The Spiritualists and the Detectives Part 15

and marked "Personal." It was but the work of an instant to open it, and but of a moment to read it, as it was short and to the point, and ran as follows:

QUEEN'S HOTEL, TORONTO, Sept. 6, 186--.

DEVEREAUX--I am hard up. I need one thousand dollars, though five hundred will do, but I must have that amount at once. You have intimated that you would not help me any further. I have merely to say to you that if you do not either call with, or send the money, during the day, I will cause you to reflect as to whether your business and social reputation are not worth to you and your estimable family immeasurably more than the trifle named. Exercise your own pleasure about the matter however.

MRS. W.

Bristol copied this upon the back of the addressed envelope in less than a minute, and in a minute more had the note enclosed in another envelope and addressed in a handwriting sufficiently similar to that of Mrs.

Winslow's to answer every purpose, and had just got into a calm and bland position with the tray, when the boy came up the stairs, three steps at a time, gave the paper a toss into the hall, jerked the letter out of Bristol's hand, and after giving him a look that had considerable resentment in it, strode down the stairs with his tray on his shoulder and his letter in his pocket, in a very offended and dignified manner.

But as Bristol was on this kind of business at Toronto he thought he might as well ascertain where the little fellow went; and, taking a position a half-block distant from the hotel, was obliged to wait but a little time before the waiter came down and started off on a brisk walk down the street.

He waited until the boy had pa.s.sed him, and then followed him in and out the streets until he saw him suddenly turn into a large wholesale house on Yonge street, when he rapidly lessened the distance between them, arriving in front of the place as he saw the boy hand the note to a thin old gentleman, who took him aside and nervously questioned him for a few minutes, after which he nodded to him as if a.s.senting to something, or directing the boy to return an affirmative answer to whoever had sent the note, or whatever it contained.

The boy walked briskly back to the hotel, and Bristol only remained long enough to notice the old man--who was evidently the Devereaux of whom Le Compte had informed me, and whose name Bristol had so recently written--walk tremblingly towards the door as if overcome with some sudden faintness, and in a sort of vacant, listless way tear the note into little bits and fling them piecemeal upon the stones of the street, hurling the last bunch of pieces upon the pavement with a violent, agonized action, as if he would to G.o.d he could dispose of the dark and relentless shadow across his life as quickly and as effectually!

All Bristol now had to do was to ascertain when Devereaux called, and, if possible, to overhear what was said at the interview.

But this might not be so easy a matter to accomplish as securing the contents of the letter addressed to the latter. After studying the matter over for a little time, but without any definite decision what to do, he found himself strolling along the hall where Mrs. Winslow's room was located, and noticed several rooms standing open and being put to rights after the departure of guests. Among this number was one next to that occupied by Mrs. Winslow, and, taking the number, he immediately repaired to the office and had his baggage changed to that room, where, after dinner, with a few cigars and some fresh reading matter, he comfortably and leisurely waited for developments.

The day dragged along, and both Bristol and Mrs. Winslow became anxious.

The latter paced back and forth in her room, and every few moments went to the door, and even pa.s.sed out into the hall, going as far as the stairs and peering anxiously down, while the waiter at frequent intervals was summoned to provide her courage and patience of a liquid character. Finally, however, Bristol noticed that she had either concluded to take a short nap, or was determined to wait patiently, for quite a period of silence elapsed in her room, which he took advantage of to steal quietly out into the hall, leaving his door ajar so that he might re-enter it noiselessly as occasion required.

It was not long before the occasion presented itself, for Bristol had got no more than to the end of the hall when he saw Devereaux ascending the stairs from below. He quietly stepped behind the curtains that trailed from the lambrequin over the window, and watched the old man as he came up the stairs.

He was a little, gray, withered old man. Almost all his strength was gone, and he certainly had but a few more years to use what little strength was left. His hair was almost white, and his face was quite as colorless, while the weak, rheumy eyes seemed almost ready to fall through the flesh which had withered away to the bones of his face. He was a living example of the blackmailer's victim as he labored along, now and then catching at the stair-rail for help, and looking behind and around him as if fearing some sudden discovery. Arriving upon the hall floor, he peered anxiously at the numbers upon the doors, and after settling in his mind what direction to take, went on tremblingly with bowed head towards the woman who was as remorseless as death itself.

He found the room after a little trouble, and tapped at it apprehensively. It was at once opened and immediately closed after, when Bristol sprang from his hiding-place and was in the adjoining room almost as soon as the next door had closed.

During the afternoon, when Mrs. Winslow had absented herself from her room, he had dragged the bureau against the door opening into her apartment, placed a quilt from his bed upon it in order that his jumping upon it might occasion no noise, and with his knife cut a diamond shaped piece out of the green paper covering the gla.s.s transom, darkening his own room so that his eyes could not by any possibility be seen through the aperture in the piece of paper, which had a dead black appearance from Mrs. Winslow's room; and by the time the poor old man had confronted the woman in a scared kind of a way, and had seated himself upon the sofa obedient to her imperious gesture, the "retired banker's" eyes and eye-gla.s.ses looked calmly down upon a scene the whole terrible import of which, could it have been presented to the world in all its terrible hideousness, and in some form become eternally typical of the curse it ill.u.s.trated, would have stood for all time a savage Cerberus frightening men from this kind of infamy and self-destruction.

In all my startling experience with criminals and the sad incidents which have in the peculiar nature of my business forced themselves upon my observation, there has been no one thing so reprehensible as the trade of the blackmailer, and there is a no more terrible torture than that inflicted by that cla.s.s of criminals; and I am satisfied that could heads of families realize their terrible danger when heedlessly forming some unholy alliance, which is sure to eventually whip and scourge them until life is a burden, there would be less of the moral laxity and lechery than now burdens the world from palace and pulpit to poverty-stricken hovel.

What more pitiable picture than that of a man just ready to pa.s.s from all that should be worth having and loving to the unknown country, with fear behind and awful uncertainty beyond--with the work of a whole life, which should now bring a reward of tenderness, grat.i.tude, and reverential esteem, embittered and blasted by the relentless curse that ever trails after weakness and pa.s.sion--fear, distrust, and apprehension between himself and family, and the Damoclean sword ever above him, ready to fall at the instant he endeavors to throw the horrible shadow from him to regain honesty and uprightness!

There the old man sat, a cowardly puppet before a brazen adventuress--sat there a weak, drivelling, idiotic wreck before one so vile that she was no longer capable of regret--sat there ruined in everything worth the preservation of, suffering what he had for years suffered--the regret, the remorse, the shame, and the abject fear that were worse than a thousand deaths; while the utterly heartless woman, with her hands folded across her waist in a masculine sort of a way, looked at him smilingly, seemingly enjoying his efforts to recover the breath lost in the, to him, severe labor of getting to her room; as it appeared to be the custom for him to see her there rather than in the parlor.

The interview was business-like, and, as it was not overwhelmed with sentiment, was not protracted.

Mrs. Winslow asked Devereaux if he had brought the money, and he stammered that he had. Well, she wanted it, and didn't want any nonsense with it, either, she said, with a vast amount of meaning thrown into the words; he knew whether he _owed_ her that amount or not, and, if he did, she didn't propose having any bickering about it.

Then the old man slowly rose, and cursing her, himself, and all the world, flung her the money and said he would go, as he knew that was all she wanted.

She told him frankly that it was pretty nearly all she wanted, but added jocosely that he was still "a charmer," and that that fact, too, had its influence in periodically drawing her to him; and then bade him an affectionate good-by as he feebly glared at her, and pa.s.sed, whining, cursing, and tottering away.

Mrs. Winslow was very happy and gay now, and during the evening and on their return to Rochester was all smiles and winsomeness. Her detective companion could scarcely enter into her unusual joyousness, but did the best he could, and that was well enough, as she was so pleased with the success of her Toronto trip that her mind was altogether employed with it until nearing home, when her eminent business ability again a.s.serted itself, and she became more affectionate than ever to the retired banker, repeating the proposition concerning the rooms, which Bristol had of course reported, and which he would be prepared to act upon when he could secure his mail at Rochester.

He told her he had thought favorably of it, and after he had ascertained whether he should remain in the city a stated period or not, would inform her of his decision, which he presumed would be favorable and permit of their continued pleasant intimacy; while Mrs. Winslow confided to him that she had thought seriously of the course for some time. She knew Lyon was having her watched, she said, and she had decided that it would be best to change her business to one which could not be so easily misinterpreted, or at least add to her present business something that in the eyes of those who scoffed at spiritualism would have a measure of respectability about it, and from which she could not only secure a livelihood, but such a pleasant companion as Mr. Bristol; and they parted upon the train before arriving at the depot with a thorough understanding about the future, and an appointment for another meeting at the first opportunity.

Unknown to Bristol I had sent another operative to keep him and Mrs.

Winslow company, and on receiving the reports of each I decided to put my men in her rooms, where one of them could constantly observe her actions, and never under any circ.u.mstances give her an opportunity to make any new move without my knowledge. I therefore sent another man to Rochester for outside work, and directed Bristol to accept the woman's proposition and become her lodger, and, as soon after as possible without exciting her suspicions, appear to become acquainted with Fox, recommend him as a lodger, and secure his introduction to the place as M. D. Lyford, a book-keeper in some establishment of the city which they might settle upon, so that he might relieve Bristol, and _vice versa_, as occasion required.

So the furnished rooms sign went up over the clairvoyant sign, and Mrs.

Winslow added to the charms of handsome medium those of an attractive landlady, while the three old maids under Washington Hall lost their prize, who became a sort of an aged page to the castaway woman who had such luxurious rooms for rent in the autumn of 186-, on South St. Paul street, near Meech's Opera-house, in the beautiful city of Rochester.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Harcout again.-- "Things going slow."-- A Bit of personal History.-- A new Tenant.-- Detective Generalship.-- Mrs.

Winslow fears she is watched.-- Mr. Pinkerton cogitates.

It is pleasant to realize that the world moves along just the same, whether the many mild lunatics it carries attempt to interfere with it or not. There are countless men, precisely like Harcout, incapable of holding in their little brains but one idea at a time, and that idea invariably pushes to the surface their own supreme egotism and self-consciousness, and just as invariably displays their utter ignorance of what they are continually interfering with; and it is both a grateful and charitable thought that such small minds, burdened with such vast a.s.surance, are merely provided by Omniscience to make us patient, to warn us from allowing such knowledge as we may fortunately gain from developing into similar self-a.s.sertion, and to serve to ill.u.s.trate true worth by contrast.

Here was this fellow sweeping into my office every day, demanding every detail of my operations on Mrs. Winslow, even intimating that I should consult with him as to every move to be made, and submit to his consideration even the character of the men employed, the color of their clothing and the quality, and every item or act concerning or included in the work. He had, in some unexplainable way that is common to brazen a.s.surance or unmitigated ignorance, fastened himself upon the weak old man as a sort of confidential agent, or what-not, worked upon his fears, his superst.i.tions, and his foolish half-faith in a system of religion that has never yet made other than male and female prost.i.tutes, adventurers, or lunatics, until the old man, standing alone and almost friendless, had learned to cling to him, and almost rely upon his consummate bravado to extricate him from the meshes of the web his own vileness and a vile woman had woven about him; so that in one sense he stood in the relation of princ.i.p.al to me, and I found it impossible to shake him off, or relieve myself to any great extent of his impudent presence and foolish suggestions.

I knew that he was utterly without principle, and was only making a show of this extraordinary energy in order to appear to more than earn whatever he got from Lyon, and continue in the latter's mind the feeling that he was utterly indispensable to him. I also knew him to be as mean an adventurer as Mrs. Winslow was an adventuress; that he was the villain who had first unloosed this vast flood of vileness and lechery upon society, and who, as the shameless Christian minister of Detroit, had put the fire-brand from h.e.l.l in this woman's hand, to ever after continue her moral incendiarism wherever she might go, until thrust from life and infamous memory, and it annoyed me that this sort of a man should dictate to me.

I could have disposed of him at one stroke, and I am satisfied that had I on only one occasion addressed him as the Rev. Mr. Bland, and casually inquired concerning his old Detroit friends, including Mother Blake, he would have slunk away without a word or a protest of any kind whatever; and had I gone farther, and showed him what he himself did not know, that this woman, whom he was so anxious to have brought down with some startling development, was none other than the one whom he had led into a life of sin from the pleasant Nettleton farm-house by the winding river, and that he was now playing guardian to a man that would have probably been free from the curse that was hanging over him, had it not been for Harcout's earlier and more rascally villainy, he would have disappeared altogether, but I realized that this would not do. It would have had the effect of putting Lyon at the mercy of a horde of new ghouls, while the existing one frightened all others away and was in a measure a protection to Lyon, for he was now only bled by one, where he would otherwise have been bled by twenty.

Aside from this, it would have probably resulted in Mrs. Winslow's being put on her guard, giving her time, not only to cover her tracks in many criminal instances we had already discovered against her, but also cause her to prevent witnesses from giving depositions, or, where depositions had already been taken, give her an opportunity to secure affidavits from the parties who gave them that they were mistaken as to the ident.i.ty of the person named in those instruments, and in other particulars greatly destroy the effect of the work already done and that which I had planned; and I was consequently obliged to bear the fellow's dictatorial manner and suggestions, as he insisted on doing the work this way or that way, and urged that I was not "pushing things"

fast enough.

"Why, Mr. Pinkerton," said he one day, his eyebrows elevated and the corners of his mouth drawn down, his whole face expressive of lofty condescension and gentle, though firm reproof, "things are going rather slow--rather slow. Hem! When we brought this case to you, we depended upon expedition--depended on expedition, Mr. Pinkerton."

"And have you any cause to complain?" I asked pleasantly.

"Well, I don't know as we should exactly call it 'complain.' No, I don't know as we exactly complain; but, if we might be allowed the privilege--hem!--we would beg to suggest, without giving offence--beg to suggest, mind you, without giving offence," he repeated, in the most offensive way possible, "that, if I might be allowed the expression, things are not pushed quite enough!"

"On the contrary," I continued good-naturedly, "we have secured what any good lawyer would consider an overwhelming amount of evidence, and are letting the woman take her own course, in order to allow her to completely unwind herself."

"But you see, Pinkerton, we supposed when we brought the case to you that you would, so to speak, smash things--break her all up and scatter her, as it were--hem!--disperse her, you know."

He said this as though he had taken a contract with Lyon to compel me to avenge them both on the woman, and it heated my blood to be considered in the light of any person's hired a.s.sa.s.sin; but I controlled myself, and explained the matter to him.

"Harcout," said I, "do you know anything about my history?"

"Well, nothing save what I've seen in the newspapers. Merely by reputation," he added lightly.

"Well, sir, whatever that reputation may be, Harcout," I said, "this is the truth. I never, that I know of, did a dishonorable deed. I worked from a poor boy to whatever position or business standing I now have--worked hard for everything I got or gained, and I never yet found it necessary to do dirty work for any person."

"Quite n.o.ble of you--quite n.o.ble," said Harcout patronizingly.

"The detection of criminals," I continued, paying no attention to his moralizing, "_should_ be as honorable--and so far as I have been able to do, has been made as honorable--while it is certainly as necessary as that of any other calling. No element of revenge can enter into my work.

You came to me with a case which I at first objected to take, on account of its nature. I would not have taken it for all the money Mr. Lyon possesses, had I not been a.s.sured that this Mrs. Winslow was a dangerous woman. Nor, knowing that she is one, as I now do, would I have any connection with the case if I found that Mr. Lyon insisted on my using the peculiar power which I always have at command for any other purpose than the, in this case, legitimate one of securing evidence against her which actually exists. I am satisfied that a no more relentless and terrible woman ever lived, but shall leave her punishment to her disappointment in not securing what her whole soul is bent on getting, and that is Lyon's money. I have nothing whatever to do with punishment, sir, and no person ever did or ever can use my force for that nefarious purpose!"

"Oh, exactly--exactly," replied the oily Harcout; "but, you see, we rather--hem!--expected something startling, you know. Now, for instance," here he raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in a wise way; "supposing you had just ascertained all about her early history, you would probably have found that Mrs. Winslow had played these games all her life. Undoubtedly you could point to the very first man whom she blackmailed----"