CHAPTER XV.
MURDER IN HELL’S KITCHEN.
To understand the preliminaries of the case on which Chick Carter and Patsy had been working for their chief, we must go back to a time before Simeon Rich was tried and executed, before Darwin was sent back to England, where he afterward died in prison.
To begin with, Old Mother Flintstone, well known in the neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, was dead.
All people have to die, and the old woman had to follow the written law of all mankind; but, what was queer, her death was a subject for police investigation.
She had not lived the best of lives, this old hag, toothless and decrepit in her hovel, where her couch was rags and the walls grimy and almost black; she had been a fence and what not, and there were stories about her that made people even in that delectable quarter of Gotham shake their heads over them.
She had died in the night.
Death had come to the hovel in the wee sma’ hours of the darkness, when the great city was supposed to sleep the sleep of the innocent and righteous; but somehow or other there was a suspicion that a human hand had helped Mother Flintstone out of the world.
She lived alone, but now and then she was visited by a boy—a waif of the streets, little, but shrewd and wiry.
Mulberry Billy, as the boy was called, had a story to tell, and it was his narrative which had set the police agog.
The boy had gone to Mother Flintstone’s just before day, crawling into the old place, where he knew there was always a bed for him, and had found the old lady lying on her face on the floor.
Billy tried to lift the body and bear it to the couch near by, but the lot of bones slid from his hands.
Then he saw the distorted face, the wide, staring eyes and the clenched hands.
Then he saw that his old benefactress was past all human aid, and he stood stock-still and thought how kind she had been to him.
But this was not all Billy saw. He was attracted to the right by a noise in the direction of the only window in the room, and there he saw the outlines of a face.
It was not a rough face, as one would expect to see in that locality; it was not the face of a hardened ruffian, seamed with sin and desperate. It was a finely cut face, handsome, aristocratic, like those Billy sometimes saw on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. It had good eyes, white skin, a broad forehead, and well-chiseled lips. The mustache did not entirely hide the latter, but it did not let the boy get a good look at them.
If the face at the window had been wicked-looking or desperate the boy would not have been astonished, for he would have thought that the desperate murderer had come back to see if the victim had yet been discovered.
Mother Flintstone was reputed rich; she was said to have accumulated by her calling a good deal of wealth, which she had concealed somewhere, but where even Billy, her one little confidant, did not know.
The boy looked at the face till it seemed to be photographed on his mind. He would know it among a thousand faces, he thought.
It should not escape him, and he would give a certain person a full description of it.
In a moment, as it were, the face vanished.
Billy turned again to the dead woman, but looked now and then toward the window. He saw that the old woman had been killed, for the rent in her throat told where the dagger had found her life and put an end to her varied career.
As yet the murder was his secret and the murderer’s.
Mulberry Billy remained in the little room some time, or until he had composed his nerves.
One does not discover a terrible crime every day, not even in New York. He wanted to think the matter over a little; he wanted to decide just what to do.
“I’ll see Patsy again, that’s best,” he said aloud, though addressing himself. “Patsy Garvan once befriended me, and he’ll tell Mr. Carter about this, and I know Mr. Carter’s the man to take charge of this matter and avenge Mother Flintstone.”
With this the street Arab slipped from the house and went out upon the street again.
In a few minutes he ran up a flight of steps leading to Nick’s downtown den, where he had captured Brockey, and knocked at a door.
Footsteps crossed the room beyond and the door was opened.
“You, boy! Come in.”
Billy entered, looking at the person who had opened the door, and who now stood in the middle of the room looking at him with a smile on his face. He had expected to find Chick Carter or Patsy there, and he was surprised to meet the great detective himself already on the trail once more.
“What’s happened, boy?” asked Nick.
“They’ve got Mother Flintstone at last, sir.”
“Who have?”
“That’s for you to find out, Mr. Carter.”
“You don’t mean that the old lady’s dead, Billy?”
“Don’t I?”
“Where?”
“In the crib.”
“Do you know who saw her last?”
“Yes, sir; the man who did it.”
Carter smiled at the answer and took a seat at the table.
“Give me the story,” he said.
Billy did so. He omitted nothing, but he dwelt a long time on the face at the window.
The famous detective seemed to think that face an important matter, and he made the boy describe it half a dozen times.
Presently he arose and put on an overcoat, for the night was cold, and perhaps he wanted to protect his face with the ample collar.
The pair left the room together, and Billy piloted the detective to the scene of the crime.
“You can go now,” said Carter, when he had taken a survey of the apartment. “I will need you to-morrow, Billy. Don’t go far. You can take my lounge if you want a snooze till then.”
The urchin went away, leaving Carter in the hovel where Mother Flintstone lay.
Nick went over the old place with his keen eyes and eager hands.
If he found anything that let some light upon the mystery he did not divulge the secret, and just as day was breaking over the spires of Gotham he came out of the place and walked away.
A few minutes later the police knew of the crime, and a sergeant took possession of the old woman’s abode.
Hell’s Kitchen had a new sensation, and its inhabitants stood about in groups and discussed it.
The sensation was too late for the morning papers, but it would do for the afternoon journals; and as Mother Flintstone was a noted character, half a dozen reporters came to the scene with ready pencils and reportorial noses.
The papers in the afternoon told all there was to tell.
They dished up the past life of the old woman and colored it to suit themselves.
Some had her a woman once respected and wealthy, the wayward daughter of a money king; others said she was related to royalty; none put her down as plain Mother Flintstone—that, you know, being the unvarnished truth, would never do!
The wasted body was removed to the morgue and the surgeons brought their skill to bear upon the case. All agreed that the old creature had been foully killed by a dagger, and the coroner’s jury added “by some person unknown,” and then turned the matter over to the police.
The following night Carter, alone in his room, heard a rap on his door, and he opened it to look into the face of a young woman. He held the door open and the girl—she was no more than this in years—glided into the room.
“Lock the door, please,” she said, with an appealing look at the detective.
Carter did so and turned to her.
His visitor had taken a chair, and in the light he saw how frightened she was and how she trembled.
“You haven’t any clew yet?” was her first question.
“Clew to what?”
“Why, to the murderer of Mother Flintstone.”
“Oh, you’re interested in that, are you?”
“I am.”
“What is your name?”
“Yes, I thought you’d want to know that and it’s no more than right that I should tell you. You may call me Margie Marne.”
“But that’s not your name.”
The girl smiled.
“Perhaps not; don’t, for Heaven’s sake, rob me of the only secret I have—my true identity.”
“I will not. You shall keep your name. That secret can belong to you as long as you want it, or until you see best to disclose it.”
“The time may come when I can speak,” was the reply. “But you haven’t answered my question yet.”
“About the clew? It’s a queer case.”
“And a dark one?”
“Yes.”
“No reward has been offered?”
“Not a dollar.”
“But you want to find out who killed Mother Flintstone, and why.”
“I do, and I will find out.”
“Thank God!” cried Margie Marne, rising from her chair and seizing Carter’s hands. “That’s the best thing I ever heard a man say.”
“What was the old lady to you?”
“Don’t ask me. Only find the hand that slew her.”
“That’s my mission, as I’ve already told you.”
“I’ll reward you,” and she seemed to smile again. “I don’t look like a person of wealth, but I can reward the man who solves this mystery of the tenements. I’m not as poor as I look, not a female Lazarus by any means.”
“You don’t look it, either.”
The girl would have replied if footsteps had not approached the detective’s door, and he crossed the room.
Billy, the street Arab, bounded in the moment the door was opened.
“I’ve located him!” he cried the moment he caught sight of Carter. “I can show you the face I saw at the window last night. Come! Let the gal stay. We don’t want her. No gals in the case for Mulberry Billy is my motto,” and the boy darted toward the door again.