XII. Mr. GRYCE FINDS AN ANTIDOTE FOR OLD AGE
“I thought I should make you sit up. I really calculated upon doing so, sir. Yes, I have established the plain fact that this Brotherson was near to, if not in the exact line of the scene of crime in each of these extraordinary and baffling cases. A very odd coincidence, is it not?” was the dry conclusion of our eager young detective.
“Odd enough if you are correct in your statement. But I thought it was conceded that the man Brotherson was not personally near,—was not even in the building at the time of the woman’s death in Hicks Street; that he was out and had been out for hours, according to the janitor.”
“And so the janitor thought, but he didn’t quite know his man. I’m not sure that I do. But I mean to make his acquaintance and make it thoroughly before I let him go. The hero—well, I will say the possible hero of two such adventures—deserves some attention from one so interested in the abnormal as myself.”
“Sweetwater, how came you to discover that Mr. Dunn of this ramshackle tenement in Hicks Street was identical with the elegantly equipped admirer of Miss Challoner?”
“Just this way. The night before Miss Challoner’s death I was brooding very deeply over the Hicks Street case. It had so possessed me that I had taken this street in on my way from Flatbush; as if staring at the house and its swarming courtyard was going to settle any such question as that! I walked by the place and I looked up at the windows. No inspiration. Then I sauntered back and entered the house with the fool intention of crossing the courtyard and wandering into the rear building where the crime had occurred. But my attention was diverted and my mind changed by seeing a man coming down the stairs before me, of so fine a figure that I involuntarily stopped to look at him. Had he moved a little less carelessly, had he worn his workman’s clothes a little less naturally, I should have thought him some college bred man out on a slumming expedition. But he was entirely too much at home where he was, and too unconscious of his jeans for any such conclusion on my part, and when he had passed out I had enough curiosity to ask who he was.
“My interest, you may believe, was in no wise abated when I learned that he was that highly respectable tenant whose window had been open at the time when half the inmates of the two buildings had rushed up to his door, only to find a paper on it displaying these words: Gone to New York; will be back at 6:30. Had he returned at that hour? I don’t think anybody had ever asked; and what reason had I for such interference now? But an idea once planted in my brain sticks tight, and I kept thinking of this man all the way to the Bridge. Instinctively and quite against my will, I found myself connecting him with some previous remembrance in which I seemed to see his tall form and strong features under the stress of some great excitement. But there my memory stopped, till suddenly as I was entering the subway, it all came back to me. I had met him the day I went with the boys to investigate the case in Hicks Street. He was coming down the staircase of the rear tenement then, very much as I had just seen him coming down the one in front. Only the Dunn of to-day seemed to have all his wits about him, while the huge fellow who brushed so rudely by me on that occasion had the peculiar look of a man struggling with horror or some other grave agitation. This was not surprising, of course, under the circumstances. I had met more than one man and woman in those halls who had worn the same look; but none of them had put up a sign on his door that he had left for New York and would not be back till 6:30, and then changed his mind so suddenly that he was back in the tenement at three, sharing the curiosity and the terrors of its horrified inmates.
“But the discovery, while possibly suggestive, was not of so pressing a nature as to demand instant action; and more immediate duties coming up, I let the matter slip from my mind, to be brought up again the next day, you may well believe, when all the circumstances of the death at the Clermont came to light and I found myself confronted by a problem very nearly the counterpart of the one then occupying me.
“But I did not see any real connection between the two cases, until, in my hunt for Mr. Brotherson, I came upon the following facts: that he was not always the gentleman he appeared: that the apartment in which he was supposed to live was not his own but a friend’s; and that he was only there by spells. When he was there, he dressed like a prince and it was while so clothed he ate his meals in the cafe of the Hotel Clermont.
“But there were times when he had been seen to leave this apartment in a very different garb, and while there was no one to insinuate that he was slack in paying his debts or was given to dissipation or any overt vice, it was generally conceded by such as casually knew him, that there was a mysterious side to his life which no one understood. His friend—a seemingly candid and open-minded gentleman—explained these contradictions by saying that Mr. Brotherson was a humanitarian and spent much of his time in the slums. That while so engaged he naturally dressed to suit the occasion, and if he was to be criticised at all, it was for his zeal which often led him to extremes and kept him to his task for days, during which time none of his up-town friends saw him. Then this enthusiastic gentleman called him the great intellectual light of the day, and—well, if ever I want a character I shall take pains to insinuate myself into the good graces of this Mr. Conway.
“Of Brotherson himself I saw nothing. He had come to Mr. Conway’s apartment the night before—the night of Miss Challoner’s death, you understand but had remained only long enough to change his clothes. Where he went afterwards is unknown to Mr. Conway, nor can he tell us when to look for his return. When he does show up, my message will be given him, etc., etc. I have no fault to find with Mr. Conway.
“But I had an idea in regard to this elusive Brotherson. I had heard enough about him to be mighty sure that together with his other accomplishments he possessed the golden tongue and easy speech of an orator. Also, that his tendencies were revolutionary and that for all his fine clothes and hankering after table luxuries and the like, he cherished a spite against wealth which made his words under certain moods cut like a knife. But there was another man, known to us of the —— Precinct, who had very nearly these same gifts, and this man was going to speak at a secret meeting that very evening. This we had been told by a disgruntled member of the Associated Brotherhood. Suspecting Brotherson, I had this prospective speaker described, and thought I recognised my man. But I wanted to be positive in my identification, so I took Anderson with me, and—but I’ll cut that short. We didn’t see the orator and that ‘go’ went for nothing; but I had another string to my bow in the shape of the workman Dunn who also answered to the description which had been given me; so I lugged poor Anderson over into Hicks Street.
“It was late for the visit I proposed, but not too late, if Dunn was also the orator who, surprised by a raid I had not been let into, would be making for his home, if only to establish an alibi. The subway was near, and I calculated on his using it, but we took a taxicab and so arrived in Hicks Street some few minutes before him. The result you know. Anderson recognised the man as the one whom he saw washing his hands in the snow outside of the Clermont, and the man, seeing himself discovered, owned himself to be Brotherson and made no difficulty about accompanying us the next day to the coroner’s office.
“You have heard how he bore himself; what his explanations were and how completely they fitted in with the preconceived notions of the Inspector and the District Attorney. In consequence, Miss Challoner’s death is looked upon as a suicide—the impulsive act of a woman who sees the man she may have scouted but whom she secretly loves, turn away from her in all probability forever. A weapon was in her hand—she impulsively used it, and another deplorable suicide was added to the melancholy list. Had I put in my oar at the conference held in the coroner’s office; had I recalled to Dr. Heath the curious case of Mrs. Spotts, and then identified Brotherson as the man whose window fronted hers from the opposite tenement, a diversion might have been created and the outcome been different. But I feared the experiment. I’m not sufficiently in with the Chief as yet, nor yet with the Inspector. They might not have called me a fool—you may; but that’s different—and they might have listened, but it would doubtless have been with an air I could not have held up against, with that fellow’s eyes fixed mockingly on mine. For he and I are pitted for a struggle, and I do not want to give him the advantage of even a momentary triumph. He’s the most complete master of himself of any man I ever met, and it will take the united brain and resolution of the whole force to bring him to book—if he ever is brought to book, which I doubt. What do you think about it?”
“That you have given me an antidote against old age,” was the ringing and unexpected reply, as the thoughtful, half-puzzled aspect of the old man yielded impulsively to a burst of his early enthusiasm. “If we can get a good grip on the thread you speak of, and can work ourselves along by it, though it be by no more than an inch at a time, we shall yet make our way through this labyrinth of undoubted crime and earn for ourselves a triumph which will make some of these raw and inexperienced young fellows about us stare. Sweetwater, coincidences are possible. We run upon them every day. But coincidence in crime! that should make work for a detective, and we are not afraid of work. There’s my hand for my end of the business.”
“And here’s mine.”
Next minute the two heads were closer than ever together, and the business had begun.
XIII. TIME, CIRCUMSTANCE, AND A VILLAIN’S HEART
“Our first difficulty is this. We must prove motive. Now, I do not think it will be so very hard to show that this Brotherson cherished feelings of revenge towards Miss Challoner. But I have to acknowledge right here and now that the most skillful and vigourous pumping of the janitor and such other tenants of the Hicks Street tenement as I have dared to approach, fails to show that he has ever held any communication with Mrs. Spotts, or even knew of her existence until her remarkable death attracted his attention. I have spent all the afternoon over this, and with no result. A complete break in the chain at the very start.”
“Humph! we will set that down, then, as so much against us.”
“The next, and this is a bitter pill too, is the almost insurmountable difficulty already recognised of determining how a man, without approaching his victim, could manage to inflict a mortal stab in her breast. No cloak of complete invisibility has yet been found, even by the cleverest criminals.”
“True. The problem is such as a nightmare offers. For years my dreams have been haunted by a gnome who proposes just such puzzles.”
“But there’s an answer to everything, and I’m sure there’s an answer to this. Remember his business. He’s an inventor, with startling ideas. So much I’ve seen for myself. You may stretch probabilities a little in his case; and with this conceded, we may add by way of off-set to the difficulties you mention, coincidences of time and circumstance, and his villainous heart. Oh, I know that I am prejudiced; but wait and see! Miss Challoner was well rid of him even at the cost of her life.”
“She loved him. Even her father believes that now. Some lately discovered letters have come to light to prove that she was by no means so heart free as he supposed. One of her friends, it seems, has also confided to him that once, while she and Miss Challoner were sitting together, she caught Miss Challoner in the act of scribbling capitals over a sheet of paper. They were all B’s with the exception of here and there a neatly turned O, and when her friend twitted her with her fondness for these two letters, and suggested a pleasing monogram, Miss Challoner answered, ‘O. B. (transferring the letters, as you see) are the initials of the finest man in the world.’”
“Gosh! has he heard this story?”
“Who?”
“The gentleman in question.”
“Mr. Brotherson?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think so. It was told me in confidence.”
“Told you, Mr. Gryce? Pardon my curiosity.”
“By Mr. Challoner.”
“Oh! by Mr. Challoner.”
“He is greatly distressed at having the disgraceful suggestion of suicide attached to his daughter’s name. Notwithstanding the circumstances,—notwithstanding his full recognition of her secret predilection for a man of whom he had never heard till the night of her death, he cannot believe that she struck the blow she did, intentionally. He sent for me in order to inquire if anything could be done to reinstate her in public opinion. He dared not insist that another had wielded the weapon which laid her low so suddenly, but he asked if, in my experience, it had never been known that a woman, hyper-sensitive to some strong man’s magnetic influence, should so follow his thought as to commit an act which never could have arisen in her own mind, uninfluenced. He evidently does not like Brotherson either.”
“And what—what did you—say?” asked Sweetwater, with a halting utterance and his face full of thought.
“I simply quoted the latest authority on hypnotism that no person even in hypnotic sleep could be influenced by another to do what was antagonistic to his natural instincts.”
“Latest authority. That doesn’t mean a final one. Supposing that it was hypnotism! But that wouldn’t account for Mrs. Spotts’ death. Her wound certainly was not a self-inflicted one.”
“How can you be sure?”
“There was no weapon found in the room, or in the court. The snow was searched and the children too. No weapon, Mr. Gryce, not even a paper-cutter. Besides—but how did Mr. Challoner take what you said? Was he satisfied with this assurance?”
“He had to be. I didn’t dare to hold out any hope based on so unsubstantial a theory. But the interview had this effect upon me. If the possibility remains of fixing guilt elsewhere than on Miss Challoner’s inconsiderate impulse, I am ready to devote any amount of time and strength to the work. To see this grieving father relieved from the worst part of his burden is worth some effort and now you know why I have listened so eagerly to you. Sweetwater, I will go with you to the Superintendent. We may not gain his attention and again we may. If we don’t—but we won’t cross that bridge prematurely. When will you be ready for this business?”
“I must be at Headquarters to-morrow.”
“Good, then let it be to-morrow. A taxicab, Sweetwater. The subway for the young. I can no longer manage the stairs.”
XIV. A CONCESSION
“It is true; there seems to be something extraordinary in the coincidence.”
Thus Mr. Brotherson, in the presence of the Inspector.
“But that is all there is to it,” he easily proceeded. “I knew Miss Challoner and I have already said how much and how little I had to do with her death. The other woman I did not know at all; I did not even know her name. A prosecution based on grounds so flimsy as those you advance would savour of persecution, would it not?”
The Inspector, surprised by this unexpected attack, regarded the speaker with an interest rather augmented than diminished by his boldness. The smile with which he had uttered these concluding words yet lingered on his lips, lighting up features of a mould too suggestive of command to be associated readily with guilt. That the impression thus produced was favourable, was evident from the tone of the Inspector’s reply:
“We have said nothing about prosecution, Mr. Brotherson. We hope to avoid any such extreme measures, and that we may the more readily do so, we have given you this opportunity to make such explanations as the situation, which you yourself have characterised as remarkable, seems to call for.”
“I am ready. But what am I called upon to explain? I really cannot see, sir. Knowing nothing more about either case than you do, I fear that I shall not add much to your enlightenment.”
“You can tell us why with your seeming culture and obvious means, you choose to spend so much time in a second-rate tenement like the one in Hicks Street.”
Again that chill smile preceding the quiet answer:
“Have you seen my room there? It is piled to the ceiling with books. When I was a poor man, I chose the abode suited to my purse and my passion for first-rate reading. As I grew better off, my time became daily more valuable. I have never seen the hour when I felt like moving that precious collection. Besides, I am a man of the people. I like the working class, and am willing to be thought one of them. I can find time to talk to a hard-pushed mechanic as easily as to such members of the moneyed class as I encounter on stray evenings at the Hotel Clermont. I have led—I may say that I am leading—a double life; but of neither am I ashamed, nor have I cause to be. Love drove me to ape the gentleman in the halls of the Clermont; a broad human interest in the work of the world, to live as a fellow among the mechanics of Hicks Street.”
“But why make use of one name as a gentleman of leisure and quite a different one as the honest workman?”
“Ah, there you touch upon my real secret. I have a reason for keeping my identity quiet till my invention is completed.”
“A reason connected with your anarchistic tendencies?”
“Possibly.” But the word was uttered in a way to carry little conviction. “I am not much of an anarchist,” he now took the trouble to declare, with a careless lift of his shoulders. “I like fair play, but I shall never give you much trouble by my manner of insuring it. I have too much at stake. My invention is dearer to me than the overthrow of present institutions. Nothing must stand in the way of its success, not even the satisfaction of inspiring terror in minds shut to every other species of argument. I have uttered my last speech; you can rely on me for that.”
“We are glad to hear it, Mr. Dunn. Physical overthrow carries more than the immediate sufferer with it.”
If this were meant as an irritant, it did not act successfully. The social agitator, the political demagogue, the orator whose honeyed tones had rung with biting invective in the ears of the United Brotherhood of the Awl, the Plane and the Trowel, simply bowed and calmly waited for the next attack.
Perhaps it was of a nature to surprise even him.
“We have no wish,” continued the Inspector, “to probe too closely into concerns seemingly quite removed from the main issue. You say that you are ready, nay more, are even eager to answer all questions. You will probably be anxious then to explain away a discrepancy between your word and your conduct, which has come to our attention. You were known to have expressed the intention of spending the afternoon of Mrs. Spotts’ death in New York and were supposed to have done so, yet you were certainly seen in the crowd which invaded that rear building at the first alarm. Are you conscious of possessing a double, or did you fail to cross the river as you expected to?”
“I am glad this has come up.” The tone was one of self-congratulation which would have shaken Sweetwater sorely had he been admitted to this unofficial examination. “I have never confided to any one the story of my doings on that unhappy afternoon, because I knew of no one who would take any interest in them. But this is what occurred. I did mean to go to New York and I even started on my walk to the Bridge at the hour mentioned. But I got into a small crowd on the corner of Fulton Street, in which a poor devil who had robbed a vendor’s cart of a few oranges, was being hustled about. There was no policeman within sight, and so I busied myself there for a minute paying for the oranges and dragging the poor wretch away into an alley, where I could have the pleasure of seeing him eat them. When I came out of the alley the small crowd had vanished, but a big one was collecting up the street very near my home. I always think of my books when I see anything suggesting fire, and naturally I returned, and equally naturally, when I heard what had happened, followed the crowd into the court and so up to the poor woman’s doorway. But my curiosity satisfied, I returned at once to the street and went to New York as I had planned.”
“Do you mind telling us where you went in New York?”
“Not at all. I went shopping. I wanted a certain very fine wire, for an experiment I had on hand, and I found it in a little shop in Fourth Avenue. If I remember rightly, the name over the door was Grippus. Its oddity struck me.”
There was nothing left to the Inspector but to dismiss him. He had answered all questions willingly, and with a countenance inexpressive of guile. He even indulged in a parting shot on his own account, as full of frank acceptance of the situation as it was fearless in its attack. As he halted in the doorway before turning his back upon the room, he smiled for the third time as he quietly said:
“I have ceased visiting my friend’s apartment in upper New York. If you ever want me again, you will find me amongst my books. If my invention halts and other interests stale, you have furnished me this day with a problem which cannot fail to give continual occupation to my energies. If I succeed in solving it first, I shall be happy to share my knowledge with you. Till then, trust the laws of nature. No man when once on the outside of a door can button it on the inside, nor could any one without the gift of complete invisibility, make a leap of over fifteen feet from the sill of a fourth story window on to an adjacent fire escape, without attracting the attention of some of the many children playing down below.”
He was half-way out the door, but his name quickly spoken by the Inspector drew him back.
“Anything more?” he asked.
The Inspector smiled.
“You are a man of considerable analytic power, as I take it, Mr. Brotherson. You must have decided long ago how this woman died.”
“Is that a question, Inspector?”
“You may take it as such.”
“Then I will allow myself to say that there is but one common-sense view to take of the matter. Miss Challoner’s death was due to suicide; so was that of the washerwoman. But there I stop. As for the means—the motive—such mysteries may be within your province but they are totally outside mine! God help us all! The world is full of misery. Again I wish you good-day.”
The air seemed to have lost its vitality and the sun its sparkle when he was gone.
“Now, what do you think, Gryce?”
The old man rose and came out of his corner.
“This: that I’m up against the hardest proposition of my lifetime. Nothing in the man’s appearance or manner evinces guilt, yet I believe him guilty. I must. Not to, is to strain probability to the point of breakage. But how to reach him is a problem and one of no ordinary nature. Years ago, when I was but little older than Sweetwater, I had just such a conviction concerning a certain man against whom I had even less to work on than we have here. A murder had been committed by an envenomed spring contained in a toy puzzle. I worked upon the conscience of the suspect in that case, by bringing constantly before his eyes a facsimile of that spring. It met him in the folded napkin which he opened at his restaurant dinner. He stumbled upon it in the street, and found it lying amongst his papers at home. I gave him no relief and finally he succumbed. He had been almost driven mad by remorse. But this man has no conscience. If he is not innocent as the day, he’s as hard as unquarried marble. He might be confronted with reminders of his crime at every turn without weakening or showing by loss of appetite or interrupted sleep any effect upon his nerves. That’s my opinion of the gentleman. He is either that, or a man of uncommon force and self-restraint.”
“I’m inclined to believe him the latter.”
“And so give the whole matter the go-by?”
“Possibly.”
“It will be a terrible disappointment to Sweetwater.”
“That’s nothing.”
“And to me.”
“That’s different. I’m disposed to consider you, Gryce—after all these years.”
“Thank you; I have done the state some service.”
“What do you want? You say the mine is unworkable.”
“Yes, in a day, or in a week, possibly in a month. But persistence and a protean adaptability to meet his moods might accomplish something. I don’t say will, I only say might. If Sweetwater had the job, with unlimited time in which to carry out any plan he may have, or even for a change of plans to suit a changed idea, success might be his, and both time, effort and outlay justified.”
“The outlay? I am thinking of the outlay.”
“Mr. Challoner will see to that. I have his word that no reasonable amount will daunt him.”
“But this Brotherson is suspicious. He has an inventor’s secret to hide, if none other. We can’t saddle him with a guy of Sweetwater’s appearance and abnormal loquaciousness.”
“Not readily, I own. But time will bring counsel. Are you willing to help the boy, to help me and possibly yourself by this venture in the dark? The Department shan’t lose money by it; that’s all I can promise.”
“But it’s a big one. Gryce, you shall have your way. You’ll be the only loser if you fail; and you will fail; take my word for it.”
“I wish I could speak as confidently to the contrary, but I can’t. I can give you my hand though, Inspector, and Sweetwater’s thanks. I can meet the boy now. An hour ago I didn’t know how I was to do it.”
XV. THAT’S THE QUESTION
“How many times has he seen you?”
“Twice.”
“So that he knows your face and figure?”
“I’m afraid so. He cannot help remembering the man who faced him in his own room.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Damned unfortunate; but one must expect some sort of a handicap in a game like this. Before I’m done with him, he’ll look me full in the face and wonder if he’s ever seen me before. I wasn’t always a detective. I was a carpenter once, as you know, and I’ll take to the tools again. As soon as I’m handy with them I’ll hunt up lodgings in Hicks Street. He may suspect me at first, but he won’t long; I’ll be such a confounded good workman. I only wish I hadn’t such pronounced features. They’ve stood awfully in my way, Mr. Gryce. I don’t like to talk about my appearance, but I’m so confounded plain that people remember me. Why couldn’t I have had one of those putty faces which don’t mean anything? It would have been a deuced sight more convenient.”
“You’ve done very well as it is.”
“But I want to do better. I want to deceive him to his face. He’s clever, this same Brotherson, and there’s glory to be got in making a fool of him. Do you think it could be done with a beard? I’ve never worn a beard. While I’m settling back into my old trade, I can let the hair grow.”
“Do. It’ll make you look as weak as water. It’ll be blonde, of course.”
“And silky and straggling. Charming addition to my beauty. But it’ll take half an inch off my nose, and it’ll cover my mouth, which means a lot in my case. Then my complexion! It must be changed naturally. I’ll consult a doctor about that. No sort of make-believe will go with this man. If my eyes look weak, they must really be so. If I walk slowly and speak huskily, it must be because I cannot help it. I can bear the slight inconvenience of temporary ill-health in a cause like this; and if necessary the cough will be real, and the headache positive.
“Sweetwater! We’d better give the task to another man—to someone Brotherson has never seen and won’t be suspicious of?”
“He’ll be suspicious of everybody who tries to make friends with him now; only a little more so with me; that’s all. But I’ve got to meet that, and I’ll do it by being, temporarily, of course, exactly the man I seem. My health will not be good for the next few weeks, I’m sure of that. But I’ll be a model workman, neat and conscientious with just a suspicion of dash where dash is needed. He knows the real thing when he sees it, and there’s not a fellow living more alive to shams. I won’t be a sham. I’ll be it. You’ll see.”
“But the doubt. Can you do all this in doubt of the issue?”
“No; I must have confidence in the end, and I must believe in his guilt. Nothing else will carry me through. I must believe in his guilt.”
“Yes, that’s essential.”
“And I do. I never was surer of anything than I am of that. But I’ll have the deuce of a time to get evidence enough for a grand jury. That’s plainly to be seen, and that’s why I’m so dead set on the business. It’s such an even toss-up.”
“I don’t call it even. He’s got the start of you every way. You can’t go to his tenement; the janitor there would recognise you even if he didn’t.”
“Now I will give you a piece of good news. They’re to have a new janitor next week. I learned that yesterday. The present one is too easy. He’ll be out long before I’m ready to show myself there; and so will the woman who took care of the poor washerwoman’s little child. I’d not have risked her curiosity. Luck isn’t all against us. How does Mr. Challoner feel about it?”
“Not very confident; but willing to give you any amount of rope. Sweetwater, he let me have a batch of letters written by his daughter which he found in a secret drawer. They are not to be read, or even opened, unless a great necessity arises. They were written for Brotherson’s eye—or so the father says—but she never sent them; too exuberant perhaps. If you ever want them—I cannot give them to you to-night, and wouldn’t if I could,—don’t go to Mr. Challoner—you must never be seen at his hotel—and don’t come to me, but to the little house in West Twenty-ninth Street, where they will be kept for you, tied up in a package with your name on it. By the way, what name are you going to work under?”
“My mother’s—Zugg.”
“Good! I’ll remember. You can always write or even telephone to Twenty-ninth Street. I’m in constant communication with them there, and it’s quite safe.”
“Thanks. You’re sure the Superintendent is with me?”
“Yes, but not the Inspector. He sees nothing but the victim of a strange coincidence in Orlando Brotherson.”
“Again the scales hang even. But they won’t remain so. One side is bound to rise. Which? That’s the question, Mr. Gryce.”
XVI. OPPOSED
There was a new tenant in the Hicks Street tenement. He arrived late one afternoon and was shown two rooms, one in the rear building and another in the front one. Both were on the fourth floor. He demurred at the former, thought it gloomy but finally consented to try it. The other, he said, was too expensive. The janitor—new to the business—was not much taken with him and showed it, which seemed to offend the newcomer, who was evidently an irritable fellow owing to ill health.
However, they came to terms as I have said, and the man went away, promising to send in his belongings the next day. He smiled as he said this and the janitor who had rarely seen such a change take place in a human face, looked uncomfortable for a moment and seemed disposed to make some remark about the room they were leaving. But, thinking better of it, locked the door and led the way downstairs. As the prospective tenant followed, he may have noticed, probably did, that the door they had just left was a new one—the only new thing to be seen in the whole shabby place.
The next night that door was locked on the inside. The young man had taken possession. As he put away the remnants of a meal he had cooked for himself, he cast a look at his surroundings, and imperceptibly sighed. Then he brightened again, and sitting down on his solitary chair, he turned his eyes on the window which, uncurtained and without shade, stared open-mouthed, as it were, at the opposite wall rising high across the court.
In that wall, one window only seemed to interest him and that was on a level with his own. The shade of this window was up, but there was no light back of it and so nothing of the interior could be seen. But his eye remained fixed upon it, while his hand, stretched out towards the lamp burning near him, held itself in readiness to lower the light at a minute’s notice.
Did he see only the opposite wall and that unillumined window? Was there no memory of the time when, in a previous contemplation of those dismal panes, he beheld stretching between them and himself, a long, low bench with a plain wooden tub upon it, from which a dripping cloth beat out upon the boards beneath a dismal note, monotonous as the ticking of a clock?
One might judge that such memories were indeed his, from the rapid glance he cast behind him at the place where the bed had stood in those days. It was placed differently now.
But if he saw, and if he heard these suggestions from the past, he was not less alive to the exactions of the present, for, as his glance flew back across the court, his finger suddenly moved and the flame it controlled sputtered and went out. At the same instant, the window opposite sprang into view as the lamp was lit within, and for several minutes the whole interior remained visible—the books, the work-table, the cluttered furniture, and, most interesting of all, its owner and occupant. It was upon the latter that the newcomer fixed his attention, and with an absorption equal to that he saw expressed in the countenance opposite.
But his was the absorption of watchfulness; that of the other of introspection. Mr. Brotherson—(we will no longer call him Dunn even here where he is known by no other name)—had entered the room clad in his heavy overcoat and, not having taken it off before lighting his lamp, still stood with it on, gazing eagerly down at the model occupying the place of honour on the large centre table. He was not touching it,—not at this moment—but that his thoughts were with it, that his whole mind was concentrated on it, was evident to the watcher across the court; and, as this watcher took in this fact and noticed the loving care with which the enthusiastic inventor finally put out his finger to re-arrange a thread or twirl a wheel, his disappointment found utterance in a sigh which echoed sadly through the dull and cheerless room. Had he expected this stern and self-contained man to show an open indifference to work and the hopes of a lifetime? If so, this was the first of the many surprises awaiting him.
He was gifted, however, with the patience of an automaton and continued to watch his fellow tenant as long as the latter’s shade remained up. When it fell, he rose and took a few steps up and down, but not with the celerity and precision which usually accompanied his movements. Doubt disturbed his mind and impeded his activity. He had caught a fair glimpse of Brotherson’s face as he approached the window, and though it continued to show abstraction, it equally displayed serenity and a complete satisfaction with the present if not with the future. Had he mistaken his man after all? Was his instinct, for the first time in his active career, wholly at fault?
He had succeeded in getting a glimpse of his quarry in the privacy of his own room, at home with his thoughts and unconscious of any espionage, and how had he found him? Cheerful, and natural in all his movements.
But the evening was young. Retrospect comes with later and more lonely hours. There will be opportunities yet for studying this impassive countenance under much more telling and productive circumstances than these. He would await these opportunities with cheerful anticipation. Meanwhile, he would keep up the routine watch he had planned for this night. Something might yet occur. At all events he would have exhausted the situation from this standpoint.
And so it came to pass that at an hour when all the other hard-working people in the building were asleep, or at least striving to sleep, these two men still sat at their work, one in the light, the other in the darkness, facing each other, consciously to the one, unconsciously to the other, across the hollow well of the now silent court. Eleven o’clock! Twelve! No change on Brotherson’s part or in Brotherson’s room; but a decided one in the place where Sweetwater sat. Objects which had been totally indistinguishable even to his penetrating eye could now be seen in ever brightening outline. The moon had reached the open space above the court, and he was getting the full benefit of it. But it was a benefit he would have been glad to dispense with. Darkness was like a shield to him. He did not feel quite sure that he wanted this shield removed. With no curtain to the window and no shade, and all this brilliance pouring into the room, he feared the disclosure of his presence there, or, if not that, some effect on his own mind of those memories he was more anxious to see mirrored in another’s discomfiture than in his own.
Was it to escape any lack of concentration which these same memories might bring, that he rose and stepped to the window? Or was it under one of those involuntary impulses which move us in spite of ourselves to do the very thing our judgment disapproves?
No sooner had he approached the sill than Mr. Brotherson’s shade flew way up and he, too, looked out. Their glances met, and for an instant the hardy detective experienced that involuntary stagnation of the blood which follows an inner shock. He felt that he had been recognised. The moonlight lay full upon his face, and the other had seen and known him. Else, why the constrained attitude and sudden rigidity observable in this confronting figure, with its partially lifted hand? A man like Brotherson makes no pause in any action however trivial, without a reason. Either he had been transfixed by this glimpse of his enemy on watch, or daring thought! had seen enough of sepulchral suggestion in the wan face looking forth from this fatal window to shake him from his composure and let loose the grinning devil of remorse from its iron prison-house? If so, the movement was a memorable one, and the hazard quite worth while. He had gained—no! he had gained nothing. He had been the fool of his own wishes. No one, let alone Brotherson, could have mistaken his face for that of a woman. He had forgotten his newly-grown beard. Some other cause must be found for the other’s attitude. It savoured of shock, if not fear. If it were fear, then had he roused an emotion which might rebound upon himself in sharp reprisal. Death had been known to strike people standing where he stood; mysterious death of a species quite unrecognisable. What warranty had he that it would not strike him, and now? None.
Yet it was Brotherson who moved first. With a shrug of the shoulder plainly visible to the man opposite, he turned away from the window and without lowering the shade began gathering up his papers for the night, and later banking up his stove with ashes.
Sweetwater, with a breath of decided relief, stepped back and threw himself on the bed. It had really been a trial for him to stand there under the other’s eye, though his mind refused to formulate his fear, or to give him any satisfaction when he asked himself what there was in the situation suggestive of death to the woman or harm to himself.
Nor did morning light bring counsel, as is usual in similar cases. He felt the mystery more in the hubbub and restless turmoil of the day than in the night’s silence and inactivity. He was glad when the stroke of six gave him an excuse to leave the room, and gladder yet when in doing so, he ran upon an old woman from a neighbouring room, who no sooner saw him than she leered at him and eagerly remarked:
“Not much sleep, eh? We didn’t think you’d like it. Did you see anything?”
Now this gave him the one excuse he wanted.
“See anything?” he repeated, apparently with all imaginable innocence. “What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t you know what happened in that room?”
“Don’t tell me!” he shouted out. “I don’t want to hear any nonsense. I haven’t time. I’ve got to be at the shop at seven and I don’t feel very well. What did happen?” he mumbled in drawing off, just loud enough for the woman to hear. “Something unpleasant I’m sure.” Then he ran downstairs.
At half past six he found the janitor. He was, to all appearance, in a state of great excitement and he spoke very fast.
“I won’t stay another night in that room,” he loudly declared, breaking in where the family were eating breakfast by lamplight. “I don’t want to make any trouble and I don’t want to give my reasons; but that room don’t suit me. I’d rather take the dark one you talked about yesterday. There’s the money. Have my things moved to-day, will ye?”
“But your moving out after one night’s stay will give that room a bad name,” stammered the janitor, rising awkwardly. “There’ll be talk and I won’t be able to let that room all winter.”
“Nonsense! Every man hasn’t the nerves I have. You’ll let it in a week. But let or not let, I’m going front into the little dark room. I’ll get the boss to let me off at half past four. So that’s settled.”
He waited for no reply and got none; but when he appeared promptly at a quarter to five, he found his few belongings moved into a middle room on the fourth floor of the front building, which, oddly perhaps, chanced to be next door to the one he had held under watch the night before.
The first page of his adventure in the Hicks Street tenement had been turned, and he was ready to start upon another.