a suitable reward should we find his story of use upon further investigation, and then we sought the purchaser of the jewel.

With him we dealt very cavalierly. We knew, no matter how, that he had purchased an emerald of value, we told him; and I further added that he had bought it from an accomplice, knowing that such an accusation would soonest bring about the desired result, as indeed it did.

A sight of the jewel sent Monsieur Lausch into raptures and rages. It was the lost emerald, the finest of them all!

That he could not at once carry away the gem somewhat modified the rapture, but we came away quite satisfied on the whole, he that the emerald would soon be restored to him, and I that I at last knew how to deal with the brunette – always provided I should find her again after the events of the day and night previous.

On the second day after his plunge into the lagoon I took Miss Jenrys and her aunt to see the injured guard, who was booked at the hospital as 'Carr.'

The blow upon the head had resulted first in unconsciousness, and later in a mild form of delirium. I had made a preparatory visit to the hospital, and was able to tell Miss Jenrys that the patient would not recognise her or any of us.

I thought that she seemed almost relieved at this intelligence, especially after I had assured her that the surgeon in charge had assured me that the delirium was much to be preferred as a less dangerous symptom than the lethargy of the first twenty-four hours.

'Mr. Masters,' she had said to me on our way to the hospital, 'there is one thing which I overlooked in telling you what I could about – Mr. Lossing. I – I trust you have not told them at the hospital, or anywhere, that he is not what he has represented himself.'

I hastened to assure her that this secret rested still between us two, and she drew a quick breath of relief.

'If he should die,' I added, watching furtively the sudden paling of her fair cheek, 'it would become my duty and yours to tell the truth, all of it. As he seems likely to recover, we may safely let the disclosure rest with him.'

'I am glad!' she said. 'So long as he chooses to be – Mr. Carr, I cannot of course claim his acquaintance. You – you are sure he will not know me?'

'Quite sure,' I replied; and she said no more until we had reached the hospital.

We were asked to wait for a few moments in the outer office or reception room. The doctor was occupied for the moment, the attendant said, but an instant later the same attendant beckoned me outside.

'Come this way a moment,' he whispered. 'The doctor wishes to speak with you.'

I murmured an excuse to the ladies, and went to the doctor in his little private room near by.

'When you were here,' he began, putting out his hand to me, 'I was preoccupied and you were in haste. There is something concerning our patient that you, as his friend, must know. By the way, has he any nearer friends than yourself at hand?'

'I believe not,' I replied briefly. 'I hope he is not worse, doctor?'

'No, not that, though he's bad enough. But you remember the sailors who came with you said that he had struck against the boat in falling, and we decided, rather hastily, that this was the cause of the wound and swelling. In fact, it was the swelling which misled us. We could not examine closely until it was somewhat reduced; but this morning, after the wound was washed and cleansed for the new dressing, I found that the hurt upon the head was caused, not by contact with a blunt piece of wood, but by something hard, sharp, and somewhat uneven of surface; a stone, I should say, or a piece of old iron – a blow, in fact.'

'Ah!' the sudden thought that came to me caused me to start; but after a moment I said:

'I do not doubt it. The fellows that made the attack are equal to worse things than that. I think, from what I know and guess at, the weapon may have been a sling of stones or bits of iron, tied in an old bandana.'

I did not tell him that this was said to be one of Greenback Bob's favourite modes of attack, and of defence, too, when otherwise unarmed. In fact, I said nothing to further indicate my knowledge of the assailants of our patient. But I got back to the ladies at once, after thanking the doctor, telling myself that his information would make the charge against the miscreants, when captured, stronger and more serious, if that were needful.

When Miss Jenrys stood by the cot where the injured man lay, pallid and weak, with great dark lines beneath his eyes and his head swathed in bandages, I saw her start and shiver, and the slight colour in an already unusually pale face fade out, leaving her cheek as white as that upon the pillow. The small hand clenched itself until the dainty glove was drawn to the point of bursting; the lips trembled, and the tears stood in the sweet eyes. She turned to the physician, and drew back a little as the head upon the pillow moved restlessly.

'I – I have not seen him for some time. Do – do you think it could possibly startle him – if – if he should recognise me?'

'If it were possible, which, I fear, it is not – now – there is nothing that would benefit him so much.'

She went close to the cot then, and, bending down, looked into the restless blue eyes.

'How do you do?' she said clearly.

The restless eyes were still for a moment; then the head upon the pillow moved as if essaying a bow, and the right hand was feebly lifted.

She took his hand as if in greeting, and said again, speaking softly and clearly:

'Won't you go and speak with my Aunt Charlotte?'

A startled look came into the eyes; a look of distress crossed the face. He made a feeble gesture with the right hand; a great sigh escaped his lips, and then they parted.

'Strange,' they muttered feebly, 'cruel – mistaken – heartless!' His hand dropped heavily, and, quick as thought, Miss Jenrys lifted her head and drew back, her face one rosy glow from temples to chin; and now the sweet Quakeress interposed with womanly tact:

'He does not know thee, dear; and perhaps our presence may disturb him, in this weakened state.' She bent over the sick man for a moment, scanned the pale, handsome features closely, gently put back a stray lock of hair that had escaped from beneath the bandage and lay across the white full temple. Then she turned to the doctor:

'In the absence of nearer friends, doctor, we will stand in their stead. Will you give him your best care and let nothing be lacking? When we can serve him in any manner, thee will inform us through Mr. Masters, I trust; and, with your permission, I will call to ask after him each day until he is better.'

Sweet soul! How plain to me was the whole tender little episode! I could imagine June Jenrys telling the story of her rupture with young Lossing as frankly as she had written it to her friend Hilda O'Neil, and more explicitly, with fuller detail. I could fancy the sweet sympathy and tender admonitions of the elder woman; and here, before me, was the visible proof of how she had interpreted the heart of the girl, at once so proud, so honest, and so fearless in an emergency like this.

Had the sweet little Quakeress come to the bedside of this suffering young stranger because he was a fellow being, friendless, alone, and in need of help and kindly care, or had she come because she believed that June Jenrys possessed a heart whose monitions might be trusted, and that the man she had singled out from among many as the one man in the world must be a man indeed?

Be this as it would, and whatever the frame of mind in which she approached that white cot at her niece's side, I knew, by the lingering touch upon the pale forehead, the deft, gentle, and quite unconscious smoothing of the white counterpane across his breast, that the pale, unknowing face had won its way, and that what she took away from that hospital ward was not the tenderly carried burden of another's interest and another's anxiety, but a personal interest and a personal liking that could be trusted to sustain itself and grow apace in that tender woman's heart.

We were a very silent party as we came away from the hospital. June Jenrys looked as if the word 'heartless' were yet sounding in her ears. I was assuring myself that it was best not to speak of what the surgeon had told me, and the little Quakeress was evidently quite lost to herself in her thoughts of, and for, others. As I took my leave of them, Miss Ross put out her hand, and, after thanking me for my escort, said:

'I will not trouble thee to accompany me to-morrow; I know the way perfectly, and can go very well by myself. Indeed I prefer to do so. I shall not even let June here accompany me – at first.'

CHAPTER XX.

'WE MUST UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER.'

The next morning brought a telegram from Boston, in reply to my wire asking instructions about the rooms on Madison Avenue. It read:

'Hold rooms until we come. Short delay. Unavoidable.

The second day after our visit to the hospital the photograph of Gerald Trent was received by Miss Jenrys, and at once turned over to me, I, in my turn, putting it into the hands of an expert 'artist,' with orders to turn out several dozen copies as rapidly as possible.

These I meant to distribute freely among specials, policemen, the Columbian Guards at the Fair City; and others were to be furnished the chief of police for use about the city proper, for I meant to have a thorough search made in the hotels, boarding places, furnished rooms, and in all the saloons and other haunts of vice and crime, wherever an officer, armed with one of these pictures and offering a princely reward, could penetrate.

On the morning of the third day another telegram came. This read:

'Still delayed because of illness. Hold rooms.

Accompanying the photograph had come a distracted letter from poor Hilda O'Neil, in which she had described Mrs. Trent, the mother of the missing young man, as almost broken down by the shock and suspense; and we readily guessed that her illness was the cause of the delay.

Twenty-four hours after receipt of this last message came another:

'Mrs. T. too ill to travel. Doctor forbids my leaving. Give up rooms. For God's sake work. Don't spare money. Letter follows.

In addition to these, every day brought across the wires, from Hilda O'Neil to her friend, the pitiful little question, 'Any news?' and took back the only possible reply, 'Not yet.'

And then came this letter from the father of Gerald Trent:

'Dear Sir,' it began,

'I thank you heartily for your kind straightforward letter, and while I see and realize the many obstacles in the way of your search, I yet hope – I must hope – for your ultimate success; first, because Miss Jenrys' letter, so full of confidence in you, has inspired me with the same confidence; and, second, because to abandon hope would be worse than death. The prompt way in which you have taken up this search, at Miss Jenrys' request, has earned my sincerest gratitude. Although I had ordered the search begun through our chief of police here, yours was the first word of hope or encouragement I have received, although I have since heard from your city police.

'My wife lies in a condition bordering upon insanity, and much as I long to be where I can, at least, be cognizant of every step in the search for my son, as it is taken, my duty to that son's mother holds me at her bedside. For this reason we must all remain here, and I implore you to work! Leave no stone unturned! Employ more men; draw upon me for any sum you may require; offer any reward you may see fit; do what you will; only find my son, and save his mother from insanity and his father from a broken heart! Above all keep me informed, I beg of you. Remember all our moments here are moments of suspense.'

The name at the end was written in an uneven, diminishing scrawl, as if the letter had taxed the strength of the writer almost beyond endurance, and I heaved a sigh of earnest sympathy for the father, now doubly afflicted.

It was impossible now to do more than was being done from day to day, but every morning I gave an ungrudged fifteen minutes to the writing of a letter, in which I tried to say each day some new word of hope and to describe some new feature of our search, that he might feel that we were indeed leaving no stone unturned.

Meantime, from the moment when our brunette vanished from Master Billy in the Plaisance, no trace of her could be found by the lad or by ourselves.

For a number of days Dave and I gave ourselves to an untiring search, by day and night. We haunted the café where she had found lodgings, but we did not enter, for we did not wish to give the alarm to a young person already sufficiently shy, and we spent much time in Midway and upon Stony Island Avenue, near the places where the Camps had seen Smug, and the saloon wherein he had disappeared one day.

That the brunette had not entered the café since the night of the assault upon the guard, we soon assured ourselves. But we did not relax our vigilance, and for many days the beautiful White City was, to us, little more than a perplexing labyrinth in which we searched ceaselessly and knew little rest, stopping only to let another take up our seemingly fruitless search.

It was not often now that we sought our rest together or at the same time, but one night, after a week's fruitless seeking, I came to our door at a late hour to find Dave there before me, and not yet asleep. He began to talk while watching me lay aside the rather uninteresting disguise I had worn all day.

'Carl, wake up that imagination factory of yours and tell me, or make a guess at least, why we don't run upon Greenback Bob, Delbras, or even Smug, to say nothing of that invisible pedestal-climber of yours, any more?'

'Easy enough,' I replied wearily. 'They're sticking close to business, and they don't show, at least by day, in the grounds any more. If they're here at all, they are lying perdu in Cairo Street or in some of the Turkish quarters, smoking hasheesh, perhaps, or flirting with the Nautch dancers, and all disguised in turban, fez, or perhaps a Chinese pigtail.'

'Do you believe it?'

'I certainly do.'

'Jove! I wonder how they managed to get into those foreign holy of holies.'

'Backsheesh,' I answered tartly.

'Look here, Carl!' Dave jerked himself erect in the middle of his bed. 'Suppose you wanted to get in with those people, how would you do it?'

'Dave,' I replied, 'why weren't you born with just a little bump of what you mistakenly call imagination? I'll show you to-morrow how to do the thing.'

'How?' Dave stubbornly insisted.

'Well, if I must talk all night, suppose in the morning we go to Cairo, and find our way to some one in some small degree an authority – some one who can talk a little English, and most of them can. I might offer my man a cigar, and praise his show a bit, and then tell him how I want to tell the world all about him; how I want to see how they live, not so briefly, you understand. The circumlocution office is as much in vogue in the Orient as, according to our mutual friend Dickens, it is in old England. Well, when he fully understands that I admire their life and manners, and want to live it as well as write it, I begin to bid. They're here for money, and they won't let any pass them – see?'

'Old man!' cried Dave, smiting his knee with vigour, 'I'm going to try it on!'

It was seven days before our invalid – as we now by mutual consent called the still nameless guard – recovered his senses fully. There had been two or three days of the stupor, and then a brief season of active delirium; and at this stage the surgeon shook his head and looked very serious; and the little Quakeress, who, true to her first intention, came alone, carried away with her a face more serious still.

'She looks,' said the surgeon to me, 'as much shocked as if he were one of her own people.'

'She has a tender heart,' I replied, 'and – he is quite well known, I believe, to others of her family.'

'To one, assuredly,' he said, with a dry smile and a quick glance; and I knew that June Jenrys' interest in the insensible guard had been as plain to this worldly-wise surgeon as to me.

Remembering this brief dialogue, I was not surprised, when I made my brief call in Washington Avenue, to note an added shade of seriousness on the fair face that, since the disappearance of Gerald Trent – unknown, but the friend of her friend – had been growing graver day by day, so that the charms of the great Fair had palled upon her, and she had made her daily visits in a subdued and preoccupied mood, and shortened them willingly, to return at an early hour with the more easily fatigued little Quakeress.

On the morning of the eighth day I called early, sent by the surgeon with a message to Miss Ross.

'She asked me to send her word the first moment when I found our patient sane enough and strong enough to receive a short call, and to listen for a few moments, not to talk, "that was not needed," she said,' he added with one of his quiet smiles, 'and when I told her that when he came to himself the sight of some friend for whom he cared would help him more than medicine, and asked her if he had any such, she said that she could at least tell him a bit of pleasant news, and asked me to send her word at once.'

I was very willing to take the message, and when it was delivered the little Quakeress thanked me in her own quaint sweet manner, and a few moments later, while I was talking with Miss Jenrys and giving her some details of our search for a clue to young Trent's disappearance, she excused herself quietly and left us without once glancing toward her niece.

When I visited the hospital in the afternoon, the doctor said:

'Your little Quakeress is certainly a sorceress as well. She came very soon after you left us yesterday, and she did not stay long. I had forbidden my patient to talk, and I heard every word she said. It was a mere nothing, but she has almost cured him.'

'If it was so simple,' I said, half ashamed of my curiosity, yet having a very good motive for it, 'may I not hear the words that so charmed and healed him?'

'As nearly as I can repeat them, you may. I had introduced her, as she bade me, and told him that she had called to see him every day, and I knew, from the look in those open blue eyes of his, that she was an utter stranger, and that even her name was unknown to him. He was pleased though, and small wonder, at sight of the dainty, white-haired, sweet-voiced little lady; and when she took his hand in hers and, holding it between both her own, said, in her pretty Quaker fashion: "I am very glad and thankful to see thee so much better, and my niece June will be also – I mean Miss Jenrys, who, hearing of thy adventure and injuries, came at once to see if it were really the friend she thought she recognised in the description. My niece's friends are mine, and so I have assumed an old woman's privilege and paid thee a visit daily, and now that thee seems much better I will, with thy permission, bring her with me when I come again."' The doctor stopped short and smiled.