Part 48 (1/2)

Her mistress, she said, was a southern woman, and she had been her servant since 'befo' the war,' when that mistress was a child of six.

An orphan with a small fortune, 'Mistress Susie' had married Greenback Bob, 'Master Robert,' she called him, and had followed him and clung to him through all his downward career of crime, as the big, heavy-featured coloured woman had clung to 'Missis Susie.' When prosperous, Bob was kind; when unlucky or drunk, he was cruel and coa.r.s.e. 'Missis Susie' had inherited consumption, and that and trouble and danger had 'wo'n her life away,' as the woman said, with big tears dropping upon her dark cheeks.

'This las',' she concluded, 'hit's been the wo'st of all. An' that sick boy! Missis Susie prayed 'em to let him go away to the hospital, when he was hurt and couldn't give anyone away. But they nuver heard to Missis Susie--nuver! They wouldn't have been trapped like this if they had.'

It was by my proposal to bring the physician--whom at an early morning hour I had summoned to see Trent--to pa.s.s judgment upon 'Missis Susie' also, that I won the negress to tell me something about Trent; how at early evening he was brought in by Bob and Delbras, whom she called Hector, and whom she evidently both feared and hated; how a physician was called, as the young man was insensible, and how, fortunately for them, he continued delirious for three weeks and more while the two wounds on his head, both serious ones, were healing; how the 'gang' had deliberately taken the risk of keeping him until he had so far recovered as to be beyond the danger-line, knowing that they could not safely negotiate the return to his family of a prisoner who might die perhaps while the negotiations were pending.

She told how some one of the gang proper was always on guard in the sick-room by day, and often by night, and that it was only since the going away of one of the gang, Harry by name, that they had entrusted the prisoner to her care alone.

It did not take me long to find out that the person she called Harry was the brunette, now lying dead at the Morgue, and I saw, too, that she did not dream of the fate that had overtaken him, although I felt sure that the woman Susie did.

At early dawn the three men, Delbras, Bob, and Smug, or Harris, as his companions called him, were taken away under charge of Dave Brainerd and Jeffrys, to be locked up and safely kept until Jeffrys should take Delbras to New York, and thence to France. The others would await our appearance against them.

When the physician came, I took him from young Trent's bedside to that of 'Missis Susie.'

Of Trent he had spoken only words of cheer. His wounds were healing, had healed in fact healthily, and with no danger of after-trouble, mental or other; and now he needed only good nursing, good food, tonics, stimulants, and for a little longer quiet and not too much company. He might be moved, he told us, upon a cot, and for a short distance, that afternoon; and he commended us for our wisdom in not following up the excitement of the previous hours with an instant meeting between the invalid and his father and sweetheart. Now, 'after a light breakfast and good nerve tonic,' he might see his friends, when they had been prepared and warned against unduly taxing the patient's nerves and strength.

Of the sick woman above stairs there was a different tale to tell. She might linger for weeks, but for her there was no recovery.

When the negress--Hat, her mistress called her--heard this she was inconsolable, and when I had promised her that, if possible, she should remain with her mistress to the end, she was ready to be my slave; and knowing that nothing could help or hurt her mistress more, she was willing to tell me what she could about the gang and their methods.

She had no love for her mistress's husband, and she seemed to have remembered against him every unkind deed or word spoken or done to her 'Missis Susie.' Delbras she had ever feared and hated, and Smug she despised as the coward decoy of the gang. For Harry she expressed a liking. 'He was bad, that's true,' she declared; 'sharp as you please and tricky; but he was good to my mistress when the others forgot her.

He was good to her always, and he bought her books and fruit. When he dressed in woman's clothes she would help him, and he never forgot to thank her. But they quarrelled, Harry and Bob and the Frenchman, and he left night before last.'

I told her of Harry's fate, and she cursed his slayers with oaths like a man's; and after that her testimony was ready, and it helped us much. As for Susan Kendricks, for this was the name by which the poor soul had wedded Greenback Bob, there came a time when she told me her story, and a sad, sad page it was, with little light anywhere upon it.

She had taken little part in their dangerous enterprises, only now and then appearing somewhere with Harry when he was masquerading as a girl, in order to mislead the officers or the neighbours in their estimate of the number and s.e.x of the gang; or to play a part, as on the night when she personated June Jenrys in order to entrap Lossing.

But when the s.h.i.+p's in port who cares to wait for the furling of the sails? The journey ended, we go ash.o.r.e.

Little need to describe the meeting between Gerald Trent and his friends, which occurred shortly after the going away of the 'gang' and the visit of the doctor.

He told them the story of his 'disappearance,' and the manner of it was briefly thus:

At one of the small tables in the Public Comfort Cafe he had dined opposite Smug, whose confiding and kindly obliging manner and general air of being a good but rather slow young man made him an invaluable decoy for the gang. Here Trent's rather careless display of a well-filled purse, together with the fine watch he carried and his valuable diamonds, quietly but mistakenly worn, had no doubt attracted Smug, who had made himself agreeable, but not obtrusively so, and had contrived to meet him again and yet again. The last meeting was at evening, when, while chatting easily, he had expressed a desire to visit Buffalo Bill, and Smug, claiming to be a near resident, very modestly offered his escort, and was so un.o.btrusive and so eminently proper while confessing to a weakness for 'horse shows,' that Trent had been quite disarmed.

At the close of the entertainment, the Elevated trains being overcrowded, Smug had carelessly recommended the Central, alleging that one of its suburban stations was little more than two blocks away, and proffered himself as guide, as an afterthought, and because he could show him a short cut.

'He showed me several,' concluded Trent, with a grimace; 'for, having lured me away from the crowd and into an almost deserted and ill-lighted street, we were suddenly attacked, and my ”short cuts”

were administered upon my crown.'

Some hazy remembrance caused him to believe that they had taken him to their lair, half-carrying and half-dragging him, and representing him to an inquiring policeman as being a victim of too much brandy and beer.

Then came his illness, a dream of fever, pain, and delirium, and a slow return to reason, to find himself a prisoner, too weak to lift head or tend, and yet fully determined not to help his rapacious captors to a fortune at his father's cost.

Since his return to reason he had, as much as possible, rejected what he believed to be opiates, and had feigned sleep to avoid their threats and importunities, and to meet cunning with cunning.

While thus sleeping (?) he had heard some of their whispered plotting, and he was able to explain how it was that Mrs. Camp had succeeded in carrying out her wild but successful adventure.

Among Smug's acquaintances was a certain widow, or a woman who pa.s.sed for such, who called herself a nurse, and whose services 'came high.'