One of My Sons Part 36

"Were you able to settle in your own mind the question just now raised between us at your office?" I asked, after a momentary silence. "It may not be in order for me to ask, and you may not feel at all ready to answer me. If so, do not hesitate to rebuke my importunity, which springs entirely from my excessive interest in the matter."

"I will the more readily excuse you," was his reply, "because my answer must dash your client's hopes. Leighton Gillespie is not a victim of double consciousness. If he were, he would not remember in one state what pa.s.ses in the other. Now, he does remember. Though he gives no explanation of what allures him into haunts so out of keeping with his usual a.s.sociations, I caught the glint in his eye when I mentioned certain names. Leighton cannot deceive me. Moreover, Mr.

Outhwaite, I cannot professionally state that in my opinion he is otherwise than completely sane, notwithstanding the tragic experience he once went through. I say tragic, because the surmise you indulged in concerning him was true. He was the man who flung himself upon the foot-rail of that plunging engine. He acknowledged it to me just now, and acknowledged, also, that he knew that those cars contained dynamite. A great and wonderful act for a man who had had no experience outside the club-room and the gymnasium."

"I respect heroism wherever I meet it," said I, slightly lifting my hat.

"And I," echoed the doctor; then as we turned down the street; "I do not comprehend Leighton or what has led him into this course of duplicity if not crime. A hero at one period of his life; a scamp, if not worse, at another! What are we to think of the man whose nature admits such contradictions! What are we to think of human nature itself! I declare I am sometimes baffled by its operations, and heartily wish that in this present instance I could ascribe them to an unsound mental condition."

I had no answer for this ebullition of feeling, so walked on silently till our ways divided. As he turned towards home, I took the shortest route to my apartments. But before entering them I dined in the cafe below, so that it was eight o'clock at least before I mounted to my rooms.

A man was sitting on the stairs waiting for me. As I stooped to unlock my door, he made known his errand. He was an officer in plain clothes, and he came to tell me that I was wanted at the earliest possible moment at the District Attorney's office.

XXVI

FERRY LIGHTS

There could be but one reason for this message from the District Attorney. I had identified myself too closely with the Gillespie case not to have attracted the notice of the police. I was about to be called upon to explain; and, while I shrank from the task, I could not but acknowledge to myself that the time for such explanations had come; that the burden then weighing upon me was too heavy to be borne any longer una.s.sisted.

But the explanations I have thus alluded to would cost me Hope. Never would she forget through whose instrumentality the man she loved had been betrayed to his doom.

It was now raining hard, and the chill which this gave to the atmosphere was sensibly felt by us both as we stepped out into the air. At the suggestion of the officer accompanying me, I had provided myself with a heavy overcoat. It stood me in good stead that night, much more so than I had any reason for antic.i.p.ating when I donned it.

The ride down-town was hurried and without incident. I entered the District Attorney's office about nine o'clock, and found him in close conversation with Mr. Gryce. Both showed relief at seeing me. This did not add to my satisfaction, and when the detective rose and I noticed his composed aspect and the somewhat startling fact that the wrinkle which I had so long observed between his brows had entirely disappeared, I experienced a strange sensation of dread only to be accounted for by the delicate nature of the sympathy which bound me to Hope Meredith. For the moment I was Leighton Gillespie, conscious of guilt and quailing under the quiet eye of this old detective.

This sensation, odd and thrilling as it was, did not cease with the first sight of this man. It followed me with more or less insistence through the whole of this memorable night, occasioning me, I have no doubt, a more poignant anguish and a more intolerable share in the grief and suspense of the woman most affected than Leighton Gillespie himself would have felt or did feel when the whole power of the law was brought to bear upon him.

But these feelings, with all their sub-consciousness of another's suffering, did not interfere with my outward composure; and I may here remark in pa.s.sing that I learned a lesson from this experience which has proved of great use to me in my profession. However true it may be that sudden shock reveals the hidden motions of the heart, it is also true that a man, if he is a man, may be the victim of the keenest internal struggle without abating a jot of his natural manner, or showing by look or gesture the wild contention raging within him. This I have learned, and I no longer gauge a man's internal sensations by his outward appearance.

The District Attorney was not slow in making me understand what he wanted of me.

After the necessary civilities had pa.s.sed, he told me bluntly that he had heard of my visit to Mother Merry's and of the conversation I had held there with a young woman against whom a warrant of arrest had for some time been made out. As by this interview I had been rendered competent to identify her, would I be good enough to accompany the officers who were about to attempt her arrest? A failure in seizing the right girl would at this stage of the affair be fatal to the successful progress of the important matter at present engaging them.

What could I say? My position at the best required explanation, and any hesitation I might show towards aiding the police in their legitimate task, might easily be construed not only to my own disadvantage, but to that of the man in whose behalf I showed resistance. Indeed, there was nothing left for me but acquiescence, hard and uncongenial as I found it.

"I am at your service," I returned. "But, first, I should like to explain----"

"Pardon me," interposed the District Attorney. "Explanations will come later. Mr. Gryce says he has no time to lose, the woman being a very restless one and liable at any moment to flit. Her name is Mille-fleurs; or, rather, that is the name by which she is known on the police books. You have seen her, and have only to follow Mr.

Gryce; he will explain the rest."

I bowed my acquiescence, and joined the old detective at the door.

"It will be a rough night," that venerable official remarked, with a keen glance at my outfit. And with just this hint as to what was before us, he stepped out into the street, where I hastily followed him.

We did not carry umbrellas, Mr. Gryce looking upon them as a useless enc.u.mbrance; and as I waited there in the wet while my companion exchanged some words with a man who had stepped up to him, I marvelled at the impa.s.sibility of this old man and the astonis.h.i.+ng vigour he showed in face of what most young and able-bodied men would consider the disadvantages of the occasion. Short as was the whispered conference, it seemed to infuse fresh life into the rheumatic limbs I had frequently seen limping along in much more favourable weather, and it was with a gesture of decided satisfaction he now led the way to a cab I had already seen dimly outlined through the mist which now enveloped everything in sight.

"We shall have to cross the city," he announced, as he followed me inside. "It's a bad night and gives promise of being worse. But you are young, and I--well, I have been younger, but, young or old, have always managed so far to be in at the finish."

"It is the finish, then?" I ventured, with that sinking of the heart Leighton might have felt had he heard his own doom thus foreshadowed.

The old detective smoothed out the lap-robe he had drawn over his knees.

"There is reason to think so, unless some mistake or unforeseen misfortune robs us of success at the moment of expected triumph. Is your interest a friendly or a professional one? The affair is one which warrants either."

It was a question I was surely ent.i.tled to evade. But I had already decided to be frank in my explanations to the District Attorney, and why not with the man most in his confidence?

"I am a friend of Miss Meredith," said I; "in other words, her lawyer.

She is more than a friend to the Gillespies, as her relations.h.i.+p demands. To serve her interests I have meddled more in this matter than was perhaps judicious. I was anxious to prove to her that her cousins' lives would bear scrutiny."

"I see, and discovered that one of them, at least, would not. Poor girl! she has my sympathy. You are without doubt a man we can rely on, no matter into what complexities our errand takes us?"

"I don't know; I have never undergone any great test. I am willing to a.s.sist you in the identification of this girl; but I would rather not be present at her arrest."

We were crossing Broadway. He looked out, gave one rapid glance up and down the busy street,--busy even at that hour and in the wet,--and quietly remarked:

"Or at his, I suppose?"

The jolting of the cab over the car-tracks struck my nerves as his question did my heart. To this day I never cross a street track in a carriage, but the double anguish of that moment comes back; also the mist of lights which dazzled down the long perspective as I cast a glance through the dripping windows.

"His?" I repeated, as soon as I could trust my voice.

"Yes, Leighton Gillespie's. We expect to take him to-night in her company," he added.

That last phrase startled me.

"You are going to take him in the presence of Mille-fleurs!" I exclaimed. "Why, I saw him an hour ago standing in his own hall in Fifth Avenue."

"No doubt, but if you have made a study of Mr. Gillespie's habits, you have learned that he is given to sudden sallies from his home. He will be found, I a.s.sure you, in the same house as Mille-fleurs. I hope we may make no mistakes in locating this house correctly. I hardly think we shall. The men I have chosen for the job are both keen and reliable; besides, for a gentleman of his antecedents, Mr. Gillespie shows a startling indifference to the result of his peculiar escapades. A strange man, Mr. Outhwaite."

"Very," I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed abstractedly enough. My thoughts were with a possibility suggested by his words. Pursuing it, I said, "The letter I saw Mr. Gillespie read was from her, then? I noticed that it caused him great agitation, even from where I stood on the other side of the street."

The old detective smiled instinctively at my reckless betrayal of the part I had played in this scene, but made no reference to the fact itself, possibly because he was as well acquainted with my movements as I was myself. He only gave utterance to an easy-toned, "Exactly!"

which seemed not only to settle this matter, but some others then inflaming my curiosity.

"We have been waiting a long time for some such communication to pa.s.s between them," he presently resumed, with a benevolent condescension, springing, perhaps, from our close contact in that jolting cab.

"Otherwise, we should have taken him to-day, and in his own house. We have had great difficulty in holding the reporters back and even in keeping our own men quiet. It was desirable, you see, to take them together."

"And couldn't she be found? Wasn't she at Mother Merry's?"

"Not lately. No one answering to her description has shown up there for days. She seems to have fled from that place, alarmed, no doubt, by the interest shown in her by the young gentleman who got speech with her at the cost of a couple of silver dollars."

I began to note the corners as we pa.s.sed them.

"Then we are not going to Mother Merry's?" I observed.