XX
THE LITTLE HOUSE IN NEW JERSEY
The surprise was great, but I doubt if I betrayed the fact to theunsuspicious eye of the patient lass who attended me.
"I wish to see one of your captains," I explained. "I will gladlyawait his convenience."
"Captain Smith will be at liberty soon," she answered, going back toher work.
I was thus left to study the face of the man whom at that very momentI was bent upon connecting with a great crime.
I had not seen him since that touching scene at the inquest; and Ifound him looking both older and sadder. Perhaps his health wasbroken; perhaps there were other and deeper reasons for the greatchange I saw in him.
I had instinctively withdrawn a few steps when the lass left me andstood in as inconspicuous a position as possible, with my face turnedfrom the light. But I had not retreated far enough to lose a word ofthe conversation going on so near me.
They were discussing an approaching meeting; Leighton with deepinterest, the Captain with an embarrassment not often seen in one ofhis calling. Listening, I heard these words.
"It will be a full one, won't it?"
This from Leighton.
"It usually is on a day like this," was the hesitating reply.
"Do women come?"
"More women than men."
"I should like to speak at the meeting."
The Captain, with an uncomfortable flush, fumbled with the ribbon onhis cap, and said nothing. Leighton repeated his request.
The Captain summoned up courage.
"I am sorry, sir," he remarked, in an apologetic tone. "You have giventhe Army much help, and we have listened to many good words from you,but I have received orders not to let you speak again; that is, fromthe platform."
A painful silence ensued. Then Leighton remarked, with a forcedcomposure and something more than his usual melancholy:
"Because of the unhappy prominence given me by the circumstancesattending my father's death?"
"That, and something else. I may as well be frank, sir. We have heardof the little house, leased under your name, in New Jersey."
"Ah!"
A chord had been touched which vibrated keenly in this mysteriousbreast. I saw his hand go to his throat and fall again quickly.Meantime the Captain went on:
"We are not frightened by sin and we hold out our hands to sinners;but we have no use for a man who prays in New York and has hispleasure on the other side of the North River. It shows hypocrisy,sir, and hypocrisy is the enemy of religion."
A smile, whose dark depths betrayed anything but hypocrisy at thatmoment, crossed Leighton's pale lips as he remarked without anger(which I could not but consider strange in a man so openly attacked):
"That little house is empty now. Has the thought struck you that myheart might be so too?"
The Captain, who evidently did not like his task, seemed to experiencesome difficulty in answering; but when he had settled upon his reply,spoke both clearly and with resolution:
"The house of which you speak may lack its occupant just now, buteverything goes to show she is always expected. Or why are the lampsinvariably lighted there at nightfall, the rooms kept warm, and thelarder replenished? Some birds in flitting come round again to theirforsaken nest. Your bird may; meanwhile the nest remains ready."
"Enough!" The tone was sharp now, the words cutting. "You do notunderstand me nor my interest in the poor and forsaken. As for myplace among you, let it be filled by whom you will. I have my owngriefs, and they are not light, and I have anxieties such as visit fewmen. A ban is upon me and upon all who bear the name of Gillespie.This is known to you and possibly to every man and woman soon toassemble here. Perhaps you do well not to submit me to theircuriosity. But there is something you _can_ do for me--something whichyou will do for me, I am sure; something which would place me underlasting obligation to you without doing you or anyone else the leastharm in the world. A woman may come in here; a woman, wild-eyed,unkempt, but with a look--I am sure you will know her. There is anunearthly loveliness in her wan features. She has--But what use isthere in my attempting to describe her? If she answers to the name ofMille-fleurs--some persons call her Millie--she is the woman I seek.Will you give her this?" (He had torn the edge off a newspaper lyingnear and was rapidly writing on it a few words.) "It will do no harmto the cause for which you are working, and it may save a most unhappywoman. Of myself I make no count, yet it might save me, too."
He handed over to the Captain the slip carelessly folded. It wasreceived with reluctance. Mr. Gillespie, noting this, observed withsome agitation:
"You are here to do God's work. Sometimes you are called upon to do itblindly and without full enlightenment." And having emphasised thiswith a bow of remarkable dignity he went out, little realising thatthe possible clue to his own future fate lay in the hands of one he atthat moment passed without a look.
"These are the crosses we are called upon to bear," spoke up theSalvation Army Captain as the door closed upon the man they had onceheld in deepest reverence. "Now, what am I to do with this?" he added,turning over in his hands the half-rolled-up slip which had just beengiven into his charge.
Involuntarily my hand went out to it. It was a perfectly unconsciousaction on my part, and I blushed vividly when I realised what I haddone. I had no authority here. I was not even known to the good manand woman before me.
The Captain, who may or may not have noted my anxiety, paid no heedeither to my unfortunate self-committal or to the apologetic questionwith which I endeavoured to retrieve myself.
Turning to the lass beside him, he handed her the slip, with the lookwhich a man gives to a woman on whose good sense and judgment he hascome to rely.
"Take it, Sally," he said. "You will know the girl if she comes in,and, what's more, you'll know how to manage the matter so as to givesatisfaction to all the parties concerned. And now, sir?--" heinquired, turning towards me.
But at this instant a diversion was created by the arrival ofDetective Sweetwater, a man for whose presence I was certainly littleprepared.
"The gentleman who has just gone out passed you something," he cried,approaching the lass without ceremony, though not without respect. Mehe did not appear to see.
"The gentleman left a note with us for one of the poor women whosometimes straggle in here," was her quiet response. "He is interestedin poor girls; tries to reclaim them."
"I am sorry," protested the detective "but I must have a glance atwhat he wrote. It may be of immediate importance to the police. Hereis my authority," he added in lower tones, opening his coat for amoment. "You know under what suspicion the Gillespie family lies. Heis a Gillespie; let me see those lines--or, stay, read them outyourself--that may be better."
The young woman hesitated, consulted the Captain with a look, thenglanced down at the slip trembling in her hand. It was half unrolled,and some of its words must have met her eye.
"Why do you think this has anything to do with the serious matter youmention?" she ventured to ask.
The detective approached his mouth to her ear, but my hearing did notfail me even under these unfavourable circumstances.
"Everything has connection with it," I heard him say. "Everything theydo and think. I wouldn't trust one of them round the corner. I shouldmake the greatest mistake of my life if I allowed any secretcommunication written by a Gillespie to pass under my nose without anattempt to see what it was. This one may be of an innocent nature;probably is. The gentleman who left it with you passes for aphilanthropist, and as such might very readily hold communication withthe worst characters in town without any other motive than the one youyourselves can best appreciate. But I must be sure of this. I havebeen detailed to watch his movements, and his movements have broughthim here. You will therefore oblige me, Miss, if you can make it clearthat the cause of justice--by which I mean the cause which I herepersonally represent--will not suffer injury by the free transmissionof this slip to the person for whom it is meant."
/> "I will read you what he has written here," replied the girl. "Heleft it open or almost open to anyone's perusal." And I heard her readout, in low but penetrating tones, the following words:
When I last saw you, you were suffering. This is an unbearable thought to me, yet I cannot go to you for reasons which you can readily appreciate. Come to me, then. The house is always open and the servants have received orders to admit anyone who asks for me.
This was certainly warm language from a mere philanthropist to a citywaif whose misery had attracted his notice. But no remarks passed, andSweetwater did not seek to hinder even by a look the careful refoldingof the slip and the putting of it away in the young lass's desk.Indeed, he seemed to approve of this, for the next moment I heard himsay:
"That's right; take good care of the slip. If the young woman comesin, give it to her. I suppose you know her?"
"Not at all; he simply described her to us; or attempted to. She maynot come in at all."
"Then keep a grip on those lines. What kind of a person did he say shewas?"
"Oh, I don't know. He said she was wild-looking, but beautiful, andthat she answered to some such name as Millie."
"It's likely to be a fake, the whole mess. Good-day, Captain;good-day, Miss." And Detective Sweetwater stepped away.
I had thought him keen, yet he had paid no more attention to me thanif I had been a stick. Was the corner in which I sat darker than Ithought, or had he been so full of his own affairs that he failed torecognise me? I had kept my face turned away, but he assuredly musthave known my figure.
When he was gone the two laid their heads together for a moment, thenbegan to bustle towards me. In the meantime I had planned a _coupd'etat_. I had considered if, by a little acting on my part, I couldput them in the wrong, I might succeed in getting from them somepositive facts to work upon. Accordingly, I was in a state ofsuppressed feeling when the Captain found himself face to face withme.
"I heard you," said I, flinging down the book I had taken up. "I haveears like a hare and I couldn't help it. I know Mr. Gillespie, and itmade my blood boil to hear him addressed with suspicion. How anyonewho has ever heard him speak to the poor and unfortunate couldassociate him with the atrocious death of his father, I cannotimagine. So good to poor girls! So bountiful in his charities! Ithought you were Christians here."
The Captain may have been a Christian, but he was also a man, and,being a man, looked nettled.
"It was a mistake for us to discuss Army affairs within reach of twosuch sharp ears," said he. "Mr. Gillespie has done some good work, andfar be it from me to add myself to those who have associated his namewith the crime which has just made the family notorious. I simply failto stand by him because he uses us as a cloak for his personalindulgences. He is infatuated with a woman whom he has never presumedto present to his family. This won't do for us. The other matterbelongs to the police."
I allowed myself to cool down a trifle.
"I beg your pardon; you know your own business, of course. But it's alittle hard for me to believe that such a refined man as Mr. Gillespiecould find any other than a charitable interest in any woman likely tocome straying in here. Did you ever see his home, his child, hisfriends?"
The Captain shrugged his shoulders and curtly replied:
"I can imagine." Then in a tone calculated to end the interview so faras this topic was concerned: "We count nothing as strange in thisplace, sir. We come too near the unregenerate heart. Human nature'sthe same, sir, in rich and in poor. And now, sir, your business? It'smost time for our noon meeting, so I must ask you to be concise."
I had almost forgotten I had any business there, but I pulled myselfup under his eye and told him I was on the search for a woman, too.
"But she's an old one," I made haste to assure him; "a lodging-housekeeper who is in the possession of evidence of great importance to aclient of mine. Her name, as told me, is Mother Merry; do you know anysuch person?"
He did not, but informed me that there were several queer old placesdown by the wharves where I might hear of her. This was enough. I hadnow an excuse for penetrating the district towards which I had beenpointing from the first.
Thanking him, and asking his pardon for my few brusque words, I wentout, and, giving my policeman a wink, turned in the direction of theriver.