The Daughter of Anderson Crow Part 42

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

The Story is Told

Elsie Banks had a small and select audience in Mrs. Bonner's room upstairs. She had come from New York--or from California, strictly speaking--to furnish the narrative which was to set Rosalie Gray's mind at rest forever-more. It was not a pleasant task; it was not an easy sacrifice for this spirited girl who had known luxury all her life. Her spellbound hearers were Mrs. Bonner and Edith, Wicker Bonner, Anderson Crow, Rosalie, and John E. Barnes, who, far from being a captive of the law, was now Miss Gray's attorney, retained some hours before by his former captor.

"I discharge you, sir," Anderson had said, after hearing Miss Bank's statement in the roadway. "You are no longer a prisoner. Have you anything to say, sir?"

"Nothing, Mr. Crow, except to offer my legal services to you and your ward in this extraordinary matter. Put the matter in my hands, sir, and she shall soon come into her own, thanks to this young lady. I may add that, as I am not in the habit of soliciting clients, it is not my intention in this instance to exact a fee from your ward. My services are quite free, given in return, Mr. Crow, for the magnanimous way in which you have taken me into your confidence ever since I have known you. It is an honour to have been arrested by you; truthfully it is no disgrace."

In the privacy of Mrs. Bonner's sitting-room, Elsie Banks, dry-eyed and bitter, told the story of her life. I cannot tell it as she did, for she was able to bring tears to the eyes of her listeners. It is only for me to relate the bare facts, putting them into her words as closely as possible. Rosalie Gray, faint with astonishment and incredulity, a lump in her throat that would not go down, and tears in her eyes, leaned back in an easy-chair and watched her unhappy friend.

"I shall provide Mr. Barnes with proof of everything I say," said Miss Banks. "There can be no difficulty, Rosalie dear, in confirming all that I have to tell. If you will permit me to relate the story without interruption and afterward let me go my way without either pity or contempt, I shall be, oh, so grateful to you all--especially to you, dear Rosalie. Believe me I love you with my whole soul.

"I have come to you voluntarily, and my mother, who is in Tinkletown, in resigning herself to the calls of conscience, is now happier than she has ever been before. A more powerful influence than her own will or her own honour, an influence that was evil to the core, inspired her to countenance this awful wrong. It also checkmated every good impulse she may have had to undo it in after years. That influence came from Oswald Banks, a base monster to whom my mother was married when I was a year old. My mother was the daughter of Lord Abbott Brace, but married my own father, George Stuart, who was a brilliant but radical newspaper writer in London, against her father's wish. For this he cast her off and disinherited her. Grandfather hated him and his views, and he could not forgive my mother even after my father died, which was two years after their marriage.

"Lord Richard Brace, my mother's only brother, married the daughter of the d.u.c.h.ess of B----. You, Rosalie, are Lady Rosalie Brace of Brace Hall, W--shire, England, the true granddaughter of General Lord Abbott Brace, one of the n.o.blest and richest men of his day. Please let me go on; I cannot endure the interruptions. The absolute, unalterable proof of what I say shall be established through the confession of my own mother, in whose possession lies every doc.u.ment necessary to give back to you that which she would have given to me.

"Your mother died a few weeks after you were born, and Sir Richard, who loved my mother in the face of his father's displeasure, placed you in her care, while he rushed off, heart-broken, to find solace in Egypt. It is said that he hated you because you were the cause of her death. On the day after your birth, old Lord Brace changed his will and bequeathed a vast amount of unentailed property to you, to be held in trust by your father until you were twenty-one years of age. I was almost two years old at the time, and the old man, unexpectedly compa.s.sionate, inserted a provision which, in the event that you were to die before that time, gave all this money to me on my twenty-first birthday. The interest on this money, amounting to five thousand pounds annually, was to go to you regularly, in one case, or to me, in the other. Oswald Banks was an American, whom my mother had met in London several years prior to her first marriage. He was the London representative of a big Pennsylvania manufacturing concern. He was ambitious, unscrupulous and clever beyond conception. He still is all of these and more, for he is now a coward.

"Well, it was he who concocted the diabolical scheme to one day get possession of your inheritance. He coerced my poor mother into acquiescense, and she became his wretched tool instead of an honoured wife and helpmate. One night, when you were three weeks old, the house in which we lived was burned to the ground, the inmates narrowly escaping. So narrow was the escape, in fact, that you were said to have been left behind in the confusion, and the world was told, the next day, that the granddaughter of Lord Brace had been destroyed by the flames.

"The truth, however, was not told. My stepfather did not dare to go so far as to kill you. It was he who caused the fire, but he had you removed to a small hotel in another part of the city some hours earlier, secretly, of course, but in charge of a trusted maid. My mother was responsible for this. She would not listen to his awful plan to leave you in the house. But you might just as well have died. No one was the wiser and you were given up as lost. A week later, my mother and Mr.

Banks started for America. You and I were with them, but you went as the daughter of a maid-servant--Ellen Hayes.

"This is the story as my mother has told it to me after all these years.

My stepfather's plan, of course, was to place you where you could never be found, and then to see to it that our grandfather did not succeed in changing his will. Moreover, he was bound and determined that he himself should be named as trustee--when the fortune came over at Lord Brace's death. That part of it turned out precisely as he had calculated. Let me go on a few months in advance of my story. Lord Brace died, and the will was properly probated and the provisions carried out. Brace Hall and the estates went to your father and the bequest came to me, for you were considered dead. My stepfather was made trustee. He gave bond in England and America, I believe. In any event, the fortune was to be mine when I reached the age of twenty-one, but each year the income, nearly twenty-five thousand dollars, was to be paid to my stepfather as trustee, to be safely invested by him. My mother's name was not mentioned in the doc.u.ment, except once, to identify me as the beneficiary. I can only add to this phase of the hateful conspiracy, that for nineteen years my stepfather received this income, and that he used it to establish his own fortune. By investing what was supposed to be my money, he has won his own way to wealth.

"Mr. Banks decided that the operations were safest from this side of the Atlantic. He and my mother took up their residence in New York, and it has been their home ever since. He spent the first half year after your suspected death in London, solely for the purpose of establishing himself in Lord Brace's favour. Within a year after the death of Lord Brace your father was killed by a poacher on the estate. He had but lately returned from Egypt, and was in full control of the lands and property attached to Brace Hall. If my stepfather had designs upon Brace Hall, they failed, for the lands and the t.i.tle went at once to your father's cousin, Sir Harry Brace, the present lord.

"So much for the conditions in England then and now. I now return to that part of the story which most interests and concerns you. My poor mother was compelled, within a fortnight after we landed in New York, to give up the dangerous infant who was always to hang like a cloud between fortune and honour. The maid-servant was paid well for her silence. By the way, she died mysteriously soon after coming to America, but not before giving to my mother a signed paper setting forth clearly every detail in so far as it bore upon her connection with the hateful transaction. Conscience was forever at work in my mother's heart; honour was constantly struggling to the surface, only to be held back by fear of and loyalty to the man she loved.

"It was decided that the most humane way to put you out of existence was to leave you on the doorstep of some kindly disposed person, far from New York. My stepfather and my mother deliberately set forth on this so-called mission of mercy. They came north, and by chance, fell in with a resident of Boggs City while in the station at Albany. They were debating which way to turn for the next step. My mother was firm in the resolve that you should be left in the care of honest, reliable, tender-hearted people, who would not abuse the trust she was to impose.

The Boggs City man said he had been in Albany to see about a bill in the legislature, which was to provide for the erection of a monument in Tinkletown--where a Revolutionary battle had been fought. It was he who spoke of Anderson Crow, and it was his stories of your goodness and generosity, Mr. Crow, that caused them to select you as the man who was to have Rosalie, and, with her, the sum of one thousand dollars a year for your trouble and her needs.

"My mother's description of that stormy night in February, more than twenty-one years ago, is the most pitiful thing I have ever listened to.

Together they made their way to Tinkletown, hiring a vehicle in Boggs City for the purpose. Mr. Banks left the basket on your porch while mother stood far down the street and waited for him, half frozen and heartsick. Then they hurried out of town and were soon safely on their way to New York. It was while my stepfather was in London, later on, that mother came up to see Rosalie and make that memorable first payment to Mr. Crow. How it went on for years, you all know. It was my stepfather's cleverness that made it so impossible to learn the source from which the mysterious money came.

"We travelled constantly, always finding new places of interest in which my mother's conscience could be eased by contact with beauty and excitement. Gradually she became hardened to the conditions, for, after all, was it not her own child who was to be enriched by the theft and the deception? Mr. Banks constantly forced that fact in upon her mother-love and her vanity. Through it all, however, you were never neglected nor forgotten. My mother had your welfare always in mind. It was she who saw that you and I were placed at the same school in New York, and it was she who saw that your training in a way was as good as it could possibly be without exciting risk.

"Of course, I knew nothing of all this. I was rolling in wealth and luxury, but not in happiness. Instinctively I loathed my stepfather. He was hard, cruel, unreasonable. It was because of him that I left school and afterward sought to earn my own living. You know, Rosalie, how Tom Reddon came into my life. He was the son of William Reddon, my stepfather's business partner, who had charge of the Western branch of the concern in Chicago. We lived in Chicago for several years, establishing the business. Mr. Banks was until recently president of the Banks & Reddon Iron Works. Last year, you doubtless know, the plant was sold to the great combine and the old company pa.s.sed out of existence.

This act was the result of a demand from England that the trust under which he served be closed and struck from the records. It was his plan to settle the matter, turn the inheritance over to me according to law, and then impose upon my inexperience for all time to come. The money, while mine literally, was to be his in point of possession.

"But he had reckoned without the son of his partner. Tom Reddon in some way learned the secret, and he was compelled to admit the young man into all of his plans. This came about some three years ago, while I was in school. I had known Tom Reddon in Chicago. He won my love. I cannot deny it, although I despise him to-day more deeply than I ever expect to hate again. He was even more despicable than my stepfather. Without the faintest touch of pity, he set about to obliterate every chance Rosalie could have had for rest.i.tution. Time began to prove to me that he was not the man I thought him to be. His nature revealed itself; and I found I could not marry him. Besides, my mother was beginning to repent. She awoke from her stupor of indifference and strove in every way to circ.u.mvent the plot of the two conspirators, so far as I was concerned.

The strain told on her at last, and we went to California soon after my ridiculous flight from Tinkletown last winter. It was not until after that adventure that I began to see deep into the wretched soul of Tom Reddon.

"Then came the most villainous part of the whole conspiracy. Reddon, knowing full well that exposure was possible at any time, urged my stepfather to have you kidnaped and hurried off to some part of the world where you could never be found. Even Reddon did not have the courage to kill you. Neither had the heart to commit actual murder. It was while we were at Colonel Randall's place that the abduction took place, you remember. Mr. Banks and Tom Reddon had engaged their men in New York. These desperadoes came to Boggs City while Tom was here to watch their operations. All the time Mr. Crow was chasing us down Reddon was laughing in his sleeve, for he knew what was to happen during the marshal's absence. You know how successfully he managed the job. It was my stepfather's fault that it did not succeed.

"My mother, down in New York, driven to the last extreme, had finally turned on him and demanded that he make rest.i.tution to Rosalie Gray, as we had come to know her. Of course, there was a scene and almost a catastrophe. He was so worried over the position she was taking, that he failed to carry out his part of the plans, which were to banish Rosalie forever from this country. You were to have been taken to Paris, dear, and kept forever in one of those awful sanitoriums. They are worse than the grave. In the meantime, the delay gave Mr. Bonner a chance to rescue you from the kidnapers.

"Shortly after reaching New York I quarrelled with Thomas Reddon, and my mother and I fled to California. He followed us and sought a reconciliation. I loathed him so much by this time, that I appealed to my mother. It was then that she told me this miserable story, and that is why we are in Tinkletown to-day. We learned in some way of the plot to kidnap you and to place you where you could not be found. The inhuman scheme of my stepfather and his adviser was to have my mother declared insane and confined in an asylum, where her truthful utterances could never be heard by the world, or if they were, as the ravings of a mad woman.

"The day that we reached New York my mother _placed_ the doc.u.ments and every particle of proof in her possession in the hands of the British Consul. The story was told to him and also to certain attorneys. A member of his firm visited my stepfather and confronted him with the charges. That very night Mr. Banks disappeared, leaving behind him a note, in which he said we should never see his face again. Tom Reddon has gone to Europe. My mother and I expect to sail this week for England, and I have come to ask Rosalie to accompany us. I want her to stand at last on the soil which knows her to be Rosalie Brace. The fortune which was mine last week is hers to-day. We are not poor, Rosalie dear, but we are not as rich as we were when we had all that belonged to you."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

Anderson Crow's Resignation

Some days later Anderson Crow returned to Tinkletown from New York, where he had seen Rosalie Bonner and her husband off for England, accompanied by Mrs. Banks and Elsie, who had taken pa.s.sage on the same steamer. He was attired in a brand-new suit of blue serge, a panama hat, and patent-leather shoes which hurt his feet. Moreover, he carried a new walking stick with a great gold head and there was a huge pearl scarf-pin in his necktie Besides all this, his hair and beard had been trimmed to perfection by a Holland House barber. Every morning his wife was obliged to run a flatiron over his trousers to perpetuate the crease. Altogether Anderson was a revelation not only to his family and to the town at large, but to himself as well. He fairly staggered every time he got a glimpse of himself in the shop windows.

All day long he strolled about the street, from store to store, or leaned imposingly against every post that presented itself conveniently.

Naturally he was the talk of the town.

"Gee-mi-nently!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Alf Reesling, catching sight of him late in the day. "Is that the president?"

"It's Anderson Crow," explained Blootch Peabody.

"Who's dead?" demanded Alf.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Why, whose clothes is he wearin'?" pursued Alf, utterly overcome by the picture.

"You'd better not let him hear you say that," cautioned Isaac Porter.

"He got 'em in New York. He says young Mr. Bonner give 'em to him fer a weddin' present. Rosalie give him a pearl dingus to wear in his cravat, an' derned ef he don't have to wear a collar all the time now. That lawyer Barnes give him the cane. Gee whiz! he looks like a king, don't he?"

At that moment Anderson approached the group in front of Lamson's store.

He walked with a stateliness that seemed to signify pain in his lower extremities more than it did dignity higher up.

"How fer out do you reckon they are by this time, Blootch?" he asked earnestly.

"'Bout ten miles further than when you asked while ago," responded Blootch, consulting his watch.

"Well, that ought to get 'em to Liverpool sometime soon then. They took a powerful fast ship. Makes it in less 'n six days, they say. Let's see.

They sailed day before yesterday. They must be out sight o' land by this time."

"Yes, unless they're pa.s.sin' some islands," agreed Blootch.

"Thunderation! What air you talkin' about?" said Anderson scornfully.

"Cuby an' Porty Rico's been pa.s.sed long ago. Them islands ain't far from Boston. Don't you remember how skeered the Boston people were durin' the war with Spain? Feared the Spanish sh.e.l.ls might go a little high an'

smash up the town? Islands nothin'! They've got away out into deep water by this time, boys. 'y Gosh, I'm anxious about Rosalie. S'posin'

that derned boat struck a rock er upset er somethin'! They never could swim ash.o.r.e."