One of My Sons Part 37

"No, we are not going to Mother Merry's."

"Yet we are not far from the docks," I remarked, as I caught transitory glimpses of the unmistakable green and red lights of the ferry-boats shining mistily on the left.

"No, our errand takes us in the region of her old haunts. I hope you feel no concern as to your safety?"

"Concern?"

"Oh, there's cause enough, or would be, if we were not in force. But our preparations have been made very carefully, and you can trust us to bring you out all right."

I signified my entire satisfaction. The prospect of physical struggle or some open adventure was welcome to me. My inner excitement would thus find vent.

"Do not bother about me," said I. "What I dread most is the possibility of meeting that unhappy woman's eye. Seeing me with you, she may think I have betrayed her. And perhaps I have; but it was done without intention. She did not strike me as a wicked woman."

"So much the less excuse for the man who has made her his accomplice,"

came in quiet rejoinder.

This ended our conversation for the time.

We were now making our way up-town through upper West Street. As I came to what I knew must be Ca.n.a.l Street from the cars that went jingling across our path, the difficulties of advance became more marked, and finally the cab stopped.

"What is going on here?" I asked, as carriage after carriage rolled into our course, till the street was blocked and we found it impossible to proceed.

"It's a Cunarder going out. The tide sets late to-night."

Here a coach, with a sweet-faced girl, drew up along-side us. I could see her happy smile, her air of busy interest, as she bent her head to catch a glimpse of the steamer upon which she was perhaps about to take her first voyage abroad. I could even hear her laugh. The sensation was poignant. Wrapt up in the thought of Hope, whom I had not forgotten for one moment during this wild ride, the sight of joy which might never again be hers came like a glimpse into another sphere, so far removed did I feel from everything bespeaking the ordinary interests of life, much less its extraordinary pleasures and antic.i.p.ations.

Mr. Gryce in the meantime was fuming over the delay.

"We might better have come up ---- Street," he said. "Ah! that's better. We will arrive at our destination now in less than ten minutes."

We had pa.s.sed the Cunarder's wharf, and were now rolling rapidly northward.

Suddenly the cab stopped.

"Again?" I cried.

Mr. Gryce replied by stepping out upon the sidewalk.

"We alight here," said he.

I rapidly followed him.

The rain dashing in my face blinded me for a moment; then I perceived that we were standing on a corner in front of a saloon, and that Mr.

Gryce was talking very earnestly to two men who seemed to have sprung up from nowhere. When he had finished with what he had to say to them, he turned to me.

"Sorry, sir, but we shall have to walk the rest of the way. There are alleys to explore, and a cab attracts attention."

"It's all one to me," I muttered; and it was.

He turned east and I followed him. At the first crossing, a man glided into our wake; at the second, another. Soon there were three men sauntering behind us at a convenient distance apart. Each held a policeman's club under his coat; and walked as if the rain had no power to wet him. Suddenly I felt myself wheeled into an alley-way.

It was pouring now, and even the street lamps shone through a veil of mist, which made them all look like stars. The alley was dark, for there were no lamps there; only at the remote end a distant glimmer shone. It came from the murky panes of some shop or saloon.

Towards this light we moved.

XXVII

RAIN

Suddenly the figure of a man stepped out before us. It was too dark to see his face, but his voice had a familiar sound as he said:

"It's all right. He's there. I saw him go in a half-hour ago."

"Very good. My man, Sweet.w.a.ter," explained Mr. Gryce, turning for an instant towards me; then, in hurried tones to the other, "Do you know on which floor he is to be found; and whether the man at the bar suspects what's up?"

"If he does, he's pretty quiet about it. All looks natural inside. But you can't tell what whispers have gone about. As for him, he's chosen his place with his usual indifference to consequences. He's in one of the attic rooms, sir, well back, and can be reached from the outside by means of a shed that slopes up almost to the window-ledge. If he wanted to escape, he could easily do so by a drop of only four feet.

But I have left a man on watch there and our young gentleman would fall into arms that wouldn't let him go in a hurry. Will you come around that way? There's a light in the window and there's neither curtain nor shade to hinder a man's looking in. If you wish, I can crawl up on the roof I spoke of and take a peep at our doves before we venture upon disturbing them."

"It can do no harm," rejoined the older detective; "and if the girl is where she can be seen, this gentleman can go up afterwards and identify her. It will mean surer and quieter work than approaching them by the stairway. The house is full, I suppose?"

"Chuck." And with this characteristic word Sweet.w.a.ter melted from before us as if he had been caught up in one of the swirls of wind and rain that ever and anon swept through the alley, dashing our faces with wet and making our feet unsteady on the slippery pavement.

I began to feel strange and unlike myself. The night, the storm, the uncongenial place, our more than uncongenial errand, were having their effect, lending to that dark entrance into one of the worst corners of our great city a sense of mysterious awe which has caused it to remain in my memory as something quite out of the ordinary experiences of life. It was not a long alley, and we soon reached the light I have mentioned. We could hear voices now, loud voices raised one moment in contention, the next in drunken cheer; and, thrilling through it all, a woman's tones singing some bewildering melody. It was not the voice of Mille-fleurs. I could never have mistaken that--but it was a young voice, and did not lack sweetness in the low notes. As I was listening to it, something flew flapping into my face. It was a piece of damp paper peeled from some billboard by a wandering gust and sent scurrying through the air. I tore it away from my eyes, drawing a deep breath like a person suddenly released from suffocation; but I shall not soon forget the effect of that cold slap in the face at the moment when my every nerve was on tension. Mr. Gryce, who had seen nothing,--it was hardly possible to see in the deluge which now swept down upon us,--gave me a pull which drew me from before the swinging door I was unconsciously making for, into a corner where I found myself more or less shielded from the wind if not from the rain. The alley had an L, and leading down from this L was a narrow pa.s.sage, within which we now stood, surrounded by reeking walls and facing (whenever the fury of the storm abated sufficiently for us to look up) an opening into what might be called a labyrinth of back-yards. As I was bracing myself to meet all alarms, real or imaginary, a.s.sociated with this noisome place, I beheld a sudden figure emerge from the opening and hastily approach us. It was Sweet.w.a.ter again. He had just descended from his clamber over the roofs, where he seemed to be as much at home as a cat.

"Lucky that it rains so," he panted; "keeps the kids in. Otherwise some of us would have been spotted long ago. There are about fifty of them in this one house." Then I heard him whisper in the ear that was necessarily very near mine:

"It's all right up there. I can see his figure plainly. He's sitting with his back to the window, but there's no mistaking Leighton Gillespie. He's in dinner dress, just as he came from his own table in Fifth Avenue. The girl----"

"Well, what of the girl?"

"Is in one of her heavy sleeps. I could not see her face, only her hair, which hung all about her----"

"I would know her hair," I put in.

The two men drew a step aside and whispered together. Then Mr. Gryce came back, and, putting his mouth to my ear, asked if I had enough agility to mount the shed as Sweet.w.a.ter had done. "He says the wood is slippery, but the climb up quite practicable for an agile man. He had no difficulty, and if you will catch hold of the window-casings as you go along----"

"Let me see the place," said I.

Sweet.w.a.ter at once drew me down the pa.s.sage into the open place in the rear. Here wind and storm had their will again, and for a moment I could neither hear nor see anything but a vast expanse of hollow darkness, lit here and there with misty lights, and reverberating with all sorts of sounds, among which the shrieking wind wailed longest and most furiously.

"Up there!" called a voice in my ear, and then I became aware of an arm pointing over my shoulder towards a dark incline running up over a flight of stairs, upon the lower step of which I had almost stumbled.

"That's your road. Can you take it?"

Jamming my hat over my head, I looked up. A lighted square met my eyes in the blank side of the wall, against which this none too desirable road, as he called it, ran up.