The Colossus Part 21

But she gave her son never a nod. In her sight he surely could commit no indiscretion. A moment later the mother asked:

"Have they talked to you again about going into the store?"

"Oh, they hint at it occasionally."

"Ellen, can't you find a chair? I know your brother must he tired."

Ellen got off the arm of Henry's chair, and soon afterward Mrs.

Witherspoon took the vacated place. The young woman laughed, but said nothing. The mother fondly touched Henry's hair and smoothed it back from his forehead. "Don't you let them worry you, my son. They can't help but respect your manliness. Indeed," she added, growing strangely bold for one so gentle, "must a man be a merchant whether he will or not? And whenever you want to write about poor women, you do it. They are mistreated; they are made wretched, and by just such men as Brooks, too. What does he care for a woman's misery? And your father's so blind that he doesn't see it. But I see it. And I oughtn't to say it, but I will--he has the impudence to tell your father that I give too much money to the poor. It's none of his business, I'm sure."

There was a peculiar softness in Henry's voice when he replied: "I hope some time to catch him interfering with your affairs."

"Oh, but you mustn't say a word, my son--not a word; and I don't want your father to know that I have said anything."

"He shall not know, but I hope some time to catch Brooks interfering with your affairs. He has meddled with mine, but I can forgive that."

Henry walked up and down the room when Mrs. Witherspoon and Ellen were gone. With a mother's love, that gentle woman had found a mother's place in his heart. He looked at the rocking-chair. Suddenly he seized hold of the mantelpiece to steady himself. He had caught himself seriously wondering if she had rocked him years ago.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE INVESTMENT.

It seemed to Henry that he had just dozed off to sleep when he was startled by a loud knock at the door.

"Henry, Henry!" It was Witherspoon's voice.

"Yes."

"Get up, quick! Old man Colton is murdered."

When he went down-stairs he found the household in confusion. Every one on the place had been aroused. The servants were whispering in the hall. Witherspoon was waiting for him.

"A messenger has just brought the news. Come, we must go over there.

The carriage is waiting."

It was two o'clock. A fierce and cutting wind swept across the lake--the icy breath of a dying year. Not a word was spoken as the carriage sped along. At the door of Colton's home Witherspoon and Henry were confronted by a policeman.

"My orders are to let no one in," said the officer.

"I am George Witherspoon."

The policeman stepped aside. Brooks met them in the hall. He said nothing, but took Witherspoon's hand. The place was thronged with police officers and reporters.

Adjoining Colton's sleeping-apartment, on the second floor, was a small room with a window looking out on the back yard, and with one door opening from the hall. In this room, let partly into the wall, was an iron safe in which the old man kept "the little money" that he had decided to invest in real estate. The window was protected by upright iron bars. At night, a gas-jet, turned low, threw dismal shadows about the room, and it was the old man's habit to light the gas at bed-time and to turn it off the first thing at morning. He had lighted the gas shortly after returning from Witherspoon's house and had gone to bed, and it must have been about one o'clock when the household was startled by the report of a pistol. Brooks and his wife, whose room was on the same floor, ran into the old man's room. The place was dark, but a bright light burned in the vault-room. Into this room they ran, and there, lying on the floor, with money scattered about him, was the old man, b.l.o.o.d.y and dead, with a bullet-hole in his breast. But where was Mrs. Colton? They hastened back to her room and struck a light. The old woman lay across the bed, unable to move--paralyzed.

The first discovery made by the police was that the iron bars at the window, four in number, had been sawed in two; and then followed another discovery of a more singular nature. In the window, caught by the sudden fall of the sash, was a black frock coat. In one of the tail pockets was a briar-root pipe. The sash had fallen while the murderer was getting out, and, pulled against the sash, the pipe held the garment fast. One sleeve was torn nearly off. In a side pocket was found a letter addressed to Dave Kittymunks, general delivery, Chicago, and post-marked Milwaukee. Under the window a ladder was found.

At the coroner's inquest, held the next day, one of the servants testified that three days before, while the old man and Brooks were at the store and while the ladies were out, a man with black whiskers, and who wore a black coat, had called at the house and said that he had been sent to search for sewer-gas. He had an order presumably signed by Mr. Colton, and was accordingly shown through the house. He had insisted upon going into the vault-room, declaring that he had located the gas there, but was told that the room was always kept locked. He then went away. The servant had not thought to tell Mr.

Colton.

A general delivery clerk at the post-office testified that the letter addressed to Dave Kittymunks had pa.s.sed through his hands. The oddness of the name had fastened it on his memory. He did not think that he could identify the man who had received the letter, but he recalled the black whiskers. The letter was apparently written by a woman, and was signed "Lil." It was an urgent appeal for money.

CHAPTER XIX.

ARRESTED EVERYWHERE.

"Who is Dave Kittymunks?" was a question asked by the newspapers throughout the country. Not the slightest trace of him could be found, nor could "Lil" be discovered with any degree of certainty. But one morning the public was fed to an increase of appet.i.te by an article that appeared in a Chicago newspaper. "Kittymunks came to Chicago about five months ago," said the writer, "and for a time went under the name of John Pruett. Fierce in his manner, threatening in his talk, wearing a scowl, frowning at prattling children and muttering at honest men, he repelled every one. Dissatisfied with his lot in life, he refused, even for commensurate compensation, to perform that honest labor which is the province of every true man, and like a hyena, he prowled about growling at himself and despising fate. The writer met him on several occasions and held out inducements that might lead to conversation, but was persistently repulsed by him. He frowned upon society, and set the grinding heel of his disapproval on every attempt to draw him out. Was there some dark mystery connected with his life?

This question the writer asked himself. He execrated humanity; and, moody and alone, the writer has seen him sitting on a bench on the lake front, turning with a sullen look and viewing with suppressed rage the architectural grandeur towering at his back."

The article was written by Mr. Flummers. As the only reporter who could write from contact with the murderer, his sentences were bloated into strong significance. Fame reached down and s.n.a.t.c.hed him up, and the blue light of his flambeau played about him.

"Pessimist as he is"--Flummers was holding forth among the night reporters at the central station--"Pessimist as he is, and a skeptic though he may be, papa goes through this life with his eyes open. Idle suggestion says, 'Shut your eyes, papa, and be happy,' but shrewdness says, 'Watch that fellow going along there.' I don't claim any particular credit for this; we are not to be vain of what nature has done for us, nor censured for what she has denied. We are all children, toddling about as an experiment, and wondering what we are going to be. Some of us fall and weep over our bruises, and some of us--some of us get there. He, he, he."

"Flummers, have they raised your salary yet?" some one asked.

"Oh, no, and that's why I am disgusted with the newspaper profession.

The country cries out, 'Who is the man?' There is a deep silence. The country cries again, 'Does any one know this man?' And then papa speaks. But what does he get? The razzle. A great scoop rewarded with a razzle. My achievements are taken too much us a matter of course. I don't a.s.sert myself enough. I am too modest. Say, I smell liquor.

Who's got a bottle? Somebody took a cork out of a bottle. Who was it?

Say, Will, have you got a bottle?"

"Thought you said that your doctor told you not to drink."

"He did; he said that I had intercostal rheumatism. He examined me carefully, and when I asked him what he thought, he replied, 'Mr.

Flummers, you can't afford to drink.'"

"And did you tell him that you could afford it--that it didn't cost you anything?"

"Oh, ho, ho, no! Say, send out and get a bottle. What are you fellows playing there? Ten cents ante, all jack pots? It's a robbers' game."

In every community a stranger wearing black whiskers was under suspicion. A detective shrewdly suggested that the murderer might have shaved, and he claimed great credit for this timely hint; but no matter, the search for the black-whiskered man was continued. Dave Kittymunks was arrested in all parts of the country, and the head-line writer, whose humor could not long be held in subjection, began to express himself thus: "Dave Kittymunks captured in St. Paul, also seized in New Orleans, and is hotly pursued in the neighborhood of Kansas City."

Witherspoon, sitting by his library fire at night, would say over and over again: "I told him never to keep any money in the house. He was so close, so suspicious; and then to put his money in a safe that a boy might have knocked to pieces!" And it became Mrs. Witherspoon's habit to declare: "I just know that somebody will break into our house next." Then the merchant's impatience would express itself with a grunt. "Oh, it has given you and Ellen a rare chance for speculation.

We'd better wall ourselves in a cave and die there waiting for robbers to drill their way in. It does seem to me that they ought to catch that fellow, I told Brooks that he'd better increase the reward to fifty thousand."

Witherspoon and Brooks called at Henry's office. "You may publish the fact that I have offered fifty thousand dollars reward for Kittymunks," said Brooks, speaking to Henry, but looking into the room where Miss Drury was at work.

"That ought to be a great stimulus," Henry replied, "but it doesn't appear to me that there has been any lack of effort."

"No," said Witherspoon; "but the prospect of fifty thousand dollars will make a strong effort stronger."