Part 47 (2/2)

The face of the woman was ghastly pale, and her sleep must have been very light, for suddenly she opened her eyes, and seeing the officers, uttered the cry, which at first only caused her lord and master to growl out an oath and turn over; whereupon she clutched at him wildly and cried to the men to leave them; they would give themselves up if only the officers would withdraw and permit them to rise and dress.

The man, meantime, seemed to awaken slowly, and to be dazed and stupid, and he paid little heed to his wife's cries as he dragged himself to a sitting posture.

'You'd better get up,' said Jeffrys sternly, 'and give up. You're all in for it.'

Possibly the shrieks that came from below at that moment convinced him, for he answered with a scowling face: 'I guess I know when I'm beat. If you'll shet the door, or turn yer backs so my wife can get up, I'll be quiet enough. Shet up, Sue!'

'All right,' said Jeffrys; and the two officers drew back from the door, and Jeffrys, drawing it half-shut, said, with his eye upon the man, 'Now, the lady first,' and pistol in hand he waited.

The one window was opposite the door and the bed close beside it, so that the half-closed door concealed from Jeffrys both window and woman. He heard her spring up, and at the instant, almost, a slight sc.r.a.ping sound, then suddenly, at the very moment when I stepped from the farther room, the light went out--there was a bound, an oath, a shrill whistle, and, as I reached the door, the flash of a bull's eye, and two pistol-shots came close together.

As I sprang into the room the light revealed an open window, with the rope ladder half out, half in, and upon the floor beneath it Greenback Bob, with Jeffrys kneeling upon his breast, and the attendant officer, with pistol aimed and bull's-eye in hand, at his head. Upon the bed, weeping and moaning piteously, lay the woman, her face buried in the pillow. I went to her and put a hand upon her arm; she lifted toward me the most woeful face it has ever been my lot to see, and said, with mournful apathy:

'Don't fear--I don't want to escape! I knew the end must be near.' And she dropped back with an air of utter exhaustion upon her pillow.

I turned to a.s.sist Jeffrys in securing Greenback Bob, who, now that his pretence of stolid apathy had failed him, was an ugly customer to deal with, and who was resisting with all his strength and filling the air with blasphemy. It was necessary to secure him hand and foot, and we had but just completed the task when Dave came bounding up the stairs.

'Eureka!' he cried. 'It's a complete catch; and Trent's alive, and the happiest man in Chicago, or the world. h.e.l.lo!'

He had glanced at the prostrate counterfeiter, and his last exclamation was in answer to a voice from the room where I had left Lossing guarding the senseless Delbras.

Following Dave's significant gesture, I went with him to the door of the room, where, to my surprise, Delbras, his face quite bloodless with rage and weakness together, was slowly dressing himself under the sternly watchful eye and steadily aimed pistol of Sir Carroll Rae.

The latter had gathered the garments together while Delbras lay unconscious, keeping a watchful eye and ready weapon the while, and had placed them close at his side, first removing from a pocket a small sheathed knife. And now, with his own weapon in hand and those of Delbras collected on the table at his side, he was compelling the Frenchman to make his toilet at the point of the pistol, and his set face left in the mind of the enraged and baffled rascal no room to doubt him when he said:

'Unless you have put on those garments within a reasonable time I will call a pair of policemen to dress you; and if you make one sound or movement other than in obedience I will shoot every bullet in this weapon into your body, and do it with pleasure.'

'How was it?' I asked Dave while this toilet was proceeding, and we stood ready for the trick or attempt at resistance we more than half expected from the Frenchman.

'I guess you heard it about all. Trent lay there wide awake, mighty blue, and too weak to lift his head; and a big negress was half-dozing in her chair by the bedside, with a pistol at her elbow. She made a grab for it, and yelled, as you probably heard. Trent was a.s.saulted and half-killed, nursed back to life for what there was in it, and has just come to his senses, awfully weak, but game enough to resist their efforts to make him appeal to his father for a big ransom. That's all I've had time to hear.'

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

AFTER ALL.

Trent, of course, was not strong enough to be moved, and that and the late, or rather the early, hour, it being now almost two o'clock a.m., decided us to camp down in the house until morning. So the men outside with Smug in charge were called in, and with our prisoners securely guarded, we pa.s.sed the few hours before daylight in conversation, Dave, Jeffrys, Lossing, and myself, in Trent's room.

I was doctor enough to see that the poor fellow had been sufficiently startled by our appearance and the events of the night, and so, eager as we were to hear and he to tell his story, we imposed silence upon him until he could be seen by a physician--at least comparative silence; and as he declared himself 'all right' except for his weakness, and finding that he was, very naturally, unable to sleep, or even to rest quietly, we told him briefly the story of our search for him, and in telling it led him slowly to the knowledge of his father's presence in the city and the nearness of his betrothed.

More than once his fine eyes filled with tears and his lips trembled as we told of his sweetheart's telegrams and his father's anxiety; and when he had heard it all, he lay a long time silent but wakeful, and evidently thinking, and at last, just as the first faint streak of gray became tinged with a beam of red in the east, he fell asleep, with a smile upon his pale lips.

When the negress had been removed from the room, she had begged to be taken to her 'dear Missis Susie,' who, she declared, was 'sick enough to die'; and I led her upstairs to the room where the pale, worn woman still lay, in the room from which her husband had been removed.

As the negress entered the room the woman lifted her head, and with an inarticulate cry threw herself into her servant's arms; there was a moment of wild sobbing, and then, as I was about to set a guard at the door and withdraw, the negress uttered a shrill cry, caught the slender form in her stout arms and laid her upon the bed, and I saw a thin stream of blood trickle from between the white lips.

Restoratives were at hand, for this was not the first attack, the negress said; and when the woman had been cared for, and at last lay sleeping from exhaustion and, I fancied, the help of an opiate, I questioned the servant.

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