The Bartlett Mystery

“Who wouldn’t? A pippin, every inch of her.”

“You’re broke?”

“Well – er – ”

“You were fired from your last job. You’re in wrong with the police. You adopted a disguise and told lies about Winifred to those who would employ her. What chance have you of getting back into your trade, even if you’d be satisfied with it after having lived like a plute for weeks?”

“That goes,” said Fowle, waving his pipe.

“You’d like to hand one to that fellow Carshaw?”

“Wouldn’t I!”

“Yet you kick like a steer when I offer you the girl, a soft, well-paid job, and the worst revenge you can take on Carshaw.”

“Yes, all damn fine. But the risk – the infernal risk!”

“That’s where I don’t agree with you. You go away with her and her father – ”

“Father! You’re not her father!”

“You should be the first to believe it. Her aunt will swear it to you or to any judge in the country. Once out of the United States, she will be only too glad to avail herself of the protection matrimony is supposed to offer. What are you afraid of?”

“You talked of puttin’ up some guy to pretend to marry us.”

“Forget it. We can’t keep her insensible or dumb for days. But, in the company of her loving father and her devoted husband, what can she do? Who will believe her? Depend on me to have the right sort of boys on the ship. They’ll just grin at her. By the time she reaches Costa Rica she’ll be howling for a missionary to come aboard in order to satisfy her scruples. You can suggest it yourself.”

“I believe she’d die sooner.”

“What matter? You only lose a pretty wife. There’s lots more of the same sort when your wad is thick enough. Why, man, it means a three-months’ trip and a fortune for life, however things turn out. You’re tossing against luck with an eagle on both sides of the quarter.”

Fowle hesitated. The other suppressed a smile. He knew his man.

“Don’t decide in a minute,” he said seriously. “But, once settled, there must be no shirking. Make up your mind either to go straight ahead by my orders or clear out to-night. I’ll give you a ten-spot to begin life again. After that don’t come near me.”

“I’ll do it,” said Fowle, and they shook hands on their compact.

It was not in Winifred’s nature to remain long in a state of active resentment with any human being. A prisoner, watched diligently during the day, locked into her room at night, she met Rachel Craik’s grim espionage and Mick the Wolf’s evil temper with an equable cheerfulness that exasperated the one while mollifying the other.

She wondered greatly what they meant to do with her. It was impossible to believe that in the State of New Jersey, within a few miles of New York, they could keep her indefinitely in close confinement. She knew that her Rex would move heaven and earth to rescue her. She knew that the authorities, in the person of Mr. Steingall, would take up the hunt with unwearying diligence, and she reasoned, acutely enough, that a plot which embraced in its scope so many different individuals could not long defy the efforts made to elucidate it.

How thankful she was now that she had at last written and posted that long-deferred letter to the agent. Here, surely, was a clue to be followed – she had quite forgotten, in the first whirlwind of her distress, the second letter which reached her in the Twenty-seventh Street lodgings, but pinned her faith to the fact that her own note concerning the appointment “near East Orange” was in existence.

Perhaps her sweetheart was already rushing over every road in the place and making exhaustive inquiries about her. It was possible that he had passed Gateway House more than once. He might have seen amid the trees the tall chimneys of the very jail against whose iron bars her spirit was fluttering in fearful hope. Oh, why was she not endowed with that power she had read of, whose fortunate possessors could leap time and space in their astral subconsciousness and make known their thoughts and wishes to those dear to them?

She even smiled at the conceit that a true wireless telegraphy did exist between Carshaw and herself. Daily, nightly, she thought of him and he of her. But their alphabet was lacking; they could utter only the thrilling language of love, which is not bound by such earthly things as signs and symbols.

Yet was she utterly confident, and her demeanor rendered Rachel Craik more and more suspicious. Since the girl had scornfully disowned her kinship, the elder woman had not made further protest on that score. She frankly behaved as a wardress in a prison, and Winifred as frankly accepted the rôle of prisoner. There remained Mick the Wolf. Under the circumstances, no doctor or professional nurse could be brought to attend his injured arm. The broken limb had of course been properly set after the accident, but it required skilled dressing daily, and this Winifred undertook. She had no real knowledge of the subject, but her willingness to help, joined to the instruction given by the man himself, achieved her object.

It was well-nigh impossible for this rough, callous rogue, brought in contact with such a girl for the first time in his life, to resist her influence. She did not know it, but gradually she was winning him to her side. He swore at her as the cause of his suffering, yet found himself regretting even the passive part he was taking in her imprisonment.

On the very Sunday evening that Voles and Fowle were concocting their vile and mysterious scheme, Mick the Wolf, their trusted associate, partner of Voles in many a desperate enterprise in other lands, was sitting in an armchair up-stairs listening to Winifred reading from a book she had found in her bedroom. It was some simple story of love and adventure, and certainly its author had never dreamed that his exciting situations would be perused under conditions as dramatic as any pictured in the novel.

“It’s a queer thing,” said the man after a pause, when Winifred stopped to light a lamp, “but nobody pipin’ us just now ’ud think we was what we are.”

She laughed at the involved sentence. “I don’t think you are half so bad as you think you are, Mr. Grey,” she said softly. “For my part, I am happy in the belief that my friends will not desert me.”

“Lookut here,” he said with gruff sympathy, “why don’t you pull with your people instead of ag’in’ ’em. I know what I’m talkin’ about. This yer Voles – but, steady! Mebbe I best shut up.”

Winifred’s heart bounded. If this man would speak he might tell her something of great value to her lover and Mr. Steingall when they came to reckon up accounts with her persecutors.

“Anything you tell me, Mr. Grey, shall not be repeated,” she said.

He glanced toward the door. She understood his thought. Rachel Craik was preparing their evening meal. She might enter the room at any moment, and it was not advisable that she should suspect them of amicable relations. Assuredly, up to that hour, Mick the Wolf’s manner admitted of no doubt on the point. He had been intractable as the animal which supplied his oddly appropriate nickname.

“It’s this way,” he went on in a lower tone. “Voles an’ Meiklejohn are brothers born. Meiklejohn, bein’ a Senator, an’ well in with some of the top-notchers, has a cotton concession in Costa Rica which means a pile of money. Voles is cute as a pet fox. He winded the turkey, an’ has forced his brother to make him manager, with a whackin’ salary and an interest. I’m in on the deal, too. Bless your little heart, you just stan’ pat, an’ you kin make a dress outer dollar bills.”

“But what have I to do with all this? Why cannot you settle your business without pursuing me?” was the mournful question, for Winifred never guessed how greatly the man’s information affected her.

“I can’t rightly say, but you’re either with us or ag’in’ us. If you’re on our side it’ll be a joy-ride. If you stick to that guy, Carshaw – ”

To their ears, as to the ears of those waiting in the car at the gate, came the sound of violent blows and the wrenching open of the door. In that large house – in a room situated, too, on the side removed from the road – they could not catch Carshaw’s exulting cry after a peep through the window:

“I have them! Voles and Fowle! There they are! Now you, who fought with Funston, fight for a year’s pay to be earned in a minute. Here! use this wrench. You understand it. Use it on the head of any one who resists you. These scoundrels must be taken red-handed.”

Voles at the first alarm sprang to his feet and whipped out a revolver. He knew that a vigorous assault was being made on the stout door. Running to the blind of the nearest window, he saw Carshaw pull out an iron bar by sheer strength and use it as a lever to pry open a sash. Tempted though he was to shoot, he dared not. There might be police outside. Murder would shatter his dreams of wealth and luxury. He must outwit his pursuers.

Rachel Craik came running from the kitchen, alarmed by the sudden hubbub.

“Fowle,” he said to his amazed confederate, “stand them off for a minute or two. You, Rachel, can help. You know where to find me when the coast is clear. They cannot touch you. Remember that. They’re breaking into this house without a warrant. Bluff hard, and they cannot even frame a charge against you if the girl is secured – and she will be if you give me time.”

Trusting more to Rachel than to vacillating Fowle, he raced up-stairs, though his injured leg made rapid progress difficult. He ran into a room and grabbed a small bag which lay in readiness. Then he rushed toward the room in which Winifred and Mick the Wolf were listening with mixed feelings to the row which had sprung up beneath.

He tried the door. It was locked. Rachel had the key in her pocket. A trifle of that nature did not deter a man like Voles. With his shoulder he burst the lock, coming face to face with his partner in crime, who had grasped a poker in his serviceable hand.

“Atta-boy!” he yelled. “Down-stairs, and floor ’em as they come. You’ve one sound arm. Go for ’em – they can’t lay a finger on you.”

Now, it was one thing to sympathize with a helpless and gentle girl, but another to resist the call of the wild. The dominant note in Mick the Wolf was brutality, and the fighting instinct conquered even his pain. With an oath he made his way to the hall, and it needed all of Steingall’s great strength to overpower him, wounded though he was.

It took Carshaw and Jim a couple of minutes to force their way in. There was a lively fight, in which the detective lent a hand. When Mick the Wolf was down, groaning and cursing because his fractured arm was broken again; when Fowle was held to the floor, with Rachel Craik, struggling and screaming, pinned beneath him by the valiant Jim, Carshaw sped to the first floor.

Soon, after using hand-cuffs on the man and woman, and leaving Jim in charge of them and Mick the Wolf, Steingall joined him. But, search as they might, they could not find either Winifred or Voles. Almost beside himself with rage, Carshaw rushed back to the grim-visaged Rachel.

“Where is she?” he cried. “What have you done with her? By Heaven, I’ll kill you – ”

Her face lit up with a malignant joy. “A nice thing!” she screamed. “Respectable folk to be treated in this way! What have we done, I’d like to know? Breaking into our house and assaulting us!”

“No good talking to her,” said the chief. “She’s a deep one – tough as they make ’em. Let’s search the grounds.”