City Crimes Part 17

A sort of under-official, who was seated at the desk, whispered in the ear of the Captain of the Watch--

'I know him, he's an infernal scoundrel, but he _votes our ticket_, and you let him slide, by all means.'

'McQuig, you are discharged,' said the Captain to the prisoner.

'Why, sir, that man was one of the worst of the rioters, and he is, besides, one of the greatest villains on the Points,' remarked a watchman, who, having only been recently appointed, was comparatively _green_, and by no means _au fait_ in the method of doing business in that 'shop.'

'Silence, sir!' thundered the Captain--'how dare you dispute my authority? I shall discharge whom I please, d.a.m.n you; and you will do well if you are not discharged from your post for your interference.'

The indignant Captain demanded the name of the next prisoner, who confessed to the eccentric Scriptural cognomen of 'Numbers Clapp.'

'I know _him_, too,' again whispered the under-official--'he is a common and notorious thief, but he is useful to us as a _stool pigeon_,[3] and you must let him go.'

'Clapp, you can go,' said the Captain; and Mr. Numbers Clapp lost no time in conveying himself from the dangerous vicinity of justice; though such _justice_ as we here record, was not very dangerous to _him_.

'Now, fellow, what's _your_ name?' asked the Captain of a shabbily dressed man, whose appearance strongly indicated both abject poverty and extreme ill health.

'Dionysus Wheezlecroft,' answered the man, with a consumptive cough.

'Do you know him?' inquired the Captain, addressing the under-official, in a whisper.

'Perfectly well,' replied the other--'he is a poor devil, utterly harmless and inoffensive, and is both sick and friendless. He was formerly a political stump orator of some celebrity; he worked hard for his party, and when that party got into power, it kicked him to the devil, and he has been flat on his back ever since.'

'What party did he belong to?--_ours?_' asked the Captain.

'No,' was the reply; and that brief monosyllable of two letters, sealed the doom of Dionysus Wheezlecroft.

'Lock him up,' cried the Captain--'he will be _sent over_ for six months in the morning.' And so he was--not for any crime, but because he did not belong to _our party_.

Several negroes, male and female, who could not possibly belong to any party, were then summarily disposed of; and at last it came to Frank's turn to be examined.

'Say, you sailor fellow,' quoth the Captain, 'what's your name?'

Frank quietly stepped forward, and in as few words as possible made himself known; he explained the motives of his disguise, and the circ.u.mstances under which he had been induced to enter the house of Pat Mulligan.--The Captain, though savage and tyrannical to his inferiors, was all smiles and affability to the rich Mr. Sydney.

'Really, my dear sir,' said he, rubbing his hands, and accompanying almost every word with a corresponding bow, 'you have disguised yourself so admirably, that it would puzzle the wits of a lawyer to make out who you are, until you should _speak_, and then your gentlemanly accent would betray you. Allow me to offer you ten thousand apologies, on behalf of my men, for having dared to subject you to the inconvenience of an arrest; and permit me also to a.s.sure you that if they had known who you were, they would not have molested you had they found you demolis.h.i.+ng all the houses on the Points.'

'I presume I am at liberty to depart?' said Frank; and the Captain returned a polite affirmative. Our hero left the hall of judgment, thoroughly disgusted with the injustice and partiality of this petty minion of the law; for he well knew that had he himself been in reality nothing more than a poor sailor, as his garb indicated, the three words, 'lock him up,' would have decided his fate for that night; and that upon the following morning the three words, 'send him over,' would have decided his fate for the ensuing six months.

When Frank was gone, the Captain said to the under official:

'That is Mr. Sydney, the young gentleman who was convicted of murder a short time ago, and whose innocence of the crime was made manifest in such an extraordinary manner, just in time to save his neck. He is very rich, and of course I could not think of locking _him_ up.'

The Captain proceeded to examine other prisoners, and Frank went in quest of other adventures, in which pursuit we shall follow him.

As he turned into Broadway, he encountered a showily dressed courtezan, who, addressing him with that absence of ceremony for which such ladies are remarkable, requested him to accompany her home.

'This may lead to something,' thought Frank; and pretending to be somewhat intoxicated, he proffered her his arm, which she took, at the same time informing him that her residence was in Anthony street. This street was but a short distance from where they had met; a walk of five minutes brought them to it, and the woman conducted Frank back into a dark narrow court, and into an old wooden building which stood at its further extremity.

'Wait here a few moments, until I get a light,' said the woman; and entering a room which opened from the entry, she left our hero standing in the midst of profound darkness.--Hearing a low conversation going on in the room, he applied his ear to the key-hole, and listened, having good reason to suppose that he himself was the object of the discourse.

'What sort of a man does he appear to be?' was asked, in a voice which sent a thrill through every nerve in Frank's body--for it struck him that he had heard it before. It was the voice of a man, and its tones were peculiar.

'He is a sailor,' replied the woman--'and as he is somewhat drunk now, the powder will soon put him to sleep, and then--'

The remainder of the sentence was inaudible to Frank; he had heard enough, however, to put him on his guard; for he felt convinced that he was in one of those murderous dens of prost.i.tution and crime, where robbery and a.s.sa.s.sination are perpetrated upon many an unsuspecting victim.

In a few minutes the woman issued from the room, bearing a lighted candle; and requesting Frank to follow, she led the way up a crooked and broken stair-case, and into a small chamber, scantily furnished, containing only a bed, a table, a few chairs, and other articles of furniture, of the commonest kind.

Our hero had now an opportunity to examine the woman narrowly.--Though her eyes were sunken with dissipation, and her cheeks laden with paint, the remains of great beauty were still discernible in her features, and a vague idea obtruded itself, like a dim shadow, upon Frank's mind, that this was not the _first_ time he had seen her.

'Why do you watch me so closely?' demanded the woman, fixing her piercing eyes upon his countenance.

'Ax yer pardon, old gal, but aren't you going to fetch on some grog?'

said our hero, a.s.suming a thick, drunken tone, and drawing from his pocket a handful of gold and silver coin.

'Give me some money, and I will get you some liquor,' rejoined the woman, her eyes sparkling with delight, as she saw that her intended victim was well supplied with funds. Frank gave her a half dollar, and she went down stairs, promising to be back in less than ten minutes.

During her absence, and while our hero was debating whether to make a hasty retreat from the house, or remain and see what discoveries he could make tending to throw light on the character and practices of the inmates, the chamber door opened, and to his surprise a small boy of about five years of age entered, and gazed at him with childish curiosity.

'Surely I have seen that little lad before,' thought Frank; and then he said, aloud--

'What is your name, my boy?'

'_Jack the Prig_,' replied the little fellow.

Frank started; memory carried him back to the Dark Vaults, where he had heard the Dead Man _catechise_ his little son, and he recollected that the urchin had, on that occasion, made the same reply to a similar question. By referring to the sixth chapter of this work, the reader will find the questions and answers of that singular catechism.

Resolving to test the matter further, our hero asked the boy the next question which he remembered the Dead Man had addressed to his son, on that eventful night:--

'Who gave you that name?'

'_The Jolly Knights of the Round Table_,' replied the boy, mechanically.

'By heavens, 'tis as I suspected!' thought Frank--'the child's answers to my questions prove him to be the son of the Dead Man; the voice which I heard while listening in the pa.s.sage, and which seemed familiar to me, was the voice of that infernal miscreant himself: and the woman whom I accompanied hither, and whom I half fancied I had seen before--that woman is his wife.'

The boy, probably fearing a return of his mother, left the room; and Frank continued his meditations in the following strain:--

'The mystery begins to clear up. This house is probably the one that communicates with the _secret outlet_ of the Dark Vaults, through which I pa.s.sed, blindfolded, accompanied by those two villains, Fred Archer, and the Dead Man. The woman, no doubt, entices unsuspecting men into this devil's trap, and after _drugging_ them into a state of insensibility, hands them over to the tender mercies of her hideous husband, who, after robbing them, casts them, perhaps, into some infernal pit beneath this house, there to die and rot!--Good G.o.d, what terrible iniquities are perpetrated in the very heart of this great city--iniquities which are unsuspected and unknown! And yet the perpetrators of them often escape their merited punishment, while I, an innocent man, came within a hair's breadth of peris.h.i.+ng upon the scaffold for another's crime! But I will not question the divine justice of the Almighty; the guilty may elude the punishment due their crimes, in this world, but vengeance will overtake them in the next. It shall, however, henceforth be the great object of my life, to bring one stupendous miscreant to the bar of human justice--the Dead Man whose escape from the State Prison was followed by his outrage upon Clinton Romaine, by which the poor boy was forever deprived of the faculty of speech; and 'tis my firm belief that 'twas by his accursed hand my aunt was murdered; she was too elevated in character, and too good a Christian, to commit suicide, and _he_ is the only man in existence who could slay such an excellent and honorable woman! Yes--something tells me that the Dead Man is the murderer of my beloved relative, and never will I rest till he is in my power, that I may wreak upon him my deadly vengeance!'

Hearing a footstep on the stairs, he a.s.sumed an att.i.tude and expression of countenance indicative of drowsiness and stupidity. A moment afterwards, the woman entered, and placed upon the table a small pitcher containing liquor. Taking from a shelf two tumblers, she turned her back towards Frank, and drew from her bosom a small box, from which she rapidly transferred a few grains of fine white powder into one of the tumblers; then going to a cupboard in one corner, she put a teaspoonful of loaf sugar into each of the tumblers, and placing them upon the table, requested our hero to 'help himself.'

Frank poured some liquor into the tumbler nearest him, and looking askance at the woman as he did so, he saw that her features wore a smile of satisfaction; she then supplied her own gla.s.s, and was about to raise it to her lips, when our hero said, in a gruff, sleepy tone--

'I say, old woman, you haven't half sweetened this grog of mine. Don't be so d--d stingy of your sugar, for I've money enough to pay for it.'

The woman turned and went to the closet to get another spoonful of the article in question; when Frank, with the rapidity of lightning, _changed the tumblers_, placing the deadly dose designed for him, in the same spot where the woman's tumbler had stood. This movement was accomplished with so much dexterity, that when she advanced to the table with the sugar, she failed to notice the alteration.

'Well, old gal--here's to the wind that blows, the s.h.i.+p that goes, and the la.s.s that loves a sailor!' And delivering himself of this hackneyed nautical toast, the pretended seaman drank off the contents of his gla.s.s, an example which was followed by the female miscreant, who responded to Frank's toast by uttering aloud the significant wish--