Part 14

Railroad tracks now cover the ground it then occupied, and the cutting away of the bluff in that vicinity, to give place for some heavy industries that require to be near the water and the iron road, has completely changed the appearance of all the surroundings, even, of that once favorite resort of the marine element of the population of the town, so that not one trace of it remains, save in memory. But it is not of the present we have to treat, or the many changes--some of them very sad ones--that have been wrought in the maritime interests of our coast. Our story dates back to a time when a big American flag floated above a long and wide two-story frame building where those railroad tracks now lie; a building that was further adorned, as to its peak, by a carved and painted wooden statue of the goddess of liberty, that seemed to have been the figurehead of some vessel; and as to its front, by a very widely-spread and gayly-gilded American eagle, holding in its beak, over the door, a huge and brilliantly red scroll, upon the flaming convolutions of which, in brightest blue, one might read the legend "The Whaler's Haven."

By day, there was little, except its size, to distinguish the Haven, to the eye of the casual observer, from several other establishments of kindred character in the vicinity; but at night, in the figurative language of Jonathan Schoolcraft, its proprietor, "the eagle screamed." Then, until hours that were at once late and early--late for revel and early for labor--the fiddle squeaked out jigs and reels; the thumps and shuffles of dancing feet made the walls vibrate and the windows jingle; glasses clinked merrily; noisy laughter, cheers, and sometimes--but not often--sounds of quarrel, broke upon the night. It was Schoolcraft's boast "that a sailor never was robbed in this house;" and, truth to tell, he made the claim good, farther than most men do who keep such establishments and make like affirmations. Over the little bar, near the front door was a sign in letters so prominent that they might have been regarded as a sort of painted shout, commanding patrons of the house: "Have your fun in a decent way;" and Jonathan was never weary of repeating that counsel to his guests. He would not let a sailor in his house get too drunk--that is, too drunk to be able to find his money, when the liquor was to be paid for--and he was sternly opposed to fights in the Haven; for, as he said, "they break the peace, and break heads, and sometimes break glasses, which is worst of all."

One sultry evening in July, when it was too hot to dance and almost too warm to drink rum, a cloud of dullness seemed to settle down upon the Whaler's Haven. Jonathan himself went out for a walk, to get cool; the barkeeper languidly leaned over the bar and yawned; only four or five sailors--boarders in the Haven when on shore--lounged between the door and the bar, "swapping yarns" concerning their seagoing experiences, and all feeling so depressed and spiritless, through the heat, that they almost stuck to the truth in their narrations; and two or three of them were talking of going to bed, when a stranger, who was evidently not a sailor, entered, called for a drink, and invited all present to join him. A stranger who was not a sailor was always the object of a little suspicion in the Haven; still none present cared about offending one who introduced himself so courteously, and the waiting sailors took their rum just as naturally as if liking, and not simply complaisance, gave it its relish. Then one of them returned the stranger's treat and soon another; and another, so that in a little while the heat was forgotten, tongues began to wag freely, the yarns became much more spirited, and the impression gained ground that the stranger was a right good fellow.

And so it was that, without his ever being able to tell exactly how it came about, Billy Prangle, a stout old sailor, found himself in almost confidential conversation with the pleasant stranger--a smooth-shaven, gray-eyed, ruddy man of forty or forty-five years--upon the subject of his friend and ex-shipmate, Dorn Hackett.

"A nobler, braver lad never signed articles," said he, "nor a better sailorman. We messed together for three years; and take him by and large, alow and aloft, I make bold to say that of the sixteen men in the fo'cas'le,--and all good men, too, mind you--he was the best."

"I'm delighted to hear you speak so highly of him," replied the stranger, with apparent heartiness, "How long is it since you sailed with him?"

"Only a little better than four months ago. We came off the cruise together, fishing in the North Pacific."

"Fishing? I thought you said he was in a whaling vessel?"

"Well, so I did, my hearty. We calls whales fishes. When we speak of taking a whale we always says taking a fish."

"Ah, excuse me. I didn't understand. And where is your friend now?"

At this moment one of the old sailors called him aside and said to him in an undertone:

"Mind your eye, Billy. I've been a listenin' to you and that lubber that doesn't know a whale's a fish, and it looks squally to me. As I make him out, he's been a leadin' you on to talk about Dorn Hackett, and maybe it ain't for Dorn's good he means it."

"If I thought he meant the boy any harm he'd get his nose rove foul in the shake of a fluke."

"Well, just keep your weather eye skinned on him."

"But, shipmate, it's as good as saying that Dorn may be in some sort of a scrape to be afraid to talk about him."

"And so he may; and small blame to him, either, bein' a likely young fellow as he is. Shore is a mighty dangersome place for a good-looking young fellow like him."

"Right you are, shipmate," assented Billy, solemnly shaking hands before returning to his conversation with the stranger. From that time he did watch carefully; and having a little natural cunning of his own, managed to evade the numerous and artfully-put inquiries with which he was plied, and still to draw the stranger on, with hope of information, until he satisfied himself that his comrade's warning was not uncalled for.

While this was going on the drinks were call on freely, and the stranger unconsciously was falling a victim to the fiery potency of the rum--a beverage to which he was not accustomed. He had tried to evade anything more than a mere show of drinking it, but believed that this was looked upon with such suspicion by all about him, that it was better for him to drink and trust to the hardness of his head to carry the liquor off safely. Little he knew how much he lacked of being a match for that tough old tar, Billy Prangle, in the consumption of that seductive but treacherous fluid. Gradually he lost his customary caution; and finding himself baffled in all his attempts to "pump" the old sailor, conceived that it would be a good idea to offer Billy a hundred dollars if he would conduct him to and point out Dorn Hackett. "That sum," he thought to himself, "would tempt a man like him to do almost anything to gain it." So he made the proffer. Billy heard the proposition gravely, and even feigned to view it favorably; but manifested a great deal of curiosity as to why his ex-shipmate was in such demand.

The stranger felt that he had gone too far for any reticence to be of service, now, and that perhaps a confidence might make him more secure of this valuable ally; so he replied: "I'll tell you; but mind you're not to say a word about it to any living soul until we have captured him."

"Would I be likely to throw away a chance to make a hundred dollars?" exclaimed Billy.

That answer, critically considered, could hardly have been deemed a promise; but the stranger took it for one, and continued in a confidential tone:

"He's wanted for murder and robbery."

"Murder and robbery! Dorn Hackett?"

"Yes, the murder and robbery of an old man near Easthampton, Long Island, where he has been going to see his sweetheart, a girl named Mary Wallace."

"And you tell me that Dorn Hackett is suspected of a thing like that?"

"Yes, indeed, he is. He was in the neighborhood on the night of the murder, and everything points to him; and I bet my head--"

"That you are a lying, landlubberly--" broke out Billy Prangle, in a torrent of quite unreportable expletives, the unregenerate lingo of the fo'cas'le; and before the stranger recovered from his astonishment, the indignant tar had commenced to make good that threat with reference to his nose.

Mr. Turner--for the stranger, now rolling on the floor with Billy, was no other than that experienced professional detective--was a sturdy fellow, well able, ordinarily, to take care of himself, and made as good a fight as he could; but even had he been entirely sober he would hardly have been able to cope with this sinewy son of the sea who smote him so suddenly. While they struggled on the floor, Billy's friends looked on with placid interest; interfering not, nor questioning, and seemingly cheerfully confident of the result. The barkeeper--Schoolcraft being away--seemed to enjoy the excitement, and leaned over the bar to get a better view, while he shouted encouragingly: "Go in, Billy! Wade in, old man!"

And Billy followed the advice so well that it was not long until the detective cried "enough," and was allowed to get up; when Billy led him to the door and dismissed him with a parting kick.

Self-reproachfully, and much humbled in spirit by his defeat, Richard Turner left the Haven. But it was not in his nature to give up a chase for one defeat. If he had not genius, he at least had that which is sometimes almost as good--persistence. He did not even waste time in thinking about the whipping and the kicking he had received, but he did reflect that it was something singular that a poor old chap like that sailor should have thrown a chance away whereby he might have gained one hundred dollars so easily--merely by selling a friend, perhaps to the gallows. Would he, Richard Turner, have been so stupid? "Hardly," he said to himself. But he had to accept facts as he found them, however strange they might seem, and the two most prominent ones claiming his attention were: first, that he had made a blunder; second, that he must work all the more rapidly to forestall the possible chances of his indiscretion leading to the escape of the man he hunted. Fortunately, the whipping had sobered him completely; and having repaired as well as he could the damages he had sustained in person and raiment, he continued until late at night, in other sailor's haunts, his pursuit of information, but took care to give a wide berth to the "Whaler's Haven." Before daylight he left the place in a fast sloop and with a fair wind, bound for New Haven. There fickle fortune made him amends for her unkind humor at New London, and facts that seemed to go far toward establishing Dorn Hackett's guilt came readily to his knowledge. The most important were these:

On the afternoon preceding the murder of Jacob Van Deust the young man went over to Long Island on Mr. Hollis's sloop. Nobody but himself knew why he went. The men on the sloop expected him to return to New Haven with them that night, but he did not do so. They left the Long Island shore about the hour that it was supposed the murder was perpetrated and, presumably, before he could have run from Van Deusts' to the cove where the sloop laid. When he re-appeared in New Haven the next morning his clothing was dabbled with blood; and his hands, though he had evidently tried to wash them, still showed sanguinary stains. He said that the blood was his own; that he had a severe fall while running through the woods on Long Island. That he had fallen seemed probable, since he had a bad cut on his head and one ankle was lame; but that the blood was all his own, at least admitted of question. Why he had been running through the woods he did not say; but it was natural to suppose that he had been trying to reach the sloop and get to New Haven as quickly as possible, to make ground for claiming an alibi in case he should be suspected of the murder.

The other significant discoveries that the detective made, and what he did in New Haven, will be noted in their proper place. Suffice it here to say, that the agent of justice felt that he had reason to congratulate himself upon a triumph.

Billy Prangle, when he had kicked out the tempter, lost no time in fully imparting to his comrades the excellent cause he had for his suddenly violent conduct, and was heartily censured by all for not hammering the stranger twice as much.

"What?--Dorn Hackett guilty of murder and robbery?"

They who had known him for years; sailed with him; messed with him; faced death by his side in the tempest and the perilous chase of the monsters of the deep, knew how absurd such a charge must be. Every man of them had belonged to the same crew with Dorn for three years, and there was not one of them who did not groan to think that he had not had Billy's chance at the stranger. In consultation among them, it was unanimously resolved that it was plainly their duty to take the matter in hand.

"Jerry Slate has got a fast little sloop," said Billy Prangle, "that I can borrow to take me over to Napeague. I'll go there and see that girl of Dorn's that he spoke of--Mary Wallace, he called her. Here, you barkeep', log that on a bit of paper for me, so that I won't let it go adrift. You, Sam, go down by Wainright's packet in the morning to New Haven, which it was the last place I heard of Dorn hailing from, and see that you find him and tell him all about it."

Thus the jolly tars arranged it among themselves to serve their friend as best they could. And so it was that, on the afternoon of the succeeding day, a weather-beaten old sailor--Billy Prangle himself--after various inquiries in the neighborhood, "ranged alongside" of Uncle Thatcher's house, asking for "a gal by the name of Mary Wallace."

"What do you want?" demanded Aunt Thatcher, who happened to "answer his hail."

"Be you Mary Wallace?" asked Billy, with an affectation of profound astonishment.

"No, I ain't. But I'm her aunt, and you can tell me your business."

"Right you are, old gal, I can; but I'll see you furder, first," replied the unabashed veteran, who had already been told by some neighbor that she was a "snorter."

"What do you mean, you impudent fellow?"

"I always does my business with the principals, mum."

Mrs. Thatcher slammed the door in his face and retired. But half an hour afterward, when she happened to be out in the yard, she saw that the sailor had lighted his pipe, seated himself on the stone step at the door, and literally laid siege to the house. She reflected that Uncle Thatcher would soon be home to his supper; and in view of the strange way he had acted of late, did not know how he might take it into his head to look upon her treatment of the visitor. Tartar as she was, she had a wholesome respect for him when he chose to assert himself, and deemed it most prudent to avoid an encounter.

With an ill-grace she went to Mary, who was sewing in her room, and said snarlingly:

"There's an old vagabond at the door who wants to see you."

Mary went out and found Billy calmly puffing his pipe and waiting. He looked up at the sound of the opening of the door, and seeing the tall handsome girl who stood there, sprang to his feet, with a beaming smile and outstretched hand, saying:

"Ah! You're the right one. I thought I'd fetch you."

Mary gave him her hand, smilingly asking:

"Did you wish to see me, sir?"

"Yes; the mate has been out here trying to rig the pump on me, but it wouldn't draw. What I'm here for concerns nobody but you and Dorn. Come out to the gate, for she's a listening beside that window. I just see the curtain shake."

Mary started at mention of her lover's name by this stranger, and unhesitatingly accompanied him as he requested; while Aunt Thatcher, who was indeed listening by the window, could almost have torn her sun-bonnet strings with vexation and rage when they passed beyond range of her hearing.

Billy, like many other maladroits, flattered himself that he had no little skill in conducting a delicate mission, and thought it was rather a neat way of sparing the girl's feelings to affect to be very busy refilling his pipe, without looking at her, as he put the blunt question:

"Be you Dorn Hackett's sweetheart?"

Mary blushed and stammered, not knowing what to reply.

"'Cause," continued Billy, "he's maybe in some trouble."

Trouble! Trouble for Dorn! That thought swept away in an instant her timidity and maiden bashfulness, and anxiously she replied:

"Yes, yes; he is very dear to me. What is it? What has happened to him? Tell me quickly!"

"Don't get excited. It ain't no great matter. But they are looking for him to arrest him."

"Arrest Dorn? For what?"

"Murder and robbery."

Mary gave a little cry and would have fallen, had not Billy caught her; and holding her against the fence, awkwardly enough, but firmly, adjured her:

"Steady, steady! Brace up! Hold hard!"

In a few moments she regained sufficient control over herself to listen while the old sailor related to her, with characteristic circumstantiality of detail, all the events of the preceding evening leading up to his visit to her. She did not for an instant imagine that Dorn could possibly have been guilty of such crimes, but the mere idea of his being suspected of them so horrified her as almost to deprive her of the power of reasoning. How could he have fallen under suspicion? How could it come to be known that he was in the neighborhood on that fatal night? There was but one person, she believed, besides herself who knew of his visit, and that was Ruth Lenox. Ah, yes! There was her aunt, who suspected it at least, and who had questioned her so sharply about him. Ruth Lenox would never have breathed such a foul calumny against Dorn. But her aunt? "Yes, it would be just like her," thought Mary.

Billy had no further information to impart, no advice to give, and no consolations to offer. The latter would have been especially out of his line. It seemed to him enough to give a person warning to look out for him or herself, as the case might be; which, he reasoned, would be all he would require under any circumstances; and so, having discharged his errand to the best of his ability in the manner we have seen, he relighted his pipe and "got under way," with a clear conscience as to having done his duty by a shipmate.

XV.

AND THE TROUBLE BEGINS.

Ruth Lenox was, just at this time, on a brief visit to the house of a married brother, who lived near Babylon; so that Mary was not able to consult with her only confidante until the second day after Billy Prangle's visit. Who could tell the agony of mind she felt during that time as the leaden hours dragged slowly by? It seemed to her fearful and excited imagination as if at any moment she was liable to hear of her lover's capture and imprisonment, and she was powerless to do aught to save him. One hope only suggested itself to her mind: that he might have sailed away from New Haven before his pursuers could reach him, and that by the time of his return from the West Indies the real murderer might be discovered, and the foul suspicion against Dorn entirely dissipated. But she was not left to cherish in peace even that small germ of comfort, for Aunt Thatcher, with the astuteness and malice of a feminine fiend--and if there is a distinction of sex among the devils, the female ones must surely be far the worst--divined that the sailor who visited Mary had come from Dorn, or in his interest, and embittered every hour of the poor girl's life by the wagging of her venomous tongue. As soon as Billy had gone away she demanded to know what his business was; and receiving no reply--for Mary felt that she would rather have died than give her aunt the satisfaction of knowing the hideous intelligence he brought--proceeded to treat the subject in her own lively fashion.

"Oho! So you don't want to tell! Well, I don't wonder at it. I'd be ashamed, too, if I was in your place. But I can guess without your telling me. It's some word from Dorn Hackett, I'll be bound. Wants you to go and take up with him while he's in port, maybe. If you do, you needn't think to come back here with your disgrace. I s'pose he thinks he's got a heap of money now. Did he let you know how much he got by killing old Jake Van Deust?"

"Oh, aunt!" exclaimed Mary. "You know that is a wicked falsehood! You know Dorn never would have done such a thing!"

"Don't tell me I lie, you impudent, deceitful, good-for-nothing hussy! Don't you dare to talk back to me! I know what I know! Oh, I'll have the satisfaction of seeing him hanged yet!"

Mary burst into tears and left the house. That bit of dialogue was a sample of what the heart-sick miserable girl had to endure constantly when Uncle Thatcher was not present. When he was by, the vixen did not dare to torment her victim, and Mary might have had a stop put to the woman's malignant attacks had she appealed to him; but from that extreme measure she revolted.

When Ruth returned home Mary hastened to her with her load of troubles, and was not disappointed in her expectation of sympathy and consolation.

"Don't you be afraid, dear," said little Ruth, in a very confident and protecting tone. "It will be all right. You'll see that it will. I'll make Lem fix it."

"Lem?"

"Yes. He shall go and find out who did kill Mr. Van Deust, and then I'm sure there can't be any more talk about Dorn. And I know, just as well as anything, that it was all started by that spiteful, wicked old aunt of yours. Lem told me, the night before I went away, that he saw her go into the Squire's office the evening of the inquest, after everybody else was gone but a strange man, and she stayed a long time; and I'd just risk my neck on it that that was the time she put him up to the notion of Dorn doing it. And I think he might have had more sense--a man like him, who has known him from he was a boy, and no stranger to what she is. But don't be afraid, dear. I'll start Lem right out to catch the real murderer, and I'll tell him I won't marry him until he finds him; and that'll bring him to his senses, I guess, for he's getting in an awful hurry about it."

Ruth was very earnest and emphatic, and her friend understood and was comforted by her, although it was not always easy to comprehend the breathless torrent of words that the energetic little maid poured forth, with reckless disregard alike of punctuation and of pronouns, when she became excited, as she now was.

Lem was very reluctant to undertake the task that Ruth sought to impose upon him.

"It ain't my business," he protested, "and I don't know anything about it. I wouldn't even know how to begin. How would I look going around the country asking people, 'who killed Jake Van Deust?' And I swon I don't know any other way to tackle the job. Squire Bodley told me he's got a real sharp fellow from New York at work--a chap that makes a business of catching thieves and murderers, and knows all about it. And I might do no end of mischief if I went to meddling."