Part 5 (1/2)

A stylish woman, still fair in spite of her 50 years, was sitting in front of Robert as he testified. She was the widow of Benjamin Arnold's brother, Henry, and her son, Henry, or Harry, had just offered a reward of $5,000 for the incendiary--a sum which McCausland might well have hopes of securing. The inspector was still hovering about the threshold of his ante-room, and now that Floyd's examination was concluded he called the district attorney to one side, apparently urging him to reserve the remainder of his evidence, which would naturally consist of reb.u.t.tal of Floyd and corroboration of Bertha. At any rate, Mr. Badger arose, and, announcing that the case was closed, offered a summary of the evidence, rapid, methodical, but unimpressive, like himself. Then the prisoner was asked if he desired to speak in his own behalf.

”Your honor,” he said, ”this monstrous charge of having set on foot a fire in the most populous section of our n.o.ble city overwhelms me so that I am impotent to express the indignation I feel. I leave it to your own sense of justice, your own discrimination, whether I am to be dishonored with the suspicion of an infamous crime, on evidence so flimsy that the bare denial of a veracious man should be sufficient to upset it. I read in many faces around me the hunger for blood; the unthinking call for a victim. Heed that, and my good name is taken from me. I am irreparably wronged. Resist it, and you will prove yourself worthy of the honorable t.i.tle which you bear.”

Not a few were swayed toward the youth by his manifest emotion. But the judge waited fully a minute before he arose and his eyegla.s.ses were trembling in his hand.

”You have elected, against good counsel,” he began, ”to be your own advocate. I cannot and do not adjudge you unsuccessful, in the sense of having demonstrated your guilt rather than your innocence. But that you have failed to break the government's chain of evidence in its most damaging links--sole opportunity, motive and suspicious conduct, especially after the act--is plain to me, and would be plain to any mind accustomed to weighing such evidence calmly.

”It is true the evidence is wholly circ.u.mstantial. No eye but G.o.d's saw this foul deed done. But since William Rufus was found dead in the New Forest, with Walter Tyrrell's arrow in his breast, men have been convicted of murder on circ.u.mstantial evidence, and will continue to be so convicted as long as probability remains the guide of life.

”I am obliged, therefore, to remand you for trial, not only on the charge of arson, but upon the graver charge of homicide involved in it under the peculiar circ.u.mstances of the case. This is not a final verdict. Far be it from me, one erring man, to say that the government has fastened this crime upon you beyond reasonable doubt. But in the face of the evidence which has been brought forward I could not order your release. It becomes my unhappy duty, as the examining magistrate, to commit you to custody, to await the approaching session of the grand jury.”

When Emily Barlow awoke from her swoon she found herself in the arms of old John Davidson. Perhaps it was as well she did not hear the jeer of execration which greeted the prisoner outside when he pa.s.sed over the sidewalk, ironed between two stalwart officers, into the jail van. McCausland's identification with the case had affected public opinion profoundly, for he was said never to have failed to convict a criminal whom he had once brought into court. But possibly the outburst was due to the circ.u.mstance that this was the neighborhood in which the Lacy girls lived and that their funeral had taken place that very morning.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CLOUDS THICKEN.

”s.h.a.garach is the man to defend him, Miss Barlow,” said old John Davidson. She was lying back against the cus.h.i.+ons of the cab, with cheeks as white as the handkerchief she held to her lips. For the marshal had kindly offered to accompany her home and she had told him part of her story.

She was, as McCausland had said to the district attorney, a photographic retoucher. You must know that a negative when it leaves the camera is no more fit for display than milk fresh from the cow is drinkable. All the minor blemishes which you and I, not being made in the stamp of bluff old Oliver, dislike to see perpetuated in our counterfeit presentments, must be carefully stippled out. The work is not without its irksomeness, requiring long hours of labor as well as firmness of touch. The strain upon the young lady's eyes was evident, and her face, for all its beauty, was as delicate as thinnest porcelain. One felt that her fingers, if she held them toward the sun, would show the red suffusion of a child's. But her earnings supported a family of five, and her character had won the love of Robert Floyd.

”Who is s.h.a.garach?” she asked, as if struck by the name.

”s.h.a.garach! Why, s.h.a.garach's the coming man, the greatest criminal lawyer in the state and the greatest cross-examiner in the world--a mind reader, black art in it. Never lost a case.”

”This is my number, Mr. Davidson.”

”Ho, there! John! Cabby!” The marshal rapped at the window.

”What was the number, miss?”

”Four hundred and twelve.”

”Stop at 412.”

”You have been very kind to interest yourself in one who is not known to you, Mr. Davidson. I should have been badly off without your a.s.sistance.”

”Didn't do half enough,” answered the marshal. ”Glad to be of service. Call on me again. Here's s.h.a.garach's address. Take my advice and look him up.”

He had been writing on the back of a card while the cab-driver was slowing his team around in front of Miss Barlow's door. It read in a scrawl, rendered half-illegible by the jolting: ”Meyer s.h.a.garach, 31 Putnam Street.”

Emily looked twice at the singular name. McCausland never failed to convict his prisoners. s.h.a.garach's clients invariably escaped. What would happen if the two were pitted against each other? This was her thought when she mounted the dear steps of home and fell weeping into the arms of her mother.

The following morning a remarkable discovery was made on the site of Prof. Arnold's house. The burned district had been roped off and was guarded by policemen, owing to the danger from the standing walls and still smoking debris. But tip-carts had begun to remove what was removable of the wreck, and the work of clearing away the ground was already well under way. Sight-seers in great numbers went out of their course to pa.s.s the ruins, for the Harmon building was of recent erection and had been styled a model of business architecture.

But ”Toot” Watts, ”Turkey” Fenton and ”The Whistler” were not indulging in reminiscences of departed architectural glories that morning. They averaged 14 years and 110 pounds, a combination hostile to sentiment in any but its most robust forms. ”That nutty duffer gives me a pain,” was their unanimous criticism from the gallery of the ”Grand Dime,” upon the garden rhapsodies of their co-mate and brother in adolescence, Romeo. But in the evenings, if that long fence, which is the gamin's delight, happened to be under surveillance from the ”cop,” they would march up street and down, Turkey mouthing his harmonica, Toot opening and shutting a wheezy accordion, the Whistler fifing away with that thrush-like note to which he owed his nickname, and all three beating time by their own quick footsteps to the melody of some sweet, familiar song. Amid such surroundings even the ditties sung by our mothers many seasons ago can bring up wholesome sentiments in which the boyish musicians who evoke them are surely sharers.

On the day before Toot had surrept.i.tiously conveyed a fresh egg to school and rolled it playfully down the aisle, whereupon Turkey, as he was walking out at 4, had set the stamp of approval on his friend's property. All three had decided to take a day off until the affair should blow over, and no better pastime suggested itself than a visit to the fire, in which they took a sort of proprietary interest, since they had been the first after the bake-shop girl, to arrive on the spot. The pa.s.sageway beside the house was still left open and unguarded. So our urchins, approaching from the Broad street side, coolly entered the forbidden precincts thereby, thus eluding the blue-coated watchers by a flank movement as simple as it was effective.

”I'm goin' to pick up junk and sell it to Bagley,” said Turkey, filling his pocket with bolts, nuts and other fragments which he deemed of value. The others followed his example and began rummaging about with insecure footing among the heaps.

”Whew!” the Whistler emitted a long-drawn note no flute could possibly rival. He had been brus.h.i.+ng away the ashes from a heavy object, when his eye was attracted by a fragment of cloth, which clung about it. His whistle drew the attention of his companions, but it also invited a less welcome arrival, no other than one of the patrolmen doing guard duty, who swooped down and seized Turkey and the Whistler by their collars, while Toot scrambled off with unseemly haste and escaped down the alleyway.

”What are you doing here?” said the officer, shaking the boys till their teeth chattered, and several pieces of iron, dropping out of Turkey's pockets, disclosed the object of their visit. ”Stealing junk, eh?”

”Say, look,” said the Whistler, who was cool and inventive; ”it's a woman.” He was pointing to the object he had laid bare. The officer slackened his grip.

”My G.o.d!” he cried; then stooped and by a full exertion of his strength lifted the thing out of the ashes and half-burned timbers which overlay it. It was, indeed, the body of a woman, short and stout. The boys did not run. They looked on, spellbound, in open-mouthed wonder.

”Run and call the sergeant,” said the policeman to his quondam captives.

The news spread like wildfire. Hundreds swarmed to the scene, but none among them who had the key to the woman's ident.i.ty. Her charred face and burned body rendered identification difficult. It was Inspector McCausland who, after consulting his notebook, recognized the garment and the form which it clad as Ellen Greeley's. An ambulance was called and the corpse of the poor woman carried away to the morgue, to await her sister's instructions.

Senda Wesner, the bake-shop girl, had described this discovery for the eleventh time to her customers, and was standing on the steps of her store alone--a condition to which she was by nature averse--when the golden-haired lady ”flashed in upon her,” as she afterward said, ”like a Baltimore oriole.” It was Emily Barlow, who had run down during her lunch hour to the scene of the tragedy. At the first mention of her name, Miss Wesner knew her.

”Oh, you're the young lady he kept company with,” she said. ”Isn't it too bad? I don't believe he ever did it. No man in his senses would set his own house afire and then walk out in broad daylight, as I saw Mr. Floyd do.”

”You saw Mr. Floyd coming out, then? Pardon my curiosity, but I am so deeply interested----”

”I shouldn't think much of you if you were not,” said Senda Wesner. ”I'm glad to tell all I know about it, and I can't see for the life of me why they didn't call me to the stand.”

Emily saw that no apology was needed for questioning the bake-shop girl. She was easy to make free with and fond of running on. Being a little reticent herself, Emily was glad to be relieved of the necessity of putting inquiries. So she simply guided the little gossip's talk.

”You did see Mr. Floyd leave the house? Was it long before the fire broke out?”

”Four or five minutes. I'd noticed Bertha raising the curtains--two Was.h.i.+ngton pies? yes'm--I'd seen Bertha up in the study, I say, but then Joe Tyke, Joey, we call him, the cripple newsboy, though he is quite a man now, but he never grew, deformed, you know--Joey was trundling himself along on his little cart, and I couldn't take my eyes off of him--20 cents, yes'm.” The bake-shop girl continued to spread jam, ladle milk and wrap warm loaves in fresh brown paper, all the while, but her interruptions only formed tiny ripples on her flowing stream of prattle. ”Then Mr. Robert came out and walked down to the corner slowly. But do you know what puzzled me? What was he stooping over the hearth for and picking up those pieces of paper?”

”People often do that. Perhaps he had torn up a letter and some of it had scattered outside the fireplace.”

”Well, I didn't see another thing, not one thing, against him,” said Miss Wesner, decidedly. Her ideas on the value of evidence were certainly of the most feminine order. ”I'm sure he's a young man of the highest reputation. Never smoked or drank or----”

”You didn't see any other person coming out of the house?”

”No, I didn't. Yes, Gertrude, and how's your mamma? That's a sweet thing, only 10 years old, but does all the errands and half the housework for her mother, that's sick, and never slaps the baby.”

”Or any stranger about?” edged in Emily again, when the spigot was finally turned off and the waters of gossip had ceased to run.

”Do you know----” The bake-shop girl dimpled her cheek with her forefinger. It was a healthy cheek, but not beautiful. ”Do you know, there has been the oddest peddler around here for the last three weeks?”

”Do tell me about him. What did he look like? A stranger?”

”Never pa.s.sed this street before as long as I know and that's a good many years. He was a sunburnt sort of man, like all the peddlers (only I'd say homelier, if I wasn't a fright myself), and with crazy blue eyes. Always came in a green cart and sold vegetables, no, once potted plants. But how he would yodel. Why, he'd make you deaf. Ellen used to buy of him sometimes. n.o.body else ever did, and it's my opinion when he left the Arnolds he used to whip up his horse and hurry right round the corner.”