The Foreigner Part 14

Again the Dalmatian broke forth.

"He say he got no knife at all. He cannot make hole like dat wit'

his finger."

"Well, we shall see about that," said the Sergeant. "Now where is that other man?" He turned toward the corner. The corner was empty.

"Where has he gone?" said the Sergeant, peering through the crowd for a black-whiskered face.

The man was nowhere to be seen. The Sergeant was puzzled and angered. He lined the men up around the walls, but the man was not to be found. As each man uttered his name, there were always some to recognize and to corroborate the information. One man alone seemed a stranger to all in the company. He was clean shaven, but for a moustache with ends turned up in military manner, and with an appearance of higher intelligence than the average Galician.

"Ask him his name," said the Sergeant.

The man replied volubly, and Jacob interpreted.

"His name, Rudolph Polkoff, Polak man. Stranger, come to dis town soon. Know no man here. Some man bring him here to dance."

The Sergeant kept his keen eye fastened on the man while he talked.

"Well, he looks like a smart one. Come here," he said, beckoning the stranger forward into the better light.

The man came and stood with his back to Rosenblatt.

"Hold up your hands."

The man stared blankly. Jacob interpreted. He hesitated a moment, then held up his hands above his head. The Sergeant turned him about.

"You will not be having any weepons on you?" said the Sergeant, searching his pockets. "h.e.l.lo! What's this?" He pulled out the false beard.

The same instant there was a gasping cry from Rosenblatt. All turned in his direction. Into his dim eyes and pallid face suddenly sprang life; fear and hate struggling to find expression in the look he fixed upon the stranger. With a tremendous effort he raised his hand, and pointing to the stranger with a long, dirty finger, he gasped, "Arrest--he murder--" and fell back again unconscious.

Even as he spoke there was a quick movement. The lantern was dashed to the ground, the room plunged into darkness and before the Sergeant knew what had happened, the stranger had shaken himself free from his grasp, torn open the door and fled.

With a mighty oath, the Sergeant was after him, but the darkness and the crowd interfered with his progress, and by the time he had reached the door, the man had completely vanished. At the door stood Murchuk with the ambulance.

"See a man run out here?" demanded the Sergeant.

"You bet! He run like buck deer."

"Why didn't you stop him?" cried the Sergeant.

"Stop him!" replied the astonished Murchuk, "would you stop a mad crazy bull? No, no, not me."

"Get that man inside to the hospital then. He won't hurt you,"

exclaimed the Sergeant in wrathful contempt. "I'll catch that man if I have to arrest every Galician in this city!"

It was an unspeakable humiliation to the Sergeant, but with such vigour did he act, that before the morning dawned, he had every exit from the city by rail and by trail under surveillance, and before a week was past, by adopting the very simple policy of arresting every foreigner who attempted to leave the town, he had secured his man.

It was a notable arrest. From all the evidence, it seemed that the prisoner was a most dangerous criminal. The princ.i.p.al source of evidence, however, was Rosenblatt, whose deposition was taken down by the Sergeant and the doctor.

The man, it appeared, was known by many names, Koval, Kolowski, Polkoff and others, but his real name was Michael Kalmar. He was a determined and desperate Nihilist, was wanted for many crimes by the Russian police, and had spent some years as a convict in Siberia where, if justice had its due, he would be at the present time. He had cast off his wife and children, whom he had shipped to Canada.

Incidentally it came out that it was only Rosenblatt's generosity that had intervened between them and starvation. Balked in one of his desperate Nihilist schemes by Rosenblatt, who held a position of trust under the Russian Government, he had sworn vengeance, and escaping from Siberia, he had come to Canada to make good his oath.

And but for the timely appearance of the police, he would have succeeded.

Meantime, Sergeant Cameron was receiving congratulations on all hands for his cleverness in making the arrest of a man who had escaped the vigilance of the Russian Police and Secret Service, said to be the finest in all Europe. In his cell, the man, as good as condemned, waited his trial, a stranger far from help and kindred, an object of terror and of horror to many, of compa.s.sion to a few. But however men thought of him, he had sinned against British civilisation, and would now have to taste of British justice.

CHAPTER VII

CONDEMNED

The two months preceding the trial were months of restless agony to the prisoner, Kalmar. Day and night he paced his cell like a tiger in a cage, taking little food and sleeping only when overcome with exhaustion. It was not the confinement that fretted him. The Winnipeg jail, with all its defects and limitations, was a palace to some that he had known. It was not the fear of the issue to his trial that drove sleep and hunger from him. Death, exile, imprisonment, had been too long at his heels to be strangers to him or to cause him fear.

In his heart a fire burned. Rosenblatt still lived, and vengeance had halted in its pursuit.

But deep as was the pa.s.sion in his heart for vengeance, that for his country and his cause burned deeper. He had been able to establish lines of communication between his fatherland and the new world by means of which the oppressed, the hunted, might reach freedom and safety. The final touches to his plans were still to be given. Furthermore, it was necessary that he should make his report in person, else much of his labour would be fruitless. It was this that brought him "white nights" and black days.

Every day Paulina called at the jail and waited long hours with uncomplaining patience in the winter cold, till she could be admitted. Her husband showed no sign of interest, much less of grat.i.tude. One question alone, he asked day by day.

"The children are well?"

"They are well," Paulina would answer. "They ask to see you every day."

"They may not see me here," he would reply, after which she would turn away, her dull face full of patient suffering.

One item of news she brought him that gave him a moment's cheer.

"Kalman," she said, one day, "will speak nothing but Russian."

"Ha!" he exclaimed. "He is my son indeed. But," he added gloomily, "of what use now?"

Others sought admission,--visitors from the Jail Mission, philanthropic ladies, a priest from St. Boniface, a Methodist minister,--but all were alike denied. Simon Ketzel he sent for, and with him held long converse, with the result that he was able to secure for his defence the services of O'Hara, the leading criminal lawyer of Western Canada. There appeared to be no lack of money, and all that money could do was done.

The case began to excite considerable interest, not only in the city, but throughout the whole country. Public opinion was strongly against the prisoner. Never in the history of the new country had a crime been committed of such horrible and bloodthirsty deliberation.

It is true that this opinion was based largely upon Rosenblatt's deposition, taken by Sergeant Cameron and Dr. Wright when he was supposed to be _in extremis_, and upon various newspaper interviews with him that appeared from time to time. The Morning News in a trenchant leader pointed out the danger to which Western Canada was exposed from the presence of these semibarbarous peoples from Central and Southern Europe, and expressed the hope that the authorities would deal with the present case in such a manner as would give a severe but necessary lesson to the lawless among our foreign population.

There was, indeed, from the first, no hope of acquittal. Staunton, who was acting for the Crown, was convinced that the prisoner would receive the maximum sentence allowed by law. And even O'Hara acknowledged privately to his solicitor that the best he could hope for was a life sentence. "And, by gad! he ought to get it! It is the most d.a.m.nable case of b.l.o.o.d.y murder that I have come across in all my practice!" But this was before Mr. O'Hara had interviewed Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

In his hunt for evidence Mr. O'Hara had come upon his fellow countrywoman in the foreign colony. At first from sheer delight in her rich brogue and her shrewd native wit, and afterward from the conviction that her testimony might be turned to good account on behalf of his client, Mr. O'Hara diligently cultivated Mrs. Fitzpatrick's acquaintance. It helped their mutual admiration and their friendship not a little to discover their common devotion to "the cause o' the paythriot in dear owld Ireland," and their mutual interest in the prisoner Kalmar, as a fellow "paythriot."

Immediately upon his discovery of the rich possibilities in Mrs.

Fitzpatrick Mr. O'Hara got himself invited to drink a "cup o' tay,"

which, being made in the little black teapot brought all the way from Ireland, he p.r.o.nounced to be the finest he had had since coming to Canada fifteen years ago. Indeed, he declared that he had serious doubts as to the possibilities of producing on this side of the water and by people of this country just such tea as he had been accustomed to drink in the dear old land. It was over this cup of tea, and as he drew from Mrs. Fitzpatrick the description of the scene between the Nihilist and his children, that Mr. O'Hara came to realise the vast productivity of the mine he had uncovered.

He determined that Mrs. Fitzpatrick should tell this tale in court.

"We'll bate that divil yet!" he exclaimed to his new-found friend, his brogue taking a richer flavour from his environment. "They would be having the life of the poor man for letting a little of the black blood out of the black heart of that traitor and blackguard, and may the divil fly away with him! But we'll bate them yet, and it's yersilf is the one to do it!" he exclaimed in growing excitement and admiration.