Chapter 17

Up to this moment she had not shed one tear. Her voice was strained, choked, and sobbing, but her eyes were dry. She kissed him on his brow and his mouth. She bent over him and laid her smooth cheek to his. She murmured:

"Good-by, good-by, till I come to you, my own love!"

All at once she raised her head with a strange light in her eyes. "Mamma!" she cried, "see how warm his cheek is. Heaven is merciful! perhaps he is alive."

She put both arms about him, and, gently but powerfully lifting his dead weight of head and shoulders, drew him to her heart. She held him to her warm bosom, rocking him to and fro. "Oh, my beloved!" she murmured, "if you will live, I will be so good to you."

She lowered him again, resting his head on her lap. A drop of blood, from the napkin in which his head was wrapped, had touched the bosom of her dress, staining it as if a cherry had been crushed there. She sat, gazing with an anguish of hope upon his pale face. A shudder ran through him, and he opened his eyes--only for a moment. He groaned, and slowly closed them.

The tears could no longer be restrained. They fell like a summer shower from her eyes, while she sobbed, "Thank God! my darling is not dead."

Her quick ear caught footsteps at the outer door. "Here, mamma, take my place. Let me hide before all those men come in."

In a moment she had leaped through the window, whence she ran through the dewy grass to her home.

An hour afterward her mother returned, escorted by one of the surgeons. She found Alice in bed, peacefully sleeping. As Mrs. Belding approached the bedside, Alice woke and smiled. "I know without your telling me, mamma. He will live. I began to pray for him,--but I felt sure he would live, and so I gave thanks instead."

"You are a strange girl," said Mrs. Belding, gravely. "But you are right. Dr. Cutts says, if he escapes without fever, there is nothing very serious in the wound itself. The blow that made that gash in his head was not the one which made him unconscious. They found another, behind his ear; the skin was not broken. There was a bump about as big as a walnut. They said it was concussion of the brain, but no fracture anywhere. By the way, Dr. Cutts complimented me very handsomely on the way I had managed the case before his arrival. He said there was positively a professional excellence about my bandage. You may imagine I did not set him right."

Alice, laughing and blushing, said, "I will allow you all the credit."

Mrs. Belding kissed her, and said, "Good-night," and walked to the door. There she paused a moment, and came back to the bed. "I think, after all, I had better say now what I thought of keeping till to-morrow. I thank you for your confidence to-night, and shall respect it. But you will see, I am sure, the necessity of being very circumspect, under the circumstances. If you should want to do anything for Arthur while he is ill, I should feel it my duty to forbid it."

Alice received this charge with frank, open eyes. "I should not dream of such a thing," she said. "If he had died, I should have been his widow; but, as he is to live, he must come for me if he wants me. I was very silly about him, but I must take the consequences. I can't now take advantage of the poor fellow, by saving his life and establishing a claim on it. So I will promise anything you want. I am so happy that I will promise easily. But I am also very sleepy."

The beautiful eyelids were indeed heavy and drooping. The night's excitement had left her wearied and utterly content. She fell asleep even as her mother kissed her forehead.

The feeling of Offitt as he left Algonquin Avenue and struck into a side street was one of pure exultation. He had accomplished the boldest act of his life. He had shown address, skill, and courage. He had done a thing which had appalled him in the contemplation, merely on account of its physical difficulties and dangers. He had done it successfully. He had a large amount of money in his pocket--enough to carry his bride to the ends of the earth. When it was gone--well, at worst, he could leave her, and shift for himself again. He had not a particle of regret or remorse; and, in fact, these sentiments are far rarer than moralists would have us believe. A ruffian who commits a crime usually glories in it. It exalts him in his own eyes, all the more that he is compelled to keep silent about it. As Offitt walked rapidly in the direction of Dean Street, the only shadow on his exultation was his sudden perception of the fact that he had better not tell Maud what he had done. In all his plans he had promised himself the pleasure of telling her that she was avenged upon her enemy by the hands of her lover; he had thought he might extort his first kiss by that heroic avowal; but now, as he walked stealthily down the silent street, he saw that nobody in the universe could be made his confidant.

"I'll never own it, in earth or hell," he said to himself.

When he reached Matchin's cottage, all was dark and still. He tried to attract Maud's attention by throwing soft clods of earth against her window, but her sleep was too sound. He was afraid to throw pebbles for fear of breaking the panes and waking the family. He went into the little yard adjoining the shop, and found a ladder. He brought it out, and placed it against the wall. He perceived now for the first time that his hands were sticky. He gazed at them a moment. "Oh, yes," he said to himself, "when he fell I held out my hands to keep his head from touching my clothes. Careless trick! Ought to have washed them, first thing." Then, struck by a sudden idea, he went to the well-curb, and slightly moistened his fingers. He then rubbed them on the door-knob, and the edge of the door of the cottage, and pressed them several times in different places on the ladder. "Not a bad scheme," he said, chuckling. He then went again to the well, and washed his hands thoroughly, afterward taking a handful of earth, and rubbing them till they were as dirty as usual.

After making all these preparations for future contingencies, he mounted the ladder, and tried to raise the window. It was already open a few inches to admit the air, but was fastened there, and he could not stir it. He began to call and whistle in as low and penetrating a tone as he could manage, and at last awoke Maud, whose bed was only a few feet away. She started up with a low cry of alarm, but saw in a moment who it was.

"Well, what on earth are you doing here? Go away this minute, or I'll call my father."

"Let me in, and I will tell you."

"I'll do nothing of the sort. Begone this instant."

"Maud, don't be foolish," he pleaded, in real alarm, as he saw that she was angry and insulted. "I have done as you told me. I have wealth for us both, and I have"--he had almost betrayed himself, but he concluded--"I have come to take you away forever."

"Come to-morrow, at a decent hour, and I will talk to you."

"Now, Maud, my beauty, don't believe I am humbugging. I brought a lot of money for you to look at--I knew you wanted to be sure. See here!" He drew from his pocket a package of bank bills--he saw a glittering stain on them. He put them in the other pocket of his coat and took out another package. "And here's another, I've got a dozen like them. Handle 'em yourself." He put them in through the window. Maud was so near that she could take the bills by putting out her hand. She saw there was a large amount of money there--more than she had ever seen before.

"Come, my beauty," he said, "this is only spending-money for a bridal tour. There are millions behind it. Get up and put on your dress. I will wait below here. We can take the midnight train east, be married at Clairfield, and sail for Paris the next day. That's the world for you to shine in. Come! Waste no time. No tellin' what may happen tomorrow."

She was strongly tempted. She had no longer any doubt of his wealth. He was not precisely a hero in appearance, but she had never insisted upon that--her romance having been always of a practical kind. She was about to assent--and to seal her doom--when she suddenly remembered that all her best clothes were in her mother's closet, which was larger than hers, and that she could not get them without passing through the room where her parents were asleep. That ended the discussion. It was out of the question that she should marry this magnificent stranger in her every-day dress and cotton stockings. It was equally impossible that she should give that reason to any man. So she said, with dignity:

"Mr. Offitt, it is not proper for me to continue this conversation any longer. You ought to see it ain't. I shall be happy to see you to-morrow."

Offitt descended the ladder, grinding out curses between his set teeth. A hate, as keen as his passion, for the foolish girl fired him. "Think," he hissed, "a man that killed, half an hour ago, the biggest swell in Buffland, to be treated that way by a carpenter's wench." "Wait awhile, Miss; it'll come my innings." He lifted up the ladder, carried it carefully around the house, and leaned it against the wall under the window of the room occupied by Sleeny.

He hurried back to his lodging in Perry Place, where he found Sam Sleeny lying asleep on his bed. He was not very graciously greeted by his drowsy visitor.

"Why didn't you stay out all night?" Sam growled. "Where have you been, anyhow?"

"I've been at the variety-show, and it was the boss fraud of the season."

"You stayed so long you must have liked it."

"I was waiting to see just how bad a show could be and not spoil."

"What did you want to see me about tonight?"

"The fact is, I expected to meet a man around at the Varieties who was to go in with us into a big thing. But he wasn't there. I'll nail him to-morrow, and then we can talk. It's big money, Sammy, and no discount. What would you think of a thousand dollars a month?"

"I'd a heap rather see it than hear you chin about it. Give me my hammer, and I'll go home."

"Why, I took it round to your shop this evening, and I tossed it in through the window. I meant to throw it upon the table, but it went over, I think from the sound, and dropped on the floor. You will find it among the shavings, I reckon,"

"Well, I'm off," said Sam, by way of good-night.

"All right. Guess I'll see you to-morrow."

Offitt waited till he could hear the heavy tread of Sleeny completing the first flight of stairs and going around to the head of the second. He then shut and locked his door, and hung his hat over the keyhole. He turned up his lamp and sat down by the table to count his night's gains. The first package he took from his pocket had a shining stain upon the outside bill. He separated the stained bill carefully from the rest, and held it a moment in his hand as if in doubt. He walked to his wash-stand, but at the moment of touching his pitcher he stopped short. He took out his handkerchief, but shook his head and put it back. Finally, he lighted a match, applied it to the corner of the bill, and watched it take fire and consume, until his fingers were scorched by the blaze. "Pity!" he whispered--"good money like that."

He seated himself again and began with a fierce, sustained delight to arrange and sort the bank-bills, laying the larger denominations by themselves, smoothing them down with a quick and tender touch, a kindling eye and a beating heart. In his whole life, past and future, there was not such another moment of enjoyment. Money is, of course, precious and acceptable to all men except idiots. But, if it means much to the good and virtuous, how infinitely more it means to the thoroughly depraved--the instant gratification of every savage and hungry devil of a passion which their vile natures harbor. Though the first and principal thing Offitt thought of was the possession of Maud Matchin, his excited fancy did not stop there. A long gallery of vicious pictures stretched out before his flaming eyes, as he reckoned up the harvest of his hand. The mere thought that each bill represented a dinner, where he might eat and drink what he liked, was enough to inebriate a starved rogue whose excesses had always been limited by his poverty.

When he had counted and sorted his cash, he took enough for his immediate needs and put it in his wallet. The rest he made up into convenient packages, which he tied compactly with twine and disposed in his various pockets. "I'll chance it," he thought, after some deliberation. "If they get me, they can get the money, too. But they sha'n't get it without me."

He threw himself on his bed, and slept soundly till morning.

XVIII.

OFFITT PLANS A LONG JOURNEY.

The bright sun and the morning noises of the city waked Offitt from his sleep. As he dressed himself the weight of the packages in his pockets gave him a pleasant sensation to begin the day with. He felt as if he were entering upon a new state of existence--a life with plenty of money. He composed in his mind an elaborate breakfast as he walked down-stairs and took his way to a restaurant, which he entered with the assured step of a man of capital. He gave his order to the waiter with more decision than usual, and told him in closing "not to be all day about it, either."

While waiting for his breakfast, he opened the morning "Bale Fire" to see if there was any account of "The Algonquin Avenue Tragedy." This was the phrase which he had arranged in his mind as the probable head-line of the article. He had so convinced himself of the efficacy of his own precautions, that he anticipated the same pleasure in reading the comments upon his exploit that an author whose incognito is assured enjoys in reading the criticisms of his anonymous work. He was at first disappointed in seeing no allusion to the affair in the usual local columns; but at last discovered in a corner of the paper this double-leaded postscript:

"We stop the press to state that an appalling crime was last night committed in Algonquin Avenue. The mansion of Arthur Farnham, Esq., was entered by burglars between ten and eleven o'clock, and that gentleman assaulted and probably murdered.

"Full particulars in a later edition."

"LATER. Captain Farnham is still living, and some hopes are entertained of his recovery. The police have found the weapon with which the almost fatal blow was struck--a carpenter's hammer marked with a letter S. It is thought this clew will lead to the detection of the guilty parties."

Offitt was not entirely pleased with the tone of this notice. He had expected some reference to the address and daring of the burglar. But he smiled to himself, "Why should I care for Sam's reputation?" and ate his breakfast with a good appetite. Before he had finished, however, he greatly modified his plan, which was to have the threads of evidence lead naturally, of themselves, to the conviction of Sleeny. He determined to frighten Sam, if possible, out of the city, knowing that his flight would be conclusive evidence of guilt. He swallowed his coffee hurriedly and walked down to Dean Street, where by good fortune he found Sam alone in the shop. He was kicking about a pile of shavings on the floor. He turned as Offitt entered and said: "Oh, there you are. I can't find that hammer anywhere."

Offitt's face assumed a grieved expression. "Come, come, Sam, don't stand me off that way. I'm your friend, if you've got one in the world. You mustn't lose a minute more. You've got time now to catch the 8.40. Come, jump in a hack and be off."

His earnestness and rapidity confused Sleeny, and drove all thoughts of the hammer from his mind. He stared at Offitt blankly, and said, "Why, what are you givin' me now?"

"I'm a-givin' you truth and friendship, and fewest words is best. Come, light out, and write where you stop. I'll see you through."

"See here," roared Sam, "are you crazy or am I? Speak out! What's up?"

"Oh! I've got to speak it out, raw and plain, have I? Very well! Art. Farnham was attacked and nearly murdered last night, and if you didn't do it who did? Now come, for the Lord's sake, get off before the police get here. I never thought you had the sand--but I see you've got too much. Don't lose time talking any more. I'm glad you've killed him. You done just right--but I don't want to see you hung for it."

His excitement and feigned earnestness had brought the tears to his eyes. Sam saw them and was convinced.

"Andy," he said solemnly. "I know you're my friend, and mean right. I'll swear before God it wasn't me, and I know nothing about it, and I won't run away."

"But how will we prove it," said Offitt, wringing his hands in distress. "Where was you last night from ten to eleven?"

"You know where I was--in your room. I went there just after nine and fell asleep waiting for you."

"Yes, of course, but who knows it? Sam, I believe you are innocent since you say so. But see the circumstances. You _have_ talked about goin' for him. You _have_ had a fight with him, and got put in jail for it, and--" he was about to mention the hammer, but was afraid--"I wish you would take my advice and go off for a week or so till the truth comes out. I'll lend you all the money you want. I'm flush this week."

"No, Andy," said Sleeny, "nobody could be kinder than you. But I won't run away. They can't put a man where he wasn't."

"Very well," replied Offitt, "I admire your pluck, and I'll swear a blue streak for you when the time comes. And perhaps I had better get away now so they won't know I've been with you."

He went without a moment's delay to the chief of police and told him that he had a disagreeable duty to perform; that he knew the murderer of Captain Farnham; that the criminal was an intimate friend of his, a young man hitherto of good character named Sleeny.

"Ah-ha!" said the chief. "That was the fellow that Captain Farnham knocked down and arrested in the riot."

"The same," said Offitt. "He has since that been furious against the Captain. I have reasoned with him over and over about it. Yesterday he came to see me; showed me a hammer he had just bought at Ware & Harden's; said he was going to break Arthur Farnham's skull with it. I didn't believe he would, he had said it so often before. While we were talking, I took the hammer and cut his initial on it, a letter S." The chief nodded, with a broad smile. "He then left me, and when I came back to my room a little before midnight, I found him there. He looked excited, and wanted me to go and get a drink with him. I declined, and he went off. This morning when I heard about the murder I said: 'He's the man that did the deed.'"

"You have not seen him since last night?"

"No; I suppose, of course, he has run away."

"Where did he live?"

"Dean Street, at Matchin's the carpenter."

The chief turned to his telegraphic operator and rapidly gave orders for the arrest of Sleeny by the police of the nearest station. He also sent for the clerks who were on duty the day before at Ware & Harden's.

"Mr. ----, I did not get your name," he said to Offitt, who gave him his name and address. "You have acted the part of a good citizen."

"The most painful act of my life," Offitt murmured.

"Of course. But duty before everything. I will have to ask you to wait a little while in the adjoining room till we see whether this man can be found."

Offitt was shown into a small room, barely furnished, with two doors; the one through which he had just come, and one opening apparently into the main corridor of the building. Offitt, as soon as he was alone, walked stealthily to the latter door and tried to open it. It was locked, and there was no key. He glanced at the window; there was an iron grating inside the sash, which was padlocked. A cold sweat bathed him from head to foot. He sank into a chair, trembling like a leaf. He felt for his handkerchief to wipe his wet forehead. His hand touched one of the packages of money. He bounded from his chair in sudden joy. "They did not search me, so they don't suspect. It is only to make sure of my evidence that they keep me here." Nevertheless, the time went heavily. At last an officer came in and said he was to come to the police justice's for the preliminary examination of Sleeny.

"They have caught him, then?" he asked, with assumed eagerness and surprise. "He had not got away?"

"No," the man answered curtly.

They came to the court-room in a few steps. Sam was there between two policemen. As Offitt entered, he smiled and slightly nodded. One or two men who had been summoned as witnesses were standing near the justice. The proceedings were summary.

One of the policemen said that he had gone to Matchin's shop to arrest the prisoner; that the prisoner exhibited no surprise; his first words were, "Is Mr. Farnham dead yet?"

Offitt was then called upon, and he repeated, clearly and concisely, the story he had told the chief of police. When he had concluded he was shown the hammer which had been picked up on the floor at Farnham's, and was asked, "Is that the hammer you refer to?"

"Yes, that is it."

These words were the signal for a terrible scene.

When Sleeny saw Offitt step forward and begin to give his evidence, he leaned forward with a smile of pleased expectation upon his face. He had such confidence in his friend's voluble cleverness that he had no doubt Offitt would "talk him free" in a few minutes. He was confused a little by his opening words, not clearly seeing his drift; but as the story went on, and Offitt's atrocious falsehood became clear to his mind, he was dumb with stupefaction, and felt a strange curiosity wakening in him to see how the story would end. He did not, for the moment, see what object Offitt could have in lying so, until the thought occurred to him: "May be there's a reward out!" But when the blood-stained hammer was shown and identified by Offitt, all doubt was cleared away in a flash from the dull brain of Sleeny. He saw the whole horrible plot of which he was the victim.

He rose from his seat before the officer could stop him, and roared like a lion in the toils, in a voice filled equally with agony and rage:

"You murdering liar! I'll tear your heart out of you!"

There was a wide table and several chairs between them, but Sleeny was over them in an instant. Offitt tried to escape, but was so hemmed in, that the infuriated man had him in his hands before the officers could interpose. If they had delayed a moment longer all would have been over, for already Sleeny's hands were at the throat of his betrayer. But two powerful policemen with their clubs soon separated the combatants, and Sleeny was dragged back and securely handcuffed.

Offitt, ghastly pale and trembling, had sunk upon a bench. The justice, looking at him narrowly, said: "The man is going to faint; loosen his collar."

"No," said Offitt, springing to his feet. "I am perfectly well."

In his struggle with Sleeny a button of his coat had been torn away. He asked a by-stander for a pin, and carefully adjusted the garment. The thought in his mind was, "I don't mind being killed; but I thought he might tear off my coat, and show them my money." From this moment he kept his hand in such position that he might feel the packages in his pockets.

Sleeny was still panting and screaming execrations at Offitt. The justice turned to him with sternness, and said, "Silence there! Have you not sense enough to see how your ferocious attack on the witness damages you? If you can't restrain your devilish temper while your friend is giving his evidence, it will be all the worse for you."

"Judge," cried Sam, now fairly beside himself, "that's the murderer! I know it. I can prove it. He ain't fit to live. I'll break his neck yet!"

Offitt raised his hands and eyes in deprecating sorrow.

"This is the wild talk of a desperate man," said the justice. "But you may as well tell us how you passed last evening."